“Glory Days”: NC State edition

We sort of stumbled into a week-long series, and the reason we stumbled into it is because my friend Tim Peeler, the foremost NC State historian I know, I think, on planet Earth, who is in studio with us, if we can get a two-shot. Can we get a two-shot, Tim? Just say something, Tim. Hey, what's going on, Adam? How you doing today? There you go.

He's here. So it was our conversation on, I guess it was last Thursday night, when the news came that Dick Sheridan had passed, and then we were talking about that was the best era of NC State football. And maybe that can be debatable, but we'll talk about it. And it really got me thinking, like, you know, summer's the perfect time to do these types of things. And so each day this week, we're going to kind of explore what the best era was of each of the, you know, the major programs, the six major programs in the state, with all respect to the Campbells and the Elons of the world. We've got ECU and App and then the four ACC schools.

So let's start our conversation. And it is the Dick Sheridan era, right? The best era. Seven years, one losing season, four years of at least eight wins when it mattered. Now, it's a lot easier to win eight, right? I mean, to be honest, just about every good program should have a couple of 10-win seasons. Right. I mean, it's built to be that way because you get yourself into postseason play, and there is no lack of postseason play these days by winning eight to 10 games.

That is not a indictment or a criticism of the current things. I'm personally a big fan of the bowl system. I don't like the college playoff system that we have migrated to.

But back then it was a bigger deal. Going back to the 70s, you know, NC State won seven ACC championships, right? Five of those times they did not go to a bowl game. After winning the ACC? After winning the ACC. Somebody in the SEC saying right now, see, it just means more here. Well, there are a lot of things that went into that, including a significant basketball probation that kept NC State's football team from going to a bowl game. But it is true that they have been very successful.

If you look at the 60s and the 70s for NC State football, there were times they won the ACC championship and did not go to a bowl game. That is remarkable. All right, so let's start with a kind of a broad look, and then we'll kind of narrow it down. Okay.

And Tim Peeler is in studio with us. Are you on threads yet? I am not. I mean, I have seen the migration of everybody from, what was it, Mastodon to...

I have... ...you know, to camel talk, to whatever. I'm just making these things up. Wow. Two threads.

I thought you were going to say something else. That's terrible. It's my fault.

My fault. My brain on a Monday. I see where your brain goes. My brain on a Monday. But I, you know, I'm still deciding whether I want to use Twitter or not.

I don't blame you. One bit. Twitter is still more user-friendly at this point.

Friendly might not be the right word, but it's still more user-easy. Is the Sheridan era, those seven years, that as good as NC State football has been? Well, I would say that for the longest sustained time, yes. But there were times when Earl Edwards, in his 16 years as head coach at NC State, you know, he won three consecutive ACC championships. Two of those were shared, but 63, 64, and 65. He won it again in 68. Those were good eras for the ACC, but most of the time when he won those ACC championships, they didn't have a winning record. They were 5-5. They only played 10 games at the time.

It was an unbalanced league. They didn't always play every team in the league. So that is a sustained era of success. Lou Holtz came in and had an unbelievable record for what NC State, he lost one home game in four years at NC State. They went to bowl games every year. That was something that NC State had not ever experienced, but it was a flash in the pan. And while I consider the Lou Holtz, Bo Ryan era to be one thing because one came from the other, the Sheridan era basically reset NC State football from three consecutive three and eight seasons, five out of six losing seasons, whatever it was prior to him arriving at the same time college basketball, college football growing at a different rate.

Yeah, that era was unbelievable because it was unexpected and unanticipated in a lot of different ways. Tim Poehler is in studio with us. So why did Bo Ryan, why did Bo Ryan, I mean, I legitimately do not know the answer to this. Why did Bo Ryan leave? He got an offer from LSU. Oh, okay. That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And so you know the story of Bo Ryan. He took the job and then he was out recruiting in January right after taking the job, less than two months, and he was on a plane that depressurized and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Same thing that happened to Payne Stewart.

Same thing that happened just a couple of months ago in New York where a plane depressurized and crashed. So that's what happened to Bo Ryan. Bo Ryan was 33 when he took the head coaching job at NC State. He was 36 taking the job at LSU. He could have still been coaching right now.

