← Josh Pate's College Football Show
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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human new year.
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Such a weird time in college football right now because on one hand, we're guaranteed to have a great story no matter how the national championship game turns out. On the other hand, half of you're telling me you're completely fed up with how the portal's operating. And there's some stuff to love. There's some stuff to hate. I happen to think we're just right smack dab in the middle of, I don't know, for lack of a better term, a hurricane. And that won't last forever. So, you know, maybe if you're turned off by certain aspects of the sport, just kind of ignore those for a little while. Maybe they are variables. Maybe they're temporaries. They're not constants. We're jam packed. We're high atop what was a sunny downtown Nashville, Tennessee today. I assume it's dark. We don't have a skylight in the studio. New studio, you can't tell, but new studio. Our folks have done a great job in here. Nashville skyline. Look at that. The neon over here in the background. Sunday, January 11th, the year of our Lord 2026. So, gigantic stack of papers in front of me. I've got some early thoughts on the national championship game, but we're not doing the full game breakdown tonight. But the portal. The portal has lost its mind since the last time you and I spoke. And I will discuss. I mean, the quarterback situation alone warrants an entire 10 minute conversation. So I won't go too heavy on the portal. Tonight. But we'll go like kind of sort of moderately heavy on the portal. You got a huge mailbag. I mean, we opened up the mailbag earlier today. The mail runs on a Sunday here on this campus, and, man, we got flooded. So we're going all sorts of different directions. A lot of Dan Lanning doubters out there. All of a sudden, hoops to monks us could have seen that coming. By the way, someone asked about targeting, which just gives me a perfect opportunity to swing the baseball bat at the pinata that is targeting not just in college football, but this is a college football show. But it's just a football problem right now. So it's going to be a fun, lively mailbag tonight. And they're watching us. Yes, they're watching us in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and Spokane, Washington, and Denville, New Jersey, and Anderson, South Carolina. Thank you guys so much. Just do me one additional favor and subscribe to the channel. Most of you already have. Let's just be real. Most of our live audience has already subscribed. I know many of you will watch this on replay tomorrow and the next day and the next day. So make sure you and your cousins and mother and father and Meemaw and Peepaw, you're all subscribed. It doesn't cost you anything. It just helps us out. And we always thank you in advance because I know you will. All right, let's dive into the show. So here's what I would like to do. I told you I'm not going to do the full game breakdown tonight. But what I will do, because we will be probably in Miami this time a week from tonight on the eve of the national championship game, which we inexplicably wait until January 19th to play Bradley. Here's a good endpoint for you. Some early thoughts on the national championship game. Miami, Indiana. All right, so the outcome obviously gives us a memorable story. It gives a national championship to a program that in Indiana's case, no one ever thought could win one. In Miami's case, people said couldn't win one anymore. Somehow the sport had passed them by. Like, I never really understood that train of thought. Then there were other people who thought Mario Cristobal couldn't win it. I got where they were going, even if I disagreed with them. So we're going to get a memorable story either way. But more so than the storyline business, this is kind of the football business. And we're looking at a football game. So I had some questions I wrote down. First question, can Carson Beck play a Clean game. What he did on the last drive, for instance, against Ole Miss, you bottle that up, that's good enough to win a national championship. That's good enough to beat Indiana. Now, it's asking a lot to get that for four quarters, I will grant you that. Indiana, number one team in the country in turnover margin, they're averaging one and a half of them per game. And so Carson Beck, in those two losses they had earlier this year, one of which we were on hand for, the other one was Louisville, he had six interceptions combined in those two losses. I don't think it's the most groundbreaking padlock stat in the world to understand if you turn over the ball, especially against Indiana, you're going to lose the game. But it all boils down to, also for me, what Miami needs him to do. Because Indiana is really good at forcing teams to feel like they need to do 120% of what they normally do, or they need to do something above and beyond what they normally do. And to beat Indiana, frankly, most teams do need to do something above and beyond what they normally do. But if you've made it to the national championship game, you got to believe that your best is good enough. You got to believe Carson Beck's best is good enough. So that's the first question. Second question, will Indiana's offensive line win against Miami? So the other night at the semifinal game, Peach bowl down there in Atlanta, which I'm still worried about being deposed as a witness to, it was tough to watch what they did to Oregon. It's tough to watch, but it's the first time I'd seen Indiana in person this year, and I think ever. And boy, it's impressive to watch their offensive line. So just the. The technical efficiency. I don't really care if you coach the offensive line position. If you've played the offensive line position, of course, you guys could look at what they're doing and marvel at it. I think we could pull someone off the street who's never watched a down of American football and show them a Saturday's worth of games and then turn on an Indiana game. And even they'd be impressed by it. And they don't really even know the names of the positions, but they're like, wow, they just look like they're doing whatever it is they're supposed to do it. A little bit higher level than everyone else. Yup, that's about the only breakdown you need. So our buddies over at College Football Nerds put out a tweet that I wanted to read to you because it's really what I'm talking about here. Will Indiana's offensive line win against Miami? Twofold, obviously run blocking, pass pro. But they put out something that I kind of go back to in my own mind and it's Indiana versus, you know, the Iowas of the world, the Penn States of the world earlier this year. You can Ohio State. You're thinking back to anyone who kind of took Indiana to the limit, took him to the fourth quarter. No one's beaten him yet. We really don't know what it takes to beat them. But our buddies of college football nerds put out a stat and said if you look at their season and all the close games, Penn State, Iowa, Ohio State, Indiana was held under three and a half yards per carry. Every time Indiana ran for 4 yards per carry versus a power four team, they won by 25 plus. Okay, so basically we're asking what kind of clip do they run it at against Miami? That's the first part. The second part is it'll probably be the best pass rush I would imagine Indiana seen all year. So I'm not sitting here doubting their offensive line. I've learned my lesson. There's. But I do wonder to what degree do they have success against Miami? Third question. Can Miami prevent Indiana explosive plays? Stopping to run with four would help a lot there. Indiana does it all the time. But you know, you could do it against them as well. Miami has been able to do that conditionally just at times this year. Ole Miss sort of a. An interesting number here. Ole miss had eight passes of 15 plus yards. They had that big cat buster run as well. Man. Look, all I'm saying is when I was watching Indiana against Oregon the other night, one of Oregon's big problems was turning the ball over. But the other problem they had was Fernando Mendoza was just dealing and he was making some NFL Sunday throws. And so when you got that recipe, if you didn't turn the ball over, he's probably beating you. If he's in that kind of rhythm, he's in that kind of zone. But Indiana has several capable receivers. Becker coming on to the nation. He's kind of come on second half of the year. There's just. There's no shutting down one guy and then crowbarring their offense to a halt. So how much can you limit their explosives? I wonder if Miami's ground game is going to be there and it has been this entire postseason. Miami's been able to run the ball. They've run it 150 plus. Each college football Playoff game, they did it on the road against A and M. And then the bigger test was going to be Ohio State. And they did it against Ohio State. They did it against Ole Miss. You're going to do it against Indiana. That kind of circles back around to the first thing I asked about. Carson Beck playing a clean game. This number is starting to circulate a little bit. I'm going to go ahead and read it on the show right now. I promise you, you're going to hear this one or two dozen times between now and kickoff. Indiana's Defensive line averages 278 yard or not yards. Indiana's defensive line averages 278 pounds. Miami's offensive line averages 331. Again, you're going to hear it over and over and over again. Now, the more you hear a stat does not render it less relevant, but what I've come to find is the more and more of the general public starts to latch onto a stat, the more and more you're watching the game and talking about it less and less. I don't know. That just sometimes seems to be the way