Eric: This is SportsEpreneur. So when I was learning more about you and seeing that you operated a sportsbook and now you're preparing students to work in sports, and then at the same time you have NIL. In college athletics, that's a changing ecosystem every day. AI has now entered the picture, and that's going to another step, and we're all trying to figure that out. Universities are navigating that, they're navigating NIL. You've seen it, you're sitting there, and I could ask you, of all those things, there's a lot of positives in all that, but is there something that keeps you up at night? Or what would be the one thing that would be like, oh man, we need to work on this?

Matt: We need to work on the arms race being discontinued in college athletics, specifically in football and in basketball. We are at a point now, and this is unprecedented, where athletic budgets are now exceeding revenue. I came from Penn State. I have seen the Power Four, I have seen multiple large schools, your Michigans, your Texases, your Florida States, etc., where athletics would bring in 250, 260 million a year and everybody was like, that's great, we're good. We're at a point now where schools are spending more with NIL collectives than they're bringing in. The University of Louisville, for example, is 19 million dollars in debt right now in their athletic program because of their NIL race. That's what keeps me up at night.

Eric: Yeah. What happens there, right? So as we see that, what do the universities, what does leadership say to, where does that end, right? Like, at what point, what does that do?

Matt: And that's the concern. So what it does is, for years, the question was always, yes, we love supporting our athletic programs, yes, there's large amounts of money involved in it, but the program pays for itself, or it brings revenue into the university, or it brings in recruitment. It brings people to the university. It now has the university presidents asking the question, do I have to allocate funds from my academic budget to the athletic budget? And that's where we start to get into a very slippery slope of now we're taking away educational resources we've used to advance society to play a sport. And if that sport's not profitable, now we've done it in a losing investment. And that's where I get really concerned.

Eric: Yeah. So what are some next steps? Like, what do you think happens?

Matt: Yeah. Well, I lay out three strategies. If university presidents are listening to this, there's three avenues that I'd like to go through.

One is we need to have a salary cap when it comes to NIL collectives. We need a structured salary cap that is in play to stop schools from overspending. And it's not a salary cap to limit the ability of winning for a school. It's to limit the school from going into financial debt. So I support the Save Sports Act. I think it's an excellent idea. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it's a great first step. So step one is the salary cap structure on NIL collectives.

Two and three are this. University presidents need to establish a strategic plan for athletics for the next five to ten years. University presidents, leadership, they love strategic planning. They do it all the time. I joke all the time in higher ed. I'm like, we're always strategically planning. Athletics have never done that before. So they need a strategic plan and they need to stick to it. And that plan might be investing in coaches and not paying athletes large amounts of money, and if they move on to another location, being okay with that. Planning on small increases over time. Planning on scaling back with these huge revenue construction projects. But something has to go on paper and we're going to follow that. We're going to structure that.

And then last but not least, this is one of the things that I don't think most people think about, is university presidents need to start building strong relationships with their local representatives in the House. And I say that because the Save Sports Act and any congressional change to the NCAA is going to come from the House. The Senate has already shown bipartisanly, 77 to 28, that they're in favor of this. So at the House level, there's concern. And what presidents need to show is that if I start allocating funds away from my academic budget to athletics, all of the things that help grow the local community, help advance education, help put people in jobs, in houses and in businesses are going to start to go away. And we're not going to have the funding for that. And then we're going to see economic downturn. And the last thing a congressman wants to hear is economic downturn in their district.

Eric: Yeah. If we're at, and I don't know if we are or not, right? It's impossible to know. Peak football. It's huge, right? Basketball is right behind it, but it's pretty far behind. If this doesn't stay the course and people start losing interest for whatever reason, they lose trust, and there's multiple things that could happen. And they've built this whole thing around, like you just talked about. We're going to build a stadium, and then around the stadium we're going to build all this infrastructure. We're going to hire the coaches, and then maybe the coach doesn't do a good job, so we've got to buy out the coach. And, you know, I have a kid at South Carolina, and you look at Beamer who's there, and there's this talk about a buyout. It'd be like $22 million today, plus all the staff and the turnover. It's like a $50 million check they have to write. Someone has to come up with that money. So if we continue to spend this money and do those things, and let's say we do reach peak football. Again, I could be way off here. It continues to grow. What happens if the money starts drying up on the other end of it as well, which I guess is what you're saying?

Matt: What I'm saying is the money is going to dry up. And I don't mean it's going to drop and go away, but we're going to hit a peak. I believe Major League Baseball has hit a peak right now. I think additional expansion teams are going to be fine. But if you're looking at where Major League Baseball is for revenue, it's been pretty leveled out. And where it's at for distribution and streaming is kind of the key driver here. You're seeing the same thing with college football. People have picked their streaming services. They pick their streaming channels. They're going to be fans. They're going to go to games. That don't allow for an increase in NIL collectives [?]. Don't allow for this. So you're going to see even bigger problems if we don't get out in front of it and put some structure around everything.

Eric: What are your feelings for, like, we got to this point where players weren't getting paid. You know, they were receiving scholarship. They had stipends and all that kind of stuff, but there was a lot of restrictions around that. Then players started getting paid. And if you impose a salary cap, one of the things that could happen is players aren't able to get fair market value, let's say, or they could argue, right? And the NBA has that right now. If someone would want to pay LeBron James a billion dollars a year, they can't do that. A brand could do that, but a team couldn't. Go ahead.

Matt: See, I think here's where the confusion comes in. People think NIL is everything. They think, like, oh, NIL is the quarterback's making $4.5 million that came from the school. There's two forms of NIL that we're seeing. One is this collective where we're paying you money. We have a responsibility you have to do. But there's no safeguards on that. So the responsibility might have to be you read a story at a library one time a season and that's it.

Then there's the other NIL where you can sign a sneaker deal. You can be a sponsor in a commercial. You can do all that. People talk about restrictions. There's no restrictions being proposed in any legislation to eliminate pure NIL. Like, Matt Bakowicz could have his Instagram channel licensed on NIL. I'm allowed to do that. I'm legally allowed to do that. There's nothing wrong with that. NIL's been around way before where we're at now. So I don't think it's going to limit someone's popularity. I think it's going to put popularity in a true market value where, yes, the college can pay you this, but if you rise to a higher level, the college isn't hindering your ability to make money. What really people are complaining about is, well, the college should give you more. And we just talked about why that's a terrible idea.

Eric: Yeah. So what stops a relationship? And you mentioned Texas, Michigan, things like that. If they say, hey, we need this quarterback. We have this brand, this company, this billionaire donor that's willing to give that money. And maybe it's not through the university, but maybe it is. How is that protected from it if we're going to give that kid $10 million over the course of four years?

Matt: Well, a couple of things. We currently don't have transparency right now when it comes to anything on the NIL level. You know, we could say Texas is offering me $10 million. Texas may have offered $4 million, but you don't have that documented. In the NBA, for example, you know how much a team has in cap spending. If you're trading with the Celtics and the Lakers, everybody knows what those contracts look like. It's public knowledge. So number one, this would start transparency. You have a cap. You know how much everybody's on. You know where things are at. It's public information and knowledge.

The second portion of that is, let's say we go to NIL where now we're talking about, okay, that billionaire says, well, we're capped out here, but I want you to come do a car commercial. I want you to do this. Well, there's trade-offs for that. Those go through scrutiny with the NCAA. Are you getting the value? Like, if you're being paid $2 million for a 10-second commercial, did you bring $2 million worth of value? People would argue, yes, LeBron James brings more than $2 million worth of value to McDonald's. But was Johnny Smith as a senior who's just starting his program doing that? We could say no.

And that's where strength needs to come in from congressional support to the NCAA so that that board can say this NIL agreement doesn't work. The value is not there. Now, he does 40 car commercials in the entire state of Texas, all around the world, in his offseason. Now we can start saying, yeah, you earned that $2 million, because that's what a comparable actor would be paid in that area for doing those commercials with your star power.

