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Visit Carvana.com or download the app to get pre-qualified today. David Cone, former Michigan quarterback in light of the Wolverines winning their first championship in years going back to the late 90s, but also a radio host, part of Crane and Company on the Daily Wire, based in Nashville. And man, what a good time to be able to talk to you, David, not only because of the Wolverine success. And we'll get to that, but I need to know what's your reaction to Nick Saban's bombshell on Wednesday that he's retiring from football? Well, I was live on Memphis radio yesterday when it happened and we had been talking about Michigan's victory for about 10 minutes. And my buddies over there said, oh, by the way, what are your thoughts on the breaking news that Nick Saban is retiring?
And I have to say that one took me took me aback a bit. And, you know, I was fortunate enough to marry into the Alabama family and the Alabama tradition. My wife went to Alabama.
Her father is Richard Todd. He played quarterback for Bear Bryant. So I've gotten to see up close and personal just what this football program means to the Alabama Crimson Tide and what Nick Saban means to them. He's the greatest college football coach of all time. What a legacy. And what I said today is the accolades and the statistics, each one gets more impressive than the last. It sort of reminds me of when Tom Brady retired that you just there's it's just so impressive.
You can hardly put words on it. But what he did for the community and for the college is even more impressive. I think he was paid one hundred and thirty million dollars over 16 seasons and enrollment went from twenty five thousand students per year to forty thousand students per year.
It was a 60 percent increase when the national average was a 10 percent increase. He brought in billions of dollars for that university and for the town of Tuscaloosa. So it's sad news for college football, but I'm so great that we got to see that Michigan and Alabama matchup in the Rose Bowl is as upset as I know Florida State was for not being in there. I'm so glad that we got to see that now, knowing that that was Nick Saban's final football game.
Yes. Thank you for saying that. That's a good point.
I'm glad that we didn't miss out on that opportunity either. I keep hearing the narrative about how no one's going to want that job. Or if you take the Alabama job, you're doomed to fail or wouldn't want to follow up a legend where I kind of feel like the opposite. The winning culture and the structure is already in place and you have every bit of support that you could possibly want or need to be a success there. When you think about the type of coach that could follow and take that job next, what's the right fit? Yeah, that's a wonderful question. My co-host Jake Crane has said for years now, whenever this happens, you don't want to be the guy who follows the guy.
You want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows the guy. I understand conceptually what he's talking about, but with that being said, the line will be around the block. And if it's not, hey, I'll do it for half at this point. But nonetheless, I'm just more interested to see how much say Nick Saban has and who replaces him.
It may be 100 percent. The athletic director, Greg Byrne, just may hand it over completely to Nick Saban and say, here's the right guy. And if that's the case, then you have to look at the usual suspects of who he has had in his inner circle before, coaches who have worked with him and who he trusts.
So that's why Steve Sarkeesian always made sense, because, you know, he helped revitalize Steve Sarkeesian's career. And certainly, you know, getting Texas back on track has been one of the most impressive things around the country, one of the most impressive achievements to make the college football playoff there. I just don't think Steve Sarkeesian is going to leave a place that has the same sort of blue blood history that Alabama does.
And he's taken the time to build up. They have just as much money and they're going into the SEC next year. So I just don't think Steve Sarkeesian will say, I'm going to leave a great situation to go over to another great situation and have to follow up Nick Saban. Dabo Swinney's name is always going to get mentioned because he won a national championship as a player for Alabama. We've seen what Jim Harbaugh just did at his alma mater. We've seen what Kirby Smart did at the place that he played, Mario Cristobal going back to Miami where he played.
Certainly his name is always going to come up. I just don't think that Alabama fans want Dabo Swinney to be the coach, which has shocked me for a few years. But more importantly, one of the reasons Nick Saban, I think, is leaving right now is because of the the the seismic shifts in the landscape of college football, i.e.
the transfer portal and name image and likeness and everything that goes along with it. Well, Dabo Swinney at Clemson hasn't really embraced those elements since he won his two national championships. I'm not sure how, you know, quick Alabama is going to be to hire him. We've seen Dan Lanning, who was the first name on the board, has already passed on the job. He's going to stay at he's going to stay at Oregon.
