Best Suitcase Wins

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 Grant.

Welcome to a Tuesday Drive. You're listening to WSJS News Talk Sports for the Triad where Carolina basketball coach Hubert Davis will be joining us in about a dozen minutes from right now. But we begin today with another Carolina coach because Frank Reich, just a few hours ago, was introduced as Panthers head coach.

And this is a huge day for the Panthers. This hire represents something bigger about the organization, but also about David Tepper as well. In hiring Frank Reich, David Tepper is now demonstrating that he's learned from his past mistakes and he's building this organization the right way. That's what I took away from listening to Reich, seeing the comments from Tepper and Scott Fitterer, where this team is headed. Because in hiring Reich, he chose substance over sizzle. The last hire, it was sped up.

They were rushing to get their guy. They're not going to let Matt Ruhl get on the plane to go to the Giants. I know better than the way most of these teams are hiring coaches. We're not going to go for a retread. We're going to hire a college coach.

That's what we're going to do. Tepper took a big swing. He rushed into a decision. He chose the sizzle of making a splashy hire over finding the substance. Hiring Frank Reich is not sexy. It's not as sexy as hiring a young coordinator like D'Amico Ryans or hiring Shane Steichen, but it's about as safe of a hire as you can make. Even safer than hiring Steve Wilks, let's say. Because in four full seasons as Colts coach, he had winning seasons in three.

Double digits wins in two of those seasons. He was fired nine games into this year. Who knows if he would have been able to turn things around in the second half of the season. His being fired does not bother me at all. There are a lot of Panther fans saying, why would we want a coach that the Colts fired? Anybody who's been around the football business for any period of time has experience being fired.

Even really good head coaches. Look at Andy Reid who's in the Super Bowl. He was fired by the Philadelphia Eagles. Bill Belichick was once fired by the Cleveland Browns. Pete Carroll fired once upon a time. You could go through the list of a lot of great coaches. Doug Peterson fired after winning the Super Bowl with Philadelphia.

Go all the way down the line. A lot of the great coaches at one point had been fired. So there are things to learn from that. And a lot of things that he did at Indianapolis that were really good.

Here was Reich speaking to that, talking about Frank Reich 2.0. You know, in the NFL, you're going to have ups and downs. You're going to have successes and failures. We had four years of good success. And then you go through one year where there's a struggle. And now you have a chance to reflect on that. And it's like getting an app.

I like to talk to the players like this. You know, in apps you get version one, then there's version two. I feel like this provides me an opportunity to debug some things, make things better, now come out with version 2.0 or version 3.0. It's better.

It's cleaned up. The important thing is, though, that you're starting with a good product to start, which I know we are. Frank Reich 2.0 in Charlotte is about to be underway. We're seeing David Tepper 2.0 as an owner, too, and going through this process. And this time he's not trying to reinvent the wheel. He's not trying to do what many of the other successful franchises would not do.

Tepper admitted, when talking to reporters after the presser, that making rule a CEO-type coach and giving him final say on roster decisions, that was a mistake. He wanted a structure that was more conventional, where the general manager is responsible for the players and the coach is responsible for figuring out who's going to play and coaching those guys. Figuring out what to do with the roster that Scott Fitterer put together. It's more conventional.

It's more poised for success. He could have gone the Sean Payton route, given up draft picks, done the splashy thing to bring in a guy who's going to get final say on personnel and undercut Scott Fitterer. He could have done that. Probably would have done the same thing if he tried to bring in Jim Harbaugh, but he didn't. He went the conventional route. He did things safer.

Again, valuing substance over sizzle. This was Reich about how the power structure of this team is going to look like moving forward. It's balance of power. Scott will have control of the 53. I'll control who's active and who's not active, but ultimately that's on paper. In reality, this is 100% collaborative.

I can already tell that with Scott. We're going to work side by side. We're going to tirelessly work where we're going to have the same vision. We'll have disagreements. We'll have different ideas, but ultimately we'll come together as one and decide who are the best players on this team and how to build this team.

I feel really good about this. Offensive-minded coach. It doesn't really take long to build a contender in the NFL, W.D. Look at Philadelphia, who's being coached by a Frank Reich disciple and Nick Sirianni. They've now gone to the Super Bowl twice in a six-year span, and they've done so with a different head coach and a different quarterback.

