Welcome to the A. C. C. Panic room alongside Lauren Brownlow. I'm Jovi's and as you can see by the sign overhead. She is absolutely stoked to be an A. C. C tip off here in charlotte. What was your overall thought on the day? I had a good time. It was nice to talk to people in person again and black people. I mean like players, coaches, whatever. I mean it's been a weird football season was weird. Like it was nice in july when we got to chat with a few people in person. But then ever since then, I mean, you know, most teams haven't been having live availability. It's just been really strange this football season. Zoom is fine to a degree, but it was so much better to be able to, like I'm not going to ask somebody over zoom like a dumb question, you know, like, and I can do that here and it's just more fun that way because when you can ask somebody a dumb question in person, they like they can see what kind of demeanor you're doing. You're clearly being tongue in cheek or whatever it is and it's a lot more comfortable. Yeah. My um, you know, the A C A C C tip off this year was really simple. It was about Roy Williams and was about Mike Wazowski and the relationships that we've had with the coaches, the relationship, the relationship they had with the league itself and what the future is going to look like. The one thing though about the A. C. C. Is that we, you know, the A. C. C. Still needs these personalities and there's still some personalities left in the league. Josh Pastner is one of the biggest personalities. Just what happens is that Georgia tech. They don't really move the needle nationally. Leonard Hamilton is a personality but it's at florida state florida state doesn't necessarily move the needle that way. So it almost feels like the two the two big schools that everybody wraps up in in terms of north Carolina duke. We don't know what those guys are going to be like in those head coaching positions since we've been so used to Roy. Okay. Yeah. I think it will be interesting. I do I did think it was interesting. I thought Leonard was a little more prickly than I expected at the notion like anything that had anything to do with retirement, even if you were just asking about someone else it was like no he had no I had no time. I'm not retiring any time soon. No time. And I mean look we all can see I mean it looks amazing like we get it. We don't have to tell us why you pushed back on the fact that I referred to him as like one of the old guys. He was like excuse me. I was like and I need to be fair if I looked like lenny I would do that. Like Jim Larranaga is over a year younger than Leonard Hamilton. Please sit with that information for a minute And you'd never know it. You would think he's like 20 years. You'd never know it. So I believe you're working on this for WRL sportsman documents. Not done. You were asking people like what they were doing in quarantine, not to give away the whole thing. But what was the biggest like what was the biggest surprise ban ebates teaching himself the piano. Yeah, he got himself, his friend taught him to play piano. So he got a keyboard to keep practicing and um you know, we like slow songs on the piano. Yeah. I also got to ask like I would have never gone to ask Michael devo about like bell biv devoe. And yes, he knows what the references, which was a relief to me, but he says he doesn't get it from young people. So I did. Which I think that seems to be the theme of this. A C. C tip off old. I mean that's that's the other thing. You know who you forgot my guy? Mike Brey. Ah Yeah, that's true, that's true. We did have a fun conversation with Mike Brey where he essentially said about Roy and K don't let the door hit you on the way out or don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out to be more specific. But you almost died because of Mike Brey. Well it's because you know, he, the thing is that he was in the media room early at the same time that Duke and coach K we're in like the big media room. So nobody was in the breakout room with Notre dame, nobody. And I'm like, I love talking to Mike break, just going to go chat him up. So I did. And I was asking him about ball movement and stuff like that boy teaching ball movement, actual basketball questions. Yes, of course. He loved that. And I like asked him a bunch of kind of specific questions and he saw me in the lunch line later, he was like, you know, you you had a really interesting and like good line of questioning, like I was, you know, where are you from? And I told him some greens around whenever I was like, but I've always been a fan of the, of the way you play. And it was like, oh, that makes sense because your questions were really good questions and I was just like, okay, I'm dead now. So do I need a new panic room partner? I'm surprised you even make it. Or am I talking to am I talking to a ghost of Brownlow? Maybe Halloween is Halloween spooky season. It is and I can be on the lookout for that. I mean, I just know that like, that's, you know, that was like goals for me. So I'm glad I'm glad you got those goals. So a couple a couple of recurring themes from the day that we're not but to Roy Williams or make a lot of how to do with transfers and the ever changing nature of season to season A. C. C. Basketball. And I do feel that while you can still be into your programs and still root for these coaches it makes it incredibly difficult to be invested when you're like wait a minute. So like we talked to hubert Davis about this north Carolina where yeah they've got returning players but the real focal point was the guys they brought in uh we had talked to Jeff Capel at Pit and Julia what happened? Well but what's funny about that is you know Giulio you know I pointed out to cable like yeah you kind of get pointed out is this guy a coach and a program that keeps losing players but capable of very quick point out. Yeah but it's two ways we're bringing other guys and guys that they really like. So the but there's an effect