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Carolina Newsmakers · Don Curtis

Tom Jensen, Public Policy Polling

November 4, 2025·1 hr·4 clips
Tom Jensen told Joe Biden he had won the South Carolina primary by double digits — after Biden cited Jensen's poll in that night's debate.
Don Curtis starts on familiar ground. He brings Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling back to talk through current polling, and the shutdown comes first. Jensen says Republicans are taking more blame than Democrats, but he does not treat the fight as some grand political reset. For now, he sees a familiar clash with limited movement underneath it. Then the conversation turns to money in sports. A college football example becomes a kitchen-table argument about massive buyouts and whether the public has much patience for them. Brian Kelly is the test case. Jensen says almost no one would back paying tens of millions for a coach to stop coaching. Louisiana comes into it too, with the governor's press conferences around LSU contracts treated as a sign that coach pay has become a public issue, not just a sports-page argument. Curtis pulls the thread wider, connecting team sports, NIL money, have-nots, and blue blood programs. Georgia carries some of that unease. The question is whether established powers can handle new competition once money changes the incentives. Jensen is careful. He says he does not know how it plays out, then floats a Vanderbilt versus Indiana national championship debate. The ratings question keeps circling back: a more open sport may feel better, but the Blue Jays World Series example raises the audience-size worry.

As heard by us

A clear look at shutdown blame and the politics around college sports money.

Tom Jensen uses a familiar public affairs conversation to trace where blame is landing, starting with the government shutdown and then widening into the politics around sports money.

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Why you'd press play

Want polling context without the noise?

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