Podcast Alert: Greg Sankey

Transcript

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Greg Sankey: [00:00:00] I’ve never envisioned working in professional sports and I don’t, despite those who say, Oh, it’s just the same. The reality is it’s not. And I watch young people who are playing at a high level in the NFL, major league baseball, the NBA, who come back to our campus and I’ve seen them. I’m like, why are you here?

And he said, because this is home.

AJ Maestas: Hello and welcome to the navigating sports business podcast. I’m your host, AJ Maestas. Founder of Navigate, a data driven consulting firm guiding major strategies and decisions in sports and

entertainment.

AJ Maestas: This week, I’m thrilled to be joined by Greg Sankey, the Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. Just so you know, Greg, we are proud to work with you and grateful for all that you do to move collegiate athletics forward. So how are you

Greg Sankey: doing today? I’m well, the [00:01:00] last nine months, I think nine months plus a week, you never know what’s going to walk through the door.

So today so far, relatively so good.

AJ Maestas: Yeah. Well, maybe you’re willing to share with some of our listeners, lady about daily distractions that you experienced, but it’s without a doubt that you have an impressive resume of accolades, mostly in the collegiate athletic side of our world. You yourself were a student athlete at one point playing basketball and then baseball at different universities.

You got your start as the director of intramural sports at Utica. You worked in compliance and services. You were a golf coach where. You won district coach of the year in 1991. Congratulations. And you were even a conference commissioner of the Southland conference before joining the sec. Did you always know that this was your path that you were destined for collegiate athletics?

Greg Sankey: No I started my freshman year in college back in 82. I was studying electrical engineering. I did that for two years and it just came to the point where my passion wasn’t going to lie and circuits and resistors and those things. [00:02:00] And I spent too much time thinking about all the weekend ahead.

And I didn’t want to live life that way and pivoted into education. As I tried to sort it out, I really thought I’d teach and coach at the high school level, maybe someday work in a college setting. And lo and behold, the Utica college opportunity emerged right after I graduated Cortland. And I was able to pursue my master’s degree at Syracuse as part of that job on permitted tuition, which was great.

I got experience and education all at once. And probably that is the moment where working in college athletics became an intentional focus. My wife and I have been married probably three or four months, had a conversation where I was at the end of my master’s degree, had to pursue an internship and I said I wonder if I can do this in division one college sports and if I’m able to find something, how far it might go.

30 years later, lo and behold, here I am.

AJ Maestas: Good for you. One of my great mentors, Jim Kaler out at Ohio University has this poster over his desk and it says, find something [00:03:00] you love to do for a living. You’ll never work another day the rest of your life. We’ve all heard variations of that, but you’re pretty darn lucky that from day one, Cause and we’re all grateful that you didn’t go on to become an engineer.

What a waste of talent that would have been.

Greg Sankey: I wouldn’t want to cross a bridge or turn on a light bulb that I designed. So I think I made the right choice for society as well as for myself.

AJ Maestas: I appreciate how humble you are in our conversations. You’re always so self deprecating. It’s something I’ve noticed in a lot of great leaders because he probably would have been a great engineer as well, but we’ll get into that later because I know you’re very well read on the subject of leadership.

And I’m hoping you can share things with our listeners, what you’ve learned from all your reading. I can’t help but dive into some of the truly great things that you’ve done as a leader for the SEC during COVID. From keeping the football season alive, when very few people believed that was a sure thing, to creating the SEC Council on Racial Equity and Social Justice.

Tell us, how has the SEC had so [00:04:00] much success during COVID 19, and what did you and your team do differently than industry peers?

Greg Sankey: I’ll give a lot of credit back to our campus leaders, both at the President Chancellor level and the Athletic Director level for the willingness to keep moving forward. If there was any real focus, it was not to just stop, but to keep moving forward, knowing that at any moment you could have disruption because we experienced that in March.

Combining my learning, my Lifelong learning with adaptation to this environment, something I read really early on was in a book about military tactics and talking about how you’re operating rhythm has to develop and has to adapt to. The operational environment, so we had a new operational environment starting in mid March 12th.

We shut everything down. Couldn’t have our meetings had to adapt and very quickly. The communication cycle was the 1st change in operating rhythm. We just [00:05:00] finished last week. Our 40th. Conference call or video conference with our presidents and chancellors. That’s a more than one a week since this has been disrupted.

Our athletics director started with daily video conferences and then three times a week now or two weekly. And the ability to be continually adaptive in this environment has helped us and all of that AJ has been based on effective communication.

AJ Maestas: Now, I know a number of other conferences are also in weekly communication, and I know there’s been sharing of best practices, but yet still, I believe the SEC has missed fewer games due to COVID than other conferences, and that’s been pretty consistent despite starting earlier than most.

Is there a secret sauce there or something beyond the communications?

Greg Sankey: Yeah, probably how we thought about the problem. So if you just define. The problem as we’re in an environment with COVID 19, we’ve never played football, volleyball, soccer in that environment before. That’s just [00:06:00] a fact. Then you back up and try to think about how do you make decisions and a dynamic.

and new environment. So there’s a lot of things that are the same. We wear helmets and pads. We did that a year ago. We play soccer with the same ball. The fields are the same. The uniforms are much the same but the overall operating environment is different. We started from trying to think through decisions.

And so it was can we compete? Can we support competition? And then should we? And those are really two different questions that the can in life versus the should. There’s a lot of things we can do, but we probably shouldn’t do individually, right? And we learned a lot of those when we’re adolescents and young adults, and hopefully are a little bit wiser later on.

And we created a construct, really a timeline to think through when decisions needed to be made. And AJ, I’ll just go back to March. We stopped everything. And the first decision we had to make was, would we allow distance communication with student [00:07:00] athletes for film purposes or team meetings? And it was really a stressful conversation because we’d had people diagnosed with COVID, you were, you’re watching surges in March and April real health problems.

Again, the dynamic environment about how are we going to treat the virus and people ill with the virus. Really a difficult conversation, but eventually said, okay, two hours of zoom calls with your teams every week will be fine. And then we had to grow from there. And so what I did is I said, here’s what it’s going to look like from probably mid April until Labor Day weekend.

Labor Day weekend being when football season was scheduled to start. And what are the significant events? In that time frame and when do we make decisions before those events are upon us and you fast forward for us. I didn’t want and we had difference of opinions, but actually came to the same conclusion.

I didn’t think it was right to start practice with helmets and pads and then stop and then have to start again. I didn’t think that was healthy. One of the lessons. In fact, it was [00:08:00] Scott Strickland. Yeah, University of Florida shared a podcast from a guy named Andy Stanley, who leads a church in the Atlanta area.

And the point of the podcast was, in times of uncertainty, what people need is clarity. That was a really good learning point for me. In mid April, I had a biostatistician at South Carolina, Stella Self, who’s the president there, Bob Caslin, connect me to her. She said, we’ve never been through this before.

We’re learning. New information every day. If you can wait as long as possible to make major decisions, you’re gonna make better decisions because the information will change daily and you’ll have better information on which to base those major decisions. And so that kind of brought us to the end of July, just knowing the timing and sequencing of what was needed in football to look out and say, okay, what have we learned?

