All right, so you're just gonna rub it in, So you're gonna use the one example of a band I like when I was sixteen that has an age.
Well, that's what you're doing here.
I know.
That was the theme that we we were talking about. I actually kind of liked Blues Traveler. I know they they got some interesting sound, some corny stuff in there as well.
What's the is it? Kingpin to the movie Collen Brothers. Excellent movie. That may be part of it. But yeah, actually I actually kind of.
Like well Forward Tour nineteen ninety four, Dave Matthews Band, Fish Almond Brothers, they were all there, and Blues Traveler was the headline.
You know, that's how big they were in nineteen ninety.
I would have spent a lot of money to be at that show.
It was a good show man, all right. Time for the voice. You know what that means? Bill Riley Tuesday Afternoon, Ryle's Happy Tuesday?
Sir?
How are you can I give you blue a couple of Blues Traveler stories?
Please do?
I paid three dollars in college at the Bottleneck and Lawrence to see Blues Traveler, and then also in nineteen ninety God nineteen. Nineteen ninety five, Blues Traveler was the headline band at the Lakewood Amphitheater at Atlanta, and Dave Matthews opened for Blues Traveler in Atlanta.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's how big they were. Man, that's how big they were. They were massive. Porter posed a question to me earlier last week, which is, how has my music in the nineties aged to this day?
What are your thoughts on that?
Uh, it's funny you say this. When I was flying to Orlando the other day, I had kind of a nineties hits channel on. I was listening a little Big Head Todd in The Monsters I had. I had the Gin Blossoms radio going, Hey will I will stand on the gin Blossoms Mountain and die on top of the gym. They had some bangers in the nineties. I like Big Head Todd the Monsters. I think the nineties has aged. Okay, maybe not the greatest music decade, but I'm all on board with it. How about you?
I'm on board. I just love that you just use the term bangers. Ryle's I appreciate that. I mean, I at least at least you didn't say that it slaps. That's the other thing that the kids say, right, you hah, something like that.
But I think the nineties it's been okay. I think it's aged. Okay, but you know, I'm old, as you've said for you know, twenty years. I'm old.
I've apologized, Okay, I've seen the the the errors of my ways because you're not that much older than I am. All right, But it was a fun bit back in the Bill and Spence days. But now that I'm aging, I feel bad.
Bill.
But we still love Shep like he's a little brother.
Right, even though he's older.
All right, Let's move over now, obviously to the news that broke prior to the show yesterday.
About an hour before we started the show.
Excuse me, I get the alert that Craig has been relieved of his duties. So the timing is interesting, and you know, talking to some people, I'm sure you have as well about why exactly this went down when it went down, Bill, So what was your reaction when you're the news and why do you think they decided to do it?
Now?
I was caught off guard, Spence. I was somewhere over West Texas, flying from Orlando to Tucson, and I had my WiFi on and I was doing some work and I just scrolled the old Twitter machine to check headlines, and I saw Jeff Goodman's story pop up, and then my phone began to be explode, you know, thirty three thousand feet. I was surprised by it. I mean, I was just the timing of it caught me off guard.
I don't know that you're ever fully expecting that something like that in season, But you know, I think you know, to your other the other part of the question, I think it was just probably the full body of four years of work and maybe the overall trajectory of the program would be my guests and maybe a little maybe not as much consistency as they would have maybe liked to, would be my guests on why the move was made.
So ultimately, there's always he's a personal side to these things. There's always an element of how this affects people that I think we tend to ignore in the media because our job is to cover the story. But look, you know, my father wasn't a coach, but he was an executive and we uprooted multiple times throughout his career, and that's just the deal. You get into this industry and you take these jobs oftentimes knowing that you're going to be fired.
You're hired to fire to get fired.
They are very very few coaches, executives, or even players that have a super long run in one spot.
It's just a transient existence.
And I think Craig's a really good man, and I do think, you know, when it comes to his ability to drop game plans.
I think he did a good job this year.
My opinion is the talent on this roster, but you know it wasn't necessarily up to par. They were picked to finish last, and I actually thought he did a good job coaching up a roster that was a little bit void in talent at times juxtaposed to who they were playing against. So you have a front row to all these games, all these seats. What do you have to say about the job he did just as a coach.
