Jerry Jones' latest comments, SEC Schedule Predictions, and MLB Playoff Picture Updates

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rich here on thirteen. Under the Zone will begin at
eight o'clock in the morning with long wrn's Game Day
and then the network pregame show at ten and the
kickoff at eleven. Hope you'll join us for that. US
Today includes, of course, the producer that is Cameron D. Parker.
The D on the birth certificate stands for Dallas as

(00:21):
in his favorite pro football team that he sometimes likes
and sometimes doesn't. I think you might like them more
once you see this documentary. You might. You might even
like Jerry jon Maybe not, I know about that, but
I saw the first two episodes of it last night

(00:41):
and it was it was rather compelling. I would say,
so you like it so far, but see, I'm coming
from a different perspective. The first two episodes really and truly,
you know, started on how the Cowboys quickly rose to
be America's team, and and then uh, you know what

(01:07):
when Jerry Jones bought the team and brought in Jimmy Johnson.
The Saturday night Master news conference, I was there anchoring
our coverage on k r L because Bradsham was up
in Chicago with a nephew, bar Mitzvah, and so he
was like in a phone booth listening during the during
the UH UH the party afterwards that he had had
the phone to his ear listening to all that, and

(01:28):
it brought back a lot of memories watching a lot
of media people that I remember back in the day,
all of us were quite a bit younger. I was
twenty eight at the time, UH doing that, so it's
pretty close to your age can when it was anchoring
our coverage of it, and then and then the Rise
of the Cowboys built by Jerry and Jimmy and all

(01:49):
the contributions to Jimmy, And it's interesting in the first
two episodes, Jerry Jones is nothing. I'm talking about the
current Jerry Jones, UH is nothing if not gushing over
how important Jimmy Johnson was to it and and what
he what he built. And so my wife Linda was

(02:11):
asking me different questions. She didn't remember too much about
it at the time, wasn't you know, wasn't she was
didn't pay that much attention to it at the time,
and was asking me all kinds of questions about what now,
why did it and and you know, on the takeover
and UH, I'd forgotten and I was even on part
of the coverage team of this. I'd forgotten that after

(02:35):
Jerry Jones went down and fired Tom Landry and came
back and they were building up and getting things going,
there was actually a parade for Tom Landry in downtown Dallas. Really, yeah,
I forgot. I'd totally forgotten about that, and we covered
it obviously, and and krty Lyon was there. But yeah,
and then he he spoke at the tail end of
it and all that, so, uh, it was interesting. Yeah,

(02:56):
the first two parts of it were. And I would
say that it kind of as I explained to Linda,
I said, you know, they, I said, she saw how
all the people were hating Jerry Jones, and he was
talking about all that stuff hit from the Sticks and
all that. He said, all that bulls, you know, but

(03:21):
everybody was just hating. I said, yeah. Then when they
started winning, the tune change for a lot of people.
Because then somebody else pointed this out and I think
accurately so on Facebook that prior to Jones buying the Cowboys,
there were a lot of fan polls and reader poles
and stuff like that, and there were a lot of

(03:42):
people who were in favor of firing Ton Landry who
wanted him fired. They'd just gone three and thirteen, they'd
had three consecutive losing seasons, and they wanted him out.
But they didn't want him out in the way it
went down. They didn't want an Arkansas oil man buying
them up and coming in. Eyes were wide time. I
want to know about jocks and socks and all this

(04:02):
kind of stuff. I just remember how everybody thought it
was unbelievably surreal, that this can't be happening, can it?
And skip Bayless's interview that he talked about because he
was there covering it. Dale Hanson of course up there
and they were talking about this, this really can't be happening,
can it? And I remember there was that air of
disbelief about it. So everybody hated him for a while.

(04:24):
Then when the Cowboys started winning, then their tune change,
the back to back Super Bowls, the three in four years,
they even put up with the drug culture and the
White House, all that other kind of stuff where the
player's party house that they called the White House, all
of that stuff until they stopped winning. And now we
see where Jerry is. He's probably back in about the
same boat he was when he started the team. Is

(04:48):
all that covered? The Landry to Jerry Jones, that all covered.
That is all covered. That is all covered in the
first two parts extensively, especially Part one two is more
about how Jimmy's trying to build the team and some
of the stuff they're going through. Always remember they show
them when they're at training camp at Saint Ed's in

(05:10):
nineteen ninety and there's a guy down on the field
of running back and Jimmy's standing over him. What are
you doing? When he says I've got asthmen, he goes
as my my ass, get over here on the asthma
fielder and he cut him and all that kind of stuff.
Uh So, yeah, it's the first two parts are about that.
I'm going to pick it up tonight. Obviously. The second
part ends with them about to play the forty nine

(05:32):
ers in the ninety two NFC Championship Game, because that's
what really launches them, you know, that's the how about
Them Cowboys game? That's the game they got them into
the Super Bowl and they blew out Buffalo the Owl.
But pretty much say, we knew if we beat San Francisco,
we were going to win the Super Bowl, which is
exactly what happened, but anyway, it'll it'll be interesting to
pick it up from there. So I thought about you,

(05:53):
just as Mike hardboll Harsh was telling us yesterday. He said,
it'll bring a tear to you if you're a Cowboy fan.
It might remembering the good old days and some of
the other stuff. It might. I don't think it will
fore you because you were born after the last time
they won the Super Bowl, so you've never experienced anything
but at the highest level, them getting knocked out at

(06:13):
the Division Round.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
My glory days of the Dallas Cowboys is I mean
it might be twenty fourteen, the Days Caught It year. Yeah,
twenty sixteen Dak and Zeke's rookie year where Aaron Rodgers
and the Packers once again. Uh, just ripped my heart out.
So yeah, I don't have the glory days. It's funny
talking to my dad, who, of course is it you know,

(06:36):
was a big Cowboys fan during the glory days. And
then you know, I asked him, have you watched the documentary? Now,
I haven't watched it, you know, and I'm like, well,
you know, I've heard it's really good.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
It's like, yeah, I was alive during the Glory days.
I remember that.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
I remember that.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Of course I don't, but you know, I do love
sports documentaries, so it's definitely one.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
I want to check out, and we talked about it,
I think earlier this week.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
I'm always a little bit wary when it comes to
these documentaries and how they're portrayed, especially if funded by
the people who are part of it. But it seems
like a separate group came in, like this was a
documentary that was produced by Jerry Jones. I feel like
it'd be told in a different story. But I think
from what you're saying so far that they do a
good job of covering it unbiasedly.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
I think so now there's no mistaking who the stars
of this thing are. In fact, it even says like
there's this big they do this big, dramatic opening. It
kind of almost reminded me of watching the TV show Dallas.
All this oil and all the cowboys and all this
West Texas stuff, and they do that and then they

(07:35):
have this dramatic music and the graphics are just like
the graphics in the end zone where it says cowboys,
you know that that graphic font. So they have all
that they go starring and they say Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin,
Emmett Smith, and then they go and Jerry Jones. Although
Jerry on the first two parts is really the most

(07:58):
prominent figure in all of it, and I think he
probably is through the rest of the thing. I'll find out,
as I think Lyndon, I'll probably binge watch the rest
of it the rest of the weekend, that sort of thing.
So it's pretty interesting. And the whole reason I also
bring all this up is because we're gonna hear some
a couple of sound bites from Jerry Jones coming up
here in a few minutes about the latest on the

(08:19):
Michael Parsons contract situation, from two different sound bites from
two different interviews. One has already, you know, just gone
crazy on Twitter on x and it was really trending
and just kind of blew up. That was something in
a YouTube podcast interview conducted by Michael Irvin that he did.

(08:41):
But then he was almost even a smith. And there's
another bite where he says there's a few words that
identically match what he said, and the other thing where
he's talking about how a kid can play one parent
against the other when he's wanting to get his way
or something, and and he uses that to describe the

(09:05):
state of negotiations and situation with mich comparisons. So we're
gonna we're gonna hear that. We've got to talk more
about it. And this happened down the stretch of the
show yesterday. What was it last thirty minutes when the
when the word came down that the SEC is going
to a nine game conference schedule. Now we hit it,

(09:26):
it was coming down. We didn't have much time to
digest all of it live at the time get on
the air, but we did talk about it, and we'll
get into a little more breakdown on that because there's
more react out of it. I am pleased to see
that by and large, not that my life is dependent
on this in any way, shape or form, but I'm

(09:46):
pleased to see that most of the responses are similar
to what mine was, at least the initial response that
it's a very favorable and good thing. But we'll get
to that. We have inconceivable on Friday, Ken, You know
what Friday within evable means.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
We get to travel to the more flatted, the lower
forty eight.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
States in reach for that low hanging roof. Yes, it
is Florida Man. And there's a Florida woman thing that
incites sympathy for Florida man. Wow, I'll have to we'll
get to that. And then there's there's one that is
as classic a Florida man story, I think as you'll

(10:26):
as you'll ever find. It's kind of a modern day
Florida man thing, an almost futuristic Florida man thing. It's
almost it's almost that, but it's uh but but that'll
be part of Florida Man as well. So we've got
that as part of being conceivable in the two o'clock hour,
we uh uh will also keep you update on the

(10:48):
Tour Championship. Are you still kind of following what's going
on there? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (10:52):
I think because of weather coming in, they actually had
to play the second round a little bit earlier, and
they have all they wrapped up the second round coverage. Okay,
a very familiar name atop the leaderboard. And I'm curious
how this weekend will go because Craig he's been leading
a lot of events going into Sundays this season but
just cannot get the job done.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Oh, we got a Tommy Fleetwood siding Tommy Fleetwood Siding. Okay,
all right, so we'll get everybody updated on that four
o'clock hour Major League Baseball. Our insider Gene Watson from
the Chicaga White Sox front office will join us live
from Portland, Maine. Oh. He's up there at the home
of the Portland Sea Dogs, whose play by play voice

(11:37):
is Emma Tiedeman, who is the granddaughter of my broadcast
mentor and teacher, Bill Mercer, who just passed away a
couple of months ago. I think it was back in
May that Bill passed away at the age of ninety nine.
She was his last great student that he taught. And
Emma does a fabulous job as the play by play

(12:00):
voice of the Portland Sea Dogs. But anyway, Gene Watson's
up there and Geno will join us in the four
o'clock hour talks in Major League Baseball, so we'll do
that as well. As always always, we're more than happy
to avail ourselves of your thoughts, your questions, your opinions.
You need only text us. You can access us via

(12:21):
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you want to do it, you just you text the
word texas follow by your question or comment to eight
one five three zero. Standard messaging and data rates may apply.

