What did we learn from ACC Kickoff?

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. This is the Adam Gold Show. This league is going to be an overdrive almost from the start. It should be right. I mean, even to the middle lower third of the league. This league is going to be an overdrive.

But everybody else, you can see it, right? And so, football, now the ascent of football has to continue. We need to see Florida State, they may not have to beat LSU, but it's got to be close. I need to see Miami beat A&M. Tyler Van Dyke can go to College Station and Caulfield on a Saturday night and wire them up. That's a good thing.

And oh, by the way, I don't need missteps either. I don't need one in Boone. I don't need one in Greenville. This is the Adam Gold Show. West Durham is demanding. He has expectations.

We have a high bar. ACC football matters too much. We will hear from that conversation from with West Durham. Rodney Jones was also there.

He was. Did not talk near the amount of lacrosse with him that I wanted to. I understand that. The first part of that soundbite was about basketball. And looking ahead to the basketball season, there should be a bunch of really good teams in this league. North Carolina is going to ultimately be, you know, the preseason favorite. We can debate whether or not that is simply a carryover from last year. But I understand they bring back basically all of the important pieces minus Brady Manick from the team that went to the National Championship game.

So I get it. But Duke's going to be there's going to be a lot of good teams in the league. And we all know how many good coaches there are for ACC basketball. But then the second part of that was about football and every year. And I keep saying this.

I had a long conversation with some some people who follow these things. And one thing that I have been saying for a long time and Jim Phillips, the commissioner of the league in his state of the ACC address, talked about how every team in the league is going to play at least one school from the power five and X amount are going to play two. And I'm like, this is why the records stink.

Yeah. If you're going to play him, you got to win him. And the ACC hasn't won enough of those games.

And I'm not saying you shouldn't play him because you have to play at least one. And the the league needs for their own roster of games. The league needs like high quality games to put on the schedule. So the AC, the ESPN and ABC, which is really the same, the ACC Network can can put three, four good games a weekend on television. You got to win those.

Yeah. So the games that West Erm's talking about, you know, Miami's trip to A&M or FSU playing LSU. Carolina at app.

That's gonna be fun. That is loseable for the Tar Heels. I don't think Apple be favored, but I don't see that game being more than Tar Heels by three. I mean, that's that is a tight game.

One possession game. NC State will be close to a 10-point favorite. I don't even I'm sure the lines are out because it is a week one game. So NC State at East Carolina may probably be about a 10-point spread.

9, 10, something like that. But it's not like State's favored by 30. So you can't just throw your hats on the field and expect to win.

Now. They only have a couple of week zero games. Week zero games. Tar Heels and what is it? FAMU, right? Yeah, but they don't have lines on those yet.

Well, they don't have spreads like Moneyline. Hawaii is underdog against Vanderbilt. Oh, man. Vandy, SEC. Yeah, SEC power.

So we'll see. The ACC needs to win those games. We got a lot of things to do today. We talked a ton of not really college football the last couple of days. We talked about survival mostly. So let's go see what we got. And we can't report after spending the last two days at the ACC football pep rally in Charlotte. That's a great analogy. Thank you.

That's a great analogy. The ACC remains intact. Ah, yes, Doomsday Clock still reads 1154. We left. We left Charlotte. And at last count, there were 14 schools for football, 15 in all sports. I thought there were 17. Well, that's still. It's one of my great regrets from the two days in Charlotte that when I went back into the dungeon to talk with the commissioner, Jim Phillips, that my first question wasn't so who are those two teams that you added at the during your state of the ACC address?

Gosh, what a missed opportunity that was. But everybody panicked. Everybody overreacted, present company included, to the USC UCLA jump to the Big Ten. The reality, though, is that the ACC is on solid foot. It's the third wealthiest conference in the country. It's the third among FBS leagues. It's the third among the power five, if there's even a power five, because who knows who's going to be left of the Pac-12? They're not going anywhere now when we get to 2032 ish. Maybe that's a different story as you get towards the end of the grant of rights, which is we're about the time where maybe Texas or USC will try to negotiate their way out to their new conference. It's possible they haven't given any indication that that's happening, but it's very possible.

