Deserves Got Nothin to do with It(3-4-25)

This is The Drive with Josh Graham Podcast. We're internet sensations, guys! Tune into The Drive weekday afternoons, 3 to 7 on WSJS.

You are on a Tuesday Drive. It is WSJS, News Talk Sports for the Triad, where today was a heavy news day in college sports locally. Plus, we have plenty of postgame sound to get to, from Duke Wake Forest to Cameron last night, where we were at.

Courtside, Jon Shire finishing perfect at Cameron for the second time in his three seasons as the Blue Devils head coach. But let's start with the big headline from the ACC today. There's good news and there's bad news with the headline regarding Clemson and Florida State. The good news is litigation has officially been dropped. Clemson and Florida State no longer suing the league. So the ACC has stability today in 2025 to all of those saying doomsday for the conference for the last few years and that it was imminent.

You were dead wrong. The bad news is the ACC, in order to get rid of those lawsuits, put itself on the clock specifically about five years. These settlements now put the ACC in a position where it needs to be innovative.

It needs to be proactive in order to survive just a few years from now. If you haven't been digging into the details, the Tigers and Seminoles received significant concessions here. Don't know why they received significant concessions unless the ACC was fearful that Florida State and Clemson had a case that they could potentially win.

Why else would you concede things that potentially puts your league in damage? Were there legal arguments that we just weren't privy to that we did not see in the various PowerPoint presentations that Florida State lawyers laid out in a very public way in the last couple of years? Those concessions, in the near term, TV ratings will factor into revenue distribution. In other words, since more people watch Florida State and Clemson games, they have larger fan bases, larger alumni bases, and a lot of the money is dependent on those TV ratings given they come from ESPN.

They're going to make more than schools like Wake Forest, then Boston College, then Cal, Stanford, just because of more eyeballs watching those teams play. That was something they asked for a few years ago. They get it in this concession here, a chance to make more money annually as a result. But more importantly for the stability of the conference overall, they agreed to lessen the exit fee should they choose to leave the Atlantic Coast Conference. Prior to today, the rough figure was around $200 million flat, in addition to having to buy out the remainder of your media rights with the grant of rights. So if you get $25, $30 million a year, you pay $200 million on top of buying out that sum year by year by year, which is draconian and unrealistic for any team to pay out.

So teams felt like they were stuck. Now, what has changed today, my understanding of it is it's now $165 million in order to get out. But that sum will go down $18 million annually until 2030, where it will be a flat number moving forward of $75 million to exit between that point and the expiration of the ESPN TV deal that goes through 2036, ESPN picking up the remainder of that deal earlier this year. Also, the exit fee would also serve, and this was spelled out, as the school retaining its media rights too. So there's no additional grant of rights cost settlement that you have to figure out.

It's the exit fee and you get your media rights as well. So if the landscape remains similar to what we have now, if you're still following along, the ACC won't be able to retain its top brands five years from now. They just won't. Florida State for sure will want out. Clemson, North Carolina, Miami probably would follow suit because $75 million is a lot more affordable. Just look at the commitment that North Carolina gave the football program in December.

Belichick's contract, $20 million war chess, the staff that was expensive, all of that. And this is going to be five years from now, we're looking at that $75 million figure around 2030. That's going to be after the first couple of college football playoff contracts hit, years of the new college football playoff contract that starts in 2036 or 2026.

So these TV networks, these conferences will be flushed with money. And there's another reason why 2030 is significant. That is the exact year that the SEC and Big Ten's current contracts expire. So these schools were worried about being lapped with another TV deal by the Big Ten and the SEC before 2036. Now you pay $75 million to get out at 2030 and you can immediately jump into the SEC or the or the Big Ten if they should want to acquire you. That's the way it seems right now. So you might think that and the SEC contract runs through 2030, there's an option that goes through 2034. See somebody saying that it expires in 2034.

Look that up earlier today. There's another look in that goes into that. So if things should change in the conference, like, I don't know, adding a Florida state, adding a Clemson, adding a North Carolina, certainly something that could be doable there.

But that's why you want to look at that window. The good news is here's the best news for the ACC. Five years is a very long time. Five years is a long time.

Do you want evidence of that? Let's go back five years ago today. Do you know what five years ago today was? March the 4th, 2020, exactly a week before things got shut down in Greensboro and the country changed with lockdowns. Five years ago. So we didn't know what social distancing was at that point. We didn't know what really COVID was.

NIL, what's that? College football expansion. All these things that have changed in the span of five years. So so much can change when you look at how TV distribution works, how the playoff format works, whether or not being a part of one of these super conferences is advantageous versus being in the ACC, where you're a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Football might just break away and become its own thing at that point.

