 Hello and welcome. I am Dean Perine, Executive Vice President at JSA and I'll be the event host and Moderator. I just have one question for you. Are you ready for fourth and goal? Because today's topic is scoring through innovation, a financially focused and forward-thinking discussion that intersects the finance industry and Football and in a way that you've never seen before. So this is going to be fun Today we welcome Mr. Mike Persico, my longtime friend and CEO and founder at ANOVA Financial Networks. We'll talk to Mike about ANOVA's technology evolution and how innovation isn't just one play to a touchdown, but a constant path of progression. And I'm going to try not to be super fan now, but on the other side of the field we have Mr. Gary Fensik. Gary is a former Chicago Bears player, Super Bowl 20 winner and captain of the most feared defenses in in NFL history. Gary played 12 seasons with the Bears and was their all-time leader in interceptions and tackles. We'll talk with Gary about his professional football career, the move into the finance industry and the impact he's seen on innovation in business and in sport. Mike and Mr. Fensik, welcome to the event. Thank you. You got it. So before we get started, I'd like to remind our audience to feel free to participate with questions and comments in the chat and we'll get to as many of those questions as we can in the allotted time. All you got to do is put that question right there in the chat and I will try to get to those as we move through the the discussion. All right, gentlemen, let's go ahead and get started. Mike, the first question is for you. For those who might not be familiar with ANOVA, can you give us a little bit of a history, a little bit of an introduction to ANOVA? Sure. Thanks Dean and welcome all attendees and welcome Gary. So, you know, when you look at ANOVA you look at our services, you look at where we connect, we look like a carrier and that's not untrue. You know, A to B, we transport data, you know, we sell services on a monthly basis, right? And in that vein, we're not that much different from an AT&T or a Verizon, you know, but then if you peel back the layers a little bit, you know, we started out as an engineering company and so our background, our MO, was always innovation. It was always coming up with the latest and greatest, not actually to disrupt the marketplace, mind you, but it was to disrupt ourselves because we knew that if we weren't ANOVA 2.0 or ANOVA 3.0, someone else would be. And so, you know, we would spend, you know, an inordinate amount of money on R&D time and focus and more so than other firms because that's what we believed in. And so that's why we've seen this evolution in our product set, going from fiber to wireless, traditional wireless to laser. And now I find it incredibly interesting that there's been a comeback to the original with hollow core fiber and you're seeing that product 12 years later come back to the forefront. And so it's been a lot of evolution to get back to a very similar place. So, but a financial industry carrier, we connect NASDAQ to NAISI, CME to ICE, Japan, JSX to the Hong Kong exchange. Excellent. Thanks, Mike and Gary. This next question is for you. It would absolutely be an understatement to say that you know your way around the football field. But why don't you give our attendees a brief breakdown on your career playing with the Chicago Bears and then ultimately stepping off the field into the finance industry? Well, thanks a lot and I appreciate being invited, Dean. You know, first of all, I went to Yale University. So there aren't any Yalees who have going there the thought of even trying to get into the National Football League. And I was very fortunate that, you know, I played 12 years. I'm from the Chicago area. I had one starting half back the entire time I played for the Chicago Bears. And that was Walter Payton, very, very unique. And I was very fortunate to be on a team that over time progressed and got better. And as you got better players and better systems and better coaches, I went through three different coaches, head coaches that is, before we had a chance to play under Mike Ditka. And while Mike has a very unique character, I think he really, as a former player, understood how to manage a collection of athletes from a variety of different economic circumstances around the country and eventually lead us to the Super Bowl. Excellent. Gary, you mentioned characters. And obviously there's character and there are characters. But you were the captain of those characters in a lot of ways. Captain of the defense there. Can you tell us what it was like to be the leader, to be the leader of those characters? Well, you know, we were talking to Mike earlier and I think you'd agree that it isn't just a leadership, but leaders pick good people. And I think when you really have a successful organization, and certainly the 85 Bears is a paradigm for that, it wasn't just having great coaches, but really them picking and the scouts and the general manager picking people of character. And so we didn't really need the coaches to tell us what to do. We knew what we had to do. And we knew that we had people who were capable of excelling and really making a difference and that you could trust them. I mean, trust is really important. And we used to have automatic front end coverages and blitz coverage based on the formations. And in any NFL game, you'll see people moving around before the snap of the ball. That would change our defense blitz or not. And it was just fun to be part of an intellectual and then a superior physical team. Very good. And I think carrying on with that theme of kind of innovation in strategy. Mike, this question is for you. ANOVA has long been a leader in innovation. But that doesn't come without a significant amount of strategy and maintaining that leadership position within innovation. So maybe talk to us a little bit about your innovation path and what that progression has been like for ANOVA. Yeah, it's a prerequisite though to think about it in the industry that we're in. And like I said earlier, if you don't do it yourself, a competitor will or the customers will, they have very bright people and they are willing to make investments in their technology and their infrastructure as much as you are. And so sometimes people say