More and more pro golfers seem to be coming out of the Triangle

Sagefield for the Windham Championship. Right now Russell Henley leads. He's 12 under through two rounds. Lucas Glover, two back at 10 under. And we will talk to Luke DeCock of the News & Observer about somebody who needs to play a little bit better today.

Award-winning writer for the News & Observer, Luke DeCock, I ask you this. Are you secretly hoping for Akshay Bhatia to become like a five-time major champion because you know you'll be able to write the Akshay Bhatia book that no one else can write since you've followed him since he's a junior? I mean it wouldn't be the worst thing for business but that's true of a lot of these young golfers around here. You know it's an interesting story because he did skip college to turn to turn pro at 17 and then the moment he did that like the pandemic hit the whole plan had to go out the window because there was no Q school, there was no Monday qualifying, the corn ferry tour was all screwed up. So he's actually had a relatively rocky path to this first pro win two weeks ago all things considered especially compared to when it was sort of drawn up on paper and very little of it has anything to do with him.

You know it's just sort of even now you know he finally wins. He wins the Barbasol or the Barracuda sorry and those points don't count towards the FedEx Cup. So when you get a win as a special temporary member you know a guy who didn't start the season on tour all your points are supposed to convert into real points and you get to do the whole playoff thing but because it was an off-week tournament against the British Open and there were European tour players playing in the stupid rules of the PGA Tour they don't count so now he was like went into this week 99th and needs to finish second to advance to Memphis next week. So he's just kind of gotten the shaft all along through this process of trying to turn pro but I mean at one point yesterday there were three I guess at the end of the day that's not true now there were three triangle golfers in the top 10. Webb, Cheston Hadley and Brendan Todd. So you know it seems like this is anecdotal you may have a different opinion there's more and more pro golfers coming out of the triangle like that for a long time there was Scott Hoke and you know Paul Simpson not a pro but obviously one of the greats of amateur golf but now it seems like kind of post Webb there was a steady stream of guys headed to the tour like Alex Smalley is out there this week Grayson Murray, Ben Griffin I mean just seems like they kind of the there's a ton of women like the junior amateur and the girls junior on the more on the LPGA Tour it's just crazy I mean it's just I'm surprised it wasn't always like that but it certainly is now also Hayes it's I feel like it's kind of I'm a little disappointed and you're not hearing the words greater Greensboro open come out of your mouth.

My bad the was it the Christ third grader Greensboro but at some point it's there's yeah for a while but yes the GGO now once Webb named his kid Windham I was sold on that as being the long-term name name for it. All right I do have to quit just to say we talk sports and honestly I've just given myself a breather from talking conference realignment here for a second because I know we're gonna have to hit it some more but as I like talking you know just life stuff with you have you written a book or have you ever considered a book or like are you ever you know at a Duke North Carolina basketball moment and you're like you know what I've got a pretty good view of something that other people don't and some perspective here like do you is book ever in your your mind as a longtime writer? Yeah yeah no I've written some children's books back in the day children's sports books so I've done you know sort of very very very lately dabbled in it no I've thought about it I haven't I've never come up with an idea that is both compelling to me and compelling to someone who would pay me to do it yeah but if I did I would I wouldn't hesitate I've had some ideas you know there was a friend of mine and I had a whole proposal and treatment written up after the hurricanes won the Stanley Cup in 2006 for a book and you know they're just there wasn't any belief in the in the in the sports publishing community that people would want to read it which is is crazy to think about now but that wasn't considered economically viable at the time the people we talked to so yeah no it's come up before it just hasn't happened it may at some point I would certainly wouldn't rule it out. You're a young man I'm sure that the opportunities will come all right that was our brief break now it's back to conference realignment.