We learned Memorial Day. Three weeks later, there was an uptick in covid cases. July 4th, three weeks later, there was an uptick. And so you go to Labor Day weekend, that was the end of our window when classes were resuming, in person [00:09:00] learning, resuming on our campuses between mid August to early September.

That informed our decision to start September 26th, which was later than our colleague conferences who started in the normal time frame. It was later than what they had decided. That allowed us to get all of our teams prepared. It lengthened our preparation time. So we had more recovery time. I think it was healthier for our student athletes trying to be prepared from a soft tissue, musculoskeletal standpoint, also cardiovascular, but also recovery in dealing with disruption.

We went three weeks and never had disruption in games. We went three straight weeks, playing seven games every week. And then the disruption started, which was the next part of the planning to say, we’re going to have disruption. We can anticipate that. And so we have to build in flexibility. So some open weeks, mid season.

And then an open week at the end of the season to schedule rescheduled contests. Once disruption started, it never ended through the rest [00:10:00] of the season. So we made it through those first three weeks and our mentality was let’s play four weeks. Then we’ll have three weeks where we have open dates where we can reschedule games.

We’ll play four more weeks and finish. That was the hope, but hope is not a plan is a great phrase. And so the plan had to be more thoughtful. And as we talk today, there are two games out of our total 70 game conference schedule, we’re not able to play. And that’s pretty good success rate. 68 of 70 is well over probably 95% success at doing what we said.

And, that then included a third point, which was flexibility, collaboration, and the willing. Willingness to adapt. So we, in mid October on a Friday, moved six games that were already scheduled. We’d never done that before with eight days notice to move games. We reschedule a game on a Monday, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

We’re going to play in Nashville and Arkansas and Missouri. We’re going to play in Missouri. By the end of that Monday. [00:11:00] Vanderbilt was playing at Missouri instead of at home against Tennessee. Missouri was playing at home, but not against Arkansas and Tennessee and Arkansas were off on Monday for Saturday.

We’ve never been through that before. All of those elements, the timeline and the thinking about how decisions had to be made. Using the information we gained about potential disruption, building a plan that had flexibility built in and then having people buy into that plan and making it work.

All of that was the foundation for success in an environment where back in early September before we played, people thought we might only play six or seven games. Lo and behold, most of our teams will play all 10 of the games, maybe on different dates, but they’ll play all 10. 68 out of 70 is incredible.

AJ Maestas: With the benefit of hindsight, you could easily tell the story you just told, but I have the privilege of having these conversations with you. I remember when we, the Navigate team put out a projection on likelihood of college football being played and at [00:12:00] what time frame and you said exactly one of the things you just shared here, which was, we learn new information every day.

As much time as we have to learn more gives us time and leaving flexibility in there. Sadly, my alma mater. With only four games played having missed both of their key rivals due to cancellations was somehow still the default champion of the North in the pack 12, but unable to play in the championship game.

And there’s no time left in the pack 12 right now.

Greg Sankey: And we had to make hard decisions like, not playing. Non conference opponents, and there’s Clemson, South Carolina rivalry that’s been played for over a century consecutively.

It wasn’t played this year. We had Arkansas playing at Notre Dame, LSU playing at Texas, in state rivalries with ACC opponents. Alabama opening up with USC, Auburn with Virginia. Every one of those, it hurt to say no to, but When we looked at our schedule, our non conference games were [00:13:00] spread from Labor Day weekend until the very last weekend of the regular season, as we always do.

I use that as an example that back in July and August, you’re making decisions in a multivariable environment that is completely dynamic. On a daily basis, and so what’s the best way to use your judgment to make decisions? Because, we, you and I’ve had the conversation, data won’t answer everything you’re gonna have to apply judgment, and then you’re gonna have to be comfortable in those judgments.

But the data can help. So I cited the three week lag time on spikes around holidays. That’s data that informs one’s judgment. And as we look back at non conference scheduling, And just thought through if we’re fighting with a school in early November about, hey, you can’t play the non conference opponent because we have to put a conference game there.

The message for me was the best way to complete a schedule is to play only SEC [00:14:00] versus SEC competition. As hard as that is, the rigor of our schedule, I think over time has shown to be more challenging than any of our colleague conferences. As hard as that is, if we’re going to play, Best way to have success at actually playing is this conference only format.

I think that’s proven to be correct because my estimation with 125 FBS football programs, if everyone had tried to begin on Labor Day weekend, internally, I said, I think 10 to 20%, there’s a pretty good range, but 10 to 20% of those 125 programs would have to Postpone or cancel or reschedule games. And just given the feeling of uncertainty that was present, if we had 25 programs not play that first weekend, I think that could have disrupted everything.

And fast forward to what we’re experiencing in basketball, you’re seeing about 20% of games on a weekly basis having to be canceled or rescheduled. But we’ve had the momentum of being able to do things [00:15:00] and the willingness to adjust so basketball can weather that disruption. And I don’t think back in late August, early September, football would have been able to continue forward.

And that was another judgment point that used data, that used objective information, at least a projection on my part, that said to us, let’s set a new start date and let’s act independently and give ourselves, the Southeastern Conference, the best chance to play a football season. That’s why September 26 became a date moved three weeks after Labor Day weekend.

Remember that three week surge that we’ve learned about. Three weeks after, a little bit more than three weeks after our campus is a return with the thought you’d see spikes there, let it settle out and then we can play and all of that, I think, combined to be really wise and decision making it and I’ll carry it forward because people will say why didn’t you do that in basketball?

In basketball, the willingness to adapt was there nationally. And so we’re dealing with that disruption that I thought would be there [00:16:00] and non conference playing. You’ve seen Duke, for example, say we’re going to stop non conference play, which is effectively what we did in football.

And, we’re all in this dynamic environment, making the best decisions possible. It’s a long narrative to inform the whys of decision making.

AJ Maestas: Those are interesting and that decision making process is something that’s fascinating to learn about. There’s many times when we’re discussing something where I think people would kill to be a fly on the wall, and it is very easy to judge right in hindsight and say, why didn’t you consider these?

But that process has clearly yielded a very positive outcome. And you have peers held by different leadership and different rules and different, choices to compare and contrast against. So I think it’s a real victory and congratulations. Cause that does come down to leadership.

You, you mentioned a book you read, do you recall the title? Or the author of that military leadership book.

Greg Sankey: Yeah, it was Jocko Willink, and he’s a, I think, a former Navy SEAL operator. I’ve read several of his [00:17:00] books, and so the most recent one, if you give me two seconds, I can tell you exactly the name of that book.

Because when I read I read with a highlighter every time, highlighter is my friend. And then I have someone now who helps me. I used to type the notes. Now I have someone who helps me. So it’ll take my highlighted part of a book, which is distilling down the best parts as I read and notes.

So it was leaders, leadership, strategy, and tactics. By Jocko, J O C K O Willink, W I L L I N K, and just a very direct title, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. And the operating rhythm lesson was actually an example he used from John Heisman, for whom the Heisman Trophy is named, when he coached football at Auburn University and instituted in about the late 1800s, a hurry up offense.

And the author’s observation was, what he did is he changed the operating rhythm of the game. And I happened to read that At a time where we were trying to [00:18:00] figure out how to adapt and it was a light bulb for me that just take a step back and say, what is our right operating rhythm in this environment?

