Interesting peace out today from Sports Media Watch, discussing the declining TV ratings up pretty much every sport across the board, including the NFL. But some important contexts we'll get to because we talked a lot about being an NBA market. We've talked a lot about the massive decline in NBA ratings and what it means, and from a local standpoint, I don't blame you for not watching this basketball team, believe me. But a lot of inside here I want
to get to. We're gonna bring in Andy Larson coming up in a bit. We'll do some hockey today with Neil Smith, but we'll start things off with some college football. I never know where our next guest is, so I just asked him straight up, Dave Bartwo, where are you right now? And what are you doing?
Shute? I'm I'm in the kitchen right now.
Man.
It's it's Christmas cookie time. It's go time. So Bone is on speaker and uh it's it's a week full of Christmas cookies for the family and in coaching carousel.
So are you yourself making these cookies? Of course that's the question.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I My wife's at work right now. So this is a I get a few, but we end up between her and me. There's about I think the list. It's like a draft board, dude. It's like fifteen different kinds of cookies and five dozen of each and they go everywhere. Even some of my head coach clients like, hey, can I get a box to those? We'll get out at as well. Well. That was been a long time credition and baking a lot of cookies in tow coming the same of year.
Okay, okay, very cool, Dave, very cool. Since it's been a minute since you and I last spoke, Dave, our college football situation in Salt Lake did not go the way we thought it would. As the University of Utah was the favorite to win the Big Twelve in Vegas, they were picked by the media to win the Big Twelve and stumbled this year. There were two and seven
conference record five and seven overall. Let's start from a thirty thousand foot view as a guy that likes coach win an awful lot, how stunder you at where we find ourselves with Utah football after year one of the Big Twelve.
Oh that was a stinker, wasn't it? Stumbled a Latin for something way worse than what I call stumble. Right, Hey, you know something is it's college football? Why we play the games?
Right?
I mean seriously, you know it's it's it's terrible when you're on the bad end of it, you know, like this, But you know with with the college rollercoaster, you know it is hammer to stay on top every single time. And what causes a clatchism as lands like this, I have no idea, right, nobody could have seen us coming. So you just hit the research button, right, is it a city, Is it still a very very good program, yes? Is it still well coached?
Yes?
And I just see this as a giant anomaly on Watingham's career. But these things happen and I can't explain it. All we can do is look forward and go, Okay, what's the schedule next year? What talent do we have? Are we making any coaching changes? And are those guys any good coming in?
And the answer to that as far as the coaching changes is yes. And we'll get to the new offensive coordinator in a moment. But the biggest piece of news is that coach went is back. I mean, there was a ton of conjecture conversation rumor that this was it for Kyle, and I have no idea whether or not the underwhelming nature of this season added his desire to
come back. But you know, for our listeners that don't know, your main gig with college football really does involve coaches, and you've always been very high on coach with and just wanted to get your thoughts on Kyle coming back for your twenty one Yeah.
Well, I mean it's for those of the you know listening out there that don't know what I do for a paycheck. We do analytics and recruiting and staff building for college football NFL, FCS, UFL. We simply try to reduce rifts and talent acquisition, performance and pay So when I'm looking at Kyle Whittingham or Alley or Beck or any of these guys, it is through the eyes of
their performance relative to all their other peers. So with with coming back, I don't know, you know, if they're Borgan had taken over, I'd be like, Okay, we're turning over the new leave or he gets to start at the bottom, so expectations are low. So you know, either way, I think you win as a program and as a coaching staff. I'd probably like to have Kyle come back. I wouldn't want him to leave on that note. I'm
sure he doesn't want to leave on that note. So having that stability and coaching continuity in the program, I can't see it. It's not going to do anything but help.
And ultimately to your point, if coach with left and they elevated Morgan, which is the plan, Morgan will take over, they would have replaced every single major coach offensive coordinator, head coach, defensive coordinator. So with Kyle coming back, you do avoid that. But what are your thoughts? And I've
asked you before, but radio is not linear, Dave. As you know, on this succession plan in place, after Kyle steps aside, Morgan slides over a seat and he will be the guy whatever that time comes.