But to your point, first and foremost, Craig Smith, for the three and a half almost four years I've worked with him, has been awesome to me, the same way Larry Christoviac was before that. So you'll hear no Craig Smith slander from me at all. He is a great guy, excellent human being and to your point too, I think
he's a good basketball coach as well. Yeah, did they outperform with their preseason expected at least to this point what their preseason expectations were, Yes, because when you're pick sixteenth, there's nowhere to go but up. But kind of going back to what where we were before that, I think it's just kind of the overall big picture trajectory, and you know the fact that the program hasn't been an
NCUBLEA tournament program in almost ten seasons, nine seasons. This year, unless they make some sort of miraculous run you know in Kansas City, it's likely to be another year without the NC Double A. And I think, you know, Mark Harlan and probably Taylor Randall above him, because you don't make moves like this without, you know, alerting your boss,
who's the boss of everything. I think they're both big basketball guys, and I think the men's basketball is important to them and what's going on at the you and I think that they probably looked at the big picture trajectory and maybe said it just wasn't good enough.
So tell me about Josh Eilert, my man's about to coach at michale I mean, goodness, gracious, dude, Like, and you know it's going to be a grumpy Arizona group based off of what happened with them against BYU. So tell us about this interim head coach and what are you expecting tomorrow night in a really, really tough place to play.
Well, the good news for Utah is Josh Eilert's been in this position before because he was the interim head coach last year at West Virginia, so he had to make the rounds in the Big twelve last year when Bob Huggins was let go at West Virginia and he wrote the title of interim head coach much of the year last year. He's well liked by the guys. The team likes him a lot. He knows the league. He's been part of most of the game plans this year
and the scouts this year. So I think, you know, it's never it's never optimal to have to name somebody an interim head coach inside a season after a move like this has made. But if anybody's up for the task and can do it, it's Josh because he was in the same position at West Virginia year ago. But to your point, too, Arizona is going to be an angry bunch after what happened to them on Saturday against
BYU down here in Tucson. So you know, it's been a tough week, certainly, but it's not going to get any easier tomorrow night on the court at McHale, for sure.
Do you have a feel at all? Bill?
And we had Sean on earlier and he referenced the players were going to fly in, so maybe you haven't had a chance to kick the tires. But you know, I would imagine that a lot of these young men, and I don't know this because there are people pontificating on the possibility of did you make this decision right now based off of some players that may be unhappy that you want back next year. But my guest would be most of these guys are bummed out that they just lost their head coach.
I mean, it's different than in the pros.
You know that your coach is hired to be fired, and you don't sign necessarily only play for a coach. In college, you know, when you're recruited, your parents are trusting this person to take care of you, and you sign, oftentimes to play for the guy that recruited you, So any context or idea of how these players have reacted to what has to be tough news for at least some of them.
No, I haven't seen them yet, kind of like Sean, we're both down here in Tucson. They're scheduled to arrive a little bit later on this afternoon, so I'll have a better feel tonight and tomorrow when I'm at shoot around and around them a little bit. But to your point,
I think you're probably right. I think there's probably a little bit of surprise and some shock and probably a little disappointment, because you know, when you come to play at a school, no matter what the school is, whether it's Duke or Kansas or Yukon or Utah, you're you're you know you're you're coming to go to the school. Sure, but you're coming because you've committed to a coach and a staff. So I'm sure those guys were a little caught off and and a little bit a little bit
disappointed by what happened. But you know, now now you rally up and see what you can do, and you know, if your competitors, you want to go out there no matter who's coaching you and see what you can do against Arizona. So, like I said, I don't have a feel for where those guys are right now, but probably will later today or tomorrow.
I know a lot of these decisions are made above your pay grade, and if there's anything you just want to straight punt on, please let me know. But do you think Josh has a chance to coach his way into this job?
I don't that that. I don't know, uh, just because like you said, it's above my pay grade, and I don't know what kind of conversations they may have had with Josh, so I can't. I just I don't feel comfortable in my position, just not knowing and again having been kind of out of the pocket down here in Orlando, or Orlando, Orlando and Tucson. Make a comment on the coaching, you know, kind of the direction where they're going to go.
You know, there's been a lot of names thrown around out there, and you know, if you read there, you know you can probably make cases for a lot of that stuff. But I just I don't have a feel for it, so I don't feel real comfortable talking about it.
Did you attend the Magic Kingdom and did you wear Mickey ears.
Well, no, I did not, And I think you and I have had this conversation about adults who go to Disney parks by themselves. It's very odd and off putting.
There's so many things I want to say right now, but yes, you and I are on the same page.
And look, let's just stick here for a moment.
It's strictly budgetary, okay, Like the amount of money that you're spending to do this. You could go to Hawaii, you could go to Europe, Like, why is it saving the cash to ride? You know, it's a small world. For the seventy fifth time, it doesn't make sense to.
