What to do with Notre Dame

We're closing out the week strong today. NFL Network lead draft analyst and AP State Football alum Daniel Jeremiah in 15 minutes. Former Notre Dame beat writer, now National College Football reporter Matt Fortuna later on this hour. And speaking of Notre Dame, since conference-only schedules look like an inevitability in college football this week, this fall, some are calling for the ACC to use this as an opportunity to strong-arm the Irish into the ACC as a full-time football member.

Taj Boyd, former Clemson quarterback, tweeted this out. Cancel Notre Dame season until they join the conference. Strong-arm them. And, putting aside the ethics of this, it really doesn't seem like the right time to be having this conference. This conversation, doesn't it? Does it really fit into what the ACC's been about for the last few decades?

Heck, maybe even their entire existence to try and maneuver this right now? Regardless of how you answered that question, I'm gonna tell you, based on what I know, the ACC's not going to do this. They're not going to force Notre Dame into the conference, into a permanent football commitment. I wouldn't recommend it in a relationship.

Heck, if you've been with somebody, if you are a woman who's been in this spot, I wouldn't recommend to you, if you've been with a guy for five or six years and you moved in with him, to give him an ultimatum where it's, hey, you're either gonna move out and we're gonna break up or we're going to get engaged. I don't think that really helps anybody. When they're ready, they're going to come. Notre Dame is already part of the ACC. Every single sport other than football. And in football, they have six games on the schedule this year. There are a lot of built-in ties to the ACC from South Bend. Kevin White, Duke's AD. He was Notre Dame's AD before arriving in Durham. Bubba Cunningham, Notre Dame alum. NC State AD Boo Corrigan, Notre Dame alum. His dad, the late great Gene Corrigan, former ACC commissioner, took the ACC job after becoming, you guessed it, Notre Dame's director of athletics. So there are a ton of ties there that I don't think they're going to be that incentivized to potentially lose Notre Dame because they tried to strong arm them while everybody's dealing with difficult circumstances. There might be resentment among ACC football coaches. I think that's real. But not among ACC administration.

This was David Cutcliffe on the Adam Gold show just a few hours ago on Sports Hub Triad. Well, I'd love to play them, but if it does go conference only, then they have to make a decision. They would have to, in my opinion, I'm not running the show by any means and people are well aware of that, but they would have to financially join us to join us in a conference only circumstance from a football standpoint. And I think that's pretty common sense if it goes that route.

And there are ways you could potentially do that. If the ACC wants to get it a certain number, 9 or 10 games, maybe Notre Dame, if they're not going to play Stanford or USC in the Pac-12, could maybe add a couple more ACC opponents. Maybe the ACC gets a cut of some of that NBC money that's coming in on the television side with the stipulation Notre Dame can't play for an ACC championship. 2020 has been weird. Would it be the strangest thing if Notre Dame said, we are a member of the ACC for the 2020 year? Cutcliffe did make that stipulation. He says he has his beard that we've never seen before, but it's only because it's 2020.

In 2021, he hopes things will go back to normal and he's going to be clean shaven, even though I think it's a pretty good look for Coach Cut. So he was just saying, for the time being, Notre Dame, maybe you can join the ACC for 2020 and then things will go back to normal in 2021. I mean, remember, the Rose Bowl has been played in Pasadena every single year, except for one.

It was in Durham, North Carolina, Wallace Wade Stadium, because there was fear as a result of Pearl Harbor during World War II. So there's a history, given that college football has been around for 150 years, strange things can happen in adverse situations. I don't think Notre Dame joining the ACC for one year would be the strangest thing, but they're not going to be strong-armed.

That's not who John Swafford is. In 23 years as ACC commissioner, and he's set to retire next year, what he's displayed in that chair as the league has grown in terms of members, in terms of following, in terms of television, as college football has changed around him. Number one has been patience.

He's always been patient and seen the big picture. Mac Brown went 1-10 his first two seasons at North Carolina. He displayed patience, and obviously that paid off when he was North Carolina's AD. The ACC network. He understood you couldn't have a successful linear network unless you hit a wide footprint. In comes Boston College, in comes Miami, here comes Pittsburgh, Syracuse, hitting a bunch of buttons, where finally, after nearly two decades of working on the ACC network television product, he was able to build a strong enough network that hit on enough major markets where he felt it would be sustainable and as successful as, say, the SEC network, or maybe even more successful than that.

That's who Swafford is. He isn't going to change final year on the job. His big picture understanding is when Notre Dame sees that it's most beneficial for them to be in a conference, to be a part of the ACC, be that be the television revenue from the ACC network makes it more appealing for them as the network grows, or Notre Dame goes unbeaten one year but there's just too many great Power 5 conference championship teams that they get left out of the four.

Notre Dame, in Swafford's view, is eventually going to be joining the conference. Right now is just not the right time. It's not the right thing to do.

Using a global pandemic to further your business, it's wrong on a moral and ethical front. It's not what partners do and Notre Dame, again, is a part of this league and every sport other than football. So don't expect that to happen. In a little over five minutes, we're going to be joined by Daniel Jeremiah, NFL network, former App State quarterback. Yesterday I was pretty pessimistic.

