Gary Stokan // Mack Brown // Dave Clawson

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. Chick-fil-A, Peach Bowl, the Chick-fil-A kickoff classic, which is, by the way, the nation's longest-running kickoff game and reinventor of the neutral site season opener that has paved the way for blockbuster games.

The blockbuster games on opening weekend. I got that right from the press release. Nice job. Thank you very much. I did give you a Chick-fil-A sandwich. You did. I thank you very much.

You gave it to my son because he devours them all the time. Earlier today, I thought I was talking with the man with the best job in sports. I was talking to Bill Hancock, executive director of the college football playoff.

And then I realized through our conversation that you actually have the best job in sports. Why is that? You just spent, I don't even know whether this matters or not. You just spent what, two weeks? You went to Wimbledon and the Open Championship? Is that where you were?

That's where I was. Had a great memorable trip with my five-year-old grandson, my son-in-law, and my wife. It was truly remarkable. The weather at the Open, you couldn't get any better.

That's the hottest Wimbledon they've had on record for the men's finals. And we were safe in our travels. We were able to stay in St. Andrews, the little town, to walk around. It was, God blessed us with ten beautiful days of memories for my five-year-old grandson mainly, but also for my wife and son-in-law. What did you wear?

Did you set a court? No, we were, thank God, we were up under the shade across from the Royal Box. So it was the hottest day Wimbledon's had, and people were walking out of there just red from the sun. It was terrible. But what did you wear?

That's what I need to know. Because people get dressed for Wimbledon. I did have long pants on, I will tell you, and I had a golf shirt on. I think it was a Masters golf shirt.

But it was truly sensational. We were really blessed. Got home late Tuesday night, Wednesday went to SEC Media Days.

It was good to have a home game in college football, a Hall of Fame in Atlanta, and then flew up here late last night to come visit with you. You're a big man. You have your own show now. Yeah, look at that.

It's not 99.9, the fan, it's Adam Gold on the logo. It's just amazing what you've done, where you've come from. You may be the most important guy. No, no, like anybody that can wear those yellow shoes. You like them?

Thank you very much. Alright, Saturday, September 3rd, you have Georgia, Oregon. And then Monday, September 5th, you've got Clemson, Georgia Tech. You guys have built such a brand with these preseason games and all you do. Just talk to me about where this is and where we're going forward with this.

Yeah, great points, great question. You know, to have three games this year with the CFP semifinal at the end of the year, we announced a sellout two weeks ago, record sellout. To have the Georgia, Oregon, Phil Steele has Oregon number 10, Georgia number 3, sellout we announced yesterday.

And then to follow that up Monday night with number 5 Clemson against Georgia Tech and Mercedes-Benz Stadium to start and kick off the ACC season. In an unopposed TV slot on ESPN, we have sold out that game as well. Sold out that game? This is an exclusive. We just announced the sellout. The release may not even be out yet, but Adam Gold is getting an exclusive. Look at that.

Look at that. So we've sold out all three of our games. Five of the six teams playing in them are in the top ten.

These three games are three of the top six conventions in Atlanta, which is the fourth largest convention ten in the United States. Over $100 million of economic impact and $6 million in sales tax will go into our community. We'll donate more than $6 million this year, which is a record for us. And we're the most charitable bowl organization in the country out of 44 bowls. So it's going to truly be a record season for us. So we're blessed.

Right. What you guys do is special and the brand that you have built is special. And when people look at the landscape of college football, it always seems to come back with to who cares about the bowls. When you hear that, why should people care about them? Well, what I care most is, you know, us being able to use football to give back. We've donated $60 million since 2002 through college football games. We gave $20 million to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta to start the Peach Bowl Legacy Fund, to fund now seven trials that have 12 kids in them to eradicate childhood cancer. That's what I care about.

What other people say doesn't bother me. We control, we control. We're going to give back to college football by moving the College Football Hall of Fame to Atlanta, building it, sustaining it. We're going to give back, you know, $60 million since 2002. And we're going to create opportunities for student athletes to have experiences like listening to Congressman Lewis and C.T.

