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Previously on the Deal and get yourself a great partner like Constance Schwartz Marini, who I'm scared of because she's behind me. So I got to say all these nice things about the boss. She is so lovely. Cannot wait for you too to have a conversation with her.
Michael is obviously my business partner, but we always say like brother from another mother, mister from another sister.
You guys know a snoop.
We had a little bit of an exchange in the boardroom that I stood up to him, and next day someone from his team called and he said, we want the girl from the NFL running the snoop team. I was like, whoa, whoa, I'm not a manager and they're like, too bad, you're a manager now.
So Constant Schwartzmarni. This episode is kind of a part two of a two part series, as it were, Alex, because she is the business partner to Michael Strahan. But you've known her for years. Who is she to you?
Yeah?
In many ways you mentioned Michael Strahan and Constant. The comparable for me is like Charlie Munger to Warren Buffett and Warren's the guy out there right, so is Michael, but she's the one in the background that just brings a lot of sanity and self awareness and they make
each other better. And if you think about some of the brands that Constant has been involved with, from Deon Sanders to Snoop to Aaron Andrews to cutting her teeth in the early nineties in the NFL, and the stories that she told us, oh, fascinating.
It's unbelievable because she gets into, like you said, those early days of the NFL, before the NFL was the NFL, when little sport called baseball was probably the more dominant in the culture. NFL takes off in part because of some of the things that she does. She goes to the music world. I mean talk about being at the center of the culture. She is a primary architect of Coach Prime, like today's Coach Prime. It's crazy.
And to think that Constant was in the cover of Sports illustraated with Dion was fascinating.
Yeah, no question. And when you think about what's happening at this intersection we talk about it all the time, sports, business, culture, music, technology. No one has been at the center of it more than she has, and yet she self describes in this interview working class kid born in Yonkers goes to Sunios WeGo, but she's like as Hollywood as they come.
At this point.
On this episode of The Deal, Constance schwartz Marini, I guess we should have you formally introduce yourself, hell us who you are.
That would be helpful. So first of all, thank you for having me. This is so exciting. But I'm Constance schwartz Marini, and I'm co founder and managing partner of Smack Entertainment.
And so Michael Strahan is your business partner. We spend some time with him. Who is he to you?
Can I cuss?
Now?
I'm sorry. So Michael is obviously my business partner.
But we always say like brother from another mother, mister from another sister. We've met, oh my gosh, yeah thirty years ago when he was playing for the Giants and I was working at the NFL. I'm an only child, so I say he's the brother I never wanted. He was my minister and my wedding like it goes deep yeah wow yeah. And my husband's name is Mike too, So the two of them jokes that it takes to Michael's to handle one contence.
And I love Michael so much and I admire him so much. What is it about Michael from your point of view that makes him different and special?
Because Michael and I had the same workout thick and the same sort of ethos, which is when, not if, when this happens, when I can do this? And I say that only because you have to have the trust with whether it's a client, a partner, or a friend, to say, what's your dream, what do you want to go build?
Let's do it together.
And that's one of the many things it's so attracted about him to many fans in that they don't.
See just a retired football player.
They don't see a good morning American news anchor, they don't see the NFL on Fox sportscaster. They think that he's their best friend. And that's something that you can't explain, you can't teach, you can't buy. And that's one of the many, many qualities that's just so endearing about him is any room he's in.
Everyone feels like they know him. He makes you feel like he knows you.
He's friendly with everyone on the set, not just the talent, but whether it's the grip or the sound guy or whoever it is, and he will reach out to me for more favors for those kind of folks that he works with than any talent ever. You know, when Pop fifty was at Yankee Stadium, he said, can you please get me four tickets?
The sound engineer wants to go.
I was like done, and for me too, I'd much rather help someone like that out who's not going to have the access that we are all privileged to have.
This guy. So, speaking of Michael, I mean, when you think about like the through line of the people that you've worked with over the years, what is it? Because it's such a fascinating collection of people.
It's a good way of putting it.
If you really dig deep and look at all of them, they're like Alex, they're a multi hyphen it. You know, they excelled greatly at their core career. Obviously he was a baseball player, but you've gone on right to have a show like The Deal and all your investments in your television career.
And that's the same thing.
Whether it's Michael or Aaron Andrews or Kurt Menafie and Coach Prime, they all did so well at the core, but they knew they could do more and wanted to do more. And that's how we look at it is there's no guard rails, there's no blinders.
It's like, let's go, let's talk about you. Let's talk about the early days, because I think something Alex and are both fascinated with. Is you starting your career at the NFL before the NFL is really the NFL, it's not what it is today. What was it like when you got there? What were you doing in those early days?
So in those days, the NFL was two different companies. There was the National Football League and then there was the marketing and licensing arm called NFL Properties. So my first job was an assistant at NFL Properties in the corporate sponsorship to do. This was the early nineties, nineteen ninety one. Wow, Yeah, I was a junior in high school.
