The Coaches Group Chat
Grab a drink and a seat at the table with hosts Matt Houlihan, Arielle Houlihan and Chad Gordon as we chat about the world of volleyball, coaching, business, and whatever else Arielle feels like!
The Coaches Group Chat
E4: Hawaii Recap, Mid-Major Strategies, Super Bowl Volleyball Ad
We were without producer Bob this episode and it shows as Matt forgot to turn the camera on 🤦♂️
But show must go on as we discuss:
- Chad's airborne birthday
- Hawaii trip recap
- Updated NCAA rankings
- VolleyDork gets acquired
- Revamping stats in volleyball: Expected Value
- Upsets around the country
- Volleyball Super Bowl ad spot
- Volleyball: Not for Everyone
How else about your birthday?
Chad Gordon:It was the worst they made me. We're three hours into our Southwest flight. They stop. They don't stop the plane, they just pull over in the middle of the ocean. They make an announcement and they're like we're so sorry, but we have a couple of announcements. They make me go to the front. They asked me it has a plane full of 200 people ever sung to you on your birthday and I was like why would they have?
Arielle Houlihan:We all put our lights on it was. It was a lot, it was a lot.
Chad Gordon:Oh man, it was to to be fair. The flight attendants for Southwest Excellent, like A plus gave me a toilet paper birthday cake.
Arielle Houlihan:Yeah.
Chad Gordon:Oh, with a little Southwest, little stirs as candles. We'll throw a photo of that up there.
Arielle Houlihan:Yeah, yeah.
Chad Gordon:Uh, it was, it was, it was top notch. But as someone who hates being the center of attention literal nightmare, like it was the word, like Ryan Smith, where are you Like? You would hate it. It was, it was terrible. But, other than that my birthday was great this is 10 out of 10.
Arielle Houlihan:Cheers.
Matt Houlihan:Oh, and of course they're the one and only person who is literally the center of the attention of the video right now was the one that orchestrated the hundred percent Every time every time I get on a flight, I tell the flight attendants to make some sort of an announcement, and if it's not a real announcement, it's a fake announcement, it's somebody's birthday.
Chad Gordon:It's got to be somebody's birthday or somebody's something. Well, yeah, 100%, yeah.
Arielle Houlihan:Just planes by myself. Tomorrow morning at five 30, I'm going to tell them to make an announcement. Congrats to beta bay. I'll be the only person who knows what's up.
Matt Houlihan:How about a how about for you? Ariel? You brought, you brought the girls with you, so you were.
Arielle Houlihan:the girls came with us. Um, it was not as bender of a bender as I would have liked it To be a bender, but it's probably good, take a pause, yeah. There was. It was good to have them there, uh, but it's hard to have children and run them around like they're a college volleyball team, so they were at, like they were everything. They did not miss anything. They were at serving pass, they were at team meals. They were at uh, actually they were not at film or scouting. Report Slickers.
Chad Gordon:That's the only thing. That's why we couldn't side out in the before classic because their mom can barely get through that.
Arielle Houlihan:So they were like we were like we're going to skip that one. But other than that, they were at everything and Riley fell asleep and was on the Jumbotron, which was super cute, and I was on the Jumbotron being sad about Stanford losing, and that was super cute.
Chad Gordon:And a Wagner was almost on the Jumbotron.
Arielle Houlihan:Wagner was on the Jumbotron, took his shirt off and then they panned away.
Chad Gordon:Oh yeah, I didn't know about this you didn't know that. Yeah.
Arielle Houlihan:They had like some college girls are sitting in front of us, and then they panned over to the college girls where they were like hey, whatever, and the Apes right behind them sees these on the Jumbotron, takes his shirt off.
Chad Gordon:We was like, it was like one of the flex cams, right. So the girls in the row right in front of them. They were like yeah, they were like yeah, they're pretty strong. And then Abe's like this is my moment.
Arielle Houlihan:Yeah, yeah, this is me. It was funny. Theresa was not happy, and then they just hand away.
Matt Houlihan:Inappropriate we're out.
Arielle Houlihan:It was incredible oh man, I love it.
Chad Gordon:It was good MVP.
Arielle Houlihan:It was nice because all the parents were there and there was a huge group of people that that traveled and John's birthday was on Thursday, and so we went to Outrigger Canoe Club for that.
Matt Houlihan:And the big, the big 60 for John.
Arielle Houlihan:Yep, super fun. Mason was the MVP and baby's out the girls for us, so that that was the one night that I got to go do something.
Matt Houlihan:Shout out to Mason.
