Sam was born in the Netherlands, where his father was working at the time, but he grew up mostly in Marlow, Oklahoma, a town with a population just under 5,000.

Sam's dad worked for an oil and gas company. Sam was gifted with intelligence and was his high school's valedictorian.

From an early age, he loved numbers. He loved math. He was fascinated by the power of exponential growth.

At the University of Oklahoma, he majored in finance. He loved sports. He briefly considered becoming a coach,

but if you had asked him at the time, Sam probably would have told you he wanted to become the CEO

of an industrials company or something like that. After his freshman year, he applied for an internship at Conoco.

He was invited in for an interview, and it was all going well until the interviewer asked

Sam where he imagined he would be in five years.

Sam was honest.

He said he figured he would go to business school.

The interviewer was like, what?

You don't want to work at Conoco in five years?

And Sam said, no, definitely not. I'm not interested in that. Instead, he interned in the

accounting group of Erston Young, which happened to be the world leader in providing third

party opinions on the purchase of professional sports teams, giving Sam some early exposure

to the world of sports business.

After he graduated, Sam was offered a job at Bain Capital.

He was the first University of Oklahoma student ever hired by Bain.

He enjoyed the work at Bain.

It was long hours of rigorous analytical work.

He liked to bring large amounts of data to important decisions. About 18 months

into his time at Bain, Sam was at lunch with some other young analysts and two men he considered

...