So we're going to go through these lists of usual suspects here. I know a lot of Alabama fans have been laughing at this for 24 hours, but the name Bill O'Brien is on a list was just Nick Saban's offensive coordinator. He has head coaching experience at at the college level and at the NFL level. You know, I understand that that's not the the sexiest hire, so to speak, but his name is going to be on a list.
And if enough people pass, you know, Nick Saban's going to pull the trigger on someone. We're really excited to spend a few minutes with David Cone, who's a former Michigan quarterback. So we'll talk about the Jim Harbaugh element coming up. And he's also part of a very popular daily wire sports show called Crane and Company based in Nashville.
It's after hours with Amy Lawrence here on CBS Sports Radio. Well, since you brought it up, what is your perspective on the changes in college football and where they're leaving the game and potentially even chasing some of the greats out? Yeah, and we've seen it in college basketball as well with Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams. Look, every industry goes through changes that that's not surprising.
And people adapt with the times. What's difficult for me is is with college football being my favorite sport, we're going through seismic changes without leadership. You know, I think the NCAA has recognized that they have lost their stranglehold on college football. That's not the case for college basketball. They still host a great tournament in March and the Final Four and all of that.
But college football is sort of in this state where the on-field product is as good as it's ever been. But because the NCAA has lost its grip on that and has lost a few key court cases, you know, out in California with the O'Bannon case and the Austin case, basically saying, hey, you cannot prohibit student athletes from capitalizing on their on their name, image and likeness. I think the NCAA has just said, you know what, we're we've done all we can do.
We're just going to just open up the floodgates, remove every guardrail and force Congress to act. We've had Senator Tommy Tupperville and Senator Ted Cruz both on our show who are working on legislation, even though I don't think, you know, having Washington try and fix college athletics is the right thing to do either. Which is why I pleaded with Nick Saban on our show this morning. Please, now that you've retired, take a leadership position in college football. You're the one guy who would be unanimously listened to. In short, what I'll say is when I play college football at Michigan, of course, it never seemed right to me that I couldn't sign an autograph for twenty five dollars while a kid in my math class could, or that I couldn't accept a breakfast paid for me or else the school was going to get in trouble.
You know, and Reggie Bush having his Heisman Trophy taken away and all of this silly stuff. At the same time, I didn't feel exploited. You know, I didn't think like, hey, I'm a professional who needs to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. I knew there was a professional level. If I was good enough to play at that level, then I would that I would play the game professionally. I understood the concept that a college scholarship is being awarded to me. At the same time, I've never met anyone who loves college football because the guys aren't getting paid.
You know, I come from South Georgia. I mean, and this is America. Like if you have a skill set that warrants compensation, we're all for that. No one says I love college ball because those boys out there aren't getting paid.
There's just there's a way to do it. Name image and likeness was supposed to be between the player and the the sponsors. Right.
Between Bryce Young and, say, Dr. Pepper. It was never meant to be pay for play. But if it's going to be that, if we're literally just going to say, hey, you're a top recruit in high school, I want you to come play for me. And I'll pay you two hundred thousand dollars to do that. Again, there's a way to do that.
It just needs to be transparent. When Tom Brady signed a new contract with the Patriots or with the Bucks, I knew how much he was getting paid and I knew what was expected of him. I have no idea what's being expected of these kids when they get this NIL money from the collective that are from the boosters of the schools. Do they have to play in bowl games? Do they have to play a full season? Can they sit out? Can they miss? I don't know.
It needs to be transparent. And then the transfer portal again. Yeah, I had to go through a coaching change. Coach Lloyd Carr brought me in.
Rich Rodriguez came in and ran an entirely different system. I thought about transferring every single day for a while. It never sat right with me that a head coach could leave and go and check another position. I'm stuck here when I'm not going to get any playing time under some new system. At the end of the day, I decided to stay and probably would have, even if I had a free transfer eligibility. But now, again, we've gone so far, the pendulum swing so far the other way, opened up the floodgates to where we're telling kids, hey, the first time you don't get on the field, you can just you can quit and change teams. You can play for five different schools in five years.
