Brenden Whitted shares thoughts on Deion Sanders & HBCU's

This is the Adam Gold Show. I think Michigan is capable for sure, and that game was not a blowout. I thought Carolina got better as the game wore on, and then just kind of leaned on him a little bit. It does look like Carolina's formula has to be exactly what it was last year. Baycott touches all the time, and RJ Davis and Caleb Love do the backcourt lifting.

It was really there. To me, it was Love and Davis and their maturation last year. Where I thought, this team is now taking another step. The guard play was so erratic. It would be Love sometimes, then it'd be Davis sometimes, then it'd be Love. And I think that them having a more distilled set of skills. Davis, if you're kind of old school, traditional point guard, he's going to set people up. He's going to get people in the right space. He runs a pick and roll about as well as I've seen at Carolina in particular. Because they just use it so much more. The offense is just more updated. Under Hubert Davis. NBA style offense. Which should help them in recruiting moving forward too. And Love is just kind of your wild card.

Who you have no idea what you're going to get. He plays hard. I do appreciate that. I appreciate the fact that even when he is not shooting well, because he takes a ton of tough shots.

Some guys just have that in their DNA. It's very diplomatic for you, by the way. It is.

I got to pull up verse two from 30 feet away. And it's like, all right, because we've seen them make those. And I appreciate Davis giving him a little bit more leeway. Giving him that green light. I don't know if other coaches would have done that. I haven't really seen that player get this sort of burn. Get this sort of love from the coach.

And then their maturation, like, Love, you're just going to go out. You're going to be the wild card. You know what you have in Baycott. And now we've replaced Manic with Nance, essentially.

Which, Manic was great. He was great for that team. And he gave them a different feel for their bigs. Yeah, we would have two bigs out there. But it would be a big with real shooting distance. And now Baycott has more room to work inside.

By the way, Baycott season I wanted to keep an eye on. Because it started out like he was taking more long jumpers. He was doing the thing of, hey, I've talked to a lot of NBA scouts. I've talked to a lot of people. I need to work on this.

I need to show that I worked on it. He's taking some of that away. He stopped doing as much of it.

Where you're like, hey Baycott, this isn't you. It's just not his game. He doesn't have that sort of touch. He actually reminds me a lot of Hansberry.

Hansberry had better touch. He became a decent 3.2. Yeah, he became like, but like, Baycott has that kind of Manic energy. Where it's just like, man, offensive rebound. Which is a skill. I do think that's a skill or a talent. You just having this kind of Wolverine style, oh, I'm going to get to the basket. It does not matter who's around now. How he's going to finish once he gets the offensive rebound.

That's anybody's guess. But guys that can give you extra possessions is so crucial. Particularly when your team takes as many 3s as you and he can sometimes. It's like, man, we're getting another bite of the apple. And we have these sort of shooters. Again, I think you hit the nail on the head. This is essentially the same team as last year. Because there's not really a bench. There really hasn't been that maturation.

And if there's one thing that I've been disappointed, two things. There really hasn't been that step up by some of the guys we saw on the team last year. And then some of these turnovers and free throw stuff.

They were bad at the free throw line last night. Yeah, you've got to be better than that if you're an older team. This is an older team, especially for college. You don't usually get a team that went all the way, that's been together essentially for three years.

Junior, junior, senior are the three best players. And you don't usually get that. And they've got that, and yet sometimes late in games it can get a little dicey. That happened in the Indiana game.

It's just like, hey man, you don't really need to try this pocket pass between three people at a high leverage situation in the game. They still do some of that stuff, but I'm hoping that by the time we get around to January, to February, that this will be that same team that we saw kind of going into the tournament last year. The funny thing about it, they were preseason number one, and I get it. You're in the national championship game, and you bring back 80% of your starters, and you bring in a guy who, athletically, is better than the guy you lost in Nance versus Manic. So I understood why they were preseason number one. But I said this, I don't believe for a minute that they were the best team in the country, because for about four months, we weren't even sure if they were good enough to make the tournament.

And then, end of February, they went into the Duke game, they win that, which was great. By the way, have you heard Paulo Bancaro talk about that? Oh, I heard he said something, but I hadn't actually heard the quote.

