Austin and Mitch discuss all the way our current situation is affecting the process of college recruiting. They discuss Smash trying to work his way onto a team in season three, other times in history that changed the way football was played, and how teams and players are handling COVID.
Follow us on twitter @deviltownpod, @a_greenameyer, and @organzapleats
Email us at deviltownpodcast@gmail.com
Find transcripts and show notes at deviltown.buzzsprout.com
Sources:
When Football Went to War
Austin and Mitch discuss all the way our current situation is affecting the process of college recruiting. They discuss Smash trying to work his way onto a team in season three, other times in history that changed the way football was played, and how teams and players are handling COVID.
Follow us on twitter @deviltownpod, @a_greenameyer, and @organzapleats
Email us at deviltownpodcast@gmail.com
Find transcripts and show notes at deviltown.buzzsprout.com
Sources:
When Football Went to War
0:00
AUSTIN: (sigh) Welcome to our Devil Town, where we’re constantly tired and have to deal with
MITCH: Have a diet coke.
AUSTIN: rain. No, I’ve had way too much caffeine today. I need water. That’s what I need.
(Devil Town theme music)
AUSTIN: In celebration of our state turning all red on the COVID tracker list
MITCH: Yeah, we… We haven’t had a day that wasn’t worse than the day before
AUSTIN: Ugh
MITCH: in a year (laughing)
AUSTIN: Our running seven day average
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: has just peaked over 3,000 new cases a day.
MITCH: Yep
AUSTIN: I would say that that’s due to this last weekend, having a 4,000 new cases in one day, but the rest of the days have been 2,400, and 3,300, and things like that. So, yes, it’s higher than what it should be, it’s still very high.
MITCH: Yeah. All of our schools are shutting down.
AUSTIN: The world’s coming to an end, again.
MITCH: That’s the thing, it’s not again. It has never stopped, it has never slowed down. We just stopped paying attention to it and it kept getting worse, and then we started paying attention again and it kept getting worse, and then stopped paying attention and it kept getting worse. Like, the numbers have never changed.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: How we’ve responded to them has changed. Which makes me feel crazy, because I haven’t changed. I’m doing basically the exact same thing I did during the summer, just going to work, because I have to go to work.
AUSTIN: Essentially I am too.
MITCH: Yeah, but, like, clearly most of the people in the state are not doing that, or it wouldn’t be getting worse and worse and worse.
AUSTIN: I’m scared for Thanksgiving, I really am.
MITCH: I think it’s gonna get bad.
AUSTIN: I had to ask my grandma, she was like, “Are you coming into town? I’d like to see you.” I was like, “Depends on what you’re doing for Thanksgiving.”
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I was like, “Are we doing it with all of our extended family like we did last year, when there were 40 people there, and half of them I didn’t know?” And she was like, “Oh no, no, no, it’s just gonna be your family. Your mom and dad, Taylor, Cole, and then us.”
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: I was like, ok, I can deal with that.
MITCH: That’s fine.
AUSTIN: But it’s gonna get worse unless we shut down again.
MITCH: Which, like, we are, but… That’s the thing, now that everything gone back… Business wise, everything has “gone back to normal,” meaning things are open, most of us don’t have the option.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Like, I don’t get to choose whether or not I go to work.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: I go to work when they tell me to go to work. I would personally be fine with shutting down. What I can control. I can’t control whether I have to go to work or not.
AUSTIN: Yeah. We’re essential employees, so we’d still be out. That’s just kind of how it works. But, in celebration -
MITCH: In celebration
AUSTIN: we’re talking about COVID and football.
MITCH: Yes
AUSTIN: And then other things that have put wrenches in college football or other football, and sports and shit like that in general. But I’m Austin,
MITCH: And I’m Mitch
AUSTIN: and welcome to Devil Town. Cue that beautiful… dirge?
MITCH: It’s not a dirge, it’s a nice song.
AUSTIN: It’s kind of a dirge, it’s kind of a dirge. It’s kind of a dirge.
MITCH: A little dirgey.
AUSTIN: A little dirgey.
(Devil Town theme music)
3:29
MITCH: Do we wanna go chronologically, and we can talk about my historical stuff and then we can talk about what’s going on right now?
AUSTIN: We can if you want to. Yeah, I’m down with that.
MITCH: I don’t have much.
AUSTIN: I don’t really have much either, but I think it’s more of a conversation.
MITCH: Yes. Mine is not, mine is just information. I tried to find other times when the college football world would’ve been, like, disrupted. Recruiting and schedules and stuff. And really, there haven’t been very many.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: The two that are similar to now are 1918, because that was
AUSTIN: COVID 1.0
MITCH: It was Spanish Flu. Spanish Flue and also World War I.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Most football teams in college shortened their schedules in 1918. The Missouri Valley conference, straight up, there was no football, in the whole conference.
AUSTIN: I wanna say they did that this year too.
MITCH: Yeah. But that was more, Missouri Valley was more because of World War I than Spanish Flu.
AUSTIN: Really?
MITCH: Spanish Flu, it was kind of like, looking back we can see that having sports made it all worse, but they didn’t know that at the time.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And the thing was, they did kind of what they’re doing now, where they were like, “Ok, we got this flu. We need to make some contingency plans.” So they shortened schedules, and they would, like, have games and say they weren’t gonna have a lot of fans in the stands, and then have, you know, sold out, packed stands. And then be like, “Oh no, we accidentally had five hundred thousand people in the stands.”
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: There were some things I saw that said, like… The Spanish Flu had three peaks that were more defined than COVID’s have been, where, like, it got really bad and then better, really bad and then better, three distinct times.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: The third one is probably because of the World Series.
AUSTIN: Hmmm
MITCH: ‘Cause it was at the same time as the biggest group of people came back from World War I. Like, the most soldiers at one moment, came back at the same time into New York City mostly. And the World Series was held in Boston on the same weekend.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: And those two things were like mass spreader events.
AUSTIN: Right
AUSTIN: Like, really made the numbers jump. So the third peak that made the numbers really jump was probably due to the World Series lining up with that.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Umm
AUSTIN: Oh! So, this is just a… This has nothing to do with that time period,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: it has everything to do with this time period. Did you hear that the Warriors, whenever they come back - The NBA is trying to push a, like a very early date to start.
MITCH: Yeah, I don’t know anything about this.
AUSTIN: Like, December 20 or something like that. But the Warriors are pushing to have fifty percent capacity in their arena.
MITCH: Bad idea.
AUSTIN: Fifty.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: That’s impossible.
MITCH: It’s a bad idea. It’s a little bit of the, like, give ‘em an inch, like. That’s stupid, but when so many other industries are just operating like nothing has changed and doing everything like normal,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: from a business standpoint, you can’t blame them. I don’t like it, I think it’s bad and dumb. But if you’re a businessperson in charge of that, of course you’re gonna ask for that.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: Like, everybody else is doing it, so like, how are you gonna make money.
AUSTIN: I know, but like
MITCH: It’s annoying
AUSTIN: even then, you look at
MITCH: You can’t expect a business to operate because it’s right or because it’s safe.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: They gotta do what they gotta do to make money.
AUSTIN: Well, they’re gonna make money. I mean, they have
MITCH: Oh no, they would
AUSTIN: tv deals, and Stephen Curry’s gonna be back. Like, of course they’re gonna make fucking money.
MITCH: That’s why we need somebody to tell them what they’re allowed to do and not do. ‘Cause yeah, if you leave it up to them to do whatever is best, of course they’re gonna do something stupid.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I was reading… The 1918 season, Georgia Tech was the reigning champs. They won in 1917.
AUSTIN: Is that the year that…?
