Jay Bilas Interview

We need to have the NCAA tournament and we need to have some contingency plans based on when this season would start. Everyone says it's going to start on time. We'll see. I would like for us to take a great look at contingency plans.

That was Coach K with Mark Packer on Sirius XM last week. I do feel like enough attention is being paid to the viability of a college football season this fall. But don't look now. College hoops isn't that much farther down the road. So we welcome any ESPN's Jay Billis to the show.

Jay, the time's appreciated as always. I look at just sheer numbers. In college football's FBS, you're talking about 130 schools and roughly a dozen games per. Multiply that by three and the number of games by three and that's what you're looking at for D1 basketball and it's a sport that's played inside. So to you, is there any plausible way without a vaccine we can have college basketball? I don't know. I think we can. It's just we haven't had a discussion about what risk we're willing to undertake, who's willing to undertake it and what metrics we're going to use.

How many positives? What if you have an entire team that needs to be quarantined? What do you do?

How do you deal with those particular issues? And I've been frankly very disappointed in the leadership of college sports, not just the NCAA but the different conferences that they've got access to some of the world's greatest minds and infectious disease and any sort of medical area you want. And they say, well, we've got this panel of experts. Well, where's the information from those experts? Why isn't that being shared publicly?

It should be. And these universities are publicly funded in so many cases. Almost all of them take public funds, both state and federal. And I think that establishes a public trust. And if they have information as to COVID-19, whether we should play, things like that, we should know about it. And I don't think we should learn about these decisions once they're already made. I think we should know as the process goes along, frankly. I'm interested, Jay, in what you make of the pretty positive stats that are coming out of these college football programs, where over the last month they've been able to kind of build a bubble on campus before students return, where Oklahoma doesn't have any positive tests, Notre Dame, et cetera, et cetera. Do you have any level of confidence that you can maintain some sort of a bubble if students are allowed to return to campus?

I don't know. I think it's going to be very difficult. It was difficult doing it with Major League Baseball.

I mean, look what's going on with the Marlins right now. And we haven't had that sort of discussion about if that happened in the college space, how would we deal with it. But it seems like the community spread we're seeing is just we're going to see a similar thing in college sports. There's an argument to be made, to your point, that if you have players on campus but don't have students on campus, that the players might be safer than they would be otherwise. Those are fair points to be made. But given the rhetoric of the NCAA that these are students and this is an extracurricular activity that is an avocation, which means it's supposed to be fun.

So it's like being in the band or being in the school play. Well, they're not having any of those things. All they're really going to have is football.

And once we get to November, my guess is we'll have basketball, at least give it a very good effort. Because it has been, nobody is saying these players deserve the educational experience of playing and all the wonderful lessons that come with it. They're talking about money. They need the money. I'm not saying it's craven or they're going to do it, putting people's lives at risk for money.

But make no mistake, we're doing all this for the money. I've spoken to a number of officials from ACC schools over the last few months about the announcement when we were all in Greensboro from the NCAA that they weren't going to have any fans at NCAA tournament events right before everything got shut down. And the disappointment from the officials were stemmed in that they were not clued in before everything was made publicly that that was going to be the decision.

They weren't a part of that conversation at all. And we're seeing some conversations break down among Power Five commissioners as well. They talk essentially every day, but none of them seem to know that the Big Ten was only going to go to conference-only games for football a few weeks ago. How broken do you think the trust is between the NCAA with Mark Emmert, but also the other leaders you were speaking about as well, the commissioners at the very top of sports? Well, I think the commissioners communicate fairly effectively, but they're competitors too. So they're only going to work together so much because they have their own interests and their own members to deal with. You know, the disappointment with the NCAA structure and leadership has been, I mean, that's not just a Mark Emmert issue that's been going on for 100 plus years.

I mean, it's a bad system. And then when you combine it with substandard leadership, you're going to have these problems. And really, it's not an issue of what the NCAA president, whether it's Mark Emmert or somebody else, what that person has authority over. It's a question of using that office to coordinate so that you have responses and you have decisions that are not made independent of one another.

