Episode #88: Dr. James Troha

Leading Through the Gray: A Candid Conversation with Dr. James Troha

In this powerful and wide-ranging episode, Dr. James Troha—President of Juniata College and Chair of the NCAA Division III Presidents Council—joins the show for a candid conversation about the state of higher education, college athletics, and student well-being. With honesty, humor, and deep empathy, Dr. Troha and Coach Rogers discuss the urgent challenges facing today’s campuses, including mental health, the national pushback on DEI, and the need to stop coddling students in favor of building real resilience.

They explore why failure is essential to growth, how accountability must be taught—not avoided—and why none of these issues are black and white. This episode will make you think, feel, and reflect on how we care for and lead the next generation.

If you’re a coach, educator, parent, or leader—you need to hear this one.

Stay tuned for Part 2 on Monday, where Dr. Troha dives into the realities of recruiting in Division III and what families need to understand when exploring the D3 path.

For more tools, books, blogs, and recruiting & coaching support, visit CoachMattRogers.com.

Transcript

0:00

We get to know our students. I, when I'm shaking hands of our graduates out here on the quad, I know where they came from. I know who their parents are. I know their particular journey, and that's what we talked a little bit about what keeps me here. That's special. I want relationships. I wanna know. Our graduates, and I wanna know that I'm gonna maintain relationships beyond the walls of geneal College in their four years here. Welcome back to the Significant Coaching Podcast, where we dive deep into the leadership moments that matter with the people who are shaping athletics, education, and the future of our student athletes. Today's guest is Dr. James Troja, president of Juta College and Chair of the NCAA Division three President's Council. This episode is different. It's bold, it's honest, and it's filled with joy, wisdom, and the kind of perspective we desperately need in today's world. Dr. Troja and I talk about the realities we're facing in higher education change at the national level in college, athletics, politics, and education. We talk about failure and how it's not something to be feared, but a necessary part of becoming resilient. We unpack why accountability matters and why doing everything for our students doesn't make them stronger. It makes them less prepared for life after college. And we get even deeper. We talk about the growing mental health crisis on our campuses. The harmful impact of the national attacks on DEI and the disproportionate effect this is having on L-G-B-T-Q students. These aren't easy conversations, but they're necessary. I. And here's the truth. None of these issues are black and white. There's no one size fits all answer. These topics need to be discussed, studied, debated, and most of all, they need to be handled with empathy and honesty. And from the perspective of people who truly care about the wellbeing of all our young people, not just those who look like us, think like us, or believe what we believe. Now, this may sound serious what I'm saying so far, but this was a fun, deep, powerful conversation. One I enjoyed immensely. One, I wish we had more time to continue, but I promise you this, it will make you think, it will make you feel, and it might even stir up some discomfort. And that's the point because if we're serious about leading with significance. We need to sit in that tension sometimes, and we need to be thankful that we have leaders like Dr. Jim Troja helping us do it. Here's my conversation with Dr. Jim Troja. Dr. Troja, and I know you said I can call you Jim, but I need to Absolutely. I need to give you the respect you deserve. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Yeah. Happy to do it. Matt I do anything for Rich Dunsworth, by the way. I've gotta make sure I give him a shout out. One of my. Favorite colleagues here in the higher education world. Kudos to Rich for connecting us. Yes. For those that don't know, rich and I have been really good friends for the better part of 25 years, and Rich is the one that recommended I have you on, and I'm so thankfully did we, you and I have had an earlier conversation and I enjoyed it so much, so I'm really excited to have this one. Yeah, it's remarkable to think about Rich and I starting our presidencies together 12 years ago. Both of us going into year 13, which is. Dinosaur years in the college presidency today It is. I think you and I might have talked about when I started back in the summer of 13, college presidents were about eight and a half years was the length of their tenure. Now it's about five years, maybe just a shade over five years. So each of us serving as long as we have, it's it's a rarity. So we've got a lot of stories and a lot of experience and I'm not sure that quite what that says about us, but we get asked to do a lot of things now that we're more experienced presidents. I feel like I just started yesterday and it's it's hard to believe going into year 13, but it's been a blast. I'm sure we'll talk about some of that as we get go. Yeah. Let's do, talk about that. Because whenever you get a chance to stay, and I've I spent nine years at Maryville University and that was my longest stretch at a college, and I just, I loved it. I loved every aspect of it. What is it about Juta that you love that makes it special, that's kept you there this long? Yeah. I think, let's take the college out of it for a second. You gotta love the work. The college is certainly part of that, but you got to enjoy the lifestyle that is a college presidency. And fortunately, I had an experience back in 2008, 2009 when I was interim president for a year. And at my previous institution, Heidelberg University. And so I had a I dabbled in it. My kids were super young. I was, gosh, how old? I can't remember even how old I was maybe 38 years old at the time when I was interim president. So I had a chance to taste it before I was appointed here. And you gotta be comfortable with the visibility. The, I think the breadth of portfolio that comes with