Locked On ACC - Daily College Football & Basketball Podcast - SHADOW PORTAL: NCAA LAUNCHES Severe "Blind Transfer" Penalties—FSU DC Calls Out Former Players

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

NCAA drops the hammer on “shadow portal” transfers, threatening head coaches with six-game suspensions and slashes to revenue sharing. Can the governing body effectively enforce these harsh new rules, or will top college football programs and power players like Florida State, Miami, and SMU find ways around them? Alex Donno and Kenton Gibbs unpack the legal chaos brewing as universities and athletes, including Chandler Morris and Xavier Lucas, consider court battles to preserve transfer freedom. Florida State’s defensive coordinator Tony White throws last year’s roster under the bus, raising questions about Seminoles culture and accountability in the post-opt-out era. Plus, Bill Connelly’s updated SP+ rankings throw a curveball—Clemson surges ahead of SMU and Louisville. Are analysts underrating ACC bluebloods, or is the sports betting world one step ahead? Don’t miss insights on Syracuse’s injury setback with Calvin Russell and what it means for a program on the rise. Everydayer Club  If you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub     Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! 5-Hour ENERGY Have your cake & drink it too. Birthday cake-flavor is back, no fork needed. Vanilla-y cakey flavor, caffeinated kick, and no sugar. It's party time. Order Now at https://5-hourENERGY.com or Amazon. Mazda Like our players, we’re driven by the details. Highlights make the reel. But the work behind them makes it count.
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The NCAA has done it, but can they enforce it? They have passed sweeping legislation to crack down on the shadow portal. You are locked on ACCC, your daily podcast on the Atlantic Coast Conference. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. He is Kenton Gibbs from Lockdown Wolfpack. You can see he's ready for the Shadow Portal. I am Alex Dono from Lockdown Keynes. And on this episode of Lockdown ACC, we'll talk about Bill Connelly's SP Plus rankings and why it tells a story, a different story about the ACC than the one that the odds makers tell.

Florida State's defensive coordinator made a bold statement, which is a pretty poor reflection on the team that they had last year. Is it different now for the Seminoles? But Kenton, we got to talk about our favorite topic in recent weeks, the Shadow Portal. So as we all know, yeah, the end. NCAA this year, they went down to just one transfer portal, and that has already come and passed in January. So players can no longer enter the portal. The portal is closed.

There's not going to be another portal window in April like there's been in previous years. However, everyone is really concerned and anticipating that players are, you know, going to do what happened with Xavier Lucas last year and with Jake Retzlaff, where they unenroll and and then enroll somewhere else. Now, I've been defending Xavier Lucas because he tried to get into the portal legally and Wisconsin illegally denied him. So that's the part of that story. But still, he found a loophole.

And there's concern that others will expose that loophole. A Big Ten anonymous football GM was quoted by On Three Sports saying they were anticipating about 15 big name players were going to be hitting the shadow portal and, you know, circumventing the rules to transfer somewhere. And so the NCAA, and they had to do this on April Fool's Day, which made me doubt whether the story was real or not. It is real. They have passed this, what they call legislation. It doesn't come from the government. It comes from them where if you accept a player through the shadow portal, they call it ghost transfers. If you accept a player who's not in the transfer portal, it's going to get your head football coach suspended for half the season for six games. And

it's going to get 20% of your revenue sharing budget take it away, which is a really, really big deal. So, I mean, first of all, Kenton, does the punishment fit the crime? Like, do you think that, because I'm surprised it passed with these harsh of penalties, if I'm being honest. Well, let me bring on a special guest first

before we get more in-depth into the shadow portal, everyone. The shadow portal is not only, an idea, but it is an entire framework that cannot be stopped by one silly legislative rule from the NCA. I don't know who that was, but anywho, now that we're back, you know, my esteemed guest has now left in all seriousness, this is a step in the right direction. I think that it is good, right?

I think that when we talk about player movement and roster planning and all that, anybody who knows me knows I have been the biggest proponent of player empowerment. I've been the biggest proponent of players getting paid. I don't even like the framework of like, oh, NIL, it's supposed to be pay for play. To hell it shouldn't be. In my opinion, it should be. In my opinion, it should be direct.

