Potential Hall of Famer guy Eric Weddle's gonna stop vibe. But on a Wednesday, starting things out, Josh for Long covers the utes board, KSL Josh, Happy Wednesday.
Man, how are we doing?
I'm doing well? How about yourself?
Since I'm good, man, I'm good.
So since we're gonna have you at on your reaction to the College Football Hall of Fame news.
I think that dropped about a week ago or so.
Yeah, yeah, well no, I was actually I think.
Monday Monday gotcha. So what do you think?
I mean, I think this is a no brainer.
Quite honestly, I'm I'm part of that committee that helps select some of these guys, and he was a no brainer to me as I was looking at some of these these individuals who are the greats of college football and then there's, you know, no question that the Alex Smith, the Eric Weddles are the greats of U tough football.
I was I was not in the state during the time that Eric Wettle played, so I don't I wasn't familiar with his college game, but just watching kind of the ambassador that D is to the program as well as kind of what he did in the NFL like, this is a guy that truly cares about football being played the right way, play the physical, but also more just trying to help people grow. So I think there's there's no better person to be kind of a candidate
for that. Knowing kind of who he is on and off the field, that really kind of specifies like the types of people that the Hall of Fame wants to represent and bring forward. So I think it's a great opportunity for him.
I didn't know that you were part of that that committee. That's really cool.
Illuminate us on the process, like how did these things kind of work and ultimately how did it end with Eric Weddle on the ballot.
So it's I'm only a part of it. So what happens is is they have different regions and you have to select a certain number of players from each region that get brought up to the larger committee, which I'm not a part of, but you basically rank the number of players that you think should be presented to that larger committee from your region. This is dating back to guys you know, well before I was even born, But it's it's looking at a bunch of these guys that
you know have had great careers. They look at their on the field, you know how they did, you know, what they did at the NFL, if that's what they were able to do, as well as.
Kind of what they do now nowadays.
And kind of like the service that they provide and other stuff like that.
So it's kind of cool to kind of put.
These names that you've seen forever and compare them to one another. I mean, for example, like Eric the Enemy. You know, obviously a great coach out there, he's involved in that kind of situations and being presented as somebody. So you get a wide range of college football players and trying to see, you know, if it's their time to be in the Hall of Fame.
And you know, some of them are on this list for quite a while. Others are on.
Their for a shorter time, and I think Eric's going to be on their first shorter time quite honestly.
All right, Well, good for our guy. It'd be fun to catch up with him today. All right, let's do some off season college football storyline. Since you and I last spoke, certain things have kind of come down the straight seeding. So we'll start with what's in front of us, and then we'll get to the expanded sixteen team CFP, but that's not until next year. The straight seating seemed to be one of those things there was such common sense that I have no clue why they didn't do
it to begin with. So now we do have straight seating coming up for the twelve team expanded CFP coming up just simply this year. Do you agree with this endeavor and do you think it's probably something they should have done right out the gates?
Yeah, I honestly don't know why they wanted to do it the other way. I mean, I get it from the standpoint they're trying to do whatever they can to eliminate the selection committee really having full control over it. But I think you look at a lot of people seeing Boise State and Arizona State being a three and four seed and not being that highly ranked compared to some of the other peers, what it could do to Oregon,
that kind of stuff. I mean, I think there's just a lot of unintended consequences as part of it, and just an you know, a straight seating seems to be the easiest. This is the thing that everybody's familiar with, whether you're playing, you know, Little League baseball, all the way up to you know, football, whatever it may be. That's how tournaments are, you know, one play sixteen or whatever it may be, and you're used to that. So
I think this seemed like the easiest way. But college football obviously have to try to overcomplicate things and make things a little bit more complex and entertaining.
So we'll see. I think this will be a better system.
So now we move over to what's on the table for twenty twenty six, which is an expanded sixteen team CFP.
And it depends on who you talk to.
