February 19, 2025 • 51 mins
In this week’s episode, Bill and Alex welcome UND Athletics CFO Chad Karthauser to talk all things money and college athletics, from revenue sharing and the House settlement to how UND measures themselves among peer institutions (1:52). Then, there are big wins and new school records to discuss, as the guys whip around the winter and spring sports scene (27:19) before flipping to the B-Side (45:16), where Alex Bregman now plays for the Red Sox and Spurs *might* be turning things around.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Bill Shaves Podcast, presented by mid
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(00:23):
This is how we do sports, and this is the
Bill Shaves Podcast. Welcome, Father God without my voice cracking.
Welcome to another edition of the Bill Shapes Podcast. We're
taping this on a Tuesday morning, the eighteenth of February.
Alex Sider Bill Shaves a special guest we're gonna introduce
(00:45):
in just a moment build not a warm week where
we live right now, little nip there in the air
in late February and Grand Forks.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
If we look at the United and welcome Alex, and
welcome everyone that does listen. So if you look at
the United State, we are the northernmost school in Division
one athletics, so we always have to start with what's
happening kind of in Grand Forks because we are that institution.
There's only one of them and it's us, So we
(01:15):
have a little nip in the air. It was crisp
this morning, and I think it'll continue to be crisp
for a little bit longer and then actually we're heading
to some okay tempts.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Next week looks great. Get through the next couple of days,
that's all you gotta do. And March is in sight.
We just talked about. Tournament season is right around the corner,
like it's happening. It is about there, it is. It
is so lot going on. Of course because of that.
In the podcast, you've got winter sports beginning to push
toward their championship seasons. All the spring sports now are
really getting started. Lots of great stuff to talk about
(01:48):
with softball and men's and women's tennis getting rolling, and
track and field is doing awesome. We are going to
start though, with some financial conversation with the man that
is no stranger to the Bill Shaves podcast. I'm not
rushmore of the Bill Shafes podcast guest list. He's the
chief financial officer at the University of North Dakota for athletics.
He's you and the Senior Associate ad Chad Cardhauser. Ladies
(02:10):
and gentlemen, welcome aboard.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Thanks for having me Alex. Shocking, absolutely shocking that I'm
a repeat, you know, first time, long time you could say,
or whatever, But yeah, always appreciative to be on. I mean,
I'm sure the information that I'm able to give today
is going to be well, I'm not sure it's going
to be the spiciest that you will have from a
guest perspective, but you keep inviting me back, so apparently
(02:34):
I'm not like halfway bad at what i have to say.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
So you know, well, I would say, Chad that what's
important is for folks to know the annual cadence of
what is required of us financially, but connect that with
maybe where we are in life right now, and so
I think those that's why I felt like it was
(02:57):
really important for you to at least behind the curve
and some of the things that you deal with and
some of the things you have to provide to the
n C double A. But then how does that work
with some of the things that we're seeing I'll just
say in headlines in the media.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, no, uh again, thanks again Bill having me on. Yeah,
you know, uh, it is kind of interesting, you know,
when you when you when you look at these uh
you know, i'd say across the country and you know
you're starting to see all the articles come out, you
know about hey, what are what are schools spending? What
are schools? What are their expenses? And you see the
(03:31):
dollar amounts that are there. You know understand that that's
a if you're a Division one school. And again, unbeknownst
to me when I got into the industry, you know,
you're required every year to go through an audit of
agreed upon procedures and it's an outside firm that you
have to go and you know, seek out and bring in.
And because oftentimes it's not cheap to do that, you know,
(03:52):
we have to put an RFP out and do that. Uh.
The company we use as a company out of Florida,
James Moore and Company, who kind of in the industry
as one of the leaders, I would say they're they're
great to work with. I think that again from an
audit perspective, I think everybody here's the word audit, and
they automatically are like, oh, like this is bad, Like
oh what's going on. I always take the approach of
(04:15):
if you're not doing anything wrong, then an audit probably
is a means that can probably help improve you from
either policies, procedure, or you know along that front. Again,
why wouldn't you want somebody to come in and take
a look and be like, hey, are we doing things correctly?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Are we coding things to where they need to go?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
You know? So you know, I always welcome the opportunity
with that because I feel like we do an excellent
job in this department of you know, being as fiscal
and fiscally responsible as we can, and you know, make
sure we're following the proper steps that we do. So
you know, every year we come in, you know, we
usually have to wait for our books to close, which
(04:54):
you know sometimes takes until September October, but we come in,
you know, the auditors they were able to do it remotely.
And then what that basically does is that gets us
to our NCAA financial reporting which we have to file
by January fifteenth. Which is why you are starting to
see the numbers come out now, is because with that
(05:15):
finally date of January fifteenth, now people can go in,
you know, can do public requests. And again, the a
lot of the articles that you see are for public schools.
You know your Texas's, your Michigan's or Ohio State's, your
University of North Dakota, because we are a public school
and subject to open records request. And you know that
document that we do through the through the financial reporting system.
(05:38):
You know, it's about an eighty page document. This year
we had about forty one thousand transactions which comprised that. Yeah,
I know it's so yeah, I know it's it sounds
like a lot, but you know, I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Is it is a lot?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
It is, yes.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
But the nice thing.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
About that report, and one of the one of the
best parts about it, I think is that you know,
they do nineteen different revenue categories and twenty one different
expense categories. But those categories are the same for every
school across the country that has to file this report.
And again it's a requirement at the Division one level.
I believe at the Division two level you have to
(06:16):
do one every three years, and I believe Division three
they recommend it, but they don't require it. So again
you can use it as a means to see that.
And again, like you know, the number of the first
revenue line item is ticket sales, and you have to
break out the ticket sales by the sport that you sponsor.
So you know, if you go into our document, you
(06:36):
look at that first page, you know, we have a
breakdown of, okay, of the total amount of ticket sales,
how much was attributed to hockey, how much of it
was attributed to men's basketball, how much of it was
attributed to you know, the track and field indoor meets
that we have here. So you know, it's a very
very good tool. And then what that allows you to
do is then use it as a means of comparison
(06:56):
against maybe some institutions that you would erman is maybe
your peers. You know, I think here when we think
of our peers, you know, we think of teams in
the Summit League, we think of teams in the Missouri
Valley Football Conference. I think you always have to keep
an eye on the Dakota's, especially what they're doing. And
you know, but I would say from an NCHD perspective
(07:17):
and from hockey, I think you have to keep a
perspective of maybe what some of those Big ten schools
are doing. I think everybody in our fan base would
would probably want to know what Minnesota's doing. I would
say that's probably number one on the list you so
as much as you might say their financial model might
be a little different than ours, and we can maybe
get into that a little bit later, we do have
to keep an eye on it.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, I think that's right. I think you know, you
do such a great job of comparing in establishing spreadsheets
for us, and so you know, folks need to know that. Yeah,
we keep an eye on what's happening, you know, with
other institutions, and I think that's incredibly important. So this
is one avenue that we can do that. Obviously, the
private's a little bit different, so harder to get information,
(08:01):
say from Notre Dame or Boston College or Boston University.
It just it becomes a little bit more challenging, but
we get an idea in some ways what they're up to.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah, And the way that you can go about with
that one would be maybe our other annual report, which
really isn't a financial report, and that's the Equity and
Athletics Disclosure Act survey that we have to do every year.
That one. If you receive any type of federal funding,
which I believe every school in the country receives some
type of federal funding, and we're talking the institution, not
(08:34):
the athletic department the institution, so it is through the
Department of Education. So that is a report that I
mean community colleges all the way up to your ivys
have to report that. Now, again, it's not a financial report,
and they're very very adamant to say that it is
not a financial report, but it does have financial data
(08:55):
in it. So if you do want to look and
see what maybe some of the ivys are doing, you
can get a good idea. But I wouldn't use it
as a means of, you know, a concrete comparison. You know,
I'd say maybe apples to oranges.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
So here's a question, chat.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
So when you do get that information from peer institutions
and you are taking a look and seeing what other
schools are doing, could you maybe provide an example then
of a past instance where you and D then did
make a change or pivot, Like what would be some
of the things you would do based off of looking
at numbers from other schools?
Speaker 4 (09:28):
How how does that affect what und does?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I think we want to make sure that we're keeping
up with our peers, So you know, I would say
that if we're looking at let's take salaries and benefits
for example, that's one of the that's one of the
expense categories that you have, you know, and you break
it out actually by support staff and by coaches. So
there's two different expense categories for it. You know, if
you can get that information and you can see okay,
(09:54):
and the coaching one is broken out by head coaches
and assistant coaches. So if we look at those report
and we see, okay, there are we have peers in
our conference that have you know, three full time basketball
coaches at X amount of dollars. And then we look
at our three full time coaches that we have for
men's basketball and our X amount of dollars, and if
(10:14):
we see a discrepancy between the two, that might be
a way that we can go to our human resource
department and say, hey, we're looking at the market of
where we are from a salary perspective. You know, is
there a possibility of us maybe being able to you know,
bump up those salaries if we need to. Likewise, if
we do that and we look and maybe we're ahead
(10:34):
of the curve, and which does occur in situation, then
we do know that, hey, we're doing what we need
to you know, to be competitive and to you know,
because I think you know, everybody's trying to win games
and you want to put you know, you want to
put the best staff that you can together. You want
to put your best Uh, you know, we want to
make sure that you're deploying your resources is good. I'd
say another example too, one of the line items that
(10:55):
are on there is a student athlete meals non travel,
So that would be meal that you can provide in house.
You know, that's a great That's a great one to
look at to see, Okay, what are we doing from
a nutritional perspective? Are we doing enough? You know? Is
that an area that maybe we can beef up compared
to our peers. And you know, obviously, you know, what
(11:16):
we find is, you know, we are doing a pretty
good job. And I think that we have done but
we looked at that maybe we were a little we
could probably do a little bit more. And I'd say
one of the things that we've definitely been pushing over
the last year is kind of that nutritional aspect of it.
And so I think that we have maybe reassigned some
some resources there, you know, to be able to maybe
beef that number up a little bit just to you know,
(11:37):
just to give ourselves maybe maybe that's a little bit
of a competitive advantage that we can have.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Those are two really good examples.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Check.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, those are really good examples in the one thing
I would say for the and we know we've got
some folks there there aren't listeners, and they dig into this,
and I know that they're interested in it for sure.
And again that doesn't account for like the cost of
living adjustment like say grand works to say Denver. But
but it gives us a very good understanding though of
(12:05):
what institutions are putting into their salary structure per se
in that regard. So so it really is good. We
need to make sure that we're at least, you know,
we're kind of in the median I mean in some way,
shape or form. You never want to be at the
at the lower lower end or the lower quartile, but
that mid that mid area to upper is what we're
(12:28):
striving for.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Absolutely. Yeah, you're looking for you know, I mean, obviously
average median somewhere within there. As long as you're you know,
closer to I think that we're doing what we can
from a competitive perspective to kind of you know, to
make sure we're not falling behind, you know, to some
regard with maybe some of our some of the ones
that we deem as peers.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
So so that's an annual occurrence that has gone on
really as far back as I can really remember, Alex.
