Will a 24-Team Playoff Save the Big 12 or Expose It? SEC Media Hates What's Coming

Should the Big 12 actually love the 24-team College Football Playoff?

SEC country and much of the national college football media seem to hate the idea, but that might be exactly why Big 12 fans should take a closer look. In this show, I break down why a 24-team playoff could create a major opportunity for the Big 12, why it could also backfire badly, and the one massive risk the league has to avoid if more Big 12 teams start getting playoff chances.

We also take a nostalgic trip back to 1990s college football, when the sport was built on regional rivalries, New Year’s Day bowl games, Keith Jackson, neck rolls, and endless arguments over poll rankings. Was that actually the best era of college football? And is there any chance the sport ever gets back to what made it unique?

Then we get into the latest big-picture movement on the future of college sports, including potential salary cap enforcement, booster collective restrictions, media rights pooling, antitrust protection, a new governing body, and what it all could mean for the Big 12. Would a stricter system help stabilize college athletics long term, or would it take away some of the Big 12’s best paths to closing the gap?

Get “Open For Business” a Big 12 newsletter sending the key headlines, interviews, and my analysis straight to your inbox. No more college football news through an SEC/Big Ten lens. If you're a Big 12 fan (or just curious), sign up below!
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https://www.youtube.com/@OFBcollegefootball

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Well, it looks like a 24 team playoff is headed down the tracks. That doesn't mean that it's here. It doesn't mean that it's official. I don't know exactly what the format is going to look like of this thing, if and when it happens, but that has been the topic of conversation all week this week across college football. The American Football Coaches Association has officially recommended a 24-team playoff. So lots of people are up in arms about it. Much of the national media, the SEC seems to particularly really, really hate the idea of a 24-team playoff. Does that mean it's the best thing for the Big 12? It's complicated. All right, we're going to talk about it tonight, but it is complicated. Uh, I want to have a little nostalgia fun tonight on the show. We are also going to go over the latest in what might be coming out of Washington. Yes, Washington, D.C., when it comes to the future of college football. And I think, much like the 2014 playoff discussion, it's a bit of a catch-22 for the Big 12. All right. That's what's on the docket tonight. Welcome into Open for Business. This is the world's best Big 12 podcast. It is where the Big 12 just means more. Thank you for being here tonight. As you file in, please do like and subscribe. Hello, R.A. Johns. Uh, first in the chat tonight. Uh, as you come in, please leave your questions and comments in the chat. But if you want to guarantee that your question or comment makes it on the show tonight, you can click the dollar sign below the chat box to submit a super chat. You can also do so on Venmo at John-Kurtz-4. Mainly for those of you who are not here watching live, you can get a question or comment in that I will lead off the next show with. So you can still be a part of the conversation. It is totally free, though, just to like and subscribe. And that does help tremendously. It is also totally free to sign up for the Open for Business Big Twelve newsletter at OFBnews.com. That is OFBnews.com to subscribe to the Open for Business Big Twelve newsletter. You can also click the link in the description of the video. Uh, Pace and Cougar fan, this is good. This is good. That is good stuff to kick off the show. A catch 24. It is a catch 24, not a catch 22, a catch 24. You are correct. Uh, thank you to those of you who are listening on the audio platforms as well. A lot of growth there lately. You can find the show, of course, on Spotify, Apple, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. So uh make sure you do that if that is your preferred format here. And I really appreciate those of you who are listening there. This is, yes, a show that streams live on YouTube. So you can always find that on Wednesdayslash Thursday and Sunday nights. Uh, but I appreciate a lot. Those of you guys who check out the podcast version of the show as well. All right, so what do you guys think? 2014 playoff, huh? I mean, this one is a complicated one. This is a show where if you haven't figured this out yet, you're typically going to get a lot of nuance. I'm gonna try and dive pretty deep and be analytical. It's not so much the crazy hot takes, and this is a complicated one. All right, hear me out. Look, SEC country and the national media, they hate the idea of a 24 team playoff. They hate that it seems almost inevitable now, after this past week, that it's going to happen. So, does that mean that because they hate it, it's the best thing for the Big 12? It's complicated. Uh yes, but it is a yes but situation. I will explain the but here in this video. There is a pretty big risk here if we do enter a world where there's a 2014 college football playoff. And I mean a big risk to the Big 12. It's easy to see why everybody else hates it. And to be honest, guys, it seems kind of silly. Like, I don't the college football purist in me, somebody who wants the game to go back, as you will find out later in the show, to the 1990s. Like, I why? Why do we need it? We just got to 12. Can we just settle with 12? The 2014 playoff, many have made these points. I think they are pretty valid. That it is going to, yes, make a section of games more meaningful because, like, well, you might have an Iowa State, Texas tech game late in the year where, you know, if Iowa State is nine and two or eight and three, something like that, it could determine whether or not they're going to make the playoff. If both teams are like nine and two, that could be a playoff elimination game. Yes, that is correct. But you would also then be losing the meaning on a game between a couple of like 10 and 1 Big Ten schools at the end of the year. Like I know Josh Pate kept using the example like, well, what if Ohio State and Michigan are 10 and 1 playing each other? What is the what are the stakes of that game? You might get teams like resting players almost. You know, I mean, I don't know that it would be totally outright in Ohio State, Michigan, but you could see that scenario coming up, right? Because they'd be in, perhaps in with a bye no matter what happened. So it is going to take some meaning away from other games. This is this is not like just a you only add significance scenario here. And the thing that college football has always had that has made it so unique is the intense pressure on the regular season. I mean, I say always had some of that is already gone. Like we've eroded a bunch of that by getting to a 12-team playoff. And like, this is the sad part to me as a college football traditionalist. I the the significance of the regular season to me should be the thing. That was college football at its best. I don't think we're getting back to that. Um, toothpaste is out of the tube, and I do try very hard. Like, just embrace it. There's change, there are good things about the new era. Try to make the best of it, right? But I do think a lot of people make good points as to why they are upset about this. If you're looking at this from a national perspective, why would we go to a 24 team playoff? But if you're thinking about this, as we do typically hear from a Big 12 perspective, all right, what's it mean for the league that has been kind of left for dead and trampled over by the rest of college football? Like, will this be a good thing for the Big 12? I actually saw this from Jack Trice Mafia, one of the best Big 12 Twitter followers out there. I would definitely uh recommend it. But Jack Trice Mafia, now, I'm gonna disagree a bit with one piece of this, which is he's calling Josh Pate one of the worst voices in the sport. I disagree with that. I think he actually gives the Big 12 more respect than a lot of the national pundits do. I think he's just pushing a lot of content. Well, the content that generates the most views for him. Like it's a business decision. The Big 12 doesn't resonate so much with his show. Anyway, that