Pair Some Bourbon With It (12-5-23)

So glad to have you on this Monday drive. It is WSJS who's talking sports for the triad where, in honor of AppState's upset of Auburn yesterday, we've got Mountaineer Hoops gear on inside our redecorated and newly furnished studio.

You can see it on YouTube, X, and Twitch. But we got to get to the college football playoff. Everything about yesterday's CFP reveal was an affront and a black eye on the sport. Greg McElroy called the committee's decision courageous, putting Alabama in. Give me a break.

Oh, the courage to put Nick Saban and the SEC into the field. The entire day was spent with people arguing about who was in the four and who wasn't, rather than talking about the games that we just saw on championship Saturday or the matchups that we had ahead of us. Some say these types of arguments are good for the sport. I disagree. I think the game's already great. It's been great for a long time.

I don't think those types of arguments, those dumb arguments are additive. I think what makes the game great at its core, what makes college football fun, are the actual games. And yesterday showed us the games don't really matter when it comes down to it. Not to make it dramatic, but it's likely true that yesterday was the darkest day in the modern day history of college football.

Because it's the first time that the sports format of crowning a champion was proven illegitimate. Now we've seen insufficient co-national champions in past years. Auburn in 2004 being left out of the BCS when they were unbeaten in the SEC. But you know what didn't happen with Auburn? They weren't passed over for a one-loss team the way the FSU was. Like again, we've seen insufficient, UCF, what to do with them and an unbeaten group of five team. We've seen insufficient. This is illegitimate.

There's a distinction between the two. Not one, but two one-loss teams were chosen over an unbeaten power five champ. Unprecedented climbs, regardless of who they were passing, unprecedented a team from the second to last pull to the final one, jumping four spots.

That had never happened before. Only one team had climbed three spots, Georgia in 2016 from number six to number three. Both Texas and Alabama, two teams made unprecedented jumps and the team they leapt over was the first ever unbeaten power five champ to be left out.

And you want me to believe that's legitimate? When one of those teams has a loss to a team not ranked in the top 10, when the other one played a home game in which they lost by double digits, an unbeaten power five team was passed over in favor of both those teams. But it's not FSU being left out that I have the biggest issue with, the ACC being left out as a league. That's the biggest problem because you might not care about FSU. You might not care about the ACC altogether.

You might even be an SEC fan. And to you, I say, this is why you should be bummed out by what happened yesterday. What yesterday revealed was who actually runs this sport.

That was laid bare. That the sport is run by television networks and Greg Sankey, the SEC commissioner. Why are we expanding to 12? See, people say, oh, the 12 team playoff can't get here soon enough. Well, why isn't it six?

That's something my wife asked me yesterday. Wait, they're going to 12? Why aren't they going to six or eight before arriving at 12? Well, the reason that is, is because Craig Sankey said he want to accept a format that had fewer than four at large bids like you have right now. So if you were going to have back when the PAC 12 was a conference and all, five automatic bids and one for the group of five, you could accept no fewer than a 10 team format. And the 12 team format just worked better than the 10. That's the reason why we're going to 12.

So if you have any question about Greg Sankey's influence, there's one piece of it. And if you have any doubt about the television network's influence on the sport, this isn't me saying, oh, well, they just wanted the team that would give them more money. So you had to put Alabama in as if Florida State is a group of five.

Yeah, it's not a money deal. Alabama over Florida State. But television networks believe they're going to have a better game if Alabama plays. So screw the team that's more deserving. I think it's going to be a better game with Alabama.

Why? Because the folks in Vegas say so and they can't be wrong, even though Washington State or Washington was nine and a half point underdogs to Oregon over the weekend. Georgia was favored by nearly a touchdown against Bama.

They can't be wrong. So Bama gives us a better game. That gives us better ratings. That makes us more money. If you have any question about TV networks and the influence they have, ask yourself why the PAC 12 is falling apart, why the PAC 12 is over.

It'd be the TV networks. The only reason Texas is into the playoff is because they needed a reason to include Bama and you couldn't include Bama and have a straight face when Bama lost by double digits home to Texas. So you had the shoehorn to one loss teams with unprecedented jumps of four spots and bumped Florida State out in order to do so. It is a blatant example of TV networks and Greg Sankey having run the sport. Those are the people that run it.

And that really is a shame. But then if we are going to get into what this means for the ACC, another reason why it's a dark, dark day and maybe the darkest in college football history, we just saw a historic conference go by the wayside in the PAC 12, a conference that's been around for over a hundred years. And this committee decided to do something that is going to accelerate the potential elimination of another power conference in the ACC. This could do irreparable harm to the ACC, even though it's not the ACC's fault. Florida State's going to blame the ACC, but it's not on Boston College. It's not on Pitt. It's not on NC State why this happened.

