The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Who Are The ACC Football Coaches On The Hotseat?; Biggest Challenges For ACC Football This Season?

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

The Jerry & Jerry Show headlines: Who Are The ACC Football Coaches On The Hotseat? Biggest Challenges For ACC Football This Season? Win-Loss Expectations For Virginia Football NCAA Boss Floats Out Regional Play For All Sports But Football Let’s Talk Some Hoops. ACC’s 3 Levels Of Expectations Virginia Could Be Better, But Will The Record Be Better The Jerry & Jerry Show Is Off Next Week For Vacation 50 Stories Per Month For Only $8 At JerryRatcliffe.com Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Jerry Ratcliffe & Scott German were live on The Jerry & Jerry Show! The Jerry & Jerry Show airs live Tuesday from 10:15 am – 11:15 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The Jerry & Jerry Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

I will copy Jerry Miller and saying good Tuesday morning out there to our fans. Welcome to the Jerry and Jerry show live from downtown Charlottesville here on a kind of started out kind of gloomy looking morning after all the rain we had last night. Maybe the sun will come out here in a little bit. We have another special guest in the studio, Max the Dog, so hopefully hopefully Max will be a good boy. was here, Jerry. That's right. He's smelling your dogs and my dogs. And Jerry is on vacation this week. And so Scott German, our

great colleague from Jerry Ratcliffe.com, veteran sportswriter, is filling in. And Scott and I will be talking some Wahoo football and basketball throughout the morning. And we invite your participation. Off air a couple of minutes ago, I was inviting people to, for this week only, if you normally send in comments or questions on any of the numerous platforms that this show appears on, if you could please today only, just send them to my Twitter account where I can see them and we'll try to get to as many of them as we can. my Twitter account is at Jerry Ratcliffe, just one word. And we'll try to get to those on air, live on air. And Scott, it's great to have you here today. It's your second appearance on the show.

Yeah, thank you. I'm sitting in a hot seat right now. You're in jury's seat. Yeah, it is the hot seat. I'm honored to be here. Now, we're glad you're here. And Scott, has been covering Virginia

maybe longer than I have actually I've been covering sports longer but I think Scott covered I started covering Virginia in 82 and you were covering Virginia before that I think I predate you by one year yeah and so you got a lot of UVA experience

in terms of media here in the room at the moment and I think we'll have a little bit of fun today just talking about some of the stuff that we've run into over the past week. Both Scott and I were at the Ryan Oden Press conference last Tuesday after the show. And we talked to Coach Odom and we talked to numerous players that they had available for us. talk to six the six new players and a few of the returning veterans

and we're as you may know we started a series on those last Wednesday and we are continuing that series this week. Scott's already written about two of the guys and we've showcased three of them we'll showcase three more

players this week but let's go ahead and start on one of today's headlines, Scott. Yeah, Jerry, we were going to have a little potpourri of basketball, football. So I was putting together, thinking about this last couple of days going into the season, putting together a list of ACC football coaches that are on the hot seat. There's a few. There's a few. not as many as some years because there were so many new coaches.

There were some new coaches hired too. Yeah. A lot of guys got fired last year. And some got fired last year. So those coaches are in the honeymoon period, if you will. But there are definitely a few. And I start off with saying the hottest of all seats is down in Tallahassee with Mike Norville. Do you agree with that?

I totally agree. And I think, I think he probably would have been fired. Well, I know he would have been fired last season had Florida State not giving him such a huge buyout in his contract. It was, well, it was going to cost him something like $60 million plus to get rid of him last year. And they've squandered so much money on football coaches

since what's his name, Jimbo Fisher, when they had to pay him off. Then they got rid of two more guys pretty quickly after that. I can't remember their names at the moment. And then they brought in Norville from Memphis. And after a good start, what they won the ACC, what, three years ago? Yeah, in 2023, they were 13 and 0. Yeah, and they were going to be playing in the national championship.

CFP, college football players. Yeah, we saw. Then their quarterback got hurt. Right. And the committee controversial decision said, you're not the same team. And they weren't the same team. They weren't because they played Georgia in the Orange Bowl. That kind of started his slide.

I looked and I did some homework. Since the 130, 2023 regular season in the ACC championship game, they're 7 and 17 under Mike Noble. And it all started with a 63 to 3 loss. to Georgia in the orange bowl and hard to believe this it could have been worse Georgia caught off the dogs

pretty early in that third quarter they really did Kirby Smart had a little humanity a little bit but yeah Norville from what I understand he has

taken over the control of I guess the offense as offensive play caller which apparently is one of his strengths or was before he got to Florida State. And I guess if he's going to go down with the ship, he's going to go down firing, right? Yeah, he wants to have all the say.

And, you know, what I think is going to be interesting to watch is that this could be a firing end season because their first seven games, I took a peek at their schedule, includes SMU, Alabama, Virginia, Louisville, and Miami. I mean, I can see them being two and five easily. Yeah. And if they're two and five after seven games, he's gone because FSU will just look at that

as an opportunity to get a jump start on hiring the next coach. I totally agree. Yeah, the days of waiting for fire coach at the end of the season are pretty much gone just about everywhere. Maybe not at Virginia. Yeah. But just about everywhere else. Yeah.