Well, you know, when it comes to head coaching changes, a lot of it is just timing. It's like the draft, do you get lucky or not? Who's available when it comes up. And when it comes down to coaching hires, there's from from our standpoint, we like reduce the risks, right, and so if we had a toy, we would like our ads to hire a proven head coach that has done well somewhere so that we have the numbers on him.
But if you're not going to go that direction, then give me a guy with an elite ceiling offense defense. I don't care, right, I mean, look at our playoffs in my scoring efficiency nine of the top twelve and defensive scoring efficiency here in the brackets. This defensive football is going to win this title. And sudden a lot of people get caught up in that, well, we need the elite offensive coordinator. Say you don't. You need to
google an elite coordinator, period. And so Morgan has obviously proved time and time again he has an elite ceiling defensively, so when he comes in you would expect the defense to be able to continue under his tutelage. The big question mark is going to be the offense. And after this year, well, everybody's gonna look.
Good next year for sure. For sure. That does lead me to actually, you know what, let's start here, Dave, because last year, you know, nothing was going well and you can certainly be as reductive as saying it had. It all had to do with the lack of health at the quarterback position and yet another catastrophic injury to Cameron Rising. But Andy Ludwig is the one who fell on the sword, and I didn't think it was all
that fair Mike. But Jakian takes over the play calling situation, and Mike, when he had his first media availability himself, said, this is Andy Ludwig's system. I'm just calling the plays. And so for me it's like, well, what is Mike and be able to do that Andy couldn't do in his own system? And the answer turned out to be nothing. But so give me, give me your thoughts on the decision to move on from Andy before we get to the new offensive coordinator, and your thoughts there.
Yeah, you know, I mean it's uh, it's like that in national presidency end, somebody's got to go to prison, yep. Right, when you got a bad offense, you got a bad defense, somebody's got to get fired. Right. We got to have a blood lighting, We've got to have human sacrifice to appease the boosters and the fans. And that was Andy right, and there was there was no doubt about it from an offensive standpoint. Easily one of the bottom five in
the entire country. Powerful wife this year, but overall for his career, I would still take Andy instead of Mike, right, I mean, if we if we were starting from scratch, he said, Okay, Dave, you got to pick offensive coordinator. These are the two guys. I will take Andy over Mike. But you know that being said, there was no fixing it this year, and again going back to when things start to tumble, there's no rhyme or rean for it. It was probably more emotional and injury and psychologically driven
than anything. You know. Now Andy's gone, pays his turner, and then you got a new guy comment.
So that leads me to giving you know, giving you the space for our listeners to give us your thoughts on Jason Beck. According to reports, Dave this was kind of the third option for Utah. First went to Oklahoma, second went to Texas Tech. Third landed here in Salt Lake. He's a former b YU player, brings his quarterback with him and Devin Dampierre. So what's the Dave Bart to take on this new o c QB duo for Utah football. Oh?
We like the risk, right, Like I talked about before, performance risks, salary risks. You know, what's the upside on this guy? So he's only been home place for two years. So in our system he's not fully graded up. Okay, he's got to have four years, but in our system he has labeled the rising star. He has one of the top five second year offensive four leaders in all college football. So bringing that with him plus his quarterback, you and I both know, we all know it's quarterback driven.
You know, the league above and the league below, everything runs through that quarterback. So the fact that you have both guys is solid. But getting back I think that was a that is a really good risk. We still don't know what the downside is to him because both of the years have been progressive. He is he has a high archy, high ceiling kind of guy. The question is when he hits that four, when he has the bad year, we still don't know. That's kind of the risk. How far down.
Will it go?
But overall, I think the risk is pretty solid for Utah.
What does your model and your experience say about, you know, the the sometimes difficult jump from you know, the G five situation of the P four situation a school like New Mexico to a school like Utah from a play caller and a quarterback standpoint, Because that's what Utah's banking on New Mexico was the four ranked offense in college football last year as far as yardage per game goes, but it was in a sorry lesser conference. Now the
competition's better. What are some of the key dynamics, the secret sauce that make coaches and quarterbacks that make this jump successful next level?
