Locked On ACC - Daily College Football & Basketball Podcast - ACC SQUAD - How Florida State's Thomas Castellanos' Comments Impact ACC Media Days

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

ACC football drama unfolds as Thomas Castellanos' controversial comments spark heated debate. Is the former Boston College QB burning bridges or building hype for his Florida State future?Host Jackson Holzer and panelists dissect Castellanos' bold claims, questioning his on-field performance and impact on team dynamics. The discussion shifts to the potential NCAA basketball tournament expansion, with experts weighing in on its implications for March Madness. A legal battle between Miami and Wisconsin over player transfers takes center stage, raising questions about tampering rules in college athletics.Tune in for insider perspectives on Castellanos' ACC legacy, the future of March Madness, and the evolving landscape of college sports transfers. Will these controversies reshape the ACC's competitive balance? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Someone needs to take the microphone away from Thomas Costiano right now. You're talking ball with the ACC squad, sponsored by game time. From Florida State to North Carolina, from Syracuse to Miami, and from NC State to California, it's the local experts of the locked on podcast network, bringing you scoops, breakdowns, and the most comprehensive preview of the upcoming ACC weekend. Hang on, it could get loud, it could get heated, and it. will definitely be fun. Squad up, you're part of the ACC Squad. Hello everyone. This is the ACC squad, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Jackson Holes of the

host of Locked on Syracuse. We are joined by our awesome panel, Kenton Gibbs, former NC State Defensive Tack and a co-host of the Locked-on Woolcack podcast, A.J. Black, the host of Lockdown Boston College. And boy, he's going to have a lot to say about Thomas Castellanos. here coming up in just a moment. And of course, JJ Jackson, the host of Locked on Duke Blue Devils, who will probably have a lot to say about NCAA tournament expansion because Duke definitely needs the tournament to expand to make the tournament more,

you know? Definitely, JJ, right? They really need that 76th team so they could just sneak in there next season. Any help we can get. Thank you all so much. You crack me up, JJ. Thank you all so much for joining us here today here on this Thursday. So we got a lot to talk.

about Miami, Wisconsin, obviously, still in a lawsuit about Xavier Lucas. The NCAA tournament, according to Pete Thamel might expand within the next few weeks, up to 76 teams. And we're going to start this podcast talking about Thomas Castiano's, and he's just running his mouth as the new Florida State starting quarterback. Before we get to everything, this episode is brought to you by Monarch Money. Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code locked on college at MonarchMoney.com for 50% off your first year.

You guys had the chance to hear or read what Thomas Tostiano's has been saying in the media recently. You guys had a chance to catch it? Sure have. Oh, yeah. So he had comments earlier this week. And at first it was maybe motivating towards Alabama that, hey, Alabama doesn't have Nick Sabin anymore. They can't stop him, which, spoiler alert, they will in week one. It's going to be really, really bad.

Thomas Castellanos. But then he started throwing his teammates under the bus or his former teammates, I should say, at Boston College. So, AJ, I'm going to let you buy the first round on this one because you're the host of Locked on Boston College. You've seen Thomas Tostianos play pretty much every snap of football at his career at Boston College. What's your take on all this?

So, you know, I was saying before, and I said it on my podcast, like, you know, there's a level of like being, you know, being confident yourself and just pushing yourself out there, that's fine, right? Like, you, we all remember Johnny Mansell and, you know, there's plenty of other NFL quarterbacks and players that are just feel confident they're going to win all the time. And that's, that's fine. And Castellanos wants to go and do that by, you know, calling out Alabama, all power to them. Don't, I don't recommend it, but that's fine. The part that really got me going, and I ranted and raved about it yesterday on my podcast, was him throwing his teammates under the bus. Now, watching his games,

Yes, Castellanos at BC had to do a lot. There are a lot of games, especially under Jeff Halfley, where he was basically the biggest piece of that offense. But to save the things that he said, and I'm going to read you a quote that was in that article by Pete Nicos, this is what really got me going. He said, I didn't have nearly as much talent as I do here, said Castellanos. I didn't have the guys. But over here, I am some of the best athletic, one of the, some of the best athletic guys. I'm not the fastest one. I'm not the most athletic guy in the team.

