oh sorry mine was kind of light too yeah yeah yeah and cody could use another one yeah do you live on the boat at night or do you go home i go back to prop we have property over in custer oh you do yep

is there enough of them in there i'm on it there you go all right i'll have one more i gotta go retie stuff for tomorrow you're going out tomorrow They're doing retying.

Just retying just in case we do decide to go.

I mean...

Because according to the...

The weather? The doc report.

Now, when you guys are doing the charters, Do them people do the best they can to stay out of the way or do they want to get handsy in? So typically when we're

first setting lines, we have everybody just kind of sit down and relax for first time.

Do you see where people view this as hypocritical?

Well, I see people who aren't familiar with the situation make those statements.

I mean, no offense, and, you know, I'm just getting to know you guys, so I'm sure present company is completely excluded.

But college sports reporting is some of the worst reporting that exists.

Oh, it's terrible.

And they don't always get the facts straight.

And so, you know, I've been involved with this situation since the beginning.

you then, why do you think people are wanting to boycott in this particular situation? You're right about all of this.

Give me a sense of how you started this Saving College Sports Initiative.

Well, um, I was appointed to the Board of Regents at Texas Tech about five years ago, um, in, in twenty twenty-one, a little over five years ago, and this was just before Oklahoma and Texas announced that they were leaving the Big 12.

And so, um, when that occurred, it, it, it took everyone by surprise.

And so Texas Tech, uh, kind of undertook an initiative to figure out what's going on.

You know, how do we best, uh, position ourselves to, um, you know, to not get left behind, um, to make sure that we preserve athletics and the visibility of our university through athletics.

Um, and so we started work on researching and understanding, you know, what drove, uh, that move, um, what are the underlying-- what's the underlying legal situation, governance situation, um, and what are the, the causes and solutions for the problems that are occurring in college athletics.

And so, um, at first it was, it was entirely through the lens of just, you know, how do we make, how do we make sure that Texas Tech is best positioned.

So as everyone knows, college football, college basketball, they are the revenue drivers on every campus, but a lot of athletic departments are running at deficits, and they're trying to figure out, "How do we pay for tennis and baseball and softball and lacrosse and water polo?" So how could that act being amended help those secondary sports potentially?

Can you kind of lay out what's about to happen and what college sports could potentially look like here rather soon because of what you guys have pieced together?

Yeah, you bet.

We've had some great developments over the last, uh, uh, few days and, and, uh, months leading up to it.

So the president, uh, formed a s- a roundtable and, uh, Randy Levine, uh, who's the president of the New York Yankees, and I, uh, co-chaired that council and led an effort of basically outsiders, business people, professional sports owners, media people, conference commissioners, um, you name it.

We talked to hundreds of student athletes and tried to help, uh, Congress to come up with a solution, um, that makes sense to resolve the problems in college sports.

And so, what has resulted from that, after working with Senators Cantwell and Cruz, who are Democrat and Republican, along with Senator Schmidt and Senator Coons, uh, again, Democrat and Republican, is that the Protect College Sports Act, uh, was introduced this week.

And, um, so this is the most comprehensiveUm, the best bill that's been released, um, on college sports reform.

The rules are also stated in this what the modern world could look like, right? And who would be against this in the, in the entirety?

[laughs] Uh, anybody else, please? Cody, please.

Yes, sir.

Uh, Mr.

President, I'd...

I w- I would like to express my gratitude for your involvement and interest in all of this, and especially, um, personally the opportunity to be, um, involved in the, in, in helping to find the solution, because college sports, uh, as many have said, changed my life.

Um, you know, made me a better businessman, a better husband, better father, um, and made me better at life in general.

Um, this is a complex issue.

Uh, could you use this as a base, and we all get together maybe as a smaller group and ultimately report back to the larger group and come up with something? Do you think this is a good base?