8-8-23 After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 4

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Just go to Stamps.com and enter code PROGRAM. There's a lot of excitement around this team, and Kevin Brown's highlighting it as part of his broadcast on July 23rd. And rather than seeing the context and the perspective and his professionalism and hearing the truth that he is sharing on the broadcast, he's spewing truth, he's spitting truth. The Orioles reportedly suspended him because they didn't like the fact that he criticized what happened the last three years. Oh, okay, the last three years, where, hmm, let's see. In 2020, they were 10 games below.500. In 21, they lost 110 games. In 22, they managed to have a winning record for the first time since 2016, though they did not make the playoffs.

So you don't want any perspective on how much better this season is than the last three years? I have listened to the clip, I've watched the clip, oh, probably 10 times now, and I keep waiting for something else. A slur, an offensive word, a phrase that is misconstrued or can be taken the wrong way, anything like what we generally see people get suspended for these days in broadcasting. Even a factual error, though most times broadcasters are not suspended for factual errors. Instead, they have to issue an on-screen apology and a correction. But again, most humans, they make mistakes. And because they make mistakes, they allow for other people to make mistakes, kind of.

I mean, social media will have its say. But we generally recognize that people who are on TV and radio, yeah, they make mistakes every now and then. In my case, every five minutes. I laugh because it's impossible to be perfect.

20 hours of live radio per week. I try. It's not possible. But in the case of Kevin Brown, there was no mistake. There was no mess up.

There was no screw up. He was just doing his job professionally, truthfully, and actually highlighting a positive for the Orioles. So I know a lot of fans are outraged over the fact that he is reportedly suspended.

Going back to July 23rd. That's crazy. Again, we we see broadcasters or hear broadcasters get suspended for various things. But a lot of times when the suspensions indefinite, when they pull someone off the air, it's because they're trying to figure out a way to fire that broadcaster.

And they want to go through legal to make sure that they can't get sued, blah, blah, blah. July 23rd was a Sunday. It was a Sunday more than two weeks ago. And yet Kevin hasn't tweeted about it.

I don't know if he has other social media, but I looked at his Twitter. The Orioles aren't even acknowledging that they've suspended him, only that they look forward to him being back on the air sooner to hearing his voice very soon and that they don't comment on personal matters. Somebody leaked the story to awful announcing at the athletic. Otherwise, we would have been talking about it.

Going back to when it happened, if they'd been forthcoming about pulling him off the air. But somebody at Massen, somebody inside the Orioles front office decided, yeah, you know what, this is unfair, so we're going to put it out there. And now the world is commenting. You can find me on Twitter, A Law Radio, our Facebook page too. Good to connect with you. Our phone number 855-212-4227.

That's 855-212-4CBS. If you missed it, we had a very informational conversation, an in-depth conversation with college football insider Brian Fisher about the realignment that is throwing the sport into a flux. But not just the sport, every college sport. Pac-12 is on the verge of collapse. Why did this happen and what does the Pac-12 do now, if anything?

And how is this going to impact the athletes? Brian doesn't hold back, so we'll bring back a chunk of that conversation before this hour is done. In the NFL, we'll do some QB news coming up because we're closer to our first full week of preseason games. And we are going to see some starters, some young quarterbacks actually, the top two taken in the NFL draft. And then we've got some other guys who will be starting for the first time this year, like Sam Howell. Boy, do they love Sam Howell in Washington. If it means that they can actually have a steady hand at quarterback, I'll love him too. Man, between the commanders and the Colts, and even the Niners, though the Niners have made back-to-back NFC championship games, between those three teams, you need name tags with the quarterbacks to keep up with all the changes.

We've got Jordan Love taking over in Green Bay. I sometimes wonder what my Grammie Helen's reaction would be to the Packers trading Aaron Rodgers. I'm still continuing to get your reaction to my letter to Grammie Helen. I posted it last week on my blog.

The link is up on my social, either Twitter or Facebook. But I was writing a letter to her a year after we lost her, a year after she passed away. And I told her about some of the last year, some of my experiences, a lot of family stuff and how I missed her. And I should have put a P.S. in there.

I thought about putting a P.S. in there. Aaron Rodgers is now a Jet. I can't help but wonder what her reaction would be because she watched football. She didn't love football. But in Wisconsin, everyone's a Packers fan. And she got really excited when I went to see the Packers at Lambeau Field a few years back, the first time.

