Frank The Tank | Frank Walks
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00:00 Lacrosse. It's a sport that has always had popularity in high schools and
00:05 college, but a professional league has yet to find and capture America's
00:11 attention. One player though rose above everything and is widely regarded as the
00:17 best professional lacrosse player ever. Paul Rabel. And now Paul Rabel is trying
00:23 to build the sport with the Premier Lacrosse League. And the Premier Lacrosse
00:29 League is a new league that is growing and the hopes are with a new partnership
00:35 with ESPN that the PLL can by next year when they're playing in their own
00:41 stadiums capture a chunk of the American viewing experience so they could finally
00:47 build a sport of lacrosse. Rabel has been heavily involved in getting lacrosse
00:53 into the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and he is joining me now for a walk as
00:59 we discuss the future of lacrosse, his career, and his new book.
01:16 Hey how's it going? How's it going? Yes I am.
01:24 Alright, got this book for you. Alright, oh awesome. So well this is a new season and
01:31 the PLL is getting ready to start. Yeah. What are the big things you're looking
01:36 forward to this season? Oh man, well number one is we have our eight teams in
01:41 home cities for the first time so you have New York Atlas and that's a that's
01:46 a new to our league. When we started for the first five years we didn't assign
01:51 our teams to cities because there was a lot we didn't know as operators like
01:54 where do we put the teams, there's fans nationwide so we wanted to learn
01:59 about our audience. That is going to be so big for us I think because sport is
02:05 really about community and the fans in New York, the fans in Boston, the fans in
02:12 Carolina and Utah and Denver and California and Philadelphia. So that's
02:17 going to be awesome and number one. Number two is we'll have games on
02:21 television every weekend this summer like we did last year. ABC, ESPN, ESPN2,
02:27 all of our games will be on ESPN plus so anyone can watch at any time anywhere
02:32 which is really cool. And then the third is I would say now that the sport has
02:37 gotten back into the Olympics it's supercharged awareness around the game
02:42 and there's going to be new fans coming in because we all just know what the
02:48 Olympics means and for lacrosse to be back allows us to catapult the PLL this
02:55 season. What are you excited for? Well I'm just looking forward to seeing the league.
02:59 I downloaded the PLL app to make sure I'm able to follow along. Yeah.
03:04 Shout out to Brendan Coleman. He's our product engineer and he's built the PLL
03:10 app in-house. It's really great. People can play fantasy on it. They can follow,
03:16 they can watch, they can see all the news that breaks. I mean lacrosse has been
03:22 popular in college, it's been popular in high school but why has it had such
03:27 trouble finding its niche in professionals? Well I think every sport
03:33 has had trouble historically. The NFL really struggled early on with college
03:38 football being king. The NBA had a really hard time up until the David Stern era
03:44 of the 80s and now what Adam Silver's done. Even golf was a college game first.
03:49 So I think you know pro lacrosse has struggled if you go all the way back to
03:54 the 70s from trying experimenting and the reality is we needed better operators
04:03 a deeper investment, a network partner. There's this saying in Field of Dreams
04:09 Kevin Costner film that I hate. I like the film but I hate the saying. It's if
04:16 you build it they will come and that's how professional lacrosse used to be.
04:21 Let's roll out a league and then everyone's gonna come. No fucking way it
04:24 doesn't happen. So you have to invest in your ticket sales department and
04:29 creating great merchandise and have a network deal and all this stuff that can
04:34 lift the sport. So that was our thesis at least and it's been frankly it's been
04:40 really frustrating because I spent most of my career playing in a league that no
04:44 one watched. That was the league that was started by Body by Jake.
