NORTH CAROLINA BOWL WEEK!!!!

That's right, Panthers still playing meaningful football. We'll ask Will Branson at the bottom of the hour if this has been a good season for the Panthers or a bad one. It's been an interesting one and it started off looking like they were not going to be an interesting or entertaining team and that's when things really go off the rails, right? You can be bad, but if you either you think you've got a franchise quarterback and you're bad and people are willing to endure bad while the quarterback learns things or it's a one bad season in the middle of like a mountain of great seasons people will endure bad.

People do not like uninteresting and the Panthers have managed to maintain some level of interest now being on their third or fourth quarterback that's played so far, but Sam Darnold, I'm gonna talk a little bit later about Sam Darnold being average is exactly what the Panthers need. I am Hayes Permar filling in for Adam Gold. We should we've got a number of names for this week.

This is a holiday week the week between Christmas and New Year's seems a little long, but I feel like we need to declare Hayes Permar week on the Adam Gold show. I've held it down for at least two years in a row at this time Victoria V to the Victoria or Vicki Vale depending on do you like all the other people giving you a nickname? I guess V to the Victoria is kind of your Twitter handle. Yeah.

Yeah, that's an old-school kind of so but I've had V squared double V working in sports. People just love to just sling out nicknames. Yeah here take it whether you want it or not.

I never know if you like them or not. Let me start here with you. Did you have a nice Christmas? I did it went fast.

So the where did it go? See I feel like it didn't go fast for me. My good friend Josh Goodson who joins from town to town Christmas can't go fast enough for him. He enjoys like the holiday season, but when it comes to actual Christmas, he's like get it over with get me out of here.

Keep it moving. He's a Scrooge. Let me play kind of like he's he could be festive on like the 15th of December. He likes the you know, the decorations being up.

He just you know, the whole thing is can be a little much. He gets the tree down night of Christmas all that stuff. The big question here was my big question deciding coming into the show today. What was the bigger story of the weekend? Christmas usually a big story for everyone. This is obviously not sports related. If you're new here, you know when I fill in for Adam Gold we get a little bit less sports centric.

It's probably who I am and it's also partly because of the times I fill in. It's often holidays and things like that. Although we do have plenty of sports to talk about. So what is the story out of this weekend from the last time you were on air with Adam Gold last Friday was the big story that Christmas happened, which is huge, but it also happens every year or the cold. The cold that happened this weekend. I mean, I was reading stories about Buffalo where like apparently the whole point of Buffalo, the whole pride of Buffalo is we're the town that could take all the snow and all the cold.

Bring it on. And even they were like, and I'm not making light of it because like it's evolved loss of human life. This storm that hit had Buffalo being like, whoa, hold up.

This is this is a lot. We did not get unfortunately for me. Some people might say fortunately we did not get the crossover of precipitation and cold. That would have been nice. Although I saw some meteorologist trying to sneak in. Well, there was a little bit of sleep. I even saw some like it was weird on like Thursday and Friday. It looked like hail at one point.

Yeah, it was weird. It's something like, well, it's the winners. We count that as snow accumulation of like, whoa, whoa, hold on. You don't just casually throw out snow accumulation in these parts on a scale of one to snow. That's that's not snow. That was not snow. Then we were also reading weather reports. We always talk about some sports related guys of like snow was happening at a higher atmosphere. So they didn't hit the ground but there was snow up there above us somewhere.

So if you didn't see it, did it happen? Again, it does not count. Does that count? But I thought the cold was interesting. It's, you know, you adjusted a little bit and it was just a reminder. You know, I want my dogs but I want my dog every winter and it's there's plenty of times where it's cold enough that I need gloves and a hat, right?

Sure. And a jacket. Like you'd walk out there and you'd be like, you know what?

I got my gloves and a hat and my jacket. It works, right? It feels the same, you know, even that's, you know, the middle of the nights might be 11 degrees or whatever it got down to. Then you're walking your dog and you get like the furthest point that you're going to be away from the house in the walk and then all of a sudden you're like, ooh. Yeah, it sets in. It's kind of seeping through my coat and jacket and hat and you might walk a little bit more briskly back to the house. But the other thing I think I've learned about cold specifically. Hey, I'm glad I live where I do.