I think, well, most people out this way with the big twelve foot print, we'll say the eleven plus five or whatever model is the way to go. I also think it's probably difficult to deny that the SEC and the Big ten, you know, Josh, in any negotiation, it's pretty simple, whoever has the leverage is going to come out on top. And I think it would be a fool's errand to pretend the SEC and the Big ten
don't have some leverage. I don't know how much, but probably enough to push this for AQ each conference thing through. Of course, Ryan Day comes out with his comments today when the dust settles two part question what do you think the sixteen team model will look like?
And what do you want it Josh to look like?
Ooh, those are two really interesting questions.
You know.
I've gone back and forth on this five plus eleven versus the four four two two one plan. I can
see benefits and consequences of each. Honestly, though, like, I think there's some undercurrent of all of this right where I think it's it's more political play where you have the ACC and the Big twelve saying hey, we want to earn it on the field, which kind of is a nod to the big or the Big ten, and the SEC kind of saying hey, look we're going to give you that, and we may take less because of it, but we don't want to give you all the power,
you know, getting four automatic bids. But then on the other hand, like you're giving up two straight guarantees that you're going to get plus a potential maybe third if you managed to get in that high. You know, I think this is a really tricky situation. I think it's probably going to land somewhere closer to the five versus eleven guarantee, the top five conferences a spot and then straight seed from there. I just, you know, I don't know,
this is hard. I feel like we're over complicating it for something that doesn't need to be that way.
If you want to.
Say it's sixteen teams, just the best sixteen teams are in there. If you're really that worried about a selection committee that you've put together, you know, that's that's.
The bigger problem.
But the reality is they all complain about the selection committee when these are former coaches and these are former administrators. These are people that understand this at a high level. This isn't just like you and I going out there and trying to select the sixteen best teams. These are people with well intentioned, you know, reasons behind all this stuff. And we're doing everything we can to kind of avoid the selection committee, and we're going to try to give
certain conferences a number. Just the sixteen best teams need to go in there. Like, to me, that would be the best approach. I think that's what it is. You see disparity between one versus sixteen. Can a sixteen seed, you know, make a run or upset? Sure, you know, any given days something can happen, But I think it gets really tricky trying to maneuver and finagle certain things to try to get a certain number of teams in there.
And I just don't love that approach, even if it is a guarantee just straight seated go from there.
So it's been a really wild news cycle over the past couple of months.
As we all were awaiting the House v.
NCUBA Settlement to simply provide guidelines and guard rails and just we kind of all thought that would be across the line, and there have been a tremendous amount of things that have stopped the progress, a lot of red tape, roster number restrictions, and then what nobody saw coming.
I certainly didn't. I don't think anybody.
The Ross Dellingers of the world didn't seem to see this coming. Are a couple of states, including Tennessee and others, actually passing legislation telling their member institutions that reside in their state, like, hey, just so you know, you don't have to adhere to what the NCUBA House Settlement Act actually tells you to do with NIL funds and distributions.
So good news, if.
You're in our state, you do not have to adhere to the guidelines that you will receive from this settlement, and then the P four conferences draft contracts and disseminate those contracts to all their member institutions, saying, hey, regardless of what your state law says, if you want to be in one of our conferences, you do have to adhere to what the House VNCAA settlement says about nil
distributions and such. And you know, Josh, at this point, I just wonder if it's time for all of us that love this sport, cover this sport and consume this sport just to say, like, this is the new normal, and it's just going to be a scenario where every off season essentially the only people that are enjoying it are the attorneys because they're going to make the money. And I don't know if we're still high speed ahead to this pro football model, hybrid AFS, the NFC two
conference college football reality anymore. I just think we're kind of in this space, and we'll be in the space where quite some time where it's just kind of continued chaos and lawsuits and filings and state legislation, and I don't really see an endgame. I've just kind of accepted that from the standpoint of people that do the job
that you and I do. We're just in for these lawsuits to be filed and then ultimately, you know, you have these lawyers over here deciding they want to look at this, and then they're going to push back on that, and I just think we're kind of in for reshuffling deck chairs and the Titanic in college football for the foreseeable future. I don't know that I really see an endgame anymore based off the chaos we've seen this offseason.
