The ACC and Notre Dame's relationship; PNC Arena redevelopment could be approved soon

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Again, G-O-L-O.com. See you, Adam. Welcome to your Friday.

How you doing? No Victoria today. That's fine. Graham Hill's here, but it's not fine.

Victoria's enjoying her day off, whatever she's doing. Not as good, but it'll work. Yeah, okay.

That's fair. It's been a while, Adam. How are you? I'm good, Graham. I feel like you've been in hibernation getting ready for the upcoming hockey season.

No, I have not been getting ready. Man, I've been driving all over the state of North Carolina. Graham, the last time you and I worked together, I was not in the studio. We were down in Charlotte at ACC football kickoff where everything in the college football world started to crumble.

Yeah, you could say that. It all started to become unraveled. It looked like that scene in Community when Donald Glover walks in with the pizza boxes and the rest of the room's on fire and he's just sitting there thinking, how did we get to this point?

What happened while I was gone? Well, we know how we got to this point, right? Everybody's got their hand out. Everybody's looking for more money, whether they really need it or not, but hey, no matter how wealthy you are, individually, right? No matter how wealthy you are, you want to be wealthier. I understand that mindset. I don't follow it.

I understand it. That explains a lot of what we deal with in sports. It explains a lot of what we deal with with major conferences in college or, heck, does the NFL really need a Saturday night package? Do they really need to be playing, what, three games this year on Christmas Day? Do they need that? How about give all of your players the day off on Christmas Day since the NBA has five games planned? Let everybody just hang out and watch basketball. Nope.

Nope. We're the NFL. I'm sure there's some other network out there that would love to take on another Monday night football game the day after Christmas. I mean, come on, people. We will, at one point, have matches. I'm sorry, games. It is the start of the football season.

I was just about to say. We will, at some point, have games in the NFL every day of the week. Why? Because somebody will watch them, and the NFL will make money for them, even though it's probably not the best thing.

Doesn't matter. And there's games that people need to bet on. Well, yes, we love waitering.

All right, before we start, and we've got a lot of stuff to do today. Funniest thing that I saw yesterday came from the PGA Tour's FedEx Championship. So I mentioned this yesterday. We talked about it very briefly because, honestly, there's not as much of a story there because we all know that Phil Mickelson has been a gambler in his life. He's admitted to having a gambling addiction. He's admitted to being severely in debt at times through gambling. He says, hasn't gambled in, what, a year? Right?

That's fine. He even joked on Twitter with somebody that he's nearly a billionaire. I do not doubt that. Phil Mickelson has made and continues to make a ton of money. He is an enormous attraction. I have nothing against Phil Mickelson. But the Billy Walters book is, it's not out yet, but you've seen articles about it. Billy Walters is a former Las Vegas businessman, a well-known in those circles sports bettor. And he formed, Billy Walters formed a betting alliance with Mickelson. Because when you are as renowned as Billy Walters, many people will not take your bets.

He's really good at it. So people don't like to take the bets of people who are really good at winning. So he forms alliances with other people who are willing to bet. So he can use their accounts and blah, blah. So Phil Mickelson and Billy Walters in the book says that he's the only person I have ever met who bets as often as I do.

I'm paraphrasing this whole thing. Anyway, Walters said that in 2012, Mickelson tried to get Walters to place a bet of $400,000 on the United States to win the Ryder Cup. Mickelson was on that Ryder Cup team. So while being on the team, he asked Walters to place a $400,000 bet on the US to win.

US had been on a losing streak, but he felt very good, he said, about their chances going in. Anyway, so Mickelson, who incidentally lost a match in singles that was crucial to the United States blowing a four-point lead heading to singles play that Sunday, he lost to Justin Rose. Really nothing that Mickelson did wrong. Rose holed two gigantic putts on 17 and 18 to win that match. But the US did go on to lose. But Mickelson, who by the way has claimed to not have bet on the Ryder Cup, because Walters said, Dude, you know what happened to Pete Rose? Right? This is your legacy.

You can't do this. So Walters refused to place the bet for Mickelson. He says, I don't know if he found somebody else to place it. Mickelson claims to have not.

I'll take him on his word. Anyway, that brings us to what happened yesterday. The book, the excerpts of the book are coming out, and the media at the PGA Tour stop in Memphis, the first playoff event, asked Rory McIlroy what he thought about the excerpts of the book.