Yes. We'll complain about the, you know, fake fall and the hundred degree sweaty days in October or whatever. Yes, but Enduring the cold is not about like day three, like we're on day three. It's still cold. It's kind of annoying. I'm not a heat my car like start my car 10 minutes before I leave guy, but I've even been doing that like in these times like, you know, just a little bit but enduring cold is not about day three.

It's about day like 33. Yeah, like if you live in Chicago and I've talked to friends who live there. I'm like, isn't it? Sometimes just like didn't it? Just make you angry like that. It's just won't stop being this cold for like a month or two months in a row and I've got people like admit. They're like, yeah, some days when I'm just having a bad day and you walk outside of the cold just hit you.

She's like out of friends like I'll just start crying. Yeah, it's just it's just too much right now. Yeah, so like we can handle three days of snow. Although apparently Duke Energy had to do some rolling blackouts. They did weren't ready for that. They did especially in the Triad because that's where my family is and they were talking about Duke doing it out that way.

Cool people got warnings. I'm haven't gotten deep into this. I've seen the governor tweeting about it. So I assume that this is going to be looked at well because this is a utility that works as a Monopoly.

So in theory like it should be working very well, right? They paid well for their services. So on the one hand, I give much credit to the Duke crews that were out. I saw three of them immediately on Thursday and Friday. Scoop it up. I think it's mostly Friday, but the wind got big.

Pick it up down power lines and trees and stuff like that. I saw them out there. So on the one hand you applaud the Duke Energy crews. However, on a storm or at least cold temps that we all knew about seven to ten days before right. It seemed weird to be getting warnings of this happening at in the middle of it.

Whereas I feel like a lot of people if you told us a week before. Hey, just to let you know if it gets too bad, we might ask people to turn off their Christmas lights. Yeah, just let someone know but then when they when the message went out during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and some people were already enduring blackouts and everyone was freezing. They didn't want to say turn off your Christmas lights because then that would have been a real bad PR move. Whereas again, I feel like if you give us heads up.

Hey, this is going to be a historic freeze. Everyone's going to be running their, you know, heating units to the max and because it's Christmas light season. Maybe if folks could consider cutting the lights that would help that. I think people are happy to help a neighbor, right?

Because when it comes down to either do I like stop baking my turkey halfway through or just turn my lights off for a little while. Yeah, maybe I won't run the dryer, you know today or whatever was I think people were happy to accommodate but and it almost felt like they knew it might happen but gambled. Hey, if we never have to tell people that there's a chance it's happening.

That's that's the best and if I get to this whole thing and never have to black out anyone. No one has to know but then when it happened and they had to announce it bad look so on the one hand do gets it. We don't do a best of the weekend worst the weekend here. There's always you know, on the one hand the Duke Energy crews that were working rapidly to get power back on great job. The other hand a little shaky. I felt like on the decision-making or at least the messaging where people might have understood, you know, how things could get tough during the big storm and people might have been able to help even more. Who knows the one good thing about this holiday week. There are a lot of sports. Yes, so I'll shut up about the cold and the Christmas actually.

I'll probably won't we'll probably talk about it more later, but we'll also talk some sports. Let's get out of the gate. I know bowl games have been on TV for a while, but this start a journey not a fad kick off your fitness journey with up to $500 off Peloton bike bike plus or tread packages choose the package that will take your training to the next level with accessories like our cycling shoes heart rate band non-slip whip dumbbells and more join now and you'll see why 92% of households that start the year with Peloton are still active a year later all access membership separate offer ends January 8th 2023 excludes bike bike plus and shred basic see additional terms at one Peloton.com. This is bowl week. Bowl week across America is the season to celebrate college football from city to city. The passion is unrivaled coast to coast and beyond the nation comes alive for Capital One Bowl week.

That's right. And in fact even beyond Capital One bully. I miss all the ESPN Capital One bully commercials.

I like that. We all had to watch ESPN all the time for Sports Center to get highlights because then that meant we all watch the same commercials over and over now. We're watching highlights, you know, wherever we want on our streaming services and every games on TV. So we don't even really need highlights if we could watch the team we want but I miss the old Capital One Bowl week commercials.

I need more of them. And in fact as it often works out because recently North Carolina teams are usually like good enough to get into a bowl game, but probably not good enough to be in like a basketball game. This is North Carolina bowl week. This is when our teams play.

