Episode 002:
Experience Matters with Eric Newton: The Future of Clemson Football with Mickey Plyler – 002

Hello everyone. This is Experience Matters with Eric Newton. I’m Eric Newton. And today I’m lucky enough to have, the infamous Mickey Plyler, the famous Mickey Plyler on the show. Famous is better than infamous. Well, true. Yeah. Famous, famous, the famous Mickey Plyler. I think everybody knows Mickey Plyler. If you’re, especially if you’re, you’re a Clemson fan, local radio personality and everybody, everybody loves, loves hearing Mickey talk sports and he’s on the, on, the show from what? six to nine, six to nine. every day, every day. So, it’s, it’s great to have him on today. on our podcast and, we’re excited to sit down and chat with you. Talk about it for a while. So I’m glad we got a chance to do it. Yeah. We’ve been talking about it for a while. Mickey’s a little under the weather.

We’re going to have to, we’re going to have to really sanitize everything after, after he leaves. I have been told that I’m not contagious, which is good, but had pneumonia just got diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, which we’re doing this on a Monday. So that’s three, four days ago, but, it was, it was Friday, but now I’m feeling guilty for no, we’re good. We’re good. So we have a few hundred coughs, but that’s not bad. It’s a lingering cough. It’s not related to pneumonia, but, I was talking to your wife about it. She had it. And I have joked.

 

If you get a shot, a chance, go get in the bronchitis line a couple of times, get you some strep every once in a while, skip that pneumonia line. I just find a way to avoid the pneumonia line. Yeah. Cause I don’t get sick. I’ve been a doctor. This is the second time I’ve ever been in a doctor and man, I was on my death bed and thanks to some antibiotics and some steroids were back. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you look good. Look, 12 pound weight loss for days. Well, that’s not a bad deal. Best.

 

Well, not the best kind of diet, but it’s, it’s a diet. Yeah. It is one. I mean, let’s look at the bright side. You lost 12 pounds. Yeah. You didn’t feel great, but so you’re, you’re, coming out of that. Yeah. Anybody else in your family gets it. Yeah, man. Not with pneumonia, but, but, so, you know, you can, it’s with your daughters. my eight month old did the first day of daycare this year and my four year old, five year old with the 4k.

 

And my wife told me in August that it will be a Petri dish and they’re going to be sick. Well, she was 100 % right that every week it was something. And so the thought there is that you get them immune system going good. And it’s cause you can either do it now or you can do it in kindergarten or first grade. So we’ve gone through it right now. And so my daughter’s at the doctor right now, 105, 102 .5. my goodness. So wait, how old is Drake now? Drake’s five. Five. You’ve got to be kidding me. Five going on like 60.

 

No way. yeah, man. He’s, he’s so stinking smart. Now he’s in to WWE. And so we’re in a garage yesterday, right? I took it to Monday night, rather than I he’s doing all, he knows all the everything. So we’re in a garage and he’s trying to lift weights as great as a weight lifter. So he’s not anyway. but his motivation songs are this WWE soundtrack. It was like 40 wrestlers with their intro music and like the first note he knows everyone.

 

So I don’t know if you’re into it and you’re a kid, you’re a wrestler. Yeah. No that’s that’s rasslin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s all into that man. And to be honest with you, it’s entertaining. Like they do a great job with their app and their, I’ve learned a lot from them, the WWE that is, all their music, all their fan participation and like how all their marketing and merchandising and how they, there’s something going on. There’s a king of the ring or there’s a WrestleMania or there’s a summer slam and there’s always something.

 

And there’s, they’re on TV on Monday nights and Friday nights. And they got other things out the week. And man, you talk about marketing. They are genius. Who’s his favorite rassler. He loves Randy Orton. Right. I don’t know. I don’t know. I didn’t know any of this stuff. Now I can know all, I know all their songs, all their sayings and all that. Isn’t it, isn’t it funny what kids latch onto? You know, there there’s always going to be something that they latch onto. You don’t know what it is. And did you do it as, I mean, did you follow as a kid? Like with.

 

Ric flair with a little bit. I wasn’t like super into the, did you have friends? Yeah. I had friends that loved it. I mean that were religious about it. So my wife is she’s an elementary school, assistant principal. And she says, you don’t believe like in our school, all the boys that’s their t -shirts and that’s their backpacks or that’s their whatever. That’s all they talk about. Really? And they’ve done a really good job with the kids part of it and getting them in there. And, my, my kid is very aware that it’s not real.

 

he’s aware of everything, but, it, you know, it is Eric, it’s Clemson football. Everyone knows the songs. Everyone knows the chants. Everyone knows the players and the coaches and, and, you know, the announcers and you know, like, and everybody knows it’s a rhythm. And so the fourth quarter video, like they’ve got videos of all their stuff. It’s, it is, it’s a, it’s a little bit like the PGA tour and it’s like, it’s the, travelling circus, but.

 

But it’s more like a Southern football game and it is this highly religious people who are fanatical. We went to Greenville. Here’s something to do smart. The ring seats are two and three and four and $500. Sit down there. Wow. We buy the seats in the upper deck. How much do you think they are? No idea. 20 bucks. And the reason they’re 20.

 

And my wife even says this, if it gets close to the event and it’s not sold out, they give tickets because it’s a TV event and when they turn the lights on the the Coliseums are packed and so when you when you’re flipping around and you say man, it’s supposed to be a big deal like this place is packed. You know that is smart. Yeah. They’re a great job of creating an atmosphere. This is big. You know. Yeah. I bet I couldn’t tell you one wrestler’s name. man. Come to my house and five minutes later, you will be

 

my son walks around the house right now with my daughter’s baby dolls or teddy bears or little lions and he’ll do a stone-cold stunner or he’ll do a figure four suplex and everything. I mean, nothing’s safe in my house. We’re going to wrestle all day. You wrestle with him. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve got to be stone cold. He has to be Randy Orton and then we’ve got to talk. We do our talking. What’s the, what’s the Tomica elbow drop. You got all that, but he has his own little moves too.

 

You have the chair breaking the chair. We don’t do chairs and tables yet, but now he’s, he’s one of his kids is like, for 15 minutes, we’re going to hit baseballs in the front yard. And then for 15 minutes, we’re going to go hit golf balls and then we’re going to go on. He loves hiking. So we’ve got table rock. Sorry. We’ve got all these places and, we’ll do that for a long amount of time, but for 15 minutes, we might play with his little wrestling stuff. And then 15 minutes, it’s like every 15 minutes music’s big doing.

 

It’s like, you know, you probably had your girls. It’s like they, you know, now that you focused in, but, what kind of music does he like every kind of music? So he will listen to bluegrass and country like Morgan Wallen he knows every word to every song, even though someone’s bad, but, the Beatles and, he likes rap now, but I’m trying to find a clean rap song for him. So we’ll go back to Will Smith. He knows.

 

Get jiggy with it. Now we sing that around now. So every kind of music and he’s taking music camps and all that kind of, so we’re trying to, what you did to your girls to like give them everything exposure to everything and don’t force anything on them. And then they’ll see what they like. So we’ve not been ultra successful. That’s one thing. Just like give him exposure and he’ll figure it out. Soccer has not been great. We’re going to do T -ball maybe next year. but I think music’s going to be there to stay as one of the staple.

 

I mean, we’ll stay, we’ll just say where he’s going to do. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s really cool to see what they latch onto. Like with my oldest daughter, Ella, she was, she got into acting. I don’t know if you remember that. yeah. I mean, so she, she acted for a long time and then, and then she got a lead role at the peace center and then she just gave it up. But, she climbed a mountain. She was really good at it. She’s got an incredible voice. she had that from you. I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe I know, but.

 

But, yeah. And then, you know, every one of them is different. You just never know. It’s crazy. Isn’t it? Like they came from you and there are certain things that are similar, but there’s so many differences in them. Right. yeah. So many different, yeah. And you can’t discipline them the same. You know, they’re all because of their different personalities. Some are more sensitive than other. I mean, of course I had all girls, so, but they,

 

You know, they, they all respond to discipline different. Can we have you a quick, discipline story? Drake’s five, man. And like, he’s a good kid right now. He’s fighting for attention from his sister. So he acts up a little bit, right? You had that with your girls. So he’s acting up and he says something to his mom. I’ve jumped in maybe, maybe twice before.

 

I mean, he’s, he’s like a little man. They’re like, he’s because of a COVID probably not hanging out with a lot of other kids. He hangs out with adults all the time. I got taken to lunch every day. You, well, you see him, you know, when you have little conversations, he’s like a little man. So he’s back there with mom and they’re getting ready for bed and his mom says he can’t do something he wants to do. And he said something he shouldn’t have said to him. And I heard it and I went back and I lost it, man. I shouldn’t have, but I lost it. And I’m about three minutes into this, this,

 

pretty good ripping and three or four minutes into it, he looks at me and goes, you know what? I want to say, he goes, I about had enough of this. I look over his mom is busting up. She’s like this. I’m trying not to laugh. And I said, well, I have it. And then I said, watch it. Little man. We don’t cuss around. Watch a little man and I’ll send you a little last to bed by yourself. He sleeps his mom and the next day they’re driving to school.

