:32 Shot Clock, Midwest Teams, and Women’s Lacrosse

(upbeat music) - All right, what's up everyone? Welcome to our first ever episode of One On One's. I'm Paul Rable, I'm sitting with my older brother Mike and we designed this podcast to answer your questions. Simple as that. We know you have a lot of them by submissions that came in last week, but also through what we see on social media. We know that what we're building is complex and the changes and iterations and innovation that we bring to the table, oftentimes need answers and there's no better way to provide that than long form via audio. So that was the genesis, what would you say? - I'd say we are often heads down. We are often busy trying to build the next gen sports league and we don't get to communicate as much as we like to with the audience. And so we wanted just to create a level of transparency and get a conversation going because there's only so much time we can respond to tweets and LinkedIn messages and wanted to create another form that might be easy to digest on your commute to work or while you're playing wall ball. - Cool, so the way that we're building this is by segments and the first one's just gonna be a catch up. I didn't prep Mike on this, but I want to talk about some current events in LaCrosse. But first want to hear what you did this weekend. What I did this weekend. This weekend, I was traveling all last week when Saul, one of our great partners down at Rebel Bourbon in St. Louis, went and got the pleasure of spending time at Owen Business School at Vanderbilt, got to do a fireside chat with some folks, actually how he knew Charles ahead of C-A Sports down there. So it was on the road all weekend and I just wanted all the week. And so this weekend I just wanted to hang with the family, invest in, invest being around them as much as I could. How about you? Leo is now getting pretty decent at LaCrosse. - Yeah, he needs to learn. I can't teach him. - It's early. It's early because it's a difficult skill to acquire which makes LaCrosse more like golf and hockey and baseball. - Something we talk about a lot, right? Like it's cradling his heart, throwing his heart. - Yeah, and the sticks big too. So we got him these small Pelo minis to play with. But how was your weekend? - It was great. It was great. I spent some time with Mick Davis, who's our VP of growth. We went out to wine country for a little bit of like a hybrid bachelor weekend. It wasn't a proper bachelor party here. He had that. I think he estimated that the pace of that first one was probably gonna be a little bit too fast for all the stuff we have going on. I don't want to do like unwind. And you know, and sometimes those vacations, you, even if it's over a weekend, it's so intentional that you're actually tired. - Yeah. - You put a lot of effort into going offline. And you're like, man, that was a lot of energy going offline. - I mean, who goes to a vacation with their family and they come back feeling full of battery and energized very rarely? Very rarely. That's why the saying is, I need a vacation after my vacation. - Well, that's why we created the company mandatory blackout, right? - Yeah. - Blackout vacation. - Yep. - Right after the season, it's a mandatory week off, dark week, the as the term we use. And everyone goes offline, 'cause you're actually able to invest in the vacation. One of the things that we found is exactly we were talking about. It's like non-stop emails, slacks, a partner reaches out, whatever it takes, and then you can't vacation, even on your vacation. So the season is crazy for us, but it's important for us to create that time and that forced vacation where everyone at the PLL is offline. I found that's one of the most battery recharging weekends. - That's so important. I remember Vince Vaughn saying one week off is essentially two weeks off because you have to catch up on the work that you would have done otherwise in that week off, and then you have to catch up to other people's inflow. So that's why we protect really both of those. Both of those are protected. No one has to come back and play catch up. Did you watch any lacrosse this weekend? - I didn't, I just followed everything on social. - So you didn't see that. - That boy Matt Collison at Johns Hopkins hit back to back over time goals last weekend. - I saw you tweet it. - Last time it was pretty nasty. I didn't, I missed. - Johns Hopkins is back. I think it's exciting. - They've been back, man. - Well, a whole season, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. They never went anywhere. - Yeah. - According to the locker room. - So you went in to begin in the season, you sat down, sat up, met up with Pete, talked to the team. Did you think they were gonna be as good as they are? - Yeah, because well, first of all, talking to the team and their success this season has nothing to do with that meeting. - No, I know that, but did you like would you read of the locker room? - So they were gonna be nasty. - They were really strong last year. They had a great run and were a goal or two away, losing to Notre Dame, the eventual champion and the quarter finals in Annapolis. So they had a great surprising season last year, relative to the year before. And so there was hope among the lums that they were going to have a big year, which they are. And they actually dropped their first game to Denver. It reminds me of my junior year, when we were top three team in the country going in the season, we dropped our first Albany. So my time with them was very much about, you're not going to win the championship in the first week. You never do. But you have to have the commitment that sustains an entire season and credit to them. They've lost some tough games and have rebounded every time and that's the hardest thing to do for a top program like that. 