Eric: Do you think there's enough adults in the room that we go down some path where we start getting some transparency and some control?

Matt: The adult question is very interesting. The problem you run into with all of college sports is it's not a simple decision. So take a university president, for example. They have to balance the fact that if we don't win football games and I don't have a high-powered coach, my alumni base is going to be angry. An angry alumni base means less donations. A poor football team means less individuals enrolling in your school. So to say, well, we should do this, there's 14 layers to kind of be attached to that.

So whose interest are they going to be advocating for, and what's the best course of action? A coach's interest is really simple. I need more money. I want to win. My entire paycheck is based on how many Ws I get. I have never seen a coach that has a losing season for five years in a row, but his team has a 4.0 GPA, keep their job. It's all based on one thing, a W. So here you have adults, and then you have, entering in the room, the media rights who want as much coverage as possible so they can sell more advertising dollars and more streaming services and subscriptions to keep their shareholders happy.

You have nine entities, 10 entities, 12. We could go on and on, sitting at the table, all advocating for themselves. The only way that works is an entity that advocates for the people and the best interest of the people steps in and says, we're going to handle this. There's only one entity in the United States that does that. That's Congress. That's the United States government.

Eric: Yeah. It sounds like a lot of things that we're talking about here, you use the word transparency, it's trust, right? Because once you start losing trust, which I mentioned before, if we hit a point where, you know, I just don't trust the rest on the field, right? Let's say sports betting gets too involved in the game. And for whatever reason, as a fan, I'm like, I don't know if what I'm watching is real. Once you lose that, you start losing everything and everything breaks down. And so I think it ties into what you're probably working with, with the students that you're talking to and the programs that you're running.

And then there's another part of it too, because it's the other side of it. If we're taking money from the academic side and feeding it over to the athletic side, now you have parents and you have people who run departments and professors, or whoever that might be, that get frustrated. The government gets frustrated, the local government gets frustrated. And then you start having that question of athlete compensation and the athlete's relationship with the university. What is that today? And how has that changed? It's different, I'm sure, at every school, but.

Matt: You start to turn into an employee. You start to turn into an employee who goes to class. I mean, there's now scheduling things where you have 26-, 27-year-olds attending one class. That becomes a bit of an issue.

But I'll play the other side. I'll also advocate for the other side. Let's take the University of Oregon's leadership team, who publicly said, my best marketing platform is my football team, because I'm on a national stage every single week highlighting Oregon University, Oregon University's academic programs, and advertising to millions upon millions of people. Show me another marketing plan that gets me that value in terms of enrollment and structure.

The Appalachian State effect is actually a research study that we do here in class. I remember to this day, I was sitting in Beaver Stadium. We just played FIU, and I was watching the game on TV monitors, and they're watching them upset Michigan at the time. Their enrollment went up 15% next year. Florida Gulf Coast, when they made their run. St. Peter's, when they made their run. When schools do well athletically, enrollment goes up. It's a proven factor.

So the other side of the coin is, I'm investing this money from academics because that's going to increase enrollment, which will increase more tuition dollars, which will increase scholarship opportunities and grant opportunities to more fund your program. So the other side of the coin is there's also value on that side too.

Eric: Sure. Well, you go back to the movie The Program, right? The college football. And it was great because they sat down, and there was a problem of trying to get the guy eligible, and the chemistry professor was really upset. And he's like, when's the last time 70,000 people, whatever the number was, showed up to watch a kid do a chemistry experiment? Now, there's a lot of arguments on all sides of it. But yeah, you're talking about the whole marketing side of it. But I guess the question then becomes, at what cost are we doing this?

Matt: And I think that's the, at the end of the day, if we keep going in the direction we're going, any smart economist will tell you that we will eventually outpace funding for athletics over what academics have. And the cost will eventually start seeping in. As much as you can increase enrollment, there are caps on that. There are ceilings on that. So what you'll end up happening is this arms race where universities will start going into debt because they're trying to compete on the athletic field and not educate in the academic world. And that's just where we're going to get to. So, again, it's regulation.

But I'll take a step back. It's not that I didn't see this coming in terms of growth, but I don't think anybody could have predicted this level of expansion, this level of growth with sports. It's easy to figure out why. It was the introduction of satellite TV, and the regional broadcast went from regional to coast to coast. It was the ability to watch 45 games at one given time. It was the integration of sports betting. It was the integration of fanism, jerseys, inside locker rooms, media attention.

And one thing that people don't really realize too much is, in the early days of college football, you had one generation. Many people didn't go to college. Let's just use Wisconsin. I went to Wisconsin. I'm a Wisconsin fan. Okay. Now you have people that graduated from Wisconsin in the 1950s and '60s. Their children went to Wisconsin. Their children's children went to Wisconsin. You have families that have five generations. And with the way that we're living longer, they're all part of that university's alumni network. So instead of needing two tickets for a stadium, I need 15, because the entire Bakowicz family is going to this game. You had a population boom of individuals that had family loyalty and legacy.

So all those things to say, it's very logical to see how we got here, but I don't think anybody predicted it would be at this level. And of course, I make this joke with my students all the time. When you have a trillion-dollar industry, because no, I don't think it's a billion-dollar industry, I think it's a trillion-dollar industry, you have a trillion problems that are also attached to that as well.

Eric: Yeah. The debt that we go to when Louisville goes in the debt and other schools have the debt, what happens on the back end of that to say, this is the debt we have? What are they going to do, right? And then you have enrollment potential issues, right? You have a huge number of kids going to school over the last few years. Most applications we've ever gotten two years ago, I believe. And that number will start going down. I think I've seen the trend lines of less kids born after the financial crisis. What happens from here?

Matt: You're going to see reallocation of programs at all universities. You're going to see universities really examining which programs are ones that, at the end of the day, produce individuals that can have successful careers that are financially stable upon graduation. What programs, while they are for the good of humanity, are not putting you in a position to be financially independent upon graduation? And what limits do we now have to put on our athletic program because we just don't have the money? It'll be a restructuring of how the college model looks. And it's not just a sports thing that's going to be causing that restructuring.

It's what you said: we have a shift in demographics where we have less individuals going to school because people had less children. We also have the integration of AI. We also have the rise in trades, where individuals are now learning manufacturing roles that are, at a very high level, paying for the rest of their lives to work in these fields. So everything's changing. And that's the hard part. I wish we could all say it's one problem. It's like a dam. You have a crack in the dam. You patch the crack in the dam. The dam holds. You have 45 cracks in the dam, the electrical turbine is not working, an environmental issue where we have drought across the country, and a construction project five minutes down the road where we want to put in a new thing. What do you tackle? That's really the challenge these people are facing.

Eric: Yeah. If someone's made it this far in our conversation, they're already going to learn who you are by the title of the article and by the description that we're going to have on there. But I think it's a good time, because you reference students, you reference universities. You also have a background in this. And I think it's important for people to understand why are we having this conversation, who you are, and what you do.

Matt: Let me give you the quick-minute rundown. Undergrad and graduate school at Penn State. Was there for six years, both undergrad and master's work. Then stayed on in the research lab working on biomechanic development with Nike, designing clubs and equipment, looking at movement of the body on that side. Became an instructor at Penn State for six years. While I was an instructor, I also worked in sport analytics with our State College Spikes minor league team of the St. Louis Cardinals, running TrackMan analysis. Worked on defensive spotting with Coach Franklin up in the booth. Ran the Bryce Jordan Center's usher staff and the operations at the Jordan Center. So I was very involved in the operations in the world of sport. And then, of course, taught as a full-time professor.

Left Penn State right around COVID. Moved back up to Connecticut, where I'm originally from. Spent a year working with the Boston Red Sox in game day compliance. Worked with the Red Sox after the cheating scandal. I was kind of a game day cop in that regard. And then spent four and a half years working for DraftKings, both on the trading floor with Simplebet into DraftKings, setting lines, understanding the sports betting aspect, understanding all the money that's involved in that, to also being the general manager of the Foxwoods Resort Casino sportsbook, overseeing sports betting operations, horse racing, and keno. And I was teaching adjunct at St. Joe's in, funny enough, esport management. I built their esport video game program.

