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Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- Probably one of the hardest journeys, myself, my family. It just encompasses your whole life, and you gotta really pour yourself into it. But it has been a great ride. I've learned more about myself and I've challenged myself, and been in more uncomfortable positions, and I wouldn't trade it.
- And learned from mistakes.
- Yeah, every day, every day.
- We're thinking about writing a book about mistakes.
- Someone asked, "Hey, have you ever made a mistake?" I'm like, "Holy cow, yeah."
- How many of you, I don't how many I made today.
- I'm super excited today to have two of my really good friends here. Scott Irvine, thank you for joining us, and then Rich Styler as well. Thank you for coming in.
- Absolutely.
- You know, we always love to have alumni come back and talk about their experience at Texas State. And our alumni actually is our most watched features. G.J. Kinne was number one. But after that, our alumni love to hear alumni stories. And increasingly, our students wanna hear alumni stories too, because they love to see like, where could I end up? And many of them are searching, trying to figure out what major you're gonna have, and what they're gonna do for a living. I typically tell them, "Don't worry what your major in, "because you're probably not gonna do a job "that's named after your major, "and you might be doing something "you didn't even know existed." So let's start with you, Scott. What's your Texas State story? Then we'll come to you, Rich.
- I grew up in Austin.
- Yeah, Austin not far away.
- No, not far away at all. Half my family went to UT. Half my family went to Southwest Texas. When they went, it was a teachers college. So growing up in Austin, I was a die hard Longhorn, and I went to Westwood High School. A lot of my friends were going to UT. I was accepted, and actually was registered to go to UT. My mom said, "You have to go look at the campus before."
- You gotta go look at it.
- "I will let you make this commitment. "You need to go look at the campus," at Southwest Texas, at the time. So when I went there, saw Sewell Park and all that. I was sold.
- You were sold.
- I mean, it's such a great college town.
- Was there anybody there, or was it just the park, or were there people there?
- No, no, it was full.
- Trust me.
- Yeah, it's the full park. It's the full park there.
- That's the part that gets people, right?
- And I knew my mom had a reason for like, driving by there.
- Starting by there. Yeah, just look over there to your left.
- And I was like, "Okay."
- All right, I'm in.
- At two o'clock on a Saturday.
- That's right, that's right.
- That's awesome. So you drive by Sewell Park, you see that and you say, "All right, I'm in." And then so what, did you decide on a major right away, or how was that?
- Yeah, I actually took an accounting class in high school, and ended up doing very well in it, and didn't have any other ideas of what a major would be. So went into it, business accounting, never changed my major
- Never changed. You know, the average student changes their major like three times now. I never changed. I was law enforcement, criminal justice, 'cause I wanna be a police officer. I just never, I didn't even know you could change. I thought the decision you made when you're 17 years old was your decision for life. And we do encourage people to look around, but sometimes people say, "That's it, that's what I wanna do."
- Yeah, I, the one thing back in 1994 when we graduated, the economy was not good, and I knew if I graduated with accounting, that I would be able to find a job.
- It's one of those rare degrees that's actually named after a job, right?
- [Scott] Yeah, that's right. And so, you know when you graduate with a sociology or a criminal justice degree, you're probably not gonna be an accountant. But if you have an accounting degree, there's a pretty good chance I know what you're gonna be doing in five years.
- That's right.
- So, Rich, what's your story?
- So...
- Were you in the backseat of his car?
- Yeah, actually I was the one showing him where to go. No, I grew up in San Antonio. I went to Judson High School, and from Judson. So we've got the two big cities, then, you guys surrounded the place.
- Yep, from San Antonio. Then I came up here to Southwest Texas State University. And same thing, just came to the campus 'cause my friends were here before, the year before, and driving around and just getting to know people. Loved it, and decided to come here. Ended up meeting my wife here, and it's, shoot, it's been 35 years.
- When you stop to do the math, it kinda scares you a little bit.
- Yeah, it does.
- So now, your parents went to college. Did your parents go to college at well?
