Bobby Bramhall: Principal of Bramhall Sports Group

Dave Almy

You play college baseball at Rice, Right. And you pursued a professional career and your trajectory was going. I mean, you were up to aaa, things were really happening. But injury derails some things. And so you. What was that moment when you realized, oh gosh, maybe this professional career isn't working out the way I'd hoped. And how had you, if at all, prepared for that? What can be a real challenging moment?

Bobby Bramhall

That's such a good question, because you don't know how to answer that until you've lived it. At the time, you're just trying to do the best you can in your sport. And I had two Tommy Johns back to back. And so after I got back from the second one, I had a 30% chance of ever playing at the level that I got hurt at. And I ended up actually playing at a higher level than I got hurt. And so I felt like my career was back on track. But what happened is you're an old guy in the system and so you're no longer a prospect, you're no longer up and coming, you start making a bunch of lateral moves.

Dave Almy

Define old guy in the system. Like how old are you considered an old guy?

Bobby Bramhall

How funny is it? I was 26, 27. So I was back, I was ready to go and actually was putting up better stats than I had before the end.

Dave Almy

That happens with Tommy John. Right. Some guys come back from it, just sort of rejuvenated better than ever.

Bobby Bramhall

That's right, yeah. It's years of wear and tear and then all of a sudden you get your ligaments back. Right. But what happened to me is I felt like I was pitching better, but I was no longer a prospect. And so I kept making lateral moves and realized probably wouldn't be getting the promotional opportunities regardless of the stats I was putting up. And so I realized it was time to maybe move on and look at what was next. Thankfully, college degree and a great network allowed me to jump into the next thing. But that's not always the case for the guys who maybe came out of high school or didn't have an education behind them.

Dave Almy

Because baseball in particular at college, that is an all consuming sport, right? I mean, you know, we talk about, I've talked to other college athletes, right. Both, you know, play football, play track and field. There's, there's a lot of activity that goes over the course of your college career that takes you away from the day to day of what a normal college is. What do you play in college? 50 games?

Bobby Bramhall

Yeah, I think were 58 and 12 one year. So you're in the 70s if you keep going pretty deep in the playoffs.

Dave Almy

So I mean, tell me about that moment of balance. I mean, particularly for any athletes who are listening, as you think back when you were playing college, how did you in particular find the balance between college student and athletics?

Bobby Bramhall

So the secret sauce is time management, but it's also, you know, becoming the best you can as a player. So I was fortunate to be drafted and have a chance at the professional level. But had I not, all that time and all those years of perfecting my craft would have been for $0. That really don't translate into the professional world very well. Other than teamwork and networking capabilities, you don't have any coaching, so. Tangible skills. Exactly.

Dave Almy

Yeah, yeah.

Bobby Bramhall

So looking back, you know, the minor league lifestyle is actually even worse than college. So you go down this, what they called an apprenticeship for 29 days out of a month, every single day. I mean, you have one or two off days for seven months of the year. I think we had 13 off days in my years. And so you're looking at that going, how in the world is this supposed to translate into the real world? Well, what it does is it gives you the fortitude and discipline for any other field, but you still have to learn that next field. So looking back, it's just a lifetime devotion to it and it's all consuming, whether you're a college athlete or you even get a chance to play professionally.

Dave Almy

Yeah, it's remarkable access to soft skills. Right. But you still have to learn the craft to apply them to eventually that you got it.

Bobby Bramhall

And I can't tell you the time demand that takes, which is going to lead into a conversation later about why can't college athletes should be paid and why those years shouldn't go to nothing. You know, asking your parents for gas money instead of actually having the ability to pay for some things because you're generating revenue for this monster industry behind you.

Dave Almy

So let's start down the path towards that particular topic because obviously it's clearly one we want to focus on today. So the baseball career kind of wraps up like you said, you had the college degree, so you kind of had the foundation and you begin what can only be described. I mean, you know, in reading your bio and things like that, it's kind of peripatetic, or at least from the outside looking at, it's a little peripatetic. Right. You know, you launched a wedding venue business, you built some vacation rental property, you wrote a book about for. For baseball families Right. So you have just a lot of these things going on. At what point did you think law school?

