A lot of underachievers, and you're, uh, you hit it right on the head, and I, and you acquiesce to the fact that they have won three Natties, but I think you were, you were dead right

rightYeah.

Uh, thanks for having me on, Julie.

Yeah, it- that's where, Florida was the trickiest one to do.

And so just a, a quick backstory.

This is an idea that we had at least in the summer, if not earlier than that, um, about, uh, just who are the biggest underachievers in the sport.

And I crunched a bunch of numbers trying to figure out how can I quantify this, right? So you look at things like money, so how much money have they reported, um, over the last 20 years? 'Cause that's what I could get handy.

We'll make up for that plus more." I, uh, because he's totally shifted his, his, uh, position on it.

Tell us about it.

Hey, Paul.

Thanks for having me on.

So one of the things we kinda talked about in the off-season, we wondered just who has historically done the mo- or the, the least with the most? And our hypothesis going into, this is even before the season started, we kinda thought Texas A&M would be in that conversation.

And, uh, lo and behold, after I started crunching the numbers be- honestly before the last couple of losses, to be honest with you, uh, Texas A&M came up at nu- number one.

Um, our, our list was part numbers, part kind of vibes, common sense in there too to smooth it- things out a little bit.

But when, when I looked at the metrics in terms of money, fan support, uh, proximity to talent, Hall of Fame coaches, things like that, Texas A&M was no worse than 17th in all of those categories a- and usually a lot higher than that.

I mean, you, you could, you could fool a, a visitor from outer space that they don't, uh, [laughs] think that they, they belong in the upper echelon.

Maybe it is the right word, yeah

... just want to make it very clear.

[laughs] I just wanna make it clear this is not pay for play because we say it's not pay for play, and that means it's not.

Like, this is, this is cut and dry.

This is black and white here.

We say it's not pay for play because that's against...

That, that's not okay, so therefore this is not pay for play.

What'd you take away about what's happened the last couple of weeks, his comments a, a, a few days ago? And clearly he's got members that are actively, aggressively trying to plot their exit.

So how did you try to figure it out?

Yeah, I thank you because I did spend a good amount of time in it.

Like I was never perfect.

Right.

And there's there's a lot of things where reasonable people can disagree.

But if I was going to put my name on it and I think it was a privilege and I'm glad to have done in an honor.

But if I'm going to have my name on it and do it, I'm going to do it right.

If Davos says I ain't leaving, what do you do if you're Clemson? If it if it goes the way Saturday that we think it goes in Miami, wax him and Clemson ends up, you know, eight and four, seven and five, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

I mean, um, uh, the schedule makers certainly got it right.

Maybe it wasn't intentional, but having this back-to-back series at this stage of the season where, you know, this Lions team has clearly turned a corner, five wins in six games, right? And I, I, like everyone else, was, was curious to see how the team would respond.

And, uh, you know, really last week, if you go back to last week, you know, y- y- you forgive them for falling just short, but the way they lost that game, some self-inflicted errors, whether it was third and short not converting, uh, an uncharacteristic, uh, interception return thrown by Nathan Rourke to Tyrese Beverette, which was the backbreaker.

Settling for too many field goals, I thought.

So to get this Montreal team on the rebound coming back here, making the trip all the way out here when this Lions team had a full week to practice and to heal up, to recover from a long road trip out east.

You know, seeing, seeing both sides of the ball make plays, you know, great for Casey Sales, right, really.

... probably his best game of the year.

Tell me, what is it that they're doing? What is his system? What does it look like on the field? What am I supposed to be seeing out of that group of players that tells me that it's working?

Yeah, this kind of speaks to the evolution of the system itself.

It started essentially as a 3-4-2-1.

The responsibilities of the center backs are to be those initiators.

We play the ball out of the back exclusively.

It's really limited what Roman Berkey has been asked to do as a keeper playing on the ball, but Timo Baumgartel is our quarterback, right? Central center back.

And he decides which way we're going.

Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

So if I'm on a rig, let's say I'm in the middle of the Gulf and there's a storm coming, what are some things that you would be looking for to monitor?

So this backs up even to before the storm season starts.

What we would do is we would have a work together to... create a storm plan with that client.

So let's say someone owns an offshore rig.

Before the season starts, we would even have a tabletop exercise where we would go through.

This is a drill.

This is how you react if the storm is heading toward you at this speed of advance from this location.

dude how can i find out more information about storm geo

It's part of the reason why I'm here is because before

it was to build a business that creates the coolest, hottest place.

We have all this unique decor.

Now that it's grown, it's like, well, that's not working.

It's not working because we can't even take on displays that are are calling us.

So like the holiday lighting season has started.

I'm like, we're in the thick of it right now.

Like, how do I solve this constraint? What system can I do? What gets me excited about this business that has disappeared? and I want you to get that back by getting rid of a lot of these things that you currently hate.

We were bound to start to get some more rumors, and these are the kind of rumors that I know City fans probably don't want to hear.

No, it's definitely not the rumor that you were hoping for.

It's the reality of soccer in that regard, though, Brendan, in that you're going to have players incoming that excite you, but you're also going to have players outgoing that are crucial parts to your team.

