Latest / The Right Time with Bomani Jones / Steven Godfrey on ESPN & the Fight to Control College Football + Lane Kiffin returns to Ole Miss | 09.16

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Steven Godfrey on ESPN & the Fight to Control College Football + Lane Kiffin returns to Ole Miss | 09.16 · The Right Time with Bomani Jones

0:05
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Right Time, presented by PrizePix.
0:09
Speaker 2: My name is Beaumont E. Jones.
0:10
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for
0:12
Speaker 1: watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us,
0:16
Speaker 1: give us five stars. You only give us four stars.
0:18
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is
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Speaker 1: that time of week where we have a guest join us.
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Speaker 1: Stephen Godfrey, I always forget what all the things are
0:26
Speaker 1: that you're doing because you're Stephen Godfrey and you are
0:28
Speaker 1: bigger than those things, but I would like you to
0:30
Speaker 1: plug them yourself in this moment so that I don't
0:31
Speaker 1: get them wrong.
0:32
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you, Bo. PhantomIsland.show. Got my own production company.
0:36
Speaker 3: We got a big miniseries coming up. We got several, actually,
0:40
Speaker 3: that I'm going to be hitting you up, Bo, to
0:42
Speaker 3: come and promote and talk about. You can go to PhantomIsland.show.
0:45
Speaker 3: We got three different shows there. Same as you, man.
0:49
Speaker 3: Just podcast until they beg you not to. And then
0:52
Speaker 3: I'm also a co-host over on Yahoo and the College
0:54
Speaker 3: Football Enquirer. doing a little bit of writing here and there, but, uh, yeah,
0:57
Speaker 3: that's enough. That's enough about me. We're, we're, we're here
0:59
Speaker 3: to talk about much more important things.
1:01
Speaker 1: All right. We're going to get to the Lane Kiffin's
1:04
Speaker 1: return to Oxford, um, a little bit later, but first Godfrey,
1:09
Speaker 1: this is one of these people love for you to
1:10
Speaker 1: help make sense of things that make you and them angry.
1:14
Speaker 2: Um, the protect college sports act that.
1:17
Speaker 1: Is probably going to go to a vote this week,
1:21
Speaker 1: or it looks like it might go to a vote
1:23
Speaker 1: this week.
1:24
Speaker 2: Um, wait, I know enough about the bill to know
1:29
Speaker 2: that I do not like it. And I have my
1:30
Speaker 2: criticisms of it.
1:31
Speaker 1: I get the feeling that you are a bit more
1:33
Speaker 1: familiar with the nuts and bolts on it. We'll get
1:37
Speaker 1: also to the obvious propaganda machine that has been behind
1:40
Speaker 1: pushing this. But I think it's always healthy to start
1:43
Speaker 1: with the very simple question of, gee, how come there
1:46
Speaker 1: are never any players involved in the discussions around any
1:48
Speaker 1: of this? And because the answer is obviously because everyone's
1:51
Speaker 1: there to fuck them.
1:55
Speaker 3: Unlike other chapters of this very long story, I'm genuinely
2:01
Speaker 3: curious how much the players know. Because we don't know
2:04
Speaker 3: as much as those of us covering this, those of
2:07
Speaker 3: us talking about it for a living. Hey, nobody's seen
2:09
Speaker 3: the complete bill, by.
2:10
Speaker 2: The way, Beau.
2:10
Speaker 3: Isn't that kind of terrifying? This thing's going to a
2:13
Speaker 3: vote and it has support from all the corporate media
2:16
Speaker 3: establishments and support from different professional leagues. I won't bore
2:20
Speaker 3: you with the entire list, but nobody has seen all
2:23
Speaker 3: the particulars of this thing and This goes back to
2:25
Speaker 3: a need for some sort of organization on the labor side.
2:29
Speaker 3: There I am being one of those, you know, typical
2:31
Speaker 3: snooty white socialists. All I'm saying is maybe the college
2:34
Speaker 3: football players should get together in some sort of formal
2:36
Speaker 3: organization just so they can have somebody show up at
2:38
Speaker 3: these meetings and say, hey, why don't you send me
2:40
Speaker 3: a copy of that so we can just check real fast?
2:42
Speaker 3: Because this thing is now breaking down the lines of
2:45
Speaker 3: clawing back control over player participation, let's call it. So
2:51
Speaker 3: where you're playing, when you can leave, when you can't leave.
2:54
Speaker 3: And then compensation. They're doing that under the guise of
2:58
Speaker 3: college sports is in crisis. By the way, never made
3:00
Speaker 3: more money than it is right now.
3:01
Speaker 2: Okay?
3:02
Speaker 3: College sports is a mess. Never been more popular in
3:05
Speaker 3: terms of attendance, television ratings, whatever metric you want to do. Then,
3:09
Speaker 3: of course, we're tacking on because we got to get
3:11
Speaker 3: all the saw horses in here, Bo. We're tacking on.
3:14
Speaker 3: We're going to save women's sports.
3:16
Speaker 2: Save it. Okay?
3:18
Speaker 3: So I live in Nashville.
3:19
Speaker 2: Labor Day weekend.
3:20
Speaker 3: They got a college football kickoff game at the Titan Stadium.
3:23
Speaker 3: I didn't even know this until the morning of. The
3:25
Speaker 3: Bridgestone Arena here in Nashville is like the NHL arena, right?
3:28
Speaker 3: Filled with five, six women's volleyball teams playing an exhibition tournament.
3:34
Speaker 3: Wrigley Field, same thing. Same thing. Nebraska's up there doing
3:37
Speaker 3: the deal. Women's sports, objectively, has never been more lucrative.
3:40
Speaker 3: It's never been more popular. There's never been more exposure
3:44
Speaker 3: of the actual play of women's sports to fans, to
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Speaker 3: future athletes. And yet we are protecting college sports.
3:52
Speaker 2: It's the PCSA.
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Speaker 3: We are protecting college sports and we are preventing it
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Speaker 3: from demise when in actuality what we are doing is
4:00
Speaker 3: clawing back the Alston decision and preventing the courts from
4:03
Speaker 3: being able to intercede on behalf of the labor. It's
4:06
Speaker 3: the same old story again.
4:12
Speaker 1: I think something that is worth noting, I've talked about
4:15
Speaker 1: this maybe a few times on the show. I don't
4:17
Speaker 1: know if you've heard me tell this story before, but
4:19
Speaker 1: in 2005, I went to the National Association of Black
4:23
Speaker 1: Journalists Convention, and Jesse Jackson was there And it was
4:27
Speaker 1: because the Voting Rights Act was coming up for renewal
4:30
Speaker 1: that year. And he was making sure that everybody was
4:33
Speaker 1: aware that this was happening. Now, the 2005 version of
4:35
Speaker 1: me found that to be incredibly alarmist and that this
4:38
Speaker 1: was a fight that had already been won.
4:39
Speaker 2: Why do we need to even really do this?
4:42
Speaker 1: And on the side of that argument, it was unanimously
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Speaker 1: renewed in 2005. Obviously, fast forward to 2025 and the
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Speaker 1: damn act doesn't exist anymore.
4:50
Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: Which was a friendly reminder along with what we saw
4:55
Speaker 1: happen with Roe versus Wade, which is if ever you
4:58
Speaker 1: had to be diligent, you always have to be diligent.
5:01
Speaker 1: And number two, and this is a very important difference
5:03
Speaker 1: between the right and the left in this country. And
5:06
Speaker 1: this is even though this bill is bipartisan, this is
5:08
Speaker 1: still kind of a right wing thing that we're seeing
5:10
Speaker 1: before us.
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Speaker 2: They don't give up ever.
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Speaker 1: Once they have lost one of these things, it's like, no,
5:17
Speaker 1: don't worry.
5:17
Speaker 2: They chip.
5:18
Speaker 1: They do a little at a time to make sure
5:20
Speaker 1: it happens, but they will get that shit back to
5:23
Speaker 1: whatever it was before if you don't super duper fight it.
5:27
Speaker 1: And this is in line with what you're saying in
5:29
Speaker 1: terms of going back from trying to get back to
5:32
Speaker 1: what it was before the Alston decision. That's basically what
5:36
Speaker 1: we've got here is, okay, so we're going to cap
5:39
Speaker 1: the money at $ 20 million, a number that's based on
5:41
Speaker 1: the house settlement, right? The house settlement for revenue sharing
5:44
Speaker 1: is where they're trying to base this, but it just
5:47
Speaker 1: really comes down to, we don't want to have to
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Speaker 1: pay them anything.