What that tells me is these windows, oh, your window to win is over. Well, it doesn't take that long to rebuild, reset, and get yourself a winner again. That was the flaw in Carolina going after Matt Ruhle, the builder. Why are we going to hire a guy where it takes two years, or I guess seven years as Jay-Z once said, when you can find somebody to build this thing up quickly. He has an offensive background. The NFC South's looking for somebody to take it over, and this team looks like it's a quarterback away from being able to be the team in the NFC South.

That's what I see. In hiring Frank Reich, David Tepper, he's learned from past mistakes, and this team, this organization's now set up to win. I kind of thought about Jacksonville a little bit, how they went from one of the worst teams in the league to now they're making a little bit of a playoff run. Away from the college coach, hired what some viewed to be, air quote, retread in Doug Peterson, and how quickly have they turned it around? First year he's in the playoffs. And then Cincinnati, between last year and then this year, making big runs. Four wins to go into the Super Bowl. Yeah, that's what I thought about.

It makes sense, but in both those instances, you've got to find the quarterback. Hubert Davis is going to join us in just a few minutes. Will Dalton's the executive producer of this show. Our show's going to be shortened a little bit today, 30 minutes with Wake basketball pregame coverage at Duke, starting 90 minutes out.

So that will be at around 5.30. The Deacs are looking to end the drought in Durham, and I see optimism, W.D. I see Deacs fans saying, well, we beat them in December. Dureek Whitehead, he's not going to play.

Duke announced earlier today he didn't play in that game in Winston-Salem either. We need a win. Oh, you lost three in a row.

It's time. This Duke team's not special at all. This is when the drought ends. The last time Wake Forest won was 1997 in Durham. Tim Duncan was a senior that year. Tonight's the night, right?

Yeah. I don't think the drought at Cameron's going to end with this team. Because this isn't the same Duke team that they beat in December.

Young squad, they're going to be better than they were back then. Derek Lively also didn't play in that game last month. Saw him hitting jumpers on Saturday at Georgia Tech. He's going to be playing, and Wake Forest is coming in not so hot. Remember, back in December, Duke was coming off a 10-day layoff. Really weird circumstances that they were playing in. Now, they're red hot. They just doubled up a team on the road, 86 to 43.

That team's humming. They're a little bit older. They're a little bit more experienced. Nobody wants to hear about how young your team is here on the last day of January.

And the game being in Cameron is obviously pretty significant, too. The Blue Devils, they should be ready. Here's John Shire talking about the motivation of playing Wake Forest after getting beat by them back in the middle of December.

For me, I think it's easy. I mean, they beat the crap out of us last time we played them. I mean, it wasn't a good performance at all for us. They outplayed us. They're really good. They're as good as any offense in our league. They're number one right now with offensive efficiency in our league.

So we know it's a big-time challenge. They're not going to be looking ahead to the game Saturday against North Carolina. They're at home where they haven't lost this year. As he said, they have that last game to draw on. It just feels like the streak's going to continue again tonight. Last year was a great game. It might be a great game tonight, and we'll have it on WSJS. But I like the Blue Devils.

The Blue Devils. Frank Reich was introduced as Panthers head coach a few hours ago in the Queen City. Shortly after his press conference, though, David Tepper was made available in a breakout interview setting. Had some interesting things to say. Obviously, the topic of Steve Wilks was top of mind.

I was interested in how Tepper was going to handle it. He said that the difference was talking about the future of the NFL and how he wanted to go in a different direction. And by a different direction, he meant finding an offensive-minded coach. Carolina, in the first 27 years of their history, never had an offensive-minded guy. Until now, Frank Reich is the Panthers' coach. He comes from an offensive background.

And Tepper expanded on why it's important that they find someone with an offensive pedigree. First off, I think every year we get in these NFL meetings. Every year, they put some new rule to benefit the offense. Every single year. Every single year. And it's never going to end. It's never going to end. Every year. And the reason it is, is scoring brings eyeballs. That's what the league's about, getting eyeballs to watch the thing. So I can tell you again, the new rules will be offensive-minded rules.

I don't know what they are yet, but they will be offensive-minded rules. So you have that challenge first. Makes sense.