It just came on quickly that there was smoke to the fire of soccer City's most important player being rumored to be on the way out.

And it started a couple, it started a week or two ago, if memory serves, a report from Hanover.

Wasn't cited well, didn't have a lot of details to it.

The vagueness included Cedric Teuchert in the report.

Well, now as we start to put the pieces together, do we think a reason they felt comfortable in paying out a transfer fee of that size was that they had this potential transfer going the other way with money coming back to St. Louis in Marcel Hartle?

What do you think about him as a coach? And then what do you feel like the possibilities are of him figuring it out over the next couple of years?

So first of all, I think you're right.

He is in a really hard situation because of Arkansas standing.

We can talk about that in a second.

But Silverfield, as a coach, I think he's fine is probably what I would say.

When you look at what he did at Memphis, he took over a program that was in very good shape from Mike Morvell.

Shoot, I was at the Cotton Bowl when Morvell had just left for Florida State and Silverfield had just taken a job.

It has to happen, I think, in order to find a way to get the dollar figures that they're working with to actually work.

What do you think about him as a coach? And then what do you feel like the possibilities are of him figuring it out over the next couple of years?

So first of all, I think you're right.

He is in a really hard situation because of Arkansas standing.

We can talk about that in a second.

But Silverfield as a coach, I think he's fine is probably what I would say.

When you look at what he did at Memphis, took over a program that was in very good shape from Mike Morvell.

Shoot, I was at the Cotton Bowl last When Norvell had just left for Florida State, Silverfield had just taken a job, and so I remember what that program was like then.

It has to happen, I think, in order to find a way to get this, the dollar figures that they're working with to actually work.

Andy's question for you on Facebook Live brought to you by Metal Law says, Matt, why aren't more colleges signing private equity deals like Utah did to help take fundraising for football programs to the next level?

It's really, really complicated is the short answer.

And it's complicated for the private equity groups.

And it's also complicated for the schools.

So, for instance, FIU, we'll pick on them for a second.

FIU could benefit from such a thing because they don't have a ton of money.

But Florida International is a public institution.

AMAC on YouTube brought to you by Quality Plum and says, Matt, can you discuss the variables in your recent football program valuation listing and how did the Gators fare?

I'm just curious, do they want this to be a sport bigger than just the

two of them? You would like, well, do they want that? Yes, I think they do.

I think if you gave them truth serum, especially Sankey, because he came up the hard way, right? I mean, he came up from the Southland Conference.

I think he truly believes in the enterprise as a whole of college sports.

But if push comes to shove and he has to do what's best for the SEC, that's his job.

The fundamental issue with college sports is nobody is in charge.

Sometimes it is a feature.

They've not rated well.

It's fluid, but overall, does it seem like from the people that you talk to that there is a better chance now that this might happen?

Yes.

Better chance than what I guess is the question.

Um, You know, I was on vacation the last couple days, and while I was gone, it seemed like the whole thing was dead.

So I kind of unplugged for a little bit, and then literally on my drive home from Tennessee yesterday, I get a text from somebody saying, you know, this thing might not be dead.

Like, you know, let's talk some more about what's going on.

There's been a lot of, I don't know if it's scrambling, backroom deals, probably just negotiations and back and forth is probably the best way to describe it.

So kind of break down for our audience how you got to these numbers that we're going to discuss.

don't

know if it's scrambling, backroom deals, but probably just negotiations and back and forth is probably the best way to describe it.

to try and get this thing to the finish line.

Because the SEC and Big Ten, I think generally speaking, and everybody too, I should probably broaden it, they want something.

Like the current system, the number of times I've heard the word unsustainable, I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that, like I could retire.

So nobody likes the current system.

Something needs to change.

So kind of break down for our audience how you got to these numbers that we're going to discuss.

Does the government have a benefit from incentivizing this sort of local reporting so that they are being better stewards of taxpayers' money.

I think that case should probably be made, yes.

I mean, it certainly is the case that based on this analysis alone that there are real benefits to having local reporting to hold government accountable in that they will ultimately save money.

But to be clear, I think there are a bunch of other types of economic impacts that government probably also has an interest in that local news has also have proven to have a positive relationship with, whether that's the mortgage lending rates, loan denials, Financial misconduct cases like these are only three distinct cases that the literature has spoken about in the past couple of years and yet they have real effects on ordinary people and in an ideal world you'd have you know government being able to to kind of track and monitor and also intervene in those cases.

But sometimes that's not possible.

And so I think there's also this idea that local reporting as well serves as a public good in many of these cases.

But the public good is not just a simple, wouldn't it be great and nice to have it? It has a real downstream economic impact on ordinary people when you have that capacity.

And so what are some ways that you think might benefit both voters, that principal and the agent there, the politicians who are doing those jobs on behalf of the citizens?

Enjoy the message.

Well, before we start, I just want to give a quick shout-out to the Kingsway Campus.

I hope you know how much I love all of you.

I will be back with you next Sunday.

I also want to give a shout-out to everyone over at the Twilliger Campus, those of you watching online, and everyone here at our Millwoods Campus.

