So, did we hear that eye roll accurately?

I'll tell you what I did watch. I watched the Celebration Bowl back in the middle of December.

I watched a 41-34 overtime thriller that maybe was the best bowl game of the entire bowl season. Trey Oliver, the head coach at NC Central, is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show, a return visit. First of all, congratulations on the win and I want people to go out and celebrate this with you and your team. And it's coming up on Saturday in Durham. Parade starting at 10 o'clock on campus, Fayetteville Street to Lawson Street, down Campus Drive to the stadium for the Pepper Alley. The mayor of Durham will be there.

City officials will be there. My gosh, that was a great game. Yes sir, Adam, how are you doing, man? Thank you for having me. Oh, the pleasure, the pleasure is mine. Now, while you're doing it, you don't realize how great a game it is, right? Oh man, no, that's three hours of intense focus and stress, man. I'm sure it was a great game of people sitting at home, you know, eating chips and drinking soda, but you don't really get to enjoy it in the heart of the game.

No, I'm sure you don't. It is high stress, but I will say that it didn't look to me like your quarterback was all that high stressed. No, that's Pee Wee, man, does an outstanding job, a great leader. And we talk about a thermostat mentality, you know, don't get too high, don't get too low. Let's set it on about 68, but you know, he's an outstanding leader and is not going to get rattled. And I think that was really like the temperament of the whole team. Even it was a nail biter, but our guys never panicked. Davis Richard, by the way, did everything. He had over 300 total yards. He had 175 yards passing. He almost had a hundred rushing. He caught a pass for 31. If you could have gotten him in the end zone on the completion, he would have done the trifecta. He would have had a touchdown passing, rushing, and receiving, but he was great. You ran the ball effectively too.

I got the sense that you knew going in that you'd be able to do that. Definitely, but you know, Pee Wee did get the Philly Special. We did throw the Philly special for the two point play, but that's right.

That's right. We, we, you know, our big thing was, you know, we had to be able to run the football and I think the win championships and we knew that Jackson state had an explosive offense. And when you can limit their possessions by, by controlling the clock, controlling the ball, you know, you can kind of keep their, their explosive offense on the sideline. So, you know, I take my hat off to all friends of line and often the staff, they did outstanding job with coming up with a game plan. And, you know, when you run the ball for 270 yards against the number one ranked defense in the country, a lot of stuff's going the right way for you. Trey Oliver, NC Central head football coach is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. If you didn't watch it, I'm sure you can find it somewhere.

If you're like me and recorded it on YouTube, I have it in perpetuity in my library. It was a phenomenal football game. And I, I know there were a lot of other things going on.

So I kind of have two questions about the, the event, the moment. One, and I know you kind of pushed it aside when we talked about a month or so ago, about the opportunity that you had in front of America, because it was a nationally televised game on ABC, to put your football program up against Jackson state. Obviously you guys handled it well, but in retrospect, have you thought about what that meant for NC central?

Yeah. Well, you know, it didn't take long for the administration to come to me afterwards that next week and say that I think it was like 2.4 million people viewed the game aside from the almost 50,000 that were attending. So, you know, when you can put on a show and show the world, the country that, you know, your brand of not just football, but how great your university is, you know, we can't put a price on that right there.

So it was just really, it was really great for, for us to put on a great show and a great venue and a great event, you know, for, for the country to see. Trey Oliver is with us, Central's head football coach here on the Adam Gold show. Going in, and I want to go back to our conversation and I could be, honestly, I could be making way more out of this than, than was there. But I asked you a question, it might've been the last question I asked you. Are you looking forward to matching wits with Deion Sanders?

And sometimes in my mind, I hear things that aren't there. I thought I heard an eye roll from, from you based on that question. So maybe it didn't matter, but it seemed to me like, I don't want to disrespect anybody here, but you definitely out coached, coach Prime. Well, I don't, we won the football game.

It was a lot of folks asked that question. How do you, you know, you think you can match up with, with, with coach standards and everything like that. I've been coaching games for 23 years, you know, and like you say, not to disrespect anybody, but you know, he's been coaching college for two years.

Right. So, you know, I thought it was somewhat disrespectful for, for the media to be, you know, coming to me, like, you know, I'm new to this, right. You know, but I've won championships on several different universities and you know, we have a great staff here. So I knew that our team was going to be ready and I wasn't concerned about, I guess, matching with, as long as he wasn't playing, I knew we were going to be in good shape.

Now, if he, if he decided to suit up, maybe it would be a different story. So I will take the zero for putting you in a position to roll your eyes at my question, because to me, this was, this was almost bigger than a football game in a lot of ways. And maybe you're the, the secret, obviously, aside from really a great game plan, was that you guys treated it as a football game, but there was a lot of other, there were a lot of other things that went on down there because I, I saw a lot of the conversations and a lot of the press conferences where they didn't use your name. They didn't talk about you, actually screwed up the name of your university. Did you guys channel all that? Yeah.

And you know, we control, we can control. And I thought it was very disrespectful for them to call us North Carolina, A&T state university at the press conference. I thought it was disrespectful for, for a couple of things, man, you know, coach Sanders didn't want to come up on stage with me during an event. The Thursday night dinner, they wouldn't move their buses and our kids had to be dropped off in the middle of street in Atlanta. It was, it was just a whole lot going on. Coach didn't address me before the game. He coached and I never spoke to each other the whole weekend, except for, you know, good game after the game.

But, you know, we, like I said, we control, we control, such as life. Our guys were focused and we blocked out all the distractions and, you know, we were forced up to come home with W. It was tremendous. So has, has campus life been since? A lot of interviews. It's a great buzz around campus. Our cafeteria did outstanding event for our young men. They had primary have been lobster for the guys the other night. The mayor is having, you know, going to be at the parade this weekend on the 21st.

I think we supposed to be going to the governor's mansion. So it's, it's been one thing after another. And then the people on campus are just so excited. And that's what it's all about, man. You know, our students, students here on campus, exciting alumni. So that's, that's what I'm pleased most with other than the wind. You know, these folks over here, you know, excited and Eagle pride is a lot of things. Well, here in Durham, look, you guys, it was a great game, by the way, there, Jackson state was like vampires.

You couldn't kill him after a while. They kept going, kept making big plays on fourth downs. I know you guys had a couple of those as well, but man, did you turn to your coaches and go, we can't put these guys away? Well, we knew it was going to be a 60 minute game.

Not nothing to me. I did not think that we were going to be able to blow these people out, or I knew it was going to be a close game because they were very talented and they have playmakers and all year long, they've answered, you know, when folks scored on them. So we knew it was going to be a 60 minute ball game.

And we talked about playing for 60 minutes or however long it takes. And it took a little more than 60, but we have a resilient bunch of guys. And even that last touchdown, they scored to tie it up as time, as time expired, you know, turn around, looked at our guys and nobody panicked, you know, guys weren't cussing and fussing and throwing helmets. You know, it was, you know, we got to go get ready for overtime. So the guys, the guys were locked in and, and, you know, they played well. Can't say enough about it. National champions.

That's what we could say about the, the Eagles of NC central. Congratulations, coach. I appreciate your time. I appreciated your time back when we talked to you the first time I apologize for any perceived disrespect.

That was not my intent. I hope you know that. And congratulations on an awesome season, a great finish and have a good time on Saturday. Thank you. We do an outstanding job, man. Thank you for all the coverage, everything you do for us. You got it. Take care coach. We'll talk again soon. I think you got it. Trey Oliver.