Well, you know, and I agree with you. That's why it's always risk, right. We don't know what he's going to be able to do in the Big twelve relative to what he did in New Mexico. I always try to gravitate towards what did he do relative to the defense as he faced, right, relative to the talent that he had faced overall, And so at New Mexico, Beck's forty fourth in defense of dusted counts in terms of
what he did out there. So I know, like, like you said, the yards are huge, but when you look at the scoring relative to the defense, I would say it's a little bit lower. But yes, it's New Mexico. You're talking bottom ten talent, put a finally in the country. Anything done at New Mexico should be you know, the should He should be really happy about that. So we don't have an exact number to say this guy at this level is now going to produce this. At this level,
he may be better at Utah. He may be better because he has better players and a better offensive line and better running back. I don't think you can simply say just because he did at New Mexico it automatically transferred to a certain level at Utah. I think you have to take a risk on what he has done relative to the talent, and for two years at New
Mexico he has drastically elevated that offense. It may not be elite numbers, but folks, look at where New Mexico was before he got there, and look what he did for two years. And then the big thing to look at is this is what we always do in the data. We'll look at New Mexico you next year and see where it goes. That's going to be part of our evaluation too, is how much impact did he have before, during, and afters.
So there's been quite a bit of coaching news in the state. Dave and Bronco Menenhall once upon a time was tasked with turning Brigham Young around, and he did. He was tasked with turning Uva around, and he did, and he didn't stick in New Mexico for very long, but did a pretty good job down there. So it's been a chaotic year year and a half up in
Logan for Utah staying in that football program. As Blake I Anderson lost his job, Nate Driling, he was hired as the defensive coordinator, took over as the head coach, and he kind of felt bad for Nate because he's a brad young guy, but he had no shots to do anything this year. Bronco Menenhall is now being asked to do in Logan what he did in Provo and what he did in Virginia. What's the Dave Bartwo take on Bronco Menenhall to Utah State.
I think it's a great day. Hire, you know Blanco and our system. Breen a half star head coach. Like you said, he was solid at BYU. He was about plus one game of year. So whatever you fell up your talent, would you know be in six and sixty was a seven and five guys seven and five, he's a eighty four guy. So he coached above the talent at all the stops. Even in New Mexico. He turned it around. Really well in one year. So from a safety's standpoint, I like the risk. For the athletic director.
I liked it for the program. He's a veteran and that program needs obviously some retooling because this was a lost year entirely. So I think it was probably probably best risk available. You know, when you account for everything, who you could get, the money you could pay, the quality of guys, the situation of the program, and this program has produced some wonderful seasons in the past years.
You know, it is elevated a lot of guys, So the potential of the program, all of that, and all of that, I think the AD made a fantastic higher in terms of best available overall guys, of the situations.
So the irony of where we found ourselves, Dave here in the state is that everything that we thought Utah would be this year BYU turned out be to be that team. You know, they put themselves really in the mix to win the Big Twelve. At one point after that nine to zero start, they were the favorite to win the Big Twelve, but they stumbled down the stretch, losing two of three. Still a really good year ten and two overall, seven and two in conference, and they're
gonna get out the Alamo Bowl. Colorado is the opponent. I think that's gonna be one of the more intriguing non CFP bowl games. But you a number of years ago on this show were really high on Kilani before a lot of people were high on him the way that they are now. And you know, given time you've proven to be correct. What do you make of what you saw down in Provo with BYU having the season that Utah thought they would have.
I remember the pre season, I was on the I was on the radio BYU Radio, and there was people that were there was a lot of BYU fansy and we need to retool the staff. And I'm like, you guys are a bunch of you know, this is a this is a top thirty staff in college football. You are not getting any better than this at YU, You're not. And you're in a coach's conference. So the entire situation for BYU I felt the one end of this year. Now,
did I expect them to win ten games? Oh? Have no, no, no, no, no no no. But I expected them to be two to three games above their win total expectation. I expected an eight win team, maybe at nine win team, not what they did, but that staff is also very very good, and so again a little bit surprised what happened. But then if you look at the whole Big Twelve, most of it revolved around coaching. You had excellent coaching at
Colorado surprising. I mean, I don't know how much it was coaching, because their standards made Pat Turmany look good and so he could just get the highpend for that alone. Nobody's ever done that. And you're good coaching at State State. You had surprising coaching at Arizona State. So you know, as far as I'm concerned by you, is sitting just fine and going in the same direction.