We're gonna play it here in a minute. That is fantastic. It is a fantastic clip coming from the old man and the three, J.J. Redding's podcast. One of my favorite basketball podcasts that I catch on the radio. He's amazing at it. J.J., I forget his partner's name, but yeah, it's a great podcast.

So we'll bring you that in a second. So they closed the season out, they were good, then got hot, and Manic hit every big three he looked at, and he also stepped up his defensive game. The underrated part of Manic was the moments he had defensively last year.

He defended Paulo Bancaro in that game at Duke, and did it well. Because remember, in the first game, they tried to put breakout on him, and he ate his lunch. They had to go to Leaky Black, but when they went to Leaky Black, it left other guys vulnerable, so they had to say, you know what, Brady, you do the best you can. Steve Logan, our old friend, used to say, get run over slowly to an offensive lineman, who wasn't very good, just get run over slowly. That's basically what they told Manic, do the best you can. We need Leaky to guard other players. And that helped Carolina's defense, and Manic did a pretty good job on Bancaro. So they got hot, so what's more true, the first four months, or the last month and a half?

And even if we say it's somewhere towards the middle, but even lean towards the good. Alright, well that means that Carolina, this is what I thought, top 15 team, and if they get hot at the end, they can absolutely make a final four. Because Davis is a good point guard. I mean, a very good college point guard. Caleb Love has a lot of upside, he can hit big shots, and he's a good driver. When he drives, because he's powerful, I think Carolina's offense is better, and Bancaro's a dynamite interior player. Love looks athletically different than he did in his first year. It was stronger, but there would be times when he would leave his feet, and even he didn't believe he was gonna get to the rim. And it would be like, man, what's happening? And I don't know if it's a confidence thing, I think obviously physically he matured, but he just looks like a different player. And I don't know if I've ever seen a jump like that from anybody where I'm like, hey, how did you get this high school, all this notoriety, how did you get this starting job?

I was very much questioning what did they see, because I'm not seeing it. And then by last year it was like, oh, okay. This is the guy I heard about, okay, fantastic. And for me, there are games where I don't like it. Oh, for sure, yeah. And there are games where I go, oh man, that's the Caleb Love that we need to see. And we see that, again, I think we see that in big moments. Yeah.

And it doesn't matter if love is 0 for 8. Nope. If the ninth one goes in, guard him when the ball is inbounded. Speaking of which, can I ask a question about the Ohio State game?

I believe you can, yeah. Okay. If you're Chris Holtman, not once, but twice, you refuse to guard the inbound pass.

I don't understand it. Two seconds to go. Just make the inbound pass harder, especially when you're gonna play as passively defensively as they did. They allowed the catch. They didn't even bother R.J. Davis on the catch. Yeah.

I couldn't figure that out. I think I have a bigger issue of not being at point of attack where this thing is coming in, not being more aggressive. Put a tall guy. Yeah, you know the shot has to go up, right? Like, you know the shot has to go up. You're talking about Nance. Oh, yeah, I'm talking about Nance.

I'm talking about the initial inbound pass, which got them to half court. Yeah. I'm like, wait a second. Yeah. Put somebody in front of Leaky Black. Make the pass difficult. It's a philosophical thing. He didn't watch the highlights of Kentucky Duke, did he? I've noticed it with coaches, though. It's kind of like filing up three in basketball. Some coaches are going to do it regardless of the situation, regardless of how well their opposition has shot, and then other coaches are just, nope, we're not doing it at all.

I think it's just one of those things where they think, hey, my way is better. You know what I mean? And there's nothing really, as a fan, you could say, it's kind of the same reason that, you know, even Popovich wasn't immune from this because he takes out Tim Duncan in the game six, and now Chris Bosh gets the off. Well, why didn't you have your best rebounder out there? It's like, I made the decision that we were better and could switch better without Duncan out there.

I mean, right? Taking Tim Duncan out of a game is a decision that was made? I don't even remember. I'm glad I don't remember that. Now I think Popovich is a terrible coach. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll come back, and when we do, you're going to hear what Paulo Bancaro said about going into the final game, home game for Duke last year against Carolina on the ultimate senior night when Coach K was coaching his last game at Cameron and North Stadium.

