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- [00:00]
Josh Pate
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.
- [00:06]
Jesse
At Lowe's get up to 35% off select major appliances plus members get free delivery, install and more. When you spend $2,500 on select major appliances Lowe's, we help you save valid.
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Bradley
Through 225 while supplies last. Selection varies by location. Excludes Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Florida. Loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions.
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Jesse
Visit lowe's.com terms for details subject to change.
- [00:30]
Bradley
Visit your nearby Lowe's on Colorado street in Kennewick.
- [00:35]
Josh Pate
Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist.
- [00:37]
Jesse
Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
- [00:40]
Josh Pate
As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that.
- [00:44]
Jesse
You can absolutely trust.
- [00:46]
Josh Pate
So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
- [00:53]
Bradley
Learn more at pennymac.com pennymac loan services.
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Jesse
Llc/Housing lender nmls id 35953 licensed by.
- [01:00]
Bradley
The Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the Residential Mortgage Lending act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.
- [01:05]
Jesse
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- [01:37]
Josh Pate
There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still. Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we're here to help you keep going further. Capella University what can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn.
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Jesse
It has come to my attention that maybe shame on me that I've spent so much time shaming the NFL. Not coming to college football's eight, not clearing the deck on Sunday night, moving the super bowl up six hours so we can have our Sunday night show that I failed to realize it may be the NFL that ends up saving college football. I never expected the combination of words to come out of my mouth. We're jam packed high atop a spirited downtown Nashville, Tennessee on this Thursday, February 5th, the year of our Lord 2026. But yes, it has come to the attention of the future Office of the Commissioner of College Football here that if the three letter CFB can't save Themselves. Maybe NFL can come in. Maybe we have sound to back it up. I've got a little bit of reaction and a lot of memories about National Signing day, which is now in our rear view mirror and, you know, in case you need to rewind. Yes, you heard me right, it did happen yesterday. It's a shell of what it once was. We've got an early signing day now. We've got nil. We got portal. So yes, I know the day doesn't mean what it once meant, but it still does mean a lot and it used to mean a whole lot more. So if you will humor me for a little while, I dare take us down the nostalgic streets of yesteryear in college football. Coming up in a few minutes, the ACC schedule has dropp. I want you to do me an early favor. We've already been praying for Northwestern in the Big Ten. Northwestern's been on all of our prayer lists every night and every morning. I would respectfully request that you add Stanford to the prayer list. At least when it comes to college football scheduling. I'll tell you why. And someone hit us up for advice. And you know, this time of year we are always prone to giving out advice. I can't promise it's going to work or that it's even right, but we will give out advice here at Pate State. They're watching us in Eugene, Oregon, Salisbury, not Bury. Salisbury, Maryland, hard E. Even though it's not in there. Midland, Texas is tuned in. Rockingham, North Carolina is tuned in. One quick favor. No matter where you're tuned in, take your finger, scroll down to subscribe, and if it already says subscribed, ignore what I'm about to say. But if it's red, if it still says subscribed, that means you have not subscribed to the channel. And all I need you to do is rectify that and just, boom, subscribe and that's it. And nothing else happens. I promise you. Doesn't sign you up for anything. You don't have to pay me anything. In fact, we'll probably save you money on any of a variety of measures we take on this show with our partners. Okay, let's dive into the show. I have a very, very interesting lead topic tonight. You would, you may think to yourself, well, it's super bowl week, right? Yeah, but we're not NFL show, so. Well, signing day was yesterday. That's true. We're going to talk about it. Schedules are out, huh? Yeah, later in the show. But all that can wait. Bradley, here's A really good end point for you. So you know how you look around college football these days more and more and you see headlines that if you had read to yourself five years ago, you would have laughed. That is Joey Aguilar is seeking via legal avenues, an ability, some kind of way to play what, Jesse? An eighth season of college football. Now, as we are learning more and more, junior college doesn't count. It's not real college. So we should just ignore those years and we should just only acknowledge the years that you've played, quote, unquote, real football. Apparently, the credits still count from junior college. It's just what you do on the field that shouldn't count. A lot of this is tongue in cheek. A lot of this is sarcastic. Of course, it's insane for anyone to still be playing college football at 25 years old. Now, what I'm not doing is, is I'm not hating on Joey Aguilar. I'm not even hating on Tennessee. Because you live in a landscape right now where there are no rules. And so we do sometimes wish, in an idealistic method, that everyone would sort of adhere to the same unwritten laws of governance so that we didn't have to deal with this thing. But this is much more like Shawshank. This is not a fairytale world. This is the real world. And in prison and college football, as Meemaw used to say, you do whatever you have to do to survive. And that's what Tennessee is trying to do right now. That's what Joey Aguilar is trying to do right now. In case you've missed the headlines. Yep, yep. That kid who transferred out of UCLA to Tennessee last spring sort of saved Tennessee season after Nico threw up the Deuces. He is seeking an eighth year of eligibility. He'll be 25 if he's not already 25 this year. So, yeah, that's where we are anyway. That would have sounded insane five years ago, but that's where we are. You see a lot of that, man, the Trinidad Chambliss stuff. NCAA said no. That doesn't really mean much. They're just going to go find courtroom that leans their way and they're going to try and get another year of eligibility for Trinidad Chambliss at Ole Miss. Again, ditto to what I just said about Tennessee. I'm not even blaming anyone. It's an overarching problem. It's a much, much bigger picture issue than, oh, Tennessee should be ashamed of themselves. There is no shame right now. So what you do find yourself asking if you feel the way I feel is where does this end? Or more specifically, who's going to step in and do something about this? Is the commissioner going to step in? Well, we don't have one yet. Is a university president going to step in? Apparently not. Is the football oversight Committee going to step in? No. Half the folks on that thing shouldn't be on it. More on that probably later this spring. Who's the face of college football? Who's the face of leadership in college football? Are commissioners going to step in? Well, if a commissioner steps in right now, how do they know that all the other commissioners are going to go along with it? Or how do they know that the commissioner from another conference isn't going to look and say suckers and then just fully take advantage of the rules they voluntarily chose to follow? You get my drift? So who can help? Well, I've been thinking about it and I've been thinking about it more and then some more and some more and some more. You know, I have brought up a point on the show many times about the NFL. I brought up the point when it comes to things like scheduling, when it comes to the college football playoff calendar. A lot of the issue with the playoff calendar, you know, a lot of the issue with us not being able to get what we want, which is a championship game wrapping up on or around New Year's Day, being able to play the playoffs pretty consistently on Saturdays, first off, secondly throughout December, is that the NFL's in the way and we can't. Well, I say we, the rights holders who hold the rights to the playoffs right now, ESPN does not want to go head to head with the NFL. It's not even unsound business logic. So again, I'm not hating on it. I hate that it exists. I hate that the problem does exist. And so I've said for a long time, man, the NFL massively benefits from college football. The NFL massively benefits because the developmental piece is such that they don't have to have a minor league. College football does it for them. The players arrive to the NFL, by and large, they're ready to play. I'm not saying they're fully developed, but they're 4/5 of the way there to 90% of the way there. And also from a marketability and recognizability standpoint, your names are established because those players did that in the three or four years they were in Columbus, Ohio, or Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or Los Angeles, California, Eugene, Oregon. So you don't have to do any of the marketing legwork. You don't have to do any of the developmental legwork. College football does it for you. I have long maintained that because the NFL doesn't have to invest a dime in those two