Josh Pate Discusses The College Football Playoff W/ Will Compton & Taylor Lewan + Army Vs Navy Picks

Summary

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Bussin' With The Boys: Josh Pate Discusses The College Football Playoff w/ Will Compton & Taylor Lewan + Army Vs Navy Picks

Date: December 10, 2025
Podcast: Bussin' With The Boys
Hosts: Will Compton & Taylor Lewan
Guest: Josh Pate (Late Kick / ESPN)

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Overview

In this episode, Will Compton and Taylor Lewan are joined by college football analyst Josh Pate to break down the 2025 College Football Playoff chaos, controversies over rankings and G5 inclusions, the future of the sport, Notre Dame’s playoff snub, and the evolving landscape of NIL, private equity, and collective bargaining in college athletics. They also give Army vs. Navy picks and Heisman predictions, while keeping the locker room banter lively and direct.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Behind the Scenes: ESPN Altcast Experience

[04:11-13:31]

• First Impressions: The crew reflects on their recent ESPN "Altcast" game broadcast, sharing stories about technical glitches, dry runs, and dealing with constant producer chatter in their ears.
• Memorable Guests: Interviews with Sean Alexander, Brandon Spikes, and Quavo, and the challenge of managing conversations on air.
• Broadcast Insight:
  • “Never sit at home and hate on an announcer for getting a name wrong... those dudes have air traffic control in their ears.” – Josh Pate [08:32]
  • Will’s enthusiasm compared to the formal approach of others and how the live energy impacted the show.

2. The College Football Playoff Is "Broken"

[13:34–23:28]

• Process vs. System:
  • Will and Taylor believe the playoff system is fundamentally broken; Josh clarifies the distinction between the process being broken (rankings/game logic) and the system (final teams selected).
  • “So even if you did get it right, even if the product is right, if the process is wrong, you just, like, fomented distrust in the entire thing.” – Josh Pate [15:18]
• Notre Dame’s Playoff Snub:
  • “Notre Dame got squeezed out… And by the way, they never really explained why they flipped Alabama. Notre Dame…they started to put insurance policies in place.” – Will Compton [16:18]
• SEC Bias: Acknowledged as real and influential; the boys highlight the lack of consistency versus ACC, Big 12 teams.
  • “The treatment of conferences is conditional…The Big 12 is not going to get the same respect the SEC does.” – Josh Pate [21:06]

3. The G5 Debate and ACC Tiebreaker

[21:32–31:16]

• G5 Inclusion Critique: All three agree the Group of 5 auto-bid is problematic and diminishes playoff quality.
  • “I don't think G5 teams should be in the playoff because they don't meet the minimum baseline of struggle...” – Josh Pate [25:59]
• ACC Tiebreaker Disaster:
  • “If nothing else changed, but the ACC fixed their tiebreakers, none of this would have happened.” – Josh Pate [21:32]
• Strength of Schedule & Merit:
  • “They’re not playing the same sport...I don't judge you based on what I think you would be capable of, I judge you based on what I think you earned.” – Josh Pate [25:59]
• Systemic Flaws:
  • “Stuff like this has to happen for change to take place.” – Taylor Lewan [25:22]

4. Playoff Expansion, Exclusion & the SEC

[34:08–44:58]

• Will Expansion Help?
  • “My belief: people being mad at the end of the season isn’t automatically evidence that something’s broken... If you expand to the point where no one’s mad, you got a playoff that’s way too big.” – Josh Pate [44:07]
• Notre Dame's Dilemma:
  • Discussion about the clause guaranteeing Notre Dame a top-12 playoff spot in future years, and the irony of their exclusion after years of being the “favorite child” of college football.
  • “Now Notre Dame’s making the kind of argument that like a Fresno State would have made in the past...” – Josh Pate [44:45]
• System Trust Issues:
  • “If they would just come out and say the reality of the situation versus trying to make stuff up...that would play with more favor from the public eye.” – Will Compton [47:13]

5. NIL, Private Equity, and the Future of College Football

[57:05–72:35]

• Utah’s Private Equity Deal:
  • Utah became the first program to accept a $500M private equity investment, raising concerns about the influence of outside financiers on athletics decision-making.
  • “The real question I have becomes, who's making decisions for Utah Athletics now?” – Josh Pate [59:40]
• Chaos in Athlete Compensation:
  • The need for a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to bring order to NIL and player compensation.
  • “If we have a CBA in college football, I think you have a pay scale that’s very much correlated to like a rookie pay scale versus a second contract...” – Josh Pate [66:51]
• Impact on Player Mentality and College Culture:
  • Nostalgia for when college football was more about development, “the process owes you nothing”; concern that NIL money for recruits changes motivations.

6. Army vs. Navy Picks

[87:00–89:07]

• Lines & Predictions:
  • Navy is a 6.5-point favorite; total points over/under set at 37.5.
  • Taylor: Over 37.5 [87:19]
  • Will & Josh: Under 37.5 [87:30]
  • “Under 37 and a half has always been a safe play in the service academy games…It’s not baked enough into the number.” – Josh Pate [87:35]
• Sentiment:
  • Pride and appreciation for the Army-Navy game; patriotic tone and locker room chemistry.

7. Heisman Trophy Discussion

[77:56–83:11]

• Favorite Candidates:
  • Diego Pavia and Fernando Mendoza discussed as frontrunners.
  • “He took one of the hardest hits of the season, got back up and cut one of the great postgame promos in the modern era, buddy.” – Josh Pate [78:55]
• Stat Comparison: Pavia's added rushing production may tip the scales.
  • “Who is the best player in college football and who does more for their team than anybody else?... It’s Diego Pavia.” – Taylor Lewan [80:07]
• Heisman Voting Process Doubts:
  • “It was at that point that I lost faith in the process.” (On learning a staff assistant had a vote) – Josh Pate [82:13]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ESPN Playoff Broadcasts:
  “We had minimum traffic in our ears. If you're doing legit, like, play by play in the Booth, you got 37 different voices in your ear...” – Josh Pate [08:32]

• On SEC Playoff Privilege:
  “The SEC does carry bigger stick, deeper pockets…” – Will Compton [34:08]

• On Committee’s Logic:
  “I wish they’d just come out and say we changed our mind. We’re 13 humans and as we continue to watch the games, we changed our mind.” – Josh Pate [48:26]

• Private Equity and the Future:
  “Who's making decisions for Utah Athletics now?...They want a return on their investment.” – Josh Pate [59:44]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Altcast stories & ESPN behind-the-scenes: [04:11 – 13:31]
• Is college football system “broken” + Notre Dame snub: [13:34 – 23:28]
• G5, tiebreakers, strength of schedule arguments: [21:32 – 31:16]
• Playoff expansion and SEC bias: [34:08 – 44:58]
• Notre Dame’s future playoff clause & transparency calls: [45:05 – 48:33]
• NIL chaos, private equity, collective bargaining future: [57:05 – 72:35]
• Army vs. Navy breakdown & picks: [87:00 – 89:07]
• Heisman pick banter and voting process: [77:56 – 83:11]

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Tone & Style

• Locker-room banter: Sarcastic, insightful, and irreverent, with plenty of friendly jabs and unfiltered honesty.
• Accessible to die-hard fans and casual listeners, balancing detailed analysis with relatable stories and humor.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode dives deeply into the chaos and dysfunction of the current College Football Playoff selection process, using Notre Dame as a case study while lambasting SEC favoritism and G5 auto-bids. The boys demand real reform, praise the pageantry of Army-Navy, and lament college football’s Wild West NIL moment—hinting the only solution might be a big, NFL-style collective bargaining and TV deal. All delivered in true Bussin’ style: bold, unvarnished, and a little bit rowdy.

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“If nothing else changed, but the ACC fixed their tiebreakers, none of this would have happened.” – Josh Pate [21:32]

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to another episode of the Locker Room. I'm your host, Will Conta. We got Taylor Lawan. We got industry plant Josh Pate. We're going to be just talking about Army Navy this weekend. A lot of stuff to cover. The system in college football is broken. We're going to talk Miami, Notre Dame. Interestingly enough, I didn't write this stuff down. Alabama should be a third with a question mark. We're going to be talking college football playoff futures with FanDuel. We'll be talking Heisman. We'll be talking all things chaos in college football. You look at the standings, we're all below 500. Taylor's in the lead 38, 38 and 39. Josh bait 37 and 40. Your boy Willie C. 35 and 42. We're going to have an incredible show. Make sure you're subscribed. Leave comments throughout the episode. Big hugs, tiny kisses. Let's go.

[B]

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[A]

Fellas.

[D]

Gentlemen, do we want to altcast talk about it?

[E]

Yeah.

[D]

Should we get this is my blood weird. Should we give ourselves a round of applause or wait for somebody that's watching?

[B]

Well, someone's got a story.

[A]

Oh, it's starting.

[D]

The guys. Seriously. Thank you, guys. Really shouldn't have.

[E]

Stop.

[A]

You shouldn't.

[B]

Unnecessary, guys.

[D]

Incredible. Unnecessary. But since you guys clapped, you might as well talk about it.

[A]

Was I hearing before the pod that Pate was just breaking down? Tate?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Self scout with an IV in his arm getting back to full health.

[B]

I don't know that the IV was necessarily hippo or. Hippo. Masculine. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sitting in the chair this morning because I get the iv. Truthfully, I don't even know what's in that bag, but they put something in me every Wednesday morning at 7am So I have not watched the Altcast. All I've had is my mom told me it was good. A few dudes online told me it sucked, which we talked about off air. Maybe we can mention on air if we have time later. And that's all I knew about it. We got good feedback from the people that matter at espn though. And then it occurred to me this morning to search for it and it's available on the ESPN app. So I had the IV in my arm, which I. I just realized I still have the band Aid on my arm.

[A]

Smart.

[D]

You want to make sure that take care of everything.

[B]

And I watched. I watched the film. I thought we really peaked in the second half as the game went downhill quickly. So maybe the people did not see the best versions of ourselves. I thought it went really good. You called Quavo, Mr. Quavo. Several times.

[D]

Had to.

[B]

Several times.

[D]

You meet somebody special, you want to be a little more formal. I think that's the way to do it.

[A]

The boys were laughing at it because I gave him a handshake like you. You apparently dapped him up right before. And I just.

[D]

What's weird about that, too, is, like, you usually dap everybody.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Hey, man, great to see you. And you go like this. It's never. It's never this.

[B]

After that early season incident up at espn, though, with Hawk, I think you've been a little trepidatious with the handshakes, period.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You got no problem shaking my hand, shaking Taylor's hand. There are some hands, though, that you still look at, and you go, how do I handle?

[D]

Not Mitch's, not JP's, not Jack.

[B]

I think we all know what we're.

[D]

Talking about about not Clayset guy.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

But, yeah, I thought the first quarter, first off the dry run.

[B]

We'Re not even facing.