(12:43):
We also have the talkback feature and you're going to
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That will tell you about coming up. And the way
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(13:05):
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(13:27):
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(13:51):
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All right, all of that table set coming up. We'll
hear from Jerry Jones and we'll talk some more pro
football as well. Here on a Friday, I'm thirteen under
the Zone back.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
It's the Craig Way Shop with a voice of the
Tactic Law Horse and all of front Craig Way.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Ahead. You heard of this on a Friday afternoon, Craig Wade,
you joined by the producer Cameron Parker. Glad to have
you us. And I should point out this first time
we've actually mentioned his name. But he's a coming attraction
to this program, and that is Jay Carman, who is
now a part of the iHeart family. And you you

(14:58):
unearthed him, but you have a asked history with him.
Is that correct? We do.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
And for those of you who are asking, no, he's
not related to Tom Herman hermy, No, Jake's not a
mensa or so it might be a self procom.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
But he was in school at the time that Tom
Herner was the coach, right, Yeah, he was so.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Jacob believe was two years younger than me at at
Moody University of Texas, the Moody School of Communication and stuff,
and so we worked alongside each other with with TSTV,
the student television and stuff. And then after I graduated,
came back from South Dakota, did a lot with LBJ
Austin high school football, and I was coached by Jamal Fenner, who,
of course now is the director I believe of actually

(15:36):
got promoted.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
He's not the he's what is he what's his title? Now?

Speaker 2 (15:39):
He got he got, he got a promotion. I know
under under Sarks he was a director of high.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
High school Relations. Was the he was the he was
the director of high school Relations, I think was the
It is still his title. I was thinking it was
still the title. But his duties have not changed as
much as they have been expanded. I guess it is

(16:05):
the best way to describe it. So yeah, I think
I think that's kind of how it's how it's been
described for him.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
But yeah, Jake helped me with with some just some
analyst stuff for me with LBJ with McNeil high school,
I scol football stuff, and then he graduated, went on
his own way. He worked up in the Dakotas like you,
went back to his hometown of Washington, d C. Now
he's back here in the five one two helping us out.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Okay, all right, good and we'll learn more about young
mister Herman when the time is appropriate. Years of arcos.
By the way, uh, the official title has changed only
slightly for Jamal. It's Director of Player Development and High
School Relations COMMA Football. So that's that's where it is.
So U and Jamal just world class guy, great guy.

(16:52):
You saw him during our photos. Yeah, that was good.
That was that was good seeing him the other day.
All right, before we get to the Cowboys audio leaderboard
update on the tour championship, and you said, none other
than Tommy Fleetwood has surged to the top.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Tommy lad seven under sixty three today, thirteen to overall
for the tournament sixty three to day. He's joined by
Russell Henley, who was in the final pairing with Scotti
Scheffler today shooting a sixty six. So it's Fleetwood and
Handley at thirteen under two shots clear of Cameron Young,
who shot a sixty two earlier. Today, he's in third

(17:32):
place by himself and then two guys at ten under
par attack or fourth, big shot Bob McIntyre, Patrick Caenttley
and in Scotty Scheffler up and down day only shot
one under four his round. He's eight under par for
the tournament. So he's five shots back at Tommy Fleetwood.
But he's in a good spot, a good spot for sure.

(17:52):
I mean he was four shots behind McIntyre last week
entering the final round the BMW Championship, and he raced
that within the first like three or four holes. So
Scotty within striking distance. But yeah, Tommy Fleetwood once again
leading a tournament heading into the weekend. Craig, so we'll
see if he can hold on. If he does hold on,
he will be your FedEx Cup champion.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
I'm at the golfer of the year. No, no, do
they say that. I don't know what they're gonna call it.
I don't. I don't. I think you're fed X Cup champion. Okay,
that's fine, And like I said, I I've come to
terms with that and that's okay. I look at it
as being like say another just shy of a major
like the Players Championship or something like that. But it's

(18:36):
not the champion Golfer of the year, which is the
phrase they use at the Open Championship when you win
in Great Britain. And and by the way, shefflerd won that,
so call him the champion Golfer of the year would
be correct regardless of the outcome. This Scotty shoots one
hunder sixty nine. Does he still have a streak of
subpar rounds going? Is that the deal? Because he was

(18:59):
born the only shot one under sixty nine to day?
But I think he's got a streak of subpar rounds
going rolling all the way back even.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Let's see so two consecutive. Let me see what he
did at the BMW here, Yeah, under par for all
of that, I mean, I think I think so.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Before the BMW there was the Saint Jude Saint ju
which's beenished t third. Under par for all of those
Open championship he won. I believe he was under par
for every single round there Scottish Open. Yeah, all in
the sixties. There Travelers Championship he started seventy two, So okay,

(19:40):
that maybe even just parr us Open. I'm guessing he
probably had just seventy three, so I think Oakmont was okay,
So I think it's probably since after that, seventy two
at the Travelers. So he's got you know, twenty some
odd rounds I think consecutive under part and he was
only under part by one shot the day, but he

(20:00):
did keep that going. So anyway, that's that's so the
other thing that struck me. So it's eighteen straight rounds,
eighteen straight rounds. Here's the other thing. The Scotty's five back.
As you mentioned, he's minus eight. The other thing that
comes up here, there's a big log jam at seven
hunder Shane Lowry, Sam Burns Ry McElroy, Royshott sixty seven

(20:22):
to day, Ben Griffin, Okshay Matiev, Justin Thomas who followed
his sixty four yesterday with a six nine. They're all
at minus seven. Then at six under you have Keigan, Bradley, Harris, English,
Nick Taylor, Jacob Bridgeman, Ludvigberg, Colin Morikawa. They're all at
six under. At five under, Maverick McNeely, Harry Hall, Sun

(20:45):
Jm at three under, Corey Conners at two under Andrew Novak,
Hedeki Matsuyama, Brian Harmon and at one under you have Stepstraka,
Justin Rose, JJ Spond and Victor Hovlin. Thank goodness, nobody's
in black numbers. That would be embarrassing there from the
last top thirty playing that golf course. But the other

(21:06):
thing that struck me about this Cam they're in that
long jam at minus seventh, Chris got her up, who
who was in the very first group the tee off
at the bottom of the standings barely got in there
and he's six off the pace.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, so sixty three the day he's really turning on.
He won the Scottish Open.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
The week before the Open Championship. He held off.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Roy McRoy is a former Oklahoma Sooner, so maybe Texas
fans won't be rooting for him this week, but he's
had a fantastic week after just shooting a meager even
round yesterday. So I mean even the guys that won
under crag, I mean we saw Cam Young, you just
mentioned got her up, you know, eight under round for
Cam Young, even you know Straka Rose, spawn Hovelt, even

(21:50):
the guys at two under par, I mean they can go.
They can shoot a sixty two tomorrow and could possibly
be five five shots back less than that, maybe if
Fleetwood or Henley struggled them all, depending on how the
weather looks. So everyone's still kind of almost in this
tournament I think now probably a long shot for guys
like Spawning, Hoblin and Rose who aren't hitting the ball

(22:10):
pretty well this week, but hey, it's definitely possible also
for our American fans out there, Straca, Rose and Hoblin,
three guys who will be on the Ryder Cup team
three in the four in the bottom of this tournament,
so maybe they're trending the wrong way.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
I don't know, probably Turlan. By my account, there have
only been four over par rounds shot total the entire
from Maverick McNeel yesterday and they're all plus one. Nobody
has been finished higher than plus one on any round.
McNeely shot at seventy one yesterday and today, Brian Harmon

(22:46):
shot at seventy one, JJ Spawn shot at seventy one
in Victor Hoblin shot a seventy one. That's it. Everybody
else is at even par or better on every round, okay,
So that's where that is on the tour. Championship. Okay,
let's hear from Jerry Jones. Now this goes on and
on and on and on, and the longer this thing
is gone with Michael Parson's contract not being done, the

(23:10):
more anti and you know, frustrated. Certainly, not only Parsons
in his side are and the Cowboys and their side
of Calbary fans as well, and a lot of them
are more inclined to blame Jerry for all of this.
Here's a couple of pieces of sound from Jerry. Here's
one when he was on Michael Irvin's podcast and this

(23:31):
is the thing that kind of went a blaze on
Twitter and where he's basically talking about we pretty much
had a deal in place, but then the agent got
more involved. Got news for Jerry. Agents are going to
be involved. But the agent got more involved over where

(23:53):
the deal was and decided that the offer that was
supposedly good was well, let's just say, in Jerry's terms,
not good.

Speaker 5 (24:02):
We wanted to send the details to the agent. The agent,
so it was to stick it up.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait what do you need?

Speaker 3 (24:12):
So?