About a year and a half ago, relocated back to Washington, D.C. to design and build American University's sports management program and work with their athletic department. So my current title and role is the program director of our sports business management program here at AU. I work with our athletic department. I work with our students. And I work in a lot of capacities of the topics we're talking about. I also teach a sports betting course in the spring semester on the business and understanding of sports betting. So I've seen it all, from the sports betting world to the NIL world, the academic world, the business world. I've seen a lot and I've worked in a lot of locations and areas. So it makes me someone who can sometimes visualize the big picture.

Eric: Yeah, I love it. I wish you had five hours, because we could keep going. I'm fascinated by the architecture of all this. We watch a game, you know, I'll sit down and I'll watch with my son [?]. And we're at a soccer game here at Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte FC, right? And so MLS, World Cup just ended. And I was like, just look around the stadium. What do you see? And you look around, it's all advertising, right? Is this a business? Now, don't get me wrong, it's a lot of fun. And then we go out, we go buy a hamburger, a Coke, whatever. There's just money everywhere, and sponsorships and all this stuff. And to have this conversation with you, who's seen it all, I can go in many different directions. And as I think about it, then you mix in artificial intelligence, right? And that's all happening. We can watch the games and we can watch offensive coordinators making decisions on analysis, right? We can go watch an NBA game and look behind the bench and see how many analysts are there. Yeah, go ahead.

Matt: My prep class that I teach to high school students: can a computer outcoach a football coach? We literally do an online model, like, you want to come to AU, what's a class look like? And I actually have the online model try to outcoach me and my dad in terms of football, and what we learn from AI and that. So yeah, you're exactly right on that. We're even doing that as our mock classes.

Eric: What was the answer? Could it do it?

Matt: Well, here's the answer. The answer is it can give you the percentages, but it doesn't give you the intangible. So one of the scenarios we bring up is, it's fourth and eight, the game is 21 to 16. Do you kick the field goal with four minutes left to go? Your kicker has a 57% accuracy from this location. And AI says, go. What you don't know is your kicker's missed the last three kicks. They're a little shaky on there. There's wind coming up into the stadium. You know that you have three timeouts. You know the opposing offensive coordinator's never run a two-minute drill. So it'll give you numbers, but there's still the human element on that. So the short answer is it has yet to replace the human element.

Eric: Got it. And maybe it's the marrying of the two that would.

Matt: Which is what we teach here at AU. And two things about my program to talk about that. One is we love using AI as, I always call it, a job enhancement, not a job replacement. I actually used AI this summer to build multiple different tagging apps and software for our men's basketball team, our soccer team, and so much so a salary cap model, that one of the assignments in my class is to jump on our app that we designed and trade NBA players and talk about how that affects their salary cap. This is something I couldn't have done two, three years ago. And now we have this integration. So it's a lot of fun.

And then as for the program, you're exactly right in this being so much money and sponsorships and everything. We focus everything on business. So as much as I love the health of sports, sports nutrition, sports philosophy and history, we've condensed it down to corporate sponsorships, NIL, salary cap management, analytics, business analytics, foundations and marketing, everything that is essentially attached to a business function of sports, because that's where the next generation needs to be trained. They can also supplement that with some of the sports nutrition, health and history stuff. But right now the need is, I need to understand the business model, and I need to understand how that business model generates revenue for my team. Otherwise, that team's going to be in trouble.

Eric: If someone young is getting into the business, right? We've always heard, I want to be in sports, you know, and it sounds great. And then you get there and you're like, I'm selling tickets. I'm in baseball, I'm at 81 games a year, and it's tiring. It's taxing. It's entry-level type stuff, not a lot of money maybe to be made in some of the entry-level stuff. What do you see now? Because we just spent a lot of time talking about how much money's in here, and there's a lot of debt as well, but there's constant investments. Sports is the last remaining thing that we show up to do together. Everything we watch on TV is streaming. I could go watch Mad Men, and it aired many years ago, and I didn't have to watch it at that time. What's your take on the sports industry for someone who's thinking about going into it, as it relates to everything I just said?

Matt: So the statement I give my students is, there is always money to be made for those that want to work hard for it. And I kind of compare a student working in sports to an athlete on the field. Let's take a 21-year-old running back that's going to start in the NFL. That running back probably was playing at the age of eight, nine in peewees. We had in our town sixth grade football, seventh grade football, eighth grade, JV, varsity, high school, collegiate football. Countless hours in the weight room, countless hours to do all this to get that $14 million contract. They put time and effort into their craft and career. You're going to do the same. The only difference is you're doing it at a later stage in life than that athlete is.

It's no different in terms of how many hours you're spending in the ticket office making cold calls, how many times you're updating spreadsheets, how many times you're making sure our tasks at the stadium [?], pulling the tarp and fixing cup holders. You put all that grind in so that when you're in those bigger situations, in those seats, you've earned that, and you've put the hard work in, and that's how you've risen there. So there's always money to be made for somebody that wants to work hard.

The understanding is, for somebody that's getting into the industry, how it's changed is you can't use the argument, I love sports and I'm a fan. There's usually 46,000 of those at a game. We've got plenty of them. [?] Because it involves sports analytics, and my main role is using numbers to help with financial decisions or help with player evaluations. And specifically, here's the projects I've worked on on the player side. Here's the projects I've worked on on the financial side.

And most importantly, and I tell this to all my students, even the non-sports ones, because I teach in our management core: how can I define my value for your organization? I use a really simple example for my social media kids in our marketing classes. Like, you guys all want to do social media. I said, well, is it working? And they're like, well, yeah. I'm like, give me more. They're like, well, yeah, it's working. People saw my video. I said, okay, what's the average cost for click views in terms of monetary dollars and advertising dollars? Like, wait, what?

So I made a post with our men's basketball team. It got 5,000 views. In the month of September, the average pay for advertisement space for an Instagram post is, for every 2,000 views you get, between $60 and $75. So that post saved the university $150 in advertising costs because we advertised our men's basketball program. So by making this post, and let's just say I'm paid $18, $19 an hour, and it took me two hours to make that post, I cost $40 and I saved the university 110. That's the value I just added. That's what you need to demonstrate as a young professional. You bring me onto this team, here's what I'm going to do, and here's the numerical numbers that are attached to that. That's what I teach my kids how to do in the classroom.

Eric: Yeah. With that example, if you bring AI into the picture and it can go and pull your data analytics and all this kind of stuff, and it can summarize it and explain it to you or to the people that you're talking to, are the students having access to that? Are they able to use it? What's your feeling on that?

Matt: And that's what I'm teaching them. I'm teaching them how do you use AI to be an enhancement. So for example, these apps that we design take a lot of coding in R. I, for the life of me, have no idea how to code in R. I have Professor Jay Simon, who is so much more brilliant, PhD from Stanford, a math magician, a whiz on this stuff. But what he taught my students and taught me is, here's how an eight-hour code in R, AI can do in eight seconds. So here's the code structure, and then we bring this over here. So AI will put this together. Now you can sort of go off with what you want to do. So it'll give you marketing numbers. It'll give you an analysis. But then you have to make the decision and then utilize that information in the appropriate manner.

So we did a little exercise in my high-functioning teams class [?] last night. They had to do a press conference, and I gave them random topics, and they had five minutes to research the topic, create a 60-second pitch for it, and anticipate questions. So they used AI to gather all that information for five minutes and walk up to the classroom. But AI couldn't speak from the computer. A human face had to do that. And then they had to field questions. They had kind of a blueprint and background. Years ago, you'd be making phone calls. You're reading journals, you're Google searching, you're trying to figure stuff out. That press conference could have taken three hours to prepare for. Now you did it in three minutes.