Totally different topic. The talk of the golf world is this book excerpt that came out about Phil Mickelson. I'm curious what your reaction, what the reaction in there was when you read about it.

I mean, at least he can bet on the Ryder Cup this year because he won't be a part of it. Oh, my goodness. Wow.

The amount of shade there. That is phenomenal. Oh, no, you did it, Rory. If anybody has seen Full Swing, the golf documentary on Netflix. Rory takes a fair amount of shots at Phil Mickelson during the documentary. I don't know if they've never had a good relationship or not. I have no idea what the genesis of that is. Speaking of Genesis, maybe it has something to do with Tiger Woods.

I don't know. Tiger and Phil, until a business relationship the last few years, have never had much of a relationship, and I think it's been strained as a result of Phil leaving for Liv Golf. But, man, that was salty.

Very salty from Rory McIlroy. All right, we got to see how much we can get done. We got a lot of stuff to do today. That was just so juicy.

Just so incredibly juicy. All right, the football season is here. Yes, there are people who have been pining even for fake football. We'll call them friendlies.

That'll be the best thing to say about them. Exhibition football, preseason football, the games that people will try to use and say, see, they're ready. There are just not a lot of starters playing in the preseason. There are not a lot of starters playing more than a series in the first preseason game. But it is a chance just to see football. All right, so the football season is upon us. Panthers host the Jets in a friendly tomorrow at 4 o'clock.

If you're listening in Raleigh, you can listen to it right here on The Fan. How much will Bryce Young play? Don't know. We'll hear from Frank Reich in a little bit. How has he acclimated himself to the NFL? The transition from college to the NFL is difficult at every position, more difficult for quarterbacks.

Here's one of the main differences. In college, you are lucky if there is a capable cornerback in coverage, one on the other team's defense. One. In the NFL, theoretically speaking, they all are. Theoretically speaking. But in college, man, there's probably three really good cover corners in an entire conference.

I mean, really good ones. So there's a, not to mention the defenses are all somewhat plain. Maybe there's a lot of blitzes, but for the most part, kind of plain. And when you get to the NFL, man, it's grad school every single day. That's what Steve Logan liked to say. Steve Logan, our old friend, ECU head coach and used to work with us here in radio, used to say that when he coached at NFL Europe, it was essentially like grad school every single day. He coached quarterbacks and it was high level education for these guys to really learn how to play the position because you're not taught how to play the position in college.

Anyway, that's that. Miles Sanders, a little bit of a groin injury, probably will be limited for the most part throughout the preseason. I don't expect him to play tomorrow at all. And who knows how much he will play between now and the start of the year.

All right, so that's the Panthers and the Jets. That's tomorrow at four. The major European leagues get underway in international football. The English Premier League starts today. Burnley, newly promoted, hosts three time defending champion Man City at Turf Moor today. I think it's a three o'clock or two forty five start.

I'm sure if you're into it, you'll find a way to watch it or at least listen to it because you can on the radio. So we've got that. The intrigue there. Burnley, again, newly promoted. Vincent Kompany is the manager.

He used to be the captain of Manchester City and played for Pep Guardiola, the best manager maybe in the history of soccer. So that matches today. You've got Real Madrid tomorrow opening up their La Liga campaign. They will be at Athletic Bilbao.

PSG opens their season tomorrow in the French league. Bayern Munich plays one of the, it's a cup match against Leipzig tomorrow. Bayern Munich won Bundesliga. Leipzig won their cup, if you will. Their in-season cup.

They will meet. Doesn't really mean much other than you get a trophy for winning it. And Harry Kane wants to play in it. Wait, I thought Harry Kane played for Tottenham. Well, he did. Then he didn't. Then he did.

Then he didn't. I don't even know what's going on there. I'm not sure Kane has got on a plane yet, but Tottenham's trying to keep him now or make Bayern pay more for him than they've already agreed to. The whole thing's a mess. My guess is Harry Kane will be a Bayern Munich forward by the end of today. It has been a wild 12 hours in the transfer window.

Comedy if you have been following it. Alright, to some ACC stuff very quickly and then to local and hockey news. Stanford Cal and SMU are still in the tower hoping that Jim Phillips and the ACC arrive as their knight in shining armor to save them from the Mountain West conference. For the American Athletic Conference.

