Speaker 1: In Part one, we examined the crazy circumstances that the
Speaker 1: PAC twelve overcame in order to play its fall football season.
Speaker 2: We are announcing and introducing a regional.
Speaker 1: Stay at home order in the state of California, fundamentally
Speaker 1: predicated on the need to stop gathering with people outside
Speaker 1: of your household. In fact, playing any version of a
Speaker 1: season was a huge accomplishment.
Speaker 3: California doesn't have the minimum number of scholarship players available
Speaker 3: for the game because multiple players have to quarantine due
Speaker 3: to contact tracing protocol.
Speaker 1: Now we look ahead, what did players and coaches learn
Speaker 1: from the experience and what can we as fans take
Speaker 1: away from it? From the solid verbal This is a
Speaker 1: special production, So now.
Speaker 3: What Welcome back?
Speaker 1: I'm Ty Hildebrandt, joined as always by Dan Rubinstein, our
Speaker 1: resident Pack twelve afficionado.
Speaker 2: Dan.
Speaker 1: Part one, we looked at just a few of the
Speaker 1: odd quirks that the PAC twelve had to deal with
Speaker 1: during the twenty twenty college football season. Now we look ahead,
Speaker 1: what did we learn? What can the PAC twelve, what
Speaker 1: can college football do better in twenty twenty one and beyond?
Speaker 1: Our interview subject again Yogi Wroth from the PAC twelve Networks.
Speaker 1: A podcaster himself a documentary filmmaker, he found it to
Speaker 1: be a rather educational experience.
Speaker 2: I learned a ton.
Speaker 4: I probably learned more about players this year than ever
Speaker 4: before because you saw their actions, you know, really speak loudly.
Speaker 1: You are the resident PAC twelve expert here, Dan Yogi
Speaker 1: learned a lot about players. What did you learn?
Speaker 3: I remember thinking that the PAC twelve never felt farther away,
Speaker 3: further away than the set of the college football conversation.
Speaker 3: And you know, USC has you know, long dominated with
Speaker 3: Oregon their place in the broader college football conversation. USC,
Speaker 3: you know, under Pete Carroll, and then you have you know,
Speaker 3: Sark and Lane Kiffin, and you know a lot of
Speaker 3: interesting talent at SC, but they can't really put it together.
Speaker 3: And Oregon has their own ups and downs. But those
Speaker 3: two schools have carved out parts of the college football
Speaker 3: conversation that the rest of the conference has struggled to
Speaker 3: do consistently. And so with teams playing four or five
Speaker 3: games or whatever, while other conferences are playing more games,
Speaker 3: and the PAC twelve has this reputation for having a
Speaker 3: commissioner that is bumbling his way through for four or
Speaker 3: five years or however long Larry Scott is there and
Speaker 3: just falling further and further behind. It definitely felt that
Speaker 3: that became more and more apparent last fall, where the
Speaker 3: PAC twelve didn't cancel, but they just decided to delay
Speaker 3: as long as possible, and a lot of it is
Speaker 3: out of their hands, right, A lot of it is,
Speaker 3: you know, the states and the counties making calls about
Speaker 3: players gathering and groups of people gathering. But there definitely
Speaker 3: was that part of like, you know, Oregon wins the
Speaker 3: first couple games, and nobody's talking about Tyler Shuck, nobody's
Speaker 3: talking about Noah Sewel or any of these guys that
Speaker 3: are you know, popping early on, and it's a shame.
Speaker 3: It's a shame to me as an Oregon fan. Shame
Speaker 3: to me that, you know, people aren't talking about Jimmy
Speaker 3: Lake and Dylan Morris or you know, Davis Mills is
Speaker 3: a couple of good games after he comes back with
Speaker 3: the false positive stuff. And I don't have a reason why,
Speaker 3: I just know that the Packed weelve was already pretty
Speaker 3: far behind, and there was that element of being marooned
Speaker 3: on an island even further.