Arielle Houlihan:Shout out to Mason Mason coming through clutch. Yeah, it was a fun trip, it was a good trip.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah.
Arielle Houlihan:Yeah, lots of fun.
Matt Houlihan:Lots of good. My perspective on number one having you guys there, having Mason there, I thought it was super fun just to kind of see the community around Stanford Meds volleyball, obviously like being a part of the staff. I'm very biased about everything that goes on with the program, but getting to have our kids there I thought was awesome. That's like the first time they've really traveled fully with the team and you had a nice post about it. But just like Kossi was incredible throughout all of that.
Matt Houlihan:It would have been so easy to you know, be fully just immersed and caught up in everything that was going on with the team and obviously John put everything he had into the group the whole staff did while we were there. But to be able to kind of also understand the family dynamic around it and be really welcoming, and that was just incredible and it's something that I've always wanted to do. It's what I want our kids to experience. So getting to kind of fully kind of live that out was awesome and of course to you as well, since you kind of carried the majority of the burden there while we were preparing and doing film and scout and report and you know team, team yoga and workouts and all those different things the girls joined in yoga.
Arielle Houlihan:The girls joined in their little stretch. Yeah, we did our team.
Matt Houlihan:We had a team swim and the girls went out into the ocean with the boys. I mean, yeah, just, it's so cool for them. They obviously know, like the beta bay boys who are on the team. But you know, like Halle is now arch nemesis is with Ethan Hill because Ethan laughed at her when she like fell Can't do that.
Arielle Houlihan:He's just like, yeah, that, yeah, you know, like just seeing Spencer with them and just a lot of the other, the other boys.
Matt Houlihan:getting to know them and getting to see them interact is super cool, so that was a really special moment. You know, even though we lost two tough matches it was. There was some good things there that I'm I'm super proud of and excited for, as we kind of continue to work forward and we've got some more trips with the girls potentially will join with the team, and that's a that's a cool thing for me as a dad to see. So good stuff that came came from that, and so I think that means the next topic should be our ABCA rankings.
Matt Houlihan:It's Monday, is the new rankings as we go.
Arielle Houlihan:ABCA rankings closest one yet To like realistic power rankings that we've got. Yeah, Getting closer. Getting closer I mean that's, that's the thing.
Chad Gordon:I mean like again it. I don't want to like just murder this poll, but like it just seems lazy right.
Arielle Houlihan:Like.
Chad Gordon:Long Beach played great night one, like I watched sets one and four earlier of both matches. And then the second night I thought UCLA, I mean, like I I didn't think Rowan set all that well, night one they didn't run a lot of stuff out of the middle of court, and then they came back and, like they figured it out, champlain played at the libero. I mean Sloan comes in and, just you know, has has a monster night. Like just for them to like leave it as much of a cap as they left it, it just seems kind of silly.
Chad Gordon:And then Grand Canyon right, I think it's the only undefeated team now but just you know, hasn't hasn't played a tough schedule yet, Right, and they're not going to knock on their future performance, but it's just a. You know how are you going to kind of keep them so high up there?
Arielle Houlihan:Yep.
Chad Gordon:Until they, until they beat somebody. But I'm not, I'm not like bearish on Grand Canyon or anything, um, but I think we'll just. We'll see how that plays out.
Arielle Houlihan:Mm, hmm.
Chad Gordon:Yeah.
Matt Houlihan:And then you got.
Arielle Houlihan:BYU's at six, irvine's at seven, ohio State, eight, penn State, nine, loyola 10.
Matt Houlihan:What did you think of the uh? What did you think of Long Beach versus UCLA this week?
Chad Gordon:I was stoked, like I, so I watched it right before I drove down here. Actually, um, and like I came away I was like Whoa, like I was just like amped, like that was cool. I was like ready to like send the matches to like our portal and be like guys, you have to mandatory viewing. Yeah, watch it, it was. It was really cool. Yeah, I mean probably of the volleyball I've seen so far. I mean why is so? Why is probably in my top three as well? But like that was big boy volleyball and that was those are big time outside hitters. I mean UCLA's medals are just stupid. And then, yeah, I mean watching Mason Briggs and Ethan Champlain play on night. Two, like that was really good liberal play.
Arielle Houlihan:I mean it was it was just.
Chad Gordon:it was a lot of fun to watch, so go watch.
Matt Houlihan:Long Beach State crowd night one couple like a big weekend for men's volleyball crowds. Hawaii had so two 8000 on a Wednesday and then almost 10, almost 10,000. They were like nine, 9300 something on the Friday, some really big. So two really big crowds at Hawaii. And then you got Long Beach with a sellout at about 4300 in the pyramid. So it looks packed and then it is packed.