Thank you so much for being in church today.

My wife, Candice, and I, we have two sons.

never stop pursuing.

How is that for you, Matt, to have these different perspectives?

I think it's good.

So I think you pointed out a nice place where we have a lot of overlap on the characterization and the molecular view and the process.

I think one of the first folders we made in the shared folder for the Formosa matrix was a QC folder, which I think is to show how scientists, it was scary and exciting at the same time.

But we try to build those in so that way we have ways to measure things and we know what's going on along the way.

I think that's where we have a lot of the same language and a lot of appreciation.

We're also very different.

I want to work with it and I would love to hear them and come back to us in a later stage.

But why is that picture wrong? And how does actually your matrix work?

I won't say that that picture is wrong because, in fact, that's what a lot of the hydrogels out there currently do.

The scaffold challenge is fun for bioengineering because at first you really need something that is a bit static so that way you can make it reproducible, you can get cells to grow into it.

But as we advance as a field, you really quickly see that that is not the biological situation whatsoever.

And if you want to go more biomimetic, if you want these cells to do things over time, divide and then differentiate, you need different environments.

And so we really have a challenge in front of us now in the field that we have to make these matrices that can adapt and can change over time to the cells.

And in fact, we started with just a simple version where our matrix is constantly dynamically adapting and we find already major benefits.

And speaking about the challenges, since you're using all kinds of different cells combined with your hydrogel, how does the scaling work? I don't know if you can talk about scale up or should we say rather scale out? What are some technical challenges people face with this kind of cultures?

And so could you.

Yeah.

I mean, just when I was up there, like you could...

You could feel it.

LSU is such a big entity.

I mean, the concrete reason is LSU is one of the top six states or so in producing elite blue chip college players, NFL players.

But there's only one LSU, right? You think about a kid in Tampa.

here? Right.

on their plate and you know not the least of which is it's been kind of the wild west with the nil we've heard talk of expansion is there still some momentum any momentum no momentum for instituting some kind of a salary cap with with these teams and these conferences

Um, it depends on who you ask.

But the question is, is how, right? Is it possible Congress does something that allows for that makes a harder cap? Yes, I think you could.

But I mean, I go back two years, I think, or really a year and a half.

I think a lot of people in college sports did think there was a hard cap.

I'll pick on Florida State here, although I could we could change the names and it would apply to a lot of schools.

I remember listening to Florida State Board of Trustees meetings as the House versus NCAA lawsuit was being settled, and they were finalizing this quote-unquote cap and everything.

And I thought there was a lot of credibility given to this program when he chose USF.

But what how often did you see the score back then? So it

depended on the year.

Sometimes it wasn't allotted in towards the end of the decade.

You would see it all the time.

And there were times where it really jumped out, where, again, it's not just the score, although that's important, but it's the time and everything else.

So I'll give you an example.

I was watching the Florida State-Miami 1991 wide right game where Florida State missed the field goal at the end.

You know, we're talking to Keith Jackson's toward the end of his era, other we mentioned Costas, what what what, what did you take away from that era's broadcasters?

So for people who are not familiar at all with PayRewards, which I'm gonna guess is a lot of people, 'cause you guys are fairly new here in the US, what is PayRewards?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'll be amazed if more than a handful of people in the country are aware of PayRewards.

But it might be best just to ki- I guess really give you a bit of a, a background of where we've come from as a business model and, um, and that will then give you an indication really of, uh, I guess really the go forward from here.

We're, uh, a standalone business, but we're, uh, effectively mirroring the very, very successful brand pay.com.au, which is our sister company, which has been established in Australia since round about 2020.

And that business model was, was based on the fact that there's two kind of key elements that we were trying to solve within the Australian market.

Um, first of all, that there is a high amount of tension, I guess, between the buyer and the supplier in a B2B environment.

So what- how does this work? How does somebody get onboarded onto Pay Rewards to say, "Use my Venture X for Business credit, and I want to pay my construction supplier who doesn't usually take credit cards"?

I mean, I get that everybody's trying to find new revenue sources, particularly with paying the players, but all this that they're doing, is it a fool's errand anyway? I mean, are they doing these projects to get a couple million dollars, and in the end, this is a doomed recipe no matter what they're doing?

So it depends on what we mean by June recipe, right? For the schools, generally speaking, and again, we're speaking in broad strokes here, I think it's a pretty safe investment.

I mean, because most of the liability, most of the risk lies with the builders and the developers who are doing this.

It's not zero risk, right? Like if Kansas opens, Something – and I don't remember the details, but if they have some – a lot of these have restaurants and shops.

So the restaurants and shops are there, and the economy goes downhill, and suddenly that place has happened.

Okay, that was bad at Kansas, right? That's not a good thing.

That's most of the risk.

Right.

Yes.

So there's a couple options.

One is this is going to go through the appeals process.

The NCAA has already appealed.

Um, in this type of case, it's possible that the courts in Texas say, "This is really important.

We're talking about millions of dollars at stake for Sorsby and, and the university and the Big 12 as a whole.

We're gonna fast track this.

Now he has to win the Heisman.