Bobby Bramhall

You know, I know a lot of guys like me to address your peripatetic comment because you're sitting in a locker room or on a bus or, you know, perfecting your baseball craft, but you're thinking about everything else that you could be doing in your life. And so the minute that you're able to and you have the time to, you're well versed in a lot of things that you want to get going. And there's no hard work like a baseball player, from the hitting to the pitching. I mean, the time demand is incredible. Right. So whenever I looked at law school, I actually went to law school first with all these ideas in my head, knowing if I could learn the business world and if I could see the way the world works, become a better reader and a writer and studier.

Bobby Bramhall

I'm going to be able to jump into any industry and maybe enter higher or be able to kind of mark my own path. And so what I was able to do is get into real estate and do some things while I was in law school because I started understanding how this works outside of my sports background.

Dave Almy

Why law and not. I guess the other path I would think that most people would look at would be like an mba. What drew you to law versus something discreetly business related?

Bobby Bramhall

That's a great question. I thought about doing the dual MBA in law program at ut.

Dave Almy

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Bobby Bramhall

And it was probably the path I should have taken, but I actually graduated law school early. I did it in two and a half years so that I could get on with my career. And for me, law was the. You have a basic understanding. You don't have to practice in your standard traditional practice, but you do have a basic understanding and you have a license that really is a noble license. You can represent people, you can do things in a way that you're respected in your community and you have an ethics board that, you know, reviews your actions different than an mba, which I think is a great degree. But I think that's more of a, you know, it's a masters of understanding the business world.

Bobby Bramhall

I think a law is a true trade and I wanted to come into a profession where I had trade skills.

Dave Almy

Something that you could really sink your teeth into versus something that was more. I don't want to like denigrate an mba, but it's more generalist than it is the law that has that practical aspect of what you were doing. And so this kind of takes me to the next question, which is, like you said, you graduated early because apparently you're an overachiever, which is irritating for just about everybody listening. You graduate from UT Law, you spend time on all these different ventures, then you kind of get drawn back to UT to teach at the College of Law. So what drew you back? And I'm assuming this comes from the playing career. I mean, what drew you to that idea of sports law and what became known as name, image, likeness?

Bobby Bramhall

So right when I graduated law school, I was either going to practice or get into something like athletic administration, which I got to do at Texas A and M. But when I went back to Tennessee, we started a nil company and it was a tech platform in Nashville. And so all of a sudden I became a part of this major nil movement, this conversation that was starting and I was educating myself in that. But also the relationships I formed at UT as a student and that I kept during my early professional years, I mean, they still bring tears to my eyes. They were some of the most impactful mentorships and people that understood my expertise as a player and before my law school career. And then what I learned, kind of pushing my legal expertise into sports afterwards.

Bobby Bramhall

So I always wanted to go back and teach. I wanted to stay involved in Knoxville and understand that, you know, my wedding venues and a lot of my real estate's in Knoxville. So it was an easy transition to just become a sports and nil law professor there. So really it was from understanding the nil industry and sports as a player, and then also having the expertise to talk about it as an attorney. In the relationships I formed at ut, they wanted me to teach.

Dave Almy

I think we've talked to a few people on this, on the show who are former athletes, go on to do something in sports business. A couple who are sort of to start to spool into the nil space. So clearly we have to jump into it because the dichotomy between what you experienced as a player in college to what today's college athlete experiences, it has got to be vast, right? Because now, like, to your point, you don't have to ask mom and dad for gas money anymore, right? You can actually go out and earn right now. Sometimes this market has been called the Wild west, right? It's new, a lot of players getting into it. So I'm interested to get started on this part of the conversation. Let's start from a high level legal perspective.

Dave Almy

In your mind, is it still the Wild west or have Things started to settle.

Bobby Bramhall

right of privacy in the late: 1800

Bobby Bramhall

So that's why it turned into the Wild west, where you have the collectives that popped up, you have donors that are paying athletes, you have athletes making probably more money than their actual value. So that's what was tough, is I think they had a chance about 20 years ago, 15 years ago, to do the right thing and put in some guardrails. And all of these lawsuits have created everybody kind of running all over the place with nobody really having the authority to say what is right and what is wrong about this new Nil permission.

Dave Almy

Do you think the NCAA's basically throwing up their hands and saying, no backsies. We're like, nil is now the law of the land? Was that a positive outcome from the standpoint of let's do what the market will do, right? We're hands off, no regulation. Is it like the perfect. Are we looking at the perfect example of a free market economy or did it create such a tidal wave of chaos that it's hurting the very market it was enabling?

