Alabama AD calls for end of conference title game + is the SEC collapsing?

On today's College Football Enquirer, a big time AD in the SEC says the SEC Championship game needs to go. We think we know what that means, so what happens next? Plus, is the SEC's dynasty dead? Has the Big Ten completely taken over? We'll discuss. Also, there was an executive order. Probably nothing's going to happen. We'll talk about it all on today's College Football Enquirer. Hey, everybody, this is Andy Staples from the College Football Enquirer. The college football season has wrapped up, but it is never too early to start planning for next season. And when you do, go to the Game Time app for all your ticketing needs. I'm looking right now at tickets to Lane Kiffin's LSU debut with the Clemson Tigers coming to Baton Rouge. You can get in for as little as $242. And when you're using the Game Time app, you can see exactly where you'd be sitting in Tiger Stadium. You turn your phone, it's like you're turning your head. Game Time is so easy to use. I used it when my wife woke up one morning and said, hey, I'm taking our daughter to the Eris Tour, the Taylor Swift concert in Miami tonight. You better get us some tickets right now. And of course, I went to Game Time and they had all the tickets I needed. I love that the price you see is the price you pay. There are no hidden add-ons when you get to check out. Game Time has a lowest price guarantee. So if it's not the lowest price, they will credit you with 110% of the difference. And your purchase is covered with the most flexible customer service policy in the industry. So take the guesswork out of buying college football tickets with Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use the code CFE. That is CFE as in college football inquire for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem the code CFE for $20 off. Download the Game Time app today. This is the college football inquire with Steven Godfrey, I am Andy Staples. Ross Dellinger is on assignment, which means he's probably wearing a really cool hat somewhere. Godfrey, how are we doing? What do you think he's got? Like a, like a took? Well, no, I mean, if he's skiing, he's got a took. I would, or you think it's something more festive? I don't know. That's the question. I mean, if he's, if he's roaming the halls of power, I think he's going to go something a little more like a Fedora news boy. Does he own a Fedora? Do you think like a Wright Thompson Fedora? He should. If he doesn't, I feel, I know, I feel like we should talk to the people. Does Yahoo have a wardrobe department? Does Yahoo have a, who makes a hat maker? I was going to say Haberdasher. Oh, there's somebody makes shirts. No, I think I thought Haberdasher's made hats. Oh, do they? Oh, I think so. There's a couple. There's a couple. Yeah. Well, you know, I live in Nashville where, where hats are still worn with some consistency. I could probably line this up. Let's not tell him. He's not going to listen to this. That's fine. No, we'll keep it as a surprise. But I know a lot of athletic directors listen to this show and I'll be curious to get their input on this topic because one of their own has come out. Greg Byrne, the Alabama athletic director came out last week talking to USA Today's Blake Toppemire and said that the SEC championship games time has passed that the, I believe Greg's exact quote was the ship has sailed, which I know that we've been saying with an expanded playoff that conference championship games are becoming more and more irrelevant. But Godfrey, I don't know that people outside the sport or people who aren't working within it understand how big it is for someone like the athletic director at Alabama to say something like this. I don't think anyone can. Yeah. The magnitude of a conference championship game is just, oh God, I'm going to say it. You ready? I'm going to say it. It just means more. I'm ready. Damn it. I'm sorry. This particular one too because it really does though. One thing though. Two, it still makes a lot of money. Three, it got 15 something million viewers last year. Yeah. It's not like it's a dead concept right now. No. And as you were talking, I was pulling up various economic impact studies. Those are always dubious. Not the best math in the world. But what you need to know about the SEC championship is that until the 12 team playoff, you're in and you're out. This game was guaranteed to sell out in an honest sell out, like a true hard sell out. Yeah. Every single life in its business. Yes. Unless somebody got sick. Yeah. Make a tremendous amount of money for everyone involved, be it the Falcon Stadium, the city of Atlanta, the South Eastern Conference. This was the blueprint that everyone wanted to emulate. And look, I've been to the Big Ten Championship. I know you have as well. They have some good years. I've seen some pretty entertaining Big Ten championships with full crowds. The last one was a big one. That was an 18 million viewer banger with two great teams. No. I mean, I was there for Urban Sad Pizza, the Conference Championship game. It's not unique to the SEC, but they authored it. They literally created it, as you mentioned. Moved it to Atlanta, I believe, the year after. It started at Legion Field in Alabama. This is a big deal for a number of reasons because let's talk about who said it first. Greg Byrne does not really make mistakes in public. Greg Byrne is a very calculated individual. You know how I joke about the whole gangster AD, like trope or archetype or whatever? Kind of thinking about Greg when I'm thinking about it, right? He's very tactful in what he says. We've dealt with him through the years. Greg understands how the levers of media work. He understands how the environment works. He understands what something he's going to say is going to do when he says it. He does not say something like that lightly. Absolutely. I think it was Byrne himself saying it. I think he was very selective in the spring cycle of when he said it. It also makes me think that he's not speaking from an isolated or a minority viewpoint here within the SEC Athletic Director community. Greg's very tactical. He's very tactful. I know you and I both remember when he was the Athletic Director at Arizona. He was really the canary in the coal mine. He was the first person to talk about the impaired health status of the old Pac-12. He was one of the first people who said, hey, if we continue down this path, we're not going to have a league. There's some serious issues here. I respect him in that he's a strategist with what he says. Any AD could have come out and said this in the last two years. The Texas AD Chris Delcani has said it, but Chris has also known a little more for shooting from the hip. Yes. Without a doubt. Yeah. He's a new guy in the SEC, even though obviously he's a new guy with a very powerful brand, but he's still a new guy in the SEC. Alabama is a charter member. This is a different situation. My fan of Mylon Coase, right, Nanny, he brought this up. We were recording something that kind of adjacent to this about Burns' comments about some other things to do with the league. Burns is kind of the dean of ADs sort of in the SEC now. I'm trying to think who the longest 10-year AD was with Mitch Barnhart leaving. Yeah. If not necessarily just by virtue of tenure, if you talk about sort of stature, the school you represent, your reputation, your influence, I mean, he's kind of one if maybe one A, right? Yeah. I can't really think of another person where if there was an individual athletic director to comment on the state of the championship game, that it would hold this much sway. There's also a lot of ADs I know right off the top of my head that would just would not do that tactically. Would not be, would not want to be the first person to say it. And it feels to me like someone saying, all right, smarty pantses, all of you, looking pointing at people like us. Yeah. We know too. We understand. We get it. There's this playoff. The last two years, the only thing that's happened is it's probably hurt the team that won the game in some way. And you know, you had multiple injuries like the Carson Beck injury and then Ty Simpson got banged up in the game last year against Georgia. They still went on to win a game against Oklahoma in the playoff, but a fully healthy Ty Simpson probably maybe performs a little better against