Carlos Alcaraz beats Novak Djokovic in 1st Wimbledon title

SCC Media Days this week. ACC Media Days next week. We are going to talk a little bit of college football with Dan Wolken from USA Today, but I am curious because I know Dan also covers the sport of tennis for USA Today if we didn't actually see the passing of the torch from Novak Djokovic to Carlos Alcaraz yesterday. Sir, what do you think? I think we saw it in the sense that the new era is coming.

The new era is here. It was sort of a torch passing. I don't think that means Novak is not going to win anymore. He's still very capable and Alcaraz is still young and so the next time they play, hey, maybe it's the US Open. It will go a different way, but Novak's 36 years old. He's going to be 37 before the French Open next year. His time is limited. We know that.

It's obvious. He's still in great shape. He still looks good, but you are at the point now, just from an age standpoint, where you start falling off the cliff a little bit and so there is a shift happening. It was always going to happen. I've been watching Alcaraz for a couple, three years now and it was very obvious this is what he was going to be. This is his destiny and now it's here and it's exciting to watch happen in real time because it was it was always going to happen and in some ways it's incredible credit to Djokovic. He's hung on this long.

Dan Wolken is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. There are a couple of things about yesterday's match watching that I really found fascinating. First of all, I really thought Djokovic had the match into the second set. He was dominant in the first set where Alcaraz was making a lot of errors and he looked like his decision making was not on top of it, but also I thought Djokovic maybe let him off the hook in the second set. Maybe even in that tie break and from that point I thought he lost control. Djokovic was kind of playing to the crowd more. He looked a lot more relaxed and once he lost the second set I felt like that went away. Yeah, he missed a couple backhands in the tiebreaker in the second set that if he makes those shots he probably wins the match, but that's the way tennis goes. It's such small margins and even Novak recognized that in his post-game speech. In the 2019 final he's playing Roger Federer.

He's down match point. Federer hits a serve that clips the top of the tape by whatever fraction of an inch and it's probably going to be an ace and it's game set match. He doesn't win that Wimbledon. That's tennis. It always comes down to a handful of points and your ability to execute and the thing is a lot of times Djokovic doesn't feel under pressure because of who he's playing.

He felt under pressure yesterday because of who he was playing and that's the biggest difference. So you mentioned Roger Federer and this is the second thing I wanted to ask you about this is that Novak was not the crowd favorite in spite of the fact that I believe a win would have equaled Roger Federer's career record for Wimbledon titles on the men's side. Novak has not yet been able to really capture the hearts of the crowds. Is there still Roger's court? Is that fair to say that he's not Roger therefore he can't be their favorite? Oh he's never going to be Roger and we've seen that over the years and the way people react to him it's not the same. Now I remember in 2021 he was going for the calendar grand slam in New York. The crowd was totally behind him. They wanted to see him do it and it meant a lot to him if you remember about the way he reacted his emotional just whatever he was feeling that was unfolding it was very different and he's always sort of craved that love from the crowd and you know maybe as you get to the end of his career where Alcaraz is clearly the guy and he's the one who's chasing a little bit trying to just squeeze more grand slam titles out of whatever he's got left in his body that may flip on him and he becomes a little bit more of a sentimental favorite but a lot of what has plagued Novak and his relationship with the crowd he's kind of brought on himself over the years. It's not his fault that he was just the third guy where Federer and the doll already had their established fan bases by the time Novak started winning a lot but some of it is also just self-inflicted and some of the weird things he's done in his head and sometimes the way he acts on the court when things don't go his way but we'll see he's got probably a couple more years left and I do think people should appreciate him while he's still around because he's certainly had an unbelievable period.

