This Is America

This is The Drive with Josh Graham Podcast.

Three internet sensations, guys! Tune into The Drive weekday afternoons, 3 to 7 on WSJS. We've made it to a Friday drive. It is WSJS, News Talk Sports for the Triad, where Scottie Scheffler and I had orange in our wardrobe today, but for slightly different reasons. Major championship golf. That was appealing enough, but it certainly jumps up a notch when the world number one starts his day in the clink.

Scottie Scheffler still on the course right now, round two of the PGA Championship. We'll hit on the golf in a bit because it's hard to overstate how devastating last night's loss was for the Carolina Hurricanes. Not only is this the low point of Rod Brithmore's six years as the Cane's coach... That was the worst loss in franchise history. As a lifelong Cane's fan, I can tell you that's not an exaggeration.

That's not being prisoner of the moment. It was that bad. But let's get into it. They didn't get beat. They beat themselves up 3 to 1 in the third period. Carolina spoiled four chances to go up four goals. You had Jarvis missing the net, Aho on a breakaway missing on the backhand, Martinuk hitting the post, Jake Gensel hitting the post, and that was in the first five minutes of the game or of the third period. Carolina had all those opportunities and once they spoiled all of them, you knew the Rangers were going to respond with something. Freddie Anderson led in a soft goal. Carolina, immediately after that, commits a penalty.

The Rangers score on the power play and then they let Crider open in front for an easy tap-in to put the Rangers ahead, a natural hat-trick in the third period for Chris Crider. This is different this year because past losses were not while Carolina was the top dog. Carolina was that this year. Last season, when they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals, they were short-handed. They had the sixth best odds entering the playoffs because they didn't add at the deadline and they lost Andrei Svecikovic and they didn't have Matz Passioretti for most of the year and they didn't have Toveo Torovainen for large stretches of that playoff run. This season, they didn't have the big injury. They were favorites, pre-season to win the Cup.

It's pre-season or pre-Stanley Cup playoffs. At every stage, they were the favorites and they added at key places at the deadline. They added Evgeny Kuznetsov and Jake Gensel. They added a ton of firepower and they fell short of the Conference Finals. That is an object failure, especially considering how Game 6 transpired. And there's now a sense that this is going to be their best chance.

This was going to be their best chance to win the Cup. You have nine impending free agents, key players, Toveo Torovainen, as we mentioned before, a guy like Brady Shea and Brett Pesci defensively. These are Gensel, we'll see if he was just a rental, Jarvis, Neches, restrictive free agents. And when Atlanta has to answer questions in all those regards, here was Rod last night on the reality of inevitable roster turnover. Yep, that's tough.

It's a special group in there. This puts a tough way to end a really good year. These guys played their butts off all year. But this is what you're going to remember, right? And that's the hard part. And like you said, it's a business and I love they rolled us back with these guys, but who knows how that's all going to shake out. It's okay as long as he comes back.

That is the big question now. Something that will run past Sarah Sivian when he joins us, when she joins us later this hour, WD, I'm down bad. Give me a break. I know. Last show.

Up is down and down is up. Until I'm on a boat for a week, I'll be gone, out of your hair. Sarah Sivian will join us. David Glenn will join us.

OnX at WSJS radio if you want in, that's where we're streaming video in addition to YouTube and Twitch. Well, Dalton, he's the expert. Ah, that music. It's really good stuff.

I could just bang it on repeat all day long. So at the moment, Colin Morikawa nailed that one. ACC legend. Is that right?

Stanford. Haha. That's good. That's a good point.

Good point. Uh, 12 under par right now. He's through 17 followed by Mark Hubbard, 10 under currently he's through 13 and then Thomas Detri is nine under so far. He actually is done for the day.

We'll keep you posted on everything that's going on at Valhalla. He's really not going to mention the fact that Scottie Scheffler is tied for second and the X man's there too. By the way, Hubbard just bogeyed so he's at nine under, not in second place. He's tied for second place now, but no mention. How do you do an update and not mention Scottie Scheffler who literally on the screen right in front of us just birdied to get to tied for second place. He's at five under today and you don't care to mention that.

Oh, that's pretty good. If you won't mention it. Is there news with him today?

Is there something? There was an OJ Simpson element to watching Scottie today. Now to be clear, not in terms of what they did, allegedly, but the spectacle of it. Just like you knew OJ was arrested during the Bronco chase, there's something magnetic about watching an athlete perform who literally just got booked. As for what happened, Scottie Scheffler's arrest seems to be a classic misunderstanding that is embarrassing for all parties involved.

