Wimp Sanderson, former men's basketball coach at Alabama, tells McElroy & Cubelic how easy Texas's schedule is & how recruiting has changed in these last few years
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Welcome back in, 9 a.m., Thursday, July 11th. McElroy and Kubelik in the morning. JOX 94.5, joxfm.com is where you can find us online. Get the podcast there if you missed Kelly Ford, if you missed our top three. A little discussion about Texas and teams in their first year in new Power 5 conferences. The likelihood of...

One of those teams, be it Texas, be it Utah, be it Oregon, winning the conference this year seems slim just based on historically how that's gone and what has happened. He joins us each and every week. Thanks to our friends at Coke and Piggly Wiggly. It's the coach, Wim Sanderson. Coach, how are you today?

Okay, I wasn't going to start with this, but since you said it, I'll say it. The reason Texas is a favorite is they've got the weakest schedule in the league. Whoever they knew in the conference office did a great job of making their schedule. You take their schedule and compare it to Oklahoma's, there's no comparison. So they've got an easy schedule. They've got a chance to win the league because of their schedule. I'm a big schedule guy. You think Texas has an easy schedule, though? I sure do.

They play Georgia. They play Oklahoma. They play Michigan. They play A&M. Well, I think they've got an easier schedule than Oklahoma does. I think they've got a better chance to win the league because of their schedule. You look at it. Let me ask you this, Coach. Do you think they have an easier schedule than Georgia? I haven't studied Georgia that much. Georgia next year plays nobody.

Next season, let me tell you something. These teams... They're at Ole Miss, at Alabama, and at Texas, Coach. That's a pretty tough schedule. Who's that?

Georgia, next year, you look at the non-conference schedule. You're talking about 25. Oh, you're talking about non-conference. Yeah, look at it. Just look at it. I got to look at the non-conference. I don't know. I was just talking about the other schedule. All right. Well, you talk about the non-conference, three straight wins. They played nobody. And I wonder if that's going to be a factor or not when you pick it. Let me tell you something, folks. When you try to decide between 12 and 13 –

That's when your stink comes in because you just tried to decide this past year when Alabama should have gotten it with Florida State and Alabama. Your stink comes in at number 11, number 12, number 13, and number 14. And when I was coaching basketball, the biggest thing for me was you had to have 20 games. It didn't matter who you played, and that's what I did. So you've got to – I think it's going to be interesting to see. I guess they'll go to nine games eventually. Okay.

Anyway, I'll talk about something you guys don't know as much about as I do, excuse me, except in football, and that's recruiting.

I think it's going to be interesting to see. Now, don't start in on me about being negative, but I think Caden DeBoer and Al really do a great job. I think they do a great job in recruiting. So I think Alabama's coaches are great. I think that you have to, and you're going to disagree with this, and that's fine. I think you have to be careful of getting too many players, let's say from California.

And the reason I say that is they can come into your place and not be what they thought it was going to be on the official visit, and they can go 88 and out the gate because of the transfer rule. I think it also affects you some when you're trying to recruit Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee. You look at the number of players Alabama has gotten in those states, I think maybe three from Georgia,

I'm not sure whether it was Tennessee, but not many people in the South. I think your coaches and your players talk a lot to each other. I think it's important that you get as many guys as you possibly can from this area. You're fixing to say to me, Coach, you've got to get the players you think are the best. I won't argue that with you.

I'm just saying I'm going to use the word careful. I'm not going to say you got Greg on this show today and played at Texas. And a lot of players in Texas, and they took him. My point is if you can go into California somewhere and get six, seven players there,

and maybe not get as many players in the southeast over the long run, it may hurt you. So I'm using careful and may for all those people that want to text in and say I'm negative and all that kind of stuff. We weren't going to say you're negative, Coach. I mean, it's just part of it. I don't think you're negative necessarily. I mean...

I think that having guys nowadays where football is very, very important to them is valuable. And that's basketball. That's any sport. I think finding guys that are motivated for the right reasons is more challenging now because there's more reasons why guys are playing. Boy, that is so good. That's right. We always said this. Do you love football? No.

Or do you love what football gives you? And that's a really difficult thing for a lot of people to answer because you might sit there and say, oh, you know, I love football. I love football. Yeah, but you kind of also like getting free drinks and getting paid a lot of money. And you also like getting a scholarship and running out to 100,000 adoring fans. So that's a tough thing to figure out for a lot of people. That's a real thing, too.

