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Josh Pate
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Josh Pate
I love a good mailbag episode as much as the next guy. The great thing about it is I get to hear from all of you and you essentially get to run the show. The worst thing about it is I get to hear from some of you and you get to run the show. Is it true, Jesse, that I took an anti fall birth stance on a recent show and I'm being called out for it? That's happening on Tonight's okay, well, we'll see. We'll see what the tape has to say about that. We're jam packed. We're high atop an unseasonably warm downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It's Tuesday. It's May 19th, the year of our Lord 2026. I don't want to talk about how storm chasing went last night, but I'll also talk about that later. Some playoff stuff's happening. Some, some things are being said. My honor is being called into question and so I will address that. And we're going to react to someone tonight. I'm going to offer my rating on your bold predictions. I am going to answer passionately a question about the games I wish I could have attended that I didn't get to be at. So all of you can just start thinking, start the wheels turning. Let's just call it in your lifetime, your adult coherent lifetimes count childhood too, if you want to. The games that happened, college football games that you wish you would have been able to attend but you didn't get to because I came up with five and then we came up with like 10 or 15 and we had to whittle that list down a little bit. All that and more. We are jam packed and they are watching us in Raleigh, North Carolina, Elk Grove, California, Fort Collins, Colorado, Ocala, Florida. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Subscribe to the channel if you have not already. It really helps us in many ways, most of which don't concern you, but it keeps the show free, which I do anyway. But just subscribe anyway. And also you might be happy to learn that we're doing a Tuesday show tonight because I am headed somewhere with Prez in tow tomorrow morning and that somewhere is the next stop on the award winning one day speaker series. And we're going to have a first time coach Jesse. We're going to sit down with someone who has never appeared on on the show until tomorrow at least. And so we'll probably upload that Thursday morning. And then I got to go to a wedding down on the Gulf coast, notice spring wedding on the Gulf Coast. So there will be no show Thursday. That's why we're doing the show tonight with all the housekeeping in mind. Let's dive in, stack the papers here. Whose show is this? It's our show, right. And yet we're leading with Klatt. So we had a question and it's kind of a mailbag episode because I had to drive like 19 hours last night. I just said why not? Let's go mailbag tonight. Bradley, here's your end point. Cody hit us and he said, did you see Joel Klatt this week? Joel had an amazing perspective on the middle class of college football of which we belong to, by the way, and the 2014 playoff. I think giving middle class programs invested gives the game the most competitive, balanced league. I'm not quite sure. What happened to the last sentence there? But I get the gist of it. So I will have you know, Cody, I went and watched the entire Clatt episode segment whatnot about the middle class of college football. I didn't know Klatt majored in economics, by the way, so I learned that in the video. But to give you a little good old fashioned preface, as Meemaw would say, instead of out of context clipping like some people have been doing our videos, I'm looking at you, Jack Trice, Mafia. I need to tell you that what Ser Joel did was, was he chose to offer all the viewpoints. He wasn't really taking a stance on this per se. And the reason I'm telling you that is because I'm going to play a clip and I don't want you to think this is him making his argument or his like impassioned plea on the whole College Football Playoff 12, 16, 24 theme. What he was doing was very accurately, in my estimation, offering up the viewpoint of the people who want to expand to 24. Now, we all know the viewpoint is we need to make or want to make more money. But then you dive a little deeper. All right, let's get past the initial layer of greed and there are reasons and there is context behind all this. So I'm going to spare you my take on it. I'm going to play you his take and then I'll respond to it on the back end. This is Joel Klatt talking about the reasons why proponents of expansion may be proponents of expansion.
Joel Klatt
Eight wins, nine wins doesn't do anything for you. You can't build on that. It's hard to generate revenue. It's hard to generate season ticket sales. It's hard to recruit to that because there's no definition of success. It's a hollowing out of that portion of college football. It's hollowed out the middle class. It's much more difficult to define yourself as successful in the middle class because why? Because too few dollars, or excuse me, too many dollars are chasing too few goods. You're spending a lot more at the grocery store for the exact same bag of groceries. Well, that's exactly what's going on now in the middle class, upper middle class in college football. So who am I talking about? It's Iowa, it's Michigan State, it's South Carolina, it could be Tennessee at times. It can be a lot of programs. It'd be Kansas State, it can be Iowa State, it can be Utah, it can be byu. There are so Many programs that used to have the ability to get to an upper tier bowl game and that tier has been hollowed out, they can't define themselves as successful unless they're in.
