All right, here we go drivetime Thursday afternoon in six minutes past the hour of two o'clock.

Had a little rain.

Earlier today, and it was a little chillier earlier today, but it's warmed up pretty nicely.

We're looking at about fifty eight degrees, little cloudy here in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.

Relatively nice forecast for the weekend, warming up into next week.

Back up in his sixties.

Not a beautiful start to fall, beautiful start to November.

But hello, happy Thursday.

How are you good to have you with us on this radio program with a lot to do.

My name is Spence check Its.

I host this show.

Border Larson producing and booking the program today.

A lot of good guests to talk college football, a lot of good guests talk pro football.

We'll have Thursday Night Football on our radio station tonight.

It will be a old school NFL rivalry featuring two teams heading in very different directions.

It is the Broncos hosting the Raiders, Denver Broncos hosting the Las Vegas Raiders.

Tonight.

When we say goodnight at six, we will send it over to our coverage of Thursday Night football.

To get your weekend in the NFL started out the right way here on ESPN seven hundred.

Massive College Football Weekend ahead.

Now that we have the CFP rankings, we will talk about the important matchups this week, and we'll discuss as a Utah fan some of the games to keep an eye on and who you should be cheering for in order for Utah to either gain access to the Big Twelve championship game or make it into the College Football Playoff as an at large.

Neither of those scenarios are extremely likely, but both of them are still very much on the table as a result of the Utes being ranked thirteenth in the initial iteration of the CFP rankings that we found out about on Tuesday Nights.

But a big game in the Big Twelve and really one of the biggest games in history of BYU football.

And I don't say that lightly understanding the history of that proud foot ball program and respecting all the accomplishments that they've been able to achieve over the course of a number of different decades.

So a big, big game between BYU and Texas Tech.

It's one of the biggest games that the Big Twelve is seen in quite some time, and The conversation continues both yesterday and today throughout the course of college football media, podcasting, radio, TV, and such about whether or not the Big twelve can get two teams in three feels like a pie in the sky.

I'm not sure that's something we're going to see.

But the committee, unlike last year, seems to value this conference in a way that a lot of people were not expecting.

BYU comes in at number seven, Texas Tech rolls in at number eight, Utah rolls in at number thirteen, and the metrics really indicate it's those three and then a very very large gap, whether it's Cincinnati next, whoever you think it is.

But this is a top heavy conference.

But guess what, so is the Big Ten.

And you know, you could even make an argument in the SEC as it depends on how you value Texas and Oklahoma, but you know, the Big Ten top heavy with Ohio State in Indiana.

This year, the SEC seems to have three, if not four league teams with A and M Bama, Georgia, Old miss and then if you throw BYU, Texas Tech in Utah in the mix, I mean, I think three of the four P four conferences could make an argument that they are a little bit top heavy this year, and I don't really know how good the rest of the Big Twelve is, making the rest of the way for both BYU and Utah both fascinating and potentially carving a path to CFP entrance, whether it's Big Twelve championship or at large.

So we get to all the storylines we'll preview BYU Texas Tech will preview the college football week and ahead, both in the Big Twelve and on a national scale as well.

Still kind of reeling from the news yesterday Walker Kessler out for the year for the Utah Jazz.

You know, first and foremost, as we talked about yesterday, just really gutted for Walker.

This will cost him millions of dollars in salary potentially moving forward forward.

But from a Utah Jazz business standpoint, it actually isn't horrible news.

As awful as that sounds.

Jazz lost to a really good Detroit Piston team last night.

The Eastern Conference in pro basketball is going to be pretty fascinating to watch.

With know Jason Tatum, the Boston Celtics aren't who they once were, and of course they got rid of Drew Holliday and Al Horford and such and Dennis Lindsay and trade Trajan Langdon have built a really good young team out there in Detroit.

So one fourteen, one h three, Useif Nurkic seventeen boards.

He's going to be the starting center moving forward, which you know he's Usif Nurkic.

So we're continuing to kind of monitor the young players.

A.

S.

Bailey nineteen minutes.

Last night Walter Clayton Junior played fifteen.

Do little jazz basketball, little NBA basketball on the program today.

Great to have you with us.

A lot to do on the radio show with a good guest list.

We'll start things off on this Thursday with one of our favorites, Kyle Bonnager, to talk a little college football.

I've not had Kyle on since the CFP rankings were released.

We'll talk some Utah, we'll talk BYU, We'll talk some Big twelve, and then I will kind of discuss the overall landscape of what he thinks this twelve team CFP format will look like, and we'll talk some college football.

Kyle maybe sneaking a little US men's national team as we are about eight and eight and a half months away from the World Cup thereabouts Diego Luna.

Hopefully he'll be a lock to make Marico Pochatino's roster and represent the US men's national team on the biggest scale that is possible.

The World Cup is something that's hard for even me to comprehend.

I'm not sure how many American sports fans really understand on a worldwide scale the interest there.

RSL offseason got going yesterday with the announcement that Kurt Schmid and Pablo Masjoini have been extended.

Kurt, as the sporting director, will report directly to Jason christ who's the president of Soccer Ops now for both the Royals and RSL, and Pablo Masjoroni gets another couple of years after qualifying for the postseason for five straight seasons.

It is the longest streak in all of Major League Soccer.

So Richard Smith will join us to talk a little jazz and some NBA smydia consistent weekly guest of ours.

We'll bring in Matt Brown from Extra Points, one of my favorites.

It's one of those interviews where I'm asking questions and then taking notes.

Matt is a very smart college football media member.

Really leans in heavily to the business side of the sport and does a great job with his newsletter Extra Points.

I always enjoyed chatting with chatting with Matt and then Sam Brockhouse Sumer Sports.

As the weekend in pro football begins tonight.

Hard to believe that it's week ten of the NFL, but that's where we're at.

So we'll kind of preview tonight's Thursday night football game between the Raiders and the Broncos.

We'll do some trade deadline and then we'll talk big picture NFL with Sam.

Of course our friends from Handy and Handy on a Thursday for a little sports court as we often want to do.

Kyle Vonneger, Richard Smith, Matt Brown, Sam Brockhouse, little sports court.

Busy Thursday, me Spence check its.

Hopefully guys are having a great Thursday almost to that weekend and you do good little football tonight and that guy Porter Larson on this Thursday afternoon bye week for the utes.

Are you going to be foraging for gold?

Are you going to be hiking in the in the mountains you reference before the show.

You're really looking hard for gold?

So you can quit your job.

Not to be so direct I'll still talk about sports, and you want to do it here?

Someone could pay me to do it.

Always looking for some sort of gold, though, aren't we.

If you find your gold, you are leaving this job the day you find it.

It depends how much there is.

I don't know how much is left.

Well, what if you find enough that it's generational wealth, you never have to work again?

Will you at least produce the show that day?

Just produce the show that day?

Give me one day.

I'll give you at least today, maybe a week or so, I don't know.

We'll see.

Well, what do you do during a bye week for the utes?

Yeah, well we'll get outside.

It's supposed to be like one of the last weeks probably of the year above what fifty fifty five degrees, So we'll get outside a little bit.

But yeah, nothing out of the ordinary.

There's still a lot of really good football, as you mentioned BYU Texas Tech.

I'll be glued to that, a good portion of for Tuesday morning and afternoon, and a bunch of good football after that, and then weekend will be over before we know it.

After all the football, are you nervous for tomorrow's Jazz t Wolves game?

As it is a is a cup game.

It's the NBA Emorts Cup.

I'm always nervous for NBA Cup matchups, as I've always talked about.

It's just it's it's it's the biggest sporting event on the calendar.

I really applaud the NBA for their forward thinking in meaningful basketball on the calendar, so these guys can make more money three weeks into the NBA season.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I couldn't.

I couldn't.

I couldn't do that earnestly.

Big weekend ahead, certainly for the fans of the NBA, as it is the Emirates NBA Cup.

All right, but we have a massive weekend in college football.

We're gonna bring Kyle Bonnager right off the top to break it all down and talk some CFP rankings and scenarios for the youths to find their way in and some matchups this weekend and keep your eye on.

But before we bring in Kyle on a Thursday afternoon, courtesy if I were good friends and you're good friends too at Prize Picks, it is time now for your opening tip.

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Check its on Utah's number one Sports Talk now into the studios of ESPN seven hundred to set the scene for the show.

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Because on Prize Picks, it is good to be right, all right, University of You taught to buy this week.

As you guys are already aware, if you listen to the station, you're probably a Ute fan.

So no Ute football this week, and then the stretch run is upon us.

The Utes have been favored in every game they played this year and obviously have stubbed their toe twice against two top ten football teams in Texas Tech and BYU, And Texas Tech and BYU will do battle coming up this weekend.

The line continues to really look at Texas Tech as a heavy favorite.

Utah will close at Baylor and Waco home against k State.

Then they're going to head to Kansas for a post Thanksgiving clash.

The Utes will be favored in the final three games, and we discussed this yesterday.

We're going to unpack some of it with Kyle Bonniguera today.

The scenarios in which the University of Utah will find their way either into the Big Twelve Championship Game or into the CFP as an at large team are not likely, but still very much alive and on the table.

And a few things you know, from a yout fan perspective that manifested this week is good news.

And whether you're like it or not, the fact that the committee did not necessarily penalize BYU the same way some of the advanced metrics are penalizing BYU.

And that's just the reality.

Like there was there was another There was another Power rankings released today by a data driven college football website and analysts that just loves Texas Tech loves Utah and is still waiting for BYU.

To answer some very real questions.

But the fact that BYU eight in the AP is seven in the CFP rankings, that's good news for Utah in around way, same thing for Tech.

I mean, you know, again, a lot of the Advanced Metrics really like Tech the same way they like Utah but don't necessarily like BYU Texas Tech nine in the AP, and they move up to eight in the CFP rankings.

Utah was the biggest mover along with Iowa.

Juxtaposed their CFP standings to the AP rankings, they come in at seventeen, but move up four spots in the CFP rankings to number thirteen.

Now, the interesting thing that's started to manifest itself a little bit is it's pretty clear that like the other conferences, the Big twelve is also very top heavy, and the top three BYU Texas Tech in Utah, and then there is a really big gap when you look at the Advanced Metrics between Utah and whoever you believe number three, as most people believe that Cincinnati probably would have been Arizona State should Sam Levitt have stayed healthy, but of course surgery for Sam he is out for the year.

And a lot of the other contenders that were thought to be very good teams this year haven't turned out to be very good teams.

Case State, Iowa State, a few I think there were a lot of people that were kind of on the Dave Randa Bandwagon early on with Baylor, but they have just been up and down, and for a defensive minded head coach, that team has not necessarily been a dominant defensive side.

And that will be Utah's next opponent on the road.

But what we're going to see coming up this weekend Lubbock is really where the focus needs to be.

It's ten am BYU Texas Tech, and it is a massive, massive matchup.

It is one of the and this is not a hyperbolic radio host, but this is one of the biggest games in the history of BYU football.

I'll tell you why.

Now.

This is a program that has accomplished a tremendous amount of the past, a lot of whack championships, a lot of Holiday Bowl wins back in the day for US college football fans of a certain age, and obviously the only football program in our state to win a national championship, and that's back in nineteen eighty four.

I do think past achievements in college football the statute of limitations needs to include a lot of context, if not just add it all.

But the banner is the banner, and.

The accomplishment was the accomplishment, and it's hard to paint this game as anything bigger than what brings you a national championship.

But obviously, back in eighty four, as a lot of media members pointed out scheduling stuff, the weird way college football picked its national championship.

A lot of people look at that national championship with a lot of asterisks on it.

I'm not one of them, because I believe in the scoreboard.

And that's why I believe BYU deserves a little bit more respect than they're receiving from a lot of people across the country that continue to have very real questions about how good this team is.

But the fact of the matter is this, and this is my opinion.

Whoever wins this game on Saturday morning, I think has stamped their ticket to the College Football Playoff, certainly stamp their ticket to the Big twelve championship game.

Now, of course, there is plenty left to do now for Texas Tech, this is the final challenge of the season.

They'll have two more games, and it's UCF at home and it's West Virginia on the road.

Two of the three football teams in this conference.

Depending on how you look at Colorado, Oklahoma State clearly is at the bottom West Virginia, UCF Colorado only one conference win, but Tech is going to roll over the final two weeks of the season.

