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The Wells Fargo Active cash credit card. Visit Wells Fargo.com ActiveCash Terms apply. It's kind of weird for a month that has no college football games in it. Man, I get disproportionately excited when It's March. It's March 1st now. I mean, I love basketball. I don't talk about basketball, but I love it. But it's storm chasing season this month we actually get sunlight past 6pm in Nashville. This month. Spring begins this month. It's a great time. It's a great time. Spring practice is starting and eventually we'll be on multiple camp I plural of campus throughout this great land of ours talking to all sorts of different head coaches. We'll see who we add to the speaker series roster. But in the meantime, we're jam packed. We're high atop a what was a Sunny Downtown Nashville, Tennessee today on this March 1st, the year of our Lord 2026. You know what else is beautiful about college football other than we can talk about it all year round, is hatred is actually a good thing. Hatred is like a badge of honor. You can collect trophies, but what you really want is you just want people to despise you. Because if they hate you, chances are you've done something right. And we have on the show tonight probably some of the most important work, some of the most important investigative lowercase J journalism that we do all year. And that is identifying the most hated teams in college football. Not historically, but right now, right this second. And it gets very argumentative for all sorts of weird reasons that casuals would not understand. So we're going to talk about that. Someone has asked me to totally reconstruct the conference configuration in college football to give what we hope to be perfect conferences. And I've taken the challenge cause it's March now, so we don't have games this weekend. So this is the time of year where the future commissioner's office accepts those sorts of responsibilities. And I'm going to do that in like 20 minutes. We've got still to this day a noon kickoff conundrum that is plaguing our sport. And one of you asked about that. And then someone else asked a question. Jesse, as Far as I could tell, we've never had on the show because we always talk about the best games ever. We talk about best teams, we talk about best coaches. Someone asked what are the worst games in the playoff era? The College Football Playoff era, The worst playoff games. I didn't have to think too long before I thought about number one. But just for fun, we filled out the entire list. So we got a jam packed show tonight. They're watching us in Talmage, Ohio, Moultrie, Georgia, Palm Coast, Florida, El Paso, Texas. Thank you so much. Like I said, maybe you've stumbled onto the show. Yeah, we do it year round. Sure, there are other things happening in the world, but we're just going to talk about college football here. Humbly ask that you subscribe to the channel and if you think you are, just check and make sure that you are. Thank you so much. Let's dive in to tonight's program. Hatred is a nasty thing in real life, but this is not real life. This is college football. And in the world of college football, I would even say just in the world of competition and competitive sports, it's kind of okay to be hated. Hatred in the proper context just translates to I'm doing my job at a really high level or we're winning at a really high level. And so every so often we like to update the paint state hat o meter, which is a term that we haven't come up with. I just kind of came up with it on the fly. But it kind of lets us track which teams are hated the most, not historically. We're looking for a living, breathing rating ranking, we'll check on that, of how much hatred there is out there for some of these teams. And it's not just if you win, as I very, very clearly figured out early on today when I put this out on Twitter. So there's going to be a lot of debate on this. I don't really have set criteria. It's just gut. It's just kind of licking the old index finger and sticking it up in the winds of college football. I came up with eight teams right now. We could theoretically go as deep as we wanted to immunity, but I went eight teams. Who's the most hated right now? I'm going to go 8 to 1. You can absolutely contribute to this in the comment section, which I'm sure you will. I've only got Ohio State at number eight. I got Ohio State as the eighth most hated team in college football right now. First off, because they're really good and they've Been good for a long time. And they won a championship recently. And ironically, I think the championship turned down the temperature on the hatred a little bit. Cause up until then, people were really angry that Ryan Day was getting benefit of the doubt and Ohio State was getting benefit of the doubt when they, quote unquote, hadn't won anything. But then they won something. And they did it pretty emphatically buzz saw on their way through the playoffs. And you would think that that would crank the hate up. But ironically, the hatred that people were hurling at them mainly revolved around what they hadn't done. But now they've done that thing. And so it's just that they're good. They're always good. People don't like you when you're always good. But outside of that, I've only got Ohio State at eighth. And the team I've got in front of them