Now you got to look at this from both perspectives here. Scottie's confusion was perfectly understandable based on the reporting that we heard from Jeff Darlington who was on the scene from ESPN. Just view it from an athlete's lens for a moment. He's a competitor. He's a professional athlete. He's got a routine. This is a major championship. It is round two.

He's on his way into the clubhouse. These guys are as regimented as anybody you can imagine. And you see traffic, you see cops, and you're thinking, oh, this is just security. It's a major championship. He clearly didn't know the circumstances of which, and he even said so on his Instagram statement he put out before his round, what exactly had transpired there. What happened, and Darlington's reporting lacked a lot of these details, a lot of it was from the lens of Scottie Scheffler, not so much the other side of it, the law enforcement side of it. What had happened, the police was cleaning up a fatal accident involving a bus shuttle, one of the shuttle buses. So they had that road blocked while they were literally investigating for evidence, trying to figure out what exactly happened. Like the golf tournament was postponed.

It was delayed, the start of the day, not because Scottie Scheffler got booked, surely that was a part of it, but it was because of this, somebody died. Somebody passed away, that's tragic. So if I'm this cop, which I'm guessing four o'clock, five in the morning, probably wasn't planning to be doing this today, and probably had been working hours before that as well as somebody who comes from a law enforcement family, and you're dealing with something as tragic as this, as delicate as this, I wouldn't care if it was Scottie Scheffler, the Pope, or Tom Brady trying to get through that road. I'm sorry, no one's getting through this road because we're doing this here.

It's embarrassing for both sides. Scottie, he's not in the right here. He's not. Because when you start reading the police statement about how he resisted a bit, probably said some things that you, we're never probably going to get the police scam footage because I bet you Scottie's team probably doesn't want it out there. He probably said some things that he probably should not have, he's probably annoyed, he probably wasn't listening to what the officer's commands were, wasn't doing that, listening to the police officer's orders, and the statement kind of reflected it wasn't that Scottie was in the right here. And then on the other end, if you're the police officer, you've got to have the self-awareness to know where you're at. You're at the PGA Championship, you're representing the Louisville Police Department. Maybe if it's the world number one player, maybe you let this one go a little bit.

Maybe you do. Or at least don't pull the guy out, throw him against a car, and put him in handcuffs. Again, we're human beings here. Scottie Scheffler, this police officer, and there's two sides to this, and I don't think there is somebody is right.

I think in this instance, both sides can be wrong, and it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing for golf, it's embarrassing for Louisville, it's embarrassing for the police department, but you've got to look at it from both perspectives. We are halfway to Margaritaville on this Friday. It has been a lovely cruise this week, which is fitting because I won't be here next week because I'll be on a cruise that I'm going on this weekend. David Glenn now joins us, it's almost his theme music, Buffett, or just anything that sounds tropical, I think. We welcome David Glenn with that type of theme.

You know him from the North Carolina Sports Network. DG, when you had Friday shows, it was called Free-for-All Friday, where you'd welcome people to call in on an assortment of topics. I think this should just be a Free-for-All Friday where I just throw a myriad of things at you.

This could be a small plates type of segment because there's so much I'd like to get your opinion on that I figure we can just hit on all of it. What do you think? I'm good with that and I love that music because for I don't know how many years, I concluded every week of programming with that song on the theory that all these kind folks that listen to your show or my show, they just spent some chunk of Monday through Friday with us, so that song, Lovely Cruise, was my thank you for them being a part of my five day cruise or at least part of that cruise. I always spend the weekend feeling good. That's a lot more sweeter and noble than what we do. Robert Walsh, the former producer of the show, just really liked Rhinestone Cowboy by Glenn Campbell for some reason and then B.

Dot sang it one time and then now we close the week by singing the chorus to Rhinestone Cowboy. That's what we do. So that'll happen in just a bit. All right.

Let me throw some things at you. What's more impressive to you that Scottie Scheffler was allowed to play today after what happened this morning or that when he did, he shot a five under 66 in a major? I'd say it's the latter. I thought it was predictable that he would be able to play. He is the number one golfer in the world for a lot of different reasons. Some of them related, of course, to just his beautiful swing, but some of it is really related to his demeanor and his even keel and his refusal to get too high or too low or be distracted by things that most human beings are distracted by. So it's impressive what he did today, but it just kind of continues a theme that that he has ridden all the way to number one in the world.