I mean, I think that's something that has gone on
for a long long time in the Division one landscape.
So Chad not to take up the entire pod plus
at this point in time. So I'm a little nervous
to ask this question, but I'm also saying, hey, be
(13:14):
kind to the people that are listening right now, be
very very kind. If I were to say to you
the two words revenue share, what does that mean to
you at this point? And when we're sitting there reading
a lot of articles, just help me. If you got
on an elevator and we're going to the fifth floor,
(13:36):
can you just help me with what that means?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Well, I think could I maybe start with I think
what everybody thinks it is. I think I think when
people say revenue share, they immediately go to the twenty
point five million dollar number that's been established by the
House settlement, And because that's what it seems like the
big schools are again, I don't think a lot. I
(14:01):
don't think in the public, I don't think people talk about,
you know, the University of North Dakota. I don't think
they talk about you know, that school seventy miles down
the road. I don't think they talk about South Dakota State.
I don't think they talk about Montana, they talk about Texas,
they talk about Ohio State, they talk about Michigan. Those
are the ones that are in there. And the reality
is is their financial model is so much different than
(14:23):
those at I would say, you know, the group of
five FBS level, the FCS level which we compete at,
and the Division one non football. You know, a school
like Omaha, for example, is in there. They're a Division
I school that just doesn't sponsor doesn't sponsor football, or
at least doesn't at this time. So when you look
at that number and you hear that number, you know,
(14:45):
these schools that are up in that range, you know
they're looking to figure out, Okay, how do we because
the number has been established in the House settlement, which
again we're not sure that's a done deal. That still
got some things that we need to go through. But
the number that those schools in the autonomy five who
this lawsuit was against. That's the number that they've come
(15:05):
up with to say, that's the amount of revenue share
that you can go up to if you would like.
All the other schools us included have to be the
ones to figure out if this is something that we
want to opt into this time or not, which then
would make that revenue share number available. But what I
would caution everybody to say is that is the maximum
(15:27):
that you could go to. You could opt into the
revenue share and not actually share revenue. You're just making
the decision that you want to opt in, opt into it,
and then subject yourself to the scholarship limit. So when
you look at that, when you deal with that number
twenty point five, that's not for everybody. And when I
think of revenue, when I'm thinking of that word revenue,
(15:49):
I think we need to be very particular about what
revenue we're talking about. I know I talked about the
financial model, the financial models and how they're different for everybody.
You know, you look at a school like a Michigan
and again I just looked at their finances right before this,
and you know, when it comes to their revenues. Their
revenues are one hundred percent generated by their athletic department.
(16:11):
That comes from revenue, ticket sales, contributions, sponsorships, all those items.
There are no dollars coming from the institution over to
the Michigan Athletic Department to support that. That's not the model.
That's that's not the model that can sustain you. At
the FCS, the Division one non football and the Group
(16:33):
of five level, you know, you're looking at, you know,
the level of support somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty
to sixty percent. You know, when you get into non football,
you're looking at probably seventy to eighty percent that's coming
from institutional support or student fees. So when we're talking
about revenue, is it really revenue Because when you look
at those generated revenues for schools like at our level,
(16:54):
we're not bringing in twenty point five million dollars in
revenue like we're we're we do a very very good job.
And I don't want to, you know, to say anything
to that regard, but there's not one school at the
FCS level that actually generates enough revenue to sustain their
athletic department. They rely on some type of revenue from
the school. So when you start saying, well, we're into
revenue share category, I think it would be a pretty
(17:17):
tough sell to say that we're taking money from whether
it be a student fee or institutional support or government support,
and then using it as a means to revenue share
with our student athletes. I think that's a tough, tough conversation.
So I would say I would anybody who's thinking about, oh,
there's going to be all this money that's available. I
don't know if I was characterized that. If you're looking
(17:38):
at the top level, absolutely they do a great job
of generating the revenues and they can sustain their athletic department.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
As you work your way down, though, it's tougher, very simply,
very simply, And again not to go too deep into
the House settlement that again we're going to find out
with Judge Wilkin on April seventh whether or not the
settlement even goes through, and from what we understand at
this point, but the defendant conferences at the time, which
(18:06):
was the Power five or the Autonomy five conferences, Now
we're down to a four and some would say a two.
But at the end of the day, those schools certainly
receive a significant dollars from their media deal and from
the college football playoffs, and so at the end of
(18:27):
the day they actually may have revenue to share versus
let's just say the two hundred and forty odd schools
that are not in that case.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah, that's I mean that you hit the nail on
the head. And that's one of the big delineationes. I
mean you can say that, you know, the big schools too,
they just have they have big venues, so their ticket
sales are good. But the big gap that you've seen
between the I would say, when you look at the
revenues that they're generating, you know, the media rights is
probably number one. I mean, you can go in and
you can look at any of those financial statements, for
(19:02):
I would say that your SEC and Big ten and
just you know, let's not say a thing about the
ACC and the Big twelve. Those are substantial dollars that
were the and the PAC twelve before that, and that
conference still exists, by the way, it does still exist.
It might not be at this time. They have until
twenty six to reload, and they've reloaded some. But I
don't know if they'll be in that autonomy classification at
(19:25):
that time, but that is really the big one where
you see there's a big difference between the two. You know,
I think anybody who's been in a hockey game here
knows that we do an excellent job I would say
generating hockey revenue here. You know, it's so I would
say that puts us in a great conversation of ticket
sales at the FCS level from that regard, But I
would say meteorites, that is the big one where you
(19:47):
see a huge difference between what those autonomy five are
doing and schools at our level are doing.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, and I would say that, you know, the last
thing you kind of it's almost like you're sort of
mixing metaphors by talking hockey and that we'd a FCS school.
But that's the way. That's the way the NCAA good
or bad, has has categorized institutions based on whether you
have a football team playing in Division one and then
(20:15):
or what level you're going to play at in Division one,
and literally we've probably seen it. There's like three different levels, right,
so you've got two levels in the FBS and one
in the FCS. That's why we keep referring it to that.
So I don't want to get people, you know, disappointed
that we keep saying that. But until that categorization process changes,
(20:36):
that's the reason why we keep saying it this way.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's a fascinating conversation. I know, we could talk a
lot about more of the specifics on this because this
right now, Chad's world is really in the news like.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
This is it is It's our time, shine, Oh yeah, this.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Is this is the time for the CFOs.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah. Well, you know, in Chad said, you know about
our audit, but really what it does is it really
uh codifies our checks and balances, and we have an
amazing amount of support from alums, from our university, from
from our students, and we just got to make sure
that we're utilizing the dollars the way we should. And
(21:17):
there's nothing wrong with going through a good audit. Nothing wrong.
And in fact, when someone comes back with a recommendation, yeah,
we implement it because that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
And those and those documents to our documents that we
do put on the UNDI website, so you know, anybody
who wants to access our ADA report are agreed upon procedure,
audit and our financial report all located on the on
the main und website in in a section that they
have there, you know, and it's updated annually as soon
(21:49):
as we finished all of our annual reporting.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So if you are like minded as Chad is and
enjoy those sorts of documents, it is nice to know
that those are available for your perusal, perhaps before bed.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, I mean well, if you're someone like Chad that
would go all night, then.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
That would go oh no, yeah, oh it'd be I
don't even for about it, like that'd be.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Hey, last thing, Alex, I just want to mention with
Chad is Chad also assists I think the last time
we've been on before. It just just generally helps with
football scheduling. And I know we have some things in
the hop or some we can't announce right now, but
just generally just just give us an update on where
we are with football scheduling. Chad.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, football scheduling. You know we're full twenty five, twenty six,
you know, we have all those schedules done. Twenty seven.
We have a contract out that we're just waiting on doing.
And then once we have that one in it's with
the school and once that comes in, we'll be finished.
And then twenty eight we actually had a contract signed
over the weekend. I don't know if we want to
go public with it yet for our additional home game.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It's a tease. It's a good it's a tease.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
But we have got the contract back so we are
done for twenty eight as well, and it's great. So
you know, we'll talk with Schmidi about what we want
to do twenty nine and beyond. You know, we do
have our our guarantee. You know, we have our guarantee
games done for those years, so it'll just be like, hey,
what are we doing from an FCS perspective about teams
that we want to play with? But yeah, it's been
very positive on that front. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Can I ask what has it been like to work
with Eric in this process? Obviously it's different new face,
someone coming from a different, different set of eyes now
after his journey in Washington and in San Diego State,
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Honestly, I think it was one less thing he had
to worry about when he got here and now because
we had so much in the hopper and we had
so many things that we're working on. So now it's
now that we've gotten that one. You know, we've got
a meeting set up for tomorrow and you know we'll
go through it and probably talk about, hey, what, you know,
what do you want to do because his philosophy from
scheduling could be different from you know, what Bubble would
like to do. But I think that they're probably more
(23:48):
like minded than maybe not like minded from a scheduling perspective.
But it'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Very good Chad. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
This is not necessarily the exciting sexy stuff like you said,
but I think it's important stuff like Bill mentioned as well,
and you do a good job breaking it down, so
I appreciate somebody.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I appreciate that. Now. It's always great to come on,
regardless of how boring the material is.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Thanks Chad.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
We'll see about you. About to get work.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Always great to have Chad Cartzer on again. It's deep stuff.
It's things that the normal U and D fan might
not think about. But just the fact that you need
people like Chad keeping everybody in line, watching the books,
crunching the numbers, doing those sorts of things. It's again
a huge reason why the university is successful. If we
didn't have Chad's this thing wouldn't work out with.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
It, Yeah, Alex. The reality of it is every single
conversation that I have internally has to do with money,
you know, in some way, shape or form, or I
should say maybe broader, I should say resources, whether it's
human or otherwise, And it has to do with that.
(24:58):
And we have to continue to ask question just because
we did this last year, should we be doing it
this year? Maybe it's always not just a rinse wash repeat, right,
I mean it could be, it could be, but I
think you have to continue to think through it as
if I always say, like, what happens if it was
Kartheuser Industries? What would you do? And just because it's
(25:23):
a state institution where it's technically not your money, so
to speak, of course it is, we have an unbelievable
responsibility to make sure that we're utilizing those dollars as
best as we can.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
So anyways, we.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Have a lot of conversations every day about should we
be spending or should we be doing something different because
that's what today is where we are. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
No?
Speaker 4 (25:50):
No, I think so, No, it does.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Well, it's good I think for people to hear that
you've got that level of care of the stewardship, that
you've been entrusted with.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Our institution, our students, our student body, that there's a
lot of people that are invest in us to do
the right things and make sure we're doing the right things.