He's looking at it pretty practically. He also said that having the structure where the coach is not having final say on personnel decisions factored into it, too, makes you believe that some of the other coaches he's talked to were asking about that specifically. Sean Payton. But that didn't stop people from bringing out the question of diversity. Where Carolina had a deserving black coach who was an interim, not get the job. The NFL in the past does not have a great track record on being very diverse with the hiring of head coaches. You have the lawsuit that Steve Wilks is a part of with Brian Flores. There was a statement put out by that law firm after Wilks didn't get the job that said they would have a lot to say about Wilks not getting this job.

They were disappointed by that. So when the question of diversity came up to David Tepper, this is how he responded. I think that you should look first at our executive team and inside the building and look at who we have in different positions inside our building. Our president is a woman. We have probably the most diverse executive team in the NFL right now. We have two African-Americans.

We are probably a minority of white men on our executive team right now. That's where it starts. That's America. OK, that's the process.

And that's the process I'm talking about here. You don't want an old boys network. No, you don't want a boys network. That's the way that he puts it.

An old boys network where you're just pulling from people that you know and people that look like you. This is why W.D. I think it's important to hold multiple truths. Was Steve Wilks deserving? Yes.

Was he wronged? No. Both those things can be true. Does the NFL have a bad track record on hiring black head coaches? Yes. Is this an example of there being of that bad track record being perpetuated?

I'd say no, for all the reasons that he just spelled out there. The fact that David Tepper was not even an owner when Colin Kaepernick first started taking a knee. And in fact, Tepper was publicly on television talking about how kneeling football players were patriotic and went a step further in signing Eric Reid when nobody else would. He's pretty forceful, as you could tell in that clip right there.

How many owners do you see talking that way about this issue? Tepper, he seems pretty grounded in that he's doing things the right way, but here's more from Tepper on the subject. You break the process by trying to get the best people possible in every rule you can do.

Whether it's the new G.C. we hired happens to be an African-American woman. Whether it happens to be Frank Wright, who's a Caucasian male. I don't care who it is. Whether we go through offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, who is the best person?

Not whether you had a formal relationship with him, not who you knew, but who is that best person? Seems reasonable to me. I think I had concerns because of the concert's comments and all of that from the last time we heard David Tepper speak.

You know, with concerts. I thought he might try to shoot from the hip, and this doesn't really seem like an issue you want to be shooting from the hip on. You could really make a mess out of it if you misspeak or get defensive in a way. But I thought he handled it perfectly.

I think David Tepper is right, and I think it's important to hold multiple truths. So, shout out to Tepper for not being front and center during the actual press conference itself. I think he was on stage for maybe 45 seconds to a minute before bringing Frank Wright on.

Being perfectly okay, not being the center of attention. Don't know if I could say that about most donors in the National Football League. Now let's get to the man of the day, the man of the hour that we hope to speak with later on in the week, Frank Wright. Who has already done some work in putting together a staff, WD. We learned yesterday, remember we played the clip from Friday when he was talking about the things he liked on the roster? And he identified by name Chris Tabor and the work he's done with special teams? We said then, probably Chris Tabor is going to return as the special teams coach, special teams coordinator.

Well, that was made a reality yesterday. We also learned that James Campen is going to be coming back as the Panthers O-line coach. James Campen was the reason why Bradley Bozeman left Baltimore to go to Carolina. He is a respected O-line coach and for good reason.

You saw the turnaround that the Panthers had on the offensive line. Keeping those two coaches in place, that's I think a fantastic move. But who are the coordinators going to be? And more specifically, since Frank Wright has had experience as a play caller himself while being the head coach, is that something we should expect to see in Charlotte this year? As far as Collin plays, I'm going to wait to see that we get the offensive staff together. Obviously, I've always enjoyed doing that, felt like I've had a good bit of success doing that and enjoy doing that. It feels to me there's a little bit of a trend going away from that. I want to continue to reexamine that and it just depends on how the staff comes together and the coordinator thing.

I'm excited about the prospects of some of the guys that are out there that could be our offensive coordinator. So I'll wait to make the final decision on that. Do you like glasses, Frank Reich, or non glasses, Frank Reich? This is something I debated on my wedding day. Do I go with glasses or without? And I decided to go with, considering most of the time I'm out and about most days of my life, I'm wearing glasses.

I don't wear contacts. I'd like to see my wife coming down the aisle. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Don't you want to see your wife?

My wife? Plus, to your point, you wear glasses all the time. You really don't take them off.

