Carolina Panthers introduce Dave Canales, UNC vs Duke, and Canes Corner

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done. Alright, as we've been pointing towards all week, and I know that there are certain people who are like over it, I get it. Duke Carolina coming up on Saturday, the rivalry where home court does not matter, the rivalry where the records don't matter, the rivalry that launched ESPN2. And do you remember, look, details are always a little bit fuzzy for me in my age, and as we move further away from it, but if I'm not mistaken, the famous Jeff Capel just across half court shot that forced another overtime, it didn't win the game, it just forced another overtime that Duke ultimately lost. I believe it was 1994. That game was shown on ESPN2, which it was basically the first year of ESPN2, and it wasn't available in a lot of places.

You had to go and ask for it. But they put it on there because they wanted people to need ESPN2. I can't, I mean, we're not making this up. Here's Chris Canty from Unsportsmanlike on ESPN Radio on whether or not this rivalry still resonates. Do we feel like it has the same nastiness as it used to? No.

Why? No, because the conference overall is weaker, and we don't look at these teams as the preeminent powers when it comes to the landscape of the sport, right? Like, that was the thing. Duke Carolina was not just for bragging rights and ACC supremacy, but it was the inside track to being able to win the national title. It was about having the number one overall seed once you got to the NCAA tournament.

That's what they were competing for. That's what it was about with Dean Smith and Coach K and then so on and so forth with the different iterations and the different coaches at Carolina. And now with two completely different coaches in Hubert Davis and your boy at Duke. So I just think this is a little bit different.

It has a different feel. And I think the biggest part of it is because the stakes aren't so high, like the implications for competing for national titles isn't so great. I don't look at Duke with John Shire as a championship contender.

And I know that Carolina by, you know, my record and ranking is supposed to be, but I don't buy them as a title contender either. All right. Hmm. The question was, is it as nasty as it used to be? And the answer is nothing is as nasty as it used to be.

I'm not even sure if that might be every sport. Yeah. Right. Nothing is as nasty as it used to be. There isn't a rivalry in hockey that is as nasty as Colorado, Detroit was.

Right. Go see the videos of Colorado and Detroit and the blood, literal bloodbath that those two teams staged. We don't have that anymore. It's like a UFC fight on the ice.

Crazy. So no, there's nothing as nasty as it used to be. But with all respect, it has no bearing on whether or not the ACC is a weaker conference. And I mean, you can measure it however you want.

It's certainly not. We're not in the the halcyon days of ACC basketball where, you know, there are three or four teams vying for number one seeds. Wasn't that long ago, by the way, when the ACC had three number one seeds? Would UVA Carolina and Duke?

It might have been two ones and a two, but it wasn't that long ago. So it doesn't even matter that these two teams or this league is weaker. But wait a second. On what planet are Duke and North Carolina not considered perennial powers in this sport? Not this planet. Where are we? Right.

So sometimes takes get away from us. Is John Shire or I don't know, maybe Evan Cullen was crowing about John Shire. I have no idea, which is why Chris Canty called him your boy. Maybe.

Or maybe he forgot the name. I don't know. Yeah. A North Carolina absolutely is a national contender. A hundred percent can win a national championship. I don't necessarily disagree with what he said about Duke, but I also don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that Duke gets their perimeter game going and Kyle Filipowski takes it to another level because he can. And if that's the case, then given the right draw, Duke can be in the final four, which gives you a chance. But I would agree. I don't think Duke is a real national championship contender. But if you don't think Carolina is, I'm sorry. You are incorrect. And if you don't think it's still a rivalry or important, you just, yeah.

Again, you don't know the area. Ohio State Michigan will always be a rivalry. Always be a rivalry.

Yeah. And we have games like that that will always matter. I can't remember the last time college game day didn't show up in the nine one nine area code for a North Carolina Duke game. You know, they could have gone college game day could have gone to Kansas. They could have gone to Lawrence for number four, Houston and number eight, Kansas. They could have gone to Lexington, which where they've been before for number five, Tennessee and number 10, Kentucky. They could have gone even though the game is Sunday, maybe not to number two, Purdue at number six, Wisconsin, which might be the whitest game we have ever seen in college basketball in 40 years. They could have gone there, but they're going to be here and they're going to be back here at the end of the season because it's Duke Carolina.

