Arkansas basketball finishes big week

[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the Whole Hog Sports podcast. And now, here's your host, Matt Jones. On today's show, Arkansas basketball beat Fresno State. Over the weekend. We'll talk about that. Also, our thoughts on the playoffs. First, a word from Kendall King. Kindle King. We're proud of over four decades of design. We're continuing the legacy of great creative design by combining our brands of Kendall King, Soapbox and Shopcart. Together, these brands represent a new focus in marketing design with individual attention to specific areas. Through our design expertise, supported by a team of talented professionals, we showcase our best. We are Kendall King. We are Soapbox. We are Shopcart. We are Design. Razorbacks are up to number 17 in the AP poll after they beat Fresno State last week. Fresno State doesn't move the needle quite as much as beating Louisville last week does, but they're up eight spots this week to number 17. So they had fallen a little bit. Now they've really taken a surge back. I think beating Louisville really, you know, there's. There's a lot of value in that, and I think the voters see that. We talked about Louisville last week. We're going to focus today on Fresno State, this 82 to 58 win by the Razorbacks. Down in North Little Rock the other day, Ethan Westerman's in studio with me. Ethan, I thought the first, I don't know, maybe nine to 10 minutes of the second half was as good a basketball as we've seen from Arkansas this year. Certainly on the offensive end, you know, they were really hitting shots. They were getting good looks. They were hitting them, you know, playing pretty good defense. Not just in the first 10 minutes of the second half. I thought they played. Played a pretty complete defensive game almost from start to finish. There's a little bit, you know, you get up 30 in the second half, and so there's a tendency to maybe take your foot off the pedal a little bit. And of course, Fresno State, they're competing hard and they're trying to make the score a little bit more respectable. So defense down the stretch wasn't as good as it was maybe the first 25 to 30 minutes of the game. But overall, I thought this was a very complete performance for Arkansas. But going back to the start of the second half, just really impressed with what I saw from the Razorbacks. Darius Acuff played really well during those first nine to 10 minutes. Carter Knox hit a few three pointers, even banked one in that. That I thought, you know, you see this with this team. There are these brief Maybe not even brief is the right word. There are these stretches where you can see, like, the. Like the real ceiling, I guess, maybe for this team. And I thought that again, the. The first 10 minutes of the second half against Fresno State, that was as good of a stretch of basketball as I think we've seen them play. [00:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you. That halftime, they had 34 points, and then less than five minutes into the second half, they're at 56. So they scored 22 points in less than five minutes. That's really hard to do as, you know, as a team, you know, relies on the three ball, like Arkansas. I don't think Arkansas is that team this year that has to rely on the three ball. But, ma', am, when it's falling for them, they just become so dangerous. I think they're. They're a better shooting team than they were last year, and I just think that it seems to me like once they get hot, they get really hot. And I think that once they get cold, they can have stretches where they get really cold. I just thought in the first half, it almost felt like whatever they were shooting, you just didn't expect it to go in. And then something flipped early in the second half, and it was every shot that went up, I was like, all right, that's going in. That's going in. But, you know, that's. It's hard to, like, play. I think you said that you thought they played a pretty complete game defensively throughout, and it's. It's hard to do that while picking up your offense. It usually feels like. Like once your offense gets going, you have a tendency to slip up a little bit defensively, whether that's just like, the pace of the game or just kind of maybe tired legs or whatnot. And I just thought they had a. They did a pretty good job of staying intense defensively throughout. [00:03:41] Speaker A: Darius. I have 18 points, eight assists, five rebounds. This is on the heels of eight, I think 1710 and that he had, or 1710 and five that he had against Louisville, where he had the double double with 10 assists. As we record this, we haven't seen SEC Player of the Week awards come out, but I suspect that when we see those come out, there's a decent chance that he's going to be maybe freshman of the week, maybe player of the week. I don't know what else was done in the conference, but, like, this is a really good week that he just put together. [00:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it really was. And John Caliperi, I mean, I know he really challenged Darius Acuff early in the season as far as, like, worry about your assists, try and be a 10 assist guy and you're starting to see that happen. I think there's something for a true point guard like Darius Acuff, once it clicks from, and they get just as excited about seeing their assist numbers go up as they do, you know, their scoring. Because Darius Akuff can score the basketball, I mean, that's clear. But he's starting to get others involved and it seems like he's starting to take a lot of pride in his assist numbers. And you do that and you've got yourself a heck of a point guard. You got to have a point guard who's unselfish and Arkansas just so happens to have one that can also, like, afford to be a little selfish because he's so good. [00:04:58] Speaker A: I think the biggest takeaway from this weekend was the fact that they got D.J. wagner and Carter Knox both giving them the type of performances that maybe we've been waiting on those two to give them. Wagner 12 points. He was 4 of 10, shooting 2 of 8 from 3, but I thought his shot looked really good. There were three or four open shots where he just missed it, but it looked like he had good form on his shots. And I thought the comments about Calipari were really good after the game where he said, sometimes your biggest enemy is not who you're playing against, it's yourself and it's that battle against yourself. And he said he thought D.J. wagner worked through that pretty well. Carter Knox, they don't have that run that they have at the start of the second half. Probably if he doesn't knock down a couple of three pointers, banked in another one a little bit later as part of an extended 22 to 6 run. So we've kind of been waiting to see, and I think I mentioned this the other day, when they get Knox and Wagner inevitably going because they're not going to stay down forever, we know they're too good of players to do that. I don't think it's a coincidence that you see them get going and. And here we're saying that this might have been the best stretch of basketball they played this year. [00:06:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I just think that Carter Knox, it sometimes looks like he's in his own head whenever things aren't going right. It's just like