is a team that also has a championship in the last three years. In fact, they've been one up on Ohio State a majority of the last four or five years. But there is an extenuating circumstance with number seven. Number seven is Michigan. And I'll be very curious when we put this out there, which we're doing right now live. But when I look at some of the feedback on this, where people think Michigan should be, I put Michigan at number seven on the most hated teams in the country right now because I think there's still a lot of bad blood that I sensed in some of the feedback we got amongst the college football public about how 2023 went down and how the entirety of the Jim Harbaugh era is remembered. Now, full disclosure, I've always said if I was a Michigan fan, I wouldn't really care what the outside world thought. I won my national championship and all's well that ends well for me. But that's. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the rest of the world views you. The rest of the world is not changing their mind. No one's changing their mind on this whole debate about whether or not Connor Stallions did this and whether or not sign stealing is okay, morally, ethically, if not by the outright letter of the law. And what kind of edge does it give you? What kind of edge did it give them? Well, you've heard that debate. Everyone's had that debate around your water cooler tailgate or your pickup truck. Everyone's had that debate by now. But there's still a lot of residue when you talk Michigan football right now in the college Football's general ecosystem about how people view them and folks want to discredit them for it. That I think is the genesis of a lot of the hatred, ill will that people throw that way or the way of Michigan. Also, when I put this out earlier today, there were a fair amount of you that said, I don't like that Michigan carries themselves as sort of better than, you know, Michigan tends to look down the nose a little bit at us, explaining to us what a Michigan man is and how a Michigan man just kind of carries himself differently. And yet there's been scandal after scandal after scandal and apparently that rubs some people the wrong way too. I heard you. So I put Michigan ahead of Ohio State. I put Michigan at number seven. What about number six? Staying in the Big Ten. Good for the Big Ten. Off to the races here. So far, just hatred all over the conference. I got USC as the number six most hated. Give me usc, number six, most hated team in college football right now. And I noticed as I got the feedback on this, there were two distinct groups that showed up when it comes to hating the University of Southern California. The first group I would guess would be, let's call it 35 years old and older. So if you're roughly that that age group or older, you were around for at the very least, Pete Carroll, Matt Leinert, Reggie Bush, celebrities all over USC practice them, leading sports center every day. If you grew up in the south, you thought they played an inferior schedule and they just got to cupcake their way out on the west coast. But then occasionally they played an SEC team and they smoked them and then that just made you even angrier. But people hated USC. In the early 2000s, people hated USC, but then there was a generation before that where USC had been dominant to varying degrees over several decades. So USC was a blue blood of college football. Therefore they already had a core group, a core constituency of haters. But then they were bad for quite a while. So then the second group pops up. Those are just the people who hate Lincoln Riley. And Lincoln Riley just so happens to be coaching USC right now. And so this group, I don't even know if they hate USC. These would be like 19, 22, 24 year old types. They don't hate USC so much because USC hasn't accomplished anything of note to draw hatred. Lincoln Riley is just a very polarizing figure. So because Lincoln Riley is the head coach at usc, there are two distinctive groups of haters that we found in the research. And that puts usc at number 6, top 5 now, top 5 most hated teams in college football. I think I'll get a lot of debate on number five, and the debate will be that some people think they should be higher. Miami. Miami just played for a national championship. I've got Miami as the number five most hated team in college football right now. Very similar vibe to USC in that we picked up on two groups of haters for Miami. Again, if you're 38 years old, if you're 45 years old, if you're 63 years old, you grew up and you lived in a world where the U was established, where they ran college football and they did it their way. And Miami doing it their way rubbed some people in Des Moines, Iowa, and Tuscumbia, Alabama and Fort Worth, Texas, the wrong way. Okay, so that was one generation, and they didn't particularly care. And they were good and they knew it and they told you about it. Then Miami was bad for a long time, but now Miami's back. They're kind of doing what USC's hoping to do, and that is dusting off a lot of what used to be, and now it is again. Now we can say the kind of stuff we used to say again. Well, Miami's there. USC is trying to get there. Miami's there. They were at midfield with a minute to go, down six, and a national championship game, what, like a little over a month ago. So Miami's back in the national