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This show is sponsored by Liquid iv. Hey there, it's Gary Parish from the I own college basketball podcast. Summer was great, but it's just about over. September is here, and that'll get us to fall, which is a time of the year where temperatures can start to drop, at which point perhaps your focus and stamina isn't quite where it needs to be as it pertains to your daily routine. That's where Liquid IV can come in. It can boost your hydration and energy. And it's so convenient, easy to use. Just throw a packet in your gym bag, in your golf bag, your purse, your glove box, whenever you need it. Just tear, put, pour, and enjoy. Want to avoid that afternoon crash? Don't have time to lay down and rest. Let the new energy multiplier work for you. Just one stick and 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone. Don't let the grind drain you. Ditch the glitch with zero sugar and zero crash from Liquid IV. Tear poor live more. Go to liquid IV.com and get 20% off your first order with code I at checkout. That's 20% off your first order with Code I E Y E@liquid I.com Foreign Parrish. Welcome back, CBS Sports. I own college basketball podcast where we sometimes discuss camel fighting, dodo birds, and leaky black. Matt Norlander is here with me. If you're watching on YouTube, you know what to do to that. Like button shouts to Brandon Davies. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to the CBS Sports college basketball YouTube channel, please also do that while you're here. Let's get into it. Big headline on this Monday afternoon. Bruce Pearl, the winningest coach in Auburn men's basketball history, a man who has advanced to a pair of final fours, including last seasons, is retiring from Auburn at the age of 65. His son, Stephen Pearl, is the Tiger's new head coach. He is 38 years old. Norlander, both of us have been aware that this has been in the wind for a while. Just out of curiosity, I went back and looked at our text. On August 6th, I text you about this. Exactly.
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B
Taking them behind the curtain, huh? Okay, let's. Let's just do it. All right, here we go.
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It was August 6th. I texted you about this specifically, and we had both heard this. I think a lot of people have heard this more recently. BP was asked about it publicly and kind of just dismissed the entire topic. Didn't deny anything necessarily, but just talked around it either way. Now here we are. It's September 22nd BP is done coaching college basketball. Your thoughts?
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B
Well, there's a lot to get to here. I am surprised that this is happening today. Now this has been in the wind plenty. The why of it remains to be seen. To everyone hopping on. First of all, we'd love to see the YouTube chat just humming here on a Monday in September. That's good stuff. The reason for it? Well, there's a coach that's no longer going to be on the sidelines who's one of the better quotes behind behind a mic that there is. So that's, that's a bummer to lose Pearl on that end. Coincidentally enough, we have talked about Pearl on the show recently, but I did not think that he would retire in advance of the season. Now that was informed by being told on the Auburn Slash Pearl camp side earlier this off season that retirement was certainly looming, you know, sooner rather than later. But if you, if, you know, if you call me this morning out of the blue was like, I'm dropping my kids off. Norlander, when's, when's our guess on when Bruce Pearl would retire? I would have said give me the middle of next April. You know, after the season ends, maybe they get into a little of the portal. I thought he'd give it one more run. He hasn't now. Also, to everyone watching and taking this in live, we have not heard from Bruce yet. I was told that the plan was for him to he wanted to be the one to break this news. That's not how it works, unfortunately. He wanted to be the one to break it in the middle of the afternoon in video form on his Twitter slash X account. So to anyone that's getting to this podcast later on Monday or Tuesday, we're going to have more context, we would think from Pearl on the why of it all. But we do not have that now. We're not going to sit around and wait for Pearl to make that statement. We, whenever he does, Stephen is going to take over. You asked me where I thought my thoughts. I don't want to ramble too long on it. So I'll give you a quick one and then we can kind of ping pong back and forth here. He does go out on top. Two Final Fours best coach in Auburn history took him to their first final four in 2019. Then obviously, you know, Auburn before the start of the NCAA tournament had the best team and the toughest league that we've ever seen in the history of D1 in A in a single season context, obviously. So he is leaving and going out on top, he's doing this a little more than 11 months removed from Tony Bennett being a retirement that was more shocking than this one. But those you know, Tony Bennett was one of the 10 most prominent coaches in the sport when he opted to step away. And Bruce Pearl is one of the 10 most prominent coaches in the sport when he is opting to step away closer to the start of the season than the end of the previous one. So it is major news. I know there's political curiosities on that. We can, you know, we can, I guess pose our own theories on that before we get out of the show, but those are some of my bigger picture thoughts. I got a little more intel and info to share with you, but let me just send it back. Where do you stand in the here and now of us just sitting here podcasting, talking about losing a guy who is, is, and has been for more than 15 years at this point, one of the go to coaches in terms of prominence in uplifting college basketball.
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A
It is unusual in a vacuum to lose a 65 year old coach filled with energy who is nowhere close to the hot seat. Like literally closer to a statue than the hot seat and coming off of a Final Four and in position to keep it going like that in a vacuum. This is unusual, although it's less unusual than it used to be because, you know, we just lost Jay Wright, Tony Bennett, other men who had no reason to walk away other than they either didn't want to do what they were doing anymore or wanted to do other things. The thing that makes Bruce's story, I believe, a little more unique is that there are words about a possible political career that have been out there for a long time. And a lot of people believe he is in a position to not only run for a Senate seat, but like actually win it to be a United States senator very, very soon. For people who don't follow Alabama politics, Tommy Tuberville holds the Senate seat. Running for governor. That Senate seat is up for grabs. And in the state of Alabama, unless you're like an accused pedophile, it's like hard to lose an election as a Republican. And even then it's difficult. You can google it if you don't believe me, but I don't know what Bruce wants to do. He's a grandfather. He might just want to spend more time with his family, watch his son succeed as a head coach and sit courtside at Auburn games and enjoy the experience from a different perspective. But a lot of people do believe that he has political aspirations Obviously, if you listen to Bruce talk, follow him on social media, it's undeniable that he has strong interest and beliefs about things outside of, of basketball, about things outside of sports. Whether you agree with them or not is beside the point. The point is that he is set up to, to have a political career if he wants one. And if he subsequently, whether it's today or some other day, explains why he wants to go down that path, that. That will not be surprising to me.