Indiana. I don't know. They are aware that it's not helping their teams. The coaches said this long before the AD said this. The coaches were, you know, Lane Kiffin was the first in the SEC. We had on my on three show, we had Rhett Lashley on the show the week that SMU was playing Clemson in the ACC championship game in 2024. And Rhett just said on the record on video, like it might be better if we all just got COVID and didn't play. Absolutely. And he was right. Let's look at just the last two, 12 team years for the SEC championship for a second. All right. Look at the winner and the loser. So do you remember, did you cover the Georgia, Texas SEC championship two years ago? I was not at the game, no. Okay. Do you remember how physical that game was? Yeah, it was a brawl. It was legit slobber knocker status, right? Subtract the tread that you're putting on the tires there. Both of those teams are still in the playoff if that game is not played, right? There's no situation. There's no problem. And the committee has created this thing, whether they meant to or not, of you can't be punished for losing a conference championship game by putting SMU in 2024 and by putting Alabama in last year. Which I don't hate. I don't hate it because it respects the regular season. Yes. I do because it makes those games even less relevant. Which is why I think it's, I'm curious if this was data driven based off of the SEC drought. We're going to talk about that in a second. It's going to be hard not to talk about the next segment in this segment because I think the apparent death of the Southeastern Conference, which is by the way, not happening. I would say that, yeah, greatly exaggerated, but it is a thing they're worried about. Yeah. We're going to get one literary reference in per show now. That's the new quota. Yeah. Last year's SEC championship game, Alabama and Georgia, obviously both teams make it in. Do you think if I grabbed someone who wasn't an Alabama or Georgia fan on the street here in Nashville, Tennessee, and I said, what can you tell me about the SEC championship game last year? Do you think anything would ring? Yes. You think it would? Yeah. They say Georgia beat the snot out of Alabama because 15.7 million people watched it. So if you walked outside of Nashville, you're going to find somebody who watched it. I think it's on, but I think to your point though, we fenced out any relevance. We know that these teams are going to make the playoff. It's an SEC game that's on in the middle of the day. It was on 3 p.m. central here in God's time zone. Essentially an exclusive one. There was nothing else to watch. Yeah. I think that's why it's drawing a number. That's a good point. I had not thought about it that way, but you're right. It is essentially in its own window now because everybody else was afraid of it and moved away. Think about replacement theory here too on if this inventory on the sea of the day was December 6, Saturday, December 6, we're looking at this past year's calendar. And that was the first week, a play in week, however you want to phrase it, whatever. If it was some sort of expansion to even if it was just 14 and it was a play in 16s of play in or the much belly hood, you know, big 10 suggestion of, I believe it's up to 82 now. If that was a weekend, a playoff inventory. With the basketball one and the big 10 one for football, they seem to be similar. A quick aside, how 76 as a number feels so jagged and it's not satisfying. There's something about a 64 team tournament that like, okay, that's satisfying. Anyway, had this been an opening weekend or a play in weekend, that's 17 million that you're talking about would have been even higher, right? You would have had a slate of games. You would have had a larger potential audience. And this is how college football needs to start thinking. Well, okay. All right. I'm going to warn you here because I've done this thinking. I've game this out. We game this out on the on three show the other day and I start to find myself agreeing with Tony Petiti about the play in games. And okay. But I don't elaborate, please. I philosophically want the sixth place team in the two bigger leagues to be guaranteed a chance to make the playoff. I'd like them to have to work for it a little bit, but I guess that that's- No, no, no, no. I don't disagree with that. And I certainly, we could probably have multiple segments on this structure of any bracket larger than the existing one. But if you slap playoff on it, you're going to see an increase in television ratings, especially in- Oh, yeah. Post rivalry week Saturday. Right. And the easiest way to do this is if you go to 16, which is what the SEC wants to do. Yeah. Or if you went to 24, which the big 10 wants to do. But let's say you went to 16 because the SEC, the ACC, the big 12, all the group of six leagues want 16. So let's say you went to 16. Okay. And you just did your first weekend there or half your first weekend. You played four of those games and then the other four later. Mm-hmm. You do numbers. You do big numbers. You're doing those numbers or you're doing those numbers arguably better. But that doesn't all go to the particular league. So for the SEC in the big 10, this is what I was going to ask you about. Yeah. Yeah. So you have covered the SEC longer than anybody I know. This is the only championship game to my knowledge that is spun off as an individual piece of inventory that's sold. So in the last rights deal and the one prior to that at the launch of the SEC network, the championship game is sold almost like Alucard because of its inherent value. This is not something easy to give up. Well, everything was sold together in this last deal. So it's all to the... We don't know what I'm saying. Because there was a price affixed to broadcasting the SEC championship game, which is not the way it was structured with like, I think the big 10 in Fox. And it has to do with the reliability of the ratings. The big 10 has now because different partners are getting the game in different years. I think philosophically the best way to look at this is one, well, we could talk about the tactical nature of Bern and I think he's not saying something is going to put him in a negative position. Greg Bern does not do that. All right? Second is, I think it's best if this strikes you as unthinkable, if you're clutching your southern pearls here. I think the better way to view what has transpired these last 20, 30 years is that the SEC was so good at this model, it inadvertently created a play in game. It was already a postseason game. I think that's where your 17 million... There's was. Yeah. Nobody else's was, but there's was in the 14... There were... Even when it wasn't. I mean, last year you could argue the most important or most impactful conference championship game was obviously in Indianapolis because you basically were fighting... You're fighting out a one seed status there, right? Like you're fighting out... That was God's... It was one versus two. Yeah. But more often than not, especially the PCS era, it was a play in game. That's why that's where the origin of the massive television audience came from. You had to watch that game to be informed on the actual national title game for the better part of the SEC Championship Games existence. Now that it's lost relevance, combined with what we're going to talk about in the next segment, it seems prudent for a... I criticize... Thank you so much and I criticize the league for a lot of missteps, but historically, Andy, it's hard to argue the SEC is the fastest to act and probably the most narrow minded when it comes to television revenue and acquiring football championships. Based on that precedence, I believe that they're probably going to act quicker than we think in finding a solution so long as it dovetails obviously with an expanded playoff that they'd like and doesn't allow the Big Ten to win. No. And that's the other piece of this that is so interesting because I thought for a while, when the SEC and the Big Ten kind of got together and said, hey, we might leave unless you guys guarantee us this much money and essentially seed control to us, I thought it was going to usher in maybe a new era of cooperation between those two because obviously in the Kevin Warren, Big Ten, they were not working together at all. And it seemed like Tony Petit and Greg Sankey were going to work together