Hey, you show up, you do the job. We'll pay you for doing the job. That's what this deal should be. With that in mind, I do think that things have gotten a little off the rails. And I think when you're looking at some of the things that have happened, for example, Caden Proctor transferring the Iowa, then transferring back, to Bama, you know, and things along those lines.

I think that there should be something. I think that there should be some meaningful guardrails put in place to prevent things like that. And again, the portal gives you plenty of time. Right. Realistically, the portal gives you plenty of time. It's not like it's a one or two day ordeal. This thing lasts. How long is it over for?

Like three weeks or a month, something like that? Actually, they brought it down to like 15 days. So they did, you know, they did shorten it. But you know, you've got to event. You've got to make your decision quickly, but you have a chance to make it. Everybody has the same fair chance to make their decision. But the thing is, Donald, how long is it from the end of your season to win the portal opens? Like, even if you're a team that made it to the first round of the playoffs and got eliminated,

which means you play deeper than a majority of teams in the NCAA, when is your season end in comparison to win the portal opens, right? See, that's actually something I don't like about the current portal because the portal opened like during the college football playoff, which to me, the calendar sucks. Like I think they need to do it later. But that's the thing, Donno, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that. I think anybody who knows me and knows my professional world knows that work in early stage startups as a recruiterate. And I say all the time, everything is iterative.

nothing should be so perfect and flawless or nothing is rather things should be we would love it if they were but nothing in the real world is that flawless to where you cannot make improvements you cannot make this better so i do think that you can fix the timing of that but what i also know for a fact about the portal and all those things there's ample opportunity for you to make a decision like just realistically even if we talk about oh it's made during the playoffs again how many teams make the playoffs every year they're expanding it to what 12 14, something like that? Yeah, they haven't expanded it yet. We're still at 12 for the time being. So we're still at 12 teams. So that leaves over 120 teams that if you want to get in the portal,

go. You've got the time. You've got the latitude. All the things are there for you to make an informed decision on whether or not you get into the portal. And to some extent, and I believe that there should be more restrictions on coach movement as well, because I think with them as well, getting out of hand and off the rails because trust me, the things that I heard, and this ain't just about Will Wade, but the things I've heard about multiple coaches who have left for different places and whatnot, I'm like, what's going on? What's going on? The reality is, I understand that this is a job and I understand that this is, you know, now a very professionalized thing. But even in professional situations, there are guardrails to prevent certain things.

There are anti-compete clauses and things like that. For example, a startup that I work with for a long time had me under anti-capita where I could not work with any company I recruited for with them like if I was with that company so anywhere that I went as like a external recruiter I couldn't go with them and that's fine that's fine I'm not saying that players can't transfer at all or they should never transfer at all but in terms of transferring in conference in terms of transferring in state even in terms of doing things where it's I took the money came back in two months that needs to be curved and this is a step in the right direction in my Yeah, I'm with you.

There have to be guardrails. Like, players need to have the right to be able to transfer and they have that, but there's got to be guardrails. And as long as everyone is on board with not doing a shadow portal and ghost transfers, I think this is the right thing. But then the other question, Kenton, is this really enforceable? Because, like, the NCAA calls this legislation. But, like, okay, like, I took eighth grade civics class. like legislation is supposed to be what comes out of Congress, not what comes out of the NBA or the NCAA front office. And so, all right, what happens if a coach actually gets caught taking what they call a ghost transfer?