[D]

We've talked about it on bus, on Busted. But, like, I was, like, more I was very excited about the op, knowing that there's four of us and, like, all of us together, lifting the ship of, like, calling the game, talking about even the person who's, like, being the quarterback and just going the play by play. You can jump at any moment and give great insight. I was like, man, this is really gonna be a lot of fun. Like, the boys just kind of hanging out. And then when the dry run happened.

[A]

Which, by the way, dry run caught me off guard.

[D]

No doubt.

[A]

Didn't know we were gonna be doing a dry run. Once the monitor started going, I was like, man, what's happening here? I hear Josh going, isn't that the worst?

[D]

The first couple times you do something and things are just happening.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

You're realizing, like, oh, shit, I'm supposed to be focused on this.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

But, yeah, when Will did his dry run, then looked up and just went, practice run, I thought, oh, my God.

[A]

You gotta remember what Alabama did we go to Stockton in the first place.

[D]

This whole thing up.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And credit to Willie Bompton, man, as soon as the lights are on, they said, hey, we're on.

[A]

I had to go. Next play.

[D]

You crushed It.

[A]

I had to go. Next play.

[D]

I absolutely killed it. It was awesome.

[B]

And in the dry run, to be clear, there's nothing scripted about the game except the first five minutes before it kicks off, which is all we had to do a dry run for. And the producers were in the truck like, hey, let's do a dry run. And we are supposed to go in order. And they got preset packages, and we got it timed out when the anthem's gonna happen, when the teams are gonna take the field, and. And you dropped this, like, 45 second to minute and a half, just nugget of wisdom about offensive line play. And they come in our ears like, taylor, that's great. That has nothing to do with what we're talking about right now.

[A]

Cue it back up. Start the trail.

[D]

What's wild is I'm learning about this right now because I never heard the producer say that.

[B]

Great points.

[A]

Totally. I wasn't hearing it either. I was just. I was hearing the monologue Taylor was going on and seeing the screen switch and everything else, just kind of chuckling to myself. Like, I'm thinking, like, I'm sure we're probably supposed to have to get back gbot somewhere in here.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Long winded boy, man. Long winded boy. And then when it's like so loud and Josh, you're like, you clearly look at one of us. Like, one time, you and I made eye contact, and you're talking. I can barely hear you. And as you're speaking to me, Caitlin comes in over you. And so it goes to him. I can hear you too. I'm just trying to read your lips now. And I just stare at you for a moment. I'm like, I got in my head most of that. Caitlin's like, hey, by the way, Taylor, after that, referring to. I'm thinking to myself, katelyn, this is the worst time.

[B]

Caitlyn, you gotta stop.

[D]

He's looking right at me to hear my. I'm supposed to talk next. I have no idea what he wants me to talk about.

[A]

Here we go. We're going to be going to a commercial in. In like 10 seconds.

[F]

Yeah.

[D]

The first commercial, I just started talking and I'm like, oh, all right.

[A]

I got hearing her talk over the year, knowing that we can't hear ourselves, and then just witnessing Josh continue to stay in flow state going into commercial.

[B]

I was like, but you know what it tells.

[D]

Yeah, dude was a pro.

[B]

But you know what it lets you know? It lets you know, never sit at home and hate on an announcer for getting A name wrong or for tripping over a word or for occasionally, like, mispronouncing the town they're in. Those dudes have air traffic control in their ears, and it's like a very, very roided up version of what we were doing. We had minimum traffic in our ears. If you're doing legit, like, play by play in the Booth, you got 37 different voices in your ear. Like, yeah, if I pronounce a name wrong every now and then, not the worst thing in the world.

[A]

We're in fight or flight the entire time.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Once again, this is it.

[A]

I'm breaking down number three, C.J. allen. I'm going on this huge rant, and it was number zero, their D tackle, talking about the A guy talking about the alpha, the SEC. Correction, hand up. That is not C.J. allen. You're going to get that a few times from Willie C On this.

[B]

All cast thought that was great ownership, though. Don't wait for the quality control email Monday morning. Just own it on air. Yeah, because you know, everyone's yelling at you on the TV anyway.

[A]

This dude is an idiot. Oh, there he is. He's calling himself an idiot. We're going to hear it a few more times, boys.

[B]

TJ Allen, really good player, though.

[A]

Really good.

[B]

Really good player.

[D]

Really good team tackles. Who was your favorite guest that we had?

[B]

What did you guys think about, like, Taylor, Josh? You guys obviously were speaking with your inside voices. Will just felt like he was screaming the whole time. Yeah, Will was. Will was. The night before WrestleMania 93, Will went full Ultimate Warrior. I was really surprised. No face paint. That was all that was missing.

[D]

I thought he was going to come with a little bomb.

[A]

There was a part of me that started thinking about it before the game, but I was like, let's not. Let's not get too obnoxious.

[B]

We talked. We talked to the lower level. He talked to the three hundreds.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

He talked to the upper deck. Yeah, you're in every man's.

[A]

I was talking to people.

[D]

People in. Just in a crowded bar watching the game. He's like, I want to make sure everyone can hear.

[B]

Will's the Roman emperor in the coliseum before technology existed. I've just got to speak with my outdoor voice or these people aren't going to hear me. I got to yell kill. And it's got to echo around this entire building.

[A]

That's a PI.

[B]

He brought it.

[D]

When. If you watch back, I'm sure there's a couple times if we're on camera when Will starts to Talk. I'll just go to my thing and turn it down for a second if it finishes, and I'll just, like, go back and turn it up. So.

Dude, I don't know about you guys, but, like, when I got home, my ear was ringing until, like, 2 o' clock the next day.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Like, just because I. Do you have two in two little.

[A]

I had two.

[D]

I had two of them.

[A]

Guys just started talking to me. I'm looking at Gary.

[D]

I'm like. I can't hear what anybody's, like, trying to get to his other ear, because I'm assuming. And he's like, leaning that ear, and I'm like, no, I'm trying to speak to just you, nobody else.

[A]

And then I'm like, hang on, let me get this thing out of my.

[G]

Yeah.

[D]

And I realized he's got both of them. I just have the one in my right ear. So I can kind of like. I don't know. I feel like with that much, you kind of feel like you're in a little more of a bubble.

[A]

Oh, I very much felt like I was in a bubble.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If anybody was talking to me, I was like, hang on a second, I'll just give him the mic. I'm like, it's my only chance of hearing you.

[D]

And it was so confusing me for, like, the first 30 minutes. I'm like, why can't he just hear the words coming out of my mouth? Or in a commercial break, no one's screaming.

[B]

It was great, too. We got Sean Alexander that walked up. We got Brandon Spikes walks up. We have Quavo later in the show, later in the broadcast, walks up and they're walking up and they're talking to you, and you have no clue what they're saying. And you. You either put your own mic up to their face, or if you don't want to seem really weird and they don't even know what you're trying to do, you just kind of dap them up, say, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[A]

That is 100.

[D]

Smiling, nodding.

[B]

Yeah. Meanwhile, they walked up, for all you know, say, bro, my grandma died last week, but I'm still happy to do the broadcast.

[A]

Absolutely.

[D]

You're the absolute.

[A]

That reminded me to. You brought up Sean Alexander. There was one time we were going into commercial and he was taking the entire. He was talking the entire time. I'm like, giggling to myself. Cause I'm like, I know Peyton wants to get in here, but Sean Alexander ain't stopping.

[D]

Sean Alexander started talking, and I see the monitors go to, like, the first Commercial. He's still talking. He's still talking, and I'm just looking at him, and Harry's like.

What a guy. Harry's making him feel so good right now.

[B]

Yeah. We're 15 seconds into an athletic commercial. Sean Alexander's dude, I remember we played here in 99. Yeah. And we beat Florida. And Spikes is standing over there. It's the middle of an athlete command commercial.

[D]

Middle of it.

[B]

It was great.

[D]

Spikes was awesome.

[B]

Yeah, he was.

[D]

He came in with some serious energy. He could have done the whole thing.

[A]

Yeah. Spikes. Yeah. I can't wait to get him on the bus. He should be part of the squad.

[D]

Mr. Quavo as well. Be nice to get him on the bus.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

He won't.

[A]

Spikes, I could feel like I'm saying.

[D]

Quavo, why won't he.

[A]

Because he's. He's a superstar. He's a rock star. He's got things to do.

[D]

People see.

[A]

He's gonna. He appreciates. He's not. Like, he's not above.

[D]

And that's all I need.

[A]

He's not above us. Anytime he'll see us. He'll. He'll dap it up. He'll chop it up. We. If we need him for a segment, I'm sure he'll come on if he's at that place. But I'm thinking, like, I'm thinking overall picture, we could probably hit up Spikes, and Spikes will be ready to get down to Nashville.

[D]

No doubt.

[A]

Spikes would be ready to go.

[B]

Quavo already did.

[D]

Spikes will be back. He's on vacation. Then he's going to try to make it to Nashville. So let's go.

[B]

Also, Quavo posted you guys on his Instagram, so, I mean.

[D]

I did follow him after. He's like, 23 million followers.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, he's.

[D]

I don't know. He was like that. Like, I, you know, I still got a K next to mine, which is.

Let's dive in before we get into Army Navy. Well, that's obviously.

[A]

Oh, that's the main event.

[D]

The main event. Miami, Notre Dame. And you said, I didn't write this, but Alabama should be in there as well. Have we not cleared the air on the playoff? Like, where do you sit right now when you look at these 12 teams?

[A]

I sit at it in 20, 25, this season, the College Football Playoff. The system is broken.

[D]

Yeah, I agree.

[B]

The process is broken or the system is broken, or are they the same thing? And this is coming from an industry plant.

[A]

Yeah. Honestly, I don't even know. I'm kind of nervous speaking in front of Josh because, you know, somewhere in that ear, he's got a bug in there. Somebody in New York's telling him what to say.

[D]

Yeah, here he goes. He's wired.

[A]

There's things to fix.

[B]

Like, so to me, it's broken.

[A]

ACC tie breaker.

[B]

I agree with you on that. That. Okay, you can't call me a plant and then agree with me. I need the stuff that you think I'm wrong.

[A]

Yeah, but so are you.

[D]

Are you saying what?

[A]

Time out. Are you saying the system's not broken?

[B]

I'm saying the process is broken. I'm saying the system can't be broken. If it gave me the teams I think should be in, not the G5 teams. That's its own separate thing. You and I agree on the G5 thing. Okay, system broken. The G5 thing. We all agree with that. If we could take that and we could set it on the table, we agree on that. The rest of it, which came down to the whole Miami, Notre Dame, Alabama thing, it gave me the teams that I thought should be in. So obviously, I don't think the entire system is broken. But the process, the Tuesday night rankings release Hunter Jurecheck. The, like, North Korean style propagandizing right up until the 11th hour, and then they just flip the pancake on Notre Dame. Notre Dame's rightfully irate about that. They opted out of their bowl game, which I thought was a little extreme, but still, I understand why they feel that way. And so even if you did get it right, even if the product is right, if the process is wrong, you just, like, fomented distrust in the entire thing. So from that, for, like, from that angle, yes, the model or the system is broken, but I don't think the results were broken, if that makes any sense.