pretty closely. And then that stopped. All right, I have a question. Right about last spring, it feels like that all broke apart. And now one of them's got to win and one of them's got to lose, which is kind of keeping the thing from expanding, which I'm actually OK with because I like the 12th. But if they do want to solve the conundrum they've created with the Conference Championship Games, they probably will have to agree on something. Let me propose something just as a hypothetical. The SEC moves to eliminate this. Let's say 27 is the last year. I'm just pulling out of here. This has got to be a sigh of relief for most other conferences because they would willingly and happily eliminate their Conference Championship Games. I mean, think about what it put the ACC through this year. Yes. What is that an 80 percent reduction of making fun of the ACC? Just just eliminating the Conference Championship Game race. That was you were sitting there. You're the ACC sitting there at the end of that night as Duke beats Virginia handing you like your Jim Phillips, you were handing a trophy to Manny Diaz. Yeah. And going, oh, crap. Did I did I just watch my league get eliminated from the playoff? Because they didn't know at that point that Notre Dame or that Miami is going to get in over Notre Dame. Sure. Think about the value of we need an English soccer alert on this show because we comp it so often, but by eliminating Conference Championship. Yes, I'm very British sounding. I'll just. Yeah. I don't know what the BBC's Premier League coverage theme is. Drinking from a Turvis. What is there? It's my opinion. It's really it's more spacey now when you watch the BBC news. It's more modern. I'll raise my peak even though I'm drinking out of a plastic Turvis. I feel like most conferences would would breathe a sigh of relief. They'd be happy to get rid of this. If you were the ACC, think about the arcane structure and think about the impact this has on scheduling. Think about the relief that this would you could really then focus in on quality conference inventory for the regular season, which is the thing we all say you said it at the outset of the segment that we allegedly value the most. Right. We would like a sane playoff that stays the same, at least for a couple of years at a time, but we want Labor Day weekend through Thanksgiving to remain sacrosanct. Right. And I. Yes. This is a step towards that. So what would you do? What was your solution be, Godfrey? Would you just eliminate the Conference Championship games start the playoff on that weekend? Would you have some sort of play in games? I've had people suggest, you know, listeners suggest really fun things like I'd love like remember the old ESPN and bracket busters where they'd have two mid major teams that are on the bubble play each other and toward the end of college basketball season. Yeah. Like I would love if you had a 12 team playoff and you just made teams 12 through 16 play each other. So the NBA play in style. Yeah. Yeah. Like 12, 12 versus 16. Actually, I don't know what you do. You would do 11, let's say 11 through 14. So 11 versus 14, 12 versus 13. I like the W. W. Yeah. You've got a W. W. Philosophy about this. I appreciate that idea. Yeah. Um, they wouldn't do it. The conferences wouldn't, wouldn't do it because you have no idea who's going to get in that idea is going to win. Don't know. We're going to put them. Stay with me. Yeah. No, stay with me on this. Okay. Okay. Okay. 11 through 14, you said. Mm hmm. Okay. So two games. Yeah. For two spots. Yep. So instead of Dayton, why don't you just use Mercedes Benz? Oh, the first four. Atlanta is the easiest city in America to get to. Could you, well, could you make it? Okay. Let's make it four games. Let's, let's, let's do 16 teams. And look, I realized what we're doing is creating a 20 team playoff. But I might be okay with that. We're, we're also trying to engineer a television window. Right. Right. Exactly. So we do four games. Yes. Which would be. Would be 13. Through. If we hang on. Hang on. If 20, is that what that would be? Yes. But if we really, if, hang on, let's back up. What we're talking about here is starting college football at either Labor Day or Labor Day. 13 through 18. I'm bad at math. I don't know. Yeah. Sorry. Well, I, I'm terrible at math. 13 through 20. It would be 13 through 20. 13, 20. 14, 19, 15, 18, 16, 17. Just so I'm, just so I'm clear. Because I want people to stay. It's one on Friday, three on Saturday. I want people to visualize this. You college football like, let's not even mess with the front of it right now. That's a whole other segment. Let's just say Labor Day weekend and there's a week zero. Somebody's getting beat up in Ireland, whatever. Okay. You have your beautiful, wonderful regular season. Rivalry Thanksgiving is now the end. Right. You go into your rivalry game, you play your rival, your regular season has concluded. So if Alabama wins the SEC, just in, just in terms of the table, as the Brits say, they get to hoist some trophy there in, in, you know, Auburn or Tuscaloosa or what have you. The next week, the top end of the bracket, what you're proposing, they got a week off. All right. So your Alabama's, your Oregon's, right? Whoever's at the top noted in. Not playing. And yeah. Okay. The only other concession that we have to make, we've killed, by the way, I'm talking about, we, we just killed all the conference championship games. I'll deal with a group of six. Don't worry. I'll make some phone calls. Okay. They're all gone. They're all gone. So there's no Mac championship on like a Friday night. None of that. It's all done. You still have to handle army Navy. So that's the only wild card, right? Because that is that, that's like technically a Heisman week game right now. Right. You would have to handle hot. You would have to maybe army Navy slots that day at like a locked time and in Philly or Baltimore or something like that. I don't know. Yeah. We can give them that afternoon. And then, and then we play, you're saying four games. I was saying one Friday, three Saturday, but we don't have to do it that way. No, we could do one Friday, three Saturday, then include army Navy somewhere in the mix. And then you know, that's a pretty easy tradition to build as well. Yeah. How fast still, it's still some football in between these. It's not some football though. Think about that. That's, that's still an iconic football game. That's dramatic football. Andy. Yes. Like game this out for a second. I mean, you can sample, I pull it up. What is the playoff standings last year? I feel terrible because I've been saying leave the thing at 12, but I am really. Well, you know what we're doing? This is a 20 team playoff that I'm actually kind of getting excited about. It sounds like we're just goofing off on a podcast, but turn it into Tony Petite here. We're, we're, we're, we're serving television first, which is what everybody does anyway. Yeah. So we're, we're wagging the right dog in, in, in how we're thinking about this. Okay. And here's the thing. I, because I know, like I'm, I'm hearing my, my on three coast already waster been in my head because he's saving 13 through 20. Nobody's going to want to watch that. Those teams didn't ready for this. You ready for 13 through 20? Yep. This is the, you'll pair off. Yeah. I'm just ready. Number 13, Texas. Number 14, Diego, Pavia, but Vanderbilt really. Number 15, Utah. Number 16, Southern Cal. Number 17, Arizona. Number 18, Michigan. Number 19, a very exciting Virginia team. And number 20, just barely beating out Houston is too late. So if, are we just going to go 13, 20, 14 night? Like we're going to do it that way. That's how I would do it. Yeah. All right. Real fast then that's Texas, Tulane, Virginia. That's a little rough. That's not, that's not the best. Utah, Michigan. L-O-L. Oh my God. L-O-L. Southern Cal, Arizona. Southern Cal. Oh, a Pac-12 game. Okay. You know, the only problem, you know, the only problem is Andy to go back to the SEC's pocket is going to be lighter in every scenario that we discussed. Right. Because they don't have an SEC branded event in their SEC sort of de facto capital. There's only two teams in here. I mean, that's really the only thing you actually is. I do think most years you're going to have more SEC and big 10 teams than this. Let me go, I want to go back to. In future years, yes, definitely. Yeah. I'm going to go, well, I want to go back to 2024. Final CFP rankings. I mean, let's see what brands we get in that. Because I do think. I've got a hold up right here. You ready? All right. 