Is there ANYTHING positive that could come out of this college realignment??

I missed a lot over the last three shows when I was not here. And again, thanks to Dennis Cox for sitting in. I missed... We had a Haze Perm. Oh, good.

I honestly didn't know. On Friday. Excellent.

Oh, it's always good when Haze sits in. And I made a second appearance on Friday's show. Now I feel like I missed out.

Yeah, missed you. But listen, when a 100-year-old conference is being picked apart over 48 hours, you kind of need to throw around your expertise as you need it. I have spent... We're now into hour number two of this program, Chip. I have spent the better part of the last 80 minutes venting my spleen about how disgusted I am with the whole process. And I'm thinking to myself as I'm in commercial breaks, I'm like, there's got to be some positivity here. But I just can't find any because I don't think it's good for anybody but the people who are adding up the money. So... And the players... Like, if I...

Here's the positivity for me. Tell me if I'm crazy. After they finish this whole wave of expansion, which who knows how long it's going to take, every single athlete at all of the schools in question, every single one should be paid a salary. I don't care what the salary is. They all should get paid because it's the only way we can come up with some benefit to them because it doesn't benefit the golf team or the volleyball team or the fencers to be having a match, you know, 2,500 miles away. I don't think that every single athlete will be paid a salary.

Oh, I agree with that. I think they should be. Again, should and will are completely different things, especially when it comes to the NCAA. Like, Tez Walker should be eligible at North Carolina. But he probably won't be. You think so?

I think it's fascinating. Because it wasn't just Tez Walker. We got a whole wave of rulings. Yeah, and Florida State lost the guy too.

It was like, no, no, no, no. And I'm hearing two things. I'm hearing on one side the messaging that's coming from North Carolina.

Mac Brown, Lonnie Galloway. And the idea that, hey, we think that this appeal is going to be able to go through. You know, we're feeling pretty good about the fact that he was at these schools, but only played at one of them.

I mean, the facts say that a sensible decision is to have the appeal allow for Tez Walker to play against South Carolina. But then I'm hearing from Chris Hummer of 24-7 Sports, an expert on the transfer portal and a lot of many, many things. Really, really sharp follow. I've enjoyed working with him over the last couple of years.

24-7 Sports is a partner of CBS Sports. And he says that nationally, personnel directors are very concerned. And that this wave of rulings is having them rethink their approach to the transfer portal and have to rework some of their planning in terms of the kinds of players that they're going to take. And if that means less opportunities for players like Tez Walker, then that's very, very disappointing.

So that's what I'm balancing right now. North Carolina, they say it's a slam dunk. That's fine. Nationally, it does seem like coaching staffs and personnel departments are now trying to adjust to what is clearly a big pivot from the NCAA just issued this January. So if we stop calling them transfers, if we call them player realignment, would the NCAA ignore it?

I mean, that is the joke we've all made. You cannot, again, come to us and be mad about a wide receiver coach sliding into the DMs of one of your players when backroom deals have led to the decapitation of a conference. That is not the biggest issue facing college athletes. So look, it is that is everyone's written about that.

There have been tons of columns, tons of commentary on the such. But the fact is, you know, we are barrel we are here, we are moving faster towards professionalization and consolidation than I thought we would. If we circled 2030 as the moment when that was going to happen, now it's looking like it might be 2026. The fact of you mentioned the golf teams and the volleyball teams like they are facing impossible challenges. But I think the answers to those challenges might be a disassociation from the football program entirely.

No question. We are looking at a fracturing, not just even within the FBS, but we are looking at a fracturing of athletic departments where football and maybe men's and women's basketball, too, are broken out and handled entirely differently. So that's that's kind of the way that I imagine things moving forward.

I just never thought that it would move that quickly. But that's what the last week has done to my view of college athletics. Here's what's interesting. I know you're a Fiorentina fan from Syria. I'm a Liverpool fan from the Premier League. Everything gets underway this week. I know we've got what Real and Atletico Madrid start on Saturday afternoon.

