00:00All right, we're going to talk a little lacrosse.
00:01Yeah, let's do it, buddy.
00:02Our pal Paul Rabel joins us now.
00:05It is homecoming weekend for our Maryland Whipsnakes
00:09this Friday and Saturday.
00:12Our Whips.
00:12Jake, we call them the Whips.
00:13The Whips.
00:14Ownership calls them the Whips.
00:15The Whips.
00:16The Whip Cakes.
00:18Whip Cakes.
00:18Oh, that's even better, Paul.
00:20You know what?
00:21Limited edition T-shirts coming out.
00:23Love it.
00:24Love it.
00:24And they're going to be playing Fridays.
00:26Is that a royalty or 10% royalty?
00:27What should we do, Kate?
00:28I'm not even asking for a cut, man.
00:30I would just be honored.
00:31It's a freebie, yeah.
00:32That's all.
00:32Friday and Saturday, and they're playing at the Ridley Athletic Complex at Loyola.
00:36That's a first for the PLL, right?
00:40Yeah, yeah.
00:40We've been at my alma mater, Hopkins, for the first seven seasons.
00:45Decided to switch it up.
00:47Right.
00:47Better switch it up.
00:48Spread the love.
00:49Yeah, yeah.
00:49Spread the love.
00:50Why not?
00:51Perfect.
00:51Perfect venue.
00:53You get tickets, single session, $25.
00:56You want to get to all the games.
00:58It's like $100.
01:00It's a no-brainer.
01:01And the biggest thing is parking.
01:03Free!
01:04That's huge.
01:05That's a big thing.
01:06Zippy.
01:07Zippy.
01:07No additional cost.
01:08Is it right there, Paul?
01:11It's right there.
01:11Yeah, I think there's only 600 spots, though, so it's definitely going to be first come,
01:15first served.
01:16Right.
01:16The venue holds 5,000.
01:18Right.
01:18It's a beautiful venue.
01:20The problem with, because they put a lot of people in the stands at Loyola for the
01:26lacrosse games, but these venues that have the stands on one side and don't have stands
01:31on the other, they're built electrically to shoot from that side, too.
01:35So it's always annoying watching them on television because the camera is pointing at the parking
01:40lot.
01:40So we actually need to move the whole rig around so we can shoot the crowd.
01:46Stuff like that's important, man.
01:47Very important.
01:48It's like even here in College Park, you know, on a turn, I go to College Park, they always
01:53have the camera on the wrong side of the field.
01:56Yeah.
01:56And it looks like...
01:57Wrong side of the field, and it's 700,000 feet in the air.
02:00Yeah.
02:01Yeah.
02:01It's brutal.
02:02It's brutal.
02:03It's like watching ants play with frost.
02:05Yeah.
02:05It's really bad the way some of these things are not well thought out.
02:08But that's one thing.
02:09You say what you want, I don't know where you stand on lacrosse or whatever, but you're
02:14not going to find a sport, I don't care what level, broadcast better.
02:18These guys pay attention to detail.
02:21You still got the guys mic'd up and all that, and the cameras down low.
02:24They got kids running around with cameras everywhere you think.
02:27They're running around, everybody's got a camera.
02:29We just did a new deal with ESPN.
02:32We had a deal that was four years long with them, and they just renewed for another five
02:36years, and they made an investment out of Disney into the league, given the growth that we've
02:42done, largely because you guys have had me on your show.
02:45Yeah, of course.
02:45You guys know I've been on the show a bunch, and love you guys, and have been listening
02:49to you since I was at the MAFA 20-some-odd years ago.
02:53You always say that.
02:53Very nice of you.
02:54I mean, guys, you probably view yourselves as underdogs, or did, and that's our mentality.
03:01So you may love lacrosse because you're listening to DMV or more widely across the Mid-Atlantic,
03:10but if you don't know lacrosse, you got to know that we're fighting, man.
03:16And this is a sport that's been played for thousands of years.
03:21It's been played since 1877 at the college level.
03:24The problem between lacrosse and the Big Four is it didn't have a professional league
03:28until the early 2000s.
03:30So we just couldn't take advantage of that growth.
03:33So in a lot of ways, people that watch it for the first time think the game's new, but
03:36we call it America's first game.
03:38Well, and listen, and honestly, for new parents out there, and most people know around here,
03:42lacrosse is big around here, especially in youth and college, et cetera.
03:45But you don't have to be a genetic freak.
03:48Not everybody's built like Paul Rabel who could play safety in the NFL.
03:53You got guys like Cakes could play.
03:55Cakes could play multiple positions.
03:57That'd be silly.
03:58You could be all sorts of different sizes.
04:00Not a lot of running, though.
04:01Whatever the least running, goalie.
