All right, we are live today at Arup Blood Services. It's ninety seven eighty six South five hundred West and Sandy, let me repeat that as the edge was a.
Little loud coming in there.
That's why I died.
Ninety seven eighty six South five hundred West and Sandy.
Give local, Save Local.
It's the sole blood provider for the University of Utah and the Huntsman Cancer Institute, which means we need blood. If you're looking four ways to give back this holiday season, roll Up takes about thirty thirty five minutes of your time. We'll hook you up with a Megaplex gift card, Amazon gift cards on the table as well, and you can say hello to the legend himself, Richard.
Smith on a Wednesday Smeddi, Happy Wednesday.
Man, same to you, Spencer. This is by the way, this is a great spot for you to do your show whenever you get the opportunity to come out here to Arup. These guys do such a great job and helping the University of Utah and the hospital and getting the blood and the donation they need, you know, to help people this time of year. So it's it's fantastic. I always love doing stuff with you in these kinds of settings where people are trying to help help other people.
It's just terrific.
Well, I appreciate you saying that. I appreciate you being out here. It's nice to come out in this direction. So we've got you for an hour. We'll save the jazz stuff for a little bit later, because I like to get your perspective on some of the local things that are happening. And since you and I last spoke, the head coach of the University of Utah said not yet, not like this, and Coach Wit is back for year twenty one.
Yeah, And I've got to say I've been surprised.
At what I perceived to be a reaction that I wasn't anticipating. And I want to be very clear here, I can't say forty percent of the community or twenty whatever it is, But based off of some emails I've received, some phone calls, some text messages, and some of the reaction, I feel like he's still considered to be one of the best coaches in all of college football, and certainly the best coach that this university.
Has ever had.
And I keep coming back to this line from Batman. You either die a hero or you live long enough to become a villainy. Well, what's your take on some people that think it might be time to the succession plan to take place?
Well, first of all, my reaction is, who are these people like? I mean, it's you know, it's Bobby in his basement bedroom of his parents' home, like putting stuff online or whatever. I mean to me, I mean guys like Kyle Whittingham who have done what they've done, who's shown you what they know what they're doing. And I mean, to me, it's insulting that it's even you know, any kind of a discussion topic among the people in general, because someone who's shown what they can do and they
have a bad year for whatever. All the reasons are that everybody knows. All of a sudden, everybody wants to jump ship and it's a uh, it's you know, but we live in spence in this uh what if you've done for me lately?
World? Right?
And everybody wants everything yesterday, and so as soon as it's not good, they're all they all want to throw everything in the trash can and start over again. It's it's really to me, it's really insulting.
Uh.
For coach Winningham and for his staff, you know, to have that kind of reaction after all they've done and and shown what what they mean to college football in in the Western United States and in this in this region. It's you know, he he individually has done enough that he should be allowed to do it. However he wants to do it like he's gotten from me. He's gotten that card that says you got it. You just do
whatever you want. You want to stay another five years, you want to leave tomorrow, you want to have some other guy.
Who's gonna be here.
So whatever it is, you've earned that right based on what your track record has been. And this thing about reacting to a bad season because of all the things we know happened is just ludicrous to me.
Let me play Devil's advocate for a moment here while also making my personal opinion clear, as I did the Monday after the announcement. Kyle wants to come back. How's coming back? I mean, I'm old enough to remember when six wins a bowl game and maybe beat BYU was the pinnacle for Utah football.
They were in the Rose Bowl two years ago.
Yep, Okay, Now this is a new world in collegian athletics, as you and I have discussed. But let me pose this scenario to you and let's kind of process it through to see if there's anything there. Because what's happened now in the landscape of college football, and it's not just in Utah, because whenever you hear a college football speak during the offseason, what is he talking about? Nil investment from the community.
We need your help.
So there are powerful ute alumni, booster season ticket, older donors that are now being asked to do more economically and financially for the athletic department than they've ever been asked to do before. And some of them are writing seven figure checks. Okay, I know that to be true. Therefore, my guess would be their voices are going to be a little bit more loud as it pertains to what they want their program to look like.
If you're asking us to write these checks.
If there are those people, not Bob in his basement, no, powerful donors, people that are backing this program financially, that call Taylor Randall and call Mark Carlt and say it's time.
What do you do with that?
Well, you know those are the guys Spence who are also at every reception, every major announcement of whatever, hob nobbing.
You know.
We're using this live example, right of uh with Kyle Whittingham, you know, rubbing shoulders with him, hanging out. Yeah, yeah, I like this new quarterback. Yeah, this is gonna be great whatever whatever, and uh and they want to be a buddy buddy in the program because they feel like they've bought their way in.
