Breaking down all the exes at OHS. It's Steve Rivera and Jagin Saliz.
This is I on the Ball on Fox Sports fourteen to fifty. Welcome back
down on the ball here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm jaking zalids on.
My partner, Ski Rivera is out until Monday. One's here running the
board and running the breaking news. Go ahead, one, This is I
on the Ball, breaking news on Fox Sports fourteen to fifty. Alrighty,
Happy Friday to everyone out there. Starting off tonight with a monumental Game six
in the Stanley Cup Finals, the Florida Panthers are taking all the Edmonton Oilers
at Edmonton, trying to come back from a three y oh series, and
it's been pretty impressive to watch it to this point. It's it's it's definitely
interesting. Right. We were talking about this the other day that if you
know, when it went three to zero and then they got to three to
one and beat the hell out of out of the Panthers, then you thought,
okay, you win, you go win back and you win one in
in in Florida. Now it's interesting, and it is Edmonton's at home.
They win the game. Now you know, now you go to a game
seven. I'm I'm looking forward to this. I'm I'm actually gonna watch a
little bit of it tonight. You know, I'll be flipping between that and
the Dodgers. The Dodgers have the Freeway series with the Angels tonight. But
I'm interested and I want to see you game seven. I don't care who
wins. I have no dog in the fight. The only dog I have
is I love Game seven of the Stanley Cup. There's nothing like it.
Not a Game seven in the World Series, not a Game seven in the
in the NBA. The urgency that these teams play within the game seven for
the Cup, it's worth watching and I'd love to see that. I mean,
even just for a game six. This is the game seven for the
Edmonton r right, you know this is this is regardless of the outcome,
this is their last game right game home game of the season. So,
I mean they said it's a sellout crowd. I'm I was hoping it would
be, I guess, so good luck to both teams. Yeah, looking
for a good game. The Copa America started this week. We have Peru
taking on Chile five o'clock. So right after the show wins. I just
ran across the thing that they're complaining about the field conditions there. I was
going to bring that up. A lot of players and teams are complaining about
the field conditions across across for all locations, right right. Well, you
know, as they say, they're playing on football fields and they it's different,
right, I'm sure. I mean, if if you've ever been on
a soccer turf and a football turf, they're different, they're different things,
and so I you know, I can understand that all of that, So
we'll see. I mean, I just in general, I think something's going
on with turf because I mean you go back to the Super Bowl, the
Eagles and the Chiefs, they complained about that field too, right, So
I mean, it's not just limited to one sport. Sure. Sure.
After the Boston Celtics shopped up the NBA Finals, they had their parade,
celebratory parade today around Boston, and good for you see clips of that,
and you know, everybody's drinking and they're having beers. And I said,
there was one where uh Jalen Brown was chugging a bud whiles a bud light.
He drank the bud light and then and he was then in the top
of the bus right on and he reached on and through it, through it
through the window in the bus. They're waving. You know, look,
have a great time. It's a Those things are fun. You just hope
nobody gets killed. I know that there was a shooting at the Chiefs won,
right, So we haven't heard anything like that. But uh, you
know, Boston's had a bunch of you know, they're they're old hat at
this. They've had some There was a picture of a guy on social media
and he had a sign there were like twenty three parades in his lifetime or
something or something. Yeah, it's crazy. I just want one, just
wants one. Well, you know, last time there was a championship here
in twoson, they were turning over cards. So yeah, we you know,
we don't know how to act because we haven't had enough of those in
the college football world. In the middle of their sec move, Oklahoma and
Brett Vanna Bills have agreed to a new six year deal. Well here's the
thing. It's a six year deal and he's getting a four hundred thousand dollars
a year raise, and you know, with all the things going on,
with finances in college athletics and really all the belly aching that's going on by
the colleges, by the universities, by the program saying we're not gonna have
enough money, we don't have enough money. We got to raise more money.
We're gonna we're gonna increase. Yet we're going out and raising coach we're
continuing to raise coaches salaries. Brent Vannabilts is going to be making six something,
eight something a year, eight million a year, eight million a year.
He's only been there two years as a head coach. So it's hard
for me to sit here as a fan and hear these guys say they don't
have any money. Yet coaches are making eight, ten, eleven million dollars
a year. So don't tell me that you don't have the money. You
do or you think you're gonna have it and you're gonna and you're continuing to
spend it. I you know, I'm like, Okay, when are they
gonna and who's going to start right and pull back on this stuff so they've
got the money that they need so that guys like us aren't paying the tab,
you know, the whole tab. It's crazy to me that on one
hand, they're they're bitching about the twenty three million dollar twenty two million dollars
are gonna have to give the players. Yet we're going to keep giving the
coach more and more and more and more and more. It's crazy to me.
I'm pissed about this. I saw that today. The first thing I
did was I got pissed off. I'm like, what are we doing?
It makes no sense. I think I think they just want some stability going
into the SEC. But yeah, like you said, it's been two years,
Brinn, first year, Brent Vanables. How about you saying, you
know what, I don't need a raise. I'm making eight million a year
or seven whatever a year. I don't need any more money. You don't
need to give me a raise. I want to help, you know,
I want to help the situation that we're in. How about saying that one
time, right, you know? How about Jed Fish saying I don't need
seven million a year the five I'm making and Tucson is fine, right,
Not that I want him back here or anything like that, but just the
point being that, no matter what you say, no matter what they say,
these coaches are about the damn money, yeah, and they're the ones
who are bitching about how much all this the nil stuff and the athlete paintings
is gonna hurt athletics. Yet when it comes time, they say, well,
yeah, but I still want mine. It's crap. It pisses me
off. Sorry that was my rant. I mean a lot of people.
I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way exactly. Into the college
basketball world. The Division One Council allot next week on whether or not two
public exhibition games against other Division one programs who replace the close scrimmages against another
D one or an exhibition against the other lower divisions. That would be really
cool, you know, because right now, you know, those two exhibition
games that you get, you know, you're playing a Division too or a
Division three team. They're often not competitive or worse, you lose one,
and your season goes into the crapper, or at least your fans think your
season is going into the crapper. Arizona's lost a couple of those over over
these. I think Sean Miller lost one. I think Loud Olson lost an
exhibition game. But now let's say, you know, especially for the PAC
twelve, right or PAC twelve character. If you're Arizona, you say,
okay, well we'll get Stanford and Cal to come down here for or we'll
get Stanford here and we'll go up and play Cal or whatever you want to
do for these exhibition games that will actually be fun. It might be good,
you know, games to for spectators to go see. Look, I
as a stat guy. I worked one of the private exhibitions that Arizona had
one time under Shawn Miller. They played Saint Mary's and the amount of secrecy
that I couldn't even tell people where I was going. They said, you
can't tell anybody who were playing, You can't tell anybody what the score was.
But they wanted stats, so our stat crew went and worked stats for
the game. But we could not talk about the game at all to anybody.
They said, do not talk to anybody about this. We can get
in trouble if word gets out about what happened at the game. That's I
mean, there wasn't even any media there. It was crazy. It was
like woo. But mostly Arizona has played you know, public exhibition games against
against lower level teams, and people still come to those and you know,
they're fun to watch. But It'd be more fun if they were teams that,
you know, you go get Oregon to come and you know, maybe
go back and forth, you play one at Oregon here, one there,
or something like that. You know, those things would be fun if they
did that. Yeah, it's not necessarily breaking news, but I just saw
this article on a seven to nine center coming into the college college basketball world
going over to the Florida men's basketball team. I just I just saw seven
nine and was already fascinated. Now he's going to go play at Florida.
I saw some clips of this kid. He's you know, there have been
some really tall guys that have been very awkward, right even yell mean right,
big tall guy, but he was a good player. But this kid's
got skills. He I mean, he is tall as hell and go okay,
he's playing against high school guys, so they just throw the ball up
in there and he catches it and dunks it. But you know, there
was a clip you know he's dribbling, you know, like a point guard
bringing the ball up the court. He's got good, you know, physical
look to him, right, he doesn't look awkward out of place. He's
proportional and he only has to jump him out of two inches to dunk.
It'll be interesting to see how how he develops. But he's at the IMG
Academy in Florida, so he's at a basketball academy. He can play basketball.
It's going to be interesting to see. I mean, seven foot nine,
Holy cripes about this, eight years old at six to one. That's
not right. This is unfair. How much more is he going to grow?
Right? What is he seventeen eighteen? Probably? Yeah, you know,
is he still growing? Is he going to get to eight feet?
I think it'd be a sight to see. I hope so you know,
well, look that this is unusual, right for somebody to be that tall.
You just hope that physically and health wise he's as normal as can possibly
be, you know. I mean it was funny was there was a conversation
about him on Dan Patrick's show and they were going around the room saying,
Okay, what's the tallest you would want to be? What's the tallest you
would want to be? Because you know, seven nine, there's so many
things working against you on a daily basis, you know, walking into a
room, getting on an airplane, getting in a car, getting in an
elevator whatever, and that has to be hard. It has to be hard
on you. What's the tallest you would want to be I'm being humble,
probably like six three six four. Yeah right, that's what they were all
pretty much saying. I don't They said, I don't know that. If
you want to be six seven, you know, six three six four,
you'd be an athlete. You could be a pitcher, you could be a
you know, a basketball player, you can be a baseball player, you
know, a tight end or whatever. That's about as tall as i'd want
to be. Six' three, maybe maybe six' four. Now.
I know my son wanted to get to six foot and he's really unhappy with
me that he didn't. But that's the way it goes, son. But
yeah, I mean that's really about about it. You know, after that,
you start having issues, start having issues with getting clothes, you have
issues, you know, sitting on an airplane. I mean I flew with
the UFA basketball team, you know, on their flights and you know Sean
Elliott, you know, watching him squeeze into a seat and coach. I
mean, that's a that's a tough go. It's a tough go. Right.
The last thing I have is that came in a couple maybe an hour
ago that Barry Sanders said revealed that he has experienced heart related health scare.
Didn't provide any details, but said that it was unexpected and that it's been
life changing, life giving him perspective. Right, Well, good for him.
Oh okay, just got to know from Bruce Pasco, he's gotta he
might not be able to come on at all. We'll we'll, we'll figure
this out. But yeah, no, I you know, and you know,
you think about a guy like Barry Sanders, you know, who's probably
continues to be fit and all those things. God, you know, you
just hope the best for him. One of the good guys, right,
he's one of those people where you think he's invincible. Try to hear something
like that, right, right, right exactly? Yeah, it does,
it does? It does? I had I kind of had one here.
Oh okay, you know your geography, right, Kansas City, Yeah,
it's it sits in two states. You've seen this, you know it's part
of it's in Kansas, part of it's in Missouri. Well, today,
the governor of Kansas, the chiefs and the royals are trying to get new
stadiums. Missouri, the state of Missouri, and kansasity said we're not helping.
We're not giving you tax mindy to do this. So Kansas, their
state legislature just passed a bill today allowing the state to offer the Bill of
the Chiefs and the Royals incentives to move their state to get their stadiums built
on the Kansas side of Kansas City, which I think would be a really
really interesting deal. So I'm for it. Yeah, you have the Kansas
right, they have the unique thing right that that'd still be in Kansas City,
but now they're in Kansas as opposed to as opposed to Missouri. You
know, he turn left instead of turning right or whatever, whichever direction you're
coming from. I think it's a really interesting thing, you know. And
look, Kansas City would get to keep its team, but now it's in
Kansas, and boy, you talk about sort of a state rivalry there between
those two states that they know if they steal their team. All right,
let's go and take our break. We're going to come back. Looks like
Bruce is not going to be able to come on after this. We're going
to try and see if we can get Jake Fisher to move up be in
the next segment, and then we'll get Bruce for the last segment. So
stick around and we'll figure that out. During the break, we'll be right
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mean I HeartWare. Wow. This is I on the Ball with Steve Ravera
and Jakenzalez on Fox Sports fourteen to fifty. Welcome back TOIME on the Ball,
you know, Fox Sports fourteen fifth came. I'm your host Ja Gonzalez
getting through a strange and strange Friday afternoon here. First week, we weren't
on the air for about the first ten minutes of the show we got on
the air. We've been going through it now. Bruce Pasco our guests who
scheduled for this time. He's up in Phoenix covering that section seven a basketball
event. He just let us know he's got an interview he's got to do.
You know, when you got these kids who think there's something right,
you work on their time, not your time. So he's trying to do
this interview. Then again, he said he might not even get the interview,
but he's gonna call us if he gets free and can talk to us
for a few minutes. We want to talk to him about this five point
plan that the U of A eth leg Department put out. So anyway,
so if Bruce calls us during this segment, we'll take whatever time we have
left in the segment with him, and then Jake Fisher will join us at
four point forty to wrap up the day. But you know, since we
were going to talk about that with Bruce Lee, you know, I'll just
you know, get into that even a little bit. Now, this this
plan is, it's something that's supposed to fix all things, but they they
did put it out and uh, you know again as I as I said
in a in a previous segment, it didn't really have any specifics to it.
Well, it had one one specific was that they're going to reduce administrative
leadership personnel costs, meaning you know, higher end positions in the department.
They're going to reduce that by half a million dollars. Well, great that,
you know, I'm sure that that's what people want to see. That
it's not just all the guys at the bottom of the at the bottom of
the heap were getting laid off and whatnot. That they're going to do some
trimming, you know, all the way to the top, which is which
is great. They're they're kind of restructuring a bunch of things there, They've
got they they announced it at the same time is this they announced that they're
creating a separate entity to handle their media right their multimedia rights. Obviously,
the first question that came is, Okay, what what happens to people like
Brian Jeffries, you know, Dana Cooper who worked for who worked for what's
called Wildcat Sports Properties. Essentially they worked for Lickfield, which has been the
company that handles their radio and multimedia rights, all the media rights outside of
television what happens there, right, And there were no no answers to that
in there. So we'll see what, you know, what that's all about.
They're going to change how they do their budgets. In Bruce's story,
you mentioned that some areas of the of the Department didn't know what their budgets
were, so they were just spending money, you know, Like, Okay,
you know, I know that when I had a budget that I was
responsible for both at TEP and the city, I knew what my budget was,
and I knew what I could spend and what I could not spend.
And if I want, you know, if I wanted to spend something that
was outside of my budget, I had to ask somebody. I couldn't just
do it, I had to ask. It kind of boggles my mind.
If they were saying, well, they didn't know what their budget budgets were,
so they were just kind of spending, I'm like, how does that
work? I mean, don't you do that at home? You do that
right? Yeah? You know how much money you got, how much money
you can spend, and how much money you can't spend exactly. I know,
I know I always got enough for a five dollars pizza. If if
I know them near that, I'm not gonna gonna touch it, right right,
So you know I that that that kind of was interesting to me.
And then uh a three part three part uh uh segment to their revenue generation.
How they're gonna have to you know, raise more, you know,
do more fundraising and development. But you know again by by setting up this
Arizona Sports Enterprises, you know, trying to do more with multimedia. And
they specifically said naming rights. Right, you know, we've had this conversation
they've got and they've got to start selling naming rights, and I mean,
they gotta find money from somewhere, and it can't all come from us.
It can't all come from donors. Uh, It's got to come from somewhere.
If you got to rename Arizona Stadium, if you got a name Michale
Center, which are the two kind of signature uh facilities that you'd put names
on, you got it, You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna
have to bite the bullet, and fans are gonna have to be okay with
that. Yeah. I mean, as much as we all love Arizona Stadium,
right, the kill Center. We're just in a new era of college
athletics, right, It's it's a little bit different. But I always like
seeing the little jokes going around the like the Welos Arizona Stadium, you know,
EG Center and stuff like that. Yeah, I've always I enjoyed that.
Yeah, but you know it's gonna be different. It's good. And
this is this part of it is real. You know, you're gonna have
to You're gonna have to get the money from somewhere, and that's a chunk.
That's a place where can get a big chunk of money, right,
uh and and and and really cut into all of this and then again trying
to you know, make the fan experience better, you know, get more
people in the seats. You know, I'm great, Arizona led the PAC
twelve in attendance across you know, all the major sports. That's fine,
but there's still a lot of empty seats in football, right, they got
to sell all the football seats. There aren't any more seats to sell.
In basketball, there aren't any more seats really to sell. In softball.
They fill that stadium up all the time, you know, baseball. Yeah,
but you know, there's only so much you can do, you know,
so much you can do with baseball, but you know, mainly the
thing is you got to get you know, you got to get butts in
the seats in football. You know, A long, long time adage,
you know in the ethnic department is if you want to help the non revenue
sports, if you want to help golf, if you want to help gymnastics,
if you want to help swimming, if you want to help even softball,
if you want to help you know, track, they say, buy
a football ticket. That's how you help them, you know, you know,
the five dollars or ten dollars entry feet to go see a soccer match
or a track meet or whatever doesn't help as much as mine a forty or
fifty or sixty dollars ticket. Do you have a football game? And that's
what they need. There's no bad seat in Arizona Stadium. Yeah, I've
sat all around my entire life. So there are a couple of bad ones.
Those ones up in the corner behind the wall. Yeah, the one
behind the wall. People who sit up there sit up there on purpose because
they they know what they're getting exactly. But you know, yeah, no,
you know, and I like what they've done to Arizona Stadium over the
years. It's it's a cozy stadium. You know. I was growing up
and I'm stale am. I was fascinated by stadiums, right and I thought
the coolest stadiums were the ones that were like a bowl or they were enclosed
all the way around. You know, Arizona Stadium didn't getting closed until twenty
twelve. Well twenty thirteen was when that that that end zone section opened,
and to me, now it became a real stadium. I mean like,
okay, this is this is big time. This is what all the the
stadiums look like. You know, I love the overhead shots of it.
It looked, you know, with the with the with the end and closed,
it looks like a really good college stadium. What they've done with the
surface and how the track is gone and all those things. It feels like
a kind of a more cozy football stadium. You're not closer to the field,
but you feel like you're closer to the field because there aren't all these
other things in between. It's not open on the end, you know,
there's there, but there's more seats to be you know, to be filled.
Now it doesn't hold as many as it used to because they put in
some chairback seats and they're going to do that some more. We haven't ever
filled it up on a regular basis when it was fifty six thousand. A
fifty thousand seats stadium is plenty for Tucson, Arizona. When that stadium is
filled, it gets a loud, it's a ronment. It is cool.
It is cool. So and again, you know, we you know the
conversation we had last segment. You know, Arizona fans have got to realize
that every other venue in the Big twelve is going to be a tough place
to play. You're going to have to make it a tough place to play
in Tucson, and you're going to have to, you know, get out
here because if you don't buy the tickets, their fans will when BYU comes
to town and all the empty seats are going to be taken by BYU fans.
We've seen them come here and they come here when Arizona has been bad
and they fill up the damn stadium. You know, I went to the
game up in Arizona, play BYU and an opener up at the Cardinal Stadium,
it was all BYU fans went to the game in Vegas played BYU jed
Fish's first year. You know, we were completely outnumbered. They're going to
come here and they're going to take the seats if you don't. I mentioned
to I don't know who I was having the conversation with, but in in
two thousand, when Ohio State came here, their fans bought season tickets so
they would have tickets to that game. They did, and they just they
sold, you know, then they just sold the other seats over the course
of the year and if they didn't sell, they didn't care. The reason
I know this is because a friend of mine didn't renew the season tickets like
he was supposed to in front of us, and he didn't get them.
Wow, and they told him, no, I know how State fan bought
your tickets. So over the course of that season, we had team you
know, UH fans from other teams and and and the worst of the worst.
There were two a SU fans sitting with our group at the ACU game
that year and we got a fight with him, you know, a couple
as we should, and a couple of our people got thrown out over that
because I know I have State fan bought those seats, all right, Yeah,
Okay, Bruce had just said he can he can come on, so
uh so I'm just tell him, uh to go ahead and call. So
we've got a couple of minutes. We've got what I got six minutes,
so we'll just get into that a little bit. So we'll we'll let him
call. Uh, we'll look for right here. But you know, that's
I mean, that's the thing. So Arizona fans have got to have got
to uh, I think they will, and those show out more than they
have. You know, you get you get teams like Oregons coming in.
You know they're always good. We're not right, So don't you don't necessarily
want to go see your team. It doesn't matter to to you know.
Again, another game that was like that was the Iowa game. And when
Mike Stoops was here, I've never seen so many people in that stadium.
We we had our seats right where we sit. We were crowded because there
were Iowa fans all over the place. They bought whatever empty seats they could
find. They traveled that that stadium. That game was jammed. I mean
I was doing what I call the one cheek sneak. I sit on an
end and I had one cheek on the end of the bench, and that's
all the that's all the room that I had. So even just a couple
of years ago, North Dakota State, Yeah, all the fans. There
were fans all over the place and they had there were fans here, Gore,
here comes Bruce. Let's take this. Oh no, drop the call.
Let's see if he calls again. You know, yeah, North Dakota.
That's a perfect example. There were in North Dakota. There were North
Dakota State fans sitting in the Zona Zoo. Yeah. I don't know how
they got those tickets, but they were there. You can get passionate fans
always come to Arizona Stadium. I mean a couple of years ago, I
was in the Zona Zoo when we played the su Yeah, and to my
riot, here comes hey, Bruce, there you are. Okay, we
got about five minutes. So this is great, this is this is plenty.
I appreciate you making the effort. I know you're you're busy down there
and doing a lot of stuff. Let's just get right to you. What
were you gonna say, Oh, it's just hard. Yeah, it's hard
to find a quiet place. And I just you never know when these games
are going to end and when you need to talk to the guy and no,
we hey again, I appreciate it. I know, I know I've
been hounding you all week to come on the show. Uh so we appreciate
the time and get with you just real quick. You were at the meeting
yesterday, right, the Border Regions meeting. I watched it. I was
watching the live stream. I was in black all right. Were you,
I mean, were you able to get any sense of what the Border Regions
thought of all this, any reaction, what they look like, I mean,
were they did they just take it in? And because there didn't seem
to be any meet behind any of this, yeah, you know. I
mean again, I wasn't there, so it's hard to read everything. But
you did see flashes of it, and and it did seem like kind of,
you know, the usual look of business as usual. I think a
lot of it with this kind of thing is they've usually been pressed in the
executive private sessions about a lot of this stuff, what's going to be said,
And it's almost like this is a public show of what it is that
everybody can see. And I think there was one, you know, one
question that the chairman asked and that was about it, and they pretty much
just were like, okay, you know, which is interesting because you know,
you would think that with all the controversy that the loans that the Athletic
Department has taken out and the general death for the university, you think maybe
there'd be a little more discussion about it than just the presentation from the UVA
side. But that's the way it was, and you know that that's the
way it is sometimes. And you don't know did they have a private conversation
about it or the region's just nodding and saying, okay, we have no
idea. Really yeah, I mean, I look, I understand they've got
to have a plan, right, so the fact that they even have one,
but again, we don't know much about it, and and they and
they didn't say much about it. Yeah, I mean, it was you
know, they called it a five point plan and you know, you can
kind of boil it down to two or three things. Really it was a
lot of you know, a lot of talk about you know, they're going
to structure things differently. But the bottom line is they said, there's you
know, they're gonna, you know, try and be tighter with the budget.
They're going to be more accountability, you know, more efficient with operations
and uh and then looking on the other side to raise more money through fund
raising, tweaking, the ticket pricing, parking is going to go up,
all of things like that, but not a lot of specifics. And particularly
I think if you're a fan, you might want to know, Hey,
how much are the tickets going to go up? How much is parking going
to be? You know, and these things we don't know, they're not
they're not always in playing. I think they'll eventually, it'll eventually be clear.
And I think, you know, even people who are getting season tickets
probably already have an idea, but it's just there's things to go. And
then I think the one thing they did say was, you know, John
Arnold, the interim CFO, was talking about the amount of cuts they're planning
to make, and you know, and then I think in the presentation of
jezre read Pring Swam made was that they would be five hundred thousand and administrative
personnel cuts, which but we don't know that is that could be two senior
associate ads making two fifty each, right, these ten lower level staffers maybe
in fifty each, or it could be a combination. We have no idea,
you know, but it implies that it doesn't It implies that they're not
going to cut the coaching staff and the uh and uh you know anything within
the sports programs. Do they do they go much at all into this Arizona
Sports enterprises. Do you have any understanding of what that is? No,
No, honestly, I don't know. It's didn't seem like that. I
think there were, you know, there were some talk about, you know,
in general, about leveraging the passion of you know, Arizona fans.
They said that, you know, they want to leverage that more into basically,
you know, more ways to raise money and whether that's through philanthropy,
fundraising or or you know, freaking people with the higher ticket price for the
really desired game that they you know get, you know, and I think
naming rights they talked about. I think we're going to see everything that can
be sold is going to have a name on it. That that's something that
could be coming down, you know, But not a lot of specifics as
of right now. But it did seem that they had a plan, and
they're talking about, you know, putting what's going to be a thirty three
million dollar depths of this year down to about two under two next Year's their
cotright, all right, all right, well again, you know, I
appreciate the time we've got it. We've got to get on because we've got
another guest to come up with. But I you know, I kind of
thought that Bruce that there was just so it was a lot of this was
so vague, right, and it's gonna probably be vague for a while.
I did try to get somebody from the Uveada commem on and shaid it's gonna
have to be Desiree. So we're gonna try and get her next week.
But even then, I don't know when they're gonna say much of anything about
any of this and what you know, what the details are, and so
I guess it's a way to see for all of us, right, it
may dribble out, you know, hopefully we can get some of it out,
and you know, some of them may just be transparent. We may
have to go to the ticket price and page to see what we have at
some point, you know, But one way ornother is gonna drible out,
so we can hopefully chat about it more down the line. Okay, sounds
good. Hey Bruce, thanks again, but I know you're busy over there
with the section seven, so have a great weekend and we'll keep an eye
you. Thanks a bunch, all right, take care? All right,
all right, that was quick, but uh, kind of like I thought
though, right, I mean, how much can you get from this presentation?
There was no detail to it. We'll start seeing, as he says,
as it probably dribbles out over time. So okay, let's go and
take our next break word to come back. Jake Fisher's waiting for us,
so we'll get him on and well we're gonna actually talk some football, so
stick around. If you're an Arizona men's basketball fan, you know it's been
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Steve Rivera and Jacob Salis they have their eye on the ball on Tucson
Sports Stage cheat Fox Sports fourteen to fifty. Welcome back to on the Ball
here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Ja Gonzalez, your resident host.
My buddy Steve Rivera has only one more segment that he's going to miss.
He'll be back here on Monday. I've got one here running the show,
and Jake Fischer's on the line with us. Dude, Let's talk some football,
Jake, are you ready? Houly got it? You know, we
spent so much time on the whole all the realignment and the Anks and all
that. Okay, it's done. The Pac twelve is in the rearview mirror.
Let's go on. We've got Big twelve football coming up in a couple
of months. You know. The conversation that we've been having is how different
it's going to be for the Arizona programs to be going into the Big twelve,
and particularly as it relates to football and basketball, where regardless of how
good their teams are, their fans are nuts their rabbit they show up.
The days of going to the Rose Bowl to play in front of twenty five
thousand people or to Stanford to play in front of fifteen thousand people, those
days are gone. Everywhere they go, there's going to be full stadiums.
Let me ask you this, Well, first of all, you went to
I was talking about off air. You you were at the game where Arizona
visited Oklahoma State got beat pretty bad. As I recall the atmosphere there.
What do you recall from that? Well, if I remember correctly, at
one point we got back with and I believe Ken, which maybe we should
not have because we weren't that good that year. We were banged up in
here. I mean, as that was the year of the shoulder and the
year of the knee in terms of people getting injured prior to the season.
But I will say tell you, Oklahoma State, I mean that stadium is
fantastic. You know, they it's right upon you, like they're literally only
a ten foot difference between the sideline and the stands. You know, they've
got their whatever the hell of those things are. They do the chop thing,
they start hitting the hell they hit the wall, it gets loud.
I mean the amount of money they put in that stadium too, is fantastic.
But there's not an empty seat in the house. A bunch of these
big twelve teams, it doesn't matter if they're bottom dwellers, it doesn't matter
if they're great, it doesn't matter if they're kind of middle tier. They're
going to be packed every single every single game, every single week. You
have some of these teams or some of these colleges that are in towns that
literally have less people in it than they would feel the stadium, So the
stadium still gets filled and that kind of tells you how passionate these guys are
about their football. Well, and you grew up in was it still the
big eg when you were born. It wasn't a Big eight. It was
a Big twelve, right, Yeah, just turn the Big twelve. I
believe as soon as I was born. Yeah. My parents they grew up
in Nebraska. Yeah, they know all about that stuff, right. And
so you know, as you said, whether it's Iowa State or Kansas,
Kansas State, whoever, you're gonna go and you're gonna find a full stadium.
Let me ask you this as a player, because we've had this conversation.
It's been more related to basketball. When the basketball team goes to Washington
State and there's you know, four thousand people there and there's no atmosphere and
they kind of lull themselves to sleep and then they get beat. Would you
did you, as a player, prefer to have a pack stadium like that,
like at an Oklahoma State or in the Pac twelve. You know,
you go to Oregon and the place is jammed. Did you prefer that over
going to a stadium where there was kind of nobody there? Yeah, I
mean it gets the juices flowing. I think it was my sophomore we ended
up going to UCLA. It was the game I think it was the day
before Halloween, and we should have probably won that game forty to zero.
We only ended up beating it out by leave a touchdown or ten points.
They only had you know, fifteen twenty thousand people there because they weren't that
good. Same thing with the sc when they're not, you know, a
top five team nationally, they're only about sixty percent full. You know,
teams obviously like Washington State Stanford my sophomore we played against them, the and
Andrew Look, they had the top, you know, top five team in
the country. They didn't even fill out their stadiums. Right. You want
the justice flow and you want to know that you're up for a game because
if you get lulled asleep a lot of these teams, if you're going into
the fourth quarter and they know they got a chance, they could end up
beating you. It doesn't matter how bad they are. They're still division on
athletes. Yeah, well I'm looking. I'm looking at the media guide.
You see that game you talked about at UCLA your your sophomore year. They
announced fifty three thousand. I was at that game. There were not that
many. Yeah, that was less than half of that. Yeah, no,
yeah, yeah, exactly. I went to that game and you guys
won by twenty nine to twenty one. Is the is the score. But
you're right, there was there were not fifty three thousand people there. But
that's not even cool. I mean there was a game last year I think
they played Bowling Green and there were like five thousand people there. It's crazy.
But you're never gonna You're not going to see that over there in the
Big twelve. I'm excited about that, I really am, because I feel
like every game is a is a big deal, you know, and I
mean I do. I hate turning on the TV for a road game and
seeing if there's nobody there that I hated that. Well, it's crazy because
Kansas those few years where they were like really really bad, that looked like
you know, your average Pactwell stadium, right, But now they're good and
they're packing out that stadium. They're even building onto it because you know,
they just don't have enough seating for it. So, I mean, the
Iowa State, the Kansas Kansas state is obviously going to be awesome. It's
gonna be ridiculous because they have a very long lineage of awesome teams. I
mean even UCF. You know, I had a buddy that played at UCF
when they were you know, really really good, just I mean Cincinnati,
all these teams they lived in towns where football is king, right, you
know, the Midwest and even some of these other outlying places. I mean,
it's gonna be awesome. And the fact that you know, we're on
the rise right now, I think a su is heading in the right direction.
I don't think they're gonna, you know, be anywhere near us for
the next few years, which is good in my opinion. The fact that
Colorado has prime, they're going to pack out every stateium Utah, obviously they're
going to do what they do. I think, you know, us going
into the Big twelve, I think we're going to bring kind of a similar
atmosphere, you know. And I know you said, you know you feel,
you get you know, you get pumped up, you get juiced up
when the stadium is full. But then again, it's hard. What do
you recall or do you have any place that you consider the toughest place to
play in the time that you were at Arizona. It's always going to be
Oregon in Washington For me, Washington, because you know, I'm in the
stadium. That kind of goes up and so it traps in the noise,
and every single time you go there it seems like it's raining hard and you
got crazy wind, so it's like you're not used to playing in it.
Plus A's loud as hell. And then Oregon just because I mean they've got
all the gimmicks. They come out, they run all those weird formations,
at least when Schip Kelly was there. And then you know, obviously my
last time playing at Oregon, you know, they wore their blackout uniforms,
came out the duck on a Harley Plus even though they only have like fifty
some thousand people there, they rocked the house. I mean, because that
stadium traps noise. Those two in the Pac twelve were the hardest to play,
and I just have a feeling that every single stadium in the Big twelve,
because they're all there, their fan bases or you know, they want
them to win really bad. They eat, sleep, breathe football, it's
just going to be kind of the same thing. Yeah, let's talk about
things like like body clock. Again, we're picking your brain because you're the
only football player that we really know this well. So I was listening to
an interview that Jedfish did with Rhys Davis, and he's talking about that when
they go to the East Coast, they're going to go two days ahead of
time. How important is that? I mean, is it really a factor
if you know, if you're playing at you know, ten o'clock in the
morning, your time on the road or do you really need time to get
acclimated and how much does that matter? You know, it's a little different
because, like, you know, the furthest East I think that I went
and played was either at Toledo or in Louisiana when we played Boston College.
And I might be wrong, but with Toledo, you know, we went
a little earlier, got there and it was a two hour time difference,
so that was weird. But we ended up playing at night, so it
was earlier, you know what I mean, So that wasn't a big deal.
When we went to you know, to Louisiana to play Boston College,
I think we had the first year of the day and there a two hour
difference, and that was definitely different. You know, you wake up a
little earlier than you're you know, then you anticipate. But the fact is
we were there six days earlier, right, you know, I think that
if you're going there a day early and you're playing an early game, that
might be difficult. But that to that two day deal, I think that
would be really helpful. But to be honest with you, you know,
in the Pac twel, for me, most of the games they were in
the same time zone, so it never really affected me that I effected.
You. Well, they're going to Central Florida this year, which we'll see,
you know, what happens there. That should be fun, you know.
And look, I can't even when is that game. That game is
in November Space Day or whatever the hell they call it. It's what their
Space Day or whatever they call that day, or you know, every year
they have a game where they go like Blackout or something and they go you
know, I forget exactly what they call it. But that's going to be
a routing environment. Yeah, so that that should be fun. And then
at some point they're gonna have to go play West Virginia. So there's a
couple of those in the in their future as well. But you know,
again, I think the newness of it, I don't know how long that's
going to last, right, you know, that new car smell how long
we're going to have that from uh uh with these games. But I'm looking
forward to it, aren't you. Yeah, it's going to be different.
You know. It's not going to be the thing where you're used to playing
against every single team every single year. You know, my favorite games most
of the time are the ones that you play out of conference, right,
So every game this year is going to be a different team for the most
part. So I think that's going to be challenging. But then again,
what you got to remember is a lot of these Big twelve teams are proud
and they saw kind of how we ended last year beating the number one Big
twelve team, right, you know in the conference. You know, with
the exception of Texas obviously, and a lot of these teams, they're going
to kind of pin their ears back and try to beat the hell out of
us. So we got to be ready for it, you know. And
they're gonna throw a lot of weird stuff. You know. It's not the
the old Stanfords where you know they're going to line up in an eye or
they're going to line up, you know, three tight ends, or you
know they're going to bunch up and try to beat the hell out of you,
and you can get ready for that every single year. It's not going
to be the same organ that I used to play against, where you know,
maybe one tight end or maybe two by two and you got you know,
a little h you know, one of their little scat backs there and
they're going to try to spread it throw really quick. So you just get
back and you know, basically try to figure out where the hell they're going
and just run as fast as you can. There's going to be a bunch
of different stuff, but I think it's gonna be fun. I think it's
gonna be fun. All right. Last question, So look, you know
every year you got guys that are you know, they're getting the tension nationally
or whatever. You've got no Flafiitez in the Heisman conversation t mac is.
You know he's on all the All American teams. How do you, as
a teammate help those guys keep their heads on straight and not you know,
get caught up and all that stuff so that when the time comes to get
on the field, their heads in the right place. What can you as
a teammate do well to be honest with you, those guys you know and
Jonahs, Adovan Wendel moy you know, a couple of defense to Cary o'manu,
you know, Moldinaldo I saw, got a couple nods for the Big
Twelve, you know, Tyler loub you know a lot of our guys got
some pretty good, right, pretty good nods. I think those guys,
because of the leadership from the players perspective, they have such a level head
that it's not going to get to their head. What I think is going
to happen is a lot of these players, when you go into a new
conference and you're trying to establish dominance in that conference, a lot of those
guys are going to try to either exploit. They're going to try to take
out not like you know, dirty, or they're going to try to take
you out. They're going to try to make you look dumb. They're going
to say, you know, and I think I'm better than you. You
come from a different conference. I think we do it better here in the
Big Twelve. So I think what you can do as a teammate is essentially
you help establish you're all Americans dominant. So help Jonah do what he does
best, and that could be coaching that can be just you as a teammate,
you know, help help kind of settle no what down by running the
rock right, you know, help team Mac get a couple of balls early,
right, if you're no get him a couple of balls early established,
you know, kind of a connection or the passing game. If you're a
Tecario, I mean, shoot, if you're a defensive back, the first
thing you want to do is line up against that guy's best their best receiver,
So get his wet, you know, see wet as quickly as he
can. So I think it's more. You know, from a player's perspective,
you want to you want to help protect them. But then you know,
from a coaching perspective, you want to put them in a good spot
to get them in a rhythm early. All right, Okay, all right,
Jake, appreciate all that. Tell us a little bit about your business
and what you're doing. Yeah, guys, there's on a health insider.
My wife and I we are health insurance brokers, which means we can find
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Check us out at www dot Arizona health Insider dot com or call at five
to two oh eight, five oh six, eight sixty six. You can
find us all over social media. Just go ahead and give us a call
and we'll help you out. All right, Jake, thanks a bunch,
man, have a great weekend, all right, man, talk to you
later. All right. We got through it, Juan, we got through
it. I call that a success. I do total success, all right.
Want to thank everybody for being here. Thank all of our guests for
the week. Bruce Pascoe today, Adrian Denny Not Bryant and Jake Fisher.
So Steve will be back on Monday and we'll be back here to bring you
some more on I on the Ball. So we'll see you on Monday.
Thanks for being here,