You need to check out. This is me encouraging people, especially if you're watching on YouTube, to go back to last summer and check out the conversations that David Glenn had with Rod Brind'Amour and Tom Dundon, because I remember playing some of those answers on the show at the time thinking, I hadn't heard Rod talk about his contract. I hadn't heard Tom Dundon speak about these topics as well either. Now that it's become newsworthy and it's going to become even more so now that the season concluded yesterday for the Canes, what do you expect Rod Brind'Amour's number to be in terms of annual salary if we assume that eventually it's going to get done? Here's the way I look at it as somebody who, as an attorney, negotiated a lot of deals in a lot of contexts. Unfortunately, I wish I had more multimillion dollar deals, but when we know that there's a handful of head coaches in the NHL who either already make or are about to make five million a year, but they're all members of the I've won a Stanley Cup as a head coach club, Rod, who's a humble guy and not a money-driven guy to his core, he's not going to ask to be paid the way all the Stanley Cup winners have been paid. So he's not going to ask for five million a year. We know that over the last couple of years, the average NHL coach makes more than two and a half million a year. Well, Rod has made six straight playoffs. He's won the Jack Adams Award as the best coach in the NHL.

There is no argument, nor would Tom Dundon make the argument, that Rod is only an average head coach. So what is the magic number above 2.6 million per year? By the way, he makes less than two million a year right now. What's the magic number between 2.6 million average head coach and the five million Stanley Cup head coach?

I don't know. I mean, is it is it three point eight million dollars a year? What's the exact midpoint between to get the exact midpoint between two point six and five would be what? That's it's Friday at three point eight. Yeah.

So three point eight. Would it surprise you if the number was less than three less unless Rod's asking for other things, which I think he is unrelated to his own compensation? I'll bet you Rod Brind'Amour is the type of guy that says if Rod if Tom Dundon wants to keep the assistant coaching staff as low as it is and it's way low in the NHL rankings, what the Hurricanes assistant coaches have made, not just the Tom Dundon era, but for a long time, I could see Rod saying, pay me a little less, but help out my guys. But Tom Dundon, such a value driven guy, he's going to pay Rod Brind'Amour fair market value because he he respects the value of Rod Brind'Amour and has verbalized that. Will he pay huge upgrades to the assistant coaches if he if in his mind, they're not true decision makers? You know, Tom Dundon a little bit.

I know him really well when it's Sebastian Aho, who's an absolute decision maker. Tom Dundon approved nine million dollars per year, plus he pays to the cap every year. A true a true on ice decision difference maker. Tom Dundon exactly spends to the cap every year and does not hesitate to keep those superstars. The end of the line player, Tom's value view of the universe is there's 10 different guys that I can get for that amount of money to be a fourth line player, right? He's not going to overpay for those guys. He's just not going to do it. So he'll pay for Rod. I'll be stunned if they don't work out a deal. They say they disagree more often than they agree with each other. But the underlining foundation of that relationship to me is one of the best mutual admiration, mutual respect relationships that I have ever seen in any sport between a franchise owner and the head coach of the club.

David Glenn's with us here. You have legal expertise. I think we might need it when it comes to what's happening. This week, ACC spring meetings as it relates to North Carolina, I'll let you know my non-legal hat on what my read was on it.

And then you tell me what you think happened given the dynamics. The board of trustees started the week very critical of Bubba Cunningham talking about athletic mismanagement and budget mismanagement. And we didn't know if it was based on good info or bad info. But it was strange when it started to become, talk about North Carolina being in the ACC, perhaps being, it might be better for them to be aligned with Clemson and Florida State. It almost seemed like the audit that came out of that might've been linked to a disagreement in view about the future of the ACC, given that Bubba is incredibly respected, one of the best ADs in America. And yet last summer, very critical as an advocate of the ACC of Florida State said they were barking saying that you need to follow the agreement.

You need to be in the league until 2036, then you could do whatever you want. And then yesterday happens, Bubba's there. They don't ask any questions of Bubba during the meeting. And then they kind of walked back some of the comments that they made, some of the board of trustees members. And in fact, there was a legal ruling that said that they can't discuss athletic measures privately. There was a restraining order put on that. So it kind of looked like the board of trustees came off as a very well to do message board, the way that they came off and then walked back things when Bubba was in the room. When you look at this from a legal perspective, how close am I or what was your takeaway?

