Emo Steph Curry (8-8-23)

This is The Drive with Josh Graham Podcast.

Three internet sensations, guys! Tune into The Drive weekday afternoons, 3 to 7 on WSJS. We're on a Tuesday drive, WSJS News Talk Sports for the Dryad, where we have two outstanding guests that you're going to want to stick around for on today's show.

In about a half hour, Wyndham champion Lucas Glover will be our guest. And at about 5.35, it's going to be East Carolina coach Mike Houston joining the show. But before we get to the golf and to my pirates, there is local news in college football today, and the red flags just continue to pile up for the Tar Heels. A week after he was named preseason All-ACC, we learn wide receiver Tez Walker has had his transfer waiver denied, which makes him ineligible to play this season. The NCAA is viewing him as a double transfer, and the rules state you can only transfer once and become immediately eligible. However, Carolina is appealing the ruling, and they do have a case because there are unique circumstances with Tez. Prior to playing college football, he had signed with East Tennessee State.

He's a North Carolina native. But after sustaining a knee injury, they decided they'd be in East Tennessee State to gray shirt Tez. Tez then decided it would be best for him to play closer to home. He decided he was going to get out of that letter of intent at East Tennessee State to play at North Carolina Central.

The problem was it was 2020. The 2020 football season got canceled. He wasn't going to play. He wanted to play in the spring of that year.

That spring, they didn't play football either at North Carolina Central. So he left there, and his first transfer under the NCAA's ruling today was him leaving a place that he never played a snap for, North Carolina Central, to go to Kent State. He's played at Kent State a couple of years. Excellent player, putting up tremendous numbers. But he wanted to move closer to home and play at North Carolina because according to Mack Brown, his grandmother had never watched him play before.

She can't travel and has been having health concerns. He's from the Charlotte area. North Carolina's first game is in Charlotte against South Carolina. They've made amenities at Kenan Stadium that would allow for his grandmother to attend, who essentially raised him. So they feel, North Carolina, that he's transferred for the right reasons and that the right thing's going to happen here, that their appeal is going to be met and that they're going to win their case against the NCAA.

This was Mack Brown this morning when speaking about Tez Walker. We feel very, very good moving forward that the NCAA will look at this and understand this isn't a normal case of a double transfer. And they will go ahead and accept the appeal and let him be able to play when we open up for the season.

Here's what I've learned about the NCAA, though. You can't bank on that. It seems they're trying to send a message, whether it be with Tez or the Florida State D lineman that also had his waiver denied today, that we're going to enforce the double transfer rule. We're not just going to let everybody clear nowadays. And it's something that the coaches have asked for. So I wouldn't say that this is a lock that Tez is going to play. Even if he does get cleared, though, there are enormous questions about Drake May supporting cast on offense. Losing Josh Downs, Tez Walker seems like a good player, but is he going to be as good as Josh Downs was?

That seems like an unrealistic expectation. And who's going to be as good as Antoine Green was last year? Who's no longer around? Which running back is going to step up? Yes, you have them back, but Drake May was the leading rusher on the Tar Heels a year ago. And it's a new offensive coordinator. We don't know if Chip Lindsey coming from UCF is going to be an upgrade from Phil Longo, who helped Drake May put up astronomic numbers right after he helped Sam Howe do the same thing.

Then you got the problems on defense, which any Tar Heel fan knows has been the big Achilles Heel for them in recent years, including last year. But the most concerning part about North Carolina, the part that really gives me pause is their schedule. See, North Carolina has these enormous expectations attached to them.

A lot of that is due to Drake May. We saw the coaches poll was announced yesterday. North Carolina was ranked in the top 25. You look at Vegas odds, North Carolina, their win total is eight and a half for this year after they won nine last year.

Send me that cash out, fam. So in order to get the over, they have to meet their regular season win total from a year ago. That seems unrealistic. It's overwhelming this schedule. Their first six games, they could easily be three and three or worse. That stretch, they play South Carolina, who's good in Charlotte. You play Appalachian State, which obviously is not a gimme in Chapel Hill. You play Minnesota in Chapel Hill. You've got a road game at Pittsburgh. You've got Miami during that stretch. You could easily be three or three and three or two and four in that six game stretch.

Best case seems like you'll be four and two. And again, preseason win total eight and a half. That means you almost have to run the gauntlet the rest of the way, run the gamut in order to meet that number. And let's not forget the last three, Duke at Clemson at NC State. In consecutive weeks, that's a tall task. This seems like a seven and five football team. That's what it seems like.

