The Drive with Josh Graham - NC State

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It's brilliant. Welcome to the official slowest day of summer 2019. No baseball, no basketball, no anything. But then right as we were going off the air yesterday, the NCAA swooped in and threw fresh meat into the den of us summer content seekers. That meet NC State announcing that it had received a notice of allegations stemming from the FBI's college basketball probe, including level one allegations and charges of former head coach Mark Godfried and then assistant Orlando Early, who has been charged with paying Dennis Smith Jr. $40,000 through a bag man in order to get DSJ to rally for his one and only season with the Wolfpack. The biggest question we need to have answered today and that we're not going to have answered, I'd imagine for some time.

Two questions, really. Why NC State first? Why is NC State the first domino to fall here? Does the NCAA do this because they feel like they have a slam dunk case with the Wolfpack, that they feel like they might be the one to set the precedent here?

They feel so confident in the Wolfpack case, Godfried and Early that they rolled them out as the first domino. And the more important question, who's going to get the brunt of it here? Coaches or the institutions? Because based off the charges and allegations, the way that I read it, it appears the NCAA is focusing its sights on the coaches, which means while this is not good news by any means for NC State fans, it does appear the targets are the coaches, which could mean NC State might catch a break. This is the strategy for NC State.

We're already seeing it unfold. We fired all the guilty parties. Godfried's not here anymore.

Neither is Early. Heck, if you even look in the institution, Debbie Yow's gone and Boo Corrigan's in place as the new director of athletics. Now, the reason Mark Gottfried was fired was because they went 15 and 17 with Dennis Smith Jr. and 4 and 14 in conference play. And Early, of course, got fired along with Gottfried. And Debbie Yow retired. It wasn't because of the wrong doing. Debbie Yow at the time decided we need a change in the basketball program.

It was more performance based. But Mark Gottfried, he's at Cal State Northridge now. So if the NCAA wants to send a message by hammering all of these college basketball coaches, whether it be Gottfried, Will Wade at LSU, Sean Miller at Arizona, Bill Self at Kansas, they could still go about doing it and say they got a current coach. There is a chance NC State might come out of this.

Not unscathed. You're going to have to probably do away with all the wins in 2016, 2017. You might even go under probation. But that is something you would certainly sacrifice over scholarships being limited, a postseason ban, especially this year with Markelle Johnson returning at NC State, looking like it's going to make the NCAA tournament. The strategy for NC State is this. We ensured they knew the rules while they were here. We had no idea Early was trying to wire money through Adidas, through this middle man getting to Dennis Smith Jr. in order to bring in players.

We had no idea that was happening. We did our due diligence and letting these coaches know what the rules were. That's essentially what NC State said yesterday in a statement that we didn't break the rules here, the coaches did. And based off the charges, the four that were levied by the NCAA in the notice of allegations, two level one charges that seemed to be focused on Gottfried and Early, two level two charges, which used to be far more insignificant.

But when rolled up with all these level one charges, we really don't know how they're going to be handled. The level two charges having a lot to do with parking passes, getting to Dennis Smith Jr., that being an NCAA violation. That might be all that gets pegged against the school. I didn't see lack of institutional control in these allegations, so that might be good news. Tar Heel fans are well familiar with that expression, lack of institutional control. NC State isn't taking any chances. In its defense, they have hired the same law firm North Carolina used to stave off the NCAA. However, you're not only staving off the NCAA if you're NC State this time around, you're also defending yourself against the FBI, which did the investigating. A lot of times the NCAA botched cases, cases we felt like they really had an opportunity to send a message in.

Joe Paterno, where they were heavy handed against Penn State, then had to recoil and lessen the punishments a year or two in. Miami with the Shapiro investigation, him being the booster that was so close to Miami, it seemed like they could have hammered the hurricanes. But there's a self-imposed postseason ban for Miami and some less than ethical investigation practices. The NCAA has to suspend its case and let Miami off essentially scot-free. The FBI did the investigating here. They have resources. The NCAA does not, such as subpoena power.

So with that and just their overall far better ability to investigate, it's tougher for me to imagine schools shaking free. Using the same expectations we have for the NCAA in 2019 with the FBI involved to say five years ago. Luke DeCocks going to join us to give us more details on this. He's from the Raleigh News and Observer award winning columnist who's already been writing about this, as many are today. Pat Forti, also a guest on today's show, national college sports columnist from Yahoo Sports.

Desmond Johnson, the producer of this program, NC State, not alum, but NC State student intern Nick hanging out in the house here. Yesterday's news should terrify Kansas, Arizona, LSU and Auburn, because once I saw level one infractions towards Gottfried, towards the coaches, my feeling on it is that's the precedent we're going to see moving forward. That the NCAA is not going for the programs. They're going for these coaches who have been so evasive in these cases over the years. Remember Rick Pitino.

He was the first domino to fall with the FBI investigation. It just became too much with the stripper allegations and then everything with the one hundred thousand dollars reportedly being offered to that Bowen kid. It became too much that Louisville just decided to slap its hands and say, we're done with this. We're done defending Pitino.

We're going to move on here. But remember, they couldn't get Pitino before. We don't know if he knew anything.

We can't prove he knew about the strippers. So we're going to let him off every single case that we were curious to see if it was going to involve a head coach over the last 10, 15 years. It feels like they found a way to get out of it because the NCAA could never prove that the coach knew about it. Even with North Carolina and Roy Williams and the and Atham and Butch Davis, while that's a little bit different and I don't care to rehash all the Atham issues here. It seems to me the NCAA is going to use its bullets and the ammunition to try and get some big time coaches.

