Locked On ACC - Daily College Football & Basketball Podcast - ACC SQUAD - How NCAA, House Settlement Impacts the ACC

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Private equity firms enter college sports. Is this the death knell for non-revenue programs?ACC insiders break down the potential fallout from this game-changing development. Key topics include resource allocation shifts, impacts on smaller schools, and the future of college athletics. The panel explores how private equity could reshape everything from recruiting to facility upgrades.Each host reveals their team's biggest offseason surprise. NC State's defensive exodus, Duke's QB acquisition, Clemson's transfer portal strategy, and Syracuse's captain departure take center stage. Former NC State DT Kenton Gibbs offers unique player perspective on balancing athletics and academics.Tune in for expert analysis on how private equity could transform the college sports landscape. Will your team adapt or fall behind? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So apparently private equity firms are entering college sports. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Let's assemble the squad. 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. This is the Locked-on ACC squad. I'm Jackson, Holes are the host of Locked-on, Syracuse. Of course, we're joined by Kenton Gibbs, the host of Locked-on Wolfpack and former NC State defensive tackle, and JJ Jackson, the host of Locked-on Duke Blue Devils and Morgan Thomas,

the host of Locked-on-Lecton Clemson, Tyler. Tigers. And on today's show, each one of us are going to give the biggest surprise of our football team's offseason. Hey, Syracuse fans, I'm going to trigger you all. I'm just warning you. I'm going to trigger you all with the surprise of the offseason for Syracuse football. But first, we are going to talk about private equity firms entering college sports because this is all brand new to literally everyone. So that's a real thing. we're going to talk about here on this edition of the ACC Squad. Now, before we get to everything, today's episode is brought to you by Game Time.

Download the GameTime app. Create an account, use code locked on college for $20 off your first purchase. So late last week, the house settlement, predictably, it passed, and that is going to allow colleges to pay their athletes directly through revenue sharing. And one of the ripple effects of now colleges being able to pay their athletes directly is that private equity firms are getting involved in college sports. Now, for those that are unaware of what this means, what are we talking about here, well, normally a private equity firm, they buy a stake of a company and they trim some fat out of it,

then they resell it for a higher price. And that's how that private equity firm stays in business and makes a profit. Well, with them in college sports, what they're going to do or what they're planning on doing is invest money into the team. And in return, instead of getting an ownership stake, they're going to take a piece of the team's revenue. So folks, I'll open the floor. Who's buying the first round? Is this a good thing or a bad thing for college sports and the ACC? Go for it, Kitten.

Well, I wanted to let everybody get their point off here, but I'm going to just say this. This is one of the worst things I have ever heard of coming to college sports. Worse than NIL, worse than the transfer portal, worse than, I would say the only thing that this could be akin to is the Pact 12 dying. I would say this is on that level of catastrophe for a multitude of reasons. The first and most obvious one being, when it's a lot of the fact that. is the last time you heard anything good come from a private equity acquisition? When is the last time you heard of a place being acquired by private equity and all of a sudden their service got

better? Their product got better. You looked up and you said, man, this place was really a dump until private equity acquired it. It's always the exact opposite. Always. It is so, it's mind boggling a little bit to see how we're sitting here and having this conversation as if it were a serious conversation about whether or not this is good or bad. This is once again the people at the top putting short-term gains in front of long-term sustainability. This will be a shot in the arm for a lot of teams. A lot of teams will get very good returns up front. But on the long end, the bill will always come due. And when that bill comes due, when that bill comes due, And those private equity firms come knocking.

All of a sudden, red herring equity is taking everything that you got, including some of the research facilities on campus or something crazy like that. Because, again, they never tell you, oh, we're private equity. And by the way, we're here to kind of run your business into the ground. Oh, that's exactly what we're going to do here. They didn't tell that the Red Lobster. But all of a sudden, all the land that sat on was owned by a different private equity company. Hmm, strange how things like that tend to happen.

when private equity gets involved. And that's never what they say. You're never going to be told, hey, we're going to make things drastically different and potentially exponentially worse. But you'll have fun with it. And we'll give you a lot of money up front. That's not how this works.

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to speak out of turn here, not having a business background whatsoever and strictly just being kind of the sports guy. But now this is a reality that it's becoming a part of college. I would want to know how big of a deal this actually is set to be? Or is this just a spinoff of what's now taking place because the House settlement has been agreed upon? Because now we're going to be able to pay these players directly for what they're wanting to do, right? Or is this truly going to be the instant model that everybody goes for

is that we want private equity firms to be a part of our universities? I almost feel like that in itself is still too early to be told. I mean, this was a late Friday night news. that we saw last week, guys. And if I'm not mistaken, none of this actually even goes into effect until July 1st. So all throughout athletic departments this week, I'm sure this has been the busiest week of work that they've had ever because they're trying to figure out answers to all of these questions.

