CFB's Power Two Future + Big Ten's Big Drama | Late Kick Live Ep. 389

Paramount Plus is streaming a mountain of movies with freaky favorites like Smile. I'm seeing something no one else can see. Then scream six. Hello. Let's play a game. Action adventures like Dungeons & Dragons honor among thieves. We got him now! And Top Gun Mav. Good morning, aviator. And family favorites like SpongeBob SquarePants Sponge Out of Water. Gravity Taddies. And Paw Patrol the movie. Actually, sir, I'm a puppy. A mountain of movies. Paramount Plus. Haven't any fun yet? Stream now. Hey, everyone. It's Lisa Roman, host and analyst on Attacking Third, a CBS Sports Soccer Podcast. The NWSL is back, and this year it is better than ever. Plus, we're just a few months out from the 2023 Women's World Cup. So you can catch international stars like Alex Morgan, Marta, Mallory Swanson, and Kaitlyn Sheridan competing every week for their club teams. Listen to Attacking Third three times a week for expert analysis, previews, recaps, news, and exclusive player interviews from around the world of women's soccer. Download, follow, and listen to Attacking Third anywhere you find your podcasts. Plus, we're also available on YouTube. You can watch all of our episodes and interviews at youtube.com slash Attacking Third. I guess if you don't need signatures on documents, any of us could close any deal theoretically. It seems that way in the Big Ten. There's a lot to talk about. I have a stack of papers in my hands. It's the middle of May. It's supposed to be, according to reliable sources, the off-season. And yet we've got to show as jam-packed as it would be in November. In fact, true story. We had to shave some stuff out. Like Auburn just moved up to number two in the transfer portal rankings. They landed Shane Hooks. We don't even have time to talk about it. How is that? Well, I'll tell you why. It's jam-packed. We're high at Taipei, spirited downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It is Sunday, May 21st, the year of our Lord 2023. Are we headed towards a Power Two in college football? Dirty words. But I've got a piece of literature that I want to send your way. I want to at least put it in front of you. See what you think about it. I had some strong thoughts on it. Georgia has doubters out there. I know this may come as a surprise to some of you. And I'm not talking about the kind of doubter that Nolan Smith was citing when he said, people thought we were going to go seven and five. Not quite like that. But there are still doubters out there. Dare I say, I found a hater or two we will discuss tonight. As I said, big drama in the Big Ten. This is news that has just come out within the last few hours. As we're talking here on Sunday, Oregon's rolling. They're probably going to continue to roll into early next week in recruiting. We got the Penn State mood tracker. We've got a whole lot of stuff to talk about. Big show tonight. Do not miss any of this. We are disproportionately jam-packed. Especially for May. That's why they're watching us in Wilmington, North Carolina. Someplace in France, I have no shot of pronouncing. I just thank you guys in France for watching. Hobbes, New Mexico, is tuned in. Brunswick, Georgia is tuned in. And the drive to 200,000 subs has commenced. We're about to hit 180. That's great. No questions asked. My Christmas present that I want from you well before Christmas is 200,000 subs on this channel. There's no excuse not to be subbed. 57% of you are not subbed to the channel. It's free. It helps keep the show free. So do your duty and then get five of your friends to do their duty. And then we'll all just live happily ever after. Thank you in advance. I know you'll come through. Let's dive into the show tonight. Boom. Paper stack. Probably going to be plenty of paper pops in this show. Also I've got a little segment at the end of the show. A little clip from an interview I did last week that I thought was really good. It couldn't have been me. So it must have been the questions. But I took a clip from that larger interview and I'll play that for you at the end of the show because a lot of you ask the kinds of questions that I answered and I don't necessarily ever have a good time to fit what I talked about into our show. But it is very, very, I think enlightening and it'll answer a lot of your questions. So that'll be at the end of this show. In the meantime, the ceremonial clearing of the throat means it's time to talk about, well, what everyone's talking about lately. You know how everyone was talking about the ACC last week and how, oh, is it going to crumble? Oh, no, actually things seem resolved. Or are they? That was all the talk about the ACC last week. And usually when someone's sort of going like this in college football, you want to know what's in the other hand because it seems like all the big stories are actually behind the curtain. And you've got a good reason to feel that way because a lot of times that is the case. So what happened last week at Emilia Island where the ACC was having their spring meetings is you had a lot of reports about how there were seven member institutions ready to just break off. And then there was a lot of folks saying, hold up now, you can't do that. You would owe a lot of money. We've got contracts. We've got grant of rights deals. You've got your copyright signed away. And then at the end, there was this little kumbaya moment where everyone lied to you and said, well, we're okay for the time being. No one's okay. They're not okay. We're not okay. It's not okay, but it's okay. That was basically how they left it. So the end of that story seems to be that there's going to be an agreement in the ACC to give the power players a little bit more of the revenue, a bigger slice of the pie instead of evenly distributing money across the conference. Okay. So that was what got your attention last week. As we always talk about on the show, it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. I'm pretty sure Mema originated that quote, even though you've heard it from many people throughout your life. I'm not sure that's a Mema quote. What's happening right now? Really, aside from just the ACC, aside from just whether Arizona State's going to stay in the pack to ever, just random stories out there, you can probably figure out there's interconnectivity. All of this is part of a bigger design, right? At least they have to be overlapped at some point and they are, but it's so complicated to figure out and you're driving your FedEx route. You got to wake up at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning. You don't have time to worry about all this. You run a bakery. That's your Monday through Friday, 9 to whatever time it is you get off. If you run a bakery, you don't have time to sort all this out. And I do a college football show and I can't even sort it out. But that is the trees. Let's take a look at the forest and let's understand where ultimately this is probably all headed. And if you don't really take away anything else this week, I think there was a really, really good article in the Omaha World Herald at the end of last week. It may have even been today or yesterday, but this is the first time you and I've gotten a chance to talk about it. And keep in mind, a lot of wheels in motion as of late in college sports, right? So Tom Chatell who writes for the Omaha World Herald, he got Nebraska's president to go on the record and talk about a number of things. And when I say on the record, I mean, it's his name behind the quotes and he did not mince words when he talked about where he thought the sport was headed, not just this sport, but college athletics in general. Now, I'm showing you a quote on your screen. If you're listening on podcasts, let me give you context. There is a thought out there that college football is not headed towards a power five, but just with some conferences bigger than others, maybe a juiced up SEC, a juiced up big 10. There's a thought that we're headed towards a power two world. There's a thought that you're headed towards whatever the big 10 morphs into and whatever the SEC morphs into rest of the sport be damned. That's a nightmare scenario for a lot of people. That is a dream scenario for some other people. It is not the scenario that I necessarily dream about, but it is a dream scenario for some people. So with that in mind, here's Ted Carter, Nebraska president speaking to the Omaha World Herald quote, I'm on several national boards. I get to sit with a lot of top tier presidents and I can just tell you this is the conversation that's happening right now. He's talking about that power to structure. He's talking about moving towards a world where that's the case. What do you think about that quote? When you think about that, that attitude, that thought, because as is usually the case, whenever these big stories break, you notice how there's always language inside the story that sounds something like even though this is breaking news to you, it's been known in inner circles for a long time. It's been talked about and bandied about in inner circles for a long time. Well, this is the inner circle. It just so happens that someone took a stethoscope and put it up to Ted Carter and we got