So you would probably be one of those people that would look awkward or weird without them. Because it's like a part of your face there. Frank Reich's part of the big frame gang. He is. And I'm a fan of him with glasses. He looks.

Good accessory there. Really smart when he has the glasses on. He does. He looks like a super smart coach.

Kind of like a hipster type. I think so. Frank Reich, like any head coach, can give us useless pieces of sound.

Like Ben McAdoo used to do when he was in Charlotte. That's true. Well played. We still need to give him a proper tribute. God, I'm going to miss him.

When that time comes, we will do that. But this was how he ended his press conference today, Frank Reich. I like to talk about, hey, guys, during the week, the way we practice, the way we meet, the way we prepare, we're going to put all that in a suitcase. That suitcase is only so big, right? It has a weight limit when you can take on the plane. Or it's a 50-pound limit when you pack it up and put it on the plane.

So you can only fit so much in there. But what happens is then when we get there on Sunday, we're going to pour that out on the field. Our collective score, preparation, all those things, how we did it, we're going to bring our suitcase and the opposing team is going to bring their suitcase. And on Sunday, those things are getting dumped out on the field. And whoever has the best suitcase is going to win.

And then guess what? In the NFL, that suitcase is completely unpacked. And then you pack it up the next week.

And that's the cycle of the NFL. Suitcases. How many times did he say suitcases there? That's number one.

Number two. Anybody else hear Kevin Costner when this guy speaks? When I hear Frank Reich talk, I think Costner. I feel like I'm about to cry when he's asking Ray Liotta if he can have a catch. W.D., have you seen Field of Dreams? I have.

So you know exactly what I'm talking about. They do have a catch and all that. I'm a huge Costner fan. This isn't a shot.

But can you give me a clip of Costner speaking anything from Costner? You catch a good game. Thank you. So beautiful.

For me, it's like a dream come true. I was expecting more Costner here. Shows how well I know the movie. Can I ask you something? Is this heaven?

It's Iowa. There you go. I think that sounds kind of like Frank Reich.

Give me five seconds of Reich talking real quick. See if this stacks up at all. You know, in the NFL, you're going to have ups and downs.

You're going to have successes. Thank you. Thank you.

It's crazy. The Panthers have a new head coach and his name's Kevin Costner. I mean Frank Reich. Hayes Spermar of Sports Channel 8 makes his weekly visit with us now. We'll get to skips or plays with Hayes momentarily.

That will have a Frank Reich flavor to it. Frank Reich introduced his Panthers coach earlier today. We visited with Hubert Davis earlier since it's day two of Duke Carolina week. The first meeting between the Tar Heels and the Blue Devils Saturday at Cameron. So Hayes, I wanted to talk about now that we're going to see these two teams meet for the first time since the final four. What impact do you think the final four matchup ultimately had on the series? In the interim right now, like in the near term, is it a net positive to create more interest in these matchups given we don't have either Kay or Roy for the first time this year? I'm not sure I totally understand the question.

Let me rephrase it. So everybody out of that game said the fact that they played it's going to be negative for the rivalry. And my concern was, I remember the day that Coach K announced that he was going to retire after the season. What washed over me was sadness in the sense of, well, we don't know what Hubert Davis is going to be as a coach. We don't know what John Shire is going to be. And so much of the interest in programs or week to week these games nowadays, since the players are, they rotate and they turn over year to year, are the personalities of these coaches.

They drive interest in these games. We don't really have much emotional attachment to either of these coaches was my fear when that was first announced. But now that Hubert Davis has taken the team to the Final Four already, and we know many of these guys who were back with Carolina in IL working positively in that sense. I do feel like these games, including Saturday, it's a lot more intriguing because they met in the Final Four last year than if they didn't meet at all.

What do you think? First of all, I thought we got a little bit of a preview of what the aftermath of Duke UNC in the Final Four might be when Louisville and Kentucky met in the Final Four. And the same things were discussed a few years back. And it was the same situation where it was a semi-final and not a final.

I believe I have that right. So it still wasn't like all the stakes on the line is just sort of semi-stakes and then the stakes got ratcheted up because there was the potential ending of Coach K's career or the reverse, the potential Coach K playing for a national title. That's a wide swath, you know, there. But I think, yeah, I don't know if this is answering your question, obviously, you know, big names in any sport bring more attention, and in college basketball because, well, in college sports in general, because the longest any player can be there is four or five years. And now the average time a player is at one school is much, much shorter than that in football and basketball because of transfer port or whatever. The average time every player stays at the first school they start out at, and I did 20 years ago, was like three plus or 30 years ago was three plus. And now it's probably like under two or whatever.