Well, I'm not hung up on fives, and I'm not hung up on anything except getting the right people. I think Texas went through a period of time where they spent more money than anybody because they got it, and they were the bell cow of spending money. I think they're down a little bit lower now because they felt like if they maybe spent money for guys that –

weren't quite good enough after they got them. So they're beginning to be a little bit more careful. I mean, I don't know about rankings. You guys, you know, they can all rank them. People love all that.

stuff. You know, they're ranked 10th in the SEC in recruiting right now and 12th overall nationwide. Recruiting has gone down and the answer to it is why, why, why? And so I think a little bit is about what you said. They're trying to be darn sure they get quality people and I think sometimes the money factor enters into it to the point that you don't get the kind of players that you need to get. Hey, think about this.

Colorado, who we're all going to listen to and talk to about, whatever, I don't know whether it's in or out. They're either in or out 43 players on the transfer portal. So don't tell me that you get somewhere at 43 cotton-picking players. If 43 are coming in, a bunch of them are going out. It's a building of a program one year at a time.

just about. Even my boy that played, a young man that played for me, Darby Richards, the new strength coach at Texas. And when he was at Memphis at one point in time before he went to Texas the other day, they lost 12 players in basketball because they weren't getting enough or weren't getting this. So I think we're a one-year-at-a-time type

football, basketball, all kind of programming. I think sometimes, you know, we got a lot. I'll say this. We have a lot of people now that bet on games. I do that blue plate special and people like it because I'm dumb. But you have to be darned. You start to bet on games and you're early in the year, you don't know as much about the teams as you think you know.

You know the names of the players they've gotten, and you think they're pretty darn good, and they've got this guy from here and this guy from there. All of a sudden, those booger bears are not quite as good because instead of being first string, they're second string. And I think it'll have an effect on some of the gambling part of it that people do. Not that that matters, I don't guess. It doesn't to me, but it's kind of interesting.

Coach, when you look at some of these new teams in these conferences for the first time, we mentioned Texas and Oklahoma. I mean, this has only been done three times. Virginia Tech in 2004, 92 Florida State, 1953 Michigan State. If you're talking about first year in a Power Five conference, winning that conference, whether it's Utah in the Big 12, Oregon in the Big 10, Texas, Oklahoma, and the SEC, do you think it happens this year?

I don't know. If it happens, it'll happen in Florida State going somewhere. Uh,

Florida State is in a controversy. I talked to Debo Clemson the other day about different stuff, and Florida State is looking to get out. I think any time that you, you know, football is a one-game schedule. Tennis is not. Basketball is not. Golf is not. Whatever the other sports are. Baseball is not. I think now that we're going for the Big Ten, taking a lot of players from

or the ACC taking a bunch of teams from Stanford and people like that. Is there a rivalry there? No. The Stanfords and Vanderbilts, there is a split between teams. A lot of teams will get a lot better, and the other teams will never be able to catch them, and those two teams will be Stanford and Vanderbilt.

They'll never catch anybody. I know they don't now. But Stanford at one point in time had pretty good football. But I think now, this day and time, it becomes more difficult. The rivalries are not there. We'll see what happens to the ACC. The Big 12 has gone with a whole bunch of teams which I think are good. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado State.

I don't think the rivalry is there. Is anybody excited to see Gus Malzahn bring his team to the Big 12? No, they're not. They're in the Big 12. They get the money. If they rename the Big 12 a big name, everybody's excited about that because everybody's going to get a pot of money for it. It's going to be called whatever it's going to be called.

But I don't think the rivalry is quite there when you split teams. And I think the expense of going with – and I got football as a bell cow. I coached 32 years at one place where it was. And I understand that. And I was great friends with all the head coaches, and they helped me out a lot. But moving in the way they're moving –

to me affects it I don't know I saw this quote from Nate Oates he sat down with Seth Davis and I just wanted to get your thoughts on it

He said, for four hours a week with players in the summer is not enough. Look at how many Europeans got drafted in the first round. I think we've got to reevaluate how we do basketball in the U.S. a little bit. There's no restrictions in Europe. Coaches that they sign up to play for that are responsible for their development are not being told they can only work with them for four hours a week. Let me tell you this. When I was coaching, you couldn't work with them at all.

You started basketball practice on October the 15th, and you played your first game six weeks later on December the 1st or 2nd. You could not work with them at all. If we slipped in there and got them four on four or five on five, we had to be careful, and we were careful. You're darn sure you'd be at practice at such and such time. As far as coaches going over there, they couldn't do it.

