The Sports Career Playbook #1.5 - Who is Professor Bob Heere?

Hello and welcome along to the sports career playbook. This is a podcast here to help current students and applicants break into the sporting world. A big hello from myself Elliot Stockdell and alongside me, as per usual, we have Professor Bob here, the director of sport management at the University of North Texas. Now, we've recorded a couple of episodes already, but today, Bob, is when our listeners are going to have the opportunity to find out a little bit more about yourself. Yes. And part of me hates talking about myself. Part of me doesn't mind, you know, a little bit of narcissism is good for everyone's self ego. But, you know, we were doing these episodes and we were like, wait, why would people want to listen to this? Yeah, who is this person? Why am I listening to him? So we figured we would talk a little bit about the career I had and the experience I've had, hopefully to inform people, you know, where some of these thoughts and opinions come from. Absolutely. Now, feel free, if you're not interested in this, and you just want to focus on the real meat of what this podcast is here for, feel free to skip ahead. But if you do want to stick around and find out a little bit more about Bob, then please, please stick with us, because I feel like this is going to be a really interesting conversation for everyone listening, but also me personally, because I do know a little bit about yourself, but I certainly don't really know a lot about your journey, especially sort of where it started off, because there's several sort of strands, you know, I know you were obviously in the Netherlands for a bit, and you come over to United States, you've worked in lots of different jobs. So I suppose where did this journey actually start? I mean, first of all, I was not in the Netherlands for a bit. Well, yes, I'm a proud Dutch person who grew up in the Netherlands, outside Amsterdam, about 30 miles north of Amsterdam, moved to Amsterdam. Of all the moves I made in life, the most scary one was going from the small town I grew up to the big city of Amsterdam. And I went there to study at the University of Amsterdam. In between of the one year, the University of Leiden, I'm not counting that University of Amsterdam was really kind of like where I spent most of my years as a student. So yeah, it started in the Netherlands, and at some point that you're in the United States, but I'm sure you're going to ask me how about that? Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned there that you don't really count Leiden as where it began. It was more Amsterdam, where you sort of spent the majority of those years that you're building up. And maybe this is good to talk about a little bit, right? So I'm a first generation student. And I'm guessing that a lot of our listeners are first generation students, right? Who really don't know a lot about universities, about education. The parents might have taken jobs early on in life. My dad, indeed, finished high school. He went to the police academy at some point as a construction worker. My mom finished high school and that was it. My brother went into the Navy when he was 17. So I was the first one to go on that route. And I really didn't know what I was getting into. And to make matters worse, I was an athlete. My wife here says she starts to laugh. And my wife knows me as a professor. She met me later on in life when I tell her, "Oh, I used to be an athlete." She always starts to laugh. It doesn't believe me. But let's say this way, I was in an athlete mindset. I played soccer at a reasonable, high level, competitive. I took it very serious. And so I went to the University of Leiden my first year, but I stayed at home with my parents playing soccer, doing my things that I used to do, and really didn't emerge myself in university life. And part of that was because University of Leiden is a very conservative, traditional university in the Netherlands. It's one of the oldest. It's where our royal family attends. The king of the Netherlands went to Leiden University. And it's very preppy. It's very much fraternity, sororities. That's the life. And man, dude, I hate those guys. I would be not getting there, right? This was upper-class people, middle-upper-class. They talk differently than me. They tell you different things. In the Netherlands, if you're in that class, you're British, so you recognize it. You play field hockey. You don't play soccer. Soccer is a blue-collar sport. And I was a soccer guy. I just didn't fit there. And in Leiden, that's the only thing. That's the life there. So I never moved there. Never had any intention. But I had a buddy who went to the University of Amsterdam, so I visited him weekly. And this is the Netherlands. Everything is close to each other. So I would actually spend more time in Amsterdam. And in Amsterdam, yeah, University of Leiden was still very preppy, but it's Amsterdam. There's so much other stuff you can do. And I love that city. So I was actually able to transfer from the University of Leiden to the University of Amsterdam. And I spent five and a half years at the University of Amsterdam. Now, on my resume, you'll see I have a degree from the University of Leiden, because back then, the system was different. There was no bachelor master system. It was a properducer, which you get after one year of completing all the classes. And then you went straight into your master's degree, which is a four year degree. And so I don't have a bachelor's degree, which I'm probably the only professor in the world who doesn't have a bachelor's degree. I just have a master's degree. So on my resume, I said, first Leiden, then Amsterdam. But really, I was in Amsterdam for five and a half years studying international affairs, political science, nothing through with sports. It didn't exist back then. And honestly, if you told me like, Bob, you can have a job working in sports. I wouldn't have believed you. That's like, no, that's something other people do, right? I mean, that's not what I grew up up, you know, the kind of jobs that I think we're around. So I started political science. I'm like serious and thinking I would be a diplomat or something or going to politics. And later on doing my university years, I came to realize, you know, I love sports, I want to kind of like translate