CFP Calendar Disaster & Signing Day Nostalgia - Pate State Extra

Summary

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Josh Pate’s College Football Show

Episode: CFP Calendar Disaster & Signing Day Nostalgia – Pate State Extra

Release Date: February 4, 2026
Host: Josh Pate
Publisher: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

In this Pate State Extra edition, Josh Pate delivers a candid, unfiltered exploration of two hot-button issues in college football: the chaos of the new College Football Playoff (CFP) calendar and a nostalgic reflection on the lost magic of traditional National Signing Day. The episode combines critical analysis, amusing anecdotes, and sincere longing for college football’s golden era, all in Josh’s conversational, no-nonsense style.

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Major Topics & Key Insights

The College Football Playoff Calendar Crisis

Segment Start: [03:19]

• CFP 2026-27 Dates Cause Uproar:

  • Pate reacts to the recently announced playoff calendar, which schedules quarterfinals on a Wednesday (Dec 30) and Friday (Jan 1), with semifinals on Jan 14-15 and the national title on Jan 25.
  • He points out the illogic and disruption to tradition:

    "Longtime fans of the sport, anybody who even knows how to spell the word tradition will be horrified..." [04:32]

  • Pate calculates how the extended schedule shifts the season’s halfway point:
    • 2026 season starts Sep 5, national title is Jan 25.
    • Week 11 (Nov 14) marks the mathematical midpoint—by then, many teams have already finished their seasons.

      "Week 11 is the halfway point mathematically of the season this upcoming year, which is off the wall insane..." [07:13]

• Why the CFP Is So Drawn Out:

  • Josh explains it’s not just about longer playoffs, but also the need to work around the NFL’s December broadcast dominance.

    "The elephant in the room is the NFL. The NFL owns a lot of the broadcast window and therefore a lot of the inventory and a lot of the landscape of December." [10:27]

  • Instead of collaborating with the NFL to plan a fan-centric calendar, college football administrators have failed to reach out.

    "College football needing all the help in the world...hasn't even seen fit to ask the NFL for help." [13:39]

  • Refers to Roger Goodell’s recent comment:

    "We'd be happy to help...but basically, they got to reach out to us...If college football needs our help, we'd be happy to do it...But they got to knock. College football hasn't knocked." [12:53] (paraphrased from press conference)

• Lack of Unified Leadership:

  • Pate criticizes the college football power structure for failing to address NIL, transfer rules, TV deals, and playoff schedule in a coordinated way.

    "They can't...enforce their own rules...figure out whether they're going to collectively bargain...get antitrust exemption from Congress...pull their own television deals..." [13:04]

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National Signing Day Nostalgia

Segment Start: [16:46]

• The Decline of a College Football Pillar:

  • Pate mourns how the once-revered National Signing Day (first Wednesday in February) has faded due to the advent of early signing periods and NIL/transfer changes.

    "Signing day used to be a pillar in American society. It used to be an institution. It used to be really, really incredible. And now it's kind of an afterthought." [16:55]

• How Things ‘Used to Be’:

  • The “golden era” spanned mid-2000s to early 2010s, with fax machines humming, no NIL or early signing, high drama, and rumor-fueled message boards.

    "That was it for talent acquisition...by and large, the kids that you signed on National Signing Day...that was going to be the bulk majority of your roster three years down the road..." [19:07]

  • Recruiting was more personal and prideful—decisions based on culture and school legacy, not primarily money.

    "Even if money changed hands...it came down to that kid committing to the university...to that kid picking Ohio State because Ohio State's way of doing things...appealed to that kid." [20:34]

• Anecdotes & Signing Day Rituals:

  • Pate humorously recounts skipping work for Signing Day, laying out his scheme to convincingly call in sick:

    "You want to sneeze a couple of times in the morning...make sure the eyes look a little glossed over...say, 'I'll be fine' at least three times during the four to five o'clock hour..." [22:22] "Hey, Bob. Yeah, man, I'm not making it in today...I gotta get back in bed. I just can't do it today." [23:29]

  • Describes the thrill of following signing ceremonies, deciphering clues from hat choices and rumormongering on grainy livestreams.

    "You're just looking at the auditorium fill in and you're trying to read clues. Which hat looks the newest, which ones have the bent bill...Can we read anything into the attire that's being worn by his family members at the event?" [26:40]

  • The euphoria and agony of last-second flips, especially when message board insiders started buzzing.

    "Those were the best of times, ladies and gentlemen, because those were the times when you thought to yourself, anything could happen." [28:47]

  • References Travis Hunter’s 2021 shock decision as a rare modern echo of the old drama.

