and welcome to our holly jolly humble about the thunder of on this week 16 kickoff Thursday this program starts now football it's wonderful and we're so incredibly lucky that we get to talk about it every single day we appreciate you for allowing us to be a part of your lives no matter where the hell you're watching from or listening you're the greatest people on earth and so are sports today's a big one we got the greatest of all time when it comes to college coaching and uh nick saban joining us in about 35 minutes normally stops by on friday we'll be off tomorrow because there's a bowl game kicking off at noon and immediately following that noon kickoff on espn college game day rolling all the way into the iu notre dame kickoff to kick off the 12 team playoff i believe it's the first time since like 1960 that notre dame's playing on espn and on a friday night or whatever the case it should be electrifying as the who who who travel up to south bend uh it's gonna be a chilly evening but both these teams are obviously built for that and the college football playoff is gonna be electrifying i'll be honest i'll be doing a certain way i'll lean a certain way because of our personal relationships and getting a chance to watch and watch some film being like hey what they got could be good matchup could be good matchup and then i watched a highlight reel this morning uh that was put out by notre dame's digital team it's what jesus on the track yeah obviously he's a snowman he started with the snow all over notre dame and this late of a uh into the calendar a game happening there it's gonna be chilly it's gonna be historic it's gonna be legendary it's gonna be movie quality up there in front of touchdown jesus in south bend i did not know that notre dame had this i'll be honest i had no idea that they even knew jeezy i had a thought of what jeezy was and then put jeezy on the hot i mean that is i'll tell you what after i say i said hold the phone now yeah what do we got going on tomorrow night which is gonna be a great game to celebrate this college football season and obviously kick off something that's gonna be remembered forever this is a precedent now for the future 12 team playoffs which are gonna lead in the 14 team playoffs what decisions are gonna be made what these first round games gonna look like you know because the big battle the big conversation was should be alabama getting in south carolina getting in old miss getting in or is the second team from the ACC gonna get in because of the record and everything like that we shall see how these games play out and we shall see how the future looks we're not gonna be part of it on saturday we'll be field side for the tennessee ohio state game for our simulcast on espn2 main broadcast will be on abc and on espn we'll be on sideline on espn2 live from columbus ohio and hype one of the boys nico yamaliava dylan sampson traveling up to columbus where it's gonna be cold shit cold and breezy up there in ohio ryan day will howard an entire team of superstars are trying to avenge a loss to michigan for their home crowd tickets for this particular game expensive but people are saying the tennessee fans are invading ohio it's gonna be tough to believe and i echo the sentiment that kirk kerbs she was trying to make whether it was taken out of context or didn't deliver it exactly how he wanted to it's like ohio state fans love that team so if they're giving up tickets and selling tickets and tennessee gets that orange in there and that becomes a little bit of a scene then the chatter about ryan day is gonna get even louder yeah it's gonna get even louder he knows he has to win this game i assume he very much wants everybody wants to win this game but tennessee's a tough one coming out of the sec to take on the big ten half weekend of football and uh we're lucky that uh we're in the middle of this time of year every game matters we don't have to be in most crop games sure but i guess those games depend upon potential draft status which leads to a team over there in new york new jersey area it's not just me that gets a chance to talk every day about all these incredible situations that pop up from the nfl it's also the table i lost it's one half of the hammer done cowboys ap tone it's a man who coached football for 36 years 18 in college 18 in the nfl cannot wait to get all of his thoughts today on everything happening and also his pick against spread which he is currently batting 500 ladies and gentlemen and coach a lot of football experience okay you've been around the game been around the league been around a lot of things i feel like i have been very lucky to follow football my whole life grew up in a football time bittsburgh pennsylvania the happiness of the entire city depends upon how bittsburgh feelers do so that made me a lifelong fan immediately of the game of the sport because i knew that it could take people away so i feel like i paid attention i tried to learn a lot of storylines obviously was very lucky to be the bottom person on the totem pole but i think that's actually the most important part of the totem pole so for the sake of the metaphor i'll say bottom of the totem pole but in actual reality tippy top of the totem pole is a punter in a professional uh athlete premise i've seen a lot i feel like we covered a lot on the show and the nfl never stops giving a shit that you know is absurd you know we certainly talk about what's happening in the jets building i think we were really starting to learn about for the next time there's been rumors about how it operates over there and people go like boy stinks always will stay what's the curse woody woody's the curse well it turns out from an article that we read written by the diner team and i think it was the entire crew over there yeah yeah i think it was in mike silver i think it was a a slew of insiders writing for the athletic uh obviously new york times owns the athletic so this is high level journalism obviously high level sourcing the stories that we were hearing not about woody johnson okay certainly maybe a problem what about woody johnson's boy what brick johnson oh brick the brick do you know have you heard about i didn't know brick johnson existed i learned today 17 year old boy 17 he's a harvard tennis player yeah i am you want the deerfield academy in massachusetts which bonnie you know well i think it's 75 grand a year right sometimes yeah very expensive the prep schools in new england are definitely illustrious schools in the region and they've been around since you know we looked it up 1790 i believe some of these schools 1796 uh i think it was founded by samuel adams i believe uh yes that samuel adams founded deerfield academy so we're talking old money old money we're talking about i guess very mature boy okay yes because woody johnson's father who owns a franchise owns an nfl team that everybody on earth is looking to buy looking to own he has a 17 year old boy i guess just making decisions getting speeches to on the phones on draft day for the undrafted free agents that's a younger con type deal tony connor the actual football strategies down there in our chief football strategy i don't remember him starting at 17 making the decision prodigy kind of a prodigy i think we actually have brick with us brick when did this all start for you running the new york jets pretty much whenever i wanted to start um my dad doesn't know shit about football i do that's kind of why he put me in the position that i'm in a lot of stuff going around but yeah i mean big deal you know draft night we get someone on the phone who's the first one saying welcome to new york bruh me really yeah absolutely absolutely you're not getting like close game speeches or anything are you when it's necessary you know a lot of people are you know kind of making waves about that yeah big deal you know get a big win on thursday night coach brick not i'm brick i'm that which is honestly maybe a little bit part of the problem that no one's talking about there's one fucking brick in that building and it's me it's not coach olbrick okay but he gets his first win you know rogers is kind of which we talk about him later well you know i told my dad yeah yeah i said hey i've been grinding the tape i've been watching the tape this guy's still pretty good okay so let's maybe get him now i also have hands in drafting zach wilson maybe kind of a wonder kind of a wonder if you will though um you know age is just a number when you gotta you gotta fucking brain like i do to be quite frank with you yeah you know 17 47 i've grabbed more football knowledge in the last five years than for instance chuck has in his entire life okay you see that in his entire life it does feel like you have a lack of respect for like really anything other than like just how you personally feel in the moment because i think what you're talking about there with coach briggs all briggs well now let me do it for you okay these are things you know that as you grow older you'll kind of fit into you're somehow gonna get smarter which none of us really know how hard that's right yeah welcome to the show i forgot about that so how's your tennis game we gonna be checking to watch or what well actually i'm a one and three in singles and oh and three in doubles so but it doesn't matter because i'm gonna be running the jets here shortly so my tennis career may be shortly yeah you're watching too much film you're not focusing on four hands and back hands and jump shots and drop shots against all the other ivy leaders who've been playing and they're just doing tennis i get a brick but i guess after coach olbrick's first win as the head coach at halloween night uh aaron rogers as customary gets the game ball goes into the locker room and uh basically your is coach coach briggs is gonna get kind of handed this the game ball for his first ever nfl win it's a big moment huge big moment that's like a massive moment in the entire interim coaching thing especially as a former player with how that team has been treated how that season has gone that was gonna be a massive moment then allegedly uh what's being reported with sources and honestly uh through new york times is that you actually uh snagged another game ball from equipment manager and before all that could happen you just said game ball garrett wilson this guy and then you start swearing he went fucking mad tell me give it up for garrett wilson let's fucking go boys this is what it's all about was that i remember exactly because it was very you know obviously very emotional big win so yeah i don't but i do remember like i said he did go mad dummy yeah exactly what did you do when you got that catch brick one-handed in the end zone like jordan well i was just you know i mean it was actually i'm kind of for the time to and i was just bringing the boom to anyone who would listen oh so you started doing a boom you know just a little bit of how do you believe in that 17 year old making decisions why joe douglas i'm sorry uh sources around an executive around joe douglas the fired general manager in the middle of the season why did he say uh allegedly that he was reporting to a teenager was joe was joe d reporting to you because he was one of his first days on the job i told him football decisions run through me and then this came out i said yeah you're right fatso you are reporting to a teenager you didn't say that i'm on day because i heard also that you go into a locker room potentially postgame whatever i want teaching stuff to people oh yeah i got no problem going up to a lineman you fucking suck you're too fat you stink what well why do you think you're one three as a harvard tennis player what are you because i have absolutely no repercussions what are you talking about i don't have to answer for anything this is just coming out i've been doing this since i'm 15 years old this is just coming out right now everyone just say hey your dad's a moron which i'd like to kind of get something off my chin yeah we were gonna trade for gary judy we were yeah i heard matt well i told my dad i said fuck that he's made in madden bro he's like a 77 and did your dad know what that meant when you said he's made in madden bro he did i had to kind of you know school him on a little bit but my dad watches me play madden all the time how do you think he knows who we're going after in the trade deadline i think he knows who to you know look around the league for a couple couple of different guys i mean i again i grind the tape you know on a very very nice you know theater that we have in our home oh you got a specific theater to watch film absolutely how much did that cost a bill i mean i don't ask these questions i just say hey dad stop being a bitch get out the checkbook let's go all right okay uh coach everything gets mentioned i don't know if it went exactly how brick was reinterpreting there and obviously i think he's a be where you feed our person he just kind of operates in the moment all these things are being reported have you ever heard anything like this a teenager okay and i assume he's a good boy sweet i doubt it there's a chance there's a chance there's a chance there's a chance there's a chance he's a good boy there's a chance there's some entitlement there seems like yeah lack of awareness too seems like once again teenager so he's gonna have to grow up and there's a lot of these things happening but could you fathom being a general manager in the nfl a coaching nfl a player in the nfl in a 17 year old who has accomplished nothing other than being born into the family was to come up and say something to you about your profession this is what's being reported we have no idea what's real what's not real this is just from new york times the athletic high level journalism happening they're saying it's taking place that's bananas to think about and whenever you see you know people say like and it's like if you haven't been in the building i don't think you would have ever ever guessed that i don't think i would have ever guessed that that was happening did you know about any of this and how do you feel about this particular operation that's taking place over there obviously i just heard about it but all the