Mm-hmm

... and, and less of a creator, um, at that, uh, after that, uh, experience.

And, um, so to make a long story short, I wrote Confessional after coming back to music toward the end of COVID.

Um, my marriage was falling apart, uh, and then, and I picked up the guitar again.

I actually picked up an old guitar and then bought a new guitar, thought that would be a good motivator, and began writing, and my first songs were about, uh, you know...

One in particular was about alcohol.

I was, uh, newly sober, um, after several decades of self-medicating, and I wrote a song about that experience.

Bye now.

Yeah.

I mean, you and I can remember when, you know, there were far fewer than 40 or so bowl games, and that it was a reward for a successful season.

Uh, I still think it's viewed by the teams as a reward, uh, for a successful season.

And we can argue about what success looks like.

Is that six wins, seven wins, whatever it is? But in terms of opportunities to engage with fans outside of your, your general market or where your campus is, to give, uh, rookies and, and, and freshmen and younger underclassmen an opportunity to play some meaningful minutes and to see what you may have for next year, and to really kinda hopefully end the season on a, on a, on a positive note, like the Gophers did, I think these bowl games all continue to provide that, while at the same time providing great economic impact and activation in the towns and communities that support them.

... to keep it, uh, in the Big Ten or to keep one of the match ups a Big Ten team now, wh- uh, do you wait for the playoff situation to figure that out and then, uh, hammer down and, and try to secure that?

Yeah.

You know, I mean, the, the, the ball really is in the court of the, of the autonomous four, the P4 conferences, to decide what they wanna do and, and how they want this to, to, to go.

point, what do you do? I mean, you talked about hotels and all that stuff and the infrastructure of the game and all of the events

that go around.

You don't know your teams until a week before.

That's a challenge.

Yeah, I mean, from a promotional standpoint, you're relying in large part on the travel parties.

But we have made it a point since I arrived about almost four years ago to really build up our local fan base, to ensure that we're selling tickets to locals who have a great opportunity to see two of the best teams in the country pursuing a national championship every single year at our game.

And so I think we went from something like 6,000 kind of season tickets, if you will, to over 16,000 now because we want to make certain that there is that foundation for people year over year because they're going to see a playoff game.

much of a voice do you have in those discussions?

To her point, like what do you do? I mean, you talked about hotels and all that stuff and the infrastructure of the game and all of the events that go

around.

You don't know your teams until a week before.

That's a challenge.

Yeah, I mean, from a promotional standpoint, you're relying in large part on the travel parties.

But we have made it a point since I arrived about almost four years ago to really build up our local fan base, to ensure that we're selling tickets to locals who have a great opportunity to see two of the best teams in the country pursuing a national championship every single year at our game.

And so I think we went from something like 6,000 kind of season tickets, if you will, to over 16,000 now because we want to make certain that there is that foundation for people year over year because they're going to see a playoff game.

voice do you have in those discussions?

As somebody who's in the ball business and runs one of the premier events, what do you think?

I think we're a little bit agnostic about that.

I think there's still a place for the six Bulls that are currently part of the playoff format, even if you expand to 24.

Most of those additional games would be first-round games.

Those are the games, if we're going to have lopsided affairs, they'll tend to be in that first round.

We saw that in my second year with the Fiesta Bowl with Oregon and Liberty.

which kind of was a tough sell, right, for fans, many of whom weren't familiar with Liberty's football program.

differentiate you know from a final four to a super bowl to a cfp well i mean in the community that is i mean the phoenix area you know multiple professional teams college is represented but not like it is in certain places of the country where