Bill Landis

It wasn't just like, oh, someone's saying something nice about our team.

It was like, nope, someone's saying something nice about our team in comparison to Alabama.

Bang.

The first thing he said, and I think I'm understanding what he said correctly, and he flipped the SEC speed thing.

He said, we worked hard at Alabama.

I'm not saying we didn't.

And he sort of went out of the way to say, I'm not trying to say anything bad about Alabama, but you asked me about Ohio State.

and like both places work hard but there's a different intensity at ohio state and then he said like you know he said in the sec like that the players maybe are a little bigger and slower and here it's faster and i was like what i don't think anyone has ever said that before but you've experienced both so who am i to say you're wrong so his experience has been uh sec big and slow four practices in the big 10 speed all over the place

Yep.

He said when he visited Ohio State as a transfer this winter, the energy around that visit, the conversations he had with people while he was in Columbus reminded him of his recruitment and freshman year at Alabama when Nick Saban was running the program.

I don't know what to tell you.

It did seem like, yeah, like James Smith was like, he wasn't like, Alabama sucks.

I'm glad I left that place.

But I think if you really wanted to parse his words a little bit, it was sort of like, I signed up for one thing, I ended up in a different thing, and I came to Ohio State because it reminded me of the thing I signed up for.

Definitely did.

And part of that discussion, too, was kind of the feedback that he said Caleb Downs, former teammate at Alabama, related to him about his experiences.

I don't even think comparing the two places necessarily, just sort of like, here's what Hawaii State's about.

And James Smith, I think, liked a lot of what he heard.

And there was a previous relationship with Larry Johnson as well.

He actually made it sound like, so I guess...