Now, one thing, and people are theorizing on this, and this is probably a thousand percent true, if your university doesn't particularly like your head coach and he gets caught taking a ghost transfer, then you can fire him with. cause. I mean, right now, Kent, and Florida State is probably setting up a sting operation for Mike Norvel so they don't have to pay that buyout. So that's one thing. But then the other thing is if you like your coach and he gets caught accepting a ghost transfer, you're probably going to take the NCAA to court. The NCAA's record in court is like one win and 10,000 else. So just because they say they're going to enforce this doesn't mean they actually. can. The NCAA was undefeated up until about 2018. All of a sudden, they came. They were batting a thousand up until right when that abandoned case got this conclusion. Then all of a sudden,

they, you know, it went from the rim being as wide as the ocean to that rim being this big. And you're trying to shoot a full-size basketball. So I will say this. I think a university will be the first people to sue in this type of thing because look at it from this angle. if a coach is suing from his personal perspective, now he's got to deal with that on top of the on-field things that are going on. If a player is to sue, same type of deal. But the administration at the school, they're hands off. Once I hired a head coach and I tell him, go out there and get your players,

once the head coach goes out and gets the players, gets the assistance, gets all the things, at that point, the machine is running. The administration could disappear. and the machine would continue to march on as it should so long as those checks get signed. So I think that it will very likely be at university who's like, oh, man, you know, we needed a quarterback and we knew UVA couldn't keep Perbula. And who's the other guy up there? Oh, Holstein? And Holstein, there we go.

Yeah. Is Chandler Morris still trying to come back or did he lose that? You know, Donno, there's too much going on. They might have two guys trying to leave. Donno, I've been tracking flights out of Raleigh that the three stops in 14 hours in tracking the coaching search. I ain't going to lie to you.

Here's the latest. As of five hours ago, so this is still not been resolved yet. Chandler Morris and his father are set to testify against the NCAA in Charlottesville. And okay, that's where the case is being held. A little home cook in there. I think he's going to end up back at UVA.

Again, Donald. Question. which universities have law schools in the states? Is it generally the smaller universities? Is it generally? I don't, and this is no disrespect to these schools, but I don't think Florida Memorial has put out a majority of the lawyers in the state of Florida, right?

I don't think Edward Waters, with all due respect to them, has put out a majority of the lawyers in the state of Florida, right? So where most likely are they coming from? Probably Miami's law school, Florida State's law school, Florida's law school. So if a player just so happened to be at one of those schools, I don't know. I would bet my bottom dollar that UVA's law school, probably the greatest producer of lawyers in the state of Virginia,

you know, in terms of, you know, well, and not only that, but there's like an 80% chance that a judge in Charlottesville probably went there. Well, that's what I was going at, because you've got to be a lawyer before you're a judge. Yeah, that's right. the majority of the lawyers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do I think are the judges in that area?

This is why we do the knowledge. This is why we don't use chat GPT on this show. We like to use the old intelligence. We like to use that to come up with and draw these conclusions here. So, you know, Chandler Morris might be back. And again, in the words of Victor Sweet, that's too much quarterback for one program. Y'all got to share that. Y'all got to share that.

And granted, Victor Sweet is not talking about quarterbacks, but that content is too adult to talk about on this show. So, long story short, that's the type of stuff that we're talking about, though, Donovan. Is that not a moment that could be very pertinent to the Shadow Portal? And my special guest host that was on here a little earlier, is that not very pertinent? And also, I'll peek that you wear the pink shirt today. See, you knew we were going to be talking about the Shadow Portal, and you know, the unofficial colors of the Shadow Portal are pink and black. You know, we've got our eye on the Shadow Portal.

We're black and pink today. That's what we got in. Yeah. Well, so a little bit more on the shadow portal. CBS sports got a quote from an SEC coach who does not think this will get enforced at all. You want to keep it locked right here. We're also going to talk about a bold statement from Florida State's defensive coordinator. We're only getting started on this brand new episode of locked on ACC. Yeah, it's tax time. And for a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is a lot. Trying to book an appointment that's not the most convenient. Sitting in a waiting room with a stack of papers, email, back and forth and wondering if they really get my situation. But this year, you're getting a major upgrade. Intuit TurboTax now has in-person locations nationwide. You can meet face-to-face with a real tax expert, and your documents get uploaded straight to your TurboTax app on the spot.

And just like that, you're done. TurboTax expert works to get you every dollar you deserve while you get real-time notifications right as you go about your day. It's the relief of walking in and meeting a real person and walking out knowing your taxes are being handled right. Head to turbotax.com slash local to find a store near you and book your appointment. Guys, if you've been looking for a reason to join the Everydayer Club, you want to get on board this thing.

