The ACC Finally Did It (9-1-23)

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It is WSJS, NewsDonk Sports for The Tryout, and we've made it to a resolution from the ACC. As you know by now, something that felt like an inevitability all week long is now a reality. Cal, Stanford, and SMU are officially joining the ACC. Look, there's a mountain of things to hate about this. The overwhelming majority of people aren't fans of this.

Even some that voted yes for this aren't super happy today. So rather than preach to the choir and yell into a void all throughout today's show, let me instead tell you three key reasons why the ACC has chosen to expand westward. Number one, to strengthen and protect the ESPN television deal. The practical financial aspect of this has been reported ad nauseam it feels like the last couple weeks.

It's simple math. Adding households in Texas and California, the two most populated states, will expand distribution which will in turn turn into revenue for the ACC. ESPN likely going to be happy about additional windows it can have on the ACC network or even on ESPN having ACC games at night.

But the piece that isn't being talked about enough is the protective piece here. In the ACC agreement that goes through 2036, there is a clause that says if the ACC dips beneath 14 or 15 members, then ESPN can renegotiate the deal with the conference. Now, given how volatile things are in television media, you're seeing the shift to streaming, you're seeing cord cutting, you're seeing disputes between charter spectrum and Disney even last night that are still unresolved as we speak with you right now. That deal through 2036, knowing where the money is going to come from, insignificant money, is going to become the ACC's friend.

So you don't want to put that in jeopardy, so what do you do? You add three schools so that way if for some reason Florida State, North Carolina, Clemson, if they're able to finagle a way out of the league, a way that we don't see right now and we certainly don't forecast happening anytime soon, if they're able to accomplish that, this protects you in numbers being able to maintain that TV contract. That's number one. Number two, it was a tumultuous summer. Yeah, you had teams that were jumping to other conferences. It was a busy realignment cycle, the Big 12 revamping things, Washington and Oregon joining the Big 10.

But it wasn't just that. Florida State in the spring started crowing. A few weeks ago, Florida State doing the same thing.

About a month ago, they were complaining the Board of Trustees meeting. And privately, there were other ACC schools that have had some issues with the revenue too. Adding these schools nets the ACC $24 million per year for each school they added. So 24 times 3, not a math major, but that's $72 million. Cal and Stanford are expected to make 30% of that $24 million a year, so roughly $8 million apiece.

8 times 2 is 16. 72 minus 16 is $56 million. SMU is going to take a big ol' zero for the first nine years of them being in the conference in terms of television money. Cal and Stanford, they are going to make $8 million, so that leaves a pot annually of $56 million of additional revenue each year for the conference because you added these three schools. How are you going to distribute that? How much of that is going to be shifted equally? How much is going to be given to schools based on how you perform on the field as part of the success initiative? Jim Phillips wouldn't get into many of the details of that, but he did speak to the revenue piece of this when he met with reporters earlier today. Virtually, here he was on the revenue front. I know that there's something in this for everybody.

No one can deny that. It also takes a step forward towards it. Maybe it's not enough, maybe it is, but we are doing everything we can within the conference to address that piece of it. The success initiative, let's let that play out.

Let's see what that looks like. Let's see how much revenue is generated and distributed to those that maybe have more success in football. The first reason was strengthening protecting the ESPN TV deal.

The second reason, after this really tumultuous summer, it buys the ACC time by adding revenue here. Is it enough revenue to keep Florida State, North Carolina, and Clemson at bay long term? Maybe not, but is it enough for them to stop complaining, Florida State publicly, and stop barking and crowing and threatening that you're going to leave the league if you don't get your way?

Are you going to stop examining every single quarter inch of that physical grant of rights document? The amount of money you're getting, is it going to buy them enough time to eventually we get to a point where college football just breaks away and becomes its own thing, which case you can just regionalize at that point and things could look a lot like what we used to expect from college sports. This buys time for the ACC. And the last piece here is exclusive to the ACC. The last key reason why this happened today, academics still matter a great deal to the ACC.

They just do. The ACC, that's what makes them different than the Big Ten. The Big Ten has this reputation of being this powerhouse juggernaut conference, even though it doesn't show on the field. And the reason why they have that reputation in part is because their school is made up of a lot of public, large universities that have massive fan bases, massive alumni bases, while the ACC is comprised of a lot of academic institutions that are largely private and smaller schools. Like a lot of them, like half the league is in the top 40 academic institutions in the country.

