>> So greetings, everybody.
We're mixing it up a little bit today.
As you can see, our regular host, Evan
Rutter, is finishing a [inaudible].
He'll be back tomorrow.
So in his absence, you get me and Jenna
Gough, of course, who will keep things
on the rail while I'm sitting in here.
I'm Mike Sutton, class of '76.
Many of you knew me as Coach Sutton.
And now I'm the Director of
Advancement for Athletics and a colleague
of Evan and Jenna's on the CMC team.
I'm really happy to be able to introduce Geoff
Russell, Class of '84, for our event today.
And please know you see that we're
recording this meeting for our library.
So people who can't be with us today can
take a look at it a little bit later on.
So we here in Claremont hope you and your
families and loved ones are managing as well
as possible during this incredibly
challenging time.
And I know there is so much up in
the air for all of us, to be sure.
You probably know the college leadership,
along with a great team of students,
have been working around the clock,
you know, this summer to prepare
for the return of students next month.
And I'm really impressed with the
depth of thought, imagination,
and determination of these folks.
They have got so many variables
they're working with right now.
And we all hope there's an opportunity
for our CMCers to be together in 3D.
But we'll have a good plan
for the fall regardless.
We'll put the link, CMC returns, in the chat box
if you want to check and see what the plans are
to date and how thoughtful
and thorough they are.
I've also heard Evan promote the end
of June and Fiscal Year outreach.
And I want to thank everyone for their support
for the Crisis Response Fund
and for our alma mater.
Many parents and friends have assisted the
college with donations that have enabled us
to respond to the needs of our
students this spring and summer.
And we're very grateful for that generosity.
Thank you very much.
So on to the program.
It's probably not your first Zoom.
But here are a quick review
of the features that we have.
I expect you all know the difference
between speaker and grid view.
And so if you want to see who
all is here, it's the grid.
And if you want to listen to Geoff and get Geoff
full view there, you've got that on speaker.
In the chat box, I would be great if
you would add your name, your location,
and your class year and/or parent
year and let us know who's here today.
And also you can add a question
for Geoff in there at any time.
And then when we get to the
Q&A portion a little later,
you can raise your hand using
the participant feature.
And we'll call on you then as well.
So I got to know Geoff early in
my coaching career back at CMC.
I knew him first as a leader on the golf team.
And he played for two of my favorite
people in CMS coaching history,
Larry Korpitz [assumed spelling]
and Grail Hollick [assumed
spelling], two of the very best.
Geoff's senior season was
special for many reasons.
He was our Stag captain.
Chris Brant [assumed spelling]
was a freshman on that team.
And he was our MVP.
And he was honored with a Jesse Clark
Memorial Award that year for the second time
in his career as the [inaudible] golfer
that all looked up to and somebody
that they respected and wanted
in their foursome.
And he finished his second tour at the
NCAA Championships with a hole-in-one
on the back nine of his final
round of collegiate golf.
At the CMC awards dinner later, he
received the Bill Dickinson Award.
And that combines athletics, leadership, and
service as a great example of how those of us
in Athletics hope our Stags and
Athenas could represent on campus.
After leaving CMC, Geoff earned a master's
degree in journalism from Northwestern,
the premiere program in the country, of course.
And subsequently he has made a wonderful
life and a huge impact on the development
of golf journalism, most
recently with the Golf Channel.
We were able to reconnect a few
years ago when he was inducted
into the CMS Athletics Hall of Fame.
And I got to meet his great
family during that celebration.
I have especially appreciated Geoff recently
as an excellent mentor and advisor for CMCers
who are interested in the path he has taken.
And, Geoff, thanks for taking all those calls.
So I'll shut up and let's welcome Geoff Russell.
And we'll be back for the Q&A a little later on.
Geoff?
>> Hey, Coach Sutton, thanks very much.
Those are very kind words.
I appreciate it.
I deserved about 20% of it.
But I appreciate it nonetheless.
And it's great to see everybody
who showed up here.
I see a lot of old friends
and a lot of new faces.
But this is really great.
And it's an honor to be here, you know.
As the introduction said, I have felt
and I probably do feel like I, you know,
I chose a different path from most CMC grads.
Everybody that I went to school,
it seemed like, went to law school
or Wall Street or business school, you know.
I did something maybe a little bit different.
My story, you know, of course,
it always begins with golf.
I first played golf when I was six years old.
And by the time I was 12 years
old, golf was all I wanted to do.
I wanted to do it every day.
And that is true to this day, as
my wife would be happy to tell you.
But, you know, even though
I loved competing, you know,
I never really aspired to be a professional.
I never wanted to, you know,
not that I have the talent
but being a Tour Pro is not
ever what I had in mind.
By the time I started high school, I
knew I wanted to be a sports writer.
And specifically I wanted to be a golf writer.
So having said that, I don't exactly
know why I chose CMC as a college.
I'm really glad I did.
It's one of the best decisions I ever made.
I got a great education.
I had wonderful experiences, wonderful memories.
I made lifelong friends.
It was really the right place for me, an
extraordinary place for me personally.
But for an aspiring sports writer,
it was kind of an odd choice.
It's not exactly a hotbed
of sports writing training.
I figured it out, you know.
I spent a lot of time working for the Sports
Information Office in the Athletic Department.
I wrote sports and was the
Sports Editor for the Collage,
which was the five college
newspaper at the time.
I became a stringer for the Pomona City
newspaper covering five college sports.
Covered a lot of Pomona and CMC and Scripps
athletic contests that I wrote for the paper.
It was a lot of fun.
But, of course, even after all that,
by the time I graduated in 1984,
I didn't feel like I was ready to,
that I had the experience to get
out and begin a journalism career.
So as Mike said, I went to
Northwestern University
and got a master's degree
from the Medill School.
And that was a nice experience.
It wasn't as much fun as it was at CMC.
I remember the first week I was there,
you know, having one of these meetings
where everybody was kind of talking about what
they wanted, what their goal in journalism was.
And I remember saying, "I
want to be the sports writer."
And the guy who ran the program at Medill, who
had been the editor at the Omaha World Herald,
said, "You're not going to
do any sports writing here.
That's not real journalism."
So I kind of got off to a rocky start there.
I did finish.
And the best thing about Medill was that the
three gentlemen who founded Golf Digest Magazine
in the 1950s, turns out they were Medill grads.
