NATIONAL PRE-SEASON SHOWCASE WITH JUSTIN BRANTLEY OF THE BRANTLEY METHOD & KIM MICHELSON FROM HONEST GAME – EPISODE 305
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Justin Brantley from The Brantley Method and Kim Michelson from Honest Game jump on the Hoop Heads Pod today to let everyone know about their National Pre-Season Showcase Series which will be held this fall in seven different locations.
- Boys Basketball Players – Class of 2021 & 2022
- Combine Testing (Performed by NBA Combine Testing Service – BAM Testing)
- Recruiting Seminar & Game-Plan
- NCAA Eligibility “Care Plan” (Presented by Honest Game)
- Skill Development
- Film
Justin and Kim explain their roles in the creation of this brand new event and how it brings value to student-athletes, their families, and the college coaches who are recruiting those players.
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Get ready to learn more about the National Pre-Season Showcase Series from Justin Brantley of The Brantley Method and Kim Michelson from Honest Game.
What We Discuss with Justin Brantley & Kim Michelson
- The “Why” behind the National Pre-season Showcase
- The basketball & recruiting benefits to student-athletes
- The academic benefits to student-athletes provided by Honest Game
- The Showcase evaluation process and what the players will experience
- How The Brantley Method and Honest Game have worked together to provide max value to Showcase participants
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THANKS, JUSTIN BRANTLEY & KIM MICHELSON
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TRANSCRIPT FOR NATIONAL PRE-SEASON SHOWCASE WITH JUSTIN BRANTLEY OF THE BRANTLEY METHOD & KIM MICHELSON FROM HONEST GAME – EPISODE 305
[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here this morning without my co-host, Jason Sunkle, but I am pleased to welcome back to the podcast, Justin Brantley from the Brantley Method, and welcome to the podcast, Kim Michelson from Honest Game. Kim, welcome.
Kim Michelson: [00:00:14] Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
Justin Brantley: [00:00:17] Thanks for having me, Mike. Excited as always,
Mike Klinzing: [00:00:19] No question. Glad to have you back. you reached out to me about, an event that you’re going to put on and would like to have this be the kickoff for that event. So I want you to go ahead and tell people. What you guys have planned, like super excited to be a part of it and help you to get this out to the masses.
Justin Brantley: [00:00:37] Absolutely. Absolutely. So, this is the first ever live introduction of, any event that I’ve done, you know, typically. It’s a press release or it’s sending out emails and you know, that’s kind of where we leave it at. So, you know, to be able to unveil this to your listeners first, I think that that’s, an awesome opportunity.
I had a lot of fun the last time on the [00:01:00] podcast with you. So, we pretty much what we have, what happened here. one of the things that you and I talked a lot about when we were on the podcast last time is the recruiting process. College coaches ability to evaluate guys, or the lack of evaluations that happen based off of, you know, guys playing at the smaller schools or guys not playing on those top AAU teams, et cetera.
so, you know, I went into problem solving mode and started thinking about a way that we could get better evaluations to college coaches. started going into problem solver mode and trying to figure out how we could get rid of, you know, you, you read, No. Read a bio on a kid or stat line and it says he sucks.
Seven. You go to watch him in person and he’s six, three, six, three and a half, and. You know, for college coaches. and even for me when I was at the prep level and recruiting and trying to find players, you know, you don’t have time to waste at all. you don’t have time, you know, [00:02:00] to, to go out and watch a player play live because you think he fits the mold of what you need and come to find out, Hey, you’re looking for, you know, a six, eight and above big.
And they can play above the rim. And that’s what the coach promised you he was. And you show up and he’s, he’s six, five, and, you know, can’t get off the ground and save his life. So, I thought it was important to, to bring to the table, a non biased way of evaluation of student athletes. so immediately I went into, you know, mode the mode of how can I make this the best version of what I’m trying to create.
You know, how can I, how can I do this and, and bring something to market that, you know, is not already out there, right? Cause nobody needs just another camp. I think that, you know, that there’s plenty of those in the ecosystem. so. The first step for me was to figure out the, the model. and the model that we came up with was a purely testing and evaluation model.