And can we have these phone calls with private equity firms and whatnot to come on in? Well, I'll go ahead and give my thoughts from Clemson's perspective. And also, little known fact, I have an NBA from Clemson, so 2018, you know. Let's go, Morgan. We got a business background here. I have no business background. Everybody saying they don't have a business background. I guess I'll say something, but not that I know anything.

I just, you know, slept through classes. But I think the thing that is shocking to me is that you're telling me that they're opening up. We originally thought they're opening up money for the player and the university. But what we're seeing is that these private equity firms, these really intelligent, rich groups are saying, well, the money's open up for them. Why isn't it the money open up for us? Let's go ahead and get a piece of the pie as well. If you're going to pay revenue to them, why aren't you going to pay back revenue to other people as well, like these firms? Where I could see it being a benefit is those teams that already don't have the fanatics paying with no return on investment anyways. I mean, you've got Alabama, you've got Clemson. These schools have fan bases that have never got any money back. They've been paying into their, you know, into their Ipte and things like that for years and years, decades, centuries maybe, paying into these universities with no return on investment other than to be able to say roll tide or go tigers and to be able to say, well, my team won a championship and your team didn't. And that, when you have that kind of fan base that's going to pay regardless, that is a blessing for sure. has that. But when you have these other teams that don't have that and NIL is introduced and you're

paying the players, what we are seeing is a lot of the fan bases pushing back and saying, you know what, I got a lot of money, but I'll pay the player, but I'm not going to pay blindly with no return on that new facility. I'm going to pay the players at a facility so you run out of money for other things. And so that's what I thought was going to hurt Clemson, but it hasn't seem to really hurt them yet, but you run out of money when it's just fan-based with no return on investment. Now, like Kenton was saying, we've got guys in there saying, hey, you know what, we'll give you money, but we want a little piece of the pie. We want some of that revenue. And the problem that I see is that what happens when your ticket sales, when your revenue generation

does not bring back the return on investment that you were expecting? Now, you're going to say, hey, let's say us four at the ACC squad, we have a private equity. We say, you know what, NC State, we're going to buy you a brand new stadium in Raleigh. But we're going to need X amount of money every single season. And guess what? If you don't have a good season, if Dave Doren can't do it, then what happens if revenue generation and ticket sales aren't where they need to be? Then what do we do?

Well, we know that it's not ownership that we can demand. But maybe we go in and say, hey, you remember that dorm room? Now it's a hotel and we own it. Exactly. That's exactly my point here. I am worried about the back end of this because I'm not just looking at the good days when everything is sunny and everything is rolling in the right direction. As a matter of fact, we can spend a lot of a second block talking about what Jackson said there in terms of even best case scenario, which you can tell Jackson comes from a business family. Oh, they're just going to come in, give a nice little shot in our arm, and, you know, they'll get a little something in return and that'll just be the end of it.

You know those businesses a lot of times fail. I mean, you brought it up. Those businesses fail. But the thing with private equity firms is that they almost don't care. I mean, they do care, but they don't because all they need is one Facebook. Yeah, but they get what? They hit a home run one time. They win.

But even in the way that you phrased it, there is so much meat on that bone. And that's why I said, we can't talk about all this in the first of me. Because when you think about this, what does it look like to trim the fat from a damn college athletics for? program. What does that look like? What is the fact almost everything that you have in a college athletics program needs to be there or the coaches will argue it needs to be there. I'm a big believer. If you're a ball player, you're a ball player. You don't need no lazy river in the middle of your locker room. You don't need no spaceship looking locker room to go play ball. But you know who thinks you do, the head coaches, the decision makers, the people who do the recruiting. So I think that

there is a much bigger conversation to be had about, okay, best case scenario, what does this look like? Worse case scenario, what does this look like? Because I think that there's a very real possibility that Morgan's situation comes true for plenty of teams out there who are like, please give us just a little something because private equity will always lend because they know the house is always going to win. Well, I think we can continue this conversation about private equity firms and whether it's good or bad for college sports in general and the ACC, So coming up, we'll do exactly that here on the locked on ACC squad. There's nothing like the NBA playoffs.

