Keith Carter

So, um, yes, I, I've become comfortable, Rich, with the fact that college sports are wonderful but broken, and are always going to be wonderful and broken.

And, uh, I, I wanna give, uh, Keith Carter, the AD at Ole Miss, credit for this line.

We were standing in the hallway at the SEC tournament last year for basketball and, you know, just having, like, the regular old industry conversation, whatever the, you know, the, the, the, the flap of the day was.

And he says, "It feels like for the last five years, we've been three years away from stability."

I've heard there's maybe some incompetencies that have been uncovered that may lead to all that kind of stuff.

ATX hog says, if we decided to move on from Hunter Eurocheck, who would be your ideal hire? And it's Keith Carter too much of a dude, Keith Carter.

What are you talking about? We screwed that up years ago.

Like the fact that Arkansas didn't offer Keith Carter out of high school when they offered some of the players that they offered in state during that time, and that's Nolan Richardson.

Loved Nolan, did a lot of great things, but wasn't perfect, and this was one of the mistakes that they've made.

You know, they're – There's a lot of mistakes like that over the years at Arkansas.

But they didn't hire Keith Carter, and he went to Ole Miss and had a really good career there and had an ax to grind against Arkansas.

And now

Mm-hmm.

And, um, I think, you know, I was fortunate to work with Keith Carter, um, my early days working for the UMAA Foundation, and he's that type of guy, too.

You just want good people there, and when you have good people around you, I think no matter what you do in life, um, college sports especially, um, you like to see good people have success, and typically they have success because they are good people.

Has Keith's arc surprised you at all?

Mm-hmm.

Um, everyone knows Keith Carter was a basketball American at Ole Miss.

Mm-hmm.

But did you know our chancellor was also a college athlete? Did you know our chancellor was also a championship coach? Um, so it's just a unique place.

But, yes, there was joy in Rebel Land on Saturday night for multiple fronts.

And Keith Carter.

Even the athletics director even jumped on Twitter and said, you know, what a great day for Ole Miss and watching all the results later in the day as well.

And, you know, dropped a little red and blue emoji on there.

Yeah, they didn't storm the field or anything like that.

They didn't do anything weird, but that was an emotional game to the point where Keith Carter's still tweeting out when LSU loses a game like they did against Kentucky last night.

That game meant more.

There was a lot of emotional capital spent on that football game.

No, for sure.

The question is, are we gonna get the Keith Carter '99, uh, basketball jerseys?

Oh my goodness, the red jersey with the, the...

Oh, yeah.

Listen, that, that's my era.

Whenever, um, Keith Carter and those boys beat Kentucky in '97 and stormed the court, I was in that crowd.

I, I was there doing that, going absolutely nuts.

Dick Vitale shooting free throws, all, all the whole nine yards.

Right.

Um, um, but that is a uniform that I think should come back, and the way it's going to be, in my opinion, is, you know, Keith Carter, A, has to get this right, 100%.

The money's great, everything, but fans want one thing.

When they go watch Ole Miss play football, it looks like Ole Miss playing football.

So there's one that's, like, red and powder for the powder blue jersey and, and wi- red and navy whenever you wear the navy jersey or the red jersey, depending on what the helmet is.

I, I, I, I w- I, I'm curious about that and which direction they're gonna go.

I think, uh, everything that [chuckles] Keith Carter's done so far is amazing, by the way.

So I have full, full, uh, confidence in him You know? I don't mind the powder blues if the kids like them, 'cause they're the ultimately the ones that are gonna have to play in it.