Andy & Ari On3 - FOREVER A BUCKEYE: Why Jeremiah Smith TURNED DOWN $10M to stay with Ohio State | Ty Simpson's STOCK in the NFL Draft | Michael Malone introduced at UNC

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

As Jeremiah Smith is heralded as the best wide receiver in all of college football, the star Buckeyes wide receiver has had to make some tough decisions to stay in Columbus. Reportedly offered $10M to transfer somewhere else, watch here as Andy & Ari break down Jeremiah Smith’s decision to stay with the Buckeyes. Is this the right choice? Would you stay in Ohio State if you were Jeremiah Smith? Andy & Ari debate on today’s show.   Read Chris Low's story on Jeremiah Smith here: https://www.on3.com/news/jeremiah-smith-prioritized-ohio-state-legacy-over-10-million-transfer-portal-payday/   (0:00) On Today’s Episode (0:42) Presenting Sponsor (2:42) Intro: Jeremiah Smith stays at Ohio State (19:31) Previewing Kevin Clark on the show (20:13) Kevin Clark joins (22:33) How Ryan Day would change college football (28:40) Miami in the NIL era (31:29) Competing in this era of college football (38:12) Ty Simpson’s NFL Draft Status (44:40) Peyton Manning & Voice Notes (47:39) James C Clark Scholarship - UCF (55:10) Kevin Clark’s Rules for life (1:02:50) Revisiting Miami (1:08:40) Closing out with Kevin (1:10:48) North Carolina introduces Michael Malone (1:21:10) Conclusion: See you tomorrow!   After the Jeremiah Smith discussion, Andy & Ari are joined by Omaha Productions’ Kevin Clark. Watch here as Kevin discusses plenty of topics across college football surrounding Ryan Day, the Miami Hurricanes, and where Ty Simpson may land in the NFL Draft. A great interview with Kevin Clark you won’t want to miss.   To donate to the James C Clark scholarship at UCF, visit here: https://www.givecampus.com/campaigns/74750/donations/new   After Kevin, Andy & Ari dive into North Carolina’s introduction of Michael Malone as the new head basketball coach of the Tar Heels. How do the fans feel in Chapel Hill after Malone’s introductory press conference? Watch here as Andy & Ari break it all down here.   Send your questions to: [e-mail] [e-mail]   Our show is also presented by BetMGM!   If you haven’t signed up for BetMGM yet, use bonus code CFB and you will get up to a $1500 First Bet Offer on your first wager with BetMGM! Here’s how it works:   1. Download the BetMGM app and sign-up using bonus code CFB. 2. Deposit at least $10 and place your first wager on any game. 3. You will receive up to $1500 in bonus bets if your bet loses! Just make sure you use bonus code CFB when you sign up!   Make this college football season one for the history books. Make it legendary.   See BetMGM.com for Terms. 21+ only. This promotional offer is not available in DC, Mississippi, New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET (Available in the US) . 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), 1-800-327-5050 (MA), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-981-0023 (PR). First Bet Offer for new customers only (if applicable). Subject to eligibility requirements. Rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 7 days. In partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel   Watch our show on YouTube! https://youtu.be/8oL1nCv12vI   Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari Wasserman Producer: River Bailey   Interested in partnering with the show? Email [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On today is Andy Narion 3 presented by BetMGM. Did Jeremiah Smith turn down more than $10 million to stay at Ohio State for his junior season? We talk about Chris Lowe's bombshell story. Plus, Kevin Clark from This Is Football on ESPN, joins us to talk about Ryan Day, suggesting college football should have a draft. Also, Kevin's Keynes and what the. the NIL era has done for Miami football. We'll talk about all that, plus the introduction of Mike Malone at North Carolina. On today's Annie Narion 3, presented by Bed MGM.

This show is sponsored by Bed MGM, and we've got our own tradition, unlike any other, because college basketball is done, which means it is time to head to Augusta. Open your BedmGM app and look for your Master's Odds, boost token. That'll work for you. Tuesday, April 7th, Wednesday, April 8th, BetmGM players will receive a master's odds boost token to use it. Add any master's wagers to your bet slip and activate the token. If you win your bet that was made with the odds boost token, you will receive extra winnings in unrestricted bonus dollars. Plus, you've got a master's second chance.

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that expire in seven days in partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. Welcome to Andy and Ari on 3 presented by BetMGM. And Ari, we've got another for slow banger. He was in Columbus. He talked to Jeremiah Smith. And Jeremiah Smith said that, yes, schools did come after him following his sophomore year at Ohio State.

He mentioned one, Miami, which was the school that finished second in his recruitment at a high school. He also said, and he did not specify which school this was, but he said the largest offer he got was more than $10 million. Now, we have no way to prove that number one way or the other. Do you believe it? All right, that someone would offer Jeremiah Smith more than $10.00. $10 million.

Like this season of college football. So here's the thing that I have a really hard time with when it comes to comments like this. Because I believe Jeremiah Smith is worth paying whatever you can afford to pay to get it. I believe he could be the highest paid player in the country. Maybe he's not because he's not a quarterback. But he could, if he chose, if he just simply went to the highest bidder, probably would command the largest dollar figure of any player in the country. So, but here's where I have a, yes, it does.

Here's where I have a hard time. In NIL, there are so many moving parts. There are, you know, agents. There are people that, you know, might be, you know, contacting the agent to see if they could gauge interest. What if we paid you 10 million? Would you do it? Now, I think that there's a lot of place.

within that merry-go-round of contact and gauging interest and seeing what could be possible, that numbers could be flown around without actually being like legitimate offers. Does that make sense? And I think that when you're here, you're probably not as familiar with what's an ironclad offer or what are numbers being flown around to see. He wasn't seriously entertaining them. So you could probably say whatever you wanted to say at that point. You say what you want to say to see if it gets the guy's head to turn,

but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what's being offered. The other piece of this, sorry, because we talk about real NIL and paying someone just because of their value on the field, Jeremiah Smith has real NIL value. There are brands that want to be affiliated with Jeremiah Smith that want to get on the ground floor with him now before he is in the NFL, and the assumption is that he's going to eventually be the best receiver.

in the NFL. And so everybody wants to get in with him now and start that relationship now. So his level of value is so different than most people. Well, and the other thing that people might not know about him is that he's a very good looking kid, very articulate, very funny, and like very easy to like build an ad around. Did you see that? He did an ad for somebody last week where they were kind of knocking off the uh this a sports center yes um and i feel like he could be the face of a brand in a very good way i think he's a highly marketable person for reasons outside of his skill set in football but then you add the skill set on top and it's a it's a it's a perfect storm situation but here's what he told chris here's what he told chris low on

tuesday and this is chris has asked him about you know did did Miami make inquiries about bringing him back to South Florida where he's from? And he says, no reason to go back home, not when I'm at the best place in the country. I came to Ohio State for a reason to win championships develop as a player and a person and keep building on the legacy. I might have grown up in South Florida, but I'm a Buckeye. That's not changing. I wasn't going anywhere.

And I'm sure Ohio State fans read this and are thrilled. It's Megaboard Wednesday. There's a threat on Letterman Row about it. and they absolutely love him, love him, as they should. There are seven directions we can go in this, and I'm going to take you into two. Okay. First of all, let's do this. Is Jeremiah Smith, whether it's Ohio State or anyone else worth $10 million?

Given the, okay, the dollar figure it's, self is hard because what something's worth keeps changing. Can we agree that based on what we know from people we've talked to, people Pete Naco's talks to, that the highest paid quarterbacks this year are going to make about $6 million. Right. Okay. So then you can rephrase the question like this.