to me, they're like, isn't it exhausting that you have to rebuild your networks every 18 months? Wouldn't it just be nice to make a capital investment every decade? And then sit back and get a return off of that? Well, it would accept that's not possible in this space. But so when I don't view it as exhausting, I view it as exhilarating. I mean, we bring products to market that are so ahead of their time, no other industry would use them. And I'm talking about not just ANOVA but the fintech exchange to exchange connectivity in general. And so I think that we take these things sometimes out of the military, sometimes they're science faction, and we're making them a reality collectively and we're refining them. And then we find that they get used in other industries because they've matured under us. And when I mentioned Halifor fiber earlier, that's exactly what will happen. There's been an adoption and an implementation by firms like myself and some of the other individual trading companies. But no one else is using it right now. But fast forward three to five years and you'll see it be quite pervasive in its use by traditional carriers, other industries that need low latency, high capacity fiber. And so you have to be committed to it and you really need to enjoy it. You can't have it be a burden, right? And we do, I think that's what makes our job so interesting. In working with these technologies, bringing them to market. And you know what, sometimes failing with them a few times before you get them to work. Mike, you mentioned the word committed. And just to kick this with that word in mind to kick the next question over to Gary. So Gary, you're playing on the iconic Chicago Bears defense known for one of the most innovative schemes, the four six. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience moving to the four six defense and what it meant to the Bears and ultimately your ability to dominate in the league? I gotta believe there was a commitment to that scheme to get the job done. Well, I mean, I think innovators have an early advantage, but there are a lot of copycats that follow. But you still need people who can execute. I mean, it's great to have a technology, but you gotta have people can really execute in that. And for us, the first time we ever played the 46 defense, it was Neil Armstrong's last year before Mike Ditka became head coach. We played the San Diego Chargers with Dan Fouts. And we beat the heck out of those guys with this defense that really confused a lot of people, made quarterbacks, made quick decisions. And but it was only one element of that overall defense. And over time, there were a lot of copycats and then offenses changed too. And I would say today would be very difficult to run the 46, because people run three or four wide receivers and they start to isolate you. So things change, but as Mike was saying, you have to constantly innovate, otherwise you will fall behind. And I'm very fortunate that for the last 20 years, I've been a partner in a private equity firm based out of Chicago, but we have 10 offices worldwide. So we're always looking for either disruptive companies or we have a fund to funds product and we're with, I would say, the best venture managers in the US, Europe, and particularly in China today. And it's amazing. I mean, you have these product innovations, but then you get a little bit bigger and then you need to scale. So it's always product, market fit, and that's always changing. Gary, was everybody committed day one to the 46 or were there people that went over unwillingly? I think most of us weren't quite sure what the hell we were doing. Are we really going to do this and you ended up blitzing a little bit more? But it also any type of unique offense or defense, it starts with a great scheme. But it also, you want to be consistent and you have to have, you're really great to be a great player. So I mean, we all watched the Super Bowl. Hey, Tom Brady is a pretty phenomenal player, but they had a lot of great players. And all of a sudden you're saying, wow, there's a lot of guys on this defensive Tampa Bay that seem to be pretty good, right? We don't really tell who they are, but I think it's a combination of both. Yeah, and it's commitment, yes, but it's also vision. You can't have innovation without vision, and I think that's a little bit of what you were talking about Dean with your earlier question. And when you're going to do something that's novel or innovative, the vision is going to be questioned. And I'll give you an analog to that. We were going to deploy millimeter wave technology, which is now the de facto standard for metro wireless networks, except we were going to do it in a way where instead of going three miles, we would go 15. And so the hops would be longer, so we wouldn't have five millions of availability, but we'd have 95%. But there were people that said everything from it'll never work, including people within my own company, by the way. There were contractors that refused to build the network because they said, you know what, we're going to save you from even having to spend this money. What you're doing is not feasible. And so, but you have to fight through that. You have to say, no, I believe in the vision and I'll be the one, I'll raise my hand if it doesn't work, but I think it will. So there's vision and then there's the commitment to it. And I think Buddy had a vision too, and he was committed to it. But look at today technology. I mean, Andreessen said that technology is going to eat the world and look at, I mean, now it's in cars. It's in all of these areas that you never really thought about in your plan. But the applicability of that is much wider than you realize. I mean, we just look at the millennials that changing food habits. And I just look at all the different applications that we see entrepreneurs and venture funds present to us, it's amazing. It's really exciting to be able to see just how dramatic that impact is having on a population globally. Yeah, there's no shortage of ideas and no shortage of innovation. Yeah, particularly in the US though, right? You can sign off now, Dean. Yeah, if I'm not needed, I can just leave. Now, you guys are really providing all of the great segues that I could ever ask for. But just to keep us on target. So, Gary, you were talking about