On this episode of I Know This Guy… we have Bob Heere, a Professor of the University of North Texas and head of the Sports Management Department. We end up covering topics ranging from how athletes transition out of a career in sports, how UNT has developed a program to help with this and the importance of student and faculty diversity.
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Date: October 20, 2020
Episode: 26
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Bob Heere, a Professor of the University of North Texas and Head of the Sports Management Department.
Subtitle: “Let The World Change You And You Can Change The World”
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-26-after-a-career-in-sports-what-happens-next-bob-heere/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Bob Heere, a Professor of the University of North Texas and head of the Sports Management Department.
Bob Heere is also a researcher. He discussed how athletes transition out of a career in sports, how UNT has developed a program to help with this and the importance of student and faculty diversity.
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Hayden 0:00
Hey there guys and gals, we’ve got a special announcement for you. Since Halloween is upon us, we thought we would do a Halloween giveaway. Because Halloween is the official holiday of I Know This Guy. All you have to do is click the link in the podcast description, fill out a short survey and you’ll be entered to win a $50 Amazon gift card to buy all those Halloween snacks for yourself. That’s enough for me and now for the rest of the episode.
Bob 0:32
Unpaid internships are very exclusionary to diversity because you’re going to get the same kids who come from well to do families and because they did the internship, now they know people so the reference in the recommendations are directed to the same kid so you get this kind of like this circular system. That’s hard to escape out of.
Norman 0:57
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know This Guy wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, like kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 1:27
So dad, who do we have lined up for the podcast?
Norman 1:30
Alright. Do you remember Matt Difebo?
Hayden 1:32
Of course I do.
Norman 1:34
Well, he delivered on his promise. He said he would be talking to Bob Heere to see if he’d come on and he agreed. Fantastic. So Bob Heere is a professor at the University of North Texas. He’s going to be talking about retired athletes. He’s going to be talking about diversity on campus and eSports.
Hayden 1:55
Awesome. Well, I can’t wait to hear this one.
Norman 1:57
It’s going to be good.
Norman 2:00
Alright. So welcome to the podcast, Bob.
Bob 2:03
Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Norman 2:07
Some of our guests, I look at their bios and I can just read it off. No problem. Yours is a book. So I’m gonna let you tell a little bit about yourself and I know, I know, because I’ve talked to you about this before. It’s like, Oh, do I have to but yes, you have to. I want to know more about you or our guests want to know more about you.
Bob 2:29
Yeah and I fell in the trap to every academic does, right. So if you ask an academic for his resume, you’re actually going to get a real book. It’s somewhere between 20 to 30. We list all our publications, we list all everything we do in every class we teach. So I guess my bio, which for academics, is extremely short. Yes, it is too long. So you want me to try to shorten that to two to three sentences of who I am?
Norman 2:54
We’re going to hit your backstory. It’s so interesting. But yeah, just maybe, the cliff notes or in Canada, we call it the Coles notes. So we can just go back, hear a little bit about your background and what you’ve accomplished.
Bob 3:09
Okay, well, I’m a full professor in the Department of Management at the University of North Texas and at the University of North Texas, I direct the sport business concentration programs, which is both a BBA and an MBA and I got to the University of North Texas after a long career in academics that took me from America to New Zealand to the Netherlands and back to America.
Norman 3:34
That’s pretty short.
Norman 3:37
Alright. Well, now we can start to dig a little bit deeper. Okay, I want to know about your backstory. I’ve heard a bit, but I really like to find out what makes Bob Bob.
Bob 3:52
Yeah, and I seldom talk about that, particularly not in our world. But so I grew up in the Netherlands. So for those listeners who are wondering what that quirky accent was, that’s not some weird Southern United States accent that’s actually the Netherlands. I grew up in a town North of Amsterdam. My dad was a cop, my mom was a secretary or stay at home mom for a while and my brother when he was 17 joined the Navy. So I really come from a blue collar kind of family. My entire family is still there. We’re very close to each other and I guess I was the black sheep. We decided to go off in the world, was a first generation students, are the first one to attend university and got an ambassador degree, master’s degree and then decided that hey, you know what, why don’t I get my PhD at an American University and set it to explore the world and that started a long journey that at least ending up here at the University of Texas.
Norman 4:52
Well, that’s great. So let’s go back and I know that you had some really interesting experiences. Why don’t we just go right into it. At what point, so you were still in the Netherlands when you started to work with the coach?
Bob 5:07
Yeah, well, so I had a beer there for years that I moved from continent to continent. So when I finished up my PhD at Florida State University in sport management, I was not necessarily the most attractive job candidate. So the only job offers I got in the United States were from small schools where I would be buried in teaching and that would be it. That’s, it would be a life at a small college. But the one job offer I received and that I applied for was from New Zealand, Auckland University of Technology and they were the only school who said, Hey, we’ll let you do research and work on that as well and I’d never been to New Zealand. I’d never been anywhere close to New Zealand, I got the job offer on the phone calls, I didn’t even invite me to fly in and I decided, you know what, let’s just take on a new adventure and run with it. So I took a job in New Zealand and I was there for six, seven months, when Johan Cruyff, who is probably the greatest Dutch soccer player of all time, one of the best players of the game period and also one of the most influential coaches of all time and he is unofficially the godfather of Barcelona, he built the first Dream Team and he was just, of course, a childhood hero of mine and when I was in New Zealand, they actually responded to it, open application I had in with him from like the year before, saying, Hey, we want you to come back to the Netherlands and help us build these graduate program for retiling professional athletes and so I was only in New Zealand for like six, seven months when that came and it says okay, that’s too good to pass up on. I Love New Zealand. It’s such a beautiful country at such a great time. People were so good to me, but I just can’t pass up on it. So I left New Zealand after my first year there started working for Johan Cruyff and built that program for him.