 

And he’s not scared of that, by the way. He’s scared. He doesn’t want time out, but me yelling at him, obviously it’s nothing. They’re going to school the next day. And my wife says, Drake, what’d you think about your dad jumping to you last night? And he goes, I thought it was pretty cool. I said, we need some excitement around here. He goes, he said, he said, plus I got him say ass. So like for him, he wasn’t scared of that. Yeah. He’s not scared of you. No, I don’t know how in the world we’re going to get it.

 

Get that. Cause I do think you need to be a little, have a little tiny bit of fear. Yeah. But we don’t have it now, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. He goes, I’m just about tired of this. Just about tired of this. It reminds me. Have you seen that there’s a video of this little kid? He’s probably about Drake’s age and he’s like, dad, I’m having a bad day. Don’t mess with me right now. I just, and he’s like, he’s like walking away. He’s like, just don’t mess with me. I’m having a really bad day. And the dad says,

 

So you’re having a bad day. He’s like, yes, I’m having a bad day. He said, he said, okay, well, you’re not going to wrestle later. And he goes, well, maybe, yeah, we love what my kid, my kid likes watching other kids videos. So the, the listen, Linda listen stuff for someone. Linda, Linda. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But he’s so, you know, like all the kids are technology, like he can run stuff.

 

my laptop and just someone went straight. What I do here and he’ll go fix it for me and all that five years. Isn’t that crazy? So what, what grade we’d be in kindergarten next year. He just did K four. he’s going to kindergarten next year. Is he going to go to six miles? Yeah. Yeah. Which is good. You know, he likes being close to her. man, they’re inseparable. She’s an unbelievable mom and, and they’re inseparable. So it certainly helps to have that. And the other thing is like after school,

 

He hangs around, he runs the school, like all the teachers, all the support staff, everybody’s like, Hey, Drake, he goes in our offices and does all this stuff. But it’s a good environment for that. You know, to him to grow up around all that and good teachers. Is that going to be an adjustment? Cause I know y ‘all get to hang out a lot after your work. So, you know, that’s what my day looks like is I get up at five, go to work. I get home about 10, 10, 15. I picked my daughter up. we,

 

play, change diapers and play and, feed and do all that. My wife gets home about four 30 and at four 30 is like here we switch because Drake, man, we got to go. We’re going on a hike, dad. Let’s go out in the backyard. Let’s ride bikes. Let’s go, you know, whatever baseballs we’re going to, let’s go to the golf course, whatever. So we switch it up. We reintroduce ourselves back to the girls. We have, this is really cool. Saturday mornings, every Saturday morning we have bro time. He wakes me up at six 15.

 

We watch outdoor boys, YouTube channel of their hiking or their fishing or whatever. And then about eight o ‘clock, we make, make pancakes and then we have bro time and then it’s time for mom to come in and get some mom time. But I mean, they’re, they’re much closer than we are, but it’s pretty cool. It’s bro time in there. That’s awesome. Yeah. So you take them with you to the golf course. Starting to, I didn’t force it on him a couple of times. I’d ask him to go and he went and he didn’t like it.

 

And about the past two months on four or five occasions, he wants to go. Now he asked me to go now, which is a goal and he’s pretty doggone good at it, you know, for that, but just to now he wants to go. Well, you’ve got a good teacher. Yeah, but you gotta be careful. You know, all my thing now it’s like just hit it hard and let’s have fun. Cause my, the only goal is getting to go back, you know, if he wants to. So how’s your game then? What’s funny is, I was decent.

 

Had him, my handicap went from a plus two to a two. he went to school. I got it back down to plus two. I had my daughter now. Now I’m a three. So it’s a four or five deal there. And then she’ll go to school and hopefully one day, you know, that’s different. So, so what do you think suffered the most with your game short game or, no, just because you, you, you go up, you go out and chip and putt hours to work at it. Yeah. You know, when I had time I was single and what else?

 

My buddy said that, almost quit one time. He goes, what the heck would you do? I was like, I don’t know, man. Like, what would he do? He quit one time and he said, I’m going to go buy a bass boat. And he goes, I’m going to sit it in the driveway. And every time I get the urge to go fishing, I’m just gonna go sit in the boat till the urge goes away and then come back inside. So like, you know, what would you do if you didn’t have, like I’m getting off of work at 10 or 10 30 in the morning. I got all every afternoon.

 

If you didn’t have four girls, you’re gonna have a wife. You didn’t have a big business. What would you do? You, you played golf at one point in time. You fished, you boated, you had the hobbies. Yeah. You don’t have those anymore. Right? No, not now. I mean, eventually I, I want to play, get back into golf right now. You’re, you’re going to soccer, basketball. You’re, I mean, you’re all dance. Yeah. Soccer, basketball. I’m coaching. Yeah. a, you basketball on top of all this sick. Yeah.

 

So I don’t really have time. Maybe I’m starting to catch your ear and little, no. yeah, I just don’t, I just don’t have the time. Like I love playing. I love playing. I just don’t, I just don’t have the time. I loved hitting balls. I love chipping and putting. And I mean, I can do that for hours and I, you know, prior to kids, I did, I did do that. I would, there’s a time for that. You’ll have time later in life for that. You’re young. Hopefully we’re all gonna. Yeah. Yeah.

 

I mean, I’ll, I’ll eventually get back into it. So to answer your question about that, that’s what I would do. I’d probably go on hunting trips and do one of the more than one year to play golf. Are you really 11 days playing unbelievable golf courses, but you’re going with, you’re not going with that Clemson group. Yeah. No, we’re going with, some guys we know eight of us total. Some of the guys you might know, but, I want to do that. I want to do that one day, which I’ll travel a lot, which is great.

 

But you take your girls. Yeah. We take the girls. Yeah. They didn’t take up golf, but that’s okay. Well, now, but not just that, like for your girls to experience Europe. Yeah. It’s fun. I love, I love traveling. That’s, that’s my, yeah, that’s our hobby. But, but you wouldn’t do it alone. No, you wouldn’t do it. I mean, we went on more fun with the whole family. Yeah. And more than those knucklehead groups we should go play golf with. Yeah. You know, and doing dumb knucklehead stuff, right? Like this is better.

 

You can spend your girls on your wife on a right. And cultural type deal. Get to experience all that together. Yeah. A lot of, you know, it’s first time for them sometimes first time for us. And then you think about like your grandkids and, and, and all that, like they’re, their moms will have these experiences that they know and they’ll go, they’ll take them right. You started that lineage. Yeah. You learned so much, just learn a lot about a lot, you know, other cultures and I mean, a lot of the historic, we go to a lot of historical places, you know, and it’s just really fun for them to experience that.

 

But, but tough with six, it is tough with six. It’s hard to travel with six because you have to have, food is probably a big deal. food. Yeah. Where we eat is always a battle. we’ve, we’ve, we always get two rooms unless the hotel or the place we’re staying doesn’t have two, you know, double beds in the rooms. Then we have to get three rooms.

 

And so that can get pretty, pretty pricey, but like we always try to put, I mean, we’ll have a room to ourselves and we’ll put the girls in a room with two double beds and then they’re packed in there. Yeah, they do. But I don’t, I swear. Probably not always the case, but there’s enough there at the age now. They do the, the, my oldest and youngest, they usually gravitate towards each other. And then the two middle ones, they, they hang out together and then, Ella, the oldest, the one that’s.

 

about to be a sophomore at Clemson. She’s, she’s kind of like the mother hen. So she, she, she kind of watches over everybody and tries to keep everybody in check to have that. Yeah, it is. It is. There’s a sale. Listen, Jordan Peterson podcasts all the time. And he always says, if you have two, you might as well have three, four and five because after two, the oldest ones helped raise the youngest ones. Yeah. So it’s not like, I mean, there’s a big jump from one zero to one.

 

And there’s a big jump from one to two, but the jump from two to three and three to four is not the incremental and not the right jump. Yeah. It’s, it’s kind of cool to see. She just naturally did. I mean, you know, we didn’t always ask her. She just did, you know, so she’s, she was like, kind of like, you know, the, the big sister she’s, she’s, you know, she is helping. She did help raise those, the younger ones. So she’s a role model too. So yeah. Yeah.

 

She’s already been through with like like like their ages are going through stuff. Right? Like there’s for girls nowadays, I couldn’t imagine like the social pressures and the social medias and the popularities are the dresses like that. That pressure. She’s been through that. Right. And so she’s seen all that. Right. My little nieces, they’re sophomores now. They’ll be juniors at Clemson and

 

on the most. Something hit me like I’ve never noticed before and I knew there’s pressure on girls, teenage girls and all, but I won the national championship games. They get the picture made by the Golden Gate Bridge. You know what? We’re in California and or it might’ve been my niece’s a planet Pebble Beach in the in the USA or whatever and they get their picture made and it’s a beautiful picture, but they had to post it at prime posting time.