Because I do agree that, look, I cut the NCAA a lot of slack in March, and I believe that, you know, rightfully so, that there was a lot going on. Decisions had to be made pretty quickly. Data points were changing, and they decided that they didn't want to do the normal process where, you know, a decision might get bogged down by having to run it, you know, run it up the flagpole with everybody in the organization.

I get that. But they needed to communicate. The conference commissioner should not have found out that stuff through normal channels. They shouldn't have gotten it through the media. They should have known. And the optics of the ACC and others playing their games on that Wednesday night with fans in the arena after the NCAA set, there'll be no fans at their events.

It made everybody look kind of foolish. But I, you know, I think it's a real problem that we don't hear anything from the NCAA, from Mark Emmert, even though he may not be able to force anybody into something. I do think that office, being able to use that office to say, here's the right thing. You know, the right thing is to do this, this and this. The right thing is to postpone.

The right thing is to cancel, whatever it is. We're not hearing that. And I'll give you an example. Emmert testified before a congressional committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, last Wednesday. And in that committee hearing, he was asked, I think it was by Senator Blumenthal, what his opinion of students being asked to sign, or athletes being asked to sign waivers to play ball, to play football. And he said he was categorically opposed to it. Well, why did it take Senator Blumenthal asking him not to say that?

All these schools have been having their athletes sign these waivers, the Buckeye Pledge, all these other ridiculous things, you know, the calling of ridiculous things when they're waivers. And why didn't he say that publicly? Why did he have to wait until he was cornered by some senator in a hearing where they were asking for an antitrust exemption? I just thought, you know, that's just the absence of leadership there, where you're not using that office to, you know, make your voice heard on something that important.

You know, you do it when you're cornered. And I don't think that's the right way to do it. And similarly with COVID, I think there are opportunities for the NCAA, which claims to be about education, to help educate the public. They've got some of the top research institutions of the world as members. And why aren't those, why aren't their findings, their opinions, why isn't the NCAA putting those out to the public?

I think it's a mistake not to. It's ESPN's Jay Billis here with us on Sports Hub Triad. I do want to transition things to basketball as Cole Anthony. He is getting set for the NBA.

You, of course, in addition to all your college basketball duties, you are also responsible for the NBA draft as well and covering how these guys are going to translate from college ball to the NBA. Sam Fassini put out a story last week for The Athletic, which pulled a bunch of coaches anonymously to give their analysis on Cole. And it seems, this is Sam's words, that he is maybe the most polarizing prospect in this draft. I don't know if he was hurt for coming back to a team that already had its flaws and he was dealing with injuries too, but what do you make of Cole Anthony as an NBA prospect, where he stands right now? He's a top 10 pick.

Now, he may go 15 or something like that. That happens every year. But he's a legit top 10 prospect.

North Carolina had a rough year. Those things tend to rub off on the best player. Plus, he had injury throughout the year. He was hurt from the very beginning. But when he played and when he was healthy, he played well.

So, I have no problem with him. I can't remember whether I've got him ranked 8th among all prospects, whatever it is. I had him in the top 5 before the season started, so it's not like he's had a big drop.

But some people, I've seen some of these mocks where they say, okay, he's in the low 20s or whatever it is. He's a very, very talented player. And I think he's going to have a very good NBA career. Who's at the very top of that list, Jay? James Wiseman of Memphis.

James Wiseman's at the top. And he's a guy who obviously was in a tough situation as well, decided to forego the rest of the season with Memphis. And do you think he's your best prospect? Would you be surprised if he wasn't the No. 1 pick, considering where the NBA is headed away from back to the basket, away from the big man? Well, he's not really a back to the basket player.

He can do that, but he can also step away. And they're not going away from guys that have a 7-6 wingspan that can run rebound block shots and impact the game the way he can. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the second pick or the third pick.

I wouldn't be shocked at that. It's not one of those years where it's a complete no-brainer. But there are question marks about every player at the top of this draft as to whether that player should be No.

1. It's not definitive like it is in some years where you go, OK, you know LeBron's going to be the No. 1 pick. That's not this type of year. It's not the best draft we've ever seen.

