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The Mike Keith Show | BIG INTERVIEW WITH GARTH GLISSMAN (10.23.26) · The Mike Keith Show

• 0:26
  SPEAKER_09: Inside act test, behind the scenes, from Rocky Top, direct from the coaches, inside from the players, the inside track.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_09: Mike Keith starts now.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_11: Welcome to the big interview edition of our show, presented by Clayton Holmes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee, helping families across the state find their dream home.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_11: My guest is Garth Glisman, SEC Associate Commissioner for Men's Basketball.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_11: I'm excited to talk coaches, schedule, rules, NIL, transfer portal, and more with Garth.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_11: Thanks for joining me, Garth, and welcome to the show.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_12: Mike, thanks for having me.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_12: It's an exciting time of year.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_12: Of course, the SEC is associated with football.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_12: But the good news is that that SEC fandom, and I know Tennessee has a great fan fan base, that SEC fandom doesn't have to stop when the football season is over.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_12: And we're doing everything we can at the SEC office to ensure that Tennessee fans and SEC fans across the conference can keep their fandom going into January, February, and March with another exciting SEC basketball season.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_11: SEC basketball used to kind of be a sidecar.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_11: Let's face it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_11: As a matter of fact, from 2012 through 2017, the SEC earned a total of 23 NCAA tournament bids.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_11: So that means six years, 23 teams made the NCAA tournament.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_11: So the SEC was earning four bids per year in that six-year period.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_11: In the last two years alone, the SEC has totaled 24 bids, 14 in 2025, and 10 this past spring.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_11: Garth Glissman.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_11: What has happened to raise the tide of SEC basketball to the top of the NCAA from where it was?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_12: Well, those are great statistics, Mike.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_12: And first let me point out that our two-year average of 12 teams in the NCAA tournament in each of the last two years, which is the conference's only two seasons uh as a 16-member league, that tops the prior single season record for most teams in the tournament for one conference all-time.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_12: And that was set by the Big East in 2011.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_12: So to put it in perspective, the prior all-time record for most teams from one conference to make the NSA tournament was the Big East in 2011 with 11 teams.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_12: And in the last two years, we've averaged 12 teams per year.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_12: So it really has been a historic stretch for the SEC.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_12: And as to your question, the why and and how it came to be, uh Commissioner Sankey deserves a lot of credit.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, I think he is open about the fact that when he uh took over as commissioner, basketball was was not in a great place outside of uh frankly Kentucky and Florida.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_12: There had been some teams that had performed well at the very top of the league, but the depth uh was not up to the SEC standards.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_12: And so Commissioner Sankey just methodically built um the league up.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_12: I give a lot of credit to my predecessors.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_12: Uh he made a great hire in Dan Libavets, who's my predecessor.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_12: Uh he also um just I think invested uh more time and energy uh in basketball, including the officiating program, encouraged schools to make investments uh in basketball coaches.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_12: And so what that has led to is a league that now uh has the strongest group of head coaches in the country.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_12: And so it's head coaches uh have played a pivotal role in the SEC's ascent in basketball, but it's a combination of factors that allow our schools to make the necessary investment in head coaches to attract that type of talent.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_12: And also think the overall ascent of the conference as a whole has been beneficial.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_12: You you see just across the SEC, our schools are flourishing academically, enrollment is seemingly setting records at each institution every year.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_12: We've had enormous success in football.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_12: That's generated a lot of cultural and financial momentum that has allowed schools uh to invest in men's basketball.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_12: And now we're we're starting to reap some of the benefits.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_11: And your belief, too, is some of the growth of this part of the country is a huge part of.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_12: Absolutely.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, one of my favorite statistics is that in recent years, for the first time in recorded American history, that the southeastern part of the United States actually generated more in GDP than the Northeastern corridor from New York City to Boston.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_12: And when you think about Wall Street and kind of the traditional uh Northeast and what that's meant uh for economic productivity, to think that the center of gravity has now shifted to the Southeast.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_12: And not only has there been a lot of you know economic growth, we've seen population growth, and there's also this cultural phenomenon associated with the SEC that people want to live in the Southeast.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_12: And even for those people who don't live in the Southeast, they want to send their kids to go to school in the SEC because they know it's a one-of-a-kind college experience.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_11: More of the big interview with SEC Associate Commissioner for Basketball, Garth Glisman, when we continue right after this.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_09: This is the Mike Keith Show.