That coming up with Brendan Whitted, next. As a parent, no two days are ever the same, and let's face it, sometimes a little extra help goes a really long way. That's what's so great about Care.com. They make it easier than ever to find local, experienced, and background-checked child care to help manage your family's ever-changing needs and schedule. From nannies and babysitters to daycare centers and tutors, find help for long- or short-term support. Whether you need an after-school sitter or help with the homework, there's a large selection to choose from, and all caregivers who use Care.com are required to complete a background check before they're able to interact with families on the platform.

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Visit Care.com today. We're going to talk about Deion Sanders a little bit more here in a couple of minutes, but I want you to hear Paulo Bancaro, former Duke star. He was a star at Duke. Now with the Orlando Magic, the first overall pick in the draft, and I know you've seen him.

Oh, Orlando is one of those sneaky, fun teams to watch. He is going to be a headache. By the way, Markel Fultz is not awful.

No, he's not. He's occasionally actually really good. He needed the change of scenery. I think he was physically hurt. I still don't quite understand what it was. His game was broken, too. His game was... And yeah, once your game breaks, you got, like... But kudos to him for being able to get back and be serviceable and helpful in a way where it looks like, okay, you can still have a career, because I was very concerned at one point. I was like, hey, hey, is this... Hundred percent.

Has this worked out as badly as it can? Also, a shout-out to BowBow. Nasty. One of my son's favorite players.

Nice. He absolutely loves... You're saying it's great taste. Oh, he's...

He loves the league. All right. And the segment that comes up at the end of this hour is his creation. Fantastic. So Paulo Bancaro, Duke last year, the entire season was Coach K's last ride.

Right. So he appeared on JJ Redick's Old Man and the Three podcast, and they talked about the lead-up to the final game. Here's that clip. I never felt, to this day, a game like... Like that last game at home. Like, that was... Crazy. Like, just being on the court and, like... Just the amount of pressure and, like, expectation we had, like, we didn't even really practice, like, game plan that week. Like, it was just so much going on around coaching, you know, people coming in, reporters, like, a bunch of media. Like, the most media, you know, we had all year was during that week. And... 96 former players. Yeah, like... Trotting out on the court before the game.

Yeah. It's already been twisted that Duke didn't practice that week. Obviously, they practiced that week, but I could see all the stuff getting in the way of game planning, and they sort of played like it in the second half. And there's another part of that. Do we have the part where Bancaro talked about when Carolina had cut into the lead?

All right, let's play this, because I think this is really telling. It kind of threw us off a little bit, and, I mean, and then once they started coming back, we got a lead early, but, like, once they started to come back in game momentum, it was like, that's when the pressure just, you know, grew to its largest, because we knew if we didn't come back or we didn't respond, like, just the weight of the whole world was on us. And, you know, when we didn't, I mean, it was like... It was tough, man, because we knew the season wasn't over, obviously. We had bigger goals, but, like, that was a game, like, you can't lose. And so that was kind of our mentality. I feel like we were trying not to lose more than we were trying to win. Isn't that amazing?

To have an NBA player say, and I understand he's a rookie, he's only halfway through and Orlando's not good this year, but, like, to have an NBA player say, I've never felt anything like that, because, again, as he mentions, that's not the last game of the season. Right. That came later. It did! It absolutely did. It absolutely did. That was a great basketball game.

That was a great game. But, like, to have him say that, lets you know that, I mean, because he was, to me, he was the clear-cut number one pick. Mm-hmm. Like, I understand Chet, and I get it. Yeah.

Jabari, 100%. It was always him. Yep. And so to have the best player in college say, hey, man, this pressure was stifling, because that team was loaded with talent. Mm-hmm. Not that UNC was some small, bereft team of talent, but, like, you ain't got... It didn't... To me, those weren't equal. Duke was clearly the more talented team.

No, of course not. And so for them just to be so far into their head... Mm-hmm. I have a question based off of this quote now, and I've been thinking about this.

Does that mean that the way Roy Williams did this was better than the way Coach K did it? Uh... Well, in turn... Well, yeah, probably. Right? Because I always wonder if having the last dance, as having something that is, A, everybody knows I'm a legend. Right.

I'm about to be out here. It all depends on... Like, there are two... I think there are two topics of discussion there.

The first is, did Coach K do that because he wanted the adulation? And I personally believe that that's not the case. Okay. Right?

