- 6 days ago
Gopowercat.com Tim Fitzgerald checks in from his car with all the latest on K-State Athletics!
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00:00Brock Brady Bowman here. Tim Fitzgerald joining the show. Fitz, the new time slot,
00:04we're giving you a little extra time to think about things. Think about your behavior. Prepare
00:12here for joining us. What's going on, Fitz? How are you? I'm driving. I'll be driving the next
00:20four appearances I make on this fine show. So you're going to hear me while I'm whistling down
00:26the road. Oh, the old dusty trail. Fitz, what do we know about the first Klein camp? We don't have
00:35any access for a little while. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I suspect it's not fun. From what the
00:43guy said about off-season conditioning, I imagine these early stages of transitioning into learning
00:51plays and kind of becoming more cohesive, will still be a lot of conditioning and a lot of
00:58pushing you to your limits. So I imagine they're not having fun. And for the first time since I've
01:04been covering this program since the 90s, they're a morning practice team. So they're getting up and
01:11getting after it and getting it out of the way. And I kind of like that approach.
01:17You know, Fitz, I don't know if you heard about this thing that Akron is doing, this promotion
01:23about letting a season ticket holder win a raffle or something, calling, well, I don't know exactly
01:29how much involved this is going to be, but allowed to help script the opening drive and call plays on
01:36the opening drive of the home opener for Akron. Would Colin Klein ever allow such a promotion at K-State
01:42to
01:42have a season ticket holder help call some plays for a series? Only if that season ticket holder was
01:47Bill Snyder. Yes. That probably is one asterisk there. No, I can't see that. That's, I wonder if
01:55the coach really approved that or they said, no, we got to do this to raise money, coach. I, I
02:00can't
02:00imagine that. I can see being able to call a play, like not when it's used, but it'll be used
02:08or
02:08not even that with Colin Klein. I can't, I just can't see any power level coach doing that.
02:15They're playing Robert Morris. If they can't, if they can't run a pre-scripted drive against
02:22Robert Morris, I love, I think it's a great idea for Akron. How many season tickets do you think
02:30they'll sell? I bet it's at least 20 and maybe a lot more than that. It might be a lot
02:37more than
02:38that from smart asses all across the country. Just want to do the promotion that have too much money
02:43on their hands. Oh, you brilliant son of a you. That is wonderful. I wonder how much those tickets
02:50are. I'll script a drive for you. That's what I mean. I'll bet you this. I'll bet this isn't the
02:58last time we see something like this. Now I'm with you. I don't, I don't think we're going to see
03:02K-State do it because they don't need help selling season tickets, I suspect. But Fitz,
03:09Colin Klein's running a hard camp. It's, it is that time. Is it as bad in, you know, in the
03:17NFL,
03:17we talk about, and we have a lot more access in the NFL. Like you get really excited about it
03:22and
03:22then you just hold your breath that nobody gets hurt. And especially when you hear about hard
03:27training camps, which I believe in, you know, football players have got to play football.
03:32But when we think about this, I don't think we've talked about this a lot and I don't have
03:37appropriate insight to this at all. We know a lot about, you know, K-State's key players and a lot
03:42of their return. How much depth does this team have as they enter an injury scary
03:47time of year? Yeah. Um, it's a great question. I mean, they got a full roster. So
03:53number count, they're great quality. We're going to find out. Uh, I continue to be worried about,
04:00excuse me, uninjured depth along the two lines. And we still don't, still don't know much about
04:05that offensive line. It'll be something that I'm sure Collins asked about, uh, at his
04:11week where this offensive line stands. And I think there's ongoing concern about the defensive
04:17tackle position and having enough quality depth in there. So, uh, you're right. That's something
04:21they most certainly need to develop as this camp goes on. Cause they feel like they've got good
04:26answers at a lot of position groups in the spring. Uh, but all to be continued. However,
04:32you got to make sure you got enough bodies because the big 12 will shoot you up and spit you
04:35out.
04:37Yeah, no doubt about that. I'm looking at go power cat.com right now. And, uh,
04:42uh, here's a, one of the headlines where it says that fits picks the transfers who will exceed
04:46or fall short to pay an expectation. Uh, a few of the big names that we should be looking at.
04:54I'm sorry. You broke up big time on me. It's about the portal.
