Owner of the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte FC and I believe multiple other businesses. A man who is a yinzer, ladies and gentlemen, David Tepper.
Hell yeah.
Don't, don't deserve it. All right.
It's an honor. Thank you.
Hey, you could do something cool. Throw some at him.
You didn't know that? Give it to him. All right. I got two gifts for you. Since you brought to the Carolinas, it's a concert for the Carolinas jersey.
And that's special because I wore that myself when I gave it to you. I was going to wear it today, but I figured I'd give it to you.
Sweat. Tepper sweat on there. Tepper sweat on that.
Okay. There you go. That could be sold on eBay in the finance area. This is the second thing, I'm going to give you a second gift. I have the honors yesterday. You know, Tatt was there. You were on the award team.
He looked good wearing that yesterday.
And now I think I can say anything.
Is that how it works? I'm not 100% sure.
I think I'm 100% sure. Okay. First of all, thank you so much for both these things, thinking of us. This shirt, can I talk about this shirt in this moment?
I think that's whenever it all changed for you guys at Carolina Panthers. I've mentioned that numerous times. I think there was potentially some interesting energy around the Carolina Panthers with you and the town and the team. And then I think whenever you guys came together, you offered up the stadium, you offered to foot the bill, you donated so much money for the hurricane relief that was happening in the area. I feel like we've seen a direct response on the other side of that with you and this. Do you agree with that or no?
Listen, if you believe in karma, you know, my wife Nicole's a big believer in karma. Listen, we do a lot. So, there's a lot of karma that hopefully if we get paid back, we got a great future. So, yeah, it's all coming now. It feels like, well, you know, we'll see.
Carolina Panthers under your leadership at this point feels much different than it did a couple years ago. You agree with that? And why do you think that is the case?
I think we have a great team right now, a great management team with Dave Canales and Dan Morgan and Brandt Tillis there. So I think it starts with them and the confidence I have in them. So it starts there and I think we've done a pretty good job in the draft and stuff like that and the whole building just feels better.
Feels like you're an uber competitive person.
Yeah, you would have to be. What business world did you come from? What was your direct line business before you got into owning an NFL team?
Okay. So, that's a lot of competition. You got to drive, obviously there's a lot of driving, a lot of vision and everything like that. You've had a lot of success. You get into ownership both the soccer team and the NFL team. It's not going perfectly. I think for you it was probably something that was very difficult to deal with. Is that an accurate read of who you were?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, with the soccer team, we started the soccer team and you know, it's kind of easier when you start something from the get-go and then you don't have to kind of change things around. And we also had a little experience with the football team. So you know what we might have not done right there. So with the soccer team, we were not in the playoffs the first year, but we've been in the playoffs three of the four years. So the soccer team was going really well and not to talk about soccer here, but the soccer team's interesting because we gave identity to the Hispanic population in Charlotte that people don't know about. So we have the second biggest attendance in MLS behind Atlanta.
Oh wow. You're telling me Messi is not moving.
They don't have a big enough stadium yet.
Ah, you're just saying hey Beckham. Yeah. Good try down there. Good job. And let's go over to football because I assume for somebody like you who's had a lot of success. You're also a yinzer so I know probably a little bit more about how you probably operate. Shout to you inner city Pittsburgh kid doing everything that you're doing currently. But whenever it's not going right, your immediate reaction is, I want to help. I want to fix. I want to change. And then did you hear the outside noise saying, 'Hey, you got to get your ass out of this.' Did you hear a lot of that? And how do you balance that type of stuff?
Yeah, look, I mean, when it's an interesting question because it's also how you pull back and you probably know this. It's like on some things it's the perception on one hand on what's on the outside world and then there's inner perception, you know, what's really going on. So it's also how the building feels and what's happening different in the building that sometimes you have to respond to one way or another that people don't know on the outside. They don't know what's going on. So for me, I always want to get it right. I'm probably which people don't think so. I mean I've had the same people working for me forever at my hedge fund. So it's kind of like one of those dichotomies that people view. But right now, I'm really happy with the management team. Happy with the management team on the business side. And we're in the third year, right? We didn't have to compete with 10 other teams for coaches this year.
Thank God. Hey, congratulations. Hey, congratulations. Because you were in there for a while. Yeah. You've been in those waters before.