And she wanted to see all the videos and the pictures and everything else. And I remember, was it three years ago, Jay? I think you were here, so it would have been 2021 season, when the Packers started out. Remember, they were playing in Jacksonville? Because they were playing the Saints in Jacksonville, if I remember correctly, and the Saints crushed them. Remember it was a game that got moved because of a hurricane, because of a natural disaster?

Yes. So it got moved to Jacksonville. It was the opener for the Packers.

It was supposed to be in New Orleans, I think. And the game got moved to Jacksonville. And the Packers, they got demolished in Week 1. And this was coming off a season in which they made the NFC Championship, so I think it was the 21 campaign? Yes. Yeah, you're right. Week 1, packer Saints moved to New Orleans, moved from New Orleans to Jacksonville due to Hurricane Ida.

Okay. But find me the score. Was it 28-3? It was something along those lines. 25-3?

It was bad. Maybe they actually had a touchdown, but I don't think so. That was a final of 38-3. Oh, I was generous there with the Packers. 38-3.

And I remember I spoke to Grammie Helen, actually we did a Skype call not long after that game. And her assessment of the Packers was this, and I quote, I don't think they were trying very hard. Anyway. Bums.

That's true. You definitely were bums in that season opener. And I just remember laughing so hard when my grandmother said that. And now how much I wish I could get a reaction to the Packers trading him to the Jets. And to Jordan Love being the new, I know her response would be, who? To Jordan Love being the new starter for the Packers.

So I did not put that in my recent letter to Grammie Helen, but it could have been a perfect P.S. A Packers P.S. if you will. Bums.

Animals. I did hear that he's going to start actually and play a couple series. We'll see if that's true with the Jets as they get set for their actual preseason opener. Their second preseason opener because the Hall of Fame game's not supposed to count.

It's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio. Okay, so we have a suspension for Kevin Brown that no one agrees with. We have a suspension for Tim Anderson that plenty of people agree with. A six game suspension, Jay do we have the brawl? Between the White Sox and the Guardians, a game on Saturday in which Tim Anderson tagged Jose Ramirez.

A little bit too hard, a little bit too close to the head and the face. And then apparently according to Ramirez, Anderson challenged him to a fight, a duel if you will. They both put their dukes up. They actually got in their boxing stances.

They put their dukes up. They went at each other and of course the rest of the teams had to respond. And it was this crazy ripple effect where the brawl seemingly didn't stop. There were three or four different iterations of it. It kind of flared up again.

Like sometimes you put out a fire and then it flares up again. So this brawl went on and on including really pretty much everyone who was on the benches. And Anderson himself had to be held back multiple times. Finally got thrown down the stairs by a teammate. So just for your Tuesday morning entertainment, here's the Cleveland version of the brawl.

Here it comes. A swing and a smash to first by the diving pond. Down the right field line. Kicks into the corner. Ramirez on his way to second. Head first slide. Safe and in to score is Jimenez. And another hustle double.

Right over the bag at first. Now Jose and Anderson square off. They're fighting.

They're swinging. Down goes Anderson. Down goes Anderson.

Jose never gets upset about anything. They came up chewing. Anderson squared off. Jose decked him.

I know they were officially official today. Yesterday, Michael Hill actually reached out about 1130. So I was kind of on the run, but I still thought it was nice of him to reach out and kind of give me a heads up like what he was thinking. You know, when something like that happens, you know, there's going to be a price to be paid. So, you know, Jose is appealing his three.

I think you always hold your side, you know, you always have your side of the story, but there's two sides to things. So he has to listen to both. I did appreciate him reaching out. So Terry Francona says he got a heads up.

He knew that these suspensions were coming down. He was serving his then his third base coach had to serve one. But Ramirez is appealing. Now we don't have I don't think we do Jay unless you want to go and check the postgame from yesterday. The White Sox even play yesterday. They the the White Sox Rick.

That's right. They did finish up their series with the Yankees. And oh, yeah, not just that, but they beat the Yankees. I don't know if there's any reaction to the suspensions because by the time they played, the White Sox would have known about it. But Rick Hahn, the general manager, had said before the game that it's unfortunate.