Take Jeremiah Smith out of it. Is an alien receiver worth 35% more than the highest paid quarterback in any given year? for any team. I don't think so. But he does change the math in ways that, like in the NFL, he won't be able to change the math as much as he can change it in college. Only a top-level elite quarterback can change the math in the NFL like that. But in college, a receiver like that, an edge rusher like that,

a detackle like that, who is that utterly done. dominant, that he must be the focus of your entire opposing team. I do think those are incredibly valuable people. I think it would be insane for Ohio State to pay him $10 million. Which they aren't. They aren't. I think it would be more understandable if you were a place that needed a spark to get back the relevancy, that you are paying that money not only to get a supreme talent on your

team, but you're doing it as a spark plug. to building something that makes you more relevant. Which, by the way, Miami doesn't need now either. Exactly. And they also have one of the best receivers on their team already. So like whether I actually, to get back to the root of it, believe that Miami would have paid him $10 million if he wanted to go. I don't know that I do. And that's not me calling Jeremiah Smith a liar. That's me saying that that that probably.

probably was a number that was floated around to see how interested they could pry him to be. Yeah. I think you said it well, can we get you to turn your head and at least look at us, which it doesn't sound like he was looking at anybody. Now, the second branch of this, because anybody who's listened to the show for more than 30 seconds knows I'm obsessed with Jeremiah Smith. I even bought one of his cards that I have because I think he's going to be a Hall of Fame receiver in the NFL one day. I'm obsessed with him. I think he's amazing. Is your value as a human being outside of football to remain loyal to Ohio State, say you're a buck, I turn down $4 million of extra income. Are you a more valuable asset for the rest of your life as a result of your affiliation with Ohio State in that statement? I think you have more to gain by staying at Ohio State taking less money now and being an Ohio.

state legend through and through, then you do being a $4 million scooper at Miami for a year. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I had a conversation with an agent about this at the Senior Bowl who had advised a client something similar. This is not anything associated with Ohio State. This is a different school. But they had a client, and it was essentially a $100,000 difference in pay between staying at the school they're at or going to a different, fairly common.

comparable school, but maybe not quite as good at football school. And the difference was the player, if they played this season at their current school, would have been a one Jersey guy whole time at that school and would have been, you know, mercenary if they go to the other school. And the agent's thing is you're going to make more than $100,000 in the long run being the one jersey guy, being the guy who helped your, this. school do what it did. And it's not something everybody's thinking about, but it's something the smart folks

are thinking about. Yeah. Like, they might, there might be a Jeremiah Smith sports bar in Columbus. Right. And like we have Kevin Clark on the show later on this episode. And he was talking about how his favorite athlete of all time is Cam Ward, because he's a Miami guy. And I'm wondering, and I see this in cards all the time, you know, I'm obsessed with cards.

but like Will Howard, for instance, last year is not as collectible as Jeremiah Smith is. Quinn John Junkins is not as collectible as Carnail Tate will be. And I think that there is a certain connection that people still have to the players who came out of high school and stayed through them and are Buckeyes through and through. That's not to say that Will Howard isn't a Buckeye for life. But I think rentals are remembered differently than guys who are. one jersey guys. And I think that when it comes to your legacy, Cam Ward will always be a cane and Will Howard will always be a Buckeye. But if you ask an Ohio State fan, who do you connect with

on the most personal level? Who do you want to collect? Who do you want to eat at their sports bar? Who do you want to take out an insurance policy with? It's the guys who came and stayed and did those things. So I think that there's more to gain by saying, I'm a Buckeye and a Chris Lowe story than there is to take the pay. And listen, if you're just, Jeremiah Smith, income's never going to be a problem for the rest of your life. Like we're talking about the type of player here who's going to make a lot of money in the NFL. He's going to be marketable. The extra $4 million or even his Ohio State legacy probably is going to be the make or break

for him financially regardless. But I think changing your life, potentially putting yourself in an unfamiliar situation, not going back to the machine that's already proven that it's going to be in the national championship conversation and make you a top five pick. like the opportunity cost of like doing that doesn't really make financial sense in my mind anyway. And he also seems to just truly appreciate where he is. I think it's a matter of liking Ryan Day and the coaching staff and being comfortable with these people feeling like you are getting value from them.

And so Nick Saban used to always talk about, you know, can you provide value for your players? And I think Jeremiah Smith certainly feels like he's getting value from his relationship with Ohio State. And he also feels like he's the best player in the country, which I think you and I have said plenty of times. But this quote to Chris Lowe is something. He goes, I feel, this is Jeremiah Smith talking. I feel like everybody in the world will take me in a heartbeat.

Nobody in college football is better than me when I'm at my best. I don't think people would even think about who they would take if it was up for grabs. I think everybody knows who the best player in college football is, and it's Jeremiah Smith. That might sound cocky, but I'm confident to myself. and I know the work I've put in, and I put on film and the way I play the game. He's not wrong. Yeah, and you can say that when it's true.

You can say it when it's true. So, you know, I think that there is a real conversation to be had about whether Ohio State from a finance, because, like, more and more, we just got done talking about this in, in Indy on Monday, in terms of roster allocation, financial, you know, the financial aspects of how to allocate. Right. If it had cost $10 million, what would Ohio State have done? Would they have let him walk? Well, here's the more interesting question.

I asked you before the show is last year with Cardale Tate on your team, and I saw on Twitter on Wednesday morning that people were saying that he might be the number two or three pick in the draft coming up. Would Ohio State have stood, would they have been better last year if they didn't allocate all that money to Jeremiah Smith? And they spread it around to offensive line and other positions. of need that made them a more lopsided team last year. Like, and that's not, again, to diminish what Jeremiah Smith is or who he is. See, I think the amount that Jeremiah Smith changes things for your offense is still greater than if you'd spent, if you'd let him go and spend it on a couple offensive lines.

Jeremiah Smith didn't beat Miami. No, he didn't. He had a great game against Miami. The right tackle that could block somebody might have, might have won. I'm just saying, like, I think there is a conversation. But would they have even been close in the Miami game without Jeremiah Smith? That's, he had a good game that game. Like, that was a Jeremiah Smith game.

Nobody else was doing much. Yeah. But I think that there's always the would you, the, the, the, the, would you protect your, rather protect your quarterback and throw it to Carnell Tate that much? Or would you, or were you better as a result of it? And like, maybe the answer to the question is Ohio State was better last year with Smith. But I think that. Oh, I think they were.

I think that game in particular. I'm just going to read his stat line from that game. Seven catches 157 yards in a touchdown. All right. If they don't, let's say they don't have them. They have a couple better offensive linemen. Maybe they average a few more yards per carry, but I don't think they win the game.

Because I don't think they move the ball consistently enough or have enough explosive plays to win the game. That might be true. I just think that moving forward, if we're going to start paying skill position players, five, six, seven million, ten million dollars a year, there needs to be a conversation, not just with Ohio State with anybody of, yes, he's a star, yes, he's very good, and yes, he changes that dynamic.

But is the bang for the buck what we're getting? Oh, I think that's exactly what they're having. Now, you don't necessarily do it with Jeremiah Smith, because if Jeremiah Smith's in the NFL, and we'll see it because Jeremiah Smith will get to his second and third contracts in the NFL. If Jeremiah Smith is everything we think he's going to be in the NFL, there's no way in hell whatever team drafts him lets him get to free agency. No chance. Yeah. They will pay him whatever it takes. And I think that part of the reason why it's rarer to see people in successful situations leave, I think in both levels, college and pro. Like, that's the other thing, too. It's

like prying away Jeremiah Smith from Ohio State is harder because he's enjoying success. They've won a title. He's going to be the top non-quarterback taken next year. Things are going really well for him. Of course, he's less likely to leave. The people who leave are the ones who are encountering. Cam Coleman left for very different reasons. If Auburn was throwing the ball to him and he was averaging, you know, 120 yards a game and he was a top 10 pick, he might not have left.

People leave when things are not perfect and things have been pretty perfect for Jeremiah. He scored a touchdown. He won a national championship. Yeah, he's got a good quarterback. you know, if if Julian Sayan hadn't been as good of a quarterback as he was last year, maybe that changes the factors in Jeremiah Smith's decision process. Thousands of players who enter the portal in a year, it doesn't matter what the sport, how many of them are in the portal because they reached their peak as a player at the place

that they were at. Very few. Not many. I mean, Jordan Adam can happen very often. It happens. It happens. And maybe it will happen more when you're. going from tier B to tier A in terms of stature.

But if things are going well, it's a lot easier to say, hey, I'm this, I'm a tiger for life. I'm a panther for life when you know that you don't really have much to gain by leaving. Now, you might get more money and you might be at a higher place, but like who, nobody wants to mess up inertia. If things are going well in your job, you don't leave. If things are going well in your life, you don't leave your relationships,

people stay in comfortable situations that are fruitful for them. And Jeremiah's relationship with Ohio State, very fruitful so far. And Ohio State's still hot. It's still hot. Like, she's hot and she's taking care of you and she loves you. Like, I mean, like, what's the point? Well, we'll talk a little more Ohio State very soon because we're bringing on Kevin Clark. The host of This is football with Kevin Clark on ESPN.