And the red flags are continuing to pile up for the Tar Heels. On Twitter at WSJS Radio, if you want it, that is where we're streaming video in addition to YouTube and Twitch. Will Dalton is the executive producer of this show. W.D., you gonna watch Jets Hard Knocks tonight? The Panthers and Jets start their joint practices tomorrow and the Panthers' first preseason game Saturday, but we get a preview of the Jets tonight with Hard Knocks. Are you gonna give it a peak?

I'm probably gonna give it a late peak. No bachelorette tonight at the Graham household. So you have the evening free. Oh, this is all news to me. Yeah. This is all news to me. We're not doing...

I didn't know that. There's no get together tonight at the Graham household for the bachelorette. We're pushing to next week. So you have time to watch. You have time to watch Hard Knocks if you want to.

Well, I guess I'll be watching now. Getting to the NFL. The NFL 100 list was announced in its entirety last night. And you won't be surprised to learn that Patrick Mahomes was named the best player in the league.

Justin Jefferson, right behind him at number two. However, it might surprise you just how blatantly the Carolina Panthers were disrespected on this list. And this list matters because it's not voted on by the media.

This isn't like anonymous reporters that are putting this thing together that might not watch everybody in the league. This is voted on by the players who know exactly who's great within the sport. And the players decided only one Carolina Panther belonged in the top 100. And that's Brian Burns. Brian Burns and that's it. No space for Jeremy Chen, none for Miles Sanders after the Super Bowl appearance of being one of the best backs in the league last year. No room for JC Horn, our guy at corner.

Send me that cash out, fam. Just Brian Burns. And he wasn't even ranked in the top 50, 54th. Which you might think, okay, come on.

Like that seems fair. You're in the top 100. You're close to the top 50. He was the 11th ranked rusher. That means they're telling you he's not even one of the 10 best rushers in the league. Despite the fact he was eighth in sacks last year and he missed games. Some of the guys in front of him, Cam Jordan and Khalil Mack. They didn't have as many sacks as Brian Burns. If it was 2017 or 18, sure those guys should be ahead of them. But Brian Burns is better than both those guys. It's absurd.

And the disrespect is everywhere, it feels like. Madden ratings. JC Horn, like a 79 or an 80. Send me that cash out, fam.

It's amazing. I don't even think he's one of the 10 highest ranked Panthers on Madden. Vegas odds. You have fatter odds than Atlanta and New Orleans? You have worse odds than those two?

Make that make sense. It does seem to me that all of this is going to change once the Panthers make it to the playoffs. I think they're going to.

I think they're gonna win the division. And when that happens, don't be surprised if the NFL 100 comes out next year and Icky's on the list. And Derrick Brown's on the list. And maybe even Bryce Young after his rookie years on the list.

And the other guys that I mentioned, Chen and Sanders. One Panther in the NFL 100. One.

And that guy's not even in the top 50. It blows me away. Let's go, baby.

What, kind of like this? Let's go, go! The Drive with Josh Grab.

One more time. Wyndham champ Lucas Glover will be our guest in about 15 minutes. Also, we heard from the new Duke basketball assistant coach earlier today. We'll get to that shortly as well. Meanwhile, over the last 24 hours, ACC ADs met on a call.

ACC university presidents met on a separate call, exploring the possibility of expanding and adding Stanford and Cal to the ACC. As soon as Pete Thamel reported that at about this time yesterday, there was a nuclear reaction of negativity towards it. Almost unanimous. This makes no sense. Why would you do that? Why even have the discussion? You're ruining college sports, hypocrites, and all the rest. But it turns out the university presidents are pretty bright that are on that call, as are the ADs. So while it likely still isn't the best idea for the ACC to add Stanford and Cal, that's our position.

And I doubt my mind's going to change on that. There is a case for it. And I feel like not enough people are laying out the case for why it's even worth having the discussion about Cal and Stanford for the ACC. This is why there is some value to it.

This is what they are talking about. Adding Cal and Stanford expands the ACC network's reach. It expands what they're able to do with the network.

Let's just think about this from a practical sense. You want the ACC network on in as many televisions, in as many homes as possible. You want that available to people. ESPN wants that. They want the widest distribution possible for their conference networks. The SEC network is limited to the Southeast. The ACC might feel under the ESPN umbrella, which is shared by the SEC network, there is some chance for some geography that ESPN hasn't fully capitalized yet with its conference networks. In other words, if you're on with Cal and Stanford, if you have Cal and Stanford in the league, then the ACC network is going to be readily available in the state of California, which is the most populous state in the country. And it's not close. It's by about 10 million people that California, it's the largest state that we've got. It's the most populous state that we have. And that's something the ACC could have that the SEC network doesn't.