They feel that's the way to send a message in college basketball, to knock Sean Miller down a peg, to knock down Will Wade a peg. Bruce Pearl at Auburn. Bill Self even at Kansas. Now, I feel like Kansas will be able to fight back and that will be the most interesting one to see. I don't know how much LSU after already suspending Will Wade.

How much, say, even Arizona. Where there's already a great deal of doubt within the regents board. And whether Sean Miller is innocent or guilty. How much they're going to be willing to defend their coach. So this is the first domino, but I suspect in the next month or so, what we're going to be talking about are coaches. That's what the NCAA is going for here. And out of all the schools I just mentioned, there's only one that recruited players improperly at a place he's no longer at. And that's Mark Gottfried, which might be a blessing in disguise for NC State.

Now, it's far from good news. You might have to revoke wins, but if you're an NC State fan, do you take that? 3-3-6-7-7-7-1-600. Because you're losing 15 wins and you're losing only four conference wins. Four and 14 with Dennis Smith Jr. Now, one of those wins was against Duke, which means if NC State plays at Duke again, you can't say that they won that game. You can't say NC State beat Duke with Dennis Smith Jr., which means they now have not beaten.

If it gets taken away, wiped off the board, that entire season 16-17, those wins, NC State still will not have beaten Duke and Cameron since 1995. Yes, Des? So I just finished reading the notice of allegations here. You just got done reading this? It's 12 pages. It's 12 pages? It's 12 pages long.

Got it right here. You waited until 3-12 in the afternoon to read this thing? Well, there really wasn't a lot of new stuff in there. The Dennis Smith story's been out for over a year, so we've kind of known bits and pieces of this for a while. We were going off the air yesterday when this first came down. We had all this information. And this entire segment, I'm looking over and you're reading, this is the time you chose to read it?

Yeah, and a little bit before the show started. Now, my point was, from off of what you were saying, I went back to go look at any kind of situation that might be similar to what NC State may be facing. And the closest thing to it is 1988 Kansas, where Larry Brown left after that season. They won a national championship, Danny Manning over at Wake Forest. Larry Brown leaves that offseason and then Kansas gets hit with a three-year probation from the NCAA due to major violations with improper recruiting contacts, improper travel payments, yada, yada, yada. You can almost say what NC State did is worse than what Kansas actually did. Now, back in 1988, there was no lack of institutional control inside the bylaws of the NCAA.

In fact, I think this case is what allowed them to create that very thing. So, Kansas didn't have a lack of institutional control in their charges. But this is the closest thing I can find that might give you some sort of idea of what NC State could potentially face. Now, Kansas, they were able to still play it. I think they lost some scholarships. But the main issue that they ended up getting was that they were banned from postseason for three years. And that's because Roy Williams took over for Larry Brown immediately after that 89 season and had to rebuild the program for it.

I could see NC State being banned from postseason play for a couple of years. We don't know that. We just really don't know.

We don't know what to expect. But they haven't levied the charges against the school. It seems that all of these have been focused on the coaches, which is different than even what you have with Kansas in 1988. It's even more different than that.

It's not an exact carbon copy, no, which is what I was saying. But this is the closest thing I can find to it to give at least NC State fans some sort of idea of what may happen. Now, at the time, Kansas was up for the death penalty for what they were doing, which was considerably far less than NC State did. But the NCAA let him off the hook and gave him that probation instead. That could be something similar to what they end up doing. NC State's been on probation before.

Jim Valvano, back in the day, selling tickets, shoes and gear and stuff. So, I mean, it's not like they haven't been on the watch list of the NCAA in the past. It's just a matter of, like you said, does the NCAA decide to make an example of the school and all the muck that we've seen with these other schools get involved with this through the FBI stuff and punish the school?

Or do they punish the coach and let the school off scot-free? Up next, just how close Zion was to returning to Duke for a second season. This is The Drive. Come on! Let's go! You're on The Drive with Josh Graham, the sports hub.

At AM 600, AM 920. What a day it was in Raleigh yesterday where you have, first off, the Board of Trustees voting to officially allow alcohol sales at NC State sporting events, including Carter-Finley Stadium. New Belgium recently also introduced an old Tuffy lager. You got the NC State logo and Tuffy on the beer can. So all sounded like it was going to be good in Raleigh yesterday.

Then right when we were getting off the air, we learned that NC State had received a notice of allegations from the NCAA with some level one infractions involved in that as well. Somebody who's been covering this as well as anybody. Luke DeCock now joining us, the award-winning columnist from the Raleigh News and Observer on Twitter, at LukeDeCock. It's good to have you back on in the Triad, Luke. How are you? I'm good, Josh. Thank you for having me.

There are a lot of things I want to get to in a short amount of time, so we'll get to a number of topics here. Let's start with just what signal you think this sends. Do you read the NOA as a sign that the NCAA is more focused on punishing the coaches than the schools? Absolutely.

A hundred percent. And no one ever knows what the NCAA is really thinking, but the fact that NC State went first, this is probably one of the simpler cases that the NCAA has. One player, one coach, one payment that came up at trial in testimony. So you can see why the NCAA might start here, and to the extent that we can extrapolate from this notice of allegations where the NCAA is headed, it's very coached focused.

It's targeted at early at Gottfried. There's some minor secondary violations that involve NC State, but there's no failure or monitor charge. There's basically no accountability whatsoever for the university, whereas Gottfried is held accountable for Lando Early's actions, and nobody at NC State is held accountable for Gottfried. So to me, to the extent that you can predict these things, that does feel like the NCAA has decided, not surprisingly, to focus on individuals that are easily punished and not to tinker with the spigot that flows money and attack some of these big-time college basketball programs directly.