You've bought yourself time if you're Jim Phillips. That's the best news that you have. And you need to be innovative and you need to be forward thinking. And the next battle that you need to pursue is to make it less appealing to jump to a conference five years from now is fighting the automatic statuses for the Big Ten and the SEC with a 14 or a 16 team playoff.

As there was a report yesterday, there seems to be a lot of pushback on because if you guarantee the conference twice as many playoff bids, well, that's more incentive for a Florida State or a Clemson to leave five years from now. It's big news. There's a lot to dig into it legally. David Glenn, he's going to join us at five thirty to help break things down. He has a legal background and has followed this as close as anybody.

The ACC is now on the clock as far as I read it after settling these lawsuits. On X at WSJS radio, if you want in, that's where we're streaming video in addition to at Josh Graham show on X, The Drive with Josh Graham on YouTube and on Twitch. However, and wherever you are listening or watching, we greatly appreciate you doing so. Will Dalton, he's the executive producer of this show. W.D., remind the people what movie you're going to be reviewing today. We'll take a look at Unforgiven, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood.

Yes, Morgan Freeman in honor of Gene Hackman watching Unforgiven. We'll review that later this hour. Shifting things to tonight's slate. North Carolina better be ready for a fight at Virginia Tech tonight. They better be ready for a fight and not feeling entitled to a win because they won six in a row and they got Duke on the horizon. And everyone saying you got to beat Duke in order to get in and focus on that game at home.

You better be ready for tonight because Castle Coliseum is a difficult place to play. It's been a house of horrors for the Heels lately. They lost their last game there. They've lost three of the last four times they've entered that building.

And even in the down year, which this has been for Mike Young, who was given the sigh of confidence, the sign of confidence from Virginia Tech that he was going to come back, according to Jeff Goodman's report yesterday. Even this year, Louisville last week was up just three points and Virginia Tech had the ball in the final minute. And that team's ranked in the top 15. It's a tough place to play and that building's going to be energized with Carolina coming in. Even though Carolina's won six straight, it's not enough sample on the road to completely trust them. See, only two of the wins of the six game win streak had been on the road. They won by 11 at Florida State last week and they won by six against Syracuse, a game they were up 10 with four to go that became a two-point lead with a minute remaining, almost blew it. Prior to this stretch, North Carolina was just two and six on the road on the season. And the two wins were two-point win against NC State in Raleigh, not the most impressive, trailing by three in the final 15 seconds against Notre Dame where Elliott Cadeau is fouled on a three-point make. Four-point play, you win the game by one point.

So not exactly the most impressive of wins. Here was Hubert Davis on North Carolina's recent run of success and the concerns going into Virginia Tech tonight. I mean, that's what you want as a coach. You want, you know, you want your players individually to get better and to improve and you want your team to improve.

And I feel like we're headed in that direction and, you know, but there's a long way to go. This is a huge week for us and Virginia Tech is a really good basketball team and it's very difficult to play them anywhere, especially on their home floor. And given how this ACC season has gone, Will, doesn't it just feel like the Tar Heels are going to lose this game?

Hey, Pittsburgh, hey, you know, this is the it team and then they completely fall apart. Wake Forest, yeah, they win at SMU, yeah. And then you lose to Florida State and NC State and to Virginia and last night.

It just, that's the feel of this season. No basketball expertise on it. North Carolina is a better team. Virginia Tech lost 90 percent of its scoring to the portal last year. They have to, if they lose this game, they're in the same position Wake's in right now. They'd have to beat Duke on Saturday.

In fact, Joe Leonardi just put out his newest pracatology in North Carolina. They're not moving up the bubble. They're just not.

They're right there. The third team on the first team outline. If you don't beat Duke or if you don't take care of your business tonight and win a couple in Charlotte, you're not really going to have much of a shot. Now, with all that said, we're picking Carolina to win the game.

Carolina is the pick, but it's going to be close. And North Carolina better be ready for a battle. The place you need to go to get all the breakdowns of the ACC's settlements with Florida State and Clemson is ncsportsnetwork.com, where our guy David Glenn was all over it yesterday. And I'm sure he's going to continue to be all over this story. Has his legal background for those who have known him for years on WSJS and on stations across North Carolina for decades.

And of course, his written work. So let's start here, DG. The we talked about how flimsy many of the cases seem to have been for Florida State and Clemson against the ACC. And almost anybody who looks at what they got today, the concessions that they asked for years ago, even before the lawsuits, TV ratings factoring into revenue distribution, lessening what they described to be a draconian exit fee number.

And that's going to go down annually over the next five years. That seems like a big concession, big concessions to give if you were on the plus side of the legal argument. What legal argument do you think the ACC was worried about? What do you think led to them giving these types of concessions? Yeah, it's good to be with you, Josh, as always.