- No, my parents didn't go to school, and I was actually the first one in my family to go to college and stuff. My wife's family, they did. They're actually alumni also from Southwest. Her brother's alumni here. Her dad's got two degrees from here, so. Both my kids came to school here, so.
- Thank you for that.
- Yeah, we're Bobcats, yeah. We're through and through Bobcats, so.
- About half our students are first generation, about half of them are Pell eligible as well. So they come from backgrounds. I'm not sure what your family background was like as far as finances, but a lot of our kids are like you. About half are like you, and about half are like you. So you guys represent kinda both ends. And then, so what about major? What'd you decide on?
- Criminal justice also.
- Yeah, there you go, punched out virtually.
- I think a major that I just kinda fell into, and then kind of fell in love with it, and did a internship with Austin PD, major crimes and stuff. And that was gonna be my goal, and what I wanted to do for my life. And when we graduated and we got married, and waiting for my turn into the academy and stuff, I started doing landscaping on the side, and just kinda fell in love with it. And we built a house right outta college, and realized when I came up for my term for to be in the academy, that I wasn't going to be able to afford to live in my brand new house. And my wife wanted to have a baby, so I had to make the decision, go into law enforcement or continue...
- Make money?
- Yeah, or make money, basically, yeah. And so I chose to make money.
- So Scott, what are your some of your favorite memories about being a student here?
- I think the friendships that I made here.
- It's always the case, right?
- It is.
- [Kelly] People, yeah.
- Yeah, one of the reasons, too, why I chose Southwest Texas State at the time, Southwest at the time, Texas State now, it is such a college town. And I ended up rushing the fall semester, and those...
- Did you come here thinking you were gonna do that, or just find it when you got here? Oh, there's some guys doing some stuff.
- I didn't, I was one of those that...
- [Kelly] Tabling or something like that.
- Hey, I'll start out, go through my first semester, see how it goes, see who I meet. And I quickly found out, I lived in a dorm, Butler Hall, and everyone was in a fraternity or a sorority that was co-ed. I don't know if it's still co-ed. So I decided to rush the next semester, and so glad I did. I mean, those are my closest friends. Those are the ones that go to the football games. We go on trips together. Those are the lifelong friends,
- The alumni of your generation that I know, almost all of them that are really involved were either in StuCo or student foundation, or they were in Greek life somehow. Because that's where you kind of made that bonding relationship at a different level than just going to school, and then you have a reason to come back together. Going to football games or whatever it is, traveling together. And I always tell freshmen, they're like, "You're probably sad or lonely, "or worried you're gonna leave all your friends behind "in high school, "but you lifelong friends are gonna be found "here on this campus." And that happened to you.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- So what about you, Rich, favorite memories?
- I would have to say the fraternity life, my...
- Were you guys in the same one?
- No, actually we weren't. So funny story, a lot of the guys that you see at the suite and stuff are my friends from like, elementary, junior high, and then we came to college together and stuff. They went into the same fraternity Scott was in. I went into a different fraternity, and that's where we met the first time. But all the other guys in the suite we've known, I've known for 40 years, 45 years and stuff. And so it's definitely just the friendship that we built. And people are kind of amazed that when we say, "Oh yeah, we've been friends for 45 years, "and we've been friends for 40 years." And they're like, "How does that happen?" But yeah, we just have a great core group of people, and it's not like we don't see 'em. We see 'em all the time. Half of 'em live in New Braunfels and stuff, and Scott comes into town all the time, and we're at every football game. We don't miss a game. But yeah, I would just say, just meeting my wife and meeting my friends, and is probably the best thing.
- Do you remember a specific professor that you had an experience with?
- There was an accounting professor. I think her name was Montedon. She taught intermediate accounting. And in accounting, the intermediates are the weed out class. And it was tough. I'm one of those that I'm not the smartest person, but I will outwork you. So I have to study very hard. And she was just a great mentor. She, I took it during the summer, and she would meet me after class. She would help me on stuff that I didn't understand so I could go back to the dorm or to the library and study. And some of the professors wouldn't do that. But she took the time, and it helped me. I made A's on my intermediate, which was great. And that's when I really knew, okay, I'm in. So she is the first one that comes to mind.
