Welcome back to the latest edition of the audible presented by Trader Joe's.

I'm Bruce Feldman joined as always by my colleague from the Athletics, Stuart Mandel.

We are doing this episode from the New York Times offices on a Wednesday afternoon.

Stu and I have been here for a couple of days.

The athletic has had an off site for our college staff, not just the college. of of familiar faces and meet some people we haven't met before. We'll talk a little bit about what we've talked about in some of our meetings, which is a good way to prepare for the kickoff of what will be.

We talked a lot about the new playoff and so we're gonna,

I hope we'll be like an interesting conversation starter about the new playoff and how we think it's going to

Change the way we consume the season but first

Some big 12 news from last week?

Are we calling it the Big 12? What are we going to call it?

The All State 12?

I'm not, we shouldn't go there yet because it's not official.

But yeah, I'm sure you guys saw the headlines, you know, the Big 12 was trying to raise money,

both because they're significantly buying the Big Ten and the SEC,

and because of the House settlement where schools are now probably going to want to opt in and pay their athletes 21 to

$22 million or whatever it ends up being.

Bright your mark as we know.

Commissioner of the Big 12. From the Big 12, on Orthodox, not afraid to think outside the box.

And so the two...

Because he comes from outside the college sports box.

That and I think specifically because he comes from a pro sports background with the Brooklyn Nets with NASCAR and so he's not necessarily like I just think a lot of lifetime college people there's like a ceiling to where they're willing to go and he's willing to blow right past that.

I think it's, you know, like, to me this is not like an off-putting, like clutch the pearls kind of thing when I heard about it for a couple of reasons.

...