Or they've earned their way in in some other regard.
And then as soon as uh, uh, you know, there's a ripple in the water, you know, they they start running for the for the hills. I mean, that's you know, I'm not sure those are the people, you know, that that you want involved in your program. If they, I mean, you're either in in with the group or you're not that that's kind No, that's right, and so uh, you know, and I don't know if there's any of those people necessarily uh you know involved at this point in time
with the with the University of Utah. I know exactly what you're saying. There are a lot of those kind of people who are who are what we always reference as heavy hitters, right, and they they have a voice in the room Okay, but there's there's some point, there's some line in the sand where you know, you have some guy who's been there for a little while and he's been okay, had some success, some things didn't quite go right whatever. Okay, we're questioning what this is long term.
But when you're talking about a Kyle Whittingham, you're talking about a Greg Popovich, you're talking about a Jerry Sloan, whoever it is, who has shown you what they can do when they have the players, when when everything's lined up and they're ready to go toe to toe with
their opposition night and night out. You know, if those guys still wanted to you know, be doing it and they've they've got it, they know how to figure it out, they'll, you know, Kyle Winningham, Yeah, it's a new landscape and in I L and all that and transferred portal stuff. But Kyle, I'm sure has gotten guys on his staff who know how to navigate that stuff, who know how to what they need to do to be able to
keep that train moving forward. I know, like you know, uh, not to transition off of for a second, but but with Kevin Young, the new basketball coach at b YU, you know, has brought in his a brand new staff there and has lined up all these guys who work in their office, you know, dealing with all this stuff.
And obviously we've seen a.
Big apple fall off the tree yesterday with the announcement of the Debanza kid uh committing to come to BYU. But you surround yourself with people in the in the college landscape now, with people who know that, who know the grassroots, who know what it takes and what you
have to be able to do. And you know what I'm afraid of is that that it's just starting to get away from everybody in terms of, you know, what the numbers are and what's what's happening now in college athletics across the board to get kids, you know, to to commit to come to your university and play with you. And I know Kyle's guy guys around him who are figuring that out, who know what needs to be done, and they'll reset and they'll come back strong next year.
There's no doubt in my mind about that.
All Right, you referenced it.
Okay, we'll move off the coach with stuff and we're going to continue to kind of talk about some of the things that are causing ripples throughout the community. But we now know, based off of some good reporting of college basketball writers, that aj Debants has signed his letter of intent November nineteenth or twentieth. Of course, as all young athletes do, there had to be a dog and
pony show. He had to jump off a helicopter with his red bull hat on to sit next to stephen A Smith with his father to inform the world that he has decided to attend Brigham Young University.
I always get a kick out of it because after.
The announcement, I listened to three or four random college basketball podcasts, and I always get a kick out of listening in real time when national people learn about what BYU was all about and so like.
For instance, this morning, I was listening to in a.
College basketball podcast where they learned in real time what BYU's honor code is, and they learned in real time what happened with Brandon Davies and why Jimmerfurdett never went to a Final four and how the Brandon Davies situation. So you know, Brandon was their second best player and he gets kicked off the team for allegedly having premarital sex.
I think they went to the sweet sixteen, but.
For det was so next level that year, they probably could have gone to an Elite eight, maybe a Final four.
We'll never know.
And so the reaction of the national media that cover college basketball know who AJ is has been pretty funny because they're stunned that AJ has picked Brigham On.
Now. He could have gone anywhere.
His final final schools were Carolina, Kansas, Bama, and BYU.
The reports are he really.
Wanted Bama, but they couldn't meet his financial ask and Carolina and Kansas rely on their blue blood nature, so they say, no, this is the deal. If you want to play for us, you're gonna make this amount. Obviously, there's a Ryan Smith angle here, there's a Danny Ainge angle here.
The reports are he has.
Been paid between five and seven million dollars to play college basketball BYU for five months because he and his father both said on first take, we're one and done. Now I will say, and you're gonna roll your eyes. And I love your reaction to this. Over the past twenty four hours, I've read more about this kid than I have anybody this year. It's Cooper Flagg twenty twenty seven. It's a kid named Tyrone Stokes and twenty twenty six it's AJ Debansa.
There's a CBS poll.
They polled NBA scouts of those three players, Cooper Flag, Tyrone Stokes, AJ Debantsa. Who would you take if they were in the same draft? It was overwhelmingly in favor of AJ. And from what I've seen, Smitty, I mean, you know the deal. If you're at a high school game, or even if you're at a college game, you're watching prospects, the prospects that are.
Ranked between like thirty and like one hundred and twenty.