04:49 Body by Jake who you know done a phenomenal job with his career but I
04:55 think what they were doing at the time was saying hey this this sport like
04:59 lacrosse is taking off in America let's start a pro league and sort of sit on it
05:05 as if it's beachfront water property. I mean I remember they were actually
05:09 when they playing games in Moncler State New Jersey. Yeah. That's my
05:14 college that's the my alma mater and I remember huh they're playing a
05:18 professional lacrosse league here. There's things like that right? Like even
05:23 when we did our ESPN deal and I grew up having the privilege of playing on ESPNU
05:28 at Johns Hopkins which was a big deal for our program for me. It helped
05:34 launch my professional career because I was able to build a social media
05:39 following from it but it's ESPN University and so when we cut our deal I
05:45 was like our games can't be on ESPNU because that's where people go to watch
05:49 college you know so there's things like there's touch like that and of course
05:55 they've done a even better job than we could have ever imagined by ABC ESPN
05:59 ESPN2 but to your point when you're building a pro league the hardest part
06:04 and why most people fail is that you essentially have to roll out a red
06:09 carpet and pretend that you've made it before you have. You have to
06:15 get the fans to believe that when they spend on a ticket it's going to be it's
06:19 going to feel like they're going to a major league baseball ballpark. I mean I
06:22 think the spring football leagues are trying to do that and they give
06:26 that vibe off that's how they got their big TV deals they got the
06:29 Rock involved. The Rock is the biggest star in spring football by far. The
06:35 problem that spring football has is they don't have the best football players in
06:38 the world. No. And what fans want when they spend on a ticket or watch a game
06:44 on TV is they want to know that they're watching the best there is. That's the
06:49 challenge with the Olympics right now too. They're trying to get to ensure that
06:53 the leagues allow the best players to play. You know we all know Olympic soccer
06:57 ain't the World Cup. Well they deliberately make it that way except for
07:01 the women. The women do. Exactly and they got it right. So anyway we think
07:08 about that stuff all the time. You know how the UFC has gotten as big as they
07:13 are. Why did F1 become so big in America over the last five years? Because the men
07:20 actually have a role for the Olympics. They can't actually be 22 under I believe.
07:24 Yeah and you know Olympic basketball went through that phase for a little bit.
07:28 The dream team was the dream team because it was the first time back in
07:32 the Olympics with pros. I think this year's Olympic tournament for basketball
07:37 is going to be one of the toughest ever for the United States especially playing
07:41 a good French squad on their own soil. I think it's still hard for a lot of
07:47 basketball fans to wrap their head around that because you see Steph, LeBron,
07:51 KD, Ant and you're like no way these guys lose but European basketball this goes
07:58 back to your question David Stern helping bring international players
08:03 domestically wasn't about growing revenue and attention. It was about
08:10 opening up the pipeline to players all around the world. Well the dream team did that.
08:14 The dream team did that. They helped. They helped but when Stern took the NBA over
08:20 to Asia and doing these exhibitions yeah the dream team brought the vibe because
08:28 the dream team played in Barcelona and everyone was like holy shit this guy
08:32 Michael Jordan is the coolest and best thing we've ever seen. That's the thing
08:37 that's happened. I don't even remember what channel Major League Lacrosse was on
08:41 if he was on a channel or anything like that. No it wasn't. They decided to at the
08:47 time because of OTT services streaming they were like hey instead of paying a
08:54 network which is our business called a time buy instead of paying a
08:58 network to have and distribute our games why don't we bring on our own producers
09:04 and we put it behind a paywall and we monetize against every head that watches
09:10 and they built Lac Sports Network so essentially you're shrinking the
09:13 audience you know to this day people go oh what happened to boxing you know it's
09:19 too confusing. They put it behind pay-per-view. Bingo. It used to be on ABC.
09:23 ESPN used to have Friday Night Fights. Tuesday you said be on ABC and USA Network.
09:29 And it's been lucrative for the business the athletes get paid well the top ones
09:33 but the the sports exposure has lost out and now MMA is the fight sport of
09:40 popularity. And even though they have like the main events on pay-per-view ESPN
09:45 has those the first two hours the undercard is always on always on. Yeah
09:51 you got to get the title fight back to the masses so that's the thing that's
09:56 why broadcasting cable I think has another decade or so especially related
10:01 to sport you know it's hard to predict with AI and technology how you know
10:07 sports fans will continue to evolve I think the NFL is canary in the coal mine
10:13 they can change everything because their audience and demand is so big but
10:18 there's nothing quite like broadcasting cable because it introduces the sport to
10:23 new fans. You think about like lead-in programming for Seinfeld and others
10:28 like they give you a primetime spot to try and hold an audience that's already
10:33 there that's what's beneficial to us and we're on ABC is we come on after the
10:39 College World Series after the French Open after the NBA playoffs we get
10:45 access to a million sports fans that can decide if they want to stay on and watch.