being a college president and you just gotta, you've gotta just, agree that, your life is on display and you're gonna be dealing with, a variety of constituencies that you know, when you're a vice president, you've got. Your particular area that you're dealing, whether it's student life or financial or academic, when you're president, all those things are part of your portfolio, and you just gotta know that you're gonna be asked to do a whole bunch of things. But at the end of the day, Matt, it's about, and reading about your background, I think you get this, it has to be part of who you are. You gotta be authentic with the job and just know that it's gonna be. Somewhat disruptive. It's gonna be challenging, but it's also extremely rewarding. And I think if you were to ask Rich the same thing, I mean it was, that's what it comes down to for me. I, there is enough in every academic year that is rewarding enough where I feel I wanna keep doing this work. Yeah. And that goes away is when the time you need to fold the book and say, I need to go find something else. It's probably similar to being a coach, if the challenge is not there anymore or the love of what you do isn't there anymore, then you've got a choice to make. And for me, I continue to love the work and part of that is the environment that I'm in. I. I knew of Junior outta college. I don't, didn't have any relationship with it prior to me coming to be president here. But the people here, the ethos here the job that I get asked to do, the board of trustees that I work with I. Is I couldn't have asked for anything more. Do I love every minute of it? Of course not. There's always moments where you're just like, yeah, why? Why am I doing this? Maybe I need to be reconsidering. Then there are moment comes around where you're like, okay, that's why, and I. It happens frequently. I'm talking, even within an hour or even within a day, I have those extremes. I think it's time to leave versus I love what I do and I can't wait to get my feet on the ground tomorrow and come back to work. It's, that's just the nature of the work. Yeah. And you've gotta be ready for it. And so I've been fortunate enough to been doing it now for 12 years and it's been a true blessing and at a place that I've come to to love as as an institution. Yeah. Yeah, I, I work with so many families and so many families want their kids to go to Penn State. They want'em to go to, they want'em to go to Penn. They want'em to go to University of Colorado where I live, and I just say. Just, I want you to look at, I want you to look at every level of size of school. Because I think you're gonna be amazed at what's there. Everybody's, everybody sees the price tag, everybody sees the size of the school and they can't put the pieces together on what that experience is gonna lead to. I had a great experience at co college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, outside of Iowa. Very few people know about CO and when they start listing off the alumni, they go, what? They're just they're shocked by how many. People have gone on to such great things from such a small college. You've been a college coach, you've been a vp, you've been a director, now you're a president, you're a dad. What have all those things done for you to make you the president you are? And how do you, are you using those tools today? Are using those coaching tools, those dad tools, do you find they're coming out in everything you're doing? Absolutely. Yeah. I, particularly the coaching part. I think more of what I do relates to coaching than maybe anything else because I've got a team here, I've got a team of vice presidents. I work, I've got a team of faculty, I've got a team of staff, I've got a team of trustees, I've got team of students here. And it is, you're building an organization, you're building a successful team, and you've got to, you've gotta know. How to manage the different personalities that are around you. So like a good coach, you can't yell at. This particular player and expect one thing and yell at this and expect the same thing. Everybody has to be managed a little bit differently and good coaches get that. Good coaches understand the nature of personalities and what is going to ultimately lift that team to perform. At the levels that you would expect. And same thing as a college president, I have to manage each of my VPs a little bit differently. I have to manage my board a little bit differently. I have to manage my faculty a little bit differently. And my experiences at a young age of coaching, also being a student athlete absolutely essential to my leadership style. No, no question about it. I think Matt, if I were to discern a little bit about all those experiences. I would say you've just gotta be authentic in who you are. Look at some of our best coaches out there and some of the interesting personalities. They are authentic people. Whether you're a Bill Belichick or a Nick Saban or a Gene R ema, those coaches are real. They don't pretend to be anybody that they're different. And the reason I think my, my, my understanding of it would be that these jobs, college president, coach of a major program, coach of a division three program, they're difficult, demanding positions and you better. Be authentic in who you are. Otherwise your team will see through you, your campus community will see through you. And so why not just be yourself? And it is what it is. And I, that's try I've tried to live that as long as I've held this job. I didn't come up through the academic ladder. IEI was not a faculty member. I did not become a dean. I was on the administrative route. And I, when I interviewed here. I talked about that. Listen, if you're looking for a leader in the administrative space that believes that can lead a, an organization like Junior Outta College, I'm your guy. If you're looking for an academic voice, somebody who understands faculty culture to its core, I'm probably not your person. So I led with an authenticity and really understanding what I can bring to the table. And Juliana is either gonna take that or not. And I think. That's important for any position that you seek is just to be who you are. And if it's not the right fit, then