Vivian and Ambassador Young in Ebenezer Baptist Church here about civil rights. We're going to take them through the College Football Hall of Fame and have them dream about being inducted in that Hall of Fame as a Hall of Famer 15 years from now to aspire to be that. We're going to give fans a unique first-class experience through our tailgate towns, through our experience at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. So, you know, you control what you can control, and hopefully we can put our arms somehow around what's going on in college football and make it better moving forward. I have some concerns big time about what's going on. I think our kickoff games are in danger of not existing in the future, but that's okay if that's what's best for college football. We're going to get to those concerns in a second.

I just want to know, should NC State fans already be booking hotels for New Year's Eve in Atlanta? Adam Golden Studio with my man Coach Pete DeRuder with the Capital Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement. Coach, let's say I have more than a million dollar balance in my 401K. Congratulations.

Thank you very much. How can that actually come back and bite me? Well, because, and this is a thing that we, it's a mirage.

You see mirages, I've written in the desert before, you see what's water ahead, but it's not there. Well, your financial mirage is thinking that that total balance in your 401K or your IRA is yours. We have two people that want to get ahold of it, two uncles, Uncle North Carolina and Uncle Sam. Both of them are going to do some damage to that balance depending on what kind of other income you have. You could lose 40% of your value.

So if you're looking at a million dollar IRA, maybe it's only worth $600,000 to you. So how do we get around this? Well, you don't get around it because you end up in jail if you try to do that. But you can do tax planning to minimize the effect of taxation into the future. The tax train is coming, Adam. We need to make sure to minimize the effect of the derailment of our financial accounts. And for the next 10 people, we'll do it at no cost or obligation. Put together your very own tax and retirement plan.

800-661-7383 or text ADAM to 21000 for Coach Pete DeRuta. From your lips to God's ears, I'll save them a lot of hotel rooms. But, you know, obviously Dave Dorn's a good friend and NC State's where my heart is. I owe them a debt of gratitude for giving me my education and letting me start my life debt free. And so many good Wolfpack fans out there that I love that have been so good to me. But, you know, this is the year for NC State with who they have coming back.

Two great coordinators, a quarterback that's one of the best in the country, a defense that's really strong. This is the year for NC State. And, you know, obviously I root for NC State and I root for Dave Dorn. I root for other coaches more so than I root for programs. And we've got to be neutral, but I would love to find a way if NC State could get to our bowl game before I retire. I've had them in the kickoff game once, but they've never been in our bowl game. And they've been in our Peach Bowl in history more times than I think anybody but Clemson. So, it'd be great to end my career over the next few years here having NC State in our game.

Gary Stoke, Executive Director of the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic is joining us here. Alright, to your concerns. Are your concerns that two conferences are going to grow so big, meaning that they're not done at this point, that it's going to eliminate the need for any non-conference games, they will just play each other?

So, explain what you mean about your concerns as it pertains to the elimination of the kickoff games. Not to denigrate any presidents or commissioners or ADs or anybody, but my concern is holistically about what are we doing. Are we in the education business or are we in the business of sports business? Right. Let's declare and let's move forward.

You can't be both. You know, if we're in the education business, give you an example. My concern on collectives. Collectives shouldn't exist and donor money shouldn't exist to pay kids to come to that university in a pay-for-play scheme. Those collectives should be available so that when that kid, student athlete, athlete, whatever you want to call him, goes to that university, gets his degree, then that collective should be there to give him a job. That's what those collectors should be doing. Not paying kids on the front side to come there, but be there on the back side so that volleyball player at NC State, when she graduates, she has a job because that's what we're in the business of.

Educating kids and making them citizens in the United States or wherever to give something back to society. Right. We keep looking at the 2% instead of the 98%, which I was a part of.

