Roundtable Time with Randy Slack and Jeremy Greene!!

As we have done several times throughout several summers on Fridays and other holidays when I jump in here, I go now across the state to guys who know more sports than I do, are funnier than I am, and more entertaining. And if they could get here in a car faster than I could, they would probably be guest hosting the show.

They've got other radio to tend to right now in their respective markets. Joining me from Wilmington in ESPN Wilmington down there, it is Randy Slack. Randy, what's going on, man? How are you doing?

Doing alright, hey. Thanks for having me, as always. And then up in the mountains, it is Jeremy Green, the mountain man in ESPN Asheville. What's going on, Green? Oh, a little out of breath. I had to run to the Knights Green to make sure I got to the turn to talk to you guys.

That's right, that's right. Feel free to go back and play golf. You can play golf while doing this interview. You just have to, like, tell us how your shot was while you took it.

I'll be at the right. We're playing. I probably could sit here and do this whole interview, and I'm not even sure the green in front of us would be cleared.

So, we timed this perfect. Golf up in the mountains in the summer is a different ball game. It is so hot down here.

Feels so much better up there. How much of the Hall of Fame game did you watch last night? I think I know the answer to Jeremy Green.

So, we'll start with Randy Slack. How much did you watch at the Hall of Fame game? There was a game last night. Alright.

Jeremy Green, I think you'll balance it out. How much did you watch? Every second. First win of the year, that'd be over. First loss of the year, batting the Jets. Oh yeah, I bet preseason football. It's an addiction.

It's a curse. You took the over. Were you surprised that they said the under in 33? It felt like the deal in the past used to be, oh yeah, the sneaky pick is the unders in preseason game, but Vegas was having none of you sliding in under a 33 last night. Do they know about the low-scoring preseason phenomena? They started overreacting to that about three years ago. I literally just bet the under on every preseason game and don't look at it until the end of the preseason. And four years in a row now, it's been a winner.

Alright. And Randy, no interest? Not even DeMarcus Ware singing the national anthem could warm your heart to watch a Hall of Fame preseason game? I didn't know he did that until today, but yeah, I don't really, I mean, as a Cincinnati Bengals fan, I couldn't care or could care less, whatever the worst one of the options are about the Cleveland Browns. And you know, but the Jets are, I mean, the Jets are the Jets until they're no longer the Jets.

So we'll see. Yeah, I mean, I love, nobody proved that theory more than the Falcons, who you were like, you know what, maybe the Falcons are actually going to do it up 28-3 at the Super Bowl. So like, yeah, the Jets will be that team that if they're in the Super Bowl, if they're winning, people are like, nah, they're still going to Jets this thing. I've already got one NBA title with my Denver Nuggets. This is the year of Jeremy. We're going to have Denver Nuggets NBA champions, Florida State NGA football champions, New York Jets Super Bowl champions.

I've never had a title. This is the year of Jeremy. Breathe it in. Hold on. How are you a Nuggets, Knolls, Jets fan? Florida State was with Charlie Ward back in 93. I just fell in love with him, fell in love with basketball and football because of him. My dad is a 60-year Jets fan and Denver, I grew up a Knicks fan and I physically couldn't give James Dolan any more of my money and I love watching Nicole Jokic. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

I moved to Denver four years ago. No, no, no, you don't get to claim a championship for picking up the Nuggets four years ago. Well, I screamed that they were going to win it three years in a row and I think I was the only person in any form of media to say that, so I'm taking that as a win.

It might be a cheap win, but it's a win. Randy, back me up on this. I try not to fan-gate too much, but Jeremy claiming that his team is winning a title in the NBA that he just adopted four years ago. Are you okay with that?

Yeah, you can't do that. Now, I will say that NBA, I feel like, is more of a player league than the team league. So, if you root for, like, I was an Iverson guy. I loved Iverson as a kid. I followed him in Philadelphia and then when he went to Denver. So, if you're a Nicole Jokic guy and you want to be happy for that, but unless you live in a city where you have an NBA team, I think you just mainly root for players anyway. Like with Jeremy rooting for Charlie Ward when he played for the Knicks and then rooting for Nicole Jokic in Denver.

Alright. I do respect Charlie Ward made me fall in love with Florida State too, so I feel you on that one. I saw two days ago, I believe, on an updated NFL over-under win total betting, I saw the Panthers listed at 7.5. Would you take the over or under on the Panthers winning 7.5 games this year, Randy Slack?

I like them for 9 or 10. They're in a terrible division. You got Baker Mayfield and Kyle Trask battling it out. You have Derek Carter.