And that has been an asset for us while we’re talking

AJ Maestas: about books. I know you’re a voracious reader I’d like to think that I am as well. I’m probably a book a week type person, but you Overwhelmingly read about leadership. I’m sure listeners would love to hear your book list. Is there a top five or top 10 you’re willing to share?

Greg Sankey: Yeah, that varies by time. So as I’ve shared different books, I’ll give you just a couple, like big picture. There’s a book I read 25 years ago called the life you’ve always wanted by an author named John Ortberg. That just struck me at that moment in my life. And it was, it was an observation about, Hey, as a father I long every day to read a story to my kids at bedtime and we’ve had dinner and laughed as a family.

That’s my goal and then the day will end and I realize I did none of that. And his observation was I was [00:19:00] disappointed in my lack of disappointment. And I was living in and that forms adjustment and a little bit later in the book, he observed I was trying to seek balance in life. I had gone through a little bit of a health crisis, spent a night in the hospital with atrial fibrillation, and so I would visit with people about how do you balance life and about chapter 12 of the book, he says.

Balance is an insufficient goal to pursue in life and wow, I just bought a bunch of people that are in C suite positions lunch to find out how they balanced it. Here’s this author saying that’s not enough. And so it informed principles about that would guide my decision making and my life that I still use.

The book by John or board of a book by Andrew Hill, called Be Quick, But Don’t Hurry. It’s about his time playing for John Wooden at UCLA and how he spent 20 years not liking John Wooden. And then realized when he led CBS studios that every day he used principles, he’d learn playing basketball at [00:20:00] UCLA under John Wood.

And it was I actually had the opportunity to have John Wooden autograph that book, which is over on my bookshelf in my office. Pretty cool. And the old Testament book of Ecclesiastes people like that’s odd, but it’s a person. Who wrote the books King Solomon at the end of his life, and he just walks through everything he did to find satisfaction and happiness is being insufficient and it deals with tough issues.

The end of the book talks about growing old and the poetic metaphors that he presents and then how should one live? So I’ll save the ending and challenge someone to read it. I read a book this summer called Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets by Andy Stanley. I referenced him in a podcast earlier, just a great book.

In fact, I’m not going to tell my family to listen until after Christmas because I bought them all that book. That’s how much it impacted me. One of the books a year or two years ago, I read is by an author named Annie Duke, who is a professional poker player, actually. But had [00:21:00] training and data science.

It’s called thinking in bets and it begins, AJ, you would probably understand this, the past, the Seahawks through against the Patriots and the Super Bowl that was intercepted her observation up front is. There’s an outcome based bias in judging that where people say what a bad decision by Pete Carroll and she walks you through the percentages to say that was actually the right decision because the percentage of the ball being intercepted there is so small and the benefits of having a clock stoppage for an incomplete pass.

Are so great to reserve timeouts that you maintain the run past threat for a couple more plays and I bring that forward to this circumstance. I went back and reread my book notes multiple times through the summer because I said to our presidents, chancellors and athletics directors, we’re going to have better information.

And better data when we come to a decision, but it won’t be complete. And so [00:22:00] judgment will have to be applied to the circumstance. And I drew that out of that book, Thinking and Bets by Annie Duke. So there’s a book about Churchill. It’s called How Churchill Waged War that I read in February.

And it was just about the hard decisions he made and things I did not even understand and how, as he’d make decisions, the balance of his status as prime minister and the balance of the early stages of World War II in particular were completely fleeting. And we look back now and what a great leader and then the aftermath for Churchill of World War II, when all of a sudden he wasn’t prime minister and where leadership worked in one setting, but was rejected in that post war setting.

All of those are just some of the examples and I could go through because the beauty of typing those book notes as I go to a reading notes file and I can tell you chronologically the great books I’ve read. I love that.

AJ Maestas: I’m really grateful you just shared that. [00:23:00] Churchill is unbelievable, especially when you put in context the Prime Minister that he followed, and the decisions that were made, and there was some razor thin margin for error there in World War II.

The book, by the way, on calculated bets and sports, I think a lot of the sports fans that might listen to this later would really benefit from understanding that Seahawks game. Fortunately, I’ve got a lot of Seahawks friends and family haven’t gone to school in Seattle and grew up in Alaska and what have you.

I was on that nearside 25 yard line and it was pretty shocking. But I agree. We actually did this assessment when I was in grad school and not on that specific play, but the idea of you throw when they’re preparing for the run. You run when they’re preparing for the throw, you play this game of probabilities and outcomes and bodies matching up with bodies.

There’s a book called scorecasting. I don’t know if you’ve read that but it was pretty enlightening for me to get a fun overview of some of the trade off decisions that people make in sports that [00:24:00] politically serve them, but are actually suboptimal decisions. And that Seahawks one is a perfect example because.

Pete Carroll is roasted for it, probably making, to your point, the smart play.

Greg Sankey: I’ve been asked in our current setting, was playing football the right decision? And because of what I learned from reading, thinking, and bets, I answer that one question with two components, which is, if you’re asking me to evaluate the decision at the moment the decision was made, based on the available information.

We made the best possible decision or the right decision, I’ll put air quotes around. But I also I’m comfortably uncomfortable with the fact that you’re judged based on outcomes and that goes back to that call in that Super Bowl, right? We’re judged on outcomes. It was intercepted game over Patriots win.

I said, so you’ll have to go to Midnight on [00:25:00] December 19th, or maybe the morning of December 20th after the season’s complete to then judge me based on the outcome and whether that’s a fair evaluation or not, somebody else will have to determine. But if you go back to when the decision was made, and I think by comparison, it’s upheld as being the correct, if you will, outcome based on the available information at that time.

AJ Maestas: That’s all we could do is make intelligent choices. This is the crux of what we do at Navigate is trying to provide superior information so you make the correct choice so that you’re judged by history fairly, at least by those who look at it in a balanced and informed way. That scorecasting book I’ll share with you since we’re on the topic of football, that coaches with political air cover it right.

So in New England, they are making choices that appear risky politically going forward on fourth down in your own territory, which statistically are the correct thing to do. In fact, all coaches. [00:26:00] Per this, at least assessment should go forward on fourth down far more than they do, but repeated behavior like that finds you without a job.

If even though you played the correct odds, it just happens to not work out for you on average. So it’s fascinating stuff because even with perfect information, you may often be making the wrong decision given political. Consequences,

Greg Sankey: right? In fact, I have a daughter who’s a meteorologist on TV and Nate Silver’s book.

The signal in the noise is a really good framing of decision making, just as you’ve described it. And there’s a chapter on weather, which should be the perfect place to combine it. Data and informed decision making, but he takes you through and one can accept or reject the hypothesis that when you’re at the National Weather Service level, there’s no influence of advertisers.

And so that’s the best possible outcome. When you get down to local news. Over predicting rain is an asset because people are happy when they go outside and you said it would rain and it’s sunny [00:27:00] and I don’t think it’s an absolute construct, but it is an interesting analysis. It’s it’s that political environment that you just identified about football decision making brought back into local news broadcasts

AJ Maestas: and it applies all over the world.