In fact, we're actually in the NBA finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers, the intensity, the buzzer beaters, the fans losing their minds. It's the kind of atmosphere you must experience live. And this year's matchups are already delivering. If you want in, game time makes it fast and easy to get seats, even for the biggest playoff games. prices on the app actually go down the closer it gets to tip off and with killer last minute deals, panoramic seat views and no surprise fees. Game time is a total game changer.

Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with game time. Download the game time app. Create an account and use code locked on college for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account, redeem code locked on college, L-O-C-E-D-O-N-C-O-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L. EGE for 20 hours off. Download game time today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. This is the locked on ACC squad. I'm Jackson Holes are the host of Locked on Syracuse. On our panel today, we got Kenton Gibbs, the host of Lockdown Wolfpack and former NC State

defensive tackle. Morgan Thomas, the host of Lockdown Clemson and JJ Jackson, the host of Locked on Duke Blue Devils. And we're going to continue this conversation about private equity firms inserting themselves into college sports after the House settlement recently passed late last week. And I think we're all kind of an agreement here that there is obviously a downside. But one of the perks of a private equity firm, in my opinion, taking over college sports a little bit, is that this is less pressure on the donors. And this goes back to Morgan's point where donors, when they invest into a team, what is their return on investment? It's saying, go team. And hopefully they went, there's no monetary value to them investing into the team.

So at some point in time, maybe you do have a crazy superfan that wants to donate all their money and they've made a lot of money, but sometimes you don't. And now you got NIL. And with the revenue sharing, that revenue sharing money used to be for the school to be, to be, you know, used on its own facilities. The players could not touch the revenue money. Now all of a sudden, the house settlement is saying, no, you can pay them $20 million. And most teams, if they want to be competitive, what are they going to do? They're going to spend that $20 million. So now you almost kind of have to do it. Unless you can get a crazy amount of donations, you kind of have to take investments from a private equity firm, in my opinion, because how are you going to,

here's the question I have for you all. How do like the smaller schools out there, how do they pay to the cap of their revenue sharing, but also be able to upgrade their facilities and maintain them so they can actually get recruits in the building? You don't. I mean, I'm sorry to say this, but there have been halves and have nots for as long as college football has existed. And this will not stop that. As a matter of fact, I have a feeling this will be the hyper-acceleration of the exacerbation of that. And sorry to use all those big words, but you get the point. This is doing nothing but speeding the rail, speeding the train down the rails of the crazy train track.

I am looking at this and I'm saying to myself, there are going to be teams that are like, you know what, we need the money, let's take the money. But they know good and darn well, they can't pay that money back. They know good and darn well, we are one bad year away. we are one bad coach away from not being able to pay it back. And I'll use an example out of the ACC, who is not represented today because Brian Smith ain't showed his face since his boys went to a 10.

He ain't, you know, he don't want to be around here no more. But Florida State, right? Florida State is already super deeply leveraged in terms of building a new stadium and a potential buyout for Norville coming up here if they have another bad season and you're going to have to pay a new coach and you're talking Florida State coach money. You're not going to be able to lose.

lure a coach from a much less desirable place on the idea of, well, this is Florida State and we'll pay you the same as what you're getting there. But when we get done paying for the stadium and paying Norville, we're going to get you right. We're going to set you straight. That's not, people aren't going for that. So then what happens, right? Oh, we're for sure going to be better. We'll take this private equity money and we're going to the Big Ten anyway. We're going to get lots of money from them. And then you get to the Big Ten and become a middle of the pack team. Or you stay in ACC and you continue to have down years. You go through your dark ages as a program. Not saying that this is guaranteed to happen, I'm just saying, hypothetically, they go through

their dark ages as a program and attendance is as low as this every day, viewership is as low as as every day. How then do you pay back that money? When they were expecting Florida state viewership, they looked at the past 20 years and said, this is what your viewership has been. Clemson. Goes back to Clemson being a thing. What do you do if you take private equity money and then all of a sudden, you're no longer a national powerhouse like we were. NC State, same thing for us. It's not any different for any university year. The premise of what I'm saying is we are, at the end of the day,

I'm looking at this and I'm saying the smaller schools, accept where you are and try to build within that. This temporary shot in arm, I'm going to tell you a phrase that my grandmother tells all of her children and all of her grandchildren whenever she knows we're up to something we shouldn't be. Whenever she hears bad things about our names in the church or in the streets, wherever, she said, boy, you keep dancing with the devil and one day it's going to follow your home. This is a moment where these schools making these deals with private equity,

oh, not only are they dancing. They two-stepping, they tango and they're walking it out. They're doing the boots on the ground. They're doing an electric slide, whatever, the hokey shuffle, whatever white folk dances are. They're doing all of them all in one. They river dancing out here because I'm telling you this is a bad deal to get in bed with private animals. Yeah, I mean, now I'm thinking more, Kent, about, okay, to fix this, trimming that what is the fat? What is the fat that you then trim within an athletic department?