We're on in California. Another thing the ACC might have that the SEC doesn't, another thing that the ACC could provide its partners at ESPN that the SEC can't, programming that could go from 10 a.m., nine or 10 a.m. in the morning with pregame coverage for a noon kickoff on a Saturday morning, all the way up until postgame wrap up at one, two o'clock in the morning, games being all day, expanded inventory, all the television slots from noon till one in the morning filled with games, with games, football, basketball, baseball, you name it. And on a related note, that could allow the ACC to get back to the negotiating table with ESPN. Now, there's some risk in doing so. You wanna be careful about that because if your deal doesn't go through 2036 and the grant of rights is amended at all, Florida State might try to swoop in or Clemson and try to leave the league.

So you wanna be careful with that. But who knows? If you can keep that grant of rights intact but just bump up the revenue number by adding these two schools, and who knows, maybe in a good faith effort of being a good partner to ESPN, they bump up your number as well, understanding how far away 2036 is. If adding Cal and Stanford does that for you, it's worth exploring.

It's worth looking at. And who knows? You might not have to give Cal and Stanford a full cut of the pie that all the other conference members receive.

That's not uncommon. Washington and Oregon aren't expected to get that in the Big Ten. So you can figure things out financially where it's not hurting the other schools and it makes sense for you as a conference to expand the network, to get back to the negotiating table with ESPN, and maybe, just maybe, adding these schools could give them leverage with Notre Dame, specifically Stanford, who Notre Dame has played every single year since 1988. The last 35 years, Stanford has played Notre Dame. And if the ACC has more control of Stanford's schedule, then they might have more leverage against Notre Dame.

Then there's the academic part of this, where both these are great academic schools and the ACC does identify itself as being an academic conference. So when you put all that together, yes, it's worth discussing. And having a notepad the way that I do a yellow, long-lived notepad of seeing the pros and cons and trying to weigh it. Those who say there are no pros to doing this, it's disingenuous.

It's insulting the intelligence of people that are pretty smart, that run these conferences, that run these universities, that run these athletic departments. There's a reason why they're meeting about this. There are, and the reason is, there are some pros. And these are the pros.

I don't think they outweigh the cons, to be clear, but that is the case for Cal and Stanford being added by the ACC. We've got Lucas Glover gonna join us in just a few minutes. How about we hear from new Duke assistant basketball coach, Emmanuel Dilby. If you don't know who that is, well, and you're also wondering, wait, wait, Duke just added an assistant basketball coach now, isn't it August? Well, the NBA, for teams that make deep runs to the playoffs, whenever there's coaching turnover and assistant coaching turnover, they don't make those hires until the middle of the summer. So, Emile Jefferson was pulled away by the Boston Celtics about a month ago.

Boston made a deep run to the Eastern Conference Finals. And they had some coaching turnover even before the season started. They decide, they bring Emile Jefferson in, which means Duke has to replace him on John Shire's staff. And that's why Emmanuel Dilby was announced just in the last couple of weeks. He's the second straight Shire hire that's not a Duke player, that wasn't a former Duke player. The other was Jay Lucas who they pulled away from Kentucky. And Jay Lucas' dad was John Lucas, the great Maryland player who's from Durham and loves Durham.

So there is a connection there. And there is a connection as well to Duke for Dilby. He worked many years at Northwestern under Coach K, assistant, longtime assistant and former Duke player, Chris Collins.

So there was a tie there. He went to Porter Mosher's program at Oklahoma for a couple of years before landing at Duke. But here he was on the Duke Basketball Podcast talking about not being a former Duke player and being on a staff with a lot of former Duke players, chief among them, John Shire.

It's not too many play staffs that I've been on where I've been the worst player on the staff. So this is gonna be a little bit new for me, which is hilarious. What are you laughing at, W.D.? Cause you're holding your Capri Sun little juice box up and you're proud of it. Here's the thing. There's an advantage when you watch the show on YouTube or on Twitter. There is. Because there are moments in the show that I forget that we're on video.

Yep. And what just happened was I picked this up and I looked and I saw myself on the camera drinking from a juice box and I immediately thought, oh shoot. This could become a meme. Someone could make fun of me. This isn't great. When prior to doing video and streaming the show video wise, I can freely drink a Capri Sun without anybody knowing. I kinda like the extra bonus they get.