I am not knocking either of those two leagues. It just would mean far less money and prestige for certainly the first two schools. SMU just wants in. They don't like Stanford and Cal offer something in terms of their universities as a whole. But with the PAC 12 completely falling apart underneath them around them, they're looking for a home and the ACC has been considering them. ACC has 15 voting members. You do the math.

Wait a second. You need 12 yes votes for invitation. Notre Dame has a vote and this bothers people. I don't I'm not 100% sure why the fact that Notre Dame who is a member of the ACC in all sports other than football. And I know this is a football decision for the most part. But Notre Dame has openly advocated for Stanford and Cal to be accepted. And we were told yesterday by Andrea Adelson that the vote is close, but it is not yet there.

Therefore, they will not vote until it's a definitive yes. And there's been so much teeth gnashing around Notre Dame because many have criticized the Irish for not coming to the ACC's rescue. I don't think the ACC needs rescuing, but they're not coming to the ACC's rescue when three years earlier. The Atlantic Coast Conference through the Irish lifeline. Remember when sports almost didn't happen during the pandemic. So very quickly, this comparison is apples to lampposts for me.

To me, that's what it is. We're apples, 2020, lampposts. Now, in 2020, it was one season. It was that season.

We were just trying to get through it, man. I mean, I'm not saying the games didn't matter, but heck the NCAA ignored it by saying, well, even if you played, you can get the year back. Like, stop, stop assigning so much importance to 2020 that we're going to treat this year and, you know, decades in the future, and we're going to say it's the same.

Be intellectually honest about this. One is one year and it's that year. This is essentially a lifetime or until the grant of rights expires or until the entire college sports industry implodes on itself, which is probably going to happen.

Second, and maybe I'm in the minority here and I'm going to bring in my friend Brian Murphy here in a second. If we had a scale, you know, we all know what a scale looks like, right? We had a scale and it's all about the ACC Notre Dame relationship. And you put the ACC on one side and Notre Dame on the other, at the very least, I think it's level. If anything, I think the ACC might get a little bit more out of the relationship from Notre Dame or with Notre Dame. I'm not saying Notre Dame's not getting a lot out of it.

They are. But the association with Notre Dame means money to the ACC. The fact that Notre Dame will play a game at Wallace Wade Stadium, which they would never do, ever. Why, why can't we open our brains and understand that this is a relationship that works well for the Atlantic Coast Conference? Are we so silly and jealous because Notre Dame is a giant fish?

I just don't understand why people can't look at it from both sides. Notre Dame. Yeah. Do they consider themselves special? I mean, yeah, they do.

Guess what? They are. They are. The Rose Bowl considered itself special for a long time. And guess what?

They were. Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter joins us. Before we get to the real reason that we have you on, do you have thoughts on the last part of my diatribe on the ACC and Notre Dame?

Well, I would say two things. One, Notre Dame wouldn't be playing at Carter-Finley Stadium either, if not for this deal. Correct. And two, it doesn't change the math. You know, 11 out of 14 and 12 out of 13, as long as Notre Dame is voting in the positive, it doesn't change the math. You still need, you know, there's three no votes. There's three no votes. It kills it.

Or four no votes. It kills it no matter if there's 14 or 15 teams. So I'm not sure that, you know, do they get a full vote even though they're not a full member really matters in this case because it takes the same number of teams to kill the proposal no matter what.

That is true. By the way, David Thiel from the Richmond paper, who is a friend and a frequent guest in this program, paints economically, paints a good picture if the ACC were to approve Stanford and Cal and even SMU as members of the league. I am against it, but if it works out financially, at least you can explain it. And especially with those two schools or three schools taking limited or no shares, no medium money over the first portion of their stay, at least until the league dissolves. Then it probably means more money for the existing schools. Maybe not significantly, but again, I'm tired of having that argument.

I think we have narrow views on certain things. The real reason that Brian Murphy is on this program today, WRAL sports investigative reporter on X at Murph's turf, is that, give me an update on where we are between the centennial authority, the city council, whatever it is, and the hurricanes on lease extension and renovations to PNC Arena. It's all happening. It's all happening. We've talked about this. You've probably been talking about this for years, that all three things are going to have to go together.

