Main Host / Analyst (2:03)
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.
