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How Can College Football Be Fixed In 2024? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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  Welcome to Buckeyes tomorrow morning for Sunday, December thirty, first time your host
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  Tom Or. The Akron game is in two hundred and forty four days.
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  Yes, just shy of thirty five weeks. Almost here, almost where,
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  Almost back to college football season again for twenty twenty four, the game against
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  Michigan in three hundred and thirty five days. Well, a couple of days
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  ago, I told you we were going to be hearing more from Ryan Day
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  and more from Eli Drinklets to Missouri coach about some of the more bigger picture
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  things going on in the college football world right now. This is that show.
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  That was one of the more interesting press conferences that I've been to.
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  A lot of really interesting kind of big picture ideas being being discussed, and
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  guys with some really interesting answers to some of them. So let's start with
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  Eli Drinklets and this is you'll hear both coaches answer this one, but Eli's
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  going to go first. How different is next year going to be because this
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  is a twelve team playoff era now starting in twenty twenty four, So does
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  that mean you know not every game is going to be a must win,
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  You're going to be able to sneak in with two maybe even three, law
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  is to the playoff next year, So how different is that going to be?
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  We're not every game is really a must win. I don't know what
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  world you're living in, man, college football, every game is everything,
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  and I don't think that's ever going to change. Everybody expects to win,
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  the players expect to win, the fan bases expect to win, and the
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  coaches expect to win. And so I don't think you'll sense anything really different.
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  I think the margins, especially after what happened to a couple of teams
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  not making the playoffs this year, I mean, yeah, there's gonna be
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  some teams that can get in with maybe ten or eleven wins, but there's
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  still going to be the which game did you lose and how did you perform
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  and all that different stuff that are going to be variable. So I really
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  don't think the pressure will change any in my opinion. Agreed. I think
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  the four teams that get a bye in the first week will be significant.
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  So I think that will be important because of the length and number of games
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  that are going to be coming. You know, certly, our focus is
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  notingishing the season now, but when you do look ahead. I think you
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  know it's going to be important to be playing your best football down the stretch.
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  When you look at teams who make runs in the NFL playoffs, they'll
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  go through stretches whether it lose two or three in a row, but if
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  they get hot down the stretch, then they win in the super Bowl.
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  And so I think the first thing is you know it's going to be important
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  to try to get that by with The second thing is you gotta be playing
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  your best football on the stretch, and I think you know the healthier team
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  will be critical. One of the big stories this time last year was that
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  Ryan Day was going to be giving up play calling duties. He was thinking
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  about that Brian Hartline was brought on as the offensive coordinator. This was going
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  to be a big change, and then it never really happened. Ryan Day
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  has continued to call plays all season long. So you can contrast that with
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  Eli Drinkwitz, who talked about it last year and actually did do it.
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  He actually did give up play calling duties hired a new offensive coordinator. Drinkwitz
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  talked about this for quite a while about the benefits that he saw and Ryan
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  Day's sitting right there. So I was wondering what we're going through Ryan Day's
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  head as he's given this answer. But this is a really intriguing answer about
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  how that really helped the Tigers put together a vastly improved season. Yeah,
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  it really began after the bowl game, going back to the month of December.
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  You know, I just I wasn't doing the best that I could for
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  our football team. We have a sign in our building that says, hut,
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  do your job. Put the team first, right, embrace your role,
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  put the team first. And I wasn't doing that. I wasn't embracing
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  my role as the head coach. I was trying to hold onto my ego
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  of being the play caller. And I needed to step back and say,
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  the job as a head coach is to build this team, empower other people
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  to do their jobs, and really build connections amongst our players, from player
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  to player, coach to player, and from our university to or from our
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  team to our university and community. And it begins with investing in your guys.
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  And I just didn't have the time that I needed to do that,
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  And so that really became my mission. How could I support our strength and
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  conditioning athletic perform Mormans, How could I be around our players more? How
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  could I engage our coaches more on our in a real way. How could
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  I engage our players more in a real way to create a more connected team.
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  You know, football is a powerful game, and there's always elite teams,
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  but it's really not about elite talent. It's about elite teams. Ryan
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  alluded to it earlier. You know, when NFL teams get on a run,
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  it's teams that are connected. And I felt like, you know,
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  we needed to be more connected so that when that moment came and we we
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  broke through, we would be able to sustain it. And that kind of
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  happened for us after the Kansas State game. So yeah, it really just
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  came down to me being more living my integrity, not just talking about it,
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  but being about it and putting the team first, embracing my role as
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  the head coach. And and you know did a Kirby Moore came in and
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  did a phenomenal job to coach the offense, call the offense, and couldn't
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  have had it happen any better for us. Today is the last day of
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  the month of December, and I think a lot of college football coaches are
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  probably pretty happy to see it go. December at this point for a college
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  football coach is just about impossible. You've got the prep for your bowl game,
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  you have the transfer portal opening up and a ton of players going into
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  the portal, and then you have to evaluate you know, the guys who
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  are in the portal and you want to bring them in. So you've got
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  all that and oh yeah, early Signing Day as well. That happened on
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  December twentieth this year. So basically, for the first three weeks of the
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  month of December, you are trying to juggle transfer portal, signing day,
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  and game prep for your bowl game. That is just there are not enough
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  hours in the day. So if the coaches could change things up to maybe
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  improve their quality of life and improve the life of college football players and just
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  sort of the general state of the sport, how would they do it.