This is their final test.

Now, the interesting thing about the BYU side of this.

BYU is coming off of bye Texas Tech has played six straight games.

Okay, so if you're BYU, you feel really good about your chances just based off of how fresh you are.

They're going to get LJ.

Martin back.

He's one of the best backs in all the Big twelve, and it's a little bit more of a dicey finish for Brigham Young.

But again, as I said earlier, all of the numbers, all of the data points, and even all of just the ability to analyze this conference.

If you watch the football games, it is BYU.

Texas Tech, Utah, and a Grand Canyon gap between whoever is three and whoever is four.

So I do believe that if BYU is able to win on Saturday, they will handle their business the rest of the way.

But their challenges are a little more difficult than Texas Texas.

They're going to take on a TCU team at home that is very much mid tier but not bottom tier, and a team that if they get it going, they can.

Put some points up on you.

You know, they put forty two up on Baylor, they put thirty five up on SMU.

They beat SMU, a team that beat Miami, Like TCU is not a bye week.

It's not West Virginia, it's not UCF, but it is in Provo.

And my guess is BYU will be a healthy, maybe nine to ten point favorite in that game.

Then they do have to go on the road to Cincinnati.

Okay, and that gets a little bit interesting because, as I referenced, even though this is a top heavy conference with the top three, I think most people would tell you the fourth best team in this conference is Cincinnati.

Now this is recency bias, but I was up there at rice Eco Stadium and I was not impressed at all.

And that was more of a testament to the current form of the Utes and the current form of the Utes, and also, more or less, being as health is Utah football has been this time of year for maybe four or five years, is the reason these advanced metrics still value this team as potentially a top seven or eight team in all of college football.

So Cincinnati ran into a buzz saw.

We should be clear Cincinnati ran into a Utah team that right now has simply just figured it out.

But if what I saw on Saturday of last week as any indicator of who Cincinnati is, remember BYU football is built a lot like Utah football.

At the admission of their head coach on this show a couple of months ago, when I asked him, when I asked Kilate, as you've built this thing up over a decade, how much of it is you?

How much of it is Leavell, how much of it is Wit?

And in classic Kialani form, he credited the coach who he played for in Lavelle Edwards and the coach who he coached under in Kyle Whittingham.

Jay Hill cut his teeth Underwit.

And you can see it when you watch the schematics on defense and the way they like to play, and how fast and physical they are on defense and their ability to run the football.

I mean even a lot of the conference metrics and numbers put BYU in Utah right next to each other on both offense and defense.

That's not by accident.

So if Utah can undress Cincinnati the way they did, I think BYU has a chance to do that too.

And part of me actually believes the TCU game at home might be a more difficult test than the Cincinnati game on the road, because remember, and we talked about this prior to Utah Cincinnati, the PFF grade on Cincinnati's defensive line tells us that's the worst defensive front in the Big Twelve.

Worse than Oklahoma State, worse than West Virginia, worse than Colorado, worse than UCF.

And we saw that manifest last Saturday as Utah ran the ball down their throats.

Utah is the best rushing team in the conference, but you know who's two.

That's BYU.

So if Utah can out physical Cincinnati, I think bring him Young can as well.

And then BYU's last game is a glorified buy with UCF at home, by ways for the utah Utes getting ready for the stretch run.

Three games left for Utah.

Utah comes in at third teen, and the first iteration of the CFP rankings are released on Tuesday night, a big one.

In Waco between BYU and Texas Tech.

So a lot to talk about with our next guest, Kyle bonnegera ESPN Kyle, Happy Thursday man, How are we doing?

Are you doing?

Well, so you and I talked about this last week, Like, ultimately, a lot of these advanced metrics are telling us that Utah is still a really, really good football team, a lot of the metrics actually ranking Utah ahead of BYU and some even ranking Utah of Texas Tech.

So that leads us to Tuesday night, as we were all sitting in front of our TVs waiting for the rankings to be released, Utah at seventeen in the AP, and then the rankings start rolling in on the CFP and seventeen is Tech, sixteen is Vanderbilt, fifteen is Louisville, and I'm going, Okay, where are they going to land?

Fourteen Virginia?

Thirteen is where the Utah Utes landed.

Were you surprised?

Give me your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean I think I was a little bit surprised, just because I think I was preparing for them to be closer to where the AP had them.

That's kind of the default way I went into it.

So for them, it's yeah, I mean, it couldn't have gone much better, right because now you're looking at thirteen and so before I think, you know, when we were discussing the possibility of you know two Big twelve teams.

Last year, I think it was it was probably the teams that were going to play for the title.

And now you can kind of drum up a scenario where Utah just wins its last three, they're sitting there at ten and two, don't have to worry about a conference title game, and where where could they potentially wind up.

They're so close to where the cutoff is going to be that they're very much part of the discussion.

You could you could kind of come up with some scenarios where they could get in, and of course there's plenty where they don't.

But it makes these last three games a lot more interesting from that perspective, knowing that they're nationally relevant in that way.

So b YU, on the other hand, you know, pretty closely mirrored their AP eight and the AP seventh in the college football rankings.

We'll talk some big picture Big twelve in a moment, and then I do want to get your thoughts on what potentially is going to be a I hope it's a good game.

It's certainly a massive game, but BYU slides off one spot from their AP ranking juxtaposed to where they're at at the CFP.

Is that about what you were expecting?

Yeah, And I kind of do the exercise every week too.

I forget if I had them at seven or eight.

I might have had him at eight, because I think I had Oregon ahead of them, But for me that was I think I had Oregon at like five or six, and everyone else was in the same war.

So yeah, so seven is not totally surprising, you know, being undefeated, they were certainly going to be somewhere in that range.

And yeah, I think that it looks It looks about right when you kind of round it out.

So from a big picture, if we if we pan back now to thirty thousand feet, Texas Tech at eight, so BYU seven, Texas Tech at eight, Utah at thirteen, the scenarios are dizzy ing to go over about how Utah qualifies for the Big twelve Championship Game or you know, makes it in as an at large.

But just generally speaking, it does feel like this committee this year values the Big Twelve in a way the committee last year did not.

Is that fair to say?

I don't know.

I wouldn't want to, honestly, I don't really remember how it broke down with the Big twelve last year that like, especially at disappointing season.

For me, it's always very individual team based, right, It's like the conference as a whole, and it isn't necessarily reflective of the teams at the top allways, and so certainly in this case, it kind of gives their you know, projection that they value the Big Twelve.

But for me, look, Utah seven and two, bi is eight to Ozer Texas, Texas eight and one.

Based on who they've played and what their records are, it made sense for them to be decided and you just don't see anyone else after those guys, and so the teams the top earn their spot there, and I think going beyond that is probably too much for me to kind of, you know, say that it's a reflection in the Big Twelve as a whole more than just these teams.

Well, and to underscore your point, and you know, pretty much every data point, pretty much every metric indicates that in the Big Twelve this year, there are three good teams.

And those three good teams are BYU Texas Tech and Utah and whatever order.

You'd like to rank them.

I'm old school and believe in head to head, right, and so BYU in Texas Tech both beat the Utes.

You can't get around that.

But then it appears, Kyle, that there's like a Grand Canyon gap between Utah three and whoever you think is for most.

People believe at Cincinnati.

And I was up there last Saturday and I watched Utah and look right now, Utah is in They're in great form.

I mean, it's one of the reasons these current metrics are valuing Utah as high as they are.

They're as healthy as they've been in a mid November college football season in four or five years.

But that didn't like Cincinnati rolled in as a top twenty five football team, and I walked away both very impressed with Utah and a little bit disappointed at what I saw from Cincinnati.

So it appears that we have in the Big twelve isn't too dissimilar to what we have in the Big Ten with Ohio State in Indiana, or even the SEC with A and m Bama Georgia.

I mean, I think three of the P four conferences are legitimately very top heavy.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah, no, for sure.

And there's the I mean you spelled it out well, like there's it's you know, Cincinnati is five and one in the league, and you know they didn't blow on the same field as Utah on Saturday, right, so if they're the if they're the number four, like the margin of victory was thirty one points between the you know, the supposed third team and fourth team, And so I think results do matter, right, And I think it's like what you said too, like you know, BYU deserves to be ranked ahead of Utah and Texas Tech right now because you know one that you know, beat Utah and it hasn't lost any games.

But like if you if if you were to put those teams on a neutral field next week, that doesn't mean that the consensus would necessarily point to b YU being the pick, right, And I think that's to how close these teams are Utah.

Therefore they are they deserve to be ranked ahead, But as far as like who the better team is like next week, that's you know, there's a debate that we had, I guess, is what I'm saying.

So that brings us to what we could see coming up this weekend where Texas Tech and b YU are going to do battle coming up at ten am.

The line it continues to favorite Texas Tech basically as a double digit favorite.

And I've been you know, kind of listening to a bunch of different college football podcasts and reading a bunch of you know, different uh previews here, and a lot of people do believe Texas Tech is not just going to win but cover.

That's tough for me.

You know, b YU has been really really good against the spread, you know, coming up pretty much all season long, and that that just feels like a really big line even though this game will be played in Lubbock.

Now, as you know, Texas Tech defensively like they're the best rushing defense in the Big Twelve, and it's actually not close.

They allow seventy four yards per game, seventy four point six.

The next best rushing defense is actually TCU, which kind of surprised me at one hundred and twenty.

As far as what BYU wants to do on offense, they want to run the football.

They're one of the top I think they're one of the top four or five rushing teams in the Big twelve.

And that to me is where this game is going to kind of rely on.

BYU.

Does get LJ.

Martin back coming up this weekend because they're coming off of bye and that's another interesting dynamic.

BYU's coming off of BUYE and Texas Tech will be playing I think this is their seventh This will be their seventh straight game without a buye.

So what do you think we'll see in Lubbock?

Texas Tech a ten point five point favorite.

But again, BYU's been awesome against the spread all year long.

Yeah, not only has BYU been awesome against the spread, but over the last two years, this is nine team that has ever been blown out.

Right, as last year, we're both coin flips.

They're undefeated this year.

So to all of a sudden expect this team with that track record over a two year period is all of a sudden you get you know, you know, lose by double digits.

Yeah, I don't know.

That seems that seems like a stretch for me, right, and it's it's it's really maybe that's me over simplifying things and just kind of looking at scores and looking at like, how have they done over a long period of time.

DLA is just not a team that you know that they always play to whoever they're the competition, right, you can kind of ding them for playing close games against bad teams, but they're always in whatever game they play, and I don't think that will be any different against Texas Tech this week.

And I mean, I love Texas Tech as a team.

I think the the aos in a State game was a bit of a fluke.

I think at its best, Texas Tech is the best team in the Big Twelve when you know, you know, when all things are equal, So I think Texas Tech probably should should win this game.

But for me, it and it sets up to be much closer than a ten and a half point spread, and I'm expecting it to be, you know, a.

Game that is competitive all the way, all the way to the end.

I will not get into these Big Twelve tie breaking scenarios with you because I do not want to give you a headache on a Thursday, nor will I discuss I'll save it, and I started the show with some of it.

I'll save it for a solo segment so my listeners can turn on the radio and be like ol Spencers schizophrenic because he's talking about twenty five different scenarios.

So I'll just reduce this to a question, does it feel like it's more likely that the Big twelve will be able to get two teams into the CFP today than it did last week when we spoke.

Yeah, no, I think that's clear that it's more likely than it was a week ago.

And I think a lot of that is just where you taw that because now that you have three teams that are in the mix, the idea.

You know, and.

I would be interested in running like various scenarios to determine, like if three could get in.

I think that's probably a stretch and maybe a waste of time for me to kind of do that.

But if you but let's game it out just for a second.

So Utah wins, it's in the next three games.

Handily, it finishes ten and two, you have uh Tech Texas Tech beat or b YU beats Texas Tech today and then Texas but Texas Tech returns the favor in the Big twelf title game.

Then you have Utah at ten and two, Texas Tech in the virtue being the conference champion.

Then you have b YU at eleven and one.

I think in that scenario, definitely two teams get in.

Like I just don't see an eleven to one team that at that point would have risen to maybe call it number four in the country possibly, Like I just don't think they would get left out.