And so Chad's like kind of the head of the
spear when it comes to that, because as he would say,
so you would say, well, why you know, would he
be the one to go through this audity every year
(26:20):
when there's like forty one thousand transactions. The reason why
is because he can on a really on a dime
think through what we're doing so that when we have
these broader conversations, he's got the specifics.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
His passion is fantastic for this, Like it takes special
people to really want to dig into the numbers like
that with the bigger picture in mind of doing Why
am I doing this? It's not just a spreadsheet. This
is what's helped to succeed on the court, on the ice,
on the right. Yep, So good stuff from Chad. We
will we may or may not read that eighty page document.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
I don't know. We'll see. We'll get back to you
in the future. But that's why we have Chad.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Well, we have some folks that really I think have
a financial bent that loved the University of North Dakota
and they love that type of stuff, you know, and
I think it's great. I think if we can provide information,
that's the one thing. The more the more information we provide,
the more opportunity for understanding of kind of some of
the things that we deal with, not good or bad.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Just is we have lots to get to.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah, for the final twenty minutes or so with this podcast,
a lot of good stuff happening. We mentioned the close
of the winter sports season is just around the corner.
Tournament played two weeks away now for basketball, for hockey,
like it's all coming quickly and really across the board. Hockey,
men's and women's soups on the winter's side all had
pretty successful weekend, some really big wins for each of
(27:42):
those sports.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Built.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, you know, it was a busy, busy, right heightened
weekend where you know, there's just seems seems like we're
in that little crossover now like we get in the fall,
but we're in the crossover where a lot of spring
sports are on the road doing their things, so you've
got to manage and make sure they're doing okay right
from a welfare standpoint, you never know, you could have
travel issues. There's some things that could go on. And
(28:05):
then obviously we had a pretty you know, big series
in Denver this past weekend with with ice hockey, and
as we know, we have so many alums in the
Denver area, so there's some So there were some things
going on out there where Eric in Bubba Schweiger could
go which was awesome, and you know, again him providing
(28:26):
opportunity for us to kind of meet with folks do
some things. So it allowed me to stay back in
Grand Forks because we had multiple basketball games, multiple tennis matches,
just a lot of things going on. So it really
was good. It was a kind of divide and conquer.
But yeah, I mean we had a good weekend. You know,
(28:46):
you hope you can keep stacking. That's what you that's
what you're looking for at this point in time. Alex.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, to dig into the specifics the game I got
to do obviously didn't end in UND's favor, but in
a tremendous response the next night, I think when a
lot of people saw the team, she'd come out the
team sheet. I'm talking thinking in soccer terms. So the
line charts come out on Saturday and you see all
those names missing and you don't even have enough to.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Fill out the chart.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
It's like, oh boy, how are they going to find
a way against this team that looked so imperious the
night before? But this is UND's DNA. It just always
seems like when the Chips are up against them and
their backs are against the wall, they just seem to
rally and find a way to play a hard, simple
game and get a result. And that was the case
(29:31):
on Saturday night. Tremendous effort by the guys.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah, I mean I think you're right, and it's why
you don't play it on paper, and it's why you know,
you play the game. And I thought our guys came
out and you know, always always critical to score, you know, first,
and to be able to kind of you know, especially
when you're shut out the night before and you know,
(29:54):
you want to get that goal and kind of get
a good feeling going. And so I thought did a good,
great job, and thought TJ had a good weekend. I mean,
you saw him on Friday night, but I thought on
Saturday played very very well. So yeah, I mean found
a way, found a way to get split the six points,
(30:14):
and here we go. We just now we go on
to this weekend and you know, somewhere along the line,
it's just really odd. I don't understand why the Friday
versus Saturday deal going on, But I don't know. You're
just looking at the facts. You look at him, it's
like it is true, like we are struggling on Friday
(30:35):
night for whatever reason, and we seem to bounce back
on Saturdays.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, I believe four and one on Fridays in twenty
twenty five, still looking for that first win in game
one of a series, and like another chance this weekend
against the very good Minnesota toa loose team. But yes,
the win on Saturday. You mentioned TJ. He's the goaltender
of the week in the ANCC. I thought he was
really good on Friday, really like it, only gave up
three goals against the team that is the number one
offense in the country and then turns around, doesn't allow
(31:00):
and even strength goal at all and only gets beaten
in a five on three situation the next night and
gets in a fight at the end back in his teammates.
Can I say what other goalie would have the presence
of mind to understand they have an extra attacker on
the ice, so there's a scrum and we have one
less guy, So I need to fill out the numbers.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Like. He's obviously a brilliant kid.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
He graduated school in three years and he is working
on his master's right now. But that's impressive that he
would have that level of care for the team to
realize if I don't get in, someone's getting double teamed
in this scrum over here in the corner.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
And he got a bloody nose for it. It was
just awesome to see him come.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
To the een.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, as he liked to say, a transaction tax. So
you know, I thought that that was a I don't know,
sometimes people ask me what's the definition of leadership? You know,
sometimes you can't really pinpoint it, but that felt like
a leadership type move to me. It is, you know,
(31:59):
you've got your guys, and you know what they they
He wants, you know, guys to play for him in
front of them, and he's got to have their backs too.
So yeah, and you know the emotion after the game,
I mean, you know, it's a physical game, it's a
you know again, it's emotional and I you know, these
two teams certainly like to go at it, and uh,
(32:19):
you know it's spilled over and uh, two guys will
pay the price this upcoming week and then uh and
then you move on.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
What are the great things I thought about the way
the game ended was there was the melee in the corner.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
But then, you know, I think both coaches.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Sets of coaches did a great job to make the decision, hey,
let's not do a handshake line. And then also we're
very cordial to each other, like it was good sportsmanship
from you know, coach Barry, coach Carl, all the assistants
going thro because there's a bunch of there's so much
I think absolutely amongst the teams as well. And you
could see that after the game too. I think in
some of the postgame comments there's not like this sense of, oh,
(32:57):
the next time we play these guys, da da da
da da. I think both programs do a good job
in that regard for sure, and that showed after the fact.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah, you know, and we've seen it also, Alex, like
in other sports too, where sometimes maybe a question why
you're doing a handshake line or not, and and you
know you can argue, well, you should be able to compartmentalize. Well,
it's it's kind of hard in that moment to compartmentalize.
And I thought that was a good decision made, and
(33:24):
I thought the coaches did a great job getting both
teams to the locker room and that was probably the
smartest thing to do.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yeah, give Nathan Miler and Steven Renaul, who were the
officials on that game, credit as well. I think to
have that conversation and to keep things that's right, at
least as best they could keep the lid on.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Again, there is there is a decent chance these two
might see themselves again in the future. If the season
ended today, dever would be coming the Grand Forks right
in a HC quarterfinal series, which is hard to believe,
but that would be something if we get that come
in the middle of March. So big win for North
Dakota on Saturday. That moves you in the all the
way up to nineteenth in the pairwise. I know there's
(34:00):
still a ways to go, and there are six games
left in the regular season, but that road win moved
them from twenty seven to nineteen, and now you're kind
of in the conversation again, like if they lose that game,
and that large is pretty much Dad like, I don't
know you could win two games in Western Michigan, of course,
and things changed very quickly. But now all of a sudden,
not to look too far ahead, but we can do
(34:20):
those sorts of things. Now it's back and play and
that makes the two games coming up this weekend incredibly
important against a Minnesota DA loose team whose record is
not fantastic, but they've been a different team in the
second half of the season, and they just took Arizona State,
who you Indy just saw a couple of weeks back
and saw how good they're. New Denver just saw last
week and saw how good they were. They took Asu
(34:41):
to overtime both nights. This isn't the team that Yound
beat seven to one and four to one back in
November at Amaziel. They're young, and they've improved, and they're
going to pose a sift test in North Dakota this week.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
No doubt about it. I agree with everything that you said.
I would say, you know, I would. I just know
that we've got to figure out a way to come
out with the urgency that we need on Friday night.
And I I don't know, I know the coaches and
even the team, the team's trying to figure that out too.
I mean, sometimes it's just odd. I have no idea
why that is. I don't think they're coming out not
(35:14):
to play with urgency, but uh, you know, it's just
a strange deal. And uh, we just got to figure
out how to be how to be good on Friday
night and then we'll let we'll let Saturday take care
of itself. But we've got to have a good Friday.
And uh, you know, we've kind of put ourselves in
a position right now where we got to stack some
games and that's it, Like at the end of the day,
(35:37):
that's uh, that's that's where we that's a position we've
put ourselves in. And from a conference standpoint, I thought
Brad Slossman had a great article on kind of the
reasons why the n c H eight NCC is where
they are right now. Well, that's why you do root
for your your your your team, your your member institutions
to win non conference games.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
It certainly matters. It shows up this time of year.
How you did a non conference Echoes in February and March.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Even us, you know, we lose two at Cornell, and
you know, Cornell I thought was going to be I
thought they were going to be a little bit better
than what they are, and they probably thought the same
thing about us. And to some degree, it feels like
we've been in the same sort of area code all year.
And you know, and even the BU series, if you
can kind of find a way to come back and
(36:24):
sweep BU on a Saturday, you know, all of a sudden,
that helps the league. Certainly helps North Dakota, but it
helps the league as well.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
It's all those little things.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
It's true, that's fine margins across the board and so
but nothing again, nothing you can do about that now.
Now it's all I mean looking forward Minnesota, loloth at
home this weekend, huge road trip to Kalamazoo the next
weekend to take on a Western team that looks like
they're going to win a Penrose copy if things keep
going the way that it's going. And then they'll finish
with Omaha seventh and eighth Senior weekend coming up at
(36:53):
the start of March. Three big series before the playoffs
for Brad Burry and Company. Playoffs are just around the
corner for men's and women's hoops as well. Both the
men and the women got big wins on the weekends.
The women get a tremendous performance against North Dakota State
and it had been a series of tough results for
Malen company to come out and get the job done
(37:13):
and snap a losing streak to their in state rivals
the way that they did, with young players coming up
big and making big shots and great defensive effort and
great second half comeback. Just really happy for the way
that mal and the team stepped up on Saturday night
against the Bison.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, I think so. I talked to Mal on Sunday,
and you know, she was just really happy on the
way we defended them. And it took. It took, you know,
it took a good team effort to defend them the
way we needed to. And you know, it was good, good,
good for the team to get a result because I
thought it was important. You know, obviously, from a mental standpoint,
(37:52):
no one's looking to play the eight nine game. Obviously
you want to get into that seven hole or higher.
And you know, I'll say, Alex and I think it's
as simple as this, I'll probably leave it right here.
With basketballs, of the eighteen schools that play basketball in
the Summit League, really only one is distinguish themselves head
and shoulders above the other teams. Other than that, it
(38:15):
really is a dice roll at times. And so then
it comes back to how are you playing? And then
you know what your roster look like, and do you
give yourself a chance going to suit Falls.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
The one SEAMI reference is the South Dakota State women
who have won sixty conference games in a row, which
is ridiculous, but everybody else, yes, it does feel like
we saw the und men pick off the STSU men
and the jack Rabbit siv Rold since then, and we've
seen on the women's side like Oral Roberts NDSU obviously,
when you just prove that those are the kind of
the next tier of schools behind the Jacks, and they've
(38:48):
been beatable this year. So it's gonna make for a
really interesting tournament in two weeks time in suit Falls
again marks the fifth is when that begins for the women.