Speaker 5 (24:12):
Well mean, yeah, Mike and I talk and then we
were going to send it over to the agent, and
we had our agreements on term a mile guarantee everything.
We were going to send it over to the agent
and the agent said, uh, don't bother because we've got

(24:35):
all that to negotiate. Well, I already negotiated. I already
moved off my mind over several areas. And so the issue,
very frankly, is we've had the negotiation of my mind
and the agent's trying to get his nose in it
right now and try to come in there and improve

(24:56):
off the mark that we'd already said. It's the mam
and daddy. Did you go into mama and she won't
do it, and she's the boss sober, she won't do it.
So you run into daddy. Daddy says, do it, and
then you go back in and say, mamma, Daddy said
it was all right, So mamma, daddy did we've all
been there and done that. Well, we've got this there

(25:19):
resolved in my mind for the dollars comberance, and we've
got it done. And if the agent wants to finish
up the detail, which is should and do all the paperwork,
and he can do that, and we're ready to go.
But as far as the amount of money, the years,
the guarantees, all of that, we negotiate that.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, all right, So that's that's the first piece of sound.
Now there, here's another one. When he was being interviewed
by steved A. Smith. He uses the Mam and daddy
comparison thing again here in a little more broader context.
But again his basic stance is that he and I

(26:00):
pretty much agreed on everything. But then the agent's like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
it doesn't work like that. So here's the second piece
of audio. Where he was talking about was Steve and
they spent and.

Speaker 6 (26:09):
The spirit of not doing the old mother dad deal.
How many times have you seen the little rascal so
Clever go in there and Mama told him you're not
going to get it, and goes into Daddy, who only
sees him at that after five and afternoon was loved
and says you can have it, son, you can have

(26:31):
that before dinner. And he goes back in and says, Mama,
Daddy said I could have it, and said Mom and
Dad had been around since the beginning.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Of the time. I'm not gonna go for that year.

Speaker 6 (26:45):
That's what's happening.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
You're not going for it.

Speaker 6 (26:47):
I'm not going for it. No, No, We've had a
very very strong negotiation. Now, by the way, frankly, it
wouldn't have made any difference what the negotiation was us.
Guess who has to be comfortable for this to work,
Michael and who else?

Speaker 3 (27:08):
You?

Speaker 6 (27:09):
Hello, there's not room for a third. There's not room
for a third. This will be a good one.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
This will be a good one. Hello. So Jerry's kind
of trying to do the end run around the agent
on this thing. And I also say this, Cam Michael
Parsons has to come in for a little blame here too.
Why are you directly talking to Jerry if you're leaving
it to your agent to negotiate it.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, I feel like well, first off, but there's two
parts of this one. Jerry has to be naive to
think that, like, the agent's not going to get a fault,
especially when we know Mike's agent. I don't know his name,
I can't remember his name, but it's the same agent
as de Shaun Watson, who's secured a fully guaranteed contract
coming off a torn achilles and coming off probably the
biggest scandal in football since Michael Fick maybe the flight

(28:00):
gate who knows. Ray Rice is a great example there.
So Jerry had to have known that his agent was
going to get involved, because the agent is going to
do what's best for his client, and what's best for
his client has to make as much money as possible.
To your point, Mike should have also known at the
same time, Hey, like this sounds great, but you got

(28:21):
to go through my agent, not like, yeah, this sounds great,
let's do it.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Jerry.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Then why do you have an agent for so definitely
both sides to blame here, But is Jerry doing a
little damage control?

Speaker 1 (28:31):
You wonder? David Mulligetta, there you go. Is the agent
of athletes first, So yeah, he's he's the agent. So
what Jerry is basically saying is Mike and I agreed
on money, length, incentives, all that stuff, and you can
do all the paperwork you need to do, but the

(28:52):
terms are done and I'm not gonna mess with this.
You heard him say the yes bomb there anymore after that.
So the lines are being drawn in the sand on
this thing. We'll see where it goes from there. From
thirteen hundred the Zone, my name is Craig Way, alongside
the producer Cameron Parker and also in the employee in

(29:14):
training transit mode right now is Jake Herman. You'll learn
more about the MS. Time goes forward, and it's like,
you know, can we were talking about McDonald's. You go
to McDonald's and you know, you order something there and
then there's another employee standing right there signing it's this trainee,
it says on the uniform there. That's kind of how
we describe Jacob the woman. Right. Hopefully it's more fun

(29:37):
to work here than McDonald's. Yeah, yeah, even though they
do have the McDonald Land meal going on right now,
you know, with that purple and blue and red Mountainous
milkshake and all that other stuff. Anyway, we'll get to
a couple of your your questions, your feedback there on
the text line, and again if you'd like to join

(29:58):
into that, all you have to do is text the
work texas followed by your question or comment to eight
one five three zero Standard Messaging in data rates ban Applot.
I did want to make sure we gave you an
opportunity to win a pair of tickets to see Breaking
Benjamin and Three Days Grace, neither of whom Cameron is

(30:20):
familiar with or were familiar with until it told you
a little bit. And the only reason I knew anything
about it is because our resident musician antone like them
and as self described promo kid drummer in the band
whisk Here locally seem if you get a chance, I
was the one who explained Breaking Benjamin in Three Days Grace.

(30:40):
So they were big in the nineties, and now because
of TikTok, they're you know, they're vital again.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
You know, I'm not big into a lot of the
nineties music. In fact, my hot take is the nineties
is the worst decade of music I lived up there
with it used to be the eighties, but I've found
some really good stuff in the eighties. There some good
music in the eighties, But in terms of the nineties, I
think most of the pop of the nineties is just

(31:10):
the testable and even some of the rock. You know,
you know, I'm sorry to offend Three Days Grace and
Breaking Bad, Breaking Benjamin fans of those bands and stuff,
I'm not really all in them. And I love Nirvana, Yeah,
I like Nirvana a lot, and Pearl Jam.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
That grungs rock not so much really, you know, very
very very in Neirvana. That's part of the grunge. Okay, well,
how do you call pearl Jam? Well, it could be
part of it as well. You don't like Eddie Vedder's voice,
that's a problem. I don't dislike his voice. Don't ever
say it around Keith Morland, really, Keith Mortlin. So Pearl

(31:47):
Jam would have been on his music service for any
number of reasons, not the least of which they're very
good friends. Oh really, Eddie Vedder is a lifelong Chicago
Cubs fan, and he was a he was was a
rabid Cubs fan. When Keith was playing in the eighties
with the Cubs and we were doing Keith was actually

(32:09):
you know, and of course Keith Morland of course three
time All American in baseball at Texas and actually came
to Texas on a football scholarship as a defensive back
recruited by coach Royal in the early seventies and played
in the secondary for two years, but then just shifted
full time to baseball. But Keith was, you know, his

(32:33):
his his path was going to be ultimately was going
to be baseball. But he was. He was really good.
And then later Keith was actually part of a show
that we did for about I want to say about
four months, Keith, Rod Babers and myself, the three of

(32:53):
us did the old Sports but Fat Show in the afternoon.
But then Keith left to take the color analyst job
with the Chicago Cubs on radio. I was up there
for three years, then came back and obviously got on
Longhorn Network with Grex Windell, and they were a team
for like ten years. Did a great job together, and

(33:16):
we are very fortunate to have Keith back in our
fold as analyst on baseball. He was also, remember my
analyst on Longhorn football for nine seasons from twenty two
to twenty ten before leaving to go to Chicago. Because
Keith played college football, he still does analyst work on

(33:41):
some of the ESPN Plus telecasts of Texas State games
at home. So he does that, and he still fills
in on occasion as analysts with us with football, like
when we have a football basketball conflict like we did
last year. Roger Wallis had stayed back to do to

(34:02):
call the play by play to fill in for me
on the men's basketball home game, and so Keith went
to Arkansas with us, and then Roger went to South
Florida to do the women's tournament. They were playing him
down there in Fort Myers over the Thanksgiving weekend, and
so Keith stepped in again as analysts on the football

(34:22):
game in College Station at Texas A and M. So
he still does that. So and his football actuim in
is fabulous having played for coach Royal. But obviously he's
best known for his time in baseball, and when he
played with the Cubs, he was really really he got
to be good friends with Eddie Vedder. But in that
four month period, like in two thousand and nine, I

(34:44):
want to say, or into the spring of twenty ten,
I guess it was before he left, he was going
at he was doing the show with Rod Bavers and myself,
and he went out to prior to the start of
spring training to a Cubs fantasy camp because they were
paying him to, you know, you know, be in the

(35:07):
Cubs fantasy camp with those guys.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
When I think a fantasy camp, I think the line
of Seinfeld or Kramer goes to fantasy camp, and Jerry says.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Fantasy camp. His whole life's to fantasy. So Keith was
out there doing a fantasy camp. But we gave him
a broadcast and This was in the very early days
camp of the old Comrades Access unit that we is
now a regular part of our road broadcasts. And so

(35:34):
Keith took one out there with him in his hotel
to join us in the afternoon. And we come out
of a break and blah blah blah, and Keith Mortland's
joining us from Tucson, Arizona. Blah blah blah, and Keith goes,
hold on, we got a special guest right now. Soon's
that hecuse, guys, we have Eddie Vedder with us. And
Eddie Vedder do was on with us for about a

(35:55):
half an hour with Keith, and at one point I
just said to Keith, you know, Keith, we're gonna just
step back and let you run the show with the
interview because it was great here what I'm talking about.
So anyway, yeah, yeah, so that's so. Yeah, he's tight
with Eddie.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
I have the privilege of working with Keith on a
high school football broadcast later this year.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Any tips to be able to work with him as
an analyst, with him being an analyst and ye playing
left lay. No. Oh, he's easy. Everything I've heard of
him is great. Yeah, he's easy to work with. He
knows timing, he knows to play by play guy's job.
And especially with television, you don't have to overtalk it

(36:36):
because on telecast they can see it. You can call
it blah blah blah blah blah blah, thirty yard run,
first down and then you get out of the way
and he'll tell you why it happened. So that's that's
the good thing. So back to what I'm talking about.
We are going to give away a pair of tickets
to see Breaking Benjamin in three days Grace, and that's
coming up September third, That is a week from Wednesday

(37:02):
at Moody Center. If you're interested in winning tickets, this
is how you do it. You download the iHeartRadio app
free easy. You just download it. You search AM thirteen
on the zone. It pops right up. There's a little
red button with a white microphone. You tap that button
and you leave us a message with the keyword that

