Wes Durham on expansion: "Biggest argument I ever had with my dad as a kid was 9 to 12."

On the landscape shift in college football:

“I'm probably the worst nightmare of everybody because I'm not the earth is blowing up-- skies falling guy. I don't think you can be because there are still so many unknowns. No. 1 is that we don't know what the College Football Playoff structure looks like. No. 2, we don't know the dollars involved in that structure, which is important. Right? No. 3,  the ACC has schools that are tied down to what I've been told is an 'airtight' grant of rights-- media deal-- through 2036. Now, is there some wiggle room for the conference to try and generate more revenue? Absolutely. Can they add? Yes. But for somebody to say they want to leave-- and these are rough numbers, nine figures-- deep nine figures-- get out of jail. Here's the other part about this too, you're going to surrender those rights, then the conference, you're going to if you're going to make that money, then what's going to happen is your pie has to be like say for instance, if you go someplace with 16 schools where they have to cut a 17 slice. So that means everybody else is not going to make the number they thought they were going to make. So I think in some ways, you just got to pump the brakes here a little bit. Because invariably, Lawton, somebody's gonna hit their head on the ceiling and fall back. I mean, there's just there's not this infinite money tree that sits in the yard for college athletics."

On Clemson’s profile heading into the season:

"I like Clemson. I just have two unknowns. No. 1. The ability to run the ball efficiently. No 2. Are you going to get some semblance of continuity at quarterback? Outside of that? I know it could be this year's version of a generational defense in college football-- could be Clemson's. There's no question they have perimeter players. McFadden and incredible talent on the offensive line, but I need to see people-- and I know the injury has played a big role in last year and everything else.”

“The thing I don't have as many questions about is NC State. Everybody says, 'well, wait a second NC State hasn't done this.' I understand that. Neither had Pittsburgh-- and Pittsburgh had a lot of the same traits last year that NC State has this year. Heavy inventory of experience, veteran quarterback, depth at running back, wide receiver, coaching continuity-- NC State's the only school in the league to bring back all of its assistants. So that's the decision that I've got to make. It's down to those two."

On NIL and the impact it can have on a school like Miami:

"Look, I think Miami is in the game now. I think Miami wants to be in the game. And for Miami to get in the game, Miami is going to push this thing, to quote the original Top Gun movie 'all the way to the edge of the envelope.' And that's what they're going to do until somebody says, 'hey, you can't do that anymore.'"