And as late as 1985, when I was graduating,
Golf Digest still did a little recruiting
at Golf Digest for new employees.
And it's kind of a long story.
But I wound up getting a job at Golf Digest.
And in 1986, I left Los Angeles and
my favorite roommate of all time,
Chris Brant [assumed spelling],
and moved to Connecticut to start,
you know, to start my journalism career.
I ended up staying at Golf Digest for 26 years.
the first two years I was at Golf Digest.
But two years in the company bought
a magazine called Golf World.
And Golf World magazine was
the perfect magazine for me.
Golf Digest is a magazine that's
really based around instruction.
And despite being a life-long
golfer, I'm not very technical.
And I can't write golf instruction.
But Golf World magazine was a
really interesting magazine.
It was a weekly magazine devoted to covering
competitive golf, primarily the PGA Tour.
I was used to tell people two things.
Golf World is like the golf magazine
without golf instruction in it.
And it was also kind of a Sports
Illustrated but just for golf.
And so I went to work there.
And I began as a beat writer on the LPGA
Tour and a beat writer on the Senior Tour,
which is called the Champions Tour now.
And I just had an amazing time.
Some of the things I put in
the bio there really happened.
I was at Oakmont for the 1994 U.S. Open when
Arnold Palmer played his final U.S. Open round
and came into the press room when he was done.
And Oakmont is, you know, in his backyard.
Pennsylvania is his home state.
And he gave a really amazing press
conference for about 300 media members, very,
you know, very bittersweet and dramatic.
And, you know, by the end of an hour or
so, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
It was pretty amazing.
I was at Newport Country Club
in 1995 for the U.S. Amateur
when Tiger Woods won his second U.S. Amateur.
It wasn't his first big win.
But I think it was right about then
that we all started to think, hey,
this guy is really going
to be something amazing.
And I was at Augusta two years later in 1997
when Tiger Woods won the Master's by 12 shots.
And there was no doubt that
he was something amazing.
I've got to cover the, you
know, Tiger's entire career.
I've been there every step of the way for every
amazing moment, every phenomenal golf shot,
every huge, you know, win and,
of course, all the other stuff
that came with covering Tiger Woods.
And that went on for 26 years.
And for the first 15 years, my magazine
was owned by The New York Times,
which is an amazing journalism company.
And then The New York Times sold us to Condé
Nast, which is an amazing magazine company.
And I feel incredibly fortunate to, you
know, to work for two such, you know,
fantastic companies, to get the kind of
mentoring and the teaching and the experience
and the opportunities that I got.
It was really wonderful.
In the mid-'90s, I got married.
Wouldn't normally talk about my wife or
my family unless somebody asked except
that my wife plays a huge part in this story.
She's a TV producer.
And she worked for NBC in the '90s.
And we met at a golf tournament
that NBC was covering.
And we got married.
We have, you know, her TV
producer career continued up.
My magazine career continued on an upward arc.
We eventually started a family.
We have 17-year-old triplets,
who they turned 17 on Sunday.
So that's been a crazy ride.
But the reason I bring her up is that as,
you know, my 26 years at the magazine,
the first 23 years, you know, were idyllic.
It was a wonderful place to work.
Forty-five weeks a year, we put out a
magazine that was all about the week in golf.
I used to go to work on Sunday mornings
at about 11:00 or 12:00 in the morning.
And I didn't come home until Monday
night at 9:00 when the magazine was done
and had been shipped off to the
printer to be printed and mailed.
And it was really a very rewarding,
busy, but fun existence, you know.
If I was put on this world to do one
thing, it was to edit that magazine.
And I got to do it for a long time.
I eventually did become the editor.
But the last three years I was there,
this thing called the internet began
to have a huge impact on our business.
And as the internet came along, the
print business started to suffer.
I was not smart enough to really figure out how
to make our magazine deal with the internet.
I think most of the people that I
worked with weren't really prepared
or able to figure out those questions as well.
The last couple of years, we spent about 50%
of our time making magazines and about 50%
of our time trying to figure out how to make
magazines that would work in the digital age.
It's still something that not a lot of magazine
companies have been able to figure out.
The other thing that impacted our business
was that in 1995, Arnold Palmer of all people
with some businessmen decided to
start a 24-hour cable TV channel
that was all about the game of golf.
And you maybe forget about it now because
there's so many channels that cover sports.
But in 1995 there were no 24-hour, 7-day-a-week
cable TV channels devoted to one sport.
Golf Channel was the first
channel to try and do that.
And, you know, it got off to a slow start.
There were some rocky times.
But eventually in about 2005, when they were
10 years old, they started doing pretty well.
And they got the rights to the PGA Tour.
And they became a formidable opponent for
those of us in the golf magazine industry.
But what happened to me was through my
wife and the years of being married to her,
I got to know a lot of people at NBC.
Got to be friendly with them.
They were fans of the magazine.
And when Comcast, which owned the Golf
Channel, bought NBC in about 2009,
they combined their sports assets.
The NBC assets, NBC sports assets
combined with the assets that Comcast had.
And suddenly NBC was in charge
of the Golf Channel.
And the people I knew at the Golf Channel
offered me a chance to go to work there in 2012.
So I became the Executive Editor.
And my wife Molly became the Executive Producer.
So for eight years, we've been
down there together, you know.
I'm not a TV producer.
My wife is a TV producer.
She's an amazing TV producer.
I'm a smart golf guy who knows journalism, knows
editorial standards, knows how to be an editor
to a bunch of people who want
to do great golf content.
And so that's what I've gotten
to do the last eight years.
And that kind of brings us to today.
I was telling Mike before we started
the program that we are in the process
of relocating the Golf Channel from Orlando
after 25 years to go to Stanford, Connecticut,
where NBC Sports is headquartered.
That's a consolidation move.
We've got a big TV facility in Orlando.
And we have a big TV facility in Stanford.
We don't need two TV facilities.
So we're going to move Golf Channel up there.
I'm not going to go.
I'm going to help our kids
get out of high school.
So at the end of this year, I'm going to
retire and call it a career after, what,
I think almost 35, 36 years now and
figure out something else to do.
But it's been a wonderful ride.
And, you know, as I said, maybe
not what everybody else that I was
in school with at CMC went off and did.
But it was exactly what I wanted to do.
And it's worked out great.
So that's my story, you know.