even. Just his movements kind of look unorthodox and it's like it's just not the Carter Knox that we saw late last season, but whenever he turns it on and he's at his best. It really does make this team just completely a lot better. I think that DJ Wagner too. One thing about him, I think that he. He definitely can knock down an open three. He just. He doesn't need to think about it. But also, I know John Caliperi said this, like, when he drives at the rim, he's always trying to make these really tough layups. If he can just start knocking down a little floater, not always having to try and get it off the glass. I think he's as good of a driver as Arkansas maybe has, as far as he can get by his guy and. And create space. And he goes hard and can draw fouls. It's just it. I feel like with those two, it's right now just fine tuning their offensive game a little bit and maybe finding what their fit is with this team. It's. It's different than last year because last year, you know, if one of these two guys aren't playing well, it's like you're gonna have to fight your way through it and figure it out because there's not the bench to turn to. Like, you gotta have you guys in the mix this year. Like, Arkansas is only 8 sometimes, sometimes very rarely 9 deep, but it just feels deeper. It feels like John Calipari can afford to take one of these guys and sit them on the bench for a while if they're not giving what what he needs because he has other options. So I just think that as this team gels together and they figure out, you know, playing with these two freshmen that are just incredible talents, that some of these guys from last year will start to get more comfortable. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Arkansas ended up with 35 bench points. Of course, Malik Thomas, he's going to contribute highly to that every game. He had 12 points in this one. Malik, you would. Had nine points and five rebounds. That was with some foul trouble because he played, I think, for only like four minutes in the first half before he got just a couple of quick fouls. And, you know, I think that it's. It's his fault. You know, I mean, the fouls were his fault. He's got a really. He's got to do a better job of playing without fouling. And I think that's really, you know, been a problem for him since the beginning of this season. Isaiah Seeley came off the bench and gave him eight points there toward the end. And you listen to Calipari and the players talk about Seeley. They think that he's got a chance to really contribute to this Team, they just say he's got a. He's got to practice harder and he's got to, quote, avoid the slip ups. You know, two to three slip ups that can really cost you in a close game. [00:08:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think for him, it's just attention to detail, maybe defensively too, that they're looking for. But if they can get him to just be a guy who can play a few minutes a game to maybe. And also just be a guy that if you do get in foul trouble late in the year, because at some point this team will get in foul trouble and you'll probably need him to step up and play bigger minutes. But if you can get him to where he can play just in the normal rotation a few minutes a game and it's not a liability, I think that's a real contributor. I mean, he played 10 minutes and had two steals, so I think that's pretty good active defense. And he scored eight points. It was funny because late in the game I was, I actually missed the end of the game watching it. I was just listening to it. They were cracking up on the radio broadcast. Matt Zimmerman and Chuck Barrett, because he was like, if Isaiah Seeley touched the ball, they're like, oh, yeah, he's trying to score right now. Like, it was like he, it was his moment to get in there. And they're up quite a bit. They're like he. And he ended up shooting the most free throws on the whole team. He shot six free throws in 10 minutes, which means he. That he just got it and he was trying to go score. But if you can get him getting his confidence up a little bit and really be a contributor, that will, I mean, of course, only help the team. [00:09:53] Speaker A: You know, you look at this, it's points off, turnovers. Arkansas won that battle. Offensive rebounds, Fresno had a couple of more, but Arkansas limited the number of second chance points that they had. Arkansas, 17 assists on 30 made shots. And then you look in the second half, 10 assists on 17 made shots. This is, this is, you know, a thorough, thorough performance, I thought. [00:10:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, analytics liked this win. Which, it's funny because sometimes you can watch a game like this and I mean, the first half was very unimpressive and it wasn't always pretty in this game. I mean, I think back to the end of the first half, whenever Arkansas gets a score, but you leave time on the clock. And I think whoever it was for Fresno State, I'm blanking on the name. Knocks down the three pointer at the end, it's Just like things like that, that you're like just have the basketball like you to like just take it down a little bit and like stop a guy, don't give him an open shot. It's like things like that that make it like it wasn't the most beautiful performance of all time for sure. But I do think that this was the type of game that the analytics liked it because Arkansas played good defense. They beat him by a margin that probably is more than Arkansas was favored by, by most models. I think it's the type of win that like you need some of these non conference wins against teams that like Fresno State. I mean what was their record going into it? Six, six and three. Six and three. Like it's not a bad mid major, they're certainly not good but. But you just need thorough wins like this. And I think that's what Arkansas got and it took them overcoming kind of that sleepy start down there. [00:11:28] Speaker A: By the way, Darius Acuff, as we were talking right now, just, it just happened. SEC freshman of the week for him. So again that's not a surprise at all. I thought that that was probably going to happen after the game the other day. Defensively, Arkansas kept Fresno from scoring for the first almost five minutes of the game. And it's weird because you would think that and it kind of goes to show that Arkansas's own start was kind of sloppy. Offensively they're up, you know, Fresno scores their first basket with I think 15, 11 to play in the first half and it's only five to nothing. And Arkansas, they got up in the first half and I never felt like the game was in doubt but they just kept having trouble pulling away. You know, you get up 13, they'd bring it back down to 8, get up by 11, they'd bring it down to 7 or something like that. And you know, then you get that hot start to the second half and that's really what allowed Arkansas to pull away. But I just thought pretty thorough win by Arkansas. Don't make too much of it other than the fact that maybe this and maybe Fresno's not at the level of a Winthrop or some of these other teams they played. But I felt like a couple of times this year Arkansas's played down to its competition and on the whole, maybe for you know, stretches the other day that happened but on the whole I thought that this was a nice development for them to beat a team