Speaker 1: All right, what's going on drivetime Tuesday afternoon, about twelve
Speaker 1: minutes past the hour of two o'clock.
Speaker 2: It is a gorgeous day, man, what a stretch of whether.
Speaker 1: We have had beautiful outside about seventy two degrees clear
Speaker 1: and sunny here in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. And
Speaker 1: as it is every day, it's going to have you
Speaker 1: along for the ride. Spence check, it's behind the mic.
Speaker 1: That's Porter Larson behind the glass today producing the program
Speaker 1: on this Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 2: We've got a lot to get to.
Speaker 1: We have some breaking news out of the world of
Speaker 1: college athletics. Looks like Gonzaga is headed to the Big
Speaker 1: twelve according to our buddy Kyle vonnack Gura. So the
Speaker 1: latest with the ever changing shifting landscape and conference additions,
Speaker 1: conference subtractions, you know the deal now when it comes
Speaker 1: to college athletics. So we'll get to some of that
Speaker 1: on the show today. A recalibrated Big twelve right in
Speaker 1: front of us. We did our Big twelve Power rankings yesterday.
Speaker 1: Both Porter and I had Byu atop the Big twelve
Speaker 1: Power rankings, Iowa state number two.
Speaker 2: I had Utah at four. So we'll see if the
Speaker 2: youths can.
Speaker 1: Get back out of you know, Arizona did have a
Speaker 1: bye between k State and Utah and a lot of
Speaker 1: the conversation out of the Arizona side of things, as
Speaker 1: they felt like Saturday was going to be a get
Speaker 1: right game for them in Utah get right against Arizona
Speaker 1: State after a bye week. The latest on cam Rising,
Speaker 1: the latest on the quarterback situation. Dennis Dodd from CBS
Speaker 1: did a piece today and he kind of took Utah
Speaker 1: to task or the way they're disseminating their information. So
Speaker 1: we'll get to all the latest on the college football landscape.
Speaker 1: Look at to a busy week six nationally, not so
Speaker 1: much locally all although Utah State is back at it
Speaker 1: after a bye taking on Boise State. Some really good
Speaker 1: national games on the slate coming up this weekend, So
Speaker 1: we'll get you ready for a busy college football weekend
Speaker 1: ahead on the program today with some good college football guests.
Speaker 1: The weekends in pro football came to a close last
Speaker 1: night with some Monday Night football. One pretty good game,
Speaker 1: one dog game. The Titans just smoked the Dolphins. That
Speaker 1: guy Tyler Huntley struggled, he did rush for a touchdown,
Speaker 1: but Miami looks like they're in big trouble without Tu
Speaker 1: and the Titans decided the bench will Levis. We'll see
Speaker 1: if that's something that they continue to kind of roll
Speaker 1: with because they were actually able to find some success
Speaker 1: with Levis on the sideline. The Lions absolutely put it
Speaker 1: on Seattle offensively forty two to twenty nine. That was
Speaker 1: a fun game in Detroit, Jared Goff with a record
Speaker 1: breaking performance.
Speaker 2: So we'll get to some NFL on the show today.
Speaker 1: Gets ready for Week five coming up, and of course
Speaker 1: you can hear all the NFL action on this radio station.
Speaker 1: Week five starts on Thursday, Little Buccaneers Falcons action down
Speaker 1: in Atlanta at Mercedes Benz Stadium.
Speaker 2: Then a bunch of great.
Speaker 1: Games on Sunday in the NFL will culminate with only
Speaker 1: one Monday night game. It's the Saints and the Chiefs
Speaker 1: at Arrowhead in Kansas City. The Utah Jazz open up
Speaker 1: training camp. We'll do a little Jazz on the show today,
Speaker 1: do a little NBA on the show today. We haven't
Speaker 1: talked a tot about that massive deal that was made
Speaker 1: while we were away with the Knicks and the Timberwolves
Speaker 1: making a big time trade, so we'll do a little
Speaker 1: jazz on the show one day away from game day.
Speaker 2: From match day for RSL, they.
Speaker 1: Welcome in Minnesotay're coming up tomorrow night at seven point
Speaker 1: thirty at America First Field, trying to hold onto a
Speaker 1: top four seed in order to host a home playoff match.
Speaker 2: All the ladies with RSL on the show as well.
Speaker 1: The Utah Hockey Club is high speed ahead to their
Speaker 1: opener as the Blackhawks are in town coming up next week,
Speaker 1: and obviously one I over there as excited for pro
Speaker 1: hockey to land on our market.
Speaker 2: Major League Baseball wildcard action.
Speaker 1: The Tigers lead the Astros three zero, bottom of the
Speaker 1: six there, so fall means a lot of things, and
Speaker 1: it certainly means baseball playoffs, which I've always really enjoyed.
Speaker 2: All right, good guest, listen for you guys on this
Speaker 2: Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 1: We'll start things off with Joe Fort and ba I
Speaker 1: will talk a little little college in pro football with Joe.
Speaker 2: He's gonna stop by today.
Speaker 1: Richard Smith joins us, coming up at three o'clock the
Speaker 1: Tryumph Return of Smitty.
Speaker 2: He'll roll by today.
Speaker 1: Scott Mitchell, former Utah quarterback, one of the best to
Speaker 1: ever do it is our guest in the four o'clock hour.
Speaker 1: Then the voice himself, who is now off the pressure
Speaker 1: that came with potential of Utah defeated season. The Bill
Speaker 1: Riley Mullet watches over. Let's see if I can corner.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll make him grow a mustache. If Utah wins
Speaker 1: against Arizona State, I don't know, we'll see so Joe
Speaker 1: Fort and Bob Richard Smith, Scott Mitchell, Bill Riley, me
Speaker 1: Spence check ats, all of you the great listeners on
Speaker 1: this Tuesday, and that guy Porter Larson on a Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 2: Tuesdays during the football season hit a little differently.
Speaker 1: At least we have Major League Baseball playoff action, Little
Speaker 1: NBA basketball, Utah Hockey Club as well.
Speaker 2: How how's your Tuesday afternoon?
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, Tuesdays until mid October. I'm just waiting, waiting,
Speaker 3: waiting until we get action on our Tuesday television scrip.
Speaker 2: I've told you this before.
Speaker 1: Just do what I do and record maction from years
Speaker 1: past and then when there's no football, just watching on
Speaker 1: your DVR right.
Speaker 3: Right, And I'm getting to that point. But luckily for me,
Speaker 3: my Mets are surviving. And advancing at least until today
Speaker 3: got the wild card matchups as you mentioned, so a
Speaker 3: little nervous as we approach the first pitch of that one,
Speaker 3: but that's holding me over at this point until we
Speaker 3: get some football and of course a bye week for
Speaker 3: the Utes, but plenty of other college football storylines to.
Speaker 2: Get to the week. Little break, little breaking news on
Speaker 2: a Tuesday.
Speaker 1: According to Ian Rappaport, Devonte Adams has requested a trade
Speaker 1: from the Raiders, and you kind of understand why.
Speaker 2: So little NFL news on a Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 1: All right, our first guest today is Joe Fordenbaugh, so
Speaker 1: we'll get you ready for a busy weekend ahead Ian
Speaker 1: Pro and college football with Joe. But before we catch
Speaker 1: up with Joe on a Tuesday, courteousy of our friends
Speaker 1: at Standard Restaurant supply, it's your tailgate headquarters.
Speaker 2: Get everything you need to make your tailgate epic.
Speaker 1: Check them out at thirty five hundred Southwest Temple and
Speaker 1: online at Standard restaurant dot com.
Speaker 2: On a Tuesday afternoon, it's time now for your opening tip.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the Drive with Spence. Check its on Utah's
Speaker 4: number one Sports Talk. Now into the studio of ESPN
Speaker 4: seven hundred to set the scene for the show. The
Speaker 4: opening tip of the drive is brought to you by
Speaker 4: Standard Restaurant Supply, your one stop shop to build the
Speaker 4: best tailgate in town. Standard Restaurant Supply thirty five hundred
Speaker 4: Southwest Temple.
Speaker 1: So the University of Utah on the football side of things,
Speaker 1: has a bye week this week and then they're back
Speaker 1: in action coming up next week against Arizona State. Arizona
Speaker 1: State was off to a really good start to the year,
Speaker 1: and you know.
Speaker 2: They might be a little bit better than most people thought.
Speaker 1: We have not seen a line released, nor will we
Speaker 1: that's going to be an eight thirty pm kick. We
Speaker 1: do have that down in Tempe, Arizona, and you're hoping
Speaker 1: on the Utah football side that they're able to do
Speaker 1: what Arizona just did, utilizing their bye week to make
Speaker 1: sure that they have quote a get right game. Now,
Speaker 1: that was kind of the narrative from the Arizona side
Speaker 1: of things before last Saturday, when the Wildcats rolled in
Speaker 1: a Rice Cycle stadium and quite frankly just undressed the Utes.
Speaker 1: Twenty three to ten was the final score, and prior
Speaker 1: to that, Arizona went to Case State and they got stopped.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of people were saying, on the
Speaker 1: Arizona Arizona side of things, let's utilize the bye week,
Speaker 1: let's get healthy a little bit, and let's make sure
Speaker 1: Saturday at Rice Cycle Stadium was quote a get right game.
Speaker 1: And that's what it was for the Wildcats. They looked fresh,
Speaker 1: they looked healthy, they looked rested, they got a couple
Speaker 1: of players back during the bye week. For Feet, it
Speaker 1: was awesome, you know, he was able to evade a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure and make a lot of plays.
Speaker 2: And of course, the conversation around here with a.
Speaker 1: Bye week is this, will this be enough to get
Speaker 1: Cameron Rising ready, not just for Arizona State, but for
Speaker 1: the rest of the season. So Dennis Dodd, front of
Speaker 1: the show, joined us during Big twelve media days. He
Speaker 1: wrote a piece today for CBS, really kind of taking
Speaker 1: the University of Utah to task for the way they've
Speaker 1: handled them messaging, because, of course, his status is week
Speaker 1: by week, and as I've said on the show, I'm
Speaker 1: going to operate off the assumption that it's eyes that
Speaker 1: can tell it's not. But this continues to be kind
Speaker 1: of the main topic, not just around here, but folks
Speaker 1: that you know cover college football big picture style, like
Speaker 1: a guy like Dennis Dodd. Now it's very important to
Speaker 1: be clear that this is not just a coach with thing.
Speaker 1: Kaladie Satake right now is dealing with some injuries to
Speaker 1: his running back room, and he has taken a page
Speaker 1: out of his former boss's book by being very vague
Speaker 1: about the status of LJ. Martin and some others. This
Speaker 1: it takes place all over the country. You know, this
Speaker 1: is not just a Utah thing. It feels like around
Speaker 1: here it's been spun into just a Utah thing and
Speaker 1: just a Kyle Whittingham thing.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: And it really depends on your opinion of what actually
Speaker 1: you know is at stake when you report injuries. Do
Speaker 1: you believe that it is a competitive advantage? I think
Speaker 1: Kyle does. I think he's made that very clear. And
Speaker 1: if you're only to win football games, as I've talked about,
Speaker 1: and that's coach, which job, you have to utilize every
Speaker 1: single piece of ammunition at your disposal to make sure
Speaker 1: your team is in the best spot possible. Now, there's
Speaker 1: a very legitimate debate as to whether or not it
Speaker 1: actually is a competitive advantage. As I referenced I think yesterday,
Speaker 1: Jim Harbaugh has always scoffed at that notion that it
Speaker 1: is a competitive advantage, and he's always reported even when
Speaker 1: he hasn't had to. He's talked openly about when he
Speaker 1: was in college. Obviously he's in the pros now with
Speaker 1: the Chargers, and pro coaches have no choice but to report.
Speaker 1: But even when he didn't have to report, he kind
Speaker 1: of scoffed at the notion that this really is a
Speaker 1: competitive advantage. So ultimately, I'm just going to repeat a
Speaker 1: little bit what I said yesterday. I don't agree with
Speaker 1: the portion of the Utah fan base that wants to
Speaker 1: move on from Cameron. You know, Dennis Dodd himself, in
Speaker 1: his piece today quoted a bunch of different youth fans
Speaker 1: that he's heard from about what their preferences are as
Speaker 1: far as what next under center. One of them said, quote,
Speaker 1: it's time to move on from an injury prone starter. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you for your heart and grit, but I believe
Speaker 1: at this point he's doing more harm than good. Cam
Speaker 1: went all fall getting QB one reps, and now he
Speaker 1: stands on the sidelines watching again for the second year
Speaker 1: in a row cam is the highest paid nil player
Speaker 1: on the team, and there's not much return on that investment.
Speaker 2: And guys, I said it like.
Speaker 1: The unfortunate part of this whole thing is that money
Speaker 1: does change the way people feel about how you're performing
Speaker 1: at work.
Speaker 2: It just does. If you're a lawyer and it's pro bono.
Speaker 1: It's different if you're being paid millions of dollars to
Speaker 1: do your work. If you're a college athlete and you're
Speaker 1: a quote amateur.
Speaker 2: Which was never really a thing.
Speaker 1: It was invented to distract everybody from the fact that
Speaker 1: the business was being built on the backs of employees
Speaker 1: they didn't pay. But for years there was this kind
Speaker 1: of unspoken rule in broadcasting where you just don't crack
Speaker 1: on college kids. You just don't because they're not paid
Speaker 1: for their endeavors, and essentially they are unpaid employees because
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people getting rich off their backs.
Speaker 1: Now that's changed, and because that's changed, people are going
Speaker 1: to feel differently about the situation. I'll repeat what I
Speaker 1: said yesterday and I'll continue to send people towards a
Speaker 1: couple of things. Number One, Chris Camaradi's article from The
Speaker 1: Athletic when he had access to Cam, when he had
Speaker 1: access to Cam's family, and for the first time, at
Speaker 1: least in my opinion, on the record, Cameron Risen spoke
Speaker 1: about the dark days and nights he had last year
Speaker 1: trying to get back from what was a horrific knee injury.
Speaker 1: This was not an acl this is not a sprain.
Speaker 1: He blew up his knee. And that's why when I
Speaker 1: was doing the math last year, because you know, we
Speaker 1: all heard the rhetoric, we all heard the propaganda, the
Speaker 1: walking line that ultimately talked about Cam potentially being back
Speaker 1: for Florida. I didn't buy that for a second and
Speaker 1: I didn't have any information on it. You just do
Speaker 1: the math from when Cameron hurt himself last January.
Speaker 2: What that injury entails.
Speaker 1: That injury takes a year, oftentimes sometimes more. Oftentimes sometimes
Speaker 1: it never is the same. So I'd never thought that
Speaker 1: he was playing last year. And honestly, I can take
Speaker 1: you to feel bad for him because the way they've
Speaker 1: handled the dissemination of information, the way they've handled the messaging,
Speaker 1: I guarantee Cam doesn't have one iota of a percent
Speaker 1: of how that goes down.
Speaker 2: This is not on him, and ultimately he's hurt.
Speaker 1: He just is and I know injuries suck, and I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people are frustrated about the way
Speaker 1: it's been handled. And yes, according to what Dennis Dodd
Speaker 1: wrote and some of the feedback he received from Utah fans,
Speaker 1: there is a portion of the fan base that's ready
Speaker 1: to move on. Altogether, I think that's a slippery slope
Speaker 1: because I still believe, as we saw on Saturday, Isaac's
Speaker 1: got a long way to go if Utah wants to
Speaker 1: compete and win the Big Twelve this year. I still
Speaker 1: believe Cameron has to be under centered for the majority
Speaker 1: of the season.
Speaker 2: They're gonna have to get more from Isaac for sure.
Speaker 1: Whether he starts against Arizona State, there will be reps
Speaker 1: that Isaac will take the rest of the way because
Speaker 1: the data is in and Cam has a tough time
Speaker 1: staying healthy. And I just have never bought the premise
Speaker 1: that you can retrain somebody like Cameron Rising, who is
Speaker 1: a competitor, who wants to go out and give it
Speaker 1: his all, to play differently in order to stay healthy,
Speaker 1: because essentially he cut his legs out from underneath him.
Speaker 1: One of the things that makes Cam great is that
Speaker 1: he wants to compete, he wants to play. He's not
Speaker 1: afraid to take a hit. He'll take off and gain
Speaker 1: yards if he needs to. And yes, it would be
Speaker 1: great for everybody if he played a little bit safer.
Speaker 1: You know, discretion the better form of valor in order
Speaker 1: to stay healthy. But guys, the dad is in Okay,
Speaker 1: we don't need to see anymore. So for you Tid
Speaker 1: to win the Big twelve, Yes, I believe they need
Speaker 1: Cam under center, but I do believe Isaac needs more
Speaker 1: reps with the ones because he has to stay ready
Speaker 1: so he doesn't have to get ready as the kids
Speaker 1: would say, when the inevitability and that, yes, that is
Speaker 1: the term I will use comes back down into play
Speaker 1: where they need him under center again because Cam's not readier,
Speaker 1: Cam's not healthy. But it's an interesting read if you
Speaker 1: want to check out cbssports dot com. Dennis Dodd, you
Speaker 1: know the latest to kind of take you Todd a
Speaker 1: task about the way they've handled this and ultimately how
Speaker 1: much negative attention is falling on the shoulders of Cam
Speaker 1: because of the way they've decided to handle it. And
Speaker 1: it's not Cam's fault. I continue to stay on that
Speaker 1: My heart goes out to him, and I hope that
Speaker 1: he gets back soon, and hopefully with the bye week
Speaker 1: and then a game against a good but pretty beatable
Speaker 1: team and Arizona State, hopefully Utah can do to Arizona
Speaker 1: State what Arizona did to Utah after a bye week
Speaker 1: and have a quote get right game coming up down
Speaker 1: in Tempe on the fifth, six o'clock. Excuse me, that's
Speaker 1: the wrong, wrong kickoff. Let me let me get you
Speaker 1: the right kickoff coming up in Tempe on the eleventh.