It’s particularly relevant, I think, in the collegiate athletics landscape, and I think this is one of the reasons that you deserve to be celebrated is that Bill Belichick has the air cover with proven performance to be able to go for it on fourth down and cost them, significant negative outcomes, which they have, but whether that storm and when on average but not all coaches, not all administrators, not all commissioners are afforded that air cover from their.

Ultimate leadership and the risk aversion that you see in collegiate athletics and some of the things that I think hold back the business and the sport in general are consequences of that political climate. In fact, I think it’s one of the biggest hurdles.

Greg Sankey: Two points if I can offer. So one, I think the pattern, because I just read an article analyzing this, the Belichick’s behavior has [00:28:00] changed over time because he’s in a much more secure position now than he was at the beginning.

So that’s one. But two, to our discussion. One of the really important weekends in this experience was, like, July 11th, 12th. So it was the week after July 4th, I think I’ve got Saturdays and Sundays, and I spent between 30 minutes and two hours on the phone with all 14 of our presidents and chancellors, just asking them, How do you see moving forward with your campus, with your community, and with our sports, particularly football, but others.

And what I learned from those calls was everybody was trying to make really informed decisions. A lot of moving parts, but everyone had patience around decision making, particularly for the Southeastern Conference. And what was important there is, to your point about the security and decision making.

I knew I had 14 presidents and chancellors [00:29:00] willing to take our time. In the week before we had the Ivy league stopped completely. And that’s why the timing’s important. And then the next day, the Big Ten said, we’re going to play conference only. Pretty quick when you still had time and remember the biostatistician said, take as much time as possible to make major decisions.

And so that was a mantra for me, but people have to be with you. It could be really good advice, but if people aren’t walking that journey with you. Good advice is going to have to be put on the shelf. And what I learned that weekend from our campus leaders was we were seeing this problem through a similar lens, which is let’s take the time to make wise decisions.

And so as we think about. All of the elements of decision making having, partners in that decision making is really key. And then, at some point will emerge from this environment. And how do you continue dealing with major issues through that same [00:30:00] type of construct? And, that may be a chapter in my future book, I guess.

AJ Maestas: We can watch it live out in real time by following your leadership here over the next year or two. Another highlight for the SEC. We know this has been done for a while, but knowing it’s difficult for you to share information like this, I’ll give you the publicly reported numbers. You just announced a blockbuster new television deal with ABC ESPN.

This will see all of ESPN. Broadcast content on ABC ESPN and the family of networks, the new deal for your tier one football games, which is 15 football games a year. And I think it’s roughly eight basketball games a year at over 300 million per year. Ignoring the basketball games for a second that comes out to over 20 million per football game played.

It catapults the SEC further out in front of everybody. As far as revenue, it puts you in a position for the next decade to be on top. It’s. Beautifully aligned and coterminous with the other ESPN deal that you had from a few years ago, along with your network. If you don’t mind sharing with us some of [00:31:00] the things that enabled you to be in this place, because you have secured the long term future of the SEC with this yet another great

deal.

Greg Sankey: I’ll start first and say you have accurately recited what has been publicly reported. Which I have not verified the accuracy or the inaccuracy of that. So one should not assume. So I’ll just say that because we do keep those matters private. And I think people understand these agreements are much more nuanced and sophisticated than gets reported.

That’s just the reality of media agreements. If you back up and I could be criticized and probably in the summertime was more than once, how come he doesn’t have a decision? How come, it’s taking too long. And I really go back to March 2015 when I was named the conference commissioner. I knew where the end of our media agreements where I had studied all of that knew how things plotted out.

And we had a great individual named Chuck Gerber, who had been our media advisor, Mike Sly, my predecessor, brought Chuck in [00:32:00] and Chuck was battling some health issues in 2015. Ultimately passed away in November of 2015. Way too soon. And I was smart enough to know, you don’t want to just jump back in.

So you had this great relationship with a media consultant. And I learned 25 years ago when I had a staff member depart, when I was the Southland conference commissioner, the very first person I looked at for, I interviewed was the same thing. And you can’t go back to the future if you will. And so I learned from that.

I had this meeting in what, 1999 and I walked away saying, she’s just like this other person. And I stopped myself and I was really wise because the person I brought in actually is Linda Teeler is now senior associate AD at University of Florida, different person, but great outcomes, great work at the great leadership.

So I took that forward, that lesson and said, you know what, Chuck was great for a time, but we’re going to have something different [00:33:00] from a media advisor. And that was a two year effort, taking the long view, knowing in 2018, I had five years to figure it out on the outbound part of our existing agreement for our first tier media rights, and then just started working.

Every day on the issue to learn, and I have a two page list of media executives. I’d travel around the country and ask media corporate executives just to say, Look, I don’t have anything to sell, but where do you see the future and tried to inform myself individually and all were gracious with information, and that just led us to a point where we decided to start.

Intentionally walking through first with CBS, what might the future look like with them? And that came to a point where we expanded and led us to this new opportunity with an existing partner. And one of the cool things last week we made the announcement was I saw this slide that had the Disney logo.

Everybody knows the iconic Disney logo [00:34:00] and the SEC logo. Another, I think, iconic logo on the same slide right next to each other. I’d never seen that before and that was one of those great moments in leadership because the power of the Disney Corporation and brand across A, B C, E, espn, its universe, the digital media that’s emerging and the S e C network we’ve created together will be in full force come 2024.

AJ Maestas: And what does that do? If I’m a fan of an SEC university, what is that all this incremental money? What is it going to do for me? What is it going to do for my conference? Or what would your advice be on what to do with all this incremental money?

Greg Sankey: Let’s take money and put it aside because I don’t think money leads, even in these deals, it follows.

And I’ve… Structured my career that way. So I’ve taken moves where people would say, Oh, it’s a great promotion. You’re making a ton more money and I’ve forfeited, a third of my salary because the experience was at the center and the ability to be challenged [00:35:00] so that I could learn and grow.

You take back here and say what were fundamentals of this arrangement. So one was from a fan centric approach, which is our scheduling of football games. So we’ve heard more and more from campuses, and I can’t get fully to this adjustment until the 24th season. There’s some incremental change that can happen in 2021 that we’d like to know more kickoff times in advance.

When you have different partners, that’s tough to do. And so under one umbrella, probably by mid summer, that’s an ill defined date when we’ve got, some contractual structures to it. By mid summer, maybe around our media days, mid July, we’ll be able to Schedule the kickoff windows for just over 50% of our total game inventory.

In other words, fans will know the game’s going to be played at this time in November, even number one, number two, those early window kickoffs, we will know at that time. And those won’t move. [00:36:00] So you’ll know if there’s going to be a noon Eastern time kickoff. Our athletics departments can plan promotions and sales initiatives.

People can figure out, Hey, I’m going to come in Friday, take the day off, wake up early, tailgate, go to an early game. And that’s an asset we’ve created in my view, the ability to have advanced scheduling. And then even where we have movement, the movement will be between two windows, like the midday window and the evening window, rather than moving from morning until.

Nighttime, and then we’ve narrowed the timing of night kickoff. So we’ve got the ability to put games on more platforms simultaneously. We’ll still maintain a 3 30 eastern national broadcast television window like we have with CBS that will be on ABC. But we’ve increased the opportunity to have more games on broadcast TV.