He had in a great interview with Ryan Day last week. I got a couple questions about that. Got a couple questions about Kevin's hurricanes because he's a Miami guy, and he has watched that program change its trajectory over the last few years. I'll talk about that in the state of college football. Also, I will ask Kevin,

if Ty Simpson goes in the first round, where will he go? We'll be right back with Kevin Clark. It is, of course, a megaboard Wednesday, and our next guest appeared on the Letterman-Roe message word, our Ohio State site, with the thread, great sunny styles story because Ryan Day was on our next guest,

Kevin Clark's podcast, discussing getting dunked on by an eighth grade sunny styles and ending Ryan Day's basketball career. Welcome, Kevin Clark from This is Football. I'm so happy to be here, guys. I was actually just thinking this morning, I love this show. I listen to it all the time.

And one thing I do, and it's just become a yearly tradition last two, years is I don't listen to any of the coach interviews until right before the season. And so every July and August now, I just play the NCAA video game and listen to you guys talk to like Dan Lannin for 30 minutes. It's binge it. That's all I do. I binge it.

That's how I get cram for college football season is the NCAA video game and this show. Yeah. This is the way to do it. You know, Andy, I don't know how much you play the game. But whenever I play the game, I'm listening to college football content. So, you know, I think you could in a backwoods, kind of. of way try to like tell yourself i'm learning a lot about football while i'm playing this game because you're looking at the rosters you're telling yourself you're telling your wife that's that's that's

you're telling no i'm afraid of my wife i only play when she's not home or she's asleep but like i do i do think that that is the best way to consume it and uh thank you for doing that kevin it means a lot to us that you you uh like our show i i just hope this leads a movement you see a huge spike in like may interviews of uh of james franklin on august third when people are building their ultimate team you know we ought to we actually this is a good business plan we don't roll those back out yeah let's just just roll what you should do you if i if i if i were you just do like a five hour mega cut and it's be like this is what you need to listen to when you're setting up your recruiting board and ncdb away oh yeah this is this is beautiful oh yeah there we go see yeah we got game footage we got

everything. All right, Kevin, I want to talk to you about this Ryan Day interview because there was a clip that blew up on the internet. And it's just, it just got me thinking a lot. And so let's, let's play it. You ask him if he could wave a wand, what would change in college football? Here's you and Ryan Day. All right. You mentioned the hash marks thing, but I'm curious. If it's wave a wand, change anything about college football, what are you going with? Ooh, that's a good one. Well, I mean, the first thing is, a wave of wand is creating a structure that you can enforce rules and creating that. And that's not just like easy.

I understand. You know, it's not too far-fetched for me to think that there's a way that you could actually have a draft and build it like the NFL. I know that seems a little bit out there. But we're going to need a lot of help to get there. I can do that right now. That's not happening overnight. I think that there's, you know, once we started going down this road of NIL, we have to kind of go one of two ways, in my opinion. We almost have to go back to where we were before or we need to go all the way towards the NFL.

I think right now we're sort of in purgatory. And I think until we start to, you know, make some hard decisions and create that overall structure, we're still going to be in this phase. But that, to me, is the number one thing. We've got to figure out an enforcement system that can start enforcing rules. I have a lot of ideas on it, probably not for this conversation, but that would be the number one thing. I think most college coaches would say the same thing. Yeah, I think the draft is something that comes up every once in a while. It'd be really hard.

I guess you'd have to have a pool of teams or maybe you do it by geography or something like that, but you think that could be something that could be feasible within our lifetime. Yeah, someone who was explaining me that day, like they do it up in Canada for, you know, like the juniors. Yeah. Oh, I go. If you want to become, you know, part of it, then you put your name in. you know, there's a lot that comes with that. I know it's kind of out there idea, but but I think it's sort of like that or going back to the way we were with amateurism.

I'm having, I'm having a hard time figuring out, you know, how we work through this right now with this NIL because recruiting is always going to be part of the college process until we change it. And, and because that's not going to ever change, we have to create some sort of enforcement arm. Otherwise, we're always going to be in this space when we're putting together roster. Okay, a college football draft. Guys, before we get into the draft, when I saw this clip, Ryan, or when I saw Ryan say this, my head exploded. Because, not because it's so crazy that somebody would think that a draft would be cool in college,

it's because if you are the head coach at Ohio State, that is the, the answer to the question of if you could wave a magic wand and this never happens, that should be his answer. Like that is unbelievable to me. Why would you want like Purdue drafting third overall? Like your entire existence as Ohio State's football coach is to get all the good players and stop the other teams from getting any good players ever. So like promoting an idea that would then cut your program off at the knees and like level

the playing field was such a bizarre thing to hear him say. Like I know Ryan, I've talked to him a lot. You know, I've seen him grow up in this business. That was the most peculiar thing I think I've ever heard him say publicly. Wow, I'm glad he did it on my show. He did. Maybe that should be the new hook for my show is the most peculiar thing anyone's ever said publicly will be on my show whenever I have them on.

No, I, so I, I'm with you. I think it's, Ohio State has built-in recruiting advantages that they should hammer over and over and over again. I think the broader point about whether you go to totally free market and just let it rip or sorry, right now it's totally free market. I think what Day is saying is either we go back to the way it was before, which I don't think anybody thinks is going to put the toothpaste bass in the tube, or we go fully to the NFL model. And I don't know if that is even correct, Andy and Ari, because right now we're looking at record ratings. we're looking at the most attention I've ever seen on college football in my lifetime.

And what I don't understand is, and this isn't a Ryan Daypoint, this is more of an NCAA point, is why Charlie Baker looks at this and says, this is bad. Part of it, I think, is because it makes coaches lives harder and coaches complain. But guys, guess what? Coaches complain about everything. When I were working the Wall Street in the ringer, every August, my genre would be, what are coaches pissed about? Ask 12 of them, get some great piece, put it together.

But then the counterpoint to that piece was always. always who cares who and by the way you know well you know who doesn't care in the NFL the owners the owners never care what the coaches say that's why they always cut practice time that's why they use things the coaches care about as a bargaining chip in labor negotiations because they do not care what the coaches think and so i think that that we're looking at record ratings record attendance i mean the the national championship game was was was taylor swift level tickets uh ticket prices which it's never been before and and i just i actually do think there's a happy medium and i kind of I kind of think we're in it, guys.

Yeah, that's a good point. You and Brett Bilema. Is that his take the same thing to us? In one of those interviews you're going to listen to in August, Brett Bilema says there's never been a better time in college football. Yeah, the question here that I always have is because we're in a place where we never, where all the things are changing in college football

are never taken from a fan perspective. Everything that's ever changed is about how we can get richer, how can we structure the sport to get more robust television, deals, all these things. But from a fan perspective right now, are we in the golden age of football? Because more teams have a chance to win. Your team has a chance to go from bad to good very quickly with the right hire or the right signing. You know, back in the old days, 10 years ago was the old days, if your team sucked, you had to like strap up and like wait and be blindly optimistic for like four years.

Like it took a long time for a whole out of the hole. Like, Kevin, you've watched your team do this. You're a Keynes fan. Oh, so you've watched this happen. Okay, so there's a couple things about it. All right. You've done as good to work as anybody on the planet about this.

Before NIL, the stat was 80% of five stars went to the same six schools, if I'm not mistaken, from 2010 to 2020, something like that. And now Calvin Russell goes to Syracuse. Okay. And it's funny, Thamwell said this two years ago because I think he was talking to coaches. I was talking about how this is going to develop. And he said, listen, with his revenue sharing thing, the thing that nobody thinks about is a team like BC or a team like Syracuse, he didn't name Syracuse, but ended up happening.

They can just say to a five star, we're going to build our program around you. We're going to give you so much revenue sharing. You're going to be the best recruit in our history. And you're going to be team Calvin Russell and Sarah. So you're going to be Team XYZ at BC or at Eastern Carolina where they say Mr. B should give $100 million, right? Places like that where you can just say, hey, we've got this money, we'll give it to you. And then the recruiting role gets flattened a little bit. But I'm with you.