So just being here in this winning mentality in what we can do, they get the team, they get the guys. All they needed was a leader. Okay. So let me just say this. Throwing your former teammates, guys, over 100 guys that went to war with him and saying that they didn't have talent is a complete slap in the face to all of those guys. Whether you're talking about NFL level talent like Christian Mahogany, guys like Kai Robichow or Lewis Bond, who he's, had a vlog with that they were best buddies, they're a wide receiver. There's plenty of talent on that Boston College roster.

And to say that he, Donovan Azaraku, sorry, forgot him too. Like, there's tons of talent on that team to go and slap them in the face. Like, yeah, you can have your beef with Bill O'Brien and say that he didn't do you justice. And that's fine because there's an argument that maybe he didn't. But to throw your teammates under the bus to make them look less than after you worked with them for two straight years is childish and it's immature and it really shows what kind of leader he really is and that's not a good thing yeah if you're looking to have lifelong relationships with teammates and that sort of even after you move on it's not off to the great

start and and as a guy who played at this level right i've been in the locker room i've done all the things, there will always be, it is a hundred men in that locker room, right? You tell me a group of 100 people where everybody likes everybody. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't exist. But you always keep it respectful at minimum. You keep it respectful. Unless somebody has done something so agrees.

And even then, you pointed that one individual, this guy was a real bad guy. This guy, I don't have any love loss for it. And there are people like that that I don't speak about publicly because I don't care for them. But like you said, AJ, to throw your entire team under the bus to say, oh, I didn't have the guy. I'm the biggest Bill O'Brien hater. However much, Costalano thinks he hates Bill O'Brien up to by four. And you probably got half of how much I dislike the guy. I think he's one of the worst head coaches in all of the power five.

I honestly and truly do. Sorry, AJ, with all due respect. But to throw your teammates under in service of what, what do you gain? That's my biggest question. I wouldn't even, I could understand if he said there's a different level of athlete at Florida State. That's objectively true. That is objectively true that we look at the recruiting metrics, we look at all that. It's just a different caliber of athlete.

Historically, Florida State to Boston College. That's the facts. But to say, oh, you know, I was running. the ACC by my bleeping self. Brother, you can run the ACC. You didn't tear it up. And again, I'm a huge Casolano. Was the huge Casolados guy because he started turning to football

Kanye, which is really worrying me. Every time he gets in front of a mic, it's just like, please, stop, stop. You start off with it, no prime time. And then you get into, oh, you know, know, the Bama ain't got Nick saving, they can't stop me. And then you get into throwing your old teammates under the bus. Dude, why? What do you gain from any of this? I'm fine with confidence. This is cockiness and disrespect of the guys that you fought with, that you bled with, that you

conditioned with, that you did everything with you lifted with them, you ran with them, you ate with them, and now they aren't good enough anymore? That's, come on, man. That's terrible. He's also just wrong. But like, like, he's wrong. Like, he might, he's, he's got a point, even though it's disrespectful about Florida State having better athletes than Boston College. Nobody's going to sit here and try to tell you differently. That being said, him saying, he ran the ACC. Just look at the statistics.

All you got to do is look at the stats. How about you pull up the QBR ratings in the ACC from 2024? Guess who had the worst QBR in the ACC last season among qualified passers? Thomas Costalanos. Yep. A 38 rating. It grades on a scale of zero to 100. He was dead last.

He didn't run the ACC. This guy isn't good. See, I'm all for the confidence, but there's a level to it. You got to be good. If Lamar Jackson, we talked about this on Monday, Lamar Jackson says that at Louisville.

Yeah, we're, nobody is going to stop him. He does run the ACC. You know, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, if they want to talk trash when they were in the NFL and they're playing, they can. You know why? Because you're not going to be able to do anything about it anyway. Thomas Castellanos, someone needs to get in his ear and be like, do you know how your career ended at Boston College? Do you know how his career ended? Like, I don't want to make everything about Syracuse, but you should go look at how his career ended. He was benched because he could not bring him.

form against a bad defense. That's how, and now he's going to go to Florida State and he's saying, oh, now I have the athletes. Now I have the talent. Okay, man. Like, honestly, he's just painting a bull's eye. It's just, it's all right there. And this is going to turn into a disaster.