10:48 Like I said I remember when the major league lacrosse started they had a
10:55 big buzz body by Jake was out there and you heard nothing like yeah they like
11:01 completely like disappeared. Yeah I mean he's the king of buzz he's really good
11:06 at generating hype and awareness he did it for a living you know but that's
11:11 that's the challenge like how can you sustain you know there's a stat that
11:16 since 1990 200 sports leagues have formed with a 1% success rate and the
11:23 success rate is based on can you have a season after your third most leagues
11:28 hold even American Alliance Football League XFL they all turn over because
11:32 it's so hard to sustain and credit to Jake and the MLL they sustained for 20
11:38 years. Now you took over. Now you played in that league you won countless
11:45 awards that league MVPs championships yeah and then but that league was a
11:49 summer league and then there is the indoor league the National Lacrosse League
11:54 yeah now how does that differ from outdoor lacrosse and traditional lacrosse?
12:00 So think of it as soccer right at least in America we see UEFA the Champions
12:06 League Premier League MLS La Liga that's all 10 on 10 outdoor and then you have
12:12 arena football or indoor soccer which is a different version smaller field indoors
12:19 five on five fast-paced exciting that's a that's not for every soccer fan but it
12:26 is for many. Indoor lacrosse sort of feels that way it's indoors it's five on
12:34 five shorter version a lot of action but lacrosse the genesis of lacrosse was
12:40 always on the field it was created by Native Americans thousands of years ago
12:44 sometimes played on fields that stretch for miles with hundreds of people on
12:48 each side no time constraints. Indoor lacrosse started in Canada because it's
12:55 so goddamn cold there and they have all these amazing ice rinks so they decided
13:01 in the summer when the ice wasn't there to use that surface to play what they
13:06 call box lacrosse yeah and I played in the NLL for seven years learned a lot
13:12 developed skills built some long-lasting friendships with teammates won a
13:17 championship and I think the sport benefits from box lacrosse young kids
13:25 out there develop their skill sets and they take it on to university to play
13:31 for their college teams in the PLL much like you know some of the greatest
13:34 footballers the Brazilians they play futsal or what what do you call it in
13:39 Brazil soccer lito yeah when they play in the Olympics it's gonna be like a
13:43 different sport than both of them it's like a hybrid I believe yeah yeah now we
13:49 can now we can confuse the audience even more so when we got into the Olympics
13:56 you know first of all when I started playing there were 18 countries that
14:00 played lacrosse now there are 91 but what's most important the Olympics is
14:04 parody of play where US and Canada and the Haudenosaunee really dominated the
14:10 rest of the world so we created a version that we thought would increase
14:14 the parody of play where everyone has the same stick size it's five on five on
14:20 the field goalie each and and the other thing that's important to the Olympics
14:26 is headcount it's why you see a lot of new sports that are individual sports
14:31 introduced because it just costs less money you can have 12 countries
14:36 participating two athletes per country 24 heads you got to pay for in team
14:42 sports it's 24 players on a team 12 teams gets really expensive so that was
14:48 also figuring out how to make the math work to get lacrosse back into the
14:53 Olympics and build an exciting game that's competitive across the world now
14:57 this year I believe you're doing like weekend tournaments or weekend like
15:00 showcases in different cities yeah now what's that about where we where's our
15:06 schedule taking the PLL this year so going back to that stat around why most
15:11 sports leagues fail as they create more supply than there is demand so when we
15:16 started the PLL there are 15 million lacrosse fans according to MRI Simmons
15:20 report that ESPN runs now there are 46 million so we're starting to build it
15:25 when we first started our teams weren't tied to cities and we were touring we
15:30 felt like touring like the PGA or like f1 or UFC is best for the fans it's best
15:36 for the business it's best for the players and frankly the network just has
15:40 to go to one location to produce and distribute all four games this stage
15:45 that we're in now with teams and cities is phase two where we're touring still
15:51 but going to the home markets of our each of each of our teams phase three
15:58 might be okay we then go to a home and away model potentially team owners well
16:05 no but we've got to make sure that the supply that we're getting out is not