Josh Pate
There's nothing wrong about that, at least in factual terms. There's nothing wrong about what he said there. It used to be that there was a lot of context and nuance to you having preseason six and six expectations and you going eight and four. It was a cause for celebration. You did get to punch your ticket to Tampa or Orlando or Jacksonville, some warm weather bowl game on New Year's Day or thereabouts. And it was a big deal. And you had these levels, success, it meant something to win seven games or eight games or nine games. And the reason that he's talking about seven, eight, nine is that is what you would call sort of middle class achievement levels in college football. We used to have ways to define success and categorize success. Then came the playoff and what he's talking about there. If you're 16 years old, this is sort of the world you've lived in. If you're 46 years old, you've lived in multiple versions of the college football world and you remember a college football world not too long ago that described well, was described perfectly by what he just said. But you'll also remember that with the advent of the playoff came a complete re engineering of the way we talk about success in college football. And it was like someone took a giant vacuum and stabbed college football and sucked all of the meaning that didn't have anything to do with playoffs out of the sport. It was did you make the playoff or didn't you? If you made it, you succeeded. If you didn't, you failed. So we had four teams and that meant outside of the four teams, everyone else in the sport failed. It's a dumb way to look at was easy to see coming, but people chose to look at it that way. I was in the minority at that point in time. Remember, that was like a whole five years ago, Jesse. I was in the minority at the time. I had to deal with it. But it was very easy to see coming. So anyway, now we get to this point where the people who made the mess are looking to be put in charge of cleaning up the mess by making a bigger deal of what made the mess in the first place. If you're having trouble following that is because it is absent any discernible logic. This wouldn't really fly in the real world. But this isn't the real world. It's college Football. So let's just ask ourselves this, all right? What Joel's saying there is these days going 8 and 4 doesn't have any context behind it. It doesn't have any meaning behind it. And it's not his take. I want to remind you he is merely regurgitating what a lot of people who are proponents of expansion are saying. And what proponents of expansion are saying is once upon a time, it meant something for us to go 8 and 4 because we got to go to a New Year's Day bowl game down in a really bright, sunny environment. And we got to sell it to our donors and they spent more. And we got to sell it to our players and they believe they accomplished something. And we got to sell it to our recruits and they believed our program was going somewhere. But now when we walk in the door and we tell the donor or the prospective student athlete that we went 8 and 4, they say, did you make the playoff? And if the answer is no, there's nothing more to sell them on, I don't care. That's not my problem. That's your problem because you're the ones who advocated for the change. So I would say if you're having problem or problems convincing your donor class about where you stand in the sport, do a better job of explaining to them where you stand in the sport. They're not idiots. They do have functioning brains, right? It's like in 2012 they knew what 8 and 4 meant. But now these are children we're dealing with. Like, you can't sell the vision and direction of your program to recruits unless you can slap a college football playoff sticker on the side of your 8 and 4 record. I'm supposed to buy that? Like, I'm supposed to ask myself what's more important, Josh? Is the regular seasons sanctity more important or is it more important to avoid donor fatigue? Well, you know what my answer is. But also, look, you seriously think I'm supposed to look at this whole dynamic and because you can't decide on how to explain the value of 8 and 4, I'm supposed to totally upend the entire structure of the sport to make you feel better? That's the best we can do? I'd rather you just look at me and say you need more money than look at me and say that sort of thing. But he is right. Joel Clad is right. That's what's being pitched behind the scenes by a lot of people who don't think that it focus groups very well to just say we want more money because it doesn't. And so absent we want more money for the sake of wanting more money or the lie of we need more money and this is the only way to get it. They're trying to peddle these sorts of narratives. So he's right about that. I do want to go back to one thing he said, though. You heard what he said there, Jesse. The one word that I noticed he used was unintended. We didn't play it in the clip, but if you go over to Joel's channel, you'll watch about a 30, 35ish minute video, which is still shorter than the one we did the other night. So I'm not blaming him for being long winded. He said these are unintended consequences of expanding the playoff bowl season. Losing its meaning may have been an unintended consequence of the people that pulled the lever. It was far from an unforeseen consequence, actually, quite the opposite. This is one of the easier things to see coming in college football. Once you expanded the College Football Playoff. And once espn, who owned the rights to the product itself, generated that Entire marketing campaign 10 years ago. To their credit, they backed off of it a little bit now, but back then it was, who's in, who's in? Who's in? You'd be watching a University of Buffalo game on a Tuesday night and during the commercial breaks, who's in, who's in? Who's in? Well, that did suck all the oxygen out of anything else having to do with the sport that didn't have the playoff sticker on the side of it. It sure did. And once we, once we went down that road, once we went down the playoff expansion road, it was really easy to see what was coming for bowl season. And then players started to opt out, and then bowl season started to lose its meaning. Expanding and emphasizing the playoff at the expense of everything else sealed bowl season's fate. My entire stance on this is I watched him torch bowl season. I'm not willing to watch him torch the regular season by using the same logic. The logic back then was, well, we got to expand for pretty much the same reasons that they're citing now. And it torched bowl season, okay? Something that I highly valued the sanctity of and the value of back in the day. All college football's got left as the regular season. That is the one North Star. That is the one most precious commodity that college football has left. And I'm about to turn the same people loose who torched bowl season in a quote, unintended manner and I'm going to let them mess around with the regular season. I'm not willing to do that now. It