04:58Uh, yeah, yeah. I got an article on go power cat talking about, uh, transfers who will exceed,
05:03who could maybe fall short to pay an expectation. Who are some of those transfers? We should keep an eye
05:07up. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's going to be interesting because you, you know, you can see
05:13them in practice, but who's actually going to pay it out? Um, you know, and I think, uh, they've got
05:18some dudes that are going to be really good and maybe some dudes that won't be quite as good as
05:23we expect, but this is by far the best transfer class Kansas state. Um, and you know, doing so on
05:30a
05:31still restrictive budget compared to a Texas tech or big 10 and sec schools. It
05:37did a really good job with this. I think they got a lot of answers, but they not, not all
05:42of them
05:42that we think will be great. Uh, could be, you know, I, I think Rodney Fields a running back from
05:47Oklahoma state's going to be great. Awesome. But he was injured in the spring and, uh, in the spring,
05:54two guys stepped up and really looked good at running back. So I think maybe you won't have as
05:58much impact this year as we expect. I wonder to Tim Fitzgerald, uh, publisher, go powercat.com
06:05at life of fits on X. I wonder, as we're looking at this and we see, you know, the five
06:11and five
06:12got challenged, but it doesn't sound like it's going to be much of a challenge for football or
06:15anything. And we see the protect college sports act looking like it, it will get passed. Maybe
06:21we don't know the timing, but I think it'll get passed. It seems to reemphasize to some degree
06:28how much more coaches can go back to paying attention to high school football.
06:34Is that, is that, is that more of Klein's wheelhouse than the transfer portal? Do you think?
06:42Um, I think that's the preference is to develop talent, but, uh, I think no matter how good a
06:48coach are you going to miss some guys just won't click with you. Some guys will pan out. Uh, and
06:53portal now gives you a, uh, like in-house recycling program. You can put them back into the portal and
06:59you pull something else out. So I think if managed correctly, you can find an incredible balance
07:03while still being a developmental program, like Kansas state needs to be, because you're going to
07:08be recruiting kids from Kansas and maybe the upper Midwest where they just have fewer high school
07:13opportunities to get on the football field and say a Texas or Florida. Uh, and that's always been
07:18the key to Kansas state footballs and identifying those guys who are behind the curve, catching
07:24them, catching them up real quick in college.
07:29Fitz, we know about the Avery Johnson, as far as that leadership position on the offensive side
07:33of the ball, uh, who are the emerging leaders, uh, we're seeing on the other side and on defense.
07:38That's a great question. Uh, who knows? I mean, I suspect safeties will step up. That's always
07:43been a leadership position and, and, uh, one of the linebackers will break loose here.
07:48It's kind of a kind of jumbled mess, but I think with the new direction on the defensive
07:54side, with the new defensive coordinator and new philosophies, we really could see a transfer
07:59or two, uh, emerges leaders over there. Cause they're all starting over with the new system.
08:06Yeah. Yeah. I don't like that. We, I don't like that. We don't have access. You guys are going
08:11to get it though. Go power cat.com. Let's talk about the protect college sports act. Anything
08:16in there you have concern with, uh, do you care at this point? I've said forever, if they can just
08:24fix the portal, fans will be happy. Like, do we even care anymore? Just get it, get it through so
08:28we can fix the portal. Yeah. They just, we need to see progress. And I think this is progress,
08:34progress, but with all of these things, uh, it's not really about what's in the bill and how it'll
08:41directly impact things. So often what's in the bill that will have a unpredictable impacts will
08:49have an unknown factor. Uh, there's always things that rise up out of changes that you just don't
08:55foresee. Uh, and that's really where we've been with a lot of this stuff is you fix one problem and
09:01the leak moves somewhere else. So hopefully this plugs more holes and it creates, uh, and at some
09:07point, uh, college sports needs to have some rules that they can codify. Uh, and how we go about that
09:14still has to be sorted out. I don't know if Congress can fully do it. Got to get the student
09:20athletes
09:20involved in some way. Uh, but you can't have any court judge around the country on the federal bench,
09:28even if it's a, you know, one of the smaller districts or something, just overturning all
09:32the college football on a whim, uh, because one lawyer made a good argument that, that seemed okay
09:38to them. It just can't be that fragile. No system can be, they've got to figure this out.
09:45It's when it comes to Kansas state, uh, and the athletic department, uh, are you getting any feel on how
09:51much, uh, K state and, uh, other big 12 schools are paying attention to this, uh, college sports bill,
09:57or just kind of going on business as usual and just maybe not feeling like it's going to have a,
10:03uh, a passage this week. Uh, what's the appeal locally as far as, uh, what the university is
10:08paying attention to? Yeah, I think K state as an entity really want better enforceable, uh,
10:16K state has a culture where they want to play by the rules. Uh, and I've, I've said this before,
10:21uh, the rules have never been black and white in Kansas state has stayed on the right side of,
10:27of that imaginary line. There's a lot of gray in there and you know, like a speed limit that you
10:34can go eight over they've been going the speed limit. It's time to find that next gear and play
10:41in the gray where you can be the most competitive without actually breaking rules. Um, but I think we
10:47can all agree the less gray, the better, the more codified these rules could be the better. Uh,
10:53and, uh, then we'll figure out how the sec is cheating now because as soon as they set rules,
10:58these sec coaches will start bending and breaking them before their ink is even dry. And that's just
11:05the way they've always been. It's the sec culture. Yeah, man. I gotta be honest though. I really don't
11:10care. I like that. That's the kind of stuff we, we can have fun with here. That's the kind of
11:15stuff
11:16we can write about and talk about and, and, but like, I don't think that's the kind of stuff that
11:22has people kind of growing leery and weary of college sports. I think that's the transfer portal.