it works. So the other thing about facing Indiana is a lot of teams don't get to stick to the run because they put you behind the eight ball and you got to throw the ball to catch up. And then everything just goes horribly wrong. So Penn State is the closest comp that I can see because Penn State stayed within reach. Penn State took the lead on them. So the game was played pretty balanced. It was played pretty straight up. Penn State had 33 carries for 117 yards. Now, I think if you told Indiana right now you're going to hold Miami to 117 yards, they wouldn't be happy with it because in their mind they think they can do better than that. So maybe, maybe instead of telling them, tell me that they're going to hold Miami to 117. I think Indiana's won that football game. That's just my hunch. I think they got a 7030 shot or better at winning that game. So it greatly behooves Miami to top that 117, maybe even top 150 like they have every game. And then lastly to just go full intangible mode, who gets impacted by the moment more? This is a national championship game, after all. It's the first time either of these coaching staffs have been in this kind of arena. It's the first time these coaching staffs and these rosters have really been in this kind of arena. I Know, some of them have transferred, like Carson Beck's played some big games, but man, this is the biggest game of everyone's life. It's just no need to sugarcoat that. Or I guess we are sugarcoating it, but that's reality. Now. That does some funny things to get guys sometimes and other times it just serves as a mechanism to further lock guys in. And you don't really know until you're there. I listen to people talk about being veterans of the NFL and playing 10, 11 years. Finally you get to your first super bowl and they talk about how it felt. Well, that's the same way in college, except no one's a veteran in college. No player is a veteran. I mean, and I'm even speaking about the era of the Carson Becks who were fifth and sixth year players. Man, that's the closest we get to veteran college football players. And hardly any of them have played in a national championship game. So I'm looking at the uncharacteristic decisions and mistakes. Miami was heavily penalized last game. They had done a good job up until last game of limiting those. But as for the entire season, you're looking at a team in Indiana that was number two in the country and penalty yards per game. Miami was 85th. I also know a lot's going to be made of home field. It is a big deal to me that Miami gets to play in their home building. But as for, as for the home field advantage, I witnessed, I witnessed, I mean, I witnessed Indiana take over Atlanta, like Indy, like Atlanta hasn't been taken over since Sherman. I was trying to get my history in order in my head. They took that place over. I don't think Indiana is going to be outnumbered in Miami. I don't care that it is Miami's home building. I've looked at SeatGeek. I got a big deal for you later. By the way, if you're looking to buy tickets, don't buy them yet. I got a big deal for you. Buy them in like an hour. So those are just some early thoughts from me. We're going to obviously pick the game as the game gets closer, but right now, Indiana a seven and a half point favorite. Seven and a half. And just for the record, I did hit up our friends at FanDuel and I said, let's go back to week one. Pretend these teams played, let's say in Nashville in week one. Neutral field, Indiana, Miami. What would the number have been before I tell you? What would you guess? By the way, think back. This is week one not, not week 13 or 14 they told me they would have put Miami minus six and a half on the board. It is now Indiana minus seven and a half once we have the actual game. So about a two touchdown swing in odds making perception. Does that mean anything when the game kicks off? No, it does not. I just thought it would be of some interest to you. You know we'll be at that game. I guess I haven't announced it, but now I am announcing it. We'll be there courtesy of our friends at Quick Trip Fueling us just all around the country. We pretty much go wherever we want. You know, back in the day, if I wanted to venture down the street to a friend's house, I just have to let mom or dad know, hop on the bike, non gas powered and I would go. These days it's pretty much the same thing except we pick up the phone, we call Quick Trip Joe qt. Joe QTJ in the I Josh and we let him know, hey man, we need to go to Miami. And he says, all right, well, here's your fuel. You're on your own with hotels. No hotel sponsor on the show. We're not seeking it out. We wouldn't turn it down if it presented itself to us. But what we do have is we've got Kwik Trip. They are the wind in our sails. Only we don't have to rely on wind now because, you know, we've advanced technologically and they've taken us all around the country on the Fallout Live tour. Our last stop, obviously will be the national championship game in Miami next Monday night. Looking forward to that.
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Alrighty. There's a lot of names on this piece of paper in front of me, Jesse. I mean, is this real? I've never look at the amount, the amount of highlighter on this piece of paper. That can only mean one thing. Transfer Portal's gone off the rails a little bit. I got to be real with you. Transfer Portal conditionally is a turn off for me because I miss the old school ways of talent acquisition in college football. And I know many of you feel that way too. But I also know everybody who's watching the show is a college football fan, which means you root for a team. Which means even if you don't like the way the portal works, you want it to work for you. It's working. I'm looking at the quarterback position right now. I'm looking at Sam Levitt. He's the number one overall player in the portal, obviously by way of Arizona State visited lsu. Really interesting times on that visit to lsu. Really interesting times after he left campus. You know, it's one thing to visit campus and get a lot of attention from the head coach and then it's another thing to leave campus and then the head Coach, like, chases you down the driveway, which Lane Kiffin pretty much did. So he was at Miami this weekend, and it still hasn't made a decision as of 7:15pm on this Sunday night, January 11th. I have to always caveat it because half the time, by the time we go off the air, guys have committed somewhere. That's one to watch. All right, that's the big one. That's the domino. Everyone's waiting to fall. Byron Brown has fallen in a good way. He's fallen right into the waiting arms of Alex Gollish. It sounds romantic, but it's really just the Portal. So he was Golish, his quarterback, obviously, at USF this year, he was the number two quarterback in the Portal. It's really a huge deal because they've had a lot of attrition there. I don't think it's all a bad thing. But then again, I'm not looking for every coach who takes a job to immediately, you know, be a top four seed in the playoffs the next year. What I'm looking for Alex Goelish to do at Auburn is sort of wipe. Wipe the slate clean. Sort of clean the deck. And there's a lot of clutter on the deck. Sometimes that's in the form of bad habits. Sometimes it's just straight up in the form of guys who don't need to be on the roster. And then other times, you're going to lose some guys that you wish you could have retained. This is not a fairy tale world, much like Shawshank in the movie. Prison is not a fairy tale world. Neither is the Portal. But this was a good addition, Byron Brown, because what you have to sometimes do is take a new job and you either inherit a quarterback or you go portal in a quarterback. But either way, he's got to learn your system. Well, this guy doesn't. And Golish is bringing more guys from usf. So, you know, in the old school, you look down your nose at importing G5 players. We're Auburn University. This is the loveliest village on the place. We don't need G5 players. Come on now. Kurt Signetti says you don't need. What? What'd you say? Nothing. Nothing. Mr. Mr. Signetti. Carry on. So no one really looks down their nose as much as they used to at that concept. Brendan Sorsby is at Texas Tech now. That's officially done. I saw the reports. Yes. Before anyone even asks me, yes, I am aware that the reported price tag here is $5 million. Yes. It's insane to me. Yes. If that number is accurate, it's more than over half a dozen starting NFL quarterbacks made this year. Again, I don't know that this is the permanent landscape of the sport, but it is right now. So I'm not going to get mad at Texas Tech. I'm going to get mad at like 37 other people that made this possible. Probably more than 37 culprits in the room. As is usually the case with these people, there's never one face that we can attach to this problem. But the problem with Texas Tech, which was obvious in the playoff game, was they weren't dynamic enough at quarterback. That was kind of something I said all year about Baron Morton. This is not some anti Baron Morton thing. It was just, are we talking about trying to win the Big 12 or are we talking about trying to win the national championship? They're talking about both there, for the record. So they were going to be good enough to do one and not good enough to do the other. At least as I saw it happened to be right on that one. Thankfully, not thankfully for Texas Tech, but I remember after the game I was Talking to Joey McGuire after the game. Cause it's right back to campus. You got to dive right into the portal. And like we were just, you know, he was disappointed because they just lost in the playoff and they had a really good season this year. And I said, hey, you just put a gigantic chunk of peanut butter on the bread. You just got to spread it out a little