Hey Bear

This is The Drive with Josh Graham Podcast.

We're internet sensations, guys! Tune into The Drive weekday afternoons, 3 to 7 on WSJS. You are on a Tuesday Drive, WSJS News Talk Sports for the Triad, where today we are all Judge Smalls from Caddyshack staring at Florida State. Well, we're waiting.

Well? Today's the deadline to file for departure from the ACC, if FSU should choose, so we'll give you the latest on that shortly. However, before we delve into that, let's get to the Carolina Panthers. A lot of things went wrong against the New York Jets on Saturday.

Pretty obviously on the scoreboard they lost 27 to nothing, but it's preseason. Frank Reich's let that be known that he's willing to take one on the chin, to use his expression, if it means that teams don't know what he wants to do. That he can keep things vanilla and keep things under wraps until the regular season arrives and Carolina opens things up against the Atlanta Falcons. But there is one thing Frank Reich was particularly disappointed with and he expects to have fixed for this week against the New York Giants. And that's effort. You can't really coach effort.

You know all the cliches with that. It's kind of weird to talk about effort when you're talking about preseason games. But Frank Reich, in keeping things vanilla and not wanting to reveal much, wanted to see one thing against the Jets from his players. At least his starters. He wanted to see effort. You know you're going to get it from the fringe guys who are trying to make the roster, but the starters, that's what he wanted to see.

That's not what he saw. So this week against the Giants, effort is what he wants from his starters. He admitted to complacency from the group on Saturday night. This was Frank yesterday assessing the performance against the Jets after getting a chance to break down the tape. I'm going to err on the side of being a little bit more vanilla, but at the same time you want to have a little bit of success.

I mean you do want to have a little bit of success. So really obviously didn't anticipate Saturday going the way it did. You know we came out on Wednesday attacking, being relentless and really just had great energy on Wednesday in the joint practice and was really thought envisioning seeing that carry over to Saturday. And it didn't.

Energy synonymous with effort and vice versa. The energy and the effort was there for joint practices Wednesday and Thursday or I suppose Wednesday since Thursday got rained out about a week ago. But that would explain the offensive line getting worked by the Jets reserves. The Jets didn't start any of their regulars against the Panthers. It would explain why a good offensive line performed so poorly and why James Camp and the O-line coach wanted to have an offensive line closed door meeting after the game ended. They thought the effort was poor. And the reason why is because it's preseason.

Now there's some more context that's necessary to that. Some say it's preseason and these guys are entitled and all that. That's not what I'm saying here. More specifically, in the joint practice the starters played a ton of snaps. You play a ton of snaps. You're running your regular offense. You're running your regular defense. You're going all out.

You're getting a lot out of that joint practice. And then on Saturday against the Jets you go vanilla. You're just running. You're not running your regular stuff. As starters you're told you're going to play two maybe three series.

So naturally human nature just tells you this doesn't matter as much. We're not even running our regular stuff. We're only going to be out here for two or three series. The games don't really matter. The score doesn't really matter. Let's just lay up a little bit here.

And you know it's 93 degrees on a turf field. Let's make sure we don't get hurt. That's why you saw the effort that we did. And that's why you also shouldn't be surprised if Carolina this week goes all out.

And you're talking about a lopsided win against the New York Giants. Are the Giants going to care that much? Are they going to care that much about effort? Then the Carolina Panthers who just got called to the carpet for not having enough energy and enough effort? Probably not.

Now it won't really matter if they don't of course. It again is preseason. But if you see a lopsided Panthers win and you see a lot of effort and contributions from the starters. I think you'll know why. And also why it's way too soon to have any type of evaluation for Bryce Young.

He wasn't given much of a shot out there. And again he's not running the regular offense that he's going to be running when the season starts against the Atlanta Falcons in about a month. On Twitter at WSJS Radio if you want in on today's show. That's where we're streaming live on...

It's live action, Tracy! In addition to YouTube and Twitch, Will Dalton is the executive producer of this show. WD fresh off Oppenheimer last night for the second time.

Perhaps we could talk about that a little bit. We've got The Bachelorette at My Place tonight viewing party. Fantasy Suite week. It's big stuff.

Oh that's great. We've got Hard Knocks. We do. The Jets in Spartanburg. Maybe we'll find out what Garrett Wilson and Michael Carter got from Cookout after the Panthers-Jets game. And you also have Orioles Padres at 9.40 tonight too.

So it's going to be a wondrous night in the Graham household with WD in the house. We've talked about this before. There's no greater purgatory as a sports fan than rooting for a team with a bad owner. Just ask Washington football fans. You can get rid of the coach. You can trade the quarterback. You can't trade the owner.

You're stuck with that guy. Look at everything that had to happen to get Dan Schneider out of there. Conversely, it's such a tremendous luxury when you have a good owner running the show. And with the news today that the Carolina Hurricanes have extended their lease at PNC Arena 20 years to 2044.

Gotta make sure I get my math right here. Yeah, 2044. It's become clear. It's become clear that the Canes have hit the hockey owner lottery with Tom Dundon. He has turned the Canes.

Let's before we get to the lottery piece of this or pardon me, the lease piece of this, the news of the day. Let's just start with the hockey stuff. He's turned the Canes into a powerhouse.

How else would you describe it? The Canes have made the playoffs five consecutive years, won the division three straight times. And according to DraftKings, they are the betting favorites to win the Stanley Cup for next year.