16:11 exceeding the demand now we've had involvement from part of my take with
16:16 big cat PFT with the water those guys are the best you know they named the
16:21 water dogs I did not know they actually chose any yeah they chose the name so
16:26 there's them we have them to blame their worst names out there I mean come on we
16:32 got the people love dogs yes dogs I mean we're at the Washington commanders in
16:36 the Cleveland Guardians that's true that's true no we you know those guys
16:42 are so great they had me on PMT for the first time the week before our inaugural
16:48 season in 2019 and we just had a laugh at the stereotypes and lacrosse you know
16:55 my wage previously that that that interview actually made our documentary
17:01 that's on Hulu called fate of a sport where big cat was like you got paid how
17:07 much as a rookie I was like $6,000 fucking kidding me that's how we do
17:13 this wage what I love about those guys is their mind for branding and their
17:19 touch and their creativity what we were just talking about earlier where a lot
17:23 of leagues miss so when we made our first expansion announcement I picked up
17:29 the phone and was like hey big cat what do you think you guys want to first of
17:33 all break this muse and then second of all name the team you guys come on the
17:37 show let's talk about it so I didn't know what was gonna happen they were I
17:42 thought I was prepared for them to be like this is the name take it or leave
17:45 it but they gave us a chance to take back 12 names to our audience our
17:49 audience voted they decided and we announced I love those guys but yet I
17:54 mean and of course you've had a good partnership with Barstool Barstool yeah
17:58 sent coverage out there and that helps get an audience yeah yeah I mean look
18:04 Barstool I think is modern media where you have Dave and big cat KFC these guys
18:12 were like hey we have this rocket ship called social media and the internet to
18:18 our advantage that's different than when the New York Times the Washington Post
18:22 CNN ESPN were all founded yeah I mean those are all just those are traditional
18:28 media it's more expensive and your reach is limited to people who not only have a
18:33 subscription but are tuning in at a certain time social media has this
18:37 longtail immediate reach three billion people on pop-up they're like we're just
18:41 gonna tell our story through this so that's how we think about the PLL - is
18:45 okay shit if if MLB was started instead of the early 1900s in the 21st century
18:53 how would they design their program that's true now you have recently come
19:00 out with a book yeah called the way of the champion tell us about this book
19:06 well it kind of ties back to a friend of mine who's my favorite author and an
19:13 investor in the PLL Ryan holiday he writes obstacles away ego is the enemy
19:18 he's a stoic writer he called me in my final season before I retired and asked
19:25 if I had ever thought about writing a book and proposed an idea that was like
19:30 hybrid athlete and business book and he said just basically take let's let's sit
19:36 together and write down a bunch of lessons you've learned over your career
19:39 but more importantly Frank I used to take walks like this with other athletes
19:45 basketball baseball football you know I get on the phone I'd fly out to
19:50 conferences and what I'd learn about what other athletes were doing and
19:54 through those lessons I you know applied them to my career as an athlete and then
20:00 also what I was doing in business like Mark Cuban has a couple of chapters in
20:04 there as a bit of a mentor and Adam Silver so consider the book a guide for
20:11 becoming a great athlete business person entertainer whatever you want so what
20:21 are your hopes for this big season what are your goals for this upcoming PLL
20:25 season yeah well I want more people to watch it I want more people to attend
20:29 games I want to set records we set a lot of records last year against our
20:34 business but you know one of them was we had 757 thousand people tune in to our
20:41 opening weekend game on ABC I want to beat that number you know I want to sell
20:48 out more venues I want to bring on new title partners to all-star game on the
20:55 league side to you know local team sponsorship it's pretty business heavy
21:02 but ultimately I want more people and different people to watch lacrosse and
21:12 care about the PLL now who are your biggest stars what if we're watching the
21:19 PLL who should we be looking for what what players should they circle and say
21:24 that's the guy that's the guy team yeah reigning MVP Utah archers Tom Schreiber
21:29 one of the greatest players of a generation he's a bit like the