So I think that's probably good news for Kansas and Louisville and Arizona. If I were Sean Miller or Bill Self or Rick Pitino, I'd be extremely concerned right now that any wiretap that I showed up on, any testimony in court is going to be used against me by the NCAA. And I think if I were Mark Gottfried's lawyer, I'd say, look, the only evidence against Early is this testimony of this informant, this fixer-turned-informant. As far as we know, and there's no indication of this, there's no physical evidence, you know, how am I supposed to be held accountable for monitoring someone where you wouldn't even know about this if it weren't for the FBI?

How was I supposed to know about this? So I think there's some fascinating threads to come out of this. But to me, the main one and the main impact is we've all been waiting to see how the NCAA was going to handle this informant issue in its midst, this FBI stuff, the trials. How was the NCAA going to deal with this? And I think to the extent that we can tell from this NOA, they're going after the coaches. What's the best-case scenario for NC State here?

I mean, I think it's pretty simple. NC State gets a slap on the wrist for the ticketing violations and, you know, some probation maybe and maybe a scholarship for a year. And the NCAA brings a hammer down on Early and Gottfried with show-cause orders, which, you know, would basically put them out of the college basketball business.

Early is already, he's been in the NBA since he left NC State. Gottfried obviously is coaching at Cal State Northridge and one of your guests later this afternoon will have plenty to say about that. You know, I would just say that Cal State Northridge hiring Gottfried, I said this at the time, in this hailstorm of subpoenas was certainly a curious move to say the least and very difficult to comprehend that with all these college basketball coaches out there, talented young coaches who deserve a shot as head coaches at the Division I level, why you would take a guy who had just been subpoenaed is beyond me.

But I'm sure Pat will have plenty to say about that, and I'll leave that to him. You know, as far as NC State's NOA goes, I think, you know, that probably could not have gone any better for NC State. You know, I'm sure Boo Corrigan's relationship with some key people at the NCAA probably didn't hurt. NC State hired Bon Shonek and King, the law firm that got UNC off the hook. So, you know, obviously that's a law firm that knows how to deal with NCAA issues and handle being CA'd. So there's a lot, I think, you know, that went well with this for NC State. I think going first probably wasn't ideal for the Wolfpack. They'd probably prefer to have it buried amid a barrage of NOAs for schools that are going to have more going on. But I think, you know, just in a vacuum, this is pretty far from the worst case scenario for NC State. Luke DeCock's with us from the Raleigh News & Observer. Follow him on Twitter, at LukeDeCock.

He's here on the Sports House. Unlike the AFAM scandal, the FBI did the legwork with the investigation, and they have far more resources than the NCAA possesses with subpoena power and other things. With the FBI's help, do you think the NCAA has more ammunition to send a message with these allegations, these notices of allegations?

Well, it just has ammunition, period. You know, in the old days, pre-Rights Commission, the NCAA would have had to gone back and re-interview TJ Gasnola. And we've seen, in some cases, people will say one thing in court and say another to the NCAA, and there's really no recourse for that. In this case, the NCAA, you know, the Rights Commission's recommendation was to allow the NCAA to use court testimony and not have to go and re-interview and reinvestigate everything. So this entire case wouldn't exist without those changes.

And to a certain extent, any kind of speculation here is a little futile because we just don't know. This is an entirely new era, a new day of NCAA governance. There really is no precedent. There is no past practice here. You know, they never would have been able to use this before. So, you know, we can draw some conclusions based on what the NCAA has done in the past and what this NOAA looks like.

But it really is hard to know what's going to happen other than to say, to your question directly, these are charges that never would have been able to have even been brought before without an NCAA investigation of its own. So that alone is very different from what we've seen before. In addition to covering NC State, you cover the Carolina Hurricanes as well. The Sebastian Ajo match offer was something that we talked about at length last week. And it's the first time someone offered someone an offer sheet, a restrictive free agent, in six years. The Montreal Canadiens trying to bring in Ajo and the Hurricanes, of course, matching. How do you assess that and also the other moves the Hurricanes made this summer?

How do you assess the summer as a whole? Yeah, the Ajo offer sheet's pretty easy. I mean, that was just unbelievably boneheaded by the Canadiens. There was no way that the Hurricanes weren't going to match that. You know, the up-front money is a pain, but the overall number was fine.

It's probably where they would have ended up with Ajo. And the term wasn't what they wanted, but the term is fine. They'll have a chance to renegotiate and extend them a few years down the road.

And this puts them at a reasonable number for that period of time. I have no idea what the Canadiens were trying to accomplish other than maybe just to pander to their fan base and say, here, look what we tried to do. And all it did was take away some leverage for NHL teams with restricted free agents. It was pretty self-defeating and stupid, if you ask me. I think that's the way the Hurricanes felt about it. They actually were relieved that the offer sheet didn't put them in a position that was going to be difficult for them to match.

I think, to a certain extent, the Canadiens got caught up in the rumor mill about how cheap Rob Dundon is and ended up underestimating him. I think what people who have spent some time with him know is he doesn't like to spend money, but he absolutely will when he has to. And this is certainly a case of that.

He's not short of it. And a guy who threw away $70 million on a gamble on a football league is not going to shy away from paying Sebastian Ajo money. He was going to have to pay him anyway. So the whole thing was just kind of dumb. I think from the Hurricanes' perspective, it sped up the Ajo negotiation. So if anything else, the Canadiens did them a favor. The rest of the summer, they brought back Peter Mrazek.

I think both sides were kind of poking around, seeing if they could do better before sort of ending up back in bed with each other. And that's fine. Mrazek isn't going to have the Curtis McElhinney safety net this year. He's going to have to be a number one kind of on his own, not splitting time.

So as long as he can do that, they'll be fine. The goaltending number two situation is curious because you've got James Reimer. You've got the Forsberg kid they picked up from Chicago in the DeHaan trade.