No, I completely agree with that.
I mean, I think that's the frustration about a sport that everybody loves because it seemed more pure, right It seemed like you had your agencies based on you know, whether it be your family has always been you know this this fan or you went.
To that school.
There was a lot of pride that went into that more than just a professional team, right Like, there's different types of pride for that, And now that's really chipping away at the core of what college sports is. And I think that's you know, you're getting more of the hardcore fans, the ones that are paying attention to it every single day. They are the ones getting riled up,
especially because they're the ones that understand the nuances. They're the ones that don't tune in suddenly in August and wonder, Okay, what's happening. Who's on the roster. These are the people that are looking every single day. These are the ones that are paying attention. These are the ones generally probably maybe the boosters, the ones that are putting in the money. When you start disenfranchising that group, I think you lose the effect of what college sports can be, especially in
college football. We all understand that it did shift it away, especially from an amateur model. It was always a mass amateur model. There was always a lot of different things that the NCAA screwed up. But now we're sitting in a quasi professional realm where there's no you know, no straight understanding of how it's supposed to be. There's no collective bargaining agreement. There's, like you said, state laws that are trumping the NCAA, which really doesn't have any legal
power anyway. And it's just this big cluster that doesn't really make sense for anything. And I think that, you know, I don't know what the endgame here is, right like, unless there's some sort of binding contracts, which will still get challenged in court. But unless there's some sort of binding contracts or certain things that kind of pull everyone together, this is going to continue to be the cycle every single year. And it's frustrating because most people, they just
want to tune into the games. They want to show up on a Saturday, kind of relax from all the stresses of the regular work week and just enjoy their team. And now it's becoming much more professionalized, much more complicated, and it just doesn't feel like the sport that we used to know.
I mean, it's still fun, don't get me wrong.
Ratings are still high, everybody's still excited to watch it, and come August September, you know, we're all going to forget what's happening in the summer. But there's still that in the background that frustrates people, that makes them not want to, you know, donate to the programs or or invest in in the same way, because one, you don't know if the players are going to be there, you
don't know what it's going to look like. Your team may be relegated suddenly, and you have no clue, and so it's just kind of this complicated system and nobody really has any standing to be able to make it work.
One follow up here, because you're plugged into this stuff in a way that I probably am not, because we've been pretty basketball and hockey centric with the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals draft coming up. But in twenty seven days, D one athletic departments are scheduled to begin paying out more than one billion dollars to athletes. And as of now, without housing the NCUBA being settled, there are no rules. There's no enforcement because the nc double A has been told, oh hey, by the way, you.
Can't enforce anything.
So there's conference by conference enforcement and very little regulation. And we're all waiting for this settlement to take place, and they have twenty seven days before the more than one billion dollars is set to be distributed to these young people that play sports at schools. Are you hearing anything about a finished line in sight? I can't believe it's June fourth and we're still talking about this thing not being done.
Yeah, I mean, everything has to be settled by July fifth. If there is a settlement. Obviously, Claudia Wilkins could extend it beyond that, but July first was the date that everybody has given that everything has to be in July first is the date that schools have to say, hey, are you in the settlement or not? And if you opt out, you don't have to pay athletes. There's a lot of other rules, but you're.
Not tied to it.
But most of these schools, especially at the powerfol level, have prepared for the last year plus to opt in.
They're ready.
Most of them at the very least are throwing one year's worth of cash into this program to see how it works, to try to make sure that they can pay players, remain competitive in this landscape that nobody really understands, and then kind of go from And so I think whether the settlement passes or not, I really think most schools are probably going to be moving forward that way because to that point, the NCAA has nothing to do with it, right, Like, they can't say no because what
are you gonna how are you going to stop them?
Right?