'Cause even if you're John Tockens and hasn't been to a final four since 2015, and hasn't won a championship since 2008, they will always have a target on their back. It's like Notre Dame football. - Yeah. - So walking the game and you're playing John Tockens, you wanna kick their ass. - So what's the conversation like in the locker room after the loss to Albany when you're ranked top three or the loss of Denver, like how did the captains rally? Like what's the conversation like when you have high expectations in the first game of the season, you lose? - It's really, I mean, it was really hard for us. And I don't think we wore loss as well and that's why we would typically have consecutive losses while I was there. Because our expectations, the bar we set for ourselves was so high, my class at least, being a part of a championship team or freshman year. I think these guys, the temperament of their coaches and the temperament of the players, the resilience of the players over their career at Hopkins is different. Seems to me like they're very supportive and that's ultimately what you have to fall back on is like no one's happy when you lose at that level. So what's the value of pouring salt on the wound on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Versus getting more strategic, watch the shit out of film, find motivation in the next week, you have to transition fast and then support each other because people are down. I mean, you know this from playing at Dartmouth when you lose, you're kind of like fuck. - We were down all the time. - Down all the time. - It's a hard thing to do to change. - Yeah. - You have a winning culture, you have a losing culture trying to find your culture. - It's really hard. - In life's about momentum, can you continue to win and can you stop losing? That's like the winning-ness cultures are able to keep the momentum and the fire going in the pressure that another team feels when they step on the floor with them. - How much do you think, like if you were to say, like there's a recipe between the captains, the coaches and the rest of the team, if you were to say like, is it 33%, 33%, 33% of being like what makes a great like turn around locker room and build in a winning culture? - I think the coaches and the culture that they start, the mission that the team's oriented against and the pace of practice, the preparation for games starts at starts in first. And then the captains and the leaders on the team's job is to impart that style onto the rest of the team. And so what I would say is what at least I would offer to coaches out there listening. And this comes from Coach K and Greg Popovich, but they have a 1080-10 rule where they go, no matter what level you're on, you're at, no matter what discipline, you have your top 10%, your middle 80% and your bottom 10%. Even in the NBA and the NFL, you have guys who are fucking off. And he was like, and what you get on both ends of that spectrum is the best players in the captains, they wanna pull the 80% to be like them. They desperately want everyone to show up early to. And the bottom 10% out of that weird sort of conniving guilt that you have, you feel better with numbers going out on Thursday night before a Saturday game and things like that. So he was like, it would behoove coaches who by and large spend either most of their time focused on the top 10% 'cause it's easier or penalizing the team on the mistakes of the bottom percent. But he was like, it's more important that you focus on the 80 and try to shift them like the top 10. That's what winning coaches do. You're like winning over the bulk of the team. - Yeah, yeah. I love that. Anyway, one more to line on the cross or maybe a couple more that wanna bring up. So Brett who's recording this was in Austin, Texas. UT, I wanna give a shout out to former PLO player and former teammate of mine, Kyle Hartz, always the head coach there at that MCLA program. And now assistant coach of the can. - Now assistant coach of the canons. They completed their first program undefeated regular season, which is incredible. And they beat their rival, Texas A&M, on Friday night. In front of a packed house, thousands of people there. Hook 'em. Hook 'em. Kyle sent me photos and it was just unbelievable. I mean, people stacked on each other over the top of the hills and the stands. I'm long on MCLA. Yeah. Super long and both of us are. Yeah. And when you get someone like Kyle Hartzell, one of the best lacrosse players ever play, natural leader, investing in a program. You have great boosters there who are investing in that, the players who are investing in that program. That's what's going to take that serious level of commitment in one of those programs. You see it at University of Florida. Yeah. And you'll get it at the head coach over there. Some of these programs have a serious commitment from real individuals both on the donation side. Obviously, the players that have been at it for a long time. And then the coaches are coming to this space. And that's what's going to take for it to start moving in a new direction, getting more eyeballs on it. Yeah. And I love the university brands that are part of the MCLA. They are universally understood of sports fans around the world when you see Texas and Texas A&M, when you see LSU in Florida. And when you see USC playing Oregon, it's just so tight. And I think it's one of the reasons why Notre Dame was so