Sometimes it's hard to tell, like exactly what's different about then the guys that pop.
You see like, oh, okay, and he appears to have everything he wants.
There's a marathon between this day and the day he enters the NBA. But from a Brigham Young Kevin Young standpoint, what could yesterday mean for the program they're trying to build.
Well first and foremost spence What it does It puts by U right in the forefront of the national media and and everybody else who follows college basketball to say, oh, oh, those guys are in the mix now, knowing on here, Yeah, because you have a Devans and or you have Cooper Flag last year. Whoever all these guys Ace Bailey at Rutgers and you know, all of a sudden, you're used to hearing those kinds of names with the same group of schools all the time. Duke, North Carolina, Kansas sometimes
U c l A, you know, uh Yukon. You know those are the those are the schools where all the guys that gravitate too and then they sifted out through there. Who's gonna who is gonna be a betefit for me?
And and however they're judging that. But now all of a sudden, b y U is one of those guys, because everybody's going, well, wait a minute, this isn't an LDS kid you know from oram Utah who decided to go here, or like they've had in the past, you know, like a Great Kite back in the eighties who came from Houston, Texas, or a Danny Ainge in the late seventies who came from Eugene, Oregon. You know, this is
a kid from Boston, Massachusetts. Sean Yeah, Sean Bradley was down the street, you know, But this isn't this isn't
an LDS kid, and he's not a local kid. He's you know you probably uh uh six months ago could have challenged him with a map of the United States to say, okay, you got three choice, you got three chances to tell me where a BYU is located and point to it on a map, right, But they end up getting him to come from Boston to Actually he's been now his third high school and they he's down at the Utah Prep and Hurricane doing his senior year
of high school and getting ready for BYU. So b YU is showing that they're a major player with those other guys now.
And the only.
Thing you can really equate it to or are the two things that have happened in the last twelve months, and that is that the change in the coaching situation where Mark Pope left for Kentucky and b YU brought in Kevin Young who has an NBA background and told b YU and in certain regards that you know, if you want to hire me, the only way I know how to do it is to set up an NBA
type program. And if we're going to do that, you know that we have to be able to compete now in the Big Twelve with Kansas, with Baylor, with Texas Tech, with Kansas State, Arizona now in the Big Twelve. So so yeah, these you know, this is a big time basketball men's basketball conference, and so if you want us to be one of those guys, we have to be able to compete on the same level they do to
go after kids. Kids know about Kansas, right, they know about Houston Baylor who won the national championship several years ago. They know something about by U, but not a lot. If you want to be with them in the same breath with those guys, you got to make these kind of changes. And that's the way Kevin Young is running
the program now. And also with the financial backing of whether it's Ryan Smith or whoever it is, that that's that's lining up behind to take part in that from the financial nil standpoint, but they've got the backing apparently to do that. And so if that's the deal, then what it does spends it opens up that big door that now the one the one main kid has decided he's going there. So now the other main kids, whoever, they are coming down the pipe the next you know, year,
two years, five years, whatever it is. They're gonna say, well, yeah, yeah, you know, I'm one of the top rated kids and I'm sixteen years old and I'm a high school sophomore and I got my list is you know, I'm already looking at Duke in Kansas and North Carolina and BYU. And now they put BYU in with that group, you know, because they've seen that that's a school that is gonna play with the big boys and can go.
Now, what do they have to do? Now?
They have to bring it on the core. Now they have to be able to produce on the court to be able to win. So that brings added pressure to the program in terms of having some level of success and being able to go to toe to toe with those guys.
You know, Gonzaga has.
Done it for years, you know, with a from a mid major profile in the Northwest, in the West Coast Conference, a small school conference. But Gonzaga has been able to also build it up but then make that transition to the way it's being run now because they have donors, they have people who are helping to say, yeah, we want to stay up with those guys. And Gonzaga is the one school to me that I think, you know, I love what they do, I love how they do it.
But they are the school that in November and December they say, we play anybody anywhere, let's go. And it's not this like you know, Kentucky, Duke North, those guys, Oh they'll play you, but they'll play you three times at their place and one time at a neutral place, you know, or whatever. They always feel like we have
the leverage, we don't have to. But Gonzaga says, hey, we'll go wherever you want us to go to Bahamas, you want us to go to Yukon, to going to New York this week to play Yukon, they go, you know, they you know, they played in Seattle the other day was a return game from Kentucky because they played at Kentucky left all this stuff.
You know.
They've built that up where they play everybody anywhere.
Before their conference season.
BYU, I think is heading in that direction where they're going to say, hey, we want to play everybody because this is what we do, and that's how we attract the good players. Because the good players want to play in big games. They want to play against the other guys.