buildings that i've been in starting in cleveland early 2000s to the raiders you know to the ravens to the to the colts bears there's a lot of coaches there's a lot of ownership there's front office there's a lot of people after games there's there's sons and people come in right but never like have i ever seen you never heard a word right like my grandpa my grandfather's rules was you know children will be seen and not heard that's how we grow up everywhere okay if somebody addresses you and they ask you a question then you could you can speak but otherwise no but just fascinating to read that that you finally get this win right after everything that's been going on and we're going to celebrate you know the guy that's you know taking up taking on this responsibility and jeff obrick right interim head coach and we're going to celebrate him and the team and they're fired up and then all of a sudden out of nowhere like i can't even imagine the looks on the faces of those players like can you imagine like hey hey wait and then here comes what do you call him what i can't the one out the wonder kid but garrett went mad at me that's why okay yeah see him come out of left field no no no like here we go obviously we know what he wears he has a sport coat on blue blazer not all the way but no tie on we got some loafers on we just came hair's obviously perfectly qualified kid looks good coming in there so jacked about him first went along so jacked just needed like harry wilson and he went he went mad dummy bro that's what i was referencing and i guess we took the game ball out of harry rogers thank you shut up all those all those people being around jim jim was in all those locker rooms the sank the respect that they understand between players and coaches and what just transpired on them they never when it was when it was time there was a moment or whatever and you had it but it wasn't certainly on top of like your quarterback or your head coach or anything like that yeah i uh i appreciate every time i learn something new that i didn't know was even possible it's the highest level yeah this is the nfl you know i don't remember that there's a lot of kids you mentioned a lot of teams have a lot of kids pass down to get the team and uh some kids i think do good some kids though having this potential life that has shown them that they have zero accountability they have it all figured out and i'm not saying this about brick he's from the sounds like though shut up like there is uh a chance that he grows into this he wants to be around so you can learn like jim mercy tells stories about working in the equipment room whenever he was like a young teenager so that he could kind of get to feel the way the land of what a football team's like i was in the locker room whenever bob bob bob broke his ankle and this whole thing like he tells his stories and then he was the youngest general manager ever hired i think in the history of the nfl jim mercy he's like 31 or something like that his dad hired him to view himself as a football player as opposed to brick wants to view himself as an owner like i'm an owner of a team because his dad is an owner of a team and it's like man you're very lucky that you're born into that position just have a little sense of gratitude for it and awareness and then when your time comes to actually run the team you're gonna be you have an advantage over everybody else that's new money into the nfl as opposed to having a disadvantage because you've been acting like an entitled brat your entire life like that is a if i'm a jets fan i'm hearing this i'm really bummed out it's not just right now everybody's like what are these problems like don't worry there's more there's there's actually a little one that's almost it sounds like he'll be around he'll stop on a way to live forever too and he's not it sounds like he's dream is to run the jets forever gary obviously a story like this is gonna people are gonna talk about and it's gonna get they're gonna be clicks what are you gonna still bring the stage out or what what are you talking about sorry sorry wait for sending me a thing for me to drink out so i'm super healthy here again dude what's it say what's the side well start 11 a.m roll something get the day started yeah i don't know if it has anything to do with hydration but i do appreciate it we're starting day 11 a.m wake and back baby let's keep it moving then obviously no time like right now hell yeah nice little reminder 1 p.m no time like now then we go down you'll be good okay you get a little self-doubt don't worry about it it's about 3 p.m we gotta make it to the end of the afternoon what's happening you'll be good don't worry about stay hydrated then uh 5 p.m let's get it dog let's let's get it here 7 p.m concentration is key oh i'm a little tired right now let's lock it in hey 7 p.m we're nowhere near that 9 p.m impress yourself cool yeah you know you don't even know you can do this impress yourself and then you keep going yeah y'all love that yeah y'all 11 p.m okay yeah y'all and then 1 a.m about to level up again okay boom cheers taylor gang taylor gang now to be clear i cannot fill it all the way because that would have been like five bottles of water. I was going to say, and turned on a nice machine over here that was very loud, and we didn't know if it would work, but I appreciate Wiz and Will looking out for my hydration levels. Will this ever happen again? I'm guessing no.
I'm guessing no. You're glowing. Boom. Keep going.
Yeah. I disimpressed myself. I disimpressed myself. This is 25 bucks if you want to impress yourself.
That's not bad. Why am I about to level up again? I'm going to grab one. Can we adjust the hours if you have to...
Hey, nobody's really talking about because you guys are going to talk a shit. Look at this thing. Let's put that on those shit. Hydrate.
Yeah, yup. Anyways, it's Rick Johnson, kid. It reads like an onion article. That's what I was going to say.
It seems like it's satire. It seems incredibly fake. There's no way you would believe this, but also to kind of defend him a little bit, you can see how he gets into this position when him and I think it was his brother are reading stuff on the internet and like reading in the tabloids and they take it to their dad and instead of like vetting it or talking to someone, he takes it directly to the locker room or the GM or the coaches and says, hey, what's this about? Why is this the case?
Or like the Madden stuff. He takes that as gospel and it's like, okay, well, we're not going to trade for Jerry Judy then because my son's playing Madden and he said he's a 77 overall and we can't trade for that guy. I'm not paying a 77 overall at all. Are you kidding me?
And Jerry Judy has responded. He's come out and said that he blames Ocho Cinco because Ocho Cinco is the Raider for Madden wide receivers. So there's a chance that Jerry Judy could have been a Jet, but Ocho Cinco didn't like his break or his awareness on his routes and his what was potentially reported. Nonetheless, this happened at the highest level.
And do you Jets fans? We didn't know that this was even possible. No. Cheer for the Giants.
Well, yeah, it would take more, but at least there was more. But more at least was kind of on the right track. Do you want to say one? If we watch Hard Knocks.
Yeah. Anyways, Jets fans, it's never going to get. I mean, you look at the replies to this, the amount of people that like legit and like, I'm jumping off. I'm done.
I'm not doing this anymore. Well, it's because he loves owning a team, that kid, 17 years old. And you know, I think this happens with probably a lot of different businesses where the owner, super successful kid kind of thinks they wield power and nobody ever checks the kid, you know, ever. So then one thing leads to another.
Bang, bang, bang. Probably a lot of red flag moments where it's like, hey, this isn't reality. This isn't your, this, boom. Nope, boom.
Because I'm thinking about this a lot for my baby girl, Mackenzie. And I assume you guys are as well. Vastly different life for my daughter than me growing up, everything. So I'm trying to figure out like, how do I enjoy it all while also making sure she understands like, this is not normal for a lot of people.
And it sounds like if you're a parent, you can just check out and be like, yeah, you're me, reincarnated. Just act like me. Don't worry about it. Feels like that's what has happened here.
And Rick can still learn. You know, this is something we can learn from. He doesn't pay attention to everything. I don't know if he watches our show, but if he does, like, hey, Rick, if this shit's real, you're going to walk around someday and the kid's going to punch you right in the face.
And it's probably going to, you know, like you need the reality, you need to set it at some point. And you stink as a GM. Your team has stunk since you've been kind of around. So if you want to act like an owner and a GM, let's go off a results business.
Your team sucks. So maybe back off a little bit, learn, and then get back into the saddle if what is being recorded is true. Yeah, if it's not athletic in New York Times, like what the hell are we doing? Yeah, like a story like this, this is absurd.
And for it to be published, if it's not true, it's just as big of a problem as if it is true. Yeah, we tried to call our source to legitimize the story, but work is happening. So we weren't able to get ahold of anybody. We shall see tight, massive game.
Huge. Huge game. Now you want to talk about family ownership situations. Chargers had that for a little bit.
That seemingly disappeared. They bring in Jim Hornbaugh. Chargers certainly have what happened to them against the Bucs just a few days ago. Now they're taking on a Red Hot Broncos team.
They just put up 24 zip, I think, in the second, or 21 zip in the second half, 24 zip in the second half to the Indianapolis Colts after they were able to figure them out. And Bo Nix has obviously played better in the second half of the season than he has in the first half of the season. People are talking about him maybe being Offensive Rookie of the Year. Nick Benito is an absolute superstar on a defense littered with superstars because you've got Patrick Schertank from playing out there as well.
Then when we talk about the Los Angeles Chargers, it's not going as well as of late. They're our team. Yeah, love them. We love that team.
Still love that team going forward, but we wondered how it was going to go. They get a couple injuries, things changed. Chuck Pagano, Chargers favored by three at home on Amazon Prime, Shotspur Kerr Street, Al Michaels, Kaylee Hartung, Carissy Thompson, Gonzalez, Fitz, Witt, Sherman, is he still doing those? I haven't seen those over the last couple of weeks.
Me neither. He's been missing. He has been missing. He's always done a deal where he's in that city doing something.
Well, he's in. Yellow City. I couldn't turn the fucking fridge off. Anyway, Chargers favored by three against the Denver Broncos team.
Do you think this line is because they think the Chargers got their ass beat and they're going to bounce back because they're a Jim Harbaugh person? What do you think this line is like this for and what are you looking at this evening? I don't understand the line. Just your point, you look at one team, last four games, Denver's 4-0.
These guys are 1-3. Tampa just went into their backyard five points a game, which is tied for first in the NFL. But again, like I said, one in three the last four games. Denver's 4-0.
Denver's covered. It's against the spread, ATS, 11-3 in the National Football League. Wow, geez. Thank you, Sean.
Five straight. You lose the offense. Offensively, they struggled. Chargers?
Chargers have. Gave up 200 yards on the ground. AQs yesterday showed the run. Bucky Irvin, the run.
So they ran up and down the field. Mike Evans had a field day. I think it's going to be a really good defensive battle. Bo Nix, you mentioned Bo Nix, right?
He's been playing better late. Early in the year, he's terrible. Then there was like a 13-game stretch where he was like 13, 14 touchdowns, only a couple interceptions. And then he's thrown five in the last two games.
Bo has. So he's kind of reverted back a little bit. Colt's got three interceptions off him. So a lot of game records in this.
A lot of good defensive players. I think this will be low score in defensive battle. Who doesn't turn the ball over? Okay, is it Herbert?
Or is it Bo Nix? Or is it the football? Herbert's only had two interceptions all year. They're first when it comes to that category.
Okay, so he's going to turn the ball over. Obviously, AFC West Battle, they know each other, both teams. Yeah, this is one of those games whether it was Broncos or favorite or Chargers favorite. You would just say Broncos definitely favorite because they've been hotter and the Chargers have been going down.
But because the line is minus three Chargers, it has to be Chargers. I forget what question Tony asked you the other day, but because of the way he asked you the question, it was like, okay, well, obviously, it's way more than you would think in your brain. So it's one of those situations where, all right, well, it has to be Chargers then because they shouldn't be favored just looking at it from a 30,000 foot view, if you will. Yeah, I think it was a spread.
And I said eight and a half. And he said, actually, it's 12 and a half or something like that. And I'm with somebody and he always makes that pick whenever a line is a little bit strange. We should see how it plays out.
Can't we see who you're picking? Speaking of picking, everybody was picking off Kirk Cousins. And then everybody in Atlanta was picking on Kirk Cousins. So much so that the Atlanta Falcons made a shift from a $180 million quarterback to a number eight overall pick quarterback in Michael Penix.
The Atlanta Falcons still very much in this thing in the NFC South. Now, we just talked about what the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did. The Chargers Tampa Bay Buccaneers is very hot right now. That is a very good team with a great offensive line, which is a huge piece of the whole puzzle as we get in this late season football where it matters.