And then if you find enough losses elsewhere, say Notre Dame, Newses, you know, I think Texas and Oklahoma are are quite clearly going to drop off at some point.

And so there's there, there's three spots already, right, and you got to make way for the a SEC champ and the Group of five champ.

But like, yeah, like maybe if you know, if Oregon moves is a coupany you know, like you conceivably put together, it's an area that results in three you know, will that happen?

No, But the fact that you can kind of have that conversation, you know, speaks laws in terms of getting two themes in right, So I think I think it looks pretty diferent after the cloth.

Not a conspiracy theorist.

I don't listen to a man whose job it was five years ago to try to convince humans to eat animal feces on TV for medical advice.

I just usually call my doctor if I have a question.

So not one of those guys lives online.

That's a Joe Rogan joke.

But but but but you know, we do exist in this area of the country now in the Big twelve footprint, where a lot of people do believe, uh, just simply because b YU does not have the Big Ten connected to it or the SEC connected to it as an undefeated team, why are there teams ahead of.

BYU that have losses when b YU does not.

And there are a lot of people that believe.

That, you know, there is this bias against the Big twelve and believe the Big twelve as far as football is on par with the Big Ten and the SEC.

I am not one of those people.

I do think the best football at America is played in the Big ten and in the SEC, which is why I hope at some point, certainly Utah and maybe BYU, who knows.

I don't know that they're a Big ten fit.

But if you're not in the Big ten in the SEC.

You and I have discussed this, you still in a way are a little bit on the outside looking in.

If I asked you simply, Kyle A is somebody who covers the sport, and it's been all over the country to compare the quality of football even the top teams BYU Texas Tech Utah to the top teams year after year in the Big Ten and the SEC.

Your reaction is.

What, Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear that over a period of time several years, that the top of the Big Ten, in the top of the SEC is different than the rest of the country.

That doesn't mean there can't be a team every now and again that jumps up and plays at that level.

But look, you look at every single metric you can come up with.

That's the story the numbers tell NFL players straight up, wins and losses, head to head results, like any way, you can kind of look at it.

Those conferences have just been better.

Again, Like that doesn't mean Utah can't go out and be you know whoever, right Oregon, We've seen them be organ and a number of times when they're in the same conference, right, So.

Like you can be at that level.

But like you know, also you.

Look at BYUS undefeated and Blu.

Beat Colorado by three points, right, And so if you're trying to make the case that this undefeated team is on par with these other undefeated teams, maybe like beat a terrible team like Colorado by more than a field goal, and that that would help to make your case a little bit stronger.

Right.

I think that's the type of result you would need to see from a team in the Big Twelve to be to convince everyone else around the country that they're on that same you know, playing field.

And look, the playoff is great for a discussion like this because in years past you would get Bowl games where maybe or maybe not people are taking seriously, especially with the last five sixty some years or whatever.

Now we're going to get meaningful data points at the end of the year to find out who is the best on the field.

You know, Arizona I thought showed pretty well last year in its opportunity to represent the conference, and that's really going to tell the story.

If teams in the Big Twelve can routinely win playoff games, I think the perception changes, Like the perception is what it is because of the results over a long period of time.

And they're sure there's some biases that go into that.

That's just the nature of college sports and sports in general when we're talking about who's better than someone else.

But yeah, it's really the honest is on that is on the Big Twelve to go win these games when they really matter most.

So let me ask you about Oregon, who was I believe the team that had the biggest fall between their AP spot, certainly in the top twenty, biggest fall between their AP spot and where they find themselves in the CFP.

At nine, they.

Only have one loss, and it is to what we're being told is the second best team in the country.

Were you surprised at the CFP values Orgon at nine while the AP has them at six.

Yeah, because like even personally, I think I said regarders before, like I had Orgon higher, and maybe that's just bias by me, right, being a West Coast guy and being really familiar with the Oregon and just like, hey, like they started really high.

They you know, the loss to Indiana isn't a bad loss.

I was a competitive a pretty competitive game against a team that has been routing pretty much everyone it plays, and so yeah, kind of looking at their schedule really hasn't doesn't have the have the impressive wins right now.

I think that the Penn State win when it happened, you're like, oh, you know, it was a top five matchup and they won on the road, and it kind of validated kind of the preseason hype about who Oregon was.

But now that we know, Penn State's not a good team.

You kind of have to frame that that win differently and without without that kind of hit to hang their hat on.

There really isn't a great performance out there.

They look sluggish against Wisconsin and the last time out.

That's why I can this week's trip to Iowa feels like a hey, show us who you're who you are Iowa.

Iowa played Indiana really close as well, and so yeah, I think the committee did it.

Like when I went back and looked at it, I was like, oh, well, why did they fall?

And they did go look at the results.

They really just haven't don't have the wins this year, and they got some chances and they're on the stress.

They get Iowa this week and they still have sc and Washington, both of which are in the playoff rankings as well, so plenty of time for them to make their case.

And again like they'll have to prove it on the field.

When does.

When does the heat get hot with Dionne and Boulder And you know, maybe it's just him taking off.

It's just it's weird to think about when he took the job and how much attention was on the higher and how much progress seemed to have been made really quickly for a program that was basically dormant for a decade.

But they're back to being a team that nobody is looking at as some sort of serious thread.

Do you think this is a scenario where he does the calculation and maybe says, I'm not as good as this as I thought I was going to be.

Or do you think the administration down there is kind of looking at him maybe with some side eyes.

Yeah, that's a good question.

And I was talking about it with a colleague this week too, just kind of just wondering those those same things, because I was really surprised by last year, Like I didn't think this was a serious endeavor from day one, and then they went one nine games, are like, okay, well, maybe maybe he surrounded himself by confidence staff and they know what they're doing, And it turns out it was really just kind of sugure and and Travis Hunter really brewing that thing much higher than it really was as a program, And so the drop this year has been Okay, I don't know how you kind of bounced back from this.

I mean, you certainly there's an all that stuff you can you can remake a roster.

But now he's had like this is the year three, right, and so we're trending this direction.

I mean, they've given up fifty points the last two weeks, more than two points the last two games.

It doesn't there's just no positives to take from this year in any way.

And I guess I do want to be sensitive to his medical issues that he's dealing with too, and and you kind of I think it's like natural to wonder, like what sort of role that plays in that.

I mean, he's fighting cancer in the off season, he's you know, dealing with blood clots on the sideline.

Like that's a lot, right, So it feels like there would be a natural reason for him to walk away and be like, look, you know, I've got my health to worry about.

This isn't going well.

But if you watch his press conference on Thursday or Tuesday rather, he really gouffled down in terms of wanting to be at Colorado and building the program.

He's the one to fix it, or he's the one who knows how to fix it and all of these things.

He certainly didn't sound like someone who was trending towards leaving the job behind and then as far as like the administration side, like, I just don't.

I haven't seen anything to indicate that that administration would be willing to consider making the change.

I think the amount of attention and you know, with that money that Beyond has brought to Colorado is going to buy him more time than some ordinary coach at a random school, or even if it was a different coach at Colorado.

Right, I think he's going to get a lot more, a lot more to play with that if the situation was different than you know, he wasn't generated all this interest in all this revenue.

What do you most attribute this?

What I perceived to be a pretty wild coaching carousel, I mean, very early into the season.

Nine p four schools looking for head coaches Stanford, UCLA, VO Tech, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, Penn State, Florida, LSU, and now Auburn, Oregon State UA be also open as well, and there are a lot of rumors about other schools potentially terminating their coach.

What why do you think we are seeing this this time of year?

It feels new and somewhat unprecedented.

Yeah, and it's I think a lot of it is just like, hey, like, look at this school fired their coach and then it's just like copycat, right, Like, oh, you know, that's just kind of a trend right now.

And I don't think it's based in logic.

I think it's based in emotion.

That you know, schools are you know, fan bases are demanding results and putting a lot of pressure on people to make a change, and like we're all human, right, So I think these people who are in these positions to make these decisions feel that pressure, and they have the ability to act, and they have the ability to kind of appease the people who are making their life difficult.

Is what this feels like, because you know, for me, you know, you look at what James Frinklins did at Penn, says just one example, right, Like you can certainly make the case, you know, he wasn't going to get him over the hump, But like the other side is like, are we sure that the next coach is going to meet the same level that he met over the last you know, five years, when they've been one of the best teams in college football.

Yeah, was reasons for frustration.

But I think Nick Saban said it really well, is like he created those expectations, so you know, it puts a lot of pressure on the next coach to exceed them, right because if you don't exceed them, then it's like, well what are you doing?

And I mean you could certainly allow with the possibility of the next guy at any of these places, right like doesn't do as well as the guy they're replacing, like LSU.

You know, they have all the all the advantages you ever asked for to be successful, you know, but it doesn't guarantee that the next guy is gonna outpace what Brian Kelly has done and he's been okay there There's just so much money in the sport, right There's we're living in a world where Vanderbilt has found a way to have a really good program.

Now, if you're going to the SEC and the expectation is national titles, like I don't like there's that's the expectation everywhere, and when that's the case, not everyone can be happy.

He doesn't mean like the third or fourth or fifth place team the coach is doing a bad job.

It's just like that's how sports works.

And the idea that you can just fire your coach and find someone else to magically make things a lot better it's just I don't know's.

I guess there's a lot of money to burn there.

And I, you know, as everyone always jokes now like when I grow up, I want to be a fired college football coach because that's the best good going right now.

Speaking of Brian Kelly, I mean maybe his wife likes him.

I've just been like stunned and it almost feels a little I don't know.

It's kind of like your buddy who you think is happily married, then he gets divorced, and then you learn like all the things after the breakup.

It's kind of how relationships work.

But we had Tony Pike on who played quarterback at Cincinnati under Brian Kelly before Utah Cincinnati, and it actually didn't occur to me to ask him about Brian Kelly until he brought it up as like, oh, yeah, you have firsthand experience playing for him, and he said kind of the same thing that is the general sentiment with Brian Kelly, which is like, yeah, he's a really good football mind, but just kind of an ass I don't know how else to say that is is that just kind of consensus, do you I've never met the man, I've never interviewed the man.

I don't know him at all, but is that just kind of the deal with him, like a guy that certainly knows football but maybe doesn't necessarily know how to treat human beings.

Yeah, and I haven't met him either, And I haven't spent any time around the program in a way to like speak for a place of like authority, but like that's certainly the projection he gives off.

I don't think he would really like fight people on that either.

Like it feels like he's so cocky and so arrogant that he's like willing to just like.

Own it in a way, in a weird way.

Yeah, And it just never felt like a he just never He doesn't seem like a genuine person, I guess is also what stands out for me the no one's going to forget him, going to you know, going to Baton Rouge and all of a sudden overnight developing a Southern accent, which for me, that was just like there couldn't be a worse fit here culturally than a guy who is like thinks that that's normal, like wouldn't like make people think less of him.

It was just such a laughingstock moment to kind of kick off for your tenure.

There's like the only way to come back from that is to win big.

And then it also just calls into question like the fit there if you're trying to recruit in that region the country and this is who you're projecting yourself as publicly, Like I have to imagine he lost a lot of respect from people right right from.

The big start.

Kyle, good stuff as always, Man, appreciate your time today, Enjoy the weekend of the games, and we'll chat next week.

Okay, all right.

Boniger covers college football for ESPN.

You can get his work on his social media page.

He also has a great podcast out called Finding Dolores, which I listened to last month.

Gripping stuff at Bonagura ESPN is where you find him.

All right, we've got one hour down.

We have three hours to go on this Thursday afternoon.

We'll catch a break and we're gonna bring in Smitty coming up on the other side of a Thursday drive.

All right, show is rolling along today and joining us live in studio once again is our good friend Melissa from Sound Sleep Medical.

Melissa, how are you doing well?

Thanks for the time in studios always.

Let's start with people that have trouble sleeping.

What sort of health problems do they run into?

Okay, great question.

If you're not sleeping well through the night, or maybe you have a snoring problem, you need to get tested and make sure it's not sleep apnea, because if it is and you're just ignoring it, kind of letting it go, it can be linked to all sorts of health problems, many that are very common with our society today, like high blood pressure or high blood sugar levels, other stuff like anxiety, depression, and as you get older, even more serious things like dimensioned stroke.