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Speaker 3: All right, let's get into the fun part. Let's talk
5:55
Speaker 3: about $ 20 million for a second. So I have a
5:56
Speaker 3: show on our network called Numbers and Words, and it's
5:59
Speaker 3: basically like if you want to go to football 400 class,
6:02
Speaker 3: people want to really get into the diagnostics. And it's
6:04
Speaker 3: not scheme because it's hard to do on a podcast,
6:05
Speaker 3: but we talk about money a lot because money is
6:08
Speaker 3: the thing that stays obfuscated in college sports. $ 20 million
6:12
Speaker 3: was this magic number that came out of Alston. It
6:14
Speaker 3: really became popular because in 2024, Ohio State's payroll, their
6:18
Speaker 3: roster to win that national championship was thought to be
6:21
Speaker 3: about like $ 20 million. That's roughly what came out. I
6:25
Speaker 3: think that's what Ryan Day confirmed maybe the following offseason.
6:29
Speaker 3: So I had a guy named Parker Fleming who's essentially
6:32
Speaker 3: what you would call him a cap analyst if he
6:33
Speaker 3: was in the NFL, but he advises on NIL and
6:35
Speaker 3: advises on roster construction for college football teams. He does
6:38
Speaker 3: so as a third party. And I said, all right, hypothetical,
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Speaker 3: I'm going to give you $ 20 million right now. And
6:43
Speaker 3: we're going to break it down. We're going to figure
6:44
Speaker 3: out how much we're going to pay a quarterback, running back,
6:46
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff.
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Speaker 2: Market value.
6:48
Speaker 3: Keep in mind, I just got done saying, the revenue
6:50
Speaker 3: has never been higher for these top-end leagues, right? So
6:53
Speaker 3: we're talking, I'm not talking, hey man, I'm not talking
6:55
Speaker 3: about directionals. We're talking about Ohio State. We're talking about
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Speaker 3: national title contender level schools. I want y'all to think
7:00
Speaker 3: about this. We're talking about Texas, right? $ 20 million. We
7:05
Speaker 3: got done with the episode. I'll go ahead and spoil
7:07
Speaker 3: it for you. I said, what did I just build
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Speaker 3: in 2026, two years after $ 20 million won you a
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Speaker 3: national championship? He said, you built probably a North Carolina
7:14
Speaker 3: State team that could maybe go to the Pop-Tarts Bowl.
7:19
Speaker 3: That's it. That's what $ 20 million buys you. And the
7:20
Speaker 3: reason I'm bringing this up now is not that, oh man,
7:22
Speaker 3: inflation's crazy. No, it's that at the highest end of
7:26
Speaker 3: the sport, where the advantage has always lied in the
7:31
Speaker 3: ability to fundraise, the ability to build these massive facilities
7:35
Speaker 3: and structures and then work under the table, the labor's
7:40
Speaker 3: finally kind of caught up with that, right? If you're
7:41
Speaker 3: going to have this much money on hand and you
7:44
Speaker 3: are Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, et cetera, your payroll is
7:48
Speaker 3: going to point north towards about 50, I think has
7:52
Speaker 3: been kind of like where people thought this was headed. Now,
7:56
Speaker 3: this is a great talking point for conservatives. This is
7:58
Speaker 3: a great talking point for people like Cody Campbell, who's
8:00
Speaker 3: the mega booster at Texas Tech, who's kind of been
8:02
Speaker 3: behind all this. There's a lot of dual motivation going
8:07
Speaker 3: on here, so I want to be clear for the
8:08
Speaker 3: audience so we don't get lost here. There's also the
8:11
Speaker 3: inclusion of who's going to make it into the eventual
8:13
Speaker 3: Super League. We don't have to talk about that right now.
8:15
Speaker 3: Texas Tech obviously still on the outside in sort of
8:18
Speaker 3: the shell of the old Big 12. All right? But
8:21
Speaker 3: what the money people are finally realizing is the labor
8:24
Speaker 3: is going to be a substantial line in the ledger.
8:27
Speaker 3: I think the last time I was on your show,
8:29
Speaker 3: we talked about like, okay, well, Patrick Mahomes constitutes the
8:32
Speaker 3: largest chunk of payroll for the entire Kansas City Chiefs organization.
8:37
Speaker 3: Understandably so. Andy Reid is considered to be one of,
8:40
Speaker 3: if not the best NFL head coach currently working, makes
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Speaker 3: $ 20 million, a fraction of what Patrick makes. We were
8:47
Speaker 3: headed and are heading towards a path where payroll is
8:50
Speaker 3: inarguable for labor.
8:52
Speaker 2: And if we could cap it at.
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Speaker 3: $ 20 million, what they think is that they can get
8:55
Speaker 3: back into savings mode. They can continue to stock the coffers,
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Speaker 3: and then this is where it gets fun. I said
9:01
Speaker 3: we were coming to the fun part in a minute.
9:03
Speaker 3: You know what they really want to do that they're
9:05
Speaker 3: never going to say out loud, Bo? They want to
9:07
Speaker 3: go back to the old days. Shit, they always want
9:10
Speaker 3: to go back to the old days in some way, shape,
9:11
Speaker 3: or form. Trust me. They want to go back to, okay,
9:15
Speaker 3: we got a $ 20 million cap at Texas A & M.
9:17
Speaker 3: I'm always picking on the Aggies. I apologize. Oh, me too.
9:21
Speaker 3: $ 20 million cap at A & M. Okay, guess what?
9:23
Speaker 3: We're going to start bringing the Trans Ams back. We'll
9:26
Speaker 3: start bringing them duffel bags back. Because here's the reality.
9:29
Speaker 3: This is the thing that nobody says. Nobody's going to
9:32
Speaker 3: do that.
9:33
Speaker 2: Nobody's going to follow that rule.
9:35
Speaker 1: Well, except what they're trying to do to get you
9:36
Speaker 1: to follow the rule is to no longer make that
9:38
Speaker 1: stuff an NCAA violation and now make it a federal
9:41
Speaker 1: fucking crime.
9:43
Speaker 3: And guess what? They are talking out of both sides
9:45
Speaker 3: of their mouth and everybody knows it right now because
9:47
Speaker 3: the same people who are pushing for that limit and
9:49
Speaker 3: complaining about the price of things are the same people
9:51
Speaker 3: that could be buying Mama and them a house.
9:53
Speaker 2: They want to go back to that because.
9:55
Speaker 3: Here's the deal. It's considerably cheaper to run a black
9:59
Speaker 3: market market on labor. All of history has taught us this.
10:04
Speaker 2: You got to take like two college courses to figure
10:06
Speaker 2: that out.
10:07
Speaker 3: If the value, you know, when I did the Mississippi
10:10
Speaker 3: investigation story about what's going on 10 years now, four
10:13
Speaker 3: star linebacker, was commanding cash payments of $ 50, 000, $ 75, 000, $ 250, 000
10:18
Speaker 3: under the table to sign with a particular school, right?
10:22
Speaker 3: It was a four-star linebacker.
10:24
Speaker 2: He was pretty good.
10:25
Speaker 3: Doesn't have an NFL career or whatever, moved on. A
10:28
Speaker 3: four-star linebacker now is going to cost a zero more,
10:33
Speaker 3: a comma more, right? And then you start multiplying that
10:37
Speaker 3: by X, and this is a real problem. They caught
10:40
Speaker 3: up with the market. That's all that's really happening here.
10:44
Speaker 3: This is a cost-saving exercise. And it is, you know,
10:47
Speaker 3: we can talk about Nick Saban if you want to,
10:49
Speaker 3: but the thing that I'm fixated on is I've never
10:52
Speaker 3: seen a man afforded the opportunity to wrestle with his
10:54
Speaker 3: legacy in real time. And that's exactly what we're watching,
10:58
Speaker 3: is this human being who could have walked off into
11:00
Speaker 3: the sunset and been ensconced as the greatest and do
11:06
Speaker 3: all that hyperbolic nonsense. But instead, this guy chooses to
11:10
Speaker 3: get on a plane every week, travel to some damn
11:12
Speaker 3: college campus, sit there, listen to Pat McAfee, make him
11:15
Speaker 3: dumber for three hours, and then stump for a college
11:18
Speaker 3: football that can no longer exist because it better reflects
11:21
Speaker 3: his legacy. It's fascinating to me. But what he's not
11:25
Speaker 3: saying out loud is that his legacy was one of control.
11:29
Speaker 3: I try not to go on Twitter as much anymore,
11:32
Speaker 3: but anytime I just get frustrated enough where I want
11:35
Speaker 3: to yell at the element, is when Saban comes out
11:40
Speaker 3: here and he's all mealy-mouthed and apologetic, just like, oh,
11:43
Speaker 3: we've lost control. His entire tenure was built on control.
11:47
Speaker 2: He quit, right?
