← Josh Pate's College Football Show
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Josh Pate
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Public Investing Advertisement
Guaranteed Human support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures wasn't that delicious?
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So good.
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Main Host / Analyst
Your bill, ladies. I got it.
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Josh Pate
No, I got it. Seriously.
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Main Host / Analyst
I assist. I assisted first.
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Josh Pate
Oh, don't be silly. You don't be silly.
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Main Host / Analyst
People with the Wells Fargo Active Cash credit card prefer to pay because they earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Okay.
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Josh Pate
Rock, paper, scissors for it.
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Main Host / Analyst
Rock, paper, scissors. Shoot.
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No.
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Main Host / Analyst
The Wells Fargo ActiveCash credit card. Visit Wells Fargo.comActiveCash terms apply.
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Josh Pate
Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?
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Main Host / Analyst
Right.
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Josh Pate
And the best part? They accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh yeah. Huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on baby, get with the times. Right. So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.
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Main Host / Analyst
Discover is accepted at 99 of places
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that take credit cards nationwide, based on
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Main Host / Analyst
the February 2025 Nielsen report. Do you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car? Start at CarMax and shop your way. If you want to browse with confidence, get pre qualified online with no impact on your credit score. And shop cars within your budget. From luxury cars to family rides, CarMax has options for almost every price range, including more than 25,000 cars priced under $25,000. So hey, want to get started? Just head to CarMax.com for details and get Pre qualified today. Want to drive CarMax? Guys, I know February can be a little bit weird, but as of today, spring practice has started on the campus of Pate State. So it's time to lock in. And I wrote it in all caps. Lock in. We got a jam packed show. In fact, a suspiciously jam packed show tonight. We're going all over the country. Bunch of different questions. But this is the time of year you start to figure things out. We're jam packed. We're high atop unilluminated downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Sun's still up. I don't know what kind of psychopath doesn't love this. I'm not one of them. I do. Sunday, March 8th, the year of our Lord 2026. We just call it kind of our mega Spring preview edition because it looks good on the thumbnail. But you got portal transfer quarterbacks all over the place. We got Lane Kiffin starting anew down in Baton Rouge. We got all kinds of situations across the country where programs are in desperation mode and we're trying to figure out what they have to work with. So I'm going to talk a lot about that tonight. I'm going to talk a little, just a little bit about this thing that happened Friday, this roundtable deal and how that didn't have my attention but something else had my attention because I don't think that's going to matter all that much. But this thing I'm paying attention to, I think it may matter. And I'm not just talking about to power brokers or commissioners or presidents. I mean, you driving around right now, St. Paul, Minnesota, Valdosta, Georgia, you know, just fan of college football. You may actually care about this particular thing I'm paying attention to. I got some games I'm circling this year and someone asked us, believe it or not, about Urban Meijer in Florida. Not a ton of breaking news, not a ton of new information when it comes to urban in Florida, but an interesting question that's going to give me an excuse to go down one of my favorite rabbit holes, the Urban Meier era at Florida. If everyone has like their favorite president or their favorite history subject to study. Urban Meyer at Florida happens to be one of mine. So we're going to talk about it tonight. They're watching us in Calhoun, Georgia, Arvada, Colorado, Quincy, Illinois, Hamilton, Alabama. Wherever you're watching, thank you. Wherever you're listening, thank you. Please make sure you do one more thing if you can find it somewhere in your heart. Subscribe to the channel here on YouTube and check and See, because if you think you are, you still may not be. A bunch of you always think you are, but you're not. So it doesn't cost anything, doesn't sign you up for anything, but it really helps us do college football year round. I don't do a ton of notes on the show, but I got a ton of notes in front of me tonight. There's an entire pen's worth of ink on this piece of paper. Why is that? Spring practice. Spring ball has begun. I got so much to dive into. We have been preparing for this for a month. This is an extremely critical time of the year. I refuse to believe when we get to November and December that the surprise outlier teams gave you no signs that they were going to be outliers. For example, you can speculate all you want to on signing day, you can speculate all you want to during the transfer portal, but the time for speculation kind of ends once they start practicing and then you start learning things. And the hit versus the miss ramifications at the quarterback position this time of year are so critical and there are clues. So if we're talking about transfer portal quarterbacks, remember last spring we were going back and looking at some of our old shows. Jackson Arnold did not work out at Auburn, but that was not a mystery. It shouldn't have been a mystery if you had been paying attention at all. Because as early as spring ball we started to hear all sorts of less than desirable drumbeats out of Auburn. Quite the opposite at Oklahoma, where Mattier came in there and we were immediately hearing great things. Remember, Fernando Mendoza goes from Cal to Indiana and the inside buzz was Indiana killed it in the transfer portal. They're the ones that really figured out quarterback out of the top 15 or so teams in the FanDuel odds to win the national title. Right now we don't have an AP poll right now, so that's what we're going on. Out of those 15 teams, only about four of them took a quarterback that figures to be their starter this year. But if you look at teams ranked 16 through 30 in the FanDuel odds, it's littered with teams that are going to rely on a portal quarterback to start for him. So I'm going to split this into buckets right now and we got a lot to go over tonight. So just lock in. Just lean back and lock in. Good T shirt idea. The top teams right there on your screen right now. If you're watching on YouTube. In terms of the odds to win it all, let's talk About LSU for a second. Sam Levitt to lsu. There were bad rumblings around Sam Levitt this time last year at Arizona State, you know, he was very turnover prone. You kept on hearing all sorts of less than glowing feedback and everybody was like, oh, it's okay, he'll just come around because he had a great year the year before, never really fully came around. And the Arizona State season went the way it went, had injury concerns and now Sam Levitt's coming off an injury and he goes to LSU and he's going to face Blake Baker's defense in practice every day. So some of the early stuff you listen for is like everything else with lsu. There's a lot of newness down there and how is he meshing? Because you got a brand new system to learn, you got a brand new campus to get used to, but also you got a ton of new pieces around you. So Sam Levitt at lsu, obviously, I mean, that's a headline grabber. I don't need to tell you much about him. Darian Mensah in the on three portal rankings at quarterback was number two and he went to Miami. This is a really big deal, really big deal, because in a, in a chain now we've had Cam Ward, who kind of had to do most of it by himself. Then we had Carson Beck last year who had a lot more help from his supporting cast. And I just kind of wonder, and I think I know, but I'll kind of look for confirmation that it is the way I think it is. How will it be for Darion Mena? Because you really got to think third offense in three years. But you got Malachi, Tony there. They brought their wide receiver, one from Duke. I don't know if people really picked up on that because Mental was the headline grabber. But Bar Kate, which I believe is how you pronounce his last name, he came down there with him. Offensive lines sort of the biggest question there at Miami and I mean, it's Alex Mirabal, it's Mario Cristobal, so I just figured they'll have a half decent offensive line. So Darian Menta at Miami. Let's start listening to the feedback out of Miami in spring ball. I want to know what we're hearing and what we're feeling out of Indiana with Josh Hoover going up there from tcu because the one thing Fernando Mendoza didn't do last year is give the ball to the other team and maybe Josh Hoover won't either. All I know is in his past three years, because he's a three year starter, nine picks, 11 picks, 13 picks. That won't be tolerated at Indiana. So he's stepping into maybe the best ecosystem to step into right now in college football. You gotta like the wide receiver backfills. There are a bunch of new names there in Bloomington, but I think they did a really good job with what they're losing, what they picked up in the portal. A lot of high quality additions in the portal. But Indiana sort of scaled in 2025, unlike in 2024. In 2024 they made the playoff. Right. But then everybody kind of understood they faced Ohio State in the regular season. Nah. They faced Notre Dame in the playoff. Nah. So it was, it was really obvious what the ceiling of the team was. Well then they ran it back last year and there was no ceiling. So they scaled it. Why did that happen? Well, there