Back to the stupidness. Do you have any idea well it may be a dumb question because part of what's been changing this whole time is television like oftentimes the shifting in in college sports specifically college football has been directly linked to shifts in the cable slash television how we consume sports industry right and that seems like it's still in flux so it seems like conference realignment or what country alignment will continue to be in flux but do you have any guess of what the end game right now it is I feel like I've heard most people say this conference realignment seems like it's done for now and then it just keeps on going. Yeah and this latest spasm the previous spasm sort of the Oklahoma, Texas, UCLA, USC process of the two previous years was driven by the desire to get more television money to get more money out of Fox in the Big Ten's case and more money at ESPN in the SEC's case. This particular spasm Oklahoma and Washington and Colorado and potentially Utah and Arizona and maybe Arizona State is being driven by the lack of television when you basically the PAC-12 went to market to try to do a deal and do it at a time when Fox is tapped out with its rights fees and you know Disney is considering selling off half of ESPN potentially to NBC Comcast or somebody else private equity maybe the money's not there the money wasn't there for the PAC-12 they timed this badly and the schools all said you know in the case of Oregon and Washington they basically said we're going to take a we'd rather have a half share of Big Ten money than whatever the PAC-12 is going to come up with with Apple and the CW and whatever um you know part of the problem here Hayes like globally speaking there are more identity threats than you realize even if you monitor your credit only a little personal info needs to leak out like your social security number or password or you did any kind of victim life lock alerts you to threats you could miss if your identity is stolen a dedicated u.s-based restoration specialist will work to fix it no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions but everyone can save up to 25 percent off their first year go to lifelock.com aware is is like Bill Friday was a great man and he had all these great ideas the worst idea he ever had was putting university presidents in charge of athletics because if they had all been like Bill Friday we would have been fine but the vast majority of university presidents these days I mean there's not a group of people I have less confidence in and you can see it with the way they handled Mark Emmert at the NCAA they extended his contract and a year later fired him that the way you advance in academics now is fundraising university presidents are the academics who can raise funds the best and they look at college athletics not as a a trust or responsibility but something they have to squeeze every last nickel out of there's nobody looking out for the best interests of college sports or athletes for that matter and I think university presidents have just steered themselves into this cul-de-sac where the only way out of it is is people talk about three I think it's two mega conferences there's going to be a Fox conference and an ESPN conference because those are the because those are the people willing to pay for the rights and what you're seeing with this latest these latest changes Oregon and Washington in particular is Fox basically saying fine we'll pay for the schools we want to put on TV we're going to ignore the rest of them that's basically what ESPN did when the SEC added Oklahoma and Texas they said okay well if you can add schools that we want to put on TV we don't care what happens to Oklahoma State and Texas Tech and and all of that so I just this this round I think USC and UCLA is the worst thing to happen to college athletics I mean maybe the death blow going to the Big Ten because it's so unequivocally and and on the face of it horrible for athletes that the only reason it makes sense is as a business decision to make money for people who aren't athletes and I think that's where we sort of cross the Rubicon into oh we don't have to pretend to be building around our footprint you know we have to add Boston College because it's in the footprint but we're just going to abandon all pretense of any logic and say what makes the most money and do that and that's not what's best for college sports and that's kind of how we ended up where we are I tried to present this question to Chip and I probably did a poor job of asking it but like the whole point of professional sports is people who you know born out of you know I'm not your sports historian but like go back and whoever was putting up professional sports teams back in the day you know the milk union in Chicago or whatever and the meat packers who own the football team here and everybody was probably trying to you know make the most money they could and at some point they were like hey guys if we all kind of play if we set some ground rules and and and make these teams and schedules so it all balanced we could all make the most amount of money right and going back to NBA, ABA mergers, AFL, NFL all that stuff it's teams deciding professional sports deciding look we decide who's in our club and out and if you're in let's all decide the best way to make the most amount of money is will that ever happen with college specifically college football you talk about a fox and ESPN conference and I get it I see where that's going to but like those same entities have found a way with the NFL to be like okay instead of us all you know fighting every year and like you know like let's make agreements we'll share the super bowl you know will you get x number of games I get x number of games like at some point doesn't it make sense to do that in college football and not quit wasting money of moving teams around say all right figure out whether it's 30 teams 40 teams 50 teams who's in our top tier all negotiate with all the networks and you know come up with a league and then put them in regions and play schedules that make sense to preserve regional rivalries like are we not pretty close to that I mean I think that's sort of what's happening when you look at Oregon and Washington that's basically saying you know these are teams that spend the money and and we want on television I mean I think you're seeing what you're seeing is Fox and ESPN choosing the haves and have-nots in college sports you know based on who can make them the most money you know we've seen this before right like the Ivy League the University of Chicago they got to a point in the in the 50s I mean the University of Chicago had Heisman winners at one point and then was in the Big Ten and then said yeah you know what we don't like the way this is going we're gonna go drop down and play division three the Ivy League went non-scholarship and said hey we don't like I mean this is crazy I think now they thought football was getting out of hand in the in the 50s and said we don't like the way this is going we're gonna go and play sports for the love of sports I don't know that anybody who's currently in their job right now can say hey we need to take a step back we're losing the plot here especially because now you have that dynamics of athletes are eventually going to get paid in some way and that's going to change things too I think you're going to end up with schools in the two mega conferences that are willing to pay athletes and pay them a lot and you're going to end up with schools and other conferences that are not whether that's philosophical or financial and choose to go to a more sort of you're going to have a division three that's non-scholarship a division one that's that's scholarship but but maybe just a stipend and then a division super one that's going to be you know competing for athletes contracts collectively bargained with the union and I think that's the real tragedy here is if the NCA hadn't been fighting all of this tooth and nail for so many years with this disastrous legal strategy that now they're losing in in court and in legislatures on every front if the NCA had said 10 years ago we're just going to take this head on we're going to collectively bargain with athletes we're just going to negotiate terms of service that work for everybody not necessarily as employees but just you can collectively bargain with with athletes and say hey look we'll give you four-year scholarships and 10 years of medical care in exchange for you agreeing not to transfer more than one senior care or whatever and that and then you would have a framework for dealing with this but it's just I I just think maybe the fuse has been lit there's no way to stop it it's kind of like global warming at this point no matter what you do I don't know that it's reversible the college college athletics is a feedback loop at this point and the decisions that are being made are going to destroy college athletics but everybody who's actually in those rooms doesn't see any other option brightening up your weekend it's luke to cock uh no no no I'm the one who's talking gloomy gloomy topics although to be fair you brought the global warming into it um all right let's uh one topic we hit on just to have a little fun if you were delivered a burger that accidentally gave you two sides of the bun would you rather get two tops or two bottoms on your burger yeah I've given this a lot of thought since you tweeted it earlier and I think you can make pretty compelling arguments either way but I'm gonna go with two tops because I feel like the top is still supportive enough and two bottoms would be a lot of bread that's kind of what I came up with I think two bottoms is too much bread and as long as it's not like a really wet burger you know like with a lot of like mayo or whatever on it I think probably the the bottom top can hold on okay your line of thinking is right uh if you're getting the support you need from the tops that's probably the right choice I'm I I'm probably leaning a little bit safe in uh in voting bottoms uh enjoy a weekend without much football because there aren't many of them left it's about to be all football all the time and uh we'll talk to you soon sir luke to cock appreciate it yeah you got it