11:28And I think that's what they have to fix. I think that's, you know, tampering with coaches before
11:33seasons are over. I think that's tampering with high school players who have committed to places
11:38already. Those are the kinds of things I think that drive people nuts. If the sec wants to worry about
11:45retention pools and they've been doing that forever and we didn't care. So why would we care
11:50now? Well, I think fans did care, uh, to the fact that they would pound their chest about being the
11:58best conference while blatantly cheating and also denying it. And then once it becomes legal,
12:03they go, yeah, we were doing it all time. No, no crap. Um, I, I wish the sec culture was
12:10different.
12:10And if you can't kind of join the ranks of everyone else, big 10, I think the big 10 is
12:16leery of what
12:18the sec can become and do by playing in the gray and even stepping over that line. So, um, I
12:26think for
12:27college football to really survive and thrive in this, what will still be volatile era. Um, I think
12:32everyone needs to kind of be on the same page and, uh, the sec just never wants to play ball
12:38with
12:38everyone else on equal footing. They just don't. Fitz, I got to ask you a quick shift of gears here,
12:45but we got some NFL football tonight. It's the hall of fame game. Fitz, who you got? I didn't even
12:50know
12:50about this game. I didn't either until, until a couple of minutes ago, we've got the Cardinals
12:56favored by one point, the Carson Beck Cardinals against the Kenny Pickett Panthers. How about that?
13:04I think I'll watch a soap opera. Yeah, I'm telling you, that's where I'm at. I can't,
13:08uh, I don't know. Maybe, uh, all my children has some reruns on some channel. I'll watch this.
13:15Yeah. I can't take it this early. It's so slow. It's a great example of one of those things we
13:23see
13:23like on the social media, you know, runs where people pretend like they're excited. Oh, we're fine.
13:30Football's finally back. And like 90% of those people won't watch one second of the hall of fame
13:37game. Nobody's watching that. Nope. Nobody's watching football. Nobody. I still don't grasp why
13:46they do it, but Brady's going to stubbornly watch now. Cause we've called out his, his lies. Uh,
13:51well, I'm working tonight, so I doubt it, but I mean, I'll try and pay attention.
13:54Okay. You're not even checking the box score. Are you? I'll be checking the box score tonight.
13:59Absolutely. Check the box. I'm curious about Beck. Yeah. I might, I might, I might check in on Beck.
14:04Maybe, uh, maybe, uh, Fitz go power cat.com. What do you guys have for us? Uh, we're just cooking
14:09away right now. Uh, we're at 60% off. So, uh, as camp really gets roaring, the VIP flowing better.
14:16Um, it'll be really fun, fun time to be around the message boards. And I think it's going to be
14:22really exciting season. So go check it out at go power cat.com. Of course, our YouTube channel
14:27is always accessible and I hope you're becoming a member and, and, uh, getting kind of behind the
14:33paywall where it's just the community at K state are talking sports and not a bunch of people from
14:37other fan bases chiming in. And then you guys get access. We all get access to practice beginning
14:44next week. Is that right? Sorry. What? When, when does access to practice begin? Like
14:50when, when, when the coaches, I don't, I don't know when, when we actually have access.
14:57It's weird. K state's always weird about this stuff. This is not, this is all kind of reverting
15:03back to Bill Snyder. So I would doubt we're going to get a lot of access, maybe a little
15:07bit. Uh, but press conferences at least start on Monday with Donald Klein. Okay. Klein Monday.
15:14Got it. Uh, Fitz be safe. Good luck with the travel and, uh, and welcome into the new
15:19time slot. Let's do it again next week. Thank you boys. Here goes Tim Fitzgerald, our K state
15:24insider. Uh, it is Brady. It is weird. It does feel like Bill Snyder's back in charge.
15:33It's always weird. Like the one thing I'll say about NFL training camps and things like
15:38they're like, they're like, you've got that schedule and you know, it, and the access is
15:42much easier, you know, in college. We like.
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