11:48
Speaker 3: He quit and walked off because after the famous Rose Bowl,
11:51
Speaker 3: they lost to Michigan three years ago now. He had
11:54
Speaker 3: players within 24 hours of the game coming up and saying, hey, coach,
11:57
Speaker 3: we've got to talk about my deal. I'm getting offered this,
11:59
Speaker 3: I'm getting offered that. And that's when he decided, oh,
12:02
Speaker 3: I have no control. Fear doesn't work. The Saban process
12:07
Speaker 3: was a machine that killed doubt because he could control
12:09
Speaker 3: every element. Every coach bent the knee, and he built
12:13
Speaker 3: an apparatus where talent had to go and go through
12:16
Speaker 3: his machine. But I could rant for hours about that.
12:20
Speaker 1: Now, I want to touch on something else because you
12:22
Speaker 1: mentioned it right fast. Sometimes I do things before I forget,
12:25
Speaker 1: not because of the actual flow of show. But the
12:29
Speaker 1: protecting women's sports element of this.
12:33
Speaker 2: Yeah.
12:34
Speaker 1: What I don't think people get is that $ 20 million
12:37
Speaker 1: cap that we're talking about would not be a $ 20
12:39
Speaker 1: million cap for the football team.
12:41
Speaker 2: We're talking about a cap for the whole athletic department.
12:47
Speaker 1: And some information I got on this is that the
12:48
Speaker 1: only school that's really reported what their payouts have been
12:52
Speaker 1: was Penn State. And they reported that they paid out 6%
12:58
Speaker 1: of their payments to female athletes.
13:01
Speaker 2: 6%.
13:03
Speaker 1: If you cap this, they're not going to get any
13:07
Speaker 1: of the money.
13:08
Speaker 3: No.
13:08
Speaker 2: All the money is going to go to football. I
13:10
Speaker 2: don't even know how much money basketball will get.
13:14
Speaker 3: No, and I think in most instances this will be,
13:16
Speaker 3: I think this is a net negative for basketball as
13:18
Speaker 3: well because if you actually had any number that you
13:22
Speaker 3: truly had to follow, which I still believe at the
13:25
Speaker 3: top football schools, they're just going to go back to funneling.
13:28
Speaker 3: I mean, we're going to go right back down to
13:29
Speaker 3: the table. But let's just say, and there's a lot
13:31
Speaker 3: of earnest athletic directors out there. who really want some
13:36
Speaker 3: sense of sanity on what the budget should be. And I, I,
13:39
Speaker 3: I can empathize with that. Like it just, Hey, tell
13:41
Speaker 3: us what it is so we can do it. That's
13:42
Speaker 3: kind of been the operating stance of a lot of coaches.
13:46
Speaker 3: A lot of that next generation of coaches have just
13:47
Speaker 3: said like, Hey, just like, all right, man, I'm not
13:49
Speaker 3: arguing on a moral standpoint anymore. It's about educating kids.
13:52
Speaker 3: They shouldn't get paid. No, let's pay them. Let's pay
13:54
Speaker 3: our DBs a million dollars, whatever. Just tell me what
13:56
Speaker 3: it is so we can do it and move on.
13:58
Speaker 2: Right?
13:59
Speaker 3: Like that seems to be the operating mindset, but I
14:02
Speaker 3: can tell you for a fact, Women's sports is going
14:05
Speaker 3: to disappear financially. Can you name me one school right
14:10
Speaker 3: now where if you had that $ 20 million hard and
14:15
Speaker 3: fast amount where they would say, hey guys, it's down
14:20
Speaker 3: to wide receiver three or a half million of that
14:25
Speaker 3: that we could spread across the entire women's basketball roster
14:27
Speaker 3: and go to women's final four. It's going to be
14:30
Speaker 3: running back three.
14:31
Speaker 2: It's going to be wide receiver three. I can name
14:32
Speaker 2: only one school. Yukon?
14:35
Speaker 4: Yep.
14:36
Speaker 2: Okay. That's it. Good luck. This is insane.
14:41
Speaker 3: The other thing that nobody says out loud, too, and
14:43
Speaker 3: I run a podcast business right now, and I'll tell
14:45
Speaker 3: you this.
14:46
Speaker 2: I'm curious if you've had.
14:47
Speaker 3: This experience, Beau. If you are covering women's sports right now,
14:52
Speaker 3: there's money. There are a lot of big agencies and
14:57
Speaker 3: a lot of big corporate entities that are trying to
14:59
Speaker 3: put their name and their dollars next to women's sports.
15:04
Speaker 3: And the framework of this bill is counterintuitive to the
15:07
Speaker 3: way that the market is moving. And by the way,
15:10
Speaker 3: anytime you see a conservative mindset pushing a bill that
15:14
Speaker 3: looks counterintuitive to the actual economics of a thing, what
15:18
Speaker 3: that tells you is that someone's ass is hurt. And
15:21
Speaker 3: so you've got a lot of people with hurt ass
15:22
Speaker 3: right now. Because even if the market is saying women's
15:25
Speaker 3: sports is profitable, we shouldn't cap this, we shouldn't do this,
15:28
Speaker 3: we should allow for more money to come in through
15:30
Speaker 3: third-party NIL to fund you know, essentially pay for a
15:34
Speaker 3: roster of women's basketball, soccer, but it's the other one
15:36
Speaker 3: too that's growing rapidly in terms of finances and volleyball.
15:40
Speaker 3: This is just because, this is because the kind of
15:44
Speaker 3: boomer class of the booster is very, very frustrated. And
15:47
Speaker 3: by the way, I'm not going to put it all
15:48
Speaker 3: on the redneck Republican booster.
15:50
Speaker 2: Here, but there's a lot of... Yeah, this is bipartisan.
15:53
Speaker 3: Well, the Cantwell thing we can get into. I think
15:55
Speaker 3: the road to hell is paved with good intention, and
15:58
Speaker 3: there's a classic naive liberal that I keep in my
16:01
Speaker 3: mind's eye, and man, does she fit it. I am
16:03
Speaker 3: sorry what happened to Washington State. I know that's why
16:06
Speaker 3: she's doing this. She's representing her constituency, she thinks. She's
16:11
Speaker 3: also completely blind to the face of the economics of
16:14
Speaker 3: this sport, which was the Pac-12 was always going to
16:16
Speaker 3: fall apart because it was poorly managed. The Pac-12 did
16:20
Speaker 3: not have the structure, the logistics, the execution of any
16:23
Speaker 3: of the other leagues. That's why the Big 12 is
16:24
Speaker 3: still here. The Pac-12 is not. That's even why the
16:26
Speaker 3: damn ACC is here, limping along with Bay Area schools
16:29
Speaker 3: and SMU and all this. What happened to Wazoo sucked.
16:33
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the best fan bases I've
16:35
Speaker 3: ever been around in college sports. Those people are dedicated
16:37
Speaker 3: as hell, but it was inevitable what was going to happen.
16:40
Speaker 3: So for Cantwell to sign on, she's kind of emblematic
16:42
Speaker 3: of that naive liberal. There's still a lot of leadership
16:45
Speaker 3: on the school side of this, presidents, chancellors, etc., who
16:49
Speaker 3: are still saying, hey, this is about, this is amateurism,
16:52
Speaker 3: this is about receiving an education. Like, I'm not going
16:54
Speaker 3: to clap and scream into the microphone like I used to,
16:56
Speaker 3: but no, it's not. You know it's not. You know
16:58
Speaker 3: it's bankrolling your entire operation. So, this is not just
17:03
Speaker 3: the kind of foghorn, leghorn, redneck type with the Cadillac.
17:06
Speaker 1: ESPN has made itself a player in this because they
17:09
Speaker 1: are shilling for this bill every weekend. By the way,
17:13
Speaker 1: they're going to have, I think his name is Derek Johnson,
17:15
Speaker 1: the president of the NAACP. He will be the voice
17:19
Speaker 1: um that is opposed to the bill and they'll have
17:21
Speaker 1: him on sports center and if we're being real about
17:23
Speaker 1: this yeah there's a part of me that thinks that's
17:27
Speaker 1: a sinister sinister move by espn because what i think
17:31
Speaker 1: is happening there is this is me and my buddy
17:35
Speaker 1: joel talk about this and i think we disagree but
17:38
Speaker 1: this is not a matter this this bill is not
17:40
Speaker 1: a matter of race in the way that i think
17:41
Speaker 1: that people would like to think of it as being
17:43
Speaker 1: the losers on this are actually going to be a
17:45
Speaker 1: lot of white people the non-revenue sport athletes who are
17:47
Speaker 1: not going to get money that they used to get.
17:50
Speaker 1: But of course, the revenue sport athletes are disproportionately black.