MITCH: It’s one of the years. This is, uh what’s his name? Heisman was the coach.
AUSTIN: Yes! 222-0
MITCH: Yeah, in 1916, they had the highest scoring game of all time, Cumberland, 222-0. They’re coming off of that, two years later. They were the reigning national champions. They didn’t start until October 5th, but I kind of get the feeling that they were, like… Most teams in the country were struggling. Like, barely fielding teams. There were a lot of reasons why it was challenging. And Georgia Tech still had their shit together and had no mercy, ‘cause Heisman didn’t care. (laughing)
AUSTIN: No, he doesn’t give a shit.
MITCH: They… Their first game of the season, they beat Furman 118-0.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Then they beat the Oglethorpe 11th Cavalry 123-0, after the third quarter when it was stopped.
AUSTIN: (laughing) It was stopped in the third quarter?
MITCH: Then they beat North Carolina State 128-0. Their first five games, the total scores were 425-0.
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: I don’t know why Georgia Tech just, like, was so dominant, but like, they clearly knew before the season started that they were gonna be dominant and were like, “No mercy, let’s do this.”
AUSTIN: And then a century later they are a floormat. (laughing)
MITCH: That’s really all I have about 1918. There’s really not a lot in general except for the Missouri Valley straight up cancelling.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I don’t know if that’s a conference anymore, actually, now that I think about it.
MITCH: I thought it was. Missouri Valley?
AUSTIN: Oh, it is.
MITCH: Who’s in it?
AUSTIN: It just says Valley. North Dakota. It’s a D2 school.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: North Dakota State, Southern Illinois, Illinois State, Indiana State, Missouri State
MITCH: Wait, Illinois State?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Is D2?
AUSTIN: I think so.
MITCH: Ohh, I just assumed they were D1.
AUSTIN: Western Illinois, South Dakota State. North Dakota state is, like, world beaters.
MITCH: Southern, central Illinois is so far away from North Dakota and there are so many things between them.
AUSTIN: Indiana, and that’s on the other side.
MITCH: It is the Missouri Valley, but…
AUSTIN: Youngstown State, I think that’s in Ohio.
MITCH: (laughing) That’s so far away.
AUSTIN: I’m pretty sure it’s in Ohio.
MITCH: Nowhere near the Missouri River.
AUSTIN: Well, I mean, the Big 12 has, typically, southern and central southern, and then you have West Virginia.
MITCH: I didn’t know that.
AUSTIN: They were trying to get… They were also, like, since everything went haywire, the Pac 12 initially said they weren’t playing. They were trying to get Arizona and Arizona State in the Big 12.
MITCH: The Pac 12 is one of the ones in World War II that more than half - oh, at the time it was the Pacific Coast Conference - over half of the conference didn’t play at all in 1943. And I didn’t realize it, but it’s because Pearl Harbor happened right before the season, and at the time, they were, like, seeing Japanese subs off the west coast. They thought that there was an imminent attack on the west coast soil.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So, like, everything that had large crowds of people on the west coast was cancelled that year. And I didn’t even put that together, like, it wasn’t just players getting drafted and all that. It was also, like, we don’t want to have a stadium full of people in San Francisco or Seattle.
AUSTIN: Jesus
MITCH: And then, I mean, it didn’t happen.
AUSTIN: I know, but still, like
MITCH: That was the thought at the time.
10:49
MITCH: Most of what I found is from this article, When Football Went to War. It’s from Sports Illustrated but it’s from, like, 1975.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: It was in the vault. It kinda goes through all the ways football teams weren’t able to play well during World War II.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: There’s some stuff that might not be new information to everybody but it was very new to me. I didn’t realize there were so many military teams that were not the academies. Not Army and Navy -
AUSTIN: So like… Ok
MITCH: So in 1943, when World War II… when there was a draft and World War II was, like, fully going, a lot of schools switched to six man football. Georgetown straight up had to cancel because they realized that every single player from their varsity and freshmen teams were not going to be there in ‘43.
AUSTIN: Fuck
MITCH: Like, literally every player was gonna be gone, so they cancelled. Penn State lost 24 players. Nearly 200 colleges just cancelled the ‘43 season completely. The NCAA loosened regulations, letting freshmen play varsity. So a lot of these colleges were playing, technically, college teams, but they were college students who were 16 or 17 and too young to go to war, or late 20s, people that were going back to college,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: because they hadn’t been drafted. It was really rough for just, like, average colleges in 43, 44, 45.
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: What I didn’t know was that there was all these teams that were military but weren’t the academies. Obviously you had Army and Navy, they still exist, West Point.
AUSTIN: Right, yeah, Army, Navy,
MITCH: Air Force
AUSTIN: Air Force, yeah
MITCH: There were a lot of - mostly Navy, some Army, some Air Force, but mostly Navy - the training camps you would go to before getting deployed. A lot of them were hosted on college campuses and they would field their own teams.
AUSTIN: Oh wow. I did not know that.
MITCH: So you’d have, like, one of the best teams was Iowa Pre Flight. It was on Iowa’s campus.
AUSTIN: I had no idea.
MITCH: But you had Iowa football team, and you also had Iowa Pre Flight which was a Navy recruit… Like, it was a Navy school,
AUSTIN: Wow
MITCH: operating on… It was a V12 program. They were allowed by the NCAA to be considered college teams.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Army didn’t let their… They had those teams in the Army camps, in the Army bases, but they didn’t, they weren’t allowed to compete collegiately.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Navy was.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: So if you look at the AP polls, uh, for 1943, of the top 20 teams ranked by AP, I think 10 of them are those military - not Army, not Navy, but like - Number 2 was Iowa Pre Flight. Notre Dame was number one, but Iowa Pre Flight was, like, maybe should’ve been ranked higher than them.
AUSTIN: Wow
MITCH: Great Lakes Navy was number 6. Del Monte Pre Flight was number 8. March Field, 10. Army, as a team, was 11. Bainbridge NTS was 17, and Pacific was number 19. So a lot of the teams were not colleges.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And these teams were, like, dominant for those two or three years, and then after the war ended they just disappeared.
AUSTIN: That’s wild.
MITCH: Like, two or three of them kept playing for one or two seasons after the war ended, but they mostly just were gone after that.
AUSTIN: That’s insane. I didn’t know that.
MITCH: Yeah, I didn’t even know they existed.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Um, the other things that’s weird, the six best training camp teams were Navy. They had a lot of coaching talent, because a lot of coaches were in the military, and, like, that’s a pretty easy way to stay off the front lines, is like, you know, convince somebody that you’d make a good coach for one of these teams.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: You can spend the war on Iowa’s campus coaching a football team that’s as good as your other one. But also, they were getting a lot of people after their college career, and after a few years in the pros.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: So a lot of people who were, like, 22, who had finished their college career playing college football were immediately drafted and put on another football team in the Navy or the Army.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And these coaches
AUSTIN: That’s cheap (laughing)
MITCH: you never knew, like, they… You didn’t really recruit. These teams didn’t recruit, these, these, these smaller… It was truly who they were given in the way the military drafts people randomly. The would just happen to get really good athletes. They’d get some, like, really famous professional football players. But those people might be there for, like, two months and then get shipped off,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: and they never knew when it was gonna happen. Also, at the time the Navy had limits on their recruits. They couldn’t be over 6’3” or bigger than 200 pounds.
AUSTIN: Oh shit
MITCH: So they were that dominant that season
AUSTIN: And they didn’t have any linemen.
MITCH: and nobody was over 6’3” or over 200 pounds.
AUSTIN: They didn’t have any linemen.
MITCH: And they never knew how long someone was gonna be there or they’d get transferred midseason or…
AUSTIN: That’s incredible.