04:02Maybe you'd be a good Fogo.
04:04Goalie.
04:04Goalie.
04:04You could be a goalie.
04:06Goalie is crazy, though.
04:08Paul, some of these kids at Princeton when I was watching, because I watched the semifinal
04:12and the final, man, these kids can move.
04:16I mean, they're smaller dudes.
04:16They can freaking move, man.
04:18These athletes are getting better and better.
04:20Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:21It's unbelievable.
04:21I mean, Belichick has recruited lacrosse players for 15 years now.
04:27He had Chris Hogan, famously, who was a four-time All-American lacrosse player at Penn State.
04:31And then we have guys like Jared Bernhardt, who will be playing Saturday afternoon on ABC
04:35with the Denver Outlaws, who had a short stint in the NFL.
04:38But what Bish is probably referencing is those midfielders who are built big, almost like
04:44a slot receiver, who have this shake and dispose of defenders.
04:49And that's the type of guy that fits in the NFL.
04:52Or even like Pat Spencer, who's went to Loyola, local guy to Baltimore, now plays for the Warriors.
04:59I think you're right.
05:01Like, you know, you can be any size and shape, and if you have good hand-eye coordination
05:05and deception, you can go pretty far in lacrosse.
05:08But the caliber of athlete is shifting, and I'll see lacrosse players in the big four leagues.
05:13And I don't mind it.
05:14I don't mind sharing players, man.
05:15Deion Sanders left baseball to play football.
05:17Paul, I want to kind of go back to when you started dreaming about this league, right?
05:23And I know like in the documentary, it shows all these players playing in multiple leagues,
05:29barely making any money.
05:31How close are you to your ultimate vision, and how much progress have you made with the
05:38players now playing, you know, full-time and getting paid a little more than they used
05:42to, and, you know, basically eating and drinking out of their trunk after games.
05:47And that sort of thing.
05:49Well, when I was playing, and at a moment in time, I was the league's MVP, and I just won
05:56the championship, and my max wage was $14,000.
05:59So I was having to cobble together.
06:02Well, I really just sort of like got involved in the internet and built a social media presence,
06:06which brought Under Armour and Red Bull and other brands to me, which allowed me to be
06:10a full-time lacrosse player because I wasn't making it on the field.
06:13So the dream was always like, how do we build a business that can sustain?
06:17And also pay guys 10x what I was.
06:20So now there's guys making $100,000 to play lacrosse.
06:23That's right.
06:24And where I want to get to is guys getting paid millions of dollars to play.
06:28And that leap, I mean, we're in that tweener phase.
06:31Speaking of football, you know, the difference between a cornerback and a linebacker is often
06:37size and speed.
06:38And you don't want to sort of live in the middle or tier two.
06:41So we're trying to make that big push.
06:42And that was evident by the ESPN renewal of like, how do we do what the WNBA just did
06:49in the last two years and make that big jump.
06:52And it's got to be supported by things like viewership and ticket sales and merchandise
06:55sales and all that.
06:56So, I mean, we grind daily to try to tell the stories of our players and our teams.
07:02And then even the last thing is on the call out to the Final Four, we still tour because
07:08of looking at the Final Four really being the only thing that has historically worked in
07:13lacrosse.
07:14We can get 30,000 people into a venue for four games over the weekend.
07:19So that was the original model, but we're not far away from selling teams, which I think
07:25is the next big step.
07:26Then our 1% ownership stake is going to be big.
07:29It's got to be worth a lot.
07:30Dude, you know I'm going to try to figure that out.
07:33We just got to call them the Maryland Whip Cakes.
07:34All right, we got to do it.
07:35Whip Cakes.
07:36Sorry, call one.
07:37By the way, the producers want to make sure they're in.
07:40You know how silly it is in Dewey when you tell a chick you're 1% owner of the Whip
07:44Snakes?
07:44Yeah, the Whip Cakes.
07:45Dude, what do you guys think if we built from ground up in Ocean City in a future summer?
07:52Let's do it.
07:52Like the Dew Tour.
07:53Let's do it.
07:54Like the Dew Tour and host a game.
07:55You guys co-host it with us?
07:56Of course.
07:56Of course.
07:57We combine it with our next trip to the Starboard and Dewey.
07:59Of 100%.
08:00Hey, we got to run, but just to let people know, Friday, Saturday, Ridley Athletic Complex
08:04at Loyola University.
08:05Where do they get the tickets?
08:06Five games over the weekend.
08:08You can go to plltickets.com.
08:10All right.
08:10Paul, thank you.
08:11Love you, buddy.
08:12Love you, man.
08:12We got a roll for Bish, Cake, CBM, JP.
08:16We'll see you tomorrow.
08:17Be Mitch and Finley next.
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