Yeah, probably. And so he had a huge future in front of him, but because he left and then immediately after, Willis Casey who was the athletics director at NC State during that time was known for finding great, great coaches. He found Lou Holtz. He hired Kay Yow. He hired Jim Valvano. He hired Richard Sykes and Bob Guzzo and all the people who had had success in so many different eras of NC State athletics, but he failed on three different occasions to get the guy that he wanted to be the football coach. He wanted initially Pat Dye from East Carolina to replace Bo Ryan. He wanted John Cooper at one point to replace Tom Reed. He had other people in mind and he didn't get those guys, including Sheridan in 1982. He tried to hire him then, but Sheridan had two kids in high school who wanted to graduate from high school. So it wasn't until 1985 that Willis Casey was able to get the person that he wanted for at least four or five years to become NC State's football coach. And when Sheridan got here, he immediately turned things around. He immediately wanted things to be significantly different than the three years that immediately preceded him when they lost to Furman three out of five times, I think. Some ridiculous number, including two years in a row, which I was at those games as a student and wondering what football was all about at that point.

There are people, although I think they have maybe unrealistic expectations, who are still worrying about that. So explain, because when I got here, it was Mike O'Kane who took the job after Dick Sheridan left. Explain what was great about the Sheridan era and why was it so successful?

Again, other than Lou Holtz, Sheridan has the best winning percentage in NC State history. Explain what it was about. What was their hook? What was their style? So his style was... We had the diamond NC has. He brought that with him from Furman, the proud place from which my wife graduated and my son is about to graduate from.

Oh, look at you. So he brought that with him from there on the copyright to the logo, changed NC State's Athletics Department logo to a diamond NCS, even though there have been versions of that in the past. But he came in and changed a culture of these are the guys I want to play for NC State and these are the guys I want to play in the system that I developed. It's not what the recruiting wars are now, where you recruit seven players who are listed as athlete or seven players who you migrate down from cornerback to safety to linebacker to defensive end to eventually putting them at defensive line or offensive line when they grow to be larger than what you anticipate. He found guys who were 225, 250-pound offensive linemen from career South Carolina or from, you know, Airport High School in Columbia or from Eastern North Carolina, brought them in and taught them to do the things exactly the way that he wanted.

And if that meant practicing a play 150 times a week, then he would do that. He was so good at Furman when he left in 1985 that there were players who decided they were going to come to school at NC State with Dick Sheridan, not because they want to come and play at a bigger program, a higher profile program. It's because they didn't think they could start at Furman with the program that he had left behind that Jimmy Satterfield took over. That's the kind of culture that he had was he took players and made them better and made them work in the system that he had. He ran an option offense, a 50-defense, but he did all those things really, really well.

The only time that he ever changed up what he wanted to do and how he did it was when he got here in 1986, which I believe is the most underrated season in NC State football history because of the success that they had and because of the last-second success that they had. They came from behind, I think, in six of the, what, 11 games that they played that year? They played 12. They were 8-3-1. 8-3-1, including the loss to Virginia Tech in what was then the new Peach Bowl. It wasn't the Peach Bowl. It was the new Peach Bowl. But they saved that bowl game from existence because the year before... They were in it a lot. Well, they were in it a lot, but the year before, in 1985, Army in Illinois played.

It was rainy. There was about a third of the stadium was filled. They didn't sell any tickets and that bowl was about to go under. But when NC State and Virginia Tech came back, they rebranded it. They got new leadership.

They did a whole lot of things. And that was the most exciting game played that bowl season. And it revived the Peach Bowl. Now, what is Atlanta? What is the Peach Bowl?

It's the most... It is College Football City, USA. That's where everything is. College Football Hall of Fame is there. The Hall of Fame there. My good friend, Gary Stokken, put the Hall of Fame there. Built the Peach Bowl to what it is. The SEC Championship game.

Brought the College Football Championship and the Super Bowl. And, as we all know, Gary Stokken is a former NC State basketball player. And he is...

It's funny. He is a basketball player, but, man, he is all about college football. And it's all about NC State as well.

Every time we talked here. But that run, Peach Bowl, the next year wasn't good. But then it was Peach Bowl, Copper Bowl.

I mean, all American. But these are all good bowls. We didn't have 44 bowl games like we do today. So you needed to win seven or eight games. And you probably needed to be good in October. Because at this point, we were handing out bowl bids at midpoint of the season. There were bowl scouts there from October 15th on. Now, a lot of them came because they wanted to go to the NC State Fair, too. When they came to scout.

Deep fried candy bars. Absolutely. But that was the point where it was all about negotiations. It was all about profile. It was all about who traveled with you.