may be out of my control, but I can use this microphone as much as I possibly can. Also, just to go back to the economics principles there. My very limited understanding, Jesse, of economics is any crisis that we've ever seen in the history of economics in any country has largely been man made, has it not? You know, so the United States certainly wouldn't be the first country or the first economy to deal with crises the likes of which humans have dealt with throughout the entire history of existence. And likewise college football, not immune to disasters or at the very least major issues that are caused by human error. It seems to me though that the prudent thing to do would be to get the humans out of the way who made the mess and maybe usher some new ones in there to clean up the mess, you know, maybe to chart a new course going forward. I don't know. What do I know though? What do I know? We, we do this show pro bono. After all, they are watching us all over these great United States of America tonight. And you may be watching the replay or listening to the replay the next day. Whatever you're doing, wherever you're doing it, we appreciate you so much. Let's move on. Got a lot to get to in the, in the, in the mailbag, but I did want to hit this. You remember a few weeks ago we just circled like four teams and we said are they going to be better or worse this year than they were last year? And a lot of people like that. So we're going to continue to do that. I don't know if we're going to do every team in existence, but I did want to circle four tonight kind of at random. So Texas A and M is one of them regular season. Last year they were 11 1. Naturally I have to lean that they're going to have a worse record in the regular season this year than they had last year. And it's because they did lose over a dozen starters. A lot of draft attrition which good on them because for a long time you heard Texas A&M's name on signing day. You didn't hear it a whole lot on draft night. Crazy. That ratio in was not the same ratio going up. Their over under win total this year is eight and a half. They've got a top five toughest strength of schedules at least from our internal metrics. Now on the plus side, wide receiver could be really good here. The Defensive front, defensive backs could be really good. There's a lot of churn. I'm saying that Eileen, they have a worse record but there is certainly a world where A and M goes 10 and 2 in the regular season but they end up being a better team. You got to get some breaks to go 11 and one frankly. And you got to be good. They may be good and it may be a Miami situation from last year for them this year where they may lose a couple of games early but like by the end of the year you're looking at them saying dude, no one wants to play A and M right now. So it could be a worse record, better team situation, but I would lean worse because it's hard to do much better than 11 and 1. What about Nebraska? We were just up there. I spent an inordinate amount of time in Nebraska the last 48 hours regular season last year in Nebraska was 7 and 5. And you know, if you were to have told someone at the beginning of last year Nebraska's going to go 7 and 5 this year and Riola is going to hit the exit door, it would have been an all out panic. And instead here I sit having watched them go seven and five ready to tentatively in light pencil say that Eileen, them being better this year record wise than they were last year. Now here is what that theory is tied to. It is called the Anthony Calandria puzzle piece theory, meaning he just plugs in and he's a better fit for what they want to do. The ground game starts working better and more in conjunction the theory that Nebraska has a very underrated wide receiver room, which I'm prepared to say for a second consecutive year. All of it starts to work downstream of the fact that even though his name is of less renown, Anthony Calandry is a better fit in that offense than Dylan Raiola was. Now if the Anthony Calandria puzzle piece theory doesn't have an acronym yet, but if it is not true, we are screwed. It's over. We are screwed. As is this prediction. So the other thing, last year, if you watch Nebraska, and believe me, as someone who predicted them to go ten and two, I did, man, they got sacked a lot and man, there wasn't a real much of a mobile threat at quarterback. And last year stats and info has reliably informed me Anthony Calandria over 3400 yards passing, over 800 yards rushing. I expect at least a portion of that to translate. So give me better than last year for Nebraska, Clemson, it's got to be Better, doesn't it? Jesse? If it gets worse, I'm not going to say it can't get any worse. But if Clemson's worse than 7 and 5, well that means they either struggle to make a bowl or don't make a bowl. And then it's just really uncomfortable conversations that we have to have. Recruiting has trended down. They're not terrible, but it's trended down a little bit from what it was in the vintage years. But you know what? I'm fresh off a visit to Clemson over the past couple of weeks and I got sold. So I will hard lean that their record will be better this year. Now I don't know how much better the team will be, although I do think somehow someway, with all the doubt and all the back against the wall, chip on the shoulder, bunch of nobody stuff that Dabbo is going to be able to sell to everyone, including himself. In the mirror every morning I could see him pouring the ingredients in the pot and somehow what comes out of the pot, the sum is greater than that of the individual parts. I can see that. I could also see if I'm looking at the schedule right now, that in conference play this year they do play the alpha team in that league and that's Miami, but outside of Miami and then remove Clemson cause they can't play themselves. They avoid five of the other top six teams in the ACC when it comes to odds to win the conference right now. So it may be a very, very, very top heavy strength of schedule. LSU and Miami are on there. Outside of that they can win any game. I'm not saying they couldn't win those games. Miami comes there, who knows what happens in week one when they go to lsu. I think they're going to be better than seven and five. Run game can't get worse. Pass defense can't get much worse. That with a workable, kind of a secretly workable schedule. I'll go better than 7 and 5. Baylor is the last one I wanted to look at here and we'll move on. Baylor was 5 and 7 last year. They have now posted losing seasons in three of their last four years after that Big 12 championship year. Dave Aranda dodged getting fired last year cause his AD got fired. Everybody kind of understands that now. If he goes 10 and 2 this year, then all is forgotten. They went and got D.J. lagway from Florida, former preseason number one quarterback in the league last year. D.J. lagway. Yes, according to some lists. And they went and they turned the portal hard Jesse. But that class was only rated 58th per on Three's portal rankings. So you make