 

for their Instagram account or whatever. Because if you didn’t, then you wouldn’t get as many likes on this web. But the comments below, now remind you, it’s a beautiful picture, the beautiful girls anywhere. But they got the Golden Gate Bridge as the backdrop. Love your outfit. The earrings look great. When did you get your hair done? And I was like, my God, they missed the Golden Gate Bridge. They missed it. But my mother, they says, what?

 

Then they say that because they like, cause when they put their picture, you got to talk about their hair and their makeup and their dress or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. How about the pressure? But they’ll, they’ll, they’ll be hundreds of those comments. Yes. And every one of their posts gets, you know, hundreds of likes, but none. Some of them go viral. The bridge. Yeah. But not about the bridge. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy how that, how that works. I don’t know. gap. I don’t know. Made.

 

A million of those dresses. Yeah. And they got one Golden gate bread, you know, that crazy. Yeah. And, and, and while you were that dress 50 times, you can see this thing one time in your life. Yeah. You know, well, it always cracks me up too. It was like how much, I mean, this is everybody. It’s not just girls. I mean, I find myself wanting to do it too, but where we’re we’ve all gotten to a point where we’ll be at an event and we’re videoing the event while it’s going on.

 

So we can go back and look at it, but we’re not absorbed. So you’re looking at your screen, which is no different than looking at the TV. Really. You’re looking at the screen the whole time you’re at the live event. And I’ve like made a point. I’m like, I’m not going to do that anymore. I don’t care if I don’t get the, I don’t get the, you know, the live action Dean. I can’t go back and look at it. I want to be able to visualize it. My, my, in my, my, my brain, but it’s great. Chris rock bit the other day and he says the.

 

Number one addiction in our country is not drugs or alcohol or food. It’s attention. And he said, there’s four, four ways to do it. you can, you can, he said, you can show your butt and you see that at Walmart where the lady slams or whatever on the airplane. Like you knew that you can, you could be infamous and go shoot up a school, whatever you want to do that. you can be exceptional and be elite, but that’s hard.

 

You know, like you can get in Clark. Yes. But, but that’s hard to do, but the final way and he’s the way in what people do more than anything else is you just become a victim, you know, but it’s all about, and he said, yeah, that drives me crazy. He said the world used to be when the Beatles say, all we need is love. He goes now all I want is likes. I don’t want to be loved. I need likes. Isn’t that crazy? Brilliant though. No, I mean, you’re exactly right. I mean, everybody wants to play victim.

 

you know, I heard something the other day. It was, well, I actually read it. I read a book and, the guy said, was, was talking about like a lot of times people say this happened to me, you know, like, you know, some, something bad happened, whatever. And they say, this ha this happened to me and that that’s their crutch. And that’s why things aren’t going the way they want them to go. And the guy said, no, actually, actually that happened for you.

 

You know, if you learn from, from your mistakes, you learn from those, those as bad things that happened to you, you’ll, you’ll become a better, in the long run, you’ll become a better person. So it happened for you, not to you. I have a great podcast. I’m sorry. The other day and talked about self -pity and it talked about, the victimhood mentality of why I didn’t deserve this. And the answer was, let me remind you that a couple of thousand years ago,

 

But the only unflogged human being to ever walk the face of the earth went through the stuff that no human being ever has had to go through by no father is on. And you’re going to say that you don’t deserve this. Like, and you know, obviously why I did it and all that, but like, wait a minute, man. Whoa. You got a little bit of perspective on what you deserve. You know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I can’t, I can’t stand when somebody says, yeah, I don’t like this stuff.

 

So what else is new? Everything going well with the radio, man, we’re blessed station and everything. Y ‘all, y ‘all. I mean, I know it’s been a while, but come by as good. We, you know, you knew our old building wasn’t great. Our new building is, I don’t know, 20 ,000 square feet is awesome. It’s the best radios to go ever been in our sales. I had my year in the other, the other day that I think they’re going to keep me. I’m 26 years and I saw a joke with that about that. And my GM was like, you’re going to want to do it. Like, yeah, I got to do it. I’m 71 now. I got to.

 

I got an eight month old, but, things are going great. The station’s awesome. Our sales, our records, our interest is higher. We got more listeners than ever before. technology is a big part of that on apps and, and go back and listen to podcasts and how you track all that. And we do all kinds of innovative marketing stuff now, which is awesome. And on top of that, I mean, Clemson is a Clemson driven stuff. You know, the sports world is still.

 

you’re going to be there, but Clemson driven helps with what’s going on and what is going to happen here in the next five years. if you think it’s big now in your business, I mean, you think about all the things you do on campus. I mean, all, all the student housing stuff, all the new home stuff, all the commercial, all the rentals think about on those weekends in which.

 

university of Texas could come here to play football or Alabama or Oregon or Penn state or Ohio state or Michigan or, you know, Oklahoma. Like that’s a, we’re about to, you know, I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s crazy. Yeah. I mean, I know you’re going to visit with the mayor. If, if, man, I’m excited if I’m in those folks, I’m a little bit terrified. Like this place is going to be, it already has been at times the epicenter, but we, you know, you grew up here, so, you know, man, this is where we are to where we now, but.

 

If this happens the way most think it’s going to happen, almost as surely it’s going to happen. that’s, that’s the biggest thing happened in our lifetime to this community. yeah. Like Florida state being good is one thing, but in four state coming here, whatever the years, that was a big deal. Not Texas, you know, not Ohio state, not Michigan, not Alabama. That’s a whole different, we’re talking about exploding and I don’t know how you handle all that. Yeah.

 

Yeah, I know. It’s a lot of negatives to it too, but man, it’s, I mean, that’s big now. It’s going to be big. So it’d be the best thing to happen to us. Right. I mean, you eventually, I was going to just going to ask you, like, I mean, I’m sure y ‘all track, you know, how many listeners do you have you have on a daily basis or? Well, there’s two ways. There’s two listeners. There’s one that is, the radio listener over the airways FM signal, and you can’t track those. There are people that track. We do very well in the tracking system.

 

and especially one of them, and I just learned this the other day, we’re doing great with young people for some reason. So biggest growth we used to do, we used to really sell, 25 to 54 year old males. We still, we do a lot better with females than what the normal, radio station, store station would do. That’s not, we can’t sell on that because do we have a lot of great listeners there, but that’s not a big number for us. Biggest numbers, 25 to 34 still male.

 

but the younger crowd, we’re doing much better with, they do like, I don’t know, 25 to 35. We’re doing much better with them than ever before. But what we can track is on our app and on our website. And I am shocked, but the millions of minutes that are listened and all that, because you got to register, I think that they can tell you, A, who you are, where you’re listening from, how long you’re listening.

 

You know what time to turn it on time to turn it off. And so we track that there’s got these data people that these internet geeky people don’t know what they’re doing, but they know all that stuff. And it is, it’s more and more and more every single month, which is crazy. Yeah. I mean, and you start adding these teams coming into, I mean, I, I jokingly, when people, it’s amazing to me when I go out and I introduce myself to people and I say, Eric Newton,

 

And they’re like, Eric Newton .com. And I’m like, yeah. And I’m like, you know, and some, sometimes they’ll say, you know, like, are you that insurance guy or, you know, like, or are you the attorney or whatever? I’m like, no, I’m a real estate guy, but it’s, it’s, it’s amazing. I’m like, it’s amazing how many people listen to your show. And it’s, it’s that one slot that I advertise. And I’ve been doing it for what I don’t know. It’s been probably since probably almost 20 years, almost 20 years.

 

And, you know, and you, do you remember, do you remember the, the, how that all started? We were joking. We were sitting in the studio. We were going to do a, you’re like, you got 30 seconds to get your point across on whatever ad that I was going to do. And I was like, I sat there for a minute and I was, you know, jotting down some notes and I jokingly said, what if we just said Eric Newton, Eric Newton, Eric Newton, Eric Newton .com. And you, you looked at me and you’re like, that’s a good idea. And it was, it was, it was a complete joke.

 

But then the next day you did it and you’ve done it on the radio ever since. And, and I have so many funny stories about that. So oftentimes people come to you and get in and they’ll say Eric Newton, Eric Newton, Eric Newton, Eric Newton .com. Yeah. Like I can’t tell you how many times, you know, and sometimes it’s embarrassing, you know, you know, like I’ll go somewhere and, and they’ll just yell out Eric Newton, Eric Newton, Eric Newton .com, you know, and I’m like, gosh, you know, and, and,

 

You know, it’s like, who is that vein guy? You remember the reason we did it is because we’re, I was going through a transformational period, you know, right in the middle of the recession and all that, you know, right. man. You stuck with me in like, we worked together on some stuff. And so it was like, Whoa, like because eight, like it wasn’t good for either one of us. Right. but we, we did all that. I remember, but the reason that came up was because you play guitar and you sing and you’re in this band at the time. And I said, why don’t you just sing them in your target?