dramatically impactful on College of Cross last year, winning a national championship. Notre Dame is really synonymous with the biggest sport in America, which is football. And so people start connecting the dots there. Okay. Something else I saw, Coach Belichack was on the sideline with Kelly Monti-Hiller at Northwestern to see that. Two goats. Two goats. How many rings between both of them? Is it like 14 rings or something? When I saw the photos from that and the two of them spending time together, the having access to being a fly on a wall to that conversation, I think, would be incredibly valuable, right? To be able to listen to the things that they're applying to their programs, to winning championships, winning one championship is hard. It's winning the next one that's even harder. And the next one I felt, how do you continue to keep the bar high? How do you motivate yourself? I think about it as like, she's already won a national championship. He's already won a Super Bowl. It's like, how do you keep your team inspired? How do you inspire yourself? You've already reached the top. And to me, those are the types of things that I would walk away with that conversation, really trying to understand. I know that in the past, when you spent time with Bill and Dave Petramalla, a lot of that stuff is they're sharing. It's like motivational tactics, right? To keep the team inspired. Yep. Yep. Coach Belichack's all-time legend. So is Coach Kelly Monti-Hiller. And I think that scene Belichack on the side on a lacrosse side line was pretty cool. Again, I should say, given his transition right now and I'm excited to see what's next for him. I know he is doing a bit of a tour between college football programs and lacrosse programs. I wouldn't be surprised if any of us saw him on an upcoming side line, or it's at Navy or North Carolina with where Petram is now, especially the season heats up. I know he's close to John Tillman at Maryland, but more Belichack spottings forth coming. What I'll say about Coach Belichack as we transition into your questions is he is so curious. He is the most curious and I would say is his greatest characteristic as a coach and as a human being. And his time spent on the side line with these other lacrosse coaches and football coaches is to learn and absorb as much as possible. He'll impart some wisdom, but he's there to learn. That's pretty great. And I think what Mike and I will be doing as we hear your questions come through and answer them is hopefully it's a dual practice. Without further ado, let's jump in the first question, Brett. Hey, Paul. James Wells. Obviously you're trying to PLL. I actually have a podcast myself about your league. So thank you for my question is, was the lowering of the 52 second shot clock down to 32 an analytical decision based upon the data that you guys had or it was the MBA, an influence at all to lowering of the shot clock. I know they did that as well after shot. So just wondering if it was based on MBA influence or an analytical decision or how you guys can take that number. Thanks for everything you do. Bye. Awesome, James. Thank you for that first question. We knew we were going to jump right in. Hard hitter. Yeah. So I would say that the short answer, short version, which I'll come all the way back to is that it was both every decision that we make here at the PLL is highly analytical. It's backed by data and just like any other sport that has reached a level of relevance like the NBA, there's instinct. And it's a combination of both. But what we've done at the PLL from building the bones in 2018 to where we are now is we like to say we take the best attributes of the most relevant and mainstream and successful leagues in the world. Toring is much like an individual sport. We took a lot of flack for Toring in our first year. Not having teams tied to cities. It's non-traditional. The rules that we created in the first year, even non-traditional to the sport. But we believe at a baseline level our goal is to improve the quality of product on field, to play and get the game in front of as many eyeballs as possible and entertain our fans. So diving into the NBA, quick history there. Up until 1954 they did not have a shot clock. They went from zero shot clock to 24 seconds. And you're right, the analytics that did put behind it, they took a statistician and a few of the owners and they got together and said, "Okay, what's some of our best games?" And some of the best games had roughly 120 shots. And so they said, "Okay, that means good pace, good movement." So then what they did is they took their 48-minute game and divided it by those 120 shots. That got them to a 24-second shot clock. Not that scientific. But they did believe that if we can encourage 120 shots between two teams in a 48-minute game, then we can do that via a shot clock. And so that's good like history to learn. The other part of that is for the next five years, team coaches, GMs and players were livid. They wanted the rule changed. They thought, "How could they even get into an offensive set? They can hardly get the ball across the center in time." And the goal was similar to what we actually see in modern day NCAA, which was in the NBA's "Let's let this run for five years and pull as much information as we can and decide if it's right or if it needs to be adjusted." The NCAA has a two-year men on any new rule. Because the thing about sport and the essence of sport is that you're looking at the best players in the world at what they do, matched with the best coaches in the world at what they do, and they figured out. And they were in a phenomenal job. So here's the part around the PLL. In 2019, we shortened the field by 10 yards. 