the way that you would think they're going to beat that team. [00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And the, I will say this the way you feel a lot better about this window is if they cut out this tough guy stuff of pushing around guys and Billy Richmond, like, it's. [00:13:00] Speaker A: Well, Brazil had a moment too, that first half. [00:13:02] Speaker B: His was at least a little bit more retaliatory. Like, Billy Richmond's just didn't make any sense. It just was, why are you doing this? And I just think that this team that's going to bite them if they don't. If they. I get it. You want to be aggressive and play a game that you know your opponent knows that you're not budging. I don't know what they're trying to accomplish, but this, this has reached like cross the line of just tough guy stuff that isn't. It doesn't make them look tough, it just makes them look like jerks. [00:13:29] Speaker A: Brett Dolan and Joe Klein were talking about it on the broadcast on Saturday, and I'm trying to think. I know there's the Nick Pringle incident toward the end of the Winthrop game. [00:13:38] Speaker B: And that one, I understand. [00:13:39] Speaker A: Are there others? [00:13:41] Speaker B: There's been. I feel like there's been a lot of smaller ones all throughout the year. I feel like this is definitely not Brazil's first one. Billy Richmond, this is definitely not his first one. It's like these guys, it's little flare ups that a lot of times I think they've been like offsetting double technicals and whatnot. I might even be thinking of some exhibition games. Like, it's. It's hard to remember all these incidents off the top of your head, but this is. It's been definitely more than one too many times at this point. To where it's like, that's going to bite them at some point if they don't just cut it out. I mean, I don't know what else to say about Billy Richmond's. And that was just. Why are you doing that? That does not. I don't know. [00:14:17] Speaker A: Makes you wonder if there's going to be a book on them too, where, you know, you're one of these teams that's a real physical team. Once you get to conference, maybe not even conference play, they got to play Houston. They got to play Texas Tech this weekend. Texas Tech. They've got some physicality to them and certainly Houston does, you know, so when you play these type of teams, you know, maybe they try to get under your skin a little bit more and see if they can get you to retaliate and get an edge in that way. [00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah, well, all I know is that it's just a bad look more than anything like. And in a close game. Yeah. Like you think about Nick Pringle, what happened against Winthrop, and that one was. I understand that one the guy had. [00:14:52] Speaker A: I felt like the Winthrop player was. [00:14:53] Speaker B: More at fault for that. [00:14:54] Speaker A: That was Richmond the other day. That's just losing your composure. [00:14:58] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And it's like it almost cost them even just retaliatory with Pringle in that Winthrop game, with all the stuff that happened with the benches and players coming off, everything ended up offsetting, which was. [00:15:09] Speaker A: You know, because are we right that if Arkansas say they would have had a third player come off the bench and Winthrop only had two, I think they would have gotten free throws. [00:15:19] Speaker B: I. John Calipari certainly thought that he said something after the game as far as. Like, thank God they had two off the bench or else we lose that game. But it's. It's. It's little things like that that make a win that otherwise you'd feel pretty good about. It just leaves a little bit. I think a lot of fans don't. Did not like seeing that. It just isn't. There's no place for that, in my opinion. It's just. It was something that Billy Richmond, I feel like it's going to maybe hurt his reputation a little bit with some people who liked him a lot more before that, it just was a dirty play. That's all it boils down to. And it wasn't even a dirty play. I don't get what even happened, to be honest. Just like he just decided to just elbow a dude in the face. [00:16:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Probably just some frustration. [00:16:05] Speaker B: Yeah. But I mean. And Billy Richmond is going to be a fan favorite no matter what. But it's. I do think that there's some people that. That probably, you know, hurts his reputation a little bit. [00:16:15] Speaker A: With them at tennis was 11,500. Simmons bank has got. Their listed capacity is 18,000. I don't know that it seats that many for basketball. I think that that might be for concert seating. So basketball, I think it is, you know, smaller than that by, I don't know, maybe 1500 or so. I've seen crowds at that arena in the. I think in the 16s for basketball before. But a lot of people upset about the attendance and the fact that it's the one game that North Little Rock has this year and that that is the attendance. And I tell you, number one, the competition you play matters. You know, the times they've been able to fill up that arena for the most part have been back in the old Days when they were playing Baylor and Houston and Illinois and Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, Fresno State. It doesn't move the needle a whole lot. The other thing I think has hurt them from an attendance standpoint because it wasn't a great attendance last year when they played UCA there either. [00:17:17] Speaker A: Up until last year you couldn't get these games on TV and you know, it's a little bit of a blackout type situation. And I don't think it's coincidental that as soon as you put these games on TV that the in person element to North Little Rock games has decreased. [00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And also correct me if I'm wrong, it feels like the past two years this game's been played there a little bit earlier, mid afternoon, earlier in the day and earlier in December. [00:17:44] Speaker A: Slightly earlier in December, but earlier in the day. I think that makes a factor too. You know, when Musselman's teams would play down there they would play night games and I think that makes a difference. You know you're talking about it's December, there's a lot of stuff going on, people out, you know, maybe Christmas shopping or. There's just a lot going on and I think that whenever you put a game at 7 o' clock versus putting it at 3 o' clock that makes a difference. Well, would it have filled up the arena? Probably not. Would it have gotten another 500 to 1,000 people in there? Maybe so yeah. [00:18:14] Speaker B: And my thing is I just remember in the past going down there for that game and students were like finals were over on a lot of times that I was down there and right now this is like finals week at the University of Arkansas and I think that probably there are students who will travel to go to games like that, especially ones that are from that area. I just think that it was, it's a little bit earlier in December and the mid afternoon just it's not going to be able to pull the crowd I don't think unless you got like a, like you said, a big name opponent coming in that really inspires people. [00:18:47] Speaker A: They're not