it's not the right fit. But if you can't be who you are, it's not gonna be successful at the end of the day. Matt. That's probably one of the biggest learnings I had as a young professional and seeing and learning from great mentors. And I think if you ask any coach, every successful coach has had both. Extraordinary mentors that they wanted to learn from, but they also learned from the bad ones that they've served under too. As did there are people and supervisors that I've had that weren't great and you'll learn as much from them, but you gotta lean into that and understand what you take from each of those experiences so you can develop your own authentic leadership style. I love it. And for me, when I'm talking to a 16 or 17-year-old, one of the first questions I always ask them when we're talking about that college experience they want, I go, do you want to go someplace that already has a proven legacy? Or do you want to go somewhere and create that legacy? And it's always love it. The light bulb goes off and I go, yeah, I never thought about that. I've never thought about, I only can look at who just won a national championship on TV or who just did this and go, I wanna be a part of that. And I love getting a 16, 7-year-old to go, oh, I could go somewhere and create that. I could be the first to do that. And well, Koch College Junior outta college, a lot of the institutions like ours. You are not a spectator at our institutions, right? You are on the court, on, on the field doing that work. You are in the game as I talk all the time about to our prospective students. If you don't wanna be a participant, we are probably not the place for you, right? Go to a Penn State, a pit, some of these larger institutions and listen, those are wonderful institutions. That's not a knock on it, it's just a different type of institution. Bigger institutions, you're gonna be in classrooms with six, 700 kids. And some people learn better than that. That's not who we are. Yeah. And if that's the experience that you want that's where you should go. But here, excuse me, we. We expect our students to be participants. We expect everybody to be on the court and on the field playing the game. That is a giata college education and we don't shy from that. That's just part of our DNA. Yeah, there's not a lot of places to hide at places like Code and Giata or the those ours richest. And that's part of the what makes I think us unique and special and different is that the relationships that you develop, the, that's part of our identity and ethos and culture are those. Relational aspects of our institution because we have 13, 1400 students. We get to know our students. I, when I'm shaking hands of our graduates out here on the quad, I know where they came from. I know who their parents are. I know their particular journey, and that's what we talked a little bit about what keeps me here. That's special. I want relationships. I wanna know. Our graduates, and I wanna know that I'm gonna maintain relationships beyond the walls of geneal College in their four years here. So I'm going to an event tomorrow in Pittsburgh. We're doing these little, they're called Troja Tap House events. We're going to breweries and we're just getting together and socializing and having a beverage with one another. And I'm getting to connect with our alumni, a lot of our younger alumni in these areas. We did one in Hershey and Philly and Pittsburgh and go DC. That's great. These are opportunities to connect and continue to build the relationships that are so important for our type of institutions. Yeah, and I want every college I. To pursue someone like you or rich Dunsworth, because you guys get it. You understand It's about the relationships. It's about how we treat people. It's about, for sure. It's about more than what we learned in the math classroom in, in the biology c those things are essential to go to college. Yes. I tell kids this all the time. I go, when I graduated from college, I played college basketball. I was an ra. I was a student assistant. I was student body president, and. This my spring semester of my senior year, I had the president of the college, the vice president of enrollment, the Dean of students and the Director of Residence Life were all making calls for me to help me get a job. Yeah. I go where else could I have done that? Where else would tho would I have even have met those people to have a relationship with them? Yeah. I just had a, to that point, I had a Zoom call yesterday with one of our student athletes. Who's applying for an NCAA internship. And he wanted to talk with me about my NCAA experience and how it might work and what he should, think about relative to interviewing for that. And to your point, I just did that yesterday. Sean just emailed me and said, Hey, president Trump, would you mind chatting with me about this? Of course. This is the nature of what we do. And if you're a college president and that doesn't excite you, then you're in the wrong, you're in the wrong business. By the way, I mean your point around skills and what you learned in the classroom and outside. I was just talking about this to some students at the end of the last semester, do you know that the top 10 skills that employers want today out of graduates. Nine out of the 10 that they listed have nothing to do with the knowledge attainment. What took place in the classroom? Why not? It's crazy. It was about teamwork, leadership, good judgment, attitude, respect. Communication skills, all of those, what I would call essential skills, what we used to call soft skills, these intangibles, Matt, the intangibles is what is developed at places like Giata that I think separates our graduates from other graduates. That we spend time on those skills because it's grounded in the relationships that we have with our students, our faculty, our staff. Peer to peer. We take seriously the attainment of those intangibles and making sure that. They're challenged if they don't have'em, that by the time they graduate, we gotta make sure that they're tested on some of these skills, because that's what corporations are seeking. They want good humans. They want humans who can look at each other in the