I mean, I think this is probably the
point where we open it up to questions.
And what do you think, Mike?
>> Yeah. Yeah.
It is my first Zoom, sorry.
So maybe just a couple little insights in what's
going on with the PGA right now with PGA Tour.
>> Sure.
>> People might be interested
in hearing about that.
And then we can take some questions.
If you want to put questions
in the chat, we can.
Or we can ask them, you know, out loud, yeah.
>> Sure. So we've been very fortunate in the
golf business because as all you golf fans
out there know, golf is maybe one sport
out of, you know, NASCAR is another
and we're starting to play some soccer.
But golf they were able to get back up
and running pretty quickly, you know.
It's an outdoor sport.
In professional golf, you're only playing
with maybe two other people at any one time.
There's not a lot of chest bumping or
tackling or rubbing up against each other.
They've been able to, for about a month,
month and a half now, play some tournaments.
There's been a few positive tests.
But all in all it's been a pretty safe endeavor.
And, you know, if you're watching golf on
TV, you don't miss the fans, I don't think.
That's one thing that we really worried
about and I think most sports are worried
about is how can you do live
sports without fans?
And I think as we've, you know, as you find
when you watch TV, at least when you watch golf
on TV, it turns out you don't notice
the fans as much as you think you do.
But we've been fortunate.
For my friends in California,
the PGA Championship is supposed
to be the first major of the year.
It's scheduled for San Francisco
this year in a couple of weeks.
I know California is from a virus standpoint
maybe going in the wrong direction.
We'll see if that happened.
But hopefully we have a PGA Championship.
We have a U.S. Open.
We have a Masters this year.
And we get to keep showing golf.
>> Geoff, we've got a few questions in the chat.
I'm going to call on John McDowell first.
John?
>> Yeah, thanks, Mike.
Yeah, the question I had was just
in general what advice do you have
for current CMC students who
want to become journalists?
I know we have some journalists at The
New York Times, maybe the Washington Post,
a couple other places more politically oriented.
But for CMCers who want to move into sort of the
sports corporate world, particularly journalism,
what's the advice that you have, you
know, for them and maybe just for us
who may, hey, I want a new career, so.
[laughs]
>> Sure. Well, you know, I
think, John, a couple of things.
Mike and the folks at CMC have been
great the last couple of years.
I get one or two prospective golf
journalism folks who come my way.
And I try to talk to them.
I think a couple of things.
It's easy to look at the world of traditional
journalism right now and get discouraged,
particularly if that's something
you want to have a career in.
But there's so many new ways of doing
journalism and nontraditional journalism.
And I think it would be good for any
particularly young folks starting out to think
about those careers, whether it's
working for digital media, you know.
I was never very good with a camera.
But if you can get good at filming and be good
at editing and doing that in addition to writing
and editing, I think there
are great opportunities there.
I think a lot of nontraditional
places are doing journalism, you know.
When I started, we covered professional golfers.
And we covered golf companies.
And we covered golf organizations
like the USGA and the PGA Tour.
And none of those areas did, you
know, did their own journalism.
We were the only ones who were writing
stories and covering the PGA Tour.
Now, you know, athletes all
have their own websites.
Athletes all have their own
social media accounts.
Golf equipment companies are
really big into creating content.
They want to promote their products.
And they want to promote the players
that endorse their products, you know.
The one that gets really painful
for us sometimes is the PGA Tour
has got a huge media operation.
They have hired up a lot of old golf writers and
a lot of old golf producers to do golf content.
And, you know, we butt heads all the time.
It gets competitive.
But, you know, that's a huge change in
30 years of my being in the business is
that I think the important thing to
remember is the content is always going
to find an audience, you know.
There's always going to be people out there who
want content, who are interested in, you know,
if you're a golf fan, you're going to want
to read about Bryson DeChambeau putting
on 35 pounds and gaining 50
yards, you know, in his game.
And it's just a question of where
are you going to find that content?
I hate to say it.
You definitely don't buy
Golf World magazine anymore.
And you probably don't buy Golf Digest either.
But you get that content
from these other places.
And that's what I think young
aspiring journalists need to remember.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
Let's see.
We've got next up, Brad Pine has a question.
And Jeff Cline is on deck.
>> Okay.
>> Hey, Geoff.
Great to see you after all these years.
>> Hey, Brad.
You look great.
It's great to see you.
>> As do you.
Yeah, it's funny.
I've actually, you know,
Googled you intermittently
to see what you were doing
and envious of your success.
And you kind of touched it.
My question is similar to what John was asking.
But do you think it's still relevant to
go to journalism school in this world
where it's, you know, internet and TV.
And, you know, yes, we need content.
But it doesn't seem like it works the same way.
>> Brad, that's a great question.
And it's a question I get all
the time from young folks.
And, you know, this is kind of
what I touched on in the beginning.
Journalism school is definitely relevant.
But I would encourage anybody who's
thinking about it, any parents out there
who are wondering about it for
their kids, I think it's much better
as an undergraduate experience
than a graduate experience.
What I've found when it was time to
go out and get a job in journalism,
practical experience counted
way more than a degree did.
I would never, you know, I would never discount
my master's degree because it does count
for a lot and it was a great
experience and I did learn a lot.
But at the end of the day, when you're
trying to get a job in journalism,
you have to show people,
"Here's the stories I've written.
Here's the videos I've created."
And, you know, the more of that that you can
build up, that's what helps you get a job.
And I think, you know, I think it's just that,
you know, in my experience, you know, at Medill,
there was obviously a huge
undergraduate journalism community.
And then there was the graduate school.
And the undergrads seemed to be getting,
you know, more out of it than we did.
They were there for four years, you know.
It was part of their schooling.
It was part of their education, you know.
As much as I loved CMC, I think if I had
it to do over again now, if, you know,
one of my kids comes to me and is hell bent
on a journalism career like I was then,
I would steer them to a school that offers a
journalism program as an undergraduate degree.
But, yeah, I still think it's great.
It's great training.
It's wonderful training.
>> Good. Thanks, Geoff.
Jeff Klein.
Jeff, where are you, buddy?
There he is.
>> You mentioned it a little
bit in your previous remarks
about the impact of social media.
But I'd love to get your sense of how
social media has changed golf journalism.
It certainly has had a powerful impact
on traditional current event journalism
as journalists have tried to develop their own
brands with their Twitter feeds and the level
of sort of vitriolic and angry back and forth
on Twitter and other social media platforms.