was a really, really big jump in overall caliber at quarterback position, to be blunt. So how does this year's quarterback position compare to last year's? And I'm just talking about that in a vacuum, how do we see Josh Hoover compare to Fernando Mendoza? Just something you start to keep an eye on. That's not the end all be all, but it's a big part of the equation there. And Brendan Sorsby going to Texas Tech from Cincinnati is another really big one because this is to me a very clear upgrade at the quarterback position. And when you watched them against Oregon last year, it was very obvious they didn't have any kind of element of mobility at the QB position. And look, you're facing a high level defense and they just know where you're going to be every snap. It's not a recipe for success. And it wasn't for Texas Tech. And you saw that play out in the Orange Bowl. So then you go and get Brendan Hortz, Brendan Soaresby, he knows the league very well because he's coming there from Cincinnati. And I wrote down the next Mendoza question mark. I don't mean that to say talent for talent. Is this guy going to be the number one overall pick in the draft? I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is you remember this time last year, Fernando Mendoza was a known commodity by pretty hardcore college football fans. But a lot of America didn't know who Fernando Mendoza was. Not because he hadn't played, but because he had played at Cal. And a lot of folks who were in the more casual crowd, they don't watch Cal football. So Mendoza goes to Indiana and he was kind of a surprise to a lot of people. And I kind of wonder Brendan Sorsby's got that possibility about him. Not a lot of you watched Cincinnati football, you know, bell to bell. You don't watch a lot of complete games there. So when he goes to Texas Tech, Texas Tech's going to be in the spotlight a lot more than Cincinnati would. I just wonder, maybe in a perfect situation, he takes people by surprise. Now, the next group of teams, for broad strokes purposes, we'll just look at the FanDuel odds. Teams 11 through 20 in the FanDuel odds. This is where it gets fun, because everyone knows about the big boys. Everyone knows about Mensah and Levitt. But I want to talk to you tonight about DJ Lagway. As we all know, DJ Lagway, formerly the top quarterback in the sec, and that was per a certain someone's preseason rankings last year. There's no need to get specific. We don't like calling people out by name on this show. It's rude. We don't do that, especially when it's me that I'm talking about. But DJ Lagway is a guy who has shown flashes in his career. That's what we've gotten from DJ Lagway to this point. He's no longer at Florida. He is at Baylor. Baylor had the number four passing offense in college football last year. Baylor is sort of kind of in desperation mode, which is funny because DJ Lagway is kind of in desperation mode right now. And somewhere in this group of teams, there will be this. This perfect inflection point of desperation. Player, desperation team. If it's in Waco, Texas, so be it. But I'm looking at that. I'm looking at Austin Simmons at Missouri. I mean, picture this time last year, me telling you Austin Simmons is going to be one of the circle names for 2026. You would have said, yeah, duh. Probably going to kill it at Ole Miss this year. This year being 2025. And then I tell you, oh, no, no, no, no. I mean, Austin Simmons is going to be a circle name for Eli Drinkwitz in Missouri. And you'd be like, how'd that happen? And then I go on to tell you the script of 2025. Austin Simmons was circled with Red Sharpie. Everyone in Oxford thought he was going to be a star, and it was a little wobbly out of the gate, but then he got hurt. And then Trinidad Chambliss comes in. Rest is history. And Austin Simmons just kind of faded and everyone forgot about him, like no one was talking about him. But here's the thing, he may still very well be the player that Lane Kiffin and the boys over there thought he was going to be. He's just not in Oxford anymore. He's in Col. Missouri. So he goes up to Missouri and he's going to play for Eli Drinkwitz. And there's a ton of what I would call verified hype. Sometimes hype is they put you on the COVID of a magazine or someone ranked you so and so. Verified hype is the kind of hype where people you really respect and people you really trust thought highly of someone or something. In this case, this dude was good enough to earn the starting nod for Lane Kiffin at quarterback. So there's got to be something there. We'll see how it plays out at Missouri. Again, this is the time of year you start really hearing so and so's over the moon, excited about the addition they made or. And this happens too, so and so is not really feeling this addition they made. They're worried they kind of got sold a bill of goods here. Don't know. That's why God invented spring practice. What about Lincoln Kyolz? You know, there's. He's. He's coming from the Big Ten and I'm going to get to some Big Ten quarterbacks in a second. But Lincoln Kyholz was at Ohio State last year. And remember, unless Ryan Day lied to us, and he never has, but unless Ryan Day lied to us, this dude was locked in a battle with Julian Saen for QB1 in Columbus. And we've gone over our philosophy about quarterback battles several times. Most people thought Julian Sain was going to win that job. I thought Julian Sain was going to win that job. He did win that job, but it went a little longer than some expected before he was announced the starter. Now, there are various schools of thought here. One school of thought is it was just a legit battle that went as long as it went. School of thought number two is no, it was always Julian Saen's job. Ryan Day just sort of manufactured the illusion of a quarterback competition as long as he could to make sure he kept as many guys on campus as he could. Then there's this third compartment that almost never gets broached. And it sounds a little something like this. Ryan Day and the offensive staff expected Julian Saen to win the job. Ryan Day and the offensive staff probably thought Julian Saen was best equipped to lead the team if he won the job. But until Julian Saen grabbed the job by the throat and took it, they couldn't just Name him the starter. And finally when that point happened, he was named the starter and they were off to the races. I happen to think that many, many times quarterback battles come down to that third description. Nevertheless, Lincoln Keinholz transferred and you'll notice he transferred to Louisville and he's going to go play for Jeff Braum, who has botched a quarterback acquisition approximately never. So it always pans out when a guy goes and plays for him. But if you were paying attention to the portal, you following Pete Nakos on Twitter and whatnot and there are all these headlines and so and so is taking a visit here or so and so is taking a visit there. Did you notice how quick Louisville moved on? Lincoln kyinholz they didn't wait around, they didn't sit around. It was kind of like Indiana with Mendoza the year before, actually, where they had circled the name they wanted. They went and got him. No waiting around. Jeff Brummie. Again, a name, an opinion, an evaluation I will blindly trust when it comes to the quarterback position. But there's this other bucket of Big Ten quarterbacks. While I'm at it, there's Anthony Calandria going from UNLV to Nebraska. Cause Raiola dipped and Kenny Minchee just kind of took a visit and then said no, never mind, I'm out. How's that going to work out? Maybe it'll be like best of all worlds for him. What about Hauser going to Illinois? Colton Joseph, the Old Dominion transfer, going to Wisconsin? That's just got to work out. It's got to work out up there or else changes have to be made. Aiden Chiles is at Northwestern now, so there's just this bucket of Big Ten quarterbacks. And the reason I mentioned those specific guys is because if we're going to develop legit like tier 2, tier 3 depth in the Big 10, those are the kind of programs that have to hit on quarterback transfers. Illinois, but especially your Nebraska's, your Wisconsin's. Those sorts of programs just have to get better and then we go another tier down. If you're looking at the FanDuel odds, this would be teams outside the top 20 in the preseason. Might I interest anyone in? Oh, I don't know. Ethan Grunkemeier going to Virginia Tech, followed his head coach there. Yeah, Ty Howell knows him as well. So a lot of the offensive staff there at Virginia Tech, they've worked with him. They know him. How quickly does that work out? Does it work out? Aaron Filo went to Florida, followed Buster Faulkner down there from Georgia Tech. The coordinator Went from Georgia Tech to Florida, and Florida's really good at tailback. Florida's probably going to be really good at wide receivers. So this is not a situation where it's come save us, Aaron Philo. It's, hey, come in here and thank us for giving you the opportunity and enjoy all the weapons you have to work with and don't screw it up. I'm told verbatim that was probably John Sumrall's recruiting pit. Not really, but, I mean, that's how I'd be if I were him. Beau Prabula's at Virginia, Byron Brown and Rocco Becht, those guys followed their head coaches to Auburn and Penn State, respectively. As best we can tell, we think about 30 power four teams are going to start transfer quarterbacks from this past cycle. So, like, Dante Moore doesn't count. Dante Moore is not a transfer from this past cycle. Rocco Becht is. Ethan Grunkermeyer is. These guys we just mentioned, they are the quarterback position. I'm telling you, we started to get little indications here and there, both on the positive and negative side this time last year that things were or were not working out. And there's. There's nothing more disheartening than when you're talking to a staffer and they've put all their eggs in a quarterback basket and it's not even halfway through spring. Like, they haven't even gotten to their second scrimmage of spring and already it's just kind of, oh, and remember now you don't have the second portal window. All those theories about the shadow portal, and that's its own separate topic. So allegedly, there is no help for you if you didn't hit on quarterback. And it becomes apparent this spring, there is no rip cord you can pull. There is no parachute. You just street pizza. Try again next year. Allegedly. That's how it works. Let's move on. I'm not even remotely close to done. No, this is a spring mega