And yeah, I totally agree. I think at that point, if they even get to that point, they might pull the blood even earlier. That might be optimistic, you know, optimistic. Yeah. To look at that. They'll just hand the range over to one of the coordinators probably.

Yeah, just as an interim. So, Up next on my list of hot seat coaches is Davo, Davo Sweeney at Clemson. I look back and I know this is kind of hard to believe, but a coach being on a hot seat, it's 35 and 19 in his last four years. At most schools, that's okay. It might build a statue for him here.

Yeah, he'd be a statue up beside George. but at 35 and 19 at Clemson that's not cutting it right and 7 and 6 last year it just seems Davo doesn't want to embrace this new landscape he's not not in doesn't have both feet in on the portal does not has gone on a record doesn't agree with the NIL I'm not sure why because he's not hurting for funds and it's not like Clemson doesn't have any money they've got He's a money. He's just kind of, you know, made his stand on it.

It's gotten pretty bad down in Clemson, the Clemson Football publication. Tiger Paul said this. This could be a make or break season for Sweeney. If it keeps not working his way, then he needs to move on. That's a pretty bold statement, considering that that's, that's the official publication of the you know clumson football so to come out like and just basically say what you know what a lot of people are thinking that is a ball statement yeah it's going to be interesting to see if the aED and the movers and shakers down there are going to

would would go ahead and pull the trigger on that I've heard a lot of people say oh there's no they fired Dabo, but it's not like used to be. It's pro sports now. It's not college sports anymore. And if you're not getting the job done, they don't care who you are. They have fired guys with stronger legends than Dabo, not just Clemson, but college football programs in general. So. You know, with Dabo, too, Jerry, it's kind of easy to take that state.

because he would be among the unemployed for 24 hours or less if he wanted to return to football. Yeah, somebody would scoop him up. Or he's got a personality. He'd go into Booth somewhere. So, you know, I can kind of see his positioning of, hey, you know, this is a hill I'm going to choose to die on. Right. Because he's got a lot of other hills to climb. Right.

If he'd like. He's got more hills than most of us. Yeah. And then the other coach, the last is the three that I feel like is on the hot seat. You may have somebody else or a couple other people, but his Boston College is Bill O'Brien. Seven and six, his first year, which was 2024. They had a terrible year last year, two and ten, and they were not competitive in most of those games. They were outscored by about 30 points a game.

Right. And he's got a brutal schedule this year. Notre Dame, Miami, Georgia Tech, Duke, Florida State. I mean, he could be looking at another two in 10 year. I guess the flip side of that is does anyone care enough to fire a coach? It's got a pretty good name. Well, that's a great observation because the times I've been to Boston College to cover Virginia games up there and even one other time, the crowds were

they were so-so but it's nothing like most of the ACC and you're in a pro sports town where if you'll look at the newspapers up there there'll be like eight stories on the Red Sox

eight stories on the Patriots some stories on the Bruins and the Celtics and it's hard to find anything in the whole sports section about college sports and Boston College is probably the one that you would

write about if you were going to write about any of them. Yeah, more than B.U. Boston University. Yeah, it's just not a college sports town, really. And, um, yeah,

I, you know, I think, I think they're one of the underfunded programs in the ACC that doesn't have the NIL to compete on the higher levels. And so I think it's going to be very tough for him to turn that program around. I really do. Yeah, this is a topic for another day, but it just gets back to what we've talked about for a long time now is

what were the suits in Charlotte or then Greensboro before they foolishly moved to Charlotte, the ACC, AECA headquarters, What were they thinking that adding Boston College to the ACC would do to enhance the conference? Supposedly it was to sort of anchor the TV market, but I don't know that it's done, accomplished what they thought it would. I was reading something the other day about that was one of the reasons the Big Ten added Rutgers and Maryland. It wasn't because those programs are great programs by any stretch, but they're sort of an anchor in those two metropolitan areas for TVIs. And apparently it has, even though those programs have kind of struggled,

they have produced some exposure for the Big Ten in those markets. I don't know if that's the case, with the ACC in Boston or not. I don't know. I haven't done much research on that. But other than that, I can't see what they've done to really bring anything to the conference.

Yeah, I agree. Except a lot of unnecessary travel. What about Bill Belichick? Do we think he's on the seat, hot seat or not? I think he will be after this year if they have another subpar year, but I think they're so deep into the buyout with him that, I mean, he's $10 million a year of salary.

Yeah. So his buyout's got to be 50, 60 million bucks. You would think so. I was going to put him on, I was going to add him as a warm seat. But I think after this year he could. Yeah. And if you look at the preseason predictions for whatever value, they are.

Carolina is not viewed very highly in the conference. I've seen them as low as 13th, 14th. Yeah. I think some of the over-unders I've seen on their win expectations is like three or four games. Yeah. That's pretty brutal, considering if you schedule right, you should be able to get that with your non-conference schedule.