• 6:08
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• 6:11
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• 6:16
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• 6:34
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• 7:01
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• 7:06
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• 7:09
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• 7:26
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• 7:29
  SPEAKER_14: We're actually not a two-man team.
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  SPEAKER_14: Everyone is a critical part of the journey.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_07: Championship teams are not built by one person.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_07: Great companies aren't either.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_14: Like the Vols, coaches and players need to learn to handle the pressure, including the pressure of success.
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  SPEAKER_14: We invest in the next generation.
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  SPEAKER_14: And most importantly, we invest in our employees.
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  SPEAKER_12: Want to change the world?
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• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: The real question is what does it get enjoyed?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: You want to freeze.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_15: Sometimes it's not just protecting the quarterback.
• 8:47
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  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's good lower.
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• 9:04
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• 9:56
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• 10:28
  SPEAKER_11: Garth, the SEC has some serious alpha males among its 16 coaches.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_11: Is there actually a point that you get them all together in the same room?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_12: We get the head coaches together in the same room once a year at SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, and that's two full days of meetings.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_12: And then we get them together a couple of other times per year via Zoom.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_12: They all come to SEC Media Days in Birmingham, but they're not all together in the same room.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_12: So when you talk about bringing all those alphas together, uh the one time when they're all in the same room uh is SEC spring meetings, and then that's actually two days of meetings.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_12: So that's always an important part of my job.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_12: And I I love the alpha males that we have in our head coaching room, Mike, because it it makes me better.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_12: And I want to serve our schools, and I want to serve our head coaches.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_12: And I will tell you uh that they're competitive, they are alphas, uh, but they have been absolutely great partners to work with and uh frankly one of one of the favorite parts of my job.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_11: I I think what surprises me in getting to know them around the league a little bit last year and kind of reading and uh just seeing the overall interactions, they really are people who love the game very much.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_11: And when they're taking away the competitive hat from head-to-head competition, their discussions about what's really important in the game would seem to make them very collaborative, even though they're all very big in their own way.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_11: Fair?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_12: They're very dynamic individuals.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, and I think that speaks to the multidimensional role of being a head college basketball coach at an SEC institution in 2026.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, in fact, at SEC Spring Meetings, uh, I put up a slide for all of them to see that uh essentially tried to uh break out all of their different job responsibilities uh if they were doing that job in the NBA.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_12: And so that included the head coaching responsibilities, uh, which is uh you know speaks for itself, but it also included being the general manager.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_12: So they're the head coach, they're the general manager, and then we also had a bullet for uh VP of corporate development and sales, which is the pro equivalent of having to go out and raise money because we know that you know, whether it's a head basketball coach or a head football coach, that in in today's college athletics, there's there's certainly a fundraising component to it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_12: There's always been a public relations component to it.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_12: And so now there's there's the public relations and a fundraising component.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_12: So you talk about being an SEC headman's basketball coach, it's a multidimensional job.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_12: It's a job that is more than just one job in the NBA.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_12: Like I said, it's it's head coach, general manager, and some type of VP of corporate development.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_12: And so it takes a special individual to be able to perform uh all of those tasks at a high level.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_12: And frankly, when you think about an SEC basketball coach and how they're competing among themselves, they're competing in all of those verticals.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_12: And so, you know, the ability to generate support from your fan base, the ability to connect with recruits, uh, that's a that requires a multidimensional skill set.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_12: And so for me, it really is uh rewarding to work with them.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_12: And of course, you know, we have Coach Rick Barnes and Coach Calipari, they're the elder statesman of the group.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, and then we, you know, we have Todd Golden, who was, you know, one of the first uh in in in many years, I think the first since Jim Valvano, the first head coach to win a head uh national championship before the age of 40.