Right. Where's the conversation with the NFL? When Kenny Pickett can be a first team All-American and not play in our bowl game because the NFL gives him a draft card and first round pick and he can't play in his bowl game because he's worried about getting hurt. Where are they with an insurance program to say, Hey Kenny, we're going to pay you a lot of money in the NFL and here, go play in your bowl game. You've got an insurance program that takes care of you.

So if you do get hurt, you've made your money in the insurance program. Where's that dialogue taking place? Where's the dialogue that we're the second most favorite sport by fans? Yep. That is true. The NFL is number one by a far, far distant place. They're making over 10 billion in TV revenues. We collectively in college football will make about a billion dollars. Right.

That's too much of a gap, right? We would be better as we learned in business school of one plus one equaling three rather than one minus one equaling minus two, which is what we're doing individually with these conferences. We need to get united around a conference commission, a college football commissioner. Sure.

A college basketball commissioner, an Olympic sport commissioner, and a college baseball commissioner and have them develop a board that is made up of ADs and commissioners who know that sport, let them create a vision of the sport, break them out of the NCAA, and have that sport run their own rules and their own regulations, enforcement, and move that sport forward with some vision in basketball and football and baseball and Olympic sports. That's my thought that we should be doing instead of UCLA being $100 million in debt, running from the Pac-12, which they've been in for 85 years, and going to the Big Ten, just like Maryland did. Absolutely.

That's wrong. Maryland was also in financial trouble. Where are we teaching kids, right? But, yeah, we're talking about student athletes' welfare, but we're going to have them travel from UCLA to Rutgers to play a lacrosse match and take up three days and travel. Hey, they're in school, right? Let's get them an education.

Let's get them a job afterwards, and that's the business we should be in instead of professional sports. Let me close on this with Gary Stokin from the Peach Bowl. I asked this of Jim Phillips. Based on everything that's happened over the last, let's just say, 12 months, how can the leaders of these conferences, how can there be trust when Greg Sankey and Bob Bolesby are sitting across from each other while at the same time Texas and Oklahoma are leaving the Big 12 for the SEC? We had this alliance and the Big Ten adds UCLA and USC. Jim's answer was, it's business.

I still don't know that you – how can there be trust? How can we trust everybody to work together? Well, what are we saying to our student athletes, right? These are grown men doing things, and I don't blame Bob Bolesby or Greg Sankey in the instances you brought up. It's the presidents of universities who have asked to be the leaders of the NCAA. There's no leadership in the NCAA. We're where we're at because of the lack of leadership.

Presidents do great jobs in universities. They have too much going on to know sports. That's why they hire an AD, right? But they need to get out of the way because they can't lead because they don't know the sport. They don't have time to know the sport.

God bless them. I'm not denigrating them. I'm not denigrating the commissioners. But you need a focused leadership. You need a breakaway from the NCAA.

You can't have schools that don't play football voting on things that might impact schools that play big-time football. At the end of the day, the presidents need to give up the leadership. To lead, you need to be able to create a vision, and you have to be willing to take heat. God bless the presidents. They don't want the heat, and they don't know the sport, so they can't create a vision.

Again, not denigrating them. It's the reality of their job. John Sankey is doing what's best interest of the SEC because that's who he's paid by, the president. What we all need to do is get on the same page collectively together and say, We're college football. Here's where we're going to go. We're college basketball. Here's where we're going to go. We're Olympic sports.

Olympic sports, 80% of athletes in the Olympic teams to represent this country come from the universities. What's going to happen to them? We need to have somebody focused on the Olympic sports and move them forward collectively together. It may be that they break up into working under the NGB roles.

Who knows? But we need people focused. That's the way you have to run the business. You can't run a business with five different conferences and 550 other schools trying to make a decision.

Everybody has different needs. Basketball has different needs than football. Football, different needs from Olympic sports. So let's, if we're in the business of sport, let's say we're in the business of sports and running like a business. If we're in the business of education, let's get the kids educated, look out for their student-athlete welfare, mental health, et cetera, and then let's get them a job afterwards.