- I would've to say probably Professor Perkins in a criminal justice. And he I believe became a judge later on in New Braunfels. And I had to go in front of him one time, but not for anything bad. You know, we had an alarm system at our house, and you didn't know that you had to have a permit to have alarm system. And so when it went off, we actually got a ticket for not having a permit, and I went there, and he actually recognized me and dismissed it. So, but yeah, I think he was one of the ones that I really enjoyed. And he was like, he was always willing to meet with you and stuff, but yeah, he was good guy.
- Okay, let's talk about post-graduation. So you get into your landscaping and some other business, so walk us through like, what you did with your degree here.
- So I got into landscaping pretty much right outta college. I had a good, I was actually one of the managers at Blockbuster Video, hear it?
- I've heard of that, yeah.
- And so, I was working full time,
- Great career move to get out of it.
- Yeah, how about it, right? After we graduated, I got into property management and stuff, and liked that, and was making, you know, really good money for being right outta college and stuff. And that's when me and my wife decided, as I was waiting to get into the academy, I kinda just got burnt out on that kind of stuff. Didn't want to go back to law school and stuff. So I decided I'd do the stuff that my dad wanted me to do when I was growing up. He had a construction company and he always wanted me to landscape his houses. And we did it because we were told to do it, and that's how we earned our money. And he always said, "You're really good at that. "In college, you should look into that." I said, "Well, at the time, Southwest didn't have, "you couldn't be a landscape architect at Southwest." So I went into the criminal justice, but after I graduated, I started doing that just for fun around my own house. And a neighbor would come over and say, "Hey, that's really cool. "Come to my house." And then it just kinda steamrolled from there. We were up to, we had 75 employees full-time, and designers and stuff, so.
- Family business, your wife's involved, yeah.
- Yeah, my wife, my son works, my daughter does a social media for us. So my son works for us also.
- So again, a job that didn't exist five years ago, someone to run your social media.
- Tell me about it, yeah.
- And how important that is. I mean, you guys probably have metrics, right? Like how many people are looking at your stuff.
- [Rich] Oh, absolutely.
- Coming into your shop 'cause they saw an Instagram video.
- Absolutely, yeah. It's crazy when me and Scott talk about the restaurant and stuff and we're like, okay, well what are the analytics, and you wouldn't have said that five years ago, 10 years ago. You're not like, how many people are viewing your stuff on social media? That didn't exist, so, but yeah, so we built that business and then me and Scott, after years, we decided probably about seven or eight years ago, we started buying homes together also, and started doing rental homes and stuff, and flipped a few of 'em and then, so that was kind of a neat thing. And then we were approached with the Grins Restaurant, so.
- And we'll get to Grins in a second there, 'cause I think it's a great story.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so you guys are friends, then you kind of grow apart, then you find each other again, and you're like doing, start doing business together. Scott, what is your pathway? Because you kinda go down a different road.
- I always knew I wanted to own my own business. So instead of going big four.
- Go work a HR Block or?
- National, I went to one of the larger local firms in Houston. All my job offers were in Houston. So I went from Austin to San Marcos to the big city of Houston, and I was, oh my gosh, this is a lotta opportunity, but I've never been in a city this big and I don't know anyone. Found a job at a local firm. It ended up getting bought by another large local firm. And I just dedicated myself to working as many hours as I could and moving up as quickly as I could, and ended up leaving and going to work for a client as a CFO. And we worked with private equity. We were in the software space. So we did, this was back in the dot-com.
- The dot-com era.
- Everything with the dot-com was like, you were gonna be rich, and...
- I mean, you would literally just make up a dot-com and people throw money at you.
- You could, yeah, exactly. We could be grins.com right now.
- Can we still do that?