Norman 7:01
Now being able to work with your hero. How was that?
Bob 7:08
That year was remarkable. So first, you have that moment when you actually meet your childhood idol and I’ll share this with you right. When I was young, we kind of liked running jokes in our friends group. I don’t know how that started. But for every big Holland national team game, we would have kind of like, Hey, what do you think is going to happen in this game, and we would have this joker saying, but I called Johan and Johan said this is going to happen and I don’t know where that joke originates from. But that was a running joke and then suddenly, he calls to ask you to work for him and you have that moment when you meet him and suddenly now you can tell your friends like, Oh yeah, I spoke to Johan and Johan thinks, so that was really weird and the day I met him, I was never as nervous. I’ve never been that nervous again about meaning someone after 30 seconds you forget about it because he was a truly remarkable person, very social, very personal. He was one of those people that if you talk to you’re the only person on earth, which I’ve met a lot of famous people since then, it’s kind of the opposite of what general Trent is among. Now, thankfully, because most of them were like, a little bit standoffish because everybody wants something from them. So he was remarkable. I love working for him. His entourage and I struggled slightly a bit more in getting along.
Norman 8:24
But like any entourage Oh, isn’t it?
Bob 8:28
Yeah, I learned a lot from that, because entourage by definition, I’m trying to protect our own position and they’re not always there because of the talents or their capabilities, but simply because the trust they have developed and the relationship they have developed with the person in charge and so that sometimes causes for friction and I was a young guy and I was brash and I definitely made mistakes in managing debt as well. I just didn’t have that, she knew already yet. So yeah, that was sometimes explosive and that ultimately led to me leaving that organization after a year to come back to the States.
Norman 9:07
Just thinking of what you said just a little while ago, about your just being able to focus in and having him look at you and talk to you, feel like you’re the only person in the room. Now, doesn’t that make a great coach? Maybe that’s the difference. He was a great coach rather than just a famous player.
Bob 9:29
Yes, and people joke about him that he became a coach when he was 19 years old, because he kind of figured out the game already. He knew everything there was to know about the game and he was the best player on the field. So by that time, he started coaching and changing the team and inventing this new style soccer that until today, people still talk about. Some people credit the coach from back then for that style. Some people credit him but he definitely had a big influence on what is called total football where defenders attack, attackers defend, people switch positions, all that didn’t really happen in soccer until he decided that he played for really started to invent that and work with that and if you look at the Barcelona team from now, or Liverpool, or any of these great teams, that where it comes from.
Norman 10:18
Interesting, so what did you have to call him? Coach?
Bob 10:21
Johan. Yes, no and I started of course with Mr. Cruyff, right, because, but now he immediately was Johan and this comes back to personality that didn’t feel weird after like a minute or show. Because just, he was such a, and he passed away, unfortunately, a few years ago, but he was such a charming and relatable guy that, he was your Johan.
Norman 10:48
Now, that also must have opened a lot of doors for you. You were trying to get your research done, and meeting up with some buddy with this type of profile. How did that work? Did you get to meet a lot of people?
Bob 11:02
I didn’t get to meet a lot of people, but I don’t think it necessarily helped me too much, right. So when I left there after a year, which was probably one of the biggest disappointments in my life, because in my vision, I would help them direct, manage, lead those programs and in derivation, I would just develop curriculum, and that was it and they would bring in an athlete to really lead these programs and in that kind of negotiation or difference of opinion, I decided not to extend my contract and leave them and that almost felt by burning bridges because I left Holland again and so that was the second time in my life that I left my home nation, which is is not an easy thing to do and it really took me a couple months before I had ease with that. It was almost, I was flying to the Netherlands, to go back to America and build my academic career. But that was a really just one of the most difficult periods of my life to make that decision and leave my, what I thought was a dream job and to go back into academics, and now I’m looking back at and was definitely the right decision. But I didn’t know that back then.
Norman 12:15
So where did you end up after you left Holland?
Bob 12:19
So I was able to become a visiting professor or lecturer or whatever we call that Florida State, my alma mater, they had somebody leave at the last moment. So that was my luck. They needed somebody to teach classes. So they said, Hey, come here and then, you got a year to apply for jobs and get a good job and I used that year and was successful in scholarship. So I did get consideration from some really good schools, and got hired by the University of Texas, as an assistant professor, where I really started to build my scholarly career as a researcher.
Norman 12:54
So Bob, are athletes facing any challenges now, especially now with COVID?
Bob 13:02
I’m not sure if we need that COVID in one sentence, right? So do athletes face challenges when any dedication? Absolutely. So in the United States, and maybe to a lesser extent, in Canada. I don’t have enough knowledge with the Canadian system to really back this up with you, you guys might be able to fill it in. In the United States, because elite athletics and education are intertwined, as it takes place in schools. At a very young age, good or great athletes are being pushed into the sport and sports is being prioritized for them and in a way no one did, right? Because as a kid, I mean, every kid dreams to be a professional athlete. So it’s not like they’re fighting that. But basically, they’ve been taught from a very young age, you’re a football player first, you’re a basketball player first and by the way, yes, you need education, and you need to graduate, but they have to make choices early on and some are really good at navigating that there. There are many great student athletes who do very well in the university. But many others are struggling with that and they’re being pushed in easier majors so it doesn’t conflict with their playing time or their practice and so they have somewhat of a disadvantage and some of them actually don’t even graduate, right. So if you’re a basketball player, you have to technically play one year in the university or maybe two years, and then you can go play pro. So a lot of them are either not finishing the degree or finishing it, but in a way that they never really engaged at the same level as their fellow students. So now they’re playing for a couple years and for many of them, it is only a couple years, right? The average career in the NFL is three and a half years and a lot of athletes are looking at Tom Brady saying see, you can be there for 20 years, but he’s the exception and not the rule. So the average career is three years and now suddenly, that all ends, their whole life ends, right because that’s what their whole life was about and they have to set new goals, transition into a new career for which they might or might not be paid for through education. So, yeah, where you and I, or at least I had what, at the age of 15, realized I was not good enough to be a professional soccer player, and really start focusing on education and be prepared and slowly being, socialized into a nine to five career. They don’t have that. So they all without exception, fall in somewhat of a black hole after a career that they have to crawl out and then find a new purpose in life. So yeah, they face a lot of challenges.