As you get to the end, the the way to buy your way out is less expensive. A lot of coaches said the same thing yesterday, and I'm not sure like a lot of people rolled their eyes. And the critics may be right.

I'm not saying that they're wrong, but a lot of people said the same thing. Looks like everybody's staying together and like that would be good for everybody anyway. Yes, you're leaving money on the table if you're not in the southeastern conference.

But there's there's another side of that story. And what good are you to the SEC? I mean, are you going to pay for yourself?

Otherwise, these schools aren't taking a pay cut. Yeah. So, I mean, if the SEC added NC State and Clemson, I'll just throw this out there. All right.

Textile bowl. Is that going to be worth two hundred million dollars each year to the southeastern conference? No, because that's what that's what it would need to be for all of the other schools to not take a pay cut. And I'm not sure that that's the case. And that's not a knock on state or Clemson. When the numbers get this high, it becomes way more different. Now, if we were still talking about 50 million dollars per school on a pay out, then, yeah, I think you could do that. Yeah, between those two. Now we're now we're doubling that number. That's not easy.

That is not easy. So I do think that until the time comes when this system is structured or restructured massively, then I think everybody is staying where they are, especially if Notre Dame stays independent. Real quick, just this just a thought that is you're not a soccer guy, but is college football when it completely blows up and starts over? OK. Is college football not completely ripe for promotion, relegation? I'm not I'm not against the thought of that, but getting all of these schools to agree to that, I just don't see it happening. So I just just spitballing here, but I'm not against the idea, though.

Take, oh, I don't know, twelve of twenty four teams in the SEC, twenty four teams in the Big Ten. Doesn't make a difference. You can call them whatever you want at this point. Yeah. And you split it in half, split each league in half.

OK. The best programs are in the top twelve. The next twelve are in the bottom twelve in each side. OK. And you play the season. Bottom three. Get relegated.

Top three from the second division. Get promoted. OK. I mean, this is a total like merit based system. Play well enough. You earn your way to stay. You don't.

You don't. Now, you're certainly not going to go poor. Teams in the second division of English soccer don't go poor.

No. Right. There's still money to be made. Like players still make good livings playing professionally there. I'm just I'm just I'm just wondering if it's not ripe for promotion and relegation in college sports because people want to use that in pro sports. And I've always said this.

You are never going to convince owners, billionaires who paid billions for their franchises to accept a system that knocks them into the second division. Yeah. Just for a bad year. Don't make a difference. The Dallas Cowboys. Sorry.

You were two and fifteen. Guess what? You get dropped down to the USFL. Oh yeah.

I play in Birmingham. Whatever. Yeah.

Everybody everybody gets to play. So you will never have that in U.S. pro sports ever. No. Right. If we have 40 teams in Major League Soccer, which we might be close to it, sort of a Ponzi scheme, the way the whole league is structured. But the if we have 40 teams in MLS, I might you might see that.

I don't know. But these David Tepper paid three hundred million dollars for a franchise. Right. I think it was three hundred million, which was well overpaid for what the franchise is worth. They can't bring Chelsea in every week to play so they can put seventy thousand people or whatever it was in the Bank of America stadium. Just just kind of spitballing there.

But I think it's ripe for a promotion relegation. Adam Gold in studio with my friend Coach Pete DeRuta with the Capital Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement. Coach, how does longevity risk figure into our retirement and income plan?

This is the best of times and the worst of times, Adam. The longevity risk means we're going to live too long. But to me, every day I live is not too long. Right.

Absolutely. So we want our money to outlive us. And unfortunately, many people have seen you out there listening, maybe one of them. Your money is not designed to outlive you. You might outlive your money. And that's not what we want to have happen, because when we get to that day after you run out of money, it's not going to be a fun time. So let's design a plan that guarantees you'll never run out of money. We call it the GPI plan, Growth Protection Lifetime Income, for the next 10 people. This is a golden ticket, Adam. $1,000 value, we're going to do it at no cost or obligation. And all you have to do is call. We make it so easy.