Yeah, which we'll talk about a little bit. Yeah, exactly. the imbalance. So balance. But you know, Jerry, in the day of NIL, is the hot seat always on for coaches now? Certainly the pressure's turned up. No question about it.

With Tony, with Coach Elliott at Virginia. He won 11 games last year, but we know there was a massive infusion of money into the program. We know when the, Infusion of money came in, the front office basically tore up their draft board, their transfer portal board, and said, okay, we can go a lot higher now. We can shoot for a lot higher caliber player. So what happens if Coach Elliott has a 500 season this year?

The money's still there. I mean, the expectations are going to be pretty high every year. So to me, every season, the coach is on the hot seat. I think a lot of it goes back, Scott, just a lot of these programs are getting the money, but it's what they do with the money and how well they have a system set up to find the right talent. I mean, we saw what Carolina spent last year on rebuilding its roster.

It didn't pan out. Florida State spent a lot of money didn't pan out some of these schools doesn't seem like their infrastructure allows or is giving them their money's worth the

Tyler Jones last year and Sparrow they did an excellent job of bringing in last year's team. I mean, that was going to be the biggest challenge I thought was to blend all that talent together, you know, all these guys coming from everywhere.

And we saw the result. And now this year, it looks like they've done a good job in the portal again, and the schedule is negotiable. Yeah. That's a good word. Easy. And we've got to remember that last year they, I don't know if they set a record, but for winning close games.

I mean, if some of those games had gone the other way, we might not be talking that way. So their ability to win close games, and part of that is because they had the talent and the experience to where they knew how to win. We'll see if this team can duplicate that. Yeah, every year. You know, the expectations are,

there because the resources are there now. Yeah, absolutely. We're talking UVA football and basketball here on the Jerry and Jerry show. Me, Hooty, and Scott German. Jerry Miller's on vacation. If you have any questions or comments, just send them into my Twitter account at Jerry Ratcliffe, and we'll try to get to them on air.

I think you had a question from somebody in Texas, Scott. I did. I had a question earlier before we went on air from Matt, who goes by the name of Hookham Hoos. Hookham Hoos. Down in Fort Worth area. Wanted to know what are we going to do next year media members when they move the press box. Where are we going? and I'm going to let you

I'm going to defer that to you so yeah well I mean I've only heard bits and pieces and I don't know how accurate any of that is but I've been told that they're going to build

an extension on to the press box side of the stadium I don't know how big it's going to be or what level it's going to be on or anything else but I imagine it'll be scaled down sizably. I don't know if they'll have the TV people in there, or I guess they will.

Will they move the coaches' boxes down there too? Yeah, interesting. Both teams that have coaches' boxes up beside the press box now, along with the radio and TV booths. So if they move that entire operation to an addition to the end of the present structure, it'll be closer to the end zone. It won't be prime time seating for sure, but that's the way it is with media these days.

We've been moved to the hinterlands in some of the arenas and stadiums around the nation. and so, you know, as long as we can do it. I'm not sure we're going to end up going, but I can tell you it's not going to be between the 30 and the 30. It's going to be somewhere closer to the end zone, if not in the end zone. Right. You know, right now that the Scott Stadium press box is pretty sweet. You and I both have been in a lot of college football press boxes, and it's not the most modern, but it's all in one of the first.

floor we share it with a lot of folks we share it with both teams coaches assistant coaches for both virginia and the visitors with the tv people with the stats crew you got to there's a massive amount of folks that are up there keeping keeping stats yeah so there's only so much they can size it down to because there's still a lot of people they have to accommodate and to me the part of the beauty of the press box at Scott Stadium is it's one of the few still open-air press boxes in America. And some people complain about it because in November it can kind of get chilly, even though they have heat lamps in there. They're not close enough.

But, you know, back when they renovated Scott Stadium in around 2000, Terry Holland asked me, and I appreciate that he did that. He was AD then. He said, what if we move the press box to the very top of Scott Stadium because at that point they were going to add the big addition on top, what if we put the press box at the very top and enclose it?

And I said, please don't do that. I said, you've got a historical press box that's, I don't know when it was built. I don't know if it was built as part of the original stadium in 1931 or not, but you've got an outdoor press box, which is unique. I know Georgia Tech has one. I don't know of any others off the top of my head, but please leave it where it is, and don't enclose it because, you know,

you have been and I have been in press boxes around the country where people will say the noise, And from the stands on the field is deafening, but it's so antiseptic in the press box because of the thick press box glass. You can't even hardly hear any crowd noise. Wake Forest comes to mind. Yeah, Clemson, some other places.

You're so far, I think Wake is eight floors above the field. You don't really feel as though you're part of the game. Right. You're almost better off watching the television monitors. To me, that's part of the thrill of covering the game is that you can hear the crowd and you can feel the excitement, you know, the electricity. Absolutely. And then in some of these press boxes like some of the NFL press boxes I've been to, and so now more college and college press boxes, you can hardly tell that there's 90 or 100,000 people in the stadium, let alone anything else. So it's sad, but it's a reality of today's college athletics,

and it's just part of what we have to put up with. I think we've seen the golden age of media coverage for college sports. Yeah, I agree. 100%. So I was moving down into the next topic that was, thinking about someone asked me a couple of weeks ago what what what do you think the biggest challenges for the ac c is especially in football and i was kind of preparing for this last night i thought oh my gosh it's endless amount of challenges but i i came up with a few and and i'll just

put them out there for your feedback yeah um i think one of the maybe the biggest challenge is the The ACC needs to become relevant. Last year, in an expanded 12-team playoffs, we got one bid. And almost didn't get that one. Almost did not get that. Now, Miami made the best of it. They went all the way to the national championship game, so there is that. But we got one bid.