You know, and if you're not worried about your preseason conference schedule, and you're not worried as a coach about, well, we have to figure out how to get to be eleven and two before we go into conference, because that shows everybody that I'm a good coach and that I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna be able to.
Hold on to my job for next year or whatever. You know.
That's the players want to play in the big games whenever they can, and they want to play against the other guys, and so that's what BYU is setting themselves up to do. And they're off to a running start, obviously with the recruits they've got this year and deming and catchings and now this kid coming from Boston in a year.
So there's a chance, whether it's intentional because leadership is seen around corners, or there's some serendipity involved that BYU is a little bit ahead of the curve as far as how they've been able to build their basketball infrastructure.
And here's why.
On the football side of things, you hear all the time, we have to start building out our infrastructure the same way the NFL does. So now we have general managers in college football and there are other staff additions that sound very much like an NFL press release. Kevin has Will Voight, who you know, who's the head coach of teams internationally as well as the G League, Tim Fanning, over Time Elite. His strength and conditioning staff are all
former NBA people. His nutritionists she came directly from pro basketball. There's no other staff in college basketball built like this, Smitte, There really is not, And the main reason why is that it's really rare for people who have tasted NBA charter food to decide that they want to go take
a rental car to Des Moines, Iah to recruit a prospect. Right, So, look there before we break, the question I have for you is is this sustainable to the point where we're seeing the beginning stages of Kevin and Brigham Young building a college basketball powerhouse? Or is it Ben Simmons to Lsu is it Dewan Wagner Memphis.
We've seen this right before.
We've seen big time top prospects take the path less traveled by because the uncle's the assistant coach or whatever it is, and it's just a moment in time. Does this feel like to you it's the start of something pretty sustainable down in provo.
Well, I think what will happens Spence is, as you mentioned a minute ago, you can get all this stuff set up, you can line it all up, you can get all the best people around you and to help get the program up and going the way you want and going in that direction. You can have the support behind you in terms of the finances, the resources you make available. But at the end of the day in March,
you have to be whatever it's going to be. You have to be twenty seven and three and you know, making a deep.
Run in the NCAA tournament.
You know, if you get the top players and your team is waddling around eighteen and fourteen year or whatever like that, you know, then people are going to start questioning whether they can actually do it.
On the floor.
And that's always the final The final verdict is is how well do you play and what do the wins and losses, you know, stack up to be. If he brings in the right guys and they're coaching them up and they get all this support and they they don't play as well as is expected, you know, then then there's gonna be a lot of you know, raised eyebrows.
But if they if they start.
Running it like in Zaga has for years, right, and every year you know they're gonna be in the mix for the conference championship and they're gonna be you know, twenty five and and five, or they're gonna have a winning record and they're gonna get on runs in the NCAA tournament. That's what builds up that momentum and sustains it. But that's that's really what the end the end game is.
Do all this other stuff, which is a lot of noise, but at the end, we got to come out and produce and we got to take care of business.
Yeah, I gotta go to work. Kevin's got to coach now.
I mean, John Calipari did win a national championship, but when you look at the list of players he's had, people wonder if he's a coach or a car salesman.
I don't know. I hope that doesn't sound harsh.
All right, we'll catch a break before we do. Deb Jordan stops buy out here at Arup Blood Services.
Deb, how are you? I'm great.
It's so great to listen to this great conversation.
He's a wealth of knowledge. I just sit back and ask the questions and listen, it's a lot of fun.
All right.
We're asking for blood donations today out here at ARUP Blood Services at ninety seven eighty six South Sandy Parkway. As I ask you to do to start every segment, we are incentivizing.
You to do good. What are we doing for our listeners today?
Yeah, First of all, that feeling of euphoria is also a sense of doing good. So but for us for giving out ten dollars Megaplex gift cards to our blood donors and twenty dollars Amazon cards to our platelet donors, and we have this great drawing every day for one hundred dollar Amazon, we figure we can help you buy some Christmas presents or put that turkey on the table for you too.
So I'm reading this on the copy points.
The hospitals you guys serve, need at least seventy five donors per day to meet needs.
Do what is it about this.
Time of year?
I think it's every day of the year. The hospital's growing to meet the growing population. The Huntsman is growing to meet the demands of councer patients. They also serve the Greater West regions and they're seeing patients from outside of Utah, so they're really busy. But that includes blood drives, so people can donate out in the community at one of our blood drives as well.
