My good friend Tim Griffin passed away in July 2022, just five months after this interview we did.  He is greatly missed by many.  The memorial service hosted by his widow, Dede, and son, Bradley, was a celebration of a life well-lived and was attended by a "who's who" of sports journalists and friends from across Texas.

I was proud to be one of the guest speakers with the opportunity to salute Tim.

Larry Carlson

 Looking back to this interview, after our Chik-fil-A supper in Corpus Christi, Tim's insights into college ball seem rather prescient, indeed.   Tim was always a very keen observer of what was going on in football and in the areas of music, travel, pop culture, and many other topics.  He was a guy who was always ahead of the rest of us in his reading of the tea leaves in football's affairs and future concerns.

 SIX POINTS

Larry Carlson interviews Tim Griffin, former FWAA President

Mark McDonald another prolific sportswriter says about Tim:

Not many people roaming the planet have covered more college football than Tim Griffin. And I'm certain that only a handful have covered it as well. Griffin, a former national president of the Football Writers Association of America, has covered 14 national championship games while writing for the San Antonio Express-News, ESPN.com, CNN, Sports Illustrated.com and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He now works as a content manager for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times after relocating to the Coastal Bend to punctuate his journalism career in the sunshine. Griffin has worked in it all...newspapers, websites, radio, television and multi-media platforms.

Tim is a Memphis boy and earned a degree from Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis). We met and became friends back in the late '80s, covering Houston Oilers training camp, when the Oilers had a youngish DBs coach named Nick Saban. We share many interests -- college football, down home eateries, old TV and movies, classic soul music and, off-the-beaten-path travel -- and were both raised on college football via the radio. I've been fortunate to share football and food with Tim, from San Antonio to Lubbock, Birmingham to Baltimore, Memphis to Atlanta to Glendale to Robinsonville, Mississippi and even Toronto, Ottawa and Winnipeg. Griff is a connoisseur of "meat and three," the Southern standard, and introduced me to Buntyn's in Memphis and Mary Mac's in Atlanta. And I can testify that he and his wife, De De, know how to host a stellar backyard barbecue and stir up a savory batch of gumbo.

So when we met for supper a week ago, and again spoke of the joys of college football on the radio, I wondered why it had taken me so long to bother Tim for some insights into the great game for Texas Legacy Support Network. Here, below, are his responses.

By the way, in Tim's words, he has "a deep appreciation of the art of announcing" those radio games, dating back to a transistor on the pillow as a kid. He cites John Ward (Tennessee), Cawood Ledford (Kentucky), Larry Munson (Georgia) and "the pairing of Bill Schoening and Craig Way, on Texas football from back in the day" as favorites.

TLSN:  What should the NCAA do, if anything, to try and establish some checks and balances on free agency in college football, also known as the transfer portal?

TIM:  I think the NCAA is on a slippery slope as it tries to regulate the idea of the transfer portal. And it’s all kind of The Wild, Wild West as nobody has ever really experienced it. I worry about a recruit who might get angry about the lack of playing time early in his career casting longing eyes at another program that recruited them. But I know that will be happening on a regular basis.

What eventually will happen, in my opinion, is that the NCAA is pulled out of the regulation business for the biggest of all college football programs. It’s already the case with the CFP having little input. I see it going even more to where the biggest conferences will manage the programs themselves and not even rely on the NCAA. This will effectively make coaches feel that no player really will be safe in their folds until their senior year and will make the dynamics of the coach/player relationship fascinating and something to continually watch.  

And this will also result – mark my words – in burnout for coaches, who continually will have to be recruiting 12 months a year, 365 days a year in college football. In the long term, I look for more college coaches to make the switch to the NFL, where they won’t have to face these incessant demands, eventually resulting in a watered-down college product in comparison with the behemoth NFL.

TLSN:  With reports of A&M raising $25-35 million to pay the December recruiting class, and UT's establishment of a "Pancake Factory" to pay offensive linemen, what does NIL do to recruiting for the foreseeable future?

TIM:  On the reports of big money going into investing in top players in the NIL, I think we’ll continue to see this. The genie is out of the bottle and will eventually result in the bigger, richer programs become the most powerful with the best recruits. It’s something that needs to be analyzed for a couple of years before changes are made.

Now will this eventually lead to those programs dominating? It should. But this is where coaching and talent development becomes key, taking those heralded players and making them their best. It will be interesting to see. But I could see the big school spending big money to get the top players resulting in an eventual stratification where only 15-20 schools contend for the national championship. It will be those schools with a big money outlook.

