
Loading summary
Podcast Advertiser
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Matt Rogers
This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Bowen Yang
This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Matt Rogers
Hey Bowen, it's gift season.
Josh Pate
Ugh.
Bowen Yang
Stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for?
Matt Rogers
Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired. Except for the guide we made in.
Bowen Yang
Partnership with Marshalls, where premium gifts meet incredible value.
Matt Rogers
It's giving gifts with categories like Best Gifts for the mom whose idea of sensible walking shoe is a stiletto or.
Bowen Yang
Best Gifts for me that were so.
Josh Pate
Thoughtful I really shouldn't have.
Matt Rogers
Check out the guide on marshalls.com and.
Bowen Yang
Gift the good stuff at Marshalls.
Josh Pate
So let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there and everywhere, but your AI can't use the data because it's here, there and everywhere? Seems like something's missing.
Bowen Yang
Every business has unique data.
Josh Pate
IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives. To change how you do business, let's create Smile to Business IBM.
Podcast Advertiser
Stay cozy, stay home and save big online during Lowe's December deal drops. Because honestly, why go anywhere when the deals come to you? Check this out. Lowe's is going to give you two free select tools from dewalt, Craftsman or Cobalt when you buy a select battery or combo kit. Yep, two tools free. It's basically a holiday miracle. Plus rewards members get free standard shipping all month long. Yet another reason not to leave your couch. Kick back, click around, let the savings roll in. Shop new December deal drops on lowe's.com every week this month. Fresh deals, cozy vibes. 0eff.
Josh Pate
They told us you'd never forget this day. And I'm never gonna forget it. Not a chance. People are mad now. I've been led to believe that people being mad means something's wrong and something needs to be fixed. And we will discuss that. The playoff rankings have dropped. Listen, right boom in our lap. We are jam packed. It is Sunday, December 7th, the year of our Lord 2025. We're coming to you live way earlier than we normally would because we need to come to you live earlier than we normally would. It's a very weird day. Some ways it's an unprecedented day in college football, and those seem to stack up on each other. The rankings just got released moments ago. I got full reaction to it. I was stunned. I'll tell you why I was stunned. I got conference championship game reactions. Because yes, football games do still matter around here and we do still talk about them after they occur. I am going to give you some thoughts on these first round games in the playoff that we have. I know a lot of you have thoughts. I've never seen a more broad consensus come together about the structure of the playoff and how the playoff views G5 teams than I'm seeing right now. Almost to the point where I may need to step in and defend the G5 as G5, Josh. Sometimes I have to do that also. I don't know if anyone caught this. Jesse, did you? Did you catch this? Penn State hired Matt Campbell.
Interesting. Yeah, we'll talk about it. Denton, Texas is tuned in. Montgomery, Alabama. Reno, Nevada. That's just me considering making a comment. Bradley. Reno, Nevada. Geneva, Georgia. Thank you guys so much. We're past 500,000 subs. That's old news on the channel, but not unappreciated news. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now the drive to a million begins. So if you're watching, we do this live. We do it all year round. It's just college football. Just make sure you subscribe to the channel, okay? Man, we got so much to get to. The college Football playoff rankings are out. They are final. We've got matchup set. The bracket is solidified. I was stunned, stunned, stunned. First off, the ACC doomsday scenario played out. We telegraphed this for a couple of weeks, all right, about three or four weeks ago, we thought, man, if Duke gets in there, it looks like the committee may be faced with the prospect of Duke winning the ACC championship not being ranked high enough. And then they got to make a decision. Are we really going to have a playoff bracket with no ACC representation then? Remember, Duke lost to Virginia in the regular season and we thought, all right, well, that takes care of that. The ACC champ will be ranked high enough. Then the ACC'd so incredibly hard that we got back around the merry go round to the point where we said, wait a second. Duke's in the game, aren't they? Yes, because the tiebreaker is just nonsensical. Let's just shake your bowl like it's Alphabet soup and whatever the letters assemble. And that's the. That's the tiebreaker, I think the Alphabet soup tiebreaker in the accident. And then we looked at it again and we said about a couple, two, three weeks ago, duke's going to get in that thing. If they win it all out, chaos. Because the question is going to be not whether Duke's going to get in. They were never going to be ranked high enough. It was going to be whether Miami could get themselves high enough to where the committee looked at it. And I don't care what Hunter Jureczyk just said on the playoff show. They absolutely had to look at the prospect of not having a Power four team represented in the playoff or a power four conference represented in the playoff and do something about it. And I think that's one of the things that happened here. When you look at Miami getting in at the 11th hour over Notre Dame, I believe the right thing was done, but the process behind it is so jacked up. The reasoning given was so jacked up. So that's the first thing I wanted to talk about. I'm going to get back to Miami, Notre Dame in a second, but just. I wrote ACC doomsday verified. Okay, that's the first thing. The second thing is we just were in Atlanta last night and we saw Alabama get dump trucked by Georgia, and that led to a lot of folks leaving Atlanta last night flipping over to the Big Ten championship game. You know, Twitter fingers working. Alabama's got to drop, right? Well, no, they don't have to drop. They weren't going to drop. I was very confident in that. Like I said that going into the game, they gave me the theoretical of, well, what if they lose by 50? Well, then they lose by 50 and they're not a conference champ. They're not dropping out. That was so basic. You got to understand something. Whether you like what I'm going to say or not. I'm not telling you how it should be. I'm telling you how it is. The SEC championship is worth a whole lot of money. The SEC as a league, runs and dictates a lot of this sport. There's not even anything wrong with that because that's how powerful they are. They have accumulated that power, not through false means like they're where most of the big brands are and the Big Ten's where most of the big brands are. So if the Big Ten's championship game was in the same situation as the SEC's yesterday, I'd say the same thing about the Big Tens championship game. A lot of people looked at Alabama lose last night and they said, and I don't agree with this line of thinking, but they said, well, if conference championship games are going to mean something, then there's got to be risk. No, there doesn't. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of a conference championship game within the overarching structure of the playoff. The meaning of a conference championship game, if you're already Ranked inside the top 10, let's say like Alabama was, is you only stand to benefit from it. Alabama could have won that game last night and then gone on to take a first round bye and so they would have benefited. Georgia did win the game. So they solidify a first round by, oh, by the way, they win the conference championship, in the words of Kirby Smart, if that still means anything to you. But there was something to gain. What you're not going to have is you're not going to have several members of your conference, a la A and M a la Ole Miss, a la Oklahoma, sit at home and watch the number one overall seed from that league risk lack of playoff inclusion for playing in a reward game. That was just never going to happen. And here's the other thing. If you think there's no punishment for losing that conference championship game, understand from the time the regular season ended for Alabama, for example, they needed to either win last night or understand they're one of the teams that's going to have to play five games to win a national title. Last night was the first one and they lost. So now they got to play an opening round game and then if they win that one, they got to play another game and then another game and then another game. And I know you're listening saying Alabama's not going to win the national title. No, probably not. But the point is, if they were to do that, the punishment for losing the game last night is they will have had to play five postseason games. So there is risk. But the risk was never you're going to drop out for playing in a game that other people didn't earn the right to play in. That was never going to happen, by the way. I got a lot to say here. We do have the opening round lines from Fanduel and some of these are probably going to interest you guys. In fact, Jesse, I didn't even write half of these down. I think I haven't memorized those. So James Madison is going to Oregon. I'm going to have again, I know you're about to yell at the screen. I'm going to have plenty to say about this. Excuse me. Tulane is at Ole Miss. I'll just say him in order. Tulane is a 17 and a half point dog at Ole Miss. That game already happened this year, by the way, James Madison does go to Oregon. Oregon is a 21 1/2 point favorite. Yes, these are playoff games. I didn't make the format, guys. I'm sorry. Alabama, believe it or not, opens as a one and A half point favorite at Oklahoma. And then we've got Miami at A and M. For my money, the most attractive game of round one, A&M is a five and a half point favorite. You need to assume there's three to three and a half points of home field baked in there. So they're telling you A and M a little under a field goal favorite on a neutral field. Okay.
You did text me times. Oh, Jesse, breaking news here. Okay. This is not inconsequential. Alright? So these games, you know, they take place on a Friday, Saturday. This is Friday Saturday, right, Jesse? Oh man, they did us a favor. Wow, this didn't pan out how I thought it would. Okay, Friday, December 19th, 8:00pm Eastern Alabama at Oklahoma.
Which gives us the ability on Saturday, December 20th at 12:00pm Eastern Time to be at Miami A and M. Now my only beef with this, and I'm not, I'm not going to even pretend to understand how the broadcast structure was negotiated. Miami at A and M at Kyle Field at night would have been, in the words of many people, cinema. Instead, we're going to watch it as an 11am kickoff. So even with the home campus games, we can't get the kickoff times right. All right, I move on December 20th. So that Saturday has three games. The mid afternoon game two lane at Ole Miss is a 3:30 Eastern kickoff. And then the primetime game is James Madison at Oregon. That's a 7:30 Eastern kickoff.