could be a whole other discussion. I actually like Josh Pate. But he puts him up with Paul Feinbaum and it's two headlines there. Josh Pate talking about how much he hates the 2014 playoff idea. Paul Feinbaum talking about how much he hates the 2014 playoff idea with the caption best indicator that a proposed change to college football would be a good thing. The worst voices in the sport are adamantly opposed to it. I might just tweet that to say the most SEC and national-centric college football voices are adamantly opposed to it. Because I do think that has generally been true, right? Going back to July of 2021, when Texas and Oklahoma first it broke that they were going to leave for the SEC. Since then, generally anything that has gotten consensus from national media or especially those in SEC country has been it's the inverse, right? If they love it, it's bad for the Big 12. If they hate it, it's good for the Big 12, right? Like that's that's kind of the world that we're in right now. Um, so I think it's a good point, even if I disagree a bit on some of the subtext there. I think it's a really good point by Jack Dreis Mafia. You have to zero in on this now and be like, all right, wait. John, what is the whole, what is the catch, man? 2014 playoff. More Big 12 teams will get in. Like that's probably why these guys hate it. Like Paul Feinbaum, who very emphatically wrote off Iowa State a couple of years ago, said he would never pay attention to them again after that seven and six season with uh Brock Purdy and Brees Hall. Uh, he doesn't want to have to deal with them in the playoff, right? Like this is this is where it comes from, right? Well, let's take a look in practice at what the uh 2014 playoff would actually look like, and then I will tell you what what the risk is here for the Big 12. Well, on the surface, it might seem great. Please do subscribe to the channel, pushing toward 35k subs. We got over 32. Thank you, everybody. A lot of you watch but don't subscribe. Please do click subscribe, it helps a lot. Let's see what this thing would have actually looked like over the last two years. And this is where I really appreciate what has been done here by Andy Staples for one. Uh, a lot of people were doing something like this, but Andy Staples, these on three graphics are really, really nice. Uh, so shout out to Andy. But 2024 college football playoff, you can see here the Big 12 would have had three more teams in the 2024 college football playoff had it been a 2014 playoff. Iowa State, as weird as this sounds, a 16 seed uh is in there. BYU and Arizona State have to play each other at 18-15, which is a bummer. And then you've got Colorado, and there is a 23 seed playing Boise. So, okay. Uh, if you think that is a nice little boost for the Big 12, check out what last year's would have looked like. Now, this is hey, if we're just going by the college football playoff rankings, I don't know what the auto bid situation is or how this would work out. But here, you got five more, right? I mean, Texas Tech, you see, they still have their buy there at number four. How about Houston coming into play at Miami? What tough draw for Houston there in the uh good old-fashioned 21-12 matchup. Then Arizona and Utah playing each other 18-15. You got Iowa State and Notre Dame. Um, and then Georgia Tech and BYU. How about add a little bit of extra meaning to uh the Pop Tart Bowl in a college football playoff game with the winner about to get O'Miss? So that's a total of eight more teams over the last two years that would have been in the college football playoff from the Big 12 to get a shot, to get a shot in the in the playoff, right? And look, this is where I feel like you could start to see what the risk is on the horizon here. It is a it is many more bites at the apple, and that that access is something that is really important for this league right now. What did I talk about earlier this week? It was Alabama dropping the games with Oklahoma State, and I'm saying, like, this sucks because you just don't get many opportunities for this. You do not get very many opportunities to play some of the big boys and biggest brands and the the games that can actually generate respect for you. So on that level, you'd have to look at it and be like, man, this is great, John. Like the Big 12 gets eight more chances to win playoff games. And you've been telling me forever that the currency here to gain respect in this sport these days is to win playoff games. How could this possibly be a bad thing? Well, Bud Elliott is another guy, by the way, who is a national guy, very much national-centric, national focused. Um, he's actually, at least to my knowledge, from what I'm seeing, not pushing the negativity side of this, but he did say here SEC Big 12 benefit the most, just to drive that point home. He is showing you that in his opinion, the SEC and the Big 12 would benefit the most, which is very interesting here because we're talking about two opposite sides of the coin. Like, what do we do as Big 12 fans? And then, hey, oh, the SEC doesn't really like this, right? Um, but he's pointing out over the last few years which leagues would have generated that many more playoff spots, and you can see by his chart uh the Big 12 is there. Okay, so what's the catch? What's the catch? The catch is there's a risk of this backfiring. Okay. Now, let me be clear. I if I'm just thinking about the Big 12, I would take this. I would take this 2014 playoff, getting more teams in, more access, you've got more cracks to actually earn respect by winning playoff games. However, if you just get in and start losing a bunch of these games, and you know, your record is like, so there's eight more games that you go one and seven in those eight games, then it could do you more harm than good. I I don't know. We could debate that. We we could debate whether or not it does more harm than good to be there and lose or just not be there at all. Um there certainly is a healthy debate, I think, to have on that. But if you start looking at some of these matchups, like even if you know we're talking about getting out of this like first round that didn't exist before, I don't that will be a different type of currency, right? That's not gonna be a hundred dollar bill. That's gonna be like uh, you know, maybe a five-dollar bill, something like that. It's not gonna buy you that much. And then you get to the next round. Look at what some of those matchups would have been. BYU will miss. That's tough, man. They made the final four. Iowa State AM. Um could I I would actually say like that one I like better than the first round matchup, which was Notre Dame that they had there, would have been very tough. Um, Iowa State, Oregon, Utah, Indiana, national champion, Indiana, uh, Colorado, Tennessee a couple of years ago, Houston, Oregon. And that would only be if Houston somehow beat Miami, who just played for the national championship, right? Like these would be very tough games. And I know you're probably screaming as a Big 12 fan of me right now. Like, John, what the hell? You're supposed to be the guy defending this. How many times have you told us that Arizona State was a fourth and 13 away from beating Texas? You are correct. And that is why at the end of the day, the answer is you would take this if you're a Big 12 fan. You would take the access because nobody thought that Arizona State was going to go out there and outplay Texas, and they did. So you got to take the chance. Eight chances, in fact. You sign yourself up, but you gotta win some of these games. Someone's got to make a run, or else you will be in the same spot, maybe worse, depending on not only are you winning or losing, but how are you winning or losing, right? Because remember, TCU had a massive win against Michigan. Nobody remembers it because not only did they lose to Georgia next, they got demolished, decleated, like absolutely gobsmacked. So that's all anybody thinks about or remembers or talks about. I'm cautiously optimistic that the momentum toward a 2014 playoff right now would be good for the Big 12 at the same time. I don't think the sport needs this at all. It just is part of this push that seems to be mostly spearheaded by the Big Ten to make it the NFL light. And I think that as a global thing for the sport is not great. You want to maintain as much of the fabric of what makes college football unique from the NFL as you possibly can, but it is what it