The SEC had five, the Big Ten had three. So the challenge for the ACC, I think this year, the most important. important challenge is they got to get more than one team in the playoffs or else the ACC's going to look more like a group of five conference than a power four conference. Yeah, I would agree. And right now, just looking at some of the early national preseason polls, it looks like Miami's getting a lot of respect, obviously. They've got it going pretty well.

and SMU everybody's picking them second in the league. I don't know if Miami and SMU play this year. I haven't looked, but it looks like those are the two teams to beat. And after that, it's just kind of a mad scramble. Virginia, Louisville, Virginia Tech. I'm not sure.

I almost said Notre Dame, I wish. That would solve a lot of problems. problems. I think the top of the ACC is pretty easy to define. I think you've got Miami, SMU. I think Louisville and Virginia are going to fall right in that order. And then it's, I don't see a lot of teams capable of making a run for the college football playoffs. Yeah, it's going to be a 17 team conference, but really only four or five schools, in my opinion, have that ability to make, to make playoffs. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we don't know if Florida State's going to have a turnaround. We don't know if Carolina is going to have a miraculous turnaround. We don't know if James Franklin is going to put the Hokies back on the map or not.

Most people think that he will. Georgia Tech, without that great quarterback they had, who won so many games for them, is gone. He's got a good program going on, but I don't know if he's ready to, Georgia's check doesn't seem to be a program that can just reload. Yeah. They seem to be a program that kind of has to rebuild. Right. And I think they have kind of joined the NIL party a little bit in the offseason.

So maybe that will invigorate them a little bit. But yeah, I think you're right. And if they're going to get two in, it looks like Miami and S&E. SMU were the best candidates to get that done. SMU is, they put together a pretty good ACC record since they've been in the league the last two years. Well, we kind of predicted that because a lot of money there. Tons of money. They have unlimited money.

And I believe SMU was a good decision for the ACCC, gets them into the Texas market, Dallas, huge metropolitan area. with a great fan base. Yeah, absolutely. I'd like to go out there for the Virginia's game this season if you could figure out a way to get out to Dallas, but that would be... I've never been to a game at SMU. I'd kind of like to see what it's like,

but I have been to games at all the other Texas schools, I think, but that one kind of intrigues me for some reason. I don't know why. Well, I get a bad taste out of her mouth, because the last football game I saw in Texas was the debacle against the longhorns. Yeah, that was still, you know, one of the few times in my career

that I actually thought the officiating crew was cheating. Yeah. It was the last. That's being kind. It was the last year of the Southwest Conference, so nobody out there gave a rip whether they, followed the rules or not, I don't think. There were so many calls that went against Virginia in that game

that everybody thought should have gone the other way, including a missed field goal, where even the Texas fans thought the Virginia field goal was good. And the referees waved it off, said no good. And to this day, it's too bad we didn't have instant replay back of those days. because I think Virginia would have won that game. Texas wanted on, I think, a 51-yard field goal at the horn. At the horn.

And that guy went on and kicked in the NFL for like 20 years. Yep. Most of it with the 49ers, his name escapes me at the moment. But, yeah, that was one of the best seasons that I've covered Virginia football in 1995. Yeah, they had a great team, man. They opened up at Michigan and lost the best seasons. that game in the last second, lost at Texas in the last second. Yep.

Beat Florida State in the last second. First Florida State lost ever. I think they came back really late to beat NC State, and then they came back and beat Georgia in the Peach Bowl with PD Allen's kickoff return. And I remember some reporter who had no clue, I guess he wasn't, you didn't cover Virginia. but he asked George after the game something about,

you guys feel, how'd you feel going into, you know, late in the game, trailing like that, did you think that your team could handle a close game? George looked at him like, you moron, where have you been for the last 15 weeks? That's all they've done.

Yeah, every game has been nail biters. So, you know, that was a fun season to cover, even though they had some really tough losses. But that was a long season. I remember almost every one of those games. Yeah. Took a few years off my life. And everybody else, I think.

The other moving into what's challenging for the ACC this year, as we know, the conference decided to go to nine years. games. Yeah. Every school is going to play nine conference games. Well, we thought. The ACC is calling us the transitional schedule. Is that because they couldn't think of a better word?

Yeah. The conference transitioning is transitioning to a nine game schedule, but math got in the way. You can't apply that to a 17-team league. So the result is 12 teams are playing nine games. And, excuse me, yeah, 12 teams are playing nine games and five teams are playing eight. Virginia is one of the teams playing nine. Playing nine. Now, if you remember at the end of last season, all of the tie-breaking, tie-breaker scenarios.

