We're tired of the lies in college athletics

So this whole college realignment with Oregon, Washington, USC, UCLA going to the Big 10, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah all going to the Big 12.

It's time for me to call out some people on their lies and their BS. I never want to hear again, never, never want to hear again an AD or a conference commissioner go up there and tell me our number one priority is the health and well-being of our student athletes. Bull. That's crap.

That is absolute crap. Because if that was the case, why are you going to send your athletes, USC, UCLA, all the way cross country to Rutgers for volleyball matches? Oh, they got to fly back because you got to go to class. Oh, you got to go three games out to Penn State or Ohio State for baseball or softball for a weekend series, and they got to fly right back.

You got to do all that kind of stuff. But no. We're getting these decisions anyway. You know why? Cash.

Yeah, it's all about the money. One hundred percent. That's all it is.

So you know what? I never want to hear another administrator ever say that again because it's a damn lie. It's a lie. You don't care. President of the universities, chancellors, Board of Regents, you don't care. You care about the dollar. You care about the bottom line. That's all you care about. Sorry, you're going to send Arizona State. You're going to send whatever team, but your volleyball team is going to go to WVU to West Virginia. Right. Okay. For a conference matchup.

What are you doing? I mean, no, it's not the health and well-being of your student athlete. Eli Drinkwitz, who used to be at NC State, was at App. Now he's the head coach of Missouri for football.

He summed it up perfectly. We're talking about a football decision based off football, but what about softball and baseball who have to travel cross-country? Do we ask about the cost to them?

Do we know what the number one indicator of symptom or cause of mental health is? It's lack of rest and sleep. Traveling in those baseball softball games, you know, those people, they travel commercial. They get done playing at four. They got to go to the airport. They come back.

It's three or four in the morning. They got to go to class. I mean, did we ask any of them? Are we going to look back? I don't worry at all about the game.

The game is going to be strong. Football is going to be fine. We'll all figure it out. But did we consider the people that we are entrusted to? Did we consider the student athlete? Because then we're asking them to go out on their own to get NIL. We didn't say we're going to revenue share. We're not saying they're getting a piece of it. So that's the thing that's bothering me right now in this whole situation is we keep trying to limit what the student athlete can do. But then we act on our own. All right.

A lot of layers to that. No, you didn't take into consideration the athletes. You never have and you never will. You never did. Let's be real.

You never did. So otherwise you wouldn't be making these decisions, right? I always think of like East Carolina and the Americans got to play Houston. You know, like that's not a short flight. No.

I mean, it's not the worst in the world, but you're going halfway across the country. It's not an easy thing. Even in his clip not mentioned in that little section of it, he said, I do this so my family can see me. Yeah, I was going to get into that. Right. So we talk about that. We talk about how we want student athletes to be healthy. We have their health and well-being.

No, you don't. Because like he mentioned there. We try and college athletes or college athletics, whether it's universities, the NCAA conferences, try and restrict so much on what athletes can do. In terms of like, well, you can only transfer during this. I actually opened that clip of like, oh, I thought the transfer portal was closed. He compared this conference realignment to the transfer portal. Like, oh, you can just freely go to another conference. You know what? One invites you and you want to go, make it happen.

You can do. That's what they're doing. It's like the transfer portal.

And you know what? Coaches have the ability to up and leave whenever they want to. I have no problem with that. I have no problem with athletes wanting to transfer to another school. I have zero issue with that. But schools and like, heck, conferences and schools are trying to go to Congress to restrict and limit what athletes can do in terms of what their name image of likeness and how they can earn their money.

How much they can earn. Heck, Pat Narduzzi of Pitt even said, let's put a cap on the amount of money that these kids can make from name image of likeness. But we have no problem taking all the money that we can get from a TV network by going to another conference. We have no problem. We're going to cap that? No, never.

You're never going to. So, yeah, it's one big hypocrisy. It really is. And it sucks because who gets left behind? It's the athletes.

They're the ones that got to do it on their own. And yeah, as someone who plays sports in college myself, those things are a struggle. Like I had to take buses, right, where I went to school in Virginia, Shenandoah University. I had to take a bus all the way to upstate New York to play a lacrosse game.

Or even like parts of Ohio to play a lacrosse game and then bus back. And you know what I'm doing on the bus? Studying. Typing the papers.

Those kinds of things. No, you're not sleeping. You can't sleep on a bus. I mean, some guys slept on a bus. But no, if you're doing your schoolwork and all those kinds of things, I had to get up and go to class the next morning. I heard times I got back from like a midweek game, like a Wednesday game, like a five-hour bus trip.