some of my classroom to sports. And I got to write the thesis back then, everybody had to write a thesis. I wrote a thesis about the development of amateur soccer, which all soccer used to be in the Netherlands until like, well into the 50s, into their development evolution into what they are today, international companies. And so I wrote my thesis on that subject. My professor loved working with me. It actually came pretty easy to me. I wrote my thesis in two and a half months. Now for most people, this is kind of like one of those. This takes a year plus. And so he invited me saying, Hey, what about doing a PhD? Again, I'm a first generation student, right? I didn't even know what that was. And like a professor, that that was like, you know, I would be sitting in the back of the class most of the time. When I was a student, I was completely intimidated by my professors. Those were people like from a different world than I was. And but yeah, so when when my the guy who guided my thesis explained to me, I started thinking about that. And for the first time, considering that. And partly probably because of that minority complex that I had. And yeah, to some extent, you'll have that's why I like to talk about myself with composites for that, right? That's that's kind of like where that comes from. That's when I started to look into the United States. I had a buddy who was a tennis player at Florida State University. And I visited him. And I figured, well, if I get an internship kind of like in sports, in the United States, I still didn't know what that meant, right? Like departments, I didn't understand what those were, all that. Yeah, I really didn't know. But it's like, well, you know, if I can get something there, that would make my application to the University of Amsterdam Sociology PhD program more competitive. And that's when I came to visit them. And during that week that I visited them, and I met with a lot of people in the athletic department, I got my first win of what that is and how that works. But they also introduced me to the chair of the sport management program, which again, didn't exist an allowance. And he started talking to me and he asked me, well, why don't you come do your PhD here? And I was like, okay, I can't afford to do my PhD, I need to make a living. And that's when he explained to me, he's like, well, you know, as a PhD program, you're going to be funded, you're going to get a small salary, you don't pay for the education. So it's not entirely true, but I bought into it and managed to get by. And so he kind of invited me to apply for that program, which I did. Got lucky that one of my professors, Aubrey Kent, had his ancestry in the Netherlands. His grandpa was a radio commentator for the team that I researched for my thesis. So we had an instant connection. And then I spent three months translating my Dutch written thesis into English to send to him to get admitted. Where was Google scholar then? It could have saved me so much time. I translated 80 pages into 50 page English thesis. But that's the gamble that that paid off for me. And so that's how I ended up in Florida State and kind of like put me on the track to become a professor. So once you then obviously transitioned into becoming a professor, something that you never envisioned doing, how did you then transition into sports management? Because that's far away from what you originally started out with with this international affairs. Yeah, I think it's the same for what we talked about in our first episodes, and we're going to talk about more, right? It's the love of sport. I was a soccer player. I was good enough to know I wasn't good enough. But I would, you know, once I realized there were actually people working in sports, which of course did because who was organizing this, right? I was like, Yeah, that's cool. But at that point, yeah, I was doing my PhD. So you're also on a different track, right? Because I was not doing my PhD to become a CEO or working marketing or sponsored. I knew I was then going to be a teacher, which throughout my first year kind of started to realize I actually enjoy that. I enjoy doing research, I enjoy doing teaching. This might actually work for me. But when I got to there, and you know, I had no clue what that was about. I didn't do research outside my class. I did my class work thinking that's enough. I didn't realize that, you know, the same way that we talk about doing internships and getting work experience doing an MBA. And the same thing is when you do a PhD, you need to be researching and you need to put out articles that maybe not be connected to class. I didn't know any of that. But I really worked hard to assimilate myself in American society and American sports. Okay. So talk to me a little bit more about how it will work then with this PhD and how that sort of developed because you were on about earlier as a first generation student yourself, you had no idea what that meant. I've got no idea what this means in terms of if someone offered me the chance to do a PhD, I'd have no idea what it would do for for my career. And so that's that's that's the challenge I faced. But then the added challenge of being in a different culture, being in a very unique sports culture, right? So when I got here, I knew about probably the same about American sports, maybe even less than you did. And so the first year, I spent so much time reading so many books, nothing academic, right, but just books about, you know, nonfiction books about American sports. I wanted to know the history. I wanted to understand the things that matter to Americans, right? I wanted to, I wanted to understand that the University of Notre Dame, you know, the fighting Irish was a very important cause football team, I would a lot of history and they won one for the keeper, right? I wanted to learn about Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan, the big house, the rivalries. I was at Florida State University Seminoles, right, the rivalry with the University of Florida. So I'll call it sports. So the ACC basketball, your, you know, Duke with Coach K and North Carolina with Dean Smith. I was reading all these books about these leagues and these tournaments and these sports, professional collegiate. So I could communicate with the people around me and really ingrain that because I also used to teach