You didn't have a chance. If anybody wants to say, oh, well, you have to have money to compete now. Show me when that wasn't the case. Show me the golden age of parody of college football if it's not now. Was it when Notre Dame was winning every national championship? Was it when Oklahoma was winning a million straight games in the 50s? Was it when Miami was the team of the 80s? And whether winning all the games or losing one game per year and it was the national championship,

without the golden age of parity, I just don't understand the argument what the nostalgia is for. And with Miami in particular, I mean, I think that it's giving teams a shortcut back to relevance, which is what you want, what the NFL wants. The problem with Miami was they didn't keep up in the arms race with facilities and resources and coaching salaries. And they treated football like it was easy because guess what, guys, for 20 years it was. You just got the guys in South Florida who came and Andre Johnson wanted to play from Miami and Dan Morgan wanted to come down from Broward County. And all these guys wanted to play for Miami.

That didn't continue into the 2000s. And all of a sudden, Urban is taking those kids to Gainesville and then Ohio State. All of a sudden, Sabin's getting in the South Florida. All of a sudden, Kirby is getting into South Florida. The recruiting world completely changes. So what NIL is doing is giving teams like Miami a shortcut back. And obviously, Mario Cristobal is 99.9% of that because he understands the vision of it. He understands how to build that roster.

He's incredible. But I just think that that's, that to me is the most important thing about the NIL world, is that there's more teams that get to be relevant. And I just, the people who are complaining about the competitive landscape, I don't know what sport you just watched for the last hundred years. You know, I think like I'm actually having like an epiphany in the moment. And I think I always knew this, but like it's actually like, Kevin, you're you're like the conduit to this, to this light bulb going off. But like I was one of the olds that would say the thing that's wrong with college football is that fans no longer get to connect with players during the recruiting process, sign those players for their favorite teams, watch them develop over the course of time.

and then turn out to be stars at their school as they walk through the same hallways, go to the same classrooms and eat at the same places that they did. And I have a romantic view of the reason why fans I believe are more passionate about their colleges than even their pro teams is because they feel connected to the player based on those shared common grounds because most people don't have anything in common with Tom Brady, but everybody has something in common with their favorite college player. But then like I'm just now realizing what do you think that fans would rather have a connection to their players that are on a four and eight

team or a winning team from a player who took the most money to come play for you? Like I just, I feel like there's so much conversation about what's wrong with college football. And guys, there's a lot wrong with it. It's the most dysfunctional sport in the world. But what if? And I, and I, and I, maybe I should, we should just say it. What if? Like, this is awesome and there's nothing wrong with it. Like, is anybody like actually just acknowledge that? We've talked, Dan Wetzel talks about that all the time. Dan Wetzel has said, why, why

you guys keep trying to fix a quote quote fix? It's working. What's broken? Yeah. And also, by the way, people keep saying NIL is not sustainable. Yes, it is because the money hasn't dried up and the money keeps increasing. If NIL wasn't sustainable, it would have shown by now.

And I think Bud Elliott's made this point before, there is, especially at these big institutions, big state schools, there is an infinite amount of boosters who have millions of dollars who love the idea of being in the luxury box and saying, you see that guy, I closed on that guy. It's there. And it's in Oklahoma and it's a Texas. And it's in all the three, four to schools or maybe two of them.

It's USC now. I'll let you guys decide which Florida big three isn't. I think we know which one you're talking about. now. And the other thing is, you're seeing this at a couple of places. USC, it seems like in particular now. Maybe you're seeing in Florida, too, although the basketball success kind of complicates this. But it's schools almost getting embarrassed into professionalizing the operation, just saying, hey, we're not going to let these kids out of L.A. anymore. This is, California's back to being ours. Same with the Mario did in Miami, what three

years ago when he starts getting Ruben Bay and Wesleyan and all those guys who would have gone elsewhere. What that sounds like, Kevin? That sounds like. Because the thing that I'm most nostalgic for in college football is the general recruiting strategy. Yes. The big game of risk. And what you're describing is, is the NIL era is actually financially just turning into that in a way that it never was before. But it's still a big map and a big geographical battle. And like what if NIL actually gets us back in a backwards way to the place where, you know, maybe these kids are just going through recruiting two years later?

Um, like, I am so nostalgic for National Signing Day meaning something. That was a huge day for me in my career and obviously a huge day for a lot of people in, in the fanhood of the sport. But like, what if the Nico Iamaliava thing last year at this time was just the new modern way of paying attention to a recruiting battle? Like, yes, he was the guy that the fireman to this year would be a good one. Yeah. And there's a court case involved.

You're the, you're the, you're the program that. got their player flipped at the 11th hour. And if you sign the player, you're the program that flipped them. It's just a different time. And I guess maybe you get more connected to the player because they've already been on your favorite team. But all this is, all the portal is, is national signing day week. I'd also say the commitment isn't lessened because they're not 17 anymore, Ari. Like that to me, just being a Miami fan of watching it, when Cam Ward commits the same feeling I have when Ruben Bain commits, okay?

because there's more of a sure thing element. You actually know Cam Ward's going to be good at that point. Exactly. And there's also an element of it's a college star picking you when they have so many different, Damon, Damon Wilson from Missouri could have gone anywhere. Jordan Seton does go elsewhere, right? You're still watching it.

And I also think that the emotional attachments are speeding up in a way that, like, again, to go back to Cam Ward, Cam Ward is like my favorite athlete on Earth. And he was on Miami's campus for six months. And I don't think necessarily, the one thing we need to get used to are in this era is, okay, well, I don't think Cam Moore is at the same Starbucks by the library that I was in. I don't think he was in the student union. I don't think he goes to the rat, which is the bar. That's over.

A lot of these guys now in all schools. I've heard this from a bunch of staffs. A lot of these guys treat themselves like professional athletes. I had Tray Zoon on my show yesterday. And he said, you know, the last two years of Texas A&M, he treated himself like he was an NFL player. You were able to set that up. And that's athlete only football only facilities now.

You're just not going to get the same. Hey, this guy joined a frat. We see him every Friday night, whatever. It's just not that anymore. These guys are professionals. And I'm going to take that deal. I'm going to take that deal as far as these guys going to pay. I mean, the thing that broke my heart, you'd see it in college football all the time.

And some of these guys end up having good careers. But you'd go, and I would go to a Giants training camp on August 3rd, and I'd see some guy who was, like, at Florida or USC or at Ohio State the year before, and he was the third defensive end, and he got a big interception in the national championship game, whatever it is, right? He'd reach the pinnacle. He'd be the first guy cut in August, and he would leave the sport of football without enough money for a down payment on a house, right?

He would leave the sport of football with officially, like $50,000 for showing up at NFL training camp on a low-level thing, and then he'd be flushed. out of the sport because he was two inches too short or 0.10 of an inches, uh, 10 of a second, too slow and all of a sudden he's drummed out of football. Now those types of guys can make $700,000 in the last year. And I think that's a much better setup and much healthier for the sport of college football

and football in general. Well, all right. So speaking this, because you cover mostly NFL. Now, what I love about you, Kevin, is you are clearly a true college football fan. You understand how the,

these ecosystems merge. And that's why I love, you bring me on your show every year as the draft process begins and we get to talk about the guys that are moving in. And I got to ask you some draft stuff because I'm fascinated by how this one's laying out. The one thing for me, because there's one guy that I think is the kind of the pivotal figure in this draft, and it's Ty Simpson. And so my question to you is, if Ty Simpson goes in the first, round what happened who took him how did how did that come to be yeah so you've heard it

rumored a lot I heard this months ago that the Rams were the team that was hot on them was hot on Ty Simpson and then the Rams surprise trade their second first round pick which was going to be the Ty Simpson pick that was the rumor mill and I'm not the first media member to to hint at that but it was it was it was a big rumor around national championship game when Ty Simpson turned down all those big offers from Tennessee and from Miami. So the thing I was to go back to, Ian Rappport was a really funny story a couple years ago when it wasn't a good quarterback class.

And there was a quote in there from an anonymous scout that was like, well, there's really nobody in the first round with the grade, but the coaches will get involved and then somebody will fall in love with somebody to rise up the ranks, right? Like Dave Gettelman famously, he's a GM, not a coach, but fell in love with Daniel Jones at the senior bowl because he loved his moxie, right? It's just little events like that. That's all it takes.