Yeah, so it was. It was awesome.
I had two amazing bosses, Jim Schwabl and Maureen Rosen. I'm still super close to Maureene. She really gave me my start in my shop because she would say, whatever you can handle, I'm going to give you more of, you know, And that's what she did and she gave me the best advice that I used to this day with everyone that comes and works with us at SMACK, which is, when you mess up, although it was a different word, and you will, you come to me, you own it, you say I messed up and need help,
let's fix it. That has stuck with me throughout my whole career, my whole life and everything, because it's such simple common sense. But unfortunately more people go the other direction, which is to cover something up or lie about it, and then the issue snowballs. And that's how we work with everybody at the company, not just the talent, but the staff too, And that's just was the best thing ever.
And yes there were women executives back then, not many, but I was very blessed that she was the one that looked out for me.
And I want to sort of stick with this notion of what the NFL was then, in part because the show is called The Deal. What were those early deals that you remember?
I couldn't have received an MBA at any school that would have taught me what the NFL taught me about the art of the deal, in the sense that it was just our jobs, like everyone's like, oh you got into producing so late in life. I'm like, no, we produced at the NFL, but you didn't get a credit in a sense because it was your job. When the network deals were done, there were hours carved out for the NFL to program and you'd go to the sponsor
say what are your guys objectives? And you know, nineteen ninety three and it was Miller Lte at the time. They're like, well, the Pro Bowl, which was in Hawaii,
that's our target. So you know, the NFL Films guys would come up with the Pro Bowl Beach Challenge, and then there was the NFL on Skills Challenges and then the NFL Lineman Challenge, which was one of the ways Strahan and I got to really interact and connect because the show needed a little dusting off, and so Tracy Polman, who's still at the NFL, was like, you guys need to sit with Strahan, and we brought him in and said,
what do you think of the show. You've you've participated in it, you know enough years, and he was like, I like this, I like this, but why don't we replace this skill challenge with that one?
That was when the light bulb went off about him.
You're like, Wow, this guy isn't just great on the field, but understands all the things you know that go into off field careers.
You're doing these deals and the NFL does start to take off a little bit. I think we're both fascinated with this idea, is like, what was it like inside there was there a sense that something special was happening in terms of the NFL and the culture, because that, I think is one of the most fascinating things about you is that you're looking at this not just through a sports lens, not just through a business lens, Like what was happening then?
It was early nineties, so hip hop, you know, is really starting to take off, whether it was Snoop and Ice Cube and they're all rocking jerseys and Starter was was the it jacket, and I think they might have even been doing some jerseys as well back then. And we saw that and we just ended up really tapping into it, and we hired a company called Loud Records. It's Steve Rifkin, where he's like, I can help you guys, and started placing jerseys on the you know, folks that
weren't already wearing them. And then I just even keyed in to say, Okay, we have the Super Bowl halftime in the anthem, but there's so much more. And I started working with the music industry and we would do these NFL New Artists tours and we'd tap people to play at the Pro Bowl, which.
Nobody ever really paid attention to. And the cool thing.
About it was the artists that we would tap in at that point were on the come up. So then two three years later were they're the biggest stars in the world, whether it was in Sync or the Backstreet Boys, even Creed Kelly Clarkson, like, they all wanted to just stay and be a part of it and would still come back and not charge the seven figures that they could have to be a part of all the events and activities concerts.
Is interesting. You say nineteen ninety three, and that was the year that Michael Strahan and I were both drafted. But at that point, at least what I remember was Major League baseball was still America's pastime. And some may say that at that point mob Baseball was greater than the NFL. But what's happened over the last thirty years is phenomenal. I mean, it's incredible, and they become behemoth of network television in the world that everything's dying and
they're still growing. Their numbers are crazy. In hindsight when you look back thinking about the deal, was there one, two or three things that happened that started changing really the future and landscape of the NFL.
This is just my opinion, and I think it's what sets them apart still to this day, is you know, on Sundays and Mondays where you were going to be watching, Like you knew on Sundays and Mondays that was NFL football and that's what we really would drive to and for when I was there, it was all about, Okay, the NBA, the players aren't wearing helmets, so how do
we make sure our players are identified? And that was when the groups that I was in, whether it was special events or liaising with the NFL Films Group, is let's get more content out there that showcases our players without the helmets. I think those two things for me would be identifiers looking back on when you could see it. And then Michael Jackson's halftime performance which was at the
Rose Bowl, that was pivotal. I mean I wasn't involved in any of that, but just being a small, little coordinator. And then we also started the NFL experience back then, which was really I think the first fan fest, which is what a lot of people call them, where you would really lean in to the local community. But as you guys know, how many hundreds of thousands of people show up in a Super Bowl city, so you were giving them another activity to do than just drink at a bar.
What is it about the NFL? What is it about pro football that makes it so culturally relevant and valuable today? The gap between every other sport in the NFL is massive when you think about valuations, when you think about viewership, when you think about every element. What is it about the NFL.