It’s another key. So scheduling, flexibility, advanced notice, and then how given what’s happening with the universe digitally, cable and satellite and broadcast TV, [00:37:00] do we expand the number of contests presented on broadcast? And we’ve done that. And then the digital world. So what you just heard was a vision from the beginning that, this whole media delivery won’t just be digital.

It won’t just be cable and satellite. It won’t just be broadcast TV. It’s a spectrum of how people will consume video and content. And so again, you look and say Disney, ABC, ESPN presents that in a very sophisticated way. Buying BAM tech, having the plumbing, that’s part of what I learned from other media executives, is they can deliver content through those three methodologies.

That was important to us. And then I tell you all of that to say how we produced and present was important. And then you get into the money conversation and we have to finance athletic programs. We are rapidly entering a new era of college athletics. I don’t know what that means, even as I say it. What’s the new era going to bring?

But we know we’re expected to [00:38:00] support mental health of student athletes in a sophisticated way. Ten years ago, we did not even talk about that reality. And now we have staff, six, eight people embedded in athletics departments. Healthcare extends beyond the period of eligibility at the autonomy conference level, which is us and our five conference colleagues.

Those are expenses that are there. In fact, the sophistication of physical support, nutrition, training, Recovery, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and medical treatment is beyond what it was, even two, three years ago. And you think about the way Tuatunga Bailoa was treated after his injury in November of 2019, that really odd hip injury.

He was helicoptered back. It’s a Birmingham where the Andrew sports medicine facility is located. They took 24 hours to literally call globally for the best experts to help him heal. Lo and behold, he’s the fifth pick in the NFL draft and playing now. For the Miami Dolphins, that’s a tribute to meeting those [00:39:00] expectations.

And so that’s an indication right now of how. Financial support is used and the answer is, I think, will continue to change. And that’s a conversation that we’ll have to have as an entire conference, even though we give authority locally to our campuses to determine whether they take athletic swans to build a science building, which happens or to fund.

Faculty endowed roles, which happens or student scholarships or how they fund their athletics programs. But we’re going to be in this new era of college athletics, which will guide us in more and more of those resource use conversations.

AJ Maestas: From the voice of a fan, I would love to thank you for setting a standard there for.

If not certainty, at least clarity on when games will be played. I, some of it’s the benefit of being in the business that I’m at and having to be with clients during some of their key games, but I’m a season ticket holder here at ASU. And I want to watch my alma mater, the Huskies. And it is.

More than [00:40:00] inconvenient to plan out on six days notice those start times and where you are, and it would be a real luxury to have that level of certainty on those big matchups. So holding the incredible financial outcomes to the side for a second, that really is putting fans first. So congratulations.

That’s very thoughtful and incredible success for the SEC.

Greg Sankey: Yeah, and that’s a credit to our staff, Charlie Hussey work diligently on that with ESPN and trying to think creatively. We’ll still have some six day adjustments. We narrow, as I said, the volume of movement within a day, but whatever we can do to both facilitate great games at great times with high viewership and facilitate attendance, I think we’ve adapted in a new way to meet both objectives.

AJ Maestas: I think we love Charlie Hussey. So no question, the job is well done and it’s you to share credit. But you are leading this. You mentioned something I can’t resist, which is what does come of collegiate athletics. If you were the czar of collegiate [00:41:00] athletics, and I know that decision making and all these things are fragmented.

So I know this is truly hypothetical and really in a fantasy world at this point. But if you were the czar, and you could design something that you think is right for the student athletes, right for the universities, right for fans. What would the future be? I start

Greg Sankey: from right now in college athletics. We do things exceptionally well and there are a multitude of stories.

I was watching Sarah Fuller Vanderbilt kick extra points this weekend. That doesn’t happen if we don’t try to play in the summer. And work to answer the question, can we play and should we, but that just doesn’t happen. And I observed before we play, 2019 was LSU’s year and Joe Burrow’s year and his teammates year.

That was their time. It’s somebody else’s time in 2020. It’s different. But I think we owe them the work to give them their time. And so I would just observe, that’s a testament to things [00:42:00] being done well. Now, how do we adapt? Because the expectations are coming in different ways from different directions.

So in some ways we’re dealing with a pre professional model in certain sports. And perhaps more here than in other settings across our conference. What I mean by that is, on our campuses, we have pre professional educational programs. That’s normal. We have athletes who view this experience in college football or college basketball as the next step on their journey to professional sports.

And then the expectations come because there are a small number who can probably monetize that in a different way and we’re being asked whether it’s because of state laws, court cases, or federal legislation that’s being introduced and discussed to update our approach. Where scholarship and support around your competitive and educational interests was deemed enough, the volume has grown where [00:43:00] many, not everyone, but many are saying that’s no longer enough.

I don’t have the right model. Problems yield to effort is a mantra we use here, and we have a problem that’s been introduced, and so we’re all engaged in the effort to try to solve that. How does medical care exist? How does Educational excellence play out if someone says, you know what, I graduated while I was an athlete, but I don’t feel that I got the education I wanted.

Is there a customer satisfaction guarantee for a student athlete that says, you know what, as long as you behave socially, judicially and academically in the right direction, we’ll invite you back and support your future aspirations. Those are the questions that we’re going to have to answer.

Those are all resource intensive or resource altering. Yeah. And each has sophisticated outcomes. And it’s not just level one thought that needs to be applied. So one can say, oh, let student athletes monetize their name and like this. That’s level one that says, okay, here’s the problem.

Let’s just go do it. But what’s the second [00:44:00] order and third order outcome of that decision make? And what’s unfortunate is we’re so focused on that first order question. Why don’t we just do this, that we’re not digging into the impacts on individual lives and how they conduct themselves and run essentially a small business at 18, 19, 20 years old, but dealing with academic and athletic pressures and then think about, are we advancing to a, not a pre professional model, but a professional model?

Then we’re going to have to spend more time than ever coping with those realities.

AJ Maestas: I would love to know if you had your druthers what you would lead collegiate athletics towards. So you brought up name, image, and likeness for those listening that’s, those athletes rights to receive money in exchange for an endorsement or an appearance or a signing, or even putting on camps, other forms of employment that an income that are.

Not allowed as of today that’s coming summer 2021. So we’re just six months away from that if you could [00:45:00] author the rules that would Allow or disallow for certain things in that world. What would you do personally?

Greg Sankey: Understand i’m what I confess to be a true believer in the value of college sports in the educational setting So you go back to like my vision from a career standpoint I’ve never envisioned working in professional sports, and I don’t.

Despite those who say, oh, it’s just the same. The reality is it’s not. It’s not. There’s nobody in the NBA who has to go to class the next day. Yeah, we challenge young people with that all of the time. The nature of our program is being embedded in the college campuses, and our franchises don’t just pick up and move.

That’s it. Key difference and I watch young people who are playing at a high level in the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, who come back to our campus and I’ve seen them. I’m like, why are you here? I met an NFL player on a Monday who played on Sunday and didn’t have to be back until Tuesday. Like, why are you here?

And he said, because this is home. I’ve [00:46:00] never heard that from somebody who played for the Batavia Muckdogs in the New York Penn League that, that was the greatest summer ever, that’s home. But that’s said repeatedly. When they win a World Series, they’ll point back to their college experience preparing them for that.