copycats. We're talking about commitment and copycats and innovation. There's somebody out there who wants to steal your lunch every around every turn. So, Mike, back over to you, with knowing that, knowing that there are copycats out there, how do you go about making that turn before the copycat does? How do you continuously stay in your lane of differentiation to make sure that no one's coming after your lunch? Yeah, people talk about first mover advantage. And that exists in innovation as well. Because if you can bring a product to market that's novel and first of its kind and get adoption, well, look, that won't exist in a vacuum. There will be other people that will reverse engineer that, that will figure out how it's done and that will offer a similar service. But if you are constantly innovating, they'll be busy deploying your technology or your innovation from two years ago. So you're already well on your way to the next item. And so if you stop, then that's when the problem happens. So the best way to deal with a copycat is to always move forward. And if you've had the first mover advantage, you keep that. And so there's this concept of kind of perpetual motion, perpetual innovation, that you have to engage in. And people talk about the race to zero in our industry, right? And that ends when you have transactions, networks that are occurring at the speed of light. And I kind of question that. I say it ends when we lose the ability to measure time, right? But that's a glib answer. In reality, the race to zero isn't just NASDAQ to NISI. There's a global economic fabric that can be optimized from Shanghai to the CME. And it's not just networks, it's FPGA, it's risk management, it's algorithms, it's all of this execution stack that's wound together. And so there's, as I said earlier, there's no shortage of ideas or innovations. And you have to, yes, you stay in your lane, but you also have to understand when you need to pivot. And some of our vast innovations have been products that I'll call to be adjunct to our core service, like self-healing, where a wireless network is going to have some loss on a cell phone network. We lose a bar, half a bar. It doesn't matter. On a financial network, you're losing trades. You're losing market data. That's critical. Those are gaps, right? And so we developed a product that if you drop the packet, a single packet, over wireless, the entire wireless feeds causes and it's backfilled by the fiber network. So nobody loses a trade. Nobody loses a single price, and that was an innovation at its time. And now it's part of the fundamental products that we offer. Mike, is that part of the process of scaling? That as you scale, you start to see these either additional opportunities or things that will make you more competitive in an iterative way? You know, it's a little bit of scale because you kind of have the breath, the personnel and the experience to identify opportunities. But it's also about the evolution of the product set. When people were trading and getting market data over fiber, you didn't need a product like this. But as things evolve to the primary method of connecting to the exchanges, being over wireless, then a product had to be developed to account for the data losses. And so there's no perfect technology. So as you implement one thing, perhaps on the basis of latency, you then need a product to pair with that to address availability, right? And we're working on the perfect product, it's not there yet. Just as a segue to our next question, I feel like there's some themes that are obviously boiling out of the conversation that we have right now, innovation and commitment and teamwork and moving parts and strategy and things like that. But all of those things combine, sometimes don't equal the same number at the end. So Gary, this question really is for you. The 4-6 scheme, you perfected it in a way that made others that were running it still not as good as the Bears. Why is that? Was it talent? Was it commitment? Was it? I think it's, one, the level of trust. You'd be surprised in football, most defensive coordinators say run this play. Doesn't matter what offense you're facing. Doesn't matter if you have four wide receivers or they switch or they're predictable in doing something. And Buddy Ryan would trust his players and so we could audible. And as I was mentioned before, a lot of times we didn't know what the defensive front or coverage was until they finally got into the formation. They'd have a guy go in motion, we might change. And so we felt that we were smarter than the offensive schemes that we face because we had that flexibility. But that meant that not only did you have to be physically good, you had to be mentally good. Buddy, more than anything else, hated mental errors. So if you didn't have the brains to make those adjustments, you're probably going to watch the game from the sidelines. So to me, it isn't just being good as one would think, oh yeah, he's bigger, faster, stronger, whatever. It was that combination. And then once you feel that, you know it as a player and as a unit, that you're kind of a step, you're just doing something different. And you can see on film that people are trying to mimic you, but you'd almost laugh, oh, they're not exactly. They have the framework, but they really don't know what they're doing. And that's when it became really fun. And of course, for me, I played free safety during the great teams. And so I would have the total view of before the snap of the ball going, you know what, they are not going to be able to stop Richard Dent or work blitzing and they're not going to be able to protect it. And it was kind of a joy to watch. I mean, I didn't play the entire fourth quarter of the Super Bowl because we were so far ahead. You know, I want to go stay on the football tangent for a quick second here. So you brought up the concept of defensive audibles. You know, everybody's incredibly familiar with pink manning changing a player, Tom Brady changing a play at the line, and the better quarterbacks have that latitude, but how prevalent is a defensive audible? How many defensive coordinators allow it to me? This is almost the first time I've ever heard of it, and I've been a football fan my whole life. You'd be surprised, not a lot. They don't trust their players. And that was why Buddy, who