Yeah he has and frankly he's still one of the best two players probably on earth right now. Dan Walken is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. All right let me ask you about two college football things as we get ready for the information the preview season to begin and the SEC is first up so I'll start with Tennessee. Over 200 violations 18 of those level one under head coach Jeremy Pruitt were you surprised that the most harsh punishment was really the eight million dollar fine levied on the volunteers football program and there were some scholarship reductions but a lot of those is already time served and there was no postseason ban. I'm not surprised because this is not the first time we've seen it it's a new era over there in Indianapolis they are clearly making an effort to not penalize the current student athletes who had nothing to do with whatever violations occurred you know three four or five years ago. You know some people would say that's a good thing and I can certainly make that case I think you could also say okay well if it doesn't affect things like postseason bans or whatever why would anyone follow the rules and I can see that side of it as well so this is the problem with the NCAA right now I don't think they can ever win or satisfy everybody on any side of these situations and so they're the whipping boy they were going to get the abuse from from all sides no matter how it turns out but look right now this is a consistent decision with several of the rulings that have come out over the last I don't know year and a half and that's just the way it is now because that's what the schools want and the schools are the NCAA they are the ones who make those policies and this is just kind of where the pendulum has swung over the last couple years. Look I'm of the mind that the nature of the violations I understand that the coaches are not allowed to actually pay the players themselves but you know when it comes down to money I don't care I mean it just I have a hard time being moved negatively if a player is getting money from the school from the coach because I've always thought that they have deserved it let me go to northwestern your thoughts on what we saw there because it had I mean look it was a strange set of circumstances that have to go from a two-game paid summer vacation to a firing of the most popular player and best coach in program history in the span of two days with no new information. Well I think we should all be able to agree at this point that the things that were alleged happened I think there's enough corroboration based on what people have reported and based on what the investigative law firm that Northwestern Hired found that we know maybe not everything in exact specificity but there was some some stuff going on in the northwestern program from a hazing standpoint that should not have been happening in 2023. Now the question is what did Pat Fitzgerald know? What did he encourage?

What did he wink his eye at? There's very clearly different interpretations of that and and a lack of evidence on that but I would also argue that when you're the head coach at some place for 17 years when you're a legendary former player at that program you are the culture the culture is you you can't separate the two clearly Pat Fitzgerald he did not know about these things you should have known about them um when you're Pat Fitzgerald in northwestern I just believe you own everything that happens from the scores of the games to what goes on in the showers it's all you and um I just find it I find it personally a little hard to believe that that he oh he just didn't know I approached for 17 years that sounds crazy to me well it sounds crazy to me too and also he played there was there and if you go back and you read enough of the articles like some of these things predated Fitzgerald in the program so who knows they probably uh went on all the way back to when Pat Fitzgerald was a player at northwestern or certainly you can you can uh it wouldn't be that big of a stretch because we had things going on back to 2001 based on one article one article uh that I read Dan Wolken before we let you say goodbye look this to me I've always thought that the number one priority for all of these universities uh other than making money from their perspective is to make sure that the programs are you know really have the best interest of the student athletes I shouldn't even use that term that's a gross term of the students of the athletes in mind and it didn't appear that northwestern really did that join planet fitness today the most convenient way to get energized with equipment for every workout one dollar down ten dollars a month no commitment canceled anytime deal ends july 19th planet fitness is an official fitness center of the carolina panthers see home club for details well look uh I think it's funny I remember a couple years ago I had a conversation with an athletic director um and one of the things we talked about was how in this day and age one of the most difficult parts of the job is trying to separate fact from fiction when it comes to allegations of impropriety within the program or abuse you know emotional abuse whatever these these kinds of things come up because they come up a lot and most of the time we don't hear about them right and um sometimes they can't even be substantiated sometimes it's just false like if you're an athletic director you're getting a lot of these kinds of complaints and I do sympathize with people who have to try to make heads or tails of it because you know you can't just fire a coach every time somebody comes in and says I was mistreated that's not the way it works um you know I think northwestern tried to do things by the book but once it comes to you have the information what do you do with it well then it becomes more complicated then it becomes political there's there's donors involved you know northwestern's got a guy named pat ryan who's given you know tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to the school and uh he loves pat viscera and he was going to put his name on the football stadium that they're trying to build and all this stuff it it becomes hard to figure out whose interests you're serving and that's why I said in my column last week you need a players union to sort of figure out a lot of this out and figure out what what is um you know what what's proper and what isn't and just take some of the coach take the coaches out of it because to me that only makes it impossible to really adjudicate all right final thing uh for dan wolken i appreciate your time at dan wolken on twitter usa columnists uh give me one uh one thing you are fascinated by heading into this college football season um you know i'm fascinated by of course whether this is going to be alabama coming back and um taking the crown away from georgia or georgia putting their stamp as as the dominant program in the sec and if it happens three years in a row what does that mean for alabama what does it mean for nick saben uh being over 70 years old now i think it's a pretty key season in that entire dynamic and and certainly um it's hard to bet against georgia given what they've done the last two years and what they've got coming through their program from a talent standpoint they're they're they're the best roster um but you know but alabama's not just not just going away either but if they're if they can't beat georgia they can't win the sec what does that mean well it means that we're headed for a three-peat dan wolken uh columnist covers college football covers tennis uh just writes about good stuff at dan wolken on twitter i appreciate it man enjoy and we'll talk to you soon you got it dan wolken here on the adam gold show