So let me just say, too, with the not having the guys, he, once he was benched, BC played 14, I think it was four games. And they were all bowl eligible teams, where there was UNC Pitt, SMU and Nebraska. Grayson James averaged 32 points per game once he came in. He had the guys. He just couldn't use them. It's called revisionist history,

what Thomas Castellanos was doing. He's just trying to rewrite what happened from his perspective, but it's totally wrong what the events that took place. And that's the worst part about this. Like Jackson said, if you don't have to revise history, this is a situation where if he's Cam Newton at Aubrey, right and after they won that national championship for whatever reason he had to come back and was like oh yeah man i i didn't have much i did oh you got to pan the shadow too j jay thank you

to help me out but you know i i could understand him saying yeah i ran the cc by myself hey nobody else on that offense got trapped amen that's brother but in this situation you didn't i i will give him that he was a very exciting player but like jackson alluded to earlier this week he's a social media guide by and large. And again, I still believe in his ability more than most people, but I'm looking at what we've seen from first year quarterbacks in general. I'm looking at, even with having better talent at Florida State, we don't know what that culture is.

You can talk about, oh, we've got a winning culture and winning mentality. Florida State won less games last year than Boston College has in the season since. When's the last time Boston College won less than three games? It had to be, what, the early 2000s or something? It's been a while since they were that bad. And you're saying, oh, this team has a winning mentality as opposed to Boston College did not. I just think it's, again, I think it's very disingenuous.

And I think that, like Jackson said, big target on your back. You have made a hate watcher out of so many people. You made a hate watcher out of all of the fans up on Chestnut Hill. Every single one of those fans is now going to hate watch you. Bama fans for the rest of the season. Don't hate watch it. I get what you're trying to do, get Florida State those ratings that they want to help out in the revenue share. I get it.

But this ain't the way to go about it. Maybe Florida State is telling them to do this, you know, because the ratings and the hate watch and everyone's going to hate them. So they're going to tune in any way to watch. Maybe that's why because of the, you know, hey, it's so egregious to the point where you might have to start thinking about conspiracy theories because this guy is delusional. He might be the 10th best quarterback in the ACC next season. That's if he actually improves on his career 58% completion percentage. This guy is not very good. You can go ahead and clip it.

Best case scenario of Florida State, they make a bowl game and oh, my goodness, Thomas Castellanos will hear him say how he needed more weapons in six months. How about that? But that concludes this conversation, I think, about Thomas Tastiano and how Florida State needs to take the microphone away from him immediately. And coming up, we're going to switch to years and talk about basketball because the NCAA tournament might be on the verge of expanding. Yes, that's right. Everyone's favorite topic.

Everyone's favorite thing, tournament expansion. We're going to talk about that next tier on the locked on ACC squad. Ever wish managing your money felt easier with Monarch money. It can. Whether you're growing your savings or planning a big purchase, Monarch puts you in the driver's seat. It's like having your own personal CFO giving you full visibility. and control over your finances. Monarch money is more than a budgeting app. It's a complete financial command center. You can track all your accounts, investments,

and spending in one place. So in addition to managing your money, you're also building wealth. So, hey, you have that Roth IRA, you have your own checking account, your own investment account. That's where Monarch Money can come in for you. And you can take control of your finances with monarch money. Use code locked on college at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year. That's Monarchmoney.com. Code Lockedon College for half off your first year. This is the Locked-on ACC squad. I'm Jackson Holes,

of the host of Locked-on, Syracuse, our awesome panel here, Kenton-Gives, former NC State Defensive Tackle, and currently a co-host for the Locked-on Wolfpack podcast. We're also joined by A.J. Black, the host of Locked-on Boston College, and J.J. Jackson,

the host of Locked-on Duke Blue Devils. And there's the football background behind me. So because we're talking about tournament expansion, you know what I got to do, you know the drill by now. we've been following along this podcast for a while. You've got to change backgrounds. It's basketball time here because according to CBS or is it ESPN's Pete Thammel,

the NCAA is going to decide to either expand or not expand the NCAA tournament for next year. Within the next few weeks, this is both for men's and women's side. And the expansion would be, thank goodness, no more than 76 teams. So who's going to buy the first round here? Do you want to see the tournament expand or do you want to? to keep it as is. I don't know who's like wanting this tournament to expect. Who's leading the charge for tournament expansion?

