Josh Pate (31:28)
Let's move on. This is a very dangerous game, but it's a game that we choose to play every single spring. It's a fact. Some of you are going to be better and some of you are going to be worse this year. Was that a question? Bradley, did you have a question for me? No, I thought. I thought Bradley was asking a question from the control room. Sorry. So this time last year, we looked at a lot of teams. We just kind of threw a dart at the board. You going to be better this year? You're going to be worse. This year we did four teams per show. I thought we could start that tonight. And I want to start With Miami. Is Miami going to be better or worse this year than they were last year? Boy, it's tough to be better, isn't it? They went to the national championship game, they were at midfield with under a minute to go down six with a chance to win the national championship and then they didn't. And it's really tough to get back. You got to start from scratch. So it may shock you to hear me say I think Miami's team's going to be better this year than they were last year. We were down there last week, got a good look at them. There is no shortage of skill, of size, of athleticism on either side of the line of scrimmage. There's just a shortage of known commodities. But Miami has transitioned into one of these reload instead of rebuild type programs. They tasted it last year, but they haven't really accomplished it yet. So you don't have to worry about any of the usual complacency creeping into the program. Quarterback's an upgrade. That's no disrespect to Carson Beck. I'm just telling you Darian Mensah is a baller and he will fit very, very well down there. I also think the wide receiver room is good with the upside of incredible. And I think second year defensively under Heatherman will pay a lot of dividends. So look, I think they'll be out for blood this year. They made it to the national title game last year and yet I think this team this year will be better than it was last year. Now this is not, this is not a record prediction segment, but I will tell you like I think Miami is going to be a one loss team max in the regular season. So I actually do think they'll improve their regular season record. Although saying one thing doesn't always mean the other. Next up, another playoff team, Oklahoma. Hmm. Is Oklahoma going to be better this year or worse this year than they were last year? This was a playoff team last year. Ten wins in the regular season. Now, I have not been to Norman this spring yet I have not watched them practice. I've only got to go on feel at the moment. My feel, my instinct is to very, very slightly lean worse this year than they were last year. Very slight lean because of the, like I said, I haven't seen them. And number two, I think tight end has been transformed on this team and I think the running game, kind of like with Alabama, couldn't get worse. So it's got to get better. I will blindly trust their defense and I will blindly Trust that at the very worst it'll be a top 20 unit. Jon Mater is returning, so we have experience at the quarterback spot. I like their wide receiver room, so I just listed off a bunch of reasons why I would feel good about them. Why am I saying I think they'll be slightly worse than they were last year? Well, it's just because I think about range of outcome and, you know, people's expectation of this year will be based against the backdrop of what they did last year. Right. Most people's minds work that way. Mine does too. I'm not so sure. We didn't see Oklahoma towards the top end of the range of outcome last year, even with the quarterback injury. I think their range of outcome, you know, plot point, it was pretty high up. So my instinct on them is somewhat blind because I haven't seen them. And it's going more off the law of averages than it is not liking a portion of their team or anything like that. The schedule is tough again, but it was tough last year. So, you know, schedule is not going to be the thing. I circle with them and say, man, how are they going to overcome this? Because that would be ignoring evidence like less than a calendar year ago of them doing just that. So I'll lean slightly down on Oklahoma. I got time to change my mind on that. Let's go all the way to Washington. So Washington last year went 8 and 4. They went from 6 and 7 to 8 and 4 to fill in the blank in year three under Jed Fish. I lean that they will be better this year than they were last year. But there are big questions on this team and I got to figure out how do I process portal and attrition now the attrition is RB1 is gone, wide receiver one is gone. The portal thing is the quarterback tried to leave and didn't. I don't know what that does to a team's dynamic. I have. It may not. It may be totally irrelevant. And really only the people inside that building can know that until they play games. Then we'll all know that. But the other thing is Jet Fish knows what he's doing. I trust that. I also think that the talent roster overall has improved. So there is somewhat of a mirage that happens to us sometimes in college football predicting. And that is you look at a piece of paper and it says, boy, Washington lost some players. Boy, they got to replace some production. But not all lost production or roster churn is created equal. Sometimes you have churn, but the players you backfill with in the aggregate or just overall are better players. And you could case by case make exceptions to the rule. But overall, I just think Washington's roster will be better this year than it was last year, which is no guarantee of anything. But if I got to lean one way or the other, coming off an eight and four year, I'm going to lean that. They're better now. The schedule is tough. They got to go to USC early October, they go to Nebraska, Penn State comes in there. They got Indiana and at Oregon to end the year back to back. So maybe the record's