Who are the other ones that I'm going to be going out of my way to tune in for?

Arizona's got another guard, 6'5 guard named Caleb Holt, who's like top five pick type guy.

Oh, really? And then like a big topic of conversation that we got into, like Kansas just added Trey Kaufman-Wren.

who was an all-American level guy at Purdue.

Right.

He's 24 years old.

This is his sixth year of college.

It is odd.

All right, all right.

We will be back after this.

Chris Farnan Show.

[upbeat music] Grizzlies fans know it's the team that gives you the edge.

Big River Steel does, too.

And much like the Grizzlies have recruited legendary talent, we want you to be part of our team.

Are you ready to be part of something legendary? Then visit www.bigriversteel.com.

For help quitting, call 800-522-4700.

Sheesh.

They were in the NCAA tournament from '82 to 2009, from Kirk through Calipari 61% of the time, and in the Sweet 16, um, more than one out of every three years on average.

Then John leaves.

Mm-hmm.

Since then, there have been 17 seasons of Tiger basketball, seven NCAA tournament appearances.

They've made it 42% of the time.

Used to be 61, now it's 42.

And Scott, make the video

So

any parents that do this, I would just say don't.

Don't do it.

Even if money doesn't matter to you, it's just embarrassing.

Just don't, okay? But here's where I sort of break away from.

It's a scam.

It's just another branch in a tree of youth sports being a business.

Cal brought

I was

told there was a scene where the money people, like the wealthy people connected to Memphis.

The people who like fund this stuff.

The people who, John, if he was having dinner, they'd be at the dinner.

And I was told that collection of people, you can imagine who they are.

You know some of them.

They're at his, I think, home.

That's Tulane

long time to adjust.

Yeah.

Like I told the story yesterday as we were talking about this.

We went from Boston.

We on a Monday night, we left Boston around 11 p.m. And we're flying straight through the night, just like the Rams did.

And, you know, and then we landed in Lisbon and Sylvia, our Italian extension, landed roughly the same time.

And we were going to spend the day with her.

Yeah, like Sweet Child

You gotta be able to step up even though it's a, you know, it's a money game and all that stuff, but your thoughts on, on where the program's at?

I thought last year when, uh, Scott came in, it was a, it was, y- you know, overwhelming trying to...

You had to bring in 70 different guys, and trying to find some continuity amongst those players, and try to find team leadership.

And, and then, and then, and we got banged up.

Quarterbacks were hurt.

Seems like every week we l- r- had quarterbacks hurt.

We couldn't find the offensive line combination.

Gary, uh, it's often viewed as coach speak, but what are the typical first game things that you just got to avoid regardless of who the opponent is?

And he was like,

no.

He did not want to accept it.

He didn't want to accept it.

He didn't want to accept it.

I have another guy.

I don't want to be too specific, but it was like, imagine if somebody would – offer you hey hey if i paid you to do like imagine somebody came to you for a master's update they wanted they just wanted you to recreate master's updates and they said hey here's the amount of money we and you did this this is something you did yeah i'll do a master's update for your tournament and this is the normal price you pay now imagine you came to me and said hey i just got another offer to do this thing and it's 10 times that much money right I have a guy who, buddy, and I was like, what? And he was like, yeah.

It

Newton was at Florida and chose between Mississippi State and Auburn right

and yeah so here's a story that I think underlines this I did a thing maybe 15 years ago where I went on a recruiting trail with Tom Izzo and it was just me and him private planes the private cars I was just with them for like three straight days everywhere we were and um one night we're in a gym and I don't know where we were.

Let's say we were in Indianapolis and needed to get to Akron for the next morning.

And we had a private plane, and we were just going to take it that night at the end of the night.

We happened to be sitting with Bruce Weber, who at the time is the head coach at Illinois, conference rivals in the Big Ten.

And Tom's like, so you're going to Akron? He's like, yeah.

He's like, yeah, I'm going tomorrow morning.

One of the

And we got mega burned, right? We put his ass on TV 27 times as a rookie, and then he just didn't play.

The interesting thing is the choice they have to make is every time you put the rookie on, it is at the expense of a LeBron.

or a Steph or a KD.

And so we know people will watch these people, so let's do them.

But there's an argument to be made, above my pay grade, but like, is it counterproductive? Yeah, you know you can put Steph and the Warriors on, and they'll do a better number than A.J.