Hi to WD as well. I think it's twofold. One thing we've emphasized on your show and my various platforms all along, and this shocks a lot of people. But if there are multiple lawsuits addressing the same concepts, in this case, lawsuit in North Carolina regarding this grant of rights and the exit fee and all the rest lawsuit in South Carolina and lawsuit in Florida, it surprises a lot of people to learn that the one that wins essentially, they call it the race to the courthouse, whichever court case concludes first, reaches an ultimate conclusion is the one that matters. And most of the time you don't have three lawsuits on the same subject matter.

In this case, we did for more than a year. There have been there's, you know, the North Carolina case on one track Clemson case on another track Florida case on another track. And in Florida, the ACC kept appealing saying this case really should be heard in North Carolina, where a judge has been more receptive to the ACC's legal arguments. Well, a judge in Florida who happens to be an undergraduate, have an undergraduate degree from Florida State University and a law degree from Florida State University.

John Cooper is his name. He seemed very receptive to Florida State's arguments on a variety of things, not just one legal issue, but whereas the case in North Carolina, that judge seemed to agree with the ACC more often, not always. The judge in Florida clearly agreed with Florida State far more often. And the reason I think the timing happened this way is that in recent months and as recently as last week, the ACC had appealed this lower court judge's decisions about how, yeah, Florida really is the right place for this case to be settled. And they appealed it once, they appealed it to the Florida Supreme Court and the Florida State Supreme Court, the state of Florida Supreme Court said, no, that lower judge can continue with this case. And the ACC's fear became if this Florida State friendly judge is the first one to get his case over the finish line, well, then the ACC might be in trouble.

And there were sovereign immunity arguments and other legal arguments that probably we won't be able to get into. But Florida State scared the ACC enough that the ACC was willing to make these concessions that absolutely include a lot of things that both Clemson and Florida State had wanted all along. I'm interested in what percentage you would place on the ACC potentially losing legally, because in my non-legal backgrounded brain, the way I think about it is if you were to tell me I have an 85% chance of getting to work safely today, I probably would take the day off.

15% isn't worth it. And in the ACC's case, if there's a 15% chance that that judge decides that you lose and they get out scot-free, that risk is just too great for the ACC not to do something here and to give those concessions as you're describing. Is that a fair way to put it?

I think it is a fair way to put it. You know, lawyers are always telling their clients, I can't guarantee you a result. The lawyer is going to tell the client, hey, ACC, we're a little worried about how this judge, again, not every ruling went against the ACC, but the theme was this judge in Florida was willing to listen to a lot of Florida State's arguments that I believe would have been thrown out of a similar court in a different state. Give me one example of those. Sovereign immunity would be one. Sovereign immunity essentially means we are an actor of the government.

Florida State University being a public university is an extension of the government. And the sovereign immunity concept basically means that an actor of government can't be sued unless it agrees to be sued. So if there had been in the grant of rights, one more sentence. And the grant of rights is a shockingly small document. Two pages. Yeah.

2013, 2016. If there had been an overt clause in the grant of rights where every public university president or whoever was doing the signing said, we understand and absolutely agree that if this document ever is part of a legal dispute, we agree to have that dispute heard in the state of North Carolina where the ACC is headquartered, where four ACC members are located, even though we're a government actor as a public university here in Florida. I practiced contract law for a long time. I could have done that extra paragraph for them. And that argument would have been out the window.

So, you know, that's just one example. I believe the ACC has the better legal arguments overall, but it doesn't matter. If the ACC got nervous to use your hypothetical, if they believed that there was even a 20 percent chance that this Florida judge was going to be very receptive to these. Some of these are Hail Mary legal arguments.

I'll put it this way. I became an attorney in 1994. I am aware of one case in that.

What is that? That's 31 years. 31 years. I'm aware of one case where a public university used sovereign immunity to successfully to get out of a lawsuit successfully in the sports contract context. It was actually Mike Leach suing Texas Tech.

It was a very unusual case. I think to Mike Leach's dying day, he thought he was treated incredibly unfairly because of this very unusual sovereign immunity application. Generally speaking, and this is in air quotes, generally speaking, sovereign immunity doesn't apply to things like contracts. We don't run around letting public universities just get out of deals whenever they don't like them anymore.

Right. By saying, oh, you know, you can't sue us here. You know, this doesn't apply to us because we're a public university and you can't sue us to enforce the contract. That in this case, of course, Florida State willingly and knowingly and repeatedly signed these documents regarding an exit fee and a grant of rights. This was the this was Florida State saying, hey, lawyers, we don't care if it's a Hail Mary. We don't care if it's a traditional contract argument.