Kirk, just the way he processes, the way he speaks to the team in meetings on the field, just the command he has to the offense, getting things the way that he wanted so that he can play fast. The things he said in the huddle, I was in the huddle today and walked through this night. Just remember some of the stuff he did and just saying it the way he said it. Because I look up to Kirk and Kirk, to be honest, Kirk couldn't do no wrong in my eyes.
So it was like, dang, when I saw him in camp leading all the way up through the season, he's special. He's doing that at this age and he's done a great job. I'm talking about getting through his progressions, making a pass to the fifth read. Our fifth read, you don't see that a lot.
He's scoring touchdowns and doing stuff like that. And how's he processing the game so quickly to get to that fifth read, to make that play? You're just trying to learn stuff like that and just seeing how he canceled out certain routes and stuff like that based on coverages. I feel like I learned a lot of that and I'm ready to showcase this.
I love that that's the way he handled that question. I also love that this tells me and I know Michael Panik's a good dude. Everybody watched him love him and he loved him and everybody that's ever played or met him, loves him as a leader and everything like that. But I assume that whenever he was drafted him, he said, hey, you're going to the Kirk Cousins, NFL quarterback, university.
Everything he does, watch. I think you were the one that said, if you find a vet, your position be in his back pocket. Just follow him around and see why that person has been in the NFL for that long. Even if they don't play the same style you do, see what they do that has made them play this long in the NFL.
I was very lucky to do with Adam Bennett Terry. I was very lucky to see how he operated, how he handled his body, how he talked to people, how he handled situations, how he handled the ends and flows of a season, wins, losses, all those things. So whenever we talk about young quarterbacks being behind a vet, it's not just on the field if they're better than them. It's also like an ability to learn how to be a professional ball player, how you be a franchise quarterback, which is why, once again, Anthony Richardson getting a chance to watch Joe Flacco we thought could have been a nice benefit.
I've always said that I wish Andrew Luck had a chance to watch Peyton Manning for one year. If Andrew Luck could have watched Peyton Manning for one year, not that Andrew Luck wasn't ready to play quarterback his rookie year, not that Andrew Luck wasn't phenomenal on the football field, not that Andrew Luck wasn't a good leader, he was certainly that, but if he could have watched Peyton Manning, the way he talks in the huddle, the way he talks to his team, the way he talks to coaches, the way he talks to general managers, the way he talks to the equipment staff, the way he operates behind the scenes, how he has hangout and gatherings with the wide receivers and offensive line, making sure everybody feels like they're a part of it, almost being like a politician in the locker room while also saying, I don't like this play, I would rather run this play. That's the difference between college ball and professional, and you see what Patrick Mahomes got to do with Alex Smith, you see what Aaron Rodgers got to do with Brett Favre, you're seeing what Jordan Love got to do with Aaron Rodgers, you saw what Tom Brady got to do with Drew Bledsoe, whenever you get to watch a vet operate, it's not just about on the field, I think it's off the field, and I love that Pennix took that all in, and everybody's questioning Atlanta when they made the draft pick, and certainly because they made the draft pick, they had to make this move off a $180 million quarterback, but it feels like it was handled in a proper way for a quarterback to mature and become a professional quarterback, I loved what Pennix just said there. Yeah, that was incredible, I mean that's Raheem Morris, credit to him and the culture that he's built down there in Atlanta at this point, obviously we've seen so many players, it just blows me away how many guys came through our building, and we had those conversations early on, just to your point about, hey, find a dude, and we say, hey, you're in the linebacker room, you're in the DB room, let's go in the DB room, Darius Butler, okay, I'm going to implore you to say, okay, just do exactly what he does on a day-to-day, get a calendar out, ask him, okay, what time do you get up, time do you go to bed, what do you do in between, how much tape, body, treatment, rehab, everything, and I'm blown away how many guys, because this is going to help you, all right, we've got guys that are college free agents that have been in the league for 10 or 12 years that weren't drafted because they followed this model, and they found a dude and they figured it out, and I can give you a laundry list of dudes that we do that, and they don't listen, they got all the pride, all the entitlement, yeah, I got this, I got this, I remember we used to try to go get Johnny Newsome, could have been unbelievable, you remember, I remember Johnny, Ball State kid, right, stud, hey, we're watching film after practice, right, he's in the locker room, okay, go get him, go try to get him, he won't come, he's got to get a shower first, whatever, right, John Newsome could have played 10, 12 years, cup of coffee, because he wouldn't listen, but this is phenomenal, Raheem and his plan, and they didn't want to play this kid, but out of necessity and everything else, they're sitting there at 7-7, they're a game back, they got the tiebreaker on the pucks, right, they beat him twice already at Atlanta, right, so Kirk's struggling like heck, who knows why, I mean 16 interceptions, he's had a pot full of fumbles already, he just doesn't look the same, so, and so what's your point, even bring up Johnny Newsome, because I've kept up with Johnny Newsome, I think whenever he gets, like exited from the NFL, you guys are right, you understand, I think he locks in, he goes up to Canada and has like a great career, which is why we like, reiterate to all these young guys, like hey, don't change when it's already, I think that's why I was so adamant about the Anthony Richardson stuff this season, because it's like hey bub, like you have an opportunity, and I wasn't the only one, DeForest Buckner actually came out, and he said whenever Anthony Richardson got benched, he went over and talked to him, you know DeForest Buckner, obviously former first rounder, he doesn't have the pressure of being a franchise quarterback, he said, so I can't relate to him there, but I can relate to him about the high expectations, and he laid out to him about hey, not everything off the field is being met, this is what you need to do, and he said Anthony Richardson has bought in completely, he didn't take any negativity from it, and he's kind of dead it, but that's what happens whenever you get benched, and there's a little bit of perspective, not everybody gets that opportunity, sometimes you get cut, and then it's over, and then it's like, I wish I would have done that earlier, so hearing Pennix do that is wonderful, joining us now, this guy probably has a lot of thoughts on all of this, he's former NFL coach, down with the Dolphins, but then, he goes to Alabama afterwards and cements his legacy as the greatest college football coach of all time, and also a man who's becoming a TV megastar through three months of television, ladies and gentlemen, coach Nick Saban.
Yeah, coach! Coach, I don't know if you heard, you're unbelievable in your introduction. No, I ain't shit, I don't know if you, we just had the highest ratings in the history of college game day, thank you jolly old Nick Saban, thank you jolly old Nick Saban, and it's not just because your name, brother, you know, people show up one or two times off a name, you gotta have ability and talent, and you have that in spades and everything that you touch, which is why I appreciate your friendship, now let's get back to this, Michael Penix, I don't know if you saw the video where he laid out how he kind of watched Kirk Cousins and just said like, thank you to Kirk Cousins, and now he's gonna take everything you learned from him and he's gonna try to put it on the field. Still a rookie, I assume he's gonna struggle, there's gonna be situations like that, but the off the field shit, just as important as the on the field shit in the NFL, do you think we're gonna lose, is there gonna be a common generation with this NIL stuff and everybody being superstars since they're like in high school and paid and rich and everything, do we think we're gonna lose that like ability to like kind of put ego aside and be like, hey, how do I do this actually?
I'm almost worried about that, coach, you would know a lot better than me, I guess. Frozen, gone, you don't want to talk about it, I don't want to talk about it either. Got you there? I'm here.
Okay, we lost you there for a second, that's on us. Do you think there's a chance that that's gonna become much less common where people are gonna be okay kind of putting ego aside and learning from a vet and trying to like understand that it's a different world in the NFL than maybe anywhere else that you've ever been? No, I think first of all, the number one reason that there's such a failure rate with quarterbacks, even guys that are very high draft picks, is they come in with great expectations, they really don't know for sure all the things they need to do to be able to play in the National Football League. They go out there and play before they're ready, they lose their confidence and then bad things happen.
And on the other hand, when you have all the situations that you just discussed, whether it was Aaron Rodgers behind VetFar, whatever, and these guys have a chance to learn and develop, I think they have a much better chance of being successful and even in Michael Penning's opportunity to just spend three quarters of the season as a backup, no pressure, just learn how to be a professional. I think he has a much better chance to succeed. He has great ability, he's got the right mindset, he's a good guy, he's gonna be a good leader in the league. So I think he has a better chance to be successful now.
Is it gonna be instant? Maybe not, but I think a much better chance than he would have had if he'd had to come in and start right off. And you get a lot of pressure from the owners and everybody else if you pick a guy, one, two, or three, a quarterback, we gotta play the guy who's not ready to play and then bad things happen sometimes. Some guys can handle it, some guys can't.
So I think there's a lot to be said about guys that learn how to be professionals and have respect for development. You mentioned it in your case, and that's the one thing we're losing right now in college football is the mindset that if I don't play right off the bat, I'm a failure and then I wanna transfer and leave. So there's never a commitment. to, you know, do the things you need to do to improve, to develop as a player.
And I think that's going to carry over in the NFL as well. Yeah, the ripple effect of not having to stare down adversity and beat it as opposed to just run from it is certainly going to have lasting impressions, I think, on a lot of things. Hopefully, the dogs survive. You know, that is kind of, and I'm not talking about Georgia Bulldogs, although I do believe their program is built with a lot of dogs.
I'm just talking about the dogs will survive through it all, even in the new era. I believe that wholeheartedly. Rhett Lashley actually said to us yesterday, he said, the days of what Nick Saban was able to do, and he complimented you, he said some good things, where you just stack up five-star recruiting class and you have a pipeline on those, which you have, obviously. And we've heard a lot of guys that have gone to Alabama come out and say that when you're recruiting them, you actually told them, like, not sure if you're going to play your first two years, but every day of practice, you're going to be playing against the best people at their position in the country.
So you're going to get better, you're going to get better, then when your time comes, you're going to be ready for the moment, then bang, you're going to be in the NFL. He doesn't think that's possible anymore because these five-stars or these recruiting classes, they're not going to stick for a year or two because if they just put their name in a portal, there's a chance they're going to get $800,000, a million dollars and playing time immediately. Do you agree with that? And did you think about that whenever you were thinking about retirement from coaching?
Well, I think it's obviously good for the players if they can make that kind of money, you know, as college players, which was, you know, never allowed. We weren't allowed to have anything prior to five years ago. But I do think on the development side of it, it is not beneficial to players. I think that when you have to go out and compete, and I don't think you're going to be a good competitor, you mentioned it, if you can't overcome adversity.
I mean, that's the part of being a good competitor. I mean, I don't care what sports you're playing or when you're playing, if it's golf, if it's tennis, if it's soccer, I don't care what it is, there's going to be times when, you know, you have a bad play. There's something that you have to overcome. And I think people learn to do that in the process of development and what they have to do to get better so they can compete.
And you're absolutely right. You know, all I ever promised a guy was an opportunity. And I said, you're going to have an opportunity. I told Jonathan Allen, you're going to practice every day against Cam Robinson.
He's going to win the Outland Trophy, you're going to win the Outland Trophy. You know, in terms of getting in the portal or going to another school and, you know, nobody talks about college experience anymore. Nobody talks about graduation. You know, all these things are probably important to the future.