Chad Gordon:It feels packed. Yeah, it's clear.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, they feel it right, but then you go just under that like UCLA's crowd at UCLA was just under 4000, but they're in Polly, so it's like it just feels a little bit. A little bit doesn't feel packed. Yeah a little bit less, but still a lot of people a big crowd that was there and in attendance, so get some good things kind of being seen across the board for men's volleyball. Obviously, byu and Hawaii are traditionally kind of powerhouses. I think Long Beach State's kind of become a powerhouse in terms of their crowd 100%.
Chad Gordon:Yeah that's really is for sure.
Matt Houlihan:Really cool experience in in house experience when you're there.
Arielle Houlihan:Long Beach is, for me, the best place to watch a volleyball game.
Matt Houlihan:Best place.
Arielle Houlihan:For sure.
Matt Houlihan:Is that because they have a bar on the floor?
Arielle Houlihan:Correct they having a like luxury box type of thing and being able to like have that experience while watching a game. I don't think that anybody else has that.
Matt Houlihan:No, I don't think there is a luxury box experience. I mean, I wanted to say I want to say the the sand bar is a luxury box, but it's no, but it's an elevated experience.
Arielle Houlihan:I mean, I think more teams have got to start doing this. I mean even for women's games too. Like you got to have some sort of a luxury experience at some of these games.
Chad Gordon:What doesn't it be? Some stuff with like a PVF going on right when they have like couches and like some I don't know. It's like you know tables and like bottle service type of you know kind of ambiance behind the end lines, yeah, but they've got.
Matt Houlihan:you got an elevated experience for sure.
Chad Gordon:This is something I think.
Matt Houlihan:Nebraska has some suites.
Chad Gordon:I could be like up in, like the middle ring, maybe I thought a lot of those were offices, but maybe man off the top where, spencer, we need to be in there most recently.
Matt Houlihan:We can comment for us, let us know.
Arielle Houlihan:We need more elevated experiences at games.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, no, I agree, I think long beach that's a cool aspect of long beach that I haven't seen somewhere else. Let's talk about some upsets. Okay, In the past two weeks there has been huge weekend for upsets.
Chad Gordon:There's been some big upsets.
Matt Houlihan:I want to start with Damon. You guys see, Damon.
Arielle Houlihan:Damon college taking down Santa Barbara. We didn't watch it, but we saw that they did that.
Chad Gordon:Well, isn't Gleason? Your boy right, I didn't watch. What Isn't Gleason your boy? Yeah, I love Donny. Yeah, that guy's awesome, but you didn't watch the game. I did not watch the game.
Matt Houlihan:No I saw the highlights, you see that they won and I looked at the stats like can't watch every game on a Friday, santa Barbara didn't play all of their quote, quote starters, sure, but still they're divisible players Like they're good, exactly, yeah, yeah. No, no, knock on Damon, damon, and they beat.
Chad Gordon:CSUN last year when they were ranked that's two years in a row has been trending up for the last five years for sure.
Matt Houlihan:That was. That was probably the biggest one.
Arielle Houlihan:Where is Damon?
Matt Houlihan:It's New York. Yeah, it's a really I think.
Chad Gordon:I'm sorry, donny, I'm pretty sure it's Buffalo, but it's it's. It's cold and it's, I want to say, north, the New York.
Matt Houlihan:OK, northeast New York. Cool, definitely New York.
Chad Gordon:Where is? Wiccans oh man Masters and.
Matt Houlihan:Masters, masters, northridge, yeah. First you had Northridge beat Stanford, ok. Then you had Masters beat, yeah, CSUN in three in three. Yeah, which was with all CSUN starters, which was very impressive as well. They then they played Concordia and they lost in four Princeton, I think, dropped two this weekend.
Chad Gordon:Is that true Really? Hmm, man, I hope I'm not. We can cut this up. I'm making this up.
Arielle Houlihan:No, I like. I think we should keep it. We just make everything.
Chad Gordon:I'm not as confident, as you are, that we should keep it. This is where we need a producer to be like yeah, actually no Princeton went undefeated this weekend. Idiot Dang it.
Arielle Houlihan:Lincoln Memorial is on here.
Chad Gordon:That's a good team. They they got some guys. They play good volleyball.
Matt Houlihan:I mean, everyone's kind of beaten everyone, right now Like. Usc just beat Irvine. All the 10 to 20s man.