MITCH: Yeah. It was truly just a, you know, luck of the draw, they got some big talent in some big places through luck,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: and had some amazing football teams for two years and then just went away. The place where it really got crazy with recruitment was the military academies.
16:08
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: Because they did have a history and they had reason to, like, wanna further their program. A lot of these Navy teams it was kinda just like, weird, pleasant surprise, flash in the pan thing. Where, like, obviously the coaches and the players were happy to be playing again and, like, loved it,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: but there were no long term goals there. They had no history, they had no
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: reason to try to build a program, they were just playing football.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Army and Navy recruited hard. (laughing) There’s… I don’t know, the kid’s name wasn’t in this article. But there was some kid who had been recruited his whole high school career. There was anecdotes from people in his small town like, every weekend the train would stop and you’d see which college had sent somebody to come talk to him.
AUSTIN: (laughing) Yeah
MITCH: He finally settled on Princeton, committed to Princeton. Moved out to New Jersey to finish his senior year of high school, so he could, like, get ready to go to Princeton and play football.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: The night after Pearl Harbor, Army recruiters came to his dorm at his, like, charter high school, or at his, uh, private high school, and knocked on his door and said, “Do you want to be drafted or do you want to play Army football?” And he went to West Point and played football.
AUSTIN: Shit
MITCH: So like, West Point, the coach at West Point and that program had no shame in like… They had, like… Every 17, 18, and 19 year old in the country was just waiting to be drafted.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And if you could get Army to want you on their team, that’s a way to stay out of the war.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So everybody wanted to play there. ‘Cause even those other schools, you could play on, uh, like, Iowa Pre Flight or something, you’re still gonna go to war. You’re there while you’re training.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: If you go to West Point to play on their football team, you’re gonna come out of that an officer.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And if you can get into West Point through your football skills, hey,
AUSTIN: You go
MITCH: you’re an officer instead of enlisted, why not?
18:03
18:03
MITCH: West Point in 1944 had enough talent that they just straight up had two different teams. There were two West Point teams that year.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: 'Cause why not? They hadn't beat Notre Dame since 1931 and they hadn't scored a point against Notre Dame since 1938. In 1944 they beat Notre Dame 59 to 0. (laughing)
AUSTIN: Yeah!
MITCH: They beat Pennsylvania 62-7, Pittsburgh 69-7, and Villanova 83-0. And obviously that didn't last. Like, Army's still good, but, like they're not...
AUSTIN: I like to believe that that's the reason that Villanova doesn't have a football team anymore.
MITCH: That's the reason, truly, Georgetown closed their team at this time and never came back.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Reading about it, obviously recruiting got crazy, because how do you recruit kids when most kids that are football recruiting age are also draft age?
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: You can't.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Also, something I hadn't thought about was, the early 40s were crazy ration times.
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: It was really hard to justify getting thousands of people, the gas to drive out to Nebraska or somewhere. So a lot of the places that had to shut their programs, it was because they were out in the middle of nowhere like Nebraska. Most of their fans that they depended on for money were driving long distances to go to games. And if you have to ration gas, you can't do that.
AUSTIN: You can't do that, yeah.
MITCH: If you're on the west coast, they didn't want to have night games where there was lights because they were scared of air raids and stuff.
AUSTIN: Shit (laughing)
MITCH: A lot of it was the money. It wasn't necessarily just the talent of the kids, it was the money of, you know, you can't expect a town or a county or a state to ration and also have the numbers that a big time college football program requires to sustain itself.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So that's why a lot of them shifted to, like, shorter seasons or smaller games. They had the people, they just couldn't justify the travel or the crowds,
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: or all that kind of stuff.
AUSTIN: (sigh) oh man
MITCH: It was also different because both of those things - 1918, World War I, Spanish Flu, and World War II - immediately just went back to normal. Like, there was a very clear... The draft was on a schedule, they knew when the draft started, they knew when it ended.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So 1945, when everything was over, that 1946 season was like,
AUSTIN: Normal
MITCH: back to normal. Everything was exactly how it had been before. Now we don't really know. Like, we're looking at recruiting high school juniors for 2022, who knows what the state of college football's gonna be (laughing)
AUSTIN: I know. That's what we're gonna kind of get into.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Vietnam didn't have any...?
MITCH: Not really...
AUSTIN: Nothing on Korea, Vietnam?
MITCH: There's a lot to read about the way college football interacted with college activism with Vietnam that I did not get into.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But no, they didn't shorten any seasons, didn't... Nothing really changed, like, concretely.
AUSTIN: That's... That's surprising, actually.
MITCH: I found... There were a lot of articles that were written with the headline, you know, similarities between 2020 and... And really the only thing anyone compared it to was 1918 and 1944.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: I don't think there's been any other cases.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I guess it's just the amount of... Well, 1918, that's an obvious one.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Yeah, it was a war effort, and it was Spanish Flu.
MITCH: The Spanish Flu was crazy. It was 3-5% of the world population. Like, all people. The show The Leftovers, that was 2% of the population that died, or that disappeared in The Leftovers. So like, we've had, like, crazy fantasy sci-fi shows where the thing that happened was less severe than the actual real life Spanish Flu.
AUSTIN: God
MITCH: I think it was 500,000 people from the US. Which, our population was much smaller then.
AUSTIN: Yeah. That's incredible.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: 'Cause, I mean, like, we're up to 250,000 - no that's worldwide -
MITCH: No, that's us.
AUSTIN: that's us.
MITCH: We're 250,000, but think of how much bigger the country is now.
AUSTIN: Yeah. They said that by - I think it was - December 5th, these projections, we're gonna have another 40,000 deaths.
MITCH: Yep
AUSTIN: That's assuming that - I don't even know if that's assuming anything. I would hazard a guess to say that that's including if we shut down.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And that's just...
MITCH: The other thing that made the Spanish Flu hard - I'm not, like, an expert of the Spanish Flu, I've read a little bit - most flu, and COVID, primarily affect elderly people, infants, immunocompromised people. Spanish Flu's one of the few anomalies, where it mostly killed young people that had no health issues.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Like, what's his name, Edward from Twilight.
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: It is. Like, you're joking, but like, it was a lot of people that hadn't had any reason to be scared of a pandemic because, you know, the flu came through every year.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Somebody would've been like, oh yeah, there was a flu in 1914, 1915, killed some grandparents, that's it. And then this one came through in 1918 and it killed everyone.
AUSTIN: I need to look up what the difference was between that and, like, the regular flu.
MITCH: I don't know.
AUSTIN: That's incredible.
(Devil Town theme music)
23:31
AUSTIN: Now, flash forward, 2020 (laughing) So, this one’s been a bit of a jumble. It’s just, there’s a lot of stuff going on, and right when COVID really hit,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: it was a lot of uncertainty, and we didn’t really know what was going on until - with football specifically - probably until September.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: August, September, somewhere around there.
MITCH: They kind of did what everyone has done, where they put forth a plan, then a month later changed the plan, and then change that plan a little bit, and then… Like, it’s been all over the place.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, it has. Well, and we can sit here and… I’m almost positive that every… ‘Cause I looked up… I found a pretty dang good article, it’s not… It’s not in Oklahoma City. But it is a roundup of how the sports in Orlando were affected, high school sports specifically. So it doesn’t go just football, but it talks about, like, baseball, softball, basketball, stuff like that.
MITCH: Yeah. Good sports.
AUSTIN: (laughing) I don’t know about baseball.
MITCH: I (scoffs)
AUSTIN: I will, on my deathbed, say that baseball is one of the most boring sports that I have ever seen in my life. It does not deserve to be America’s pasttime. Fuck it.