21:34 Caitlin Clark of our sport he can shoot from anywhere he plays sort of freely
21:42 almost effortlessly on your squad Trevor Baptiste he was two years ago as MVP is
21:49 the best faceoff player in the world plays offense defense just a beast and
21:54 then down in Carolina there's a kid Blaise Reardon and Josh Byrne Blaise
21:58 Reardon is the best goalie I've ever played against and seen Josh Byrne is
22:03 like you know if you look at a basketball player on the lacrosse field
22:06 that's his style a lot of like pick roll shake swim moves dunking from behind the
22:11 net so he's pretty exciting those guys I would say are worth the price of
22:16 admission and then all the way out in California legend Rob Pennell one of the
22:22 most exciting midfielders and Romar Dennis I think one of the best young
22:25 talents in the Chi Montgomery who plays college football at Duke and college
22:30 lacrosse at Duke and then the fourth guy on that team a new signing who was the
22:36 captain linebacker for Stanford football Ricky Miazon many people forgot that he
22:43 was the number one high school lacrosse recruit in the country before decided to
22:46 play college football he's a fucking beast so we got loads of talent on each
22:51 team those I would consider are the stars now remember the champions
22:56 tournament down in Virginia yeah Boston beat Philadelphia in on a overtime
23:07 sudden-death yeah great goaltending by Boston in that game yep
23:12 cursed is one of the best goaltenders in the world he's young he's a brother of I
23:18 think now gonna probably be four or five players in the league they have their
23:22 youngest right now at Cornell who's gonna be a tour town finalist was
23:25 essentially our Heisman trophy Boston Cannons man that's the team that drafted
23:32 me back in 2008 they have 20 plus years of history in pro lacrosse they're back
23:38 they're gonna be playing at Harvard which is where I started my career and
23:44 then they're gonna play at Gillette who so it's uh it's pretty cool to see them
23:51 win a championship and especially in the Olympic format and you were there man
23:56 yeah I get you said it I was very exciting very like that version better
24:00 than the 10 on 10 version the smaller or the larger I like the other smaller I
24:07 the larger I haven't really gotten much exposure to him except whenever I watch
24:11 maybe the the NCAA yeah when they're the final four yeah I remember about I
24:19 remember Princeton having a little bit of a dynasty in the 90s oh yeah they're
24:26 really good a little bit they won I think four championships in the 90s
24:32 their head coach Bill Tierney now took over the Philadelphia Waterdogs we
24:37 announced him about a month ago and that was big news it was all over Sports
24:41 Center because you have I don't even think it's arguable you have the
24:46 greatest coach of all time who's won eight I think national championships he
24:53 won a world championship in 98 he's a beast he's so dynamic he's a he's a US
25:01 lacrosse Hall of Famer the field is named after Bill Tierney and we were
25:06 able to sign him to coach the Waterdogs oh that's terrific so that'll be good
25:09 yeah you'll see a lot of like throwback Princeton's celebrations when he took
25:14 the team to greatness his son was the goalie Trevor back in the 90s so it's a
25:20 great family so it looks good looks like a team in exciting season coming along
25:24 and that's what you need you need to grow the sport I mean yeah once the NBA
25:31 NHL and it's just baseball and WNBA and of course you got the Olympics to
25:35 continue this year but if you can find that a little bit of avenue I think
25:40 you'll have something big on your hand yeah that's why one of the reasons why
25:44 we booked the summer it's less competition football is all about the
25:49 fall football dominates everything winter it's cold too by the way we're an
25:53 outdoor league and it's basketball hockey I mean I just think about what the
25:59 NFL has done to the NBA on Christmas oh yeah it's like no that's not your
26:05 holiday anymore it's ours yeah I hear that you have you're trying to bring
26:08 lacrosse to more people yeah and you've started a initiative to bring hot lacrosse
26:14 to Harlem yeah well I want to give a shout out to my former Boston Cannons
26:19 teammates there's a good segue Mike Levin who's the CEO of a group called
26:23 Harlem lacrosse they're now in seven states across the country they're there
26:31 they're more than just an after-school lacrosse program though they offer also
26:34 offer after-school studying and tutoring programs they get kids into college that
26:41 play lacrosse we'll have a Harlem lacrosse alum in the PLL at some point
26:45 soon I'm sure and what we do through our foundation five our 501 called PLL