You're getting exclusive ad-free versions of our episodes, private listener group chat on Discord where you hang out with hosts and other listeners daily, and you can join for free for a month when you use code March. go to LockedonACC.com, use code March, and become an everyday or club member today. We're back here on the Shadow Portal, aka Locked on ACC. So I've read a lot of good reports about this thing, Kent, and the NCAA put out their own press release. I was reading the On 3 sports right out, right up about it. And this is some good quotes from CBSSports.com.

So an SEC head coach told CBS sports, there's no way in hell that any of this expletive holds up, he said. If a kid gets kicked off a team, he can't join another team, they say, which is an interesting point. Like, is that, like that, that's not the normal scenario, Kenton. Is that, would that be an extenuating circumstance? It's weird that he jumped right to that, which I don't think that's the spirit of this rule. The spirit of the rule and how it's written are two different things. I have not seen the specific language in which it is written yet, but I can say with a good amount of certainty, if a kid gets kicked off a team, that's an entirely different scenario. Like, I highly doubt that the NCAA is going to go after folks and say, you use the ghost portal for a young man that was kicked off a team.

Now, enrolling and unenrolling voluntarily when the team is like, hey, we still want you, you're supposed to be our starting Mike Langell. linebacker, but unfortunately, Golding has sent you a picture of a $2 million check. That's a very different scenario. Yeah. That's a very different scenario. And we know that it's a different scenario and that these things account for nuance to some degree, not saying that the incident is perfect about it,

because grad transfers are the prime example. Grad transfers do not follow the same rules as everybody else in terms of transfer. They never have, nor will they ever, because again, it's an entirely different framework based on a different staff. So I think that there's a difference between being kicked off and voluntarily leaving, even in the rule, if they had any modicum of sense while they were writing it. Now, granted, giving the NCAA the benefit of the doubt to have a modicum of sense may be very adventurous of me. So I'm not going to do that. I would just say it would make sense if they wrote in the exception of if a player is kicked off, if a coach is fired, or if something exceptional happens along those lines.

I think the problem is if you give any exception, players will try to claim that they fall into that accepted class. Do you remember in the early days of the transfer portal, when the portal first started, they still would have the rule that you had to sit out a year unless you got a waiver. And then you started to see some crazy excuses being made for why you deserve a waiver to play in me. I feel like that would happen here. I feel like if they make any exceptions for, hey, you know, I know. know we said you can't transfer, but if you have a valid, everyone's going to be claiming they have a valid reason. So I guess from that standpoint, I understand what that coach has to say. An SEC general manager said legal chaos is what he expects. None of these rules hold any weight

and are hard to enforce without constant audits, which nobody has the manpower to do effectively. And then Darren Heitner, who was the lawyer for Xavier Lucas, who, you know, when Wisconsin refused to put his name in the portal. They found that loophole for him to unenroll and then enroll at Miami. He believes that court cases are on the horizon if the NCAA tries to enforce these penalties. Courts have repeatedly constrained the organization's ability to restrict athlete movement and compensation. Most recently, Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chamblis was granted a six-year of eligibility in a Mississippi court. They write Virginia quarterback Chandler Morris is seeking similar.

relief. So I get, I'm fascinated to see, like you said, who's going to be the first person to sue? Is it going to be a coach who sues on their own behalf? Will it be a university who sues on their coach's behalf? You know, because whoever wins that first verdict, that's going to set the precedent. I'm betting dollars to donuts. It's a university. Because again, I can't see a player doing it because if a player sues, the only way, actually, let me take that back. I think it'll be a or a player from the standpoint of if a player sues and gets a temporary injunction, he doesn't have to worry about it. My lawyers are handling that.