    "When Travis Hunter came out of high school...thought to be a formality to Florida State...And then you find out Shador Sanders is going to Jackson State with Deion Sanders. That was one of the biggest wrecking balls out of left field on signing day that I could remember." [30:10]

• Dreams of a Return:

  • Ends this segment with hope that the spirit of old Signing Day can return someday:

    "I still hold out hope that maybe there are some changes down the road that reinvent, reinvigorate the spirit of what signing day used to be. Again, I dream. We're allowed to do that around here. I dream." [32:19]

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Gus Malzahn’s Retirement & His Legacy

Segment Start: [35:41]

• Surprise and Context:

  • Josh expresses surprise at the timing of Gus Malzahn’s retirement, especially after being the OC at Florida State.

    "Gus Malzahn, what do we think about Gus? This surprised me a little bit. Not the concept of it. It surprised me that it happened when it happened." [35:43]

• Malzahn’s Impact on the SEC:

  • Highlights Malzahn’s revolutionary fast-paced offense and its effect on opposing SEC defenses, recruiting, and officiating.

    "It's not the scheme. The scheme's not all that hard to figure out. It's that we don't have the players to defend it...and the tempo at which he runs the offense." [36:47, quoting defensive coaches] "Officiating crews lost control of the game to Gus Malzahn." [37:25]

• Comparing Auburn Coaches:

  • Pate argues Malzahn is likely the best Auburn head coach this century, outshining Tuberville given he “went heads up with Nick Saban” and had success in an even tougher SEC.

    "Is Gus Malzahn not the best coach Auburn's had this millennium?... Gus Malzahn competed in way more shark infested waters." [39:01]

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Notable Quotes & Moments (Chronological)

• Tradition Upended:

  "We're going to play a quarterfinal game on December 30th. That is a Wednesday night quarterfinal game...The semifinals Jan. 14th and 15th, and…the national title game...January 25th."
  — Josh Pate [04:00]

• Season’s Midpoint Insanity:

  "Week 11 is the halfway point mathematically of the season this upcoming year, which is off the wall insane, just totally out in another galaxy insane."
  — Josh Pate [07:13]

• On College Football Leadership:

  "They can't...enforce their own rules...figure out whether they’re going to collectively bargain...get antitrust exemption from Congress...pull their own television deals..."
  — Josh Pate [13:04]

• Roger Goodell’s Offer:

  "We'd be happy to help...but basically, they got to reach out to us...If college football needs our help, we'd be happy to do it...But they got to knock. College football hasn't knocked."
  — (Roger Goodell paraphrased by Pate) [12:53]

• Signing Day as an Institution:

  "Signing day used to be a pillar in American society. It used to be an institution...now it's kind of an afterthought."
  — Josh Pate [16:55]

• On Nostalgia and Fan Rituals:

  "You want to...sell the idea that you're fighting through...drop the hints, man, I cannot wait to get home and get in bed...say I'll be fine at least three times..."
  — Josh Pate [22:22]

• Message Board Madness:

  "You're just working on a mountain of rumors and you can't substantiate any of it. It was so great and there were so many lies flying around..."
  — Josh Pate [25:32]

• On Gus Malzahn:

  "He was the offensive coordinator...no one remembers that. They just remember Cam Newton with good reason...the impact Gus Malzahn had in the SEC was such that it turned the SEC upside down."
  — Josh Pate [36:03]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:19] – Opening thoughts on CFP calendar disaster
• [07:13] – The mathematical midpoint insanity of the new season timeline
• [10:27] – The NFL’s broadcast dominance and its effect on college football
• [12:53] – Roger Goodell’s comments and college football’s lack of outreach
• [16:46] – Signing Day nostalgia and the ritual of fandom pre-NIL/Portal/Early Signing
• [22:22] – Josh’s comedic story on how to call in sick for Signing Day
• [26:40] – The clues and drama of old-school NSD coverage
• [30:10] – Travis Hunter’s signing day shock as a rare 21st-century throwback
• [35:41] – Gus Malzahn’s retirement and SEC legacy analysis
• [39:01] – Malzahn and Auburn head coaching context

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Tone & Style

Josh Pate’s tone is candid, conversational, and tinged with dry humor, especially when recounting fan rituals and industry absurdity. He’s passionate and nostalgic without being saccharine, questioning the sport’s modern direction while conceding its perpetual change.

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For Listeners New & Old

This episode spotlights how administrative decisions and TV forces are reshuffling college football’s soul, punctuated by Josh’s sincere longing for a time when Signing Day was a communal, rumor-packed, heart-racing event. It’s both a critique and a love letter—a guide to understanding why old fans sigh at new developments, and why college football, for all its warts, is still “built for the folks.”