The damage is... Okay. I wanted you to see the eye roll there.

That was a great eye roll. I don't believe he wanted that. Okay. I think he... because I believe that in order for this to do, to work out the way Coach K wanted it, if anything, it was the orchestration of it that forced that to happen. He always wanted Jon to be the guy. Absolutely. Right? And I love Jon.

Jon was on earlier. He is a great guy. I hope it works out well.

I mean, I have... Do I think it? I think it will. I think he's too smart a basketball person for it to not work out. The recruiting, I think he's got pretty much down. That is not going to be a problem for Duke.

No. But I think he wanted Jon to take over and he wanted... like the new players were going to know that. Right. And he wanted to coach the players that they had just brought in so it had to be that way.

So it was inevitable that that was going to be the thing. I think Roy would have continued to coach as long as he wanted to and I think Roy realized, you know what, I just don't want to anymore. So it just hit him different than when Dean did. I thought Dean was strategically helping out his friend Bill Guthridge. Oh, absolutely. Because I don't think Guthridge gets that job otherwise.

No, he doesn't. And what we know about state employees, it was really good for Bill Guthridge's retirement. Right. Which is, I am on board with that.

Yeah, completely understand. Maybe you want to work for the state. I ain't going to lie.

Maybe you want to work for the state. My father-in-law worked for the city of Durham. Yeah. Polite golf clap. Shout out to my dad.

Working at the Department of Public Instruction. Oh, man. Yeah, it was real life.

So I worked at the water plant, my father-in-law. So it's just different but I do agree that in terms of for the basketball, the way Roy did it was better. Yeah. And I just don't think it was intentional. It's just this is the way it was going to end up because everybody would have known.

Nobody's keeping that secret. Right, yeah. I'm just thinking about it and I was thinking about it from a basketball point of view because Coach Williams, the way he did it, one, I do think his was, if I'm being honest, I think the way Kessler left and stuff like that had a lot to do. He talked a lot about the context of college basketball change, like the landscape changing and I think he was realizing, because he was already towards it. This is the winner of his career anyway.

Do I really want to learn all this new stuff? He didn't want to deal with it. He didn't want to deal with it, which again, I completely understand. You do anything for as long. I mean, working at a water plant, working at DPI, you do anything for that long. Hey, maybe that's just enough.

You can love it, but it's okay to just leave. And I think that that sparked his leaving. I'm sure he had already been thinking about it. I would disagree with the coach. They didn't want it to be about him. I don't think you get to give me the last, because it wasn't the last game in camera. It was your last game in camera. This is your last season. It's not nobody else's last season. That's an opinion. That's a fair opinion. And again, I ain't got no problem with it.

I can pop my jersey a little bit and be like, hey, look at me. I don't have no problem with that at all, but I do think that's what's going on now. Here's what I didn't like about it. I didn't like the post game from that game. And that's the other part.

That's why I think it, because he was personally in it. Yeah, he took it that personally. This was unacceptable. For real, it's unacceptable, because this is your last game, and you just got whapped by your biggest rival. Like we've never seen an undermanned team go up against a better team in this rivalry and win. Happens all the time.

On the road, too, right? Happens all the time. Austin Rivers. That Duke team wasn't good.

Man, don't even have to give me a story. No, but yes, you're 100% right. UNC should have, walking in, the thinking was UNC was going to win that game. And Duke just played better.

Absolutely. Well, I don't even know if they played better. They finished. Finished better. They finished better. In this game last year, and I want to get to some other things here, but in this game last year, Carolina played better. Yeah.

That second half was clinical. Yeah. And again, I give Brady Manik's defense. By the way, you know Brady Manik has a pizza name for him? Where is Salvio's Pizza?

It's either in Chapel Hill or in Cary or somewhere. Yeah, he's got a pizza name down there. Do you know what's on the pizza? Yeah, I do, and it's kind of not a pizza I want. It's got, what is it, Alfredo sauce. Now, I'm not a big fan of different sauces on the pizza, on top of the regular piece. Just give me the regular piece. Now, the problem is, if you're getting a new thing named after you now in 2022, if it's like a new sandwich or something, you're going to probably, I mean, you're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I mean, pretty much everybody's done everything. All the sandwiches are made. All the sandwiches are made now. So now you're about to get some wacky, like, oh, give me some anchovies on top of some prunes. Prunes? Yeah, jalapeno. Whatever sandwich is made, it's probably not going to be a sandwich that you want.