We want you to keep throwing stuff at the wall, as you and I have discussed on your show previously. We want to exhaust ACC universities with the legal expenses, which are in the many, many millions of dollars. And we hope to find a friendly judge that will listen to one of our arguments in a way that surprises the ACC lawyers and makes them go back to Jim Phillips.

The other decision makers and say, we're not sure what we're going to get from this Florida, this judge in Florida. So that's what happened. And here we are. The ACC did get no guarantee, but a likelihood of what they thought they had all along, which is some stability through the end of the 2020s.

Yes. And keep in mind, Josh, whether it was 2016 or any time after that, I think you and I both have been reminding people that just because the grant of rights went to 2036, that really it was going to be around 2030 because the closer you get to the end, the less expensive it is to leave. Under the new system, under the old system, it's always less expensive to leave as you get closer to the end. So 2030 and beyond was going to probably be another chaotic time for the ACC, even if the grant of rights had stuck. And remember, a judge did not say that the grant of rights was illegal. This was a settlement. It never got to the finish line.

A judge never ultimately ruled on what's legal and what's not. It was the fear of a negative ruling that caused the ACC to settle. And it's kind of short term stability in a trade for even less stability 2030 and forward than they would have had under the grant of rights. I mean, you know, these I'm sure you've explained it. Some schools are going to make more money under this new revenue sharing system. Yeah. But that doesn't mean we're sure they're going to stay if the year to year gap is still that much below the SEC in the Big Ten, if one of those leagues tries to poach a Florida State or a Clemson or anybody else.

Yeah, because one thing I think the fallout from this is going to be very, very, very interesting. And we're just looking at it from the ACC lens. But if you're Ohio State, if you're Alabama, if you're Georgia, what are you thinking within your league when you're seeing Florida State and Clemson get these types of concessions? And you're thinking, wait, we're sharing equally with Vanderbilt? We're sharing equally with Northwestern?

Like part of me sees there could be a track. Oh, we want to join this conference because we get more money. But there's no guarantee that when you join that conference, if they have the leverage that they're going to allow for you to get the same amount of money that they're getting. Like is the precedent that's being set here is what fascinates me where we're headed.

And who knows? I mean, if you would have told me, DG, that college sports would look at, look like today, five years ago, which was a week before the world changed when we were in Greensboro and we had no idea what NIL was or I mean, the Pac-12 still existed, for example. Like, would you be shocked if five years from now, Ohio State, Alabama or whoever just says, you know what, let's create our own thing where we're playing together so we don't have to share money with Vanderbilt, Kentucky and with Northwestern to use some examples?

No, it could be chaotic at the end of this. Remember, so all of this is about money and the money is largely about TV partners, right? So follow the money applies here and it has in college sports for a long time. A lot of the big TV deals, even though the ACCs goes all the way to 2036, a lot of the other TV deals expire around 2030, around 2031. Well, what happens when you come to the end of the TV deal? You don't wait till the very end.

You start negotiating prior to the very end. But those it is it is harder to create that super conference when you'd be breaking a lot of TV contracts that are already signed, sealed and delivered. It's less complicated to build a super conference if that's where all this is going. And, you know, the Vanderbilts of the world might be left behind by the SEC and the Northwesterns of the world are left behind by the Big Ten. And only the strongest of the ACC are even invited to this mega conference that the TV partners, you know, tip that the two heavyweights, of course, are Fox and ESPN right now.

But streaming has become a bigger part of this world. It's it's follow the money and what this deal does it, you know, it gives at least the schools an incentive to see, you know, Carolina thinks they're going to make new money, more money under this different revenue sharing system. For those who don't know that now it's not just last year the ACC adopted. Remember after 70 years of roughly equal revenue sharing last year for the first time they had that success initiative where basically if you're making the bigger bowl or the playoff or you go far in the NCAA tournament, it's no longer equal you get more because you succeeded on the field.

That's only one year old. We're in our first year of that. So moving forward, you're also going to have this brand initiative where those who get more TV eyeballs get compensated for that.

And those who get fewer TV eyeballs are going to make less money than they used to. It's funny. You just painted a funny picture to me where like, I love the idea of like a super hardcore fan saying, we can't watch the Carolina game. We can't watch Carolina.

I'm a state fan. We can't watch them because the TV ratings they make money. We can't watch the Tar Heels now because it's competitive.