Robert had to cheer me up with some things. There was a little bit of presumptive reporting happening where it just seemed like we were on the Titanic again like we were four months ago. But the more I've done reading, the more I've talked to people in the know, the better I feel about college football happening this year. I still think it's about a 50-50 shot. I would not punt on fall football just yet. Fall college football. I'm very confident the NFL is going to figure it out. I would not punt on college football because if they do so, if they do what the Ivy League has already decided, we're not going to play until the earliest January 1st. We hope we can have a football season then.

And the power five, you're going to be sacrificing the biggest stars in the sport. None of the big stars that Daniel Jeremiah is going to talk to us about for the 2021 NFL draft class are going to participate next year and they shouldn't. The NFL isn't going to budge.

Dan Wolk had reported that last week, that the draft is going to remain where it is. So if it's spring college football, you might have fans in the stands. You might. That's the operative word there.

Might. But you're not going to have Trevor Lawrence at Clemson. You're not going to have ETN. Justin Fields. Heck, you might not even have Boogie Basham and Sage Surratt at Wake Forest.

Because if you're projected to be a top two pick, top two round pick, there's just no justification for missing out on the combine process and playing football where you could potentially get hurt before April's draft. But there's no guarantee when it comes to fans being in the stands. There's no guarantee about a vaccine being found by then. The logistics, it's going to be a nightmare. And you're going to be thrusting this right into the middle of flu season. So who knows what's going to happen as a result of that. We're learning more and more about this virus every day.

This is the part where I get optimistic about where we might be in about a month and a month and a half by September. Cases, yes, they're surging. Deaths are not. That's because we're finding new ways to treat this. We're treating it better. While there might not be a vaccine, our first option, our first line of defense is no longer the ventilator.

People are going in, doctors are finding ways to treat it, and we're going to continue learning more about this every single day. There's still more time to figure this out. So is this me saying, for sure there's going to be a college football season this fall?

No. But I think the ACC, the SEC, the rest of the Power Five, not named Big Ten Conference, they're doing the right thing by waiting and welcoming more information before they make a decision that might be premature, that might be emotional, that might be unnecessary, hopefully. We're going to be talking about Trevor Lawrence, and we're going to talk about how excited Panther fans should be about next year's quarterbacks class when the NFL Network's lead draft analyst, Daniel Jeremiah, joins us next. Josh Graham loves to talk sports. He also loves the way his new jeans highlight his man curves. Ooh, hot.

Oh, yeah, that's hot. You're on the drive with Josh Graham. When I think about what makes Jon Swofford such an effective leader, the first thing that comes to mind is patience and always understanding the big picture of things. When Mac Brown again went one and ten his first two years, he was patient, he wrote it out, it paid off. Twenty-three years as the ACC commissioner, he slow-played the ACC Network and got all the proper markets he wanted in order for that to thrive, and it looks like that's going to be a really successful network as well, we hope.

And that's also why he doesn't strike me as somebody who's just going to react rashly one way or the other to what the Big Ten announced yesterday. And a statement was released in the last five minutes from Commissioner Swofford that says this, The health and safety of our student athletes, coaches, and administrators remains the top priority of the ACC. As we continue to work on the best possible path forward for the return to competition, we will do so in a way that appropriately coincides with the university's academic missions. Over the last few months, our conference has prepared numerous scenarios related to the fall athletics season. The league membership and our medical advisory group will make every effort to be as prepared as possible during these unprecedented times, and we anticipate a decision by our board of directors in late July.

So they're pushing things to the end of the month, welcoming more time, welcoming more information so they can make the best decision possible. Matt Fortuna from the Athletics with us now, and you spend a lot of time covering Notre Dame, so I'm interested in your thoughts on what yesterday's news and potentially the dominoes falling where Power Five leagues will all just play conference-only schedules means for the Irish. Before I get your thought on that, David Cutcliffe was on this radio station a few hours ago, and he believes that if Notre Dame's going to benefit from having six games against ACC teams, just for 2020, they might should consider being technically a football member.

Here's Coach Cut. Well, I'd love to play them, but, you know, if it does go conference-only, then they have to make a decision. They would have to, in my opinion, I'm not running the show by any means, and people are well aware of that, but they would have to financially join us to join us in a conference-only circumstance from a football standpoint.

And, I mean, I think that's pretty common sense if it goes that route. Matt, how much is Notre Dame relying on the ACC here, and are there concessions Notre Dame can give to potentially maintain those six games and potentially add more? I think that the ACC holds the cards maybe for once in regards to Notre Dame, but, I mean, Notre Dame's going to need help from the ACC, no question about it. I think, you know, if you're an independent and you look at what's probably going to happen nationwide, what happened in the Big Ten yesterday, which is everyone goes to a conference-only schedule, well, yeah, you need all the help you can get. You need all the inventory you can get.

