Jesse (43:48)
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.