Send me that cash out, family. He's turned the Canes into a powerhouse in the span of five years. And now he's transformed the arena experience at PNC.

It's something I remembered his first year as the owner. You step into the arena, the music's different. The way that they lay things out is different.

The type of products they have in the building is different. But now you look at this news about this hundreds of millions of dollar agreement that's been agreed to. Talking about $400 million here. What you see from it, is it $400 or $800 million?

I'll have to double check that. You're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. The arena is going to get a facelift. You're going to have the sportsbook that they're allowed to have starting next year whenever online betting becomes legal. You're also going to have the surrounding area to PNC Arena getting a facelift. Think about the battery in Atlanta. That's what they're looking to have in Raleigh. If you go to Carter-Finley Stadium, if you go to PNC Arena, you know what we're talking about. It's a lot of tailgate space there, a lot of parking, a lot of room. And they feel if you add a parking deck, if you add some restaurants, if you add some bars, if you add like a 3,000, 4,000 auxiliary music pavilion there, there's a chance that you can elevate that to be even bigger. And all of that happens only because of Tom Dundon.

What did you find? Within the 20 years, it'll get up to $800 million. $800 million. So they have commitment here. And on top of that, within three years of the completion, this is in the contract with the NHL, within three years of completion of this project, the Canes will get another All-Star game to Raleigh.

And within five years of completion, the Canes will get another Stadium Series game at Carter-Finley Stadium. This is the definition of good ownership. Do you make the organization better? Have you made it better?

Have you made it more marketable? Of course the Canes have. Have you grown?

This is the definition of growth. People were worried, is a new owner going to move the team from the Carolinas? No, Tom Dundon, that's never been a concern. And he's turned the Canes into a powerhouse on the ice. It took some grief early on from critics saying, oh, you're not paying this guy enough, and oh, you mistreated Chuck Caton and Jon Forslund. He's changed everything.

Just think about this. When he took over the team in 2018, in February, I believe, of 2018, the Canes had not been to the playoffs since 2009. People were talking about fear of relocation. You were worried about people showing up to the building because they hadn't been winning. And since then, he's made the playoffs every single year, his teams. Rob Brindobor was not the coach at that point. Tom Waddell was not running the hockey operations. They are because of Tom Dundon. So from a hockey perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a growth perspective, what we're seeing is the definition of good ownership. Tom Dundon, who took over, by the way, the same year as Mr. Concerts in Charlotte, David Tepper taking over the Carolina Panthers. Yeah, with concerts.

Yeah. But look who's done a better job owning their respective North Carolina organization, pro sports franchise, in their five years as ownership. Tom Dundon, a winner, hands down. To help us make sense of the college football world, our friend Ryan McGee from ESPN joins the show. You can't not think of Myrtle Beach when you hear Alabama playing. I'm headed to Myrtle Beach this weekend with the wife, our annual getaway right before football season starts, even though we have preseason games and all the like. McGee knows Myrtle Beach pretty well. You also know him from Marty and McGee on SEC Network.

His roots are in the state of North Carolina, though. So I figure rather than going down the Myrtle Beach path, we start with the ACC. As somebody who cares a lot about the league, Ryan, what bothered you more in the last couple of weeks, the ACC's considerations of adding Cal and Stanford and it really coming a vote shy from actually happening or all this public blustering we've seen from the Seminoles in Tallahassee?

Well, so first of all, thank you. Our talking season specials on SEC Network started last night, and Nick Saban actually talked to me about the fact that growing up in West Virginia, Myrtle Beach was like the French Riviera for everyone in Myrtle Beach and how he and his wife, Ms. Terry, used to go shagging at Studebakers. There you go. It always comes back to Myrtle Beach. To the ACC, so we've learned whenever there's conference realignment and it's happening now, you know, every handful of years, and I think about the last real big one was, what, 2010, 2011, prior to what we're doing now. And that was when we thought that Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, there was going to be like a five or 16 breakaway from the Big 12 to the Pac-12.

And people forget about that now. But I remember having a conversation, I wrote a story for ESPN Magazine about it, and I went back and read that story just a couple days ago, and I remember reporting the story and talking to Hall of Fame basketball coaches, it was actually in the basketball preview issue of the magazine, and how their feelings were hurt because I'm talking about Bill Self and Rick Pitino and guys that are in the Hall of Fame, and they could not believe that no one ever bothered to ask them what they thought. Like Kansas was considering joining the Pac-12 and no one ever asked Bill Self if he liked the idea. And the reason is because football runs everything and basketball doesn't.

And I think about that from then in relation to now because what happens when this conference realignment deal happens is people find out that maybe they aren't as big a deal as they thought they were. Florida State's phone never rang. No one ever called Florida State. No one ever certainly ever called and said, come join us, because if they had, they would have joined them.

They would have figured it out and they would have joined them. And so what happens is people get their feelings hurt because the phone doesn't ring and it's ringing for other people. Why in the hell are they calling so and so and so and so? Why are they not calling us? We're a big deal.

Maybe you're not a big deal. The SEC doesn't need Florida State because they already have a school in the state of Florida, just like the SEC doesn't need four schools in North Carolina. They take one because now they got the state. They don't want closer because they only have the University of South Carolina. So that's kind of what's happening right now is people are finding out that, you know, maybe they aren't as big a deal as they thought they were or maybe they don't have as much money as they thought they did. And, you know, so Florida State is yelling and screaming and no one at the SEC is calling and no one from the Big 12 is calling and no one from the Pac-12 is calling and no one from the Big 10 is calling and everyone from the ACC is ignoring you. You get your feelings hurt.