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B
Won't be surprising me. Okay, let's get to that. Let's get to that point right now. There's. Yeah, there's going to be continued speculation on this again. There's a chance, I suppose, within 20, 30, 70 minutes of us finishing this podcast, Pearl putting out a video saying, I'm retiring and I'm making a hard pivot to run for Senate. That could happen. I'm going to talk as though that's not going to be the case. If I'm wrong, ultimate I was wrong on me after the fact with that. I was told previously earlier this year by people on that end that he would very much not be doing that. Now. What could perhaps get, you know, the political world is one that you and I are not. Not remotely an expert in.
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I am. I would lie.
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B
No, do not, Paris. No, not on this. I am.
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I am an expert.
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B
That's enough.
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I'm an expert on everything.
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B
Shut it down.
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A
Yes, I am.
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B
Shut it down. My point that I'm staggering toward making here is that I can see scenarios in which people that may be hemming and hawing, vacillating on whether or not they ultimately want to get into politics for the first time. There are people, well, embedded in that world that have been in that world for a long, long time that understand how the levers of power are moved, that if not even if you're just Bruce Pearl, if you're just someone else that has a certain public standing and was debating maybe, and for a long time you were no. Well, if you get the right 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 people on the phone in the room with you, they can get you to go from a no to a yes over a certain amount of time with a certain change of perspective. So I am leaving that on the table. But I want to be clear. I was told earlier this year he would not be running for Senate. So doesn't mean he can't, won't change his mind. But we'll see from him either later today or in the, in the days to come if he has Indeed, changed his mind. The timing of that would indicate, you know, of this right now and indicate, okay, maybe that's a factor. Here's a couple more factors. Today is the start of college basketball's preseason. Largely, practices can begin and, you know, begin anew. What they've been doing in the off season from a, you know, formal standpoint is not the same as when practices actually get going and players and coaches, they can actually run their, their operation in a different way than they have been essentially since the summer and off season started many, many months ago. So there's that to consider. We are of a weekend obviously as well. And then, yes, with the Stephen angle. I was told he is. Let me be clear on this. He's not the interim. He is the head coach. He will be the head coach. Doesn't mean that he's going to be the head coach for 20 years or maybe even more than one year. We'll see how this goes. As I said on HQ shortly before we went live on the pod, just because you are the son of a really good, good coach, doesn't. It has no indication of whether or not you can do the job. Stephen Pearl might prove to be just as good as Bruce Pearl, although that's extremely unlikely. We'll get to his record in just a second as well. I want to reset what Bruce has done in his career sidelines. It could go any which way. I was also told that the news coming out, like they didn't, you know, this is just how the news cycle works. I know coaches get really understandably, like frustrated over this. But when you make a decision and enough people know like the news is going to leak, the team didn't know when it got reported out here earlier on, on Monday afternoon. And so they're in the midst of, of taking care of all that kind of stuff. But this new era is going to be intriguing for sure because Auburn has been operating at a level that it hadn't ever previously to Pearl. And I know you can speak to the beginning of this in particular when Bruce Pearl got fired from Tennessee. There's so much to cover with this guy's career here. He gets fired from Tennessee, we can get that as well. But fast forward past all that. Auburn brings him on at the end of his show. Cause I could be misremembering this. Did he have to serve a suspension at the start of that? If he didn't, I know there was some skepticism over whether he should be hired there. Some other people were like, what are you talking about? Like, he was great at Tennessee. He's ready to do this and then he has an 11 year tenure that is, I mean he's by far the best. He famously called Auburn and everything school. I think he said that to you when you were sideline for one of those games on CBS Sports a couple years back. And well, I do want to still dive into a little bit more of his career big picture commentary. He, what he was able to achieve at Auburn is, is pretty outstanding for particularly like our younger viewers and listeners that might be under the age of 27, 28 years. Auburn, you know, there are shots to Chris Porter, you know around the turn of the century they had a couple of good teams but for the majority of its existence with occasional good years, it just wasn't a factor in the sec. Certainly wasn't a factor nationally. And for more years than not Auburn has been a factor nationally in college basketball. I'm sure Bruce could have it at the ready. If we could call him up on the pod right now, I would, I would think this is a guess. I would think they get a bad first year if you take out that first year. The past 10 seasons I got to think that Auburn's been a top three school in the SEC in terms of win percentage and all other accolades there. So it is, it is fairly astounding. He wasn't mostly obvious hire for Auburn to make at a time when it needed to make a change and try and do something. And he his arrival at Auburn paralleled with, with an era. It wasn't specifically in 2014, but basically like the 2014-2017 18. That's when they really started to make a shift in how they were prioritizing a lot of things in men's college basketball league wide. And so as Auburn ascended the league, broadly speaking, GP also ascended as well. It speaks well to him and his resume. Coincidentally enough, we just had our mailbag episode last week. We were talking about hall of Fame coaches. I'm still not sure if Bruce Pearl will get to the hall of Fame, but his case is at least there. More than 700 career wins D2 national title the the greatest coach at Auburn. One of the best. It was short, but he's one of the better ones ever at Tennessee. Obviously there's a lot to dive into there. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. 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A
I think you can reasonably call him the best coach in Auburn history and Tennessee history.
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Auburn beat at this point. I'm sorry, does Barnes have Pearl beat at this point?
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We could argue it.
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Yeah. When you say that I. I don't know the answer. Just I. It made me think, that's all. Yeah.
