Bill Riley in The Zone 9-10-26

0:00enjoy the convenience of seven days a week banking and extended hours with cube from first Arkansas bank interest member fd ic uh... let's bring him in on the jim's razor back pizza hotline and visit with him about the u.s. are you tough to keep in the pocket bill i am not i am a very i'm a i'm a stationary at best quarterback i have no movement i'm an easy target uh... no one will ever confuse me for devin damp here well we appreciate coming on with us to talk a little about the matchup there are a lot of uh... nervous razor back fans who aren't really sure what they saw last weekend we all know we saw from you taught it was domination uh... what do you think a week one from the your team uh... i thought they did what they should have done against the uh... against the one double eight team i mean i'd have host kind of a big on the back big sky team and you thought came out and and one of the line of scrimmage and put up some points and got a limited eye to who's the deal so i mean that it was it was the college football equivalent you know in a lot of ways of a

1:03preseason game because you call us a power for team and a power for team that ranked right now and and i think they did what they were probably supposed to we were talking earlier this week bill about Arkansas and i don't know if coach silverfield address this last night fill and move some of you guys heard the show last night but um... about coming out maybe a day early and heading out there today instead of tomorrow uh... is that typical when teams play against Utah do you know do they come out early to try to get used to the elevation uh... no i mean i know not really it can't really get used to elevation in a day or two you gotta kind of be here a couple of weeks so um... yeah i mean teams will come out maybe a day early maybe to acclimate to weather but really not the elevation you can't really do that in 48 or 72 hours okay well it looked like their minds were in Utah last week when they were playing north alabama so uh... hopefully they've already adjusted that part at least so we were talking about

2:04the dual thrott quarterback threat and uh... what uh... you guys do offensively what what are the expectations i guess this week and what what you see through week one um... i think the expectations this week are the the level of talent to be a whole lot higher than it was in week number one against Idaho uh... you know cnc cschool coming in and they're gonna have cc athletes they're gonna be better on the lines of scrimmage they're gonna have better skill guys overall so it gets gonna be a step up for you thought there's no doubt about that um... you know again you thought checked all the boxes in week one could they be a little bit cleaner probably so but they committed one penalty and didn't turn the ball over and forced two turnovers in week one so they were pretty clean i didn't watch the entire game uh... against north alabama i watched some of the clips um... and again i think it's a first game with eighty new players and a new coaching staff and still you know trying to figure some things out i thought you know again i'd be curious what you guys thought about the race backs performance i you know i

3:07thought he was a first game performance with some room to grow yet on their definitely room to grow i think the biggest thing for for razorback fans and for guys in our our business was you know there were a lot of things that were hopefully going to be cleaned up that were addressed and that were purported be fixed up from the previous regime and that was penalties turnovers uh... and those things honestly did not get cleaned up very well in game one and there was some decision making questions i guess for the quarterback in the first time but those numbers ended up pretty good i think the the future you know hopefully is a little bit brighter for kj jackson but there were some disappointing things there i'll be honest i mean i don't know what the fans were expecting as far as a final score but but they weren't real pleased i'm curious about how the interactions been with with coach um... scally taken over again i know he's part of the program before so how much difference or i guess how much are we close to the same from when coach wedding him is there cultures the same guys i mean morgan scally grew up here his dad played here he was an all-american here he's been on the coaching staff for 20 years here

4:07that there's there's a lot of that there's there's a lot of cohesion here he lost some guys i mean some coaches went with kyle witty ham to michigan so you had you had that part of it but he retained a lot of coaches uh... he added coaches to the staff that they played here guys who were former teammates of his guys that have been on him and played here that had coached another place is so they they knew the culture already um... the culture in the heart of the program has it changed you know morgan's going about things a little bit differently you got a little bit different approach than maybe kyle had their philosophies are different morgan came from the kyle witty ham school he was coached by him and coached with him so the toughness and the physicality that you tell us always fighting itself on is still very much there so that there's you know to the to the folks on the surface on the outside there's not a lot of difference now offensively they look different last week they they had a lot of formations they put fall in the air they they ran the ball really well which isn't too dissimilar to what they did for years under winning ham the aggressive nature of the defenses it could change a whole lot