So, of course, the ACC will have interest in helping out Stanford and Cal, who are both in the top 20 academically. But remember, it's not ADs and coaches who are pressing the button for expansion. It's not them. It's university presidents.

They're the ones doing this. And look no further than the state of North Carolina. The deciding vote, the swing vote was Randy Woodson at NC State. North Carolina said no.

Randy Woodson said yes. Those are the two public schools in our state. They disagreed. But let's not let the private schools off the hook either. We have two other teams in the state of North Carolina that voted yes on this, and it's Duke and Wake Forest. And when you look at the backgrounds of those two presidents that voted yes, Vincent Price owns a degree from Stanford. Susan Winty at Wake Forest owns a degree from Cal Berkeley. When you get into the academic world and you're at the very top of academia, you kind of look out for your own. And to a degree, that's what happened here with the ACC. I believe that was a piece of this. And they'll be the first one to tell you that academics played a role in this.

Those are the reasons why the ACC chose to expand. A reminder, we're going to be live on Labor Day Monday doing the show of Duke and Clemson that you can listen to on WSJS. Make sure you're subscribed to our podcast if you aren't already. Search The Dry with Josh Graham on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Anchor. You can chime in on Twitter at WSJS Radio. That's where we're streaming video in addition to YouTube and Twitch.

Make sure you're subscribed there as well. Will Dalton, the executive producer of the show, he'll be with me at North Carolina and South Carolina tomorrow. Exciting stuff, W.D. Who do you got in that game?

Huh, come on now. You're going to pick your Tar Heels. I'm going to pick my Tar Heels, but I do think it's going to be a really good game. I think it'll be a good game too, but how many times do we need the same movie for you to expect a different ending, right? I like reruns, so we'll see. At least one more time. I know, but it'd be ridiculous for you to expect a different ending when you rewatch the same movie over and over again.

North Carolina. Oh, well, we are hyped up, man. We got the quarterback and Mack Brown, just like Sam Howe two years ago. And we're just going to ignore the fact that they lost his top two weapons, Daz Newsome and Diamie Brown, a couple of years ago. Just like we're going to ignore the fact that they lost Josh Downs and lost Antoine Green from last year. We still don't know if Tess Walker is going to play in the game.

That stuff matters. South Carolina, the last time they played North Carolina, blew them out in the bowl game, won four of the last five over the last 15 years, and Mack Brown has a 2-4 record against Cockey in his Carolina career. So give me South Carolina, who is trending upward towards the end of last year with two of the best wins they've had in the last decade, beating Tennessee and Clemson back to back, while North Carolina lost four in a row and had a couple of bad losses in there. I actually think the two marquee games this weekend, North Carolina, South Carolina, ACC versus SEC. LSU, Florida State, ACC versus SEC, both in prime time. I think both break against the ACC. I think Florida State loses to LSU, and I think North Carolina loses to South Carolina, even though North Carolina's favorite. This show has been a lovely cruise, despite all the chaos we've seen in the ACC and in college sports in recent months and certainly today. And since we're hearing Jimmy Buffett, that can only mean one thing.

David Glenn from The David Glenn Show and North Carolina Sports Network joining us on the show. DG, how would you describe your last 18 hours or so, or let's call it the last 12 hours of things happening? I would say it's unusual at this stage of my life that the battery on my phone threatens to die. But that has happened within the last 24 hours. I am almost never late for a radio or TV hit, and I was actually late for one earlier today, which has a long time host myself as a pet peeve. I don't think I've done that four times in 36 years, and I did it today and I'm mad at myself.

So I'm happy to be with you on time. But it's a crazy day in the history of the ACC. We all know that. And I know you and your audience have separated fact from fiction. But there's a whole lot of confusion about how this stuff came about.

And I've been spending half of my time correcting people with false assumptions. Would you say the biggest misconception and the biggest false assumption is one of the legality of what's happening here or the motivation to do that? I think the biggest false assumption is that the 12 schools that voted yes fail to realize that Cal and Stanford and SMU are not going to upgrade the football product, which is the root cause of the ACC's problems, because if your second tier football product in today's world where football TV money is the tail wagging the dog, you're going to have a second rate TV deal. And of course, Stanford, Cal and SMU are not going to upgrade the football product and they don't draw huge audiences either. So the false assumption is that the 12 schools that voted yes don't realize those things.

