The ACC vs Big Ten (or 18) football matchups this weekend!

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See website for details. It is time to chat with our friend Luke Tkachov, the news and observer, at Luke Tkachov on Twitter. All right, let's not talk about Tez Walker. Let's talk about North Carolina versus Minnesota to start. What jumps out at you about their defense, Carolina's defense, from game one to game two? And does it need to be better in game three? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a work in progress, but I think we saw enough against South Carolina to know that it's going to be better than last year.

I mean, obviously they didn't give up 50-something points to App State, so that counts as progress, too. But yeah, I think generally speaking, it's a defense that is not putting them in a position to lose games, right, which last year it was. So last year you were asking the offense to do amazing things, and this year you're just asking the offense to be the offense. So I would expect continued improvement from that defense. I think Minnesota is probably going to be a stiffer test for players who haven't been as tested on the defense because it's going to be a more physical game. I think it's going to be more comparable to the Notre Dame game last year when the Irish kind of punched it down the Tar Heels' throats, and this is going to be a different kind of test that way.

But by the same token, I don't look at Minnesota as a team that North Carolina should struggle to stop if this defense is as good as we think it can be and continues to improve from week one to week two. Who do you think is better, South Carolina or App State? Well, I've been told by one of my colleagues that App State is the best football program in the state, so... Well, I mean, I understand the argument there, but... No, to actually answer your question, I can't say right now, I think there's a chance that South Carolina is absolutely terrible.

Yes. Which is the answer of the App State. I also think there's a chance that South Carolina figures things out and has SEC talent and turns out to be okay.

So I'm going to punt on this one and say it's too soon to say, but I wouldn't rule out it being App State. My read is that at least on the offensive line, I think App State is better than South Carolina, which is part of the reason why I loved what North Carolina did defensively against the Gamecocks, was that you couldn't run on them. App State looked like they could run on North Carolina a little bit, so I'm a little bit concerned going into the game against the Golden Gophers that they'll just line it up and try to run it all day long, which North Carolina is going to have to stop.

I don't think Minnesota is going to have a ton of success throwing the football. After the game against App, and I talked about this a little bit during the week, and I'm pretty sure Andrew Carter, your colleague and our friend from the NNO, wrote about these types of games. Mac Brown loves the games and then won't play them.

He's done playing the place he coached for a year. What's your takeaway on why these games are good or why they shouldn't happen from the perspective of a school like North Carolina? I think Matt's got it wrong here, and it's a little weird to hear coming from the guy who invented the concept of the state championship. You should want to play in state teams, and you should want to beat them, and you shouldn't feel like the risk outweighs the reward.

I think that says more about your program than it does anything. I just think these games are great, right? College football in the state is better when App State is good. It's better when ECU is good.

It's better if and when Charlotte is good. I think you look at basketball, the ACC is better when teams like Georgia Tech and Wake Forest and Virginia are good because you need that complement to the steady diet of Duke and UNC and whatever. I think that's true in football, too. I think fans would much prefer you play App State and you play ECU than you play Minnesota or you play Georgia State or you play Old Dominion. These games, to me, it's what made college sports great in the first place that we're increasingly getting away from. I want my team to play the teams that my coworkers care about. We go into the office, we argue about it, and maybe once in a while App State or East Carolina win, but that's the beauty of it. I think these games need to be played.

I think they're good for everybody. I get Mack's argument that his point is basically our program is at a state where we have nothing to gain from these games. But I just feel like if you're going to be playing Cal and Stanford and SMU and Boston College and Syracuse and in conference games, you need to put some non-conference games in there that remind you of what used to be conference games, which are games everyone cares about. So I hope state and I hope UNC will continue to play App State and ECU.

I think eventually Charlotte will get to that level and that will be interesting too, especially for UNC with all the UNC alums in Charlotte. But it's something to me that's good, it's worth whatever the trouble may be, and quite frankly if you're UNC you should feel like you're going to win that game anyway. The way I look at it is if you beat App, smart people recognize that App State plays good football. Smart people recognize that a win over the Mountaineers almost all the time, not all the time, but almost all the time, a win over the Mountaineers is a good win, something to be proud of. So when people say, well Carolina beat App and they dropped three spots in the polls, first of all it's week two, who cares? Secondly, why are we trying to feed stupid? Don't play to the dumb, play to the smart.

Here's the problem with your argument. There are very few smart people in college football. College football makes people stupid.

It's the Cam Newton of college sports. You're right, you're absolutely right, but you're playing for a very small audience. Well okay, it's really hard to argue that, and the proof of that is that nobody, zero people have complained that Michigan and Georgia have two of the lamest schedules in college football. And they are one, two in the poll, and it will not hurt them a single bit. Georgia's top non-conference game is Georgia Tech, and Michigan's top non-conference game, I don't know, is it East Carolina? Is it UNLV? Michigan's willing to play ECU. I'm with you on that, but I just think, especially as we get away from good conference games, it puts more of an onus on schools, just to keep people interested and entertained to play non-conference opponents. People care about whether that's SEC teams in Charlotte, obviously thumbs up to that, although I think neutral sight games are, in the end, probably bad for fans, but still it's a game people care about. And look, how about your games against FCF teams? Why not play, you know, Elon or Western instead of some school from a time zone away? Yeah, no, I agree with that. I'd love to see, and I've talked about this in basketball, I've said it out loud, talked about it on the radio, I think the ACC, and this is not about local, I think the ACC should play road games at HBCUs.