What do you make of the way Kenny dilling Ham has been able to turn things down around there after herm Edwards left him as led Zeppelin after party type mess. I mean, it's pretty impressive in just a couple of seasons to see ASU and the CFP representing the Big Twelve. I've never asked you about Kenny. What do you think, Dave?
It's surreal to me, you know, because well if you had asked me about Kenny before it was you know, when he got hired obviously, He's got no head coaching experience, so I don't have a feel on him. He put up one elite year as an offensive coordinator at Oregon, so you have an asterisk there. He came into Arizona State pretty depleted on tenalent. The defensive coordinator Brian Ward,
three and a half star guy, nothing special there. He brings in Marcus of Royo two and a half star guys, certainly nothing special there, and it all came together, so he must be a phenomenal culture guyhow maybe they just caught lightly in the bottle. I don't think we should get too far over her skis, but celebrate the year
in general. I think my biggest takeaway right now is when I see something like this, a team winning so far above expectations, having the offense performing where it's at, having an offensive coordinator with the career Grady has Stam eleven should be being called by every NFL agent right now because that guy drove over the bus.
Yeah he did. Let's stick in the conference. Another quarterback coach, Comba, I want to talk to you about and I honestly don't recall what you told me about Dion when the hire was made and maybe because there wasn't a ton of P four data, you weren't sure how that was going to go. And look, of course, the Dean effect
is a real thing. We all have experienced it both in the Pac twelve and the Big twelve here in Salt Lake, And ultimately, I think there were questions early on, but I think it's really time to hit your cap to what Dion Sanders has done in Boulder over the course of just a couple of short seasons, turning a program that was irrelevant into something that most people pay attention to, whether you love it or not with the landscape of college football, and also looks like his boy
is going to be the number one pick in the NFL Draft. So the Dave Bars, you take on the quarterback coaching combo and Boulder Dion and Shador Sanders.
Again, it's like it's like Arizona State. It's amazing. Now. Dion coming out of Jackson State, we had him at a three and a half star grade. He'd only been there two years, so we had him as a rising star head coach. So he was good at staffing, pretty good staffing. He was very good at results, and one of my big questions is how much of this is should go griven right. I think we all have that question. Is is this going to be replicable next year without
that quarterback? Probably not because Sumer is not a good offensive four dator. You know, if you look at his history in the NFL, I have him in the bottom twenty of all his offensive coordinators since two thousand. So it wasn't that. I think it was quarterback driven. I think the one big mystery and the amazing hire that nobody talks about because it's always Standards, it's always Hunter,
it's always Prime, it's our defensive coordinator, Livingston. He'd never been a defensive coordinator before, he wasn't in our system. Then he put up a top twenty scoring efficiency defense this year. While everybody focuses on everything else. That was the single most amazing, unpredictable part of Colorado. We knew what Prime would do, We knew what s Do would do. You no idea the defense would do what it did.
And living Ston, for everybody out there that don't know who he is, just go little circle around that guy, because the data is saying this guy could be really good. If you can sweep up this art.
I continue to chuckle. What I reminded that the most popular preseason Big Twelve Championship game pick was Utah or Oklahoma States, and the two teams combined to go two and sixteen in conference. What happened with Mike Gundy? He is coming back? They did not win a conference game, and they never lose at home, and they couldn't win it home this year? How did it go so wrong? Dave and stillwater to me?