10 yards out of middle field. That's important related to shot clock. Our shot clock went from what MOL was 60 seconds to 52. We took the 2.0 arc from 16 to 15 yards. And that all faced a lot of headwind from coaches to players. Cut to 2022. A lot of our players and our coaches are sort of the faces and advocates of the current version of the PLL in way of gameplay. And they've adjusted and it's created a phenomenal game. And like the owners of the NBA did with the statisticians, in 2013, college coaches all met around the pace of college lacrosse. They cited it was too slow. It was based on who was winning the face-offs and who could hold on to the ball. You get into a little of that what they had in basketball, which is four corners. Where if you had the ball, you just hold on to it. The other team doesn't get it. They can't score and they can't win. So they actually looked at substitution methodology. So they eliminated the horn on the sideline. We can still sub on the fly. Since 2013, as many of you guys know, the face-off itself has been tinkered with almost annually. So when we were all meeting two years ago around the development of pace of play related to our 32 second shot clock after a face-off win, the number one rule we set amongst ourselves was don't mess with the face-off specifically. We had looked at no clamps. We had looked at all these other things. Actually, face-off players suggested that we don't want to fuck with what you do. That was really important to get right. All right. Now, here's the deal with why this 32. So I love the face-off. I think it's an exciting and unique element to LaCrosse. And it will always be here in the 10 on 10 game for as long as Mike and I are around. Feel the same way about Longpulls. It's unique. However, LaCrosse is the only sport in North America that is played with the possibility of unequal possessions. Possessions is the fundamental rulemaking process for any sport. We even get it in the backyard. We rebuttal. We win by two. Someone gets the ball. The next team gets the ball. Someone gets the one next team the ball. Every mainstream sport except LaCrosse. Possession is decided by an individual. So I say that because when people barter online about Tom Schreiber scoring six goals or plays Reardon saving 25 balls or no one beating Jack Rallette. Well, why don't you give Jack Rowlett a short stick and blaze rear dinner field stick and Tom Shriver along pole make it more difficult on them. Those guys are not determining possession. The other side of it face off players. They can play offense and they can play defense Trevor Baptiste had two Patrick's last year. We want to encourage that style of play. So actually the idea with the 32 was to tax what the face off group had been morphed into over the last 20 years where you have exceptional draw guys stepping up like Greg Remlian like Trevor Baptiste that can win 85% of possessions. Then you have specialized wing play where you have ground ball specialists long poles. So what you have is this amazing aspect of the game that has taken on its own shape where you have wholesale substitutions after a draw and it slows the game down and it fractures the continuity of offense to defense transition fast to sport on two feet. So what we did is we actually put a tax on substitutions. So if you win a draw and you have your own guys on the field or you have your two way guys on the field, you have plenty of time to get to the hoop. So I think that we wanted to create an environment that coaches and players were just in to create more continuity of the game versus having to mess with the face off rules again. So that's a big piece for number two. Number three is if I look at the data from year one, offensive efficiency is what our stats team pulls, which is when you have your offense on the field with the ball, how often are you converting to goals? And the 52 second shot clock our scoring efficiency is in the range depending on the team of 25 to 35%. On a 32, it's 20 to 28%. So there's a really small delta, which indicates success of this adjustment to the rule. And frankly, puts coaches in positions that are pretty similar. Would you rather defend against a 20 to 28% goal efficiency team first? Or would you rather take 20 to 28% likelihood of scoring first? That's a decision that a lot of coaches made. And we saw last year that if a team doesn't have a great face off player, they were putting on a defensive unit to try to win the ball back first. Remind me a little bit of the Boston can's remind me a little bit of the Baltimore Ravens in 2000 where their defense at times would outscore their offense. They just had a really good defense and great transition and credit to them. And I think that's exciting. I think that's good strategy. We adjusted the rule this year to say no long poles at the stripe to do a couple of things. One, protect the draw guys because if you're a long pole and you just stand up and you get to tee off on someone, that feels too consequential. There have been long poles that can clamp in when draws C.J. Costa be all over time. And we had to look at that. And frankly, that's why we allowed it in the first year. But we think this is smoothing it out. And it's not a groundbreaking rule either because goalies are the only ones for example with bigger heads face off guys. We think should be taken the draw with a short stick. For me, we have no issue with specialization. Right? None. I think specialization exists in all sports. I think the what we wanted to really try to strip is