this. Yeah. And I can talk about Dutch soccer or British soccer for that matter. But back then that would only excite one or two students in every class. That's it. And the rest was like, really, you can talk about soccer. Who gives you that? Yeah, you know, so I spent a lot of time on that. And I just, I just did a lot of things, right? I created a student organization for my program, played soccer again, right? Because that's what I did. So I played soccer. I was out of shape, 28 year old against 18 year olds. Florida State doesn't have a varsity team, right? It doesn't have a collegiate team because of Title IX. So they have a club team where you get pretty decent players. So I played on that team and told my ACL, which was truly the end of my career. And then as you get assimilated, you get to know people, you start talking to people, you also start to understand the academic world. And I also started to understand during my second year kind of like, Oh, wait, I need to do research. I need to write articles and to get them out there. I need to go to conferences to percent and things like that. It took a while before it connected with me. Okay. So what were your, I suppose, next steps after that, then once you'd collected this PhD, you know, you are now, I think I'm right in saying PhD professor. So you are now professor Bob here. Yeah. Oh man, I couldn't stop talking about that. I was 28 and I was a doctor. I was the first doctor in my family, the only one I thought that was so cool. So yeah, I know I was completely caught up in myself. And you know, couldn't wait, whenever I met somebody, I couldn't wait to drop that nugget in there. It's like, that's, it's Dr. Bob here. I got a PhD. So embarrassing when you think back, but you know, it was a big deal for me and the world I came from. But because I was very late to the game, there was not a American research university I would want to hire. I was not competitive. I didn't have any output. There was no evidence that I could do the work. So the only job offers I got in the United States back then, and this is 2005, were small teaching schools where they vary you in teaching and service. And I knew I didn't want to do that because once you get into that, you want to get out. That takes all your time. And so there was, I applied to some international problems too, because, you know, I was single, I was not necessarily married to the United States. I love my time there. But I'll go anywhere where there's a good job. And I actually applied for a job in New Zealand, Auckland University technology. I was like, Hi, let's see what that is. And so I actually got a phone interview with them. And they actually offered me a job that would allow me to do research. And I could do teaching and research. And now, at that point, I think the closest that I've ever been to New Zealand, geographically, and this is ironic, because I was in Florida State back then, the closest I'd been to was Dallas, because that was as far west I had gone in the United States. And I went back to Dallas, I went to Dallas one time for Thanksgiving with a buddy of mine to watch the Dallas Cowboys game, the Thanksgiving game, which was super cool. But it was the farthest west I'd been in the United States. And thus by definition, it was also the closest I've ever been to New Zealand, because I've never, I was never ever been to Asia or, or Australia. I mean, I don't know what the flight time is from, from the USA, but from back from back in Europe for both of us, it's like 20 hours. It's two connecting 12 hour flights with overlay. And I've done it. It's, it's the longest flights in the world. It's kind of like when you want to stop because it's literally the opposite of the world. Yeah, from Dallas, it's about 17 hours to Melbourne. You can't fly directly from here to Auckland, but it would probably be like a 16 hour flight or something like that. It's, it's far, it's far, it's far from every way. But now this is also the years following the Lord of the Rings movies, which I'd seen. And you know, I completely geeked out. I'm nerdy enough to appreciate it. I read Lord of the Rings, of course. I love those movies. And it's like, well, it looks pretty. I saw some pictures of Auckland, you know, the internet, we could actually find images back then, right? That that's how far we go. I mean, just, just about 2006 pictures, right? Not videos, pictures. And yeah, the good vibe from the call. So I just took, I took the job based on the phone call. I'd never been close to there. It's like, I'll take the job. So I went to New Zealand to start my academic career and still very grateful for the opportunity they gave me. Okay. I remember you speaking briefly a little bit about, I believe in our first episode about Auckland and about your time there because of the view that you had. I think I'm right in saying, Oh man, it was so gorgeous there. And I thought I would stay there for about three, four years. You do feel isolated because it's far away from everything, including Australia because we think of it like Australia, New Zealand, but still four hour flight from one to the other. It's far away. But I loved it there. I wasn't planning to leave that quickly, but I was there about six, seven months, and then I got a call from the Christ family. Okay. And now, now for those listening, because, okay, this is majority and American audience, I feel like we're going to have to explain who that is before we go into actually speaking about what you did for them. John Crye was voted European player of the century, the 20th century worldwide. He was prior to Messi, probably top three player of all time. Yeah. Right. I mean, most people play some right below Pele and Maradona and then often cry his number three. Yeah. I mean, he is right over. Here's the thing. That is as a player as a coach, right? Because you can coach actually as a player, he was already coached because he was probably the smarter soccer player ever exists. He changed the game as a player and as a coach, he continued to change the game. So for those who were relatively young or new to the game of soccer, FC Barcelona, he's the Godfather of the team. He got them where they are today. His coaching kind of tribe of people that grew up under him as a player or as a coach is among others, Pep Guardiola in Man City. If you look at that passing game that