13 is Miami. 20 is Illinois. Miami, Illinois. Brett Bielmerio, Cristobal. Brett Bielmerio. Yep. Ole Miss, Missouri is your 14-19 game. So I don't believe they played that year. They did not. South Carolina, Iowa State and Clemson, BYU. Those are pretty funky. That's football. That's good. That is good. That is the quality and the names. I think people would associate with a play-in weekend. That is compelling. Tag that with Army Navy. And I think you've got a weekend that is infinitely better. Now let's talk real fast, something that Greg Byrne doesn't have to position or worry about, is that you're always, I would say, you're going to get some blowouts in some years at the SEC. I've covered some SEC championship games that were blowouts. But you've got quality football. Some of these conference championship games to the whole Duke of it all are terrible. They're not fun to watch. A lot of them are coronations. It's kind of a walkthrough, right? Especially when you get down to the group of, that's when you start to get really kind of lopsided crappy games. Eliminate all that. And this is what you've got. Maybe there's a provision in here, Andy, for a mandatory group inclusion. For chance. I don't even think you need one if you're going down to 20. I really don't. Well, the year that you're talking about, you would have had Boise in already at 9. Yeah, exactly. And then ironically, this is, hey, here's a micro problem. You ready? You know who was 22 that year? Army. Ooh. You do have a problem there. So we can never solve for everything. But we'll figure out the Army Navy at all. We have to. There's an executive order. Oh, wait, we'll talk about the executive order later too. God, if we, when we come back though, we've, I don't know that we've solved anything. We've thrown out some of the stuff that we've got. We've thrown out some ideas. We're going to need to throw out some ideas for the next thing. My colleague, Brett Bermurphy, on three wrote a column on Monday that said the SEC dynasty collapsed. What? Yeah, that's crazy. What indeed? We'll discuss where we're going. We are back. The college football inquire. We have tried to solve the issue of conference championship games and what happens without them. Now comes the question of what to do about the SEC because, uh, as my co-worker, Brett Bermurphy, wrote on Monday, the mighty SEC has literally fallen out of the game. We're going to have to go through the process of the SEC because, uh, as my co-worker, Brett Bermurphy, wrote on Monday, the mighty SEC has literally fallen and can't get up. That is the lead to his column, Stephen Godfrey. Oh, so it's this. And I will say, I think Brett might be being a little bit dramatic here. I don't think the SEC has completely collapsed as a business or as a football entity. They have not won the national championship in a few years. Yes. And that is causing quite a bit of angst among the teams of the SEC. But it is a, it's an interesting column because the kind of the impetus of it was actually UCLA crushing two SEC teams in the women's final four, which is basically saying, Hey, there's three sports everybody really, really cares about. Like, because the SEC dominates in baseball and gymnastics, but, and in softball. But the argument is not everybody really cares about them. Everybody, every conference really cares about football, men's basketball, women's basketball. And you just saw a big 10 team win the women's basketball title. Three big 10 teams, different programs in a row have won the football national title. And what a full disclosure, we're recording this before the national title game. So one is playing for the men's basketball national title. We don't know if they've won or not. But obviously big 10. Yeah, I would feel like it. This year doing, doing well in men's basketball. And if we're going to future proof this episode, if I had to like bet my house on it, I would bet that the big 10 team is probably going to win. They're really good. Very good. I, I, again, the listener already knows who won. So one of us is going to win. But I just, I, I refuse to bet against Dan Hurley like that. So I love, no, I love you. I also know nothing about basketball. I want to add one thing because Brett shaped his entire column as a, and this is fine. It's like within the rules. He got into the treatise on football, which is what we're really probably going to primarily focus on in this segment. Shocker. I think the reason why you have to add basket, there's two things. I want to put an asterisk on some of this basketball stuff and then explain what it is. These are the three revenue sports, but they're also the three sports where nationwide you essentially have, I don't want to say an equal chance of success because there's money involved, but every every conference cares deeply about everybody's sports and every, every sport underneath that falls into a regional niche. And I'm sorry that baseball and softball are regional collegiate level. They, they like, and, and by the way, nothing wrong with the SEC and the soccer region. The SEC is not its region. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, obviously men's and women's hockey, men's and women's hockey, then you get into the Olympic sports, et cetera, so forth. So that's why you put these three sports together the way you do. Um, look, the SEC had, has dominant programs in the women's game. One of them lost the championship game. So isolated. The SEC is fine in women's basketball, Florida beat Auburn in the final four last year to then go on and beat Houston in the championship game in men's last year. Fine in men's basketball too. The SEC, the SEC is fine in basketball. They were not fine as you recall, about a decade it should go. And I think a lot of programs really kind of got the let out, did some actual facility, some necessary facility investment in some schools. I was in Destin when, when Greg Sanky, he brought in Mike Tranghese, the former big East commissioner, he brought in some other people to basically read their coaches, the Riot Act, when it came to non-conference scheduling and, and read the ADs, the Riot Act, when it came to resourcing the programs, uh, that was a determined effort by the conference to make the lead, make, make that sport better. Do you remember John Calipari would routinely, when he was the head coach at Kentucky, would that finish a road game in the SEC at one of the sort of more football schools and then stump for the coach he just beat to have better facilities? Correct. I know he did it. I know he did it at Ole Miss. I think he did it before the Auburn building, the new Auburn building was built. Like he was notorious for saying, Hey guys, we got to raise everything has to rise here. It can't be Kentucky in. So SEC basketball is fine. Moving on. I think Brett had a good window to do this and I totally appreciate it. Lord knows I never, I love a good troll. But I want to ask you, I want to skip ahead a little bit real fast before we get into what's wrong with the SEC. Brett has a graph in here. He says it's been nearly 25 years since the SEC has gone three consecutive seasons without winning or even playing for the national title in football. That stretch is really interesting to me because it represents a ton of transition in the sport. Sound familiar. So he's talking about Florida State beating Virginia Tech in 1999. Virginia Tech, by the way, was in a big East team. Oklahoma then beat Florida State in 2000 in the BCS and then Miami beat Nebraska in 01. Oh, sorry. And continuing on in Ohio State beats Miami in the pass interference game in 02 in the fiesta bowl. That period of time, Andy, 99 02. Massive amount of transition in the game, modernizing the game in many ways. Financially, television is coming online and spending way more money on college sports than we'd ever seen. The BCS kind of words to life, right? Clicks in. Yep. And then what's missing, like the next chronological thing that happens after what Brett says in his book, The New York Times, is when Nicholas Saban turns LSU into the first of many war machines in the midst of this. Yeah. Is Nick Saban's hire from Michigan State to LSU where Nick Saban essentially lays out the blueprint for what