In the thirty years you know since I started there to where we are now. Fantasy football huge, huge, and you went from just cheering for your local team to now, all of a sudden, wait a minute, I have players spread out at all the teams. Then Sunday Ticket was born, so you didn't have to just watch your team in your market. You could then watch all the teams. And I think the betting, you know obviously has just for
every sport, has just taken it through the roof. But those would be the things that stick out for me right now. And then the limited amount of games. I mean, you know better than I do. How many games do the NBA and MLB play a year?
Eighty two and sixty two?
Right?
So, because I haven't, you know, I'm always thinking about, like what happens inside these very famous boardrooms that all of our viewers would love to be a fly on the wall. But when you think about the last thirty years, is it Roger Goodell? Is it Jerry Jones? Is it Robert Craft? Who were the key players in that room that you think shifted this?
Well?
I wasn't in those boyfriends, but one thousand percent. I mean they are such visionary leaders. And you know, I was lucky enough to get to know Kim Bogoula from the Buffalo Bills, and I think she was a big visionary for one of the new ownership teams that came into play. Steve Ross, who I know you know very well. My dad was his driver. Talk about the.
Deal and no way what?
Yeah, that's interesting, And it's this is how much I love Steve Ross. So I run into him at Super Bowl every year, and whether it's the tailgate party or the Commissioner's party on Friday night and he's with all of his fancy billionaires and he's a big hug and he says, this is Consent's her father used to work for me.
And you can see them like, what did he do?
And we both go to his driver and it's the greatest thing because I'm a blue collar kid, and I think that's something that gets so lost in the deal that you have to go to an Ivy League school and you have to know Steve to have connections. And that's one of the reasons I love him so much is it doesn't matter what you did, if you were
smart and you're a good person, you just excel. And when he went in, you know, and bought the Dolphins, I know there's like this, there's always controversy with every team owner, but he brought such a different point of view, coming from the successful real estate market and everything. So
but Jerry obviously and the whole family. I mean, Charlotte's a dear friend and what she's done, you know, in marketing the team and building the star and Robert Kraft just what hasn't Robert Craft and the Craft family done? But absolutely those are the owners that I just remembered vividly.
So let's talk about music if we can, because you mentioned that, you know, those early days, you bring in these artists and music becomes really interesting to you. Talk to us about that transition into a different part of the sort of cultural zeitgeist, as it were.
I owe my music career to Hoody and the Blowfish.
Believe it or not, don't we all have.
I'm so excited they're touring again next summer.
We a whole bunch of us text are like, we have to go and see them on the road somewhere. But literally, Don Garber, who's commissioner of Major League Soccer, was my boss at the NFL at the time, and he said, hey, I just got a call from someone at a record company. Can you take it? And that one conversation changed the course of my career. And I said, Saron, I called this woman and she said, we have this band.
They love sports. They're playing at Jones Beach. Would you come see them because we think there's something to be done with them. In my mid twenties, I was like cool, grabbed a couple folks from the NFL. It's like, let's go to Jones Beach. And see this band forgot They were opening for like Genesis, somebody like that. And I was so in awe and so blown away. And again this is mid nineties. I go back to the office, is Don, we have to hire them for the tailgate party.
And for those of you that don't know, the tailgate party is the party of the super Bowl. It takes place right before the game. It's all the corporate partners, the owners, the networks. I mean, every fancy is at this party. So you have to come correct, not just with the music, the food, the decor. And that was one of the projects I worked on. And Don says what I said, Don, You've got to trust me on this.
He's like, are you crazy?
You think I can take a band that no one knows and have them play for the owners.
I said, just trust me.
Well, Book, I think it was Casey and the Sunshine Man as well. I said, And if I'm wrong, you can publicly fire me and then we'll put.
Those guys as the headliner.
This is August, September, October, November, climbing, climbing climbing. By the time the Super Bowl comes around, I don't even know how many Grammys they're nominated for so Don was like, con this is what you're going to be doing now, and so that set me on this course. And everyone I met from the hoodie camp, you know, from the publishers and the record company, they said, what more can we do?
And it's time.
Garber was like, go go create this entertainment marketing division. And I would just cold call because there was no social media, and so you would use a telephone like a handheld telephone, and you dial numbers and I said, Hya, it's Constant Schwartz from the NFL. We're expanding our music interactions. It's outside of just Super Bowl halftime pregame. Would you be interested? And who didn't want to work with the NFL?
So we created NFL New Artist Tours, where you'd work with the record companies and they'd put new artists on tours going to each stadium because how else are these new artists ever playing in front of seventy eighty thousand people. And it just kept snowballing. And then we started securing venues at the super Bowl outside of obviously the stadium,
and we'd set comedy. Jamie Fox played in the late nineties like it was the Super Bowl comedy tour, and then we started a Super Bowl concert series that took place at the NFL Experience, and all those things just kept elevating and growing. And next thing, you know, after the Cowboys Thanksgiving Game, we held a Shania Twain concert at the stadium that was then rolled right into CBS's you know after the game.