was a corporal in the army in Korea, he was tough, but once you earned his respect and you were mentally and physically good, then he trusted you. And I would go after every TV time out, and there are a lot of them. I would go to the sideline, and of course, I would hear, oh, run this blitz, run this stunt, and Buddy would say, who the hell's running this defense? But he wouldn't listen. And I think that that's why everybody loved playing for him. They probably loved playing for his sons. But most defensive coordinators do not, because there's a lot going on. And they, in their own mind, have already kind of played this out, like a war game. And the input from the players, they just don't seem to think it's critical, as I think Buddy did. Who did Buddy trust to make some of those defensive audibles? And my thought was always that it was Mike Singletary. Well, those audibles, they weren't necessarily audibles. I mean, they were automatic. I mean, you had to know we had the game plan that if they were in a split backfield or an eye backfield, a guy goes in motion. Everybody knew, but the people who would communicate that, because you got 80,000 people screaming and yelling. So you'd have to use a lot of times, even hand signals, because you couldn't hear, would be me in the secondary, because I'm in the middle of field, Singletary. And then it would probably be Hampton and McMichael. So, and again, you think that all physical errors, those are really apparent, and you can see those. But boy, if you make a mental error, it would be brutal the next day of the film. Because you're getting, it's either you're good enough or you're not. But instead of just looking at your physical capabilities, it's your mental ones. I think this is why I think AI today, it is imbued in baseball, but it's not yet there in football, but it's getting there. I listen to moneyball and work and business on serious. I just love when they get into all this stuff that you don't really think about, but it is applicable if you get enough points to really be able to say, these are trends. You know, sometimes I, you know, you made the connection with AI, and I just remember as being like a 12 or 13 year old boy, watching you run around, you are just seemingly everywhere, almost as if you had some kind of artificial intelligence saying, I'm gonna, you know, predicting where it is that you needed to be before you actually need to be there. So pretty fascinating stuff. But anyway, to get us back on target really quickly here, guys, because maybe we should have booked four hours for this one today, I think. But Mike, the next question is for you. You know, what do you want ANOVA to be known for as far as being a step ahead of the rest? Is it, is it, is being a step ahead of the rest enough, or is there something more there? You know, I don't think about it as much in those terms, right, you know, something to be known for. It's, it's having a strategy, having a vision, executing on it, being committed to that, and I think the rest kind of takes care of itself, right? You know, I do think that there are, there are kind of tiers of companies where, you know, some are very traditional carriers and they stay in a, in a classic lane. And then there's a small select group of people who will build cutting-edge networks, who will take chances and, and, and, and we're in that group and we're comfortable with that, right? You know, it's, it's, it's been 12 years, right? And, and, you know, sometimes we, we go through a pattern of design, deploy, sell, right? You know, and so you, you're not always designing, right? Cause there's a cycle to that, to, to design and then deploy and then sell. Those are, that's a three to five year period, right? So it's cyclical in, in that regard. So every three to five years is when we're actually, you know, bringing something new to market, but we're not full-time innovating because you do need to block and tackle to use the football analogy, you know, and do the operational things of deploying and selling. Design, design in a vacuum isn't good enough. You know, we're not an R&D facility at a university. Very good, Mike. I think, I think now is probably a good time to maybe take a couple of audience questions. We do have one from Mr. Tim Braun. Thank you for your question, Tim. First he says, thanks for joining us, Gary. I echo that. Thank you very much, Gary. By the mid-80s, you were established, you were an established top level NFL player. What made you have the foresight and desire to continue your education at Northwestern in the middle of your football career? Great question. Yeah, sure is. And, you know, I was very fortunate to have not one but two mentors, you know, in my 20s and 30s. And one of them had been a Harvard Business School grad, a Fortune 500 CEO. And he said, you know, you could go to Cal Lager, you go to Booth or University of Chicago at the time, part-time. And I go, yeah, yeah, I'll do that when I get done with football. And so, unfortunately, one year I went into the season knowing that I had to, my ankle had some problems. And they said, you know, you probably tore them and we're gonna have to wait till after the season, but you can get through the season. Then opening day against the Green Bay Packers, I broke my arm on the artificial turf field and missed two games. And then we made the playoffs against the Philadelphia Eagles and on a failed safety blitz, I tore a ligament on my knee all on the left side. And that's when I worked out, you know, seven days a week for six months, made all pro. And then I started Kellogg two nights a week during the football season and then full time. So it was purely based on, I thought I was gonna get back out of football onto the traditional path of a Yalee. And it was one of the best things I ever did. I really enjoyed it. I was single, so it wasn't like I had to worry about kids or a wife or anything. But I was also an English history major. And so to take stats and accounting and finance at first was pretty difficult, but, you know, it really worked out well. And my last class was in the fall of 1985. 