avenues, at the very least, could they not, in some kind of reciprocal duty, self realized reciprocal duty, do college football a solid and work with them on the calendar front? I've long said that. Now, again, to go back to the idealistic world, the NFL does that just because they feel it's their duty to do it. Their heart leaps out of their chest and they call up college football and they say, guys, we're here to help. We're not the federal government here to help. We're the NFL and we're here to help. That would be a perfect world. Thus far that hasn't happened. But you know what I always thought, and stupid me to think this, I always thought that it had already been tried. I always thought the college football had tried and the NFL was saying no. It turns out maybe I should not have assumed. So take the calendar problem, put it to the side. That has nothing to do with Joey Aguilar, right? That has nothing to do with eligibility. That has nothing to do with kids playing college football till they're 30 years old. So how do they connect? Well, here's where they connect. So if the NFL is not going to involve themselves in college football for altruistic reasons, maybe one day they'll get involved for different reasons. So I want to take you back to Monday. Roger Goodell at the beginning of super bowl week. Every week he has sort of a State of the union type press conference and there are a bunch of questions. Some of them are off the wall. Some of them are very topical and timely. But very rarely is Roger Goodell asked about college football. But last Monday, the fine folks at Front Office Sports asked Roger Goodell about college football. And I'm going to give you the answer in just a second. But to tee up what you're hearing from Roger Goodell. The question is basically, hey, college football is a mess right now. The eligibility model is in shambles. No one knows when you're out of eligibility. There is a lot of churn in college football. It's just a mess right now. Could that ever hurt the NFL and would you guys be willing to help? Pretty basic, right? Here is what Roger Goodell had to say. We have a great relationship with college football. We cooperate on a number of matters, including something I think is really important, which is our eligibility rules. I think our eligibility rules benefit the young men that come into league because they stay in college football longer. But I also think there's obviously a lot of change going on and a lot of disruption and they do need to bring some clarity to that. And I think that's something that if for some reason we can be helpful with the right people, we would obviously be willing to engage with anybody. But I think we try to stay in our lane. Unless we're invited in to be. Try to part of, be part of the solution. If I could translate for Roger Goodell. Yeah, we'll help. They gotta ask for it. So again, it kind of makes you feel ignorant here because you just assume college football's asked for the help. But you know what? A collective organization that has failed to so much as take a leak without getting the front of its pants wet should not shock me when they have not reached out via the proper channels for, for help on things like eligibility. Now, you may say to yourself, Josh, well, what specifically would the NFL do? Hey, what would it hurt to ask the NFL to do? That's the question. The NFL has long understood this landscape, and I don't necessarily mean the landscape of apples to apples. College football. They have a draft. You don't have one of those in college football. They have a collective bargaining agreement to this point. You don't have one of those in college football. I'm not suggesting these two sports are apples to apples, but I will tell you this for the first time. College football has a problem that really could have a tangible negative effect on the NFL. And it's not the calendar. As much as I wish the NFL would volunteer to help out college football with the calendar and the playoff broadcast windows, it's not that it's eligibility, because we're not very far right now from a world where a guy declares for the draft, takes part in the draft process, hopes to be drafted, maybe late, but hopes to be drafted, goes undrafted, and instead of signing a free agent deal with the Buffalo Bills or Green Bay packers or Jaguars, and those are all on the table, he just says, I'm going to accept a low seven figure offer to go back and play another year for South Carolina. And you pause for a second when you think about that because it's insane. It's absurd. Also, your mind keeps telling you, well, you can't do that. You can't declare for the draft and hire an agent and go through the process and come back to college. Hey, no, you haven't been able to do that. Who's tried? Who tried to do It. How do you know it would fail? How do you know you couldn't find a friendly judge there in South Carolina or somewhere in Texas or somewhere in Illinois that would grant you the ability? Or at very least, they just grant the temporary injunction, temporary restraining order. The old tro. Those aren't just letters in the back of a Toyota anymore. No, the TRO just stays in place long enough for you to play and then by the time it finally makes it into a courtroom, you just drop it. Cause you know you already played your year anyway. We're not far away from that. And the way I know that is it's happening in college basketball in a roundabout way as we speak. You think that couldn't happen in college football, you're crazy. And the last thing the NFL wants is their talent pool tampered with. We got tampering all over the place in college football, but it hasn't touched the NFL yet. The NFL has not seen their free agent pool dry up because the guys tested the draft waters, didn't like what they got, and they go back to college. Hey, what if a guy goes out for the draft and what if he was drafted, Jesse, have we ever walked this through? What if he was drafted mid sixth round and he knows the offer on the table to play another year at Miami would be much greater than the guaranteed money that he stood to get in the NFL? Like, have you ever thought these scenarios through? You just think you know how it would play out. But especially the undrafted free agent pool could very much be tampered with. I want you to think about a guy three years in, he's played a couple of years, he's played 10 or 11 games on NFL rosters. And he's kind of a fringe guy. And a lot of the time when someone goes in the ir, he's the kind of guy that you're picking up off the free agent wire. What if that guy, just three years into his pro career decides, man, I'm going to go play college football this year? What's stopping it? The rules? Well, you don't have them right now. What's stopping it? So I almost wonder if this isn't the avenue, if this isn't the on ramp, for the NFL to get involved in college football. The NFL can help in matters of eligibility. The NFL can absolutely help while they're at it in teaching college football how to pool their media rights. Because, you know, there is a school of thought that I happen to subscribe to that the media rights of college football, if collectively pooled are worth three or four times as much what they're worth individually right now. It's just college football hasn't figured out that for all the money hungry approaches in this sport, that'd be the one that quenched the thirst the most. College football hasn't figured that out. The NFL figured it out a long time ago. And if you pulled those media rights and everyone else got richer, might I suggest that your new media rights deal in the spirit and in the process of massively propping up lesser conferences that are going bankrupt right now could garner you a lot more favorable view from Congress. The NFL again has figured this out and mastered this approach long ago. College football just trying to keep up. Trying to keep up. So I never thought we'd lead a show with sound from Roger Goodell, but here we are. I do know every show. We're going to Kwik Trip. I know every road trip. We're going to Kwik Trip. I know these things because there's certainty there. You know, Kwik Trip knows what they specialize in. It could be gas. It could be cold brew. It could be trail mix, it could be pizza. It could just be a friendly smile as you come in out of the rain at the front counter. They do these things and they do it every day all over the country. I know this because I have never not received that when I go to Kwik Trip. Kwik Trip fueled the Fall Don't Lie tour. Kwiktrip has fueled every tour that we've done for the past three years. Also, they fuel the show. They are the presenting partner of this show. So when all else is equal and it never is and you're out there on the road looking for a place to stop, that Red Square QT should be where your search begins and ends. And if you ever need any kind of convincing again, I just want you to think through what it's like to walk into a place and see cold brew on tap. Do we play favorites? Is that my favorite aspect? Yes, it is. I just think that sometimes people still believe I'm kind of saying that. But when you walk in there, it's just cans of cold brew. It's not. It's not. It's really on tap. And there are rumors that we may able, we may be able to like, visibly prove that in the studio one day. Jesse, it's just rumor at this point. I mean, we haven't, we haven't confirmed anything. But some rumors have legs. Some rumors have legs. All right, big news. Liquid IV's got something huge coming this February 8th. Have you heard about it? Yeah, you just told me a second ago. Fair enough. I'm guessing it has something to do with fighting dehydration. Speaking of, do you know seven potential signs of mild to moderate dehydration? There's thirst obviously, and six more right?