- Billion dollar valuation.
- Is it too late to get on that?
- Ended up leaving industry, going back into public accounting. And that's when I decided with three other guys, let's start our own firm. We started with eight people, four of us were partners. We had one admin person and three staff. And fast forward to now, we have five offices. The larger one's Houston, San Antonio. We have one in New Braunfels. But we have 230 people now and...
- Overnight success, right? Easy?
- Yeah, we were just talking about this before. Probably one of the hardest journeys, myself, my family. It just encompasses your whole life and you gotta really pour yourself into it. And I'm a workaholic to begin with. So it can always be better, it can always be bigger, it can always be make more money, provide more opportunity. But it has been a great ride. I've learned more about myself, and I've challenged myself, and been in more uncomfortable positions, and I wouldn't trade it.
- And learn from mistakes.
- Oh yeah, every day, every day.
- We're thinking about writing a book about mistakes.
- Someone asked, "Have you ever made a mistake?" I'm like, holy cow, yeah.
- How many of you, I don't know how many I made today.
- Yeah, so I got to know you guys on a more personal level on traveling with football team, on road games, you guys, at least once a year, you guys get in the plane with us. But I've also seen you at the games and being very supportive. You guys have decided for some reason to give back to your alma mater. Not everyone does, but what motivated you to think about giving back the way you guys have done?
- I've always considered myself sort of the underdog. Going back to, I wanna make good grades, but I've gotta study twice as hard as the next person. I always saw Southwest Texas at the time, now Texas State, which I thought was a great move, as sort of an underdog. It was a school where I don't think it got the respect that it deserved. I don't think the degree got as much respect as it deserves. And so I want to help out the university. I like the underdog label, don't get me wrong, but anything that I can do to make it easier for the university, 'cause I feel like they've, we've struggled over the years in different ways, whether it's financially or athletically, academically. And I owe a lot to the university for the degree and the opportunities that it gave me. And I wanna give back twofold, just to try to help out the next generations, and if I can make it better for them, or it will get them into college, I wanna do that.
- That's great, Scott. What about you, Rich?
- Because back then, Southwest took a chance on me. I wasn't a good student in high school. Many my teachers probably rolling over in their graves now that I actually went to college. But just, it's kinda the same thing. They were there for me. I loved my time at Southwest. Matter of fact, just today, just Scott asked me, "If you could do it all over, "would you go back to college again?" And I said, as long as I know that I would meet my wife again and I would have my kids, which are the three most important things in my life, I would absolutely, 'cause I love going to college so much. Some people they're like, "Oh yeah, got school." They don't realize, enjoy it and embrace it, because it's probably the last part of your life that is gonna be fun, right? You can have fun. I mean, just trust me, me and Scott, we have fun with everything we do, right? And I think we've made our life, you know, we've worked our butts off in order to get ourself where we can enjoy it and afford to have fun. But college is all about meeting people, getting out and doing things, and experiencing something. Most of them are away from home for the first time ever and stuff, but some of them take it too serious, and some of them don't take it serious enough. Just enjoy it while you're here, 'cause being an adult isn't always fun.
- I remember getting a job after I graduated from school, and yearning like, wow, I wanna go back to college. It's tough out there, right?
- I still say that.
- Yeah, that's why I went back. I was at community college, was working in prison going, holy cow, I got 20 more years of this? I'm not sure I can handle that. So let's transition to like, the new adventure. And I love this story because I've got two ways to get to my house, and one I go by Spring Lake, and the other one I go by this restaurant called Grins. And I heard about Grins right when I moved here. The faculty and staff got together and very graciously wrote out, "Here are some places you should go eat while you're here." And Grins had to be like the top one. And the fact that it was so close to our house, we went there all the time. And one day I'm driving by, and I see "For sale by owners," kinda thing, I'm not sure if it was by owners, but for sale. I thought, holy cow, is someone gonna buy this thing and then like, turn it into a bookstore or something, or tear it down and put an apartment complex there? 'Cause it's surrounded by apartments and so close to campus. And I thought if someone's smart, they should buy this thing and like, just light it on fire.