Chad Gordon:It's just. Yeah, it's a cluster, it's all over.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, it's great to see for men's volleyball you got so many different teams that on any given night can win. That has not been the case really the past number of years. There's a lot more parity. I think we're starting to see kind of the top teams start to separate themselves a little bit A little bit. But even still, none of them, besides Grand Canyon, are unscathed when it comes to, when it comes to results as far.
Arielle Houlihan:Yeah, yeah, I still think UCLA is head, shoulders, feet and toes above everybody. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I think they'll figure it out. I mean but that being said, if they don't figure it out, I'm okay with that as well. Like sit on a fence she's good Lord.
Chad Gordon:I mean so, like if all of these teams are. So, if the parity is like where you know where it's good for the sport, right, how do you differentiate? Is it just recruiting because there are only so many dudes playing men's volleyball, and obviously that's growing and more states of you know, uh, sanctioned it as a high school sport and that's that's awesome and that's that's great for the community. But, like, let's say that you're somewhere in the 14 to 20. What do you have to do?
Arielle Houlihan:international.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, there's no, I mean Poland. Yeah, I think I think there's a lot of schools that go international. Right, Please, so right.
Arielle Houlihan:Start thinking outside the box.
Matt Houlihan:Specifically if you're a school, that's not a like you know, a recruiting powerhouse come stateside like a lot of those Southern California schools have that advantage in the sense that there's a large pipeline that sees that as the pinnacle and they want to go there. They're like I want to just be in California, yeah, where you get an international kid. And they're like I just want to be in the United States, you're in the United States, that's the win Sign me up.
Matt Houlihan:I'm in, I'm good to go Um. So international is one. I think style of play is is the other way to kind of differentiate.
Arielle Houlihan:That's what I was about to say. Like number one start training differently. Maybe start start, not to say like start training a little bit better, but like maybe start training differently. And number two throw money at the problem. If these schools invest in their program, if you want to throw money at this issue, you're going to be. It's not that hard to invest in a good, top level men's volleyball program. If you put money into the problem, go hire somebody major, go bring somebody to come in and actually revamp the program and you're probably going to be in the top 10 easily, if not in the top five.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, I mean UC Irvine back in the day was a good example Kind of when there was mid majors kind of made the choice to go after the smaller sports. Like UC Irvine put money into men's volleyball right, they had, they had Sparrow, they were fully, they were fully funded. They went from having you know one assistant to two right, those little things make a difference. And back then you could get away with just that. And now it's like you've got these schools getting even bigger contracts and all that money trickles down from football to these other sports or the USC's and the UCLA's and these bigger programs. Just they just have a bigger budget. But you can, you can still be a mid major and decide that you're going to go big into these smaller sports like UOP as an example they cut men's volleyball, but they went heavy into water polo.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, right, they are like all right, we're going to never compete in basketball Like we're still. You know, we're still going to spend our money and do our thing there, but we're going to go all in on water polo, we're going to hire the best coach we possibly can. We're going to give them a max contract to make it as big as possible so he stays, and we're going to give them all the money he needs to go international, international.
Chad Gordon:And they're completely international.
Matt Houlihan:And they are legit. Every year they're a top five program every single year because they've made that conscious choice of hey, we're literally branding ourselves as water polo U and they're most certainly can be a more mid major program that goes hey, we are men's volleyball.
Arielle Houlihan:U and I think that the mid majors that have done that well are schools like Lewis did it have done it well. Lewis and Loyola are like the two that are in the Midwest that did a good job of that and did a good job of it back in the day. I would say like schools like honestly, like Junietta, and like those schools like tried to invest in men's volleyball and there were smaller schools that like really put into volleyball and like became powerhouses in where they were at.
Matt Houlihan:Springfield can be in that as well. Springfield for sure.
Arielle Houlihan:Absolutely.
Matt Houlihan:Grand Canyon. Take any of these schools. Great, you take Grand Canyon and go. Hey, we're going to, we're going to, we've got a good team, we've got something, we've got something going on here. We're in an air up and coming area for boys volleyball, right Like Lewis and Loyola kind of rode the wave of the growth of Chicago boys volleyball, whereas Southern California has had a stronghold of boys volleyball and so they've had a lot of talent over the years. Penn State kind of pulls all the Eastern East Coast talent.
Arielle Houlihan:They've had a main state coach there forever Right, who has done a great job, have has been the guy for them and so he's super consistent.