Right now, they're currently in seventh position. It is a
tightly bunch packed down there like five through eights are
all within a game of each other, and it could
really swing one way or the other. Base And now
the next couple of weeks ago, the men have now
moved themselves up into sixth position after an eleven point
(39:11):
win against Earl Roberts. At the weekends, they can't really
climb too much higher. It feels like, given the fact
they've only got three games left, they get an opportunity
there to keep building momentum towards two falls, starting this
weekend on Senior Day against North Dakota State at one
o'clock at the Betty.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's a good
way of putting it. I think you want to continue
to try to figure out how do you play your
best basketball? And I and we've seems like we've used
this term a little bit on the pod a couple
different times with a number of our teams. It feels
like we're still searching a little bit, and it's just
not a great time to be searching, and uh, you know,
in February, but I think, lo and behold, that's kind
(39:48):
of where we are. And so I think, you know,
with this week, it's almost like a mini bye week
for the men where they don't play on Thursday and
just have the one game and so, you know, gives
you a chance to work on yourself a little bit
and then get prepped for the last three games. Certainly
the game on Saturday is huge, but then the two
after that and then you get ready for suit falls.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, it's a big win Saturday against the Bison, and
then after that again it's a road trip to Saint
Thomas and then to South Dakota for the U and
D men. Before things finish up, they've just been Yeah,
like you said, searching a little bit and you never
really know what you're gonna get. The one positive thing
I think is we've seen different players step up over
the course of these victories, and even in some of
(40:29):
the defeats. They're a tough matchup because you don't know
who's going to be hot, whether it is Tracing, whether
it is going to be Amar inside Mere. Panola has
had some really great games and has been pretty consistent.
That's obviously it's been Eli King and it's been the
Star the last couple of wins. That can be a
negative because you don't really know who's going to be
the go to guy on your own side, but it's
(40:50):
made them be a tough out at times when you
don't know who's going to have the hot hands.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, I think it's pretty simple with the men. If
we can lock in defensively somehow, some way, I think
we'll score enough points. I do believe that. But we've
just got to lock in defensively and just do a
better job on that side of the floor.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Stay tuned again. Some of league tournament just two weeks away.
Big games on the way for both the men and
the women down the stretch. The other winter sport that
is also getting set to enter championship season his track
and field. Indoor track and field is coming off a
split squad weekend out in Boston and then in Brookings.
Just the four more school records that have fallen. Jaden
Keeler now is leading the Summer League in the five case.
(41:31):
She broke her own school record out in Boston. She's
seventeenth in the country right now in that race. You
think about what Kenneth Curry is doing. She just broke
her own school record at the shot put at Brookings
this weekend, fifty two feet even. She just did set
the mark a month ago. Then broke it again. She's special.
And then on the men's side too, Joy Vassik broke
the school record in the four hundred. Mattay Rebaka broke
(41:52):
the three k school record in Boston this past weekend
as well. Just a lot of really positive things going
on for the U and D men and the U
and D women, with just two weeks to go before
they kick off their championship season in Brookings.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Yeah, should be very very exciting. And I love the
way coach barrin camp, you know, separate sometimes the travel
depending on where the right place for some of our
students to be at to compete. So I think we'll
be prepped, Alex. I mean it should be a fun time.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, you and the tune up coming up this weekend
on Saturday, and then yes, the twenty eighth some of
League indoor Championships taking place in Brookings next weekends quickly,
men's women's tennis to both coming off pretty good weekends
as well. The men have won three in a row now,
the women with a couple of wins lately at home.
Both will go to Milwaukee this weekends before someat league
play starts. It's crazy that they will begin conference play
(42:38):
coming up just before the end of the month.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, it was great. We had great crowds out there,
and like I said, the environment is is great at
Choice and so yeah, some good, good performances for sure.
And again my little urging, if you've never been out
to a team tennis college tennis match, it's pretty cool.
I mean, you get to if you can think Davis up,
(43:00):
that's what it's like.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Women's tennis starts conference playing the twenty eighth at Saint Thomas.
Men's tennis starts the second at Drake and I would
be remiss to not mention softball. What a start for
Jordan Stevenson company. Yeah, five and five one of the
best starts they've had really in the last decade or so,
highlighted by a ten to one win in six innings
at Arizona States.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
Come on, Bill, come on, now, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Well, you know we went to you know, the weekend
before we were down at you and I and came
out of there three and two. And you know, I
sat with him before he left, and he's gone for
about a two week period right now. And yeah, that
when you inside the curtain from softball scheduling, you decide
(43:44):
to go to certain tournaments and then at that point
there's a little bit of a hope that you get
banded with let's just say, like institutions or institutions that
might be like in the northern type climbs. And we
got the schedule back and it was it was okay,
(44:05):
I thought we were in the old Pac twelve. I mean,
it was okay, let's go Ducks, and then let's go
Arizona States.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Yeah, Oregon followed by Arizona State, by Grand Canyon.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
We had Washington too, and Washington. I know, it's just ridiculous.
So I mean, and you went two and three, you went.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
To and three, I know, I know, And it was
it was it was really the mental approach, and it
was really an awesome opportunity for our our team to
go and find out, you know, what can they do
against teams like this. That's the approach they took, and
you could see it manifest itself on the field.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Yeah, very cool. MICHAELA.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Carr had a great Weekend Picture of the Week in
the summer week, just a lot of positive things for
that program. When you think about the new field that
is going to officially start regular season play, come April.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
New locker room. Weight room's great.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
There's just so many, so many good things happening around softball.
Cool to see them get some early season success. They
have a trip to Texas now, six games down there,
next they do and then South Carolina for five games
and it'll continue to warmer climbs for the ladies. But
congrats on a great start to the season.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Certainly, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
I think time for a quick flip.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Quick flip. Yeah, I got a top of the hour,
so I think we've got a few minutes here.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Two main b side topics today baseball. Right around the corner,
Alex Bregman is the Red Sox. You said this on
the podcast. You tried to speak this into existence. It
felt like months ago. He finally signed on the dotted line.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Though I think there were some other teams involved, Detroit
in Toronto specifically. I thought that he was kind of
waiting this thing out a little bit with the Red
Sox because I think he felt like that was the
best spot for him. And I don't mind the how
they structured the deal. I thought the deal was great.
I mean, he is literally thirty as we record right now,
(45:54):
He's going to be thirty one, I think in a
couple of weeks. But you're going to get him in
his prime. I mean, as he heads towards his non
prime to some degree. I think that's when you kind
of get in trouble with contracts. So yeah, could you
call it an overpay right now? Sure, I guess, But
I will say this, it's good to have good players on.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Your team exactly one thousand percent. And this just gives
them another bat and another Gold Glove caliber infielder. That's
what Alex Kora talked about, just what they're gonna do
with Devers and what do we do Trevor story, Like
we've got a lot of names now in the infield.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
And they'll figure it out.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Like if Devers becomes a DH that's probably his destiny
right in the ends, Like that's going to be despined and.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
He can fight for his position right now, that's okay,
he can say when he wants the reality of it is,
Viy'll end up doing what's the right thing for the
for the for the team and to have him. And
already I think he's like lockered next to Christian Campbell
and Marcelo Mayer, and you know it's just that's that's
what you've kind of brought into the clubhouse to some
(46:59):
to and that's important especially obviously, and we mentioned I
think last pod that he and Walker Buehler own a
horse together, so they're already type. So it's just a
different I think it's going to be a different vibe
for the Red Sox this year.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
You mentioned though, the winning culture that he brings, like
that DNA of having all that success with Houston. He
and Alex Cora were a part of that together. Of course,
his experiences, leadership, his professionalism. This is going to be
a pretty young Red Sox team in some areas, and
they've got so many talented prospects that are probably going
to get their first case of Major League ball this year,
and to have another guy like that to lean on
(47:36):
in the locker room, in the lineup, it's going to
manifest itself into some victories.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
I mean, Raphaela, Duran and Cassis are young guys. I mean,
they've just made their way up. You know, Wong is
trying to figure it out behind the plate. A lot
of pressure on him, honestly, you know, given the fact
that I'm not sure from our you know, our backup
situation from a catching standpoint. But long story short to
have that's been through it, that probably will be in
(48:02):
front of the camera, you know, when they're going through
a tough time. I think that takes a lot of
pressure off a lot of the guys.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Yeah, it's a big win. And I just regardless of
what you think about the numbers for his age except whatever.
Speaker 4 (48:15):
Who cares, He's going.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
To be a great addition, certainly in the short term.
And this team needed to boost in it got one.
They've had a really good offseason. Excited for the Red Sox.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yeah, it's gonna be good.
Speaker 4 (48:26):
It was. It was good for Spurs this weekend.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
You found a way against in the battle of two teams.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
Someone had mentioned this the other day.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
The sort of damocles has hung over Tottenham and Chester
for much of this season, and the question was who
is it going to fall on and you found a
way one nothing over Man United. Back to back wins
now in the league for Tottenham.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Bill Yeah, I thought that. I thought and said it
well pasta Coglu that Yeah, I mean Anchester now United's
going through some injury bugs and hey, every team's dealing
with it. There's just so many fixtures. As we've said,
I know we're kind of a broken record here, but
they're getting a few guys back. They actually had like
(49:13):
five guys that were part of their i'll call it
senior team that came in and saw the game out
because they had some energy and they were able to
put some they were able to kind of just manage
the game at the end, and they had not been
able to do that recently. So we'll see what happens.
I mean, you go to a team like Ipswich who's
(49:34):
spent tricky at home. I mean every team is tricky
at home, but you got to go try to figure
out a way to get three points, and then then
you go all in on Europa. I mean, if you can,
if you can try to win the Europa League. I
hate to say it, it would be a successful season.
It's through all of that stuff that's gone on.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
And has always won a trophy in year two. That's
you say, I always win at Chophy. It'd be amazing
if it would be a European competition and that would
get you into the Champions League, it would be unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
What would be very sad, very very sad, And I'll
bring back. I'll close it with this is that I
thought when back in I forget what year it was,
but Quinnipiac lost to Yale in the final, and I
think the Yale goalie stood on his head and at
the end of the day that they had played three
(50:27):
times and Quinnipiac had won all three matches, all three games,
and Yale won the final. So Tottenham's beat in Manchester
United three times this year. I do not want to
see them in the final. I don't think. I wasn't
thinking that in the final whistle, final whistle, I'm thinking,
(50:48):
all right, so now we're three and oh against these
guys and we can see them again.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
You got long ways to go, and so do they. Well,
that's true, that's true.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
Class have full, Alex.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Gotta lean, you gotta Lian Glass out full in these situations.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
That's I love it, Bill, I love the journey.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
I love the journey.
Speaker 4 (51:06):
It's what it's all about.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
All right, awesome, Well that journey will continue, yep for
you and you and the athletics this week and next.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
Enjoy it all. Enjoy it all, Bill.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
All right, sounds good, Alex. I appreciate you big.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
Thanks to Bill Shaves as always.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Thanks to Chad Krthouser for hopping it on to Alec
and Paul and the rest of the crew. I'm Alex.