I haven't found that person. We joked a little bit earlier about the Duke perspective and a lot of this. Obviously, the Blue Devils are not going to be impacted in all of this. I just hate that every time we expand the tournament, I love the flavor that you've got of getting these small teams into the field so you can get upsets every now and then. But I hate when we expand and then they've just got to fight. into playing games to even get in. Let them have those lower tier seeds.

Hopefully you're going to expand and put more bubble teams in to get a little bit at least some competitive matchups there, but all in all, there is no reason to expand the field. I don't get it. What is there to gain here?

It's 64 teams. It's 64. Like, enough. Enough is enough. Please stop. And the space. especially on the women's side. For anybody who has been paying attention to this podcast long enough,

you know, big women's basketball fan here, they're super chunky. It's always super chalky. What are we doing? What are we? This is so embarrassing for so many reasons, and it's a very clear cash grab, because there is no other explanation to expand this tournament.

Who the hell is best? banging on the table and screaming and crying about the 70th team in America, not getting in. If I am correct here, and I could be wrong, so please basketball guys correct me if I am, I believe there's about what, 350 to 360 somewhere in that area, basketball team. And there's only about five or ten that can actually win the tournament, but keep going. But why do we need 20% of them in? Why? This tournament is supposed to reward excellent.

Your ability to get in is supposed to be an indicator of, hey, you have done a hell of a job this season. We will get you in. Why we would expand it out to get in a quarter of the field is ridiculous. For reference, this would be the equivalent of football having in about 2018. This is that equivalent. Are we serious? Come on, dog. Stop it.

Yeah, I look at this is like too much of a good thing, right? Like, we all love college basketball in March and in April. It's a fun thing, right? But it's too much. And I go on to, and I'll go to jump off onto my own little island here. I am a wrestling fan. I grew up a wrestling fan. I watched WWF when it was back in the 90s.

I love that stuff. And I used to watch my two hours of raw every week. I got back into it when my kids started getting into it again. Now there's three hours of raw. There's two hours of AEW. There's three hours of Smackdown. There's NXT. There's pay-per-views.

I don't have time for any of this. I look at basketball and college basketball is the exact same thing. Like, yeah, we love college basketball, but we don't need to drown in it. I don't need to see the 70th ranked team. And I'm talking from a Boston college fan who has not seen a BC, you know, a team in the tournament since many of our listeners have been. born. It's been forever. And I still don't want it to be expanded. I want it to be the way that it's always been. I wanted to, you know, 64, 60 to 64 teams stop because we all know what's coming next. It's at 70 now. A couple more weeks. We'll do that for a couple of years. People complain

about that. The media people will rub their hands and say, hey, we can get some more commercials out there. We can get some more money. They're going to go to 80. It's stop. Just stop. And that's my thoughts. I think we're all on the same page here. In fact, I'll actually go a step further. I wish they actually shrunk the NCAA tournament. Like, I'm the only one who might be in the camp of that. Like, I think they already have too many teams. Because I told you already that I believe that there's only about five to ten teams in the nation

that can actually win a national title once you get to that point in March. And we've seen it over the last few years. It's, yeah, you get those Cinderella stories, but more often, much more often than not, that Cinderella story. up losing in the end of the day. It's just how it is. And I think there needs to be more of an emphasis on the regular season. And all you're doing with expanding the tournament is you're just getting more money, which is great, I guess. Like, congratulations. Gride is your greed is just taken over here. In my perfect world, honestly, the NCAA tournament would have 32 teams. But honestly,

keep it at 68 right now. Like, just don't bother expanding it. But it's going to happen. So, like, I don't know what to tell you all. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm going to just hop on AJ's Island for a minute with WWE. I'm going to tell you, if they put more Jay Cargill and Bianca Bellaro, they ain't got too much of a good thing in that regard. But no, in all serious, Jackson, I think you're, you're wilding a little bit, taking it down to 32.