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Or you could text Adam to 21000 for Coach Pete DeRuta. Alright, while we're all spending otherwise valuable time worrying about the future, there are those in the Pac-12 neighborhood worrying about theirs. Because theirs is real. San Diego State AD, they're not in the Pac-12 yet. Jim Wicker has some thoughts. Everyone I think was shocked. I mean, you know, it's one thing for Texas and Oklahoma to go to the FCC, it's kind of regional. But when you hear USC and UCLA are now going to take everybody across the country all year, that was, everybody was like, wow, I can't believe it.

But, you know, you look at the dollars and you understand a little better. And then, you know, we started looking at it and saying, okay, you know, we're the only school in Southern California that, you know, plays Division 1 football at the SBS level and is not in the Big Ten. So we recognize that there's a potential opportunity for us. We sit in a good position right now. It does look like if the Pac-12 can stay alive, they will try and they might expand to San Diego State.

I don't know who else they would bring in to be perfectly honest. I'm not sure it's a viable conference at this stage of the game. I'm also not put off, like, it's not good and it is unfair to athletes to ask them to, especially for those not in the sport of football or basketball, who are used to a lot of travel. Those athletes are used to it.

Not that it's good for them, but, I mean, it's more commonplace. And I would point out, it is, what is it, 2,765 miles between Los Angeles and New Brunswick, New Jersey, where Rutgers is. So, Southern Cal's trip with the women's field hockey team to Rutgers, that's an arduous trip. Hey, that's a lacrosse matchup. It is. For women's.

Oh, is it good? Southern Cal play women's lacrosse? They do. Rutgers does, right? They do.

Sure, why not? New Jersey's big on lacrosse. So, but what is the mileage from Miami to Boston? I mean, it's 2,000 miles anyway. So, all we're really bitching about is time zones.

Yeah. It's still travel, but we have planes now. We do. Although, I will say that we rode the train back from Charlotte yesterday.

You did? Yes, I was with Luke Tkach and Andrew Carter of the News and Observer. We had a blast. We played games on the train. And it was like traveling in the old times. It was very good. You hear the clickety-clack of the track? Yeah.

And you're stopping in towns, and it's just good. It was fun. I felt like I should have been wearing a tweed suit with a bow tie. You should have.

And a bowler hat. Very nice. By the way, train underrated. Oh, it's very good. We had a wonderful time. We probably annoyed all the people on the train with us, but there you go. All right, we have some football things to get to.

NFL stuff to get to, actually. Oh, very good. You know, that sound bite does sound like somebody throwing up. This one?

Play that again. Doesn't it? Kind of.

Am I the only one that thinks that? Okay. A bunch of new numbers for some of the Carolina Panthers. Did you see this story?

No, I did not actually. Okay, we're going to talk to Darren Gant about this and other things later. Among the Baker-Mayfield has negotiated an exchange with punter Johnny Hecker for his beloved number six. If you were Baker-Mayfield, wouldn't you want a different number? I don't know.

I need a fresh start. Maybe the number six was really holding me back. Anyway, Hecker will now wear number ten, which belonged to a wide receiver I'd never heard of.

The biggest issue for me, though, because I'm not really bent out of shape on whatever numbers these people wear. Amare Barno, who is a defensive end from Virginia Tech, who was drafted in the sixth round, is going to wear number 90. What? I have questions. That is Julius Pepper's number, right? Yeah. He is, I mean, if there was one, on the Mount Rushmore of Panthers, no? Oh, easily.

Right? I say so. Nobody's going to wear 89, right?

Nobody's going to wear Steve Smith's number. What about Luke Keakley's 59? No.

What about Sam Mills' 51? I'd say no. Right. Why are we putting 90 on somebody?

I don't understand that. You shouldn't put a number one on anybody either. That's Canada's number.