And what do you know? You already had six ACC games on the docket for 2020. Why not just keep those games and add a couple more? It's going to take, I think, an act of kindness, if you will, from the ACC, but everyone seems to be on the same page, at least from an administrative standpoint, of, yeah, we want them. Why wouldn't we want them? They're a moneymaker. They draw tons of eyeballs to us.

They improve our football schedule, especially the last couple years when this league is essentially consisted of Clemson and everybody else. So, I get the sentiment from David Cuckliffe. I don't think he's unique among coaches, and specifically ACC coaches, in saying, well, if they're going to be in it with one foot, they should be in it with two feet.

I get it. But that's coach speak, too. I mean, they want everyone to play by the same rules, and I get it. But coaches aren't the ones making the decisions here.

The administrators are, and even above them, the money is. And where Notre Dame goes, money goes. And whether it's as a partial member, whether it's as a full member, whether it's as a full member for this upcoming football season and nothing else football-wise, it's a financial boon for the ACC, and you cannot turn away potential money, I think, amid a pandemic. I don't think anybody who knows John Swafford and understands the administration of the ACC thinks that they're going to strong-arm Notre Dame to get into the conference when you consider that, like I mentioned at the top, that Swafford, he's a very patient guy.

He understands the big picture. If Notre Dame's going to join the conference, it's going to be the ACC. And when you look at the framework of the ACC, Bubba Cunningham, Notre Dame grad, Boo Corrigan, his dad was the AD at Notre Dame, he's a Notre Dame alum, and Kevin White, Duke's AD, he was once the AD at Notre Dame, too.

And oh yeah, they are already a partner because they're a member in every other single sport. So I'm just interested from your perspective, knowing the Iris situation better than most, what circumstance do you think it will take, if not this, for Notre Dame to look at its situation and say, yeah, we need to join a conference, we need to join the ACC? It's such an intricate part of the fabric of not just the football program, but the university. I mean, they sacrifice money by being an independent. I mean, people don't probably fully comprehend that, and I get it, but it's such a part of their identity that, you know, they only make $50 million a year from NBC. I mean, they're losing out on a lot of TV money by not joining a conference.

This isn't a situation that's going to be dictated solely by money. I mean, personally, the only way I could see it happening would be if, whenever the college football playoff expands, which seems inevitable, the new criteria says you have to win your conference or have to be in a conference. I think that's the only situation that would absolutely force Notre Dame's hands, because they haven't done it so far, why would they do it now?

He's on Twitter at Matt underscore Fortuna, read his stuff in The Athletic. I'm looking at the teams that Notre Dame set the play, and if it was a conference-only schedule, Clemson is in a situation where they, playing Notre Dame in addition to just a league schedule, they might look at their national title odds and think, why, if we're going to only play eight games, are we going to add Notre Dame potentially to something that could harm us in our national title chances? How surprised would you be if that game happens, Clemson versus Notre Dame?

If there is football this fall, in some way, shape, or form, conference-only, non-conference, whatever you want to call it, going off what we know now, I think it'll happen, absolutely. I mean, Dan Ratajkovic and Jack Sorbrick, the athletic directors from both universities, have a really good working relationship, and I actually disagree with you, with whether this would hurt Clemson. Clemson has been in a scenario, thanks to everyone else not really pulling their weight in the ACC, where if they lost one game, if they lost that North Carolina game last year, if they lost the NC State game there before, they're not getting the playoff. They do not have the strength to schedule where they can get it, whereas, hypothetically, again, let's assume we're all playing 12-game schedules here, 10-0 Clemson versus 10-0 Notre Dame November 7th, Clemson loses that, but dominates everyone else and wins the ACC title?

I mean, maybe you do get them all. Notre Dame's a top-four team this coming season, so I don't look at it as a landmine or as something that could inhibit their ability to get the playoff. If anything, I think it helps it because usually, and again, this year's going to be different because we don't know what the schedules will be, but usually strength to schedule and challenge yourself in the non-conference is going to help you. And to be frank, as good as Clemson has been, when's the last time you looked at their regular-season schedule before the season started and circled a game on their calendar and thought, hey, you know what, this could be a good game? No. There are 20-point favorites in every game.

It's boring. The ACC has not been good at football the last few years outside of Clemson, and so any time you can get two Blue Bloods and two playoffs and at least one national title contender on the field together in regular season, I think it's a win-win for everybody. I was telling Daniel Jeremiah a short while ago that the team I feel worst for in America because of yesterday's news and where things are trending is Appalachian State because the Mountaineers, not only were they probably going to be a preseason top-25 team in the Sunbelt, they also had games at Wake Forest and at Wisconsin that they were set to have and had a really strong team coming back, Coach Clark's first year. Rather than pinpointing just one team, is it the group of five that you feel worst for because of yesterday's news?

Absolutely. I thought you were going to say Army when you said there's one team you feel bad for because Army has already, in addition to being an independent, has already lost Princeton, will almost assuredly lose Bucknell, and then when everyone else inevitably goes to conference only, they're going to have a lot of heavy lifting to do on their part, but not to take away from the sympathy and feelings for Appalachian State, but the group of five in general, absolutely. I mean, you saw the Bowling Green athletic director come out yesterday at the statement after the Big Ten had made its announcement about scrapping their non-conference games.