(37:22):
you heard on the radio. Love the keyword today That
antone came on with today's keyword mash as in the
mosh pit mash msh. So when you call it, when
you do that, when you leave us the voice, the
talkback message again, you download the iHeart Radio app. Then

(37:44):
in your search bar window you put AM thirteen on
the zone. It pops right up and you'll see and
we recommend go ahead and make us a pre set
on that because it'll kind of move you ahead of
some other people. It helps you navigate it all quicker.
And then you leave us a message up to the thirty seconds.
You don't even need that to say, Hey, Art on
the Craigway Show, you give away tickets to Breaking Benjamin

(38:05):
three days Grace. The key word is mash. It's all
you have to do, and you're gonna go. You're gonna
jump the line of a lot of people and you're
gonna have a much higher chance of winning as well
if you do the if you do the preset thing.
So there you go. That's that's how you can win
tickets out, even though Cameron's not a fan of them,

(38:26):
but that's okay. You can if you are a fan
or curious about it, you want to enter, you just
go ahead and do it all right to the text line,
our man Chuck in Houston set the tone about how
he feels about Jerry Jones on This came after when
we discussed that we had the two pieces of audio
where Jerry Jones first told Michael Irvan on this podcast

(38:52):
that he and Michael Parsons pretty much had agreed on everything.
And then he said, the agent told us we can
stick it up and you figure out the rest. And
then she said to Stephen A. Smith, similar type stuff,
and he said, you know, the offer is the offer
is the offer in terms of the money and the
terms of stuff like that. We can dance around a

(39:14):
lot of the other things, but that's where that is. Well,
our man Chuck in Houston, who started off, I want
to say, he said happy Friday in hook of Morren
So Chuck. Chuck seems like a really nice guy. But
he did say, am I the only single person on
the planet that has a dad that quit liking the
Cowboys after Jerry fired Landry? The answer is no, Lots

(39:35):
of people quit liking the Cowboys after Jerry bought the
team and fired Tom Landry. Now I will tell you,
and there were some people who have carried it all
the way through it and never gone back to the Colviny.
My late wife, my first wife, she grew up in
the Metro, Like I say, a huge Cowboys fan. But
when that happened Saturday night mask our news conference, Jerry

(39:58):
took over. She said, I'm never going back, and she
she never did. She I think she became a Bears
man for some reason, but anyway, she never went back
to that. So, no, Chuck, You're not the only one.
And then Chuck said, I'm a diehard Cowboys fan, but
Jerry's got to go the Saint nineteen sixty. No. But

(40:18):
if I've said it once, Chuck, I've said it a
thousand times. Jerry ain't going anywhere. He owns the team.
He can't be fired from being owner unless he does
really like egregious things in violation of league policy. And
I think Jerry's a little too smart for that. I

(40:39):
don't think he would do that, no matter how he
might personally feel. So he's not going anywhere. And when
the time comes, and he's eighty two, when the time comes,
when he steps away, Steven's gonna run the club now,
I think, Stephen, because I got to know both of
them over the time that I was doing Jerry's radio
show in nine ninety three. That was another reason, Cameron,

(41:02):
why when I was watching the documentary on Netflix, I
gotta I got a kick out of that because that
was it reminded me of a lot of things back
in the day when we were doing his radio show,
like the time for example, that when we were doing
in the documentary, his voice is To this point, I've

(41:23):
not seen him interviewed. Yeah, I'm trying to think if
there's any al Michaels he's he's in it in the
first two parts. Now again I've only seen parts one
and two. But so Jerry, you know, during that time,
Steven seemed to be more of a voice or reason. You, however,

(41:44):
feel that the chip is the apple is not rolling
far from the tree. You think he's just going to
continue to do it the same way that that Jerry's. Yeah,
I think so.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
I think Stephen will be less, will cause less of
a media store stir like his dad.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
But I think in terms behind the scenes, how you
think he'll he'll be the the GM. You don't think he'll, Yeah,
after Jerry steps away, you don't think that Steven will
hire a general manager.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
I think it'll be like him and Will McClay. I
think it'll be the same thing. But I think that Stephen,
the way he likes to run the business, I think
is how he'll run the business, which is what it's
basically being run now. I mean, there was a great
piece in The Athletic this past season. I forget who
who penned it, but basically kind of said, hey, Steven's
fingerprints are all over this organization. They don't be full

(42:32):
just because Jerry Jones is the one who talks the most.
Stephen Jones a lot of input And at first, you know,
I thought, hey, once Jerry's out and Stephen comes in,
because I think Steven's an excellent job in the NFL,
draft him and Will McClay. You know, obviously talking Jerry
out of Johnny manziel a couple of years ago was
a huge part of that reasoning.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Why.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
But I du think in terms of the way Stephen
likes to negotiate, I don't want to believe it, but
I do that even if Jerry was removed from this
and Stephen Jones was negotiating, I think it'd be a
very similar situation with Michael Parsons as it was with
Trevon Diggs and Dak Prescotts.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
How the cowboys like to negotiate, all right, we'll say,
and by the way, that's what I was saying one
thing that came out of the first two parts of
the documentary that I found a little difficult to accept
or believe. There are sound bites with Jerry, a lot
of them, obviously Stephen Jerry Junior and Charlotte Jones Anderson.

(43:32):
And if you know anything about Jerry's daughter, Charlotte, Charlotte
Jones Anderson, she is responsible for a lot of the
look if you go in at and T Stadium, if
you go to Jerry World, do you go for a
Cowboys game, or a Big twelve championship game, or a
high school state championship game, you see a lot of
the way that the inside and the decor is set up.

(43:54):
That's all Charlotte the artwork, that's her fingerprints on it. Now.
In the documentary, Jerry says that he gathered his family
and said, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna buy this team,
and I need you all to be on board with this.
Do I have all of you because he's gonna take

(44:15):
all of you. This is a gamble and there and
and Charlotte says, I had no idea about, you know,
how to run a football team. And he made it
sound like he was gonna need all of them running back,
and I don't recall that being at it all. I
remember it's it's Jerry's show. And Jerry did say in
a sound bite Charlotte said something like, I don't know

(44:35):
anything about running football team. To hear Jerry go and
I said to her, I'm gonna run the damn team.
You know. It was something like that, So you know,
he uh, he was gonna be in charge, but he
wanted their support, and obviously they all threw their support
behind it. And they've all been involved in one way
or another. All right, up next and get back into

(44:56):
the college football world landscape and the se seeing that
announcement yesterday and again it happened in the back half
hour of our last hour of a program yesterday that
they're going to the nine game conference schedule. We did
talk about it on the air, and but we're gonna
get a little more perspective on it coming up here

(45:16):
on a Friday afternoon. Glad to have you with us.
We are eight days to kick off of the long
worn season. Remember the college football season actually itself does
begin tomorrow, and there are Division one FBS games tomorrow,
including a conference game in a power for conference. We'll
run all that down as well when we continue here

(45:38):
on thirteen under the zone. On the text line, were
talking about the Cowboy fans, and I've said this and
said this, and said and apparently I need to continue
to say this because that there are still many Cowboy
fans who harangue about all this stuff with Jerry, and
I totally understand it and agree with him. But then
they say he's got to go. He can't be the

(45:59):
He's not going. That's the problem. He's never going. He
he will die before I think before until he become
unless he becomes, you know, physically or mentally incapacitated. There
are those who feel he's mentally incapacitated and after running
a pro football team. But anyway, uh Kerry, one of
our loyal listeners, says, I was raised a hardcore Dallas fan,

(46:23):
and I bled blue when Jerry took over. I left
and have never gone back. Caused me to stop watching
the NFL because the loss of my team, it's all
college ball since then, all right, CARRY feel bad for
you that it had to be like that for you,
but I understand where you come from. You got to remember,
you know, I'm a long suffering Rams fan and went
throughout the decade of all those painful playoff losses when

(46:45):
they couldn't get to the Super Bowl, than they finally
did and they lost the Steelers, and you gotta yata
in and so on and so forth, and they went
through a really really dark period through most of the
nineties until that magical ninety nine season when they were
in Saint Louis. But they were owned by Georgia Friendzier
at the part know of Terrol Rosenbloom, and she was
a former chorus girl and she knew nothing about profile.

(47:09):
She tried to bring in Joe Namath, who has had
nothing left in his body to be quarterback. She tried
to bring in Bert Jones, same thing, didn't and didn't
have anything left. Brought Vince Perregamo back after his best
stuff was gone in the earlier years with the Rams,
she was she was a horrible owner. And then the
Kronky's by, and then and then Los Angeles Rams fans

(47:32):
will say Kronky's been fine as an owner, and so
Fi Stadium Babill. The ones in Saint Louis say he
ripped her heart out and abandoned them and all that
other kind of thing. So I understand the dispute between
a fan and a team based on what happens with ownership.
It's a tough it's a tough love that happens sometime
on that point, especially when you're not a fan of

(47:54):
a team because of the owner. Right. But no, you
roting can impact your interests play the coaches and the players,
right yeah, sometimes not even for the coaches. You're just rooting,
and in some cases you're rooting for the uniform, you know.
So that's just how that goes, all right. I wanted
to jump to college football a couple of headline notes.
One of those was the fact that Pat Fitzgerald, the

(48:20):
Northwestern coach, was able to reach a settlement in his
wrongful termination lawsuit. And that was that after his dismissal
and amid the allegations of hazing in the program two
years ago, there was an investigation in the hazing and
he was suspended for two weeks, and then after public

(48:41):
backlash and the student newspaper reporting on alleged incidents, he
was fired three days later for failure to know and
prevent the hazing. He then sued the university for one
hundred and thirty million dollars, seeing the two sides had
agreed on the suspension and maintaining he didn't know about
the incidents. So anyway, the terms were not disclosed, but

(49:04):
he did reach a settlement, and that's taking here. Okay, yesterday,
when we were talking about the nine game conference schedule
for the SEC, it started with a piece from Seth
Emerson of the Athletic, who is out in front of
it more so than anybody else, saying this is going