You don't get an argument from me. I realize that if you do that too often in football, you run out of numbers. But now, with the ability to wear whatever freaking number you want in the NFL, and knowing that there are 99 options, plus if somebody wants to wear zero, I'm sure you could.

And if somebody wanted to wear double zero, I'm sure you could. So with 101 available options, and what, a 53-man roster? Right? Yeah. And let's just add, oh, 15 more players for injury purposes and whatnot. 20 more players. It kind of gives you 25 numbers or so to play with.

Yeah. If your franchise is so amazing that you might have 30 retireable numbers, you know what? We'll figure it out. But you're the Panthers, and you maybe have five. And 90 is one of them.

Nobody should wear... I'm sure maybe Amari Barno was a huge Peppers fan, and he's geeked to wear 90. Yeah. And maybe Peppers gave him permission. I don't know.

But it just seems odd to me. Anybody in the Giants gonna wear 56? Should they? Lawrence Taylor? No? Yeah. I don't believe so. All right, Cardinals gave Kyler Murray the bag yesterday.

Five years, $230 million with $160 million guaranteed. I think I might have shortened him $0.5 million. You did. I did.

I apologize. He'll be okay. So if you're thinking about the future, this probably means that Baltimore's Lamar Jackson is next, right?

Jeremy Fowler of ESPN? I don't know that even the Ravens are willing to give them the Kyler Murray deal at this point. I think they... From what I've heard, it's like there's a gap in the pay, and it's gonna have to be bridged by one of the parties. And right now, it hasn't been. I don't know if there have been enough talks, enough negotiations to even get that far. Because, you know, Lamar talked to GM Eric DaCosta at minicamp. That was considered productive.

But that was also really a victory at the time because they hadn't had a lot of conversations. And so maybe it will heat up now that Lamar is back in Baltimore. He has reported for training camp. By all indications, he will be on the field. And so in good faith, maybe they can negotiate this a little further.

But right now, there just hasn't been enough movement to even know what it would look like. This might come as a shock to many, but the cost for not signing Jackson to a long-term deal, a superior player to Kyler Murray, by the way, is going to be painful for the Baltimore Ravens. Now, the average number that he's gonna play for ultimately is gonna be between 45 and 50. But if you sign him to a long-term deal, you can lessen the cap hit by extending out dummy years. You can always drop the cap hit.

And that's typically what teams do. Except if you're playing on franchise tags, that's your cap hit. So, not this year, but next year, Lamar Jackson's cap number will be 45 million. Because that's what the franchise tag is likely to be. Unless they decide to give him a non-exclusive franchise tag, which would allow any team to sign him to an offer sheet, which then the Ravens would have to meet or let him go for two first-round picks. The following year would be 54 million. Are the Ravens willing to take a 45 million dollar cap hit than a 54 million dollar cap hit?

And I think the year after that is like 72. Oh yeah, for a third-year franchise? I just don't even understand. He's one of the five best players in the game. He's dominant. He is your franchise.

Why are we even having a debate about this? Well, I forget who it was. A couple weeks ago brought up the fact that because he doesn't have an agent, and the front office is trying to contact him, and he's just not answering. He's there! Well, he's there now.

He was there at minicamp! Yeah. Just do it! Yeah. Like, come here. Come here, Lamar. Here's what we're gonna do. We don't want this. We don't want this lingering. Let's get this done now.

Yeah. But what Fowler is telling you is that the Ravens don't want to pay him that money. They don't want to give him Kyler Murray money. He's better than Kyler Murray. Yeah, you shouldn't want to give him Kyler Murray money.

You should give him more. It's not close, really. Anyway. So, it's gonna be fun to watch. Lamar is just a ridiculously good player. Alright, will they or won't they final thing.

Actually, we're probably not gonna have time to get into this a ton. Because it appears that Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers are gonna hand the keys to their first round draft pick quarterback from a year ago, Trey Lance is gonna get the gig. They've given Jimmy Garoppolo a chance.