At the same time. At the same time, the money for the renovations, the long-term lease, and the rights to develop the area around PNC, and it is all happening at the same time. Just this morning, a committee, a group has recommended that PNC Arena get $21 million a year for the next 25 years. That will give them the type of collateral they need to get financing for more than $300 million to do the renovations. I think we'll see Tuesday of next week that there will be at least a lease agreement voted on and a development agreement voted on, and off we go. This is everything that everybody kind of wanted involved with centennial authority, PNC Arena, the hurricanes, and it's all happening.

They say that the renovations will cost in the neighborhood of $300 million. I know when the Lakers renovated, is it even called Crypto.com Arena? I don't even think crypto is a thing anymore, or that company. It's still staples to me. Yeah, I agree.

I'm still calling it The Forum, but that's way in the past. It was vague. They called it a nine-figure renovation. I don't know why, but $300 million for what they want to do at PNC Arena, I don't know why that seems low, but do we have an idea of whether or not that is sufficient?

It does seem a little light, especially if you consider last time they were talking about this right before the pandemic. They were in the $200, $225 million range. Obviously, costs are up. I think the money that they're getting, or likely going to get that still needs to be voted on by the city council and the board of commissioners for the county, they may be able to stretch that money. They don't need to take all out $300 million at once.

You can wait until interest rates drop. You can maybe push and get more than $300 million with this money, use this money as collateral to get even more than $300 million. I think that's the next thing. They've had these plans, these grand plans. I also wonder, and we won't know until we see the development contract, are the hurricanes or Tom Dundon going to kick in some money for renovations at all, given that they're going to do all this stuff around the arena?

I don't know that. I'm not even suggesting that they will, but I don't know if we've got a full financial picture at the moment. Just the fact that they're going to have enough money to get $300 million, I think is a good enough start for them to lock down all the other parts of this. Home equity line of credit. You don't have to get all $300 million at the same time. Just get a HELOC.

It'd be great. You can only have to pay the interest too, last I checked. Do we know what the length of the lease is likely to be? Are we talking about a 25-year lease? Are we talking about a 50-year lease?

What do you think? I think 20 to 25 is the range that at least my reporting seems to indicate that we'll be talking about. That will put PNC Arena at 45 to 50 years.

That's probably the life of the arena. When you're having this conversation with the next person that holds my job 25 years down the line... Wait a second. 25 years from now, man, I just hope to be still above ground. Right.

Me too. When they're having this conversation, I think the next conversation will be, how do we replace PNC Arena with a new arena? We're talking about a new build and all that stuff. I think they're looking at this lease, be it 20 years, be it 25 years, as the full extent of PNC Arena's life. And then they'll worry about what's next next. But by then, in theory, the area around Carter-Finley and around PNC will be developed and people will want to put another arena, right?

And they will build that arena in some place within that development. When can we expect the agreements to be announced? And I agree, we've said this all along, that everything will be announced at the same time because that's the only way it was ever going to work.

Yeah. I mean, I think that Tuesday meeting of the Centennial Authority is pretty darn important. It's a special board meeting next Tuesday. I think we could see, at least according to the agenda, we could see agreements and proclamations and public displays. As I said, the city and the county will have to vote. They have meetings scheduled both for Tuesday afternoon and then the county next Monday, or the Monday after, the following Monday. So this all could be wrapped up in the next 10 days or so. It would be fantastic.

Get an announcement, even a ceremonial ribbon-cutting ceremony for nothing other than a lease. Or a pen, a signing ceremony. We could have Tom Dundon there.

We could have Philip Eisele, the executive director of the Centennial Authority. Who knows? Maybe you and I will be out there as well, Brian. I think the important thing, sorry, not to cut you off, important to note that when all these documents get signed, we're not going to see shovels in the ground tomorrow. I mean, this is going to take a while as you would imagine large construction projects would. Yeah, I mean we're two, with minimum, two years away, I would think from seeing. But maybe the renovations to the arena will start sooner than that. I know they certainly want to have a sportsbook up and ready for whenever the sportsbook can turn the lights on sometime March, April or so. I know the earliest is in January, but we all think that's not going to happen.

Brian Murphy, WRAL Sports investigative reporter at Murfsturf on X, sir. I appreciate your time. We'll talk to you very soon. All right. Thanks Adam.

You got it. My sleep is way better. My inflammation has gone way down. Golo saved my life. I was way overweight. That's what sent me down the path. I wanted to make sure and live for my kid. I have literally tried everything. I was on the verge of getting gastric bypass surgery and I saw the Golo commercial and it was the last thing I tried because it worked.