I don't have to worry about all these moving pieces and parts of the team. I got to worry about me. I got to worry about being in my best shape, showing up and, you know, in playing shape, ready to learn the playbook, knowing the playbook, all those types of things. But a coach, especially a head coach, the coaches that are most affected here, right? Because if you're an assistant coach, oh, you geeked up. coaches suspended for six weeks oh no oh shucky darnes whatever shall we do do i need to maybe be an interim coach maybe we remove the interim tag if head coach comes back and things don't go well

but if you're looking at this from a standpoint of the university or the player again the university is out once the levers are put in place and they hire the people that they hire that's the delegation that is finest they raise their hands cut the checks and move on a player is worried about himself. And so if he can get that emergency injunction, which we've seen multiple times already with some of these transfer portal things before we get into the shadow portal. We've already seen that happen. So I think that, you know, I think it'll very likely be a university or a player. I'm leaning like 70 university 30% player. Yeah. Let's move on to some ball. I saw a quote from Florida State defensive coordinator Tony White, who's heading.

into his second year there. So I guess this is like really the time where you start to make your stamp on the program. And I know Brian Smith from Locked on Seminoles was really excited when he saw this quote. I think it's pretty clear, Kent, in the last two seasons

where Florida State has seven wins in two years, zero road wins since 2023. Not only was the roster, has it not been good enough, but the culture has been rotten there. And you could start to see it when they, you know, when they didn't get into the CFP in 2023, which they should have.

We think they were robbed of that. Absolutely. How you had a bunch of guys opting out of the bowl game, guys hitting the transfer portal and then coming back later. Like the culture was rotten. And I thought these were great words from Tony White, who he seems to think the roster has turned over for the good. He said, quote, you don't have all of the off-the-field bull crap.

And the guys who don't respect this logo and school and what the coach provides and what FSU provides, he said on Monday. Quote, you don't have that with this group. You've got a bunch of guys who want to win as of right now. They want to win and they're doing it with action. I hope that he's right for their sake. And that's not just him kind of talking up his guys. Because, you know, Kenton, no matter how talented you are,

if you've got players who aren't on the same page and aren't respecting your coaches and they're not respecting each other, you know this better than most, having played at NC State. It's not going to work if you have no culture. Let me ask you this, Donnell. When you think about culture, how do you believe the culture is established? And I'll tell you what I think as a player. But on the media side of things, where do you think culture is established and where do you think it comes from? I mean, I think it comes from recruiting and obviously transfers now as a big part of it. Just the right, the right types of young men who love football, who don't get distracted by partying and social media and nonsense and just want to focus on getting better.

Like I think it just comes, you have to have the personalities of the guys who are goal-driven and oriented. That's where I think it comes from. Yeah. So as a former player, the only moniker or moniker that I hear a lot that I know is a 100% of truism, teams take on the personalities of their coaches, especially in college. it starts at the top and it works its way down. In college more than the NFL,

because in the NFL you have budget restraints where you sign a guy, he's there for X amount of years. You cannot cut him, right? The Browns with Deshawn Watson right now. There's nothing they can do. The money's guarantee. You might as well have them on the roster for something

just a case because the money's guaranteed, right? In college football, you recruit each and every one of them. you sit down on each and every one of these young men's couch, couches, you know, or whatever, you know, their couches, the love seats, the, the ottoman, or whatever it is that they got for you to sit on. You sit on that thing and you say, hey, we're going to make your son a better man.

We're going to make him a better person. We're going to, you know, we're going to mold him into a better athlete. When he leaves here, he's going to have a shot to NFL. He's going to have a degree. He's going to have skills that will last a lifetime. That's what all these coaches do, right? That's what everybody does. they go give their low pitch.

Oh, we're, we play for national championships here. We play in ICC championships here, right? Great. But the reality is the coach sets the temperature in the boom. Donno, you talked about the players and getting the right type of guy. Who is responsible for getting those guys on a college football team? The head coach. I am concerned here because this feels like you're throwing players under the bus

in this last year's player. So it's easy. It's easy. Yeah, right. Oh, big Darrell Jackson. It was lazy. Yeah, and then you got to wonder, is he talking about Daryl? Is he talking about Earl Little Jr.? Who's like, who's you talking about? And that's the thing about it. That's the thing about it. We will never know, but I don't fancy a situation where we've had multiple years of, oh, these guys are not getting it done. we've had the roster turnover that they saw from two years ago to last year was immense. It was immense. So if you say that the two years ago, we had a bunch of guys that don't care about the logo,

well, what happened the next year? You got a bunch more guys who did not care about the logo. So what do you think is going to happen in the third damn year? You know, it's easy to talk this talk. It's easy to point a finger at somebody else. It's easy to say, oh, we don't have the same views or such and so because of, nah, no, and da-da-da-da. But if I'm pointing at you,

I got four fingers pointed right back at me saying, well, wait a minute, what am I doing? Am I doing my part to make this thing happen? And I think that if I'm Tony White and they ask me, hey, what's the difference between this year's team and last year's team? It doesn't matter what I say. The results are going to show on the field.