Me, It makes no I mean I took my kids when they were younger. We had a good time. But that's what you kind of take one for the team when you're a parent and you get that experience and then you then you move on. So I did not visit Epcot or the Magic Kingdom when in Orlando, or did I visit the uh the the old Magic Home either what's what I don't even know what it's called these days. It used to be uh guess it was like it was one of those MLMs that that was
big in the nineties. They had the name of the arena, but we were way at UCF's West sixty by the way, sixty thousand students at UCS. It's the second biggest campus in the country.
Wow, I did not know that, all right, Moving from one Josh to another, Josh, I don't know.
Did you have a chance to listen to Josh Grant on the show yesterday?
I didn't. I was flying when he was on, but I heard I heard he was. He was. He was quite passionate in his in his desire for what he was looking for in the next head coach.
Yes, he was very salient, he was very clear eyed, He was very direct and even said that he was very excited that the news came down when it did. And it leads to a conversation Bill just philosophically, because ultimately, you know, when it comes to historically speaking, the way
that college coaches the profession works. And one of the things I love about March Madness is seeing a coach that coaches a smaller school into the NCAA tournament, winning a game or two, and his life changes immediately, and the life of his family changes immediately because he gets this great opportunity to triple quadruple his salary and take
over a bigger program. And there there's a group of options right now, coaches that are coaching at quote unquote smaller schools that have done a great job that seems to indicate that they are next in line to get an opportunity like coaching in the Big twelve at the University of Utah. Now, the names on that list are not necessary early names that people around here are probably
all that familiar with. You're talking about UC San Diego, Eric Olson, You're talking about Nico Medvet at Colorado State, Eric Henderson South Dakota State, Leon Rice at Boise, UC Irvine, Russell Turner. And this is a list that's put together by Jeff Borzello, who covers college basketball for ESPN.
So that's one route for Mark to take.
Now you could argue that he just took that route with Craig being at Utah State after South Dakota State and then rising up the ranks. And then the other route is the route people around here talking about, and that essentially is Alex Jensen as the head coach. Potentially Andre Miller is coaching the G League as an assistant or Johnny Bryant, who's an associate head coach for a really good basketball team in the pros with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
So just thirty thousand foot viewpoint, what's the voice's take on just kind of the direction you think this thing will go?
Again, back to what I'm saying before, I'm not sure. But what you have to look get when you're making this decision now is I don't think either path spence is a bad path to take, because as you said,
there's good options on both of those paths. But what you have to look at, especially in particular with Utah right now, is who's going to be able to come in and, you know, get kind of jumpstart the program and get it back to where the expectation is and the expectation and I think Mark said this in his release yesterday, was to compete in a regular basis in the NCAA tournament, to compete at a high level in
the Big twelve, turn in the Big Twelve Conference. You know, who's the guy that gives you the best chance to do that. At the same time, you know Utah, you know, the interest in Utah men's basketball has been down a little bit, So who's somebody that could come in and
connect with the fan base a little bit. And then the third component is who's somebody that in today's day and age, can work in the nil world and you know, whatever that budget had happens to be work within those parameters and make it work to your program's best you know, best ability. And again, there might be guys at that at that Mountain West you know, big West West Coast conference level that could do it. There might be guys that haven't had that college experience, but you've got to
find the guy. And also, can you build a staff, because in today's day and age, you have to have the head coach. We know this. It's not like when Rick was here. You know, football and all these sports. The head coaches are CEOs now. So you've got to find a guy who you think can also build a staff and surround himself with good people because the job of a head coach is so much more intricate and
complicated now. You're more of a CEO. You're still coaching, but you have lots of other duties now, So who's the guy that could best do that? And that's what you know, Mark and his search committee's challenge is going to be I.
Do think, and I talked about this with Sean earlier. I am not a you got to win the press conference guy, Like watch Nick Sirianni's opening presser for the Eagles and you're like, dude, can even can he string a sentence together?
They just want a Super Bowl.
All that matters is the long game at the end of the day, and somebody coming in here that can recapture past glory in his own way in the modern day and age of college basketball, because there's no going back. You've got to look to the future. And even invoking the name of Rick mcjeris is unfair because that was a tremendous run. But it shouldn't just scare people away from having that standard around here. This is a proud
basketball state, it's a proud basketball market. And while my initial reaction was sadness for Craig and his family, because I know what that's like, my secondary reaction was, Okay, somebody up there finally said this is not good enough, okay, and we need to change our standards for what our basketball team is. There's no reason that you can't be both a basketball and a football school. Ask Auburn, ask Alabama. I mean, they're Florida. We could keep going. And for
too long this has been kind of branded. No, you're a football school. Now you can be Oh, Bill, don't you think I mean it's not an unreasonable expectation.