Of course they realize those things. They were weighing pros and cons. I think those 12 schools that voted yes can see the same cons, mediocre football, small audiences, coast to coast travel, etc. I think that the 12 yes votes can all see the negatives. I think the 12 yes votes ultimately came, though, from the reality that this decision was not made in a vacuum. This decision was made by an Atlantic Coast conference that is picturing a PAC 12 that in various forms.

Those schools mostly were together since 1905, and it's dead. The PAC 12 name may hang around, but it's going to be a power. It's not going to be a power conference.

We all know that. So the ACC decision makers just saw one of the other power five conferences disintegrate before their eyes. And whereas you and I have discussed one hundred and twenty million dollar exit fee and the hundreds of millions that you'd leave behind in your TV rights. If Florida State or Clemson or somebody else was going to leave.

The Brett McMurphy was the first to report the clause that if the ACC fell below 15 members. Bingo. Yes.

Yen could actually negotiate what's already a problematic TV deal downward, whereas if you have 18 schools and a couple leave, you're still at or above 15. And you don't risk the disaster, the sliding into the ocean scenario. Right. This is not an ACC on a shiny yacht making decisions while drinking champagne and eating caviar. This is an ACC making decisions, wondering if Florida State and or Clemson and or UNC, the three no votes, will at some point say we're going to take on this grant of rights.

And then what are you left with? Could the ACC slide into the ocean the way the PAC 12 did? Well, this expansion, while obviously flawed in ways that you and I could count, it does add some stability. And anybody who underestimates the stability factor here in the eyes of the 12 yes votes is never going to understand what just happened. I acknowledge the one pushback I'd have on that is you. There has not been. And you've talked about this.

We've talked about this. Any real, well-communicated, comprehensive attack of the grant of rights that's legit. Like, so for you to fear somebody to leave and talking about these massive exit fees and such. There's nothing credible that says that anything like that was imminent.

So the ACC was in a position where it could do nothing. I acknowledge what you're saying about the stability piece. What I push against is the doomsday being imminent, where you needed to add two schools that don't add anything.

This is why you're so good at your job. In all seriousness, that is exactly the pushback. And not only is it the pushback in the conversation you and I are having with each other, that's the pushback between university presidents. We're mimicking essentially the volleyball of what they were deciding.

Well, hey, you better be reasonable. Florida State and Clemson, remember, decided to pull into this expansion conversation the details of performance-based revenue. For 70 years, the ACC did not have a performance-based revenue aspect. They do now. So Florida State and Clemson tweaked those rules successfully, so they got one of the things they wanted. They also wanted new rules about how the schools that bring the most TV eyeballs would get that new revenue. They didn't really get that. And why didn't they get that?

Because they didn't have the leverage. Because at some point, the 12 schools called their bluff and said, we know you could try to leave, but we think you're fighting an uphill legal battle if you do. But, Josh, whereas your pushback is exactly the right pushback in 2023, 2025, 2027, there will come a time closer to 2036 when the grant of rights expires and the ACC's TV deals expire. There will come a time where a Florida State or a Clemson, of course, the penalty to leave gets smaller as the years go by, because there aren't as many years left on the grant of rights. So in 2029, these chancellors right now are trying to buy time, and they know that there's more stability if seven years down the road, Florida State and or Clemson and or UNC leave. At that point, again, less expensive to leave, leaving behind fewer rights.

Or maybe seven years down the road, the whole world could change again. And there's two 25-team super conferences, and everybody has to make decisions all over again. I think this is the 12 schools saying, we know this is a flawed expansion, but we want to feel the security that we don't feel right now, with Florida State running to every microphone telling us what a lousy conference we are. It's a misconception, too, going back to false assumptions that all the crowing that Florida State has done publicly and people are assuming Clemson's doing behind the scenes, this is to appease them. No, they are two of the three that opposed it.

