Tournament Champion of the Maui Invitational…

One of the best gentlemen I have ever covered in coaching Dave Odom, former Wake Forest, former South Carolina, former East Carolina head basketball coach, five-time Durham high school coach of the year, joins us now on the Adam Gold Show. And you have the best title right now, the tournament chairman of the Maui Invitational. What a gig. How are you? How does a man get so lucky?

Just what an amazing, it really is. People ask me, you know, what are you going to do when you retire? I said, well, I'm not going to retire.

Just changing jobs. They said, yeah, yeah, yeah. The next thing you know, I'm flying back and forth, spending a week in Maui at the time. And my phone rings constantly from coaches around saying, how about us? Take us with you. We want to compete. We're going to have a good team.

And, you know, I try to do the best I can. So, because I want to get into that a little bit, because we know the announcement came earlier this week that, I guess it might have been yesterday, that North Carolina is going to be in the field coming up in November. Has anybody ever said, you know what, we just can't make it? Yeah, we have. Believe it or not, I've had two or three. I probably should not reveal who it was simply because, you know, I don't want the fans in an uproar against these coaches, but I did have two, maybe three say, ah, it's not for us. And consequently, the reason for one of them, the coach said, I got a bad back.

The flight over there is going to be at nine hours, nine hours back, plus all the walking and coaching and everything I do. It's just going to be too much for me. So it was kind of a personal thing. I respected that. And then there was another one who just simply said, the competition over there is more than I want to deal with this early in the year. And that there was one more, but that's basically the only reason that people would not want to go because, you know, it didn't cost them anything.

And, you know, we're paying for that and the competition, their own TV and are off to a good start. So I generally don't have a problem. And just, Adam, so, you know, I am full through twenty six, twenty twenty six. So if you get you a team up, don't call. All right. That's fine.

But I would definitely be up for the flight. Do now, do you force the broadcasters to wear Hawaiian shirts? No, I don't. But I couldn't keep them from doing that if I wanted to.

You know, they love that. You know, Jay Billison and Dan and those other guys, you know, we don't have we put them in their room where I mean, if you want, they all do. Dave Odom is joining us here on the Adam Goldsher, tournament chairman of the Maui Invitational.

So you say you're full through twenty twenty six. Here's what I do know about the Maui Invitational is that pretty much every year it's a stacked field and it looks like it's a stacked field again next year. The defending champion, Connecticut Huskies are there. Iowa State that had a good year is there. Michigan State will be there, among others. I know Colorado is there. It's a really good field.

Dayton is always good. I know they're part of it as well. How do you if you're booked through twenty twenty six, do you know something that we don't about the teams that are out there or we pretty much know who's going to be good all the time? Well, you know, back twelve, fourteen years ago, when I first started this thing, I realized, you know, getting ahead of the the field is going to be.

And when I say field, I'm talking about teams getting ahead is going to be key to us being able to have the best fields and in the country each and every year. So I started working a little bit ahead, which was something that was unprecedented at the time. The people that run this, that owners didn't understand what I was doing, but I think they do now.

And basically the way I do it, Adam, is I looked at there are certain rules that you have to go by. One of them is, you know, you you can't bring a team back to Maui or any other and into more than one in four years. Right. So that simply means if a team is in twenty twenty three, he could not come in twenty twenty six. That would only be three years. So in North Carolina's case, and I know that's the one that most of your listeners are interested in, they they would last there in twenty two. I think it was I'd have to look that back up, but I think it was in twenty two. No, excuse me.

Twenty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. And so, you know, they're going to be OK and we're you know, we're pleased to have them. They bring a large crowd and everybody's interested in the Tar Heels and we know why. I mean, it's a big draw.

Yeah. So I usually put some teams on a four year role. Michigan State is that that team or UCLA is that type of team, Kansas, those kind of teams on a four year role along with North Carolina. And Duke has not been there since twenty eighteen. I'm going to go out and live and say that the Blue Devils are somewhere between twenty four and twenty six.

But I could be wrong. Dave Odom is joining us. I wasn't planning on asking you this, but it just kind of popped into my head. And I'm just curious your thoughts with the explosion of the women's game. Would you guys consider starting a women's Maui Invitational? We have talked about it and talked about it and talked about it. I think that's a wonderful idea, one that needs more probing, more understanding.

And the problem is this in order and my company is Maui Gym Crowd, Kemper Lesnick. It's a money making group. Yeah. I mean, we don't do things for pleasure.

I mean, not only pleasure. Right. And in order to make money, make it profit sharing that type thing, you've got to have financial backing. And I don't know that you could get enough sponsors to sponsor a women's tournament.

So you'd need television. And I'm pretty sure TV is stretched out right now and probably wouldn't be the best time to go to them and say, look, we're going to do a men's we're going to do the men's as always. And then right after that, the next week, we're going to do a women's tournament. You interested? I think we'd get would get a no.

And I don't like to ask questions where I know the answer before I ask it. Well, I think that's what that would be in the future. Actually, I don't know. Wait till you see what the women's NCAA tournament is because I think the NCAA is going to form that out separately next year. Yeah.

I think the I think the price tag for that is going to be eye opening. Women's soccer is now exploding in sports. Can I ask you a question or a couple of questions about the nature of the game right now? Somebody was as successful as you were as a head coach in the ACC and in other leagues in the SEC. What do you what is your take on the state? Not of the way the game is played, but of the the state of college basketball as a whole.