17:55
Speaker 2: So I get it. So the NAACP is their voice.
17:58
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
17:59
Speaker 1: But this is being positioned on television in a way
18:02
Speaker 1: that I contend is not in line with the actual
18:05
Speaker 1: issue of the bill, which if I were someone on
18:08
Speaker 1: the right, is the way that I would want it
18:10
Speaker 1: positioned because that's how we position everything and that's how
18:13
Speaker 1: we win money.
18:14
Speaker 2: On everything.
18:15
Speaker 1: But with ESPN, I want to ask you this because
18:18
Speaker 1: I think you can explain this better than I can.
18:20
Speaker 1: Why would they want this bill? Because they are actually
18:24
Speaker 1: putting millions of dollars behind lobbying for it.
18:27
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:28
Speaker 3: I do want to shout out Open Secrets has done
18:30
Speaker 3: some great work there in journalism nonprofit and they kind
18:33
Speaker 3: of blasted out to a lot of the reporters who
18:35
Speaker 3: had listened last week basically saying like, hey, this is,
18:37
Speaker 3: we have pulled all of the funding for the lobbying
18:40
Speaker 3: for PCSA and Disney's in there at 1.7 million dollars.
18:45
Speaker 3: Which is not that much compared to others, but it's
18:47
Speaker 3: very clear where their intent is. If you couldn't tell,
18:50
Speaker 3: by the way, from having Nick Saban, Pat McAfee, et cetera,
18:55
Speaker 3: organically working pro bill points into the game day show.
18:58
Speaker 3: There are also then the Ted Cruz incident happened on
19:01
Speaker 3: Saturday where I thought I was going to have an aneurysm.
19:02
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe that. I honestly just, the transparency of
19:06
Speaker 3: it was insane. Why does Disney want this? Because they
19:12
Speaker 3: have a massive rights relationship with this product, and it's
19:15
Speaker 3: woefully unstable right now. So why not walk it back
19:19
Speaker 3: to a more control? Corporate control is what everybody wants
19:24
Speaker 3: on that side. They want a more stable sport. Stable
19:27
Speaker 3: meaning they can control the labor. They don't have as
19:29
Speaker 3: much uncertainty. We're headed towards consolidation anyway. Disney's trying to
19:33
Speaker 3: figure out how much of a part of it they're
19:35
Speaker 3: going to be. Probably the next, oh, God, the sky
19:38
Speaker 3: is falling crisis is going to be playoff expansion. 24
19:40
Speaker 3: is inevitable. It just depends on where you slot the inventory,
19:44
Speaker 3: and Disney's trying to figure that out. But there's a
19:46
Speaker 3: big problem here. If you're going to invest as much
19:49
Speaker 3: as you're investing in, the NBA, not as much as
19:51
Speaker 3: the NFL, but pretty much everybody, like after the NFL,
19:54
Speaker 3: college is on there financially. The total investment in college
19:58
Speaker 3: is similar to what they spend on the NBA, Major
20:00
Speaker 3: League Baseball, et cetera, on down. So it's very important
20:03
Speaker 3: to them that they have a stable product. I don't
20:07
Speaker 3: know if they've been led to believe this, necessarily, but
20:11
Speaker 3: I think that they've, they have probably had a couple
20:13
Speaker 3: of knee jerk reactions to some viewer feedback. I'm not,
20:16
Speaker 3: you know, it's funny at the end of the day, they,
20:18
Speaker 3: they probably have done more damage to their reputation publicly
20:21
Speaker 3: in the way this Ted Cruz game day thing blew
20:23
Speaker 3: up than I thought could ever happen. I should be
20:25
Speaker 3: kind of pleasantly surprised by the rank and file fan
20:29
Speaker 3: finally realizing what's going on. And I said this on
20:32
Speaker 3: the Yahoo show this morning, cause I'm, I like to
20:35
Speaker 3: make my, I guess I like to make my agent
20:36
Speaker 3: frustrated with me. continuing to eliminate future employment destinations. I said,
20:41
Speaker 3: you know, ESPN is in the WWE era right now,
20:45
Speaker 3: which is true, right? They put WWE programming on this.
20:47
Speaker 3: And I said, as someone who worked in pro wrestling
20:49
Speaker 3: in his twenties, you know, Jimmy Pataro is doing Vince
20:52
Speaker 3: McMahon right now. But the problem is, is that what
20:55
Speaker 3: Jimmy needs to call Vince McMahon up, because when you
20:57
Speaker 3: piss down my leg and tell me it's raining, what
20:59
Speaker 3: Vince always knew was you kind of had to do
21:01
Speaker 3: it while you were winking. And ESPN is not even
21:03
Speaker 3: winking right now. They're just jamming this home. to, I think,
21:07
Speaker 3: an audience that is increasingly aware of the problem. Now,
21:10
Speaker 3: I don't think, like, everyone had a moral outrage at
21:12
Speaker 3: Ted Cruz last weekend, Beau, but I do think that
21:14
Speaker 3: it was 10 minutes of bad television of a guy
21:18
Speaker 3: stumping for a piece of legislation in the Senate that
21:21
Speaker 3: nobody in Austin, Texas, wanted to hear about. He was
21:24
Speaker 3: on more time, for more time, on a longer segment
21:28
Speaker 3: of that show than Steve Sarkeesian was.
21:31
Speaker 2: What are we doing? I thought this was an.
21:33
Speaker 3: This is an entertainment program, right?
21:36
Speaker 1: He was on there like Kurt Angle, but if Kurt
21:39
Speaker 1: Angle couldn't wrestle, like he just came out there and
21:42
Speaker 1: all you heard was, you suck!
21:45
Speaker 3: The amount of heat, the amount of.
21:47
Speaker 2: Heat those kids gave.
21:48
Speaker 1: Yo, to be Ted Cruz and this is just what
21:51
Speaker 1: happens everywhere you go.
21:53
Speaker 2: You didn't even notice. You're like, what? People were talking?
21:57
Speaker 3: He locked in, man. You could tell he was like,
21:59
Speaker 3: I've got to get these eight talking points out. I
22:02
Speaker 3: don't care what reason. At one point, Reese asked me,
22:04
Speaker 3: how is this good for the athlete? And he just boom,
22:06
Speaker 3: goes right through, just barrels right through, stays on top.
22:08
Speaker 3: Like that's, you can always tell a media, when you
22:11
Speaker 3: work in media, you can always tell who's been coached,
22:13
Speaker 3: like who's hired someone to make sure you get this
22:16
Speaker 3: sentence out so we can clip it. That's kind of
22:18
Speaker 3: the short game there. I'm flabbergasted, but I'm also, I
22:24
Speaker 3: don't know why I am. Like the slow decline of
22:27
Speaker 3: ESPN as a news product and everything that's gone on
22:30
Speaker 3: in other sports with what's going on with the Clippers
22:32
Speaker 3: story and all that, like, I stay in college sports specifically,
22:35
Speaker 3: so I kind of feel insane, Bo, because for years,
22:40
Speaker 3: I was one of the first people who got banned
22:41
Speaker 3: from Feinbaum when he went to the SEC network because
22:44
Speaker 3: all I ever said was some kids got paid under
22:46
Speaker 3: the table.
22:47
Speaker 2: That's all I said.
22:48
Speaker 3: And, buddy, I broke Omerta. That was it. I was
22:52
Speaker 3: done for that. And the more they got focused as
22:57
Speaker 3: becoming a rights holder and the less independence they afforded
23:00
Speaker 3: the journalism department, the news department, whatever, This is where
23:03
Speaker 3: we ended up. And they're not even commenting on it, though.
23:06
Speaker 3: So you go to this ridiculous, and I'm not sure
23:09
Speaker 3: exactly when this show is going to air. But so
23:13
Speaker 3: the SportsCenter segment is Tuesday night, I believe, right?
23:19
Speaker 2: So by the time people hear this, it will have run.
23:23
Speaker 3: So that segment averages, I think it's like 550,000 viewers.
23:30
Speaker 3: Game Day, because they send out these press releases beating
23:32
Speaker 3: their chest all the time, is in the neighborhood of
23:36
Speaker 3: 3 million. And anybody who works in sports media can
23:41
Speaker 3: understand that it's much bigger than just the raw audience, right?
23:44
Speaker 3: Things that happen on Game Day platform narrative. And so,
23:48
Speaker 3: to me, this is just a conciliatory kind of, oh, here,
23:51
Speaker 3: the other side's mad at us? Let the meat cake.
23:54
Speaker 2: That's what this is.