will become the SEC's nearly two decades of dominance of college football. Yeah. And there's some interesting geographical stuff at play too because this is the twilight of the state of Florida's like total dominance of the sport where Steve Springer leaves Florida Bobby Bowden is in decline. Yeah. Butch Davis leaves Miami for the Cleveland Browns. Now Larry Coker wins the national title, but he doesn't, like Butch was the one who carried on what Howard Schnellenberger started in Jimmy Johnson. Absolutely. Yes. And so you see a shift. Also again, one Nicholas Saban as many, many, many players would say a decade later, didn't see a border, went into Miami, held camps, right? Started to treat things more regionally. And the SEC started to pilfer places like Florida or Texas where they weren't supposed to be allowed necessarily. And then you had the five or six programs that would really write the history of the sport throughout the 2000s kind of come online if you will. Florida hires Urban Meyer. Yes. To combat LSU having Nick Saban. And this is what then the Big Ten who takes it on the chin the most in this period right after Brett's talking about the LSU. The Big Ten who takes it on the chin the most in this period right after what Brett's talking about, emulates by hiring James Franklin, hiring Urban Meyer. Well, hiring Urban Meyer. Well, hiring Urban Meyer is the first ten. Sorry. Yeah. I was trying not to be alliterative. The interesting thing to me is there's some parallel here, right? Like we're in a period of pronounced change in the sport in the postseason structure specifically and in the personnel specifically. And one of the things that I remember reading about at just, it's mentioned in every book about Nick or about these individual programs or just what I've heard from old school journalists, people are older than you and I, the individual programs in the south had to modernize and catch up and it wasn't like they weren't passionate, Andy. There's no lack of passion right now. It's not like this has never happened before. Right. Like the SEC didn't throw the ball. Steve Spurrier gets to the SEC dominates by throwing the ball. What happens next? They start hiring defensive masterminds as head coaches. Tommy Tuberville becomes a head coach in the SEC. Nick Saban gets hired. Like those were direct responses to Steve Spurrier and then Urban Meyer is a direct response to Nick Saban. And yeah, so that's how these cycles happen. I feel like in so many ways, I say this a lot on the show, we are currently living in the period in between. These last couple of years have been the period in between. We introduced radical modifiers into the sport and now we're watching the powers. For theory as to why the SEC has been seemingly more affected. And it's a hopeful thing. I've got a few, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Because I think at the end of it, if I'm right, we all win as viewers later on. So here's the theory. The non-Georgia, non-Alabama teams of the SEC were much more deeply invested. And so therefore much more ready when NIL happened to start picking off those guys that would have been the depths of the Alabama and Georgia teams. Yes, absolutely. The non-Ohio State teams of the Big 10 were not. Correct. Some of them were Michigan, obviously Penn State. They were always deeply invested in football. But the other ones weren't. My guess is as this goes forward, they will become more deeply invested in football. They will be picking off that depth as well from the Ohio States, but also now from the Oregon's. And you will see what you've seen in the SEC. And so it's funny because the one thing the SEC trumpeted this year that you hadn't seen them trumpet in the past is their better ratings. And specifically their better ratings in those ABC triple header days. Right. One of the things that they pointed out, one of the bullet points in their talking points about this was this was the closest margin of victory, like average margin of victory year in the SEC in almost two decades or maybe more than two decades. Which is not the feature I think they think it is. I actually believe it's a bug. In terms of breeding a national champion. It is a bug in terms of creating a national champion. It is a feature in terms of having compelling games one after another, which is why the Big Ten needs to get to that because they don't have that. Like one good game a weekend. They need three good games a weekend. They're going to get there because there's so much money. There's no choice for them to get there. Yes, we believe that's going to change. We've talked about this on the show before where the middle class has to rise up to create more compelling week to week matchups in the Big Ten. It's interesting to me like look, success breeds complacency. Right. Complacency is going to breed a level of inertia. Inertia is going to create a failure eventually that if you are not innovating, it's just like any other business model. Eventually you're either going to be caught, exceeded or just blown off the map. You also had all these other people who were tired of you being successful but didn't know how to fix that. Yes. Then suddenly there's a massive paradigm shift in the entire industry. It allows them an opening to take advantage, which they did because they were eager to do it. This is where again, I want to talk about the margin that we're discussing because if we don't talk specifics, I feel like we can give off this idea that the SEC has is 10 laps down right now. They're not. Ole Miss was a drive away. Right. Georgia had a quarterback injury situation the year before that. Arche, Texas, they've underperformed. I'm just going off the top of my head right now. There's sort of an identity crisis overall at Alabama. They're not present. They're very present in the playoffs. They just don't have to go back to that margin of victory in the regular season thing. They don't have one program that stands above all else and that has to do with the portal and NIL. You have more innovators like it was South Carolina the year before. It was Ole Miss this year. People who are being just a little bit more intuitive with roster. Yeah. Ole Miss was the biggest disruptor in the SEC, which is a big reason why LSU hired Lane Kiffin. But I don't think Lane Kiffin was the only disruptor at Ole Miss. I think about this a lot. I know we've got to be quicker, but I've had long conversations with people about this where everyone right now is figuring out the next blueprint and you look across the league. So you have the usurper model in Ole Miss, which is that do the thing that you weren't allowed to do for years, bust through. It's very much like it is the South's Indiana. They just didn't win the national title. You have Georgia, which is sticking to the most similar script to the old days. I'm not saying they don't use the portal. I'm not saying they don't use NIL. Georgia and Ohio State are probably the most similar. Oregon, I think, is in this boat too, where if you look at their rosters, it is still mostly guys they recruit out of high school. It's a very impactful transfer. Then you look around and you have a bold off-season move like LSU where they believe the investment should just be we should flood the lane with cash. We should go out and get the, we should poach the best available coach in every sport that draws revenue. And then we're just going to throw money at the situation, which to me still personally feels like this is last decade's Jimbo Fisher move at A&M in a lot of ways. Well, Texas Tech did it. And it worked so far, right? I'm curious what serious like back room, cigar, country club conversations around the University of Alabama. I'm very curious. I don't think Kailin DeBoer is the long-term answer there, not because of Kailin DeBoer. I think both parties there are going to eventually pass each other in this wild period of transition. Why don't Kailin DeBoer wants to do it the way Lane Kiffin does it? No. Maybe the way Lane Kiffin does it is the way you have to do it now. But I'm watching Alabama. I'm from Alabama. And I'm looking around. I'm seeing Georgia, let's just say they sort of held strong. They held steadfast. And what it's done to them is basically gotten them to the rung below the summit two years in a row. I'm looking at LSU go hog wild financially, right? Then I also have to deal with the Texas schools