Thanks again for listening. Gosh, stay warm out there, it's
almost over.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
Hang in there. We'll talk to you soon
You're listening to the Bill Shaves Podcast, presented by mid
Coast Sports. With conference tournaments now just weeks away in
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(00:23):
This is how we do sports, and this is the
Bill Shaves Podcast. Welcome, Father God without my voice cracking.
Welcome to another edition of the Bill Shapes Podcast. We're
taping this on a Tuesday morning, the eighteenth of February.
Alex Sider Bill Shaves a special guest we're gonna introduce
(00:45):
in just a moment build not a warm week where
we live right now, little nip there in the air
in late February and Grand Forks.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
If we look at the United and welcome Alex, and
welcome everyone that does listen. So if you look at
the United State, we are the northernmost school in Division
one athletics, so we always have to start with what's
happening kind of in Grand Forks because we are that institution.
There's only one of them and it's us, So we
(01:15):
have a little nip in the air. It was crisp
this morning, and I think it'll continue to be crisp
for a little bit longer and then actually we're heading
to some okay tempts.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Next week looks great. Get through the next couple of days,
that's all you gotta do. And March is in sight.
We just talked about. Tournament season is right around the corner,
like it's happening. It is about there, it is. It
is so lot going on. Of course because of that.
In the podcast, you've got winter sports beginning to push
toward their championship seasons. All the spring sports now are
really getting started. Lots of great stuff to talk about
(01:48):
with softball and men's and women's tennis getting rolling, and
track and field is doing awesome. We are going to
start though, with some financial conversation with the man that
is no stranger to the Bill Shaves podcast. I'm not
rushmore of the Bill Shafes podcast guest list. He's the
chief financial officer at the University of North Dakota for athletics.
He's you and the Senior Associate ad Chad Cardhauser. Ladies
(02:10):
and gentlemen, welcome aboard.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Thanks for having me Alex. Shocking, absolutely shocking that I'm
a repeat, you know, first time, long time you could say,
or whatever, But yeah, always appreciative to be on. I mean,
I'm sure the information that I'm able to give today
is going to be well, I'm not sure it's going
to be the spiciest that you will have from a
guest perspective, but you keep inviting me back, so apparently
(02:34):
I'm not like halfway bad at what i have to say.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
So you know, well, I would say, Chad that what's
important is for folks to know the annual cadence of
what is required of us financially, but connect that with
maybe where we are in life right now, and so
I think those that's why I felt like it was
(02:57):
really important for you to at least behind the curve
and some of the things that you deal with and
some of the things you have to provide to the
n C double A. But then how does that work
with some of the things that we're seeing I'll just
say in headlines in the media.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, no, uh again, thanks again Bill having me on. Yeah,
you know, uh, it is kind of interesting, you know,
when you when you when you look at these uh
you know, i'd say across the country and you know
you're starting to see all the articles come out, you
know about hey, what are what are schools spending? What
are schools? What are their expenses? And you see the
(03:31):
dollar amounts that are there. You know understand that that's
a if you're a Division one school. And again, unbeknownst
to me when I got into the industry, you know,
you're required every year to go through an audit of
agreed upon procedures and it's an outside firm that you
have to go and you know, seek out and bring in.
And because oftentimes it's not cheap to do that, you know,
(03:52):
we have to put an RFP out and do that. Uh.
The company we use as a company out of Florida,
James Moore and Company, who kind of in the industry
as one of the leaders, I would say they're they're
great to work with. I think that again from an
audit perspective, I think everybody here's the word audit, and
they automatically are like, oh, like this is bad, Like
oh what's going on. I always take the approach of
(04:15):
if you're not doing anything wrong, then an audit probably
is a means that can probably help improve you from
either policies, procedure, or you know along that front. Again,
why wouldn't you want somebody to come in and take
a look and be like, hey, are we doing things correctly?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Are we coding things to where they need to go?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
You know? So you know, I always welcome the opportunity
with that because I feel like we do an excellent
job in this department of you know, being as fiscal
and fiscally responsible as we can, and you know, make
sure we're following the proper steps that we do. So
you know, every year we come in, you know, we
usually have to wait for our books to close, which
(04:54):
you know sometimes takes until September October, but we come in,
you know, the auditors they were able to do it remotely.
And then what that basically does is that gets us
to our NCAA financial reporting which we have to file
by January fifteenth. Which is why you are starting to
see the numbers come out now, is because with that
(05:15):
finally date of January fifteenth, now people can go in,
you know, can do public requests. And again, the a
lot of the articles that you see are for public schools.
You know your Texas's, your Michigan's or Ohio State's, your
University of North Dakota, because we are a public school
and subject to open records request. And you know that
document that we do through the through the financial reporting system.
(05:38):
You know, it's about an eighty page document. This year
we had about forty one thousand transactions which comprised that. Yeah,
I know it's so yeah, I know it's it sounds
like a lot, but you know, I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Is it is a lot?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
It is, yes.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
But the nice thing.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
About that report, and one of the one of the
best parts about it, I think is that you know,
they do nineteen different revenue categories and twenty one different
expense categories. But those categories are the same for every
school across the country that has to file this report.
And again it's a requirement at the Division one level.
I believe at the Division two level you have to
(06:16):
do one every three years, and I believe Division three
they recommend it, but they don't require it. So again
you can use it as a means to see that.
And again, like you know, the number of the first
revenue line item is ticket sales, and you have to
break out the ticket sales by the sport that you sponsor.
So you know, if you go into our document, you
(06:36):
look at that first page, you know, we have a
breakdown of, okay, of the total amount of ticket sales,
how much was attributed to hockey, how much of it
was attributed to men's basketball, how much of it was
attributed to you know, the track and field indoor meets
that we have here. So you know, it's a very
very good tool. And then what that allows you to
do is then use it as a means of comparison
(06:56):
against maybe some institutions that you would erman is maybe
your peers. You know, I think here when we think
of our peers, you know, we think of teams in
the Summit League, we think of teams in the Missouri
Valley Football Conference. I think you always have to keep
an eye on the Dakota's, especially what they're doing. And
you know, but I would say from an NCHD perspective
(07:17):
and from hockey, I think you have to keep a
perspective of maybe what some of those Big ten schools
are doing. I think everybody in our fan base would
would probably want to know what Minnesota's doing. I would
say that's probably number one on the list you so
as much as you might say their financial model might
be a little different than ours, and we can maybe
get into that a little bit later, we do have
to keep an eye on it.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, I think that's right. I think you know, you
do such a great job of comparing in establishing spreadsheets
for us, and so you know, folks need to know that. Yeah,
we keep an eye on what's happening, you know, with
other institutions, and I think that's incredibly important. So this
is one avenue that we can do that. Obviously, the
private's a little bit different, so harder to get information,
(08:01):
say from Notre Dame or Boston College or Boston University.
It just it becomes a little bit more challenging, but
we get an idea in some ways what they're up to.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah, And the way that you can go about with
that one would be maybe our other annual report, which
really isn't a financial report, and that's the Equity and
Athletics Disclosure Act survey that we have to do every year.
That one. If you receive any type of federal funding,
which I believe every school in the country receives some
type of federal funding, and we're talking the institution, not
(08:34):
the athletic department the institution, so it is through the
Department of Education. So that is a report that I
mean community colleges all the way up to your ivys
have to report that. Now, again, it's not a financial report,
and they're very very adamant to say that it is
not a financial report, but it does have financial data
(08:55):
in it. So if you do want to look and
see what maybe some of the ivys are doing, you
can get a good idea. But I wouldn't use it
as a means of, you know, a concrete comparison. You know,
I'd say maybe apples to oranges.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
So here's a question, chat.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
So when you do get that information from peer institutions
and you are taking a look and seeing what other
schools are doing, could you maybe provide an example then
of a past instance where you and D then did
make a change or pivot, Like what would be some
of the things you would do based off of looking
at numbers from other schools?
Speaker 4 (09:28):
How how does that affect what und does?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I think we want to make sure that we're keeping
up with our peers, So you know, I would say
that if we're looking at let's take salaries and benefits
for example, that's one of the that's one of the
expense categories that you have, you know, and you break
it out actually by support staff and by coaches. So
there's two different expense categories for it. You know, if
you can get that information and you can see okay,
(09:54):
and the coaching one is broken out by head coaches
and assistant coaches. So if we look at those report
and we see, okay, there are we have peers in
our conference that have you know, three full time basketball
coaches at X amount of dollars. And then we look
at our three full time coaches that we have for
men's basketball and our X amount of dollars, and if
(10:14):
we see a discrepancy between the two, that might be
a way that we can go to our human resource
department and say, hey, we're looking at the market of
where we are from a salary perspective. You know, is
there a possibility of us maybe being able to you know,
bump up those salaries if we need to. Likewise, if
we do that and we look and maybe we're ahead
(10:34):
of the curve, and which does occur in situation, then
we do know that, hey, we're doing what we need
to you know, to be competitive and to you know,
because I think you know, everybody's trying to win games
and you want to put you know, you want to
put the best staff that you can together. You want
to put your best Uh, you know, we want to
make sure that you're deploying your resources is good. I'd
say another example too, one of the line items that
(10:55):
are on there is a student athlete meals non travel,
So that would be meal that you can provide in house.
You know, that's a great That's a great one to
look at to see, Okay, what are we doing from
a nutritional perspective? Are we doing enough? You know? Is
that an area that maybe we can beef up compared
to our peers. And you know, obviously, you know, what
(11:16):
we find is, you know, we are doing a pretty
good job. And I think that we have done but
we looked at that maybe we were a little we
could probably do a little bit more. And I'd say
one of the things that we've definitely been pushing over
the last year is kind of that nutritional aspect of it.
And so I think that we have maybe reassigned some
some resources there, you know, to be able to maybe
beef that number up a little bit just to you know,
(11:37):
just to give ourselves maybe maybe that's a little bit
of a competitive advantage that we can have.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Those are two really good examples.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Check.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, those are really good examples in the one thing
I would say for the and we know we've got
some folks there there aren't listeners, and they dig into this,
and I know that they're interested in it for sure.
And again that doesn't account for like the cost of
living adjustment like say grand works to say Denver. But
but it gives us a very good understanding though of
(12:05):
what institutions are putting into their salary structure per se
in that regard. So so it really is good. We
need to make sure that we're at least, you know,
we're kind of in the median I mean in some way,
shape or form. You never want to be at the
at the lower lower end or the lower quartile, but
that mid that mid area to upper is what we're
(12:28):
striving for.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Absolutely. Yeah, you're looking for you know, I mean, obviously
average median somewhere within there. As long as you're you know,
closer to I think that we're doing what we can
from a competitive perspective to kind of you know, to
make sure we're not falling behind, you know, to some
regard with maybe some of our some of the ones
that we deem as peers.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
So so that's an annual occurrence that has gone on
really as far back as I can really remember, Alex.
I mean, I think that's something that has gone on
for a long long time in the Division one landscape.