85 just keeps on coming back for me. So we're talking a little bit about some adversity, you know, and things like that. But let's move away from that. Why don't you tell us what you're in this? I feel like this is a question that you can go on about all afternoon. But what was your favorite NFL moment? You know, again, I had mentioned earlier, I'm from Chicago. So no one had won anything in Chicago for so long. And the most memorable has to be the Super Bowl without question, it changes your life. But really the best memory is the NFC championship game against the Rams at Soldier Field. At the end of the game, Wilbur Marshall picked up a fumble and ran about 50 yards. I knew as I was chasing him down the field, first of all, it started to snow. And then we knew as he ran into the end zone, we were going to the Super Bowl. It was not just a great moment for us as players, but the whole crowd. You knew there was no way that we weren't going to the Super Bowl. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. You know that is ingrained in every Bearsman memory. Yeah, we know the play that you're talking about, you know, and it broke through. You know, it was just, it really was like out of a movie. Well, in that NFL films, you know, Memorial Island, well, you know, I forget the name of that announcer. He was so... You have to send that. Yes. He was the best. Yeah. Okay, we have one last of our regularly scheduled questions, and then we're going to jump into some more audience attendee questions. Mike, this is for you. 2021 is off to a really fast start. After 2020, thank the Lord, right? Off to a very, very fast start for you. What can our viewers expect to see from ANOVA in 2021? Yeah, you know, we're, as most people know, we have our own wireless platform. So we've made the investments to own our own technology. And, you know, we think that being kind of subservient to off the shelf products or third party products, what that ends up not allowing you to do is respond to the marketplace quickly or have custom features built in, you know, because it may not be in the best interest to the third party to do what you or your constituents need in terms of to stay competitive. And so we realized that a long time ago. And so we're a little bit atypical versus a standard carrier in as much as that we make investments in owning our own technology, our own assets, our own platforms, right? And over the past three years, we've been developing a 10 gigabit per second wireless backbone. And so we're about to roll that out across the entire New Jersey metropolitan area. It's called the equity triangle. It connects bats to NISI to NASDAQ. And so, you know, we're really excited about it because it gives extra capacity. It's very low latency and it's the next evolution in who we are. And, you know, we think that the sky's the limit from there. But again, you know, we're out of the design stage. We've designed it. Now we're deploying it and in short order, it'll sort of be ready to be marketed. And so this year, 2021 is the year of the 10 gig network. Very good. Congratulations, Mike. We will definitely be monitoring your progress over 2021. I can't thank you enough for bringing this all together today, but now let's really kick the fun up a notch, shall we? Okay, I do have questions from the audience. Gary, how has the game changed since you retired? Well, clearly the biggest change is that nobody could touch the quarterback anymore. Boy, I would hate to be a defensive player today, but you know, I think just in terms of, you know, the passing games, the critical part now, unfortunately, the Bears never seem to get that puzzle of getting the quarterback who can really excel in the NFL. But, you know, when I was playing more of a balance between running pass and you'd have two wide receivers and a tight end until maybe third down. Today, really, I think the normal offense is three, if not four wide receivers. And so that really changes the composition of the defense as well. You have more, probably a nickel defense, five defensive backs or more. They call it a dime to six. And so that has made a significant change in terms of the skill set and really the body types that you see in the NFL. I have a question for you. So given kind of the overall pandemic environment and what it kind of meant for getting to games and things like that, do you think that that's gonna have a lasting effect on football fandom or do you think it's just a blip? Well, I'm a seasoned ticket holder. So I sure as heck hope that I'm gonna be able to watch the Bears in the stadium next year. But I do think that, you know, whether it's Zoom technology or just how people are watching the game of football and the analytics, now you're getting, you know, more and more gambling involved that you can do from your TV. I think that the challenge for the NFL is whether people value going to a live experience or do you stay home and not pay $10 for a beer, $50 for parking, $200 for tickets, is it worth it? And that's, you know, that's gonna be a bit of a challenge. But in terms of football itself, I know that, you know, they're doing everything they can to prevent concussions but concussions with as big and as fast as people are, it's gonna be really hard to, you know, just stop that. But I, you know, I think that for me, the football experience has changed and analytics even on TV are getting more and more involved in that. So that there are, I think, different ways to appreciate the game of football. But still, those athletes and the ability to throw a pass and to catch a pass and to tackle someone is truly a, you know, you get out there and in college, you might be one of four good players on the team. In the pros, everybody's good and no one is protecting, I'm not trying to protect the guy because he's not as good next to me. If I do that, I won't be in the NFL very long. And you just see some phenomenal physical talent. And you know, I think, you know, even the quarterbacks, you look at this and go, you've got six people, four people coming in, you know, thousands of pounds of muscle have come in your way and you're able to somehow throw this fear 50 or 60 yards in a perfect pass. It's a magic. You know, the league wanted this trend. They wanted more points on the board. They wanted the star quarterbacks to not get hurt in the L3 12 games out of a 16 game season. And so they put in the tighter pass interference. They put in, you can't hit the quarterback. And so the game has changed over time, you know, and they changed because the NFL wanted a different