championship conversation. They're back at the head table. And here's the thing that you learn about Miami folks. When they're good, they are first in line to tell you. They're first in line to let you know. And the Miami fan base is very, very unique. It's a fan base I know very well. Miami's a very small school. It's a private school. So the Miami fan base is a very national fan base. There are a lot of Miami folks in the Northeast. There are a lot of Miami folks on the West Coast, a lot of Miami folks in the desert Southwest. It's very interesting, and that's why the dynamic is what it is when they go on the road a lot. But Miami has a very, very unique way. They carry themselves and the fan base carries themselves. When they're good and they're good, again, that's going to draw a lot of hatred. I don't sense that they have too big a problem with it. Had they won the national championship a month ago, Miami would be much higher than 5 on this list. All right, now we get into the top four. This is going to Be controversial. When I first put it out there today, I literally just asked, hey, most hated teams in college football go. For a long time it was Notre Dame, lsu, lsu, Notre Dame. So here's what I'm going to do. Number four. I got lsu. I'm putting LSU at number four on the most hated college football teams list. But then we had Kiffin weigh in earlier today, and Lane Kiffin gave us the tiger emoji, you know, so he clearly wants to be featured very high here. But then a lot of the other feedback we got was not lsu, it was just Lane Kiffin. Man, I hate Lane Kiffin. Kiffin's not a team, but I don't really know since he hasn't coached a game at LSU yet. They haven't even cranked up spring ball yet. Can I really vault LSU to number one? I can't do it yet. We don't know if they're going to be any good this year. We think they are kind of expect that they are. They killed it in the portal. But Lane Kiffin has walked in the door down there. And I'm not saying that LSU was universally beloved or beloved before Lane Kiffin stepped on campus, but they wouldn't have been. What would you say, Jesse? Would LSU have been top seven or eight most hated? No. And then Lane Kiffin walks in the door and white hot heat, like true heel, vintage late 90s pro wrestling type heel heat. So I've got LSU at number four. They could rock it to number one at any given moment here. I mean, imagine if they beat Clemson by 40 in week one this upcoming season. And then Kiffin just kind of does what he sometimes does at the post game press conference and they start to get sort of that same vibe that the other vintage LSU teams have had. Yeah, man, LSU can get pretty insufferable pretty quickly. So LSU could rock it up to number one. I conservatively have him at number four right now. I got him behind Texas. So if we go to number three here, got Texas as the third most hated team in college football right now. Someone in the comment section said, and I quote, I hate Texas because they have the arrogance of Alabama with the trophy case of Auburn, which I thought was, I mean, a little extreme, but that's what the guy said. Okay. And he had a Camel smoking a cigarette as his profile picture, so it had to be a real person. Every advantage in the world has been afforded the Texas Longhorns. Given the current makeup of the college football landscape. The tables have never been more tilted towards Austin, Texas And I think a lot of the hatred, aside from the fact that folks have always kind of hated Texas, a lot of the era specific hatred right now is people are looking at it and people are saying, you guys ought to be dominating right now and you haven't. People look and say, like someone said in the comments, imagine if Chris Peterson, just to pull a name out of the hat, imagine if Chris Peterson had the resources that Sark has in Austin, Texas. Imagine what he would have done. Now, I would contend it's not quite that simple, but your point is taken. So until Sark wins a national championship there, he'll be dealing with the Ryan Day disease. And the Ryan Day disease was Ryan Day has been afforded all of these luxuries, all of these resources, yet he can't get over the hump. Well, then Ryan Day got over the hump and he won a national championship at Ohio State. And now it becomes Steve Sarkeesian's turn to bear the brunt of the what is he won crowd. Because there is a crowd and they wander the college football streets. And their opinion is unless you've won a national championship, you hadn't really won anything, especially if you're at a top 10, top 15 program, which clearly Texas is. So yeah, Texas number three. And I know certain fan bases would argue they should be higher than that. Number two, we've got Alabama, Alabama right now still holding steady right there at number two as most hated college football team in the country. And the way I could measure this is I just know there's no team in the country that brings more jubilance in our comment section than when Alabama loses a game. It with without fail, the Sunday night show after Alabama loses the game is always our highest traffic shows. And so I think that a part of that's just the residue from the Nick Saban era. People dealt with that for a long time. They dealt with that Alabama logo, meaning a certain thing for a long time. And they haven't fallen off a cliff. They may have regressed a