That's something important to remember, too. But I want to narrow in on the local here when talking about NC State and North Carolina political dynamics, because I've seen a lot of people leap to, well, NC State and Randy Woodson disagreed with North Carolina. Now North Carolina is going to leave without NC State whenever that time comes. And all I'm thinking is, the local politicians, I'm not sure if that's how they're going to view it. And there seems to be a lot of hurdles to climb there.

With the statement last night from the Board of Trustees from North Carolina, and even from Kevin Guskowitz today, disagreeing with what State did. What real consequences could you see coming from that, real consequences? I don't think it's going to be a big deal, because I think whenever we get to that crazy chaotic fork in the road, it's not in the near future. If the chaotic fork in the road, like those super conferences that we're thinking of, or somebody just says, okay, the grant of rights is real, but we're going to get out anyway in the year 2030 or whatever, there's a great chance that there's new chancellors at these universities, new athletic directors at these universities, new politicians in the state legislature. I mean, you get too far down the road, and all the relationships change. And when relationships change, nobody's going to say, yeah, but I remember what happened back in 2023. By 2030, nobody cares about that stuff.

I've been around 36 years. I can tell you lots of stories of where State and Carolina were mad at each other, or ECU was mad because they weren't playing them in football, and every once in a while, a legislator made noise about it. But you know what, those people turn over, and I think the bottom line is, the three schools that know the Big Ten or the SEC, the two wealthy leagues that everybody wants into, when the day comes, Florida State and Clemson, because of their football brand and TV audiences, Carolina for a different set of reasons, UNC would be a flagship university in a brand new geography for either the Big Ten, which invited them to be a member 10 years ago.

Not officially, but behind the scenes, I can promise you that that happened. When Maryland left, the Big Ten liked UNC even more than the Big Ten liked Maryland. The Tar Heels said no, and the Tarifins said yes.

Carolina knows that its brand is in demand. Florida State and Clemson know that as long as they stay so powerful in football, and by powerful, I don't mean just winning, even when the Seminoles were losing, they were drawing bigger TV audiences than we draw around here on a regular basis. Those three schools are the most in demand by those two power conferences if either the SEC or Big Ten choose to get bigger.

Correct. The other 12 schools are not as in demand. So the 12 schools who aren't sure where they'd end up in the Armageddon scenario all voted in favor of expansion for the stability factor. The three schools that know, even if they had to wait a while, the Big Ten or the SEC, one of them, if not both, would be happy to have them, they all voted against expansion because they're not worried about the slide into the ocean disaster scenario. That's fundamentally what happened here today, and I'm sure you've gotten into it, but if SMU didn't agree to come for zero TV money for nine years, or Cal and Stanford didn't agree to come for those tiny partial shares that only grow to full financial shares over many years, there's a zero percent chance that this expansion happens. What those three schools did was leave tens of millions of dollars on the table as partial or zero TV money schools, and that lets all the current ACC schools split those tens of millions among themselves, or pour it into that performance-based revenue pot that the Seminoles and the Tigers, among others, think are going to make them happy. This is why we didn't have any other guests today. There's one person we want to talk to.

It's David Glenn, who can share a lot of insight on this because there are a lot of different angles to hit on it. If we're removing the obvious travel piece of the logistics here, which is an obvious challenge that exists. By the way, Jim Phillips, when asked about it today, said that once every other year, men's and women's basketball programs would travel out west, and they'd try to knock it out on the same trip. So you'd play Stanford and Cal back to back, and that's what you would do every other year.

That's how they hope to overcome that in basketball. What logistical piece of the puzzle most interests you if we take the competitive, the financial pieces off the table, and even the travel piece? Because there's also scheduling.

There's how you figure things out in many other ways that come along with this in a short period of time. Well, this may be financial so I may not be giving a perfect answer to your question, but I'm intrigued by the ACC network. And here's what I mean I don't think a lot of folks understand, just as it is accurate to say that if Clemson. Excuse me, if SMU, Cal and Stanford did not agree to take those partial or zero TV money shares, this would not have happened.

It is also accurate to say that if Northern California, where Stanford and Cal are located, and Dallas Fort Worth where SMU are located. Guess what, they are two of the 10 largest TV markets in America today. It's a long story short, but when the ACC network flips millions of TV households from previously being what was out of market from the ACC perspective, paying maybe $1 a year to get the ACC network. When you flip millions of households to now become in market ACC households, some chunk of those 5.5 million TV households, some chunk of those get the ACC network. And if that's two or 3 million of the 5.5 million, you're going from getting those same customers who already are paying this tiny price for the ACC network to paying the in market price.