Speaker 1: I think what I learned, and I'm sure part of
Speaker 1: this at least was by design. You know, every conference
Speaker 1: claimed to have player safety in mind, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: at the core they all did. They all cared about
Speaker 1: player safety, no doubt about it. Maybe it's simply by
Speaker 1: virtue of being last to come back to football, but
Speaker 1: there was certainly a layer of authenticity to the PAC
Speaker 1: twelve's desire for players' safety that maybe didn't exist elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Everyone said it, but the PAC twelve it seemed like
Speaker 1: they were practicing what they were preaching. And that's certainly
Speaker 1: not the kind of thing that you're going to be
Speaker 1: able to use looking forward as recruiting tool. Players aren't
Speaker 1: going to care about that a year from now. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's a feather in the cap of administrators, who knows,
Speaker 1: but at least from afar looking back seeing how this
Speaker 1: whole thing played out, the PAC twelve, to some extent,
Speaker 1: sacrificed potentially greater prominence as part of the college football
Speaker 1: playoff or postseason and opted instead for this whatever we
Speaker 1: saw through the month of November, this odd, quirky season
Speaker 1: that didn't really benefit any of its programs on a
Speaker 1: national level, but benefited players to the extent that they
Speaker 1: at least had games to play. Yeah, they had games
Speaker 1: to play, and I'll echo myself if that's allowed. It's
Speaker 1: just that a lot of this was out of their hands.
Speaker 1: A lot of this is not just you know, Stanford deciding, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't want to play until November, or Arizona State
Speaker 1: or UCLA saying we want to hold off until November.
Speaker 1: That's what all you know, four hundred people involved in
Speaker 1: this decision, are involved in the program, feel that it
Speaker 1: is just out of their hands, and you know, state
Speaker 1: by state, it's just we just have different situations.
Speaker 3: And so it ended up to me hurting the PAC
Speaker 3: twelve on a national level. I'm certainly glad the PAC
Speaker 3: twelve played, and it's not necessarily the playoff thing. To me,
Speaker 3: it's we didn't get to see and we didn't get
Speaker 3: to see this across college footble as a whole because
Speaker 3: we didn't have, you know, a non conference light like
Speaker 3: we're used to having.
Speaker 2: We're not.
Speaker 3: We don't didn't have a crowd, a full crowd in
Speaker 3: every game like we're used to having. But it's there
Speaker 3: is that element of narrative and storyline, like what does
Speaker 3: the college football nation at large think of you know,
Speaker 3: Jaden Daniels, or think of ZTF at Washington, Like there
Speaker 3: are certain sides of the ball, or certain players, or
Speaker 3: certain systems or certain coaches or certain narratives that are
Speaker 3: allowed to take hold. And even like Colorado's this unexpected
Speaker 3: success story near one of Carl Derel. But like, no,
Speaker 3: I mean, if I put you on the spot, could
Speaker 3: you name Colorado's Like I know you could probably name
Speaker 3: their leading rusher, but like their quarterback was a converted safety,
Speaker 3: and like there was just there was no time for
Speaker 3: people to familiarize themselves with PAC twelve storylines with such
Speaker 3: a shortened, delayed season, it just started right right, it
Speaker 3: just began. It almost ended as quickly as it began.
Speaker 3: And that's what I mean. It's an attention economy that
Speaker 3: everybody is fighting for attention. We know who's going to
Speaker 3: end up in the postseason by and large, right it's
Speaker 3: going to be whoever wins the SEC going to be
Speaker 3: probably Ohio State out of the Big Ten. Oklahoma stands
Speaker 3: a good chance most seasons. Clemson certainly has a flag
Speaker 3: plant that people aren't removing it seems anytime soon. But
Speaker 3: there's always that element of Oh, we're falling in love
Speaker 3: with Wazoo's Run and Shooter. We're falling in love like
Speaker 3: Chip Kelly's UCLA has taken a nice step forward. I'm
Speaker 3: going to pay more attention to them. The PAC twelve
Speaker 3: just didn't have a seat at that table that's sort
Speaker 3: of attention table, and that's what I think is damaged that.