And that's kind of what's happening with those guys right now. And then for the other side of it, hilarious to me that everybody is constantly talking about this school is a great academic fit and how academics matter. You don't have a place for Cal and Stanford, right? No one has a place for Cal, for Cal Berkeley and Stanford. I think Stanford is the greatest university on the face of the planet.

I do. Statistically, it's the most difficult university to get into on planet Earth and everybody's always crawling about academics and yet no one seems to have a place for Cal Berkeley and Stanford University. And Notre Dame is saying exactly what you're saying and they're wondering what can be done to help those schools. We got to get them to join a conference and Notre Dame meanwhile is going to pass on that. Of course they are.

Of course they are. Why would they join a conference? They will eventually because eventually the conference money is going to be more than the money they can make on their own. But we haven't reached that point yet. And we might not ever because the checks are not going to be as big going forward as they are now.

Simple as that. You know, it's no secret Walt Disney Company is, you know, got financial stuff going on and ESPN obviously can't write as big a checks as they would want to. You know, they've got to pick and choose what TV contracts they want to do. Fox does not have a bottomless pit of money. Everyone thinks that they do. But the reality is they have shot their shot now with the Big Ten.

That's what they're doing. And so the reality, and CBS is in on that, the reality is that the TV money, it reminds me of NASCAR. I go back to NASCAR all the time with college sports. The financial model of NASCAR fell apart when the recession happened at the end of the 2010. So like 2008, 2009, whatever it was. The housing crisis.

Right. The reason was because the business model at NASCAR was totally based on, well, you know what, Anheuser-Busch will write us a $20 million check this year because last year they wrote an $18 million check and ten years ago they wrote a $4 million check. It was all based on projections of we can keep increasing the amount of money that we're asking for from sponsors. When the sponsorship money dried up, no one in NASCAR knew how to run a business. They didn't know how to sell tickets. They didn't know how to sell sponsorship.

The phone had just been ringing for 20 years. And it's like that with college sports. The entire business model is based on, well, you know, Fox is going to write a check or Amazon is going to write a check. The Pac-12's entire future was tied up in this Silicon Valley money they were supposed to get.

And then when they finally received an offer and they took it to their membership, the membership left because the offer was bad. And so there's going to have to be a shift in the way that you do your spreadsheets at these conferences going forward. Not for the big 10 in the SEC. They're set for a long time because of these contracts. But it's going to be really, really, really interesting going forward. But yeah, you can't find a place for Cal and Stanford.

And then you tell me the academics matter, then, you know, you're lying to me. So is there a way, though, McGee, that the fact that the ACC's contract runs through 2036, that this can turn back around? Because originally it was good because the league was protected because of the grant of rights that locks in Florida State. And then it was viewed to be bad because of the revenue and what we're seeing with the numbers with the SEC and the big 10. Are you saying that eventually with the money pit being established that, hey, there isn't endless amounts of money, that number's not going to just continue to climb, that this could come back around and being a good deal for the ACC? Yeah, there's got to be a market adjustment at some point.

There has to be. If things stay the way they stay. Now, if we have a big super conference breakaway and we have a college football league that starts on its own, which is probably going to happen, I mean, again, I go back to that story I wrote for USB in the magazine in 2010.

It's in that story. Roy Cramer said it to me then, the man who created the modern conference with the SEC. He said this is all headed to a super conference one day. So if it goes to that, then all bets are off, everybody starts over.

But yeah, I think there will be a market adjustment at some point. And I still, I understand people's frustration in the ACC, but the reality is the deal they did when they did it, that John Swofford did when he did it, was what they had to do to survive. It's what they had to do.

And at the end of the day, all of this is about survival, all of it. You know, Washington getting on a plane and flying across the country to play a volleyball game. That's about survival of your university athletic department. And so that's what the ACC did.

You know, let's get in the time machine and go back to when Maryland left, right? You're not going to let that happen again. You've got to hold it together. Let's go back in the time machine to Pinehurst when all the questions that John Swofford from the great Carlton Tutor at the time were, can you survive a raid from the Big East? You have to do what you have to do to survive. And so they did what they had to do at the time.

And retroactively trying to act like that was a bad deal drives me crazy. Ryan McGee's with us from ESPN. Marty McGee, the SEC Network, you know McGee. You made the NASCAR analogy with college football years ago with us before it became a popular comp when it comes to sports, namely in the South veering away from their roots. But as somebody who loves those two sports, college football and NASCAR, it feels like more than any other. How close is college football to reaching NASCAR territory of concern?

How far is far enough to turn even the likes of Ryan McGee off of it? Well, you know, transfer portal and NIL and even conference realignment, you know, those are all administrative decisions. But when you start altering the game on Saturday afternoons, that's when you're making the mistake. So if suddenly because of conference expansion and realignment, you can no longer play Tennessee, Alabama on the third Saturday in October, that is a fundamental change in the way the game is played. And when you start screwing with fan habits, right? And we've seen it in ACC basketball, you know, when the priority shifts away from, I mean, and I understand I'm talking to the king of defending Greensboro, right?

