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Josh Pate's College Football Show
Is the SEC on the Decline? | Thoughts on Lane Kiffin Situation with Cole Cubelic
00:33:10
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- [00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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B
All right, so sec, overrated, sec, bad bowl record. SEC is a conference on the decline. Million different things being said. Where's your head with all this right now?
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A
I think the overrated part of it, Josh, would be where do you rate it? If you still have it at, I don't know, what, 2012, 13ish, whatever it is, even maybe 2000, 19ish, then, yeah, it's going to be overrated compared to that because it's not as dominant as it was then. Specifically, the teams at the top are not as consistently dominant as that was then. I don't know if we'll ever see that again from any program in any conference where Alabama was for a long time, then where Georgia came in to be really next to them for Florida with their run, LSU with their run, and then a couple of teams that sort of skyrocketed up. Auburn, Mississippi State, a few others. I don't think you're ever going to get that consistently again. I do think the depth, though, if you're just rating it on best conference in America, probably proves that it is that you could look at the draft every year. I think you look at the venues, the crowds, the capacity. Those kind of things all make it one of the most difficult conferences to play in, regardless of what your record is or who you have on your team. And the coaching prowess, too, I think elevates it. But does it have that. Has it lapped the Big Ten and some of the other conferences, like maybe it once did, like we talked about for a while? No, it's just not there anymore.
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B
I think if you just wanted to say that, just say it in week three. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to anyone who they. They make what could be a good argument. But there are so many bad faith counter arguments, not bad faith counter arguments. They're like bad faith ammunition to the argument. One of them's always been bowl record. Now, to be very, very clear, like when I was doing radio down in Columbus, there was a year where the SEC just dominated bowl season. I can't remember what it was. It was like 9 and 1 or something like that. It would have been in like the mid 20 teens. So some dude calls us up, says, told y' all the SEC was the best in the country. Look at their bowl record. And I said, no, man, the. The SEC is either the best in the country or it's not. But the bowl record is not the end all be all. And this was before opt outs this was when bull record probably had more meaning than they do right now. But even back then, my stance on using bowl records to provide a definitive answer as to relative conference strength has always been that it's stupid. It's completely stupid. Whether it supports or negates my argument as to who I think's best. The only time bowl season would have ever told me anything about conference versus conference is if we were to have The Bulls take SEC 1 versus ACC 1, Big 126 versus Big 106 and nobody opts out. And so you really have equal seating and you have head to head bowl bowl games featuring teams from different conferences. Only then would I really know not only do we not have that, not only have we never had that, then we got the water that's further muddied by all the opt outs and coaching staffs moving all over the place and the portal stuff. So I've never cared about that. If you want to tell me you think the SEC is on the decline, if you think the SEC was overrated, tell tell me that before bowl season starts. The bowl season tells me nothing. Now I do think this, I think that the talent in arguably in college football has been more spread out. So that part's obvious. You, you don't even need to look at Georgia starters, look at their twos, look at Alabama's twos and that's really where the, the litmus test has been for me as to what's happened with talent. But that's not the SEC is still the most talented league in the country. So it's the SEC doesn't have a talent problem. Like they're not lacking in talent. So let's just go down this road. Let's say hypothetically, if you think the SEC is inferior to the Big Ten right now as a conference, however you choose to measure that, it's certainly not cause top to bottom, the SEC has less talented football players than the Big Ten. Because I don't, I don't think anyone's really arguing that. What you may be arguing is talent's not the end all be all. So talent doesn't always equal a good football player. Most talented team doesn't always equal best football team. And you're not going to get any argument on that from me. So let's say theoretically the Big Ten has better football teams top to bottom right now than the sec. Would you argue that first off, and then secondly, if that is the case, what are some of the reasons you would see there? Because I got a few theories if.