It really isn't. Honestly, you can blame the SEC schools on their schedule more. If LSU lived up to what they were supposed to be preseason, you could not leave out Florida State. If Florida was worth a turn for the first time in a decade, like if they were good enough, then that win that they had a week ago would mean more to the SEC teams did more harm than the ACC teams did.

But that's not the perception and perception's reality. Like perception out there says that the Big Ten is just undoubtedly better than the ACC, even though only one team's won a playoff game in the history of that conference. And that's Ohio State. Same thing for the ACC.

Clemson's the only team to have won. But if you would just talk to a general fan, hey, who has better programs in their conference, the ACC or the Big Ten? They'd say it's the Big Ten and not close.

Perception, it's reality. And the perception is that an ACC champ can now be treated like a group of five teams. And that's going to affect recruiting. That's going to accelerate FSU once again this offseason and wanting to get out of this league as quickly as they can if they can find a way. If they find a way, maybe Clemson's going to follow. And recruiting might take a hit, too. Teams want to play. Players want to play for championships. And if FSU can get left out this type of way for going unbeaten, that undoubtedly hurts. So for all those reasons, that's why yesterday is such a blow. It's illegitimacy. It reveals who runs this sport and it's not the people you want it to be.

And it might lead to the acceleration of another conference potentially getting eliminated in the ACC. On X, at WSJS radio, if you want in. It's where we're streaming video in addition to YouTube and Twitch. WD, we hit a milestone on YouTube over the weekend. Darn right, we did. What'd we do? Over a thousand subscribers and now it's a thousand ten already.

At the start of football season, we were saying, hey, can we get to a thousand by 2024? You guys did it with a month to spare. We appreciate that. We'll figure out a way to repay you and do something fun for the audience. We'll tell you about that in the coming weeks. We're going to figure out something there. To cheer you up, the Carolina Panthers.

Oh boy. This team should not be a one win team. Gosh, like coachings cost them in so many games. Frank Reich's mismanagement at the end of the Chicago game. Toss up losses against the Saints.

It doesn't have to be tradition. If Bryce doesn't fumble against Minnesota, the two pick sixes against Indy. This should be a three, four, maybe five win team.

Maybe five's a stretch. But yesterday, coaching cost them again. Thomas Brown's play calling more specifically and most notably the calls on third and one and fourth and one on that final drive. Chuba Hubbard, he had rushed for 104 yards going into those plays. First Panther to rush for 100 yards in a game this year. Don't give him the ball though.

How about behind the worst pass protecting line in the NFL? We're going to chuck it twice. That didn't go well. But Chris Tabor, the interim coach made sure to point out that was not his decision. He made it clear. It was not me.

Here he was. Those are the decisions. Those are the two plays that they liked. So that's what we went with. I let the coaches coach. And I got a lot of faith in them.

I think they do a great job. So that's what we did. Yeah, to quote Shaggy, it wasn't me. And if that was the only debacle in short yardage, I'd let it pass. But first half, third and one from the two. They ran from the pistol because you can't ever run under center in this offense apparently. Loss of three yards. They got three points, but really it was a minus four. First drive, third and one. Handed off in the shotgun to Miles Sanders and predictably it's a loss of two. That's on Thomas Brown. But it turns out it wasn't all Frank Reich. A lot more people need to go and blow this up from this coaching staff that we thought was an all-star staff.

And it turned out to be anything but. Before we get to our first guest, a reminder that we've got Monday Night Football on WSJS tonight. It's the Bengals and the Jaguars. And if Jacksonville wins, they'll have the best record in the AFC. Thank goodness there isn't some committee out there to tell me how some other team with more losses is better than they are.

Just had to throw that out there real quickly. Friday afternoon, we did our show from the home center ahead of Auburn visiting Boone, visiting the mountain. And yesterday what happened? App State pulled off the upset of Bruce Pearl's team as you'd expect.

There was a court storm on the mountain. Here to tell us about it is Mountaineers head coach Dustin Kearns that joins us now. Let's start here, coach. What do you remember about the moment clocks hit zeros and everybody started running onto the court? Well, first of all, it's great to be on the drive.

Second time in I think three days. So I feel honored. You know what? Just a great moment for our players, our staff, our staff's wives and families. It's just a lot of work by a lot of people that went into having a moment like that at the home center in front of our fans and crowd. And so when it hit zero and they went down and shook Auburn's coach's hands, just kind of sat back and just watched our players in the midst of the student section jumping around and kind of had a moment with our staff. And then I went and found my wife and kids.

But I just really wanted that moment for our players. To my knowledge, it's the first court storm in the home center history. And so you know what? That's pretty cool. First time since the building opened up with Bill Guthridge's North Carolina team in 2000 at a high major team visited the home center. When was the last time you were part of a court storming?