- Not light a fire, figuratively, not literally.
- Insurance claim.
- No, no, but I'm sorry I used that phrase, but I think just like Texas State had, I saw so much potential at Texas State, I saw that place as like a potential goldmine, if you just had just turn a couple things around. And then I found out that I have friends who bought it. And so let's talk about that decision you guys made, like how did it come to your mind? 'Cause you guys have done a lot of houses, flipping houses and so on, and you've probably have done some commercial stuff, but buying this, it kinda feels like it must be like a labor of love too, the nostalgia of Grins, right?
- Yeah, it kinda started as a joke when it first came up for sale, 'cause it was on the market for like a year or so. I jokingly texted Scott and said, "Hey, you wanna get into the restaurant business?" I said, "Grins is for sale," and we kinda joked about it and stuff, and we kinda let it pass and stuff. And then a while goes by, and we had talked about it again and we're like, "Well, it's still up for sale." So then we had another friend, Cody, who owns Valentino's Pizza on the Square. And me and Scott were like, well, we don't want to run a restaurant, right? That's not our wheelhouse.
- And I've had him on this show, not a podcast, but we did a video with him one time. So he's super entrepreneurial, and knows that business, right?
- Exactly, so he knows it. And so we were like, the only way we would feel comfortable is bringing in someone that could actually run the operations and do you know, his part. And when we first started talking about it, they actually had another buyer. They just couldn't secure their funding, but I think they were from California or something, but they had nothing to do with Texas State or Southwest. They weren't alumni. And Paul and Johnny, the previous owners, I think they were kind of leaning more towards us because they knew that we wanted it because it was nostalgic to us, right?
- I think when people sell their house, they feel the same way, like you'll take a lower offer if you think a good family's gonna use it.
- [Rich] Absolutely.
- Because I think there's an emotional attachment to that.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- I think this emotional tie that the previous owners had, you guys kinda had an emotional tie to it as well.
- Oh, big time. I mean, when we went to school here, '90 to '94, for me, there weren't the major chain restaurants. Grins, if you wanted a nice sit down meal, that was the place to go. And we went there probably once a week. I mean, it was very at the front of our mind and anytime we had alumni back, homecoming or anything, on the list was going to Grins. And so when Rich told me, "Hey, it's up for sale," I deal with some hospitality clients in Houston that have various restaurants. I know how hard of a business it is. We needed to find someone that could operate that. And it's a big footprint. It's some very, recipes that are near and dear to people. I mean, God forbid you mess up the broccoli cheese soup or anything.
- Mess up that soup, you're in trouble, right?
- Yeah, that's right, so Cody...
- So can't be bringing sushi in and stuff like that. Step different, yeah.
- Cody wasn't real familiar with it at the beginning, and I said, "Look, you've gotta go just look at it." He ended up going and looking at it, and came back and he said, "Man, there's some real opportunity here." And so once he got on board, we really started getting traction. So after we negotiated for a while, we were finally able to get the price where it needed to be. There was a lot of deferred maintenance that needed to be done, but there was no way I was gonna let someone from the outside come buy that and turn it into a Chili's or something. It's too near and dear to my heart. And you know, it's about giving back, not only to the school, but you know, to San Marcos itself, and that's part of it. And you know, it's really for the city, the community, the school, sorta to have those same sort of feelings that we had going to school here, outside of just the name brand restaurants. I always liked the local places, the places that people go to that no one else really knows about.
- That's my thing too. You wanna go to a new town, you go to, I always like search for diners. I have breakfast at a diner every new town I go to. I was in Alabama, we were playing Alabama, and I went to this restaurant that Bear Bryant had breakfast there every day. Two eggs, a piece of toast, six cigarettes and a cup of coffee. And they had his hat sitting at his table. You couldn't sit there 'cause it was reserved for him. And so I love that kind of...
- We can reserve a table for ya.