We'll listen to the ESPN folks a little bit later on. They gave Jimmy Garoppolo and his camp a chance to go seek out a trade. Here's my question. Panthers.

I mean, let me workshop this with me. If you can get Jimmy G and have the 49ers retain a big chunk of the salary for a mid-round pick, why wouldn't you do it? Another one?

Who cares? Can we just trade Sam Darnold straight up for him? Oh no, they want to keep Sam Darnold. I mean, think of the depth in the quarterback room.

I mean, it's a lot of castoffs. Garoppolo, Mayfield, Darnold, and Matt Corral? Stacked. Where's P.J. Walker? P.J. Walker is like, there's no room in the quarterback room. He's in the kicker room now. USFL. So, they gotta get on that. They have to get on that.

Off of the crossbar! And the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup! June 19th, 2006. But it all started May 6th, 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina. It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Cane's Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move. Presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now.

Find Cane's 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcasts. What's your overall impression of what we experienced for 48 hours at Operation Kickoff? I mean, I think a couple of things.

I think one, yes. Jim Phillips' idealism and the last man in power or woman, man or woman in power who still believes that college athletics has a soul worth saving, certainly opened himself up to mockery. There are a lot of people who are questioning whether someone like that is necessarily the best person to navigate a conference at a time of existential threat. But I actually found it kind of refreshing in the sense that we spend all this time talking about money and television and football.

We really have. I think the SEC and Big Ten have lost track of why they got into this business in the first place. If you want pro sports, go be pro sports. And look, I'm for NIL. I'm for players getting a piece of the pie. This is a billion dollar industry.

I'm for all that. But I think there's a Rubicon coming for the ACC where this conference and some of these schools are going to have to ask themselves, are we going to do semi pro sports or are we going to return to our original mission from 70 years ago, room 232 or whatever it is, the Sedgefield Inn? The problem is we already know the answer. The ACC is going to chase the tail of this dog just like everybody else, whether they can keep up or not. And schools like Duke in North Carolina are going to end up in an existential crisis of their own, saying what value does athletics deliver to us from an educational perspective if that answer increasingly accretes towards zero?

Here's what's interesting to me about this conversation that and I tried to ask the question a couple of times yesterday. Twenty years ago, the distribution to each member of the ACC is a little bit more than 20 years ago was nine million dollars per school. And that was the number one distribution of any conference. The SEC was second at eight million. Nobody foresaw this, this amount of money. It was always going to go up because everything goes up. But nobody foresaw the explosion to this degree to the point where when the SEC deal kicks in, now you add Texas and Oklahoma to the mix, and when the Big Ten renegotiates their deals, we're probably talking about a hundred million dollars per school in media revenue. And when that happens, it automatically changes your focus. Like, it can't help.

Because if we were presented that, I think we would all make like, oh my, all of this money? We could join the live radio, live media tour. Live Fridays with Luke and Adam.

It's on my brain. I can't stop. Every single Friday, you and I mention the live tour in some way, whether it's legit or sarcastic.

I don't wait until Friday, man. I make jokes about it now. Every one of our single conversations. Oh, yes.

And when I run into you, we usually have some jokes to make too. No, I think that the point you make about nine million dollars is great because what it gets back to is, I think there's a point where a certain amount of money becomes enough. But that's not the way these people look at it, because here's what I mean by that. If you had told ACC ADs in 2000 that they're getting nine million a year, whatever it is now, in 20 years, you're going to get 52 million. They would have been like, oh my God, what a windfall. What can we do with that?

That's going to be great. Instead, you know what they say now? Oh, you know, if this gets any worse, we're going to have to cut sports. They will always spend every nickel. Some of that's because technically these are nonprofits. Some of that's because it's human nature if you give someone $20 and tell them they can't keep what they don't spend, they will spend all $20. It's like the end of a supermarket sweep. It's like giving my kid money going to camp. Right.

It's not coming back. Your kid might come back, but the money's not. So where does that go? It goes into hiring assistant, deputy, associate athletic directors who do very little. But I'm sure they have real jobs and they work hard.