We can't do that anymore. But you know, there's a there's a headline now that needs to drop in the next few weeks. We think about the college football playoff the new format 14 to 16. This headline coupled with that how much more important is it for the ACC to fight automatic qualifiers being uneven in favor of the SEC in the Big Ten now that it seems they've been put on a clock even clear over the next five years it becoming easier for Clemson or Florida State to escape if they wanted to in 2030. The question is who has the leverage does the ACC have the leverage to make demands about what the new system is going to look like the ACC didn't throw its weight around and what the previous system looked like right it didn't protect the Big 12 or the ACC what's been happening is the SEC and the Big Ten have more money than everybody else and they have stepped to the forefront and thanks in part to their relationship with their TV partners and they're more they're frankly they have more popular football products there. Obviously every school within a league has a different following and Florida State and Clemson may get five times as many viewers when they're on national TV as Boston College gets so their argument is well, just like if we go to the college football playoff we deserve more money if we get more TV eyeballs for the league we deserve more money.

Well, that wasn't the case for 70 years, but it's going to be the case moving forward because of this legal settlement. I just don't think the ACC is in a position to dictate terms. The tier now is two leagues at the top, SEC and Big Ten, two leagues on kind of tier 1B if you want to call it that with the Big 12 and the ACC and then everybody else below that has no leverage. Well, the question is it's not whether the ACC has the leverage. It's the question of does the ACC, the Big 12 and all those other leagues together have enough leverage to fight back? Yes, and you know, the ultimate push there is are those leagues willing to truly break away? Are we truly going to have two super leagues that don't even operate traditionally under the NCAA umbrella, right? Right now the college football playoff does not operate under the NCAA umbrella the way the NCAA men's basketball tournament obviously is directly under the NCAA umbrella. So they're just going to take will they take it to the next step where they basically say, hey, the college football fans of America don't care about the rest of you.

So you can either take the peanuts that we're offering you to be a part of this thing, you know, where one group of five champion is guaranteed a spot or whatever. You can either accept our peanuts or we're just going to break away and we're going to have a college version of the NFL and we're going to have, you know, whether it's Eastern Conference and Western Conference, we're going to have the biggest brands in college football and we're going to build a system at the college level similar to what the NFL has where what's one of the reasons the NFL is so popular. Part of it is the love of the game of football, but part of it is a lot of NFL fans not only love their own team.

They know every starting quarterback in the league and they know star players on every team and it is just an intense passion that many NFL fans have for the league as a whole even beyond their own team. What if college football rather than being spread among all these conferences, what if they just create two mega conferences and they say to the college football fans of America, come watch us, you know, get to know Alabama and Ohio State and Michigan and whoever else is invited to the party. And just like, you know, in our pro sports that we follow, there's typically 30 to 32 teams, right? That's a small enough number that fans can get attached not only to their favorite team, but they can look forward to watching games that don't even involve their favorite team. Yeah, maybe there's a college football version, you know, of 40 schools, which wouldn't be a lot bigger than the current Big Ten plus the current SEC and a few others, what if they created a 40 team mega league based on those same premises because they think people will still watch and whatever those other schools decide to call themselves outside these two mega leagues, they can call themselves whatever they want.

They can get secondary, second-rate TV deals, you know, people still watch their games in small numbers, but we're going to take this college football thing to the next level. DG, we'll see you in Charlotte next week. When do you plan to get into town because I was at Duke Wake last night and I'm like, hey, we're going to be there Tuesday and they're looking at me like I have two heads. I know, my plan is to be there Tuesday as well. So even if you and I are, even you and I could be at different spots on Press Row and be able to hear each other. Hospitality! And there'll be short lines at the hospitality suite on the early nights of the week. Oh, no.

DG, we'll see you then. Thanks for doing this. Great to be with you guys. Josh Graham loves to talk sports. He also loves the way his new jeans highlight his man curves. Ooh, hot.

Oh, yeah, that's hot. You're on The Drive with Josh Graham. We haven't even got to the Duke Wake Forest game from last night.

We'll do that shortly. The breaking college football news we have. NC State and App State have agreed to a home-in-home series. The Wolfpack and the Mountaineers will meet in 2026 and in 2028. This is very strange because NC State nuked a previous home-in-home canceling a trip that would have been to App this year with App State returning in 2026. So now App was going to face NC State and Raleigh in 2026. They're still going to face App and Raleigh in 2026. It's just this game's getting pushed back to 2028 and the reason why this is strange, they replaced the game this year with a non-conference ACC game against Virginia because that makes sense.

Dave Doran was on our show last summer when this was canceled. The game up in Boone, he went viral and people got upset when he gave us the logic for it. Well, we were asked by the league to play as many Power Five games as we can. Yeah. We were also told not to play mid-major games on the road.

Yeah. Because it's not good for television. It's not good for the rankings that we're trying to have to be in the top 11. It's noteworthy that Dave Doran has a kid that goes to App State. So Dave Doran, not one of those that are against playing App State. Clearly, they're going to play in 2028. It almost feels fair that State, because they canceled the 25 game, would go to Boone first. So that way there's no fear of, oh, you're going to play us in 2026 and then you're going to buy out the 2028 game.