23:54
Speaker 3: I'm just... I could rant for a while at the
23:57
Speaker 3: slow decline here, but I mean, I don't know what
24:01
Speaker 3: good it would do, to be honest. And every time
24:04
Speaker 3: I do one of these segments and people from ESPN,
24:06
Speaker 3: like the journalists, the rank and file guys, they'll all
24:08
Speaker 3: text me and say like, oh, you don't understand it.
24:10
Speaker 3: I don't want to hear it this time. I don't
24:12
Speaker 3: want to hear it this time. It was inexcusable. Also, Bo,
24:16
Speaker 3: bad television. Horrifically bad television for 10 minutes. Not even
24:19
Speaker 3: in a funny way. It wasn't even like you could
24:21
Speaker 3: spoof it. It was just kind of had a Dennis
24:24
Speaker 3: Drill type effect.
24:25
Speaker 2: No, no, no.
24:26
Speaker 1: Not even that man white want to spend 10 minutes
24:28
Speaker 1: with him on Saturday morning. Last thing I want to
24:32
Speaker 1: hear on this topic before we get into break.
24:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.
24:35
Speaker 2: Do you notice the irony? At least it's an irony
24:38
Speaker 2: to me.
24:38
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal had
24:40
Speaker 1: this long article about Syracuse and their financial struggles and
24:45
Speaker 1: their inability to. to bring in enough students to pay
24:48
Speaker 1: the bills because as these immigration laws have changed, these
24:51
Speaker 1: people charge those international students.
24:53
Speaker 2: A whole lot more money.
24:54
Speaker 1: And so the revenue projections they'd had forever have all
24:57
Speaker 1: changed as the Trump administration has changed things. And this
25:00
Speaker 1: is a legitimate issue for a lot of colleges around
25:04
Speaker 1: the country. Do you notice the irony that I do
25:06
Speaker 1: that they keep talking about protect college sports while actively
25:10
Speaker 1: destroying the colleges themselves? And that is the most what
25:14
Speaker 1: is much more important right now is the collapse of
25:17
Speaker 1: higher education in this country.
25:19
Speaker 2: It's a much bigger deal because there aren't going to
25:22
Speaker 2: be schools.
25:23
Speaker 1: For these teams to play for at the rate that
25:26
Speaker 1: was the goal and that's the plan that's yes we're
25:29
Speaker 1: gonna save the room and burn down the house.
25:33
Speaker 3: One of the things I need people to understand and
25:35
Speaker 3: obviously like I understand it's not gonna be a lot
25:37
Speaker 3: of people in this audience are gonna take issue with
25:39
Speaker 3: it but this is where this is where I have
25:41
Speaker 3: arrived as someone who who deals with a lot of
25:44
Speaker 3: conservatives in his life it is now more apparent and
25:48
Speaker 3: inarguable than ever that the goal was never governance The
25:52
Speaker 3: goal was to put into effect the things they wanted.
25:58
Speaker 3: There's no long-term play here. We could sit here and
26:01
Speaker 3: talk about, well, how if you're restricting international students and
26:03
Speaker 3: you're drying up revenue, how could you keep a university
26:06
Speaker 3: like Syracuse? That's not the goal. The goal was to
26:10
Speaker 3: hurt people. There's no long-term financial model to this.
26:14
Speaker 2: That's it. That's the whole conversation.
26:16
Speaker 3: What you see this across different policies in the administration,
26:19
Speaker 3: and then as they feed into sports, There's no goal
26:23
Speaker 3: with the trans rights issue. There's no goal with the PCSA.
26:27
Speaker 3: They don't actually want to change college football. Ted Cruz
26:31
Speaker 3: was on the sideline on Saturday night cheering on the horns, right?
26:34
Speaker 3: They don't actually want to change anything. What they want
26:38
Speaker 3: is to either deliver a blowback for a perceived slight
26:41
Speaker 3: from the previous 10 years, or they want some modicum
26:45
Speaker 3: of control that they feel they deserve. But there's no
26:48
Speaker 3: long-term plan here. And then we're going to have to
26:51
Speaker 3: clean it up.
26:52
Speaker 2: That's it.
26:53
Speaker 3: I could say this about almost any topic in American
26:56
Speaker 3: politics right now.
26:57
Speaker 2: There was never a goal.
26:58
Speaker 3: Pain was the goal.
27:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the Adam Silver line. Cruelty is the point.
27:04
Speaker 1: We see it over and over again. But coming up next,
27:07
Speaker 1: speaking of cruelty, Ole Miss gets Lane Kiffin back at home.
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Speaker 1: with Stephen Godfrey. LSU is headed to Oxford to play
28:46
Speaker 1: against Ole Miss. By the way, in line with our
28:48
Speaker 1: previous discussion, would you be surprised if part of the
28:52
Speaker 1: reason LSU went on that crazy gambit about bringing back
28:55
Speaker 1: the NFL players was just to give the air of chaos?
28:58
Speaker 2: And put a little more gas into the engine of
29:00
Speaker 2: this bill? Oh, yeah. Do I think the fix is in?
29:06
Speaker 3: It's funny that had it happened at Texas Tech, it
29:07
Speaker 3: would have almost been a little too obvious.
29:10
Speaker 2: Too easy.
29:13
Speaker 3: No, definitely, without a doubt. Again, that's another good example
29:17
Speaker 3: of wanting to talk out of both sides of your mouth,
29:19
Speaker 3: because it's a Republican-backed bill, and then you have Republican leadership.
29:22
Speaker 3: Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, is attempting to actually
29:28
Speaker 3: recreate the function of Huey Long. And I'm not kidding.
29:32
Speaker 3: Because it got to a point, I wanna back up
29:34
Speaker 3: for a second. When we were doing the NFL player
29:36
Speaker 3: bit two weeks ago, we got Lane Kiffin's going to
29:39
Speaker 3: go to court, and he's a defendant for what he
29:41
Speaker 3: said in week one after the Clemson game, all that, right?
29:44
Speaker 3: I can tell you for a fact that down in
29:45
Speaker 3: Baton Rouge, it's the first time I've seen Greg Sankey,
29:49
Speaker 3: the commissioner of the SEC, so successful. When they went
29:52
Speaker 3: to federal court in Alabama and filed that suit, everybody
29:56
Speaker 3: who you would logically expect at LSU to go, oh, shit,
29:59
Speaker 3: they did. The leadership, the athletic department, even Kiffin himself
30:04
Speaker 3: started to realize, oh, we did a stunt. The juice
30:07
Speaker 3: is not worth the squeeze, right? Because like Texas Tech
30:11
Speaker 3: trying to go to court over a quarterback in Brendan
30:13
Speaker 3: Sorsby who might be the difference of a playoff, like
30:15
Speaker 3: a final four bid or not, that's understandable. Y'all, we're
30:18
Speaker 3: talking about a backup tight end who got cut from
30:21
Speaker 3: the Browns who's not the best tight end on your team.
30:25
Speaker 3: But everybody got the message, Beau, except for the governor
30:28
Speaker 3: of Louisiana. He was the one where they were like, oh, Paul,
30:33
Speaker 3: we have got to get him to shut up or
30:35
Speaker 3: we are actually going to face legitimate expulsion. I just
30:38
Speaker 3: want to point that out. Everybody thinks LSU is in chaos. No,
30:41
Speaker 3: there's a lot of intelligent people working in that administration
30:44
Speaker 3: right now who are like, okay, we took this too far.
30:47
Speaker 2: Slap us on the wrist.
30:48
Speaker 3: It's fine.
30:49
Speaker 2: Eventually they'll drop the lawsuits. It was the actual.
30:52
Speaker 3: Governor who couldn't shut his mouth. He is the one
30:54
Speaker 3: drawing the ire right now.
30:56
Speaker 2: Fascinating.
30:57
Speaker 1: Well, my apologies to Lane Kiffin because I definitely blamed
30:59
Speaker 1: him for being the one who took the joke too
31:01
Speaker 1: far because it would be.
31:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, you still do that for sure. Well, yeah, I
31:05
Speaker 2: tell you this.
31:06
Speaker 1: What are the interesting things about Lane coming into this game?
31:10
Speaker 1: And when I wrote the story on Trinidad and Chambliss
31:13
Speaker 1: for Vanity Fair. The biggest surprise that I learned was
31:17
Speaker 1: that after Lane Kiffin had decided to go to LSU,
31:20
Speaker 1: he connected Chambliss with Tom Mars to begin the lawsuit
31:23
Speaker 1: that made it such that he was able to play
31:26
Speaker 1: this year. On one hand, the most selfless thing Lane
31:28
Speaker 1: Kiffin has ever done. On the other hand, perhaps Lane
31:31
Speaker 1: Kiffin thought it was a possibility that Chambliss might want
31:33
Speaker 1: to come to LSU with him.
31:35
Speaker 2: Always on the board but yes.
31:37
Speaker 1: That game is here and this is going to be
31:39
Speaker 1: interesting because i'm honestly not sure how good either team
31:43
Speaker 1: is the only thing i feel like i'm really sure
31:46
Speaker 1: of is that chambliss is really.
31:47
Speaker 3: Good no i think it's a fair assessment um i
31:51
Speaker 3: spent you know we sort of drowned in all this
31:54
Speaker 3: in the offseason in college football media um And I
31:57
Speaker 3: think the most honest assessment wasn't a particularly interesting one,
32:00
Speaker 3: which is that Lane Kiffin provides a very, very high ceiling,
32:03
Speaker 3: a very, very low floor, and a ton of volatility
32:06
Speaker 3: in between. And people think I'm talking about the antics,
32:10
Speaker 3: the Joey Freshwater stuff in Alabama, his Twitter account. No,
32:13
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the actual football product. One of the
32:16
Speaker 3: things that's great for college football about Lane Kiffin is
32:19
Speaker 3: the product he puts on the field. Now, you notice
32:22
Speaker 3: I did not say a championship product. I did not
32:24
Speaker 3: say an infallible product. designed schematically or your roster philosophy. No, no, no, no.
32:30
Speaker 3: What I am saying is this man is going to
32:32
Speaker 3: give you a firework show where you see some of
32:34
Speaker 3: the most beautiful explosions in the sky you've ever witnessed. Also,
32:38
Speaker 3: the truck's going to catch on fire down in the field.
32:40
Speaker 3: The breadth of possibility is why you watch a Lane
32:45
Speaker 3: Kiffin anything. And now, for the first time ever, you
32:49
Speaker 3: have this mirror moment because the operating agenda for Ole
32:53
Speaker 3: Miss had to be in the short term They just
32:56
Speaker 3: got dumped.
32:58
Speaker 2: They have the better roster.
33:00
Speaker 3: They had the legitimate national title shot last year. We
33:03
Speaker 3: returned the quarterback running back battery and a decent amount
33:07
Speaker 3: of that talent. We can't say we don't need you
33:11
Speaker 3: philosophically in the scheme. They go out and they get
33:14
Speaker 3: Billy Edwards Jr., who's a former Lane Kiffin assistant. He
33:16
Speaker 3: was at ECU. He'd been on staff at Ole Miss
33:18
Speaker 3: under Lane to replace Charlie Weiss Jr., I can tell
33:22
Speaker 3: you from watching the Louisville game, they are running the
33:24
Speaker 3: Lane Kiffin offensive playbook.
33:26
Speaker 2: By the way, as they should.
33:28
Speaker 3: Like, Trinidad Chambliss is, I think, a legitimate talent and
33:31
Speaker 3: a legitimate Heisman candidate. This is what they should be doing.
33:34
Speaker 3: But now they're going to essentially play the same team
33:37
Speaker 3: that's on the up in construction phase.
33:40
Speaker 2: So they're about even.
33:41
Speaker 3: Because what I saw when it worked against Louisville was
33:44
Speaker 3: a 70% operating efficiency of a Lane Kiffin offense, right?
33:49
Speaker 3: And then what I see... The Clemson situation is so
33:52
Speaker 3: bad I would throw it out, to be honest. But
33:53
Speaker 3: the two games I've seen at LSU, again, is that
33:55
Speaker 3: wide variance of, like, Sam Levitt's great and he can move,
33:59
Speaker 3: but he's throwing multiple picks against Louisiana Tech when you
34:02
Speaker 3: should just be using the shortest amount of your playbook
34:04
Speaker 3: to get through the game. So this is Lane Kiffin
34:07
Speaker 3: football against Lane Kiffin football. The only extraneous kind of
34:11
Speaker 3: nonsense is the existential dread that one of these programs
34:15
Speaker 3: is going to have leaving this game. Because I'm going
34:16
Speaker 3: to be honest with you. It don't really matter. I
34:18
Speaker 3: don't think either one of these teams is going to
34:20
Speaker 3: be in the playoff at the end of the season.
34:22
Speaker 3: This is all a hype thing.
34:25
Speaker 2: I still think we have a very interesting thing at
34:27
Speaker 2: Ole Miss.
34:28
Speaker 1: Where they hired a guy that literally nobody else would
34:32
Speaker 1: have given.
34:32
Speaker 2: That job to.
34:35
Speaker 1: The dynamics under which they were in when they gave
34:37
Speaker 1: that job to Pete, where you got to hold this
34:39
Speaker 1: team together. I don't think there's any other program at
34:42
Speaker 1: the level of Ole Miss that was like, we got
34:43
Speaker 1: to get Pete Golding in here.
34:45
Speaker 2: And talk to him about this job.
34:46
Speaker 1: And I do kind of enjoy the fact that he
34:49
Speaker 1: gives no head coach vibes, but he is the head coach.
34:52
Speaker 1: Like if they do win some games, you're going to
34:54
Speaker 1: really enjoy it as long as it goes. And then
34:57
Speaker 1: when it's over, all that stuff is going to catch
34:58
Speaker 1: up and people are going to act like they were
35:00
Speaker 1: never with it.
35:00
Speaker 2: But that's the guy. And I bet he is loving
35:03
Speaker 2: this week.
35:04
Speaker 1: He strikes me as the sort of guy that loves
35:06
Speaker 1: the idea of what this game is going to be.
35:10
Speaker 3: The legitimate criticism of Ole Miss in the Lane Kiffin
35:13
Speaker 3: saga is, really kind of falls between playing Florida and
35:18
Speaker 3: Mississippi State and Kiffin going to the athletic director, Keith Carter,
35:23
Speaker 3: and Walker Jones, who's kind of basically like a de
35:25
Speaker 3: facto Manning family member who runs the collective there, and
35:30
Speaker 3: dragging this out and dragging this out because there's like
35:34
Speaker 3: a 14-day span in his deliberation with LSU that had
35:38
Speaker 3: it been seven, Ole Miss might have been able to
35:40
Speaker 3: go and hire a different coach that you're talking about.
35:43
Speaker 3: I don't think people realize how close they were with
35:45
Speaker 3: John Summerall, the new Florida head coach. But Kiffin, chestnut checkers,
35:52
Speaker 3: knew his deliberation allowed him not only the most luxury
35:56
Speaker 3: of options possible, but also if he decided on LSU,
36:00
Speaker 3: he could go up until the very, very last moment
36:03
Speaker 3: and then penalize Ole Miss because I don't think that
36:07
Speaker 3: Lane thinks much of Pete as a head coach because
36:09
Speaker 3: they reached a certain point, Bo, where they had to
36:11
Speaker 3: keep Pete This is also the magic of Jimmy Sexton,
36:14
Speaker 3: by the way.
36:15
Speaker 4: Yes.
36:16
Speaker 1: For those who don't know, Jimmy Sexton is the agent
36:18
Speaker 1: that reps all the coaches in the SEC, basically.
36:21
Speaker 3: So you weren't going to get Pete. So Pete had
36:23
Speaker 3: to be, you're in this extraordinarily unique situation where you're
36:26
Speaker 3: trying to make a national championship run at an irrelevant
36:29
Speaker 3: school in the modern era. And you've got the talent
36:32
Speaker 3: to do it. Your head coach just walked out of
36:33
Speaker 3: the door. And the only guy who can is the
36:35
Speaker 3: ex-Saban assistant who was, by the way, there's always been
36:38
Speaker 3: a Pete for Lane Kiffin. I don't think people realize that.
36:41
Speaker 2: Are we trying to get Orgeron as a Pete? No doubt.
36:45
Speaker 3: I talked to Ed Orgeron when he was that Pete
36:47
Speaker 3: for Lane Kiffin. There's a guy who's showing up and
36:51
Speaker 3: going to the meetings and doing the things and showing
36:54
Speaker 3: up to the golf tournaments and shaking the hands, but
36:56
Speaker 3: also making the 830 meeting. That ain't Lane Kiffin. This
37:01
Speaker 3: is another thing that Baton Rouge people don't want to
37:03
Speaker 3: hear from me. I kept saying, I was like, he's
37:05
Speaker 3: not going to show up to your charity thing, dawg.
37:07
Speaker 3: He's not even going to give you five minutes for
37:08
Speaker 3: a grip and grip. That's not, he gets on the
37:10
Speaker 3: plane and he goes down to Boca and he gets
37:12
Speaker 3: on the boat or he goes to parts unknown for
37:14
Speaker 3: other reasons. He ain't state like he doesn't love Louisiana.
37:19
Speaker 2: You don't get it.
37:20
Speaker 3: You're not going to get the pablum and the politician
37:22
Speaker 3: sheen and the kind of procedural nonsense that you get.