little bit, but they haven't fallen off the cliff. So it's still a big deal for Bama to lose. It's still a big deal that, you know, if your team played at noon today and Bama's kicking off at 7:30 tonight, you, you kind of got to make sure you've arranged your plans where you can watch Bama because, man, we got to check it out. We got to make sure we're there, we're tuned in if they lose. And I don't know how Long. It takes that to go away. And maybe it doesn't because Bama's been a brand that's mattered across the years, the decades of college football. So I'd say Bama as a strong number two. You could easily make the argument of number one. If I were to just gauge this based off the feedback we get, it'd be Bama number one. But also our show was born in the south. So maybe if our show had been born in Indianapolis or Detroit or Milwaukee and there was a little more of a rust belt sort of Midwest vibe to it, maybe this team that I'm about to list at number one would have more heavy dose of hatred in the comment section. Notre Dame. That's who I put. I put Notre Dame number one on the most hated teams in college football. There's an age old hatred about Notre Dame now. Since I have emerged from my youth of growing up in the South, I have a little bit divorced myself of my upbringing when it comes to Notre Dame. Because look, you just get taught a certain way to feel about Notre Dame football when you grow up in rural Georgia. And the same would go for Mississippi and South Carolina and Tennessee, etc. But they also feel that way in Los Angeles. You know, they also feel that way a lot of places in the country about Notre Dame. Notre Dame's mattered as long as the sport has mattered, but also Notre Dame because of the independence factor, which is a good thing when you're talking about the country, but for a lot of people, a terrible thing when you're talking about college football. People hate it, I'm telling you. I think it's just because they can't have it. But I'm not going to editorialize here. It doesn't matter why you feel the way you feel, just that you feel that way. And a lot of people hate Notre Dame because they have that independence, even though you'd probably celebrate it too if you had it. But I digress. But thirdly, most recently, I noticed a lot of our youngest, the youngest portion of our viewership, my high school college age. There is like a real, real, real sharp tip of the spear when it comes to talking about Notre Dame. And overwhelmingly, the feedback was we got no respect for the way they carried themselves after they got left out of the playoff. And a lot of people even conceded they thought Notre Dame should make the playoff. The old Will Compton protocol there. A lot of people even conceded, hey man, they probably got screwed out of it. But dude, they whined 10 times more than the level of which they got screwed at. And then number two. And this was the most popular sentiment. I hate anyone who opts out of a bowl game at that level. That was like five to one, what we heard about Notre Dame. So there was a lot of it, man. I think Notre Dame was the. The most frequently mentioned team them in Alabama, and then there was a lot of lsu, but that was mainly Kiffin. So Notre Dame, number one, most hated team. Bama, Texas, lsu, Miami, usc, Michigan, Ohio State. Here's what's crazy, Jesse. Did you see Georgia at all? Georgia, like, there's no mirage here. You don't see through Georgia. Georgia's been good and they've been good for a long time. They've won multiple national championships in the past few years under Kirby smart. They've been 1A or just straight up number one as the best program in the SEC for quite a while now. And I can't find hatred of them. And I'm not talking about in Gainesville or like Knoxville. Yes, the teams you have traditional rivalries with, that's baked in, man. You're born with that. That's a. That's a great thing. I don't want that to die. But do people in Minneapolis hate Georgia? Do many people in Phoenix hate Georgia? I just didn't pick up on it. We got hardly any mentions of Georgia, and it's not because they haven't won enough. I just think Kirby needs to. I don't know what he needs to do. He needs to have a mic drop moment at SEC media days. He needs to really embrace a heel Persona because there's not nearly enough hatred out there for Georgia for the amount of winning they've done. Just crazy. I don't know many different theories on that. Appreciate the participation on that, by the way. We got an inordinate amount of feedback. People were happy to talk about hatred on a random Sunday afternoon. That's what brings us all together. After all, this sport is hatred. And somehow, some way, we've constructed the world where it's a beautiful thing. It's totally acceptable. Now onto more, shall I say, constructive, very important matters. Lewis, Hailing from East St. Louis, he said, you have a clean slate. How would you perfectly align college football conferences? Now I got to assume this means I don't have to operate under any constraints. Louis basically just named me commissioner. I have full autonomy. I don't have to answer to any TV networks. I don't have to worry about budgeting or bottom lines. I don't have to worry about any of that. Louis right Say nothing if you agree. He said nothing. He agrees. So you're telling me I just totally get my way and I can