is. Uh, we are going where we are. So you try and make the best of it. And you know, for me, for us, most of you in this audience, that is what does it mean for our league? What does it mean for the Big 12? I think it would be good. You're going to get more chances out of this. Most likely. Most likely. Especially if you're if you're not having to sign on that 4-4-2-2 line, right? Like taking half as many auto bids. There are lots of, this is all in a vacuum right now. There are lots of nuances that could come out uh from this, but that would be my conclusion right now. You know, the other thing you have to do is hope that the SEC sticks around to even see the day here, because if they don't like it, they might just pull off and do their own thing and only play each other. It is a real threat. Uh, click here to find out just how real that threat is. That's for everybody watching the clip version. For those of you who are hanging out live, I appreciate you. I will uh chat more with you guys as we move along here. I see that I have a super chat to get to. I will do that in just one second. If you want to submit a super chat, click the dollar sign below the chat box. In order to do that, appreciate everybody who does. That's for people hanging out here watching the YouTube live stream. If you're listening on podcasts, get here on Sunday evenings around eight o'clock and Wednesday or Thursday evenings, uh, subject to change around eight o'clock. If you want to be a part of the live show, you can definitely do that. Like and subscribe, it is totally free. And you can also sign up for the open for business big 12 newsletter at ofbnews.com. Uh, let's shout out here, okay, to my 92% male audience, uh, at least on YouTube anyway. Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. If we have mothers out there listening, I wish you a lovely Mother's Day. Hope you had a great one. And I hope all 92% of you out there listening treated your mother, wife, grandma, whoever, okay, to a uh a great day today for Mother's Day. What did you do for them today? All right. I took my mom out to lunch. It was lovely. So I hope you all did the same thing. Uh, all right. We're gonna have some fun before we get into the it's more like college football policy walk stuff to end. I promise you that isn't really that boring either because it presents another wicked catch 22 for the Big 12. This one a catch 22, not a catch 24. I promise this one's a catch 22, good old fashioned. Um, but before we do that, we will have some fun and talk to TMGel. TMGel with the super chat. Appreciate you, TM Gel. Thank you for being here. TMGL says tech now has six of the top 20 in the state of Texas recruiting rankings and the number two class in the nation. Anybody else in the league can catch up on the talent gap, or it will be years of a gap. You know, it's a great point. I I did, in fact, I kind of intended to make that a topic on the show tonight, and I did not follow through on that. So my my fault. Uh, we maybe we'll do that midweek. I I do want to discuss this because I saw that this was firing up a lot of discussion. Not just, I mean, a lot of the back and forth I was seeing was between like Texas and Texas Tech fans, like debating the merits of just how impressive what Texas Tech has done now actually is versus, you know, there were some comps I was seeing to like we haven't seen anyone dominate the state of Texas like this and recruiting up at the top since Mac Brown's era at Texas. And I can understand why Texas fans might, you know, be like, hey, well, whoa, wait, let's check this out. But that that should not matter to Texas Tech. What Tech is doing is incredibly impressive. And I love that they're still doing this at the high school level. Like, I think one of the misnomers about Texas Tech is just mercenaries, right? That they're just a bunch of mercenaries and hired guns. And if you yeah, there there was definitely some of that last year. Not gonna say that there wasn't. But I think the best player, well, debate between David Bailey and Jacob Rodriguez. But the guy that, according to the Heisman voters, was Texas Tech's best player, was a guy that had been in the program for a while. I know, yes, he didn't technically start there, but that was not a mercenary guy that they brought in for one year, right? That was a quarterback that walked on from somewhere else and stuck it out in the program and developed and turned into one of the best college linebackers we've ever seen. So my point is that Texas Tech values not just bringing in an entire new roster every single year. They're gonna build this thing up in the high school ranks as well. And that's where, for as much talk as there is about Texas Tech spending money, you can get more of a discount on players. Not that it's like a crazy discount, but it's a little more cost efficient to do it that way because it's it's talent that just is not developed yet, right? Like you're you go to Papa Murphy's, not a sponsor could be. You go buy the pizza and then you you still have to take it home and bake it, versus like if you're just going to Pizza Hut, not a sponsor could be, and getting it, then I look, I would pay more for that because I don't have to go do the rest myself, right? So that like that's that's the difference there. I I like the tech's doing that, and their their whole program is set up right now to develop guys. Like I do believe in the program and the culture and what's going on there to do that. So I think it's a really positive sign. Now you're talking about what it means for the rest of the Big 12. Can anybody close the gap? I I would I would say like give it some time. You know, I mean, Oklahoma State, West Virginia. I know West Virginia fans have hit me up a lot about what they're doing in the NIL space right now. Um, Oklahoma State putting together Eric Morris's first class. Like clearly, some other schools are stepping up. But no, we have not seen anybody step up to the level of of Texas Tech. It certainly appears tech again, we're a year into this, but it certainly appears that Texas Tech is putting All of the pieces in place to be the most talented team in the league and the best team in the league for years to come. But you got to follow up on it. And you got to do it more than just one year. So kind of the same message I had last year, just from a different place. Let's see Texas Tech do it again. Brendan Soresby situation. Can you weather that storm? How good is high school recruit Will Hammond, right? Is he ready to be developed and step in and do that? It'll be a test of uh of Texas Tech's program right now. But yeah, I mean, nobody is coming close on paper to what Tech is doing from a talent acquisition standpoint right now. Uh so TMGel, I appreciate you. Thank you. Honestly, legitimately, thank you for bringing that up. I'm a little mad at myself that I did not do that on the show tonight. So maybe that turns into a bigger topic uh later this week. And it will be because of you, TMGel. Thank you. Uh Michael, what's up, Michael? Appreciate you. It's been a minute. Yeah, Michael says, uh, what's up, John? Been forever since I caught you live. I wouldn't care if it were 16 or 32 if it were fair, but I don't trust the powers that be. Yeah, well, there so there is that, right? I was like, I don't know what the auto bids are going to be. I don't know, you know, how does this someone made the point earlier? I'm sorry I'm not gonna give proper attribution, but I saw a tweet that was like, hey, when when they had a four-team playoff, man, they love to rank Big 12 teams like five through 10. You know, TCU and uh Baylor certainly remember that from just over a decade ago. And then it was like, hey, when it's a 12-team playoff, they sure love to rank Big 12 teams from like 13 to 20. And does that just keep sliding back right now? It's a 2014 team playoff. They love ranking Big 12 teams 25 to 30, whatever. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. I'm sure I would bet that it wouldn't be quite as you know, Andy Staples laying it out there. Eight Big 12 teams from the last two years jumping in there, probably not to that degree, but if you do pay, I mean, if you pay attention to any of the rankings, AP poll, um, coaches poll, college football, playoff poll, whatever you're looking at, the Big 12 is basically like a teens and 20s merchant. I mean, that's they stick, that's just the default spot. You the top like 12, you'll throw Notre Dame, nine teams from the uh SEC and Big Ten, and then like Miami. There's your top 12, and then everything else, that 13 to 25, that is Big 12 range, man, and it is just peppered with Big 12 teams. So the opportunity would definitely be there. But I understand, especially, Michael's a BYU guy. I understand especially why a BYU fan wouldn't trust anybody, you know, would not trust anybody when it comes to the playoff and and uh what's what's gonna happen there. So, Michael, I get it, my friend. I get it. Uh Michael also follows up here and says, gotta use stats uh like NCAA basketball does. Yeah, I mean, we get into look. I have said, Michael, if we're gonna talk about stats many a times here, not everybody agrees with me on this. Like, I go back to the BCS. I think I mean I would take that system a hundred times out of a hundred over where we're at right now. Go back to the BCS, give the computers the work of spitting out the top two best teams, and then everybody else play meaningful bowl games and have the regular season be extremely meaningful because you're trying to get in the top two. Do that. That's that's when college football is at its peak, and this is a perfect segue. This is a perfect, perfect segue. Thank you, Michael, uh, for doing that. We're gonna have some fun here. Let me indulge, all right. Everything was better in the 90s, college football included. Uh, in fact, college football at the forefront of that, and I'm gonna give you the proof. Uh, biggest piece of proof was uh actually horrible for my school and most of the current Big 12 schools, but it still makes college football's best era, the 1990s. So indulge my millennial heart here for a moment. Let's uh let's go back in time. Do you remember college football in the 1990s? I know that I see the analytics on my audience, right? We skew older here, all right? We skew older as I'm now aging into my mid-30s, mid to late 30s. We're definitely going to still call them mid-30s. I know that much of my audience is older. You guys saw college football in the 90s. I would anticipate I don't get a ton of pushback here, right? We were not worried about a college football playoff. That did not control all of the discussion. And I don't just mean, oh, are we expanding to 16 or 24 or whatever? No, it's it's not only that, it's like every conversation from any talking head at any point in the year nationally about college football as well. What are their playoff odds? What are their playoff odds? No one was talking about that. No one was talking about that. The conferences made sense regionally, geographically, like that. What you know, we look at this. Look at this beautiful picture. College football conferences in 1990. All right. It it doesn't get any better than this. Look at the logos of those conferences, the aesthetic of the 90s. I just love it. Now, I I obviously I love the Big 12. This is pre-Big 12 days. We've got the Big Eight here, which is what I grew up with when I was very, very young. Uh, but we got the Southwest Conference, which I love. I would love to have lived in a world where like I could vividly remember the Southwest Conference. I frankly, I was born in 1989. Don't remember much of it. Don't I, you know, I came to as the Big 12 was coming to. All right. But this made sense geographically. Regional rivalries. You played your rival every year. We didn't lose these classic, classic rivalries. And you know what? You remember what it looked like when guys were actually out there on the field. Oh, by the way, on this graphic, I should make the point. Do you see the Pac-12? Well, it's it's the Pac-10, actually, there, John. The Pac-10. The Pac-10 still existed. Oregon State and Washington State. You were still there. Wet Blanket says the Big Eight was glorious. It was glorious. These are all teams that had played each other for like a hundred years. Everything made sense. There were great rivalries. Man, I miss playing Missouri every single year. I miss playing Nebraska every single year. I miss playing Oklahoma every year. It was great. And the players looked like this. We had mid-drifts everywhere. Okay. Mid-drifts everywhere. Every single college football players jersey cut off like mid-ribage. Okay. Linebackers had the big neck rolls. The aesthetic was just pristine. I mean, it does not, it does not get any better than this. It was truly the best of times. We were so spoiled. And why am I doing this? You might be asking. John, why are you doing it? Why are you hammering home this point about the 90s? Why are you going on a nostalgia trip as a uh nostalgia-obsessed millennial who was born in 1989? Well, first of all, that is my God-given right to do that. Uh, how dare you? Second of all, and third of all, it's all because of a tweet that I saw today. Okay. It is all because of a tweet that came straight after my own heart. Please do subscribe to the channel, by the way. Push into 35k subs. We're getting there. If you watch and don't subscribe, it really does help me a lot if you give me that one click. Okay. Let's uh let me show you. Let me show you what got me here today. It is a graphic from the next round. To be honest, I don't I don't know who exactly the next round is, but I appreciate the next round quite a bit. Well, thank you to uh good old StreamYard for screwing this all up for me. One second, guys. I lost my audio there when I went to do that. So let's let's find the next round. Here, here is the next round's tweet. The next round, the winningest college football teams of the 1990s. A look back at who the winningest college football teams of the 1990s were. This is what got me. And it got me straight into nostalgia mode because I was like, well, one. You guys know I'm a K-State guy. So I see here K-State at 87. K-State tied for 11th. Most wins in the 90s. Basically, a top 10 program in the 1990s. Bill Snyder, thank you, good sir, for everything that you did for K-State. But look at these. I to me, to me, I love this. Now I know that I look, it's not like I personally am invested in Florida State, but when I think of like Florida State teams of the 90s, it doesn't get much better than that in college football. Nebraska, I loved to hate them. I grew up loving to hate them, but they were a machine in the 90s, and they were one of the true great like college football dynasties, which you need. You need programs like that to hate. You need teams to love to hate. And 90s Nebraska is about as good as it gets. Plus, like, you know, much as I hated them, like, can I really hate touchdown Tommy Fraser? It's hard to, you know, go watch the highlight of him peeling off like six Florida Gators in that it was an orange bowl, right? Uh when Nebraska won a national championship. It was crazy. And if you just yeah, I mean you look at these teams. Again, I'm Big 12 guy. I'm not supposed to be like the brand worshipper or whatever, but like this is pretty like this is this is good. Like these programs being all up there at the top. Like, this is what college football was built on, man. Think about the coaches that are here: Bobby Bowden, Tom Osborne, Steve Spurrier, Phil Fulmer, Joe Paterno, uh Bill Snyder, Lavelle Edwards, uh, Frank Beamer. Frank Beamer getting in there with Virginia Tech as well. Like that, man. This, I don't think that it gets any better than this in terms of legendary figures. Maybe you would look back and say, well, John, right now we have Ryan Day and Dan Lanning and Marcus Freeman, and 20 years from now, we're gonna look back and say, hey, this was actually an era just as good, if not better. And perhaps, perhaps there's always a danger in this. I have admitted my bias up front. Obviously, I was I was a child when all of this was happening, a very impressionable child, and this is what sparked my love of college football and why I'm sitting here doing this right now, why I had a 10-year career full-time uh covering college football, traveling across the country. I admit my bias, that is very true. I get that you're still asking the question, John, what is the one thing that you're saying is the emphatic piece of evidence here that makes this the best that the Big 12 schools actually may have frowned upon and it wasn't the greatest thing in the world? I will get to that in just one second, but I do first uh want to emphasize this to you, okay? This is my favorite part of what was going on in college football in the 90s. It's that the man, the myth, the legend.