show. This isn't a spring mini show. I came in and I said, jesse, I got a lot of questions about a lot of teams. What about you? He said, yeah, I got some questions, too. We just started firing them. We started blasting. I got questions all over the place. Spring football, spring camp opening up. I'm just going to start with Notre Dame. Why? Well, because I ranked them number one in February, so why not start with Notre Dame? I do not see big questions with this team. Marcus Freeman may. And even if he doesn't, he'll lie about it and he'll say they do have big questions, but the one thing that I will say is that the wide receiver position, I think they'll be as good there as they've been under Marcus Freeman. Will they be dynamic enough to win a big game down the road with the wide receiver position? If they need to, everyone's going to focus on losing the two big tailbacks. I think they'll be okay. They'll be a lot younger and less experienced. I think they'll be good at tailback. I trust them implicitly at quarterback, the wide receiver position. Faison and Great House coming back from injury. Mylan Graham and Porter, the two they got from Ohio State, I mean, those are two quality players that just kind of fall in your lap. I mean, you had to effort going and getting them. But Brian Hartline leaving at Ohio State opened the door where you could do that. How dynamic is that room? It may end up being one of the best receiver rooms in the country for all we know. But we're not used to saying that about Notre Dame, so that's kind of. I don't know. As we start spring ball, that's something that I'll keep an eye on. Speaking of Ohio State, this is the second year, you know, kind of the second year where Ohio State on paper has to replace a lot defensively. I'm actually more concerned about him this year than I was last year. Now, Matt Patricia came in and worked what on paper looked like a miracle. And so I'll always trust Matt Patricia and I trust Ryan Day and I trust Ohio State to have a pretty high floor when it comes to what we're going to be dealing with there. But they've got a hit with transfers at several of these positions because you have one wave of attrition, that's one thing, but then you have a second wave right behind it. Styles, Caleb Downs is gone, Orville Reese is gone. It's tough to lose guys like that and one for one, replace them. Now what you can do, plus it's a football team, not a unit, is, hey, man, what if Ohio State offensively just revs it up another gear? Well, I guess you don't have to be quite as dominant defensively as you were last year, but I'm also looking at the schedule this year and it's a little different animal than what Ohio State normally faces. Starting with a week two trip to Austin, Texas, and you're going to go to Iowa, you're going to go to Indiana, you're going to go to usc. You got Oregon at home in early November. So, man, it's going to be fun to watch. But defensively, I wonder, like, what is the max potential of that team? We won't learn that in spring. We'll start to get some indications in spring. Indiana just won the national title. So they won the Big Ten. They won the national title. They won the whole thing. There's a lot of roster churn at Indiana now. I think a lot of people will probably get amnesia. And as much as Kurt Signetti just taught everyone, including me, a lesson, I think some people will forget the lesson. I think some people will look at Indiana and say, all right, they did it once, they'll never do it again, and the doubt will creep back in. I've immunized myself from that because when you throw on a clown nose after you pick against someone four or five times and they prove you wrong, you don't forget. So I won't forget the lessons I learned from Indiana, but I think some may. And here's what I'll say about those questions. All right? If you look at having to overhaul the skill group, yeah, that's valid. If you look at the recruiting profile, if you follow Rivals recruiting rankings and you say, boy, when Ohio State wins a title, they've always got a bunch of top 10 classes to backfill with when Alabama does it, when Georgia does it. But Indiana, they haven't recruited at that level and they did finish very high in the transfer portal rankings, but it was, it wasn't a quantity class, it was a quality class. So they've got to continue to be the best eval and development program in America. And they've also got to deal with the bullseye on their back. And there are things called the consequences of success that as much respect as anyone, including me, could have for Kurt Signetti, they haven't dealt with at this level. They haven't dealt with this combination of churn and then expectation kind of setting in simultaneous. Now, what you got to love is the staff continuity. I mean, they, they got maybe the best coordinator combo in America, and somehow through a cheat code, they kept them. That's not supposed to work that way, but it did. So there's. There's not really a specific thing that I'm looking for at Indiana. It's more in totality. Maybe we'll even get up there this spring. Maybe Texas Tech. Now look, Texas Tech went to the playoff last year. They dominated the Big 12. They lost some cornerstones on defense. This is a big name players. Romello Height is gone. Lee Hunter's gone. Bailey's gone. They lost big time players. And the thing is, I don't doubt they're totally comfortable that they backfilled properly and they've earned the benefit of the doubt. But what they didn't do is they didn't go raid the rosters of a lot of top teams. They went and evaluated and they went and got the best players off of some G5 teams and maybe some second tier Power 4 teams, which is totally fine. It's not like that can't work. For all I know, they may have a better team this year than they did last year. I think at quarterback they absolutely upgraded, but defense wasn't the issue last year. And so you circle it right back to Brendan Soaresby at quarterback because both of those running backs return. And the other thing that they did last year so effortless, it seemed effortless, it wasn't effortless, is they brought in a bunch of new guys from the portal and they just immediately got it. It's like you didn't have to go through several introductory rounds of, you know, like, onboarding and here's how we do things here. Everybody just kind of got it. Well, will they duplicate that every year? You start to feel that a little bit. Because I remember talking to Joey. I remember talking to a couple of guys on that staff in spring last year. We were out there and they were adamant, hey, this group's got it. We just got it. Now. I was sitting at a table with Joey McGuire a month ago and I said, hey, that thing, that little vibe that you told me last spring, you know, you can't just take that for granted. He said, that's the biggest challenge we have right now is reminding everyone that just because it happened one year doesn't mean we have a patent on it. We start from scratch, you hit the reset button and of course your record is 0 and 0. But also you've got to build a new team. Always interesting, the external dynamics there. What about Miami on paper? So this right here, when it says you have to replace four or five offensive linemen, that's normally a big time concern. I'm going to call it a mild concern only because the whole benefit of the doubt thing, it heavily tilts towards Alex Mirabal and Mario Cristobal just knowing how to put an offensive line on the field. And they're relying on a bunch of in house products too. They didn't go search far and wide in the portal to, you know, just basically put a strip of masking tape over that unit on the program. No they trust the guys that they have there. And then on the other side you got Bane going to the draft, Mazador going to the draft. Now Damon Wilson came in and he'll be a guy that should be plug and play. But are we looking at Marquise Lightfoot? There are a couple of other options there. Do they have? Let me rephrase. They probably don't have a pair that just pound for pound have the impact that Bain and Mazidor did. But again, these are like chunks of clay football teams are. And so when you take some from here, you can add some from over there in the aggregate. You just hope to be able to put a playoff caliber product on the field, a championship caliber product on the field. Also, I would like to talk about Oregon because I don't have a ton of questions about them other than O line now. If they don't have it, they don't have it. If Oregon does have it on the offensive line, this team may win a national championship this upcoming year, which I know dan appreciates on March 8th. But D line, DB loaded. Offensive line, they lost three of five but I feel okay about them there. But that's the big question mark because they are relying on their guys. This time last year it was Isaiah World. It was pregnant. It was guys they were bringing in from the portal because they didn't think they were ready. Well, now I think they think they're ready there and again, quarterback check. Wide receiver check. Running back check. There's not a big question mark elsewhere on this roster relative to the rest of the country except the offensive line position. So that's what we're looking at there. I'm still not done. I just have to quickly remind you, because it would be rude if I didn't, that we have a ton of really, really good products over at the store right now. Paintstatematerial.com I don't know if you noticed yet, but it was warm this week. We may get a little shot of cold air later this week, but don't be fooled. Spring is coming and I have it on very good authority summer will come after that. So I know you've been bundled up all winter and it's not fun, but it is what it is. But the evil winter is gone and spring is here and that means short sleeve weather is here and that means patestatematerial.com has all sorts of different options for you. Just you want to dress casual. Well, we never dress casual. We don't even call it casual wear, we just call it wear kind of have to come up with a new name for it, a new industry standard name for it. But you want the Ramen Noodle Express represented on your chest. You can have it there. Pate State Strength and Conditioning It's There. Magnolia Foundation Gear It's There. Proceeds go to the Magnolia Foundation. Now you buy a Pate State Strength and Conditioning shirt. Jesse just keeps all that money. So nevertheless a lot of good products over there. I can be found frequently wearing them around my apartment in the gym.