And you're not going to make that trip, but that's not what we're looking at here. NC State App in 2028 in Boone, first ever trip for State up there, State App in 2026. Let's go to Stuart in Greensboro, 336-777-1600. It's North Carolina, Virginia Tech tonight in Blacksburg. I think Carolina needs to be ready for a fight.

What do you think, Stu? Definitely for a fight. I've been to many games in the castle and it can get rocking pretty quick. The floor, I mean, the crowd is on top of you, right on the floor.

It's like you're in a funnel. And I think the heels are going to have to come out early and punch them in the mouth. I think they'll take care of business, but it will be close. 77-75, heels, big game for RJ Davis. He's going to score 31 tonight and he will pass Steph Curry on the NCAA all-time scoring list tonight. He's 30 behind right now.

He's going to get 31 tonight. Hey, you didn't get to the castle yet. You better be careful saying Steph Curry's name in that building. You better be careful.

People might get mad. Appreciate the call, Stu. Enjoy the game, okay?

Alright, thanks. If he's right, we'll give him a Tina Turner if RJ goes for 30-plus and it's a close game tonight. Did I deserve a Sarah McLachlan for last night? See, I'm getting dunked on by a lot of people on social media.

You are. Getting dunked on, people say, Oh, Josh, you were wrong about Duke Wake and the Hornets game. And via bets, yes, my wallet and WD&I's coffee bet, yes.

Oh, and my wallet, too. I did lose, but some are acting like I said Wake and the Hornets were going to win when I pretty clearly picked Golden State and Duke. Oh, you're such an idiot for thinking it would be closer than it was. What? All I'll say is stick around at 4.30.

You're putting a time on it? We'll answer that question then. To be continued. Okay.

That's what we call a tease in the biz. Unforgiven. We'll review that in about 10 minutes. But getting to the game last night, the game in Durham specifically. After last night, Cooper Flag should have locked up National Player of the Year.

No more questions asked. We've seen enough. The numbers point to Cooper, not Auburn's Jenai Broom. To Jenai Broom's credit, this has been one of the best National Player of the Year races we've seen in modern history.

You probably go back to JJ Reddick against Adam Morrison in 2006. But the numbers, they point to Cooper. Cooper's usage is insane. That's what NBA nerds salivate about.

Whoa, this type of usage in college. Just imagine what he could do in the NBA. Has him in scoring. Has him in assists. Close in rebounds. Close in field goal percentage. Even though, again, Jenai Broom is attempting more high percentage shots given his position in size than Cooper.

And again, the numbers could be a lot more dramatic, the difference between the two, if Cooper was able to play longer in these games. He's only exceeded 30 minutes one time in his last seven because Duke's been blowing out everybody. Won by 30 plus for the fourth straight game last time and fifth time in the last six. So he's checking out of the game with the chance to have a triple-double last night. In fact, this is the part that's nuts, watching it up close, watching it court side, is the fact that it just seems so normal now, the things that he does. 28-8-7, multiple blocks, multiple steals.

A stat line that hasn't happened since Evan Turner had it 15 years ago at Ohio State. It's just normal because the game's coming to him. He's not being assertive with it.

He just lets the game come to him and he plays that way. He's not chasing stats. Cooper's season, from a basketball documentation standpoint, a historical standpoint, Cooper's season is more deserving of recognition than Janai Broom's is. With all due respect, Janai Broom, he's a fifth-year guy. Cooper is supposed to be a high school senior. Thus, it is more impressive what Cooper's doing under the microscope of playing at Duke than what Janai Broom has done at Auburn, with all due respect. Listen to the way Steve Forbes heaped praise on Cooper last night.

Like I said, I don't use the word generation. I played Vince K.D., Derrick Rose. I coached against Kawhi Leonard, but he was just a freshman. Marcus Aldridge, not on that level.

Just randomly John Wall, throwing guys out here in my little career. I think K.D., he's pretty good, but I think he is, too, and I think they're different. I think I would say that Cooper does more at this point.

Now, will he be as prolific of a scorer? I don't know about that, but I put those two guys in the same breath. Steve Forbes just said that Cooper Flag does more at this stage of his career than Kevin Durant did his one season at Texas when they went head-to-head in 2007, roughly. Did K.D. even win the National Player of the Year? Obviously you had the great draft where Greg Oden went number one and then K.D.

went number two to Seattle. Who won between Oden and K.D.? Oden's team was better, went to the Final Four. Yeah, K.D. won it. K.D.

won the award. Greg Oden had the better season, K.D. Oden went number one to Portland.

Okay, got it. So it's better than Zion. It's better than Paolo. It's better probably even than Anthony Davis, which, again, do not say lightly. We're talking about Kevin Durant, one of the best college seasons we've seen a freshman ever have, and this might even be better than that. That's what you celebrate.

