ACC vs. Mountain West: NCAA Tournament Predictions with Chip Patterson

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It's good to see you too. I want to get the stuff on Chapel Hill because once again, they have decided that we're all stupid. It is amazing. Chapel Hill might think we're stupid too. Oh, my fault. You're right.

Thank you very much. It is Capitol Hill. They do not think we're stupid in Chapel Hill. I was stupid in Chapel Hill. My time in Chapel Hill was filled with a lot of stupid.

But that's not the reason we're there. We can do that on a podcast sometime. That sounds fair.

Let's run the chip-o-lytics. I keep hearing that the Mountain West Conference is going to get maybe seven teams in. I think the ACC is going to end up with maybe four? I think you're saying four. The ACC will end up with four teams with a – yeah, I know, but just listen. They've been butt recently. Virginia's last ten games don't factor in the same way that last ten games factored in 15 years ago. All games are the same.

They're all little snowflakes. Virginia did enough work already that I think it's okay. Even if they are just continually sliding backwards in the projections, I think the ACC gets four. I think there is an open door given favorable results and maybe an unfavorable treatment of Indiana State that could allow for a fifth.

Yeah, there's a couple teams that are there. But it sounds like you're questioning the strength of the Mountain West. I'm not questioning the strength of anything. I have watched zero games played by Mountain West teams.

I am not questioning anything. But Jay Billis said something, who does watch basketball, said something on Scott Van Pelt the other night that I believe is probably true. And I would believe that this is true not just for the Mountain West but also for the Big 12. That if the ACC were playing in that league or if those teams were playing in the ACC, then records in the Big 12 is probably a bad example because this is not the same thing. But if those teams in the Mountain West were playing in the ACC, their records might be a lot different than they are. It is so hard to compare across because there's so little overlap from the Mountain West to the ACC. Jay Billis said we should have an ACC Mountain West challenge and see how it all works out. How many teams in the Mountain West do you think get in?

I'm not sure about how many officially get in. New Mexico has not had a good second half of the season and they've been playing their way into a tenuous position. But what I can tell you from watching a decent amount of Mountain West and tracking it through the season is that they've got a super strong top six. And what's happened is that every single time these top six teams all play each other, they all knock each other off. They go and they win these thrilling games.

And look, a lot of them have been on the mothership CBS Sports Network. Right. So you do have to stay up a little bit late, but that's OK, because just like when you get the trumpets, you know, for the Mountain West games, you know, the. I mean, I miss that. Yeah.

It means you also get a little bit of when you when you watch the last one on CBS Sports Network, chips got its own soundboard. So do that again. I don't know what you're talking about. You want me to pull on this little ripcord right here, this ripcord, they can go like that. That's so good.

All right. Utah State is legit. Utah State jumped into the ACC right now.

They could finish easily with a double buy in the ACC tournament in a number three or a number four seed. I think Nevada is probably on the same level as a Clemson Wake Forest pit in terms of their overall ceiling. I think at places like New Mexico and Colorado State, you've gotten a lot of great coaching.

Boise State's been rock solid in terms of being really consistent. A lot of these environments have better home court atmosphere, better student sections than a lot of the home court advantages that we have found throughout the ACC and you're playing at elevation. So you've always got these wild factors going into it. I'm serious.

You're right. Things make it really interesting and difficult to win on the road. I mean, you know, we're sitting here and you're trying to like move them across conferences. The teams that are making the NCAA tournament from the Mountain West have a lot of conference losses, but they're not against the bottom half.

And this is where the overall rating of the Mountain West, when those teams play against a San Jose State, a Fresno State, an Air Force, that is an automatic W. And I think that outside of Louisville, you don't have that as much from the ACC this season. I mean, I'll tell you right now, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech yesterday, I was so fired up for that game and it delivered. It was fun.

It was fun. Give you two first year coaches. They both got a lot of young players. Miles Kelly is obviously a junior. But, you know, you've got some of the best freshmen on the court.