now. I think a lot of key programs, especially in the SEC, are waiting for a blueprint and trying to figure out how they can iterate just a little bit on that blueprint to really make it their own. And that's why I'm fascinated how Alabama responds the next couple of years. Because they're the one program I feel like we certainly know that they can throw the most behind something in the most aggressive way. I still believe in my heart. They can throw the most energy behind something, but they no longer can throw the most money behind something. So is it so has energy, which that term constitutes a lot of things here, right? I want to say it's smiling. Is energy out of the paradigm? Is it just a raw numbers game? I think caring deeply still matters. And it's not all numbers. And I thought Steve Sarkissian said it really well in a story that Chris Lowe did on three last week. He said there's probably 25 teams paying the admission price. Yes. But you still have to evaluate. You still have to pick the right players. You still have to put them in the right places. And that's why Kurt Signetti, I laughed at the revisionist history as we're watching Mark Cuban walk around the field before the national championship game. People saying, oh, Mark Cuban just bought him a team. He did not. No, he didn't. They didn't spend the most money. They evaluated better. They schemed it up better. That still matters too. Mark Cuban was very, very, very late to that party. I don't know if that's public. Like he was not the force behind this. Yeah, okay. Yeah. He is, I know he is involved now, but this wasn't the guy from the Mavericks that you've seen on TV, stroked a check and you've got a national champion in two years. That is a false narrative. No. It is picking the coach who picked the right players and put them in the right places. And that still matters. Because if only we had a league where everybody spent the same amount of money, yet certain franchises are always terrible and certain ones are always great. And then there's other ones in the middle that switch places all the time. Oh, wait, there is one. Yeah. This is what we're headed towards. Yeah. If you're good at evaluating and good at putting people in the right places, you don't have to spend as much money. You can get more out of what you spend. Yes. And right now, it doesn't mean Alabama is completely cooked is what I'm saying. No, no, but I, to go back to what we would you call it energy? Passion. Yes. Off field. Want to. Want to? Yes. Go back to the NFL for a second. Jerry Jones is still in business. He's still doing this in the NFL. He's still spending more money than everyone else in other ways. He just can't do it on his actual football roster. Right. He's got a slightly above average quarterback that he overpays. Yes, but you can, I'm just saying off the field, you can still be a wanton fool and an idiot. You just how you really have to channel this now into spending on the, on the really precise decision makers because you can't over recruit anymore and you can't hoard five stars and kids are going to leave. And so I think big caveat, big, big asterisk here, the blueprint we're waiting on Andy is going to look something or it's going to center more around those front office roles or those front office philosophies. Then it is going to be like, Hey man, Nick Saban played the best cover two possible and he recruited the best defensive players. Or it's those coaches because that's the thing. We keep thinking because the players are getting paid now. People are hiring NFL style GMs that it's just going to suddenly become that. I don't necessarily think so. I think it's still going to be a little bit of a unique ecosystem because the coaches in college football for years and years were the GM as well. Yeah. Who's the GM at Indiana? Really? Who's the, who, who makes the final say on any personnel decision? I know I get what you're saying and I don't think the head coach. Yes, the head coach is never going to be completely undermined or usurped, but the, the, the analytical structure of what makes a good of it. Look, man, I hate, I hate to keep going back to this. So Saban Meyer, the previous sort of Titans of the, of the previous era, were they great evaluators? Were they just really good at, at bringing in recruits at places where you had all the advantages and they were, they, you couldn't travel around. No, Gavro and Brent Venables were great evaluators. Yes, this is where I'm getting. If you look at those Clemson teams that won the national title, they did not fit the same profile as the other ones. No, no. This idea of what an evaluator is, is probably something we need to do a better job of in the media and being a little bit more specific. We also need to probably learn a little bit more of what positive trends are. Yeah, it's also changed because I've always said the greatest evaluator in history college football is Gary Patterson, because he could go to a high school practice and see you're running back and say, that's an NFL defensive end. But the thing is, that doesn't matter as much now because you need that person in your program for three years at least to make that happen. So we'll go with one of the guys that made the national title game in basketball, Dusty May. Dusty May at Michigan basketball coach there. They're two best players. Well, no, two of their three best players. Yaxel Lindberg is probably the best player and that was a straight up. He was amazing at UAB. They got him out of the portal. They beat out some other really good teams. But Audemarra, their seventh recenter and Elliot Caddo their point guard. Audemarra played 13.1 minutes a game at UCLA the previous season. He didn't suddenly become that much better. Dusty May saw the role he should be in. Dusty May saw the role Elliot Caddo should be. Elliot Caddo was North Carolina's starting point guard the previous two years. He didn't suddenly get that much better. Dusty May saw the role for him. Lane Kiffin, I would argue, is one of the really good coaches in college football at seeing the role for the guy they bring in. Eli Drenquitz is pretty good at that. But that's the key is who in the SEC, who in the Big Ten, who will be the people who can see the role for somebody who played on a not good team or someone who maybe played in a different scheme. Who's going to be able to see how those pieces fit because that is what matters now. And to your point, who has the front office help to allow them to see that? I also don't think to put a cap on this that we're ever going to go back to a single conference dominating through a decade plus like we did. I do think of a sort of forced form of parity has been introduced. And because you can be financially involved. I don't know, the SEC needs to win one before we can declare that Big Ten is on a night's run right now. Miami's closer than Notre Dame are probably my closer picks than anybody in the SEC right now. Yeah, and that's the thing. I haven't looked at the Bet MGM futures recently, but I'm pretty sure Notre Dame is in the top two in terms of pre-season odds for the national title. Andy, if you can find the right conductor, choreographer, is that a word? Yeah, choreographer. Hello. Thank you. It's a dance pop. If you can find the right person for that role at Notre Dame in the era of the transfer portal and NIL and maintain the Notre Dame standards that are not going anywhere, right? Yep. And succeed at the highest level and compete for national titles, by the way, they should have been in the playoff this year. Then it's certainly possible in Alabama. I'm going to say that's the nicest way I can say it. Like, this is a you problem. The thing is, it's also now possible it'll miss. We saw it. Uh-huh. It's now possible at South Carolina. We haven't seen it yet. It's not possible. Again, we're close. We haven't seen it yet necessarily. Florida Auburn. You can all do it. Because you have the want to and you also have the money. What I think we're silently shifting towards and in the SEC, this conversation, the way Brett structured his article was title focused, championship focused. And I think what the sport is going to try and shift more towards is postseason participant focused. It's much like the NFL. Very rarely are you judging an NFL head coach on how many Super Bowl championships he has. That's not how they do it in the job market. How many times are you