But could that function be fulfilled by four fewer people? It was in 2000. It goes into pockets of architects and contractors and developers.

And I made this argument earlier this week in the paper. The Big Ten has $100 million per team. ACC has $50 million per team. The basic cost of playing big time college sports right now, and we'll get to the later in a second. Right now, you can do it for $50 million a school. That extra $50 million does not give you an incremental competitive advantage.

Those extra million dollar strength coaches, the third flat screen in the volleyball lockers, the massage chairs in the football locker room, the second lazy river in the football complex does not give you the marginal return on the next $50 million. And maybe the number is not 50. Maybe it's 60.

Maybe it's 30. The marginal return going beyond that point, it starts to minimize. So I'm not as worried about the ACC quote unquote falling behind as long as the ACC is in the conversation and at whatever the baseline is to compete.

Now, here's the later. If you end up having to start cutting players in on the pie, which I think is the right thing to do, then maybe that nut gets bigger. Maybe your zero number gets bigger. But maybe it doesn't, because maybe you spend less on facilities and you spend less on salaries. And you threaten to cut sports, but in the end you don't because cutting sports is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the school because if you cut a non-revenue sport, whatever money you save in the athletic budget, you lose in the university budget, which is what East Carolina found out with purple egg all over their face. Not only were they costing the school money by cutting tennis and swimming, they got in tight line trouble, and they had to spend a bunch of money on legal fees.

So there's ways. Not everybody's going to sponsor as many sports as North Carolina, and that's fine. But the idea that somehow making more money means you have to cut sports is one of my favorite college athletics tautologies. The volleyball locker room's not getting another flat screen.

But you know, I mean, whatever. But look at the facilities. Let's just take for an example Duke. Well, compare it to the NFL. Every NFL locker room isn't close to as lavish as the top football programs. Not even the top football programs. Football programs in college. No, and look at the Hurricanes. Look at the Hornets. Their facilities are very nice.

They're adequate. They can compete at the highest level in their sport, and they have nowhere near the bells and whistles. And do you know why? Because they are businesses, and they're run to make a profit. So you don't have to spend every nickel. The owner wants to keep some for themselves. And that's the difference, I think, with college sports is the more money you make, it just means you spend more. There's no rationality.

And here's the other thing, Adam, not just players. If I'm the chancellor of Ohio State, and I look at $100 million and say, well, you guys functioned pretty well on $80 million two years ago, at some point, the provost and the deans are going to come for that money. They are going to come for that money. And a lot of these schools, as academics has been subsidizing athletics for a while, that worm is going to turn. That doesn't happen at Ohio State. Maybe not Ohio State. It might happen at Purdue. Purdue, Michigan, yeah, Northwestern. Michigan, I don't know that the athletic department is subsidized at Michigan.

Put 105,000 people in that stadium. No, but I can see the academics coming for their chunk of change. Oh, sure.

It could happen, and it should, to be honest. I've always thought that to really boil all of this down, these are not nonprofits. No, it's a billion-dollar industry. Right. So why don't we simply tax, look at them as businesses? I mean, I think you can... Tax them. In the end, you have a billion-dollar industry that relies on what is essentially unpaid labor.

Right. There's any number of ways you can go about addressing that. Yes, taxing them is absolutely one of them. Classifying athletes as employees, which eventually to some degree is going to happen, maybe not flat-out employees, but collective bargaining between schools and athletes on things like transfers and things like how many classes you have to take and all of the, you know, everyone's like, oh, athletes have too much freedom now. You can negotiate that if you think that's true, but they're going to want something in return and that something is going to be money. Oh, sure.

I would like that money, too. All right, look, did you hear any football this week? Man, I did. I talked, I had some good conversations with people about football, but just absolutely dwarfed by these bigger-picture questions. And frankly, last year, Texas and Oklahoma was the cloud hanging over this. Yeah, but at least that happened on day two. It didn't happen on day one. Well, NIL was the cloud hanging over it.