Sure. And reality is that when you start playing conference tournaments in Brooklyn and no one in Brooklyn cares, you've made a fundamental shift in who you are. And so when college football starts stepping into, you know, we might not be playing Auburn, Georgia every year, or we might not, you know, USC and Stanford aren't going to play anymore.

And the Rose Bowl isn't going to be the East versus the West anymore. When you start screwing with those things, that's when you get into trouble. Because I never blame NASCAR for trying new markets and trying a new car. But when you really start messing with the fabric of what I'm sending out and watching on Saturday, and when my Saturdays start looking like Sundays, why am I watching on Saturday?

Right. And so I just what you've had going for you for one hundred and fifty four years college football is you're not the NFL. And so every decision that you make that makes you look more and more like the NFL, it starts taking you more and more away from the traditions and the games and the rivalries that got you there. That's when you start stepping into minefields.

And so that's where they got to be careful. You got to pick up Ryan McGee's minor league baseball book. This show helped inspire.

There are only a few weeks left in the minor league baseball season. So, McGee, I just need to know, what's the story you've received the most feedback on from your minor league baseball book? What story was it? Well, it opens with Captain Dynamite blowing himself up at the ballpark.

That's the opening scene in the book. And so I've been shocked at how many people have reached out to me and said, oh, yeah, I saw him do that. You know, at Atlanta Dragway in 1978, I saw him do that prior to a Mets Padres game in 1982. And people sent me pictures and videos of Captain Dynamite blowing himself up at minor league games all over the country, all the way back into the 1960s. And then Lady Dynamite, you know, the spangly 1990s, you know, thong wearing Evil Knievel bathing suit wearing deal. People have sent me a ton of pictures of Lady Dynamite who kind of picked up the stick of Dynamite and ran with it after that. So probably Captain Dynamite and then the tarp. You know, I tell a couple of stories in the book about the time the tarp almost swallowed me up and then the time the tarp threw me up in the air. I flew up in the air and the amount of people that have reached out to me saying the same thing happened to them, you know, pulling the tarp for the Peoria. You're not alone.

You're not alone. Yeah. Yeah.

And the videos, people send all these YouTube videos. There was a deal at the Cincinnati Reds game a couple weeks ago where the guy disappeared under the tarp live on TV. And and the number of people who sent that clip to me going, see, you weren't lying. I'm like, yeah. So, yeah, it's near death experiences at the ballpark apparently are very relatable.

Ryan McGee, king of relatability from Marty McGee, SEC Network, ESPN dot com read the piece he wrote last week about the Pac-12's demise and really just an ode to the Pac-12 and read also the stuff he's been doing with NASCAR 75 to pretty neat stuff that you have in the cooker McGee. It's good to hear your voice. Thanks for making the time for us today.

Anytime, brother. Ready. Set.

Forge. This is the drive with Josh Graham. If FSU actually has a plan to exit the ACC, as they've claimed to have, today's their deadline to tell us to quote FSU as one of their mantras five years ago. But as expected, they're not going anywhere.

They're not actually going to do it. The nulls, they're all talk and they're going to remain in the ACC. Today's the deadline. Oh, you have all these plans. And all this bluster two weeks ago, the Board of Trustees meeting, it's not a matter of if we leave, it's when we leave. We need more from the ACC. We have so many options, options for days.

We make it rain with options where we could potentially go. Shman of rights. Shman of rights. Nothing. We're not worried about that. That's not going to get in our way. To quote the Board of Trustees chair, that's not a document that's going to prevent us from being able to do what we're going to do.

Got it. And then in the spring, they had all that talk too. And what is it going to amount to? The deadline coming and going today, which means they're locked into the ACC for at least the next two years. The reality is, and it's always been this, they have no way out.

They have no way out. You have committed your grant of rights, which means your rights to get a television deal to the ACC to negotiate. And the ACC years ago negotiated with ESPN a deal that goes through 2036 that everybody in the conference is locked into.

Everybody. And you sign that away. So unless you plan to pay ESPN half a billion dollars and the ACC combined when you factor in the $120 million exit fee to leave the conference, they just don't have that. They keep saying we're not afraid of the grant of rights.

But to this point, nobody, and I mean nobody, has given us an explanation, a legal argument for how they're going to get from underneath the grant of rights. And this isn't just a Florida State ACC thing. You ever sit there and wonder why USC and UCLA agreed to leave the Pac-12 last summer, but they're not going to join until a year from now? Or Texas and Oklahoma two summers ago agreeing to join the SEC, but they're not going to join until next year. And even then, they had to pay an exorbitant amount of money to make sure it wasn't 2025 and instead was 2024. It's because of television contracts.

It's because of grant of rights. These conferences, not even the big bad SEC and the Big Ten, want to mess with these things. So Florida State isn't going to be able to mess with it either. If the SEC can't figure it out, or the Big Ten, I have little faith that FSU is going to figure it out. And then you've got the bigger problem, and this is the one that Florida State fans hate. They don't like this, but it's the truth.

They don't have a place to go. Who wants Florida State? You would say the SEC, but the SEC, like the ACC, is owned by ESPN. They are. When you pay each school in a conference 40, 50 million dollars a year, you own that conference.

You do. And since the SEC network and the ACC network are both run by ESPN, they don't want to rock the boat. They don't want to renegotiate these contracts. They don't want Florida State to jump from one property to another. Also, if it was voted on by schools in the SEC, Florida State, they want to join the SEC.