Now I'm sure a lot of people have either tried a seapap or believe that we are offering a seapap today.

We're very much not doing that.

You have a non evasive alternative seat to a seapap.

Let's hear about it.

Yeah, that's the good news.

No seapap.

It sounds sleep medical.

We do a custom made oral appliance.

It's kind of like a mouth guard, perfect size for you.

You though, that you just wear on your teeth during the night.

What it will do is stabilize your airway to keep your oxygen levels up.

Snoring goes away, so does your sleep apnea and you actually wake up feeling rested.

And what's the special off from LISTI have for our listeners who call you today.

Okay, call right now during the show.

The number is eight oh one three three five nine eight two four.

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Locations in Clearfield, Murray, Sandy, American Fork Prova St.

George, Melissa, thanks so much, thank you.

Following this story down in Frisco, man really sad Marshawn Neeland twenty four years old plays for the Dallas Cowboys has passed away due to a self inflicted gunshot, and more information is coming out that he was involved in a police chase and crashed his car, fled the scene, and shot himself.

My gosh, so really sad story out of the world of the NFL.

The NFL does get back in action tonight.

Feels weird to go from a tragic story like that to talk about a game, but we'll say good night and then it's time for the Raiders and the Broncos.

The Jazz lost to a really good, young Detroit Piston team last night.

Walker Kessler has lost for the season.

A lot to talk about with our next guest, who, unfortunately I'm not looking at his handsome face today, but Richard Smith joins us via telephone.

Hello, SMITTI, Happy Thursday.

How we doing.

Then we're good.

We're good.

Let's start with the Walker news, the Walker Kessler news.

You know, SETI, it's interesting.

You know.

The first storyline here not to bury the lead is you feel bad for Walker and you hope that he gets back fully healthy.

This does come a few weeks after the deadline came and went, where the Jazz elected not to offer him an extension on his rookie contract.

So this injury could cost.

Him millions and millions and millions of dollars, but of course health is the most important thing.

Unpack this for us.

What do you think this means for Walker?

What do you think it means for the Utah Jazz.

Well, it's really a tough situation for him because the young man worked hard.

They tried to get a deal done on his rookie extension this summer early fall, couldn't come to an agreement.

So my understanding as the Jazz decided to hold off.

Now they hold all the cards in this as far as you know the future with Kesler being with the team, because he will next summer be a restricted free agency and in contract terms for our listeners, that simply means that Kessler and his agent will have an opportunity to chop his services around the league to anybody and solicit an offer from someone, but the Jazz will have the right first refusal.

They they'll have the chance to match on the offer that he gets, so they'll be in a position to decide at the end of the day, do we want to keep him or do we want to let him go based on what the numbers are looking like going forward.

For Kessler, it's a tough deal because he misses this whole season to show what kind of improvement he may have made during the summer, how his game is coming along.

You know, it looked to me like he's playing very well.

You know, in the first five games, he was moving well.

You know, he averaged fourteen and eleven with three assists.

I mean, he's made himself, in my opinion, into a legitimate starting center and soone who can can affect gains on a consistent basis going forward.

So now next summer, he's going to turn twenty five, he's going to have come off a full year of not having played.

He's going to be a free agent.

There is still going to be teams lining up at the door, because the teams are going to believe that he's getting better, and those kind of guys at seven feet seven to one that can play like him and especially around the rim, are hard to find.

And so it's just going to be interesting to see what teams have some kind of feel and the excitement for adding him to their team, and then whether the Jazz want to go forward and match whatever that offer might be that that's going to be the intriguing.

Part when it comes to this type of injury.

You know, I never want to be the radio guy that's like, hey, I've had a shoulder problem.

I'm not a young professional athlete, so it's a certainly a false equivalency.

But you know, Locker Keshler is a big and you have to lift your arm to rebound in block shots.

There is my medical analysis for you.

I don't know what sort of insight you may have on this based off of your experience in the league, but you know, what sort of danger is there with this specific injury and what sort of you know, kind of process will he go through to get back fully healthy.

Well, he has a torn label and so it's just a matter of him rehaving that the surgery goes.

I think he's having the surgery actually today, if I remember right, he'll they'll put him on you know, the usual rehab program.

They'll have you know, twenty eight different physio therapists and doctors and massage therapists and strengthened to conditioning guys and all these kind of people monitoring his daily activity while he gets better, while he heals gets the proper rest and then starts strengthening it, and there shouldn't be any problems for him as long as all of that goes according to form.

These things have happened with other players before they come out of it just fine.

Again, it's one of those things where you don't want to rush it.

You want to make sure that he does it the right way, that the rehabit is going the way they want, the strengthening is happening on the incremental levels that you want to see.

And as long as all that stuff goes find, he'll be He'll be.

He'll be fine to go, you know, next summer.

UH And again then it's going to be a matter of UH teams wanting to plug in a big like him who can run the floor, who can catch on the move towards the rim, can protect the rim on the defensive end, and and there's a natural rebounder in traffic and so so I don't think the injury will set him back that much.

I think the one thing that that will hurt him is that it's turning him from this season showing team what kind of improvement he's made and UH and enticing them into believing that that he can really help them in terms of offering contract numbers.

But he'll have a job next year at this time with somebody.

I would assume it'll be with the Jazz, unless some team comes in with the crazy they consider a crazy offer and just doesn't make sense to them.

I also think it's going to have an effect on how the draft plays out next spring, and all those moving parts stents that are hard to pin down right now.

But his future in the NBA should be fine as long as the surgery and the rehab process goes along as it would be expected to be.

Yeah, you reference the numbers this year, they've been really good.

It's about fourteen and a half points, about eleven boards and nearly two blocks, and he started to shoot some threes and actually was knocking some down.

Do you think that's a portion of his game that will continue?

You know, when you look at the modern day skill set of a lot of Bigs, it's just a lot different and then it was back in the day with you know, well, we can use Big Mark as an example, who developed a nice little hook shot and was a guy that could get some putbacks.

But certainly Biggs back in the day, I mean youing had a decent you know, face up jumper and a fadeaway jumper.

But Biggs didn't shoot threes back in the day.

A lot of them do.

Now do you have you seen enough from Walker to believe that can be a consistent part of his game once he gets back and healthy.

Well, I think it's one of those things that David trying to add just his game as a as a fourth or fifth option threat.

I don't think there's anything where he's going to start, you know, throwing up eight, nine, ten to threes, a game lowry markin and type thing.

But with a big like him, he can set solid screens.

He can dive, which he's showing he's been able to do, catch at the ram, finishing traffic.

With this new new element to his game, what he does now for an offense allows him to set screen instead of diving to the basket.

Now he can step back and try and spaced out the middle of the floor for his teammates, assuming that his man doesn't sink down and off him to try and clog up the lane.

When and if they do that, then it's an easy pitch to him.

Now he's wide open and you're not expecting him to create and take hurried shots that his MO would eventually I think be just to be able to catch it.

I'm wide open because my man is sagging off me.

We practiced this every day.

I just take a nice easy shot here, set shot for him, and hopefully it can make enough to make the defense play up on him during the course of the game, and then that opens up the middle.

So that's really what his threat would be going forward in that regard.

In a way, in this kind of even makes me feel a little bit gross to say this, because you hate to talk about how a team can benefit when one of its good young players gets hurt.

But is this a little is there a little serendipity here with a Jazz elected not to extend them, and maybe on the back end of this the contract that to your point, they'll probably match, should walker around and get one like Heyward did back in the day with Charlotte, might not be at might not be as expensive as it would a prior to And then in addition to the potential economic benefit to the team, as you and I have talked about and will discuss, and it's the same thing we talked about last year for a team in a market that is trying to rebuild that historically speaking, has not been able to allure the top free agents year in and year out.

A top eight draft pick is a big time asset that, in my opinion, you have to maintain as you continue to try to grow.

So with Walker out, they're more likely to lose more games, and maybe even with Walker in there they'd be one of the bottom eight teams of the NBA.

But I mean we did see them win some games early on in a roundabout way.

Does the Walker Kessler injury actually benefit potentially the Jazz long term?

Well, that's that's gonna be the interesting thing right place to see how this this whole thing plays out.

I mean, the season is just starting.

They're they're the exactly right there between a rock and a hard place when it comes to decision making and how they run want to run their team, and so are they going to try and make sure they protect that that draft pick that they would have coming to them next year.

That's their own you know, for our listeners who are fully aware of how this works.

The Jazz several years ago traded with Okac and had a top eight protected pick in the twenty twenty six NBA Draft included in that trade.

So now that's going to come out this next year in the draft.

And so what that means is that if the Jazz have want to be eight worst records in the league, then they would get to keep that pick, and of course, because of the lottery situation, potentially have a chance to move up and maybe even pick three to two one in a top heavy draft like everybody's predicting this next year.

If they have a record that's better than that nine through thirty, if you will, in the league overall, then they would owe that pick to Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City would get to pick uh and then the Jazz would have no first round pick next year.

So to your point, it's very important for them to hold on to that asset.

That means a lot to them in this rebuilding mode that they're in.

But the players they have on the roster, now you know, whether it's for money reasons or what have you.

You've got guys like Steve Mkay.

Look, you've got guys like like the big big guy use of Nurkic, who is playing I think pretty well so far this year.

Kevin Love has been in and out a little bit.

He provides some stability, and we still haven't seen George Nyang or Kyle Anderson yet.

And whether they're going to be starting to play minutes when they get back and injury wise, or whether they're just going to sit on the end of the bench.

We don't know that, And all those things are going to play into the development of the young guys and how they're used during the course of the season, or if the team starts trying to quote win games, you know, by having veteran guys in lineups down the closed stretch of code game.

All those things are going to be fascinating to watch because it's going to give the fans an interesting look into what the team is thinking, what the organization is thinking about how they view this group of players going forward.

Wonder what you make of the way Will is kind of allowing Ace Bailey to ease into his life as a pro basketball player before the season started.

I want to say Cooper Flag was the runaway in Vegas as far as the favorite for Rookie of the Year.

I think Ace was third after the Harper kid who's in San Antonio.

Because during the preseason Ace was starting and playing a lot of minutes.

He played almost forty against San Antonio, played over thirty against Houston, but his minute distribution, he's only played over twenty minutes twice.

He was sick prior to opening day, but he actually played twenty minutes against the Clips.

The numbers don't stand out at all.

But of course he's not playing a ton and I anticipated that he would start and maybe they'd throw.

Him in the deep end.

But you kind of like that Will is allowing him to ease his way into his pro basketball career.

Are you surprised that we're not seeing a starting and playing more minutes so far?

Yeah, well, a.

Little bit of both.

Stn I thought the same.

I thought he would play more because I thought they would say, hey, we got a top five pick, we got to call him up.

That we're we're not trying to win a championship this year, contending for top top level in the playoff, up the race, and so so we got a young guy here.

We obviously value him because he picked him and number five in the draft, so we're gonna throw him out.

They have thirty thirty two minutes and let him get a speed under him and all of that.

That hasn't happened so far, could happen as the season unfolded.

You know, Again, they have a lot of other young guys that they're still trying to figure out who they are.

The George Kidd is getting a lot of minutes and a lot of time at the still at the point guard position, a lot to guess.

The Collier kid is out.

They have Taylor Hendrix, who ironically had an injury of his own almost a year ago to the day that Walker Kessler was ruled out for the year.

So they've had a tough break and back to back years with young guys that they that they got that they thought they were going to be part of their building process.

And so that puts you back in terms of how you look at the hierarchy of your off stir and who's going to get minutes and who's going to get the meaningful time as as as the season goes on.

You know.

But but I'm a little bit surprised he's not playing a little bit more.

He also looks like to me, like he's got some some gas in that time that if you give you in some games in terms of his athleticism and his nose for the ball.

But but it's coming slow.

But that's okay.

You know, sometimes they those guys also may end up spending some time in the G League to get some run and to get more minutes, you know, pre pre flowing minutes, and get more confidence and that kind of thing.

That's all part of that process.

Sence.

And again because because they're not really quote interested in winning games at the moment, at any meaningful level, Uh, they've got time to to nitpick around with their roster and try and figure out who they want to get in games and who they want to see with the minutes.

Yeah, and it makes it hard to I mean, I don't want to do like a Keyante George up day with you every single week, like it's just yeah, well, I mean, I mean, look, I just really wish they were serious about competing.