We're glad no one was hurt. Essentially, we'll we'll trust Major League Baseball to handle this. But there have been a lot of rumors swirling around the White Sox and their clubhouse culture to the point where a former reliever Keenan Middleton is talking about how it was so unprofessional. You got guys falling asleep in the bullpen, yada, yada, yada. Rick Hahn disputes that and says, actually, Middleton told me he'd love to come back and play for us again. And then there was this rumor flying around about how Yasmani Grandal got into a fight with Tim Anderson going back to before the All-Star break in the clubhouse. This is unreal. Especially the fact that they said it was a day before the All-Star break. I'll tell you one thing.

The one thing I was thinking about that day, especially after that game, was let's go to this lighthouse I have rented with my family because I haven't spent enough time with them. So, yeah, I mean, it's I know people are need to do their jobs and they're trying to put a story out. But I mean, it's it's crazy to what extent people can can go to to just put something out there. I mean, I feel like you're almost fishing for for something.

So, yes, Mani Grandal disputes that. And this is what happens in the media, in sports, not exclusive to our industry. But when a team is down or a player is down, there's this demand for dirt kind of kick them while they're down, so to speak. And right now, the White Sox are the target. And there are a lot of rumors coming out of that clubhouse.

And a lot of times where there's smoke, there's fire. So maybe not everything is true, but certainly Tim Anderson. He kind of reminds me of the Dylan Brooks role with the Memphis Grizzlies. Yeah, you may like him as a player. You may think he has value, but is there more negative than positive?

Tim Anderson definitely likes to poke bears. All right. You can find me on Twitter, A Law Radio. We spent a lot of time talking about suspensions on this edition of the show. Aaron Boone, who desperately wants to be suspended, he wants nothing to do with the Yankees anymore. He's he's he's had it. He wasn't going to deal with me. He's done. He's actually got a future in theater.

Should he choose? Yeah. So Aaron Boone gets suspended again because the Yankees stink and he believes every umpire stinks as well. It's got to be the umpire's fault, right? The suspensions for the White Sox and the Guardians, the suspension for Kevin Brown.

It's very depressing, this edition of the show. Not to mention crazy conference realignment in college football. We'll get to that at the back of the hour. Straight ahead, though, some QB news because it's August and we're inside of a month to go until the NFL season kicks off. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. fires for the end zone. Touchdown Kansas City. Hand off to Ekler again.

No, Herbert keeps it. End zone. Touchdown.

charges. Herbert with his second of the day. Here's the snap. Josh going to keep it himself and run it again inside the five into the end zone. Touchdown Buffalo. Josh Allen, nine yard touchdown run.

The Bills respond and then some. It's time for QB news on After Hours. Oh, yeah, you love it. You crave it. You can't live without it. This portion of the show is brought to you by Wesley Financial stuck in a timeshare and want out.

Contact Wesley Financial Group now and get a free timeshare exit information kit at Wesley Financial Group dot com. Before you make your plans for Taco Tuesday, it's time for QB news. And we're coming up on the official first full week of preseason games. And we're going to see a lot of young quarterbacks or QBs in new places that will actually be on the field for the opener of the preseason.

That includes Bryce Young, the number one overall draft pick for the Panthers. He will start this weekend. It's a Thursday game, if I'm not mistaken. It is that actually under that C.J. Stroud. I take it back. It's not a Thursday game for the Panthers. They will be hosting the New York Jets.

Oh, isn't that perfect? So Bryce Young, he sounds like a veteran quarterback already critical of the rest of his offense. A lot of stuff to clean up on tape. You know, defense definitely won the day to day. And, you know, there's a lot of things that, you know, I got to do better. You know, in, you know, just us as you know, we have to do better after do better individually. All of us, you know, we take we take responsibility, take accountability for that stuff. So, you know, we have to go in and learn from it. And, you know, again, we haven't had a chance to cut on the film yet and, you know, see all the takeaways that we're going to get.

So we're looking forward to doing that. You know, it's got to be better tomorrow. I don't think anything really gets to Bryce. You know, I think he's really hard on himself more than anybody. So, yeah, you know, in the quarterback this league, you just got to be unflappable. And I think we all know Bryce has that gene.

