Marty Smith, ESPN reporter, tells McElroy & Cubelic how truly special having Texas & Oklahoma in the SEC is, why Nick Saban will be a great broadcaster, and who he's got making the SEC Championship game - thanks to Southwest Airlines
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Groyd Kubik in the morning. Radio Row. Marty Smith with us. Get to him in just a moment. First, got to tell you about Ox Foundation Solutions. Ox Foundation, most reputable foundation repair waterproofing company in Alabama. 25 years experience. Basement and crawl space waterproofing, crawl space structural repair, floor support, concrete lifting, lentil repair. Ox provides free full foundation inspections, free evidence-based repair plans, fully transferable warranties, and they have financing and multiple payment options available. Serving over 350 of Alabama's cities for

All your foundation repair and waterproofing needs, they guarantee you to keep your foundation healthy and strong. How strong? OxStrong. 205-236-9500 or visit OxStrong.com. All right, Marty Smith is with us now. Did y'all see Lebby's suit? Yes. Did you see the paint? So you guys are across the table from the person with whom you're speaking. The calf region of Lebby's tailored suit was so tight that...

I can't. Big calf guy? Like massive calf guy. People don't understand. He's a big dude. I didn't have that on the card, boys. I didn't have the accentuated calf suit. High calf? Because that's athletic. No, it was a real athletic calf. Needed a high calf, yeah. Big around my thigh, which isn't saying much, but nonetheless. Well, you're a twig. Well, Marty, you're joining us.

Southwest Airlines announced a multi-year deal to be the sponsor of the SEC, named the official airline of the SEC. To celebrate the sponsorship loss, Southwest is hosting the Flex Your Fandom Sweepstakes. Tell us a little bit more about it. Yeah, opportunity to go to the SEC Championship, brother. It's cool. You go to southwestsecsweepstakes.com. You have your opportunity to go to the SEC Championship, which this year is just going to be – it is every year, but it's just going to be unbelievable. Massive.

They've really immersed in the culture of the conference already. They've added flights to various markets to big games so that more fans have a more seamless way to get to those games, starting in week one with the USC-LSU game in Vegas. Week three, Bama-Wisconsin, on and on.

Can we get that direct Birmingham to Como? I mean, look, you can talk to my friends right here and we can make that happen. Now, getting to Como is a difficult task. I think it's the toughest in the league right now. But they've actually expanded the Como airport. Did you go to Como before they expanded the airport when it was like a brick,

It was this old school brick building and they had two gates and you stepped out of the plane onto the tarmac into the airport and like the baggage claim thing was spinning right there in front of you. It was unbelievable. I've never been to the Como Airport. Dude, it's not bad at all. Como Airport's not bad. It's small. Very, very tiny. What aspect of this league in particular are you most interested to see sort of how it plays out this year?

Several things. Of course, the Kalen DeBoer, I don't want to call it an experiment. The man wins everywhere he goes so far. But the league's different. It's just different. And it's relentless. And you look at their schedule, and it's relentless. And he is inheriting a cupboard with a lot of talent in it.

and a lot of experienced talent in it. So that's beneficial. The culture shift in Tuscaloosa is striking. If you talk about the energy in the building, Nick Saban, you can ask this gentleman sitting right beside you, of course, had a very direct, dictatorial way of doing it.

And DeBoer is very different. The energy in the building is relaxed, and he's really changed that. And so I'll be fascinated to see how that unfolds. I think Vegas has him at 8.5.

Do you guys know? Nine and a half. Oh, it's nine and a half. That's Greg's area. Yeah, nine and a half. So I think that would be a really successful year, honestly. I think any – I mean, nine wins in this league is going to be really good. Yeah. I think they're going to be pretty good. They've got to stay healthy, but that's everybody. When you think about just the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, obviously Texas will be here today. Yeah.

I know what it means to me. I mean, I grew up in Dallas and Oklahoma, Texas, a big part of why I love the sport. What does it mean to you? Huge. Huge. It's, you know, when I was a kid growing up, we had three channels. Three. We didn't have cable. In Virginia. Out in Appalachia. In Virginia? Yeah.

And we always got to see Texas and OU. And Appalachia. The Jamel Holloway, Wishbone, Brian Bosworth, Barry Switzer. I mean, they were mythical. How old are you? 48, bro. Good Lord. Yeah, I'm a lot older than you are. Talking about, like, players in the 80s. I have grayer hair than G-Mac, but I have a lot more of it. That's accurate. Can confirm. He gives me a hard time for my 90s football obsession. Yeah, no, football started in 98. Okay.

That's when college football started. But in all honesty, there are not two better brands to add to this thing than those two brands. They are national brands. They are competitive not just in football, but across their entire athletic departments. If you look at what Patty Gasso has done with the women's softball team at OU, they've won four straight national titles.