I'm not even sure it's a true legal perspective, but I endorse your point of view and I'll even add to that basic framework that you just outlined. I think it was not only the message board mentality, I think it's something we see all the time on message boards in American society and otherwise. It was aggressive ignorance.

It's a phrase that I've adopted over, let's say these last eight years. The loudest, most obnoxious, over the top, screaming, whining, complaining, bold, loud people often are the most ignorant. And I mean in politics, in public service, on message boards, on sports radio, et cetera. And here's the reality. The biggest Bubba Cunningham critics in that meeting didn't even get the annual budget right until the end. They keep throwing around $125 million. They're supposed to be voting on this stuff. It's $140 million.

They're off by $15 million. They talked all boldly about how they're going to grill Bubba Cunningham. They didn't even know the rules about what has to be in a public forum and what they're allowed to do behind closed doors. And they didn't even know he was in Amelia Island. They didn't know where he was. They didn't even give him credit for the fact that he's on the NCAA men's basketball committee. And that's one of the reasons he was unable to visit them at their preferred time back in March. I mean, this is just, these are the people in charge of the university of North Carolina.

Are you kidding me? Now, they can have whatever opinion they want. There is a valid debate to be had about whether UNC should chase the money, which is what Clemson and Florida State are doing, or whether UNC should have a broader view about a future of a conference that they helped found more than 70 years ago. But the ignorance in those statements on multiple levels were off the charts.

It was embarrassing. And for example, they should know more details about why UNC's budget is in trouble. They know about the bigger picture there.

They were shooting shots across the bow. Bubba Cunningham, remember, did do what they wanted him to do on the expansion vote. Remember, UNC, the only three schools that voted no on Cal Stanford and SMU were the two schools currently suing the ACC and the University of North Carolina. Those were the only three no votes. And they made their vote. They made their vote public too.

Correct. That made some of those critics, those pro relocate to the Big Ten or the SEC people, that made them happy. But other things that Bubba has said publicly has made them unhappy. There is no consensus in the UNC fan base about how UNC should handle this. There's no consensus on the Board of Trustees. It was the loudest, most ignorant people screaming the most and then having to backpedal when they got called on their nonsense. Let's get to, this is where we actually need your legal expertise. The most important of the topics that we're going to hit on today. Indiana, a judge, see, we got to veer away, you know, I don't want to get too deep into politics here, DG, but a judge ruled on something that's very controversial here.

A judge declared in a case between a restaurant and a local like ordinance of sorts that had specifics on what type of restaurants could be developed at a plaza, an Indiana judge declared that tacos and burritos are quote Mexican style sandwiches that you can consider legally a taco or a burrito, a sandwich. I'm just going to let you have the flow here. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Now I'm surprised that the ordinance only allowed those who serve sandwiches to open the restaurant.

It'd be, I'd be intrigued to see how it was replacing a subway and that they needed something that had, there's a lot of detail in it. They were looking to fill a category, so to speak. Right.

Oh man. This is like a law school question. I'm flacking, flashing back to 30 years ago, although it's also a sports radio topic, right? How often have people debated, you know, what's the sandwich and what's not a sandwich? I think legal DG, Indiana just ruled that tacos and burritos are sandwiches. I guess, I mean, I guess I would not just instinctively call them sandwiches. I think they're different than sandwiches, but you know, if I were representing the restaurant that needed to needed them to be described as sandwiches for them to be able to open to their place, I could come up with some kind of logical argument on their behalf. And apparently that's the argument that carried the day.

So more power to them. I need to figure out where the word taco comes from. Like would we be surprised to learn that the word taco in another language actually means sandwich of some sorts?

Like we need to get to some of the language specifics as well. But DG, you, you're, you're a coward. You sat on the fence. I didn't like it. I'm, I'm not, I don't, I don't think they're sandwiches. I don't. There you go. That's it.

If I were the judge, I would have ruled the other way. That's it. Indiana can bleep off. They say that they have the best basketball. What's next? An Indiana judge is going to say that they're officially the hoop state. No, this is America. We got 50 states. We could have different ideas on these things.

Guess what? Now we are getting political. This is the basketball state. Our basketball is better than in our state. We don't have tacos and burritos that are sandwiches.

They're tacos and burritos. We're supposed to be halfway to Margaritaville, man. We're supposed to leave that harder hitting stuff for Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. Yeah, that's what we're doing.