All Right, we were talking last segment about the Huntsman Cancer Institute, and you do not know this, Smitty does some of my listeners do. I am a alumni of the Huntsman Cancer Institute and I needed blood when I was there. And it's funny you don't really consider, like, hey, I wonder where this blood came from. You're just like, hey,
I kind of need this right now. So what specifically about the Huntsman Cancer Institute is so kind of vital for our listeners to come donate to make sure we're helping them out.
You know, I didn't know that about you. I also am a Huntsman alone. I haven't hit my five years yet, so I'm still in that period chemotherapy. Some chemotherapy treatments just eradicate, they just destroy platelets and so you're just sort of bleeding on the inside. So we want to make sure that the chemo patients, the cancer patients, that the patients who have sickle cell can have that blood and platelets available to them. Platelets only last five days.
So we always need donors to come in. You can donate every two weeks. But being a Huntsman alum is not something that you really want to be in that same club. But there's a lot of people here in the Salt Lake Valley and we need to help them.
It's not a club you want to be in, but when you are in it and you come out the other side, there's a perspective that you can't teach.
Yeah, I didn't need a transfusion when I was there. I was really lucky when I was being treated there, But you know, you just feel awful. Your life is just spiraling out. And so the fact that a family is going through that, or a dad or a mom or a grandma is going through that, we want to make sure that they're not worried about anything else when they're there as well, Like the blood is there, the plate's there, everything is there that they need to get treated for sure.
All right, before I set you loose, let's just tell people about the process they'll go through when they come out here to donate.
So it's pretty easy. You come in and you greet with our receptionist and you have a little health history questionnaire that kind of through all your medications and what your body is going through at the moment. We want you to be healthy. You get a little mini health screening with our forubottomist, and then the donation process for a blood only takes about, you know, thirty minutes total, So for thirty minutes you can really save three people's lives.
And then you can come out and hang out in the waiting room and eat the best snacks around.
You can ask smitty basketball question. You had to come hang out with us, right.
It's pretty great. You guys should come down today. We're open until seven tonight. We're open seven days a week. We're going to be closed on Christmas, so that means we need a few more donors a day before and a few more donors a day after. But that allows our staff to have the day off as well, but the hospital doesn't stop.
Deb Thanks for your work. Thanks for okay.
Here's the address, ninety seven eighty six south five hundred West in Sandy. Very easy to find, but I would put it in your GPS.
Follow that out.
We've got a station van out front ninety seven eighty six out five hundred West and Sandy all.
The blood stays in Utah.
They are the sole provider for the University of Utah and the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
So please come out.
Get a Megaplex gift card, Amazon gift card on the table as well. Out here at Arup Blood Services on a Wednesday. All right, Morris Smithy coming up next right here on ESPN seven hundred.
Kyle Whittingham and Utah Football, Utah Men's and women's basketball, Martee games in the NFL from Week one to the Super Bowl, the biggest NBA games from the regular season to the finals. Top NHL games till they lift, the Stanley Cup, Major League Baseball, and the World Series, the biggest of Vincent sports are exclusively on Utah's number one sports talk ESPN seven hundred and ninety two to one.
Alp M.
All right love today. Arup Blood Services. Come on by and say hello. Richard Smith is live on site ninety seven eighty six South, five hundred West and Sandy very easy to find the phone numbers eight oh one, five eight four fifty two seventy two. You can visit Utah blood dot org for more information if you have any questions. Open seven days a week, they will be closed on Christmas. So if you're looking for something to do this.
Holiday season, come on, buy and do some good, donate some blood. Are you you fan of the holidays?
You get Christmas out, you decorate the tree, get ready for the Well, no.
We do.
We do it all. But my my wife, Linda does all that stuff. She's she gets all the house you know where I live in a scenario, you know, spence, so I can try and help with something. I'll put something on a shelf and then she'll come over five minutes later, and you know, it goes over here, does it's it's over on this.
Side, not that sid Well, that's probably good.
You know.
But I and I joke about that, of course, but but she but I mentioned that to a friend of behind just recently about that, and she's asked me about Christmas decorator. I said, well, yeah, my wife does it, does it all. But I seem to like not put stuff in the right place. And he says, oh, yeah, that's that's I'm onto that guys do that on purpose, so that so that the the the wife of the women in the house will go, hey, why don't you go downstairs and watch the football game? And I'll take
care of the decorating. Okay, you guys got that all figured out. And I go, really, she goes, oh, yeah, I'm onto you guys.
No, no, that's not true.
Okay, And I don't want to wait into the area of misogynist it takes. But when I was home for Thanksgiving, I decided I was going to clean the kitchen and I was going to do the dishes, and my dear mother, bless her heart, comes downstairs and changes every like.
I put everything in the wrong place.
