How NFL Legend Justin Tuck Tackled Goldman Sachs

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0:32Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Please welcome to the stage Alex Rodriguez and Bloomberg's Jason Kelly for a live taping of The Deal. When we were thinking about who we wanted to be here with us today, we're like, who embodies all of the things that are power players, are The Deal? You know, what are the brands that we might associate? Okay, Giants, Notre Dame, and what's the name of that bank that's downtown? Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, yes. Wharton Business School? Wharton Business School. I think there's literally only one person who fits that. So please help us welcome, for this very special taping of the deal, Justin Tuck.

1:27The Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit returns to Singapore on July 22nd. Our fifth annual Asia-Pacific Summit will explore how business and finance leaders are shaping the next phase of globalization by strengthening resilience and driving a multi-speed energy transition across Asia's diverse markets. Join us for solutions-driven discussions and networking opportunities. Thank you to our summit advisor, Bangkok Bank. Learn more at BloombergLive.com slash SBS-Singapore. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. This is awesome. All right, take it away, champ. So, Justin, I've been such a big fan of yours, and Jason was talking a little bit about some of the accomplishments you've had, some of your history.

2:11But, you know, being a champion is one thing. Being a champion in New York is another. And I know that I was very fortunate to be part of one title in 2009 with the Yankees. And it's changed my life. It's changed my family, the trajectory of my business. You got two titles. How has that impacted your life? Listen, I think the first one was just surreal. You do it the first time. And again, I was very, it was very early in my career. I think that was year three in my career. And, you know, your friend, our friend, Michael Strahan was the guy. So I was just in awe of this whole process. It really didn't hit me until after the Super Bowl, so I didn't necessarily enjoy the lead-up to the Super Bowl because you just didn't know.

2:55But that second one, when I was the captain, I had the opportunity of seeing all the things in my life that had changed after we won the first one, and I got to enjoy the process of going through it, whether that was the road trips, whether that was the media, whether that was you know my i had a son at that time and he got the opportunity to experience it um that type of stuff is just life-changing now not only of obviously being in new york and doing it but um just you know solidifying that like we did it again that that was just amazing so justin notre dame then undergrad then you go to business school at wharton then you win two titles with the giants and now you're at gomas sacks i mean it's blue chip everywhere yeah but take me back I remember when I was 10 years old, it was the first time that I had a vision for what I wanted my life to be.

3:43And I called it the two Bs. I was sitting there in New York City, Washington Heights with my father, watching the Yankees, the Mets. And it was at that point that I wanted the two Bs based on business. I was driven for those two things. When did you first start thinking about business? And which one's harder, business or being a giant? Yeah, I mean, listen, I grew up on a pig farm in Kelton, Alabama. There's probably more people in this room than there is in Kelton, Alabama. I was going to say, if you were waiting for like Kelton, Alabama. Oh, no, no, no. They're not here. I'll take Alabama. Alabama, anyone.

4:22So for me, I think the only thing I thought about was from a sports perspective is how do I utilize football to provide a phenomenal education that my parents can't afford? You know, my mom and dad was not going to be able to send me to Notre Dame. My mom and dad was not going to be able to send me to Warden. But I knew if I did what I needed to do on the football field, and I played basketball and baseball, I knew that that was going to afford me the opportunity to go other places. And so, like, for me, I never thought about anything other than, hey, play a great football, get a great education.

4:59The time when I started to think about all the other ancillary things that could come off of this, I'm talking to my cousin at the time and this is my rookie year in the league and he said something to me that he had probably heard from someone else and this is somewhat of a known phrase now but like he said the NFL stands for not for long and I just started thinking about alright if I'm blessed to play four years even if I'm blessed to play ten I came to the league when I was 21 years old I'd be 31 when I retired what am I going to do then and so I started thinking about that and started really making relationships with people.

5:33I tell all of my friends that play in leagues now, make these relationships now while you're hot. Don't wait until you're the 12th year in and you're just hanging on and you're trying to go into some private equity owner or some hedge fund founder. No, do that stuff now while you're hot, while you're winning Super Bowls or you're playing in all-star games. And then they can be a part of your journey. I had so many guys that were part of my journey of taking young Justin Tuck to think about going to Gordon, think about going to Goldman Sachs, think about investing in XYZ. Whereas if I was left to my own advices there, which is fine, I'll probably be back on a form somewhere in Alabama, which I love to do, but I probably wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have those relationships prior to leading me to what the opportunities could be.

6:25Well and it's interesting too to think about what your playbook was because there are, as there often are on this show, like, echoes to you. You know, Alex has talked about how, you know, he would literally, like, go in his cleats and into Jerry Reinsdorf's office or, you know, other owners. You know, my understanding is you were literally, like, working the suites at Giant Stadium, right? Is that fair? I don't know. When I say working, I mean networking. Yeah, for sure. I don't know if it's even legal for me to get this information, to be honest with you. But I had a phenomenal relationship with the Giants, their ownership, and people that work.