So that's my that's my rant on on that. Carolina's third in the country coming off a loss to Georgia Tech. Duke is struggling with wins in 11 of their last 12.

He says intentionally sarcastically. Look, I don't think they've been playing great and they've won 11 of 12. So what what do you make of I'm not even saying that that shouldn't be alarming for Duke.

Maybe they've just been getting away with not playing their best. I don't know. But that's that's that's what I got on. Yeah.

Come on. That's a stretch. It's still it is still a great rivalry now. There's no Dean. There's no K. I get it.

I get it. But if the Big East, which is a very good basketball league, nobody is saying anything bad about the Big East. If the Big East was still the Big East and now it's more the big Midwest, then we would have bigger, more national games between, let's just say Georgetown and Villanova. But Big East basketball isn't necessarily the New York City, the northeastern corridor league anymore.

It just isn't the focus of the league has become more of a TV product. And right now, who are the best teams in Connecticut, which actually moved back to the Big East and then is threatening to leave again. And what, Marquette? Yeah. Like, no offense. No offense.

Marquette, not a Big East school, but it has been for for a number of years. Anyway, it's we'll move on. We'll move on. You want to talk about the Pro Bowl games?

Neither do I. Hey, this will come up later. The the Baltimore Orioles, who I have in some ways made fun of for their stance on, well, we just had a great year, but we're not going to be able to pay our players. Right. No money. Right.

Sold. I have many, many, many, many friends who are Orioles fans. Yeah. And for people who don't know, I spent three years of my radio career in Baltimore working for a radio station in downtown Baltimore. That was a was the Oriole flagship WBAL in Baltimore. And I mean, I'm a Mets fan, but I probably went to 20 to 25 Orioles games a year while I worked at WBAL. So I have a soft spot for that team for those fans. I also went to some games and I was at the University of Maryland.

We would go up. This is before they moved to Camden Yards when you when their ballpark Memorial Stadium was basically in a neighborhood. It was just like, here's how I would describe it for people who know what the the culture is of European football, where, wait a second, like Luton Town in the Premier League right now, their stadium, which seats 10,000 people, looks like it's in between row houses and like in somebody's backyard.

Yeah. So Memorial Stadium in Camden Yards is like smack dab in the middle of a blue collar working class neighborhood. And so I used to go up there for games when I was in when I was in college. Anyway, Camden Yards, gorgeous opened, I think, in the early 90s, absolutely gorgeous. And I was there in the mid to late 90s when the Orioles were good and we're going to they were going to playoff games.

So I know what that ballpark and that city can be like. And even then, when they were going to the playoffs, they were in some ways, you know, Peter Angelos had just bought the team not that long ago. And in the early days of Peter Angelos, I thought he was a good owner. He made his bones as like fighting for the little guy, the labor. He was a labor attorney.

Can't hate that, right? No, he was fighting for the little guy. And how much of it was Peter?

How much of it was his entitled son, John, who took over? But they became cheapskates. Hate that. And stopped trying to compete. And then last year, it all came together with a whole bunch of young players.

And then as they're making the playoffs, and it didn't go well in the playoffs, but it happens as they're making the playoffs. The guy who controls it, John Angelos, like, yeah, you know, we're having a great year now, but you know, we're not going to be able to keep these players. I'm like, you know, you're a jerk, because not only can you keep these players, you should keep these players. And it's only by your choice that you're not going to keep these players. Because I keep pointing this out to people, somehow, even though it might not be the same players all the time, somehow, Tampa makes it work.

Yeah, every time. It's been literally 15 years that the Tampa Bay Rays have been one of the best teams in baseball, and they haven't really had the same players over and over and over and over and over again, which you could argue, you probably shouldn't anyway. So there's no reason why Baltimore can't be a consistent winner unless you choose not to. So the Angelos family in later years has chosen to be bad. Which unfortunately, if you're an Orioles fan, and I would say this about if you're a Pirates fan, or if you're a Reds fan, or if you're a fan of a team that hasn't been good in a decade and a half, it's by choice.