You would have had to have been a mathematical genius. Yeah, absolutely. And that was with everyone playing eight games. Yeah. Now, what's going to happen at the end of the season when you've got teams playing nine games, teams playing eight? I think the ACC needs to buy themselves a magic eight ball. Because I don't see how this is going to – this has just got the makings of a disaster. Because what's at stake is the top two teams.

in the conference playing the ACC championship game. Yeah. So this is going to directly impact the potential for the ACC, what they're going to move forward as how many teams they might get into the college football playoffs. Exactly. And I mean, they used to talk about the imbalance of the ACC basketball schedule. this may be worse because there's fewer games. And there's no tournament to decide your champion.

You're putting the two, you're moving the top two teams to the ACC championship game in Charlotte where the top two teams, there's a highly likelihood that there's going to be some crazy tiebreaker scenarios to determine and not really that important to be to determine who's number one, but how about who gets that other birth in the championship game? Exactly. You could have three teams easily tied.

Oh, yeah, no question about it. So, I'm not a math person, but I guess it is impossible. But my question is, what are they going to do moving forward? I don't know. unless they add another team. Yeah. And I know that they're looking, they've done research on a bunch of other teams out there.

I've heard that lately. And part of that, because they're trying to protect themselves in case some teams bolt. Right. And they may have to add anywhere from two to six new teams. So I don't know if they would consider adding one before that, just to balance out the schedule or not.

And that would make an imbalance into basketball. Right. Because then you'd have 19 basketball teams. You can't win. That's a difficult way to have to figure out how to put a balanced schedule into play, to have to invite a team into the conference. But like you said, it's only going to work for football. Right.

So I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do. it's all going to be based on percentages and all kinds of wacky tiebreakers, I guess. Do you think if there's going to be 17 teams, an odd number of teams, do you think they would have been better off going back to the conferences? Conference? Or would that still lead to who wins the conference? Divisions, I mean.

Divisions, yeah. Divisions. I was against them going away from the, divisional play anyway. I thought that was a good way to do it because you had more teams involved late in the season that, you know, they might have a chance. Remember how crazy the Coastal Division was. And over seven years, they had seven different teams that won the division and went to the championship game. And there was always drama late in the year. So a lot of between

tech and UVA about if they were going to win the coastal or not. And you

took all that away when you went to just one one big long conference

schedule. I thought that gave everybody more of a chance to make Charlotte

instead of the way they do it now. Heck, they're not going to listen to

me. I don't make them any money. I was just getting familiar with who was in what division, and then they do away with it. It only took like 15 years for me to figure that out. Exactly. So the last challenge I see for the ACC this year as far as this kind of gets back to putting teams in the college football playoffs is there's a ton of really,

tough non-conference games coming up for the ACCC. ACC teams play Alabama, LSU, Notre Dame, Indiana. I mean, to me, some of the ADs didn't get to memo about, hey, you got to schedule wins. Because some of these teams, some of the ACC schools really have some donning non-conference opponents. Yeah, and, you know, it depends on what, you think you want to bite off if you can chew it up or not.

But, I mean, like Indiana, for example, they've gotten rid of most of their tougher non-conference games. They got rid of Virginia. Got rid of Virginia. Replace them with another cream puff. And they're playing as light a non-conference schedule, I think, as you can possibly play. At a lot of the SEC schools have gotten rid of those,

one, it used to be one double-ag game. I guess they're F-CS, no F-CS games now, that they used to play the week before the last game of the season. They would play an SEC schedule, and then on the 11th game of the season, they'd all play like a UT Chattanooga or a Western. an exhibition game.

Yeah. And then they would play probably their rival in the final game of the season like Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee Vanderbilt, or Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, Florida, you know, stuff like that. I think what. South Carolina, Clemson. What may have created this tough non-conference schedule is that the ACCCC was a little late getting to the party on adding

that ninth game. SEC had a, I think, had already added a ninth game, Big Ten. So with nine conference games, there's really no and not much of an incentive to go out and play a really tough non-conference

opponent. Right. And I've thought all along that Virginia, as they were trying to rebuild off of three straight losing seasons, I thought all along, even early on that they should have played

the softest non-conference teams they could find until they got to the level where they could get back into bowl games. I think that was Broncos mentality, wasn't it? Yeah, pretty much. And, you know, you build your program to where you can play in a bowl game and helps recruiting,

helps the fan base get it a little bit excited. And then it's okay to play one really tough, a puner. non-conference opponent, but you know, you can over-schedule and you can kill your, you can kill your season if you're not careful by the schedule you play.

Absolutely. Well, I just pointed it out earlier, Mike Norvell at Florida State. His job is definitely on the line this year, and you know, they got Alabama. If he can win with

that schedule, he ought to be ACC coach of the year. He should go off the hot seat for sure. So over under on Virginia football, the magazines are saying 7.5? Yeah. Too low, too high. I know what we've talked about off the air, but what do you think? I think they've tabbed it pretty right. I think I would take the over considering the schedule that they play. I think they could win eight games. Again, a lot of it's going to go back to those 50-50 games that they played. Like last year, they were remarkable in winning so many close games.