Either we show you a different team or we don't. And leave it there. But to throw those last year players on the bus, that's the stuff that fractures and has alumni not coming back. That's the stuff that, again, the grown men in the room, the adults in the room.

You can say the players are making millions now, some of them are making more than Tony White. Sure, sure, I don't disagree with you. But the reality is, as a coach, you still have to, from a man to a man, take accountability. Because what do you think the current players are thinking?

If this goes wrong, who is Coach White going to blame? Is Coach White going to say, I didn't put him in a position to succeed? Yeah. Hello? Is he going to say I didn't put him in a position as you see? What does the history say he's going to say?

Oh, you know, that kid, man, he just, he's not really all bought in to the spear. He's not really all the way there for the garden to go. Come on, man. Come on. Take accountability for you first. Take accountability for you before anybody else. Set the tone in the room for accountability. It should start with, hey, Norville saying, it's on me.

I didn't coach well enough. This is the problem. It should go to White saying, I didn't coach the defense well enough. I had studs. I did not put them where they needed to be. But instead we got, it was him. Actually, we got a new offensive coordinator. You know the old guy retired.

He's not here no more. Actually, you know, the old players, they were kind of stinky on defense. They'd been believing filling the gap. Stop it. That's a hell of a point. Great insight there from Kenton. When we come back, Bill Connolly from ESPN dropped his SP Plus rankings. and he tells a different story from the one being told by the odds makers and the handicappers when it comes to the ACC.

You want to keep it locked right here. We're not done yet on this brand new episode. Hey, what if sports were traded like markets? Now you can put your sports IQ to work in real time with Robin Hood prediction markets. It's not you against the house. It's you participating in a live market. You can buy or sell your positions live all game long. Use your sports knowledge in the moments that matter.

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That was a lot of fun. I host Locked on Cains talking all things, Miami Hurricanes. All right, so the one thing that Bill Connolly, his SP Plus rankings, do agree with the handicappers, like Fanduel.com, is that, you know, Miami looks to have the best roster in the ACC. So Bill Connolly's SP Plus, which is an analytics-driven matchup, but he's always tweaking the algorithm. His criteria is returning production for every team, recent history for every team, recent recruiting, and he says this is not as heavily weighed as it used to be because the transfer portal throws a lot of this stuff off. Number four, coaching change effects, okay? So if you go by the handicappers, and I think you and I largely agree with this, after Miami, the team with the next best odds to win the ACC, according to the sports books, is SMU.

A lot of returning production, including their starting quarterback, stability on the coaching staff. They were really close to the last couple of years to winning the ACC. And then, you know, maybe you go, I don't know, Louisville after that, different directions you can go in. But Bill Connolly's formula after Miami, who he has ranked eighth overall in college football, the next team up is actually Clemson, Kenton, followed by. So he's got Miami, he's got Clemson, and then he's got Louisville before SMU. I don't know. Are we underrating Clemson or is Bill Connolly overrating Clemson?

Bill Connolly, get off that dope. Okay? You stop doing it. You put that stuff down. It's no good for your brain. We have a quarterback battle looming in to fall camp. Let me say that one more time, Donald. We have a quarterback battle looming in to fall camp.

And I've seen the comments of people saying, oh, it's no battle. Vazina's the guy. It's the devil's playing the closest chest. When has Daubo ever played in? anything close to this chest. If there is any coach that's going to tell you immediately exactly what's going on, the man came to a press conference, wasn't even asked about the Mike linebacker that

transferred, and immediately said, I have receipts. So on page one, if you could all turn with me, and it was like, okay, this is, this is interesting. And yet, for some reason, he's going to play a closer chest here. When Kelly Bryant was announced as a start, there was no, oh, yeah, well, you know, we don't know who's the guy. It was, hey, this is our guy. He's who we're going to try it out first. You know, we're going to go with that.