Matt Houlihan:He knows, he knows how this works and how to get to the end and be in position. But, yeah, you take a mid major that can just say, hey, we're going to number one, we're going to throw some extra money at this. We're going to make sure this team is fully supported, fully staffed, with a Dovo with two assistants, head coaches, top, top the line head coach. We're going to make sure that everything they need is covered and see what they can go do and you're going to get some results like a Grand Canyon. You're going to get some results like a a an Irvine back in the day. Chad yes, matt, no longer working as a people analytics for whatever tech company. Yep, can you? Can you let us know what's what's new? What do we got on the on the Chad Gordon life lifeline?
Chad Gordon:here. Yeah, I mean. So we've been working on computer vision for volleyball for the last two years or so, something like that, and so we're now we're signing some stuff with with volleyball station and we're going to basically pursue that bringing that to market through volleyball station as a, as a great partner, calling it like volleyball station AI, something like that, and basically trying to bring volleyball forward as a sport through data and in kind of the same path that NFL, nba, all these other big sports have kind of gone through. You know we're at the nascent stages obviously right now, but you know it's cool to not have a nine to five and just be working on something, something exciting.
Matt Houlihan:So yeah, that says so. We're talking like some next gen stats type of a deal. Yeah.
Chad Gordon:Player, player tracking, player ID, being able to, you know, just use the video right to pick up what's happening on the court, who everybody is and what's going on, and then, based on some of that stuff, you can start building models right to to maybe have the computer tell you what's important or what matters, or you know what is good, what is hard, what is, what is whatever.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, and that you think you, coming from a coach perspective, looking at what you're building and what you guys are working on, how do you see this, this thing that you're creating, helping coaches, how do you see it Like? What's? What do you think the biggest, the biggest factor it is that you guys are going to find for the volleyball industry. Is it coaching? Is it? I'm?
Chad Gordon:not, I'm not sure yet. I mean like there's there's obviously a sports betting angle of of any kind of data. But I think also the defensive side of the ball is always something that's really hard to kind of quantify and we've seen that in, you know, the NFL or NBA and and just being able to put better numbers right. You look at a Mason Briggs he's everywhere, right, and like you can't right now show the value someone like that brings unless you watch the video. If you watch UCLA Long Beach, they're passing with three TOSC goes up and they all shift Right. Same deals, like they start with four TOSC goes up, they all shift and they hide their opposite and Mason ends up passing about one out of two balls for Long Beach.
Chad Gordon:Yeah, I don't know how to credit that right now, right, because you don't know where everybody is. You don't know where they are at all times, and so I think it'll really open some interesting doors, all right. So that's a quick shout out on parts of the game that we that are currently kind of like underwater. But I don't have a better answer now, but come back in a few months so we'll see.
Matt Houlihan:I know this is the part where Ariel just like nods her head, but it's also just falling asleep and like she's going to have more, but I got more I got one more nerdy question to ask you.
Matt Houlihan:That's the worst Expected value, yeah, when you like, if someone's following you at at volley dork, sure Right, or, excuse me, at volley dot dork on Instagram and they see some of the charts and things that you put up. One of the big numbers that you kind of use to quantify your rankings for you know, say, top back row attackers or top outside hitters or top of arrows, is expected value. Can you I saw some good conversation on your Instagram post about this Can you Lay it out for the people of what, like the easy way to understand expected value is and why it's important to understand?
Matt Houlihan:Pretend you're teaching me because Ariel definitely knows what she's talking about right now.
Chad Gordon:If you shank the pass, your team is in a worse position to score the point Correct. And then if you were able to score out of that position, you should get more credit than if you were to play that first ball perfectly. It's, I think, of expected value. There was, there was, a great post for like expected goals and soccer and they like kind of like labeled out a few things of like, oh you know, 10% expected goals. It's like I can't believe he, like he shot it from you know 100 yards away. It was unreal ricochet, whatever. And then, like you get all the way to the other end of like man this was worth nine tenths of an expected goal man. He missed a sitter. It's like the goal is behind him and the guy trips and like he like kicks it out of bounds, like kind of thinking about it that way of of how difficult the situation is, because all the situations are not equal, right.
Chad Gordon:So if somebody is hitting 300, is that good or is that bad?
Chad Gordon:And if it's your middle, it's probably pretty medium.
Chad Gordon:If it's your outside and all you guys have been doing are shaking the ball and then chucking it high, it's a pretty good number to be hitting out of system and so expected value of the idea is that you just account for all the situations that you're dealt, you aggregate across all of them and then you see like, hey, based on you know you had 10 situations, given the context, given the difficulty of all the situations, we expected you to hit about 200, right, because that's what all of your peers have done, given the strength of schedule that your opponent like all of these things, hey, you actually hit 300.
