A very special guest joins The Litigation Psychology Podcast – DeMaurice Smith, Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). De Smith discusses how NFL players are coping with COVID-19, his extensive experience as a trial attorney including the art of storytelling in front of a jury and the importance of witness testimony at trial. De also describes the challenges of running a major professional sports players association, the role of sports in helping to address and solve societal issues in the country, his thoughts on a minor league for professional football, and much more. An entertaining and enlightening discussion!
Full Episode Transcript
[0:04] Bill Dr. Bill Kanasky from Courtroom Sciences, absolutely thrilled to have a very old friend in the house: De Smith, Executive Director, NFL Players Association. De, how are you doing?
[0:16] De I’m awesome. Good to see you buddy and, uh, yes it’s good to connect with old friends.
[0:21] Bill I tell you what, we were just talking before we went on live here and we’re talking about the lack of sports in our society and I think it’s making a lot of people crazy. How have you been coping without sports?
[0:35] De I don’t think I’ve been without sports. I mean, you know, we, we got our collective bargaining agreement done in, let’s say, the first week or so of March. And and that was voted on on a Saturday and and rolled into a global pandemic on Monday. So you know business hasn’t stopped. You know, if anything, it’s, it’s we’re probably all running at about 110, 115 percent right now.
[1:11] Bill Wow. Question: How are the players dealing with COVID-19? Not being able to work out in groups is what it’s sounding like, and a lot of individual workouts. How are they coping with that?
[1:30] De You know, I, you know our players are resilient. I think, you know, one of the reasons why they are so successful at this level is they just simply adapt. And they are, you know, as mentally strong—you know, not even close—I mean they’re just mentally stronger as well as somewhat physically different than everybody else. But what gives them the edge is really the mental discipline that they have. And you know, we, we pivoted to virtual OTAs, yeah. And in that, that almost, that went on without a, you know, really without a hitch. You know, football has evolved over a number of decades and this is yet another instance where it will just evolve and our guys will figure it out, coaches will, you know, right, but they’ll figure it out. And, and, and the goal will be: how do we bend, you know, the NFL to the virus as opposed to trying to bend the virus to the NFL?
[2:32] Bill That’s, that’s a good point, De. Now, you and I go way back to your days as a trial attorney and I tell you what, we had a lot of fun. Yeah, in my first two years of jury consulting you and I worked on several trials, some focus groups together, and I gotta tell you I really, really learned a lot from you. So I have some questions about that, but I think we have to, I want to go to a key question here because the world is very crazy right now. You got a combination of pandemic and a lot of social unrest. Can football save this country, both mentally and socially?
[3:11] De No. No, no. You know, I, I don’t wanna be too, you know, Pollyannaish about sports. Sport has a important place in America. You know, sports philosophically… you know, if sort of the, the earliest book on the philosophy of sport was written by a man named Joseph—Johan Huizinga. And, and the thesis of his, that early book, was that what really defines sport in its essence isn’t so much sport as its play. And, and so when, you know, certainly I work in the National Football League and working in the business of trade unionism, but when we think about sports, the real beauty of sport is how you and I and our kids and our family, how it relates to how we interact with each other, both engaging in and watching play. And at the end of the day, play, whether you are watching dogs, you know, wrestle and in the backyard or whether you’re watching, you know, you know, what I, what I unfortunately still do and then get hurt, you know, messing around with my son and you know, it’s fun and games until he picks me up and puts me somewhere. You know the real beauty of sport is how it creates social connections. So that’s a long way of saying football, you know, NFL, it’s not gonna save anything. What will save us is all of us learning how to live and get along and, and have a view towards what it’s like to walk in another person’s shoes.
[5:05] Bill Agreed.
[5:06] De And that’s really social engagement. So you know, you know, what we do in the NFL is such a small tiny part of play. What we need is a larger and more inclusive, you know, both morally, ethically, and spiritually, of how we’re gonna interact with each other.
[5:29] Bill Yeah, I, I agree. You know, the one thing I miss, which which it’s, you know, when you start looking back on things when you’re locked up for three months in your house and you can’t socially engage… go, going to football games or college basketball. It’s amazing. It’s like if everybody’s wearing that same color around you, you’re wearing the same jersey and the touchdown gets scored, I don’t care what your sex is, your, your race is, everybody’s hugging and high-fiving and it’s… I hope we can get back to that have some fun soon.