It's great. I'm a huge fan now of international football. But the transfer window has still got like 30 days left on it, right? Yeah, until September 1, right? I'm trying to fend off Brentford from getting Nico Gonzalez.

I don't know how we're going to score any goals. Exactly. I've seen a lot of Fiorentina shirts on X of late.

Like, yeah, Fiorentina is potentially losing another player. But my point is that if you talk to people who have moved here from Europe, they have never been able to kind of understand why such we have major athletics attached to universities. That does not exist in Europe.

It does not. They don't even they don't get it. But I think what we're moving towards is something very similar that the university's football teams are just kind of, I don't know, a marketing arm of the university. And they're not really part of the university at all. This is going to be basically professional sports. I don't know how many schools or how many teams, maybe we stop calling them schools. I don't know how many teams are going to be a part of it. But that it just looks like that's what we're moving. And I think we're going to get there pretty quickly.

The first part that you said. Terms and embargoes apply. Offer ends 919. No refund.

Subscription auto renews. Kind of has been the case for a while that the football teams are the marketing arms of universities. Their football program is the front porch of the university.

It is the way that you it is. There is no better way to bring tens of thousands of alumni together in one spot to remember the good times. Slap each other on the back. Right.

Get all high on nostalgia and maybe open up their checkbooks. There is no better way to be able to generate enthusiasm and revenue and even attract future students. Then write a football game and a football program. And that's why the university presidents are so concerned of trying to maximize whatever they can get out of the football programs and the athletic departments to be able to better themselves because higher education is facing a lot of crises in the next decade or so. I had no idea about the enrollment cliff of twenty twenty six and I still am not super educated on it. But if you look at birth rates, there was a big, big drop that will have now 18 year olds coming and applying for colleges. Less of them starting in twenty twenty six.

Interesting. Fundamentally less bodies in the United States that are going to be 18 and applying for college starting in twenty twenty six. Oh, says the university president. We need tuition checks.

And again, I am not the expert on this, but somebody tipped me off to it this summer. And I did a little bit of cursory reading on it to understand my big takeaway that I needed, which is they have a lot of motivation to do whatever they can to make sure that revenue is coming to the university via the football program, because all of the other methods, they're going to be taking a hit. And so I you you've been spending the last 80 minutes venting your spleen. Here's the bit of positivity. And it's cold and it's cynical. But I, I, I think that if you sit down on a Saturday, you're still going to be able to watch some college football games and enjoy it.

I feel bad because I am sad for what is happening. But as the host of the covered three podcast, where we do not only focus on one conference, where we pride ourselves on the fact that we take not one hundred and thirty three, like we're not talking about every single team, but these sixty to eighty most important or interesting teams in college football. We really, really know what's going on. And when they play against each other, we can tell you what's interesting. The matchup advantages, which means that we have been unintentionally preparing ourselves for a world where only sixty to eighty teams are playing at the top level. Like I, I think the fans love it.

They love the product that we are putting out. And I think there is a demand and there are consumers who will take a national college football type league. It's just going to be the the alumni, the fans who've been around for a long time and the people who've been the most invested in their university, who are going to be disappointed by the loss of the regionality and the rivalries.

Chip Patterson here, as he is every Wednesday. Here's the thing. I said this earlier. I don't want people to take my disgust with how everything has played out. The fact that, I mean, the Big Ten didn't need Southern Cal and UCLA. They didn't need Oregon and Washington. The SEC didn't need Texas and Oklahoma. The ACC certainly doesn't need Cal, Stanford and SMU.

All of that is silly. Big 12, whatever. Geographically, it doesn't make awful sense to have Arizona, Arizona State and Utah along with Colorado in your league. But it doesn't really move the needle financially. It just makes it just adds a lot more like schools if they're even like schools. But for college football isn't going anywhere.