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Okay, so let's just back up a little bit. We'll get to the Tennessee stuff. I think most of us first become aware of Bruce Pearl. Not because of the Division 2 stuff. Pearl perhaps because of a NCAA scandal a million years before that when he was an assistant coach. But like he took Milwaukee to the Sweet 16 in 2005 and it was like boom, burst onto the scene. Here's the sky. He's filled with energy. And then he gets the Tennessee job immediately after that. He was at Tennessee for six years, went to six straight NCAA tournaments. I believe it was three sweet 16s and an elite eight. I get the job at CBS in July 2006. That is right after his first year at UT. And you know when you first get a job like this, you're just trying to meet anybody you can meet and get to know anybody you get to know, however you can do it. And because Bruce Pearl and Steve Forbes and Jason Shea and Tony Jones, like I can still remember the whole staff like those guys were at Tennessee. They were recruiting Memphis all the time. Funny story, I remember one time Elliot Williams, I think was the McDonald's all American who was at St. George's and he was being recruited at the time by everybody, but among those, Tennessee and Duke. So I go to St. George's one time. I got, like, a tip from somebody, and they were like, hey, if you just pop into St. George's at, like, 1:45 today, Bruce Pearl is going to be there. Coach K is going to be there. And I'm like, well, okay, cool. You know, I get some FaceTime with two of the best coaches in college basketball. Pop over. So I pop over. They're both there. And then at some point, somebody realizes, like, nobody is supposed to be there. It's, like, wildly inappropriate, in violation of NCAA rules for anybody to be on camp this day, but somehow everybody's there. And I'm, like, talking to K and BP and I'm like, listen, like, if it's the problem's me, like, I've started to feel like they were coming no matter what, and I just happened to show up, and now we've got a problem. And I'm like, if the problem's me, I'll just leave. I don't really care whether you're here to see Elliot Williams in violation of the NCAA rules or not, like, whatever. But I just remember every. Everybody had to leave. I think everybody got there and then had to leave without doing anything because they found out, ooh, this could be an issue. So everybody left. But he's there for six years, six straight in civil tournaments. He's terrific. Like, got that Knoxville just rocking and rolling the whole deal. Then what happened with the barbecue happened. And if you remember, like, I'm the one who broke that story. The Aaron Craft aspect, I actually.
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I didn't remember, but, damn, that was a huge story. Just succinctly wrap up. Because it was a deal for a long time. But for those who might not be familiar, just wrap up what that was about. And I think still to this day, some people are. They're misguided, they misremember about why Bruce Pearl had to stop coaching at Tennessee.
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So it's a football weekend. Coincidentally, I happen to be there. I'm in Knoxville on this weekend. It's like, Tennessee, whatever, football game, and they're having unofficial visitors come in. Among the unofficial visitors was Aaron Craft, who went on to, of course, be a point guard at Ohio State. And the thing about unofficial visits is you can be on campus, but you're not supposed to be at the coach's house. That's, like, obviously not okay. Well, Bruce Was having, like, a big football weekend thing at his house. And my understanding is, had invited the recruits that were in town, including the ones that were there unofficially. Probably would have never been a big deal, except there was a picture snapped of BP and Bruce Pearl at Bruce Pearl's home. And my understanding is somebody got a hold of that picture, turned it in the ncaa, then you had. You had real problems. What's wild about this is that there's a whole lot of things that are wild about this. I'll pull the curtains back a little bit. So I used to host a Monday Night Football night at a local bar here in town as I was doing radio. And it would just be like, local Monday Night Football, come hang out with gp, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, football season is when coaches are recruiting all the time on the road. So I would have college basketball coaches just. They just text you when you come and attend. They'd be like, hey, I'm in town recruiting. What are you up to tonight? I'm like, hosting Monday Night Football. Come drink with me. And so come have dinner, whatever. So it's a Monday night. The way I remember this is Steve Forbes is in town recruiting for Tennessee, and Richard Patino is in town recruiting for Florida. And they had both reached out and I said, just come meet me at this place. And. And they both come. And so it's me, Forbes and Patino hanging out at a bar in South Haven, Mississippi. It's ridiculous.
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B
Every good night starts, okay.
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That's how every bad night starts, okay? So I just remember that night, Forbes, like, not in a good mood. He seemed bothered by something, but he did not talk about it at all. But I just could tell he wasn't himself. The next day is when the news broke that Bruce Pearl's holding a press conference to discuss an NCAA issue. Literally, as I remember it, the next day or within a couple of days. So then I started piecing things together and I look at this. This is why Forbes is on edge. The NCAA wanted to talk to BP and the whole staff about what happened. Here's the truth, that they'd have just told the truth. Everything would have been fine. It would have been like, secondary violation, slap on the rest. But you keep coaching at Tennessee. They decided, whoever they is, like, hey, if we all just say it didn't happen, they don't have any proof that it happened. So. And they had gotten Aaron Craft's dad on board. Like, if you. If everybody just says it didn't happen, what are they going to do? Well, they. I don't think they knew until like 10 minutes before they were talking to investigators that their picture existed. And then they were just like in panic mode, scrambling. And they messed up. I think any of them would tell you they messed up. What got him isn't the barbecue. What got him isn't the recruiting violation. What got him is the lying about it, the COVID up. Worse than the crime type of thing. So he's out. Boom. I mean, this happens in the middle of the season and they have to coach under that cloud for the rest of the way. And it just became, looking back on it, it seems weird, but like at the time it just became every game was like. And I don't know how you can let somebody who lied about this continue to coach. And as soon as the season was over, they got him. And the way I remember it is if you think back to like when the news first broke, it was like, he'll be okay. I think he'll be okay. I mean, I'd be surprised if he's not okay. And then by the time we got to march, it was like, they're gonna get him. Like, this is. It just snowballed on him. And Tennessee pulls the trigger and BP's out. He does some commentary and is working like he's a sales rep for a company. I can remember talking to him. He was on a sales job one day. He's like, yeah, I'm driving from one place to the other, you know, doing whatever he did. He gets Auburn while he still has the show. Cause I went down there before he had ever coached a game at Auburn. And he, I remember him saying vividly, this is going to be hard. Harder than it was at Tennessee. I believe we can win here because they win at everything else here. That's the everything school thing that came out all those years later. They wanted everything else here. So I don't know why we can't win, but this is not going to be easy. And it didn't get off to the best of starts. 13th, 13th, 11th. Those were his finishes in the SEC at Auburn. First three years. Year four won the SEC title and it's been bombs away since then. He goes down as again, one of the best, if not the best coaches at two different SEC schools. Given what he also did at the Division 2 level, I could make a compelling case that he absolutely belongs in the Naismith Memorial hall of Fame.