bit more. Feels like you got a million elite defensive linemen. You know, maybe we spread the peanut butter a little bit more. Well, they did. They allocated some of that peanut butter or as you might know it, cash at the quarterback position. And they may have gotten the best one available from Cincinnati. So that's Texas Tech. What about Longstreet into the portal? Husson, Longstreet out of USC now. He was at LSU as recently as today. On three's got all this covered by the way. Nacos and Wilfong and the boys over at On3 are covering all this and it's updating by the hour. I actually have alerts set for Wilfong and Pete right now and I don't set alerts for anyone. Jesse, I don't have alert set for you. I don't have alert set for anyone. But I do have alert set for Pete and Steve right now. Number 19 overall player, number six quarterback. Oregon one to watch here to an extent. But LSU, like LSU's got to get a quarterback. LSU still in the market right now. So everyone's kind of waiting to see how they move. So that's one we're watching. DJ Lagway. Obviously, I have a disproportionate fascination here. Like, I have a vested interest emotionally, with DJ Lagway because I famously made him my number one SEC quarterback entering the season. And we were flying to Phoenix the other day. We were flying through. It's either New Mexico or Arizona, where that big asteroid hit out there. You can see it clear as day. And we're looking down at it. And it reminded me a lot of my DJ Lagway prediction, honestly, because it just cratered into the Earth. It was a terrible, terrible year for myself and DJ Lagway, in that order. But what you need to know is I have not given up on DJ Lagway. Now, Florida did. John Sumrall did, which is okay. Okay. It's his constitutional right to put together his roster. It's also my right to go down with the ship. TJ Lagway is my ship. And if he goes down, I'm going down with him. I just don't quite know where we're going to go down yet. Are we going to go down at Baylor or somewhere else? Because we're doing this weird thing right now where guys commit even though they're in the portal, and there's no need to commit because commitments are worthless until you sign. Why are we committing? No one knows. Anyway, he's committed in the portal to Baylor, but he's still taking visits. I do not trust anyone's word on this. If Memaw were in the portal, I would trust Meemaw. But outside of Meemaw, I would not trust anyone's word in the portal, Respectfully. That goes for DJ Lagway. So Baylor had the number four passing offense in the country last year. I still believe in DJ Lagway. I still believe in Dave Aranda. So I would like the three of us to just lock arms and see what we can do in Waco. Okay? Magic things, magical things can happen in Waco. Terrible things can happen in Waco. All right. It's really dealer's choice in Waco, Texas, this upcoming year. Deuce Knight has landed at Spin the Wheel. Ole Miss. We've all obviously, by now, I assume, seen the headline that Trinidad Chambliss had his waiver denied by the ncaa. I know they're going to fight that thing out in court. I am not a lawyer. Pate State Law School, very prestigious. I just did not come from the law school side. Of campus. And as for now, Deuce Knight, Auburn to Ole Miss. Look, maybe he starts for them this year. Maybe he sits one year. He's got a ton of potential. I mean he was a five star in the class of 2025. So he just went to Auburn. And nothing at Auburn worked out this year, including Deuce Knight. But I mean the word on him out of high school was he was pretty raw to begin with. But once he gets developed, if he gets developed, he's a little over six'4,210 thereabouts. He's the number 49 overall player in the on3 portal rankings. I think his upside's way higher than that. It's just unrealized potential. Kenny Menchie, what a world. What a world, what a story. So Kenny Menshee last week was committed. There's that word again. To Nebraska. He verbaled, if you will, to Nebraska. And it was all done but the signature on the paper. It was all done but the most important part. And then he wasn't. Kenny Menchie just ripped Nebraska's heart out and Will Compton's heart out in the process. And he's now landed at Kentucky. Kentucky's doing some good things and they've added other players as well. But I'm thinking about Nebraska. Like you guys thought for several days you had your portal quarterback, then you don't and so what are you going to do? I got a disturbing call from Will Compton the other night. I thought his family was in trouble. I thought his home had been broken into. He used some very serious language and. And in reality all he was calling to inform me of was Kenny Minchee had sort of, you know, hoodwinked Nebraska and he was headed to Kentucky and he was desperate. And that is where Anthony Calandria of UNLV fame enters the equation. And I gotta tell you, I think it's gonna be a great fit at Nebraska. But don't take my word for it. We have Jesse. I think this is a pretty exclusive. We have exclusively obtained the Will Compton scouting report of Anthony Calandria. You see it right here. Okay, these are, these are inarguable. Super live. Arm full of piss and vinegar, magic in his legs, total gamer. What more could you want if you were Matt Rule? Has it ever been more obvious that a double digit win season is incoming than it is at Lincoln Nebraska with Anthony Calandria just tooting the horn there in the engine? They're fine, they're fine. And if you didn't believe it before, Willie C's scouting Report there. You got to believe it now. Austin Simmons to Missouri, which I don't know why a bigger deal is not being made about this. Maybe it is and I've just missed it. But this is a huge deal to me. It's extremely underrated. What is it rated? Well, it doesn't look rated very high. He was the number 115 overall player in the ON3 portal rankings. I'm not on the committee. I disagree. But whatever. Cleanup turnovers get him healthy and that's a really good player. So Eli Drinkwitz got himself a quarterback that I didn't know that they were going to be able to get. They got him. This is semi old news. I just. We haven't talked about it on the show yet. And then the other one that I have circled, everyone has circled is Dylan Raiola. The Curious case of Dylan Raiola. So he's in the portal and Oregon, according to Pete Nakos, is where he's visiting. I think he's up there even right now. And reportedly Oregon is still a potential destination even if Dante Moore returns and doesn't go to the draft. Which would be ironic because that would put Dylan Raiola on the Dante Moore path. Remember, Dante Moore once upon a time was committed to Oregon and, and then decommitted, went to UCLA and then he came back and he sat behind a guy for a year and then he assumed the reins this year and that might end up being what Dylan Raiola does. So like I told you, there are a million and one things going on in the portal right now. It's very important to follow if you really, really, really want to be up on roster retention construction. I mean, those are just quarterbacks that I talked about. I got a whole nother segment coming later about some of the other stuff going on. But I do understand if you're turned off by it, it's okay. It's okay to just, just hit fast forward on that part of the show. I do get it. I understand it's not for everyone. What is for everyone, perhaps especially if you're a Miami or Indiana fan, is the national championship games next Monday night. We have fresh hints. The paper's still kind of hot. Jesse just handed it to me. We have secured a great deal with SeatGeek. They've never agreed to this kind of deal with us. So national championship game is in Miami next Monday night. We'll be there. Many of you want to be there. I know you've seen the ticket market. I know it's pricey. So a lot of Times, we'll get you, like, 10% off, but in this case, we just need to get you more. And I just need to guarantee you the amount of money I'm going to get you discounted. So if you're buying tickets to the national championship game, I'm getting you $100 off your order, and that is if you enter the promo code. Pate 100. Pate 100 at checkout. I know it's pricey. This is the way I've always looked at this. If you're a Miami fan, if you're an Indiana fan, you hope that this is the first of many, but you don't know. You do not know. So I heard Colin Cowherd a long time ago gave me my entire philosophy on this sort of thing in life, and that is, lease your fun, but buy your memories. So obviously, man, that's a hefty price tag that you're going to have to pay. A lot of people spend money on, like, speedboats. A lot of people spend money on all sorts of things that are kind of commodities that, honestly, you could just lease or just borrow your friends or go find a friend who has it all. That was my strategy growing up. But the memories are invaluable. So, like, if I'm going to spend $3,300 on a thing over here or spend $3,300 on a memory, I've always been a buy the memory kind of guy. Luckily, we can get you a little bit of a discount on it. Pay 100. But I'm speaking philosophy right now. If you're on the fence, if you can't afford it, you can't afford it. I know it sucks that prices are what they are. Trust me, I've been bitten by that many, many, many times in my former life before I fooled people into credentialing me to these games. I get it. I have lived in that world for years and years and years. If you can swing it, I highly advise it. I mean, ask Indiana fans that were in Atlanta the other day. That's a memory. No one takes that from you. Even the NCAA can't take that from you. All right, let's move on. Now, they try all the time, but I got Michigan buddies who still swear by the fact that that night in Houston a couple of years ago is one of the best memories of their lives. And come what