- [19:32]
Bradley
Fatigue, brain fog, nausea, headaches, irritability, and.
- [19:36]
Jesse
There'S one more that I can't remember. Does that mean I'm dehydrated? Maybe. But I think I'm dehydrated because you're irritating me right now. Then drink some Liquid iv. I like the sugar free raspberry lemonade, but Mango pineapple is great too. Liquid IV Sugar Free is the only sugar free hydration product on the market, clinically demonstrated to hydrate faster than water alone. And there aren't any artificial sweeteners or colors. You got to stay hydrated. Well, that's my crash course on dehydration, but no doubt Liquid IV will have something more to say on February 8. Anything else happening that day? I don't know. I'll have to check the calendar. Stay hydrated Stock up on Liquid IV at Liquid IV and use the code.
- [20:29]
Bradley
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- [22:05]
Josh Pate
Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull.
- [22:08]
Jesse
And I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
- [22:11]
Josh Pate
As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that.
- [22:14]
Jesse
You can absolutely trust.
- [22:16]
Josh Pate
So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
- [22:23]
Bradley
Learn more at pennymac.com pennymac loan services.
- [22:27]
Jesse
Llc/Housing lender nmls id 35953 licensed by.
- [22:30]
Bradley
The Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.
- [22:37]
Jesse
Let us continue. Oh what a day yesterday was. But really what a day Yesterday was like 15 years ago. So national signing day was yesterday. Now I know that a lot of you weren't glued to your screen for national signing day. I will say, like I got a few takeaways about the overall signing class that some of these teams had, but I'm going to wrap this segment up by sort of staring off into the distance and thinking back 10 or 15 years and especially for my high school and college age folks, I got to educate you guys on how magical national signing day was. And for anyone who's like what, 35 or 40 years old and older, it's just a chance to relive the good old days. It's going to be like a Judd song for a few minutes in here. So the first thing that stands out to me when you look at the signing class, the spread of the five star talent. For everyone who wants to talk about competitive balance and the talent spreads out more. Well, this is your graphic right here. You look at the rivals industry final 2026 five star list there there are 32 kids rated five stars. 17 different teams landed at least one five star rated player. Miami, Houston, Vandy landed the numbers one, numbers two and numbers three players in the country number one, number two, number three player, Maryland landed number six. So like the top six players in the country, Miami, Houston, Vandy and Maryland landed four of those top six. Oregon had four or five stars, Notre Dame, Texas and Bama had three five stars. And outside of that there was no lumping together. Like it was pretty well spread out and it really becomes a retention game at that point. Like Zion Lee is the number six player in the country. He committed to Maryland, he signed with Maryland okay, is he there two years from now? That kind of just becomes the evergreen question about any signing class. Because no sooner do we do any kind of recruiting segment these days than people say, oh, it won't stick. Case by case, you may be right. Collectively, maybe you're not. But case by case, you may be right. The class rankings. You know who finished number one in the country this cycle? Well, you probably do if you're watching this. USC finished number one, Oregon's number three. And I just. USC and Oregon being one two in the Big Ten, and then Ohio State closely behind them. Ohio state was ranked 4 overall. It's huge for the Big Ten because, I mean, I know I can count on Ohio State. I know I can count on Michigan, Penn State in general. This year they were down. They had a coaching change. But generally Penn State's good for a top 20 class. There's a lot of steady as you go to elite recruiting approaches there. I really needed USC to step up to the plate. I can count on Oregon, too. I pretty well rest easy knowing that. But I needed USC to step up and they did, and they landed the number one class in the country. And this is how I pictured it going when Lincoln Riley had his little reset summit a couple of years ago where he talked about how we're just reassessing everything we do, we're changing the way that we go about business. And they got better defensively, but also what they had to do is they had to stop leaning on the portal. They had to start recruiting and developing out of high school. That had to be the foundation of their program. It was always going to take a couple of classes, but this is what I envision. So it's not a guarantee that they'll ever win anything there, but it is required for them to win something there. As for Oregon, they only signed 16 kids, so USC signed 35 of them. Oregon signed far less, but they had the highest average player grade. So Oregon, massive believers in quality over quantity. But then again, they're in a different boat than usc. So Oregon did not need to do what USC did. But that average player grade there, again, you just. You keep on looking at the average player grade coming into Oregon. The caliber of player continues to tick up and up and up year over year. It seems there Notre Dame's the number two class in the country. I think they continue to prove a lot of people wrong. By a lot of people, I don't mean a lot of people doubted that Notre Dame could recruit. By a lot of people, I also don't mean, a lot of people thought Notre Dame couldn't be competitive, but I think as recently as a few years ago, there was a solid chunk of the college football public that thought the days of Notre Dame recruiting at an elite level are over and the days of Notre Dame playing at an elite level, competing for national championships are over. There was just a school of thought that the game had passed them by. What worked for them a generation ago and beyond. It just doesn't work anymore. Things have evolved. The landscape has changed, and there were portions of that that even I bought into. In fairness, Brian Kelly did a good job of convincing the country they were true. So then Marcus Freeman steps up and he takes the job after Brian Kelly leaves and they get better and Marcus Freeman improves. He enhances the recruiting effort, which wasn't bad under Brian Kelly, but it was never, you know, top three elite under Brian Kelly. So they play for a national title two years ago. They're the current odds on favorite at FanDuel to win the national title this upcoming year. Kick off in seven months, by the way, set your calendars. But in the interim, they sign the number two class in the country. You know what Notre Dame is. Notre Dame is what Dabo Swinney dreamt Clemson could be. Notre Dame is the vast majority lean on high school recruiting. They do some in the portal, but you can clearly tell most of their investment, energy and financial resource goes into high school recruiting. They're reaping the benefit of it right now. They don't have a ton of guys leave. They staff very well. There is a very, very solid, identifiable culture about Notre Dame. You don't have to talk too long when someone asks, hey, who are they? What are they about? You know what Notre Dame football is about. That's what dabos tried to do at Clemson. They've just had much more mixed results at Clemson than they have at Notre Dame. You scan the top 20, some of them don't stand out. You got the usual suspects in there. Georgia's always there. Oregon's always there. Alabama's always there. You know who's not always there? Washington is at 13th, which is fifth in the Big Ten, by the way. And it goes to show you again, the depth that the Big Ten is building goes beyond a Big two or Big three. It wasn't that long ago that we were talking about how top heavy the Big Ten had been. And I'm going to say again, I'm going to beat the commenters to the comment section. Nothing about national signing day guarantees any success. It Just gives you a really, really good indicator since the beginning of time. Programs that do very well on signing day are disproportionately more likely to do well during the season with exceptions. So Washington being up there, that's another blinking red light or I guess blinking green light for the Big Ten. And North Carolina was at 17 and they're not even led by a Pro Football hall of Famer and they're, they're at 17. So imagine if Belichick was in the hall of Fame, how good they could be. What a joke, man. I have no time for it tonight, but what a joke. So they signed 40 kids. They signed 10 blue chippers. I still have skepticism, I do still have doubts about ultimately whether they can be better than they have been in this generation under Belichick because like that was the thing. He's not there to win eight games a year. He's there to be better than what they had. I still have doubts about that. But if they're going to prove those doubts wrong, if they're going to silence those doubts, you kind of have to do this sort of thing and then you have to stack these sorts of things. What about immediate impact quarterbacks? Keyshawn Henderson's a guy from Houston, signed with Houston, 63185, really highly rated quarterback, number two overall prospect in the country. I'm a big fan of this sort of Ed Oliver vibes. Not a quarterback. But Ed Oliver back in the day had all the offers in the world. Defensive lineman, signs with Houston, plays well, doesn't transfer, ends up in the league, plays a long time in the league and you're just like that was an era where that never happened. Big time five star talent, never stayed to play for those caliber programs. Well, it's kind of happening again here. So that's a good thing. Now Wegman's still