2G5 games. Those, those games are on TNT and that's a whole separate mess that. I mean, TNT paid to sub license these games and that's what they're getting dropped in their lap. So if you're sitting at home and you're thinking, I'm upset two G5 teams are in the playoff, imagine being an executive at TNT and you have no control over this. Or maybe you do. So anyway, Notre Dame's out of the playoff. Notre Dame is not a playoff team. Notre Dame gets left out of the playoff at the 11th hour and I have a post, it stuck to my index finger and it says, this is the first time I think Notre Dame's really been punished for not being in a conference. When the playoff got set up the way it was, people kept yelling what they've been yelling at Notre Dame for a long time. And that is you need to join a conference. I've never yelled that at Notre Dame. I never will yell that at Notre Dame. I fully respect their independence. I've always said if I were a major university, I'd want to do what Notre Dame does. That would be an ideal situation. You call all your own shots. Your seat at the table carries as much weight as other conferences collectively. Kerry at the table. Who wouldn't want to be in Notre Dame's position? But I did say if you guys want to hold out this small sliver of hope that they'll ever become more motivated to join a conference, not that I think they will, but if you ever want to hold out hope that they'll become more motivated, you need to hope that they have to pay a price in the form of losing a playoff spot for not being in a conference. Now for the first round of the playoffs. Last year, the first time we ever had one, there was this rule where if you didn't win a conference championship, you couldn't have a first round buy. But that only lasted one year. So that parameter got removed and it looked for all the world like the stars were aligning for Notre Dame to just exist in this new world, pay no price. I think they paid a price for not being in a conference here. So Notre Dame gets left out. Miami vaults Notre dame at the 11th hour. I actually agree with the rankings the committee put out. I actually agree that that should have been the way it panned out. Said that last week and I've said that for a couple of weeks now. However, if I'm a Notre Dame fan, I probably disagree with what I just said on the surface. But even if we get past our initial disagreement, like of course you guys think Notre Dame should have been in, but even if you get past that, where we'll be aligned is the messaging here was so pathetic. The protocol and the lack of follow through on the way the protocol is supposed to be applied was so pathetic to the point where we're sitting here on Selection Sunday and we're really listening to a guy tell us we were incapable of fully appreciating head to head results until Brigham Young lost the Big 12 championship game so bad that we had to drop them and put Notre Dame and Miami next to each other. And all of a sudden then it just dawns on us. Holy crap. They played each other. Gustav, Gustav, go get the footage of that game. Let's take a look at it. And then they claim they watched the game. Guys, they, they grinded tape last night, did the committee into the wee hours of 8pm and then it dawned on them that guys, head to head, I mean these, these resumes are comparable. Head to heads got to rule the day, which is sound logic, dot, dot, dot. That could have been applied two weeks ago. It could have been applied last week. But the problem is, if there's one thing of the many that that committee is guilty of, it is of knee jerk reaction. They knee jerked early on when they dropped Alabama as far as they did after the Oklahoma loss. They dropped Miami way too far in their initial rankings because it came on the heels of the loss to smu. Notre Dame was probably already too high. And then they were forced to course correct. Which brings me to a point that I'll make later about how meaningless now and how dumb it is to have those weekly rankings reveal shows. I don't. I think they serve a negative purpose. Like I think they serve an ulterior purpose. Now. They don't serve their initial purpose. So this should have been this way going into the weekend, but it wasn't. So then you create this mess. You're like Kevin with the pot of chili. And then you trip and you fall and you're wallowing all in it. And every one of us are looking saying, you know, it didn't have to be this way.
It went how I thought it should have from a pure ranking standpoint. It went horrifically wrong from a messaging and presentation standpoint. So, look, I understand how this works. I understand I got a lot of people who I really like, whose opinions I respect that are going to be diametrically opposed, which is like the beauty of sport. This is always going to be a subjective sport, by the way. Well, at least it is right now. Who knows what the future format holds? But this is subjective, which means there are going to be varying degrees of opinion. My whole takeaway on this has been 95% of the opinions that I've heard thrown at me, whether it be about Notre Dame or Miami or Alabama or Brigham Young, they haven't been based on principled stance. They've just been based on rooting interest, which I'm okay with. I just wish people would say something like this. I'm a Miami fan, so I think since we beat them on a field to start the season, we should be in over them. Or if you're a Notre Dame fan, I just wish people would say, I think we're better than them now. That's why I think we belong in. Or if you're a Bama fan, just say, look, I think we played a tougher schedule and so I don't think we should get punished for playing in a conference title game. Or I hope we don't. We belong in. But there's no principle behind it. Because if any of you and I'm talking to the 95%. If any of you really just switched resumes, you'd end up making each other's points. So it's just rooting interest. So anytime someone tried to question, you know, the ethical guidelines or the moral stance or anything right and wrong, it was all shades of gray to begin with. Do you honestly think if the resumes were reversed and Notre Dame beat Miami in week one and the rest of it played out the way it did, you don't think that every Notre Dame fan walking this planet would have been banging the head to head gong? Of course they would have. As they should. I would expect nothing less. That's my point. It's been my point for a couple of weeks. I don't have a problem with folks coming at me. It's just come at me and just say I disagree for the sake of disagreement. I'm just flat out rooting for Alabama to get in and I hope they get in. And I'm gonna say whatever I think needs to be said for them to get in. I'd respect that. But we were looking earlier today. I'm not gonna do it. Because we were going back in some notable college football figures respective Twitter histories.
And finding them one year ago making points totally counterintuitive to the points they were making today about what should and shouldn't matter in the playoff because of rooting interest. Now I changed my mind with Florida State a couple of years ago and Florida State folks still think I flip flopped on that. I did not. I still think it was bs As I said in the weeks leading up to the playoff reveal that Jordan Travis's injury was going to be factored by the committee. The value of his loss was going to be factored by the committee. And I said that shouldn't matter because of the results on the field. I don't need a committee to tell me how many points they think a player is worth when the results on the field should carry the day. The reason I changed was because Bill Hancock, the week of the selection, did an interview. He was the playoff committee chair or I think he was a very important figure in the playoff scene and he said most deserving has never been in our lexicon. We're putting in the best teams. I thought that was garbage. I still think that it was garbage that he did that. Just like I would have thought today if they said we put Notre Dame in because we think they're the better team. I thought that would have been garbage because I don't care who you think is the better team? I don't care who I think is the better team. And so if I don't care about my opinion, you know full well I don't care about your opinion. But back to the Florida State example. When he said that I came on the show. You remember this, Jesse, because we had a big production meeting and I said I've got to put what I think to the side because I'm not on the committee. That guy just told us where the committee's head's at. And so whether I like it or not, based on the new stated protocol. And Alabama belongs in over Florida State because Alabama would be favored. Alabama is the quote unquote better team. That was it. That was all. But I've stayed pretty consistent on it. Florida State fans would disagree with that today. I at least respect, even if it was completely backwards, it was more backwards than the Penn State coaching search. But at least they got to the right outcome. I do respect that the committee I thought got to the right outcome. When I say right, I just mean the one I agree with. There really is no right or wrong here. Teams being mad though, is not automatically evidence that something's broken. I keep going back to this. There's always going to be a lot of argument on Selection Sunday and contrary to popular belief, there will be. No matter how far you expand this playoff, there will always be disagreement. My point when it was four teams is the same point I'll make when it's 12 teams. Just because a fan base or a coach or a program is mad doesn't mean something's broken. It just means you've got a finite amount of a very valuable commodity in this case playoff spots. And not everyone can get one. Had Bama gotten left out today, I'd disagree with it. But I wouldn't claim that it was the end of the world. You know why? Because they had a shot to take it out of the committee's hands and they didn't get the job done. And by the way, they would be a very flawed team that never would have whiffed a four team playoff just a few years ago. Notre Dame missed out. You could have won games and changed your fate, but you didn't. Miami could have missed out. And I could very easily look back to the Louisville and SMU games. Point being there's just a bunch of flawed resumes here that we're looking at. And I always promised myself I would take this approach and I would say I didn't even want to expand the playoff to begin with. So surely I'm not going to allow myself to slip down this mental drain of arguing that the 12th or 13th team got screwed. No, I'm not going to get that worked up about it because you never would have even been in the picture a few years ago. But even if it's 12 teams, that doesn't mean the answer is to expand to 16. The answer is look the teams in the eyes who were upset and just say, do better next time. What are they going to do? Stop playing? They're not going to stop playing. They're going to get motivated to take it out of the committee's hands. All right, if you're in the batter's box and there's a pitch right there, lower outside corner, but it's an zero count, you can take it knowing full well the worst that's going to happen is it's 01. Or to put it to football terms, Ohio State lost last night. They're in the playoff comfortably. You know why? Because they bought themselves a ton of equity. Ohio State is a team that would have been viable in the four teams format. Alabama can't say that. Miami can't say that. Notre Dame can't say that. Vandy can't say that. Texas can't say that. Brigham Young can't say that. And so I'm not. Just because you're mad doesn't mean something's broken. Do better next time. That's the answer. It'd be the answer no matter who was the first left out today. But I do think that there are changes coming. I do think that that committee, just like they did this past year, they had one round and then they adjusted their terms and I. Now they've had another round and. And I think they're going to adjust their terms again. I do think a lot of people have started to throw around one of the proposals that we've made on the show, and that is if you're going to make the playoff, shouldn't you at least have a minimum baseline ranking? I don't know what that ranking would be. Shouldn't you have to be top 15? Shouldn't you have to be top 20? But a lot of people are looking at the fact that we've got two G5 teams in here. And of course that's a joke. It's a complete joke. It's an utter disgrace to the overall spirit of what this thing's supposed to be about. That I got a team like Notre Dame sitting at home. Notre Dame could legitimately make a run to win A national title. They have that maximum capability. They're going to sit at home so that we made room for a team to be a three plus touchdown underdog in Eugene, Oregon. So yes, even the most die hard of G5 Cinderella supporters out there understand from a pure principled standpoint this makes no sense. And so I do think something will be done to address that. I also am strongly urging our friends at ESPN to rethink the concept of a weekly rankings reveal show for a couple of reasons. Number one, you back yourselves into a corner when you release College Football Playoff rankings every week. Like the crowd that says we shouldn't have AP votes and AP polls and rankings until week five. What you really ought to be yelling at the poll that matters is maybe you guys ought not release that thing until Selection Sunday. Because had the committee not let you know what they thought about Notre Dame and Miami relative to each other, had you never known that Miami dropped to 18 and then worked their way all the way back up, had you never known that Alabama jumped Notre Dame yesterday or last week leading into yesterday, like had you not known all that, you wouldn't have nearly as much to complain about. And think about the entire side market of conspiracy and therefore content. Conspiracy equals content in our world that it creates. When you're thinking you know what the playoff rankings are, you're guessing. You've looked at the AP, you've looked at like McClintock and those guys, Dave Bartu and those guys do a great job at letting you know, hey, here, based on our modeling, here's what the committee rankings would be right now. But you wouldn't unequivocally know until Selection Sunday. Imagine being in the dark totally until Selection Sunday. Now the counter argument to that is, well, if we think this process is corrupt, now imagine how much more corrupt it would be if we didn't have to have minimum baseline accountability with them making their results public week to week, which is a valid counterpoint. I think the third point that I would make if you're going to have the week to week is you've got to publicize the deliberation. You've got to publicize it. Now we know that will never happen because the committee does not operate the way they tell you they operate. That committee is not full of 12 or 13 ads or whatever sitting there with their readers all the way down on the tips of their noses, just meticulously grinding over data and tape as their fourth cup of coffee is delivered at 2:38am that's not the way it works. I've long maintained they get a simple spreadsheet, the computer spits it out to them and does 95% of the work for them. And then they just kind of move the chess pieces around a little bit at the very end if they need to. But I do think changes will come on that front. The five seed is just golden yet again in this format. The 5 and 6 seeds, unless this thing changes, but especially the 5 seed is such an opportunistic place to be that I ask, what would you rather do? The Oregon Ducks are the five seed. What would you rather do? Now, Dan Landing is a good friend of the program and I would never be able to convince him to come on air and say we were totally cool not playing in the Big Ten championship game yesterday, but they were totally cool not playing in the Big Ten championship game yesterday. And those are not his words. I'm speaking for him, which I am at liberty to do. And I'm asking you, do you want to win the Big Ten title? Of course you do. But your ultimate goal here is to win a national championship. Where would you rather be? Would you rather have to play in a game yesterday and risk losing like Bama did and then playing the first round game anyway, or would you rather be parked right there where Oregon is, be a 21 and a half point favorite in round one, win the game at home and then advance to round two? You're going to play Texas Tech.