Has that happened in the
world of golf journalism?
And what's your opinion of that?
>> I think it's happened a little bit
in golf journalism, maybe, you know,
maybe not to the extent as
it has in other sports.
But I would say that's just a factor.
Golf is not as big a sport as NBA basketball
or NFL football or some of the other sports.
I think it's impacted in a number of ways.
One, you know, you put news out on social media.
And that's the quickest way to
disseminate news that there is, you know.
A newspaper can't beat that.
A weekly magazine can't beat that.
A TV network can't beat that, you know.
The minute Tiger Woods announces he's playing in
a golf tournament and commits to a tournament,
you know, that's on Twitter
and Instagram in five minutes.
And so breaking news becomes almost
impossible to do for a traditional journalist.
And you're taught breaking news
is kind of your number one goal.
Another way that it affects -- and
you kind of mentioned, you know,
journalists are out there trying
to create their own brand.
And you can do that.
But a more serious issue for journalists is
that the athletes are trying
to create their own brand.
And, you know, the history of journalism
involves, you know, tension between, you know,
kind of a professional tension between
the, you know, journalist and the subject.
Right? And no matter how
conscientious of a journalist you are,
it's inevitable that you're
going to write stories
that your subjects aren't
going to like, you know.
They're not going to like your take.
They're not going to like your
poking into their background.
They're not going to like some of the
things that you reveal about them.
But that always kind of came with the territory.
And when I started as a journalist, it was
easy to get -- well, not easy, but, I mean,
the natural byplay was that the athletes
would talk to people like me, you know.
You could have interviews.
And it was part of the research process.
That interview with the player, the golfer that
you were writing about was a huge, you know,
it was a huge part of the process.
I think athletes have learned that
they don't have to do that anymore.
If they really want to get their message
out in the form that they wanted out,
they don't need to talk to journalists anymore.
They can just do it themselves.
And the ones who are really, really good
at it like Rickie Fowler and, you know,
Bubba Watson for a long time, you know,
Phil Mickelson in the last year has become
a real big star on social media, you know,
it's not ending journalism as we know it.
But people like me have to get used to the
idea that Phil Mickelson is not going to talk
to us or, you know, certainly Tiger
Woods is not going to talk to us.
They don't feel like they need to.
And you have to learn to do
journalism, you know, in a different way.
You have to learn how to write a story
about Phil Mickelson without ever talking
to Phil Mickelson, which, you
know, is delicate and complicated
and makes you have to work harder.
The last thing I think I would say about social
media and the way it's impacted our business is
that social media -- and it's kind
of related to the point I just made.
When you don't have a lot of concrete
information from talking to Phil Mickelson,
it's easy to formulate opinions about
Phil Mickelson that you, you know,
that are easy to not make
up but you take liberties.
Right? And that, you know, one of the things
that the communication between the journalists
and the athlete or the journalists
and the subject did,
it kind of kept the journalists
honest, you know.
We used to say if you write a
critical story of somebody --
you know, I had a boss once who said, "You
write a critical story about somebody,
I want you out at the next tournament next
week so they can find you if they're unhappy.
And you guys can have a conversation about it."
Because the subject deserves that,
you know, deserves the chance to get
in your face and have it out with you.
I think with social media, that
doesn't happen as much anymore.
It's easier for journalists to say things
that are overly critical, overly nasty,
and then not really face
accountability afterwards.
>> Yeah, I think that people say things
on social media to another person
that they would never say in
person to that other person.
>> Correct.
Absolutely.
>> Thank you.
By the way, I went to J School with Mike Ritz.
So if he hasn't retired from the Golf
Channel yet, please say hello to him for me.
>> I sure will.
He's still around.
And I don't see him in the age of COVID.
But we email a little bit.
And I'll tell him you said hi.
>> Thank you.
>> Nice, thanks, Jeff.
Hey, Sam Minter has a question for you, Geoff.
>> Yeah, hi.
Thanks for taking the time today.
This may be a somewhat inside baseball.
But I'm the kind of degenerate fan
that has PGA Tour Live, for example,
follows all the tournaments, is
looking at the batting matchups.
There's no need to get me into golf.
But this past week, you saw on
Sunday three of the best guys
in the final group, the young guns.
And it wasn't on TV.
My friends were texting me
saying, "How do I watch this?
This is the only live sport on now."
There's this constant attention
on grow the game.
But there seems to be especially this
disconnect with the CBS-Lance Barrow contract
and getting the game for the masses,
especially at a time like this.
So how do you think that
can be better addressed?
Because again I don't need
to be bought for the game.
But there's a lot that needs
to be done for other people.
Like even my parents, who were confused
this weekend when it wasn't on TV on Sunday.
>> So Sam, I feel your pain.
I think everybody at the
Golf Channel feels your pain.
Whenever they say -- for those of you who
are wondering what happened, this weekend,
CBS had the broadcast rights
to the PGA Tour event.
And it was being played in Ohio.
And going into the final round,
the weather forecast was lousy.
And it was going to rain and
thunderstorm in the afternoon.
And probably if they went with normal
starting times, the tournament wasn't going
to finish before sunset on Sunday.
So the tour made the decision to move to the
tee times up and have everybody play early
so that they could finish before the rain
started, the rain and the thunderstorms.
The issue is that CBS owns the
rights to show the final round.
And when CBS has the rights,
they want to show the golf
in the window that they are committed to.
They are not prepared to start
the coverage of the golf early,
bring all their production
people in and start probably
in this case five hours early and show the golf.
And they may not be prepared to do it.
And they may also not want to do it because
they're going to get a higher rating from,
you know, from 3:00 to 6:00 Eastern
Time than they would from 10:00 a.m.
to 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, you know.
In this day and age, when everybody expects
everything to be live and probably has a right
to expect things to be live, that is a problem
because what we've been talking about here
for 20 minutes is by the time CBS is
showing the golf tournament on tape,
everybody's been learning
about it on the internet,
knows who won, knows what the outcome was.
And now maybe they're not going to watch it.
So that, Sam, in this case, I
think that was a CBS decision.
And I think at our company, at Golf
Channel, you know, we're connected with NBC,
I think we've come around on that.
And we also have Golf Channel
as a nice landing spot.
CBS and Golf Channel work together.