And I think a lot of Jazz fans are nervous that this is going to be a perpetual rebuild.

Where you and I have discussed this.

You were part of a front office that spoiled all of us.

You know, we're used to watching Jazz basketball that's highly competitive and in the times where it wasn't, for whatever reason, you guys were able to get it back really quickly, you know, within a couple of years.

And yes, you need some luck on your side.

And you need a Dennis Lindsay to identify a Donovan Mitchell, and you need a Donovan Mitchell to burst right away out of the scenes and suddenly blow everybody's minds.

You need a Darren Williams in a Carlos boozy.

You need to piece together things incrementally in a way where luck is part of it.

But what do you make of this?

Is year four they're unseerious about competing and again in year four, I don't think you guys ever went four years between really competitive teams.

Like, if we pan back, what do you make of the project so far?

And when is when?

When are we going to see a team that's serious about competing at a high level?

Well, you know that's what it looks like is and again, not being in the room, I don't know obviously everything that that that's going on in terms of their long term strategy.

It appears as if what they've really done is put most, if not all, of their eggs in the draft bucket and decided that we're just gonna have a whole bunch of draft picks, and we're just going to keep taking young guys every year in the draft and we hope that somewhere along the way we get lucky, you know, with a with a couple of picks that we hit on.

Maybe the Bailey kid has won.

I think it's too way too early to tell that his career is just starting.

You know.

They they thought maybe something thing with the Taylor Hendrix might be something like that.

He's then he guy hurt last year, so now that put him behind a whole year.

The George kid, I think is still in my mind, is going to be a uh A score type guy.

I don't think he's a point guard, but they got him playing point guard.

He has some nice numbers, okay, but he has nice numbers on a losing team.

I'm not sure he's the kind of guy you want running your team up top as you leave guard on a team that's going to be competitive or is going to be winning games down the road.

But those kind of guys they're trying to flesh out.

They're trying to figure out if they can find a guy somewhere along the line.

Maybe he's on the roster now, maybe he's not.

You know when when I was involved with the Jazz, we had a critical time in five o six where we're turning the team over after Stockton them alone both left in the same summer, and and we were fortunate we had a bunch of money because of John and carl leaving.

And it just happened that that summer that we were able to uh, to get get in on and be able to convince both Carlos Boozer and the Metal Corps that this was a place where they could thrive and and and their careers could flourish.

They're both young guys.

Uh.

They both wanted the opportunity to play big minutes on a on a team that was rolling over, so to speak.

And uh, and they came in.

And then the next year we had moved up from six to three in the draft to get Darren Williams, and all of a sudden, that team, Uh, the next thing you know, we're in the the there in the Western Conference finals.

They had a good young core along with Andre Carolinko and rebuilt it very quickly.

And then of course then when those guys went on and they didn't last as long as we had all hoped it would, and Dennis Lindsay came in and we were able to pair Gordon Haywood with to get a young Rudy Gobert at twenty seven, and he developed better than we thought he would, that's fair to say.

And then Donovan Mitchell we were able to get at thirteen, and he came out of the blocks much quicker than thought we thought he would.

And so we were the team was the recipient of that good fortune, and you have to have that kind of thing happened along the way.

So the current Jazz group, the front office, the ownership group, they're trying to figure out a way to do that.

Hasn't clicked yet.

It's going to be a matter of time, I think before the fans start getting a little jittery about you know, what are we doing?

How long is this going to take.

They've got to have some form of hope that somebody's on the horizon that's going to lead them, you know, in that positive direction.

So far they haven't found it.

Okay, there's still we going through the weeds trying to trying to figure that out.

Now, with Austin Ainge on board as the lead basketball decision maker, maybe we see a difference in approach or difference in philosophy that remains to be seen, but it certainly is a tough task that they have going forward because it's a tough Western Conference and it doesn't look like anybody near the top half of the conference is giving up that type of territory anytime.

Soon, Sminny, before I say you lose moving off the Jazz.

You know, once upon a time, I don't know, four years ago or so, I felt like John Morant was a talent that put Memphis on a level with teams like you know, Dallas with Lucas now and you know who's now in Los Angeles.

He was, as the kids would say, box office, really fun to watch.

But beyond that, he appeared to be like this emerging talent that could like be the face of the league for a minute and have everything that you want in the modern NBA with the league guard with that length, athleticism, and you know, he's never been an awesome three point shooter, but he was making in roads in that direction.

And now we find ourselves with yet another suspension, and I've lost track of how many issues he's run into.

I was surprised Memphis moved on from Taylor Jenkins, who I thought was a really good coach.

I don't know much about this Aya Solo dude, Tomasaya Solo, but I guess he and jogging into it after the Laker loss and you know, they suspend him for a game and they lost the other night, and he was simply asked, are you enjoying playing basketball?

And he said no, it only takes one team.

And he's talented enough that I'm sure there would be interested.

But is this Does this feel like it's now untenable?

Do you think Memphis has to figure something else out?

Well, it's gonna be interesting.

You know, his current attitude and his responsors and recent days in those kind of interviews have led you to feel like, oh, here comes the next Jimmy Butler saga from last year in Miami, where he was doing great.

He was one of their he was their guy.

He was leading them in playoffs and tough games and all that, and then he got into it and didn't like the way that he was being treated internally for whatever the reason, and all of a sudden it flipped on a dime, and now he doesn't like the Miami and now he wants out and he got into it.

Pat Riley, he's the one guy to get into it, because you're never going to win that battle.

And so as we saw what happened is he eventually moved on.

Now in Golden State, it feels like it's that kind of a thing with Morant.

You're exactly right, you know, a few years ago, he was one of the young studs capable of being one of the league guys in the league.

He had all the has, all the athletics, the ability.

His issue, in my opinion, being being you know, two thousand miles away and not being there every day.

It seems like his head has gotten in the way of his game and he's developed an attitude that he's bigger than the program.

That's what it looks like to me.

And in Miami that seemed like that's what was happening with Jimmy Butler.

He was in line with them for a long time and then all of a sudden the next day he was out of line and didn't want to be part of it, and all of a sudden, you know, had started knocking.

And we saw what happened with that just feels like it could be a similar type thing.

The issue is going to be his money, because you're going to have to if they want to move on from him, You're going to have to get some team that can afford to take or or flip a guy who's making similar money in the neighborhood of forty million dollars a year.

Uh So you're gonna that that's that's not a very long list of guys you'd have to trade money dollars a dollar for.

You have to find a team that wants him, that believes that they can deal with him.

And and let me tell you a lot of teams always believe that they have the way of handling the guys, and sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Sometimes it takes a special head coach who's in place.

Sometimes it takes a special another player, superstar player, like a Lebron James, like a Steph Curry, whoever it is, to to let you know, this is how we do things here, and if you're coming on board with us, this is the way it's gonna be.

Those things you know are gonna be something that mempers have to has to figure out if this is gonna they're gonna be able to work with long terms.

He's supposedly very tight with Jared Jackson, who's their other star player who was also just given a massive extension this past summer.

So he doesn't like it look like he's going anywhere.

So can Jared Jackson interfere and and and talk to his guy and say, hey, come on, man, we got too good of a thing going.

We got to figure this out.

Whatever with the with the coach who is bringing in an unorthodox system that the players have somewhat been barking at, and uh so that may that may be part of it.

It could also be a Cleveland Cavaliers thing from years ago, uh where where they brought in uh another European coach, the coach the cab and that worked out for one short year and they jettisoned him because because it just didn't jibe with how he was coaching uh an NBA team uh uh in in uh in that regard.

And so there's a lot of those things that have to be fleshed out.

But I can tell you the owners for Memphis of the already concerned because this is their star guy.

This is the guy They've hinged a lot of their marketing, a lot of their ticket buying, sponsorship, all that stuff.

To his genius as a basketball talent, and now he's starting to buck the system a little bit like Alan Iverson in Philadelphia.

He's not Alan Iverson, but he's maybe, you know, half a step below that sphere.

And if that's the kind of stuff you're dealing with, that's a lot of heavy lifting for an organization.

Smitty, I appreciate the time.

I'll look forward to getting you back in studio.

Have a good weekend.

Okay, hikes Fan sech Man.

All right, Matt Brown joins us, coming up on the other side of a quick break.

All right, show roll along today once again.

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We got Thursday Night football on our radio station tonight.

We are your home of the NFL in the market and the biggest and best college football games as well.

The Raiders are.

In Denver to take on the Broncos old school NFL rivalry, two teams headed in very different directions.

We'll do some NFL with Sam Bruckhouse today, but let's welcome in one of my favorites.

It is that time of year where I ask a question and start taking notes because professor Matt Brown from Extra Points on a Thursday.

Matt, how are you, sir?

Hey, I'm doing all right.

Thanks for having me back.

Are you technically a professor or do you just talk like one?

I did actually teach two college classes today at UMAs, but I do not have an advanced degree.

Okay, I can't actually be a professor that with my mom.

Okay, okay, fair enough, fair enough.

Well, I appreciate your time.

Right off the top, do schools in the Big twelve drink more alcohol than BYU drinks more soda and chocolate milk.

By a lot?

I was surprised.

Now I'll break some news here on the air.

The feedback that I got on the very small sample size of booth sales was so great that then that afternoon I blocked off three and a half hours and sent a follow up request for updated data for everybody in FBS and FCS, because I think a number of people said, hey, you know, you know who drinks almost as much as Nebraskans and Wisconsinites, our friends in North and South Dakota, and you need to be able to go get that information too.

What I can tell you is that the soda and chocolate milk data that somebody at BYU shared with me is substantially below I think every other power for schools, beer and wine and cocktail data that I got in the data set.

The joke, as I understand it about BYU they used to say about when they play in the Vegas Bowl was that all the BYU fans would go to Vegas with the copy of the Ten Commandments and a fifty dollars bill and they wouldn't break either.

I think I think there might be a little bit of that with the concessions.

For as much as we know, if this market loves sugary beverages, I suspect they love thrift even more.

Yeah, that's an old Lavell Edwards quote which is hilarious.

Just for our listeners that might be upset.

Lavell Edwards said that, Okay, so everybody understand that that was your legend making that comment.

It's it's such an interesting topic.

What what motive?

So for our listeners that might be confused as to why I'm asking you this?

You you wrote on this, what what what's the origin story here?

Why did you decide to dig into these numbers?

So the honest to God reason this was I was I did not do this to try and create an online public drunkenness war between Tennessee and Nebraska and Wisconsin fans.

I did this because so much of what I cover at Extra Points concerns revenue generation, how schools are earning money, how they're spending money, what are they trying to do to bring in more money?

And and this this is a conversation that I know happens at Utah, and it happens all over the country.

Part of that conversation is around what can we do to better improve game day revenue UH and and the proverbial game day experience.

Most places now sell beer UH, which which wasn't the case at the beginning of my career.

And I wanted to get some ballpark figures for how much money be talking about here, especially given that once you start selling alcohol, you generally have to have more security guards, and you pay different insurance and and things move around.

And so the data that I got showed that Nebraska and Tennessee and West Virginia LSU were all near the very top, and then some MAX.

Schools and some New England.

Institutions near the bottom.

Well.

Then I texted some folks I knew at BYU to try to go to see if their consumption patterns were similar.

Strictly out of curiosity.

Were you able to get like breakdown of how much the beverage sales down in Provo are either chocolate milk or soda?

Do you have like a comparison between the two so the data that.

I have, nobody would share dollar amounts.

As you know, and I'm sure many of our listeners know, trying to get financial information out of anything that's tied into the church is not easy to do.

But my people said, all right, here's the number of chocolate milks.

I want to say the average chocolate milk consumption per home game this year is around thirteen hundred.

Here's the number of like bottled sodas, and here's the number of like refillable soda cups that we have sold.

And that I think has to has to be the issue because if you have a family of six, yeah, you could buy one or two cups and kind of pass that around a little bit if you wanted to save some money, which is not something that the other institutions do.

Were you able to uncover any data on Cougar tail sales, and I.

Think I'm a spoiler.

I think I may do that in a couple of weeks.

Okay, because as part of the follow up that I'm doing here on alcohol sales across all of the country as kind of a different benchmark, I've also asked everybody to send me their hot dog sale data.