Hyden 15:38
So you’re creating programs to kind of bring them in and retrain them in a sense, right?
Bob 15:44
Yeah, and this started with Cruyff back then. Right. So Cruyff wanted to have a degree that helped professional athletes make the transition to a management job, thinking, hey, these guys love sports, I want to be in sports, to be a sport business degree and that’s why they created that as the first degree and the degree that I helped create, hosted guys like editing Thunderstorm United goalie, who’s now the CEO actually of IX, Amsterdam. A guy like Michael Bokor, towards the Tour de France, professional cyclist, who started managing his own thing, started his own business and a slew of other athletes have really went through it. So when I came to the States, I regretted leaving that behind and go into normal academics. But when I got here to the University of North Texas, I realized that with our partnership with the Dallas Cowboys, and with the PGA and some of these other organizations that we’re talking to, that we could do the same thing. So we created an online MBA degree for which you need to have three years of work experience. But we count professional playing days as work experience. So if you’ve played in the league for three years, but you never did anything else, but you did finish your undergrad degree, you can now come to our university, we admit you into our MBA program and you can get that dedication to make the change into starting your own business, or working for a sport organization.
Hayden 17:11
Do you include any mental health services? Like I feel like with the situation that you just described, where someone realizes that they can’t be pro for their entire life? Or that the road might be ending soon? Like, that’s just something that came into mind. Like, that’s got to be really hard on those people.
Bob 17:29
It is, we are a university and I believe that you should always stay in your own lane. Right. So we don’t provide those services. I don’t think we should. But I know there are a lot of people in this space helping athletes and getting them through that. I think we’re coming in at the back end where they kind of like say, okay, I understand now. I’m not an athlete, I need to do something else. That’s where we offer a solution. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. Mental health is a big part of this. But, I’m a university professor, so I think I should stick to what I know well.
Norman 18:03
Just listening to what you were saying there. Back in the, I don’t know if it was the early 2000s, or if it kind of collapsed around 2008. But I was involved with an organization called the Executive Sports Club. It was out of Florida. I’m not sure exactly what ended up happening. But it was incredible, what it worked. The people who came out to the club, there were businesses that supported the club. Athletes, usually, I would call them C level, B level athletes. There were some A athletes that were in there, but I think they hit about 400 different athletes and the reason why they had set it up is because athletes when they were going into retirement, they were like a deer in the headlights and they were able to get athletes to work with businesses, and they would help them with the psychological side of coming out and leaving the sport. One of the things I had no idea about is how many athletes go bankrupt after they leave the sport and how quickly they go back bankrupt.
Bob 19:14
I don’t think anybody has an accurate number right now. So whatever I’m saying right now is not academically proven or anything but I believe that the worst is Sports Illustrated article years back that headed as high as 60%. I’m not sure if that’s accurate. But let’s say it’s half that, it’s still a ridiculously high number. But you got to understand a lot of these guys and I’m saying guys, because it’s often professional athletes in the higher revenue sports. With female athletes, it’s a slightly different story, but the same thing can happen to them. But a lot of them are simply unprepared for a professional career. They overestimate their ability to remain active as a professional athlete and they kind of like go into that rat race, right so they report rookie camp or the reporter training camp, and they see the quarterback, showing up in a Ferrari or Lamborghini, whatever it is, and like, Oh, I gotta get one of those things, and they don’t realize that, after the signing bonus, you have to get to your next contract passed the first three years before you really start making money. Some of them don’t understand the difference between pre tax and after tax. Right. So things like that. They overestimate the ability to generate revenue and then by the time they’re done, it’s gone. Now they make risky investments. Yeah, they’re just also problems, their debts.
Norman 20:39
They blow money, I hung around with a lot of different professional athletes and the amount of money that they will pay not only for everybody else, but their entourage is crazy, absolutely crazy.
Bob 20:52
Here’s the thing, right. So I will never say the word they, because I know so many athletes who are really smart and use what they have as a great platform. They’re guys like Richard Sherman, who negotiates his own contracts and knows exactly what he does. Here at the Dallas Cowboys, we got a guy, a linebacker Jaylon Smith, who’s starting his own brands, while he’s still playing, has his own Foundation, helping entrepreneurs. So there are a lot of athletes who understand this. But the’re probably more who were not prepared.
Norman 21:26
Yeah, I shouldn’t generalize. Maybe it was the athletes that I hung around with
Bob 21:32
An entourage is an issue of it and that comes from a good heart, right, a lot of people want to, our loyalty to people that grow up with that helped them, that often protected them and that they feel obligated to. So they’re supporting people, but again, not understanding how limited their first contract is and how far that carries them and there are a lot of parties right now in the United States actually addressing that from a sociological perspective, and are helping them. So we’re not trying to solve all that, right. But what we’re trying to solve is saying, Hey, we can help with the education and get you better prepared for the next step.
Norman 22:09
I really do find it fascinating. One of one of my friends, I did some work with, again, a very high profile, like A level, well known athlete and his entourage. What I noticed was he had no problems spending the money. They grew up together, he took care of them, like a family. In fact, not only did he take care of everybody that was around him, like the nine people that when one of his friends got shot, took care of that family, and took care of the coach and his wife that helped him through the times, because he came through a very poor family, just no running water. Mom was a crack addict and this coach took them and just built them, believed in them and helped him with his career. So he repaid them by paying off his mortgage, and they traveled around together. But anyways, I always find it very interesting how not only the athlete, the entourage and the outside, work together or don’t work together.