- That's right.
- No cigarettes, but you know.
- Yeah, that's right. So you guys go in there, some deferred maintenance, but then you think like, what else could we do here that kinda would make it a little different? And it's great. And by the way, I love the staff because they're all students. And so every time I walk in there, it's always like, "Hey, K Damp's here, let's get together." But they're so, our students work everywhere. They're not just customers, they're also employees. So you got great employees, got a great menu, got a great kitchen, but you decide to do something kinda different that I think is really cool. So what made you think about going outside?
- You wanna take a place and not change it too much. You don't wanna ruin the ambiance. You don't wanna ruin the nostalgia. Cody, who is a great operator, he had an idea of that lower level, which is now called the beer garden. And we're fortunate enough to have, with a partnership, you have different trades, you have different expertise. We were fortunate to have Rich.
- Landscape expert.
- Yeah, and Rich has, I mean, he does landscape architecture and outside design. So it was a blend of Cody saying, "Hey, we could take this space, clear it out, "have picnic tables."
- It was just cobwebs and junk out there.
- So many forks and knives and stuff down there.
- 50 years of just...
- The cafeteria coulda had full.
- That's hilarious.
- Yeah, I mean, it was like, 30 bags of literally forks and knives and just trash that had blown over from the deck and stuff, you know?
- Oh, that's hilarious.
- And got caught up in all the brush down there and stuff, so.
- Cody had the vision, and then you add on, I think Rich and myself sort of wanting to take it up a notch. So that's when we did the turf, and we really wanted to go out with the TVs and some live music and just give the students a new place to hang out. And that's casual, be outside.
- You can have your dog there.
- [Rich] Yep, exactly.
- Which is a very Central Texas kinda thing.
- Yeah, take your dogs there.
- Absolutely.
- We added the bar. So there wasn't a bar before. And you look at it now and it's hard to remember how it was before the bar, but the bar area has been a big hit for people that just wanna come in, watch a game.
- You guys have done things together that you said, "We're gonna make a lot of money on that thing right there, "and let's put some money in it. "We're gonna flip it as quick as we can." On something like this, you might say, making money is...
- It's a long term goal.
- You gotta you gotta make money eventually, but that's not the goal. The goal is to kinda bring back something that was special to you guys.
- Oh, exactly.
- We knew we weren't...
- Special for current students.
- We knew we weren't gonna be rich overnight with this one.
- Yeah, I mean this is bigger than I think just us as owners, and we saw it with people just coming back for Homecoming recently. That again, I mean, so now before games we meet there. We'll put, we have 15 to 20 people. We'll go eat some queso, drink some beer, watch the game, and then head on up to the suite to watch Texas State.
- It's a upscale tailgate right there.
- There it is.
- And we're trying to bring that back. And not only the city with Grins, but also Texas State with Grins, and getting them and us involved in helping the programs, giving the students a place to go watch games.
- You guys talked at the very beginning about coming here and seeing the place, and getting a different perspective of what it was, Sewell Park and maybe just the campus, but you know, we sell the city as much as we sell the campus. And 'cause it's a great town. It's a college town. It's every year named one of the top two. Last couple years, number one college town in Texas. But you need to have businesses, and the businesses that make a college town special are not the chains, because every town's got the chains, right? It's the mom and pop places, the places that are unique, you only get there. And you guys have done something special to us because you've brought back or kept alive something that was important to our alumni, but will I think be increasingly important to our future alumni, our current students and future students who come here, and they'll be able to make memories there that will bring them back year after year, which will be your client base. But it's actually, like I said, it makes the university better. And when we make the university better, we're actually improving the quality or the value of your degree. Every time Texas State rises in stature at some level, either athletics or academics, we're increasing the value of your degree. So you're investing, without thinking about it, you're actually investing in yourself when you give back to the university, or when you do something that adds to the value of it outside of the campus.