All right, DG. I'm literally getting on a boat like this weekend. So I literally hope you have a lovely cruise.

I do. You're wearing a Jamaica shirt. We are going to Jamaica. That's great. How fitting is that? Oh, man.

Call me if you need any input. Maria and I love Jamaica. Cross it off.

But he didn't say lovely and talented, so that doesn't count. You don't get that on your bingo board if you're at the Davidson. I thought we were out of time. I had to shorten it up. All right, DG. It's good to see you. We always make time for you. Thanks for doing this.

Have a great weekend and have a great trip. And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, you're on The Drive with Josh Graham. A great joke I heard when listening to stand up in Winston-Salem. Seems fitting I bring this up as Bill Burr's performing the Joel DeMar Night. You want to know what it sounds like when Tom DeLonge, the lead sangerer of Blink-182, is looking for aliens? What does it sound like?

Where are you? Get it? Because he's the big alien guy who's exposing a lot of things. This is a question in regards to Scottie Scheffler. Whoa, Rory McElroy just bombed a birdie.

Goodness. Round two action of the PGA Championship going on. Scottie Scheffler, if he pars out 17 and 18, he'll be shooting a 66 today.

He's 5-under par, tied for second to Kala Murakawa, currently 9-under. If I were to ask you at 10 o'clock this morning when Scottie was about to tee off, how's this going to go? Are you more apt to say what happened to him would be motivating or there's just, golf is such a mental game that this is going to be hard to compartmentalize. Being in a jumpsuit an hour and a half before teeing off and being booked this morning, being thrown against a police car, that's just too much for you to block out.

This isn't going to go well. I mean, the jokes that are made following this would say, oh he's about to light it up, but then like the reality of it, it is a mental game and that is heavy stuff, especially how it's just everywhere, it's all you see, but he's kind of in second place right now. He's a mutant.

Well he's not kinda, he is. This is the same guy that the last 9 on the Masters, during the Masters, seemed unfazed whatsoever. The great ones in that sport, and this is kind of what makes Happy Gilmore such a great golf movie, you have that ability to go to a different place. In that movie it's your happy place, but in reality it's the ability to compartmentalize in your head. Compartmentalize pain like Tiger did in Torrey Pines in 2008. Compartmentalize even being booked earlier today like Scheffler has.

That's such a compelling, interesting thing. Coming to something else though, the NBA Draft Combine wrapped up and the Combine spells bad news for some of our locals. Hunter Salas from Wake Forest still hasn't declared that his name's gonna stay into the draft yet, so some Demon Deacon fans are holding out hope he's gonna return. He's not returning to Wake Forest. He was a borderline first rounder going into the week.

This is not a great draft. He only helped himself. He was second in the three-point shooting drills, and of course he was gonna test well. Incredibly smart guy, great measurables. When scouts were next to me at the Duke game that he took over before the Filipowski incident, one of the best games in the ACC this year, Mitch Kupchak in another scout told me, that guy's going in the first round.

So he helped himself this week. It'd be crazy not to keep his name in the draft. North Carolina target Coleman Hawkins from Illinois, he's gonna stay in the draft too.

That's not official yet. Teams are trying to keep him in college basketball, offering him lucrative NIL opportunities. The record NIL deals the $2 million that the Washington kid just received. He even kind of referred to that here, saying, if I'm not gonna make anything, if I'm not gonna make enough playing pro, because I'm not gonna be a first round draft pick or a draft pick at all, I'd be stupid not to come back and take the money in college. But he made it clear that's something he doesn't want to do.

He had 17 points leading scorer, scoring in one of the games this week, looked really good. And then he said this to reporters when asked whether or not he was gonna stay in school or stay in the draft. And I'd really love to hear from a team that I can at least get a minimum contract, something guaranteed. I'd feel really comfortable with that because I honestly really don't want to go back to school and I know someone just became the highest paid player and I wouldn't want to have that label.

I'd be making a good amount, but that's a lot of added pressure when you label yourself that. I just feel like I've kind of outgrown college basketball, I'm ready to kind of just give my life to basketball, if that makes sense. It makes sense he's not going back to college basketball, which means back to the drawing board if you're North Carolina. Some Tar Heel fans objected to my suggestion that after they struck out on all of the centers, Cliff Amorui from Rutgers, for example, who chose to go to Alabama, Bradshaw at Kentucky, Omar Balo at Arizona, after they didn't get in on any of those centers, making it clear Jaylen Washington was going to start there. My thought was, North Carolina starting five is set in stone. You're gonna find a big man, but it's not gonna be a guy starting for you. You could find a stretch four, a guy who could play the four, but he's not gonna start over a 47% three-point shooter in Cade Tyson, in what Hubert Davis wants to do, a more flexible three-point shooting lineup.