But we're not business partners.
And so they don't want to let us have the
final round and show it on the Golf Channel
and get all the, you know,
get all the revenue from it.
Whereas if it was an NBC Tournament
and it was starting five hours early,
I think we've become pretty good at putting
it, you know, putting it on Golf Channel
and showing it live so at least you and
your parents can watch it in real time.
>> I appreciate it, thank you.
>> I'm going to be out of the business
before I can fix that one, Sam, but.
>> [laughs] Thanks.
>> Okay. We've got Marc Risman
up next and Kyle Casella on deck.
>> Hey, Geoffrey, thank you so much.
I'm just glad Marty Hackle
[assumed spelling] isn't
on to criticize all our apparel in this but.
>> Yeah, he wouldn't like
what I'm wearing today.
>> Yeah, no bright greens
or pink pants with them but.
>> Yeah.
>> Two quick questions.
Do you think Pro-Ams will come back before
general fans are let into the tournaments?
And then secondly do you think Lee Elder
[assumed spelling] will have the opportunity
to be an honorary starter with Nicklaus
and Player this year at the Masters?
>> So let's see, the first question,
you know, I think Pro-Ams, yes,
I think Pro-Ams will probably
come back before the fans do just
because it's kind of a numbers game.
Right? And there are a lot more fans
than there are Pro-Ams participants.
Interesting thing about Pro-Ams
and professional golf, you know,
you're watching a lot of PGA Tour right now.
But the LPGA Tour and the European Tour and some
of these other tours haven't
had a chance to come back yet.
And I think part of the reason for that is
because the PGA Tour's TV contract with us
and CBS and the other networks is so large
that the money that they get every week,
their portion of the rights deal is
so large that they can actually afford
to have a tournament without fans
and without a Pro-Ams and without all
of the other money making ways that tournaments,
you know, that tournaments have to make money.
It's not the same with like
the LPGA and the European Tour.
The LPGA Tour, their TV rights deal isn't
anywhere near as large as the PGA Tour's.
And, you know, for little tournaments in places
like Grand Rapids and Toledo and the places
where the LPGA plays, they need the Pro-Ams.
They need to sell tickets.
They need to sell hotdogs and
have people park their cars.
Otherwise, those tournaments don't make money.
So the virus is really having
a big effect there.
Lee Elder, you know, that's
a great question, you Know.
Of all the organizations that
I've covered over the years,
I would say Augusta National is the most
impervious to outside opinion and being pushed
into doing anything they don't feel like doing.
It took them, as we all know, a long time
before they had a diverse membership,
before they had Black members.
Took them even longer to get female members.
But I think this is a different
day and age we're living in.
And it may be different people
running the master's.
And I wouldn't count it out.
But they might be more inclined to wait for
someone like Vijay Singh or Tiger Woods,
you know, some past champion
of color to add to that lineup.
But that is 100% a guess.
I don't know.
And the only person who does
know is Fred Ridley.
And he's the guy who runs the Masters.
>> Thanks, Mark.
Kyle?
>> Thanks for joining us, Geoff.
The PGA Tour seems to be very restrictive
with their content and how they, you know,
we were talking about Instagram
and social media earlier
and how they let non-licensed creators utilize
content to what I would say promote the game.
>> Right.
>> Do you have a view on if
you think that's the right path
or if you think they'll do
something differently in the future?
It seems like other leagues are
moving in different directions.
>> You know, I think I've always
been of the belief that, you know,
the more you share your content,
the better it is
for your product, the better
it is for your brand.
But that's, you know, that's
not my specialty, you know.
In my profession, for years, all of
our, you know, newspapers and magazine,
we all gave away our content
for free on the internet.
And now a lot of them are out of business.
So I'm not sure giving away
content really worked for them.
And I was never part of a company
that was in business with the PGA Tour
until I went to work for the Golf Channel.
And, you know, the Golf Channel has been
the PGA Tour's cable television partner
for 15 years now.
And I think at the beginning of
the contract, I wasn't there then.
But at the beginning of the contract, you know,
digital rights, you know, video highlights,
all that stuff was kind of small potatoes.
It's become a huge deal.
And at the Golf Channel, we don't
have great video rights, you know.
We are not allowed to on our social media
handles put out highlights from PGA Tour events
of stuff we're showing on our own air.
This would be really getting in the weeds.
But if you ever wonder why our Golf Central New
Show, why we don't post segments from our show
on our website, you know, if Brandel Chamblee
says something crazy during a video package,
you know, that everyone is talking
about, why we don't put that online,
it's because we don't have the right to because
of our contract with the PGA Tour, you know.
Obviously, what that tells me is that those
digital rights and owning the right, you know,
having exclusivity over your
content is a really big deal.
I'm not sure how much longer we're all going to
be watching golf on television sets, you know.
I think, you know, certainly my
kids don't watch TV, you know.
They don't watch sports on TV.
They watch it on phones and iPads and
their computers and other devices.
And I think places like the
PGA Tour want to control that.
They don't want to give it
to just anybody who wants it.
At the end of the day, I don't think
they see the benefits to growing the game
if it means they're going to lose those rights.
It's not a good business deal.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Al Harutunian, Al Harutunian
followed by Andrew Gordon, Andy.
>> Do you think that the Tiger Woods scandal
caused any lasting damage to the PGA Tour?
>> In the end, probably not, you know.
I think you've got to begin by
understanding what a gigantic presence
and a gigantic star Tiger Woods is for
the PGA Tour and for all of golf really.
When we show an event with Tiger
Woods in it, it's going to double
and probably triple the ratings of an
event that doesn't have Tiger Woods in it.
So Tiger Woods, as we used to say,
Tiger Woods doesn't move the needle.
Tiger Woods is the needle.
And when the scandal happened,
it was obviously bad for Tiger.
And then after the scandal, if you
remember, you know, he came back.
And he started playing.
And he was kind of lousy for a
while and sort of unenthusiastic.
And then he had a couple
of really successful years.
He didn't win any Majors.
But he had a year where he won five tournaments.
And he seemed to be coming back.
And then he got hurt.
And then he had back problems.
And he had a series of operations.
And he really wasn't a factor.
And at that point I can tell you
that the TV business was in terms
of covering professional golf, the
ratings were really in a bad place.
And for those of us in the TV business,
it was kind of a double-edged sword.