They've got Alex Nadelkovich, who really has done everything he could do at the AHL level and at some point deserves a shot to show what he can do in the NHL. But it's a lot easier to work out your number two situation than number one. And then the DeHaan trade was hard for a lot of fans to understand.

I struggled with it a little bit too. I think with some perspective and some time it makes a little more sense. They signed him really to be a second pairing defenseman on the assumption they would trade one of their right shot defenseman last summer. And then, you know, they never did. And it turns out those four guys, you know, Hamilton, Faulk, and Pesci in play, they could play pretty well together. So DeHaan was kind of going into the season, especially with his shoulder issues, as a third pairing guy.

He was just making too much for that. And, you know, when they signed him, the contract was kind of structured so they could trade him after the second year if they wanted to. In this case, with the shoulder issues and the way the defense was stacking up, they just decided to move that timetable off the year.

He's a popular guy, he's a nice guy, and people liked him. So it's hard for people to understand the financial aspects of that, especially when the return of a number two goalie and a depth defenseman doesn't seem like a lot. But, you know, the fours-link kid they picked up in the trade, his salary fits that 6-7-8 slot. The fours-berg goalie is a guy they like and think has maybe some potential to be a number one, is worth the gamble.

So they got some assets that they liked, they shaved some salary, it gives them some money to, you know, to deal with an hour, gave them at the time, some money to deal with an hour offer sheet. The piece that they got in Eric Holla from the Golden Knights, you know, he's a guy who, before his injury, was a really sort of upper-level third-line center type. And that's the position where they really needed more help than anything, just to get a little stronger down the middle.

And that does that for him. That slaps Lucas Walmark in on the fourth line. He's an okay third-line center, a really good fourth-line center.

You know, Holla can score. The only question is the severity of his knee injury and his recovery from that, as long as he can come back at some level of where he was before. He does give them another really useful centerman who can play some special teams and strengthens them down the middle.

Takes some of the pressure off Sebastian Ajo, some of the pressure off Jordan Salt, should enable both of those guys to play better. So the Hurricanes haven't done a lot this summer, but they also haven't lost a lot. You know, Michael Furlan was a complete non-factor after the trade deadline.

You kind of tip your cap and wish him well. They're not going to miss him. You know, their record with and without him in the playoffs, a lot of factors there, but it still speaks for itself. So, you know, they've done some things in the offseason that aren't very flashy, but they've kind of kept everything in place.

And that's really what they needed to do. They like their team. They think it's going to get better. They've added a key piece in Holla. And, you know, now the important thing for them, they ended the playoff drought last year.

People forget that they haven't made the playoffs in back-to-back years since 2002. So there's another thing to shoot for. Luke, it's crazy to think that today is the slowest day in the sports calendar because next week we will be in Charlotte Wednesday and Thursday for ACC kickoff. And three weeks from today is the start of the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro. We'll be broadcasting live from there. So I'm sure we'll be seeing you sometime soon, Luke. Yes, absolutely. Next week for sure.

Yeah, you got it. See you, Luke. That's Luke DeCock, Raleigh News & Observer, on Twitter, at LukeDeCock. As you can tell, has a lot of information on NC State, the Carolina Hurricanes, read his stuff, newsobserver.com, and of course, again, on Twitter, at LukeDeCock. Coming up, the Summer Sports Radio Playbook.

Keep it here on the drive. Every year, you're bound to see one of these topics pop up. There are others that are budding Hall of Famers that haven't quite been inducted yet, but these three for sure are slam-dunk Hall of Fame summer topics. Number one, how to fix baseball. Every single year.

Every single year. That show's going to be done. You need to have the game sped up. You need to have a runner start at second base in extra innings so the game doesn't go long like minor league baseball. You need to get rid of umpires.

You need to do this. You need to have more marketable stars. Mike Trout needs to do more commercials.

Now that's Mookie Betts. Every single year, we're going to have the how to fix baseball conversation, I believe, till the end of time. And it only happens in July because there's nothing else going on in NFL football or the NBA or college sports.

So we'll talk about how to fix baseball. Number two, soccer is coming. Soccer is going to be a major American sport. Every year.

You know. Soccer is the future NBA. Soccer is going to be the future NFL. Remember a year ago or make it make it one century ago, the most popular sports were. Baseball, horse racing and boxing. 50 years from now, it's going to be soccer, soccer, soccer, soccer.

That's what's going to happen. Ever since Beckham arrived and before that it was Pele in the 70s. I keep hearing about how soccer is going to make this torrential rise into consciousness and take over the NFL and the NBA. I ain't there yet, but that won't stop us in the summer talking about it, especially in a World Cup year. Soccer making the comeback. Hall of Fame, sports radio, summer topic.

And lastly, without fail, usually early August or in the middle of July. I expect this in the next few weeks. Somebody is going to notice there aren't enough black coaches in football. Or in fill in the sport.

Right? People are going to, oh my gosh, realize that owners, a lot of them are white dudes. And a lot of people hire people that look like them and general managers, most of them white dudes. And we're going to get to the point, usually in the past, it was Tony Dungy's face on the ESPN main screen. But in years past, it's been Mike Tomlin, maybe even a Hugh Jackson mixed in there.

We're going to get to the point in the summer where somehow we just now realize and we have this shocked reaction every year that there are a lot of black coaches in the sport. Those are three Hall of Fame summer sports topics guaranteed not to fail every year you're going to see them. We were talking about sports movies. I believe the best sports movies are baseball movies.

They deserve their own category. I don't think we have any great football movies, but that's a point of contention. The control room believes that Remember the Titans, Any Given Sunday, The Blind Side, they're great sports movies. I think they're good. Rudy, I'd probably say, is the best football movie and I think it's good. It's good, not great.