on this. The coaches are adapting to it obviously because they have to they're left with no choice but I still think his fans were still having a hard time processing what's about to happen. Duke fans have been living that life for a while now but with the one and does I think with state fans through Godfried and like let's scramble for a roster. They've been living that and obviously under kevin Keats was used to that given his coaching background including including U. N. C. W. There's some familiarity with that. The program that's going to have the biggest adjustment would be Carolina fans with how things are gonna be going forward. Hubert Davis not to say that they can't be successful not to say that people are still gonna love Carolina basketball but this is gonna be a whole new freaking world for target basketball fans. And it started today with the way they were talking about the team for sure. But I mean it's you know I think it's almost more symbolic too of just like the whole thing about stepping into a new era of basketball with hubert Davis. They're not going to talk about straying too far from the things that are traditionally important to them. But at the same time like I think they realize yes we have to start getting big men who shoot threes. Yes we have to start getting transfers and when they're interested and certainly they'll be interested. I mean they've it's not like Carolina never took transfers before. Never had any before. But you know they certainly didn't have to expect as much of that as they probably are going to have to now. But I mean that's what happens when you put that exemption in place and say you can transfer wherever this funny Prentice Hall was like a c c players are transferring to each other. Sec schools he goes I even know that was the thing I was like well maybe that's why Notre dame had no transfers. Maybe they know that they could do. That is a thing now it is absolutely a thing now. It's a thing a couple of other housekeeping notes from A. C. Tip off here in charlotte jim phillips. The commissioner of the A. C. C. Did the normal press thing. Um Although he he didn't because remember at a. C. Kick off he said football is the priority. He didn't really like have to like circle back on. Yeah we're basketball here to write and he spent some time talking about you should have just been like I'm not even going to show up today. Yeah I was thinking about that even doing this because that's what football is a priority. I mean if you've seen the state of the league right now we're really worried about the college football playoff. But what I actually thought the more interesting aspects of the jim phillips press conference were related to the alliance which we still don't know what the alliance's about. They can say all the buzzwords they want and the distribution of the A. C. C. Network. Now I go back to july okay I go back to july for A. Cc. Kickoff where they were optimistic about the A. C. C. Network getting cleared by Comcast slight problem still hasn't been cleared by Comcast and they front loaded that a. C. C. Football schedule including the game we just had this past weekend between Notre dame and Virginia Tech that was like engineered to get Comcast to bite because of Notre dame. Such a big football product Comcast did not bite. But he's still reiterated that they're optimistic if I may. The issue right now is that the distributors are so emboldened by the fact that consumers are continuing to leave these bundles because they can go to netflix and they can go to do various other things HBO and everything else. They're not willing to pay those prices anymore for sports, I hear you. But at the same time if that's an impetus driving people to those things, why would you want, especially when you can still get some regional networks there, why would you want to drive people away? But that's what hulu exists for. They talked about working with Disney and ESPN. Disney owns Hulu and I understand that Comcast is like this, it's all the homes. But if you're really motivated to watch network stuff or sports in general, you have those options in front of you including Hulu. And I'm not quite sure that Comcast is going to put this cost to subsidize ESPN and the network for a consumer base that maybe 20% of care about not even 20%. 20% of people might be general sports fans and it whittles down even more when you get to things like the A. C. C. Network. But Disney's got the hammer because they've got this portfolio. I'll be curious to see where it goes. But I almost feel like the window has been missed for the Comcast thing because they've had some big games and Comcast is not just not yet. So we'll see where it goes. We'll see where it goes for distribution network. We'll wait. They wouldn't show it on, they don't show the sec title game on the Senate. Where do they know that that was going to say that's an abc. I was like well you know Pit State doesn't get him to bite. I don't know what will any other things that got your attention here at the tip off. Um No it's just it was interesting. I really enjoy talking to players from other teams as well because it's a nice chance to get to know some of them beyond just what we see on a basketball court. I felt super like inadequate and interested in the fact that so many of them actually did productive real things with their time in quarantine. We like what radio show. I mean trying to find new and inventive ways to get people to listen to sports talk radio without sports and that's work Lauren. I didn't learn the piano. Like man it's like it's just you know some of them were reading I was like God I read less during the some somehow I read less like than I did before. Just like video games. A lot of them did that too. Yeah, it seems like a much more productive use of their time. Anyway, that's gonna wrap it up for this edition of the A. C. C. Panic room at a. C. C. Tip off here in charlotte. We'll see all this weekend for some A. C. C. Football action.