if specialization is hurting possession. There's no other sport where specialization can, can massively decrease your ability to have possession. Possessions are always equal until the clock rings. Right? And so for us, what we really wanted, what we are, what our job is to grow the sport, grow the league, grow attention, more attention, the more eyeballs, the more revenue for the league, the more players get paid, the better investment to fan experience, broadcast, etc. That all flows through. And so for us, you know, when you have possessions that could be affected or gamified, the quality of product in the field suffers and then fewer people watch. And so for us, we were basically mandated the team to go out and use data to come up with a policy and a rule that still allowed for specialization, but didn't overcorrect. We're seeing this overcorrection of possession and allowed for it to be a bit more equal. Yeah, I mean, that's totally right. You know, in soccer, they say a team will have won against the run of play, which means the other team is better throughout the game. And then they snuck a goal in the end. They stole the match. In the cross, if you're winning eight out of 10 draws on a 52 second clock with 12 minute quarters, that's pretty dramatic. It means you're getting close to close to eight minutes of of quarter. And you really can put a stranglehold on the other team's ability and the other team may actually be better that day. They just don't have the ball. So what we saw last year was that a shortened clock on a draw win, even if a guy wins eight out of 10. That means they're more likely to win and score goals because of that 20 to 28% efficiency. But the other team, if they get a short and stop, gets more ball. And I think that's important. And the last thing I'll share is that traditionalists who come out and discuss the changes that we're making, whether shot clock or we have to remind ourselves that traditionalists are the creators of the game. The game was built with no boundaries, no timing, sometimes hundreds of players on each side, playing to often three, first to three wins. The secular version of the game that was first created by George Beers and Montreal, that was 12 on 12. We have box across it's five on five. We have sixes across. We have 10 on 10. Women's is 12 on 12. One way to think about it is that wow, it's confusing and really fractured. The other way to think about it is this game is really flexible. And anyone can play a different version as different skill sets to fit. It's based on it's up to us and a lot of the marketers from the governing bodies to other leagues to be able to story tell better. But this sport has always evolved from the very beginning. It's rules. Shall we get to the next one? This is Hayden. My question is, how come you guys been considered putting a lacrosse team in Chicago? I know it may be cold, but the summertime and the spring time are the absolute best around or anywhere in the Midwest, but mainly Chicago. These guys love the show. Keep it up. Hayden, if you don't mind, this is Mike. I'll take this one first because I love summertime. Chi, I love Chicago. I'm actually headed out there tomorrow to sit down one of one of our new partners in the world pool. We did heavily consider Chicago. I think even moving back a second, I think it's good that there's demand for more teams and more cities. I don't think as long as Paul and I in here we're not going to stop at just eight teams. We want to do it in a very thoughtful way in a way that makes sense prudently for the business, for fan consumption. So I think that if you take a step back, the fact that there's demand to be in other markets besides where we are right now is a good macro place to be. Chicago is a burgeoning, if not very robust lacrosse market. There used to be an ML team there, the Chicago machine. And when we look at our database, there's a lot of our fans that are based in Chicago. We actually did an opening season in 2019. We had a game out in Chicago at the MLS stadium there. You know, I'd say that what we try to do to Paul's point is make really strong data driven decisions that also have a qualitative aspect to it. I mean, if you if you're purely qualitative, you're just never going to get at 100% confidence. So there has to be a qualitative nature to it. I think when we look at selecting, when we looked at selecting a home market, there was a lot of different factors. It was fan votes, first and foremost. It was lacrosse history there. It was performance of those markets did fans show up. Are they continuing to show up? It was viewership from those markets. It was venue availability in those markets. I mean, one of the things would be super candid with you guys because this is what this shows all about is pretty hard to find a good venue in Chicago, right? I mean, you might be like, well, there's, you know, that MLS stadium is pretty far outside of the stadium. I mean, I think the MLS stadium has it. We went there. We struggled. Yeah. And you could be like, well, you know, it was raining and it was our first season and like, yeah, sure, but like, it's pretty far. And that's been a big complaint in an issue, even with their own fans for those MLS games there. And then you look at other other venue availability. We've had our partners, even at Gatorade try to make inroads with some of the places they're at in full transparency in Western Western. And, you know, we have struggled to find good, reliable venues. And so we love Chicago. I know it pops in the spring in the summer. I think it's a perfect place for us eventually. We love the