Get back, class at 8 a.m. You can get back till 2 in the morning. That's hard. That's difficult. I can't imagine going cross-country on a flight. It's not easy. Heck, it's probably hard enough already in the Big Ten to go from Nebraska to Rutgers.

It's not an easy flight either. But this is the thing. This is where the hypocrisy comes in.

And this is what annoys people a lot when it comes to these things. Is that these conferences and these schools are going to get more money, these ones that are making these shifts, right? And the players don't get a cut of it. They get none of it.

None of them do. Eli Drinkwitz, like you mentioned, a lot of the guys, a lot of men and women, one of the reasons why they make their decision for their school is because they get the opportunity to, their families do, to see them play. We talked to Mike Mentor on this program last week.

I think we talked to him on Tuesday. Mike Mentor, former Carolina Panthers defensive back, now the head coach at Campbell University for the football program. He said one of the big things for them for recruiting is that we can recruit guys from the state of North Carolina because we play a lot of, I called it the tank of gas rule, right?

Is that you can get to watch your son or your daughter play within a tank of gas of where you live. That's an easy trip for families, right? So if, for example, if I'm a kid from California or let's say from Arizona, then I'm getting recruited by the Southern Cal. All right, USC recruits me, I'm a kid from Arizona. OK, well, it's easy. It's not a far trip from Arizona to USC or to UCLA or to Arizona or Arizona State.

Like, it's easy. My parents can come watch me play more often. But no, hey, Mom, Dad, we've got to hop on a flight and go to Columbus if you want to come watch me play.

That's harder for parents, too. And like you mentioned, Eli Drinkwood's in that clip saying, you know what? Every game I get to look up at the stands, I get to see my family. Now you make it harder for them. And this is, again, not just football. Football is going to be fine. Football, you travel six weeks out of the year. They're not worried about that. No, it's a lot easier for them. Those guys travel nicely.

Trust me. They get a nice private charter plane, all their equipment stuff's all handled for them. All the other athletes.

Exactly. There have been times I've been in the airport living here in Raleigh. I've been at RDU trying to fly out and I've been in the airport with teams and programs from other sports. And I remember seeing there, I talked to head coaches, like, hey, I used to coach at this school and coach at that school and this university and such.

So just kind of strike up a conversation because you have something in common. And you know what? A lot of them talk about, yeah, this flight got delayed and now kids are trying to, like, a lot of the athletes are just sitting there in the airport studying. So, yeah, they don't get the luxury of flying commercial and charter or get to fly charter.

They got to fly commercial. Then flights get delayed. If you've flown in the last 12 months, I guarantee you probably had at least one of your flights delayed. If you've flown in the last 12 months, you've either been delayed or whatever it might be. Hopefully your luggage doesn't get lost either.

There's that too. Trust me, I've flown a couple of times for athletics in terms of as a coach. And that was my biggest worry, is that the equipment that we put on as checked in baggage, And that you need to actually play your sport. Yeah, that it showed up. That was a real legit concern. It's like, I want to make sure this actually gets there because if our sticks, again, Coach Lacrosse, if our sticks don't show up, we don't play. That's really it. So I made sure my players had their uniforms and their carry-ons.

Just in case. Yeah. But nonetheless, these schools, when they made these decisions, Washington, Oregon, all of them, they didn't care. But it's not just them. It's the schools in the Big 12 and the Big 10 that said, yeah, vote, come on in.

Because you know what you were doing? You were doing the same thing to your athletes. You're doing the same thing to your athletes and causing them to do this. And no, it's not fair to them at all. It stinks for them. And again, more money coming into the schools. They don't get a piece of it.

That's it. They don't get a piece of it. So no, I don't want to hear another school, another administrator, another AD, say the health and well-being of our student athletes is their number one priority. Bull.

It never has been and never will be. Now for coaches, that's a different situation. Because coaches aren't in charge of these decisions. They're just not. Now I'm sure an AD or somebody may have asked them, like, hey, what would you think if Colorado came in here to the Big 12 or something like that?

You know, whatever it might be. But the way coaches operate nowadays is that they're not going to be there in two years or three years. But when they're there, yeah, the health and well-being of the student athlete is one of your number one priorities. But I never want to hear it ever again because it's one big lie and I'm tired of it. I think everyone out here, not just for sports fans and just in general, I think our public, are just tired of lies from people that are in charge.

Just stop lying. If you would have said like, hey, you know what, we're doing this strictly for the money. That's why we're making this decision. I may not like the decision, but at least you're honest about it. Right. We all know it. We all know it. Just be truthful. Stop lying.