And, you know, I actually coached 25 years ago when not very many guys graduated and there were a lot of stories out there about, you know, guys that didn't do very well when they, you know, got out in the real world and couldn't play anymore. And so I know there are people like yourself who have done extremely well and there will always be cases like that, but there's going to be a lot of people that they should use their football plan opportunities to, you know, develop a career outside the game so they can have success when they can't play. Yeah, backup plan is always good even in post-retirement. I think these guys now are much more entrepreneurial savvy, you know, at least whenever it comes to like digital currency and social media and everything like that.
But the whole, everything else of what college ball used to be about, I think is obviously out the window. We'll talk to Charlie Baker in the next hour actually because I think that April 8th ruling will at least put some answers but it's going to remain a lot more questions. You obviously are the athletic director at Alabama. Whenever you promise an opportunity and these guys are going to go to work, I guess you don't have to spend as much money.
These are what people are saying now. It's a little different world. Don't figure it out. Roll Tad.
Roll Tad. Roll Tad. You know, Pat, each year it's gotten a little worse. Like, you know, the first year we had name image of likeness four or five years ago we had a $3 million and everybody was happy.
Then the next year it was $7 million. Then the next year it's $10 million. Then this year it's $13 million. Now they're looking at $20 million.
I mean, where does it end? And the people who are supporting this, they really get no benefit for it. And I'm sure that there's going to be some instances in the future where those people don't want to continue to support players that aren't there. I mean, how would you feel if you gave them $500,000 to your program and it was to pay certain players and those players all left after one year?
You would say, I don't know if I'm going to continue to do this. Yeah, it seems like a poor investment there. Whenever these people have a lot of money, they can invest in a lot of things and their money can make money. They're investing in sports or school but then whenever that money just vanishes and there's nothing, it's like, what am I even doing?
I don't even get a parking spot. I don't even get a parking spot in this entire thing. Wild Wild West, hopefully it'll get settled. We'll talk to Charlie Baker about that.
Let's move to these games. Tomorrow night, IU, Notre Dame kicking off the 12-team playoff up in freezing-ass cold South Bend, Indiana. Now both these teams will obviously be prepared for the weather because they both live in it, they practice in it every single day so I don't think that's the storyline for this particular game. What is the storyline for this particular game?
Coach, in your eyes. Well, I think number one is Notre Dame has to play really good complimentary football. That's what they've done all year. They really don't blow people out.
I think from Indiana's standpoint is they're going to be able to have to handle the pressure that Notre Dame's defense, they pressure 46% of the time, first down, second down, third down, it doesn't matter. And they're going to try to create a lot of negative plays, a lot of positive down-and-distance situations for the defense and then take advantage of pressure on third down. So if Indiana can't handle that, that's going to be a problem. But when people have handled it, like USC did, Notre Dame struggled a little bit on defense and had to count on turnovers to be able to survive.
So I think Indiana's probably better than most people think and I think that they've got a really good opportunity if they can handle the pressure on offense and keep the ball away from Notre Dame. Who can run it? Probably better than they can throw it. Yeah, I think that's a matter of fact.
Riley Leonard's legs are a real weapon and they've kind of experienced that throughout the season. I think early in the year, all of them didn't really know what they were, including that big win over Texas A&M. I don't think Notre Dame really knew who they were. I don't think Texas A&M knew who they were.
So I think they get that big win. Yeah, Coach, something he said yesterday on the program was that when Indiana played Ohio State, they had to go to the silent count and he said he's never doing that again because as soon as they found the signal for the snap that they're basically cooked on offense. Is there a way for IU to kind of combat the noise at Notre Dame if they do have to go silent count but without using the silent count per se? Like how do you snap the football if they can't hear what you're saying as a quarterback and you can't use the silent count because they know what the tell is?
Yeah, well, you know, to me, most of these teams in a gun don't use a verbal cadence anymore. They all go on the clap. And when you get used to going on the clap and then you have to go silent, where a lot of NFL teams, you know, they go silent a lot of the time so it's not anything different for them and they can actually go on two or late kick and go on two but most college teams are not adept at that. So when you try to do it, it can create huge problems.
I remember when, you know, Tua was playing for us and we played at LSU, we went right down the field, man, right down the field. We got down to the student section and we got like four false starts in a row because we tried to go on silent instead of clapping and it was a damn, I mean, it was... Hey! The coach breaks his headset.
I don't think so like that. All right, so I think if Indiana can clap in the game, they'll be much, much better off than trying to go silent clap is my favorite. We're doing a fake clap, you know, because you're watching on TV, you're like, ah, that was a very poor fake clap. Nobody's falling for that fake clap right there.
You need to go ahead and sell that a little bit more. In the NFL, they care about it a lot. Like cadence count is everything in the NFL. In college, I didn't even think about it not being a high priority, but then if you get caught in a situation that not everybody's on the same page, you can see how that can hurt you.
Sig was like, we don't have to do that. We're never doing that again. That's what he said yesterday. And I laughed, but I don't think he was being dead ass serious.
I don't think he was joking around at all about it. Very important. Ty has a question for you, coach. Yeah, coach, when you look at a lot of these teams, and this kind of goes back to what you were talking about in terms of development, but when you look at a lot of the teams in the college football playoff, their quarterbacks are just one-year guys that transferred in.
And with the transfer portal now, we're seeing a lot of these teams who kind of year over year, they just go for one of these quarterbacks. And while they're still, you know, recruiting like five-star guys or whatever, they're just grabbing, you know, transfer quarterbacks year after year, and the young guys are never really getting an opportunity. Do you think that's, for a lot of these like marquee blue blood teams, do you think that's going to be the formula moving forward because we've seen so many of these teams in the playoff be successful, kind of just getting the gun for hire year after year after year? Well, it seems to be the trend right now, and I think the more people like Oregon who had success doing that with their quarterback, I think other people will try to follow suit, but you can look at other programs who did that, like Florida State this year, and it didn't work out so well, and you really got a problem on your hands.
And I think the big thing in all this that people have to understand is where this is going to have a little bit of an effect on, you know, parity is the fact that, just like in Alabama, in Georgia, I think Kirby's going through the same thing. You don't lose your front-line players. You recruit a five-star guy, and you're able to recruit really, really well, which George has done Alabama this whole time I was there. We always had really good luck in recruiting.
And you lose the next guy. Okay, so you have this five-star guy who thinks he should be playing. He doesn't play that much when he's a freshman. Like Martin Humphrey didn't play when he was a freshman.
He was glad to develop and become a great player, playing on special teams as a freshman, learned how to play on special teams, that became a great corner. That doesn't happen anymore. In this day and age, Martin Humphrey's transferred. So you don't have that next best guy to come in, and you have all these holes on your roster and a lack of depth, which I think is something that people really don't look at or understand because you don't lose your front-line guys.
You lose the next guys, which affects the depth of your team. And if you're really going to play in a tough conference, you've got to play a lot of tough games, even though I think, you know, we talk about teams that have great schedules not getting into playoffs, but the teams that play the best schedules are going to have the best chance to be successful in the playoffs because they're used to playing against good competition. You talked about, you know, the depth of a team. That is where special teams come into play.
You know, so you think about what happened with Indiana, Ohio State in that particular game. Now, punter obviously drops a snap. That can happen. Anybody obviously gets a lack of concentration.
That'll get fixed going forward. But then a punt return. Yeah, Coach, we all know that you love defending the athletic quarterbacks who love to scramble and make plays. Penn State hasn't really had to play an athletic quarterback like they're going to face in Kevin Jennings of SMU this weekend.
How do you think Penn State prepares for that if they haven't seen it yet this year? Because I know you put a wide out there in practice and stuff like that, but obviously that's not the quarterback. How do you go about it? I think, first of all, it depends on style of play.
You know, one of the reasons that we always had difficulties, we played a lot of match coverage. So we had more people turn. Even when we played zone, we matched up zone. So you have people matching patterns all the time so they're not always looking at the quarterback.
And then the guy scrambles and you don't get that immediate, you know, sort of break on the ball. I think Penn State plays a lot of zone. I think the big thing that they're probably emphasizing with their players, I love Kevin Jennings as a player, but his ball security is not what it needs to be. You know, when he's turned the ball over and when he turns the ball over, they have issues and problems.
And I'll bet you that Penn State is saying, we're going to knock the ball off this guy. We're going to knock the ball out of his hand when he has one hand on the ball, even when he runs it. So I don't think you stop a guy like that. I think you've got to make this guy beat you throwing it, which I think he's a good thrower.
I think the conditions probably will affect SMU a lot more than they're going to affect Penn State. I mean, throwing a cold ball, catching a ball, holding on to a ball when it's cold and you're not used to it is a lot different. So I think Penn State's going to try to knock the ball for this guy and create a lot of turnovers in the game. How do you feel like the cold is going to affect you tomorrow?
You got a face warmer? You ready for this? I'm concerned. I was actually going to get some coaching points from you.
One comment that I wanted to make about what you're talking about depth on the team and special teams. Don James, who I'm sure Chuck remembers, maybe some of you young bucks don't, was my college coach, great coach at Washington. He used to always tell us, your team is going to be as good as the last 40 guys on the roster because of exactly what you're talking about and how it affects special teams and how it affects depth on your team. I mean, Caleb Downs, run that punt back for Ohio State, you just think like, oh, this is the most expensive guy on the field in the modern world we're in, the most athletic guy on this field, the highest football IQ guy on this field, and probably the guy with the best burst.
And then you're just watching him run around. It's like, no shit, Ryan Day was like, yo, let's go ahead and do that, especially for Indiana team that he's literally trying to build right now. So the second half of that roster is still Indiana football team that didn't exist in the state of Indiana. And Ryan Day, that was a good coach.
Nobody talks about that. Ryan Day, that was a good coaching move. That was a good, we can take advantage of this situation right here. And he certainly did it.
My advice to you, coaching tips, feet and hands. Let's not get to do super fashionable boot shit on the feet. Let's keep the feet warm. It's under that desk anyways.
You don't need good looking boots. Just keep that shit warm. That is the biggest thing. All right, coach?
I got you. I got you. If I see some high fashion bullshit on your feet tomorrow, I'm going to tell you you deserve whatever's coming because that's where it gets you. It starts on your toes and then it works its way up your soul.
And then all of a sudden, it's over. He's got you. That's what you need. That's what you need, coach.
When I coached at the Cleveland Browns in that stadium, the old stadium was right on Lake Erie. And that wind used to blow through there. I know another place where it can hit you and go right through your soul, too. I can't wait to see you tomorrow.
You're the man. Ladies and gentlemen, the GOAT. Coach, thank you. He's right.
He's right. Four hours tomorrow in the South, man. Three hours in Columbus on Saturday morning. It's going to be cold.
That's what we live for. That's football weather. It's most meaningful football. We'll all see you.
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Sign up and activate now. Football is launching its 16th weekend of the NFL season this evening as the Chargers and Broncos battle in an AFC West clash. That'll be on Amazon Prime that we will certainly be paying attention to in about 15 minutes or so. The president of the NCAA, only the sixth president in the history of the NCAA will be joining us for a conversation about everything happening in sports.
I've had the opportunity to listen to this man speak up at ESPN during a college football conference. There was live speakers, a lot of them, went on this. Sure, well, I can see that. I got all the information out.