eye, shake their hands, talk about being positive, talk about, their colleagues with the right attitude. They'll train them in some of the specific skill sets that they want. And so these intangibles, I believe, is what separates small, private residential, small liberal arts schools like the ones you and I are familiar with. I, I've got a, I've got a thousand. Sorry about the commercial I've got. No it's fantastic. It's the right message for any family or teacher or guidance counselor that's listening to this to understand. They have to be open-minded. They have to understand that there's that perfect fit for them, that home for them may not be what they expect, and it's so worth the time to look. I've got a thousand different questions I can go based on what we just talked about, but I want to talk about Yeah. Athletics itself within that capacity, because I talked to so many presidents that came up that academic route to be president. Yeah. That, and I hate to say it the way I'm gonna say it, but I don't have a better way to say it. They don't quite understand how athletics affects their college. They don't understand. What an a really strong athletic department does for the big picture, the long term, the endowment, the retention, all those things that we all want. How campus vibrancy, spirit. Yes. Alumni engagement, all of that. All those things, right? Yeah. How do you see your athletic department? In terms of how you use it, how you market it, what it means to the big picture of what you're able to do as the president. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so a couple things on this man, and it's a great, it's a great point. I wanna be careful. What I say here,'cause I don't mean it. I what you're saying, I have seen in spades in terms of my colleagues at my level who don't understand it. And quite frankly, many of'em don't wanna understand it and which is just a miss on their part. There's a lot of schools like ours that, you're talking. 35, 40, 40 5% of their undergraduates at schools. If you're under 1500 students, you might be having your student athlete base being close to half of your population. And so how do you not understand what's taking place in that space? That's number one. Number two and this is the downside of somebody like myself who came from. As being a student athlete, but also came from a little bit of athletics where I've supervised athletics as a former dean of students and VP for student life. And it is this, that my faculty, not all my faculty, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna generalize here, thinks I spend too much time with athletics. They think it, it's. It distracts me. They think that I spend too much money on athletics. They think I don't care about the academics because I love sports and I love athletics. They think that my priorities are a little outta whack. Now, I'm not saying that everybody does, but the feedback that I sometimes get mad as a college president is that my priorities are miss if I care about athletics. That's probably why some college presidents maybe don't lean as heavily in it as I do. But we, if we go back to where we started this conversation around authenticity, I can't hide the fact that I grew up as a student athlete. I was a coach at some point. I supervise athletics. I tend to believe that what takes place in the. Athletic space is great training for real life. Whether it's a discipline, taking care of your body, taking care of your mind, being part of a team, being collaborative, partnering with your peers, learning from coaches. We know, you and I know people who are listening to this often know the power of being part of a team and how it relates to real life. And so I don't apologize for that part of who I am as an academic. As, or as a college president, it's just, I have a passion for it. And if they think my priorities are misaligned, then so be it. I know that academics is the core of what we do. It's why we exist is to make sure our students graduate, prepare to lead in a particular career. I know in my heart of hearts, I know that, and athletics is secondary to that. It doesn't mean that it can't be an important part of who we are as an institution, and I feel like I have an obligation to make sure that it has the rightful place in our environment and that I support our student athletes. I support our coaches, and oh, by the way, I. It contributes a huge amount to our enrollment. It contributes a huge amount to the campus spirit that we have here, to the alumni donations that we have here. And if I look around my campus, I've got tennis courts, I've got gymnasiums, I've got lacrosse fields, I've got other we spend a tremendous amount of resources in this space. So how is it not an important part of who we are and what we do? I'll just say that. It's amazing in my work at, part of Division three presidents Council of how many college presidents just don't wanna lean into the work that we do with student athletics or athletics as a, as an entity. I, let me just end on this. I think you can be an excellent academic institution and also be. Hyper competitive and be a great athletic institution at the same time. Those things are not mutually exclusive in my judgment. And you only need to look at schools like Stanford and Notre Dame or Williams and Amherst. These are, the NECA as a conference. You're talking about the, the top, echelon of academic institutions and yet they care a great deal about how they perform. From an athletic perspective, it doesn't mean they don't care about their academics. And so I say all the time, I want both. I wanna be known academically, but there's no reason why we can't have a great academic reputation and care a great deal about the competitiveness of all of our sports. Those, to me, it's not like you have to sacrifice one for another. I think you can do'em both. I did my early coaching in the SLI in St. Louis. And I got to coach against FBA U College and it, and then it became FBA University. They just closed their doors. Yeah. We're seeing more and more of these colleges close their doors and the more I dig, the more I talk to the administration that's leaving that's having to close those doors and find new jobs, the more it was about they couldn't fill their beds. And as somebody that's transitioned from a college athletic director and a college coach to now a consultant for small colleges. I want to pull my hair out when I hear that. Because you have the beautiful fields like you have the gymnasium. A small D three can have 300 kids that are just athletes in your dorms. 