you see, that's him. Yeah. There's not a bit more for me to add, but for those that think that don't follow soccer, he is one of the greatest names in coaching and in playing history. He is just, I'm in awe of the fact that Bob had even met him. Nevermind then worked alongside him. Yes. And so when I got that first call, which was with his daughter and her husband who led that organization, so what he did, he's still doing. It's now called, I think, the Crive Institute for Sports Studies back then was Crive Academics International. They were helping retired athletes make the transition into the real world. Back then, not many athletes had enough money to be an investor as now they're all right, right? They're all investing now. Yeah, because they're really wealthy. They don't have to work, but they do have to take care of the money so they start to invest. Back then, a lot of these guys still need a job. So that was an educational program. They ran educational programs to help these guys out and they asked me to create a postgraduate and master's degree for them, which they had outsourced prior and they wanted to do it internally and they hired me to lead that process. Now, they called me, it's the Crive family, I was completely intimidated, right? Shocked, like, okay, this is childhood hero, right? And they offered me a job to work in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. We had this amazing office. I could actually touch the Olympic grass from my desk. I could open the window next to my desk and I could touch the Olympic grass. I played a game in the Olympics. I scored this gorgeous goal in the Olympic Stadium. We went to Mexico City where we had a program. I played in Estaco, Estatio Estaco, where, you know, where Maradona did his thing, an incredible goal. I walked on that field. I scored a goal in that stadium. Those were incredible things. So yeah, I mean, when they came knocking, I couldn't say no. So I left after one year. I went back to Amsterdam, figuring I would be home, work for this kind of, like, technically what it was, a startup, right? It was me and one other guy and an intern and a cleaning lady, an admin lady. And yeah, we started developing the program. And yeah, I met incredible people, Johan, of course, and which, when did you meet him? So I went from completely, like, nervous, like shaking, right? When he walked into like within 30 seconds, I was comfortable with him. And I realized why he was such a great coach, whereas most former players are not great coaches. And that is because of his personality. So he had that gift that when he talked to you, you were the only person in the world. And he would just put you at ease. He had this very open, you know, I want to say energy aura. And within 30 seconds, you forgot, you know, you forget that this is probably one of the most famous people in the world back then, at least. And, you know, you're calling Johan. And, you know, I was, I've been at his home both in Amsterdam and in Barcelona. And yeah, that was, that was a dream come true to work for him. I mean, absolutely incredible. Again, for our American listeners feel, I want to try and translate what that was like across. I don't know, is LeBron James even close? No, I think I think I think as an athlete, you have to put them there with what I think with Michael Jordan. Okay, yeah, okay, we'll go for Michael Jordan. Yeah. And then combine that with a Bill Walsh as a coach, right. So you can take, or Phil Jackson, if you want to stay with him basketball, but now his impact in the game is un-matched. There were maybe better players, but nobody had a bigger impact on the world game than he did. So, honor to work for him was only for one year. But maybe that's your next question. But yeah, that was remarkable. Yeah. Well, okay, well, you've just touched on that it was only for a year. So I'm interested by what your next steps were because it says, I believe, either on your resume or your bio, I can't remember which one I was reading, but it says that you worked in six different continents. Now, okay, so we've got North America, we've got Europe, and we've got Los Angeles, Oceana, that kind of area in New Zealand. So what was your next step? Did you go to a new continent then or were you coming back to America? Let's not keep the readers hanging here on why I left, right? Because yeah, I think that's a fair question. It's not like I don't want to talk about it because I do. That was the toughest decision in my entire life. It was so incredibly hard because status-wise, I had everything. You can imagine, my friends were jealous of me. They were like, you know, that I worked for you and I had access to all these famous people, right? I was talking to Richard Kreijek, who won Wimbledon one year, right, to Yvonne van Genen, who's a three-time gold mentalist and speed skating too. Erica Terpser, who was an Olympic mentalist in swimming and then became the minister of sport in the mental. I had to talk to really important famous people. And I left because the role that they envisioned for me, and now I'm not talking about Yohan himself, but his entourage, the role they envisioned for me was the wrong role. They wanted me to develop programs, build curriculum, but then when it was time to roll out the programs, they didn't want me to lead it because I wanted to be an athlete and to lead it. And I knew that for my career, that was deadly because curriculum development is just has no value in the industry. So I would be stuck in that position. Well, forever is a bit dramatic, but I wouldn't be going anywhere. And I realized that that was like, well, that's a long time. And then because he's so famous and there are people around him that they're more there because he trusts them rather than their abilities. So these people are very defensive, protective of their own space. And so they, it's very political to be around that, because everybody wants to be facetime, everybody wants to protect, everybody's kind of like, you know, that's not, I'm not good at that. I don't do the politics. I can't. So it became clear that the culture was wrong. And so I decided to step away. I was still very young, right? Keep in mind, just PhD, and came back to the back to the States to really pursue an academic career as a scholar, which was really, really tough. But now looking back, which is now 15, 16 years later, 17 years later, I'm very happy that I did so. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's essentially, I wouldn't quite say your dream job, by the way that you're describing it. But what I found was my dream job, right? And this is why I want to share this because we have our own students, we have students who work for the Dallas Cowboys, which is the organization they dream dreamt of, right? That's, that's their like, you know, legendary organization. And they realize they don't fit in the culture. And it's really difficult to take a step back and then have to step back. And when those students come to me, you know, I feel like, okay, I've been through this. It's going to be okay. If the culture is not right, do not stay where you are regardless of all the status and glamour, famous people, whatever it is, walk away and find something that you're, that you fit, that you're passionate about that works for you. And so yeah, I think that's an important story to share. And then, okay, that's what you did then you took that step away and you decided to become a scholar back in America. That was, that was your next step. And that's, again, quite a, again, a bit of a different change. Yeah. And so you seem to have this, this pattern really. And yes, reinventing myself, let's say, because I became truly a scholar, I loved research. And if you get it research, if it comes natural to you, right, and you can write well, you can sell your research, which really, it's a trick almost right to be well published. You just have to understand how to write these articles. And fortunately, I'm blessed that I kind of figured out that trick. And so I was successful enough that it allows me to have the freedom to do things, take some risk. But that's the life of a professor. If you're, if you're a research professor, you teach two classes per semester. And the rest is research, which was most of the time at my university, Texas, where I ended up, right, assistant professor. And then at the University of South Carolina as an associate professor, where I was working with PhD students and helping them with their projects, they have a lot of freedom to take on a lot of research. And it's a very international world. So you mentioned the contents. I didn't live in six continents. I conducted research in, in, in all continents, I believe. I think I got a couple of studies in South Africa, the World Cup there. We did a really cool study in the World Cup 2002 in Korea and Japan. Don't work in South America. So just to take a quick pause on that, how do you mean research? Because when I think of research, I mean, I'm just going online and having a look on Google and, and finding out some information. And now I obviously know that research you're doing is not like that. But are you going to these places? Are you interviewing people? Are you delving into paperwork? Like, what does it all entail? Yeah, so let's not go into the details of research, right? Because this is a for your program. But when you're talking about the secondary data, you're looking at research that other people have done. This is primary data, right? So you collect your own data. And in this case, what I mentioned, you collect data in these nations on a research question that you tried to solve. So with South Africa, right, the World Cup 2010, I can share with you, like, we wanted to know, does it really have an impact? But we've known so much about 1995, the rugby World Cup in South Africa, when Nelson Mandela and how it changed race relationships and how it helped with building the rainbow nation, right? Yeah. Well, we want to know what extent is that mythical? Or is that real? And can the World Cup 2010 have the same impact? So we actually collected data prior to the World Cup among a big part of the population and represented the sample of the population. Yeah, we did so again after World Cup to figure out did it go up or not. Which it didn't. Okay. So in that sense, it was not a success similar to 1995. And that was the goal of that. So that's kind of like the difference, right? So we've collected data in South Africa. We've collected data in Korea, Japan, China. Well, I think, yeah, 20 nations don't ask me, you know, to name them all. But a lot of different nations would collect the data. So you have sort of, you're not necessarily lived all over, but you've, you've certainly had a global scale to your career. You've, you've, yeah, I've lived in technically I've lived in three nations, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United States. And then I've summered. I've spent a couple summers in London for an international program. And I've had debates with fellow academics about how long should you have lived somewhere before you can call it living? Because we had somebody who said like, well, I lived in Scotland. And then when we kind of like asked more questions, he just spent the summer there teaching is like, no, no, that's the summer is not enough. It's need to be at least close to a year because New Zealand was maybe as close to a year. It's gotta be six months plus in my opinion. I can live. I can live with this. I think, I think six months. That's, that's more than a holiday. I think there's even a deadline to mentioning that. So when New Zealand was only a couple of years ago, I could say, hey, I lived in New Zealand for a year. But now it's, it's 20 years, almost 20 years ago. I have hardly any memories of living in New Zealand. I really don't have a lot of engagement. I haven't never been able to get back. I want to go back. So yeah, did I live in New Zealand? Yes. Did it enrich my life in a way that I've now benefited? Yeah, maybe, but I don't know. So even then, right? So my, my, my, my minimum is maybe a little bit higher even. But yeah, no, I lived in three nations, but I traveled a lot, been, of course, confidence all over and spent in top classes, a top class in, in the Ruba for eight weeks or spent eight weeks there. And as I said in London, but yeah, that's kind of the beauty of sport. And I know we've touched on this before in terms of the location that you want to pick for your program, but obviously eventually down the line, you get to go to so many different locations as part of sport, because that's the beauty of it. Sports played everywhere. And you know, your job takes you to all sorts of places. I mean, me personally, over the last couple of years, I've been to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Spain, you know, I've, I've had the absolute pleasure and now I'm in America. So yeah. Okay. So that's a good one, right? Because you are journalists, you are commenting on games, you are doing that, you know, Qatar. Yes. How much of Qatar were you able, really able to experience outside of the tourist cocoon, right? Of the hotel and the stadium and the fan zone and the media center. I saw literally just Doha city, because that was the big, that was where everything was. So anything further out of the actual main city, I did not see. So you didn't live there because you were a tourist? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm not arguing. I live there. Absolutely. I know. I was just putting the boundaries. What it means. But if you live in a different nation, and this is what, you know, you might not be here yet, but you'll be there. It is a superpower to have lived and experienced two cultures into debt, right? Understanding two cultures. Because, you know, often, and this is such a cliché that people don't use it even more. I don't hear it very often. Think outside the box. Well, if you lived in one nation, there's no way you can live outside that box, because that's the box that you've been living in. Go to a different nation, and then suddenly you start to notice things. And for me, my first year in the United States, I constantly would be comparing stuff. I mean, that's that. I can speak from experience. That is exactly what I'm doing right now. All right, so I'm going to tell you something then. What my New York buddy, Dusko Bogdanov, his parents were Serbian immigrants. Okay. And he was a typical New Yorker. I love the guy. After giving the shout out. And this is my, and we were roommates kind of like beginning my second year, and I was doing one of those typical, well, in the Netherlands, and he's like, "Yo, Dutch." He's like, "What's up, Dusko?" "We don't give a fuck about the Netherlands." Shut up. And so, it's like, I was looking at him. He's like, "Nobody cares." He's right. Nobody cares. And I get it, right? So, for you personally, you know, you make these comparisons. But, and he was very blunt about it. He was very New York. He was very Dutch about this, right? Because that's why I love New York. People think New York is very rude. Now, they're Dutch. It's a Dutch, it's a former Dutch colony. It's the same culture. We're very blunt on answering each other. So, I loved it. He said that. And I took it too hard. I was like, "Okay, I can do these comparisons in my hand." Just don't set them all out. Unless they ask for it. Yeah. Don't offer it. Or pick maybe, you know, for you, and you'll be getting that once a month. Or bring it up with your friends saying, "Guys, I know you don't want to hear it." I said, "No, none has to do it. Just tell me to shut up when it gets too much." Okay, I'm really going to have to dial back now. I'm really going to have to dial back. I know I'm doing it every day. Yeah, no. And it's, it's, it's normal because that's how you process. Yeah. It's that, that's what it means to cultivate the new culture. And once you've done so, yeah, then it becomes a superpower because you, you, you understand the weaknesses of strength. You can think differently, but you can adjust as well. So, yeah, for the students who are listening to this, right, this is not meant to be a focal part of like the whole thing. And we'll probably talk about it in one of the episodes too. But man, live abroad. And not an exchange program for three months. It doesn't meet the six months minimum. So I'm with you on that. But be somewhere for like a year at least, or maybe even longer. Man, that's a superpower you're going to keep for the rest of your life. Well, you mentioned that that you've, you know, you've only worked and lived in these three specific countries, but you've worked with lots of different companies in different countries. So has your experiences in these, you know, in the countries that you've lived in helped you work with these different companies. So I've noticed that you worked with Fallon in England, a football club there, you worked with Shanghai Sports, presumably that's, you know, a Chinese based company. Did those experiences and those cultures that you managed to embrace help you in these jobs? Well, yes, yes, I know, right. So all these projects, these international clients come to us through somebody from that culture. So Fallon Foundation was Steven Hills, who's somebody that Dr. Walker and I worked with quite a bit. He lives now in Colombia, but he was in London back then. He had that connection. The Shanghai Sports Federation was through one of my PhD students, Gao Fei, who was a former professional basketball player in the CBA, the Chinese Basketball Association, who had these connections. Right. So most of these international things come to you from somebody in that culture. I brought Dutch projects to my friends, right? It's the academic world is a very international one, right? So I have friends, almost in every country, or from, you know, people I call friends that, you know, for most cultures, you name a nation, I say, like, Hey, yeah, I know this person and that person, I can reach out to it's like, Hey, yeah, we want to do something. So yeah, it's a it's a it's a it's a cosmopolitan world. Where, you know, you work among yourselves. So did it help me? I think where it's most beneficial is Europe versus the United States. Because in sports, the European world of sports, it's so different from the American world of sports. And particularly then continental Europe, right? Because Britain is a little bit of both. Value wise, it's more American collegiate sports is kind of like the educational sport system is kind of like a state of life in in Britain, right? So you played probably for your school on the soccer team or cricket team or something. There we go. Right. So that's very American, whereas in continental Europe, like Holland and Germany and Scandinavia and France, none of that is in school. Right. So it's all in the clubs in the amateur clubs. All the frivolous English sports back in the day in late 19th century were replaced by the German rigid physical education classes. And so we pushed it off. So I understand American sports at a very high level. And now particularly here at UNT, right, where, you know, we work with all these teams. But I also understand European sports at a very high level. And there are very few people who know those worlds equally well. So that gives me kind of like an advantage. Give me a time scale then of when you worked for these different entities. When was this around? Because I feel we were, you know, we were doing well in terms of in this podcast, sort of detailing exactly when these things were happening. I feel like we sort of lost the way a little bit. You mentioned that you worked for John Cruyff 17 years ago. So we're going back to. Yeah, quick timeline. 