(49:24):
to happen, expect this toll. Within like an hour of
the story being out there on the Athletic, it became reality.
So we go back to Seth Emerson's work today because
he is a follow up today on how it's supposed
to work, and he starts off with the words, they
finally landed the plane, he said. Four years since the

(49:48):
debate over going the nine games heated up, and more
than two years after SEC commissioned GREG, saying he compared
the decision of landing a plane and saying he hoped
to do it that week they finally did. The SEC
announced on Thursday that it's officially going to nine games,
ending long running saga with a voter school presence now
comes to saga. Within the saga, who are each team's

(50:09):
three annual rivals. Now, if you're a long worn fan,
it seems incredibly elementary to you. Every sports gus said this,
I said this, It's in the papers today saying it, Oh, yeah,
it's going to be A and m Arkansas and Oklahoma
makes all the logical sense in the one Then it
would seem to so to review. The nine game format

(50:31):
has two main components. If three games against annual components
and fix against what are called non annual components rotated
such that everybody plays everybody twice in four years home
and away. Now there's two exceptions that rule. It's really
one exception, but it involves two games neutral site Georgia,

(50:54):
Florida and Jacksonville and obviously Texas Oklahoma in Dallas. This
format is going to begin next to you, and it's
going to be on a four year cycle. Now, Sankie
said yesterday, well he actually said of the summer, and
then the sources reiterated yesterday that the three annual rivals

(51:14):
could be revisited. That would give the conference flexibility to
change those annual opponents either because rivalries evolve or because
competitive or financial needs evolved. So if you're thinking it's
a slam dunk, that it's Texas against Oklahoma A and
M in Arkansas. As we can invoke the phrase of

(51:37):
the famous the corso who's getting ready to do his
final college game days right next weekend, Not so fast,
my friend. The SEC did not announce who the three
annual rivals for each team will be. Sanki pointed to
an announcement back in December, since he said that's worked
well the past few years. He added that the schools

(52:00):
themselves will be notified earlier, which indicates that the proposed
list that made its way around a few years ago
has already changed. That list was done in twenty twenty three,
and it did prioritize historical rivalries. However, it prioritized competition.
The conference work with an analytics company to develop a
metric that took into account every team's record over the

(52:23):
past ten years in an effort to have balanced schedules.
Here's the example on this, and I thought Seth Hemerson
did a really good job because I've thought about this,
because the other thing that came out naturally after this
announcement came down every swinging huha in the United States
that it had a Twitter account and was talking about it.

(52:44):
Was saying, okay, here they are, and they would have
each team's three annual rivals already picked out. Well, some
of those were a little bit on the unfair side,
like Auburn having to play Georgia and Alabama every year
be kind of tough. Auburn and Georgia, by the way,
is the oldest rivalry in the Southeastern Conference. So you say, okay,

(53:06):
well maybe that belongs tempt You can't not have the
Iron Bowl right anymore? That you then you can't have
the Red River rivalry. Texas and Oklahoma have played continuously
I think since nineteen twenty nine, and they were in
different conferences, so you can't have that, right. I mean,
they've got to continue to play well. Anyway, this metrics

(53:29):
analysis that came up, and I was reading through this
thing extensively this morning about the possibility of what might
happen on this deal, and as Seth Emerson pointed out,
the result was keeping each team's top one or two
rivalries but sometimes not the third. Georgia, for instance, would

(53:50):
play Florida and Auburn, but then Kentucky rather than border
state rivals Tennessee or South Carolina. That there was also
the odd match of Florida and Oklahoma. He said that's
not to say those games won't still end up among
the three annual rivalries, but a source familiar with the
conference's office is thinking said the list of two years

(54:13):
ago would not necessarily be followed. Sankee was on SEC
network yesterday and the emphasized tradition, and he added, here's
his quote, We'll look at historical rivalries. That's a really
important component. We have a lot of those. In fact,
in many ways were uniquely positioned to honor those historic rivalries.

(54:34):
I know what many of you are thinking at that point.
Many people are thinking, obviously Texas, Texas, A and M
Obviously Alabama Auburn, obviously Texas. Owe you right. Doesn't that
fall into what Sinkie is saying. We have a lot
of those, in fact, in many ways were uniquely positioned

(54:55):
to honor those historic rivalries. So those become annual opponents
on a schedule. Everyone is free. But that's the basis
is free annual opponents. The last point is the key here.
Not every school has three teams that will consider historic
or geographic rivals. What'd you say, Cam, The poster child

(55:16):
for that is Mississippi State. Yeah, probably, I mean you
got old miss the entirety. Well, yeah, you know old
miss You could say LSU, that's been a long time rival,
Mississippi State obviously, maybe Arkansas something like that, but you
know there may be some flexibility there Missouri, who's gonna
be there? They're annu Are you say Arkansas? Oklahoma? Maybe

(55:43):
that's that's the dynamic of flexibility around there.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
So anyway, which that makes sense, and I'm glad you
explained that because even yesterday I was like, well, why
don't you just keep the same Now it makes sense
and I'm glad you point out the geographical part, but
also the fairness in in terms of the difficulty of schedule.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
That's the key.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
You know, imagine if your Texas and it's like, hey,
you got to play you use example of Auburn.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
That's tough.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
It already is tough enough playing a and m Oklahoma
because those are going to be two programs that you
know are going to have five stars and four stars.
But for a program like Auburn that maybe is on
the same level in terms of n al as Texas.
You're looking at do we want to sign up for
two losses every year?

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Yeah? I mean it could be difficult. As Seth Emmerson
points out, not every school has three teams that will
consider historic or geographic rivals. Some have four or more.
It's going to be hard to fit everyone's ideal list,
but it's better than the alternative, and I agree with
him on this. The eight game schedule had only one
annual rival, which meant games like Texas Texas A and

(56:46):
m Alabama Tennessee and Auburn Georgia might not have been
played every year. Yes, Sankee said this year they had
a way of continuing to play those games in an
eight game schedule, but it would have created a headache
for schedule makers and may have just been Sankeie's way
of signaling that they we're going to end up protecting
those rivalries through a nine game schedule. All Right, we're

(57:09):
gonna take a break when we come back. Uh, we're
going to look at his potential list on this. And
there's another wrinkle of this whole nine game conference schedule
that we're going to get into in the four o'clock hour,
and that's the other shoe dropping, and I pointed this
out yesterday. This is going to definitely significantly affect the

(57:33):
implementation of the expansion of the college football Playoff. We'll
get to all that and more coming up. I'm thirteen
under the zone. We're fact.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
It's the craig Way Show with Hall of Fame broadcast
in voice of the next bit long Craig Way.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Talking from college football on that SEC nine game conference
schedule that was announced yesterday. That's going to happen, and
the key to that whole deal will be or, as
Sark likes to say, the key to the drill, three
annual opponents. They didn't say necessarily traditional rival opponents. The

(58:14):
word used was annual three annual opponents, six rotating opponents,
opponents that you do home and home. The method to
the madness there is that each team in the SEC
would wind up playing each team in the SEC at
least once every two years, and you'd get a home

(58:37):
game against every other SEC team at least once every
four years. I think that makes perfect sense. The math works,
all of that. That works as well. Somebody on the
tech sign said, so if it ends up only being
two rivals, assuming oh un A and M who would
you choose as the third If it's not Arkansas, maybe Tennessee.
Battle for who gets UT for next year? Says care

(59:01):
The SEC already made the call on that, by the way,
that it's UT on their abbreviations for Tennessee and it's
TX for Texas, So that's okay. So in terms of
how would this work? And again back to Seth Emerson's
piece in the Athletic, he's the one who kind of
broke the news that it was going to happen yesterday
and then today he's got a model set up like them,

(59:23):
and so gets to the point where he says, so
how would it look? Here is a potential list, prioritizing
tradition and geography, not competition. The seemingly most important rivals
are listed first. Okay, for Alabama, he's got Auburn, Tennessee
and LSU. For Arkansas, he's got Missouri, Texas and Kentucky.
For Auburn Alabama, Georgia, Florida. Wow, that'd be tough for Auburn,

(59:48):
wouldn't it for Florida to be Georgia Auburn South Carolina.
For Georgia it would be Auburn, Florida and South Carolina,
for Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi State because they're just kind of
hanging out there in Arkansas for LSU, Alabama, Ole, Miss
and A and M for Mississippi State, Ole, miss Kentucky

(01:00:11):
and South Carolina Missippi State. Excuse me, is Mississippi State
is old miss Kentucky and South Carolina for Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Vanderbilt.
That's another outlier, by the way, Vanderbilt, who they got,
they got one traditional rival. We'll get to that at
the moment. For Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Texas, A and M

(01:00:37):
for Ole, Miss, Mississippi State, LSU and Vanderbilt, for South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Mississippi State, for Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Alabama, Kentucky, for Texas, Oklahoma, Texas,
A and M and Arkansas. That's what everybody's kind of
nodding their head in these parts about. For Texas, A

(01:00:58):
and M, Texas, Coloma and LSU, and for Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Ole,
Miss and Missouri. And as Seth Emerson points out, and
he does some real scholarly work on this, and usually
does when he covers college football anyway for the Athletic
but he writes, this isn't perfect. It leaves out some

(01:01:19):
natural geographic rivals like Alabama and Mississippi State, which are
only about ninety miles apart. It also leaves out historic
rivals like Florida and LSU, who developed a good cross
division rivalry during the SEC East West days. But it
does restore Auburn and Florida, who were annual opponents until
two thousand and two. There are also fill in games.