Eric: Yeah. And they have to have the judgment when they're reading through it to say, what's worth it? How do I synthesize this?

Matt: Exactly. And I also say, too, that doesn't replace old-school classroom knowledge. Sure, I could make an algorithm that gives me this coefficient or this statistical significance. I need to know if that's right. Because there are times, when we did this analysis with the Pioneer League for baseball with one of my students this summer, and I'm like, wait a minute, this can't be 99 percent. The statistical significance is like 0.99. No, no, that's impossible. That means every player that comes up hits a home run.

But you know what, guys, if you break the old-school math down. I had one of my students that had to do a revenue project for class, and they had to present this revenue project of an addition to the team, like a fun team outing event, when the teammates and the players in the NBA go out into the community and do something. Well, they had all their math there, but I put their math wrong [?]. And I'm like, wait a minute here. I said, your math is off by $300 in this cost over here. I said, there's $1,200 of missing data here. You still have to recognize where the errors are and still know the old-school mentality.

Eric: Yeah. Which goes back, you were mentioning R before, and I was just talking to a student, and they're taking this class in R and it's frustrating. Whether it's you or people that you know, is that a class in college today that's worthwhile taking? Or say, why are we teaching these kids this, because they can go do it with AI? Or are you saying it's more the old-school way, have the basic understanding of it?

Matt: Well, I think you're selling my program, because I think that's one of our differentiators here. It is actually a requirement for graduation from my program to understand R. And here's the reason behind that. Analytics are not just in sports for player evaluation. They're also for business evaluation too. I make this joke. I don't know where this quote was said, but somebody published it in one of the major newspapers. I said, I just want one of my students to be able to get a job at either Goldman Sachs or the New York Yankees, because the math is the same. The variables are just different. So yes, to answer your question, 100% learning R and learning coding. AI can be an enhancement to learn that, but it's not going to be perfect every time. And it's going to be helpful both as an evaluator for players and from a business sense.

Eric: What's the university's take? Obviously you're teaching a class in this and you're using AI in all of it. How does your school feel about it? You know, it's difficult. I sat down, and one of my other kids in their class is talking about The Great Gatsby, and they're struggling with how we can't let them use AI because of this. And I'm like, if I read Gatsby, I want to understand things. What does this mean? And I can ask questions to my AI. I'm not taking a test on it, so there's nothing to cheat on. So I understand you put it in front of a kid, it's like, oh, this is like candy, I want to eat it. So what are you guys thinking around all this, and what's the direction you all are going?

Matt: So I'm going to speak to the Kogod School of Business, because I'm going to talk about our business model here. We're pro-AI. We're very pro-AI. We want AI integrated into all of our classes. We want our students exposed to AI. We want students using AI. However, my job as an educator has gone from being a content expert to a facilitator.

So let's take The Great Gatsby example. I know in the opening lines of The Great Gatsby, they talk about how it was a different time when people drank too much. Here's a great question: why were people drinking too much at that time? And what was the understanding of Prohibition in that era in New York City? You can type that into AI and then learn the history of the speakeasies and the structure in New York City, and use that as a training aid to then understand where that line comes from in the opening of The Great Gatsby. So for us, it's pro-AI. It's AI training.

I did a collab with a female student athlete on our women's field hockey team, Riley Krause [?], who uses AI to help explain financial concepts to her so that she can be better prepared for class. So she's asking AI, why is the S&P 500 trading at this level? Why are they doing that? So for us, we're pro-AI. We're using it as a job enhancement. We're using it as a trainer. And it's my job, as somebody who's been around AI and as an instructor, to demonstrate the safeguards and demonstrate how to use it properly.

The students, it's exactly right. It's like Halloween. You put the entire candy box in front of them, they're going to eat the whole thing. So it's me being the parent and saying, one piece of candy tonight, maybe two on Saturday because you did your homework. Here's the reward system. We're going to ration this so that you don't get sick behind it. Okay, here's the responsible way to use AI. Here's how to disclose that you used it. Here's our policy. Here's how to make it better. When you have that structure in place, I truly believe you can thrive. And I truly believe that we're ahead of the game at Kogod being able to do that.

Eric: But if Kogod's doing that, and you have other schools out here that are freaking out about it, they don't know how to handle it. I mean, what happens? I guess we don't know, right?

Matt: That's the whole thing, is we don't know. But if I were to be in the predictive world, which, spending multiple years in sports betting, that was my job on that side: it's not going away. I would look at college football in the mid-2000s and say, it's getting bigger and bigger. It's getting larger and larger. Data centers are getting built. More people are involved with AI. More individuals are using it. It's being integrated into multiple things. So it would be foolish for an academic institution, whose job is to prepare the next generation for functioning in society, not to at least have some level of embrace of this technology. Whether you like it or not, you're going to have to deal with it. It's not something that can go away. So I think it's truly in the best interest of educators to be part of that positivity and education, rather than a no, no, no philosophy.

Eric: You know, all schools have an honor code, which is interesting to me. We have an honor code. Even if the notes are in front of you and you're not supposed to look at your notes, or you have a sheet that gives you all the answers, the honor code says you're not supposed to look at it. But when it comes to AI, schools are like, we're going to take it out of the classroom. We're going to take it off your devices. You're not going to have access to it. And again, I understand it, because it's too much to control. If these universities have many thousands of students, what are they supposed to do?

Matt: Well, I think that's where the ownership goes on the instructor. I'll share a fun example. My first or second class I took at Penn State, I was the only kid in the classroom that was on a laptop. And our professor at the time was staring at me like, why are you on your computer? Are you cheating? Are you playing games? I was the weird oddball. We had a 180-person class. I was the one guy on a laptop. You go to a classroom now, every kid is on a laptop typing. So I had forward thinking involved. Matt Bakowicz has had a history of maybe being first, or maybe being able to see into the future. Maybe it's a trait of mine. Maybe I got lucky. I don't know. But I believe this.

So then I think it goes away from, the students have the answer on AI, to, how can I design an assignment that allows them to use AI but still get the learning from that? So my second exam in the spring semester, I redesigned the exam where I gave them an HR scenario where no matter what you decided, not everybody was going to be happy, and you had to make a decision in your company. AI could tell you, well, if you do this, that happens. If you do this, that happens. They could use AI, but AI is only going to tell you, well, here's the plan. AI won't make the decision for you. It'll give you percentages of what it might be, but it's not going to say you go this route. And then they had to speak in front of the class and defend why they made that decision.

How many CEO boardrooms are doing that exact particular activity, versus me giving a test of, okay, if this person says this, what's the best course of action? It's, let me redesign the assignment to involve AI but still keep you at a very high learning level.

Eric: Yeah. And putting pressure on. It goes right back to the thing. They have to make that judgment. They have to go sit in front and feel that pressure, right?

Matt: Exactly.

Eric: Yeah. So let's stay here for a second with American as a mid-major program, right? College basketball, obviously being, I think, the top sport as far as probably money-making is concerned. I went to college at Charleston, right? And right after I was there, Steph Curry was there. Well, Steph Curry, not there. He was in the conference. He was at Davidson. And a Steph Curry today who goes on a first run and then can go on a second run in the tournament, he's not coming back. Maybe he's a difference-maker [?] and he's the one who stays at Davidson, but we can imagine how much Duke or Chapel Hill or whoever's going to offer that kid to move programs. How does American see this? What's their involvement? And that's obviously different. They might have different academic restrictions on all this. But it's difficult, right? You see these kids, they can jump. So that's one example of it. And how do you stay competitive, and what's the role in it?

Because a lot of things we've talked about are big-time college sports, right? But mid-majors have a major place, in a weird way to say that, in college sports. And I think it's one of the things that we love, and, you said this before, it's a part of the community, right? I don't have to be a Commanders fan. I could go to an American game, right? And I love that. And it's close. And maybe I know the coaches. I don't know. Anyway, you know where I'm going with this. Where are we going on the mid-major side of things [?], specifically with American?