I've spoken to other administrators in the group of five since the Big Ten made their announcement. Let's say everything goes off the way we hope it will and everyone's able to play 12 games apiece this fall. Is another group of five that got dropped by the Big Ten going to reach out to Bowling Green and say, hey, we can fill that spot on your schedule. We got some too.

Let's play each other. They could do that. Bowling Green's not going to make the $2 million that they were going to make for Ohio State, though.

This is probably another conversation for down the road, but the way these contracts, these game contracts, are going to be litigated years into the future could set a precedent one way or another about whether some of these group of fives are going to make it because these payday games are what they get by on hand. For everyone who was playing a Big Ten team from the group of five in 2020, they just had what were already pretty slim wallets become that much slimmer after yesterday's news. Matt Fortuna from The Athletic on Twitter at Matt underscore Fortuna.

Follow him on all things college football related. It's good to hear from you. I hope you're safe in the Midwest and I hope that the young one is doing well as well. Thanks for doing this, buddy. We have our jobs. We have our health. Can't complain. Thanks, buddy. That's well said. That's Matt Fortuna.

He's on Twitter at Matt underscore Fortuna. I want to shift things to how the NFL should react to the idea of college football games not being played non-conference. The ACC statement is they're going to wait until the end of the month. The feeling in college football is this is where we're headed.

So if you're the NFL, what do you do, Robert Walsh? If you're the NFL, I believe college football, if it gets postponed, because there are more, there's just more red tape to maneuver through, I think if you push it back a month, you're talking about that last Saturday in September, September 26, you could potentially start things. Take away a bye week, 10 straight weeks of college football, and you would be set at championship weekend when you were set to have it, the Carolina Panthers stadium, Bank of America stadium.

Don't know why I was saying it so proper there. They're set to have the ACC championship on December the 5th. I think that would be smart for college football. Maybe that'll be enough time for us to get a hold on this virus and to get things kicked off with just conference games. If you're the NFL and you see this, I think there's an opportunity to capitalize on openings left by college, just like college football does with the beginning of its season. I don't think it's a coincidence that in recent years there's been a week zero ECU getting set to play Marshall this year.

Last year it was Florida facing Miami. I don't think it's a coincidence that they get these games in while the NFL's in pre-season and the significant games aren't happening yet. And then week one, Robert, you got NC State Louisville on a Wednesday night, college football on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Because they know this is the final week, we can't have college football on Sunday. And we can't have college football really on Monday either because you got that Monday Night Football NFL product going head to head with you. So if you're the NFL, why not for the first three weeks of the season, assuming college football gets pushed off for about a month, September 26, the first three weeks are the only weeks that the NFL doesn't have any teams with bye weeks.

So you're talking about sixteen matchups, generally nine at one o'clock. Nine or ten at one o'clock, why not, in addition to the Thursday and Monday night games and the games you have on Sunday, push three games a week to Saturday where college football games would be the first month of the year. You can reconcile some of that college money you would have lost otherwise or some of that attendance money you would have lost because you're not going to have full capacity stadiums and you could have a lot of great matchups the first three weeks of the season until college starts and then you have bye weeks for the NFL week four.

I think this is a plausible idea, I really do, and something the NFL should consider. You are listening to WSJS Winston-Salem, WCOG Greensboro, WPC in Burlington, the BMFR High Point, those signals making up, sports I'm trying. Got some pretty big college football news to pass along. Hopefully there's going to be a season, I'm still 50-50 on whether or not that's going to happen after yesterday's news, really this week's news when you consider the Ivy League as well. Tony Grimes, he's the five-star kid that Mac Brown was talking about earlier this week with us, five-star kid that committed to North Carolina last week for the 2021 class, he just put this out on his Twitter, he's going to be reclassifying for 2020. So he's going to enroll at North Carolina August the 1st, making him eligible to play this year. The Tar Heels, I think they already were the favorite to win the Coastal Division, I think this is just going to add that. Still a wide gap between them and Clemson, but pretty big news for the Tar Heels as we now welcome in Mike DeCorcy from the Sporting News Hall of Fame Rider.

Haven't talked to you in a while Mike, I'm just interested from the basketball front strictly. With the Ivy League saying they're going to push off sports until January 1st at the earliest, how worried are you about college basketball right now, or is it too soon to worry about that? Honestly, the Ivy League's decision had no impact on anybody.

I spoke to Danny Gabbett last night, Danny is the NCAA's Vice President for Basketball. I mean obviously it has a huge impact on the Ivy League, and the players who are in the Ivy League, I'm not going to say that that's not the case. And maybe some teams that in basketball had scheduled Ivy League opponents.

But Dan told me that their plan, they're still believing that they will open the season on November 10th. They're obviously very much interested in how college football is able to transpire. If college football isn't able to go in the way that they're trending, which is to play only conference games, if they're not able to pull that off, then that would probably affect college basketball. But I don't see us going through another academic year with no intercollegiate athletics.