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Transcript

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You know, I can't help but think somewhere out there, one of the administrative types, one of the college football sweater vests, has to be thinking themselves. You know, if the super bowl is this weekend, maybe we could make college football's national title game the weekend after that. What says we can't just play to February? Hey, why not just bump the national title game right up against spring football? Why not just play year round? And for those of you who think I'm joking, I think I am. Pretty sure I am. But then again, I never know. Yesterday's jokes become today's reality in college football, as Memo used to always say. So we got the playoff calendar for the 2020, what, six and 27 seasons yesterday, and everyone laughed. And then they realized, oh, wait, this. This is the real one. Hold up. This is the real one? Yeah. So we're going to talk about that this morning slash afternoon slash night. What is this, by the way? This is not a normal show, is it? Doesn't sound like the normal intro. Well, once upon a time, we started a show called Late Kick when I came up here from Columbus, Georgia, and I was at 247 sports at the time, and I was recording three nights a week during the season like we still do. And then we bumped it down to two nights per week during what a casual would call the off season. But we don't believe in like we still do. And about Monday or Tuesday of every week, I would think to myself, I kind of feel like I got some stuff to say. I kind of feel like I want to talk to the folks, you know, because that's what we call our audience, the folks. And I just started recording what we call the Late Kick Extra podcast. At the time, there was really no video component to it. You can't even find it on the YouTube channel. It just showed up in the podcast feed. And it would be sort of what you're about to listen to, this wandering, meandering, just stream of consciousness. I kind of ask what you guys want to talk about. You guys kind of find out what I want to talk about. Some of it, probably. Most of it's college football, not all of it. And then we spill out into various sectors of society and that's when the show gets really dangerous. But it hops back up on the rails. So that's what we're doing here today. And so there really is no structure here. It's kind of like you and I are sitting down at lunch and we're just talking. And I'm going to pretend that I know what you're saying back to me, but we're just talking. And what a lot of people are talking about right now is the fact that yesterday the College Football Playoff put out their calendar, put out their dates for the upcoming couple of seasons. Longtime fans of the sport, anybody who even knows how to spell the word tradition will be horrified to know that we're going to have quarterfinals for this upcoming year that take place Wednesday, December 30, and then Friday, New Year's Day. I don't even know what we're doing on New Year's Eve. Don't ask me. But we're going to play a quarterfinal game. So that's the second round of a four round tournament. We're going to play a quarterfinal game on December 30th. That is a Wednesday night quarterfinal game for those of you keeping track at home. We will then play the semifinals Jan. 14th and 15th, and we'll play the national title game. And I'm not joking here, although it is a joke. January 25th. So if you're Oregon, let's say you may play a semifinal game on the 30th and then play a game on the 15th and then play a game on THE 25th. There's nearly a month between the quarterfinals and the national title game. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, well, that's bad, but if I know the College Football Playoff like I think I do, it could get a whole lot worse. Right? You would be right. So I pull out the trusty Pate State calculator yesterday because, I mean, if you got a season lasting that long, then you want to know, well, how long is this season lasting? I'll tell you how long it's lasting. I want you to think in terms of entire season. I want you to think about when the season starts. Think about when week one is. So this year, week one, I think, is the weekend of September 5th. And I'm checking this in real time. Yeah. So September, September 5th, that's the Saturday of week one. A few teams play week zero, but the entire season for everyone will have started week one, September 5th, all right, your national championship game is Monday night, January 25th. Do you know what that means? If you don't let me tell you. Saturday, November 14th. That's week 11. By the way, what is significant about Saturday, November 14th? A, it's my sister's birthday, but it will surprise you to know that's not what I'm talking about here. B, Saturday, November 14, week 11. That marks the mathematical halfway point between week one and the national championship game. I want to remind you at this point. You know what? Before I remind you of anything, I want to let that breathe for effect. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. All right, now that it's settled in, week 11 is the halfway point mathematically of the season this upcoming year, which is off the wall insane, just totally out in another galaxy insane. I want to remind you, some teams are done already. I think There were some G5 teams whose seasons ended November 18th or so last year. So we will have some teams whose seasons are done right after. What is the mathematical halfway point of the year? Why is that? Well, it's because the playoff is longer. And it's not even just that the playoff is longer. Okay, yes, that is a culprit, but it's not the only culprit. Because as we detailed, what last week, two weeks ago, we're not alone on this. There is a way to have a four round playoff that wraps up on New Year's Day or shortly thereafter. I did get some pushback. You know, when we put our plan out a few weeks ago that had a national championship forever enshrined on New Year's Day. Some people were saying, well, we want to float that around a little bit. Hey, I don't care if you float that around. You could go whatever that weekend is for the NFL playoffs, I think that's the divisional round or maybe the wild card round of the playoff. And you could have it that weekend. Either way, it's the first week of January and your season's done. But you would have to start your playoff the first week of December and you would have to play games pretty much every week. And you could take a little bit of a break for Christmas. That's how you'd have to do it. But for those of you out there asking, well, that sounds great. Why not do that? Well, it's just because you're too simple minded, you know, you could not possibly think at the level of the college football sweater vest type, the college football administrative type. These are people who structure everything in the sport right now. These are people who have Built this calendar here. And really what our issue, excuse me, not our issue. What their issue is, is the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is the NFL. The NFL owns a lot of the broadcast window and therefore a lot of the inventory and a lot of the landscape of December. And you're having to work around them. And it's always been the elephant in the room. And I don't talk about it a whole lot on the show because it really doesn't pertain to fans, but it does pertain to fans now because it's impacting how we experience the game, how we watch the game. So I found it interesting that at the super bowl week news conference this week out in Santa Clara or San Jose or San Francisco or there's like a five hour radius around the super bowl week of events out there, judging by how long it's taken people to get around. Anyway, I noticed Roger Goodell, NFL commissioner, had his weekly press conference. Most of you probably didn't watch this, and that's okay. That's what you pay me for. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to do the stuff so you don't have to do it. And one of the things that I did is I was riding around Brentwood, Tennessee yesterday. I said, hey, I wonder what Roger Goodell said this week. So I went and listened to it. Now, of course, I'm not a savage. I did put it on 1.75 speed and I listened. And most of it didn't pertain to college football. And then someone from Front office sports, hat tip, Front office sports. They asked about the different messes in college football right now. And they asked about the lack of any kind of guardrails and the lack of rules and accountability and enforcement. They asked about nil, and their question sounded a whole lot better than me paraphrasing it here. But anyway, they asked Roger Goodell, hey, could all of this turmoil in college football ultimately hurt the NFL? Really good question. It gave Roger Goodell the opportunity to go many different ways with it. And I'll tell you which way Roger Goodell went. He said the requisite, you know, we always have a good working relationship with college football, blah, blah, blah. But then he said something that was really interesting that I think applies here. He said, we'd be happy to help. I'm paraphrasing him too. We'd be happy to help, but basically they got to reach out to us. If they need help, they got to reach out to us. This is our lane over Here we're in our lane. If college football needs our help, we'd be happy to do it. We'd be happy to open the door and let them sit on the couch for a little while if they need to come in. But they got a knock. College football hasn't knocked. That is one of the least surprising headlines that I've heard in recent years. College football needing all the help in the world, not the least of which is needing the help, assistance and cooperation of the NFL hasn't even seen fit to ask the NFL for help. So what we have here basically is college football in one lane. They can't get their act together. They can't enforce their own rules. They can't figure out whether they want to collectively bargain with the players. They can't figure out whether they're going to get antitrust exemption from Congress. They can't figure out if they're gonna pull their own television deals down the road. They can't figure out any of that. But they also haven't reached out for any kind of guidance or help from the NFL. My imagination leads me to believe that if they haven't reached out on those fronts, they probably also haven't had the stones to reach out on this front. Coordinating with the NFL if you have to. Paying the NFL some in exchange for getting some of the TV windows that you would need to structure your playoff where we don't stretch the thing almost into March. That's just a hunch I have. I'm just working on a theory over here this morning. So yeah, with that we're off and running on what I am now calling the Pate State Extra podcast Trademark. All of that's trademarked.