And at the end of the day, the NCAA is there to do the bidding of the NCAA pre or the college presidents and kind of put it all together. But when there's no framework and nothing there, it's going to be chaos, So I don't know that there's going to be a ton of change. I think the real problem though, comes with roster limits and scholarships, because there's always been this this other end where Okay, you can
offer walk ons and you can still have your scholarships. Well, now everybody essentially is a scholarship player proportionally, and you have to be able to have a certain roster limit, you have to have certain things. That's not going to be equal if this settlement doesn't pass. So there's so much to go into this, and obviously I don't want to get into the weeds of it, but I think there's going to be mass chaos. But at the same time,
I don't think it's gonna be me. As I'm saying this, it reminds me of like if you remember, like when Y two K was coming and everybody's like and your milk is going to explode and everything, Like, I feel like we're kind of getting to that level where no, it'll be fine, you know.
We'll figure it out.
But I think it's kind of getting to that mass hysteria, to a certain settle, like we don't know what's going to happen, and so you kind of start going down to the worst case scenario situation.
All right, Josh, let's move off of it and talk about some storyline surrounding Utah football, And of course the storyline that everybody loves every year is the schedule release when we actually get kick times. Let's start with the opener. It's at UCLA. It's nine pm Mountain Time on Fox. I'll look, I'm single, I'm chilling, you know, like I've got one sad. He's twenty four, he lives in New York,
so it doesn't really affect somebody like me. But I can't imagine very many people out there with kids, or deadlines or actual lives in a way that I don't are thrilled about a nine pm kickoff for the opener. Let's start there. Your thoughts, you'd tell you sala nine pm.
Yeah, I mean it's.
Not ideal, especially for a game that a lot of people thought could have at least a little bit more national relevance just with Nikuayamilavia. But I think, look that first day of college football, people are so excited to have it back that I think you're still going to get a lot of people tune into this game. It's going to be on network TV, and so it's going to be something that people can find readily. You know, maybe you've heard about this Tennessee quarterback that went to
UCLA and you want to check it out. So you know, I still think you're going to get the die hards. The hard part here is I mean, like even here in Utah, that's a nine o'clock game, right, I mean, that's really hard for a lot of people to stay up for. You know, some of these people are going to church in the morning. Some of these people, you know, have different things on Sunday that they do. That becomes a really difficult thing. And so it's not the best.
But at the end of the day, it's college football and we're going to watch it whenever it is. I mean, if the game was at two AM, I guarantee you people would tune in and watch it. So I you know, I don't get too caught up on it. I do like earlier games, and I think for a team like Utah, they want to be more on the national spotlight, but the last two years haven't afford to them that And so I think you get the break where you are
on Fox. You get that National Line. But you're not going to get it in the exact prime time that you were thinking of, so it still works. It's still something that people are going to be excited for most you know, a lot of fans are going to go out to the Rose Bowl and check this game out and have fun, so it'll still be a good time.
I'm opener cal Poly four o'clock. That feels like a really really.
Solid time then at Wyoming six o'clock, CBS Sports Network. But I'll ask you about the final game of the regular season at least and will you be spending Thanksgiving in Kansas as it's the day after Thanksgiving and it is a ten to a m kick, which is aggressively early.
Your thoughts on that, Yeah, the ten AM one.
That one I'm more frustrated with because nobody likes that game. I mean, it's nice in the sense that it's early and it's it's one of those things that people can wake up after Thanksgiving and enjoy.
But you know, covering games like that, it's tough. Last year, I had to travel.
On Thanksgiving, miss you know, spending time with my family to go out to UCF to be able to have the Black Friday game and that was a little later in the night. But you know you have to take them the flights you're given this one, you know, this one's tough. I mean, you know, I'm gonna be once again on a plane on Thanksgiving ready for a ten am game. For me, I don't love it just because of the travel, But I'm not going to have anybody worry about me.
That's not my issue. I just think ten.
Am games are just a real testing right, Like I think you don't want to have that at the end of the day. If this is on ABC, I think fans will be happy. If not, it's on ESPN, which is still good. But I think you know, if you can get that ABC Utah is doing well, suddenly that becomes a great showing for your program and maybe you're in a position.
To be able to be in a big twelve championship. I don't know.