Those days. A little icing on the cake. I thought it was gonna be a fruit punch flavor, but it's strawberry kiwi. Oh, I'm so disappointed for you. Poor guy. Ha! Ha! Ha!

It's just so good. The risks. Sometimes content creates itself. Of drinking Capri Suns on the radio is that sometimes you might, you know, it might go down the wrong way accidentally. I don't even know if I'm allowed to have this in the studio. Probably not, but. Yeah, and it's on in the hallway and stuff.

Someone's gonna come in here and tell me that I'm breaking the rules. I'm sorry. It's my bad. Getting back to Duke, though. It is kinda fitting that the first time we hear from Emanuel Dildey, it's on the Duke basketball pod that's hosted by Ryan Young. Because Ryan Young spent three years together with Emanuel Dildey at Northwestern. So they were together for three years and now he gets to coach them again.

So the staff that Jon Shire has now, you have three assistants that are on-floor assistants. Mike Schragge is not technically an on-floor assistant. He's a special assistant to the head coach. But when you look at it, if we were to include Schragge in that, because he does travel with the team, former Elon coach, Schragge wasn't a former Duke player, but worked as a director of basketball ops under Kay about 20 years ago. You've got Chris Carowell, who's a former player and a former Duke captain. You have Emanuel Dildey and you have Jay Lucas. Three out of the four are not former Duke players.

Three out of the four do not own a degree from Duke, which is just another example of how Jon Shire is leading things a little bit differently than Coach K decided to. He's his own man and he's running his own race to use a Hubert Davis expression. Two days ago, Lucas Glover won the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro.

Up next, he's gonna be a guest on this show. So we hope you stay with us here on a Tuesday Drive. The Drive with Josh Graham, only on WSJS. A couple of days removed from winning the Wyndham Championship, Lucas Glover now joins us on WSJS. For those who don't know by now, your home is not that far down the road in Greenville, South Carolina. You had more starts at Sedgefield than anybody in the field last week, and you even had a couple of uncles who were members at Sedgefield. How many courses on tour would you say you have a better understanding of than R. Donald Ross in Greensboro?

Oh, probably zero, for sure. Yeah, I remember playing there as a kid. Like you said, some uncles and cousins that played and hung out there when I'd go visit. That's where we'd go. That's where we'd play golf. That's where we'd go to the pool.

So yeah, I've been around that place quite a bit. I heard you saying after the round what you were just describing there as a kid. I think you said Sedgefield had the best pool you've ever seen. What were your earliest memories of Sedgefield and even Greensboro as well? Yeah, no, I just remember the pool because they had a high dive. I thought that was really cool. I was probably what, 10, 11 years old doing that. So, but no, I just remember growing up and being there, just having that old school feel as a golf course and the Donald Ross, the roll-offs and the upside down saucers for greens and just how much fun it was to play.

And it's still that way. You could have a PGA Tour event there. You can go play there in the random Wednesday afternoon men's game and probably have a ball. So it's just a great place and a great course to play. Is there a point where you have to pinch yourself given your familiarity with the course and all that history that not only are you playing it as a pro on Sunday, but you're at the top of the leaderboard too. Yeah, no, that was obviously where everybody wants to be on Sunday afternoon and then just executing down the stretch and so didn't really have a lot of time to think about where I was or my history there. It was more of a where do I want this ball to go. But afterwards reflecting on it, it was very cool that it happened there with family and so many friends and family there.

Lucas Glover, champion of the Wyndham Championship with us on WSJS. Before you knew that Russell Henley had bogeyed 18, you hit that tee shot left that fortunately struck a cart and took a bounce or two back towards the fairway. When you hook that shot off the tee on the last hole of a golf tournament, what is going through your mind? At that point, it was just hoping for a good lie. Just knew the rough over there was pretty bad because I was in there Thursday and had to lay it up.

So just hoping for a good lie. And when I got down there, it wasn't so bad. And I didn't know till after that it hit the cart. But after I realized I only had to make five, I felt like I was in a pretty good spot.

And you were. And then on the green, your kids got to see you win for the first time in person. I'm sure as a parent, there are many times that dad isn't very cool. But for all the parents who might be listening and can relate, how would you describe the feeling of getting to show them firsthand what you're capable of doing in that spot? Oh yeah, that was amazing. They weren't there for the deer a couple years back.