MITCH: We’re gonna do a Brockmire podcast and we’re gonna talk about baseball.
AUSTIN: I love Brockmire. It’s already to the point where it’s boring, so, why? It’s boring, and it’s way to long,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: and the only thing that makes me excited about it is, like, obscure sports stats.
MITCH: Yeah, baseball’s for nerds.
AUSTIN: Mmm, no it’s not.
MITCH: It is.
AUSTIN: For people that watch it and then look at the stats, maybe, yes. I don’t watch the games.
MITCH: I know.
AUSTIN: The games are boring.
MITCH: That’s what I’m saying. I know people who like baseball. Even my friends - like, I’m not a big baseball fan, really - but like, people I know who do like baseball, don’t watch games.
AUSTIN: (laughing) True
MITCH: (laughing) Like, nobody watches games. Some people do, but really, not many.
AUSTIN: (indecipherable)
MITCH: Yeah, I know people do, obviously. I think the other thing is, like, football is, like, there are fewer games. They are on specific nights and always have been and always are.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Baseball is like, there are a lot of people that follow baseball, enjoy baseball, but those games are 2 in the afternoon, 7 at night, Monday morning, Thursday afternoon, who knows. It’s just whenever. So like, even fans are not watching every game. There’s too many. There’s hundreds.
AUSTIN: It’s a dumb sport. It’s a dumb sport.
MITCH: I kinda like that, though. I like that it’s, like, personalities and numbers and stuff, and you don’t have to sit down and watch the game to pay attention to baseball.
AUSTIN: Fair
MITCH: ‘Cause I don’t wanna sit down and watch any game of any sport.
AUSTIN: Oh man, ok, so, I follow a recruiting service for OU, which actually gives me access to all the recruiting services through the NCAA, on 24/7 anyway. That’s a CBS Sports affiliate.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: So I get a lot of information from other places too. And whenever shit hit the fan, it was very uncertain, obviously.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: But one of the big things that really kinda screwed the pooch, their recruiting service, their job is to, like, consolidate all the scores, all of their recruiting analysts, all the people that go out, recruiters and things like that,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: that are able to analyze these guys’ film and see them in person and say, ok, well this, this, and this, right ups and all that stuff. That all disappeared,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: for months.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And now that football’s back, relatively, there’s still areas of the country that are not playing, like the DMV area. You have areas of California that aren’t playing. That has kind of put a wrench in things. It’s affected a lot of high school players that were looking into getting recruited.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: That now can’t really get their name out there.
MITCH: That’s kinda why you wanted to talk about this in general. We were just watching the part of season 3 where Smash had had years of just constantly getting this attention from recruiters, and then all of the sudden he’s in a place where he can’t get people to return his calls, or… Completely different circumstances,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But it is like… Through no fault of his own, really, just through circumstance, this recruiting system no longer can work for him.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: Yeah, if you’re in California where they’ve shut things down, a high school kid in California can’t do anything about that.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: You did have prospects and now you don’t, (laughing) and that sucks.
AUSTIN: Unless you are… What’s good about the recruiting service, they put them on a list, and they show them all the, like, they rank them, and they have them on ESPN, too, like, and then Rivals - I think Rivals is owned by somebody else, but those are the three big ones, is 24/7, Rivals, and ESPN. And then they make a composite score based on what each of them say. And then they make a national ranking. Now if you’re on that ranking, obviously, your name’s gonna be out there. People are gonna be looking at you. If you’re in the state of Texas, you’re still playing.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: People are gonna be looking at you. But if you’re from California or you’re from the DMV area and you haven’t been recruited heavily, you no longer have the capability of showing people what you can do.
MITCH: Those people on the cusp, where it’s like, you weren’t already a known name,
AUSTIN: Exactly
MITCH: maybe you would’ve gotten noticed if you’d been able to play.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: You’ll never know if you would’ve or not.
AUSTIN: Or maybe you are… you’re very good, but you had a guy who was just as good as you that’s a senior and you’re a junior, or you’re a sophomore and there’s a guy that’s a higher class than you. He’s playing, you’re not. You’re not able to put your name out there. So, it affected a lot of things like that. ‘Cause I’m sure that now there’s a lot of kids that kind of got looked over.
MITCH: Yeah. That’s gotta be true, thinking about top, top football prospects. Think of how many thousands of people there are that were counting on playing a less major sport, at maybe the D2 or D3 level, and what it’s done to them. Like, there are a lot of student athletes in the country, and a lot of them are depending on some scholarships. Not the ones that make ESPN front page, like… But like, I went to a very small school that wasn’t even in the NCAA, it was in the NIAA?
AUSTIN: NAIA
MITCH: NAIA. But most of our tennis team were international students who were only there because that was the team that offered them a scholarship.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Can’t do that anymore.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: Like, none of that is happening. And that’s probably tens of thousands of people,
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: were counting on that system to get them into a school somewhere.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah.
30:29
AUSTIN: I was trying to look up stuff on that, and each thing I was reading I was like, ok I already knew this. I already knew this. I've gone through this entire phase on that website of knowing exactly what had happened. And I'm not gonna go through exact dates or anything like that. I could, but that's a lot of work for me to go and find that shit, because all these dates were different for different schools and different conferences and things like that.
MITCH: Yeah, yeah
AUSTIN: One date that I did find, and what the NCAA has done, and they've announced a moratorium on in person recruiting.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: It's called the dead period. They basically have a dead period that's built in, where you can't go see, you can't see recruits face to face.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: That's already built in.
MITCH: Like, every year?
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: Every year there's a moratorium where you cannot go and talk to them face to face. Once that ends, then you can. Now, I don't know why that exists, necessarily.
MITCH: Is it early in the...? When is it?
AUSTIN: I want to say it's earlier in the season,
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: I mean, the year.
MITCH: So the period where they can go face to face is later?
AUSTIN: Later, yeah. And during the football season, that doesn't exist, obviously. So they can end up going to games, they can do stuff like that.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: But they pushed it back to May 31st, for, like, the tentative date.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: So, ok, May 31st, that is the end of the dead period.
MITCH: This last May 31st?
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: Obviously they've extended that (laughing)
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It's now past the season.
MITCH: So there's really gonna be no in person recruiting this year.
AUSTIN: Correct, yeah. So there are workarounds with that. Now, recruits have not, they have not seen these guys in person.
MITCH: No
AUSTIN: I mean, the coaches in person.
MITCH: I mean, now we're in a time where we have the technology that you can share video super easy.
AUSTIN: You can do that, yeah. You can do that.
MITCH: It would've been harder in the 80s or 70s when you would've been sending tape.
AUSTIN: Right, and you can do that. Here is, basically they break down each sport in the Orlando area,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: It's an article, it's basically just from a lot of the staff on the Orlando Sentinel, and it was dated on May 9th. So, I mean, like, this was very early.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: But this is how the immediate effects... They talk about baseball. I mean, it was in the middle of baseball season.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: So they cancelled high school baseball. College baseball was all screwed, pretty much. Now, what kind of comes in with the baseball side is that the draft happened almost immediately after all of this happened. And that's the amateur draft. So a lot of these guys, luckily, it was pretty soon,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: so a lot of the players who were gonna be playing probably had already been seen at one point.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: Because the season had started.
MITCH: And baseball does that more than football, drafting straight from high school into the minors.
AUSTIN: They don't do football.
MITCH: I know. For baseball it is. A lot of those high school players weren't looking at colleges, they were looking to go straight into triple A or double A ball.
AUSTIN: Right. Let's see. "Complicating things, the NCAA's decision to allow colleges to grant spring sport athletes including seniors an additional year of eligibility."
