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00:03 Let's go down the street a little bit to Lexington.
00:06 I actually heard people on this very network arguing all week when
00:11 Mark Pope got the job that Kentucky wasn't a top three program
00:17 in college basketball anymore.
00:20 As if it was or if it is or if it isn't is irrelevant.
00:24 Kentucky basketball to me is gigantic and it always has been and it always will be.
00:32 And they went and got one of their own.
00:34 It is what it is.
00:35 What's your reaction to where the program is today after Cal left and
00:39 Pope takes over?
00:41 >> Well, I looked into this for
00:45 a column that I did on today's sportingnews.com site.
00:49 And I think what it's important to understand is that in today's era,
00:56 and this may not be a long era because we don't know where name, image, and
01:00 likeness and all of that is going.
01:02 But for now, being a Blue Blood,
01:06 being one of the programs with tradition and history and passion,
01:11 it's not necessarily the advantage that it was ten years ago.
01:14 There's still an advantage, there's no doubt.
01:19 But it's not the advantage that it was ten years ago for a couple of reasons.
01:23 One, you can recruit five star guys to those Blue Bloods
01:27 more easily than you can to other programs.
01:31 But how valuable is that?
01:33 And at least in a very short window when you have 24 and
01:38 25 year old players in Division I basketball, that's gonna die out pretty soon.
01:45 That's gonna go away in 25, 26.
01:47 But right now you've got those older players,
01:50 the disparity between the incoming freshman and the outgoing senior, senior,
01:55 senior, whatever you wanna call them, they've been sticking around forever.
01:59 >> Gratuitous.
02:00 >> Those guys, it's pretty vast.
02:02 So that's part of the issue.
02:04 And then the other part is that the American talent development system is in
02:07 a bad spot.
02:09 So you get a five star guy and he turns out to be DeJuan Wagner,
02:13 DeJuan Wagner, not very good, not able to help you win college basketball games.
02:20 And maybe certainly not what you got when that number one player was DeJuan Wagner
02:25 in 2002 or Milt Wagner in 1981.
02:31 I mean, it's just not the same right now.
02:34 And we've gotta get to work on fixing that.
02:37 But it does make a difference to the Blue Blood that has that first in line standing
02:43 for the five star player.
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