7:04And I was just like, man, who owns that? Who is it? And most of the time, they would know that guy, he runs XYZ Financial Services. Or this guy, he and his family owns this real estate group, whatever it looks like. And over time, I was just like, I just had a good game. It's Monday. I'm not doing anything. I should be making relationships. So I started talking to our staff about, hey, Is there anybody I should be talking to? So I got names of people who own the suites and started just reaching out to them and just, you know, doing a coffee chat or dinner or lunch or whatever it looked like. And I didn't want anything.

7:40I didn't go in and say, hey, can you help me here? I just I was interested in how they got to where they got to. What are some things that you can tell me about your story or your process or your journey that if I decide to go this route? Because I don't believe in reinventing the wheel. I think people have come before all of us that have done things that we would like to do. So just learn from them and try not to make the same mistakes they made. So that was the premise. And then, again, over time, they got to see me for eight, nine years in the journey of Justin Tuck. And now I'm at Goldman Sachs.

8:11And you better believe I'm calling those people and being like, hey.

8:17So that part of it was phenomenal in my transition. Because I tell people all the time, transition, if you're thinking about transitioning for something, make it a long transition. Don't try to just transition. Because if you think about, look at me at football. Think about how long I played football to get to that point. So if I'm transitioning into finance, why do I think I'm going to go from being a highly talented football player or athlete and go right into the next transition as that highly talented person in finance or person in real estate or person in whatever it is you're doing? No, no, no.

8:50You need to get back to being the Pop Warner person over here and go through that process of learning all the ancillary things that's going to make you that Pro Bowl caliber or that all-star caliber businessman and not think that our ego is so great that we got to go from here to here. That's not realistic. Now, you're building teams at Goldman Sachs. Kind of the same things you were doing with Giants. You mentioned you were the captain of the team, right? What lessons and how has that mindset translated to the world of business? Yeah, I think if I think about things that I would do on a daily basis as the captain of a football team and now as a managing director of leading teams at Goldman, it's very simple, to be honest with you.

9:33Like, invest in the people around you. In football, it looks different. It might be, hey, I'm bringing this rookie and his family into our house and cooking him a meal and making sure I learn everything there is and know about him, his story, his wife, his kids, et cetera, et cetera. And I use that on the football fields, too. I mean, fourth and one, and we need to make a stop. I know exactly what triggers this person. I know exactly what his motivations is. I know exactly what's going to get him so hyped for this moment, right? In the fourth quarter, and we need to get a stop to win a Super Bowl.

10:03We're tired, and guys are – I know exactly how to point those, you know, the right things. I knew which guy would like for me to curse him out on the football field. I knew which guy I needed to pull to the side and pat him on his back and say, man, it's okay, you're doing this right, right? Keep doing what you're doing. I knew exactly how to finagle that. And the same thing in the business and my team at Goldman. I know exactly how to position our team. And again, as you bring on new people, you've got to learn it. But I know exactly how to position them, what clients they need to be paired with and which ones the synergies are right for this person to be paired with that client, et cetera, et cetera.

10:40And that's, I think, is very, it's simple. If you pay attention to people, if you take an ownership in knowing what your team looks like and what really moves the needle for them, And it allows you to make the right decisions around a lot of different things in the business.

10:59This week on Leaders with me, Francine Lacqua. I speak to tennis legend Rafa Nadal about how he stayed competitive despite injury. I was able to enjoy the victories probably more than if I will not have this issue. One iconic match. In my mind was, I am almost dead. And whether he misses playing. I don't miss tennis because there was nothing else to offer. Listen and watch Leaders with me, Francine Lacqua, on Bloomberg Television or wherever you get your podcasts. And so from a business perspective, as Alex alluded to, you were blending this early, you know, your interest in business. But you also had to think about your business as a football player.

11:44Yeah. How did you think about that? And, you know, I know Alex has had this experience or Alex had this experience of getting smarter about the world of baseball and negotiations and all of that. How did you do that? And how did you think about your deal making as a player? Yeah, I think I think back to your point about when you win, you get more opportunities. You get opportunity to sit in some of these rooms that you like when I was a rookie. The contract was a contract. It was, you know, you trusted your agent to do the right things for you and get the best outcome for you. as you got older and you you had more success you could dictate a little bit more right and you could you could tell your agent hey i want to play for this team or i don't want to play for that team i like this you know and then like with the relationships i had with the mayor family and the titch family and the gms i could talk about things around like hey here's where i think i'm weak we're weak here's where i think i can get stronger and etc etc here's where i think the team could get stronger and they listened to it they didn't listen to me to the point was like We were going to just go out and, like, hey, Justin, give us a list of players.