What is that? I mean, I would have run home to South Georgia the first chance I could if I had just transferred any moment. I don't think that's a good thing. Again, some of these problems, the solutions are so simple, but any attempt by the powers that be in the NCAA to institute these solutions is seen as being exploitative of the student athlete and they're getting shut down in court. So, again, we need someone like a Nick Saban to step up and say, hey, here are some of the basic solutions that we have. Maybe we don't take a month off from our regular season to our postseason.
You know, maybe that's an easy place to start. What other sport would do that? We end the season at Thanksgiving and then we don't play our playoff games and our championship games for a full month until New Year's.
That's a broken sport to me, and it seems like the solution would be fairly easy. As a former Michigan quarterback yourself, what if you wake up on Friday or Saturday or Sunday and it's Jim Harbaugh who is leaving Ann Arbor in this case, what's your reaction? Well, after going 15-0 and accomplishing this perfect season of the national championship, I have to say I'll help him pack at this point.
You know, he's everything that he can do, and certainly I hope that he stays. I hope that a lot of these players stay and run this back, but what a magical season. It's the greatest season in the history of Michigan football, and not only that, but with everything that they had to overcome. All of the adversity, you know, all of this nonsense of advanced scouting throughout the season or recruits showing up in a COVID-dead period, so Jim Harbaugh has to miss 50% of the season.
Again, I don't know all the details of what went on in those situations. I just know when I see Jim Harbaugh, I see a guy who loves his players, who loves his staff, who loves his family, and who was doing a good job at Michigan, but not a great job at Michigan because he wasn't beating his rival. He lost every game to Urban Meyer, he wasn't winning his conference, and he wasn't making the college football playoff. And in 2020, when things got as bad as they've gotten for him, he pointed the finger at himself and said, this is not good enough, I haven't been good enough, but I will be or I'll die trying. Since he said those words, he's gone 40-3, he's beaten his rival three times, won the conference three straight years, he's beaten the greatest coach in the history of college football, Nick Saban, in the Rose Bowl, and he's had a 15-0 perfect season and capped it off with a national championship.
And we can honestly say this was the greatest year in the history of Michigan football. And the guy who played quarterback for Bo Schembechler, the guy we wanted the most eight years ago, came home and he delivered it for us. You know, I would have loved an opportunity to play for the guy, I can just see the team is so galvanized behind him. They care about him, he cares about them, and he's always going to be an attractive NFL candidate.
Why? Because he's one of the few guys who's had success at both levels. So I don't know what's in his heart, I don't know what he wants to do. If he stays, hey, let's continue on this path that he's helped build. If he leaves, I'll be rooting for the guy at the next level. David Kohn's a former Michigan quarterback and now radio host, so you know I always tell athletes, welcome to the dark side.
On the Daily Wire, Crane & Company is how you can find it. And it's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio where we're pleased to have him for the first time. What does it mean to be part of the Michigan family which got so loud and proud over the last few months? You know, being from South Georgia, I had no intention of going a thousand miles away from home to play college football. But I did have one goal and that was to play college football. And Lloyd Carr, Scott Leffler, and the University of Michigan gave me that opportunity.
They believed in me. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into my time at Michigan. And you know, even if you go and look at the stat sheet and say, well, David Kohn didn't have that much success on the field and he didn't play that much and lead to a lot of wins. I can say that no less effort was given by me or any of the guys that I played with during those years than was given by this championship team. You know, we went out there every single day and tried to deliver a championship the way this team did. But that's what makes them so special is, you know, while we were three points away from a national championship appearance, they finished the drill.
And just, we're all standing on the shoulders of who came before us, right? Me being a thousand miles away from there to be steeped in the Michigan tradition and what it means to be a Michigan man, it meant so much to me. Even right when I set foot on campus, three months into my tenure there, I was in the room for Bo Schembechler's final speech. Thursday night, he passed away the following morning. And then Saturday was the one versus two Michigan and Ohio game. I remember it like it happened yesterday. It's a part of my blood.