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Oh, what are some other things I wrote down that I wanted to talk about? Do you know what today is? If you're listening, on the day that I recorded this at least, and that's up to Mitch to get it out to you on time. I trust that he will. Today is Wednesday, February 4th. Speaking of calendar, you know what? This day technically still is, but what it really used to be. And that's National Signing Day. Now, I know that we have a very, very vast high school, college aged audience and it is always my duty as the future commissioner of this sport and also as the Chancellor here at Pate State to inform you that it used to be greater than it is now. Not all things fit that description. Some things are great right now. Some things are better than they used to be. Signing day just does not happen to be one of those things. Signing day used to be a pillar in American society. It used to be an institution. It used to be really really incredible. And now it's kind of an afterthought. Even within some football programs. They're not even really waking up this morning remembering it signing day. But what I want to do is I want to take you back. We don't have to go back too far. We're not going back to the 50s or the 60s. Just go back 15 years. So if you're in high school right now, technically you were probably born. If you're in college right now, yeah, you were born. I don't know that. At four years old, you were subscribing to message boards and you were scrolling Twitter looking for updates and you were following official visit rumors. Maybe you were, if you were. Hats off to you. I know that's how I spent my fourth year on this Earth, but I don't expect that from everyone. But if you were a little extra credit there. I gotta tell you, though, I really wish you guys could have experienced it. If you are of a high school, college age right now, I wish you could have been just a little bit older. I wish you maybe could have been born just a decade earlier, just for this example. So maybe if we could live in an alternate universe for this. So you get to keep your youth as long as you can in the real world, but in the alternate universe, you kind of get to play it out. I do this all the time. I wish that I could keep my current self, my current age, but then I wish I could simulate in an alternate universe what it would have been like if I were born in 1974 or something like that and get to be a teenager in the late 80s, early 90s. Anyway, that's mainly for pop culture reasons, but for college football reasoning, let's say you were 19 or 20 years old. The year is 2006-200720-08910, 11, 12, 13. That's kind of the golden era of recruiting, as I define it, because that's the era where you've still got the fax machines humming on signing day. National signing day is still national signing day, so there's no early signing day. Keep that in mind. Nil doesn't technically exist. Everything's under the table. Everything is hearsay, everything is rumor. And also the money isn't astronomical. Therefore, if any school gets really desperate, any school can afford to pony up five or ten grand to go pay a kid. But really, with no portal, the way you know, the portal now with no Nil, the way you know, nil now with no early signing day, the way, you know, early signing Day. Now, that first Wednesday in February was sort of it for talent acquisition. That was it. And by and large, the kids that you signed on national signing day, that was going to be the bulk majority of your roster three years down the road, four years down the road. And the kids you were signing, yes, money in some cases played a part, but it was a different galaxy compared to what it is now, where there are many recruitments out there that are just pure transactions. Back in the day, even if money changed hands, like if you had a recruitment coming down to the wire and it was between LSU and Alabama or Georgia and Florida or Ohio State and Michigan, it came down to the kid committing to the university. It came down to that kid picking Ohio State. Because Ohio State's way of doing things and their staff and their culture and the vibe and everything that is Ohio State football appealed to that kid. And you took immense pride in that as a fan, especially if you went to the school as an alumni, you took great pride in that because that was kind of the ethos, that's kind of what's woven in to your attachment to the University of South Carolina when Jadevion Clowney chooses to stay in state and commit to South Carolina on signing day. This was late 2000s, early 2010s that I remember these things vividly. I remember individual recruitments vividly. And I remember I was just out of high school at this time, late 2000, like mid to late 2000s. I'm just out of high school, so I am college age at that point. And I remember I loved Christmas, Thanksgiving. Love it. Easter is always on a Sunday, so you're never having to really work that around your job anyway. But I remember that I always had a game plan for National Signing Day because I'd never use sick days or vacation days. I never use them today. I actually have never used a vacation day. I think I used a week of vacation for my honeymoon. That's it. Like, I haven't used another sick or vacation day since 2020, so I really don't ever use them. But I would strategize back then and I would have a game plan for making sure I can miss work on National Signing Day. Now, the strategy here was very simple. What you want to do Tuesday morning of National Signing Day week. So signing day eve, you want to sneeze a couple of times in the morning. Now, since people know you never get sick, they notice when you're sneezing. And then you go to lunch. And when you come back from lunch, you really got to be selling. You're selling the idea that as the day goes on, your feel is going downhill, your health is going downhill, you're not feeling great now you're fighting through and you're selling the idea that you're fighting through. And you know the cough, you make sure they hear it from another room. You make sure the eyes look a little glossed over. You have that far away look, like the lights are on but no one's home sort of vibe. And it's all building towards 4 o' clock to 5 o'. Clock. That last hour, you start dropping the hints, man, I cannot wait to get home and get in bed. Oh, if not felt good all day, I don't know what's wrong with me. I'll be fine, I'll be fine. You need to say I'll be fine at least three times during the four to five o' clock hour because you have to plant the seed for the next morning. Somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30. If you got to be there at 8:00 clock to send the text or to make the call and you got to plug your nose while you do it, it needs to sound a little something like this. Hey, Bob. Yeah, man, I'm not making an end today. I don't know what's wrong with me, dude. I got to get back in bed. I just can't do it today. I'm sorry. You know, I'll make it all up, but. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. I know, I know, I hate it too. All right, bye. Boom. You just secured yourself wall to wall coverage of national signing day uninterrupted. It was the biggest holiday of the year for me. It was the most important day of the year for college football fans. And you think I'm joking and I'm not joking about this. What the NFL Draft Night 1 is for anybody who follows pro ball. That was what national signing day was in college football. Only it was better in college football for people like me because I love college more. But number two, because it feels like with the NFL draft, everything is sanitized, everything's on the up and up. You get to watch the combine, the like you've got fully fleshed out reporting. Everything's public. There are very few things hidden. Everything's visible in the NFL in college football. The recruiting, trench warfare, and especially back then, recruiting was nothing but message board rumors and random callers into a talk show that claimed to have a source on things. And then you find out, wow, well, is it the kid who's going to make the decision, or is it the uncle or is it the mom? And where did he take his last official visit? And what do our insiders on our respective team message boards claim? The vibes were on the visit. And then you've got the dead period or the quiet period which kicked in like Sunday at midnight leading into that Wednesday and that Monday and Tuesday, those final 48 hours. You're just getting whispers and rumors. And so and so was on the phone with Miami staff last night until after midnight. And so and so got the last in home visit. Oh, it was great, guys. And you're just working on a mountain of rumors and you can't substantiate any of it. It was so great and there were so many lies flying around and people built their hopes up only to have it crash and burn. And I mean, what you would do is if you're a Tennessee fan, you know your remaining targets and so you know what time during the day on Wednesday their announcements are. And so you would go to your message board the night before or you would go to your favorite team website and you would get a rundown. Okay, like we're in it for this five star linebacker. He announces at 9:45am he's going to have a signing day announcement and a press conference at his school. And you would be looking at these grainy Internet feeds that were really choppy and sometimes they would freeze and the audio would be terrible. And then maybe if ESPN was going to cover one of the high profile recruitments, you'd have a kid with an earpiece in and it was never coordinated ahead of time and it was always a complete disaster. So you may have hats on the table and you may have people gathering there in the audience and you'd be watching the live stream. If the announcement starts at 9:45, but they go live at 9:30, you're just looking at the auditorium fill in and you're trying to read clues. Which hat looks the newest, which ones have the bent bill and they're not fitted, which means his mom picked him up at a gas station because he's not actually picking that school. But he just needs the props on the set. Can we read anything into the attire that's being worn by his family members at the event? All of these things were very important context clues. And then you would be getting reporting from the event and you would be getting team reporters who were there covering the event and they're reporting on the message board some of the last minute rumors that they're Hearing. Hey, I'm told so and so was on the phone with so and so as of this morning. Hey, so and so's teammate who already plays for Tennessee is in attendance at the high school today. That's got to be a good sign. Just, just the most amazing climate of a bunch of grown men could be in their 20s and 30s, could be in their 50s and 60s, and their entire mental disposition, their entire mental health, their entire mood for the next several days to months really rides on the decision of a 17 or an 18 year old kid that day at that high school. Just the most amazing time. And my other favorite part about it is for the bigger schools, you know, for the higher profile recruiting type programs, you always had the targets that you knew you were in on. And you'd be following these for years, really. And then leading up to signing day, you'd be getting daily updates, sometimes multiple updates per day about where things stand with, you know, the 10 or 15 guys that you're in on and you're recruiting against so and so for. And you know, you would have levels of confidence. We have high confidence in this guy, medium confidence in this guy. We're still in it for this guy, but we're on the outside looking in, going into signing day week, things of that nature. But the most fun part is there would be a message board insider that would pop up and every message board has them, then they're legitimate in most cases. I mean, yes, there are guys or girls who have sources inside the athletic building and the football complex. And sometimes they get nuggets of information and they share what they can share on the message boards. And the most fun thing to see as I would scan around on different team sites, as you get to know who the real insiders are and when those insiders would start hinting that there is a player x, a surprise player, a player that we're secretly in on and no one knows it and the staff's trying to keep it under wraps. But you'll see on national signing day, those were the best of times, ladies and gentlemen, because those were the times when where you thought to yourself, anything could happen. We got to have our head on a swivel because on one hand, hey, we may be able to flip a kid at the 11th hour. However, on the other hand, we're not the only school who thinks we have the inside track no one else knows about on a kid. There may be a kid that we're really confident on that gets flipped from us at the 11th hour. And when that happened, and there were one or two examples of that every year. When that happened, it was anarchy. It was total chaos. And the closest I can compare it to in recent history is, if you'll remember on signing day a few years ago, maybe 2021, something like that, 2022, whenever Travis Hunter came out of high school and he was verbally committed to Florida State, I think he was verbally committed for a while, but he was thought to be a formality to Florida State. All he's got to do is sign with Florida State. I remember we were down in Fort Lauderdale covering national signing day for CBS at the time. And Wilt Fong, Steve Wilfong is in that studio with us, but he's off on a side set. And what we would do is we would have coverage on the desk and then we would throw to Steve every now and then. And he's working the phones and he's getting updates. And I remember I kind of caught out of the corner of my eye, his body language start to shift as he was on the phone and he was getting text updates and stuff like that. And what he was hearing was, Shador Sanders may not be signing with Florida State. And so we tossed to him for an update and he dropped that update. And then shortly thereafter you find out Shador Sanders is going to Jackson State with Deion Sanders. That was one of the biggest wrecking balls out of left field on signing day that I could remember. And it really took me back to what national signing day used to be like a generation prior, if we call a generation 10 years, a generation prior. So, yeah, I wish you guys, if you're a little bit too young to have lived through that, I wish you guys could live through that. Oh, man, it was just amazing. It was like its own season. Recruiting was its own season. I mean, there were people who kind of treated college football like NFL fans treat the NFL. You know, you've got some people in your lives who you would almost swear love the draft more than they love the season itself. And it may not make any sense to you, but there are people who are like that. There are people who just cover the draft and that was the way recruiting was. So I still hold out hope that maybe there are some changes down the road that reinvent, reinvigorate the spirit of what signing day used to be. Again, I dream we're allowed to do that around here. I dream.