So I think I have to level set that confession. And the second is, there are any number of legal dynamics that restrict what I would say. Because I’ve got to deal with litigation and depositions, but I will say this, I would go back and challenge leadership to step back and say, what are we doing every day to make sure college athletics is anchored in the educational setting?

Let’s start there. And then we can make the next level decisions, whether it’s scheduling championships, economic activity of the participants from that set of values. And so now it’s you’re not really saying much. Actually, I am. I’m saying that. We have to have a structure and we have to be allowed to have a structure [00:47:00] that continually redirects the high level athlete.

So student athlete sometimes has a little word student and a big word athlete. What do we do to balance those words? How do we redirect that effort? And we have to say it’s okay if you don’t want to come and play college sports. You can go directly to your next step, whatever that may be. We have to be comfortable with that decision making.

We have to say, you know what, if we didn’t meet your expectations, come back. That customer satisfaction guarantee. So I would start there. And then if I got into the mechanics of it, I’d start with an NCA manual. That’s hundreds of pages. And I would clarify based on those values, what matters. And then I would enforce those rules aggressively so that there’s a common platform for national competition.

And there are elements of recruiting that you can decide there are elements of recruiting. We need to decide and we need to draw clear lines and not spend so [00:48:00] much time upset about conversations in a high school hallway and much more time dealing with inappropriate engagement of boosters, agents and those sorts where we have drawn clear lines.

So that’s a general description. Of policy thoughts and principled thinking without too much of the front line and the weed solutions.

AJ Maestas: That’s interesting. A senior executive in collegiate sports, a super senior executive in collegiate sports once said to me that we’re busting Jay Walker as well.

Serial killers run around on the loose, as far as the interpretation. We had the good fortune working the last couple of years with G League and seeing it evolve into more of a commercial entity with the ability in my mind to be the second most successful pro basketball league in the world right here in the U.

1. And the transferability of those athletes to the NBA level makes it really attractive if they could even pay somewhat competitive with the European leagues. We also worked on the launch of the XFL, [00:49:00] which. Much like the G League was a very real professional alternative to the collegiate path. I’d love to know your thoughts given what you described and I believe in sound mind and body the sanctity of collegiate athletics With an alternative path who for those who are purely there for their next step to reach that sort of professional vocational future is this a pro a con is it helpful to collegiate athletics?

One of the

Greg Sankey: great Misnomers is that the colleges control movement decisions into professional sports. That’s actually collectively bargained. And so the professional sports speak to that. I’ll go to a personal example. I have a friend whose son was a highly talented baseball player in high school, had a college scholarship and was drafted.

Signing bonus, ability to play in the minors. After three years, his baseball career at the professional level was essentially done. I think people can make that decision. We allow it in baseball. Now, had he gone and accepted that scholarship offer in [00:50:00] three years, he would have been draft eligible again.

And based on how we support education would have been probably 85% of the way through his college degree and in baseball and the SEC, great coaching. Great support staff, great crowds, great intensity, great development, great medical care. And so I look at that and say, everyone gets to make their decisions based on their own values.

It may need be that they need that income right then for themselves and their family. But the longer decision, which was go play three years of college baseball, or perhaps even four, gain your education, mature physically, emotionally, mentally. Socially, probably spiritually as well, so that you then are much more prepared for that high level professional environment is about creating an asset just like a computer programmer or an engineer or an educator will do at college.

We provide that and so the observation about the G League is it’s there and [00:51:00] it’s an opportunity and that may be the value system that people have, but it doesn’t guarantee success. It doesn’t guarantee athletic success. It might sell that up front and we might sell that as well. But one of my great lessons is if I can, and it goes back to something I read from John Wood, and if you can accomplish multiple things at the same time, like play high level sports, be coached, trained, developed, be educated, mature, which is, probably six prongs.

There’s a lot of value in that. And we in college sports should be. Talking about that value rather than simply being criticized for something that some deem is exploitive, which really is developmental because the ability to have somebody come in play three or four years and then you’re done with them.

That strikes me as is more that exploitive word than the effort to develop a well rounded person.

AJ Maestas: I don’t disagree with that. Of course, the XFL is gone now. So there isn’t that path for someone who feels that way, whereas there’s a viable path in basketball. But I don’t know. It’s a concern that weighs on me [00:52:00] and I understand, it is the union and what is collectively bargained that holds players back from the NFL for three years.

But you have one only path.

Greg Sankey: But understand what I talked about in that baseball example is here’s the opportunity for a person to decide those two pathways, nothing wrong with that. And so it needs to be a values based informed decision. And I know what we offer. And as I said, I’m a true believer. And I think that value is so great that we should continue to emphasize how one can prepare themselves for that professional athletics career still in this college setting.

AJ Maestas: Growing up in Alaska, I was around a lot of libertarians. And if there was something that was gospel, it was choice. It was the ability for people to make that choice and having that available to them. So we’re approaching the college football playoffs and all the positive things that come with that.

I’d love to hear your opinion on the. CFP playoff and expanding. It’s one of the beliefs we have here at Navigate is that, at least around the next [00:53:00] contract in 26, that it will expand its membership. What’s your view on that? And if you do think it should expand how many universities?

Greg Sankey: I’m going to save that one for someday, I think four works.

And I actually answered this question, AJ, by going back to. When we when the college football playoff was initiated, what are the, what were the objectives and have those objectives been fulfilled? And if not, where is it not working and why? And is there actually a solution that answers the set of conundrums?

Without creating more and it’s not unintended consequences. It’s that first level, second level, third level order of thinking that has to be brought to the matter. So we’ll have an opportunity one after 25 after the 12 year cycle and in advance to look at that. And I think you have to go back to the objectives, which was to select the national champion.

From highly qualified teams, and then to make decisions about that without lengthening an onerous [00:54:00] way, the football season, because there are trade offs. And when I’ve talked to our coaches and even coaches outside the SEC who go to that championship game, they’ve all said that was about as much as my team could handle.

So you’re good. There are tradeoffs for any decision making. That’s why I’m careful about just picking a number because every one of these numbers has outcomes that have to be carefully considered. And it’s easy to say, go to eight. But what is really eight solve? Does it solve where I may think the objectives are not met?

I’m not sure it does. If you go to a bigger number, 16, do we have any other bowl games and are those still important? I think those are all elements of a dialogue and informed decision making that can use data and go back to judgment to think forward on what is college football like and look like in the future.

And I think we’ve seen this year with some of the scheduling things at the end of the season or rules that were set. And some made exceptions [00:55:00] to those rules. You’ve seen the college football playoff driving decision making in a new way. And I actually think that’s really important data for us to think about as we go forward, because it’s dominant now and it may have to cause an alteration in thinking.

AJ Maestas: I agree with you. It is just a level of meaningfulness and there’s only four slots. Imagine the NCAA tournament, where it’s only four that get invited to the final four. I think there’s a lot of wins in the expanded scenarios and not a lot of losers. So it’s our hope and belief that it’ll go that way.

But I look forward to you expounding on that in the future, because in many ways it has been beneficial for the SEC. This has been a pretty incredible run for the SEC and in defense of the current model, I don’t think many people believe that a true national champion was left out of the process, at least so far.