But to have them there this week was really cool. My daughter had really gotten into it the last six, eight months. And my son, he's still kind of whatever, but he knows enough. But my daughter's gotten really into it and involved. She still doesn't really care about playing or hitting balls or anything, but she likes to watch.

So very cool to have them there. Were you surprised how emotional she was in the moment? No, she's like me. She gets excited or gets nervous. Emotions just kind of pour out.

And that wasn't expected, but I wasn't shocked either. Yeah, Lucas Glover's with us here, Wyndham Champion. So here's the thing. There's the weather after you finish up too, and there's so much that's happening on Sunday. What did the rest of your Sunday night look like? How did you celebrate?

Not at all, really. Just had to try to get them home and fed and in bed and ready for the next morning. They were supposed to fly home and ended up having some flight trouble, but then I had to figure out how I was getting here to Memphis. So it was a lot of logistics, actually. And then yesterday just kind of chilled out and I'm at the course now getting ready to get to work.

Yeah, we'll let you get to work in a second, but getting back to your background real quickly. See, you're from Greenville, South Carolina, as is weight great Jay Haas, who I know you've connected with in the past. Before staying home at Clemson back in the 90s, was there any thought of playing for Jerry Haas in Winston-Salem? No, I knew Jay, obviously knew Jay, knew Jerry, but all the family ties at Clemson and they had a nice team.

So I was pretty ingrained there. But what's most important is being that, see, since he's from Georgia, we saw how Brian Harmon represented for the Dawgs after winning the Open Championship. Are you willing to be that guy on tour for Clemson? Like how closely do you follow Tiger football?

Probably too close. I'm pretty into it, actually. I've got, you know, still got friends on staff and I've known Coach Whinney and known him for years.

So yeah, I follow it very close and love it. It's probably outside of my family and playing golf what I'm most passionate about. Taking family off of the board Sunday or yesterday, what's the coolest call or text that you received after winning the Wyndham? Probably a text from Coach Whinney with my daughter's picture in the Tiger Paw shirt saying, got my new favorite Tiger, so that was pretty cool. She was impressed by that. That's outstanding. Well, we were all impressed by what you did on the course, Lucas. Congratulations. I know it meant a lot to you.

We could see it on your face and on your family's faces. Thanks for making the time and best of luck in the playoffs. All right, thanks, Josh. 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. It kind of blew me away that this song, Misery Business by Paramore, was released in 2007.

Over 15 years old. When it was released, a player in the state of North Carolina was just starting to emerge. At Davidson, some guy named Stephen Curry was just starting to figure things out. And fast forward 16 years, Paramore is performing in the home of the Golden State Warriors Chase Center in San Francisco.

And when they perform this massive hit that probably is their biggest hit, they decided they needed a little extra help. And it was Steph Curry who emerged on stage. And Steph, this is probably the most impressive thing he's ever done in that building, the home of the Warriors. He did himself a little singing.

Yeah. Steph Curry did a great job there. He did.

Also a huge Carolina Panthers fan since he's from Charlotte. I'd say that's slightly better than the Bryce Young clip that we had. We don't have the clip of him singing Love by Keisha Cole in front of the Panthers team a couple of weeks back at the talent show. But we do have video of one of his teammates, who's the real MVP, at Alabama a few years ago. Like this is prior to him starting.

He looks very young. Belting out Keisha Cole. It's not nearly as good as Steph.

But we'll put it side by side. Let's hear Bryce Young, the California kid who now plays in Charlotte, belting out some Keisha Cole. Oh my goodness. I love the commentary. Do we know who that is?

No idea. The part where yo mama's listening is pretty good. Excellent stuff there. So that's the California kid who now calls Charlotte home. Let's put that side by side, that performance, before we put our Simon Cowell American Idol hat on, which I guess is an outdated reference. Kind of like referring to stuff from 2007. Now let's hear the Charlotte kid, the North Carolina kid that now plays in California.

Couple of things too. Clearly Steph Curry is a lot better than Bryce is as a singer. But there is a very strong possibility that Steph Curry went through a legitimate emo phase.

Legitimate. Because one thing that's kind of a giveaway, and this is the part where it pays to be watching on video, on YouTube, Twitter, or Twitch. You can't see the video of Steph. And we're not going to replay, but when he went to sing, he did the one leg forward and then sing into the microphone. It's a very emo singing type pose. It's like what you would expect by Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, the way they belt out songs with Linkin Park. I have no doubt that he was a Linkin Park fan who also loved Paramore, at Davidson was probably super into Ocean Avenue, Yellow Card.