So I was trying to think of, like, what's a concession item that literally everybody sells, and you know, everyone's deals are a little bit different, but like, you can't go to a football game in this country and not get a hot dog, So I'm gonna get that.

I should try to get some cookertail information event, you know, just like make sure that we don't tell whoever the surgeon General of Utah is about what kind of a caloric explosion is happening down south.

Whatever that number is, I'm sure it's I'm sure it's going to get some doctor some some chagrin.

I absolutely love that we're talking about this.

It's hilarious to me, but it's one of the reasons that I really enjoy your work up at extra points.

So here in Salt Lake, at Rice Echols, they sell beer for com concerts.

They do not.

Sell beer for Utah football games, which I always got to kick like it felt like for six or seven years BYU fans would come to Salt Lake and then be like, yeah, they were pouring beer all over me.

I'm like, well, no, they weren't, because they don't sell beer.

And if you're going to sneak something in a rice cycles, it'll probably be whiskey b but out beer.

But anyway, course, moving.

Aside from that, based off of your data and you know what you've kind of uncovered, does it feel like college football programs are leaving a tremendous amount of revenue on the table by not selling beer at their games?

I think unquestionably, But that doesn't necessarily mean that they should do it right.

So it was interesting.

I had a long conversation with folks that wis constant about this over the off season, and I say this with love with Wisconsin is probably the state in this country that has the most developed drinking culture, and it would make sense that you would sell the beverages there, and this was they had just started doing it throughout these and the reason was because the stadium was so dagone old there was no place to fit in in taps, and they didn't want to start selling bottled beer until they can make sure they had enough bathrooms.

So sometimes even if you might be able to generate, you know, two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand dollars in alcohol revenue, if you don't have the infrastructure to support that, yeah, it probably does make sense not to do it.

The biggest reason that I have heard, and I do think the preliminary data kind of bears this out in most markets, is that it's actually a positive public safety move because if people feel like they can buy alcohol inside the building, then they become less likely to smuggle it in themselves and maybe engage in more problematic drinking behavior where or feel like you have to get absolutely loaded in the parking lot before you come in.

How much of an issue this is, I think is going to depend on the market.

I don't know if I could speculate what the drunkest place is going to be, but this is I know, a sore spot among many fan bases.

This is something that comes up with Iowa State fans in the Big twelve a lot.

I want to say, Kansas State does not have a very widespread alcohol sale within their stadium.

You definitely will generate more revenue if you do that.

Whether it makes sense for your stadium, your fan base, and your donors, it's a different question.

Yeah, And I believe it's a state law that is in place that does not allow Utah to sell beer during its football games.

Like I said, arricycles as concerts where they're going to sell beer.

Sure, and maybe you do, true.

Yeah, and maybe you don't have information on this, but you kind of alluded to the logistics that you have to put in place when you make the decision to move into the space of selling beer alcohol during a college football game.

What does that look like.

Let's just play hypothetical.

Let's say Taylor Randall, President of the U, Mark Carlin athletic Director, see extra points and see a few million bucks potentially left on the table, and they say, okay, we we want to sell beer at Utah football games.

What what sort of red tape would they have to traverse?

Well, I think one to your to your point, Utah, as I understand it, tends to have more draconian alcohol rules than almost anywhere else in the country.

So yeah, right, you're gonna have to go check to see all right, if we're gonna sell alcohol, do we have to do that weird curtain thing?

Do we have to have it of a certain ABV?

Like, what do we have to do to make Governor Cox feel good about this decision?

You have to do all of that, and then you have to sit down and with your risk management team and your operations crew and figure out, Okay, if we're going to start doing this, where in the stadium can we sell beer?

Because what we don't want is to only have two places where you can do it.

Have a gigantic line creates a choke point, causes problems.

You know, you navigating around the stadium.

You have to make sure that you have enough bathrooms, and you're gonna need to get more bathrooms because if people drink beer, they have to pee more often, and so you have to picture that there's there.

You know that that even if you have to set up temporary facilities throughout the same so you don't have those kind of issues.

And then as you have the security and the insurance and the rest of the personnel in and around the stadium to make sure that you could do this in an orderly way and a pretty common way to kind of do it.

As a dry run is to is to just sell beer and beer and cocktails in your premium seating sections as a start, and then begin to kind of spread out from there once you figure out, okay, we can handle four hundred very drunk, you know, drunk bridge people.

Now, let's see if we can handle forty seven thousand and fifty two thousand other people.

Not, of course not might not like everyone in a Utah game is going to be drinking anyway, it's you know, it's it'll be it'll be a different thing what I could when I started my career doing this, and was pretty unusual for college stadiums to sell alcohol unless they played in a professional stadium.

And it was really a lot of you know, pacifically in West Coast schools and like South Louisiana kind of places that we're doing this.

But it's now it's kind of spread across the country, and I think people are realizing you can definitely manage this risk and having you know, some Modello's does not necessarily turn your stadium into some kind of bach and all, especially if you if you have if you have security, and you educate your your your fans about what is and isn't acceptable.

I don't.

I don't think it's really an issue very many places now.

Was there ever, and you know, because you just referenced when you started doing this, it was pretty rare.

Was there ever an NC double a you know, kind of country wide rule that nobody was allowed to do it?

Or or why has there been a change as far as the number of schools that are now doing it compared to when you kind of started covering the sport.

And you know, I'll give you I'll give you an example.

I don't know if I've said that on the air here before, but like one of my very early professional writing gigs, you know, around two thousand and nine, I was covering a college baseball game at the University of New Orleans.

Now, I had a day job then, and I would stringer a kind of at night in and around New Orleans events and at this baseball game and UNL had to add a decent program.

Back then, they had a Foamer homer and if somebody hit a home run during the Fomer Homer, everybody in the stadium got a free beer, and that included the press box.

I mean, you know, it wasn't it wasn't a it was like a six eight ounce corps like cup.

Right, So it's basically just breadwater, but they would bring it out to everybody and nobody died, right But that But that's New Orleans that has that, that's the place has a very different attitude about alcohol than lots of lots of other places.

But what has changed so much, I think has not so much been an NCAA rule over the last fifteen years as it's been a crushing need for athletic departments everywhere to generate more revenue.

And I think a generally more promissive attitude about all kinds of things that in the nineties or early two thousands or mean when you and I were first starting this business that would have been thought of as like unheard of, we can never do this in college sports.

And whether that's now with explicit gambling tides, whether that's now with potentially private equity, whether that's not just selling alcohol but allowing alcohol companies or casinos or sin industries to advertise in your stadium.

I mean at Louisville you can even buy like a CBD drink, you know, in the stadium while you're watching.

And the idea of doing that ten years ago, especially in like Kentucky, would have been would have been ludicrous.

I wrote about this, I think last week.

And I'm not saying this to be like a troll or provocative or anything.

I think the industry has changed so much that it's really difficult to think of a kind of like a kind of activation or marketing plan that would that would be so offensive that schools wouldn't do it.

Then a couple of markets maybe firearms, certainly adult entertainment, and that's really about it.

And I don't think that was the case when we.

Started Interesting You bring Out because I wanted to move over into the space of, you know, allowing college athletes to bet on pro sports now and and it's certainly a dynamic that Adam Silver has had to deal with this with this year, with the Chauncey Billups situation, you know, coaching one night and then arrested at six am and in his house the next morning, Terry Rozier from the Miami Heat.

So look, I think, and look, I'm not a pearl clutcher on many things.

When it comes to this trend in society, I don't see it ending.

Well at all.

I believe in the UK, they had to put a lot of regulations on betting, you know, on English football, on the Premiership, on the Premiership because of all the chaos it was causing societally, the toothpastes out of the tube.

And you know, I think it was the athletic who did a piece indicating seventy percent of college males have a betting app on their phone that they're actively using.

You know, their frat bro suddenly hits a twenty thousand dollars parlay and they're like, okay, well, if Broccoli Rob can do it office reference, then I can do it too, obviously, But do you think it's a good idea to allow these college athletes to bet on pro sports?

So this is a really good question, And if you had asked me that question like three weeks ago, I would have told you, honestly, it's probably yes and not because I think that gambling is like as a as a societal good.

I'm with you.

I think this is one of the candful of things where I think I've become more of a Puritan over the last little while.

But my initial thought was if seventy percent of college men have this app on their phone and only a tiny handful of college athletes could potentially have any kind of inside information or connection to a pro player and then use that to gain an advantage.

It seems like it's silly to ban this because there's no possible way to enforce that rule.

No one wants to, you know, to penalize a third of their roster because they put fifteen bucks on the Super Bowl.

So we should we should change the rules.

So we're only going to enforce the most the most malignant of examples, and and you know, be reasonable well with with with what we within our control.

And then let's talk to Gene Taylor about this, who's the AD at Kansas State and is not a guy that I think is super prone to you know, hyperbole, are a public outbursts or anything.

And he was quite against the NCAA making this change to allow athletes to bet.

And what he told me was, look, if you're a power school, you can afford to pay for the gaming integrity services that can stop this sort of thing and catch it much easier than than maybe I had originally thought.

The biggest worry that I have about this world is less about athletes college athletes betting on pro sports or less about the NBA scandal, because I do think a lot of that isn't totally analogous to what happens here in college.

But what I would be worried about, I don't think there's a good solution to this.

Are people within the trusted network of a college athlete either asking for the ass to shave some points or throw a prop bet so that guy can win money to go help his is his extended unit, or if he's being blackmailed or forced into participating into one of these schemes, which is kind of what happened within the NBA, and that I don't think there's a there's a there's a good solution to here.

The college sports ecosystem I think is way more vulnerable to gambling related problems than fans and even some administrators I think want to admit.

But it's not like Charlie Baker or any of these ads can ban gambling if we if we could, I would, honestly that would be what I would prefer.

What happened is we'd go back to how it used to be, where you could gamble in Atlantic City, Vegas, or you'd have to go somewhere that felt like societally skeezy and make you think that you were doing something that was a little bit antisocial.

Now it's it's so ubiquitous.

I don't think a lot of the low and mid major programs are really capable of dealing with what's with what's been unleashed.

That's a really good point about the inner circle of athletes.

Unfortunately, and tier there's nothing you can do about that.

Yeah, that's an angle I hadn't really considered.

I want to move over here, Matt.

We talked a little bit earlier about this with Kyle Montager.

From the ESPN.

As of now, nine power.

For schools are looking for head coaches Stanford, UCLA, vo Tech, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, Penn State, Florida, LSU, and now Auburn.

What do you attribute this to?

Why are we seeing this?

And these are some of these are marquee like top tier jobs, and it feels like this is very early in the calendar to have this many jobs open.

Why do you think we're dealing with this in college football?

You know, I think part of that is because last year's cycle was uncommonly slow.

I'm trying to remember.

I think the biggest job that opened last year is probably UNC which didn't exactly go through like a typical open, open hiring process.

So you had a few schools that were thinking we could be justified and firing our coach.

But let's let's throw in some money to nil.

Let's kind of roll the dice one more year.

See, you know, had to buy at go down a little bit, so you had you have that world.

But I think one of the other other dynamics, and it's hard for me to kind of talk about this with that's sounding like some kind of like political crank.

But I think the honest to god truth here is the buyos or P four coaches are not really paid for most of the time by the kind of people that buy season tickets, the kind of people that you and I might consider to be like conventionally rich, right right, Like somebody who makes one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year and lives in a nice Saltlake suburb and gives money to the University of Utah is an important donor.

But and and somebody that that's that the university needs to continue to court.

But if you hypothetically had to come up with twenty two million dollars to buy out a coach.

There's like three guys and they and the kinds of places where you're fishing for that kind of money.

They're so rich that they're insulated from a lot of the other forces that you and I and even our wealthier neighbors or colleagues face.

And if somebody who can write a forty million dollar check and not blank wants to change the football coach, and you see fan attendance begin to decline and interest begin to decline.

Every incentive within an athletic department points.

To doing that thing.

And it's this very surreal kind of way of writing a story every year because almost everybody acknowledges that the economics of this entire market are broken and dumb, and we thought that there would be a reason for this to kind of claw back a little bit now that schools have to directly pay athletes and some of the revenues should be floating away.

I even wrote about this, I think a couple of days ago.