Bob 23:20
Yeah, I think sometimes, as the outsiders, we hear to train wrecks. I mean, and quite frankly, most sports fans love to train wrecks, right? I mean, that’s juicy, that works well, and we’re drawn by bad news. So we focus on those four cases. Many of them do really well, they take, they get the most out of it, they support other people, they’re able to transform not only themselves, but the people around them and levitate them. So I think in general, if you would do the research, the numbers might actually be more in favor of positive change, than squandered opportunities, but nobody’s done the research and so it’s most of these is kind of like anecdotal, and yeah, there are some very famous train wrecks, and Antoine Walker who made 120 million as an NBA player and yet was bankrupt before the end his career. Allen Iverson who has made a lot of money and squandered it all and the list goes on and on. But, on the other hand, you got guys like Lebron and Michael Jordan, who are already billionaires who are going to be billionaires and know how to use the platform to do well.
Norman 24:37
So I’m curious, can you tell me a little bit about the diversity of the student population and the challenges and advantages that they face?
Bob 24:45
The University of North Texas is actually a majority minority school. They serve a lot of first generation students. So the majority of our students are non white, and unfortunately, the United States that often means that they’re also coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Their parents might not have attended the University and so for them kind of like getting used to the university and socializing to it, that takes a little bit more time. But it’s such a rewarding population to work with and I’ve mentioned this earlier, I’m a first generation student, and I had no clue what I was getting into. So I connect more so even with these students that I had to tell them how to universities where one of these kids kinda like knew what to do, they just told me Hey, what do I need to do to get an A and that worked for them and but here you have these, blue collar kids who were like, hey, what I’m excited to be here. I’m the first one who made it here. I want to make the best of myself and the advantage for them that I see now is, let’s face it, sport teams, there on the business side, I honestly have not done a good job, recruiting and hiring diverse staff, diverse people that they struggle with that and a lot of that had to do with the fact that sports teams, if they post it position, they get 60,000 applicants. Because everybody wants to work for this favorite sports team, right? I mean, what’s more fun than telling your buddy say, Hey, I work for Farmers Insurance, or, hey, I work for the Dallas Cowboys, it’s simply more fun to say the second one. So whenever they put out a position somewhere, and they don’t do that for a reason, they would get thousands and thousands of responses. So they hire basically on two things. One is internships and then second is recommendations. Now the internships are often unpaid internships, again, because so many kids want these internships and are willing to do it for free. But, if you are a student from a lower socioeconomic background like I was, I was a bartender, throughout college, I had to work, I didn’t have time for an internship, because I had to make money. So unpaid internships are very exclusionary to diversity, because you’re going to get the same kids who come from well to do families and because they did the internship, now they know people, so the reference and the recommendations are directed to the which the same kid so you get this kind of like this circular system, that’s hard to escape out of. So if you look at diversity within sports teams, they’re not doing a great job and this is where our university, we’re really proud of the fact that we have such a diverse population, because now we can actually connect the sport teams with these kids and then if you bring in the athletes that we’re wanting to serve, we’re hoping to serve as we move forward, and so are already serving some of them. We have a former NFL player in our program. In our program, we have former minor league baseball players and so when we bring it all together, you get a really exciting group that really serves the sport organizations, well moving forward, because all of them, particularly the last five months, have woken up to the fact that they need to wake up and need to hire more diverse population, and need to hire from different groups that they originally were not at and they not finding them through their traditional channels. So this is why I’m attached to be at UNC, because we can provide those people to them.
Norman 28:04
I’ve always wondered, why these very rich corporations, franchises, or dealing with free internships. I know it gives people a great start. But I’ve never been for it. I always think you’ve got to pay people and for those reasons that you just talked about, there’s certain people that can go and have access to these and last while they’re getting paid nothing. Yeah, it’s too bad that it’s spread like wildfire. In my industry, everybody’s trying to get an intern and intern means free. We don’t work that way. We pay all of our interns that come in, we pay, but it’s too bad. But what you’re doing is fantastic. So, yeah, kudos to you.
Bob 28:52
Yeah, they were able to get away with it because of the demand and also sports teams like to spend the money on the fields on and off the field. Right. So that’s part of it, as well. But again, I’m entirely with you in those industries, where the demand for labor is lower than the supply because of the glamour that’s associated with the entertainment industry in the sport industry. You gotta protect yourself and if you want diversity, you got to be able to invest in it.
Hayden 29:20
So is this program unique to UNT, or are universities starting to catch up and try and look at these inequalities and do something about it actively?
Bob 29:31
Well, I think some programs are still ahead of us. Let me say that first, right. So what we’re doing is not unique. However, the level of intensity that we’re able to work with the industry and do things with them. To some extent, I think that other organizations might need to catch up. I’m not sure if they are, but ironically, some programs, professors are definitely more concerned about producing great research than innovating their teaching practices. That’s just one of the inherent things related to being at a research university. But I would say this way, I think every university should strive to have these programs in place. Think about internships, some of my students are doing unpaid internships because they want it and don’t mind and to say, hey, you can do them. But we do try to educate all our partners in the industry saying, pay your interns, try to be diverse, bring in different people, don’t just rely on recommendations off, the same old boys network that you have, and work on the diversity of half the organization.
Norman 30:43
I want to go back to the COVID question, because, like, at least I can talk hockey. So hockey, up here in Canada, we follow it like a religion. What I’ve seen is, you’ve got the junior level people that get drafted. So how is this going to affect so they’ve worked all their lives, they get drafted onto an NHL team, they’re heading out to camp, and all of a sudden, for whatever, six months, their career comes to an end and all of a sudden, another group of draftees are there and it must be tough on the sport, or on the athlete?