the same, but it's a better team. Maybe that's the way it works out. And I also wanted to go to Arizona State right quick. So two years ago, Yeah, a couple years ago Arizona State was, it really looked like they were trending towards, you know, like sustained playoff caliber run. But what did Kenny Dillingham keep doing? He kept talking about the portal. He kept talking about how they need people to step up, Mitch. They need you to open your wallet. Got to do it. And it was because he knew what was happening around him. He knew what was happening in Lubbock. But that's not the only place that Arizona State's getting outspent. And so two years later, if I got an entire starting offensive line gone and I got four of five on the defensive line that I'm having to replace and I can't backfill those spots the way I want to, then I got to think that maybe I'm trending down a little bit. And I got to think coming off an eight and four year, maybe the FanDuel over under being at six and a half is right. And maybe I hit the over, Maybe I go 7 and 5, but I'm just a little bit worse than I was last year. Jordan Tyson off to the NFL. Relik Brown gone to Texas. I mentioned the line of scrimmage. It's just not a conveyor belt like you have at the University of Texas of ready made, equal or upgraded options. That's not the way it's working there right now. I don't, you don't have to take my word for it. Like the head coach out there has mentioned this several times. So Sam Levitt to Cutter Bowley, that's the transition we're making at quarterback. There are a lot of places that absent Kenny calling into the show and us putting him on speaker and him personally vouching for these positions, I've got to assume at the best are washes. More likely they're slight downgrades. And I'm just going to assume that their performance level correlates with that. That is the most diplomatic way possible that I could say that you're. You're headed in the wrong direction. It's the most diplomatic way I can do it. They're watching us in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. If this posted is any indication. They're watching us in Evergreen, Alabama and Carlsbad, California. Thank you guys so much. Make sure you are subscribed to the channel whether you're watching live or you're watching the replay or listening tomorrow morning on your drive to work. I appreciate it. JD Hit us up. Not Pickell. No, this was not JD Pikel. This was JD Corey. JD Though, hit us up and he said, what's with the Twister poster on your set? My daughter asks me every time we watch your show. It's a great question. So Twister is one of my top five favorite movies of all time, but it's easily the most formative movie of my life. This movie came out when I was a local youth in Georgia. This movie came out right smack dab in the middle of an era of my childhood where SportsCenter and the weather Channel were basically the only things that I was watching every day. And I was introduced to the concept that storm chasing existed before Twister came out, but when Twister came out. It's one of two movies that I've seen three times in theaters. You want to guess the other one, Jesse? Actually, I've seen three movies three times in theaters. Titanic was one, of course, Twister was the other. And the third was a very, very underrated film in the Denzel Washington library called Deja Vu. I loved it. I went and saw it three times. I don't care. I would go on to see the fourth if I could afford it, but I couldn't at the time. So Twister is on the set because it is the most formative film of my life. I love it for three reasons. Well, four. One, it's about storm chasing. Two, the cast is absolutely phenomenal. Rest in Peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rest in peace, Bill Paxton. The soundtrack is insane and really, really meshes well with the overall vibe. You got Shania Twain dropping a banger, Lisa Loeb dropping a deep cut banger, Goo Goo Dolls, Van Halen just going off. Unbelievable. And thirdly, it captures the culture of storm chasing, which I know 99.9% of you cannot relate to, but I can, because I have lived that life. Now, I readily admit this movie could not mean to you what it means to me. Unless you have lived that life. And I'm not recruiting you either. Okay? Chaser convergence is already bad enough out there on the streets as it is. So I'm not asking everyone to go participate in this. You can live vicariously through me. I am just telling you, if you ever look back and you romanticize a thing, thing, it could be like a house you lived in. It could be a period of time. That is how I look at Twister. So that's why we have it on the wall. Plus, I think it really rounds out the room. Jesse, what's the word? Feng shui. That's really what I think. I think brings our room together. More so than the brick, which is. Is it real? I can't remember if it's real brick. More so than the Pate State sign. More so than the YouTube award. Floyd of Rosedale is a nice touch, but it's really the Twister movie poster that I think not only completes this room, but completes any room. Yeah. All right, let's move on. Very important question here for some more than others in the room. Manassas, Virginia. They have checked in one of my favorite town names in the country, by the way. How many games will Penn State win with Matt Campbell? And why did you say 12? We're not doing this this year. We're not doing this this year. Okay. Last year I let a lot of false allegations slide and I shouldn't have. So this year we're reigning this stuff in. So it's very important for the record to show what I have said and what I have not said. Have I said that Matt Campbell is the savior of Penn State football? Of course I have. Have I said that he's going to win 12 games this year? I absolutely have not. 10 at most. But double digit wins are on the table. Yes. The over under win total at FanDuel is nine and a half. Okay, so I'm not the only