And I tried to make that as plain. The game is getting more popular. The sport is getting more popular. It's just the inner workings of it all. I just have no, I mean, I have great interest in it. But it just, it depresses me over all the decisions being made. Like every time I hear an administrator talk about the experience of our student athletes, I mean, it just makes me nauseous.

Because you're obviously not really considering that. And I mean, there's just no way around it. But the game's not going anywhere. We're still going to watch, you know, 47 games between now and the second week of September.

Or more. We'll watch more than 47 games between now and the second week of September. Real quick to the poll, which came out, I guess yesterday, the coaches' poll, Chip. Georgia number one, no surprise. Michigan number two. And here's where I point out that your non-conference schedule will never matter. Because Michigan's non-conference schedule might be the worst among the Power Five conferences. And no offense to East Carolina. I mean, ECU is a credible football program. And there are years where that would be a difficult game for most teams.

It's at the big house. But other than that, I mean, who they fooling? So here's. Man, you think that the coaches' poll should be where a team starts or where you think a team will finish in the preseason? I don't think we should have any preseason polls, but I've been saying that for 20 years. I go about filling out my preseason. Right.

We had the CBS Sports 133 was released a little bit ago. And when I filled out my ballot, it is the most cold and calculating that I am, because it's almost all talent evaluation. Michigan has one of the most talented rosters in the entire country. So I had Michigan as one of the top teams on my ballot, but it had nothing to do with the schedule or where I think they're going to finish. I think that Georgia is the team with the least amount of question marks and highest talent than anybody else. It has nothing to do with the fact that their schedule doesn't start until the second week of November and that they're going to be cakewalking.

And I know right. So they actually have to play a team with the polls. You know, the like I think Ohio State has a really, really tough schedule. I think Ohio State's schedule, both in terms of having to play at Notre Dame in the non-conference and then in their draw from the other division, they have to go play Wisconsin while, you know, all you're playing for Michigan are the bottom feeders from the Big Ten West. I think Ohio State on paper probably is better than they might finish just because of schedule. I think that for preseason rankings, they need to be starting points that based on not the schedule or where I think you're going to finish, but based on who you are before we've snapped the ball, which can only be depth charts and talent evaluation.

That's kind of how I stack my teams up. So, you know, I would probably have had Ohio State ahead of Alabama instead of Alabama ahead of Ohio State. And that's because I've got more faith in the quarterback and the passing game at Ohio State than I do at Alabama, where quarterback is a concern and the wide receivers have underperformed over the last couple of seasons.

And then, you know, you start to get a little bit further down. I've expressed many times to you that I don't think Florida State should be ahead of Clemson. And in fact, if you want to dabble, you know, with the the wagers, you know, and place your bets later on, I think I think that Clemson plus 130 to the ACC is value because Florida State is being overhyped. The Florida State at plus 140 Clemson at plus 130 essentially lists them as co-favorites and they are not co-favorites. Clemson is the favorite to win the ACC. And I think that Clemson should be ahead of Florida State, not way ahead, but Clemson is ahead of Florida State in my ballot. And I think that Clemson is going to win the ACC. So I would put Clemson again on paper. I do think the roster top to bottom is better for the Tigers than it is for the Seminoles.

And then once you start to get beyond that, it's a little bit of a grab bag of what the voters are attracted to. And when Clemson loses to Duke in the opener, Clemson's odds will get better in terms of more value. And then I will I will buy in at that point. Chip Patterson, you're the best man. I will talk to you next week. I'll probably talk to you before then. Just may not be in this forum. I appreciate your time. One question.

I'm so sorry. I don't mean to push us further. Do you think it is pre-backfilling or a play to increase revenue on the network? What, for Stanford, Cal and SMU? Yeah, I don't think SMU is a bad addition because they want it. They want it so badly. And they've got I mean, they've got every single player on salary already.