All anyone wanted to talk about last year was NIL and NIL. I'm tired of hearing about guardrails. I'm not into it. It is what it is. There's always been inducements. There's always been financial inducements.

It's just on top of the table now. I just have no time. And I don't even have the energy to argue about it with people.

I'm like, we've always had it. The coaches who are most concerned about NIL affecting recruiting, which is essentially the free market for the record, are the coaches whose boosters haven't ponied up as much money as others. And I'm sympathetic with it. Like, look, if I were a football coach, and I were a couple years older than I am now, and I got into a position where instead of recruiting people with my charm and my pitch, I was losing recruits to some school whose boosters were just putting piles of money on the table, I probably would not like that either.

And I would certainly question whether this was a profession I wanted to be in. But that open market has been going on secretly for decades and decades upon decades, and you're, oh, hey, this quarterback's uncle suddenly has a new kitchen. We all know the stories. A lot of yellow wood. Bringing a lot of yellow wood.

That's a nice deck. Bringing all that stuff above the table I think is actually cleansing and sanitizing. And look, if Texas A&M is or isn't buying an entire football team, if they're doing it now, what are the odds that all that money just came out of nowhere? Zero. Right. That's what I'm saying. So, inducements have been going on since we've had recruiting.

So, I keep using this example. John Wooden was a great coach. But there were a lot of other players that all of those guys from New York who went to UCLA could have gone between New York City and UCLA. They could have stopped in Philly. They could have stayed in New York. It wasn't just that John Wooden was a great coach and there was a tradition.

There were plenty of places to go. There was a reason. It's okay. Yeah.

No, it is. And as I said, one, it brings it out in the open where we can all see it and then we can maybe wrangle with it if we want to. Or, B, you've been profiting from a protected market for college athletes because you couldn't pay them over the table. So, how did you compete for them? With facilities. With coaches. By spending all of this money on things that don't really matter, now you can actually spend it on the players. And they don't have to watch a $20 million football facility they don't need get built with that money. They can actually get a piece of it.

And this is all very opposed to it. Yes. Does it get away from the educational mission of college sports?

We got away from that years ago. Is there value in college sports other than people making money? Absolutely. There is.

As a fan, as an athlete, as a coach. There's a reason everyone cares about this stuff so deeply. But to pretend that it can be rinsed of financial imperatives is, to use Jim Phillips' word, Pollyannish. That said, I like the idea that even as he says all options are on the table, he's willing to say that, hey, this is supposed to stand for something. Let's try to keep that in mind as we engage in this all-out scramble for more money. Let's at least try to be less naked about it than the SEC and Big Ten have been.

It would be really good if at the end of the day the joke isn't on him. That the ideals of what college sports is supposed to be do win out to enough of an extent. Where we don't have the destruction. Yes. Let's just say this. I haven't complained about a lot of this stuff.

I've been pro-reform. I don't think USC and UCLA being in the Big Ten makes sense for anyone. It doesn't make sense for the athletes, it doesn't make sense for the schools.

It only makes sense financially and for Fox. And I think that's the line the ACC is going to get to a point where ESPN is going to tell them, say, hey, if you want to be number three, you have to add Washington and Oregon. And the ACC, that's the Rubicon. Does the ACC do it even though it flies in the face of everything that this enterprise is supposed to stand for? Or does it say, you know what, we're not going to do that.

We're not going to take direction from our network partner and do something that we think is detrimental to not only our conference but the future of this enterprise. I don't know what happens. I think they probably do it and we all complain and then we're back here next year and trying to figure out how long it's going to take the Oregon and Washington players to get back to campus for the ACC kickoff. It'll be a three-day because we won't have divisions. We'll just have them separated.

Won't that be fun? Oh, my gosh. This is the Adam Gold Show. Off with a crossbar and the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup. June 19th, 2006. But it all started May 6th, 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina. It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Canes Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move. Presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now. Find Canes' 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcasts.