Patience Pills

He's amused Cam Newton. He's been insulted by Charles Barkley.

He's interviewed Matthew McConaughey. And he's taken on Big Blue Nation. It's time for The Drive with Josh Graham. You're on a Thursday drive, WSJS NewsTalk Sports for the Triad, where you could not script a more fitting finish to North Carolina's football season than what we actually saw in the Holiday Bowl last night. Like most of their games, it had a crazy finish with Oregon on top 28-27. And it was a microcosm of what this season's been for the Tar Heels.

Just think about it this way. Carolina was great for three quarters of the game. They were playing complimentary football. Something they haven't done really all year long.

What does that mean? Well your offense is playing well and your defense is playing well at the same time. Second quarter. Late in the half.

You have that circus pick that bounces off a couple of players, off a thigh, off the foot of power echoes before he grabs it. And on the very next play, final minute of the second quarter, Drake May hits his man in stride for a long touchdown. You have a 10 point lead in the fourth quarter at 24-14.

You're feeling pretty good. Just like Tar Heels fans felt a month ago. Just like this season. Three quarters of the way in, North Carolina started 9-1. They were ranked 12th in the country. They had the Coastal Division locked up.

Then it all slipped away. Just like last night. Two late touchdowns for Oregon, including one in the final 30 seconds.

Four straight losses to close the year for the Tar Heels. It was an exciting season. It was illuminating.

It was interesting. But, ultimately, the three quarter start ended poorly for Carolina. Once again, Drake May was asked to do too much. He had 250 yards of the 320 yards of offense that Carolina had. They didn't have a run game. They missed a field goal. Obviously, that's what's happened all year long for Carolina. It was Drake May and pretty much nobody else there to help him.

There were some positive signs. You hung in this game against a really good team without Phil Longo, your play caller. Without your offensive line coach. Without Josh Downs. Without Antoine Green, who was pretty much a scratch even though he dressed for the game.

Without Gavin Blackwell. Without a ton of receivers. North Carolina figured out a way to manufacture offense, but it just wasn't enough. As a result, it's really hard to look back on this season optimistically. If you're a Carolina fan and you start 9-1 and you lose four in a row, it's really hard to look at that and say it was such a great success because all you can think about is what could have been. But this was Mack Brown after the game trying to spin it positively. What I see is that we closed the season with nine wins, which has happened only one other time since I left here.

And I left here a long time ago. So this is one heck of a season for North Carolina. Could have been 10, could have been 11. Most of them are coming back and that's what I'm looking forward to. Second time in school history we won the Coastal and I don't care about anything else. There's one Coastal trophy and it's in our trophy case and these guys will be remembered for that for the rest of their life. Here's the counter to that though. Four straight losses.

Two of them were bad bosses. You're at home against NC State's third string quarterback. You're facing a third string quarterback from Georgia Tech. You did good things against Clemson, but it all fell apart when Cade Club came in and Mack Brown admitted after the game that they had no preparation for Cade in that ballgame. No wins this year against ranked teams. Crushed by Notre Dame, crushed by margin by Clemson, beaten by NC State, up 10 in the fourth quarter against Oregon and see it slip away. So it's easy to nitpick the nine wins that Carolina got. Last night was a perfect microcosm of what this Carolina season has been. Really difficult to figure out.

Really difficult to feel good about the positives when the negatives are so clear and apparent as well. On Twitter at WSJS radio if you want in. 336-777-1600 is the phone number. Will Dalton is the executive producer of this show. We made you watch Shawshank Redemption, yes?

Yes you did. Later in the show you will tell us what you thought about Shawshank, but I've literally never heard someone say they disliked that movie. Never?

Never. There are two movies, really, actually this might be the only one. The only one I've never heard anyone say a negative word about. The other one was Forrest Gump, but in the last 10 years, for whatever reason, it's become popular to say that people don't like Forrest Gump.

I've never heard that. Yeah, there's some of the going back in time, talking about mentally deficient people at points that some nitpick when it comes to Forrest Gump. But Shawshank Redemption never heard anyone say a negative word. That's one of those movies that if I heard somebody badmouth Shawshank, I wouldn't want to be friends with that person. I wouldn't want to be around that person.

Probably question their credibility a little bit. Did you watch it last night? No, I watched it during the day. Okay. So I used my day off for that purpose. I like it.

Yeah. Glad to hear you had a good day off in that regard. I actually watched the movies I haven't seen before either. I'd never seen the Terminator movies.

None of them. So I watched the first two. I watched Terminator and I watched Judgment Day yesterday.

So you and I had similar days off in that regard. On Twitter again at WSDS Radio, your chance to win tickets to go see Wake Forest and Virginia Tech on Saturday at about five minutes. My picks later this hour. We haven't had a losing week, W.D. in two and a half months now. Send me that cash out, family.

Got five later this hour. But let's get to a team that won yesterday. Because see, not all nine win seasons are built the same as was evidenced by the team eight miles down the road from Chapel Hill yesterday right here on WSJS.

The reason we were off yesterday. Duke beat UCF in the Military Bowl to finish the season nine and four. A mark Duke reached just two other times since World War Two. A mark that's only been exceeded once in over a century of Duke playing football. So how did Mike Elko do it in just one season as Duke's coach?

By drawing on his background. That's been the key for this rapid turnaround that we've seen. Following in Dave Clauston's footsteps.

He's never had the talent advantage. If you go the coaching path of being a G.A. in the SEC and then a low level assistant for Alabama or Georgia for Kirby Smart and those types. It's a lot different than working your way up from Fordham to Richmond to Bowling Green to Wake Forest so on and so forth like Mike Elko did.

It's not like being the G.A. at Bama where you're used to having more talent than the other side. Mike Elko's instead had to win in the margins.

You don't have the talent to overcome mistakes. So there is an added emphasis. There has to be on coaching and the details. And that's what Duke has showcased this year. And being that he was a defensive guy. He brought a physicality from his last two stops at Notre Dame and the SEC that wasn't there before. That wasn't the identity of David Cutcliffe coach teams dating back to his Ole Miss days and even at Tennessee as well. That's not the identity we've seen with Duke football over the last dozen, 15 years around that point. So what we saw was a simplifying of the offense, running the ball, winning by running the ball, winning with your defense.

More accountability, more physicality, more focus on the details and you have a huge leap from going three and nine to winning nine games. That's what we saw. And he got a little luck at quarterback. That's the thing. Some coaches will admit it.

Others won't. But in order to win like Mike Elko won this year, you need to get a little lucky. Mac Brown admitted that he was lucky at Carolina. Things got turned around so quickly for him in year one because he got the quarterback. You got Sam Howe as a freshman. You lucked into that. If they didn't have Sam Howe, the turnaround would have taken longer in Chapel Hill.

And the recruiting would not have been jump started as quickly as it did. With Duke, similar deal. Riley Leonard was the biggest surprise at quarterback in the ACC.

And I don't say that lightly. 31 combined touchdowns, 20 passing, 11 rushing. 3400 yards accounted for this season. And he's only a sophomore.

So he's going to be back. Mike Elko, the reason why Duke took the big jump was because he drew on his background, which was not in the SEC, even though that's where he came from last year. It was rooted in I'm used to not having the talent advantage and having to win with craftiness, having to win by the details, having to win in the margins for programs that aren't used to having that advantage every time they take the field.

A lot of that rooted in the time he spent with Dave Claussen, especially here in Winston-Salem. It's The Drive with Josh Graham, WSJS. Let's go to the movies.

WD. Watched a movie that I think has the highest batting average of any movie you can pick. The Shawshank Redemption, 1994. Nominated for Best Picture. Apparently, it's the most visited IMDb page of all time. Even to this day, movies, the movie that is most investigated, most visited on the IMDb website. So we'll see how WD felt about it right now in At The Movies. We'll figure out what WD needs to watch next week shortly, then we'll circle back to football. But right now, Shawshank Redemption.

What'd you like about it? I have a few things written down here. How come? This is something that always bothers me about producers. You do this.

Robert did this. You can't clear your throat before turning the microphone on? Most of the time I do, but that particular time I didn't. You've done this multiple times, to the point now where I feel like I had to call you out.

But clearing your throat, it's not hard to either hit a cough button or clear your throat before turning the mics on. It really isn't. Anyway, what did you like? I liked the fact that they painted this prison out really dark, really well. Dark movie.

It is. It's very bleak in a dark prison, and I thought that scene where the van comes up for the first time, they did a really good job. Just like when they're going into the prison. When the guys are betting on- Correct, with cigarettes, yeah.

Who's gonna have a rough night. Right. And they bet on fat ass. Yes. So I thought- Apparently Jon Favreau read for that role. Did he really? Yeah. For fat ass. You think he should have gotten it?

I don't know. Tough night. I think the guy did okay. Not in the movie, but he did an okay job with his role. Yeah, and all the prisoners are chained together.

It's just a very crummy place, to say the least. My favorite scene in the movie, outside of the escape scene, the scene where he just straight up clowns the wardens by playing Mozart over the whole prison. As a radio expert, sound expert, I venture to say in the 40s they didn't have sound equipment that would sound that great as the music did over those speakers. But, that is a very important scene because it introduced many of these guys to music for the first time.

You gotta remember, I think Brooks got in in 1905, they described in the movie. There weren't records until the 30s and early 40s, so many of these men would have never heard music before. The first time I watched this as a kid, I thought, how could they like that type of music?

And then as you get older and appreciate history more and learn more, you realize, oh, they had never heard music before. For me, rewatching this, what I like is it's like six different movies in one. It's a long movie, but there's Andy Dufresne's first two years in Shawshank where things are going poorly. When he got introduced to things, and you see the first night, and you see Andy dealing with the sisters and all of that. That is one movie in itself. Then him earning the trust of the guards, which starts on the roof with the guard and talking about his wife and keeping the 3500 or however much it was. And then earning the trust of the warden. And then there's the Tommy scene when he proves that Andy is innocent, and then things don't end so well for Tommy.

Apparently that role was originally supposed to go to Brad Pitt, but then Brad Pitt had bigger roles to take because he blossomed into a star at that point. There's the Brooks angle. There's the Red getting out. There's the escape. There's the post escape. What I'm trying to say is this movie is so easy to rewatch because it doesn't really matter where you parachute in.

Odds are there's going to be another close-ended story that's told within this bigger story if you just stick around for a while. I did not see the escape coming. Did not see that coming.

Through a hole in the wall that took however long to cut through. Right. Which gets to what I don't like. The name has grown on me. It's become part of the lexicon for such a long time, Shawshank Redemption, that we don't think otherwise about it. But part of me thinks, why not just call it Shawshank? Just call the movie Shawshank. The Shawshank Redemption and all that. Some would say you call it Escape from Shawshank or something.

Well then you give away the fact that he tried to escape. Which is a pretty big reveal. So the title has grown on me. What hasn't grown on me is the sisters. The sisters have not grown on me at all. Anytime the sisters scenes pop up, I'm skipping through the sisters scenes.

I don't care for them much. Especially Boggs. Any other movie that Boggs is in, all I can think about is the scene where he's talking about putting a screwdriver through his head. That's all I can think about. Like Departed. He was one of the guys that could have blown DiCaprio's cover in The Departed. Have we made you watch that yet? No, I don't think I've had to watch a movie with Leo in it yet. Really?

Maybe we can change that. But I didn't like the sisters. What didn't you like? Just how the warden and a lot of the officers were just royal bleep holes.

They work in a prison, W.D. Tom Hanks wasn't a bleep hole in Green Mile. Those guys weren't jerks.

Maybe you should be a jerk if you're dealing with the worst of the world. There's a fine line I suppose. Like the guy was going to throw him off the roof. I think that's kind of the point of their characters. That's what makes them great. That he's going to throw them off the roof? Yeah, and make some great characters.

Then we ended up doing the guys taxes and they got beer and everything so it worked out. Excellent scene. I thought I was going to kill him.

What is this? What's the best quote? These walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them.

Enough time passes so you got to depend on them. Yeah, this is the best narration movie probably ever. Which is why Morgan Freeman should narrate everything.

How can you be so obtuse if you want to go non-Morgan Freeman division? Andy, the man who crawled through 500 yards of bleep and came out clean on the other side. I'd like to think the last thing that went through the warden's head other than that bullet. I almost went with that one. Was how did Andy Dufresne get the best of me?

It's great. You remember the name of the town, don't you? That's the quote from the movie. Do you remember the name of the town? What was the name of the town? Zaywataneo. Oh, see that sounds like something you would have given me in the spelling bee the other day. Zaywataneo, that's the name of the town.

You remember the name of the town, don't you? Zaywataneo. What would you score this on Rotten Tomatoes? I feel like this one's really high. I'm going to go with 97. 98. I almost went with the 98. Look at that.

Well, you didn't, so it doesn't matter what you almost did. 98%. We need to figure out what the next movie is. You said you haven't seen a Leo DiCaprio movie before? I haven't. You've seen Titanic. Yeah, but I mean like in this segment, we've not done a Leo movie yet.

I got you. Love Titanic. Well, let's see. Let's go through the movies. Have you seen Wolf of Wall Street? I'm not even going to say it. Well, you can.

Bits and pieces, yeah. No, don't say that. Inception.

No. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Blood Diamond. Catch Me If You Can. Just tell me if you've seen any of these.

Only thing I've seen out of that is, well, I've only seen Titanic. That's it. Okay. Earlier today, we were talking about The Dark Knight. Yep.

And Heat. You haven't seen The Departed? No.

You haven't seen Aviator? No. Okay. This is what I want. We have, I'll bribe the audience with tickets here.

336-777-1600. Make a case for what? Leo movie? The Dark Knight or Heat that WD should be watching. Make the case. And if you make a good enough case, and we decide to go with your movie, we will give you tickets to Wake Forest Virginia Tech Saturday at noon, the ticket giveaway, courtesy of our friends at Reese Builders that you can call 336-760-4030. But that's not the number you should be calling right now, so 777-1600 if you want to help us out on that. I think The Departed has to be the movie on the Leo front, but you make the argument for Dark Knight, The Departed, or Heat.

Those are the three that I'm going to narrow it to. So if you can help me out in making an argument here, 777-1600. Carolina Panthers face Tampa on Sunday, and if they win, they're likely going to win the NFC South, albeit I'm still not chalking up the New Orleans game as a sure win since it's on the road and Carolina only has one win up to this point on the road this season. But it is a fair question to ask, what is the best case scenario for Carolina? Is the best case for them to win the division and host a playoff game even though they're under.500 and they're going to be picking 19th or 20th in the draft? Or for them to pick in the top 10 by not making the playoffs?

But Steve Wilks, let's say in this hypothetical, Steve Wilks still has done enough to demonstrate that he's the coach moving forward. What is the better circumstance, better outcome for Carolina? I don't know, I'm so hyped up about the possibility of them getting into the playoffs now.

Yes. I bet you that's what most fans feel. And I think I'm with them. Your point is to win, you want to win divisions. It's not all about who can win the Super Bowl. If you can win the division, that is significant. If you can win the NFC South, do it.

You can hang a banner by doing those things. So that does matter, and I think that's where I lean. But given the quarterback situation and where you would be picking if you don't make the playoffs, I do think it's a fair question to ask. Let's go to a member of the Graham Crackers, Lance at High Point, who wants to make an argument, I think, for one of the three movies, The Dark Knight, Heat, or The Departed for W.D. to watch. Yeah. Hey, guys.

Hope y'all's day is going well and getting ready for the new year to start. Thanks, Lance. Definitely don't have any big beef, if you argue, The Departed. It is a great movie.

I'm going to guess, given his film background, from what I can tell listening to the show, I imagine The Dark Knight is probably more up his alley and something he will really enjoy, really appreciate in the moment right now if he watches that over the coming week. But let me ask you this. Lance, up and down, you name all four or five people, Morgan Freeman, to connect it back to Shawshank we were just talking about, it's endlessly good in a number of ways.

That's one. No matter what part of the movie I come across it at on the TV Guide, I will stop. I will watch it until it's over. But let me ask you this, Lance. I think I'm with you on picking The Dark Knight as the movie.

The reasoning can't be what W.D. is going to enjoy the most, what he would seek out, because the premise of the segment is that he would never ever seek these movies out anyway. He wouldn't watch Shawshank unless we made him watch Shawshank. We should be picking movies that we know are great, like Heat, like The Departed, knowing that W.D. wouldn't watch it otherwise unless we make them. That's fair, because again, just rolling through a TV Guide, if you're not familiar with it, you see the names, you kind of keep going, but you see The Dark Knight, you think Batman, you might give it a watch. But again, I do think he would enjoy that one and maybe be surprised how much he does like it and appreciates, again, some of the performances in it. I'm convinced. I really like The Departed and would not beef with that.

I am convinced we'll make him watch The Dark Knight. Lance, you got tickets for Wake Forest and Virginia Tech on Saturday. You made the case. You're a lot more friendly than I am. You're on the drive with Josh Graham, WSJS.

I'm not keeping up. Geez, nice and bright, the lights. You show the lights, don't stop me, turn to stone.

Ellie Goulding's a nice touch. Graham's gambling in about 15 minutes from now. That was Ben McAdoo from earlier today. He's such a gem. Asking what we need when we sit down with him sometimes. And even though he was once the head coach of the New York Giants and dealing with that media scene, he's still talking about the lights. Oh, sheesh, so many lights.

You guys with your cameras and such, what's going on over here? And just a helpful, delightful figure, Ben McAdoo. Let's get to some of the things he wanted to talk about, such as Sam Darnold going through his first four starts this year without an interception. It's the first four-year stretch in any season, this being Sam Darnold's fifth. He's gone four games without throwing a pick. It's never happened in his career in any single season.

Trying to make it five in a row against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Saturday. Ben McAdoo says patience has been the key. I guess four weeks into it, we haven't seen a ton of football from him. I haven't had a ton of football with him, but four games is such a small sample size.

But he's a guy we talk about in the offensive room. Sometimes we talk about, we got to make sure we take our patience pills each week. You hear that, Sam? Just got to take the patience pills. We got to make sure we take our patience pills each week. You wake, hey, when you wake up, take two patience pills in the morning and make sure you wait six hours before you get another one of those patience pills. That's true. Well played.

Make sure, no, no, no, not more than two. Don't want too many patience pills. Still got to be a little aggressive. We could all use patience pills from time to time.

I would subscribe to that. That's true. Well played. Did they give out patience pills over the counter? No, you got to get those from McAdoo. They have to be prescribed. Yeah.

Prescribed by McAdoo. That might be why he's able to, for the record, he did coach that game the other day in shorts. That's for the record? For the record. Good to know. If you didn't know that. Coldest game at Bank of America Stadium in McAdoo. He's got shorts on.

That's true. Well played. Love this man.

Do like him in a quarterback beating. Hey Sam, do you ever eat Altoids? Eat any of those icebreakers? The ones that you get when you're going through the food line?

He would be the one to bring candy. Hey, you want a piece of candy? Are Altoids candy? Yeah. Well, because they used to make sours.

Remember that? They don't make them anymore. Altoids aren't candy. What are they?

Do some homework on this and then we can revisit this conversation shortly. I do like in a meeting, he's like, oh yeah, got Altoids. Got some of those icebreakers.

Well, I want you to pop in your mouth from time to time. Not any molly like these kids say. Not any of that Percocet. Maybe pop in some patience pills when you're out there on game day. Pop in the patience pills. Don't tell the league about this though. They might try to test us.

That's true. Well played. Patience pills. Did you find anything? Did you just type it to a browser or icebreakers or Altoids candy? It says it's a brand of mints, but aren't mints candy a version? No.

They're not? Mints are not candy. Oh, this is a debatable topic here.

No. This is controversial. Mints are not candy, three, three, six, seven, seven, seven, one 600 if anyone disagrees on that.

But I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page. It's a different category. It's just like chocolate is not candy.

What is it? It's chocolate. It all falls under the same funnel here.

It does not. It's a type of candy, but it's still candy. They all fall under treats, but not every treat is a candy and not every candy is a treat. My head is spinning. You want to say a chocolate bar is candy.

Yes. It's a candy bar. It's chocolate.

A candy bar. Oh my God. Now let's get some more Macadu sound.

It's not to deprive the people. Carolina is fresh off a yardage record and a rushing record against the lions. So you might expect Macadu to come swaggering in after that. No, no, no. Macadu's turned the page to the box.

He's staying humble. Again, you know, it was, it was one of those days and that was great. But as you know, when you hit the building the next day, you got to make sure you hit the reset button, right?

Not the easy button. Don't work that way. He sounds like maybe it's because I watched Terminator one and two yesterday, which I had not seen before.

We'll get your review of Shawshank next hour. But the way he delivers answers, he sounds like an eighties movie star action star delivering some of these lines. Don't work that way. That's what it sounds like.

You could picture Arnold saying that or Stallone saying that in an eighties movie saying we're not going to press the easy button. Don't work that way. Don't work that way. It's amazing.

I really wish I hadn't. That was easy, but I don't. Then Macadu doesn't have the easy button.

Not the easy button. That's right. Moving on to Tampa Bay.

That's what he's doing. Like I mentioned, Graham's gambling coming up in just a little bit. We haven't had a losing week.

Yes, J.C. Horn. Here's a tease though for Graham's gambling. We've got the Wolfpack against Maryland tomorrow at noon in the Dukes Mayo bowl. When forecasting bowl games nowadays, like 2022, soon to be 2023, the number one question you've got to ask is who cares more about playing in this bowl game? Who cares more about winning this bowl game? Whether it's a powerhouse like Alabama barely getting left out of the playoff or a middling team with some pro prospects who decide to enter the portal or begin draft prep early rather than playing in the game. It's something you've got to consider, which is why tomorrow is the golden example of one team clearly wanting to be there and win more than the other team.

And the team that wants to be there more is NC State. That's why they win this game. Nobody on the pack has opted out of this game. Both MJ Morris and Ben Finley have been practicing according to Dave Doran. Tim Beck's not going to be calling the plays. He took Coastal Carolina's head coaching job, but if you ask most pack fans, they probably say that's a plus. Peyton Wilson, he's going to be playing in this game. Meanwhile, Maryland has had three or four transfer slash opt-outs including three wide receivers, which does not bode well when you're going up against NC State secondary led by Tanner Engel.

This also goes back to last year too. They didn't get a chance to play in the Holiday Bowl. That game was nuked the day of because of the UCLA COVID situation and they didn't get a chance to play for 10 wins.

This is the last time this group of seniors are going to get to play together. Peyton Wilson, Tanner Engel, Isaiah Moore, these star players that have been around a very long time and I think they take it out on the Maryland Terrapins. It's going to be a neat spectacle.

Aneesh Raff's going to be calling the game on ESPN at noon tomorrow. Radio Voice of the Panthers. It's an old ACC rivalry. Sure you have a lot of memories of the Wolf Pack facing the Terrapins. A lot of Maryland wins over the decades.

Not that that matters to the players on this team or even to Dave Doran. Phillip Rivers never beating Maryland. Russell Wilson losing a game that would have sent NC State to the ACC Championship and winning the Atlantic about a dozen years ago. That game in College Park looms still today.

People talk about that game. I suspect it's going to be a state friendly crowd at Bank of America Stadium. We'll see. And if NC State wins, Dave Doran apparently has agreed to get a bath of mayonnaise after the game. Get doused with Duke's mayonnaise. So we're excited for all of that. Tomorrow really matters to NC State. That's why they're going to beat Maryland and that is officially the first of our Graham's gambling picks that we have here.

Give me that cash out, family. I've got to ask the question, are mints candy? Mint is a flavor frequently used in candy, chewing gum and an ice cream. Not specifically a candy.

Well that's also probably talking about the flavor mint, not just a mint. No, I see it. This is controversial.

Yeah. My head's spinning still. I've never had somebody tell me a chocolate isn't a candy. A mint isn't candy.

It's a different category. It's just a mint. It's not candy. It's a type of candy.

It's a different category that you put it in. Of candy. No, of treats. Treats can be candy.

Can be. Treats can be dog food. Treats can be candy.

Like treats can be a lot of things. I love the edit of Gus Johnson's Gusgasm at the end of the game. That was the sound of Oregon's go ahead extra point and there are a few things more satisfying in sports than listening to Gus Johnson call a game one and two, the sound it makes when a ball strikes the upright and there's a mic there to capture that sound.

That was Oregon 28 North Carolina 27 last night. But Darren, listening to Gus and Joel Klatt call that game for Fox had me thinking what announcer when you see them attached to your game makes you most excited in college. See that was the top Fox college crew. The Panthers are going to have the top Fox NFL crew, Kevin Burkhart, Greg Olsen and Aaron Andrews for the Bucks game on Sunday. But limiting it to college, I still get excited when Joe Tessa is calling a game.

I really like a Joe Tessa tour game. But I think the answer to the question for me is Gus legitimately. I got excited to watch that game. Sure I had to for work because it's North Carolina. But even if it wasn't the Tar Heels, Gus Johnson being on a game still gets me excited.

What say you? Yeah, I think there's an element of excitement there too in that he's not normally on ACC games. So it's an unusual pairing to see North Carolina and Gus associated with each other for a bowl game. You know who I really, really, really enjoyed this year?

I think last year was their first year as a as a pairing. I at times will pull up a game of two teams I otherwise have zero interest in to hear Mark Jones as the play-by-play and RG3 Robert Griffin III as the analyst. Ran into those guys a few times during the year, do a lot of homework. You hear guys talk about the mesh quite a bit with Wake. But I didn't hear an analyst break down the mesh better than RG3 did. So I every time I run into RG3 at a game, I ask him what socks he has on and he always pulls up the pant leg and it's something Disney related.

I think the last time I saw him, it was Nightmare Before Christmas socks that he had on. But that's a really good pull on your part. Yeah, I just and Mark Jones is to me underrated. They they both speak really well in lay terms, right?

Like Jones is one of those voice guys, but he talks like a real person, not to say that that most at that level don't. And you can tell, man, they just they have a chemistry together that they just using the word mesh, they mesh well together. It's a good pairing that I really like. I think it's one of the best in terms of the complete duo.

I think it's one of the best teams that that ESPN has on college football. Mark Jones and RG3 worked the ACC Championship where Wake Forest lost to Pittsburgh last year. Mark Jones stepped in for Mike Breen BANG when he missed out on the first couple games of the NBA Finals this year.

So Mark Jones, I think that's enough of a track record to warrant what Darren's saying or to back up, affirm what Darren just said there. Let's get to unusual questions for this week. Last week, guys, everybody made it out that I got mad at Josh and I left the press conference.

That's not right. I thought it was an unusual question and it's OK. It's time for unusual questions with Josh Graham.

That clip was from February, March of 2021. So after this week, unusual questions will be entering its third calendar year. Let me start with this being a bit of an unusual question. How much longer are we going to play unusual questions? I don't I mean, we have not run out of questions to ask. No. Do we need to update the sounder there? People still recognize Roy Williams voice like that, don't they?

Well, that was going to be my next question. How long until Roy Williams is not that familiar of a voice or that sound bite in particular is just a distant memory that no one remembers. Yeah, I feel like Roy is still one of those figures that even though he's retired, that's still Roy Williams. I mean, we could substitute it with Steve Forbes saying funny question or something of that sort. Yeah, we probably could.

That changes the game, though, right? But a funny question is not necessarily an unusual question. You know what? I might try to task an ACC coach. I might text an ACC coach to try and update some of this imaging here for 2023.

See if somebody will come through. Get Forbes to come through with a, well, Josh, that's an unusual question. That's it. That's all we need. That really is it. That's all you got to do for us. Steve, if you're listening or watching, we're on YouTube, Twitch, and on Twitter as well. What is your unusual question, Darren?

All right. What is, we're all, we work in sports, we like sports, we talk sports, so we use sports analogies a lot. And I think some sports things, terminology, have made their way into everyday conversation in a way that I was explaining to someone earlier today that I made a change to my plans for the day. And I used the phrase, I called an audible and did this instead. Well, this person is not into sports and they had no clue what I was saying. What are some other sports things that maybe if we're talking to less sport-minded people, we need to keep in mind, okay, I'm probably going to need to explain this. I've made this mistake many times this year. See, I got married earlier this year. So there are many instances in trying to be the deferential, you know, humble husband that's elevating his wife, I would say that I out kicked my coverage and a lot of people I found do not know what that means if you're not in the sports space. They do not know and there might be some people in the sports space that do not know where that expression comes from, what it means to out kick your coverage in a football sense.

I've got a couple more. I think we say batting a thousand a lot more than we should. You're a baseball guy, not many people say that. But we, the collective we within a baseball community or a sports community or whatever, like if like, it could be anything, right? But if you're- You're right, I do use it, I might have said it earlier today when WD was talking about, I don't know what you were talking about at lunch earlier today.

I'm like, man, you're batting a thousand. So it's true. Who knows what that means? Besides sports heads.

Do you have any that come to mind, WD? The ball is in their court is one. I use that one quite a bit. Why do we say that? What is the sports context that we say that? When do we say it? Well, the ball is in Wake Forest court. What?

When? When do we say that? Not if they're on the road, you know?

That's true. Well, you got to pick it up and go play with it. The ball's on the court. Well, that's not what they say. They say the ball's in your court. I don't know where that expression comes from. I'm genuinely curious. This could be an unusual question in and of itself. Where did the ball is in their court come from? Well, you can Google that while I ask this question.

336-777-1600. Do you guys ever say, make reference to throwing someone a lob or throwing lobs? Yeah. Maybe you're just trying to help them out and occasionally that'll come across as like, okay, well, what? Like, I mean, you're just trying to assist a teammate, right?