That's what you recognize. And please, please, please spare me the strength of conference arguments. This is Duke we're talking about. Do you know who Duke played and beat?

Auburn. And Cooper, while Janai Broom was good in the game, Cooper was slightly better. 22 points, 11 boards for Duke. He had 26-11 against Kentucky, went on the road to Arizona, had 24-7. Terrific against Illinois at MSG when they played the two now ranked top 15 teams in the ACC, Clemson at Little John Coliseum, even though it was a loss.

Okay. Cooper was clearly sick, still had eight team, was hitting shots down the stretch to give him a shot to win that game. They were leading in the final two minutes. Louisville, he was great in that game as well. On the road, both those games.

Please spare me the strength of schedule argument. Cooper Flag is your national player of the year. Locked it up last night.

Locked it up, hid the key. WD's movie this week in honor of the great Gene Hackman was Unforgiven, and Will, I reckon if I was to want a free one, it would be with you at the movies with the WD next. It was a touching moment at the Oscars on Sunday when they brought out Morgan Freeman to speak about the late Gene Hackman who passed away last week. So we felt in his honor, we'd make WD finally watch Unforgiven, which after rewatching it this most recent time, it got labeled as a Clint Eastwood movie because it's a Western. That's what you kind of know Clint Eastwood for, and he directed it. He won best picture for this movie 30 plus years ago. But man, Gene Hackman's on screen just as much as Clint is, and this really does stand out to me as being a Gene Hackman movie just as good as it gets playing Little Bill.

But that's what I think about it. The segment's not called At the Movies with Josh Graham. We'll get to some big NBA news today in just a second, but first we need to see what Will thought watching it for the first time at the movies with the WD. What you liked, what you didn't like, best quote, Rotten Tomatoes score, seeing if you can get it within five, WD, we've been setting this movie up quite a bit. You finally got a chance to watch it. Did you like it? If so, what did you like? I did like it. I do enjoy good Western.

We haven't done very many other than. What do you mean you enjoy a good Western? I mean, I enjoy good Western movie. I grew up as a kid liking Western movies. What kind of Western movies did you grow up as a kid watching?

Oh man, like Lone Ranger type stuff. Of course, that was a show, but just like the old black and white stuff that would come on TV. You were watching black and white Westerns as a kid?

I was actually, I was, but we haven't done very many of them. And I did, I did really like this movie. I thought it did a good job bringing you into the story pretty quick out of the gate with what went down in the beginning there. I enjoyed, they made it, they did a really good job making the world feel big, like with the travel that happens. Well, yeah, kids, I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

You know what I mean? Like it just, it was a very big, vast world that they were traveling in a, the movie did a good job making it feel that way. I thought it was very engaging and I just enjoyed watching the journey that Clint Eastwood's character went on, given his backstory and everything. And I really enjoyed watching that.

What journey did he go on? Cause he kind of took some swigs of alcohol at the end and then killed everybody. I mean the final, the final 20 minutes of this movie is the best.

It's one of the best finishes where you're at home movies on and you're like, Oh, it's the final 20 minutes of Unforgiven. Yeah. I'll stick around. Let's let's take a look.

I'll stick around. You probably would not get this cause you haven't watched a lot of Clint movies, but this movie was portrayed and the reason people love it so much is it was, there's so much meta commentary there on Clint Eastwood's movie career. It's him reckoning with his age.

It's him reckoning with the impact of his work. Cause when you think of Clint Eastwood, you think of the good, the bad, the ugly. You think of the outlaw, Josie Wales, you think of all these shoot them up movies that are incredibly violent. And this movie is about, this movie doesn't celebrate violence. And in fact, it admonishes it.

It talks about the cost of it. The scenes that really stood out on this rewatch was when they actually kill the two cowboys. The first time was when they were in that mountain range and they shoot the guy in the stomach and he dies slowly and he's like, Oh, they shot me, can I have some water? Give him some water, damn it.

We won't shoot. You know, it's just painful. You see it like slowly and then the other guy dies in the, in the, in the John, you shoot that guy. And then the way the, the young actor is affected by it, like those scenes, that's what this movie is all about.

And then they do give you the payoff that you want, where he goes back and he avenges his buddy. What didn't you like about this movie? I hated to see what happened to Morgan Freeman's character. That was a bit of a tough watch there.

You decorating your pub, he wasn't armed, you decorating his, this loom with my friend. It was a bit of a tough watch there when he was in the jail and he was getting tortured like that. And I'm glad you brought up Morgan Freeman. Yeah. There are two things I have written down that I, this was difficult because it's hard to nitpick this movie.