I just don't think so. Tar Heel fans need to come to grips, but their starting five is likely going to be Elliott Cadeau, Ian Jackson, RJ Davis, Cade Tyson, Jaylen Washington. Maybe at the start of the year, kind of like we saw Cadeau wasn't starting right out of the gate, you might see Seth Trimble start right out of the gate rather than Ian Jackson, but once you start getting into the meat of the schedule, that's gonna be your starting five.

And North Carolina needs to find depth to support that starting five. It's not great news that Coleman Hawkins had a great week and says these type of things because that means probably the last gasp of a guy who can start for you left in the portal probably isn't gonna be in college basketball. Elsewhere, Harrison Ingram, Bronny James, they both could be first-round draft picks.

They had good weeks. Bronny, with his dad watching on, led scoring in a game, he had 13 points. The fact that LeBron James is his dad and has said on record multiple times that he'd like to play with his son, I think is enough reason for him to go in the first round. They just need... You see the NBA trying to give every possible reason to make it seem like, oh, teams should definitely take this guy. Oh, the draft's bad, so certainly he can go in round one. Because this guy averaged three points, four points last year, if that. You hear Woj out here at the start of the week saying, oh, he's gonna pack out G-League arenas.

That's right. The field house for the Swarm is now just gonna be sold out every single night because Bronny James is in the lineup. So, he's gonna get drafted in the first round because, A, it is a bad draft, B, because LeBron James is his dad and teams feel like they could potentially add a top-10 player that will get their team talked about every single day on first deck.

And you can't pay for that type of publicity. That type of merchandise, that type of attendance that will come from that. So that's why that's gonna happen. Harrison Ingram, great week for him. Harrison, the Draymond Green comparisons, that's only gonna continue to amp up.

So that's what's happening at the NBA Draft Combine. W.D., have you ever watched the show Real Time with Bill Maher? I've seen clips of it. I've never sat down to watch a whole show, but I've seen some of the different guests he's had on. Mm-hmm. But one of the things he does before he goes on vacation, there are no new ideas in this business so you just steal from people.

But whether or not you recognize that you're stealing, that I think gives you credibility or character. He has a bit before he goes on vacation that he calls future headlines. He takes off a month and it's like, well these are some of the things you can expect to see.

And funny enough, sometimes those things happen even though the premise of what he's doing is a joke. I thought it would be fun if I make, I'm still trying to figure out these buttons in front of me here. There you go.

They do work. Yes. I thought it would be fun with me going on vacation, being on a boat next week, if I make three predictions, things that are gonna happen while I'm out on vacation. So that way you can have my takes right here. So these are things that are going to happen over the next 10 days because we'll be back the day after Memorial Day, things that are going to happen that we're gonna react to right now. Do we have three, two, one that we can count down from or should we start with number one? How should we do this? Let's start with... As it just so happens... Number three.

Okay, three through one it is. The Canes are going to extend Rod Brindamore. It's 10 days, that'll happen. Unlike Dom Waddell, they're not gonna let this one drag out because teams weren't bending over backwards to say, let's pay for Dom Waddell. We need to have Dom Waddell on my team. Toronto is looking at this very closely saying, are you gonna sign Brindamore? Is it gonna happen?

Huh? If not, oh, we'll pay you five. We'll pay you five and a half million. Yeah, we'll make that happen. Please come here. Let's do that.

They said it was imminent a few weeks ago. Now that the season's over, this is only gonna ramp up and then it becomes a conversation on what the annual salary is going to be. The best coaches make five, five and a half million.

The average salary is two and a half. Rod makes about that. And Tom Dundon knows Rod wants to stay.

So there's the argument or there's the tension there. Why pay a coach five million dollars if you don't have to if that coach would stay for two and a half, three million? Now I'm hoping for his sake he gets something closer to four million dollars, but I doubt it's gonna be more than that. So you're probably gonna look at, in the best case scenario, three and a half, three point seven five, four million dollars. But the Rod Brindamore deal will get done. They will extend him over the next 10 days.

Number two. We'll be staring down a Denver Boston NBA Finals. The Nuggets, they're gonna win game seven. Oh my gosh, they got beat by 45, 45! It's almost better that they got blown out in game six.