of that what you will. Just cause you go and get a bunch of players in the portal doesn't magically mean you've got a great team on your hands. And the portal roulette wheel doesn't always land on the color you want it to land on. So I kind of feel like Baylor lands on the same as they were last year. I know we're not supposed to play that. This is supposed to be better or worse, but it's our game, it's our rules. So I think I have no reason to hard lean Baylor better or worse than they were last year. FanDuel leans a little bit better. They're over under win total six and a half. But I'm going to go about the same as last year. Jesse I ordered items from my own store. I didn't tell anyone. We could have. We could have had them shipped to us. But you know what? If I am going to ask the good hard working people of Pate State to pay a nominal fee for T shirts, then why wouldn't I do the same? Brady from Pensacola asked a very timely question. He said why doesn't the store carry camo shirts or long sleeve? Who doesn't want to see a train in camo? No love for the Southern states. Boy, what a headline that's been today. So I have heard you. Jesse has heard you. But he sucks at design so that's of no importance. Alex has heard you and she's great at design and great at fulfilling your needs on any kind of shelf that you want it to be on in this store. So you know, I don't have camo shirts to show you tonight. I do have rumors, strong rumors, that we have been in discussions with certain prominent companies based in the south that provide such gear. And I think that long before fall gets here, maybe even before summer gets here, we'll be able to fulfill that request. Until then, those Depth Over Dopamine shirts are moving to like our new slogan around here. Depth Over Dopamine. Why? Because that's how AI described our show last week. And AI is not going to sue us. So you can go there and buy that T shirt right now. Paintstatematerial.com
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Josh Pate
let us move on. Back to the mailbag we go. And it was jam packed. Was the mailbag. Logan from Toledo, Ohio, which college football program, in your opinion, is under the most pressure headed into the 2026 season? Well, if you were asking me which coaches, you know, it'd be like Mike Norvell. But Logan asked about programs, so I think the answer for me, I got a few of them. Texas is the first one that comes to mind. A lot of pressure on Texas this year. Not because they've been terrible and they're trying to get themselves out of the gutter. Quite the opposite. They've been really good. They've recruited at a very high level. They've portaled kids in there at a very high level. They've developed at a very high level. They're just these really, really high hurdles that they haven't been able to clear yet. Sark's gone 5, 7, 8, 5, 12, 2, 13, 3, 10, 3. It's really good the last three years. Not greatness. Really, really, really good. You could look at it that way or you could look at it and say, man, when you spend the way we spend, when you've got the seemingly bottomless resources like we do, and we got no SEC title and we got no college Football playoff title game appearance, whoo. Lofty standards, but that is the way I think some Texas fans look at it. However, there's no hot seat talk or anything like that. Not even remotely close. And I would also say, talking to some longtime Texas folks out there, I want to be careful how I say this. Sark is the first example in a long time of someone whose football acumen and likability mesh at the perfect counterpoint, perfect counterbalance there. In other words, they like him. They like him. They're fully behind him, but they like him too. They don't put up with him. They like him. I say all that to remind you how quickly sentiment can turn in this sport. The thing about being all in on a season is if you win the title, great Ohio State did it two years ago. But if you're all in on a season and every bit of criticism of your head coach in your mind has been tamped down by, well, he'll get it done this year and he doesn't get it done that year, boy, it changes quick. I mean, the outcome of a couple of one possession games this year realistically could change the tone on how 50 plus percent of the Texas fan base views Steve Sarkeesian. That's pressure. That's competitive pressure. It's not job security pressure, but that's pressure. So I'd say Texas, I'd say usc, undoubtedly. USC absolutely is one of the programs under the most pressure this year. I really think it's one of those playoff or bust kind of situations. That's totally fair because Lincoln's over half a decade in out there right now. Famously. I have not sold my stock in Lincoln Riley yet, but I don't find very many other people saying that. Jesse. I'm, I'm kind of over in the corner by myself there. The sentiment has just been that it all eventually leads to this outcome. Like when he hit the quasi reset button a couple of years ago and said, all right, we're finally going to take defense serious now. Hey, they got the results and they, they improved quantumly. Now Gary Patterson's the DC there after Lynn left and went to Penn State. But, you know, overarching above and beyond even one specific side of the ball is just the overall caliber of the program. Is it going to be playoff caliber or is it not? And I think a lot of The USC fan base looks and says, come on now, if we don't get it done this year, he's not the guy. And that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of pressure because you have no margin for error anymore. There is no screwing it up this year. Going 8 and 4 and then telling your folks, well, we're on our way there, we're getting close. That's what you say in year two. You can't say that this many years in. So I'd say USC is there and I'd put Alabama in this category. I don't know how many people would agree with me here. I think a lot would. Alabama's under a lot of pressure this year that I don't think they've been under as much the last couple of years. Last couple of years. Well, there's always pressure at Alabama, but the last couple of years there's still been this little haze over Kalyn DeBoer's 2024 and 2025 that still kind of felt transitiony, like they were still merging their way off of the Sabin Speedway. And they're still kind of on the ramp over here to the deboer Freeway, but they're fully over there. Now. The team that takes the field this fall is Calen deboer's players. The staff that's on the sideline this fall, Those are Calen DeBoer's staff. It really was in name the last couple of years, but there's, there's minimal Nick Saban residue on Alabama now and moving forward, which just means your outcomes now and moving forward are total reflections of who Kaylin DeBoer is as a head coach. And the pressure is you think you've got the right guy. Greg Byrne thinks he's got the right guy. I think you got the right guy. But you got to find out. You got to find out. And the only way to find that out is results. It's a bottom line business. And there's a lot of pressure because you're, you're going into a season where that's sort of on the header and you don't even know who's starting for you at quarterback. Now that doesn't mean you got a weakness at quarterback. You may have two guys you can win with, but you couldn't run the ball last year. You totally overhauled your offensive line. You do get an easy, er, start to the season maybe than some other folks in the conference and maybe a more backloaded strength of schedule. But I put Bama there USC there, Texas there. You know, they're actually watching us in Oxford, Alabama and Pryor, Oklahoma and Denton, Maryland. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Let's go back to the Mailbag, my least favorite part of the show on nights like this four Verticals podcast from Jacksonville, Florida. Let's see what great football question they submitted to the mailbag. Thoughts on yesterday's storm chase and the drama in the chaser community? Well, my thoughts are, I don't really want to talk about yesterday's storm chase now. Two nights ago, headed back down the Missouri river, the spine of the Missouri river we had been chasing in South Dakota and Iowa. Earlier that day, I believe we were in Salix, Iowa. Caught a brief Jesse, a QLCS tornado. You're very familiar with those. Caught one right as it was going to cross 59 I think it was. So we did not go home empty handed on Sunday night. So we did postpone the show for a good cause. Rain wrapped nocturnal, but we did postpone the show for a good cause. Then we stayed the night in Omaha, woke up, drove down to beautiful Salina, Kansas and zigzagged our way across central and east central Kansas most of the day and got nothing. Nothing. It's not even our fault. There was nothing to be gotten. And so I arrived at a spot with our buddy, friend of the program, Brad Arnold, AKA the tornado sniffer. He had a stuffy nose yesterday, Jesse. Very stuffy nose. As did we all. We arrived at a point Last night about 7 o' clock thereabouts where you realize the chase is over, everything's lined out and we're not chasing a line of thunderstorms. What do we do? You got two options, Jesse. You can kick it over to Kansas City, check yourself into a hotel, catch the first plane to Nashville, home the next morning. Or you can realize how angry you are and how much rage and adrenaline you have bottled up and realize I'm not going to sleep anytime soon. Let's just punch it. And that's what we did. And your boy behind the wheel all by himself, at least from a driver's perspective, drove from, I don't know, close to Salina, Kansas, Marysville, Kansas. Remind me to tell you something about Marysville in a second. All the way home last night I drove all the way to Nashville, like an 11 hour drive. Stopped at a couple of quick trips and that's it. There was no stopping. It was stopping to fill up gas and that's it. Got in about 4:45 this morning and here I am. Am I. A hero? I can't say for sure, but yes, yes, but I wish it would have gone better. But that wasn't the question. Bradley, throw the question back up for a second because I do want to talk about something pretty serious here. He asked thoughts on yesterday's chase. I just gave you that. But drama in the chaser community. There is a chaser community and there is drama in it. And it's kind of a joke, but it's kind of not. So here's the problem. The problem is everyone's free to chase tornadoes, which means a bunch of people, especially in the post Twister 2 era that we find ourselves in, are out, I guess, doing what they call chasing tornadoes now. Thing about it is there is just a conga line, a train of cars out there on these roadways. You would have to see it to believe it, actually. Because if I showed you the pictures, you think it's AI. It's not. It's insane, but it's real. And I mean, most of them have the phone pointed the wrong way. They don't even know what they're looking at. They're not reading wind direction, they're not reading cloud structure. There's really not much scientific basis for him to be out there. It's just adrenaline thrill seeking. But at the same time, you sound like a hypocrite if you criticize it because, like, what are you doing out there? Everybody's kind of out there for the same reasons, right? Well, not really. However, valid, valid retort there. Here's the problem with it. It's very obvious when you're out there, you're past the point of no return. By that, I mean there is a very, very major mass casualty situation that's probably imminent in those sorts of environments. And I'm not sure that anything will ever get anyone's attention. Short of that, once you've passed a certain point, trust me, I was out there yesterday. We have long since passed that point. And there are a bunch of people that have very little idea what they're doing, who are drawn to the idea of it and have no idea what the reality of it is. And the reality of it is very serious. It can be very dire. And some of the best in the world have lost their lives doing that stuff. And when I say best in the world, I mean having a thorough understanding of the atmospheric science of it all. And those are on far less crowded roadways than what we saw yesterday. So that headline's coming. I see no way around it. And it will only be at that point, that attention will be gotten. Now let's move back over to college football related matters. Someone who's new to the show has no idea what just happened. Well, what happened is I love college football, I love storm chasing and I love Meemaw. Meemaw's no longer with us and so it's college football and storm chasing. And especially in the spring, we do a healthy amount of both. So that's what that was about.
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Josh Pate
Tyler from Wildwood, Missouri what are your top five college football games in history? You didn't get to attend, but in hindsight you wish you were there. Extremely good question and extremely difficult to whittle this list down. I did Write down, I think I wrote down 6. I cheated a little bit. I mean, how do you not start with Texas, USC. Oh, five, the Rose bowl, the national championship game. This is WrestleMania 18 as far as I'm concerned. This is Rock versus Hogan. This is Rock Austin at WrestleMania 17. This is like the last shining beacon of the old era of something. And this right here is it's historic programs. It is the national championship game. It's Pete Carroll's usc, it's Matt Brown's Texas, it's Matt Leinert, it's Vince Young, it's Los Angeles, it's Keith Jackson on the call. And I think maybe his last national championship game. And it is the last of the major pre cell phone moments in college football. And it's the reason I always mention that is it's the last one of the last times you ever watch a big seminal college football moment where everyone's attention is fully locked in, there's no distraction. You can't get that anymore. College football is still great, but it's just different than it was then. And I couldn't be there because I was a child. And so I would love to have