Not in the same category as Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, or even Moneyball in the last 15 years. Let's go to Todd in Jamestown. Your thoughts are welcome. 336-777-1600 and on Twitter at sportsubtriad. Todd, what do you got for me?

What I have for you is this. You guys are a little younger, so you may not have seen these movies or even heard of them. But the best football movie, hands down, and you can Google it and look it up on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes and it will have a high rating. It was critically acclaimed.

It was North Dallas 40. Really good movie. It is considered a great movie. You need to watch that one. The NFL probably didn't like that movie to be showed a lot because it shows a lot of the dirty side of the game. And I would also have to say that The Longest Yard, the original one, is a great movie. Oh yeah, I've definitely seen that one. Funny, great movie, but North Dallas 40. You gotta put it in there. Alright, thanks so much. That movie came out in the late 70s.

I've heard of it, never seen it. Getting this in all caps from Phillip on Twitter. Just all caps. I'd like to picture Phillip sitting in his car and yelling this at first for nobody else to listen. Yelling at his radio before grabbing his phone, safely of course, parked, and tweeting this.

In all caps he just writes him with no other contact, THE REPLACEMENTS! It's fine. Not great. It's fine. I'm not even sure if that goes into the good category.

It's fine. But we're doing the thing that usually happens during the summertime. We get into the sports movie route and then all of a sudden the phone lines flood with people wanting to talk about sports movies. The thing that we tried to push against, in the name of being original, we're going back into the same rudders.

That's where we're headed. Let's go to Charlie in Trinity who wants in on sports movies. Charlie, you're on the Sports Hub. What do you got? Charlie, go ahead. Hey, what's going on?

Oh, not a lot. What do you got on sports movies? One guy just blew my thunder because I was going to say North Dallas 42. But as far as golf movies, you got to put Caddyshack and Tin Cup in there. Oh, Caddyshack. That of course goes into the funny movie category.

Thanks so much for the call. But in terms of the recyclable news stories, recyclable summer sports topics, I think it's tough to beat how to fix baseball, soccer taking over America eventually, even though that's been the take for 15 years recently and then before that in the 70s with Pei Lang, a popular topic, before sports radio was a thing. And then somebody just magically figures out that there's not a lot of black coaches in football.

And we're still trying to figure out that problem. But every year it gets brought up. And it's always during the summer when things are slow.

Always seems to be that way. Joe Weil is going to join us. Speaking of movies, send in movie lines at Sports Hub Triad that we can work in. Can we get to Joe's work very quickly here from last week? This is on the Dash broadcast.

You could listen to Dash baseball seven o'clock right here on the Sports Hub every single Thursday. And Joe works in movie lines that you the audience sends in and he finagles them into his play by play. Before Connor went on the eighth inning and just walked around the ballpark to check things out, to see the great crowd, essentially telling Connor, if I'm not back in five minutes, just wait longer. Needed some overacting in his voice there. If I'm not back in five minutes, just wait longer.

I think he was squeezing that in before the game ended. I'm Jim Carrey. Just wait longer. The over actor of the century. The best over actor in all things movies. Are you trying to do a Jim Carrey impression?

That's right. Give me the next movie line. Good fastball on the outside corner.

Pumped in at 95 miles per hour. And Perez, after catching that baseball, nodding in approval at mean, almost as if to say we go in Sizzler. We go in Sizzler.

White Men Can't Jump, another underrated sports movie. You could send in lines that you would like Joe to work into the broadcast later on tonight at Sports Hub Triad on Twitter. Joe will join us in just a little bit. Let's go to Gary in Greensboro, who also wants in on sports movies. Gary, what do you have in the way? Actually, did we already get to Jeff? Let's get to Jeff first before we get to Gary. I brought up sports topics that I think are just classic sports radio summer topics that are recyclable every single year.

Jeff, what do you have to nominate on this list? Oh, I think the biggest one will come out about mid-August is when the AP football poll comes out and there's seven Big Ten teams in the top 45. Every year they're coming back. Oh, it is one of my favorite segments we've done.

Thank you for the call, by the way. Where the preseason list comes out. I hate preseason polls. There are always three or four frauds.

Usually there's six, but three or four easily identifiable ones. Last year, I remember Virginia Tech fans got mad at me. I said, Virginia Tech, not going to be any good. They're in the preseason top 25.

They're a fraud. Virginia Tech fans gave me a lot of heat. I didn't hear from them much after the season ended, their first losing season since the George H.W. Bush administration.

So we'll do that when the preseason top 25 comes out. Gary in Greensboro, what do you got on sports movies, Gary? Hey, how you doing today?

Eh, we're doing all right. One movie that I'll never get tired of soon is for the Redwood Gang and Kevin Costner. Just to listen to Vince Scully call that baseball game just makes the movie. Him being the best play-by-play in history, I believe, it just makes that movie always worthwhile. Wait, what movie is that that Vince Scully's calling a game in? For the Love of the Game with Kevin Costner. Of course, of course, of course. Kevin Costner deserves his own category, too, I think. Good stuff, as always.

From the phone callers. So we'll put together these movie lines for Joe. My hair is still purple day four. Does it look any different than it has the previous days? Yes. It's even darker than it was yesterday.

I mean, Nick, you were here two days ago. Would you say his hair is a little bit more purple than it was the last time you saw it? Uh, yeah.

I think it's a little, yeah. I warned you about this before you even did it. Right. And every day since. So there's something you guys don't know about, something I haven't even told you guys about. But my hair is purple right now.

And the way the show works, I mean, we have a lot of different perspectives on the show. Des, he's in his 40s and he's married, has children. I'm a single guy. I'm still just kind of hanging out because I, you know, work with my career and such.

It's just that that's just something that hasn't really been a priority. But I forgot to tell you guys, I have like a date tonight and I don't really know how this is going to go. Like, got set up and I'm meeting someone later and no idea how it's going to go with the purple hair.