400 kids. Yeah. If you've got a football team. I don't like using this as an argument. When we're talking to faculty, they're arguing about how much time we put into athletics, but at the end of the day, the average small school is making, what? 12,000 in revenue from a student? 14, 15,000. Somewhere in that world you're not too far off. Yeah. If a coach is bringing in 2030 kids for their roster every year, let's just start there. Yeah. Multiply that times 12,000. Is your history professor, your calculus professor doing any recruiting to bring kids into the classroom? Some of'em are. Some of them are, yeah. But not as the due diligence as your coaches have to go find those kids in Arizona, California. Now that's part one. Tell me how much fun your marketing and publicity team have when your volleyball team kicks everybody's butt in the country year after year, and is in every paper on ESPN. Yeah. How much would you have to pay to get that type of publicity? Yeah. We our our own Olivia Foley was just in New York City.'Cause she was the Honda. Sports Division three athlete of the year of all sports. And so Junior outta college was on a national stage with CBS sports next to Paige Becker's. So the answer is, we can't we wouldn't be able to afford that kind of publicity. Yes. To your point and when I am introduced often in the NCAA world. And they see, oh, trau Junior outta college, your volleyball team. That's how people know about me. It's not necessarily my success as a college president or as D three, chair or on the Board of Governors. It's our volleyball team that brings me notoriety. I love it. I wish it would happen more often in some other sports. But volleyball has been incredibly important for us. Yeah. And guess what? Our student athletes going back to the importance of that, they're some of our best students. Yes. There, these are our grade point average for our athletes is higher than our non-athlete grade point average. So it's not like they're coming in and poorly performing and having a negative and downward pull on our academic profile. It's just the opposite. Yeah. So what's funny, I just talked to Paul Dill, who's the volleyball coach at MIT and he tells me the same thing. He goes, Matt, our volleyball kids outperform our regular students. Yes. At MIT. Yes. They, it's same as here. Yeah. They're great kids. It goes to what we talked about, Matt, is, which is they learn at that level of performance. They learn the importance of time management. Yes. And discipline and what it takes to be. Successful not just on the volleyball court, but in life, in the classroom. And those skills are taught by coaches. Yes. And so it goes back to those 10 skills you were talking about, the corporate Americas, right? That's right. That's right. Alright, I'd be remiss if I didn't jump into the D three President's Council with you. Yep. You're the chair. Tell me what's. What are two or three of the things that you're talking about in the President's Council? With all the craziness that's going on at the division one level, that we're gonna feel the trickle down through all colleges and universities. Yeah, the lawsuits and everything. Even though as a D three president, as a D three coach, we still may not have to deal with the NIL issue. We still may not have to deal with the portal a whole lot. What are you discussing that mom and dad and? In the middle of the country have to be thinking about when they're thinking about sending their kid to college. Yeah. Couple things immediately come to mind and I think about the mental health challenges I. It's happening at all levels. It's not D three specific, but what we have seen in the last, five plus years, I think it preceded COVID. I think COVID exacerbated some of the challenges that our students have about their emotional health and wellbeing. We are seeing it on at the student athlete level that it's, it, students have to sometimes. Get a pause from their sport to deal with mental health challenges. So how does the NCAA support that? How do we as institutions, athletic departments, support our students? And, I'll tell you that the interesting thing and it's happening with our faculty as well. And that is that our coaches. Or being asked to not just be coaches. They're asked to be therapists. They're asked to be friends with our students because the students don't know where else to go. So they go to familiar places. And those tend to be their coaches. It tends to be their trainers, tends to be the faculty. And boy, I'm not saying it never existed before, but it seems to be a role that our coaches are having to play today. At levels that exceed probably what we want our coaches to be doing. They're not trained to be therapists, but they're being asked to manage mental health concerns at levels that, that are probably just not comfortable anymore for our coaches. I hear a lot. We see it a lot. So the ncaa we're trying to provide resources in ways that, weren't available years ago. I. And so we, there, there are numerous solutions that we're talking about at the NCAA level right now. There's online solutions. There's training that is happening right now for our coaches to manage this, making sure that students know where to go if they've got issues related to mental health. So that's, that would be a big one for us. Something that I knew was happening, but at the broader national level, I had no idea. How pervasive the challenges that our student athletes were faced today. So that's number one. Number two would be sports betting. Major issue on our agenda of how we manage this. I think everybody can agree that the the nature of sports betting, what's happening with our student athletes at all levels is getting a bit unwieldy and at times very, uncomfortable for our athletes, particularly when there's sports prop betting that's