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00:00So, Mike, the conferences are changing again.
00:07Are you buying that Gonzaga's going?
00:09Are you buying the Utah State stories?
00:13Some people are refuting it.
00:15Some people say it's legit.
00:17Where do you think all these teams end up when it's all said and done?
00:20Well, there's also a lawsuit that was filed today by the Pac-12 against the penalty fees
00:29that would be due the Mountain West for taking certain members of their league.
00:34So it really has become wild in the last week.
00:38What's interesting to me is that there's this level of interest, even though we're talking
00:43about what the Zombie Pac-12 and the Mountain West and the American Conference, leagues
00:49that don't usually get that much attention.
00:51So maybe a little bit of expansion talk is good for them because it puts their product
00:57in the spotlight some.
00:58I'm not sure where the Pac-12 ends up at this point.
01:02I didn't like their strategy at all for what they did.
01:06I thought that, honestly, what the Pac-12 and Mountain West should have done was cooperate.
01:12Put together a league that added Oregon State and Washington State to the existing Mountain
01:20West and then just decide which is a better brand.
01:24Mountain West is a pretty cool name.
01:26Pac-12 is a really powerful name that's been around for a long time.
01:30Decide which is a better brand and go from there.
01:32Instead, they decided to fight each other.
01:35And I don't think that the strategy of the reanimated Pac-12 has been good.
01:40They did not have a good handle on their attempt to raid the American Conference.
01:44And look, first of all, if you go after Tulane, Scott, I mean, you do not know what you're
01:49doing.
01:50You don't want to get Tulane.
01:52Tulane's a wonderful university.
01:55New Orleans is a cool city.
01:57But you don't want that athletic program.
01:59Even though the football program has gotten better competitively on the field, it's still
02:03not a prime program.
02:06Its history is so up and so down.
02:10It's not one that's been consistent.
02:13The addition of Tulane to the Big East back in 2013, I believe it was, was what precipitated
02:21the basketball school saying, the heck with this.
02:23We're out of here.
02:25We're going somewhere else and doing our own thing.
02:28So I didn't like the fact that the Pac-12 did that.
02:30And then to get rejected by Tulane, Memphis, and USF shows they really didn't have a good
02:36plan.
02:37They should have been all in on Vegas, which offers so much in terms of the possibility
02:43of what the Rebels could become, what they have been many times in basketball.
02:47And hey, Scott, the worst case scenario, if you add Vegas, what is it?
02:52The worst case scenario is your team goes on the road, gets a W, and all your fans get
02:56to go to Vegas.
02:57How, how do you not want them in your league?
03:00Are they staying in the Mountain West?
03:02That's their plan.
03:03And do you think that, I talked about this earlier yesterday about St. Mary's.
03:09Why are they being left out?
03:11Because they're pretty good at hoops too.
03:13Well, it comes down to the fact that in a case of St. Mary's, they have a magnificent
03:19basketball program, but not one that, one that is believed to have endurance.
03:26And it doesn't have great national appeal.
03:30It has, it has had great success nationally.
03:34But it's not like a lot of people are turning on the television when St. Mary's is there
03:38unless they're playing Gonzaga, which is a brand that draws people to the television
03:42set and is why there is some interest in the Pac-12 in adding them as a basketball member.
03:48I'm not sure where Vegas goes because they were pretty much firm on staying in the Mountain
03:54West when they, when they weren't initially invited by the Pac-12.
03:58And then the idea that Utah State might cross the line there and go to the Pac-12 sort of
04:03destabilized Vegas's interest in remaining in the Mountain West.
04:07So we don't know where it's going to end up at this point.
04:10As you said, even Utah State's interest in the Pac-12 now seems to be dubious.
04:17I just think that the Pac-12 strategy here was really poor.
04:21And why should we be surprised now?
04:23Because whoever's been in charge, the Pac-12 in the last 15 years has made very few good
04:30moves from hiring Larry Scott, to letting him run things as he did, to then when he
04:35was, when he departed, to then asking for a King's ransom for their television rights
04:40and seeing a reasonable contract go to the Big 12 instead that could have been, belonged
04:45to the Pac-12.
04:46They haven't, when's the last time they made a good move?
04:49When they decided they wanted UCLA maybe?
04:51Was that the last time?