2005, I got my PhD from Florida State. 2005, 2006, I was in New Zealand. 2006, 2007. I was in the Netherlands. I worked in Cruyff 2007, 2008. I went back to Florida State to work as a professor because as a vision professor, because, you know, my, my departure was so sudden. And I missed the academic cycling for hiring. And then when I was there, after a couple months already, I knew I would go to the University of Texas in Austin in where I started 2008. I was there for five years. Then I got the offer to come to South Carolina and start the PhD program in 2013. And then UNT came knocking in 2018 with the question, if I want to start their BBA MBA programs in sport management. Perfect. Right. I feel like we're back on track now in terms of where everything is. This is a podcast and that's supposed to be in track. It's sometimes nice for the viewer to listen to, to know where, to know where things are at. So, okay, let's go to 2018, University of North Texas. This is where you still are now. You've been there for six years. But when you first got here, this MBA program that I'm currently enrolled in, wasn't here. And I feel like that's kind of been your major stamp, you could say, at UNT. And that's kind of been the major thing that you've done over the last few years is build up this MBA program. Yeah, I guess so. I'm not sure if I see that strongly, but I can see that from your perspective, that is the case indeed. And, and yes, it's been the number one thing in time wise that I've allocated myself to. I got the call from my headhunting agency asking if I was interested in this job. And honestly, and I mean that with all due respect, I've never heard of University of North Texas. And I worked at the University of Texas in Austin. But it's, it is a regional university, right? So I really had to look into it. And what drew me first was, was the location, Dallas, Fort Worth. At that point, we had a eight month old. We had a little baby. We knew she would be our own child. And my wife's younger brother lives in Dallas, Fort Worth in Carrollton. So we knew we would live close to them. They, I think they were pregnant of their second, their daughter. So we know it actually was already born. So we knew there was a little girl there that would be kind of like, you know, the same age that she could be raised with. So from a personal perspective, it was like, I got to look into, you know, I got to make this work almost, right? I felt that, that pressure. I never fit in very well in South Carolina. It's a deep south. If you're from Amsterdam, that is a bit of a, you know, there's a lot of cultural distance, let's say that way, which I don't feel in Texas, which is much more libertarian like the Dutch are. Yeah. And people think that the Dutch are liberal. Yes, no, yes, but no, we're libertarian. We just give that what you do. Right. So, so I have always felt more at home. So it's like, I got to look into it. And then I start looking into it. Okay, wait, hold on, location, of course, it's amazing. Because so much, so many of our programs are in these small call stands, we talked about them on the podcast. Here, you're surrounded by all these great sport teams and, you know, iconic teams, the Dallas Cowboys, most valuable sport franchise in the world, the Dallas Mavericks, right. Incredible team, the Texas Rangers, FC Dallas, Dallas Stars, like, okay, this is cool. And then I start talking with people in the university. And I realized they already had a formal partnership, or they were a sponsor of the Cowboys. And part of my interview process was like, they asked me how I could convert that into an educational partnership. So as I engage in this conversation, I started to realize more and more that this was, aside from the personal perspective, this was the job I wanted. This was the dream job. At that point, I had spent 10 years in the academic ivory tower, publishing, publishing, publishing, publishing. I was very successful as a publisher. But I didn't get, was not rewarding to me anymore. I remember I got a publication in Journal of Sport Management, which for us is the number one journal. And I was like, okay, what's next? I didn't celebrate it, right? And that's like one of your bigger accomplishments. And it's like, okay, I can do this research, you know, like, I need to take off that, that tunnel vision. I need to do some other things. I want to re-engage with the industry. I want to, I want to work close, more closely with students at the lower level of the MBA and the BBA level, right? Because it was only work with BSU students. It's like, I need something new. And so this came at the right moment. And man, that was a dream job, right? And since then, it's only gotten better, right? We started from scratch. I could create a program from scratch. First thing I was trying to hire Matt Walker, who I knew very well. To him to join him, he gave up his job as a chair at Texas A&M University, which is a technically university-wide, a much better and bigger university. And he gave up a chair job to come here. Because he realized, okay, there are opportunities and things we can do here in this market here in Frisco, right? Which, you know, for those who don't know, Dallas worked very well. It's directly above Dallas, kind of like, you know, about 30 minutes north. And it's an incredible city. It's an incredible location with so much sports here. And I think we've done really well leveraging, activating those relationships and work closely with them. How much of you loved your job? I know you said it's the dream job, but I'd have everything you've done in your career. You do seem very proud of what you've managed to build here. I think I