ESPN’s Pete Thamel: Kyle Whittingham Will Thrive Despite Michigan’s Inner Turmoil

Pete Thamel has a name for what happens every July when college football's conferences gather the media in a ballroom.

"We are right in the throes of complaining season, as I call it," Thamel told Rich from SEC media days, where he had just come out of an interview with Kirby Smart. "All sit around and point out the problems in college athletics without any imminent solutions."

Smart's session was a good tell. Thamel said 13 of the 15 minutes were spent on whether the SEC should break away from the NCAA and what that would look like. The last question was the one about, you know, the actual football team that just won back to back conference titles.

That is where the sport is right now, and Thamel's framing of it was the most useful thing said on the show all day. He covers a billion dollar business that is fundamentally unstable, with 138 FBS schools, four power conferences and six non-power leagues, and his theory is that there is never going to be a time of peace.

"I think we've all embraced like there is never going to be a time of certainty," he said. "We're on the precipice of significant change and no one knows if that's going to happen in six weeks with this bill."

The bill is the Protect College Sports Act, which could reach the Senate floor in the coming weeks. Thamel put its odds of ever becoming law at roughly 10 percent, and explained why the politics are a mess. It was pushed forward by Senator Cantwell, whose state includes a Washington State program left behind by realignment, and by Senator Cruz, who is tied closely to Cody Campbell, with private equity carrying real influence throughout. Critically, it was written without the participation of the SEC and Big Ten, two leagues that between them cover 26 states.

"It would be hard to pass a bill that the SEC and Big Ten don't support," Thamel said, adding that conversations between Congress and those leagues have picked up more in the last three weeks than ever.

His verdict on the people now trying to fix this is worth quoting in full. "People who are uniquely unqualified in Congress to fix college sports problems are now having to become experts, whereas the people who have failed to solve college sports problems at least know the general tenor of the issues and solutions."

So what about Greg Sankey saying out loud that the SEC taking its football elsewhere is not posturing? Rich noted that Sankey is the single toughest interview he has done in the show's history, a man whose every word is curated. Thamel agreed that nothing Sankey says is impromptu, then laid out the headwinds. A television contract running through 2036. A House settlement everyone signed for roughly nine more years. And the non-revenue sports question nobody wants to answer.

"What do you do with the NCAA tournament? Like look, what do you do with Omaha?" Thamel asked. Football would be fine on its own, he said, but it would be regional rather than national, and that is the trap.

Thamel's larger point was that the BCS, remembered as wildly unpopular, actually taught the sport that regional passion could scale nationally. He told a story about sitting in a bar in Eugene watching Oregon fans watch a South Florida and Louisville game because both were ranked in the top 10. A retreat to regionalism, he said, would hurt the bottom line and the popularity of the sport, because the interconnectedness is what makes it grow.

On Michigan, where Rich is headed Monday, Thamel was unequivocal. Kyle Whittingham is one of the best coaches of the last generation, and the last Utah quarterback drafted was Alex Smith, meaning Whittingham has won despite the position rather than because of it.

"This is not going to slow Michigan down," Thamel said. "They are set up and poised to win again."