Speaker 3: And this is, you know, we have a new commissioner
Speaker 3: to pay attention to in the PAC twelve, and you know,
Speaker 3: maybe that's a nice new step forward and there will
Speaker 3: be some sort of innovative thinking in terms of broadcasting
Speaker 3: and marketing whatever. But yeah, the twenty twenty season, and
Speaker 3: the subtext of all of this is the PAC twelve
Speaker 3: losing attention is not equally important to COVID nineteen, Like
Speaker 3: this is all far below the most important thing that
Speaker 3: happening in America. But this is the sort of lasting
Speaker 3: element of the PAC twelve making the decisions that they
Speaker 3: did nationally, is that there's just a vacuum in terms
Speaker 3: of notoriety, in terms of storyline and terms of awareness
Speaker 3: with the conference.
Speaker 1: We asked Yogi, what specifically did you learn about players?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Every player I talked to to a man in the
Speaker 4: fall prior to November seventh, and or now in the
Speaker 4: spring value the game at a greater level.
Speaker 2: They value us sprint.
Speaker 4: I remember talking to her Edwards and he talked about
Speaker 4: his Hey, my players love just running sprints now because
Speaker 4: we get to do something. We get to be together,
Speaker 4: we get to be around each other. They love waking
Speaker 4: up at six am for a workout or a team workout.
Speaker 4: So I think there was that, like a real appreciation
Speaker 4: for the craft. I think you learned that you were
Speaker 4: maybe done with college right. Stanford had one of their
Speaker 4: starting safeties just retire. He just got a great job,
Speaker 4: and he's like, I'm good. I know I can get
Speaker 4: a bonus year, maybe start again, but I've been here
Speaker 4: for five years. Keep it moving. I think you learned
Speaker 4: a lot of principles that you'll apply when you're our age,
Speaker 4: right when you're family men. I think all of these
Speaker 4: young men will learn how much they love the game,
Speaker 4: how much they love their teammates, and how college football
Speaker 4: fed their soul or didn't. To be really honest with you,
Speaker 4: you know, were they just playing because they loved the crowd,
Speaker 4: or they just planned because they had a scholarship, or
Speaker 4: man did they really did it? Did it matter if
Speaker 4: there was one fan in the stands or sixty five thou.
Speaker 4: I think that's something that every player, when reflected upon
Speaker 4: in their own journey, they'll say, Yeah, I learned that.
Speaker 2: I learned how much I loved it.
Speaker 4: And I also learned how somebody and how some teams unite,
Speaker 4: and how a leader all of the head coach leads
Speaker 4: imide dramatic chaos and adversity.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting to me, Dan is we came
Speaker 1: up with the idea to do this type of look back,
Speaker 1: I want to say, at the end of last year
Speaker 1: and the thought process for so now what was always
Speaker 1: we're going to take a look in general, look back
Speaker 1: at what happened around a certain topic, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to take a look forward in part too, try
Speaker 1: to figure out what we learned. That's what we're doing now.
Speaker 1: What did we learn And at the time, to me,
Speaker 1: I was expecting that there will be more big picture
Speaker 1: things that we learned, a lot that we could take
Speaker 1: away from this, a lot that we could learn from
Speaker 1: and grow from. In Part one, we didn't really find that.
Speaker 1: With conference decision making, the takeaway was we didn't learn anything.
Speaker 1: We didn't formulate a playbook. We learned a lot about
Speaker 1: the powers that be and the people who make decisions
Speaker 1: and how they make them, but ultimately it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like there's a whole lot that we can glean from
Speaker 1: this that's going to make things better. I think we
Speaker 1: learned more from the player and coach level than we did,
Speaker 1: certainly at the conference level. But what strikes me is
Speaker 1: that players and coaches mirrored to large extent what went
Speaker 1: on around the rest of society, and that is maybe
Speaker 1: there weren't any great takeaways that applied to everybody in
Speaker 1: the conference or on the team. It was on a
Speaker 1: very individual level that I think is going to resonate
Speaker 1: with a lot of people listening to this.