How do I broach this subject? This date was set up before or after you started dyeing your hair? Uh, before it was purple. But after you made the bet to know one?

Yes, but it was before the United States won. See, for me, dating is so different now than it was when I was out and about in the streets. I mean, If you had purple hair, I don't think it's much different. Well, I would never do that. So, but no, I mean, it seems like it's for you guys, it's more of a you guys don't meet each other the same way. So literally this is going to be... You get set up and it's like a first meeting type deal.

Yeah, but it's all swipe left, swipe right. Well, that's not what this was. This one was like somebody hooked you up with somebody? Yeah.

Okay. They didn't warn them ahead of time what they were getting into? Well, I don't think they knew about the purple hair. Ah, so you're going to make that person look bad. Like, why did you set me up with this guy?

It's got purple hair. Are we that sure it's going to go poorly? I mean, it depends. Where are you going? I'm just going to grab some drinks. You're going to wear a hat? No. Have you thought about wearing a hat?

Yeah, but if you don't like me with purple hair, then you don't deserve to like me without it. But that means that you're thinking about keeping it longer than Friday. It ends tomorrow, right?

Yeah. Okay, so... I'm not keeping it longer than Friday. Okay, good for you. This entire weekend, it's going to be football-centric, getting prepared for ACC kickoff next week.

We're going to be broadcasting live in Charlotte Wednesday and Thursday, but also focusing on washing out my hair. I mean, if she has a great sense of humor, then she might get it. If she's mortified to be in public with someone with purple hair, it's going to be a bad time. The question I have is, is it that? It's not like Joker-level purple. Not yet, but you're kind of going that way.

It's not that purple. Do we have a picture of you from Monday when you first did it? We do.

We need to see that picture and compare it to the way you look today, because I don't think you believe it's darker than it actually is, but it really is. Do you have the hip-hop air horn ready to go? Always.

Tyrannosaurus Flex tweeted in on Monday, and he's reminding us now on Twitter that his Let's Get Crazy take was that I was going to have success with the ladies with purple hair. That hasn't happened yet. No, no. Well, that's… I mean, if it does, well, how do you even need to let him know that he was right? I'm not sure if this is going to come up again.

DM him or something? Like, thanks, bro. Yeah, you're welcome. You're right.

Congratulations. Mike brings up a good Hall of Fame sports topic for the summer. Pete Rose being in the Hall of Fame. Steroids and baseball used to be it. I don't think many people are even discussing Pete Rose anymore. Not anymore. I think it's moved on to the 90s, early 2000s, steroid users. Should they be Hall of Fame? And that's moved on even too. Yeah. We're past that.

We're now at the point where we don't care, and we are making A-Rod the biggest star in Major League Baseball television. Stick them all in there. Why not?

Just do it. Says Dez, the person that doesn't care about baseball. I do when they're juiced up. On deck. Why I feel so badly for and kind of proud of NC State fans. This is the sports hub. You're on the drive. Oh, look who's back.

This is the sports hub at AM 600 AM 920. Now back to the drive with Josh Graham. Oftentimes, when you do what we do here, you get caught in the local and just stay on task of trying to figure out what a headline might mean for your specific team. Whether you're talking about here in North Carolina, the Panthers, Duke, North Carolina, or in the case of today's big headline, NC State, and what this notice of allegations means for the Wolfpack. But our next guest is Pat Forti.

If you do it better than him in college sports, Yahoo Sports columnists that you can follow on Twitter at Yahoo40. He took an angle that broadened it that really had me thinking and reminding myself of just how bad of a hire it was by Cal State Northridge a year ago to hire somebody who was being subpoenaed in Mark Gottfried. Pat, when you were writing this story, do you have any idea, any idea what might have led Cal State Northridge to thinking it was a good idea to hire Gottfried? No, I mean, I've been wondering since March of 2018 when they did it, you know, I mean, this is one of those where, I mean, you could see this problem coming clearly. And they kept just ignoring every warning signal that came up and, you know, the infamous phrase from their PR people, no red flags whatsoever.

Yeah, well, there's a giant red flag planted in the middle of campus right now. You know, it's just mind boggling to me that they went through with it. And I would love to know, you know, who made the decision and why, because none of it ever made a single lick of sense.

What's the funniest thing that somebody in the college basketball world has texted you in regards to what Cal State Northridge did or why they hired Mark Gottfried or their reaction to it? Oh, well, I mean, there was a lot of it back when it happened. And, you know, I think the first thing was somebody at some point in time said, do they not have Google at Northridge? You know, could they not find out what was going on? Because, I mean, the stories were everywhere. First of all, you know, like the whole recruitment of Dennis Smith, I think everybody thought that was really a bit sketchy to begin with.

And then when, you know, the truth starts coming out about it, you're like, okay, yeah, I believe that. Sure. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes.

TJ Gaston, only $40,000. Sure. Yeah.

And then, you know, for that to not phase Northridge at all, and then just, you know, the blow through the stop sign was just, it was pretty remarkable. And, you know, I think that a lot of people were actually waiting for this day. And I'll be honest, I was one of them because I wanted to write the column, but you had to wait for the NCAA to bring the goods first. As for what this might mean for the Wolf Pack, do you interpret NC State's notice of allegations as a signal that the NCAA is going to be more focused on coaches than the schools?

Well, I don't know. First of all, interpreting the NCAA is always hazardous. You know, you just don't know, especially when it gets to the Committee on Infractions.

You know, I do interpret, the language was pretty specifically pointed, I thought, towards Orlando Early and Mark Godfrey. And so, you know, there was not a lack of institutional control finding. There was not a lot of language, you know, pointing any fingers definitively at NC State. So maybe that is the direction at least that enforcement is pointing the Committee on Infractions, but they don't have to go that way.