TLSN:  You told me recently that you believe only Clemson and Ohio State have shown that they can compete with the SEC.  As Texas and OU prepare to join the conference, what does this move mean for the rest of the Power Five conferences and schools?

TIM:  This will mean that the other conferences will be playing at what they average fan perceives to be a much lower level. Will people watch? Sure, but not at the levels they are now. Eventually, this will lead to lower television ratings and lower rights payments and push them even farther down compared to the highest levels.

It will lead to the perception that the SEC is at the pinnacle of college football. And everybody else will be at a lower level. I don’t think that will be good for the sport. I love the variety of different programs, different areas, different stadiums, different traditions. And I fear this will be lost.

Here’s something to consider. The viewership of the three-game national football playoffs has skidded from 91 million to 56.4 million since it started to the most recent one. That’s more than 38 percent. Those erosion numbers should scare the founders of the playoff and anybody who loves the sport.     

TLSN:  What's one rule that needs to be changed?

TIM: As far as on-the-field rules, I actually like most of the college rules better than their NFL counterparts. I love stopping the clock after a first down, giving us more plays to savor. Damn the people who want to fit a television game into a tight 3½ hour window. It is a game to be savored. Anybody who has battled traffic to get into Starkville or Stillwater or even the L.A. Coliseum should be able to enjoy more football once they get into the stadium. It happens only once a week. I’m enough of a glutton to want more. 

I’m not crazy about the overtime rules as they currently are constituted. I’d like to back it up say to the 50-yard line in overtime to make it more of a challenge to score. It’s too easy now.  

Another item I’m not enthralled with is the fair catch on kickoffs outside the goal line and the automatic placement on the 25. I realize it’s being done as a safety rule. But what it’s done is effectively taken the kickoff return out of the modern game. And that’s sad. Special teams are an important part of football, but its importance is being lessened with these rules changes.

TLSN:  Where do you see the college football playoff system going in the near future, and what would be your choice for it?

TIM: I think the playoff needs to be expanded to 12 teams. I would favor all five Power 5 conference champions to get a bid. I would also like to see the highest rated G5 program to make it. And then we could pick six at-large teams. Give the first four teams a bye in the first round and play 5-12 seeds at homefield sites for those games. Incorporate the biggest bowls the rest of the way out.

People would say we would never see those lower schools contend. Who knows?  They might.   And once we got that upset, it would turn the public’s reaction of the CFP into more like “March Madness.”   The NCAA tournament thrives on. And the biggest reason?  The upsets that mark the tournament. Some of that would help the college football playoff and eventually would happen.  

College football needs a shot of excitement. Right now there’s a growing perception that only the top 4-5 programs have a real shot at the playoffs every year. And it’s playing out that way with Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Ohio State making the playoffs most of the time over the last few years. This must change if college football will start earning some new fans.

The public is getting tired of seeing those same teams play all the time. With the SEC’s continued dominance, the sport is becoming way too regionalized with the South dominating. It needs to open up to the entire country or it could become irrelevant in the eyes of many fans.

TLSN: How 'bout a nutshell theory on how and why UT football has been so mediocre for so long? And how do you read the tea leaves as to the way things will play out for the Longhorns in their first few seasons in the SEC?

TIM: Texas has been mediocre so long for several reasons. Despite having among the best infrastructures to build upon among all college programs. The Longhorns have skidded because of a pair of substandard coaching hires. I’m not ready to throw the towel in on the Sark experiment. But he needs to show substantive improvement in Year 2 to get the program back on the right track. In terms of challenging top national powers, the Longhorns often appear soft and wimpish. That’s a systemic problem that starts with location. The last generation of Texas high school football players who form the foundation of recruiting for the Longhorns have been weaned on seven-on-seven, Air Raid-heavy attacks. Unfortunately, that leaves them woefully underprepared to play smashmouth football against the SEC powers like Alabama and Georgia they have to beat to challenge for a national title. They shouldn’t feel alone. Oklahoma has faced the same problem when they played in the CFP with the same results.

That’s why I think the transformation into an SEC program will take several years before Texas and OU are contending for conference titles. They have to get their offensive line and defense comparable to the teams they are going to have to beat regularly once they start playing conference schedules. It’s not there yet for Texas and will take some time to get back there. It won’t be as easy for the Longhorns to transform into the SEC as it did for them to join the Big 12 in the mid-1990s where they won the conference title in their first season.