SPEAKER_03 33:25

I'm Keith Jackson, Saturday here of ABC Sports. Number one, Notre Dame goes against number two, Southern California.

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Rodney Pete, off a dramatic performance.

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I get this is from 1988. It's basically the 90s here.

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But just that voice, man. At the Los Angeles College, just listen to that voice. With all the elements that go into making this a piece of Americana.

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Keith Jackson talking about it being a piece of a Americana. Like, dude, what more could you possibly want? What more could you possibly want? Here's the thing, though. I think one thing that made the 90s great actually is that it's so perfectly embodied college football because everybody was arguing about who would win the national championship based on who the voters actually chose. Like literally, people like me who were just in the media, they said, you guys have a poll. We're not going to have a national championship game. You'll just watch the games. And by that I mean you'll watch what you can, but you can't watch every game because it's the 90s, and sometimes you'll have to listen on the radio or just read a box score, get the newspaper, and make your judgments based off of that, and we'll just pick a national champion. I know a lot of you out there are like, John, how could this possibly be the best era of college football if that is something that was happening? It seems freaking insane. But I feel like that's a part of like that's college football to its core, man. It's always had the inequities baked into it, it's always been a beauty contest. And back in in the day when we're looking at those teams that were on that graphic that I was talking about, and you had all those coaches rolling around there. You know, I guess like Notre Dame's on the graphic too. We're talking about like Lou Holtz, Bobby Powden, Tom Osborne. Like, yeah, yeah, they're getting the benefit of the doubt all the time when the voters are picking those teams and who's winning the national championship. It's it's kind of ridiculous that like that was the system that we had then to determine national champions, but it is what it is, and it it kind of sparked everything that, at least from my life, college football has been. It's a huge part of the fabric of the sport. It's not great if you're K-State trying to get to the Cotton Bowl for the first time in the 90s, or if you're K-State in 1998 and you make the national championship game if you don't blow it in double overtime against Texas AM, but you do blow it in double overtime and then suddenly you fall to the Alamo Bowl. You don't even make a BCS bowl game. Yeah, it's it can hurt you. Okay, but it also was a part of to me what makes this all great. So let me know in the comments if you think I'm off here. Uh, I would venture a guess that the only pushback I'm really gonna get in my audience is probably from people saying, and I believe that I saw somebody. Who did I see? Michael, maybe you said 1984. You can't leave off 1984. That would probably be the biggest pushback I would get out of Big 12 country. Is like, we're gonna cut this off six years after BYU won the national championship, which hey, I get it. But uh I would I would hit that button to go back to the 90s in a heartbeat. And this has been my therapy for the day as a nostalgia-obsessed millennial. Thank you guys for letting me uh do that. Please do like and subscribe. It does really help. I appreciate everybody who does that. It's totally free. You can sign up for the Open for Business Big 12 newsletter at OFBnews.com. That's ofbnews.com uh in order to do that. You can also click the link in the description of this video. Should be there on the audio platforms as well in the uh description, I do believe. So that makes it uh very, very easy for you. Click the dollar sign below the chat box if you want to leave a super chat. We've got a couple more. Uh let's pop into those. Yeah, there was Michael. Michael says 90s. How about 1984? Best year ever. Uh, that's uh that's it's a good point. It's a good point. I don't mean to yeah, your national championship still counts. You know, we could still be living in the shadow of that, right? Like BYU was on that list of best programs in the 90s. Things are still going very well, and you the banner flies forever, Michael. That would be my message to you. Let's say hello to Alan. Alan, what's up? It's great to see you here. Uh, good question, Alan. Alan says, John, what's your vision for the open for business show in five years? What other shows are examples? I'm ready for Big 12 football season to start. Rockchalk, Jayhawk, Alan. Well, me too, Alan. I saw literally today is the halfway point of the college football offseason. You may not want to hear this. We are 111 days away from college football starting, and the season ended exactly 111 days ago. So that's where we're at. My vision would be one, I would just say it's a little tricky because what's the vision of what college football will look like in five years? Like, what will college sports look like in five years? We're talking about at that point, 2031. So we're into this big line of demarcation in 2030 that everybody talks about, where the sport will change a lot. We could be super league, we could be AFC, NFC, Big Ten, SEC by that point. Um, I some of it will depend on that. But my mantra, what I have been rolling with myself here is hey man, I love the Big 12. This is what I grew up with. This is, as you just saw from that last segment, like I, you know, I have been about this life. I attended the first Big 12 football game in 1996. I grew up going to Big Eight football games when I was so young, my parents could get me in for free without paying for a ticket. Like, it's in my blood. And whatever the Big 12 is going to be, whether it's uh a league that's still fighting and scrapping and competing there in a 2014 playoff and teams are getting in, or if it's there's a breakaway and the Big 12 is uh like the fun, zany league that's not quite like the top top. And like I'm I'm just gonna embrace it. So I want to always be a show for whatever the Big 12 is, Big 12 fans. I hope to continue to grow it. I would love to uh perhaps at some point be doing if things stay together, national content as well. I don't forget the the newsletter. Like, I want this to be like a whole ecosystem that can best serve Big 12 fans and continue to grow that as much as possible. So that's that's the vision. My my vision right now is to keep growing, but keep growing and evolving with what this actually is and be a place that can best serve what I think is a really underserved fan base nationally, quite frankly, because you just don't get a whole lot of that. You know, we were talking about the big national voices of the sport earlier, and they don't do a whole lot of Big 12 content, right? I I love the fan base is here, I love you guys, and I want to make sure that uh that I'm I'm giving you some great content. So it's not like a crystal clear thing, Alan, but it's hard when it's not you don't know exactly what the sport is going to be. I just I want this to be as big as possible and help Big 12 fans as much as possible. That's that's kind of the vision right now, and I've really tried to transition into taking a really positive look at it and saying, hey, there's a ton of chaos right now, and there's always opportunity and chaos. So what's what's the opportunity here with everything I'm doing and everything that I've built? Um, I do I've been thinking about this a lot, though, and I know you know the more specific your vision is, the better. So I'm trying to I'm trying to work on that and sharpen it. Alan, I appreciate it, my friend. Uh JJJ Jazz Forge. 