Plus I don't know if I don't think my wife will let me, uh with the but rock, we have other fish to fry. Right now. It is Tuesday round about this time, it is time to talk to the Queen. Our good friend from w CPO nine News, Tanya o Roorg Tanya, Welcome back, guys. It's been a while since we've chatted with you. I know you were lounging on the beach there for a little bit. I was.
I gotta tell you, coming back to this, she was really tough. You talk about retiring. That sounded good while I was down there, But there's no end in sight here. We're not stopping any time since Oh no, no, the baby's got to get shoes'.
That's the bad thing about going to nice weather places this time of year, because you come back and it's like this.
I know, it's really cool, Thank goodness for the sun. Though I can come to tolerate it if sunny. If it's just gloomy and forty or drizzle and forty, that's way worse than this.
To me, I agree with the one hundred percent. As long as the sun's out makes it makes it tolerable. But uh, the last last night, Tom, did you watch the National Championship game and do you have any thoughts?
I did watch it, Okay, so I'm really happy for Indiana. I did, and I'm glad they won because I thought, you know, this is this feels like a fate all company, right, they needed to do this.
But I also was kind of rooting against Miami. Is that bad?
Does that mean that that's honest?
I think a lot of people were really Yeah.
I think I didn't like the hits they were putting on the quarterback. I thought was kind of dirty.
I thought they got away up from the.
Yeah, I think. You know, it's been an interesting it's interesting to watch, kind of like the rest of between the NFL and.
That game less, I like what's been going on. And then we had Joe Burrow tweet about all that stuff last night that caused an uproar in the middle of the game.
That was fun.
But the game last night I thought was was actually really good. And at the end, I thought, Okay, Indiana is trying to give it away. I mean, one of the least penalized teams, and here they were making mistakes left and right, and I thought they're trying to lose this game.
They're going to give it up, and then they didn't. I was I was really happy. I know a lot of kids in this area went to IU.
I worked with a lot of IU has a good journalism program, so a lot of our producers are from IU. So if you've noticed on w CPO nine the last couple of weeks, I've been mentioned quite a bit leading up to the national championship, and it's because they write the stories.
So yeah, they're they're leaning in on that one.
But I was really happy for all those folks because can you imagine going to IU. You really haven't had much to hear for the last couple of decades.
So this was period well rocket besides basketball obviously, but a rocket agree not that much with them. The football problem with the football program, yeah rocketed.
Here's a stat tany on October fifteenth of twenty twenty two, IU became the first D one program to reach seven hundred losses and they were the losiness program in college football until like a year ago, I think it was at Northwestern. I ever took them, and so yeah, they go from that seven hundred something losses to the national title in a couple of years, it's awesome.
Yeah, okay, and I've heard this and I don't know if it's true. You boys would no better than I, but that U see turned away Signetti saying he didn't have enough experience as a head coach.
That's correct.
See is that the reason I've heard you and what they're talking about. I had never read any now reasons why now?
To be fair, you know, and again, obviously be fair, go ahead. Hindsight is twenty twenty. But I think sure there would have been a lot of Bearcat fans had they hired Kurt Signetti. And this is back when no one knew And I said, wait a minute, we just hired a coach from James Mattison who's been in the FBS one year. They've been an FCS program for most of their tenure in college football. We hired him. Well, and that's of course what an athletic director and a hiring
staff must overlook. And I will say this too, I don't know if Kurt Signetti happens at a at a more blue blood school, because the scrutiny it would be so fierce, you know, at a at a bigger program where in Indiana they're like, well, no one gives a damn anyway, so let's let's try this, right. They were able to kind of roll the dice and go with the gut instinct and try it, where other programs it would a little bit harder, and maybe you see was one of them.
I don't know.
Come on, we had a good run under Luke Fickle obviously, which prior to that, you see, I mean, you couldn't give away tickets to UC Beartay game before Luke.
Sickle showed up.
And I think that, with all due respect to coach Satterfield, when he was hired, everyone was like, what why would you do that?
So it's the same sort of like huh yeah kind of.
But I know he came from Louisville, even though Louisville was, at least according to my friends own, they were trying to get rid of them when we hired him. So I don't know, so Signetti, we could have had Signetti.
We did it to Rocks Point though, too. He is they are a big ten school, so it's it's a little easier to get these nil guys to come in there and draw on that game.
And they were also going through the transition. I'm going from you know, a group of five team to a big twelve team. So that was right, Yeah, it would have been quite as seamless as it happened in Indian either.
It was clear to me that his winning formula, at least as far as like what kind of players he attracted, were players who were kind of fifty or six year seniors. So do you see that replicating itself across you know, college football now, like people going, I want to do what Signetti did here.
That is a fantastic observation, Tanya, and I think you're absolutely right, and the answer is yes. The average age of a player on Indiana's football team was twenty three years old. That's the average NFL team, right, that's an NFL team. Yes, So well you see that more in the future, yes, and that's going to that's going to you know, change a lot of things when it comes
to high school recruiting. You know, like colleges are like Indiana version, we're plucking more kids out of the portal that played in college than they are out of high school. Why because you get an older like like what usually wins like an older man or like a younger man, right, somebody who's eighteen or twenty three, someone who has experience, whose body is now fully developed. And credit curse Signetti for recognizing that and using the modern ways of assembling
a roster that you couldn't have done five years ago. Right, he's able to now implement that. We now we can get older, more experienced players here and make that the bulk of our team. He did it.