I and I'll be very frank with you. I am disappointed with all of this in our business. I am disappointed with all of this transfer portal business. I think we have given the game over to pretty much a corrupt way of doing business. I don't think it's a I don't think the way it's being governed now is going to last. They're too many. Now, maybe it's just me being an old guy and whatever, but I just I don't think this river of money that we now see going into this thing we call NIL.

Think about it a minute, Adam. You got a situation where in some cases millions of dollars are going to players on a single team, right? Now, if that team were to have two or three years where they didn't play well, didn't play well, that means the players didn't play well. And if I am the benefactor, I look at that and I say, I'm not getting my money's worth and I'm going to pull my money back. And, you know, that's going to create a problem for the players because they were brought there with the understanding they were going to make X amount of dollars. Now, second thing on that, the chancellors and the presidents, I think eventually will come to grips with. There is a there's there's a stream of money that has been coming into them.

Let's say you're a chancellor at X University and you've been getting a certain amount of money, private donations every year, and you've been putting it in library funds, professors salaries, reconstruction renovation around the campus, et cetera, et cetera. And now all of a sudden, the guy that's been helping you, our group of guys that have been helping with this say, we can no longer do that. We can't support the school and their needs and the athletic department, and the athletic department, basketball, women's basketball, men's football. We can't do both. And so you're going to force him to choose on that.

And one of the outlets are going to suffer, I think. And I can't believe that the presidents and the chancellors let that get started so quickly. I think you're probably aghast at what they're doing. Well, I think they didn't have a choice. Yeah. Yeah. You're right.

You're right. They didn't have a choice. I saw the president of Notre Dame, athletic director of Notre Dame, on 60 Minutes, I think two Sundays ago, and they were lamenting the condition of the of the athletic department and the NIL and the transfer portals, all that. And of course, I wanted to stand up and clap in my bedroom or in my living room.

I want to stand up and clap. And then I turn around and I read where Notre Dame has given all this money to the NIL guys. I guess Sam Hartman from right here at Wake Forest is up here on an NIL-based scholarship. So I don't know what's happening. I don't know.

So let me just play a little devil's advocate for you. Do you really think that we're drawing from the same pool, the people who would donate separately to the university and people who would donate separate, otherwise to the athletic department? Because my sense is that those are separate. Those are two separate entities that if you were giving to the university, certain schools.

Right. And I'm just make up a school. Notre Dame. No, excuse me. Ohio State.

Sure. Ohio State is a huge university. 1,070,000 students. And in a pool of students like that, and all spring parents and all that, you very well might have different lines of money donation and all that.

You very could do that. But then there are other private universities. Rice.

Sure. Vanderbilt, maybe. Wake Forest, certainly I think is, you know, they're not, they don't have the expansive. They don't have the donors.

Yeah. They don't have the alumni base to generate it. But so would you prefer, would you prefer, cause the men's basketball and football generate so much revenue and really it's more about football, generate so much revenue. Would you be more comfortable if the universities or the conferences simply made the players employees and paid them directly?

Because this seems to be the better way for the universities to have third parties compensate the players for their value. Well, let's be honest. We know every player worth his salt has an agent now. Right. And, and it's legal.

That's the thing about it. I mean, they've been hiding for all these years, but this year, I mean, and I think last year, I mean, it's, you know, coaches go to the players and they're starting to re-recruit them as, as you know. And the answer is, well, I don't, you know. Did we lose Dave Odom? Did, did, did, did a coconut shell come in or do we lose, we lose coach? I don't, I don't, I don't think we have, we don't, I don't think we have a need for another professional league. And that's what we've got. Well, I, yeah, but I mean, the sport generates so much money and the players are the ones playing and it was going this way anyway. So I think, well, I, again, I, I don't have a problem with them being paid, but I do have a problem with them being given $800,000 million. I mean, that's more than a coaching staff gets paid.

I mean, maybe not head coaches, but yeah, the assistant. So I don't see, we haven't, you know, part of going to college is teaching them, you know, how to be an adult adults handle money. And, you know, we're, we're not, we're not even giving them, giving these universities a chance to teach that. I don't, I don't see it myself. I really don't now get setting up something where you can pay them on a moderate basis so that they can, you know, live comfortably in college. I got no problem with that.

A million dollars to a college player. And I don't, I don't see a single one that's worth it. I really don't. Is it a, is it fair to say boy, times have changed. Yes, boy, they have. And I think you could also say people in my era, my vintage boy, are you, or is everyone glad we're gone? Cause we're so antiquated that it probably we'd be a fight with that. But yeah, yes, you're right.

Times have changed. The first thing I said was, is the most true of, of everything we've said here. You are such a gentleman. I remember speaking to you when you were still coaching Tim Duncan back at Wake Forest in Baltimore, after an NCAA tournament day game, just sitting around on a folding chair, talking basketball and life. And I appreciate your time, Dave Odom.

Have fun with the Maui Invitational. We'll talk to you again. My, my pleasure, man, Adam. And you're all my best at my friends now in the triangle. You got it. Thanks coach.

Dave Odom here on the Adam Gold show. Yeah. Times, I think we have a basically proof of that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Always changes. Have changed.