Does it become salaries at that point? Because then I really worry about, well, there are so many people inside athletic departments that your everyday fan has no idea even exists. That already been to get paid. Right. Well, the issue is, JJ, is that it's, I hear your point. but that revenue money is now going to the players. So something's got to give here. Someone might lose their job no matter what. This is wild, man. But that's where I'm so interested in seeing what does the fat look like. Before we even get to, hey, this is what the injection

does, does the fat become the less, the least valuable sports? Because let's be very honest about this. I love watching sports and competition in all facets. We are, we can all be honest and say women's sports are most likely to be on that chopping block of which ones are least profitable. It's not even, it's not just that. It's, it's literally, with the exception of every program around the country, they're always going to have their outlier sport, but it's really football and some programs with men's basketball and then every other sports of them is really not profitable. So what, what then happens? We have this. Fun title, it's the one after eight and before 10 that make sure that we have to pay out, that we have to protect these programs for women's sports as well.

So what then happens? What is the fact that private equity is going to trend? You know, you talk about the operations guys. You talk about the equipment guys and gals and all that good stuff. They're already not making that much. And we know when companies want to trim fact, the first place they do it is headcount. Where is the headcount that you can pull out of college football and be like, oh, we're still good here? where's the headcount you can pull from a college basketball team and say, oh, yeah, you don't need a second or third trainer.

Y'all can all get taped up by one trainer like they did in the 80s and you'll be okay. Right. Yeah. All the media-related PR people that you've got within your athletic department. I mean, there are just so many different areas, photographers, videography, you know, everybody that you've got there. Because salary would be the obvious way to go, right? Like, I don't know because it's been a college athletic department that's been looking to fundraise to fund. you know, for out history, I don't know where that large chunk of money would be other than salary.

What about star? Yeah, I think it's going to be salary outside of college football, as y'all are mentioning. I think that the smaller schools are the schools that are just trying to get by that maybe only have enough donors to pay for the football players and nothing else, what they're going to do is they're going to maybe no longer have a baseball team. Maybe they'll no longer have a basketball team. They may not have a soft softball team or volleyball team because that private equity firm is going to, to say, you know what, we need our money back and you're spending it in areas that you don't need. Another thing that I'm going to be disgusted by that has already really basically happened,

but it's going to get worse is that everything is going to be sponsored. You know, your first time out going to be sponsored by the, it's not going to be Death Valley. It's going to be Bob's chicken presented Death Valley. You know, it's going to be every little thing is going to have some sponsorship to it. I mean, that's why I watched the Atlanta Braves and I have to see them with a big giant concrete logo on the side of their uniform. It's the same thing.

You're going to see what happens in Europe, sports, and overseas, and what's happening in MLS. You're not even going to see the team name. You're going to see Motorola. You're going to see Emirates. You're going to see, you know, Delta, whatever it's going to be. Everything is going to be sponsored in order to try to make up that loss of revenue or get back in your money.

And you're not going to have, you're not going to be able to say anything because you owe that money. And they're going to be pushing you to do. that. So that's going to really hurt the tradition. You know, Howard's Rock sponsored by Bud Light, you know, whatever it may be. It's going to be literally everything out there. I can see it happening. And with the smaller schools, that's the unfortunate thing. But I think what really it all boils down to is that you're eventually going to have the haves, which we already have, but you're going to have some of those teams saying, you know what, we're going to drop down out of this league. And we're

We're going to go play the lower level college football where we can hang because we cannot hang and we cannot afford the payback all the loans to keep up with the power four or the power five or whatever. So there's going to be some teams out there. Maybe, you know, I don't want to name specific teams, but they're going to be smaller teams that are going to struggle that already have a fan base that can't keep up. They're going to finally say probably, you know what, y'all have a 64 team, but we'll be the 6015 out of. here. Hey, all I know is make sure if you're touching Howard's Rock, you touch it responsibly. Okay, that's what I know. We're touching Howard's Rock presented by Bud-Ly. But you make a very interesting point there. And honestly, that to me is the least of our words. Like, I kid you not. If somebody told me, Kenson, the bad thing out of this deal would be that we have

sponsorship like teams of Europe. I don't give a damn. I'm sorry. Hey, I'm terrified of the Delta Bulldogs. Hey, that's the team that I don't want to face. The Clemson's a lot. The Clemson and tigers presented by Cors Light. That's what I was it. But at the end of the day, I'd be okay with that. I'd be okay with all of these ugly designs all over the jerseys. And we can barely even tell which team players for which because like in soccer, teams change colors year to year based on who their sponsor. NASCAR.