Easier to turn the page from that. And they're gonna play it at home. They're gonna play a lot better. They're the champs for a reason. They're gonna beat Minnesota. It's a commendable season for them, fantastic. They'll take out Dallas because Dallas isn't going to the NBA Finals.

What are we talking about here? A team full of 23 year olds isn't either with OKC and the Celtics will work either Indiana or New York. Game six of that series, by the way.

Later tonight, W.D. 's just grimacing at the thought of the Celtics and the Finals. Those series might not be completely wrapped up yet, but we're going to be staring down a Denver Boston Finals.

Number one. Our state will earn four regional sites for the NCAA Baseball Tournament. Under state run ruled Wake Forest last night, I think if they did the poll this morning, you'd have four or five of the top 15 teams from the state of North Carolina. And the top 16 get regional bids.

I don't think all five are going to, though. North Carolina and Wake are pretty close to locks, even though both lost last night. Two out of these three will get regional bids. NC State, Duke, ECU. And that means whoever is the lowest ranked out of the four that get the regional bid is going to have the top team that's left out as a two seed going to their place. So in other words, if my East Carolina Pirates, for whatever reason, don't host a regional, get ready for ECU to visit NC State, or ECU to visit Duke, or ECU to visit one of the four.

So that's where we're headed with that. Those are three predictions, future headlines, things that are going to be going on while I'm on vacation. The Canes will extend Brindamore, Denver Boston NBA Finals, we're going to be staring that down, and four regional sites for our state's teams in the NCAA Baseball Tournament. Who will the Canes be prioritizing this offseason? That's a key question. Who will they bring back?

Who are they going to lose, likely? We'll ask our friend Sarah Sivian when we play Pucks and Tweets with Sarah, next. Today's one of those days the internet really thrives. W.D., feel free to pull some of your favorite tweets you've seen in regards to Scottie Scheffler a little later on.

Oh, we will. Speaking of being entertained on social media, gosh, we've got to throw it back with some 90s hits, late 2000s, because Sarah Sivian, our old friend from the Too Many Men pod, Bleacher Report, Open Ice, back on with us. Sarah, are you feeling nostalgic at all? Are you ready to play an old school edition of Pucks and Tweets with Sarah? Josh, I miss you, and I'm honored that you played Third Eye Blind to bring me in here. July 13th, it's going to be my 26th Third Eye Blind concert. 26th?

Wow. Yep, been going since I was 10. Is there a favorite venue or show out of the first 25 Third Eye Blind shows?

Oh my God, we found out, we got Osama Bin Laden at one of them in Providence, Rhode Island. That was a good thing. Because I remember it was a Phillies game that was on ESPN that night when it came out, and it was one of the first great Twitter moments where everyone started chanting, USA, USA. Did Blink 182, or pardon me, Third Eye Blind acknowledge that on stage? Oh yeah, there was a huge USA chant, they did the national anthem, it was epic.

It's incredible. Okay, for those who are uninitiated, we will ask a hockey question, then throw one of Sarah's recent tweets at Sarah Sivian on Twitter at her and get her reaction to it. Let's start with hockey. We called earlier the Cain's loss last night, the worst loss in franchise history. But from your view, how far would you have to go without risking overstatement to capture how bad game six was, how bad losing in round two was for this team? You know what, I'm glad you said that because I felt like, not that I root for the team or whatever, but I want to see people succeed and I felt really, really bad after that loss.

It felt different, right? Because the context you're kind of asking for here is like the window is closing a bit, you have contracts coming up, you've got Rod's contract coming up, and you've got another year of falling short, either making the ECF and getting swept or not making it all, just having the pieces you think, going for something for once at the deadline and falling short. At Sarah Sivian on Twitter, more like Harry Sun Butt-ker, thanks, I think I'd said it all. Yep, that's all we have to say about this, we don't need the discourse anymore, I think just his name, period, that's all.