DeBonsa and the Wizards.

But should you be trying to build A.J. Devonsa into something by putting him on ABC and on NBC, even if the Wizards aren't – hey, sort of the we'll give you what you need instead of what you want.

Yeah.

schools called him like, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no. That's exactly what happened.

We're going to be stuck.

Yes, we'll be stuck.

And that would have been bad for Memphis because there is still room in the power conferences.

The bill would cap all power conferences at 19.

And if you 19 times four, you get that number.

They just

hard and so but aaron hills i would do that tomorrow if i could i mean it's just amazing it's amazing

let me let me add one thing because our buddy matt our new buddy matthew yeah uh mentioned this yesterday because i guess i gather he probably gets questions like this sometimes i know we get him it's like so why are you going and doing all this like why are you doing that because like first off it's just fun it's just awesome experience but beyond that matthew sort of put it this way He said, people ask me all the time, and he said, like, if you're a basketball player, odds are you never get to play basketball where Michael Jordan played basketball, right? If you're a football player, odds are you never get to play football where, you know, Joe Montana played football.

But this is a sport where you can play where Brooks Koepka plays or where Tiger played or where Jack Nicklaus played.

And it's a unique to – I don't want to say it's totally unique to golf, but it's pretty unique to golf.

You can't play tennis and be like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to center court at Wimbledon and just hit it around a little bit.

But we can go to where – The PGA Championship is.

The Ryder Cup is.

it used to be you were paying to take the guys running back away.

Mm

...

Michigan to Auburn or from Eastern Michigan to Louisville or whatever.

So they'll ch- but they're not leaving the restaurant.

So I'm out in Vegas and talking to one power conference coach, and he says, "So there's this ..." There's ...

He's- we're having this conversation.

He said, "Okay, here's one for you.

Yeah.

Is there anything not to love about his game? Like if he's healthy, what is he five years from now?

I mean, if he's healthy, he's a consistent all-star and Hall of Fame talent worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which I think played a role in how he was handled at Kansas.

I think they were over-careful to a fault.

I think if he just is healthy, I'll answer it this way.

If he's just healthy his freshman year at Kansas and just plays the way he played, he's probably the first pick of the draft.

The only reason he wasn't, I don't want to say the only reason he wasn't healthy, Among the reasons he wasn't because A.J. DeBonte is also awesome.

And like Cameron Boozer is, you know, amazing.

That's a really good point.

And, you know, if they would be like an eight seed, I don't think they're going to let Bill Self go, but would Bill Self look at it and be like, I don't have it anymore?

I mean, other coaches have done this.

I mean, Roy Williams really, you know, walked away after a season.

And when you asked him why, and I'm sure it was more complex than this, but he said more or less, like, for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I don't know that I'm the best person to do this anymore.

Like Roy kind of in his humble way said, I'm going to stop coaching North Carolina, not because I'm not enjoying it or because I don't love it, but because I need to look in the mirror.

And maybe, you know, maybe there's somebody who can do this better than me right now.

And so I guess any of us, when you reach that point where – I mean I think we're in a string now where you can say like, well, this past year was the worst of the Bill Self era.

Looks like they clearly are going to get to the arc and shoot the three, but is there any new things you're hearing? It's going good, going bad, anything along those lines?

That's heroic.

We felt like heroes.

There was, I think, maybe a couple of young women, maybe three, and they were walking through the streets of Chicago just outside of Wrigley Field.

We were up there, and we were having a good time.

And this guy was just clearly intoxicated and bothering them.

He had lost his phone, had lost his friends, and we just sort of...

And he's like, hey, but y'all, can you just help? If you just let me use...

to go.

And a lot of people to this day, we don't know what they were.

Yeah, we actually did it a little bit different.

We took the county actually did the background investigations first.

So I was assigned to do the background and that it was pretty intense background investigation at the time.

Everything going from the elementary school teachers to the parents to the grandparents to the church, synagogue, wherever it may be, we would take a look at that and discuss their background, any issues, any problems, how great they did in school.

Look at their grades if you were in the military, look at their DD 214s, get full information.

And then if they came from another area, we would go to that area or contact that area, whether it was Baltimore City or Ohio State or New York State and ask for help in doing the background investigation to get a complete background on an individual.

Yeah.