Was so much fun. God, I'm like sitting here reminiscing. I'm like, I want to go back.
But it's interesting, I mean, because you were living obviously deep in baseball world. Baseball's not doing this. No, Like baseball is like, we're America's past time. We're good. Everybody's going to watch, and meanwhile, the NFL is eating their lunch.
And to think that in the late seventies when the Yankees played the Dodgers, forty five million people watched that game six and you cut to twenty twenty and those eleven million people and watch the Dodgers win the World Series. So it's been interesting to watch one ascending and the other one.
Being a little bit challenged. But the cultural relevance is obviously at the core of that. When we come back, we talked to constants about managing Snoop Dogg ing Smack with Michael Strahan and everything coach Prime. Then you start to really get into the to the music business. I mean, fast forward to today. You're still there. You and Snoop Snoop Dogg, Snoop Dogg' like you know all the names. How does he come into your life? You have a movie coming out with him?
Do?
We have a movie that's streaming right now on Prime Video called The Underdogs. But my last two years at the NFL, there was a new show they were developing called NFL Under the Helmet, which was our answer to inside stuff, and it was let's get the helmets off the players, and Michael Strahan was our correspondent with Brandy Chastain while he was still playing for the Giants. We'd
send him out into the field. But it was where we literally combined sports media and culture because artists on that show were everybody from run DMC and ice Cube and so at that point I start getting calls from management companies and labels and they said, Okay, we know you're having a time over there and it's been great for us, but we want you to come work at
a record company. I was like, I'm not leaving the NFL, and then another a management company in LA, was like, come out here, you can do strategic marketing and all the partnerships.
It's like, I'm not leaving New York City.
But then I just kept getting so many offers that you get to the point where, Okay, someone's offering me a senior vice president position to create a new department.
In a new area.
And as you guys are doing the show called the Deal, how do you say no to that? And that was how I ended up leaving the NFL after a decade there, and I went to work at a record company for eleven months. Wasn't for me, but I learned so much and I'm so glad I did it. And then I moved made the jump and moved to LA to go really in the entertainment space. So when I was at the firm, we represented everybody that you can imagine in the early two thousands.
Remind us about the firm, because that's seminole not just for you, but in the sort of.
Many people that are going to be in these chairs with you. So the Firm was a talent management company who wrapped everybody from Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Martin Scorsese, Ice Cube, Vin Diesel, Kelly Clarkson, Enrique Iglesias.
I mean, it just goes on and on.
And I was brought into strategic market, the talent, brand partnerships, endorsements, and believe it or not, the music business wasn't as comfortable as they are now with doing endorsements, so it was sort of helping them understand that it doesn't compromise the integrity of your music or who you are.
It just enhances it.
And if we can get a brand to cover, you know, your release week, your tours, your release parties, why wouldn't you want to do that, especially if it's something that's so organic. And Enrique Iglesias was just coming off Heroes, the biggest thing in the world, and we just had so much upside and so much fun with him. And again early on how it's so important to establish trust
with the talent because I'm new to the talent space. Yes, I worked with football players, but I was at the NFL, and I mean, my goodness, Enrique had a Dorrito campaign. He was in a Pepsi campaign globally with Britney Spears, Beyonce and Pink playing a Gladiator.
You have to look that one up. It's phenomenal. And then the way Snoop came into my life.
We threw a Super Bowl party in San Diego and I remember what year and Snoop was a guest and somebody from his team ended up talking to someone from my team about the firm. And the next couple of days their call comes in that Snoop wanted a meeting and I'm barely out of a suit right, like, I'm as corporate as you could be. And Snoop was doing that GFL, the Gangster Football League, and I was like, I don't want to work with him, Like I don't understand,
like I'm going to stick in the pop world. You guys know a Snoop once you meet him, I mean the best. And so I was on his marketing team, though different than I was anyone else, but we had a little bit of an exchange in the boardroom that I stood up to him, and next day someone from his team called and he said, we want the girl from the NFL running the Snoop team. I was like, whoa, whoa, I'm not a manager. Yeah, this isn't my forte And
they're like, too bad. You're a manager. Now the talent wants you, and wow, I jumped on a plane I think it was the next day to Reno, Nevada, where Private was waiting for him. He was on tour to take him to New York to do press for Starsky and Hutch and maybe soul plane.
Oh my god.
And that was the beginning. And I never looked back, and we had an amazing run together. But I stepped down as his manager when I turned forty just because I wanted a life, Because.
When you're with Snoop, that is your life.
Yeah, because I think we should stick on that for a second, because I feel like now it's like, oh, Snoop, he's like Mark, he's doing a show with Martha Steward, and he's got he's like this empire. That wasn't totally the vibe then.