That's what we should be focused on. All right. I'll see you New Year's Eve with the Wolfpack at the Peach Ball. As I said, from your lips to God's ears. Gary's going to be with you. Congratulations on your new show and all the best.

All right. When we come back, we thank Gary Stokken. We've still got Mack Brown and Dave Claussen coming. Wake's coach, Carolina's coach, both of those still to come on the Adam Gold show.

Mack Brown is the head coach at the University of North Carolina. How's the conveyor belt treating you here at Operation Kickoff? It's good.

It's good. You got to be, uh, uh, in fact, the, uh, this is my 34th media day. Wow.

So the guys used to tell me the best thing you can do is leave with no headlines and that at 70, you just say what you think. So there's going to be something. So that's just part of the deal. It's interesting. You bring that up.

You could get away with more as you get older. My grandmother, I don't know why I'm telling this story. Uh, my grandmother is no longer with us. Obviously she was in her mid nineties. She was at an assisted living home, totally had all her faculties and would steal books from the library because she liked them. She said, what are they going to do?

Not give me cherry pie. She had a, she had a reason for it. Joe Paterno came and honored me at a function in Texas and he stood up. He insulted everybody that was there and they laughed and gave him a standing ovation. And I said, how do you do this? I think it was 83 or something. I said, ah, when you get this age, they, they, they're amazed that you remember things and say things. So it doesn't matter. Mac Brown life after Sam Howell.

What is it? Well, we, we, three years ago when we sat here, Sam Howell never played in a ball game. Right. And as a true freshmen, he beat South Carolina and Miami in the first two games. The two guys we have are very talented in Jacoby. Chris will, um, player of the year in Arkansas, Drake may flip from Alabama player of the year in North Carolina, and they've got experience.

So we should be further and we have better players now than we had when Sam started three years ago. Um, so we've just got to see how it plays out. People have said, are you going to play too? That depends on them. Right.

You know, if you would you rather play one? Yeah, I'd rather have Sam back, but we don't. So what we've got to do is whatever the situation dictates for us to win, we've got to figure it out and do it.

That's our job as coaches. June 19th, 2006, but it all started May 6, 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 quarter look at the 25th anniversary of the move presented by the aluminum company of North Carolina. Listen, now find James 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcast. Oh, I want to ask you about both of these quarterbacks in a second, but I'm curious about Sam. It was one of the real, it was a cool thing. I thought that he played in the ball game last year because I mean, Kenny picket didn't play in the ball game because a lot of these guys are protecting their futures, which I understand. I understand. I'm sure you do too. Um, what were you surprised that Sam said, yeah, I'm going to play.

No, I was pleased, but I wasn't surprised. He never even thought about not playing because he's a football player. Goes back to Ricky Williams when he was at Texas where we're playing in the cotton bowl. And he's already won the Heisman and he said, sure, I'm playing. Why wouldn't I play?

Cause I love to play. And I said, well, you may get hurt. He said, I'm going to get hurt riding the bike. He said, so I don't worry about it. And Cedric Benson sat and cried in the locker room after we beat Michigan, the Rose bowl. I said, what are you crying about?

You hurt your knee. And he said, no. He said, I'm crying because I'll never have a university of Texas uniform on again. So the there's still passion with some of the guys and Sam just won the Patterson award, which is one of the highest awards you can win at the university of North Carolina. And he's given back to, to kids that can't, um, afford to eat good in, in orange County. So he's just a wonderful representative of the university and of his family. And, and, uh, he did so much for us. He really, I think it's one of the things happened last year. He got us ahead of where we should have been.

Right. Um, because of his first two years and then we weren't good enough to help him enough last year. But, but he's put us back on the map and got us in a position now where we can actually compete at this level. You warned everybody about last year.

Nobody listened. It was so funny. I was sitting there and I said, I've been in the media.

They're thinking it's, it's just me talking. I watched us. Right. I'm going to be honest. That's the thing.

You can be at 70. And I said, we weren't playing good. I didn't want to convince our team.