So let me break it down for you today. East Carolina representing the pride of the state of North Carolina against Coastal Carolina from South Carolina. If you didn't know that in the Birmingham Bowl that was at 645 Eastern on ESPN. If you remember he has Mike Houston turning around the program got ECU bowl eligible last year, but that bowl was cancelled because there are still several bowl games affected by covid outbreaks the winner last year. We'll see if that's that.

I don't think that's happened yet, but we'll see if that's still a thing. So ECU gets to take on Coastal final game for quarterback. Holden Ehlers, who's been a stalwart for the program and sort of this transition time. We'll see if they can get a win on the broadcast for ESPN Tiffany Green Jay Walker, Jalen Johnson. We will talk to Patrick Johnson of 94-3 the game. He'll be on the pre and post game show a little bit later about that game tomorrow.

You get a double dose and they do not even overlap. It's Duke versus Central Florida in the Military Bowl. That one's at 2 p.m. Eastern on ESPN Kevin Brown play-by-play Hudson Mason the analyst and our good friend Marilyn Payne who will join us later. She'll be doing I don't know if this is her second or third bowl game, but she's been making the bowl rounds and I think this might be her final football game of the season. We'll talk to her about the travels one. She went from a game in North Dakota to a game in Florida. Oh, wow. She might have had like a 100 degree temperature change in a flight at one point.

We'll ask her about that. Also tomorrow UNC takes on Oregon in the Holiday Bowl. If the Holiday Bowl does not get canceled. We remember last year UCLA and Holiday Bowl not getting it done versus NC State. That is one of the rare bowl games. It's not on ESPN. It's on Fox. So Gus Johnson get the play-by-play which means we're guaranteed an exciting finish because just we need some Gus Johnson.

Oh wow. And Joel Klatt will be the analyst there again. That game is at 8 o'clock Friday. The bowl madness continues. It is North Carolina Bowl week. Like I said one of our favorites here not just because it is the only bowl game in North Carolina, but it is the Duke's Mayo Bowl.

They are good about having branding that fits with the south. It used to be the Belk Bowl before that. It was like multiple car. Like it was a Meinecke car Meinecke Bowl at one point Car Quest Bowl. I think at one point Continental Tire Bowl. The Belk Bowl was cool because Belk was a North Carolina brand and Duke's Mayo Bowl. Everyone loves it. It's one of those bowls that punches above its weight because everyone will be talking about the Mayo Bath and yes, Dave Doran and whoever the Maryland coach is.

I don't know his name. I'm not paid to study these things, but both of them have agreed that the winning coach will get a Mayo Bath. I think they do one of those things where they rope you in for charity. Like if you agree to do it. Yeah, get some money to your charity. Good cause. Then it makes you feel like if you don't do this thing, you're taking money away from poor kids. You're a jerk. So you have to do the Mayo Bowl. One of the most interesting thing is they can't just dump actual Mayo. It's not. And here's where I'll go back.

Shoot Mr. Corsetti, my physics teacher or Miss Roberts, my other physics teacher. They're listing. They'll I can't remember if viscous means it pours better or worse. I can't remember which way viscosity goes, but whatever it is, I could have gotten away with this without revealing that I didn't remember that term. I could have just said they will be working on the viscosity of the Mayo. Hey, it sounded good. You should buy adding. Yeah, just the term alone.

I should have just left the terminal and not said that. I don't know what it means. They will be working on the viscosity of the dumpable Mayo.

They have to add the right amount of water so that it actually does pours out. Yeah. Yes. And do I get to tell my Mayo Bowl story? You know, I'm going to save my Mayo Bowl story. I'm excited if there's anything that sports radio hosts are it's self-congratulatory and Pat on the back. See, I feel like Adam Gold is fairly self-deprecating and I tried to be as well in the in the spirit of the show, but I will point out where the Duke's Mayo Bowl or Mike Golan Jr. Or somebody owes me some royalties. I'll get to that story later. Did you know, Victoria?

Yes. That NC State and Maryland all-time series tied at 33, 33, and 4. This is for big-time bragging rights for the old ACC foes and the last time they met, Maryland won 42-21. Maryland had this history.