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_12: So we kind of have both ends of the spectrum.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_12: We have the future Hall of Famers who are in the final chapter of their career, and then we have the younger up-and-coming coaches, and we have a lot of coaches in between.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_12: And they're all talented, multidimensional, uh a privilege to work with.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_12: They're all very different human beings, they all approach the job differently.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_12: You see that uh it ref, you know, that is reflected in the way their teams play.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_12: They have different playing styles and they also have different personalities.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_12: But I think that the important takeaway for fans is just to understand uh how multidimensional the job has become and what a special individual it takes to perform uh the job of being an SEC headman's basketball coach at a high level.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_11: Ask you to pull back the curtain just slightly for all the Tennessee fans.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_11: What is Rick Barnes like in that room with the other 15 coaches?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_12: Well, Coach Barnes is an elder statesman, uh, as I mentioned, and he has great perspective uh based on you know having coached in different eras, different uh conferences, and different uh institutions, including some some major institutions, and and now two of which are in our league currently.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_12: He's obviously a Tennessee.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_12: Before that, he was he was a Texas.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_12: So whenever Coach Barnes speaks, uh everyone listens.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_12: Uh he has been an instrumental uh mentor to me and helping understand how the college game has evolved.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_12: I'm I'm still relatively new to college athletics, Mike.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_12: Uh this will be my fourth season, uh, but I sp you know I spent seven and a half years before that uh at the NBA league office.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_12: So there's a lot that I want to learn about the history of college basketball, and and some of what we've tried to do in the SEC is hearing stories from Coach Barnes about the way that certain high-profile coaches in certain leagues maybe got the benefit of the doubt from officials at an earlier era in college basketball.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_12: And so it's hearing those stories is motivation to ensure that in the SEC, in this era, uh we're gonna make sure that we work hard to provide a level playing field for all players, coaches, programs.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_12: So it doesn't matter which coach has the most wins, whether you have a Hall of Fame coach or a new head coach.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_12: So uh whether it's in the meeting room or in one-on-one conversations, Coach Barnes has so much wisdom and perspective that he brings with him uh from his long career, and then also just who he is as a person.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_12: He's an incredibly uh warm person, as you know.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_12: And he he is as competitive as it as they come uh when he's coaching, but off the court, he is an exceptionally kind and caring person, uh, one of the most caring people uh I've ever met uh in any walk of life, um, and certainly uniquely caring in this hyper competitive world of of college athletics.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_11: Has Rick Barnes tried to pull a joke on you?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_11: Has he pulled the joke on you, or have you seen him pull one of his jokes on one of the other coaches in any of your meetings?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_12: Well, coach Coach Barnes will be the first to tell you that his love language is uh you know playing jokes.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_12: And so uh I have I've been on the receiving end of of many of uh Coach Barnes's jokes.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_12: Um during the meetings, I would say he tends to be pretty serious just because our time with the coaches is limited, but he he loves to tell jokes.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_12: He always has uh good one-liners.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_12: I think the the one that made me laugh most recently is he said that uh if our guys don't play defense, the the substitution table is gonna look like Grand Central Station.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_12: We're just gonna keep waving them through.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_12: So, you know, he's he's a uniquely charming guy who has a great sense of humor and uh usually good for at least one good one-liner per press conference or media appearance.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_11: Marv, the big interview with SEC Associate Commissioner for Basketball, Garth Glissman.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_11: When we continue right after this.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_12: Uh in that I'm always trying to take inspiration uh from my experiences.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_12: And so throughout the year, I'll take notes uh on my phone.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_12: Uh and so to back up a little bit, Mike, uh I I got this job in August of 2023.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_12: And I think my first day on the job was a week before the schedule, the SEC schedule was released.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_12: So my my first year on the job, I really didn't have any impact on the schedule because it's not realistic that one could do that in their first week on the job.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_12: So I had the my first full season was essentially just an opportunity to travel throughout the conference as it relates to you know observing how the schedule worked.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_12: And so I had a full year of experience uh under my belt by the time that I was first designing an SEC schedule.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_12: And one of the things that I noticed uh in my first year is that SEC fans were hungry to make uh big SEC basketball games a game day experience uh akin to the football game day experience.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_12: And that in their minds uh meant Saturdays.