I think you're wild a little bit. You know what? My perfect, how would we all go along here? The perfect NCAA tournament. You ready? 25 at large. and then you take seven auto conferences. So you get the power five and then two more.

Stop it. That's what I would do. Stop it. Why do we need that 13 seat in there? Why? Because what are they going to do? They're going to win two games and then lose by 30? I'm sorry.

Did we not all see UVA lose to UMBC? Yeah, we did. And then what happened in the next round? Does the 16 seed ever have a chance of winning ever? Well, not really. Why are they there? To spoil the one seat in one game? Yes.

Yes. It's worth it. It's worth it. It's worth it to see those feet. My nightmares, my nightmares are Mercer and Lehigh and some of the upsets, you know, that Duke has had over the years. And, yeah, I can't go that far, Jackson, to eliminate it down to 32 teams. Yeah.

I'm guessing with 76. The format is just going to be like we're going to have more of these play-in games to find us. You know, like there's clearly not another round that you're adding on here. So it's like, goodness, great. How many play-in games do you want to set your field? Yeah, it's foolishness, man. It really is. And that's the worst thing.

That's the most unfortunate thing about this. The reality is playing game is a de facto penalty. Like, let's be very honest about it. Where everybody else is at the career of chilling, feed up, guys. got your norma tech on got to you know got your stem and ice got your whatever you need to get your body right while they're doing that you are out on that court bang in and grind you know oh lord don't don't see me to oh j jay j don't see me know please anywhere but ohio you know so so now i got to play an extra game and be around those big old women in ohio and and you want me to

be happy about this this is foolishness man this is foolishness listen all right at the end of the the day. This is, yes, absolutely a ploy for more money. And yes, Jackson, you are right. Most of the 64 do not have a chance. But it's still good to watch them do certain things. It's still good to see the occasional three, what is it, 14 to three seat upset and all like this stuff. It's still worth it to happen every now and then. It's just, we don't need to now get out here and say, well now your 16 seeds all have play-ins and your 15 seeds all have play-ins. That will reduce the amount of upsets because these guys are going to come into these games a little bit more worn out.

And again, on the women's side, it's always chalk. You can damn near always say, oh, the 401 seeds are going to be maybe every now and then the two seed might sneak in to the final four, maybe. But when's the last time we saw a double-digit seat on the women's side getting to the final. four. What are we doing, man? What are we doing? Ken, how about those silly folks down in Chapel Hill? I mean, had it not been for Dayton, Ohio this year, they wouldn't have even made it into the 64 team field, winning their playing game before they got absolutely blit by Ole Miss there. But yeah, no, you're exactly,

and especially for expansion talk to come on the heels of a year where the final four was all one seats this year with how it played out. Kind of adding to your point. there, Jackson. Hey, hey, hey, last year. My point, I wouldn't even make a single elimination. I would go Best of three in the round of 32, best of five in the sweet 16.

Now, I would get behind that. You get to best of seven. No. Why would we do this? That takes away from the outside. Guess what? You have so many games so you don't need to worry about having that expanding the tournament. You have so many games. That's get rid of the excitement,

though. And you're going to have more Elite 8 games and Final 4 games because they're all going to be a series. This would go into June. Exactly. And even beyond that, even beyond that, now this is going to affect, JJ, because NC State was not going to beat Duke three times in the elite eight. That was not. Correct.