may from the ncaa, man, the portal's insane. All right, I talked about quarterbacks, like, in an entire separate part of the show earlier tonight. If you're Just watching this video, I did a whole thing on the quarterback. So when I don't mention quarterback here. That's why Texas has gone off. Texas is all in. Texas is going to be a lot of preseason picks to win the national championship this upcoming year. Maybe mine, I don't know. But they just went and got Cam Coleman. This has all happened today. A lot of this has happened today. Cam Coleman from Auburn, he was the number one overall player in the portal. Former five star wide receiver, all the talent in the world. And this dude is going from the Peyton Thorne, Jackson Arnold experience to the Arch Manning Steve Sarkeesian experience. And that is what we in life call an upgrade. So congratulations to Steve Sarkeesian and Cam Coleman and everybody involved out there because I would say him and Wingo probably enter the season as one of, if not the best one, two combos in college football. Ohio State always has something to say about that, but I'm going to say one of, but that's not all. Relik Brown from Arizona State is a tailback who had committed a day or so ago, I think, which sort of triggered Hollywood Smothers, the NC State running back to Alabama. And it was one of those commitments which we have since learned mean absolutely nothing. They mean even less than when kids are coming out of high school. So today Texas decided, no, we just want both of them. And so they went and also purchased. Is that the right word? I mean, is anyone else uncomfortable with me saying this? Listen, this is big boy college football right now. Texas went and also decided they wanted to purchase Hollywood Smothers. Why settle for one when you can have both? So they've totally, totally retooled their tailback room. Like all their tailbacks left and they just imported new ones. And then they for good measure looked and said, well, we need to play defense as well. So Rasheed Biles, number one overall linebacker in the portal at Pitt. Let's add him supermarket sweep style. Oh, there's a, There's a top 50 corner from Rutgers. Let's knock him in the basket. It's an all in season. If you don't understand what I'm saying. It's an all in season for Texas. Then they're probably not done. South Carolina had to make something happen on the offensive line and they did. Jacarius Peak was an offensive tackle. He's going to play left tackle for him. 38 games over three seasons. South Carolina was woeful last year in this department. They were 131st in sacks allowed. And so it's One thing to get the quarterback back like Lenora Sellers. Didn't go anywhere and good. How refreshing for high profile players to just stay somewhere. That's great, but it doesn't matter if you can't protect him. So running the ball pass pro. These basic concepts of offense, that's what they're looking to rectify here. Tennessee is in the process of importing a defense now. It started with Josh Hyple going and getting Jim Knowles, who I guess was not retained at Penn State, which has been a weird 24 months for Jim Knowles. He's on top of the world. They win a national championship at Ohio State and then he decides to leave and he goes to Penn State right in time for the whole staff to get shown the door. And now he's in Knoxville of all places. I don't know why I said it that way. I just, I didn't see that coming 24 months ago. Anyway, so Jim Knowles comes in. Obviously he knows the Penn State defense very well. And they've gone and they've taken several guys. Chaz Coleman, who for all the world I thought was headed to Ohio State when he entered the portal. Number five overall player, huge upside. He's got the kind of skill that when you look back may make you say he should have been rated number one in the portal. Could be an elite pass rusher. They thought he was on his way to being that at Penn State. Well, now if he's going to do it, he's going to do it in Knoxville. Amari Campbell, big time linebacker. He was Penn State's leading tackler last year. He's headed to Tennessee. Xavier Gilliam, the defensive tackle, Lane, the safety. So why does Tennessee feel the need to do this? Cause they fell off a cliff defensively. That's why. They were number six in total D two years ago and number 92 last year. And I remember we were at SEC media days and all the Tennessee folks were like, yeah, we'll take a step back. Defensively, you took leaps and leaps and leaps backwards. You're supposed to leap forward, but sometimes you leap backwards or fall backwards, so that was necessary. Michigan, as expected, is seeing some churn. Some of it's good, some of it not good. The best currently is the fact that John Henry Daly, who was the number one overall edge player in the portal, he's headed to Ann Arbor. He was at Utah. He follows Kyle Whittingham. 6, 4, 2, 55. He had 11 and a half sacks in 11 games last year. So he's a really, really good Player, he'll fit right in. Jamie French, also former top 150 player in the on three high school rankings. He's a big time talent at wide receiver. Two Fs in the last name, mind you. And then Justice Haynes headed elsewhere when healthy was really good for Michigan last year. Number 21 overall player in the portal rankings. And I was looking at some of Nacos and Wilt Fong's reporting on this and Georgia Tech's been mentioned. Georgia Tech's been mentioned for a number of guys, so they're not sitting still either. And just go back to the state of Texas right quick. Everyone's making moves out here. So A and M and Texas Tech are looking down the road in Austin and saying, I mean it's basically Southwest Conference mode. You think you're about to outspend us? Absolutely not. And so Texas Tech currently has the number 15, number 16, number 17, number 52 and number 58 rated players in the portal. They're crystal balled for the number 14 rated player in the portal. And this is the Texas Tech way right now. Now look, it's not like they're sitting back and not recruiting high school because they're recruiting high school very well too. They just understand in the interim we have to, we have to go about it in a little bit different way. I mean we don't have like a Georgia roster or an Ohio State roster just sitting here at our disposal. They got the number one portal class in the country right now. I thought A and M made a big move today too. They got Isaiah Horton. Isaiah Horton was a go to guy for Alabama this past year. Most of the big touchdown catches that you saw them have were Isaiah Horton and, and now he is at Texas A and M. And that's one that because there's so much movement, it won't get talked about a whole lot. That's the kind of guy in big games for them next year. It's not theoretical, it's proven. You can depend on him. Speaking of Texas, they're watching us in Prosper Texas, they're watching us in Elk Grove, California and Moline, Illinois. Thank you guys so much. I mentioned we checked the mailbag today and it's a good thing Jesse doesn't check the mail as often as he needs to. And so that thing was just loaded. They probably think we moved or we died. It's just overflowing with great questions. So I'm going to hit several of them right now. We had a couple of questions that are basically about Indiana. So Sean asked One and then Ohio divided, asked another one. And so you see them on the screen. If you can't see them on the screen, what I'm going to do is I'm going to read the first one and then Bradley, I'll just have you throw this back up in a second. I'll read the second one. So the first one from Sean in Rochester, New York. He said you said Cinderellas would never happen in college football. Well, isn't Indiana somewhat of a Cinderella? They've got eight, four or five star players, there's a huge talent deficit and they still throttled Alabama and Oregon. Cinderellas have great coaching and they play harder than their opponents. Yeah, I see where you're going with that. I absolutely said that. The College Football Playoff expanding completely eliminated the chances we would ever have at seeing a Cinderella run. Indiana is not a Cinderella, at least as I define it. Now, you may define Cinderella differently. I define a Cinderella as a have not in college football, making a run to play for or win a national championship. So Indiana is not a have not. Indiana is a has not. There is no way that a Big Ten or an SEC school could ever be classified as a Cinderella. To me. I understand the history of the sport has seen Indiana be terrible in football forever. If you are affiliated with the Big Ten or the sec, you are not a have not. You just aren't. Everything financially about the table of college football is tilted in your favor. And it has been more so recently than ever before. So there will never be a Cinderella story from the Big Ten or the sec. You could argue from the power four, but especially from the Big Ten of the sec. Now, that's not to say I'm shortchanged in Indiana. Indiana may be the best story in college football I've seen in several, several, several years, maybe in my life. Although I don't like to say that as the story is still being written. So, I mean, got all the respect and admiration in the world from what they're doing, for what they're doing. I don't classify it as a Cinderella story. Here's what the Cinderella story would be. The Cinderella story would have been had SIG stayed at JMU and took JMU on this run. That would be the Cinderella story at Indiana. It's just an incredible story. It's an unfathomable story. It's not a Cinderella story. The Cinderella story is the have not making the run. Give you a little bit of an example here. Fernando Mendoza just won the Heisman. Indiana's not where they are right now, without Fernando Mendoza, right, they spent reportedly about two, two and a half million dollars on