Yeah.
So yeah, I guess what's the answer.
You try to help out a little bit, but when it comes to the final decision, you just take a step back and say do your thing.
Yeah.
Well, you know, in our whole household anyway, Spence, for anything that we do, it's it's it's an equal opportunity place. I have one vote and my wife has two votes, and so that's you know, that's how it run. That's a democratic society.
Maybe that's how you stay married. And you're better at it than I certainly have proven to be. All right, Richard's live on site real quick breaking news. Bill Belichick is accepting the North Carolina coaching job.
Yeah, what I don't. Hey, look, everybody has to do their home thing. Bill Belichick again in uh, you know, we talked about Kyle Whittingham in the last segment. Belichick has done so much to prove who he is as a coach and at the NFL and the pro rags. He's got to be some kind of you know, lifer who's just itching to get back in the film room and on the on the practice field and all that kind of stuff. To to go back to college, especially
with all this nil transfer portal stuff. He's, uh, you know, why would you when if you're someone who's in in his position go back and do that. It's got to be just because he has such a such an itch to do that kind of work and to get into it and and you know, especially at the college level where you're doing that recruiting and all that stuff. But yeah, that's a kind of a surprise to me.
Are our coaches just lunatics?
I mean, can they not walk away once they're because it seems like lifers, right. Some of them do transition into media, uh, and some of them do transition into other things. But I mean, Bill Belichick's been a football coach for like fifty years. Is it just kind of at some point what you know.
Yeah, well that's you know, you some guys have to have it in their blood and they're just like they just they just can't get away from you. Whether it's Jay Wright, you know at Villanova, who did step away while he was right in the middle of his his career and and and and uh really doing well at Villanova. Whether it's Mike Krzyzewski who was near the end of it, you know, in terms of his age and stuff, but he just decided that now is the right time to
step back. And you know, Bill Belichick, it didn't go I think the way that he wanted to at the end with New England, and uh has been out for a couple of years, and you know, looks like he just has to be around the game.
And maybe this is.
An opportunity where he gets to be able to do it the way he wants to do it, and you know, at a place that's that's a high profile school.
So well, and maybe it's an avenue back to pro football. I don't know. I don't know.
Interesting news though, is Bill Belichick has accepted the job at North Carolina to coach their football team. All right, last segment discussing some of the local stuff with aj Debant's high speed ahead to bring me young, and coach went back on the sidelines when it comes to coaching the youths for the twenty first season coming up, I want to ask you one more question in this space and then we'll do some jazz I guess. Transfer portal nil. As of this morning, I haven't checked the up to
date numbers. This afternoon, we're approaching two thousand football players in the transfer portal. We talked about, you know, the players that Utah is losing and they're gonna lose more.
That's just the deal.
Initially I pushed back on the premise that this was becoming pro sports, but.
Now it just is.
And it seems like every single issue that drives fans crazy, every single issue that drives administrators and coaches crazy, really could be solved by allowing the players to unionize and collectively bargain with the governing body that run And I'm saying football specifically, okay, And yes, I know that the ancillary issues are plentiful. And whenever you hear pushback on the pro model comes from university presidents who do not want these young people to be employees of their institution.
And I understand that, but I'm SPORTSCOC radio host. So we're going to stick with the football side of things. What's the downside, Smitty at this point? Because at least if you allow the players to unionize collectively, bargain and it would be a mess, it would take a long time. At the very least, they will sign contracts to stick around for a couple of years. And look, each contract,
just like in the pros, would be different. Your opt out is this, if you don't play this amount of games, if you're not happy after a year, maybe it's a one and done thing where you can leave the next season. But if you're the institution, you would have the ability to sign a player for maybe three years and then he's allowed to go pro or whatever. Do you see any downside at this point to the model that the pros use, that college is clearly leaning into anyway.
No, Well, it seems like it has to go in that direction because right now, when you're talking about in professional sports, you negotiate with someone you know, whether they're a draft pick that's coming in or a free agent that you're trying to acquire you have a written agreement that says that they're going to perform for you services that you will in turn pay them for for X amount of period of time. In college now, you don't
have anything like that that's binding. So you can have you know, you can have a guy coming into your program and he's all set to go and something goes wrong in a practice or a friend of his and another school says, Oh, we're really we're really killing it in practice.
We're gonna be a good team this year.