Bob 31:23
Oh, absolutely and I think that the toughest of that actually is for those people who, you made a classification of ABC athletes kind of like to C athletes who really never make it, right? Who kind of get stuck on on a minor league level, or, kind of like, never get the contract and they are the people who put it in just as much time as the star athletes or maybe even more, and they never get to pay out and for them to kind of stop trying is extremely hard and to switch that knob and say, Okay, I’m done, I’m gonna do something else. Yeah, a lot of them are not able to do that and they hang on, in making very little money for a very long time in the hopes that one day it will change for them.
Norman 32:12
What about the growth in eSports? Now, are you seeing a shift where it’s exploding? Now that we’re sitting at home?
Bob 32:21
Yeah, I mean, I actually had a conversation about that today with somebody who knows the industry very well. There’s definitely continued growth now. But I think that if you talk about eSports, and I always ask people, if you know a guy, I know a guy, and I can introduce you to him, and he can talk about the eSports world, much more informed than I do. But I think what I will say is, people don’t understand the difference between eSports and video gaming. So the video gaming industry is enormous and the video gaming industry is bigger than the movie and music industry combined nowadays, that’s how many people play video games. But that’s not eSports. So eSports is actually that little slice of people who want to play competitively, and can generate revenue by making other people watch them and the people who watch other people play video games, is still much lower and more problematically, people still trying to figure out how to monetize that behavior beyond Twitch or YouTube. So Twitch and YouTube make money, video game companies make money, but they make it out of video gamers and not necessarily eSports, although it’s a nice branding opportunity. But there are very few people outside those groups that actually make money in the eSports industry. So it’s still unclear where this is going to go. Is it popular? Absolutely. Do they have millions of people watching? Yes. Are people making money out of it? Not that many.
Norman 33:57
Do you see any related cultural shifts once COVID settles down?
Bob 34:04
Yeah. Right now, I think most sports teams are in crisis mode, right? Because they are one of the hardest hit industries. They were the first one to close. There’ll be the last one to successfully open. What they’re doing now is a batch. Right. So, I think that the stars are playing in Colorado right now. Right, the avalanche right now for their playoff game and yeah, people will watch on TV, but yet nobody understands, there’s a big source of revenues missing. sponsors are struggling. Well, sponsors are also complaining because they don’t get their impressions. So sports teams are all in crisis mode and regardless of sport, because of lacking revenue and so the world after COVID is unclear. I think that right now sports teams are just trying to survive and we’ll see what happens with attendance. I mean, if we have a vaccine, I don’t think that necessarily 100,000 people are going to be comfortable shooting in a stadium. But, I don’t know how people think, so we kind of like to see how that’s gonna play out if the old business model of cramming as many people into a stadium and make them pay for it is going to continue to work. So yeah, I think they’re going to be sports with struggle, I think they’re going to be sports are going to be fine. I think they’re going to be sports that do better. Yeah, eSports will do better. I think the NBA will be fine. I think the NFL will be fine. I think Baseball will have an even harder struggle going ahead, because they’re so dependent on attendance and so yeah, it’s not a good time to be in the sport industry.
Norman 35:43
Yeah, Hayden and I both love F1. Anyways, what they were able to do, so we’re all kind of bummed, with any sport that they weren’t doing it, then we saw an interesting marketing plan, a little campaign where the drivers would actually use EA Sports and compete against each other, which was kind of fun, it was kind of silly. But now they’re back on the track and they took advantage of the sponsorship opportunities by covering all the stands and because it’s not something that you would see like in a baseball game where the fans are kind of interacting in the cheering, you don’t hear that in a F1 race. So it’s interesting to see how they use the stands as a marketing tool, and how they played the game. Just trying to, keep the interest in F1. I think they did a really marvelous job.
Bob 36:39
Absolutely and I think when you look at a television audience, particularly for a sport, like Formula One, it doesn’t hurt them and in fact, I’m assuming that television ratings are slightly up compared to any other year, because what else are people going to do? Right? They can’t leave their house right now. So I think they’re fine there. But you got to keep in mind, so last week they were at Spa Francorchamps. Right? In Belgium. Normally, if 300,000 people are attending, that’s 300,000 thousand people times, 300 bucks for tickets or something like that. Right? So is that on a million? I’m doing a die hard, kind of like close to, 90 million, or maybe I’m one zero, maybe two, but I think it’s like 90, that’s a lot of money and you’re not getting it now. Right? So yeah, you can appease the sponsors and sponsors understand this as well and these contracts are complicated but now, if you’re spending all your time on your existing sponsors, who might or might not renew after this or might go bankrupt, you don’t know. But you definitely don’t have time to go after new sponsors and you don’t know what your value proposition is. So even then they’re right and I think no one has done great. NASCAR’s done great, NBA has done great, NHL has done great, but they’re all losing or missing out on a lot of revenue that normally comes in. So it all depends on how high the contracts are and what other kind of financial commitments they have.
Norman 37:59
Do you know, have you ever heard of Philip Yang?
Bob 38:05
I have not.
Norman 38:08
Wow, we had him on last week. Wasn’t it Hayd? So anyways, he is an urban planner. He just makes cities, big cities better. Anyways, he was talking about, like, based on his research, cities to grow and thrive have to have the landscapes, the government, and residents kind of all work together to have a successful city. So he’s in Sao Paulo and anyways, he’s been doing some projects over there. Do you think to have a successful sports franchise that you need those three components?
Bob 38:48
Normally, it’s the other way around. But people asked me, do you think a successful urban area needs a sports team, but you’re asking the other way around. Does a sports team need to have a successful area? I mean, I think it helps, right? I mean, it helps with fandom and you need those from connections, you want to have to support. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Norman 39:09
Yeah and one of the things he was talking about is if you take one of those out, one of those three out, the city falls apart one way or the other.