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Josh Pate
could this vintage store be any cuter? Right? And the best part? They accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so. Jennifer. Oh yeah, huh. Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on baby, get with the times. Right. So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback I think.
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Main Host / Analyst
Discover is accepted at 99% of places
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that take credit cards nationwide based on
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Main Host / Analyst
the February 2025 Nielsen report.
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Main Host / Analyst
Go ahead.
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- [34:35]
Main Host / Analyst
Let's continue. I told you it's a spring mega show like half an hour in. We've just talked about spring. I got a lot of other things to talk about in the show tonight. We haven't even talked about the SEC yet. So all around the sec. The SEC is always the caboose on the show. As we as you know, Texas. Texas right now would be considered the favorites to win the league this upcoming year. And there's a pattern with a lot of these teams that I'm about to mention because Texas and LSU and Alabama and Oklahoma are four teams just right off the top here that need to mightily improve their run games. I mean, just inexplicable underachievement running the football last year and it led to amounts of pressure on the quarterback that you just can't tolerate. So Georgia ironically dealt with this and then they fixed themselves last year. So can Texas do that? Trevor Goosby, offensive tackle stud. I have no doubts about him. Other than that you got to replace some guards here. What caliber of offensive line are we trotting out there in Austin? They crushed it at running back. They just basically flushed the running back room and said if we can get relief brown and we can get Hollywood smothers, we get both of those guys out of the portal and we can cause we're Texas, then we're good. And they did that and they should be good there also. I don't want to overlook this. You know, Texas added a lot of players from the transfer portal, but they also added Mark Stoops who was fired as the head coach at Kentucky. And he's just there right now. And it's interesting to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly because Texas struggled mightily against Kentucky last year. So it's always nice to have that voice defensively in your building now. But the other part is, if you'll notice, Texas against Georgia, for example, they have finished runner up in the physicality department, in the toughness department on the field against Georgia and what, three times now in the past couple of years? I guess it is. And I always remember Kirby Smart talking about the toughest physical battle his team had every year. And he always circled Kentucky. He always circled Mark Stoops. Now they could just meat grind their way to wins against Kentucky cause they could out roster them. But it was always a bloodbath. I don't know how much of that Mark Stoops can serve to infuse into the Texas program. He is just one man after all. But it doesn't hurt having a guy like that in your building. So I'll keep an eye on that. At lsu, this was the worst team in the league running the ball. I want to say it again for emphasis. LSU was the worst team in the SEC running the ball last year. They realized it, as did everyone under the sun. And so Lane Kiffin comes in and then he brings in half a dozen new offensive linemen from the Portal. Question how good can the running back room be? Because you're going to look on this right here and on paper it's going to be, I don't know. But then, you know, you hit up Shea Dixon, for example, you hit up the guys close to the program down there and they'll tell you Harlem Berry, it was very, very important they kept him around. Caden Durham, it was very important they kept him around. Dillon Jones is a guy I believe that transferred from Wisconsin who would probably figure third on the depth chart but has been an early buy in guy. A guy's giving him a lot of juice. I just wonder how good that tailback room can be. I wonder how good the entire team can be. I wonder with a total of what did we count Jesse? One reception returning in the wide receiver room. Not the tight end room, just the wide receiver room. I wonder how effective that room can be. Look, they brought in a lot of potential impact guys. I get how the Portal works. I get all of it. It's just got a gel it's got to coalesce cause it's a new team for Lane Kiffin and very high expectations. They're not going to give you an introductory year down there. So this is probably going to be the highest, highest, highest attention spring practice that you can remember in quite a while in Baton Rouge at Alabama. Obviously we got the quarterback battle there. So Alabama, you're going to have Keelan Russell, you're going to have Austin Mack and that's going to be the most high profile quarterback battle in the country. We did a whole segment on that the other night. So let's move past the quarterback battle. Four of their five offensive linemen are gone. Their offensive line coach is gone. Now you can listen to that if you live in Boise, Idaho and say, oh, Obama's in trouble. People in Tuscaloosa, Alabama listen to that and probably say good, you know, cause we kind of, we, we, we low key sucked there last year and that led to them not being able to run the ball and, and that led to Ty Simpson. It took all the way to the playoff but it finally led to him getting injured and he was hurt all year but finally couldn't play anymore physically by the time the Rose bowl came around. Looks like they trust their recruiting and development because they didn't go and overhaul in the portal at offensive line either. I know they went after Jacarius Peak, but South Carolina landed him and he's out at South Carolina right now. But other than that, I mean they got a lot of guys they've recruited that are young that they're going to trust Here I look at the other side of the ball and wonder if they're good enough on the interior of the defensive line. And again, like I've said three or four times tonight, it's okay not to know everything with the start of spring ball but we don't have to talk about it a whole lot longer. We start to figure a lot of this out in March. What about Oklahoma yet again, four for four here. Teams that should have been better than they were last year but they couldn't run the ball so they didn't maximize their potential. Well, Jon Mattier is back at quarterback. As I said last show, a lot of competing theories out there about how good John Mattier can be. I picked the guy to win the Heisman last year partly because I thought it was good value. Let's be real. And so, I mean I haven't, I've sold the ticket because it's, it's invalid now, but I haven't Sold my John Mattier stock. But here's what I need, all right? I got two top tailbacks returning here. Defense is always going to be good, you know, Cause it's Brent and Venables. But four or five offensive linemen being back, I just got to have them be better. I got to have them be so much better than they were last year. Because 113th rushing, look, even 73rd rushing is not going to be good enough. That's what will teach me about the ultimate ceiling of this team. Got a tough schedule again. You did last year. And I don't want to talk about them like they went 6 and 6. They went to the playoff. The problem was they were a one story house and you needed to be two or three stories tall to win come post season. And they couldn't because they couldn't run the ball. I mean, they faced another team that couldn't run the ball and couldn't even beat them. So yeah, Georgia. It's interesting I put Georgia purposefully next after those four teams because remember this time last year going into spring, what were people talking about? They were talking about Carson Beck transferring, so Gunner Stockton, like how good's he going to be? And they were saying, wait a second, hold on. We couldn't run the ball last year. Carson Beck bailed us out a lot, threw for like 19,000 yards, but we just lost a guy who could throw the ball. Gunner Stockton's a lot more of a running quarterback. If we can't run the ball this year, we're going to be in big trouble. Hey, that was not breaking news to Kirby Smart and his staff. So they corrected, okay, they've already been in the position a lot of these other teams are in. They couldn't run the ball well at all in 2024, but they pulled the nose up in 2025. So as is often the case, if you're trying to figure things out in the sec, look to Athens Georgia. They probably have a blueprint for it that they've used at some point along the way. But at Georgia, they're losing four of their top five wide receivers. And I was going back just for fun the other day, looking at some of the 2021, 2022 Georgia Games. They were so loaded at wide receiver, probably didn't appreciate it enough at the time because you just always thought it would be like an endless supply of those kinds of guys. It wasn't. And so I wonder if they're going to be dynamic enough in that room. And then I wonder if there's Going to be a different level to Gunnar Stockton's game. If there's not, that's okay. But you know, I always kind of wonder, all right, well, does a guy level up? They're replacing Monroe Freeling at tackle. And look, I don't know that they just have the guy to do that, but they're counting on in house guys as well. This is not a huge portal program. They can. They have the ability to. They don't ignore it. It's not a dabo Clemson sort of thing, but they don't heavily rely on it and they haven't here either. But it's Georgia too, so very high floor. Texas A and M, one of the most fascinating teams in all of college football to follow right now because they had a good offensive line. They're losing a lot. But with Marcel Reed, I ask the same thing about him. I ask how high is the floor? Because he had a very, very volatile second half of his season last year. I mean, there are a lot of the highs were high, but the lows were really low. Just watch the South Carolina game. I have never been on that kind of emotional ride. Was that the biggest comeback, Jesse? What was it? It was like the biggest comeback in conference play history or something like that. Crazy. So that's not fun. That's not fun. What you want is you want to compress the variance a little bit. Okay. Let's have a little more consistency and outcome. Well, they have to replace both coordinators and they elevated. They did an organ. They promoted