5:10either because morgan was a defensive coordinator and you know the guy that's now the defensive coordinator worked under morgan for eight years coltons one so again there's some subtle changes that maybe if you're inside it like i'm in around it all the time maybe you noticed but but the big picture stuff hasn't changed a lot well and also just looking offensively there's a lot of names from the year before and you know your top rusher and parker you know even keeping the the second quarterback and bird fickland like that's a guy that may have had a chance to go start play more somewhere else but he's obviously got a very interesting role in the Utah offense and he stuck around for another year ficklands role in the offense is different than a regular backup quarterback describe it well he's a weapon is what he is and you're right he had offers to go a lot of different places he and he and Dan peer or best friend i think heaven the given the new offense of coordinator did a really good job of selling him on you're gonna play quarterback for us but you're also going to be on the field in a lot of different ways if you guys watched the game last week against Idaho there were probably seven or eight sets where

6:14he and Dan peer are in the back field lined up in the quarterback position same time they're also lining pickling up as a running back they're also lining him up in the slot he's got a live arm and he's right now probably the heir apparent next year when Dan peer is done uh to go and and assume that spot and and maybe you'll see him Saturday night play some quarterback too and they'll motion Dan peer out but he he's a weapon he's too good an athlete he played last year when Dan peer got dinged up in a few games in limited amounts of time he ran for over 500 yards 10 touchdown he's got a really live arm so he's too good a player really and truly to keep on the sideline and that's why Kevin McGeeven dualizing him in a lot of different ways Bill Riley is the long time radio voice of the Utah UT joins us here in the James razor back pizza hotline I want to talk about the offensive line because I know last year they were terrific and just got one guy out of the portal that's um the tackle Cedric Jefferson out of Montana state but the rest of the offensive line that

7:16started last week they were part of the program before and it feels like they've just sort of been like waiting for their opportunity and that's part of that continuity on the offense I just don't think it's talked about as much well you're it's so great that you brought that up the storyline has been and and and somewhat rightfully so they had five guys that started for back to back then they made every start for two consecutive years two guys first round picks two other guys on NFL roster one other guy hoping to get there and everybody's pointing at the offensive line and I get that from the outside but to your point they had a bunch of guys that were playing behind those NFL guys that have been in the program three and four years they played a lot of steps they just haven't started a lot of games so they've been coached well they know the system you bring in Cedric Jefferson who won a national championship starting right tackle for Montana state last year at 1 AA and then you bring in the highest recruit you cause ever had on the offensive line Kelvin O'Bottah five star kid from Brooklyn Idaho so they filled in nicely behind there I'm not

8:20going to tell you right now that they are a finished product because they're not because you guys know offensive line takes time and reps and playing together but they looked really good last week they dominated Idaho up front they ran for 360 plus yards no sacks given up to the Devon Day appear so it's a good off into line I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's the line they had a year ago because that was one of those lines you have every five six seven years where everybody goes to the NFL but it's it's a good offensive line and and I knew from the beginning that it was going to be pretty good it's still to be determined how good what they're sealing is this year but it's not the dramatic fall off a lot of people wanted to point to when five guys were drafted and in on NFL rosters Bill I've spent most of the last 10 years of my career talking razor back fans off a ledge and so I'm going to try to do that again because I think this is a really good Utah team I was looking at the schedule and the home and road games the way they fall it seems pretty favorable for Utah do you feel like this team has a good great okay or not so

9:25great shot of maybe making the playoff with a really great record this year well I think they've got a really good chance to make the playoff you you said it says the first six games are all very winnable for Utah and then it gets a little bit tougher they've got an Ashley Rank Houston team that comes here to Salt Lake City they've got their biggest game of the year the rivalry game the Holy Wars they like to call it with BYU here in Salt Lake City then they've got two tough games on the road in November at Arizona and at TCU I really believe guys that the game against BYU it's huge every year right it's an unbelievable rivalry game but it's got a chance to maybe be the biggest game in the in the in the program history meaning the rivalry game because BYU's got a really good team this year too there's a good chance you talk could be eight know maybe seven and one there's a good chance BYU might be eight and oh seven and one going into that game and I think the winner of that