to hear what the inner circle is talking about. Now there are several things that that could mean. There are several things like, for example, self governance that could be on the table. So as is usually the case, when there's a big story or there's a big change in college athletics, there is one group that thinks it's all bad. There's another group that thinks it's all good. I'm usually the one in the middle, maybe 70% one way or the other that says there are probably some good things here, but they're outweighed by the bad or vice versa. That new world would not be ideal for me. Actually, it would be great for the show. We'd make a ton of money on it. Nevertheless, I love college football. And so I would not like to see that world come to existence, even though it feels like we're probably tracking that way. But what would that mean? Because they got into a little bit more detail and Tom Chatel, who wrote the piece himself, he talked about and I'm sure it's guided. He talked about what that could mean and it goes right in line with a lot of what we've talked about on the show. If you have that power to structure. Talking about in other words, adding some teams, probably expansion on multiple fronts and having about 40 to 50 teams in two conferences, if we want to call them that, that just kind of break off. And when I say break off, I mean break off. I mean self governance. I mean a dynamic scheduling agreement and a whole new model, a whole new reworked media deal, but also unified NIL guidelines that really basically take all of these headlines and develop them into moot points because there is synergy. There is a working together side by side. You probably would also have the opportunity to enter into revenue sharing agreements with your student athletes. A lot of what you could do with this structure, in other words, would circumvent so many of the nickel and dime problems that you have right now in the in the name of players rights and NIL, et cetera. There are some good things that would come from this. The shaving off of a chunk of the sport would be the price that you pay for that. The shaving off of entire portions of the country from the mainstream college football picture would be what you lose from that. There's an argument on the other side and the argument on the other side is, hey, if this is the entertainment business, which you always say it is, if we've got 45 or 50 of the top properties in college sports and they are playing in what equates to, I don't know the NFC and the AFC, what more could you want? Now this seems like it's snuck up on you, but it shouldn't because I am telling you right now, this wasn't hard to see coming. And the way I know it wasn't hard to see coming is because director Colin has a piece of footage that he has dug up from the archives. We got here in 2020, COVID happened about five minutes later. And so we had to do shows about whatever we could find to talk about. And we did a show one day. And I speculated about the future of college football and where we were headed and director Colin, I would like you to take the opportunity from 2020 archives to show the people what we said then. Are you comfortable with a future of college football existing where you just have the SEC and I would guess an entity like the big 10 and it really becomes a lot synonymous with what the NFC and the AFC are. And you've done so at the expense of many a program that had a story and a history and tradition, all their own that used to be able to survive that because of the new law of the jungle and college football is no longer able to survive. So was it hard to see coming? Not really. I guess it was hard to see coming if you put a little bit too much faith in the people who run things. Maybe then you're taken a little bit by surprise. I never expect much from these people and therefore nothing surprises me. In fact, quite the opposite. I would have been surprised if we didn't end up in this book. Now there is good news that format would make for an insanely entertaining television product, insanely entertaining. And I'm not here to suggest otherwise. That's why I'm not telling you it would be all bad news. Well, yes, absolutely. Think about the possibilities. If you have just a blown up big 10 and a blown up SEC, what do you do? Do you then do you then do what the NFL does? And what have we ever been chasing? If not for the professionalization of college sports, how dare we have something unique? Would we then just have the equivalent of the NFC and AFC playoffs leading to a match up in whatever college football Super Bowl would be called? Is that what we is that what we use? Is that what we construct? Is that the model that we work off of? Sure, to be entertaining. Just like the expanded playoff will be entertaining, the games themselves will be entertaining. I am anti-expansion, but I never said the product itself wouldn't be entertaining. It's just that, you know, that there are some brands that look really good when I put them on. Do I want to know the story about what went behind bringing that brand to me? Not necessarily. In fact, sometimes if I learn that story, I say, I don't think wearing this shoes worth it. I don't think wearing this hats worth it. Same way here. Like, what are you giving up? What are we ultimately sacrificing? How many opportunities do you ultimately sacrifice? I'm not just even talking about players. I'm talking about coaches, talking about administrative types. I'm talking about nutrition, the strength, the conditioning coaches and such that have jobs right now that may not have jobs in the future. Now you'll never really see that on the front page of any headline because it's not front page news, but it's a reality. And so you got to decide like, do you care about just the entertainment aspect or do you care about that built on a foundation of something that's more than just entertainment at the end of the day? I've always fallen into the latter camp. I know some people fall into the former camp. That's okay. It's not that it makes you a bad person or me a good person. It just makes us have differing opinions. Imagine a world where we're allowed to have that. My feel on this is this course is pretty set. Now, if I'm in Nashville right now and I set my GPS to take me to Seattle, Washington and I said, no interstates, no toll roads. The GPS is still going to find a way there. It may look like spaghetti plot on the way, but it'll still find a way there. So we may take a straight line to this world. We may take a very, very convoluted etch a sketchous direction to this new world, but I think we're headed to that new world. And so I left a little spot on the paper that's just blank. And that is the blank where I leave it open for your feelings. You weren't here. You didn't have the pin in your hand. So I don't really know. I think some people are jacked about it. I think other people understand, yeah, there is, there's a little bit too much we're giving up. Because see, college football was never a bad product. That's the point that I want to reemphasize the hammer home all the time when I'm talking about this stuff. We weren't ever hurting. The sport never needed saving. People came in and tried to fool you into thinking you needed saving. It's an age old story. It's just new to college football, but it's an age old story. Things are going so good that you can't point out the natural problems in any order of doing things. And so you've got to create them. You got to make them up so that you can then come in and be the hero to rework things and re-engineer things so that the net result is you acquire power and you acquire what you wanted. And then the rest of the folks are left saying, wait, what in the world just happened to us? Happens all the time. It just so happens college football was next on the menu. Again, it's not all bad. Not all bad. There would be some great advancements in the NIL and players rights front from this. There would be great entertaining product on the television or on your device on Saturday. I'm not suggesting otherwise. Those like ours would massively scale and flourish in that new world. I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm just telling you it's not my ideal world. And I leave it up to you to decide how you feel about it. Now we have so many more things to talk about tonight that I do not really want to spend any like 20 minute period on one segment. So boom, paper pop it there. I know that one of ours has made some comments and I will address them. It's about Georgia. And I'm going to address them in just a second actually. So I'll do it at the end of this. But I did want to work around to something that I heard a lot. So I was back in my home state of Georgia over the weekend. Always converse with buddies when I go down there. A lot of Georgia fans obviously that are double drunk on the Kool-Aid back-to-back national championships. And you can imagine what the energy is like in the state from Clayton to Valdosta and Brunswick to Rome and everywhere in between. So there is this natural inclination for some reason that people have when they win to think that they're still being disrespected and to think that they're still being doubted. Why? Because that's the only