Like you want great TV ratings because
that's the key to your revenue.
But as we were getting ready to negotiate
a new rights deal with the PGA Tour,
low ratings are actually a good thing because
now we're not going to have to pay as much money
for those rights as we thought
we were, you know.
I love Jordan Spieth and
Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy.
They're fantastic.
But they don't get an audience
the way Tiger Woods does.
And so as we were getting ready into negotiating
this new TV rights deal, lo and behold,
Tiger Woods starts winning again.
And all he has to do is win a Tour
Championship and win a Masters
and suddenly the audience comes back.
And so the Tour was, last year, we
started negotiating a new rights deal,
which we signed in March of this year.
And the Tour did just fine.
They got a huge pay increase.
So in the end, no, I don't think
the scandal hurt the PGA Tour
because Tiger Woods is still their
biggest star all these years later.
>> Yeah. Next up, Andy.
Oh? Give him [inaudible].
>> Andy.
>> We can't hear you, Andy.
>> Not only do I not know
how to operate these things,
I'm also apparently the only one stupid
enough on this call not to figure out how
to get a job where I'm not wearing a tie.
So I apologize for my [inaudible].
>> Hello, Your Honor.
How are you?
[laughs]
>> So I'm going to dredge up the age-old
question of why we have to be quiet in golf.
I mean, I know baseball players have
the argument we can hit a ball coming
at 110 miles an hour with a bat.
Setting aside that golf is
a genteel and formal sport,
you're talking about attracting
the crowd, going to the audience.
And it seems like the audience,
young folks these days,
tend to be a little more
rowdy, a little less formal.
When fans start coming back, is there ever
going to be a time when golf starts to relax
and let people be a little noisy, other
than the 16th hole at the Phoenix Open,
which is a big crowd draw,
and the people go crazy.
>> Or the Rider Cup.
>> Or the Rider Cup, too.
But they're still a little quiet.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, so is that every going to change?
Are people going to be allowed to
get noisy at a golf tournament?
>> You know, that's a great question.
And I think I don't know, you know.
I just think it's ingrained.
I mean, look, I think golf's gotten noisier.
One of the things I started doing about
five years ago is I started listening
to music when I play golf, you know.
They have these portable speakers now.
And a lot of golfers, a lot of recreational
golfers love to get these speakers.
And I hang one on my golf bag now.
And I find that, you know, you can play it real
low so you're the only one who can hear it.
Or you can play it really loud so
everybody in your group can hear it.
And I really enjoy it.
It calms me down, you know.
It kind of fills the dead space.
And it's noise.
Right? It's not screaming and yelling.
But it's more noise than I'm used to.
I think that, you know, I think
what it comes down to is, you know,
are professional golfer disturbed
by having, you know, crowd behavior?
And some of them still are.
And as long as they can complain about it
and have fans tossed out for, you know,
for behavior that they think crosses the
line or prevents them from doing their job,
then it'll be hard to change that one.
But, you know, your larger point about
getting new fans and younger fans, you know,
you've just got to look, you know.
For a long time, pro-golf didn't
want cellphones at their tournaments.
And now, you know, they've
relaxed all those rules.
And to, you know, one of the earlier
points, that is a way that they allow people
to share their content is you can go to
a tournament and take cellphone video
and put it out, you know,
put it out on the internet.
And they're fine with that.
The one place where that rule
hasn't changed is the Masters.
And if they catch you on the
grounds of at Augusta National
with a phone, they'll throw you out.
And they'll never let you back.
It's weird.
It's like the one place left in the
world where you can't have a cellphone.
And they don't seem like they're
ready to change anytime soon.
It's good to see you, Andy.
You look great.
>> You, too.
Thanks.
>> Let's see.
Who's up next?
Paul Fisher has a question for you, Geoff.
Did we lose him?
Paul? Paul was asking about podcasts.
Paul, can you -- oh, there he is.
There he is.
Go ahead.
>> There he is.
Sorry about that.
It's a journalism, golf journalism,
sports journalism question.
Podcasts are becoming more
and more burgeoning out there.
And I was wondering how they're
affecting the business.
And it seems to me there's some -- the
spectrum that covers golf is out there.
There are some of them that are really trash.
And some of them are really good.
But just wondering how they
were affecting things.
>> So I'll answer that question this way, Paul.
I've had to get really smart about podcasts
pretty quickly because podcasts, you're right.
It's kind of exploding.
And, like we say, it's the
Wild Wild West out there.
But in my role at the Golf Channel overseeing
all these, you know, people who make content,
all the TV people and all the website
people and all the digital people,
that was kind of the number one thing
that everybody pitched me was I
want to start my own golf podcast.
And I think it's just because, if you're in our
business, you can't start your own golf TV show.
It's too complicated.
Or you can't, you know, go write
a book or columns, you know.
Writing is a lot of work.
But I think everybody wanted to do a podcast.
And the first few times,
I was very accommodating.
I said, "Sure, if you want to
start a podcast, go for it.
We have a podcast department over here.
And they'll help you get started."
Pretty soon, our podcast
department was overwhelmed.
And to your point, I think most
of the podcasts weren't very good.
And I had to try to figure
out why was that the case.
And I realized the first thing
you've got to do is you got to go
and find out what you like in podcasts.
I was telling people they could do podcasts.
And I didn't personally listen
to a lot of podcasts.
So I just started doing that.
And I think, you know, I think the best
podcast, number one, shorter is better.
We do podcasts at the Golf Channel.
And sometimes these episodes go
longer than an hour, you know.
Nobody's got an hour to listen to a podcast.
I think a podcast is something you do
when you're driving your kids to school
or you're driving to work in the morning
or you're walking your dog in the morning.
So a good podcast episode needs
to be like 20, 25 minutes tops.
I also think everybody who wanted
to do a podcast at the Golf Channel,
their idea was to go out and interview people.
And they were all trying to get the same guests.
Everybody wanted to interview Jack Nicklaus.
And everybody wanted to interview,
you know, Tiger Woods.
And everybody wanted to interview Justin Thomas.
And maybe I'm jaded.
But I hear those people all the time.
And, you know, I don't, you know,
and I think if you're a golf fan,
you hear Jack Nicklaus talk all the time.
I think the best podcasts are
podcasts that tell a story, you know.
It's just like a magazine piece.
It's just like an episode of a TV show.
There has to be a message there.
