The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Sam Kahn From ESPN On The Future And Responsibility of College Football

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

At home say, Alexa. Play Sports Talk 790 on IHard Radio. Halfway home on the Matt Thomas show, 131 on Sports Talk 790. 713212-2-5-790. We're going to add some more names to our Walk of Shame or Wall of Shame. A lot of you are giving me some good ideas. We'll run through them. If you've got to send me some ideas, Twitter account is at SportsMT.

At SportsMT on Twitter if you'd like to do that. Right now, we are joined by a good friend of the show. fellow Cougar and a man who, I believe, for a better part of a decade, has been named the Best Dressed Sportscaster in America, Sam Con Jr. ESPN. Sam, your wardrobe is amazing. I'm just afraid we're not going to see much of it in 2020. Yeah, you know, it's been an inordinate amount of time since I've put on a suit, a tie, even a fedora.

You know, I thought about using a fedora on Zoom calls, but it just hasn't felt right. And so it's been a lot of t-shirts and jogging shorts these last few months. And I'm hopeful that I'm able to dress up for a game later this year. But like you said, it's hard to tell right now. Yeah, I'm in a t-shirt and thong right now, for those of you playing at home and one envision what I'm doing looking like at this point. TMI, Matt, T-M-I. Yeah, I figured.

Samuel, I've had a lot of great experts on. I'm so pleased you took some time for my show. I'm legitimately concerned about a college football season. A, because of the spike, and even there wasn't a spike, we're talking about 125 programs, give or take, with hundreds of kids and staff, and more importantly, no guidelines from anywhere, no commissioner, no czar, to kind of regulate this bad boy.

You spend all of your time writing stories looking at different things across the country. What's the trend you're seeing right now, generally speaking in college football? I think people are still hopeful, but they're starting to get nervous. If you were to ask me a month ago, if we're going to start the season on time, I would tell you that I felt confident that we'd start the season on time. I don't know how confident I was that we would finish the season,

and I'm still not confident necessarily that we may finish the season. But now I think that starting on time part is starting to become a question mark. The more teams that you see pausing workout because of positive tests on their roster. Or you have an instance like Arizona who paused it, not because they had positive tests in their roster, but because of the amount of positives they have going up in their area. This is something that you can't,

it's really hard to work around in a contact sport. And when you talk about the wild card of students being on campus in whatever capacity and players having to be together in meeting rooms, whether it's position meetings, team meeting, and hitting each other on the field, it's almost impossible to keep this thing from spreading of one person catching. Is each individual team leaning on their conference commissioners, university presidents? I mean, let me, my point is, is Auburn treating this the same way as, say, USC? It depends really. I think you're right. They are leaning on conference leadership,

and that's where you kind of alluded to it earlier. I think the absence of leadership at the top really strikes a chord here because there is no commissioner, there is no czar, there is no one person or one solid group that can say, here's what we need to do, here's how everybody needs to handle this. And I think the nature of the differences in the case counts across the country also plays into that. So they are going to lead on conference,

commissioners and athletic directors and presidents. And obviously, university president and conference commissioners are going to have the calls on all these things. But, yeah, there's going to be a difference in how we're dealing in with Texas right now as opposed to how they're dealing in with the Northeast to where the numbers aren't as high right now. But there needs to be some uniformity. I think that uniformity is only going to be within the conference at this point. Are you seeing more conferences being proactive in other ones? For instance, if I was to survey what's happening, the ACC, what I see things.

dramatically different than I would see saying the Pact 12 for that manner, even like a Mountain Western American conference right now? No, I don't think so because one thing is those conference commissioners are talking every week amongst themselves. I mean, because one thing that has been made clear in talking to officials across the sport, even as much far as a couple months back, is I don't think it's likely that you're going to see one conference step out and do something that the other conferences don't do. that's going to be rare and unlikely because they're having conference calls weekly and staying in communication because they understand that it doesn't help the sport if one or two conferences are playing and the rest of them are not. So they're trying to keep some uniformity across the country, but it's hard to do it because ultimately you have to serve your team in that area and what may affect you in that area may not affect the other conference across the country.

We're visiting with Sam Khan of ESPN with us here on the Matt Thomas show. Sam, what do you think if we don't get a season? I think it's a two-parter. Big delay, maybe push to December, January, as compared to not playing a season at all, what kind of impact could you see? I mean, look, I think Auburn will survive, LSU will survive, Georgia will survive, Alabama, the super heavyweights. But let's go middle of the road, power five to upper end.

group of six. We'll throw Houston in that mix, BYU, Cincinnati, and then we'll go to the middle of the road, Power 5s. Kansas State's Wake Forest, at Al, what will potentially happen to some of those programs that we know are not the $85,000 guaranteed in their house on a Saturday afternoon? I think as long as you have a season at some point, whether it's in the spring, whether it's in late winter, I think as long as you have a season, they can manage.

But if you don't have a season, if at some point they have to scrap it and say, we cannot have a 2020 season period, you know, whether it's in the fall of spring, whatever, that we just can't have one. I think that's where you see everybody get impacted. I don't think it's just those schools that you mentioned. I think even with the exception of Texas, Texas, Texas A&M, Alabama, Ohio State, the ones at the top of the top, don't forget, there's less than a couple dozen schools that run a profit in their athletic department nationally in Division I

because a lot of these schools, even the big boys, runs so close to the margins on cost because they make all this money, but then they put it in facilities. And for those schools that have big time debt service on, you know, huge stadium renovations, you know, that's tough. If you're losing a whole season of fans and the fans and games, that is a huge, huge hit to those schools. So I don't think it's just those schools you mentioned.