And for every household you flip, that's a lot of money. You might be getting $15 a year per customer instead of $1 a year per customer. If you do that with 3 million new households, you're splitting that money with ESPN because it's a shared venture, the ACC network. You don't get every dollar, every new dollar. But I think that's an underestimated aspect of what happened today because it is definitely tens of millions of dollars in new revenue every year for the ACC network.

Exact number is hard to pin down. But if you get a couple million per school just for expanding, and a couple million per school also with new ACC network revenue, of course you're not getting near to silencing that 30 million gap that's on the way to coming for the ACC, that deficit in comparison to the two wealthiest conferences. But little by little, it doesn't hurt. I'd rather have that 4 or 5 million than not have that 4 or 5 million if I'm a current ACC school. So every bit matters.

And these are among the ways that the ACC is trying to minimize that financial gap for the foreseeable future. The one thing I'm mad at the ACC about today is that this drops and this drag gone where I can have a 20-minute conversation with David Glenn where in-state teams played last night and we've got games this weekend too. And we didn't spend a minute talking about them. I know. That is a bummer. It is. Well, you can have me back anytime to talk on the field stuff.

That's right. North Carolina Sports Network and host of The David Glenn Show. DG, you're the best. Thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate you, Josh.

WD as well. Good to see you guys. This is the ball of Tiger Woods. Lanny, what about this? Three left. One to the right. Shotgun formation. Snap to Rodgers. Jackson stays in the block. Rodgers throws the middle.

Oh, my lord. Grace Jennings had a beautiful spiral over the middle and crossed the 50-yard line. Grace Jennings, the all-pro, and Aaron Rodgers drilled them for 27 yards and a first down. McCaffrey. McCaffrey. There it is. Over 100 yards. 14 straight games. Touchdown, Cardinals.

Back for the outside. Michael in is Dickerson. Eric Dickerson, the sophomore from Seeley, Texas, puts SMU on the board.

He'll probably try to swim it, and he does. Ball comes loose, and the Bears have to get out of bounds. Rodgers along the sideline.

Another one. They're still in deep trouble at midfield. They tried to do a couple of... The ball is still loose as they get it to Rodgers.

They give it back now to the 30. They're down to the 20. Oh, the band is out on the field. He's going to go into the end zone.

He's going into the end zone. The Bears have won. The Bears have won. Now watch this drive. Just a few ACC Legends.

We're claiming them all. ACC Legend, John Elway. ACC Legend, Tiger Woods. ACC Legend, Aaron Rodgers. ACC Legend, George W. Bush. Are we claiming him?

Yeah, why not? His wife went to SMU. Close enough.

There it is. We're claiming the president as well as an ACC Legend. Condoleezza Rice, ACC Legend. I feel like we need to do for sports what Chappelle's show did with the racial draft. Oh boy. And I feel like the number one pick for this sports draft, who gets to claim who with Stanford, Cal, and SMU.

Probably going to be the same pick as the racial draft in 2004 when Tiger Woods went number one. I love you dad! Congratulations. You have a home again, Tiger Woods. ACC Legend.

We could do this for days, man. Alex Morgan. Andrew Luck. ACC Legends. Katie Ledecky.

One of the greatest women swimmers ever. Josh Rosen. Why Josh Rosen? He went to Cal, right?

He went to UCLA. Oh, I got my Cal scooters. We have so many options you can choose from.

You chose one that doesn't go to either of those places. And that was a complete bust. That's amazing. A guy's not even good. Even if he went to Cal, why are we claiming him?

How about the guy who has the richest NBA contract in history, Jaylen Brown, ACC Legend. There you go. Boom. Bang.

Bang, bang, pow, pow. We have that. I'm struggling to come up with a lot of SMU Mustangs.

It's harder than you think. I'm trying to remember who the wide receiver who played for the Broncos and were, I believe, 14 in recent years, like the last five years. He's a former SMU receiver.