there, Jesse. Right, like we. Connor Wegman's still there. So it's not a slam dunk that Henderson comes in and plays immediately. But I guess he could be in the mix. I don't think Houston brings him in to just sit there automatically. Houston sleeper team. Sleeper team this upcoming year. Jared Curtis right down the road here played his high school ball here. He is going to play for Vanderbilt. I think he's going to be their starter. Six three, a little over six' three, 225, number two overall prospect in this class. I think it's the highest ranked commit in Vandy history by the way. So there's a lot of excitement around here about Jared Curtis, Faison Brandon in this state. Over at Tennessee, obviously a lot's up in the air about Joey Aguilar and his eligibility. You got McIntyre there, so it's not any kind of foregone conclusion that he's going to start, but at the very least he'll be in the mix. So big time quarterback talent spread all over the place. But I cannot talk about national signing day very long before my mind just goes back. So yesterday as I'm talking to you, it's Thursday. Yesterday was Wednesday. I did a PA State Extra sort of mailbag podcast and I talked about what signing day used to be and in a word, magical. In a word, euphoric. That was terrifying. It was very nerve wracking. But signing day used to be to college football what the NFL draft is to NFL fans. The energy, the anticipation, the fear. It was like nothing we have in college football today. It was like its own season. What drew me to recruiting so much was that obviously you've got the games on the field in the fall, but there was this whole separate compartment of knowing that, all right, Tennessee and Florida, they compete against each other on the field. However, you're telling me there's this whole other world where Tennessee's coaches and Florida's coaches and like the brand Tennessee and the brand Florida, they compete for recruits too. And we keep rankings and we rank the classes. So if Tennessee has the number six class and Florida has the number 17 class and Tennessee landed the number six class because they took two key four and five star players out of the state of Florida, you're telling me I could swell up with immense pride from knowing we just did that. Sign me up. That was recruiting. And the closer you got to national signing day, the shorter and shorter the fingernails got because you chewed them down to the nubs. And the more and more the fear built up. Now, as I talked about on the extra pod yesterday, if you worked like normal people did, it was really hard to stay glued to the Internet, maybe your phone, if you were ahead of the curve enough to where you had a smartphone that early. But it was tough. It was a Wednesday. It was the first Wednesday in February. So you had to either, number one, have a desk that was over in the corner and a boss that didn't track your web activity. Number two, you had to strategically take bathroom and lunch breaks, or number three, like most of us, you just had to lay out of work that day. But you have to figure out a way to lay out of work or lay out of class, because I did both. I have Skipped school or skipped work for National Signing Day from the age of. How old are you when you're a sophomore in High School? 15. About the age of 15, all the way through my mid-20s or later. And by that point, I just fooled people into paying me to talk about college football. So at that point, it's my job to stay tuned into National Signing Day. But, yeah, I skipped high school. I never attended a day of class in college that was National Signing Day. And then when it came to work, it was a busy time of year down in the fabric warehouse, by the way, for us, when National Signing Day would roll around, I didn't care. And so what you had to do, as I detailed yesterday, is you had to start planting the seeds the Tuesday before signing Day that you were coming down with something. And then after lunch that day, you had to sneeze a few times, you had to cough a few times, you had to get a little scratch in your voice, clear your throat. And then you had to really have a groggy look from 4pm on that day, let everyone see it, so that it would make perfect sense when you called in the next morning around 7:15 that you weren't going to be into work that day. Did that several times. No one ever noticed that it happened to occur every National Signing Day because no one else was as sick as me in our office. It was just a normal Wednesday to them. They didn't realize there was a correlation between signing day and me being out sick every year. Carry that on several years. And so you're on every message board. And the way I did it growing up was obviously, I've got, you know, eight to 12 buddies who follow this stuff as hardcore as me. So we all, since we're broke, we volunteered to each of us sign up for different websites so that we could have everyone's login. And so collectively, we had access to all the message boards and we had access to all the insider information. The concept of the flip, I got to tell you, it was one of the most exhilarating yet terrifying experiences when you're coming down the wire, when you're coming out of turn four, the finish lines in sight on National Signing Day, you know, like, you wake up that Wednesday morning and if you're a Georgia fan, all right, we've got the number six class in the country, and there's still, there's still three players just in the Atlanta metro area who have commitment ceremonies today. Two of them are four stars, one of them is a five star. It's US versus Bama for one. And it's US versus Tennessee for another one, US versus Florida for a third one. And we feel really good about two of three. It's 50, 50 for the kid we're committing against or we're competing against Florida for. But there are rumors that we may be flipping a big commitment too. We may flip someone from another person's class. And especially if. Here's where it got really tangled. Okay, you heard rumors that if we don't get this five star linebacker out of Alpharetta, we may be able to flip this four star kid who's committed to lsu. However, for all the positive vibes that went into the fact that you may get a flip unbeknownst to you, on your rival fans message boards, there were rumors that they could flip someone in your class. So you had to constantly watch your back and no one knew who had credibility, by the way. And you had team reporters, but you also had insiders whose identities you could not verify on local message boards. I guess every message board is local. And so you're just constantly refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. Mind you, this could be early to mid 2000s. High speed Internet is not a guarantee whatsoever. So you had like little spinning wheel of death, right as a four star wide receiver from Jonesboro, Arkansas is about to commit. And then the feed freezes. Because that website's built to handle about 200 people and 2,000 people are trying to watch. And then you learn, some of you through painful experiences, that it's not just the press conference. It's not enough for the kid to walk in the gym, sit down at the table, throw down two other hats, put on your hat. Everyone goes crazy and the balloons come out and dad takes off his sweater to reveal that, oh man, he knew where he was going all along. He's got the Arkansas shirt on underneath. It's not enough to have all that happen. You hear this? It's paper. You hear this? It's a pen. Pen has got to hit paper. You've got to get the signature and then that thing's got to get fed into a fax machine and the fax has to come through. Not until you hold a hot sheet of paper in hand, fresh out of the fax machine with a 17 year old signature on it. Are you safe? But it was always viewed as a formality until it wasn't. And then we had a series of high profile recruits who went as far as to announce their commitment at a signing day ceremony in front of hundreds, in some cases thousands of people and a Worldwide television audience and God and everybody. And then you check the message board. You know, you just want to join in on the celebration an hour later. Man, let me see what everyone's saying over there. And there's a nugget. There's a breaking news nugget. Hey, hey. So and so's paperwork is not in yet. And that's when everyone gasps. And that's when you realize announcements mean nothing. The paper, the signature, the national letter of intent that in another world, kids used to mean everything. I mean, that was it. That was the door slamming behind that kid. He's in with us. He's in the foxhole with us. And I think Alex Collins was a kid who signed once upon a time or so we thought. And then you find out his mom ran out with the papers. I think one of the Cuanjo kids committed to Auburn on live tv. But then you find out his parents refused to sign and he's only 17. So you got to have your parents signature if you're not a legal adult. And I just remember the roller coaster of emotion. And I'm just standing there watching it and thinking to myself, I know what these people have invested in this. I know the celebration I just watched happen. If that was off or not. If you're telling me that kid just announced, but he's actually not going to sign with that team, so. Oh, man. It was great, though. I know it sounds terrible. It was great. It was something that I long for. And I know everyone tells me we can't have it anymore and maybe we can, but it doesn't hurt to dream. Some people dream of far different things. I just dream about signing day being great again. Okay, that's what I would love to do. And I know that there are a million reasons why we can't have the traditional first Wednesday in February. I know early enrollees like that concept has totally killed that idea. But again, I want to tell you, I don't care. I still want it. I would go as far as to say I need it. There's a part of me that needs it.