happening. I'm sure you're familiar with prop betting free throws, number of free throws, somebody will make or miss and this and that. And President Baker has been very clear about NCAA stance on that in trying to eliminate that because. The pressure that it puts on division one players on their campuses when it comes to some of this prop, beding, you can imagine where this goes. Yeah. And it, it just it's just an ugly part of some of the business that we're in with sports gambling right now. So a lot of conversation happening around sports betting that's not too dissimilar to, the use of marijuana and some of the drugs that used to be off limits. So right now we're trying to socialize concepts around sports betting so we can better educate our students on sports betting. And, so those two issues right now are top of mind. The other one to probably a lesser extent, but something you mentioned earlier, which was around colleges closing and conference alignment. Is becoming more and more challenging as you. Yes. You probably have seen schools opt outta one conference, join another conference, and, oh, you have this school closing now you got a conference of five schools. Now their EQ is gone. What do we do? I. How does the rural nature of these closures impacting conferences and student athletes' ability to compete at the highest levels? So it's just something that we're trying to get an understanding of. I think the NIL conversation and the expense that is now associated with that, St. Francis in our backyard moved from D one to D three. I would, venture to guess, there are a lot of other institutions that are. Considering what a different model might look like for athletics at the D one level because of NIL, because of some of the changes that are happening there, can they afford to be playing in that space versus maybe playing at D 2D three? So I think, I don't have to tell you. It's a really critical time. Across the NCAA and college athletics. Right now I think the house settlement is gonna provide some stability for the. The number of schools that are playing in that space. But I think at Division three and to some extent, division two, the rest of us are really trying to understand how do we continue to provide the experience that our students and parents expect today, where their students are having a positive experience, that they ultimately will get their degree in the timeframe that they want and they expect. I totally agree. Those are some of the things that I would say are high on the list and they're also important. The they're all, none of it can be brushed under the rug or say, we can deal with this tomorrow, ev everything. And I, and you tell me if I'm wrong, it seems like the biggest issue the NCAA had, has had for so many years. It's not, do we have good ideas and the right mission and a great vision? It's. How do we enforce it? How do we get, sports betting? How do we enforce it? How, how, what kind of body do we need? Do we need an ncaa FBI do we need our own? There's so many things that I don't think the average person understands the challenges you're facing as a president. It's not that you don't have a, a path. It's how do we enforce that path? Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. The NCAA has some things in place to monitor some sports betting. And it, that, that will be ever increasing because of the the proliferation of gambling and the number of states that offer the ability to gamble on college sports. Yes. So looking at sports betting and what you can and cannot do, and the enforcement of that is problematic. There there's no question about it. Yeah, there, there's, and there's so many things that we have to enforce. It's, coaches trying to steal kids from other schools. And once you sign your national letter of intent, how do we keep coaches from talking to those kids or throwing, money now that seems available around the corner. So there, there's so many things that I don't even wanna get into today that we can have a whole nother podcast on. Just for that, I do, before we close this down. This part of our conversation. And again, I'm so thankful that you did this where I'm, I could go on and on. I want to talk back to your mental health challenges we were talking about for these kids. And without getting into politics, and I'm akay, if you want to be as vague as you want to be with this, and I understand the pressure that you're under, I want to talk about how we protect these kids that are. In that DEI world that's being attacked. Yeah. How do we protect these trans kids? How do we protect these L-G-B-T-Q kids? Because that's gotta be a major concern for any president when it comes to mental health challenges for their students and their student athletes. How do we do that? How does Matt Rogers sitting in his house. How does the president of junior college, how do we do this together to make sure these kids know they're loved and know they're accepted and that there's a place for them? Boy that's a great, it's a great question and something that we manage every, almost every single day, and it's becoming more complicated and troublesome because of what's happening at the federal level. My very first, so I was. Appointed to the Board of Governors in the fall. My very first meeting was shortly thereafter shortly after President Trump declared that there were, primarily two genders. And. The ncaa, as shortly after that aligned its practices with what was coming out of the federal government, that there was male sports and female sports. Which was a really interesting conversation, my very first board of Governors. I can imagine, yeah. Conversation in action. And I just wanted, I wanted, I didn't say much during that meeting, of course. I was just listening to how we were managing that. Some of it obviously was around. A legal perspective of what we were permitted to do. Now that the federal government came down to say that, there's male and female sports with the conflict that we knew, the different campuses that we all sit at, knowing that's a different model than what maybe is being asked of us from our students. But here's the thing. So I, I think the ncaa, my own opinion was that it was doing the