It's that good. But there are two things. I don't know if I love the title cards at the beginning and end. I don't know if I like, like him, like the, the, the details they give us about his wife with the parents and like his background and all that. I don't know if we needed that frankly, but it's a, it's a nod to Westerns of course, but also I have written down Morgan Freeman's casting. At no point are you going to explain like how race factors into this at all when it's 1890 and you guys go way back and that's like civil war times.

We're just not, we're just not going to touch it. It's not even going to be acknowledged like, Hey, how did you guys meet? Did it correspond with the war? Like these are questions that I felt maybe should have been asked, maybe should have been answered addressed at some point. I also don't know if he was a good guy, Morgan Freeman.

We're just conditioned to say that, but then he's getting free ones, leaving his wife behind. It's it's borderline, but I found myself liking his character. I don't know. I don't know what to do with it. I just conditioned to like Morgan Freeman. I think we know what the best quote in this movie is.

You could deliver it if you'd like. I'm here to kill you little bill. Well, no. Is that what you were thinking about?

It's right after that. I don't deserve this. Deserves got nothing to do with it.

Deserves got nothing to do with it. Yeah. You fat man. Speak up. Pick up that rifle. Pick it up.

I'll see you in hell, will you, money? Get off of her. Really? All of this is like from the end of this movie. Again, it's like what you said with the final 20 minutes. You gotta watch it.

I suppose if I wanted a free one, it'd be with you. Any man don't want to get killed, better clear out the back. I don't know if it was a nod to Josie Wales in the first parts we were introduced to Clint Eastwood's character when he said, he didn't say, I reckon so, but he said, I suppose so or something like that. I don't know if it was a nod to Josie Wales or not. There are a couple nods to Josie Wales in Unforgiven talking about being lucky.

Like him not getting any credit. I'm trying to think if there's anything else best quote wise that stands out that we haven't gotten to in Unforgiven. I think we probably nailed it. Okay. Rotten Tomatoes score. Can you get within five? Let's find out.

Let's find out. I feel like this one might have a high rating. So I'm just going to guess just off the top of the noggin 87. The answer's 93. Wow. You're off by five. You don't get any points for that. You're off by six. Yeah.

Just on the outside looking in. I don't like that. You shouldn't. And that's been at the movies with the WD, we already know what your movie for next week's going to be.

It's going to be the color of money with the salad dressing guy, Paul Newman, Tom cruise. So we'll do that getting to the NBA news of the day. If you have any Dallas Maverick fans in your life, maybe think about them before your head hits the pillow tonight when you're talking to the big man upstairs because the Luca trade, that's already bad enough. And then Anthony Davis gets hurt his first game back. Not awesome. You're already without Derek Lively and Daniel Gaffords banged up.

So you're just trying to scrape by. And then last night, Kyrie Irving goes down, but you're feeling a little optimism when he gets back up and he shoots the free throws and you attempt the free throws because the NBA rule is if you don't attempt the free throws, you can't come back into the game. So you attempt the shots, he makes the shots, scenes of Kobe Bryant and Klay Thompson in years past making the free throws before having devastating injuries. Because today Champs has reported that Kyrie Irving is out for the remainder of the season with an ACL tear. Is there a fan base in American sports right now that you feel worse for college or pro than Dallas Maverick fans?

Because here's how you'd count it. You'd say, well, at least the Mavs went to the finals last year. You got that, but then you lose Luca and then Kyrie gets hurt. And apparently Kyrie has a player option this summer, so how funny would it be if he opts out of that and decides, oh, well, you know, I might want to play in LA. Go join the Lakers. Play with LeBron, Luca, and I'm not going to say it's karma for Nico. I'm not going to say it, but I'm not going to not say it.

Well then you didn't say anything at all. That was productive there. So not very good, but in terms of tortured fan bases, Buffalo, the Browns have just been tortured. But they haven't been good enough to be hopeful.

See there's apathy that sets in, it's different than being bad. We're talking about being good enough that you believe and then getting kicked to the nads. That's what made the NC State experience bad until last year because they're just, they're not Boston College. They're good enough to make you believe they can do something and inevitably don't until last year. I have no sympathy for Dallas Cowboy fans, but that's a good example. They're a fan base that 30 years they've been put in the, for some reason in the Super Bowl conversation seems every year, and people don't like it because they get talked about so much and they do get picked and it makes it easier to pick on them. But Cowboy fans don't control who gets picked to win the Super Bowl and those odds.

Then they hear that and they believe they have a chance and then they get undercut. That's not fun. So I think, you know, Cowboy fans, where are the Cowboys located?

Dallas. Oh. Oh. Why'd you have to do that? That's not nice. You did it.

I didn't. Man. Dallas fans.

Tough. Dallas. Sports Hell. Sports Hell, USA.