There, there is no, there [00:03:00] is no gameplay. There is no, you know, five on five, which is, you know, not, it’s rare in, in the market. It’s rare. And what, what is currently being done so. What we did was, first and foremost, we’re going to go with a MBA, combine testing model, which we, we brought in bam testing, who is the testing partner of the NBA combine.
and they’re going to come in and they’re going to do the, the, the height and weight. They’re going to do the wingspan they’re going to do, you know, the vertical they’re going to do all of the things, all the same measureables that a student athlete will get at the NBA combine. They’re going to get out our showcases.
so you know, they’re going to walk away with the ability to, you know, say definitively. Yes, I’m six, five. yes, I have a 30 inch vertical, which is something that, you know, is a metric. You know, people throw around a lot, Hey, this is what my vertical is, but where, where’s the testing standard coming from on that?
Right. And. How do we know that it’s an unbiased testing [00:04:00] standard? And you know, your uncle didn’t just put a piece of paper up on the, on the, you know, on the garage door. Now you’re marketing to college coaches that you have a 30th vertical. and then, you know, outside of the testing model, from, from that standpoint, we’re going to do, or I take them through the same shooting testing that’s done at the NBA combine.
so, you know, not only are you going to have these metrics, but we’re filming everything. So college coaches will quickly be able to identify and evaluate, okay, Hey, this kid, he’s got size. he’s got the explosiveness I need. He can run, he can shoot. those, those are the first steps right? so now it goes beyond basketball.
We had to figure out how can we identify that academically these kids fit the school that’s recruiting them. And that was the biggest challenge for me. I know when we spoke on the podcast last time, I talked about my nephew, who currently plays at Western Illinois, who was literally a week away from being an eligible, not being able to attend college based off of not taking [00:05:00] the right.
Courses. there, there was one core course that, and luckily we were able to get it fixed, and, and get it petitioned through the NCA and to make it happen. But there’s so many kids out here that have the talent, they have the ability to have the drive, they have all of those things, but the academic piece, is not there.
So. That was my, my, my hangup for a moment was how am I going to bring this full circle so that these student athletes aren’t, you know, just walking away with, with a camp T shirt and an experience and, and then it’s not beneficial on any level outside of that. and that’s where honest game came in. I was, I was blessed to be connected with, chemical, some from honest game and talk a little bit about what their vision was and their mission.
and it’s so greatly aligned with what we’re doing. So. Not only the student athletes walk away with their metrics, they’re going to walk away with what’s called a care plan, and Kim will get a do a little bit more of a elaborate explanation of what that is, but they’ll [00:06:00] know exactly where they stand on the eligibility standpoint.
they’ll know the roadmap moving forward from that camp forward as to what the eligibility steps and process looks like. and, and quickly be able to, identify, Hey, these are the things that need to be doing on the court, off the court. we’re going to mix in some, you know, some, some social media forums.
We’re going to mix in some recruiting panels. I mean, we’re going to make sure that these student athletes are walking away with, with everything that they could need for this journey.
And one thing that’s kind of adjusted a little bit on it is, you know, because Corona, obviously, you know, everybody’s experiencing differences and we have to figure out a way to adjust and adapt. and one of the adjustments we made is we’re limiting numbers. so typically in a camp setting, you know, you want as many kids as you can get, right?
Because that’s where you make your money. Well. For us, we had to make a decision on is it about impact or income? and for me it’s always going to [00:07:00] be income or impact over income. So what we did was we’re limiting it to 200 participants. Just in the classes and the junior and senior classes because they’re the ones that need it the most.
you know, when, when Corona hit and I was thinking about, okay, Hey, maybe now is not the time, maybe it’s, you know, I need to push this back or do it again. Do it next year and just, you know, scrap it for this year. Yeah. I sat there and I started getting all the text messages and emails from players and former players and you know, guys that this year were seniors and you know, next year going gonna be seniors and they’re missing that AAU, they’re missing that AAU year.
They’re missing the opportunity to showcase themselves in front of college coaches this year. And those, you know, those kids, they don’t get another year, right? Like they’re not going to get an opportunity to redo their senior year or, you know, redo their junior year. So that’s what made me say, you know what?
We still gotta press for, we just gotta do it differently. So we’ll be able to break them into small groups of 20 max. we’ll be able to [00:08:00] maintain six foot social distancing. we’re really excited about the, the different things that we’re going to be able to do. and, and hopefully the evaluations that we’re going to be able to deliver to college coaches, where coaches will be able to read about this player, watch his film, look at his academics and know, Hey, this is who I want, who I need.