So at least we have that. Yeah. If I could revisit leadership for just one second, given the [00:56:00] turbulent times that we’re talking about COVID, which we covered at great length, but The Me Too movement and social justice and Black Lives Matter and all the things that in my mind are a decade or a few decades worth of political and social challenges in just a matter of a year or two.

Is there any advice you could offer us? Is there any guiding light you could give to other leaders? Something whether you’ve learned it from those that you meet with and inquire with or possibly from your reading that would help us be better leaders? I

Greg Sankey: understand I’m in a continuous learning cycle of my own.

Even on issues of race, civil rights, I grew up in central New York, about 20, 30 miles from Syracuse. I now live in Birmingham and well before this past summer spent time trying to just understand and learn about the history of Birmingham, particularly around civil rights and racism. And there are [00:57:00] elements of that are beyond troubling.

And Merit not to be forgotten in 2017. Stood up and said, we’re going to honor the pioneers of integration and football and men’s basketball. Perry Wallace and Godfrey Dillard, who played at Vanderbilt University in 1967. Perry being the first African American basketball player in an SEC varsity game.

And then at the University of Kentucky Nate Northington, who played in September of 67, was a varsity football player, first African American in the SEC, but his teammates Greg Page, who passed away because of an injury of practice that, that fall, August of 67. Houston Hogg and Wilbur Hackett, who were incoming freshmen that year.

And I sat at a table, AJ, with them and we had probably 10 minutes of pleasantries. And I said, tell me, what was it really like? So this was 50 years after. their college experience. And they started in telling me stories that people haven’t heard, that they don’t understand how [00:58:00] actually individually hard that experience was.

And we’ve worked to try to tell those stories. On the SEC network, we now have seven head coaches in women’s basketball who are African American. I think that’s the highest of any women’s basketball conference in the country. And they just started talking about their realities, but also what they share together.

I think those stories have to continue to be told. We have to step out and improve the hiring of leaders who are historically underrepresented groups within our athletic programs. And we’re working on that. That’s why that council was formed. It doesn’t mean I can do it quickly enough as a leader. But I certainly can continue to engage and to learn to figure out what does our future look like?

It can’t just look like our past. It has to look like what we as a country are going to be in the future. And there’s a level of humility in that because I haven’t shared all of those experiences. I can learn from those experiences and I can help us adapt and grow. [00:59:00] But I have to be continually attentive to that conversation.

AJ Maestas: That constant cycle of growth, I think, is all that someone could realistically ask for, but I’m glad I get to sit in my seat in a private world versus yours in, in that very public setting. I’ve noticed you’re really active on Twitter, which is rare for a commissioner.

Greg Sankey: But so in those days, I’m not sure it was the wisest decision, but that is what it is, right?

AJ Maestas: I think it’s something that we aren’t talking about what we’re talking about without fans. And I think it’s a gift to fans, in my opinion. On a personal note, how do you maintain your health and happiness?

Greg Sankey: Faith is central to who I am. Just going back to my childhood, the role of our family doctor was a Methodist deacon sharing gospel message with my dad.

Made a huge difference in my family from that point forward and has continued to in my adult life and within my family. So that faith would start there and, I cite an affection for the book of Ecclesiastes, which is a really strange thing to just pick out of the old Testament to [01:00:00] read, but the depth.

Of human experience and wisdom there is, I think, a critically important learning experience. And to go back and read the history presented in the Old Testament is something that I think everyone would benefit from spending time doing. In this environment, my old operating rhythm was I’d get up at about 4 40 a.

5. I’d be in a CrossFit gym at 5. 15. It’s actually called Iron Tribe. It’s not directly CrossFit. And then I’d finish that, get cleaned up, and I’d go read for about 45 minutes and then come in the office. And that was my setting to begin my day. It was time I could generally control. And all of a sudden, all the gyms were closed, and Starbucks wouldn’t let people sit in.

You could grab and go. My operating rhythm again, back to one of my readings changed. And so I started back in March running again, reference that. And I do that first thing in the morning, grab a win, actually breakfast at home, which I probably hadn’t done much over the last 20 years. So that’s [01:01:00] been healthy for me.

The day just goes. And at the end of the day, that’s where I take my reading time to just quiet myself. And I wear a whoop device, which has all kinds of data. And what’s pretty cool is my resting heart rate, my heart rate variability, my, my metrics have actually improved over the last nine months. And which is a long way to say the job was killing me.

When I was less attentive to these realities, and so getting sleep, getting rest, trying to have a rhythm to my day and recognizing the parts of my day I can control and those which I can’t have been a part of the really personal health improvement I’ve experienced since March.

AJ Maestas: Well, that’s very impressive.

I think people went one way or the other during COVID, right? But you’ve ran for a long time. If I remember correctly, you ran a marathon a month for 15 straight months at one point in your life, correct? Correct.

Greg Sankey: That’s right, yeah. 2009 I set a goal and I’d run a marathon in December of [01:02:00] 2008 and I said I’m going to run a marathon a month for a year.

And I actually ran 13 marathons in that 2009 year. I went back to back in June. I was out in the Forest of Nicene Marks, which is south of San Francisco, I think, near Santa Cruz, California. On a Saturday, and then I was in Estes Park, Colorado, the next Sunday. So I think eight days running a marathon. I don’t recommend that because the second one was not one of the great experiences.

And so I set that challenge and great memory. I blogged through the year is my only blogging experience. I think it still exists someplace. But, it was an accomplishment. It was my midlife crisis.

That’s a healthy

AJ Maestas: midlife crisis. I love that you’re smiling as you tell this story because it would be punishment if I were forced or made to run, yeah, 15, 16 marathons in 15 months, two in a single month.

You mentioned some of the lessons that you received through your faith and through the Old Testament. Are you willing to share [01:03:00] highlights for us, the messages that are at the tip of your tongue at all times?

Greg Sankey: Yeah, there’s if you read the book of Esther, story of a nation swept away, and there’s a moment of confrontation where the message is, perhaps you’re in this position for such a time as this.

That’s a paraphrase. And I read that in a small group. I was in Plano, Texas in our church. And how do you prepare yourself? And perhaps my chance will come. That’s an Abraham Lincoln quote that does says you’re going to be in situations. You better be attentive to the lessons you’ve learned and see how you then lead.

You go to Ecclesiastes where Solomon talks about, I decided I was going to learn all kinds of things and I realized that wasn’t satisfying and I was going to party like the best of them. I was going to build things and realize at the end of the day, That wasn’t satisfying. And then you go into a part of that, which became a hit song in the sixties from the birds, there’s a time to be [01:04:00] joyous and a time to weep a time to work and a time to rest, and it’s just this portrayal of a very human existence.

But at the end. She talks about becoming old when the metaphor, I think it’s when the almond trees blossom, which are silver, as I recall, and about gray hair and the shutters are dimming, which is about your eyesight going in. There’s the grinders are a few, which is about, losing your teeth and old age dentistry wasn’t great in Old Testament times.

So as I realized there’s nothing better to live life, but live life with God. And I think that lesson for me was critically important. And then any number of themes where I’ve had the chance to lead groups and just share a depth that’s there. And, I think we’re in a culture that is divided, sometimes along political lines.