from within. Holloman Wiggins is the new OC there. Lyle Hempfield is the new, or I said old, the new OC and the new DC there. This is where, if I'm right about Mike Elko, if they're right about Mike Elko, this is really the spring where it starts to bear itself out. And by right, I mean thinking he is a supreme evaluator and developer of talent and also just happens to be at a program that can go get a lot of it. But then is it. Is it bettering itself or is it the opposite? Are you getting guys on campus? And the best they'll ever be is the day they walk on campus. Well, I don't think that's Mike Elkos. Texas A and M. They did look at the portal and specifically they needed to backfill in the front seven there. So a lot of. A lot of their future, a lot of their destiny this year will depend on Portal additions defensively in that front seven. Tennessee. Tennessee had a weird year last year. Because of the Nico Yamaliava stuff. That was post spring, by the way. It feels like 19 years ago it was post spring. Tennessee loses Nico. Okay? Then Joey Aguilar comes on board and now Joey Aguilar has been ruled ineligible. So he's not going to be your starter. So we got the quarterback thing and I'll get to that in just a second. But you know, they also brought in Jim Knowles as defensive coordinator. That's been an interesting three year journey, by the way. Jim Knowles is at Ohio State. They win the national title. Then James Franklin pulls off the Big Ten coup of the hiring cycle and he goes and gets Jim Knowles and brings him in. But then halfway through the season, not even halfway, halfway through the first half of the season, James Franklin's out. And so Jim Knowles is in State College one year and then he's out. And now he's gone to Blacksburg. No, he's gone to Knoxville because Josh Hyple hired him and he brought what, Jesse, like three or four guys with him that'll probably end up being starters. And it's needed because Tennessee went from sixth to, to 92nd over the span of one year in total defense fell off a cliff. So they'll be better defensively this year. But the book on Knowles has always been it takes a couple years, sometimes three years before his system really, you know, starts to click. Well, no one wants to wait that long because we've got a quarterback battle here. It's George McIntyre and it's Faison Brandon. And the whole thing with Faison Brandon is if not now, eventually. But they're overall in a position where it's, it's so clear. When you look at their team profile, 2027 should be a huge year for Tennessee. That's so clear. The question is how fast could they run in 2026. Now, Josh Hyple does not think this way, but I'm thinking about 2026 as a, as a build year, you know, like, like a teeing it up year, like a building up to max speed year. Sometimes you just get out of the gate a little bit quicker than folks thought you would. And the year before ends up being the year. So that's what we're watching. Quarterback battle, obviously, but outside of that, that's what I'm watching with Tennessee. South Carolina is, it's tough at South Carolina right now. Both offensive tackles are out for spring. One of them is out for the year. Thompson, I think is out for the year. Jacarius Peak was the transfer from NC State. And great player, man, like a big time portal edition, promptly gets hurt, I think in conditioning work in February. Now they think they'll be able to get him back. Shane Beamer has said as much, but he's not active for the spring. That's not a young player. So it's not that this work is absolutely critical for his development. But these offensive linemen, man, they always talk about how different things are, how different practice reps are. Now Kublick's come on the show and talk about it. Talked about it a lot. So don't love that. My new tackles miss in spring. Is there another two or three pass catchers behind Nick harbor, for that matter? Here's what I'll be looking for. Broad stroke here. Immunity. How many things are fundamentally different than this time last year? Because last year led to four and eight. So how many things are fundamentally different? How many things have fundamentally improved about South Carolina football this year as opposed to last year? Spring, guys, it's. I know that December, I know Christmas is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. All I'm saying is we need to consider March 2nd secondarily to the start of the season itself. But I have so much optimism. Those teams I just listed, they're all undefeated right now. Not a loss in the whole pack. Fort Worth, Texas is tuned in Morgantown, West Virginia is tuned in Arkadelphia, Arkansas is also tuned in. Appreciate you guys. If you're watching live, the Drive to a Million Subs continues. Please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Now to off the field matters, but they will eventually impact on the field. So Friday, I know a lot of you probably noticed that there was this whole roundtable thing in Washington, D.C. as it relates to college football Friday, and there were a lot of people there and everyone had an opinion on it. Did a lot get accomplished there? No, I would say probably not. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it. Truth be told. I still haven't listened to any of the sound from it. And the only reason I'm going to talk about it on the show is because there was something that happened that had very little to do with that roundtable that I think is of utmost importance. So the roundtable itself performative a little bit. Most people there didn't even speak. There was no athlete representation there. So yeah, it was pretty obvious not a lot was going to be accomplished. Now not a lot is going to be accomplished on camera versus not a lot being accomplished behind closed doors are two different things. And we can't talk about what happened behind closed doors because we weren't behind them and we're not Ross Dellinger. So that's not where my focus was. My focus was not on that roundtable at all. My focus was on the other drum beat that I'd been hearing for the better part of the last month, but specifically the last two weeks. And that's why you'll notice on the show last week, I did not talk about the roundtable thing, but I did talk about something else. You notice I talked about the pooling of the media rights, which is kind of a boring topic. So it's risky to talk about it on the show. But I promised you then, and I'm going to promise you now that it's going to end up mattering for you. As a college football fan, I don't care about administrative types. I don't care about network executives. The stuff they're caring about right now does not matter for 99.9% of us. So I'm not wasting time on the show talking about that, but I will invest time talking about matters that we actually care about. So show me the Dellinger tweet. So Ross Dellinger is in Washington, D.C. and he's covering all this. But also Ross Dellinger had a report on Friday and it's on the screen right here, said, hey, for the first time, a Republican and Democrat, Senators Eric Schmidt and I believe it was Cantwell. The text is small, so I can't read it. They've agreed on legislation to amend the Sports broadcasting Act of 1961 to permit conferences to pool media rights. Their staffs tell Yahoo Sports. Sounds like, sounds like filler, doesn't it? Just sounds like word salad. It's not. First off, when you've got a bipartisan bill being brought to the Senate floor in this day and age, it is not word salad at all. This is the deal. This is the deal I'm paying attention to, not the roundtable. The whole pooling of media rights is a, is a thing I'm fascinated by and it's a thing that I have said before. And I'll say again, let me, let me very clearly restate my opinion on this. This whole concept of pooling college football media rights I think will be met with super majority support once it's articulated properly and once everyone understands that. And I'm especially talking about college football fans, and fans win for basic reasons. So you and I do not pocket a dime from broadcast rights deals. We don't because we're not networks. So some of the things that maybe a network executive would care about, we don't particularly care about. But what do we care about as college football fans? Well, I wrote down three things. I care about scheduling, which this absolutely addresses, and I'll get to it in a second. I care about variety and texture of coverage. So the way the sport is covered itself. And I would love to erode the silo model that college football has sort of worked its way into. And that's the thing where one network has a TV deal with one league, so they kind of only promote that one league, or only talk about that one league and then overhear another network copy and paste with another league. And it's so dumb conceptually, because what you should have is you should have all the networks in business with college football, just the way I said it, in business with college football, not in business with one conference. So in my more utopian world, which, believe it or not, is feasible, it would look a little bit more like the NFL strictly from a media rights perspective, in that if I'm an Eagles fan, I'm going to play probably most of my games on Fox because I'm an NFC team, but I'm also going to play on ESPN when I play on Monday nights, Sunday nights, I'm going to play on NBC. I go play in someone's house that is in the afc. I'm going to play on cbs. Most likely I'm going to play probably an Amazon game. But the point is, because all the teams are playing on all the networks at some point during the year, the networks have it in their best interest to promote the NFL because they cover the NFL. They don't cover one specific league. Likewise, all of the networks have a piece of the playoff media rights pie, which means it's in their best interest to promote the NFL playoffs instead of college football. Right now, NBC doesn't have a playoff game. Fox doesn't have a playoff game. So the season kind of ends for them at the end of the regular season. Why would they waste time promoting anything beyond that? Well, they don't, because it doesn't make financial sense for him right now. Doesn't make business sense, but also from a fan's perspective, and this is kind of just me talking, I think most people would agree with me on this. But you can let me know if you don't. I've always thought that the coverage gets a little stale when you know if you're an Ole Miss fan or you know, if you're a Michigan fan, the same network and therefore the same broadcast teams are just going to cover your games over and over and over again. If I want that, I can listen to my home radio broadcast. I'd love a whole lot more