Mike Klinzing: [00:08:18] So what I love about the idea when you first told it to me was that. The concept that it has a benefit on two sides. So it has a benefit to the student athlete and that they put together this profile as an athlete, but then they also get this help from Kim and honest game in terms of their academic situation to make sure that they’re progressing and taking the steps that they need in order to be eligible as a college athlete.
And then you take it to the other side, and it’s a tremendous benefit, as you said, to college coaches who now have. A set of reliable metrics, both on the athletic and the academic side that enable them to be able to effectively evaluate your student [00:09:00] athletes. So talk a little bit about the when, where, why, part of when the showcase is going to take place and where.
Justin Brantley: [00:09:07] Absolutely. So we’ve got seven locations. the first event, the, the inaugural kickoff event, September 12th and 13th. it’s at community first champion center, which is an Appleton, Wisconsin. So that’s going to be our first event, that, that very next week. We’re in New Jersey, at apex center. it’s in Hillsborough, New Jersey.
and then October 3rd and fourth, we come to the great state of Ohio. We’re at, the brand new Cedar point sports center. I, I’m really excited about that event because. For anybody that knows about Cedar point, you know, one of their biggest things is how the weekends, you know, they, they decorate the park and they turn it into like this Halloween themed party.
and it’s, you know, all age ranges. I mean, there’s guys, you know, in their sixties and seventies that every year go out and ride the roller coasters. And, [00:10:00] what we were able to do with Cedar point is. All of our attendees will get a free ticket to holiday weekend. So I’m excited about that and being able to share that with, w with everybody.
from there we go to Rocky top sports world, which is in Gatlinsburg, Tennessee. that is on October 17th and 18th. October 24th and 25th we’re at Rocky mountain event center, which is located in Rocky mountain, North Carolina. I’m, you know, we’re looking at different regions and being able to compare and contrast.
I think it’s going to be interesting in see all social media, the guys who say, Hey, you know, I was the vertical champion from, from Wisconsin and, you know, talk a little bit of trash back and forth. Who put North Carolina guys. And then, you know, our last two events, November 7th and eighth, Highlands sports center or Highland sports complex and wheeling, West Virginia.
and we wrap in November 14th and 15th, Myrtle Beach sports center. So, seven events, seven [00:11:00] States. And hopefully when it’s all said and done, I’ll still be standing.
Mike Klinzing: [00:11:05] Totally understood. All right, Kim, time to bring you into the conversation. Tell us a little bit about how you got connected to Justin and then give us an idea of.
How you see yourself fitting into this event and then we’ll dive deeper into the things that you’re doing with honors game and how you’re trying to help student athletes.
Kim Michelson: [00:11:22] Terrific. Thank you. Thank you both so much for having me. I, I was lucky enough to meet Justin, through, some sort of mutual connections and it was really to talk about, you know, all Ohio and how maybe how honest game could help him.
And the conversation lasted more than an hour and a half, and it was, we really connected and I think. Overarching over all of it was this sort of feeling that, yeah, sports matter, but, but it’s part of a bigger picture, you know, it’s part of this picture of sort of personal development and sort of sports as the carrot to sort of other things in life and, and how we could work together.
[00:12:00] in addition to sort of bringing kids this sort of important athletic development, but to sort of reach the holistic student athlete. And it was really a great conversation. And, so we are, you know, we are really excited to be able to work with, with Justin on these, any showcases.
Mike Klinzing: [00:12:16] Tell us a little bit about how your company got started.
What was the thought process. For you getting it started, where did your inspiration come from? Just maybe tell us a little bit about the process of getting honest game up and running. What you had in mind were from the start.
Kim Michelson: [00:12:31] Sure. So we, it kind of started a little bit as a passion project. my co founder and I, she sits on the NCAA high school board and I have worked with student athletes, you know, for almost 20 years and we kept seeing the same things happen over and over.
We kept seeing, you know, this reactive process, not a proactive process. And often by the time a student athlete would find that they had academic issues, whether it was classes that were not counted from their high school or [00:13:00] act or sat scores or, or overall GPA and the sliding scale, that it was too late to catch up.