Yeah. No, so that was really nice. And you know, listen, when you have that level of confidence in people, it's really easy to be more hands-off. There's no reason to be hands-on. There's just no reason. So, things are going right. And we're still trying to, you know, is something I should not be involved in any day-to-day decisions or day-to-day operations. You know, it's just something that no owner should really be involved in. It's a question, you know, potentially some strategy things. There's some money issues that you get involved in and things like that, but you know, and then there's the things I care about obviously things that I'm going to get criticized about, you know, which is really in the draft. It's the first round or first two rounds, right? Nobody cares, you know, they don't blame the owner for the third round pick.
They blame the owner for the first round pick. They blame the owner maybe for the second round pick, but they don't do for the third round pick.
I like that. So, you're focused in on the first couple picks there.
I kind of know where all the picks are going. So, yeah, but I mean, listen, it's pretty much even in all that stuff, always letting guys do their job.
Okay, so let's talk about one of your early first round picks, Bryce Young. He was on the show yesterday. He sat in the pocket here. We talked about things that obviously were not comfortable for him throughout his life. I think adversity is always going to happen. I think you experienced it as an owner. I think you experienced it through life. I think Bryce experienced it in his professional career already. And he said he just took the mind into perspective of like, hey, be the best part of this. How can I change? How do I make this good? What have you seen from Bryce from a leader and like the guy who is the face of your program?
Look, Bryce, first off, you sat with Bryce. Bryce is a great individual. He's one of the truly great individuals. I mean, there's a lot of great individuals in the NFL. I mean, people don't appreciate how great, how nice and how good these young men are in general.
I think that's an accurate reality. So,
And Bryce, like I always say, Bryce is the kind of guy you might want to have your daughter marry. So, if I was going to give him that kind of compliment. And you know, Bryce, it's like, you know, if you look at it year by year by year, we're where we are now in this last year. And listen, great to have a playoff game and let the national people see the playoff game and see the guy under pressure. And he's cool as a cucumber in that fourth quarter. He has the most comebacks since '23, so it'd be nice to have those first and second quarter leads.
So, see my heart here, you know,
But you know, when you have that and you know that you talk about, I was just talking about with Vinnie back there, you know, you have these guys that can come and do that fourth quarter and you know that Roethlisberger or Bradshaw from Pittsburgh.
Yeah. You're a Steeler fan when you grew up, I assume?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Life's better when the Steelers win. If you're in Pittsburgh,
Life is better if the Steelers win. When,
Oh, yeah. Well, Pittsburgh it's Steelers first, religion second, you know, on Sunday morning.
Yeah, I think it's two religions. Yeah, it's actually a good call. I don't know if you saw, by the way, the father blessed the field with a kick. Maybe something to think about. Yeah, I know you thought about it. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know.
AJ has a question for you.
Yeah, Mr. Tepper, what do you like when you watch the games? I guess where are you watching? What's your mindset? I would imagine as an owner, you're pretty nervous knowing, hey, there's the hay in the barn. I can't really do anything now that the game has started.
You know, in the box, in our box, I usually watch, we always watch the games together with Dan and Brandt in the box together. Dan is the most animated in the box probably.
Yeah. I'm, despite things, I'm pretty calm until I'm not.
Yeah. You're awesome. Hey, you're awesome when you're not though.
I understand that. It takes some interesting story which we won't get into today but it takes to be, I'm very calm until.
Yeah. You're a dude. Yeah, we do. You know how it goes.
Yeah. Yes. 100% top to top.
I see that sign every day. I'm driving by here. Yeah. Yeah.
Listen. It's like you don't like to start a fight. But if you're going to get in my face then it's a... But as I get older I just said this back there. I was talking again to Vinnie. He's 53 years old. I said, you know, at some point you got to leave that edge go. Okay. It's like enough already, you know, but it's the yinzer edge.
Vinnie doesn't though. Like if you're playing checkers with Vinnie and he's about to lose, he's flipping the thing to say.
Exactly. I think there's just levels to it. There's only 32 teams, man. You know, and everybody's fighting for it.
So, I respect your competitive juices. And I like the fact that you're like, I'm sick of this place. I'm actually gonna go in here and say because people that are in your position would never do that. That would be something that they would send. The fact that you want to do it yourself, I think is a part of who you are. Like that is a part of your nature is like I'd rather handle my own business. And then whenever it doesn't go great and it's not the exact same as everybody else, you provide an opportunity for everybody to bury you, which I think you kind of understand being a unique individual probably, right?
You agree with all that though?
Yeah. History on the ice was awesome. Like these things are all awesome. You know what I mean? Like these are all awesome. It's a human thing that you billionaires and owners aren't supposed to act like.