Chad Gordon:We want to give you some love for that, right. The same way of like I guess the opposite is you know you were given five overpasses and you hit all five in the net. That's way worse, right, because you're supposed to win those points. Right, those are just, oh, he missed, and like you, net, while you know hitting the overpass, you get docked a lot of points there because that should be a layup. So that's kind of how I would start to think about it. But obviously that's just attacking and you can expand expected value to any touch.
Matt Houlihan:So blocking passing digging yeah.
Matt Houlihan:Right. So that's how you can start to quantify a little bit more of like all right, what is this libero bring? Yeah, In comparison to maybe the second libero on my bench, Do I use a defense libero and a server-seek libero and things along those lines. So starting to look more holistically at the entire play rather than just X air, kill air in play, right, Is it taking into account kind of the quality of your swing if you get them out of system versus if they're in system? Yeah, of course, right.
Chad Gordon:Because only about 50% of swings, you know, are terminal, right, either you score, you make an error. It's a little bit higher on the men's side, of course, but you know there's a whole other half of attacking that we just ignore, right, you just count it oh, it's a wash, it's a zero. But if I chip an easy ball again to Mason Briggs, there you go, shout out it's going to be perfect. And now you put the other team in an excellent position to score versus. Okay, I hit it so hard, middle back shanks, it Setter has to run off the court.
Chad Gordon:Guys launching a highball. You know, if you're UCLA, maybe you're okay hitting that highball, but if you know you're a 14s boys club team, that might as well be a point for the offense. Like there's no chance those guys are going to score that ball, they're going to double the set and they're going to hit it out of bounds, right? So I basically scored, and so you just you need to, you know, be able to differentiate between those two things, because there's a huge value change, not always just in one swing, but like, let's say that you take 10, 20, 30 swings a match, you're talking about a few points, right, a half dozen, dozen points just in non-terminal value that you could add. But right now again, right, we, just we count all those as zeros. So that's the main goal here. Love it, volley dork follow him guys, or don't?
Matt Houlihan:it's fine, take a look, he's going to be all over your no easy buckets feed regardless. So thanks, justin, all right, what's next on the docket? Ariel, this is the time where you can come back into the conversation now.
Arielle Houlihan:I got 17 comments during that whole rant about how women shouldn't be coaches. So it's fine, I've got my own thing going on.
Chad Gordon:That's all right. You're not wearing sleeves. It's fine, hobo coach, I'm wearing that outfit.
Arielle Houlihan:It just didn't different colors right now.
Matt Houlihan:People, people were giving her so much flack about her outfit of the cutoff sleeve and the pants that she, out of spite, went on the website and bought every single color of the pants and the shirt and sent it to the house so that she has the same outfit in every different color possible.
Chad Gordon:We're only in Orlando. Like what? Nine days, yeah, are you going to get through all of them?
Arielle Houlihan:Oh, don't worry, I've got plenty.
Matt Houlihan:It's the day after the Super Bowl. Rest in peace to the Niners Super Bowl. Themed question, though Watching all the ads yesterday, if you could get a 30 second Super Bowl ad had to be volleyball related, but you got it for free. What would you do with your 30 second Super Bowl spot?
Arielle Houlihan:Okay, I'm going to set the scene.
Chad Gordon:Please. We don't have a scene currently, so Tom's got to set it.
Arielle Houlihan:You know the ASPCA commercial that's like in the arms of an angel. In the arms of an angel.
Matt Houlihan:With a little puppy shivering in the corner.
Chad Gordon:Yeah, yeah, yes.
Arielle Houlihan:That song starts.
Chad Gordon:Is there a puppy or no?
Arielle Houlihan:puppy. There's a poor little 12s team shivering in the corner. They're cheering for their team and they go on to the sport court and a referee starts blowing their whistle at them, saying get off the sport court in the arms of an angel.
Matt Houlihan:Tears are shed, and then it would all quit volleyball.
Arielle Houlihan:And then it would all go dark and in big yellow letters it'd be like. Want to get this rule changed in volleyball. Sign this changecom petition. Donate now To ban all referees from yelling at children to get off the sport court.
Chad Gordon:Your donations keep referees and children off the streets.
Arielle Houlihan:I think that's an incredible 30 second commercial.
Matt Houlihan:So a 30 second ad about getting rid of the rule about kids coming on the sport court.
Arielle Houlihan:Yeah, it's ridiculous. There's no reason that it should be. We should stop like let's stop kids from having fun, even though we've already told them not that they can't play the sport.