There were several of those that could have lost. Yeah, at Cal, the North Carolina game came. Washington State. Louisville, Florida State. Carolina game they missed at the end. I think they won on a safety, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you lose two of those go the wrong way,

and all of a sudden it's not so great. I mean, it's still a non-win season, which they haven't had many of those around here either, but still you don't have the glorious... Well, you're not playing in the ACC championship game either. Right, exactly. And you're not playing in the Gator Bowl. You're probably playing in the Independence Bowl

or worse. Something like the Bermuda Bowl or something, I don't know. But, yeah, I think seven and a half is, if you're a gambling man, that's a tough decision because, again, I think they're good enough to win eight and maybe more if they get lucky. They got to win a lot of these close games. Like the NC State game, that could go either way. There's a few of those on there.

The Virginia Tech game, I think, is a up-in-the-air game. Which is kind of an accomplishment for Virginia football, because how many years have you said playing at Tech was an up-in-the-air game? Yeah, it's been a long time. That's been a long time. You know, I think seven and a half is under. You look at the home schedule that includes Norfolk State and Delaware. Yeah.

It's not a gauntlet by any means. No. You run the table and win all seven of your home games. Then you've got five games, five away from Scott Stadium. You know, you only have to win a couple games. And one of those is a neutral side game. And one of those is in Charlotte against West Virginia. So this team could come close to equally.

what we saw last year. I think they could. They really could. It hinges on a lot of different factors, I think. You know, will the quarterback play be as good as it was last year? It knows maybe it'll be even better. It's hard to say, but. I think there's some depth that we haven't seen in many prior years,

especially on the offensive line where games are won and lost. Yeah, and a stable running backs. They've got like six or seven running backs. I agree. And the defense, I think, is loaded too. People haven't talked much about the defense, but I think there's a lot of depth on that side of the ball, too.

I think the big question, Mark, is the wide receiver room. And I think there's guys with a lot of potential there, but they had to prove it in games. I spoke to one of the offensive linemen, and basically he tells me that we had to do a lot. We had to kind of revise our offseason, our summer workout, our offseason conditioning, because blocking for the new quarterback. Pribula. The quote was, that cat can move. So, you know, it maybe takes a different skill set for your offensive linemen to, you know, to move with him.

Yeah, I think he's faster. I think he's faster. I'm not sure he's quite as good a passer, but I think he's faster and maybe a better runner than Virginia had last year. So they may have to rely on the run a little bit more this year than they have in the past. They've got the options. They certainly do. You said a stable of running backs. It's a pretty big stable, too.

Yeah. And they've got, you know, different types of backs, fast guys, guys that are not so fast but are more power backs, run between the tackles, guys. That's going to be. interesting to see how they divide the carries with all those really good backs. Yeah, you got to keep them happy. Yeah, and it's going to be hard to do if that many of them. That's for sure.

Real quickly, I think one of our topics was, and I agree with, I think finally the NCAA is showing some common sense, floating out the concept of regional play for, the traditional non-revenue sports teams. And I think that's the only way you're going to keep these teams part of your athletic program. Yeah, yeah, the NCAA commissioner came out Sunday on one of the news shows. I was talking about that. He wouldn't come out and talk much about the super conference in football, which apparently is looming when the TV contracts run out that we've talked about before.

But he thinks, and I agree with him, and I agree with you, I think it makes a lot more sense that if you do have this super football league with 80 or 100 teams or whatever in it, you've got all that. Let's just move that over to the corner. That's not part of the right. Then you have conferences and everything else. Right, exactly. And they play regional play.

And you might have to have some cooperation between conferences, like it would be easy for the ACC to play some SEC teams, some big East, big ten teams that are not that far away. Right. So you don't have all this insane travel with softball and, you know, tennis and volleyball and all this stuff sending teams to California for three or four days

and California teams coming to the East Coast and just, you know, just have regional play where you don't have to travel that far, cuts down on your expenses. It just makes more sense. Yeah, and no business model does it, would that, would that

work if you're trying to send the woman's field hockey team to Stanford? Right. I mean, to that makes no sense at all. No. Keep them regional. And then as your season ends and you start tournament, then, yeah, if they, you know,

if they end up playing one another there, that's fine. But they don't need to play in a regular season. Yeah, and the colleges complain, oh, well, we don't have enough money. Well, you know, if you have some common sense, you wouldn't spend so much money. And so I need to get a brick. Virginia had a $7 million deficit. And that's light compared to most schools. That's good.

Yeah. Louis has $30 million deficit. If you had that regional play concept, that model, whatever, in play now, how much would that have slashed that deficit? It would have to cut it in half at least, I would think. You're not sending a non-revenue sport to California. Yeah. Or a non-revenue sport to doubt.

Dallas, Texas. Yeah. Instead of sending them to Dallas, send them to Harrisonburg. Yeah. Let them play JMU. Let them play West Virginia, Maryland. Even sending a baseball team to California to play Cal and Stanford overall four or five-day period. Think how much money that costs.