product. And so to that end, and perhaps your bias, which products do you prefer, Gary? Do you prefer your brand, you know, when you played? Or do you like seeing 42 to 30 games, you know? And I kind of have my own opinion, but I'd like to hear what you have to say. You know, I think that it's more of a chess game today than it even was back when I was playing. I mean, you know, you've got to make adjustments on, okay, how are they going to attack? You know, defensive, you know, if you have five or six and you know, they're still running the ball and then you get a guy who's running like a four two, who's like an Olympic athlete who's coming through as a running back or you know, like that guy Henry at Tennessee who weighs 240 pounds. I mean, you know, I only got one concussion. You know, this is in the old days where, you know, where I had to go off the field, you know? I had Earl Campbell. Well, I had a 33 inch waist and Earl Campbell had a 34 inch thigh. So it didn't take very long to figure out, you know, and he wasn't really looking to make moves. He was just going to run right over you. So I think that, you know, the game's changed but the game's changed in baseball. And you know, all of these games, I mean basketball they didn't even have when Michael Jordan was around. You're like, can you imagine if he his whole career at a three point shooting? And I think it is, as you said, it's to get more action, more points. And you know, in football where you have a salary cap although it's going down this year, but it was 200 million and you're now paying one player 30 to 40 million a year. You better make sure that that guy is going to be around. So I understand the protection. You know, the one thing as a defensive player each set of referees kind of call a game slightly different. And you know within 10 plays how they're going to call, are they going to call holding or are you going to be able to get away with a little bit more in the secondary? Everybody screams and yells at the refs the entire game. You just have a mouth guard on so they probably can't understand what you're saying. But you know, it's just those adjustments. But I do think that, you know, in any sport you do want to be able to accentuate great athletic ability and skill sets for the benefit of the viewers, the fans. Mike, I debated asking this question at all because I feel like there can only really be one answer on this during this discussion. But do you have a favorite football team? Come on. I think it's evident. You know, I grew up a Bears man, even in the face of my stepfather being from Green Bay and he was a diehard Packard's Fiends. I mean, he tried to indoctrinate me and bring me to Lambeau Field and make me sit. I'm one of the, you know, basically the coldest place in earth, you know, is Lambeau Field because the wind rips right through that barn and it was the old Lambeau, not the new one, right? So we were sitting on bench seats and it was, I had to get up and leave the game. I mean, I was 10, right? You know, and it was so cold, but I managed to resist that, you know, and came out of it on the right side. So they're paying to this day. But Mike, they still have those bench seats. You know, the Green Bay Lambeau is the only stadium in the NFL that doesn't have seats on the back. It's like you went to a high school game and I asked Mark Murphy, who was a friend of mine, who's the president of the Packers played for Washington Redskins, said, you ever think about getting rid of those seats? And he goes, no, no, you'd have to, if you put normal seats in like every other stadium has, you'd lose about 30, 30 of your seats. He goes, I'm not that dumb. That's never going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, they don't seem to mind, right? You're like, I don't, I can go cold up there. You're, you're huddling up with everybody, right? It is better for body warm. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I'm not snuggling with it. That's how smart those guys are, but no. Gary, is there, is there a place you hated to play? You know, I can't say that I hated to play, although, you know, early in the 70s, when they used to be able to throw real beer cans onto the field and you would hear it. I mean, you're like, don't take your helmet off in the sideline. It would happen in Detroit. I mean, a full, you know, Stroh's beer or something like that is, makes a little explosion on the field. So I would say that, you know, we played, again, talk about transitions. Well, when I first started, there weren't heaters on the sideline. Most people don't realize the white benches that all the teams have, have jet heaters being blown underneath there. So it's so warm, you can barely stand there. And, you know, I played early in my career, we're up in Minnesota, we were outside and both teams are on the same sideline. And we were like, oh, it's a really cold game. We're like, oh, at least we'll have heaters. Well, another new rule I wasn't aware of, if the home team doesn't use the heaters, you don't get them either. And I think they just psyched teams out. Can you imagine being the Miami Dolphins coming up to, you know, Green Bay or to Minnesota, like, what, no heat? I mean, it just psychs you out. And as much as people think that, oh, it's brutal. And it is tough if you're a, you know, an LA team or something like that and you're coming up to a Green Bay or Minnesota or Pittsburgh or something like that. It is equally brutal to go, you know, from Chicago to play Miami in December when you're just not used to that heat and you melt. I mean, you better hope that you don't have long drives against you because you'll see guys literally kneeling in the huddle because it just snaps you. You know. Is it more difficult to play in the heat than it is in the bitter cold? I think so. Because I think, you know, in the bitter cold, it's only bitter, you know, for one series and then you go to the sideline. If it's really hot, you know, there weren't, you know, like now I see on the sideline that it looks like they have, you know, coolers and, you know, oh, that's, didn't have any of that when I was playing. It was just, hey, I mean, it was so cold in Green Bay one year. I was talking to somebody. I had my arm, I was trying to heat it up. And next to a heater and I looked, I burned all the hair off my arm. I