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A
I wanted to just Go with this. I, I still don't think that I would say that top to bottom. Do I think that there are a couple of middle of the road, maybe upper middle of the road teams in the Big Ten, in the sec? If we compared them, I'd probably take the Big Ten teams on most days. Yeah, I think I would. I've had some really interesting conversations with a couple of coaches that have been in both in the last couple of years. I can remember Dave Aranda at LSU having conversations with him and doing Illinois's bowl game this year. Regardless of what some folks who cover Illinois think that wanted an Illinois broadcast, that we spent the entire game on Tennessee, which I would debate and disagree with, actually enjoyed covering that team and learning more about that team. And you come to find out that culturally things are different right now. And I, I don't know how we can put this on paper. I don't know if you can necessarily quantify it through PFF or whatever statistic you want to. I don't think we're going to be able to do that. But what I do think is that the Big Ten is they're building their programs and their teams a little bit more around team where I do still think a lot of the SEC is just talent acquisition at its peak. Like let's go find the most talented guys with the most star rankings that we think have the highest ceiling and let's jam them in there and let's go. That's not collective. That's not every coach. That's not even, I think, what's at the top of the minds of a lot of teams. But Josh, I think there's part of this, it just means more and there's a trickle down effect to that. And where that comes in is it just means more of if you're not competing for the conference championship, it's not enough. If you're not in the playoff, it's not enough. We had people calling our radio show the day after the Rose bowl saying that Kaylin d' More should be fired. He won a playoff game on the road, was in the SEC championship game. Fans are not satisfied with that. I understand it's Alabama and there's a different standard and all those things. But like you sit and talk to Brett Bielma and you ask these questions like where do you find these guys? Where do you get these guys that don't mind if they don't get 20 targets in a season or they don't get 30 carries a game, or if you're not throwing the ball 45 times a game. Where do you get these lunch pail hard hat guys, these role players? And he's like, yeah, it's a little more difficult to find them. He's like, but culturally, that's how we had to build our football team. Like Dave Aranda told us. I remember we asked him the difference, and he said, I never had a kid at Wisconsin talk about his combine numbers or his camp numbers or his vertical or his 40 or anything. Like, they never. And he said the other thing was those guys watched football. A lot of football action. Tuesday night, Wednesday night Conference USA weeknight games, Sunday night football, Monday night football, Thursday night, NFL game, Thursday night college game. He said, most of the kids down here are watching highlights. And so I. There's just a little bit of. Again, going back to that. It just means more the recruiting rankings. Like, you've. You've been a little bit more entrenched in recruiting over your career than I have. Like, who cares more about recruiting? Like, what portion of the country cares more about how many stars you have, where recruits ranked, where our recruiting rankings are? And I'm not saying Ohio State and Michigan don't care. I'm not saying Rutgers doesn't care. USC doesn't care. But let's be real. Like, the genesis of all this recruiting hype started in the Southeast. And a lot of that is probably because, like, when I was coming up, it was Texas and California and Florida had some of it. Now I think it's Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, you still have some California, you still have a ton of Texas, but like the southeastern portion of the United States, and not just the teams that are centrally located there, but the people and the majority of players that come from there. I think that's why the recruiting buzz is what it is. And I think there's a lot of SEC programs that are still thinking to themselves, we got to be ranked there. We got to get those kind of guys. I mean, Indiana is a perfect example of this. They have good football players. They do. But their guys understand how to execute what the play asked of them. Understanding collectively what is asked of you on an offensive play, a running back having patience, waiting to hit a hole, an offensive lineman understanding that when you get movement up front, you can't turn back, you keep your hat playside, you get your hands inside, you run your feet, you finish, good things are going to happen also, too. I think with that comes one last thing, the unreliability of individual players. And I think there's still a lot of programs, teams in the SEC that look at it, we got to have a quarterback that can carry us. We got to have an elite pass rusher that can shut down a game or elite interior defensive lineman that can take over a game and we'll figure it all out from there. I think there's teams like Illinois, I think there's teams like Indiana right now that are not necessarily building their teams that way. Otherwise Howard Fernando Mendoza win the Heisman with what, two 300 yard games this year. You have tight ends that are not going to get 20 catches in a season that are out there busting their rear ends. For Indiana, you got defensive linemen that are role players. For Illinois, you got guys that are being asked to do different things that they're okay with because it's a little bit more about the team. I don't know how that started, what the genesis was of that, how you continue that, but I do think recruiting has a lot to do with it and I think messaging has a lot to do with it as well. I think a lot of times these teams in the south, when you don't win 10 games or go to the playoff or win the conference, people think you need to be fired. And that's just the reality of where a lot of it is.