That was not. Correct. And it was good to see. It was great to see. So no. No, I full. But NC State would have made it because they won the ACCC that year. See, if you win your conference, you're in.

but was the ACC one of the seven best? That's a question that may come up. I would say so. It's a question. Yeah, it had to be the seven best conference. Yeah, they would have made it. They totally would have made it. So, you know, I'm just saying, again, if it's based off your conference as a whole,

NC State would have made it. If it's based off NC State's resume before the ACC tournament, ah, we may not have BJ Burr. Bumblehead knife at the Lenovo Center after all. All right. Well, I think we're good talking about basketball here. I think we're all in agreement. We do not want the tournament to expand,

but we all know it will expand. And in my perfect world, which will also not happen, the tournament will shrink. We know it won't. But coming up, we'll go back to football a little bit here, but we'll also put on our legal caps once again

because we got a Miami-Westonson lawsuit to talk about. That's coming up next year on the ACCC SWAT. Guys, you've probably heard. heard of Viagro or Sealis, maybe you've even tried them. But if you're looking for something beyond the usual pill, it's time to meet Ruggiet ready. Ruggiet ready is a next-gen prescription treatment designed to amplify arousal in the brain and boost blood flow.

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Compounded drugs are permitted to be prescribed under federal law, but are not FDA approved and do not undergo FDA safety effectiveness or manufacturing review. Please visit the Ruggiat website for full safety information. This is the locked on ACC squad. I'm Jackson, also, we're joined by our awesome panel. Kenton Gibbs, the host of Lockdown Wolfpack,

AJ Black, the host of Locked on Boston College, and JJ Jackson, the host of Locked on Duke Blue Devils. And when you're done watching or listening to this podcast, and you can just do us all favor, check us out on our own personal channels. Locked on Syracuse, locked on Wolfpack, locked on Boston College, locked on Duke Blue Devils.

We're all there. We're all free and available wherever you get your podcast on the locked on podcast network. And we're going back to football. So now I've got to change my background once again. Here we are. And that's the Miami and Wisconsin lawsuit that we're going to talk about here. So for those that don't know, we talked about it earlier in the week. It broke late last week, but we haven't had the SWAT assembled in a while.

So we've got to talk about it here and get everyone's perspective. But Wisconsin has filed a lawsuit against Miami. for tampering and eventually poaching defensive back Xavier Lucas. Lucas left the program back in January, and the Big Ten is also backing Wisconsin in this lawsuit. So I'll open the Florida wall. Who's buying the first round? What are your thoughts on this lawsuit?

My thoughts are as vague as this rule is written. I would hope. It is my sincere hope and prayer that Miami was not dumb enough to give them concrete evidence in this case. but even if they do have copyright evidence, what's the request? That's my

biggest hope and my biggest question because as the rule is written right now, correct me if I'm wronging anybody, but I believe it's nobody directly affiliated with the university or who's employed by the university

to reach out to this young man. So if it's, I mean, Jackson and I got into all the different varieties and lanes by which somebody could reach out in back channel earlier who they could talk to win this camp. And it's like, if you gave them proof of this, I have oceanfront property to

sell you in Riley, North Carolina. Don't worry about, you know, which ocean is connected to. Just give me the money first. And we'll discuss that on the back end because clearly the marbles are not there. The lights are on, but nobody's home. I wouldn't put it past Miami to, you know, for this whole thing to kind of blow up. But I agree with you. Like, they have to be so dumb. if they really do believe, if they really put this out there with concrete evidence, because what's the thing with the NCAA right now? Everything is so, you know, vague and it's hard to pin down any sort of, you know, allegations about anything right now just because everything seems like it's up in the air.

So if there's a smoking gun out there for this, man, that, that person's not going to have a job very much longer in college football. because there's so, as you were saying, Kenton, like, there's so many ways to get around this, like, easy things that you can do that it's happening everywhere, right? Like, you know, they gauge people's interests. Hey, if you jump into the, you know, they'll have someone reach out. If you jump into the portal, you know, we'll do this X, Y, and Z. But you can't have a, you know, a staff member do that. And if that's what happened, then that's on them.

Yeah, at this point, I'm curious, like, if Wisconsin wins this thing. I mean, to this is the new norm? Like what is the after, you know, like how does the rest of this play out? The domino effect is what I was looking for there of, you know, what transpired. This is going to happen all the time. And I want to know will smaller schools start getting paid when their players are poached by bigger schools? Are we looking at a situation where, you know, potentially whoever the new football CEO is for college football in this NCAA-less society, if they'll decide, all right, fine, got to pay a transfer fee or whatever for these guys to leave and come into your school or whatever.