I was actually talking about this one of the staff. The last time I was part of a court storming was 2011, Gonzaga, Santa Clara. I coached at Santa Clara for six years. We beat Gonzaga who was ranked. And well, yeah, the students stormed the court.

Doesn't happen all that often. Hope you savored it. Earlier this season, your team beat UNCW. On Saturday, UNCW went into Rupp Arena and beat ranked Kentucky. Did seeing that happen a day earlier give your guys more confidence, you think?

Absolutely. We actually talked about it at walk-through Saturday night. And I think that my message to our guys then was like, hey, that just confirms that we've got a good team. We knew UNC Wilmington was a good team.

They went on the road and won at number 12 Kentucky who had just beat number six Miami by 20 points. And so my message was two things. One, guys, this confirms that we've got a good team. And two, this confirms you got to go play the game.

Also, as if going to the NCAA tournament when you guys did recently and being picked second in the Sunbelt isn't enough to think that you guys are a pretty good team. How many text messages did you get yesterday? You know what?

I've gotten back there, but I still got some coming in, but I would say it's close to 400. Give me one that stood out. Seth Greenberg was in the studio yesterday for our App State Auburn game. And then got a nice text from him afterwards. So that was kind of cool that he was actually covering the game and then reached out. I got a phone call from my former boss Mike Young this morning.

All the guys that I ever worked for called. A lot of App State people. So yeah, those are a lot of coaches around the country.

So it was fun to hear from a lot of people. Dustin Kearns with us here, App State basketball coach. You made a point when we were sitting next to you on Friday to say that, hey, we're going to be really excited about Sunday, but we're excited to see what the football team is going to do on Saturday and support App State football. One of the first things I saw after the buzzer hit was Sean Clark was at the game and tweeting about App State basketball and after a difficult loss for them on Saturday. That must have meant something to you that he was there.

It's a busy time, the transfer portal opening up today and all that. It seems like that all the coaches there support each other. We've got a great group of coaches in all my years of coaching.

I think this is one of the best groups. We all support each other. I heard from our volleyball coach, our soccer coach, our wrestling coach, our baseball coach, our softball, our women's basketball coach.

I heard from Sean. I heard from some other just assistant coaches from other sports. So we've got a great group and he did a great job this year getting our team to the Sunbelt championship game, won five in a row and now excited for them to go to a bowl game.

That's always good. Cure Bowl for App State football against Miami of Ohio. We're being joined right now by App State basketball coach Dustin Kearns after the upset of Auburn yesterday. You got emotional in your press conference when talking about the promise you made to AD Doug Gillen about changing the culture of App State basketball. What was the root of that emotion? Well, I hadn't had time to really kind of process what had just happened. Everybody on the court, then I went to the locker room. The team drenches me with water and then I'm rushing the media.

Then Brett Strela who works for us is a terrific writer. Just the way he asked the question just kind of hit me. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work by a lot of people and a lot of sacrifice from families and wives and kids. This is a job that's impossible to do at home.

It's impossible. We've got to go out and recruit. We've got to go into living rooms. We've got to play road games.

We've got to go out and speak and spend time. It's just a lot of years there that built up for a moment like that. I was fine until just the way he phrased the question just kind of hit me for a second. Yeah, he's got that soft tone. Brett Strela, that's how he gets you. He can get you.

He's done it a number of times. As you mentioned, a great writer for several years before arriving at App State and doing all the stuff behind the scenes there. Your mantra is take the stairs. You said yesterday was a pretty big stair for your program to climb.

What's the next stair? I think the next stair is continue to handle success and to keep moving forward. Not to just have a big moment, but to keep building on that moment. We've won five in a row. To this point, we've been able to handle success. I think the next big stair is that consistency. All really, really good teams are consistent. Obviously, we play in a very competitive environment. We're going to go on the road here some. We've got some big games coming up.

Just trying to find that consistency would be a next stair. I'll tell you something that disappoints me. I don't want to single out anybody specifically, but there are things. I remember when Virginia went on the road to JMU and they lost when they opened up their building. Many of the headlines, the way that people in my business talked about it with headlines, it was an embarrassing loss for Virginia.

Well, James Madison's really good. Many of those same media members that want the big boys to play at these schools, then shame them and say it's embarrassing when these types of things happen. There was a little bit of that with Auburn yesterday. Fortunately, not as much as I've seen in the past. You obviously want other power schools to want to visit the mountain and see value in doing so.

What do you say to people when they say there's no value in doing so? Well, I think that taking your team onto a true road game, and I respect Coach Pearl for doing that. That's the only true road game they're going to play in the non-conference. So I remember Arizona played at Duke this year. That's what I've heard of. A lot of those schools, they don't play a true road game until they get to conference.