37:27
Speaker 3: You have to have the, so Pete was that, um,
37:31
Speaker 3: Ed Orgeron was that for him. I just blanked on
37:34
Speaker 3: the guy's name. The head coach at Mississippi State before
37:38
Speaker 3: he went to Oklahoma, Levy, was that for Lane when
37:42
Speaker 3: he got to Oxford. In fact, he almost got that
37:44
Speaker 3: job when Lane threatened to leave Ole Miss for Auburn.
37:47
Speaker 3: So it would be deeply satisfying for Pete, but I
37:52
Speaker 3: still don't know what his long-term potential is at Ole Miss,
37:54
Speaker 3: to your point. How many games does he have to win?
37:56
Speaker 3: He does have a significant shadow behind him, right, which
37:59
Speaker 3: is his former employer winning so many games for a
38:02
Speaker 3: program that was irrelevant the entire modern era.
38:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am generally skeptical of hiring the interim. Right?
38:09
Speaker 2: Just like as a rule, hiring the interim. Yeah.
38:12
Speaker 3: The only thing worse in college is the head coach
38:14
Speaker 3: in waiting, which never works.
38:16
Speaker 2: Right.
38:16
Speaker 1: But you think about the history of the interim. Bill
38:19
Speaker 1: Stewart is a great example of the interim. Ed Ogeron
38:23
Speaker 1: is an interesting case of the interim where you got
38:25
Speaker 1: the best and the worst of the idea. of carrying
38:28
Speaker 1: the interim through but like a guy that's just like
38:30
Speaker 1: hey everybody got a little charged up and excited about
38:32
Speaker 1: keeping them let's just keep this thing going.
38:36
Speaker 3: I have a working theory it's not popular about interim
38:39
Speaker 3: head coach ed orgeron at u.s clay.
38:41
Speaker 2: Helton that was another uh higher.
38:44
Speaker 3: Than hey man i'm a georgia southern fan i get
38:47
Speaker 3: it uh when ed orgeron was the interim at usc
38:55
Speaker 3: that would have been the long-term path to success for
38:58
Speaker 3: both parties. I know what happened in 2019. It's one
39:01
Speaker 3: of the greatest teams ever. I'm not saying that.
39:02
Speaker 2: I get it.
39:04
Speaker 3: But LSU also had a referendum on Ed, though, that
39:07
Speaker 3: you weren't good enough because he was out two years later.
39:10
Speaker 3: It was too inconsistent of a program. The Palace intrigue
39:12
Speaker 3: got him in Baton Rouge.
39:14
Speaker 2: Yes.
39:14
Speaker 3: I think in Los Angeles, had they pulled the tag off,
39:18
Speaker 3: I think he'd still be there. I think he would
39:19
Speaker 3: have won a national championship just like he did in 2019.
39:23
Speaker 3: Because he could go get Joe Burrow from Ohio State
39:25
Speaker 3: and take him to USC too. I think i think
39:27
Speaker 3: that would have been a better fit for both parties
39:29
Speaker 3: ironically but to your point the interim almost never works
39:31
Speaker 3: out the problem was the old miss couldn't go to
39:33
Speaker 3: market and so how long are they going to do
39:36
Speaker 3: this are they going to do this for two years
39:38
Speaker 3: with him they do this for three years by the
39:39
Speaker 3: way what are the reasonable expectations that these programs that
39:42
Speaker 3: have become relevant during the portal era and the nil
39:45
Speaker 3: era I don't think I'm telling a secret here, man,
39:48
Speaker 3: but Ole Miss is spending a tremendous amount of money,
39:50
Speaker 3: and that base is not as populated or as deep-pocketed
39:55
Speaker 3: as a Texas A & M or a Texas or
39:57
Speaker 3: any of these other schools they're competing with. I'm curious,
39:59
Speaker 3: how long does this go?
40:02
Speaker 1: Where does the Ole Miss money come from? Yeah.
40:06
Speaker 3: It's a little bit of a mix of things. There
40:08
Speaker 3: was always more money in the banana stand than they
40:10
Speaker 3: wanted to give because of the administrations that they had
40:12
Speaker 3: were pretty weak. And then also the leadership. And, but the,
40:15
Speaker 3: when they got an IL going, there's some old money
40:18
Speaker 3: in there, like planter class, Delta, all that kind of,
40:21
Speaker 3: I don't know, my Delta accent's not great, but like
40:24
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of that. But the reality in
40:26
Speaker 3: Mississippi is that it's filled with people who think they're
40:28
Speaker 3: millionaires because it's because they've never been around really rich folks.
40:32
Speaker 3: There's a, Generation that's closer to me, that sort of like,
40:36
Speaker 3: I'm an exennial or whatever, kind of like in your mid-40s,
40:40
Speaker 3: that all went to Ole Miss before the enrollment boom
40:44
Speaker 3: happened in the Saban era of the SEC. But they
40:46
Speaker 3: were all from Atlanta. They were from Dallas. They were
40:49
Speaker 3: from even like New York, New Jersey area. And they
40:53
Speaker 3: all got into like tech, oil, et cetera. And you
40:57
Speaker 3: get to be a big booster fish in a small pond.
40:59
Speaker 3: And so they kind of changed everything. the calculus of
41:03
Speaker 3: boosters at Ole Miss. It's funny because everything goes back
41:07
Speaker 3: to the mascot and race and all that kind of stuff.
41:09
Speaker 3: There was this consortium of white boosters my age who
41:14
Speaker 3: had suffered through all of the just constantly stepping on
41:17
Speaker 3: the rake national headline racial moments at Ole Miss. And
41:21
Speaker 3: when they got a little money, they kind of used
41:24
Speaker 3: it to push a lot of the old school native
41:27
Speaker 3: son decision makers out in the name of just good
41:30
Speaker 3: old commerce. And so that's where some of it comes from.
41:33
Speaker 3: I'm curious what the sustainability is. I don't know what
41:35
Speaker 3: that is long term because it's still not as big
41:38
Speaker 3: as some of these other schools that we talk about.
41:40
Speaker 3: Indiana's secret to success is there's a freaking Indiana grad everywhere.
41:44
Speaker 3: So you mobilize them, they start writing checks. That's a
41:47
Speaker 3: big part of what happened with Indiana.
41:49
Speaker 1: Don't they have something like the largest living alumni base
41:52
Speaker 1: or some crazy number like that?
41:54
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, so I live in this weird north-south
41:58
Speaker 3: border in Nashville where most of Kentucky is definitely Southern.
42:02
Speaker 3: I don't think you'd argue that, but you get Midwest
42:04
Speaker 3: real fast. I'm only three and a half hours from Bloomington.
42:08
Speaker 3: And you see in these cities like Nashville and Memphis
42:10
Speaker 3: and Louisville, like there's a more IU than there ever
42:13
Speaker 3: have been. I mean, a lot of that too, is
42:15
Speaker 3: just being aggressive about bringing kids in from out of state.
42:18
Speaker 3: I'd be one of the projects I want to work on.
42:21
Speaker 3: I know you've seen this in the media with the, uh,
42:24
Speaker 3: like the neocon blogger types talking about how, uh, Northeast
42:28
Speaker 3: universities are too woke.
42:30
Speaker 2: So these kids are.
42:32
Speaker 3: Coming down and having the time of their lives in
42:33
Speaker 3: the SEC because it's great, it's sunny, the girls are beautiful.
42:37
Speaker 3: This is adjacent to the whole Rush Talk conversation.
42:40
Speaker 2: I think there's a real story there.
42:42
Speaker 3: It's none of that. I think what's interesting is it
42:45
Speaker 3: was extremely affordable for high population centers in America to
42:50
Speaker 3: send usually white kids that were upper middle class down
42:53
Speaker 3: to Southeastern Conference universities as out-of-state students for about 10
42:57
Speaker 3: to 15 years. And it bolstered the revenue at those places,
43:02
Speaker 3: which to go back to the Syracuse conversation, is kind
43:06
Speaker 3: of another market indicator. I think there's something to that
43:09
Speaker 3: to where now you're seeing these things treated like TV brands.
43:13
Speaker 3: Because I know people in Oxford, and after this playoff run,
43:16
Speaker 3: they are seeing applications from across the country just from
43:19
Speaker 3: rank-and-file kids.
43:20
Speaker 1: Not athletes, just rank-and-file kids. That effect is real. I
43:24
Speaker 1: am fascinated by the people who are like, wow, that
43:26
Speaker 1: team won something.
43:27
Speaker 2: Let me apply that. I know, man.