Too bad you didn't come and play with us whatever, And the kid goes, oh, maybe maybe I should come
play with you guys. I mean, you can do that at this point in time in college athletics, So they have to have something that they're gonna be able to put their teeth into that that allows the institutions to have some modicum of control in terms of how they're running their programs with respect to the student athlete, because otherwise it's just this wild wild West that's a revolving door and and everybody's coming every you know, in and out, and you don't know who's on what team, and and
it really really references the uh the old Seinfeld routine that he used to do about growing up a Mets fan and all his all his guys and he rooted for you know, Tommy ag and Cleon Jones and all these guys when he was growing up.
And they were his guys.
And and now he's says, I'm still a Mets fan, but I don't know who's playing for the Mets because you know, the guy's changed so much and everything, because so really I'm not rooting for the players. Really, what I find I'm doing is I'm just rooting for laundry. You know, So whoever's wearing a Mets jersey, that's who I'm rooting for.
But I don't even know who the guy is.
And so, you know, that's that's what it's gotten to in terms of college athletics. You know, the teams are switching around, the players are switching in and out every year. We don't have a gymmer for Debt for four years to root for and grow up with and see them get better and all that, yeah, and all that kind of stuff. So, uh so that that's what's disturbing about college athletics right.
Now in that regard.
And then whatever is happening with the revenue producing sports, right, which is always said to be football and men's basketball.
Right.
Uh, some schools maybe women's basketball somewhat, some schools maybe like the University of Utah with the women's gymnastics. You know, But again, why is that that way up there, Spence? Because they've had a winning program that's been sustained for so many years and people have gotten used to that and they want to be part of that winning, you know,
positive environment. And what's gonna happen with all of the other ancillary sports, you know, the tennis team and the track and field team, and the baseball team, and you know, whoever it is that that aren't revenue producing sports, how are they going to be affected by all of this stuff? Is really is really going to be very interesting in the coming years.
All Right, got about ten minutes ish left with Smitty, so we will talk some jazz.
Okay, all right? That was that was good. That's good, Spence. The pregnant pause that.
Look, I'm going to say this and you're gonna roll your eyes at me, but John Collins is a fifty to forty ninety guy this.
Year, that's right, And he's twenty seven years old.
Yep.
And I feel like because Walker Keyante Taylor Price. I feel like because there's so many nineteen twenty twenty one year old players on the roster and they're so far from being even average.
We talk about John like he's forty yep. Is there an area.
In your mind, a space that exists that John might be a player that is playing better Underwill than he ever did with any coach he's had before, And maybe he's part of like this thing. But I don't know, man, I'm trying to make it interesting space.
No, no, but that.
But it's a great point because when they made their trade for John Collins, he was really more like their version of a free agent signing right. They couldn't get anybody. Atlanta almost seemed like they wanted to trade him, you know, from the moment they re signed him, and it seemed like it was a move that they had made at that time simply because they didn't want to lose him
for nothing. So they signed him, signed him at that time to a contract that a lot of people thought was maybe too much, you know, in the twenty five million dollar range a year for what he did for the team. They were willing to trade him. Eventually, the Jazz had had money available, so they so they took him in to take a look at him. And now he's playing a different game. He's you're you're exactly right. A lot of people lose sight of the fact that he's,
really basketball wise, just entering his prime. He's in that same window that Lowry markin is in. They're the same age. And so has he refined his game? Has he been able to change some of his game enough that it fits in. Is it, if you want to take the negative view, is it because he's with a team that's not expected to win and a team that's struggling to win games right now. So when you have those games and you're in those games on that side of it,
there's less pressure on you. And if you have less pressure to produce, maybe you play more freely. And if you play more freely, maybe a real skill level or talent level comes out. You know, it's all those things and that could be combined. And so what you're looking at as a guy who, again it's only twenty games into the seasons or a quarter of the way into the season, but he has played a lot better.
He's played for me a lot better as a five, you know.
And and but in recent games they've had him and marking In and Kesseler on the front line as their starters, and so he's still producing some I think it's gonna be interesting because do they want to pay him, you know, that kind of money for what they're getting as the end result of the team, which is not very many wins. And so maybe this is a great showcase for him to show other teams, hey, I can be a contributor
and do some different things on a winning team. Maybe they'll they'll look at moving him, you know, closer to the trade deadline, or maybe they see him as you know, you know, maybe we're uncovering a guy who can be part of our rebuilding program and we can fit him into some hole that will help us going forward. It's been that's been fascinating to me. I think that's been the main storyline so far this this first quarter of the season for the Giants.
Yeah, I mean, Larry's awesome.
So there's really nothing new to talk about with market In because he's under contract.
That can't trade him. He's here for a while.
I think Walker's played himself back into the equation of a big who you want to keep seeing grow to be here for a while. And john is an interesting case study because at the very least, you now have showcase the player in a spot where maybe somebody calls you prior to the deadline to give you something real for them, and at the very most you found potentially another piece of the puzzle that you want to keep on your roster.