variety and coverage. Now that's me personally talking, but I tend to think from the comments and the feedback we've gotten on this, we've got like super majority support on that. Now that concept, the pooling of the media rights, if you don't understand a thing about this, just understand the entire thinking behind this is everyone's crying broke, everyone's yelling broke, everyone's freaked out that they're running out of money. So everyone's yelling about problems, right? So there's a group that comes along and says, well, we think we have a solution. Now, as is typically the case in society, the group that's yelling about all the problems, when met with a suggestion for a solution, just take it upon themselves to shout down the solution or the suggestion and talk about why it won't work. Now what's their idea? What's their alternative? Don't have one. So to be clear, the thinking here is, well, if you were to amend the Sports Broadcasting act, which is boring and you don't even need to understand how that works, but understand if it's amended, that means college football can then pool their media rights and there's just one college football media deal and all the networks and maybe even some of the streaming giants get a cut of it through the same process that they always would. They bid on it. And probably what ends up happening there is the SEC and the Big Ten are still the biggest revenue conferences. So the SEC in the Big Ten probably still decide to a large degree how it gets divvied up. But everyone makes a lot more money. Now there are some pushback, there's some pushback on that. There's some different schools of thought on that. I have talked to some really, really educated people in my personal industry. But also as part of that push, I am firmly convinced that there is a ton more money to be handed out by pooling meteorites than there are right now in the silo approach than there is right now in the silo approach. But picture this, all right? Everyone makes more money. Therefore you can fund your non revenue generating sports. More money ultimately flows to the athlete. Now you may listen to that skeptically and say, oh yeah, right, no, no, it's gotta work that way or else you're never going to get the support you need in Congress to pass this to begin with. So you've actually got to have it papered where it works that way. But think about that waterfall financially. Think about how everyone makes more money, Everyone, including the Big Ten in the sec, make more money. And then understand the majority pushback on this is going to be from the Big Two, from the SEC and the Big Ten. And that is because, yes, while everyone may make more money in the aggregate, you relinquish a lot of the control you have over the sport right now. And if I'm Greg Sanke and if I'm Tony Petiti, look, it's not my job to run college football, it's my job to run my league. And so you may not like it at home, but those guys aren't going to sit here and just voluntarily say, yeah, absolutely, man, we'd, we'd love to relinquish a lot of the control that we have and a lot of the overall market share that we have on this sport to help out the Big 12. Of course we'd love to do that. That's where the question becomes what does it take to get what you guys are asking for? You know, the SEC and the Big Ten are in Washington and when they're not, their lobbyists are up there every week and they're looking for congressional intervention so that they can get their antitrust exemption so they can create rules and they can implement them. And anyone with a fully functioning brain is looking around right now and saying, number one, you're not getting it the way you want it. So then number two, if you want to get it, you're probably going to have to traffic somewhat in this kind of idea. And then over here in the world of collective bargaining, and if you give enough in compartment A and compartment B, then maybe finally Congress over there in compartment C bends enough. So that's where my mind is on that right now. It's been fascinating. I could lead every show with it, but I think we would just completely light our numbers on fire because I think I find it more interesting than the audience does. But the scheduling piece of pooling the meteorites, I think that's something people would go crazy for if it was articulated properly and if it ever even stood a chance of happening.
- [59:59]
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Josh Pate
could this vintage store be any cuter? Right? And the best part? They accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so. Jennifer oh yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on baby, get with the times. Right? So we shouldn't get the parachute Panther. These are making a comeback I think.
- [61:23]
Main Host / Analyst
Discover is accepted at 99% of places
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Main Host / Analyst
the February 2025 Nielsen report.
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- [63:04]
Main Host / Analyst
Let's move on. Football games. We're gonna talk about football games. Wow. Isaac from Miami said, hey, what games are you looking forward to the most in 2026? May the best games, but the ones that have caught your eye. I'm glad you said it that way because we'll do just our top 10 biggest games of the year later in the spring. But how do you not point out LSU at Ole Miss in week three? There are no notes needed on this. Really. I can give you some. But this is Lane Kiffin and a brand new team rolling into the venue of the team that didn't fire him, the team he chose to leave. He chose to leave him even as they were going to the playoff. He chose to leave him. And that guy right there, Pete Golding took over. And Pete Golding, as much praise as he got for sort of grabbing the wheel and then even hitting the gas a little bit after he grabbed the wheel there in the playoffs, there'll be a lot of folks who doubt Pete Golding. All right, there's. It's one thing taking the stick in midair and just making sure the plane keeps flying. It's another thing to pull the plane away from the gate, kind of pull it out on the tarmac and take it off and then land it. That's. That's a full coaching job and no one's seen Pete do it yet. So it's, I guess, if you want to call that doubting him. Everyone gets doubted until they've done it. And so Lane goes in there. Week three, pure theater. It's going to be unbelievable. Oregon at Ohio State's much later in the season, but that one's got to be one, too. Oregon goes to Ohio State in Week 10, and there are two monster games in Week 10. This is one of them by this point. Look at that schedule for Ohio State by this point in the season. By Week 10, Ohio State has already faced Texas on the road, Iowa on the road, Indiana on the road, and USC on the road. And they play Southern Cal the week before Oregon. So a nice little 6,000 some odd mile round trip there. Dan Lanning's way versus Ryan Day's way. One of the things I always say about matchups of top five caliber programs is if you're a top five program, that means you've got the resources to do anything any way you want. So your philosophies, your roster, building, your portal Strategy, your hiring strategies. You get to choose how you do it all. There is no inadequacy that forces you to Oakland A's your way to a win circa 2004. You get to do it any which way you want. And anytime these big time programs face off against each other, it's like competing worldviews. It's competing cultures. You remember they played out in Eugene two years ago and is unbelievable, amazing. And then they played again in the Rose bowl and it was a splattering and they didn't play last year, right, Jesse? No. So this is the next time that we will have seen him face off. That one will be awesome. The same day, probably later in the day, if I had to guess kickoff times. Miami at Notre Dame. So we get Oregon, Ohio State and we get Miami at Notre dame in week 10. This is a regular season super bowl for Notre Dame. Not a must win, but it's a regular season Super Bowl. It's a rematch of the game they lost down in Coral Gables in week one of last year. And this is not an early season game. So this is Miami on the road in South Bend later in the year. A little more crispness in the air, you know, maybe dare I say some long sleeves in the crowd, especially from the visiting fans. But elite rosters. You got Miami knocking on the door of winning a national championship a year ago. You got Notre Dame favored to win it all. This year Miami's favored to be right back in the mix. This is what people like me live for. I know a lot of you guys feel the same way. I get more jacked thinking about regular season matchups like this than I do the playoff. I get more jack thinking about this than I did than I do the national championship game. Because this thing's going to be played in South Bend, Indiana, not in Glendale, Arizona. All due respect to the Fiesta bowl, fine people out there, but it's a little bit different in the regular season. Week six is a big one too. So kind of like week 10. There are a pair of massive games here. Red River Shootout, known by no other name on this show. The Red River Shootout is in week six. Oklahoma, Texas, the Cotton bowl. The real one, the one that God built, not the one that Jerry Jones built. Love it. It has become my favorite rivalry game to go to. I'm normally an anti neutral site guy. This is one of very few exceptions where I would just bake it into the college football constitution that it has to be played here forever. Oklahoma will have already played at Michigan and at Georgia by The time this game happens, Texas will have already played Ohio State and at Tennessee. By the time this game happens, as is customary, they both come off a buy. It's an early game, too, so it's an early bye week. We only got one buy for everyone this season. The setting is immaculate. I have sold the setting of the Cotton bowl more than the committee itself has, and I'll do it as many more times as they need me to. And the one thing that I don't really think anyone knows, Jesse, I don't know that I've told this show or this story on the show at the Cotton bowl, obviously, it's just wide open and most of the time it's sunny, fairly warm, and they have the corrals. You know what a press corral is? Do most people know what a press corral is? So you know if you're watching on TV, those little triangle things that are on the ground and they're like they, they line the sideline. There's normally advertising on them. They're orange. If there's not advertising on them. They're made of the same stuff like the pylons are made of. Well, those are on the field to keep the press, to keep the faux togs off the