I got everybody to cover their ass. I got to make sure they knew that this is how we feel. When he sat down, I thought he was fantastic. I think he acknowledged all the situations that the NCAA is currently in.
I think he understands what college football and other college sports are currently in the middle of in his transition era. I think he was over in D.C. just a couple days to answer some questions about gambling for college ball, also sports in general, and then everything taking place with his April 8th ruling, so I cannot wait to talk to him. And I think Charlie Baker, he's former governor, I believe.
Oh, yeah, one of the best in Massachusetts. Okay, so I assume there's a bunch of people that don't believe that because that's how politics is. I will say, as a guy who is a sports guy who gets kids both way ball, I think so, he's grown up in sports, and a politician, you think, well, this guy can probably talk. Not all politicians can anymore, which I thought was a requirement for the job.
That's wild to me that that is kind of taking place in your guys' world. I don't pay attention enough. People pop in my algorithm as politicians and speak, and I'm like, this person's getting to talk. I thought that was all politicians do.
I thought that is kind of what you were. This guy, good, did not wait. Seemed to be very transparent as well whenever he was at the ESPN thing. I paid attention to it.
I was taking notes on my phone. I don't know if he thought it was on my phone. Air phone's paying attention. But I'm excited to get him in here so he has to, you know, answer questions from just sports studios.
And hopefully we'll get some good stuff. The talk table's here. I have Boston Connor and I have Ty Schmidt. One half of the hammer.
Done. Cowboys, AP Tone is here. 36-year coach in football. 18 in college, 18 in the NFL.
Chuck, we're going this year. How you doing, Coach? Doing great. God, if they can overcome all this, my God.
Coach of the year. No questions asked. I'll give it to them for the next five years. Yeah, just like Terry.
over hey we're giving uh mcdc coach of the year because remember two years ago 2024 season yeah nobody wants to even they won somehow i think the teacher lions fans are kind of coming back down to reality on what the season might be yeah definitely on monday i was really bummed out but to coach's point when i heard mcdc talk about holy bread and steaks i thought yeah we can win the super bowl again i was all the way back but then it's just so much it's gonna be really tough so this is what we learned from the hard knocks whenever we hear mike tomlin speak and we hear these coaches talk it's like how does the coach get everybody's mind going in the right direction no matter how the season's going i think stephancy was like you want to make playoffs congrats the next four games are all playoff games we are in the playoffs like to get your team to buy into a message even if it's after a very very bad time that is the job of the head coach mcdc obviously has that ability and all the great ones do and some of the crop coaches don't you know that is that's why whenever you know the great chip and then the belgium pretzel or the german pretzel and all these other things it's because chuck digs deep to get his message across which is what all these guys do a lot of people read books motivation inspiration watch movies how we get our message across get everybody to keep going mcdc is clearly great at it and uh the boys show up or no matter who it is no doubt no doubt that was your message was awesome always well i appreciate you were worthy of a watch that means a lot yeah appreciate that i did watch you know that yeah i enjoy watching people public speak you know like no matter what it is if somebody's public speaking or publicly doing something and they're trying to you know kind of get something across how they go about doing it i'm intrigued by i always have been and you were one of the guys that i knew was listening and watching and as a coach you're definitely definitely afraid of coming in there with some bullshit because you know that that dude right there wears jersey number one who's going to call you out on that um coach one second please just based on what you just i'm not sure yeah so i think uh i was scared to death of that with okay we had guys here in there that were smart dudes and you can't bullshit them and you can't i mean all you're gonna do is start talking right and you just start reading that room just like we're doing on hard knocks right now in season and you're looking at the coach and then they're spanking the room right you can tell who's just body language like if they're picking up what they're putting down if they're engaged if they're listening it's like okay like yeah and that's why rich rodriguez said uh sit your ass up mcafee and uh with that being said i did i do i like to pay attention and learn i'm a listener because i'm not that good of a reader so uh if i hear it normally it's gonna stick and stay a lot of your messages stick and stay to this day so i think you've done a fantastic job although not all coaches have joining us now is another man i think was listening in those meetings yep yeah thoroughly yes did you hear what big might be blood ball no what is it yeah blood ball yeah obviously that is why that even exists in the area in the aj world he's college football national champion super champion rider cup winner ladies and gentlemen aj hawk yeah i felt pretty good right there here coach say i was scared to death walking in those rooms you're listening i appreciate it yeah i never thought that yeah when i was sitting there as a player you think it's a coach it's like a teacher in school whatever they say they know what's going on they know what's right like i definitely when i was young i thought that all the time then i started paying a little bit more attention to try to say are they trying to slide something past us here and try to fool us a little oh it's the same message four weeks ago all right all right back to the fucking drawing board come on give me a little bit more sauce there i enjoy how you know motivators go about doing what they do because it's not easy giving a speech not easy how you get everybody to listen not easy especially how diverse a locker room is you got to be able to reach the richest of rich kids which we're gonna talk about in a moment and you're talking about kids that are coming from areas of absolutely nothing and you have to be able to reach everybody and get everybody going on the same page that's why it's so hard to be a head coach could you imagine how hard it would be to be a head coach if a 17 year old son of your owner was walking in handing out game balls before you get a chance to speak and criticizing and chastying professional athletes uh because obviously he knows best this report out of the athletic and once again i think we should commend you know everybody talks about aaron rogers coming on the show we know nothing about any of this no nothing and aaron would never want this out because he wants the best for the team but if these reports are true aj this is baffling and i would have loved to be on a jet scene one i would have absolutely what chuck just said about the way i would have love to be able to serve the body brick you know brick the amount of those that i would have been sending in from the back of the locker room would be next level but this is a wild thing this is the highest level age this is the highest level yeah yeah i think we uh you start to understand why it might be so tough to be a head coach there at the moment like what do you say if you're robert he's dealing with all this stuff from the top and then all of a sudden you're jeff ulbrick and you're the interim head coach like how do you you can't tell the owner's son hey man like i gotta speak to the team before you give a game ball out when it says a profanity laced situation like i mean i know he wasn't in the studio for a little bit and then how did brick describe gary wilson's game gary went fucking mad unfortunately ty is probably very close yes we know that's why we did it you know because uh up in that area deerfield academy obviously connor knows the area know that world ty went to a private school or catholic school i believe so he knows that world and we've all seen these types of characters on movies and we hope it's not actually real like hey entitled kid who has no idea he thinks that he actually hit the triple you know had no idea that he was literally born there nobody's ever told him hey shut up nobody in the history of anything so he just waltz around and run a team it's like that's not his fault i guess because he's been able to get away with it but if i was just brought into that team and i saw it happening that'd be hard to take serious yeah and it'd be hard to stay committed to wanting to win for that particular team it'd be hard to want to do after stuff it's like so let me start piecing these little things together it's like well why does this team ever win it's like i think there's a lot of people that think it's a joke they're probably in the team and uh that's never a good thing for people to feel like if they're on a team i want to go for a joke this is a joke i report to a teenager the last line of that paragraph said one of the players said like it was one of the most brutal cringeworthy experiences ever of all time yeah can you imagine how i mean awkward uncomfortable like yeah but see that's why i wish there i was in that would not just me there's a lot of people like me that are listeners and uh have a pretty good sense of room have a pretty good sense of room and when and how like somebody needs but then you're cut probably and then madden stories dropped immediately this guy's awareness is zero yelling at my kid i don't think so uh i can't wait to ask erin about this and granted no we don't have a show next tuesday and i told him on tuesday i'll see you next week we will not see him not monday maybe monday maybe we're trying to slide it over monday you can see in the photo that brick did post two players in the background you can kind of you can kind of get a read on what the feeling was if we can pull that back up 75 000 a year deerfield academy right oh yeah get those two with the door would kick in the locker door it's like game ball y'all i mean like you can see brick you can see back left i mean front middle oh my god i did not see this one before like nailed the costume oh yeah we know which white kid fine no one is entitled white kid hair perfect perfect i mean we knew exactly what this was gonna look like what he's standing in front of brick brick's traps are like i think that is what coach brick is probably wondering like this is very kind my first ever win i'm getting from a teenager this is uh it's a really cool thing this is the future you know maybe i do have a coach job here and then he says gary went mad w let's go clap it up man i hope there's footage there's got to be footage put it out and remember they're very good putting out stuff because remember when robert sala and rogers had that interaction and the whole world was speculating that they hated each other and everything and then there was a hug literally 20 30 minutes after that in a tunnel that nobody could see but the jets social media team but the jets digital media team and they had it in 8k perfect and they could just put that out you know to kind of put fire out of what everybody's saying they just hold that thing on and say wait till we release this two weeks from now yeah it's gonna be a big thing so there has to be footage of this team celebration in the locker room and brick johnson just walking right in the middle just like you know respect the confidence he's getting ready for it that's great yeah that's right from hey shut the fuck up you want to be a coach full-time at all i'm making it that's what i thought oh geez louise this guy's gonna get punched in the face someday don't think it's ever happened no very evident but like this could be a turning point yeah you know this could be a turning point yeah that's probably how it works yeah maybe yep or he'll just be the owner of the jets for 50 60 years uh-huh so he's 77 and then guess what though yeah break second definitely break square what if you're one of the guys that they're interviewing you know future gm future head coaches i mean this comes out now are these questions like okay where do where do i fall in line where does that thing what does that thing do i mean he's leading moving forward in the interview can i expect what can i expect rabble flicks a cigarette that puts out on his forehead and says that's how that's gonna go i mean let me tell you a little story you can't even buy me zins kid get the hell out of my face if brick wins his fantasy football league he's going to be a gm oh win he's actually gonna they're gonna make him one of them rings the super bowl ring he's gonna make a super bowl ring for brick if he wins his fantasy football but he doesn't do fantasy football he does that's kind of what the report was saying wow do you think we know how players feel like did players feel like like you naturally would do you would gas him up if you saw this happening in the locker room but do players feel like hey i can't do this because this dude legit has the power to get cut right away definitely and this is the thing where you have the power and then you abuse it in front of people and then nobody can really do anything and it's just a different fashion of doing that you're stealing a moment yada yada you can't because you're the owner's kid and nobody's ever told you shut the fuck up what should have happened a lot of times in your life it appears uh so no but i would like to say and this is uh you know i wish i would react the same way in a situation situation i was in there it would have been impossible for me to keep my mouth shut up there would have been something coming hello baby and probably a brick brick brick brick brick i probably would have started a full-on he would have thought that was just for sure yeah yeah so we would all have been having a moment you know with this yeah i mean it would have been impossible not to do yeah yeah yeah me me me me all right um begin the night charges broncos aj and once we get your thought on how this game's gonna go we're about to have a conversation with a president of the ncaa that i think a lot of people are gonna be uh listening closely to because there's a lot going on in college what do you think happens tonight broncos charters age well i heard chuck talking about it earlier chuck thinks it's gonna be a low score and i tend to think that as well the over under 41 and a half i don't i don't like taking unders but that might be a safe bet on this guy but yeah man i like this broncos defense a lot so i hope for them too i know herbert doesn't throw many interceptions at all but this broncos team does a good job trying to get the ball so i'm good i think they're gonna get after her pretty good yeah and obviously nick benito is like that read out here came out of nowhere ad mitchell said afterwards i executed the play and then 15 became that read i don't know what you want from me all right i he told me if i didn't didn't like it i could throw it away but did you see him from my perspective and if you do look at it back from his perspective