Matt: So I can't speak for Coach Simpkins and Coach Killian [?] and their philosophies and their structure on that one, nor would I want to presume their stuff. But let's talk about the mid-majors, because what I can speak upon is where we're at and what the best course of strategy is going to be. So I look at mid-majors like the Tampa Bay Rays. The Tampa Bay Rays are a perfect example of the mid-major world. You have the New York Yankees. You have the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays won in three games [?] right now, as of this recording, and are now going on to the American League Championship Series. The Rays, for the better part of 26 years, have been a contender in the playoffs. Now, are they a contender every year? No. But is every team a contender? No.

The Rays do one thing that is very intelligent. They invest in coaching and player development at the minor league level. Their philosophy is, we're going to invest in young players, we're going to invest in coaching, and we're going to invest in these individuals. And when they get to a point where we can no longer afford them based on our business model, we think it's okay for them to move on to another location. So that's the Tampa Bay Rays model.

Now, let's apply that to mid-majors. I think where a good mid-major school is going to be, and where one's going to be successful, is two parts. Part one is they're going to look for young talent that they can develop. The one and two stars, the two and a half to three stars, where we can get you to the next level. And the conversation isn't, come to American. The conversation is, I want you to be better whenever you leave here. And if that's in two years, if that's in three years, if that's in four years, it's no different than I would say to one of my students in the classroom. When you leave here, I want you to get a good job, be successful. I want you to be better when you leave here. Not so much, I want you to be a four-year athlete here, graduate as a senior, and be on our alumni. I want you to be better. What does better look like? It could be playing at the next level at a Power Four school with an NIL deal. It could be graduation. That's our philosophy. We invest in good coaches that can work with those individuals, and we grow that model. And mid-majors become okay with the fact that people are leaving after two years, and understanding that, look, this is the model we're going to operate in.

And then the other question about that is, when we go back to development and better, we might also be looking at, with the transfer portal, those that are juniors and seniors where, you know what, better for you is more playing time, more leadership experience, more confidence, and becoming a more fulfilled young man or young woman who's going to be playing and then going on to the industry, coming over here.

So what's our philosophy going to be? And if the philosophy is simply, well, we're just trying to recruit, we're trying to compete, we're trying to give money, it's not going to work. You have to be very honest with your strategy. And I think a good strategy for all mid-majors is, I want to get you to the next level. I'm going to invest in development. Because believe me, while there's tons of students that want to go to Power Fours, those rosters are capped at 125. There's a lot more players playing college basketball, college football, and Olympic sports as well than there are in these college roles [?] in the high school era. You can find players at the one, two, two-and-a-half-star level that want to play at the next level. And if you can develop them to a three, four, five star, look at the Tom Brady success story. You find a situation where you can develop that person. And I don't think that's the rarity of the exception. I think if that's your philosophy and you invest in it, you can have success. Look at the Tampa Bay Rays.

Eric: Yeah. That's an incredible outlook to have on it. In those scenarios, how do the sponsors feel about it? Right. Because that brings in, like you said, this isn't just one easy answer. It's very complicated.

Matt: Yeah. So, I mean, again, this is like my perfect, if you're following Bakowicz's plan, everything works out perfectly in the road.

Eric: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Matt: So let's go back to the university president. You have to stick to a course. You have to stick with a plan of, I support our athletic department and I support our athletic director. And this is their philosophy, and this is why I support this philosophy. And they have a transparent, honest conversation with alumni, students, and those involved, saying, if we go down this alternative road, financially, we're not going to be able to do all the things this university does. And it's very scary when you're only making decisions for 15 or 125 people when you have 46,000 that are involved with your university. That gets to be a very confusing time around campus.

So university presidents need to say, this is going to be our strategy. We're going to support this. And you've got to have thick skin. One thing that's very interesting: we see a lot of university presidents transitioning from job to job in different roles, just like we see coaches and GMs. A university president has to say, yes, I'm going to be like a head football coach. And there's going to be times when the media is going to hate me because I lost. There's going to be times they're going to question my judgment. But I know this is the best. And I have a team around me of vice presidents and provosts that are going to help me and support this. And we all believe in this collective vision. Here's the research to support that. That's a person I want to go work for. And that's a person that I want running my school.

Eric: Yeah, it's difficult right now, because I was having a conversation with someone. When a team's not doing well, they all want to fire the coach, right? They all know better than the coach. And then they get mad, like you said, at the athletic director. Then you're mad at the player. It's across the board. And there was a time, you talked about this early on in our conversation, when the coach was just there, right? And again, you'd probably know more about the history of how long these coaches lasted. But nowadays, you have a couple bad games in a row. It's like Ryan Day. I follow Ohio State, and they want to fire Ryan Day after one bad game. And he won a national championship. It's crazy. In the last two years, he won a national championship. You lose one game and they freak out. Yeah, it's tough.

Matt: Correct. Well, why? Because alumni are so heavily involved in this NIL collective. Look, alumni should be smart in a sense. These alumni are business individuals. If you have the ability to donate this much money, you probably were pretty successful in business, and you know that not every marketing plan works right away. Not every business decision is correct. So maybe take a step back and go, we're not going to be perfect, because wait a minute, this is kind of a business. And in my business world, I'm not perfect every time. But it's an honest conversation you have to have with your alumni base, and having them understand.

Of course, then again, with sports being the great equalizer for some people, from a culture standpoint, this is the one positive thing that goes on in their lives. The one thing that brings their family together, the one thing that has the best community. When that doesn't go right, it's a reminder of maybe some struggles they're experiencing, maybe some challenges that their lives are having. So it's magnified when sports aren't doing well, because it amplifies the other things that are not perfect in one's life.

Eric: There's a lot of, I don't know what it is. I mean, obviously it's manipulation. You can go on X and watch a game, and Drake Maye throws an interception and we're just going to crucify him. And then the New England fans are going to get upset. And then the Bills fans are going to pile on. And then Josh Allen throws an interception. And it goes back and forth, and people truly get angry about this type of stuff. And like you said, it's a control factor, and it's almost like an addiction. And I'm sure we can get into this as it relates to sports betting. You talk about having 45 games on at a time. The NFL is on, there's so much coming at us, and the game doesn't end. The games are before, during, after, the middle of the night. There's always games on, and there's always games to bet on. There's always games to root for, root against. You can hate-watch. You can do whatever you want to do.

But you would know about this, because you've worked inside the sportsbooks and you know what that looks like. So you can take us behind the scenes with that right now. Because we hear stories about, you go to a college campus, and a lot of these young men are betting a lot, right? And it might be small. And we've talked to people in the mental health world, and they'll talk about how it mirrors the opioid crisis, because they're betting five dollars. It's in an app. It's very easy to do. And it's legalized. And in many respects, it's fun and it's entertainment and all that. But at the other end of it, it can absolutely create all sorts of things. I'll stop there. You kind of get what I'm saying. I see you nodding.

Sports is the center of the universe for a lot of people, and our universe. And it's an important thing that's in our community. And why shouldn't we love it? It's an amazing thing. I've always said, to say the positive side, sports brings people together, right? You can text me and go to a sports bar with your buddies, or whatever it might be. Your family can sit around and watch the game together, win or lose, right? I'll stop there. You see what I'm getting at. And I guess one of the things I'm also getting into, while you're framing the answer, is going behind the scenes of the sportsbook and all of that. We could start in a lot of directions.

Matt: Yes.

Eric: I want you to take it where you want.

Matt: Let me point out a few things and some comments here. You're absolutely right in the sense of, there's always something on and there's always something to bet on when it comes to sports. You can bet on Russian ping pong at three o'clock in the morning. When I worked in the sportsbook and I worked as a trader, one of our biggest games was whatever game Hawaii played at home, because it was the only thing available at two o'clock in the morning that people were betting on. So there's always action. There's always something.