I don't I don't know what your how fall how much you followed NC State football over the year. Maryland had this like run with it. You know Wake Forest recently would thwart NC State and be a thorn in their side. Like all we needed was to win Wake Forest and we'll win the division or will you know be going to this bowl or whatever and then Wake Forest would beat him. For a while that team was Maryland. Maryland would like not be good, but then they would beat State to keep up for winning an ACC, getting an ACC title game or whatever the case may be. So, obviously these players don't have any history with Maryland, but State fans I guarantee you will be ready there to boo the Terps. Yeah, and I better hear a loud, a guttural ACC chant if the pack wins that one.

A lot on the line. Yeah, and not to be outdone. Technically, they're not a part of this North Carolina Bowl week because back on December 23rd, I think it was, Wake Forest took out an SEC team in the Gasparilla Bowl. It does not matter what SEC team it was. It just matters that Wake Forest beat an SEC team in a bowl game. Who cares if it was Missouri? It doesn't matter.

It doesn't count. They won 27-17. Sam Hartman went out on a high note. 280 yards, three TD's.

A.T. Perry at 116 receiving yards. Great run for them. Seven straight bowl games for Dave Kloss at Wake Forest.

Wow. And he's gone five and two in those games. Got another two-game winning streak going.

He won his first three, then lost a couple. And they've played some like good opponents. They play SEC teams, Big Ten teams. They are earning their bowl wins at Wake Forest. Just to put it in perspective, in the history of Wake Forest football before Dave Klossen, which also included Jim Grove, some successful years in there. Yeah. Wake Forest, I know bowl games are different now.

There's a lot more of them. Wake Forest is going to 10 bowl games in its history prior to 2016. Dave Klossen is now taking them to seven in a row.

So just he continues an impressive run there. Overall, maybe it's slightly, it's funny that you could call this a maybe disappointing season for Wake Forest. They got a good win on the road to Florida State. And at one point, we're undefeated about halfway through the season. But you know, didn't get the win against Clemson, although they played him better than they ever have. And then didn't get the win against NC State.

A couple other losses mixed in there. But Dave Klossen has proven don't vote Wake Forest last and well, there are no divisions anymore. Don't put Wake Forest in the bottom third of the ACC. You don't have to pick them first or second, but put them wherever you got bowl teams going because they've proven they're going to be there. That's an ACC win in the Gasparilla Bowl.

Next up, hitting out the game. Speaking of football in the state of North Carolina, how about them Carolina Panthers? Forget about that Pittsburgh game. Never happened.

We moved on. The Panthers came out and I don't know what it was. Maybe, maybe games on the holiday weekend for NFL teams because are kind of like bowl games. Yeah.

Well, you don't know who really cares. Maybe there's teams whose coaches have handled it poorly, either pushing the team too hard or letting them be too loose. I don't know what the right answer is, but there seem to be teams that just didn't show up this weekend.

Absolutely. In the NFL, including last night and Monday night, you know, the Colts were not good, right? There were teams that seemed to not show up. The Lions had not been a great defensive team. They were one of the worst run defense teams, but out of the, from the jump, the Panthers were handing off and dudes were running like eight yards before anybody touched them. Like safeties were the only people tackling the Carolina running backs early. Just huge holes and it just, they looked like they cared more than the Lions about this game.

When it was all said and done, it was indeed a record rushing for the Carolina Panthers, 320 yards, 165 from Deontay Foreman, 125 from Chuba Hubbard, which again, begs the question, right? Where were these guys? The first six games of the year.

Yeah, CMC really holding you back. And it's not like they've come from nowhere. Deontay Foreman, Joe Giglio. That's like, I heard him professing this more than anybody. I took a flyer on Deontay Foreman in fantasy football. He had a good year last year.

Every time he was in the game, he just wasn't a full-time starter. Seemed like the perfect pickup and it seemed like it put you in a position where you had Start a journey, not a fad. Kick off your fitness journey with up to $500 off Peloton bike, bike plus or tread packages. Choose the package that will take your training to the next level with accessories like our cycling shoes, heart rate band, non-slip grip dumbbells and more. Join now and you'll see why 92% of households that start the year with Peloton are still active a year later.

All access membership separate offer ends January 8th, 2023. Excludes bike, bike plus and tread basics. See additional terms at one Peloton dot com. I mean, I'm not saying that you want to rough up anything. You had enough workload to go around. Yeah, you had dudes. It could give you first, first down, three yard runs or second down, get you from what would be third and long to third and short, right? Without banging Christian McCaffrey's head against the wall. They didn't always have to go 35 times a game like these dudes were there. I mean, whatever we can't look back but it seemed like a perfect seem like 15 touches for Foreman, 15 touches for Hubbard and 15 touches from McCaffrey. Every game you have McCaffrey on the field more. You have him running out. You have him, you know, in in pass, putting out in space in the past game.