10:25game is probably going to go to Dallas and face Texas Tech because tech schedule is really weak this year I mean it is they don't they don't play Utah or BYU in the regular season and I think there are two toughest conference games are in Lubbock so I think tech's got a pretty good route to play in Dallas but I think that's that game November the seventh here in Salt Lake City between Utah and BYU might be the might be the play in game for the other team we've been talked about we've sort of tried to avoid it a little bit only to a point can you in this part of the country with the crazy stuff going on at LSU and the lawsuits and all of that and it's like we're you know it's good for an entire league to have one school to throw a bunch of hate at is that what it's like for Texas Tech in the big 12 is everybody else in the big 12 just sort of look at Texas Tech and BYU the way you are yeah and there's a little bit of that I mean it started a little bit last year when you know they spent whatever the amount was 40 million 45 million dollars and then the whole source be

11:29things this year too it's almost like they've leaned into being the villain you know they've leaned into being the heel and wearing the black hat and that's I guess that's okay if that's the role you want to play nothing wrong with being the team that's attested but usually you want to be the team that's attested because of your results on the field because you're really good and people can't stand playing it because you're good not because of the fact that you know you've got a unlimited budget and you just go out and kind of flop flop the rules and everybody else is fake Bill I know Utah is also part of the private equity group we talked about this little bit this week what kind of impact is that had on the program and the ability to do what you guys want to do well it's still new guys that you know they they made that announcement last December that they were they were going to enter into a into a partnership with them but the deal really didn't get done till early summer so it's there there's still kind of in that early stage that feeling out process but I could tell you having talked with the university president and

12:29director of athletics they were just looking at the landscape to lead you to athletics and and trying to figure out a way to stay ahead of the game here trying to find a figure out a way to remain highly competitive you don't want to just be competitive in today that you've got to be highly competitive you want to play for conference championships if you want to be in the playoff you got to find a way to be highly competitive and I think they looked at this and and because you guys know unless you've got some fanboy donor that's got billions of dollars and it's just will you can only go back to the donors so often you can't go every year and ask for tens of millions of dollars so you've got to figure out a way to create that that revenue stream and I think they wanted to be unique and nobody had done it and I know that talking to the A.D. and the president do they've got a lot of A.D.'s and presidents around the country watching and calling them and asking questions to see how this experiments going because nobody else has done something like this so uh check back with me in six months nine months and we'll see how it's

13:33going everything's been off to a great start so far but again like I say it's only been a couple of months here so it's hard to get real big picture results yet. I would think that that competition just has to be part of who you are when you work at the University of Utah in athletics just but which is looking at the part of the country that we're in here you don't have if you're the razorbacks you don't have to compete for attention with anybody else. The Utah Utes are in one of the big growing sport cities in America. I mean Salt Lake is a candidate for major league baseball expansion they just got the NHL you got the jazz and everything you're already competing for your own fans interest aren't you? Okay and let's not forget BYU's only 40 miles away I mean that's a major power for program too I don't think that Arkansas State is probably pulling the same type of revenue away I don't think the folks who with with razorback sports are probably concerned about Arkansas State jumping in and and pulling revenue and sponsors and donors so yeah you're right I mean I've always compared Arkansas and Nebraska are a lot of like being tough ways because

14:37University of Arkansas razorback sports corn huskers sports I worked in Nebraska my first job out of college there's no real professional major league professional sports in either state so and there's not another major state university that tries to pull the attention away so when the razorbacks are good or the corn huskers are good it might as well be a major league sports franchise yeah that's a great analogy I thought you were going to insinuate that both fans are extremely frustrated that their team is falling short of their expectations over the last decade. There's also that yeah I'm sure there's some of that too there's a lot of that uh listen bill I have a great call Saturday and uh I'm going to beg you to be gentle I hope it is a competitive game but we'll see how it goes we're all a little concerned Arkansas has got a lot to clean up and I'm heck I'm sure you know coach Scally probably feels like they've got some things to clean up too so we'll see what happens but thanks for coming on with us we appreciate it. Talk to you we'll be back to we'll be coming back to pay filling three years so let's do it again all right we love to have you thank you man