Speaker 3: Frankly, you know what I took away from talking to
Speaker 3: Yogi something I thought about a little bit but not
Speaker 3: a good amount, is I went in thinking, Okay, he's
Speaker 3: going to talk about how players had a really tough
Speaker 3: time just being on campus but not being in classrooms
Speaker 3: in the facility. The fact is college football players, more
Speaker 3: than a lot of people. Now, it's not a blanket
Speaker 3: a lot of people, but a lot of people were
Speaker 3: able to have human contact with even if it's just
Speaker 3: a position group, even if it's just you know, Friday
Speaker 3: walk through Saturday games, a lot of people are working
Speaker 3: from home, you know, maybe seeing each other if they're
Speaker 3: more conservative in terms of their COVID precautions. You know,
Speaker 3: you see somebody on a driveway or a backyard or
Speaker 3: something like that, but you're not eating at restaurants. That
Speaker 3: I think college football players and college coaches were afforded
Speaker 3: an obviously successful human thing, of human contact for prolonged
Speaker 3: periods of time, and treasured those times that a lot
Speaker 3: of people, depending on what you do for a living,
Speaker 3: if you're working an office job, you were probably working
Speaker 3: from home and not seeing your coworkers and maybe not
Speaker 3: seeing extended family members if they were across the country
Speaker 3: for a good amount of time. That college football players
Speaker 3: were still leading even if it was just amongst themselves
Speaker 3: and not on campus or at you know, bars and
Speaker 3: restaurants around a college town. They're still seeing each other,
Speaker 3: and they grew to appreciate those moments in the way
Speaker 3: that I think a lot of us have as things
Speaker 3: have opened up and we see more friends and family
Speaker 3: members and things like that. That they were some of
Speaker 3: the first people to be able to appreciate human contact
Speaker 3: and having a social life and having you know, camaraderie
Speaker 3: with friends or in this case you know, fellow players
Speaker 3: or coaches or whatever staff members. I thought that was
Speaker 3: really telling that they were one of those groups of
Speaker 3: people who were able to just hang out with a
Speaker 3: few other people at a time. That was telling.
Speaker 1: A lot of the stuff is very relatable. Yeah, unrelatable
Speaker 1: to all of us who have had to go through
Speaker 1: this over the last year.
Speaker 4: If you talked to Stanford players, not surprisingly, right, they
Speaker 4: told David Shaw when he said, hey, how would you
Speaker 4: describe the year? They were ones that didn't go to
Speaker 4: a bowl game, They were off of their campus, They
Speaker 4: practiced in a park in Bellevue. They won four straight games,
Speaker 4: and they probably got hit hardest by COVID in terms
Speaker 4: of on the field, in terms of their potential for
Speaker 4: the season, because they were false positives before the Oregon
Speaker 4: game with their starting quarterback, so it impacted their season.
Speaker 4: And they said the word gratitude, right, They were so
Speaker 4: grateful that people did whatever they could to get them
Speaker 4: to play.
Speaker 1: Just to be out there, Dan, just to be out there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to get out there to play the game. That they
Speaker 1: love was a big deal to these kids. And you know,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it was an oddly shapen PAC
Speaker 1: twelve season, a college football season really wasn't just the
Speaker 1: Pac twelve. I think, despite our ambivalence, despite some of
Speaker 1: the guilt that I know I referenced in our first episode,
Speaker 1: it was good to have those games. It was meaningful
Speaker 1: to us too. We share that gratitude to get those
Speaker 1: kids out there, just to give us something to watch,
Speaker 1: to distract from, you know, at the time, which was
Speaker 1: not a great time in the country.
Speaker 3: And most certainly wasn't. And it's one of those things
Speaker 3: where we are hoping that normal also means watching games
Speaker 3: at home with friends and family, are going to games
Speaker 3: themselves more often, or in bigger stadiums or more packed stadiums.