Let's put it up to a vote. Why would Florida want Florida State in the SEC? You already got the state of Florida in there. Oh, we want you to recruit our players, the players that we want to recruit in our footprint?

Cool. You think Alabama's for that regionally? You think Georgia's for that regionally? Of course not. Auburn?

No. So they won't get the votes. For the same reason my beloved East Carolina Pirates will never join the ACC because the schools in the state of North Carolina would never let that happen. Why would they? You're not going to have the schools in the SEC do so. So you need to root for the Big Ten to bring you in. But does Fox really want to start a holy war with ESPN by poaching FSU and trying to get them out of their television agreement with the grain of rights just for them to join the Big Ten?

Small chance. So this has not changed. We are saying the same things we've been saying for over a year now.

It has not changed because to this point nobody has nixed it. See, we watched Oppenheimer last night again and movies about science. And one of the core principles of the scientific method is that, you know, something is, nothing's ever settled science. It's just this theory has been tested time and time again and nobody's been able to break the test. Nobody's been able to prove something false. So we're going to keep saying these things about FSU and the grain of rights and the ACC and them trying to break away and go somewhere else until somebody can prove it false, whether it be the grain of rights or having a place to go.

That's where it stands. Before we get to Hayes Permar, W.D., what did you notice in your second viewing of Oppenheimer that you didn't notice your first time? And we're not in the business of spoiling movies here that had just come out in the last month. I mean, I didn't notice a ton that I didn't notice the first time, but you pointed out something to me that I had heard a lot of people talking about, and that was the significance of like the raindrops. Yeah.

First shot of the movie, there are some raindrops and at the end and during the movie at different points. And he might be it might have some symmetry with what he's trying to create that also falls out of the sky. It's just three hours worth of brain juice. That's all it is. It's a it's a rewarding rewatch. This might be the best movie. It's going to end up being one of the best movies of the decade like that. That type of good could win best picture.

But then again, they're going to have some competition for that. There's a Scorsese movie with DiCaprio and De Niro coming out later this year. There's, you know, a, gosh, who's the director?

Ridley Scott doing a walking Phoenix Napoleon movie that's coming out this year. But I do think this might be a really hot take. It might be the best Nolan movie.

It might be that. You know what? Let me do my five through one really quickly off the top of my head. The best Christopher Nolan movies.

Number five. We're going to go. I'm split between Memento and Inception here. Actually, you know, Dunkirk. Yeah, we'll go Dunkirk here. Dunkirk. Great war movie. Only 100 minutes long. It goes into and not a lot of character, you know, character arcs in it. But that's kind of the port point, a very ambitious movie. That's really good.

Number four. This is where we'll go with Inception. Every time I watch it, I like it less. But it's DiCaprio. It's very fun movie. I love Joseph Gordon Levitt. And, you know, it is a lot of fun. It's it's a very, very fun movie. It's a guy's movie, but a fun one. Number three, The Prestige. This might be his most rewatchable movie.

It's not crazy long. And, you know, you're talking about a nice twist that's in this movie. It's magic. It's great acting. You're talking about Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine. I'm Michael Caine. Terrible Michael Caine impression. But The Prestige, that's top three for me.

Number two. This is where I put The Dark Knight. And I love The Dark Knight. I really do. One of my favorite movies. But the more and more I think about it, I think it's singular.

My love. I think it's the Joker performance. It's not really about all the other elements surrounding it. And plus the last hour of the movie, every time I rewatch it, I like it less with the Harvey Dent stuff and the two face angle.

You probably could tighten that up a little bit. So the more and more I think about it, I think Dark Knight's my second favorite Nolan movie. Number one.

I think it's Oppenheimer. I do. You might think that this is me doing prisoner of the moment type stuff. I rewatched it thinking about these things last night. And it's just a more original movie. More original than a Batman IP movie.

As good as it was. The performances are fantastic. The historical element, the existential questions, the debates that it brings up, the performances, the cast. There are some surprises in there that I won't spoil right now with performances that are in this movie. But Oppenheimer, I think, is my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. How did you describe Social Network as far as its relevance?

What did you call it? I think that probably is the best movie of the last decade. Do you think Oppenheimer will be that for this one? That'll depend on the next eight years. We're very early on in this decade. But in the 2010s, Social Network is up there. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the end of the decade. That's one that's up there.

There are several movies that I throw into that, but Social Network might be the very best of the bunch. What's the theme for Skips or Plays with Hayes this week? Back to school. Oh yeah, because high school football is this week. Kids are going back to school.

College is getting ready to start back up. We'll do that when we play Skips or Plays with our guy Hayes Permar next. The Drive with Josh Graham, only on WSJS. There is some synergy where Hayes Permar is joining the show now, Sports Channel 8.

You seem to really like this bump that WD is playing. We can just do this the whole time if you want. A dance break for Permar? Break it down.

Break it down. Who is this? Peter Gabriel? Michael Jackson? That's a Michael Jackson song you don't know.

And Paul McCartney. So, in 2018 Hayes, in February, Tom Dundon bought the Carolina Hurricanes. In June of that year, David Tepper bought the Carolina Panthers. What we've seen over the last five years is what good ownership looks like and what bad ownership can look like.