fuel that could ever sustain success. You couldn't just have inner drive. It's got to be that you're doubted. So I got buddies who feel this way. And so you'll have to excuse me as I channel an entire chunk of this show towards like half a dozen people I know. Because I know they're not the only ones who feel this way. Do you remember this time last year? Yes, you probably do. How much do you remember about this time last year? This time last year we're sitting here in May, Georgia's coming off winning their first national title in several lifetimes. And no one was talking about them. It was the craziest thing, including us. I've talked about this publicly. You go back and look at our inventory. We did so little Georgia coverage during the spring. And most of the national shows did the same thing. The reason is because a couple of things. Number one, the NIL thing was blowing up off the field. It was the saving Jimbo. That was kind of the poster for it. But the NIL stuff was blowing up. The recruiting calendar was being flipped. Simultaneous to all that, you had conference realignment happening. We were about to stumble upon USC and UCLA going to the big 10. So there was all this chaos. There were like multiple college football volcanoes blowing up to where even though Georgia had just done something historic, it's like no one had time to really focus on it. And I remember our attitude here. Our attitude was, oh, we got all summer to talk about it. Well, the thing about it is you can't keep saying that because eventually summer turns to media days, turns to fall camp. And what happened? Where did the time go? We didn't even really relish that Georgia national championship. It's kind of happening again. This is my point. It's kind of happening again. Got a lot of stuff going on off the field. Kirby and Georgia just went back to back. And it's kind of happening again. Which leads some to believe they're being doubted and overlooked. So I listened to that. And on the surface, I think to myself, you are outside your mind. If you think anyone still doubts Georgia. So I did the most scientific thing that I could do. I texted like 10 people and put it out there on Twitter. What's more scientific than that? And the last thing we do on this show is question science. Remember the experiment we ran with the Ohio State National Championship Prediction? Science predicted it, not me. So I did the same thing. Okay. And I wanted to find out. I wanted to test my theory. Are there any Georgia doubters out there? Turns out there are Georgia doubters out there. Now, I'm not in Vegas because Georgia is the favorite to win the national championship this year. But here we are in 2023. They're back to back national champs. And there are a surprising number of doubters. They don't doubt that they just won the titles. There's this thing out there. And it's for different reasons. So let me just see if you fall into any of these categories. There's this thing out there in the subconscious of college football that frankly, I don't think a lot of the national types are going to pick up on because you got to be in the weeds a little bit. You got to be talking to actual fans to pick up on this, but it's there. There's a respect for Georgia. I'm not saying there's not. There is an admittance. They've been the best program in the country the last two years. There's an admittance that they are recruiting like a machine. Kirby smarts the real deal. So people aren't doubting it that way. Here's what the doubt sounds like. And again, I'm just the messenger here. Like I said, you wouldn't arrest a guy for just delivering drugs from one person to the other. Would you? No, so be in the middle man's fine. And as you're a middle man, I have to dutifully inform you tonight that some folks just don't really take you seriously because they look at what happened in 2021. And they really think if Bama would have been healthy, you wouldn't have won that title. And they look in 2022 and they say, T.C.U. Hoops amongst us wouldn't have beaten them. I mean, the time you really got pushed was against Ohio State and they hung 40 plus on you. Your own head coach said you should have lost the game again. Middleman, middleman. I think this is going to end up in a Georgia hype video, Jesse. Knowing how they roll up there, I could see this in and up in a Georgia hype video. They also think the SEC East has been a joke. They're kind of right about that. I mean, I can't argue on that part. Like Clemson, you know, when they were making their run, everybody would look and say, Oh, well, anyone could win the ACC. Okay. But this is me now speaking. Even if you do, you don't get to breeze through the playoff. You eventually have to run up against a really good team. Do you beat them? If the answer is yes, then you were legit. Here is what I will agree with. And this is one of the core philosophies that you always have to, you have to guard against when it comes to winning national championships. And anytime you start to build up a big run, the dominance sometimes can be overblown. And in Georgia's case, the dominance has been overblown. I've seen it happen with Bama. The dominance sometimes got overblown because your mind works in highlights and snapshots. Your mind does not work in all 22 film review. And what I mean is this, when you think about 2022, Georgia, what do you think about? You think about dominance. What you don't think about is Missouri led you by two possessions in the fourth quarter. Ohio State, like I just said, is a misfuego away from you not even playing for the title. And that doesn't negate it at all. That's how football works. I'm the first to tell you that what I am saying though, is sometimes you'll be sitting on the porch at Cracker Barrel and that little buzzer hadn't gone off. It's not time to go sit down yet and order your chicken and dumplings. And you're just conversing back and forth about how unstoppable your team was this past year. No, they were perfect, but they weren't unstoppable. There were margins that were really close. And that leads to preview magazine season. And at least all this assumption in something that I don't believe in. And that is the carryover effect in college football and sports. You don't get to carry anything over. Some of the players may be the same. Some of your coaching staff may be the same. Some of your core tenants may be the same. Your philosophy, most of the time, is unchanged, but your record is zero and zero. When you take the field in August and September for real games, your record is zero and zero. And there's this thought even if people don't articulate it this way that, well, if you've won a title, if you just want to in a row, especially, there's just this wave that you're riding that builds or I guess gets created because of that success. And in reality, it's the opposite. In reality, the success that you just had builds up a little bit of a rip tie that you have to push against because of the net result of everybody placing their crosshairs and their focus on you. Not even to mention some of the stuff that can creep up inside your own building. I'm not even talking about that. So there are people who doubt Georgia. It doesn't matter that they doubt you because they can't come and confiscate those trophies. So when we did the mood tracker for Georgia a couple of weeks ago, I said the attitude of the fan base was sorry, not sorry. You can listen to all these folks talk about how this meant a little less or that didn't quite mean quite as much. It doesn't matter. That's football. That's how it works. You won the titles. You don't give them back. You don't ever apologize for them. That's one way that people can doubt you and disrespect you and hate on you. But it was brought to my attention earlier today that an acquaintance of ours had taken it a step further. And so no one can question the championship, Georgia's won. No one can question the recruiting, but there are still things that are at least somewhat subjective out there that are in a state of flux as it relates to public opinion. So our, I don't want to go as far as to call them a buddy, but our acquaintance, Brandon Walker, took to the airwaves of unnecessary roughness. There, Jack's there, Katie's there, Casey. Welcome back, Casey. And they were talking about the most intimidating atmospheres in college football and Sanford Stadium corrupting the conversation. And Sanford Stadium is your cousin who lost a hundred pounds, but you didn't witness cause you didn't go to the last family reunion. I am telling you, I've experienced it. I've experienced Sanford Stadium be a middle of the pack SEC environment as recently as a few years ago. I've also witnessed what it's become. So the argument amongst the folks there and Brandon Walker leading the charge was it's not even a top five environment. It's not even a top five game day atmosphere and stadium atmosphere in the SEC. And that used to be right until like 36 months ago that used to be right. It is not correct anymore. Sanford Stadium is like a whole new world now. I, you might as well have a Disney princess sing a song about it. It's like a whole new world. Now, I've been there. So you know what we do. We go on the road every Saturday. We stand on the