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B
I think the talent stuff, it. Talent matters a whole lot. Talent also gets overrated and misunderstood a whole lot. And I don't even, I'm not even talking about failed evaluations. Like, yes, there's going to be a kid this cycle that the recruiting industry ranked five stars. That ends up being a bust. Happens every cycle, happens every NFL draft cycle. So that's not, I'm not, I'm not putting it on, on three or any of the other recruiting services. I'm looking at it and I'm saying it's one thing for those rankings committees to sit around and rank guys and then they go on to become what they become number one. All right, Cole Kubelet comes out of high school. He's ranked a three star offensive tackle. He commits to uab. Five years later, after a red shirt year and three or four years of playing, he transfers to, let's say, Auburn for his senior year. He's going to be classified as a former three star. You are five years, you're half a decade removed. Half a decade of physical and mental maturation removed from what your high school rating was. And yet you're still going to be considered a three star. I understand when you go on the portal you get re ranked and all that stuff, but for Broad strokes purposes. People are going to remember you as a former three star. Yeah, you are going to then go to Auburn and you're going to face off against probably a five star true freshman edge rusher that Alabama got on campus that will be looked at as five star versus three star. And in that matchup a fan will say, well, Alabama's got the talent edge in that matchup. My point is talent matters a whole lot. I also think a lot of people who blanketly throw around talent designations and talent labels and who's more talented, they have no clue what they're talking about. And that's before we even broach the difference between having a lot of talent and having a good team. Having a lot of talent in winning football games. Don't even go to that conversation yet just describing talent because I'm going to tell you right now, I'm not doing the NFL draft stuff or anything like that. I'm not trying to prep for that. But how many times did we hear in the week leading up to Alabama, Indiana, Alabama's got talent edge over Indiana, Alabama's got talent advantage over Indiana. And I know what that's born from. You got two different people who could say that. You could have a supreme talent evaluator who really has methodically broken down both rosters and arrived at that conclusion. Those are few and far between. Or you just got people who follow recruiting rankings and who follow mock drafts and that's it. And it's just so popular to throw it out because you know no one's going to push back on it. Then the game happens and not only does Indiana win the game that they were favored by over a touchdown in to begin with, I look at it and I say, really, there's a Grand Canyon's difference in talent versus the team with three and the team with 38. You're telling me, really, my eyes are supposed to see David slaying Goliath here. I don't really see that. And so those bubbles just build in your mind and then they get popped and you can't make sense of it because your worldview is a default. That supreme talent over here, plucky underdogs over there, I don't know that. I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe there are talent edges. I don't know that the gap's always nearly as big as people paint those things to be.
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But the talent edge might still be that big. But there's, there's a portion of this that you're maybe leaving out just A little bit. When you talk to coaches about what they want, what they desire, what they, what they need to have to have a successful team, like the word talent comes out a lot. What's the other word? That hey, we don't have a lot of this, or hey, we have a lot of this, we feel pretty good. It's experience, right?
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Experience, yeah.