there's guy in face and also benito is kind of you know everything around you know kind of disguised and hiding in the crowd and then boom out of nowhere that's a pitch six uh but it's called a fumble and speaking of fumble this all came after carter taylor dropped the ball a half yard before he got the end zone after four yard run just remember this this could be a moment all the colts learn from yeah they're lurking they're lurking coach still lurking all right ladies and gentlemen it's time for us to do something that is uh very important for the sports world not often we get to say this this guy is phenomenal at his job he owns a lot of power the sixth president of the ncaa how's how's he six six six five six five right there hey we did it page we did it what is it oh we won the championship holy shit look at us we've only won huh and we uh mr baker thank you we'll take care of that all right we got seven guys there we'll take care of it uh mr baker thank you so much yeah friends family friends all right so i consider us friends we appreciate you stopping by obviously the ncaa headquarters are here in indianapolis indiana but you do a lot of work how do you feel about the current state of the ncaa uh if we watch that men's soccer national championship the other night vermont scores a golden goal game winner place goes crazy feels like college sports is alive and well right now do you agree with that i think college sports on the field of play is and obviously part of the reason i took the job was because i played my wife played my wife was the best athlete in the family she's a gymnast at northwestern um she does a triple whoopty woosh well yeah um and keep running those that's what they do that those are impossible almost the same way she described it to me um the uh the boys play football i mean i i love i love what college sports does for people i really do and does for kids does for fans and um and the game on the field is i think as enjoyable and as exciting as it's ever been and i've been to d3 championships d2 championships fcs football championships um obviously tons of basketball and uh i think it's i think it's incredibly exciting on the field and i think the the state of the game there is actually quite high but there's a ton of other stuff going on that you know i knew walking the door was going to be a challenge and we're basically in the process of trying to put a new set of pieces together okay so i want to get into that but first i think we got to explain why you're kind of uniquely qualified to be the guy in the role that you're in right now you come from the political world right you were i was a healthcare guy and a government guy okay so in sports guy obviously sports guy growing up in your life but your political shit i think is the most important part of this because we got a ruling coming from a judge but then we also got a lot of different things that need to get figured out in work almost right there's yes votes no votes for everything what do you think is the biggest issue and obviously in the college football world right now the chaos is around the transfer portal and college football playoff and then there's no calendar really when can you do what what do you think is the biggest issue that's going to get settled first and then what are the outliers you think that are going to remain well i'm obviously going to go with the settlement because the settlement is right april eight uh we got preliminary approval in october from to begin at the start of the next um calendar year which is seven one uh for academics and sports and and i think that is going to be the first time schools will be given the opportunity to own the relationship academically athletically and financially um with their student-athletes and i think part of the chaos of the last few years is schools have sort of been cut out of that the collectives for the most part drive the drive the train there and um and from where i sit uh until you give the schools back their primary relationship with student-athletes so the kids can make an investment in schools and schools can make an investment in them i think it's going to be really hard to control some of the chaos that people talk about and see what's going on out there okay and obviously the chaos is the poaching and people reaching out to players agents and saying hey if you're getting the transfer portal we'll pay you 750 000 so kids who weren't thinking about getting the transfer portal hop in there now that was a collective is that a real contract or not how often have you heard about guys maybe agreeing to deals and then not getting paid and these school deals that are going to come are those going to be like multiple year guaranteed deals like iron clad like can't get out if it happens like how do you make the deals kind of become real for both sides well first of all the way the way the settlement works remember this is being driven through a court process so there's kind of an overhang on this that's called the court monitor who will be appointed by the judge the plaintiff attorneys will continue to be involved to make sure the thing works the way it's supposed to um and because of the way the institutional nil piece will be set up you know a deal will be a deal until it actually gets approved and the first thing i thought of when i thought of the settlement was the debate argument conflict uh between the quarterback at um nevada and nevada over what happened and there was a whole bunch of back was he promised something was he wasn't promised something what was the story there because of the fact that this was third parties the difference here is you're going to have process transparency and accountability which you don't have now and a deal won't be real until it actually goes through the calculator and gets signed same thing with respect to the any third party deal is going to have to go through a clearinghouse and get approved and until that happens it's not real no offense to people that have been in politics or in any bureaucracy I've been in a few other things Yes, uniquely qualified. So these deals getting approved, how does that, how long is that, that's a massive... That's going to be one of these. It's going to be one of these.
Okay, yeah, because then, you know, because if there's a holdup on that, then obviously there's ways for everything else. And then the NILPs, it has to be approved, the deals, and then they have to be what comp prices do, so people can't just be throwing ridiculous numbers out. So we can get a market, we think, too, that comes alongside this ref share? I think we will get a market that goes alongside the ref share, yeah.
And that's going to be important. Very important, yeah, because one school offers this, they have no idea that this school's offering this, and then they're making up numbers that are going to offer. The question you're asking right now, which is a great question, is currently being discussed, which is how do you figure out what information is available to who when? But the most important thing here is there's a general acceptance and understanding across the D1, which is where this activity is going to take place, that there's going to be a mechanism you have to submit your contract into and get it approved.
Legit, it legitimizes everything. It's overseen by a court process. Now, are those one-year deals, two-year deals? I think it's going to be a little bit of both.
I think it's going to depend to some extent on what the young person's looking for, what the school's looking for. And at least, again, for the thing to get through, they'll both have to agree to it, and then when it gets approved, there's no more debate about what it is or what it says or what it does. And I think part of what the biggest problem we have now is so much of this is happening through multiple parties. You know, when people talk about third parties, you have a lot of situations that I've been made aware of where there are multiple people who are involved.
There are family members. There are friends. There are agents, sometimes real agents, sometimes people who are playing the role of an agent, maybe for the first time. This is going to be a lot cleaner than that and a lot more, I think, systemic.
And I think the schools, generally speaking, are going to want to do this in what I would describe as a way that ensures that the word that gets out there on the fields of kids in high schools and programs all over the place, that the school is doing it the right way. Got it. Okay, so another big question that's happening, and I'm happy that's all going to take place. That, by the way, is all theoretically effective.
If we get the approval on April 8th, it starts with the academic calendar on 7-1. And you said pre-approval on October 7th. We got that already. So what does that mean?
The judge said, you know what? First glance, like it. Don't love it yet. Actually, second glance.
Didn't like it so much on the first glance. I was back to the drawing board. And we came back with a second submission, and she, on the second glance, said, by the way, this judge has been involved in these cases for a decade. She is considered to be kind of the, this is like her issue.
To some extent, having her as the final arbiter here is, from the point of view of a lot of people, a really good thing. Okay, so she gets a second look at it and says, in theory, I like this. So then you're able to basically tell your constituents. It's all contingent, which is kind of a drag, right?
We're busy building infrastructure to deal with this. The schools are busy doing it because we're all assuming it's going to get approved. Got it. But what if she just wakes up one of your boys and reads the finer details and says, you thought I was going to pass this?
No way. Then obviously we remain in the chaos and we'll try to get another bill passed or another thing to get approved. That's theoretically possible, but I kind of hope that she wouldn't have given a safe approval if she wasn't planning that. Your Honor, we appreciate you.
We appreciate you. Your Honor, all your hard work and your pre-approval in October because everybody's preparing for it. Okay, so we'll have a market for NIL. The schools will be dealing with it.
It feels like it'll be real deals and there'll be a relationship back between coaches, school, and players as opposed to the coach saying, I like this player, then the NIL collective saying, this is how much we value and then the coach having to hear about it and then this person going out. So that feels like that settles some of the situations. Now let's talk about the other one that's happening right now. This transfer portal window.
We have a graphic timeline, basically. The start of football season is in August. Conference championships are in December 16th. So obviously we find out who goes into college football playoff.
December 9th is during bowl game season here. December 9th is when the transfer portal opens. Then transfer portal closes, this first one on the 28th. The CFP teams are currently in the middle preparing for the biggest game of their lives while their players are also having to figure out whether or not they're going to be on the team next year to negotiate deals.
Coaches are having to re-recruit their team before having to play in a playoff game, which I thought we were all about. And then there's a chance potentially guys sign and pay a new deal during this transfer portal window and then guys go through the spring and then in the second transfer portal window, others have said why these transfer portal windows are when they are. Is there a thought of putting together a calendar like the NFL has? Like, hey, this is draft season, this is free agency, this is spring, this is this.
Is there a thought to doing that for football or is it even possible to do that because of the academics that come along? I mean, the one asterisk I would put to your chart is if you're playing in a bowl game, you're playing in a CFP, the window doesn't close for you until you finish. You have five days after your bowl game ends or your team loses. The transfer portal is available to you then.
Not leftovers. I'm not saying that. Why did you say that? Think about the fact that a lot of these kids play on really good teams.
I'm not really sure anybody would think of them that way. But the pressure that's coming is, the window is part of it, but what's really driving it is the stuff you were talking about, which is the other folks trying to get kids early and the kids being told, basically, if you don't come early, there's not going to be a spot for you. And, you know, people have worked really, you know, the NCAA colleges, big time college sports, got absolutely crucified about 20 years ago for having abysmal graduation rates, abysmal test scores, and failing the 99% of the kids who played big time college sports and college sports generally who were never going to play professionally. And even today, you know, the number, I talked to Nick Saban about this once, and he went, who was, by the way, so people have worked really hard to sort of clean that up.
And at this point, you know, student-athletes graduated higher percentages across all three divisions than any other group that's in college. And they, you know, and for all the talk of the transfer portal... Like band and choir? Yes.
Like those types of groups? Well, I don't know if you divide it by band and choir, but if you say student-athletes, non-student-athletes, you go by race, class, division, it doesn't matter. Student-athletes graduated higher rates. That's what I thought.
Nice. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. That got my father in his chair.
To be clear, I'm not cracking. But I am proud of student-athletes beating non-student-athletes. I like that. We take that grit into the classroom.
Correct. That's what we do with it. The academic part is why the transfer portal is because they have to enroll in classes, right? So then some people bring up in this future of professional...
But I do think if you get to the point where you have institutional agreements between the schools and the kids, some of this will soften a little bit. And the other thing that's important to remember here is we live in a really different world than we used to live in because of the availability of information in social media. I mean, I say all the time that one of the reasons I took the job at the NCAA was because the basketball program at Harvard was literally... Maybe you get to make a phone call on the dorm phone once a week if you save your lunch money.
And the thing that is different now is... And kids transfer a lot more in high school and college than they used to because I can learn everything there is to know about every school in an hour on my phone. And I can probably find people there who I can engage with either through text messaging or social media or some other vehicle. So the connectivity that they have and the knowledge that they have about what's going on on another campus which was just turbocharged by the pandemic when every school went out and developed huge resources that they could virtually make available to people so folks could see what the schools were like and all the rest.
So almost 40% of all the kids who go to college We're more loyal than you. I thought so. I thought so. Because everybody's talking about these players.