Mendoza, which, which just means they got him on the cheap relative to the quarterback market right now. But let's say two and a half million dollars, that alone is a higher price tag than the entire payroll of all the G5 teams. So that's not a Cinderella story. It is a superb job of evaluating talent and acquiring the talent and then plugging them into an incredible system. And you don't need to sell me on the efficiency and the execution level and all the coaching and the buy in. All that stuff is a plus in Indiana. That's different than it being a Cinderella story. All right, so that's the Cinderella part of it. Now Bradley, throw the questions back up because there was another question about recruiting rankings that everyone thinks Indiana has shot a hole in Ohio State, divided, hit me up and said, is high school recruiting dead? Not at all. It's just evolved. It's just evolved. All these folks like to compare the NFL to college football, which I hate. But let me use their arguments against them. Not you per se, but let me use their arguments against them. Would you ever hear NFL fans watch a team acquire big time free agent talents and those free agent talents lead a team to the super bowl and say, well, I guess, I guess the draft is dead? No, it'd be stupid. The draft is never dead. Recruiting is never dead. And I don't really even care if in what context you're asking the question. It's not dead. The reason I say that is there are a couple of different contexts in which people are talking about high school recruiting right now in the wake of Indiana making this run they've made. The first is, well, high school recruiting's dead. Cause now you just need to portal your team in, which is a fallacy. I think most people who understand roster construction know that there is another group of people out there saying recruiting rankings are dead. In a sense that recruiting rankings are flawed. Because if recruiting rankings were accurate, then these former three stars wouldn't be like torching their way through these rosters littered with four and five star talent. And I'm looking at that and I assume what you're saying is you're saying that recruiting rankings aren't the end all be all. But here's the thing, no one ever said they were. I'll make my argument here. I can't speak for anyone else. What I've always thought about recruiting rankings in a 50,000 foot perspective is that they are the greatest tool at predictive success in college football. They have been for a long time not perfect, but the best tool we have. And anyone who disagrees with that, I would encourage you to hit rewind 30 seconds and listen to what I actually said. Because sometimes I think when people disagree with that, they heard what you didn't say. So hear what I did say and then if you still disagree, I want you to tell me what better tool is there for predictive college football success than high school recruiting rankings, team rankings? I don't think you have one. You can anecdotally pull me examples of two stars that have gone on to be first round draft picks. You can anecdotally pull me examples of 5 stars that ended up never doing anything. But see, I never denied that those exist. I said it's an imperfect system that still remains the best predictor of success. With that in mind, every rule in life, at least every rule in sports, has an exception to it. You're looking at a glaring exception in Indiana. But guys, I don't even know if it's this massive exception to the rule that everyone's making it out to be like. Everyone keeps putting these graphics up about how many former four and five star recruits they have versus your Oregons or your Alabamas and then they run roughshod over those teams. It's like, oh man, I guess those players were overrated. I guess Indiana's players were underrated. Hey, conditionally, maybe some of them were on each side of that coin. Could I also present you that talent does matter a whole lot here, but so does development and so does experience, and so does age. And I've always thought there is a glaring inefficiency just in player ratings in general, but not high school ratings. I've always wondered why in the world we rate kids out of high school and then stop when they're in college and the next time we rate them is when they're going out for the draft. Like, to me, I'm not passionate enough about this to do it, but like I've told Shannon before, said, hey man, if I were going to invest in manpower and resource, what I would do is I would build an entire department to put living, breathing grades on every active college football player. It's a huge undertaking. Of course it is. I think it'd be worthwhile. Here's what I think you'd see. What I think you'd see is, let's just take a random Indiana 3 star, all right? I'm speaking generically here. There are going to be exceptions on both Sides of this. Let's say you got an undersized kid, comes out of Muncie, Indiana and he doesn't get offers from Ohio State and Notre Dame and Indiana takes him, all right? And he's a three star and then he's a freshman and he doesn't play and then he's a second year guy and he doesn't play third year guy, special teams and he's a reserve. Fourth year he starts to get in, he's using his red shirt years. So then by his fifth year he's a big time player. Sometimes you get a medical. Then these guys that got Covid years, they're in their sixth year, you're over half a decade older, you're over half a decade removed from your high school recruiting ranking. Now let's say you've been in a program for those six years that is a plus at development, a at culture, a plus at strength and conditioning, a at nutrition, a at everything it takes to take a former three star and and cultivate them. What do you think that kid could be six years later? And then what do you think a whole group of them could be six years later? So what I'm trying to say is I don't just look at the 23 year old former three star and think because he's playing out of his mind that the recruiting industry missed when they ranked him. I think people need to properly understand what a recruiting ranking is. A recruiting ranking is at 17 or 18 years old when you get spat out of high school, a talent based measurement of who you are or who guys subjectively think you are when they're grading you. It doesn't measure you from the neck up. First off, because you can't grade kids mentally because you don't have that kind of access to them. So what are you grading? You're grading high school film, some combine type stuff. If they go to camps and things of that nature, you're probably a little bit influenced by their offer sheet and you can debate whether that has merit or not. But by and large you're talking about a snapshot of an athletic profile of a guy when they're 17 years old. Some of these guys are 23 years old. So if I take a 23 year old former three star who's done everything the right way inside the walls of a great program and I put him up against an 18 year old freshman five star and he whips his tail, that's not automatically an indictment on the recruiting industry to me as much as it is a reflection of what age and experience do in relation to talent when talent is raw versus a grown man. That to me has been Indiana football this year. And then the other thing that I would say is maybe it is the case that it takes a healthy look at how you're grading guys, but that should be happening anyway. If Indiana serves to be a wake up call, so be it. But I always think that the recruiting industry as a whole should be evaluating itself. It should be quality controlling itself. And maybe if Indiana serves as some wake up call, okay. It hasn't been the indictment on the recruiting industry and the star rating system and the team ranking system that I've seen a lot of people make it out to be. That's all I'm saying. I do not view it the same way that many people do. And no, I certainly don't think high school recruiting is dead. I challenge you to find me anybody that's about to build for long term sustained success. That is not, first and foremost prioritizing high school recruiting. I'm not asking you. Are there examples to the contrary? I'm not asking you're going to point out Texas Tech to me. And if I had Joey McGuire on the show right now, if I, Cody Campbell on the show right now, they tell you, dude, we're heavily leaning into high school recruiting. Heavily leaning into it, heavily investing in it. That's what it'll always be about. I'm looking at a lot of these schools right now. The model. The model to build a winner is still the same as it's been. Just it's evolved a little bit. It is recruit and develop and then invest in your high school recruits because that's how you build. You want guys multiple years in your system and you recruit them out of high school and, and you develop them and hopefully they improve. And you take your money and in a perfect world you're doing what Notre Dame's doing right now. They hadn't taken a single kid out of the portal. It's not a poverty program. That's Notre Dame. But they hadn't taken a single kid out of the portal. Cause they believe in their guys they have in house right now. You don't think they're spending money at Notre Dame? Of course they are. They're spending it on the guys they have in their system. That's the model. Anybody who tells you otherwise is lying to you. The way Notre Dame's doing it right now is, is the envy of everyone else. They Wish they hit 100%. Everyone wants to bat a thousand on Their kids, they recruit out of high school. You don't think that. You don't think. You don't think Alabama or Texas or Texas A and M would love to bring guys up three, four years in the same system and then just pay them instead of having to go to the portal. Of course they would, but they swung and missed. And so the second part of the model is you supplement or if