It's just home or neutrals. But I think that I respect what Coach Pearl did in the sense he wanted his team to experience a true road game. I think that that will be valuable for his team down the road. Auburn's a really good team. They're going to win a lot of games. I thought that yesterday just confirmed that we've got a really good team. I think that every coach is coming from a different perspective of what they want for their team and things like that.

But I think that some coaches understand it and they want to go play on the road, play in a hostile environment. Dustin, congratulations on the win. We'll have to get back up on the mountain sometime soon.

Thank you for doing this and best of luck. We're 1-0 on the drive as a show in the home center. And so we're going to have to continue to do that. Loving the App State gear in the studio there. Always a pleasure to be on the drive. Let's get the show going. It's the drive with Josh Graham. We'll grade the basketball weekend in Graham's grades 15 minutes from now.

There is an excellent Dave Doran piece of sound that we need to get to in just a second. But first, where is Jim Phillips? Have a great day and go ACC.

Where is he? I've watched a lot of television since the CFP's decision to leave Florida State out. All we have from the ACC commissioner is a five Senate statement talking about how upset he is.

I don't know why I became a Cajun all of a sudden there. Jim Phillips doesn't deserve the most blame for Florida State being left out. That does fall at the feet of the committee. LSU deserves some blame too for not holding up its end of the bargain after losing to FSU. Same thing looking at you Florida. Georgia for losing to Alabama creating this chaos.

Yes, those teams deserve blame. Jim Phillips lack of vision cost the ACC here and this has become a trend. This is not a one-off for Jim Phillips. Let's go chronologically with this.

He was asleep at the wheel at every turn of expansion. On Jim Phillips watch, Texas and Oklahoma leave for the SEC and his response is to create the Alliance. And the Alliance, as a lot of people have pointed out in the last 24 hours, the reason why we have a 12-team playoff starting next year and not this year. Jim Phillips can shoulder a little bit of blame for that. How about when UCLA and USC left the following year proving that Alliance to be what we all thought it was in the moment, an absolute sham.

How did you respond to that? Well, rather than adding Oregon and Washington, seeing where this is headed and trying to add to your conference in adding West as other leagues were doing, you decided to lecture all of us in the media at ACC kickoff about gated neighborhoods and how that's good for college sports. So then Oregon and Washington get poached as they inevitably were going to. The Pac-12 falls apart and you're left with the scraps. Here's Cal and Stanford who don't ever win anything in football.

Congratulations. There it is. Once again, Jim Phillips lacking vision in that spot. And once again, he wasn't politicking for his conference the way that he needed to. The reality is Florida State should be in.

And if it was a perfect system, they would be, but it's not. Humans are deciding who gets into the playoffs similar to the NCAA tournament where humans are deciding who gets in, who gets out, how many bids your conference gets versus other conferences. So when Georgia lost to Alabama yesterday, guess who we heard from? Greg Sankey speaking out publicly saying both Georgia and Bama should be in.

That it would be a shame if either were left out. And the pressure was applied by the SEC's mouthpiece on get up. Paul Feinbaum saying that two SEC teams should get in under no circumstances should the SEC be left out. Who was out there defending Florida State? Why wasn't Jim Phillips doing shows like this one, like shows across the state and across the country?

You don't think that people would have him on? Of course they would. And trumpeting this message every single day that if Florida State wins this game under no circumstances should they be left out. In this country, whether it's politics or sports, you need to campaign. And Jim Phillips didn't campaign. Thus, I believe in my heart of hearts that those people in that room made the decision they felt would net the least amount of blowback for them. And they felt, given the way the PR monster works with the SEC, there would be more blowback if they left out Nick Saban, Alabama in the Southeastern Conference than if they left out Florida State. And Jim Phillips deserves some blame for that.

I mean, remember when we were talking about during basketball season, how ridiculous it was. Your broadcast partner is having the two screens like the picture in picture where Joe Leonardi is urinating on the league during an NC State Carolina game. Well, how is that any different than Joe Tessitore and Jesse Palmer doing the same thing where during the entire broadcast as the entire committee's watching this game in Texas is talking about why Florida State shouldn't be in the CFP. That's your broadcast partner.

They're your business partner. How is that acceptable? Why aren't you calling that out? This sounds like March all over again where we called out Jim Phillips. Hey, where are you?

Have a great day. Why aren't you calling this out before it's too late? Why aren't you putting pressure on the folks with this committee and saying that you deserve more than five bids before it's too late?

And I know what the folks over there will tell me. Oh, Josh, what good is that going to do? Behind the scenes, you know, Jim Phillips is doing so much. Do it publicly because that's what the SEC did. And that worked.