sideline every Saturday. We don't hop in a private jet and go home after pregame. We are there every Saturday. So I am probably the best source on this because I actually don't even have favoritism here. I talk about all these places with brutal honesty at Georgia. This used to be a sweater vest special man. This used to be like a Microsoft convention and there just happens to be a football game being played in the background. It was pretty quiet. It was pretty unintimidating. What happened is a perfect microcosm of what Kirby did to the program. Kirby walked in and told them the way you do things is not going to work. Okay. And they overhauled everything about that program that needed to be overhauled. What happened was, and this was unexpected on my part, what happened was the attitude of the fan base ended up perfectly reflecting Kirby Smart's attitude. The fan base adopted his way of doing things and left behind the previous way of doing things. And it used to be that showing up was enough, you know, barking in a stranger's face in a Kroger's parking lot. That was enough. Go dogs. Well, now Kirby Smartwalks in is like, it's not enough. Take off the sweater vest. You don't even need to wear a shirt. It's optional. Paint your chest if you want to, but come in here and make people terrified to play in here. We got 90 some 1,000 seats in here. Why in the world should anyone ever be able to hear on third down? And they did it. But the thing about it is just like the cousin who's lost 100 pounds in the last year, if you're not at the family reunion, you still think he's fat and your buddies, your sister, your cousins come back from family reunion and you say, who was fat Teddy there? Teddy's not fat anymore. What are you talking about? Teddy's enormous. No, Teddy was enormous. Teddy just lost 100 pounds. Teddy lost a bill. You need to see Teddy. Brandon Walker needs to go to a game at Georgia. I'll take him. But again, we stay for four quarters, my friend. I'll take him. I think if nothing more, if you would have been at the Georgia Tennessee game last year, it would have changed your mind. All you need's won. I mean, it's not like anyone's going to every game and running case study on these places. Your opinion is born from the games you've witnessed. And so if you went to the Tennessee game last year, there's no doubt in your mind. The Arkansas game a couple of years ago was like insane. It was a noon kickoff, which proves the point that yes, noon kickoffs can be very, very legit in terms of atmosphere. Um, Stanford stadium, I'm not going to do the rankings. I'm not going to do the power rankings of SEC stadiums tonight, but I will tell you because he texted me today, Brandon was texting me today and he gave me five of them that he thinks are better than the Sanford stadium. Sanford stadium is a better atmosphere than the swamp is right now. Sanford stadium is a better atmosphere than Kyle Field is right now. And I think the world of both of those places, I'm just telling you what Sanford stadium is turned into. It wasn't this as recently as three years ago, I would not have said this. They've just transformed that place. And I just told you who I think deserves the credit, but even if Kirby Smart preaches at eight days out of the week, man, the fan base is still got a, they still got to adopt that and they have. So I know you, it's not the first time I've said it. It probably won't be the last time I say it this week, but Brandon Walker was wrong. But God bless him anyway. This is Jimmy Conrad, the host of In Soccer We Trust. A podcast that's a part of the CBS Sports Podcast Network dedicated to the United States' Love Affair with the beautiful game. I and two of my favorite former teammates Heath Pearson, Charlie Davies, will be coming to you every Monday and Thursday to talk all things men's soccer, especially as it pertains to the red, white and blue. We'll be keeping tabs on the Americans abroad and the rising domestic stars, as well as looking ahead to the US men's national team's Nations League and Gold Cup title defenses this summer. And like always, we'll be mixing in game previews, recaps, interviews, heated debates, breaking news and much more. So download and follow an Apple podcast spotify and anywhere podcasts are found. Subscribe to In Soccer We Trust. 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Because the drive to 200k subs is very serious. It's being taken very serious around here. When director Colin and producer Jesse, even Bradley, the associate and I talk about it, we don't even smile. It's serious stuff. It's very serious stuff. All right, let's dive back in. Bold prediction season. Still upon us going to be upon us for a little while. How does this work? Well, allegedly these are the things you claim you would bet your money on and it's about as bold as you're willing to go. How bold? Well, let's take a look on a scale of one to 10. I'm going to give this first one about a 9.25. This is from Austin from Fort Myers, Florida. Austin, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but he's basically telling you, Clemson and Florida state are both going to miss out on the ACC Championship game this year. These are easily like far and away. The number one and number two teams in terms of odds in the preseason there. Florida state actually the slight favorite to win the conference right now that could fluctuate, but you get the picture. There is a pretty big gap between Florida state Clemson and then Louisville, who is at number three and then North Carolina is at number four. Divisions are out this year, by the way. So you can't count on one of them making it and knocking the other one out because it's division play. No, they're taking the top two from the conference and that's your conference championship game. So first off, what would have to happen to them? Well, the way we figured it, Florida state would probably need to lose to Clemson because Florida state has an easier remaining schedule. And so if they beat Clemson, LSU is their other hard game. That's not even a conference game. So I have no clue how Florida state is being kept out of the conference title game if they beat Clemson. So you probably need FSU to lose to Clemson because let's take a look at the Clemson schedule. There are more loseable games here. They open against Duke, Riley Leonard season opens September 4th, but they also go to Syracuse right after they play FSU. They got Wake. They go to Miami and NC state back to back. They got North Carolina late in the seasons. Certainly they'd be favored, but at least that's a little bit more treacherous a path in Florida state. I don't think this is going to happen. This, they're basically trying to find the Texas, Oklahoma scenario of 2022 in the big 12, but for the ACC, I don't think it's happening. Nine and a quarter out of 10. That's the boldness rating I give this. Now we hop on the jet and we go all the way out to the west coast because we've got a prediction that I have every bit as bold as the last one at Playboy Trojan. He hit us up from Northridge, California and he said USC is going to go undefeated. Wait for it. Wait for it. He's not done. They're going to go undefeated with a top 30 defense. I could hear some of you. Some of you heard me say USC goes undefeated and you said, and then you heard me say they have a top 30 defense and there was the sound of screeching tires. If you're driving, there was the sound of, of ceramic shattering against the floor as you tried to eat your cereal and listen to the pod. And thank you for that. I don't blame me. It's not my prediction. Blame Playboy Trojan. They're going to have a top 30 defense. Going undefeated. It's tough enough. Top 30 defense. They were 106th in the country and total yards per game allowed last year. And that was with them being fifth in forcing turnovers. So they had all kinds of crazy turnover luck. They were 94th in points per game allowed again with the turnover factor heavily in their favor. Could have been even worse. They need to improve by about a touchdown per game in terms of points per game. If they want to be the top 30 caliber defense that they need to be to make this prediction pan out. Oh, and by the way, they got to go undefeated and it is a very tough walk out there. Not to mention they play Notre Dame, but it's a tough walk out there. Lot of you hate on the Pac 12 schedule. Oh, you shouldn't because it's not easy this year. It's not easy by a long shot. They go to Oregon second to last week of the year. Oh, and by the way, they got Washington the week before that they got Utah. Listen to this. They play Notre Dame, Utah, Washington, Oregon and UCLA. Those five teams, they play in a six week period to end the season. That's tough. So I'm putting a nine and a quarter on this as well. This is pretty bold. Next up, somehow I put an eight and a half on this one, but it's a long shot. So this is from Jim from Davidson, North Carolina. He says that national championship game will be two teams that have not made the playoff to date. So we're going to have newbies, two of them at least, crash the playoff and two newbies are going to play for the national championship. Now right off the bat, I had producer Jesse look up the odds to win the