[6:04] De Yeah and that, you know, look, that is very important. I guess the one piece I worry about a little bit and, and you know, I mean part of what I believed in being a good trial lawyer was, you know, having a firm depth in sort of history and literature. But you know, the one part that I do worry about, and I do think that that frankly the country is better off right now not having a lot of sport is, you know, sport as entertainment, sport as an escape, you know, sport as “I can focus on this and not focus on that.” That’s where, you know, you know like Neil Postman would say, that’s, that’s the risk where of entertaining ourselves to death.
[6:55] Bill Yeah.
[6:55] De And, and so you know one of the reasons I do think that the country has started to look inward is there really isn’t an escape.
[7:03] Bill There’s nowhere else to look.
[7:05] De And you have to embrace, you know, what’s going on. And so I think, you know, I think it’s weird. I mean every now and then it just seems in our social order that, you know, something comes along and comes a little bit closer to kind of righting the ship. You know, so you know if we can bring back sports, you know, as a, as a function of that social engagement but prevent it from being an escape so we could ignore everything else, that is closer to the right house.
[7:32] Bill Absolutely, a great point. Now speaking of being a trial attorney, this is my 16th year of jury and trial consulting and I was kind of a baby when I was, I was on those cases with you. But I got to tell you something I want to address there. One of the, the best skills I saw you pull off where I was just literally jaw-dropping and you may be the best I’ve ever seen: your ability to get in front of a jury and, at your storytelling skills, were absolutely amazing. And 15, 16 years later I’m working with a different generation of attorneys and I got to tell you, they admittedly struggle with it. Talk about the importance of the ability to tell a story to a jury, kind of where you got those skills from and, and, and if you’re not able to do that how it really, it really hurts your case in front of a jury.
[8:29] De Yeah, well, I mean let me put it this way: I mean you, you may have been young but you let’s just say you were a brilliant baby. So, um, you know, I’ve, I haven’t worked with anyone, you know, in the field better than you and, and the team there.
[8:47] Bill The check’s in the mail, De.
[8:51] De Well, you know, I’ll say this and then answer your question. I think it is extremely important when to be a part of a team and when people sort of, you know, see the world the same way, see the problem the same way, everybody can work on in the same way towards a solution. And, and, and that makes that makes those partnerships really easy. And I look, I had a fantastic time and it wasn’t not stressful, but it was fantastic, you know, the storytelling part—I mean that’s the way I was not only trained as a lawyer in law school, but you know, I come from a family that just is a group of storytellers. And you know, I come from a long line of Baptist preachers and it’s all about telling stories. And you know, it’s one thing to sort of, you know, watch a struggling pastor stand up and read a sermon. It’s another thing to watch someone tell a story to a congregation without any notes and, and, and choosing to choosing engagement over whatever you’ve decided to write down, you know, on a sheet of paper.
And you know from your background that that ability to connect, to establish a trust and network… between the deliverer and the person who’s receiving the information is far more important psychologically than the tidbit of information that you’re actually giving. And you know then the other thing too is I, you know, I, I really started to research and learn storytelling when I became a prosecutor. You know, that I’ll forget the name of the book but, you know, it’s somewhere—somewhere in here—about the art of storytelling. And the opening of the book is a fable about Truth walking into a campfire with people around it, and no one accepted Truth because it was raw, it was brutal, and it was ugly. So Truth leaves the campfire and comes back clothed in Story. And when Truth walks back into the campfire clothed in Story, everybody around the campfire welcomes Truth, yeah, because it’s clothed in something that they can relate to. And, and I think that’s in essence—if had to boil down the job of a trial lawyer—how do you clothe, you know, what happens to be your truth (small-t truth) sometimes in story. And if you can’t tell a story… I mean you know, you and I have both watched and, you know, we had co-council, just bad.
[11:55] Bill I remember I was in the room going like oh no, what is he, what is he doing?