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what else is happening? So Gus Malzahn retiring. I mean, as best I can tell, this is it for him. Gus Malzahn, what do we think about Gus? This. This surprised me a little bit. Not the concept of it. It surprised me that it happened when it happened. So if Gus Malzahn was gonna step down or if he was gonna get fired, whatever, if it was gonna happen, I thought it would have already happened. But it happened just a couple of days ago. If you missed it. Gus Malzahn announced his retirement as the offensive coordinator at Florida State and Mike Norvell is going to reassume play calling duties down there. And we talked the other day about the vibe around Florida State and the mood around Florida State. It's kind of thought to be a dead year upcoming, which I don't really recall in college football very often. Sort of a not a tank year because there's no draft. So you're not tanking for draft picks at Florida State. You're kind of tanking in exchange for saving money, which is what it is. Maybe they'll go 10 and 2. Maybe they'll surprise like Virginia did this year, semi out of nowhere. But that's for another day. But for Malzahn retiring, my thought about Gus Malzahn always goes back to those Auburn days. It always goes back to the immediate splash of cold water to the face of the SEC he was, especially when he came to Auburn in 2013. They had just won a national title in 2010 and he was the offensive coordinator. But no one remembers that. They just remember Cam Newton with good reason. So then Gus leaves and he's the head coach at Arkansas State and he comes back and he's the head coach at Auburn in 2013. And out of nowhere they go from being pretty terrible to being on the doorstep of winning at all. They were less than a minute away. They led Florida State in the fourth quarter of the national title game. They're less than a minute away from winning that thing. And if not for Jameis Winston, they would have won that thing. If not for Kelvin Benjamin, they would have won that thing. But even as it is, the impact Gus Malzahn had in the SEC was such that it turned the SEC upside down. Now the frustrating part for coaches back then was it wasn't the scheme Malzahn was running that really gave them fits. I remember talking to a couple of defensive coordinators back then. We didn't have nearly the access back then we do now, but I knew a couple of coaches at least, and they would always say the same thing. They would say, hey, it's not the scheme. The scheme's not all that hard to figure out. It's that we don't have the players to defend it. We don't have the players to defend the version of the offense he runs. We don't also have the players to defend the tempo at which he runs the offense. And they also felt like back then officials let Malzahn take control of the game. Officiating. Cruz lost control of the game to Gus Malzahn. And the hurry up, no huddle offensive approach nowadays that's kind of normal. And we've even gone away from it a little bit because everyone adjusted to it. But you were in a period, especially in the sec where everyone had built their rosters to stop what Alabama and LSU and Georgia did. And so all the linebackers were like 63240 plus in some cases. And then you got Malzahn running all over the place, using all 53 and a third yards wide of that field. And it's sort of basketball on grass. It's at a really frenetic pace. And so you got those big linebackers having to run east to west and they're running a play about every five seconds. It feels like guys are just gassed. And so you would watch Malzahn's offenses operate and they were succeeding through chaos. Like when you watched Auburn and you watched Malzahn, it wasn't just this absolute, off the charts, high level, precision based execution. Most of their big plays, most of their explosives would be sprung because defense wasn't even ready for the play to be run. And it forced a lot of change. It changed the dynamics of the way that programs recruited defensive personnel. It changed the way the game was officiated. There were a lot of cases where illegal man downfield, illegal lineman, you know, going downfield too far, that kind of stuff. Malzahn was notorious for understanding how to work and understanding how to get away with. And it brought increased scrutiny and increased emphasis and focus on that. And that's why you don't see teams getting away with that nearly as often today. But if you rewind 10 years and it wasn't just Malzahn and Auburn. But if you rewind 10 years and you look at some of those hurry up, no huddle teams and you look at how often they pop a pass, especially quarterback rollout, and then you pop a pass and there's a guy wide open and you're saying, wow, how could you bust a coverage like that? I mean, there's a receiver and the DB had crashed on the quarterback and