And so I think that is more of a factor of like losing interest in this. You don't get the same people going head to head three or four years in a row, six or eight times or whatever. And then also right now, it'll be tough to judge this game specifically because, I mean, what's UNC ranked right now?

Getting votes somewhere? Yeah, North Carolina and Duke, they are not ranked. So if this were Shire versus Hubert Davis, but it was number one, you know, Duke versus number four UNC, I think it would feel the same as many, many, many Duke-UNC games of the past. There's a little bit of edge in that both these teams need wins to make their NCAA tournament resumes better. And yes, you do have returning UNC guys, but, you know, I think there are other factors at play besides just they met in the Final Four the last time or the coaches are retired. I think it's more about the longevity of a player's career in college is shorter than ever, and right now those teams just aren't as good. I think one of the things that has made UNC and Duke such a great rivalry and elevated above Kentucky-Louisville in basketball and sometimes even elevated above, you know, the Michigan-Ohio State or the Auburn-Alabama is that seemingly Duke and UNC managed to end up in the Final Four all of the time, even in years where they aren't great. You know, like last year you weren't sure that either of them would get to the Final Four and yet they both get there, right? And then in any given year throughout the 80s, 90s and 2000s, it felt like one of those teams, either Duke or UNC, was probably the team that everyone was chasing for the majority of the year. So there are factors that will make this game a little bit different, but I think it's less about the Final Four meetup. I was always one, you know, people are playing the, oh, I heard the rivalry was over, this would end things. And like, you know, that's a little bit of, I don't know, Twitter blowing back up a media hype for obviously what was a big game and then it becoming like this grand cycle of, oh, this is going to be the biggest game ever and there will never be a game after this.

When like in sports, we've seen plenty of times where games of the centuries happen and then the next season there were still big games. So I put less stock on the whole, the Final Four changed and severely altered the course of the whole rivalry. I think we'll be back to Duke, UNC. And heck, my guess is I'll make a prediction now. I don't know who it'll be, but I'm taking either Duke or UNC to the Final Four this year. One of them is going to the Final Four, mark it down. I said it. It's marked down here on January 31st at North Carolina. Or should I whisper it?

Which one is that, Josh Graham? That's pretty good. Your whispers don't seem to be going very well. Maybe I should mark it down.

They don't do that. Might need to stop whispering because I don't think people understand what that means. It's supposed to be like you're not trying, it's not like a forceful take with conviction. You're kind of limping in with it. So I don't recommend a whisper for you.

You're a little bit more forceful, it feels like, on the subject. That's right. I'm going all in.

Duke or UNC in the Final Four. Let's get to the Frank Reich theme, skips or plays with Hayes. It's time for skips or plays with Hayes. So WD said, because of all these videos back from 1995, and the picture of him in the starter jacket, Frank Reich holding up the jersey. Don't forget the action figure. The action figure was pretty cool too.

I like the fact that you can take the helmet off and put it back on. That's how you know you've got an old school action figure in that sense. Frank Reich has us thinking about 1995. Let's see if WD is able to pull three songs from 1995 that Hayes Permar likes. Because when we did 1991 last week, or a few weeks ago, I forget what it was. You pulled a Shaggy song? Oh boy. From 1991? Yeah, never heard of it. So we'll see how many of these we've heard of.

We'll see. WD, you were born what year, by the way? 96. 96. Okay, good to know. So this would be the equivalent of me pulling songs from 1977, the year before I was born. 95 is perfect for me. This is like prime high school.

I'm once again very excited, but also open to the possibility that I'll be let down. I will say, they've been doing all this Panthers nostalgia. I know facts. I know Frank Reich was the first quarterback. I know they played in Clemson's Memorial Stadium.

I know they lost a bunch, but then kind of finished strong or whatever. I know these things. I do not remember these things. I do not remember anything about the Panthers' first season. And I feel like it's kind of a testament.