And, you know, some of those things still expand, but it was really important at that time. And you could get a bowl bid sometime in late October. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you had to be eligible, for one, but you could absolutely get one.

A lot of those decisions were made well in advance. All right. Haven't won a title since 1979. Right. They've been close. They've had opportunities that, you know, at least to win a division, they've had opportunities.

And what has been their best season since then? You know, this is only going to be one of those things where I trip and fall on my face. Oh, is it? I don't mean for that. No, but I get what you're saying. I'm just saying that there have been some really good seasons of NC State football.

During the Amado years, there were some good seasons. If you go back to the Sheridan season, 1986, they could have won the ACC title by beating Virginia on the road the week after they beat South Carolina. But in that South Carolina game, which all NC State fans know, Eric Kramer threw to Danny Peebles when time had expired to score the game-winning touchdown.

But Kramer got hurt on that final play. He did not start the next week at Virginia. So that game, which is remembered as the greatest game in the history of Carter-Finley Stadium, actually cost NC State a really good chance to win the ACC title in 1986.

They did so again. Sheridan's biggest obstacle during his time in his seven years there was playing against Virginia. Two times they had a chance to win the ACC title but lost to Virginia when George Welsh was beginning his program. And then in 90, they won the national championship, right? No, no, they were tied with Florida State for the ACC. But they were ranked number one in the country at that point. Georgia Tech won the national title that year. But those two teams were ascending at that point.

NC State was never really part of the national conversation in that. But if you look at some of the players that have come from NC State, starting with Sheridan inheriting Eric Kramer as his quarterback. He had Shane Montgomery and Preston Pogue and Charles Davenport and some really good college football players. And he had Terry Harvey and Jeff Bender. And he was going to have Trott Nixon. But that was the summer that Sheridan stepped down. Was the summer that Trott Nixon was coming in to be the All-American quarterback and baseball player. And because of that transition, Trott Nixon decided his future was going to be in baseball. Turned out to be a great decision for him.

I think so. And the Red Sox. And the Red Sox.

So lots of things were happening there. Sheridan stepped down in the summer of 93 after taking NC State to the Gator Bowl after the 92 season, losing to Florida in what people know as the Fog Bowl, which was the only time I've ever sat in the top of a stadium and looked down on a cloud. Never saw any of the game because it was so foggy on the field, but not not as much higher up in the stadium. Anyway, they lost that game to Florida. Lots of things happened during the spring and summer of 93, and he stepped down about six weeks before the season started.

June 29th, 1993. Michael Caine was a good coach. I remember Bobby Bowden saying once, and we have to take a break here and we'll come back and we'll talk more about college football in general. Bobby Bowden once said that his most difficult game plan was to stop a Mike O'Kane offense. And a lot of that came from, you know, Mike O'Kane developed the Dick Sheridan offense. He was the offensive coordinator. He was the offensive coordinator. He had played for Dick Sheridan at Orangeburg High School. So that was that was his first coach. Mike O'Kane's first coach was Dick Sheridan. They won a South Carolina state championship with a 13 and 0 record. Michael Caine went on to become Clemson's quarterback and then became a coach. But they had a system. I know people don't like to talk about systems very much, but they recruited to fit people into their system.

They didn't always take the best players because a lot of times they couldn't get the best players, but they made the best out of the players that they had. Did Mookie Wilson play for Dick Sheridan at Orangeburg High School? I do not believe so. Oh man. Don't say that name in my presence.

Why? I still remember Mookie is my guy. The day of the NC State Clemson game, NC State beats Clemson, which is ranked number 15 on national television. I was working for CBS that day. I introduced the concept of a corn dog to Brent Musburger and NC State beat Clemson 27 to 3.

That night was game six of the 1986 World Series. Excellent. Ah, wait a minute. Ah, fantastic. Red Sox.

I grew up as a tortured Red Sox fan because of Jim Ed Rice. And then they had it. It was all there. They named Bruce Hurst the MVP and then they did not make the one defensive change they made every single game.

Dave Stapleton at first. Yep. I understand.

Get Buckner out of the game. I get it. All right. The future or the current, the present of college football, which I know you are not a fan of. So we're going to talk about that. Okay.

All right. The current state of college sports. You're not a fan.

I'm not going to say I'm not a fan. I just fan of college sports. I'm a fan of college sports. I'm also a fan of the kind of college sports that I grew up watching.