right thing in aligning itself what was happening with the federal government because it was protecting its core work as an NCAA body. I think if we hadn't done that, there would've been lawsuits and there would've been a lot of other legal challenges and it wouldn't have just been healthy. So how do we take. The model that we have and do what you are suggesting, which is to support and make sure we understand the needs of all of our student athletes however they are defining themselves. And I would say that you do that I, on your individual campuses to know that those students are embraced. Included in ways that makes them feel whole at your particular campus, even though the competition may look a little bit differently. Now, we also have to understand, Matt, that it's a very small, those who have chosen to let their campuses know that they are trans. It's a very small number, and I, it's, I don't even wanna suggest what that number is, but it's less than half of 1%, right? Something along those lines. And the number of athletes that it, it's a very small number. It doesn't mean that there's not a lot of other athletes who just haven't come out and said who they are and what they're about. Some would argue that, we're talking about something that affects a very small minority of students I know at my campus that it's much larger and more pervasive than anybody wants to quite admit. So you have to have coaches, you have to have policies on your campus that make sure that supports those students in any way possible. And we've tried to do that here and I know a lot of other college presidents are wrestling with this sort of incongruence that we have of what we, I. No is right from a human perspective, but trying to abide by the letter of the law of what the NCAA requires and what the federal government has said that we need to do. All that said, Matt, I do think it's a really interesting dialogue around the health and safety of athletes when we talk about trans participation, particularly when you talk about biological men performing in women's sports and whether or not that's. There's some safety issues that we need to be concerned about. And I think it's not in every sport, but I do think there are moments where it's it's probably a absolutely right conversation to have about the safety of the participants. When you talk about biological men participating in women's athletics. Yeah. Volleyball being one of them. Yeah. It's, we saw last, I think it was last year, right out in the west in I dunno if it was San Diego State, somebody had a trans player and there were teams that refused to play that team. And in that conference because they had a biological male playing women's volleyball and this person was towering over players and hitting balls at rates that were not safe. That's my understanding of it. That's my understanding too. I know you're talking about Yeah. I think that's a fair conversation. Yeah. And so how do you have both where you're trying to be inclusive, but you're also trying to look out what's in the best interest of your student athletes? It's why you and I want every 18-year-old to go to college for four years. Yes. We want you to go get a degree and learn something, but we also want you to learn the world isn't black and white. Complicated. There isn't complic, there isn't a wrong and a right for every answer no matter what. Yes, we have politicians that want to tell us that there's a black and white, there's not. There's a whole lot of gray. I, and you need that empathy. You need to learn that empathy. You need to learn that there's people that are different than us and we have to understand why they're different than us and give them the respect of what they're trying to do. Yeah. We've gotta listen to our student athletes. We want to be fair. From a competitiveness standpoint, yeah. We, at the same time wanna be inclusive and accepting for wherever you are coming from in terms of your sexual orientation. And all, I, all I can say as a college president is that it's extremely complicated. Yeah. And I. There's not a lot. I love your the black and whiteness of it that people want doesn't exist. That's right. And so it's just really challenging space and I feel, blessed and honored that I have an opportunity to have these kinds of dialogue conversations at the highest level with the ncaa because I feel like. I, I wanna learn myself of the best things to do, but I also want to help as many student athletes, as many administrators, as many college presence as I can in trying to bring information that could be helpful to managing this at the level of individual institutions. And so we're not gonna get it right all the time. Matt, that's, yeah, that's just the reality. I think we just need more people in your chair. To continue to say, we welcome everyone, we want everyone to be safe and healthy. We want everybody to have an opportunity. And it all goes back to that rights. We want everybody to be able to pursue that happiness and that health and a happy life. And I think the more people in your chair are doing what you're doing and saying that out loud we're gonna respect everybody. We're gonna care for everybody. Are there gonna be rules we have to follow? Are there gonna be conversations we're gonna have? Absolutely. Yeah, we want everybody to have that opportunity to go to college and have a great experience. You bet. And it's not gonna be perfect, but, it's we want to, we wanna try to do what's right. All right. I promise you that was the last question for this segment, but I'm gonna ask you one more'cause I, this is important to me. A how do we and this could be another full podcast and you can be as brief with this as you want. How do we as colleges and universities, how do we do a better job of teaching an 18-year-old how to be an adult, how to be a learner, and when they walk off your campus better prepared to get a job, get an apartment, save some money and be able to walk out of there knowing. I know what I'm doing. I've been taught how to do this. How do we do that at the college level? And I know I just asked you a question. We can talk for an hour, but how do we do that? Boy, I. You may not like my answer on this, Matt. I