So Chad not to take up the entire pod plus
at this point in time. So I'm a little nervous
to ask this question, but I'm also saying, hey, be
(13:14):
kind to the people that are listening right now, be
very very kind. If I were to say to you
the two words revenue share, what does that mean to
you at this point? And when we're sitting there reading
a lot of articles, just help me. If you got
on an elevator and we're going to the fifth floor,
(13:36):
can you just help me with what that means?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Well, I think could I maybe start with I think
what everybody thinks it is. I think I think when
people say revenue share, they immediately go to the twenty
point five million dollar number that's been established by the
House settlement, And because that's what it seems like the
big schools are again, I don't think a lot. I
(14:01):
don't think in the public, I don't think people talk about,
you know, the University of North Dakota. I don't think
they talk about you know, that school seventy miles down
the road. I don't think they talk about South Dakota State.
I don't think they talk about Montana, they talk about Texas,
they talk about Ohio State, they talk about Michigan. Those
are the ones that are in there. And the reality
is is their financial model is so much different than
(14:23):
those at I would say, you know, the group of
five FBS level, the FCS level which we compete at,
and the Division one non football. You know, a school
like Omaha, for example, is in there. They're a Division
I school that just doesn't sponsor doesn't sponsor football, or
at least doesn't at this time. So when you look
at that number and you hear that number, you know,
(14:45):
these schools that are up in that range, you know
they're looking to figure out, Okay, how do we because
the number has been established in the House settlement, which
again we're not sure that's a done deal. That still
got some things that we need to go through. But
the number that those schools in the autonomy five who
this lawsuit was against. That's the number that they've come
(15:05):
up with to say, that's the amount of revenue share
that you can go up to if you would like.
All the other schools us included have to be the
ones to figure out if this is something that we
want to opt into this time or not, which then
would make that revenue share number available. But what I
would caution everybody to say is that is the maximum
(15:27):
that you could go to. You could opt into the
revenue share and not actually share revenue. You're just making
the decision that you want to opt in, opt into it,
and then subject yourself to the scholarship limit. So when
you look at that, when you deal with that number
twenty point five, that's not for everybody. And when I
think of revenue, when I'm thinking of that word revenue,
(15:49):
I think we need to be very particular about what
revenue we're talking about. I know I talked about the
financial model, the financial models and how they're different for everybody.
You know, you look at a school like a Michigan
and again I just looked at their finances right before this,
and you know, when it comes to their revenues. Their
revenues are one hundred percent generated by their athletic department.
(16:11):
That comes from revenue, ticket sales, contributions, sponsorships, all those items.
There are no dollars coming from the institution over to
the Michigan Athletic Department to support that. That's not the model.
That's that's not the model that can sustain you. At
the FCS, the Division one non football and the Group
(16:33):
of five level, you know, you're looking at, you know,
the level of support somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty
to sixty percent. You know, when you get into non football,
you're looking at probably seventy to eighty percent that's coming
from institutional support or student fees. So when we're talking
about revenue, is it really revenue Because when you look
at those generated revenues for schools like at our level,
(16:54):
we're not bringing in twenty point five million dollars in
revenue like we're we're we do a very very good job.
And I don't want to, you know, to say anything
to that regard, but there's not one school at the
FCS level that actually generates enough revenue to sustain their
athletic department. They rely on some type of revenue from
the school. So when you start saying, well, we're into
revenue share category, I think it would be a pretty
(17:17):
tough sell to say that we're taking money from whether
it be a student fee or institutional support or government support,
and then using it as a means to revenue share
with our student athletes. I think that's a tough, tough conversation.
So I would say I would anybody who's thinking about, oh,
there's going to be all this money that's available. I
don't know if I was characterized that. If you're looking
(17:38):
at the top level, absolutely they do a great job
of generating the revenues and they can sustain their athletic department.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
As you work your way down, though, it's tougher, very simply,
very simply, And again not to go too deep into
the House settlement that again we're going to find out
with Judge Wilkin on April seventh whether or not the
settlement even goes through, and from what we understand at
this point, but the defendant conferences at the time, which
(18:06):
was the Power five or the Autonomy five conferences, Now
we're down to a four and some would say a two.
But at the end of the day, those schools certainly
receive a significant dollars from their media deal and from
the college football playoffs, and so at the end of
(18:27):
the day they actually may have revenue to share versus
let's just say the two hundred and forty odd schools
that are not in that case.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah, that's I mean that you hit the nail on
the head. And that's one of the big delineationes. I
mean you can say that, you know, the big schools too,
they just have they have big venues, so their ticket
sales are good. But the big gap that you've seen
between the I would say, when you look at the
revenues that they're generating, you know, the media rights is
probably number one. I mean, you can go in and
you can look at any of those financial statements, for
(19:02):
I would say that your SEC and Big ten and
just you know, let's not say a thing about the
ACC and the Big twelve. Those are substantial dollars that
were the and the PAC twelve before that, and that
conference still exists, by the way, it does still exist.
It might not be at this time. They have until
twenty six to reload, and they've reloaded some. But I
don't know if they'll be in that autonomy classification at
(19:25):
that time, but that is really the big one where
you see there's a big difference between the two. You know,
I think anybody who's been in a hockey game here
knows that we do an excellent job I would say
generating hockey revenue here. You know, it's so I would
say that puts us in a great conversation of ticket
sales at the FCS level from that regard, But I
would say meteorites, that is the big one where you
(19:47):
see a huge difference between what those autonomy five are
doing and schools at our level are doing.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, and I would say that, you know, the last
thing you kind of it's almost like you're sort of
mixing metaphors by talking hockey and that we'd a FCS school.
But that's the way. That's the way the NCAA good
or bad, has has categorized institutions based on whether you
have a football team playing in Division one and then
(20:15):
or what level you're going to play at in Division one,
and literally we've probably seen it. There's like three different levels, right,
so you've got two levels in the FBS and one
in the FCS. That's why we keep referring it to that.
So I don't want to get people, you know, disappointed
that we keep saying that. But until that categorization process changes,
(20:36):
that's the reason why we keep saying it this way.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's a fascinating conversation. I know, we could talk a
lot about more of the specifics on this because this
right now, Chad's world is really in the news like.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
This is it is It's our time, shine, Oh yeah, this.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Is this is the time for the CFOs.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah. Well, you know, in Chad said, you know about
our audit, but really what it does is it really
uh codifies our checks and balances, and we have an
amazing amount of support from alums, from our university, from
from our students, and we just got to make sure
that we're utilizing the dollars the way we should. And
(21:17):
there's nothing wrong with going through a good audit. Nothing wrong.
And in fact, when someone comes back with a recommendation, yeah,
we implement it because that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
And those and those documents to our documents that we
do put on the UNDI website, so you know, anybody
who wants to access our ADA report are agreed upon procedure,
audit and our financial report all located on the on
the main und website in in a section that they
have there, you know, and it's updated annually as soon
(21:49):
as we finished all of our annual reporting.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So if you are like minded as Chad is and
enjoy those sorts of documents, it is nice to know
that those are available for your perusal, perhaps before bed.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, I mean well, if you're someone like Chad that
would go all night, then.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
That would go oh no, yeah, oh it'd be I
don't even for about it, like that'd be.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Hey, last thing, Alex, I just want to mention with
Chad is Chad also assists I think the last time
we've been on before. It just just generally helps with
football scheduling. And I know we have some things in
the hop or some we can't announce right now, but
just generally just just give us an update on where
we are with football scheduling. Chad.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, football scheduling. You know we're full twenty five, twenty six,
you know, we have all those schedules done. Twenty seven.
We have a contract out that we're just waiting on doing.
And then once we have that one in it's with
the school and once that comes in, we'll be finished.
And then twenty eight we actually had a contract signed
over the weekend. I don't know if we want to
go public with it yet for our additional home game.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It's a tease. It's a good it's a tease.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
But we have got the contract back so we are
done for twenty eight as well, and it's great. So
you know, we'll talk with Schmidi about what we want
to do twenty nine and beyond. You know, we do
have our our guarantee. You know, we have our guarantee
games done for those years, so it'll just be like, hey,
what are we doing from an FCS perspective about teams
that we want to play with? But yeah, it's been
very positive on that front. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Can I ask what has it been like to work
with Eric in this process? Obviously it's different new face,
someone coming from a different, different set of eyes now
after his journey in Washington and in San Diego State,
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Honestly, I think it was one less thing he had
to worry about when he got here and now because
we had so much in the hopper and we had
so many things that we're working on. So now it's
now that we've gotten that one. You know, we've got
a meeting set up for tomorrow and you know we'll
go through it and probably talk about, hey, what, you know,
what do you want to do because his philosophy from
scheduling could be different from you know, what Bubble would
like to do. But I think that they're probably more
(23:48):
like minded than maybe not like minded from a scheduling perspective.
But it'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Very good Chad. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
This is not necessarily the exciting sexy stuff like you said,
but I think it's important stuff like Bill mentioned as well,
and you do a good job breaking it down, so
I appreciate somebody.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I appreciate that. Now. It's always great to come on,
regardless of how boring the material is.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Thanks Chad.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
We'll see about you. About to get work.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Always great to have Chad Cartzer on again. It's deep stuff.
It's things that the normal U and D fan might
not think about. But just the fact that you need
people like Chad keeping everybody in line, watching the books,
crunching the numbers, doing those sorts of things. It's again
a huge reason why the university is successful. If we
didn't have Chad's this thing wouldn't work out with.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
It, Yeah, Alex. The reality of it is every single
conversation that I have internally has to do with money,
you know, in some way, shape or form, or I
should say maybe broader, I should say resources, whether it's
human or otherwise, And it has to do with that.
(24:58):
And we have to continue to ask question just because
we did this last year, should we be doing it
this year? Maybe it's always not just a rinse wash repeat, right,
I mean it could be, it could be, but I
think you have to continue to think through it as
if I always say, like, what happens if it was
Kartheuser Industries? What would you do? And just because it's
(25:23):
a state institution where it's technically not your money, so
to speak, of course it is, we have an unbelievable
responsibility to make sure that we're utilizing those dollars as
best as we can.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
So anyways, we.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Have a lot of conversations every day about should we
be spending or should we be doing something different because
that's what today is where we are. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
No?
Speaker 4 (25:50):
No, I think so, No, it does.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Well, it's good I think for people to hear that
you've got that level of care of the stewardship, that
you've been entrusted with.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Our institution, our students, our student body, that there's a
lot of people that are invest in us to do
the right things and make sure we're doing the right things.