It's a part of my being. And so for a guy like Jim Harbaugh, who was a Michigan guy, to be the one who's taken them to a championship now, it truly is incredible. And that's always been something that is important to Michigan. So when you talk about Alabama, do they need a guy, an Alabama guy? You know, Nick Saban wasn't. And Nick Saban wasn't an LSU guy.
He wasn't even from the South. And he won national championships at both of those locations. I think it's going to be about, you know, who is like-minded when it comes to the relationship with Nick Saban.
Who does he think is the best steward for what he has built? Because if you get the right guy in there, you can have continued success. It still is the most attractive job in the country. Alabama, for many years, had fallen off and had struggled. We do have to remember that they also had Bear Bryant at one point. So they've had two of the top five greatest coaches in the history of the sport. They're going to get the right guy. It's going to be tough.
It's going to be a tough gig. Because even if that person goes undefeated and wins the championship next year, it's going to be seen as, well, those were Nick Saban's guys. If he wins it against them next year, it's going to be seen as, well, Nick Saban still built this.
I understand it's a hard gig to follow. But at some point, the thing that makes college football coaches go, the thing that makes them work 365 days a year and spend so much time away from their family and on the recruiting trail, is the reason that someone's going to say yes to that job and give it their all. I thought it was somewhat amusing that a couple days after the Wolverines had beaten Washington, the president of the NCAA called the championship fair and square. That Michigan earned it fair and square. And that there was no tainted nature that Michigan won it without the benefit of any cheating. Okay, seriously, to know that the president of the NCAA called it legitimate really did make me laugh out loud. Well, I find it quite odd that he would say that yesterday while the investigation is technically still open.
Okay, well, what are we doing here then? And not only that, not only that, a notice, an official notice of wrongdoing for that incident still has not been delivered to Michigan. We just got the official notice of wrongdoing from the COVID dead period Burger Gate scandal. Oh, and guess what? They dropped it on National Signing Day.
Trust me, we know what's going on here. The NCAA does this all the time. They said they knew about Cam Newton supposedly being paid at Auburn before the season started. But when did the story drop? Oh, it happened to drop the week Auburn played Georgia. They said they knew about advanced scouting for Michigan before the season started. But the news drops by ESPN before Michigan's even told about it.
What day? The day before Michigan plays their rival Michigan State. So, you know, the NCAA has led from behind, if you can even call it, leading for so long.
It's just, it's astonishing to me. But good on Charlie Baker for at least saying yesterday, yeah, this legitimizes the Michigan's national championship. It was a tough day for the asterisk vacate crowd for sure. On my show right after Michigan captured the title with a really angry Wolverines fan who called from Ann Arbor, just so angry about the coverage and the publicity all year from the media. And I just wanted him to be happy. I just wanted him to be excited about his team having won a championship.
So there is validation in this, right? The fact that, as Harbaugh said, it worked out the way that it needed to. And that's why I think this is the most important season in the history of Michigan football. Because it's one thing to just have a great team and you go win a championship.
That would have been special enough with everything that we've gone through for the last two decades. But to do it when everyone calls you a cheater, to do it when your arch rival says, well, yeah, you beat us back to back years, but it was only because you did X, Y, and Z. And you are cheaters. And the term Michigan man doesn't mean anything anymore. I mean, to go and beat Penn State on the road with the defense they had, with Jim Harbaugh being suspended 12 hours before while he's on the plane. And Sharone Moore has to step up and be the offensive line coach, the offensive coordinator, and the head coach.
What a win. To do it against the Buckeyes, it's hard. Jim Harbaugh proved you can be an excellent coach and still can't beat them. That's how great the Buckeyes program is. Sharone Moore is 1-0 against them now.
Unbelievable performance. That alone would have taken the sting and the stigma away from, oh, Michigan is just cheaters. But to move forward and to beat Alabama, and then to hold the most prolific offense in the country to 13 points.