It's going to bother me. That guy, ACC Legend now. We're claiming him. I don't even know his name. You talking about Courtland Sutton? That's right. There you go. Courtland Sutton, ACC Legend. Deal with it. Now watch this drive. Getting to last night, since this expansion stuff's happened, there's so much that we're just not going to have a lot of time to talk about.

So I just want to hit on things in bulk very quickly. Ronald Acuna Jr. If you talk about real achievements in baseball, that sport, when people say things like, oh, that hasn't happened in the history of baseball.

No. In baseball, that expression, this has not happened in history, hits harder than any other sport because you have stats that are real that go back to the 1800s. So when you talk about 30 home runs and 60 stolen bases for Ronald Acuna Jr. this year, it's amazing. And that was an amazing game last night between the Braves and the Dodgers. I think he's probably your National League Most Valuable Player because he's made history. The Braves have the best record in baseball. I get it. They have also the best roster where a ton of dudes are having great seasons.

You can make arguments for other players. For me, that guy is your NL MVP. Matt Ruhl.

Oh boy. Anybody feel bad for Matt Ruhl last night? I did. I felt bad because I did. Nebraska, why didn't you feel badly for him? I just wasn't surprised.

Well, no one was surprised. It's Nebraska who, before Matt Ruhl arrived, was like 3-21 in their last 24 one-possession games. It's amazing how much bad luck has hit them. I want to say they were most deserving of winning that game because it required a ridiculous fourth down touchdown catch that Minnesota had to tie the game and then you had the turnover late. I want to say Nebraska should have won the game, but then again, former ACC quarterback Jeff Sims picked up a ball and a hop on a reverse pass to the quarterback that should have been a disaster and that ended up being a touchdown. Nebraska's only touchdown of the game.

So Matt Ruhl loses that game. I got a feeling today they're hitting on the DBO sign quite a bit because they had four turnovers in it. And the tape. Gotta watch the tape.

Gotta go back and watch the tape. Jay Z. No doubt about that. But that's what you gotta remember. It took Jay Z seven years to create an agency and become famous.

Seven years is what it took. Nebraska, fine solace in that. And then Jon Isner. His career ended yesterday in round three of the US Open.

And you're not going to believe this. Greensboro's Jon Isner. It took five sets in order to finish that off. Jon Isner. His last match. Five set match and he was up to nothing.

But then lost the last three sets and it went to tie-breaking points as you would imagine for Jon Isner in the US Open and his career ended yesterday. Incredibly tall dude. 6'10". I think he's one inch short of the tallest tennis player. There's some 6'11's out there. I don't think there's ever been a seven-footer.

But obviously a long reach. Gotta be remembered for playing not just the longest match in major tennis history. You might remember the three-day, 11-hour fiasco from 2009 or 2010 that he had. But a few years after that in the US Open he played a semi-final that was the second longest match.

It lasted nearly six and a half hours. So the two longest matches in US Open were major tennis history. Jon Isner was a part of. He won the longest and he lost the second longest. If he would have won that second one he would have advanced to a major final. Something that he had never done before.

Never did in his career. But Jon Isner's career ended yesterday. So while we understand that ACC expansion is the hot topic and we're not going to ignore that. Certainly we'll hit on it all throughout the three hours.

Wanted to hit on those things. I do want to make a Big Lebowski joke. But I love this song.

Tequila Sunrise. I told you man I hate the Eagles. There I made the joke anyway. Still gotta see that. We haven't made you watch Big Lebowski yet?

We have not. Gonna write that one down. You're gonna watch Varsity Blues sometime in the next few days. For next week. This question's been asked a lot with ACC expansion going on. By the way, your last chance to win Winston-Salem Dash tickets this year. Sunday's the finale. First two callers right now gets tickets to go see the Dash at 336-777-1600.

The first two to call in if you want to go watch Dash Baseball on Sunday afternoon. This question's been asked a lot today. Should the ACC change its name now? Because not all the teams in the conference are on the Atlantic Coast. Should they just change the name now? Maybe we could call it, get this, the All Coasts Conference. Or the Any Coasts Conference. No.

No. They should not change the name. The ACC will consider changing its name when the Big Ten changes its name to the Big Eighteen. When's the last time the Big Ten had ten teams in it? They're still the Big Ten.

How many lakes are in Los Angeles? They're still the Lakers. That's just their name.