Bobby Bramhall

Well, let's see what. What's been hurt. So as you look at fan base or revenue generation, nothing's been hurt. It's actually gone completely positive. However, I do think the predictability and the public conversation has these negative undertones of players making too much money and mercenaries and the whole thing. Right. With the transfer portal kind of being open free agency. I will say that if there was a collective bargaining agreement where like in a professional league, everybody sits down and determines what the share of the revenue for broadcast Nil is, or what the share of a salary cap that a team can take and pay their players, then you have everybody on the same understanding. Different than college, where it's just a free for all and whoever can pay the most gets the most. I do think that's the ugly side of this.

Bobby Bramhall

But you look at the other athletes who have true content. They're creating content. They're creating intellectual property that they own that they were not allowed to harvest before they were allowed to do nil. They deserve that money. And there's been so many cases where an athlete created something that had nothing to do with sports. And the NCAA said, nope, you're not allowed to make money off of that. You know, Katie Ledecky, Olympian gold medalist, she was worth over a million dollars at Stanford. Not allowed to make a dime off her. Nil before the ruling. That doesn't make any sense. Right. So those things, in my opinion, have created a pathway for the famous people who are great in their own right to be who they should be with name, image and likeness.

Dave Almy

Do you think the trajectory of what we're talking about right now is taking it to the point where that balance will be struck?

Bobby Bramhall

Right.

Dave Almy

Yeah. I mean, because you have the House decision, which is saying, okay, we need to figure out what those compensations are going to be for athletes from the past. So let me do this. Can you give a. Can you give the Reader's digest version of the House decision and how you believe that's going to impact some of the issues that we're talking about right now regarding basically, fair play and equity amongst the different teams?

Bobby Bramhall

were suing for back pay from: 2016

Bobby Bramhall

And the NCAA realizing they're about to run out of money if they don't settle and figure out a new plan. So the quick is that in the future there's going to be a revenue share that schools are allowed to pay athletes nil dollars to be there, you know, to. To appear at school and be famous in their own right on campus. And then there's also back pay for years that they missed that money from name, image and likeness. So there's a lot of different moving parts, and they're giving different parts of this total settlement to different funds from video game revenue and that kind of license all the way to broadcast NIL radio and tv. And those things for athletes that really college football and college basketball are making the majority of this money for the ncaa.

Bobby Bramhall

Back in the back pay argument, it's impossibly complex. Absolutely.

Dave Almy

I mean, I'm listening to you describe it, and I'm trying to think of lawyers sitting in a room trying to parse how this is going to work going forward when not only the past doesn't offer, except for the professional models and things like that, there's not a lot of experience drawn from the past for colleges to be able to figure out what this is going to be. But also the state of college athletics keeps changing as these decisions are trying to be made too. So I want you for a minute to put yourself in the, as a former athlete, to put yourself in the shoes of a current athlete who is starting to make some money from nil, probably doesn't have a ton of experience or support navigating some of the legal challenges that they, as an individual, might experience.

Dave Almy

So in your mind, like, what are some of those in broad brushstrokes, areas where an individual athlete needs to be cognizant of to protect themselves.

Bobby Bramhall

n't get all of that. You're a: 1099

Bobby Bramhall

So there's no fiduciary duty. Right. So the athlete needs to go find their own fiduciaries if they actually have that value coming in. Lawyers, accountants, agents, publicity agents. That, in my opinion, is the representation on the athlete side that's not provided in their team atmosphere.

Dave Almy

I am trying to think of myself as a Division 3 college athlete back in the day, trying to wrap my head around all the issues that you just brought up for a 18, 19, 20 year old. Those are not, those are not young college student concerns. Those are big adult life, adulting things attract. That can really blindside people, can't they?

Bobby Bramhall

I think it can. And I don't think that any athlete is prepared for what money, how money affects them, because they've never known that it was coming at that age. I mean, how many of us at 20 years old, 25 years old in our first job actually looked at the pay stub? You just take your money and you go and you pay your apartment rent and you keep going forward. Right?

Dave Almy

Direct deposit, man. Let's just.