[A]

It makes a little bit of sense, but Notre Dame, all the way up until that point, like, Notre Dame got squeezed out of the College Football Playoff.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Like, we watched with our own eyes Alabama get whooped by Georgia.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

We're up there. And I'm not saying BYU should have been in all the way up until the very end of the rankings. We knew BYU wasn't going to be in, but the way they talked about byu, we saw what happened on the football field today, and that kind of, you know, they were never going to be in the equation. We bumped them back. And then you go into full protection mode for Alabama that they don't even drop a ranking. So what I'm saying is Notre Dame was sitting at 9. And by the way, they never really explained why they flipped Alabama. Notre Dame Hunter sat up there and talked about they had a gutsy call on fourth down when they survived Auburn and Notre Dame whooped Stanford, but they flipped.

[B]

Your boy here explained it to you. I told you what they were doing.

[A]

Insurance policy.

[B]

I told you what was coming.

[A]

Yeah, an insurance policy in case we got the doomsday scenario that you called a long time ago that came out.

[D]

Which is amazing that the doomsday scenario that you've been talking about for multiple weeks literally took place.

[B]

It took place. But also. Let's. All right, so that's corrupt. What you said is corrupt. The. I guess the fallacy, but that's not really the right word. The flaw in their entire approach is they overcorrected to begin with. So my. My viewpoint. I got to zoom out the telescope a little bit. My viewpoint is Bama should have already been ahead of Notre Dame, but I also believed Miami should have already been ahead of Notre Dame. But they really knee jerked several times in this whole process. They knee jerked in that. When the rankings came out, that was, I think, right after Bama lost to Oklahoma or either the rankings came out then Bama lost to Oklahoma. They dropped them like six spots, which was way too far. So that was point one. Point two was when the rankings came out. Miami was at 18, which was too low. We said that at the time. I didn't even know that we were going to head towards this conclusion. But I said at the time, there's no way Miami should be that low and Notre Dame should be that high. The third part, Notre Dame being that high, I thought was sort of predictive. They were putting Notre Dame high in preparation for what they thought Notre Dame was going to do. But that's not what you should be doing with a ranking. Your ranking should solely reflect the body of work, not. Well, yeah, we know Notre Dame's lost two games, but we think they're going to go on a run. So we're already going to put them where they would be if they went on that run. Because then what you did is times three. You made a big mess down the road where you had to correct it. Because what they're hoping is they can screw the rankings up and then the teams will just sort it out for them. Kind of like Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss. They knew if he was going to leave that they weren't going to let him coach the playoff, but they kept on putting off facing that fact because they just hoped the world would Work itself out. Well, it didn't. And then it got really messy at the end. The playoff committee didn't do their job properly, so it got really messy at the end. And so then people have like this tunnel vision. They got the racehorse blinders on and all they see is that final snapshot, which is totally fair. It's not the public's job to do the committee's job. And so the public looks at it and sees just what you said and just what I said, which is independent of what I think should have been. What was, was Notre Dame was ahead of Miami going into the final week. Neither of them played. And then all of a sudden at the 11th hour, the committee came in and said, well, you know, there's a head to head between these teams. We need to flip them. Well, the head to head was there last week and two weeks ago and three weeks ago. It's been there all season.

[A]

Yeah, that's my point is when you're looking at deep state college football and big conference, they're talking to us like they're talking to America like we're all idiots and we can't see through what they had to do in the 11th hour because the way it was set up like Notre Dame was again number nine for a long period of time until they dropped to 10. We go into conference championship weekend and everybody talks about, should conference championship games mean anything? Should they not mean anything? We saw two teams, BYU in their championship game, Bama in their championship, get whooped. And again, the committee went in full protection mode on Bama and protected their ranking at large. Because we were having the conversation the night before. This is one where Notre Dame and Bama are now side by side. They could easily flip back to where Notre Dame is now nine because again, they still never explained why they put Bama ahead in the first place, but we all knew it was the insurance policy. But now Alabama sitting there at 9, they got whooped. They sit there and talk about BYU, their ranking didn't get protected at large. I know they were never in the college football playoff. I know they were never getting in unless they won. But they still dropped to get Miami right next to Notre Dame. And now they're feeding everybody the head to head game, which is. That's what they want everybody eating at. But if Virginia wins, Miami's not getting. Notre Dame is in the college football playoff.

[B]

Yeah. Two things.

[A]

Virginia's getting in.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Does that make sense?

[D]

That makes sense.

[B]

Two things. All right, so you asked, what do you mean about the ACC tiebreaker So I'm gonna hit that in a second because that would have fixed everything.

[A]

Yeah, that simply would have.

[B]

The thing with Brigham Young, people, people are making this argument and people are saying, hey, why did Brigham Young fall? But Alabama didn't fall because they look the same on Saturday. Both of them are in conference championship games. Both of them lose convincingly. Brigham Young drops. Would they drop one spot, two spots.

[A]

Dropped enough to just get Miami next.

[B]

Even if they dropped one spot, they dropped further than Alabama did. Those Bama didn't drop. All right, a couple of things that if I wanted to play devil's advocate, if I was a deep state plant, and I may be, what I would say is one of them is a comfortable truth, and that is Brigham Young winning. Got smoked by a team that already smoked him before Bama went and got smoked by a team they beat in their own building earlier in the season. So at least Bama's track record has a win over Georgia this year. BYU never got close to Texas Tech. The second thing, this is the uncomfortable truth is what I told you last week and the week before. And that is whether people want to admit it or not.

The treatment of conferences is conditional. In college football, the Big 12 is not going to get the same respect the SEC does. The Big 12 is not going to get the same respect the Big ten does. And that's just the way it is. You don't have to like it, but I'm telling you that's why that happened. And then the third thing, the ACC tiebreaker, which I keep glossing over because I think people live in the weeds of this, but they don't. If nothing else changed but the ACC fixed their tiebreakers, none of this would have happened.

[D]

And what needs to be fixed with.

[B]

The ACC tie breaker, all they would need to do so everyone's first tiebreaker is head to head. So if you and I are 6 and 2 in conference and I played you and I beat you, I get the tiebreaker. That's universal. The second tiebreaker should be conference standings based on the College Football playoff rankings. So if we've got a five way tie in the acc, it doesn't come down to what a sixth grade's calculations equate to or whatever. Like it should be the college Football playoff rankings. And in that case Miami would have gone to Charlotte and they probably would have won convincingly. Miami would have been the ACC's team and it would have been a moot point. Bama would have been in only one G5 team would have been In Notre Dame would have been in and Miami would have been in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Instead we got this because the ACC couldn't get out of its own way to the point where a five loss team ended up in their conference title game.

[A]

Yeah. Virginia, Virginia couldn't get the job done.

[D]

With the acc.

From a mile away.

[A]

You wouldn't have the two. Yeah. You wouldn't have those two G5.

[B]

Even if Virginia got job done, there's not that much difference in Virginia and the G5 team. Like Virginia is going to be a 16 some odd point dog, whereas James Madison's a 21 point dog. Either way, there's going to be a huge gap. Like there's going to be an undeserving team by universal standards in the playoff either way. Whereas if Miami would have gone to Charlotte and won, at least you have a playoff caliber team. At least you have a team loaded up with future Sunday guys. A team that realistically could make noise. You don't say that about Tulane. You don't say that about James Madison. Now if we could broach this for just a second, the whole G5 inclusion thing. I think a lot of people make faulty arguments about why the G5 shouldn't be in the playoff. So you got people who think the G5 should be in the playoff. So we'll do this again. They're on the table here. They're not part of this conversation. You already have your opinion. There are those of us. Are you in? Yeah, you're Definitely, man. You're Mr. Anti G5.

[D]

I respect. Hold on.

[B]

You despise the very fiber of the being of a player on a G5.

[D]

We're doing this again.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So I would say, I would say to argue for Taylor when we were first talking about right here. Okay, well, defending Taylor, when we were first talking about the G5 teams on bus. And it's more so 2025 watching the G5 teams knowing like none of these teams should be in the college. Not. Not with the way we're arguing about all of these other teams that are on the bubble.

[B]

Yes, you are a believer.

[D]

Every G5 school. Lee like remembers Boise State, Oklahoma, Fiesta.

[A]

Bowl and Upstate Michigan.

[D]

Well, okay, all right. I'm just, I mean App State, Michigan as well. And they think, oh, we could do all these things. That's like, hey, Boise State, that year in the Fiesta bowl against Oklahoma is an outlier. If the college football playoff was structured at 12 teams, I agree. They should probably be.

[B]

They would probably be like 17 Boise.

[D]

State making it last year. I'm like, yeah, okay, I could see this team coming in being a little destructive or making games closely, at least competitive. But I don't think G5 teams should just get a bit in because it's fair. Like we all have to be equal in making sure that everyone is represented somehow. Like, college football is great. These kids go from high school, they're 1 percenters, they get to go play football, whether it's a big school, small school, whatever. When it comes to the College Football Playoff, I want the 12 best teams that are going to be the best matchups, the down to the wire games that I can sit there and be like, who truly is the best team? Because the only. I keep bringing up Vanderbilt and Texas could be in the conversation too. It's in like Notre Dame. Like they all should have a good argument to be in the college football playoffs, but yet it was never an option because one G5 team has to make it. And now because the ACC can't hold their end of the bargain of being a power four conference, they two G5 teams have to get in.

[B]

Yep.

[D]

I have respect for both those teams, but I do not think they should be in the, in the college football playoffs. All right, there's, there's.

[A]

You see. Yeah, systems broken.

[D]

Systems broke.

[A]

Systems broken.

[B]

So let me.

[D]

But here, the thing I love about this season though is stuff like this has to happen for change to take place. Because a lot of people, I'm seeing a lot of people, hey, we got to go to 16, we got to go to 24. It's like if you keep kicking the can down the road of more and more teams. And a couple of weeks ago I said, I was like, I kind of like the idea of 16. I don't like the idea of 16 right now because the process, the timing, the calendar has to change.

For the playoff bracket to be correct. Then we can go and look at the 16, the 24, whatever people want to do, the playing games, those types of things. But if it's not fixed at 12, it's not going to be fixed at 16 because you're going to have the same argument just down the road.

