North Carolina WR Tez Walker denied eligibility by the NCAA for the 2023 season

Luke Tkach of the News & Observer. I'm excited anyway. Luke's going to be on.

We're going to talk to Luke. I've talked a lot about Tez Walker and everything that happened. If, thumbnail your opinion of what this has been. I'm sorry, you dropped out for a second. Opinion of what was the this?

Tez Walker. Oh, yeah, no, just a travesty. An absolute perversion of justice. I mean, the people who say that those rules are there for a reason because the schools want them there and, and, you know, the NCAA is just doing what the schools want.

They're right. The NCAA is not the IRS. It's a, it's a voluntary organization, but there's also an appeals and waiver process in place for cases like Tez Walker, who's played one season at two schools. It's just, you know, the idea that there's an Alabama State AD on the last Appeals Committee who works at a historically black college university would understand what Central was going through in 2020. You know, without the resources to do the kind of, you know, surveillance testing and quarantining and all those things you had to do to play big time college football in 2020. You know, they're penalizing Tez Walker for that and it just doesn't make any sense.

I get it. They change the waiver process or criteria, of course, after he'd already enrolled at UNC under the old criteria, which is, I think, potential grounds for a lawsuit. But in general, I just think this is just an absolute abuse of power by the NCAA.

And as I wrote, it's online now. We'll be in the Sunday paper. This is just another way that the NCAA reminds athletes that they're just, you know, grist for the giant money mill where everyone makes money but them.

Luke Tkach of the NNO is joining us. Like, I don't want to overlook the clamoring of coaches and administrators about the freedom of movement of athletes, but I've been saying for a long time, I don't care how many times you want to transfer. They should all be free. Second time, third time, fourth time.

I'm sorry. We're not going to have that many situations like that. I think athletes should be treated just like students and coaches and administrators. And if they job hop, they job hop. And if athletes want to, you know, team hop, let them team up.

You can't change. There's no trading deadline during the season. You can't leave during the year. They should be allowed to leave as many times as they want. I have no problem with it, but the coaches hate it and the administrators hate it. And honestly, I'm not saying that UNC is getting what they deserve because that's not my opinion. But I think the NCAA fast tracked it and are overly harsh because of all the complaining. I don't know about that necessarily, but I do think that if coaches and administrators want to restrict players from transferring, because I'm with you. I mean, the idea that athletes are just regular students when it comes to getting paid to do endorsements, for example, has become commonplace now. We don't treat athletes differently in that respect in the NIL era.

They should have the same rights as other students to enroll where they want to enroll. If coaches and administrators wish to restrict their movement, perhaps they should collectively bargain with them. That's the way forward for the NCAA period. It solves every single issue the NCAA has.

You don't even have to call players employees. You can collectively bargain with them as a group the way that universities collectively bargain with grad students. But you can come to terms on terms of participation that work for everybody and then everybody knows the deal and everybody's a part of it. But, you know, that's a huge mental leap for people to get there. I think the really smart people get that. I think Charlie Baker probably gets that. But the people who don't are university presidents and they're the root of everything that's wrong with college athletics.

Not the shoe companies, not the television networks. University presidents, stewardship of college athletics, and I'm looking at you, Randy Woodson, is the reason we're in this fix. This is three, I think this might be three weeks in a row.

You've, Dev, two. I think the third week back you were nice to Randy Woodson. Last week you were not and this is two weeks in a row. Randy Woodson I know is listening and he is making a mental note of that.

Luke Tkach of the News and Observer. All right, so are you buying North Carolina on the football field after last week? Yeah, I mean, what did you want to see from North Carolina?

You wanted to see that they could move the ball in the passing game without Tez Walker and Nate McCollum, which despite the couple of early drops, they did. Could they run the ball? Yes. Is British Brooks back to what appears to be full health? Does that give them three different running backs they can potentially use?

Yes. And the defense, does it look like a Gene Chiswick defense? Can it get pressure on the quarterback? Can it stop the run?

Can it be physical in the secondary? And the Tar Heels did all of that and not against, no offense to Lafayette, which plays Duke this week, not against Lafayette. They went and did it on the neutral site against an SEC team where historically, especially pre Mac Brown, the Tar Heels have struggled. They went down to Georgia, you know, Atlanta and got spanked by Georgia. They've lost in Columbia. You know, that's two in a row now in the opener against South Carolina in Charlotte for Mac, but they did it on a big stage with a lot of pressure with the distraction of Tez Walker.

I mean, there is no doubt when you look at Eric Church wearing the jersey on the sideline and Drake May wearing the jersey backwards and postgame interviews to make sure nobody missed the point. That was a big issue for UNC going into that game mentally and they played like it wasn't, which is a huge credit to those players. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I don't think it means you and she's going to win a national title necessarily, but all of the questions that we had about the Tar Heels.

I felt like they did at least a good job and in some cases a great job of answering. The only thing I was confident, even without the wide receivers, I was confident their offense would be good. The only thing I wanted to see from North Carolina on Saturday night, we saw and that was disruptors on the defensive front, whether it's at a from the defensive lineman or linebackers and we saw tons of disruptors. The jury's still out on whether or not South Carolina's offensive line is any good. We'll find out over the course of the season, but I loved what I saw from North Carolina defensively. And that was the only thing I definitely needed to see because if their defense can be good, not doesn't have to be great.