That worked. But apparently Jim Phillips did not learn his lesson from basketball season where we then talked to Andrea Adelson a few weeks later and said how upset he was in a story and essentially what we said verbatim that he needed to do. He said two weeks too late. He needs to rep for his conference. He needs to do it and he did it over the past week and it probably costs them. And to add insult to injury, you've got Brett McMurphy's reporting from yesterday that says that the ACC was leaving bowl reps in the dark in danger at one point of some of those bowls just deciding to fill their bowl game without ACC team since they had not heard back from a few of them. That's dysfunction.

The hat is disarray. There's confusion with Duke's bowl gamer. They go into the Gasparilla bowl or are they going where they ultimately ended up in Birmingham like under Jim Phillips watch.

Look where it's at. Is there another conference where you have members within it publicly taking shots at the league the way Florida state is? Like even last week. Three games with five million viewers this year. The rest of the ACC combined.

Three games. Ridiculous. Like North Carolina, Clemson, these schools publicly saying they're not for what the ACC did with SMU, Cal, and Stanford. It's disarray. People firing off at each other and now this bad PR on top of it. Jim Phillips lack of a vision.

It cost the ACC. It's not the primary thing to blame. Neither is Boo Corrigan by the way.

Leave him alone. He's just the face of the committee. Pretty bummed out that he has to go up there and do that to his own conference but Jim Phillips does deserve some of the blame.

That's for sure. Speaking of Boo Corrigan and NC State, let's get to some of the bowl games that we will be following over the next few weeks locally. There's a chance it could be a meaningful bowl season. I hear people say the bowls don't matter. Well that to NC State which can win 10 games for just the second time in its program's history. It's only happened one other time and that was 21 years ago with Phillip Rivers. Doran playing in the Pop-Tart Bowl against Kansas State says, yes, I will eat the massive record-sized Pop-Tart that the winning coach is awarded with if NC State beats K-State.

Here he was. Man, I guess I would have to, wouldn't I? I'm not going to be the guy that doesn't do that.

So, you know, as long as it's, I don't know, what flavor is it going to be? I don't think I'm at liberty to divulge that information yet. Well then maybe I'm not at liberty to answer the question. How's that? That's fair. Do we have any more questions for Coach from the room?

If you do, raise your hand. Can I chase it, can I chase down the Pop-Tart with a nice bourbon or something like that afterwards? Is that part of the Pop-Tart experience or not? Coach, I think we could arrange that if you want. We'll make it a whole tasting. Okay, then I think I'm in. Great negotiation. I'd like to hope that's how he negotiates his contracts too.

Pop-Tarts and bourbon. Can I hear his pushback? Sounded a lot like what Thomas Brown says when he doesn't want to answer a question. I don't think I'm at liberty to divulge that information yet. Okay, well then maybe I'm not at liberty to answer the question. What up? How about that?

Maybe I'm not at liberty to do that. Whoa! Drake May, he could still play in North Carolina's bowl game. I think it actually helps North Carolina's chances that it's in his hometown. Duke Spayo Bowl, that's, you know, Sam Howe, he did the same thing playing in that bowl game and it's a fun opponent. West Virginia, a lot of fans here locally. Fun opponent, West Virginia versus North Carolina.

That's on December the 27th, a few days after Christmas. Mac Brown, he could get mayonnaise dumped on his head. That's fun. App State, they got the Cure Bowl against Miami of Ohio. They could close on a high note after that. Whoo, drubbing that they took in his Sunbelt Championship game. Nine wins after starting three and four.

That would be quite the achievement, though. Right here on WSJS, you got Duke playing in the Birmingham Bowl against the team that handed App State that loss. That, of course, is Troy. Meaningful bowl season. That's what we got ahead, some of the games that we'll be watching locally. Coming up, we're going to grade the basketball performances from over the weekend by attaching letter grades to it in a segment we call Graham's Grades. You know the drill by now.

Keep it here on a Monday drive. Even though App State is a six point underdog in the game, you should fully expect the Mountaineers to win it. Expect Sean Clark doing the postgame interview, just like the JMU win, saying do not call this an upset. The circumstances are right for a Carolina Panthers win Sunday.

Even if it doesn't make sense at face value, it makes football sense. Mayfield looking to throw on first down, has Evans into the open field. They haven't scored 20 points since mid-October. I say they do and win the game 20 to 17. Carolina's has officially been eliminated for the postseason. Tampa wins a 21-18. For the first time in a month, we've had a losing week. But the reason I had a losing week, the difference between a winning week and a losing week was not App State or the Carolina Panthers, because the Panthers actually did in fact cover, even though I was wrong about the game.

Once again, W.D., that snake. We have a coffee bet on the line. And the game that we decided was me thinking five and a half points too many for the L.A. Chargers going on the road one o'clock Eastern Time Zone at the New England Patriots. Five and a half points. I don't know if you watch much of this game, but the final score was Chargers six, Patriots nothing. I needed one score. One. Just one score.