you can, you upgrade via the portal. You don't build through the portal. No one's doing that and sustaining long term success. Now if you want to go bobble rocket approach and just light the fuse and watch it pop off one time Florida State did that a couple of years ago. And then what happened to Florida State? So if you want to chase that model, be my guest. I don't think many people with a proper head on their shoulders are chasing that model. Let us move on. I told you it's a lively mailbag tonight. We ought to do this more often. I say that as I'm in full control of what we do on the show. All right, so Pablo from Potomac, Maryland, he said, can we finally admit that with the SEC not in the title game for a third straight year, the Big Ten has overtaken the sec? Pablo, that's a groundbreaking question, my friend. No one's talking about it. Is anyone bringing this up? Well, aside from everyone. Let me ask you a question, Pablo. What if Ole Miss won the other night? Would it change anything? I mean, I think these are such bad faith arguments. I think the Big Ten's overtaking the SEC no matter if Ole Miss is in the title game right now. Like if, if Carson Beck would not have been able to run that ball into the end zone the other night. And Ole Miss forces a fumble and they turn it over and they bleed the clock and they win the game and they're going on to play Indiana. How does that fundamentally change the balance of power between the Big Ten and the SEC right now? So to let you know how irrelevant that point is to me, let's assume Ole Miss won the game the other night and Ole Miss is headed to Miami and got the whole sidebar with Lane Kiffin and Pete Golding and whatnot. But if Ole Miss was in the game, the SEC would still be lagging behind. So it's. There are these cut and dry stats people put out there. Like, man, the SEC's missed out on the title game for the third straight year. What if they made it? What if Ole Miss was in it, which they were very close to being like that doesn't fundamentally change anything to me because I'm still telling you I think the SEC is lagging behind the Big Ten. So my question is not, are they lagging behind? I'm gonna give you some reasons why I think they are. My question is not whether they're lagging behind. My question is this. Who's arguing against this right now? I don't mean random dudes on Twitter. I mean, find me people whose voices you really respect who are beating this drum right now. I can't find them. I can't find them. The way I know a lot of it's manufactured is because half the Internet's telling you I'm saying it, which is always how you can tell who does and doesn't watch the show. The ones who don't watch the show, they try and they, like, manufacture a counter to their argument. And in this case, the counter that they're manufacturing is they're imagining this army of people out there that are still steadfast standing behind the scc, chanting SCC and, you know, tramp stamping. It just means more on their lower back. Where are these people? Reputable people, people that you would admit you respect their opinion? Who are they? So it's not me. It's certainly not me. Jesse reliably has informed me much of the Internet believes I am that person. But the thing about having your own show is you don't have to rely on the Internet to find out what I think about the Big Ten compared to the sec. Just come here. I'll tell you. The SEC is lagging behind the Big Ten at the top. I would even venture to suggest maybe the middle tier now is at least comparable, if not slightly lagging behind. That's probably where my perception has changed as of late, more so than at the top. So I'm not beating that drum. The Internet will continue to tell you I am, because the Internet doesn't watch the show. So a couple of culprits here. These aren't excuses, these are culprits. These are just things that I think are in play. Firstly, we had Kubelik on the show last week or within the last couple of weeks, and I shot it in my kitchen. But he and I had like a 30 minute discussion on this, and I would encourage you to go listen to it. He made a really good point. I think I made a sound point as well. But the two of us made points that I haven't heard mentioned many other places. I haven't heard him mentioned any other place. The point he made was when he sits down with these coaches a lot. Many of them have coached in both leagues and they therefore can talk about how the Big Ten player compares to the SEC player. Again, broad brush there, but how the Big Ten players in general compare to the SEC players. And I have sort of evolved my thinking on conference culture. I think conference culture is a real thing. There are going to be exceptions to it, obviously, but conference culture meaning on average, how does an SEC player think? How does he act? What is his college football and athletic worldview versus his Big Ten counterpart? And what we came to agree upon is maybe football is just a little bit more important to the Big Ten folks. Maybe the average Big Ten player is wired a little bit differently. Maybe they focus a little more on the football aspect, the meat and potatoes aspect of football, instead of the more highlightish branding aspect of football. I think there's something to that. You're going to have exceptions to that rule. I think it's become a rule. That's me. Do I think I walk the halls of the University of Georgia and have major issues with guys being committed to football? No, not really. But I'm not speaking specifically about one side of the ball at Georgia. I'm speaking holistically about the conference. That's the first thing that was sort of Kublix angle. And then I said something that you've heard me say it on a number of shows probably recently. I don't think I've said it on this one. Again, this is a very, very broad brush. I think for a long time, people in the SEC came to take the talent advantage and the talent edge they had over the rest of college football for granted because they just always assumed it was going to be there. The SEC thought for a long time that the talent edge they had over the rest of college football was a constant, but it wasn't. It was a variable. But for the time being and for an extended times being, they could assume it because the talent had every reason to choose Tennessee over Michigan. The talent had every reason to choose Alabama over Iowa. And the sports changed and the landscapes changed. Portland and IL have done that. So the talent edge, even if it's still there, it's been greatly reduced and doubly, especially if you look at the depth of these rosters, the number twos at Alabama and Tennessee and LSU don't look like the number twos used to look because they're starting elsewhere. So that's a reality. Everyone knows that. My point is, I think because the SEC became so comfortable that they were just going to have a massive talent edge on the rest of college football every year. They got lazy in certain aspects of their operation. And the first one that I started to notice was staffing. You would think to yourself, man, if you're really serious about football, you hire the best head coach you can hire. And then that head coach fills the building with the best of the best in terms of position coaches beneath him. That's what you would think. That's how football's supposed to work. That is not always how it worked in the sec. What the SEC did is they realized, wait a second, if we're going to load these buildings up with better talent than they have anywhere else in the country, we can out athlete a lot of people. Therefore, when head coach gets in the building. Unfortunately, the way it started to work in the SEC is that head coach prioritizes filling his building with recruiters over coaches. Or even worse, that head coach looks at his representation, credits them for getting him the job and the favor that he returns to that representation. That agency is he fills his building with clients of said agency. If you think that's ridiculous, it's because it is. But that's been standard practice in the SEC for quite a while. I don't find that to be the case in the Big Ten, at least nearly as much. The Big Ten knew they didn't have the edge, so the Big ten had to live a little bit more on the margins. This is in a previous life. Things have changed now. But I think the SEC is still suffering the consequences of some very lazy practices from a generation prior. We're defining generation as like 10 years ago. And so I still think there's a lot of that residue. So when you wonder how the SEC could still have better talent rosters, but they're sort of getting outperformed on stages by the Big Ten, I think those are a couple of reasons why that's just my opinion. Academy, sports and outdoors present in the sec in the Big Ten and they are pretty much a one stop shop. They don't say that, you know, they're not that gaudy, but I will be for them. Spring sporting season is coming up and I just encourage you, implore you, make sure you stop by Academy. You got to have the kiddos properly geared up. You don't want them to be the one dragging the same bat to the game that you used when you were a kid. I'm sure it performed admirably for you, but frankly, technology has come a long way since then and little Stevie and little Lori, they need to be swinging the best. They need to be catching with the best. They need to be geared up with the best. They've got it at Academy. And if you cannot get there in person, that's okay. Academy.com. now, I know what some of you are thinking, but, Josh, I don't even have kids. Great. Maybe change that one day. But in the meantime, live your life. I assume you have one. I know our audience. We don't have much losers watching this show. Our audience has a life, and a lot of it has to do with outdoor activity, Academy, sports and outdoors. Yeah, you can get bats