You've got guys playing eight years, three different schools now. That needs to stop. Don't disagree. But that is in some respects what I would describe it.
You're playing at the end of the curve. Yeah, these are the exaggerations. These are the outliers. They're not exaggerations but they're definitely the outliers.
Yeah, I know we're going to do stats today but certainly the bell curve on this entire stuff is certainly heating up in the entirety of it all. We are talking about the outliers of it all. Okay, so transfer portal window not really movable because we've got everyone in classes. There's always an ongoing conversation about the transfer portal.
There is. Between the membership talks about this all the time and so what I would say to you is if there's going to be some change in that to accommodate some of the issues you just described we've got to figure out how to make sure we don't screw up kids' ability to actually go to college because again, you know 99% of them aren't playing professionally. Okay, so let's... And I'm only on NIL.
I was the first guy in higher ed to say literally like a year ago schools should be able to do NIL with their student athletes. I think that was a big takeaway whenever we all learned that it wasn't the schools doing it and the schools weren't even allowed to be a part of the conversation. I think Coach Rule told us that whenever we came in and got the job in Nebraska after leaving the Carolina Panthers he said, hey, a lot has changed. I'm talking to guys, recruiting guys but I'm not allowed to talk about the money.
The money's coming from somebody that I've met one time I don't even think is even in our building. They're the ones handing the cash and then we're handling the who we want. He said that has to be fixed. Sounds like that's being fixed in the university which will hopefully fix the transfer portal coaching too because there will be at least some honor amongst the thieves about hey, we won't do this to a team that's going through the college football playoff team but I think they're going to continue to be a little bit behind on the ability to study the players that are in the transfer portal get the first wave of transfer portal guys out of there and then having to catch up at the five days at the end obviously will help the players who are potentially trying to transfer out of there.
This is not just true in football and I'll give you an example of what I mean about trying to fine-tune this. The window in basketball opened last year right around the time the tournament started, right? What did you guys do? We moved it.
We moved it. We moved it two weeks. By the time you get two weeks into the tournament you basically have a huge number of the games already played and the number of teams that are left at that point is much, much smaller for just that reason. So people do make changes.
Yeah, because we just thought for a long time before you got in there is the NCAA does adjust they just get dumber somehow. Ain't that right, H? Isn't that how we kind of That's usually that was the sentiment for a little bit, yeah. Yeah, that was kind of the NCAA sentiment as well.
I don't know how you could get dumber and then all of a sudden the NCAA would be like just wait, yeah. By the way, I did not know that H.A. had won a golf tournament. He didn't, so.
No. He said he was a match. He was a celebrity. Myself and Rob Riggle.
Rob Riggle, he was a great partner. But USA lost the Ryder Cup as a whole. Oh, I see, okay. So he won his match.
He contributed. He did. Yeah, but the USA. Not enough.
Agreed. You could have done a little bit better. And then maybe you're coming home with a Ryder Cup jacket. You are a golfer?
I am not a golfer. I am not a golfer. I know, not a golfer. First of all, I'm just going to say this because I have to.
I would rather spend time with my wife than my kids. What do you mean with the golfer? People spend a lot of time. I'm not a politician.
I have three blank faces over there. Conor has a question for you. Yeah, I don't want your kids. You have to be willing to be bad at it for quite a while to get good.
And I couldn't do it. I quit. You're holed. Bingo.
I quit. Yeah. Who has the time? And hopefully one day in my life I will have the time.
But I spent time on it last year. I spent a lot of time on this. I thought I had to figure it out. Worse.
I got worse. I said, fuck this sport. I'm not doing it, Chuck. That's what I said.
Just like you have said before. Go ahead, Conor. Yeah, so Charlie, back to the eligibility thing. Obviously, you know, some guys do spend a lot of time and they get injured and they need more time.
The ruling with Diego Pavia just came out where the two years in JUCO that he had don't really count towards his eligibility so he can continue to play. What do you think about something like that? And then how do you fix an eligibility problem just because, you know, with the COVID year, people got extra years and that's coming to an end here soon. But there are still situations where dudes are playing for eight, nine years in college.
The COVID thing, the big issue with COVID and the reason for this, there are a lot of big issues. But by the way, the big issue with COVID for sports was they're applied to everybody, basically. So you could grant the extra time and the extra eligibility because you're basically just doing it across the board. I think the, I mean, we said yesterday we thought the decision that the judge made in the Pavia case.
And by the way, I love watching him play. Change Vandy. Change Vandy completely. So much fun to watch those wing T and sort of run first offenses.
Well, and also teams that are completely out of it. Mock, ridiculed, transfer portal, NIL, which everybody's hearing because there's chaos. A lot of good games from it too. A lot of parody in college ball.
Look at Indiana. That's a good example. You know, great game. You were talking about this earlier.
I mean, most of the people I've met in Indiana who were Indiana grads, they're Notre Dame fans of football because now all they know is whoever wins on Friday night is still winning. Here's the irony to this. The more you know about a legal question that's currently outstanding, especially if you're involved in it, the less you're allowed to say about it. It's a politician.
But that's just, I'm not a lawyer. The lawyers can say lots of things that people can't. Thank God I'm not a lawyer. Too many of them.
They do a great job. But what I would say is that my big worry with this thing, and again, it's very fresh. It just came out last night. My big worry about it is there's a rhythm to college sports and the rules associated with this four years of eligibility except for injuries and red shirts and all the rest has been with us forever.
And it's been how we make it possible to sort of line up academic performance with athletic performance and opportunity and to make sure that the next generation of kids have a place to go. I mean, if you writ large this decision across the JUCOs and then maybe somebody says, well, hell, if JUCOs get two years plus four, why shouldn't anybody who goes to college get six? You're going to create a freight train collision. You're worried about precedent.
Well, just worry about the collision with all the high school kids. We're going to have no place to go. Darius J. Butler, Broward Downey, South Florida Sports Hall of Famer, he said when he was down there for the induction, I guess scholarships among South Florida seniors down 40% for football.
Really? Yeah, that's what he said the stat was. And that's what you're talking about, though. These guys playing extra long, taking up entire recruiting classes, transfer portal, people saving money or saving scholarships for transfer portal and everything like that.
And that is, look, the beauty of, one of the big beauties of college sports generally is, and this is true outside of the big time schools and the NIL stuff and all the rest, is it's still $4 billion in scholarships, right? And those scholarships, I mean, you talk to a lot of kids who don't play at the big time schools, it's the scholarship that made it possible for them to go to college in the first place because their families weren't in a position to pay for it. It gave them this huge, really great base of support and teammates to help them through the tough times and kind of would hate to end up in a situation. You know, there's 120,000, 130,000 kids a year who actually go from high school.
There are 8 million kids who play high school sports. 7, 6, 7% of them actually make it and play in college. It's 120,000, 125,000. It would be awful if there's just no place for them to go because we have the 510,000 college athletes.
It's like 125,000 class, right? That's the way to think about it. It's not like we're suddenly going to grow a whole bunch of new teams. We'll grow some new teams in new sports, but it'll be on the margin.
But if you suddenly take that four years and you turn it into six for some huge percentage of the kids who are there, there's really no place for the kids coming out of high school to help. Understandable. And I think there's a lot of people that feel the same way you do. You know, I think a couple years ago it was maybe like, oh, these guys deserve an opportunity, these guys deserve an opportunity because in the kicking and punting world, more so the punting world, there's been a lot of Australians that have come over and the Australians are incredibly cool people.
I do not blame the Aussies for taking advantage of the situation. But like 26-year-old, 27-year-old Aussies coming over after an Aussie football career, already have a full family but they haven't been to college for the university so they still have their shot clock of time that they can do college sports. So they were getting all the scholarships basically and 17-year-old American kids had basically no chance there for a while. That was kind of a run.
That kind of took place. I think it's kind of bouncing out. And the Aussies, once again, nothing against them. They do good basketball programs still.
Who, Aussies? Yeah, I think the Aussie basketball, pro basketball thing has a bunch of stuff down there. Love the country, love everything about it, but that created a situation where there's a lot of high schoolers losing out on scholarships. Now that was after me so I'm thankful and lucky for that.
