north Carolina Athletics director Bubba Cunningham now joining us on the easter automotive group hotline last time we talked to Bubba Cunningham, he was adamant about preserving the north Carolina pit football rivalry. But as I'm looking at these primary opponents from 2023 to 2026 Bubba, I do not see pitt as one of your three. This has to be a very tough day in Chapel Hill. It is emotionally scarred by you guys ridiculing me for the past month, but I'm somehow I'm surviving. All right. So the day, we appreciate you coming on. We appreciate you Coming on. The day is finally happening. I feel like we've been talking about this for for a very long time. But it finally happened. What I want to know is what was the process like I envisioned this like a draft. You're like a fantasy draft. Everybody's in a room in Amelia island and you've got your big board and they go around the room right here. Alright, Bubba, it's time to pick your primary opponent, your first of three primary opponents and you say I want pit and that's what happens. How did this process exactly work with the primary opponents? We need to have you in more of our meetings. You need to explain how we should be doing these things because that has nothing to do with that. See I'm looking at it from a C. C network television content. Like can you imagine if you televise a primary opponent draft that would be ratings. It's a great idea now. The way it works is we we actually had a couple of A. D. S on a subcommittee, if you will working with Michael Strickland, who's overseas football operations for the league. And Michael with our scheduling partner, um really came up with a number of different iterations of combinations as well. 355 was one, there was a, I think a 266, there were all kinds of other iterations that we were taking a look at. And then ultimately, You know, you just, you basically say, Okay, here's, here's a draft of 14 teams and here are your three partners and that's good feedback and then it was more of a all right, well, you know, we would like to preserve this rivalry or this one's not quite the rivalry that you think it is. So we don't need it or we want to stay in our geographic footprint, but we don't want to stay. So everyone had a little bit different opinion and we all express those. And we had quite frankly came down today to three different iterations that, that we could consider and the one that you're looking at is the one we landed on. So you killed the pit Carolina rivalry because you chose Virginia, the oldest and and Duke and state. I was building a traditional rivalry with Pittsburgh and you laughed at me and now now it's gone. I mean, Nathan Peterman Ryan Switzer, great moments what I was trying to express very poorly, I guess last time I preferred the divisions and I still believe with the larger number of teams, the more you divide it into smaller divisions and play more frequently, the better it is. But I get the argument that, hey, you're in a league, there's a lot of our student athletes would like to play everybody at least go to their stadium once in there four years and that's what this um, what this configuration does for us, would you have preferred divisions if you had to play Clemson every year? It just depends on who's in the lead. But you know, I do think what we're going to see in the next couple of years will have more balance. I do think having a race for two divisional champions. I think I believe there's probably gonna be more teams In it later with two divisions than there would be with one. And, and just quite frankly for a guy is as simple minded as I am not smart enough to figure out How many other teams are playing each other in my division when there's only seven in each league, I can keep track of that better than I can track at 14. Bubba Cunningham joining us here on the O G alongside joe Giulio. I'm joe obvious wood is the day of scheduling a nonconference conference game in the past. Like you know, Wake forest in north Carolina have played a nonconference game. Is that done. Do you see that happening again, I don't I think that probably is done. Um now that we're playing each other more frequently. That was part of the reason we wanted to do it. You know, the other discussion and debate was should we play eight or nine conference games? And as you know, there's four teams that play sec schools every year. And then with the addition of the Notre dame game every couple of years, um some don't want to play that many uh say Power five. So that's always been a debate as well. The pac 12 did away with the divisions this year. Not the schedule format but just having the, you know, two division winners. Was there any discussion for that with the A. C. C. For this year? Bubba To do it immediately. Yeah. Not change the schedule obviously, but the format where it could just be the team to two teams with the best record. That's what the PAC 12 decided to do for this. We did, we didn't even discuss, we were always looking at 23 and quite frankly, I don't know if that's because it finishes a rotation. Um all I know is when we looked at 2023, there's only one repeat site uh for that year, which I think is another kind of driving factor to get Bubba Cunningham North Carolina's A. D joining us here on the east of Ottawa group hotline. He's playing down his intelligence and insight here and I appreciate that but the truth of the matter is here and I'll use Lawrence here. This move is made in a set up for when the playoff has expanded. Is it not? You know I I said on the call today I do not believe you can schedule your way into the playoffs. You have to win games just like basketball. You have to win a lot of games and you have to play good teams non confidence and whether the playoff stays at four goes to 68 12 16. I don't know what the number is going to be but I still believe in those principles. There are scenarios where playing this way we'll get a second team in and there's other scenarios were playing this way. We'll get a team in that shouldn't have been in and your best team doesn't get in and we've seen that in other leagues. So there's there's not a perfect way to do it. This is just like you keeping wake forest out of the N. C. Double A. Men's tournament this year because of their strength of schedule. Right. Right. And I did think I told you that you know when I listened to the baseball and and state didn't get in at all. Miss did well miss ends up winning it. So you're splitting hairs there at the back end. Bubba Cunningham joining us here on the O. G. Athletics director. North Carolina. We appreciate the time bubba. We always appreciate you making time for us and putting up with our sarcasm as it relates to this particular topic. And I guess we'll see you in about a month at A CC kickoff. Looking forward to. And I appreciate the sarcasm because that's right up my alley. We'll bring you an urn for the Coastal Division.