We'll see how this team goes, but there's there's the ten where it could be good. You're gonna have a lot of eyeballs on you. But at the same time, that's usually the rivalry weekend and a lot of other teams are going to be paying attention to that week more than Utah Kansas.
Tell our listeners, Josh, you guys have been covering this and I obviously read the stuff you write about, you know, anything pertaining to the you it's the twenty twenty six visits in the twenty twenty six recruiting class. Obviously that's not top of mine right now. We have a season prior to. But how that's kind of the main you know, you know, point of emphasis for this program currently in
this coaching staff currently. Any insight on how these visits went and any names you want to throw out there commits that our listeners should know about.
Yeah, so Utah has two commits right now, Preston Pitts and Lagary Mitchell. Two two good guys that I think are more of the underrated guys that Utah tried to go for and hope that they can be stars. But you know, starting last weekend there's a you know, a large group I think it was twelve players that came
in for an official visit. This begins a one month period where there's going to be something like forty five or more athletes coming through Utah on official visits where they whine and dynam really try to show how it is one of the perspective, you know, recruits. He showed video of the Utah offensive line really working through plays with him so that they could kind of get a
vibe with it. So this is this is really Utah trying to showcase themselves to all of these kids that have a lot of talent, that have a lot of buyers, that are going to be visiting a lot of other places. The biggest name there, at least locally, is Celesimoa. This is an athlete who can play both sides of the ball. I mean, he is probably the closest that we've seen in a while to probably like a Travis Hunter style where he can play wide receiver, he can be on
the other sides of the dB. Really talented kid, number one kid in the state of Utah, and so there's a lot of emphasis to try to get him to Utah. The other kid that I'll mention is Kelvin Obot. This
is the number one recruit out of Idaho. You know, with Spencer Fano and Caleb Lomu potentially moving on to the NFL this next year as potential first round picks, this becomes a great opportunity to get a new offensive tackled, and Utah has shown that they're willing to put freshmen in there, just like they did with Spencer Fanos.
So that's that's the.
Big selling point for for those And if you can get those two guys alone, I think that really improves your chances on what this recruiting class can be. So this next month is going to be really busy for Utah. There's gonna be a lot of kids coming in and out of the state of Utah to try to kind of see what they're all about. And you're gonna start seeing a lot more commits here coming soon.
Since you and I last spoke, Bill Conley released his post Spring sp Plus for ESPN dot Com and I like Bill and this model seems to make a lot of sense to me. And of course a post Spring sp plus ranking certainly will not tell the entire story what we could see come fall, and we still have a number of months until we actually see these teams play.
But when you look at the post Spring sp plus ranking, the highest rated Big twelve team is Case State at eighteen, and then it goes like this, Arizona State is twenty two byu Exeated Texas Texas twenty six, BYU is twenty seven, and we'll see what the rets last stuffed, you know, as far as how that plays out, then it is TCU twenty nine in Utah thirty one, and Utah's right ahead of Iowa State, who's at thirty two. So that
puts Utah at five in the Big twelve. On Bill Conley's sp plus Vegas over under a seven point five and that also puts Utah about five six seven. It seems like most everything I read for Big twelve predictions and previews has Utah kind of middle of the pack as opposed at the top of the pack this year.
Does that drive with your understanding?
Yeah, no for sure.
And I think you know, Bill Conley does a great job of being able to put those things together. He fine tunes his data to really make sure that it fits with the current you know, ages of the transit portal stuff like that. But I think that's that's really
where Utah is going to fit, right. I think based on their potential on paper, they have what it takes to kind of be in the mix, right, and I think you're going to see them, you know, at least be competitive and people think that they can be competitive. But the real question is just canad all come together with so many players coming over from the transfer portal on the offensive side, especially, you know, it takes.
Time to jail.
I mean, I think there's there's you know, positions that help Utah in the sense that the offensive line.
Works together, they've played together, that one's going to be connected.
And then you've got a quarterback that has seemingly done really well at Jason Beck's offense. I think those things can work well, but it's still unsure how that will go against, you know, teams in the Big twelve.
So I think it's a good spot for Utah.