 

to sing Eric Newton .com for 30 seconds. It was over and over and over. But the, what’s interesting part of that is, is that, cause you know, the, the strategy has worked out like the natural conversation that’s worked out. And so someone who might think you might be an insurance that matter, but like they would either go to that eventually, you know, and yours is not an impulse by, I mean, not oftentimes for some folks it might be. but the other part is, is that they know that and then years later, they still know that. And most of them would probably know it’s real estate.

 

Probably not all forms of your real estate, right? Right. But so you’ve got to me, you’ve got a very interesting marketing.

 

dilemma, but also opportunity because you’re so widespread and you, you know, there’s, there’s that niche market that certain people would have, but yet you’ve got a bunch of those. So you’ve got to challenge through all that. But I think you’ve done a great job of that. Well, yeah, when had to basically regroup during the recession, you know, I, you know, had to figure out what I, what I wanted to hang my hat on. And I just decided to hang my hat on Clemson, the Clemson market and the surrounding lakes.

 

And, you know, we focused on, you know, I was doing a lot of single family, residential development, land development, and then that business tanked because of the recession, couldn’t give lots of way, which is crazy because it’s completely different now. I was the opposite. You know, you can’t find a lot, partly, but, you know, and so I focused on the property management, growing that, and then the sales, the sales business, and it was more of a branding. And I was like, most people want to deal with a person. They don’t care so much about.

 

the company that care about the person. And so that was the idea behind the Eric, you know, Eric Newton brand, you know, they may not know me, but they may know the brand health. It’s your local health is your, you know, you’re degreed in it and like, you know what, and the experience part of it, people knew you a little bit through it all too, but you know, the, I mean, you were very,

 

You had an awful lot of persistence. You know, you were going to survive. I remember that conversation. Like one of the conversations we had, you might not remember this, this is probably like 2009 or 10 is like, we’re coming out of it. Like in every one of your projects, not everyone, but most of your projects that the conversation would be. Man, failure is not an option on this one. Like if this goes down, man, we’re cooked, but we’re not going to get cooked. Like we’re going to do this. Right. Yeah. And I mean, it was just kind of like,

 

You know, things kind of came full circle. You know, there were points in time, you know, during that timeframe where I thought, man, this, you know, do I even want to continue doing this? Cause you like you’re, you’re rolling the dice and it could come up snake eyes. Right. But the other part, I think I remember well in, in, I always thought it admired is that there’s a point in time you could walk away at any point in time you’d be comfortable and everything and be okay. But like you’ve got a sense now of.

 

You’re provider for a lot of people, you know, like when you go to bed at night and we look at one and you’re thinking about, I got families, I got to do well for today. Yours most importantly, but a lot of people, right? Yeah. I feel that sense of obligation. You know, the Lord put me here in this position for a reason. Community wise, but more, not more than fully, but also in that company, right? Yeah. Lies, man. Those are families of moms and dads and kids and they got, right. They got.

 

doctor bills and mortgages and it’s a lot of responsibility. Yeah. Well, how cool is it that, you know, I wanted to hang my hat on Clemson Clemson market surrounding lakes and I’m able to raise my, my family here and do business here in the town that I love. And, you know, I love everything about it. You know, I love the lakes. I love the, all the sporting events. I love that. We’re so close to everything. You know, one of the amazing things about your company is that.

 

In your industry, I’m only guessing, but in your industry, like, cause you’re a local guy, you know, like I’ve had friends of mine that, that rented a student housing from a national company and it was a disaster. Like their pubs didn’t come in and it’s supposed to be furnished as a furniture. Like they walk in, where is it? I don’t know. It’ll be in a couple of weeks. But like when it happens to you, I mean, that’s Eric Newton and that’s a Clemson guy. And so there’s a Clemson mom and dad that want to talk to you about that. And I’m sure every day of your life, there’s.

 

there’s fires like reputation wise and, and I mean, there’s a micro and a macro part of it, but like, you’ve got to survive a lot of that, but, but really for the most like reputation wise, I think people, you know, trust, they know it might not be perfect. You’re going to learn some risk in there, but some people don’t like me because of what I do, but like who doesn’t like not, not specifically, but what groups of people wouldn’t like you? Well, I mean, you know, I mean, you talk about all this, this,

 

growth that we’ve had and all the success we’ve had in the sports programs and all the attention that has been put on the university. And I mean, it’s, you know, when, when Ella, like when Ella applied Clemson, I think there were like six over 60 ,000 applications. Yeah. You know, so the popular fault, my fault. I mean, these, these are, I mean, the upstate in general is growing. I mean, look at Greenville, Greenville’s exploded. And so, you know, we’re midway between Atlanta and Charlotte. So I mean, it’s, it’s just, it’s generally, it’s a,

 

great, a great place. These are things that are out of my control, but how cool is it that to your point, like that a local person is do is working here is hanging his hat on this area. Like I don’t think people realize too, like there’s that’s nothing that didn’t happen. Like there’s national, huge corporations that are part of other places. Yeah. I mean, it sounds, maybe sounds a little cliche, but like, you know, development with a conscience, right? I mean, I do, I do have a conscience. I mean, I, I want.

 

I want what’s best for the school too. There are things that are out of our control, but would you rather it be, you know, somebody from California doing it, or would you rather it be somebody’s going to agree on that. And that’s fine to disagree on that. But with that said, you can always cause I mean, there’s, there’s lines that move, but you grew up here and I grew up here. I mean, I know this place. So when I was a kid, you want to eat in Clemson, you got RJ’s get your hot dog.

 

had some pizza and some subs over there. Max. You always had Max. Yeah. and downtown Clemson, you had a couple of t -shirt shops and then a bunch of bars and you know and and then you look at some that was dilapidated areas, right? You talk about beautiful. It was and you know, there’s parts of it and what but man, there was some dilapidated stuff down there that looked awful but you didn’t choose to see that. You wanted, you know, you choose your arguments and all that, right? It’s not a, you know,

 

I’m in those challenges. I’m sure not everyone’s going to be happy about it. But yeah, I mean, the thing that I try to remind people, I mean, the things that I love about this town or what everybody should love about this, it should be the reason why people move here. They move here because of the school. If the school weren’t here, if Clemson university weren’t here, the town wouldn’t exist. You know, I wouldn’t, none of us, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. We are here for the students. Everything we do in this community is for the students and the idea that.

 

I hate traffic. So I hate all these students being here. hate all these young people, the noises or whatever they might do, whatever. Well, you got to back up and remind yourself they’re the only reason that we have jobs. They’re the only reason we’re here. Right. It’s still a lake and a mountain. We’d find it, but the catalyst was, is still the student. Well, and it’s the same people that say they don’t want our football program to suck or any of our sports programs. It’s like,

 

Like, look, if you want to be, but they also want to want to be able to pay a hundred dollars to uptake and pay $20 to take and go send a 50 yard line to like there’s prices to all of that. Right. Yeah. And I’m going to be priced out of it one day. Good. And that’s fine. I’d rather be that look, talking about Texas coming in here or Ohio state, if it’s sec or big 10, you got to tell you, man, that’s exciting. You ain’t going to like the ticket situation. Right. I mean, well, it’s already gotten pretty, pretty crazy. Okay. It has going to get, it’s going to.

 

burst and you’re going to go, man, this stinks. I can’t, you know, I can’t take my whole family. Do this. This is going to be bad. A lot of people, but what’s the alternative go play wake forest again and go back to being seven and five or five and six or something. I don’t want that. I’d rather sit at home watching TV. You know, we get stacks. Yeah. Well, it’s all relative to right. You know, I mean, and, and COVID taught us that, I mean, I didn’t go to one.

 

You know, I, I grew up going to all the games from like Thomas. I don’t remember up until COVID the last time I missed a game, a home game. And, I took the SAT from time I was four until the, I met this year, my daughter was born. I missed two home games.

 

And so I went 51 years in this one home game, take the SAT. I don’t know why to take the SAT in the spring or something like that. I just messed that one up. It’s like weddings. Why do you have a wedding on a football weekend? But who does that? But Eric, they still had the game. Yeah. Like I always thought, man, if I’m not there, they’re probably not going to start probably when he keeps score. Well, guess what? They still played. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Well, and I’m not going to lie. You know, we had just built our house and had man cave and watching those games. Yeah.

 

He’s a comforter of your bathroom couch. It was pretty nice. Now that there’s no substitution for being there in person before we talk about the, all the sec and potential big, big 12 stuff or big 10 stuff. I do want to tell you a funny story about the Eric Newton .com thing before we move on. But so I tell this story to people when, when they asked me, it’s like, what started that, that whole thing. And I tell them a story about us, you know, us sitting in the.

