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t m c » p u l s e | s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5 27 Q | Was it that exposure that led you to play soccer for Clemson? A | Well, I was recruited by a number of different schools and had a number of options, including Clemson and South Carolina. Mark Berson and Trevor Adair were the coaches at South Carolina at the time. They saw me play in Atlanta and said, 'Hey, we think you would be a great fit for the University of South Carolina.' Greg Andruilis, who was the assistant coach at Clemson at the time, came down and said, 'Yeah, I think you have a reasonable shot.' So really, my best options came down to those two and I'm not exactly sure what caused me to pick Clemson at the end of the day. They are both great schools. I was a big University of Georgia fan growing up, but they didn't have a soccer team. Clemson just felt like the same kind of collegiate atmosphere with a soccer program that was really elite. I mean, at the time, Clemson consistently went far in the NCAA playoffs. They hadn't yet won an NCAA championship, but they were close a number of times. Q | Clemson won two national championships during your time there. A | We did. We won my freshman year and my senior year. Q | Tell us more about Coach Ibrahim. His unique approach obviously led to a long period of success. A | He was really an innovator at the time. Soccer was growing here in the United States and he had a tremendous passion for the game. He was a hard- nosed, no-nonsense kind of coach. I think he really had a great appreciation for the 'beautiful game,' and an eye for talent—the type of players, the technical abilities and tactical understanding of players that would fit into his system. And we played, for the time, a pretty attractive brand of soccer. You have teams that can be tough and effective, but it's not that fun to watch. I think we played a good combination of tough discipline defensively, but with attacking flare. And we had a number of players who brought that creativity and excitement. Eric Eichmann played for us and was an All-American. He was a year older than me and was a very gifted player. Bruce Murray, who is one of the greatest players in National Team history, probably was our best player. We came in together as freshmen. We had a good balance of stars and role players. And I think, more than anything else, our teams had amazing chemistry and a great sense of 'team.' That may have been lacking in previous Clemson teams that had more talented international players. You think about the Texans. Bill O'Brien has brought in that same 'team-first' philosophy. It's about the name on the front of the jersey, not the back of the jersey. At Clemson, we had that in spades. We really worked hard and fought hard for each other, and I think that made the difference. Q | What was your next step after Clemson? A | I joined IBM right after Clemson. I worked in Greenville, South Carolina as a marketing representa- tive for mainframe computer equipment. I had a cou- ple of large accounts—Michelin Tire Corporation and the Greenville Hospital System. I spent roughly three years there, and the experience was great. I learned a ton. There were so many talented people there. The training that they put you through was amazing. It gave me a great chance to understand technology and its applications—at least technology at that point in time. It was a great experience, but there was some- thing that was missing for me. I saw graduate school as an opportunity to pivot my career. I went back and visited with Bobby Robinson, who was the athletic director at Clemson. He was a great friend and some- what of a mentor to me. We had lunch, and he said, 'Hey, you're talking about being a coach, wanting to be in the sports business. Which do you want to do?' And I said, 'Well, I want to do both.' He said, 'I think that's the first thing you have to get past. You really can't do both in today's sports environment.' So Indiana was a great option for me. It gave me a chance to get an MBA, work in the athletic department and coach with Indiana's soccer program, which is one of the premier soccer programs in the country. So the Indiana experience was really ideal because it gave me a chance to try out coaching and business. I had never been a full-time coach. I had done camps and coached youth teams. But it gave me a chance to really get in the middle of it and see what it was all about. And it gave me a chance to get the MBA degree and work in the athletic department, doing promotions and marketing and things of that nature. Q | How important was that to your career path? A | It was very important. I was a full-time MBA. In soccer, I think my official title was 'manager,' but it gave me the opportunity to be on the field working with the team on a regular basis. And it was awesome. It was so much fun. It was going back to something that was so comfortable to me, which was working with players. And I loved that part of it. I loved my two years. But, I thought about how my life would develop. I'll be getting married at some point. I'll be having kids. Will this still feel the same 20 years from now? Will I be challenged? Will I have the same fire? So I decided to pursue a sports-related business role. The opportunity in Columbus that eventually emerged was absolutely ideal. It was the perfect balance between the competitive side of the game, being involved with coaches and being involved with players and still being able to lead the development of a business. Q | How did you transition from soccer to football? A | I had spent four years in Columbus, launching the Columbus Crew, which was really a 'bootstrap' startup. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, we created a busi- ness and a way of operating. We built a stadium, we built a training facility, we built an experience for fans and we had really engaged the community in a power- ful way. Then I got a call from a head hunter, and she asked, 'Would you like to be part of the Houston NFL team?' And I said, 'There's not a Houston NFL team.' She said, 'There's going to be.' So I took the chance to come down and visit with Bob McNair and a number of folks here who were leading the start of the team. Being president and general manager of the Columbus Crew was great. It was kind of a 'top of the mountain' experience from a soccer perspective at the time. I could have continued to do that. But I really saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate to myself that our success in Columbus wasn't just about a sport that was most familiar to me. It wasn't just about being in a small market. I wanted to prove to myself that I could be successful in a sport that I haven't played for my entire life, even though I have been a football fan my entire life. And the same principles could apply in one of the largest markets in America. It has all worked out pretty well. Q | Why did the Texans select someone with a soccer background for their football program? Did they just decide that you were the one to take a chance on? A | You know, it's interesting. When I first went to Columbus and met with Lamar Hunt and Clark (his son), I was 29 years old. There were much safer bets for a general manager than me. But something just clicked. We sat down and talked and it felt like we saw the world the same way. And the same thing hap- pened when I sat down with Bob McNair. Even though he was student body president at the University of South Carolina, and I was student body president at Clemson—that's like oil and water. But for some reason, as we talked, I just felt like we saw the world the same way. And when you work in a sports busi- ness, you really do have to be working for somebody who shares your same values. Otherwise, you can't be authentic. I have found over the last 15 years, I have been able to do what I think is right and almost every time, that has aligned well with Bob's perspective. It's not just about watching a football game. [...] It's about engaging with something that really is so meaningful to you, something that is bigger than yourself. It's about tailgating and the bonding and family time that happen there.