title and out of the top 17, this criteria alone would eliminate 11 of them. So we're left with the USC's and Texas's Tennessee, Penn State teams like that. That's who we're left with. Then we do a little bit deeper dive, according to sports reference, no team in the playoff era that started the year with plus 4,000 odds or lower has won the title. So you factor in that just as a nice little line in the sand of a cutoff. And that left us with six teams that we could choose from here. Remember, we need two of them to match up in the title game. It could be USC. It could be Texas, Tennessee and Penn State are both included here. Texas A&M Utah. Good teams. They should be good this year. Viable candidates. We're going to get two of them though. The reason that I'm only going to put an eight and a half on that is because number one, there are some good teams out of that group. And number two, where's the dominance? Where's the preseason dominant team? Where's the insurmountable foe out there? I don't think there is one, even if the odds suggest otherwise. I don't think there is one. I'm going to say that an eight and a half. And last up, let's go all the way to rivalry weekend. Week, what would that be? Week 13. Auburn's going to win nine games. And Auburn's going to win the iron ball in the process. That is from one of our friends there in Enterprise, Alabama. And I put an eight and three quarters out of 10 on this on the boldness scale. The win total is at seven right now. So they're going to win two more than that. Get out of the realm of possibility. Bama right now has a win total of 10. Bama in the iron bowl right now is a 14 point favorite at Auburn. Yes, those lines are out by the way. So we were looking at their schedule, Auburn schedule. We think they'll be a certain underdog in five games at A&M, Georgia at LSU, at Arkansas, probably in Bama. The Ole Miss game at home. Very, very close spread. And I should have done my due diligence. I could have just looked at what our model thinks. Yes, the model is back. And I could have told you, but there was a lot going on today. I don't know what to tell you. So they got an easy non-conference schedule. They do have Vandy as one of their road games in conference, not to dismiss the Commodores. We took over three and a half wins as one of our best bets of the year for them. But you'd rather go there than like South Carolina is my point. We've got the number two portal class that changed as of a few hours ago. I'm going to put an 8.75 there. I think we'll have a pretty good feel early on, obviously, because you can't be losing games early and still get to nine wins. But we'll also have a good feel of, hey, what kind of fit is Peyton Thorn at quarterback there? Are these receivers, two of which they got recently? Are they immediate plug and play guys? What's the situation with Jarkass Hunter? And if he's not there, what's the situation when they're run game? People know early on 8.75 steep, but not undoable. That's silence, but you can hear the paper. I'm just doing that so you know I'm still here. I, um, sometimes you just get a story that comes across your desk and all you can do is laugh. Well, I'll tell you two things you can do. You can laugh and then if you have one at your disposal, you can grab your chalice of supremacy, take a nice long sip and shake your head and say, why am I not surprised? Because friends, why am I not surprised? So Colin, here's your endpoint. The big 10 has a great big mess on its hands and it in some ways may surprise you, but in other ways, if you have followed this board for a little while, it shouldn't surprise you at all. So Kevin Warren, who was last seen doing such things as trying to sabotage the 2020 college football season, decided as it turns out to leave one last bag of crap on his desk before he vacated the premises as big 10 conference commissioner. You remember that massive TV deal? You remember that thing? Seven billion dollars. Revolutionary. It's groundbreaking. It's so innovative. It's next level. It also, as it turns out, didn't have signatures on it. It's not finalized. What? We already released the balloons. I know. Well, we already hired a new commissioner. Kevin Warren's not even here anymore. He took all of our pets on the back. I know. That's where Pete Thamel comes in. ESPN.com late this afternoon. Pete Thamel comes out with a story and he just casually reveals. Yeah. That media deal that everyone's praising the big 10 for him. It's not finalized. What? Well, let's talk about it, friends. In fact, this is from the Thamel article. If you know who we're talking about here, it shouldn't surprise you. Then again, if you understand how many people have to be in the room, how many presidents and chancellors had to have signed off on this thing, there is a lot of blame to go around here. This is not solely at the feet of Kevin Warren, but a lot of it is at the feet of Kevin Warren. Quote, from the Thamel article, you can read this entire piece on ESPN.com. Nearly three months before the season kicks off and those TV deals begin, the big 10 does not have completed long form contracts, which include the fine print details. Instead, Mr. Petiti, who is the new commissioner up there, is engaged in significant horse trading according to multiple sources to get the NBC prime time deal even finished and figure out what the network calls outstanding issues in order to uphold as much value as possible. Allow me to translate. There were some details that needed to be explained and instead of explaining them, the person who's responsible for facilitating this kept the wool over people's eyes to get them to sign off on it till he can celebrate and then leave and drop the whole shrug of the shoulders. Not my problem anymore. The article continues quote, these deals are not done and they aren't what they were represented to be from the standpoint of the NBC deal and the availability of all members to participate in November games and prime time set an industry source. Allow me to summarize. This is really where the first point of contention comes in. For those of you who live in Sarasota, Florida, you may not understand the tolerance agreement as they call it in the Big Ten, but in the Big Ten, there's been a long understanding. In the Big Ten, there's been a long time upheld understanding that we don't play night games past a certain point in the season. It's just their way of doing things. They got us several reasons for it. It's just the way of doing things. Well, Kevin Warren gets in the room and this is according to this report from Pete Tam, Kevin Warren gets in the room with NBC and they realize, boy, those prime time games are worth a lot of money though. Wouldn't they? Wouldn't they be worth a lot of money? But just do it, Kevin. Let's just do it. It's your inventory after all. More on that in a second as well. It's your inventory. They'll go along with it. Just do it. Oh, okay. Lick's the pen, signs the paper, voila. We've got a prime time Big Ten package of games. Here's the problem. They never went to the member institutions. They never went to the athletic directors and said, hey, what'd you think about overturning our long held rule about not playing those night games? And all of a sudden the coaches are looking around while they announced the deal saying, we're going to do what? Ohio State said the blank we are and did owe for Penn State and did owe for Michigan. And that is the crux of the current issue because NBC paid a lot of money for that package. And all of a sudden the three biggest brands in the conference are saying, y'all have fun with it. Like we'll watch Iowa Purdue in prime time. We're not going to be there, but we'll watch you in prime time. And then NBC said, hold up. You think we paid that money for you to not participate? What's going on, Tony Petiti? And then Tony Petiti says, I just got here five minutes ago. I thought all this was wrapped up. And it turns out not so much. Yes, friends. They got a big problem. That's not the entirety of the problem. Oh, we can tend you. There's a, I can't believe this is a real thing. There's also this, this little issue of Kevin Warren agreeing to give NBC the Big Ten Championship game in 2026, which he had no authority to do because the Big Ten doesn't own their own inventory, which is sort of a part of the story that I had heard about because I work in TV, but was not public knowledge for a long time, but it started to become public knowledge. And that is the fact that the Big Ten does not own their own rights. Fox does the Big Ten network, which is owned by Fox does. That was the deal they entered into in 2016. So you see when you're, when you're reading all these stories about the Big Ten signing TV deals and whatnot, it's really just a sub licensing agreement that NBC or CBS or whomever is signing with Fox. And that's why Fox representatives were in the room when CBS reps were in the room talking to the Big Ten. It's like you're going on a date and all of a sudden the boyfriend's over here. You're like, what is he doing here? Oh, he, he owns me. What? Well, you didn't tell me this. This changes a lot. Yeah. So that was going on the whole time. Now, now imagine for a second, if you will, imagine the fine folks over