might be a little bit of a contrarian in this case, and I'm okay with it. I, and I'm not even sure where this comes from. Maybe it's, I'd have to do some soul searching, but I, and I a little reflective on maybe how I was brought up and the, maybe the discipline that I have for my parents. I don't. So I don't think it flies in the face of what I talked about before that. I feel like I have an obligation to help in this space. Without question. I believe our faculty have an obligation to help in the space. I believe our coaches should help in this space, but I also think the accountability should rest with the individuals that are choosing our environments. I think. I think we have left. I think we had, we have left them off the hook. Let the students off the hook in terms of accepting and embracing some personal accountability about that journey. Yeah. And about the developing of those skills that I've got three kids, 26, 24, 22, and I, of course. Want to parent them and help them in any ways that I can. But I also believe in that it is now their journey. And when they were in college, my wife and I, large part, we were hands off. We, they, they had if they had struggles, they couldn't get into classes, they had, hard times getting rooms selected. Figure it out. If you fall and you skin your knee, so be it. You're gonna learn next time to look while you're walking, and Matt, I, to answer your question, I think already too much is asked of those of us who are in this space. Yeah. And I do think there needs to be some. More accountability on developing those skills on your own. Read more. Learn more. Get off your phone. Join clubs. Learn to fail experiment. Get uncomfortable by going to a different country. We shouldn't have to say our students get on a plane and go and get uncomfortable and study abroad. We do. But. They should understand that's part and parcel of their development. Now, can we facilitate that? Of course, but I guess my, my you asked me about how do we do it, boy I think we, we have probably coddled more than we should, and now's the time to. Expect more. Yeah. I think we need to expect more. It's not black and white and not only do I like your answer, I just had this conversation with my wife and my 16-year-old daughter yesterday, so it's my job to make sure she can be an adult when she leaves my house and she knows when she leaves my house, she's gonna be an adult. Yeah, which right now she has a car, she has a license. When you leave this house, you're responsible for you. Will we help you? Will we advise you? Yes. So I'm with you. I think it starts with the parents. I think it starts at home. I think, right? We can, this is why we can talk forever, because I think, yes, the conversation moves before they come to our campuses of what is happening or what is not happening. Yes. In K through 12 education, what's happening in the home, what's happening in our own communities, our churches? That's, we can talk about that. We are in receipt of what is happening or not happening before they join our campus communities. And so we can have that conversation and quite frankly, it's a little bit too late. It's a little bit too late when we get'em. That's right. That's right. All I. I think we probably aren't helping ourselves. I'm talking at the college level when we try to do a lot of things for'em. I agree. I agree. I think we've gotta do a better job of giving them the expectations and then holding them accountable for their outcomes and their behavior and the socialization that they have. We need to facilitate it. I'm not suggesting you just let'em go, but boy. I'm, I don't hear a lot of people talking about this. Matt and I think it's incumbent upon us. We've got an obligation to help these students grow more and deeper than maybe and we don't give them probably enough credit that they can do it. We just do a lot of things for'em. If you're up for it, I'm gonna invite you back here in the next couple months and I'd like to continue this conversation, but I promise you an hour and we're gonna have the shortest recruiting podcast ever here in a low for Monday. But thank you for your time today, and thank you for giving me five more minutes to talk about recruiting on Monday. You bet. What a conversation Dr. James Troja reminded us today that leadership in higher education and in life isn't about comfort. It's about courage. It's about standing in the messy middle of complex issues and choosing empathy over ego. Whether we're talking about accountability, mental health, DEI, or the role of athletics in education, Dr. Jim brought the kind of honesty and conviction we need more of in this world. These issues don't come with easy answers. But that's exactly why we must keep talking about them with humility, with perspective, and a heart for all young people, not just the ones who look, think, or believe like we do. If today's episode challenged or encouraged, you, do me a favor, follow the show, hit subscribe and forward this episode to someone who might need to hear it, a coach, a parent, a teammate, a leader. Let's keep this conversation going, and if you haven't already, head over to coach matt rogers.com. That's where you'll find the tools and guidance to help you build a healthier, smarter, and more significant path. Whether you're a family navigating the recruiting process, a coach building culture, or a school looking for leadership development, check out my books, like Significant Recruiting, the Recruits Journal and my online recruiting classes, all built to simplify the journey and support student athletes at every level. You can also sign up for my free newsletter, where I share weekly recruiting insights. College athletics updates, new resources, and behind the scenes news about future book launches and free tools. And don't forget to come back Monday for part two of this conversation with President Troja. We'll shift into the recruiting space. Yes, with a college president. Talking about it, talking about Division three, what families often miss, and how to think differently about building a college opportunity. That fits for you. Hey, thanks for listening. Keep leading with purpose and as always lead with significance.