And then it would be this process of credit recovery and how do I get this? How do I help? How do I fix this? And I think my cofounder and I looked at each other and said, there has to be a better way. You know, and similar to what Justin talked about earlier with, you know, really kind of being able to measure it and having real data.
Like, you know, what is this? What does this vertical look like? And you know, all that. And how, how tall is this player? Actually it was the same thing on the academic side. I mean, people just are. You know, they really want this knowledge. They really want data, they want real data. And the problem with eligibility is that it’s, it’s pretty complicated.
It’s, I like to say it’s similar to the tax code. and you know, on average in high schools across the country, you know, it’s not unusual for classes to have more than a hundred classes that are different on the curriculum guide that don’t match up on there on the NCAA portal. So we’re here to kind of fix that process and we kind of came [00:14:00] together and.
You know, apropos, sort of named it honest game because we really wanted to bring honesty and transparency and integrity to a process that we felt was really confusing. All right, so when I hear what you’re doing and what you would have been trying to do as you’re getting the company started, my first question would be, how do you get access to all of the data from a student’s academic record in order to be able to compare it to.
The guidelines from the NCAA. So just talk to us a little bit about how you thought about that problem as you started the company and then how you actually go about collecting the information you need from the student athletes, from the school, from the club team in order to be able to help the kids who are a part of it.
Kim Michelson: [00:14:44] Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I mean, student privacy is probably, you know, next to HIPAA and in healthcare it’s incredibly protected data. So, getting the information is one thing. And number two, our company is based on the integrity of [00:15:00] the data. So when we work with high schools. We work directly with the it department and similar to whatever their learning management system is.
we get that data directly from there. So it has it’s verifiable academic data as well as their course list. We work with, with folks like Justin, Justin and on other club teams, they, they gather the data via academic transcripts. So academic transcripts of course, look different all over the country, which makes it difficult for college coaches.
So we take that data as well as there. Test scores. and we have to actually see it. We don’t trust anything we haven’t seen and that we know is verifiable and we kind of added to put it to our algorithm and it turns this sort of regular high school GPA into a NCAA core GPA.
Mike Klinzing: [00:15:46] Got it. So when I’m thinking about the showcase process, so I’m a kid who registers for the showcase.
I show up as a basketball person. I have a pretty good idea of what Justin side of this thing is going to look like. So give me an [00:16:00] idea of what it’s going to look like from the student athletes side in terms of what they’re going to do and how they’re going to act, interact with honors game at the showcase.
What does that look like?
Kim Michelson: [00:16:09] Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. I, you know, Justin is going to, you know, actually as he’s building these profiles, he’s going to, require a academic transcript. And as we have these academic transcripts, they will be downloaded into our portal, our technology portal. and then we will be able to, prior to each location, each student athlete will get a college athletic report on eligibility, C a R E care.
and they will get one of these, and they will get it. They’ll get two of them. the first one will be at the showcase. And so they will know. And it’s, what I like to say about it is that it’s step-by-step. Every class they’ve taken, every grade they’ve had and calculates. D one, D two, and Nia. So they will know exactly, you know, where they are from eligibility, eligibility standpoint.
And I think, you know, we, what we kind of like to do with honest game is, the stuff we’re [00:17:00] talking about, we talk about college access. We talk about college admissions, we talk about, you know, athletics. These are incredibly, sort of emotionally charged issues, particularly because, you know. We have a one point $6 trillion college debt right now and it’s expensive.
It’s almost unaffordable to go to college. So, but what honest game does and our care plan does is it takes these emotional topics and puts them in a very unemotional platform. It is what it is. This is just data.
Mike Klinzing: [00:17:25] So once I’m, once I have that, that eligibility sheet in front of me and I see what I’ve done in the past, then I’m assuming that through that process, then they see, okay, here’s what I’ve done so far.
So far. Now, what is my plan moving forward? Especially if I’m an underclassmen and I still have years ahead. Probably the best time from your perspective and from the student athlete perspective to get involved and to be able to have this sheet in front of you is when you start your high school career.
So basically, if I’m a freshman, it’s going to be even more valuable [00:18:00] if I can have this sort of tracking device. Following me through so that I can make sure that I’m doing the things I need to do in order to be able to be eligible.