I think as all people are, um, you know, I grew up, um, my, my formative years were watching Tommy Burleson and David Thompson and Monty Towel play. And then my, uh, graduating year of high school was 1983 and I been accepted to NC state. Um, that was a different kind of era of sports and athletics. Um, and I was just starting to understand it. And I think I finally just started understanding how college athletics worked when I, uh, left the newspaper business in, in what, 2004.

So it takes a long time to get, to learn some of those things, to know about it. And we are now in one of the five greatest eras of changing college athletics that has ever been. If you go back to say the formative years of the NCAA when it was created in 1905 because of the death of so many football players, uh, or 1935 when Frank Porter Graham came up with a Graham plan that essentially eliminated all possibility of scholarships and all, uh, intercollegiate athletics. And that was from the university, the president of the university of North Carolina system. And then you had the sanity, um, rules of 1948 where the NCAA tried to, uh, bring things back under its control without any enforcement. And then you had the 1952 plan to redo it.

Then you had, uh, you know, prop 48 that changed how things were recruited. That was one of the great, not, I don't mean great. That is one of the, um, times of the biggest change in college athletics.

Spectacular doesn't have to be good. Right. Right. And so, um, those are the eras that I re I don't remember all of those, but I know about all of those areas and how things changed and we're right now in like a decade long change, all created, but we're not even close to finishing.

We're not close to finishing. It's all because of, uh, the television money that has been injected into it. That all started about the same time as prop 48 when, uh, that was another opportunity or at least a chance to, um, change athletics, change the recruiting of athletics because of what college athletics was becoming.

And that was something that was on television every week, uh, every week night, just about then the cable TVs came in and started injecting all kinds of money and all kinds of things. I'm just not to a point where I, I think some of the things that are out there now, uh, the way college athletics is changing, um, is too far afield from what I grew up with. Right. Your thoughts on name, image and likeness and what that has, I never thought, what is it, what has it done? I never thought it would get to the point where it's at right now. Um, because I never thought that, um, the name image, image and likeness would info or get into women's athletics as much as it has.

And I think because that is part of the federal law. Yes. Pure.

That's pure NIL. Well, but I have some problems with. You know what Livy Dunn is, right? Livy Dunn for those people who don't know.

I have two teenage sons. Okay. What are you accusing me of Tim? Livy Dunn is a gymnast at LSU. Yes. And I don't know what she, or like the Cavender twins from Fresno State who then went to Miami and is still, they are still the impetus for the only NCAA sanctions, if you will.

And I use, use that term very lightly, uh, for an NIL incident since NIL has become the law of the land, so to speak. Uh, but Livy Dunn is an, she got, I don't know how many millions of Instagram followers because, well, she's a gymnast. Uh, she's tremendously athletic.

She's gorgeous. All of that. Therefore she has a lot of followers and the pure, the purity of NIL is you have a lot of influence on other people because they follow you on social media.

So we're going to pay you to do things. Right. My problem with that, and I, I wanted to see if NIL was going to become relevant and real and legal, then it needed to filter to all sports because that is part of the title nine legislation. It is a federal guideline, not an NCAA rule or anything like that.

It needs to filter to all. But my problem, and I've talked with lots of women's administrators, lots of people who, you know, I can't say this purely from my own perspective, but I was afraid NIL was going to sexualize women's athletics to a point that it turned it into something away from athletics. You see what I'm saying? That's very much marketing. What is happening with, with Livy Dunn and other athletes, even the Kavanert twins, um, is marketing. Right. I get that. Now, there are others, other women who have great NIL deals like Kaitlin Tuohy from NC State, possibly the most accomplished athlete in NC State athletics history.

Kaitlin Clark from Iowa. Yes. Same kind of thing. Those, they are actually coming through with groundbreaking NIL deals because they are there from, they are getting those deals with accomplishments. I'm not saying Livy Dunn is an unaccomplished athlete or the Kavanert twins are not accomplished athletes, but I think there's more to their NIL deals than just their athletic accomplishments. And I have an issue with that because as we've seen so much through the years, um, sexualizing women's athletics is not a good thing. Wouldn't you have, and this might not be completely accurate, but wouldn't you have a problem with Maria Sharapova for a long time? Of course.

She was more, she was, she was making more money away from tennis than Serena Williams. Of course. I mean, that's the, the issue is that I want people to be accomplished for their athletic achievements.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be, they shouldn't be. Right. I get it.

But I know I understand. I like to say the purity of the sport. I'm not sure any of the sports are truly pure. Or have they ever been? They have not. So what I was going to ask you, because now we have the collectives and the collectives are, and I don't think we're far away from the collectives actually being under the umbrella of the university. Right.