You know, they can do their own thing to a degree and say, you know, we think this is not just a coaching problem, this is an institutional problem and that they both need to be penalized. And I anticipate there will be penalties of some kind against NC State if the allegations hold up, which they should. They're based on federal testimony here. So it's not like this is some sort of, you know, flimsy evidence. But, you know, will they drop a big hammer on the coaches and a small hammer on NC State?

I kind of think that could be the case, but I really don't know. Earlier on the show, Luke DeCock from the Raleigh News & Observer brought up a really good point that with the Condoleezza Rice Commission and some of the changes that came from that, they're allowed to use the FBI court testimony and use the FBI, the legwork that they put in, as evidence or as they can use. They don't have to re-interview any of their any of the other guilty parties in this or any of the coaches in this who have already been heard from in court. So unlike the AFAM scandal and what we saw, say, at North Carolina, the FBI, they did a lot of the legwork with this investigation. And I wonder if that gives the NCAA a little bit more ammunition here with the subpoena power of the FBI and what they found with that to maybe send a bigger message.

Sure. I mean, I just think it makes their case much easier to make. Again, there's federal testimony, witness stand under oath and never has been really denied or refuted by anyone. And in previous times, the NCAA probably would have had to try to get TJ Gasnola to tell them the same story. You think he's going to sit down with the NCAA?

No, he's not going to do that. Now they don't need it. They've got the testimony and they can say, OK, here it is. That's why you're charged forty thousand dollars cash from an assistant coach through a middleman.

You know, it's pretty cut and dried. And so, you know, I do think that it has given them a much greater degree of certainty about their charges and perhaps greater leverage to lay down very significant penalties because of it. It's Pat Forti with us from Yahoo Sports. He's here on the sports up. If it's Will Wade or Sean Miller or both being handed level one infractions such as Mark Godfrey has been given here. How willing do you think LSU and Arizona will be to defend their coaches? It's a great question.

I mean, you know, it's I've been kind of surprised all along, Josh, that everybody still has their jobs other than Rick Pitino. And so, you know, at some point now, is this if a compelling notice of allegations hits the desk, is that when they say, OK, we we dared you to call us on it and you called us. So we give up. We're going to fire them. Or do they stand behind them further?

I don't know. Every case is different, though. You agree with that, right? Like Kansas, for example, a Hall of Fame coach and Bill Sepp won a national title and say maybe even Auburn with Bruce Pearl, just how the small amount of time he's been there and what they just did to get to a final four. That's a lot different than Sean Miller coming off a down season and the allegations being out there and how severe they are with DeAndre Ayton and even LSU with Will Wade being suspended a month. Yeah, I mean, sure, they're all different cases and different variations and different levels of accomplishment. You know, in a vacuum, you would hope the coaches throw the records out and just say, OK, is this a fireable offense regardless of whether the guys gone to a final four or been the Pac-12 coach of the year?

Yes. And let's fire him. But, you know, that's probably certainly the one guy that I think will be the hardest to fire is Bill Self because he's won a national championship.

He's been to multiple final fours. And while his fingerprints are on this via text with TJ Gasenola and there have been a lot of problems at Kansas, beyond those texts, he's not directly implicated in anything. But the head coach responsibility obviously has been established as a major rule. How does Kansas view that, though? You know, does Kansas say we're standing by him even if he's suspended for a year? We don't care.

He's our coach. Or does Kansas make a move? I mean, I don't know.

These are going to be fascinating questions. And given how little the schools have done so far, I'm not sure how much to expect them to do going forward. What do you make of NC State being rolled out first, if anything, at all of it? I don't know.

Probably not much. You know, I think that maybe that was just the easiest one that was presented earliest. You know, I mean, like out of the Adidas trial, here was Gasenola on the stand saying, yeah, I paid $40,000 and it went through Orlando early.

Okay? You know, I mean, it's very direct, very blatant, and pretty easy, I think, to write that up and submit that charge. Arizona, there's more people involved. I think there's a little bit more he-said-she-said involved. Kansas, perhaps the same thing, although, you know, I mean, Kansas and Auburn, you would think, could possibly be coming in relatively short order because I think those are somewhat cut and dried. Louisville is a big boiling kettle of fish, and, you know, how are they going to deal with everything that came out in court there? I really don't think that it's, you know, indicative of much of anything, and I have seen a lot of people, I mean, people just love to jump on the NCAA and ascribe some nefarious intent, no matter what. And so now it's, oh, we're not going to touch the Blue Bloods.

Yes, they are. Kansas is going to get a notice of allegations. Did the NCAA screw up the UNC case?

Absolutely. But that has nothing to do with this. They're not going to sacrifice Kansas because they're a Blue Blood. Kansas will get a notice of allegations.

I am reasonably certain of that. And this is not any indication, timing or any otherwise, of any sort of plan by the NCAA to, you know, unfairly help or hurt anybody. Well, the NC State deployed their secret weapon, though, Pat. They have the same defense law firm that North Carolina had with the AFAM scandal. Well, there you go. Hey, they certainly earned their billable hours during that one. So we'll see what they can do with this one. I think it's going to be a little tougher, but who knows?

Yeah, they own the kryptonite. But you have NC State fans wondering if it is, in fact, the coaches, based off the language we read with the notice of allegations that they're focusing on, what do you think would qualify as a slap on the wrist? What would the best case scenario look like for NC State? Probation, you know, maybe a couple scholarships, maybe some recruiting limitations and a fine. Anything that doesn't involve major scholarship productions or a postseason ban I think would be palatable and certainly survivable in terms of keeping your program going forward if you're NC State. You get into those other two areas and it gets tough then because then you're getting, you know, players transferring and obviously bodies, if you're losing bodies, if you're down two, three scholarships a year or something like that.