You know, nothing really changes his pulse. Well, he comes from the Alabama system, of course, where you have to be unflappable when you're the center of a college football fishbowl. But I do love Frank and I'm rooting for him to have some redemption with the Panthers this season. All right. Thinking then about CJ Stroud, who, yes, will also start. And this time I got it right. It's against the Patriots. I mean, you can't expect me to memorize the preseason NFL schedule. Stop it.

I'll cover it. But the Patriots are hosting the Texans. So Bill O'Brien on hand as the OC for Mac Jones now gets to see some of his former teammates, not teammates, but former players there in New England. CJ Stroud now playing for D'Amico Ryans.

I'm hearing a lot of good stuff about D'Amico. What does the head coach want from his rookie QB in his first game action? From CJ in this game, I just want to see a guy come out and command the huddle, command the huddle, command the offense, get us lined up, get everybody on the same page and just operate efficiently. I spoke to.

I don't even know what you want to call it. A business owner, I guess would be a good way to say it, who was in Houston yesterday. And he asked me once he found out what I do for a living, asked me right away about the Houston Texans and what their chances are this year of making some noise in the AFC South. I told him honestly, I love what D'Amico Ryans is doing, but I also said rookie quarterbacks giveth and they take it the way. So be ready for a wild ride no matter how highly touted or prepared CJ Stroud is. That's D'Amico Ryans on NFL Network.

All right. Staying there in the AFC South. Doug Peterson, second year with the Jaguars. Remember, they finished real strong.

They won the South Division last year. Third season for Trevor Lawrence. And actually, Doug Peterson's going to throw them out there in preseason week one. I'm a big believer in the starters plan. And I really feel like they need to feel sort of that that energy that comes with that comes with starting a football game. And so I did it last year, you know, with the guys and anticipate right now. We're still a few days away, but I anticipate I'm getting, you know, maybe a series or two this weekend.

Jaguars will be on the road at the Dallas Cowboys. Meanwhile, Trevor Lawrence settling into year two with Peterson's offense. I feel really comfortable, feel really confident, feel like that's me. But that's also the other guys. We've we've had so much experience together and so many different situations we've seen. It's nice to be able to lean on those when you come out, you know, for your second camp in this system to lean on some.

You can go back to week, whatever, 14 last year. I remember checking this play against this team and this coverage. And so the call comes up again and you see the same thing.

It's like, all right, remember when we did this and you can just get to it quick. So I think that is that's so valuable when you think about an offense and just being able to do that and get yourself in the play that you want. And as a quarterback that I feel confident I can just go play free because I know what I want.

I know what I like and I know my guys are good at. Now, remember, they overtook the Tennessee Titans, who really fell off a cliff at the end of last season, didn't have any quarterbacks. Really, they're just a mess. But now Ryan Tannehill is fighting for his job against. Are you ready?

Go ahead. Jay, do you remember who he's fighting for his job against? Last year was Malik Willis. He has to do it again. It's kind of a bummer. That's not what this cut is about.

So we'll get to that after. But he does love the addition of DeAndre Hopkins, as he tells Sirius XM NFL radio. I was a fan of his game from afar for a long time. His ability to make contested catches, his body control, his ability to hold defenders off and judge the football. It was a lot of fun to watch from afar and now being able to see up close and personal within his first couple of days here. He made a couple of plays that, all right, that's exactly what I've been used to seeing him make.

So just growing with him, being on the same page. Ryan Tannehill fighting for his job against who? Jay. Jay's driving.

He's going crazy right now. So remember they drafted Malik Willis last year. They drafted Will Leviss this year. And there is talk, even though Leviss is listed as third on the depth chart, there is talk that he's going to battle Tannehill for the job. Oh, OK. We'll see how that goes.

It's after hours with Amy Lawrence. I do like the DeAndre Hopkins addition because the Titans needed a star receiver in their fold. So can he stay healthy?

That's huge. Let's talk now about the AFC West and this cracks me up. Josh McDaniels is already fielding questions about Jimmy Garoppolo's turnover problem at camp. It's training camp. He's coming off an injury and you're worried about whether or not he's turning the ball over at camp.

No concerns. I mean, we've also seen some really good throws and some, you know, stretches where the offense is really doing a lot of good things. And I think this is that time of camp every year where it's very competitive. You know, everybody that's out there is really competing in their own position group. Credit to be given to the other side when they make a play. You know, they're competing, too. So I think it's just normal, normal ebbs and flows of camp.