(01:01:40):
It loves how he puts this down fill in games
like South Carolina Mississippi State. It'd be great at Mississippi
State play Alabama, but who Alabama ditch among Auburn, Tennessee
and LSU. And he puts some preenthesies. Alabama would gladly
ditch LSU form Mississippi State, but ESPN would not prefer
that switch, which television matters here. That's the other thing

(01:02:02):
you got to keep in mind on this. ESPN is
set to give each school an additional five million or
so for adding the ninth game. For multiple sources, he's
really plugged into this kind of stuff, even on things
like the number and one source emphasized that a driving
force of this decision was to enhance the regular season,
especially in the face of college football playoff expansion, which

(01:02:25):
would seem to erode the impact of the regular season. Still,
competitive reasons may intervene. For instance, Alabama was once a
proponent of the nine game schedule, but they flipped in
twenty twenty three when Nick Sabans saw you'd have to
play Auburn, Tennessee and LSU every year, but before year
cycle does provide some flexibility. If you don't like your
annual rivalries, you can lobby to change them, and even

(01:02:47):
if your annual games are tougher, you still get to
play the rest of the conference twice every four years.
The disparities not like division plays, saying he pointed out
when for long stretches one division was much stronger than
the other and play most of their games against their
own division. As he said, quote, you're never going to
have a perfectly equal competitive balance. But the more games

(01:03:08):
you play, the more balanced that is across the league.
Yets harder. Playing more games makes that balance better. So anyway,
it's a good take on all of that. We'll be
back to wrap a bower number two. I'm thirteen under
the zone, thirteen hundred of the zone. Glad to have
you with us Craig Way alongside the producer Cameron Parker,
and the producer in training. Remember when Will must Champ

(01:03:29):
was the coach in waiting at Texas that ended up
not going well, it ended up not going on at all.
But producer in training is different, not coaching waiting. It's
a producer in training. That would be Jake Hermon. So
he's firing off the things that need to be fired
off as well. That's why, Yeah, you have when you've

(01:03:49):
heard a couple of misfires of the episode, Jay, they
were a little minor little things coming up. With a
few minutes, we'll talk baseball with Geene Watson and we'll
talk about that. There's a couple of big series this weekend,
Red Sox, Yankees, Yes, Dodgers, Padres. I do have my

(01:04:10):
Dodger batting practice jersey on today for that, so it's
gonna be interesting to see out those here and some
other things. And and again, the the the Astros did
wake up, of course they were playing the Orioles, but
they did wake up yesterday they got the win. And
so the Rangers continue to fade further and further in distance.

(01:04:34):
You really have to look in that rear view mirror
to see him back there. Even so, it's it's tough,
it's it's difficult to see that as well. All right,
But like I said, we're gonna talk more about this
nine game sec format, and like I said, Seth Emerson
did a really good job of laying out how it

(01:04:54):
might work. And I know some folks of wade in
with what they think the rivalry thing is. And I
think the thing that's important to remember about this is that,
as as Emerson pointed out, he says, it prioritizes tradition

(01:05:21):
and geography, not competition. But if you're Auburn and you're
getting your brains beat in for four straight years by Alabama,
Georgia and Florida, that you know, they would say we
got to shake this up. You know, Listen, It's it's

(01:05:42):
no cakewalk either for Texas with Oklahoma and m in Arkansas.
It's just everybody kind of expects it to be the
case because those have been the traditional rivals. You know,
before Arkansas left the Southwest Conference, Texas played Oklahoma and
him in Arkansas every year from going back to the

(01:06:02):
twenties to about nineteen ninety one, when Arkansas left, Oklahoma
was in the Big Eight, or at the time there
was the Big Six, and then it became the Big
Seven when Oklahoma State joined, and then it was the
Big Eight. And so when they were all those decades
that Oklahoma was in, they still played Texas every year.
He's played it in a non conference game. Then when

(01:06:25):
the advent of the Big Twelve came in nineteen ninety six,
it became a conference game and it became, you know,
even more important as a result of that. And then
Arkansas has left. Texas played him in a couple of
non conference swaps. They played him in two thousand. First

(01:06:46):
of all, they played him in the Y two K
Cotton Bowl in two thousand. That's the one where Major
Apple White blew out his knee and Texas lost to
Arkansas that day. But then in the regular season they
played them in two thousand and three and two thousand
and four, in each one on the other team's home field.
Arkansas had Matt Jones at quarterback and they won here

(01:07:09):
in three and then Texas went up there four and
won a big time duel with them, twenty two to twenty.
Vin Young scrambling finding Benson up the sideline for a
touchdown catch Philip geegor with a late interception they gave
Larry Dibbles were covered a fumbway. There were some big
moments in that game in Texas won that Then they

(01:07:33):
had another home and home scheduled for eight and nine,
and in oda and eight, Texas played them. They had
to push it back because of Hurricane Ike, which was
sweeping up into Arkansas. But then when they played at
Texas one I think it was fifty two to ten
they did, they blew them out, and they were supposed

(01:07:55):
to play again in nine, and then Arkansas said, can
we push that back because they were starting a at the time,
non conference schedule, a non conference series with Texas A
and M similar to the Texas OU game. They were
going to play in the Metropleags. They're going to play
at Jerry World since it had just opened. So Texas said, okay,

(01:08:16):
so they moved it back from O nine to twenty fourteen.
Then something else happened, and they happened to move it
again to twenty eighteen, and then something else got in
the way. I think it was for Texas this time,
and he ended up moving into twenty twenty one, and
that was Sarks first year. That's why there was the
one off when Texas went to Arkansas Sarks second game

(01:08:37):
and Arkansas won a hand and I think it was
forty to twenty one. That was still the return game
that was originally scheduled to have been played in two
thousand and nine ended up playing it in twenty twenty one.
Now they're in the same conference. They played two games
so far in conference playing. Texas has won both of

(01:08:57):
those games, and so now or they played one game
and they have the second game coming up. Texas won
the game in Fayetteville last November and they have the
return game coming this year. But if this thing holds,
like many say that their traditional rivals or again the

(01:09:20):
keyword there is annual. Annual means you can mess with it.
You can shoot some things around and change it if
you want. That's what annual means. And so the tradition
and the geography were placed ahead of the competitive part
of it. So if it's to be kept with the tradition,

(01:09:43):
the rivalry thing, it would be logical to perhaps see
Texas play Oklahoma A and M. In Arkansas A and M.
According to Seth Emerson, would draw Texas OU an LSU.
But it's just it's you know, we were talking about
we'll gonna be tough matchups. Alabama Auburn is the Iron Bowl,

(01:10:06):
and you know Alabama has dominated the thing. It's still
a rivalry. And then they would add Tennessee and l
Shue because in case folks didn know, Alabama Tennessee is
also a huge rivalry, just as Texas and Oklahoma the
second Saturday in October. Alabama Tennessee are the third Saturday
in October. It's been that way for decades when they played.

(01:10:28):
So it's we'll see next when the SEC comes out
with it. Because everybody's going to be curious now now
that we know it's nine games, Now that we know
that it's three quote unquote annual rivals and six rotating
conference games. Now that we know that that's that's going

(01:10:52):
to be the case, the next thing is the non
annual opponents. So six games which are home and home.
That's what everybody's going to be curious to see what
happens there. But more importantly, what are going to be
the annual opponents. So carry said, by the way, you mentioned,
said Benson, it's Arkansas happy, said Benson. Day to day. Yeah,
Edar Benson, who's he was? He might have been the

(01:11:17):
most mere, mercurial and to many people misunderstood young man
of play Texas football in a long time. I got
to know him when he was in high school and
called all three of his state championships and kind of see,
he's a really good guy, but was kind of misunderstood
as well. When we miss him, There's no doubt about
it all right up next, we talked some baseball. Geene

(01:11:38):
Watson from the Chicago White Sox front office joins us. Next.
I'm thirteen under the zone. Glad to have you with
us today, and it's usually at this time on Friday's
that we take the opportunity to talk some baseball with
Geene Watson from the Chicago White Sox front office, who
joins us in a from A correct me if I'm wrong,

(01:12:00):
would this be the north eastern most Major League affiliate
baseball team in the United States? Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
I think you might be right. I think you might
be right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
Portland, Maine, home of the Portland Sea Dogs, is where
you are the Red Sox double A affiliate. Correct?

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Correct, But I'm.

Speaker 7 (01:12:22):
Wondering about Everett, Washington, where I was at about three
months ago.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
But I right, well, that's why that you know what,
That's why I said northeastern most Everett Evan would Everett
would definitely be the the northwestern most. I think, uh,
it's right about that, all right, At first things first,
we have to handle some business here. Uh you've probably
already met her and visited with her, but but you

(01:12:47):
do have to say alone for me to Emma Tiedeman,
the play by play voice of the Portland Sea Dogs,
who's outstanding. In fact, I think she's the next female
with a real opportunity to be working at the big
league level. And of course my connection to her. Her
grandfather was the immortal Bill Mercer, who of course was
my broadcast mentor and teacher and first play by play

(01:13:10):
voice of the Texas Rangers and did White Sox with
Harry Carey in addition to doing the Cowboys and calling
their first Super Bowl, and was the voice of the
Mean Green of North Texas for thirty five years and
did all that kind of stuff. I don't know if
you've met Emma, but for folks to hear her, she's outstanding,
and the Red Sox put her on a telecast every years.
She did about a couple of weeks ago or something,

(01:13:31):
and she's really really something. But she's really adapted to Portland,
Maine pretty well.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
She's done really well. She is just tremendous.

Speaker 7 (01:13:40):
And I've actually been with her husband the last two
nights during the game, sitting and talking.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
I believe he's.

Speaker 7 (01:13:46):
The general manager of the team here. And several of
the employees here came from.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
Lexington, Kentucky, which was our Loway affiliate while.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
We were in Kansas City.

Speaker 7 (01:13:56):
So there's a great connection here and that we've talked
about Bill almost every night. And she is truly one
of the rising young stars in broadcasting.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Yeah, yeah, no doubt about that. Way. People will have
to keep that in mind when they hear emmittam and
on that. And by the way, those employees from Lexington
might well have known if they were there, say ten
years ago or eleven years that they might have as
well remembered a young Andy Way who was starting out
in the Royals organizations as a videographer.