- [41:15]
Bradley
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- [42:47]
Josh Pate
Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist Tara.
- [42:49]
Jesse
Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
- [42:52]
Josh Pate
As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that.
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Jesse
You can absolutely trust.
- [42:58]
Josh Pate
So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
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Jesse
Learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection.
- [43:13]
Bradley
And Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.
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Josh Pate
You've never been one to settle, stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance. At Capella University we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit Capella. Edu to learn more.
- [43:49]
Jesse
They're watching us in Ashland, Virginia. Sorry Pres. They're watching us in Talbot in Georgia. They're watching us in Las Cruces, New Mexico. And thank you guys so much. Wherever you are tuned in from, we check back into the real world here. I got feedback in front of me. Bradley, here's a good endpoint for the segment cut. As you know, there are a few things I value more in life than the feedback from you guys. Even when it's as hateful as it was after I put out my extremely ridiculously way Too early top 25 rankings for the upcoming season to remind everyone the season is about seven months away, I was sitting around on a random day in February and said, jesse, someone on Twitter just asked for my way too early top 25 ranking. Should I do it? I don't think I should. And Jesse said, yeah, let's do it. Because all Jesse cares about is clicks. He's a click merchant. Me, I hold myself to a higher standard. But I didn't on that day. So we put together our way too early top 25. I even had Prez put way too early on the graphic. Now what I thought that would do is somewhat stabilize the comments. It did no such thing. So this is what I put out the way to early Commissioners poll. This thing could change. Someone could fall out of the top 10. Someone could rise up from the 20s to the top 10. Mind you, no games are going to be played between now and August. It's just the way that these sorts of things work. The by far the most common piece of feedback we got was Notre Dame's overrated at number one, Notre Dame. And it wasn't just Notre Dame's overrated, it was people questioning my integrity. Look, I know this will shock you guys. In South Bend, a lot of folks called me a Notre Dame homer. Chuck said, you proved you don't know ball when you put Notre Dame number one. Chuck did not offer his top 25. And there are a lot of people. You know what, let me just pause this. And let me also remind you we have a rule around here. And that rule is I don't care if you criticize me when it comes to predictions, as long as you offer your prediction. Cause what happens a lot is what happened in these replies. People were looking at my top 25 and then they posted my last year's top 25 at this time, you know, I had the audacity to have Clemson top 10. You know, with the rest of the free thinking world. I had Clemson top 10, Penn State, I had top 10. The audacity to have Penn State top 10. And so everyone is really good at dunking on preseason rankings in January once you know the end of the story. So I don't have a problem with you taking shots at me. But like I told a kid who did it, I said, hey Curtis, or Connor, it started with a C. Give me your predictions for the 2026 season right now. And he, to this point, he hasn't gotten back to us. He may be busy. It's a busy time of year for us all. So I don't have a problem with you hating on this. You got to give me your top 25 and then you got to meet me in January so I can pick it apart. Because, see, this isn't my final. This is way too early. I may just jumble them all up and start over again. Why is Notre Dame at number one so egregious? Does anyone want to remind me of that? Notre Dame was perceived to be a top 10 team to finish the year from a power rating standpoint. I know they didn't make the playoff. A lot of people thought they should have made the playoff, but at the very least you got a lot of those pieces coming back. TJ Carr, another year under his belt at quarterback. Really good roster, secondary is going to be incredible. Like, why in the world is it egregious to think Notre Dame should be number one? What criteria do you use that suggests Notre Dame is laughable at number one? And applying that criteria, who should be number one? Also, where should Notre Dame be? Because I had one guy that came at me and said, you're insane, having Notre Dame number one. I said, where would you have them? He said, third. So next up, there's a lot of pushback on Alabama. I thought the pushback would be we had Alabama too low and some of the Bama folks thought we had Bama too low. Jesse, where'd I have them? 13th. I think we had Bama number 13. And someone came at us. Many people came at us, said, why would Alabama be that high? Why wouldn't they be that high? Alabama. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jesse, I may be misremembering. It has been two months. Josh came at us and said, what has Bama even done? Well, the answer is nothing. No one's done anything. It's February. We've got over half a year until these games happen. But I'll tell you what they did last year. Did they not make the playoffs and win a game? So I didn't rank them third guys. I ranked them 13th. How is there any egregiousness to this? Maybe if you don't believe in Keelan Russell or Austin Mack, whoever wins quarterback battle there, I guess they could be overrated. Like Alabama's absolutely properly rated, if not slightly underrated at number 13. But I thought Bama was properly placed. Penn State. I did understand this. Some people thought we had Penn State way too high. I put Penn State at 15. Like someone said, I assumed you were knowledgeable about football. By the way, notice you can never just disagree with someone about football. If you disagree with someone, it's because that person does not know ball. It's not we disagree or that person has a bias against you. It's never we just disagree. Anyway, one person said, I assumed that you were knowledgeable about ball, but there's no way you could be commissioner of college football putting Penn State as high as you have on this list. Can you tell me who they have returning? Their roster is subpar. Their high ranking is solely due to their schedule being considered weak. Well, I couldn't care less about their schedule. I didn't take scheduling into account with any of these teams. This is also not a projection of how I think these teams will finish. It is a comparative list of how I think these teams stack up in a vacuum to start the season, if the season were to start today. So Penn State at 15. Yeah, I do understand that's probably one that I have some exposure on. That's one I need to do more work on. I gave my feelings the other night. Like, I think if you bring Rocco Bechton, if you brought the nucleus of that Iowa State team in, it may lower your ceiling a little bit, but I think it gives Matt Campbell and his staff a pretty high floor, a pretty decently high floor to start. So, again, I didn't rank him fifth. I put him 15th. These are rankings. These are not power ratings. And then, I mean, we can't wake up. It can't be a day ending in Y without being accused of SEC bias. So I don't even know if we got one of those, Jesse, but there were a million of those. I mean, you'd sneeze. And someone said, yeah, it's an SEC sneeze if I've ever heard one. Nicholas, just as an example, hit us and said, why do we keep giving the SEC this crazy benefit of the doubt? I don't think they deserve half of the top 10. I don't think we're learning the lessons we should be learning, which is to stop ranking SEC teams so high. Where did we learn this lesson, first off? Secondly, this is meant to be predictive, so it's not reactive. Thirdly, how should I rank them? Bradley, throw the rankings back up for a second. So we had half the top 10, he said, were SEC teams. What should we value here? Like where should, what basket should I be putting my eggs in? So Texas is loaded this year, Huge portal team, really good recruiting team, Arch Manning coming back. They're all in. Put them number two. Where should they be? I don't have any other SEC team higher than seventh and that's Georgia. Has Georgia performed at any point over the past few years lower than that? Texas A and M and Oklahoma at 8, 9. I'll listen to you if you tell me they're a little bit high. But I'm not just going to listen to you tell me they're high. Those were two playoff teams last year by the way. So I'm not going to listen to you tell me that two playoff teams at 8 and 9 are too high without you telling me who belongs ahead of them. You can't just shout nonsense like SEC overrated because you hate the SEC without telling me who belongs there in their place. Because if you think that you're about to just blindly throw Texas Tech at me without me weaponizing your logic against you and your argument, you're crazy. So LSU's number 10, very, very high variance team. Very, very volatile team. We talked about their schedule the other