🔥Upside Chat: Dr Ron Dick, Duquesne University, Ex NBA/NCAA exec on Tom Brady, Novak Djokovic, the Super Bowl, the MLB Luxury Tax, the LIV Golf League, And More.

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🔥Upside Chat: Dr Ron Dick, Duquesne University, Ex NBA/NCAA exec on Tom Brady, Novak Djokovic, the Super Bowl, the MLB Luxury Tax, the LIV Golf League, And More.

Julien Blin

Feb 09, 2023

This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on Tom Brady's second retirement as well as his predictions for the Super Bowl. Then we talked about the MLB luxury tax payrolls hitting $5.2B in record revenue this year as well as Scott Rolen's Hall of Fame announcement. We also discussed the latest news on the LIV Golf league, as well as Djokovic winning his 10th Australian open tennis and 22rd grand slam. Lastly we talked about Duquesne men's hoops game that got interrupted by apparent food delivery attempt from an Uber Eat delivery man.

🚀Best Quotes: Here’s some of the key discussion points and best quotes from our conversation with Ron:

On Tom Brady's second retirement:
- “I don't think coming back again would do him or any other NFL teams any good. He had a pedestrian year. He defied the odds of father’s time way longer than most people ever have. He's probably the greatest quarterback of all time (…) As far as his ability, he'll be in the first ballot Hall of Fame in five years”.
- “There are rumors that he didn't like the fact that he couldn't announce his retirement a year ago. That somehow it leaked out (..) He told one friend and that friend told three other friends and it just pyramided out into leaking out.
  And that really bothered him for some reason”.
- “Tom supposedly has this Tony Romo type deal sitting on the table (…) Has Michael Jordan been a great general manager? I think the numbers would show that he is not. Just cause Tom was a great quarterback, will he be a great commentator giving us inside information about what's gonna happen the way Tony Romo used to do? I don't know that, but obviously somebody (Fox) thinks he will be and they're gonna pay the $375 million to take a look at him”.
On his Super Bowl predictions between the Chiefs and the Eagles:
- “I certainly hope the Eagles win (…) and how can we forget the great Andy Reid, who has more wins in the playoffs than any other coaches in the history of the Eagles. And he got to the Super Bowl with the Eagles and they lost, and now he's going back against his own team”.
On the MLB luxury tax payrolls hitting $5.2B in record revenue this year:
- “ I think it's very surprising that they're going over and they're not even hesitating to go over. I mean these owners either don't need to make a profit, Or maybe these MLB owners look at how much the value of their team's going up and how much they have been able to offset it with other revenue streams or maybe they don't mind if they lose money”.
On the LIV Golf League:
- “ I think anybody that likes the LIV Golf League needs to not put on the golf channel. You don’t need to listen to the analysts because they're inherently a biased group of guys because they feel threatened. When do people lash out? When they feel threatened. And the LIV Golf League has definitely made some roads and they're going nowhere. So they're here to stay”.
On rumors that Saudi Arabia might be looking to buy the F1 league for $20B:
- “Saudi Arabia has always been, to my knowledge, in the G20 as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with all the oil and gas that they have. This certainly makes them more palatable, more acceptable, and more mainstream”.
- “I never thought that they were infatuated with golf. If they want to go into auto racing, or they want to go into tennis…I wouldn't be surprised if they expand into other leagues (F1)”.
On Novak Djokovic winning his 22nd grand slam at the Australian Open Tennis:
- “My question would be: Where are all the young superstar tennis players? The guys that are between age 20 and 30, they're supposed to take the crown away from him. If Tom Brady's gotten too old now at 45, then where are the young stud tennis guys that are going to challenge him as he's 35 years old?”.
On the Duquesne men's hoops game that got interrupted by apparent food delivery attempt from an Uber Eat delivery man:
- “It was a stunt. It was all premeditated. He had a buddy with him and his buddy videotaped the whole thing, so it was captured (…) It was on Good Morning America. It was on the National news, possibly global news, all over social media. And this young guy has a social media page and he got a million hits, so he got exactly what he wanted”.
- “And then Uber had some nice publicity. So It's a crazy time we lived in with social media. I think 10, 20 years ago there was no social media, so everything changed with them”.