And they couldn't do that. Still five games over five hundred having a great year. But W.D. 's taken some coffee off of me in the last few weeks. Three straight. Not very happy about that.

Something I am happy about. A lot of the results we saw in basketball over the weekend. Let's recap the basketball weekend and Graham's grades right now.

Every week is a test for your favorite sports teams. Who passed the test? I don't know. Who dropped the ball? I don't know. Josh Graham has the answers. What? Time for Graham's grades.

A through F. The very good, the not so good, the meh from over the weekend. And we start with the best of the best. Hey, it's got to be UNCW at Kentucky.

It's on the road. You're facing UNCW alum John Calipari. You're coming off a loss to my East Carolina Pirates, which net some very fun transitive property results. And UNCW beats the Wildcats on the road against a ranked team.

Nothing is better than that. Shout out to Coach Sittles group. Shout out to the Seahawks.

B. This is where I have App State. They beat Auburn. The only reason it's not an A is it just felt like the right team won. It didn't feel like an upset, albeit it obviously was, considering that's the first high major win that App State's had and maybe their history. First time in 23 years that they had a high major team visit their building. That was since North Carolina with Bill Guthridge opened up the home center in the year 2000.

First time they sold out the building in 14 years. So to win that game and lead for more than half the game, I think they led for 27 of the 40 minutes. It felt legitimate. Didn't feel like an upset. It's still a monumental win nonetheless for Dustin Kearns program. C. North Carolina's win over Florida State.

Why is this a C? Because you trailed it by 14 points. You missed 11 straight threes in one stretch. It felt kind of flukey how they came back. If you watch the game, it was hilarious how bad FSU was against the North Carolina press. North Carolina doesn't press all that much and it looked like FSU was ill-prepared for that pressure.

Just comic turnover after comic turnover, a 22-0 run. It doesn't look like FSU's any good, who was beaten at the buzzer at home by Georgia earlier last week. North Carolina found a way to win the game, but I can't say it's that great of a win when the game you came off of was dropping 100 against Tennessee. D. NC State at Boston College.

The Wolf Pack. They won the game. Josh, how is this a D? Well, you were up seven in the final three minutes of this game and you missed one of your last seven or you missed six of your last seven shots of regulation to allow for this to go to overtime.

And it probably should have been stolen from you. But credit to the pack. They figured out a way to win the game, but nothing was impressive about this at all when you expected them to play with their hair on fire after getting blown out the way they did against Ole Miss. It just doesn't look like the state team is all that good, or at least not as good as they were a year ago with Quavion Smith and Jarkel Joiner.

F. Any question who this is? It's Duke. Duke losing the Georgia Tech. Speaking of a team you expected to have play with its hair on fire, you lose at Arkansas, your second loss of the year. People were doubting you and then you lose to Georgia Tech.

Now, another the details do matter, but I think this is also a big reason why this is an F2. It could be a lot worse for the Blue Devils because of this game. In the first two minutes, Tyrese Proctor went down and we still don't know the extent of the injury, I don't think. In fact, D.J. Turner, who does all our production here at WSJS, he was just asking me in the last break, do we know about Tyrese's injury yet? Is it going to be an ACL?

Is it a, because it did not look good in the moment. And do you know what Duke's three losses have in common? Tyrese Proctor either being hurt like he was Saturday or not playing well in the game.

So he's a very, very, very important piece for the Blue Devils banged up in the game. And then Mark Mitchell, I felt good for him to have those two dunks to put Duke back in front. It was funny. I was in the North Carolina press room with my iPad watching this game and Armando Bacon was doing his media with other people and he stopped mid-answer of someone's question to be like, hold up, is Duke losing? Is Duke losing? And one of the writers got mad at me.

I'm like, I didn't tell him. Hey, everybody started like surrounding the iPad, North Carolina players and support staff. And needless to say, they weren't that bum that Duke lost at the end.

So there's Graham's grades. It is still staggering to me. ESPN get up this morning. First thing I saw was Paul Feinbaum.

You're not going to believe this WD. Completely okay that FSU is left out in favor of an SEC team saying it's faux outrage that people are having crocodile tears, if you will, about the Seminoles. Yet elsewhere on the lineup, I did not see ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips. In fact, I haven't seen ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips speak about FSU since this happened. We got a five sentence statement and I got a feeling kind of like March when we encouraged Jim Phillips to say something before the inevitable bad thing happened and five teams got into the playoff or into the NCAA tournament then. It was after the fact that he told ESPN's Andrea Adelson about all the things that he probably should have said and how bad things were that the committee left out Clemson and all these teams. And here we are again.