 

in the studio and all that stuff. And then, well, this was probably a year or two, maybe three into you doing that. And I mean, you know, I love, I love Clemson basketball. I mean, I used to paste up. I mean, I used to go to all the games, you know, all the home games of basketball games too. And I loved coach Purnell and Oliver Purnell. and, I mean, I, you know,

 

We had, we had Rick Barnes and then we had, shy it and then Purnell came in and he was like, he had that, you know, that awesome off his office. It was just, it was so much fun to watch. And I was really upset when he left, but anyway, so he was kind of a, you know, I’m not, I’m not a starstruck kind of person. You know, I’m not one to just go crazy over when I see famous people, and you know, with him, he’s a, but he’s a famous local guy, you know, and,

 

So, Jessica and I had, we went down to Charleston one weekend and he had a house down there. we went on Charleston on for a long weekend or is it like Friday night? We got down there late, had a late dinner and I don’t even remember where we went, but sat down. We were, we were waiting on our food and having a few drinks or whatever. And I said, I got to go to the bathroom. And so I got up to go to the bathroom and in the doorway in the, in the lobby was.

 

Oliver Penel and his wife and I’m like, Holy cow. Yeah. Yeah. What was it? Vicky Vicky. And I was like, Holy cow. Like what? I don’t, I don’t, I didn’t see him much around town. I’m down in Charleston, you know? And, and, and so I went to the bathroom and I was like, okay, if, if you still stand there, I’m going to, I’m going to say something to him. So, so I’m going to hurry up, you know? And, and,

 

I wash my hands and I go back out and he’s sure enough. He was still standing there. First of all, I was like, why is Oliver Purnell still standing there waiting to be seated? You know? But, so, so I was like, okay, here’s my chance. So I went up to him. I’m like, Hey coach, Eric Newton, you know, I go to all the games, you know, I did all the fan geek stuff, you know? Yeah. Fan boyed it up and, and, and I was like, it’s so great to meet you. I love your style, basketball, blah, blah, blah, you know,

 

And then he looked at me like kind of annoyed, you know, it was like, you know, like, I was like, God, he just came down here to have dinner. He’s getting away. You know, and, he just looked at me and he said, did you say Eric Newton? And I said, yes, sir. He said, you mean like Eric Newton, Eric Newton, Eric Newton. He’s like, that is the most annoying.

 

commercial on the radio station, but it must work because I know here. So then, I mean, and I was like, Holy cow. I was like, I’m Mickey would love to hear here that, you know, I didn’t say that, but I was thinking in my head and Mickey would love to hear that. You know, the head basketball coach at Clemson knows one of his, one of his ads, you know, a couple of things they’re like coaches always say, we don’t read your newspapers. We don’t, we don’t listen radio. Every one of them. Every one of them. Yeah.

 

I’ve had so many run ins with coaches and one of my favorite ones was Reggie here and who was a dear friend, coordinate dot defensive coordinator. You remember Reggie? Well, Reggie was a Sony Corleone. He was shoot first, ask questions second all the time. And there’s one time where, you know, we in this small town, like all the wives listen and all the kids listen and all, you know, and, so we’re at this.

 

part of the season and things didn’t go great on about a loss or whatever. And he called me up on the phone and he ripped me up and down. And he said, I heard you said this about our blitz percentage. We needed to do this. And then he said, I will tell you this. That’s not the percentage we had. We didn’t blitz but this many, many times. And, and, I mean, he cussed me up and down. And I said, coach, that was a call that said that I took up for you, gave you those numbers. He goes, you did? yeah. He goes, Hey man, how’s your family? Everybody good? Like, so, you know, it’s like,

 

You know, that’s how coaches are like, they’re going to defend themselves and passionate about it, but they all listen. So I’ve always wondered, do you ever hold back because you’re afraid they might be listening or not? Or do you just say it like it is? No, I would never now say this. What I’ve learned to be is not to be too close to any of them anymore. There’s a point in time where I was just closer to your coaches and it’s hard to criticize a friend. I still consider some of them friends, but it is harder to criticize that. But I will tell you that more than anything else.

 

what would be held back is because of families. So there was a time where there were, the coordinators at Clemson got fired and I got the phone call from one of the secretaries that, Hey, they just went in and they’re getting fired right now. And like, I could have broken that story on the radio that morning. That would have been a big feather in my cap. Like this guy got fired. Well, that said, I didn’t go to the store because I didn’t want

 

the wife and the kids to hear on the radio. You know, you got to remember, man, like those are dads and moms and those are husbands and fathers. And so that’s where you got to be a little bit aware of. So I would say, I would say criticizing fairly and praising fairly is probably a way to go about it. But understanding you’re criticizing the position and not the person, right? You know, these are all good people.

 

My aunt the other day, she’s a big game cock fan. She’s like, dabbo texted her call or something. I said something about it. And she said, I don’t, I can’t stand him. I want to be honest with you’d love him. She said, no, not Dumbo, but it was like, you don’t understand. Like he’s Shane Beamer. Like I would like Shane Beamer. Like these are good people. They’re doing good things. They’re helping young people out because they wear a color. Like they’re not bad. You know, you’re so ingrained in that. Yeah. That’s the thing too.

 

You know, and we’ve, you know, living here and then raising kids here, a lot of our, you know, my kids are friends with a lot of the kids of the coaches and stuff. And then you personally, like you’re, I mean, people don’t realize like there’s a couple of coaches that you told me stories about there off the ear, like several things you told me. And like, I would never mention that on the air. So you got to protect those relationships. Yeah. And I’m, and I’m, you know, I don’t, I want them to feel comfortable because they’re.

 

You know, they’re friends. I mean, and we, we love them and you know, you’ve got the kids of, those kids that they’re, they’re playing sports with and everything else. And work from a client standpoint, because I’m in real estate, you’re, you know, you’ve got a relationship with someone there. You’re in a bad house of the wife’s coming to town. Who knows if guys can be fired or not fired or hired. So like a lot of stuff you had all that. So, you know, you had to protect clients, but then the friendship to your kids, man, they don’t need to be subjected to all that. Right. And it’s the friendships first. Right. I mean, and I like,

 

You know, so it’s, it’s really sad. Like Grayson Grayson’s best friend is at evenables. And, you know, when they moved, that was a really sad, she cried. They both cried. I mean, and you see that and you’re like, people aren’t seeing that they’re not seeing that side of things, you know? And I mean, they still, I mean, they’re still best friends. They talk every day just about, you know, and so, and so like to me,

 

I mean, yes, there’s the job side of it. And sometimes, I mean, people criticize me and, you know, they don’t know you and they don’t know me and they, like, they don’t know that you do it too though. I mean, yeah, I criticize people. I don’t know from afar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was locally that way, but you know, people make decisions in there, right. But that’s, but that’s part of your job. I mean, to do that and you don’t do it. It’s not personal for you. I don’t think so. It’s just, you’re just, you’re just,

 

You’re just stating facts and those coaches, kids grow up like having to know mom or dad are in this different world and they get it. I mean, there’s tons of advantages to it too. It takes some to go with the bed, but with it, they grow a little thicker skin, knowing that somebody said something like that or, you know, yeah, they, there’s definitely a shield that gets put up, you know, they, and it’s, you know, they don’t let, they don’t, they don’t always let people in and I get it. I get it completely because you don’t know.

 

Tommy Bowden was the best at that. Like the best and the worst Tommy Bowden grew up. And I remember this, his dad was criticized at West Virginia and he played there for him and he saw that. And like they, his dad got fired there basically, and he left, but like they were, they want to hang him in effigy there. So he had this calloused guard up at all times. He never got close to Tommy Bowden. I got a little bit closer to him at times, but there was always, he’d always keep you a little bit at bay.

 

And, what’s interesting about Davao is that, Brett Benner, what’s the matter of fact? I said it best. Davao never takes his guard down cause he never puts it up. And that’s what people who don’t, you know, I’m well enough know that like, he didn’t have to do some of it now more than ever, but still, man, that’s pretty hard to be that authentic and to be that real in front of everybody all the time. But the way to protect that is just, just he’s comfortable being him, which helps a lot. Yeah. Where about maybe might not have been, but.

 

Yeah. You see it like there’s, they’re going to protect themselves and their reputation and their family and they should, and they should. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you don’t know what someone’s intentions are. You never know. And so you got to protect your family first. So, and then at the end of the day, they’re, they’re all human beings, just like us. They’re, they’re just like us. They just get a lot of attention and a lot of scrutiny, you know, but I always, always was curious to know how you like, cause you got a lot of friends, a lot of friends and a lot of friendships in that world. And like how you,

 

how you kind of navigate around that, how you manage that. I would tell you this, that, that again, when I was a younger man, like I had much more personal relationships, the business has changed too, because they control their own message now. So there’s not, you don’t meet with the coaches anymore. You know, you don’t get to talk to them on the record anymore. Like they’ll call you or text you and you get encouragement type stuff or family type stuff, things like that. But like, you don’t get that like you used to get it, but that’s good in a way.