there at Fox got a lot of friends over there. Imagine their face. And inventory they own is being awarded to another network without their consent. And they're saying, you're doing what the blank you are. It's just that Ozark quote over and over and over again. And so we've got an in pass right now that hopefully is being worked through for the sake of the Big Ten and the fans up there, but all the while you got a new commissioner who's come in and that commissioner comes in and he has a long track record in television, thankfully. And I'm sure that Tony Petiti came in and thought, I'm hopping on a, I'm hopping on a jet plane here. And you did hop on a jet plane, but it's on the tarmac still does this tires deflated and that wing needs to be adjusted. And we haven't even fueled this. And he's like, we have to take off in 15 minutes. I know. That's why we hired you. Have fun. What's going to happen? I don't know. I have no clue. But I, because that Big Ten championship game was given to NBC without proper consent, the big, the big 10's got to pay $40 million to Fox. Guess whose pocket that comes out of member institutions pockets. Do you know what that does to an athletic department when you've already budgeted for your year? And then someone walks in and says, Hey, I know it's May, but we need 40 million. You guys got it? Hello? Everyone. Oh, you're on vacation. Well, when you get back, Illinois, Rutgers, you're talking to your mom. When you get off the phone, we need $40 million. We already spent it. Not my problem, man. We need $40 million because as it turns out, we gave away something we weren't allowed to give away. Okay. So, so that's what's going on in the Big Ten right now. I'm sure we will hear a rebuttal because there's this other little issue for Kevin Warren. And that as much as was the case with Jim Delaney because he negotiated a new media rights deal, he's supposed to get a bonus. Delaney got a big bonus, like $20 million. Kevin Warren supposed to have a bonus come in his way. And as you could imagine, the Big Ten is meeting with with various legal minds to try and find out whether they even owe him that bonus. Pick up. So there's going to be a lot of, a lot of posturing over the coming days. I don't doubt, by the way, well, I say I don't doubt. I could see a world where this very story comes out because of the need to paint Kevin Warren in a negative light. And I would just counter with, you don't need to, uh, advantageously come out with stories to paint that guy in that negative light. Just remind people of what he did in the past. That's all you really need to do. It's my take on the matter. I don't consult for the Big Ten though. So yeah, that's where they are right now in the words. So in other words, if you're a Pac-12 fan, if you are an ACC fan, remember that. In the words of Robert California, the 1% is suffering to people. No, that's not the, in the words of Robert California, the 1% are suffering to people. Some people didn't like Robert California in the office and I thought he was a well-placed character too late in the series. Put him in season four. Give me him instead of Charles Minor. How would that have worked out? Probably pretty good chemistry, but I digress. Okay. So we still got a lot of show to go. But again, man, we were so loaded tonight. Thank you for watching. Oh, there's 1,776 people watching out patriotic. So they're watching us in Kessler Air Force Base. That's down in Biloxi, Mississippi. Thank you so much. Laguna Beach, California Kitchener Ontario, Canada is tuned in. We had multiple Canadian viewers in the chat earlier tonight. I appreciate that. I, I, I wondered whether we should talk about this because there's going to be some things happen early this week that evolve this story, but I think we need to. We have a situation in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon's on fire. Let me rephrase. Oregon recruiting is on fire. So deep sigh of relief there for our, our friends battling forest fires every other year out there, Oregon. Oregon's coming off the top rope in recruiting right now. Okay. So they are rolling and it continued this past week. Remember when Mario left and Dan Lanny came in and we were answering a lot of questions on the show, do you remember the key piece of doubt that a lot of folks had that the key concern that a lot of people have? They had watched Dan Lanny at Oregon or at Georgia rather. They had watched Lanny at Georgia. They didn't doubt his coaching ability. They just wondered, wow, we just had a guy in Mario Christobal who's a really good recruiter and we're at Oregon. So we don't have a ton of talent in our backyard. So we got to have someone who's just a killer on the recruiting trail. And we don't know what we're getting in Dan Lanny. We think we love the press conference. It's a really fun loving guy, but does he just have that killer instinct? Can he bring in a staff that's got that finishers killer instinct on the recruiting trail? Answer. Yes. In the definitive. So just over this past weekend, they landed four star quarterback Michael Van Buren. They landed a four star defensive lineman, Xavier Sims. I have a strong feeling this will continue Monday when Dylan Gresham makes his decision that's a high four star wide receiver. Oregon currently sits at number six in the 24 seven sports team recruiting rankings for 2024. The next closest pack 12 team is Colorado and they're at 34. Oregon has more four and five star committed players right now than the rest of the pack 12 combine. And actually has more four and five star players committed right now than the rest of the pack 12, even if you doubled the rest of the pack 12. Oregon's got 10. The rest of them have four combined. This is a shark swimming in a lake out there, especially when it comes to recruiting doubly, especially when USC and UCLA leave in about five minutes. They are going to make a run at the highest rated recruiting class in Oregon recruiting history. And when you say something like that, let me assure you friends, it is like kicking over a casual ant bed because you kick it over and they just scurry all over the place and they say things like, well, yeah, but they have Nike. Uh, well, as far as I know, Nike's not going anywhere, man. And this is the NIL era. You harness anything and everything you can. So you tell me, yeah, they got Nike and I say, yeah, they got Nike. What else? What else do you have? And then they say, well, they're kind of staggered by that. They didn't really expect to retort. And then they say, well, it doesn't mean anything until national signing day. And so here's, here's the approach I've started to take. Did I talk about this foolishness all the time? If you really want to tell me that what you're insinuating is the kids are going to decommit. That's really what you're saying. Otherwise, it's just nonsense defense mechanism foolishness. So when you tell me, oh, it doesn't mean anything in a signing day, indefinitely, here's what I'm offering you. I am offering you to take any given recruiting class. In this case, Oregon, they got 13 kids committed right now. I will bet you $1,000 per kid that they stay committed and I will gladly take any wagers, but you don't get to pick kids. You've got to go entire class or nothing at all. And we can find a great charity to put that money on the line to benefit. I'm willing to offer that to anyone right now who steps up. So does anyone actually want to step up? Of course you don't because you know what the numbers say. The numbers say 90 plus percent of kids who are verbally committed even this early are going to stay committed. It just doesn't make you feel good because it's not your team. Oregon by the way, if they stay in the pack to have a long term, that is a total shark in a lake. If they go to the big 10, those are just rumors. If they go to the big 10, I don't think people realize this the day they stepped in the big 10, they would be one of the premier national recruiting brands in that conference. There would only be one, maybe one in Ohio State that touches them in terms of national recruiting presence. Now in fairness, Oregon has to be that whereas you don't have to be that the further east you get. I told you they got 13 kids verbally committed right now, probably about to be 14 tomorrow. Do you know out of those 13 kids, they've got Maryland, California, Texas, Texas, Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Washington, Arizona, Missouri and Oregon represented just out of 13, they got two, four, six, eight, nine different states represented. That's how you recruit nationally and they've harnessed everything up there and then some to do it. So I am telling you that to tell you, I know there's doubt. Look, these days in college football, until you win a national championship, people doubt you. So, you know, maybe Oregon will check that box one day. But even before that, you shouldn't be surprised. If they, especially when you look at where they're stacking, it's not just a bunch of receivers. So that's the other point I'm trying to make with you there in the portal and in recruiting. Yeah, they got a quarterback yesterday and yeah, they get their fair share of offensive players. They got a ton of defensive linemen. They