You have Desmond Ritter. So, sure. Could they win 8 games, 9 games, 10 games?

Those are all plausible to me. So, yeah. Let's go over 7.5. That seems fairly easy to me. I tend to agree with you. What do you say, Jeremy Green?

I have them over, but I have them over at 8. They have a really ugly start to the schedule. And that's not how I wanted it to go with a rookie. I mean, look, I think the team's really talented.

I think the coaching staff is really good. I just don't know that you're going to start well. And so I'm taking over 7.5.

I think that's why it's so low. I mean, look, the NFC South is the most open division in all of football to me. It's the NFC South and the AFC North.

You could tell me any of those four teams won the division and convince me of it, and I would believe it. I'm 100% with you, where if it said it's 7.5, I'm taking the over. If it said it's 8.5, I'm not taking the over. I'm probably taking the under. I think 8 or 9 is pretty good. I think at 8.5, I would just avoid it. To me, it's 8 or 9.

I don't know which one. I think it's the best bet, but you're right. With the division being terrible, yes, if that defense is as good as it was last year, and there's even modest improvement in the offense, 10 wins wouldn't be crazy. It's still amazing to me how much just how the general populace feels about the Panthers has changed so much with the coaching moves. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a college sports bubble as a guy who grew up in the triangle with Duke State and UNC dominating my sports pages all the time, so the conference realignment stuff is still fascinating to me.

I don't know how much you guys care about it, but do you have a prediction of what the end game is? What the landscape of college football is? Just to say college football, I know that there are other sports that are part of it.

What did it look like in three years? Is it a two-conference thing? Is it a breakaway tier of elite that starts actually calling itself professional college football or whatever it is? What's your prediction for what college football looks like in three years, Jeremy Green?

Well, I mean, we basically already have that. You've got the Big Ten and the SEC. Once this is all done and USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington are playing the Big Ten, you basically have two conferences that just play a different brand of football than the rest of us do. And so the Pac-12 is dead.

I think it will be officially dead and we can play taps for it within seven days. The ACC and the Big 12 to me just feel like now it's not power five and group of five anymore. It's power two, slightly less powerful two and then group of five. And I think that's where it goes. I did a conference with Seth Greenberg before last basketball season. And he said the movement will be to contracts in college sports and that will be how you moderate the transfer portal. And there's only so many teams that can do that. There's only so many programs that make that much money that you could take the risk of having the contract and miss. So I would say you wind up with the Big Two, SEC Big Ten, mediocre two, ACC Big 12 and then everybody else. They're fun to watch and tailgate and drink domestic lights in the parking lot, but you're not really a threat to anything.

Randy Slack, what say you? What does college football futures look like? I can't imagine it changes much more because just because I don't know where the money is, I don't know how much more money you can have. Like how much more can these networks actually give these conferences?

And at what point are we reaching diminishing returns? And to me, like, do we have the new playoff format set yet? Because if I were a team and I'm trying to compete for a national title, would I rather A, be in the ACC or the Big 12, compete against, you know, a lower overall quality of conference play and almost assuredly guaranteeing myself to play for at the playoffs? Or go to the SEC where I could be eight and four and nine and three with 17 other teams? Like, to me, I would rather be the Notre Dame of the ACC or the Clemson of the ACC, play that pretty good schedule, win 11, 12 games, get into the playoff. That, to me, is a more lucrative deal.

No, I totally agree with you. I can't articulate this very well, but I still think there's something to... I mean, much like, you know, the NHL, you've got the Toronos and the Bostons and the Detroits that resent the Carolinas and the Tampas and the San Jose's or whoever for even existing. But they realize, well, hey, in order to have a league, we need all these teams. I feel like that kind of happens in college football too. Like, yeah, like Big Ten, you may look down on North Carolina or NC State or whatever, but also, like, if you want to have a brand that works that reaches the entire country, you need teams spread out.

And maybe you need to, you know, I think it ultimately breaks that into, like, a professional sports league where they put it up in divisions and start looking a lot like the regions that look like our original conferences back in the day. Who knows? All right, Randy, you brought this up. The Mega Millions is over a billion now. Did anybody win it? What's our next drawing?

I forget what night these things are on. Tonight, billion dollars on the line. Sadly, well, there's two factors here. One, obviously, Uncle Sam wants about half of that at least if you win. So your billion, you walk away with nearly $500 million. And then, there aren't that many sports leagues where a billion dollars even gets you a team outright anymore, especially if you're talking NFL, MLB, NBA. I'm not sure if a billion dollars could still get you a NHL team somewhere.