Bob 39:20
Yeah. No, you live in Canada, you guys are slightly better in managing those relationships, understanding that you need everyone involved. It’s not as cutthroat as the United States. Right. But the free capitalist system. I grew up in the Netherlands. So I’ve seen that and I think a lot of the success of my birth nation comes from having those strong relationships and understanding where you need to compromise and not having a winner take all mentality. If I look at the Dallas Cowboys, right our partner at the University of North Texas, they actually have done really well in their relationship with local governments here managing the ads. They build a headquarters here in Frisco where we are located. They build that in full partnership with both city of Frisco and the Frisco high school system in which their training facility became a high school football stadium and for those listeners that don’t understand how popular high school football is in Texas, but high school football actually need stadium in Texas, because you easily get 10 15,000 people attending and so The Cowboys partnered up with the ISD and together they built a stadium/practice facility that they got, which The Cowboys were using and then they built a whole mixed usage area around, restaurants, hotel, and all this other stuff. It’s a beautiful illustration of how a city can, or public entities can successfully partner with a sports team.
Norman 40:55
Is that why so many other sports organizations are interested in Frisco?
Bob 41:01
Yes, Frisco is extremely pro business. They set out about 20 years ago, they set out to be a destination. They didn’t want to be a sleepy suburb where people drive back and forth to Dallas. So they figured out like, Okay, how can we become a destination and they realized that they were in the heartland United States, heartland Texas, there are no mountains, there are no beautiful beaches. So if you want to be a destination, their solution was we need sports and sport events at all levels, right. So from a little use board Little League events to the big events. That’s where they started the growth and that started with the old stadium at FC Dallas, that was built in Frisco and there was nothing else here and started with a minor league baseball team, the Frisco Roughriders, and then a arena for a minor league basketball team, and from their group, so at some point that got the Cowboys to build their headquarters here. So the Cowboys played our games in Arlington, which is Southwest of here. But the rest of the time, they’re here in Frisco and now this coming year, or the last year the PGA of America announced that they’re moving into Frisco, and they’re building a 36 hole championship course, or two championship courses, at a resort hotel and all that, again, in full partnership with the city. So the city has always made sports a priority and that’s what drew University of North Texas to Frisco as well, the growth here, the pro business attitude, and that’s how I ended up here in Frisco. Because of the University of North Texas, one of them has a sports business degree that allows them to kind of really partner up with all these great things that are happening here in Frisco.
Norman 42:44
I love what Vegas is doing as well. I would never have thought Vegas, a tourist town, would have ever become a sports Mecca.
Bob 42:54
Yeah, and I think that’s what people underestimate and I was one of them is, yeah, you actually it’s a big city. There are actually people who live in Vegas. It’s not just doors, there’s actually an entire city around it and those people want to watch their sports as well. So yeah, aside from the fact that you have great partners in hospitality and entertainment, you also have actually a pretty big city that’s still growing and it’s attractive to live in for a lot of people and these people want their team. So yeah, it makes perfect sense.
Norman 43:25
They can spend lots of money.
Bob 43:27
Yeah. You mentioned COVID earlier, and I don’t think there’s been a bigger victim of COVID in Las Vegas. Right. So the hotels are empty, the casinos are empty. I assume? I haven’t been there. But I assume that if there’s one city who really struggles through all these, then I would think it’s Vegas.
Norman 43:44
Alright, so what are the other factors that determine the success of a franchise?
Bob 43:52
You asked me the million dollar question. Right? So a lot of new sports teams that are like, oh, let’s see what he says. Yeah. I think that the first thing that they’re different layers to this show, first of all, successful franchises is defined by the popularity of the sport. So the successful franchises are Hockey, Football, Basketball, and Baseball, and Soccer to some extent, but it took Soccer 40 years to get where they are right now here in the United States and they still have ways to go, but they’re doing well. But that shows you how long it takes to build something and MLS took a long time to really take off and that’s because origin is really about history, about narrative, about stories. You’re selling stories to people and so if you’re new, it’s really hard to do that because you don’t have those stories you can sell. So with the Cowboys right now, an extremely popular team, they haven’t won the Superbowl since 95 and that’s a long time ago. But people are still excited about the Cowboys still believe in them, and they have those, amazing stories, their brand heroes from yesterday earn, whatever we call that and it’s similar with Canva. Right? I mean, it’s been a while since the Stanley Cup has been home. But people are still excited about it, because there’s the history. They’re just stories. They’re the brand heroes. There’s, all that. So, what I think what sports teams in general have, and some do better than another is to have a community that has great stories in history together, and an incidental success and yeah, you need things successful now and then. But yeah, it starts with having a great community.
Norman 45:38
I’m still waiting for Buffalo Bills to come back.
Bob 45:42
Well, maybe this is the year right. I mean, Tom Brady, I finally left and who knows, I think they’re a couple years away still. But, that would be great. I mean, honestly, it’s a leak, you need that right. You need rotation between great teams and important because that’s what North American sports in general do much better than European sports and in North American sports, anyone can win a championship and historically, if you look at that most teams have won a championship at some point. But in Europe, it’s the same three, four or five teams who win every year and every year, Bayern Munich has won nine out of the last 10 Bundesliga championships. Real Madrid and Barcelona among them have an 80% of all the Spanish championships. That’s not that much fun, right? Those are the only teams that matter. So I think North America does really well, by ensuring that one year’s this team, one year to the team, and even the most successful teams only have a small percentage of the overall championship.
Norman 46:43
Is that by design?