There has to be a story arc there, you know.
Unless you're a really, really good
interviewer like Conan O'Brien or Howard Stern,
an interview podcast, I think,
is hard to pull off.
So I've tried to coach our folks to, you know,
to try to design your podcast like you would,
you know, a magazine piece
or a TV series, you know.
I work with a guy named Jaime Diaz.
And Jamie has been covering
Tiger Woods his whole career.
I mean, he's the smartest journalist there's
ever been when it comes to Tiger Woods.
And I said, "You should do a six episode podcast
on covering Tiger Woods and
what it's been like."
That would be really fascinating.
But I think podcasts, it's not as simple as
just saying, "I'm going to start a podcast.
I'm going to get a tape recorder.
And I'm going to turn it on.
And I'm going to interview
somebody over the phone."
It's not that easy.
>> I think, Geoff, we have a young alum out
here, Skyler Butts is watching in today.
He's a tennis alum from a couple
years back, a national champ.
And he started a neat podcast, D3toPro.
I'd love to have you two guys connect
later and have a chat with this guy.
>> Yeah.
>> We've got another question up.
Andrew Stroud is is in the house.
Andrew? There you go.
>> Hi, Geoff.
How are you?
>> Hi, Andy.
How are you, buddy?
>> I'm doing very fine.
Thank you.
Shelly says --
>> You look fantastic.
>> Yeah, thank you.
Shelly says hello as well.
>> You tell Shelly I think Dan
Debevok [assumed spelling] left.
So you tell Shelly she was
the best RA of all time.
[laughs]
>> I will.
[laughs] I will tell her that.
I will tell her that.
>> Okay.
>> Listen, I think that also when Andrew Gordon
asked his question, you should have asked him
when is he going to let people yell at
him while he does his job, you know?
Then we'd be living.
[laughs]
>> [laughs] His job is a lot more
important than most of us who hang
out at golf courses for a living but anyway.
>> Hey, Shelly and I have two sons, Geoff.
And we've been trying like heck, I have
at least, to get them involved in golf.
Bought them golf clubs, lessons,
all sorts of stuff.
And, you know, oh, it takes too much time.
It's too long, et cetera, et cetera.
And I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts
about how to get young people involved and what
that means for the future of the game.
>> Yeah, well, another great questions.
And I've kind of been through
that in my own house.
I've got three 17 year olds.
I have a son and two daughters.
My son, by far, the biggest
sports nut of all of them.
And he's played soccer.
And he's played basketball.
And he's played this.
and he's played that.
And I really never really
succeeded in getting him into golf.
I wasn't heavy handed about it.
But I spent a lot of time trying to figure
out, you know, what his issue was with golf.
And I think, you know, I watched
him play soccer for nine years.
and he would go to practice four days a week.
And he would, you know, the kids on his soccer
team were his 12 best friends in the world.
And he had a coach who, you know, really was a
pretty, you know, tough on him and held him to,
you know, high standards and accountability
and made him, you know, and disciplined him
when he didn't do the right thing
or didn't do what he was told to do.
And then at the end of the, you know, at
the end of the week, we get to the weekend.
And now there's a game.
And he gets to put on a uniform.
And he gets to go and be with those 12 guys
and go somewhere and play against another team.
And the whole thing was incredibly
rewarding for him.
And golf doesn't provide any of that, you know.
Golf, you're not on a team, you know.
It's a very solitary pursuit.
You're not on a team.
And you don't get to wear a uniform.
And, you know, at the end of the week,
you don't go have a golf competition
against another team full of golfers, you know.
And I think that was certainly an issue for him.
And I think it was an issue
for a lot of young athletes.
And I think golf is trying to figure that out.
The PGA of America has got something called
the Junior League, which is a team aspect.
I don't know.
I think you're in Sacramento.
Are you still in Sacramento?
>> You bet.
>> You know, Hagen Oaks out there is one of
the best public golf facilities in the country.
And they do all of this stuff.
And if it's not too late, I would try to --
I really think that that camaraderie is
the first thing kids notice about golf,
that lack of camaraderie, that you're not
usually with a bunch of other kids your own age
who are pursuing the same way you are, you know.
As it turned out, I have a daughter who has
got decent athletic skills but, you know,
is not really competitive by
nature and doesn't really want
to perform into a bunch of other people.
She's kind of gotten into
golf because it's cerebral.
And it's kind of a mental challenge.
And she enjoys it a little
bit more than my son does.
And the last thing you've got to
recognize, it's incredibly frustrating.
It's a hard game to learn.
And it does take practice.
And it does take time.
And, you know, don't make
him play 18 holes, you know.
Find a place that lets you play 3
holes or 4 holes or 9 holes at a time.
That might help, too, so.
>> Okay. Thank you, Geoff.
>> That's great, Geoff.
Hey, we are right at the top of the hour here.
There's one question in the waiting room.
Geoff, you got time for another question?
>> I do, sure.
>> Good. And so for the folks that were able
to come in today, you're welcome to stay.
But just to let you know that we are,
like I said, we're at that point.
We'll be wrapping up shortly.
And it's been great to have everybody in today.
Tomorrow, we do it again.
And the real host will be back.
But this has been terrific, Geoff.
I'm going to thank you right now.
But let's see what Terril
Jones has for you here.
Maybe this will be the showstopper, you know.
There you go.
>> Showstopper.
>> Hey, Terril, are you there?
There he is.
We can't hear you though, buddy.
Yeah, you're unmuted.
It looks like you're unmuted.
But we're missing you, darn it.
Oh, man.
>> Let me try this.
I switched the microphone.
>> There you go.
Got you now.
Yeah.
>> Okay. I switched microphones.
So I'm sorry about that.
And then my apologizes for tuning in late.
I just had a bunch of errands
that ran longer than I thought.
>> That's okay.
>> By the way, I teach journalism here at CMC.
I wonder if you ever came across a golf
writer named Tommy Bock, Thomas Bock.
>> I sure did.
Yeah. I mean, Tommy was, you know, a
great colleague of mine when he was
at the Los Angeles Times and, you
know, a little bit of a mentor to me.
Great guy, you know, great writer, yeah.
>> Yeah. He sat in the cubicle next to
me when I was assigned to San Francisco.
But my question is, I mean, forgive
me if someone has asked this,
but the U.S. Presidents are frequently
associated with golf, whether people complain
that they play golf too much
or that they don't play golf.