You got to give him credit though, like a great Twitter handle, at Butt-kicker7, that is a great Twitter handle regardless of how you feel on the topic. Getting back to hockey, what's your level of concern that Rod Brindobor might have coached his last game with the Gaines? Zero. They are not going to find somebody cheaper, period, or somebody cheaper that has a Jack Adams, period, period. I think Tom Dundon, okay, convoluted here, I don't think he's happy they lost, but I think he might be happy he can leverage the situation a little bit more and pay him less than the market, the market has lowered for him a little bit, but you don't want to live and die by every single game, and you look at the talent on this team, there are more talented teams out there, and he was kind of coaching them to the best of his ability, but the Optics work in their hurricane's favor with this negotiation. I explained the situation to my wife about how he wants to be here and Tom Dundon's negotiating tactics and such, and she got mad on Rod Brindobor's behalf, it's like, he better make at least four and a half, is what she's saying, why do you care, will he make four and a half, what is the guess of what that annual salary is going to be for Rod?

I don't think they want to pay him more than 2.5, which is crazy, I think he might leverage 3.5, I hope, I know we're all rooting for him, and it looks worse for the rest of the league's coaching negotiations, so I know his agent is probably trying to get him more, not just for him, but for the rest of the coaches and setting the market and the salary caps raising, obviously the coaches don't go by that, but everybody's going to need to, inflation's real, everyone's going to need to dish out more money for everybody. That Sarah Sivian on Twitter, given our showtime I appreciated this, quote, you wouldn't last to 3-6pm in the asylum where they raised me. Everyone's getting mad and telling me to get a job because I tweeted what do people do from the hour to 3-6pm, I think I deserved that, I did deserve that one, like I know people have jobs, I think you should look, if you follow me you know that my job is not happening from the hours of 3-6pm, but I've gotten into a bad habit of having like one beer then, but it's like, what else can I do? I don't know, I'm sitting there waiting for the game. Why else do you think our show is from 3-6 because people aren't doing anything but listening to the show?

Thank you! Even my boyfriend, when he's working, it's like, that's the dead hours, right? That's what I learned from him having a job, like I don't know. You mentioned the turnover that could be coming with the Canes, among the nine impending free agents, where I believe on, in terms of the forwards, you have Tebo Taravainen, for example, Jake Gensel, who they just acquired, defensively, Brady Hsieh, Brett Pesci, plus you have Seth Jarvis and Marty Natius, who are restrictive free agents this summer. Who should the Canes be prioritizing in terms of looking at extensions? Well, Brett Pesci's dad tweeted last night that when Brett is on a different team, he'll meet up with some of the fans, so I think, I don't know, that was alarming. If they aren't prioritizing him, I think they should be, but there's been back and forth with him for years, where he's probably deserved more money, I mean, story of the Carolina Hurricanes, but I think he might be getting a little fed up, I think his dad thinks so. And then, Jake Gensel, I mean, you saw the immediate impact that he made.

Don't have like a sunk cost fallacy with other guys, like, you got him now, he wants to stay there, get that done. It would be a weird world without Tara Vainen and Natius, I mean, Tara Vainen and Aho. I think Natius is gone, I hope D'Angelo's gone, I don't know. At Sarah Sivian on Twitter, an oldie but a goodie, hey baby, are you goaltender interference because I have literally no idea what this is or where it's going? Yep, I was in the house for the Bruins goalie interference fiasco and had to bring back my tweet for 2018 with that one. We still don't know what it is, we still don't get a suitable explanation and that completely determined the outcome of that game. I was, at least with the Hurricanes Rangers series, it was like a pretty clean officiated game. I know there were a few moments, but like, there was no one goal that changed something that was on an undeserved power play, I mean, the power play was the Rangers weapon there, but they didn't really get unfair calls, the Hurricanes beat themselves.

Let's localize things with Sarah Sivian, too many men podcast. Since you're a noted Carolina Thunderbirds supporter, do you have a favorite story, there are always great stories when you watch hockey at that level, do you have a favorite story watching Carolina Thunderbirds hockey? Oh God, probably every time my ex would get into a fight, everyone would stand up and cheer and I'd be like, he doesn't have health insurance, I would just sit there and I would not cheer. There's that.

What else? People would come up to me and just be like, you're the reason he's playing poorly, like they just didn't care. It was a great community though, you take that every time, you're like, okay, the closeness the players have with the public was a good time, it was an experience for sure. I don't want to get too personal, but was there a situation after a game you got mad at your ex because he was getting into a fight without health insurance? No, I think he was a big boy and he was usually the one winning those fights, so it was all good. There you go. Sarah Sivian, on social media she wins her fights, at Sarah Sivian, that's what she does. It's so good to see you, thanks for doing this and I wish it was on a better occasion to talk about from McCain's perspective, but the time is appreciated nonetheless, keep crushing it. Of course, thanks so much for having me.