Bob 46:45
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely and you can see that even by looking at wrestle, Baseball historically was the biggest league and they have the least amount of competitive balance measures because they didn’t have to and it was harder for them to implement that. But a newcomer like NFL that struggled early on for like 40-50 years, people tend to forget that. But the NFL has been in business since the 20s to 1912 or something like that, or whatever it is. They struggled until like 1969, that’s half a century that they struggled. But that’s why they did all those competitive balance because they realize that every game should matter and every game should be, any given Sunday, that same comes from that. They wanted to make sure that everybody’s competitive, and that everybody has an equal chance. Because that means that all fans of every team will tune in every year.
Norman 47:33
Hayden, you want to tune in?
Hayden 47:36
Sure.
Norman 47:38
You’re being very quiet today.
Hayden 47:39
I’m just taking it all in.
Hayden 47:42
Alright, so actually, one thing that maybe we can hook back to, I made note of, are there any changes in sports education, that you’d like to see going forward?
Bob 47:54
I’m glad you bring it back to education, right? Because ultimately, I love these current issues but if you look at sport management, as a discipline, right. So sport management got invented back in like the 60s when the owner of the Dodgers said, Hey, I need people to be trained to work for my organization and I wanted to be more specialized and that’s what kind of sport management came from. It started to really become a true discipline in the 80s, when they found it, the North American Society for sport management, which allows scholars in this field to come together and talk about research and push research forward and honestly, it didn’t really come into full maturity until the 21st century, 2000 somewhere around there, you really see the researches take off, you see programs exploding and now it’s a true, legitimate discipline in its own way. You have hundreds of schools who offer a degree in some capacity and it’s an exciting field to be part of. It’s very industry focused. But in its own way, it’s an educational field in which people do scholarships and teach classes.
Norman 49:07
So how come it took so long to get implemented? The importance of these changes in sports education, wasn’t there a need for it? Or didn’t people realize that there was a need for sports education?
Bob 49:19
I mean, I think we’ve always had physical education. That’s all but think about this from an historical perspective, when did the sport entertainment industry which has been driving this field really become worth more? Well, that was not until the 60s in the 70s when people started having TVs and really started to watch games on mass right. So before that, it was an attendance driven industry, which was relatively small peanuts compared to other industries. But once kind of like TV took off, and then a decade later when sponsors realized the power of sports on TV and started to latch on, the once that entertainment complex industry complex started to take off. That’s when there was a big need for education as well and people understood that business and learned how to do sales and learn how to do sponsorship and all that. So I think actually, it wasn’t that far behind, it followed that kind of growth of the industry in general. But in general, it just takes time to build the discipline, right? You cannot just say, right now, this is actually an interesting comparison, people are now calling out for eSport degrees and so we need to educate our kids on eSports and training for the industry and that’s a fascinating question, because is there such a thing as an eSports industry? What are we teaching these kids? What kind of jobs are going to be there out there for them? So it takes time to build that as an educational program, you cannot get ahead of the industry. You first need to know that there are jobs and that there’s economic opportunities, before we actually build an academic degree of fields, those responsibilities.
Norman 51:01
So what about organizations who are ahead of the game?
Bob 51:04
So I consider what we’re doing at the University of North Texas as trying to be ahead of the game, or at least, redefine the game. I see that in terms of how you work with the industry and ironically, in the United States, most sport management degrees are not in cities where the professional teams are. So they’re often actually at the land grant universities, whatever big athletic departments, but no professional sports. When I was approached by the University of North Texas, I was excited to come here, because it’s in Fort Worth, it’s the fourth biggest city in the United States and there’s a lot of professional sports here and it allows you to partner with these organizations in ways that a lot of the other programs that we are competing with and as far as we’re competing, we can partner with them in ways that they cannot do. Because we can invite people into our classroom, we can do intense programs with them and that’s much harder to do if you’re two, three hours away from, your nearest professional team
Norman 52:05
Interesting. I had no idea. I never really thought about it, that these universities were outside of the main cities, or the main hubs. That’s interesting.
Bob 52:17
Think about it this way, right. So you have a lot of these physical education programs, recreation management programs that existed back then and then you have an athletic department that’s being built. So think about Ohio State, think about Michigan, think about University of Florida, Florida State, Texas A&M, University of Texas, those kinds of universities, there’s a need there as well to have graduate assistants to work in the athletic departments, right, you get all these kind of like cross fertilization that leads to the sport management problems built around these athletic departments. So it’s actually been associated with a lot of departments more so than with professional sports, that were more distant from this and had perhaps less money and I’m somewhat speculating here, but I think that’s where it originated from and why, most of these programs were at the big universities and big sports programs.
Norman 53:10
Okay, great. I’m going to switch it up a little bit. I’m kind of curious about a quote that you live by, or that is of interest to you.
Bob 53:20
Yeah, so my quote is, “Let the world change you, so you can change the world” and that comes from Che Guevara, which and let me be clear, I’m not a communist. But that sentence always hit me because I’ve always been someone who has looked for new challenges and I think if you look at my bio, right, that shows you I went from living in a small town where I was somewhat of a renowned soccer player, and people knew me and I had a well and I moved to Amsterdam, the big city doesn’t seem so far away. But back then it seemed like a million miles away and I lived in a tiny little attic apartment where I had to go downstairs to go through the bathroom and started working as a dishwasher. So I started over again. But that changed me and then after I finished my university degree, I came to the United States, again, that changed me and then I took a job in New Zealand. That changed me and started working for Johan Cruyff, that changed me and came back to the States and constantly taking on new risks, taking on new advantages, it changes you and because of that growth, you start to bring things to the table that can help or change other people. So I’m always looking for new challenges, new adventures, looking for change.
Hayden 54:46
So being on faculty at a university, does that rub at all against that kind of constant search for change, or are you getting your fill?
Bob 54:55
Oh, I have to be careful how well I respond to that.