[12:05] Bill So we got consulted on a case earlier this year before COVID and I had a client, a newer client, call me and say, “Oh my god, the case…” you remember these days, “Oh my god, the case didn’t settle, we’re actually going the trial.” There’s a pure panic. “We need you to come down and help pick the jury.” Okay, I’ll, you know, buy my flight, I get down there, think I picked a pretty good jury. And De, I kid you not, so, I said, “I’m gonna stay in the afternoon for opening statements.” The defense counsel got up—I’m not, this is, this is a couple months ago—with an iPad and read. Never made eye contact, just read the entire opening from an iPad. That, I mean, I was like, I can’t believe I’m seeing this. And obviously there’s nothing I can do, I can’t take a 20 second and go, “Hey CEO baby, you need to stop doing that.” Can you talk about the importance of your movement in the courtroom and your eye contact with people and how if you read it, even off note cards, would be less destructive to your case?
[13:08] De Yeah. I, well you know, my mother is the toughest one in our family and she would say at this point you know you, someone needed to walk up and deliver a good country slap. You know, I was always a fan of no notes. I, I was trained, you know, as a again a lawyer, you know young lawyer, young budding lawyer in law school. And, and really, you know, when a trial lawyer stands up in a courtroom, you know, he or she has to take on that they are a leading actor, the stage director, the showrunner, and the most important person in the courtroom.
And, and I know that, you know, I know that during my career that pissed off a lot of judges but you know I always looked at it this way: I mean the judges in some respects, you know, and again that I’m just taking things that people taught me. The judge is chained to the bench, the witness is chained to the witness chair, the jury is stuck in a box. The only person in that room with ability and improvisation is a trial lawyer. And, and if you don’t take advantage of that, the worst thing you’re doing is ceding the advantage to somebody else. And you know if there’s as good of a jury as you picked, if somebody on the other side is better at that, that stagecraft, it will take the great jury that you picked, and they will sledgehammer that jury over a bad trial lawyer.
[14:55] Bill And that’s exactly what happened in the case I was just referring to.
[14:59] De I mean it’s kind of that, that world. I mean, you know, you, you get into certain federal courtrooms and, and you know some judges engage in that kind of shotgun jury selection where you really have a limited ability, yeah, to even exercise strikes. You know, and I had the luxury of really learning how to try cases in DC Superior Court. And and it’s a free for all. And so you learn how to take advantage of that lack of structure, and then if you’re stuck in a world where you have a tremendous amount of structure, you learn how to take advantage of just the little micro pieces of non-structured engagement that you have. And then just take advantage of it because, look, I’ve been waxed by really good trial lawyers who had really bad facts.
You know, especially when I was a criminal lawyer. You know, I’ll, I’ll never forget, you know, the there were probably, you know, 10 or so, you know, Criminal Justice Act lawyers or public defenders, who, you know, really didn’t have a lot to work with when, when I was prosecuting a case. And there were a handful of them that would keep me awake at night, literally, over their ability to try a multi-defendant, you know, conspiracy case with literally a half a page of a legal pad. And, oh my, well, if once you see it happen, you know, you realize I’m just along for the ride, I know how this is going to end, it’s you know.
And so that is an awful feeling, so you really learn sometimes that, you know, you know this, you know, it’s like the, it’s like the Mike Tyson line: you know, everybody has a plan until you get hit in the face, right? And so learning how to pivot, learning how to take advantage of what you’re feeling from a jury… you know, you taught me a lot about, you know, how to pick out certain people in a jury box, how to read body language from a witness. But you know so much of that stuff is, and I think you know sometimes you know really—how do I say this nicely—people who have been in law firms for a very long time but but may not know how to try cases, they, they, they’re very good at all the facts, they’re very good at, you know, all the wonderful multicolored outlines and tabs. I mean, you saw me, it was, it was basically a notepad, maybe a couple of cards. That’s it. If that.
And so you’re trying to manage… you know I know you and I, you you’ve studied Herb Stern, and that’s the way I was taught, you know, trying cases to win. When you’re in a courtroom and you’re really trying to leverage the judge, the witness, your opposing counsel, your witness, yourself, all towards what’s the best package for the jury. And, if you can’t do that, you might be a litigator but you’re not a trial lawyer.
[18:38] Bill Exactly. And I know, I, I don’t, I would, I don’t want to bring up any PTSD here, any nightmares, but because my true love—my true love is actually not the jury psychology part, it’s the witness preparation work because I think that’s the key driver of jury decision-making… can you talk about regarding if you could give the best opening statement ever given on this planet, talk about how an unprepared witness can absolutely torpedo your case.