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: That's kind of screwing things too.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: But yeah, the MLB draft, that really screwed things. High school seniors, JuCo players, and NCAA juniors are eligible for the annual amateur draft. So juniors in high school are eligible, which I didn't know.
MITCH: It happens every once in a while, an MLB team will get a 17 year old.
AUSTIN: Yeah. So, but it goes into boys' basketball. Boys' basketball was still going at the time but you didn't get to see state championships, you didn't get to see anything like that. March Madness got cancelled.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: A lot of different things like that. Here's, specifically, the Wolverines, I'm not sure what school that is specifically...
MITCH: Looking back, big picture, at everything that changed. March Madness just straight up not existing is one of the bigger changes that we had this past year, like...
AUSTIN: It just disappeared.
MITCH: That's a massive thing that we just didn't do one year.
AUSTIN: Didn't do it, yeah. And now they're trying to do it where, like, bubbles.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Yeah, they're trying to. It's not gonna happen.
MITCH: Well, everything else, like, ended up happening in one form or another. Like, we did have basketball and baseball and football.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: College basketball, we just didn't do it.
AUSTIN: Nope. And honestly, when it comes down to it, college basketball has taken such a huge hit recently,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: that it doesn't matter anymore.
MITCH: Yeah. Oh, I'm... I don't miss it, they were right to cancel it.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, they were.
MITCH: But it is one of the few things that we just, like, didn't do.
AUSTIN: Yeah
34:59
AUSTIN: They were right to cancel it. It is sad that basketball, that college basketball has taken such a hit in popularity. It's mainly the one and done rule that's done that.
MITCH: I don't know what that is.
AUSTIN: So, big time players that would normally be drafted out of high school, say Kobe Bryant or Kevin Garnett or something like that,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: it was a while ago that they did this. You have to go to college for at least one year.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Have to.
MITCH: Get those gen eds.
AUSTIN: Yeah, pretty much.
MITCH: Take comp. (laughing)
AUSTIN: The guys that would normally, they did get drafted. Kobe Bryant got drafted out of high school. Kevin Garnett got drafted out of high school. No longer do that. So now they're thinking about doing it again. I think LeBron James' year was the last year that you could do it.
MITCH: Did he go straight from high school?
AUSTIN: He did, yeah. But I think that was the last year that you could, if I'm not mistaken. So that was, what, 2004?
MITCH: I don't know.
AUSTIN: 2003? Something like that. But this talks about three players specifically. They talk to their coaches. Trey Moss, Kanye Jones, and EJ York, they were on the class 7A region runner up team, I don't know.
MITCH: Good for them.
AUSTIN: So, one of them has a D1 scholarship offer.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: He's kinda set.
36:14
AUSTIN: I mean, he's already got an offer. The two other guys, major colleges had looked at them but they had not gotten any offers. So theirs, once COVID hit, disappeared. I mean, like, they no longer... The didn't disappear, they obviously are talking to people, but they are no longer able to show people what they have.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: They're not able to impress these people anymore. One of the big things that also happened was camps. Camps disappeared. A lot of these recruiters, the numbers, the rankings that you jump up and down on, not only get shifted because of game footage and things like that, but these camps that you're supposed to go to over the summer where all these recruiters go. And they go to watch you. They no longer have that.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: So these kids that are maybe in like small markets, Bixby, Oklahoma,
MITCH: Yeah yeah
AUSTIN: or, um, like, Pampa, Texas, things like that. You have these tiny, tiny schools. They're not 6A, they're not 5A, they're not playing massive, massive schools, they don't... there's not a ton of talent in those areas. But normally if they were on that team they would be really good.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: They would be able to go to these camps if they can get invited, which, sometimes they can, I mean. They go, they show what they can do. And then they would get put on these lists.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: They were no longer able to do that. Now, I will say, there were workarounds. During the summer, some of those camps, not the bigger camps, but smaller camps did end up happening. But a lot of the ones that were attached to schools disappeared too. 'Cause, like, OU would do some and, like, UT and bigger schools, they would do their own camps at their school.
MITCH: I don't know, but I'm guessing, if the ones that still existed were private. Probably not as accessible? If you needed to go but you couldn't afford to go, or needed transportation or lodging, it would probably be one of the school ones that you could go to. I'm just guessing. Like, that's just how things work in general.
AUSTIN: Yeah, but now the parents are paying out of pocket, they're driving
MITCH: And not everybody can do that. If you live in rural Texas, what if you're good enough but you can't pay for one of these camps?
AUSTIN: Yeah. That's kind of where... That's a general problem, you know?
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It's not necessarily, you know, what if a kid is in a lower socio-economic class in one of those small towns, but is incredibly good? The likelihood of him being able to go to one of these camps was always small.
MITCH: Yeah. If these workarounds are requiring adults that are gonna put in the money and work, or the time... Or even if it's like, you know, if you make a good enough reel for yourself that you can get on video and convince somebody. Do you have the equipment to do that? Do you have the knowledge to do that?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It's not accessible for everyone.
AUSTIN: It's not.
MITCH: It never has been, and that's not a COVID thing,
AUSTIN: It never has been.
MITCH: but it's making it more obvious.
AUSTIN: Yeah, very much so. But, it talks about girls' basketball. It basically says, like, that a lot of the players in the Orlando area were already, like, being looked at. Because they not only did school sports, but they did AAU, with girls' basketball. Mens' does that, too. But it wasn't as pronounced in Orlando, I guess. They basically said, like, the AAU teams are constantly playing,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: like, throughout the year. And so the people that were gonna be seen were gonna be seen anyway. Under the radar players that you necessarily would not be able to see didn't get seen at all.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It talks about cross country, bowling,
MITCH: No thank you.
AUSTIN: flag football. "It is played only as a club or intramural sport on college campuses with no NCAA scholarship opportunities." And then it goes into football. I think Florida is still playing, if I'm not mistaken. It would not -
MITCH: Probably
AUSTIN: It would not surprise me if they were. Texas is playing, Oklahoma's playing. The basic thing that I... One of the problems that I've seen is that the NCAA, like I said previously, basically a wash this year. They said, ok this year doesn't matter. You still have your eligibility for this year. Now, that means that you have freshmen that came in this year that are going to be freshmen next year.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: They're going to be having another recruiting class come in. I'm not sure how many scholarships they're giving them. But I wanna say, like, it's now gotten to the point where it's gonna be hard.
MITCH: Well, what happens when this isn't just one year? What happens when we have to do the same thing next year?
AUSTIN: I know. I know.
MITCH: I think it's... Colleges in general, I think the schools around here said that they're not taking test scores into account for the next several years, proactively.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Knowing that these things are gonna have ripple effects for years and years to come. So what does this do to recruiting even four years from now?
AUSTIN: I know.
41:25
41:26
AUSTIN: That has affected things quite a bit for a lot of these... Like, you're gonna make room for a big time recruit. These schools are.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: That's just kinda the nature of the beast. Like, if you see a guy that's a once in a generation talent, you're gonna get him.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: So you work your ass off to recruit him as best as you possibly can. You'll find a recruit, like, you'll find the space. And I wanna say, I wanna say it's not as restrictive as what - it's not saying, ok, you... 'cause normally you have 100 scholarships you can give out in four years.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And so, depending on how many you give, if you give 21 one year, you now have four extra. You could give one extra a year, or you could split them up over the other years, or whatever. I think that they've extended that,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: to where it's gonna be 125, I wanna say.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: But I haven't found anything...
MITCH: Is that an NCAA rule?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Ok. I didn't know that.
AUSTIN: Only Division 1.
MITCH: Oh ok, I didn't realize that was a thing.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I mean, Division 3 doesn't even do athletic scholarships.
MITCH: Do they not?