Sometimes those political lines are drawn around what I’ll consider religion as opposed to faith. And I recognize how far [01:05:00] I fall short, but I think that engagement the humility, the opportunity to read and to learn on a regular basis has been critically important to me and certainly highlights that I don’t have those answers all the time.

AJ Maestas: Thank you for sharing that. I know there’s personal stuff in there. Only one more on that topic, I promise. When you say, to be with God what is God to you? What does that represent?

Greg Sankey: Oh

I was trying to think about preparing. I think there are different elements if you go through reading. So the origins of the universe, the source of good, but there’s also clear aspects of Judgment that are communicated, particularly when you go back to that Old Testament, the provision of faith, and you go into the book of Hebrews, that faith is the substance of things, hope for the evidence of things not seen, and how we make decisions based on the presence of God in our lives, I think is critically important.

I think there’s an opportunity for a real personal relationship. Not that I can walk down the [01:06:00] street and say hello like I can a long lost friend. But as I talk through those daily realities from a personal standpoint of digging in and trying to learn that informs one’s faith, which is that, both that evidence and that hope.

AJ Maestas: Thank you.

That’s beautiful. I know contribution is something that’s core to you, and you and your wife have done some pretty amazing work related to water in Sub Saharan Africa. Do you mind sharing a little bit more about what you do?

Greg Sankey: Yeah really, a couple of things. So there’s a, there’s an organization called Never Thirst and that was formed in Birmingham.

I’m a member of the board and we’ve done, she has the map of where we’ve built wells or freshwater opportunities and that extends now into Cambodia, Southeast Asia, Sudan has been a part we’ve gone to Ethiopia. Our 25th wedding anniversary, I was trying to figure out like the perfect gift. And instead of, we have plenty in this country.

In fact, too much, it was the opportunity to do something for someone else. So her 25th anniversary gift was a well [01:07:00] that we drilled in India. On a small community and I have a picture of my hallway here at work of that village and a couple hundred people and you realize how you impact women in that culture who have to go gather the water or the ability to have fresh water when you see the water sources that might exist.

So that’s one. And then through Compassion International in Rwanda, Kathy actually traveled there to a family that we sponsored. For 10 years now, and we just helped build a community center there that now we just received report impacts about 250 children around families in Rwanda and what we forget is the United States is not the only country disrupted by COVID 19.

And so to read the stories of meeting needs through that outreach through Compassion International is pretty significant. And we’ve actually had, through World Vision, so I’ve got competing faith based outreach organizations in our world. [01:08:00] In Ethiopia, there’s a young woman who we’ve sponsored. She’s now in college in Nicaragua, a young woman who’s in pharmacy school.

Who was five years old when we first engaged through either world vision or compassion with both, they’re both different organizations to, to try to meet needs at different locales and pretty amazing to do. So over time, the young woman in Ethiopia, I was at a third day concert right across the street where I went up and found someone the same age as our oldest daughter, who’s now in her mid twenties and did the same with our youngest daughter.

And that’s how those particular relationships that now. We’ve built bathrooms for a disabled family in Honduras and a community center in Rwanda and a house in Ethiopia for a family whose house was destroyed and it’s pretty amazing what you can do with relatively little in our context but means so much in another.

AJ Maestas: That’s truly amazing work, Greg. Thank you for doing that with your time and talent and treasure. It’s [01:09:00] a personal passion of mine. Sub Saharan Africa is a place I go once or twice a year. And for those who have not been in these places and to understand, the words that you’re hearing, the difference that a very small amount can make to villages that struggle for fresh water and electricity and a schoolhouse and the list goes on.

I was in India in January as well. And, it’s, yeah. It’s not radically different when you think about the economic pressure they’re under, and some of the challenges, some abject poverty in these parts of the world. My last question would be if there’s a life hack you could share with us, if we all want to be more like you, what would we do?

You mentioned you have wearable tech that really changed your health routine with Whoop. Is there anything you’d give if you were just giving one or two pieces of advice to help us be a better version of ourselves?

Greg Sankey: I’ve shared a faith perspective and it should be an informed faith. So that’s, there’s a life hack there.

I’ll start with, life is about decisions. And what’s interesting is, we’ve talked through [01:10:00] data, we’ve talked through judgment, we’ve talked through leadership, all of which is A math equation is you try to arrive at a decision point and as I speak to groups, I’ll go through the need to have a framework for your personal decision making, which critically important and are you going to make decisions for your career based solely on money?

When I make as much as I can and when I cap out here, I’m going to go take the next thing. I think that’s an unsatisfactory way to make a decision. And so the framework I used is literally, am I being challenged in my work so that I can learn and grow? And I have come to a point in my career in certain jobs where the answer is, I think I’ve capped out in my learning and then it was time to seek the next thing, because I think one of what I’ve seen is people become frustrated when they stop growing.

[01:11:00] And a job and burnout’s a word, but lack of growth is critical and that means different things to different people. So I can’t answer that, but you’re going to have a template for how you make decisions. And if you can make better decisions, you’ll have a better life, whether it’s Saturday night down at a honky tonk at midnight.

Or working at your desk in a cubicle at the beginning of your career and choosing to leave the next one, you’re going to need a framework for that decision making. So that’s 1 and 2 is this notion of lifelong learning in different ways, whether it’s formal education. Or reading or digging in further to figure out, examples from people around you.

How can you engage in a lifelong learning environment and experience? And so you take those two. How do I make better decisions? And how do I continually learn? You can improve one’s personal performance in whatever context I would contend.

AJ Maestas: Thank you very much for sharing that. It’s truly a pleasure [01:12:00] to gather your wisdom and learn from you and your life experience.

Super grateful to be able to call you a friend and to have the chance to be able to work with you is always enlightening and always something that we are grateful for. Are extremely grateful for so thank you for sharing your time. So other people could experience you a little bit more and please know that there’s a way we can help.

I would love to know. You’ve named a few of the organizations with your mission and Sub-Sharan Africa and beyond. But if you would remind me again, I’d love to make note of that.

Greg Sankey: So the three I mentioned, Never Thirst, which is neverthirstwater. org, and then that’s one I’ve worked probably most directly with over time, and then World Vision and Compassion International.

So Compassion is the organization where we partnered to build this community center in Rwanda. Kathy had the opportunity to travel there with the Compassion Group a couple years ago. She’s also, last year, made the trip into Uganda, a couple other countries, with Neverthirst to see, boots on the [01:13:00] ground, what happens when you can provide a place in that environment with fresh water.

And pretty amazing the reality and the joy that brings when you think about the struggles on a daily basis just to exist, particularly when you don’t have a reliable source of fresh

water.

AJ Maestas: Yeah, that’s right. It’s not a stretch to call this life saving work. Thank you for being who you are and doing all you do.

And thank you for joining us again today.

Greg Sankey: Sure. Thank you.

AJ Maestas: This is AJ Maestas with Navigate, joined by SEC Commissioner Greg Senke. Thank you for your time, Greg, and joining us on Navigating Sports Business.[01:14:00]

Thank you for joining our podcast this week. If you’d like to join the conversation, email us at info at nvgt. com or check out our website at the same address nvgt. com. Join us again next week.