And all of a sudden, you're a top 10 quarterback. And then a couple of years later, the Colts fell in love with his moxie. Incredible. What's the value of a Duke degree? You just get hiring managers to fall in love with you every couple of years. I just, I want you to finish your thought. I love Daniel Jones. I think he's so under, I think that he is, people shit on him all the time.

And he's like a top 15 quarterback in the NFL. Sorry, go ahead. I don't agree. But with Simpson. I don't think there's a way, and maybe I'm wrong, but I've seen the same mocks that you do, him going 3030, ESPN had that to the Jets.

I think if he gets to the 20s, somebody talks themselves into it, because there's a couple of things about quarterbacks. Number one, it's a lottery ticket. You just feel like, hey, this guy could be a franchise guy. Number two, it's job preservation. A lot of coaches and GMs think, hey, we can restart the clock with a rookie quarterback.

It didn't work for Jackson Dart, but you get to say, hey, we've got this quarter. He's showing something. You certainly can't fire a guy, you know, fire a coach going into a second year of the rookie quarterback. That's not good for infrastructure, right? So I think coach is to look at it like that,

job preservation. And I also just think that there's this element. Every single year, we say next year's draft is the draft. Every single year. It was supposed to be this year. I'm supposed to be Arch. and we're supposed to be John. Ari and I keep getting into this because he did this the other day.

And I was like, but we said that last year. a great example it's going to be insane guys DJ Laguys yeah DJ Lagway exactly by the way he might be in the draft still I'm not I have

He's still like yes that's true In the draft he might be an entrant into the draft That's correct Factually that might be true But remember when all those Ohio State guys were going And we were like well wait till Marvin Harrison

Jr. gets in the league Okay these guys are a warm up backs Marvin Harrison Jr., meanwhile we've got Jackson Smith and Jake Boo who's the best receiver in football. We've got Garrett Wilson and Crystal Lave, who are, you know, buckets every time they go out there.

And we're just waiting on the youngest guy. And so I think there's an element of there's going to be somebody at 24 who's like, we're not waiting a year. We might be fired in a year or we might want to accelerate the clock. And that's how I, how I view Ty Simpson. He's a,

even though he might not even be that great of a prospect. By the way, I don't completely disagree with, with Dan Olavsky. I think the gap is between Mendoza and Simpson isn't that significant. I think Simpson got hurt later in the year. I think the first half of the season, not counting the four-state game.

And the four-stick game was awful. But not counting that game. He had a nice little run of games there that that was impressive. I think he can play at the NFL level. I don't think he's elite. I don't think if Mendoza were in the draft two years ago or even last year, he would have been the first quarterback pick. But I think Simpson gives you enough to where someone's going to

fall in love with them in that 25 to 30 range. It's just, we've just seen too many instances of teams just saying, screw it, we're trading up. It's not that important to have a third round pick or whatever and just going for it. And the reason I ask you this, Kevin, is because I'm just going over the dollars. Like, when Ty Simpson was deciding what he wanted to do, I pulled up the rookie salary scale and said, he must know something.

Otherwise, he's not doing this based on the money we know he's been offered to stay in college. versus what he can get in the NFL. We said that about Quinn Ewers last year, by the way. Oh, we did, didn't we? Quinn Ewers knows something. Oh, he's a sixth round pick. Oops. But I think he was, I think he was being pushed out.

He knew something. He knew something very here from what you did not welcome back. He wasn't necessarily welcome back at Texas. I don't think that was a case with Ty Simpson and Alabama. I don't think that was a, okay, Ty. I think the J. the Monroe situation might have been a little bit like that, but the Thai Simpson one doesn't feel that way.

Yeah. I think U.S. could have gone to Texas Tech, I think, was a big offer, I heard. This is all message boards, stuff. My brain, like he was poisoned by message boards. I forget what was actually vetted and what was just random post.

You were just at Texas Tech this year would have been fascinating. Would they beat Oregon? They might as score. They might have been a word on. I don't know. I could have beat him. Oh, that was a lot. have been tremendous that would have been incredible and i actually think that i buy what quen you were said

about wanting to you know retire a longhorn and yeah i do too i also think that there's one other thing about yours that always gets lost in the fold here which is that the man had been injured every single year of his career and probably didn't want any more mileage on his body um and was probably just ready to go to the nfl and get paid if he wasn't going to be welcome back at texas good point so football is on ESPN. It is an Omaha production. So I got to ask, does Peyton Manning call and offer you the job? How does that work? No, but I heard from him almost instantly when I accepted it. And then you get handwritten notes from him, which is amazing. And then you get, I wouldn't say feedback, but like when he's on the show, when he's on my show, which we do every January,

we do a playoff quarterback preview. He's always for weeks after. checking and say, hey, you know what, to that point, hey, this is the play I was talking about with the Vikings playbook, whatever. And so it's, it's so cool. And everybody just loves him, myself included. I think that I've said this a million times, but if his arm fell off when he was 16, he would have been a top of Fortune 500 CEO. Like, he's just so good at everything. He's just a people person in a way that I don't know how many athletes that reached that level are. And so I, no, it wasn't like a, I'm sending sending my counteroffer to Peyton Manning. That doesn't happen. but but he's certainly involved and certainly made me feel welcome he's a big voice note guy right

big voice note guy big you know who else i learned is during the coaching search process lane kiffin really yeah imagine those two guys i guess maybe i don't know i probably exchanged view yeah i don't i don't know i don't know where you guys stand on this but whenever i get a voice note no i always a transcription yeah i always go wow this guy this guy must be so important and busy And but with Peyton Manning, that's actually true. That's true. But what I'm saying is unless it's Peyton Manning, I'm not listening to. Yeah.

That's true. Yeah. I don't want to hear whatever Peyton Manning has to say. I'm not opening one from Lane Giffin. I just, oh, whatever, he's doing his own thing. You know how my wife keeps up with her friends that she grew up with that don't live in our state? They don't have phone calls. They have five minute voice notes where they do it.

And then she'll play the five minute voice note while she's doing her hair at night. and then the next day we'll send a five-minute voice note back. And it's like a conversation that's a phone call, but it's prolonged through text voice notes. And I find that to be kind of interesting. We can't be doing that. I don't like that. What happened to group chats?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if this is more personal. So easy. I think group chats are better for guys. Yeah. Because we don't have deep conversations with one. Yeah. With our mail friends.

We just drop in Twitter links and then. Yeah. Yeah. Just drop in Twitter links with no comment. You send memes to your friends and you guys laugh at them. Like she's talking about like very personal how feelings and stuff in ways that men don't communicate. So like I guess I understand it to a certain extent. But I guess to her, she's listening to the six minute voice note while she's curling her hair.

And that's the equivalent of me like listening to part of my take while I'm doing like my brushing my teeth or whatever. I would want one from Peyton Manning though. I've listened to that. Absolutely. Kevin, also you've talked about this. on a lot of shows you've been on. I did want to ask you about this. So your dad, Jim, was a UCF professor. He passed away last year. You've established a scholarship in his name at UCF. How can people help out with that? Yeah. So it's the Jam C. Clark Memorial Fund. You can find that.

It's via UCF's Day of Giving UCF put it together the last couple of weeks. It's on my socials, or I'm pretty sure you can just Google it. The response to far has been enormous. My dad taught there for like 30 years. And I actually did a UCF football podcast a couple weeks ago when I was promoting this. And the host was started around the same time. And my dad was like, you could count on two hands, a number of buildings on the campus, okay? And the idea that they've gone from, you know,

Division 2 to Division 1, AA to not only Division 1, not only FBS, but Big 12, to where they're hosting Texas in the first game of the stadium. They're playing in BCS bowls at the time, what they're called. They're having first round picks regularly. It's incredible. And my dad kind of was a gator. He was never that into it. And I certainly wasn't that into it.

And the UCF thing, even though he didn't go there, he taught there, was such a huge part of his life. I'll just tell you this. When he passed away, it was suddenly, I went into his house afterwards. and literally the one he was getting ready to leave and and on his staircase getting ready to leave before he passed was a gold and black tie because he just loved UCF and was got i don't even know where he was going but he was going to wear a UCF tie somewhere he always wore a very plain UCF sweater was really cool just as UCF on the front he just loved the school and it wasn't necessarily a football thing wasn't necessarily a basketball thing he just loved the institution and so

what i was surprised by even though maybe i shouldn't have been was finding out what what a force he was on campus. Because in the days after he passed, and I put it on social media, and we did a couple, I did a thing with Jim Nance. It was kind of an accident where we talked about our dads and it went kind of viral.