We were bad, but I was trying to convince the team that you can't just walk around and be complacent and when we're not good enough. And they just, they, they listen to all the hype more than they listen to me. And that's kind of what today's about. It's a hype day. It is because everybody's got hope and everybody's as healthy as we're going to be. And everybody's going to be good. And everybody's excited and all that. And the truth that seventh, eighth game, it'll be about 90% of these will have a disappointing year and not finished like they wanted to. And that's just part of part of media day.

We'll find out pretty soon how good you are. Cause I think your trip to up the, up to the, to the rock is going to be interesting. You have a game week zero this year is, was that game designed to just kind of knock the kinks out before you get to the game at app? No, but we wanted a home game with young quarterbacks before we went on the road to a tough game at app state. And it also gave us an open date before Notre Dame. Okay.

So it really worked well from, from two or three different standpoints. But you, you really don't want to take young quarterbacks that have not started in a game and put them on the road against a really good team. And app, I think app is very, very good. This is going to be a toss up game. Um, I think the game at Georgia, Georgia state, they're better than they've ever been.

Sean Elliott's done a tremendous job. I told our people, uh, everybody, all of our opponents that are in, um, FCS should schedule us because they all get really good after they schedule us. So I said, that's, that's exciting for us to, to have, we're going to Georgia state, we're going to app state. So we've had trouble waiting on the road. There you go.

We'll have to get that fixed fast. One more question about the two quarterbacks that you've got. Um, if it's even whether they both played well, or they've just kind of both tread water, what's your plan? If it's even, do you have a guy that you think, well, we can, we can manage more this way. Like if they're even do you met, can you manage the game more with Chris?

Well, because of his, the other attributes or do you trust me? Yeah, we haven't gotten there yet. It's a great question. And one that we'll have to address, we're hoping that they'll separate.

Okay. That's what we're hoping. And if, if not, we're hoping there'll be a reason that you're not rock, rock, paper, scissors that you have to choose one in pregame. Who wants to play it, man? You got it.

You should let them do it. Yeah. It'd be fun. We played two quarterbacks and it's worked. We put one in. If he kept scoring, we left him in.

Okay. If he didn't score, he came out and that, that was the goal. We told him that's, it's not complicated. It's pretty simple.

It does seem like a simple equation. You've, you've coached at all levels. You were an app when they were one double a, you went to Tulane. You've been, you were, this is the second run here, Texas.

So you've been all over the place. How do you look at the state of college football today? I, um, it's very healthy with some real life problems that we need to fix and need to fix immediately.

We're making decisions without looking at consequences. We throw the transfer portal out there. It's good for Joe burrow. It's good for a lot of kids that needed to transfer, but then we don't have guidelines. We don't say when it is kids are leaving at mid season. They're just walking away from their teams, which isn't healthy. People are, are buying people off campuses now, which is, they say they're not, but they are, it's, it's real.

It's happening. Um, and then you go back and look at the combination of NIL, which is a wonderful thing. And thought if, uh, an artist can make money as a student, musician can make money as a student. Why can't an athlete? Right. So I got it. We had no guidelines.

We had no guard rails. So now, um, the ones that are paying the most money for the recruits are the ones that are going to have the best recruiting years. And we need to always keep a competitive balance and recruiting, or we're going to have 10 teams that are playing and the rest of us are just going to be standing around watching.

Um, so we, we've got to make some really hard decisions right now, uh, and because people need more money now than ever before realignment's talked about, that's the next step of this. And, and I'm a guy that really believes in what's best for college football, not just what's best for North Carolina, even as the president of the American football coaches association, I used to ask the coaches on the board. There were 17 of us vote for what's best for college football.

Don't vote for what's best for your school. Right. And to me, um, 50 teams and two mega conferences is not best. You're going to have a whole lot of good programs that just die.

Yeah. And the fans aren't going to come if it's not competitive. And if it's not something that they're playing for, then it's going to drift down and hurt group of five and then FCS and then division two and three. Uh, so I'd rather see us keep conferences across the country and be competitive and really look at it.