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_12: They wanted to have big games on Saturdays, they wanted to make a day of it with their family and friends and and bring people together like college athletics so uniquely does.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_12: And I started to study the schedule and see what the SEC had been doing to really lean into Saturdays uh to the extent possible.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_12: And I I concluded that uh we could do more.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_12: And so uh a big initiative of mine in each of the last three seasons has been to honor uh SEC fans, the best college best fans in the country, with iconic home games on Saturdays in particular.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_12: And I think we delivered for the Tennessee fans this year.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_12: You look at your Saturday home schedule, uh start off conference play with in-state rival Vanderbilt.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_12: Uh middle of January, you've got Coach Calipari in Arkansas coming to town.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_12: Saturday, January 30th, Florida.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, Saturday, February 13th, Kentucky, and then conclude the Saturday home slay with Alabama.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_12: So in total, Tennessee's five Saturday home games this year include Vanderbilt, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Alabama.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_12: And we think that's optimizing excitement um in and around Tennessee related to SEC basketball.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_12: I'm a beneficiary of some improvements in technology, Mike, that have allowed Us to be more precise with respect to the construction of our schedule.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_12: So, of course, uh we we we try to learn from our fans as much as possible uh from our own observations and insights and designing the schedule, but we also use uh best in class technology, including artificial intelligence, to help unlock uh the possibilities.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_12: Our schedule is a 144-game schedule when you tally up all uh 16 SEC programs and 18 regular season games.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_12: And then there's a number of scheduling parameters that are designed to ensure competitive equity with respect to how many games you can play consecutively on the road.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_12: Your first one of your first two games has to be at home, two of your first four has to be at home, same with the with the last four and the last two.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_12: So those constraints, uh, every time that you add a constraint to a schedule, mathematically it becomes harder to accomplish.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_12: And so it limits your optionality to do fun things for your fans.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_12: So I am fortunate that, yes, uh I was able to listen and learn from SEC fans.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_12: They wanted to make Saturdays more of a game day experience.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_12: We hadn't done that in the past as much as we are now, but part of the ability to unlock those Saturday games at the volume that we have over the last three years is developments and artificial intelligence and frankly mathematical optimization that allow us to iterate from a scheduling standpoint in ways that weren't possible when the technology had not advanced to the extent that it has today.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_11: Why has Nashville been such a good place and it continues to be such a good place for the Southeastern Conference tournament?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_11: Two factors.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, the geography works for the conference, you know, it's uh generally centrally located.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_12: And then uh Nashville is an up-and-coming city.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_12: It's a city you know very well, uh, Mike, and it's a city that resonates with SEC fans.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_12: Uh they it's become the the Las Vegas of you know, the eastern half of the country.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_12: Uh people know that if you go to Nashville, you can have a really fun weekend, especially if you're like me and you like country music.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_12: In fact, it's better than Las Vegas if you like country music.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_12: So the combination of the the geography, which is centrally located, and then Nashville's ascent as a destination city and the attractions in Nashville, particularly the music and the restaurant scene, brings SEC fans in because they know they can watch great college basketball and then have a lot of fun in Nashville while they're there.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_12: And also, we benefit from a great setup in that Bridgestone Arena is within walking distance of downtown hotels, restaurants, and the music scene.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_12: So you can watch your team play basketball at Bridgestone Arena, walk to dinner, and then walk to some of the best live music in the country all within a span of five or ten minutes.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_12: So there's just so many factors uh working in our favor that uh we have made a long-term commitment to Nashville as the home of the SEC tournament, and uh I expect that we'll we'll be there for a long time to come.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_11: People are interested in the SEC football championship game and the championship games for all conferences based on the potential expansion of the CFP.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_11: Is there any worry that the SEC tournament might go away with some thoughts like that?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_12: Basketball and and football are uh different sports in that regard, Mike.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_12: So when you think about adding another SEC football game, so so this year for the teams that advance to the SEC football championship, it'll be their 10th SEC game.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_12: Uh and there's obviously a wear and tear to the SEC football schedule given the depth of the conference.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_12: That's SEC fans know that uh all too well.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_12: So layering on the SEC championship game at a time when we're we're currently at a 12-team playoff, and there's discussions of maybe advancing the expanding the playoff all the way to 24, you can see where you get to a point, particularly if you're at a 24-team playoff format, where from a coach's standpoint or a team standpoint that a conference championship game could do more harm than good, because ultimately you want to get into that national tournament and optimize your team's chances for success.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_12: I think for a couple of important reasons, that basketball is in a different posture.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, number one is um you can play more basketball games throughout the course of a season.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_12: You can, you know, in the SEC tournament, depending on where you're seated, you can end up playing any more anywhere from three to five games in a one-week stretch.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_12: Uh it's fairly common that you you can play multiple basketball games within a fairly tight window, whereas football, it's essentially to college level once per week.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_12: And so that limits what you can do from a scheduling standpoint.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_12: So, number one, the volume of games in basketball and college and the NBA is much higher than football.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_12: The risk of injury is not as high.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_12: And then also, especially now that we've expanded to a 76 team instable tournament field, you're you're you're playing for different reasons.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_12: So the incentives uh in basketball have you know continue to evolve as the tournament field expands.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, and so you can go to the tournament and play for seeding.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, there's always, it seems like there's always a cluster of teams around the bubble.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_12: So I think there's still value in the conference tournaments for basketball because it can kind of sort through some of the seeding, it can sort through those teams on the bubble, and you get those benefits without the downside risk that comes with an extra SEC football game.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_12: So I think basketball tournaments are safe, conference basketball tournaments are safe for those reasons, which is a good thing because those conference tournaments are important for the SEC coming together as one and celebrating the SEC.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_12: I I think that our our tournament experience, there is no better way to culminate the SEC men's basketball season than having all 16 teams and their fan bases come into Nashville for a great weekend of basketball and and live music.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_12: There's just no better celebration.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_12: And that is part of the identity and the fabric and the culture of being a part of the SEC.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_12: And I think it's really important that we keep that.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_12: And and fortunately, because of those structural differences um that exist in basketball, that those work in our favor here.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_12: So I expect conference basketball tournaments to be around for a long time to come.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_11: Barb, the big interview with SEC Associate Commissioner for Basketball, Garth Glisman.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_11: When we continue right after this.
• 29:11
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• 29:25
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• 31:44
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• 32:45
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• 33:03
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• 33:10
  SPEAKER_11: This is the big interview edition of the Mike Keith Show presented by Clayton Holmes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee, helping families across the state find their dream home.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_11: I'm talking hoops with Garth Glissman, SEC Associate Commissioner for Men's Basketball.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_11: Now, let's talk rules and officiating points of emphasis for this season, starting with a change to the 10-second backcourt violation.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_11: Previously, once the shot clock struck 20, if the ball had not crossed mid-court, it was a 10-second call.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_11: Now, the shot clock must be at 19 to be a backcourt violation.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_11: Why the change in the rule?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_12: It it has to do with uh the way that the clock technology works combined with honoring the intention of the rule.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_12: So the the nature of a 10-second violation is that if you hold the ball in the backcourt for more than 10 seconds, you've committed a violation and therefore it's a turnover and the other team gets the ball.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_12: Assuming a 30, you know, in college we have a 30-second shot clock.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_12: So if you exhaust 10 full seconds, the first time that you're going to see that the clock after 10 full seconds have been exhausted would be when it shows 19 on the display, but in in reality it's 19.9, right?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_12: Because you've now exhausted 10 full seconds.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_12: So with with the shot clocks not displaying tenths of a second until you get to the five second mark, under the old uh version of the rule, really a team only had to force the opponent to keep the ball in the backcourt for effectively a little more than nine seconds, because you you'd see the clock show twenty, uh, but that had not fully elapsed uh ten full seconds.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_12: You know, it'd be it'd be nine and some change, right?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_12: Because you're seeing twenty on the clock, but you first see twenty on the clock when in reality it's twenty point nine.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_12: Uh which is again, you're at nine point oh oh oh oh oh oh one seconds, right?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_12: At in that scenario.