NC gambling, a Canes win, and LIV

I've been feverishly figuring out percentages and I've been doing math. Oh yeah. I've been doing math.

That's no fun. I apologize. Hope everybody's having a good day. We've got a lot of things to do today. I am a little weary from last night's hockey game. You know what I found out last night?

What's that? Actually, I want to see the attendance. I bet they had their second under 18,000 attendance last night. I felt like the crowd at PNC Arena was still gassed from Saturday.

It's possible. They were a half-hearted attempt at a wave. They tried a Freddie, Freddie, Freddie chant in the first period and it was like Freddie, Freddie. I mean, Anderson was great last night. And full-throated Hurricanes fans energy, that would have been thunderous. But they were like, oh that's right, I have to do the Freddie, Freddie chant. I just can't.

A little hockeyed out. I just think Saturday took it out of every, it's an all-day thing. Yeah.

Saturday was an all-day event. They asked people to get there at two. Yeah.

And a lot of people did. I mean, I got there at two. On the road, too. Right? I got there at two. And you know, if you walked out of there and it was 11 and it was cold and maybe you didn't go right home, maybe you went somewhere else.

I just think people are still gassed. Yeah. Especially if they went to the UNC and NC State hockey game later. Oh, that's right. We had all sorts of hockey.

Yeah. But Hurricanes won again last night. I thought, I thought they looked pretty good in the first two periods. They gave up a little bit. A couple of too many chances in the first period.

I thought it was much better in the second and the third when Jarvis scored early in the third. We're done. We don't have to do anything else. St. Louis isn't bothering us and we'll be fine. We got four. That's enough. And Freddie was very, very good anyway.

So Anderson could clean up any of the misses. So it was good. The Hurricanes are, I still believe that we're still waiting for the next gear. Yeah. And they just seem to win all the time. Which is good.

I mean, I got a tweet from somebody. The Hurricanes in the second period, the first half of the second period, they were just peppering really good scoring chances in tight. It was not shot volume from the blue line or from the wall. They were really close. They had so many chances to score. And I just remarked, I'm like, the Hurricanes have had like 20 scoring chances and they have two goals. And there are advanced metrics which basically give you a, this is how many goals you should have at this point. And at one point the Hurricanes expected goals was four and a half and they had two. Yeah.

And I'm like, my gosh, this day, it should be so much bigger than margin. And somebody responded, they need finishers. And I said, wait, let me check their record. Yeah.

I think we still won the game. You know, look, they, they should be able to convert a little bit, a few more of their opportunities. Although that is starting to happen. But since Black Friday, they're 28, four and three. Wow.

That's impressive. Can't complain with that. No, you can. They do. They do. People will find things to complain about. There are real, I mean, I think we all have real concerns about what this team will look like in two months against playoff competitions. Right. I'm not worried, but there are no guarantees and the playoffs get harder and all that.

And I have, I have concerns about a couple of things about this team that I'd like to see them shore up, but I just keep getting back to this. They sure do win a lot. Yeah. There's that. I mean, even if you count the overtime losses as losses.

And as I said, I think it was on one of the, either yesterday's podcast or the previous podcast, the one we did after the stadium series, like they feel like losses, even though you get a point. 28 and seven in their last 35 games. I just, I, I, it's hard to criticize that. I know.

It's just with a straight face, it's hard to go, well, you got to get better. Like they've been better than Boston. Both times they played, they dominated the penguins all year. They dominated the capitals three times.

Now the capitalists and penguins might not make the playoffs, but the only team they haven't really fared well, the two teams I haven't fared well against this year, the Rangers and the Rangers caught Carolina at the perfect time, both times. And the Rangers are good. Yes, and the Rangers are good. Yes, they are good. And Colorado.

Yeah. And right now, Colorado's, they're playing better, but they're also missing Cale McCar. And they've had other guys hurt all year, but every now and again, the stars too. They're a little iffy, but they beat the stars like a drum. Well, the first one, they wanted overtime both, but they were the better team in both games. And Dallas is really good.

And they're big too. So I don't know. I have a hard time really being mad at the hurricanes. It's very nitpicky.