No, right, not at all.
Snoop was in his thirty and you know, still had a lot of activity happenings, say, you know, at home from Long Beach, and maybe some kerfuffles with the law here and there. But once you really understand him, there was never anything that he has done or still does with bad intentions. Right, A lot of it's wrong place,
wrong time kind of things. And I saw that, and he is such a star, and yes he had a global footprint, but we saw because this was again pre social media, so a lot of people aren't going to understand what I'm talking about. But in order to really build your base, you needed to be there. And so
we just hit the ground running. And I was on tour with him internationally for that entire time, and we hit every continent, whether it was hosting the Europe you know, Video Music Awards MTV was so big that you'd go to Germany, he'd host that and that would pop. And we had a family doc on the E channel called Snoop Dogg's Fatherhood. Clothing lines had him in commercials like he was in a commercial with Yaya Coca for Chrysler.
That just really took him from say the gangster rapper to the media sweetheart that you know him today and my most proud accomplishment with him, And there you'll see a string.
A thread for me. I said, what's your dream?
Like?
Forget any barriers, what is your dream? And he said, I want my own youth football league. He said, I played as a kid and I tried to coach my sons, but where we live, they didn't want me. And just all I need, like my whole career is, don't tell me why I can't tell me how I can. And when a client tells me, you know that someone's telling them now, it just it gets me going and it puts the battery in my back. And I said, Okay, if you'll follow my lead, I will make this happen.
So Commissioner Taglibu was still the commissioner at the NFL. Roger Goodell was the second in command, and I called Roger. I said, Okay, I know this is going to sound completely insane, and I know I've only been gone for less than two years, and you're going to say, what the hell has happened to you since you moved to California. I want to bring Snoop Dogg in to the NFL headquarters on Park Avenue for a meeting to talk about supporting us starting our own youth football league in southern cal.
Hello.
To their credit, Snoop and I showed up. We walked up those stairs and I said to him, do not smoke one blunt before we go anywhere near these offices. And if you do, you are spraying yourself with some clone. I'll give you a tip travel for Breese, a tiny little bottle throat in the purse which got me through my time with him.
But it was one of the most.
Memorable meetings I ever had, and Commissioner Taglibou and now Kimishner Cadell couldn't have been more gracious and more open. And going back to what you're talking about is the cultural relevance of the NFL. They saw it, they got it. The majority of players going into professional sports aren't growing up in Greenwich, Knnikut. I'm sorry, like you know, at
least not in the NFL. And for them to see the impact he can have on these children that not everybody comes from a two parent home, not everybody's you know, working nine to five jobs. A lot of these kids' parents might have been in jail, and Snoop is helping them as any way he could, and they greenlit it, and we just said we want to be able to just know we have your support. We don't need anything else, but the kids want to be wearing the NFL team jerseys.
And then we ended up starting to play a Snooper Bowl game at the Super Bowl every year, and they allowed us to use that because that's something you get to see. Some desistance shut that down, and there are thousands of kids that went on.
To play at the collegiate level. CJ.
Stroud right now is an SYFL kid. Black Mamba Shuster, He's another SYFL kid, And that's actually the inspiration for the Underdogs was just these kids. It's still going strong. I think the last number I heard was eighty thousand kids have come through that lead.
Wow.
So that kind of brings us to Smack and sort of this relationship network we talked with with Straighthand about it. This is a very interesting collection of people, is as I think we both appreciate. I mean, we're talking about, you know, Whiz Khalifa, Aaron Andrews, Tony Gonzalez, you know, Michael obviously talked to just a lot about that. What's the underlying idea.
For me starting SMACK.
I actually didn't plan on going on my own truly, Like I didn't realize I was an entrepreneur. I always joke about it, like kale and entrepreneur weren't words you used back.
In the nineties.
And when I went on my own, it was because I got fired, which was the best thing ever. So I'm so thankful to them for, you know, telling me to hit the road. But when I parted ways with Snoop, I had Michael and I had Dion, but they weren't coach Prime and Straighthan. The media, you know, behemoth now and I understood it. But wherever I was interviewing at they wanted me, well, you worked in sports, you'll work in sports. You produced Snoop's reality show, you should be
a reality show producer. You're great at brand partnership. So don't you get it, Like I have twenty years of the best experience ever combining what I learned at the NFL and what I learned at the firm. That's what this company is. That's what it's about. One of our new people that just came into the company on the production side, he said to me what McDonald's is to hamburgers and what phones are to Apple smack is.
To game changers.
And I never looked at it like that, And I actually had a little a little teary for somebody that didn't work at the company who had that perception of us on the outside.
I was like, that's what it is, and that's truly what it is. It was.
It reminded me of when Strahan went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. When you get that, you go back to your team and they present you, you know, with the team, and you get a ring. And I was on the field when he was being honored and all the Giant sponsors were there, and a wife of a big sponsor overheard or she goes, why is Michael Strahan from Live with Michael and Kelly being honored at
the Giants game. I never looked at me like that that I was going to be upset, and I started high fiving my team.