But then now that the COVID years are starting to see it and then they're done they're done officially over this was the last year for covid so we beat it we beat it all right i can't believe we did that i didn't know that was gonna happen we did it uh aj's in ohio rider cup winner but not a champion as well for you yeah mr baker i when i think we kind of lived yeah chuck i'm sorry we kind of live in this bubble this football bubble i think sometimes i know you run the ncaa every decision you make you have to think about like every sport can you tell us like what it's like we have to think about not only football which is kind of takes the headlines especially with us but we need to think about every single sport all over the place how does that change and you know your decision making well the biggest i mean the most interesting thing about the ncaa it's 90 championships um across three divisions so you're basically talking 24 25 sports maybe as many as 30 um in each division um all of which provide competitive opportunities for kids you don't have to look at me i'm sorry you don't have to look at me you talked about the vermont um men winning the soccer championship uh the unc wake forest women's soccer championship was terrific donna carry right same place um field hockey championships i've been to those uh went to the men's swimming and diving championships in indianapolis last year awesome and guess what everybody who's winning medals at the olympics were swimming at that um i i think the biggest challenge that we have is to stop thinking about the sports other than football and men's basketball women's basketball has proven this as non-revenue sports i think it's less about you know non-revenue and maybe more about maybe we're as focused on as maybe we should be i mean we're busy growing a fan database it's one of the first things i started doing when i got to the ncaa we have 13 million people in it and we're going to keep growing it to try to get to 25 million and then fill in some of the gaps with respect to where people went to school what sports they follow what teams are interested in and we've used it a couple times to try to drive traffic to some of these so-called underrepresented non-revenue sports championships and it's goose the numbers up in a pretty big way i think look people love college sports they love football they love basketball i do too my kids played i played um but there's tons of other sports that people love too and what we have to do is love them back and the people in institutional positions like mine have to figure out ways to create fan base to create content to take advantage of the fact that digital means you can talk to anybody anywhere anytime and drive people to those events and then use that to create advertising opportunity and sponsorships and grow the game the growth of the women's game which a lot of basketball which a lot of people have invested in it's been huge um i'll give you another one women's volleyball the semifinals are tonight the finals are on sunday their ratings were up last year by 100 okay tv ratings attendance all the rest the ratings this year grew a little too by another 100 okay people love the sports people love competition people love to see young people compete and we got to stop talking about sports other than football and basketball is quote-unquote non-revenue and start talking about them as sports where there are opportunities to grow them that's the way you got to think i like the other mindset we'll continue to classify them as non-revenue generating and then revenue generating because you know we're in a world where certainly money matters but that leads to a question of is there a chance of like people thought football maybe breaks off from this entire thing and everything's kind of differently has that come across your desk is that a real conversation and how do you feel about that first of all to campus that is 100 campus decision that's not an ncaa decision um because the the real impact of that would be would be felt on campus more so than it would be in our organization i i think um i think that's a lot easier there's just rules like hey it is different and then everything else can live by their own set of rules would that make it easier for you if that was the case in the ncaa um i don't know i mean i love fcs football um and shout them out yep i mean adam vinnatari one of my all-time favorite professional new and also an fcs football player i mean the list michael strahan the list is jerry rice greatest receiver of all time mississippi valley state there are a lot of really terrific um games that get played outside of just the big time fbs programs but what i would say about that is in the end that's that's something the school's got to figure out i mean the brands that are represented by the schools and the financial support and the donors that um invest heart soul and money into those programs um i don't know if you pull them completely out and fund them through third-party money i don't know what that does to the zeitgeist or even maybe it's people's willingness to sort of write you know checks to refurbish the stadium or whatever it might be um but i certainly think it's a conversation that's worth having i know people are having it and and i'm not you know i'm not unaware of the fact that um the college football generally especially big time college football which is maybe five percent of all of it all college football um generates you know 95 of the eyeballs and and is a big machine it is well i think you're doing a good job of juggling at all and i appreciate your take even though ours is non-revenue generating and then revenue generating you're saying hey people just need to learn more about these sports we need to do a better job marketing because then everything well if you just say non-revenue generating then you're never going to sit around and say let's build a fan database put 25 million fans in it and start to drive traffic based on what people we'll start saying sports that people haven't got to love yet but women's basketball was non-revenue generating too three or four years ago and caitlin clark came through caitlin clark a lot of the players too yeah yeah yeah okay i agree i agree needed all sides angel recent lsu team was needed in the entire thing south carolina obviously a massive part of the machine they had they had i agree at the top that was a class i think that was a class though now how you continue to carry that have you been to a pace again or a fever game yeah yeah i went to those fever games last year um a little different it's a little different yeah yeah this year it's absolutely nuts yeah professional college obviously everything's different uh let's stay on that note because you mentioned women's volleyball and you mentioned other women's sports i have a daughter uh he has a daughter he has two daughters aj has a daughter i believe chapagano out here has granddaughters and daughters the future of women's sports big conversation i know you were just in congress kind of getting peppered with it where do you stand in all that and like how should we view it as fathers of a 19 month old girl in her future sports because she's definitely gonna play sports because sports are the best life teacher i think that you can have growing up how do you stand on that and how do you feel about that whole conversation that's kind of taking place well um there are 510 000 college athletes playing in the ncaa there are less than 10 transgender athletes um so it's a small community to begin with um there is no clarity at this point in time in the legal environment and let's face it the legal environment to us is important because you win and lose cases and you set precedent so there have been five there have been five court cases in the past call it 15 months that involved the right of a transgender student athlete not just at the collegiate level but also high school level to play all five cases federal judges ruled in favor of participation and play and what i said when i was in washington is i would love to work with people in washington to create a federal standard around this issue because right now we don't have one and it's a problem and i accept that it's an enormously controversial and challenging issue but right now if you look at the way this these issues are getting decided in court the courts are deciding in favor of participation and so we are abiding by um the way they're deciding it i saw a lot of people pissed off at you for that no no no i i i i i i i i i i i i'm a sports person so i think a lot of people that aren't in sports but what i also said to them was we would love to work with people to deal with this issue and i would love to have regulatory clarity from the department of education or uh legislation clarity from from congress and and we abide by state laws so there are many states where um they have very restrictive standards on this um and some of the court cases at the federal level have been state laws that have been challenged and have been either stayed or overturned about this issue associated with participation i think you're right charlie i think you have a fantastic job since taking over the helm i think you've been phenomenally transparent through it all and uh i can't thank you enough for coming in here and making us sports studios a little bit smart literally a little bit much more smart i actually um you guys a while back were talking about nj you were involved in this conversation you were talking about one of the watt brothers um the one that plays for the steelers dj and you put up a set of stats on him and i think i screenshot and sent it to you and said basically i had no idea and my my oldest was a dn in college and so i took it i sent it to him and he basically said back dad you're such an idiot you don't already know this but thank you for continuing to learn and to grow and to appreciate the fact that dns are the most important football players on it but um but but there is a tremendous i mean yes you guys are are fun and you're entertaining and all the rest but if you're interested in sports you also and this is no joke you also give people an opportunity to learn i can't believe the patriots oh yeah we'll be back don't worry so um i went to the i went to the glendale super bowl against the giants we're 18 and 0 going in we're gonna win the super bowl and we're gonna be 19 and 0 first team to ever be 19 and 0 here no no that was in um that was in phoenix oh okay and uh that was before that whole area around the stadium had been built out this is 2007 i think and um 2007 season 2008 right so everybody's parking a million miles away we all have to walk like forever to get to the stadium watch the game back and forth really tough battle with the giants we played in the last game the regular season that year we i say we that's what we do exactly yeah and we beat them 35 to 28 um on a bomb from tom brady to randy moss at the end of the game so things go on we eventually get ahead and i'm like okay looks like we're gonna win this and then um asante samuel misses the interception right in his hands and you know these are moments when you're a sports fan and you see that happen real time you know your first reaction to that is that's a really bad sign because that means there's something going on here and then you know eli manning somehow gets out of the grasp of what should have been within the grasp call and uh this is over this football halfway down the field and this guy catches it on his helmet with rodney harrison probably the nfl defensive player of the year should have been that year defending him and now we were like oh my god we are doomed and um and sure enough we were down by that end zone you know they scored down there and then on the on the next series i'm like well the only shot we have here is the same thing we beat him with in the last game of the regular season which is a long bomb to randy moss so brady is literally like right in front of me okay takes a snap drops back takes like three steps over here to the right and i'm thinking oh my god he's gonna tee off on this and i look down the field and there's randy moss on the other side of the field behind the secondary here we go and he throws it and it misses moss's hands by less than a foot and i'm literally like okay so this is just the way life is we trudge out we walk like a mile and a half back to our car get there and realize that we don't have the keys to the car right but for some crazy reason i actually put the rental car in my pocket so i take it out it has a 1-800 number on it i call the 1-800 number and somebody answers the phone and i say i'm you know i'm customer this is my um this is my contract number and i lost my keys and the woman goes just a minute and she goes like this is a long time ago very different kind of technology and she goes uh the people at the uh customer service center at the stadium have your have your keys so somebody actually found my keys and handed them in to the customer service people so things aren't too bad so now i'm walking back all right now what happens at the end of a super bowl all the people on the team that win leave wait all the people who are on the team that excuse me all the people who are on the team that lose leave all the people who stay they stay so the giants fans have all been staying they are now starting as i am walking back with my friends all of us dressed and patriarchy here and all the rest and it's literally like this people are throwing stuff at us throwing the beers and it's fucking fucking 18-1 all the way back in it was pretty humiliating no i was just joe q citizen sad fan when did you decide to be the governor i ran in 2010 and lost um and uh and i and i learned a lot from that experience um that's something right when the public says not that's why people thought i should have been able to win and i went around and talked to all the reporters to cover the race i talked to a whole bunch of the smart talking heads and i basically said all i'm gonna do wrong and they had no trouble telling me everything i did wrong humiliating and embarrassing and informative and one guy in particular said to me you spent too much time talking to your customers and not enough time talking to your prospects which is his way of saying you're spending too much time with people whose votes you already had not enough time with people whose votes you didn't have and my wife lauren and i talked about running a second time in 14 and what it really came down to was was okay with my you know obituary saying charlie baker who you know did this and did that and ran for governor twice in massachusetts and lost both times just kind of the opening paragraph the double loss and uh you know loser um and uh twice twice and once we got over that we basically said yeah let's go for it and so second time we ran i campaigned in all kinds of places where i knew i was gonna lose all right and the media actually wrote some pretty sort of snarky stories about you know this guy clearly doesn't know what he's doing um and what ended up happening in the end was i lost those places first of all talking to those folks who had never seen a republican before never talked to a republican never voted for a republican um it made me a better candidate to hear their life stories and i think it helped them a little bit to understand where i was coming from and why and uh and i lost those places by less than i lost the race the last time i still lost but i lost them by a small enough margin that i won the rest of the places i was supposed to win and that's how we got over the top and the next time we ran we got the largest number of votes in state yeah that's not a big dumb two-time loser right exactly steady but if you're round and pound hits the locker room understands everything you need to do gets out and reaches people which more politicians need to do talk to people you don't agree with talk to people that don't know you i think that's what politics is i love that it ended up working out for you that's how it's supposed to work you know and now you're in charge of taking care of the quagmire that is the ncaa in the middle of the wildest time in the history of college sports and i said this the first time i heard you speak and i'll say it now i think you're the right guy for the job i think you're uniquely qualified for the job because there's so many people that could be maybe the right people for the president of the ncaa but there's no way they want to do it because the amount of shins shots that you're gonna take but hell you were walking right into people that didn't like you yeah that is why the politics thing helps because you got to be able to stand in the face of people and uh know that they're not gonna love it and be able to deliver news and make a decision for the future i uh i respect for you brother a lot of them and i think we all do and uh we appreciate your time good luck love the show and like i said learn a lot hell yeah you need to stop watching me we need you to make good okay right age yeah pretty much you need to watch the show we make people worse and dumber knows how to unclog by the way i really enjoyed watching you play appreciate it i appreciate it how tall are you sir you were you were uh you and your ohio state teammates were the 12 noon must see tv in our household oh that's awesome appreciate it how tall are you i'm 6 6 can you still dunk holy shit i'm 68 years old the answer to that is no oh yeah you look good he asked me if i could still dunk can you shoot sometimes like free throw probably yeah okay i mean look at the shoot in their converse museum yes in indiana i think there is there is we're talking about chuck taylor and my dad sent me a picture he's like i want to a converse museum here in indianapolis indiana here's the young lad here's the young lad did you ever stop by the harvard tennis team he runs the uh the jesse 17 okay charlie all right that's how you become the highest vocator of all time here we go okay ladies and gentlemen if the president of the ncaa charlie bank former harvard basketball player former governor of massachusetts can make this free throw we will give 50 people 500 who repost this post, say something nice to somebody, and put the easiest way to be paid digitally. Just go back to that Harvard gym, brother. You can do this with your eyes closed. Hold on, hold on, hold on.
We got another one. Bill, get down there and rebound. That's right, Bill. No, no, no, we'll give you another one.
Nobody will save it. All right, all right. Hold on, take the layoff. Take the layoff.
Come on, lock it. Charlie, lock it. All right, take the layoff. All right, ladies and gentlemen.
Lock it. There it is. Okay, he's fine. Charlie, we're going to let you know.
Tyrese Halliburton took 30 shots one time. And here, he is a professional. All right, Charlie, whenever you're ready for the next free throw attempt, you let us know. 68 years old, getting loose.
A lot of bricks over there. This guy's building something special. Jeez, he's going to put the ball in there. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
You're going to get away with the 40% of the field. All right, all right, I'm going to start at least 68. I think I'll look it up. 68, what do you want?
He's sitting down for an hour. He's a swing player. All right, all right, he's fighting it. Okay, all right.
Hey, listen, he's going to let you know. All right, here, here, here, here, here. Say miss, say miss. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Charlie Baker is the president of the United...
President of the NCAA. He's the sixth president in the history of the association. He is being tasked with making college sports right in the middle of full chaos. He just did a...