The things I heard about was not just his students. It was the people at the bookstore, who they were, he was their favorite customer. It was the people at the restaurants on campus. He was their favorite customer. He was just such a force on campus. And so UCF almost instantaneously wanted to do something to memorialize that.

And so, you know, one thing, to be quite on, we've gotten a bunch of donations. and Andy, you know this. It maybe comes in handy for you at some point. Public school in Florida for colleges is really cheap. And so it is not like the University of Miami. I got two high schoolers in the state of Florida right now.

And we are hoping that's the option they choose. Andy made a comment that sending his kids to Florida would be cheaper than sending my four-year-old to daycare for a year. It's true. Trust me, as part of this, I got the breakdown to like what a semester would be, what a year would be, what a four-year would be. And I was like, this sounds great. I'll put, we can put a lot of kids through college with, with the money we've already done. And so truly any bit helps. This is not like we have to raise $400,000 because we're sending these kids to NYU.

That is not the case. And so, yeah, go ahead. You understand, because you also grew up in Orlando, the job they've done at UCF. And this is not even a sports thing. I think the sports actually might be the secondary characteristic of this rather than, the sports being the leading edge of this, they've turned it into a legitimate campus where people want to go and go to school there. Whereas when I was in high school in the 90s, it was viewed as more of a commuter school. Now it is a place that people from other towns are like,

I want to go to UCF. I love the campus there. Like when I go, you know, in high school, you would see a bunch of Florida and Florida State shirts on campus. Now it's just UCF shirts. It sounds like your dad was a big part of that. Like people like him turning that place into a special college experience. People caring. That was the first step. He really cared. He wasn't trying to go to Gainesville.

He wasn't trying to go to Miami. He wasn't trying to go to Telassie. He was being where his feet were and was trying to grow UCF. And that was a huge, huge part of it. And you're right. Even with the football thing, when I was in high school, it was considered an anomaly if a good player went to UCF. And now, I mean, UCF was beating Billy Napier for recruits for four stars and has beaten

Tallahassee for him and has beaten Miami in the past, not in a moria, but in the past they've lost out. You see USF the same, by the way, at some parts of theirs. And that would have been considered absolutely unheard of in 2004, 2005, 2006. I remember one of our family friends that was a kid who was a tight end who had. maybe 2007 chose UCF over BC. And I'm thinking, no way, man. Like, BC, you know, Big East, the whole thing.

Like, you got to go to BC. And now it's like, that's not even a question. You go to UCF over BC. And it's just grown so much. And I think it's one of the biggest success stories in college, just in colleges over the past, let's say, 15 years. It's just the idea that the school is not only one of the biggest in the country by enrollment, but people really care.

You go downtown. I was doing a Jaguars podcast yesterday, Andy. There's a lot of Jaguars fans because of Blake Bordles in Orlando. Like that's a built-in thing where people loved Blake Bordell so much that they became Jaguars fans. That wasn't happening 20 years ago. And so it's a real phenomenon. I actually do think it probably hurts the Gators a little bit because of how much the Gators

owned Orlando as just a band-based. Gators just need to win. But it's incredible. And if anybody can give any money to the James C. Crick Memorial Fund, which is for a student who loves history, majoring in history, we're welcome to it. Your dad sounds like an amazing man.

I'm so sorry for your loss, but I'm happy that his legacy moving forward will be having a positive impact on future students there. Yeah, no, I do want to say, I was seen this other day, because somebody was saying to me, would your dad have loved the, what would he have said about the college football season? Because he passed away, and I say, my dad at heart

was a troll. And so the only thing I can think of is I was at the NASDA championship game. And I was at the 40-yard line, actually right in front of her Carson Beck released the interception. And the only time I was leaving the stadium, I was dejected and I have never watched the replay. And all I could think about was if my dad were still alive, what that troll making fun of me text would have been. Like it would have been it would have hit so hard 30 seconds after the interception. He would have been like, should have gone to UCF. It would have been something like that.

I can't stop. That to me is the funniest part is my dad. Not only would his legacy going to live on with the scholarship, his legacy will live on and me thinking about how he would needle me about this stuff. My wife went Northwestern. He would have sent the text to me and my wife just saying something like, hey, Northwestern was undefeated today. Like it would have been something like that.

That's also his legacy. So while we're talking legacies and things you've, learned, we always ask our first time guests. Same last question. What is your rule for life or your set of rules for life? If you are just, if you're talking to a college class, if you're talking to your, no, your kid is very young, but when your kid is older, if you can impart one piece of advice, what's it going to be?

Do something. So for me, I'm not joking. I think that naps are important to me. So every time I sign a contract extension and get to stay in this industry, I get to say, oh, I get to take my afternoon naps. That's all I'm after in this industry is afternoon naps, okay? That's number one. But that's not actually what I'll say about the advice.

What I'll say is, and I swear to you, Andy, you do play a role in this. Don't worry about the ultimate destination. worry about doing what you love and everything else will take care of it, take care of itself. And Andy, I don't know if I've ever told you this, but you took a job when I was in high school and he was the Sports Illustrated, and I think your job was to write basically like profiles and longer form stuff about recruiting. Is that right?

That's exactly right. Covering her free. I can tell you exactly how every conversation went. You got hired at Sports Illustrated. That's amazing. what are you covering? And I'd say recruiting. And they go, oh.

No, that was, it was not, if you were in downtown Orlando, you would have not gotten that reaction. Yeah. And I was telling somebody this maybe five years ago. I thought that when I got out of college, I was going to go cover college football at the Miami Herald or the Sun Sentinel, which is where I was working when I was in college. And I was going to be there until I was 30.

And then I was going to try to get your job, which was, I was going to go. wanted to just write stuff like that traveling around the state of florida traveling around the south telling college football stories but i was going to be like 30 and i wanted to live in st augustine florida this was my my roadmap okay there you go 30 to 30 to 40 uh i was just going to do that and then when and then like i'll figure the rest out later but that's all i wanted to do plan it was never like hey i have to be on tv and even now if you set these specific goals whether it's in sports media whether it's in sports or anything, you're not, you're not going to hit them and then you're going to get down

on yourself. It's more about like, do the things they're going to make you happy, do the things you're going to love, and then everything else will take care of it from there. I just wanted to write about college football and then write about recruiting. And then I thought that was going to take me until age 40. Everything else that's happened to me since that has been a byproduct of me throwing myself into the things that I've been tasked with because I loved it so much. And I have an version and this is i don't think anybody should i don't i don't i don't uh recommend having this i do not do anything i don't want to do like i don't i don't do paperwork well i have a bunch of paperwork on my desk i'm just not going to respond to i'm old i'm a year late on my expenses constantly

like all i care about is the four or five things i'm really really really really passionate about one of them is the sport of football the other is journalism so i got to combine those two things but if you just throw yourself into that every single day and you aren't cynical and you work your ass off, good things will happen. I think that's true of any industry. If you love it, I remember I was doing a story in the Niners once. And one of their minority owners was a guy who was one of the Yahoo founders. And he said that the number one question they asked when they were hiring people at Yahoo 40 years ago, 30 years ago, was do you love the internet? And they were like, no one loves the internet.

It's like, well, yeah, the people we hire will love the internet. You have to wake up every single day and love everything you're doing, everything you're doing, because it's going to suck sometimes. But if you love it, you're going to figure it out. And yeah, that's it. Well, I got to be right. And now you want the backstory on that job I took at S.I? I still want it.

I still want it. Can I go get it right now? I wish it still existed. I'd still have. have it if it still existed. But my wife says to me, I am the Florida beatwriter for the Tampa Tribune newspaper. My wife goes, you can send an email across the world in 10 seconds. You're in an industry that relies on printing the news once a day on dead trees.

Do you think that's sustainable? Do you think that's going to last forever? What do you really want to do? I was like, well, I'd love to, you know, cover college football nationally. But real people don't get those jobs. Like, you have to be somebody special to get those jobs. She's like, do you know people who have those jobs? I'm like, yeah, I've met them.