I just can't picture that. There's too many athletes who want to compete. There's too much at stake for the institutions in terms of their athletic departments and what it would mean if they did not play. I don't know whether or not we'll have college football on schedule. And when I say on schedule, I mean the fall.

I don't know for sure. But I still would, you know, you said 50-50. I would still lean toward the upper side of that dividing line in terms of the likelihood they'll play.

But I'm not as optimistic as I was three weeks ago or a month ago. Let me ask you this because you do a lot of work with the Big Ten Network. Yesterday's announcement. I was interested in, I mean because we're right here in the backyard of the ACC. The ACC offices are in Greensboro. John Swafford has said for the last few months that pretty much every day he's been in touch with the big conference commissioners and that they're all on the same page. Commissioner Swafford put out a statement today saying they're not going to make any decisions like the Big Ten made yesterday until the end of July.

And it seems the SEC is close to the same page on that. I don't know where the Pac-12 is currently. Why do you believe the Big Ten separated itself yesterday and said, all right, we need to announce that we're going to go conference only?

I don't know. I think that it really comes down to each conference's comfort level with what they're able to execute. And I think that's the real question and the Big Ten decided that they felt like that they could more comfortably execute a conference season because they can talk about their own. Each conference can say these are the things that you have to adhere to or you can't play. But they can't say that to somebody else. They don't have the standing to tell some other school that this happens to be on their schedule.

Here's what you have to do to play us. They can't do that. Within a conference you can.

And so they felt comfortable that this is the direction that they are going to go. And the Big Ten already plays, I believe, a nine-game conference schedule and they could expand that if they wished to whatever. I mean, I think that mathematically they could expand it to 11 or 12 if they wanted to. So they have the ability to still play a full season, perhaps within their own conference. So I don't think that that should be taken as an indication that we're definitely not going to play.

I mean, I think all the principals, Gene Smith of Ohio State, Kevin Warren, the commissioner, said, look, there's a chance we might not play and I think that that should be read less as them being sears and more as a warning. I think they're trying to tell people, look, if you want this, you've got to stop. This is the only country in the first world that is having this problem to this degree. It's the only one. It's the only one that's arguing about the science and saying that masks don't help and some people saying that.

It's the only one. I did a piece for the Zone News today because we carry the Champions League in a lot of our markets, Canada, Italy, places like that. And so I did a piece for the Zone News on the Champions League draw today.

And they're getting ready to have the Champions League and teams from Madrid are going to be able to go to England and everybody who's still alive is going to be able to go to Portugal and they're going to be able to have this. And they're still taking care. They're still distancing.

There was no one in the house when they did this draw and usually everybody would be there. But at the same time, they're going to have it and they look around and they're able to finish their league seasons. And here we are sweating about whether we can get a baseball season started, sweating about whether we can get an NBA season started in a bubble. Basically shipping hockey to Canada where they're not having as big a problem.

America's got to wake up. It has to be thinking why hasn't like in the NFL, for example, that they're trying to make have this foothold in Europe, specifically in London. I wonder if they've even considered the idea of having football games over there if that is a last-ditch effort.

Is your confidence level on football? We're not allowed. Yeah, we can't go over there right now. That's a great point.

They won't let us in. Yeah, that's a very good point. Is your confidence level for the NFL a lot different than your confidence level for football, college football? Yes, my confidence level with the NFL is close to 100%. The only margin for error there is if the virus somehow became even worse than it is now. And I doubt that happens. It may persist at this level for long.

I can't say it won't, but the only way I would see the NFL not playing is if it went in that direction, and I don't think that's what's going to happen. So that's why it's close to 100%. Follow him on Twitter at TSNMike. Read his stuff on COVID-19. Read his conversations. You said you talked to Dan Gabbitt, right?

Correct. I talked to Dan Gabbitt last night, and we talked about one of the things that I was interested in was, especially in light of yesterday's news relative to the Big Ten and the possibility that other power five leagues could follow that, is if that were the direction that college basketball went, then how do you judge whether or not, if you're only playing Big Ten teams or only playing ACC teams, how do you judge how good they are? That becomes a real challenge. Usually it's established by what you do out of conference, how good your league is, and therefore what a league win is worth. Last year, ACC win was not worth what it ordinarily is. Almost every year it's worth the highest quality you can get, and last year it wasn't. Big Ten last year was really strong, but if you didn't have that competition, what would it mean? I thought that was an interesting topic, so I posted it today, and I got people ripping on the net. So then I took the net out and said, look, if the net doesn't work, then you're going to have to be dependent upon the eye test.

And then people were yelling at me, well, if we have a tournament, we'll be happy. And I was like, OK, I can't win today with this article. I got a recommendation from the voice of the deke, Stan Cotton, a while ago that I haven't fulfilled yet. I need to watch The Outlaw, Josie Wales. I haven't seen that. Robert's mad at me because I haven't seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I haven't seen that movie with Jack Nicholson. I haven't even seen Deer Hunter. And I call myself a movie buff. I haven't seen any of those movies.