This is such a revelation. Some scars by Papa Roach. He was into that. Nickelback's where I draw the line. He probably wasn't into Nickelback.

That's probably, but everything short of that. Steph Curry, I'm willing to bet, was listening to Welcome to the Black Parade, Getting Ready for Games at Davidson circa 2006. Like if you go up to Steph Curry and say, oh, I was a small boy, my father, he probably would finish that sentence for you, probably finish the lyric. It's unbelievable. I couldn't believe that he was on a Paramore stage.

Like I never would have thought Steph. He's at a Paramore show singing on stage. Now, Darren Vaught's pointing out. Yeah, what did he have to say about this? The most Darren Vaught thing he could say. What? I would have liked it to be a more deep cut Paramore song. Stop. Song's more than 15 years old, man. Come on. Not to mention, it's just the principal.

He's on stage with Paramore. That's all we needed to know this. Yes. Oh, it's such a revelation. Speaking of things in the mid 2000s, since today is 8-8 and we just learned that WD has not seen Dodgeball. Well. We put four 2000s comedies that he hasn't seen up on a Twitter poll that you can vote on at Josh Graham Show and at WSJS radio. Dodgeball is one of them. That came out in 2004. Borat came out in 2006. Do you even know what that movie is? He's like an international something.

Is he a... Superbad came out in 2007. That's where my wife comes from. Oh. That's where that comes from. My wife, everybody's referencing Borat when they do that.

So when you hear that, that's what people are doing. Also in 2007, Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Those are the four 2000s comedies WD has not seen that I love. And if you have any input on it, 336-777-1600 and also on the Twitter page, you can vote on that. We'll see what Mike Houston thinks about it.

I know he loved Chappelle Show back in the day. So I bet you he's seen many of these movies and would have some input when he joins us a little later. Speaking of things that happen out in Northern California, Cal and Stanford being considered by the ACC for expansion. Even though there is a case for adding Cal and Stanford, the cons far outweigh the pros in doing so. And this will likely make the revenue problem worse. That's the biggest thing here. When you're talking about making decisions, what is Florida State?

What is their big problem? When they had their board of trustees meeting last week, what had they been talking about? We're not making enough revenue. So you think adding two schools, like let's just make it a math problem. $40 million a year, that's what you're roughly getting from the ACC and what you're gonna get from now through 2036. So in order to make more than that by adding a school, they need to bring more than $40 million of value. And if it was USC or maybe even UCLA, they might do that. I don't know, maybe Washington and Oregon, might be cutting it close. Cal and Stanford aren't bringing you $40 million a year. So you would be asking schools to take less in theory if the revenue is shared the way that it is right now.

That's two more mouths to feed in the same amount of revenue to share or a similar amount of revenue to share. The ACC, this would wreak of some of their past expansion moves. Like the ACC wasn't wrong to expand when they did, they had to, like they had to for survival and they made some good moves like Virginia Tech and Miami, those made sense. But then they also made some moves that weren't great like Boston College. Okay, they're not really adding much. Boston College.

They're just a placeholder. Pittsburgh's not really adding you a lot, even though they do have a lot of fans that like to hit me up from time to time. Shout out to Pitt, hail to Pitt. But the ACC, they needed to add, they added some of the wrong schools. And adding some of the wrong schools here, not the answer. Like adding UConn, that's not gonna do it. West Virginia, that's not gonna do it. Other West Coast schools, like the other thing is in adding Stanford and Cal, you're kind of last to the dog bowl here. There's no more room for expansion beyond those two, unless you plan to add Oregon State and Washington State, which is not gonna help you at all either. Like the Big 10 and the Big 12, they've already claimed a lot of that terrain and adding the schools that are valuable that could add something if any of them add anything. So I get it from a television perspective. I get, you wanna get back to the negotiating table and you wanna expand the network and have it in California.

I understand all that. But the cons that we've just described here and the message it would send if you were to do this to your other schools, I can't imagine that the ACC would do that. I think the cons, again, if you're putting together that a Long Cane Polly-like pros and cons list on the yellow notepad, have you seen a Long Cane Polly with Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston and Philip Seymour Hoffman?

Well... Yeah, of course. If you're doing that, what you're probably gonna find is there's a lot longer list on the right column of the cons. That isn't to say there aren't any pros.