12:46But they listened to us from the perspective. They knew, like, at the time after Shre left, it was me and Eli's team. So they knew that we owned that locker room. Eli Manning. We are discussing. For those of you not in a first name, Bailey's thesis. Eliza Manning. Yeah. Yeah. So we owned the locker room. That locker room was our place, and we didn't allow nonsense in it. But to that point, we knew the players. we knew what because we were just an extension of Coach Coughlin and we knew how to navigate that locker room in a way that we could go back in the offseason and say hey here's where we're strong, here's where we're weak that was the start of kind of like my deal making or negotiations with when I was thinking about contracts at a later point One of the things that we've obviously touched on but I want to sit for a minute with is you do it, talk about deals You do a deal, one day contracts, you can retire as a giant.

13:43Great move. And then you decide to go to business school. That's a big decision. Then you decide to go work for Goldman Sachs. When you list the sort of places you've been, I think you're one of one. And so why did you make those decisions? Why did you decide to go to school? And then why did you decide to go to Goldman? There's a lot of decisions there, but like it was probably because I wanted to learn how to be a better steward of the gifts and the talents and the resources God had given me. Again, growing up where I grew up, not a lot of people get the opportunities that I had, and I didn't want to squander those opportunities.

14:27So me going back to business school was to get smarter about honestly just managing my own opportunities. Now, that morphed into a lot more, but that was the infancy of the idea. You wanted to know more about how to run the business of Justin. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I was getting inbounds from all different opportunities, right? Whether that be on the real estate side, whether that be going into media. I dibbed in that for a little bit. And then also on the financial side. So I wanted to learn more about that. Goldman honestly was because my grandfather used to say something to me that stuck.

15:05To this day I use it often. He goes, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And what he meant by that was there's so many cases in history where decisions have been made for us. And so when I think about the relationships and the conversations I had in those locker rooms and the advice I had to give kids, and I say kids, rookies and younger players about how to navigate New York City, whether that was on the field, off the field situation. When I was really, really thinking about what I wanted to do, I started to really think about, you know, how do I represent us at the highest of my ability?

15:47And I couldn't think of any other place that gave me an opportunity to be in these rooms and be a part of these decision-making deals than in a place like Goldman Sachs. And, like, you know, I get the opportunity to talk to, you know, a lot of our partners of the firm, obviously David and John, who are doing an absolutely phenomenal job. David Solomon and John Waldron, again. I think they know me. This guy, I mean, with, like, the first names. I mean, you know. I still call them Mr. and Mr. and Mr. But they don't like that, so I call them David and John. But I get the opportunity to see that. And the thing I always tell my team is I don't really care about owning a bigger piece of the pie.

16:30I care about making the pie bigger. So, yeah, that's what wakes me up in the morning. And I think that's what drives me to continue to be successful. That's why Goldman. Platform. Platform, 100%. So, Justin, when you think about when you were a rookie, and in recent news you saw there was an investor that came in for a 10 % piece for the Giants. at$10 billion. When you were a rookie, it was probably one, two, or three. It's probably 4X, 5X, 7X. Yeah. A couple questions there. What do you think is the best investment in sports? And what do you make of this whole thing? Where does it stop? Where does it go?

17:07Yeah. What are your thoughts? Listen, I think Roger Goodell and team are doing absolutely. You're a quick study. I love it. That's good. I'll give you another tip on about me. I listen loudly. but I think Roger is doing a phenomenal job it would be hard pressed to think that there's an investment in sports better than the NFL obviously I'm biased, there's a lot of people who represent a lot of sports leagues and sports franchises out there that would argue that and I would take that argument but again, where does it stop? I don't know if it does if you think about where media rights are going and now private equity money coming in and the consolidation around you know, media, et cetera, et cetera.

17:53I'm not smart enough to know where it stops. I'm not betting on it. I think it is a popular game that's getting popular, more popular. I guess a better question is, if you were the championship year in your second or third year, right? Yeah. If somebody told you the Giants would be worth$10 billion in 2025, would you have said true or false? I probably would have said false. So it'd be interesting to see as we sit here today in 2025 and 2035 where this goes. But I have no reason to think that it has a – it might have a slowing down power, but I don't think it has a stopping power. You alluded to something, Justin, and you mentioned it, private equity coming in.

18:34I had a conversation earlier today with Tom Garfinkel and Mike Garagetti about Aries investment in the Dolphins. you are, through your studies and now through your day-to-day work, very familiar with the power of institutional capital. How does that change the business of sports in your estimation? We went through this period where David Blitzer and Josh Harris and Mark Lasry, et cetera, et cetera, were making personal investments. Now it's fund investments. How does that alter the landscape, especially for people in this room who are thinking about investing in sports? When you bring in that much capital in and being able to do a lot of different things, I think the movement in sports investing is going to be very interesting.