 

Because you can separate that. I mean, when Rick Stock still was here, you know, you’ve had a couple of coaches that, that, that you’re dear, dear, dear friends with best friends in the world with kind of thing. And that’s hard. whereas it’s a little easier if you just keep it a little bit more at bay, you know, and, and they’re going to criticize you too. You know, there was one of my favorite stories was, there was a defensive coordinator here who let it be known to staff. He can’t stand me. Couldn’t stand, can’t believe I said this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And.

 

I’m at one of his charity golf tournaments and he’s there and I see him across the, the, parking lot. And I said, well, we’ll go put a little into this thing right now. You know? So I walked up to him and I walked beeline right to him. And I said, we’re going to have this thing out. And he looked at me and he goes, have a minute to call you. Yeah, I heard he had, he goes, I heard he had some back issues. I had some back issues too. What do you think I need to see this? I was like, that’s what you had issues with me about? He goes, yeah. All right.

 

You know, I was younger, more brash then, but for the most part, they understand I got a job to do. They got a job to do. Yeah. Well, it’s just like with me, I mean, it’s not near on that level, but you know, some of the projects that I do are, you know, get a lot of attention and, you know, I’ll, I’ll see, you know, social media posts are like that. Eric Newton’s ruining our town. It’s like, you know, and I’m sure my kids hear things, you know, from time to time and.

 

And, you know, and it’s just like, and I’ve had, I’ve had people come up to me and say things is like, when are you going to stop doing what you’re doing? And I, and I’ll just say, well, what do you mean? And they say, like, when are you going to stop ruining our town? When you’re going to stop like building stuff. And, and first of all, I’m, I’m taking it back. I could be sitting in a restaurant and somebody said to me, you know, it’s like, I was like, well, you know, I’m going to, I’ll, I’ll, you know,

 

I do this, I do my job, I do it with a conscience. You know, I grew up here, I’ve lived here my whole life. And you know, you’d rather me do these projects than somebody from out of town. I spend my money here. I, I, I live and work here. I, you know, I’ve got a lot of employees that are depending on me for their li, their livelihoods. And, you know, every chance I get, I’m trying to spend money in this town, supporting all the local businesses. And is that not what we would.

 

we would want is to support local. I’m a local. You don’t get that as much face to face as you do social media there, right? Right. Cause social media makes brave man. yeah. And, and I just ignore that stuff, but you know, it’s hard not to be defensive. It is hard not to be defensive. You know, so my reaction to that would be, I only had like two years resolutions in my life. And one of them was a few years ago. Don’t try not to be defensive. And that’s hard. Cause you want to point out to the troll.

 

or whatever, you know, the social media person that, but face to face is different. Like that person might have some concerns. You might agree. You might not agree. And they might be right about something. You might be wrong, but more times than not, they’re probably their point of view is not as educated on, on all things that you consider. They’re looking at from a much more narrow terms to all that. But I respect someone who would come up to you to not at a restaurant, but you know, have a sit down with you or talk to your email.

 

Yeah. I mean, I would much rather that, you know, it was like, talk to me. You, you’ll see, I mean, let’s have a beer together, you know, talk through this. You see my, my perspective and then, and you see there’s, yeah. I mean, it’s real easy to criticize somebody over a keyboard, but yeah. But the other part is like, I mean, there are legitimate concerns too. You can understand. I mean, not, you don’t, might not agree with them, but I can understand where some of that comes from, but not in the end, obviously there’s you’re balancing. That’s only, you know, we only look at it through our set of eyes. There’s a lot more eyes look.

 

Right. Yeah. I mean, you, you know, what they may not understand is I want a lot of the same things that they do is just going about it a different way. Sure. You know, I mean, like we talked about earlier, and then the university’s growing enrollment. you know, they’ve been growing by six to 800 students from what the stats that I’ve been seeing every year. I mean, that’s infusing six. How does that like, how does that compare to Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina or Florida state? They’re all, they’re all very, they’re all very similar. Yeah.

 

Yeah. It’s education in the future though, like the smaller schools. I would be, I would be worried if I was at a really small school. Like to me, if I’m clumsy, I’m going to sell the experience. You’re going to come to my campus. I’m going to, I’m going to grow your daughter up, your, your son up, and we’re going to have this experience to where, you know, you got online stuff now. I’m not sure if I can go to a small tiny school and say, I can sell an experience. You can have it a major. Yeah. And that’s an, that’s an interesting point thought is.

 

You know, a lot of these smaller schools, you know, after COVID really suffered a lot. And, you know, if in some schools have shut down, some are just, you know, they are really, really struggling to keep the doors open. And well, the model is so tough, man. Like you’re talking about taking out that much as student loans to go make that little money. I mean, trade school looks awfully good to me compared to that. So I mean, that model, there’s a bubble in there, I’m sure. And I’m sure that may just.

 

really bright people who are trying to balance in that bubble and growth and not growth. And there’s a lot in there. Right. Well, if you think about if a lot of those schools shut down, they’re still going to want to go to the, the, the good tier one schools like Clemson. So what’s that going to do? It’s going to continue the growth. Sure. You know, in spite of what you’re hearing out there that may be getting a college education is not, you know, the smartest path, you know, student loans and everything, you know,

 

I still think it is part of part of just growing up. But, but a thing I like, I noticed in my industry in, things don’t things change. I’m changing yours. Obviously. I mean, you talk about what we went through in the eight compared to COVID compared. I mean, these major catastrophic catastrophic type things in my industry. Okay. When I was a kid in 1974, 1 billion people watched Muhammad Ali and George Foreman and Rumble in the jungle.

 

on television, a billion across the world. Nowadays, I’m in super old draws, like 120 million, the biggest sport event in the world, like eight times less, you know? And so if you get a, a, a clumps of football games, going to draw 4 million people think, man, that’s a mega game. Clemson Florida state this weekend is going to get like four or 5 million people, a billion watch boxing and what happened? When’s the last time we watched a boxing match? I watch UFC.

 

All right. Bottom line is like boxing’s dead. So NASCAR had Marty McGee on my show the other day from, from, ESPN. He’s a big NASCAR guy now. He’s got a football guy, but he said, imagine telling Bristol motor speedway 20 years ago that those tickets that are willed to your family, like Augusta national, like imagine telling that you’d have to actually go out and market and have to sell and have thousands of empty seats at your NASCAR.

 

It’d be crazy to think that would ever happen. Major league baseball, you know, you grew up, you grew up, we watched the Braves growing up every single night. Imagine now I don’t know what the Braves are throwing, what channel they’re on. Like things change. Right. And you better make it easy on your client, on your market, on your fan. You better make it convenient because somebody’s out there making it easy. Right. And if you don’t and you’re, and you make bad decisions to make it harder, like what cost of balls trying to do.

 

And it’s those things can go away and you don’t think they can. Nobody in the right mind would have thought that Sears would have gone away or best buy or whatever, you know, like you couldn’t screw up Budweiser. It screwed it up. So you couldn’t screw up Sears. Yeah. Screwed it up. You know, so that’s why you gotta be careful in every. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s, and that’s what I, you know, I tell my team and my staff, you know, and our, and.

 

company, you know, it was like, there’s always somebody gunning for us. Somebody’s always wanting to try to do things better. And so is cliche as it is, we were always trying to do things better. Let’s try to learn and grow and, cause you’re not growing, you’re dying. Right. And so, but you know, I, I really, I really do believe that, you know, the, the, the growth that we’re experiencing here is a generally positive thing, but I want, I want to grow the right way, you know,

 

you know, that there are, there are a lot of things that, you know, there’s a lot of political pressure to halt growth, you know, not just tears crossing, but I just, I just have a hard time wrapping my brain around that concept. Like how do you halt growth? You know, Pickens County enacted a, six month moratorium on multifamily, you know? and so you can’t do multifamily. We tried to pull permits on a little small.

 

duplex deal not too long ago and we couldn’t get them. We had, we’re having to wait. So, so in that case, you can have a nicer home for somebody. And what, what the County says is no, we don’t want a nicer home for somebody. Yeah. Or, or it’s just, it’s like, we’re, we’re just, we’re just, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a function of supply and demand, right? I mean, we’re with the moratorium was because of the growth issue that they’re trying to, I guess they’re trying to stop. Okay. So in that case, I’m

 

I’m not getting too much. So in other words, the, the contractors you have, the people working on the side, you know, the tax base that would come out of that. Someone that could have a better dwelling. somebody could have a healthier environment, your schools, your taxes, your pain. Like we’re just going to say, well, yeah. Well, in the meantime, people were moving here in droves from all over, all over the country. I mean, it’s the, it’s the entire state.

 

South Carolina is a very attractive place to be. I was told the other day that like in your lifetime, like there will be 20 million people that live in South Carolina. Yeah, that’s probably right. I mean, it’s a great place. You know, easy though. Yeah. And, and no, two to 3 million is like a decade or two ago. Yeah. And then we’re almost like four or five, some five and a half or something. And then we’re going to 20 in the next 20 years or something like that. Right.