[19:07] De Well yeah and it has because again it goes to managing the stagecraft, right? And you know imagine you’re, you’re, you’ve gone to see Hamilton. It’s the best, you know, the best stage you’ve ever seen, you’ve got the best director, you’ve got the best actors, the, the audience is there, the music is fantastic, and the guy walks in for the first, you know opening line and he forgets his words.
[19:41] Bill Okay game over.
[19:46] De The play is ruined. So you know to me that’s the danger. I mean I was trained, maybe this is horrible, but I was trained that witnesses are bad. Nothing but trouble.
So, you know, what I would say is the—what I always tried to do with, with our witnesses both as a prosecutor, you know, criminal defense lawyer, and when we were trying cases together, was really take the minimalist view. That you know prepare—I’m sorry, deliver a well-prepared witness and, and delivering that in a minimal way where it touches the things or the elements that you have to do but you don’t take on any harm. I would choose a witness who delivers 15 minutes of crisp, nearly flawless testimony rather than a witness who delivers a solid hour. Because a solid hour…
And, and the reason why I think it has such a negative impact is I think two things happen, and I think sometimes lawyers only think of the one bad thing. Okay, the first bad thing that happens is your witness doesn’t do well on the stand and doesn’t, you know, doesn’t perform well. Everybody understands that. I mean a five-year-old gets that. I think the difference between you know what I learned from really good trial lawyers was two things actually happen: one, your witness doesn’t get something right; second, and perhaps even more important, the jury now takes that flaw or, or misstep or error, and they actually layer it on to the person who presented the witness. And, and so it breaks that trust dynamic and they no longer trust you as a truth teller. And now that’s, that’s something that carries on not only after that witness, it carries on to the next witness, it carries on to everything you do and now you carry that baggage into closing. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
So you know, for me, I have always believed that—again it feeds into my ego—that trial lawyers are the people who deliver wins. And, if you know like you said, you pick a great and you always pick a great jury. If they don’t believe me at the end, it’s not gonna matter.
[22:33] Bill You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Okay let’s get back to sports. Okay,
[22:39] De No, no.
[22:41] Bill Absolutely okay. NFL, MLB, NBA: which Players Association director has the biggest headaches?
[22:52] De Wow.
[22:55] Bill Little curveball there.
[22:57] De Yeah that’s a curveball. I think we all have different challenges. Tony Clark is brilliant. He’s probably the—the Players Association chief that I’m the closest to, he’s like a brother. Tony was a tremendous athlete, you know multi support guy, played you know a long time of the MLB. You know he has a challenge that I don’t have: you know, 40—somewhere between 40 and 60% of any given team that he visits is from another country.
[23:29] Bill Yeah. Yeah, that’s, yes, huge.
[23:33] De A challenge, He’s got to conduct his team meetings half in Spanish. So yeah my challenge, you know, tends to be that we, we have the shortest playing careers. Michelle Roberts, you know in the NBA, she probably has the youngest—along with Tony—probably has the youngest players because they come right, you know a year out of college. So you know, I like my gig. Most of our guys are four-year guys, they’re older. I do think that that brings a different level of maturity into it. You know, but, but you know I also have 2000 special cats.
[24:16] Bill I’m sure, I’m actually sure. And you brought up something interesting about the—the maturity of the players. And we’ve, we’ve seen the AFL and now the XFL again fail for, for a number of different reasons. Is the NFL really is the only sport without a farm system, I guess, or I guess the college is I guess, natural farm system? Is it gonna—should it stay that way, or should there be a farm system, and why is that? You don’t, you don’t want Vince McMahon?
[24:54] De Yeah no no I mean look, I wouldn’t mind competitors to the NFL, but I have been a hardliner when it comes to quote unquote farm systems because it creates a group of professional athletes who are second-class citizens. And so you look at minor league baseball where you’ve got what, you know, probably quadruple the number of of them in the minor leagues that are playing in the majors. They play without a collective bargaining agreement, they play without minimum salaries, they play without benefits. And, and that’s an, you know, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a system that I think, you know, breeds inequity.
And I also think it’s not good for the individual players because take basketball—I forget what they call it, the G League or whatever they call it—you know the, everybody can name the first three guys on a—four guys on a NBA roster. You know, after you get to guy five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, it’s whoever. And so and the tough thing for those group of guys is every year a large group of those guys go back into this G League pool and they have to play all year against, you know another 2,000 people with the hope of once again being guys six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. And I think that that creates an inequity. And so, you know as long as I’m here, we’re never gonna have a minor league football, you know, with the NFL because I think it would simply mean that a larger group of our guys would have the lack of job security.