getting to the playoffs? How many times have you gone to the playoffs? Playoff drought. Playoffs. Did you make the playoffs? That's it. And the second season is largely not given up entirely to chance. There are certainly dominant franchises throughout years, right? But the shift towards evaluating whoever we consider to be the top of that food chain. And like you're saying, it's still probably going to be the head coach in this new era is if we can expand the playoffs a little bit more. By the way, I'm saying if we, I'm talking about like if I'm the powers would be, if I'm, if I'm, you know, Petiti or Sanky or anybody, we're going to have fewer players. We're going to have fewer programs in, in a constant state of tumult where they're firing off their coach for an eight and four season. That doesn't mean anything. A nine and three season. That doesn't mean anything because the standard at Auburn is a national title. The standard at Florida is a national title. There's so many schools with that standard that if you can shift that narrative towards where they went to the playoff to the last three years, this is how, by the way, I have tried to talk to Tennessee fans about Tennessee at present. Right. In this off season specifically where there's still more questions than our answers about the future of Tennessee at the quarterback position. How fast they're going to pick up the new defensive scheme. I am the person who goes on the local show and I say, Hey, you made the dance last year. Let's calm down. That I think is right. And if you make it again this year, even if you don't win the national title, you're still doing it right because you're getting there. Yeah. So I am not ready to give Brett his flowers. I mean, I love Brett. Again, I like what he did. I'm not ready to do this until we have five or six years worth of data. Brett knew exactly what he was doing. I've known Brett for a long, long time. We worked the same newspaper together, but no longer exists. Oh, no, I love, look, I love Brett. One, I bet, hey, I'm not taking anything away from the big 10. I love this is the big 10 coming back like this is 200% good for the sport. I want to be super clear about that because I know we're both Southerners. This is not some sort of nonsense bias, but I don't believe the circumstances that prevented the Georgia run the previous year or how close Ole Miss was in that Miami game this year. I just don't believe that the margin is so significant when you get into the final four of those teams. It's not somebody else is going to break through whether that's an SEC team or Notre Dame or Miami or there. Yeah, it's going to happen. And what I hope happens is you have something more like the turn of this past century where it goes from, you know, Florida to Michigan, Nebraska to Tennessee to Florida State to Oklahoma to Miami. Like, it was, that was fun. I mean, if we're personally rooting for something, then I want to see Arizona State win the national title. I want to see, you know, Miami almost feels like a cheat because they are spending and sort of comporting themselves like a big two program. But I want to see someone from the SEC. I think you still have to do that. I think that's part of it. Yeah, here's what I wanted to do. Texas Tech would be the one in the big 12. We're going to Vegas for this year's title game coming up. Where's the next one at? Is it Tampa? I believe so, yeah. All right. Tampa, you ready? We're out. We're there. We're about to do our podcast at 3 a.m. Arizona State is just beating James Franklin's Virginia Tech for a national title. That's what I want. Only because it's going to give some equity. It's going to give some equity as that divide continues to grow with the big two and everybody else. I want to see more programs with a puncher's chance. That's all. That's all I want. I agree. And I know the old joke would have been like the ESPN suits will hate that. No, they won't because the ride will have been very fun. Correct. They will have gotten them some good monster ratings. Don't worry. Don't worry about that anymore. That's, yeah, that's it. That's a red here. If the people at the top keep cycling and different brands start popping up there, it'll be good for them too. Yes. God for you. We do have to talk about the executive order. We've gone 52 minutes. Oh boy. America's fanciest press release. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the college football and choir with Stephen Godfrey. I am Andy Staples and no Ross Dellinger here. Godfrey means I apologize in advance to the listeners, to the viewers because when Ross is here, they probably get a little more calm take on things like Friday's executive order instead of us going, well, we got five minutes left in the show. That's more than enough time to cover this because it's not going to do anything. It is, well, I'm trying to remember who maybe Sam Ehrlich, who is an attorney who follows all of these college football cases. Maybe it was Mitt Winter, another attorney. I want to give proper credit. So I'm just throwing out names. Okay. I know it's one of these. I think it might have been Mitt because I asked him about this. He said, you know you're confident in your executive order when you put it out after 5 p.m. on Good Friday. Okay. No, that wasn't it, but that's a great line. That's fantastic. Yeah. It was a news dump for sure. It's, you know, how do I, okay, how do I say this nicely and how do I not repeat myself for the 17th time? Lighthearted in this segment because obviously the federal government is, and the executive branch are dealing right now with some very much more important things that matter a great deal more than college sports. And I say that as someone who makes a living on covering college sports. So I'm not going to get too, you know, snarky about this, but I just, it's, if you think what came down is going to change anything, then you don't understand what it has the power to actually change. I'm a little frustrated at not Ross or anyone individual. I'm frustrated at, you know, I'm a big believer in like personal, extreme responsibility. That's a jocco tenant, right, Andy? You know, extreme responsibility. And so I work for the fourth estate ostensibly and I'm very frustrated in how we deliver this news because we just had Easter weekend. I did way more socializing than I normally do. I'm a little bit of a hermit crab and I meet a lot of really nice people, a lot of highly educated individuals. They know what I do for a living. I'm sure you encounter this and I got a lot of questions over the weekend of, so what does this mean? And now Trump took control of college football. Nope, nope, nope, nope. I think in watching the reaction on Friday, there was this breathless transcription of the details of the executive order and there was almost virtually no context delivered. That these amount largely to be suggestions and directives that the NCAA could potentially adopt, comma, and if they do in certain instances, they will actually, I guess the terminology I'm looking for is they would violate precedent already set by the Austin decision as well as subsequent other decisions that have followed Austin. Meaning this was largely a big public to do to, you know, there's a million and a half political things we could talk about with Trump. This was making good on a promise that he made to some stakeholders. It doesn't change anything whatsoever. I'm going to read directly from Mitt Winter because I asked him specifically, I was like, hey, check me if this isn't a nothing burger, like redirect the media if there is something contextually that we're missing. And he said, no, if you read the new college sports executive order closely, you'll see qualifying language that essentially makes it a nothing burger. For example, it directs the NCAA to create new rules as permitted by law and applicable court orders. If you then follow that trail, if you're so interested, you're going to find that some of the suggestions, directives, decrees, whatever you want to call it and what is basically a glorified press release can't happen because for lack of a better term, they've gone the other direction. And so this doesn't advance things that we need to suss out. This doesn't stop the chaos that people on both sides of the political spectrum are talking about. There is precedent. The courts have already settled some of this stuff. For