AUSTIN: Uh uh
MITCH: Oh
AUSTIN: Now, if you're NAIA or stuff like that, they do.
MITCH: Yeah, other conferences do.
AUSTIN: Division 2 does. They find workarounds.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It's, "Oh you got an academic scholarship."
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: Did you? But, one of the things that - with all of this happening, all of these kids weren't able to see this coaches and things like that. Which is a huge draw to their school. You invite them out to games,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: they pay for you to come out sometimes. Official visits is what they call those.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: They're no longer able to have official visits. All that money is now just, like, all those situations where you can come into contact with them and talk to them in person, if you haven't already been doing that, you will not get to do that.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: The workarounds - this is where money comes in. The families, if the family has money, they're gonna be able to do a lot more.
MITCH: Yeah yeah
AUSTIN: One of the recruits that OU got this year, he's the number one quarterback. He's from the DMV area. They're not playing.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: So what he has done is he's taken trips to, he had already taken a trip to OU before they shut down.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: Talked to the coaches, stayed there a week. Went back, they shut everything down. They then -
MITCH: He spent a week in Norman and he still wants to come out here?
AUSTIN: Apparently
MITCH: Ugh
AUSTIN: (laughing) It was more so talking to Lincoln Riley and like,
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: getting the system down and shit like that. So he ends up committing, and it was huge. But now his whole goal is to recruit other players that he wants to OU as well. So what they did was they did this thing called the Sooner Summit. It was not sanctioned by anybody at the school.
MITCH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: They can't.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Trust me, all over boards, all over the place, they were pissed. They were like, "Oh there's cheating, we know there's cheating."
MITCH: Yeah. I remember - didn't we talk about this when we were talking about, just, college players grabbing more power in general? Him realizing that, like, as a prospect, he can also recruit.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah. And he's very successful at it.
MITCH: Yeah, like, that's, that's interesting.
AUSTIN: He pulled in two or three 5 star recruits with him to come. So, they - I forget what month it was - but they all brought them in. It was like, I think ten to fifteen people,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: all came to Norman, and stayed there for like three days. At one point they went to Top Golf, over here.
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: Our Top Golf?
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: Oh boy
AUSTIN: But they all came up here and that's kind of how they did the workaround, is they're not able to... I don't think that they're able to... The field is always open.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: There was a big ole stink about how somebody opened up the field and let them go out on the field, which is a NCAA violation. In reality, the field's always open. Whoever wants to go out there, can.
MITCH: Well that is... You can look at that... I'm sure there are lots of people who are looking at that and seeing that the, you know, the OU people are behind the scenes pulling the strings. The optimistic way of looking at it is, like, no this is... These kids have grown up with social media. If I knew that wherever I chose I was gonna get to go to a big school that checked all the boxes of what I want. It would be realistic to think that one of the decisions would be "who are my teammates gonna be?"
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Do I like them? Do I want to play with them?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That wasn't the case for decades and decades, because how would a 17 year old in the 70s have any idea who these other kids were?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But now, they all have twitters, they all have everything, yeah, it makes sense that they're finding out more than just what the NCAA and the coaches say that they're allowed to know.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: I believe that that's legitimate. That it wasn't OU setting this up in secret.
AUSTIN: Well, it -
MITCH: Maybe it was, I don't know, but like...
AUSTIN: There's no evidence of that.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: There was a huge stink and then not a week later there was stuff up on the boards saying, "Oh, these other schools are now doing it, too." (laughing)
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: So it wasn't just them, like, there was a bunch of schools that did it. Georgia did it. I think LSU did it. Bunch of the SEC schools, 'cause obviously the SEC...
MITCH: The dirty south.
AUSTIN: A lot of the time when you see SEC written on the OU board, it's written with a dollar sign. (laughing)
MITCH: Is... OU is in the...?
AUSTIN: Big 12
MITCH: Big 12
AUSTIN: Yes. SEC is, I mean, obviously, it's the head honchos. Like, they control a lot of the shit.
MITCH: The south, right?
AUSTIN: Oh yeah. South Eastern Conference.
47:11
AUSTIN: You have Florida, you have Alabama, you have
BOTH: LSU
AUSTIN: LSU’s taken a dive this year.
MITCH: I like LSU
AUSTIN: Texas A&M, I hate Texas A&M so much. Ugh I hate them.
MITCH: I don’t even know where they are.
AUSTIN: Uhhh
MITCH: Texas, I’m assuming.
AUSTIN: Yes. College Station, Bryan.
MITCH: Ok yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: Arkansas is in the SEC.
MITCH: Woo pig sooie. I grew up with a, what’s it, the little hog head hat
AUSTIN: Razorback
MITCH: hanging on my wall.
AUSTIN: Really?
MITCH: My mom went there for a semester I think.
BOTH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: But I have one, somewhere in the garage.
AUSTIN: See, that makes it better. My dad never went to OU,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: and he’s the one that brainwashed me into being an OU fan.
MITCH: That was always really foreign to me growing up, was, like, one of my good friends from home, their basement is like, Illinois, it is like, they have a giant… The whole basemen is orange, they have a giant I painted on the wall. Every single item in their basement is Illinois something.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And they have three kids that went to college in the last decade and none of them went to Illinois.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: It’s like, you’re right here. You’re thirty miles down the road. (laughing) I thought you loved this place.
AUSTIN: I mean, in our defense, my dad almost went to OU.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It was too expensive.
MITCH: Well now I get that it’s not really… You can be a fan of the thing and not actually want to go there.
AUSTIN: I almost went to OU.
MITCH: I didn’t get that for a long time.
AUSTIN: I almost went to OU and it was just too expensive.
MITCH: Yeah. It is very expensive.
AUSTIN: My family told me, “if you wanna go there, you can. We’ll pay for it.” And I was like, “I don’t want you to spend $20,000 a semester”
MITCH: (laughing) Yeah
AUSTIN: For me to go to OU.
MITCH: To go to OU.
AUSTIN: And then when I went there I was like, oh it’s a beautiful campus, but
MITCH: It is, it’s nice.
AUSTIN: It’s a massive Greek program.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Massive.
MITCH: It is. It’s very much like, if you’re going to OU, you’re going there for the campus, it’s a great campus, but there’s nothing else.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: Like, you better like that campus because that’s all you’re gonna get, is what is in the school’s bubble.
AUSTIN: Oh, and then I went to UNT,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: that has the biggest mishmash of, just, architectural styles that I’ve ever seen in my life. But it’s thirty minutes away from Dallas.
MITCH: That’s the thing.
AUSTIN: So that was great. I could just go wherever I wanted to. So, back to this, honestly, there’s a lot of different things that happened with this. And we’ve already kind of touched on a lot of them, I mean…
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: And we can get into details. One of the big issues is that you had - not a huge number, but there was a contingent of players that were leaving high schools that were not playing to go to states where they would.
MITCH: Yes. And didn’t similar things happen with which conferences were playing and not playing?
AUSTIN: They did. So there was, not a ton of recruits, but there were some big time recruits that basically told the PAC 12 schools, like, no, fuck you, you’re not playing.
MITCH: (laughing) Which seems harsh, but like, yeah, if you’re a high schooler going to college, I wouldn’t want to commit to a school that I didn’t even know if they were gonna play or not.
AUSTIN: Yeah, they were like, no, we’re not going to you.
MITCH: Yeah, of course.
AUSTIN: We’re, like… So a lot of them decommitted.
MITCH: What happened? Did PAC 12 not play at all, or did they…?
AUSTIN: They reneged.
MITCH: Yeah, I thought so.
50:25
AUSTIN: A lot of… The Pac 12 did,
MITCH: Did any college conference make it through the whole season without playing? Did any of them truly cancel this year?