Speaker 3: That's it's one of those things that is always going
Speaker 3: to be more meaningful than the football itself, is the
Speaker 3: football experience. And that's long been the case with college football.
Speaker 3: And I'm positive people are you know, chomping, champing at
Speaker 3: the bit to get back to that experience.
Speaker 2: Yo.
Speaker 1: You mentioned David Shaw in that last clip. He told
Speaker 1: a really good story about David Shaw and just how
Speaker 1: coaches approached this whole thing what they learned.
Speaker 4: You know, David Shaw told me a great story and
Speaker 4: he said he read this book called Radical Acceptance that
Speaker 4: I immediately of course picked up because anything he says,
Speaker 4: I kind of just do it. And it's all about
Speaker 4: just like accepting what's in front of you and not
Speaker 4: fighting it. But Davids Mills is out. Okay, that was
Speaker 4: five hours before the game. Jack West, you're going to start,
Speaker 4: Tanner McKee, you just came off a mission in Brazil
Speaker 4: the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: You might play.
Speaker 4: Oh and our top receiver can't go either, Okay, John Huffreys,
Speaker 4: you're a true freshman. You might have to play like
Speaker 4: or we're going to play a bunch of two three
Speaker 4: tight end personnels. Like I just think that that leader,
Speaker 4: that coach who didn't fight it.
Speaker 2: I think those were brilliant examples.
Speaker 1: Playing the cards you're dealt, Dan, playing it as it
Speaker 1: lies was about all you could do as a coach.
Speaker 1: That was the most preparation you could really afford yourself
Speaker 1: because things changed. As we said in our last episode,
Speaker 1: was a very fluid situation, right, Everything was changing at
Speaker 1: a moment's notice.
Speaker 3: And of course not exclusive to the PAC twelve. Every
Speaker 3: team in every conference who played was dealing with the
Speaker 3: exact same issues, and the coaches and the players were
Speaker 3: able to adjust to whatever degree of success, you know,
Speaker 3: without three or four offensive linemen, without starting receivers, without
Speaker 3: whatever the situation. It was just a reality of the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty season. And the PAC twelve did what it
Speaker 3: thought was the right thing, and with the availability of
Speaker 3: the rapid testing and then okay, we're gonna have a
Speaker 3: PCR test once at least once a week. And then
Speaker 3: the PCR test, did somebody test positive with the I
Speaker 3: think it was called point of care testing. They did
Speaker 3: what they absolutely thought they should do, and it didn't
Speaker 3: always work, But I mean that the moral of everything
Speaker 3: was it was a season more than ever, of everybody
Speaker 3: just needing to roll with unexpected circumstances, rolling.
Speaker 1: With unexpected circumstances, rolling with the rules that the conference,
Speaker 1: in this case the PAC twelve, had put in place.
Speaker 1: As Yogi said in Part one, coaches were awesome about it.
Speaker 4: But nobody pretended to be a doctor. Nobody pretended to
Speaker 4: have an opinion on what you should or shouldn't do.
Speaker 4: Nobody pretended to call out a school on a false
Speaker 4: positive or a positive or a late positive. Like nobody
Speaker 4: was riding like that. Like everybody had great respect for
Speaker 4: what they were going through. But man, they're not trying
Speaker 4: to go through it again, you know, I obviously, and
Speaker 4: I think they probably learned a lot about like the
Speaker 4: consistent nature of what successful coaches do, which is they're
Speaker 4: uncommonly consistent.
Speaker 1: One thing I know that is of particular interest to
Speaker 1: you and I, especially with regard to coaches moving forward,
Speaker 1: is this whole issue of roster management. Now, keep in
Speaker 1: mind that there are a lot of guys who qualified
Speaker 1: for a bonus here be a six year senior. In
Speaker 1: some cases, freshmen coming into programs may have a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a log jam than they once expected.
Speaker 1: In many cases, kids couldn't visit the schools that they
Speaker 1: committed to, so there are a lot of zoom calls
Speaker 1: zoom recruiting became a thing. We talked to our friend
Speaker 1: branded Hoffman about that time, and again there's a lot
Speaker 1: of concern that this could have some longer lasting repercussions.