Maybe. But let's say you could become a decent player in a pro sports team. What league would you want to buy a franchise in right now with your billion dollars, Jeremy Green? I would rather have 10% of an NFL team than 100% of anything else. Because you're just printing money. And let's say I buy into that, I catch my share of the revenue, and 10 years from now I buy an NBA team or I buy an NHL team.

And then I can be the big dog and still have my 10% in the NFL. It's just a completely different revenue structure. And I'm looking at the guys that bought the Hornets and I'm glad that they did. But I'm still looking at it going, how exactly do you think you're going to keep making the same money with the diminished TV returns, the diminished attendance? How do you think this is going to be a smart investment five years from now? I don't see it. Doesn't mean that it won't happen.

For me, it's easy. It would be the NFL. I don't know. We were talking earlier on the show, these Gen Z-ers think that tennis balls are green.

I mean, with that kind of crazy thought, what if they think that football is dumb and all of a sudden in 20 years there's no audience? Tennis balls are not green. You're not serious, are you? I'm colorblind, so I really don't know.

Alright, well I'm not trying to mess with anybody. They ask me yellow, green, brown, or white. It's one of the four. Nah, they're yellow. They're yellow.

They're not green. Randy Slack, what sports league are you buying into? I mean, this is probably the hipster answer, but I would like to do a low-level European team in England. You know, you buy a team in the Sky Bet Championship too, let other people run it, because I'll be honest, I have no business sense. You tell me that I can outspend everybody in my league and that my team can grow, because that's the play. If you go to Europe, you can buy a team that would be a AA MLB equivalent. You put enough money in it, you might get the AAA. You might get to the majors. Buy low, sell high, baby. That's what I'm doing. I'm buying a Colchester or somebody like that over in England, and I'm trying to get up to the championship, trying to get to the Premier League, and flipping that team over to some English guy who just wants to buy a cool team. For me, it's not going to end well either way, because I'm going to be like Jim Irsay, and I have a bajillion dollars, and I'm going to get 14 domestic lights and get on Twitter and alienate somebody within probably 10 days.

Extremely hipster answer. I think actually some people are working on this, and you guys are going to make more money than I am, but I think I could start a women's professional indoor volleyball league that would do well. I think you give me the billion dollars, and I think we could start it up. Again, I think somebody might be working on it, but I used to, in high school, I grew up watching traditional sports like football, basketball, and then I had to cover prep sports, and I got sent to lacrosse and volleyball and sports. I didn't know, and I didn't have to be asking people what the rules were before I could write my story, and I found myself, it helped that there were some high level players in the area that I was covering, but I found volleyball to be just an incredibly gripping sport, and unlike basketball, which it's too late for them to do, the women play on a 10 foot rim in basketball, same as the men, and obviously there's biological differences, so women's game looks different for the men.

In volleyball, the women's net is adjusted lower than the men's, so the women can spike and block above the net the same way a men's team can, does that make sense? So you still get some of the same excitement, so anyway, long winded answer. Alright, and finally, keeping it very North Carolina, Jeremy, we didn't prep you for this one, so we might have to just ask your outside opinion, but there's not much more extrinsically linked, I'm using bigger words than I know how to use here. Right now, there's not a bigger brand in North Carolina than Cookout. I assume you guys have a Cookout out there in Asheville, Jeremy, correct?

We do. It's the only place you can get a corn dog as a side, which means I absolutely love it. Yes, a quesadilla as a side, you can get a quesadilla with two sides of quesadillas, it's unbelievable. And a walking taco, which is the most brilliant, I don't know what person did recreational crimes and came up with a walking taco, but I would like to shake their hands. Wait, a walking taco, I don't even know if I've heard of this. It's a bag of Doritos with taco seasonings on top of it.

Okay, alright, respect. So, in Wilmington, it was the first place that this happened, so Randy Slack could talk to it, and now in Raleigh, we are getting the first experimental Cookout next concept. Randy, I believe you had a, was it a Taco Roo down in Wilmington that you guys had? Not only did it come about, I was actually interviewed on television about the Taco Roo situation because it was under construction for probably two years. We were waiting and waiting and waiting, it finally opened up, it was right next to UNCW's campus, right next to the actual Cookout that's over off of College Road next to the UNCW campus.