You know, you're not going to get this preseason polled where you're a top twenty five team, but you're lurking, we'll say. And so I think whether you're you know, the second tier, third tier type team and the Big twelve, I think that's good for Utah and I think they can do some damage if they live up to the potential that they.
Have for themselves.
I hate to make the rets last off a football story, I really do. But this is a sports talk radio show, and so I will ask you while we're all kind of a waiting word about how this is going to play out.
Brian Santiago made his first comments.
I think to you, guys is where I saw that since taking over as a d and he said, what you would expect, They're going to let the process play out. He has confidence it will work out. Blah blah blah blah blah. If if the Rets laugh stuff comes to the point where they just have decided they've got to move on from him, what does that make BYU's football season look like?
And do they have good depth in that room?
Yeah, that one that was the real tricky question there because coming into spring camp they had three quarterbacks including rets last and you have experienced the Ka Hills, did you know it was up at Utah State had obviously started for them and had some success, but they're you know,
it would be a definite drop off from that. They did get some in the transfer portal and stuff that way, but I think that becomes probably the biggest worry for this team, where they're predicted that seven and a half wins as well, and obviously coming off the season that they had, there's a lot of expectations for this team
to be good. But if you don't get a good quarterback that knows the system and it has that chemistry, you know, especially if there is this off the field drama with you know, I don't know if players are frustrated with this, you know what their feelings are. It has a real chance to distract, even if you have a good quarterback in place, to distract from kind of what you built last year, right, And I think coming into lot from last year, this is a team.
That was overlooked.
They kind of believed in themselves, They rallied around themselves and really just kind of insulated themselves from the world. And when it started to work, things jibed.
Right.
Now, you've got this huge off sson hurdle that you have to manage, and whether you have reds left back or not, that becomes a real distraction to just what you're trying.
To do as a team. Right.
Obviously, the things that are being alleged are way more serious than.
What football is.
But at the same time time, when we're just speaking about the football, that becomes a very massive distraction, as it should, right, I mean, I think if there's something serious that happens like that, it should be a distraction. But I think that's unfortunate to these guys that have put in their hard work and effort to be able to get there, to suddenly have something that didn't even impact them now distract them from kind of the success that they were hoping to build.
All right, Josh, before I set you loose, Look, I don't know if the narrative, a narrative of Alex is going to hire Andre Miller was just something that we created out of thin air, or maybe it was people pining for Utah basketball the past and believing that one two punch would be really dynamic. And I maintain, as somebody who was there in the nineties that Andre has a level of cachet for my generation that is hard
to find. But it looks like it's not going to be anything that we'll see, at least not anytime soon.
Do you have any insight here?
Do you know whether or not it was ever really discussed, or it was ever really close And maybe is there a chance that could happen at some point even though it doesn't look like it's gonna happen now.
Yeah, there was definitely some real conversations about that. I mean, there was mutual interest between Alex and Andrea to be able to bring him on staff. I think with what Alex was trying to build for his first year and just kind of the output that he was expecting, I just don't know that there was a you know, the right fit right. Obviously, andre is a great ambassador of the program, he was going to be a great salesman for the you. He was going to bring a lot
of excitement. Those weren't the questions. I think it was more just with what Alex was trying to do this year, what kind of commitment level it would take, And I just don't think they were able to agree on that. So you know, whether that whether he's able to circle back to that in a future time, you know, remains
to be seen. I think, you know, there's definitely not a door closed there, but I think there you know, Alex is trying to do the best that he can to bring his model and not necessarily bring back.
The Vick and Jarris era.
He's still going to play homage to it, try to bring in that kind of era and kind of.
Get people excited. But at the end of the day, this is the Alex.
Smith or Alex Jenson or excuse me, and you know he's got to do what he can to be able to be the guy and not live off the cotails of somebody else.
All right, Josh, good to catch up. Man.
Appreciate the time as always, have a great week and we'll chat soon.
That great appreciate it, sense.
Josh for a long stops by today courtesy of our good friends at IFA Country Stores.
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