Bob 55:02
Yeah, if I look back at different situations, I’ve left places not always with the best relations with the people who were still there and referring to that earlier with Johan Cruyff, but I came in there and I was a young guy and I said, Hey, this is how we’re going to do it, we’re going to change the game and there were people who were not on board with that and didn’t see that and one of my former universities that I worked, where I was hired to build a program, it was kind of the same thing I came in and said, Hey, this is how we’re going to do that and there were people who, even before I set foot there, kind of decided that that’s not how it should be and so change comes with conflict, change fears people. So yeah, it’s not as easy as I made it sound earlier on, it’s hard. Change is hard, and people will fight you on it and you develop scars, because of those conflicts. So yes, it’s not always easy.
Norman 56:01
So that’s going to lead us to, let’s talk a little bit about your greatest successes.
Bob 56:06
If you’re an academic, you’re a marathon runner, right? It’s not an easy sprint, it’s one long kind of battle. I’m very proud of my research output, lack of a better term. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished here at the University of North Texas in the last two years since I arrived here. When I went there, people were like, they didn’t know what North Texas was. It’s not a famous University. It’s a local university that has done really well within Dallas Fort Worth, and is known well for providing great education, particularly to first generation students. We have an enormous diverse student base, we’re very proud of both. So when I went here from well known universities, where a lot of people were asking, What the hell are you doing here and so now, two and a half years later, we have a partnership with the most valuable sports franchise in the world, the Dallas Cowboys. We have partnered with the PGA of America, one of the biggest sport organizations in the United States and we have excellent relationships with every other franchise and we’re doing projects with them. We started last week with the Dallas Mavericks on a project for one of our classes, where we’re looking at interesting international markets for the Dallas Mavericks to explore. So we’re doing all this great stuff with the industry. We’re bringing into our classrooms, I have an advisory board that has some amazing people on it. So I think if I have to call something my greatest accomplishments, I would say that what we’ve done at University of North Texas, and not just me, but just as a program, is what I’m most proud of.
Norman 57:44
Fantastic. How about we turn that around, and we talk about some of the hurdles that you’ve had to overcome to get to that success?
Bob 57:53
Yeah, and you have to start by talking about a university. So University is, by definition, just a beast of an organization and you’re talking about, well, we have 40,000 students, probably, and I’m just speculating about 8000 faculty members, or something like that and an enormous staff of probably another 10,000 people and it’s a village on its own and because of that, that means that a lot of procedures, there’s a lot of policies, there’s a lot of red tape coming with that and that means that it needs to be a lot of communication between people to do a lot of coordination, check with a lot of people, whether you can do something, whether it follows certain procedures or policies and that’s not easy because, then on the other side, you’re working with a professional football team, who says, hey, yeah, this is what we’re going to do and, Jerry said, we needed to do it, so we’re going to do it and then our sides, I would have to communicate that to five different people, three different Dean’s, my chair, Provost, whatever, whoever is involved, 10 different staff members, making sure it’s being executed. So working within an organization, like a university can be very challenging because it is an entire village, and there’s a lot of different people playing into almost any decision you make.
Norman 59:18
It can’t be that tough. You’ve still got all your hair.
Bob 59:21
Yeah, but if you look right on top of it, it’s definitely thinning a lot and there are more, lying to my face, so it’s not going the right direction. I can tell you that.
Norman 59:38
But it’s still there. Take a look at me.
Bob 59:40
Yeah, so who knows, maybe when I get to that point, I might try to make up for it on the bottom side as well. A little bit more. Yeah.
Norman 59:51
So I think we’re coming to the end of the podcast, and one thing I’m going to have to hook back on. I forgot to ask you how to get in contact with you.
Bob 1:00:00
I’m the most famous Bob Heere in the world. So if you know how to spell my name B O B H E E R E and you Google me, I should be the only one who’s populating your Google screen. So you can find me there. My email is bob.heere@umd.edu. But yeah, they’re not a lot of Bob Heeres in this world, so you’re good there.
Norman 1:00:25
Bob, there’s a question that I asked every one of our guests at the end of the podcast and that question is do you know a guy?
Bob 1:00:32
I got two guys for you, not one, I got two guys for you and both of them are based on that same thing that I talked about earlier. We want athletes to be able to successfully convert into a business career, we want to help with that and these two guys both have done an amazing job to transform into something entirely else, find new purpose in life and be very successful. So the first guy I have for you, his name is Brian DeMarco, he’s a former NFL lineman. He suffered a gruesome injury, took him a year, I think, to walk again, started his own company, sold it successfully, and now started his second company and Norm, you will appreciate it or not, but he might actually have a more impressive beard than you do. So I think you guys can just talk about beards.
Norman 1:01:23
We’re gonna have a beard off.
Bob 1:01:25
You’re gonna have a beard off and I love his story. It’s so inspirational and he’s a great guy. So you’re going to hit it off with him. But then the second guy is from a completely different angle. But his name is John Davison. He’s a former professional skateboarder and that’s such a great niche sport. He really don’t know what to do with it and you can’t really imagine what does it mean to be a professional skateboarder and from there, it kind of like took his career into eSports and he’s now with BRG. One of the biggest event production companies in the world, where he has their eSports efforts, helps him trying to make sense of this world and he’s also the president of the eSports Traders Association. So when I mentioned earlier, I know people who can talk much more eloquently about eSports and I do, he’s your guy.
Norman 1:02:15
Oh, both sounds fantastic. I can’t wait to interview them. So Bob, I got to thank you. This has been very informative. I’ve learned a lot just talking with you today. You’re a great guy. So thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Bob 1:02:31
It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Hayden 1:02:36
Hey there guys and gals. That concludes our interview with Bob Heere. Make sure to tune in next time for our interview with John Davidson. John is a former professional skateboarder. He’s extremely involved in the eSports communities and recently launched Davidson Learning Company. So make sure to check it out. Also, check out the link in the description for our Halloween giveaway. Just click on the link and you’ll be guided through the rest of the process. That’s enough for me, and I’ll see you next time.