Yeah, it does feel like, you know what, shut up. That kind of thing. Exactly.

All right. We've got a bunch of things. Brian Murphy's going to join us from WRAL Sports Investigative Reporter. We're going to talk about sports gambling with him. We're actually going to start with sports gambling as well. And that is today's poll question, our fan poll question, sports wagering should dot, dot, dot be legal in North Carolina, remain illegal in North Carolina, be legal for pro sports only.

Those are the only three options. We'll give you the results of this or at least in progress results at the top of the next hour. You can go to my Twitter at a gold fan and vote. I've retweeted it a couple of times. I know Victoria will do that. And the 99.9 the fan Twitter will do that as well.

All right. Let's get to sports gambling, shall we? Because it is because it is possible that we could see a sports wagering bill in the state legislature, even today. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to be voted on or passed, but it could be introduced even today. The scuttle is that the bill will resemble that which failed a year ago. Jason Sain is a representative from Lincolnton and he does believe that it will pass this session.

This came from WRAL's on the record hosted by Cullen Browder. I do believe it will pass. I think it'll look a lot like the bill from last year. You know, we certainly have gotten some input and we'll consider that as it goes through the process.

Everything has to start over again. So we'll start fresh with a new bill, but it will mirror what we saw last year. And we've had more time for members to learn more about sports betting. We've also had another year go by where we're losing money to other states.

So that's something that's going to be certainly talked about. I think over the last two years, the issue kind of needed to marinate a bit. As most things that come to the legislature, they don't necessarily pass the first time. Last year, when we got to it, we were getting into summer and we had some legislators on family trips and some missing out and didn't get a chance to vote on it. So we'll see what that looks like. We had two bills that would have brought sports betting to North Carolina.

One passed by one vote and one failed by one vote. So to borrow a gambling term, I think we broke even. But I think that it's something that is not going to go away. I spoke with Virginia legislators just a couple of weeks ago and they were kind of chiding me and saying that we're glad you didn't get it passed last year, but we know you're going to do that soon. So they know that they've got a lot of North Carolinians going over the border and playing sports, participating in sports gambling in Virginia and other states, too. We see that. So it's something that it's a revenue loss for us and North Carolinians are playing anyway.

All right, a couple of things about what Jason Sain, representative from Lincolnton, had to say. You didn't break even. You didn't get any closer to getting it.

Gosh, no, you didn't break even. That's not how that works, no. I mean, never mind that.

If it looks like last year's, they took wagering on college sports out of last year's, which is dumb. And more time for members to learn like the bill was sitting there for how long your members are supposed to learn. It's an important thing, like, and it ain't that hard to learn about it either. Are people doing it? Yes. How illegally? How do we stop that? Make it legal. People are doing it anyway. And this is not about, well, why don't we make whatever legal?

It's not the same thing. No. The Venture X card from Capital One gives you premium travel benefits. Perfect for seeing Taylor Swift, the era's tour presented by Capital One.

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See capitalone.com for details. We gamble on tons of, should we make the stock market illegal? I'm just curious. Should we make, should we make day trading illegal? Right. This is silly. Absolutely silly that the people that we elect to represent us in state matters because it's not that complicated an issue.

Can't figure all this out. Look, it means money. It doesn't really matter how much money, but it is an entertainment source for the overwhelming majority of people who do it.

It's simply an entertainment source. We have no problem in the state of North Carolina, zero problem with allowing people to go into a bar and watch women dance. Yeah. We had no problem with that. That's okay. Right. It's not my thing, but if you want to do it, fine.

In a way it's a vice. You had no problem with that. We had no problem with that.

We had no problem with people going to a place and drinking beer or wine or hard liquor. We have no problem with that. It's vice. Makes me angry. Makes me angry. All right.

So one more, one more quick. So I don't know if it's going to encompass college sports or not. Representative Pricey Harrison is from Guilford County and she has some issues with the bill. This might be a little long. We might have to cut it off, but this is Pricey Harrison.