It's for shame, right? But give me something else. I trust your recommendations on movies. What's something you've seen in the last month or two that you were surprised how good it was? Well, you know, one of the things that I decided to do as sort of a mission was to, you know, I had told you before about my Oscar streak of seeing all the nominated movies before Oscar night for something like 35 years, 36 years or something. But I thought, well, I should see all the Oscar best pictures.

So I listed them all and went through. So I was I took a day off a couple of weeks ago and I watched in the heat of the night and I had never seen it before. It was Sydney Poitier and Rod Steiger. And it is terrific. And it's really, you know, it's funny because it was made I think at 67, I think was the year one best picture. And it could have been made yesterday almost, because it's so topical.

Even now, 50 years later, it's still topical. And I you haven't seen Deer Hunter and all those. And I recommend all those movies. Deer Hunter is magnificent. And I'll tell you, Jussie Wells is a really entertaining movie.

But I would say in the heat of the night is one that you should definitely put on your list. All right. I got it written down. Mike Decorcy, we correspond off the air when it comes to movies. Feel free to always shoot me over things you've been watching. It's good to hear your voice, man. I hope things are going well with you and I hope we could talk basketball and maybe some other things sometime soon.

That would be wonderful. Absolutely, Josh. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much. He's on Twitter at TSM Mike.

That's Mike Decorcy, the Hall of Fame writer from the Sporting News, also from the Big Ten Network as well. Robert, you like movies from that age, 60s, 70s. Have you heard from the for the heat of the night? I've heard of the heat of the night. I've heard of it. I have not seen it. Hmm.

Sidney Poitier. So I might have to keep an eye on that. Generally, I have a rule.

If it's made before 1970, odds of me seeing it a lot lower than it would have been. Also, you're a goody goody. So I don't know how you get your movies. Do you like buy them on Amazon Prime or something? Yeah. Okay.

$3.99? Yeah, it's not that bad. That adds up. Well, I don't do it that often. Maybe once or twice a week. Oh, gosh.

Do you have any weeks or in a year? Yeah. I'm just watching. I love movies, Robert. I want to support the movie industry, too. I don't want to steal. Ah, they don't support you. They don't care.

They'll do just fine without you. They don't want to steal. You're not stealing. You're borrowing. Are you not going to watch this Jorge Masvidal match?

Yeah, I'm going to watch it. I'm not a fan of stealing. I'm not stealing anything.

Dana White stayed in an apartment in Abu Dhabi this weekend and he is doing just fine without me paying for his pay reviews. You're still stealing. I'm not stealing anything. What's the line when you feel like you're stealing?

When I can physically take something home and it is now mine forever. Okay. So, but then again, I think you can still justify it. If you stole Dana White's watch, you could still say he's still staying in that apartment or whatever. Yeah, Dana White would also kick my ass, but I'm not stealing his watch. I'm stealing his pay per view. Which is still, we can understand, stealing. He can come kick my ass over that then. Coming up, why you shouldn't expect the ACC to strong arm Notre Dame into the conference in football.

This is a Friday Drive. Before we get to the top 10 list, what's happening with Will Smith right now? There is, gosh, the internet has changed the world in so many ways, but it's changed journalism too because journalism has now dissolved to a place where Robert just tells me, go on Twitter, search Will Smith's name, and you're going to see what exactly is happening. And apparently it stems from a clear the air Jada Pinkett Smith conversation with Will Smith where they confirm that they split up and Jada Pinkett Smith's talking about the fact that she was once with a younger rapper who I've never heard of before.

And now the internet seems fixated on rumors that have been around for a while now. What's the name of this movie? Is it Focus? Is that the name of the movie? That Will Smith was in with Margot Robbie? Something like that. I never saw it.

I did. And it was pretty good from what I remember. I remember being pleasantly surprised. Yeah, it was called Focus.

How good it was. And there have been rumors for the last five years that there might've been a really close, intimate relationship there between Will Smith and Margot Robbie. And all I have on Twitter right now are just little snippets. But the main points that people are hitting is like how much this hurts Will. Because Will's been out here slinging Big Willy around for years. And everyone's talking about his posture and his body language to hear Jada talk about her experience with this other man.

I don't know. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm captivated without ever hearing a single word. I love her red table stuff she does anyway, but I'm very interested for this show to be over so I can listen to it. Where do you stand on Will Smith's career? I like Will. He had a great come up. He has a good story. Maybe he's a playboy.

Who cares? But I like Will. He had a great the rap career and with Fresh Prince while Leonardo DiCaprio was what's eating Gilbert Grape, Titanic.

And they were both at a point at the end of the 1990s, they were in a similar spot. And at that point, if you were to ask who's going to have the better career in acting, Will Smith or Leonardo DiCaprio, most people probably would have banked on Will Smith, probably. But I don't think anybody would say over the last 20 years that Will Smith has had a better career than Leo, would they? In terms of the actual movies that were made, the thing that's disappointing to me about Smith, because I don't know him like Robert does, close enough to call him Will, is the choice of movie he's made consistently over the last 20 years.