And even with that, are you still going to have the rules surrounding tempering at all? Or is it going to be a free-for-all in terms of, hey, we don't care who calls who. We don't care who goes where. As long as you got to transfer fee money right to pay to Tulane for getting dairy and mens up, you got to, you know, we're all right here. You know, if you got your money, if you got your duckets in the row, to pay to Syracuse for getting the treasurer. opinion you. Hey, we're good here. You can pay NC State for Casey. Take them. Hey, we enjoy them. We love to pay before it, but appreciate the duckies. I have an idea. The NFL has it already.

Why not put it in college sports? You have a legal tampering period. You have a period of time before the portal opens where everyone can talk to everyone. It's just free reign. How about that? Is anyone opposed to that idea? No. I think it's a good idea. Now we're banking on a calendar working out, you know. And I mean, like this year we're going through, here we are going into July, and there's no recruiting taking place in this dead period within the NCAA. Like they've never been able to figure out what exactly a good calendar looks like. And so I love the idea.

I'm just curious, are they even smart enough to implement something like that and follow it? Exactly, JJ. This is the one place where I might be more extreme to you, JJ. Or at Jackson, rather. I don't think that there should be a rule against tampering at all. I do not care. If your player can be enticed, they did not want to be there. I believe in volunteers, not hostages.

If you want to come off from my player X amount of money, if that amount of money is enough to get my player to lead, that's enough to get in the lead. Look at Lenora seller saying, hey, I was offered $8 million, which is substantially more than I was paid, what I'm being paid here. But I decided to stay for other factors.

If your other factors are not attractive enough to keep your players, so be it. We are already seeing the world where the rich are going to get richer with revenue sharing and the poor are going to get poor. We need to stop pretending like we care about equality and fairness. This is sports. There is no fairness. Do you think a high school kid thought it was fair when they had a long day of going to algebra and all that good stuff?

And then they had to walk on that field and say, I got to check Jeremiah Smith. Do you think that was fair? You think Ryan Williams was a guy that made it fair? That defensive back, I honestly, I mean, that's like a night off for you if you're defensive back because you're not going to be able to touch him. So it's like, who cares? You might as well not go on the field.

You're not covering them. So, you know, here's your night off. Go have an ice stream Sunday before the game. It won't matter. So that's why I have the belief that stop the tempering is illegal in general. Call whoever you want to call. If you're a head coach and you have enough time to dedicate to that, if you're an assistant coach, if you're a staffer and you have enough time to dedicate

to that instead of recruiting your guys that are currently on your roster, making sure whoever's tampering with them cannot entice them to leave. If you don't have enough time to ensure, if you have enough time to do that on top of game planning and all the other things, more part to you. God bless it, go for it. But I just, I think that tampering in general is a very dumb idea. I can kind of see the logic behind that, but I just wouldn't want tampering to be legal during the actual season. I think once you get to the off season and you got all these rumors floating around and all these dollar figures that are floating around,

I'm at the point where either you eliminate tampering once you get to the off season or you just implement a period where it's just legal. So you can go ahead and you don't have to enter the portal or anything. the portal's not open yet, but you can go see what your worth is for a week before the portal opens. So that way we don't have to ever worry about it. Oh, this guy tampered or this guy didn't tamper or what is tampering. Like, no, just let free rein contact. It's all legal for like a week before the portal opens and then the portal will open and we'll see what happens. That's my take on.

I think that's what they should do. I think that's the solution to all this. But anyways, this has been the ACC squad. I'm Jackson. and also the host of Lockdown Syracuse, of course, our awesome panel. Kenton Gibbs, the host of Lockdown, Wolfpack, AJ Black, the host of Locked on Boston College, and JJ Jackson. Thank you all so much for watching.

Thank you all so much for listening. If you hit that like button, hit that subscribe button. We'll see you all again soon.