But if you beat Texas Tech, I mean if you play Texas State, like you're looking at a roster advantage, you're probably looking at a roster advantage against the first and second teams you play. You may have one against the third team you play. But just forget about the matchups for a second. If you're the 5 seed, you're playing the 12 seed, which until further notice is going to be a G5 team. You didn't have to play a game yesterday, so you'll be three weeks rested by the time that game happens. And then you get to play what equates to a warm up game before you play another team that's been rested. And you found out last year having a first round buy is not the best thing in the world. So you kind of, you get to play a playoff game almost as a tune up opportunity. That five seed, great spot to be six seed, as it turns out this year is Ole Miss and they're facing a team that they beat what, like 45 to 7 or something like that the first time around. So yes, we have our playoff bracket set it's unfortunate that we have two games that are 17 plus point spreads in round one, but we do have two of them that are must see. Look at the potential second round matchups. We could get Miami against Ohio State or A and M against Ohio State. Either way, from a, from a pure talent profile, I mean outside of Texas, those will be the best groups that Ohio State's face this year. Check me on that, Jesse. Who else will Ohio State have faced? Michigan's not to that level. They didn't face Oregon this year. Indiana's not to that level. Indiana may be a better football team, but in turn, I'm just talking about pure talent roster which is not the end all be all. I understand that from a pure athleticism and talent roster makeup, A and M and or Miami may present the best challenge that Ohio State has seen this side of Texas. Now they beat Texas, but that doesn't mean they weren't athletically matched across the board. From Texas, we could get Ole Miss, Georgia, rematch. We're going to get an Oregon, Texas Tech. We could get either Oklahoma, Indiana or if it's Alabama, Indiana. That's DeBoer against his old team. And either way it's Kurt Signetti sitting there playing a playoff game. Just incredible. So yeah, there you go. It's incredibly dry in the studio right now. Unfortunately, the only lip balm we had left was this red kind. So I'm not wearing lipstick, I promise. Boy. Kwik Trip had a busy weekend with us this weekend. Kwiktrip was present and accounted for at our live show Friday night in Atlanta, which I'll talk about later. It went better than best case scenario. Unbelievable. More to come. They fueled us there and they fueled you because, Jesse, I don't know how many cards we handed out. Maybe a thousand. But we handed out a whole lot of Kwik Trip gas cards. A lot of people showed up and left with a free tank of gas. I'm told that Quick Trip even got heavily involved at the concession stand. So that's great. And then on the way home, tanks running low. Just hit Quick Trip up if your energy is running low. Cold brew on tap. If your tummy's grumbling a little bit. I don't have time to list all the assortment and variety of snacks and just straight up outright food that would pass for a real meal that they have inside. But we, we appreciate Quick Trip man. Appreciate them big time.
You know, I got plenty more to say about the playoff. Trust me. I'm going to spread it throughout the show.
Limu, Limu and Doug. Here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Affiliates excludes Massachusetts.
Matt Rogers
This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Bowen Yang
This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Matt Rogers
Hey, Bowen. It's gift season.
Bowen Yang
Oh, stressing me out. Why are all the people I love so hard to shop for like me?
Josh Pate
Exactly, honey.
Matt Rogers
I'm easy. But you're right, holiday gifting is stressful.
Bowen Yang
And all the gift guides out there are boring and uninspired.
Matt Rogers
Wait, what about the guide we made.
Bowen Yang
In partnership with Marshalls where premium gifts mean incredible value?
Matt Rogers
It's Giving Gifts, a series of guides filled with premium gifts at great value for everyone on your list.
Bowen Yang
Yeah, Cause if I see one more for the dad who likes golf list, I'm out.
Commercial Narrator
Right?
Matt Rogers
How about something for the people who.
Bowen Yang
Actually surprise you with categories like best gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible walking shoe is a stiletto. Psst, she wants a pair of stilettos.
Matt Rogers
Or best gifts for me that were so thoughtful, I really shouldn't have dying.
Bowen Yang
To see what those are.
Matt Rogers
And you won't believe their prices.
Bowen Yang
Just wait till you see what else is in there. It's basically a one stop shop for everyone.
Matt Rogers
You know, I started bookmarking half the list for myself.
Bowen Yang
Honestly, this is the guy for the 2025 holiday gifting season.
Matt Rogers
Check out the guide on marshalls.com it's.
Bowen Yang
Giving gifts Gift the good stuff at Marshalls.
Josh Pate
Hello. Hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast smart talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?
IBM Executive
My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, if anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah, so we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology is getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things.
Josh Pate
To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com smarttalks.
Commercial Narrator
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other, one for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you are drowning in software Instead of growing your business, this is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that handles everything CRM, accounting, inventory, e commerce, HR and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you are just starting out, already scaling up. Plus it's easy to use, customizable and designed to streamline every process so you can focus on what really matters running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com that's O D O O.com.
Josh Pate
The SEC Championship game happened yesterday. We were there. Fueled by quick trip no less. We went down to Atlanta. A bunch of our friends of the program were there. We did the ESPN Altcast. I'll tell you guys about that in a little while. That was amazing. A lot of you tuned in for that. I'm told the game gets one and a half chow I and that's music to the ears of Georgia fans because finally you exercise a lot of the demons that you've had against Alabama and you're able to celebrate in the fourth quarter. I was on the Georgia sideline last night. I will tell you, it wasn't quite the TCU game from a few years ago. Like they weren't going to the concessions and getting chicken wings and eating them on the sideline. It wasn't that bad. But there were a lot of, you know, top button undone, arms spread over the bleachers, sort of just lean back, taking it all in in the fourth quarter of that game. So what have we said on this show about Georgia all year? You got to cut the head off the snake. And several teams had the chance to cut the head off the snake. That is Georgia. And you didn't cut the head off the snake. You remember the Tennessee game earlier this went to overtime. Tennessee misses a field goal that would have won the game. Could have been another loss, but it wasn't. Bama beat him in the regular season. That was their only blemish. You remember the Auburn game. Georgia just totally dead in the water. Could have been down 17, nothing at half. Instead it's 10 to 3 at the half. Auburn couldn't cut the head off the Snake. Florida, they're down late in the fourth quarter and they have to drive to win that game. Florida had a chance to really kind of define and stamp their season, but they couldn't cut the head off the Snake. Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin are up two possessions on Georgia in Athens. Second half, fourth quarter. Even Georgia comes back to win. Couldn't cut the head off the Snake. So many people grip that shovel. So many people tried. And Georgia just last minute darts to the left, darts to the right. And what ends up happening? They face Texas three weeks ago and they stuff him in a locker and everyone leaves going, oh, we didn't cut the head off the Snake. And then they do what they did against Georgia Tech last week. I know that looks like a close game. That game never felt like it was in doubt. And they go right back to that same building eight days later. And it just. It's another of many, many examples of how unmatched I think Georgia's competitive character is in the sec. You could argue Ohio State nationally, and that's about the only one that I would listen to from a pure competitive culture standpoint. Doesn't mean you're going to win every game, but it does mean if you beat Georgia, you brought your A game to do it. Very, very rarely do they do it for you. And also, I think it's such a testament, and I've said this before, and I'll say it again, to how hard they keep coaching all year. It's not a situation where you coach hard in the spring and then summer and then fall camp and then once you get to week one, you just are who you are. No, it's like a starting point for them. But the culture has been questioned at times around Georgia. I've always pushed back on it and I've taken a lot of heat for it because when they had the off the field incidents that happened in droves a couple years ago, everyone said, oh, Georgia's culture sucks. Georgia's culture competitively doesn't suck. And believe me, I know what the pushback there is. The pushback was then and still is probably, oh, just cause you stack a Bunch of great football players on top of each other. That's not indication of culture. Anyone can win when you have great players. No, they can't. No, they can't. Also, there's a lot of skill in stacking the great players because they don't really cut corners there to do it. If you're familiar with the Georgia recruiting approach, you know they're not always going to outspend you and they're not really going to apologize or sugarcoat what it's like there because they count on that being a filtration part of the recruiting process. And they don't want every four and five star to come through that filter. They want the filter to catch a lot of the guys that would melt inside Georgia. I was standing there talking to someone last night and they said, man, I can't believe Alabama didn't get up for this game. And I, you know, I kind of laughed. I said, what do you mean get up? And said, man, they just, they just get, they just didn't get up like Georgia got up this week. It's so obvious they didn't get up this week any more than they normally would. They played a pretty good game last night. They played a three phase game. They were very effective. They dominated the game. But please understand, that's not Georgia getting up. It's not about the music you listen to the day of the game or the inspirational video you watch the night before the game, or the text that your uncle sends you in all caps or the bus ride over there. That's not how you win games. They got up for this game in February. They got up for the game the third week of April. They get up for the game with the decisions they make on a random Tuesday morning in July when they could be home if they want to, or how they handle a practice in the middle of the season when they may have, like Austin Peay on deck. It's a standard. That's what competitive culture is. And anybody who dips below that standard, they don't last at places like that very long. And I say places like that, there really aren't many, but it's on display in games like last night. So this wasn't some vintage high flying blowout effort. What it was was a very, very complimentary approach where they just suffocated. Alabama negative. Three rushing yards is impressive. And I don't really care who you're facing, but dominance looks like that. So dominance is Georgia scoring four touchdowns with three drives starting in Alabama territory. That's a blocked punt that's an interception. And their fourth scoring drive, I think started on the Bama 43. Special teams tilted the field so hard. This is like what Oklahoma did to Alabama. By the way, you want a paper popper? Georgia's starting field position Average was their 40 yard line. Alabama's average starting field position was their 18 yard line. This is another one. Lot of paper poppers. Kirby gave us a record number of paper poppers. 