Had a pretty long list if you got a lot of time. And I guess one thing that was interesting to me, the New York Times did an excellent investigative reporting series this fall that talked about these efforts in other states have enacted all online betting and the problems that they faced. And a lot of these states have had buyer's remorse because these bills are basically written by the gambling industry and it's a predatory industry and it's looking to raise money. It's not looking to raise money for our state, but it's looking to raise money for the industry. So my recollection is that some of these figures that have been tossed around about the revenues that will come to North Carolina are pretty minuscule on the states that have enacted online betting, such as Kansas recently. $350 million in revenues produced $700,000 in tax revenues. $350 million spent on gambling through $700,000 in tax revenues for the state. And a lot of these states have enacted these, have given tax incentive status to the promotions, the free betting, have ended up really eliminating this potential for the revenue source. So I think it's kind of maybe overselling it to talk about the potential for revenue raising. And it's a bad way to raise revenue. Gambling revenue is not sustainable, it's not good, it's predatory and it shifts the burden.

Let me just stop Pricey Harrison there. There's more to it and we're going to play all of it a little bit later on. I have no idea if Kansas is upset or not. The state of New Jersey in 2022 raised $11 billion from Sportswager. Only $11 billion.

Now, I don't know what you could do with that. And it's, I mean, it would be a sizable chunk of North Carolina's budget. And I'm not expecting $11 billion. New Jersey was also one of the first states to get involved in this and their tax rate is higher. And who knows what North Carolina's tax rate for this. It's not going to be like a normal sales tax.

It's going to be increased. And like anything, there is a, all right, this works, this doesn't work, this works, this doesn't work, this doesn't work. Predatory. What? I know. It's a business.

Are we five? It's a business. They're not knocking on your door, enticing you with candy to place a bet on the Tar Heels.

They're not calling 99-year-old women asking, you know, their grandson needs money because he's lost in Nebraska. Oh, no, no, no, a Nigerian prince. Yes.

Is going to send you an email saying he wants you to do an in-game parlay. Exactly. If you could simply take the hurricanes and the gold total over, yeah, I can, I'll send you $6 million. You're the special winner out of all the people. Wow.

Our elected officials, people. All right. Let me move on to something else for now. Brian Murphy's going to join us in about 10 minutes.

My gosh. So college football might be changing the way they time the game. And I'm not saying they're going to use a, an hourglass or a sundial or count Mississippi like we used to do when we played touch football in the playground.

But they're going to change the way when the clock runs, when the clock stops, things like this. They're, they're, they're discussing it at this point. And there are four areas that they are looking at.

All right. Four areas they are looking at. The first two don't do anything.

And I can't even believe they spent any time looking at it. Other than actually, I kind of like this one. They're wanting to eliminate teams from calling consecutive timeouts to ice the kicker. Because in college you can do that. Which of course doesn't really happen all that often. And if it happens maybe once a week, maybe, like we're not, we're just not saving that much time doing it. But I will say that if you do that, I'm judging you. Because you're kind of a child at this point.

Also, data has suggested that there is either zero effect or it works against you when you ice the kicker. So why are we doing it other than, see me. And I love waiting right before the snap. Oh, you are so galaxy brain.

You're sneaky. Gosh, I hate that. So that's one thing they're discussing. Also, no untimed down if a defensive penalty is committed at the end of the first quarter or third quarter.

I've never seen that. I'm sure it happens. But again, that's, you know, one play.

Okay, I guess that matters. I'm all about enacting this because it does seem silly. Just we have another quarter we're about to start. Just carry it over. We're about to start.

Just carry it over to there. But there are two that I think matter. And one I'm in favor of, and the other I think would be bad. But not stopping the clock for a first down during the game. If the first down doesn't go out of bounds at a certain time of the game, they still stop the clock until the ball is spotted. Now that doesn't mean that eventually the clock will run. But however long it takes them to spot the ball, that's when the clock, you know, if it takes six seconds to spot the ball after a first down, and there are probably, I'm just going to average a ballpark in here, 50 first downs in a game. So if we stop the clock 50 different times for a first down, and it's, let's just say, five seconds per first down. I can't do that math. 250 seconds. Is that what that is? Divided by 60.

How many? I don't even know how much time we're saving. But they basically said it's about eight plays. Yeah.

All right. Let's take eight plays out of a college football game. College football has about 20 to 25 plays more than an NFL game.