I was like, my god, guys, like.
We've done this, like in these short years, in six years, we've crossed him over, you know, from being a retired athlete to a media powerhouse.
Sokasa's described the business of SMACK. What is it, what does it do? And what kind of people are you looking for?
So SMACK stands for sports, media and culture and it's a multi hyphen it like talent management, production and brand incubator company. So we manage talent, we produce whether it's scripted, non scripted documentaries and now feature films, and then on the brand side, we launched straighthands like head to toe skincare, you know, clothing lines, and then we have a pet line called Snoop Doggie Dogs with Snoop, and then a headscarf line with John tay rottis his wife and Snoop in the whole family.
We have whereby.
Aaron Andrews, which we launched with Aaron five years ago. That's what the culture comes into play, because we look and see what's happening in the world where there's white space, you know, where there's something that we can really lean in on, and those are the ones we've targeted.
Right now, I want to talk about this moment that happened in this NFL season where probably the most famous person in the world, Taylor Swift, shows up at her second game in Kansas City, and she's wearing Aware by Aaron Andrews. Top. I walk us through that moment in sort of what led up to it and what it means for a brand like that.
Aaron, like Michael, is one of the moost hands on entrepreneurs you will ever meet.
When I tell you, she busts her ass at every.
Game, not just obviously being super prepared, you know, for sideline reporting. But she will come with a stack of gear and hand it out to the fans, and the fans are like, Aaron am wearing this, I'm wearing thiss like they're screaming, And I tell you that just to say that didn't just happen with Taylor, I would love
to say it did. But Taylor's PR team had reached out to Aaron, you know, to come to a show over the summer, and then when it came out to Taylor and Travis were dating, we sent a huge care package to Taylor's PR team and then Aaron's very good with Travis, and even on her Calm Down podcast over the summer, they'd put it out there because Travis was telling the story how we went to a concert and couldn't get the bracelet tour. So everyone on this like Tiree,
like Taylor, please go on a date with Travis. It'll be great for America too, like going on and on. So there was some connectivity there. We had no idea she was gonna wear their jacket, And when that happened on Thursday Night Football, Aaron calls me, she said, I think she's in our jacket. I'm like, oh, my god, I'm like, I pulled it up on my phone. I forgot where I was. But the way she was wearing it, we couldn't see the whole jacket and like the shot.
So we're just literally spent five minutes like we were John Madden, you know, with teleprompter dissecting, called someone else from the team like it's our jacket is not. We were screaming like we were little girls at our first time at Disneyland.
We couldn't believe it.
And then it was just like, oh my gosh, buckle up. Our partners at Fanatics were like, okay, we need to go now. Our manufacturer I said, if you have to send somebody overseas to go stand in these factories and make more jackets. We sold out that night. The orders kept coming in, pre sales kept happening. But even more so and exciting than that, how many young girls are now fans of the NFL, specifically the Kansas City Chiefs.
So just seeing that hotailor effect, it's phenomenal.
I mean, thank you, Taylor, including my two daughters and not watch ye right, yeah, there you go.
So we think about cultural relevance and I think about the last twelve months. There's one man who has emerged as one of the most culturally relevant people in sports, and that is Dean Sanders. Coach Prime. Talk about a man who's had many names. How do you distill down Coach Prime.
I've worked with Coach Prime now for over a decade. I think it's probably about thirteen fourteen years. Dion could have had a television career as big as is Michael is You.
But he wouldn't leave Dallas. His commitment was coaching the kids.
He started a truth league, similar to how Snoop had his Snoop Youth Football League. That's what Dean did as soon as he retired. So every time something would pop up, a new talk show, a radio show of this, he'd be like, can I do it from Dallas? And this is before COVID, I mean, this is you know, a long time ago. And they're like no, and he's like, nope, I'm good then, And so he had his NFL network job.
Shiloh was off at University of South Carolina. Shadore the Baby is now senior year high school and getting ready to make his decision and where he's going to go play on at the collegiate level, and I popped into the NFL network to see Diani was doing a shoot or something, and he said, I've been baking an idea, but you know, I don't like to bring them to you till they're fully cooked. I'm there, I said, okay, you know, you're just sort of like what's coming. I
sent a letter to the ad at Florida State. I want to help them recruit. Why would you help them recruit? I said, what do you mean? I said, I understand it's not the norm for somebody to go from coaching six year old to high school to the collegiate level, but you're not anybody. You're Deon Sanders. And he said, hmmm, let's figure it out. So again, good at what I know, better at what I don't know. I called one of my best friends, Jordan Bejon's now at Fox Sports, who
was an agent at the time. I said, hear me out, kind of like when I called Christer Cadell. I said, Dion is ready, you know, to move on to the next level, and he's going to be a.
Head coach at a college. Hello, And Jordan's like, you know what.