Or mediocre ownership or meddlesome ownership in David Tepper's case. And with the Carolina Hurricanes, whether it be right now, the Canes, the odds-on favorite to win the Stanley Cup according to DraftKings for next year. And this lease agreement that they just lined up and all the stuff that's going to be face-lifted at PNC Arena and in front of it as well.

Tom Dundon, the Canes hit the hockey owner lottery with him. But with the news of the day, since you've called the rally home forever, what's the most exciting piece of the news today? Most exciting is tough. I mean, some people will say that the upgrades are going to include a gambling lounge. You know, which I guess I don't get as excited about because if gambling is coming, as I understand it, it's going to be pretty easy to access. So it's not like having the lounge will make it.

If that were the only casino in a 60-mile radius, that'd be kind of cool to go there. But I don't think that's going to be necessarily the case. To me, honestly, it's the bigger picture. It's the step back macro of, and Sports Channel 8 alluded to this with a joke, that the lease was signed for 20 years. So the joke was NHL media says, Canes set to leave in 2044. Right. And so that to me, we are getting pretty close to moving past the Canes aren't going to make it here. Right. Like everyone here thinks we'd move well past it.

But I mean, in general, we're like nobody ever brings that up again type thing because it's twofold. One, I've come to realize sports franchises have to survive a generation basically to have any chance of getting that foothold. Right. Like think Atlanta Thrashers. How long did they make it?

Whatever it was. But once you've been in the market for 25 years and presumably you've had to do some successful things to exist in that market for the Canes, it really helped to go to the Stanley Cup finals really early. Well, there's a year three or four here in North Carolina that supercharge things. Then when you won one five years later and then obviously as much as the the 10 year drought was terrible. When you come out of that and you're like, we had a 10 year playoff drought and we didn't move.

We're probably not moving right now. And then obviously the next little bit looks rosy and successful. But franchises don't think in terms of we're not going anywhere because Rod Brind'Amour is here, like Green Bay and Pittsburgh think that Steelers and the Packers think we're not going anywhere ever because we're built on tradition. Right. So the right in the more years is going to be a few more years. But this 20 year deal is almost a reminder of you now have 25 year olds in North Carolina who are out of college buying homes. Maybe factoring in a season ticket package. And to those people, the Carolina Hurricanes have existed as long as the Boston Bruins have in Boston to these people, because they've only been allowed 25 years.

Right. They don't really see the difference the way I don't see the difference between the Chicago Bears or the San Francisco 49ers, like one as a much deeper history. But to me, they were both just teams that have been here in my lifetime.

So to me, I know I've gone long. The bigger story is this solidifies that the Canes and North Carolina are a forever thing and not something that's going to go to the whims of NHL fans in the market. And I'll go a step further. That's where the economic, the industrial piece of this outside of PNC Arena is an important piece. When you talk about how a hockey team in a franchise can support local business and local business can help support a franchise in turn. When you have restaurants, when you have bars, when you have stuff a la like the battery in Atlanta that Tom Dundon wants to build around the arena, too. That stuff is only going to help the bottom line as well, I'd imagine.

Sure. And that's one where we've seen these plans before. We've heard this talked about when the arena was built, this was supposed to happen. And then there was another little push to make it happen. Like, yes, it's great to see Tom Dundon investing his money and the Carolina Hurricanes investing their money on it.

There's still a little bit of the and I'll be honest, I didn't get into all the details. I didn't watch the press conference. Have we addressed the parking lot situation? They're going to do a parking deck, but it's only going to be two floors above ground and there's going to be one beneath ground. There's going to be a parking deck and NC State's tailgate lots are going to be unaffected. Carter-Finley Stadium. So they say, so they say, have you ever been to Glendale where they have the football arena, but then right next door is a small arena where the hockey team did play? The Coyotes are obviously a disaster now. Have you ever been to that little setup?

No. The cool thing about it is there is nothing around there. This was clearly a space, almost like a blown up version of PNC when it's like we put it out there in a cow pasture. Glendale was nothing but like there's no other buildings around.

It's all just two story apartments as far as the eye could see. But they built the arena and then it almost looks fake, especially when it's not a game day and there's nobody there. It looks like almost like, have you seen the Barbie movie? It looks like a Barbie set, like somebody supersized a Fisher Price. Like here's a restaurant, here's a bar, here's another restaurant, here's a Mexican restaurant, here's an Italian restaurant, all in this little cove neatly arranged to go perfectly with the arena.

And it looks a little bit cheesy until it's game day. And then they're like, that's the perfect what we want. That's all those places will be filled. And it's all the places that people can go before and after. And that's what we're talking about.

So you don't need a ton of space to do it, but it is going to involve giving up a little bit of parking space. You can't say we're going to build restaurants around the arena and then have them up on Blue Ridge Road. You know what I mean? Haze Permar with us here. I do know what you mean from Sports Channel 8. WD has pulled some songs for skips or plays with Haze. So how about we get to those now? Haze Permar is somewhat of a Renaissance man, an expert in the finer things, but he hangs his hat on music.

Love says God and he's no friend of Satan. Feels like 06 getting busy with his sticks. Been watching Big Mike and Lil Trinket trip.

I just need a Zion and someone he can dunk on. Today Haze will decide if this music is smash or trash, blows or blows. It's time for skips or plays with Haze. Three songs and it's back to school edition. It's about that time. High school football starts this week.

College football. Week zero is next week. So I'm interested to see. I know schools out for summer type songs, but back to school songs? Let's see what WD comes up with.