should be. Oh, absolutely. But I think it's more proud of the students. I think what Matt and I both had was like, we were in these academic ivory towers doing our research, and maybe, you know, Matt was involved with admin, but not in a meaningful way felt. And we knew here that if we could create the program the way we envisioned it, where the intensity of working with the industry is five times as high as any other program. And I'm not saying that to Brad, because, you know, we ask, we know what other what other schools are doing and then the way we do, right? Where every class, you have an industry project, and then we file some extra stuff on, right? So in your class right now, the PGA of America, and in the middle of it, you know, I bring in, you know, a soccer team local to say, hey, we're going to launch soccer team, you guys come with the market playing in one week, present your poster, right? Load up load up to get you that that industry experience. Then to see the students to go off from jobs. That's the reward. And that's that is the biggest reward of everything else. All the other stuff, you know, Matt and I is like, no, we love the fact that these guys are now being hired by Cdallos, or by Cowboys, or by the Rangers, or CAA, or Wasserman, or whatever the organization is, the PGA, or even the small ones, right? I mean, startups, entrepreneurs. We love that. We love seeing that because honestly, Matt and I missed out on our career. We tend to joke that if this program that we've created was there when we were your age, we would be taking the program and we would now be CEO of some kind of franchise. We would not be academics because neither one of us Matt is like me. He's a new first generation student. So neither one of us would be an academic. We would be working in the sports. But we became academics. We were fortunate enough to be good enough at it. And now we're there and we're helping people prepare. And so that's the most rewarding part is preparing people, getting them jobs in the jobs. Yeah, for the jobs that they dream of. And I think that ties in perfectly to this. So what we're doing right now, this whole podcast is to help MBA students. And it really kind of drives behind that real passion that you've got to to help these students succeed. You know what? Yes. Now, yes, this is actually what we're doing exactly. And stupid that I didn't even do it deliberately as a plug like, Hey, this is what our podcast is about. This is what we're most excited about. And we can talk more about the consultancy that I do with with organizations, right, which I think needs an other way of teaching the executive education programs we've developed in our developing. But yeah, no, this is what it's about. I had no clue what I was doing. It versus just, you know, a student at the University of Amsterdam, sitting in a back row, and I was fortunate enough that I'm smart enough to memorize, you know, by book enough to, you know, pass my exams. That's kind of like how I went through the university. That's how I graduated with, you know, grade that was okay. And then miraculously, I got into this PhD program. And I was good at it. But even then, you know, I didn't have my first publication till two years after I got my PhD. Well, now that's a death sentence as a scholar, you don't get jobs because they want to see that productivity, right? So I was very late. But then for 10 years, I published more than in the top journals than anyone else out there. So once I got it, I got there. And, you know, and I was just, I would left for people to not make the mistakes, be better prepared, and not having to get as lucky as I did. Because damn, I got lucky. Well, just to finish off then, before, before we wrap up this sort of bonus episode that we're doing, what's- Which is longer than our normal episodes. Yeah, yeah, I know. Yes, yes. Sorry. You did, you did say it might be a bit longer. I was worried about that. But here we are. So, yeah, just to wrap up then, what is, what's sort of one thing from your life and from your career that you, you really want to sort of hit home for people, you know, we're constantly talking about ways to get into the sports industry and tips and advice. But I mean, from a proper personal point of view, what is, what is, you know, okay, maybe I'll even reword it. What's something that you'd want to tell your 20 year old self? Because the majority of our students are in that sort of 20 year age gap. Now, I, okay, I make plenty of mistakes. So let me preface it with what I'm going to say, right? Because I make plenty of mistakes. And, you know, was a dumbass at times. Don't, don't get me wrong. However, what I think I did well, and I credit it to be, you know, to where I am right now is I always took risks. I always did things for the right reasons. And I always did things to make myself better. And I, and as I mentioned, right, I walked away from like the dream job, I walked away from the freaking legends and myth to pursue the next step was better for my career. I took jobs across the world that in countries that I've never been to, because it was the right move for my career. I've picked fights with people, because I thought it was the right thing to do. And we don't have to talk about, you know, we don't have to name names. But I picked fights with people because it was the right thing to do. And I'm very proud of that. That, you know, if I look back, it's like, okay, that's how I got where I am right now, because I kept feeling that, that, that back sack with more and more stuff. And now I find myself in situations where I just know a lot of stuff and I've experienced a lot of stuff and I have the confidence to, to share it in the right way with people, which if I hadn't gone through the journey that I did, there's no way I could have done it. Well, thank you ever so much, Bob, for joining us and for talking us through your career and life so far. This episode has probably been a bit longer than we were expecting to be. But we hope you've enjoyed it nevertheless. Make sure to follow us on Spotify, but of course, make sure to reach out to us on the LinkedIn, myself, Elliott Stockdale, and of course, Professor Bob here, H-E-E-R-E. So if you've got any questions, do feel free to drop us a follow or a connect over on LinkedIn. But for now, that's everything. So thank you and goodbye.