What kind of a combination is that? All right, let me... Prunes? Oh, y'all ain't trying to stay regular?

Actually, whatever. That's why we have... You have prunes? I do blackberries. Oh, is that good for the inside?

Oh, yeah, all that stuff's good for your innards. A dark berry. A dark berry.

A good dark, but blueberries, blackberries. Yeah, good. See, that's the kind of insight that I like to get off this show, man. There you go. Oh, I got bagel takes, too. All right, let's talk about... Prunes? Prunes.

I don't know. I don't eat prunes. I don't eat prunes.

Although, I love plums. See? Same thing. Same family. Yeah, they're cousins. It's the same.

Oh, it's the exact same? Oh, the prune is just an old... Oh. An old plum. It's a dehydrated plum. Oh, so it's the raisin of plums. Yeah, exactly.

Raisins are raisin of plums. Yeah. Now you're learning stuff. See, I've always been of the mind that you don't learn something new every day.

This isn't like twice this week that people have learned things. All right, let's talk about what we... Just your thoughts, being at Howard, being affiliated with Howard University, your thoughts on the Deion Sanders experience at Jackson State? I think that this is a really good example of kind of a... I'll call it a Venn diagram of life, where you have people that are really into HBCUs and not necessarily into college sports that much. Right.

You have people that are really into college sports that don't really know that much about HBCUs. And you're doing it with a person that is a lightning rod like Deion. He hasn't been famous for 30 years. Yeah.

He's been famous my entire life. It's not more than... I think it's more than 30 years.

Yeah, it might even be more than 30 years. Yeah. And so you have this lightning rod that everyone identifies and recognizes, and so now everyone feels comfortable speaking on this. I think on the HBCU side, if you're not really heavily into college sports like that, especially college football, the idea of him not only leaving, but then taking with him these players, his son Hunter, who was a top prospect when he flipped them from Florida State. Number two recruit the entire class. And he went to Jackson State, which was a huge deal and should have been. Flipped from Florida State to Jackson State. And now they're going to be going to Colorado.

They actually already announced it today. Yeah, yeah. And so I can understand you being like, well, what's going on, you're using us as a stepping stone to get to this place. And that triggers a whole bunch of HBCU grads too, because for a lot of people, they see our degree as somehow lesser than. And it's not lesser than, our experience is just vastly different. We went there to have a vastly different experience.

And so the idea of being you so that you can then go and white flight it over to a PWI like Colorado, it makes people, it really brings up a lot of other issues. Part of the reason that we were so hyped when Vice President Kamala Harris got that position, because it was like, I told you so. Ours is just as good. That Howard degree right there, it'll get you to 1600 Pennsylvania. And so it was a moment of like, we always knew, but now everybody else can know and we don't have to make that fight anymore. And so him leaving and something to comment, he had said something about Isaiah Land, who was a defensive end for FAMU, who is going to play on Sundays, but was making the decision whether or not he wanted to enter the portal and leave FAMU. He was like, he commented on his Instagram, you shouldn't do that because we've seen people make it from HBCUs to the NFL and you leaving sends a bad message. So yeah, that's a little hypocritical, right?

It's a little bit, it's a little bit. But the idea of him gutting or somehow taking the best of us isn't, it's not the case because this is college football. You want big time college football, you want to be covered in a certain sort of way, this comes along with it. Every college football coach in the country is trying to get a better job.

And even if they're not trying to leave their job, they're going to tell their current employer, they might go get another job so you can give me more money. That is just the facts of the life. You can be mad about it, don't take that out on Sanders.

That has nothing to do with him. That is just the way things go. And so it was, it was, it was so much of that, but it was also a lot of pain because it's different when, when, when we leave, like when Ante left the MEAC, when Hampton left the MEAC. They're in the colonial now. They're in colonial now. They didn't stay in the big seven.