going to put a big name opponent down there again. [00:18:49] Speaker B: Nor should they. [00:18:49] Speaker A: I don't, I don't think they are. [00:18:51] Speaker B: I think. Yeah, I mean you saw this past week you play your big name opponents in Budwalton arena and you have a real advantage. I mean you might would in Simmons bank, but it's just I just think that having that on campus, I would love to see them do more home and homes than these. I get for Calipari wanting to Bring his teams to NBA arenas and get those big CBS games that big paychecks. Yeah, and it's big paychecks. I love the Michigan State home and home. I loved Louisville coming here. I know that was ACC sec, so that wasn't really even Arkansas. But I just think you get more of those home and homes and those are so good not only for the sport but for your fan base because you just saw like if they didn't have that Louisville game at Bud Walton, you know, what really would they have before conference? [00:19:35] Speaker A: I think Baylor still owes Arkansas a home game from Marcus I going down there and playing them in Dallas last year. So they, they've got some of that. It's just modern scheduling. I mean like this isn't just an Arkansas deal. Everybody's playing their games at neutral sites. Look at Kentucky the other day they played Gonzaga in Nashville and that was a home game. A home game. [00:19:56] Speaker B: Yeah, for a little while. I think that last year they maybe played in Seattle. [00:20:02] Speaker A: I believe that's right. [00:20:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's two years in a row playing in like a big city. That's pretty. A lot closer to one fan base than the other. But I like, I do like Alabama. [00:20:10] Speaker A: I think plays Arizona this week in Birmingham. I think last year they played him in Phoenix. [00:20:14] Speaker B: I do like those neutral site games and I just love a home and home two. And I am glad honestly that we're shifting away from these MTEs a lot more with other than like the whatever the Players Classic or whatever it was the Vegas in Vegas. Like I don't think that's going because it's not the traditional format of like a Maui where you're playing so many days in a row. Because I just think that those, you've seen it enough now how they don't maybe don't really help teams as much as they did in the past. I just, I've just always been a fan of putting big name teams in your arena and then you paying a visit to them the year late. [00:20:51] Speaker A: Simmons bank arena is kind of a strange facility in that it is, it's newer than Bud Walton, but it was still built in that old era of arenas. And they just have not, they haven't kept up with the times. It's not a basketball arena. Arkansas is the only team that I know of that goes there and plays basketball games. You know, in the old days UALR played there. They had the SEC women's basketball tournament there a time or two. NCAA tournament came through there. But it's gotten to the Point that this is high school. I think the high school state championships were there, but this is the only game now that they really. They really host from a basketball perspective. So it's one of those deals kind of like with War Memorial and Little Rock. Do you really want to sink a whole lot of money into it for just that one time that you get a game there, a big high profile game a year or you just kind of live with some of the warts that it has. It's an arena that was built. Arena. Football, hockey. They had hockey games there. In fact, I don't know if they're still there. The last time I went and covered a game there, like the hockey wall was still around the perimeter of the of like where the floor is, you know, the seating. Like I watched the Missouri Kansas game yesterday at the. What is it called now, the T Mobile center in, in Kansas City. Like that's clearly. That was built for basketball. And you know you've got seats right there over the top of the floor at Simmons Bank Arena. You know, they're, they're way off the floor. I don't know that the sight lines are that great from, from some of the spots in the arena for. It's just, it's just, it's just a different kind of facility. And where I'm going with all that is not to bash the facility. It's just that I think once you've gone there before that you might not be in a hurry to go back. [00:22:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I feel a lot better about Simmons bank arena than I do War Memorial at this point. As far as like I've been to games there that the crowd, I mean the crowd gets really loud down there. It gets. [00:22:45] Speaker A: They do that's. There have been years where that's been some of their best atmosphere. [00:22:49] Speaker B: The game against, I believe it was Valparaiso under Muscleman that went to overtime. Yeah, it got so loud down there like that was one of the louder crowds. I think I've heard basketball, like it's a different. And John Caliperi said this like before the game on radio. It's a different type of crowd than you get in Fayetteville and they're just really rowdy. But you do understand that by going and playing down there, there's always. It feels like going to be something like a couple of lights. The lights went out on the pregame intros and they didn't turn back on for like 30 minutes. And they started the game like with it kind of dark. I felt like on Saturday the real Thing was the shot clock. You didn't trust it early in the game. [00:23:31] Speaker A: See, I don't know. Was there a real problem? What I saw was that whenever it got under five seconds, that it was going down to tenths of a second. So it looked like if you just kind of glance at it, it looks like there's 42 seconds on the shot clock when it's really 4.2. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is really. It can be. It can mess with your mind a little bit. But also, I think it was messing up a little bit early in it, too. [00:23:51] Speaker A: Like jumping from one time to another. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Yes, I think it did a little bit of that early, and then it maybe got sorted out. But you were just kind of waiting. At least I was of like, what's going to happen that's causing. [00:24:02] Speaker A: It seems like there's always some sort of electrical issue. [00:24:05] Speaker B: But hey, it feels like they kind of smoothed it over and they're going to finish it. [00:24:11] Speaker A: There's no, like, War Memorial. As of right now, Arkansas is not going back there. And I know that that may change at some point, but as of right now, they're not going back there, and that's not the same thing. For Simmons Bank Arena, Caliperi was pretty adamant, I thought, afterward saying, this is the capital city, we're the state's team. We're going to bring them down here to play this game. But it's not going to be a marquee game. [00:24:34] Speaker B: What did you think about Silverfield mentioning War Memorial in his. [00:24:39] Speaker A: I guess I missed this. [00:24:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, no, it was part of the big scripted start to it, you know how. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Oh, you're talking about in the press conference. [00:24:46] Speaker B: In the press conference. [00:24:47] Speaker A: No, I did see that. Yeah. [00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I was like, oh, are you opening the door again? Yeah, I don't know, but yeah, no, I just thought it was funny because there's been so much more Memorial talk and then Silverfield and his opening. Everything else was pretty hard to translate. [00:24:59] Speaker A: Maybe it wasn't vetted. Yeah, there's possibilities. [00:25:02] Speaker B: Every other part of his press conference was somewhat hard to transcribe because he does think really fast and talks really fast. But his intro was like, whoever got that was just like. It was golden because it was all scripted and that was the part that was like, from Fort Smith to Fort Smith. [00:25:20] Speaker A: You mentioned Fort Smith twice. [00:25:21] Speaker B: Yeah, Fort Smith. [00:25:22] Speaker A: Ryan Silverfield, big Fort Smith guy. [00:25:24] Speaker B: And then to War Memorial Stadium. I was like, oh, boy. So, yeah, no, that's just a random side note. The. I thought it was funny that was. [00:25:32] Speaker A: Brought up Silverfield was there Saturday, by the way. [00:25:34] Speaker B: He was. And I saw a video that he did his Hog call down there and it looked a lot more confident. [00:25:41] Speaker A: He, like figure out how to, like, raise the arms. [00:25:44] Speaker B: He looked natural. [00:25:44] Speaker A: Straight up in the air. [00:25:45] Speaker B: Yeah, he looked natural with it. [00:25:48] Speaker A: It's always so funny watching these coaches learn the Hog call. Chad Morris, I'm not sure he ever realized he was in Fayetteville. But they played Minnesota. You remember this game when they played Minnesota on a Saturday night. [00:25:59] Speaker B: Daniel Gafford went crazy. [00:26:00] Speaker A: Yes. And so that was the Saturday after Morris was hired. I think he was hired on a Thursday or a Friday or introduced on a Thursday or a Friday. And then they played Minnesota on Saturday and, you know, he did the hog call and then he does pony up and they realized that, like, oh, I'm not there anymore. I'm not at pony up anymore. Oh, man, there's a great. I've got a video of that somewhere. I'll have to share that with you sometime. All right, when we come back, we've got some thoughts on the playoff, on the future of bowl games. That's a big topic here today. First, another word from Kindle King. Kindle King, we're proud of over four decades of design. We're continuing the legacy of great creative design by combining our brands of Kindle King, Soapbox and Shopcart. Together, these brands represent a new focus in marketing design with individual attention to specific areas. Through our design expertise, supported by a team of talented professionals, we showcase our best. We are Kindle King. We are Soapbox. We are Shopcart. We are Design. Hey, welcome back. I want to tell you about our friends at Bentonville Glass. They've been serving their community since 1971. They are committed, professional and versatile. If you're looking for a quality leader in northwest Arkansas or looking for skilled craftsmanship, look no further than Bentonville Glass for all your glass market needs with the highest quality products you can buy. And see them now at 507 South Main in Bentonville or online at Bentonville Glass. I seem to think I may not or I may be the only person not surprised by what happened with the playoff yesterday. I thought, in fact, I posted this on our board on Saturday night. My playoff prediction and 1 through 12. It's what it ended up being. I know there were a lot of people who thought Alabama was going to fall. I never thought that. And I thought that at the end of the day that common sense would reign supreme when it came to Miami and Notre Dame and, and that they would give Miami that last playoff spot because they won the game head to head. If Miami had three losses and Notre Dame had two losses and they're right there side by side. I think that maybe you could look at some of those other metrics, but I think that, you know, when they're both there at 10 and 2 and they've got a head to head result, you've got to go with Miami. I think that, you know, the three big takeaways here is that and they're all precedents. You try to set precedent and you try to follow precedent. And so the precedent was set last year that SMU was not going to get bumped from the playoff because they lost the ACC championship game. Same thing applied this year with Alabama. I thought two more precedents were set yesterday. One may be precedent. One, we'll get to it. First precedent is that you value head to head results. The other is that I don't know that they wanted to completely. [00:28:50] Speaker A: Keep out in the cold a Power 4 conference, which would be the ACC in this sense. And so I think that Miami going in over Notre Dame helped them with both of those. That we value head to head and we don't keep the ACC locked out. [00:29:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean those were kind of my takeaways too because you know, you get in these situations where say you've got four or five teams that are all right there and they're. You're having to maybe contradict yourself of what you value whenever you're sorting them out because they have the same record and similar this. Maybe a couple of them played each other, but not all of them did. So then you're having to like find different things to value. I thought that with what happened if you weren't going to penalize Alabama for playing in its conference championship, it really did boil down to just Miami, Notre Dame. And if you don't put Miami and over them, you set a precedent of head to head can maybe not matter unless I get it if say that Miami's two losses were just blowouts to really bad teams. And it's like, you know, they played early in the season and things can change. But I just thought that it was close enough of maybe a comparison that you want to value the head to head there. [00:30:03] Speaker A: Arkansas played two playoff teams by the way. Ole Miss and Texas A and M played them both pretty well. Notre Dame obviously could have been a third, but that didn't happen. I thought just as big as the playoff precedent that was set yesterday was the declining of bowl games. There's three teams. Kansas State, I think is 6 and 6, Iowa State 8 and 4, and obviously Notre Dame at 10 and 2. They all say they're not going to a bowl game. And this reminds me of those, like mid-2010s, somewhere in the 2014, 2015 range where you started having players opt out of bowl games. And I think that this is the tip of the iceberg. The bowl games, they're already irrelevant outside of the ones that have to do with the playoff. [00:30:55] Speaker A: They're basically exhibition games. You know, we went to Memphis last year to cover the game against Texas Tech at the Liberty bowl. And you know, it did not feel like we were covering the two teams that had actually earned their right to be there. And in some ways it felt like it was just an audition for players to go get some tape and hit the portal. Because there were still what, six, ten days, something like that, that you could get in the portal. I mean, Dazmon James ran 94 yards to the end zone. He just kept running right through the tunnel like Forrest Gump. And they never came back. And they went to Cal and he never did anything there. [00:31:29] Speaker B: Let's say, ran straight to Cal Berkeley. [00:31:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And he got real chiseled on the way. But the. Why do you, like, if you're a team and this is not going to be popular to some people, and I understand this, but if you're a team and you don't make the playoff, why do you want to keep playing? I mean, seriously, you run the risk of that's another game where you potentially suffer a career altering injury. And it's a game that it just, honestly, it just does not mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. Like, you can talk about the bowl practices, but in the old days you'd get the bowl practices and that's whenever you would work out guys that you knew were going to be back, that you were going to build your future around. You don't know if any of these guys are going to be back because your next roster might have 60 or 70 new players on it. [00:32:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that it's telling the handful of teams that got an invite because they were 5 and 7 who also didn't want to. They're like, no, why we don't want to play in this. It just, it's not, it doesn't provide an advantage for you, especially if you're like, I know Auburn was one of the teams, they just, I mean, they have a new coach. Like they're trying to build stuff and recruit and all. It's like, why would they go play in a poll game right now? It just. [00:32:40] Speaker A: And that's why Iowa State and Kansas State both said that they don't want to go. Notre Dame's for a different reason entirely. [00:32:45] Speaker B: And Notre Dame's just mad. [00:32:47] Speaker A: They're mad. But also, you know, I mean, it's, it also they're going to lose a lot of players between now and the bowl game. Even if the portal doesn't open till January, there's probably going to be a lot of players who would opt out, and that's not going to be the same Notre Dame team. And I think Florida State a couple three years ago provided this example of. [00:33:08] Speaker B: It makes your season look a lot worse. [00:33:09] Speaker A: It does, it does. And so Florida State, you know, they could have declined a bowl trip in 2023. And you remember them for being undefeated. And there's this great what if about, you know, what if the playoff committee really left out a deserving team and then they go and they get smacked around 63 to 3 by Georgia. I don't know that Notre Dame wanted to be that team this year. [00:33:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's valid. I just think that if they, if bowl games are going to be protected and teams want to still play in it, there's got to be some crazy big incentives start to come down. [00:33:39] Speaker A: And that's what I was going to bowl games in their current form, I give them maybe five to 10 more years. I think the way that you, if you want to save the bowl games and I think you're going to start seeing potentially some of these bowl games go away. I think the ones that have got the longest or the ones that have got the most. [00:34:00] Speaker A: Most history, like, I think that they've got a chance to stick around for a little bit longer. The Liberty bowl, the sun bowl, and that doesn't even mention the ones that are, you know, in the playoff bowl picture because those are going to, you know, those, those are going to hang on for a while. The gosh, the Citrus bowl in Orlando. [00:34:19] Speaker B: Has been the outback, but now it's like the Roliah Quest or whatever. [00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah, the royal eye. Did you know? I could not tell you. And this kind of goes to, you know, again, talking about how relevant the bowl games are. I could not tell you one bowl matchup this year outside of the ones that could potentially happen for the playoff. [00:34:36] Speaker B: I only know a few. I think that if you're these bowl games, like the Liberty bowl, for instance, that's been around and you don't want this Tradition to die. And it's a, you know, it's a, it's a game that's been played there for a long time. I think you're all for playoff expansion and hoping that they just keep on assigning different matchups. [00:34:55] Speaker A: I think there's. So here's where I think they might go. One of two things. The less likely is making the bowl game like a kickoff event for the next year. Okay. So you qualified for it and you qualified for it and next year these two teams are going to play here and that's going to be the game. I think that's the less likely path. How I think that the bowl games can preserve themselves is if they become pay for play events. Arkansas, Texas Tech, we want you to come play at the Liberty Bowl. The winning team gets X amount of dollars to distribute among its players. The losing team gets X amount of dollars to distribute among its players. [00:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that that's the most likely path for sure. And I, here's the thing. I do love these playoff games being on campus. I think it's great that you can earn that. They need more and it's. But I also think that if you did expand the playoff like by a lot and you played maybe like a first round game at. And it's the Liberty bowl, you played a first round game and it's the Gator Bowl. [00:36:02] Speaker B: But I don't know because then I'm at odds with. I do like seeing these on campus, but I also, I'm one of them that I would like to see. You know, these bowl games still be a thing in the tradition. Carry on. But it's like, at what point are you sacrificing what's best for teams for what's best for maybe tradition in college football? What it's been. [00:36:21] Speaker A: Yeah, the bowl games are relics. They're relics. I mean, that's all they are. The Rose bowl, that's worth saving. I don't know that the Bahamas bowl is worth saving. The Frisco bowl, the whatever else. I think that Pop Tarts bowl, the. [00:36:36] Speaker B: Precedent that also has been set somewhat in college basketball is with the NIT and how they'll do. [00:36:40] Speaker A: That's what bowl games feel like now. Yeah, that feels like they are the NIT of college football. [00:36:45] Speaker B: But the NIT started doing this thing where they played some regular season games that's run by the NIT and it's like the, like the whatever Classic during the season. You know, it's just, will these bowl games get creative to be like, okay, we're going to still have this game afterward in the season that, you know, maybe we can get teams that still want to come and play this, but we'll also do something during the regular season. [00:37:10] Speaker A: The bowls are a reflection of what's really wrong with college football, and it's that it's trying to cling on to the past. And by trying to do that, it's not able to fully embrace its future. I think that the thing college football needs to do right now, they need to expand their playoff. And I don't have any doubt about that. Some people say no way. I say, why not? I mean, look at it this way, Ethan. How many NFL teams are there? There's 32. How many of them get to the playoffs? 