field and everything. So when everything empties out after this game, they pull those press corrals up. Well, the Cotton bowl is low key, infested with locusts. Again, I wouldn't change a thing about this place. I'm just saying, funnel cakes and locusts, that's what the cotton bolt does. And these locusts hide under the press corrals to survive the sun. Then when they pull the press corrals up, there's like a thousand of those things that have been enjoying the damp shade for three or four hours and. And then they get exposed to the light and then they all die. But it takes like a minute. And sometimes in a former life, some of us are doing standups on the field and you're live on the air, on network, and you got locusts all around you. And some of your staff may be a little more squeamish about those sorts of things than you are. So look, many different reasons to look forward to ou, Texas, that was just one more. That same day, probably later that night, Georgia goes to Alabama. Georgia and Alabama, for states that touch each other, didn't play regularly for a long time. And now all of a sudden, it feels like they're playing every five minutes. So two years ago, Georgia goes to Tuscaloosa. The Ryan Williams game till they lose and then Bama goes to Georgia. Last year, the Ty Simpson game, but then the rematch in the SEC title game. Total splattering. And now they're going to play again, this time in Tuscaloosa. And I just can't help but remember the last two regular season games these two teams have played. I can't help but think about how high the stakes have been every time Kirby's faced Alabama and that was while Nick Saban was there. And then it's been that way since Nick Saban was there. So that's going to be a big double header day there in the SEC. And I wanted to mention one Big 12 game and it's early. It's week three. Houston goes to Texas Tech in week three. Obviously, Texas Tech is going to be the overwhelming favorite to win the Big 12, and they were last year and they did. And there will be again. And we're just trying to scan the landscape. Is there a sleeper? Is there an outright contender? Is someone going to be able to match Texas Tech? Well, we happen to think that Houston is a pretty good sleeper candidate, but we get to find out because they play them early on in the year. New roster for Texas Tech. There's a lot of continuity at Houston, so they're going to take that operation on the road. They're going to get to measure themselves against Texas Tech. Remember Brigham Young went in there last year. It was a big game day environment. Game day was literally there and Texas Tech wins. But that was just round one. Then round two was in the conference title game. Could that be the way this game plays out? This will go a long way in just explaining what the landscape of the Big 12 is at the very least. So those are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 games I'm looking forward to. We could have gone all night. Immunity. We had a very unique question in the Pate State mailbox. Bradley checks it about once or twice a week. Will from down in Florida said, I was watching you describe Florida the other night. I'm the kid who wasn't old enough to experience Urban Mire and that era at Florida. From your perspective, what was that world like? Awesome. Maybe my favorite era in the history of the sec. So Urban Meyer was at Utah and at the time, everyone looked at it as this good story in the South. Like I'm growing up in the south at this point. Everybody in the south looked at Urban Meyer at Utah and they were like, oh, they don't play anybody out there and this guy's getting hyped up and oh wait, Florida just hired him. Wow, he's about to have that sharp dose of reality sort of poured over his head like Gatorade. And the overwhelming sentiment in the SEC when Urban Meyer got hired from Utah to Florida, I remember it clear as day, the overwhelming sentiment in the SEC when Urban got hired at Florida is, boy, the SEC is about to teach this dude a lesson. And it was the exact opposite. Urban Meyer came into the SEC and treated winning like oxygen. He fought for it like he was fighting for oxygen. And he was like that. And the best compliment that you can give a coach is you can see his thumbprint on every aspect of the program. Because everything about Florida operated the way Urban operated, for better or for worse. I know in hindsight you can talk negatively about all the off field issues they had, but I was asked what it was like in the moment. And what it was like in the moment was it was like a hurricane hit the sec. And everything from recruiting to the way practices worked down there, the way that they played, the energy and the tenacity and the effort, it was like the conference discovered a different level that you were capable of playing at that they hadn't hit. And it took an outsider coming in. So that's a little shot to the pride of the sec, because an outsider comes in, didn't even grow up in the South. Now it's not like he was coming home. It was an outsider. And he came into the SEC and reshaped the SEC and they won the title in 06, and they won the title in 08. And dude, I know it didn't go for 15 or 20 years, but the Urban Florida teams at their best, like that was a white hot star. And when it burned, and it burned for a little while, it burned as hot as any team had down there in a long, long time. So what happened? Well, Nick Saban happened. That's what happened. But there's another school of thought on that. I'll get to it in a second because I buy into the first more than the second. Well, let me go and spoil it for you. The second school of thought is people think that they just burned it at both ends and they cut corners and that's why they had a ton of off the field issues. And the culture sucked and it was very, very cancerous. And so it sort of rotted from the inside out. And. And once Tebow left, starting with that 2010 team and beyond, they were never going to resurrect it, even if he had stuck around. You may be right. On that, I think I articulated that pretty well. I know I made it seem like I feel that way. Hey, the culture wasn't perfect. The competitive culture was off the charts. But yeah, they had a ton of off field issues. But Nick Saban coming to the SEC in 2007 and then subsequently taking Bama to the SEC championship game in 08 and 09 and facing Florida those two years, this is where I love questions like this. You know, I was lucky enough to be growing up in this era. I'm telling you, I've never experienced anything before or since like those 0809 SEC championship games. Nick Saban and Urban Meyer, that Florida, Alabama matchup in 08 09, I got blessed enough to be at both of them as a spectator because that was an hour up the road. So we always used to save up and buy SEC championship tickets. The Florida, Alabama, SEC championship games from 0809 are the best atmospheres I've ever experienced in college football. It was the most off the charts, intense, insane environments that you've ever experienced. Goosebumps on the arm right now. I know these days with the way the playoff is structured, people look at conference championship games and you think, oh, they're pointless, or oh, they've lost their luster. Well, buddy, this was not the playoff era. This was the BCS era. The SEC championship game in this era felt bigger than the national title game. You could argue that both of those years, it actually was the national title game. Both of those years it was one versus two. And remember, this is the beginning of the Saban run. Urban's in the middle of his run at Florida. This is the beginning of the Saban run. So that 08 team, that was the first year that they were good. Saban was like seven wins his first year. But then they're undefeated. I think regular season, they go to Atlanta, they lead Florida going into the fourth quarter, and Tebow just goes off and Florida wins the game. Florida goes on to win the national title. And then the whole next year it was 1, 2. The whole year it was like looking ahead to a pro wrestling pay per view several months down the road. Cbs, I remember they were like borderline promoting the SEC championship game well before it was mathematically decided. Everyone just kind of knew from media days on, it's going to be Bama and Florida again in Atlanta. And if Nick Saban's ever going to do anything at Alabama, he's going to have to go through Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer. And Tebow had the moment there in The Swamp, where everyone thinks he's going to announce he's going to the draft. And he goes, oh, by the way, I'm coming back. So, boom, that locks it up. This is going to be the best team of all time. Urban's got all these guys coming back from the national championship team. And the build up for weeks and weeks and weeks finally culminates on a Saturday afternoon in Atlanta. Florida is a point spread favorite. They're number one, Bama's number two. And Bama handled them pretty thoroughly. And that was the changing of the guard. That was the moment that the rope started to slip out of the hands there at Florida because you're going for best of all time. And then the mantle just changes. I mean, Saban and Alabama grabbed the belt. They were off to the races. You know, what became of them. But then with Urban in, Florida still had a really, really insanely talented roster. The next year, Tebow's gone and so, you know, they were ranked highly. They went to Tuscaloosa the year after that, and they go up there as a PrimeTime game on CBS and it was not really all that competitive. And then shortly thereafter, you got the whole health thing and he's gone. And the Urban Meyer era is done at Florida. So it didn't go a long time, but man, that period, like 05 to 2010, sort of that, that time period, Urban comes in and transforms the sec. Saban just left lsu. Miles takes control. He wins the national title. The Florida, LSU games are off the charts, insane. Then Saban comes back to Alabama, takes over. He has to go through Urban. He has to knock them off the mountaintop and does it. And then Urban leaves and then Bama's off to the races for an extended period of time. And then in retrospect, everyone remembers all the off the field issues. And you know, anyone who's not a Florida fan looks at that era completely differently than a Florida fan does. The same way Michigan fans will look at the whole Connor Stallions, sign stealing, Harbaugh controversy stuff different than outsiders will. But it doesn't matter if you're a Florida fan. You don't really care what outsiders think about your off field issues in the late 2000s. Just like Michigan fans don't really care what Penn State fans or Ohio State fans think because they