Been some really good days. And then there's, you know, some some plays where you get to coach off them. Wouldn't you rather have your quarterback air it out, go for broke, try a riskier play in camp to see if they can, they can find a play that might work in a real game?

This is where you want them to take risks and to turn the ball over. My goodness. Sometimes the media, we're just a little bit too eager. A little too extra, if you will.

All right. Now we're talking AFC East. So much drama.

Tyreek Hill. You know, he already thinks that his quarterback has the best quarterback in the NFL and that chemistry is developing. It's deepening. They've got an ethereal connection. He into a it's grown crazy, man.

You know, just a reception I had yesterday where he was able to throw it in between, like three defenders was crazy. So it just goes to show the amount of trust that he has in me. You know, and, you know, I just feel like it's going to continue to grow. What are the chances that he makes yet another preseason comment about how the Kansas City Chiefs are going to miss him and won't be the same without him?

That didn't turn out to be so accurate. Anyway, I'm excited. We know that Tyreek Hill has an ulterior motive, though, you know, he wants to be the first receiver to go over 2000 yards in a season. He really needs Tua to stay healthy.

And I want Tua to stay healthy. He's bulked up. He's done some weight training. He's learning how to not take it so he can be free of concussions this season. Kenny Pickett going into his second year with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Of course, he is the starter and he likes the connection he's developing with now second year wide receiver George Pickett. He's the best athlete I've ever played with. And now that his route tree is coming along and you're seeing him catch different routes out there. I think it's night and day from last year from how much he can do now and we're moving him around. And he's a really, really smart player. You know, he's doing route conversions that he wasn't seeing last year. Now he's doing and he started seeing it towards the end of last year. So he's a quick learner. It's awesome to see and also, you know, be on his team and have that as my teammate. All right. Kenny Pickett just dropped a route tree on the media, which I love, and also says George Pickens is the best athlete he's ever played with.

That's high praise. One more. Kyle Shanahan. Will we see Brock Purdy out there against the Raiders on Sunday? I doubt Brock plays.

We haven't fully decided it yet. I mean, usually when we go scrimmage against guys, I rarely play our starters. That's usually my plan going to it because a little more into the practices and the games. But I've changed my mind a couple of times, too, based off how those practices go.

So usually that's our plan, but we'll see how those practices go. Kyle Shanahan loves talking about quarterback. We do, too, actually.

I don't like playing this game. Yeah, yeah. We got you, man.

Then get a starting quarterback that can play the entire season. We've got college football realignment on tap next. If you're looking for Intel, if you're looking for the cold, hard truth, we've got it with Brian Fisher.

You are listening to the After Hours Podcast. When I look at it, you know, it's about sustainability. It's about stability.

It's about guaranteed revenue planning. Those are critical for having a balanced and an appropriate athletic program. And I think this grows our ability nationally. We have opportunities to be exposed in all the different time zones across the country. We compete, you know, in a way coast to coast. I think it can really help our program grow.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. The voice of Dave Heek, who's the athletic director for Arizona. Arizona among the defections in the Pac-12 Conference. Colorado already moving to the Big 12. And then you've got Arizona, Arizona State, Utah will be joining as well. We found out Friday Oregon and Washington are officially moving to the Big 10, joining USC and UCLA.

Wow, it is happening lightning fast as well. And here we are just weeks away from the start of the college football season. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Brian Fisher of Fox Sports had to take a break from his college football preview to cover all the alignment news, the realignment news.

And then he said every time he would start to write, the phone would ring. So we do appreciate that he took our call and that he joined us on the air from Salt Lake earlier. The late night for him writing, but he took a few minutes to offer us the intel and answer our questions about conference realignment. And I started by asking him his reaction to what's happened, the drastic changes in the last couple days.

Yeah, my reaction is it's just one of disbelief. And I think that's honestly what a lot of people around college athletics are feeling right now. Just how did we kind of get to this point? And, you know, there are a lot of missteps, you know, along the way and a lot of turning points, you know, throughout the history of college athletics and especially so in the last two years. But it's just kind of wild to fathom really these last two weeks, especially last Friday, you know, kind of when everything with the pack, well, certainly went down. And for this to happen, you know, right after media days when everybody was talking about all the on field events and maybe we had gotten past kind of focusing on a lot of those off the field moves.