Kim Michelson: [00:18:08] Yes, you want to start as early as possible, but we know that’s not always realistic.
So in Justin’s case, you know, we’re going to have juniors and seniors, so one of the key things for the juniors will be. You know, people understanding that there’s, you know, you know, a 10, seven rule, you know, that, you know, 10 of 16 courses, classes have to be completed before the end of your junior year.
So we need to give them, we give them, we give them a roadmap. It’s kind of like a yellow brick road. Here’s where you are, here’s what classes you’ve taken that aren’t counting. So we give them a, it’s not just a, Hey, here’s where you are. It’s here’s your grades in progress. We gamified it a bit and say, but if you can move these up to A’s or you can move these up to BS, your core GPA will be this versus this.
So we try to give guidelines so that people like Justin folks like Justin has the student athletes, parents, the student athlete, those sort of, in a sense, we’re building wraparound services for these folks so that they can all help this particular student athlete get where they need to go [00:19:00] to have what we call access to college athletics.
Mike Klinzing: [00:19:04] Alright, So let me ask you on the other side of it, just like Justin kind of has two sides of it with the athletes and then with the coaches. Do you have any connection with coaches? Have you had any discussions with people from the NCAA with college coaches in terms of them with admissions offices, talking about how your reports
are viewed from that side of it? Have you had those discussions?
Kim Michelson: [00:19:28] Well, are, you know, we’re really, I mean, the youth market is a $17.8 billion market. So we’re kind of like, and we really want to help coaches, high school coaches, club club coaches and students and parents. That’s really our sort of bread and butter. But we have shared our report, the care plan with colleges and you know, one example would be Miami of Ohio.
We shared it with them and they basically said. Oh my God, we just did our job for us. They’re like, you handed it to us on a silver platter, and you know this as well as I do. Like, do you want me to have a larger compliance department? But when you go D to HBCU, [00:20:00] a lot of those coaches have to calculate this themselves.
So for sure. Yeah. We don’t want to give anybody any culture reason to say no for a student. So we want to make, you know, when you register for the eligibility center with a used to call the clearing house, it should be a formality. It shouldn’t be, wow, I’m not eligible.
Mike Klinzing: [00:20:16] Yeah. I can see where if you have that form in a, in a format where the student athlete can see it and clearly understand what they need to do and then where the college can clearly see it and go, wow, this is something that if we have more athletes that are coming in that are aware of what they need to do.
Cause I think as you said that in a lot of cases it’s a part of the student athlete and their family. It’s a lack of awareness. And then that lack of awareness is often. Compounded by just the, the confusion. I liked how you compared it to the tax code. You know, you think about, you might know your own tax situation a little bit, but for most of us.
Something new pops up [00:21:00] or there’s a new tax law enacted and we have no idea. So that’s why you just take your data and you give it to the accountant and it comes back in a nice form that you can send off to the IRS. And so I think this is something very similar in that if you can kind of cut through that backend.
Terminology and changes and all that stuff, and give it to the people who need it in a form that’s easy for them to understand and actually put to use and utilize. Then everybody comes out ahead. So I think that what you guys are trying to do here and putting, combining the athletic side of it. With the student side of it is clearly something that lots of us talk about that lots of us would love to be able to see that interaction, that interplay between the student and the athlete become as balanced as it possibly can to the benefit of those student athletes when they.
Get done, being a students, they go out and be productive members of society. And that’s what I think we’re headed for when it comes to what you guys are trying to do with this.
Justin Brantley: [00:21:56] Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the other things, one of the other pieces I’ll add in Mike [00:22:00] is, you know, you always look for silver linings, right?
And you know, one of my, one of my high school coaches told me a long time ago, you know, great ones adjust. And you know, when we made the adjustment to a smaller number, right? and a smaller sample size, cause originally the plan was, you know, we’re gonna start at seventh grade, and we’re gonna have seventh through, through 12th.
And it was going to give us the ability, like you said, to, to start the tracking a lot earlier, to catch the problems a lot earlier. the difference is now. Just focusing on those junior and senior classes. now I have the ability to, to travel through this process with each of these individuals one-on-one.