90s college football. Come for the mid-drifts, stay for the RPOs. Were we doing a lot of RPOs back in the back in the 90s? I would like maybe uh come for the middrifts, stay for the triple option. You know, the remnants of the the triple option, the wishbone. Like Nebraska is still using some of those tenants to win national championships. But hey, I I get it. I get it. The come for the mid drifts line, there's so much potential after that because that is 100%, that is why you're there in the 90s for college football. The middrifts and the neck rolls. Come for the mid drifts, stay for the neck rolls. You know, I mean, it could be as simple as that. Uh come for the mid drifts, stay for the wild polos that coaches were wearing. There's a great, I should have brought that in. There's a great picture of Bill Snyder wearing this, like, I mean, it's a ridiculous polo. I don't know where I don't know where they came from. I it was it starter maybe that was making these. It's like crazy pattern, like purple, and I feel like it had some of that turquoise that was everywhere in the 90s, you know, like the inside of a Taco Bell when you think about the turquoise that was in there. Um yeah, the whole aesthetic was just incredible. Uh TM Gell, are you going to a World Cup game in Kansas City? Uh, yeah, Kansas City is getting the World Cup, ladies and gentlemen. I listened to a great podcast. Shout out to uh Nate Bucaty in the Church of Laszlo talking about Kansas City getting the World Cup and how that happened this weekend. That was very, very insightful. Um, I don't think I'm gonna go. It's just it's really expensive. There are six games in Kansas City. Last I checked, the cheapest, which was one of the games that's not gonna involve Ronaldo or Messi, uh, was like maybe 200 bucks to get in, something like that. And as much as I would like to go and like it'd be a cool bucket list thing, and I I went through a really big soccer phase of my life, mostly because I was playing FIFA in the video game back in college. Uh I just can't quite pull the trigger on that. I don't know. If I can find a way to work some free tickets, I would love to go. But I don't know that I'm going to. I'm very interested to see what it's going to be like for the city, though. I will say that. I think it could be a very, very cool thing for the the city. Although local news right now is that the hotels aren't filling up and um short term rentals aren't filling up the way they thought they would. So I don't know. Uh I don't know what the impact is actually going to look like. Basing Cougar fan. Go Cougars. Utah to the big sky. All right. Well, hey, if we go back to the 90s, that is, you know, that is true. That is one fan base that would not want to. TCU. No, I, you know, they're in the Southwest Conference. I guess that's okay. Utah's not going to want to go back to the 90s, right? They, they, they would not like that uh at all. It's a testament to how far they've come that they would push back on that. I promise, Utah fans, that was not intentional at all. Okay. That's just me being on a being on a nostalgia trip. Thank you, Payson Cougar fan. Uh Kenny, what's up, Kenny Evans? Kenny Evans 1320 says, Do you see the Big Ten or SEC poaching each other in realignment? No, probably not. You know, I know there's always been, I feel like the the wild, wild realignment rumor, quote unquote rumor, or like just speculation that people have would be does Texas AM get sick of Texas uh being back in the same conference as them now, and that they would go to the Big Ten. And you know, the Big Ten would obviously love to get a foothold in the state of Texas as they try to just conquer America uh with their conference. You know, I I that seems pretty far-fetched to me. I don't think you'd be leaving the SEC. I highly doubt it. I would not see that. I would not see that. Wow, Michael says Michael reveals here, and thank you, Kenny, by the way. Michael reveals via super chat that he was a Utah fan in uh 1984 and in the 90s. Whoa, whoa, all right. I it took some courage to admit that here. I appreciate that you did. I won't tell anybody. I'll I'll just I'll forget you said it, okay? Um, no, the Utah fans probably will not. Utah fans, feel free to use that against him at any point in time. Michael, I'm sorry, you volunteered it, man. You volunteered it. Uh, Kenny, what's up, Kenny? Kenny says, Do you see the Big Ten and SEC doing unequal revenue sharing like the ACC did with Florida State and Clemson? Yeah, I definitely could see that coming. I definitely could see that coming. That's like your um that's like your soft launch of just totally cutting those teams out of the league, right? That's the way you can basically do it without doing it. Doing it without upsetting the Apple cart too much. You just say, well, fine, we're we're gonna pay way more to the teams that win and who people watch on TV. So you guys can have the Big Ten logo on the side of your helmet, but you know, you're gonna get paid half as much as we are. Uh, whatever it's gonna be. You're not gonna make the$90 million that uh Ohio State did, for instance, that we saw this year. Uh so yes, Kenny, I do think that's something that will happen uh eventually. Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't heard more about it uh to this point. But appreciate you, Kenny. Thank you for being here. A lot of super chats tonight. Thank you guys. Good energy uh here today. I appreciate that. Uh, we are gonna get a bit bogged down in the details of what's being talked about with this presidential committee on college sports that presents a real catch 22 for the Big 12 and what's gonna be best for the league. I do I forgot. I was gonna ask you guys for some help real quick, though. First, I have a proposition for you. Do you remember anybody who's been on Twitter has definitely seen the old pictures of Lincoln Riley's brisket? Okay. You remember Lincoln Riley's brisket, it looked terrible. Uh, I'm trying to not be Lincoln Riley. I have a grill. All right, just a not a sponsor could be, just a monument grill. Um it does okay. I've usually just like thrown stuff on there, not paid any attention. I just like meal prep chicken and but I I the other day I was like, you know, I should try to actually do this well, like actually get good on the grill. I would I that's it's a goal for summer. Okay, trying to get good on the grill. So anybody who has recommendations, YouTube channels, recipes, whatever, let me know in the comments. If you're if you're watching live right now, if you are watching afterwards, leave me some comments. I'm gonna scan them. I need some help, help turn me into uh into a grill master. I was actually really impressed. I pulled up a recipe the other day when I was doing some burgers and actually followed it, and they were way better than if I were to just do them, you know, kind of lazily by myself. And I was like, all right, there's something here. There's something here. So help me save myself from being Lincoln Riley. Okay. I don't I don't like necessarily need a new grill right now, too. But if there's, you know, if I need to go out and if it's gonna be Traeger, big green egg, whatever, you can definitely uh you can definitely let me know on that front too. Uh Pacific Northwest Ute, real quick before we uh get into the last topic of the show. Pacific Northwest Ute says Utes would go for a repeat of the late 90s when Majaris led them to the NCAA basketball finals and the early 2000s when they got an undefeated urban renewal. Yeah. We're like right, you're you're right. We're like right on that. Keith Van Horn walking back through that door, right? Um, that's something that I remember from my childhood. I definitely remember Rick Majoris. So, okay, Pacific Northwest Ute says this isn't the worst thing in the world. If we're taking the 90s and the early 2000s, but I mean, I'm here for the early 2000s also. K-State was still great in the early 2000s, things were rolling. Keith Jackson, I think, was still he was still doing games into the the early 2000s. So yeah, we can do that. We can do that. We'll we'll compromise there. Could we take if we took like uh 95 to 05? We're gonna go 95 to 05 Pacific Northwest Ute. Maybe that works as a compromise with uh with all the Utah fans. Uh thank you, Pacific Northwest Ute. Uh okay. Last thing here. We are one step closer to a legit salary cap in college sports uh for both players and coaches, by the way. Uh, plus one step closer to pooling media rights, something that the SEC and Big Ten uh hate. And it's all thanks to the government. Yes, uh the U.S. government. Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. I think it all presents a catch 22 for the Big 12. Is this good or bad? The answer is yes, and I will explain. Uh, it's easy to forget. It was not that long ago, but it so much has happened both in the world and in college sports. I think it's very easy to forget. We had a meeting at the White House with dignitaries from the college sports world, with politicians all over the place, including Cody Campbell and Brett Yormark, who both spoke briefly in said meeting. That, you know, that was like 90 minutes. I watched the entire thing with a lot of people trying to get a word in edge-wise, and they were trying to fix college sports, right? This was saving college sports. We we got like an executive order, uh, it seems like that stuff, it's really hard to get any of that to actually stick. So, what I've been paying attention to here is like, all right, like is there going to actually be any legitimate change enacted that makes sense that comes out of this that is enforceable? Okay, we're getting some movement on some legitimate ideas that I'm surprised. I will admit it. I am in some ways pleasantly surprised here by what has been proposed. Like these would be they would shake things up a lot. I'll put it that way. If everything that was on this list that was put together by who, you're asking John who did this, it's the presidential committee on college sports that was put together after this. It's made up of you've got commissioners, right? Like all the main conference commissioners are on there. You've got ADs, you've got university presidents, you got White House reps, you have pro sports executives, all making up this college sports uh presidential committee. So things are moving. Now, I don't know whether or not that means this will wind up being enforceable. I understand people that are going to have lots of cynicism about this, but I'll just read you here from Ross Dellinger who gives an overview of what was released. The college sports presidential committees have produced a draft of preliminary ideas, including establishing a new governing entity. All right, that's a huge one right away. Basically, a new NCAA, a new governing entity, strict cap circumvention rules. So that basically means like you've got a strict salary cap, revenue sharing cap. You can't go over it. Um, a G6 playoff, another thing that's been a hot button issue, controversial, but a G6 playoff, regionalizing Olympic sports, capping coach and AD salaries. I don't know if the AD salaries are really that much of a problem, but the coach salaries certainly are capping coach salaries. Whoa. Uh eligibility and transfer standards, pooling TV rights. Okay? It's a lot of stuff in this. A lot of stuff in this that's very, very intriguing if it were to all go through. The biggest things here, uh at least to me, if they're seriously going to eliminate any cap circumvention, and you basically do have a legit, like, hey, the Rev share number, you know, by the time it gets put in, you know, say it's$25 million. You can't spend any more than that. We're gonna really enforce it. We're gonna be watching like a hawk. You have to submit everything. If that's the reality, I mean that's a big change. And that's where some of this gets into like, all right, this is kind of a catch-22 for the Big 12. Like, uh, the exact language from this says elimination of salary cap circumvention, including but not limited to booster collectives and prohibition of redirection of AD revenues from multimedia rights, apparel contracts, and other sources. Man, if you're really serious about doing that, it changes life for one Big 12 school quite a bit, and that is Texas Tech, who, you know, right now can wield its financial power pretty freely. And, you know, there are still ways to do it if there is like a pure cap there. And tech is more than just the money. It's Joey McGuire, it's James Blanchard, it's how are you allocating that? It's and they got a good thing going. Like they may have enough momentum right now that you could still produce at a pretty high level riding the lightning. We heard earlier in the show about how they're they're just dominating high school recruiting in the state of Texas right now. Um, but that would that would certainly present some issues, I would think, for Cody Campbell and company, ironically enough, because he's somebody that's been involved in all of this, right? Like you're gonna take away our biggest weapon to be able to just throw as much money out there as we want. There would be, and tech is far from alone there. There would be a lot of schools that would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, what? But at the same time, all of these schools have to be looking at it like, well, how do we do this long term? The price keeps going up. And I more on that in a moment, because that is the yin and yang of this, of where we're at right now. A couple things I wanted to mention that are also included in all this. I know one thing people have said, like, what about a one-time transfer rule? You get one free transfer and then you can transfer if your coach leaves, but just not crazy free agency. It was discussed in here, taking a bit of a different angle on it, which would be the bird rule, uh, which is schools would be able to exceed the cap to sign their own players, basically. So, like, I think that's from the NBA, where you can pay a guy, if you're the hometown team, you can pay a guy on his second contract more than anybody else can. Like, you can sweeten the pot, sweeten the deal, and it doesn't count against like if you're going over the salary cap, that's okay. That that is my basic understanding of it there. So that'd be one way to do it. You're trying to hold on your player, you know, your TCU, you don't want Josh Hoover to go to Indiana. You can pay him more than Indiana can theoretically. Um, that I felt like was was very interesting. So, what okay, first of all, would this ever work? Would it be enforceable? And is it actually good for the Big 12? Please do subscribe to the channel, pushing toward 35k subs, getting close. And uh every time that you subscribe, we get a step closer. Thank you. Uh, here's the plan, okay, written in this. It says, quote, including limited antitrust protection and preemption of state law to allow for efficacy and enforceability. That's what they're trying to do from a legal standpoint. Limited antitrust protection and preemption of state law to allow for efficacy and enforceability. How realistic is that, man? I have no freaking clue. I I think you're right to be a little skeptical of it, at least anytime they're trying to say they think they could get that. I don't know. Then does it change if the administration in the White House changes? I don't know. Like, I, you know, there you're putting yourself at the mercy of all of that. So it's it's dicey for sure. Um, but could it have my only pushback on that has been we have seen way more movement on this out of Washington in the last since the beginning of the year, so the last like five months than we had in the last two years before that, with a lot of talk about it actually happening. So it does seem like things are happening, like we're moving. I don't know where it's gonna wind up. Is it actually good for the Big 12? Well, the complicated part here is people have made this point, and I think it's very true. Like, you know, Indiana happening in this era. Certainly, you know, Mark Cuban, the story has come out within the last week. Mark Cuban got Fernando Mendoza to Indiana. Like that happened because Cuban was the guy who made the difference on paying for the QB. Okay, in a previous era where everybody's on the same salary cap, you may not be able to do things like that. Maybe that's not the perfect example. Maybe Indiana was still within the cap, but you get the point, right? Like you can come over the top, pay a crazy amount of money for a guy right now at a school like Indiana that you couldn't before. And if all resources are equal, now it just goes back to, well, okay, suddenly you're recruiting tradition. Can you get to the NFL, coaches, back to like more of your traditional recruiting pitches, right? And if you're Texas Tech, maybe if you're BYU right now, maybe Oklahoma State, West Virginia, depending on if their NIL situation keeps going the way it's been going, that may be a bad thing for you. If you're not able to just outspend your way to a superior roster, um that you could argue that takes away some upward mobility. And if it goes back to just, hey, the leagues are the way that they used to be, but now you don't have Texas and Oklahoma, and you don't have the opportunity