26:52 assists is we work with groups like Harlem lacrosse to get sticks in hands
26:57 and goals on field or goals on courts and we send our players I'm going up on
27:02 May 6th to a practice giving away a bunch of books and also gonna shoot and
27:08 then we have our street lacrosse event that we do with Rich Kliman and KD who
27:12 are investors in the PLL that's gonna be on May 11th and so you'll see Harlem
27:17 lacrosse City lacrosse Bronx lacrosse Brooklyn lacrosse all these
27:21 organizations coming in boys and girls playing on Kevin's courts in the Lower
27:26 East Side and then we bring in some pros men and women it's such a sick block
27:31 party you got to come to that that's on a Saturday from 2 to 5 I think so we try
27:37 to not just contribute resources to these organizations we build events and
27:43 I think that's the path man that's great that's great you know I'm gonna be going
27:49 to at least one of the tournaments this week I wanted a weekend showcases yeah
27:53 don't know which one I'll make yet but I know I'm gonna be at least one of them
27:57 maybe I look forward to seeing it maybe we get you opening weekend when is the
28:01 opening weekend June 1st June 1st that's that ABC game you want to pop it's in
28:06 Albany you'll see the New York Atlas kick some ass well I look forward to the
28:12 season I'm gonna of course I'm there or not at least I have the app to walk to
28:17 follow the Atlas yeah hopefully Atlas make some noises here oh yeah they got
28:23 an all-time coach by the way Mike Pressler it was his first time coaching
28:27 pro lacrosse last year I think I'll turn it around now I mentioned I heard you
28:32 mentioned football players playing lacrosse yeah now I didn't think I wanted
28:38 people a lot of people notice but the one of the greatest football players of
28:43 all time Jim Brown was arguably a better lacrosse player than football Jim Brown
28:50 rest in peace was an advisor to the PLL he owned shares in the PLL our MVP award
28:57 is named after Jim Brown his wife Monique and his son Eris are fantastic
29:03 people they care a lot about the sport they contribute to groups like Harlem
29:06 lacrosse and Jim said Jim told me if there was a pro lacrosse league around
29:12 when he graduated from Syracuse he would have entered that versus the NFL he was
29:17 obsessed with lacrosse still kept his sticks in his house and I've been a
29:22 phenomenal sort of steward of the game and the other one who kept a great
29:28 relationship with Jim Brown I think one of the best if not the greatest coaches
29:32 of all time not just in NFL history he wrote the forward to this book for me is
29:37 Bill Belichick he grew up playing lacrosse loves the games goes to the
29:41 Final Four comes to PLL games and it's just such a amazing mind for sport at
29:49 large one day I want to try to get him coaching in the PLL I tried I already
29:53 tried messaging him and pick up the phone and calling him to come take over
29:56 the Waterdogs we got a better fit with Bill Tierney for now but one day one day
30:01 I want to get coach Belichick. Why not the Canons? That would be cool wouldn't it? I mean yeah he's
30:08 a he's a he's a icon in Boston so why not the Canons? Bill Tierney tried to
30:14 get him to be his defensive coordinator. Think about all the press that would
30:20 show up to training camp if Bill was coaching a team. That would be something else. I know it would make
30:25 Big Cat and PFT happy we're still trying to work on getting Bill on PMT I don't
30:30 think they'll have me back on the show until I can land that booking for them.
30:33 Hey maybe one day I'll even do a walk with Bill Belichick. Yeah. And I can use some
30:38 pointers for Jenks over here. Oh man. Jenks and Mikey. You'd have to walk quieter streets
30:42 so Bill keeps a really subtle tone. But you know I look forward to hopefully
30:50 this is this is it seems like you have a great model. Yeah. I mean getting on TV
30:57 putting it out there connecting with social media I think that's how you
31:01 build a league. Yeah. So I'm looking I'm really looking forward to the season. I'm
31:06 glad that you have an app that I could follow because I'm gonna be on the road
31:10 a lot myself this year and that's gonna be helpful I think and I wish
31:18 nothing but great success. Again the book that's coming out is The Way of the
31:24 Champion. I mean this is a guidebook you can learn about this guy right here and
31:30 of course thank you for joining me on the walk and all guests who joined my
31:35 walk get a nice Frank walks. Incredible man. I love it. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
31:42 Appreciate you brother. I look forward to having you at a game. Yes I'm looking
31:46 forward to it.
31:48 (upbeat music)