Bobby Bramhall

Yeah, you don't even know what those numbers mean. And so why would a 19 year old that's getting a check for his nil or her nil, that doesn't really line up to their playing ability. Why would that even matter to them except for just checking the bank? Same thing, right?

Dave Almy

I'm old enough to remember a classic McDonald's ad where some. It's about getting your first job at McDonald's and the kid gets his paycheck and he says, who the heck is Fika? Who said he could take all my money?

Bobby Bramhall

That's it.

Dave Almy

regard. Right. You brought up: 1099

Bobby Bramhall

That's right.

Dave Almy

I didn't know what the heck that was. So these are, what are the resources in your mind that schools should be offering? Should they be offering these kinds of resources or does start to muddy the water for the legal standing of the athletes?

Bobby Bramhall

What I go back to is no school or the NCAA has yet to pay an athlete. And that's the truth. Like they're not allowed to. Right. So they are providing some resources. I know the compliance departments have actually done a pretty good job of saying, hey, you're one of our athletes. Come in here and let me look at your contract of this deal you got. But they're not, like I said, a fiduciary. They have no responsibility to do anything. So they don't have any incentive either. Right. So schools are doing a good job. I think the schools are actually turning to the athlete side, realizing their value in recruiting and retention and the good things that a school, you know, partners with the athletics program.

Bobby Bramhall

But like you said, there's nothing that actually makes them pony up and do the right thing because they're not paying any dollars yet. So it might muddy the water if there was an employee employer relationship where you're allowed to talk to them about it. But hey, this is actually between you and your accountant or you and your lawyer, as you and I would if we're working for somebody. Right.

Dave Almy

I can give some loose advice on it, but I can give you direction or directives associated with that.

Bobby Bramhall

Yeah. Or call hr, maybe they can talk through it with you kind of thing.

Dave Almy

Okay, so one of the other big deals about N is where does it cross the line into pay for play? Right. You brought it up earlier, you know, transfer portal and schools being able to offer and now being some of them charge, I think 20 to 25 million dollars is what they're starting to say is what that's going to start looking at the pool of money that's going to come out of house and things like that. Where's then from your perspective, the guideline. Where does the demarcation point between free market athletes making money to. Okay, well, we're basically. This is a professional sport now. Is there one?

Bobby Bramhall

Well, pay for play is already here. Yeah, this is one of my favorite conversations because we gotta stop acting like it's not here. There's recruiting, there's transfer portal, there's retention. This is all here, but it's disguised in the name of nil because the NCA will not get off their hands and put in a true agreement that allows all this to go away and have a fair agreement at the bargaining table. So the. To answer your question, pay for play going forward looks like a cba, a collective bargaining agreement where you have the nil money as a part. You have a salary, whatever you're worth. You know, it might be minimum wage, it might be more just like another league. Major League Soccer makes a lot less than the NBA players. Right. Same thing.

Bobby Bramhall

So we all sit down and we figure out what's fair for everybody instead of acting like this is nil. Now, again, we talk about the content creators. That is not pay for play. There are athletes who are not very good at their sport and they're not starters, but they have an incredible TikTok. Yeah. Channel. And the TikTok channel generates all of this revenue for them and ad. You know, revenue. And that is a great thing because that has nothing to do with their sport. But this pay for play through the collective system and through the. The coaches pushing donors to athletes, that's here.

Bobby Bramhall

And I think the best way forward is to make sure that we have some type of CBA that allows everybody to bargain fairly and that the other teams have the same rules to make sure that, you know, the Alabamas don't just surpass and never get caught by the schools that might have had a good athlete in a competitive program before that time.

Dave Almy

You also just played a role in launching the South Main Collective, and that's the collective that serves Rice University, your alma mater, where you played your undergraduate degree. Now, collectives seem to come in for a wide range of opinions from people. Some people say, oh, they completely hijacked the nil system. You've seen commissioners, including the one of the Big Ten, I think, Tony Panetti, he said it's just a pay for play scheme designed to disguise as nil. So they have their share of critics. So what led you to want to do this for Rice and what do you think people who are call them anti collective? What are they not understanding or what are they maybe refusing to see what.