I want somebody to go back and look at this scientifically. I think the key to an expansion franchise is early success. You've got to make an indelible memory in your fans' minds early on. And the Panthers going to the NFC Championship game with Kerry Collins, it didn't matter that they weren't great. It helped people be like, oh, this is a thing. I think the same is true with the Canes going to the Stanley Cup Final in 2001 or somewhere early in there. And then you look at other teams that like, if you don't do something interesting early, even the Jaguars who have never been good for the course of their franchise, but they never went away. And I think part of it was they were very interesting early and that helped sustain.

So that's my theory. Be interesting. You've got to do something early. Go all in on getting a win early, getting as far as you can in the playoffs early, because nobody remembers the first Panther season and everyone remembers the second one. Canes. Man, they were in action tonight.

We can talk about the Canes at a later point. Permar's full of takes today. I like it. What's the first song? Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio.

Wow. The shadow of death. I take a look at my life and realize because I've been laughing so long that my mind is gone. This song is tough. I wish I wish you could come later in this thing.

Like this is one that it's it's it's a play, I guess. I don't hate this song. I've just never liked it as much as everybody else. This song.

Permar. Now, I'm more a kid of the 2000s than the 90s, even though I do remember like my first conscious memories of movies was like ninety eight, ninety nine. But I love Coolio.

I do. Fantastic Voyage and and Gangsta's Paradise, two of the best songs of the decade. OK, what's the next song? Waterfalls. Let me ask you.

Let me ask you this real quick. Did you like I'll admit growing up. I knew Can't Touch This by MC Hammer before I knew Super Freak by Rick James. Did you know this song? Like if you heard this hook for the first time and you thought it was Gangsta's Paradise was like the origin of that song.

That makes it feel like a better song to make sense. Yeah, that's right. I learned that there was a sample from you sitting next to you on The David Glenn Show. So, no, I did not know. Yeah. So that's one of those were like if you're like, oh, my God, this is a dope tune because you didn't know that it was already a dope tune, that it makes you you're more impressed with it.

You know, hit them up. Also, a great song from Coolio in the 90s. What's the next song? Waterfalls by TLC. I've got my own opinions on TLC, but this is not skips or plays with Josh skips or plays with Hayes.

This is a huge play. This is like not only a great song. It is deeper than your average pop song. Like if you were listen to it, you know what I mean? Like this is one that you could pull out as a camp counselor for a devotion. You're like, yeah, we're going to a little TLC. All right.

Don't go chase some waterfalls. Right. Yeah. So this is a this is a great time to play.

Hayes, also getting a second life among younger people who watch the other guys. And you have Michael Keaton just constantly dropping TLC references like creep, creep. Don't go chase some waterfalls, fellas. That's a great comedy. OK, two plays and two songs.

Are you going to get a clean sweep? Let's find out. Speaking of Shaggy. Mr. Bombastic came out in 95.

Oh, yeah. It's definitely more the Shaggy era that I'm aware of. Let me hear it.

Let me hear it. Now, are we going to have to have this conversation again? I don't even know which one Shaggy is. Is he the one that's singing now? Yeah.

Yeah. There's no one else. There's no one else in this song. The only point I was trying to make was it wasn't me. The person who sings the hook is not Shaggy.

But a lot of people like me thought that it was for 10, 15 years. Instead, it's the guy who sings the verses and sings this. You know what? I don't feel this Shaggy.

Never really liked it. Another time, WD, you might get a clean sweep. I will say I didn't want to like say this early because I knew there was no way to be able to pull this off. And be careful if you try and pull this because these songs would need to be edited.

But there was I can't even tell you. I'm going to like prove my whiteness. Frank Wright, I believe, was either a rapper or producer regardless of who he was.

I got him. Frank Wright would get name checked by like Biggie Smalls and all these people like like Victory. And I think this album maybe even came out in 95. You know, P Diddy and the Fam, Victory, or whatever the album was. P Diddy and the Fam. I forget the name.

No Way Out. And the song is Victory and Biggie Smalls is rapping. He's like, be on the ball, something's on the call. True to yours, Frank Wright. And like as a kid, that was around the time Frank Wright was still in the league. And I'm like, dude, all these Frank Wright shout outs from the rappers.

They love that come quarterback. So every time they're saying Frank Wright in my head, I'm still here. True to yours, Frank Wright. Permar.