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So I mean, do you want Caleb Williams last year or Caleb Williams this year for the Bears? By this two totally different quarterbacks, you want, you want Peyton Manning rookie year, Peyton Manning fifth year in the NFL? It's not even a debatable, it's not even a question that needs to be asked. And there's a lot of examples in college of that. We see kids struggle early and then all of a sudden two years later, three years later, or they go somewhere else, but they've had an extra spring practice, an extra fall practice. Maybe they sat for two or three games and watched how things operate and then they're a better player. The problem with that is going back to your example of me going to uab being five years later is a perfect one. Because you take some of these guys out of the Ivy League, like I forget the kid's name that was from, I think Penn, that played D line at Florida a couple years ago. He's a really good football player. Like gave them great reps, played. I don't. He probably didn't even have a star coming out. Nobody wanted him. A lot of the Indiana guys that Signetti has brought in, they had three, four, five years of college football experience. Like you're taking that over super five star first year guy because you don't know what you're going to get with super 5 star first year guy. Now you might get Julio Jones as a freshman, you might get Randy Moss at Marshall freshman year, like maybe. But there's a hundred other guys that you could look at and say he's not going to know what route to run. He's going to get tired after three games. He's not going to know how to play four quarters. He's not going to want to play special teams. You look at like some guys in recent memory. I'm thinking of like Braden Fisk at Florida State. I had one of his games at Western Michigan. And that coaching staff sitting there telling me this kid plays punt cover, punt return, kick return. He's in our short yarded situation. On offense you can play inside, outside, on defense, like he is a football player. But he had also been doing that for multiple years. You don't think his awareness and football smarts and understanding of what the play is asking for is going to be that much better than nothing against Dylan Stewart. But Dylan Stewart, coming in as a freshman, he didn't collectively understand why coverage was working a certain way, why leverage was being given up to one receiver in the boundary, but not to the field. Like, he just. He didn't have that understanding yet. So that experience is something that can be more valuable than talent because of the football understanding, the situational awareness, the collective understanding of just one play, what's being asked for. I mean, I can tell you from my experience my junior year when I started, I had no idea what was going on with coverage. Zero. Not a single thing. By the time we got to the middle of my senior year, I could look at safeties and tell you why front was, you know, shifted a certain way, why a corner was playing something a certain way, and it all worked together. It was all intertwined. You don't understand that right out of the gate. So. And a lot of high school kids are coming in with better understanding of football because of camps, because of film, because of different things. But the experience portion of it, being in games and playing even at a lower level, is doing leaps and bounds for what talent had not done for a long period of time. I mean, Trinidad Chambers is a perfect example of this. Just kid has been in games. Charlie Weiss Jr. And Lane both told us this kid came into practice, he could not complete passes in practice. We get to our first Saturday scrimmage, he's with the threes, he's walking them up and down the field on our defense. Same thing the next week. Struggle, struggle, struggle. Saturday scrimmage, he's with the twos up and down the field. We need to give this kid more reps. Still doesn't look good in practice. Now we're going to split time with the ones up and down the field. In scrimmage. He had game experience, may not have been a good practice performer, but he knew what it was like to be in games. He probably knew what coverage was doing. He knew why people were lined up certain ways, and he can go out there and execute. So that experience, I think, is something now that is becoming. I'm not going to say more important than talent because it's not because you still have takeover guys that nobody can do anything about. You and I had that conversation earlier in the year about potential playoff teams and who had things that nobody was going to be able to do anything about. But experience is something that I think Becomes almost as valuable when you get, especially at this point in the season.