day. They kind of have front loaded schedule, then soft in the middle, then a back loaded schedule. Who do we have? We've got Bama at 13. We just talked about them. Ole Miss at 16. That was. And it's still before we know what's going to happen with Trinidad Chambliss. So I will admit to you without Chambliss they're lower. But Ole Miss was just in the playoffs too. Ole Ms. At 16, there is no bias there. That's it, right Jesse? Yeah. There's no other SEC team in the top 20. That's it. So what are we even talking about? If anything, this is as low as we would have had the sec. If anything, this is sort of reflective of a little bit of a tamped down opinion of the sec. If you really want to get mad at someone, get mad at FanDuel. FanDuel is the one with real sec. By FanDuel is the one that you really ought to go attack. And by attack I mean with your money. Look at these odds. They got Texas and Georgia and LSU and A and M and Alabama and Oklahoma. They all got them pretty high up there in the odds to win the College Football Playoff this upcoming year. So if they're overrated by default, that means many teams are underrated. And you should be betting those teams, should you not? I ask theoretically, should you not Way too early means I reserve the right to change those rankings. It is February 5th, so stats and info tells me that means we're less than 10 days away from Valentine's Day. And I gotta tell you, of course I'm proud of everything that we offer in the paid state store. But we've got a Valentine's Day collection over there, which I just wanted to be called the Pate State Love Collection. But Alex and the folks overrode it because they think Valentine's Day is more recognizable with this time of month, which makes sense. She knows what she's talking about more than me. But anyway, after Valentine's, I'm calling this the Pate State Love Collection because at that point, Valentine's will be an afterthought. So, you know our mascot around here is Chuggy because we are the state freights, after all. And what does a freight do if not chugging? What do you do on Valentine's if not hugging? And so we just put those two words on a hat, hugging and chugging. And that is my favorite new item that we had. Not piece of merch. We don't use those laying those words on the show. But item. The hugging and chugging hats are awesome. We have other things in there as well. Like there are several things. You can go to patestatematerial.com and look, right now I had moderate expectations. When Jesse came to me and said, hey, should we put some Valentine's items together? We exceeded my moderate expectations. I would even go as far as to say this is high level stuff. That little paint state logo with the arrow through the heart, that's good stuff. That is objectively good stuff. I wish I could say the same thing for Stanford schedule this year. I cannot. So let me stack these papers. I've got the ACC schedule in my hand. And I got to tell you, there's some stuff I like, there's some stuff I don't like, but some of you are in trouble now. Miami's not one of them. So Miami just played for national championship. Miami, I generally like the path they have this upcoming year, but it's weird. So Miami schedule, if you're looking at the slider Bradley just put up, you can't tell that their first three games are non Saturday games. They have four overall games that are non Saturday games. So they don't play on a Saturday until Central Michigan on September 26, which is kind of weird. You kind of adjust the body clock a little bit different. But outside of that, they play six of the bottom nine teams in the acc. Now when I'm talking about odds, I'm just saying we went to fanduel, we looked at the odds to win it all, we stacked conference teams accordingly. It's a very rough metric there, I'll grant you. In February, Miami plays six of the bottom nine teams in the acc. They don't play Louisville, they don't play smu. They don't play Virginia. They do go to Notre Dame. Of course that's a non conference game. They do go to Notre Dame in November and that's the second leg of back to back road games from Miami. But the trade off is they get their final three games at home. So I like Miami's path. I think Miami's a playoff team again, so I really like their path. Florida State has probably the toughest schedule in the acc. If you've been sitting around thinking, man, it feels kind of bleak for Florida State, you're right. But then if you were sitting around thinking maybe they'll get a little reprieve from the schedule maker. The schedule maker is applying body blows to Florida State as we speak. They play the top five teams in the ACC in terms of odds. Five for five. They play all of them. They go to Louisville and to Miami, back to back road games. Miami, by the way, coming off a bye, they've got two northern road games back to back in November. They go to Boston College, they fly right back up there and go to Pitt the next week. Oh by the way, out of conference, they just casually play at Alabama and then play Florida at home. So we couldn't license the undertaker's music. We tried, but just, just envision that playing as a soft audio bed in the background. Right now Georgia Tech I think has a pretty tough road. So first off, Georgia Tech plays 11 Power 4 teams. Not many Power 4 teams play 11 other P4 teams. And not that it has to do with schedule, but like Haynes Kings moved on, Buster Faulkner went to Florida. So you're replacing an OC quarterback combo there. Your backup quarterback left as well. And not only do they play what they play in conference, which I'll get to in a second, but you also got to remember with schedules like Georgia Tech, they play Georgia at the end of every year. They're also playing Tennessee this year. So they play two big time SEC teams in out of conference play. Now what this could be is it could be a situation where they also play Colorado. I didn't even mention that they play Colorado to start the year. It could be a situation where progress is not Reflected linearly like this schedule is tough enough to where just 50,000 foot. Georgia Tech does improve a little bit this year, but their record is off from last year just cause the schedule is tougher. But the other thing to look at, if you look at this and you'll look at the ACC portion, it's not the toughest draw in the world. They don't play Miami, they don't play smu, they don't play Virginia because of those three real high profile out of conference games. It kind of fools you into thinking, oh man, Georgia Tech's going to be buried. Hey, they could lose all three of those out of conference games theoretically and still go play for a conference title. So something to keep an eye on there. I think Louisville feels the same, but Louisville even more so. Feels like this to me because Louisville is going to play Ole Miss in an out of conference game. They're going to play Kentucky as they do every year. So they book in their season with out of conference games against the sec. But outside of that SMU game in week three, they play six of the bottom seven teams in the ACC odds, which means no Miami, it means no Clemson, it means no Virginia. And so Louisville, they play in Nashville, by the way, they play Ole Miss in Nashville to start the year. They could lose a game in week one, be kind of off the radar a little bit and then maybe they play SMU in week three and lose maybe an underdog there. We'll see. And then they're really off the radar. There's a world where Louisville starts one and two and everyone writes them off and they go on and play for a conference title. Stanford, very few truths in this uncertain world, but one of them is I don't think Stanford's playing for a conference title. Stanford is going to live in the air this year. They play not one, not two, not three, not four, but four, five games in the eastern time zone. Stanford is on the Pacific Ocean essentially in Palo Alto. They play Miami, they play Louisville, they play smu, they play Notre Dame out of conference. Who is number one in the preseason college Football playoff odds. But man, they go to Duke, they go to Wake Forest and Notre Dame. Back to back by the way. They go to Louisville, they go to Virginia Tech. That trip to Virginia Tech is mid November in Blacksburg. Always a fun time. So this is kind of like the Northwestern schedule but in the acc. Like Northwestern got thrown in the wood chipper by the Big Ten schedule maker. Stanford suffered a similar fate in the acc. Let's move on while we Can. Oh, yeah. We had a question about media advice, which I always. I always do this sort of thing when we're on tour, and I'll go speak to a class on Friday. But sometimes these questions mix themselves into the mailbag. And I know some of you are in college, so you're looking for this, and then others of you are just fascinated by how the media business works. So sometimes I'll throw these in the show towards the end. Michael from San Francisco, California, any advice on those looking to move up in sports media? Do you have any stories about your journey that someone like me could really use? Yeah, there are a ton of stories. Most of them I've told on the show. I think one thing I was thinking about yesterday that your question sort of triggered in me, Michael, is the concept of a big break. A lot of people out there working a lot of jobs for not a lot