construct these conferences any way I want to? Well, here's what I would do. There would be big changes. I would value regionality because I think that's what this sport is built on. And I know, you know, if you're, if you've just come along lately to college football, you're watching USC play a conference game in Piscataway, New Jersey. Friends, that's not the way it's supposed to work. It's not. It's not supposed to work that way. It just does work that way right now. But, but teams in Seattle, Washington and Columbus, Ohio, in a perfect world, or even in a just world, are not playing in the same conference. So I would value regionality. I'd value tradition, I'd value rivalries. Not going to break any of those up. In fact, we'll resurrect many of them. But here's the other thing I would do. I'm all on board with a nine game conference schedule, and I'm on board with that happening for everyone. But I'm only on board with that if we limit the number of teams per conference, because right now the SEC's got 16, the Big Ten's got 18. So I don't really care. You could play eight games, nine games, 10 games. Not everyone's going to play everyone. So what I would love to do in reconstructing and reconfiguring conferences in this sport, I'd love to cap the total amount of teams you can have in a conference, and I'd love that number to be 10. Because if I have no more than 10 teams in a league and you're playing nine conference games, that means everybody plays everybody. Therefore, conference play is true round robin conference play every year. And so I would have that as the conference slate. And then I'd make you play one power opponent out of conference so that I could keep rivalries intact, which you're about to see. I'm splitting up a lot of teams. So if I could do that and I didn't get any pushback, which according to the question, I'm not going to get, would be off to the races. Here's how I'd make it look. Let me walk you through this. And I know if you're listening on podcast, you don't have the visual medium, but just follow me here. Think about the SEC. Right now, the SEC has 16 teams in it. The most recent realignment added Texas and Oklahoma, well, they're gone. In my sec, Texas and OU are no longer in. Missouri is no longer in. I'm taking Arkansas out, I'm taking Texas A and M out. And what we're left with is we're left with Bama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, lsu, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Tennessee. Just a night. Nice, neat, tidy sec. I think we counted the miles. The longest road trip here is either going to be LSU, South Carolina or maybe like Kentucky, LSU, Kentucky, Florida, something like that. So that is my 10 team SEC. Which brings us to the Big Ten. The Big Ten I had to do even more shaving down on because the Big Ten has 18 teams currently. There's a funny thing we're going to do here, with one exception. If you've got a number, then I want that to correspond with how many teams are in the league. Again, with one exception I'll mention. So the Big Ten, I'm going from 18 teams down to 10 teams. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin. You'll notice no west coast teams here. Oregon's gone, Washington's gone. Both the Southern Cal teams are gone. There's no Northwestern. There will be controversy over what I'm doing with Northwestern, but I think it's in the best overall interest of the sport. And it's not like we're hanging them out to dry. In fact, we are freeing them to do whatever they want to do. You can go to class just as shortly as you can schedule anyone you want to. So I'm going to make Notre Dame an independent or not? Well, Notre Dame will be one, two, Northwestern will be an independent. I'll get to that in a second. It kind of comes down to a numbers game if you're trying to make things nice and tidy. And 10 teams per most leagues. Guess what? The Big east is back. And that's not the only conference that's back. But I would bring back the Big east and that's what it would look like a lot of what the Big east used to be. I need to add Boston College again, because it's a numbers thing. But Cincy and Louisville, Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse, UConn, Virginia Tech, West Virginia. You'll notice UCF is in there. I've got to put UCF somewhere. And it was either going to be the ACC or the Big east. And it's not like they have traditional ties to either one of them. But they're not going to be in the Big 12 because they're in Orlando, Florida and the Big 12 is about to cease to exist in a matter of moments. So I put UCF in here. We're just going to have to accept that. Small prices to pay, small prices to pay. I have an even bigger announcement than the Big east returning. I think we should have drumrolled this. The Southwest Conference was one of the wonders of the world when it existed. You had the pyramids, you had Niagara Falls, but the Southwest Conference was not far behind and it died unjustly in 1996. And on the 30 year anniversary of the Southwest Conference's tragic death, I would just like to bring the entire Southwest Conference back. I don't need new logos either. The old artwork is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's fine. Texas and Texas Tech and SMU and Texas A and M, they're all back. You'll also notice that in a gesture of probably good faith that's not even deserved, I