Realignment reared its ugly head. And, you know, I think that's what everybody's been knee deep in certainly these last couple of days, couple of weeks, couple of hours. And, you know, hopefully it will subside a little bit. But this is groundbreaking stuff in college athletics.

And it'll be interesting because I don't think that the waves are done shaking necessarily in the sport. Well, let's talk about the Pac-12 first then, because that is one that's been real stunning. Where does this leave the conference overall?

You know, in a very precarious situation, you know, I think obviously they only have the four members left moving forward. And that is not enough to technically be a conference. And this is not just for, you know, existing in period, you know, it's for next next year. You know, and I think that's the you know, when you talk with a lot of the administrators that you are involved in things like compliance and things like fundraising, putting schedules together like that sort of stuff is done so far in advance. And you've got to think about it.

You've got to have all these meetings. Well, the Pac-12 is in a precarious situation just to get a schedule out for 2024, much less find the teams that they need to even get and remain a Division 1 conference. And that's not even getting into things like how are they going to get their NCAA tournament unit revenue and disperse that to schools. And some of these minor points that, you know, really kind of underscores just how dangerous and on a nice edge the Pac-12 really is.

And they don't have many options. You know, you look at the four remaining schools, they're doing their best to look out for themselves. They're not looking out for the conference as much as they want to preach unity. And really, that's all been what the Pac-12 has done these last couple of weeks. All four of the remaining schools are still looking out for themselves.

So this is a very dangerous situation for George Glavkov to navigate. You know, there's certainly some possibilities where they can either merge or have those schools join the Mountain West in some sort of kind of West Conference, West Coast type of conference merger. And I think those discussions are probably going to pick up steam after the Mountain West met on Monday night. But, you know, this is an ever evolving and very fluid situation as we see things can change in a matter of hours. And that's simply where the Pac-12 finds itself right now.

Why, Brian? What brought us to this point where one of the Power 5 conferences is on the verge of being defunct or at least collapsing in terms of its stature in college sports? Well, I think you've got to look, turn yourself on in terms of the Pac-12 and look at its most recent history. And then really it was just a series of bad mismanagement and bad leadership from the conference office. You know, I think a lot of people are going to point their finger at Larry Scott, and certainly he deserves a fair share of the blame in terms of some of the missteps. You go back a couple of years, ESPN had offered to kind of take over distribution for the Pac-12 network, sign another long term rights agreement that would have kept the league together, would have kept USC and UCLA in the fold. But, you know, the conference office and conference leadership said no.

And I think he kind of traced things from a moment like that. You need to go back to just kind of the whole concept of the Pac-12 network and how vastly they kind of underperformed in terms of the expectations and the amount of money that those networks had driven back towards the schools. And, you know, and honestly, it's just a lot of recent decisions. I mean, you look at just what George Golovkin has done this past year, you know, I mean, he continually thought that the Pac-12 would have a good media deal that never materialized. You look at, you know, things like USC and UCLA leaving, that's on the current commissioner for not keeping those schools happy enough and not keeping those schools in the fold long enough to get a media deal run. And, you know, the last couple of years, you know, when you decide to wait and wait and wait so long, there were market forces, you know, with a lot of these media companies that were bidding on Pac-12 rights, their economics and their outlook changed significantly in the past year. And that's what the Pac-12 got caught up in. And so with no media deal, with a very subpar, I guess, media deal to present from Apple, a lot of these schools said, we're not going to go through what we've been doing.

Let's try to find a better home. And that's what a lot of these schools that are either going to the Big 12 or the Big Ten have finding themselves in. And it's frankly still a little bit hard to believe that this is kind of where we're at right now. Is that really the bottom line, Brian, the actual bottom line, the student athletes, the college's academics, does any of that factor into this or is this really just become about as much money as possible for these conferences through the lens of football and basketball?

Oh, it is the almighty dollar. That is certainly driving a lot of these decisions. And I always kind of get a chuckle out when you hear either ADs or presidents kind of talk about being with like-minded institutions and finding fits and all that. Just look at the position that Cal and Stamps would find themselves in right now. You know, if that were really honestly the case, they would be in the Big Ten. They would be in some of these other leagues.