Bobby Bramhall

I want to do? The reason I want to do this for Rice is because I don't feel that there's enough representation on the player side. But I also love college athletics and I love my university. You know, I had a lot of great years there and I'm. And it's still a network that, you know, is fruitful today. So I want Rice athletics to continue to be in the mainstream because I believe we are a Stanford, I believe we're a Vanderbilt, and we've had the championships to prove it, you know, namely in baseball, but in other sports as well. So that's why I got involved in the Rice side, because were in one of the last Division 1 schools to form a collective and make this happen across all sports. Now, football was doing a great job.

Bobby Bramhall

Basketball, we had some baseball, but we really need it as a school, as an institution. As far as the critics, it kind of makes me laugh because most of the critics have a paycheck coming from their sports profession. And I'm going, who in the world can speak and be yelling at the free labor below them, saying that the free labor should continue to not get paid whenever they're the ones filling their, you know, their family's home and putting food on the table with the money they're receiving from their sports job. So it doesn't make sense to me that anybody that's even associated with sports would be able to not have a biased opinion of this arrangement that's currently allowed.

Dave Almy

As you look down the path of house decision, getting finalized, the roles of collectives, you know, the Power 4 conferences, you know, maybe even soon the Power 2 conferences, who knows how that's going to go? Why are you keeping your eye on in terms of legal decisions in the pipeline evolution of this market? And how do you feel like they're going to impact the current state of college athletics? Is unionization inevitable? Is collective bargaining? That's come up a couple times inevitable? What are the other things that you think people should be keeping their eye on in terms of what can only be described as the most dynamic market in sports? Right there.

Bobby Bramhall

That's right. Well, you know, Dartmouth voted to unionize their basketball team last year and a 13 to 2 vote. And it's funny because the NLRB recognized their unionization. Right. Private university. They have been deemed employees under an economic realities test. Guess what Dartmouth College did? They said, we will not negotiate with you. So they denied any rights of these union workers that they are even. That the athletes even are employed at this institution. Interesting there because that happened last year and not many people actually realize what that means going forward. So you have the NLRB on the athlete's side. Secondly, you have a case right now under the Fair Labor Standards act, which is Johnson versus the ncaa, that's under athletes deserving minimum wage. And one of their big arguments is that it doesn't matter if the Dartmouth cafeteria makes money.

Bobby Bramhall

You're paying the Dartmouth cafeteria workers to serve food to the student body. You're paying. If they're students, then they're serving food. They're getting a paycheck. But yet the athletes at the stadium get $0 even though the person serving popcorn at that game is getting minimum wage. Right. So it doesn't make sense. Nothing that we're looking at is making sense. So Johnson is coming down the pipe and I don't know if it's going to be Congress is going to, you know, create antitrust exemption to overrule what that might, you know, show for these athletes and keep the NCAA immune to these arguments or if that's going to create some type of employment model where maybe the sports that are not going to survive have to be kicked out of the NCAA because they don't produce enough revenue to be profitable.

Bobby Bramhall

Now, I don't think that's necessary. But if you look right now, college football playoffs is not even run by the ncaa. They don't even make the money from it. Right. And so the March Madness is run by the ncaa. They make over a billion dollars a year from it. So there is a way to reorganize the money to keep ATHletic programs afloat that are not, you know, profitable. Every, every athletic program is revenue producing. We hear non revenue sports. They are revenue producing. They're just not profitable. Right. So there's a way to do that. But the question is, how many sports do they want to continue to exist and why is it guaranteed that they have to exist? In Europe, you don't have this university model of profitable college sports. Right.

Bobby Bramhall

But you do have in the United States this model where it went from a club atmosphere 50, 100 years ago to what is now a business atmosphere. But yet the whole time you still haven't paid the labor to run your business. So I don't know where it's going. I don't know really what the right thing to do is because I know that the women's swimming team, that doesn't make any money at a school, it's better that they get to swim and be in school and be a part of this. But if it means that they just have to, you know, accept less or they don't get paid because they turn back into a club sport, does that mean that the whole NCA model is. Should have not been overthrown? I'm not sure.

Bobby Bramhall

I think that's still, in my opinion, a negotiating table argument to figure out what the new system should look like.

Dave Almy

I'm with Bobby Bramhall. He is the principal of Bramhall Sports Group. Bobby, I want to thank you for the time today. Look, this is. There's a part of me that really doesn't envy you. Right. There is so much change going on in this market. I mean, every time you open up the newspaper or see the sports section, there has to be an element of, oh, my God. It's just everything's changed all over again. So good luck staying on top of this market. But before I let you go, I got to put you in the lightning round. I'm going to give you a couple of questions. These are unexpected. There might be, as a baseball player, some curveballs in there. So I just want to make sure you are ready for this chaos. Are you ready, Bobby Brimhall?