43:30
Speaker 3: That blows my mind. But if you think about it,
43:33
Speaker 3: if you're going to get a liberal arts degree, if
43:35
Speaker 3: you don't know what you're doing with your life and
43:37
Speaker 3: you want to go drink beer and get a marketing
43:38
Speaker 3: comms degree, it's like I guess suddenly the social aspect
43:43
Speaker 3: of it becomes much more paramount.
43:45
Speaker 1: Well, I am a firm believer that the number one
43:47
Speaker 1: thing you should choose in a college is a good time.
43:49
Speaker 2: Everything else will work itself out.
43:51
Speaker 1: By and large, that shit really comes down to you.
43:54
Speaker 1: The school itself, hey, once you get to the job,
43:55
Speaker 1: we're going to figure out what it is.
43:57
Speaker 2: But I'm a big believer.
43:58
Speaker 1: The one thing you can't get back, nobody I know
44:00
Speaker 1: that picked a college for a good time has ever
44:02
Speaker 1: regretted it.
44:03
Speaker 2: Not one person.
44:03
Speaker 3: You're terrifying me because the problem is this. I ended
44:06
Speaker 3: up there because I got on scholarship, spent six years there,
44:08
Speaker 3: and was a big townie dirtbag dropout. Now I have
44:13
Speaker 3: a 12-year-old who's obsessed with Athens and UGA. And so
44:17
Speaker 3: if I'm going to eat that out of state for
44:18
Speaker 3: a good time, that's going to be the cruelest of
44:20
Speaker 3: ironies against me, bro. I don't know if we can
44:23
Speaker 3: do that, man. Either that or podcasting business is going
44:26
Speaker 3: to get a lot more lucrative. So, bro, I don't know.
44:30
Speaker 3: And I got another one who wants to go to Texas.
44:32
Speaker 2: What are we going to do there?
44:35
Speaker 1: See, Texas, the interesting thing about if you decide to
44:38
Speaker 1: go to Texas is you get college and city at
44:41
Speaker 1: the same time. And that's really, really, really hard to
44:44
Speaker 1: pull off.
44:45
Speaker 3: I think maybe, and of course every human being's mileage
44:49
Speaker 3: may vary, I think that's maybe the best model you
44:51
Speaker 3: could provide somebody who's trying to learn about America and
44:54
Speaker 3: learn about the world, is that you're not thrown into
44:57
Speaker 3: an NYU circumstance and you're not thrown into this quaint
45:00
Speaker 3: pastoral college town experience. By the way, what are your
45:04
Speaker 3: thoughts on, since we're talking about Texas, the South Asian
45:10
Speaker 3: invasion and all this stuff that happened on Saturday night?
45:13
Speaker 2: Good night.
45:14
Speaker 3: I didn't see that one coming.
45:15
Speaker 1: No, I didn't know that the beef had gotten over
45:21
Speaker 1: to that way.
45:22
Speaker 2: I also think, though, obviously it was ridiculous that... Guys
45:28
Speaker 2: like running for railroad commissioner or something like that. Yeah,
45:31
Speaker 2: I checked. It's not a real office.
45:33
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I'm like.
45:35
Speaker 2: Well, the railroad commissioner is a big deal in Texas.
45:37
Speaker 2: I forget. There's something else that's under the railroad commission.
45:40
Speaker 2: I can't remember what it is, but the railroad commission
45:42
Speaker 2: is an office....
45:45
Speaker 3: Republican nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, O & G Regulations.
45:48
Speaker 3: And then he claims he's an entrepreneur. I mean, his
45:52
Speaker 3: entire profile looks AI-generated, and I kind of thought it
45:55
Speaker 3: was a joke for a minute, and then I realized, no,
45:56
Speaker 3: this is a real person.
45:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he basically said, this is what college is becoming,
46:00
Speaker 1: and it was a picture of a bunch of South
46:01
Speaker 1: Asians at the football game. And, I mean, I guess
46:06
Speaker 1: he thought that the international student band would stop the
46:09
Speaker 1: ones that have been here for a long time.
46:11
Speaker 2: Nope. And Houston got a gang of them. They show
46:13
Speaker 2: it up, right?
46:14
Speaker 1: Like, you just got to deal with this.
46:17
Speaker 4: But the one thing I wonder when I see something
46:19
Speaker 4: like that, though, is as wrong as that was, did
46:23
Speaker 4: we gain anything from the promotion of it through the ostracism? Like,
46:29
Speaker 4: it's my dilemma because we don't want to create a
46:31
Speaker 4: world where people feel like.
46:32
Speaker 1: They do that and there are no consequences. But, like,
46:35
Speaker 1: now I've made this man famous.
46:37
Speaker 3: See, I'm glad you said that. Because I have had
46:41
Speaker 3: arguments in the, in the, in the white left circles
46:44
Speaker 3: all the time where I'm saying, Hey man, I'm not
46:47
Speaker 3: saying that he should have the right. I'm not doing,
46:50
Speaker 3: we're not doing that argument. What I'm saying is there's
46:52
Speaker 3: a great at listen when they tell you, right? I'm
46:55
Speaker 3: of the opinion that they need to get this out. So,
47:00
Speaker 3: you know, right. We came from, we came from a
47:02
Speaker 3: more coded era and now that, our boy Beau French
47:07
Speaker 3: feels emboldened enough to say this. I feel like that,
47:09
Speaker 3: I think is what you're saying, is that's kind of
47:11
Speaker 3: instructive to a lot of people, right? People are hung
47:15
Speaker 3: up on the gall that he had to say it
47:18
Speaker 3: and put his whole chest behind all that part. That's
47:20
Speaker 3: what people are hung up on. Whereas what I'm saying is,
47:23
Speaker 3: this is data. Listen when they tell you.
47:25
Speaker 2: That's what I say all the time.
47:26
Speaker 3: Listen when they tell you. And so maybe that's the
47:29
Speaker 3: positive to take from this.
47:30
Speaker 1: The terrifying part is, I think that was a risk-free
47:34
Speaker 1: thing for him to do as somebody running as a
47:37
Speaker 1: Republican for statewide office in Texas.
47:40
Speaker 2: You know, he only stood to gain.
47:42
Speaker 1: That's what's so crazy about this time.
47:44
Speaker 2: He only stood to gain. Probably.
47:49
Speaker 3: One of the things I'm working on right now as
47:50
Speaker 3: a project, I've been working on it for two years,
47:52
Speaker 3: and it's about the change in American football and Latino cultures.
47:56
Speaker 3: And I've been in South Texas a lot this year,
47:58
Speaker 3: like a lot. And when I say South Texas, I'm
48:00
Speaker 3: not talking San Antonio. You mean like the Valley.
48:03
Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
48:03
Speaker 3: I'm talking about McAllen. I'm talking about Roma. I'm talking
48:07
Speaker 3: about Laredo. I do think there's a turn coming. I
48:11
Speaker 3: know the purple Texas thing has been talked about to
48:14
Speaker 3: death for 10 years, and I know everybody wants to
48:17
Speaker 3: get good and fuzzy about Tallarico and all that. I
48:19
Speaker 3: understand that, but I'm telling you, whether they like it
48:22
Speaker 3: or not, the pro-business mindset that they drilled into the
48:27
Speaker 3: ethos of that state has diversified it, whether you like
48:29
Speaker 3: it or not. There are certain minority populations. What's really
48:33
Speaker 3: fun is in late stage Trump, I think like just
48:36
Speaker 3: good old fashioned racism is realizing that they've only been
48:39
Speaker 3: as like they've really only operated here. There's a wealth
48:42
Speaker 3: of other things you can be discriminatory about. And they're
48:44
Speaker 3: just now like Nashville's got the biggest Kurdish population in
48:47
Speaker 3: the United States.
48:48
Speaker 2: And the people really for office here just figured that out. Yeah.
48:51
Speaker 2: They just figured that out like a year ago.
48:53
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden it's an invasion, even
48:54
Speaker 3: though they lived in the same two neighborhoods for 30 years.
48:57
Speaker 1: Yeah.
48:59
Speaker 3: Look, man, you know, you make enough albums, you got
49:01
Speaker 3: to change your sound up.
49:02
Speaker 2: I don't know.
49:02
Speaker 3: Like, it's been funny to watch. Yeah, that kind of
49:06
Speaker 3: took on a life of its own on Saturday night.
49:08
Speaker 3: I was really just kind of shocked. Felt bad, but
49:10
Speaker 3: also I was like, yeah, I mean, that's par for
49:12
Speaker 3: the course in 26. Hey, man.
49:15
Speaker 2: Stephen Godfrey. Check him out. Yahoo Sports.
49:17
Speaker 1: Covering college football and producing 51 different shows and podcasts
49:22
Speaker 1: for the world. He is a podcast business, comma, man.
49:25
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49:26
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49:28
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49:30
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