So there's no downside to Johnstone.
And again, Spence, this is all part of that. You know.
The analogy we've used before in terms of how the Jazz are approaching this process of theirs is, you know, like the the the old miner prospector panning for gold in the stream, you know, and he puts his pan in there, and he gets the water and everything, and he shakes it around and shakes it around and and gets rid of all the rocks in the sand and maybe finds a little nugget in the pan or something.
And and this is what the Jazz are doing.
They're they're giving different guys different looks at different positions and seeing if anything hits or anything comes up that maybe they hadn't seen before. And maybe even though the focus is of course has been on the group of draft picks they've had the last two years. Maybe John Collins has you know, you know, entered into that fray and said, hey, you know, I'm I'm I'm still here and uh, you know, I could do some things here.
And you know, I don't.
Know if the if the one eighty thing is sustainable all year long, but just the fact that he's in that in that area, in those in uh, in those statistical categories, really says something about, you know, the skill level that he has and maybe there's something that Will Hardy and his coaching staff can uh can can mine you know, with his game that that that can help them going forward.
All Right, I'm gonna I'm gonna make an attempt here. I'm gonna do a sports socc radio attempt to try to make this topical for our last piece of content here before you catch a break. Because I've read and heard and seen a lot of people drawing a straight line between what b YU Basketball is building and what Ryan's building with the Jazz. That's not how that works, Okay, it's it's b YU is not the jazz pharm system. AJ Debants is not gonna be a jazz man because
he's playing for b YU for five months. Uh jegor Demon the kid who's gonna be a lottery pick, maybe top five, He's not gonna be a Jazz Man unless they draft him. Neither with neither Will Cannon Catchings or any of the other talented young players they have.
But is there a benefit.
That Ryan is intentionally trying to create bank rolling BYU basketball that could benefit.
The Jazz long term?
Like one thought, if it's not talent for talent, because again, you can't just take BYU players.
And put them on the Jazz, That's not how it works.
Could there be some sort of like aj Debansa has a positive experience in Utah and therefore players wants to sign.
I don't know.
I'm trying to stretch my mind here to create a topic that might be kind of interesting. You ru in a front office for forty years. Is there any tangible benefit as far as what Ryan is doing for BYU that could benefit as pro basketball team?
Sure? Well, well, there are a couple of things.
One is that by having those that kind of a player and we use him that the band's a kid, you know, just as a as a hypothetical, as long as he's in the BYU program, as long as he's on the campus, those coaches, the people who are around the program, the Ryan Smith, the Danny Aingels or whatever have that have tight connections with them. They're they're getting a firsthand look at who he is outside of the basketball world. Right, So what kind of a kid is he? How are
the coaches dealing with him? How does he react to coaching? What kind of kid is he on the campus? Is he is he a social kid? Is he is he do people like being around him? Does he have that kind of energy personality?
You know?
Is he a guy who's just out for himself? You know all these things you try and evaluate off the court of the things that they're gonna have firsthand knowledge of, you know, more so than anybody else because they're around twenty four to seven for this long time period that he would be here, right, So they get to experience that firsthand, so they know what that's what, what that's all about. The other part of it is, you know,
they don't draft him. Somebody else gets him. And again we're just using the de Bands kid as an example. And five years from now, seven years from now, he's in the middle of his NBA career or whatever. He's killing it and he becomes a free agent. He does the Gordon Hayward thing and becomes an unrestricted free agent at age twenty six, twenty seven.
What have you?
And he goes, yeah, you know, when I was at BYU and I lived there, I really like the people there. I like the people that were around, I love the you know whatever, blah blah blah. And so that gives them a leg up now to instill that knowledge in that person so that when they if and when that time should ever come, you know, that may help them in a free agent recruiting process to say, you know, hey, you know you might hey, no, no, I know what Utah is all about because I lived it, and and
that could help them in that regard. So, yeah, there are some benefits that can help you know, you know, does it ever happen?
Who knows, and we'll we'll see.
But that's uh, those are certain things that are pluses for you when you're trying to make decisions down the road.
Okay, No, that's good insight. So it's not nothing, you know, and we'll see, uh see how it plays out.
Great to see you. We'll set. You listen, you go put the star on top of the tree. At least you'll do that.
Yeah.
Well, I my wife does it all and she does a great job. And she she's the expert. She knows, she knows what's going on. I'm just the guy sitting in the back of the bus.
Well, we always love having you, my guy.
Good to see you, Richard said, forty years with the Utah Jazz Front Office.
Appreciate his time. He'll be back next week.