[B]

So I agree with you. The three of us largely agree on this G5 stance. But here's what I want to say to anyone out there watching, because there are a lot of debates about this and people get themselves caught up in debates. And one of the worst stances you can take about the G5 view is I don't think G5 teams should be in cause they can't compete in the playoff. I don't think JMU should be in because they're going to get blown out by Oregon. It leaves this really, really obvious hole in your theory. And that is what happens if they go out there and it's a competitive game in the fourth quarter. Your argument is shot. That shouldn't be your argument. Like what your argument should be is I don't think G5 teams should be in the playoff because here's my argument. I don't think G5 teams should be in the playoff because they don't meet the minimum baseline of struggle during the regular season that it should take to merit playoff inclusion. I was looking at the schedule last night. I took JMU and I took Oklahoma and I put them next to each other and I just looked at our power ratings. They're going to be similar with everyone's power ratings. Like FanDuel would have roughly the same numbers. JMU played no teams power rated top 30. They played one team power rated top 50 and they lost to him by 14 points. That's Louisville. Outside of that, their toughest opponent. Their toughest opponent was Old Dominion. Who's number 52. That's their best win over number 52. Oklahoma played eight teams power rated in the top 30. They're not playing the same sport. Yeah, so I don't. My argument about the G5 would be the same whether JMU gets beat 50 to nothing or whether they legit go and upset Oregon. That proves nothing to me because I don't judge you based on what I think you would be capable of. I judge you based on what I think you earned. And my very simple stance on G5 is the strength of schedule that they play does not warrant inclusion into the playoff because you're not playing the same caliber of football, you're not playing the same caliber of opponent. So like. And the other thing is, if people want to go back and point out the upsets in the past, dude, the Boise of like the late 2000s, those teams would murder current G5 teams because you didn't have the transfer portal and nil. That works the way it works right now. The way it works now is anything that is like the slightest blinking light on these G5 rosters immediately gets post by the big boys. It happens with coaches, too. We're watching both of these teams in the playoff whose head coaches already took power four jobs. The players do the same thing. So it's impossible for a G5 program to ever start to elevate to the level where they would be remotely Comparable to the big boys. So then people listen to that, and they stop listening. Really 30 seconds in, and they just think, oh, man, you must hate the G5. Why do you hate the little guy? Why do you hate us having a seat at the table? I don't. I just wish you had your own table. That made sense and it gave you enough to eat to where if you really do get big enough, you take the place of one of the weaker guys up at the head table. Because we got plenty of weak chairs at the head table. So if you want promotion and relegation to where you're not permanently banished to table number two. But we're also acknowledging there's a clear difference in Louisiana State University and Louisiana Monroe University. That's the world I would love to live in. It sounds so logical. And then they just. They beat it like a pinata, right?

[D]

Yeah. For me, for G5S to even have a conversation to get in the playoff, it would have to be like, you're 12.

[B]

It's obvious without an auto bid.

[D]

Yes, you're 12 and, oh, and you're winning. You're. You're winning all your games by multiple touchdowns. And it's like, to them, it might be unfair, but based on, like, the Old Dominion being their best win. As Jamie, you were talking about.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Being their best one. It's like, that's crazy to me. Yeah, Like Old Dominion. When someone says Old Dominion to me, I think about a band. Not a. Not a football team.

[B]

Maybe the freight line.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

It's like, that's nuts. And now we got to deal with those two teams. The thing I do love, though, is, like, now we get into. And I thought, like, one of your points was maybe the best point is like, to get in the College Football Playoff, you have to have a minimum.

[B]

Ranking or a minimum struggle. You have a minimum struggle.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

It's like if I could be the top ranked figure skater in the world and you could be number seven, but if you actually have to go and do all the flips and the triple axels and stuff, and I just kind of skate around on a pond, it doesn't really matter what people think I would be capable of. He actually went and performed under pressure with judges and people looking at him. And maybe the ice wasn't as smooth. Cause the little Zamboni machine didn't even clear it off for you. You had to go out in the trenches and you had to earn it. I'm just sitting over here saying, well, think about what I could do. It doesn't matter what you could do.

[D]

Right.

[B]

That's why, like, I think it's, it's a dumb slant of an argument to just say, oh, I don't think James Madison should be in because they're going to go get killed. Like with SMU last year I thought SMU did belong in the playoff because I thought they earned it through meeting a minimum threshold of strength of schedule. Then they went and got blown out by us, by Penn State and a lot of people said, oh, that's proof they didn't belong. No, it's not. It's just proof they're not as good as Penn State. Yeah, but they belonged in the playoff. Conversely, JMU could go play Oregon razor tight. And it doesn't prove to me my arguments flawed because my argument was never about what they're technically capable of doing in one four quarter game. Cause what I don't think they could do over the span of 12, four quarter games is go to Iowa and go to Penn State and face Indiana and do what Oregon had to do. That's what I don't think they could do.

[D]

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Hello.

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[A]

You said something earlier. I want to talk about the SEC bias. You guys. Earlier you were talking about SEC Big 12. Big 12 is never going to be compared to the SEC. Big 12 is not going to be compared to the Big Ten, Texas Tech. But also, it's like we were on the Outcast and I sat there a couple times in that second half and I'm looking at the camera and I'm like, put Notre Dame in Miami, both in the playoff over Alabama. I think everybody understands that the SEC does carry they carry the bigger stick, they carry the deeper pockets. They have the most depth as far as talent, different rosters and teams in the sec. But that to me, it doesn't mean that we should just accept it when we know that hey, there is there, there very much is SEC bias coming into this equation. Because when they put Notre Dame and Miami in front of the people and all we do is nitpick as much as we can for whatever their resumes are. We talk about their Week one matchup where Miami beat them by three points. We're talking about how badly they beat teams who are inferior to them. But then when Alabama gets in this situation, they're getting whooped right there in the SEC championship game and you're thinking, well what. What was Alabama doing in Week one when Miami beat Notre Dame by three points?

[B]

They were losing to fsu, they were.

[A]

Getting mopped by Florida State.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

And if we're looking at how are they performing late in the season against inferior opponents, they beat South Carolina. JP no disrespect, they beat South Carolina by seven points. They had to hang on to that. They went in so close to being right. They didn't beat LSU very badly when LSU had just fired their coach and Bama was coming off of bye week, I believe. And then they survive Auburn, limp into the SEC championship, get whooped by a team that they had beat by three points earlier in the year. But they got whooped same way byu, same way. We've seen ass whoopings happen. So to me, I'm thinking, I feel like it's justified when everybody's thinking, yo, is Alabama a top team that should be in the college playoff over these other teams that we're arguing about on the bubble? Because we've seen them over the last month and they're clearly wounded going into this thing.

[D]

Do you mind if I ask one question before you go?

[B]

Absolutely. Because what I'm going to do over here while you ask is I'm going to zoom the telescope out.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because I have context. You're not wrong. I just have context to add to it.

[D]

I'm with the telescope thing, too.

[A]

I just. I don't want. I just.

[D]

If Alabama did not play Georgia in the SEC championship and we didn't set a result that is wiped from our brain. Do you believe Alabama should have been in the playoff?

[A]

Yes.

[D]

Okay. So if we're going to go into an SEC championship where there's two other teams that are in the playoffs already that didn't earn the right to play in that game, and we're going to.

[B]

Three.

[D]

What's that? Three. Excuse me. And we're going to judge those. We're going to judge the two teams that have earned the right to play in a game for a championship, and we're going to judge them so much that they are now losing a chance to. Which is the ultimate prize. It's a national championship. How is that fair to Alabama? Because they can lean on eight. They had eight guys out. I think three or four of those are some of their best players on the team. And.

[A]

Yeah, to that I agree. But that to me is where it's like the fact that they got protected with their ninth ranking at large is what blows my mind. Because again, they can still earn their way into the playoff because you move them down to 10, they're still in the playoff in that situation. And to me, it's like, are these championship games, like, what do they even mean to everybody? Because if Bama wins, they all of a sudden we're talking them getting a potential bye week. They get to jump up so many slots.

[B]

That's a reward.

[D]

It's a reward.

[A]

It's like, okay, if they mean. If the championship teams mean nothing for the teams that lose that are already positioned in the College Football Playoff, it's like, all right, this is a dumb argument, but it's like, all right, so Ohio State lost by 3. Why should they lose their at large ranking at still being the number one team? But I know that's just a flip. They're playing for the one seed.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

You're just thinking, move movement. Overall, why are we moving teams? Why? Okay, BYU got whooped again protecting their at large ranking at 11. Why do they have to get moved down?

[D]

If two teams play each other in a championship game and the winner of that game got a buy that's worth.

[B]

Playing for Also, Alabama plays that game knowing, hey, if we win it, yeah, that's what we're playing for. We're playing for a conference title and we're playing to jump up into the by territory. If they lose it, even if they're still in, it's not like they got. They didn't get punished because they end up being one of the only teams in the playoff that ended up having to play five games to win a national title. Like from the end of the regular season, you go play your conference title game. Ole Miss hitting A and M's, not, Oklahoma's, not. They're sitting at home. So if you go play in Atlanta and you lose, it's not like that game didn't happen. Right. It's not like the bumps and bruises didn't happen.

[D]

Exactly.

[B]

Then you don't get a first round buy, so you got four more to go after that. You end up playing five games, which is probably impossible for them to win a national title. But go back to the telescope. If we zoom it out a little bit. They did get smoked by Florida State at the beginning of the year. They did get smoked at the end of the year by Georgia. They did look suspect on the road against South Carolina. They did look. They looked okay, like they covered against lsu. It's just defense had to carry the day. They did have to hold on against Auburn. All that stuff happened. But it's important to note that right before that they had that stretch where they had to play at Georgia with one of the best wins in the season going on the road and winning in Athens and then they had to play Vanderbilt and beat them by double digits. And then they had to go on the road before Missouri was injured and their season was shot and they beat them on the road and then they had to come home and beat Tennessee. So that little four week stretch, that's more impressive than anything anyone went through all year, I think provides a lot of context in terms of injury, in terms of vulnerability down the stretch for why Alabama looked the way they did. And while everyone's asking, well, what were y' all doing while Notre Dame was busy playing two top teams in this, in the beginning of the season, apply that same logic. When Notre Dame was playing that like jelly middle of their season, what was Alabama doing? Bama was in the meat of their schedule. They're in the schedule and playing four of them in a row instead of, there's one here, then a month later there's another one. They went boom, boom, boom, boom. No buy go on the road to Columbia, South Carolina. And like, that's why I remember when we broke that game down and we were just talking about, get out of there by one point. Get out of there by any means necessary because they're beat to death. Get to the bye week however you can. Like, it was just big for me that they won that game, period, having provided the context of what they had just gone through. So you can apply, like, you can apply that logic, but to me you got to apply the whole logic. Like, you got to look at the whole picture. That's why I didn't think it was unfair that they were in the top 10, nine, whatever. You can argue they shouldn't have jumped Notre Dame right before the final Sunday. But my counter would be they already should have been ahead of Notre Dame. So it should have been a moot point, which was kind of my stance all along. I thought it was dumb that they weren't ahead of Notre Dame. I thought it was dumb that Miami wasn't already ahead of Notre Dame, which provided a lot of the fireworks at the end. But we end up arguing about like the merit of teams when you ought to be arguing about how like, mind numbingly stupid the process of the committee was because you find out, oh man, a lot of us actually kind of agree, what are we yelling about? We're yelling about the committee. That's what you're yelling about.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And the way the committee breaks down the games, going for a fourth like, you know, being, dude, I'm telling you.

[B]

Man, you got it.

