Gene Smith Joins the Show from Big Ten Media Days

This week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays is coming to you one day later than usual, but we hope it will be worth the wait.We recorded this week’s episode from Indianapolis, where we spent the past two days covering Big Ten Media Days. And we were joined by a special guest while we were there.Dan talked to Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith on Tuesday about a wide variety of topics including Big Ten expansion, College Football Playoff expansion, NIL, Ryan Day and Chris Holtmann’s contract extensions, how Ohio State is making up for the deficit it incurred in 2020 and more. You can hear the entirety of their conversation in the first half of this week’s episode.Griffin joins the show at the 24:10 mark for a conversation on everything we learned in Indianapolis including the likelihood of more expansion for the Big Ten, who is and isn’t available for Ohio State going into the start of preseason camp and Day’s confidence that the Buckeyes can have a top-10 defense this year. We also discuss what we heard from Michigan players about last year’s rivalry game and the weirdest moments of Jim Harbaugh’s media sessions on Tuesday.