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A reminder for a lot of you guys. I know you're about to go to playoff games, looking to go to Fiesta bowl, looking to go to Peach bowl, maybe go to both. I don't know what you like to do. You need tickets before you just go blindly purchase from somewhere. Check out SeatGeek. And right before you check out, this is probably the most important part next to going to the game. Pate 10 P A T E 10 at checkout. That'll get you 10% off your entire order up to $200. Anything above 200 get you $20 off. Not free, but discounted. All right, back to the talent thing. Yes, it is true that the SEC has far less a talent edge over any other conference than they used to. I think the nil Portal era has obviously evened that out a little bit. I'll tell you what that did to me. I think that era where the SEC could just roll out of bed in the morning and understand as a conference it had a massive talent edge over whoever was number two did. I think it made them lazy in a sense that you did not have to scratch and claw for every potential edge in that conference. I'm speaking generically, not about one school in the Big Ten and then in other conferences as well, but I'm speaking specifically about the Big Ten. The search for every margin, the search for every inch, the search for every edge. The innovation by necessity that you have to have is greatly reduced when you just know we're going to load up a roster and you may still go win with them even though you're less innovative and you may be less disciplined and you may be less honed in on your craft as a staff. And the second part of that, where I think the SEC got incredibly lazy in an era where they knew they just out talent everyone is. The way the conference staffs collectively can be a joke at times. You got places out there that understand we're living on the margins and therefore we can take no, we, we can cut no corners when it comes to staffing. We gotta go full merit based. We gotta put the best dudes in the best positions. You're not running a position room here as an experiment because you happen to belong to the same representation as I do. And I've watched time and time again around the sec. Probably the most disappointed I ever was when I finally got into our business on this side of the business, got a little access, was my ability to observe how staffs are Put together, it's night and day different than what I thought it was from the outside. From the outside. I used to think that is pure wizardry happening behind the curtain and there's just purple smoke and you, your mind would be blown if you knew how intricate these coaching searches are. And then you pull the curtain back and you realize, well, I'm signed with this agency, I've got these letters on my chest. In exchange for that, I'm just going to take their Rolodex, flip through it and I'm going to do a bunch of favors. And I've got so big a talent edge here, it probably ain't going to matter a whole lot. So that's how I'm going to fill my building that does not exist nearly to the extent in the Big Ten that it has in the sec. For a long time and for a long time you could get away with it. And now because the talent edge has evened out a whole lot, you just get exposed. You get exposed a whole lot more. And if anyone wants to talk about bowl records, again, I put no stock in them. But situationally I do think sometimes you see that, sometimes you see just these, these little edges, these little increments here and there that show up because you got a heck of a coaching staff that's probably less heralded because the trade off from doing it the Big Ten way versus the SEC way is a lot of the guys that are finding their way onto SEC staffs are finding themselves there because they're marketed properly, they're presented properly, their name is shouted through the bullhorn more than the offensive line coach at Illinois, per se. So I think that's going to course correct out of necessity in the coming years. But that's a practice that existed for a long time in the SEC that I think has got to change.
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I also wondered to go back to it just means more again financially where the SEC is, what they're able to pay their coaches, what they're able to pay their staffs. What do we say about so many SEC assistant coaches that they've been at? 5, 7, 9? I mean, how many SEC schools has Rodney Garner been at? You know, Eric Wolford, offensive line coach, he's been at Alabama, Kentucky. I think he's going to LSU now. He was at South Carolina, like so. I also wonder too that because the money is so great and the league has been so incestuous as far as how they have gone about finding other assistant coaches be a position or coordinators, a lot of them usually come from other SEC schools. It makes it that more difficult at this point in time in the season to be able to go out there and get things. I mean, I've done a, I've done, I did the Tax Slayer bowl with Mississippi State in Louisville when they had like three paid coaches on staff. Mississippi State did because Dan Mullen had taken the Florida job. And, you know, we've had other staffs where it's like, hey, so and so is going to handle this position. So and so is going to do this position. Like, he's gone. He's gone. So, I mean, I do think that that kind of plays into it as well from a game planning perspective. I haven't seen to the extent exactly what you're referencing as far as, you know, how those staffs have been put together. But, you know, there is, I mean, there's definitely a little bit of a buddy system that's going on there too. And I think a lot of it is, as you said from the beginning, this league is different. Things are different, expectations different. You want guys that have been around it that either understand how to weather those storms, know how to have those conversations, and that's why you go get those people from those other teams.
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What do you think about the new guys that have been brought into the SEC specifically? You got Summer all Golish, Silverfield. Who am I missing?