- We do on-campus recruiting, my firm does. We have probably the most success with Texas State graduates. I don't know if it's just the mentality, that underdog, which I mentioned earlier, but it seems like the interns that we bring in from Texas State, they're smart, but they work so hard. And we've converted several of our interns from just being an intern and coming either in the fall or the summer, to employees, and they are some of our best staff.
- I hear that all the time from people, so. Okay, so guys, one of the fun things about The Current is we ask our listeners to submit questions. And Scott, I'm gonna give it to you since you're closer. You get to be the podcast host now. Fire away.
- Glad you didn't ask me this question.
- Well, I'm going to.
- Okay, what's something you've done once but would never do again?
- Holy cow. It's probably something I've eaten that I'll never do again. I'm adventure guy, so I've done skydiving and mountain climbing, and all kinds of stuff, and I would do it again. I'm gonna switch back. I probably wouldn't climb the mountains I've climbed again because I think my wife is not worried that I'd be killed, just that I'd be badly injured, and she'd have to look after me the rest of my life. And so maybe I do a little bit less riskier things now. I used to ride like, distance bike ride a lot, and I find it's just becoming dangerous to be on a road on a bicycle now. So that's something I don't do a lot of anymore. But I used to ride the Hotter'N Hell Hundred up in Wichita Falls.
- My father-in-law did that.
- Yeah, I had a great time doing it. I just, I feel like I can't put myself at risk like I used to, and probably shouldn't have when I was younger, but I just did a lot. I'm trying to think what I ate that I wouldn't eat again. I was in Mexico one time and this guy put some stuff on our table and I ate it, and it was actually kinda good. And he wouldn't tell me what it was, and then later said it was ant eggs. And I said, "Yeah, I'm not having that again." So, what about you? What have you done, Rich, that you wouldn't do again?
- Well, it's funny that you say that.
- Don't say podcast host, I guess.
- It's funny you say that because I'm an adventure guy, too. Me and my wife, my kids, we love to do adventures. And we actually did skydiving one time, and my wife got it for me and a buddy of mine for a gift. And we talked her into, once we got there, we talked her into doing it also. And we get up there and we jump outta the plane, and everybody lands, and they're all talking about, "Wasn't that such a cool feeling that when your legs whew, "you know when they pull the chute?" And I said, "I didn't really feel that." And the guy came out afterwards and he was like, "Well, you wouldn't have felt that. "Your chute didn't open." And I thought he was joking, but no, they had to use their emergency chute. And so I didn't have that big whew feeling that everybody normally has.
- Holy cow.
- And so yeah, watching the video, and he was yelling in my ear, "Hold this, pull this." And I thought that's part of the experience. I was like, this is awesome, man. This is like hands-on experience. And no, he was, I don't wanna say he was panicking, but he was like, trying to get the other chute untangled or to open up, and the whole time, I'm tandem, and I thought this is what it's supposed to be. So that's probably something I wouldn't do again.
- Sometimes it's better not to know what's happening.
- Yeah, I wish I didn't know afterwards, but.
- Scott?
- So Rich and I have been skiing. He knows what a horrible skier I am. And I think on one of our ski trips, we took a wrong turn, which is easy to do, right? Ended up on some moguls. And when I say I'm not a good skier, I can barely do greens, like barely.
- That's not true. He's a good skier, but he's not a mogul guy.
- So I start going, and Linda's with me, our sons are with me, and we start doing these moguls, and both my skis pop off. I'm cussing, I'm pointing, I'm, and the lift is going right over our head, and all these people.
- Are are looking at you.
- Are pointing like, and that just makes me even more angry. So I pick up my skis, and we're walking down the hill, like never again.
- That's it, you're done.
- Never again.
- That's it. That's funny. It was great to hear your story. Thank you for continuing to invest in this university, but also now in the city as well.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- Happy to do it.
- Yeah, happy to have you guys here. And thank you all for joining us. You know, we have lots of episodes from our alumni sharing their stories about their time here at Texas State. I invite you to go back to the archives and look at them. Until next time, we'll see you here at The Current. All right, states up, everyone.