 

And I don’t think that any of the thing, those kinds of things are what’s going to stop that from happening. You know, it, it, so there’s gotta, there’s gotta be a better way. And you know, we could stop it. We could, we could elect bad people, make bad decisions. And then as pretty as those lakes are, as pretty as the mountains are, there is no more beautiful place in the country than California. And you see what it costs to get up, you see this stats, what it costs to get a,

 

an RV, I mean, I get a, a U -Haul from California to Texas compared to Texas, California. Like if you take a U -Haul to Texas, California, it’s outrageous. Like you can’t get one because they don’t want to, you know, whatever. Anyway, we can screw it up. We could, yeah, this place is awesome. Well, a lot of those people are moving here. Yeah. We could screw it up though. I was out there skiing Tahoe, in March.

 

with some buddies of ours, which I used to go on. Yeah. Yeah. You have kids now you can’t do gas was pushing $7 a gallon. Double what we’re paying here. I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot of good things, you know, obviously awesome things about the state. I don’t want it to get over. I don’t want to be overflowing with people, but how do we can’t stop it? How do we stop it? Like the way we go about the way we

 

are trying and I say, we, I say in general, what, what the political pressures have been. It’s like, we’re trying to stop it the wrong ways. You don’t, you don’t, what you have to do is figure out the quickest way to absorb as much of the demand as quickly as you just over as quickly as possible. And that’s an unpopular opinion. You got to identify those areas that where it makes sense to have density and then put the people there. And you got like Clemson itself is.

 

is looked at. I just, I went to a conference back in April, the largest student housing conference in the country is the who’s who of student housing. And everybody is looking at Clemson. I mean, there’s other college towns too, but Clemson is one of the most attractive markets because of the barriers to entry. How hard it is to put deals together. People think that it’s easy. It’s not easy. It’s very difficult. I live it every single day, but the more barriers to entry there are, the easier it is for the bigger groups, the ones that can

 

that want to put together those big massive projects that nobody likes. You know, or a lot of people don’t like this easier for them. So they love it. They love it. You know, I mean, and, and so it’s like, you got to figure out there’s, there’s gotta be a different way. You can’t stop market pressure. You can’t tell me is I need to listen to the mayor tomorrow. I need to go on your podcast with the mayor. Well, I don’t know what he’s going to say. I’m not going to, you know, we’re just going to talk general, but yeah, I mean, there’s, I mean, there’s, and this is something you need to educate yourself about with.

 

You know, there’s, there’s people to talk to and websites to go to and all. He, and he’s in a, the, the, the council is in a really tough spot because, because no matter what they do, they’re, they’re going to get, you know, like they just passed that the, you know, that, just approved that project, the hub, the big, you know, that massive deal over there on QE trail. And that, that was extremely controversial and I don’t think about it. I had to look it up when we’re done. Yeah. It’s a, it’s massive. It’s massive. You know,

 

That probably from being truthful, it hurts me, but you know, I’d be a little bit hypocritical to say that I didn’t want that project, you know, but I also think that it makes a lot of sense where it is that you want stuff. You want projects to be built and developed where it’s they’re walkable to campus. Cause that’s what you don’t want is the sprawl. Like, you know, that’s where we made a mistake. You remember all that we were going through all of it together with.

 

for another friend of ours and seeing it all happen. And they made a mistake, man. Yeah. Made a huge mistake. Yeah. So, you know, anyway, I didn’t want to get off on that, but that’s interesting. Yeah. It’s, it is interesting. you know, it’ll, it’ll be real interesting to see how things play out over the next five to 10 years. this, this was, this was funny. It’s probably not true. I mean, it’s probably not true, you know, but when I was out at that conference, that

 

you know, people I’ve been going for so long. They didn’t do that, but they knew they knew that I that I, you know, that I’m, you know, a lot of people knew I’ll, you know, operate here in Clemson. And, I had so many people say, I hear Clemson’s grow into 50 ,000, enrollment, you know, over the next 10 years. And I was like, that’s news to me. I hadn’t heard that, you know, but I mean, that was the rumor at the conference. So what do you think that does?

 

I mean, wait, I mean, it, it’s, it’s like all the eyes are on, on Clemson and you know, I don’t think at the end of the day, I doubt that’s true. I mean, this is where visionaries and, leadership have to take the proper, you know, like if there’s a couple of forks in there, you know, like we could go down some bad areas, make bad decisions sprawl and it could be bad, but.

 

Yeah. Imagine if it is true. Like what if it is true? What if in the next 10 years, I’m not saying I want that. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t want that. I wouldn’t want that either. That could be great. If it’s handled correctly, if not, it’s a disaster. So it’s a fork man. It’s on and it’s about leadership and vision. Right. And, and, and so halting, you know, projects, enacting moratoriums. I mean, I understand if you’ve got, you know, infrastructure issues, like you, you don’t have sewer capacity and plants. I mean, you just, you just, but.

 

but just trying to stop it when the pressure, all it’s going to do is going to, it’s just going to force projects to be developed in areas that want them. And which is the sprawl that you’re, you know, that we’re talking about. It’s, it’s gonna, it’s gonna, you know, parents of, of kids are already buying houses in nice neighborhoods in Clemson and they’re putting their kid in them. I mean, they’re paying, you know, I mean, I heard the other day of a, of a parent that bought a,

 

a million plus, house for their kid to live in while they’re at Clemson. So it would have gone over well, my dad. Yeah, that would really gone over well. So is that what we want or would we rather have purpose built student housing projects in the right places? You know, in town places, the key. Yeah. And so, so that’s the thing that people don’t think of. And so when, and if I’m, if people are criticizing me, you know, because of what I do, they’re not, they’re not.

 

They’re not understanding what’s going through my head, you know, but, but, so I got a good podcast and we got a good websites and you can, yeah, but it’s accessible. Yeah. But anyway, but it is, it is interesting. I know, I know we said we were going to keep this pretty short because I know you’re not feeling, feeling well, but, we’ll try to try to wrap it up. But I do, I do want to hear your perspective on what conference you think we’re going to go into. I would say.

 

Today, 5149, tomorrow, 4951. Graham Neff does not know what conference we’re going in. And Jim Clements doesn’t know what conference we’re going in. And our board of trustees doesn’t know. And so I don’t know. I would say that if Clemson had their way, it would be SEC. It just makes it easier. We’re more like them. We’re not like Boston College or Pittsburgh or Syracuse or Miami or Stanford.

 

And Cal, I need to add those in there. We’re not like this people. SMU is going to be like Texas. But we can swallow that because it’s texts. Sorry. And, and, and, said SMU with that said, socially or, or just DNA wise, that makes more sense. baseball wise, it certainly makes more sense. and travel wise.

 

But they’re not making these decisions based upon fans traveling away games. That’s not, you know, and we’d like to think that it is. It was nice to get in the car and go to Chapel Hill and go to Raleigh, go to Durham, go to Winston -Salem. Those are easy Atlanta. Those are easy. And that’s fine. You can, the SEC does present a little bit of that. Now remember we are still flying to Syracuse, Boston College, Miami, sorry, Miami and Pittsburgh. So we’re flying to some of those anyway. with that said, it’s going to come down to, I think originally the big team will be a little more,

 

aggressive. They’re probably a little ready, you know, father long ready to go. I think the sec wants to wait a little bit and see how Texas, Oklahoma wants to work out. But in my mind, I don’t can’t see where the sec would let the big 10 come down here and take major boardwalks and part plakes parks, places like, Clemson and Florida state. I, you know, I’m for a state probably got the big 10 maybe I feel bad about them in the big 10, but so they were a key piece. And so is the sec going to sit back and let the big 10 come in here?

 

I don’t know on the big 10 side of things. You got to change the way you think about the big 10 because it’s not three yards and cloud of dust in Michigan, Ohio state and Penn state. It is now Oregon, Washington, Southern cow UCLA, Penn state Oregon. I mean, Penn state, Michigan state and Ohio state with Nebraska, Wisconsin, all that. So you got to change. It’s a national brand. The other thing that the big 10 has done a great job of is on the national scene.

 

They’ve got TV contracts with NBC, with CBS and with Fox, ABC. I mean, ESPN has ABC ESPN. I mean, SEC is a S ABC ESPN where the big 10 has. NBC and CBS and Fox. So now when you’re watching the mass singer or the voice or the view, whatever those things are, then you’re watching it in the promos. You’re going to be about Clemson in Florida. I mean, Clemson in Miami, I mean, Michigan or Clemson, but Oregon or Clemson, the Southern cow.

 

So it would be a national deal there. So you got to think about that. that it would be a little more money in the big 10. either one you’re better off with. And while the big 10 might not be as, as, desirable to some local folks, especially older folks, they’re still better than what we were going to be in the ACC because in the end it is about money, but it’s also about perception because imagine this, imagine that you’re a great linebacker.