How I believe that in this context money isn't real because there's just enough hyper rich people who aren't anywhere near that donor fatigue breaking point when it comes to seeing their favorite college football team win.

I guess we're closer to the English Premier League oligarch model the maybe, I thought.

Matt, great stuff, as always, my man, And where can people go find your work?

You can go find my serious professional reporting on hot dogs, beer sales, conference for your linement, video game news, and all that stuff at extra Points mb dot com.

Thanks buddy, you have a great weekend.

Okay, of course you too, you too, you will.

All right, Matt Brown, I'm telling you I have subscribed to that newsletter for years.

It is wildly entertaining.

Extra Points and the other thing I mean, he's tongue in cheek about his current reporting about juxtaposing BYU's chocolate milk consumption to Wisconsin's beer consumption, but it's a really phenomenal newsletter to understand the current landscape of the business of college football.

He wrote a piece after July first, after the House NCAA settlement that made it very digestible to understand the landscape and how it shifted that day.

Extra Points dot Com.

Great guest, really good dude.

Always appreciate Matt's time.

A couple hours away from the start of Week ten in the NFL, Hard to believe that it's actually Week ten, But here we are.

We have the Broncos and the Raiders.

It is an old school NFL rivalry between two teams moving in two very different directions.

Our next guest Weekly Conversation with the Great Sam broadcast from Sumer Sports.

Hello Sam, how are you, buddy?

I'm doing fantastic.

We had Lindsay on yesterday.

We had Lindsay Roads on yesterday.

She is a fountain of knowledge.

What's it like working with her?

You guys must have some good chemistry.

Yeah.

Look, Lindsay is the consummate professional and has been an excellent mentor for me in my career.

She's seen it all and as a result, she's such a wealth of knowledge and brings such great perspective, and I think her experience and her analytical view on things kind of contrast my playing experience and my analytical view on things.

So check out the Sumer Sports Show with me and Lindsay every Wednesday.

Next week we'll be doing our Midway All Pro Team and so I'll be crunching those numbers on Sunday and banging those out.

But Lindsay's absolute best.

Tell me you reference your playing career, tell it.

Tell me about your football backgrounds, your football life had you what's what's your what's the Sam Bruckhause Orgon story?

When'd you know you love this sport?

And how'd you get to where you're at now?

Yeah?

So I come from a football playing family.

My dad played briefly at Macnee State in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where I'm from.

My cousin's coach.

Uh, most of most of my family are coaches and teachers.

So came up through that Louisiana high school football, made my way over to Tulane, where I played linebacker.

Look, I wasn't the best.

I was a special team's ace my senior year.

But you gain an appreciation for the level of play that occurs at the collegiate level, Division one level.

Down there at two lane, we had multiple NFL guys that are still there.

Dorian Williams of the Buffalo Bills, Patrick Johnson who you'll see on the Eagles field camp, sample on the Bengals, Taj Spears.

I could go on and on, but you gain a true appreciation for the work that you have to put in.

I mean, you're basically in class from hours of five am to nine am.

Then you are on the field from nine am to eleven am.

Then you're in the weight froom from eleven to twelve.

Then you have real class at that level for the rest and that's not even including your own film study and your own weight room stuff.

And so you really get a level of discipline that's really fun, and it, you know, helps helps me in my job now, just that discipline, but also understanding the game, understanding what is going on on the field.

Somebody you played at that level.

I always like to ask the former college guys, and sometimes I feel bad because I'm rubbing it in, but you know, you didn't play during the time where you could get paid, and now these these guys are getting paid.

And look, I said for years that I thought the NCAA and still stand on this was a extremely corrupt organization building a multi billion dollar business on the backs of employees.

That they don't have to pay.

I know there are complications with it, and I'm sensitive to all that stuff, But do you like the fact that you know, college players now are able to basically have the same basic economic right that every other American has.

I absolutely love it.

But Spence, I'm a little biased.

My freshman year, I tore my ACL tour basically everything in my knee.

I was lucky enough to get an internship while I was rehabbing with an NBA agent.

I represented guys like Langston Galloway, Tyrs Thomas.

Jay Huff who is now with Indiana Pacers was one of our guys.

And you gain an appreciation for the other side, for what it's like to be a professional player and having all these responsibilities and having to be compensated for it.

Obviously at the time, I was not compensated, was not legal.

We had guys who would get, you know, water bottles handed to them and posted on Instagram, and then all of a sudden would get hit with an NCAA violation that they would have to talk about in all kinds of conferences or councils and stuff like that.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

I'm very pro nil.

As an ex player and a person who has been in player representation before, I think it is better for the game.

I mean, you go look at Utah versus Cincinnati.

That's a ranked matchup.

Now you go look at Texas Tech.

What Texas Tech is doing.

They've built a brand off the back of NIL and look, once again, I'm biased.

Two Lane has one of the best NIL outfits in the G five.

We're starting to see teams like that compete as well SMU.

Given their NIL outfit was able to compete at the G five level, then automatically go compete at the ACC as well.

I think it evens the playing field and I think it makes it a better environment for players to play in, given that you know you're risking.

I mentioned I tore my ACL.

There's guys who have massive injuries on a field that cuts their future earning short.

And sometimes it's not even just in football.

Sometimes it's your ability to lift stuff and so that really can affect people's lives.

So I am one hundred percent pro INIL and moreover, the college game, ironically, from the analytical side, is one of the few games where we can actually value a win.

When Tu Lane goes to the Cotton Bowl, we could actually value the marketing dollars that that added to the school as a whole.

That's not even to consider like the state program or whatever.

And so it's one of the few things where we can actually value what the value of a win is at the P five level, the G five level and upset.

We've seen programs like Gonzaga in basketball basically build a whole brand off of these collegiate athletes and grow their school as a result.

You can't really do that in the NFL, where there's thirty two teams.

It's a monopoly for the most part.

Most of the teams are are locked into a cap structure and stuff like that.

So you're in a situation where you can truly value each player and their contribution on the field, and I'm very glad that teams teams are outlaying that to players.

Now, you reference the Utah Cincinnati game, and I do want to do mostly pro with you today, but you're an analytical guy, and I just continue to find it really fascinating that most of the advanced metrics really value Utah in a way that the AP doesn't necessarily, and the fact that if they do have two losses, yet you look at things like the s and P Plus and the Football Power Index, they're basically telling us SMP plus has Utah six, Football Power Index has Utah at seven, and the CFP committee clearly agrees, because while Utah is seventeen in the AP, they're thirteen in the CFP rankings.

I don't know what sort of data you have at your disposal, and I know that you're kind of focused on pro football, but your thoughts on the fact that most of these advanced metrics really value the Utah Utes.

So I think let's just break it down piece by piece.

You look at their offense right now, it's not the most explosive offense, but it is an incredibly successful offense.

Right now, they're sitting right around the top thirty in expected points out and for play, but they're very good in success rate.

What's that means is they're not getting the explosive plays.

And we've talked about Spence, how Devin Dampier is not going to throw it super deep.

You're not going to have an extremely active or explosive running game as well.

But I mean, ah Lee Cincinnati game, they are sixty six percentile, so not even the top third in expected points at it on the day, but they control the game, massive increase in plays over Cincinnati, control possession play behind that offensive line, which is extremely analytically valuable in our war ratings and our player value metrics.

They're doing extremely well across the offensive line.

Particularly with those two NFL level tackles, and they continue to win big, they continue to beat the teams they're supposed to beat pretty badly, and then you play two tight games against two top twelve rated teams BYU in Texas Tech.

That'll put you at a.

Very high value in these rankings.

I think, as it pertains now, they are going to be favored in all their remaining games basically until the Big Twelve championship.

And as a result, they kind of are they do they control their own destiny, not necessarily, but for the most part.

You win out, you're probably in the college football playoff right now.

One more question, then we'll move over.

It also has become very clear it's really manifested that the Big twelve has three good football teams, and then there's a massive gap between three and whoever you think is four.

I think a lot of people think it's Cincinnati.

But if I asked you to rank, and maybe the data says something here Texas Tech BYU Utah and order of who you think the best teams are in order, what would you say?

Sam?

Yeah, I think if you look at our player value metrics and our actual monetary valuations, plays you gotta go with Texas Tech.

I mean, they outlaid the money and they have the defensive line, offensive line, wide receivers, quarterbacks to make a run for real.

They're an immensely physical team and they're doing it on both sides of the ball.

Extremely high, have a grate, extremely efficient offense.

I think they're number one.

I'm a little hesitant on BYU.

I think that obviously they beat Utah.

You gotta look at it, and I think they're probably at the same level at Utah.

But you got a rookie quarterback, you're not exactly the most explosive offense of all time, and you're not exactly an excellent defense.

I just worry that they don't excel at anything.

And then you look at Utah.

A quality offense, for sure, very successful.

They struggle a little bit in stopping the run, but they have an excellent pass stopping defense.

I think that is what puts them slightly above BYU in my eyes.

But I do think it's Texas Tech, Utah, and then BYU right now.

Last thing, Texas Texas Tech favored by ten and a half over Brigham Young.

When they do battle coming up in Lubbock on Saturday morning.

Who do you like?

You think Tech wins and covers you think by you can hang in?

What are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean ten and a half is a huge cover, But given that breakdown I just gave, it makes sense to me, at least analytically.

I think when you got guys like David Bailey, like the defensive tackles they have, it's gonna be a rough It's gonna be a rough game to overcome for Bear Bachmeyer, the rookie quarterback, And as a result, I think it has to be Texas Tech.

It's going to be a massively competitive game BYU scraps it out.

So I don't know quite if Texas Tech is going to be able to cover that spread.

It's a big one.

But I do like Texas tack on the money lines.

All right.

Sam Lindsay tried to make me feel better about my New York Football Jets yesterday, and.

I've tried to do it last week to Spence.

No, you did.

But now we've got new news is they're trading some of their best young players.

Sas Gardner as a cold, Quinnin Williams is a cowboy.

I know I'm supposed to be excited about the future, but as a Jet fan, that's hard for me to stomach.

Do you like what they decided to do prior to the trade deadline?

I like it.

I mean it's a clear decision.

It shows clear process.

And in the National Football League nowadays, when you're trying to rebuild these teams who have struggled for decades, much to your sugar and spence, you gotta have a process.

We saw it with the Carolina Panthers, who now sit right around five hundred years prior.

We saw it with the Detroit Lions.

They had primo players, at least.

In the eyes of the league.

They gave them a half of the year to compete, and in terms of expected points outed per play allowed, this team's like twenty eighth.

You just cannot continue to do that if you have players that people are going to offer first and second round picks for.

I mean, it's premium draft capital.

It gives you a long leeway, it gives you options.

You can cash those in for players you know are good, or you can use it in the draft.

And so I think there's hope in Florham Park right now that there probably wasn't going to be had soft and had to still been on the team basically as the season went on.

I mean, like Frankly, the defense can't get much worse.

The real question is is, like Frankly, they weren't that bad in success rate.

I think they were about league average and defensive success rate.

The question is can they maintain that.

I'm of the mind that they probably can.

They kept a lot of key pieces that are a little bit younger, not as highly paid.

Jermaine Johnson, the two linebackers Sherwin Williams, will McDonald's had a pretty good year up till now, and then you kind of keep the pieces in the secondary.

Brandon Stevens has played well and honestly outperformed what he did in the Ravens.

He's played about up to what his contract really is.

So you can't expect the defense to get worse.

And now you got two, well really three first round picks in the deck and a second round pick.

I think there were good deals.

I think they evaluated what their team was this year and thought that they could still make, you know, progress as a team moving forward without those two guys.

And I'm inclined to agree.

I think you really look at the metrics all around, and I think it was a pretty sound decision, and it gives them a little bit of leeway for the next two years to go after a quarterback, go after positions of needs, so forth, and so on.

I think Lindsay made a good point yesterday about the Colt side of this.

You know, maybe you saw this coming with the Colts.

I certainly didn't.

Yeah, you know, but ultimately they're in the mix and they decide to, you know, push their chips into the center of the table.

And oftentimes in Pro football, contending teams that might be a piece or two a way decide to sit on their hands, But the Colts didn't.

What do you like about this from their perspective?

If you're just sheerly looking at the metrics that matter, Spence, right now, they are first in point differential and it's not particularly close.

Number two is the Chiefs.