Speaker 1: Like we asked Yogi, is transferring going to be more
Speaker 1: of a problem.
Speaker 4: I don't think it'll happen immediately. I think in a
Speaker 4: year or two we'll see it. I think the super seniors,
Speaker 4: it's kind of like the general term we're all giving
Speaker 4: everybody who has a sixth year or a fifth year
Speaker 4: or took that bonus year of eligibility. You know they're
Speaker 4: going to come, they're gonna play, They're gon do the
Speaker 4: thing that the challenge will be freshmen this year and
Speaker 4: freshmen next year. To me, and that's why I think
Speaker 4: you're seeing teams signed small classes, right. Jonathan Smith often
Speaker 4: says they want to do common things in uncommon ways.
Speaker 2: Roster management is one of them.
Speaker 4: I think they signed eleven last year, maybe less than that,
Speaker 4: but they know they're going to work the portal, and
Speaker 4: they wanted to split up some of the bottom portion
Speaker 4: of their roster when it comes to age and experience
Speaker 4: and academic grades. And I think that's a smart move.
Speaker 4: You know, getting some veterans, excuse me, getting some transfers
Speaker 4: like Arizona to State's doing a great job to me,
Speaker 4: as good of a job as anybody in the country
Speaker 4: with roster management and making sure that there isn't a
Speaker 4: dramatic logjam. Like I'm so curious because I think Oregon
Speaker 4: is the most talented roster top to bottom out here
Speaker 4: in terms of sheer talent. If you went in a
Speaker 4: field and paths or shorts and a T shirt, you'd.
Speaker 2: Be like, WHOA, these guys are loaded.
Speaker 4: Now the management of that is going to be really
Speaker 4: interesting because of the last two classes, two best classes
Speaker 4: in the history of Oregon football ever, right, So what
Speaker 4: does that do for upperclassmen? Do they bolt? Or do
Speaker 4: some of the young guys say, Man, I don't really
Speaker 4: want to sit anymore. So I think it's a wait
Speaker 4: and see for me. And probably the thing I'm most
Speaker 4: excited about this coming year and coming years is watching
Speaker 4: these head coaches manage their roster almost like they're an
Speaker 4: NFL team and free agency, because we all know that's
Speaker 4: basically what the portal even is.
Speaker 1: So Organ's got a challenge in front of it, Dan
Speaker 1: doesn't it.
Speaker 3: So I was looking while Yogi was talking about that
Speaker 3: when we spoke to him. Oregon had two seniors started
Speaker 3: wide receiver last year, Johnny Johnson and Jalen red They
Speaker 3: both decided to come back. So Oregon, who has been
Speaker 3: recruiting receivers as if there were going to be normal
Speaker 3: cycle after normal cycle, now has like six or seven
Speaker 3: starter quality receivers. If you look at some of the
Speaker 3: promising younger players and now the seniors who've decided to
Speaker 3: come back, there's you know, three or four I think
Speaker 3: good to really good looking tight ends, which is very strange.
Speaker 3: You know, whatever position group. I'm sure Notre Dame has
Speaker 3: a specific position group. You're like, well, there are more
Speaker 3: good players here than there normally are. And I don't
Speaker 3: know what that is for Notre Dame, but it's definitely.
Speaker 3: I mean, Anthony Brown is, like is he thirty old?
Speaker 3: Anthony Brown is, but he's taking advantage of an extra
Speaker 3: year of eligibility, and you know, it's it's going to
Speaker 3: be fascinating to watch because recruiting has continued for a
Speaker 3: lot of these schools who have recruited at high levels,
Speaker 3: and it's like, what happens now is going to be fascinating,
Speaker 3: just like Yogi said, especially after springball, after fall camp,
Speaker 3: just you're going to see flurries of transfers, after depth
Speaker 3: charts come out.