Permar. If only there was somebody who does parody songs who could potentially do something with Frank Wright. The problem is, it's never he's never like the core subject of the song. It's always just like it's the it's the it's the last shout out before Biggie Smalls ends his verse. And it goes back to Busta Rhymes going, we got the real live hits. The underboss of this whole the call is true to yours, Frank Wright.

And I'm like, man, why is that? Notorious B.I.G. loves Frank Wright.

He gives them all these shout outs. There was a small part of me that was hoping that Frank Wright would make an appearance. They'd skip their plays for Frank Wright. I hear that. Tell me if it's not Frank Wright.

ACC legend, Frank Wright. Don't throw out there from Maryland. OK, Permar. Also, I know we got to go. I've probably gone too long.

Yeah, it's been 17 minutes. I should have picked you up last week because I needed to coordinate. I needed a special B.Dot grammar school for Permar. I got called in as a P.A.

announcer for a CIAA game between Shaw and Bowie State. And I just I needed a couple of tips from my man B.Dot before I went live. But it all went good. We made it. We made it through. But I definitely could have helped with a little bit of guidance from our boy. Yeah, we tried. We need to help Hubert Davis out, too.

And apparently Stan Van Gundy grammar school is something that a lot of people need. OK, Permar. Thanks for the time. We'll see it. A triad. This is Rich Eisen. Catch me this evening at six for the Rich Eisen Show. Now back to the drive with Josh Graham. We're going to take it to the house a little bit earlier than usual today. That's because Wake Forest Duke pregame coverage starts 15 minutes from right now.

But before we get to that. Let's take a look at some of these ACC football schedules that dropped over the last 24 hours. Seven o'clock last night. The ACC network did a two hour release show and they decided to go week by week.

And it was a great day. And there were no new dates announced essentially over the first 20 minutes of the show, aside from the opener where Duke's going to face Clemson at Wallace Wade Stadium on Labor Day Monday. So it was hard to maneuver through the show. But eventually we got the completed schedule. That's what North Carolina's schedule looked like, because Mack Brown, prior to the schedule being announced, already told us he had issue with it. This was Mack, again, not being asked about the schedule.

He was introducing a new assistant coach to his staff, but just made sure to volunteer unprobed. Hey, the schedule is coming out tonight and I don't like it. When you see the ACC schedule tonight, you'll see they didn't do us any favors. It's really, really difficult.

We start tough and we finish with an unbelievably tough schedule. So I'm disappointed. I told them I didn't like it, didn't think it was fair, but it is what it is. But that's what we got. So you'll see what I'm talking about tonight.

It won't take long for you to figure it out. So he says that and you're thinking, what did the ACC do? What did they do? Did they flip a game that they were supposed to play against Virginia Tech, against Florida State and Tallahassee? They give them multiple Thursday night midweek games? No. They gave them back to back road games to close the year at Clemson and at NC State and it follows a rivalry game at home against Duke.

That's it? The ACC gave us no breaks. You're going to see.

I see some breaks. You don't have to play any short week Thursday night games like Duke and Wake Forest do. Or Friday night games like NC State has. You don't have any Thursday or Friday nights. You don't have to play but just one road game for the first two months of the season.

So there are some good, there's some good and there's also some bad. That's how things are supposed to work. We got no breaks as if it's the ACC's job to give you breaks. Plus, I wish Mac would have had a little bit more self-awareness on this because there is not a coach in the ACC. People want to hear from less in the way of complaining about their schedule than Mac Brown. The man just won the Coastal Division in the last year of the division format. Which means he got to the ACC championship without having to play Clemson or Florida State in the regular season in order to get there. That's the guy who's complaining about his schedule. Also, Mac Brown is in year five as a coach. If you're in year five, you should be above this. If you're a Hall of Fame coach and you're recruiting great players like North Carolina is, you've got a tremendous quarterback in Drake May complaining about your ACC schedule, that is beneath you.

But here he is wanting to make that point, wanting to make those things known. Shifting things to Duke. Their schedule is very difficult. Just like North Carolina's was going to be, you knew the opponents, it's just about where things fall. But Duke actually caught a lot of breaks where these opponents just so happened to be on the schedule. Mike Elko couldn't have asked for more from the ACC schedule makers. You got Clemson, but if you're going to play Clemson, you probably want to play them as early as you can get them. So how about the opening Monday night Labor Day game? They probably have no problem with that. Why?