have got a ton of linebackers. They have stacked front seven defensive talent like no one else in that conference has. And that includes USC. No one's done it like Oregon. So, you know, I'm scratching my nose. I don't know why you, you can talk about the quarterbacks out there and you should. Good quarterbacks in that league who gets after them the most is who will ultimately win that conference every year. And there is no one building themselves to accomplish that more consistently than Oregon is. Uh, you know what, Jesse, I know you'd be mad at me, but I almost, I almost looked right past the Penn State mood tracker. How dare me? Yeah. So, uh, in return, Jesse came in my ear there and asked you guys through me if you would please like the video and subscribe to the channel. A lot of you already have. So I'm not talking to a lot of you, just some of you, some of you hold outs who are being stingy with your likes. There's no need to be that way. I could have runny nose. I feel like I got a nosebleed and I don't. Hmm. Anyway, at least I'm not coughing all over the place like I was last week. Mood tracker season continues. And I want to remind you after this, stick around because I'm going to play you a clip from an interview I did with one of our buddies here in Nashville last Friday and it was really good, really fun. I dove really deep on some stuff. I'm going to play you part of it and I'm going to tell you where you can find the rest of it. Okay. Mood tracker time. Let's take the temperature of a fan base tonight. We're headed to state college, Pennsylvania. Some of you say we talk about Penn State all the time, which is impossible because we haven't even done the Penn State mood tracker until now we're doing the Penn State mood tracker. Speaking of Penn State. We were up there recently. So I think we got as good a feel about the Penn State vibe as we do any vibe. I was explaining to Bradley, the associate earlier today who's been on an airplane once in his life. Well twice because he counts the flight back. And so he doesn't get out much. Bless his heart. I was telling Bradley about the creamery that they have on campus at Penn State. And it's just some of the most delicious and fattening product that you'll ever taste. When we were at Penn State, it's an unlimited supply. When you walk around the football complex, I forgot, Jesse, what's the creamery call? The cream. Okay, the creamery. I wonder how they came up with a name. It always fascinates me. So they have that chocolate milk all over the place. And I downed it. I downed it stone cold style. And I still really have not fully burned that off. I don't regret anything. But anyway, so we were up there and we got to watch practice. We were in there with the coaches. We interviewed James Franklin. We had a really good time at Penn State. They're coming off in 11 and two years. They're coming off a Rose Bowl. We have really seen a surge in Penn State. Those folks are dialed in up there. What's the mood of the fan base, therefore? The mood of the fan base. And yes, I did give producer Jesse noted Penn State grad a little leeway on this one today. But I had a good source on this. Jesse says the Penn State mood tracker should be a list attitude. What do you mean, Jesse? Well, it's pretty easy to see where he's going there. James Franklin is 4 and 14 against the top two in that conference, Michigan and Ohio State. He is 74 and 22 versus everyone else. That is a heck of a job a coaching. It's not elite premier top of the line. It's that next rung below that. It's hard to even get there. So what we would equate that to on national college football terms is we would equate you to being live Tyler. You would be Alexander Scarsgaard. You know who that is? That was that dude who was in true blood, Eric Northman, which shockingly I watched. More recently, you would know him from such shows as Succession. You're a solid B list actor and you want to be an A-lister. You want to go from live Tyler to Brad Pitt. You want to be Denzel. How do you do it? Pretty simple. Beat Ohio State and or Michigan and go to the playoff. Maybe even when you play off game, hey, maybe even when you're title, but they at least accomplish something that you haven't already accomplished. They got the highest rated quarterback they've ever had there. They got an incredible 1-2 tandem in the backfield. They got a ton of experience along their offensive line. They have got an exceptional defense and an exceptional defensive quarter or coordinator to go along with that. They love the staff. I love their staff. They are recruiting very, very well. In other words, all of the ingredients are there for you to become an A-lister this year. You just have to get it done. College football landscape is coming at you. It is coming in your direction. If you're Penn State, forget what I think about the way things are changing. The fact is they're changing. Has any program out there just been sitting and waiting for these changes more than Penn State? An expanded playoff? How much would that benefit them? Doing away with divisions in the Big Ten and just awarding the top two as a selectee for the conference championship, who does that benefit more than Penn State? So with all that being said, you're not far off. It's fractions of degrees. You are not in a situation where you have to overhaul anything quite the opposite. You just have to make minor adjustments here and there. Could be well on your way. They are right now a plus 2,500 odds team to win the national championship. And that really is because they're in the same division as the number three and number four team, respectively, when it comes to title odds. Doesn't matter. You know why it doesn't matter? Because they all get to play on the field this year. Ohio State welcomes Penn State in, I think in week eight. Michigan goes there, I think in week 11. And I really don't think I just have the Big Ten schedule memorized. So there you go. A list attitude. That's what we're looking for at Penn State. All right. So before we get out of here, I want to thank you guys again for watching live. And I have a little present for you. We rarely do this. But I was over at RCA Records the other day because that's where our buddy Michael Bratton, you may know him as SEC Mike. He records his pod over there. Does some of it at his house too. But he asked me to be on his show and so I was on his show. We recorded it Friday and I don't know why. He asked really good questions, I guess is the reason why. But we got some really good stuff out of that interview. And I'm going to link the entire long form interview in the comments below. And if you're watching in the live chat, I'm about to link it in just a second. But I would encourage you go check it out. It's on his YouTube channel, SEC Mike. But I'm about to play you a clip right here because a lot of you have asked me, hey, can you retell the story of like how you, how the show came to be and then how it eventually arrived in Nashville? Like how in the world does this show end up as a CBS sports property at 24 seven sports? How did you get there? And I told the story a long time ago, but we've had like hundreds of thousands of new subscribers, hundreds of thousands of millions actually of new viewers and listeners since them. So you may not have heard the story a lot. Well, here is a little bit of it. And if you want more of it, you can go listen to the full interview. Let's roll it. How did someone get to your position to wear CBS 24 seven sports? It wants you on their team. I had Chan and Terry in here about a month ago. He said, yeah, paid. I think I think he was doing the weather. I mean, I always thought that was a joke. You chasing tornadoes, but I guess you really do that. Did that stuff, huh? Yeah. So I was down in Columbus, Georgia. I mean, I could give you my whole life story. It would take a couple of hours, but I mean suffice it to say, I was wasting a lot of time. I was wasting a chunk of my early twenties being in the same position. Countless people who were listening to this or watching this have been or maybe are right now. And that is just you're not so broke that you're backed into a corner, but you're certainly nowhere close to wealthy enough to where you've been born on third base and you don't have to outwork everyone. You're just kind of a tweener and you gotten out of high school and yeah, you maybe you're going through college, but you don't know what you want to do. And I was that way for a long time. If you asked me at 22 years old, who are you? I don't know that I could have answered that. And it took a little while and took a confluence of different kinds of events and people sort of smacking sense into me to finally realize, hey, you do have passions somewhere down in you. You do have talent somewhere down in you. You just got to kind of find where that little intersection is and make a career out of it. There's going to be a career there. So that just sounded like motivational speak talk for a long time. Come to find out its reality though. So I end up getting in sports talk radio and work for free for a long time. And finally, much the same way Shannon reached out to me before Shannon did, I had a general manager from a TV station down at Columbus