Marcus Marcus Burton, obviously for Notre Dame. You know, those teams that were playing on Tuesday, you know, Boston College. That was a tough team to defeat in post was a mass to handle inside. So I just think the ACC this season, as opposed to last season, where this was not the case, has a stronger bottom half. And that's where overall I think the ACC is a tougher, better conference than the Mountain West.

But the Mountain West has a more loaded top tier of teams that if you drop them in the ACC, they would be top half teams. And they've just got a bunch of easy wins at the bottom of the state. And the funny thing is that every time an ACC team lost to one of the teams below it in the standings, it got ripped for it nationally. Every single time an ACC team, like when you lost to Georgia Tech.

I'm not going to even lie and pretend that I've seen Georgia Tech more than six or seven times this year. But I saw all of their conference wins. And I'm like, how was that team under 500? Every time I watch them, I'm like, how was that team under 500? They look like they have too many good players.

I'm part of the evil national media. I didn't hear that. I didn't hear a lot of ACC getting ripped.

They did from losing to Georgia Tech. I heard a lot of like, wow, Damon Stoudemire got a brand new team. He's doing a really good job. Hubert Davis is the coach of the year. But if we're starting to put together other names on that list, who's got a better set of seven conference wins than Damon Stoudemire? Incredible. He beat all the big dogs.

Drewsbury did an awesome job. And, you know, he's got his son on the team, Marcus Burton, who I mentioned earlier. Those are two freshman guards that were really big and big games against good teams. I'm I think that the Mountain West ACC predicament goes like this. ACC's got better teams deeper down in the standings. Mountain West has a little bit more consistency in terms of teams that are close enough to the top. Duke in North Carolina or North Carolina and Duke have separated themselves from the rest of the conference.

And they don't you just don't have that as much in the Mountain West. By the way, I miss the days where we used to go to like Ogden, Utah, and Boise, Idaho, or Missoula, Montana for the first rounds of the NCAA tournament. I miss those days, boys with a court where like the court would have an individually specialized for the location design on what? Well, no, they used to use Boise's court. So it was like half orange and half blue inside the key, which I loved. I loved seeing all of that and I was wanted to cover a subregional at Boise.

Never got the opportunity to do that. All right, let me get to I'm going to ask the broad a broad brush question here. But there were two different happenings on Capitol Hill yesterday. There was a a roundtable hosted by the senior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz on on NIL, which I think we've beaten that horse to death by now. And then there was an actual congressional committee hearing based on the Dartmouth University decision that declared those athletes to be employees and allowed them the right to vote to unionize.

That one is more along the lines of what needs to be discussed. But let me just ask this this question is NIL not as initially intended, but as is in practical use today with collectives and all of that. Is that a sustainable model for college sports?

No, I don't think it's a sustainable model because you are asking too much from the individuals and the. Fans, boosters, like people who care about the success of one school, you are asking too much of them without delivering because the asks are going to be all we need is this and then we can go get it and then we'll deliver it. All we need is this and then we can go get it. We can go deliver it. And most this is this is really groundbreaking stuff.

I'm so glad to share this on this unprecedented statewide platform. But Adam Gold here with my man coach Peter Ruda Capital Financial Advisory Group. Are most of your clients hands on or they just give you their money and let it work for them? About 90 percent give the money and then we meet every year and go through status reports, have a financial pit stop, make sure everything's fine. It is like a puzzle, Adam, but for the next 10 of you will solve your own retirement puzzle at no cost or obligation. Call and claim your comprehensive review with Coach Pete and the team. Triple eight, eight, four, three, double o thirteen or text Adam to six hundred seven hundred.

Adam Gold is a paid spokesman investment advisory services offered by Capital Financial Advisory Group, North Carolina registered investment advisor. They only give out one trophy. What I know, I know. I know you would think when kids are these days that everybody could win national championships and conference championships. So when I run the very complicated math again, you know, shout out to public schools like that means more people lose than they do win. If you were trying to do is win championships. And so if you continually sell the hopium of a championship to these individuals who are parting ways with money, not just to be able to fund major stadium renovations that need to be done so that you can continue to see attendance increase in college football like it has each of the last two years.