been there. I Also fast forward two years. There was a game at LSU in 2007. Actually, there were several games for LSU in 2007. They won the national title that year. Give me Florida at LSU in 2007. This is an LSU 28 to 24 win. This is Jacob Hester's magnum opus. This is just cinema. Frame it, hang it in a museum for him. This is LSU five of five on fourth down. This is Death Valley at its very best on a Saturday night. This is Urban Meyer and Tim Tebows, Florida going in there. This is LSU number one in the country. And figure out in a way or figuring out a way to stay number one in the country. Oh, dude. I just encourage you guys. If you haven't ever seen it, please go watch it. If you're younger, you may have not seen it, go watch it. But like, if you just haven't watched this stuff in a while, it slaps you in the face how different this stuff feels. And I don't. We were trying to figure out a way to describe it earlier. Just more raw, I guess. Just. I don't know, man, that era of college football, but. But I'm sure people in that era, like people in 2007 would have said the same thing about the 80s. I understand how nostalgia works. I'm a huge victim of it. But man, that works for me. That works for me. And it's. It's a regular season game where it feels like everything's about the regular season, which is college football at its best. Fast forward, let's see, nine years. This one's more recent. 2016. Do you guys remember this Clemson game against Louisville? Louisville at Clemson, 2016. This is Deshaun Watson against Lamar Jackson. This is the eventual national champ against the eventual Heisman Trophy winner. This is Lamar Jackson losing the game, having gone 27 of 44 for 295 through the air and another 31 carries for 162 and two on the ground. That was the losing quarterbacks stat line. So you can imagine how good Clemson was that year. Good enough to go on and win a national championship. This was so crazy. Few turnovers in the game, but crazy. That was as electric as it got in the regular season in 2016. All right. Sorry, Bradley. I mean, you gave me a slider and I was already ready to move on. Looks good, though. I'm dragging. I'm kind of filling time so everyone can read it right now. Okay, let me tell you the one that I thought of fourth, but I think this one may be number one on my list. It's in 2005. USC at Notre Dame in 2005. Of all the games in my lifetime that I never got to attend that I wish I could have been at, I think this may be number one. I can't explain to you in strong enough terms how this game lives in my memory. This game lives with more authority in my memory than like any national championship game, because that's how much reverence I have for the regular season. And that's how insane the buildup was to this one. This game right here. USC at Notre Dame, 05 and LSU at Alabama, 2011. In my lifetime. I'm talking about. Those are the biggest games I can ever remember. The hype around those games you can't even put into words for someone today. Because for someone today in the expanded playoff era, there could never be this kind of urgency on games anymore. Not to mention, here's the real beautiful part about it. This is the Reggie Bush push. This is Charlie Weiss conspiring with the Notre Dame grounds crew to grow the grass in Notre Dame Stadium. Because, yes, that existed back then up to, like, ankle height and trying to slow down usc, they break out the green jerseys. This is our boy Brady Quinn pulling the trigger for Notre Dame. This is Matt Leinert pulling the trigger for usc. I think Leinert got helicoptered into the end zone at One point or down short of the goal line, I can't remember which. But here's what's great. That right there, Bradley's playing it right now. The moment USC wins the game. All it was about is we just beat Notre Dame. That was it. It wasn't. Boy, think about what this just did for our playoff seeding. Boy. Let's take a look at our updated bracket projections. It was none of that. It was none of that. It was. This was one of the most awesome regular season games you'll ever see in the history of the sport. It is pageantry and tradition at its utmost. It is two of the absolute iconic brands, programs in the history of this sport. All eyes are on Notre Dame Stadium. USC and Pete Carroll go in there and pull it out of the fire. And there were like, I was a kid watching this. And in the south, like, we detested USC because, like, we were led to believe they played the game the wrong way. Just like Miami once upon a time, you were led to believe, man, they were just doing it the wrong way. It's not about flash, it's about meat and potatoes. You know, it's just, it's competing worldviews, it's competing cultural worldviews, and that's football and sports at its best, by the way, because it gets to be played out, you know, with very few actual consequences on a field of battle, field of play, whatever you want to use there. But what was beautiful is it was the outcome of a rivalry game that was the most important. But for those of us who weren't Notre Dame fans or USC fans growing up, we're looking at it saying, I think USC is going to go in there and smoke them. But then when you realized it wasn't going to happen and Notre Dame actually had a shot, and while Notre Dame's up in the fourth quarter, are they about to win this? And then you've gotten so used to watching USC pull them out of the fire. This is finally the one that they're going to get got. And they pulled it out of the fire. Amazing game, man. 2012. I didn't get to be there when Johnny Manziel went into Bryant Denny Stadium and stunned Alabama. I wish I could have been there. Good John Anderson song, by the way. Wish I could have been there for that. Can you imagine just a week after Bama goes down and it's the AJ McCarron to TJ Yelden screen pass, almost like a walk off touchdown situation in Baton Rouge. A week after that, they come home and they're down 21 to nothing to Texas A and M and Johnny Manziel. And most people have never been in an environment where there's a big favorite that's been stunned like that. But there's a different kind of silence a crowd has, and you don't get to experience that, but maybe like a handful of times if you're lucky. I can't imagine what that must have felt like. Then Bama mounts a comeback, and then it looks like they're going to win the game. And then McCarron throws a pick down at the goal line. And only then, through the fighting, Billy Lucci's realized, we just did this. Wow, we just pulled this off. And all of a sudden, Johnny Manziel goes from a household name amongst college football diehards to a household name amongst people who otherwise never even watched college football. Just, that's what it meant to beat Alabama back then. And then the other one I came up with was 06. This is just games in my childhood, basically, because games in my adult life, I've been able to go to most of the ones that I would have wished that I could have attended. Michigan, Ohio State 1 versus 2 in 2006, I remember more than the national championship