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B
Okay, so good stuff from you there. Nada. You had something on the screen before. I'll say it for our listeners as well that are Listening on the pod here. So how about this? So shouts to our research team over at CBS Sports HQ. This is a graphic that ran when GP and I were on HQ earlier this afternoon. So look at this. 11 years before Bruce Pearl got to Auburn, the record at, at that school was 159 and 182. It was the worst in the SEC and they did not go to an NCAA tournament. Now in 11 in the 11 years since 246 and 125, it's third best with six NCAA tournament appearances. But not even just that, it's third best considering what Paris just told you to start his career at Auburn. 13th in a 14 team league. 13th in a 14 team League and then 11th thereafter. Also consider there's a lot to cover here with Bruce. He's got, he's got it. He's got, there's a lot adorned on his career frankly from what you mentioned before. He did become Persona angra to a lot of coaches for essentially ratting out another coach for, for cheating, right or wrong. I'm just telling you, you know, he made some enemies early in his career and was able to, I would argue on the college football and the college basketball side, you don't see a lot of coaches that are able to overcome similar type circumstances that Pearl did to go on to become, if not a Hall of Fame level coach, a borderline hall of Fame level coach. But he did do it. He had immense success at D2 Southern Indiana. So he's also the rare coach to make that, that D2 to D1 jump. And not just make the jump, but utterly thrive as a result of doing so. You mentioned he made the Sweet 16 at Milwaukee. Coach to Tennessee. This might surprise some people that have been following college basketball for 20 plus years. Was only at Tennessee for six seasons. And so we're not going to dive into the semantics of all this. He made the tournament every single year, didn't make the Final Four, got to the Elite Eight, was part of the. Got Tennessee the number one for the first time in school history. I don't know if he's the best because it was just a short tenure there. The way it ended was obviously not under the best circumstances that GP just laid out. But he, he, he's out. Okay. He, he gets a show. Cause I think it was three years he goes into. Do you remember like he was something with some sort of like grocer or.
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A
Yeah, it was a sales job of some sort.
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B
Sales job. I, I remember talking to him amidst all that gets A job commentating for espn. Sometimes you're in this job, GP I know you feel the same way. You think back to like something that happened and you're like, there's no way it's that long ago. I covered Manhattan. There's a Manhattan home game. I want to say it was. Let me see if my brain can pull this. I'm gonna say it was Manhattan against Iona. I want to say it was. I want to say it was a, a rivalry game. And this was on ESPN News, maybe espn3.com for the Internet. Bruce Pearl was doing. How about this? How about this? Because I talked to Bruce about this like a year or two ago and I didn't remember this part of it. He reminded me, I think this was for the Internet. It was. And not as. Just letting me know, like literally. Yes. In real time. Pearl has announced his retirement video. It's 14 minutes, by the way. This dude went Martin Scorsese, absolute cinema on this in real time. If we can get some, if we can get some, some bullet points in real time as to what Pearl says in this video, we'll inform you. I'm glad he did it. While we're, while we're doing, while we're doing the pod in real time. But anyway, so Pearl's just doing this, this side gig and he eventually did some studio stuff obviously with espn, but it was him and Jason Benetti. He goes, you know who did that game with me? I was like, I couldn't even begin to tell you, but I remember talking to him for like 15 minutes before the game and he's like, it's, it's the, it's the, it's the guy. He does, he does, he does the Tiger game. Now I go, Benetti. He goes, yeah, Jason Benetti. I was like, that's amazing. But then he's obviously one of the best play by play guys in the entire business now. So he goes from that, that to getting the Auburn job. We just laid out what it just, you know, it just, it, it's easier to say now. It would have been harsh in real time, but true just Auburn was a disaster. It was a total, total, total non factor. I remember he lands on the private plane, gets off. There's fans like, you know, they're welcoming him in and it was tough to start. And then there's even more Parish because he had truck person on his staff. Auburn was entangled in the FBI scandal that led to, I think, the vacation of some games and ultimately ineligibility in one of the seasons so that gets knocked off the books. And there's also part, you know, like Pearl was absolved of anything and everything. And I think both on the record and off the record, Pearl was, I think he was about as forthcoming and blunt as you could ask him to be. I, I would say of any coach that was connected to that, that Pearl was as willing to speak about it to the extent that they would let him and sometimes even beyond what they wanted him to say, maybe off record with all of that, but if you want to have that be another mark against him, so to speak, I get it. No shame in that whatsoever. And then his team, he had like a top 15 level team in 2020 when there wasn't a tournament. So that's another opportunity that was obviously not there for him or any other school that, that year. But, but yeah, it's been, it's been insanely impressive to see what he's been able to do at a place like Auburn. I had the chance to go and cover an Auburn Kentucky game a couple seasons ago. That's, you know, that place gets built in part, if not in large part because of what Pearl was able to do, you know, and the jungle is when it's really rocking, it's, it's top tier in the sport. And I know Auburn fans watching and listening. Let's speak directly to them right now. I know you're reeling a bit right now because this is, you heard the rumors, you thought, okay, we might not have Pearl for much longer, maybe we get them for another year or two. And then you wake up on a Monday, hello, Fall has officially arrived, by the way. Summer's in the rear view and we just lost the best coach in program history. There's no telling what Auburn will be over the next year, two or three. There's also been some slight changeover within the athletic department there as well. So it's just, it's, it's a time of some change. And so those are some, some additional thoughts. Let me toss something to you though, a question. All right? And I don't, to be frank, there's been a ton going on. Getting some text. I haven't really checked the, the live chat, so I don't know if this has been mentioned in the chat or all if you saw it, but it did pop to mind here because I remember we talked about it with the Bennett retirement a year ago, should Pearl Bennett took plenty of heat and I had the opportunity to be at Bennett's retirement press conference. I actually asked him on the record, and he answered to this question specifically. Hey, you're. You're leaving this program, you know, right? With Bennett's situation, it was less than a month before the season. Pearl, we've got six weeks about Should Bruce be taking I've got thoughts on this, but I want to tee you up first. Should Bruce be taking heat for the timing of his decision? Is it fair to criticize him for him deciding to do this and make it public on September 22nd as opposed to even September 1st, July 15th, let alone April 15th?