It's a longer list of cons. It's The Drive with Josh Graham, WSJS. This is exciting. I am a graduate of East Carolina University. So we welcome in pirate head coach, Mike Houston, to the show who has turned around that program. When I went to school there, I befriended the youngest position coach on staff, or I guess he was a coordinator at that point, who was just trying to break into the business and prove himself, kind of like what I was trying to do in journalism.

The guy's name was Lincoln Riley, and he turned out to do a thing or two in Greenville, and they were ranked in the top 25, and he left in 2015. A year before that, they went to a bowl game, ranked in the top 25, putting up a ton of numbers. But then ECU did not go to a bowl game until our next guest had East Carolina bowl eligible in 2021, but they didn't play the game against BC and Annapolis. And then last year, they actually played in the bowl game, won eight games and won the bowl game. ECU's first bowl win, they've had in close to a decade. So Mike Houston's turned it around, just like he turned around other programs, turned around other programs in the past, too. But what's made turning around the Pirates most satisfying to you, given your past successes, which includes a national championship win at the FCS level at JMU?

How's everything going? Oh, man, things are great now that you're here, coach. Well, I'm excited to be here. And, you know, East Carolina is a great place, and I'm from the state of North Carolina originally. And I think, you know, probably the most rewarding piece of, you know, what we've been able to do here has been taking a once proud program that had, you know, fallen off and be able to return it to, you know, we're not quite back to where we wanna be, but we're getting there. But we're returning it to, you know, being a winning program, a bowl winning program, programs competing for conference championships, you know, that's our goal. And so, you know, getting the program back to that state and doing it here in my home state has been very rewarding. I've got a question that's completely unrelated to your schedule, no relation to your schedule at all, just completely random. You remember that time App State went up to Ann Arbor and beat Michigan?

No reason. Yep, we actually played App State the next week. I was at Lenoir Rhine, and we went to Boone the next week. So I was actually watching that game. We played on Thursday night. So I was watching that game at a local restaurant and watched the whole game there.

So yeah, I remember it well. How'd that game go? Well, it went pretty good for the Mountaineers.

So they had this guy named Armani Edwards, and, you know, they got an empty and ran quarterback counter and quarterback draw and quarterback trap, and Michigan still hadn't tackled him. Yeah, Panther fans getting PTSD thinking about Armani Edwards, but Mountaineer fans certainly beloved there. And you've got the Mountaineers on the schedule this year too. You're going up to Boone. Hope to be in attendance for that game.

Hope to see you then. But in all seriousness, when you're talking about motivation, nobody's giving you a chance against a team that's going to be ranked top five in the nation. But last I checked, that Michigan team was ranked top five in the nation too.

Is that going to be a card that you pull in terms of motivation for your group? Well, you know, the thing is, I think the poll came out today, they're ranked number two preseason behind Georgia. And so, you know, certainly a very talented team. They think it's the most talented team they've ever had at Michigan. Obviously a national championship contender. So, you know, a group that is, you know, a very good football program.

And, you know, the thing is, you know, we've played a lot of really good football programs over the years in a lot of different places I've been. And, you know, especially preseason, you know, you can sit here and you can come up with all this and that and the other, what people are supposed to do, but you got to line up on the field and go do it. And so that's what we're focused on is, you know, focused on getting our team ready to go up there and play at a very high level. It's a great opportunity for our program and for our institution.

And the kids are gonna be really, really excited and we'll go up there ready to go. ECU football coach Mike Houston with us here on WSJS. You pointed out at the top that you grew up in the state of North Carolina and pretty much your entire career, you've been in the ACC footprint, but that footprint during that time has grown to New York and to the state of Florida and other places. And now we see the reports after what we saw with the Pac-12 last week, that the ACC is looking at Cal and Stanford.

And in the last hour, we learned a team from your league. SMU is being part of the discussion now based on some of the reports. As somebody who, again, you know, probably grew up watching this league and following it, what's been your reaction to all the expansion talk that we're seeing?

Well, I mean, we all understand what it's about. It's about the TV money. You know, I think the piece that's a little disheartening for me is just, you know, like you said, growing up in the ACC and you had all the regional rivalries and they were awesome. And in the Big Ten, you had the regional rivalries. Same thing for the Pac-12. And it's just, you know, we're losing some of that.

And, you know, I don't know if it'll come back around. You know, this stuff is gonna completely change college football and I don't know what it's gonna look like conference-wise, you know, in three or four years. But at some point, surely somebody's gonna say, hey, you know, maybe it's not a good idea for our volleyball team to be traveling to California from North Carolina on a Tuesday night and then turning around and going, you know, up to Boston on Thursday.