[D]

It is so ridiculous when they could literally just use logic to explain their answers. And it's, it's simple. Like Miami head to head and common opponents were better than Notre Dame regardless, it was the beginning of the season. At the end of the season, whatever it was, Miami should be number them. That's just what is. They're more deserving regardless if they're better or not. If you just say that, is Notre Dame really throwing this big of a fit where now they're like breaking all ties with the ACC now?

[B]

Do you remember going into conference championship Saturday when they jumped Alabama above Notre Dame? I looked at it and I said, oh well, better late than never. You corrected your flaw. Then Hunter Jurecheck, the committee chair came on camera and Rhys Davis asked him, why did Alabama jump Notre Dame? And that dude started listing the reasons. And one of the things he said was, well, you know, they jumped out to a 17 to nothing lead. Auburn came back to tie the game. So they also blew a 17 to nothing lead. Well, they ran the ball better today. Well, you know, they had a gutsy call on 4th and 2 and I just sat there and I just went, oh no, I can't defend this. He made, they made a move I agree with and yet this sounds so bad. Yeah, I'm going to have to spend all my time criticizing this, even though it correlates with a decision that I agree with. It's the craziest thing the committee does to you.

[A]

Yeah, to me that's where it's like if there's accountability in the college football playoff committee to see how they're breaking all this stuff down. Because again, he's saying all that stuff publicly making, you know, making everybody else feel like, yo, we see through all of this bullshit. We're going to need a better argument. An argument that you provided with Alabama the gauntlet being in the playoff. And to me it's like the logic of how that year ended and everything else, that logic is like, where is that logic? When again they could just move down, they're still in the playoff and they could just move down a slot. But they couldn't do it because Virginia couldn't take care of business for the conference of the acc. So they needed to find a way. We got to figure out a way to get to manipulate this, get these guys together. Hey, we, we value the head to head game. It's like that wasn't it? If Virginia wins, Miami isn't in over Notre Dame.

[B]

I can't believe this is.

[A]

We can't battle For Notre Dame.

[B]

Can't believe this is the world we live in now. Can I float one more theory to you guys? This is a very 50,000 foot theory. So a lot of people are saying that playoff expansion is the way you fix all this. I of course disagree with that. But let's remove the Notre Dame stuff for a second. Think about Vandy, think about Texas, think about Brigham Young, because those are teams that were just on the outside looking in. Or last year it would have been South Carolina and Alabama and Ole Miss. So last year people were saying we need to expand. These teams deserve a shot. I disagreed.

It is my belief that people being mad at the end of the season isn't automatically evidence that something's broken. I think that if you have a playoff that's the proper size, you'll know it because there will be anger at the end of a season because it was exclusive enough to where not everybody could get in. Therefore some people were left outside the door banging on it. But that just means there's still enough scarcity in that valuable thing you have that it means something.

[D]

Right.

[B]

If you expand to the point where no one's mad, it means you got a playoff that's way too big. That's how I feel about that.

[A]

I don't disagree that 12 teams is the proper amount for a playoff. I just think in 2025, where we're currently at with this system, the system was broken this year because of two G5 teams being in. And there was the squeeze out operation to get Notre Dame out when they led them to believe the entire time when all these rankings came out every Tuesday that they were going to be in the College Football Playoff.

[B]

Do you believe this happened to Notre Dame of programs? Because for my entire life growing up in the South, I was taught that the entire system was rigged in the favor of Notre Dame.

[G]

Yeah.

[B]

And now we fast forward to present day and Notre Dame's making the kind of argument that like a Fresno State would have made in the past of man, you're boxing us out. The system's built. It's rigged against us.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Notre Dame. Notre Dame football was the favorite child of college football. Rage against the machine.

[A]

South Bend, Indiana, who also Notre Dame got a clause in there. What was it? The MoU where it's like, if they're a top 12 or 13 next year they have an automatic bid.

[B]

Lost Dellinger MAN over Yahoo. Was just licking that index finger, flipping through papers and realized that. And to his credit, he said, wait a second, no one's reported this and it's just there, but it's in all that boring legalese, and you gotta, like, push the readers way down on the tip of the nose to even read it in there. And he saw that and he reported it, and everyone was like, wait a second. So they're making this argument, they're, like, railing against the operation, knowing this will never happen to them again. Like, mathematically or contractually, they're guaranteed it'll never happen again.

Where did that come from? No one knew that. I had never heard that before this past week.

[A]

Never heard the automatic.

[B]

I never heard that they had negotiated as part of agreeing to whatever current and present or future version of the playoff we're going to have, that they're guaranteed if they're in the top 12, they get a, they get a playoff spot. Or if it expands to 16, like, whatever the size of the playoff is, if they're in that number or higher, they get a spot in the playoff, which has a lot of people up in arms. Honestly, there's a very, very minute chance that that ever comes into play. But ironically, it would have come into play this year. So that. But here's my counter. All right, so you're thinking based on that language, you're thinking, oh, man, if that was in place this year, then that means even though Miami was 10th and Notre Dame was 11th, Notre Dame would have still gotten in. Well, if you believe that the system is built against you, how do you not know the committee wouldn't have just bumped you down another spot? And they wouldn't have just bumped you down to 13 if you believe that. Like, I don't know that the system's rigged against them. I think the system ironically favored them too much in the regular season and had to correct itself, which is corrupt and flawed and stupid, but that's the way it happened. But I don't know that that just automatically gives me all the comfort in the world if I'm a Notre Dame fan.

[D]

And an example of them being comforted is losing their first two games and still being in the top 25. That being like, the first time in however many years what's ever happened, right?

[A]

Like, yeah, that, that process, it kind of did it to themselves. But I, I, to me, it's like, yo, if they would just come out and say the reality of the situation versus trying to make stuff up to where if you just look behind the curtain, you can figure out what happened. To me, I feel like that that would, that would play with more favor from the public eye. You know what I mean, like a few weeks ago when they kind of flipped Bama Notre Dame, they started to put insurance policies in place. Hey, BYU could be collateral damage here if they get Wolf. It's just more like if at any point that came out said, hey, we kind of messed this up, dude from the jump. Like Miami, we do value that.

Yeah.

[B]

It's like if we can get.

[D]

We made a mistake in these.

[B]

If they talk like normal people.

[D]

Yeah, we're sorry. We actually made a mistake. We actually did not put in the head to head or the pit game or any of that. Miami should be over, over Notre Dame because of these reasons. Because I like, we made a mistake. It's like, yeah, we're probably all pissed off. We're like, oh, these guys made a mistake. Who's to say it's not going to happen again? But like, at least they're not hiding behind bullshit like a gutsy call or having point lead four to two guys.

[B]

No other coach made a call to go for it on 4000, just Ryan Grubb in Alabama. Hey, how about just saying this? We changed our mind.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

We could just say we changed. We're 13 humans and as we continue to watch the games, we changed our mind. Yeah, because every other person does that.

[D]

As upset as people want to be that are not the non Alabama fans out there who want to be upset about Alabama being in. Imagine if Alabama lost where they did in the SEC championship and they're out now. What would take place in college football?

[B]

I don't think we would have an SEC championship game.

[D]

I don't think we'd have conference championships at all anymore.

[B]

Not that they, not that people care. Because if you're anti Alabama, you probably don't care about the SEC championship game. I'm just saying there's a lot of other collateral damage that comes along with that. And I don't really even know what it is as I say it. I just know it would have been a mess. Kind of would have been fun to watch purely like voyeuristically wanted to watch.

[G]

The world burn, get popcorn out, sit.

[D]

There and be like, my God, this is crazy.

[A]

Yeah. Because I'm sitting there on selection Sunday when I see Bam at 9. I was like, like, man, I guess it's going to be, is it going to be Notre Dame here? Is it going to be Miami? And you're just kind of sitting there waiting. And then when you see the Miami one come across, I'm like, oh, what did you say going to be?

[B]

If I, if I had Surveillance footage of you as you were watching it. What would I have seen?

[A]

You would have saw. I'm sitting there and I'm like, hang on, sweetheart, I just got to see. Yes, I'll play hide and seek with you here in a second. I just got to see what happens here with my.

[B]

So you have your hand on your child's forehead.

[A]

Yeah. I push her back a little bit, and I see it happen, and I go, oh.

And Charles, like, what? And I'm like, you have no idea what just happened.

[B]

The world just changed. Yeah.

[A]

Sweetheart, I need five minutes on my phone.

[D]

Set the timer.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

Dude, it's. It's nuts. And the way Notre Dame's handling this, like, when they say we're not gonna play in a bowl game, I'm personally of the opinion that the only thing that matters about bowl games is the 15 practices that you get playing the game and the gifts. But playing in the game, there's going to be so many guys that sit out. It's not going to. It's like, really a chance to get scrimmage. It's an exhibition match now, but for.

[A]

Some guys, some seniors, who are never going to play again, I don't disagree.

[D]

You look at the cheerleaders, the band, all that for them to say, oh, shit, like that. The last game, we didn't know it was our last game. We didn't take a moment to sit there and go, you know, kind of look around like, hey, it was a fun ride. I have empathy for all of that.

[A]

Yeah. I feel like it was kind of. It was a weird move, like. I understand. Emotional move in the moment. This is what. What they're standing on. This is where they're going. It probably came more than likely from the administration, their positioning of it. They're going to get torched for it for the rest of time. Especially knowing what we know with the mou, where they're. They're in a. They're in the spot that they want to be in from here on out. You know what I mean? Like, they're not going to. They won't be in this spot again as long as they're in the top 12 or however things get fixed within the process.

[D]

And Clark Lee being like, oh, you guys are not at the boys. Like, no, we love football here.

[B]

We're interested.

[A]

He's part of big conference.

[B]

He's in on it.

[A]

He's in on it. He's doing what he's doing.

[B]

Clark's just playing the role.

[A]

He's doing what he's told.

[B]

Yeah, he's just reading off the sheet that sent it to him.

[D]

He got the text.

[A]

Yeah, it's tough. You know, I was telling a story yesterday when we were in the Big 12 championship, I believe in 09, and we lost that one second game to Texas when they kicked that field goal, they put the second back on the clock. They kicked the field goal. It was known that we were going to the Big ten, you know, after that next year or whatever. So everybody in their mind thought it was like, Big 12 is against us. I still to this day believe Big 12 was against us. But we lose the Big 12 championship. It's us in Texas. Texas wins. They win by that game winning field goal. They go on to play in the national championship against Alabama. Well, the delegation for the Big 12 champion loser, like, where we were positioned when bowl games mattered a lot. It was the Fiesta bowl, got a Big 12 team.

[D]

The.