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A
I'm sure he will catch heat in some circles. I personally don't care. Let me ask you an honest question from an honest place. If he announced he was retir scoring on April 15, who's the head coach at Auburn?
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B
That is not an answerable question. There's a chance at Stephen, but there's a very good chance it's not. That's my. That's, that's, that's my. I guess on the situation.
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A
If he waited this long strictly to manipulate the hiring process to where hey, now you're up against it, buddy, and there ain't really anything you can do other than hand it to Stephen. Yeah, then I do think that's worthy of being pointed out. And if it doesn't go well, if you're an Auburn fan, you, you would then hold the right to someday say if our greatest coach in history would have retired at a more reasonable time, we could have conducted a more reasonable coaching search and actually hired somebody other than his 38 year old son with zero head coaching experience. I get that. That's why this needs to go well. But he's. If that's. I don't know that that was his intention here, but if it was, he's not the first to do it and I, I'm just not gonna. There's enough things to get mad about in the world when Bruce Pearl retired from Auburn. I don't. I don't think sits pretty sits anywhere on my list.
- [30:45]
B
Okay. All right, I got quotes here. I had to read this twice as you were just talking. So I think my intel remains correct. I'm going to read this. This is a direct shout out to Kyle Boone getting it done in our Slack channel. So he has transcribed this. Kb, I'm counting on you here. This is part of what Pearl has said in his goodbye video, which is again 14 minutes long and best I can tell, starts with an Let me just watch this real quick here. Hold on. Starts with an opening shot of a darkened Bruce Pearl office. I don't Even know if this is his office. This is not the office I sat and that's. This might, I think this is his home office. He's putting. Oh gosh, this GP you see that? He puts the jacket down, sits down, mood lighting, pictures of his family. There's a lot going on here. Okay, watch that all now that goes.
- [31:32]
A
It's a sound stage.
- [31:34]
B
Okay, here's the quote. Auburn is our home. Many of you know that I thought and prayed about maybe running for the United States Senate, maybe to be the next great senator from the state of Alabama. That would have required leaving Auburn. Instead, the university has given me an opportunity to stay here and be Auburn senator. As an ambassador at Auburn, I'm going to do everything I can to help, to keep helping Auburn be the very best version of what it can possibly be trying to lead, trying to be an Auburn man and let this continue to be the best everything school anywhere in the country. End quote. My sources are good. So as long as I'm reading that correctly, he is going to be not a United States senator. GP he's going to be an Auburn senator. Now, I don't know if you can't both be an Auburn senator and the head coach of a men's basketball program simultaneously, but it would seem to me that Bruce Pearl has come to this conclusion independently. But yes, I think if I have that correct, he is not going into politics. And a lot of the speculation over the past 90 minutes that this means he would be is not correct.
- [32:49]
A
Right. So he then walks away at the age of 65. He's mentioned, you know, wanting to just have a different quality of life. Not necessarily better, but just different quality of life. You know, he's been married for a long time now. Coaching at that level can really, you know, take a lot of time away from that. So perhaps he is just trying to change his lifestyle on a day to day basis here. I know others get caught up on the timing. It just doesn't bother me as much as it bothers other people. I think more, more likely than whatever is just that these are hard decisions to make. Like these are hard decisions to make. Nobody's asking him to retire. Nobody wants him to retire. But clearly something was pulling him in that direction. That is a wild picture.
- [33:41]
B
You gotta be. If you're listening, we want, we appreciate our overwhelming listenership. It comes from podcast audio. But GP had not seen.
- [33:48]
A
GP hadn't seen.
- [33:51]
B
He hadn't seen what Pearl did. The setup for this video and nada. Just dropped it in a real time and GP Went even when he went off script. This is the start of the video. Paris. I think this is right after. Right before he drops the jacket on the final four.
- [34:03]
A
That's fine with me. I don't. I don't mind it, man. You have a career with that many accomplishments. You can say goodbye to it however you. However you want to with however many you think. I'm gonna get mad at another man talking for 14 straight minutes. I do it every day. I do it every day about Juan Sodos on base percentage, all right. I do it every day about American Athletic Conference football, all right? You think I'm gonna get mad at another man for talking for 14 straight minutes?
- [34:30]
B
Absolutely not. No, no. It's just. Yeah, it's just. Hey, it's Sydney Sweeney. I'm not here to tell you to buy American Eagle jeans. And I definitely won't say that they're the most comfortable jeans I've ever or that they make your butt look amazing. Why would I need to do that? But if you said that you want to buy the jeans, I'm not gonna stop you. But just so we're clear, this is not me telling you to buy American Eagle jeans. Sydney Sweeney Hasbrook jeans. You see what I did there, right? If you love the NFL and NFL draft, you'll love with the first pick a part of cb, CBS Sports podcast network. CBS Sports draft analyst Ryan Wilson and former Titans GM Ran Carthon come to you twice a week to give the front office perspective on the biggest NFL storylines of the day. We also follow the NFL draft closer than anyone with weekly updates on our favorite college players, names to know based on your favorite NFL team's needs, and all the mock drafts and big boards you could want. If you love football, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. Download with the first pick and follow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere podcasts are found.