I think that's going to happen at some point. But I will just say that, I mean, don't you think David Thompson and Tommy Burleson and some of those other guys might've been getting $500 handshakes? All I know is that David Thompson would often jump to the top of the backboard, get a quarter, but he would leave the two dimes and a nickel. You know, in the NIL era, that might've been different, but that's what he used to do. So that's, that's been, that's been my argument is that man, these things have been going on for so long.

The hundred dollar handshakes have been part of it for a long time. NC State got a probation early on when, after the sanity rules of 48 and then the, the enforcement era, starting in 1952, Everett Case was investigated because he was the arch enemy of Adolph Rupp. And Rupp, you know, abandoned the 1952-53 season, just didn't play it because he knew he had been paying all of his players enough money to, to, to play for him. So NC State got into trouble for offering a player's girlfriend seven years of education, including a degree from Duke, and it was also got a probation for giving one of the greatest players in NC State basketball history, a set of golf clubs and a membership to Carolina Country Club, uh, to come here to play, you know, so those things happened all the time. Of course. Um, going back to the thirties when things were truly, uh, difficult, I know of an instance where a coach, I'm not going to name him at this point, um, traded his best two high school recruits for a handful of credits to get his degree. What?

Okay. These things go way back there. There were all kinds of difficult, uh, times in college athletics. NC State North Carolina did not play for 20 years in any sport because they couldn't agree on what the eligibility standards should be from 1905 to, uh, uh, 1920 or 1918 when they were forced to play each other in a game. They, they just wouldn't play each other in anything. I think there were maybe two athletic contests between those years between the two teams. Really? All right.

Um, let me, let me get a couple of more, uh, things in. What is your view of where we are as an ACC and what the future is? Tim Peeler, who's an NC State historian, uh, and I'm like, I'm not, I'm not labeling you being anti-current college, but it's very different and I think that we all, and you and I are basically the same age, right? You graduated high school in 83. I graduated high school in 84. Um, I'm much more militant about graduated early because I was that smart.

Uh, I'm not, I'm not going to make any comment about me. Um, I, I do believe I would, I like where college sports is headed. I like the fact that the players are getting the money cause you, you made the illusion, uh, you, uh, you basically brought it in that this all began when the TV money started going nuts. Yes. Right. And at some point the players were going to realize that they were helping to generate all of this revenue and their deal had not changed.

Right. My, I guess the biggest issue I have with all that, I'm not saying they don't deserve having the money, uh, but the money was, was generated and went to other things that did benefit the players. When you start talking about stadiums, uh, you start talking about, uh, workout facilities, uh, you know, training, um, physical training, uh, regimens, all the different things that come along with it. Money did go to those things and it did improve their games and what they did.

Uh, the, the expansion of the staffs of college athletics, which is enormous now, that money did go to those things. What the era that I see right now is, um, I don't like when people say they get nothing for going and playing for a college. Well, I don't think they get none.

I would never say they get none. I know, but some people do say they only get a college education or they only have the opportunity to get a college education. And I don't like the devaluation of what a college education is. Well, except that the NC and the NCAA, the individual schools to varying degrees have devalued the education themselves. Right.

I don't disagree with that because, and this is what I had been saying for, I don't know how long, decades that decades of the newest 25 years into three decades that the college education has a value, but that value varies from player to player. Right. It definitely depends on what the player gets out of it.

What the player wants out of it. Right. What the university wants to give the player out of it because, and the, what happened at UNC, you know, the Carolina way and they were different than everybody else. As it turns out, no, they weren't or worse in many, in many cases than anybody else. I'm not here to disparage a sister institution. But my, my point is the way North Carolina treated a lot of their athletes was that you were here to play, which it'd be hard to dispute that that's the case in a lot of other places, right? But you are not, you are here to be, we are going to keep you eligible more than we are here to educate you. That is what the university did in many cases, not across the board, but in many cases. I don't want North Carolina to go, what are you talking about? Like, unless you're in denial, you can't possibly think that what all of those reports were not based in truth. So here, here, here's the main thing that I will say out of this that I've talked to enough.

Um, gosh, we only have two minutes left. I talk with enough folks through the years and written stories with enough, enough, uh, someone who comes from a financially disabled background who came here and college athletics afforded them the opportunity to change not only their lives, but their family's lives because of what they did with the education that they got. I understand that in almost every case now, people are doing similar things by getting, um, whether it's NIL money or the opportunity to play professional sports or all of those things. But as someone who has worked at a educational institution for the last 20 years, I always think that the best and most important thing that you can get out of the opportunity to play college athletics is the opportunity to get an education.