And well, who knows what the external intangible effects were? But I don't know if I said it on a miss Joe, but I said it on every single that I went on talking about Oklahoma State in the Big Twelve. That was the by far the worst offensive defensive coordinator pairing in the Big Twelve. To start seat by law, Dunlan and Nardo were both bottom ten coordinators in the FBS. I'm talking UMass, Akron, Matt Teams, Jacksonville State, you name it,
bottom ten on both of them. So Gundy has even when he was top twenty, I think, weren't they like nine and three and top twenty five two years ago? It would still if you look at the numbers, dude built Oh did he do that? They were not good on offense, they were not good on defense. So they must have want a ton of one score games in the final seconds, a ton of them. And so I think it was kind of a fault positive that we
saw in twenty twenty three. Twenty twenty four showed us exactly what that staff was, which is the worst staff in the Big Clowes. So that one was zero surprise at all, other than losing so many games by Gundhy. But from a staff standpoint, no shock here.
So I know you don't have a lot of data on the Let me check the name here. The new North Carolina head coach. Not a college guy. I'm not really we don't know much about him, Bill Belichick to college football. I've got a couple of things here. How do you think this works? And is this the beginning I'm not going to say an accident, but the beginning of a trend because of the model now moving towards a professional model inevitably, whether you like it or not.
Do you think we'll see other I don't know, former NFL guys taking college jobs. And what do you make of Belichick to Carolina?
We might get we might see former NFL guys going into college. But the first thing is the NFL has got to turn that former guy down at all of his job try you know, all of the interviews he did, and believe me, North Carolina was not the only team he tried to pitch his four hundred page manifesto too. There was a bunch of people that was thrown at, and even at North Carolina getting the ad didn't even want it. You want to done some rom and Chairman Bard of the trustees got sold on the whole thing.
And that's where we're at. So my concern is not everybody in North Carolina's on board with this idea, and if everybody is not in support of an idea, it will never be maximized. So I don't positive negative. I mean it's going to bring a ton of attention to the brand and bring a ton of attents to the program. Bill all he's got to do is go find one hundred at the basketball school. I mean, obviously they let Max sit there, lose a jillion games over the last
half decade, didn't care about it. It is worried about basketball teams and so it's a great place to experiment. But as far as trying to prognosticate what's going to happen. I think that it was really difficult. I'm gonna have to see more of the staffing as well.
Gus Melzhon bounces for FSU. Scott Frost is back at UCF and he taps Alex Grinch to be his DC, a sentence that I didn't think i'd be able to say. Ever, again, how does our guy continue to keep a job? I mean, look, I'm not you know, go support your family. Congratulations on the gig. But from my uneducated I dave the Alex Grinch experiments, you know, experience on defense doesn't seem to be very beneficial for the team who employs him. But what do you make of that higher came down yesterday?
I'm I'm shocked, flat out shocked for reasons I can't even tell you why. I'm out shocked that that was the decision. But Alex Brinch, look, like I said, in our database, we have every coach in twenty ten in our database. We have over eleven hundred defensive coordinators in our database. Alex Grinch is five hundred and twenty first, five hundred and twenty first. His real market value is three hundred and nine thousand a year in the Big Twelve.
He is the worst defensive coordinator in the Big twelve right now, basically replacing Nardo at Oklahoma State. He's probably going to get paid three times his value. I got nothing on that one. I have no idea other than Scott Now Alex must be really good.
Buddies relationship business. Last one, Michael Vick is going to try his hand a coaching in Norfolk State. What do you what do you make out of this? Good look?
Oh? You know something I'm not going to do because when Dion went to Jackson State, I poo pooed the heck out of it. I'm like, no way, not going to work not at stenance that guy. No, you know, And again with no data, I start popping off and sound stupid. So I'm not going to pop off about Michael Vick. Let's just see what he can recruit, Let's
see how he staffs, see what happens there. But the cool thing is we're talking about it, right and so I think that's the best benefit that he brings right now. Is it just it's a good conversation and we'll just have to see where it goes. Because Deon todd up. Let's not be too judgmental about NFL superstars trying to be head coaches, no doubt.
All right, Dave, I'll let you get back to making those cookies. I appreciate your time.
Man.
Happy holidays, have a good one.
All right, Thanks Spencher taking these man.
Dave bar two. The College Football Matrix does a really good job analyzing college football coaching staff. Does a lot on the recruiting side as well. At CFP Matrixes where you find him, it looks like he's cooking, baking, pardon me, baking coffee cakes and chocolate chip cookies right now for all of his clients. So appreciate Dave's time.