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If you want to do, you know, Lane, obviously at LSU and then Pete Golding at Ole Miss. I mean, I think goals has a mentality to be able to do it. He's, he's no nonsense. People are going to see his offense and think, you know, oh, he's, you know, and unfortunately he's at Auburn where you've had a couple others that people have looked at as being a little bit soft and not being, not having that edge. He's got that edge. And so I, I think that he will be relentless in the manner in which you need to be to be successful. John Sumrall is just the perfect fit as an SEC coach. Honestly, like, give me the SEC school that he doesn't work at. I mean, honestly, like Alabama, Georgia, lsu. I mean, the guy, the guy would work anywhere. South Carolina, Mississippi State. Like, he can be good old country boy. He can be like CEO. Let's talk about how to build a program. He could work anywhere. So he's, he's going to work at Florida, in my opinion. Obviously, Lane has won. I think Lane will continue to win with the resources he has at lsu. Pete Golding is next up. I mean, Pete Golding is a guy that the players love. He is. He knows more ball than any head coach in this league I've ever been around. He's the only head coach that I've talked football with that I've asked him to rewind because I didn't know where he was and he lost me. So I think he'll be fantastic. Ryan Silverfield comes from a great lineage of coaches that he's worked with. Now, the Arkansas job is tough, and that's Greg and I had this conversation this morning about how sometimes it's difficult in this league because we had a guy call it and say, well, Somerset's just, you know, Billy 2.0. First off, Billy's not a bad coach. Second off, Tulane's not in the Sunbelt, and actually neither is South Florida, which a lot of folks are calling and saying goal is beat up on Sunbelt teams. They only played one Sunbelt team last year, so I don't really know where we get that. But I still think Brian Harson's a good coach. Now, was he a good coach at Auburn at that time? Absolutely not. Needed to get rid of him. Didn't work. Same thing with Billy at Florida. Billy had his chances at Florida, but I don't think that that doesn't mean he can coach. He just made a couple poor decisions along the way. Things didn't work. Like, how many kids at Florida do you think that 14, 15 SEC schools would have loved to have had instead of the kid they had at that position last year? I know about 12, 13 teams would love to had Jaden Ball. I know a bunch of them that would have loved have had Caleb Banks, a couple of those receivers as well, like even DJ Lagway, and let me see what I can do with that guy. So he got talent there. It's just he didn't relinquish control of the offense. It didn't work while he was there. So I think sometimes, too, in the sec, we look at these coaches and they don't have a good run and we just say they're bad. They're just. They're not a good coach. But it's tough and it's a different place because of those expectations, partially. But I think you got some coaches in here that get it, that understand it, that are going to grind, and that's a big portion of what it takes because you're asked to do a lot of. Because those programs mean so much in the communities and the surrounding communities. But it's more than just being a coach right now. Josh, you gotta have. You gotta have that administration on your side. You gotta have some extra fan support. You got to have some extra compliance support. Like, it just takes a lot more alignment now than it ever has. It's why the Lane thing is so interesting. Like, everything that we say, oh, we had to take all these people that are obsessed with. He had to take that job. Like, honestly, outside of local high school talent and its vicinity to your campus, what is the biggest difference? Historically, we know that. We know that, but what does that matter? Okay, so the folks will say, well, historically, it's a powerhouse. Indiana's in the playoff. Tulane was in the playoff. Miami's back in the playoff. They were a powerhouse, but there was a long stretch where they weren't. They're back in. Ole Miss is in the playoff. Not a traditional power in college football.
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B
So here's what's going to be fun on that reminder. Just by the way, we're talking about the Big Ten, the sec. It doesn't really matter which of those conferences you're driving around. Quick Trip all over the place. You feel you. You walk in with one of these things. Actually, this is discouraged. You need to use their cups. Go fill a Quick Trip cup with cold brew on tap, then take it to your car and pour it in a. In a mug that you and I both have because these were wedding gifts or whatever.
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I love that you were about to hand out free coffee refills.