And so Chad's like kind of the head of the
spear when it comes to that, because as he would say,
so you would say, well, why you know, would he
be the one to go through this audity every year
(26:20):
when there's like forty one thousand transactions. The reason why
is because he can on a really on a dime
think through what we're doing so that when we have
these broader conversations, he's got the specifics.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
His passion is fantastic for this, Like it takes special
people to really want to dig into the numbers like
that with the bigger picture in mind of doing Why
am I doing this? It's not just a spreadsheet. This
is what's helped to succeed on the court, on the ice,
on the right. Yep, So good stuff from Chad. We
will we may or may not read that eighty page document.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
I don't know. We'll see. We'll get back to you
in the future. But that's why we have Chad.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Well, we have some folks that really I think have
a financial bent that loved the University of North Dakota
and they love that type of stuff, you know, and
I think it's great. I think if we can provide information,
that's the one thing. The more the more information we provide,
the more opportunity for understanding of kind of some of
the things that we deal with, not good or bad.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Just is we have lots to get to.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah, for the final twenty minutes or so with this podcast,
a lot of good stuff happening. We mentioned the close
of the winter sports season is just around the corner.
Tournament played two weeks away now for basketball, for hockey,
like it's all coming quickly and really across the board. Hockey,
men's and women's soups on the winter's side all had
pretty successful weekend, some really big wins for each of
(27:42):
those sports.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Built.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, you know, it was a busy, busy, right heightened
weekend where you know, there's just seems seems like we're
in that little crossover now like we get in the fall,
but we're in the crossover where a lot of spring
sports are on the road doing their things, so you've
got to manage and make sure they're doing okay right
from a welfare standpoint, you never know, you could have
travel issues. There's some things that could go on. And
(28:05):
then obviously we had a pretty you know, big series
in Denver this past weekend with with ice hockey, and
as we know, we have so many alums in the
Denver area, so there's some So there were some things
going on out there where Eric in Bubba Schweiger could
go which was awesome, and you know, again him providing
(28:26):
opportunity for us to kind of meet with folks do
some things. So it allowed me to stay back in
Grand Forks because we had multiple basketball games, multiple tennis matches,
just a lot of things going on. So it really
was good. It was a kind of divide and conquer.
But yeah, I mean we had a good weekend. You know,
(28:46):
you hope you can keep stacking. That's what you that's
what you're looking for at this point in time. Alex.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, to dig into the specifics the game I got
to do obviously didn't end in UND's favor, but in
a tremendous response the next night, I think when a
lot of people saw the team, she'd come out the
team sheet. I'm talking thinking in soccer terms. So the
line charts come out on Saturday and you see all
those names missing and you don't even have enough to.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Fill out the chart.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
It's like, oh boy, how are they going to find
a way against this team that looked so imperious the
night before? But this is UND's DNA. It just always
seems like when the Chips are up against them and
their backs are against the wall, they just seem to
rally and find a way to play a hard, simple
game and get a result. And that was the case
(29:31):
on Saturday night. Tremendous effort by the guys.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah, I mean I think you're right, and it's why
you don't play it on paper, and it's why you know,
you play the game. And I thought our guys came
out and you know, always always critical to score, you know, first,
and to be able to kind of you know, especially
when you're shut out the night before and you know,
(29:54):
you want to get that goal and kind of get
a good feeling going. And so I thought did a good,
great job, and thought TJ had a good weekend. I mean,
you saw him on Friday night, but I thought on
Saturday played very very well. So yeah, I mean found
a way, found a way to get split the six points,
(30:14):
and here we go. We just now we go on
to this weekend and you know, somewhere along the line,
it's just really odd. I don't understand why the Friday
versus Saturday deal going on, But I don't know. You're
just looking at the facts. You look at him, it's
like it is true, like we are struggling on Friday
(30:35):
night for whatever reason, and we seem to bounce back
on Saturdays.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, I believe four and one on Fridays in twenty
twenty five, still looking for that first win in game
one of a series, and like another chance this weekend
against the very good Minnesota toa loose team. But yes,
the win on Saturday. You mentioned TJ. He's the goaltender
of the week in the ANCC. I thought he was
really good on Friday, really like it, only gave up
three goals against the team that is the number one
offense in the country and then turns around, doesn't allow
(31:00):
and even strength goal at all and only gets beaten
in a five on three situation the next night and
gets in a fight at the end back in his teammates.
Can I say what other goalie would have the presence
of mind to understand they have an extra attacker on
the ice, so there's a scrum and we have one
less guy, So I need to fill out the numbers.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Like. He's obviously a brilliant kid.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
He graduated school in three years and he is working
on his master's right now. But that's impressive that he
would have that level of care for the team to
realize if I don't get in, someone's getting double teamed
in this scrum over here in the corner.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
And he got a bloody nose for it. It was
just awesome to see him come.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
To the een.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, as he liked to say, a transaction tax. So
you know, I thought that that was a I don't know,
sometimes people ask me what's the definition of leadership? You know,
sometimes you can't really pinpoint it, but that felt like
a leadership type move to me. It is, you know,
(31:59):
you've got your guys, and you know what they they
He wants, you know, guys to play for him in
front of them, and he's got to have their backs too.
So yeah, and you know the emotion after the game,
I mean, you know, it's a physical game, it's a
you know again, it's emotional and I you know, these
two teams certainly like to go at it, and uh,
(32:19):
you know it's spilled over and uh, two guys will
pay the price this upcoming week and then uh and
then you move on.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
What are the great things I thought about the way
the game ended was there was the melee in the corner.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
But then, you know, I think both coaches.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Sets of coaches did a great job to make the decision, hey,
let's not do a handshake line. And then also we're
very cordial to each other, like it was good sportsmanship
from you know, coach Barry, coach Carl, all the assistants
going thro because there's a bunch of there's so much
I think absolutely amongst the teams as well. And you
could see that after the game too. I think in
some of the postgame comments there's not like this sense of, oh,
(32:57):
the next time we play these guys, da da da
da da. I think both programs do a good job
in that regard for sure, and that showed after the fact.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah, you know, and we've seen it also, Alex, like
in other sports too, where sometimes maybe a question why
you're doing a handshake line or not, and and you
know you can argue, well, you should be able to compartmentalize. Well,
it's it's kind of hard in that moment to compartmentalize.
And I thought that was a good decision made, and
(33:24):
I thought the coaches did a great job getting both
teams to the locker room and that was probably the
smartest thing to do.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yeah, give Nathan Miler and Steven Renaul, who were the
officials on that game, credit as well. I think to
have that conversation and to keep things that's right, at
least as best they could keep the lid on.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Again, there is there is a decent chance these two
might see themselves again in the future. If the season
ended today, dever would be coming the Grand Forks right
in a HC quarterfinal series, which is hard to believe,
but that would be something if we get that come
in the middle of March. So big win for North
Dakota on Saturday. That moves you in the all the
way up to nineteenth in the pairwise. I know there's
(34:00):
still a ways to go, and there are six games
left in the regular season, but that road win moved
them from twenty seven to nineteen, and now you're kind
of in the conversation again, like if they lose that game,
and that large is pretty much Dad like, I don't
know you could win two games in Western Michigan, of course,
and things changed very quickly. But now all of a sudden,
not to look too far ahead, but we can do
(34:20):
those sorts of things. Now it's back and play and
that makes the two games coming up this weekend incredibly
important against a Minnesota DA loose team whose record is
not fantastic, but they've been a different team in the
second half of the season, and they just took Arizona State,
who you Indy just saw a couple of weeks back
and saw how good they're. New Denver just saw last
week and saw how good they were. They took Asu
(34:41):
to overtime both nights. This isn't the team that Yound
beat seven to one and four to one back in
November at Amaziel. They're young, and they've improved, and they're
going to pose a sift test in North Dakota this week.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
No doubt about it. I agree with everything that you said.
I would say, you know, I would. I just know
that we've got to figure out a way to come
out with the urgency that we need on Friday night.
And I I don't know, I know the coaches and
even the team, the team's trying to figure that out too.
I mean, sometimes it's just odd. I have no idea
why that is. I don't think they're coming out not
(35:14):
to play with urgency, but uh, you know, it's just
a strange deal. And uh, we just got to figure
out how to be how to be good on Friday
night and then we'll let we'll let Saturday take care
of itself. But we've got to have a good Friday.
And uh, you know, we've kind of put ourselves in
a position right now where we got to stack some
games and that's it, Like at the end of the day,
(35:37):
that's uh, that's that's where we that's a position we've
put ourselves in. And from a conference standpoint, I thought
Brad Slossman had a great article on kind of the
reasons why the n c H eight NCC is where
they are right now. Well, that's why you do root
for your your your your team, your your member institutions
to win non conference games.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
It certainly matters. It shows up this time of year.
How you did a non conference Echoes in February and March.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Even us, you know, we lose two at Cornell, and
you know, Cornell I thought was going to be I
thought they were going to be a little bit better
than what they are, and they probably thought the same
thing about us. And to some degree, it feels like
we've been in the same sort of area code all year.
And you know, and even the BU series, if you
can kind of find a way to come back and
(36:24):
sweep BU on a Saturday, you know, all of a sudden,
that helps the league. Certainly helps North Dakota, but it
helps the league as well.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
It's all those little things.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
It's true, that's fine margins across the board and so
but nothing again, nothing you can do about that now.
Now it's all I mean looking forward Minnesota, loloth at
home this weekend, huge road trip to Kalamazoo the next
weekend to take on a Western team that looks like
they're going to win a Penrose copy if things keep
going the way that it's going. And then they'll finish
with Omaha seventh and eighth Senior weekend coming up at
(36:53):
the start of March. Three big series before the playoffs
for Brad Burry and Company. Playoffs are just around the
corner for men's and women's hoops as well. Both the
men and the women got big wins on the weekends.
The women get a tremendous performance against North Dakota State
and it had been a series of tough results for
Malen company to come out and get the job done
(37:13):
and snap a losing streak to their in state rivals
the way that they did, with young players coming up
big and making big shots and great defensive effort and
great second half comeback. Just really happy for the way
that mal and the team stepped up on Saturday night
against the Bison.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, I think so. I talked to Mal on Sunday,
and you know, she was just really happy on the
way we defended them. And it took. It took, you know,
it took a good team effort to defend them the
way we needed to. And you know, it was good, good,
good for the team to get a result because I
thought it was important. You know, obviously, from a mental standpoint,
(37:52):
no one's looking to play the eight nine game. Obviously
you want to get into that seven hole or higher.
And you know, I'll say, Alex and I think it's
as simple as this, I'll probably leave it right here.
With basketballs, of the eighteen schools that play basketball in
the Summit League, really only one is distinguish themselves head
and shoulders above the other teams. Other than that, it
(38:15):
really is a dice roll at times. And so then
it comes back to how are you playing? And then
you know what your roster look like, and do you
give yourself a chance going to suit Falls.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
The one SEAMI reference is the South Dakota State women
who have won sixty conference games in a row, which
is ridiculous, but everybody else, yes, it does feel like
we saw the und men pick off the STSU men
and the jack Rabbit siv Rold since then, and we've
seen on the women's side like Oral Roberts NDSU obviously,
when you just prove that those are the kind of
the next tier of schools behind the Jacks, and they've
(38:48):
been beatable this year. So it's gonna make for a
really interesting tournament in two weeks time in suit Falls
again marks the fifth is when that begins for the women.