The whole coming game was versus Campbell. You know what I mean? Like that don't hit like, that don't hit the same. And so like there is a, there is the idea of being left behind so you can do bigger and better things that it tied into a whole bunch of that sort of stuff. It just, it's different from even when Jimbo leaves Florida State and goes to Texas A&M, it's different because we carved, we had to carve and scratch and fight and die for this space for HBCUs. The education of black people in this country was dangerous in and of itself. And if you look at some of the educational discussions we have now around race, it's still dangerous to some people. And so leaving an institution of higher learning for a space that didn't want us before, it's always gonna hit a little bit different.

It's always gonna hurt some more. And I get it. It's just not fair to place that all on Deion Sanders.

That would be my only thing. It just wasn't fair to then make him to be out of some person that's somehow trying to, you know, a traitor or some of the other stuff that, you know. Well, he sold a different story at the beginning. True. Because he sold the story he had to sell. Right. Right? Because this was the job that he was allowed to get.

Yes. I mean, he wanted Florida State. He wanted Florida State.

But there were two problems. He didn't have a degree. Right. So he went to an HBCU that had a fast track degree, to get his degree, and now I think a month later, he was named the head coach of Jackson State. Sidney Lowe, by the way, did the same thing. Absolutely.

Right? To be able to be the head coach at NC State. So he used Jackson State, but he sold it differently at the beginning. And again, I watched the interview he did with Michael Strahan, a product at Texas Southern, right? Another HBCU.

And that was all about, you know, doing it for the HBCU. He sold that, and he left, he didn't even leave for a great job. He left for a power five job, which obviously will pay him more money than he made at Jackson State. And his assistants.

And his assistants. That he takes with him from Jackson State, which is important too. And I think you can win at Colorado, and especially you can win at Colorado in the version of the Pac-12 we are going to see. So Colorado is not his last stop. He'll be at Colorado, if he does well, he'll be at Colorado three years, and maybe he'll go back to Florida State eventually. I think that is ultimately where he, because he's already talked about, and I mean, coach says this all the time, that he doesn't want to coach in the NFL. Because he's got, I've made fun of Dabo for some of his takes. Deion Sanders has some pretty close sentiments when it comes to NIL stuff in particular. He doesn't like it, he feels like hey, I don't want to deal with, his thing is, I don't want to deal with entitled NFL players and stuff like, and it's like prom time.

What are we doing? Well he doesn't want to deal with him. Right, exactly. Which is fine. Which is fine.

He knows that. But here's the thing that I ultimately think that this is good, and this could be wrong, I don't know. The athletic experience in today's HBCU, the athletic experience is really supposed to be, I think, extracurricular. As opposed to big money, get on TV, like I think it's supposed to be, I think that's what it is. This enhances the college experience, and I don't know, like I think ultimately the attention that it raised is good. It's going to show that there are good athletes at HBCUs. Like, if Lavelle Moten hasn't gained more national attention at NC Central with the success that they've had and the profile that he has, it's probably not ever going to happen. But I think it's more about, this is the college experience, and this is what athletics can do. Homecomings are about fun and parties. Just my experience going to, covering the CIAA tournaments. Love going to CIAA tournaments.

I did too, and I was so sad when it left Ry. Heartbroken. So I think ultimately it'll be fine that Deion is not there. But again, I'm probably not the expert on this.

This is just a guess. So one, I'm not going to defame any black coach for getting a power five job, because we have so few of those anyway, right? Like, I do think that there is also probably a larger conversation to be had that maybe now some of these institutions are going to look at HBCUs and look at their coaching staffs a little bit differently. Like, hey, they're doing a lot of good work over here. We can, there's talent over here. But even just me saying that, I can hear the gatekeepers being like, no, no, no, you stay over there. You didn't want us before, stay over there.

And I get that, but you also have to deal with you're dealing with real human beings. That might just have different things that you shouldn't have to sacrifice so much because you want to change some stuff up and you want to do something a little bit differently. I don't think that that's his burden.

If he wanted to do that, amen, God bless him, do it. But if you don't, I'm glad you're here. Now, if I'm being honest, there's some of the stuff that when LeBron left Cleveland, some of this stuff played in too. You also know you're not going to be as good next year without him. Yes.

No, they're not. You lose your starting quarterback and your wide receiver slash quarterback, you're not going to be as good. And if we're being honest, I think some of that plays to at least with the Jackson State alum of, hey, our program was in a place that hadn't been in a while.