Speaker 3 (01:14:26):
That is correct that that group is all here right now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
Wow, that's great, that's great. Okay, I want to talk
before we I'm curious to get your thoughts on this.
When do we start actually, and I say we I'm
already in it, But I mean, when when should casual

(01:14:50):
baseball fans really start paying attention to what our quote
unquote not just what we used to always call pennant
races going for in the old man acular, the National
and American League titles, but then the division titles. But
now it's really playoff picture. Because the Florida Marlins team

(01:15:11):
you worked for was a wildcard that won a World Series.
The Texas Rangers two years ago one of World Series
is a wildcard. So just getting in, As I've heard
you say, getting in is where it really begins. So
when does it really begin to start taking a crucial
look at the teams that you think have a real
shot to get in, other than of course the division leaders.

(01:15:35):
I think it's really about the last ten days of
the season. It really depends on the number of teams
that are involved. Were starting to take pretty good shape
with the wild cards in both divisions.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
Of the Royals being two out, I think is the
outside of that, and.

Speaker 7 (01:15:51):
The Reds I believe are still one out, and after that,
I think that there's not a lot to be concluded.

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
I think that a.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
Team would really have to go on hot run, which
we've seen with the Colorado Rockies before in September, and
so it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
But I think really the last ten.

Speaker 7 (01:16:09):
Days, when you talk about having to win every night,
and teams that you're chasing lose almost every night, it
gets harder and harder to pass, you know, two, three,
four teams a night.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
And so really the last ten days for.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Me, what was what was the biggest deficit when you
were with the Marlins and three? What was the biggest
deficit at its latest point before it really flipped for
the Marlins in September of three.

Speaker 7 (01:16:37):
Well, we were nine out on May first when we
hired when we hired Jeff Torboard in Houston. But the
real kicker was in September, late August early September. We
lost eight out of eleven games, and the Phillies were
chasing us, and every night that we lost, the Phillies lost,
And had they probably played at least five hundred or

(01:16:58):
little over five hundred baseball in late August early September, we.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
Don't even get in. If you look at.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
The Yankees in two thousand and one, I was covering
them for the Atlanta.

Speaker 3 (01:17:08):
Braves for the World Series.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
They didn't get beaten September like twelve out of fourteen.
They got humiliated. They got beat every night by a high.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
Number of runs, and they end up winning the World Series.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
And so it's just you can't pay too much attention
to it. All you're really trying to do is just
play the.

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
Base baseball best baseball you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
Can, stay healthy and really those last five to seven
ten games get your team rolling. Which is when you
see these teams at clinch early and they give their
starters a couple of days. You know, that's where the
moment of the wild card, when you have to play
that sharp every day and think about winning every night,
that's where that wildcard becomes very, very dangerous, because this.

Speaker 3 (01:17:53):
Is not a sport where you can turn it off
and turn it back on.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
Historically, history teaches us just what you said, gino I mean.
And in the pre divisional days, obviously everybody knows about
the fifty one Giants who caught Brooklyn and the shot
heard around the world, Bobby Thompson's home run. What they
may not know is it wasn't that the Dodgers played poorly.
They were around five hundred, maybe a little above. But
the Giants went thirty seven and seven in their last

(01:18:18):
forty four games in sixty four. It was clearly a collapse.
The Phillies are up and this just seems unfathomable even today.
They were up six games with twelve to go and
wind up losing all of it. If they had just
won one of those, they lost ten in a row.
And if they'd just won one it they would have
been in a three way playoff, which had never happened

(01:18:40):
before that happened. But now in the modern times we
get to watching those races toward the bottom of the
playoff picture. I know that Red Sox raised thing that
years ago comes to mind. That's one to do. And then,
like we said, the Rangers seemingly gave it all the
way there with the collapse there late in the season,

(01:19:01):
with the Astros winning the division, only to see the
Rangers beat them in the ALCS to get to the
World Series and then go on to win the World Series.
How much does mindset play in this when you start
to lose games late in the season, and what is
that clubhouse vibe like? Because you've been there and you've
been around it as to flipping the script a little bit,

(01:19:22):
so don't let it become a crash and burned by
the end of the year. Well, I think that teams
that say just get in and you've got a chance,
I disagree with that. I think you've got to be
playing very, very good. You've got to be able to
match up with anybody else's number one, two, three star.

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
You've got to have a great closer, you got to
play very.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Good defense off the middle, and you've got to.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
Have a little luck.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
I've been a part of four World Series teams where
I've lost two, have been a part of losing.

Speaker 7 (01:19:51):
Two and the two we won we could have lost.
The two we lost we could have won. We could
have been swept at all four and won all four
and so. But you have to have talent base to
get there. But I think that really depends on the club.

Speaker 1 (01:20:04):
If you've got a veteran mindset, there's not going to
be any panic or any fear to the club.

Speaker 3 (01:20:10):
But those last few days, and when you think about fourteen,
Mark Burley starts.

Speaker 7 (01:20:14):
The last day of the season in fifteen for Toronto
and gives up you know, eight or nine.

Speaker 3 (01:20:19):
In the first we went home field.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
Advantage at home field advantage ended up being very big,
a big part of that fifteen alcs and so I
think you got to do the very best you can
to get your team's edge and play the best baseball
that you can the last seven to ten days talking
baseball with Teen Watson here on thirteen unders. I'm gonna
I'm gonna name these teams on it, and again I'm
just zeroing in on the wild carnd. Then we're going

(01:20:42):
to get to a couple of big series this weekend.
But I'm going to start off in the American League.
And you tell me if you think that the word
I'm looking for, the term that i'm ascribing to this
is the word realistic. So I want you to tell
me as I run down these teams and where they are,
how real listic a shot they have to be in
the postseason. I'm not talking about getting to the World Series,

(01:21:03):
are winning it. I'm just going to get into the postseason
all right. In the American League, Yankees, Red Sox, and
Mariners right now would all be in the playoffs if
the season ended today. And so the Royals are two back,
the Guardians are three back. Are all of those realistic

(01:21:24):
possibilities to be able to still get into the postseason.

Speaker 7 (01:21:28):
I believe they are, and I think you've got to
be careful of Kansas City right now.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
They've played as good at baseball as anybody since the
All Star break. They're getting hot, and they're getting healthy.
Cole Reagan's is going to be back soon.

Speaker 7 (01:21:40):
They've got the kind of players that when you expand
your roster in September, they've got some dynamic arms and
some dynamic position players that they can decide on to
bring up. And this is a very dangerous team right now.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
And kudos to JJ Piccolo.

Speaker 7 (01:21:55):
For not panicking at all and just being patient with
his roster.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
And they got a.

Speaker 7 (01:22:00):
Legitimate shot to uh to make this run with two
being two games out so far.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
How about the Guardians three back, Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
It's gonna be a little bit more difficult for them.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
I think I think that that it's starting to the
clock is starting to run out.

Speaker 3 (01:22:14):
On what they can do. The Royals are just super hot.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
I don't see anything happening, uh with with two of
the three teams that are in right now, and so
to me, it feels like either Kansas City is gonna
make the push or are there won't be anything happening there, okay,
And you're feeling now the Rangers and and and you
just you feel for them because the Astros went through
that slump and got swept by the Tigers. But the
Rangers could not pick up any ground because they couldn't

(01:22:40):
beat the Royals. And they're five and a half back
and the Angels are six and a half back. You
figured that the that the Mendoza line probably is where
Cleveland is at three back.

Speaker 7 (01:22:51):
Well, and here's the thing what you're gonna.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
Start to see now.

Speaker 7 (01:22:54):
You're gonna start to see some dumping of contracts. Players
with contracts are gonna be going on waiver soon, and
teams are going to have to decide, you know, do
we want to take on.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
This financial responsibility and potentially, you know, take on some
salary but improve our ball club and improve the depth
of our club. And the clubs that do that might
have a chance of really strengthening their team if they
have the payroll flexibility.

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
So you're gonna start seeing that in the next week.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
It's something we discussed today with our players, and you're
gonna start seeing that this next week with teams that
could potentially add talent by adding payroll to their overall salary.
All right, let's jump to the National League. Cubs are
sitting on top of the wild card picture by a
one game over the Padres. Then the Mets would be
the third. Then the Reds are a half game back

(01:23:45):
of them, and then you've got the Cardinals at four back,
Diamondbacks five and a half, Giants six and a half.
So is the cutoff point below Cincinnati? Is that the deal?
I believe?

Speaker 3 (01:23:57):
I think that they're gonna have.

Speaker 7 (01:24:00):
They got to really get hot, and they got they
pitch as well as anybody in baseball, but you get
them outside that ballpark and they're a little bit of
different team.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
That The interesting part.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
Of how watching this season finishes is watch the Saint
Louis Cardinals. They've got a tremendously young, talented team at
the major league level and they've got very good players
at the upper levels right now.

Speaker 7 (01:24:22):
And watch the Cardinals this winter. You're gonna be hearing
a lot of momentum about them being at force in
twenty twenty six, and there's gonna be some inner divisional
play towards the end where there cann be some statements made,
but I really don't see it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
Have said for a while, I don't see much movement
taking place in the National League. All right, all right,
let's go to the weekend here. I'm gonna start with
the American League because Red Sox and the Yankees are
playing in New York this weekend. Red Sox won last
night Brian Bellow and Max Free the pitching matchup tonight
in New York. How crucial a series is this for

(01:24:59):
e of these teams starting off a four game and
this is go rolls all the way back to my
question when we first started the conversation about how close
attention do you play? Pay to the races still with
six weeks to go in the season, but it's a
head to head series Boston and New York.

Speaker 7 (01:25:19):
This is for Boston, who I just left. I've just
left their major league teams a real statement series. And
last night Roman Anthony's home run the backflip. I mean,
this is a kid that is arguably going to be
the best.

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
Player in the game within five years. He is a
superstar and a bit of a statement for him last
night going into Yankee Stadium.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
But when you look at the two teams, Boston young, talented, athletic, energetic,
high energy. They defend well. The Yankees a little older, not.