If you want to continue to be able to keep pace across the board with the best strength and nutrition, with with all the best amenities so that you have the best team and also be able to obtain the best players via NIL in a free agency every single year world. Most of these boosters and most of these fans are not going to get a return on their investment. And that's why it's not sustainable, because at some point they're going to walk away, become disinterested and stop cutting checks.

How about this? How about the fact that you're I mean, these the people who donate to the NIL right to the that that cut checks to strutting wolf. I'm making it up.

Obviously, it's not called strutting wolf. Like to all of these NIL collectives that that help schools, you know, incentivize recruiting. Like these people are not also given tickets. You're not getting anything tangible.

Right. So there's like if you could put your name on a building, that's one thing. If you donate enough money to a school, you can put your name on a building and that's there or a locker room or you can endow a scholarship.

You can do it. There's a lot of things you can do. And there's you get something for it here. You're just giving them money and then you're hoping that they win. And at some point that money dries up. I mean, it's people don't have unlimited monies to me. Some people do. But most people, the overwhelming majority of people don't have the money to just keep funneling it to schools.

Isn't there a better way? I mean, you're you're you asked that with a smile because that what Nick Saban said, Rob, talk about wrong way, because he was asking for players to get a share of the revenue generated through the media rights deal, which again, like that is the NIL operates outside of players taking part in the billion dollar industry that has become college sports at the highest level. You cut them in on the media rights deal. They start to get a portion of that. But he wanted to retain control. So if you're getting money.

But you're giving up control. That sounds like employment. That's that sounds a whole lot like employment. So he didn't want it to be employment. And so I don't have a problem with what Nick Saban said. I think it was smart for Nick Saban to agree to a roundtable and not a congressional hearing. Yes, because get that oath out of here.

It's not about the perjure himself. He's the greatest of all time. Will he participate in an informal setting to discuss his expertise on the topic?

Absolutely. But I think that he really does see an unsustainable model. And he does not have the answers. And he is trying to point that out that this NIL world will not work. I think he wants college football to still be around 10, 15 years in the future. And the way that we're going isn't going to work.

We all want it to be around. Here's the thing. See, Nick Saban would have the answer if they were willing to to address the right questions, because the correct answer is collective bargaining, because with collective bargaining, you can, between two sides, negotiate something that works for both parties. And so I'm just going to bring this up, because the the AD at Alabama, Greg Byrne, was also at the roundtable. Right. And he said, Jim Phillips. Yes. Exactly.

But I have the quote from Byrne, which is probably pretty similar to Jim Phillips. And frankly, I have been appalled at how the Atlantic Coast Conference has continued to spend money lobbying on Capitol Hill. I want I want the league I support to be smarter than this. And obviously, I'm just always going to be disappointed because we cannot pretend that anything that we have been doing for the last 60 years is either fair or, as it's been proven now, legal. It ain't legal. The Supreme Court told us that with what is the Alston decision. Right. And and Brett Kavanaugh told us, look, this doesn't seem right to me. And like to have a nine. We actually had had another 9 0 vote recently. But the other 9 0 vote against the NCAA was the better one. So Greg Byrne said that, you know, we won't have twenty one sports at Alabama if we have to pay the athletes.

So here's my response to Greg Byrne or Jim Phillips or anybody that says that I'm going to use the monies that the universities got from shared media rights deals in 1999 when the ACC distributed nine million dollars to each of their member institutions. Nineteen ninety nine. It's a long time ago. Right. Twenty six. Twenty five years ago. Correct. Is it twenty five?

Twenty five years ago. Good math, Adam. So do you know what that is worth today? Nine million dollars in shared revenue. You know what that is worth today? No, no clue. Seventeen million.

OK. The ACC bottom of the barrel can't rub two nickels together. We're still we're distributing nearly 40 million dollars to each school. How is it possible that with essentially three time almost three times as much money that we can't afford some to pay the athletes something which I'm not suggesting that we have to pay them all. But it is it is fundamentally idiotic to think that people should buy that crap when in real dollars where we've two and a half times just in the ACC. What is the SEC going to get the big 10? We're talking about pretty close to one hundred million. They were behind the ACC at the time. The ACC was at nine. You're talking about I don't know.