They would have media companies jumping over to pay up and televise Stanford and Cal Games. But that is not the case. It is all about ultimately what can you bring in terms of that dollar figure. It's already a modern business, but it's certainly becoming an even more ruthless business that is really underpinned by that pursuit of the almighty dollar. And that's really kind of what led to a lot of these decisions that has led us to this moment. I like that word. You're right.

It does seem ruthless. It doesn't really matter who is affected, who is in the way of it. These conferences are just moving forward regardless. Brian Fisher is with us from Fox Sports, National College Football writer. It's after our CBS Sports Radio. Are there any of these conference alignments, realignments that you think make zero sense whatsoever and you kind of wonder how it's going to work out?

I think kind of all of them. When you get away from being a West Coast league spanning multiple time zones and you're talking about cross-country travel. And look, I travel a lot in both my current job and as well as personally. And it can add up. Those miles can add up.

And I can't even imagine even being young kids just having some extra energy that I might have. That travel just adds up. And I just think it's going to be hard to comprehend when we're talking about big teams, even before the Washington and Oregon moves were announced. You talk about the big 10 was thinking, well, you know, we can maybe have a UCLA soft soccer team charter with a USC lacrosse team if they need to go play in Illinois. Like the fact that we're talking about that or talking about going to play literally from coast to coast, you know, for a lot of the non-revenue sports in particular.

That's where I scratch my head. And it's one thing for it to be in football, but the fact that we're the big 10 is going to have 500 plus teams. You know, when you're talking about ice hockey and you're talking about lacrosse and you're talking about soccer, not even getting into the high profile men and women's basketball games. I think it's going to cause a lot of late nights for a lot of administrators out there. I know it's already causing issues with the coaches. And I can only imagine where we're going to be in a couple of years when everybody is probably going to pinch themselves and say, why did we do this? I think we're ultimately going to get to that kind of moment because it is crazy when you pull out that map and you look at a school in L.A. going to go to Piscataway to play a conference game.

It's wild to kind of comprehend and probably going to be even wilder when we actually see it in front of our eyes. What, if anything, does the NCAA have to do with this, Brian? Well, nothing.

You know, that is the thing. And, you know, I mean, Mark Emmert, you go back to the former NCAA president. He would not touch this topic with a 10 foot pole, like would not provide any leadership, would not return. You know, he might return some calls, but really just kind of kind of to be a sounding board, not really to provide any leadership. Charlie Baker, you know, he issued a statement to Fox Fort Worth and a few other outlets today. I do get the sense that he's not happy with the current situation. You know, he's somebody that has talked quite a bit about since taking over as president about that student athlete experience, making sure that that is kind of the focus.

And these moves really run counter to that. And that said, you know, he's really powerless to kind of do anything about it. You know, he can issue a sternly awarded statement.

He can call up, you know, Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti and, you know, Brett Yarmark and all these others and maybe chew them out on the phone a little bit. But it's not going to change anything because ultimately the NCAA is still a member run organization. They can take their cues from the schools themselves and the schools are right now. They're also saying, you know what, this is what we want, essentially. And so the NCAA kind of finds itself between a rock and a hard place, as they typically do on a whole multitude of issues, but especially on this one. Brian Fisher, college football writer and insider for Fox Sports. And there's more to that interview.

You can find that on our podcast. Great intel and also implications. I ask him, how does this affect the upcoming college football playoff expansion? Because in my opinion, it seems like the richer getting richer, the Big Ten, certainly the Big 12 has resurrected itself from the dead. That's another question I asked him like just a couple of years ago. It was the Big 12 who was in this precarious position.

So how did this happen? And he kind of gives the story of how the Big 12 used its nine lives, but managed to stay alive and has now become one of the more bloated conferences in college sports. But the two things that really jump out at me, one, the NCAA can do absolutely nothing about it, really doesn't want to touch it. It's completely left up to the conference commissioners. And that's why the bottom line is the most important thing, not the student athlete or the academic experience. No, it's about being bigger and badder and more expansive and more extensive and being able to offer more markets and more reach to broadcast partners. And ultimately, that's what brought down the Pac-12, is that there wasn't a broadcast deal, one that the schools could agree on, they felt like would give them the type of money that they could find elsewhere. And then he says the Big Ten will have 500 plus teams.

How in the world can one conference meet the needs of 500 plus teams? Remains to be seen. All right, have a great Tuesday. We'll talk to you tonight After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio.

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