one who is looking at this as something that's not quite as crazy as it sounds. Normally, when you fired a coach and then you're bringing another one in, you're kind of starting from scratch. That's not what they're doing up there. You cannot overstate, though, how poorly this could have gone. We're talking about Penn State playoff contention in year one under Matt Campbell. This could have been an utter disaster. This was an over 50 day coaching search. Dead end after dead end after dead end. Meanwhile, the GPS me is pointing them down the proper road and finally out of, I don't know, a lack of Options. Pat Kraft heads down the Matt Campbell road and he says, sure, I'll come coach for you. Stunned. I was utterly stunned. And so it's like, I don't know any of a number of 90s action movies where a guy like jumps out of a third story window and just lands on his feet. It's inexplicable. It's not supposed to happen. Wouldn't really work that way in real life. This is not the way a bungled coaching search normally turns out. I could say the same thing at Auburn, by the way. Normally you screw up coaching searches like this, first off, you're out of your job. And secondly, you're firing the guy that you ended up hiring. Two years later, they ended up hiring the guy who should have been the first option. It just so happened that it worked out that way. What do we know about 2026 though? Because that's what you asked about. I didn't say he's going to win 12. But you're asking how many could he win? Well, like I said, the FanDuel over under win total is nine and a half in year one. What do we know about the schedule? Out of conference. Ridiculous, Embarrassing. Abomination. Matt Campbell did not create the schedule, but he will benefit from it. What do we know? By the way, if you're listening on POD and you cannot see the slider that Bradley just put up. Marshall and Temple in Buffalo. Oh, they go on the road to Temple, Josh. Yes, they will outnumber the locals there five to one too. Just like it's an extended home game. It's a good solid reason for the fine folks in central Pennsylvania to head over to Philly for the afternoon. Probably a noon kickoff, don't you think? Probably back by sundown. It's early September, so we're not getting those sunsets by 3:30pm so yeah, then the meat of the schedule is USC and at Michigan. Like that's the. That's the crux of the schedule. The 10th and 17th of October, there's a trip to Washington in early November. There's no Oregon here, there's no Ohio State here. There's no Indiana here. So that's what we know about the schedule. Sounds like. I take the schedule personally. I don't. I just want people to remember this come playoff selection time. What do we know about the roster? Several positions of strength here. Tight end. Check. Linebacker, Check. Secondary, check. Offensive line. Ellipsis right now could surprise some people. So it's not going to be an X. It's not going to be a check, but I'm leaning more towards check quarterback, experienced. I don't necessarily count on Rocco beck to get 20% better. I just think he is who he is and anything above and beyond that I'm happy to be surprised by. But it's not going to be a weakness. Could possibly be a strength for him. Wide receiver and defensive line are question marks. So that's what we got to figure out. And as Memaw always taught us, that's what God invented spring football for. And to a lesser but also relevant degree, fall camp. So what could happen in year one? Well, it could be a nice, solid starting point in the best of cases. In the worst of cases, it could be a disaster. There's also this scenario where sometimes a guy's first year is the best year he has. I think Gus Malzahn at Auburn. Malzahn comes in at Auburn in 2013 and they go to the national title game in his first year and he never got there again. And I was doing radio in Columbus at the time, brand new, didn't know what I was doing. I went on air one day and I said, hey, there's no guarantee they'll ever get back. This could be the closest that Gus ever gets to winning a national title. They didn't like it, but I ended up being right. And maybe that happens for Matt Campbell this year. I'm not banking on that, but maybe that happens. But anyway, at the very least, we don't have to wait a few years before Penn State's blip on the radar screen is close enough to relevance for us to talk about them. They, they should be in it this year. We'll see. I mentioned the over under win total being nine and a half. It's available. It's available right now over at fanduel. You can go look at it, you can go think about it, you can go bet it. If you're really sick, like some members of the staff, it can be one of 17 legs of a parlay that you put in. Yet a shocking and frankly a disappointing amount of support behind producer Jesse's 17 team parlay the other day. And look, you guys want to ride with him, be my guest. There are a lot of ships at the bottom of the ocean that had a lot of people on them. So I'm not deterred. I am going to actively not root against this parlay this fall because that would be unethical. But what I will have is I will have my wag finger ready to shake in everyone's face who looked at this the other day at Plus 100 Juice and tried to convince me it's a sure thing. No death and taxes are. A 17 team parlay for teams not to make the playoff is not that. It's something, but it's not that. However, if you think it is, FanDuel is the place to go. Should we hit Mike up? Should we, should we ask? We're not going to do it today. It's Sunday. Put it on the agenda for Monday. Let's hit Mike up. Let's put that ridiculous parlay together and let's ask him. Do we want to make that a tab? Do we, do we want to make. Do we want to have a special promo code? If you don't want to take 30 minutes out of your day and add in all 17 teams, do we just want to make that a tab? Because we do have the power to do those sorts of things.