I think even some of the big ones will get hit. I think the ones that will be okay are those ones at the very, very top. When will we start, Sam, hearing about perhaps larger cuts in head coaching salaries and assistant coaching salaries? I mean, even there are some schools in group of six. We use University of Houston as example. Dana Holgerson is making a lot of money, and I'm not looking to take money out of his pocket. But just generally speaking, we've already seen a lot of schools already take small cuts. win on the, if there is no season or a massive delay,

imagine the kind of money each individual institution could save if they paired off some of that coaching cyber between the assistants and the head coach. I think you could see it a little bit if you start seeing games be affected again. But I also think one thing you'll see, and we've already seen some conferences discuss it and look toward plans of it, is reducing travel. And you'll see schedule changes. You know, you won't see teams flying from the East Coast to Hawaii and things like that,

you'll see a lot more drivable games. And honestly, I think you'll see a little bit of a revert to what we used to have, which was more regional schedule. The conference used to be regional before all this realignment happened. And I think you could see a lot more of that because that factors into cost. And then you have to rethink some certain things like, do we need to have the team stay in a hotel for a home game the night before the game? Things like that, I think you'll start to see.

see being considered whether or not that needs to happen because most college football teams do that. And I don't know at this point if that's feasible when you're trying to cut costs. But I do think, yeah, if games start to get impacted, I think you start to see a lot more of these measures. Right now, the conference, athletic directors, conference commissioners are holding off their life and hoping that there's a season so they don't have to go down some of these roads. A couple more minutes here with Sam Khan, Jr. v. SPN. Sam, you keep in touch. I know at least during season with A&M and Texas.

A lot of your stories are based on those two schools. What's going on with those particular institutions right now? Well, so far, they're still moving along, you know, as far as, you know, there hasn't been any, I mean, Texas had a little bit of an outbreak, but, you know, they're doing their best to manage it as they can. Texas A&M seems like they've had it under control to a reasonable degree, at least as far as we know. And one of the difficult parts is not everybody reports this the same way.

some are more forthcoming than others. Texas has been a little bit more forthcoming, and some of those numbers they purported to raise some eyebrow, certainly. But there's still, I think I still sense some cautious optimism on both sides there. The question is, one of the interesting things is I think with both of those programs, too, is you have athletes that both of those programs also using their voices for social change, and that's been interesting to see in the last few weeks and a month or so. But I think both of them are cautiously optimistic.

But again, I mentioned we talked back to the beginning. Those are two schools that financially are at the top in the country in terms of revenue. So certainly any kind of impact in the season will hurt them, but I don't think it will hurt them to the degree that will hurt everybody else. Last question, Sammy. When's the come to Jesus count are going to be put together in terms of we're going to play this on time? We're going to scrap it or we're going to push everything back. What is the sense you get? And the problem again is I feel like there's going to be just a different.

answer depending on what part of the country and what conference you're in. If there's going to be an on-time kickoff for a Labor Day weekend for the season, then guys have to be back on campus and without interruptions by a couple, two or three weeks.

Like they need to have five or six weeks of workouts, practice, and be able to have a couple of weeks of acclamation period before training camp, start training camp in early August. If you cannot do that, then I don't think you can start the season on time. what does your gut tell you?

Right now, I think I'm a lot less optimistic about the season starting on time than I was a month ago. I think right now if you ask me, I think we probably get delayed a little bit at least. I don't think there's anything wrong with the delay. Keeping people safe, figuring out proper protocols. You're talking about 100 young men, 125 when you're clouting staff and coaches. They need to go in and get ready for a season and not have to worry about more than any other time they would about getting involved in a group of gentlemen that may be spreading it to each other.

And football is just the harder one, Sam. It just is. I mean, you can't mobilize college football players. You just can't. It's too many players. No doubt. And the other thing is, I haven't heard this much. I know Pete Amel, yahu wrote about it last week, but there was a lot of talk a couple months ago

about a spring season, and I felt like that died down because people were so optimistic about the season starting on time. I wonder if this is something that's going to start being talked about again because I think it's a real possibility because ultimately what helps them get through this is time, is the more time we have to learn about this virus and the more time there is to develop treatments than the better shot you have of making this happen. I think a spring season, while it would delay the 21 season, I don't think it's a bad idea. And I think it's something that leadership needs to really start seriously looking at.

And they may have to start looking at as long as the numbers continue to be where they are in some parts of the country. Take care of that young family of yours, and I look forward to seeing you at some point. It may not be. It'll probably be later than sooner, but thank you for the inside as always, and we want everybody to check out your articles at ESPN.com. Thank you very much for the time, friend. No problem. Thanks for having me and stay safe.

Thank you, buddy. That's Sam Con Jr., ESPN, on the college football beat. All right, let's add to the Houston Wall to shame. That's a lot of great ideas coming from you guys out there on Twitter. You can send me your results at SportsMT or download in at 713-212-5-7. 719. 713. 212.12. 790.

144 on Sports Talk 790.