reach out. This is out of the blue. Now he's cold calling me. It goes to voicemail because I don't recognize the number. And it was a guy by the name of Drew Rhodes. He was the general manager at the WLTZ NBC 38 affiliate down there in Columbus. And he said, Hey man, me and my sales jam, we just had this crazy idea. Like we want to do a college football show on TV every night. What do you think? I listen to you on the radio on the drive home every day. Kind of like what you say. What do you think? So I took it. I'd never been on TV. First time I was ever on TV. First time I was ever in a studio. I was on TV. And so ended up doing that ended up parlaying that kind of into being a local sports anchor down there. What in qualified for it ended up being a news anchor. What qualified for it. But all the while what I came to realize is you start doing that little college football show and at the time we just covered Bama, Auburn and Georgia because that's where we were located in terms of DMA. I start realizing, well they got me wearing a jacket like a suit jacket here. They got me wearing a tie every night. And it's it's their gig. I'm just I'm just in the driver's seat. So I'm happy and content to do whatever they ask me to. But ultimately I started to get a vision of what I thought that show could be and what I thought we could grow it to. And you got to remember now this is about 2013 ish. And there were so many important things that started to happen. First thing is my contract was about to be up. But the second thing is Facebook had this crazy idea that they could take their platform and just add a live streaming component to it. And then YouTube shortly thereafter they add a live streaming component. And I see that one day and it's just like it was the first light bulb moment of my life. Everyone else talks about their light bulb moment. I had never had one. I thought they were lying about it. So I finally have my light bulb moment. And so after our newscast I was anchored in the six o'clock news after that newscast one day. I just I undid my tie a little bit. I go in the I go in the control room. No one's in there. I prop my cell phone up and I just start talking for 20 minutes. And I did that for about a week and management shut it down. And they were every they were every bit within the right to do it because they said hey we're not paying you to be on our dime to use our facilities and going to business for yourself. So a contract comes up and they just wanted to renew me as a sports anchor news anchor. And I said well if I can't do in addition what it is I want to do I'm not going to do it. So we came to an agreement where I just work as an independent contractor for them. There'll be a news anchor so the far as the public's concerned nothing changed. I was just going to make a whole lot less money. But the trade off was they gave me access drew roads in the ownership group down there gave me access to their television studio for three nights a week for an hour where I could produce my own show on my own platform. So the very next week we launched what you know is late kick now and we launched an independent YouTube channel and it took about a year and a half and I got a call from Shannon Terry one day. And he said you never met me I've never met you. But we've been watching some of your stuff and look we don't do what you do right now but I think we can. Will you come here and just keep doing what you're doing but just do it for us. And that was the golden ticket you know because that is 24 seven and then getting in the door of CBS as well. And it's it's just a landmark moment because no one had really made that jump especially in our college football space. Now no one had made that jump before. No one had been taken seriously enough by major media to be given that opportunity because the age old philosophy is well if there's someone good enough we will have already known about them because we will have developed them in house or they will be already working for a legacy media type. And so man like you you look back at a few names in your life and drew roads is one of them Bobby Roblowski before him and Columbus on radio but Shannon Terry man like that's a guy who is visionary to the tee you see his picture next to that name in the dictionary when you look it up and it starts company after company after company and the thing about winners is they just keep winning. So there's never any doubt whether they're going to succeed now they may have an individual little test pilot that fails every now and then but the direction they're going is always going to be a sound direction. And I knew that because I had been a subscriber to his website for a long time I had been a customer of his for a long time and and so I knew the product in the vision was sound and I know everything I need to know about CBS in terms of distribution and in terms of production quality. So we came here in 2020 like five minutes before covid happens we come here and we launched late kick and it's just scaled ever since because the concept was sound and now you've got the backing that truthfully I never really knew that I would have I always thought I'd always have to raise the money I'd always have to go get some new capital right but the one other thing that was happening and I don't know if you experience this like I did but if you grew up a hardcore college football fan once upon a time you could find what you wanted like you could get that shot in the arm you needed even from some national media you could get it now it wasn't as plentiful as I would have liked but you could get it. I don't actually I do know what happened but I don't want to go down the road but around the middle of the twenty teens a lot of entities that had provided that kind of content veered off down a road they had no business going down right and they stopped providing the kind of content that you and I crave and so many people who are in our respective audiences crave and it's so so you had the technology come of age at the same time you had other traditional media abandon their audience so you had the need all the sudden pop up and you had the means to deliver it to them all the sudden pop up and so you're talking about a perfect storm and then you add on top of that that I've got an opportunity in a TV studio down in Columbus then I've got an opportunity with Shannon Terry in the 24 7 CBS not all of that's in my control you know a lot of that's just being blessed folks looking out for you folks giving you an opportunity but the thing about it is it'll eventually happen like if you grind long enough if you're doing good work it'll eventually happen but it may not happen twice so you got to jump on it grab it by the throat when it does come your way so big thanks to our buddy Michael Bratton the SEC Mike which I'm told he has tattooed on his lower back unconfirmed you can find that entire interview on his YouTube channel it is SEC Mike also just put the link in the live chat for those of you watching live a lot of we went for like an hour that studio that we're in okay this freaked me out so it's over at RCA it's over just off music row here in Nashville I love country music that don't mean what they do now so much I mean like legit country music so unbeknownst to me we're in a building there where Elvis has recorded where Dolly Parton has recorded Charlie Pride I love and he recorded there Chad Atkins recorded there uh Merle willy Nelson they're just picture after picture on the wall but I didn't see it when I first got there so I took a little tour afterwards and had I known that I was in like the same room and same studio as a lot of them had been I probably just would have fanned myself whole studio or whole interview that's a pretty big deal to me so I appreciate it if you want to check out the entire interview uh go go give him a like over there on that it's really good though we covered a lot of college football too it's not just like procedural industry stuff so there's a healthy balance of both but I had fun with that had a lot of fun so I appreciate that appreciate you guys being tuned in make sure you drop a like on the way out subscribe to the channel and if you're listening on podcast just do a bump sub to the podcast and then mosey on over to the youtube channel and subscribe there as well we'll be back here same time Thursday night look for a late kick extra podcast between now and then and until next time for Bradley the associate who I don't know why I listed first I just did director Collins in there producer Jesse's in there I'm Josh Bate thanks so much have a great rest of your night and god bless oh yeah this is Brian Campbell one half of your award-winning morning combat duo and you can listen to MK every Monday Wednesday and Friday live as Luke Thomas and I preview and review the biggest fights and news and mixed martial arts and boxing and this combat sports show takes the fight seriously every Saturday night providing instant reaction after the final punch is thrown there's a big summer coming a big time fights including the UFC's international fight week offering in early July download morning combat today don't miss a beat when it comes to the combat sports wherever you find podcasts.