[A]

Was it the Cotton bowl, the Alamo Bowl? I believe we got delegated all the way down or relegated all the way down to the Holiday bowl, which everybody. Yeah, San Diego, which everybody was pissed off because again, we're in our heads. We're the number two Big 12 team. All these other bowl games that are slotted for Big 12 that we get to get chosen with, you know, the Nebraska fan base. So we were playing, we had Ndamba, Kinsu, Heisman, we had like the number one scoring defense in the country, and we get pushed all the way down to the Holiday Bowl. Bo comes in the team room when all this got decided and asked everybody outright, do you guys even want to play in this fucking game? Like I'll tell you right now, I'll burn the whole thing down if you guys want to. Guys stood up. We decided obviously to play the game whooped Arizona that year, but it was a conversation in that moment to give people an inside look at when you feel like you just get wronged in a situation in that moment of time, which I'm sure, again, Notre Dame, there was no explanation, no nothing. It's like, yo, we've been sitting in the top 10 the entire. Since the college football ranks have come out and now all of a sudden you're just throwing this in here at us in our face. I'm sure they are. We're all in the team room and everything else, very emotional. But yeah, I remember Bo comes in. Do you guys want even playing this fucking game and saying like, I will burn this place.

[D]

How long was that meeting?

[A]

I just don't want to. Probably about 15 minutes because it was emotional. We just, man, we, we felt like they put the second back on this. When reviews, like it wasn't like a reviewable play to go and put a second back on. They put it back on. They kick the field goal and win. You felt like you won the Big 12 championship, but it was like a very emotional next week. And then, you know, bowl games get picked and everything else. And it was, it was very tense, very tight. Like every, everybody was pretty angry how we felt like we got treated getting pushed down to the Holiday bowl back when bowl games were a big time thing.

[B]

That was big time before people adopted out too. So you fast forward 15, 16 years. I could especially understand at Notre Dame now that it's normal to opt out of bowls. Don't take Bulls seriously. You think you just got shafted out of a playoff spot?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, walking in, the default mechanism is, yeah, we're done. We're not participating in this. That's why I said when a million people asked me, what do you think about Notre Dame opting out of a bowl game? Well, I personally hate the concept, but I'm not going to rail against them and act like I don't understand it.

[D]

Yeah. It's the world we live in.

[B]

Yeah. Like I totally get where their mind is.

[D]

You think Jeremiah Love is going to play in that game? No. No shot.

[B]

No.

[A]

You thinking about.

That Ultra? That Ultra, Them bragging rights.

[D]

Michelob Ultra Superior is worth playing for. And we're playing for a Michelob Ultra. We've started this Rock, Paper scissors and right now I'm leading the series eight to six. At one point I was down two.

This would be catastrophic for you if you lose this one.

[A]

Possibly. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoe.

Superior is worth playing for.

[D]

Now it's 8, 7. Now it's 8, 7.

[A]

Down one. Yeah. Down one. Down one.

[D]

Back to the episode.

[G]

Hello.

[D]

Hello.

[G]

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast smart talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?

[E]

My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, if anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah.

[C]

Wow.

[E]

So we are not asking our clients to be the first Experiment on it. We say you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology, is getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things.

[G]

To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com smarttalks.

[C]

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[D]

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means a half day.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment.

[H]

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network spizzy taxes and fees extra c mint.

[D]

Mobile.Com Heisman candidate by the way, should we talk about our Heisman?

[B]

I have a quick question about Will. You tweeted about it yesterday and I don't know Josh, if you can give more insight about it, the whole Utah thing going with that.

[A]

Oh, when I said what could go wrong where it seems like can you.

[D]

Explain that Utah bought a PR or some private equity company bought a piece of Utah is that we're talking about?

[B]

It's essentially, it's essentially Wall street getting involved.

[A]

It's like, this is what it's like.

[D]

A minority fighting against for the Big Ten. Correct.

[B]

As, as a whole. The Big Ten as a whole.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

This is an individual athletic department basically taking an infusion of private equity money.

[A]

Over 500 million.

[B]

Yeah. It's no small, it's no small figure. It is, it's. You can see it coming from a long way away. College football has been horrifically financially mismanaged for a long time. It's no different than the federal government. It's just college football administrators who have been loosely spending money because it's not their money. When you're spending someone else's money you don't really have proper incentive to be frugal with it. And so a lot of different places have dug themselves in holes. And then all of a sudden you have on this other set of rails over congruent to your train, you've got the college football train at large, which has been mismanaged. And now you didn't really have a plan, when all of a sudden you have to pay the players to pay the players. So you have this huge added operating expense that you can't afford because you never positioned yourself. You kept on spending every dime you made. That's why all the facilities look like they do. That's why coaches make 10, $15 million a year. The buyouts are huge because you couldn't afford to make the revenue and sit on it. Because if you were sitting on a mountain of money, it was going to be really bad optics because the public was going to look at it and say, wait a second, you're hoarding hundreds of millions of dollars while also saying you can't afford to pay the players. So they kept spending the money as it came in the door and spending on all sorts of ridiculous things. So now they're in a bind. Not just Utah. Utah just happens to be the first one to do it. And they're looking into the future and they're looking at projections and saying, yeah, we're just headed even more in the red. We need help. Private equity comes in and they help. Now, most college football fans won't be affected by this. They'll see logos on the jerseys, they'll see branding on the fields. And that's whatever the real question I have becomes, who's making decisions for Utah Athletics now? Or if it comes time to fire a coach and hire a new coach, who's making the call on firing the coach and hiring the coach? Because we're really in the interest of what's best for business. Right?

[D]

Right.

[B]

And if it's just your business, it's your business. But all of a sudden, if someone's bought a in Utah Football or Utah Athletics, they want a return on their investment. And they want to say. Cause they're paying for a seat at.

[A]

The table, which is what essentially is happening with Utah. Because where we're at, it's like, say you have this $500 million in a private equity, like you have all this money, you want to back it. Like we've been seeing, whether it's Cody Campbell down at Texas Tech, whatever it is, the thought was, we'll donate to the NIL Collective like, make a donation. They got a lot of money backing them. What's happened at Utah is they've stood up another LLC to where now this 500 million, this private equity company has bought, like, a minority stake in the team to where they will be decision makers for making money. Are they going to be involved with making these big decisions? Now you have a.

[D]

We'll never see the fine print.

[A]

There's like a new. Yeah, there's like a new master who's now at the seat of the table with all this money coming in. They now own a part of Utah athletics. They're not like, donating, like, hey, our group wants to make our football team better. Here's a shitload of money. Now they are minority owners, like, in Utah football.

[B]

Can't say.

[D]

Just getting that small breakdown. It feels like there's no good outcome.

[A]

You saw Dillingham yesterday. He was doing. I saw him in an interview and they were kind of asking about it. He's like, dude, it's a mess, man. As far as financials, as far as money, entertainment, the media that is booming, it's going to continue to boom, like, very popular. But as far as all the structures and process in college football, he's like, it's an absolute mess, man.

[D]

So I.

[A]

He's like, we'll handle it the way we handle each new thing that comes in. He's like, but it's a mess, man.

[D]

If you're looking at like a Utah, an asu, these. These brands of college football that their logo doesn't have, like, a bunch of people that have left, made a billion dollars, are donating a lot of money to Nil to be competitive. What are the choices they have then to take on a private equity group?

[B]

Oh, I'll tell you. You need to collectively bargain with the athletes. Athletes.org. i mean, I sound like a spokesperson right now, but it just so happens that as we're recording, it's Tuesday, right? It's Wednesday. Two days ago. Two days ago, out in Las Vegas, they go ahead.

I just wanted to know.

[D]

As soon as you open it up, I started to get flashbacks.

[B]

I just look at. I just follow your eyes, and then your eyes go down there.

[A]

It's.

[B]

Oh, man, he's looking at his crotch again. That must mean it.

[D]

But go ahead, players.org you've got to.

[B]

Make yourself financially viable in the future. Right now, it's such a train wreck because people are trying to figure every which way around collectively bargaining with athletes. I'm not taking a stance on this. I'm kind of old school in it myself. I'm just saying you've tried the congressional approach over and over again. Just last week, the SCORE act fell on its face in Congress again. And that is basically to dumb that down. We're just normal people, understand what's happening here. They really want a way for Congress to step in to make laws that say, all right, college football, you're free to govern yourself now. You can limit transfer portal movement, you can limit what nil is. You can do all of that because we're giving you the power legally. Well, that keeps falling on its face. So that's never going to pass the legal barometer that it needs to to be signed into law. At least it doesn't look that way. The other option is to collectively bargain with the players and to centralize that. Take it out of the hands of the teams and the leagues and centralize it. This is very, very clearly gaining traction. Athletic directors are on board with it. University presidents are on board with it. Some of the most influential voices within those two realms are on board with it. And I really think over the next 612 months you're going to see traction on this. And then where I'm interested because that stuff is boring. What I'm interested in down the road is do we ever get to a place where that same principle is applied to media deals? None of the networks really want that, none of the leagues really want that. But collectively it would make everyone a lot more money if college football's media rights structure reflected that of the NFL. There is no AFC East TV package. There is just the NFL, the AFC and the NFC. But underneath the NFL's umbrella, that is a media rights deal that is sold by the NFL. And NBC's got a piece and Fox has got a piece and CBS has got a piece and the league kind of dictates here's the players got a piece. Yes. That I think is the direction we're headed in college football. It's just we're like a pinball going through the machine right now to get there. It's not just let's flow down the river out into the ocean. It's we're a pinball and we're going all over the place.

[D]

So if that, if that takes place and that happens and there's a CBA for college football and it becomes this like, oh, this is a big umbrella company, what happen these private equity companies that have bought pieces?

[B]

I don't know. I don't know cuz I'm not smart enough in that world to know. I just know we need that guy.

[A]

It's above our pay grade.

[B]

That's what we need.

[D]

We need your live show, boy.

[A]

Oh my God, that cat from the live show, man, I was breaking down.

[D]

And I was like, I was like confident.

[B]

I was like, we were, we were getting nervous. We're just tapping each other's legs. You want to take this one? Nope.

[A]

I'll tell you what, man, I, I like, I love that the players are getting paid, but I also, we're in such a d. We're in such dangerous territory. Like, even for the athletes too, with all this money that comes in and everything else happened and just, man, when, when we were in high school, the whole thought process was like, I'm just saying, like, think about the commitment, the dedication, the work ethic, everything just to get the opportunity to get a scholarship on thinking that you're, that's the way out to get to the NFL.

[D]

NFL.

[A]

And all of the foundational values and cultural things that you have to establish as a high schooler, but you're very raw as a high schooler, learning all of these values, learning all these traits and characteristics. And then they get molded and developed and hardened in college to where whenever those first big paychecks come in, in the NFL, it can get guys off the tracks. Like, obviously you see guys fall off, but at least you're equipped. I know when the money started coming in for myself. It's like.

A lot of guys know in their head they have to stay very principled in their approach and commitment all year round to keep getting and keep getting it, tapping into this well and keep getting paid and the life and all the bells and whistles that come with it. Now it's like all that's just getting chopped when all this money sinking into these 17, 18 year old kids when they're going. Because now it's not even about this work ethic, this sickening gritty approach. When you're in high school, it's about picking up your phone, looking at how many likes you have on Instagram, looking at what deals your agent might be getting you. Because now you have an agent who's telling you all these things. You might not have to worry about certain principal things that you're establishing, whether it's workout routines and everything else. Because it's like, who's going to pay me the most money? Like, it used to be you owe the process everything and the process owes you nothing in return. Now these kids are getting paid for a process they haven't even established going into college football. And it's just, I hate it for the athletes because the development that happens that isn't going to be taken serious as much, near as much anymore at the college level is what bothers me about those things because I do enjoy that they're getting paid. It's what we wanted, right? But all this, how it's getting pushed all the way down now we're talking about college is going to be looking like the NFL. That's, that's a big fix because we need all this regulation to come in and help everybody out with all the money floating around everywhere. But in doing that, it just the way it massages the mentality of these college kids. Now at the high school level I'm like, like.