of money who are looking for their big break. Now, this could apply outside of the media business. I'm just familiar with the media business. So I was thinking about the concept of a big break and how, man, I longed for it and I prayed for it and I fought for it for a bunch of years. Over a decade ago, I didn't get it when I wanted it. And I was just thinking back in retrospect at how fortunate I was that I didn't get my big break when I wanted it. Because in this business, what you come to realize is sometimes you only get one big break. If that, and if it comes at the wrong time and you're not prepared, no one really gives you a shot again. And I was not ready for any kind of big break in 2015 or 16. What I was ready to do in 2015 or 16 is turn a microphone on and get a few thousand hours worth of reps in and take several years to do it to hone your craft, to hone your skills. I knew nothing about nothing about nothing. I had very, very rarely been in a situation where I was on live air. So that's what I was ready to do when I thought I wanted my big break. So the reason I bring that up is because I know how bad it sucks to be making under $30,000 a year because I've done it. And I know how much it sucks to not even know if you can afford rent and counting. Not dollars, but quarters. To make sure that I could afford to put enough gas in the tank to get to the station. I'll just figure out how to get home. I don't know, maybe take the Work car. Like, legitimately, I've gone through all this stuff, so I know how cloudy the vision can get and how your mind can get warped into thinking, man, even if I'm not ready for it, I just got to get it. I got to get out of here. I got to make ends meet. But the principle still applies. Like, if you're not ready, you're not ready. And a lot of people tap out because of that. But if you're not ready, you're not ready. Here's what I mean by that. When you get your big break, normally what people mean by their big break is it coincides with a much better, grander opportunity than you've had, right? So normally that means a much bigger company giving you a shot. And what stands out the most, the biggest difference between you doing a podcast in your bedroom or in your basement or your makeshift studio versus going and doing live TV for an ESPN or a Fox or a cbs is the production piece is so massive that it overwhelms you. It can be a shock to your senses. Technically, you're doing the same thing. Technically, you're talking in a microphone in your bedroom. You're talking in a microphone if there are 5 million people watching you at home. What I'm saying is like, if you've ever experienced this, it's one thing to hit off a tee in your backyard, it's another thing to be at the plate, down 1, 2 in the count, state championship on the line with thousands of people watching you. And this is just a high school comparison. Technically the mechanics are the same, but there's so much going on that it's really hard to clear the mechanism. And what you find when you work your way up the ladder is the production just becomes so huge, the moment is so huge. The spot rather is so huge that oftentimes your mind is on everything but what it should be focused on. Now, if you've got repetition in the bag and you've got a lot of hours worked and you've got a ton of experience in the bag, you block out the noise and you're just able to do it. But that right there, you're not born with. No one's born with it. You may be born with God given ability to do it, hopefully you are. Or if not, this is a moot point. But a lot of people have the God given ability to do this. Talent is very overrated in this business. What you have to have is you have to have grind and you got to have a proper value and principle system. But You've also. You got to have reps to where you can do this, and then you're doing this. And it doesn't matter how many people are watching because you're just zoned in, truthfully. You're not even paying attention to how many people are watching. You're not even paying attention to how much production movement there is going on around you. You're not paying attention to studio movement. You're not paying attention to how many white hot lights there are all over the place. You're not paying attention to just how involved the travel mechanism of the industry is. You're not paying attention to all the stuff that could overwhelm you if you get your big break before you're ready for your big break, is the point. And then the second thing that I personally wasn't ready to do when I wanted my big break so bad is I wasn't ready to acknowledge that I hadn't developed a style and a personality that was mine. If you were to listen to me 10 years ago, if you were to listen to a lot of you right now who are sort of just breaking in, trying to do this, I can see through you. You could see through me 10 years ago. What I mean by that is it wasn't my style. It was just me emulating someone else. It was me emulating people that I looked up to. And therefore, you can't help but mirror the personalities and the styles and deliveries and whatnot of the people that you listen to the most. It takes a long time to shake yourself of that. It takes a long time to go from emulating someone else to which, at best, you'll always be a copy of and never the original, to being yourself. So hopefully, through, you know, years and thousands of hours of repetition, you get to where no one can see through you. And it's authentically your style. So much so that people start copying you. Because you really have, through repetition and applied knowledge, you've developed your own way of doing things that works. And then if your way works, then other people are taking cues from you. But the thing about it is, no one starts that way. Or let me put it this way, very rarely does someone come out of the gate with their own, like, fully formed on air Persona, and they've mastered the craft of their delivery, and they've mastered the craft of audience psychology. Very rarely does that happen. I don't know that I've ever seen it happen. I know it didn't happen with me. Like, if you listen to me 12 years ago, you say dude, you sound just like so and so or man, you're using the same phrasing that so and so uses. Yep, that's because I was. That's because they had heavily rubbed off on me. So yeah, I would, among the two hour TED talks I could give on this, I would just say work hard, but don't try and expedite a big break like that. That stuff will come in due time. That doesn't mean you have to sit back and be lazy. That's not what I'm saying. You're working hard and you can't see light at the end of the tunnel and then all of a sudden it's just there one day. As is fanduel. As is fanduel. Now, I think most of you are aware that it is Thursday, February 5th right now and therefore super bowl is around the corner and this is not on FanDuel. Like the NFL would not move the super bowl for us this year. So they're still going to have it at the same kickoff time they always have it. And fanduel is going to be there with several offerings. However, one offering I've just been made aware of. There's a number on the screen, $6 million. Now that would be a lot if just you singularly won that. I'm not saying you can't. I'm saying it would be tough to win $6 million. But I'll tell you what you could do. You could go bet on the game. Just spread over under. That's your dad's way of doing things. And look, it works. But also if you want to go place an anytime touchdown bet, that means producer Jesse is plus 11 trillion to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl. If you place an anytime touchdown bet on a guy and they score the first or the last touchdown in the super bowl, you will share a part of that $6 million jackpot. Now if Jesse just scores one touchdown, the first touchdown in the game, or he just scores the last touchdown in the game, well then you're sharing a $3 million pot. However, does it have to be the same guy, Jesse? Like if the same. So, so you could, you could infinitely bet on this. So like I take Jesse and Bradley to score anytime touchdowns. If Jesse scores the first touchdown in the game, Bradley scores the last touchdown of the game. Well, how does it not work that way? So I'm choosing one player. Yes. So if they score the first or last touchdown in the game anyway, I'm sharing a $6 million potential. That's what I'm doing. So I would love to take a guy who's a guy that'd be a little off the radar here. But so like if I bet Rasheed to win to score touchdown, if I did that, Bradley knows. Bradley knows what I'm doing. If I did that, I would take a share of that six million dollar pot. It would just be a bigger share because not as many people bet him. Yes. So you're picking up what I'm putting down. Anyway, if the super bowl does interest you, I would encourage you to go down that lane because you know they're just offering this in addition to what you won on the bet, you could also just go bet the Heisman if you don't feel like doing that. You could also just, I don't know, bet LSU -10 and a half against Clemson because that's on the board right now for week two. So there are a lot of things over there. It is the last call for football. And yes, that makes us sad. But as Meemaw always said, we can't get to the start of the season until we get done with the end of the season.