You have him in the backfield, whatever, but he's only getting the ball 15 times a game. It just seems like that was there for them. But regardless, I do think the offensive line is improved.

Obviously, a Qantas has gotten better and the line in general has improved but it seemed like this was possible. Here's the other thing about the Panthers that I love. Sam. Darnold was a completely average quarterback and it was awesome because that's all they need because they're running a defense team. How average this is like the exact perfect average stat line for an NFL quarterback, average for an NFL quarterback. I'm giving you some credit there.

I'm not I'm not trying to demean him by calling average average. Just be the 17th best quarterback in the league, right? 15 for 22. Not amazing, but real, but good.

Great. Yeah, 250 yards. Give me move the ball when we need to move the ball downfield. One touchdown pass and zero interceptions. That's the most average NFL that that stat line is like, yes, if you start 16 games and you put up those numbers, then you will be a starter next year.

You're not going to break the bank of the salary. You're not going to the Pro Bowl. You're not winning MVP, but you might get us in the Super Bowl conversation. If our defense running game and whatever can be great and that's what Sam Darnold did 15 of 22 for 250 yards and one touchdown. Here is Steve Wilkes Panthers coach talking specifically about what Sam Darnold given the team the last four games. Great leadership, you know, composure doing a great job and orchestrating and running the offense and you know, the most important thing we're protecting the football, you know, when you can play great defense, you know, can run the ball and protect the football without turning it over.

You can have a great chance of winning some football games. That is Steve Wilkes on Sam Darnold. I mean again, I'm not trying to sell you on the fact that Sam Darnold is great and I know Panthers fans are going to grow and write. Well, maybe they should go with Sam Darnold next year. Oh my gosh, right?

It's the beard. But I do think sticking with Sam Darnold at a low price is better than going out of your way and drafting a quarterback that that isn't good enough, but you're only taking them because you got to draft quarterback hot, right? We'll talk to Will Brinson a little bit specifically about that. Some other Monday, some other foot NFL news coming out of the weekend. The Panthers, excuse me, the Broncos Panthers already fired their coach. They couldn't fire their coach this weekend.

They got to jump on the Broncos. The Broncos fire coach, Nathaniel Hackett. In the last 30 years, only three coaches have been fired before completing their first season. Bobby Petrino, because he bounced on the team and left the players like a letter in their locker saying I'm out. Urban Meyer last year because he was being accused of like kicking players and not treating football players as if they were like humans and then Nathaniel Hackett. Nathaniel Hackett's credit. He's not being accused of being just a terrible person the way that Urban Meyer and Bobby Petrino are. So give him some credit there, but some combination of this Russell Wilson deal and Nathaniel Hackett did not work for the Broncos. It never has and they suffered an embarrassing loss to the Rams this weekend. Give it up 51 points to Baker Mayfield, which is a whole nother thing that we have to discuss with Will Brinson and then some breaking news out of the NFL that came out just before our show. JJ Watt, one of the best defensive players in NFL history, three-time defensive player of the year, I believe.

Yeah has announced that this will be his final season played most prominently with the Texans for most of his career, but suffered some injuries that cut some seasons short and then but still had a pretty good revival with the Cardinals, but he announced it'll be his final season and finally getting out the gate. Just want to mention them canes back in action tonight with the eight game winning streak going with the even more than that Point Street going there at home against the Blackhawks. I got to see the kids in person last night for this last game for the second time. Fortunately, they put up six goals, which is cool scoring goals hadn't been their forte because they needed that to endure the three straight goals. They gave up in the third did love seeing that they held on for the Christmas win and it's everybody's home for Christmas. They want to see goals right 11 point game in the Flyers fans. We're happy their team's no good this year and they got to see them score some goals. We had some fun with some Flyers fan sitting around us. We're ribbing them when we were up 6-2 then we got a little quiet when we go in that fifth goal hit for the Flyers too close. But again, the canes held on.

Hopefully they had a great Christmas break and we'll be back in top form tonight against the Blackhawks. Plus intrep basics. See additional terms at onepeloton.com