What's the first song? I hope we get Adam Sandler from Billy Madison singing back to school, back to school at the bus stop. But I'm not holding my breath. We'll see.

Yeah, don't hold your breath, Haze. For the kid that just resents the fact that it's time to go back to school, we're going to go with I'm Just a Kid by Simple Plan. I love this Simple Plan song. It's good, right? It's catchy.

I'll play it. I feel like I've heard this. Don't they do it a little more at the end when it's almost like a round? I'm just a kid, I'm just a kid, I'm just a kid. You can tell these guys are influenced by Green Day. They kind of try and sing like them a little bit, you know? But I'll play this.

I wouldn't say this. It's probably in a band I would buy a ticket to a concert to, but I'll buy a play on this song. I'm trying to think what my favorite Simple Plan song is. I think is, what's that song? Perfect? Is that how it goes? I'm not sure. Does that band sing 1984 too?

It's the one, cause we lost it all, nothing lasts forever. Oh, that's him? Yeah, that's them.

I'm sorry I can't be perfect. That's really bad singing. I don't know this band, but they sound like the people that sing that. She's still stuck in 19, 19, 1985. That's bowling for Supes 1985. Oh, sorry.

It sounds like them. It really does, yeah. That was a special period of time. What's next? So this one is for the, we all had that teacher, where it just did it for us. So we're gonna go Hot for Teacher by Van Halen. We all had that teacher? Who was your teacher, W.D.?

Don't worry about it. No, what's her name? Mrs. Baines, first grade. Shout out to Mrs. Baines.

I had a Mrs. Baines too, but she was like 75. First grade. You can't go first grade. First grade? If the teacher you're talking about isn't high school, then get out of here.

I didn't have many. First grader can have a, no, no, no. You gotta have a Mrs. Crowder.

That's the best. The best is the rumor, like nowadays, I don't want to know, it's icky, right? First of all, there's a double standard here that we need to correct. Like when male teachers get dealt with female students, we treat it totally different from female teachers and male students. And I'm down for like making jokes.

It might be a boy's cool, but when it comes down to it, those should be treated the same. And I don't see how anybody says different. There's a South Park episode about this. However, it was almost better when we didn't get confirmation on things to happen because it was just, it was better to be like, well, I heard Dave and Mrs. Crowder. And you never really know. You don't want to know for sure it happened and you don't want to know for sure it didn't.

You don't want to be able to entertain the possibility of like, I don't know, man, I heard it did. Like that's the classic urban legend of like, I heard that dude and that teacher. And I will say we have to at least recognize, I know Will Dalton gets schooled in his movie knowledge. But we've got to, we know what movie that movie conjures up an image for, right? Does Will Dalton know Varsity Blues? No, there's no chance he knows what Varsity Blues is. What movie, what movie, what sports movie is Varsity Blues, W.D.?

It's a football. Hey! Let's go! There is literally a scene with this song, with the situation that you were describing exactly. And it's probably, I mean, it's a great scene. In fact, I'd say a tan! I'd give that scene a tan! Give it a tan. All right.

That's definitely a play that it sounds like. One more! What's the last going to school song? What'd you have for a moment? I honestly don't really love that song, but it's too late now. We'll get a play for all the conversation.

All the drops being played. We all had that first day of school crush. I don't know. I don't know if I did. Well, Taylor Swift, we're going with that on this one. You belong with me. It's for you, Josh. Wait, how do we not? What?

There's another song that you could have played that would have been better than this. You're on the phone. It's a girl thing. She's upset. She's going off about something that she said. She doesn't get your humor like I do. What day is it, Permar?

What day is it? No, I don't know. This is a skip. And for a couple reasons. One, we don't need extraneous Taylor Swift in this show.

I'm not hating, but I guarantee you, Josh brings it up enough. Two, you've bastardized the category. You're ramming this into a back-to-school song?

Absolutely not. Hot for teacher, I'll take. No, you could have gone another brick in the wall, Pink Floyd. School days, Chuck Berry. Off to school. The teachers are teaching the gold.

He just stretched it. Calling this a first day of school song. I don't like it.

Now, I will admit. All the kids on the first day of school will be talking about the Taylor Swift concert that they went to this summer because everybody did. Except if you're in North Carolina because David Tepper wasn't able to get a Taylor Swift concert. Have you asked him about that yet?

Mr. Concerts himself. No, I have not asked you, David Tepper. You're on the hook. I had asked Will Kunkel at Fox Charlotte to ask him about it, but now Kunkel's moving to Texas. So we're never getting him to ask. It's on you, Josh Graham, to ask Tepper why we failed.

You need to get him on the show and set it up and make him think you're talking about a first round draft pick or something. They're with a talent out there and you guys missed completely. And it's bad. They announced extended dates two weeks ago and we didn't even make the second cut.

You know, with concerts. Pretty bad. Alright, Permar. It's always good to see you and we'll talk to you next week. Same to you. Have a good one boys. We'll circle back to the Panthers in just a bit. We have tickets to go see a couple of shows all in one prize package.

Diamond Rio, Morris Day and the Time both coming to Winston-Salem at the fairgrounds. But today we're doing something special, something we have not done in a very long time. And that is debut a new segment.