This is a different situation entirely. I'm deeply worried about the quarterback position. The wide receiver room, I believe it will be healthy enough to, you know, produce. And they have big time talent on the outside, but those guys got to get healthy. The reality is, I look at this. this team and I say if I'm a betting man, which again, not a degenerate, you shouldn't be either. But if I were a bed man, I don't see a world where they're going to be the second best team. And I'm going to leave it.

I'm going to send it back to you with this much, I know. One of the biggest problems we talked about was short yardage running the football with SMU. But I want you to guess, where do you think SMU finished in the conference overall in terms of running the ball? Oh, it had to be probably top three. No. including Jennings in that? No. No, Dono.

They were the eighth worst team in the conference. So on the bottom end of the middle of the pack. In terms of yards per game, they were at 133.8 per game. Wow. So that puts them ahead of only Clemson, Syracuse, Pit, UNC, Boston College, Stanford, and Cal. That's it. That's it. And now you've got some dudes in that backfield that can talk that thing.

You've got some fellas that are going to be a load to bring down. So ultimately, you know, Kurt Signetti took a shot at Sonny Dykes and said, we introduced Josh Hoover to his new two best friends and running game in the defense, something he's unfamiliar with. I think Kevin Jennings is going to have a very similar situation in terms of, hey, by the way, have I introduced you to these two really powerful backs? Have I told you about these two guys? A quarterback's favorite pass is a handoff.

Everybody's my favorite pass is a handoff. And he's going to do a lot more. of that this year. Yeah, no, no doubt. So I want to, on our next episode, we'll talk a little bit about the biggest movers for Connolly. And usually the big movers are teams that made coaching changes and brought in a lot of transfers and like the teams that he projects way higher. And Virginia Tech is very much in that mix, one of the biggest movers in the country. And he's also got Syracuse. They didn't make a coaching change, but he's got Syracuse in that mix for positive reasons. I don't know. I think this was published before.

the Calvin Russell injury. And real quick on that, because we talked about Calvin Russell on Monday, who was the highest rated recruit that Syracuse has landed this millennium. Not since prior to 2000 had they landed a recruit as high as Calvin Russell,

who was, and maybe still can play a lot as a true freshman. But it was confirmed, Kenton, a ruptured Achilles. He had surgery on it. But they are saying the timetable might allow him to play some this upcoming season.

But I don't want anyone rushing their recovery from an injury that serious. So maybe we'll see a little bit of Russell, like kind of the back end of the season. But the most important thing for Calvin is just to heal up, rehab properly, and we'll see you when we see you because that's not an injury to mess around with. Absolutely. I've got two surgically, both of my Achilles rather, are surgically repaired. And I can tell you it, it's a journey to get back. You know, so, you know, you're in our prayer.

brother and that's that's uh that's tough that's tough man how long does it take to like how long does it take to rehab that or how long did it take you to rehab those mine i didn't feel comfortable you know running moving and grooving on either one until about the nine and a half month mark so i mean i'm i'm confused as to where he's going to play this season yeah because that that takes you to december yeah now now granted they they technology has gotten better because I tore mine in 2015 and 20, I believe it was 2015 and 2013. So it's over a decade ago. I'm sure medicine has advanced.

I'm sure recovery has advanced to the point where these guys are, you know, going to be getting out there a little earlier. But that's a tough sale. It's a tough deal. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, we're wishing Calvin Russell all the best. You know, and of course he's all.

He also plays basketball for Syracuse. So he is going to be missed for two different sports there. Thank you so much to Kenton Gibbs. Make sure you check him out at TGIF underscore Kenton and on Locked on Wolfpack. Follow me at Alex Dono and check me out on Locked on Cains. And we'll talk to everybody next time on another episode of Lockdown ACC. We are part of the number one Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day.