She's like, why don't you apply for them? Yeah. I was like, I didn't even know how. And she's like to figure it out. And so I did. I sent all my crap to every national website and said, hey, I do this. If you ever have something, please let me know. And sure enough.

that's how it all came to be you know not not to turn this into a everybody love everybody bonfire here yeah i think that part of the reason why kevin what you just said was so true and it touched me because i feel like that's kind of how i've you know yeah right approach my life um but i was the ohio state beat writer at the athletic and i knew that i didn't want to live in columbus and just do that for the rest of my life and i wanted to do national stuff too and i i found that the only way to do that would be to try to get the athletic to allow me to do Andy's job for them. And I didn't realize Andy's career path at the time, but when I was talking to Andy at one of the summits about leaving the Ohio State beat to go do this recruiting job,

he's like, you know, I had that job, right? And I feel like that helped us connect. And then a few years later, now here we are hosting a National College football show together. And I could never have fathomed in a million years that I would have gone from that to this. and it was just based on loving college football. So yeah. And the other thing I'd say is, is if you have this specific goals on three did not exist when we were plotting out our career paths.

Yeah. And I've told the story before and it was different people, different narrations. I don't feel that bad about it. When I went to the ringer, I had an offer actually had like one and a half offers from Sports Illustrated. And they were my first. I had four offers that year because I was trying, I was figuring stuff out. And SI was my first one out.

And my dad called me and said, could you have imagined even five years ago, even a year ago, the idea that the ringer, which was a startup, would be your first choice. And by the way, didn't have any employees and hadn't even launched it. That the ringer would be your first choice and sports illustrator would be your last choice. And that changed so quickly. But again, if you love what you do, the job title doesn't matter. The outlet doesn't matter. I mean, it's just, that's what it is, is you just follow your passion and, and, and, you just follow your passion. good things happen.

Exactly right. Best advice ever. Other good advice. If you are not already watching and or listening, however you choose, to This is Football with Kevin Clark. Just add it now.

You will take us later. Kevin, thank you so much. And thank you for coming here and making our show better today. It was really, really a pleasure to have you here. And, you know, I could talk to you about Miami

and all sorts of different things for another three hours. You get you back. Yeah. I've got a lot of things. a few close friends who were Miami or are diehard Miami fans, one of which was sitting in the fifth row in the side of the stadium that they were driving into on the final drive. Yeah, I was right behind your friend. Yeah, could you imagine being a lifelong Miami fan?

Obviously, you know. But like, they're driving to win the game in the end zone you're sitting at. And like the separation between what that ending would have been and what. actually happened and how, like, you would never, that would have been the peak of fanhood. That's where the guy who shaves the u. I'm sorry. Chester sits at the home games. Yeah.

By the way, exactly. Just like, I can't, like, that's what makes sports so beautiful, though. Like, you're 35 or 40 yards away from, you know, maybe getting the greatest single memory that a human being could ever have in sports. But then I think the way that they lost fuels your fanhood to chase the dragon. I almost told him, and that makes you feel better, Kevin. And I might be full of crap. you tell me.

But I feel like I always think about the Billy Donovan story that Andy tells, which is after he won his first title, he felt empty inside because once you be accomplished, I feel like it's almost better. And stick with me with this, that that happened because if they would have won and you would have had that moment where they score a touchdown 20 feet from where you're sitting. Yeah.

Doesn't the entire point of reading the message boards and reading all the things and engaging and buying tickets and doing things to chase that moment, kind of become diminished. I was like, at the very least, you got a taste of relevancy. You got to enjoy a playoff run. You went to all the games.

And listen, now you have an entire off season where you can still chase that feeling again in a way that might have been diminished had they won't. A hell of a spin zone here. A hell of a spin zone. I'm miserable.

You think that's kind of true? No, I have something, I have a quick take on that. And I have two things to say about it. Number one is the reason I'm less depressed than I was a year ago. So I was actually in Syracuse when they lost that.

What amounts to a play in game for the, for the playoff last November. So the last regular season game for Cam Ward. I was actually at basically on the goal line. I've basically been right. I've been the forest gump of every single bad Miami thing because I was sitting on the goal line for that Miami Syracuse game where they couldn't get in the end zone right at the end and kick the field goal, didn't get the ball back. I was at the 40-yard line when Carson back through the interception. But when I left Syracuse, I thought Cam Ward was so generational that this was the

mountaintop. It was like the Dan Campbell thing. This might be our only shot, right? And then we were, Miami was nasty again the next year. And it exercised the demons of Syracuse where I didn't feel, once they beat Notre Dame, I didn't feel so bad about Syracuse because like, okay, we're still building something. And so if I can take any solace, it's in the fact that they're probably going to be good every single year.

And they play in the ACC to where they should only drop a maximum of, of one conference game this year, and then we'll see about Notre Dame on November 7th. So that softens the blow. This is not a, this is not a total aberration where it's like, oh, man, there's a once-to-lifetime team

because they thought the same thing about Cam Ward. And then you can say the same thing when to King Mesidor and Rubin Bain, but first of all, look at Bain and Mesdor the year before. Bain got hurt in Gainesville. Mezador is playing defensive tackle. Tyler Barron was the top pressure getter.

It's just a machine a little bit in Coral Gables. And this year you look at the defensive line. It's going to have Damon Wilson, and Marquis Leifoot and Hayden Lowe and all those guys, they're going to be really good. And so I'm not as depressed because I think in the NFL in particular, you have these once-in-a-lifetime teams, like the lion, like the lion's window might be shut forever.

Like, it might be over, right? How? I don't understand. Yeah. Well, their offensive line isn't like, isn't that anymore. Frank Rag now retiring. Yeah. And then, oops, there it is.

And the Niners, the Niners, what if the Niners and the Kyle Shanahan run without a championship? There's no recourse for them to just reload like Ohio State, like Miami, like Alabama. And then the last thing I want to say is the point I forgot to make in the NIL part of it. Which is right before the game, I thought that Miami covering, which they did, was the lock of the century. That was going to be a really close game. And one of the reasons that Miami was going to win and I picked them to win was the blue chip ratio, which was the most predictive thing in the history of sports, basically, as far as winning national championship.

You have over 50% you can win that's championship. Obviously, but Elliot's gone over this million times. Under 50% you can. Indiana's blue chip ratio is 4%. Miami's was like 68 or something like that. And I really thought that Miami's athletes were going to win the game,

which by the way, without a blocked punt, who knows what happens. Almost did. The worst pump protection in the history of the world from Alex Baumann. But I was telling someone, an executive in another sport who was at our tailgate. And I was telling him this.

And he said, Yeah, but what if tonight we find out that the blue chip ratio is the second most predictive thing in history and the most predictive thing is age, player age? What if tonight's tonight it flips? And I'm a thing about that ever since that maybe like in college basketball has figured it out, maybe just a bunch of fifth year guys, bunch of fourth year guys, bunch of eighth year guys in some cases. That's all you need and the sport is changing. And I think that that to me is the most fascinating thing about the NIL era, Ari, is that. it's not about okay you have bain and you have marquis lightfoot

and you have francisco maunaoa and you've got all these guys francisanoa and you've got all these guys who are five stars high four stars there's a bunch of different ways to build this thing now and that to me is is more appealing brand of a yeah um god i know that you probably have to go so i'm i do okay go no no no you have two minutes okay i have two minutes i think that being a fan is like drugs and I've never gone hard drugs before. I feel like if like the one thing that I always tell Andy, I think I've said this to you in the car. I say this to everybody.

If I could figure out how it feels to do heroin for the first time, that's probably something that would probably feel better than anything that we could ever imagine. But I'm assuming that after you do it the first time, the negative impacts of that and the high that you feel when you do it is never as vivid. And I feel like you fairly substantial research on the subject. confirming that, yes. That there's a certain level of fanhood where you are kind of chasing that ultimate feeling

and not feeling it until you finally do, I think makes it more gratifying. So, like, I think that being in a position where you know that you're capable of that, but not ultimately tasting it is probably the peak place to be in fanhood. And maybe that's just, maybe there's an Alabama fan out there, like, this guy's an idiot. It feels great every time.

But like I do think that like my dad is a Cleveland person. He has been a Browns fan his whole life. And like that is the worst part of it, which is you never taste it and you're never going to. I feel like Miami being back in the situation, despite the heartbreak where they are competitive for it is the perfect sweet spot of fanhood, which is we could do it and we haven't done it in a long time.