You watch a week from now, two weeks from now. We're probably going to see some type of interview he does with ESPN or somebody about how this was a sham or a debacle. And we welcome in David Glenn now to discuss such topics. It just seems like another PR disaster here, but am I being unfair? Where does Jim Phillips deserve the most blame here, if any? Well, he wasn't on the committee, so we can only blame Jim Phillips for his reaction or lack of a reaction. Or you could blame Jim Phillips, if you want, for not embracing his podium, if you will. I've worked with several Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioners.

They tend to stay for a really long time, so it's not a large number, but they all chose how they interacted with the media differently. And I would say that Jim has not been aggressive in taking the podium as the Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner. It doesn't mean he's a bad guy. It doesn't mean his way is the wrong way automatically. But when things go wrong and you don't have the loud voice or the omnipresent in the media universe voice, he's going to take criticism for that. And he's a big boy.

He understands that. Do you think there's a role that politicking plays when you talk about human beings making difficult decisions, whether it be the NCAA tournament committee or the college football playoff committee? Because Greg Sankey, Kirby Smart, Nick Saban, it seemed they understood the assignment on Saturday. In my experience, Josh, whether it's the sports decisions that involve mega millions or billions of dollars, even my own career, nine times out of 10, whatever the result is going to be, the result is going to be.

And all the politicking in the world is not going to matter. Where politicking becomes interesting and sometimes important is the really rare gray area decision that has to be made. And in this context, for example, we're in year 10 of the college football playoff. I know there were other years where people were unhappy when Team X did not get in. In my opinion, the committee had a pretty easy job for the first nine years. If you want to go after one of their decisions in those nine years, I actually think the committee got it right.

36 out of 36. And yes, of course, there's some arguments to be made there. This was by far their hardest because you had the Texas win over Alabama. You couldn't have Alabama in and Texas out.

I mean, you want to talk about discarding the most important evidence we have. There is nothing better than head to head games between two of the finalists in their stadium. And the Longhorns beat them at their place, right? You could not put the Longhorns in without the tide being in.

You just couldn't. So now it becomes, all right, there's three 13-0 teams, which we've only had one time in 10 years. And there's these other two 12-1 power five champions, which as you know, and I'm sure you remind your audience, is a specifically stated criteria of the committee. Well, you can't squeeze five into four spots.

And this is the first time that you've had, in my opinion, that you've had five valid candidates. Because it is the harder decision, the gray area, you've got this one criterion that says power five championship matters and of course, body of work and winning games matters. But you do have this other specific criterion that says you're allowed to take into consideration if there's a coach or key player missing in an upcoming game. It's stated in the college football playoff committee rules. So it's not like they made that up, which would be a bigger deal.

Because it was such a closer call, that's where politicking can matter. I mean, anybody who doesn't think that TV executives politic is, you know, they're living in a delusional world. The 12 team college football playoff, Josh, when we get there next year, could bring in $2 billion a year with a B, $2 billion a year. And this one, as you know, brings in more than a billion between the playoff itself, four team playoff, and then the New York six, New York six bowls.

So it's an enormous amount of money. And they're saying they want the best match ups. And that committee, you probably have addressed this, I do listen to your show, but not every hour of every day. When Bill Hancock, a guy I've known for a long time, and sort of the the ongoing public spokesperson for the playoff, not the committee, but the playoff, when he said, Hey, let's remember, this is about the four best teams, not the deserving teams. That to me was an absolute foreshadowing of what we ended up with, because he was preparing the audience for a 13 and 0 Florida State to be left out without their star quarterback.

And he was preparing the audience for what turned out to be the most difficult decision the committee has had in those 10 years. I don't like it. And it's not just because of the Florida State deal. It's because it's compounded.

Like, if it's not, if it's just one unprecedented thing that happens, okay, that's fine. But it's multiple compounded, where we've never seen DG, a team jump more than three spots from the final ranking, or the second to last ranking to the final ranking. And two teams, not one, two teams jumped four spots. We've never seen a team, an unbeaten Power Conference champ, get passed over in favor of a one loss team. And we've now seen two jump an unbeaten FSU team. It's that piece where like part of their criteria is to break down teams individually. And I don't know what the case is for Texas a week ago being a seven, now being better than Florida State, or when Florida State beat with their third string quarterback, a team that was ranked five spots higher than the Oklahoma State team that Texas beat. And with the third string quarterback, they won by double digits. And by the way, as we've pointed out, the best non-conference win that the SEC had as a conference this year, if people were going to poo poo Louisville, is Louisville. That's the highest ranked non-conference team that as a conference, the Southeastern Conference, beat this year. So that those are the reasons that I dislike it. And it does seem like to me that this laid bare who actually runs this sport, which is, in my opinion, Greg Sankey of the SEC, the reason why we're going to 12 rather than, I told my wife this, they're expanding.