Exactly. If that's the case, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with like the jerseys being ugly or whatever. What I would not want, what would disturb me more than anything else is the cutting of other sports and the potential that Morgan just bought up, which I didn't even consider of, hey, we're actually going to afford resources from your university outside of sports. Because what is more important than sports to me, I know the sports changed my life. I know that without football, I would not have gotten a college degree.

But guess what? Football allowed me to get a college degree that meant something. So if the college degree no longer means as much, or if it becomes a situation where, you know, dorms are not being properly kept up or facilities around campus are not being properly up kept, or you're having to pull from your allotment for where you're buying your food from and stuff like that for campus, that becomes a problem for me because now we're putting people in deleterious situations based on sports, when to me, sports should always be an extracurricular. It should benefit the university of anything or at worst be a net zero. You should never be pulling from

the university for sports. I know we got to get to break, but I'm just, I'm thinking about a Duke basketball jersey with a sponsorship logo on it. And I'm thick. I mean, I'll get over it. But it just, to your point, Morgan, spot on jersey. What are we doing? The boat angle blue devils, baby. The boat angle devils.

We love it. The NBA finals, you see more YouTube TV ads than you actually see the NBA finals logo or you're watching the Stanley Cup. And instead of the Stanley Cup logo on there, you see like some random advertisement. But hey, for like two minutes during the second period or whatever, or two minutes in the second quarter or basketball, they might just flash the trophy a little bit for you just to like give you that old nostalgia,

but you know it's not a real thing. The Bojangled Blue Devils, how about it? Hey, the yellow and red jerseys would be hilarious. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to. That would be the part that sends me over the head. They're going to, it's going to be the Jim Beheim Court presented by McDonald's in the JMA Wireless,

I'm just ready for it. Even though there's no McDonald's on the Syracuse campus, fun fact. Wow. Wow. That's tough. Big missed opportunity by McDonald's. What the heck are they? You have to be on every single college campus if you're a fast food chain.

What are you thinking? Yeah. Yeah. Fair of it. All right. Well, I think that concludes our conversation here about private equity in college sports. Short term, it might be good. Long term, if you can't pay the bill, that's not going to be very good for these schools.

Coming up, we'll talk about the big. offseason surprise for each of our college football team. So stick with us here on the locked on ACC squad. This is the locked on ACC squad. Jackson Holzer host of locked on Syracuse, Kenton Gibbs, host of Lockdown Wolfpack, former NC State defensive tackle, Morgan Thomas, host of Clemson Tigers and JJ Jackson, the host of Locked on Duke, Blue Devils. Let's get into the biggest offseason surprise for each team in college football this off season. So who wants to buy the first round? What was the biggest surprise of your guys' is offseason? Oh, I'll definitely say mine was in terms of college football, it would definitely be the fact that we only had attrition

from one side of the ball at NC State. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. Like, yes, Kevin Concepcion is a big loss, but you bring back, you kept the entire band together on offense. You get back Hollywood smothers. You get back Noah Rogers. You get back CJ Bailey, the shot caller, the guy who mixes the drink on the offensive end. But defensively, Coach Gibson left before the bowl game, where it was announced he was leaving before the bowl game. And then you didn't hear any movement from our defense literally right up until the 11th hour.

Like it was the day before the portal closed, our entire defensive backfield that was supposed to be coming back. All got in at the same time. So that was a little surprising for me, not just that the entire. defensive back room did a mass exit at once, but that we didn't lose anybody but KC from offense. And then defensively, everybody named Mama said, hey, see you. It's been real. It's been fun.