And yes, there can be parallels made to the opioid crisis, because it's readily available, and it's dopamine hits in the head constantly being thrown at a person over a long period of time. You can be addicted to anything. You can have dopamine hits off of anything. There's that TV show on TLC, My Strange Addiction. So you can gather this from a lot of different sources. But there's truth in the fact that this being readily available [?], easy access, and constantly there can lead to traditional problems and structures and things like that that are concerning on that end.

So now, breaking it down, you're looking at the sports betting model and you ask yourself the question: why are so many people involved? Why is it so heavily prevalent in sports? Why is it something that is just growing exponentially in society? And it's scheduled to peak in 2030, but since 2018, the repeal of PASPA, it has been consistently growing at a steady rate. Why? And the answer is actually quite simple on a psychological level. If I were to ask you, what do you think the S&P 500 or the SPY stock is going to look like two and a half weeks from here, and how do you see that trend building, what would you say to me?

Eric: Do I think it's going to go up or down, you mean?

Matt: Up or down. How does the trend look? What is it going to look like on Tuesday at four o'clock in the afternoon when it's closed, and then Wednesday morning at 9:30? And how are all these things going to play out? No idea. And you're shaking your head like, man, I've got no clue. What's your favorite NFL team?

Eric: Buffalo Bills.

Matt: How are the Bills going to do this season with their entire schedule? And what do you think of Josh Allen? Give me your best take on Josh Allen's performance in XYZ game.

Eric: Yeah.

Matt: And I'm not going to have you do it, but here's the point. You could probably go on for 35 minutes with your expertise and knowledge and guarantee. There's the secret to sports betting. Because individuals have a true belief that they are taking money and risking it with knowledge that they have. With knowledge that they have accumulated, knowing this is the smart thing to do with my money and the smart situation, because of all the background information I have.

It's different than a regular casino. Why isn't there a line out the door on Sunday to pull a slot machine? Because a slot machine is random. There is nothing I can do to affect that slot machine, despite what anybody will ever tell you. It is a random number generator. But I know about the Bills. I know that Josh Allen is not going to lose to the Steelers. I know Josh Allen's going to do this, this, and this.

So I use that stock example. You can probably script to me, oh, Josh always starts off slow in the first quarter, but then in the second quarter, he hits peak [?] coming out of the locker room. He's always fired up, and we're going to have this. So I'm going to bet on over touchdowns in the third. And we could go on and on and on. And that's how we got here today in sports betting. Because the casual fan, the person watching sports, has been doing this in an armchair, like my father since 1956, watching his beloved New York Yankees, and can sit there and tell you all these things about the Yankees and all this information. And if you ask him who's going to win a game, he has a belief this is the answer because of his previous knowledge. That's no different than a doctor saying, this is why I think you're sick, because I studied all these medical books and I've seen this 45 times in a row.

The difference, however, is on the other side is somebody who is creating a line and creating a structure that is just enticing enough for you to believe your information's right, while still earning a profit. There's your holistic psychological viewpoint in a nutshell. And this is the second lecture I teach in my class, before we even get into how this stuff works. And then, if you want me to peel back some more layers, I can talk about what we see and what the sportsbook looks like. But that's how we got to where we are today.

Eric: Yeah, I would love to continue to unravel that a little bit, and partly, what do the universities, where does the protection come in? And maybe it's agency. Maybe the individual has to take agency, but it's hard, because if they don't have control over that, whatever that becomes.

Matt: Correct. Well, I think a couple of things. I think it would be in the best interest, in my opinion, of universities not to allow advertisement of sportsbooks and sports betting on campuses. Allow students to understand what they're getting into. And I'll also lump the prediction market world into this, too, because those products behave very similarly. So let's say both in this example. Students are going to college to learn and learn how to critically think. An 18-, 19-, 20-year-old has not yet gotten to a level where they can critically think and understand the ramifications of their actions. It's why the drinking age is 21. It's why sports betting should be done at 21 [?]. Allow percolation time for a person to realize what the problems and challenges are. And don't put it right in front of them. Don't advertise this on campus. Don't allow brand ambassadors on campus. Don't allow, like, this event sponsored by DraftKings. It's probably not a good strategy and structure for the collegiate world. That's a component that is concerning at the college level.

Now, when it comes to personal responsibility and agency, this is the other big wave problem we have. Yes, it is at the end of the day your responsibility to exercise strong judgment in anything that could lead to a negative situation, whether that is the overindulgence of alcohol, the overindulgence of food, sports betting, recreational drug usage, speeding on the highway. We can go on and on about things that people do where it is ultimately up to you to make sure that you're not engaging in these, because you understand the negative ramifications.

However, the problem that sports betting leaves out for society is that there are only so many people around that are involved in it. There's only so many slices of that pie to go around. There's only so many customers. For a sports betting company to exist, they have to have two things. Number one, they have to have a very robust customer base. They have to have thousands upon thousands of customers, because their profit margins are razor thin. They're only about four to five percent for every game that's being played. The second half of that is they have to have those customers being repeat customers over and over and over again. So, in defense of sportsbooks, it is in their best interest for somebody not to get over-addicted and go bankrupt, because that's actually a customer they don't want.

So when you have a business model in place that needs thousands upon thousands of customers and needs repeat business, they're going to be driving a very heavy blitz marketing campaign at multiple individuals around the world, because there's only so many of those individuals that engage in sports betting. And statistically, when it comes to gambling, 85 percent of the gambling population, their average salary is about $60,000 or less. So it's not high-end income individuals that are participating in this. It's lower-income individuals. So when those individuals lose money, it becomes a very big effect on those individuals and people.

So that's why it's such a big phenomenon. You have a business model that needs volume. It needs high-end content. And I hate to say this, it's not a knock on Walmart, but Walmart makes money. Amazon makes money. And they have great supply chain lines, because they can buy billions of products and outfit them in all their locations and stores, so they can charge low, low prices, because they have high volume. Sports betting needs a lot of people to be profitable. And there's only so many to go around. And the only way to get more people to your site is to be very effective in your marketing campaign. Welcome to 2026.

Eric: Yeah. When we continue to put in more games, expansion, the College Football Playoff, right? The NHL, for example, adds two more games to the regular season. Little things like that just give more surface area, more opportunities to place a bet. And you could speak to this. How involved are the sportsbooks? I mean, they want this, right? Advertisers want this. It's all about generating more money.

Matt: Well, the sportsbooks are heavily involved simply because they need high volume. It's a very easy answer. Why are sportsbooks involved? Why do they want more games? More games, more volume, more money. The more people involved. That's the structure.

Here's where my concern comes into play. You have individuals in gambling that talk about responsible gaming. And many sportsbooks are very quick to point to, we have responsible gaming structures, responsible gaming factors. There at times can be an educational concern: is the responsible gaming done at the level that is necessary, or is it done at a level that doesn't impact the overall business? That's not a knock on sportsbooks. It's, how far does a sportsbook need to go to make sure their customers are doing it for entertainment purposes, versus doing it because they're trying to make money, or doing it because there's an addiction problem?

And I'll also be the first one to defend the fact that when we get to a point where we start regulating how people spend their money in the United States, we start trampling on First Amendment rights. We can't put our country in a situation where we're dictating to people how they should live and spend and behave. Mind you, the disclaimer, of course: legally, professionally, and not in any way that harms another person. But if I want to go to the movies on Friday and a government steps in and says, Matt, you're not allowed to go to the movies on Friday because we think it's best, we start going down a very slippery slope that moves away from our democratic process. And of course, Matt, why are you talking politics? This whole thing started with Congress repealing PASPA. So politics have been entrenched in sports betting, and now in prediction markets.