 

from Augusta, Georgia, and you’re going to go on these unofficial visits on the weekends. which by the way, we’re paying players $5 ,000 a week just to visit your schools. Now, that’s some like unofficial visits. Kids go in $5 ,000 every single week. He kid over a summertime can make a couple hundred thousand dollars by taking visits. Really? yeah. It’s disgusting. Anyway, but imagine, imagine you’re a linebacker, right? And you’re being offered by Clemson, South Carolina and Georgia. And at, at.

 

At Clemson at noon, you’re going to be playing Wake Forest. You can go to that game at three 30 South Carolina is going to be playing Texas. And at eight o ‘clock, Georgia is going to be playing LSU. Now which game you going to. So it’s a perception. It’s almost like the JV plays at 12. And then here he comes to the varsity. Right after that. Now you could answer with, all right, they’re playing Texas and they’re playing LSU. Well, we’re playing Ohio state. You know, we’re playing Michigan and there’s some duds on most. I mean, you can.

 

Mississippi state or Arkansas, that’s not going to be like Vanderbilt. That’s going to be a lot of fun, but neither’s Rutgers or Maryland, some of that. And it’s not always every single week, but the big attract that Clemson have, attractives as they have is that like, not just, they’re not bringing in one great market, which Clemson is. They’re bringing in inventory. So in the SEC, Clemson versus Texas or Oklahoma or Alabama or LSU or Texas A or Georgia or Florida.

 

or Tennessee or I mean, that’s eight inventory, not gonna play all those every year, but that’s potentially eight inventory, mega huge, seven, eight million fan games. And that’s what you’re paying for. You’re not paying for the million dollar game, million dollar fewer games, million fewer games. And so in the big 10 Clemson versus Oregon, Washington, Southern Cal, UCLA, Penn State, Michigan, that’s inventory games that are paying. Because in the end, like you’re not going to watch.

 

You’re not going to watch NC State Wake Forest. Also, you’re not going to watch Vanderbilt in Kentucky. You were going to watch Florida State Clemson if they’re in the ACC, but the inventory looks like, man, Michigan plays Southern Cow this weekend. Ohio State plays Oregon this weekend. You know, Penn State’s playing Florida, I mean, whatever. So it’s about the inventory through all that. I think 5149. I’d say in the end, my guess would be SEC, but I wouldn’t be shocked. So.

 

You don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t leave ACC. No, that’s done. This divorce is in the process of having happening now. And here’s the thing right now, Clemson’s about a $20 million deficit. The ACC, I mean the SEC compared to the, to the big 10 and the ACC, $20 million. They’ve been able to make up through uptie and through people like you very kind contributions over there and all that. And, and they’ve, they’ve.

 

You know that that margins one thing with that margins going to grow to about 50 to $60 million in the next four or five years. So 10 years of that is half a billion dollars. You know, you’re not going to sit around and, and you’re going to ask Clemson to compete against South Carolina 10 years later, a half a billion dollars down. This is not going to happen. So the haggling and the arguments in courts, how that all works out is, is what we’re going to go through and where right now, just trying to find out what stadium we’re going to play in. You know, like we’re going to do it in South Carolina or North Carolina.

 

So once they go through all that, they’ll go, you know, one side will, we’ll start winning the case and one side will be motivated to settle. There’ll be a settlement, but the idea, no, this is irreconcilable differences. And the major thing is because of just the DNA. Clemson is a, a bigger school now that is a football school in a, in a conference of a bunch of small private basketballs. Clemson Wake Forest in Syracuse and Boston college in Pittsburgh and

 

Virginia, I mean, they don’t have anything in common. You know, the, the, the, who Clemson DNA is, is Tennessee and Georgia and Ohio state and Michigan. Like that’s, that’s your DNA. That’s who you want to be involved with. That’s who you want to, you know, it’s going to be married to. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Divorce is, is in the process of, it’s, they’re going to file for divorce. Basically. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out. Yeah. A lot of fun. Got to get rid of pneumonia.

 

cholesterol and high blood pressure. So we live long enough to see these epic battles. And you imagine that man, like Ohio state fans leaving Myrtle beach and Charleston to come up here. Five hours versus 12. Yeah. You imagine like you travel with your family, right? You’re going to big house. You’re going to Michigan. You’re going to happy Valley. That’d be fun. Right. You’re going to, the Coliseum or the Rose bowl. Be fine. Now you might not do it every year, but.

 

The idea that, I mean, that’s, that ain’t no joke. No, you’re, you’re exactly right. We were at the college football playoffs a few years ago, my wife and I, we’re in, you know, we leave Miami and we go to Arizona for the first one. I remember pulling up at stadium. I remember telling her, and this ain’t wait for us. Like this ain’t no joke. And, and so, you know, it’s Texas or it’s Michigan. Like, man, this ain’t no joke now. Right. Yeah. I mean, we actually, Ella and I, we went to.

 

Texas a and you know, the, the year Trevor Lawrence threw his first TD pass to, I think it was the T. Yeah. That game was insane. I mean, that place is insane. It’s the best college stadium in the country, but that place is, that’s Neelan and that’s a swamp, right? It’s Athens and that’s the big house. Imagine that week. Yeah. You had to change your, your, thought process about, wins and losses to like,

 

Nine and three gets in the playoffs and nine and three is like NFL nine and three is a really good year. You know, it’s like, there won’t be any of that 11 and 12 and that day. Right. Yeah. That would not likely ever happen. Anybody not to Alabama, right? Not to Georgia. Right. Yeah. Just, yeah. Georgia this year goes, goes to Texas and to Alabama, you know, Georgia the last couple of years to play nobody irregular season, even in the S E cause Kentucky and Florida and Tennessee. I mean, soccer on the happen. Very good.

 

But now, man, they go to Texas and to Alabama. Wow. That’s great. Quick prediction. Georgia Clemson. Who’s going to win that game? I mean, George is better in Clemson right now, but it’s opening game. Who knows? You know, turn it over a couple of times and Clemson can play with Georgia. And who knows like because of transfer Portland and all is like, who knows what the teams have right now? George is better than Clemson. Georgia should be favorite Clemson. It should be maybe a, like a 10 point favorite, but.

 

You know, you get in the game and people forget on, on Georgia’s, when they beat us in Charlotte a couple of years ago, Clemson was favored in the game. Yeah. 10 to three. And then Georgia won the national championship. Clemson didn’t play very well that year. They weren’t very good. So you don’t know, you know, Burton burns told me that, that every team is different every year. And so you don’t know, but Georgia should be favored over Clemson. I think Clemson can beat Jordan. Yeah. Yeah. I think they can. Yeah. who, who do you like to your point? Like,

 

Every, every year is a different set of leaders. You just never know. I mean, sometimes you can predict who those are going to be. I mean, you knew when Deshaun was coming back or Trevor’s come back, you knew they were going to be kind of the natural leaders, but like, who are the leaders on, on this team? You know, this is a team that, that I think has got good base because, because of the culture and these kids have stuck around and I transfer portal kids and all that kind of stuff. So I mean, you see it in, in those, those, you know, a lot of times it is seniors.

 

But there’s a bunch of good, you hope that cage that guy, I think Kate sometimes feels pressure to be that guy though. So it’s not really as authentic as it could be. And the quarterback’s always that natural position kind of a thing there, but I think they’ve got a bunch, no more Tyler Davis. Yeah. You’re a guy. What a good kid. Huh? Yeah. Great kid. Yeah. But Dave, no, no, no, no, no

 

Nowadays probably as more important as ever. Cause you know, that locker room can fall apart pretty quick in a me, me, me, NIL world. No doubt. Well, I’ve had, we got to do it again. I mean, I felt like I could have sat here and talked to you for another, another hour and a half, two hours. We just need to plan it. Let’s do it. So yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Thanks for your support for all these years. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It’s a good partnership, right? It’s been a great partnership. How long you gonna do it?

 

how long I’m going to work. I want to work the rest of my life. Yeah. I’m going to tell you this, leave you this. So Dan Patrick, when Bob Stoops retired from Oklahoma, Dan Patrick, he walked away. Like he didn’t have a year long thing. There’s certain people have a year long thing, whatever, goodbye tour, whatever. Dan Patrick’s hosted radio show, ESPN guy that now has a Dan Patrick show and his Danettes are the guys that work with him and said, are you going to give us a year or are you going to walk away? He said,

 

walk away from what? Like when you retire, the thought is you retired to something better. I think it’s what’s better than this. Yeah, exactly. So what would you retire to? Exactly. I mean, I want to be in a position to, you know, to travel and, and, you know, play golf and do fun things, but I’m not going to retire. So I want to either let’s, let’s keep, keep supporting each other at home. Yep. All right.

 

been another Experience Matters podcast with Eric Newton and our guest, Mickey Plyler. We really appreciate you. Come on. Thanks, Mickey. Thank you, buddy.