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_12: So the shift now uh ensures that the way the rule is applied and synced up with the the clock technology actually honors the original intention of the rule, which is you get 10 seconds to keep to cross half court.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_12: If you don't get it across in 10 seconds, that's when the violation occurs, not at 9.1 seconds, which was the case with the old application of the rule.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_11: Points of emphasis this year post-play physicality, three seconds on offense, freedom of movement, and traveling.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_11: Which of those are the most important or is the most important to you, Garth?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_12: The college game has much less spacing to it than the pro game.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_12: And there's other reasons for that.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, one of the reasons is that the pro-level players shoot it at such a high level from three, and they're so skilled offensively that you have to guard them, you know, from any anywhere within 35, you know, 30 to 35 feet from the basket.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_12: The college players, as skilled and gifted as they are, they're they're they're not NBA caliber yet.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_12: So defenses can get away uh with sagging off certain players.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_12: Uh that creates more congestion in the lane.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_12: You also have a three-point line that's not as deep as the NBA three-point line.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_12: And so for a variety of reasons, you have this value that still exists on traditional post-play in the college game that doesn't exist in the NBA.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_12: And so that is top of mind for a lot of coaches.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_12: And depending on whether you're a coach that takes advantage of having a traditional postplayer or you're a coach that maybe wants to play a more NBA style wide open game, you're gonna have different philosophies as to how post-play is officiated, whether it's a physicality or three seconds in a lane.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, I'm on the men's basketball oversight committee and the rules committee.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_12: And as we studied the data and looked at film from last year, the reality is that we had not been consistently enforcing the three-second rule.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_12: And so that it's it's never acceptable to have a rule on the books that is not consistently enforced.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_12: That that's not good for competitive integrity.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, and so to answer your question as to what um points of emphasis I think would have the most impact on the game competitively, I do think post-play physicality and three seconds in the lane, if if those now there's more subjectivity to post-play physicality.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_12: And college basketball does allow for more interior physicality than the NBA because there's more banging, there's more clutter, it's harder for refs to see that contact.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_12: So there's some subjectivity to post-play physicality, but if if that is recalibrated in such a way such that there's less physicality allowed inside, and offensive three-second violations are called more consistently, uh, though though the combination of those two points of emphasis would have, in my opinion, the greatest impact on games.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_11: When that group gathers in May 2027, does the men's game follow the women's game and go to four quarters instead of two halves?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_12: That's something that we discussed at length in the rules committee meetings this year.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, we've done a lot of surveying.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, I will tell you that among SEC uh head coaches that the preference is actually to stay with halves.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_12: And um among talking to coaches about it, it it's clear that they um embrace some of the uniqueness of college basketball.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_12: And basketball is is unique in that there are a lot of and and I am perhaps uniquely uh aware of this given my time in the NBA, there are a lot of basketball fans who will watch college basketball regularly but have virtually no interest in the NBA.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_12: And you probably know them, Mike, because a lot of those people live in the Midwest and the Southeast.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_12: I grew up in Nebraska, obviously live in Birmingham now.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_12: So a lot of people uh that I grew up with or live around now, they love basketball, but their basketball fandom manifests itself and maybe following their high school sports, you know, in their area, and they love college basketball, but that it does not extend in many cases to watching the NBA.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_12: And part of the reason is that the the NBA game has evolved so rapidly in recent years, particularly given um the the increased number of three-point shooting and the style of play.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_12: And as I mentioned earlier, traditional post-play has died out.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_12: So I think one of the reasons that a lot of people who are basketball fans don't like the NBA is because the gate the NBA game that they see today is foreign to them.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_12: It's not the same game that they that they were taught to play when they were a kid or in high school, it's not the same game they grew up watching.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_12: There's there's features uh of basketball that that no longer exist at the NBA level.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_12: Whereas if you turn on a college basketball game, although it is evolved in the level of athleticism and there's still more three-point shooting in college, of course, than there were decades ago, it still has more of the traditional elements to it than the NBA.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_12: And part one of the, I should say, one of the traditional elements of college basketball is 20-minute halves.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_12: And so I think coaches are perceptive enough to realize that there is a certain uniqueness uh and pageantry to college basketball, and at least within the SEC, there's a reluctance uh to just give away some of those unique features.