have brought Rice into the equation. We have room for food at the table in the Southwest Conference. Now. I did write down Rice will enter the Southwest Conference as sort of a probationary period and at that point, balls in Rice's court to see what they do with it. But I made room for Rice and I do need to add one team. I need to add Tulane because I think Tulane's ready and I think Tulane, geographically it makes sense. I wanted a spot for them in one of these conferences. And so we're going to put Tulane in the Southwest Conference. Arkansas is in there because Arkansas used to be in there. Now it's a lot of Texas schools in Arkansas. And Lou Holtz was not a fan of that back in the day. I get it. But look, I value tradition and I value history. And outside of Tulane, that's what the Southwest Conference used to look like. And I'm just excited to see what Rhett Lashley and the crew do in an era where you can legally do what used to have an entire 30 for 30 made about you. So the Southwest Conference will be my appointment viewing every Saturday. Big Eight is also back. The Big 12 is an abomination. The Big Eight is a beautiful, beautiful creation that never should have gone anywhere. Old logo again works perfectly. Now I need to make some modifications with the Big Eight. I am going to put Oklahoma and Oklahoma State here, Nebraska's there. Missouri, Kansas State and Kansas, Iowa State, Colorado. They were all old school members of the Big Eight. I am taking both schools from Utah and I am putting them in the Big Eight. And I know if you're doing the math out There. That means we have 10 teams in this league. This is the one concession. This is the one conference that I need to keep the name of for legacy. Pppi, plural of purpose. But the number in the name of the league will not correspond with the overall number of teams. Again, not perfect, but small price to pay. I can't call it the Big Ten. We already have a Big Ten. You could call it the Big Eight plus if you want to, which I think's lame. So I'm going to call it the Big Eight because I like calling something the Big Eight because it used to be called the Big Eight. So we have sort of grandfathered the name of the league in here, but I'm putting Brigham Young and Utah both in this league. Otherwise, it's kind of the way it used to look. Now, there was a version of this we did, Jesse, like two years ago where I had Oklahoma in the Southwest Conference. We got a lot of pushback on that because Oklahoma was a Big Eight member. They weren't in the Southwest Conference. And I pushed back a little bit, but then I thought, you know what? You guys are making more sense than me. So let's put Oklahoma where they belong in the Big Eight. There is a mandate coming from my league office, and that is Oklahoma and Texas are now in different conferences. You will be mandated to play each other every year. So the Red River Shootout, not the rivalry. The Red River Shootout will go on. We'll play it at the Cotton bowl, the real one, from now until the Lord returns. And it will kick off at 11am you know what? I'm not going to mandate that. I'll give you a little flexibility on kickoff time. I want it to be 11am but I'll give you a little flexibility on that. But Oklahoma is out of the conference. Texas is in. You've got to play each other every year. So we're not doing away with any rivalries. But you'll notice we got bedlam back. As a conference game, no less. We continue resurrections everywhere tonight. The Pac 10 is back. Josh, don't you mean the Pac 12? No, no, I don't mean the Pac 12 because the Pac 12 as an idea, failed. The Pac 12 as a conference, failed. Really? Larry Scott failed. The Pac 12 would have been fine. The Pac 10 was fine. The Pac 10, when I was growing up, even though I lived basically in another world, was the easiest conference to remember. When you were trying to memorize your conferences because you knew that you had the two Washington teams, you have the two Oregon teams. You have the two Bay Area teams. You have the two Southern California teams, and you have the Two Arizona teams. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Boom. And that is exactly what the PAC 10 is going to be here. I want to say for a third time, I don't need any new artwork. I don't need any new focus grouping or rebranding. We're going old school with this. Why? Because nothing was messed up about it to begin with, other than failed leadership. So as the future commissioner of this sport, I will see fit that people who actually know how to run a conference are enjoying spots in the league office this time around. But the PAC 10 is back. The ACC is a little interesting. So the acc. I had to make some decisions. I could have put Miami in the Big East. I could have put Boston College in the acc. I made some minor moves, Number one, because I like Miami and the ACC more. I like Florida State in the ACC more. I wanted to keep that rivalry together, but also geographically, I wanted as much regionality as possible. Now, yeah, I got Maryland here, but that's the northernmost team I have. And so if I put Boston College in there, it's just all up and down the eastern seaboard. I don't really want that. So I got Clemson and Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Miami, North Carolina State, North Carolina, Virginia and Wake Forest. No big surprises there. And