Speaker 7 (01:25:56):
As healthy, don't run as well, good in their ballpark,
but but really rely on the home run.

Speaker 3 (01:26:02):
And so this is a chance. And I truly believe
that Boston's going to control this division.

Speaker 1 (01:26:07):
Beyond this year for about the next five because they
have a great major league team, and they've got a
really good system, and they beat you in so many
different ways. But this is a chance for Boston to
kind of, you know, say this is our division, it's
our October and going to New York.

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
And really make a big statement with this series.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
The other big American League series this weekend starts signing Detroit.
It's the Tigers and Royals on this and this this
is a crucial thing. You know, Detroit is back on
track after they really staggered for a bit. They seem
to have put the train back on the track and
they're rolling again. But like you said, it's an opportunity
for Kansas City to make a statement, decline and launch

(01:26:47):
themselves into the wildcard picture.

Speaker 3 (01:26:50):
This is going to be a great series.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
And yes, both teams are playing extremely well right now.
Where Detroit really went through their struggles for a couple
of weeks, you know, about a month ago. But both
teams are playing at the top of their game. Both
teams know they are the class.

Speaker 3 (01:27:06):
Of the division. And don't be surprised if you don't
see a little bit of Dodger Padre edge to this series.
Both teams know what's on the line, not just for
this series and for October, but truly, both teams are
the class of the organization, are the class of the
division for the next few years.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
And so it's going to be highly emotional, highly competitive,
and and this is gonna be of all the series
this weekend, this is going.

Speaker 3 (01:27:33):
To be playoffs.

Speaker 1 (01:27:33):
Baseballer, you have always been been a man of absolute
supreme timing, which brings us to Dodgers Padres. Last weekend,
San Diego actually had a one game lead going into
the weekend series of Dodger Stadium. Dodgers swept them, went
out to but the Dodgers really just kind of struggled
and kind of treaded water against the Rocky split a

(01:27:55):
four game series where the Padres won three of four.
So here's San Diego one game back. Now they get
the Dodge at home it's Blakestell against you Darvish. Tonight,
tomorrow it's Tyler Glass now against Nestor Cortes. In Sunday,
your Snobo Yamamoto against Nick Pavetta. How about that series.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
Even your description right there tells the story of what
this is.

Speaker 7 (01:28:17):
It's a horse race, and nobody's gonna panic, nobody's gonna
get too far out in front of the other.

Speaker 3 (01:28:23):
Everybody knows where it was last year. And as I've
said many times before, teams when they know they're good
and they know they're October, almost wished the season away,
and you go through your ups and downs and your
struggles and your your peaks. But these both both these
teams know where they are as teams, and they know
what's on the line, and they know what's coming. And

(01:28:45):
so again, just playing as good a baseball as you
can and staying healthy right now. But these guys both
know they're.

Speaker 7 (01:28:52):
Headed first show down in October, and so there's not
a ton of panic going on with either of them
right now. But it'll be a great series, and we're
actually gonna covering that series out in San Diego.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
He's Gene Watson from the Chicago White Sox front office.
He's in Portland, Maine, where right now it says it's
seventy seven degrees and sunny, and then it's going to
be in the seventies again tomorrow, New England weather must
suit you well, right, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):
It feels like a Friday night football game in Temple, Texas.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
Hey, I appreciate the time. Say hi to Emma for
me and look forward to seeing you and we'll do
it again next week.

Speaker 3 (01:29:30):
All right, Greg, I'm great weak you too.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):
All right? That's Geen Watson from the Chicago White Sox
front office. Back through some SEC football. When we continue
on thirteen under the zone sare, I want to go
jump back to college football and the residual effect of
the SEC going to the nine game conference schedule after
all these years of debate and everything, it's going to happen.

(01:29:54):
So that came down and it became official. So there's
a couple of things in play off of this one
as it relates to the College Football Playoff Committee. They
announced this earlier this week that they're going to add
I think they announced on Tuesday that they are tweaking

(01:30:17):
the key word. I think this word has been used
more than any other word in describing adjustments made to
what they like to do with the College FOOTBA playoffs,
the word tweak. We're gonna tweak things. We're tweaking just
a little bit here. So it was Wednesday, it was
two days ago. They announced this that some new metrics

(01:30:41):
to help the committee weigh the strength of schedule, and
they tweak to the recusal pology of policy. Excuse me
for the panel, the third team member panel. They also
unveiled the schedule for this year's committee rankings, as usual,
will come out on Tuesday night. November fourth is the

(01:31:02):
first one. Ameron Parker, you know where we are November fourth,
Charlotte Roth, Cheryl laugh.

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
Yeah, yeah, I'll be I'll be watching maybe from Roses
or Old Sycamore Brewing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
I don't know, one of the spots. Maybe. No, you'll
be watching from courtside. It's a game going on. That's
the night of the game, So I'll be watching on
my matt line. Did you have your laptop out, your iPad? Yeah? Yeah, yeah.
And while Texas is playing Duke in the basketball season
opener there at the Spectrum Center, that's when the first

(01:31:37):
rankings are coming out. Okay, so they did that twelve
team playoff in its second year. They've already had one
major change this year the rankings. The final committee rankings,
as we know, we'll be used to seed the field.
Like last year in the top four seeds and the
first round byes were reversed for conference champions. Everybody were

(01:31:59):
members the memorable peachball game that Texas and Arizona State play.
Do you remember that Arizona State was actually seated higher.
They were the four seed, not the log Horns. I
would say that's why they were wearing the white uniforms.
But Texas likes wearing the white uniforms anyway, So other
than that or so, but that they were the actually

(01:32:21):
the higher seed. No more. Now it's going to be
the final rankings will determine those seeds in the first round.
By now, there's been a lot of discussion among the
conference commissioners who manage the College Football Playoff about the
format beyond the season and the role of selection committee.
More expansion perhaps and minimizing the role of the committee
through increased automatic qualifying bids has been debated. So they've

(01:32:48):
been especially vocal the SEC about the committee putting more
emphasis on strength of schedule, and the CFP staff tried
to address that through working with its data partners on
a new strength of record metric for the committee to use.
I was so entertained, I guess is the right way
to describe this. When when Rich Clark or whoever was

(01:33:11):
heading up the College FOOTBA playoff committee was on say
with Reeche Davis or somebody, and he was talking about
the data, and Reecee Davis would say, what about the data?
What can you tell me about the data? Well, it's
the data, you know, and you kind of you kind
of put the data in, and the data it didn't

(01:33:32):
get into it didn't get into what exactly how much
weight on certain elements of the data. He reminded me
of the end of the scene in Indiana Jones the
Raiders of the Lost Arc when he says the art
has got to be cataloged. Well, well, it's being taken
care of and studied by top men. He goes which men,

(01:33:53):
and the guy goes top men, and that's all he says.
It's like that commercial for Indeed where the woman goes
it's a competitive number, And if it were a number,
it would be a competitive number. So there hasn't been
enough to satisfy a lot of folks anyway, enough transparency

(01:34:14):
on how that data is actually analyzed. So now they
say there's going to be some more of that, and
then they also there was some controversy about whether teams
that did not play on championship weekend should be locked
into their placements relative to teams that did. A clarification

(01:34:34):
of the committee's procedure was made during last seasons penultimate selections.
The chairman was Ward Manual, the Michigan Athletic Director, said
the committee would not reorder teams excluded from conference title
games based on the results of those games. All right,
So the thirteam member panel is made up of current
athletic directors, former coaches and players, and a media member

(01:34:56):
no longer actively covering the sports because I don't really
Italian all the life anyway. Committee members have in the
past been recused from discussions about and voting on schools
they receive direct compensation from. Also, committee members are recused
from weighing in on teams that have an immediate family

(01:35:16):
member playing on or coaching on their team. This year,
they're adjusting things with this. It's a partial recusal which
will be used if the member has a secondary relationship
with the school, such as an immediate family member employed
by the institution, but outside of the football program. Partial recusal.

(01:35:40):
That's our operative phrase this year. It's also the name
of a band playing downtown in Austin on you I
think partial recusal. Yeah, anyway, it allows the member to
participate in discussions related to the team, but not vote
for what that's worth. All right, So anyway, that's what
the playoff committee was, what's going to do. And then

(01:36:03):
there's this deal about how could the SEC going to
nine games? According to Stuart Mandel might stave off this
is his headline, SEC going to nine games might stave
off Big Ten's hair brained playoff plan. And this is
something we talked about that you know, we've heard about
these playoff plans of Whereas most folks were talking about

(01:36:28):
the possibility of a sixteen teen playoff, and then somehow
it jumped to twenty eight, whereas a twenty four and
a twenty eight and so Tony Pettiti, the Big Ten commissioner, said,
when you get to a system that's increasing the at
largest and the work of a selection committee, that's when
you need to understand how we're competing in the regular season. Look,

(01:36:48):
at the end of the day, it's really simple math.
With eighteen schools at nine conference games, were losing nine
more games to start, and Stuart Mandel says, if that's
really the main concern, than this long national nightmare should
be over. No more disadvantage with the committee. No need
to preordain that some conferences get four h's while others
get two, or to make the thing big enough to

(01:37:10):
ensure an unranked seven and five Michigan team gets to
play in a six versus twenty seven first round game,
you know, sinking. The SEC Commissioner has made it clear
they prefer the simpler five plus eleven concept. That's five
aqs for conference champions and eleven at large bits. I

(01:37:32):
think yesterday's announcement takes it one big step closer to
that happening now that it's going to be that that way,
we'll see now that the SEC's we'll give a little,
we'll go to nine games. Now you've got to come
back to our way of thinking to the big ten
on that and maybe the twenty eighth thing was just

(01:37:54):
a you know, thing to kind of prime the pump
to get the sec up and moving toward getting nine games.
If it was it worked, we'll see. We'll be back
to wrap up today's edition of the program on thirteen
under his own

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