instance, you can't suddenly establish a cap on NIL or any which they didn't say you had to do, but you can't really peel back any, even the transfer rules. They said, okay, you have five years of eligibility. And it's interesting. Notice it said five years of eligibility, not five to play five. Okay. Because five to play five is the logical solution. And I'd be perfectly fine with that if they gave them five years to play five and no more waivers, no more nothing. I think that would be a great idea. You know why they haven't done that already, Godfrey? Why? Because the NCAA's attorneys have advised them not to. Right. Because it will create a class section lawsuit by everybody since the NIL era who only got four years of playing eligibility. I got into it a little bit with Dan Murphy, who's a great reporter. And this isn't like an actual... At ESPN. Yeah, at ESPN. This is not a beef. This was me asking the news-oriented reporters amongst us saying, like, hey, show me how this isn't meaningless. And Dan, as an example, he said to me, if you're a college president, do you want to deal with a court battle to get all your university grants in order to hang on to your quarterback for an extra season question mark? And I immediately stopped. That's not the full tweet and thought, does Dan not know that Texas A&M exists? Yes, there are a million schools that would fight this fight. And also, they're all following under the traditional constituency of the people who elected this current president. Well, I'm going to throw out there because this is the part that... And Dan's not wrong here because... Technically not. No, it's just the probability is so many. What Donald Trump has said is that the Department of Education should review whether it's advisable to continue providing federal funding, which would be grants, would be the use of the federal student loan program, to schools that violate NCAA rules. Now, making the Department of Education the enforcement arm of the NCAA, probably a bit of an overstep. And yes, to your point, this is a... This is also where what I always say about the business of college being so much bigger than the business of college sports comes in. You know, the president has said things like, this will bankrupt the universities. This will definitely not bankrupt the universities. No. College sports is a minuscule piece of the business of the universities. Miniscule. If you start messing with the University of Texas or the University of Tennessee, what giant universities? We're talking about state flagships and land grant schools. Like you start messing with their federal funding. Do you know what kind of... I was going to say another word ahead of storm, but storm that you will bring down from the states, including states that support you typically on everything? Do you have any idea what sort of reign of crap that will be for you? We played this hypothetical out on Phantom Island. It should be up now as you hear this or up later this week with Ryan Nanny and myself. Ohio is the quintessential battleground state. You talk about a land grant institution. How much property Ohio State owns? How much land they own? So you're gonna threaten to pull Ohio State's federal funding because they spent a little too much money on their roster this year? Good luck with that. Jim Jordan has been one of the acolytes of pushing the MAGA agenda for Trump at various levels. You're gonna turn that coin going into a midterm election cycle? No, you're not. You're never gonna do this. You're not gonna do it in Texas. You're not gonna do it in Florida. You're not gonna do it in Ohio. Yes. I'm gonna run Louisiana. You're not gonna do it in Nebraska. No, you're not gonna do it anywhere where they play good tackle football because guess what? Like Vermont ain't fielding a great team. Okay? Like, I'm sorry. Did the Canada... Let's even have a team. Did they play... I don't... I don't think they play the basketball team. They play SCS. I think they play SCS. Okay. They might. New Hampshire has a great FCS team. Hey, keep your eye on Albany up there. Go Danes. FCS tip of the day. Great Danes. If you look at where the money has been... Where the faucet has been turned off and where we've made headlines, it's for ideological wars and payback, political. So it's been the IVs, the California University System, not places where football is involved because the president was at the title game. Andy, we were all there. The president routinely uses this sport as a stump because it leans so red in its support. So these situations... Yeah. If you go after it, because the kind of programs you'd be going after for violating the house settlement or violating the rev share cap, those are ones typically full of fans who voted for you. Yes. And that's why it's never going to happen. So our producer, TJ asked, so when would... Can this thing actually be implemented? There's nothing... The way you'd implemented it commands the NCAA to make new rules. Watch the NCAA. Will they make a new rule that limits you to one undergraduate transfer? I bet they won't because there's already a federal court decision. And will they create a new rule that says you have five years to play five? No, they won't. And I've just told you why they won't. So... No, the larger issue that we talk about on this show all the time is we have to go to going down to a fundamental level and renegotiating the terms of the sport, the terms of college athletics. And there's parties that just aren't ready for that yet. The tell... I'll give you the tell from Friday. The tell on this thing was the effective date. Yeah. The effective date is August 1st. It's a good point. The reason the effective date is August 1st is because the transfer portal for basketball opens today. And if you had made the effective date the moment it was signed, well, then everybody who'd already transferred once was going to have a lot of questions about whether they could transfer again. And they were either going to put their names in the portal and see what happened and try to transfer, or they were going to file lawsuits. So if they actually plan to do this, they would have made the effective date Friday. So I want to close one thing. They told you by making it August 1st that it was all for show. Yeah. I want to close with one thing because I know this show goes to a lot of audiences, a lot of different political ideologies. And you and I talked before the show today, what's the most impactful thing that happened over the weekend? You know why we chose Greg Byrne? It's because he's a stakeholder and someone who actually can affect immediate change at a level of the sport. Whether you like Trump, whether you hate Trump, this is a level of political posturing and it's being done for effect. It's not going to create a direct impact on the sport. That's why we slotted this conversation last. If Congress was actually going to pass a law, if we thought that both houses of Congress would actually pass it, we would talk about it first. That the president would then sign. And the whole time. You know, the way, yeah, you remember School Health Rock, like the way it used to work before. Like if that were occurring, we would treat this much differently. This is essentially a glorified press release. And I really, I would, I would, I would say, I would just challenge my colleagues tremendously to stop with the histrionic reaction and the breathless transcription and contextualize what looks like, it's a Trojan horse of news. And I don't think a lot of people in the public understand what's actually going on. I think there's the biggest problem, Andy, is, and I think you agree, is that there's never been more confusion about the short and long-term future of the sport. And that does have to change. And this isn't helping. Right. This is a transition period. This is, this is what's between what was before and whatever will be next. We'll be talking about how, yeah, it'll be boring. Whatever will be next. It'll be boring in 2035. We'll talk about how these are the good old days. Oh, it won't be boring. You want to know why? Because it'll be still going to play football games. Tackle football. 18 to 22 year olds are still going to be playing football games, and they're still going to be wildly unpredictable. And that's the best part. Amen. Godfrey, that's why this best sport in the world. Agreed. Talk about it tomorrow and Thursday.