Eric: Yeah. Prediction markets is the other side of it. Not the other side of it. Like you said, it behaves the same way. There's no way to crystal-ball this, because we don't know. And there's probably legislation that could take place, or certain situations come about. But there was a point in time, I think it was three universities that were actually giving bonuses in stadium, right, to kids that would sign up. And they obviously took that down because they had a lot of pressure on it. Where are we going with this? Because we're just getting more games. There's more money involved. And obviously, more money is going into it and more people are watching the game, because you could argue that more people are watching the game because they're betting on it. I know they did a study in the Premier League: if you bet on a game, you're 75% more likely to watch the game.

Matt: 100%. That's 100% true. Why did we advertise the Patriots games at DraftKings and at Foxwoods when I was there? Because people would bet and they'd stay the entire time watching the game. They would then partake in food and beverage. It was a profitable customer and a good client.

So you're exactly right. Where do we see it going? If you look at shifting demographics and population trends, we have less people of age coming up at this particular time. Parents are having less children. So the model right now, economically, is that the growth of sports betting is going to peak about 2030. It's growing between 4% and 7% each year. Then we're going to see survival of the fittest. Which businesses had platforms and structures in place that kept their customers, retained their customers, and have a good client base? They're going to succeed. I would almost put it in the soda brand kind of world. You're going to have your Coke and your Pepsi. You'll have a couple other ones out there, but you're going to have just a couple big players in the industry. So that's where we see things going from an economic standpoint.

A big question for researchers: if Congress gave me carte blanche and let me speak on the floor, and they said, well, what should we do? I'd say, number one, we need to have independent research groups from universities researching this at the youth level. Because we don't have enough data on what's happening and what's going on to truly understand the phenomenon and the trends and the problems. We can make speculation. We need research data. We need research information. And there was a small committee of bipartisan senators that were trying to put this through, and it really hasn't gotten any traction. If I was a sportsbook, I would fund that. I would literally fund that entire thing. And if they go, why in the world are you funding it? I'd go, because my business model depends on my product surviving. And if it doesn't survive, I'm out of business. That's why I'm funding this.

So we need research on this. We need additional data. We need plans in place that people can look at and say, okay, this is where we see the trend. This is the direction [?]. This is where things are at. Because one question that's really being thrown out is, are we going to see more people with gambling problems? Are we going to see more people in Gamblers Anonymous? The question has to be, okay, let's just say back before sports betting was legalized in multiple states and regulated, if we had 100 sports bettors, one would go to Gamblers Anonymous. Well, okay, so now you say, well, now I have 10 at Gamblers Anonymous. But if I'm doing the math and I have 1,000, that means the trend is actually completely the same and people are acting responsibly. So even though we have more, it's just because of more volume, not because of an increase. These are questions that need to be asked and answered accordingly, and then a proper plan can go into place.

Because if it's the reverse, oh my God, we have this high increase in individuals with gambling problems and addictions, we can then fund that appropriately with the right funds and add safeguards from a legislation standpoint into the betting model to try to lower that. Same way we put a seatbelt in a car, and we cracked down on drinking and driving, and we studied road patterns to lower accidents. We put safety checks in for firearms. When we understand the numbers behind it and the reason something's going wrong, we can then do something about it. And the first step is research and study.

Eric: The sports betting companies, the sportsbooks, I would imagine would be involved in that. No different than a car putting in a seatbelt and better safety mechanisms. There's a cost to that for them, but there's also the benefit.

Matt: And I totally understand that. But I'll give a very crappy, morbid example. If I don't have a seatbelt in my car, and my driver crashes and dies at the age of 21, he's not going to buy another vehicle from that company. So if a person gets themselves in a negative situation at 21, they're not a customer for life. That's a hurt on the bottom line of that sportsbook. So you would want to be involved in the responsible structuring of making this stay in the entertainment space. And look, I worked in the industry. I teach in the industry. There's a fun entertainment capacity about it. There are people that like to sports bet. There are people that like to go to Coachella and concerts. I like one. I don't like the other. That's the beauty of being in America. You get the choice. You get the free will to do whichever one you want.

Eric: But yeah, the overarching theme here is the changing business of sports. It applies to everything that we're doing, and you're teaching people and you have a background in this. And I would imagine the skills that are needed today, in 2026 and going forward, are similar in all these different areas. We've talked about transparency, trust, judgment, things like that. And not that long ago, you'd come out of school in engineering, computer science, right? And I'm not saying those are bad places to go. Obviously, we talked about coding in R and how it's still useful. And if you know the most about that, it's still going to be useful if you're using AI. What are the skills that you're seeing, especially for young people, that they need, not just to go into the sports business world, because it's all related? What are you looking for? And, as you're obviously tied to this, what are the employers looking for? Because I believe it's changed, and we've heard from a lot of people that it has drastically changed, not only in the last 10, 20 years, but in the last couple of years. What are the employers looking for from these people?

Matt: So let's start with a few that I love to bring up in class. First is work ethic. There's the classic CEO example: you're the first one in, last one out. Look, you can be a really good worker and work eight hours a day. It's about how you're functioning in those eight hours and how much effort you're putting in. So it starts at the basics. It's work ethic. Am I willing to put effort into my job and position, or am I just there to collect a check? If you want to work in sports and you're just there to collect the check, you're not going to survive. You need to be somebody that's putting effort into their job. So that's your first factor.

Your second: can I overcome challenge? Can I overcome a difficult situation? Do I not run from that? One of the things I think a lot of young people lost during COVID-19 was, they went to this remote world of education during a time when it's critical for development. And the philosophy that was told to them was, listen, if you can't get it done, it's okay. If it's hard, we'll figure it out. Because why? The world had never gone through something like that. We didn't know how to handle it. Unfortunately, what it left in a lot of younger individuals was, I have flexibility. If it's difficult, I don't have to worry about it. Somebody's going to take care of that. You need to understand, I have a hard situation in front of me. I'm going to face it, and I have to overcome that and succeed through that. Or if I'm going to fail, I've got to be okay with that. That's why student athletes, in my opinion, make really great employees, because they know how to lose. They've had situations where they've had to lose. So, work ethic. Being able to overcome challenge.

Identify, in the sports world and in the business world, your value. You have to do it numerically. It's not so much, Matt's a hard worker, Matt overcomes challenge. It's, oh, by the way, Matt being employed here brings in this amount of money to the organization. His sales figures are this. His numbers are that. Because at the end of the day in sports, everything comes down to a financial number. I hate to say it, but everything comes down to a financial number. I don't know a salesman that people love just because they're so great. If you make two phone calls a day in the office and have one out of two sales, versus the other person that makes 300 phone calls and brings in 75 sales, just because you're nice, it's not going to let you stick around. So you have to have a skill set that's quantifiable, and you have to be able to quantify your structure.

Now let's get down to, okay, so what study things should you be doing? For me, I am big in the sports world on, that's why I love my foundations of front office management, you need to know a little bit about every single job and position that's part of your organization, because they will all impact each other. I am very proud of my PGA education, because I learned every part of the golf industry. I took a class in turfgrass. I learned how the grass grows and why the superintendent does this. I took a class in teaching the game of golf, merchandising golf, technology in golf, playing and coaching in golf, so that I could speak to every person across the board. A professional in sports needs a foundation where you may not do marketing, but you understand why marketing says we're going to launch on Friday with that Instagram post. Or why your coaches are coming to you and saying, from a player development standpoint, hey, listen, I'm not starting this player because his knee is at this, and if they get to this level, we're not going to play. So you have to have a foundation of all structure in that.

And then finally, an understanding of financial spreadsheets, return on investment, accounting. In my class, I like to teach revenue strategies and growth. How do we grow revenue? And more importantly, if you walk into a sports team and that question is asked of you, how would you grow revenue, you at least have some idea or answer of where that's going. So if that kid walked into my front office, and I'm a diehard Eagles fan, so I'll use my Philadelphia Eagles. I'm Howie Roseman, and a kid walks into my office who is a hard worker, has a strong work ethic, can overcome challenge, understands every part of the Eagles operation from the concession stand all the way up to the player development stand, knows what a spreadsheet looks like, and knows how to generate revenue and growth. That's the person I'm giving an interview to.

