Hey, hey, where you been? But God talk is about to begin. Hey, hey, hey, come on in.

Welcome back to a Wednesday, Buckeye Talk, Douglas Maurice, Nathan Baird, Steven Means.

We spoke with Gene Smith, Ohio State Athletic Director for about an hour on Wednesday afternoon. We held off on this Wednesday pod because we wanted to bring you our analysis of that news conference as quickly as possible.

So we're getting this to you late Wednesday afternoon. We'll be back with something else Thursday.

The interview is set up by I hope it comes together.

Life in the transfer portal hopefully will be the topic on Thursday with somebody who can provide some perspective on that. So Steven and Nathan, I wish want to run through what we thought was the most interesting stuff that we heard from Gene Smith on Wednesday.

There's a particular reason for this news conference, just sort of a state of college sports of the athletic department of the football program.

And we'll I'll give you guys the opening to say Nathan, where do you want to start? Here's my only rule.

We're not start with NIL. We can do a little NIL stuff at the end, but I would act as I would prefer to talk about like football stuff that affects fans directly. And then we can get into a little of the NIL stuff later. So Nathan, where do you want to go first?

Well, let's talk about some of the big 10 stuff because I thought it was important and considering that in the past few weeks, some other big 10 stuff had come out from other ADs that we were to hear what Gene Smith had to say about some of those topics.

The one that I guess you should just start here, the one that I think generated the most interest on Twitter and it was because I think as often happens from press conferences that are being live tweeted, the wrong or incomplete information or incomplete opinion got out there first and people ran with it was what he said about hosting a playoff game or not hosting a playoff game.

That's a big 10 related at all. That's that's playoff. Well, it's okay. It's but it's fine. But it's I think it all it all falls under the it is somewhat big to relate because it relates to his ambivalence towards continuing a big day and championship game in the future too.

Yeah, that's yeah, those are two kind of separate but combined things. So what do you want to do first?

The playoff.

Sure, let's do playoff first.

Okay, this is not this was not completely new to my ears, right? This is something that I come up before the idea of in a 12 team expanded playoff, Gene said he thinks we'll get there.

And and Shahan Jheraj and I on the college football playoff show, we did an hour on the Wednesday pod all about the issues that might be holding up playoff expansion that aren't holding up playoff expansion.

There's a lot of big 10 stuff, a lot of Gene's thoughts work their way into that podcast. So for an even deeper dive into playoff, go listen to the college football survivor show wherever you find Buckeye talk.

This is the idea that in a 12 team expanded playoff where the first the top four sees get buys and the other eight teams play four first round games at home sites that possibly the home site for big 10 teams in that scenario Nathan would not be their home stadium.

It would be the most convenient domed stadium, which could mean for big 10 teams Indianapolis, it could mean Detroit, it could mean Milwaukee, it could mean the NFL stadium in Minnesota.

There's actually a nice bevy of options for this.

What do you think of this idea Nathan is this a good idea and this is a little bit this really seems like a gene thing he's quite in on this.

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