So, you know, they’re not going to be guys that are going to come to the event and then they get this report and it’s hands off. That’s not the way that we’re doing things. You know, they’re going to get this report and they’re going to have follow ups and phone calls and zooms and emails from me. leading up until.
No, the seniors will get a second care plan, at the start of their [00:23:00] second semester, so we’ll be able to look at, okay, Hey, this is what it was when before your senior year started, when you submitted your transcript from your junior year. This is where you’re at now. Now we’ve just got to finish the process.
We’ve just got to get to the end and graduate, right? Or, Hey, you, you didn’t make the adjustment that we needed. So maybe now we need to start looking at junior college or whatever the case may be. and then for the juniors, they’re going to get their second care plan at the end of the year. So they’ll be able to look at, okay, Hey, we got this on.
you know, let’s say they were there at the Wisconsin date. We got this on September 12th. and that allowed us to make. XYZ changes. And you know, we went from a 2.2 and probably, you know, scratching the surface of potentially being eligible to a 2.6 or a 2.7. So those are the kinds of things that we’re looking to accomplish.
and we can follow and track and trace from, from start to finish. And I think that that’s going to be important, in setting a model [00:24:00] for the way that we do business and do business moving forward. and you know, those were, when I look at the value adds and I look at, okay. You know, what is a family walking away with from the event?
Because that’s big for me. ROI. You know, I’m a big return on investment guy. I like to under promise and over deliver, and I never want a family or a student athlete to come to one of my events and say, you know what? It was fun, but I really didn’t get anything out of it. So, you know, I think that we’ve, you know, we’re, we’re going to be providing so much value on the backend, that that is a no brainer for student athletes and their families.
Mike Klinzing: [00:24:38] So when a student athlete shows up at the showcase, describe for me what their day is going to look like from when they get there. How do you envision the. Sort of the roadmap of what each day is going to look like for that individual student athlete who signs up.
Justin Brantley: [00:24:53] Yep. So there’s two groups. so we’ll break them into, into classes.
You’ll have your juniors and your [00:25:00] seniors. the senior, the seniors will probably go just, off of age first. the seniors will go through their testing, so they’ll get their height, weight, their vertical. They’ll do all that. So those 100 seniors will be broken up into five groups of 20. and they’ll see.
They’ll circulate through different stations, and it’s a five hour day. so, you know, they’ll do their, all of their measurements. They’ll do their testing, they’ll do all of that. While the seniors are doing that. all of these locations, the smallest small locations are, are the, Are the Wisconsin and the New Jersey, venues, and they each have four courts.
So, you know, we’ve got adequate space to be able to spread these guys out. and that’s one of the things we looked at with the social distancing model and what we’ll do with the juniors while the seniors are going through that testing. The juniors will do. There should be doing their shooting. there’ll be doing all of their clinic stuff, so they’ll, you know, they’ll meet with Kim’s team.
they’ll meet with, you know, we, we’ve got a, a strength conditioning coach [00:26:00] that spent several years at the MBA level of who’s going to be talking to the guys about recovery, talk to them about, you know, training both in season and off season. really just like, like Kim said earlier, wrap around resource where.
Yeah. These student athletes should walk away from this event and not only know more about themselves, but know more about the path and the journey that they’re looking to take moving forward. All right.
Mike Klinzing: [00:26:24] I like it. I want to just go ahead and talk a little bit more about what the testing is going to look like. So for people who maybe aren’t familiar with the NBA shooting, combine, give us some idea. Just give us one or two things that you’re going to put them through from a basketball standpoint.
Justin Brantley: [00:26:39] Yeah, absolutely. So the two main things that we’re going to look at, is stationary, shooting, catching, shoot. so, you know, there’ll be five spots, five spots at three point align, that, that they’ll rotate through catch and shoot, and they’ll take it.
10 threes and we just want to see their ability to catch, catch [00:27:00] and shoot the ball. the great thing about it is there’s five different spots and they’re not shooting at spot one. Then going to spot two cause they’re gonna have time to, you know, so it’s not like, okay, I was too nervous to shoot. No, we’re gonna they’re going to take their time.
Yeah, we’re going to get them warmed up and have a, have them in their optimal performance range there. So that’s the one. And then the other is off the dribble, you know, one dribble pull ups. So we want to see, you know, if guys are able to, you know, trans make it translate to a game situation. You have a lot of guys that can, you’ll stand there and catch and shoot all day long.