She's like, oh, to six, to eight, nah, to 12. Why? Because Greg Sankey was so public in saying, I won't support anything that has fewer than four at large bids.

And if you want five or six AQs, you got to have 10 at a minimum and 12 works better than 10. That's why that happens. And if you're wondering why the Pac-12 isn't a conference anymore, that's because of television. And you spelled out the reason why for television purposes, they might want Alabama over say Florida state in that spot.

That's I think the most depressing thing of it all. It's not FSU and the ACC getting screwed. It's pretty clearly laid bare to me who actually runs the sport.

And it's not the people you want running it. I won't debate that Greg Sankey is an incredibly influential power five commissioner. He is the most influential, but I think your other point is even more well taken that he is speaking through the eyes of a TV partner. No TV partner wants to alienate the largest, most passionate college football fan base on planet earth, which is SEC fans. I'm about to write an article about the most watched college football games in the country during the regular season. And the ACC has a handful of them, but the SEC and the big 10 have the most, which of course ends up translating into the biggest TV deals with their various TV partners. The TV executives know this and they don't want to alienate their base, which is what would happen if Alabama and Georgia were both left out. And you know, the committee is going to say that the reason you had the second, the reason you had the first unprecedented example is the Jordan Travis missing quarterback explanation, which is again in the criteria.

They don't tell you how much weight to put on that, but it is one of the criteria. The other unprecedented thing that you just laid out, they're going to say is because they had another data point seeing the Seminoles without Jordan Travis as their starting quarterback. And that's why the rankings looked one way.

And then you had these two unprecedented leaps as you correctly described them the other way. I don't know if you've gotten to this, but I'll say this out loud. If it is really about the best teams as they keep emphasizing FSU without Jordan Travis, if we're going to be honest about it, should be behind a couple of other teams as well. What if I brought this up to WD right before the show started, I wish somebody would have asked Boo Corrigan.

Absolutely. Why is Florida state behind Bama, but why are you trying to sit on the fence? And you know what, Josh, I mentioned the Bill Hancock conversation in public comments. That's before the committee even went in.

He was preparing us for all of this, I believe. In the committee conversations, Boo Corrigan specified that they asked the football coaches in the room. We would all agree it's a great idea to ask the actual football coaches to lead the conversation.

We would all agree with that, I think. But did you hear what they asked? The question they asked was, which team would you want to play and which would you not want to play? Well, that is rigging the answer. You could ask those same football coaches a different question.

Whose 13 or 12 game body of work is more impressive to you? That's a very different question than which of those teams would you rather play or rather not play. You're loading the question for Jim Grove and the other football coaches on that committee. I'm an attorney for crying out loud.

You never ask a witness on the stand a question that you don't know the answer to. If I wanted Florida state in, I would say to Jim Grove and the rest of them, whose body of work do you respect more over 12 or 13 games and why? And if I wanted the result that you ended up getting, I would ask which team do you not want to play?

Well, no bleep Sherlock. No, you'd rather play an excellent Florida state team, of course, with their second or third string quarterback that doesn't have a whole lot of experience. And if Brock Glenn turns out really well, you know I'm going to start calling him cousin at some point, no known relation, but why not? Right. But But yeah, it's all in the question that you ask. And you know, there's that one terminology ESPN and other use. It's called strength of record. Strength of record asks the question, what are the odds that a top 25 team would do what you did against your schedule?

Florida State is third, according to the computer that spits out strength of records. That's a body of work argument, right? That's not you're, you're looking in the rearview mirror, what has happened? You're what they asked those coaches in the committee room was to look out the front of the car. What do you think is going to happen? Those are two very different questions.

And the way these things were framed is what got Florida state the short end of the stick. DG real quickly, I'll give you a choose your own adventure. What are you more fired up about today? Transfer portal portal related matters or first net ranking related matters? I got to go transfer portal. I am, you know, I'm a college basketball guy and I love I love it all day, every day, 365 days a year.

But I think the portal is more impactful, right? We just watched two teams play for the ACC football title. And I wrote about this at nc sports network.com. They're the two schools that hit the transfer portal hardest and most successfully a year ago. That is not mere coincidence of the 11 most frequent starters Florida State had on offense this season 10 started their college careers at other schools. That's a 10 out of 11. I mean, that's incredible. This is not a tweak to the way programs have been built.

Historically, this is a turning upside down of how they've been built. And man, we're at 100 plus outgoing ACC transfers and counting that we've documented at nc sports network.com. And in the time I'm talking to you, I probably missed another half dozen nc sports network.com the David Glenn show, you know, I'm a legend joining us here. I hope it doesn't make you feel old when I call you that. It's good to have you on the show. And we'll have to catch up sometime soon. Thanks, brother. You can call me whatever you like. I'm always answering the phone. Great to see you in WD as always.