Con If it was anybody else, I'd tell them they're crazy, but it's you and him.
He's like, let's do this. And Jordan helped prep us because it's a.
Whole different world and if you don't come from that world, you don't understand it. And so there's the search firms, and the search firms make the first calls, and then you have to prepare your playbook and you present your playbook.
To whoever it is.
It's doing the interviewing from the ad to the board of trust, you know, all the folks, and Dion like he is the most prepared individual. It's remarkable and he was crushed these interviews. But I think those schools just weren't ready. And he always says, God's plan is something that none of us you know, really know, and you
have to follow it. And there was a reason why he didn't get those first couple of jobs because then a call came in from Ashley Robinson, who's the AD at Jackson State, and said, I heard he's looking to be a head coach and I'd love to.
Talk to you guys about it.
And coaches eyes lit up, and he said, this is my calling and I want to go to Jackson State and I'm going to shine a light on all the HBCUs and let's go do this this year especially he's been a blur and what an amazing run he had at Jackson State. And we still help, you know where we can with the HBCUs, with brand partners and anything of that sort. And then when it came time to go to Colorado, Rick George, who's our boss at AD at Colorado, I said, Rick, you have to understand you're
not just getting a head coach. You're getting the machine that comes with it, and you're getting a docuseries that comes with it. So if that's not something you're comfortable with the Board of Regions, he probably won't want to.
You know, take this job. You know, there's a lot of other offers.
And Rick was like, I am all in, Like I understand you know him and what comes with it, and I am all in. And Rick honestly was the main reason Dion chose Colorado because he's such an innovative AD and just truly welcoming and partnership and everything. And when that spring game hit and everyone went like all of it that day was sold out, the whole season was sold out, and then it just kept going and going, and I would love to sit back and tell you what a great deal maker I am. And then I
knew all this was coming. There is no way anybody could have predicted how big and how fast it was going to take off. But what I absolutely do you know and continue to know is he's a winner. And for everybody that started, you know, just criticizing the way the season ended, we knew that we would have some dogs coming. And so when Jordan Seaton you know, announced that he was signing with Colorado, and it just silenced the haters.
That is the best part of it all.
But one thing, and like I said, you know him, well, none of the noise ever creeps in ever, like I've I call him and I said, okay, I think we're going to clap back at this.
We're going to respond to that. He said, oh no, you're not. I was like, but why he.
Goes It just feeds us like haters are the marketing team. We have a show that we're developing with him, scripted comedy, amazing writer Ali Larroy. I don't know if you guys have worked with him. Everybody hates Chris and a few other great shows and in the pitch because it's it's loosely inspired by coach's life, takes place of a celebrity head coach in a like a professional NFL team, but in like Wichita and what Ali says in this pitches, haters never focused on a loser.
And I was like, I'm going.
To start using that, Like, think about that because it takes a second to sink in.
I feel like that's going to be written on the corpse soon.
But it's so true, right yeah, Like I've never thought about it like that, and that helps me as the person that has to guide him that I'm like, I don't care when anybody's saying anything. I really don't because if someone's gonna hate when we win, they're definitely gonna hate when we lose.
It's cool.
Not only is Deon a force of nature, but he's also like I consider I'm a friend and a mentor. And I remember when I signed my big deal with Texas going back to two thousand and one, We're playing the Reds and we were running sprange right before the game and spring training, and I asked Ian. I said, Dan, what advice can you give me? And he said, obviously you'll take care of the baseball, but just make sure, you're the best teammate in that clubhouse to those twenty
four other guys, and I never forgot that. But my question to you is what is Dion's super power? What makes him so special?
His faith?
And why I say that is because it's that faith that makes him want to lift everyone up around him. For a lot of the critics, they're not listening to what he's saying. They might hear it, but they're not listening because if you read his social media posts, if you listen to him an oppressor, if you read an interview, he's not talking about himself just to talk about himself. He's talking about whatever he's working on to build the
people up around him. I'll call him and say, I can't believe you just blah blah, I didn't do it. We did it. It's such inclusion and mentorship and guidance. I've never seen anything like it. I really haven't. It's the most endearing quality about him is the faith that he helps you have in yourself, no matter who you are, whether you're a student athlete, whether you're one of his coaches, whether you're one of his brand partners. It's just this
faith that he helps you to believe yourself. It's the advice he gave you exactly when you were playing. Yeah, it is his superpower.
One of the things that clearly happened both at Jackson State and then at Colorado. He was at the forefront, leading edge, poster child, whatever you want to say, for an entirely different business of college football. We talked about you being a witness to the NFL at this catalytic moment. This is a catalytic moment for college sports if there ever was one. How do you see it from where you sit, Like what's happening right now?