But if they have to put the ball on the floor at any point in time, you know, it’s over for them. and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think it’s important to identify, you know, where we’re player’s strengths and weaknesses are. And once again, that’s part of the reason why I was excited about having this with younger student athletes.
Because again, we give them the ability to understand, you know, from a testing standpoint, Hey, I need to get stronger. I need to get faster. I need to work on my vertical. But also, Hey, you know what? I need to work on my one trouble pull up, [00:28:00] going to the left from, you know, from the top of the key. Or I need to work on my ones who will pull up going right from the top of the key.
You know, those are things that I think are important. At important facets of the game. and things that a lot of times you can’t see in gameplay because, you know, student athletes are smart, right? Like basketball players are very smart. You very rarely will see a kid work on something in the game that he’s not good at, or it’s not a strength of his.
So, as a coach of valuating, you never really know that he can’t shoot, you know, going left because, Hey, I’m never going to go left throughout the course of that game. Right, right. So, so this is going to give a true barometer of where that student athlete’s skill set lies. and I think it’s going to be great for, you know, college coaches evaluating and saying, you know, you might have a kid that’s on the bubble, in comparison to another player.
And the question Mark is, you know what. I don’t think he can shoot, but maybe in his high school offense, he needs to be more of a facilitator. Or maybe he’s got one of those old school coaches that says five [00:29:00] passes before shot, and you know, he’s just not getting shots within the flow of that offense.
Well, now that coach that that player has something to show, Hey coach, no, I can shoot the ball and I could shoot the ball at a high clip. and here’s film of that. Alright.
Mike Klinzing: [00:29:14] So let’s go into how people can get signed up, how they can find out more about what each of you are doing. Kim, you can share as well how people can find out how to interact with you outside of the showcase as well. So I don’t know if Justin, do you want to go first? Kim, go second. And then if you guys have any other things that we didn’t touch on that you want to share before we wrap things up, please go ahead and do that. After you share how people can reach out to you and get signed up for the showcase.
Justin Brantley: [00:29:43] so as far as signing up for the showcase, they’ll, they’ll go to www.thebrantleymethod.com. the great thing, I’ve got an amazing web web design team, who has made everything very simple for us for that. So it’d be backslash events, [00:30:00] honest games listed as a partner on our site. But I also want Kim to talk a little bit about her site, but you can get right to honest game site from our site.
I think that, you know, partnership is key in this situation. Without Kim, you know, this wouldn’t be what it, what it is. I think that, you know, that’s the most important piece of the puzzle. I truly believe that if a family is going to do nothing else, they have to identify where they stand academically, in order to move forward.
Because without that, the rest is, is. The rest doesn’t matter. The rest is irrelevant. But as far as registration, you know, your, any of your followers, they’ll have their own coupon code, which I will send to you, after this, after this podcast. So, you know, anybody that’s following, following the who peds podcast, if they, you know, send you a DM and you see that they’re following you, they have a 10% off coupon code that that’s available.
but they can sign up for the site there. And then from there, they’ll submit all their information, their transcript, everything that [00:31:00] we need moving forward, and we’ll start working on that process on the back end.
Mike Klinzing: [00:31:05] Alright, Kim, go ahead and share how people can find out more about what you guys are doing at honest game and how they can reach out to you.
Kim Michelson: [00:31:11] Sure. So we are beyond excited to be working with the Brantley method and, just I feel like that is, like I said, the next generation sort of the future as far as looking at the entire athlete, from a holistic perspective. So. individuals can reach out to us at, find us actually at www dot dot com they can shoot us an email at info, at honesty, game.com, and our, you know, and they can also communicate with us on social media at honest game NCAA.
just to add one more thing to this whole thing is, You know, I think there’s not a lot out there about sort of providing a pathway for academics. And people don’t know this, but you know, there’s, most people don’t know this, that there’s almost a million student athletes a year that are academically ineligible.
And then in urban areas, you know, the Chicagos, the new Yorks, you [00:32:00] know, just sort of the downtown kind of those communities. it’s almost one and two. So most of us, and most of your listeners will probably know a story. And, you know, I think if we all work together and get ahead of this, and sort of help students and families and coaches understand where they are and where they need to go, we’re going to see a lot, a lot more student athletes that are actually, you know, playing and being able to go to college.