game. So many of these regular season games. I remember more than the national championship game. The build up to this thing, man, again, as a kid in the south, you resented the attention that the national networks gave Ohio State, Michigan, because, like, in the south, you wanted people to talk about the Iron Bowl, Georgia, Florida, those sorts of things. But then when this is put in your face and you watch the magnitude of that game and it's a. What final score is like 42, 39 or something like that? Jesse, I can't remember what it was, but it's just an insane game. It's one of those games where the hype is enormous and then the result exceeds the hype. It's just amazing. Just amazing. And somehow we had a 14, or didn't even have a 14 playoff yet and still worked perfectly. So those are the games that I circled. That was a trip down memory lane. Let's continue. This is controversial, but I got to tackle this. Patrick from St. Louis Baby, due November 2nd. He reminds us. He says, is your having. Wait, yeah. He says, is your. No having babies in the fall? Your worst take paternity leave during the season. A valid excuse to skip fall weddings and events and late night feedings during west coast and maxion games. It seems like the perfect time. All right, let's break this down. Into parts. Jesse, do you remember me taking a no babies in the fall stance? You remember that? That happened? I think you're a liar. I think you and Patrick are making stuff up. Bradley, did this happen? Mitch? Good answer, Mitch. Allegedly. I took a stance that you shouldn't have children in the fall, which is, of course, insane, but let's just say I took that stance, okay? Now, there's a big difference in me saying you can be strategic about it, and it's better to have a kid in the spring versus me saying no babies in the fall. We can't do that. I'm pretty sure it's illegal. Even on campus here at Peyton State, it's illegal. However, let's say that I did take that stance. If I were one who believed that, I think Patrick just talked me off of it. Listen to this again, folks. If you're out there planning a family of your own or additions to your family, and you and the Mrs. Are saying, all right, look, as we carry out the game plan here, I think we all know what we're talking about. Do we want a game plan in, oh, I don't know, September so that we can celebrate in spring, summer, or do we want a game plan in January, where we're just, boom, right smack dab in the middle of the season? If you're having that internal or external debate, Patrick is making the case for fall children, and his case is really solid enough to talk me off of this stance that I allegedly have. He said, you got a valid excuse. By excuse, he means newborn. You got a valid excuse to skip fall weddings and events. Bingo. And also the late night feedings perfectly coincide with west coast games and maxion games, and you get paternity leave during the football season. I'm sold. So if I did make this claim, and I'm not sure that I did, but if I did make this claim, I'm willing to loosen my. My stance. So congratulations, Patrick, and shame on you, Jesse. Let's move on. FanDuel, the exclusive odds provider of the show, unfortunately, despite our best efforts, no fall child props. None whatsoever. What we do have is we do have, like, tonight on the show, we've done a mailbag episode. Fanduel Mike hits us up and says, mailbag episodes, huh? That's interesting. Did you know we have a discord over here? I said, yes, yes, Michael, we know that. Well, Fanduel got to thinking, because I'm always pressuring them to give away free money, and they, you know, they don't want to just hand it out. That's, that's, that's lame. So they want it to be transactional. So one of the ideas fanduel Mike has had and I have endorsed is that if you go over to FanDuel's Discord channel, you guys know how to get there. If you don't, there's a QR code on the screen. You can drop your questions there for future mailbag episodes if we choose them, you're getting $100 in bonus bets dropped into your account, no questions asked. I already asked the questions for you. All you need to do is ask a question for the show. So FanDuel, the exclusive odds provider of the show, and now the exclusive bonus bets provider of the show, pending that you ask questions in their Discord channel. So there you go. Balls are in your court.
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Josh Pate
Let's wrap it up tonight. We'll wrap up the show with bold predictions tonight. These are things that you claim, that you believe, and if it rates high enough on the boldness scale, you may just qualify for a chalice of supremacy at the end of the year if your prediction comes true. First up, Golden Domers in Roanoke, Virginia. Press country, as they call it up there. Notre Dame goes 12 0. And in those 12 games, there is not a score closer than seven points. So Notre Dame's winning every game by a touchdown or more. Now, their win total is 11 and a half. So they are, they are very much expected to be in contention for this. Strength of schedule is pretty light. I'm Gonna put an 8.75 on the boldness scale for this prediction. Two questions. Number one, are they gonna have a weird game where they're playing an inferior opponent playing Stanford or at Purdue, Michigan State, Rice, and all of a sudden it's just really weird. It's close. They win, but they win 31, 27. Because if that happens, this, this prediction goes up in smoke. Also, these games, like the game against Wisconsin in week one or going to Brigham Young October 17th or obviously the big showdown against Miami, they're going to win all those games by a touchdown or more. We hit up fanduel Mike, by the way, said, hey, you guys don't have the Miami Notre Dame line up yet, but what would it be if you put it up? He told us, Jesse, and he's given us permission to share it on air. Let's play this game right quick. By the way, guys, this is Miami at Notre Dame November 7th. What do you think the line would be? 3, 2, 1. It is Notre Dame -7, which I think is a little high, but whatever. So, Fanduel Mike, I strongly encourage you to post that number. Let me know ahead of time. I'm going to put an 8.75 on this, on this, on the boldness rating. Next up, this one's Boulder Lance from Lexington, Kentucky Will Stein will take Kentucky to the playoff in year one. That is a 9.75 on the boldness scale. That will get you a chalice of supremacy if it happens. Emphasis on if. Kentucky has seven plus wins, just one of the last six seasons. They got 47 new players on this team, recruiting and portal both outside the top 40. Now it may be a solid portal class, but they also face nine of the top 25 teams in the preseason odds to win the national title over at Fanduel. So there's no shortcutting on the schedule and you got to figure 9 and 3 bare minimum, 10 and 2 probably more likely necessary to make the playoff. And I think they can be greatly improved and still not get there. So if they get there with an over under win total of four and a half, then