The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Cole Cubelic On The Future of CFB

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Sports Talk 790, available everywhere with the IHard Radio app. Now number one for podcasting. 233, Sports Talk 790, the Matt Thomas show continues. Our next guest is a guy that you see on ESPN covering the SEC, very successful radio host in the Birmingham area. But I want to say, Col Kublich, the reason you became a Houston cult figure is because you interviewed a certain man in Memphis, Tennessee, before a game at the Liberty Bowl.

Do you remember that conversation you had? I do remember that conversation. And that was with one Tom Herman, correct? It was, yeah. Are you guys besties still to this day, or is there still a little intense conversation when you guys, when you two of you meet up? No, I mean, I have no issues with Coach Herman. I do not believe that he has forgotten about it. And I do not believe that he has completely forgiven me for it.

But we also haven't had a direct conversation about that. I did have the Alamo Bowl this year. He was gracious with his time, and everything seemed to be headed in the right direction. Yeah, you know what? It was a great conversation. I used to work coach Herman's show, still consider him a friend of this day. My partner here, Ross, is a big-time UT fan, so he just likes to just pour salt on my wounds, and that's fine. But we move on.

Cole, you are in the hotbed of college football territory, where you probably talk college football 90% of the season at minimum. The stories of the last 24 hours are very interesting to me. first of all, the closures of schools in the state of California is going to ultimately impact the Pact 12. And then you have the NCAA coming out, I guess, in the last 24 hours saying, we're not going to tell these conferences how to conduct their business. First, give me your thought on the California closures and how in the world that state can have Division I football this year? I'm not sure that they can have it on time this year because of that. I do think that you could look at a delayed season, maybe from the first.

Pack 12 in the Mountain West, one that could begin maybe towards the last month or two of the year, and maybe even one that begins early next year. I think those are possibilities. I think those are things that are real. I don't think any league Matt is going to want to realistically cancel a season and not have a season, especially after what was just missed out on with the NCAA tournament. So you've got to get that revenue in. If you read the article in the New York Times from the president of Brown,

She said that if we don't get students, this doesn't include athletics. If we don't get students on campus this fall, it's not going to be a matter of when these colleges shut down. It's going to be a matter of how many. And she's not talking about for a semester or two. She's talking about for good. So I think a lot of campuses, colleges, administrators,

they understand the importance of getting students there, and then they understand the importance of athletics. Of course, geography is going to help. the American, the Sunbelt, the SEC, Conference USA, maybe even the ACC outside of Boston College at Syracuse. So the Big 12, obviously, will be aided greatly by geography. But I anticipate we're going to have a season.

Is it going to be normal or close to normal? Probably not. And I think it can be separated to a certain extent where, like we mentioned, the PACT 12 starts a little bit late. What's your time frame if you're the SEC or the Big 12, if the Pact 12 says, we can't start on time, and you go back and say, okay, cool, we're willing to wait, but when can you start?

And the answer to that is, I don't know. Well, at that point in time, you don't wait. You go. You play. And then the college football playoff and bowl games are going to have some very difficult decisions to make. Because if I'm a college football playoff, Matt, I'm putting four teams in no matter what. I don't care if the Sunbelt, the American, and the SEC play. I'm putting four teams in that playoff, and I'm having it.

We're playing those games. There's too much money on the line. There's too much influence. There's too much history, tradition. There's too many people who expect it. And if it's different, so be it. Everything else has been different. Who cares if that's going to be different?

We're used to things being different now. I mean, things are just different. So I don't know if people are going to go bananas and pull their hair out if the college football playoff is a little bit different. You want to put an asterisk next to it? So be it. Go ahead. Say five leagues, four leagues, two leagues weren't playing.