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_11: The SEC ACC challenge has been successful.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_11: It continues this coming season.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_11: Is there a possibility that those things could grow into some sort of tournament?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_11: Could could even take more shape to give more spirit to TV packages and promotion of the game early on in the month of December?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_12: Well, the SEC is unbeaten in the current iteration of the SEC ACC challenge.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, so we we feel like it's been good for us uh in that regard.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_12: And there are challenges, Mike, when you talk about these conference crossovers and and challenges.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_12: It can be difficult to get um conferences aligned.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_12: College basketball is unique in the sense that at the conference level, we control 18 games of inventory plus the conference tournament.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_12: That leaves, uh, as it currently stands, uh 14 regular season games to be controlled by the institutions plus three exhibition games.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_12: So when you add it all up in the exhibition games can be monetized based on some some new NSA rules that previously prevented that from happening.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_12: So essentially, institutions control about half of their inventory.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_12: And every institution has uh different objectives uh and different opportunities to to monetize those 17 games of non-conference inventory.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_12: And what can be difficult in modern college athletics, given the increased focus on revenue generation and IL opportunities, is that it can be difficult to get every school within a conference, let alone every school within multiple conferences, on the same page as it relates to what the trade-offs are if you were to give up more of that non-conference inventory in exchange for either more SEC games or more crossover games.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_12: So if we were to play a so when I said the the SEC controls 18 regular season games plus the the conference tournament, I actually should have specified that as it currently stands, we do control one broadly speaking, one non-conference game, and that's the ACC challenge game.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, because our teams are obligated to participate in that.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_12: So if we were to do more from a conference crossover standpoint, essentially you're taking some of that inventory that currently can be monetized by schools in a way that you know they deem most appropriate given their local objectives.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_12: So that therein lies some of the challenges with respect to taking away more.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_12: Inventory, for lack of better words, and centralizing it at the conference office, whether that's for more conference games or more intra-conference transfers.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_12: And with all of the focus on revenue generation, those can be difficult discussions to have.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_12: So my sense is you probably won't see any dramatic expansion and centralized control uh until the SC until the SEC goes back to the negotiating table uh for our next round of media deals, which isn't for for quite some time.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_11: More of the big interview with SEC Associate Commissioner for Basketball, Garth Glitzman.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_11: When we continue right after this.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_11: Another one, especially right now, court rulings on fifth-year eligibility wreaking havoc, as the rulings have been all over the map according to where you are in the country.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_11: Garth, how are you and the SEC handling all of this?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_12: When we got our head coaches together for a preseason meeting, I put up a slide for them.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_12: And essentially the the key takeaway from the slide was there's a lot of emotion and uncertainty in college basketball right now.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_12: And that emotion and uncertainty is a result of all the factors that you just mentioned, Mike.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_12: Uh the litigation, particularly around the fifth-year players, NIL, the fact that every year you have to re-recruit your roster.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_12: All of that uh is making the head coaching position more challenging than ever before.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_12: And so our coaches feel that pressure.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_12: And there's more uncertainty than ever before um heading into this season because we literally have a class of players, we have hundreds of players who are seeking a fifth year of NCAA eligibility through the court system.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_12: And their status could literally change by the day because they are seeking injunctive relief and for for various procedural reasons.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_12: Um, you you can be eligible one day and not eligible the next, uh, but the case still hasn't been resolved on the merits, so there's still opportunities to get it resolved, maybe at the trial court level or or at the appellate court level.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_12: And that's just not the type of uh uncertainty that our coaches are used to navigating for something as foundational as who's on their roster um at this point in the year, heading into the season.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_12: So, what I have told our coaches is they have to be mentally prepared for a level of inconsistency and unfairness with respect to the court rulings uh regarding fifth-year players.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_12: There are going to be situations where they may have a fifth-year player on their team who's eligible one day and not the next.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_12: They may have a fifth-year player on their team who is not eligible, and they may play a team who has a fifth-year player who is eligible uh based on the differences in their those players' litigation and one player filed in one state court, another player filed on a different state court, leading to different outcomes.