Months in the making, years in the making, possibly where constantly. I don't know if we've complained, but we've pointed out that a lot of our Take it to the House, Five Things at Five, Big Four type of stories. These every man stories, if you will, that are a bit off the wall have had a common theme. And that common theme is bears. You hear that, Ed? We're talking about bears putting the entire station in danger now. W.D.

should get that reference, but he doesn't. The. This had us thinking, why not just create a standalone segment for our bear stories? Hey Bear is the name of that segment.

So let's get to it now. I mean, the bare necessities. That's why a bear can rest at ease with just the bare necessities of life. Hey Bear! And we're working things out here just on the fly of how this is supposed to go.

I feel like W.D. every time we deliver one of these stories, you cap it with the name of this segment, which is what again? Hey, Bear.

Oh, I was looking for the one where everybody has their hands up together. We got several folks in the office involved in that, but that might be too much to ask for in the moment. The the premise of this is we're going to share some bear stories because we have way too many of them in front of us here. And it feels like it just needs its own segment.

And I'll start with an example here. Hey Bear! Right on cue. A Colorado couple's wedding started with a monsoon. You ever hear how couples say, oh, it's good luck when it rains on your wedding? No, I haven't heard that. Really?

No. Well, weddings are all that and a bag of chips. They are. Monsoons. I believe brides are told that just to make them feel good about the fact that it's raining on a day that they've been praying for for, you know, a year, a year and a half.

Maybe looking forward to their entire lives. But if it rains on your wedding day, that's good luck. Well, this was a monsoon in Colorado and it ended with an uninvited guest, a bear raiding the dessert table. So photos were shared in Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, when monsoon rains fell right after or I guess before they exchanged vows. They had to halt the ceremony for the second.

Guests were getting soaked. And while that happened, a bear went to the reception area, started eating all the desserts and even messed up the wedding cake. Which is tough. What what saying do you have about good luck for bears raiding your wedding cake? Oh, that just means that your marriage is going to be fantastic.

See, I think that might mean it's not meant to be. If you got a monsoon, it's called sarcasm. If you have a monsoon right before the ceremony or the vows or whatever it was.

And then great luck while you're waiting for the rain to stop. You see a bear eating your cake. Just call it out. Hey, bear.

Hey, what do you have? So apparently this man has a story where a bear has become very fond of his Weber gas grill. It sits on his back porch. Is it Weber or Weber? Probably Weber. I don't know.

This doesn't mean knowing one way or the other. W.E.B.E.R. Three, three, six, seven, seven, seven, one six hundred. I'm sure we got some grill masters out there that can tell us. Weber Weber. A grill. So this one night he was cooking some steaks and he heard out back what sounded like an explosion. So he goes back there. It turns out the bear like the smell of these steaks, too, and it knocked the grill over.

Steaks go everywhere. Some of the knobs come off. So what the guy does is he goes and gets his grill fixed, gets some new knobs.

A buddy of his recommends that, hey, why don't you chain the grill to the porch? So he does this. And sure enough, the bear comes back a week or two later and he has security cam footage of this bear trying to yank it off the chain. He's sitting on top of it. He can't get it to stop. And then the bear, hey bear, like comes up and starts clawing at the front door, leaving paw prints. And then it left. Oh, well, at least his buddy had great advice.

Chained out. I don't know if that advice was as good as this one here. The next hey bear story that we have, it comes from Richmond.

Rich what? Where this family was recommended, quote, highly bear resistant trash cans. And apparently bears hadn't messed with their trash cans for 15 years of using them.

This is a Granger brand they have. Yeah. You can avoid bears by having this very thick wall on, you know, your garage cans. However, when they left for vacation for two weeks in the middle of the summer, apparently the night before they left or the week that they left, they decided it'd be a good idea to have some barbecue spare ribs. Hi, if you were a barbecue spare rib and you were starving, would you eat yourself?

I know I would. A little bit of a sidetrack there. But apparently they put the barbecue spare ribs, the remains of them in this trash can. And they thought, you know, 15 years of putting it to the test, we're going to be fine. They get back home from vacation. They can't find these garage cans. They can't find these air, quote, highly bear resistant trash cans that are out there. So when they looked around, they saw 300 feet away from their home. There was the trash can chewed into two pieces, the trash can and trash was scattered all over the woods.

Bear one, trash can zero. It's Weber Grill, by the way. We've had somebody call in and fill me in on that. Thank you.

They always seat at Lowe's, they say. So you were right. I was. Good job.

Stand on your convictions a little bit. Close us out with one more Hey Bear story, or I should say, Hey Bear. So this family, they vacation in Wilmington, keeping it local here. So they're in the hot tub one day and they see a bear begin to approach the hot tub. Well, naturally, they all get out.

They run out of that. They run out of the hot tub and towards the house and they watch and they got this on video. They watch as the bear heads toward their two cards that are parked there in the driveway. And somehow, someway, the bear was able to get in and unlock both of the cars. The second car, he climbs into the driver's seat.

And this is the part where you would prove to be you would be right on this, on your method of how to approach these situations. Hands up, Hey Bear. That's right. So he's in the driver's seat and the dad comes out and he gets big. He gets big. No, he doesn't like go like his hands up.

But he like, you know, he has a little strut coming to the car. Okay, then what happened? And the bear got out and ran into the woods.

That's what I'm saying. Because he probably said, Hey Bear. What a way to end the segment with some useful information that we've been putting out there for some time. Only you can prevent being attacked by a bear. Hey Bear. Great stuff from WD. First ever edition of Hey Bear, which we enjoy around here.