Because Cade Klubnick will be making his second career start and his first start on the road. Meanwhile, you got an experienced team with Riley Leonard leading it and you just did a great job in year one if you're Elko. Shout out to the Duke social media team, too. You've got the actor who completely mastered the Dabo stride and how quickly he ran after touching the rock. That was great. Making fun of Jamis Winston with a player eating crab legs when you announced the Florida State game.

I enjoyed that. And they've gotten breaks. They got breaks in their schedule at good times. You get an early buy and it comes after you play Notre Dame, who's such a physical team that you're going to want that extra time off. And that buy is sandwiched between Notre Dame and NC State.

So that way you hope to be fully recovered when the pack come in. Both those games are going to be at home. You play a Thursday night game, as I mentioned, against Wake Forest. But when you play Thursday night, here's the advantage on the back end. You're at home for the Deacs, but then you get nine days to prepare for your next opponent, North Carolina at Keenan Stadium. So I really liked how the schedule fell for Mike Elko, even though it's a really difficult ACC slate.

And the home schedule is just fantastic. If you're trying to build a following for Duke football right down the road, and we're carrying Duke football and basketball on this station. Clemson at home, Northwestern coming in, NC State coming in.

First time the pack have been to Wallace Wade Stadium in a decade. Notre Dame, Wake Forest, Pittsburgh. Those are your ACC home games. Those are just the home games that you have that were scheduled by the ACC. Because Notre Dame has their schedule figured out by the ACC. That's a pretty good schedule.

A lot of things to approve of there. Before we pass things along to Jon Roth and David Shumate and company for pregame coverage for Duke-Wake Forest tonight, we take it to the house. Pass the 15, pass the 10, pass the 5 for the drive. We'll take it to the house.

1, 2, 3. Take it to the house. And Take it to the House brought to you by our friends at East Coast Wings and Grill.

Locations from Burlington to Lexington to Charlotte to Winston-Salem. Besides wings, they've also got other options. WD likes the salads.

I haven't had the salad there yet, but I believe it's good. Delicious burgers. I've had one of those before, even as much as I like wings. Great place to watch NFL football games. Great way to get prepared for the big game is by ordering wings from East Coast Wings and Grill. You can start to order wings for that now.

It's good to do that ahead of time. What do we got? So usually, if a woman has like a ladies night, like she's wondering if the husband's keeping things together back at the house. Well, in this Michigan household, you know, it wasn't, you know, something broke or the house was a mess. What happened was the kid ordered $1,000 worth of Grubhub to the house.

Oh boy. How do you do that off Grubhub? Well, so somehow, I don't know, you know how like kids, a lot of times these days, parents will let them play with their phones. No, I get that. I'm just trying to think, how do you get to that total? I don't know if I could order $1,000 off Grubhub if I tried. Well, so the kid got ahold of his dad's Grubhub account and just kept ordering things like it was a game show.

Oh, I get that. But I'm saying, how many orders does that have to be in order for it to happen? Like if it's $20, $25 a pop, even $100. To give you an example of how that added up, it got to a point where their bank sent fraud alert and was like declining things because they had to decline a $439 pizza order and $183 shrimp order. Tough. Yeah. Ordering shrimp off Grubhub, that's tough. Yeah.

Probably not a good idea. $439 worth of pizza, that's interesting. Yeah.

I mean, just numerous different meals from area restaurants. And yeah, that kid probably, I mean, he's a six year old kid, so. Yeah, you don't punish the kid. No. You just maybe put a password on that phone? Ideally. Probably.

I don't have a password on my phone. I probably shouldn't be saying that on the radio. Just did. Oh, me.

Yeah. Oh, and one more sponsor to tell you about on today's show. The maker of Lee and Rangwar Jeans, Contour Brands, looking for people who are team players. If you're looking to start a new career, $15 is a baseline of what you would make with the potential to make a lot more than that.

Start your new career today at contourbrands.com. I need to get out of here. You do. Duke, Wake Forest tonight. I like the Blue Devils, even though Dereek Whitehead's not going to go. We'll have postgame locker room sound from Durham on tomorrow's show. Who knows, maybe even a visit from the winning coach, whoever that might be.

Just throwing that out there. Frank Reich, we hope to visit with him sometime by the end of the week, too. Darren Vaught going to join us, too. So there's a lot for us to do. We even have tickets to give away tomorrow. Make sure you're tuned in on a Wednesday drive.