and balls there, but you can also get a kayak there if you want to. You can get a tent there. You can get a grill there. So there have been longtime friends of the program that can be a friend to you. Let's continue. Let's move on. I told you the mailbag was full. This is great. I mean, I can do this all night. Immunity, Jay Z from Weston, Florida. Does Miami making the national championship as a 10 seed justify playoff expansion? Will this spark a Future expansion to 16 teams? I think we're probably headed towards 16, but that's not what you asked me, J.C. you asked me, does it justify playoff expansion? Well, I assume you've watched this show for a while. You know my feelings on this. No. No, it doesn't. Miami making the playoff doesn't affect my view on college football playoff expansion one bit. But I always admit this up front. I just have a different viewpoint on this than most people. It really all boils down to your college football worldview, Jay Z. So capability is never what it was about for me. I was on get up the other morning, Lewis Riddick, who there are very few opinions I value more in this sport than Lewis Riddick. He and I disagreed on this, and it pained me because I don't want to be disagreeing with Lewis Riddick very often. But his opinion was, if you look at a team like Texas or a team like Vanderbilt who were left out of the playoff, his opinion was, I think those teams could have made a run. Therefore, I think the playoffs should be big enough for all those teams to be in. Well, that is his college football worldview. Mine just happens to be different. I've never cared about what you're capable of. I've cared about what you've earned. And I've looked at college football, and I've said the best format is not one that's big enough to fit all the teams capable of winning the title. To me, the Best format is the one that's built to maximize the impact of the regular season. Because I care about the regular season more than the playoff. Now again, that is my worldview. If you disagree with that, that probably means you're going to disagree with all the points that I'm making right now. But I know there are a healthy amount of us who prioritize and love the regular season of college football more so than the playoff. And you got a fair amount of people who just look forward to the playoff. It's a more pro sports minded approach to college football. That's okay if you have that. I just never grew up that way and I don't feel that way now. Like I've evolved my thinking on a lot of things in college football, but you'll never ever, ever see me evolve my thinking that the pinnacle of college football is, is not the national championship game. The pinnacle of college football for me is not the playoff. The pinnacle of college football is the 12 Saturdays that I'm guaranteed to get in the fall. That's what I love. And so all due respect to Vanderbilt, I don't care if you got left out. You had an opportunity to earn your way in. We got 12 spots. It's not like it's the four team era or the BCS era anymore, which by the way I had no problem with. But we've long since left that. So I got no problem that Texas got left out. Had Alabama been left out, I would have had no problem with it. Now there are teams that I think based on the current model and the criteria should and shouldn't get in. But like if they, if they left Miami out, I'm not shedding many tears from Miami. You know why they lost to Louisville and smu like they had a shot to earn their way in. So you lowered the bar already. We already lowered the bar. If you still can't clear that thing, I don't know what to tell you. So yeah, I look at Vanderbilt and I wonder what they would have done in the playoff. I look at Texas, I saw Arch in the Cheez it bowl. That thing had over 9 million people watching, by the way. I saw what he did. Yeah, I wonder what he would have done. But I do not look at the system and say, boy, we got to expand this thing. We got to expand this thing. So I can find out whether Texas could have. Boy, I think Texas could have made a run. I think Brigham Young could have made a run. I don't really care if I think that. I don't Care, because it's not about capability to me, it's about merit. You got to be aware of the casual counterarguments to this though, of which there are many. But two of them you'll always get when you make the argument. There are some of us out there who make this argument. The argument being we don't need to expand the playoff any further. We may have already expanded it too far. The casual counter argument to that is, number one, how can you deny that the expanded playoff has been amazing? And how can you deny that expanding it further would be even more amazing a product? I don't deny it. The playoff is awesome. A 16 team playoff would be must see you make the playoff as big as you want to. The playoff itself would be amazing. But that's opening the book at chapter four, ignoring chapters one through three. See, you're disingenuously skipping the meat of my argument to present the meat of your argument because your argument is playoff centric. Mine's not. Mine's regular season college football centric. The playoff product's incredible. Right now. The playoff expanding to 16 would be incredible, but that's where your sentence ends. Mine has an ellipses, but at what cost to the regular season? And if there's any cost to the regular season above and beyond what we've already done to it, I'm not for it. That's part one, part two of the casual counter argument. To anyone resisting college football playoff expansion. This is the worst one. But it's also the easiest one to beat down. How can you say no to more football? I just don't get what you have against more football. Well, I understand the principle of scarcity. I understand the principle of value. If I have a $1 bill in my hand, what is it worth? Well, in an ideal world, it's worth $1. But if I have a printing press over there and then I print a billion more of those $1 bills, guess what I did to the $1 bill I'm holding in my hand. It's not worth what's written on the piece of paper anymore. Why is that? Because its value was in a level of scarcity. And when we decrease the scarcity, we also decrease the value. Likewise in college football, the more playoff spots you have, the less value there is on making the playoff. So, hey, I love football. We already get plenty of it, man. We're asking teams to win 17 games, in some cases to win a national championship. Right now we're getting plenty of football. We got plenty of it, man. If you're sitting there in late August watching this thing all the way through to Martin Luther King Jr. Day next Monday night and saying, need more football. Go watch spring football. I don't know what to tell you. We got plenty of college football right now. If it comes at the expense of the regular season at all, I'm not for it. This will expand, though. So make no question, make no arguments here. I understand it's going to expand. No one really cares what I think about this. If it does expand, can I please, please, just in the name of common sense, ask a couple of favors. Firstly, can we please get two rounds of playoff games on home camp I plural of campus? Can we please not watch Oregon traveling 9,000 miles across the country combined to go to three neutral sites? Because that's what they would have had to do had they won the other night. Their fan base would have been asked to fly to Miami for a playoff game, come home, fly to Atlanta for a playoff game, come home, fly back to Miami for the national championship game. Beyond stupid. I mean, Texas Tech never got to host a playoff game. Indiana never got to host a playoff game, which is insane. So if we expand to 16, you're already taking the first round buys away, I assume. Can we at least get a couple of rounds on campus? The second thing, can we please reformat the schedule? We we are waiting 12 days to play the national championship game instead of the thing wrapping up on New Year's Day like it should. The college football calendar is nine kinds of screwed up, but even the playoff calendar itself is screwed up. There are several reasons why it is the way it is right now. I'm not asking you to tell me why it is. I'm asking people who understand how to get the job done to get in the room, put your hands on the wheel and get the changes that are necessary. If it means starting the season a week earlier, don't love it. But if we have to, we have to. And then the other part of that is, you know, you may have to gird your loins up and walk down the hall and knock on the door of the NFL and after you've done all the work developing their players and developing marketing profiles for their players before they go to the draft, you do all the favors in the world for the NFL. Maybe ask for one in return. I don't know. Seems bold enough that it just could work. Next up, we're just taking care of all the problems tonight. This is a play the hits kind of show tonight. Juan from Corpus Christi, Texas, should all Targeting calls in the playoffs be reviewed by the NCAA to confirm or overturn targeting to uphold the suspension for the next game when it occurs in the second half, especially in marginal situations. Okay, What Juan's talking about is Xavier Lucas. The other night, I think early in the second half of the game against Ole Miss, he got ejected for targeting. That means he misses the second half of a playoff game and misses the first half of the national championship game. And it's stupid. It's a very stupid problem that college football has right now, but it's really a problem football in general has. And the problem is no one knows what targeting is. We do have rules and there are parameters and bullet points and indicators. Those are all written down. No one knows when they see it. Imagine we're going to eject kids from