And, you know. They were great. You had college game day there, which is not the end all be all, I understand, but it's pretty damn good.

That's a pretty damn good feeling. And Deion was a big part of that. He was a big part of raising money for them. He was a big part of Charles Barkley and his donation to Jackson State. He was just, you can be mad that it wasn't for longer, but don't take that on him as he should have been there forever. Because the other thing is, I think he went 27-5 as a head coach. If he had gone 5-27, you would have fired him. It can't be bigger than football, and then yet if you lose, it's not bigger than football.

No, come on now. They had good players, but they won a lot. There's a lot of teams out there with good players. Hey, I believe Tex A&M had good players. Bloop!

Bloop! Didn't work out. How do you not be bowl eligible, Tex A&M? All right, we got to halftime. And now, your Halftime Entertainment. Went nearly a full eight minutes of stoppage time. Well, we just watched the World Cup.

That's true. That's no stoppage time. Exactly.

In the World Cup, that's like, oh, we just got eight minutes left. All right, holiday time, obviously. A lot of people like to throw the Yule Logs up on the TV.

Get some music in the background with it. Right, okay. Any of you guys a fan of Chucky? Your child's play? Yeah. Not me, but that's fun. Well, on YouTube, there's actually a 70-minute video that features Chucky sitting by a warm fire drinking hot chocolate.

Really? So that's for you, Brendan. Yep, that's right, a Yule Log, sitting right there, some music. There's Chucky sitting there. I don't know if there's a Chucky movie coming out, right? There's a TV show.

Yeah, I'm about to say there's a TV show, and then there's another one that's kind of Chucky-ish, where it's about a woman who's made an animatronic doll for her daughter, who is apparently lonely, and they turn into a crazy killer, and I cannot wait to see it. I'm not gonna lie. It's gonna be fantastic. I'm gonna watch it, too.

It's gonna be fantastic. But there's nothing soothing about Chucky's presence at all. It is terrifying. I don't understand that. I don't know. I personally wouldn't want to just be chilling with Chucky, but that's just me. You know what I mean?

I'm not a big Jon Groob fan. What I'm gonna do? It's out there for the people. That's all that matters.

I'm halfway there. Your favorite movie, Top Gun Maverick, Adam, is now streaming on Paramount+. Is it?

Yes. I can't get it on Amazon? I mean, you probably could rent it through there. Yeah, okay. I gotta do that. I definitely wouldn't go see that twice in theaters.

Did you? Likewise. Absolutely. We have not seen it yet. I always bring up this movie to Adam, and he changed my character. No, no. Look, I'm not a huge fan of... I mean, Top Gun was fine. It was okay. It wasn't awesome, but it was okay. I don't know what you're doing right now, but it's fine. I'm with you, Brandon.

I'm with you, Brandon. I don't know what we're doing here, but... I've heard great things about Top Gun Maverick, so I want to go check it out. It's a better movie.

Structurally, it's a better movie. There you go. Now, there's a lot... Have you seen Top Gun recently? Yeah. Okay. So there are some callbacks.

I've seen it several times. Yeah, okay. So there are callbacks which tug on the heartstrings a little bit more and stuff like that, but yeah, I'm gonna have to just disagree with you on the Top Guns. I mean, it's your classic 80s movie. It's very straightforward, but straightforward is fine. I thought Cocktail was a better movie than Top Gun.

That's my hot take. Cocktail's a little long, and I couldn't have done it without... There was some stuff with him and Cockland.

I couldn't have done it without him. Okay, I get it. I get it. It was a good movie, though. I thought it was the same movie, but that's fine. Speaking of new movies, there's a new Alien movie reportedly filming soon. Excuse you?

Yeah, because apparently we asked for that. John Hurt's not in it, is he? I don't know. Sigourney Weaver. She has to be in it. She has to be in it.

Okay. That new Predator was fire, though. I haven't seen it yet.

The one that's on Hulu. I gotta watch that. Another good movie. Another good action. Like, good action, but there's a solid storyline that I enjoy. I saw Predator.

Yeah. I love the original Predator. I'm surprised that Dennis is not surprised that I saw Predator. No, I'm not surprised that you've seen Predator.

Why? Because it came out in 80, what, eight? Yeah, but it's exactly the kind of movie I despise.