12 Bama drives last night, none of them started at better than the Alabama 25 yard line. So the best start that Bama had last night, they had 75 yards to go to score a touchdown. Georgia 44 in the red zone. Alabama was held to negative rushing yardage. And honestly I was standing on the field, so you don't exactly know where those numbers are stacking up. But the one thing that was very apparent as a guy who also stood on the field to watch Georgia, Texas is it felt like the Georgia Texas game. They had three sacks. That's. That's great. They had 18 pressures on Ty Simpson and that's kind of what they did to Arch and that's kind of what that front has done to Texas a few times that they've played them. They hadn't handled Alabama like that until last night. I know Bama's banged up, everyone's banged up. No one needs to make the excuse for me. But that performance from a Georgia pass rush and a Georgia front that's gotten healthier and it's continued to elevate. That second part's the most important part. Their football players are playing their best right now. That stood out like, yeah, there may have been some miracle where Alabama just threads the needle, but they were going to have to do that. And by the way, the Bama defense, when I was driving out of there, I heard some fans talking about Kane Womack. Oh, man. Bama's defense dropped the ball. Dude. Alabama's dad defense was the least of their problems last night. Missing L.T. overton, and still Georgia's longest play was 19 yards. Guys, you just, you can't give average starting field position like that. You can't let that many drives start in your territory and look and say, all right, defense, we're not going to do anything to help you out. We're not going to score. I mean, we couldn't throw our way out of a wet paper bag. We certainly couldn't run our way through tissue right now. Don't you let them score, though. Yeah, that's not the way football really works. So it was a Very disappointing performance by Alabama. But man, that has a lot to do with the team lined up across from them. But the, the whole take that we had coming into this one, I picked Georgia to win a close game. The reason you don't ever want to give them Bama is because they've had this mental edge against Georgia. But also, you do know there's this tightrope that Alabama offensively has to walk. If they walk it, they can win. But the point is the tightrope walk, every Alabama drive feels like a tightrope walk. And the whole thing about a tightrope walk is if you make it to the other side, it's great. It's legendary. Everyone remembers it. Why do they remember it? Because the risk is you fall off the tightrope and if everything doesn't go right, if everything's not clicking right now because they can't run the ball and that offensive line is banged up, and I would argue Josh Cuevas, number 80 for him is an extremely underappreciated facet of their offense. He didn't play last night. And so you got freshman tailbacks, which makes the tailback pass ineffective out of the backfield. You don't have your usual third down safety valve and Cuevas your offensive lines beat to death. If you don't walk the tightrope, you die. They weren't able to walk the tightrope last night. That's kind of why I've been phrasing it like that. It's cool when it works. But Georgia threw the crowbar in the spokes last night. That's exactly what happened now, because we know now that Alabama's made the playoff, the following question is, how much healthier can they get? And they've got confidence they can get a fair amount healthier, obviously than they were last night. But the reason I'm not focusing on health a whole lot is because, guys, Georgia played without their starting center last night and Tim Keenan, I mean, coming back from injury, the first time these teams played was fully healthy last night. And that was not even a focal point of that game much. We got to the fourth quarter and I looked at Luan and I said, have we even mentioned the lack of Drew Bobo tonight? Have we even mentioned his absence? No. Did you hear Kirby Smart after this game? One of the reasons why I kept hammering the drum that Alabama losing that game was not going to cost them a playoff spot is because the SEC.
Was not going to allow that to happen. I don't mean they technically control the playoff committee. I mean, the playoff committee was well aware. If we remove a participant from the playoff or from the playoff that was in the SEC championship game that otherwise would have been in the playoff, it is curtains as far as the SEC is concerned. They were going to go scorched earth. Kirby made a good point in his post game press conference last night. He said, we're about to move to nine conference games. You just witnessed our ninth lead game this year. Us in Alabama just played our ninth league game. And it's like Georgia, the winning team crawls to the podium with cuts and scrapes all over and their mouths bleeding and they may be concussed, figuratively, of course. And they're like, that's the winning team. And he said, you know, he talked about Alabama. He said they're beat to death too. Like that's their ninth league game. That's just what we're going to voluntarily enter ourselves into. And then this would be the 10th SEC game that some of us play. And he said, there's a lot of concern around the league right now. A lot of people think that's whining until they come and coach or play in the SEC and they find out like this is the only league where the bad teams have a whole bunch of Sunday talent. This is like in the sec, the way recruiting is, is Dylan Stewart will legitimately decide to go to South Carolina over Georgia or Alabama. That would never happen in the Big Ten. The Big Ten so perfectly set up right now because the Big Ten, there's a tighter concentration of talent. The good players are going to go to three or four programs. They're not choosing Wisconsin, they're not choosing Michigan State. That's just not going to happen in the sec. Dude, Arkansas gets some players like South Carolina gets players and you'll look at them and you'll say, what are you doing? Well, those places disproportionately take football more serious. And so the trade off is. And here's what sucks in the end, none of your teams may be as good as Ohio State or Indiana, we'll see. But the middle pack, they still beat up on you. And you may go in there and beat them 20 to nine or something like that in week seven. But your training room looks no less crowded that following Sunday morning just because the team you played had a bad record and now they're going to sign up for more of those. Look, the Kaylin Deborah Year two experiment as it. It's not an experiment. The ERA year two is still playing out.
I'm going to, I'M going to reserve judgment. You know, we can do the post mortem once their season's done. It's not done now. They're going to the playoff. I kind of thought both of these teams last night should be proud to get to that moment. I mean, if, you know, like the public injury report is only a small part of the story for that team right there. I mean, I would argue it's far worse than the injury report made it look. Georgia's the same way. Okay, so both of the teams can say this, but Georgia won, so you don't have to contextualize it with Alabama. They're banged up badly. They're going to play a game. They got at least one more game. They get to play against Oklahoma. Let's see how that thing plays out, you know, because I'm still an extremely high believer in Caitlin DeBoer in these big leverage situations. Let's see how that looks. But overall, just kind of offensively, I just felt like they had nowhere to turn. Georgia gave them nowhere to turn. Their own execution or lack thereof gave them nowhere to turn. I will say this, though, a bunch of you were following along. Just our overall, our overall journey this week. This week was incredible for us. It started Thursday. We went up to New York City. We did get up on Green. Look, when Mike Greenberg hits you up and says, I need you in New York, I need you in studio. We got to talk multiple segments of college football. You look at your phone and you go, is he serious? Wow, good for Greenie. And you go up there and we did that Thursday. And then you come home and you do your live show in Nashville that Thursday night, slightly pre recorded on Thursday. We went down to Atlanta on Friday and we sold out the Buckhead Theater there in Atlanta. Look at you guys. This was an incredible moment. We did not broadcast this live because that's the value of attending a ticketed event. Kubelek joined us even though we had complications getting in the building. Will Compton, Taylor Lawan joined us there. We had a bunch of friends of the program show up. Alyssa Lang stopped by. Chris Doring stopped by. We had Peter Burns join us on stage. We had exclusive merch that's only available at our live event. And I don't know whatever my expectations were for that merchandise, but you guys blew that away. Everything about the show was better than best case scenario. We intentionally went into that show having no format. I didn't even take a piece of paper on stage with me. We had no idea how we wanted it to go. So I literally told our production team, turn the mics on. That's it. Open the doors and turn the mics on. So we learned a few lessons, obviously, but that was so fun. And it was the first time that we've ever had an event where in very, very large numbers, our audience comes together. And about a thousand of you were there. That's as many as we could fit in there. So you guys can attest to this. But for the many, many more of you who weren't there and who will hopefully be able to attend the several of these we do in the future, yes, that's happening. The vibe was pretty incredible. You never know what to expect, you know, when you've built an audience like ours, but you haven't had those kind of events. You don't know what it's like when everyone gets together. I don't know how to describe that. It felt like a family reunion. Just a great big family reunion. It's unbelievable. So I've always known the attachment. I've always known how loyal you guys are to the show and me in turn to you. Like, I've always known that. But it was really nice to see it validated, I guess, with a real tangible example. So that was, man, it was a load of fun. We're going to do several more of those, you know, so anyone who had fomo, if you had fear of missing out on that one, we'll do that several more times. We had some very, very high level meetings on Friday with a bunch of very important people who are very interested in taking those concepts and duplicating them several times over. And that includes the next day when myself, along with Harry Douglas, along with Taylor Lawan and Will Compton were just handed microphones by ESPN and thrown on national television to call the SEC championship game. This right here is some of the most fun I've ever had. Kirby Smart, right before the SEC Championship game, walks up and says, guys, you got to make sure you enjoy this. Well, we did. We did. It was bumpy out of the gate, you know, because none of us have done that before. But eventually, you know, Tebow comes up, very inquisitive, happy, happy to assist him, any kind of advice he needed. This was so much fun. We got great traction on this. This is a concept that I highly expect we'll be able to explore again big time, thanks to Pat McAfee. Pat McAfee is why we were able to do this. That is Pat's package. That recording artist Pat McAfee, mind you, that is his package. That is his property and he was able to put us on it. And then thanks to ESPN for trusting us enough to be able to execute it. Man, that was real fun. I've never done play by play before. Like, I've never done broadcast and color before. So that was a really, really fun pool to just dip the toe in. But again, I want to circle back to the same thing I said about the live show. We cannot do any of it without what this audience has done, without what the bussin audience has done for those guys. And there's very, very heavy overlap there. And we understand that and we really, really appreciate that. And you guys have given us so many opportunities. And I promise you, again, you can tell I'm sort of bursting at the seams to be able to say more, but I can't right now. We're going to have many, many more opportunities because of that. And then I have to always follow that up with promising you. That doesn't mean anything about the show. We are never going to screw the show up. The show is going nowhere other than where it is right now. The same way it is right now. Anything we get because of the success of the show will be, in addition to it will be an ornament on the tree. The show's the tree. So pate state forever.