Speaker 1: It will be interesting to follow. I think the recruiting
Speaker 1: aspect of this is probably what we'll learn save five
Speaker 1: years from now, what the ramifications were they We're a
Speaker 1: little bit too close to it at the moment to
Speaker 1: fully gauge what kind of effect that we'll have on
Speaker 1: college football and on programs out west and around the country.
Speaker 1: That is one area where my attention is very much trained,
Speaker 1: you know, moving forward and back, I guess to my
Speaker 1: earlier point. For whatever reason, the PAC twelve is able
Speaker 1: to speak with the level of authenticity around the subject
Speaker 1: of player safety. It may not entirely be by their
Speaker 1: own doing, granted, but I think Yogi agrees from the
Speaker 1: standpoint of the way that they handled it. Baby didn't
Speaker 1: raise the national profile of the conference, but it is
Speaker 1: something that looking back at least the administrator class will
Speaker 1: be proud of money.
Speaker 4: A lot of money was lost, but nobody was forced
Speaker 4: to play, and I think we're looking back on that
Speaker 4: that'll be a really proud moment for this conference.
Speaker 1: In a bunch of regards, one important takeaway, though, Yogi says,
Speaker 1: there was a missed opportunity.
Speaker 4: And I think in football, in our jobs, we can
Speaker 4: get so caught up with, well, they just got this
Speaker 4: guy in the portal, they're running this system, or this
Speaker 4: coach is so hot, or this team deserves me in
Speaker 4: the playoff, like a PAC twelve shit on the SEC
Speaker 4: and vice versa, and everybody just attack each other versus
Speaker 4: Like the one miss to me from COVID and college
Speaker 4: football is there was a real chance to unite around
Speaker 4: the game. There was a real chance and it was
Speaker 4: missed because every conference is going to do in their
Speaker 4: own thing.
Speaker 1: Doggie dog Dan, everyone out for themselves. Conferences taking a stand,
Speaker 1: not taking a stand, trying to play, not trying to play.
Speaker 1: As we talked about in part one, it got very
Speaker 1: murky on the conference level.
Speaker 3: It's the playing field is going to level more and
Speaker 3: more as things open up, as you know, the number
Speaker 3: of people vaccinated goes up, and as places are more
Speaker 3: comfortable hosting fans and official visits, and with regard to
Speaker 3: college football programs, we are going to see the PAC
Speaker 3: twelve be in charge to whatever degree it can be.
Speaker 3: Now they have a new commissioner. I don't I think
Speaker 3: his name is George. I don't know how his last
Speaker 3: name is pronounced, but he comes over from He's another
Speaker 3: outside higher so I'm sure he's going to be tasked
Speaker 3: with raising the conference's profile to whatever degree the conference
Speaker 3: can control things, not individual teams, players and coaches, but Yeah,
Speaker 3: the PAC twelve will be more in charge of its
Speaker 3: narrative than it was in twenty twenty. But so will
Speaker 3: the SEC, so well, the Big Ten, So will the ACC,
Speaker 3: sold the Big twelve, so the MAX, so well, you
Speaker 3: know every conference, so well, you know the American Mountain West.
Speaker 3: So I just it'll be a fascinating year and years
Speaker 3: moving forward because everybody is going to be trying to
Speaker 3: stuff as much football and as much football experience into
Speaker 3: the normal timeframe as possible. And I can't wait for it.
Speaker 3: I honestly I cannot wait for it because seeing conference
Speaker 3: ideology and state ideology pitted against one another, with college
Speaker 3: football players largely caught in the crosshairs not super fun.
Speaker 3: Not fun as a fan, not fun as somebody who
Speaker 3: covers the sport, not fun for somebody who just likes
Speaker 3: sports in general. Have everything seep into the conversation, all
Speaker 3: of these variables, so I am. I'm as excited as
Speaker 3: I have ever been and am hoping for the best.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening to so now what quirks out
Speaker 1: West don't forget. You can access full interviews, both audio
Speaker 1: and video out on our Patreon at verballers dot com.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, come back next week for a different topic
Speaker 1: with the same basic question. So now what