Twelve times. Are you joking that you can't fund athletics across the board? It's because they they just keep hiring more people and doing more dumb things with their money because they wasted. Why can't they just operate with fiscal responsibility? I think because they've had to hide the money. That's why.

Because it's you can't generate any profit. Right. Which is I need to agree with Jim Phillips here on this unprecedented statewide platform in the state where the ACC was founded and currently resides in Charlotte. That when he said, if you know, we were to go to employment, certain benefits, I think I'm paraphrasing here, but certain benefits and amenities for our student athletes would be cut. I agree.

Yeah, I think that is likely. I don't think that you would cut sports, but I think that the benefits that are provided to your non-revenue sports would be lessened. Did those sports at all of those schools need all those amenities? I don't know. Correct. But that's where you find the money. It's in the banana stand. There's always money in the banana stand and you don't need the same strength and nutrition program for every single athlete.

I mean, it's just it's just incredible. But, you know, the stuff like nutrition and academic assistance, that stuff can all be maintained. Right.

I mean, I just I think you would I think I think that the place where you would see those decisions being made, it would win. Not if, but in my opinion, when the athletic departments that want to play ball are entering a world where their revenue sports athletes at a maximum or at a minimum, your football players are employees, the places they would not cut sports because sports are good for the university's business. That's what they're that's what they're telling us now.

No, no, no. They're telling us we're going to cut sports. Was it Phillips that said we'd go back to six?

I would be at six sports in a minute. What are we doing? Yeah.

Why are we threatening? I think that a closer thing was when Phillips said some of the amenities. It would it would make the experience of being an Olympic sport athlete closer to club sports than it is right now, when which an Olympic sport athlete might be able to get amenities that are closer to the revenue sports. When I was in school, the Olympic sports all existed.

They all existed. I was just if you were in charge of a budget and somebody handed this to you and said, we need to find out ways to fill this new column that we've never had to fill before. I think it's the places where they've been having to invest because of nonprofit reasons that end up getting redirected first or or weird. Would it could that some of that money actually come from, you know, like the administrators, like their salaries? One.

And don't even like get me going down from the self-preservation. Oh, did you hear us talk about that? Neil Brown? Neil Brown was on the hot seat at West Virginia going into last season. Nine win season from hot seat to contract extension. That contract extension included very, very small pay cuts with each year that goes up reworked his deal so that it did go up every year, but it was less money than what his original contract was so that that money could be reinvested into staff hires and your assistant coaching pool.

These are the decisions that are going to have to be made at every level where things are tight. We can't spend like we used to. So what is four hundred thousand dollars to Neil Brown to someone who's making four million dollars a year? Something not nothing.

Right. But it's a whole lot more to take that four hundred thousand and be able to go spend it on. So on two or three different assistant coaching salaries, being able to give the bumps needed to retain a staff so that you can take that nine win season moving forward. I think head coaching salaries on average will come down.

I think A.D. salaries on average will come down. We will have our individuals like a Kirby Smart who is just way out of the world, like all the way at the front of the line. But I do think that even at the super rich Big Ten and S.E.C., the financial future involves head coaches, administrators, athletic directors, everyone to figure out ways to show some more fiscal responsibility.

All right. What I'm going to do here is tease next week because we're out of time. So I've been thinking about this for some time. Chip Patterson, we all know what's what's going to happen in the probably near not long, not far, not future. I think like within a couple of years where it's two conferences, they've got most of the good teams and all of the money. What happens when the rest, the ACC, the Big 12 and the the rest of FBS football calls their bluff and says, you're free to go. We're not participating. So you and I will talk about that next week because I think we're coming to the point where it's time to call the bluff. So you are the best always, sir. And I will talk to you next Wednesday. Sounds good. Yeah, we will. Chip Patterson, we tease the week ahead of time.