to pay your way into just a roster of super freaks defensively, like Texas Tech had last year, for instance, then that's a competitive disadvantage. Why it's a catch-22 is because if we're looking at the long-term survival of this for most schools, again, Texas Tech abstained from this. BYU pretty much abstained from this. If you're looking at the long-term survival of most schools, like I don't know how they're gonna keep doing this. Like, I mean, it's the price of a basketball roster went up 65% last year, according to Evan Miyakawa, who's a guy that literally had college basketball teams entering their NFL figures into his system because he works with them. So that guy knows like what the prices are. Now you can say maybe a smaller sample size, but that's the price is going up significantly, I think is the point from year to year right now. It does not show any signs of slowing down. And we're Brendan Soresby was gonna get, you know, he he and Sam Levitt were like four and five million dollar quarterbacks this year. That's not slowing down. If this continues to go, like schools can't help themselves. They're gonna. I can understand if you're an admin in a school right now looking at this, going, uh, I mean, we're gonna just at some point, and this is gonna swallow us whole if this keeps coming. Like if we're just gonna survive purely long term, like, hey, maybe it's yeah, it's great that the opportunity exists theoretically for us to have just one year where we come in and we spend 50 million on a roster or whatever we, but we can't keep this up. You know, I mean, I think that's that's the situation that you're in. So, you know, you can have some candy there. Some candy is laying out there. If you want to go just eat a bag of candy right now, sounds great. But long term, what's gonna be better for you is like, bro, eat your fruits and vegetables, vegetables, have a balanced meal. Um, to me, that's that's kind of what you're what you're debating between here. Now, if you're Texas Tech, right now you can eat at the steakhouse every night, baby. It's it's okay. And someone may be taking that away from you if this were to actually go through. So I understand that that perspective is is much different. And then we're back to a discussion of hey, is it better for the league if you have two standout brands that are making the playoff every year, like BYU, Texas Tech? Well, that might make it harder for them to do that. So is that ultimately bad for the league, right? It's all very complex and there's so many moving parts. We just we don't know how it's all going to sort out. But this is a point that I do want to raise because I think it's fair. As much as we get freaked out by the money that's being spent and you know can have a tendency to complain about how it affects Big 12 schools and all this. There's definitely an argument there that just letting the free-for-all go actually gives you more of a fighting chance to do something significant than if all is equal and you could be marginalized much more. It might be harder to keep your coaches. Your coaches might be more willing to jump uh than to a bigger school if you're not able to overfund them, right? Etc. etc. Uh, money's an issue. We know that. Big 12 schools have with all this in mind, big 12 schools had the opportunity to take in over$300 million just to help them stay alive right now. And they turned it down. Here's why. That's for everybody watching the clipped version of that video. Those of you who have been hanging out live, no need to worry. I appreciate all of you. I think I have another super chat to get to. I do. Kenny checking in one more time. I appreciate you, Kenny. On our way out the door here tonight. Couple reminders, by the way. Please do like and subscribe. It is very easy. You can rate and review on the podcast platforms and just make sure that you're subscribed so you see when new episodes are dropping. Obviously, spread the word as well, and make sure you're signed up for the Open for Business Big 12 newsletter at OFBnews.com. Uh, Kenny says, Do you see the 30 million bringing in ACC teams to the Big 12 sooner? Go, West Virginia. Uh, so is this a I assume this is talking, like, would this be like can ACC teams come in and then use the$30 million that's out there from Redbird? Um, or just the fact that teams have access to that. I'm I'm taking it, Kenny. Let me know if I'm off in the chat if you're talking about a different sum of money. But I know obviously what has been talked about on this channel lately a lot has been the$30 million basically of credit that's extended to Big 12 teams from the private capital deal, and nobody yet has taken it. Now, fair point that's been made by people. They have up to a year to decide. So while schools right now are saying no, that could change. Maybe the maybe the cost goes up so much in the middle of the year that, you know, or some team decides they need to be all in and they're gonna take it. People are saying this 10% interest rate that, like, you know, Redbird might have to lower the interest rate if teams are actually gonna take it. Anyway, do I think that really helps get ACC teams sooner? I don't. I think the the only thing that matters with the ACC is pretty much like external as far as the Big 12 is concerned. It's gonna be like when when does Florida State make the jump? When when can Florida State and Clemson uh make the jump? North Carolina, maybe Miami. When would the Big Ten of the SEC actually pull the trigger there? Um, because that's what they're waiting on. I I think that's the domino that would fall next. And the interesting caveat to that is Michael Alford, who's the AD at Florida State, just said within the last month that he expects that there will be movement within the next two years. And he's the guy that he doesn't really hold it's the SEC and Big Ten that hold the cards, but I mean, he's the guy peeking over their shoulder, like, hey, you know, I mean, he's he's gonna be the first one to report what their cards are when the cards come out of that thing. So if you're reading the tea leaves there, that tells me he seems to think as somebody that has a very vested interest in that that something's gonna happen. Now, maybe he's maybe he is just trying to grease the wheels for his donors to say, like, hey guys, we're we're doing this, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen, and pulling people along and making sure people are still excited and Tallahassee. Could be, could be, but it's something I pay attention to. I see Kenny says helps with the buyout. So, okay, yeah, I mean, fair enough. Um, if it would help pay the buyout of teams uh coming from the ACC. Um, what is I it's been so long now since that settlement happened. I can't even remember what the buyout number was. It went way down uh for Florida State, made it a little easier to get out there. I I would think the only way you're getting teams from the ACC is probably in like a full-on implosion type scenario. I don't know if there would be 100% buyout fees at that point. Um, but yeah, it could help. The other thing, though, Kenny, I would say is that people have said with this 10% interest rate that universities just have the ability to um get large sums of money at a better rate than that in multiple different ways. So even then, I think unless it's the Big 12 just saying, hey, we'll assume the debt and give this money to the ACC team to bring them over here, the ACC school could theoretically get the money at a better rate. Anyway, we're way down in the weeds on all of that. And then if the big if you're the Big 12, do you want to take the debt on at a 10% rate to help them pay the biofee? I mean, I guess if it makes the difference in getting them, that's an investment. A lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. Save that for the end of the show tonight to get real, real deep down into that. But I appreciate it, Kenny. Great questions tonight. Thank you for being here. I appreciate your support of the channel. I appreciate all of you guys. Lots of good points made here in the chat tonight. Thanks for uh for hanging out with me. Bit of fun going on uh going on the 90s college football road trip that we went on there. Thank you for that. And uh hey, please do like and subscribe on your way out the door. I will talk to you all soon. Have a great start to your week and uh take care.