Mike Klinzing: [00:32:25] I was thrown when I read that on your website as I was just kind of looking over what you’re doing in preparation for the podcast. And I saw that statistic and I was like, I was blown away by that. When you kind of take it for granted. As someone my, both my parents were in education growing up. And you know, you just, you just kind of take it for granted sometimes, depending on the world that you live in and you forget that not everybody lives in that same world.
Not everybody has access to the same resources. And it’s a shame when you have kids who are capable of performing academically and athletically, and then they get denied that chance. Something [00:33:00] because of whether it’s. Lack of knowledge, whether it’s bureaucratic mistakes, whatever it is that leads to them being ineligible, and if you’re able to step in and fill that void and make it so that student athletes can navigate the process with the help of their school, their coach, their guidance counselor there, a new club, whatever it may be.
Ultimately the goal is to get those kids the opportunity to get a great education and to be able to be eligible to play the sport. That they love, and so I love your mission. I love what you’re trying to do, Justin. I think that this event, like I told you when you first called me and approached me about doing this podcast and being sort of a home for the announcement of putting the showcase out there for people, I was really excited again, because I think that what you’re doing is it’s necessary.
It’s needed. I could see the benefit to everybody who’s involved. There’s benefit for the athletes. And there’s also a benefit on the other side for coaches to be able to have accurate information, to help them to [00:34:00] be able to assess and understand what those student athletes are capable of doing. So congratulations to both of you for coming up with a great idea.
Putting it together and I’m excited to see where it goes when we get to the fall and see what this thing looks like and what you’re both able to do with it. So congratulations.
Justin Brantley: [00:34:14] Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. And I appreciate you taking time out of your day to sit with us. I think that, you know, like I said, I mean, I’m excited about.
The showcases, but I’m more excited about, you know, honest games, entry into the marketplace. And I think that you, you hit on it, you hit the nail right on the head. some of these things that take place when it comes to the eligibility side, they, they don’t pick and choose who they’re going to impact.
And, you know, unfortunately, I’ve been a part of a lot of, you know, Kim said, somebody that has a story. Unfortunately being in this basketball business. I’ve come across way too many people that have that story of, and it’s not necessarily just bad students, right? You have kids that are 3.5, but [00:35:00] Hey, they didn’t take the right amount of course, of core courses, or, you know, the school, the school hasn’t updated all their information with the NCAA.
So, you know, just based off of a technicality. So, you know, for me, that’s probably the thing that drives me the most is, is the ability to bring awareness. And the ability to partner with people that get it and understand, you know, what needs to be done and what changes need to be made. And I think that, you know, holistically from a 30,000 foot view, and I said this kind of joking around about a year ago.
It will be great if you know, high school students, when they were picking out their courses, you know, they could look through a course catalog and have a NCA approved logo right next to all of their courses. Now, you know, hopefully that’s something that’ll happen in the future, but right now there’s a resource that can fix that problem.
And it doesn’t mean that the schools have to go hire somebody new. It doesn’t mean that these guidance counselors that a lot of times are overwhelmed with. Too many students as it is now have to focus on, okay, who’s a [00:36:00] student athlete? What, what do they need? And you know, is this person eligible? I mean, it’s just so much additional work that, you know, honestly, game has.
Created a very easy platform to identify and put those student athletes in the right pathway. So for me, it’s, it’s a no brainer for, you know, from, from a high school standpoint, from, like you said, a club standpoint, on all different levels. I think that is important that, you know, people aren’t investing into that sort of resource.
Mike Klinzing: [00:36:28] Well, if the two of you have put together from an event standpoint is exciting, I think it’s going to be very well received out there in the marketplace. I think people that go and get involved with the showcase get involved with Justin and Kim are going to see that what they’re going to do is going to be first class.
They’re going to put it on in the right way, and I think there’s going to be a tremendous amount of benefit to anyone who gets involved in it. And I want to just say again, thank you guys for spending some time with us this morning. I’m appreciative of the opportunity to be able to be the [00:37:00] mouthpiece for getting the showcase out into the market.
And Kim and Justin, thank you and to everyone out there, thanks for listening. We will catch you on our next episode.
Thanks.