But there are a lot of really good prospects of Wiseman's, a lot of them. Last thing for you, Jay Billis here from ESPN. Yesterday marked the 13-year anniversary of Skip Prosser's passing. Obviously a really big deal in these parts, and I'd argue one of the biggest what-ifs in ACC basketball history where Wake Forest would be today if he was continuing to coach the Deacs, considering the recruiting and the success that he had in his years with the Demon Deacons. When you think about Coach Prosser and what made him unique, what goes through your mind immediately?

Just the kind of person he was. He's not only a great coach, he was just a wonderful person. I got to know him when he was the head coach at Xavier, and we became good friends. When he took the Wake Forest job, I was very pleased for him and certainly for Wake Forest. I think I was with him a week before he passed. He had a Coaches vs. Cancer event that I had hosted for him at Wake. I still remember finding out about his passing and still not being able to believe it. It's been 13 years and it's still really fresh to me.

It was so recent as to still be so stinging. He was a teacher, high school teacher, educator. He was as likely to quote a philosopher or a poet.

He'd be quoting Thoreau or something before he quotes John Wooden or Dean Smith or something like that. He was always about education more than anything, but he's also an amazing competitor. He's one of those guys that had his priorities in order and understood what everything was about and had his head screwed on right, which is not true of all of us. He was the best of us. You're a pretty bright guy, Jay, but I have to imagine that he also maybe taught you a few words as well. I always hear about his vocabulary.

That's what always comes up with a lot of people. Yeah, but it wasn't one of those things where you couldn't talk with him. He wasn't like that, but he was very well read. If you went to lunch, you weren't just going to talk about basketball. It was going to be a lot of other things.

He was very aware of his surroundings, but he's also very aware of other people's feelings that there was more to this. I had done him a favor. I can't remember exactly what it was. I'd spoken at some event. He tried to pay me and I wouldn't take it.

I'm not going to let some school pay me to speak. He said, send your kid to my camp. I talked to my wife about it.

I was like, alright, I'll do that then. My wife said, no, he's too young to go to overnight camp. He can't do that. Skip calls me up and says, alright, I got it. You bring him to my father-son camp. It's Father's Day weekend and I can't remember how old my boy was. We went and did a father-son camp there. My boy came back and he was all in with Wake. I think it was the year after.

He thought Chris Paul and Justin Gray and Eric Williams were his best friends after that camp because those guys all worked it. He was all about Wake. He was a huge Wake fan as soon as he met Skip and went to that camp. The next year, I think it was the next year, Wake Forest was playing on the road at Illinois. Wake was number one. Illinois was number two or three. Illinois drilled Wake Forest. They beat the hell out of them. I think Wake was down by 30 at one point. They were as good as anybody.

Wake was as good as anybody. After the game, the first thing Skip said was, how's your son doing? I said, how's Anthony?

I said, it's funny. I just talked to my wife and she said he's crying his eyes out over the loss. It couldn't have been that long after I had Anthony with me at a game.

Skip grabs him and starts whispering in his ear. Later on, I was driving home with my son. I said, what did Coach Prosser say to you before the game when he whispered in your ear? He said, hey, don't worry about the Illinois game. I cried after that game too.

Who does that? Then my boy winds up playing at Wake as a walk-on. When he got his offer as a walk-on, Skip's mother sent him a note about how happy she was over it because she remembered all that stuff. There have been so many neat connections even after Skip's passing. He was just an extraordinary guy. Wish I would have had a chance to get to know him a bit. I always love hearing stories like that and appreciate you sharing with us and joining us today.

A lot of stuff that we don't know answers to. Hopefully we get them sometime soon. Jay Billis, I hope you're safe up in the Queen City and that we can catch up sometime soon. Looking forward to it. Have a good one. You got it. That's Jay Billis. Joining us from ESPN.

Gosh, that's just such great stuff there on Skip Prosser. This doesn't seem like the greatest transition, but we're going to go from that great story to an embarrassing story involving me yesterday. Like Robert, he looked at me with such shame. The way that your dad or mom looked at you when you messed up as a kid for the first time and they said they were disappointed in you. That happened to me and I'll explain why next.