Right now, they're currently in seventh position. It is a
tightly bunch packed down there like five through eights are
all within a game of each other, and it could
really swing one way or the other. Base And now
the next couple of weeks ago, the men have now
moved themselves up into sixth position after an eleven point
(39:11):
win against Earl Roberts. At the weekends, they can't really
climb too much higher. It feels like, given the fact
they've only got three games left, they get an opportunity
there to keep building momentum towards two falls, starting this
weekend on Senior Day against North Dakota State at one
o'clock at the Betty.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's a good
way of putting it. I think you want to continue
to try to figure out how do you play your
best basketball? And I and we've seems like we've used
this term a little bit on the pod a couple
different times with a number of our teams. It feels
like we're still searching a little bit, and it's just
not a great time to be searching, and uh, you know,
in February, but I think, lo and behold, that's kind
(39:48):
of where we are. And so I think, you know,
with this week, it's almost like a mini bye week
for the men where they don't play on Thursday and
just have the one game and so, you know, gives
you a chance to work on yourself a little bit
and then get prepped for the last three games. Certainly
the game on Saturday is huge, but then the two
after that and then you get ready for suit falls.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, it's a big win Saturday against the Bison, and
then after that again it's a road trip to Saint
Thomas and then to South Dakota for the U and
D men. Before things finish up, they've just been Yeah,
like you said, searching a little bit and you never
really know what you're gonna get. The one positive thing
I think is we've seen different players step up over
the course of these victories, and even in some of
(40:29):
the defeats. They're a tough matchup because you don't know
who's going to be hot, whether it is Tracing, whether
it is going to be Amar inside Mere. Panola has
had some really great games and has been pretty consistent.
That's obviously it's been Eli King and it's been the
Star the last couple of wins. That can be a
negative because you don't really know who's going to be
the go to guy on your own side, but it's
(40:50):
made them be a tough out at times when you
don't know who's going to have the hot hands.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, I think it's pretty simple with the men. If
we can lock in defensively somehow, some way, I think
we'll score enough points. I do believe that. But we've
just got to lock in defensively and just do a
better job on that side of the floor.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Stay tuned again. Some of league tournament just two weeks away.
Big games on the way for both the men and
the women down the stretch. The other winter sport that
is also getting set to enter championship season his track
and field. Indoor track and field is coming off a
split squad weekend out in Boston and then in Brookings.
Just the four more school records that have fallen. Jaden
Keeler now is leading the Summer League in the five case.
(41:31):
She broke her own school record out in Boston. She's
seventeenth in the country right now in that race. You
think about what Kenneth Curry is doing. She just broke
her own school record at the shot put at Brookings
this weekend, fifty two feet even. She just did set
the mark a month ago. Then broke it again. She's special.
And then on the men's side too, Joy Vassik broke
the school record in the four hundred. Mattay Rebaka broke
(41:52):
the three k school record in Boston this past weekend
as well. Just a lot of really positive things going
on for the U and D men and the U
and D women, with just two weeks to go before
they kick off their championship season in Brookings.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Yeah, should be very very exciting. And I love the
way coach barrin camp, you know, separate sometimes the travel
depending on where the right place for some of our
students to be at to compete. So I think we'll
be prepped, Alex. I mean it should be a fun time.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, you and the tune up coming up this weekend
on Saturday, and then yes, the twenty eighth some of
League indoor Championships taking place in Brookings next weekends quickly,
men's women's tennis to both coming off pretty good weekends
as well. The men have won three in a row now,
the women with a couple of wins lately at home.
Both will go to Milwaukee this weekends before someat league
play starts. It's crazy that they will begin conference play
(42:38):
coming up just before the end of the month.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, it was great. We had great crowds out there,
and like I said, the environment is is great at
Choice and so yeah, some good, good performances for sure.
And again my little urging, if you've never been out
to a team tennis college tennis match, it's pretty cool.
I mean, you get to if you can think Davis up,
(43:00):
that's what it's like.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Women's tennis starts conference playing the twenty eighth at Saint Thomas.
Men's tennis starts the second at Drake and I would
be remiss to not mention softball. What a start for
Jordan Stevenson company. Yeah, five and five one of the
best starts they've had really in the last decade or so,
highlighted by a ten to one win in six innings
at Arizona States.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
Come on, Bill, come on, now, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Well, you know we went to you know, the weekend
before we were down at you and I and came
out of there three and two. And you know, I
sat with him before he left, and he's gone for
about a two week period right now. And yeah, that
when you inside the curtain from softball scheduling, you decide
(43:44):
to go to certain tournaments and then at that point
there's a little bit of a hope that you get
banded with let's just say, like institutions or institutions that
might be like in the northern type climbs. And we
got the schedule back and it was it was okay,
(44:05):
I thought we were in the old Pac twelve. I mean,
it was okay, let's go Ducks, and then let's go
Arizona States.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Yeah, Oregon followed by Arizona State, by Grand Canyon.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
We had Washington too, and Washington. I know, it's just ridiculous.
So I mean, and you went two and three, you went.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
To and three, I know, I know, And it was
it was it was really the mental approach, and it
was really an awesome opportunity for our our team to
go and find out, you know, what can they do
against teams like this. That's the approach they took, and
you could see it manifest itself on the field.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Yeah, very cool. MICHAELA.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Carr had a great Weekend Picture of the Week in
the summer week, just a lot of positive things for
that program. When you think about the new field that
is going to officially start regular season play, come April.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
New locker room. Weight room's great.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
There's just so many, so many good things happening around softball.
Cool to see them get some early season success. They
have a trip to Texas now, six games down there,
next they do and then South Carolina for five games
and it'll continue to warmer climbs for the ladies. But
congrats on a great start to the season.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Certainly, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
I think time for a quick flip.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Quick flip. Yeah, I got a top of the hour,
so I think we've got a few minutes here.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Two main b side topics today baseball. Right around the corner,
Alex Bregman is the Red Sox. You said this on
the podcast. You tried to speak this into existence. It
felt like months ago. He finally signed on the dotted line.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Though I think there were some other teams involved, Detroit
in Toronto specifically. I thought that he was kind of
waiting this thing out a little bit with the Red
Sox because I think he felt like that was the
best spot for him. And I don't mind the how
they structured the deal. I thought the deal was great.
I mean, he is literally thirty as we record right now,
(45:54):
He's going to be thirty one, I think in a
couple of weeks. But you're going to get him in
his prime. I mean, as he heads towards his non
prime to some degree. I think that's when you kind
of get in trouble with contracts. So yeah, could you
call it an overpay right now? Sure, I guess, But
I will say this, it's good to have good players on.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Your team exactly one thousand percent. And this just gives
them another bat and another Gold Glove caliber infielder. That's
what Alex Kora talked about, just what they're gonna do
with Devers and what do we do Trevor story, Like
we've got a lot of names now in the infield.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
And they'll figure it out.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Like if Devers becomes a DH that's probably his destiny
right in the ends, Like that's going to be despined and.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
He can fight for his position right now, that's okay,
he can say when he wants the reality of it is,
Viy'll end up doing what's the right thing for the
for the for the team and to have him. And
already I think he's like lockered next to Christian Campbell
and Marcelo Mayer, and you know it's just that's that's
what you've kind of brought into the clubhouse to some
(46:59):
to and that's important especially obviously, and we mentioned I
think last pod that he and Walker Buehler own a
horse together, so they're already type. So it's just a
different I think it's going to be a different vibe
for the Red Sox this year.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
You mentioned though, the winning culture that he brings, like
that DNA of having all that success with Houston. He
and Alex Cora were a part of that together. Of course,
his experiences, leadership, his professionalism. This is going to be
a pretty young Red Sox team in some areas, and
they've got so many talented prospects that are probably going
to get their first case of Major League ball this year,
and to have another guy like that to lean on
(47:36):
in the locker room, in the lineup, it's going to
manifest itself into some victories.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
I mean, Raphaela, Duran and Cassis are young guys. I mean,
they've just made their way up. You know, Wong is
trying to figure it out behind the plate. A lot
of pressure on him, honestly, you know, given the fact
that I'm not sure from our you know, our backup
situation from a catching standpoint. But long story short to
have that's been through it, that probably will be in
(48:02):
front of the camera, you know, when they're going through
a tough time. I think that takes a lot of
pressure off a lot of the guys.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Yeah, it's a big win. And I just regardless of
what you think about the numbers for his age except whatever.
Speaker 4 (48:15):
Who cares, He's going.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
To be a great addition, certainly in the short term.
And this team needed to boost in it got one.
They've had a really good offseason. Excited for the Red Sox.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yeah, it's gonna be good.
Speaker 4 (48:26):
It was. It was good for Spurs this weekend.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
You found a way against in the battle of two teams.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
Someone had mentioned this the other day.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
The sort of damocles has hung over Tottenham and Chester
for much of this season, and the question was who
is it going to fall on and you found a
way one nothing over Man United. Back to back wins
now in the league for Tottenham.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Bill Yeah, I thought that. I thought and said it
well pasta Coglu that Yeah, I mean Anchester now United's
going through some injury bugs and hey, every team's dealing
with it. There's just so many fixtures. As we've said,
I know we're kind of a broken record here, but
they're getting a few guys back. They actually had like
(49:13):
five guys that were part of their i'll call it
senior team that came in and saw the game out
because they had some energy and they were able to
put some they were able to kind of just manage
the game at the end, and they had not been
able to do that recently. So we'll see what happens.
I mean, you go to a team like Ipswich who's
(49:34):
spent tricky at home. I mean every team is tricky
at home, but you got to go try to figure
out a way to get three points, and then then
you go all in on Europa. I mean, if you can,
if you can try to win the Europa League. I
hate to say it, it would be a successful season.
It's through all of that stuff that's gone on.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
And has always won a trophy in year two. That's
you say, I always win at Chophy. It'd be amazing
if it would be a European competition and that would
get you into the Champions League, it would be unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
What would be very sad, very very sad, And I'll
bring back. I'll close it with this is that I
thought when back in I forget what year it was,
but Quinnipiac lost to Yale in the final, and I
think the Yale goalie stood on his head and at
the end of the day that they had played three
(50:27):
times and Quinnipiac had won all three matches, all three games,
and Yale won the final. So Tottenham's beat in Manchester
United three times this year. I do not want to
see them in the final. I don't think. I wasn't
thinking that in the final whistle, final whistle, I'm thinking,
(50:48):
all right, so now we're three and oh against these
guys and we can see them again.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
You got long ways to go, and so do they. Well,
that's true, that's true.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
Class have full, Alex.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Gotta lean, you gotta Lian Glass out full in these situations.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
That's I love it, Bill, I love the journey.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
I love the journey.
Speaker 4 (51:06):
It's what it's all about.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
All right, awesome, Well that journey will continue, yep for
you and you and the athletics this week and next.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
Enjoy it all. Enjoy it all, Bill.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
All right, sounds good, Alex. I appreciate you big.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
Thanks to Bill Shaves as always.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Thanks to Chad Krthouser for hopping it on to Alec
and Paul and the rest of the crew. I'm Alex.
Thanks again for listening. Gosh, stay warm out there, it's
almost over.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
Hang in there. We'll talk to you soon
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