Eric: Love it. That's excellent. Now, last question I want to ask you. You're working in post-grad, right? Grad school, master's programs. AI, you know, there's a lot of disruption to education right now. Why should a student go from undergrad to grad school in a 2026-and-beyond world, as opposed to maybe going into the workforce, or maybe going into the workforce first and then getting their master's later on? Either way, what's the upside there? Obviously, it's going to depend on each kid, so this is not just some sort of general question, but overall, the questions that you've heard from other students or parents or families. And this is unrelated, but maybe it is related: I know fewer people are getting PhDs because AI's involved. And you can reframe my question too, to make it make more sense.

Matt: Yeah, so.

Eric: How about I throw this out at you? If someone were to say, Matt, I want to go to grad school, what's the best plan to do it?

Matt: Let me speak to it like this. If you said to me, I want to go to grad school, Matt, what's the best plan to do it, and why should I be doing it right now? Let me throw a few things out there. Number one, it is very hard to go back into education. Life happens with a lot of individuals and a lot of people. Being 21 and 22, you're usually, in most situations, not tied down to a lot of responsibilities. Thanks to President Obama, you had the ability to stay on your parents' health insurance, for example, until 26. Pro right there. Health insurance is expensive. If you're fortunate enough to have mom and dad helping you out, that's a great perk right there.

Number two, you've been in education your entire life. What's two more years? You already understand the routine, the structure, the studying, the method. Number three, you're maybe not tied down to a very high-level job, a marriage, children, other responsibilities where studying for an assignment just can't happen because you have to get up in the middle of the night and feed a child, or you have to go to work for 40, 50, 60 hours to put food on the table. You're in a position where there's less responsibility. You can devote more time to the education. So I advocate for going immediately into that world.

But how do you do it then? Number one, you should be going to grad school and working full-time, or working in some capacity. Gone are the days where it's like, I'm working on a master's degree. What do you do the rest of the time? Nothing. You're taking nine credits. Yes, nine credits are hard. But you know what? Also go work 30, 35 hours elsewhere. Because a lot of entry-level jobs, specifically in the sports field, are low-paying and are on off hours when academic classes aren't happening. You take your grad school classes from 9 to 12. Most stadiums aren't even open then. It's longer hours, but you're younger. Your body can take those sleepless nights, those four-hour nights, those days when you're working. Because then you're building a degree foundation and you're building a work foundation at a rate that you know is hard to build.

Now I come out of grad school with a master's degree and two years of work experience. I become very valuable, and I can ascend at a higher level, versus starting off and maybe working that entry-level job, or maybe life happens, and then all of a sudden it's like, do I need to go to that next level? What's my differentiator? What's my separator? Because that leads to my last thing [?]. 94% of individuals that are the age of 18 right now will be graduating with a college degree. What's the differentiator and the separator? I now have a master's degree.

Going back into history, my parents were a perfect example of this generation. A person that had a college degree when my mom and dad were growing up, and they were born in 1956, had a job. So all my parents' generation thought of is, you send your kid to college, they're going to get a good-paying job, because the few people that we see that have degrees have successful jobs. Here's the problem. Every mom and dad in America thought that, which meant that when you have 94% of people that have something, it actually becomes the norm. Yep, you got a college degree. That's great. Everybody has the college degree. What's the differentiator? Work experience is one. A master's degree can be the other. And do it at a time period when you're less tied down and less structured into that. And that's where the value comes from on that end.

Also, a lot of master's degree programs have assistantships and stipends available for you to be employed at the university. Why does the university love hiring grad students? It's short. We're cheap. We're not expensive. You can pay us less money than you would have to pay a full-time employee. At a university, and we spent almost an hour talking about needing to save money on a revenue model, bringing in grad student employees to do certain tasks and jobs that they're qualified for is a lot cheaper strategy than bringing in a full-time employee that has to be paid benefits. So that's my advocation for it. Of course, it's going to be different for every person, every situation. But if I'm looking at the norm across the board, that's why I think it's the best strategy.

Eric: Yeah, that's excellent. Matt, what did we not cover that I should have asked you? Anything along those lines? And what's the best way?

Matt: Yeah. NIL education for those under the age of 18. We talked about college students not being educated in the sports betting world. We talked about me teaching my students. There's a population that's really not getting the information they need, and that's the 14- to 16- to 17-year-olds that agents are talking to because they saw them at an AAU basketball game and they dominate in the DMV area, or they're on the best travel team, or they have five offers from Power Four schools, a full scholarship at the rank of five-star.

And these individuals are talking to agents. They're talking to people who are like, sign this here and we'll give you this money. We want you to be a part of this NIL deal. We're not talking about a school collective. We're talking about a brand. We're talking about an agent wanting to rep you. A 16-year-old has no idea how that's working and what that function is. When I was 16, I was trying to get my learner's permit, and I was working at the high school in the summertime, and I played golf. That's what I did. Hit a white ball into a hole. Don't crash mom and dad's car, and make sure that you're working every day. That was my day in life. I had no idea how a contract works. I don't know the structuring behind that.

Academic institutions, I think, because of how big NIL is, have a social responsibility to not only educate the current students, the current student athletes, but the younger generations. The vast majority of colleges have high school programs. There's no reason why a Power Four school with a $44 million NIL collective cannot also have an education program on NIL for the youth in their region. Take the state of Florida, for example, a powerful football state. Why can't Florida, Florida State, Miami, all these schools get together and say, we're also going to have our summer college program where you can showcase your skills on the court or on the football field or on the soccer field or on the pitch, and also, we're going to teach you how do you handle an agent coming up and talking to you? What should you say? What can you not do?

Because I'm very fearful that a lot of these kids are going to be signing deals and getting into situations where a stranger now owns their collective rights for the next five, six years, and they're tied up in litigation, and they can't do what they should be able to do. Go to college at 18, spend time with their friends, and play their sport. That's what they should be concentrating on. Not going to court because somebody's trying to steal their money. That's the last thing I want to see a 19-year-old kid do. So I'm passionate about that, because I just see it being a problem, especially here in the DMV area, watching agents talking to 14-, 15-year-old kids and handing business cards to mom and dad. That worries me a little bit.

Eric: Yeah, it worries a lot of people. We've talked to a lot of attorneys in this space, and they're paranoid about it, right? And there's not a lot of case law history when it comes to this stuff. So a lot of attorneys just opt out and are like, I don't even know what cases to bring up. And yeah, it's significant. So Matt, this has been amazing. How do people connect with you and learn more about your program and American?

Matt: So American University Sports Business Management, Kogod School of Business, any of the websites on AU, totally great way to connect with me. Type Matt Bakowicz into LinkedIn. I've got a professional profile all attached to the university. Please reach out to me through that. Or if you want to see what we do on a daily basis, I'm on Instagram, Matt.Bakowicz [?]. It is not me fishing or my personal, like, shopping at the grocery store. I actually use it. It's Professor Matt Bakowicz, and it's all about what we do on a daily basis.

I'll just give you a small example. One of the posts last week was, I gave the students an NIL collective, and they had to make six changes to that collective. And I gave them parameters that they had to use for those changes: how are we establishing money and payment, and are these tasks legal? And we had Ole Miss out there, LSU, Penn State. We were using real players and real structures on that. So it's a day in the life of what I teach, and it's a really good insight into that. But I also just love to talk to anybody that wants to reach out, talk sports, talk about the world that we're approaching, that we're living in. Because you know what? At the end of the day, the more conversations we have, I think the better chance we have of solving what might be some of the future problems.

Eric: Yeah. And the enthusiasm, but also with that, the knowledge that you bring to it, and the history and the experience, I think it's amazing. So I appreciate all that you shared with us today and the time that you gave us. Thank you so much.

Matt: Well, thank you, Eric. I appreciate that.

Eric: This has been a Sports E-Media production.