- [71:23]
Bradley
Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC first online real money wager only $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non withdrawable bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms@sportsbook.fanduel.com gambling problem call 1-800-gambler or visit fanduel.com rg call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org chatincenetic or or visit nd gamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-550 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE NY or text HOPE NY in New York.
- [72:08]
Jesse
Lastly, Ohio State Mood Tracker Time what is the mood amongst Ohio State fans? General rule of thumb here, we cut off the most positive and the most negative viewpoints. We push them off to the side. We don't dismiss them, but we push them off to the side in the middle 80% of the fan base. It's a good time of year to sort of take the temperature gauge the mood, if you will, of the middle 80% of Ohio State fans. Now, as best I can tell, the mood has been sort of like they're trying to establish what the norm is. Ohio State's got a really high floor. So everyone Ohio State fan Or otherwise acknowledges that this is not a team that's in danger of going 6 and 6 any given year. So, like the worst that's going to happen, they drop a 9 and 3 on you or something like that. That's been the level they've been cruising at for a while. So everyone knows the floor is high. But you've also got what we call on the show consequences of Success. Those are problems that only the, the best of the winners have to deal with. Ohio State's one of those. So, for example, you're going in, you're winning every other game, but you just lose in the Michigan game a few too many years in a row. Well, everyone wants you fired. That's a consequence of success. Last year, fresh off a national title win, by the way, you beat Michigan, but then you go lose to Indiana and you lose in the playoffs and those are the only two games you lost all year. But the season ended poorly, you didn't win another title and people are unhappy and disgruntled. That's a consequence of success. But establishing the new norm, to me, that mood is kind of like, are we just on a roller coaster now? Roller coaster rides normally have two big sort of thrill moments. So of course, if you win a title, that's one of the thrill moments. And then if you go down one of the big drops to start the roller coaster ride, thus winning a title, it's understandable that you may go through the more boring part of the ride because sort of building anticipation, building momentum, back up for the next big drop. As long as that's what we're doing here, no one's outraged that all we did was go to the Big Ten title game and all we did was go to the playoff. Last year, coming off a national title win, had to replace a bunch of talent, had a lot of coaching turnover. Hey, worse things have happened. As long as what we're leading to is another real shot to win the national title, maybe we win another national title, that's fine. If 2025 is just kind of an in between year, that's fine. There is this. I don't know, it's a fear, but it's an acknowledgement way, way, way in the back of your mind that keeps you up a couple of extra minutes at night. That 2024 was it. It's the only championship you'll win under Ryan Day. Is this a likelihood? Is it a possibility? Is it just a small possibility? At the very least, it's a possibility. It's hard to win these things so yes, in the more negative Ohio State fans mind, you think, all right, well, we had the Michigan problem and then we had to go all in and still didn't beat Michigan, but we won a title and so that's great. Season ended wonderfully. Ryan Day's a national championship winning head coach and then kind of had to retool a little bit. This past year still looked like the best team in the country until we get beat a couple of times to end the year. We did beat Michigan, but we fell flat when it counted the most in the playoff and we got pushed around in the playoff. Now we come into this year, the Big Ten collectively is improving. So we don't enjoy the benefit of just perceptionally being the odds on favorite every year here anymore. Oregon's pretty good, but outside of that, we just talked about recruiting across the board in the Big Ten improving. Could it be that collectively the Big Ten makes it a little harder for us to play at the level that we've played? Could we have administrative issues here? I mean, there's been a lot of chatter around there. Not loud, but loud enough for Ohio State folks to hear about what we are and we aren't willing to do in nil. Basically, what that boils down to is a very first world concern that only the bluest of blue blood programs, fan bases have, and that is are we going to maintain the edge that we've historically had? Alabama has this, Ohio State has this. Like the big boys for a long time have sat at the head table and the table's been tilted in their favor. And whether they won or not, irrelevant. The table's been tilted in their favor. Texas, the table's been tilted in the favor of Texas forever. Whether they won because of it or not. The concern maybe at an Ohio State is. Wait a second. If everything's flattening out to some degree, are we always going to have the edge that we have had? Because if we don't, maybe 2024 was the best it's ever going to get around here under Ryan Day. But then you also say maybe we've got two or three more titles coming under Ryan Day. Like, I think it's fair to just kind of sit back. If you're an Ohio State fan and you're not radical either way, just say 2024 was awesome. 2025, okay, show me 2026. I got a pair of NFL coordinators now. I've got a returning quarterback. I got Jeremiah Smith still here. Like we should be talking about him 20 years from now. Here I got him here right now. What are we going to do with him? I like our ability to run the ball like I love the overall caliber of athlete we have here. We made some selectively good moves in the portal, so if, hey, 2026 gets me right back there within reach of a title, I'm good. Sort of a trust but verify attitude, but I trust the people we have in the building. I trust the players. I think we'll be good. Ohio State's got the second best odds to win it all this upcoming year, so I think we'll be good. We're good. That's our show so we're good. Appreciate you guys. We will not be here Sunday, you know, because of the super bowl and stuff. So we will be back Tuesday. I think either we'll do that or we'll put out a podcast. Just make sure you stay tuned on the socials and I'll let you know what we're doing there. Oshpate cfb. Have fun this weekend. Be smart this weekend. Stay safe this weekend. For producer Jesse Director Bradley, I'm Josh Pate. Take care. We'll see you next week. Until then, God bless. Foreign.
- [78:47]
Bradley
Must be 21/ and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C. first online real money wager only. Five dollar first deposit required. Bonus issued as non withdrawable bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms@sportsbook.fanduel.com gambling problem call 1-800-gambler or visit fanduel.com rg call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Do chat in Connecticut or visit nd gamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE NY or text hopeny in New York. There's no championship league for small business owners, but if there was, you'd be at the top of the standings. Because going pro with Lenovo Pro means you've got the winning formation. One on one Advice IT solutions and customized hardware powered by Intel Core Ultra processors help you stay ahead of the competition. Business goes pro with Lenovo Pro Sign up for free@lenovo.com Pro Lenovo Lenovo.
- [80:02]
Josh Pate
At CVS it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us. Day or night. And we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At cvs, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So Visit us@cvs.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.
- [80:38]
Jesse
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.
- [80:48]
Josh Pate
We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners.
- [80:51]
Jesse
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. Wasn't that delicious? So good. Your bill, ladies. I got it.
- [81:11]
Josh Pate
No, I got it. Seriously, I insist. I insisted first. Don't be silly. You don't be silly.
- [81:18]
Jesse
People with the Wells Fargo Active Cash credit card prefer to pay because they earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Okay.
- [81:25]
Josh Pate
Rock, paper, scissors for it.
- [81:26]
Jesse
Rock, paper, scissors. Shoot.
- [81:28]
Bradley
No.
- [81:30]
Jesse
The Wells Fargo ActiveCash credit card. Visit Wells Fargo.comActiveCash terms apply.
- [81:36]
Josh Pate
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.