Seriously, like their NIL situation is one of those. All y'all, every single one of y'all. We got we got we got money. We got money. They're used to it. That's what that's how you know that the whole thing started. SMU used to be a power, man.

The Pony Express was a thing with Craig James and Eric Dickerson. Are you panicking? Because obviously the loss of any teams is a loss of inventory, not just a loss of value. So there is a fundamental numbers game of like we will be able to have X number of games per weekend. Oh, we've got less teams. Now we are not able to have X number of games per weekend. Are you adding them just to prepare yourself so that when Florida State leaves, as Drew Weatherford put it, Florida State. They're not going anywhere. Or is it a network play where you're trying to increase the number of live sports that you have on your network?

And I love the documentary. I'm just saying less reruns of the eight part ACC tournament documentary. I think it gives them two more time zones. So, yeah, theoretically it would give you more inventory to show. But I can't make sense of the move.

I've heard a lot of theories that, yes, cover. Like, honestly, if Florida State and Clemson somehow managed to get out of the grant of rights and leave. Well, they can. It's just expensive. That's the other thing. Half a billion dollars. Well, I think that there is more motivation than I imagined to pull together the resources to cut hundreds of million dollars worth of checks. I mean, cut them.

But, I mean, to me, that's the minimum. It's a half billion dollars. And then you get no media money.

When you were talking to Bubba Cunningham and his attitude very much came off to me as, well, fine, leave. I was like, is Florida State going to fix the ACC's money issue by leaving? Is that about what's going to happen?

Here's a half billion dollars to spread around the league for the next 15 years. Yeah, I don't think anybody, honestly, I don't think. And where are they going? That's the other thing. Florida State's not going to the SEC.

I've said this before. I think there are maybe four schools that have great value. And I don't think one of them is Florida State. And Clemson, maybe.

I'm not sure. Does the SEC want Clemson? I'm not 100 percent sure that they would have a friendly landing spot there. Maybe the Big Ten does. I think the Big Ten would be interested in North Carolina and Virginia. I think the Big Ten did not add Cal and Stanford, schools that I think Big Ten university presidents would have loved to welcome in the ranks of the Big Ten, because television executives did not want to fill spots 19 and 20 with those two on the potential of what might happen.

I don't think that there's an offer available right now for Florida State or other schools. But I think that not grabbing all four was like, let's leave this open and just see what happens. Let's leave this open and just see what happens. It'll be the SE, the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten Conference. And we'll have 60 teams and half of them will be in one and half of them will be in the other.

And they'll all make a ton of money. I think ACC is going to make it through as the ACC. It might lose a couple members. The Big Twelve is going to make it through. I don't think the SEC has any interest in expanding. And I think that the Big Ten wants to get to 20.

And we'll see what ends up happening with the musical chairs there. Higher education. The Big Ten. 20 teams. The Big Ten. No, it's the Big Ten Ten.

There's a road in Wake County. Thank you, sir. Sounds good. You'll be well. Do people understand why I'm kind of grossed out by all this?

I hope you are. It doesn't stop us from loving college sports, right? It doesn't. And people are under the impression that people are getting disillusioned by it.

No, man, we're disillusioned by the corporate nature of it. But when the games start? That's a different thing. We're all going to watch. I mean, people are...

I mean, it is. We've talked about this in terms of how it compares to the English Premier League or Serie A or La Liga and all of these club teams that you grow up rooting for. So everybody who lives here is a Carolina fan or a state fan.

It doesn't make a difference what league they're in. You're going to be a fan. All of my good friends who were Maryland fans... I mean, my buddy Chick Hernandez, who I went to college with.

Scott Van Pelt, who I went to college with. These guys are still die-hard Maryland fans. They're not in the A.C.C.

An original member of the A.C.C. They're not in this league anymore. It didn't change their fandom. It changed mine because I moved away more than anything else, right? We don't cover them anymore. But we're still going to watch the games. It's not going to change that. Everything else around it has changed, but that's where I am.