[26:48] Bill That’s a very good point. Now with COVID kind of taking over the headlines, I know the issue of CTE has been a very important issue to you. And I’ve read articles titled “Are we gonna have football in 15, 20 years?” and a lot of those articles reference the fact that insurance coverage is becoming more and more difficult. So I guess the first question is: do you think the league is handling the CTE issue in the right way? And then secondarily, how does the insurance industry really handle this and is that gonna be a barrier going forward?
[27:26] De Yeah, I, I think the, you know again I think the biggest risk took, you know, global football, you know, from youth all the way up, the biggest risk is clearly Little League, high schools, local jurisdictions can’t get insurance coverage. I mean that is going to be—that’s the threat, really. And, and and you know we can go back and forth on whether it’s a real threat or just a simply a, you know an insurance company decides who they want to insure, right? And, and you know once you pool the risk, you have a relatively small risk of of massive payouts. But it’s a—it’s a business that is that is in the business of not paying—not paying out claims
[28:18] Bill And my bills by the way my invoice.
[28:24] De So that’s the real threat to football up to, you know, college and the pros, that’s not really a huge threat, you know, with with major college programs and the pros.
You know, do I think the league is is handling it the right way? I, I would say this: I think they’ve handled it better, you know, since 2009 when the Union, you know, really became aggressive about preventing, you know, unnecessary head trauma. So you know look, the problem with, with, you know anything like CTE, and it’s one of the things that keeps me awake at night dealing with COVID. While we know a lot more about head injuries and and long-term consequences of head injuries, we still know far less than there is to know.
And, and so you know even now when we are, you know, grinding through you know if and when and to what extent football returns, you know one of these interesting questions out there is we’re dealing with a novel and emerging virus. And we don’t know whether there could be long-term, you know lung cancer consequences, long-term heart consequences. And so you know it’s sort of, you know, I think sometimes it’s a—it’s a blessing and a curse to come into this job, you know, being a long-term liability lawyer. Sometimes I, I dream you know that I had—I knew less about stuff, yeah. But I don’t, you know, and so you know I know everybody wants football to come back but right now there’s just a whole lot of things that we’re trying to work through and, and we’re trying to force the league to bear the responsibility that an employer would normally have. And and try to prepare the best we can for the unknown.
[30:35] Bill Excellent points, De. Finishing as we’re just kind of wrapping up here: the challenges that you faced as a young black attorney. Times are actually different—very, very different now from from when when you started. And you have a—I have had a pleasure of working with some young thriving, black attorneys. What advice would you give them as far as career advice, in 2020 in particular? I will say this because there’s an interaction effect and this has nothing to do with skin color: 40 and 50 something partners despise millennial associates. They want to leave at 5:01, they want to come in at 9:30. They, they’re like the redheaded stepchildren of every law firm right now and I hear complaints on a weekly basis. What advice would you give young black attorneys to, to, to get to that partnership level to really thrive in the field of law?
[31:38] De Yeah, I think two things. I you know, one, I loved being a partner at both Latham & Watkins and and Patton Boggs, you know. I really loved it. I mean my advice would be—and I’m gonna frame this the right way—if you want to be a partner at a major law firm, and I would start there because you and I both know, I think every now and then people sort of have this, you know, pie-in-the-sky vision of what it likes to be a partner at a major law firm and, you know, let’s just say that the days of playing, you know, four rounds of golf a week and you know probably not.
So I would say if you want to be a partner at a major law firm, my advice to especially, you know, lawyers of color is, you know, find that area of law that you love and perfect your craft. Because you know like a, like a skilled surgeon, like a skilled diamond cutter, you’re gonna face a whole lot of challenges but if you have not perfected your craft, it doesn’t matter if you’ve managed everything else. The second thing I would say is be aggressive. You know, I mean we, we had a wonderful time working together. You and I understood and saw a lot of things going on in the in the background about how lawyers are selected for trial teams and and the politics of what goes on you know in these trials—and and still go on I’m sure now.
Control the things that you can control. Try to play the dozens on the things that you can’t control. I, you know, I learned a lot, you know even after, you know coming out of the US Attorney’s Office. I learned a lot after having tried, you know, nearly 200 jury trials.