They, they threw out a 12 team playoff. Well, why don't we do it? Well, what are the consequences? Let's think about all the things we're going to have to fix after we do it, but let's do it before we do it. And I think that's the thing we've got to learn. So let, let's, let's be better prepared and ask more questions and have more different, um, situations through the process that we can evaluate before we just say, we're going to pick this one.

Mac Brown. I know you have to go, but I wasn't sure if this was going to be ACC media day or big 10 media day where I talked to you or SEC media day because I was told that Bubba Cunningham was basically shopping UNC to the, to the highest bidder. Uh, so, but this is just a joke. Uh, but I thank you very much for your time. It's always fun.

Thank you. I remember at Texas and I'll make this very quick. Uh, they thought we were going to the PAC 12. We looked at recruiting. We looked at travel. We looked at everything the day before ESPN got a Longhorn network.

It went away. So I'm worried about Florida and who's going to start at quarterback. How do we get a lot more depth on our team?

Why did we play so inconsistent last year? I'm not worrying about where we're going to be playing. You look like you're in a good place. I'm at a good place. Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right. We'll be right back with Dave Kloss in a wake forest next. We've heard from NC state yesterday, North Carolina. It's day Duke today. Who's missing wake forest head coach, Dave Kloss. And we caught up to him up with him yesterday afternoon. The new world order of college football, where it doesn't make a difference.

What time zone you're in, you can be in whatever conference you want. Um, I hate to start there, but I guess I did. What's your take on where this whole thing is headed. I really don't know.

I don't think anybody knows. Um, you know, I, I would be an advocate for a commissioner of college football or a leadership group that makes decisions in the best interest of the enterprise. I've said this before, but I don't think anybody's doing anything wrong right now. You know, commissioners have to act in the best interest of their conference.

Right. Athletic directors and presidents have to act in the best interest of their institution, but nobody is overlooking the entire enterprise. So even though some of these moves might be good for individual conferences or individual conferences, I'm not convinced it's good for college football as a whole, but until there's a leadership of college football, uh, I think we're going to continue down this road and sometimes it may be a slow trickle and other times it comes out of nowhere.

Uh, it's like, it's, it's like opening up a fire hydrant. Um, I, you know, I've talked about it in these, in this way too, without getting to the, you know, uh, a commissioner of the sport in that what has happened was really good for a few schools in a couple of leagues or in one, in one league. Um, but the overall product, it ultimately hurts because all of the attention, everything gets kind of separated to like, I think Jim Phillips today called it the two gated communities. Like I get the whole gated community thing, but inclusion is good, especially for this.

It's hard to grow an enterprise by limiting opportunity. And again, I'm not critical of what anybody's doing or any decision they're making, but everyone's doing what's best for their leg or their school. And at some point it would be nice to have somebody that looks at the totality of college football and college athletics and says, what's best for the entire enterprise. You know, I don't know if schools moving conferences is generating, uh, you know, more value or more revenue.

It's just shifting it. Dave Clausen from Wake Forest. Final question about, about this is what's good for college football, good for college athletics, or are those two things separate? Uh, again, I think, you know, everybody has to make decisions at each institutions of how invested they are. Um, you know, at Wake Forest, we've invested in football. You know, we've spent a hundred million dollars on facilities. We've won a lot of football games.

We've invested in our staff. And I think it'd be hard to say that this point, Wake Forest is an all in with football. Uh, and I think us being all in and us selling out our stadium has benefited the other sports at Wake Forest that when you sell out your stadium, you have more revenue. And that certainly helps our soccer team and our women's golf team and our field hockey team and all the sports that we want to be successful at at Wake Forest to have a good, well-rounded athletic department. Yeah, we keep watching your, uh, the men's golfers nearly win major championships.

Yeah. And in our, in both of our golf teams won the ACC championship this year. And we're really proud of those athletes and those coaches.