Bobby Bramhall

I'm choked up in the front of the box. Ready to go.

Dave Almy

Oh, all right. My first mind needs to start with a brushback pitch, then to make sure we set the tone for this particular lightning round at that. Okay? Question number one. What was the favorite nickname of a team you played for? And why is it the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs?

Bobby Bramhall

So the Iron Pigs, you know, it comes from the iron industry, the iron ore industry back in the day in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Those are the salt of the earth people. And they supported that team so heavily. I got to play all around Pennsylvania. And the baseball fandom up there is real. So I would say the Iron Pigs was one of my favorites. I also played for. I'm trying to think the. Well, the Jacksonville Suns turned into the Jumbo Shrimp, which was a bit embarrassing, but I didn't actually play for the Jumbo Shrimp, but that was a name that I thought was pretty clever.

Dave Almy

After I had a period of time where I got to work with the American Automobile association on their sponsorship of Mark Martin, who was thrilled to death that AAA was taking over from Viagra from the number one naming sponsor of his car. So I can kind of appreciate the name change. All right. You wrote a book for baseball families called who's on First? Everything Baseball Players and Their Parents need to Know. It is currently available on Amazon. I'm wondering if there is a chapter dedicated on how to heckle a nine year old.

Bobby Bramhall

You know, we actually tell the parents to stay out of it. So instead of saying how to heckle a nine year old, we say, parents, let the coaches do their thing, because you don't know anything about nine year old baseball like you think you do. So we're actually in support of the athletes in that book rather than, you know, allowing them to get their confidence beat up.

Dave Almy

ou played professionally from: 2007

Bobby Bramhall

rter with the brewers. It was: 2008

Dave Almy

That is frighteningly good. Bram Hall.

Bobby Bramhall

Well, thank you. I'll give you another quick fact on that since we're talking about it. You know, Rick Porcello he won the Cy Young for the Boston Red Sox. Yeah, so I beat him for the ERA title in the league that year. So he had a 2, 5 3, I had a 2, 51 and I led the league. And going forward I was really happy to see his career success because I was like, oh man.

Dave Almy

Well, as a Red Sox fan, so am I. So I can only. You are listed as a lefty and lefties have a reputation for being a little unusual. Why is this accurate?

Bobby Bramhall

You know, we're only 11% of the world, so nothing that anybody teaches us is the way we process it in our brains. We use the opposite side of our brain that right handed people and we're in a backwards world. So fun fact on that, I believe left handed people have 11 year less life expectancy. So I don't know if that's accident prone, but it's one of those weird facts where you're wondering why lefties die earlier, but at the same time they're leaders and they have different skills that are analytical as well.

Dave Almy

So maybe it has something to do.

Bobby Bramhall

With doing all of our hats sit sideways on our head too.

Dave Almy

They really do. You guys can't even put them on right?

Bobby Bramhall

No, nobody can wear it straight.

Dave Almy

All right, last one. What company do you wish you had an nil deal with when you were in college and why?

Bobby Bramhall

That's a good question. When I was in college, you could.

Dave Almy

Make it a trade deal even.

Bobby Bramhall

Shoot, I know I've never actually thought about that from my perspective.

Dave Almy

See, lightning round can offer a curveball here and there. You weren't ready for that one. Stepping out of the box for this particular response.

Bobby Bramhall

Okay, now I'm coming back in. I'm ready.

Dave Almy

Ready, go.

Bobby Bramhall

So I think in college for me I would have loved to been with like a muscle milk, a vitamin shop company. I needed a lot of supplements to stay healthy. I need a lot of supplements to keep my weight up. And so for me it would have been a nutrition background for sure. I think that's the only reason I got to play a long time is cuz I started focusing on my nutrition cause I definitely wasn't good enough, you know, out of the womb to just start playing, you know, pro baseball.

Dave Almy

Bobby Bramhall, he's the principal of Bramhall Sports Group. Bobby, appreciate the time today.

Bobby Bramhall

Yeah, great to talk with you, dude.