As a result, they have a lot of wins.

You look at even Daniel Jones, what he's doing in terms of his efficiency, his success rate, and how he's contributing in both the running and the passing game.

He's doing extremely well.

It just feels and look, I'm an analytical guy.

I get paid to do data science, but it just doesn't feel correct with Jones right now, and I think everyone's waiting for the shoe to drop.

They go and play a Steelers team, which frankly is average.

They've been averaged for years, and they have an aging quarterback, they have an aging secondary, and you see it kind of explode.

I'm not going to be the guy who's going to say that this is the way it's going to be for the rest of the year.

And do I think saltz Gartner is a great addition.

Yes, he's going to lock down that defense.

I think they recognize that they're going to have to play a little bit more defensive game and get, you know, some of the heat that's going to come as the pressure mounts and mounts and mounts into the playoffs off of Daniel Jones using that defense, which has an excellent front, and I think they're going to really try to smother teams now, both with an excellent front and a staggering back seven, particularly when Sharvarius Ward comes back.

But I don't I just don't know.

When you build through the trenches, it ends up good.

They have a lot of good pass catchers, including tyler Ie, the standout rugby.

Jonathan Taylor is a potential Offensive Player of the Year candidate, But it just comes down to do you believe in Danny Dimes.

Who've seen it before where he kind of stumbles in the second half of the season.

This really feels to me like that Titan season from a long ago when Terry Collins came in.

I believe they had Vince Young on the team or something like that.

All of a sudden they're sitting at eight and one or something like that, and it kind of broke apart at the end of the year.

I think they are who they are and thus far with this similar roster SAMs Danny Jones, it's been, you know, a five hundred or slightly above five hundred, staggering in the playoff team.

I think we're going to see a little regression of that, just based off what we've seen over the last two or three years.

But all the metrics stay there for real.

So when it's data science, Sam, the metrics are for real.

They're a real team.

Go and get you, Sauce Gardner, go win a Super Bowl.

Just the general feel of it I don't really love right now.

Before we move off the trade deadline.

I'll just ash did generally speaking, what other deals did you like?

What other deals left you scratch in your head.

I really liked the Jalen Phillips move by the Eagles.

You look at that defense right now, and it is haralded as one of the best defenses in the league.

The metrics just aren't there right now.

They're kind of struggling against the run.

They have a lot of injuries, and they haven't held up there into the bargain with regards to the offense versus the defense last year.

This is a completely defensively led team.

They want to go out there and play nickel and not have to utilize, you know, a ton of linebackers and heavy sets.

They want to go out there and play light boxes and dominate.

Jalen Phillips right now is performing at a Pro Bowl level, a true impact starter for a pretty rough Dolphins defense.

The injuries are a question mark, but I think utilizing a third round pick where.

The Eagles moved from the.

Tenth most draft capital to the eleventh most draft capital is not going to hurt you.

I think that was an excellent outlay of capital for a position of need that likely will affect the bottom line on defense.

So we'll have Thursday Night Football on the station tonight, about ninety minutes or so away from an old school NFL rivalry, but two teams really moving in the same direction.

Obviously, Denver's defense's elite, and Bonix and Sean Payton have proven that partnership is something that looks like it'll be fruitful for quite some time.

We've got a lot of Broncos fans in the market, and then we're close to Vegas too.

We got a lot of Raiders fans in the market.

Can the Raiders make this interesting?

Does it feel like it's going to be one sided?

Obviously it'll be tough for them to move the football.

What do you think we're going to see tonight?

The man to watch to understand how this game is going to go talanoa Hufunga.

Right now, he is the best player at his position across positions, meaning the way he is playing at safety is not only at a certifiable all pro level, but he's like literally performing at the top of the top of what we've seen safeties do.

He's being used in the pass rush, he's being used as a basically a linebacker and run defense.

He's being used in coverage.

The man is doing a lot for this Broncos vance Joseph Coach defense.

And if he is making impact plays against Gino Smith and he's causing problems that do not allow the ball to get to Brock Bauers and the wide receivers, I think this is game set match for the Broncos.

I think they're going to overpower him with defense.

Bo Nicks has been limiting mistakes.

We've talked about it over and over.

His SAC percentage is back to extremely low, and it's just up bow Knicks not to make kind of the Auburn bo Nicks plays to be Oregon Bo Nicks.

And so I think if TA know whu funga is utilized correctly, they're unable to get targets to Bronck Bowers and Bonix continues playing with the level of at least average consistency or at least not negative consistency.

This is probably going to chalk up to be a Broncos victory.

Vegas is able to move the ball.

How do they do that?

You know?

Will they be able to you know?

Five?

Obviously, Ashton Genty is a really promising young rookies from our region of course, playing at Boise States.

You know, I'm a Jets fan.

I know the Geno Smith experience can be wild.

If Vegas is able to move the football, how do they do it?

Yeah, I think you look at what Chip Kelly has done all over his career and it's innovative.

Obviously, their best weapon is Brock Bowers.

They have Ashton Genty as well.

Can we see the geno of old Perhaps we haven't seen it this year.

So I'd like to see something that we've kind of seen a trend of in the last couple of weeks, which is teams going heavy, adding multiple tight ends, maybe an extra offensive line to try to force that Broncos defense to bring Hufunga in the box or to add another linebacker and then try to force a bad matchup with Brock Bauers.

Unfortunately for them, they are all pros, Pro Bowl Impact starter level performers all across this Broncos defense, so it will be tough.

There's a reason why the Broncos have an extremely successful record over the past two years.

There's a reason why they're one of the top ranked defenses for the past two years.

But I'd like to see them utilize that because the best offenses in the leagues and the standout offenses that have kind of, you know, kind of jumped out at us, the Colts, the Seahawks.

That's how they've been doing it this year, despite struggles in the run game from the Seahawks, despite a question market quarterback early for the Colts.

So I want to see if they can go heavy.

You know, they have bodies at the tight end position that they trust, they have extra offensive linemen that they trust.

I want to see if.

That can spring Bauers loose in the past game in particular, and perhaps open.

Up the run as a result as well.

Before I say you lose that.

You know, I talked to Lindsey about this yesterday as well.

We like to track our local players and you hope that they succeed and do well.

And you know, after the Michael Parsons trade, I think a lot of people around here excited for Jordan Love and what the Packers could.

You know, essentially turn into my question is simple.

I'm sure the response is not are they good at football?

I cannot figure them out.

I think Jordan Love is good at football.

I think the problem right now from a personnel perspective, is inconsistenc yet offensive line and I think when you really dig deep into our summer scores, we don't really have a guy in the top third of offensive linemen performing at on that offensive line right now.

And this is an offense that wants to be a power offense.

They want to run play action, they want to get Josh Jacobs off.

It's very rare in analytics that we are able to separate the offensive line and the running back.

This is one of the rare occasions where our tracking technology has identified that Josh Jacobs is actually doing a good job and the offensive line is really struggling.

I think the key right now is that Matt Lafleur is struggling to find an identity for this offense.

I talked about it over there in Green Bay in the Wisconsin radio market, but they kind of confirmed what the analytics we're seeing with their eye tests that they're kind of the median right now, and under center they're not doing really well in the run game.

That can't figure that out.

Under center, they're running a lot of play action, but it's not going extremely well.

However, their passing offense is still really good.

Their pass rate over expected is pretty low.

They're running the ball quite a lot in pass situations.

I think that their identity should be just putting the ball in Jordan Love's hands, letting it fly the way that he did at Utah State.

I think it's finally time to take the chains off and she if Jordan Love can be a true franchise quarterback and a drop back offense, that's what I think their identity should be.

Perhaps they'll find another one, but it'll be on the back of Jordan Love, and it'll be really tightly correlated with the progression of this offensive line.

Sam tell us about sumer Brain, and then where everybody can go find your work?

Yeah, check us out suomer Brain.

It's an excellent tool.

I use it every day.

In fact, me and one of our interns we're using it today to figure out what EPA lost occurs on pressures.

So Jonathan Garnard was the guy we were looking at.

We were going in asking when Jonathan Gernard gets a pressure, what is the impact of the play in terms of expected points at it.

That's data you literally can't get anywhere else for free.

So go check it out.

Soomersports dot com.

Slash suomer Brains and check us out on soomersports dot com.

We'll be writing an all prolists mid season using our Sooomer scores.

It'll be really interesting to see who comes out on top.

Will be working on that on Monday.

It'll be out midweek.

Great stuff, Sam, enjoy the games this weekend.

We'll get you back on next week.

Thank you very much, Sam Brockoutzoomer sports Man.

These Soomer sports people are just a fountain of information.

Good stuff there.

Thursday Night football comes your way Tonight's it will be right after we say a good night between the Broncos and the Raiders.

Break your news.

We reference this earlier today Antonio Brown taking into custody on an attempted murder charge stemming from a shooting after a celebrity boxing event in Miami.

He was in Dubai posting on social media.

Now, look, my advice to you if you're on the lamb is uh, don't find yourself in that situation, right like, do not escape when you're potentially facing charges.

But in the instance that you find yourself in that spot, I'm not sure that posting your location on social media is the wisest move.

I'm old school though, like I said, do not evade the police.

But in the instance that you do, if you're trying to continue your life away and out of jail, maybe don't geotag yourself on social Yeah.

I'll plead the fifth on whether speaking from experience right here fair enough.

Nor have I been to Dubai, so I don't know how the you know, the extradition laws work in that regard if you are going to be doing it though, Yeah, know the extradition laws.

And how about I'm in a back forward, I'm I'm gonna go back.

Don't shoot guns with people at celebrity boxing matches.

Yes, yes, the important disclaimer we are very anti that, and we're also anti evading arrests.

Let's be very clear about where we stand here.

But if you are going to attempt to evade arrest, yeah, the drive stance officially, yeah, you know, do it covertly.

It's part of the kind of part of the deal.

Yeah.

Like if a buddy of mine called me as I, dude, I'm in trouble and I'm in Dubai and I do not want to get arrested.

Do you have any advice I'd be like, yes, here's the advice.

Lets your phone down.

Do not send out social media posts indicating exactly where you are to your followers on social because that would, you know, tip the hand of law enforce.

It's decent advice.

It is all right, Thursday night football.

I cannot believe it's week ten of the NFL.

Dude.

We always do this, supporter every year.

There are certain football fans where it's like you're almost over, yeah, like your addicts okay, and we hear from you during the offseasons like I won't loosen too a football, and then football shows up and we blink and it's just like almost done.

I mean three games left for the most part in college football, and it's week ten of the NFL.

Dude, we are actually inching towards the end.

It's a little bit of a blessing because it's so fast and fun and front and like it's a frenzy, right, But also like you know me well enough now, Spence that you know that I'm not like a super social guy at the end of the day.

But something I get like bubbly about is football, and it's so it's gone so fast.

So I'm with you.

The days are getting shorter and the football is, you know, only a couple months still, so enjoy it.

Last time the Big Twelve had a game featuring two teams in the top ten was twenty twenty two, so BYU text to tech a big one.

The last time a true freshman led a team to an eight and zero record, it was Trevor Lawrence who was a freshman at Clemson and they won the national championship.

So obviously we'll continue to get you ready for a big game in the Big Twelve and talk some Utes even though they're on a bye supporter before we say good night for Thursday Night football, Well it comes our way on a Friday weekend edition of the program.

Not technically a football Friday with the Utes on a bye, but of course still some Big Twelve BYU chatter on a Friday.

How about some hoops talk?

Though Tony Jones, our old friend, was gonna stop by the program, I'm sure some jazz stuff even though he's in Philly.

I think he broke the Kessler News.

So we'll still get some Tony Jones on the on the airwaves here and there.

NBA Daily Assist Style with our GUYBA our guy Dave Mcminnimon Paul Pugmyer for Utah Golf update, and then we'll turn it over to college football.

Trevor Riley is in studio for an entire hour.

As I say every time Trevor's in studio, it is must listen radio because you never know where we're gonna go, so stay tuned for that.

We'll say good night special.

Thank you Kyle Bonneger, Richard Smith, Matt Brown, and Sam Bruckhouse for any of the sound you may miss from the show.

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He's Porter, I'm Spen saying, and I enjoy your Thursday night the Broncos and the Raiders after a quick break right here on ESPN seven hundred