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Yeah, I can't. Legally, I can't do it. I'd love to do it. Legally, I can't do it. Quick trip, though. Fueling the Fall Don't Lie Tour. We're going to be in Arizona and Atlanta this week. They fueled us all year. They can fuel you all year long. Maybe even get your own tour name again. You live your life however you want to. We're all about that business. But appreciate Quick Trip for fueling the show. You were just talking about something there, and I kind of touched on this the other night, and then I was getting some feedback on it. So someone asked me, hey, do you think Lane Kiffin is going to end up regretting leaving Ole Miss? Do you think he threw away his best shot at winning a national title? To the second part, I said, there's no way to know that. To the first part, I said, I don't think so. However, I could see a world five years from now where if we continue on this trajectory, it means that we've just kind of finalized the world of everything. Evening out and all the resources are just Kind of. It is what it is, no matter where you are in that world. And this is an extreme. And I don't know, this is where we're headed. But in that world, to that extreme conclusion of the logic rainbow there, you could end up looking at the world of college football totally backwards. And if you're at a place that has all the tradition and all the pageantry and all the brand recognition, it works to your detriment because their expectations are still way, way, way high. Yet you're working with no more advantage there than they have at Ole Miss. You could be at Ohio State and, and you have no more advantage than they have at Purdue. And it's never a world that you thought you'd live in. So you, you got the same pool to use at Ole Miss that you would at lsu. Yet the expectation level hasn't come to earth at LSU like it is at Ole Miss. And you may look at it down the road and say, you know, I'd rather just be back at Ole Miss than here. This is a big headache here. Now, I don't know that we're going there. I'm saying if we continue to go this direction, I could see that being the new norm.
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A
No. And there were. There's always going to be inherent advantages with the traditional powers. I say that, but I mean, Nebraska's lost 30 straight to AP ranked opponents. And that was a program that, when I was growing up, like, I, I looked at and said, boy, I'll never play there because that's like the best of the best. Like, I'm just. You, you have to be like the super elite to go play there. Like, that's what that program was when I was growing up in middle school and high school, watching them perform. But I think you asked that question about lane. It's largely dependent on what does Ole Miss do this year and in subsequent years. They get Kewan Lacey and Trinidad Chambers back and they're already getting, they're already getting other quality players out of the portal to be able to fill some gaps. It doesn't feel like they're going to go anywhere. It doesn't feel like all of a sudden it's going to be once again, look the difference. I think there's two differences in Ole Miss now, and maybe the two or three that were the other best under lane one. This team feels like it's a little more mentally emotionally stable. They're. They're a little more rugged than they have been in the past because there were other Ole Miss teams when they Got punched in the gut. It was kind of like, yeah, you knew that was it. This team continues to punch back. Doesn't mean they're the most physical team out there, but they do have maybe a step up there that they have in the past. And going back to what we talked about earlier, that over reliance on an individual player. Mike, think about when Elijah Moore was there. And you can even go back to some of the other receivers that have been there before, but how many times they were targeted, how many times Jerry on Ely had to touch the football, how many times Elijah Moore had to touch the football. Like they're not as reliant on an individual guy as some of the offenses have been in the past. So I think even this team's a little bit different. And Lane told us before the season, we asked him about Pete Golding. He's like, listen, Pete has helped me understand all of it. Like, Pete helps me in game. Pete helps me putting the team together like I used to be. Let's score 60. Who cares? We'll be fine. And now Pete can get on the headset and say, hey, man, dial it back here. Defense needs a blow. Like, don't go for this. Run a little bit of clock, punt the football. We're fine. Like, why are you going for two again? Pete's the guy. Like you and I talked about having an FU coach. Like, Pete was kind of Lane's FU coach. Well, now he can handle the whole team and manage the whole team. And I think the kids love playing for him. So I see no reason. They're just going to go backwards. So there are always going to be Texas Bama, usc, Ohio State that have those little inherent advantages, mainly because a lot of people are going to want to give them a lot more money to do cool things with. But it doesn't seem like it's as big of a difference or deal breaker or deal maker for near as many kids as it used to be. Hell, Josh, now half the kids playing college football have played at one of those schools. Yeah, like, I tried that. It wasn't the best thing ever. I kind of like being here. I kind of like being at the other place. And they, they're telling other kids that at camp or when they get recruited or their new teammates and they go off and tell other people. So it just doesn't seem like it's end all, be all. I have to be at one of these five or seven places or else we're not going to be good or I'm not going to be good. 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 chatincut or visit MDG. 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 this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.