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_12: So, from a conference standpoint, part of the reason why there's been such a push to pass federal legislation is I have no control over that, Mike.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_12: I have no control over how state court judges rule.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_12: No matter how much a coach complains to me, there's nothing that the SEC or the NCAA can do to change those outcomes.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_12: We live in a country that, of course, believes in the rule of law, and I have to adhere, the SEC has to adhere to those court rulings just like any other citizen.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_12: So I can't change the outcome, but what I can do is try to provide context for our coaches and mentally prepare them for the unfairness and the inconsistency that I believe is going to exist throughout the season.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_12: And what I've tried to do, given the volume of litigation, I've tried to take all of the kind of personal sensitivities and subjectivity out of it, and I've tried to inform our coaches from a very data-driven perspective.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_12: So on the date of our head coaches' meeting in mid-September, as of that time, of all of the fifth-year players who had filed a lawsuit in men's basketball, 53% were currently eligible at that time.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_12: And so what I told our coaches then, I said, look, if you've got a five-year guy and you're trying to get him eligible, it's it's a coin flip.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_12: I've since circled back to them.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_12: We got new data from the NAA earlier this week.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_12: The success rate has changed.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_12: So it was 53% at the time of our preseason head coaches meeting.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_12: It's now down to 41%.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_12: Meaning uh for all of the fifth-year players currently seeking eligibility through litigation, 41% are currently eligible, 59% are not eligible.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_12: That reflects the NAA's success at the appellate level.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_12: So players, for the most part, have had a lot of success at the trial court level, but the NCAA has either filed uh immediate appeals or has sought to have the injunctive relief stayed pending appeal.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_12: So there's a lot of different procedural elements at play here.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_12: And I'm not trying to get too much into the legalese, but to make a long story short, whereas the players have had a lot of success at the at the initial trial court level, when the NCAA lawyers have elevated it to a higher court and either appealed the case or asked for a stay of the adjunctive relief pending appeal, the NCAA has had a lot of success.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_12: And that's why the success rate for players declined from 53% in mid-September to where it stands today, right around 41%.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_12: And those numbers will continue to evolve as more litigation arises.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_12: There's going to be high-profile litigation, Mike, that impacts really good players in our conference.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_12: And we've already seen it in SEC football.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_12: We've had players who played in SEC football games eligible for one game.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_12: And then I think it was a Friday, I don't know if it was a Thursday or Friday, but 48 hours or less before an SEC football game, a player rendered ineligible by virtue of a court hearing.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_12: The same type of thing is going to happen in basketball.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_12: And so it is unfortunate, Mike, that we're going to have that cloud of uncertainty hanging over our season.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_12: But that's something that's beyond my control.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_12: It's beyond the control of our head coaches.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_12: And so that's why we have to focus on what we can control, and that is to be prepared mentally and go out and compete and understand that even though there's going to be some inconsistency and unfairness, uh, on Monday, November 2nd, we're going to tip it off.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_12: And players and coaches' legacies are going to continue to be shaped by who wins the games, who wins the SEC championship this year, who wins the SEC Tournament Championship, and ultimately who wins the national championship.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_12: And so there's going to be some frustrations along the way.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, but we have a great opportunity in front of us to compete this season, and we need to focus on what we can control as a conference, go out and do that.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_12: And we expect our coaches, players to compete at a high level.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_12: Garth Glissman, thanks so much for your time.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_12: Well, thank you, Mike.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, we have established ourselves as the deepest and most competitive conference in the country.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_12: This season we need to get back to having multiple SEC teams capable of making a final four-run and ultimately competing for national championship.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_12: That's the standard in the SEC national championships.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_12: Hopefully, we can get back to that pedestal this year.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_11: The big interview on the Mike Keith Show is brought to you by Clayton Homes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee, helping families across the state find their dream home.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_11: I'm Mike Keith.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_11: For our Fine Ball Network staff, thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_09: All the week long to the latest.