Yeah. I mean, you start, if this concept does get approved, then you're going to see a lot of these deficits coming down. I think so, too. It just makes more sense. But you know who's, if there's anybody out there that's going to block that, you know who it's going to be. It's going to be the TV people. Yeah, because they're looking for content. We're looking for content, particularly in basketball.

Yeah. They're looking for a way to run football games from 11 a.m. till 2 a.m. every Saturday. Exactly. And to do that, you've got to sometimes have a East Coast. theme go west. So common sense needs to prevail. Will it? We'll see. There hasn't been a lot of common sense in college athletics in a long time, so we'll see what happens there. What about, I know we're running short probably, but tell me a little bit about the ACC and your

expectations for Virginia basketball. Well, we've talked about on this show a little bit. in the past. I think this team on paper is better than they were a year ago. Will that translate into another 30-win season? I don't know. Will it translate into a deeper run

in the NCAA tournament? I think it could. If that's the case, they may surpass 30-1s. You look at those six losses last year, most of those were pretty close games, except the game at Duke

none of those guys that ever played at Cameron before and I think they got shook and the game got out of control but Max's Max agrees with me Security breach yeah

Max agrees with that You know Jerry I've read somewhere some media outlets were saying well the six losses came against teams that had stocked with NBA talent and I don't I don't really put much, I don't think that is all that relevant.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure that that was the main thing. But it's going to be interesting. I think the fact that they've got four guys back with starting experience, I mean, how many other teams in the country have four guys back from a 30-win team? Probably very few. And then we don't know how the six new guys are going to fit in.

It all looks well on paper. And your stories and our other research and stories to come have shown that these guys all appear to be good fits. They have good backgrounds. They're excited about playing at Virginia. But it doesn't mean it's going to turn into a, an incredible blend like it was last year, there might be some rough spots that may take a long time to... The schedule is definitely notched up a little bit.

Yeah, and I think that was on purpose. I think they want to play better on conference competition. I know we've been doing some stories on the players on Jerry Racklip.com. Got some more coming. But we had a chance to meet those new players last week. last Tuesday, I believe. And, you know, I came away with the impression. Now, things could change, but these – Coach Odom has done a really good job.

He's brought in some high-character young men. I mean, these guys were – I just got a quick, you know, initial feeling that these were – these were good guys. Yeah. And I think he even went out of his way to point that. out that they're all good guys and that and I don't think you'll accept anything but that. Right. That's part of the culture he's trying to build. It's got to be difficult.

Yeah, because you don't get a lot of time to scout some of these guys. I think a lot of work is done during the season that we don't see. Probably. That some of the coaches are looking at some of these players and they're getting to know them a little bit. because I don't think you just randomly bring in someone and just roll the dice that he's going to be of high character. I think you've got to do a little homework, and it looks like coach has done a really good job of that for second year in a row now. I agree with you. And talking to Darius Thea's one of the assistant coaches the other day, I'm doing a story about Favre or eBay.

the seven foot plus guy. It's only a high school kid on the team that they brought in from up in Maryland, originally from Africa. And Darius said, you and the other people, the fans and all of me, they're going to love this guy. He's a sweetheart. So he's a lot like Hugo was, and everybody loved Hugo. He was such a person.

personality. Yeah. And I think I talked a favor for quite a while the other day. I had him to myself for a while, which was nice. And he is. He's just a sweet kid, but he's very positive and outgoing. And they said he's funny. I didn't get to see too much of that in a short period of time. But he also has what it takes on the basketball court. to make a difference. And I said, you know, you're a high school kid. You're ready for the physicality of college basketball. He said, he said, oh, I can get physical. You know, and he's also going to have the luxury of not having to come in and contribute immediately.

Right. He's going to be able to play behind some experienced players. He's going to get some good practice time, perfect. situation for him. Perfect. I think coach Odom knew what he was doing by bringing him in this at this time, at this stage of his tenure at Virginia, because Virginia is going to be one of the more experienced teams in the country. Yeah.

And, you know, this kid was a good gift. I mean, they beat out Tennessee and some other people for him. Even Michigan was interested in him. So that was a good recruit for sure. What about the couple of guys you did stories on what impressed you about them? Just their character. They were well-spoken. You did Christian Harmon and Kalu Anu.

On you? Yeah, both of them were just dynamic personalities. I felt like I'd known them like they'd been here their whole career instead of just walking in the door literally a week before maybe. Christian gave me a little bit of background into how Virginia recruited him and he basically had made up his mind that Virginia was his spot before he even made his trip to Charlottesville. That's pretty good. He said he felt like he would fit in to the scheme, to the offensive scheme,

and then when he got here, Coach Odom, he was shown around by some of the players that aren't even going to be here now, that are already out of eligibility. And they basically didn't sell him on the school as much as they did just the community, didn't sell him on the program as much more so than, hey, this is a great community, you're going to be welcomed. And Christian said to first, you know, even going to the airport when he flew in, people were like, hey, why who why? And there's things like that.