- [35:35]
A
A massage chair might seem a bit.
- [35:38]
B
Extravagant, especially these days. Eight different settings, adjustable intensity. Plus it's heated and it just feels so good. Yes, a massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, but when it can come with a car, suddenly it seems quite practical. The all new 2025 Volkswagen Tiguan, packed with premium features like available massaging front seats. It only feels extravagant. It's amazing. Oh, man. Oh, man. I. You know, I know, I know. Pearl has been. He's. He's been a lightning rod for just how open he is and unfiltered he is for what he tweets about. And that has brought him high praise from one side of the aisle and just continual criticism. We addressed this all on our, on our recent podcast, so we don't need to go back into that, that discussion again. But I will reiterate something we said on the show and I think selfishly on, on our end for what we do with our jobs, we always want to have coaches who are willing to one, be available to speak on the record or off the record and just generally make themselves available to help and make coverage of the sport easier. You know, that, that really does make a difference when it comes to documentation in written form, in podcast form, for video hits, for all of it. If you have coaches that make themselves available and way, way more than not in the sport do. But Pearl would be on the short list of, of some that, that did it as much if not more than any other. And I think some of that frankly was informed by him taking a few year detour into, into doing stuff on the media side. And so now we, we won't, we won't, we won't have that. Like, Stephen's actually pretty good. Like, most people don't know who Stephen Pearl is. They've never heard him. They couldn't pick him out of a lineup all that. But, but while he's not his father, he's also, he's a pretty good, he's a pretty good communicator. He's another young coach, by the way, we've got a, we've got a real infusion here this particular off season of young coaches. So it's, yeah, from a cover standpoint, I hate to lose him at 65. It's another, you know, I kind of circle back with what I started at the start of the show. GP this is another top 10 coach of prominence, if not acumen in the sport that's just deciding to exit. 1, 2, 3. I could even argue five years ahead of, ahead of the pace overall. And for that, you know, it's understandable to be just a little bit bummed by it, that's all.
- [38:02]
A
I think on a human level, you make a good point there about bp. I know that his politics aren't for everybody, but one of the things I really appreciated about him over the years is that he understood being a college basketball coach required him to do more than just coach his college basketball team. Like he wanted to be a part of the sport. He was very helpful. And you know, I'm the person who inserted Aaron Kraft into that story. When we first, the first thing you heard about Bruce Pearl, Tennessee, NCAA issues. Aaron Kraft was Not a part of that story. I inserted that later, I believe. Why Bruce Pearl was still out of coaching. I wrote a story when Steve Forbes and Jason Shea were working down at Northwest Florida State. It. And it did not paint Bruce Pearl in a favorable manner. The gist of the story was this entire staff got fired from Tennessee. A couple of the guys are down at a junior college making nothing relative to what they used to make. And the head coach got like a million dollar buyout and you know, hasn't really been there for them over the past couple of years in ways that some of them expected him to maybe be. And you go find that story. The lead quote is not great. I know BP did not like that story. I only say these things because there is not a time or very few times I couldn't reach out to him and get him on a radio show, get him on a podcast, get him on the phone. He'd invite me into his home. Like he was always. Like I did two stories that negatively impacted Bruce Pearl in, in a serious way. And he. He was always willing to. Okay, that was that. But now let's move forward. We. We have a relationship. And I, I appreciated him for always being professional and for always being accessible. Like I would have him on a show in Memphis whenever I wanted and as soon as we got off the air he would text and say whenever you need me, I'm here for you. Like he's that guy. He at Tennessee, he'd stand on cafeteria tables and try to get people excited about Vol Basketball. The whole we're in everything school. He's an incredible coach, but also a great promoter of whatever it is he's involved in. And I think that's among the reasons he became such a big figure in college basketball. It wasn't just the winning, although the winning is the most important stuff always. And you can't do it without it. But he was a personality. And even if he's a personality that isn't for everybody, he's a big personality. That, that made you pay attention to him.
- [40:34]
B
No doubt. My. So not to put up a couple things here before we get out of here. Not to put up a poll. Is Bruce Pearl a Hall of Famer? Live chat real time 61 Yes. 39 no. I think those percentage breakdowns kind of reflect reality. Pearl had a player get drafted. This was covet era. Who was it? I can't remember. Kyle Boone took the. He took the screen grab and put it on Twitter because Pearl was like, it was nighttime. He was driving. I think from Atlanta back to Auburn. And who did. Who got drafted? It's gonna drive me nuts now. Anyway, the point is, this guy got drafted. I called up Pearl. I'm not thinking that he would pick up. This is draft night. I think he did a live his hit for the draft from his phone in the middle of the highway at like 9:45 at night. Near tears, laughter in real time at this. Because there's just not another coach that would have done this for his player to just, I guess, speak on. Maybe it was Jabari, but I don't think it was Jabari. I think it was before Jabari Smith got drafted. I'm sorry, I can't recall the player in real time. But as we do this, you know, Pearl retirement episode, I want to kind of.
- [41:50]
A
Is it Cam?
- [41:52]
B
Maybe it was Cam. I can't remember who it was, but it was just. It was so funny. Like, he was. He. He wasn't trying to be funny. He was. He was. I think it might have been Okoro. I think Isaac Okoro getting drafted. I think. I think it's when he got picked in 2020, I want to say that's when it was. And he just stopped on the side of the road, this ultra grainy video, trying to give draft analysis on this guy to basically any network that would put him on tv. And he picked up the phone and I think we also had him on. I think we had him on HQ for that draft. Because if I remember correctly, that might have been the draft was like November of that year. There was a lot of stuff when.