Matt Rogers
This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Bowen Yang
This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Matt Rogers
Hey, Bowen. It's gift season.
Bowen Yang
Ugh. Stressing me out. Why are all the people I love so hard to shop for like me?
Josh Pate
Exactly, honey.
Matt Rogers
I'm easy.
FanDuel Announcer
But you're right.
Matt Rogers
Holiday gifting is stressful.
Bowen Yang
And all the gift guides out there are boring and uninspired.
Matt Rogers
Wait, what about the guide we made.
Bowen Yang
In partnership with Marshalls where premium gifts mean incredible value?
Matt Rogers
It's giving Gifts, a series filled with premium gifts at great value for everyone on your list.
Bowen Yang
Yeah. Cause if I see one more for the dad who likes golf list, I'm out.
Podcast Advertiser
Right.
Matt Rogers
How about something for the people who actually surprise you with categories?
Bowen Yang
Like best gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible walking shoe is a stiletto.
Josh Pate
Psst.
Bowen Yang
She wants a pair of stilettos.
Matt Rogers
Or best gifts for me that were so thoughtful I really shouldn't have dying.
Bowen Yang
To see what those are.
Matt Rogers
And you won't believe their prices.
Bowen Yang
Just wait till you see what else is in there. It's basically a one stop shop for everyone.
Matt Rogers
You know, I started bookmarking half the list for myself.
Bowen Yang
Honestly, this is the guy for the 2025 holiday gifting season.
Matt Rogers
Check out the guide on marshalls.com it's giving gifts.
Bowen Yang
Gift the good stuff at Marshalls.
Josh Pate
Hello Hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast smart talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?
IBM Executive
My one advice to them Pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, if anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind it. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah, so we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things.
Josh Pate
To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com smarttalks.
Commercial Narrator
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other, one for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you are drowning in software. Instead of growing your business, this is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, E commerce, HR and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business whether you are just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable and designed to streamline every process so you can focus on what really matters running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com that's o d o o.com stay.
Podcast Advertiser
Cozy, stay home and save big online during Lowe's December deal drops because honestly, why go anywhere when the deals come to you? Check this out. Lowe's is going to give you two free select tools from dewalt, Craftsman or Cobalt when you buy a select B or combo kit. Yep, two tools free. It's basically a holiday Miracle plus rewards members get free standard shipping all month long. Yet another reason not to leave your couch. Kick back, click around, let the savings roll in. Shop new December deal drops on Lowes.com every week this month. Fresh deals, cozy vibes, zero effort.
Josh Pate
Let us move on. We had yet another conference championship game last night.
I get home in Nashville in time to watch the whole second half and of course I've since gone back and watched the entire Big Ten championship game. And you guys did it. You guys did it. Indiana 13, Ohio State 10. I'd put we deliberated two and a half chalai on this game. You could easily argue three. It's very weird, a three point game in a conference title game. I think we'll get some pushback on that. I think some people thought that maybe a 4chali game. I just, I couldn't help but watch it. Before I talk a bunch of Indiana, I couldn't help but watch it and say, you know, this seems familiar. Ohio State's played this game half a dozen times this year. This kind of compressed, compacted game they play, kind of conservative. But you're sitting there thinking to yourself they're playing this way cause they don't need to play any other way. I've seen that before from them. What I haven't seen is that against a premier opponent that limits your scoring drives and you're unable to convert scoring opportunities. That happened last night. That was really the big difference. So that means giant tip of the cap. If I was wearing one to Indiana. Because what we have here is we have our bad luck game of the year. The bad luck stat is opposite of the padlock stat. The padlock stat on this show is the one thing or the one station that if I told you Friday, you would have known the outcome of the game. A bad luck stat is the kind of stat that would so badly have misled you. You would have bet your house or your farm, perhaps you live on a farm and you would have lost it all. This was the latter. This is a bad lock stat game of the year. And it's very simple. If I tell you that Indiana scoring 13, you are printing the programs, you are buying the merchandise. You are assembling the bags of confetti for Ohio State. They have won the Big Ten championship. And you know what? That's not true. Because Indiana scored 13 and it was good enough cause the other guy only scored 10. That is the fewest amount of points Indiana has scored in a game under Kurt Signetti and they won a conference title anyway. It's the fewest points Indiana has scored in a win since 2001.
Fernando Mendoza surged in the Heisman odds after this game and that's wonderful. And he cut one of the all time legendary promos on that field after the game. And me knowing full well there's a lot of America that has not watched an Indiana game so far this year. Therefore you haven't heard Fernando Mendoza talk. And that had to be in the best of ways, just a cold splash of water to the face. Fernando Mendoza's one of one. Diego Pavia is one of one. Whatever the oil and the water of the Heismanodes were, and whatever the oil and water of like personality is, you've got it on display. I mean, Pavia's dressed to the nines with his entourage, walking into a UFC fight last night with his team recording the entire thing. And Fernando Mendoza is replacing the F word with flipping on national TV multiple times in his thanks and his effusive praise of his team and his teammates and his creator. And I have full respect for that. I'm not making fun of him. I'm just saying if you listen to it and you've never heard Fernando Mendoza talk, you might have thought to yourself, what is this? What is happening? What is going on? A Big Ten championship winning quarterback, that's what's going on. So we get to see him go to the playoff. But that's not what stands out. I suppose that was long winded. I planned on that being five seconds. Great for all those guys. Here's what happened last night. Bryant Haynes locked up the Broyles award and I'm a voter, so I'm sort of publicizing my vote here. Indiana's defensive coordinator locked up the Broyles award last night, as far as I'm concerned, holds Ohio State to a season low in points. Season low in rush yards. Five sacks for that defense, nine tackles for loss. They own the red zone. They held Ohio State to 4 of 12 on third and fourth down again. Imagine pulling up to the building in the buses. A Bryant offense is going to score 13 for you. Is that enough? And he goes, yeah, yeah, we'll be good. He was right. As it turns out, Ohio State played this game. Oh, boy. Let me think. No matter what I say here, it's going to be put in the hype video for whenever they play a playoff game. You know what? Ryan Day's done a lot for us. I owe this to Ryan Day. Ohio State played like Meemaw used to drive. Not reckless, not irresponsible. I don't mean those things at all. I just mean they played like they had some time to kill. That's how memaw used to drive. Memaw was like the Tom Coughlin of leaving early to arrive early. If you're 10 minutes early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're 10 minutes late. And so Meemaw would always leave with plenty of time. Like church started at 7, we would leave her house at 6:20, knowing full well it's only 20 minutes away. Well, here's the trade off. We're going to do 64 miles an hour in the right lane because we got time to kill. We don't need to be anywhere five minutes from now. And that's just how I felt like Ohio State played last night, they had two drives trailing, mind you. They had a couple of drives. One of them was 12 plays, 70 yards, took about seven minutes. Another drive was 15 plays, 81 yards, took about eight minutes and got zero points out of either of those. And they were down 13 to 10 as those drives happened, the red zone still an issue with them. Miss field goal, can't convert on fourth down. I just kept thinking to myself, how are they this deep in the game and not allowing that wide receiver corps to take over? Now the logical counter to that is, well, if you're so high on Brian Haynes and that defensive Indiana, maybe they weren't letting them take over. No one dictates what Ohio State's wide receiver room is able to do. If they are able to like if alignment or if matchups are able to dictate that Jeremiah Smith ends up being a non factor late in the game. It is a dereliction of coaching duty. It's not that he lost his potential, it's not that he lost his talent and it's also not that you got him on a team where it's him and a bunch of middle schoolers. You're so loaded in that room. There's just no excuse for Ohio State to be that bottled up. But they were so Kurt Signetti. The worst nightmare to me of like every other head coach in the country, Kurt Signetti's ruined it for a lot of guys. A lot of guys look at Signetti and they probably, you know, praise him publicly. But behind the scenes, do you understand how hard he has made other coaches lives because he burns all the excuse making? Because if Kurt Signetti can walk into Indiana in year one and do what he did and then follow it up with the year two performance, no one gets to ask for patience anymore. No one gets to look at their ad and say we just don't have enough resources. No one gets to say we just got to recruit a little better because the ad is going to look back and say, well, Sig doesn't have to. Kurt Signetti didn't say that. And what do you say? Are you going to say, well, we're not Indiana. They're not accepting that. Well, I'm not Kurt Signetti. That dude was at JMU searching for an opportunity in his 60s that Indiana finally gave him. They're not accepting that. I'm not saying that's logical or rational. I'm saying it is. That's just the way it's going to be. And I go back to last year. Here's where I was so wrong about him. Kurt Signetti kind of turned what we thought was the main event into the warm up act last year. They come out of nowhere. It's one of the stories of college football season and they overachieved so drastically that even though they got blown out against Ohio State and they got handled pretty thoroughly against Notre Dame, like my perspective was don't hold them to the standard you would. Georgia, this is Indiana. You've got to be effusive in your praise that they're even in this conversation. But the follow up was it's probably a one time deal though and they'll fall back to earth. That was just their warm up. This team was so much better this year than last year's team. This team, we ended up having them power rated number two by the time they played Ohio State and well before that they were a legitimate number two. I'm talking when I say power rating, I mean like odds making, who would be favored, neutral field, that sort of thing. Last year Indiana was never that. They were an inflated record because they played an inferior schedule and they executed really well. But then when it came time to play the big boys, they got put in their place. This year they are the big boy and they put one of the other ones in its place yesterday. And now we get to see them with the first round by. They're the number one overall seed in the playoffs. They're the Big Ten champs. And I don't want to fall victim to knee jerk reaction or speak hyperbolically, but I don't know how you don't at least consider Kurt Signetti on Mount Rushmore of college football. Josh? No. Oh, you mean of all sports? No, no, just the Mount Rushmore. Just the Mount Rushmore. I know it's only president so far, but none of them have won Big Ten titles. None of them could a Theodore Roosevelt. You think Abraham Lincoln is winning the Big Ten in year two anywhere, much less at Indiana? I don't think so.