Does it have to make sense? No. So they're the ACC. What's it stand for? The Atlantic Coast Conference. Maybe the Pacific Ocean changes its name. How about that? The ACC, that name's gonna stay. Maybe the Pacific Ocean changes its name. Figure that one out.

But the ACC name, that stays. To recap the week in the most efficient way possible, we keep it simple. We beat through it.

Dance through it. Here at the club on a 4.30 point in the afternoon on this Friday. Let's see who's in there. Sam Hartman's Notre Dame debut. You should expect Hartman misinformation.

There's your five words. Because the way that that's been talked about. People saying, this Sam Hartman guy, he's pretty good. Even national college football media is saying this. This Hartman guy, whoa.

Yeah, we know. He was awesome at Wake. He played at Wake for five years. They were ranked in the top ten. Last year and the year before that, too. If you didn't know Sam Hartman was good until last Saturday, that's a you problem, not an our problem. Right? And on top of that, you heard people say, well, Wake Forest, they're probably upset that Sam Hartman left.

He might even be viewed as a traitor. No. Wake Forest was not heartbroken that Sam Hartman left.

You see what things are like in the transfer portal? He had one year left, and Mitch Griffiths, who's in year three of the program, has three years remaining. You want three years of Mitch or one year of Sam?

You probably want the Mitch Griffiths. And Sam made it clear all throughout last year it was going to be his last year at Wake, so it's nothing against him. He gave him five years. Wake loves Sam. They're rooting for Sam. And Sam Hartman was pretty good, even before he started playing for the Irish. The Carolina Panthers' new receiver, Amir Smith-Marcel.

Let me see how many words this might be. Bad-ish mother bleeper in football. That's him. He called himself that, and he's got the personality, second in preseason receiving yards, and he gave up a conditional Sabbath round pick. So it is all upside and no risk for the Carolina Panthers, but Amir Smith-Marcel seems to have a great personality. He was asked, hey, what are you going to do if you return a kickback this year? If? When?

I return a kickback. Love this dude. Wake's opener against Elon. We learned nothing about Wake. Honestly. You might be the biggest Deacon fan out there, and you're looking at that. What'd you learn?

It's Elon. He won by 20. Starters had to be out there the entire game. I wanted to overreact positively or negatively to anything that you saw. They couldn't run the ball all that well. That wasn't great.

Mitch Griffiths throwing a pick-six. That wasn't that great. But I think you'll start to learn some stuff against Vanderbilt next week if things don't go well. If they blow out Vanderbilt, I don't even know how much you learned about Wake in that sense. But there wasn't a lot to be learned last night. NC State's opener against UConn.

The pack survived and advanced. 1-0. Got the win. I said that was a scary game, and I felt that way. Was not a great atmosphere in West Hartford, as expected. NC State started out slow, as expected. It was a low-scoring game, as expected. It was not a pretty win. It was not the best win out there. But there was an old ECU football coach that said, don't show me the labor, show me the baby.

Or said it might be an ugly baby, but it's our baby. And that was NC State last night. Might not have been the prettiest win, but it's a win. You know who'd like a win this week? North Carolina. Duke.

I don't know if they're going to get wins, but State did enough. Bryce Young's comments on tea. Bryce Young's a fraud. I don't think he's eaten Bojangles before. Unsweet tea, I should add. His thoughts on unsweet tea.

Gotta wait till it's your birthday. I think it's going to come out and it's going to be a scandalous front page story that Bryce Young's a vegan. I don't think that could be reported right now because how can you be a Bojangles spokesman and a vegan?

You can't be both. Either that or Bojangles announces vegan food or vegan side of the menu. Who's eating a vegan side of the menu?

Bryce Young, that's who. That's a menu for one. And lastly, may as well knock it out and get it out of the way. ACC expanding. This is awesome. Terrific news.

Now that's fake news right there. It's hard to talk about that in five words or less. So how about we'll just put a pin in that and we'll get back to that in just a little bit.

Instead, let's get one more dance break. So hard. That's not even in my top five lines of Point Break. I don't even know if it's in my top 10 lines. There's some you can't play from John C. McGinley in there. Yes, but I am an FBI agent.

It is pretty good and hard to beat. You got to go down, man. Utah. Give me two. Give me two. Give me two. Utah.