You should that should be the goal should absolutely be both of those things. And again, the standard is different today, but it's not different, meaning your standard should always be to compete at the highest level. To be in the school like Utah, with the resources it has and the support and the tradition that has, shouldn't be going nine and ten years without being in an NCAA tournament. And I think that's what Mark and the powers that be
at the you have said. You know, they want to do everything they can do to reset that standard, to get it back and make sure basketball is a top priority. Yeah, football is the big dog on every campus. It is. We know that from a financial standpoint. But you just rattle off three or four schools that are succeeding at a very high level in both and yes, you can
absolutely do that. That's what the expectations should be. And I don't you know when fans used don't you should want to have the standard that was in the Majeris era. That's fine. Just don't think that the best style of basketball and the way it was back then is coming back. Because the game in collegiate athletics has changed over the last twenty five years, but the standard really shouldn't.
Yeah, no, I agree with you, So back to the whole. Like, I don't really think you have to win the press conference all the time. I do think in this case, this basketball community could use a little injection of life. And I do think an Alex Jensen Andre Miller bench. I mean, imagine walking into a gym with Andrea as your assistant coach, Like, that's instant credibility, that's instant respect.
And I would imagine if that's the direction, and we won't know for a little while, phones would ring off the hook up there at the basketball office for season ticket deposits. So what are your thoughts on just kind of that dynamic, interjecting some juice based off of names that we're familiar with around here. If that's the direction, what do you think the effect would be on the community.
Well, I think if that were the case that people would would just they would love it. Again, that would be a connection back to the bygone days. But it's people that they you know, that they've they've known for a long time. And again that's that's another component of all this spense. It's not just you know, it's not just it's re engaging your fans and making your fans excited to come to the John M. Huntsman Center again, excited to talk about Utah basketball again. You know, the
program has not been in the dumps. It hasn't. It's been solid, but it hasn't been to the standard where where fans and and folks that run the department want it to be. But if you had that kind of connection to a bygone era, I think it just it's kind of the cherry on top if you will, and really would re engage a lot of fans.
I've got one football question for it. But before we get there, final basketball question. How much of this I don't know rising juggernaut. I guess I'll say that they're
building down in Provo. At least that seems to be the case, with the number one player in the country there now next year, to seven figure players on Kevin's roster this year, and then a massive economic investment on the bench with not just a former pro as your head coach, but pro assistant coaches, strength and conditioning, nutrition is how much of what they're building down at BYU do you think motivated folks up here to say, Okay, we've got to start making sure that we can at
least compete and keep up with what they're doing down south.
Yeah. Again, not being in those meetings, I don't know that. But what I do know is you never want to fall behind your rival. You never want your perception to be that you're behind your rival. So to whatever extent that would be, I don't know, but you always if your rival is doing something, you want to be able
to keep up or do better. So I think I don't know if that was a factor in any of this, but yeah, nobody wants to look forty miles down the road or one hundred miles down the road wherever your rival happens to be and see that they're thriving and your or you know you're struggling.
All right before I set you loose.
Brant Keithy Karen read junior TOFUNA, currently at the NFL Scout Scouting Combine as the guy that called all their games.
Got to know him? What kind of pros. Do you think these youths are going to.
Be Well, the chief thing is interesting just because the health, I mean, how healthy is he? Don't I don't know what his draft stock is going to be only because but again, the combine and then the individual workouts can certainly help. I think Karenni Read and Junior Tafuna are going to be pros. I mean, I think Karenni is going to be one of those guys. If he's not a starting linebacker, he's going to be a guy that's
in a linebacker rotation, play special teams. And I think Junior could be the same thing along a defensive line. I think both those guys are our pro players, probably have a five to seven to eight year career. And with Kiethy, it's just hard to predict because of the injury situation. But we know Brandt's athleticism and his ability at the position. I mean, he's not a traditional tight end. He's not that inline blocking guy, but he's a guy
that's really good in the open field. He's got really good hands, and I think he'll be on somebody's roster if he stays healthy.
All right, Ryles, Well, thanks for the time, man. Safe travels, safe travels, have a great call. Tomorrow night, Tomorrow night, Thanks buddy, Thanks man.