That's pretty cool. He was blown away by that. And I said, well, maybe the fact that you were six foot, you know, whatever. They probably figured you figured it out. But they're just a really good personality kids. Yeah, I agree. And the one kid that wasn't there is the new German kid. and we're not even sure when he's going to get here

because the European guys have to jump through a lot of hoops to get over here. Run low and Derrida last year didn't get here until late. And so I don't know when this kid's going to get here. No one had a Kunle. And I talked to one of the coaches about him the other day and there's not a lot known about him, but I got some pretty cool rundown about him

that I'm going to include in the story later today. I meant to write it last night. Sounds like you've got some really neat inside information on him. Yeah, yeah, he's an intriguing guy. And one of the things they liked is he said he plays like his hairs on fire all the time. So they could use a guy with that kind of, enthusiasm for sure.

So, you know, if you've reading our series, I hope you were enjoying it because I think we've already had like six or seven stories up and we'll have quite a few more this week right before we roll into football. So there's no time off, Scott. It's year-round football basketball these days.

Neither one ever still getting sun tanned. I don't have any. I'm afraid to go out and son I'll get burned alive. But, yeah, so we'll be giving you plenty of content from here on out there, brothers and sisters, because there's no let up. And as soon as we get through with this basketball series, we'll be all over the ACC kickoff. Virginia is going to take three guys down there.

Noah Josie, Bo Pribulo, and Cam Robinson, the great linebacker who's coming off a knee injury. Love that guy. I love watching that guy play. Yeah, he's a dynamic player. He's the real deal. So we'll have stuff from them. And then right after, not long after that, training camp,

it's going to be opening up and wow I mean that's it's here I am so pleased that the NC State game

common sense prevailed and that we are actually opening the season with an ACCC game yeah me too that to me is the most exciting

thing about this company season is we're not playing a cupcake to begin the year, playing a good, formidable opponent. And it's a conference game. And it should have been a home game anyway. Right, absolutely. And from what I understand, the tickets were not selling for that game in Brazil.

And I think that turned out probably to be the major factor in it would be my guess. I'm sure it was. And then, so, Virginia has struggled against NC2. They lost six in a row of those guys, and they shouldn't have lost half of those. So, you know, if I'm going to, if I'm going to want to build off an 11 game season

and try to get some early momentum going, I want to beat those dudes. And beat them handling. Yeah. I want to beat those dudes right out of the gate and get some momentum going. They have a chance to use that as a springboard and get off to a great start.

The one potential, stumbling block is that West Virginia game in Charlotte, first month of the season. I think that's what the fourth game. Yes. So I don't know what West, I've seen good and not so good reports about West Virginia. I don't know how good they're going to be. I think that, I think the consensus is they're going to be better than they were last year, but they were not good last year. No, they weren't. And I'm sure haven't delved into the West Virginia football program, but I'm sure or Rich Rodriguez is going to be under the microscope this year. Yeah.

Yeah, no question. A lot of pressure to win. Yeah. And he's known for offense, and so he's trying to get that part of the mountaineers going because I remember when Tommy Bowden came to Clemson from Tulane. Was it Tulane? And he said, it's not going to work. my program's not going to work unless I get rich Rodriguez to come with me who was his offensive coordinator

and we saw why because for a few years there nobody could stop that clemson option attack or whatever vire option or whatever it was and which propelled rich rod into a head coaching job and west virginia was pretty good for a while when he was there the first time so yeah but he didn't have a lot of success leaving Morgantown. No, he didn't. And so we'll see. We'll see what happens. If they can beat NC State and beat West Virginia,

that's, they could be over or under might be. The guys, the wise guys in Vegas may be looking bad. Exactly. If you want to put some money down, you better do it now because. Yeah, don't wait until they beat NC State. Yeah. Because that'll definitely change.

Exactly. Well, it looks like the clock on the walls yelling at us. We've been at it for a little over an hour, Scott. Seems like we're sitting at Riverside, just chatting back and forth. Pretty much. Pretty, or the Aberdeen Bar. Yeah. Which is one of our great sponsors.

Yes, absolutely. But anyways, that'll wrap it for this week's shows. Thank you, Scott, for joining us. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Judah, for keeping us from falling apart here. And don't forget Max. And Max, thanks for the security, buddy. He knew there were celebrities in the house.

He warded off the one person that was threatening our security. I think it looked like TMZ out there trying to get to us. Is that what it was? Yeah, no, Max doesn't like them anyway. we hope Mr. Miller is getting some sun rays wherever he is and

Judah you'll be on vacation next week right you're going out to California going north well no sunshine up there brother there's not much here either there will not be a Jerry and Jerry show next week because without Judah

we can't do this that shows you how important he is. He's the man. And I found that out now being here twice. So I'm wondering, Judah, how long is it, how much longer is it going to be before it becomes the Jerry, Jerry, and Judah's home? He can pipe in any time he wants. So we'll be back in two weeks.

And by then we'll be back from Charlotte from the ACC kickoff. and we'll be up to our ears in Virginia football. Maybe we'll be able to give an adjusted over-under. That's right. That's right. All right. Well, so long, everybody. Thank you for your tuning in.

And make sure you grab that subscription to jerry rackliff.com for all this great content coming your way. See you in a couple of weeks. Have a great summer.