Like none of it is risky. None of it is particularly interesting. I mean, you're talking about ever since Independence Day and Enemy of the State, he did Ali, which was essentially a three hour movie that should have been called, here's Will Smith trying to desperately trying to get an Oscar. That's what that movie was. Not really that great of a movie.

Good performance. Since then, it's just a lot of money grabs, man. Action movies, bad boys.

I mean, what the hell do we work for? Shark Tale, Hitch. Okay, Shark Tale, underrated cartoon film. And he did some risky stuff. What was that terrible Netflix show he did about... Well, the difference, what I'm saying is, the difference between Will Smith and Leonardo DiCaprio, it seemed the number one driver in Will Smith's decision making was how much does it pay and is it something that might make me not look so good in my public image. While Leo's perspective was, what director am I working with?

Am I working with the best people? Is this the best movie? Which isn't always going to be the best money maker, but it is going to lead to a really high batting average for the movies that he's come out with. It's not like Will Smith can accept the same roles as Leo, though. Any of those positions he's been juxtaposed to.

Well, apparently, like for example, here's a great example. Apparently Quentin Tarantino had Will Smith in mind to play the Django character. To play his, okay, he couldn't have been, I'm saying he couldn't have been Leo's character in Django.

Oh, no, no, no, no. To play Jamie Foxx's character. To play Django. But, that's a pretty risky role, it really is. Even though it's Tarantino, that's risky, you're going to get blowback for doing that. Leo always thought, okay, what's the art? And you look at the movies that he made. It's Gangs of New York, it's The Aviator, it's Departed, it's working with Scorsese, it's working with the top directors out there. Oh, I want to be with the actor who was in Lincoln, whose name slips my mind, one of the best actors out there. I want to be in Inception. I want to work with Christopher Nolan. I want to be in Django, work with Quentin Tarantino. So you know consistently when these movies come out, if it's Leo in it, I trust that it's going to be a really good script, really good director.

And coincidentally, usually it's just a really good performance. I've been disappointed by what Will Smith's done, really, the last two decades. Like, when's the last great Will Smith movie that's come out? You had that Netflix movie that was a disaster. Bad Boys for Life was good.

So the third Bad Boys? I don't know why you're dumping on Will Smith's career. He's had a good career. And you were talking about Jamie Foxx's role in that movie was not as risky as Leo's role in that movie. I just wanted to see better movies. I did.

I want to see better movies. Sounds like a you problem. Don't be mad at the dude for getting paid. Oh, I'm not mad.

I'm not mad at him. I'm just saying that comparatively, these two guys have taken two separate routes and the movie, the ones that one guy took, the path that one guy took resulted in a lot of classics. While Will Smith, the last 20 years, he hasn't made a classic. There's also a lot of differences between those two guys.

Sure. Like, they can't take the same path. They can't both put out those kind of, like, they're not going to play the same roles. Well, I'm not saying they're going for the same roles, but I'm saying one clearly had a different approach than the other. And, eh, I haven't been a big fan of Will Smith's trajectory.

If you disagree with it, it's fine. I felt the same way about Tom Hanks. Really did. Tom Hanks playing Tom Hanks in essentially every movie.

Not playing a villain, not really doing anything different. He had one of the best runs we've ever seen in cinema ever. Mid-90s to early 2000s.

Since then, a lot of meh. Let's get to this top ten list. Top ten bubbles in honor of the NBA bubble. I list them off right now.

Degenerate King tweets him one I forgot. Will Smith turned down the Keanu Reeves role in The Matrix in favor of Wild Wild West. He made a mistake. And Wild Wild West might be the worst movie ever made.

Not true. Really bad movie. We talked about tire at dinner last night.

But that's purposely bad. It's called Rubber. It's about a tire that kills people with its mind.

Last night you called it Tire 800 times. So, either way, tell me your top ten list, which is also your worst movie of all time. Well, I need to remember real quickly what the actor is. That's just slipping my mind at the moment. Daniel Day Lewis.

That's who I was thinking of in Gangs of New York. Alright, number ten. Top ten bubbles.

Bubble Roy? If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, you own it.

If it doesn't, you don't own it. Is that bubbles from Trailer Park Boys? If he's not on this list, this is a dumb list. Number nine! Top ten bubbles. Sports Hubba Bubba?

That bacon smells good. Is there any extra? Are all of these bubbles from Trailer Park Boys? Yep. That's how my top ten list would go. Number ten would be the Bubble Bowl from Spongebob and the rest of them would be bubbles from Trailer Park Boys. You might be ruining part of the top ten list.

That's not nice. Number eight! Number eight top ten bubbles. Bubble Gumble?

Green Bastard parts unknown. Nice. Mike Maniscalco introduced me to this show and, gosh, high batting average. Who's your favorite character in it? Bubbles.

100%. Followed by Ricky. Number seven! Top ten bubbles. A bubble screen? I'm on the phone in the foyer talking about stolen shopping carts. Not you. Well, why don't you turn your cell phone off, Gary?