I am so immersed in it that it's hard for me to take a step back at the three sixty level. But the one most important role we all have is it's got any deal we do, it has to be authentic to him. We're getting a lot of offers in many different categories, but if it's not something that he uses or does, we don't. We've passed and we'll leave money on the table. But it comes back to you, and that goes for the docum series, that goes for
any appearances he's making. I mean, I'm talking about off field. Yeah, I'm off field, And when the mania hit everyone at Smack. It was like all hands on deck, including Michael, like we needed to get the kids dressed in our suits, so what I mean all hands on deck, But we had to make sure it was never too much, it wasn't off brand, and we would end up having debates internally do we launch this? I mean the sunglasses should be an Anita Elber's Harvard Business School study because those
weren't supposed to come out until November. And we worked for a year finding the right partner. Because he wears sunglasses all the time, this was just like, oh, let's get a sunglass Like no, no, he needs his own line because there's many instances and Alex knows this that you're going to put your name on someone else's brand and there are times where it needs to be your own.
He needed his own sunglass line. And we called these guys at Blenders when the coach the Colorado disrespected Mama Connie and we said you need to go now, like we need to go this week, and to their credit, they ramped up and we got all the glasses in the kid's hands at the team.
Deane's mom gave the pregame speech that week with the rock.
We sold in the first couple of days that week over a million dollars in sunglasses and they're reasonably with fist like these, aren't you know, over the top ridiculous sunglasses.
Like it was nuts.
I mean, it was just you. You can't make this out. Like every time something happens. I'm like, if we wrote this in a script and turned it in, the studios would push it right back to us to say this is just too far out. Even with I mean, we lost I think it was the last five or six games, but we signed the number one O line in the country.
Everyone thought he was going to.
All the other Power five schools who loved to throw some shade our way, and Jordan's Seaton signed with us.
I mean, one thing that I've been thinking about in talking to you and talking to Michael about you, is this idea that you know, you get these epiphanies again, Like you're in this seat where you're seeing some of the most disruption, some of the most opportunities, some of the biggest challenges in the sports and culture world. What happens next?
Do you think On a smaller scale, what I'm seeing is more and more brands want real people. And what I mean by that is not a celebrity, not a paid influencer, but real life executives or coordinators, you know. Just that's a shift that I'm seeing a lot of and just even internally here at SMACK is like as we talked about them being seen and honored, that's the
shift where nobody. I think people are kind of sick of just hearing from the suits in a sense, and it's like the world shifted since the pandemic and you want to just have more one on one, real conversations. And that's a shift that I'm seeing, and that's where a lot of these podcasts.
Are coming up.
And the fact that I'm here, like I don't take this for granted that you guys are having me here when you're having the Michael Strahans of the world, but that to me is indicative of what's happening in the real world. Is people want to understand more about like how did you get there, what happened and being proud
of it, Like I'm a blue collar kid. I went to Suniasuigo and I to this day still fight every day for every win that we have, and you want to celebrate those wins and that's what I'm seeing and I'm going to see a national championship in our in near future for Colorado.
Wow, there's my vision.
There you go.
I like it.
Well, I'm a buyer of that stock if you say it. But you know, as we were prepping for who do we want on our show? Here the deal, your name came up very quickly. With the work we've done and me getting to know you over the years with Michael, people say, how would you describe Constance, And some of the words I use was savant, definitely a visionary.
Gritty and a plus character.
Right, So if you think about nineteen ninety one when you first started your career, what advice would you give some of our young viewers and all viewers of what can they do to be like you?
Thank you for saying that. And I'm kind of little speeches, which we all know it is not hard. I mean it's hard. Out of those words you use, the only one that I recall at twenty two years old was gritty. I've always been gritty. I didn't see any you know,
of those words back then. Those characteristics and adjectives and descriptions don't give up, you know, if I could look at my younger self and just say, I wish you had a little bit more belief in how things were going to work out, because I don't ever like to lean into the male dominated industries. It was what it was, right and here we sit and a lot of times I'm the first woman. I just want to be the best. It doesn't matter what you know, sex you are, and
things like that. That's what I would tell these young kids is hard work does pay off.
Nurture your relationships.
I mean, it's it's one of the reasons why you both have me here right Like, I mean, it just can't be pounded enough. Respect each other, like somewhere that's gone away and it's common sense. I have a little bag that says common sense is not so common And if we could.
Just go back to that.
I know this you're expecting some big visionary but that's the core and that's the base. It's just truly work hard and respect one another. And you two be sitting at to deal with you.
Guys, well, thank you. This was really fun. I mean to really sort of go back and get into it. I mean, I think we agreed prepping for this, like few people have seen the things you've seen, and I mean, if you were to put together this collection of people, it's like, what is the through line? Like you're the through line, which is kind of an amazing, amazing thing to witness.
And here's my forecast. First of all, congrats for all the extraordinary things that you've done and are continue to do. But I believe that you're still in the early stages of this empire that you're building, because I feel like you're just getting started and I'm so excited for you.
Thank you. Life begins after fifty.
There you good. That's good to know, all right, Thank you so much.
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