And this is the team that was the national champion that year. But if I'm the college football playoff, I'm finding four teams to put in there, and we're going to go. All right. So using that scenario, if the SEC says we're going in September, if the Big 12 says we're going in September, if the American says we're going in September, Pac-12 and Big 10 say, we got to wait until January. Are we going to play a fragment in college football season and then bring the top four teams back to play the first week of March to play for a national championship? Hell no. There's no way. There is no way that can happen. And it's because right around March, what are the two big events that take place? The NFL Combine and the NFL draft. And there's going to be too many players that are too important to those teams for them to even show up and pretend like they're going to go do that. I would not anticipate if the majority, and I mean 51% being the majority of college football plays and the other 49% percent. percent weights that the college football playoff still says we got to go and have this on time

and you guys can play your season out and you can you can decide what you want be what you want have what you want hell maybe they play two of them i don't know but i i would not think that there's any way possible that a team that finished their season is the second or first weekend of january as far as conference championship games were concerned would come back three four months later to play, especially to play teams that had just finished playing a season and whose bodies were physically acclimated to it, there's no way you

get the first team, that first set of teams to be able to do that. That makes complete sense this one to throw it out there. What about massive realignment of non-conference opponents? I'll give you my alma model of University of Houston as example. Our two non-conference road games are at BYU and at

Washington State. Do you envision teams, whether it be SEC, Big 12, maybe finding some closer regional opponents and scrapping non-conference games against maybe some sexier opponents. Like, I mean, I don't know what Ohio State's non-conference schedule is, but is there... Oregon. They've got there at Oregon. All right. It's a great example then. Could Ohio State and Oregon say, let's table this for a few years?

Well, I think there are a couple of avenues that you could go. Is there a way you could move it in the season and still play it? if there was a way to rearrange a game or two on each schedule and play it later in the season. And that's one that's going to be so good for both schools you'd like to try to get it done. Do you flip the home team and try to play it that way? Do you try to move different years, like you said, and play one, you know, play at Columbus this year, maybe you have to go two years out to get the return trip to Eugene. You know, the Alabama-TCU USC carousel is the one that a lot of people are talking about right now. That game's going to be played in Dallas.

and USC looks like, and here's the thing, they might, people get a little consumed with, well, they could still travel to go play in Texas. Well, if they can't get on campus,

they can't practice. So they're not preparing for a season. How are they going to go play? You're going to play Alabama when you haven't been able to practice? That's not going to go well. TCU, obviously, plays a Pact 12 opponent on the road that weekend.

So that will be an automatic flip. You fill TCU right in. You would anticipate if you are having fans at the game, that would allow you to sell a pretty deep. decent amount of tickets because of the proximity to Fort Worth. So you could probably make that happen. And I do think that you could look at a bit of a juggling act there. I think when you hear leagues like the Pact 12 reference going to a conference-only schedule,

and some people have kind of brought it up with the SEC if they start, nobody else does. I think people get a little consumed, Matt, when they hear that with extending or expanding the schedule. I believe personally, if you're hearing the league talking about doing that, you're most likely shrinking the schedule. They're not going to do that in an ad games. I think if you're talking about playing a conference-only slate, you're probably concerned not only when you're going to start, but if you're going to be able to finish.

So you just want to get the games in. So if the Pac-12 is not going from 9 to 12 or even 10 conference games, if anything, I think they might go down to 6 or 7, say, listen, we're going to get these games in, we're going to try to have a conference championship game and then let the chips fall where they may. But this could almost guarantee us that we actually get a season in. If the SEC had to do it, I just don't see going to 13 conference games. That's just that doesn't feel realistic.

So when that conversation is brought up, I almost feel like it's automatically the assumption should be that those leagues are looking to subtract from their schedules as opposed to add. Cole Kubelik with us from ESPN on the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talks. final question for you, Cole. Look, I don't know the finances of college football. I know the NFL can survive with limited fans in the stands for one year. I think they're kind of mentally preparing for that. Tell me what it would do to your alma mater, Auburn, or Alabama, or in the schools that in your state or all across your region,

that have 85,000 people that eat, tailgate, pay big prices for these tickets. How are they going to damage other sports at the school if Alabama is not playing six home games a year with 100,000 people in it. There's a brilliant man out there named Wright Waters. And Wright Waters used to be the commissioner of the Sunbelt. He attended Alabama. He's worked in the SEC office. He works with the college football playoff now.