The owners have chosen to not be good. Because it is possible. It's not necessarily easy. Is it easier for the Yankees, or teams like that, the Dodgers, who are wealthy beyond imagination, and are in markets that easily regenerate that wealth? Yes, like everywhere else in life. However, it is very possible, because in professional sports, you operate, believe it or not, on very fine margins.

Very fine margins. And I've seen the same team stink one year and be good the next. It all comes down to performance.

And sometimes you take a few risks, because that's what it may take, and those risks pay off, and all of a sudden now, wow, you're really good. You know who the all-time losing his team is in Major League Baseball? The Philadelphia Phillies. Guess what? They're in one of the biggest media markets in the country.

How is it possible? It's because they've been poorly run. Just like the Mets. In general, I hope it'll change, but in general, have been poorly run. It's all about how you run your team.

So don't blame anything other than yourself if you can't win. That's way too long of a rant, but the Orioles were sold. Well, there you go. Hopefully that's a good thing. Well, I hope it's a good thing, too.

Still need to be run properly, but they were sold. So the Angelos family, who at the beginning was good, now not so much, and yesterday, they made a trade for the reigning Cy Young Award winner in the National League. I don't know why Milwaukee was trading Corbin Burns, but fine. The Orioles take advantage of that. I'd love to see the Orioles go on a little run here and be good.

I would love to see it. One of my pet peeves in sports, you should know this because you've listened to me rant about these things all too often. One of my pet peeves is the defeatist attitude that, well, you know, we're a poor team. We can't win. Nah, man, you can. You just have to do it right. And like, maybe I was listening too much to Rod Brindemore, but you can do it.

You just, you have to make different decisions, but it is very possible. Congratulations to the Orioles for making that deal. All right, one more thing. Jay Billis is going to join us at the bottom of the hour, by the way.

I saw this. Jeff Lathley was the head coach at Boston College, is now, I believe, the defensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers. He left his job as the head coach with Boston College to become the offensive coordinator, or sorry, defensive coordinator with Green Bay in the NFL.

This is not a new thing, by the way. We have had coaches leave head coaching positions for even position coaches. I believe Duke might have two on their staff, certainly one, who was a head coach last year.

Now, we know Manny Diaz is the head coach. So this is, it is not a new phenomenon in college football. People are taking Jeff Lathley leaving Boston College and going to the NFL as an assistant.

They are taking that to be like the end of times. I'm sorry, but who left Boston College as this, I have to stay here job? They have, it's very, I would just say it's a low traffic stop in Boston, right? BC football, I mean, it's okay. But he's been there a few years. I think he's 22 and 26 in four years at BC.

I think four years, 22 and yeah, 22 and 26 in four years or something like that. He's been to three bowl games. So it's not like they haven't had some success. But you have an opportunity to be a defensive coordinator in the NFL for a team that, by the way, should be great next year. Well, why wouldn't you take that as an opportunity to elevate your career? He didn't leave, I'll just throw out a random school that might be a little bit, you know, more noteworthy. He didn't leave Penn State for, that's probably too high in the food chain. You know, Nebraska. He didn't leave Nebraska, which is a mid school right now in college football for the defensive coordinator job at Green Bay.

He left Boston College! Why are we overreacting to somebody leaving where he probably wasn't getting paid that much money anyway? People love to overreact. Why are we overreacting to that? That is not the sign that the whole jig is up when it comes to college sports.

Now, two things can be true, right? I do think we have a problem in college, certainly college football, but we have a problem at the highest levels of college sports. And we're seeing this all play out legally, whether it's, you know, lawsuits against the NCAA from outside sources, the attorneys general of Virginia and Tennessee suing the NCAA, the NCAA on Capitol Hill trying to get antitrust exemptions.

And I've been saying this for a while. The fix, the singular fix in college, and we'll just use college football, is collective bargaining. That's the fix. It's the fix to the NIL issue. It's the fix to the transfer portal. It's the fix to player movement. It's the fix to everything. Collective bargaining, revenue sharing, it's all going to be one.

That's the fix. At some point, we'll get to it. Until then, we're going to have a lot of people overreacting to a move that, yeah, I'm sorry, it makes sense. I don't understand, I didn't understand the, really, we're losing our minds over somebody leaving the Boston College head football coaching job? I think some people are just bored. Okay, it could be. It's an off week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. There's not a lot going on. You're absolutely right.