They opened up a place called Taco Roo's, there was a Facebook page, a parody page about it, I made a Twitter parody page about it, wondered when this place was going to open. The first day it opened, I went there, it was essentially just Cookout with coffee, and then about a month or two later, they started taking off the signs, and now it's a Cookout next to another Cookout. So I'm just telling you right now, Raleigh, you think you're getting some other restaurant, you think you're getting this place with Chicken Roo's, Roo's Chicken, Rooty Poo, whatever it is, you're getting another Cookout, and it doesn't matter if another Cookout's next to it, because if you drive on South College Road in Wilmington, there is a Cookout, there's the entrance to UNCW's campus, the main entrance at Randall Parkway, and then there is another Cookout. So good luck having two Cookouts next to each other. Alright, well I will say, I looked on the Google Map, and while they are definitely in the same vicinity, those two Cookouts, and especially when you're talking about like straddling a college campus, I mean that's like Cookout's calling card is late night college campuses, right? Like I feel like you can justify, the one in Raleigh, they are literally properties next to each other, if the Chicken Roo, or Roo's Chicken, or Rooty Poo, or whatever it is you called it, if that one becomes a Cookout, there are literally Cookouts in adjoining properties. The other, I mean adjacent, not adjoining, excuse me, the other interesting part about this one is, it is Chicken Roo replacing a KFC in a stretch where it goes Bojangles, Cookout, was a KFC, now is a Chicken Roo, and then two or three stops down, there is a Church's Chicken, so it's in a run of chicken. Alright, I'll put this to you Jeremy Green, apparently Taco Roo didn't work, Chicken Roo, we're going to find out if it works, what should be the next Cookout spinoff restaurant that maybe we can try in Asheville? Oh, that's a good one, first of all you were talking about Cookout, Cookout is just Waffle House with a drive through for people with designated drivers, because the most popular time for Cookout is at 204, when the bars had closed and they didn't get food when they realized they needed food.

So having them two beside each other is not that big of a problem. Well if you've ever seen the line at the one on New Bern Avenue, you'd be like absolutely open, open a second one, nobody complains about these Starbucks opening a block away from each other, they're both full. I just did, I just did my first commentating of combat sports, we did a tough man contest up here, and I stopped at Cookout on my way home, because the place that we did the fight at didn't have food at for 11 o'clock. And I saw no less than three potential Waffle House skirmishes in the parking lot, and I realized that this is really just Waffle House for people that were smart enough to bring a DD. Alright, I got a suggestion, so we had Taco Roo at the Beach, that was a Taco Cookout Spinoff concept, we've got Chicken Roo in Raleigh, that is a Chicken Cookout Spinoff, what about Brew Roo? Can we do a Beer Cookout Spinoff up in Asheville, wouldn't that make sense? Brewery Roo, Roo Brewery, something like that, I think we need a Cookout Brewery up in Asheville. Alright, I know we're Beer City, we're beared out, alright, we have, there are as many conceptual beers as one city can take. There are enough man buns, and patchouli, and all that, Asheville's full, alright, no more beer concepts. Somebody handed me a PB&J Porter the other day, and I went, that's not beer, okay, that is imitation beer. It's a milkshake, PB&J Porter milkshake, that's what they'd be selling at the Cookout Brewery, this is what we need. That is fictitious beer that you handed me, and because it has alcohol in it, you think I'm gonna drink it.

The good thing is, that you stereotyped me correctly, and I did, no more beer concepts here, we've had enough of them. Randy, what were you gonna say? The thing about this is, it's not Chicken Roos, R-O-O-S, it's Chicken Roos, R-U-S-E, it's a ruse to open up another cookout, they just don't want to open a cookout next to a cookout. Because you'll be like, why are you opening up two, but they'll open up one as a concept, and then they'll just switch it over.

That's all they're gonna do, you watch. I'm with Jeremy though, quit the game and just put up two cookouts, we're fine, the lines are long. I'll get a milkshake at one, and the food at the other, because one of them is gonna make better milkshakes, I don't know why, but one of them will do that better. Can we not just get an In-N-Out Burger, like I've been screaming for this for fifty years. Nah, I don't need that, keep with our brands, keep it Bojangles and Cookout. I love Bojangles, but any place that asks me if I will be fatly eating my food in my car is something I can get behind. I'm not outsourcing my fast food, I don't need an In-N-Out Burger or any of that other stuff, keep it homegrown. I just love that they have six things on their menu, but they have two hundred things on their secret menu, that you have to be in the club to know what to ask for. Gentlemen, I enjoy it as always, Jeremy, start cracking the beers so you can play your back nine better than your front nine, Randy Slack, enjoy us all being jealous of you because you live at the beach. Enjoy your weekend, fellas.