So. So give me. Give me Sig on Mount Rushmore. Who says no? And if you say no, you better give me good reason. Do you guys, you guys know we got several college football games left? We do have playoff season coming up. Seatgeek is there. A lot of you cashed in on our discount there over the weekend and I had a few testimonials sent my way. So here's, here's our main viewpoint on this. You guys are going to buy tickets. We're huge college football fans. But this could also be for basketball. It could be a concert. Whatever your needs may be. I know our audience. Most of you attend live events. Therefore you've got to buy tickets. Now maybe your uncle owns an oil company and he can get you fixed up in his suite. Great. Congrats. We're so happy for you. But the rest of us have to buy our tickets the semi old fashioned way. I say semi old fashioned because I don't think SeatGeek was around in 1992. I don't think those Braves, Pirates, NLCS tickets were available on SeatGeek. However.
Oklahoma, Alabama tickets, they will be available. JMU, Oregon tickets, they will be available. Now. Since you're going to buy the tickets, go to SeatGeek and right before you check out, I get you a discount. I get you 10% off your order. Just enter the code PATE10P A T E10. That's 10% off any tickets, not just college football playoff. Make sure you click the link in the description. It's right there below the video. You can download the app. You got the code automatically added to your account if you click on that link. So click the link and it's fine. Don't click the link. Just memorize pate 10. All right, back to the show. So these first round matchups, I did want to comment on these and I did want to say hey to everyone. I'm told they're playing NFL games right now and we got like 11, 12,000 people watching live. So I appreciate you guys. I'm gonna get back to the playoff here. Since the round one games are set, I do have a few thoughts on these. Like Alabama's gonna play Oklahoma round one. We just saw the game a few weeks ago in a different venue. We saw Oklahoma come to Tuscaloosa. Remember that was the game. Yeah. You guys remember? That was the game I was so confident in. Alabama's got a little bit of a roll going on. And Model loves Alabama. I think it was minus five and a half or minus six and a half. We laid the points and the thing about the box score of the game was we got everything we thought we would get from a production standpoint, except one small problem, and that was minus 3 in the turnover column. And I remember, I would love to excuse this away. I would love for them to be those freak kind of, you know, ball hit, an offensive lineman's helmet popped up in the air and an OU linebacker caught it. It was not that. It was Oklahoma forcing turnovers. And truthfully, it could have been a lot worse because there were some fumbles that OU didn't recover that they forced. So we saw the game a few weeks ago and OU ended up winning a close game in Tuscaloosa. Same issue here. If Oklahoma is able to limit that run of Alabama's and why not? Everyone else does. So if they're able to do that again and it comes down to Ty Simpson throwing this time, it's him trying to do it on the road. Norman, Oklahoma hosting a playoff game going to be pretty special. So it's him having to do it on the road. It is a night kickoff. That place will be lubricated. No immunity. It just is what it is. He had success against them the first time around statistically, but it came in a price. And the price was them having to rely on a high leverage offensive game script and Brent Venables making them pay the price. So again, we're going to see Oklahoma after a few weeks off here. Until further notice, we have to assume that John Mattier kind of is what he's going to be. I don't know that, but I'm going to assume maybe limited production from Oklahoma offensively, but just like Indiana showed us last night, if you're putting up 13, it doesn't matter if you hold the other guy to 10. So if Oklahoma is going to get 20 on the board, a lot of them feel like that's going to be good enough to win. Plus, they're going to listen to people talk about how they don't really deserve to be there. Some people, you know, Dusty Dvorak is going to make sure. Gabe Iker, Teddy Lehman going to make sure they scour the Internet and find every disrespectful comment about Oklahoma, of which there will be many, and plaster them all over the place and they absolutely will. I'm not going to contribute though, because I believe in a complimentary style of football. If you get praised for scoring 50 points a game offensively, you also ought to get praised for what you hold teams to defensively. So it's a home game at Oklahoma. Oh, they asked me when I did get up the other day, Greeny said, you're the commissioner, what would you do? I listed a few other things but pretty high on my list was giving us more home playoff games. If we've got to expand the playoff and we did, how do we look and say we only want one round, we only want one round of this. No, give me as many rounds of that as possible. Immunity. That's going to be great. That's a. In case you missed it, that is a Friday night 8pm Eastern, 7pm Local time kick. Alabama at Oklahoma is the Friday night game and then Saturday you've got three games. Speaking of which, I've got thoughts on another game. So we know that game's on a Friday night. Well, what about Saturday? Miami at Texas A and M is set as a first round playoff game. This game kicks off Saturday, December 20th. That's the good news. The bad news is 11am Local kick. I understand the broadcast parameters like those are kind of fixed times so you don't have much control over that because clearly like you're going to select the best two games. If you're ESPN and then you have sub licensed the other games to tnt, they get third and fourth pick but they do get the prime time spots. It is what it is. A and M a 5 1/2 point favorite at FanDuel right now. Interested to see if that number moves any sort of so both teams will struggle to run the ball in this game. That is my strong suspicion. Now if A and M can run the run the ball they'll win the game. If they can't or if it's limited and it stands to be because Miami brings a top 10 run defense into Kyle Field, then it once again falls on the shoulders of Marcel Reed and kind of like we talked about with Ty Simpson, but more so with Marcel Reed, it's just going to be a high risk, high reward, sort of an approach. That's kind of how I would see this game playing out. Marcel Reed could give you a performance that makes me look and say had I gotten more of that down the stretch my Heisman ticket would have cashed. That could happen. Or Miami could get out gained by 30 yards but be plus three in turnovers and Walk out of there having stolen a win. That could be one of two ways that this goes. But what I love is as far as their playoff hopes go, Texas A and M is in a shockingly similar position as Ohio State was last year to lesser attention because Ohio State lost against Michigan as a three touchdown favorite, whereas A and M lost to Texas. And that was expected to be a close game. And also that game happened on a Friday of rivalry week. So it happened and then it was kind of out of people's main focus of attention, but it happened. So in that building, that's all that's mattered. And they lost that game and they knew they were still going to host a playoff game. You will have had three weeks of rest by the time this game kicks off. They're going to put pressure on Carson Beck. Miami has not been a very good road team. Now, these last few weeks notwithstanding, like Mario could listen to this show and hit us up right now and say, did you see the pit game? Yes, that's why I said last few weeks notwithstanding, because I also saw the SMU game. So we do have to remember the entire sample size here. And they're going to go into by far the most hostile environment they will have played in all year. Some of those kids have never played in an environment like this. And they will face.
Jesse, I think, the best pass rush that they will have seen all year. So that's Carson Beck under pressure. And that is, you know, that's a situation where he's had his ups and downs this year. But think about that. Not only from Miami's hopes of winning the game, but from an NFL perspective. I mean, if you're a scout and you're kind of wondering, what do I make of Carson Beck, buddy, just tune into this game. But yards per carry, I think will be huge here. I don't want to make it padlock stat time right now because we've got 12 days or so until this game, but it's going to be at yards per carry stat. It's going to be pretty glaring. But again, we just talked about the Oklahoma Alabama game. Think about this game. Just picture it for a second. Kyle Field, early kickoff. Early kickoff. But Kyle Field hosting a playoff game, it's all I've ever wanted for Billy Lucci. It's all I've ever wanted. There's a rumor floating around, by the way, that Lucci invited me to his wedding. Like, where did that come from? On what Texas message board was that born?
I don't know. Now, there was a wedding that involved one of the two of us. And one of the two of us was invited. But I think they got the story a little backwards. It pays to scour the Internet. You know what else pays?
Pacestatematerial.com. because that's where you can go and grab yourself a Tis the season to be chuggy sweater. I saw so many of these floating around the lobby the other night. I have dropped the ball on our own merchandise because I haven't gotten Alex to ship me any of our Tis the season merch. Our Christmas merch. You guys have bought it by the truckload, though. So a lot of you showed up to the live show the other night, many of you who walked up at the meet and greet afterwards, you heard me look at your shirt and say, oh, wow, this is the first time I've seen this. It's because it's the first time that I've seen it. I don't peruse the warehouse nearly as frequently as I should, and that's on me. And I don't make sure that I'm stocked up with our stuff nearly as much as I should. And that's on me. But your Christmas shopping is on you. And in order to check that list off as expeditiously as possible, Paint statematerial.com is here to help. Let's continue. Now we have to get uncomfortable. Now we have to broach the subject everyone's talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So we have two G5 teams in the playoff.