[B]

But in your cba, let's say it's structured properly because I had long conversations about this last week because I have those concerns as well. Most people who love college football have those concerns. You worry about the detriment of the product when 16 and 17 year old kids already bank high six low seven figures coming in like it adversely affects the compass, the north star of motivation, of process oriented, of drive, of everything. All right, so think about this, all right? If we have a CBA in college, your player reps are probably not going to be freshmen, they're going to be upperclassmen. Those upperclassmen are in the position to be a player rep probably because they've proven themselves and paid the price. If you have a CBA in college football, I think you have a pay scale that's very much correlated to like a rookie pay scale versus a second contract, third contract in the NFL. Not apples to apples, but very similar to where if I'm a 17 year old kid, if we have a CBA, that also means that we enter into a world where there are enforceable laws within il, which means it's not just Wild west pay for play anymore. Like yeah, you're going to make money and it's been collectively bargained. But you know, if you're a freshman committing to Nebraska, you're not making nearly as much as you're going to make. If you succeed and you play and then you're still a sophomore on that roster and then you're a junior and then there's this huge bonus that kicks in third and fourth years on the same roster because you've proven yourself and you're under a collectively bargained umbrella where you know the big payoff is down the road, where you have all the incentive in the world. To keep chasing instead of already having a gigantic bag in your lap the moment you step on campus.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah. I appreciate the way you broke that down. Because I sit there and I'm like, we're hearing guys close to the program just be like, man, this dude program busing. This dude's dumb for signing a two year deal with Nil. And I'm just thinking, jesus Christ, I cannot believe we are in this world.

[D]

There's two chains of thought there, though. Like, when you're breaking down all the things, I agree with it, like, the process owes you nothing. All the. The work ethic. If you're being coached hard by your coaches, like, buy into a program going to a school because that's the school you want to be at and they just hosted you the best. You're like, this is where I'm gonna take my next four to five years. Like, that is clearly missed. But I can't sit back and not just like, for these kids. If I. If we're in these positions, like, yeah, you want to game the system as much as possible to put as much money in your pocket as possible. And if it's signing a one year deal as opposed to a two year deal, like, I can't get mad at a player for doing those things with the cba, like, I would love for a CBA to take place because then there's an umbrella. There's only a certain amount of money you can spend, each team can spend on their players. And I love the idea of, like, you have freshmen, like a rookie, and the more you work and the better you do and the more accolades you have, the more you'll get paid. Because just on a way simpler level, from being able to play in the NFL and go to the lunchroom and sit there in the morning and Georgia and Alabama are out to play, and I have five Georgia teammates and three Alabama teammates, and they're in their lunchroom arguing about their team and their love they have for their team. I don't see that in the next four or five years, if it continues the same way, staying that way in that lunchroom where it's like, kids have, like, absolute pride and where they played at and they're like, like Nebraska, like, no one's gonna have that anymore. And that's where, like, that's where college football, I think, is at its best. Because in a unique way, like when people gamble, it's like they're only gonna want to gamble on their team for the most part, because they're so invested and in Love with that team.

[B]

When you played for the Tennessee Titans, who was your employer?

[D]

The Titans.

[B]

Was the NFL your employer or was words the Titans your employer?

[D]

The Titans were my employer.

[B]

So in this world, I don't think that's the way it'll be structured. I don't think you'll be employed by Ole Miss or the sec. I think you'll be employed by. Fill in the blank name of whatever entity they form. And that is where the authority will be, but that's also where the risk will be. That's where the finances are handled. That's where private equity goes. By the way, in case you're wondering, like to answer your question, instead of trying to glom onto an individual athletic department, private equity will go to whatever that entity is, and that's where that cash infusion will happen, and they'll be able to afford the operating costs. And at that point, University of Georgia, University of Nebraska, University of Arizona, you guys are good. We're handling it. But here are the rules you're going to abide by, and here's the amount of money you can afford to pay your players. Handle your salary cap accordingly. By the way, this doesn't get rid of nil. It just repurposes NIL for what it was supposed to be, which is the same way it is in the NFL, which is. Pat Mahomes is a superstar, so he goes out and gets all the endorsement deals he wants. What's not happening is some guy who got rich beyond his wildest dreams, who happens to be a Kansas City Chiefs fan, went to Pat Mahomes in free agency and said, I'm going to pay you $30 million to come and play for us, because that's a competitive disadvantage, whether you think it's fair or not, or should be. Well, if you live in the world of the NFL, you're going to to operate by their rules. And if you live in this world in the future, if it's collectively bargained, that means laws can be enforced. NIL is not going to be what it is right now. So guys will still make nil money, but it'll be guys who legit deserve to make nil money. And most guys will make their money based off of, for lack of a better term, their salary. I think we're very, very much closer to that than people realize, Jimmy. There's a lot of movement happening on that front this week as we speak. There's a lot of movement happening.

[A]

Need the urgency. Need the urgency.

[D]

See? Yeah, but like, I know that you're there. There's a lot of things that we want to fix. There is also the fan in me of college football and where it's at right now. Where there's gonna be so many documentaries with the last four or five years.

[B]

Yeah. We're in one that I'm kind of.

[D]

Just sitting here like I'm really enjoying. Yeah. Watching all these things unfold and all the chaos.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

It's just, hey, fix the ACC tiebreaker.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

Fix the acc.

[B]

That was the butterfly.

[D]

Lets everything led to everything.

[A]

Army, Navy.

[D]

Do we want to talk about the brackets? Do we actually want to do that? Because it really comes down to we're going to talk about all these games on future episodes. I think we went long enough where.

[B]

I'm not going to take Tulane to win at all. So that's a spoiler. Like that's a tease. And I'm not going to take JMU to win it all. I think Miami A and M is the best game of the first round.

[A]

Notre Dame beats both them.

[B]

I think the difference. Can I just say one more thing?

Let's play.

[D]

Yeah. Who does Notre Dame. Let's play the game. Who does Notre Dame beat? We'll start with jmu. Raise your hand if you think Notre Dame beats jmu.

[B]

Think about Joe.

[D]

Josh does not think so.

[B]

They probably give him a good fight. Probably give him a good fight. James Madison was the whole president man.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

When I look at this bracket, the two teams that I'm most excited to see is Ole Miss and Texas.

[A]

Ole Miss and Texas Tech.

[D]

Yeah. I'm excited to see Ole Miss because of all the stuff that took place with Lane Kiff and now how they come out as the coaches are going, going back to Ole Miss to coaching those games. But Lane Kiffin is staying at LSU and then Texas Tech. We've had so much conversation on this show about how the Big 12 is not as respected as much as the Big Ten or the SEC and Joey Maguire being able to assemble a team that's, you know, more expensive than anybody else and for them to play the way they have, it's like how good are they really when we go against these Big Ten, the SEC teams and I'm excited to see how they play out.

[A]

They'll get to find out against the tuned up, pissed off Oregon team that remembers this month very well from last year and they're going to get a tune up game with jmu. It'd be tough to beat old Dan Lanning.

[B]

Can I confide in you guys? Lanning's not watching because he doesn't have a game this week. So Lanning won't watch this.

[A]

He's not going to be tuned in.

[B]

So this is going to be some big time rat poison. No one is set up better than Oregon here. I would rather have Oregon's spot in this bracket than anyone else's. They get the easiest first round matchup at home. They then get teed up to go play Texas Tech. Which out of the other three teams in the semifinal or in the quarterfinal, from a roster standpoint, they match up the best against. Probably. But look at the way it advances. Think about talent rosters. Think about who athletically could match Oregon. The three that I would circle the most are on the other side of the bracket. Miami, A and M. Georgia, Ohio State. Four of them. Four of them are on the other side of the bracket. And the soonest you would meet them is in the national title. The most you'll have to defeat is one of them in the national title game. Oregon. I hope they don't embarrass me because I'm sky high on Oregon.

[A]

I am too. Man. And potential rematch of him.

[D]

And I know it's like we said, it's hard to beat a team twice when we saw it in the SEC Championship.

[B]

But if. But let's just be real. You already know what Kurt Signetti said about Dan Lanning and his family the first time around. If they beat them again. I don't want to get ahead of myself. I know I am. If they beat them again in a semifinal, there's no limit to what that guy could text you. Yeah.

[A]

There's not.

[B]

Man. And we hate that.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

We don't want college football to be like that. That's not what we want this game to be.

[A]

No.

[D]

We have Cincinnati being Oregon again. Like, does Dan Lanning continue to coach?

[B]

Say that again. Because the sound bite we cut down the road is going to be great. And you said Cincinnati. Say Indiana.

[D]

Sorry. If Indiana beats Oregon again. Does Dan Lanning continue to coach?

[B]

That's something you.

[A]

If Big Nettie beats Laning again.

[D]

Right.

[A]

Does Lanning have to take his wife?

[B]

I thought we were gonna leave an unspoken.

[D]

I thought we were.

And you met her. She's a nice lady.

[A]

She is a nice lady.

[D]

We know about Dan's game.

[A]

What?

[D]

The Valentine's Day, the card. The whole thing.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Man.

[D]

So I would hate to see a man like Dan Lanning never coach again. It seems like if he loses to Indiana.

[B]

I had Bama winning.

[A]

You got Bama winning at all very much a past.

[D]

Very much a past tense. Yeah.

I know, I know. It's who I picked preseason. Am I sticking with Oregon? Yes. You'll find out later.

[B]

Wow. Do we know where these. Where these next round games are going to be? Like, where would Indiana and the winner of Oklahoma Bama be? Is that Pasadena?

Where would Oregon play? Texas Tech.

Where will the rematch of Ole Miss in Georgia take place?

All right. Rock Stadium.

[A]

Miami.

[B]

Yep.

[D]

Which one did you want, Ohio State or Indiana?

[B]

Indiana.

[D]

Indiana's Rose Bowl.

[B]

That's in Pasadena. Okay.

[D]

Ohio State's at and T stadium in Texas and Georgia is playing in New Orleans.

[B]

Sugar Bowl. So Oregon, if they go on to play in the national championship, will play in Hard Rock Stadium the second round and then a couple of weeks later in the national title because Hard Rock rotates in for the quarterfinals and the national title. Interesting. Miami could play a home game in the national title. Could, could or they could not escape the first round. You know, either way.

[D]

And that just makes Wilcon go Notre Dame.

[B]

Everyone who loses in this bracket, you just need to have the tweet ready to be fired.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Notre Dame would have been such a better replacement.