He is as fine of a human beings you'll ever meet. And right now we're having a conversation one time. This was during the BCS era, towards the end of the BCS era. And we were talking about scheduling and home games and different things. And he said, what you need to understand is, you remember back in the BCS days, that the quote-unquote BCS payout was a big deal. Remember how big a deal that was? And all you got to get to the Fiesta Bowl and play, you know, in that last BCS game to get the BCS payout.

Because that seven or eight million would go to your conference. They used to be a real conversation. You used to split up with all the schools. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So he told me that he said, when you take Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Texas, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, Clemson, when those big boys schools get a home game, what that does that weekend is, is the equivalent to eight BCF payouts. So you can imagine, and I almost didn't believe it then, and I had a long conversation with Jay Jacobs,

the former athletic director at Auburn one time, and he told me how much of his budget is derived from concessions and memorabilia and merchandise that was sold at home games. You add on to that parking and then everything else around the town that you discussed, be at restaurants, food, bars, hotels, which are price gouts and everybody, all of that impacts not only the city, but the state, and obviously the local economy and the school's economy and everything else that goes with it. So it would be a major, major, major blow. And that doesn't even get into what it does for home field advantage.

That doesn't even get into what it does for recruiting. Imagine if you're LSU and you don't get to bring recruits to a home game against Texas or a home game against Alabama this year. How's that going to impact recruiting? So the trickle-down effect is massive. and there are a bunch of branches that come off the trunk of that tree. However, to just get it in and get it on television, I think there are other creative ways that you could help make up some of it. You're not making up all of it.

You're not going to get all of it back, but you could make up some of it. And if you had it, I do think that it would be more popular on television to the point that it could offset a few of those things we're talking about. All right, I said one last question, and I'm going to have thrown one more. if the college football season does not conclude and wrap up like it normally does in the second week of January with the national championship, would you advise Trevor Lawrence to not play a full season at Clemson? I'm assuming that we're saying that it's going to play a little bit later. Let's say that they say, look, we're going to go October 15th and we'll crown a national championship on February 15th.

It would be about a month delay, which still would be a couple of months away from the NFL draft, combine, all that kind of thing. I guess the bigger point is not necessarily Trevor, but just the athletes that could potentially be top 10 NFL picks, how late can they go without potentially hurting their chances for risk and risking injury and affecting the draft status? I think the only way you see a massive holdout or a mass number of guys pull out of actually playing games is if a portion of the season went past the NFL draft. And I think the NFL draft would move for the college football season. So if they took your model and they came back and they said, National Championship game April 20th, I think you'd see the draft after that no matter what.

But I think if a kit was drafted 1, 5, 25, 55, health 75, I don't think they're coming back and playing. Because they know they got that money in their pocket. Why are you going to risk it? Unless you get some sort of stipulation in your contract that everything is guaranteed barring some sort of injury in the next game, two games, three games that I play, I would imagine that would be an instance where those guys would not go out

play, but there's just, there's such a, there's such a small amount of guys that cannot really improve their stock by going out and playing, that I don't see many of them sitting out. Now, see, here's the thing that you need to understand about the bowl game scenario is where guys sit out. Some guys have high ankle sprains they've been playing with all year. Some guys know they're flunking out of school. Some guys don't like their coaches. Some guys don't like their teammates.

Some guys are tired of college. Some guys that's already signed with an agent and their coach finds out about it and tells them, Hey, man, you're done with the bowl game. We're going to make this look good in the media. Go ahead and just act like you're prepping for the draft, and it's all good if we're not going to say anything. There are a lot of instances other than Joe Capoto tailback thinks he's a top-five pick, therefore he's not going to participate in a bowl.

So a lot more goes into it than just guys thinking they're the best thing that's ever put on paths. Makes a lot of sense to me. Cole, congratulations on your success at ESPN. Looking forward to seeing you on the field very shortly with those games. Thanks for spending some time with us. and don't be afraid to call if we want to talk Rockets basketball because maybe we get some NBA basketball before you know it.

We're going to get it in. I think it's going to happen. I hope you're right. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Cole. Take care of. Cole Kublich with us from ESPN and WJOXFM in the Birmingham area.