I'm telling you, not only does it legitimize everything great about this team and the team for the last couple seasons, but it really propels them into the conversation of being one of the greatest college football teams of this century, for sure. You've been able to transition pretty easily into co-hosting a radio show on the Daily Wire. Had a chance to see part of your live stream. I tell you that's brave. I wouldn't want someone watching me while I was watching my team compete for a title. But what's the most challenging part about fitting into a space where, similar to sports, there are so many options. It's such a crowded field. Somehow you have to figure out a way to stand out.
Yeah, no doubt. I mean, we're always having conversations on what topics to discuss. Jake Crane, when he first came to me, said, you know, I think I've got something special here, but I want to be on video. And I was a video producer. And I said, OK, let's give this a shot. I mean, all of us after COVID were thinking, there are going to be opportunities here from a lot of people. I want to be one of the guys who has a positive post-COVID story, rather than, oh, this unfortunate situation our entire country went through. I was negatively impacted by it. I lost my business or something. So I was just taking every meeting I possibly could. I met Jake Crane.
He had a solid show where he wanted to talk about college football. And I agreed that, hey, this is great. There's no profanity in our show.
But we also find ways to push the boundaries. How can we discuss certain topics? And it was always apolitical. You know, it was always apolitical down there. And let's talk about sports. And that's when Colin Cowher found us. And then, you know, there started to be college football coaches being fired because they wouldn't be vaccinated. Well, it felt like, well, those are situations we probably should be discussing.
But, you know, we're not, we're apolitical. We're going to just talk about sports. And then it just, it was serendipitous. Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire reached out and said, I love your guy's show. I want a sports show at the Daily Wire because of my love of sports.
Would you consider moving to Nashville? And it was, you know, I had been a Daily Wire subscriber prior to that. I had been a listener and a fan of his, but I still love Colin Cowherd.
You know, it was a tough situation and a tough decision. But we said, hey, if we go to the Daily Wire, we can sort of push the boundaries a little bit more on what it seems like people want to hear. And it just so happens to intersect with what we're already great at talking about, which is sports and what we're knowledgeable about. We said, look, let's figure out a way where we can incorporate some of these things and just have the honest conversations that people would have when they're sitting around a living room or a barroom or a dinner table.
Let's do that, but let's do it live every single morning and see if people enjoy it. So figuring out how to push those boundaries, but to remain fun, never be disingenuous, never do something just for the clickbait. You asked what the biggest challenge. It's not being on the field. You know, I was a ball player for so long, it was just go to work and play ball.
You know, don't talk about it. That is a little bit challenging, but I have to say, if I can't be in there in the huddle and I can't be on the field or in the locker room, then it still is a pretty good gig to be able to bring years and years and decades at this point of knowledge and experience with the game for other people to enjoy it a little more. And one of the segments I do weekly is called huddle up, where we spend two minutes breaking down the most exciting touchdown from the previous week. And everyone seems to enjoy that. So I'm just, I'm trying to give people a glimpse into what it's like to be in the locker room and in the huddle, and hopefully they're enjoying it. All access and behind the scenes is what sports fans really dig. And if you are a former athlete at the highest level, like playing for Michigan, well, then people get a piece of insight that they can't get anywhere else. So David Cone, former Michigan quarterback kind of reveling in what has been the greatest season for the Wolverines, even as we wait for some news of Jim Harbaugh, but gosh, plenty of news elsewhere. So find him on Twitter, David Adam Cone creating company on the daily wire. And we are happy to have you anytime on the show, David, thank you so much for a couple of minutes.
Thank you for having me. I'll join anytime around new years. We get a little obsessed with changing ourselves and forgetting the things we're already doing right. Like taking our supplements every morning or scheduling me time into our day. Therapy helps you recognize those victories and keep up the good work in the new year without changing everything. BetterHelp offers affordable online therapy so you can try new year same you with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash grow today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash grow. .com. Call 562-314-4603 for complete details. When something happens to your car, you might say, No!
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