then we come to the independents. I am not forcing Notre Dame to join a conference. If they want to, we can talk. Okay, I can probably kick someone out or I could negotiate a trade, but I'm gonna give Notre Dame their independence. As I said, we had a little bit of a math problem. So I have two more independents. One of them is Northwestern, the other is Vanderbilt. As I sit two miles down the road from the university, this will get way more vitriol than it should because it's purely hypothetical. But when we did this last time, any team who was taken out of a conference and made independent, there were torches and pitchforks in the comments and the replies. It's a math situation. So I have to have three independents. One of them is Notre Dame, and that's obvious. And then I just went academics on it. I went Northwestern and I went Vanderbilt, frankly, because I think they have the most in common. So that doesn't mean you're locked out of anything. That just means you both have to schedule the way Notre Dame schedules every year. And the good news is, I'm forcing every one of these teams to play one power out of conference opponent on top of their conference schedule, which means there's no shortage of opponents out there that want to play you. So there you go. Especially if I can pull the media rights, Jesse, if I can pull that off, if I can reconfigure all the conferences, which I was told I can do, because there's no limit on this. And then I get to pool the meteorites where every one of these leagues is playing on every network. Ohio State's not, you know, contractually bound to play noon kickoffs from now until eternity. They may be able to, oh, I don't know, play Penn State in primetime every now and then. That would be a great thing. So regions and rivalries, traditions, these are not dirty concepts. We still believe in them around here. It is March 1st, which means March 3rd is two days from now. So, as I have told you before, I moved to Nashville in early 2020. Now, 2020 was an insane year for a lot of reasons, but in Nashville, not only did Covid hit in spring, but a deadly tornado hit in spring. And it kind of sideswiped my building and it forced us to leave for a week, but it completely leveled some buildings across from me, so we were spared. Not everyone was, though. So there were. There were nearly two dozen fatalities just in the Nashville area. This was an EF4 tornado. It was on the ground for a long time. It was in the middle of the night. It was crazy. As you guys know, we partner with the Magnolia Foundation. So the genesis of that we're coming up on the five year anniversary, six year anniversary of this tornado is the reason I mentioned this today. It's because March 3, 2020, was when that tornado came through. Well, since then, we met a guy by the name of Matt Collins who watches the show. He's watched the show for a long time, and he let me know one day that his family got hit by that tornado. They live out in Cookeville, which is a little bit east of Nashville, and they survived, but they lost their little girl in the tornado. And so he shares the story with me, and then he tells me about all of the unexpected expenses that you have anytime you have a funeral, but especially when it involves a child. And he said it completely devastated us. And we went through a lot of heartbreak, but we also learned a lot going through the process. And. And we realized if we're going through this, anyone who loses a child is going through this. We got to figure out a way to help. They started their own foundation, the Magnolia foundation, and what they do is they try and cover cost as much as they can for families who Lose children. And we have worked with them. We've partnered with them for about a year now, and they do phenomenal work. And there's a lot of, as you would imagine, unforeseen expense that goes into this sort of thing. So we launched products in our store and proceeds go to the Magnolia Foundation. So you can see the. Like, there's a picture of it right now if you're watching it on YouTube, statematerial.com, you can find those items. But when we first talked about this on the show, refreshingly, I found out a lot of you kind of bypassed the store, which I'm fine with. You went straight to the Magnolia foundation website and said, how do I just donate directly? Well, I'll tell you, MagnoliaFoundation.com give. And Matt hit me up and let me know the kinds of numbers that our audience specifically was responsible for. And we told you on a show a couple of months ago, how many funeral costs were totally covered by our audience giving. And so, man, I appreciate it so much. And he's not here, but if he were here, he would say that times 100. And you got to know, I mean, you'll never meet most of these families that you're helping out, but they appreciate it. We had Matt stop by the studio a couple of weeks ago, actually. So if you want to give directly, you can go to magnoliafoundation.com give or you can buy one of the items in our store because portions of those proceeds go to the Magnolia Foundation. Either way, we appreciate you guys because that is. It's tough, man. You hear there is no, like, laid back story. There is no good story. Those aren't happy endings stories that you're getting, but what you are getting is an opportunity to help. You know, we always want to take advantage of that.