Matt Houlihan:You're talking the kids that are on the bench.
Arielle Houlihan:Yes.
Matt Houlihan:Coach decided you can't play.
Arielle Houlihan:Coach decided they want to play like. Those kids want to be on the court. Let's have the referees yell at them more for cheering for their team. That's a most ridiculous thing I've ever heard about.
Matt Houlihan:Where do you draw the line, can they?
Arielle Houlihan:No, they can't go on the court. Maybe like the actual playing service. Okay, fine.
Chad Gordon:Illegal sub six.
Matt Houlihan:Maybe they can't go on the actual court, but you can step on the sport court.
Arielle Houlihan:They can do anything outside of the lines of the volleyball court.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, we're talking after the rally is done.
Arielle Houlihan:From the time the whistle blows. They can do. Honestly, I think they should be able to run onto the court. I've been a masking for a lot of time.
Chad Gordon:It's a hot hot take Baby steps.
Arielle Houlihan:I think that until every volleyball event looks more like six man. I think I'm not going to stop doing this. Like they should be able to go run and cheer and great, and like they have a certain amount of time, but like let's let the kids kid.
Matt Houlihan:That's how the commercial ends. Let the kids kid.
Arielle Houlihan:Let the kids kid.
Chad Gordon:Okay, I like it, chad, send me your money. Yeah, oh man, I'd probably take 10 seconds. I don't have a nice scene or anything.
Arielle Houlihan:Yeah, what's your song?
Chad Gordon:I don't have a song you can somebody use your?
Matt Houlihan:spokeswoman.
Arielle Houlihan:Mine's Jennifer Anderson.
Chad Gordon:She's in everything. Debales are stupid At least anybody under the age of 17. Why do you not like points Like what are you doing? Expected value zero. It's great for the other team, oh man, or 12s Debales. No, that's pipes Debal and pipe Anything. You're actually probably better in the back room at 12s Set, your guy. Debales are stupid.
Arielle Houlihan:Okay, what happens if, like you've got George on your team and your 16s, you send deballs?
Chad Gordon:Probably not a ton, maybe like one or two. Okay, I'm not blocking it at 16s, no chance. Love that I'm going to give it to you. Look, if you can hit a positive number cheers and if we play you in the finals and there's finally got like George who can get up and just smoke a deal. All right, hey guys, we're just going to treat it like they're in system for a real sight, Like it's no problem.
Arielle Houlihan:We'll adjust in the finals.
Chad Gordon:Sure, okay, that's. Oh no, we'll figure it out, it'll be fine. I'm not going to base my whole strategy around that. No Two, I'm going to use a jam. Got off speed two hand, one hand, left hand.
Matt Houlihan:In the commercial.
Chad Gordon:No, no, I'm not taking my 10 seconds to teach it.
Matt Houlihan:Maybe a QR code? I thought you were about to say it no, no, no, no, no, no. You teach the jam.
Chad Gordon:No, no, no, this is how you got to you, got to, you, got to promote it Again. Just even watching earlier tonight, Long Beach C upon us. He scored triple block and he set it to zone four and he scored.
Arielle Houlihan:Okay, so what's in the commercial? Yay?
Chad Gordon:Jam's an off speed. Be creative, it's not. Look I got I'll have somebody media direct and produce whatever. I'm the idea guy, I don't stop it. Big picture I didn't tell you what kind of dog you needed in your 12s commercial, all right.
Arielle Houlihan:So what's the goal? Didn't retriever, obviously?
Chad Gordon:They want your money, yeah. And then third, oh man, I think you got to train like Milan, like you got to be able to hit high balls like Hawaii does. Those guys are just unreal. It's they've been automatic. I literally I talked to Jones the other day and I was like you have to do this, you have to be able to smoke high balls, and I don't think enough teams can, even watching UCLA and Long Beach B plus Hawaii A.
Arielle Houlihan:A this weekend in general. Yeah, in general they have one, a couple of you're right, you're right, and that is. They were right, you're right, you're right.
Chad Gordon:So devils are stupid. Train like Milan, be more creative, all that stuff.
Arielle Houlihan:People would be like, wow, this is super commercial, weird yeah.
Matt Houlihan:This commercials. There's three commercials in this one. Who's Milan In my?
Chad Gordon:head. When you, like I saw this question, it was more like like the Tim Ferriss, like you, if you had a billboard like, what would you say on it? Like that's kind of how I took it. I'm not like looking for people like, wow, that was the best Doritos commercial of all time. Well, your billboards vary.