If it can be good, I'm pretty sure they'll be able to outscore most of their problems. What did we learn from Duke versus Clemson? I mean, one, we learned that I mean, I think we knew this, but that Duke wasn't a fluke last season. And that's and I think we knew this, that even under the last couple in the last couple years of the couple of reasons, there was talent there.

It's just that things had gotten sort of off track and it took a reset from with outside voices to fix it. So we we learned that Duke wasn't a fluke last year, that Riley Leonard wasn't a fluke, that they could, you know, pick up where they left off. But and I'm not surprised by that.

Right. That's not a revelation. To me, the revelation was how ordinary, how pedestrian, how quotidian Clemson looked.

It did not look like a Clemson team. What was that word? Quotidian. I actually had a reader complain that I didn't use it. So now I'm using it every chance I get.

It means it means ordinary or pedestrian. The other two were fantastic. No, I mean, I honestly and I have witnesses for this. I was standing on the field on the Clemson end during pregame warm ups and I looked around and I said, this is visually speaking. This is the least impressive Clemson team of at least the past decade. There are just there's no Dexter Lawrence. There's no Isaiah Simmons. There's no guys you look at and say that guy's going to be playing for the Raiders in two years. That guy's a first round draft pick.

It's very, very vanilla. They looked no more physically imposing than Duke and they played like it. Duke was the more physical team in the secondary. I think Clemson's front seven is still very good. I mean, they did a very good job against Duke, especially keeping Duke from from getting any penetration running the ball. But it's not what we're used to seeing with Clemson, which is just absolute dominance. I mean, the idea of Riley Leonard breaking two tackles in the backfield and then outrunning the Clemson defense.

And that does not happen in 2019, right? Like there are dudes on that cap Clemson defense who don't let that happen. So I and you know, the Clemson offense, everybody's banging on the offense, all of that and the receivers, you know, actually the two turnovers and the two missed field goals, they played well enough to score 28 points, but their defense wasn't good enough to stop Duke. And to me, that's not just oh, Clemson's not as good.

It's like George McFly punching Biff in the face, right? It changes the entire dynamic of the ACC. If Clemson's not going to bully people, then it's just sort of a football cult that might win some games and might lose some games. I think that gives everybody a new attitude, both what can I do with my season, especially without divisions, because I don't have to worry about, oh, Clemson's the final boss anymore. And also when they play Clemson, hey, you know, these aren't the guys we were used to seeing.

We can beat these guys. That's how Duke felt. I think Duke felt that way looking across the 50-yard line during the warm-ups, and then it bore itself out over the next four hours.

My biggest takeaway was that Duke has dudes. Duke's got a bunch of defensive linemen, and they are physical and fast and talented in the secondary, and Clemson's offense is still ordinary. And I mean, Will Shipley is exceptional, one of the best players in the country, but that offense as a whole, they have nobody that scares you other than Will Shipley. None of their wide receivers are scary, and it remains to be seen whether the quarterback is great. Chances that you give NC State against Notre Dame, and we will close on that, Luke DeCock.

Yeah, pretty good, I think. I mean, you know, Notre Dame's looked good so far. I don't know that Navy in the post-Ken era is what it was two years ago, and certainly Tennessee State was, you know, in it for the experience, which is fine. So I don't know that we've learned that much about Notre Dame. I mean, obviously, we know what Sam Hartman is around here, but I don't think we saw anything of what NC State can be against UConn. I thought the offensive playbook was a lot like last year's.

I think they kept a lot under wraps knowing that Notre Dame was coming up next. I thought the defense lost a lot of big names, but it still looked like an NC State defense, maybe not as dominant as it was last year, but certainly as competent. I think NC State's got a real fighting chance, and part of it is, now some of this is NC State being very familiar with Wake Forest offense and the mesh and the things that Wake likes to do, because their offense does not change a ton, it gets tweaked, but it does not change a ton from year to year. So I think that's one reason why Sam Hartman tended to struggle against NC State. But I also think NC State looks at him and says, you know, this is a guy we know how to beat.

This is a guy, we've been in his head before, we can get there again. I think that's a bit of an advantage that NC State will have against Notre Dame that, say, Stanford won't have, right? They're going to look at Sam Hartman and say, oh, this kid's really good, put a big number at Wake, what are we going to do?

State's not going to look at him that way. So I think mentally, State's got really potentially an advantage on offense and potentially an advantage on defense, plus they're at home. And it's the home opener, and it's a noon game, which unlike other people, I think is awesome. Yeah, I do. I love it. And yeah, no, I know you and I are on the same page as that one.

Other people disagree. But I have no doubt that State fans will be out there early. There's nothing better than Bloody Marys and breakfast before football.

Let's live it up and see what happens. I know somebody, bring out a Blackstone and make omelettes right there at your tailgate. That is tailgating.

That is tailgating right there. My only fear about that game is that Notre Dame will be successful running it straight ahead with Estimade because he is an absolute load. If State doesn't get run over, I give him a fighting chance in this game. I think it'll be a low-scoring affair either way. All right, Luke, I will talk to you very soon.

I appreciate your time, as always, sir. We're so close to hockey season. Yes, we talked to Jordan Martinuk today. I'm very excited for him. We're two weeks away from the preseason getting underway. Two and a half weeks away from the preseason getting underway. I'll see you out at the rink. All right, Luke.