It's awesome to welcome them in, and I love the hype around it. I think Texas is going to be very good this year. They're going to contend for a league championship. Georgia's still the standard by which everything's measured, in my mind, but I think Texas will be right there because they have so much talent, to your point, they've got to stay healthy. But I love that they're in this league. Love it. You've had a little bit of a different seat for multiple reasons for Nick Saban's

Well, I don't want to say debut as a member of the media because he did the draft, but debut as a member of sort of the SEC media. Take us, peel the curtain back just a little bit on Coach Saban, now a member of the media. He's going to be one of the best that there is because of the way that he studies and his personal demand to be that way. It was fun to – it's been fun to talk to him through sort of the –

and nuance of how we do what we do. I was sharing with you guys before we came on, Ryan McGee and I interviewed Commissioner Sankey and Coach Saban together yesterday about the state of the sport and the state of NCAA athletics in general. And it was a fascinating conversation because I don't believe there are two more knowledgeable individuals to have that debate or conversation than those two.

And he asked me this morning, that interview was yesterday, he goes, how many interviews you got today? I said, I don't know, 10, 10 or 11 or something. And he was fascinated by it. He's like, how do you...

How do you do that? How do you know how to transition from one topic of conversation to the next and engage both people? And that's who he is. He is now going to take that relentless approach to football and put it in television. And I will tell you this, too. He don't want to sit around. No. The thing that I wondered the most, guys, was how is he going to handle

what television really is, which is 4,000 miles an hour to stop, to 4,000 miles an hour to stop. And he doesn't want to stop. He actually asked for more on-air time so he doesn't have to sit around and grab ass. That's amazing. All right, Marty Smith, ESPN, you're with us because of Southwest.

Airlines now the official airline of the Southeastern Conference, and fans have a chance to get to the SEC Championship game this year. Yes, sir. Go to southwestsecsweepstakes.com. You'll have the opportunity to go to the SEC Championship. Who do you all think is going to be there when we get there? I know everybody's happy right now. I haven't picked. Greg made his picks. I will say that Georgia will be there. I think so, too.

And right now I'm going to go Alabama. Okay. As I stated on SportsCenter this morning, when Georgia plays Kentucky on September the 18th, I believe, it will have been 1,407 days since a team not named Alabama from the SEC beat Georgia. History is not on the side of these other teams. So...

And they play week five. Yep. They play week five. It's a brutal schedule, though. It's a miserable. I mean, it's just if you look down these teams' schedules, it's just merciless. I mean, I kind of think it's going to be Georgia-Texas. And I know they face one another in the regular season as well. But who knows? I didn't expect Missouri. I'll change my mind every day between now and when the season ends. I didn't expect Missouri to win 11 games last year. I can promise you that. It's fair. And so who knows who might come out of this thing and surprise us

But will it be Tennessee? You know, does Tennessee have that kind of juice with Iyamaleava? I love Ole Miss. I want to pick Ole Miss, but there's a portion of it mentally in the back of my brain that just says. Show me, don't tell me. You don't trust them. Show me, don't tell me. Marty, thanks, man. Great job. I love you both. I admire you both. I appreciate you both. And I'm going to take my 48-year-old mid-80s. Atta boy.

Bahunkus to talk to somebody. Go talk about Bo Jackson versus Herschel somewhere else. Go put a neck roll on and put some giant thigh pads in. Neck rolls don't get due credit. We need to bring them back. Yeah. And Newman, I'm a big Newman. You're too young. Oh, God. You had these like fancy. You couldn't find them. You couldn't find them. We saw the college football players had them, and you'd go to every sporting goods store within a hundred mile radius, and they're like, what are you talking about? Remember what it smelled like? Because they were a pop clothes. They were a pearl snap clothes box.

And you pop that thing, and the smell wafted towards you, and it was beautiful, man. Hey, what kicks was Lebby wearing? Did you see? Yeah, they were Adidas, but they were like, because they're an Adidas school. I couldn't tell what they were. But they were like, they were a different. You don't just go out here to the Foot Locker and buy what he had on. No.

And you don't go out to the JCPenney and buy those calf-hugging suit pants either. I can promise you this. Jeff Levy ain't buying a suit at a store. That ain't happening. Off the rack. Marty, thanks, man. Be good, boys. Love you. Good to see you, bud. Marty Smith with us. Always fun. Always entertaining. We'll take a quick break. Hoping to have Blake Chapin in the other side. Quickly, I'll tell you about game day men's health. If you lack energy, getting poor sleep, if you feel on edge,

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A player, right? Like the myth of Bo Jackson. Like, rate, and download the show from the Jock Cup or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you tired of losing your fantasy football league year after year? Lindsay Rhodes, Emmy-winning sportscaster and football analyst, is your new secret weapon on the Believe Fantasy Football Show. Watch the quarterbacks and his ADP. I think he has massive high-end upside.

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