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  You're going to hear both guys here. Eli Drinkwitz will go first, and
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  I'm just trying to Beatlehouse to and I just listed all the issues with going
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  against their game plan. He lives on the beach man, I mean,
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  he's got time to like, look at the waves and figure out this stuff,
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  Like I'm trying to figure out what my kids are getting for Christmas and
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  I had no idea. So I don't know where the game's going. I
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  know it's the greatest game in the United States of America. College football is
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  unbelievable, and it's an opportunity for young men to get to do something that
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  they wouldn't get to do outside of the game of football. God's given an
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  incredible gift and talent to play the game at such an elite level, and
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  I just don't want to see it disappear. And I do think that there's
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  been such a grab for you know, the finances part, the financial part
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  of with the TV stuff, that we've lost a little bit of why we're
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  doing it and what's best for the student athlete. And I will say,
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  and I really felt like this in August, and I still feel like even
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  Chip carried out the message like at some point, football's got to make decisions
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  that impact just football. Okay, we're never going to be able to sit
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  into it, sit in a room as an NCA and make decisions that are
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  positive for football and other sports Olympic sports or track and field and all that,
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  like, we don't live in the same realm, and so at some
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  point we're gonna have to make decisions that are just about football in order for
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  us to have the success and sustainability that we want for student athletes to have
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  to play a soccer game all the way across the country on a Tuesday night
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  and then come back and take a final the next day, that that's that's
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  really challenging, and that that's that's a really tough because the end of the
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  day, those are football decisions that are being made. Yeah, I agree.
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  I think we can probably talk about this for hours. Obviously, I
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  know Chip very well and he's very well thought out. He's always been a
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  guy who thinks outside the box, and I think it's going to take a
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  little bit of that thinking here. It's something that maybe we're not all used
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  to, but something that's best for the student athletes, and it's going to
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  take some creative thoughts and then it's going to take a lot of hard work
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  to actually execute it and then enforce it. And I think we all know
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  that, but I think that's why we need to get some of these great
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  minds in a room together and get this thing figured out. There's a quote
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  says ideas are everywhere or everywhere. Execution is everything, and that's what it's
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  going to come down to. I mean, everybody can have ideas, but
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  at some point we got to get in a room and execute the ideas to
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  create the college football that we want moving forward. And finally, another big
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  question, big picture question here. You've probably heard something about Chip Kelly's proposal,
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  his idea about splitting off the top teams into a different division and sort
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  of, you know, separating the sport a little bit, because let's be
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  honest, Alabama and Louisiana Monroe are playing in the same division, but they're
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  not really playing in the same division if you kind of follow this board enough
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  to know what that really means. So let's start again with Eli Dre Let's
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  be you hear from Ryan Day as well. What do the coaches think about
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  what should happen with the sport and how to improve the sport and the big
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  picture basis. I mean, that is a loaded question. I don't know
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  that there's any one thing that has to be changed. I think there has
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  to be a collective group that gets together and decides that, really we have
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  to rearrange a lot of it. There's no other I mean, you know,
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  we've talked about the twelve team playoff. I mean, there's no way
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  possible for us to have a twelve team playoff next year and be recruiting in
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  an open period and have transfer portal additions and subtraction going on and preparing for
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  a game. It's just it's just not possible. So there's going to have
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  to be a reset of college football looking back. Okay, this is what
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  we've become now. You know, right now we've got like a wheel with
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  a you know, a bike cycle wheel, and we've taken the middle part
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  right out, and then we've just decided that all right, we'll just see
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  how it figures out. We got to start all over and build it back
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  again. And it's going to start with having to figure out the calendar.
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  I don't have a simple answer for you. It's not as simple as well,
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  we'll just move signing day. That's got consequences. The reality of it
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  is the decisions that have been made have not been thought through about what are
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  the unintended consequences of just saying, all right, we'll have to transfer portals.
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  I mean, now you've got players who are making decisions about leaving a
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  university, life changing decision before they've even finished their finals, which again is
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  a big deal. I mean, we're here to, like Coach said,
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  we're here to influence and impact people, and the number one way we can
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  is for them to get an education. I firmly believe in our guys receiving
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  nil and receiving payments and making financial gains through playing the game of football.
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  I think I've been adamant about that, but I also understand that getting a
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  degree is going to be significantly more important for them in their future. I
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  think not only for having that and being a positive contributor to society, but
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  for a lot of these guys, they're going to be the first in their
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  families to get a degree, and now they change the trajectory of their family
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  tree forever because now it's a standard for that person's family to go get a
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  college degree. And so again, unintended consequences of you know, all the
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  things adding up into one month, and it's just not possible for us to
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  continue forward with this cycle. Yeah, I agree with really everything coach just
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  mentioned. I think when big decisions like this need to be made, you
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  know, we struggle in college football because everyone's coming at it from a different
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  point of view. You know, I mentioned this before. You know,
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  coaches got his issues. We have our issues, different demographics, different size
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  of school, group of five, power five. But we've got to figure
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  out a way to make first off to some work. December is not working,
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  and you know whether that means you know, coaches don't go on the
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  road in the month of December. You know, moving the signing date is
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  going to be looked at. But it's not that easy, you know,
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  because I don't have a date, because I know what the issue is.
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  You do it in the summer, or you do it in June, and
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  there's coaching changes and now all of a sudden, when with that date become
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  available. So while I don't have good answers, you know, we all
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  need to come together and make some hard decisions. And like like coach said,
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  I don't think we can just patch it up and say, let's put
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  a patch on this right here, We got we got to look at this
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  thing from a big picture and then start from scratch and go from there.
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  And there's a lot that goes with that. Well, those are a lot
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  of big picture topics that we're probably going to be talking about more in the
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  coming days and weeks and months as we head into the college football offseason for
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  the Buckeyes. With plenty more to talk about there and as well as at
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  buckeheadle dot com, you can join us There plenty of coverage of the team,
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  coverage of recruiting, coverage of ex's and o's, and much more or
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  allot dot com. Thank you guys for joining us. Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you tomorrow. H