Midwest. It's a place we planned to be eventually, but there was a lot of different factors that went into that and the stadium piece really plays a big part of it. But you never know, right? Like over time, we get more interest there. We start to build relationships with great sports owners in those markets. They're the ones who really can pull locally and start to help us think through that. So we're still really, really excited about the Midwest and Chicago. Totally. I'll add, we will be in the Midwest. We're touring there now, but we want to have a team in the Midwest. We want to have a team in the southeast. We want to have a team in the Pacific Northwest. And we love the state of Texas. We had eight teams. We had to make a really hard decision. Yeah. But the fan input piece was also really valuable. So all of you all that went in and voted on P.O. Vote.com, the plus 50,000 in the first 24 hours of rolling it out. Thank you. And we love to hear that question because it gives us more energy around growing this thing so that we can expand. Hi, Paul. Like this is iron. I was just wondering what the P.O. Vote plans are into incorporating women across even more into the league. I think with the recent rise of eyes on female sports, it would be exciting to be female across tires, but like it even more. Just wondering your thoughts. Thanks. Thank you, Lauren, for the question. It's timely with what we were all watching in college basketball, this final four, how the women's games were outrating the men's games and what Caitlyn Clark has done to that sport and to women's sports at large. It reminds me of what Tiger Woods did to golf in a lot of ways where viewership to go from the number that it was to what it got to requires a once in a generation star. She's got an amazing skill set and presence. We saw her on Saturday live this last weekend. And we have women in the cross that I believe are versions of Caitlyn Clark. We have Charlotte North. We used to have Taylor Cummings, Dana Dobie, Izzy Skane. So this is a part of the game that we have always paid a lot of attention to. And in year one, we partnered with the WPLL when they were around. Following that, we also began working with athletes unlimited. We always had girls lacrosse training through now PLL play and that's ramped up even more over the last few years. And we launched unleashed, which is our women's media platform that really is aimed at mirroring TLN success. Beginning in 2019, we did our first international tour to Japan. We brought a women's team. And we had a women's all star game alongside our men's all star game. We did the same thing last year for our inaugural street lacrosse event. We brought pro women's lacrosse players to play. We want to create more and more opportunity for the women of lacrosse. All culminating with this past seasons championship series in February, where we hosted and put on our first women's exhibition, the Unleashed All Star game, which was live on ESPN plus, which was heavily promoted, marketed, underwritten by our partners at ticket master. And our players there were there put on a show. So when you have the stars that I had mentioned before, when you have the building blocks that we have at the PLL, I would say that it's safe to assume that we are going to contain a look for great opportunities to enhance the women's professional game. Nothing more to add. I think we're excited about it. Like you said, we have been active at it. We've started a resource at the company level. We brought in a GM of Unleashed. We have brought on new social media coordinator of Unleashed. We continue to staff up that media platform. And we have weekly conversations with a lot of the best female players in the world about how do we continue to do this. We always look for great opportunities. We always look for partnership first. We had a partnership with WPL. We made the introduction to WPLL to athletes unlimited. That's how they got that deal done in that merger. We made the introduction for them because we had that existing partnership. We just had the time really focused on trying to get the PLL up and running in 2020, but everything was going on. And so for us, we always want to be doing things in partnership with folks. But this is something that will continue to put resources in at the company level. And want to continue to invest on the on field product and sort of we'll see what we continue to unveil here. Hey, how's it going? My name is John. My question I remember from back in the day Paul had a podcast used to ask people what was on their phone screen on their phones. Just curious what is on Paul and my phone screen and if that changed throughout the years, especially with the development and growth of PLL. Thank you both so much and take care. Hey, John, thanks for that question. It brought me back to when I launched "Soothing Up" and actually a lot of the genesis of this is Mike and I have gone back and forth on audio and that show previously, which Mike was one of my guests at the time. I had forgotten personally that I would thread that question in in the early seasons of "Soothing Up" find it intellectually engaging and also just collaboratively the way that people creatively sort apps. So I might take the first one because I honestly don't know the apps that would be on his home screen. Is it home screen or is it wallpaper? It's home screen. Man, I really wanted to hit wallpaper. What's your wallpaper? Wallpaper is just easier and more nostalgic but I'll do maybe both. My home screen is a disaster. It's like every app but my home screen is our PLL app, ESPN+ Slack Wall Street