And I want to see that still going. I see the future of college athletics is that at some point, whether it's soon or later on down the line, that athletics will be disassociated with the universities. They will be, um, they will, they will be teams that maybe are affiliated with the university, but not necessarily populated by college athletes. Um, not necessarily, you know, the college education will be an above and beyond benefit of, of being part of someone's athletics program. Steve Logan once said this to me, and Steve is going to come on the show on Wednesday. Um, Logan said that his idea would be, you don't, you don't have to go to school while you're playing.

That we'll, you come here, you play football for us. Right. And we'll give you six years to get your education whenever it is you want.

Right. To get your education. And there are lots of programs going on at different colleges right now. NC State has one. I know Carolina has one as well. Everybody has them where they will welcome back former athletes to pursue those degrees.

I think that's great because the ultimate goal should be turning that athletic ability into an educational opportunity. Let me, we'll, we'll, we'll close on this Tim Peeler, uh, at TM Peeler on Twitter. Cause he's not, it's actually at pack Tim Peeler, pack Tim Peeler. Did you change that or did I have this wrong forever? You've probably had it wrong forever. Gosh, I'm so dumb.

At pack Tim Peeler. Um, this goes, I think these two things are very similar because the overwhelming majority of college athletes probably get more out of the system than they are worth to the system. Right. Right.

Uh, so whether it's the non-revenue sports who maybe don't get full scholarships, but they're the partial scholarships and you can always cover a lot through grants and things like that. Uh, they get a lot out of the system. Whereas this is the old system, right?

This is before pre-NIL. The star players were getting barely anything based on what they provided. So relative to what they provided. So let's just say Tommy Cramer or Tori Holt, when you are a superstar in a high profile, in a high profile sport, you provide more than you take, right?

Possibly, yes. I mean, I think in those cases it was true. And I've said this about coaches. There isn't a single coach in college football or basketball who is appropriately paid.

You are either incredibly overpaid or incredibly underpaid. That's the way I look at it. Right.

And I get that. I get that, uh, there is a lot of money involved, all of it coming from television. Um, I don't see in a lot of ways where the money is improving the educational opportunities or the money is improving the overall athletics presentations for Division 3, Division 2, NIA, N-A-I-A, any of the things that, um, everybody needs to feed, um, the, uh, the, the industrial complex, the athletics industrial complex that we've created going back into, uh, middle schools, high school, travel teams, all those different things. We are feeding education through athletics. Television's feeding a lot of money into athletics.

I just want to see us use all of that opportunity to create better and more educated folks who use that opportunity to improve their lives and the lives of their families. But it's going to more strength and conditioning coaches. That is probably true. I don't know. I don't.

I try not to know how much everybody else makes. No, it's not about that. I mean, you could just see there, there are, uh, Chip Patterson likes to call how many polo shirts you have. Right. Right.

Like the staffs keep getting bigger. Right. And I don't, I mean, to some extent, and that's really just football because that doesn't happen with the other, with the other sports. Uh, but we're not really spreading that, that, that money is not going to fund the things that would make a lot of other people's experiences better. It's going to help justify football pays for everything. So we're going to throw all of that money. We waste a lot of money, right? Yes.

I could give you several examples of places. A lot of wasted money is not just in college athletics, but in programs that we feed money to all the time. Yes.

Um, so, but a lot of, do a lot of money wasting. Yes. All right, sir. We're going to fix it. Is it a college sports going to be fixed?

We know we can have the ACC in 10 years until today. Nobody asked me how I would fix it, but I don't know. I mean, I'm a vested observer more than anything else. That's all I've ever been is just someone who watched and reported and, uh, wrote about sports. So I don't know. I can't say as I have any answer, but I'll be here to write about it when, uh, when we do, when somebody does come up with a brilliant idea. Real quick, tell me what you, do you want to even reveal a book you're working on?

Well, I'm working on a couple of things right now, but I would really like to write a book that tells the story of the most important person in the history of the state of North Carolina athletics. And I'll just leave it at that. Okay. Oh, intrigue, uh, at pack Tim Peeler on Twitter. And then he'll be that when he eventually gets over to the threads.

Uh, because I'm sure that that handle is available. I thank you very much. Thanks for having me here. I enjoyed it. You got it.