That's also very true. Okay, so you're not, like, the Schwarzenegger's Stallone? You know what I liked?

Twins. So it was you and Dane DeVito in the theater. And I liked Kindergarten Cop. Of course. Oh, that's a classic. All right, so wait. Did you see Stop or My Mom Will Shoot? I saw parts of it. Okay, all right.

I haven't seen that one. You're not missing anything. You're not missing anything. Good to know. Good to know. All right, last thing to bring up here. What a ridiculous wealth of knowledge that I have on this stupid stuff. Perfect. There's been a conversation between Brendan and I about rom-coms. Oh, absolutely. Oh, my gosh.

We could have kept going. Honestly, I could knock one out right now. Well, I don't know that Dennis has ever been on this show without mentioning a superhero. I had nothing today regarding that. You're wearing a superhero T-shirt, my guy.

I am wearing a Thor shirt. I feel like that counts. It does.

It does. All right, so Adam mentioned it at the beginning of the show, but it's official now. NFL Sunday ticket is going to YouTube TV. And I know it's something that you and I, Adam, have discussed a lot about how people are consuming sports products or whatever it is, because all these different platforms that have emerged in terms of streaming services and so forth, it's like, well, people have to get selective on where they actually put their money into something.

So how do you reach a casual viewer? Well, what's the number one streaming service for live television, YouTube TV? Is it? Wow. Guess what it basically is now? Cable.

Cable. Sure it is. But it's just a different interface and a different platform. It's less expensive. Right now it is.

Right now, keywords right now. Once you combine it with the streaming stuff, though, like, we already mentioned, well, Hulu, I got Disney Plus, obviously I got League Pass. By the time I add up all that stuff, I mean, I'm not really saving it. So there is actually, this might actually impact you, Brennan, you being a League Pass person, there's talks as well as that also floating into the YouTube packages as well. So you're looking at NFL Sunday tickets going to be going there. There's also just exclusive premium channels or primetime channels that YouTube does offer. If you want 4K, that's more money too.

There's those kinds of things. Until everything is 4K. And then there'll be a new... And then there'll be a sit tight.

Just sit tight. Trust me, they're already filming stuff in 8K. It's already happening. But that's the thing, is that... Of course, most of our televisions don't project in 8K. I was about to say, I don't understand.

Yeah, I don't get it, but... But they will. They eventually will.

Because you got to get a new one. So it's going to be an add-on bundle package. There's a big question about, okay, what's going to happen to NFL Red Zone? Because that is an exclusive thing for DirecTV. Well, there's two Red Zones.

Well, there's two Red Zones. One is NFL Network and the other is DirecTV. Yeah. Oh. So the DirecTV one's probably going to go away.

No sense. But the NFL Network one, I think, is probably still going to exist. It's going to stay because Red Zone is part of YouTube. Yeah. NFL Network is. You can get it.

You can get it on YouTube. It's already a part of mine. So it's interesting how, again, everything's flowing into this one space. Once again, just like cable used to be. But I'm also wondering as well, how does that impact the NBA as looking to possibly put their out-of-market games on YouTube TV?

Now, my biggest gripe, though, is I probably still can't watch Hornets games here in Raleigh. We had to get it. We got the Bally's app. So I can watch that.

Oh, you can watch it through that? Yes. Okay. I was so mad yesterday. I haven't watched them yet. I just got off the train. Yeah, I just got off the train like right in time for the Clippers joint.

And because they're doing whatever. It was supposed to be on NBA TV. I was like, we don't get that many Nazis until. Blacked out in your area. Man.

I got like the first minute. Yeah, and I can't, I can't watch them on League Pass because now I'm here. Right. Right. And so like before I can just watch them at home on League Pass, can't even do that here.

So oddly enough, I missed the most Hornets games when I'm back home. It's absolutely infuriating. We got the, we got the Bally's app. Yeah.

I mean, that's probably, I'm probably gonna end up having to, having to do that. But it's useless for me that because I just. I got a lot of tweets about the Bally app. Right. On Thursday.

Or Tuesday. It's not a great app. Just not a great app. Anyone who works for Bally, no comment. I'm glad, I'm glad I can see the game, but it is not a great app. This is the Adam Gold Show.