- [42:32]
A
He just cleared up 2020 draft. It was Isaac Okoro.
- [42:35]
B
Yeah. Okay. And the point of this is that all but maybe three or four coaches in that spot just would not have done that. And he was always willing to do whatever he could to help Auburn basketball. And if there was a story that he could help tell and someone from the media was asking, Bruce Pearl was always going to be there.
- [42:48]
A
And remember with Cal Boone, the T shirt.
- [42:52]
B
Oh, my gosh. Great poll. Hold on. Before we get out of here, I'm gonna find this. I'm gonna text Boone right now. I want nada to show this on the screen. Hold on. Texting kb tell the story.
- [43:02]
A
As I remember it, Kyle is still relatively young to CBS Sports. And we all get these assignments. Like there's these things we do during the season where it's like, all right, I know nobody really wants to do this, but we gotta all pitch in. These are the types of things. They're furniture for the website. They gotta Be there, there. And so it's like SEC preview, ACC preview, Big Ten preview. And so I guess KB was handling SEC and I don't know, predicted not something. I don't remember the specifics. You will, because it's. It's referenced in the T shirt. But predicted something not so great for Auburn going forward. And bp, like, quite literally had T shirts made and turned it into a rallying cry. Cal Boom motive called Cal Boom was the bulletin board material for Auburn, Auburn basketball, and that in whatever specific year.
- [43:51]
B
He predicted they would go 4 and 14. I texted KB. Hold on. Nada. I'm gonna send this to you if he doesn't give it to me. Because someone. Someone tweeted about it. This is from 2018. So it was ahead of the 2017-18 season. And we just. Yeah, for the preseason stuff, I think, you know, though, this is what it was. It was in season. It was like, okay, non conference stuff is over. And we just did some in season. Let's predict how these teams are going to go in league play. And so KB had the SEC and Bruce, like, fairly innocuous. Let's just fill up something on the site, a little bonus content on a Tuesday in early January. And so KB predicts them to go 4 and 14 in league play. And then that year, Auburn proceeded to finish 26 and 8 overall and went 13 and 5 in the SEC, which is just classic. And it's on the screen right here sending this around. And it. Let's be like, it's all. It was all in good fun. Like, it wasn't like, I'm gonna do this. I'm really ticked off. It's like, you and. And frankly, I can. I can say more of this now as we. The Bruce world stories are one after another after another. So last year, I infamously did not pick Auburn to be a top 25 team. I picked them 27th in the preseason rankings. When most predictives and humans had them top 15. Some had them top 10. Obviously they proved to be one of best teams in the country.
- [45:19]
A
And.
- [45:22]
B
He'S retired now. Sorry, Bruce, I'm gonna say this so it doesn't matter anymore. It's done. He absolutely loved that I did it. Now, I didn't know he was gonna love that I did it, but whenever my rankings went out, I want to say it was that night he called, okay. And he. He did. He didn't care. He was like, yeah, you do. Do what you got to do. He said, oh, by the way, this is the other thing. Yeah, I'm saying it now, Bruce, he's like, you might be right. He's like, I like my team, but this is a year where I'm not entirely convinced right now that we're going to be a top 25 team. Maybe we'll get there, but you really have a chance of being right. I couldn't ever say that publicly. I couldn't come on the podcast and be like, hey, Auburn fans, everyone coming after me, your coach might actually agree with me now. I was really wrong, okay? But he was at least willing to say that it might be there. And then I go to Maui. They win Maui. And then I was like, hey, can we do just a quick video for hq? Of course we can. And then he goes, are you ready? I was like. I thought in the moment he meant, like, are you ready to record? I was like, yes. And what he went. What he meant was, once we started going, he was. He was giving me crap on the record, on, on air for HQ about my prediction. Because keep in mind, at that point, they're three weeks into the season, Janai Broom looks like he's going to be the player of the year. Auburn looks like the best team in the country. It just won the toughest Maui Field ever. I'm the dope that just picked the 27th in the country three weeks back, and he's grilling me. And he was, he was wonderful about it in general. So when we talk about Pearl and what we're going to miss, it's kind of these, kind of the dynamics of these kind of relationships. He never took it seriously. He completely understood the media end of it. And there have been little bits of this, like, over the years where he's just been. He understands the prediction game. And sometimes he really likes it when his team is undersold because he can use it to feed the. Like he can feed his freshmen and sophomores and juniors. And just look at, look at these guys. They don't. They don't believe in you whatsoever. And he really, like, hammers at home to his locker room. It's one thing. And then he'll hop on the phone with you and be like, this is. This is how I really feel. This is. Yeah.
- [47:21]
A
Fans always feel disrespected if their team isn't ranked where they want it to be. Coaches sometimes like that because they can use it in a way that they want. The one, the other one, this one's got nothing to do with bp, but it's just popped into my head. The one that I've also heard from coaches is mock drafts. Wear them out. And it's like I had one coach tell me one time, like hand to heart, he said, I swear I had a mother in my office wanting to moan, why my son? Why her? Why her son does isn't playing more because CBS says he's projected to go 22nd in the next NBA draft. And I looked right at this mother and I said, are you really in my office right now because Gary Parish thinks your son's better than I do? Is that where we're at? Because I'll, I know G.P. i'll call him and tell him he needs to get your son out of the top first round of the draft because he does not belong. But he's like, I can't believe I had to have a 30 minute conversation with a mother because of your mock draft. But that's where we are.
- [48:22]
B
Yes.
- [48:22]
A
And I think that's where KB probably learns that lesson. You can, you can be Cal Boone at that point and just tweet, Auburn's gonna go 4 and 14 in the league. Nobody blinks. But the second, it's under the CBS thing now Bruce Pearl's got T shirts and it's a rallying cry.