AUSTIN: They initially were going to.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I think the Mountain West did, like, they were going to and then they basically said, ok we’re gonna play.
MITCH: Yeah, they all did.
AUSTIN: PAC 12, the Big 10, all of those said they weren’t going to and then saw that the SEC and the Big 12 were,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: and they’re like, oh, we can.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: So they did. The problem is, you have the SEC and the Big 12, which is basically like, they’ve been fairly decent at keeping it under, like, controlled.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: A lot of the schools, like, you had K State which had a problem for a little bit. Baylor had a problem for a while. But they’ve kind of, they’ve isolated and they’ve kind of come out of it to where they can actually play. You have these Big 10 schools, the first night that they played, the first game, it was supposed to be… You’re supposed to play on Saturday, right?
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Wisconsin and I forget what other school, it was the first Big 10 game of the year. Their quarterback blows it out of the water. Throws like five or six touchdowns. Which is wild, ‘cause Wisconsin’s not a throwing team but they did it. And two days later he tests positive for COVID. Just exposed everybody on that field.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Everybody
MITCH: It shouldn’t be that hard. You’re already wearing something that has a mask built in. Close it up.
AUSTIN: You can.
MITCH: I know, that’s what I’m saying, like,
AUSTIN: There’s a lot of people that
MITCH: football should be pretty low risk.
AUSTIN: I was seeing a lot of, like, prototypes, especially for the NFL, that have a fuckton of money coming to it. Like the facemasks and then they have the plastic shield that would go all over.
MITCH: Now, knowing what we know, if you play football outside, there’s plenty of air circulation. You’re not spending a long time up in someone’s face breathing the same air as them.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So if you made all those football masks enclosed masks, you should be able to play football with very little risk. Now, travelling, practicing, working out, that’s risky.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But the actual game of football really isn’t that risky compared to other things.
AUSTIN: No it’s not. Well, and you have the NFL…
MITCH: We’ve done whole episodes about how it’s risky in every other conceivable way,
AUSTIN: Oh yeah (laughing) Yes
MITCH: (laughing) but COVID, not that dangerous.
AUSTIN: You recently, you had… oh who was it… The Raiders, the Las Vegas Raiders now, have been fined on two occasions and they’ve lost a draft pick
MITCH: Oooh
AUSTIN: for COVID violations. They don’t wear masks on the side of the field. They have them, but they’re down here and they never wear them.
MITCH: Yep
AUSTIN: So they fined them. And then eventually they were like no, we’re taking a draft pick from you.
MITCH: (laughing) That’s hilarious.
AUSTIN: Oh man, but yeah, it’s very weird. It’s a weird recruiting year.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I mean, just in general. You have a lot of money that goes into this stuff, and now a lot of your time’s spent on the phone.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: And you can’t do anything about it.
MITCH: There’s a lot of things like this. We’re probably not gonna know all the implications until years after it’s all over.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: ‘Cause, you know, as easy as it is to see the effects on people that would be getting recruited right now, these camps all closing down and that kind of stuff, and the not going on as many visits, that’s gonna have effects on people that are freshmen right now, or sophomores right now.
AUSTIN: I know
MITCH: So even two or three years from now, butterfly effect, who knows how this is gonna play out long term.
AUSTIN: And I think it was good for the NCAA to say that this year was
MITCH: Oh yeah
AUSTIN: a wash.
MITCH: It’s interesting seeing how many institutions nationally have not handled this well.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That they have tried at least to handle things,
AUSTIN: That’s the only good thing the NCAA has done.
MITCH: I’m not a fan of the NCAA.
AUSTIN: No, they’re a terrible organization.
MITCH: No, I think they’re bad,
AUSTIN: Oh my god
MITCH: but, they did, like, actually do some things early on that made a difference.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Not enough probably, but some.
AUSTIN: Well, and they were just, they were just like the Trump administration. I’m going in on ‘em. The NCAA did not make any announcements, like, for the entire group.
MITCH: Yes
AUSTIN: They basically just said, ok conferences, make up your mind.
MITCH: When I was saying that, I was mainly talking about the recruiting thing. The fact that, early on, they said we’re not doing this in person recruiting, that’s good.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: They should’ve been that strong on everything.
AUSTIN: Yeah, they should have.
MITCH: It would’ve been better. They weren’t.
AUSTIN: No, they weren’t. Now, what it may be is… It may be more of a rules thing.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: Or the NCAA may be like… I don’t know the actual… The NCAA’s really good at not… Not saying… Like, letting people do whatever they want to, and then when they fuck up, quote unquote, they fine them.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Or they tell them that they’re not going to have as many scholarships.
MITCH: That seems to be all sports authority organizations.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: FIFA, every professional league, NCAA, they’re really good at, like, “Oh we don’t know what’s going on. It’s making us a lot of money. But we don’t know.”
AUSTIN: Oh yeah. The NCAA is… Yeah, you’re making me a fuckton of money.
MITCH: (laughing) Yeah. It’s in all of our best interests for me to pretend like I have no power here.
AUSTIN: Yeah. You’re making me a fuckton of money
MITCH: The Olympic Committee. That’s just how they all work.
AUSTIN: You’re players cannot make money.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Can not do it. Uh uh. No no no. But the coaches, on the other hand,
MITCH: Yes
AUSTIN: can make millions.
MITCH: They can make a lot of money.
AUSTIN: And I can put your number on a jersey, I can’t sell it if I put your name on it, but I can sell it if it doesn’t have your name on it.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: The NCAA is stupid and I wish it would disappear. (laughing)
(Devil Town theme music)
56:09
MITCH: I was trying to think of… I don’t have any questions, and this was such a football heavy episode, that’s fine.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I was trying to think of a question as a way of saying what I wanted to say, and I couldn’t think of one, so I’m just gonna…
AUSTIN: Just say it.
MITCH: I was trying to think of other media that covers this. A really, really good example of this whole thing is season two of Veronica Mars. With Wallace and basketball recruiting. They have like a few episode arc.
AUSTIN: Oh ok
MITCH: Do you remember that?
AUSTIN: It was so long ago that I watched that show.
MITCH: It’s not about Wallace, necessarily, it’s one of Wallace’s team members, is being, like, heavy recruited by basketball teams. And it’s the thing where they go out and the coach is doing everything by the book, and then after hours they’re, like, going clubbing and, like… Players are like, the jewelry and the gifts and the cars and clubbing and all that kind of stuff. And for a show that was absolutely not about sports in any way, to do a little arc set in that world, I think they did it really well.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I’m trying to think if there’s anything that touched on recruiting, other than that.
MITCH: One Tree Hill goes into the transition between high school sports to outside of high school, but not hard.
AUSTIN: Is One Tree Hill Slamball?
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: But you know what I mean? They do, they do cover, like, these are high school basketball stars, what do they do after high school?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: They don’t get deep into it. They don’t go the college basketball route. But they talk about it a little bit.
AUSTIN: Ok. I can’t think of anything else.
MITCH: There aren’t really very many others.
AUSTIN: No. I mean, there’s… I’ve watched several football tv shows. I watched, oh what’s that show? Fuck…
MITCH: All or Nothing?
AUSTIN: No. I watched that, but that’s… I watched a little bit of that.
MITCH: Fiction or non-fiction?
AUSTIN: No it’s non-fiction, but it has to do with JuCo football,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: and it’s on Netflix, and I can’t remember…
MITCH: I can’t remember what it’s called either.
AUSTIN: Well, the guy that they had on recently, season 3 I wanna say, ended up getting arrested.
MITCH: Mmm
AUSTIN: The coach did. ‘Cause he is a shitbag.