[A]

No doubt.

[D]

Before we do true classic game of the week. Heisman. Who's your Heisman right now? The four that sit there futures clump. Did anybody who picked a future Heisman guy. They make it? Yes. Who's that? Jeremiah Love. Oh, yeah. Will had Lenora Sellers, rjp. Jesus, John Matier, who actually was doing well till he got hurt.

[B]

I deserve half a win for this. He led.

[A]

He did well for the first few.

[B]

Weeks until his thumb got cut off. He's playing with four fingers and he's still in the playoff. Imagine what he could have done with five.

[D]

Imagine a couple weeks off getting healthy.

[B]

That thumb finally gets figured out doing dexterity exercises.

[A]

It's going to be in the sea Bama getting healthy.

[D]

Who do you have one of the highest men in your mine?

[B]

Diego Pavia. What do the odds say?

[D]

Actually, they took it off now officially.

[B]

Because Fernando, Was it Mendoza? Minus 3000. I just don't.

[A]

Minus 3000.

[D]

It doesn't make any sense because. Zero sense.

[B]

The game that catapulted him was a 13 to 10 game. Yeah, it's not like he rained touchdowns all over the place.

[A]

One touchdown.

[B]

He took one of the hardest hits of the season. Got right back up and cut one of the great postgame promos in the modern era, buddy.

[D]

That guy's a robot.

[B]

I will grant you that.

[A]

He might have won the heisman with the.

[D]

He had a good. You starting to sound like the playoff committee.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

He had a great third down conversion, though. I'm sure Diego has as well.

No, no, I know you. I know where you stand on who the Heisman should be, but I think it's so clearly Diego Pavia.

[B]

I agree with you.

[D]

And when I tweet that and everyone's coming at my head how Fernando Mendoza and then Jacob Rodriguez, he just gets to throw it in there, I'm like, yeah, I kind of wish he was going to New York, but he's not going to win. Yeah.

[F]

Yeah.

[D]

It's like the only two people that you would argue is Fernando Mendoza and Diego Pavia. People want to say Julian Zane, but I think there's enough holes there with who he was throwing to, you know, that whole thing. But Diego Pavia stats are. His throwing sets are better than Fernando Mendoza. And also you have to add on almost 900 yards of rushing and nine more touchdowns. Like, if you're evaluating Mendoza, you're saying, who is the best player in college football and who does. Who does more for their team than anybody else?

[A]

Who keeps it high and tight?

[D]

Diego does not keep it high and tight. Who does more for their team than anybody else?

[B]

It's him.

[D]

Diego Pavia.

[B]

It's him.

[A]

Yeah, it's Diego. I do. I need.

[D]

I need that speech through the air.

[A]

Fernando has more yards.

Fernando has more yards and touchdowns through the air, correct?

[D]

Yes.

[B]

Like, I think he was like, no.

[D]

No, Fernando Mendoza doesn't have 3,000 yards thrown.

He has five more touchdowns passing, I believe. Five more touchdowns, extra games. But Diego has more passing yards.

[A]

Who is the last High. Who was the last quarterback to win a Heisman that didn't throw for 3,001 in 2010?

[D]

Use a mic, dude.

[B]

What?

[D]

Use the mic. Oh, it is Cam.

[A]

Cam Newton was the last quarterback to.

[D]

Win a Heisman without throwing for 3,000 yards.

[A]

And the only reason was because he ran for 1400 yards and 20 touchdowns.

[B]

Well, that and Auburn picked up guys from the playground to be, what, wide receivers for him that year.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So Cam, a little bit different. A little bit Apple storage is there? Just a little bit.

[D]

Yeah. People want to hate all this, you.

[A]

Know, I think it's Diego Pavia, too. I looked Diego Pavia in the eyes last week and I said, he's like, what do you think? I was like, I think it's yours right now. But for Menando, Mendoza goes out there and throws for like 275 or 300 and a couple touchdowns. He probably needs two touchdowns at least I could see where Fernando. Where the public gets on Fernando. But that didn't happen. So I would. I feel like I'd be lying. I would have lied to Diego. If Fernando Mendoza wins this Heisman and it was the Ohio State game where he hit him for one touchdown, one interception, and then a nice third down play, but.

[D]

Right.

[B]

Raise your hand.

[A]

Fernando Mendoza's a great player though. Keeps it eye and tight. I do enjoy, I love every. Every interview. He does need him on the bus.

[B]

Raise your hand if you have a Heisman vote. We can't be trusted.

[D]

True. You're right.

[B]

Yeah. We can't be trusted to have a Heisman vote.

[D]

How do you not have it? Not have the vote.

[A]

How do you get a Heisman vote?

[B]

That's a great question, William. I don't know because I feel like.

[A]

If anybody would be close to it, it'd be you. Out of us three.

[B]

Well, I haven't asked for one. Apparently you need to beg, and that's not something.

[D]

I'm going to get a Heisman vote, right?

[B]

You do get one. Yes. So we do know Heisman voters.

[A]

I'll beg.

[B]

Oh, no. True story. A couple of years ago, a couple of years ago, I had. I had a production assistant on my, on my staff that was cutting video and we were having this conversation and I was just kind of laughing because I've never been upset about it. I've just thought it's kind of weird that like the way the Heisman votes are handed out and she just echoes from back, wait, I have a Heisman vote? And we all looked at her, we said, do what now? She goes, yeah, I have a Heisman vote. It was at that point that I lost faith in the process. Oh, yeah.

[A]

System's not broken though, the Heisman system.

[B]

Very much so.

On Sunday, I believe. Wait, were you trying to cook the vote over here?

[D]

I was just going to ask a couple people a couple things.

[B]

Okay, how many? How many?

[D]

Because I was just always making sure that if you've won a Heisman, you.

[B]

Do get a vote.

[D]

You get a vote. So I texted Marcus and I was like, do you have a vote? And when he says yes, I'm say, who'd you vote for?

[B]

And he says, derek too. It's illegal.

[D]

Yeah, I could ask Derek.

[B]

Illegal? Well, they try and make it sound like it's punishable by banishment to Guantanamo if you reveal your vote.

[A]

All right, so the vote's already in.

[B]

Yep, I guess.

[D]

So Diego lost, which is.

[A]

Oh, it's over.

[D]

Man, I feel like if there's anybody to be mad, it's Vanderbilt.

[B]

Yeah. No playoff, no Heisman, no play, no Joe Moore either.

[A]

Vandy doesn't get to partake in any of the sec.

[B]

Nope.

[A]

No SEC favor.

[B]

And they showed up. They showed up. They parked out front, they got a good spot. They went and knocked on the door and they hear the music inside and they know someone's home. No one ever comes to the door.

[A]

I told the fuck off, which is insane.

[B]

Oh, that's a little strong.

[A]

There's Mitch.

[D]

Hey, guess what, though. Every Saturday's got games. Only one fits just right. This is the true classic game of the week.

[A]

This true classic game of the week is brought to us by the one and only True Classic. Their new Curve Pima shirts. Fellas, Christmas season is upon us. Shop for the boys, shop for the holidays. Find True Classic at Amazon and Costco, Sam's Club and Target nationwide or [e-mail] Bussin look good, feel good, play good. Here's your true classic game of the week.

[G]

Hello.

[D]

Hello.

[G]

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast smart talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?

[E]

My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, if anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah.

[C]

Wow.

[E]

So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things.

[G]

To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com smarttalks.

[C]

If a Lenovo computer for your business is on your holiday list, don't shop around, just go directly to the source lenovo.com it's your last chance to get exclusive deals on the PCs you want for your business, like the ThinkPad X914 Aura Edition and Yoga 7i 2in1. So avoid. Avoid all that shopping chaos and price comparing and just go directly to the source lenovo.com where PCs are up to 35% off that's lenovo.com.

[F]

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[D]

At Navy America's game okay, Navy's favorite at six and a half. The total points in the game is 37 and a half. 50 stars, 13 bars. These colors don't run. I think it's unpatriotic for me to even sit here and say this team's better than the other. Even though Navy was in a three way tie for their conference championship and army was six and five.

So I would pick Navy to cover six and a half. However, I'm going to take the over 37 and a half.

[A]

William.

37 and a half.

Let me go defense. I'll go under 37 and a half.

[D]

Okay, I like that.

[A]

Let me just fight for the under this weekend with these two teams.

[B]

I agree with you. Under 37 and a half has always been a safe play in the service academy games. Even though it's baked into the number, it's not baked enough into the number. You know I told you I went back and reviewed the outcast and the actual hardest image from that altcast was we were on air when they played the anthem and you could see us and someone like took a picture from the ground up and we all got hands over hearts and Old Glory's flying in the background. I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little misty eyed looking at that. We did that broadcast for our country. Yeah, this game is being played for our country.

[D]

There's a lot of things that bustin with the boys doesn't do for their country. We believe in this country. I believe in these men that have taken the field.

[A]

We're not at war. Yes, we're not overseas. There's not a lot of things busting with the boys wouldn't do for this country.

[D]

But yeah, we're always in a war.

[A]

That's true.

[D]

Every day's a war. That all cast was a war.

[A]

The trolls in Pate's comment section, that's a war going on.

[D]

There are wars that take place every single day.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Whether you're gonna answer the bell or.

[B]

Not, I wish you could have my seat. Because the moment you said we're not at war yet, JP has been scrolling his phone for 10 minutes, hasn't said a word, and he just went, every day's a war.

[D]

All right, so under, under, over.

[B]

Yep.

[D]

Fun fact. This game's taking place in what, Baltimore? Correct. Last time they were in Baltimore, army broke a 12 game losing streak. So if that's the case, if Army's gonna win this game, it'll be an under game. So it looks good for you guys.

[B]

We feel good, feel great, feel wonderful, feel gruntiful. Feel gruntiful.

[D]

Big hugs, Tiny kisses.

[I]

Please subscribe photo 21 plus and present in select states. For Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 and present in D.C. opt in required bonus issued as non withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply including any token expiration and max wager amount. See [e-mail] gambling problem call 1-800-gambler or visit rg-help.com, call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org chattonconnecticut hope is here gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts, visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland, call 1-877-8-HOPE NY or text hopeny467-369 in New York must be 21 plus and present in select states. For Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C. first online real money wager only five dollar first deposit required. Bonus issued as non withdrawable bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See [e-mail] gambling problem call 1-800-gambler or visit fanduel.com rg call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8-HOPE NY or text HOPE NY in New York.

[C]

If a Lenovo computer for your business is on your holiday list, don't shop around. Just go directly to the source lenovo.com it's your last chance to get exclusive deals on the PCs you want for your business, like the ThinkPad X914, Aura Edition and Yoga 7i 2in1. So avoid all that shopping chaos and price comparing and just go directly to the source lenovo.com where PCs are up to 35% off. That's Lenovo do.

[H]

Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first.

[B]

There blast 1.

[H]

Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.

[F]

Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all in one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, eCommerce, HR. Fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you try Odoo for free at odoo. Com. That's odoo. Com.

[B]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.