And because the travel for some of these teams is just gonna be so extreme, your fans are not gonna travel. I mean, you're gonna lose the Pac stadiums where you have, you know, a huge contingency from the opponent's fan base. And I just, I don't know if everybody's gonna really like some of the unintended consequences of this realignment.

What do you think the solution is? Are you somebody that thinks about whether or not college football could just break away and become its own thing while all the other sports that you referred to, even including basketball, remains regional? Well, I mean, I think that's a decision for the, you know, the university presidents. And, you know, I do think that someone or some organization that is kind of a head of FBS football, you know, some kind of somebody that has, you know, some kind of foresight and, you know, really looking at all the things that relate to, you know, what you're dealing with at each school. And I just don't know what the solution exactly is because, you know, you gotta make the decision of just how important the money is and just how much are you willing to sacrifice for it. And that's, you know, it's not a decision that I can sit here and make for each institution. I mean, each institution has to decide what they wanna do for themselves.

But it's certainly a lot different than it was, you know, a decade ago. ECU coach Mike Houston is with us. Getting back into your background, we've covered before that your coaching career started in the Triad, right in our backyard. Our radio station actually just moved to Winston-Salem, not too far from Patterson Avenue. And, you know, we're out on Point Avenue now near Wake Forest Campus. You started at Fort Bush High School, your coaching career.

But we haven't really talked about, Mike, the 10 years you spent soon after that at T.C. Roberson High School, which is Roy Williams' alma mater. Have you ever had a Roy Williams run-in?

Oh, yeah. No, Coach Williams doesn't know each other pretty well. You know, he used to come back a good bit when I was coaching there. And then, you know, just over the years, we both have a place near each other down at the coast of South Carolina. So I see him down there quite a bit. And then just being in the state and coaching, you know, we've developed a relationship over the years. So we know each other pretty well. Is Mike Houston more interested in basketball than Roy Williams is in football? Maybe.

I don't know. You know, Coach, he came to our game when we played UNC when I was at James Madison. He came out on the field during warmups to say hello to me. So I know he enjoys watching the sport. But, you know, I grew up playing basketball, played high school basketball, and, you know, was a pretty avid ACC fan. And, you know, my oldest son is going to be a freshman in high school this year, and he plays football and basketball.

And, you know, so I'm still out there trying to keep my shot going in the driveway. But, you know, I'm still a pretty big basketball fan. So I don't know about Coach Williams, how much he follows, how closely he follows football.

The most important question I have for you here, Mike Houston's with us here on WSJS. I know you're a fan of comedy in the 2000s. We've talked Chappelle Show in the past.

Our producer, Will, here has seen none of the good movies. He probably has never even seen Chappelle Show. I've shown you some clips, but you haven't ever watched like an episode before, have you, Will?

Not an actual episode of it, no. Missing out, it's tough. I'm sorry that you had to hear that, Mike Houston. But, you know, every week we throw a movie at him that he needs to watch.

And this week, see, today's 8-8. So I made an ESPN 8 the Ocho joke and it went way over his head. He had no idea what I was talking about. He hadn't seen Dodgeball.

So we narrowed it down. Yes, we narrowed it down to four movies in the 2000s, comedies that we're trying to figure out along with the audience that he needs to watch. Dodgeball, Borat, Superbad, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall are the four movies. And you're leaving out Anchorman. You're leaving out Old School.

You're leaving out, well, there's another one that's around the tip of my tongue. Coach, you're gonna be proud of me. Coach, you're gonna be proud of me. You're gonna be proud of me. I've already made him watch those movies.

We've already covered that ground. He's bringing me along. We're trying to culture him the right way, but he hasn't seen Dodgeball, Borat, Superbad, or Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Do any of those movies mean anything to Mike Houston? Well, Dodgeball.

I mean, Vince Vaughn, I mean, I love that movie. So yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. If you could dodge a wrench, you could dodge a ball, Coach. Average Joe's, the average Joe's, you know, that's a great spot.

Globogym, that's right. If you could dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. It's very important stuff that we've learned today. Mike Houston, thanks for participating in our nonsense. And best of luck at Michigan. And I hope to see you out in the field in Boone a few weeks into the year. Absolutely, appreciate you guys. And you love the triad. Got a lot of players here from that area. So very important part of North Carolina to us. But you guys take care. See you in the fall. Go Pirates.