So it's going to be fascinating to me to see, does the argument of, hey, we've changed everyone over, nobody's here that was involved then in a leadership position, how much weight does that carry? Do you want to penalize an institution? Do you want to penalize individuals?

How fair is each one? Louisville and NC State are going to be the two big test cases for that. You and your colleague Pete Thamel have done a great job covering this story and being right on top of it as things are happening. What is your idea about any kind of a timeline for what we could expect for the rest of the dominoes to fall in terms of other notices of allegations? Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm just kind of going off what Stan Wilcox said and trying to read some other tea leaves. You know, I mean, I think that we should probably get another one or two this month and then maybe another couple in August, maybe a couple in September. You know, I guess that would get us to six or so. So, you know, I kind of think the next couple of months really will be the kind of urgent time in regards to those cases and then maybe some of these others that are a little either more complex or they've just kind of had to wait until they could get to them.

You know, they'll start rolling out thereafter. You know, we wrote we according to our analysis, we thought there were 12 schools that could be susceptible to getting major charges against them. Certainly North Carolina State was one of them. So we're one for one.

We'll see what happens with the other 11 if we get to a full 12 or if it stops well short of that or what. Follow Pat Forti on Twitter at Yahoo Forti, read his stuff, Yahoo Sports. It's crazy to think next week we're going to be broadcasting our show in Charlotte from ACC kickoff. It's already football media daytime, Pat.

Oh, I know. It's depressing. I mean, I love football, but I also love summer and I'm not really ready for summer to, you know, kiss summer goodbye and turn around to football. Well, thank you for giving us some of your summer spending some time with us here. Great stuff and great reporting is always at Yahoo Sports.

We'll be catching up somewhere down the line. Thank you. All right. Sounds good, Josh. Thank you. You got it.

That's Pat Forti from Yahoo Sports. Writing a column today specifically on Mark Godfrey and the hell Cal Cal State Northridge was thinking. I mean, who thought that was a good idea? Has there been just off the top of your head? Has there been a worse higher than Cal State Northridge saying? Yeah, let's go. Let's go with Mark Godfrey. Let's do that in college.

Just in general, general. Well, you know, I thought about Mike D'Antoni. That's not nearly as bad as that. Yeah, no, it's nowhere close. Yeah, it's been subpoenaed.

No red flags. Larry Brown, maybe what? Oh, I mean, he said controversy follow him at multiple schools. Oh, that's right. That's right. So he has. But I'm talking.

Sepinas. Well, that is the first time really the FBI has been involved. Right. Yeah.

I wonder, uh, maybe they thought they're going to discount might be. It literally might be the worst hire in the history of sports. It might be that where you bring in somebody. What does Mark Godfrey say in that interview? You obviously that comes up. Hey, what's up?

What's up with these subpoenas? Yeah, it's fake news. That's a different Mark Godfrey. That's not me. That's right. That's East Coast. Mark, that's what I that's what I do in the eastern time zone.

So as long as any of our games aren't in the eastern time zone, I mean, we're in the Pacific time zone. I'm a different Mark Godfrey down here. I was at UCLA and I am here. I was a little surprised that Mark Godfrey got picked up as fast as he did. And Rick Pitino did not because you would think if someone could hire Mark Godfrey, I would probably choose Rick Pitino before Mark Godfrey.

Right. Dick Vitale keeps pushing it. He keeps pushing the Rick Pitino. So somebody is going to hire Rick NBA.

Well, that's going to happen. The Greek the Greek team won the championship out there. The guy the guy wins man more than Mark Godfrey did. He's a coach and legend. Somebody that's a terrible thing.

Give us a little give us something with more effort there. I'll tell you what, baby, about Rick Pitino. He's a coaching legend, but he's not as good as my friend Coach K baby over at Duke. All the diaper dandies that'll be coming in here. I can't wait to see him.

They'll be all over the place jumping and dunking on people and stuff. It's amazing what Coach K does over at Duke University. It petered out at the end, but that was actually pretty good. It was really good. You got to keep it kind of short. If you have a limited Dick Vitale impression.

I'm going to study him a little bit. Are you? Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out. Aaron's, you know, got a bunch of We just heard from Dick Vitale in the last hour. We were going to have him on, but he's in Aruba. Can't be mad at that.

Yeah. Can't be mad at that at all. If only you knew the list of people we've struck out on. Like we actually we were set. I'll tell them. I'll tell them who was supposed to be on the show.

Oh, I know. But like we I was bummed out right before the show. We were set to have the guy from Major League on, Corbin Burntson from Roger Dorn. He were kind of I even have all the questions.

We were flexing about that yesterday. I have a ton of questions. I wanted to ask Corbin Burntson because it's the 30 year anniversary of Major League. Would you mind just doing a Dorn impression while I ask you some questions that I would have been asking Corbin Burntson?

I don't even know how to I mean, go for it. Give me a Bob Euchre story. You don't even know what Bob Euchre is. No, I know what Bob Euchre is. I'm 41 years old, man.

Just making sure. I remember Bob Euchre from Mr. Belvedere. I'm a man! I'm 40! What did that have to do with that? Oh, you're old?

I'm 40. Huh. Who were you asking me again? What do you got and take it to the house?

You know, I've changed the story three times now and I'm going to end up doing this one because of my trek this Sunday morning that caused me to miss the second half of the Women's World Cup Final. I was out looking for a soul plate someplace in the area and I think I found one and I think you're going to try it out because it's out towards, I think, towards your side of the county. So you might go out here yourself sometime this weekend. I'm a whole county guy. All switched all over countywide. I'm a triad guy. That's what I am. We take it to the house next.