19:17I don't think it's going to stop. I think you're only going to see more others get involved in it. Just going back to the Giants deal, you think about that valuation with no control, no path to ownership. What's stopping the next team, next owners from doing that? There's a lot of different issues that I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis for clients, whether that's estate issues, tax issues, et cetera, et cetera. But I just feel like we're at the cusp of this, and it's going to start to happen in not only the major league, the major sports leagues, but also some of the smaller ones, too, where valuations are getting so high.

19:58What individual can afford these teams? right and as as families like the mayor and tish family look for liquidity um i think the only the next option is private equity thinking about the future the question that i would think about is you know what would an investor pay for notre dame football yeah and i'm just thinking like what what world to win and how fast is it moving but you know as well as i know right sometimes this is just a I mean a play of like forget the numbers I just want to own this asset so a lot of times that can get outrageous I mean when when when Ballmer bought the Clippers that you know what was it two billion and now we were like you're insane and now yeah I mean like so I just I mean I think yeah who knows right but when you think about the college game I mean you know we We watched, you know, you watched and you watch with much more vested interest.

20:56I watched just as a college football fan, Notre Dame play University of Miami the other night. That was a phenomenal game in part because of everything that was on display, including the transfer portal, NIL money, all of those things. These are the things that didn't exist when you went to one of the premier, you would probably say the premier, college football programs in the country. When you look at that through the Wharton-Goldman-Justin Tuck lens, what do you make of college sports these days? Listen, I just wish I was an 18-year-old, 17-year-old kid. In some cases, a 16-year-old kid. Like, they're going—it's even diving into college—I mean, in high school.

21:31High school, yeah. So, like, listen, I definitely think these athletes deserve to get paid because for those who wasn't a college athlete, there's not much else for you to do. the program is so demanding on your time for good reason, right? They're giving you a phenomenal education most places. And you get an opportunity to play the sport you love basically for free. But like outside of that, I didn't get the opportunity to really, really engage with the student body as much as I would have if I had a few dollars in my pocket, right? And who knew that these athletes are going to be making millions in college?

22:08Yeah, it's more than a few dollars in the pocket now. Yeah, it's a lot of a few more. So like I definitely think they deserve to get paid. I just hope that this thing gets structured around it before it really, really gets out of control.

22:23All right. So in our remaining couple minutes, we're going to do our rapid fire that we do on every episode of The Deal. First thing that comes to your mind. Sure. All right. Yeah. You seem enthusiastic. These never go well. What's one word to describe your deal-making style? truthful what's more important to your data or gut i would say gut that has been fed the right data

22:55who's your dream deal-making partner uh i don't really have a dream person but i mean just a Alex Rodriguez. Oh, boy. Jason loves that. I know. What's the best piece of advice you ever received on deal-making or business? If you tell the truth, it's easy to remember. What's the worst advice you've been given? You're special. What is your hype song? There's a story behind that, by the way. What's my hype song? Phil Collins in the air tonight. The drum solo? Yeah. There you go. You started a literacy non-profit called Rush with your wife Lauren. What's your favorite book? Wow.

23:44I'm going to give a shot to a friend of mine. I love reading The Other Westmore. Oh, really good. If you can only watch one sport for the rest of your life, which one is it? Y 'all are going to be surprised by this one. And it's not even about me. It's about my wife. because if I had to watch another sport, I want her right beside me. So she loves tennis, so I would watch tennis. Oh, there you go. Very sweet answer. She's going to see this. You're not going to make us cry. What team do you want to see win a championship more than any? Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program. Just to be very clear.

24:27Just in case anyone doubted who we were talking about. All right. What's your advice for someone who wants a career just like yours? Do the work. No shortcuts in this. Do the work. All right. Well, and on that note, go Irish. Go Irish. All right. Thank you, Justin, so much. Thank you, Justin.

24:56Thank you, Justin. Originals. The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly. This show was produced by Anna Mazarakis, Stacey Wong, Lizzie Phillip, and Eden Martinez. Original music and engineering by Blake Maples. Our booker is Paige Keffer. David E. Ravella is our managing editor. Our executive producers are Jason Kelly, Amy Keene, Jordan Opplinger, Trey Shallowhorn, Regina Delia, Kelly Laferriere, and Ashley Honig. Sage Bauman is our head of podcasts. Special thanks to Rachel Carnevale, Elena Saus Angeles, Nick Silva, Adrian Toscano, Mark Dawson, Michael Katz, and Micah Rondo. Joshua DeVoe is our director of photography.

25:46Rubab Shakir is our creative director. Art direction is from Jacqueline Kessler. Camera operation by Summa Hussain, Stephen Craig, Christopher Dekunha, Michael Torellas, and Black Dog. Taja Smith is our video editor. You can listen to The Deal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also tune into The Video Companion on Bloomberg Originals and on Bloomberg TV. Thanks for listening. Thank you.