didn't even realize it. I was like this scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. I'm on fire, but at least I was getting warm. So, Gary, let's talk a little bit about the camaraderie of those 85 bears. Did you have a circle, you know, the buddies with the defense and the offense? Did you have friends on the team? Do you keep in touch with that? Yeah, I knew some of the offensive guys. I'm just kidding. I think a lot of it, the big difference between being in the pros and being in college or high school is that there's only a two-year gap, three-year gap, most between a freshman and a senior. But, you know, when I played in the Super Bowl, Walter and I were the two oldest guys on the team, starters. And so we were 31. Well, you know, think about that. I'm 10 years older than a guy coming out of college. You know, Kevin Butler who was a rookie. And so you have this gap. I mean, you know, you come out and you're like, holy smokes, that guy's got a wife and two kids. You know, and you don't see that. So that then also, I was one of the few guys who lived downtown Chicago. And so, you know, everybody would come downtown. But, you know, I think that you kind of segregate teams, you know, a little bit by age, but also are they married, unmarried? But, you know, to this day, you're foolish if you play for the Chicago Bears and you had a good career to not live in Chicago. Wow. It's been great. And I, you know, today it's gone, it's full time. You don't have any off season. We would work off season jobs. You had the ability to do that. And I tell guys, and most of them actually don't listen to me, but for the few guys that they do advise, I'll say, you know, if you work as hard as you did to become an NFL player with humility and you just sacrifice everything and you use that same attitude in any business that you want to do in Chicago, people will want to help you, you know, but there are a lot of them who had a great career. Maybe they're 30 years old. They've never had an off season. They don't know what they want to do. And you say, well, you know, you're gonna have to start here and they'll go, oh, that's, that's below me. And they're like, you didn't graduate. I mean, maybe you didn't even graduate from college. So, you know, it's unfortunate, but, you know, some people are coddled for a real long time and, you know, they came from not much, but they've kind of lost a little bit of that. Mike, what are you agreeing? I'm assuming that there's something analogous kind of in the world that you operate into, huh? Well, no, I was, I was actually thinking of the ESPN 30 on 30 special where they showed the letter that you guys wrote to save your buddy's job and you wrote it to Mr. Hallis. And he wrote me a letter back. And I got to tell you, like people, when they were interviewing people from the defense, they were like crying. I was watching it, you know, and I was getting misty. Like that was the most amazing thing. Can you talk about that a little bit? Frompton, you guys should do it. Who's idea was it? And I can't believe it was successful. You know what I mean? Like normally management is like, yeah, that's great. You know, but you work here. We're making a decision. Thanks for your input. Yeah, yeah. That's what I thought before I wrote the letter too. But, well, really I give Alan Page. He, you know, he was a hall of fame player. He spent his last couple of years with Minnesota. So he knew buddy Ryan, when he was a defensive line coach at Minnesota. And we knew our coaches were gonna get probably terminated. And he said, you know, you've got to do something. I was an all pro safety. So you're safe a little bit because you're at least a good player. I go, what do you mean? He goes, well, you could write a letter. And I go to who? He goes to the owner. And this is just as stupid now as it was back then. I mean, you gotta be kidding me. So I wrote the letter and covered my button at all the starter, all the defense sign it. Sure, exactly. You had sent it to George Hallis. And lo and behold, we didn't have a really good, we didn't have an indoor facility. So we would sometimes practice at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, which has cement floors. So if you had any knee problems, it would just kill you. And George Hallis showed up and he had never been to a practice. And he had a black fedora on and he needed some assistance with his driver. But we had already broken up offensively and defensively and everybody's like, what the hell is going on? And you're like, are you kidding me? It's the letter. And he told our coaches, I'll never forget this, Mike, to take a hike. Take a hike. Sure. And he said, I got your letter. I had never gotten a letter like this. And then, you know, he was in his 80s and he pointed, he goes, your coaches will be back next year. So the offensive guys are going, what was that all about that George Hallis was here? And it looks like we got, you know, we think our coaches are going to be safe. So, buddy, you know, Neil Armstrong, the head coach gets fired. George Hallis hires Buddy Ryan or re-hires him. And then Ditka inherits Buddy Ryan. So it leads at, you know, great dynamic tension. But you know what? It's funny you bring it up because some people have said, you know, did you really write that letter? And I was like, I did my garage a couple of years ago. And I had to get all the boxes out because they were going to put, you know, that acrylic floor down. Yeah. What's in this box? You know, there's some tax stuff. And I see this folder that says the Bears. And I look and I forgot, George Hallis wrote me a letter back. Wow. Because I've never gotten a letter like this. You know, I can assure you that. He didn't say our coaches would be back, but he came and physically did that. He didn't have to do that. But he did. You know, that's like the stand up guy he was. So now the Bears collect everything. So I, you know, I scan and send this to him because they go, I don't know if you ever got your grandfather's letter to me. Wow. And Pat McCasky was kind of the historian. He goes, oh, hey, thanks a lot. You know, we didn't have that letter. He goes, by the way, your letter you typed in 1981, your letter had a typo on it. This spelled morale. And I, you know, I was like, oh, great. So I wrote back to him. He said, oh, thanks a lot