14. That's almost 50% of their teams. Major League Baseball, I think 12 of 30, that's about 40, that's 40% get to the, get to the postseason. NBA, it's an even higher percentage than either of those sports. You look at FCS, there's 129 FCS teams. They just expanded their playoff field to 32. And so the, like, the big time FBS college football, it is the most, or depending on how you want to look at it, it's either the most exclusive or the least inclusive group that there is to get into the playoff. And I think there's a lot of teams every year who they feel like, and I think a lot of people feel like that they ought to be in the playoff. They ought to have that. They ought to have that chance to prove it on the field. I can make an argument this year for Notre Dame, I can make an argument this year for byu. They could make an argument this year for Vanderbilt, for Texas, maybe some other teams. And so they've got to figure out a way to, number one, expand the playoff, get rid of this goofy automatic qualifier thing. And then if you really want to get creative and if you really want to fix college football, break away from the other teams that are pretending to play FBS football. Teams in the Mac, teams in the Sun Belt, teams in the Conference USA, and you develop a league. It can be 70 teams, 80 teams, however many teams want to get in. You want to create some sort of financial threshold to be able to play here. And it's like a high roller table. If you've got the money to put down and you want to play there, then have at it. If you're Memphis and you want to pay $200 million to say, we're going to, we want to test ourselves against the best of the best. That's fine, come on over and try that. But stop this nonsense of trying to pretend that JMU is in any way whatsoever equivalent to a Power 4 team and that they deserve a playoff spot because they do not. They do not. You might say that the playoff goal is to get the 12 best teams in. It's not. It's to appease the group of five, group of six teams to an extent, and it's to appease the teams that win their conference championships. And what you end up having is in the best case scenario, you've got 11 of the 12 best teams in the playoff field. And this year I would say it's more like maybe nine or ten of the best teams in the playoff field. I think that what ought to happen is that the conferences ought to be totally blown up. You reimagine college football. You can call them conferences, you can call them divisions, but it's not the sec, it's not the Big Ten, the acc, anything like that anymore. And then you have, you use like the NFL model where you don't have to have a committee that tells you who gets into the playoff. It's you did it on the field in your conference or in your division, so you're going to the playoff and then you have some sort of wild card set up where you're able to get some other teams who may have not won their division or won their conference, but they had a pretty darn good year and they're going to be able to get in there too. I think that's how you do this long term. But you can't do that if you're still trying to hold on to bowl games and conferences and all this other stuff that just continues to pull college football back from where it could be. [00:41:06] Speaker B: I just hate that right now, the way it's set up, that for teams that were good this year, like Notre Dame, for Texas, Vanderbilt, byu, that it's right now how it's set up. It's an all or nothing approach to where if you don't make the playoff, it's a wasted season. And like these teams just, I feel like should have the chance to prove themselves. [00:41:23] Speaker A: I think so too. [00:41:24] Speaker B: And it's, and I agree completely, they. [00:41:26] Speaker A: Would have a better chance to prove them. Like one of the things that's working against everybody is this imbalance of scheduling and even within their own conferences because certain teams, I mean, look at, look at Alabama, they didn't play Texas A and M this year. They didn't Play Ole Miss this year. And those were, you know, two of the teams that they tied, you know, quote unquote tied for the conference championship with at least in the regular season. So. [00:41:49] Speaker A: I think that if you go to a model where you've got like a smaller number of conferences or a smaller number of divisions, maybe it's seven, eight teams or so per division, per conference, you can play everybody in there and then there's no doubt who the best team coming out of that group is. And then you all get together and you play a playoff against each other. [00:42:08] Speaker B: Yeah, and I know, I mean you mentioned this and you wipe out all. [00:42:10] Speaker A: This group of five and FCS nonsense. [00:42:13] Speaker B: You mentioned it. Rhett Lashley Smuko, she tweeted about it yesterday about how basically the NFL postseason structure, like you can't complain because you knew that you did not meet the qualification. You, there's a firm understanding of this is what it takes to make it these teams will you win your division, you finish in the top whatever else of the other teams, you're going to make the playoff right now. That's what makes this tough is because you're going to have arguments every year about what teams getting left out. It makes for high drama. I mean, I guess that, that if we're going for just entertainment level that there's a lot of drama around it and maybe that gets the TV ratings up, which seems to, you know, be what directs everything, the decisions that are made. [00:42:58] Speaker A: There's a strong push for ESPN to end these weekly ranking shows. Even from Kirk Herbstreet over the weekend. He said he thinks that it's going to be in their best interest to stop doing this on a weekly basis. But like you said, it creates drama and it creates a lot more eyeballs. This build up to. Well, this is what they were saying in October and this is what they were saying in November. What are they going to be saying on the day when it really matters? [00:43:22] Speaker B: Yeah, and it's just like for teams like Notre Dame and even BYU to an extent just you just got teased over and over. I feel like. [00:43:31] Speaker A: Well, and you know, like if you going back to the point that I was trying to make earlier or you know, this, this model Notre Dame, like they're not an independent anymore and they have to play a schedule that at least is comparable with six or seven other teams around them. And so it just ends all of this long held nonsense. Notre Dame, if you want to be. You know, I mean like I think the thing that hurt them the most this year is they weren't in a conference. You know, if they're in a conference, they can go earn their right into the playoff by winning a conference, conference championship game. That's, that's. You just got it. You've got to eliminate all these. Well, we've always done it this way. So this is how it's going to have to continue to be hurdles and move forward for what is the best for the sport. And that's why I hate the conference model, is because Greg Sankey, he doesn't care what's best for anybody else outside of the 16 teams that he oversees. Tony Petitti, he didn't care what's best for anything. But the 18 teams that he oversees, they got to get to a point where they have a controlling entity that's looking out for the best of everybody, the best interest of everybody, not just the best interest of whatever clique you're in. [00:44:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And I just think that it really, you know, it's hard. It's comparing