Okay, so he used the system properly. But can I just also state that I think this system really is broken and needs to be fixed because we're no longer, as you just mentioned, we're talking about men playing football here. We're not talking about college students playing football anymore. Sure, I mean, you know, the guy who was the quarterback for Miami is like, yeah, I graduated two years ago.
Now I know Joe Burrow did that too, But you know, we're now at a point where, like I think, what a.
High state has like thirty six open positions on its team? Ohigh state a blue blood you talk about bluelood organization, But all these kids are in the portal and they're all just looking for more money or a coach major who won't be as hard on them, or whatever they're looking for.
But This has to be utterly exhausting for these schools and coaches.
You have to probably have three times the amount of scouts and stuff. Now it's just trying to sort through all of this, and it just feels like something needs to fix fast or college football is going to be in big trouble in a hurry.
People say that, but I mean the television numbers aren't out yet, but I know it's going to be big. I would say, what you get with older players, you get a cleaner game. I mean, Indiana, I just saw a stout on Twitter. I just passed it up. But it's like they haven't hadn't lost a fumble and like, you know, like a twelve hundred snaps kind of thing. So you're getting a older players, more experienced players. You're getting a more well played game, if that makes sense,
you know. And they like that, well, yeah, I agree, and that'll you know, I think that'll take some time to play out. Do people go, well, they're not really college players, but they're not NFL players.
It's so but it's entertaining.
Yeah, it's like NFL junior Now, I mean, what is.
What is it remains?
It's it's really interesting to me, and I really think you can go into the portal. You can probably you should probably only be able to go once and then that's it, Like you better make your second choice correctly or else you got to sit out or something.
Well.
Rock Rocket a story last week about how many times did the one kid transferred, like.
Seven, he's on seventh school in seven years.
Yeah, I mean.
That needs to be done a lot with and I think I certainly agree with you. I would love to see a kid get no matter what, no more than you know. I think five should be the max under unless under some extraordinary circumstances where you get a you know, you tear a and an a c L or something. Okay, maybe you get a six year, but a seventh or more that that seems a little, a little egregious.
Can I ask one more question? It's an NFL question, it's a Bangal question. Yes, how bombed are you me? I know I am as a Bengals fan that if we could have at least been at all decent, we could have been gone deep into.
The playoffs this year. There is no no team that I look at that are left. Is that exciting? Like? Wow, this is a great team. I don't. Maybe I'm wrong there, maybe some.
More you're run and I talked, we had that very same discussion Land. We were just talking about, you know, we can what ifs, but yeah, they could have they could have rocked.
Okay.
So then the question becomes, how do the Busno Bills fire their coach who's done so well?
I mean, I don't know, you know the question I'm asking.
Yeah, they don't. They don't think he was ever going to get them over the hump. And the Steelers, I think, thought the same thing, is what we want to go to the playoffs every year because if you do, then then yeah, Mike Tomlin is our coach, you know. But they they and I'm not sure even know if I agree with them, but they don't feel like he was a guy that was ever going to get them past that. I think Buffalo thought the same thing. It's it's not just good enough for us to go to the playoffs,
even go deep in the playoffs. We we want we feel like we got certainly the quarterback and some elements of our roster where we can have a legitimate shot at winning a a championship. And they didn't think McDermott was a guy to do that. And I also heard a report that McDermott in a kind of an end of the year meeting with the GM and the owner expressed that, hey, I don't I don't think we have like our talent is as good as it needs to be.
And I think they they kind of bulked that a little bit, like you telling us, what.
Okay, if you're a Bengal player, if you're if you're a guy who is on the roster for the Bengals, how should you be feeling right now looking around?
What what do you mean in what regard.
So all these other teams that got further than you were, Like all you are out of here because it's not good enough.
You're not doing a good enough job. And Bengals are saying we're good enough.
We got the talent inside the locker room, We got the talent inside the building to get us to the Super Bowl.
Does does Joe Burrow think that?
I don't know. I don't think he does.
I don't think he does at all. I think that's why he keeps, you know, making you know, kind of comments and you know, like, hey, we gotta we gotta get better here, And he shouldn't feel I don't feel like this is this is a roster that obviously obviously it's not a roster that I can go to a you can go to a super Bowl, and it needs to get better, and hopefully it does.
I think I'm gonna switch from news to sports. This is really fun.
This is fun, right, Come join us, Tony. This is great and we can be talking about ice protests and all this, but we get to talk about football today.
Table.
That's right there, we go.
All right, good, well, welcome back to the frigid North. Enjoy your memories of the South.
I all look at the photos every couple of days and just remind myself of what when I get in the hot shower, I'll be like, oh, that's what it felt like.
See you, buddy. Yeah, thanks Tanya, our good friend Tanya Rourke