It might be underrated. I like bubble screens. There are people that do not like the bubble screen, who hate when the bubble screen is thrown.

I am not one of those people. Number six! You must have really enjoyed ECU football, circa Lincoln Riley.

That's right. Lincoln Riley loves a good bubble screen. Number six! Top ten bubbles.

Bubble Rap Pino? Is that how you call Winnie? Let me hear it one more time to be sure. No.

I just raised my voice. Yeah, Winnie! Winnie! Winnie! You don't ever give her an eep.

That's what I do. Number four! Top ten bubbles. C.C.

Subbubble Bathia? That was a perfectly good turkey. Come here, fella.

It's still good. I was particularly proud of that one. Number three! Top ten bubbles. A triple double bubble? With the translucent skin stretched over an alien frame, it's Trevor the Elongated Skeleton!

I take back my answer on favorite characters in Trailer Park Boys. I don't think it's Bubbles. I think it's Ricky.

Ricky had all those sayings that were just close to the saying, but not really it. It's just water under the fridge. Getting two birds stoned at once. That sort of thing.

It's not rocket appliances. Number two! Top ten bubbles.

Eddie Housing Bubble? I don't like shooting at people. I don't want to kill anybody.

I just like scaring them. Number one! Top ten bubbles. Bubble Wallace. All Ricky did was take a perfectly good name that I came up with, Kittyland, stuck his name Garbage on the front of it and came up with Garbage Land. You've got Kittyland going to you, Bubbles. You must have got the idea from Ricky's Garbage Land, did you?

It's the other way around! I love the Kittyland episode. That's my top ten bubbles. No Bubbles from Powder Puff Girls. No Bubble Bowl from Spongebob.

The best episode of Spongebob. I had Bubble Bowl written down, but since you spoiled it, I put one from the outside in. I didn't spoil it. They didn't know what was on this list, and neither did I. You tell everybody else to send their guesses in. If they have a right guess, are you like, can't have something else somebody guessed?

I usually get it after the list is revealed. So what came in? Where was Bubble Bowl at originally? Bubble Bowl came in at number eight.

That's unfortunate. Probably the best cartoon music number of all time. Sweet Victory was the name of that song, I think. I'm trying to think of some of the... I had some other ones written down here that didn't quite make the cut.

Remember they used to call D'Angelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart double trouble? Double Bubble. Double Trouble Bubble. I'm glad that one didn't make it. There's a reason why it didn't make the list.

I really like Tail of the Bubble Tape. You didn't laugh at that one. I did not. Or the Nasdaq Bubble.

That one was pretty good. Where's the Nasdaq at today? I think it finished a little up today. That makes me feel good.

I mean, it's just fake numbers anyway, but yeah, it finished up. Up $369. We had Daniel Jeremiah on the show earlier, NFL Network's lead draft analyst. If you want to listen back to that interview, Robert's put it up already on our podcast channel. Just search The Drive with Josh Graham, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, just search that. The Drive with Josh Graham, make sure to subscribe. You can listen back to that. We got into a lot of stuff draft related that was a lot of fun with the former Appalachian State quarterback.

And that's also where the Best of podcast is going to be shortly as well. Including our conversations with former Notre Dame beat rider, longtime national college football reporter with the athletic Matt Fortuna, and the Hall of Fame sports writer Mike DeCorsie from the Sporting News and the Big Ten Network. So a lot of stuff that we've gotten to today. Robert, it is a Rhinestone Cowboy Friday. I don't remember the last time we've done this on a Friday.

It's probably been three weeks since we've done this on a Friday. For those who don't know, how would you best explain the story of how Rhinestone Cowboy Friday came to be? Glen Campbell passed away. I remembered hearing this song on Daddy Daycare and loving it. And Josh was like, oh, you had other good songs.

You should listen to Glen Campbell. And then we ended up singing it on the show. And now every Friday when we sing it, I sing it and you just watch me pensively to make sure I'm going to sing. You're a better singer than I am.

Not true. I am not a good singer. Even if I was better than you, you should also... One of these days I'm going to hit you with the volume down and get you singing.

And then you'll feel bad for leaving me out in the car. I'm not ashamed of singing. Then belt it out, Karaoke Boy! If you want to sing Rhinestone Cowboy with us, 336-777-1600, I find it makes me feel better going into the weekend. I'm just a little self-conscious on the radio.

It's like... Oh my God! Shut up! You do a three hour radio show!

It's separating work from play. Like, I like karaoke. I'm not a great singer. I like karaoke. But, you know, this is my radio space. These people can't see you, though. You're literally doing karaoke in front of people.

Yeah. Would you do a Zoom karaoke bar? I think, though, there's nobody else singing in this space. I'm singing! What I'm saying is, karaoke's different because you have... I'm stacking myself up against the drunk guy who's almost falling over singing off-key right before me. That's me! Have you heard me say offers coming over the phone?

I thought that was the best part of the song. You can do that! You can do that! Alright, we'll see how this goes when we have our rhinestone cowboy ticket to the house next.