Journal email text. Social media accounts all in the one bundle into social. But I separate probably the most important ones out first so I can just reach those the fastest. And then on the personal front on the wallpaper, maybe we should ask that question if we ever have guests. What's in your wallpaper? Super deep. And it's like the most important thing is super personal. People might not want to share it. But my wallpaper, it used to be like I think when we first started the PLL it was like a PLL logo or like a picture of like you know homewood or Albany and we sold those venues out. And then like you know life we put life changes and you put so much we put so much into what we do here. Everyone does like every single person in this company and it's put so much into what we're doing. But then you also have to remind yourself of what your personal nor star is. And my personal nor star is is my family. And you know once you have a family if you're lucky enough to have one build your own that just like how we're wired as human beings it innately becomes the most important things that's mine it's my son my wife or mine Christmas we love the holidays but it's all of us doing a selfie. Yeah, is that too much for you to do wallpaper right now? No, no, I like that. My wallpaper is my girlfriend. You're unprepared for that. You're meeting her I was unprepared and yeah for the question I was as well. Same for the same reason you shared. Yes, PM plus is also on my home screen and I want to give a shout out to Dan Marguerles and Burke Magnus for different reasons but same vein. Dan Marguerles we were on a group text with on Friday and he sent us a photo of his P.O. L. pajamas that he was in which I thought was cool. How does that tie into this? Well, Burke Magnus his partner and president of content over at ESPN keeps a redwood sticker on the back of his phone. So appreciate both those guys and everyone over at ESPN keeping us close calendar maps. I have a music and podcast folder like you do social that has like Spotify audible Apple pods Amazon music. Then I have a social folder as well. I want to have some friction so I'm not just habitually clicking on Instagram and Twitter I used to be that and always makes me feel hungover. And then it's really utilitarian Uber. Equinox open meditation fly Delta P.O. L. App my nest slack in a notepad. So basically your entire life is automated into your home screen. It's my home. So yeah, I can't tell you man. I actually scrolled my right. What I should have done is manipulate this and throw top shelf on my home screen. It used to be. We have an updated while but that was a killer app that had still playing close to 100,000 people playing. And something we want to look at in the future as a company maybe we'll answer that question if it comes in in future weeks. So with that first episode down. I want to close with one thing I'll pass you to close it is street lacrosse was announced this week. I mentioned street lacrosse tying to the women's lacrosse question. Just give everyone a scoop on what they can expect and why you love it. I love street lacrosse because to me it's lowering the barrier to entry of the sport highlighting the nonprofits that we work for with it's an invitational that compete against each other. It's how we grew up playing basketball. We grew up in Montgomery Village and played basketball and on our backyard but then also in court. and neighborhoods and it was always just sort of super accepting. You jump on the court and you get a game, right? And the more games you play, the more you get into the sport. And so we wanted to create our own version of that, which is just super easy to play, super simple to understand. And it's an invitational for our 501C3 partners to go out there and bring their best. And so for me, it's something that we're excited to do more of. And then we also want to do something we're continuing to invest in those markets and bring LaCrosse and an evergreen format to them. So leaving equipment and equipment donations and investing in the community with LaCrosse equipment. So it's something more to come on that front as well. I love it. It's the infusion of culture and sport. We have a DJ there, an MC, a graffiti artist, a dance team, men's and women's players, girls and boys. It is in heart of New York City. It is the coolest thing that I've been a part of related to the sport. It's not what the sport is projected by many in the public to feel or look like. And more street LaCrosse are to come in different cities. In different cities. This one, Lowery Side KDs Courts May 11th at 2 o'clock. It's a Saturday at 2 o'clock. It is going to be fucking incredible. Closed off though, it's invitation only, right? So we're not trying to. That's true, but last year people were hanging outside the fences. Yeah, that's true. And it was very like Rucker Park vibe. Yeah, that was super cool. Yeah, for sure. I'm excited about it. And then, you know, we said today the season's 47 days away. 47 days away. So I hope everyone enjoyed this. You know, I know I enjoyed it. We could keep going if we want. And there's more questions. We got to get back to work. We'll continue to do this. We'll continue to answer questions. You know, this is a way for us to connect to the audience, to be transparent. For us, it's time to find a break, to have many therapy sessions with each other. And just appreciate everyone listening. And if you want to leave a voice note for us with a question in the future, you can call 512-910-2218. That's 512-910-2218. And we'll get you in the queue. Thanks again for joining our 101. (upbeat music)