there's no one within 20 yards of that guy. Well, you go back and look at the replay and you go back and realize, oh, it's cause the left guard was 10 yards downfield. So you've got secondary guys reading their keys. You got secondary guys really doing what they've been coached to do and getting burned. Because so much is happening so quickly. Officiating crews aren't even focused on what they're supposed to be calling. But I'll tell you, if people ask about what his legacy is, like I told you, I think about him at Auburn, I think most people associate him with being the head coach at Auburn. Is Gus Malzahn not the best coach Auburn's had this millennium? Is he not the best coach Auburn has had since the turn of the millennium? The only competition there would be Tommy Tuberville. And Tuberville ran off a string of wins against Alabama. Tuberville had a team in 04 that went undefeated, could have played for a national championship. It was the BCS era. His team got left out and it was USC in Oklahoma. But Gus Malzahn played for a national title too. So they both had at least one version of a team that was that caliber. But Tuberville sort of got run out of the sec. As Nick Saban came into the sec, Gus Malzahn went heads up with Nick Saban and I think beat him three times, heads up. So I think Gus Malzahn competed in way more shark infested waters. Gus Malzahn competed at a time when the SEC had completely leveled up its game. And Gus Malzahn did quite all right. Auburn. Now he didn't ultimately win a national title. Like we said, he came very close, but he more than kept his head above water and in some cases thrived in an era where a lot of other guys got buried. So I would call Gus Malzahn the best head coach that Auburn's had this millennium. I mean, what are you going back to? You're going back to Terry Bowden, early 90s, then you're going back to Pat Dye. So Gus Malzahn's name I think is way up there in the Auburn record books. And look, the other part about that and the funny thing about the dynamic there is Auburn fired Malzahn and they kept a home in Auburn. Like, they still love Auburn. I know Gus Malzahn, but I know several people close to Gus Malzahn. They still spoke very fondly of Auburn. Obviously they didn't love the very end of how it went down there with them. No one likes getting fired. But, you know, once. Once the anger ceases and once temperatures cool down and you just kind of go back to your baseline of how you feel about a place, it wouldn't surprise me to see them in Auburn for a long time to come. So if this is it, congrats to Gusmalzahn on what was a very storied career and a great career. Alright, I'd say that's a good spot to leave off for now. Now, what we may do, if I get good feedback on these, and I'm sure I will, because you guys used to love them when we did them back in the day. If I get good feedback on this, we'll probably make these closer to an hour as the new norm. And you know, we got a lot of stuff coming up in the spring and summer. So the schedule kind of gets erratic, mildly erratic during this time of year, but it's for a good reason. We're giving you all sorts of different variety of content. And of course we still do at least two normal shows per week. It's just sometimes one of them's on Tuesday, sometimes one of them's on Thursday. You know, most of the time you're going to get the Sunday show. And except for this weekend because the NFL refused to move the super bowl for us again. So we won't have a show this Sunday. But yeah, just make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel and the podcast feed. If you're listening right now. By the way, you may not be subscribed, you may not be following on your podcast feed, which cost you nothing. It just helps us. So please do that and of course do the same thing for the YouTube channel. The best way to stay up to date on everything, though, is just to be following on the socials. Josh Pate, cfb. That's how you know when something's up or something's going down, whichever vernacular you choose. That's it for me here this morning, this Wednesday morning until Thursday. Appreciate you guys. Take care. Have a great rest of your day and God bless.

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Janice Torres here and I'm Austin Hankwitz. We host the podcast Mind the Small Business Success Stories produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks.

[Josh Pate]

We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners.

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The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever evolving, ever changing. Everyone's a rookie. That's how fast the industry is changing. So what I'm really excited about is to be part of that change. So listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts

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