Tulane, Ole Miss, JMU, Oregon. We do regrettably have the point spreads for these games, courtesy of FanDuel Sportsbook. Tulane is a 17 and a half point dog against Ole Miss. And you may be thinking to yourself, didn't I already see that game? Yeah, Ole Miss beat him by 35 the first time around. Nextly, JMU at Oregon. Oregon, a casual 21 1/2 point favorite in a playoff game. So people have some really, really strong thoughts on this. I've had strong thoughts on this for a while. I've told you for a while it makes no sense that college football structured the way it is for many reasons. But it makes no sense that college Football pretends like 136 teams are playing the same sport. It's so obvious they're not. And so I've gotten two bits of pushback on that one. Bit of criticism is, why do you want to hold down smaller teams? Why do you want to choke off the one chance they have to compete? I don't. I'll get to that in a second. And then the other one is, well, if they don't get that opportunity, then you're financially cutting them off and they die on the vine. I don't want that. You got to get some smart people in the room to understand we can restructure the playoff. We can rebuild the playoff actually entirely to where you don't have G5 inclusion in the main playoff and still have a very, very nice revenue producing product that is exclusively G5. You know, a world where JMU could actually win the title or Tulane could actually win the title. Now everybody logically watching this or listening to this knows Oregon's not playing the same sport as jmu. Everybody knows Ole Miss is not playing the same sport as Tulane. Everybody knows that. But for some reason we're still forced to pretend they are when it comes playoff time. So you can say what I just said without having disdain or hate in your heart for the G5. I feel the total opposite. I love G5 football. I'd like to build a world. I'd like to build an ecosystem where it thrives. Not cutting it out of this system to watch it die. That's not how that has to happen. But the mental gymnastics that proponents of G5 inclusion put themselves through are so mind numbing that I just remove myself from the conversation. Because the way I look at it is no G5 teams ever going to win this national championship. Certainly they're not. So like, it's never like they're going to make a run in the playoff. The worst that happens is it takes away and robs us of what would be far more premier first round playoff games. And then JMU and Tulane will get disposed of in the first round because they're far inferior teams. And then we'll move on about the playoff. So it's not like I'm going to get burned. There is no Boise, Oklahoma 2007 coming to rescue you on this argument. So the argument you're making is a very bad faith argument if you're making this one. Well, you know, upsets have happened before. That's not even. It's so far away from the point that it doesn't even deserve a reply. But here's the reply. I don't care if JMU goes and beats Oregon. It doesn't disprove my point. My point is they don't deserve inclusion in this format because anybody. I could take Auburn and have them play JMU schedule and they're probably an 111 team or probably possibly undefeated. Auburn, Auburn. You look at some of the advanced metrics they would tell you Auburn's about the 26th to 30th best team in the country right now. They'd probably be favored top to bottom against JMU schedule. The point there is we're not playing the same sport. We're not looking at the same sport. So the one bad faith argument is someone will cherry pick this one example of an upset happening and they'll say, see, you can't say that wouldn't happen. My point is not even that it's impossible for them to pull the upset if they get in the playoff. My point is they shouldn't be in the playoff to begin with because the road that they took looks way different than the road these other teams have to take. That's part one. Part two is with all this money floating around right now, people are insane if they don't think a G5 playoff would sell and sell big. Do you understand? How dare desperate other networks are for quality postseason college football inventory. I used to work at one up until very recently. That is void of it entirely.
You don't think that if we took a package of G5 playoff games and put them on any network that it wouldn't sell? Of course it would. There are going to be a lot of proposals coming up about the entire world of, like, the way that since the SCORE act died in Congress, the way that we can move forward and you hear all kinds of pitches about private equity and people just looking to invest in college football, Invest in a G5 playoff. Everybody wins. I'm not trying to box you out, by the way, because I would love a world where promotion and relegation existed. What that looks like is I don't want to pick any one individual program, but if you're a program that just continues to suck year in and year out and you keep beating your chest, go, hey, man, we're still in the Big Ten of the SEC no matter what. Well, maybe you shouldn't automatically be. Maybe if you're that bad for that long, maybe you ought to drop down and Tulane ought to jump up. I wouldn't have a problem with that. A little advancement and escape hatch built on that system. But to sit here and pretend like 130, 16 play the same sport. So stupid. So the money's there to figure this out. Because really what the argument always boils down to is a fundamental argument. No one really looks at JMU and Tulane in the playoff and thinks to themselves, yep, purely from a competitive standpoint, this makes sense to me. You don't think that if you're a JMU fan, I got one on our staff. He looks at it and says, I love it because I love jmu. Totally fine. I say the same thing if I were you, Prez. Or if you're a Tulane fan or if you're a fan of any team that competes for this thing. You want to make it because you want to make it. I am talking about removing that lens and looking at it purely from a logic based competitive standpoint. No one looks at this and thinks it makes sense. So the argument doesn't come to that. The argument comes to if we're not involved in the College Football Playoff, we can't make enough money to survive. And what I'm saying is there is plenty enough money floating around the world of college athletics to get it figured out. That's my point on that whole thing. And it should have long ago gotten figured out, but it still hasn't. Our friends at FanDuel hit us up early today. They, of course, they gave us all the numbers, those first round spreads. Very interesting, very interesting. But I don't want to talk to you about that today. So if you watch the show, you know that we partner with FanDuel. A little over a year and a half ago.
One of the main things that I proposed demanded when I sat at the table with fanduel is I said we have got to heavily infuse responsible gaming into the show. So FanDuel always gets a read. They get placement in the show. But one of our non negotiables was occasionally I got to talk to folks who were at risk of gambling addiction or who are making some very irresponsible decisions when it comes to sports betting. And they said, not only are we okay with it, we'll support it. And they put their money where their mouth is. So you see on this monitor over my shoulder here, if you're listening on podcast, it says trusted voices. It is an entire separate vehicle. It's not part of FanDuel. FanDuel has just partnered with it Conversations about Betting. It's a website and it is totally designed to equip adults. You could be a parent, you could be a coach with tools and resources to talk to younger people about gambling. Because one of the worst things it happened to me one day I was sitting in a guy's house who I used to go watch NFL Sunday with. It was when, you know, online gambling first became a thing. This is offshore. These are the old school days. And I bet two 4 team NFL parlays. I hit them both, thought I was invincible and ended up losing a ton of money over the next year or two of my life because I didn't have a clue what I was doing. That's called irresponsible gaming. So this is a program whether someone advises you on it or whether you yourself take part in it. It's led by FanDuel responsible gaming ambassadors. And Randy Livingston is a retired pro basketball player and his wife is an attorney and a basketball agent. They kind of partnered to build this thing. The very short, digestible videos, they're like two to five minutes long. They got downloadable toolkits. It gives you the information you need to know what to avoid, what to look for. It's not at FanDuel, so it's not on the app. I would advise you, though, if you're interested in this, go to conversationsaboutbetting.com.
And it's very well done. Very. That's why we're talking about it on the show. Very well done. So good, good tool there for parents, good tool for coaches. Or just if you're friends with a dude who you know is in trouble right now, just, just give him the link and then talk some sense into him.
FanDuel Announcer
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. $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 1-888-789777 or visit ccpg.org chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelp linema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE NY or text HOPE NY in New York.
Josh Pate
All right, lastly, before we get out of here.
You didn't possibly think the show was going to end without me acknowledging this. After 54 long days, the Penn State Nittany Lions have hired a head coach and whomst amongst us could ever have seen it coming, But Matt Campbell is the new head coach at Penn State. I have to be an incredibly big man right now. And for those of you who are listening, I have my eyes closed because this is where I get myself in a safe mental space where I don't say the words I told you so. Because the last thing we want to do on this show. Last thing we want to do is beat people over the head with I told you so. But I'll tell you what, I felt like I just watched. I feel like I just watched Penn State go all the way around the world to find treasure in their backyard. This should have been the first call they made. They weren't getting Freeman, they weren't getting deboer. None of those grand slam like unicorn candidates were going to be available. That should have always been evident. Mike Elko, they were not close on him. I am just telling you from firsthand knowledge that was not happening. But Matt Campbell could have happened and you could have saved yourself potentially a recruiting class and you could have saved yourself a lot of heartache. Anyway, Matt Campbell finally happened. There are two perspectives on this and they're just fascinating because I have banged the drum for Matt Campbell on this show as the best candidate for Penn State since they fired James Franklin. The first night after they fired Franklin, we came on the air and I said, matt Campbell ought to be the one you target. So that's why I'm speaking the way I'm speaking football. People will universally praise Matt Campbell. You will never find a football guy who speaks ill of him. They all universally respect him. The NFL heavily respects him. He has turned down NFL head coaching jobs in the last five years. So they think sky high of him. His peers think the world of him. Nobody who pushed back on the concept of Matt Campbell getting the Penn State job ever gave me football related reasoning. Or if they did, it was very ignorant and it was short sighted. And it was like, well, he hasn't even won the Big 12.
In college football. It is not the NFL. You don't all work on the same platform. In the NFL, everyone plays by the same rules. Everyone's allowed the same draft picks. Everyone's working on a salary cap. None of that exists in college football. So if you're the head coach at Texas and you're the head coach at Iowa State, you live in two different worlds. You have two totally different existences. So Matt Campbell, in the 130 some odd year history of Iowa State is in the midst right now of the best three year stretch they've ever had. They just won eight games. You win eight games at Florida and they don't like it. You win eight games at Alabama, that's cause for concern. You win eight games at Iowa State, it's one of the best seasons they've ever had. And he just did that on the heels of going to the Big Ten or Big 12 championship game last year. So people who said, oh man, he hadn't won big games, you have no clue what you're talking about relative to expectation and relative to resource. He crushed it at Iowa State. So no one brought any football related counter arguments to the table. Cause there really are none. Here's what a lot of people said. They didn't trust their own instinct. They blindly trusted rumors or perceptions of other instincts when they said, well, if he's so great, if Matt Campbell's so great, how come he hadn't gotten job offers before? And I bit my tongue as long as I could and then I couldn't take it anymore. And I told you on the show a couple of weeks ago, they have, they've come his way. Tennessee came his way, Florida State came his way, the Detroit Lions came his way, USC was at the 11th hour a few years ago. A lot of jobs came his way. That's not an exhaustive list, by the way. Those are just some that have sort of quasi, leaked out there. And I'm comfortable talking about he didn't leave because he didn't want to leave. And you may think to yourself, that's crazy. Iowa State. Oh, you get, you get on the first thing smoking out of Iowa State. Well, maybe if you were the head coach there you would. But he's not like everyone else. So we went up there last spring because I kind of wanted him to talk on the record about this and he did. And I think you'll be fascinated to listen to this. This is a little glimpse into why Matt Campbell didn't just move at the first opportunity. Roll it, Bradley. Short of like Internet rumors, there's never been really serious traction to you not being here. So could you walk people through as much as you can the thought process you have when you have opportunities?