Why? Why do college football games have more plays than NFL games? This is part of the reason.

There are other reasons for it. And the other one they want to do is, or they're thinking about doing, is after an incomplete pass, starting the clock again after spotting the ball. So basically in terms of timing, they would be treating an incomplete pass just like a first down, which I think is actually bad for the actual structure of the game.

But we can discuss that later on. I asked Dave Doran yesterday, would it not simply be better to just adopt exactly the way the NFL times the game? Yeah, I would be in favor of that as well. You know, I think some of these things, they're not willing to take commercials out, but they want to change how we play the game. And it's kind of hard, you know, as coaches to see that because as we all know, every play matters in a game. Start eliminating opportunities to score, defend, you're changing the way the game's outcomes are.

We know a model that works. We see it week in and week out in the NFL. There's rules that go with it.

It'd be great if we're going to modify what we do to match somebody that already has a system that works. Like we should have two minute warnings in college football. We don't have a two minute warning in college football. It's an extra timeout.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Think of all the coaching that can be done in timeouts. So we have a two minute warning.

So we have, we should do that. We should time it exactly the same way they do in the National Football League. So we don't stop the clock after a first down. If the first down happens within the field of play, we just let the clock run. We spot it. So if we lose an additional five or six or eight, whatever it is, then we do.

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See capitalone.com for details. Sure. You know, if you look at how many possessions each team has in the NFL, it's almost always significantly less than there are in college. Almost always a lot less. Occasionally you'll see an NFL game where there are 11 or 12 possessions per team. But a lot of times like go back and look at the play by play from the Super Bowl. There were not a lot of possessions in that. There were basically eight aside. We had eight in the first half of college games. Too many plays.

That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to take some of the plays out, limit the exposure because we know that we are increasing the games and we have constantly increased the games. Way back in the day, there used to be 11 games and then you played in a bowl game. Now we have 12 games and we have bowl games. We have conference championship games and we're about to have playoff games.

So again, not every team is playing all those games, but every team is going to be playing at least 12 or 13 if you make it into a bowl game. All right, two other things before we break. First is that the Hurricanes beat the Blues 4-1. Something happened last night that had not happened in 19 games. Andrei Svetchnikov scored a goal.

Oh my gosh. Svetchnikov was asked if he felt the drought. Yeah, I mean I had the chance to see pretty much every game. I had a chance to just, I was stuck in tragedy as well.

She said like I had chances and just couldn't score you know and I tried to stick with that and you know I was successful. Everybody can feel good again. Right, sigh of relief. Right, everybody can feel good again.

Here's what we talked about it before we even started this. This stretch of play. Hurricanes are now a top 10 offensive team in the league. They're a top five defensive team in the league. The penalty kill is resembling the penalty kill like it was a year ago which is the best in the sport.

It really, there are a lot of things pointing in the right direction for this team. They need Andrei to score. He is. Well, he did last night but I think now I believe we're going to see steady Andrei Svetchnikov goal production. Martine Neches is a bonafide scorer now.

Tevo Terravina is playing better. Seth Jarvis is starting to score again. He had a goal last night. He's got four goals in his last three games.

Even Martinook has his days. Yeah, he does and that line continues to do what that line is supposed to do which is make life miserable for the other team's best players. But the Ajo line and the Kokaniemi line right now are playing really well and they're getting enough at least scoring creation if not goals from their fourth line. So for me, I still recognize some needs for this team or more wants than needs and that's really the difference. The fact that they're scoring more goals now.

The power play while doesn't look awesome has been more productive and maybe that's simply law of averages and I'm allowing for that. I actually think that this team doesn't necessarily need anything as much as you've got the ability to add something without giving up a ton and you've got the room to do it. The salary cap space to do it. You probably owe it to your, you know, to your team and to your fans to just give them a little bit of help going into the postseason. So they more need depth than they need a bonafide star.

So we'll see what happens but I think it's more about want versus need right now and that's a good position to be in. Do I think they'll do nothing? No, I think they'll do something. Will they bring in, you know, Connor McDavid? Probably not. Probably not. But we'll see what happens over the next I think 11 days, 12 days.

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