for the letter. By the way, Microsoft didn't go public until 85. They didn't have a laptop until what, 83, 82. And I wasn't able to use spell check. Right. But thanks for bringing out the error. Last time I'm sending you a letter from your grandfather. Right, right. Oh, God, that was fun. Well, you know, and that's interesting because that wasn't in the 30 on 30. Hell, his response wasn't, it wasn't in. Oh, let me tell you. So I was a pallbearer for buddy. I was very close to him. Hampton and I, Dan Hampton and I saw a buddy, you know, a couple of weeks before he passed away. So they, nobody wanted to do that 30-30 because they thought it was gonna be a, oh, everybody's, you know, it's a downer. And they go, no, no, no, it's, we really, you guys are iconic. And so we do it. And at the end of that, you mentioned, Mike, I was crying, everybody's crying. They called me up and said, they'd already done the interview. And a couple, you know, like a couple months later, they go, hey, you know, we're doing the final editing. Would you mind coming to Ditka's restaurant because Buddy wrote back a letter to you guys. I was like, you did? And so I go over there and, you know, they said, hey, just take a read of this and, you know, when you're ready, well, this letter was so emotional. And his last words to us, I was the only guy that he told that he was taking the Philadelphia job before the Super Bowl because he knew as an older player, I could, you know, I wasn't gonna tell anybody. And his last words to us, that night before the Super Bowl, after, you know, we were about to have milk and cookies or something like that. He goes, we're gonna win this game. But you know, no matter what, you guys always be my heroes, he gets emotionally walks out and everybody's, whoa, what's going on? And I was like, well, I knew what he was leaving. Right, right. So they, that letter that they wanted me to read, they said, oh, you know, and he came back to, hey, I love you guys, you'll always be my heroes. Yeah, craziness, gives you a chill. Yeah, I'm gonna need to move on from this, you guys. We do have a couple of more questions. We really, guys, I do, I really feel like we could talk forever, but we've only got five minutes left. So I'm gonna go ahead and jump into a couple more questions from the attendees, and then we will kind of wrap things up and get on with things. So next question, who was more intimidating, Reggie White or LT? Ooh, you know, I kind of think LT, and he was, you know, they both were clearly Hall of Fame, but LT had a mean streak to him that, and he was a phenomenal athlete. Yeah. New Soldier Field versus Old Soldier Field, what do you like that you designed? You know, I'm not crazy about the new one, but I, you know, the old one was really, you know, it was built in the 1920s. Matter of fact, my first year, the last game against Green Bay, we weren't, they weren't going anywhere, either were we, we go into the bathroom, oh, bad news. We're there for about five or six hours. Three of the five toilets that froze, found out after the game, all the toilets that froze for the Green Bay Packers. You go, this is the NFL. Yes. Okay, best running back you played with against that wasn't named Peyton. Yeah. You know, I'd have to say I respect Earl Campbell. I mean, I knew who the hammer and who the nail was, but you know, there were really a lot of good ones. Billy Sims with Detroit, he had a short career, Graylin, Tony Dorsett, you know, then you get into quarterbacks. I mean, Montana, Elway, Marino, God, I mean phenomenal talent. Was Barry Sanders in the league before? No, thank God he wasn't, Mike. Yeah. He actually, he came in the year after, and the Bears played on a Thursday night, Thanksgiving, and right before half, about eight tackles, missed tackles, including Mike Singletary, who I think might have missed them twice. I called up Mike after the game and I said, hey, are you okay? Yeah, congratulations to guys who won the game. He okay, and he goes, what do you mean? I go, well, I wasn't sure if you broke your ankles on the first miss tackle or the sack. Whoa, very funny, very funny. But Barry Sanders could just make you look, oh God, ridiculously bad. So speaking of making someone look ridiculously bad, who was the most difficult guy to tackle? Well, hmm, that's kind of a tough one. You know, I think more in terms of the pleasure it was tackling something like, I actually tackled OJ Simpson. It was at the end of his career, and I know it's a bad, you know, oh my God. But a lot of times it was just kind of an honor. I mean Calvin Hill went to Yale and I hit him on a short little third down pass against Cleveland and it was shook my, I introduced myself, shook his hand, and my defensive teammates are going, whoa, is that all about? Well, he went to Yale, oh you guys, you know, Ivy League. But you know, you look at different styles, like Tony Dorsett was not a really big running back, but he was phenomenal at breaking off tackle. I mean, just an incredible speed and movement. But you know, my rookie year, I was drafted by Miami Dolphins and ruptured my lung. I was playing with Mercury Morris. You know, I mean, I'm just like you guys, I'm a fan, I'm on the NFL fields, and I just, you know, you just feel so lucky to be there. Well, I'm lucky to have been given the opportunity to moderate this discussion. Mike, thank you very much for having me, Gary. Thank you very much for joining us. Whether you are on the field or off the field innovation is all around us. But we also have a raffle winner to announce that winner is Ronan Belkine. Congratulations, Ronan. You are the winner of the Jersey Raffle. So thanks to our viewers and for tuning in and for participating in this discussion. I was, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I'm sure that Mike and Gary did as well. You can check out Nova Financial Networks at anovannetworks.com. And you can check them out on social media. And you can check Mr. Fensic out just about anywhere. The internet is served. And so guys, that's it. That's all the time that we have. Thanks again for letting me moderate the discussion. And thank you to ANOVA for making it all happen today. And Gary. Mike, thank you so much. Best of luck to everybody and thank you. It was great. I had a blast. Yeah. All right. Thanks everyone. Great. Thank you. Bye-bye.