[33:48] Bill That’s amazing. You don’t De, you don’t see that today by the way. You get that’s like 30.
[33:53] De Yeah, and that that is, you know, we can talk about that for another, you know, two hours. You know, I think that at trial lawyers… you know just trials are things that we just don’t see much anymore. But you know the advice to younger lawyers is is that you, you are always going to have to face things, you know, outside of the courtroom. Perfect your skill. And when it comes to handling those things that that happen outside of the courtroom, yes, you’re gonna have to manage them with, you know with a level of grace and a level of skill and, and sometimes a level of politics.
But that said, I just never felt that there was any other course than to just be aggressive and, and to have confidence in my own skill. And, and you know that doesn’t mean you’re gonna win every internal fight but you know I’d much rather go out having given it that shot and losing rather than second-guessing myself later on and saying, “Hey maybe I should have been a little more aggressive.” But yeah, I mean I the only thing I miss, you know, in this current job is I would do just about anything to try case.
[35:19] Bill Oh I bet it’s man, you got the itch. I can tell. I can see look.
[35:24] De I miss it. Well you know it’s just also the psychological part of, you know, something starts and something ends and you either win or you lose. You know there’s, there’s, you know it’s terrible if you lose but I do miss—I do miss sort of the weight of, of, of a controlled outcome, you know what I mean? And I miss working with you it was just fun, just fun.
[36:00] Bill Well, I got two more minutes see if you can hang. And so I told some family and some friends and some colleagues I’m like hey I’m podcasting with De Smith this week. You know, you have any questions for De Smith? Now I will give the caveat: if your answer this is just like a lightning round of five or six questions. If you say “no comment,” I have no problem with that.
[36:23] De I, that’s like one thing I just abhor. I answer every question. People—people may not like the answer.
[36:31] Bill But again these aren’t my questions okay. Number one: will the Patriots continue to cheat despite not having Tom Brady anymore?
[36:40] De The Patriots are the Patriots.
[36:44] Bill Okay good answer. You versus Roger Goodell in a UFC fight: who wins?
[36:53] De I’m always going to be the first guy to cheat so I win.
[36:58] Bill Oh very perfect. Did the—did the Bears screw over Walter Payton in the 1985 Super Bowl by not letting him score a touchdown?
[37:07] De Yes.
[37:09] Bill They took the Fridge instead, remember?
[37:11] De Well, you know I just think there are certain things you have to do.
[37:18] Bill Yeah, and that documentary is sad at the end, it’s like “Come on man.”
[37:22] De It’s just “Come on man.” Right. Just, come on.
[37:25] Bill That was this wrong. Okay. End zone celebrations after touchdowns: good or bad?
[37:31] De Great.
[37:33] Bill You like them?
[37:35] De Love them.
[37:36] Bill Keep it coming. I think the fans love them. Okay two more questions. Most terrifying football player ever: Dick Butkus or Lawrence Taylor? If you’re—if you’re an offensive player who would you fear most? It’s a tough one. Well you can go Tar Heels on this one, De, even though you went to UVA. Come on.
[37:54] De I choose neither. I’m gonna choose Adam Jones.
[37:58] Bill Okay. Because I just watched that doc… yeah. You’re going with Adam Jones? Okay.
[38:02] De I’ve never met a guy who, you know, for all intents and purposes is almost the same size as me but played for about a hundred years. And did everything from running back kicks to covering six foot six wide receivers. And and when you talk to people in the league, you always heard of guys who are like, “Okay, that’s that’s the one guy I don’t—I don’t want anymore.”
[38:29] Bill You don’t mess with him. Okay last question for you, De. Okay what’s the more thrilling activity: watching paint dry or watching Virginia basketball offense?
[38:48] De I’m gonna go with I… I mean you know me, as long as there’s the W right after the end of Virginia, I’m good. But you know what’s weird now is—now we’ve, you know, my family, you know my wife and I met, you know at UVA, we got married at UVA and now we root for Maryland because our son plays lacrosse for the Terps, so, we’re pure Terps.
[39:10] Bill You gotta. I wore the Carolina blue which annoys the Terps and the Cavaliers. You knew I did that when we first got on. Well, De, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Please keep in touch. Best to you and stay safe out there and we’d love to have you back sometime in the future.
[39:29] De Okay anytime you call I’ll do this. This is—this is the most fun I’ve had in a long time so thank you buddy.
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