Matt Campbell
You know, I, I've been that guy where it's like, geez, should I be climbing this, this ladder of job to job at a really young age to, you know, when we got to Iowa State and have been able to build something different. And I know, you know, for me, leaving the University of Toledo was really hard, to be quite honest, you know, from Ohio. My wife and I had never left Ohio at that time. Three kids with a fourth on the way. We had grandparents and family that were, you know, anchors to us. And it was really hard to leave. And you know, that was the first time I said, geez, I don't know if this is what I want to do. I want to be able to lay Roots and build something different and something that's really special, that can stand for something. And, you know, I think that's the one gratitude that I have for being the head coach. I walk in here every day and I'm just beyond grateful to be the head football coach at Iowa State. And, you know, we've been able to build a program and build a program that I really believe stands for something.
Josh Pate
Savannah State heavily critical of my sitting posture there. It is what it is. I know no other way. Let me tell you why I think he's a perfect fit there. He's dead serious about that Toledo stuff. Matt Campbell came very close to just not leaving Toledo for Iowa State, okay? That's how dug in he was at Toledo. And then he got to Iowa State and thought to himself, I'm not leaving here. A lot of guys talk like that and give it lip service. I don't know how else to tell you he's just telling you the truth. Other people are lying to you. He's telling you the truth there. And so it took a lot. It took a lot to peel him out of there. Penn State was able to do it. So the first thing that I would take comfort in if I'm a Penn State is, or if I'm a Penn State fan, one of the first things I would take comfort in is knowing that guy's not going anywhere. It was so hard to get him out of there that he's ours. The only risk you would run is do NFL teams come calling? Like, that's all I would worry about. He's one of the best culture builders in college football. Anyone who's been around it, anyone who's played against it will attest to it. He's got sort of a magnetic quality, and his programs take on this magnetic quality, which is really important because contrary to popular belief, this thing's still about relationship building. I was talking to Courtney Morgan at Alabama last night and just talking about, like, philosophy and recruiting and about the misnomer that, oh, it's just about paying the most for players now, and all the good general managers or all the head coaches will laugh at that. It's not about that. It's true that you could go overspend and just go assemble a bunch of talent if you didn't build the relationship. Firstly, you probably had to overpay to get the talent if you didn't build the relationship. And then, secondly, they're not going to go over the cliff for you. There were a few very glaring examples, by the way, late in the season of teams that had, for lack of a better term, hired a bunch of players and the players quit on them.
FanDuel Announcer
So what?
Josh Pate
All the talent matter to you. That is not a characteristic of a Matt Campbell organization. Not only that, but because of the magnetic nature of the program, you'll find that guys take a discount to play for you and guys will accept, in some cases, less to stay with you. I can promise you. That was the case with him at Iowa State. Now he goes to a place where you'll still have all of those qualities. They will place a premium on evaluation and development. He's bringing his general manager, Derek Hooger, with him, one of the best in the business. So they'll still be good. They'll still be plus to A plus in all those categories. Now they've got big money to spend. Penn State will equip them to where they can be very competitive in the nil market. And so you can attract a wider net, you can cast a wider net, and you can catch bigger fish in that net. They're still going to run them through the same filter that they would have run them through at Iowa State or they're not going to play at Penn State. He is a grinder, very blue collar mentality. It's why I always felt like his personality would be a puzzle piece. Fit at like three or four big programs and this is one of them. So he won't have to get up there and pretend he has it. You know, like you guys at Penn State. You know what fits at Penn State? Some people have to pretend that they fit at Penn State. He won't have to pretend. I did want to address this, though. Okay, so I'm a big Iowa State fan. People think I'm lying about that, but I'm not. So I'm a huge Matt Campbell fan, too. Truthfully, I probably become bigger fans of coaches than programs, but I am a big Iowa State fan, have been since I was a kid. So I got a lot of heat for how I handled this. All right, so I do want to address that because I do acknowledge it's probably a really bad look because it looked like I was trying to convince the market to like remove Iowa State's head coach. It wasn't that, but I grant that if you thought it felt that way, my bad, because that's the last thing I want to do to Iowa State. What I felt is there was a guy at Iowa State and had been for a while, that was fully capable of taking over a top 10, top 15 job and winning And I thought Matt Campbell was that. And I just, I. Maybe it's selfish. I wanted to see him take a shot. Having said that, the very next thing that happened was this broke, this news broke as I was live on stage the other night doing our live show. So I was kind of having fun with the live crowd and I put that edit out of me and him walking down a hallway and he's got a Penn State logo on his chest. Bad optics. Sorry about that. I grant you that. So took some heat for that. It was deserved. That's the last thing I want to do. So now pull for Matt Campbell at Penn State. We're going to go up there tomorrow. We'll be there for the introductory press conference. Just someone tell Sean Fitz to get our get our room ready. Now we regroup. And now we get behind the new staff at Iowa State. And by the way, Jamie Pollard's the ad there. Just textbook clinic put on in how to be classy when what was probably an inevitability finally happens. Maybe they didn't feel like it was an inevitability, but when you're Iowa State and you got big programs that continuously come calling for your guy, eventually he may leave. He was there a decade. And so when he leaves, what do you do? Do you trash him on his way out the door? Do you put on this entire spectacle like we saw with Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss? No. You thank him and then you have the next hire ready to go and boom, it's done. So yes, yes, I could have handled that optics wise a lot better from the Iowa State side. So I do want to acknowledge that because it's not like I was just faking like an Iowa State. I'll be right back there in the foxhole next year. I will just also pull for Matt Campbell at Penn State. Okay, that's our show. Was a loaded show today. We've got a lot to chew on. We're right smack dab in the middle of playoff season now. Appreciate you you guys so much. Make sure you are subscribed to the channel. I guess we're on the drive to a million now. I don't guess. I know. I gotta go eat lunch. For director Bradley, for producer Jesse, I'm Josh Pate. Take care. Have a great rest of your Sunday and God bless.
FanDuel Announcer
Must be 21 plus 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. $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 chatinceneticut or visit ndgamblinghelp.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.
Josh Pate
Ah, greetings from my bath festive friends. The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money. Getting 5% cash back when I pay in of front. No fees, no interest. I used it to get this portable spa with jets. Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body. Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal. Save the offer in the app ends1231 see paypal.com promoter points can be redeemed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval. PayPal Inc. And MLS 910457 okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line.
Podcast Advertiser
But first.
There the last one.
Josh Pate
Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.
Commercial Narrator
Enterprise leaders are revolutionizing their marketing operations with AWS AI.
Josh Pate
This proven technology turns resource intensive advertising.
Commercial Narrator
Processes into intelligent autonomous systems that deliver.
Josh Pate
Real time optimization on a global scale. Amazon's own transformation journey shows the true.
Commercial Narrator
Power of enterprise AI innovation.
Josh Pate
And now your organization can tap into the same technology that drives Amazon's advertising success. AWS AI Where Advertising Meets Intelligence Discover.
Commercial Narrator
The Amazon ad story@aws.com AI our- story.
Podcast Advertiser
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Episode: Full CFP Reaction + Conference Title Takeaways & Penn State Hires Campbell
Date: December 7, 2025
Josh Pate delivers a packed episode with in-depth reactions to the just-released College Football Playoff rankings, conference championship game takeaways (especially from the SEC and Big Ten), first-look playoff matchup analysis, and Penn State’s hiring of Matt Campbell. The show dives into bewildering playoff committee logic, playoff format criticisms, the rationale for team selections, and big-picture questions about the direction of college football.
Timestamp: 02:02–15:19
The ACC Doomsday Scenario
Notre Dame’s Exclusion
SEC/Alabama/Georgia Logic
Timestamp: 09:59–11:09; 66:11–76:14
First round matchups and odds:
Game times:
Critique of G5 inclusion:
Timestamp: 11:09–20:24
Weekly rankings shows add to confusion and drama:
No “right or wrong”—just subjectivity and rooting interests:
On changes to come:
Timestamp: 34:21–46:50
Culture and Character Over Talent:
Game Recap:
SEC’s Leverage:
Timestamp: 56:49–66:11
Defensive Masterclass:
Ohio State’s Conservative Play:
Kurt Signetti’s Legacy:
Timestamp: 76:14–80:43
Timestamp: 86:23–93:53
Pate’s Endorsement:
Campbell’s Loyalty & Culture-Building:
Josh on Perfect Fit:
Campbell’s Prior Offers & Reputation:
Gratitude & Optimism for Both Programs:
On playoff opinions:
“I don’t have a problem with folks coming at me. It’s just…come at me and just say I disagree for the sake of disagreement. I’m just flat out rooting for Alabama to get in and I hope they get in. I’d respect that.” — Josh Pate [15:19]
On conference championship meaning:
“What you’re not going to have is you’re not going to have several members of your conference…sit at home and watch the number one overall seed from that league risk lack of playoff inclusion for playing in a reward game. That was just never going to happen.” — Josh Pate [06:38]
On G5 inclusion in playoff:
“Even the most die hard of G5 Cinderella supporters out there understand from a pure principled standpoint this makes no sense.” — Josh Pate [20:24]
On Kurt Signetti’s impact:
“He’s on Mount Rushmore of college football…Who says no?” — Josh Pate [66:11]
On Matt Campbell:
“He’s one of the best culture builders in college football. Anyone who’s been around it, anyone who’s played against it will attest to it. He’s got sort of a magnetic quality, and his programs take on this magnetic quality…” — Josh Pate [92:04]
Matt Campbell’s “why not leave Iowa State” perspective:
“I want to be able to lay roots and build something different and something that’s really special, that can stand for something.” — Matt Campbell [91:04]
If you missed the episode, you’ll get:
For the real or aspiring college football intellect—this episode is required listening.