apples and oranges when you do NCAA Basketball tournament and College Football Playoff. But like the NCAA Basketball tournament, nobody's feeling sorry for team whatever that got left, number 69. Because honestly, you had so many opportunities to win it in college football. The playoff is so small right now. It's. You do feel bad for these teams that don't get a chance whenever they really have an argument. Like there is an argument for so many teams that didn't make it. [00:45:11] Speaker A: I think Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt has a very strong argument even relative to the other two lost teams in the SEC. Why is OU10 and two from the SEC and they get to go, but we don't. [00:45:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:23] Speaker A: Why is, you know, I mean, it's. Why is Alabama 10 and 3 and they get to go, but we don't. I know Alabama beat Vanderbilt, but there was no head to head between Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. And that just goes back to. These conferences are so fricking big and bloated that it's hard to really evaluate who the best teams are. [00:45:39] Speaker B: And like for byu, I mean, you lost, your two losses are to a team that's. What is Texas Tech 4. Yeah. [00:45:46] Speaker A: They're the fourth seed. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, I don't know. It's if, if you put another logo on Vanderbilt's helmet this year in the sec, it would be hard for me to believe that they don't make it in. It's just I, I really think that. I think. [00:46:00] Speaker A: And I think they're a good team. [00:46:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I do too. [00:46:02] Speaker A: I think if you put Vanderbilt up, I don't think Vanderbilt would win a national championship this year, But I think if you put Vanderbilt up against at least half the field, they would probably either beat them or have a really good shot to beat him at the end of the game. [00:46:14] Speaker B: And I know that especially, you know, this podcast, there's probably not a lot of, you know, love loss for Texas and them not getting in. But, like, I do hate that they went out and played Ohio State. And I mean, like, I get it, the Florida loss. I don't feel as sorry for them because you lost to a bad Florida team. But, like, they just don't play Ohio State and they play somebody else they're in right now. It's just I hate whenever teams get penalized for playing a schedule. [00:46:38] Speaker A: I hate that teams get penalized even for having a bad day if they're playing a bad team. Who was it? The Panthers beat somebody last week in the NFL, like one of the best teams or even yesterday the Saints beat the Buccaneers. [00:46:48] Speaker B: The Panthers are good this year, I will say that. [00:46:50] Speaker A: Okay. But the Saints beat the Buccaneers yesterday. Saints are 3 and 10. The Buccaneers were leading their division. That, you know, when we get to the end, there's not going to be a committee that says, oh, well, Tampa Bay, you had a pretty good season, but you lost to the Saints. You had to be docked for that. No, it's just. It's just your complete body of work. [00:47:04] Speaker B: And especially with the way college football is now, with how, as a season progresses, the teams like Florida that had a coach on the hot seat, you know, Arkansas, like, they're not the same team, like, as they were when you lost them. That Florida team, that and Texas at the time were totally different teams. And I just think that it is, you know, like, you have to hold teams accountable for their resume and what it is. But, like, the way college football structured and whatnot, like, that Florida loss is a lot worse at the end of the year. Based on what else happened with Florida at the time of the loss. It was a bad loss, but not just like, you know, tragic or anything. Florida opened its season with a gauntlet of a schedule and I think played pretty much everybody close. [00:47:45] Speaker A: How about Texas A and M? They played three teams with interim coaches this year. Yeah, I mean, is that equal to other teams that had one loss? Probably not. So it's just the whole thing is. Not to mention, you've got 12 playoff teams and nine of them have had their head coaches move on to another team. The whole dead gum thing is broken. [00:48:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:07] Speaker A: There's got to Be a better way to do this. [00:48:08] Speaker B: Yeah. I hate this whole deal about if I'm a, like a Florida fan right now. I am hating that Tulane is about to play in the playoff and you're not going to have your coach for a little bit longer. Like, it felt like some of these conference championship games, like, who was it? Was it. Was it Tulane, North Texas? Am I making that up? That was the matchup. [00:48:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:48:31] Speaker B: It felt to me like the result was Tulane beat North Texas. So the alternate result is Oklahoma State just beat Florida because Oklahoma State's going to get its coach sooner than Florida's going to get its. It's just like the way that it's set up, it's like you hope for, I guess, your new coach success to do good things with your team, but, like, you also want them in your building and not having the playoff game on their radar while you're about to buckle up and hit the portal hard and, you know, you're signing high school guys. It just seems like the way it's set up right now. And of course, this all manifested itself in the Lane Kiffin drama. And, you know, you have Ole Miss, by all means. Yeah. I don't want you to coach if you're about to coach our playoff game. If you're about to go coach LSU after this, like, I get it on both sides. [00:49:19] Speaker A: I gotta correct myself. A and M played two teams as interim coaches. They played four teams, though, that fired their coach. They played Florida the week before Billy Napier got fired. So I think, you know, again, the bowl thing here is something worth really watching because I feel like this could potentially be the tip of the iceberg. And I know K State and Iowa State both got fined a half million dollars for skipping out on a bowl. Notre Dame, they have nobody that oversees them, so they're not going to get a fine for not going and playing in a bowl game. I don't think. But this is certainly. I think that that was the biggest thing that came out of yesterday. Even more so than whatever the playoff committee, you know, whatever precedents that they set yesterday. What happens with the bowl games now is certainly going to be something worth watching moving forward. [00:50:06] Speaker B: And I think that we both agree that the playoffs should be bigger and there should be more just structure as far as more home games and more. [00:50:13] Speaker A: More home games. Like, I mean, are you kidding me? You'd rather go play whoever in Atlanta than go play somebody on somebody's campus? No, I mean, that's. There need to be more playoff home games. I feel like that is going to come when the playoff expands next time. I think that there's going to be more home games that are part of that. All right. We appreciate you being with us today. A lot more on our website, wholehogsports. Com. Hopefully see you there or on our podcast tomorrow. Have a great day, everybody.