MITCH: You know, what are you gonna do?
AUSTIN: I knew when I watched it he was a shitbag. But, I think he was out of Independence, Missouri, I wanna say. They have a massive football program.
MITCH: I know Independence, yeah. And most movies that are about sports, the climax and the end of the story is usually a championship.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So the story doesn’t usually deal with what comes after. Like, all the great high school sports movies, like, they might mention somebody’s plans after high school, but that’s never what the story’s about, ever.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Hoosiers. What’s the baseball one, the… What is it? It’s the… The Rookie.
AUSTIN: The Rookie, yes.
MITCH: It gets closer because it’s both. It’s minor league baseball, but also high school.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And like, that kinda touches on, like, what does it actually look like to make a career out of this? Where do you go?
AUSTIN: Well… And actually I just thought of this, I just realized that there’s going to be a large group of people, kids coming out of high school, that won’t get seen by people that would normally see them. There’s gonna be a huge number of JuCo players.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Huge. Junior colleges are just going to be flush with talent.
MITCH: Yeah, all those kids that aren’t big enough profile to be noticed before this all started, but good enough to play somewhere.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Flush with talent. And most of the time they don’t recruit very well.
MITCH: No, but they might have to start.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I’m saying, two years from now we might see a lot of big name colleges recruiting from jucos more than they normally do.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I didn’t realize that there was… There’s a running back from OU right now, Rhamondre Stevenson. He just got off of a… He got suspended for six games.
MITCH: Mmm
AUSTIN: For weed.
MITCH: Oh yeah, you told me about him.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I did not realize, when he was a senior in high school he ended up breaking his leg, and took a year off. Or maybe it was… No, it was his junior year. Blew it up, basically just killed it, broke his leg, could not come back his senior year. He got persuaded by a guy that he knew to go to this junior college that was out in Cerritos, California. Problem is, that conference of junior colleges does not have scholarships.
MITCH: Ohhh
AUSTIN: So he had to work his ass off
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: to be able to play. He had to, like, get a part time job on top of it. And so he ended up having to do that. And that was when OU picked him up. It was like, ok we’ve seen that you can do this. He ended up breaking, like, conference records, national records, shit like that.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I mean, he’s six foot, 245, as a running back. Just a bowling ball of a man. He’s so good though.
MITCH: Little tuna can.
AUSTIN: Little tuna can. Got a little chode. (laughing)
MITCH: Certified chode.
AUSTIN: He scored a touchdown recently and he lifted up his shirt and it said “I’m back.” (laughing)
MITCH: Oh, I love that. Love that. That would get full points from my international…
AUSTIN: It was his third touchdown that day.
MITCH: Yes.
AUSTIN: Didn’t do it the first two,
MITCH: Love that.
AUSTIN: but the third one he was like, I’m not gonna have another chance, so he just goes, (sound) and it says I’m back.
MITCH: On his shirt or on his belly?
AUSTIN: On his shirt.
MITCH: Aww
AUSTIN: Yeah. See, the camera had blocked it, so all I saw was I’m and the B and K, and I was like, his shirt says I’m Black.
BOTH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: I was like, it’s obvious, but ok. And then I saw another picture of it and was like, ohh I’m back, got it. But yeah, the JuCo ranks are gonna be pretty flush. Like, that’s actually gonnab e really interesting.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: You have a lot of schools that don’t necessarily go to the JuCo side. I know that there’s some that really focus on that, like Kansas State. For some reason a large, a large number of their recruits are from JuCos.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And I think it’s just because in that… In the midwestern area there’s a lot of junior colleges that have a lot of talent.
MITCH: Well, and, yeah, if you… If you’re sending your guys out to the same high schools that every big college in the country is sending them out, and you’re not getting anything from it, yeah, you’re gonna branch out eventually.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, and then, even if that’s the case, you have Kansas State, you’re recruiting these massive recruits. You also have way bigger programs, OU, Alabama, Florida, Texas A&M, USC, all these massive schools are going out to the same school,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: looking at the same guys. You actually think that this dude’s a five star recruit…
MITCH: That’s what I’m saying. You’re not going to be able to win those contests.
AUSTIN: Yeah, no
MITCH: It’s also… I think it’s interesting looking at - especially football compared to other sports. ‘Cause basketball and baseball, you can go from high school. A lot of people are at their physical peak at 18, 19. But we’ve talked before about the difference between high school and college and professional football, and maturity and size and strength. I can see somebody being what would be a top recruit when they’re 20, having played a couple years of JuCo, that maybe wasn’t that outstanding as an 18 year old senior in high school.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: So it makes sense. Like, you’re gonna see different talent looking at junior colleges, I bet. And you’re maybe gonna get some people that would’ve slipped through the cracks of just looking at high schoolers. ‘Cause not every 18 year old has reached the level of maturity they need to to be a great football player.
AUSTIN: I was gonna say, they won’t be able to, like… Some high school players are anomalies, and they… Like, a quarterback, sometimes they’re just able to read the field well,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: But if you have someone who goes JuCo and has played people that are older, he’s gonna be able to read the field a lot better because he’s got…
MITCH: Or if you have a kid who is naturally talented but never had the right coach or team as a high schooler.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Maybe never had a chance to figure out how good he was until he went to a college. So, like, yeah. It seems to me like it would make a lot of sense to look at junior colleges for recruiting.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Especially knowing that you’re not gonna beat out these big schools at the high school level.
1:04:18
AUSTIN: Well, Friday Night Lights touches on recruiting in the first season, too, with Jason Street.
MITCH: I was trying to remember who…
AUSTIN: In the first episode, when his parents are sitting down in the bleachers, and they were watching Jason Street throw.
MITCH: Yes
AUSTIN: The guy is from Notre Dame.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: That’s one of the most frustrating things that I’ve ever seen in my life. That coach sitting there and talking to his parents and telling them, “he’s the best quarterback that I’ve ever seen.” And then he, like, wings a ball (laughing) It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.
MITCH: The actor playing Jason Street?
AUSTIN: Yes. It’s just not good. And it’s so frustrating to watch them trying to get down the level of athleticism that you’d have to have to show that you’re that good is not on that show.
MITCH: No
AUSTIN: Nowhere, in any way shape or form. It’s not. But either way, this year’s fucked.
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: We were wrapping up anyway, before we got interrupted.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: You can follow us on twitter at @deviltownpod
AUSTIN: @deviltownpod
MITCH: or @organzapleats or @a_greenameyer
AUSTIN: Mhmm. And you can find us at, I think it is, buzzsprout, right?
MITCH: deviltown.buzzsprout.com
AUSTIN: And then we have an email. It’s deviltownpodcast@gmail.com. Or you can just find us on the street.
MITCH: You can call me at 309
AUSTIN: (laughing) No! No no no no no
MITCH: They know my area code!
AUSTIN: You’ll never know where we’re from.
MITCH: That doesn’t help. (laughing) We’ve said where we’re from. That’s not where my area code is.
AUSTIN: Originally, though. My area code’s the same way, it’s not from here. They would have no clue. I’m 903.
MITCH: 903, that’s what it is.
AUSTIN: You’re 303?
MITCH: 309
AUSTIN: Woah
MITCH: I know
AUSTIN: 303’s actually Denver.
MITCH: Don’t care.
AUSTIN: It’s the band, 3oh3! They’re from Cherry Creek. (laughing)
MITCH: Oh is that why they’re called that?
AUSTIN: Yes.
MITCH: Stupid
AUSTIN: It’s very stupid.
MITCH: All right, that’s all.
AUSTIN: That’s all.
MITCH: Goodbye
AUSTIN: Get the fuck out, this is Devil Town