Y'all be safe. From the Duke perspective, a big surprise just in what they were able to do at quarterback, bringing Dary and Minson in from Tulane. The numbers that are out there in terms of what Duke is paying the guy are astronomical and crazy. Like, who thought Duke would be this big time spender in football? But shout out to Manny Diaz for what he was a. able to do in year one. I think that's kind of the big talk is can you duplicate that in your

second season? We had the same song and dance just two years ago as Mike Yelko was preparing for his year two. And now guys, I'm a little worried. Like, are we going to have another great second year? And then Duke football's going to have to look for another coach because somebody else is going to come and coach Mani Diaz. I'm cautious right now going into the season for Duke because I'm tired of seeing other teams take your head coach. JJ, that's a good problem to have. Great problem to have. For me on the Clemson perspective, I think that it has to be Davosweeney finally using the transfer

portal. I know you probably aren't shocked by me saying that not only did he hire a brand new defensive coordinator and Tom Allen, but most of the fans were demanding that at this point. So it really wasn't too big of a shock. But definitely when I woke up and realized on my. X-Feed that Tristan Smith, Juco from Southeast Missouri State, wide receiver with almost a thousand yards receiving,

had entered the transfer portal and had gone to Clemson and selected the Tigers. I was like, okay, well, you know, he's using the portal. This guy seems like he's not just a clipboard holder on the sideline, but,

you know, he is from a lower division. And then we beat out Texas A&M to get produced freshman superstar, defensive end will help. That was the biggest shocker to me because you're not winning that without a little bit of wetting the beak there, as my old boss used to say. So very shocking that Clemson went into the portal. Also that Dabbo Sweeney, you know, admitted defensive end was a problem and went into the

portal and beat a big time player for it. It was a big, big shock for all of us. Oh, I'm working. My team has. Exactly. My team has defensive end problems, even though we got the first rounder at defensive end. You spent me a defensive end, please. Send one up to Raleigh. You need two. That's what's one, too. I mean, we'll do it.

We don't need two. We don't even need two. To give us one, to give us what. You keep the one you like the most, which I'm guessing is going to be Parker. Just give us help. Give us somebody. We had one. We had one. You know, when we only had one, Louisville decided they were going to run that direction and really hurt us. Georgia. And South Carolina to kind of cap it all off. So hopefully the running game issues have been corrected with this with this change. All right. So you guys all went. I'll go last here. Sorry Syracuse fans. I have to bring it up again. Losing Trevor Pena was was a huge shock. I did not see that one coming at all. I remember it. It was late April. The spring portal was opening up later that afternoon.

I'm making breakfast. And I get a text that, like a WTF text. And I checked Twitter and it's Trevor Pena entering the portal. The guy was a team captain. If he was going to leave, I felt it might be in December when most players leave, especially the star players. When he entered the portal, I got to tell you, that was the biggest offseason surprise I had.

Now, it's not all doom and gloom. I do think that they did a nice job trying to replace him with getting a guy like John Tecook who's got a lot of upside. But that being said, if you're talking about the Syracuse football biggest offseason surprise, Trevor Pena leaving, the fact that he was named a team captain and then just walked out the door, I did not see that one coming. Final thoughts from any of you guys? Wow.

I'm so surprised that winning Steve Angelly wasn't the biggest surprise for you. You know, I know he's got ties to your offensive coordinator or whatnot. he's the shot caller. You know, that should be your big surprise. No, but seriously, I think that this is, this has been a very interesting offseason. And I'll tell you, there are multiple teams in the ACC that got better

by doing little to nothing. Shout out to Louisville. Shout to Georgia Tech. Those are two teams that did not have a ton of, a very big name guys leave. And even with Georgia Tech having Singleton leave at wide out, I think they'll still be okay. I really and truly do because they've got a ton of talent there.

But Louisville, that backfield, keeping both of those back. Hey, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, they were one Stanford loss away from really giving some folks in problems last year. So I'm very interested to see what they do this year. So this has been the locked on ACC squad. Jacksonals are locked on Syracuse, Kenton Gibbs, locked on Wolfpack, Morgan Thomas, locked on Clemson and JJ Jackson. Locked on Duke Blue Devils, if you can all do us all favor since you've made it this far in the podcast, hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, helps the channels grow and reach all. of our wonderful fan bases.

And also for your second listen, you might want to check out the Locked-on Portal podcast with football recruiting expert Brian Smith, also the host of Locked-on Florida State Seminels, who, I mean, Kenton said it earlier on in the podcast. Ever since Florida State went 2 and 10, right away. He's nowhere to be found.

Now, I imagine that when Florida State next season at one point is 8-1, pause for laughter, he will be on the podcast, because they're not going 8-1. That was the whole point. But anyways, everyone, thank you all so much for watching. Thank you all so much for listening. And we'll be back next week with another episode of Locked-on ACCCC squad.