yeah, I'm sending you a chalice that's a 9.75. Next up, we got a specific player led. Bold prediction. Prop situation here. Underwood unleashed from Traverse City, Michigan. Savion Hider and Jordan Marshall Both rush for 100 yards and 10 touchdowns. One that. What did I say, 100, they probably get it. But rushing for 110, would they get that? All right. Hyder and Jordan Marshall both rushed for 1,000 yards and 10 touchdowns. Great disagreement in the pre C or the pre show meeting over this prediction. I'll put a nine and a half on it. We'll qualify it. We'll qualify it for a chalice. So 1,000 rushing yards and 10 touchdown. This is Michigan having a couple of thousand yard rushers and a couple of ten touchdown guys. Now Marshall was over 900 last year and Hyder's a five star. Or hitter. Hyder or hitter? Jesse hit her right. I'm going hitter. He sounds better. He's five star. He's legit. They're both going to be heavily factored into the rotation here. 39 running backs in college football last year were over 1,000 yards. Only 29 of them had 10 plus rushing touchdowns. None of them were on the same team. So like I told you earlier, Jesse, this is pretty hard to accomplish. Now on the plus side here, Utah, entire staff coming in to Michigan from Utah, number two rushing offense last year. So you got to have health on your side. You've got to have the workload balance on your side. You can't have one of them carrying 80% of the mail here. That's a 9.5 for me. Lastly, pretty bold Patrick from Lockhart, Texas. Every team that enters the playoff will have at least two losses. I think that's a 9.75. I think there's a, there's at least a one loss team out there somewhere. I think the G5 alone kills you here because the nature of taking the highest rated G5 team is that team's likely to have one losses or fewer. Eight teams made the playoff with zero or one losses last year. Three made it in 2024. So you need chaos to happen, but you need it to happen in every league. Plus the G5, plus Notre Dame. And I just don't know that you're getting all of that. You'll get some of that, but I don't think you're getting all that. So I make that a 9.75. All right. On limited sleep. That's the best I had to give you tonight, Jesse. That's the best I had and I hope it was good enough. We are on the road tomorrow morning bright and early via air to a brand new speaker series destination. We're happy about it, we're pleased with it, but we hope you're happy and pleased with it as well. We'll probably upload the conversation sometime Thursday, but you'll know who it is tomorrow. Excited about it. Just follow on the socials oshpatecfb all right, gotta get home, get some food, get some sleep. Big day tomorrow. Until Sunday night for director Bradley producer Jesse. I'm Josh Pate. Take care. Have a great rest of your week and God bless.
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Josh Pate
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Episode: CFP Expansion Latest + Games I Wish I Attended
Date: May 20, 2026
Host: Josh Pate
Source: iHeartPodcasts
This episode of Josh Pate's College Football Show is an energized, opinion-driven mailbag session that tackles the latest debates within college football, including the impact of College Football Playoff (CFP) expansion on the sport’s "middle class," preseason pressure on major programs, and a personal rundown of the top games Josh wishes he’d attended. With a blend of informed skepticism and nostalgia, Josh fields listener questions, offers bold predictions for the coming season, and delivers informed takes on both on-field and cultural aspects of the game.
Timestamps: 02:15 – 18:40
“Eight wins, nine wins doesn’t do anything for you... It’s a hollowing out of that portion of college football. It’s much more difficult to define yourself as successful in the middle class because... too many dollars are chasing too few goods. You’re spending a lot more at the grocery store for the exact same bag of groceries.”
“If you’re having problem or problems convincing your donor class about where you stand in the sport, do a better job of explaining to them where you stand in the sport. They’re not idiots. They do have functioning brains, right?” [09:56]
“My entire stance on this is: I watched them torch bowl season. I’m not willing to watch them torch the regular season by using the same logic.” [13:46]
Timestamps: 18:40 – 23:57
Josh evaluates whether four major programs will be better or worse in 2026 than the previous year:
Texas A&M:
Nebraska:
Clemson:
Baylor:
Timestamps: 25:59 – 30:27
Listener Logan asks which programs are under the most pressure entering 2026.
Texas:
“There’s no hot seat talk or anything like that... Sark is the first example in a long time of someone whose football acumen and likability mesh at the perfect counterpoint... But I say all that to remind you how quickly sentiment can turn in this sport.” [27:11]
USC:
Alabama:
Timestamps: 30:27 – 37:09
“It’s very obvious when you’re out there, you’re past the point of no return... a very, very major mass casualty situation is probably imminent in those sorts of environments.” [35:34]
Timestamps: 39:13 – 47:08
Listener Tyler asks: top five games he wishes he attended in person. Josh delivers with passionate, nostalgia-soaked descriptions:
Timestamps: 47:08 – 50:26
Patrick writes in about Josh’s alleged stance on “no having babies in the fall.”
Timestamps: 53:50 – 59:56
Josh rates the boldness of audience-submitted predictions for the 2026 season:
Notre Dame goes 12–0, all wins by 7+ points.
Kentucky makes the playoff in Will Stein’s first year (9.75 boldness).
Savion Hider & Jordan Marshall (Michigan) each rush for 1,000+ yards & 10 TDs (9.5 boldness).
Every playoff team has two or more losses (9.75 boldness).
“This wouldn’t really fly in the real world. But this isn’t the real world. It’s college football.” [08:41]
“All college football’s got left is the regular season. That is the one North Star. That is the one most precious commodity that college football has left.” [14:10]
“Once you’ve passed a certain point, trust me, I was out there yesterday. We have long since passed that point.” [35:55]
“I’m a huge victim of it. But man, that works for me.” [42:21]
Josh Pate’s delivery in this episode is sharp, conversational, and laced with dry humor, especially when addressing mailbag “controversies.” He relies on storytelling and accessible analogies to deliver substantive critiques, particularly in the discussion on CFP expansion and its downstream effects. Throughout, he balances in-depth knowledge with a friendly, community-first approach to listener questions and engagement.
Engaging, insightful, and at times deeply nostalgic, this episode is an essential listen for fans who care about both the future and history of college football. Josh’s mailbag format is as entertaining as it is informative, offering fresh perspectives on contentious issues (CFP expansion), the shifting landscape of team expectations, and the ways in which college football fandom shapes life’s big decisions — even family planning.