Speaker 1: It's a bye week, eight thirty. It's a late kick
Speaker 1: on ESPN against Arizona State. No line has been released
Speaker 1: on that game. Just shit, all right, Before we catch
Speaker 1: a break, I want to tell you about my friends
Speaker 1: at Prize Picks. Prize Picks is the best place to
Speaker 1: get real money sports action. With over ten million members
Speaker 1: and billions of dollars in awarded winnings, Prize Picks has
Speaker 1: made daily fantasy sports accessible to all. You just pick
Speaker 1: more or less on two players at least two players
Speaker 1: for a shot to win up to one hundred times
Speaker 1: you cash. You can run your game all season long
Speaker 1: on Prize Picks. You can now win up to one
Speaker 1: hundred times your money on Prize Picks with as little
Speaker 1: as four correct picks. Prize Picks All also offers weekly
Speaker 1: promotions that can lead to big payouts, like Taco Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Each Tuesday, Prize Picks discount selected player projections up to
Speaker 1: twenty five percent to provide even more value in your lineups.
Speaker 1: It's the best way to win real money this football season.
Speaker 1: Which players are going off, which players aren't? Make your
Speaker 1: picks in less than sixty seconds and turn your sports
Speaker 1: opinions into real money all season long on Prize Picks.
Speaker 1: So download the Prize Picks app today and use that
Speaker 1: promo code ESPN seven hundred to get fifty dollars instantly
Speaker 1: after you play your first five dollars lineups. So download
Speaker 1: the Prize Picks app today use the promo code ESPN
Speaker 1: seven hundred to get fifty dollars instantly after you play
Speaker 1: your first five dollars lineup. Prize Picks are good friends.
Speaker 1: Make sure to run your game all season long, all right.
Speaker 1: Joe Fortenbau is our guest coming up next on a Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Right here time for return of Richard Smith. Today, Smitty
Speaker 1: stops by the Utah Jazz open up training camp this week,
Speaker 1: and we'll also discuss that massive deal that went down
Speaker 1: between the Tea Wolves and the New York Knickerbockers. Scott Mitchell,
Speaker 1: former Utah quarterback, and then Bill Riley, the voice of
Speaker 1: the Youths two for more college football, but joining me
Speaker 1: now on a Tuesday, Excited for this. I've never had
Speaker 1: a chance to interview Joe Fordenbaugh from ESPN.
Speaker 2: Joe, Happy Tuesday, sir.
Speaker 5: How are you happy Tuesday? I'm doing well. More importantly,
Speaker 5: thanks so much for the invite to come on the
Speaker 5: show today. I agree, I greatly appreciate it. Apologies. I
Speaker 5: started losing my voice late last week and I never
Speaker 5: got an opportunity to bring it all the way back.
Speaker 5: It seemed like I had something going on every single
Speaker 5: day between a show or a taping or a benefit
Speaker 5: or an event something we were doing. And I'm just
Speaker 5: trying to get this thing back into shape. And I
Speaker 5: think I got enough for you here. I'm trying to
Speaker 5: hit the high octaves for you.
Speaker 2: No worries, man, I appreciate the time. So I was
Speaker 2: just curious.
Speaker 1: About your path right because obviously you're on ESPN, BET
Speaker 1: we see you on TV I have ESPN on up
Speaker 1: in the studio every day. Do you fill it out
Speaker 1: here in Salt Lake City? You've got the Carlin Versus
Speaker 1: job Monday through Friday. But were you always want to
Speaker 1: lean into odds and lines and betting or what was
Speaker 1: your career path that led you to where you're at now?
Speaker 5: Joe undergrad at Penn State Law School in San Diego,
Speaker 5: and I originally wanted to be an NFL agent. I
Speaker 5: wanted to work in sports in some capacity, so that's
Speaker 5: the reason I went to law school. It turns out
Speaker 5: the agent I interned for when I was in law
Speaker 5: school started a website in two thousand and eight called
Speaker 5: National Football Post, and I got a job managing the website,
Speaker 5: writing about fantasy football, kind of doing all the day
Speaker 5: to day stuff. There was an agent, there was a
Speaker 5: former NFL general manager, former salary cap guy, former player,
Speaker 5: presenting all that stuff from an inside perspective, and a
Speaker 5: couple of years into it, I decided I wanted to
Speaker 5: write about sports betting. I had been betting since I
Speaker 5: was younger, playing parlay sheets and all that nonsense, and
Speaker 5: I just figured, you know, chat Miltman was like the
Speaker 5: only guy doing it at ESPN, so I started writing
Speaker 5: about it a little bit, and then I just decided
Speaker 5: to pick up and move to Las Vegas. I was
Speaker 5: living back in Pennsylvania at the time. I had a
Speaker 5: two thousand dollars maxed out credit card. I had like
Speaker 5: no money to my name, but I figured, let's go
Speaker 5: out there. Let's do this right. Let's meet all the bookmakers,
Speaker 5: Let's meet all the professional betters, Let's learn how the
Speaker 5: industry works, let's write about it, let's figure it out.
Speaker 5: And while I was doing that, I ended up landing
Speaker 5: a job very circuitous route, where I got a morning
Speaker 5: show offer to move to San Francisco and do radio
Speaker 5: up there. But while I was up there, I continue
Speaker 5: podcasting and writing about sports betting and then move in
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen Pastbao got repealed. Network started looking for people,
Speaker 5: and I just kind of held out for ESPN. I
Speaker 5: was one of the only guys out there that had
Speaker 5: been doing this for a while, so I ended up
Speaker 5: having some opportunities and I ran with it from there.
Speaker 5: So I'm very fortunate caught a lot of breaks along
Speaker 5: the way. There's a lot of people to thank at
Speaker 5: every turn that were there to help me.
Speaker 2: Fair enough. Well, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's do a little NFL today and I I wonder
Speaker 1: what sort of trends. There's a piece up today by
Speaker 1: Steven Holder about the noticeable decline in passing yards. What
Speaker 1: sort of trends have you noticed early on in pro football?
Speaker 1: Just through a few a few weeks, four weeks now
Speaker 1: that Navy have caught you off guard.
Speaker 5: That's the big one, the too high safety. Right defenses
Speaker 5: are playing a lot more cover too, and as a result,
Speaker 5: it's been limiting the big plays on offense, suppressing scoring
Speaker 5: a little bit, limiting some player props in terms of
Speaker 5: quarterback passing yards, things of that nature. Right, and then
Speaker 5: on top of it, we didn't see a lot of
Speaker 5: key players playing in the preseason, so they came into
Speaker 5: the year rusty. I think all that's going to regress.
Speaker 5: The scoring will pick up here in my opinion, as
Speaker 5: we move forward. But that's one of the angles you
Speaker 5: can look for. Running backs have been having a lot
Speaker 5: of success this season going against the too high because
Speaker 5: that's how you counter it. You just run the ball.
Speaker 5: They're light in the box, so that's what you take
Speaker 5: advantage of if you're looking for a couple of key
Speaker 5: trends too that I've been monitoring that date back to
Speaker 5: last season that have been really successful betting against the
Speaker 5: Kansas City Chiefs in the first half, betting on Kansas
Speaker 5: City Chiefs in the second half. They have been a
Speaker 5: really slow starting team going back to early last season,
Speaker 5: and it was on full display in the Super Bowl
Speaker 5: and most of their playoff games, like they would not
Speaker 5: cover the spread in the first half, and we've been
Speaker 5: seeing it all year, and then they come back and
Speaker 5: they win these games. Baltimore is the opposite. Baltimore is
Speaker 5: a team you bet on in the first half and
Speaker 5: then you bet against him in the second half. And
Speaker 5: I know you just had for NFL, But I throw
Speaker 5: this on top because it's a college angle, but it
Speaker 5: leads right into it. Tennessee had coached Josh Heipel. He
Speaker 5: coached at Central Florida for three years now. He's in
Speaker 5: his fourth year at Tennessee. In the first half, he's
Speaker 5: hitting seventy percent against the spread, and if he's on
Speaker 5: the road, he's hitting seventy six percent of the time
Speaker 5: on the first half line. It's incredible how good his
Speaker 5: team is. Guess what they're coming off the buy, They're
Speaker 5: on the road at Arkansas this week. They're like a
Speaker 5: seven point favorite in the first half. Absolute auto play.
Speaker 1: For me out here now in Big twelve Country formerly
Speaker 1: known as PAC twelve Country with the University of Utah,
Speaker 1: YU has been in the Big twelve now for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. You know, for me, I have a
Speaker 1: hard time deciphering what's real and what isn't in this conference.
Speaker 1: Is it safe to say that the Big twelve has
Speaker 1: provided the most chaos so far in college football?
Speaker 2: Or would you go in a different direction?
Speaker 5: Yeah? No, I would say that, And I would also
Speaker 5: tell you that that's exactly what the professional betters were
Speaker 5: predicting before the season started, because there were three teams
Speaker 5: you could look at and say, all right, these are
Speaker 5: the three teams that have a good chance of winning
Speaker 5: this conference. And the odds kind of reflected these three
Speaker 5: teams as being close to one part with one another Utah,
Speaker 5: Oklahoma State, and Kansas State. But as great as that
Speaker 5: Utah win oh Oklahoma State two weeks ago was the
Speaker 5: loss against Arizona and against all that, right, it brings
Speaker 5: everyone right back into play. And Kansas State's had their struggles,
Speaker 5: Oki States had their struggles. We see what's going on
Speaker 5: with some of the other teams. So it's been a
Speaker 5: very intriguing conference throughout the course of the So, to
Speaker 5: answer your question in a long, roundabout way, yeah, it's
Speaker 5: the wildcard Conference. There's still a lot to like. I
Speaker 5: would love to get a straight answer on what's going
Speaker 5: on with Cam Rising because I still think it's Utah.
Speaker 5: I still think Utah is a good bet to make
Speaker 5: the playoffs. But at some point we got to figure
Speaker 5: out what's going on with the starting quarterback because there's
Speaker 5: a couple of key games down the stretch that they're
Speaker 5: going to need him for.
Speaker 1: So it's funny you mentioned that because I wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of kick the tires with you on the way
Speaker 1: that the University of Utah has elected to handle the situation,
Speaker 1: and ultimately Kyle Whitdeham, their head coach, doesn't give a
Speaker 1: rip about whether or not fans are mad if the
Speaker 1: quarterback is not playing or if he is playing, nor
Speaker 1: does he give a rip with the media.
Speaker 2: Has to say about it.
Speaker 1: But I wonder, Joe, and this is in your wheelhouse
Speaker 1: in a way that it's just not in mine. I mean,
Speaker 1: the modern day situation in all sports really is that
Speaker 1: betting has kind of changed the game and college football,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, is not his front facing and obvious
Speaker 1: about how they're in bed with the gambling companies. But
Speaker 1: thefl certainly is there are QR codes and the NBA games,
Speaker 1: you get the deal. Do you think now that the
Speaker 1: reality is sports of all kinds, since they've embraced the
Speaker 1: gambling and the apps and the companies, that at some
Speaker 1: point just every school is going to have to you know,
Speaker 1: it'll be a mandate that you have to report injuries.
Speaker 2: They do it in the SEC, but they don't do
Speaker 2: it in the Big twelve.
Speaker 1: Do you think we're i speed ahead to a mandate
Speaker 1: for every member institution that plays football.
Speaker 5: It's such an interesting question because it has such a
Speaker 5: complicated answer in regards to you, Tahl. If they're not
Speaker 5: being forced to give you that information, I would do
Speaker 5: the same thing Willingham Winningham's doing. Excuse me, I'd be
Speaker 5: doing the exact same thing. I would be playing Coy.
Speaker 5: He did this last year with the knee injury to
Speaker 5: start the season, and he's been doing it with the hand.
Speaker 5: So why give your opponent any information you don't have
Speaker 5: to give them now? To the future, the directness is going.
Speaker 5: It kind of stills the Wild West with nil and
Speaker 5: the way the transfer portal works, and we all know
Speaker 5: what happened at UNLV with their quarterback. It's only a
Speaker 5: matter of time before contracts come into play, and then
Speaker 5: we find ourselves with the situation in which there's probably
Speaker 5: a players union, and we start to get to a
Speaker 5: point where we're just making another professional football league, right like,
Speaker 5: there's gonna be the NFL, and then there's gonna be
Speaker 5: a handful of college teams that make up this new
Speaker 5: professional league, and then the ones that can't keep up
Speaker 5: financially are probably going to play a more traditional version
Speaker 5: of college football, and that'll be what we're looking at.
Speaker 5: And when that happens, yes, we're gonna need injury reports
Speaker 5: just like we get in the NFL, and there will
Speaker 5: be some gamesmanship. I'm sure the Niners did that with
Speaker 5: Christian McCaffrey to start the season, but ultimately we won't
Speaker 5: have the situations like we're having at the University of Utah, which, again,
Speaker 5: to be fair, if I'm in his shoes, I'm doing
Speaker 5: that exact same thing. I don't see any reason to
Speaker 5: give out information if you're not being for Sue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well said, Well said, And that's why you know.
Speaker 1: I know fans are frustrated. I know the communities frustrated
Speaker 1: because we get a game time decision week in and
Speaker 1: week out, and then the game comes and he doesn't play.
Speaker 2: And certainly it does remind.
Speaker 1: Folks of a year ago as far as the same
Speaker 1: situation happening week in and week out.
Speaker 2: I do feel bad for the player.
Speaker 1: I feel bad for Cam because he's just hurt, and
Speaker 1: then once he's healthy, I think he's going to play.
Speaker 2: But let me follow up with a question about Utah.
Speaker 1: You already referenced that you feel like they should be
Speaker 1: the favorite to make the playoff and win the Big
Speaker 1: Twelve if Cam's under center. What if he's not, What
Speaker 1: does that do to your opinion? What if it is
Speaker 1: this eighteen year old true freshman Isaac Wilson the rest
Speaker 1: of the season, You'd still think Utah can get it
Speaker 1: done in the Big Twelve.
Speaker 5: No, I gotta knock him out. And to be honest
Speaker 5: with you, that kills me because I have a massive
Speaker 5: bet on Utah winning that conference and going oh for
Speaker 5: nine and a half.
Speaker 6: Wins this season.
Speaker 5: It was one of my favorite bets this year. So
Speaker 5: outside of the Great Salt Lake region, Like, I'm probably
Speaker 5: watching it as much Utah football as anybody out there,
Speaker 5: and I think Wilson has made some big time throws.
Speaker 5: He's got the arms strength, he's got that arm talent
Speaker 5: you talk about at the next level. I've watched him
Speaker 5: make some plays the second half of the Utah State game.
Speaker 5: He did what he needed to do to win that
Speaker 5: game and bring him back. But the thing is they
Speaker 5: are way too inconsistent on offense, Like they've got no pop.
Speaker 5: They have got to be able to hang points quickly
Speaker 5: in certain spots. Arizona's not good. I'm sorry, but they're
Speaker 5: not a good team. They got rolled up a couple
Speaker 5: weeks before that game, and that was a great spot
Speaker 5: for them because they're coming off the buy and Utah
Speaker 5: was off that war at Oklahoma State. But there's no
Speaker 5: excuse for losing that game and playing to that extent.
Speaker 5: So Wilson down the road, maybe next season's got some potential.
Speaker 5: But late in the season, you've got the UCF game,
Speaker 5: which I know doesn't look all that daunting now because
Speaker 5: they just lost to Colorado. You got Colorado on the schedule,
Speaker 5: there's at least one other one that I'm blanking on
Speaker 5: right now that's going to be somewhat challenging. And while
Speaker 5: it's not overwhelming, the fact that you beat Oklahoma State,
Speaker 5: which was the only spot off season where you were
Speaker 5: going to be an underdog, and then you blew it
Speaker 5: the next week Arizona, you just kind of flushed all
Speaker 5: that good will, like everything was set to just survive
Speaker 5: Arizona and then kind of reset with the bye week
Speaker 5: and everything. So, no, if you told me right now
Speaker 5: it's gonna be Wilson the rest of the way, I
Speaker 5: tell you they're losing at least one more game.
Speaker 1: So the one game you may be blanking and I don't,
Speaker 1: I won't hold you accountable for this is probably the
Speaker 1: BYU game here in Salt Lake.
Speaker 5: That's great call.
Speaker 7: BYU has been very good this season.
Speaker 1: Sure, And that's where I want to follow up because
Speaker 1: you know Kalaatee Satake, their head coach, used to be
Speaker 1: the decordinator up here.
Speaker 2: I used to do a coach a show with him weekly,
Speaker 2: So he's.
Speaker 1: A friend, don't I don't hide the fact that I
Speaker 1: want him to succeed so he can keep his job.
Speaker 2: Joins the show, so does their offensive coordinator.
Speaker 1: We're the home of the Utes, and of course we
Speaker 1: want Utah to do well, but it's better around here
Speaker 1: when both of these teams are good. So my question, Joe,
Speaker 1: as of today, how good do you think BYU.
Speaker 5: Is by who's been very good? And I think that's
Speaker 5: the thing that's caught some people by surprise. They were
Speaker 5: not projected to be one of those teams that was
Speaker 5: going to make a lot of noise in the conference
Speaker 5: this season, right, Like, there was some upside there, but
Speaker 5: anywhere you went, at least from the stuff I read
Speaker 5: from people who are professional gamblers and handicap this, they
Speaker 5: were kind of seen as like an on the fringe
Speaker 5: sort of team that might make a little noise, but
Speaker 5: we weren't going to take them too seriously. But again,
Speaker 5: that leads into the whole wildcard factor of the Big
Speaker 5: twelve conference in general, and they've proven to take advantage
Speaker 5: of the opportunities that are out there with the Big
Speaker 5: three stumbling early and often throughout the course of the season. So,
Speaker 5: given what I've seen with the Flaws and the other teams,
Speaker 5: so much of this comes down to key scheduling spots,
Speaker 5: like what's just happened to Utah? The idea of playing
Speaker 5: this war and then the next week you got to
Speaker 5: play someone coming off of bye week. That stuff is
Speaker 5: so important in college football, and I don't think people
Speaker 5: realize that enough. You know, the third road game in
Speaker 5: four weeks, or the matchup this weekend, for example, Alabama,
Speaker 5: they're off a huge win and they're laying twenty four
Speaker 5: against Vanderbilt. I think Vanderbilt is a great best weekend.
Speaker 5: I think this is a really flat spot for Alabama.
Speaker 5: I think they end up winning, yes, but I take
Speaker 5: Vanderbilt plus the point. This is their super Bowl.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 5: So back to your original question, Yes, I think BYU
Speaker 5: is what we'd call live to win this conference because
Speaker 5: so far, what we've seen is that it's wide open
Speaker 5: and no one has seized upon the opportunities that have
Speaker 5: been given them through the first month plus of the season.
Speaker 1: You know, Deon Sanders, of course, is a lighting rod
Speaker 1: for attention and either a polarizing figure depending on what
Speaker 1: you believe about him. I appreciate the attention he brings
Speaker 1: to this region and this conference, but I don't think
Speaker 1: a lot of people thought we'd be sitting here Joe
Speaker 1: talking about BYU Texas Tech and then Colorado atop the
Speaker 1: conference two and oh four and one through five. Where
Speaker 1: are you at as of today on Colorado's chances of
Speaker 1: maybe even getting this thing done winning?
Speaker 2: Are are they among the contenders to win the Big twelve?
Speaker 5: You see, I might be the worst possible person to
Speaker 5: ask about this because I came into the season and
Speaker 5: I was the same way last year. I sold him
Speaker 5: as a very overvalued football team because you got a
Speaker 5: lot of public money backing them up. You got a
Speaker 5: lot of hype, but the team isn't good enough to
Speaker 5: mess that hype, so there's opportunities to bet against them.
Speaker 5: And last year I looked like a fool early in
Speaker 5: the season because they kept winning. But then eventually I
Speaker 5: had my day and they stumbled down the stretch, and
Speaker 5: there were a lot of profitable opportunities there. Specifically, that
Speaker 5: Oregon game that spread early in the year was way
Speaker 5: too short. So now here we are again. I had
Speaker 5: them dead to rights in that UCF game. It was
Speaker 5: their third road game in four weeks. They were off
Speaker 5: a huge win. UCF was off the by they were
Speaker 5: going to play in the humidity in Florida, That was
Speaker 5: earmark for a UCF win. They were two touchdown favorites,
Speaker 5: and they got their rear ends kicked in that game,
Speaker 5: absolutely kicked. That I think was the best win I've
Speaker 5: seen from Deon Sanders in the last couple of seasons
Speaker 5: he's been in Colorado. Very impressive to overcome the spot
Speaker 5: like that and to put a whoop in on a
Speaker 5: team to that extent. So I probably will continue to
Speaker 5: doubt them. I will consider them overrated because I worry
Speaker 5: about the offensive line and I worry about the defense
Speaker 5: outside of Travis Hunter. But they've been proving me wrong
Speaker 5: left and right. So mark my words on this one.
Speaker 5: If we need to circle back in a few weeks
Speaker 5: and you need to shove it right in my face,
Speaker 5: you go ahead and do so. I'm going down with
Speaker 5: that ship. But he's been proving me wrong so far
Speaker 5: this season.
Speaker 1: Back to the NFL. Which team, Maybe it's just the
Speaker 1: Vikings because they're undefeated. Which team has been the most
Speaker 1: difficult to kind of nail down as far as is
Speaker 1: this real through four weeks? Which has been the most
Speaker 1: And you can throw out a couple of names if
Speaker 1: you want, Joe, but the most difficult NFL team to.
Speaker 2: Try to understand what's happening right now.
Speaker 5: I think it's the teams that zigzag that's the thing.
Speaker 5: Like the Vikings are a pleasant surprise, but I think
Speaker 5: we've learned that they're good. Right Like, maybe they're not great,
Speaker 5: but look at them. They're four and oh, they've got
Speaker 5: a great defense, quarterbacks number one in the NFL quarterback rating,
Speaker 5: and they've beaten the Niners, the Texans and the Packers
Speaker 5: and that was a road game. Like those are three
Speaker 5: teams that were people were picking them to go to
Speaker 5: the conference championship and win the Super Bowl this year,
Speaker 5: right like, that is the most impressive strength of schedule
Speaker 5: in the NFL so far. So they deserve all the
Speaker 5: respect in the world. It's no longer a question of
Speaker 5: whether or not they're good, it's just like, are they great?
Speaker 5: The teams that are kind of like head scratchers trying
Speaker 5: to figure them out, the Saints, the Falcons, right the Bucks,
Speaker 5: almost everybody in the NFC South outside of Carolina, because
Speaker 5: they've shown some promise, but they've also stumbled all over themselves.
Speaker 5: I think a team like Pittsburgh might be a little
Speaker 5: bit overvalued because they're winning all these one score games.
Speaker 5: I think Kansas City is definitely overvalued. They're four and
Speaker 5: oh with four to one score wins, like every opportunity
Speaker 5: has been there for the opposition to beat them. I
Speaker 5: don't think people realize how close Kansas City is to
Speaker 5: being zero to four. But that's what great teams do.
Speaker 5: They find ways to win ugly games. So those are
Speaker 5: the teams that kind of get me, Like these teams
Speaker 5: that might be two and two right now, where we've
Speaker 5: seen them play really well in some games and sloppy
Speaker 5: in others. It's hard to get a gauge.
Speaker 1: So opening the season, as you know, Vegas was kind
Speaker 1: of telling us that if you're going to lay a
Speaker 1: bet on the Super Bowl, you should look to Kansas
Speaker 1: City or San Francisco. And then there was a big
Speaker 1: gap between those two and then you got into like
Speaker 1: the Baltimore's.
Speaker 2: And the Buffalos.
Speaker 1: Through four weeks, What do the number say about the
Speaker 1: best teams in pro football right now?
Speaker 5: You know, Kansas City's still sitting at the top. Naturally,
Speaker 5: they're undefeated, And the thing is, it's not so much
Speaker 5: that they're undefeated, it's that no one else has made
Speaker 5: a great case, like who is there. There was Buffalo,
Speaker 5: but they were three and zero against three bad teams
Speaker 5: and then they went out there and they got their
Speaker 5: bucks kicked by a good team. So how good are they?
Speaker 5: Speaking of Baltimore, all right, they're two and two, but
Speaker 5: they've had some sloppy spots this season, and we all
Speaker 5: know about their struggles in the playoffs. The Jets coaching
Speaker 5: is definitely a problem. It's going to prevent them from
Speaker 5: being great. They can be good, but Robert salav is
Speaker 5: going to prevent them from being great. Houston, I think's
Speaker 5: got vulnerabilities, and nobody's challet in the West with all
Speaker 5: those injuries to the Chargers right now. So ultimately the
Speaker 5: AFC is the Chiefs. It's hard to find someone else
Speaker 5: to say, yeah, I really believe in in thirteen here,
Speaker 5: like the Steelers, because I think quarterback play is going
Speaker 5: to be a struggle there. Eagles, Cowboys down in the NFC.
Speaker 5: You got to give a lot of respect to Minnesota. Okay,
Speaker 5: you've got to respect Detroit. They should be undefeated. That
Speaker 5: one loss. They gave that game away. They were one
Speaker 5: for seven in the red zone. They outgained Tampa Bay
Speaker 5: by two hundred and fifty total yards. Detroit's probably the
Speaker 5: best team in my opinion in the NFC, and Minnesota's
Speaker 5: right there with them. Green Bay is going to be formidable.
Speaker 5: And then I want to say Seattle. I really want
Speaker 5: to believe in Seattle, but they feel like they're one
Speaker 5: year away from being a serious threat. That was a
Speaker 5: good opportunity for them last night, and they showed some moxie,
Speaker 5: but they got some problems. That was their first big
Speaker 5: test and they got crushed defensively.
Speaker 1: All right, Joe, Before I say you, Louise, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask you the same question that I asked you about
Speaker 1: the NFL and ask you about archies me, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask you out college football. We already talked big twelve,
Speaker 1: but big picture juxtaposed to how everything started. What do
Speaker 1: the numbers say about the teams that are legitimately going
Speaker 1: to be in it at the end to win the
Speaker 1: whole thing?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, Bama is just getting all the love
Speaker 5: in the world right now because of that win, and
Speaker 5: how could you not give it to them? I would say,
Speaker 5: don't downgrade Georgia by too much because they went on
Speaker 5: the road. They showed a lot of guts coming all
Speaker 5: the way back in that game to take the lead late.
Speaker 5: I think they I think they still very much deserve
Speaker 5: everybody's respect. Oldness showed us their true colors. Anytime you
Speaker 5: put pressure on Lane Kiffin and say it's gonna be
Speaker 5: his year, anytime you put expectations on him, they're gonna
Speaker 5: flop that. That's that's as right as rain in the
Speaker 5: springtime in the Northeast, Like you know that that's coming.
Speaker 5: So I would look around, I would say, I can't
Speaker 5: wait to see Ohio State get tested, because we haven't
Speaker 5: talked about them at all this season. I think Tennessee
Speaker 5: deserves a lot of respect because everyone focuses on the
Speaker 5: offense and the big play production, but on top of that, defensively,
Speaker 5: they find a way to get some stops. And I
Speaker 5: know MC State isn't great, but they throttle them. And
Speaker 5: I know Oklahoma isn't great, but they've throttled them. They've
Speaker 5: got some reputable teams on their schedule and they've absolutely
Speaker 5: kicked everybody's butt. So that's the team I'm kind of
Speaker 5: watching right now. They got two big tests the rest
Speaker 5: of the way, one of which is going to be Alabama.
Speaker 5: Very interested to see how the rest of the season
Speaker 5: goes for Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Joe, I appreciate the time, man, keep up the great work.
Speaker 1: We'd love to do it again.
Speaker 2: Suon Okay, it.
Speaker 5: Was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on
Speaker 5: the show.
Speaker 1: All right, Joe Fordon Baugh he is on ESPN the
Speaker 1: ESPN BET Live show on ESPN two. Has a radio
Speaker 1: show called Carlin Versus Joe Monday through Friday noon to three.
Speaker 1: That's Eastern time on ESPN Radio. Get him on Twitter,
Speaker 1: just his name at Joe Fordenbaz where you find him.
Speaker 1: All Right, before we catch a break, I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about my friends at Clearwater Distilling. Clear Water
Speaker 1: Distilling is the only distillery in Utah County open on Sundays.
Speaker 1: Great spirits. They've got a tasting room and the nicest
Speaker 1: crew around. Limited release Wednesday Whiskey Batch number two mix
Speaker 1: of their bourbon and Rye whiskeys. They've got the Scandalus
Speaker 1: the Renee. The Renee or their vodka which is now
Speaker 1: in most state liquor stores. The football season is kicked
Speaker 1: off and Clearwater is also the official spirits provider for
Speaker 1: our ESPN tailgate we have at every home game. Do
Speaker 1: yourself favor, check out the tailgate and schedule a tor
Speaker 1: in tastings in their Victorian tasting room.
Speaker 2: It makes a great date night of fun activity anytime.
Speaker 1: Authentic vintage, Prohibition prescriptions and decorp. Try their scandal Us
Speaker 1: and no Sugar, no additives, great tasting, grown up version
Speaker 1: of cinnamon whiskey. They've got ultra premium spirits, many with
Speaker 1: the unique twist. The Renee is awesome. Try their Armagnac,
Speaker 1: their Josephine, their Lorenz. You can buy their spirits and
Speaker 1: state liquor stores online or take a trip to their
Speaker 1: beautiful distillery. Grab some booze, some local cigars, and immerse
Speaker 1: yourself from the Clearwater stealing culture. More information can be
Speaker 1: found at clearwaterdstealing dot com.
Speaker 4: He's deprived of Norwich, Connecticut and an adopted son of
Speaker 4: Salt Lake City. After forty years with the Utah Jazz,
Speaker 4: there's no one better to talk some hoops. Richard Smitty
Speaker 4: Smith is back on the drive on ESPN seven hundred.
Speaker 1: All right, Scott Mitchell is gonna roll by coming up
Speaker 1: in about an hour from right now, and then Bill
Speaker 1: Riley will join us. Following Scott's hit. Bill's gonna join
Speaker 1: us at four point thirty. So back to some college football,
Speaker 1: some good stuff with Joe Fordenba today talking a little
Speaker 1: pro football, little college football.
Speaker 2: But it's been too long.
Speaker 1: We have our guy back in studio forty years with
Speaker 1: the Jazz front office and now just living the dream.
Speaker 2: Richard Smith, Smitty, Happy Tuesday, buddy. How are we doing?
Speaker 8: It is a dream too, I know.
Speaker 9: Look look look where I've gotten the station in life
Speaker 9: that I've gotten to right now, we're on the opening
Speaker 9: act for the big hitters like Scott Mitchell and Bill Riley.
Speaker 1: How about that? Yeah, I mean we would have thunk it.
Speaker 1: This is the you caught the final branch, Smittie. We're
Speaker 1: your final branch. We're propping you up. But we appreciate
Speaker 1: your time.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: How you been What's what's What's what's been going on
Speaker 2: with you?
Speaker 8: Hey?
Speaker 9: We've been on this this worldwide tour that my wife
Speaker 9: and I have been on all year and in and
Speaker 9: out of town every month. We have something going on.
Speaker 9: And we were back and got my my final two
Speaker 9: baseball parks in and uh so I've got all thirty
Speaker 9: ballparks under my belt. We did that and went to
Speaker 9: the US open, and then went down a couple of
Speaker 9: weeks ago down to Phoenix to see Green Day and
Speaker 9: concert and a couple of baseball games. And now next
Speaker 9: week because of our good friend Wesley Rouff and thanks
Speaker 9: again the West, he he got me in with Gina
Speaker 9: down at the the PGA tournament at Black Desert. So
Speaker 9: we're gonna volunteer and work down there next week and
Speaker 9: and have some fun seeing the course for the first time.
Speaker 9: I know, I know, guys like you've been down there
Speaker 9: mastering the course.
Speaker 2: For VIP playing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 9: I got it, man, And that's why I'll be down
Speaker 9: there working and probably emptying the garbage cans or or
Speaker 9: doing something.
Speaker 2: But like I said, living the dream. It sounds like.
Speaker 1: All right, before we do, little Jazz, I wanted to
Speaker 1: you know, we said goodbye to the bees here in
Speaker 1: the Capital City last week. I wasn't able to get
Speaker 1: down there last week, and I have been to a
Speaker 1: couple of games this year. Wanted to make sure I
Speaker 1: got to a couple before they moved. And you were there,
Speaker 1: and our guy Frank was there. I wonder what that
Speaker 1: was like. Frank has been such a fixture at that
Speaker 1: ballpark and you have two and after thirty years, they're
Speaker 1: heading down south to Daybreak, And you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of the Miller's obviously with what Gail, Larry before Gail,
Speaker 1: and then both of them, then Gail as the lone
Speaker 1: steward after Larry's passing, and I believe in their plan.
Speaker 1: You know, I've had Steve starkson studio and if the
Speaker 1: endgame here is major League Baseball, which we all hope
Speaker 1: it is, I understand it. I live in Salt Lake,
Speaker 1: so it's a little bit of a bummer for me
Speaker 1: and excited for our friends and daybreaks to experience it.
Speaker 2: But what was it like to be there for the
Speaker 2: final time with Frank, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 9: It was interesting. It was very It was very emotional,
Speaker 9: just from the standpoint that while you're there and at
Speaker 9: the end of the game, they let everybody come down
Speaker 9: and like run the bases or kind of just experience
Speaker 9: being on the field for a moment, you know. And
Speaker 9: they usually do that with young kids after weekend games,
Speaker 9: or run the bases, but they they just let everybody
Speaker 9: come down and there were older folks down there with
Speaker 9: their with their canes and just walking, you know, from
Speaker 9: from home to first or whatever, just to be on
Speaker 9: the field one last time, and it was, uh, it
Speaker 9: was quite emotion think about it. Spencer Andy Larson did
Speaker 9: a great piece on this prior to it, uh with
Speaker 9: the sole A Tribune that that you know, baseball has
Speaker 9: been played on the corner of West Temple and Thirteenth
Speaker 9: South for almost one hundred years, you know, and now
Speaker 9: it's uh, uh it's going away. I you know, I'm
Speaker 9: in the same boat with you. I get it. You know, Hey,
Speaker 9: look we're doing this with the Bees and and and
Speaker 9: uh the week later, the Oakland A's at the major
Speaker 9: league level are doing it, you know, in Oakland, and
Speaker 9: they're leaving, and you know, and that's just you know
Speaker 9: that that's happened over the course of time and in
Speaker 9: pro sports and teams leave and and and so forth.
Speaker 9: But you know, they're not leaving the market, o leaving
Speaker 9: for a different venue. But one of the misnomers, uh,
Speaker 9: I want to throw out there just to correct for
Speaker 9: people who who think that was the closing of the
Speaker 9: ballpark and and that uh, and that baseball is done there. Actually,
Speaker 9: next spring, Utah Baseball will still be playing one more
Speaker 9: year at Smith's Ballpark as their ballpark being built up
Speaker 9: at the university campus. Uh is being finished, so there'll
Speaker 9: actually be some baseball played their next spring as a
Speaker 9: as a last hurrah if you will, for for people
Speaker 9: who want to get down there and and see it
Speaker 9: one more time.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 9: But but it was emotional. They had a great Phil
Speaker 9: Collins song playing over the speakers at the end of
Speaker 9: the game, you know about going home and stuff and
Speaker 9: and uh uh.
Speaker 8: You know it was Uh, it was.
Speaker 9: It got a little tearful as you were walking out
Speaker 9: and going this, I guess this is it.
Speaker 8: This is this is the end of it.
Speaker 1: Certainly, Frank can speak for himself, as we all know,
Speaker 1: and I'll ask him this next time I have the opportunity,
Speaker 1: But I wonder if you could shed some light on
Speaker 1: what it was like for him. Seventh innen stretch. You know,
Speaker 1: that's his deal, man, So what do you think it
Speaker 1: was like for Frank?
Speaker 8: No, And I'll tell you what. He was in great form.
Speaker 9: He not only did the seventh inning stretch and take
Speaker 9: me out to the ball game, but he had added
Speaker 9: just a little, a little ten second note at the
Speaker 9: end of it about We're gonna miss your old ballpark
Speaker 9: and we love you. And God bless everybody you know
Speaker 9: that's been coming here all these years, or something something
Speaker 9: to that effect. And it was very heartfelt, and I know,
Speaker 9: as Frank, only Frank can do. He spoke from the
Speaker 9: heart and right off the top, and it was a
Speaker 9: nice conclusion, you.
Speaker 1: Know, to it help help me remember Abbottsfield Brooklyn Dodgers, Yes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe one of, if not the most famous
Speaker 1: baseball teams to get out of town. Yeah, Frank, Frank
Speaker 1: was a fan, right, and so he watched the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Dodgers become the Los Angeles.
Speaker 9: You saw them move from Brooklyn after the fifty seventh season,
Speaker 9: and most people forget or or you know, if you're
Speaker 9: not a real baseball fan, maybe not aware that both
Speaker 9: New York City and it's heyday in the forties and
Speaker 9: fifties when all the teams were competitive, the Brooklyn Dodgers,
Speaker 9: the New York Yankees of course in the Bronx, and
Speaker 9: then the New York Giants. They were over in the
Speaker 9: Polo Grounds, which from a physical standpoint, you could walk
Speaker 9: from one to the other. They were only like three
Speaker 9: miles apart, but three three big time major league teams,
Speaker 9: and after the fifty seventh season, the Dodgers leave Brooklyn
Speaker 9: to go to la and the Giants leave the Polo
Speaker 9: Grounds and go to San Francisco. And it was actually
Speaker 9: a time when both the owners got together, of the
Speaker 9: Dodgers and the Giants, and said, hey, we're gonna move. Yeah,
Speaker 9: you're gonna move, because we're not gonna move unless you're moving. Yeah,
Speaker 9: we'll do this together. We'll do it at the same time,
Speaker 9: so we'll be natural rivals on the West coast, which
Speaker 9: you know, just transferred the rivalry from the East Coast
Speaker 9: to the West coast. But they actually there was a
Speaker 9: moment in time spence during all that where the two
Speaker 9: owners were trying to negotiate, now, where do you want
Speaker 9: to go? Yeah, well we were thinking about well, I
Speaker 9: don't know, we kind of liked that too, but what
Speaker 9: do you think about? And they actually just kind of
Speaker 9: sat in a room one night and just hashed it
Speaker 9: out and said, well, we'll go to San Francisco, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 9: that'll be okay. Ye are you sure because we're gonna
Speaker 9: go to l Yeah okay. And so it was easy
Speaker 9: as that, but both of them made the move with
Speaker 9: the idea that we have to we have to make
Speaker 9: get more revenue from where we are now. And not
Speaker 9: only was it tendance, but it was also in concessions.
Speaker 9: It was also parking because if you had knew anything
Speaker 9: about Brooklyn and the Polo Grounds, there was no parking
Speaker 9: around those venues, and so it was all you know,
Speaker 9: you know, hit and miss and for the fans and
Speaker 9: all that. So they both moved west. They both built
Speaker 9: ballparks where they owned the parking around the structure around
Speaker 9: the facility. So and to this day it's still the same. Obviously,
Speaker 9: in La Chavez Ravine, you go to a Dodger game,
Speaker 9: you have to park in the Dodgers parking lot because
Speaker 9: there's nowhere else to go. Now, there's some people who
Speaker 9: park down the street like two miles away and they
Speaker 9: make the half hour walk or whatever. But realistically, they
Speaker 9: built it and they surrounded the ballpark with a three
Speaker 9: hundred and sixty degree parking lot. So you go to
Speaker 9: a Dodger game, you have to pay them to park,
Speaker 9: and of course they owned the concession, so they got
Speaker 9: all this money. And that's how they built up their
Speaker 9: their farm system in the sixties and seventies and became
Speaker 9: very competitive and obviously still are today. And the Giants
Speaker 9: did the same thing when they originally moved you know,
Speaker 9: west and got Candlestick Park.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, leveland Browns, the Baltimore Raven stuff. Like,
Speaker 1: communities lose their teams all the time. One more thing
Speaker 1: on this though, because I found myself a little, I
Speaker 1: don't know, a little, I guess sympathetic to the folks
Speaker 1: in Oakland because now they've lost the Warriors, they've lost
Speaker 1: the Raiders, and they've lost the A's. Now, as you
Speaker 1: just outlined the motivation behind all these moves, it's one thing.
Speaker 2: It's one thing.
Speaker 1: Only the golden rule is the man with the gold
Speaker 1: makes the rules, and folks trying to you know, generate
Speaker 1: more revenue and create more revenue streams, parking and such
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area, I guess has provided that for
Speaker 1: the Warriors in a way that Oakland, I guess couldn't
Speaker 1: hang on to the Raiders. And now they've lost their
Speaker 1: baseball team. What do you make of when a community
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, it's one thing for Salt Lake
Speaker 1: to lose our minor league baseball team. To daybreak, if
Speaker 1: you want to go see the Bees, you just have
Speaker 1: to drive another twenty three minutes. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: whole other thing when a community over the past I
Speaker 1: don't know, six seven, eight years, has lost a basketball
Speaker 1: team that won four titles when they were there, a
Speaker 1: football team that won two titles while they were there,
Speaker 1: and a baseball team who at one point was thought
Speaker 1: to be the Darleida Major League Baseball. They never got
Speaker 1: over the well they won back in the day. But
Speaker 1: like the Billy Bean moneyball stuff. You know, some great
Speaker 1: Oakland A's memories certainly old enough to remember the Bash Brothers,
Speaker 1: can Sagua McGuire so three like community changing assets gone?
Speaker 6: Yep?
Speaker 2: What do you make of that?
Speaker 9: And for people who aren't aren't aren't really familiar with it.
Speaker 9: In the Oakland area, those two venues are literally right
Speaker 9: next door to each other, as it should, right off
Speaker 9: the freeway, the A eighty, and they share a huge
Speaker 9: parking lot area. And to have that whole that whole
Speaker 9: complex now is literally just sitting there. I don't know
Speaker 9: what the plans are by Oakland or Alameda County that
Speaker 9: runs those facilities, but it's uh, it's really a shame.
Speaker 9: It's really now literally a ghost town. You drive by
Speaker 9: them and there's nothing going on. You know, everything is shifted,
Speaker 9: whether it was with the Warriors, you know, over to
Speaker 9: the San Francisco side, you know, and they're right down
Speaker 9: the street from where the Giants are, uh now, and
Speaker 9: so everything's kind of centered in San Francisco. And and
Speaker 9: uh of course the Raiders moved to Vegas and now
Speaker 9: the supposedly the A's are going to eventually be in
Speaker 9: Vegas at some point.
Speaker 8: But it's but, but it's tough. Look, the.
Speaker 9: Raiders had the fan base, h they just wanted They
Speaker 9: just wanted a new setup and new revenue streams that
Speaker 9: Oakland couldn't provide the A's dwindling attendance and in the
Speaker 9: last ten fifteen years, wanted to get a new ballpark
Speaker 9: like the Giants had, couldn't get it, and the taxpayers
Speaker 9: there kept kept voting it down and so and and
Speaker 9: and rightfully, so why should they pay money for somebody
Speaker 9: else's business, you know, Larry Miller always took that stance.
Speaker 9: You know, why why would I ask the taxpayers for
Speaker 9: money when it's my business?
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 9: So the A's are now gonna, you know, go to
Speaker 9: Sacramento for a few years and hopefully get eventually to Vegas.
Speaker 9: But that's gonna be another interesting thing. The whole Vegas
Speaker 9: a's thing if you look into it, because they're tearing
Speaker 9: down the Tropic Cane when I was there a few
Speaker 9: months ago. It is coming down. It's it's a big
Speaker 9: construction site. And yet you know, there are several engineers
Speaker 9: who have written independent people have written reports about that
Speaker 9: footprint and Vegas on that corner across from MGM Grand
Speaker 9: and saying you cannot put a major league ballpark on
Speaker 9: that footprint and make it work in terms of the
Speaker 9: logistics and what you really need engineering wise, not to
Speaker 9: say what it would impact obviously with traffic and parking
Speaker 9: and all the things. But that part of Vegas in
Speaker 9: the south end of the strip is like that anyway.
Speaker 9: It's it's a big mess in the zoo. And you know,
Speaker 9: but everybody goes anyway, right, everybody's going to the Raiders games.
Speaker 9: People flock in to see the w n b A,
Speaker 9: the Aces play T Mobile is always packed whenever they
Speaker 9: have college games at T Mobile. They've figured it out
Speaker 9: at UNLV at Thomas and Max, so they'll figure something out.
Speaker 9: But it's it's going to be interesting. It's not this
Speaker 9: Slam dunk deal. I think that a lot of people
Speaker 9: are assuming the A's are automatically going to that site.
Speaker 9: That's that's going to be an interesting thing to watch.
Speaker 2: Last thing in this space, then we'll move on.
Speaker 1: And Commissioner Silver gave his annual you know, State of
Speaker 1: the Union whatever you call it, prior to the start
Speaker 1: of training camps in the NBA, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no imminent plans to expand, but eventually they will.
Speaker 1: And the talent's there, certainly in pro basketball when you
Speaker 1: look at a lot of the players that are out
Speaker 1: of the league.
Speaker 2: That seem to be still somewhat young and really good.
Speaker 1: I would imagine, you know, there was an argument at
Speaker 1: a time, you know, at one time that expansion would
Speaker 1: dilute the talent. I don't know that I'm there with
Speaker 1: it anymore when it does happen, because I'm also old
Speaker 1: enough to remember commissioners, you know, Pete Roselle, David Stern,
Speaker 1: Bargie Imadi, like older commissioners that are no longer there
Speaker 1: talking about how they would never touch Vegas because of
Speaker 1: the gambling, the nightlife or whatever it is. And now
Speaker 1: everything has changed because all these sports are in bed
Speaker 1: with the gambling companies and and so now it feels
Speaker 1: like Vegas, Super Bowl, Final Four, whatever it is when
Speaker 1: the NBA experience, Do you think it is Vegas?
Speaker 2: Do you think it's Seattle? What do you think that
Speaker 2: looks like?
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's what I would think, Spencer. The logical places
Speaker 9: are are Seattle and Las Vegas, as the crent economy dictates.
Speaker 9: You know, Saint Louis may try and get in the mix,
Speaker 9: Louisville may try and get in the mix. Vancouver or Montreal.
Speaker 2: I'd be behind Vancouver. I was that we lost that sit.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and uh, you know, they'll all be in the mix.
Speaker 9: All have have groups that will that will make a
Speaker 9: pitch anyway. But it just seems like the big dogs
Speaker 9: in the fight at the moment would be those in
Speaker 9: Seattle and the people who want to get it in Vegas,
Speaker 9: because that just seems to to be where everybody is flowing.
Speaker 9: And the NBA has a relationship with Las Vegas for
Speaker 9: the last twenty years with the Summer League and they
Speaker 9: and until last year, we're also holding the g League
Speaker 9: Showcase there in December every year, and the league would
Speaker 9: have meetings there and every team would be there so
Speaker 9: those seem like the logical places that they would go
Speaker 9: to next.
Speaker 1: So before we maybe we'll just do some jazz on
Speaker 1: our next segment, because I did want to kick the
Speaker 1: tires with you on some news that came down today.
Speaker 2: Gonzaga is going to join the PAC twelve.
Speaker 1: And you know, Mark Fuse, a guy who I know
Speaker 1: that you know, and he's probably had opportunities to take
Speaker 1: jobs and other places over the course of his career
Speaker 1: because he's been so good up there. But from a
Speaker 1: college basketball standpoint as far as how much it moves
Speaker 1: the needle, I just wanted to get your take on
Speaker 1: what mark is built up there because Gonzaga is joining
Speaker 1: a conference because of the basketball program, right, which is
Speaker 1: a rarity in today's day and age of college athletics.
Speaker 1: The only other school I can think of that would
Speaker 1: be able to do something like this is Yukon, right,
Speaker 1: because the football program is, you know, not what the
Speaker 1: basketball program is. But what do you make of what
Speaker 1: mark is built up at Gonzaga where they can actually
Speaker 1: get a conference invite because of their basketball prowess only?
Speaker 9: Yeah, Well, it's a tremendous a feather in their cap
Speaker 9: that they've had that kind of a program for over
Speaker 9: twenty years now twenty five years and counting. They don't
Speaker 9: have football at Gonzaga, so they rely heavily on men's
Speaker 9: basketball for whether it's revenue streams or whether it's increased
Speaker 9: enrollment or applications for admission and that kind of thing.
Speaker 8: What Mark Few will do?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 9: That would be interesting because I don't know, you know,
Speaker 9: if and this is just me, I don't know anything
Speaker 9: about it at all, But you know, when you're making
Speaker 9: a move like that, are you still going to be
Speaker 9: the big dog, you know, or as you say, the
Speaker 9: big fish in the little pond as they've been for
Speaker 9: so long in the West Coast Conference right Saint Mary's
Speaker 9: is as has far them somewhat by U somewhat when
Speaker 9: they were in it, but they were always the top dog.
Speaker 9: And now, uh, if you're not, if you're not going
Speaker 9: to do that, and now with N I N I
Speaker 9: L stuff and and the and the transfer portal, how
Speaker 9: are you What is it going to be your attraction
Speaker 9: to those players to keep them and what is going
Speaker 9: to be your base from a uh financial standpoint to
Speaker 9: be able to stay where you are in those circles
Speaker 9: that you know, Uh, they've been. They've been more than
Speaker 9: a few coaches spent just in the last couple of
Speaker 9: years that I've known, who have said, Hey, I can't
Speaker 9: deal it, deal with it. It's a whole different deal.
Speaker 9: I'm out of here, you know, and have just retired
Speaker 9: and left the game, you know, whether it's Randy Ray
Speaker 9: up at Weaver Stay or whether it was uh Jay
Speaker 9: at then at Villanova. You know, Mike Krychevski of course,
Speaker 9: is a little bit older, so you know, probably a
Speaker 9: ripe time for him to retire anyway, but a lot
Speaker 9: of prominent guys in the last couple of years have said,
Speaker 9: you know, I don't think I can deal with this stuff,
Speaker 9: and so Gonzaiga moving into that kind of conference will
Speaker 9: be interesting to see just how Mark Few deals with
Speaker 9: that on a personal and professional level going forward.
Speaker 1: All Right, some sad news the surface this week. And
Speaker 1: I had a chance on a few occasions to meet
Speaker 1: to Kenby Matambaugh. He was at Patrick Ewan's retirement of
Speaker 1: the Garden. And you know, jazz fans remember great battles
Speaker 1: with Mark and Carl you know, back when the kembe
Speaker 1: was in Denver, when he was in Atlanta, the Knicks
Speaker 1: and the Hawks had a little thing going back and forth.
Speaker 1: And you know, we could talk about his game, certainly
Speaker 1: a second all time in blocks, one of the best
Speaker 1: rebounding block shot bigs of that era. But it seems
Speaker 1: like most of the conversation this weeksman has been about
Speaker 1: who he was when he wasn't playing as an ambassador.
Speaker 1: And you are uniquely qualified to talk about this. You've
Speaker 1: done some stuff basketball without borders down in Africa's home country,
Speaker 1: republic of Congo. What would you tell our listeners about
Speaker 1: your knowledge of Dekembe as he passed away this week
Speaker 1: at the age of fifty eight.
Speaker 9: Yeah, what what sad news to get You know that
Speaker 9: he died of brain cancer and one awful thing to
Speaker 9: have to deal with and at such a young age.
Speaker 9: He Uh, he was a very impactful player on the court.
Speaker 9: He was very meaningful to the teams that he played
Speaker 9: for in terms of his personality, in terms of his
Speaker 9: his total approach to the profession. You know, he was
Speaker 9: really a great locker room guy, uh that that rally
Speaker 9: people around him, but even more so off the court,
Speaker 9: both for his home country, both for the continent of Africa,
Speaker 9: both as an ambassador for the NBA. He was the
Speaker 9: first official NBA Ambassador, International ambassador, and and was employed
Speaker 9: by the NBA for for many many years to go
Speaker 9: around the world and and and preach the game of
Speaker 9: basketball and to represent the NBA at the highest levels.
Speaker 9: And he was a guy who could get it done,
Speaker 9: and he had that personality. He also had a certain
Speaker 9: level of humbleness about him, you know, where he was
Speaker 9: able to meet you know, dignitaries and and uh politicians
Speaker 9: in different countries and at the highest level and be
Speaker 9: able to get in the door and and talk with
Speaker 9: them about you know, spreading the game and building basketball
Speaker 9: courts and getting infrastructures in place for countries and uh
Speaker 9: to uh to to get involved in in this sport.
Speaker 9: And he was just a great global ambassador And and
Speaker 9: what a what a genuine person he was who was
Speaker 9: grateful for the opportunities he got in this country to
Speaker 9: do what he loved to do, and then was all
Speaker 9: about giving back to that after his career. And what
Speaker 9: a loss for the game basketball, what a loss for
Speaker 9: humanity in general to have someone like him pass away
Speaker 9: at such an early age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said all right.
Speaker 1: Coming up next to Jazz open up training camp. It
Speaker 1: is that week in pro basketball, so we'll do a
Speaker 1: little jazz coming up on the other side. Also, Donovan
Speaker 1: Mitchell loves Cleveland because he can dress for the cold
Speaker 1: and he's excited about the future.
Speaker 2: Where have we heard that before? We'll get somebody's take
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you about my friends at diamond
Speaker 1: Coat Diamond Cote premium home siding. They're new here longawasatch front.
Speaker 1: You won't believe what they can do to your home's exterior.
Speaker 1: Diamond Coate Siding next generation system delivers the exterior transformation
Speaker 1: you deserve to level up to the neighborhood standard. They
Speaker 1: are the total design solution that shows your personal style
Speaker 1: with endless styles and colors for limitless customization, and their
Speaker 1: thirty year no fade warranty means your vision will last
Speaker 1: for decades to come. Design beyond limits, beyond expectation with
Speaker 1: diamond Coat now available in the Salt Lake City area
Speaker 1: premium home siding, limitless potential, end the styles and colors.
Speaker 1: They're your total design solution. There are year round, weather ready,
Speaker 1: durable in all seasons. Discover more at diamondcoatsidning dot com.
Speaker 1: That's diamondcoat spelled Kote Siding dot com. All right, some
Speaker 1: jazz coming up with Smitty live in studio, keep it
Speaker 1: right here on ESPN seven hundred. We've got Scott Mitchell
Speaker 1: stopping by today at four o'clock to talk some Utah football.
Speaker 1: Then the voice of the Utes, Bill Riley, will be
Speaker 1: our guest after that.
Speaker 2: So some college football coming your way. We'll get back
Speaker 2: at that. Coming up in a bit. Smitty is live
Speaker 2: in studio. The great Richard Smith forty years.
Speaker 1: With the Jazz Front Office, speaking of college football so many.
Speaker 1: We might have two really good teams in our state.
Speaker 1: We got little Utes, little Cougars. Both both look like
Speaker 1: they're pretty good this year. Hey, let's get Smitty's mic on.
Speaker 1: All right, let's try again. I just so you know,
Speaker 1: I cannot control your mic or my mic in the studio.
Speaker 2: So okay, okay, yeah, you're good.
Speaker 1: Now a couple of It's always better when they're both good,
Speaker 1: chief right.
Speaker 9: Hey, Hey, there's probably some other factors involved in going, Hey,
Speaker 9: we've heard enough of that guy already.
Speaker 8: Somebody cut his mic off or something.
Speaker 1: No, it's a much more nuanced, you know, the explanation
Speaker 1: one that will leave off air for today. But you're
Speaker 1: you're a man of the community. We got both b
Speaker 1: y U and Utah footballer concerned.
Speaker 9: Oh hey, I've been to the U games the last
Speaker 9: few games at home and went to the game the
Speaker 9: other night and and uh, you know, just you know,
Speaker 9: I thought Arizona just outplayed them. You know, they they
Speaker 9: What they really did to me, for me was that
Speaker 9: Arizona every time they had a critical third down play,
Speaker 9: they made the play. And you have to give them
Speaker 9: credit for that. They they went out and got it.
Speaker 9: I thought I didn't think it was something you know,
Speaker 9: so called that the that the you gave away a
Speaker 9: lost as much as Arizona came and took it from him.
Speaker 9: And so you have to give them credit. They just
Speaker 9: played better.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 9: And and b y U is off to a tremendous start,
Speaker 9: and uh, the quarterback is really it seems like he's
Speaker 9: settling in and and they've had a couple of close calls,
Speaker 9: but they but they've been good enough to to make
Speaker 9: them again make the plays when they had to make him.
Speaker 9: In football, a lot of times it comes down to
Speaker 9: one or two critical plays or a key turnover, you know,
Speaker 9: in the second half of the game and and uh uh.
Speaker 9: But they're both fun to watch, and it's fun to
Speaker 9: to see how this season evolves, you know, with the
Speaker 9: whole cam rising uh Isaac Wilson thing and and UH
Speaker 9: and and what's gonna happen as we get into UH
Speaker 9: through the month of October and where they're both sitting
Speaker 9: uh in in UH and set up for the big
Speaker 9: showdown in early November. Up but Rice cycles between the
Speaker 9: Cougars and the Utes.
Speaker 1: I wanted to kick the tires with you on this
Speaker 1: topic because you know, Donovan Mitchell uh in a way
Speaker 1: that we the rest of us just don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: you were with the team when you drafted him. You
Speaker 1: were there at the start, you watched his evolution, and
Speaker 1: I was over there. But on the radio side, you
Speaker 1: don't have the same access obviously as you want the
Speaker 1: player personnel side. And whenever Donovan speaks, folks around here
Speaker 1: seemed to glom on to what he talks about. It
Speaker 1: was the same thing with Heyward. When Gordon bounced, everybody
Speaker 1: around here was like waiting for him to say something,
Speaker 1: but ultimately he never said until he retired.
Speaker 2: And I get the deal.
Speaker 1: You know that, So do you what Donovan said yesterday
Speaker 1: during Cleveland Media Day caught a lot of attention around
Speaker 1: here because he said, I love it here. I feel
Speaker 1: a connection to the city. I don't mind cold weather.
Speaker 1: I know how to dress for winter. And honestly, if
Speaker 1: you close your eyes, it was back during his rookie
Speaker 1: year what he said those things about Utah, right, and
Speaker 1: so that's the game. You're supposed to say those things.
Speaker 1: Now we could get into like you know, New York
Speaker 1: didn't want him and now they don't need him.
Speaker 2: Brooklyn's rebuilding.
Speaker 1: The Knicks app Jalen like, there's no way the Knicks
Speaker 1: we're going to make a play for Donovan Mitchell and
Speaker 1: Brooklyn doesn't want to be good. So the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is he can say whatever he wants. He
Speaker 1: signed with Cleveland right right after it became pretty apparent
Speaker 1: that that was just the deal. He could make more
Speaker 1: money stay and put that's my opinion. And I like
Speaker 1: you not up in arms about these things because you
Speaker 1: you're taught to say certain things to appease a fan base.
Speaker 1: But it was somewhat comical that if you closed your eyes,
Speaker 1: it did sound like what Donovan said about Salt Lake.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, I mean and I I'm one of those
Speaker 9: who probably feels more that that coming from him, that
Speaker 9: both times he spoke in that regard that he probably
Speaker 9: meant it. You know, he liked being here in Salt
Speaker 9: Lake when he first got here, and he really ingratiated
Speaker 9: himself within the community and and made a lot of
Speaker 9: stuff off the court.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 9: It took took initiative to get involved in the community
Speaker 9: and did that. And I think he really he really
Speaker 9: liked I think that's part of his personality. And I
Speaker 9: think now he's in Cleveland and he signed a new
Speaker 9: deal with them Spence. Uh, I believe he probably feels
Speaker 9: genuinely that way. I think he likes where he is,
Speaker 9: you know, but certainly after right after signing an a
Speaker 9: extension for one hundred and fifty million dollars, you're not
Speaker 9: gonna say, I don't really like the weather. I don't
Speaker 9: know about this traffic I gotta deal with every day.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'll figure it out whatever.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you know, so you know, I don't, I don't.
Speaker 9: I don't begrudge of any of that. I think he's
Speaker 9: you know, he's also got a lot of weight on
Speaker 9: his shoulders with that team now moving forward, they've got
Speaker 9: a new coach and Kenny Atkinson, and and you know,
Speaker 9: they hired Johnny Bryant to be on their staff. So
Speaker 9: they hired him away from the from the New York
Speaker 9: Knicks staff. And Johnny Bryant was with Donovan's workout development
Speaker 9: guy from day one on the Jazz coaching staff, and
Speaker 9: so they have a unique relationship.
Speaker 8: And so they're reunited in Cleveland.
Speaker 9: And and uh and now he's you know, he's the
Speaker 9: big dog with a lot of young guys there, and
Speaker 9: and they've got a good team and I'm sure he's
Speaker 9: excited for them to be able to start making some progress,
Speaker 9: especially as their as their younger players start to get
Speaker 9: more and more experience under their belts.
Speaker 1: All right, Tommidty, before we move over to the Jazz
Speaker 1: and that's where we'll spend the rest of our time
Speaker 1: after this topic. You don't get a ton of big
Speaker 1: NBA trades in September at October, but you get some.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Donovan was traded in September, So
Speaker 1: sometimes it happens more often than not this time of year.
Speaker 1: Teams know what's sort of hand, they've been del they're
Speaker 1: preparing for camp with their roster, but the Knicks and
Speaker 1: the Wolves make a deal last Friday. It was a
Speaker 1: Friday news dump where Julius Randall and Dante dia Vincenzo
Speaker 1: are now Minnesota bounds and Karl Anthony Towns is going
Speaker 1: going back to play for Tom Thibodeau, who had him
Speaker 1: in Minnesota.
Speaker 2: I believe for a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think I'll just I want your thoughts. Essentially, I
Speaker 1: think the talent win is in New York's court. I
Speaker 1: have curiosities about how Tom's going to handle that rotation
Speaker 1: because it will be I believe Kat andnob Hartridge Bronson,
Speaker 1: and that's a team with some great wing defenders, but
Speaker 1: not a lot of size and a center of that
Speaker 1: doesen't board great for his size. I mean, Kat can
Speaker 1: do a lot, But what do you make of this
Speaker 1: both both sides, Randall, Deevincenzo Minnesota bound, cat heads to
Speaker 1: New York.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think it's uh New York is shoring up
Speaker 9: the center position. Of course, they lost Isaiah Hartenstein Uh
Speaker 9: in the in the off season as a free agent
Speaker 9: Oklahoma City. You know they they're the Robinson kid, Who's
Speaker 9: who's Who's got some talent and can affect winning some
Speaker 9: nights at the NBA level. Uh, he's hard to He's
Speaker 9: been hard for them to count on because of his
Speaker 9: injury history. He seems to always be in and out,
Speaker 9: in and out, and so you can't count on his availability.
Speaker 9: So if you're gonna be somebody a team that feels
Speaker 9: like you have a legitimate chance to make some kind
Speaker 9: of extended run in the spring, then you need somebody
Speaker 9: that you can count on more and more consistently during
Speaker 9: the course of the season. And I think that was
Speaker 9: an impetus for the Dicks to make the move to
Speaker 9: get an All Star caliber player and Karl Anthony Towns
Speaker 9: at a position where they needed some stability and needed
Speaker 9: a main guy, and and they got one from Minnesota.
Speaker 9: It always seemed like Rudy Gobert and and Uh and
Speaker 9: Towns were kind of bumping into each other. I mean,
Speaker 9: they're both natural centers.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 9: They tried to play Towns at the four. They had,
Speaker 9: you know, some success with it, right, and but it
Speaker 9: always felt like it was a square pegan a round
Speaker 9: hole as far as their lineup was concerned. And now
Speaker 9: that frees up, Uh, they're spacing a little bit more.
Speaker 9: They get Randall in there. Uh and and Randall is
Speaker 9: a great mid post score who can bring them some
Speaker 9: some offense, you know, you know, you lose a lot
Speaker 9: of offense in that regard, but you have a little
Speaker 9: bit better lineup, I think in terms of how your
Speaker 9: starting five is structured for Minnesota. And then you add Devincenzo,
Speaker 9: who's one of the top five three point shooters last
Speaker 9: year in the league and can certainly help you space
Speaker 9: the floor with the other shooters they have, especially with
Speaker 9: Edwards now emerging as the main guy in the league.
Speaker 9: So I think it's one of those trade spends that
Speaker 9: for me, when I saw it, I kind of looked
Speaker 9: at it for a few minutes, kind of thought about it,
Speaker 9: looked at a few stats, a few things, and thought, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: it makes sense for both teams. You know, I don't
Speaker 9: think any either team was trying to get the upper hand.
Speaker 9: I think both teams are doing something that they felt
Speaker 9: made sense for their group and how they're currently set up.
Speaker 9: And they both made the moves with an eye toward
Speaker 9: feeling like we can be half a step better with
Speaker 9: what we're trying to do if we can make this
Speaker 9: kind of move. And I think that's that's where they
Speaker 9: both feel at this time.
Speaker 2: So let's move over to the Jazz now.
Speaker 1: I want to start here Howard Beck from The Ringer,
Speaker 1: formerly of The New York Times, formerly of Well Everywhere
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated.
Speaker 8: Howard not keep a job? Is that what you're telling me?
Speaker 2: Howard might be my favorite NBA writer.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised he's never stayed in one place, but he's
Speaker 1: landed on his feet, as he does every time one
Speaker 1: company lets him go. No, he's very good at what
Speaker 1: he does, and every year he writes what he calls
Speaker 1: the Clarity Index. Okay, so what that is is not
Speaker 1: necessarily a composite ranking of NBA teams. It's Howard's opinion
Speaker 1: on what they are trying to do currently. And with
Speaker 1: some NBA teams, it's really easy to understand what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do. The Knicks obviously are all in now.
Speaker 1: They're trying to win. And we could go down the
Speaker 1: list of teams that are serious about winning, teams that
Speaker 1: are not, and teams that are obvious about not being
Speaker 1: serious about winning. Here's what he says about the jazz quote.
Speaker 1: And now for the Jazz, they might be the most
Speaker 1: confusing of all, a team that Jettiston It's two All
Speaker 1: stars two years ago, isn't good enough to make the playoffs,
Speaker 1: isn't bad enough to now have a high draft pick.
Speaker 1: They could have doubt Lowry market in a dozen times
Speaker 1: by now, but they instead gave him an extension that
Speaker 1: makes him trade ineligible until till next summer. They're neither
Speaker 1: trying to win, nor are they trying to lose the
Speaker 1: epitome of a franchise with an identity crisis. What's the
Speaker 1: Richard Smith take on that?
Speaker 9: Well, I think that what they've you know, the first
Speaker 9: two years of this so called retooling or rebuilding or
Speaker 9: tear down or whatever however you want to label it.
Speaker 9: I can see where people, fans, writers, media people would
Speaker 9: be confused because they saw that they were having some
Speaker 9: modicum of success early in each of those seasons and
Speaker 9: then went ahead at the trade deadline traded the you
Speaker 9: know guys who are helping them to do that. But
Speaker 9: I think those are things that that that they saw
Speaker 9: as ways of trying to shore up their draft stockpile
Speaker 9: and trying to get trying to figure out where they
Speaker 9: actually were as a team. Now I think that they
Speaker 9: have they have a commitment to playing their young guys.
Speaker 9: So whether you like that or not, whether that's gonna
Speaker 9: mean more losses or the same number of wins, I
Speaker 9: don't know, but I think it's gonna I think it's
Speaker 9: gonna be hard for them to have any level of success,
Speaker 9: at least this coming season in any consistent fashion, because
Speaker 9: they it seems like from what I understand, they're gonna
Speaker 9: play a lot of their young guys a lot of minutes,
Speaker 9: and they're gonna roll with what's going on.
Speaker 8: And if that.
Speaker 9: Yields fewer wins and they get closer to the lottery
Speaker 9: land and all that, I think that's that's probably okay
Speaker 9: with them. I do think the marketing thing, you know,
Speaker 9: adds a little wrench in there. But I do think
Speaker 9: that if you're trying to build a team, when you
Speaker 9: find a guy, and you can get a guy and
Speaker 9: then you can hold on to him, uh and someone
Speaker 9: at his level, he's an all star level player, he's
Speaker 9: right in his prime, he wants to be here, and
Speaker 9: for them to lock him up. For me, that made
Speaker 9: a lot of sense, because you know, whether that translates
Speaker 9: to wins and losses or we're not going to be
Speaker 9: bad enough now or whatever.
Speaker 8: You got.
Speaker 9: When you get a good player like that and you
Speaker 9: can you can get him to commit to you, then
Speaker 9: you have to do that. That's the first building block.
Speaker 9: Now you got all these other young guys that you're
Speaker 9: trying to sift through. You know, it's like the guy
Speaker 9: and it's like the old uh uh guy mining for
Speaker 9: gold spencing the river. He gets the big the big
Speaker 9: sifter out and he gets all the dirt in it
Speaker 9: and he starts shuffling it around and he's hoping he
Speaker 9: has a gold nugget or two in that when all
Speaker 9: the dirt and the and the silt goes away. And
Speaker 9: that's that's what the jazz are doing now. They're trying
Speaker 9: to figure out, Okay, we got all these young guys.
Speaker 9: We're gonna see who can play, who can't play. We're
Speaker 9: gonna see who we like, who we don't like. We're
Speaker 9: gonna see who the coach thinks can can get something
Speaker 9: done down the road. And that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 9: And in the meantime, marketing will be our star player
Speaker 9: and whether he affects winning to any level that that
Speaker 9: that adversely affects their lottery. Uh situation. That's something that
Speaker 9: they'll deal with, you know, as they go along. But
Speaker 9: you have to keep good players when you have them.
Speaker 9: Although that you know again that that goes against what
Speaker 9: they what the current group decided to do a couple
Speaker 9: of years ago when they had a lot of good
Speaker 9: players and got rid of all of them, But that's
Speaker 9: what they decided to do. So now this is the
Speaker 9: new iteration of just what they're going through to try
Speaker 9: and build a team that they think at some point
Speaker 9: can be sustainable down the road.
Speaker 1: So give me your best guess on how this is
Speaker 1: going to go, because I often look at the Vegas
Speaker 1: over unders where the guys in Vegas are pretty accurate
Speaker 1: as far as you know, predicting how the season is
Speaker 1: going to go, and history will tell you that they
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. So they have the consensus over
Speaker 1: runner for the Jazz is twenty nine point five. So
Speaker 1: Vegas is telling us the Jazz are going to win
Speaker 1: about thirty games. Okay, So you know, initially, at first glance,
Speaker 1: that is problematic if you want, if you want to
Speaker 1: believe that the Jazz need to do everything they can
Speaker 1: to have draft capital to take your iy like Cooper
Speaker 1: Flag who it appears as of now will be the
Speaker 1: number one pick, and you always point out and then
Speaker 1: we'll see, right like everybody seems to believe he's one
Speaker 1: of these generational pieces. No one ever knows Wembnyama Lebron.
Speaker 1: There are exceptions where it feels like, all right, just
Speaker 1: take the dude, because he's going to be that guy.
Speaker 1: We'll see if Cooper flag is. People to do this
Speaker 1: for a living believe that he is in a way
Speaker 1: that I don't do it for a living. So the
Speaker 1: teams they have below the Jazz are the Hornets, the Bulls,
Speaker 1: the Raptors, the Pistons, and that's the Blazers and the Wizard.
Speaker 1: So that's seven teams that Vegas is telling us is
Speaker 1: worse than the Jazz, putting the Jazz at eight now,
Speaker 1: lottery odds have been flattened, as we've talked about, so
Speaker 1: even if you go all in on losing, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get one, asked Detroit and Xanik at their media
Speaker 1: availability on Friday of last week, basically alluded to the
Speaker 1: fact that we have a lot of young players that
Speaker 1: we like, but the only way for us to know
Speaker 1: who they are is for them to get playing time.
Speaker 1: So does that indicate we're going to see starting lineup,
Speaker 1: a rotation all of these young players. What does this
Speaker 1: mean for Clarkson and Sexton and marketing and John Collins?
Speaker 1: I mean, Lowry's going to start and play, is my guess.
Speaker 1: But how is this going to look? Trying to get
Speaker 1: the young players some minutes and experience while you still
Speaker 1: have some proud, highly paid vets on your roster.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, I wouldn't be surprised if one or more
Speaker 9: of those guys were on the move, you know, between
Speaker 9: now in February. I mean, if you're gonna go all
Speaker 9: in with the young guys, and you're gonna try and
Speaker 9: sift through and see you know, his Collier a real
Speaker 9: NBA level point guard, His keyante George more of a
Speaker 9: scoring two off the bench than he is a lead
Speaker 9: point guard or Kenny play point guard. Are we gonna
Speaker 9: let him have a lot of those minutes like they
Speaker 9: were the second half of last year? And and to
Speaker 9: see what kind of development he he brings to the table.
Speaker 9: Ken Hendrix, you know whose body looks much better now
Speaker 9: than it did six months ago. He's put on some
Speaker 9: off season muscle and and and is starting to mature
Speaker 9: into his body. Will he be able to give you
Speaker 9: some impactful minutes going into the season. The Filipowski kid
Speaker 9: they got in the early second round, you know, might
Speaker 9: be a steal in terms of having a guy who
Speaker 9: could at least come in and be a rotation guy
Speaker 9: and actually give you some minutes and get and be
Speaker 9: like an all around type player. It'll be interesting to
Speaker 9: see his development. So I I do think that the
Speaker 9: Jazz powers that be looking at it and saying, Okay,
Speaker 9: we got all these guys. Now the young guys. Now
Speaker 9: we got to figure out who can play, who we want,
Speaker 9: who who we want to move on from. So they're
Speaker 9: going to be doing all of that. I mean the
Speaker 9: older guys, whether it's Clarkson, whether it's Collins, Sexton is is.
Speaker 9: I like Sexton, he's young enough, you know, he still
Speaker 9: should be considered one of the young guys to me,
Speaker 9: but particularly Clarkin's. Uh, Clarkson and Collins, I would be
Speaker 9: I would be surprised if they were still on the
Speaker 9: roster come the end of February, just because I think
Speaker 9: they're guys who you know, Clarkson can move I think
Speaker 9: a little bit easier because it's number isn't as big now.
Speaker 9: It went from twenty four to fourteen. So now he
Speaker 9: becomes a guy that teams that are in the hunt,
Speaker 9: you know after the first of the year they need
Speaker 9: a scorer off the bench, you know, becomes attractive to
Speaker 9: teams like that. Collins will be a little bit tougher
Speaker 9: because of his big number. So that may be someone
Speaker 9: at some point where they if they can't move him,
Speaker 9: they have they have to some kind of a buyout
Speaker 9: agreement or something. But it just seems to me that
Speaker 9: they're gonna go in with the young guys, and if
Speaker 9: you're gonna go in, then you gotta play them and
Speaker 9: play them and play them and just see how it
Speaker 9: falls and who's who's showing up as the season goes on.
Speaker 2: All right, Smiddy.
Speaker 1: Before I say you, Luise, I want to ask you
Speaker 1: a question, and we alluded to this a little bit
Speaker 1: last year, and you take us into the the mindset
Speaker 1: of roster construction and what this process looks like. And
Speaker 1: you know, I remember Dennis Lindz he always had his
Speaker 1: five year plan on his whiteboard and you know, looking
Speaker 1: the head to the future and what does it look
Speaker 1: like when our best players are in their prime juxtaposed
Speaker 1: to what the other teams in our conference look like.
Speaker 1: There's no perfect way to do this, and there's no
Speaker 1: one way to do this. I understand that there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of different approaches. I think there are some
Speaker 1: that are tried and true and others that are a
Speaker 1: little bit more unproven. I'll just ask you, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: does the glut of young, really good teams that are
Speaker 1: far ahead of the jazz change the timeline?
Speaker 2: Change the calculation?
Speaker 1: When you look at OKAYC You're not going anywhere for
Speaker 1: a while and being awesome.
Speaker 2: I could keep going as you know.
Speaker 1: Dallas Luca, I mean even the Nuggets with Jokic, he's
Speaker 1: in his prime and he's gonna be good for four
Speaker 1: or five years. Because for a while, for me it
Speaker 1: was like, well, Steph's gonna age, Lebron's gonna age, Durants
Speaker 1: can age, and then Donovan and Rooty and these guys,
Speaker 1: they'll be ready when they're done. Now the franchise decided
Speaker 1: to pivot and make a change. What's your opinion on that.
Speaker 1: Does the glut of young, really good teams far ahead
Speaker 1: of the jazz and the process change the way the
Speaker 1: jazz look at this timeline.
Speaker 9: For me, it doesn't spend so And this is why,
Speaker 9: because when you are a young, good team, what's right
Speaker 9: around the corner that you're always dealing with from a
Speaker 9: management and ownership perspective is how are we going to
Speaker 9: keep these guys? Meaning who gets paid and who doesn't
Speaker 9: get paid? When you look at it and the and
Speaker 9: the landscape of the NBA Oklahoma City UH, which is
Speaker 9: in a great position right now with not only good
Speaker 9: young players and a very competitive team, but also a
Speaker 9: lot of draft picks in their back pocket still so
Speaker 9: they still have a lot of room for maneuverability. But
Speaker 9: you go back a decade ago, they had the same
Speaker 9: setup with guys who were even a little bit better. Okay,
Speaker 9: they drafted successive drafts Kevin Durant, James Harden, Russell Westbrook.
Speaker 9: Those three guys should still if it was a perfect
Speaker 9: NBA world, UH, from an ownership perspective, they should still
Speaker 9: be playing together in Oklahoma City and have been sitting
Speaker 9: on two, three, four championships. But it didn't work out
Speaker 9: that way. They were a good young team, they went
Speaker 9: to a finals and then what happens. Everybody comes to
Speaker 9: everybody comes knocking at the door, and they want theirs.
Speaker 9: And no matter how you talk to them, and how
Speaker 9: you try and divvy it up, and and how you
Speaker 9: try and massage egos and whatever it is, it rarely
Speaker 9: works the way you want it to. So guys start
Speaker 9: going out the door, one after the other. And now,
Speaker 9: of course Oklahoma City has rebuilt themselves, but none of
Speaker 9: those guys are with them. So the guys, the teams
Speaker 9: that you're relating to now that are in front of
Speaker 9: the jazz, you know, you don't know how they're gonna
Speaker 9: be able to stay together. You don't know how it's
Speaker 9: gonna work. You have to worry about how you're building
Speaker 9: your group and how you're progressing, and to what extent
Speaker 9: you want to keep that going, uh, financially, and also
Speaker 9: with the personnel you have. And then and what happens
Speaker 9: elsewhere you have no control over, whether it's you know
Speaker 9: that okay see example or the one there was more
Speaker 9: recent in Brooklyn where they stacked up all the guys
Speaker 9: and those three guys played sixteen games together. I mean,
Speaker 9: are you kidding me? I mean, when you step back
Speaker 9: and look at the history of it, you go, are
Speaker 9: you you know you remember when they all came together.
Speaker 9: Everybody was like, Oh, those guys, they're gonna be a
Speaker 9: headache for five, six, seven years.
Speaker 8: You know they're gonna be running the show. And it
Speaker 8: never happened.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 9: So, so the answer to your question, the Jazz should
Speaker 9: just stay on the timeline they're on. They should do
Speaker 9: it the way they think is gonna make sense for
Speaker 9: them going down the road, and you stick to that,
Speaker 9: and you don't worry about the other people on the outside,
Speaker 9: the other teams, and you just you just go with
Speaker 9: what you believe makes the most sense to what's gonna
Speaker 9: get you to where you're trying to go in the
Speaker 9: long run. It's tough, it's a long deal, and it
Speaker 9: doesn't guarantee you're gonna get there right, but you have
Speaker 9: to have the conviction that that makes sense to you
Speaker 9: and your group, and you go with that. And I
Speaker 9: think Larry Markinen, the signing of him, is the first
Speaker 9: step in that direction.
Speaker 1: All right, Smitty, Great to have you back. Great to
Speaker 1: see you. I have a good week and we'll chat.
Speaker 8: Soon, okay man, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Richard Smith forty years with the Jazz Front Office. Bye
Speaker 1: week for the utah Utes. Hoping for a get right
Speaker 1: game against Arizona State. Arizona had to get right game
Speaker 1: against the Utes, so hoping to kind of replicate that
Speaker 1: during this by a week our next guest. There's a
Speaker 1: thing or two about the Utes. One of the best
Speaker 1: to ever do it up there, played in the NFL.
Speaker 1: I was hoping to have Scott Mitchell iven studio. As
Speaker 1: I walked into the building, he was present. But he
Speaker 1: has ditched us and now he's over the phone. What happened, man?
Speaker 1: I thought you were coming to studio.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, life just throws a lot of curve
Speaker 6: balls at you. I mean I also expected the Utes
Speaker 6: to just be amazing on Saturday night. I mean, dark mouthe,
Speaker 6: you're at home. You have all these Hall of Fame weeks,
Speaker 6: homecoming weeks, and they kind of laid an egg. So
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, Spence. I should have known better. I should
Speaker 6: have just hung around.
Speaker 2: It's all good, my friend, all good.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your time, whether it's in person over the phone.
Speaker 1: So obviously let's start with what happened on Saturday night.
Speaker 1: And Scott, I don't know how many times I've been
Speaker 1: in that stadium. I couldn't even guess dating back to
Speaker 1: my time as a student or dating back to my
Speaker 1: time as a media member, which has now been twenty years,
Speaker 1: but I was there with my son, I was a
Speaker 1: season ticket older once upon a time. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I remember, at least recently, rice cycles seeming so nervous,
Speaker 1: seeming so almost docile. I mean, there wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: to get excited about. And obviously when the football is good,
Speaker 1: it's easier to easier to cheer, but start to finish,
Speaker 1: it just felt like a really strange night, right, So
Speaker 1: just overall, what were your takeaways from Arizona's went over
Speaker 1: Utah on Saturday?
Speaker 6: Very astute because it was it was strange, and there
Speaker 6: was a weird vibe there, and there was a weird
Speaker 6: vibe with the team. And you know, you have games
Speaker 6: like this, you do. You have low energy games. You
Speaker 6: have you know, a fatigue game. You just have one
Speaker 6: way you just you're just not quite together, you know.
Speaker 6: Converting those fourth downs early in the game. That kind
Speaker 6: of tells you a little bit about where the mindset
Speaker 6: of this team is, because it's it's a it's that
Speaker 6: do or die down, Like you don't get another one
Speaker 6: if you've missed this, So you've got to have a
Speaker 6: sense of urgency about you and and it really wasn't there.
Speaker 6: And and you could you can attribute it to a
Speaker 6: lot of things and say, you know, team traveled, hot game,
Speaker 6: emotional game for what it was. You know, you could
Speaker 6: have the fatigue of playing for two months. Now, you
Speaker 6: have a young quarterback who doesn't you know, he's never
Speaker 6: been through this, he never felt this before, and and
Speaker 6: you need your leaders to step up. And and it's
Speaker 6: clearly a game that they needed Cam rising, they needed
Speaker 6: his leadership. I think Corennie Reid they needed his leadership
Speaker 6: on defense because it was across the board. It wasn't
Speaker 6: it wasn't just offense. There was there was a lackluster
Speaker 6: effort with the defense, uh during during the game. And
Speaker 6: and I don't think I don't think they're coached that way.
Speaker 6: I don't think that there they want to play that way.
Speaker 6: You know, these guys love to play, they love to prepare,
Speaker 6: they love to get out there and do it. It's
Speaker 6: just sometimes you just have that night and and you
Speaker 6: just got to figure out how to fight through it.
Speaker 6: And it's it's the leader internally that you know, hey,
Speaker 6: we got to pick it up, guys, We gotta we
Speaker 6: got to change the tone and the feel everything here,
Speaker 6: and and you just didn't see it at all during
Speaker 6: the game.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 8: God.
Speaker 1: The big topic of conversation around the market is Cameron
Speaker 1: is camera rising, his availability, his lack thereof the messaging
Speaker 1: from the football program, the messaging from coaches and players.
Speaker 2: I continue to be in the space where my heart
Speaker 2: goes out to him.
Speaker 1: I feel bad for him because I think he's hurt,
Speaker 1: and when he's healthy, I think he'll play. Not one
Speaker 1: for conspiracy theories and sports or elsewhere, but those are
Speaker 1: flying around as well. So I just want to Scott
Speaker 1: Mitchell take on the way this is being handled and
Speaker 1: if you have any information about where we're at in
Speaker 1: the process of trying to get him back under center,
Speaker 1: obviously I would love to hear hear from you on
Speaker 1: that as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's it's if you look at his
Speaker 6: history and you say, this guy's brought a lot when
Speaker 6: he's you know, the moment he stepped on the field,
Speaker 6: I still remember it. I still remember the team. He
Speaker 6: just elevated, everyone's hope, everyone's you know, feeling like belief,
Speaker 6: just what they played San Diego State. It was in
Speaker 6: Los Angeles and the minute he stepped in, it was
Speaker 6: just different. And it was different the whole rest of
Speaker 6: that season. I remember him throwing some big, huge plays
Speaker 6: against USC in the coliseum and Utah hadn't beat USC
Speaker 6: and and they did, and it was Cam Rising having
Speaker 6: this moxie and this this confidence to throw a ball
Speaker 6: on fourth down and you know, short and he throws
Speaker 6: it for a touchdown. And there's just a lot of
Speaker 6: things that he has brought to the table. Brought two championships,
Speaker 6: brought two Rose Bowls, and played in some big time
Speaker 6: games and and came up big and in a lot
Speaker 6: of those games. And he just is a guy that's
Speaker 6: uber competitive. But it's hard. It's hard to describe to
Speaker 6: people when there's like hurt and then there's injured, and
Speaker 6: there're two different things, and hurt is like, Okay, this
Speaker 6: is just annoying. I'm gonna suck it up and I
Speaker 6: have to play. And then and then there's injured, where
Speaker 6: it's like if I play, I can't play well, like
Speaker 6: I'm gonna do more damage to myself to the team,
Speaker 6: and and it's and it's really a person individually that
Speaker 6: knows that for whatever reason, Cam has had a lot
Speaker 6: of injuries. I mean the first you know, he got
Speaker 6: named the starter, it was Covid. It was in against
Speaker 6: USC he you know, destroys his shoulder very early in
Speaker 6: that game. He got injured. You know, I think, what
Speaker 6: both Rose Bowls and uh, and so he's been injured
Speaker 6: and of course now he's injured this year, and and
Speaker 6: it's just some guys just have have those injuries. And
Speaker 6: I really think that he wants to be in the game.
Speaker 6: I had an injury one year. I had to get
Speaker 6: a shot just to practice every day. It was the
Speaker 6: worst thing in the world. And I got accused of this.
Speaker 6: You know, you just don't you know, you're not playing,
Speaker 6: you know, you're you're not tough enough, whatever, and it's
Speaker 6: just it's just not the case. So I really think
Speaker 6: he will be out there. Part of it, Spence, it's
Speaker 6: really hard when you have people that are passionate about
Speaker 6: the program, these alumni people, these boosters, and they're so passionate.
Speaker 6: They put their money where their mouth is, like they
Speaker 6: donate a lot of money and a lot of effort
Speaker 6: into this program being well and this school doing well.
Speaker 6: And to see someone who they're paying money to, you
Speaker 6: know not, you know, not seeing a lot of return
Speaker 6: on that on that investment. That that's hard and that's
Speaker 6: hard to swallow. And I totally totally get that. I
Speaker 6: don't know that there's much control over, you know, how
Speaker 6: where that money goes and what happens with it. It's
Speaker 6: it's it's one of the really bad things about college
Speaker 6: football right now. And so people do expect those results.
Speaker 6: And I think Cam, I think Cam does. And look,
Speaker 6: Utah still controls their destiny, you know. You know Colorado's
Speaker 6: the two wins BYU Iowa State, Utah plays all of
Speaker 6: those teams. It's really early in the year. It's really
Speaker 6: a game that I think this team can really fuel
Speaker 6: themselves from the sting of it, because and I'm still
Speaker 6: reeling from it. I'm just like, what the heck happens
Speaker 6: Saturday night? And a lot of times teams can really
Speaker 6: be fueled by this and move forward. You think of
Speaker 6: you think of Tim Tebow when they won a national
Speaker 6: championship of Florida and they had a loss like this
Speaker 6: and he just said, never again, ever will this happen
Speaker 6: to me and to this football team, and they go
Speaker 6: on and win a national championship. So a lot of
Speaker 6: times you can turn some of these nasty, terrible like
Speaker 6: feel like the end of the program moments into you know,
Speaker 6: something that really propels you to greater heights.
Speaker 1: So I want to get your opinion on the way
Speaker 1: that the program is handling the dissemination of information. And
Speaker 1: Dennis Dodd today wrote a piece where he talked about
Speaker 1: all the powerful conferences utilize a guy named Matt Holt. Now,
Speaker 1: Matt is the founder of the US Integrity in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: which sounds like an oxymoron to me. As a gambling
Speaker 1: integrity monitor, that's what he does. But you know, when
Speaker 1: contacted about this situation specifically, here's what Hold had to say.
Speaker 1: So quote, we constantly tell our colleges, if you continue
Speaker 1: to hide information for gamesmanship, our competitive advantage purposes, you
Speaker 1: are putting your student athletes, your trainers, your equipment managers,
Speaker 1: and your assistant coaches in a heightened risk category is
Speaker 1: what we call it. When betting groups start to figure out, hey,
Speaker 1: this coach won't disclose information. Now, there's real value to
Speaker 1: getting that inside information. So sharks and wise guys and
Speaker 1: such they lean on trainers, and they lean on assistant coaches.
Speaker 1: They lean on players to get inside information to therefore
Speaker 1: utilize that to affect lines and make money. I don't
Speaker 1: love that this is where we're at in sports, when
Speaker 1: they're in bed with the gambling companies and the apps.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really slippery slope.
Speaker 1: Beckay Coppins from the Atlantic did a piece last week
Speaker 1: on the effects on families now that we have about
Speaker 1: five years of data of legalized gambling, what it has done.
Speaker 1: Some families have lost homes, it's divorced, its debt. It's
Speaker 1: a really, really slippery slope. But we are where we are,
Speaker 1: and ultimately it does look like according to what I
Speaker 1: have in front of me from the CBS piece, these
Speaker 1: coaches that are holding back information are thought to be
Speaker 1: putting their staff in what's called a heightened risk category.
Speaker 1: Do you think stuff like this will change the way
Speaker 1: that the program is utilizing their platform to disseminate the
Speaker 1: information and do you think they should change the way
Speaker 1: they're going about it? For me, it feels unfair to
Speaker 1: cam That's my whole thing. But what's the Scott Mitchell take.
Speaker 6: Boy that that is an interesting statement because if you watch,
Speaker 6: you know, we're sitting here all week long going Okay,
Speaker 6: is Cam playing? Is he not? As he playing? Is
Speaker 6: he not? And then you watch the betting lines and
Speaker 6: they change, and they change as the week goes on,
Speaker 6: and they change. I mean at Oklahoma State they were
Speaker 6: changing during you know, the day, and and you and
Speaker 6: you and we looked at it and I said, somebody
Speaker 6: knows something. And these people that set these lines, you know,
Speaker 6: you talk about like they know like they're in the
Speaker 6: business of winning. They're not. They're not there to lose.
Speaker 6: So so they're gonna go and they're going to figure
Speaker 6: out how to get any possible information that they can get.
Speaker 6: And uh, and I'm sure those lines for the Utah
Speaker 6: the last couple of weeks were based on maybe information
Speaker 6: they got like hey, Cameron's he's not going this week,
Speaker 6: because you know, the lines changed and went down and
Speaker 6: and then they went back, you know, and and so
Speaker 6: so someone somewhere somewhere or some someone somewhere is getting information.
Speaker 6: How they do it, who knows? Because your point about gambling,
Speaker 6: and it's so easy, like so many things in our
Speaker 6: society today are so convenient. You can pretty much be
Speaker 6: anywhere and oh I can gamble on a gam shoot,
Speaker 6: I can gamble during the game, I can. You know,
Speaker 6: it's just they've made it extremely easy. And who knows
Speaker 6: who's involved in gambling. You know, it's something why play
Speaker 6: in the NFL like you, it was hammered into your brain.
Speaker 6: Do not talk to, do not share, do not anything. Uh.
Speaker 6: You know, the integrity of our game is so critical,
Speaker 6: and if anyone thought it was fixed, or if anyone thought,
Speaker 6: you know, it would just it would really destroy the whole.
Speaker 6: And it would and it does. But people, but we're human.
Speaker 6: I I don't. I know, I'm not a gambler. It's
Speaker 6: not my thing. I've never done it. I'd never cared
Speaker 6: to do it. I know a lot of people. I
Speaker 6: know a lot of people in sports. I know a
Speaker 6: lot of people who are playing sports are huge gamblers.
Speaker 6: And and so you know, if you have you know,
Speaker 6: if you have the equipment manager and I'm not saying
Speaker 6: that's the case, or you have some front office person who, yeah,
Speaker 6: I like to gamble, and uh, and then someone's and
Speaker 6: they and someone finds out they kind of like to gamble,
Speaker 6: and they go, hey, if you give us some insight
Speaker 6: onto whether Cam Rising is playing or not, we'll give you.
Speaker 6: We'll give you a thousand bucks, or we'll give you whatever.
Speaker 6: I mean, who knows what you know? Who else or
Speaker 6: someone may be in trouble gambling, and they go, we'll
Speaker 6: take care of your your problem here if you give
Speaker 6: us some insider information. These people in Vegas will find
Speaker 6: they'll find information, and they'll know because they they do
Speaker 6: not want to lose. And this, this whole setting these
Speaker 6: lines things is a science and something I have no idea,
Speaker 6: but they're they're pretty good at it. And and so yeah,
Speaker 6: I could see where it could really impact people inside
Speaker 6: of organizations. I'm still trying to And and gamesmanship is fine,
Speaker 6: right whatever, you know, everyone has their thing. Everyone tries
Speaker 6: to find a way to get an edge, to be motivated.
Speaker 6: And I certainly did it, and I you know I would.
Speaker 6: I would do everything I could possibly do to to
Speaker 6: figure out how to how to have an edge on
Speaker 6: my competition, knowing that they're doing the same thing. But
Speaker 6: I so I don't understand completely why you just don't
Speaker 6: tell people. You know, in the NFL, well, it's pretty
Speaker 6: it's pretty known, it's pretty pretty out there. Uh you know,
Speaker 6: college football, These these coaches have a pretty good feel
Speaker 6: of other programs and how their schemes and all of
Speaker 6: these different things. And it might be an advantage for
Speaker 6: a series or two or whatever. I don't know that
Speaker 6: it's a complete advantage if you don't know which players
Speaker 6: playing or who's not playing. You know, I, I you know,
Speaker 6: if if if it's anything, it just should to be
Speaker 6: standard across across the board. But I'm one that you know, I.
Speaker 6: I don't have a problem being transparent and kind of
Speaker 6: telling where where players or people are. But you know,
Speaker 6: coach Whittingham has never been that way, doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 6: He's like, look, I want if I don't have to
Speaker 6: share it, I'm not going to and and so he
Speaker 6: doesn't and I don't have a problem with that either.
Speaker 6: But uh, you know, the the challenge with Cam is
Speaker 6: that he's getting paid, and he's getting paid a lot
Speaker 6: of money, and he unplayed for you know, almost a
Speaker 6: year and a quarter or a third because we're well
Speaker 6: even a little bit more than a third now. So
Speaker 6: that's that's unfortunately how things are. You get paid to
Speaker 6: do this. There's a different expectation and now it comes
Speaker 6: with production and winning and the perception of production and winning,
Speaker 6: and that's a different deal. And that's called professional sports,
Speaker 6: and that's really what college football is.
Speaker 1: So Scott, final thing on this, and then we'll get
Speaker 1: to a couple of other quick topics before I set
Speaker 1: you loose. I'm just operating off the premise that it's
Speaker 1: eyes that can tell it's not. I don't have any
Speaker 1: knowledge on what the next couple of weeks are going
Speaker 1: to look like. It's easy to surmise that if we
Speaker 1: take Utah Football on their word, but historically speaking their
Speaker 1: word on this is not reliable and we all understand
Speaker 1: why competitive advantage all that stuff. If Cameron was very
Speaker 1: close to playing against Arizona, I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that, given two more weeks, we should expect him
Speaker 1: against Arizona State. But I'll go with the premonition that
Speaker 1: it's eyes that can tell it's not. What's your understanding
Speaker 1: of where we're at with Cam's health as of today.
Speaker 6: Well, if long term, this year, right now, Cam rising
Speaker 6: gives you taw the best chance to win big picture
Speaker 6: conference championship, win those tough games, you know, really kind
Speaker 6: of be the guy to be that leader and lead
Speaker 6: this team and rise the level of expectation and play.
Speaker 6: And so you want him in there with this injury.
Speaker 6: You know, who knows what it is. And I've had
Speaker 6: injuries like this and fingers and getting hit on helmets
Speaker 6: and stretched ligaments and broken broken fingers and all kinds
Speaker 6: of things. And the reality is it's it's probably gonna
Speaker 6: be a nuisance no matter what, for the rest of
Speaker 6: the year. I don't you know, who knows if it'll
Speaker 6: go away, just simply because if he's gonna throw, he's
Speaker 6: gonna play, He's just gonna probably continue to aggravate it.
Speaker 6: So I don't know if there's ever a level of
Speaker 6: you're just completely healthy, and so it's kind of how
Speaker 6: much can you tolerate? How much can you suck up?
Speaker 6: How can you how much can you not be distracted
Speaker 6: by it? It does you know those those two fingers,
Speaker 6: your ring finger and your middle finger are not the
Speaker 6: most essential fingers throwing the football. It could it could
Speaker 6: impact your delivery. You know, I don't know, but I would.
Speaker 6: I would, really, I'm going to disagree with you. I
Speaker 6: really think they're really trying hard to get Cam ready
Speaker 6: for Arizona State. I think I think it's something that
Speaker 6: I think he can play from. He didn't look good
Speaker 6: at Oklahoma State. He actually looked better because he threw
Speaker 6: a little bit before the Arizona game. But I think
Speaker 6: I think he I think he's gonna try. I think
Speaker 6: they're going to try to have him ready by then
Speaker 6: and and and they probably should be able to play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what you're disagreeing with. I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I'm operating off the premise that it's Isaac. Can tell
Speaker 1: it's not, because until I see it, it's hard to
Speaker 1: believe based off of all the information we've been giving.
Speaker 1: I agreed that they're trying to get him ready to play,
Speaker 1: but until we actually see it, you know, it's for me,
Speaker 1: it's time to kind of ignore the messaging until the
Speaker 1: utes run out for their first possession on offense and
Speaker 1: it's number seven and not eleven, I'm going to operate
Speaker 1: off the premise that it's eleven, not seven.
Speaker 2: I just need to see it before I can believe it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And that's probably a healthy attitude to have. And
Speaker 6: the good the silver lining with all of this is man,
Speaker 6: Isaac Wilson's getting some great experience and some of it painful.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm just telling you that last week was painful,
Speaker 6: and the painful part is Son you had, like when
Speaker 6: you're in the red zone, come hell or high water,
Speaker 6: you got to figure out how to score and you
Speaker 6: get those fourth downs, whatever it is, you got to
Speaker 6: make it happen, and you can't just you know it,
Speaker 6: just you just have to do it, and you have
Speaker 6: to will that on your team that this is extremely important.
Speaker 6: We got it, we got to get it done. And
Speaker 6: and so there's just so so many game scenarios or
Speaker 6: things that come come up that that Isaac's had to
Speaker 6: deal with that being one of them. And and they'll
Speaker 6: just they'll be so valuable down the road. But unfortunately,
Speaker 6: this team is ready to win now and has such
Speaker 6: a great opportunity in the Big twelve. And because I
Speaker 6: still think it's very wide open in the conference. There's
Speaker 6: not a team I go oh wow that you know,
Speaker 6: that's that's just a dominant team right there. And and
Speaker 6: so you really need need to get the guy back
Speaker 6: who can make it happen. But but it is good
Speaker 6: for Isaac to for him to get that experience.
Speaker 2: All right, Scott, before I say you lose.
Speaker 1: I referenced this earlier Arizona after the case Stay lost.
Speaker 1: They talked about the Utah game as a get right
Speaker 1: game for them after a buye. What does a get
Speaker 1: right game look like for Utah after a buye against
Speaker 1: Arizona State.
Speaker 6: Well, it's just playing with that sense of urgency, playing
Speaker 6: really to win and not not kind of tired or
Speaker 6: playing not to lose. Uh, It's it's about being aggressive.
Speaker 6: And you know, Arizona really took the tempo to the
Speaker 6: game to Utah. They dictated terms the whole entire game,
Speaker 6: and that's what you have to do, you you know.
Speaker 6: And I think that's the energy that people were feeling.
Speaker 6: They were like, these guys aren't intimidated by being here
Speaker 6: in the stadium and this noise and this crowd, this team,
Speaker 6: it's like they're here to win. They're here to Uh,
Speaker 6: you've got the target on your chest and we're going
Speaker 6: we're coming after you. And Utah is going to get
Speaker 6: that all year. But they've got to have the youths
Speaker 6: have to have this attitude that like every play is
Speaker 6: life and death, like like this this really matters, Like
Speaker 6: you can't you can't be complacent in any moment and
Speaker 6: that includes all of your preparation leading out to this game.
Speaker 6: I bet if you went and asked and pulled the
Speaker 6: players in the coaches and said, did you do everything
Speaker 6: you could possibly do to get yourself ready to play
Speaker 6: this week? And I'll bet almost all of them say no,
Speaker 6: there's things I could have done better and and and
Speaker 6: that's that's the cruelty of football, that's the immediacy of it.
Speaker 6: That you only get so many opportunities. There's only three
Speaker 6: more home games this year. I mean, there's three, said,
Speaker 6: you know, and so you have to take advantage of
Speaker 6: those opportunities. They have to be so precious to you,
Speaker 6: and you just have to come out with this like
Speaker 6: we just got to let everything hang out and just
Speaker 6: play to win. And we always said play like men
Speaker 6: and just you know, let it all hang out. And
Speaker 6: that's that's the way you gotta play.
Speaker 1: All right, buddy, Appreciate the time today, Bye week, and
Speaker 1: then we'll see you.
Speaker 2: With there made when they get back on the field. Scott,
Speaker 2: have a good week, brother.
Speaker 6: Okay, all right, thanks you too.
Speaker 1: Scott Mitchell, former Utah quarterback number of years in the NFL.
Speaker 1: Appreciate his time today. More you top football. Coming up
Speaker 1: next with the voice himself, Bill Riley, is our game.
Speaker 1: Got a little Major League Baseball wildcard action for you
Speaker 1: guys tonight when we say goa nights at six o'clock Atlanta,
Speaker 1: San Diego. It is that time of year. It is fall,
Speaker 1: which means playoff baseball. But of course football center right now,
Speaker 1: College Football Center, right now, Utah Football Center right now.
Speaker 1: Our next guest is not only the voice of the
Speaker 1: youth see now does not have to grow mullet, which
Speaker 1: makes me very sad. Bill Riley is our guest. Bill
Speaker 1: for the past couple of months. If I've ever been
Speaker 1: in a bad mood, which at times happened, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know that about me.
Speaker 2: At times that can happen.
Speaker 1: I picture you calling games in a mullet, and now
Speaker 1: that dream has died.
Speaker 2: So I guess I just have to say congratulations.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you.
Speaker 10: I was Actually it would have been a great you know,
Speaker 10: it would have been that win win. You get me
Speaker 10: in the mullet and I got to call an undefeated
Speaker 10: regular season. It would have been kind of a win
Speaker 10: for everyone, and then you know everybody that got to
Speaker 10: mock me as well. I will say this, though, the
Speaker 10: Kansas City Royals had just beaten the Baltimore Orioles, and
Speaker 10: if the Kansas City Royals win the World Series, I
Speaker 10: will grow that mullet for you.
Speaker 6: Spencer.
Speaker 1: WHOA so are you saying the Bill Riley mullet watch
Speaker 1: is back on.
Speaker 10: It's a longer shot, I think than the undefeated season
Speaker 10: because your Yankees are a bit of a juggernaut this year.
Speaker 10: But I will say this, if the Royals win the
Speaker 10: World Series, mullet watch is what mulletwatch is on. I've
Speaker 10: reinstalled mullet Watch, and there's still a chance.
Speaker 1: You've made my heart so happy, okay, because that's really
Speaker 1: all I want to see in my life. As you
Speaker 1: call it, a game with a mullet. But we can
Speaker 1: move on from that. Ryles, Hey, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: And we just had Scott on. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many games I've been to in the stadium, dating back
Speaker 1: to my time as a student, then as a season
Speaker 1: ticket older.
Speaker 2: Now as a media member.
Speaker 1: I don't really know how to describe the way Saturday
Speaker 1: night felt. And we'll talk about the game, but just
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, and of course you've got to give them
Speaker 1: some to cheer for, and there wasn't a lot to
Speaker 1: cheer for, but the building just felt a little.
Speaker 2: Little docile, a little like nervous.
Speaker 1: How would you describe the atmosphere at Rice Ecles on
Speaker 1: Saturday night?
Speaker 10: I was expecting, I'll say this, I was expecting a
Speaker 10: little bit more electricity.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 10: I you know, I had visions of like a usc
Speaker 10: and not maybe. I know the game wasn't on that level,
Speaker 10: but you know, with the first night game and a
Speaker 10: couple of years of meaning and in a blackout game,
Speaker 10: but it just it wasn't there. There was you know,
Speaker 10: Utah seemed a little flat and the fans even seemed
Speaker 10: a little flat on Friday night or at Saturday night,
Speaker 10: which is unusual for both parties to be very fair.
Speaker 10: Utah should have probably come out maybe with a little
Speaker 10: bit more juice, and I thought there'd be I mean,
Speaker 10: it was loud, but it was You and I have
Speaker 10: both been in that stadium when it was deafening loud
Speaker 10: on a on a blackout Saturday night, so I was
Speaker 10: I was a little surprised by that too.
Speaker 1: All right, now moving over to the actual game, I
Speaker 1: just want your overall takeaways before we dig into some specifics.
Speaker 1: We'll get to the health stuff, We'll get to the
Speaker 1: cam stuff. What went wrong? Why do you think they
Speaker 1: weren't able to counter punch. Ultimately, what is the Bill
Speaker 1: Riley take on why Arizona rolled in a right sycle smack?
Speaker 2: The youth's pretty good.
Speaker 10: They didn't get a consistent pass rush on Noah Fafeda
Speaker 10: when he threw. I mean, I thought they got better
Speaker 10: as the game went along. I looked like Tetroo McMillan
Speaker 10: was going to have about two hundred yards after the
Speaker 10: first quarter, but guy.
Speaker 7: Didn't have a catch in the second half.
Speaker 10: But I think they missed Conter O'Toole up front spence,
Speaker 10: and I think they miss Karennie Reid as well. Reid
Speaker 10: is kind of as good as Lander Barton is. I
Speaker 10: kind of feel like Reid is the heartbeat of that defense,
Speaker 10: and Conor O'Toole is so good off the edge. They
Speaker 10: don't have as much depth at defensive end as they
Speaker 10: do a defensive tackle, and not having O'Toole in that game,
Speaker 10: who's got the ability to chase a guy like Fafeeda
Speaker 10: And again, Arizona didn't run at a bunch, but when
Speaker 10: they ran it, they really ran it. And I think
Speaker 10: really the last couple of games you've seen them miss
Speaker 10: Karennie Reid and I know after the bye week they're
Speaker 10: hoping they have both those guys back. I don't have
Speaker 10: any kind of status update, but I know that was
Speaker 10: kind of the buzz around, you know, the stadium on
Speaker 10: Saturday was get this game, have a couple of weeks
Speaker 10: to heal up, and then we should we hope to
Speaker 10: have I say should they should they hope to have
Speaker 10: those guys both back after the bye week.
Speaker 7: We'll see how that goes.
Speaker 1: So, of course that moves over to the quarterback conversation
Speaker 1: and Dennis Dodd today, did you know you wrote a
Speaker 1: piece for CBS Sports Now it's front of the show,
Speaker 1: stop buy for Big twelve Media Day. And Dennis's assertion
Speaker 1: is this ambiguity and the messaging around Cameron's injury is
Speaker 1: putting Kyle Staff in a precarious spot as a result
Speaker 1: of what we deal with now since all of sports
Speaker 1: college and pro football, college and pro basketball are in.
Speaker 2: Bed with gambling companies.
Speaker 1: So there's a gentleman who all of the P four
Speaker 1: conferences use.
Speaker 2: Let me get his name right. His name is Matt Holt.
Speaker 1: He's the founder of the US Integrity in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: which seems like an oxymoron as a gambling integrity monitor.
Speaker 2: And here's the quote.
Speaker 1: The Datistasenist piece today says, quote this comes from mister Holt.
Speaker 7: Quote.
Speaker 1: We constantly tell colleagues, if you continue to hide information
Speaker 1: for gamesmanship or competitive advantages purposes, you are putting your
Speaker 1: student athletes, trainers, equipment managers, and assistant coaches.
Speaker 2: In what we call a heightened risk category.
Speaker 1: When betting groups starting to start to figure out, hey,
Speaker 1: this coach won't disclose the information. There's real value in
Speaker 1: getting that inside information, and oftentimes they lean on lower
Speaker 1: level staffers. Now I can't coroberate any of that. And
Speaker 1: my personal opinion is Cameron is hurt and he will
Speaker 1: play when he's healthy. But you know, the community is
Speaker 1: kind of tired of this entire back and forth.
Speaker 2: Bill.
Speaker 1: I know you have to be careful, so don't put
Speaker 1: yourself in a bad spot, not like you would, But
Speaker 1: what do you make of where we're at with this
Speaker 1: entire thing and kind of the Cameron rising fatigue felt
Speaker 1: by a lot of people in the community.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, I think like a lot of people,
Speaker 10: I get my phone blows up when you know he
Speaker 10: doesn't play, And to be very fair, they've been even
Speaker 10: guarded around me and not really disclosed a lot of
Speaker 10: details to me.
Speaker 7: And that's fine.
Speaker 10: They're they're allowed to do whatever they want to do
Speaker 10: with that, with that stuff. But I sense the same
Speaker 10: frustration that fans feel because I hear it from a
Speaker 10: lot of my friends and people in the media and
Speaker 10: things like that, and I you know, people want to know,
Speaker 10: and I said, I wish I could tell you. I
Speaker 10: just I don't know what that situation is. But I
Speaker 10: think to your point, the fatigue part of it is
Speaker 10: because it's two years in a row of the guy
Speaker 10: that you're counting on so much dealing with injuries. Now,
Speaker 10: I do believe this one is different than a year ago.
Speaker 10: And I know he's hurt, and I know the finger
Speaker 10: has bothered him, and we've seen him warm up and
Speaker 10: try to throw. We didn't see that a bunch last year.
Speaker 10: Maybe it was one game when he came out, But
Speaker 10: I think that, you know, it's something that I know
Speaker 10: the kid really well, and I know you guys around
Speaker 10: station do because he comes in and does a conversation
Speaker 10: every week. He wants to play football, and he wants
Speaker 10: to play football in the worst way. And Cam Woll's
Speaker 10: play on in the fact matter is you've got to
Speaker 10: put some football on tape if you want to get drafted.
Speaker 10: So I know there's fatigue around it. And I do
Speaker 10: know this that Isaac Wilson is making, you know, some
Speaker 10: some mistakes that freshmen make from time to time. What
Speaker 10: I do see from his teammates is that the fact
Speaker 10: that they're kind of buying into what Isaac's doing out there,
Speaker 10: and I think they respect a lot that this kid
Speaker 10: just kind of doesn't act like a freshman. He comes in,
Speaker 10: he plays hard, he gives it what he has. But
Speaker 10: at the end of the day, I think if Utah
Speaker 10: wants to get where they want to get and there's
Speaker 10: everything still on the board, I mean, you know, one
Speaker 10: loss is a sidetrack, especially in the playoff era. But
Speaker 10: I think this bye week Spence comes at a good
Speaker 10: time for not just a guy like Rising, but for
Speaker 10: this team to kind of exhale just a little bit
Speaker 10: after what was a tough month and then a couple
Speaker 10: of guys on the defensive side of the ball that
Speaker 10: you like to get back to. So I think it's
Speaker 10: a good week to have. If I get two of
Speaker 10: them this year, now you Thah will have another one
Speaker 10: before the BYU game. But it's a good time for
Speaker 10: all that for Utah.
Speaker 1: So we had Brian Jeffries on the show, who is
Speaker 1: the Bill Riiley of Arizona?
Speaker 2: Just not as much or not as much riz? You
Speaker 2: know what riz means, right, Roles?
Speaker 6: No tell me?
Speaker 7: Is that something the kids says?
Speaker 1: The kids say that for charisma? So Brian Jefferies is
Speaker 1: the Bill Riley just a little less Rizz?
Speaker 2: Because we know you got the Riz Rales?
Speaker 1: And he called the Utah game a get right game
Speaker 1: for Arizona after a bye week. What does it get
Speaker 1: right game for Utah football look like after a bye
Speaker 1: week in Tempe against Arizona State.
Speaker 10: I think it's the same thing you say. Here's the thing,
Speaker 10: Arizona they didn't just lose to Kansas State. They got
Speaker 10: to be thirty one to seven, and they had to
Speaker 10: sit on that for two weeks. Arizona's a good football team,
Speaker 10: but they look like it against Kansas State. Chansas State's
Speaker 10: a good football team, but they didn't look like it
Speaker 10: against BYU.
Speaker 6: So you've got a.
Speaker 10: Lot of good football teams. I don't know if there's
Speaker 10: a great team in this conference right now, but you've
Speaker 10: got a lot of good teams in this league. But
Speaker 10: what Utah's got to do is what Arizona had to
Speaker 10: do two weeks before. They've got to sit on it.
Speaker 10: They got they hear about it for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 10: but they've got to bring a little bit more juice.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 10: I think there was a feeling maybe among fans, maybe
Speaker 10: a little bit among the team that maybe, hey, it's
Speaker 10: a blackout game. Hey you know we owe Arizona little something. Okay,
Speaker 10: they just lost the game at k State. You know
Speaker 10: this atmosphere, and they didn't Arizona came in and they
Speaker 10: didn't flinch. They were well prepared. I think Utah has
Speaker 10: to do all that same stuff.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 10: The team they're playing is much improved Arizona State. And
Speaker 10: going down to Tempee on a Friday night against an
Speaker 10: improved team that may have another win under their belt
Speaker 10: before and one I think they played Kansas this week,
Speaker 10: who's not very good, you may be stepping into another
Speaker 10: hostile atmosphere. And so I think Utah's got to do
Speaker 10: what Arizona did, kind of look within itself a little
Speaker 10: bit and come with bring a little bit more juice
Speaker 10: when they come to the field against the Arizona State
Speaker 10: Sun Devils.
Speaker 2: So as you reference, everything's still on the table.
Speaker 1: I didn't push back on the narrative the Big Twelve
Speaker 1: had a bunch of parody because I didn't believe it
Speaker 1: to be true. I just didn't want it to be
Speaker 1: true because this year, for me, I'm just more about
Speaker 1: Utah football protecting themselves as opposed to latching on to
Speaker 1: the Big Twelve. Because the reality of where we're headed
Speaker 1: as a sport we all know about.
Speaker 2: You just have to be in.
Speaker 1: The best position you possibly can for yourselves to make
Speaker 1: sure that when everything actually does split off into this
Speaker 1: super conference that most people believe we're headed towards, you're
Speaker 1: in a good spot to be invited. So my thing
Speaker 1: this year is Utah football has to watch out for
Speaker 1: Utah football as opposed to.
Speaker 2: Let's carry a Big twelve banner.
Speaker 1: So I was hoping that Utah could, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of separate themselves a little bit from the pack.
Speaker 2: That still has a chance to happen.
Speaker 1: But we have seen that parody manifest in a way
Speaker 1: that most people thought that it would. How many teams
Speaker 1: build today do you feel confidence Insane can actually still
Speaker 1: win this conference?
Speaker 10: That's a really good question. I think Utah can still
Speaker 10: win it. I think Kansas State can still win it.
Speaker 10: I think BYU through five games has showed they've got
Speaker 10: a chance to win it.
Speaker 7: Here's the thing.
Speaker 10: I think Abou Killane's team. I don't think they're may
Speaker 10: be as talented as Utah or maybe even Kansas State overall,
Speaker 10: but you know what.
Speaker 5: They do every week.
Speaker 10: They play really hard, they maximize what they have and
Speaker 10: as a result, they're five and oh. So I think BYU,
Speaker 10: I think Utah, I think Kansas State, I think Arizona,
Speaker 10: Iowa State. And I'm this is gonna sound crazy, Spence,
Speaker 10: I'm gonna throw Colorado in there just for a minute,
Speaker 10: because as much as a lot of people would love
Speaker 10: to see Dion and his boys fall down, outside of
Speaker 10: going to Nebraska, which is a tough place to play.
Speaker 7: They've been okay, and they went on the road.
Speaker 10: UCF was supposed to be one of those sleeper teams
Speaker 10: and they doubled up UCF in Orlando in a rain storm.
Speaker 10: So those would be the teams right now. I think
Speaker 10: there's five. Let's see one, two, three, four, five, I'll
Speaker 10: say six. So I think I think six, right now
Speaker 10: are still in the mix that I think can make
Speaker 10: a legitimate case to win this league.
Speaker 1: Curious to, I want to follow up about BYU because
Speaker 1: I said last week that BYU, in my opinion, still
Speaker 1: had serious questions the answer against Baylor on the road. Now,
Speaker 1: I was on the sideline for the Utah Baylor game
Speaker 1: and Baylor's offense is not all that impressive, and BYU
Speaker 1: nearly nearly let Baylor get back into the game, but
Speaker 1: nonetheless they won. They stayed clean. That defense year two
Speaker 1: hunderd J. Hill looks like a defense they just coached
Speaker 1: by J. Hill and who head coach is Kialane. They're
Speaker 1: going to see Arizona after a bye in Provo. Then
Speaker 1: they have Oklahoma State and Provo as well at UCF
Speaker 1: at Utah, So they have a lot of tough games left.
Speaker 1: But let's give credit where credit is due. Man, they're
Speaker 1: clean through five games. Just how good Bill do you
Speaker 1: think BYU is?
Speaker 10: I don't know how good they are, Spence, but I
Speaker 10: came into the year thinking I didn't think they were good.
Speaker 10: I thought they'd be an average to slightly below average team.
Speaker 10: I did, and to be fair, I just didn't know
Speaker 10: a lot about them because there just wasn't a lot
Speaker 10: of information. They didn't name their quarterback till midway or
Speaker 10: late in camp, and I just I didn't have a
Speaker 10: very good feel for them. So I was kind of
Speaker 10: judging them based on the second half of the season
Speaker 10: last year, where it kind of felt like the Big
Speaker 10: twelve caught up with them a little bit. Well, what
Speaker 10: they've done is they've come out, they're relatively healthy, they
Speaker 10: don't beat themselves a bunch with mistakes. They've capitalized. I mean,
Speaker 10: you know, in case, they gifted them a bunch of turnovers,
Speaker 10: you know what they did, they turned them into touchdowns.
Speaker 10: They didn't kick field goals, they turned them into touchdowns.
Speaker 10: And again I'll say this, and this is kind of
Speaker 10: Colonie teams have always really done this. They play really hard.
Speaker 10: So when you play hard and you don't beat yourself,
Speaker 10: you give yourself a chance to stay in games. And
Speaker 10: they've done just that in they're five and zero.
Speaker 1: All right, Ryles, Well, for your sake and my sake,
Speaker 1: I'll be churring for the Royals. But let me get this,
Speaker 1: if the Yankees win the World Series, can we get
Speaker 1: one of those hipster mustaches that all the kids have
Speaker 1: these days.
Speaker 10: Maybe, Onya, No, I'm afraid now they're They're a favorite,
Speaker 10: you know what I mean. If they were transposed, if
Speaker 10: they were the wild card team, maybe I'd do it.
Speaker 2: But now probing that, all right, then go Royals. I'm
Speaker 2: all about it. Ryle's thanks for the time today, buddy,
Speaker 2: Have a good week.
Speaker 7: Okay, thanks, Bence.
Speaker 1: All right, wrap it up the show for a Tuesday afternoon,
Speaker 1: lovely day outside, good forecast this week. Hoping you're having
Speaker 1: a good start to your work week as we answer
Speaker 1: a little bit closer and closer to that weekend and
Speaker 1: the start of Pro football on Thursday. Speaking of Pro football,
Speaker 1: a couple pieces of news and notes that we missed
Speaker 1: we were busy. Von Miller has been suspended four games
Speaker 1: for violating the NFL Player Conduct Policy. No information, at
Speaker 1: least none that I've seen on exactly what's going on
Speaker 1: there has has been out, It has been at least
Speaker 1: released as of now. He served a six game suspension
Speaker 1: for performance and hatting and drugs back in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: so that news came out. And also DeVante Adams has
Speaker 1: requested a trade from the Las Vegas Raiders and they
Speaker 1: even formed teams and they will consider it and looking,
Speaker 1: and they're looking for a second round pick, an additional
Speaker 1: compensation for one of the best most talented wide receivers
Speaker 1: in all of pro football. Gonzaga is high speed ahead
Speaker 1: to the Pac twelve in twenty twenty six, as we
Speaker 1: talked about, so obviously.
Speaker 2: A lot of news in that direction.
Speaker 1: All right, Porter, You know how I reference that my
Speaker 1: fantasy football team is depressingly.
Speaker 3: Bad, I recall yet, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's even worse than I thought.
Speaker 1: Oh really, So, like a good fantasy football scorer is
Speaker 1: about one hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty points week
Speaker 1: in and week out. You put up one twenty, you
Speaker 1: have a chance to win thirty nine points, thirty nine
Speaker 1: points for my guys. So it's not just that it's bad,
Speaker 1: it's that it's historically bad. And I am the worst
Speaker 1: team in my league by far. Of course, injury have
Speaker 1: riddled my roster, but my lineup of Will Levis that
Speaker 1: didn't go well, Rashi Rice left with an injury. I
Speaker 1: could keep going on and on and on. I have
Speaker 1: Tyreek Hill, I have Joe Mixon who didn't play. I
Speaker 1: have either completely underachievers at Pukakua.
Speaker 2: I have to a tongue of iloa.
Speaker 1: I have also, I have either completely underachievers or total
Speaker 1: injured players on my roster and uh and it's just depressing.
Speaker 2: I just need to get that off my chest.
Speaker 3: What's your team name?
Speaker 2: I cannot say it on air?
Speaker 1: No, no, actually, I cannot, thank you very much because
Speaker 1: I'm because I'm responsible. Yeah, I can show I can
Speaker 1: show you the team name. You know, I am interested
Speaker 1: so well. I will tell you the team name of
Speaker 1: the team I have in the RSL League, the Gerald Fitzgerald's.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a traditional one. Yes, and my and
Speaker 3: you'll win that league, right probably, I.
Speaker 2: Mean I always do.
Speaker 1: But my little logo is a picture of Trey and
Speaker 1: sunglasses inside because it makes me happy. So if your
Speaker 1: fantasy football team is as bad as mine, I'm feeling you, guys,
Speaker 1: my heart's with you. Hang in there, all right, Porter,
Speaker 1: what comes our way on a Wednesday edition or this
Speaker 1: little old radio.
Speaker 3: Show on a Wednesday, Spence, we'll preview UFC three oh seven.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited for that. Another really fun event here
Speaker 3: in Salt Lake City. You'll remember our guy Court McGee
Speaker 3: was actually fighting this week. He kind of struggled with retire,
Speaker 3: not retire, come back doing the can't decide thing. So
Speaker 3: Court's back, he's fighting. He'll be in action over the weekend.
Speaker 3: He'll join us tomorrow. Chris Camronnie will join us tomorrow
Speaker 3: as he is doing his own Cristomer McCandless thing. Over
Speaker 3: the weekend, Neil Smith will join us. We'll start talking
Speaker 3: some hockey on the program this week, and then Andy
Speaker 3: Larson will drop by as well, so we're kind of
Speaker 3: touching all our bases midweek, going back and forth, talking
Speaker 3: some hoops, talking some football, talking some hockey, and maybe
Speaker 3: even a little soccer on a game day as well too.
Speaker 1: All right, there will be a game day for oursl
Speaker 1: and one day closer to the weekend, on halfway through
Speaker 1: your work week on a Wednesday, So join us for
Speaker 1: that well SEGA Night special. Thank you Joe FORTINBA, Richard Smith,
Speaker 1: Scott Mitchell and Bill Riley for sound you may have
Speaker 1: missed from the show. Head on over to the website,
Speaker 1: which is ESPN seven hundred sports dot com. Make sure
Speaker 1: to download our mobile app and take us on the go.
Speaker 1: It is the ESPN seven hundred app and that's available
Speaker 1: in the App Store or the Google play Store. Then finally,
Speaker 1: for what we do in our space every afternoon for
Speaker 1: four hours. Check out the podcast page. It's called The
Speaker 1: Drive with Spence. Check its and that's available wherever you
Speaker 1: get your show. Subscribe, rate, review, all the things we
Speaker 1: ask you to do. It actually helps if you have time.
Speaker 1: He's Porter, I'm Spence Saga Night. Enjoy your Tuesday evening.
Speaker 1: Little wildcard Baseball comes your way. Coming up next, Catch
Speaker 1: Oliver right here on ESPN seven hundred