I think all the schools should do that. Yeah, I mean an ACC, MEAC football scheduling agreement would be really cool. And I'll tell you, if you put UNC and NC Central to open the season in Charlotte, or UNC and NCA&T to open the season in Charlotte, not MEAC anymore, but still, I think you'd do okay financially, let's put it that way.

Oh my gosh, you would absolutely kill it. By the way, did you catch Trey Oliver's comments about Vincent Brown at NCA&T? Hey Carolina Panthers fans, Chris Lee and Dennis Cox here. We're excited to offer you all the inside information on your team with the newest member of the Capital Broadcasting Podcast Network, Panthers Playbook. Twice a week, we'll keep you updated on your Carolina Panthers. We're talking about locker room insight, exclusive interviews, and of course, in-depth looks at all of the Panthers wins. Touchdown Carolina!

Panthers Playbook, download and subscribe today at WRALSportsFan.com or wherever you discover your favorite podcasts. Got it. Discover the Ultimate Cloud Gaming Machine, a new kind of Chromebook. I did not. Yeah, Vincent Brown was throwing shade at Central after losing.

Right, and as Trey told me, after we put hands and feet all over him, it was awesome. And the truth is that, you know, they're in the colonial now, whatever, they made that move for financial reasons, that's okay, whatever you want to do. But they left some of their culture, their, you know, their conference culture behind, like Maryland did when they went and they just took the money and play zero, meaning there's no big weeks in College Park. There's no rivalry week in College Park for any football game. There's zero rivalry.

There's nobody circling the calendar. I know you're a Maryland guy. I know you're a Maryland guy. I think you're drastically selling short the appeal of Maryland Rutgers. Yes, I am.

Yes, I am. You know, the one thing is actually Maryland Penn State. Maryland Penn State was a rivalry, but once they became conference opponents, I mean, they, whatever, Penn State doesn't care. But they used to play every year in a non-conference game.

Maryland always lost, but they used to play every year in that. Duke Northwestern, I am fired up for the Blue Devils going to 3-0. Will College Game Day be here for Duke Notre Dame in Week 5? Don't know about that, but I do think this is a big game for Duke, probably a bigger game than most people realize, because, you know, with all the issues in Northwestern's program, this is a game now that everyone looks at Duke and says, Oh, well, you know, Duke's beaten Northwestern, whatever it is, four or five times in a row. Northwestern's program in complete disarray.

They've got serious culture issues, obviously. You know, this is a game, well, that's Duke. Of course Duke should win this game. This is the first time that Duke plays, and look, Northwestern's not great, obviously, but there's still some talent there. This is the first time Duke plays a team that it is expected to win, that is capable of beating Duke, right? Lafayette's not capable of beating Duke unless there's an act of God or something. But Northwestern is. There's nothing that says Northwestern couldn't put it together. And so I think it's a great test for Duke in its sort of new mentality that, you know, are we the team we think we are? Can we take care of business against Northwestern and, you know, serve it up to the Wildcats the way that a team that believes it's a top 25 team should? And I think that's a great test because Duke, even as good as Duke has been last year and to start the season, they haven't been in that position a lot.

It's a different feeling to be in that position. So I think that's a great test for Duke, even if Northwestern doesn't exactly strike fear in anyone's heart. I think the next two games are loseable if Duke doesn't play well. The Blue Devils are an 18 and a half point favorite over a power five team. When was the last time you think Duke was nearly a 20 point favorite over a power five team? I don't know the answer to that.

It has to be 1989. It might have happened like against Georgia Tech or someone like that. I wouldn't rule it out. It's non-conference?

Yeah, you're probably right. An 18 and a half point favorite. All right, Luke, we are 10, 11 days away from the first preseason game for the Hurricanes. Final question, yes or no? Brett Pesci will be on the roster opening night.

Yes, as you can read all about in this weekend's paper, I had a long conversation with Don Waddell this morning. They're prepared to roll the dice and see what happens and worry about the consequences later. So Pesci, Shea, Turbo, all those guys, like Dundon said at the end of last year, we're going to run it back and see what happens. And they're going to put all their chips in the middle of the table and figure out the contract situation slash trade situation later.

I love it. You're not getting closer to a Stanley Cup if Brett Pesci is not on the roster, unless you bring in some kind of like high scoring number two center, which I don't think is coming. And that's good. I want to see Brett Pesci on this team. And to that point, Adam, you've now got a defense. When the Hurricanes signed Orlov and then nine other defense men over the course of the summer, it all seemed like preparation for a departure. But now you've got the deepest defense in the NHL, potentially the best blue line top to bottom. Obviously, they don't have that, that, that really top end McCar Fox talent at the top. But I think top to bottom one to six, that's as strong a defense as there is in the league. You're putting yourself in a position where if Brett Pesci and Brady Shea walk away after the year and Turbo walks away after the year, you are still OK. And you've given yourself the best chance you have to win a Stanley Cup.

Maybe your window closes for a year or two as you retool. But I like the fact that they're going all in. There's none of this. We're not ready yet. We're not going to use the cap space. They are all in. And that I think is good to see. I love it.

Luke, the cock of the NFL. We'll talk to you next week, my friend. All right, buddy. Take care.

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