Dave Clausen, let's talk football, shall we? Uh, maybe you don't like to look back, but I'm curious, what is your highlight of last year? It was a great year, obviously. I mean, there were so many of them, but certainly, uh, you know, the, the NC state game is a really big game for us. And that game, you know, the winner of that game was going to be in the driver's seat to win the Atlantic division. And for that game to be at night and have our stadium sold out, we had over 90% of our students at Wake Forest at that game. And it was a magical night for our program. And, uh, and it's, you know, we beat a team that we have great respect for. That's a really good football team. But there were so many highlights, you know, beating Syracuse in overtime and finding a way to beat Louisville and, uh, winning the bowl game and winning the Atlantic division championship at BC. You know, when you win 11 games and have a year like that, there's a lot of highlights coming after the state game and knowing what was on the line.

Uh, how did you get the guys up to play it? Cause BC wasn't bad. I thought BC was a good football team. We had, uh, NC state and then we had Clemson. So the challenge was we did, we went down to Clemson and didn't play well. So you got that out of the way.

Yeah. And then, so that became, you know, you gotta, and if you look at teams records after they play Clemson, it's not real good. Uh, and so that was the challenge is, Hey guys, we still control this thing. We could have wrapped up the league at Clemson. We failed to do that and we had one more chance and we went to BC and played a heck of a game. I wanted to ask Jim Phillips today why he didn't just scrap divisions right now altogether, but I guess this is way that the way the schedule is going to be. But now divisions are gone after this year, divisions are gone, which will allow you to play North Carolina in conference games more often as opposed to having to schedule non-conference games. That's gotta be good. That's positive. But the negative is now we don't play NC State every year. Right. And you know, NC State, we've played them 110 consecutive years. I think it's like any decision you make to get something, you got to give something up. We're glad we get to play Carolina more often.

We're disappointed that 110 year consistent rivalry is going to disappear. Did you get, did you get hosed on the, on the, I guess, primary partners? No. I mean, when you have 14 different schools, right? There's a lot of different agendas. Well, no question. I mean, they could have kept the big four together.

Did you advocate for that? Yeah, but I don't know if that's fair to the rest of the schools in the leg, right? If you keep all those four together and we're in the middle of the leg, right?

Creates a lot of extra travel for other people. So I believe all those things were considered. Dave Clausen is joining us here. A couple more things. The now I totally forgot what I was going to ask you, but that's fine. I appreciate you considering others. Uh, we'll have, we'll have more time to talk throughout the, uh, okay. Thanks for having me on.

Thank you very much. So, I don't know. It all broke. You talked about the machine, the machine broke on you. You grabbed Mac Brown's headset.

You grabbed the wrong one. I was using Mac Brown's microphone. That is awful.

Absolutely awful. I was in the studio sweating for a little bit. We had all sorts of things going on. I just wanted to put on Mac Brown's microphone. Um, yeah, you know, uh, I just, we had, we got distracted by something and I was going to ask him a question about, uh, Hartman and ended up not doing it and that's fine. Uh, all right. Before we get out of here and we have about, uh, roughly two more minutes, uh, give or take, um, the move between from the PAC 12 to the big 10, I mean, it's probably a formality for UCLA and USC for USC.

No strings. They can go. Although they have to wait until their grant of rights ends in a couple of years, UCLA on the other hand might have a hurdle to overcome if the governor of California and the board of regions has some, has any sway over this matter. And I'm not sure they do. This could simply be Gavin Newsom, who's a UCLA guy, I believe Gavin Newsom saying, Hey, wait a minute.

This sucks. Leaving the PAC 10 or PAC 12 to go to the big 10, which in the grand scheme of things it might, it'll certainly be great for UCLA financially. Yes. Because he says that the board of regions was never consulted. The at issue is whether or not the decision for athletics is made simply at the university level or if you must go through the board of regions. And I'll tell you where, how this matters to the ACC because of these types of things. If you have to go through legislation, then I wonder if the grant of rights, which was signed, did that also go through the state legislature? That's a great question.

Just something to think about. Just something to think about 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.