- [48:37]
B
So, yeah, that's fun times. Fun times. Couple more things before we wrap here. I don't know if I'm, I just, I haven't, I don't. I intentionally try and avoid Torvik and Ken Palm when I do my rankings, but I just bring up for this purpose. Auburn26 at Torvik. I don't know if he's adjusted. Evan Miyakawa has adjusted in real time, so he sent out Bruce Pearl, retiring, will move Auburn from 20th to 25th in the preseason@avemia.com that's interesting. We can talk more about that stuff. I think as we get closer. We'll do an SEC preview episode in general. So we'll dive a little bit more into how much a coaching change should or shouldn't affect a team's preseason standing. Broadly speaking, I think that's entirely fair with Pearl versus without Pearl. If you want to, if you want to downgrade Auburn, I think that's, I think that's fine. I have a quick follow up on that. But before I say that, do you have Auburn in your preseason rankings?
- [49:24]
A
I do. And somebody I, I saw in the chat suggest, or maybe it was on Twitter, like, hey, what are you going to do with Auburn in the top 25 and 1? I'm just going to get through this day first. I'm just trying to get through this day and then I'll look at it. But it's a totally reasonable point. If you think a basketball team is good in part because of its coach, then when its coach isn't there anymore it's reasonable to assume it might not be as good. I'm not surprised anybody would reach that conclusion. It's a sensible conclusion to reach.
- [49:57]
B
Last thing I guess. I think we've touched on a lot of stuff and if there's more we can actually I've got two more things Allied one on Pearl one non Pearl just know like the inner workings and I said this on hq Bruce as I understood it and have understood it for a few years now, he's kind of two things at once that a lot of coaches aren't. So he really did delegate a lot of responsibility out to his staff in ways that I think like most head coaches do. Obviously that's part of the gig but I'm talking about about in terms of specific responsibilities and what, what I want you to do and having a lot of COVID for all of his assistants and trust in his assistance to do a lot of the work in prep and games the way that Auburn's program works or has worked as again as it's been told to me, as I understand it and this both comes from the Auburn side and other coaches that know coach that Auburn they have a certain way that they do things that really in theory this will now truly be tested this season should empower the program to be able to make up for not having a Bruce around because they've. The way that they just operate the program is different from a lot of other high majors. That said Pearl also it was as willing to like he. The way I put is this like he let his assistants get the ball up to like the five yard line with all this prep and stuff and kind of let them do their thing and then when it was time he would be into the tape and doing every little thing that a lot of assistants typically do. Not in a control freak way. It's just like, okay, I've lived this life for decades and decades. I know what you need to be doing here. Did you keep an eye on this when you're watching the tape? You know, are you familiar with what they ran, you know, seven games back? Do we think, you know, we haven't seen it lately. Well, they might bring this kind of stuff back. He was, he was more involved and encompassing on the exo side than I think he probably even gets credit for. And I think some of that's you know, he's the guy who painted his chest and was not afraid to go bare chested and and be that guy publicly. But, but yeah, a really, really smart, intelligent X and O coach and I'll be interested to see which side of those two wins out. Is it the side that Pearl prepped his staff for to be able to handle him not being there or the stuff that he really got himself involved in? A lot of head coaches at that level don't will that kind of show itself this, this season last thing for me GP and then I swear we can wrap up. It's just a randomly very busy time and coaching period. I don't know if Wofford has since announced this but Wofford has hired Kevin Giltner who's an alumni they fired Dwight Perry broke that news late on Friday night. So we have a changeover at Wofford was told Cal State Bakersfield, I was told it has made the decision to fire its head coach, Rod Barnes. I have not reported that on social media yet but I have a very high place source that told me they made that decision. The reason why it might not be done yet is HR laws in California are extremely strict and stringent. So they might be having to get through a lot of hoops before they can formally announce that. The story behind that is extremely, extremely disturbing with an assistant coach who has been arrested and charged with human trafficking and child pornography. A very, very ugly situation at Bakersfield. Nonetheless, we, we have a coaching situation that is, that is changing there as well. And then that's it for now. There's one more that's kind of floating out there. We'll, we'll see if there's a, there's another change in the mid major level. It's, it's too early to determine but it's, it's way, way, way busier on the carousel in mid September than, than frankly I can ever remember. Obviously. Pearl, Pearl first and foremost and the biggest by far.
- [53:14]
A
All right, let's call that an emergency podcast. 49 minute emergency podcast. Let's get out of here.
- [53:19]
B
Someone in the chat just said I need to turn on notifications for when you guys go live. Here's the deal. If you subscribe to the channel and you ding that bell, there's a little bell icon. You just, you just click it and when you do that you're going to get alerted for when we go live every single time. So there we go.
- [53:34]
A
Like a blessing. Your own personal blessing you could get from YouTube too.
- [53:37]
B
That's right. That's right.
- [53:39]
A
It's your own personal blessing. We could, we could all, we could always. We could all use some personal blessings these days.
- [53:44]
B
That's correct. Absolutely.
- [53:46]
A
Shouts to Devin Downey. Shout out to Chester, S.C. shouts to Terry Teagle. He's a legend. Hook and Larnell. Thank you guys once again for watching. Listening to the I own College Basketball podcast. If you're not subscribed, please go subscribe. Any way you subscribe to podcast, Apple, Spotify, there's more of us than there are of them that should be referred to reflected in the comments. So do that and we'll talk to you again real soon. Till then, take care.
- [54:16]
B
Paramount Podcasts, CBS Wednesday.
- [54:21]
A
I run to the chaos and Survivor is chaos.
- [54:24]
B
As a mother of a four year old, this is vacation this season.
- [54:28]
A
They're going back home.
- [54:30]
B
It's trial by the elements. Surprise. I'm on Survivor. That's how you do it. Survivor feels like a culmination of my entire life. Everything has led to this moment. Who will have what it takes? Survivor returns, CBS Wednesday at 8, 7 Central and streaming on Paramount. Plus.