And I want to feel that. I just want to say I have to go. But it is a famous story in Hollywood that John Contravolta, because of his religious reasons, obviously could not do hard drugs. He was supposed to impulp fiction be a heroin addict. And so they said, what does that feel like? And so Tarantino got a friend of his who does heroin. And the answer was, it feels like a hot bath and drinking tequila at the same time.

Okay. All right, I'm going to get the bath going. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I got to run to another interview. Thank you guys so much. Hi, Kevin. Thanks for being here. That was awesome.

All right. Bye-bye. that was a lot of fun with Kevin Clark, Ari, but it is Megaboard Wednesday. And we do need to talk about one more thing that has dominated the message boards, really over the last three weeks. And that is the North Carolina basketball hire Mike Malone introduced as the head coach in Chapel Hill on Tuesday. We talked on Tuesday's show about, you know, what's he going to say? How is he going to come across? Well, judging by the inside Carolina message boards,

I think people are very happy with how he came across. We talked about how the response, when the news broke initially on Monday, was overwhelmingly negative. I would say it's overwhelmingly positive after North Carolina fans have had a chance to hear Mike Malone. And one of these message board threads

that I thought was very interesting from Catamount Mike, maybe he is cut from the family legacy. Because the big thing was, he's not part of the North Carolina family. It's not somebody who's hired from within or is a former player for Dean Smith or a former Roy Williams player. This is somebody who came from the outside.

His daughter was playing volleyball there, but he was coaching in the NBA. Ari, you want to hear him talk about playing against Duke? Yes, please. You will see why they're so happy. I just want to get your thoughts on those. just kind of how different that will be for you as a coach to get ready for that type of format. I love rivalries. Yeah, I'm ready to get into that. You know, watching that game at home this year, when Seth Trimble hit that corner three,

my wife and I were jumping around, and I ruined back in Colorado. I mean that sincerely. Our daughter was out the game. She phasedime as they were leaving the arena and just to be a part of that moment. Life is about moments, and that's a moment that all the Carolina fans will always remember. But I'm excited to be a part of that rivalry. I want to add to that rivalry. I want to win.

And I know that Duke is a program down the road, and they've had success, but, you know, as I said earlier, I didn't come here to be second best. I didn't come here to losing the first round of the ACC tournament. You know, I came here to win and win at a big level, win at a high level. And if you're a competitor, that's what you want.

You don't shy away from that. You don't run from that. You run towards that. And that's how I'm wired. That's in my DNA. And, you know, and our team's going to take on that character as well. I didn't come here to losing the first round of the ACC tournament. That, I guarantee you, that got their blood warm.

That made them happy. Didn't come here to lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Well, losing the first round of the ACC tournament's even worse. Yeah. But that's just like the, I didn't, I didn't, come here to trip on the crack of the sidewalk. I mean, that's not what we're thinking. We're thinking, I didn't come here to not make the Sweet 16 and beyond.

I'm criticizing for no reason. But, yeah, you know, you say the thing that you need to say in that news conference, and I thought that he came across pretty well there. So I wonder from a roster building standpoint, those are the things that will be determined. That's what we got to see is what will his roster look like? And we talked about it yesterday with the Belichick thing. Belichick was at the press conference.

And we knew by the end of spring practice, or by the end of the spring transfer portal, when we knew what North Carolina's roster was, that the Belichick year one was going to go pretty rough. We'll probably know by the end of the transfer portal cycle here, whether they're going to be competitive in year one. Do they make some big splashes? Do they get some guys that maybe Hubert Davis

would not have gone after in the transfer portal? do they get some guys that can compete with what Duke will put on the floor next year? That's the key. And it's interesting, the rivalry thing, you know, when you're in the NBA, you actually develop some pretty intense rivalries, or there is a kind of a mountaintop type team that you've got to figure out how to overcome. And I would say probably for Mike Malone's, the majority of his time with the Nuggets was the Warriors were that team in the Western Conference.

It became the Thunder by the end, and he actually gets fired right before the playoffs began the year after he wins the title. But they had to get past Ant Man and the T-Wolves the year he won the title. You do develop rivalries there too. They're actually kind of parallels because the Warriors were really good at that point. And then the Thunder became very good too. So like that kind of, like if you wanted to tell me that the Duke team that he's going to have to overcome resembling of like the Warriors at peak level I could buy that well and that's the thing as as good as Duke's been it's not that good yeah I just mean like statuary not that they could yeah I know

but it's it it's harder in college to create something that's as sustainable as you know Steve Kerr plus the Warriors big three you know as long as they had Seth and Clay and Draymond together like that was pretty tough to deal with so if you've done with that. If you had to overcome that and work to overcome that, then you also understand what you're working to overcome here. And again, I think you put it really well yesterday. If North Carolina didn't hire Bill Belichick, I don't even think there would have been an initial negative reaction to the sire. I think it was what happened with Belichick, which I think you need to look at as completely isolated, completely separate. from what Mike Malone's going to be. Now, if he does the same things, which is hires personnel people

who get them a roster that isn't going to be competitive, then by all means, pile on. But if they are going after the top names in the portal and they are getting some of them, I think you should be pretty confident. Yeah.

He looks good too in the colors. You know, if you ever doesn't, those are beautiful colors. I mean, it's iconic for sure. But, you know, War the Jordan, one Lowe's with the UNC colorway, wore the baby blue tie, you know, the initial reactions used to mean so much to me. Like, how does your fan base perceive this higher? You know, I don't know.

I don't remember. Like, how did Tennessee initially react to Hypoil? Very subdued. Right? We were not happy. And like now, if you remember a few months ago, and the idea that Hypoe could be a candidate for another job came up. I mean, it felt like you were cheating on them.

You know, I was just like, I just think that. And within two years, they were really happy with him because it's not about winning the press conference. And I've said this forever. You win games. You don't win press conferences. You can be the worst in the press conference as long as you put a really good team on the floor.

I mean, Bill Belichick is terrible in news conferences and no one cared in New England. How funny that, I mean, how awful it was. Yeah. Yeah. So this part we will take with a grain of salt. But again, I look at the Greg Barnes story that came out on Tuesday that he was going after one of John Calapari's top recruiters. Like that tells me something different than, say, Belichick who's bringing in his guy who worked with him in the NFL, who's not worked in college football before. who has not had to evaluate in college football, has not had to players in college football.

Like, that's the difference. So I'm fascinated to see how this works because this is a Tiffany job. But for the reasons that we talked about while it was open, you don't really get any of the benefits of it being a Tiffany job. Like, you have to just go do the work like you got hired anywhere else. Yeah, we can revisit this in 10 days, too. I mean, like, this is. I think probably about two weeks where we have a good sense of who they got will be a good time to do it.

But I'm fascinated by this because, you know, we see this in football where guys have to flip the roster when they come in. But in basketball, it's even more dramatic because in football, like, guys will stay in football. There'll be certain good players who will stick around just because they like where they live. They're going to be paid fairly. In basketball, it seems like when you have regime change, it is a clean slate, baby. You also have a chance to completely rebuild your roster in a very short amount of time, too. I mean, Michigan. Yeah, he can make them competitive very quickly.

We just got done watching Dusty May win the national title at Michigan in his second year and job. So this is one of those that, like, you'll know quickly. A football program doing it, you're rebuilding a home. In basketball, I feel like you're rebuilding a car engine. It is a smaller thing. I think rebuilding a car engine takes some time too. No, I know. But I think if you're a good mechanic, it shouldn't take you as long as building a home.

Yeah. Let's see what they do in the portal. But he said all the right things. He definitely seems to have the right attitude going in. And now we will find out, does he have the right ideas? does he have the right evaluation tools? Does he have the money to get the players that he needs? Because, again, that's not all Mike Malone stuff.

Some of that is UNC stuff. Like, they have to make sure that he has the support he needs. But I will say, they did give Bill Belichick the support. So there's no reason they wouldn't do the same thing with Mike Malone in the sport that they are historically the best at. So we'll see. But he definitely came off. very well in that first press conference.

Ari, big guest tomorrow, too. Our friend Chris Lowe will join us. He can talk about that Jeremiah Smith story. He's also been to Texas A&M very recently. We wrote a great story about Mike Elko and the Aggies. He's been to Texas. He's been to Alabama. We need to get the full download from Chris Lowe on all his travels

because he's been to some places that are very, very interesting heading into this college football season. I cannot wait to hear what he found.