Matt Houlihan:That's going to be hard to read as I'm driving down the one on one drive.
Chad Gordon:That's a lot lower. That's a lot of work. Traffic with your leaving Stanford Shut up, it's got plenty of times.
Matt Houlihan:Dude wrote a wrote an entire novel on this billboard over here.
Arielle Houlihan:I'm not the creative director of this, so I'm telling you mine's, mine's better for mine's going to hit for views, hey, Matt what would you uh?
Matt Houlihan:dammit. Honestly, I haven't known the answer the entire time I've just been waiting for no, I'm like the first thing that comes to my mind, if I had a 30 second Super Bowl spot would just be like A QR code with like a person pointing at it.
Arielle Houlihan:This is such a mad answer.
Matt Houlihan:Just a person pointing at this QR code for 30 seconds, not saying anything. Just give me a bunch of people that look at, click on it and it's just going to take you to like beta base summer camps.
Arielle Houlihan:That's trying to monetize.
Chad Gordon:It's an actual I'm going to my actual marketing I'm going to monetize the Super Bowl commercial and we're going to have fully booked beta base summer camps all summer.
Arielle Houlihan:This is so on bread for all of us Like mine was completely Suck. Mine is like full on laid out for everybody. Yours was like three high level volleyball things and yours was a QR code to go make money. Yeah.
Matt Houlihan:That's. That's just where my my brand immediately went to is got summer camps coming up, got to fill these babies out.
Chad Gordon:No one's going to cry over our commercial Like the freaking Kia with the grandfather's ice skating thing. Yeah, no no, no.
Arielle Houlihan:I'm not crying over the other thing. People would be like the four 12 year olds.
Matt Houlihan:The other thing that I would also the other thought I had was just a 30 set, like think of it like a billboard, but 30 seconds of just play boys volleyball Three words Just play boys volleyball. That's the other. The other one. Just put it on there and maybe have a stat of like fastest growing sport in the country. That's a good one.
Arielle Houlihan:Yeah, that's a good one.
Matt Houlihan:Just to help, just to help like hey let's just get people, get people looking, and then maybe a QR code that goes to a thing that's like find the nearest volleyball boys volleyball club by you, I like it and you have a listing.
Chad Gordon:Well, I like the. I know we don't want to, you know, release too much, but you already put it out on Instagram for the beach club on the sleeve. Just the like, not for everybody. Yeah, I love that I just like hey, man, well, only the cool kids are doing it yeah, only the cool kids play boys volleyball.
Matt Houlihan:It's not for everybody. That's not. It's not, it might not be for you.
Arielle Houlihan:That's no problem. If it's not for you, that's okay with us.
Chad Gordon:You like that slogan? I loved it Actually. I really like I was hoping when I went into the garage you'd have stuff for me.
Matt Houlihan:You know who came up with that slogan. Jackson the creative director.
Chad Gordon:So not me.
Matt Houlihan:Ariel, oh yeah, I wasn't sure.
Chad Gordon:Of the two of you who's creative?
Arielle Houlihan:Oh yeah, I was about to lose my marbles on you taking credit for that, oh no.
Chad Gordon:I'm gonna give you that these microphones are heavy.
Arielle Houlihan:We definitely have a battle in our house of like who comes up with what? Because we like. There are times where I think I came up with something and you're like that was mine, and then you think you came up with something. I'm like, no, that was mine. Yes.
Chad Gordon:But we have this documented like that you have dementia already, right? Like we know that you can't remember anything.
Matt Houlihan:Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know when I came up with something and when you came up with it, that was fully, that was fully you, that was it, that was it going on? Honestly, that was me. You came up with it during our tryouts and it was like it was like you were. You were talking about putting it on our offer letter and I was like a little I was a little bit iffy on it.
Chad Gordon:I was like oh, actually I do remember this. Yeah, maybe Like on the offer letter to give to kids.
Matt Houlihan:Being like not for everyone, I was like damn, that's kind of intense, like it might be a little intense for tryouts.
Chad Gordon:It's boys volleyball, so that cut through.
Matt Houlihan:When we talk about, like, making boys volleyball cool, is there needs to be more media exposure to it? Yeah, there needs to be more people who are willing to, you know, talk about their experience and be creative with what they do with it, but also just finding ways to make it more of a thing people want to be a part of. This is something Dustin talks about all the time is like I want to make this thing cool. Like what, what would I have wanted as a kid, what would I have related to that would make this a something that I would want to be a part of. And I think there's a lot of different ways to do that and we need more people who are thinking in that terms to try and make this thing cool.