And so that's come up as an issue
under Barack Obama as a President,
under Donald Trump as a President.
I just wonder since you've been doing this
for so long, what kind of sense do you have
of the influence of a U.S. President
on the game of golf, you know?
Can that bring more people into the
sport or does it turn some people off?
>> You know, I don't think it can hurt.
I think anytime, you know, the leader of the
free world is interested in something, you know,
I mean, you know, every move they
make is covered by a huge press corps.
And so when, you know, when the first George
Bush played golf, people were covering it.
The second George Bush, Bill Clinton
loved to play golf, you know.
It's constantly on TV.
Funny story, speaking of Pro-Ams, at the
Bob Hope Classic one year in Palm Springs,
when Bill Clinton had become President,
they had a day where Gerald Ford
and the first George Bush and Bill Clinton
were paired together for the Pro-Am.
And it was the first time three
Presidents ever played golf together.
And I was part of the press
pool that got to cover that.
>> You weren't [inaudible].
Right?
>> I'm sorry?
>> You weren't the fourth there?
>> I was not the fourth.
The fourth was Bob Hope, which was
probably a better choice, and Scott Hoch,
who was the defending champion
of the tournament.
They actually played five.
But, you know, I think the
thing -- so it's good for golf.
But the kind of, you know, sort of the
negative thing about it, if it is negative,
is that the Presidents who play golf are
always a little embarrassed to be playing golf.
It's as though all that time
they spend, you know,
playing golf is taking them away
from the business of the nation.
And I definitely remember that when
George W. Bush, when the Iraq War started,
he made a point of, you know, he stopped
playing golf because he just felt
that it was the criticism that came, you know,
from playing golf when there was a war going
on was just not worth, you
know, was not worth it to him.
And so he stopped.
And, you know, I always felt
like that was kind of sad.
I think golf is a great exercise.
It's great for the mind, too.
And, you know, I think when I see
anyone playing golf, even a President,
I think that's four good hours of
thinking and mind clearing and relaxation.
And, you know, sometimes you
get done with a round of golf
and you've figured out how
to solve a few problems.
But it's tough for Presidents.
I get it.
>> So I think that might
be a wrap, unless Brian,
unless you want to share
something with us, Brian Toy?
You've been a key contributor
in the channel today.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Hey, Brian.
>> Let's see.
Can you hear me?
I'm on the phone.
You can hear me?
>> I can hear you.
>> Okay. Okay.
Yeah, sorry, my internet is not very good.
Yeah, I guess, yeah, I'm just
a little frustration with golf
and politics and getting people into golf.
And I'm not really into golf.
I've watched golf with my dad.
But I've just been on the driving range.
And I've been on to my local
expensive country club in Los Gatos.
And, you know, it's expensive,
even in pricey Silicon Valley.
And just wondering how we can
bring golf to the masses so that --
I'm struggling to make the connection here
between golf and how golf can be a tool
to help us get along better politically
and between, you know, let's face it.
Like when you're young, you want things to do.
And you want to do well in school so you
can get a job so you can marry and date.
And Jenna knows that this is a topic
of mine that's come up again and again.
[laughs] So apologies to Jenna.
But, you know, they want to do work and date.
And you're preparing kids to
do that when they're young.
And then when you get old,
that's what you want to do, too.
You want to have a wife's that's happy.
You want to be dating to
get a wife that's happy.
And so, you know, I think this
is a philosophical question
that I learned from Paul Hurley.
He was at Pomona.
Now he's CMC, you know.
How can we bring these things together, golf and
politics and getting a job and finding someone,
a partner that we want to be with?
>> So there's a lot there.
>> A lot there.
[laughs]
>> Yeah.
>> You know, I mean, it's hard for me to speak
to anybody's experience but
my own experience, you know.
What I could tell you is that I grew
up in Sacramento, you know, single mom,
one of two kids and kind of a nerd, you know.
And obviously, as I've said,
I gravitated towards golf.
And I played public golf.
Golf was a really good socializing
force for me, you know.
I'm not sure this happens anymore.
But as a 13, 14, 15 year old, I
used to go to the public courses
in Sacramento by myself and sign up to play.
And I would just get matched with, you know,
with three other people who I didn't know.
and most of the time they were
adults who were older than me.
Most of the time, you know,
most of the time, they were men.
But, you know, it forced me to learn to
interact with people and to get over my shyness,
get over whatever kind of, you
know, issues I had, you know,
in terms of making friends
and becoming outgoing.
And then later on I got a job at a
very nice private club in Sacramento.
And that introduced me to people like, you
know, federal judges and successful businessmen
and TV executives and, you know, doctors
and lawyers and all these people.
And I think that was, you know, that
opened my eyes to what, you know,
what the possibilities were in terms of
getting an education and getting a career.
And, listen, I met my wife at a golf tournament.
She was working for NBC.
And I was working for the magazine.
But as it turned out, she loved to play golf.
She was more of a beginner.
But we, you know, about our first 15
dates, were playing golf together.
And by the 16th date, we were engaged.
And to this day, 25 years later, playing
golf together is still the best thing for us
to do together, you know, the
thing that is the favorite.
So I can only speak for myself.
Golfing seems to be this, you
know, it's been great for me.
It's been great for my life.
It's been great for my career.
It's been great for my family and my happiness.
I don't know what to do about politics.
That's outside of my comfort zone, you know.
You would like to think that, you know, I
mean, I remember Barack Obama playing golf
with John Boehner when he
was the Speaker of the House.
And it was maybe the only
thing they ever did together.
But they did play 18 holes together.
And they seemed to have fun.
And who knows?
Maybe it improved their relationship.
But it's a little more complicated
times these days.
But that's what I think about
golf and growing the game.
>> Okay. Thanks, yeah.
>> Amen, Geoff.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
Geoff, thank you so much.
What a great chat today.
And great to see so many of your friends
and compadres from over the years here.
>> Yep, it sure has been.
>> And a great day today.
Thank you for making the time to be with us.
And we'll wish everybody a great
rest of the day, great week,
and look forward to seeing you
on Zoom down the line here.
Okay?
>> Thank you for inviting me.
It's been great.
>> Yeah. Geoff, we'll check back
with you here in just a sec.
Okay?
>> Okay.
>> All right.
>> Thank you.
>> Adios for now, everybody.