know they got to experience a championship or in Florida's case, a couple of championships. But, man, it was unbelievable. I know, I know that it's hard for. It's hard. You can't just like do the whole Grab claw machine and pick someone up and take them back in time. But if you ever have free time and you just want to, like, go down a little bit of a rabbit hole, go find the 08 or the 09 SEC championship game, just set some time aside and just kind of lose yourself in that replay. You can feel it. I mean, I don't have to sell you on it. You can feel it. People are on the edge of their seat. Like their lives depend on the outcome of a third and three and a fourth and one. Every first down was magnified because I think they were the top two defenses in the country too. So just, man, so off the charts intense. I have been to, I don't know how many dozen conference title playoff games have been to. I think like every national title game since then or thereabouts. Nothing has touched what those two games were like. And Urban was right there at the center of both of them. Next up, it's my favorite era to talk about. Someone asked about our hometown here, Stephanie from Corey, Pennsylvania, she said, I notice you always start the show with high atop Nashville. Is there any reason why you chose that city as your headquarters? Yes, because I got a phone call in 2019 from Shannon Terry and he said, I would like you to come to Nashville and do the show that I see you doing on YouTube for us. At the time, he was running 247 sports. And I said, nashville, you say okay. And I came up here sight unseen. Truthfully, I rented my apartment, having never seen the apartment. It worked out okay. I don't recommend it, but it worked out okay. Credit check was a little iffy at the time. You know, shortly after you've been evicted. The credit check is not very kind to you, but we got a favorable leasing agent up here and we got in and we got set. Then it's been Nashville ever since. Nashville is a really amazing place to be right now. I listen to musicians because there's one. There's like 10 of them on every street corner here. So the musicians will always tell these romantic stories about what it was like coming to Nashville in the 80s or coming here in the 90s. You come here to make a name for yourself in music. Well, in the 2000s, that's been the story in the digital media world in Nashville because some of the shows, you know, emanate from here. Some other shows, you don't know that are emanating from here. There are heavy hitter outfits here. Sports, politics, world finance, obviously entertainment and music. I mean, we got so many different companies that are producing broadcast content or broadcast quality content and they're all here in Nashville. And it's not like anyone got together on a group text and said, hey, you guys, I want to move to Nashville. Just kind of organically happened. But it's an amazing time to be here. And I'm not even talking to people in California because chances are you already live here if you're from California, because literally everyone's here. But you know, maybe some people are from other places and you haven't moved here yet. I'm not running the tourism bureau. Fact of the matter is, traffic's already bad enough. But yeah, it's a, it's a boom in time in Nashville. Fanduel Another hard transition here. Two of them in a row where I just, I had no Bridge. But FanDuel is the exclusive odds provider of the show, as you know. As you also may know, speaking of Nashville, the SEC Basketball tournament coming to town this week, our buddy Jack Mack over at Barstool once eloquently described the SEC Basketball tournament as an event that happens annually for people to gather together and talk about the upcoming SEC football season. There happens to be a basketball game going on at any given point, but that's mainly what we do at the SEC tournament here in Nashville. Fanduel I have it on good authority we'll have odds on every game and the Big Ten and the A10 and the Mac and the Missouri Valley Conference. Jesse, I know you're a big fan. So anything and everything under the sun when it comes to conference tournaments, when it comes to college basketball, NCAA tournament coming up. We got several college football futures available there. Anything and everything you could possibly want if not now. Eventually Fanduel will have must be 21
- [84:35]
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- [85:20]
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Lastly, and I regret to inform you, I Reached out to a friend of the program and they have not reached back out. The Nebraska Mood Tracker is on the menu tonight and I'm not going to cancel it just because we hit up Compton and he didn't want to return a text. But the Nebraska Mood Tracker is this thing we do. We do it with every team eventually, where we're trying to take a temperature of the fan base, trying to feel out how the fan base feels about the program, the state of the program, where is it right now? And I wrote down actually a John Mayer song title title to describe the mood of Nebraska. I wrote the mood of Nebraska fans is waiting on the world to change. Matt Rule first year five and seven. Matt Rule second Year seven and six. Here we go. Rule, Rule. Year three. It's going to happen seven and six again. So now we're entering year four under Matt Rule, and it's not a hot seat situation at all. In fact, he was rumored to be the candidate for Penn State to the point where they feverishly worked to give him a new contract extension and invest a lot more money. So it's nothing like that. Now, if you had back to back to back years of no more than seven wins like Texas, they'd fire you. But Nebraska's in a little different boat right now. Thus waiting on the world to change. Once upon a time, Nebraska ran this sport. It's been a little while since then. They're waiting on the world to change. Now, the quarterback situation, that was a total reset moment. I don't even care if Anthony Calandria works out. That wasn't the design. Okay, as recently as last year, we're looking at Matt Rule. He's entering year three. Dylan Raiola is the future of this program. And then it's seven and six and then Raiola transfers, and then Kenny Minchie looks like he's going to be the guy, but then he bolts and he goes to Kentucky. And so it's Anthony Calandria. And I know right now a lot of people are trying to build up a sense of confidence about him. Yeah. What else are you going to do? Say we're going to suck this year? Oh, we're screwed. Oh, 2027 at the earliest. No. And look, that guy may very well be a better fit for their offense than Dylan Raiola. But the point is, it was a reset and that this wasn't the plan. So you got to admit, you're kind of calling it on the fly right now. You know, you're kind of trying to repair the plane while you're already in the air, and sometimes you can do it and sometimes you can't. But they aren't dropping to the bottom tier. The thing about Nebraska is, look, there's a floor. Year three, year four and beyond with Matt Rule at the helm. There's going to be a floor that's high enough.
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They're.
- [88:05]
Main Host / Analyst
They're not at risk of falling to the bottom of the league or even fall into tier three, but they're a long way from climbing to tier one right now. And you kind of wonder if it's like this permanent class system in the Big Ten because there is still a large gap between them and your Ohio states, in your Oregons, and even Michigan last year came in there. I know it was a close game on the scoreboard, but I was there. And line of scrimmage was not competitive. It just wasn't. And physically you just wonder. Okay, well, are we in the process of moving towards putting together the kind of roster and the kind of personnel that look like that? Well, let's go to the paper. I don't know what the roster strategy is. Now, look, I'm assuming Matt Rule and company have a lot more firm grasp on what they're doing than me. I'm not questioning them. I'm just saying I don't get what they're doing. Because recruiting per rivals the last four years, 29th, 24th, 21st, 98th, 98th. Finished distantly behind the likes of Purdue this past cycle. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, in this modern age, that usually just means, oh, they must have killed it in the portal. Right? They used up all of those resources in the portal portal rankings last four years, 32, 33. 22, 32. So we're recruiting in the 90s. Barely. We are not top 30 in Portal. Our quarterback of the future bailed. His replacement didn't even put bed sheets on his bed in his dorm before he bailed. And then we went and got a kit from unlv. That's got to work out for us. But even if it does, is the state of this roster1 where four years in, we really feel like we're. We're surging? We love the trajectory we're on. I don't know. That's why we're waiting on the world to change at Nebraska. I think that's a fair mood right now. That's our show hour 21st week in March. Whomstead have thunk it. We would appreciate you guys so much. As far as we can tell, usual schedule this week. So sometime Tuesday, probably Wednesday. We'll drop a Paint State Extra podcast there in your podcast feeds and then we'll be back Thursday for our normal show here. Spring, guys. Spring. Enjoy it. We deserve this. We worked for this, we prayed for this and we have earned this. Get yourself a mild sunburn for director Bradley for producer Jesse, I'm Josh Pate. Take care. Have a great start to your week and God Bless.
- [91:05]
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- [91:48]
Main Host / Analyst
or
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text hopeny in New York.
- [91:50]
Josh Pate
At CVS it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night. And we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At cvs, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So Visit us@cvs.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.
- [92:26]
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Janice Torres here and I'm Austin Hankwitz. We host the podcast Mind the Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks.
- [92:35]
Josh Pate
We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners.
- [92:39]
Main Host / Analyst
The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever evolving, ever changing. Everyone's a rookie. That's how fast the industry is changing. So what I'm really excited about is to be part of that change. So listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
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- [93:52]
Josh Pate
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.