So it's been over the years. I know when I was doing all that, you guys weren't even born. So, you know, you're scratching your head and whatever. But we practiced them as best we could and got them to play as much as we could in the summer. As far as supervision, we couldn't do it. Now they're wanting more than that because of the overseas kids.

being playing a lot better. It's been that way for years and years and years before Nate Oates ever breathed. We started basketball practice on the 15th cotton-picking day of October with him, and we could not practice with him the rest of the year. But on the flip side of that, does not only – I feel like everybody would say yes, we do need to reevaluate the developmental portion of it, but can we realistically? Can that actually happen? What Nate is sort of suggesting, is that possible in this country?

Well, you know, he's wanting to practice because he wants them to shoot a lot of threes in preseason. What they need to do is guard somebody. I think, I don't know if it is or not, I think it's practical for each team to be able to practice as long as they want to. They're pretty much doing that now. They're practicing now. I don't know what the restrictions are exactly.

on them over the year. But there are not many restrictions on them. They practice, as the coaches say, we practice year-round. I think there are times, and this is going to be contrary to what I've said, there are times sometimes in basketball you can practice too much. You can practice too hard.

When I got to February with my basketball team, and this is a little bit different than what you're talking about, but anyway, it's talk. When I got to February with my basketball team before we played the SEC tournament and the NCAA tournament, we cut our practices back to an hour and 15 minutes.

And we brought our team in together and we said, we're going to practice as hard as we can go. If it's really good, we may be here less than an hour.

And, brother, they got with it, and we practiced hard. Now, whether that was right or wrong, we got NCAA 10 out of 12 years. So we did it a little bit different there because at that point in time, I wanted our guys to feel like they were live-legged, that they were excited about playing because they could see their girlfriends pretty quick after an hour and 15 minutes. They were happy about going, and so...

I know the conference tournament doesn't mean as much as the NCAA tournament, but we were able to get the final game nine out of 12 years, which is not easy to do because we had good players, not because of me, because we were able to recruit. There are two things that make you successful, and that's recruiting. The second thing is to get the guys that you have recruited to play hard.

If you get those two factors, you've got a chance. You get the guys that you have recruited are looking disappointed and they're ready to go home and they say to themselves, I can get the same amount of money somewhere else by going and I can play right now. We'd have a lot and we've gone over this. It is what it is.

And, you know, me getting on a radio show and talking about it doesn't change things because it is what it is, and that's the way we're doing things now. But I think it is interesting to go back and think about that and compare it sometimes with some of our listeners and sometimes maybe not so.

Coach, great stuff. We always appreciate the time. We know each and every week you're brought to us by our friends at Coke and Piggly Wiggly. Well, Piggly Wiggly and Coke are great people. They do a great job. Piggly Wiggly, you walk into Piggly Wiggly, they're going to do everything they possibly can with everything that they have to make sure that you're happy when you walk out.

The meat departments are absolutely terrific. The people are great. They do a really good job in trying to give you every aspect of food that they possibly can. They gave me a radio show one time when I was assistant coach right before I got the head job, and they said the radio show is going to be years after the game, and you're going to be sponsored by Coke. And so Coke Holder took care of me then, and the Coke people took me to Augusta.

to see the tournament and to go through all the little small things at Augusta and spend the night one time, and I appreciate that. So you know I like Coca-Cola and Piggly Wiggly.

And I also like you two guys for letting me run off the mouth. Appreciate it. Absolutely, Coach. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you very much. Okay. Bye. All right. That's Coach William Sanderson joining us on the Buyer's Right Hotline. When we come back, a couple of numbers.

Both around Auburn and Alabama. Offenses. What they were last year, what do they need to be this year? We'll compare, contrast, and ask if you think they can get there. We know the Alabama heat's going to get there. Humidity's going to get there. Don't let it affect your home and family. Keep them comfortable with an affordable train cooling system. This is our official. Train is our official partner here at Jocks. They've been recognized as America's most trusted brand 10 consecutive years. Find a comfort specialist near you at train.com. Remember, it's hard to stop a train. Alabama and Auburn offensive numbers.

Is it possible to improve or be what they were again a year ago? We'll discuss it right after this on Mac and Cube in the morning. Catch up with all things McElroy and Kubrick in the morning by subscribing to the podcast. Mythically, he's grown. He's almost like a little bit bigger than a player, right? Like the myth of Bo Jackson. Like, rate, and download the show from the jock app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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