Sure. Even the assist and letting the teammate have the shine of the slam dunk on an alley-oop. That's what throwing lobs means. I'll use that one occasionally in more of like a group setting, a team setting.

WD, what'd you find? Ball is in your court is actually a reference to tennis, which I had a weird hunch about this because I like to play tennis. It's like, well, the ball comes over. You got to hit it back. You got to do something with it. Understood.

Practical question. How many sneezes does it take for you to be worried about how sick somebody is? That you don't want to be around somebody anymore. Like I was at a Christmas party earlier this week. I am fine. I sneezed a couple of times at this party and somebody in the family did not want to hug me when I left because I had sneezed two, maybe three times. So genuinely asking the question, how many sneezes is it for you before in this post COVID age that we live in? You are concerned. See, I'm more worried about like coughing and clearing your throat. If you do that incessantly, nah, we're fist-bumping maybe, maybe, or we're standing five feet apart and waving. But sneezes are fine.

Well, sneeze is like some dust can work its way up into your nostril and you sneeze a couple of times because it, you know, shakes up your system or whatever. That could be totally innocuous. WD, what's your unusual question? Getting up to watch the ball drop. Is it overrated? Yes.

Everything about New Year's Eve is overrated. Yeah. I thought you might go there.

Yeah. One hundred percent of you go out. It's miserable.

You stay in. It's also kind of miserable because you feel obligated to watch Ryan Seacrest or Dick Clark or whoever your New Year's Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper taking shots. You feel obligated when really you would just rather watch something you want to watch. College football playoff on Saturday night. See, Sarah Bradford wants to go out on Saturday and I'm cool with going out or I was until I saw that the CFP games were Saturday and George is playing Alabama or George is playing Ohio State.

I just, you just want to get, get it over with. Let's just, we already had Christmas. We're in this weird week. Just get into the year. What like, I don't understand this week. I don't know what to do, how to feel about anything. Should I be productive?

Should I not? I don't know. I don't know. I've just, I've got uncertain feelings about New Year's. I have uncertain feelings about this text I just received. Sarah Bradford texted me. We can stay in.

I don't know how to read tone. I don't know if that's, we can stay in and she's not happy with me now. Or since she's listening, can I just say I'm very glad she enjoyed Glass Onion, the Knives Out movie. I'm glad she enjoyed it because you're, you're a miserable human if you didn't enjoy that. And I know you took to Twitter. That's a troll.

First half of the movie. That's a troll. It was fun. No, no, no. Don't get me wrong. 140 characters, not enough characters. I enjoyed it the same way I enjoy Adam Sandler 90s movies. Okay. It's fun.

We got it. But the first, there are some people talking about this as an Oscars candidate and I'm like, hold one second. The first hour of this movie you didn't need.

And they used the most lazy forms of storytelling ever. Hey, the person that, here's a diary that explains everything. Here's the imbecile that turns out to be the guy we can all predict was the bad guy. And here's, you know, Dylan, the boy, Oh, there's a twin involved. Spoiler alert. The twin like, again, speaking of movies, I don't want to spoil anymore, even though I might've just spoiled all of it, but I have a movie question to ask you on the way out here. Well, I still spoke in very broad terms. I didn't say who, what, when you could still enjoy the movie and it is enjoyable watch.

It's so fun. Which movie should WD watch next week out of these three, the dark night, the departed or heat will, you haven't seen the dark night. No, that's the one.

Okay. That's the one that is it earlier in the show, we decided it was going to be that, but then we had some, we had callers saying maybe it should be the departed. And then we made a Twitter poll and our heat on this list for weeks, months, months. It's just, it's not the heat that Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, not to be confused too with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro going toe for toe to toe almost a toe for toe in our, in our office today, two out of three said dark night. The Twitter poll is overwhelmingly saying the dark night, the audience, you on the show now saying the dark night. So there it is.

The dark night is the movie for next week. Officially official now, WD, how do you feel about that? I'm cool with it. I know you are.

I hate that I'm continually surprised that you haven't seen this movie or that movie will because this one, but, but I will say that one's genuinely shocking. WD. Yeah.

I was a little bit embarrassed about it. I'm not going to lie. Have a happy new year.

WD. We'll talk to you next week. He's your producer. He's going to be around for a second. I'm going to be here, buddy.

But yeah, I ain't going nowhere. Did I say WD? You sure did. You did. Darren, enjoy your new year. I'll talk to you next week.