games, but we don't really know what we're ejecting them for. There's no consistency in the way it's applied, even conference to conference, the things enforced differently. Here's what we do know most commonsensical people who are watching college football, or as you might know them fans, we're watching it every Saturday. And every one of us knows, at the best, this rule seems way too hazy to be ejecting players for flying in violation of it. So a couple of things. Yes, I would be okay with the approach that you talked about there, but not just for the playoffs. I think that this thing should be able to be appealed no matter what week three to week four, you could be playing a game coming up the next week in week four that will define your season. So why should it only be able to be appealed and potentially overturned in the playoff? Like I'd go a step further than that. It's insane. We're throwing guys out of games though. I was watching this the other night, I was so irate. I was there for Miami Ole Miss and I watch it with my eyes. And then targeting gets called because you're just conditioned. Now anytime a guy puts a form hit on someone, anytime there's like high level impact, just expect the flag. So there it is, there's the flag. And you think you know what you saw, but then you got to look up at the monitor or the big screen if you're in the stadium and you got to make sure you saw what you saw. And I did. It happens all too often. What happens is if you're a defender, the game's moving a million miles an hour. And as a defender, when you're going to strike a ball carrier, whether it be a Receiver going up for a pass, whether it be a quarterback scrambling or whether it be a running back coming straight at you, There is a certain point where you commit your body to contact, where you initiate the hit, past which you have no control. Now, it's a split second, and when they slow it down, you know, frame by frame, it looks like it takes a long time. But when you're moving, you know, at the speed of automobiles in a school zone, you commit yourself to contact. And a lot of times what happens is a ball carrier or a receiver will be in the process of making a catch or. Or they're in the process of lowering themselves. And here's what it looks like. You commit your body to the hit, and you're aiming for their chest or their midsection, and then they lower themselves, and you end up making contact in the shoulder area or the head area, and you get flagged for it. And it's insane. And there's not an ounce of malicious intent. In fact, the guy's trying to execute making a hit or making a tackle the exact way he's been taught. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, seeing guys ejected from games for playing football. Seeing guys ejected from games for doing exactly what they've been coached to do. Because a lot of times you want to go over to an official and you want to say, hey, could you do me a favor? You just ejected my guy from a game, and all he did is what we've coached him to do. Could you please, as he walks to the locker room, tell him what he should have done? You know what those officials will do if they're honest? Shrug their shoulders. I don't necessarily blame it on the officials. They're only enforcing what they've been told to enforce. I don't put it on the shoulders of officials. I put it on the shoulders of people who went five miles further than they needed to when they rewrote these rules several years ago because they were terrified of what was going to happen to them in court, because concussions in football were the biggest story in the news. And so they got really scared, and they went way further than they needed to to get out ahead of being blamed for not taking enough action. But what they did is they really etched in stone something that they couldn't go back on. I've talked to guys about this. I'm not ignorant to this. I understand exactly what the nature of the rule is, what the purpose of the rule is, and why you guys are terrified of going backwards. Because if you go Backwards an inch on it. If you even redefine or rewrite the rules or you just add some protocols, you're terrified that one day in court a jury will look at you and a skilled lawyer will convince them that you eased up restrictions on concussion protocol and now you're on the hook for untold billions of dollars in damages. I get doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. And it doesn't mean there still aren't actions that can be taken. Because if you look at football today, it's never been safer than it is right now. You've never had less a risk of concussion than you do right now. The rule has had its intended effect. It's fundamentally changed the way that the game's played. Do you see how many receivers are totally carefree going up over the middle now? Do you know why that is? Because a 19 year old kid, a 19 year old receiver, or a 19 year old safety, corner, slash, linebacker have now grown up in an entire era, from their pee wee days to middle school to high school and now college, where the game's been officiated that way, where rules have been enforced that way. So everyone's been conditioned to play the game that way. You're more likely to concuss yourself hitting your head on the ground than you are being hit by a safety now. And yet, ignorantly, we're still tossing guys out of games. Xavier Lucas missed the second half of a playoff game the other night and will miss the first half of a national championship game for committing the crime of playing football. Basically. I don't know what else to say. I'm using him. There are a million examples of this. So what I'd love to see is very commonsensical. Basketball's done it for a long time. Flagrant one, flagrant two. Essentially, understanding there are tiers of fouls here, because when we watch a football game, I think we can all understand the difference between incidental contact in some cases that a defender could not avoid, versus a malicious hit. And there aren't many malicious hits that are made, but the ones that are made, everybody knows it when one of them's made. Go on Twitter. Everyone goes out of their way to point it out. Everyone goes out of their way to say, get that guy out of there. That right there. There's no place for that in college football. It polices itself, basically. So that's your flagrant too. Get them out. There's no place for it. There never has been, never will be. But where there is plenty of room or where there is plenty of room for is to understand something just happened here. Maybe we even want to throw a flag on it. There is no way that kid should be ejected from this game. There is room for that. Secondly, I would love a more rigorous appeals process where you got a panel of people. Like, in my opinion, if a kid's going to have a half of a game stripped away from him, you want to have a panel of 10 people with at least eight of them agreeing on the ruling. I don't know how you feel the panel should work. And then the third one is, I would love full transparency on that. I know we don't seem to be in the business of full transparency with any decisions being made in college football, whether they be rules or whether they be in the name of officiating. But when I'm college football commissioner, we're going to have full transparency on how that playoff rankings process works, how officiating works. And then if we ever have an appeals process that is legitimate on targeting ejections, let's make that fully transparent as well. After all, what is there really to hide if we're doing things the right way? FanDuel was where I spent a lot of my day yesterday. You know, I actually had a FanDuel warning, a responsible gaming alert, come up on me yesterday. Now, it's because I left my account signed in too long, and that tool was a time limit tool that FanDuel has. And every now and then I just talk to you guys about this instead of promoting FanDuel like, of course, you know, the playoff odds are over there. NFL playoff odds are over there right now. Yes, you can do that. But every now and then, I like to talk to you about responsible gaming instead. And FanDuel affords us the opportunity to do this. So the Responsible gaming tools are a must. Like if you have an account at FanDuel or if you're ever considering having one, make sure you understand. I've got them all written down here. The MySpend tool. Deposit alerts, deposit limits, the time limit one got me the other day. That's basically when you've been sitting on that thing for hours, there's an alert that pops up and says, hey, bud, you've been logged in for like three hours. You okay? You probably need to take a little break. Now, in my case, I just accidentally left it logged in. So I respectfully said, no, thanks, I'm moving on. But you got loss limits. These you can set for yourself to where it just. It's inoperable. Once you hit these limits, wager limits, timeouts, self exclusions. There are a litany of them. And I always encourage any of our viewers or listeners who sign up for an account at FanDuel. Even if you're ready, even if you have disposable income that you can afford to wager, do it smartly, do it responsibly, and make sure you don't get yourself in trouble. It is not a place you want to be. There are addictions of all kinds of gambling, not the least among them. Don't ever get yourself there and make sure if you have any doubts about it, you're not doing it until you're sure. And make sure that you understand those tools are there for a reason. They're there to help. And I appreciate FanDuel agreeing to be the odds presenting partner of this show, but also letting us carve out time on the show occasionally to go over that in lieu of just our usual promoting of the platform itself.
- [79:43]
Advertiser/Promo Voice
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- [80:27]
Co-host
Okay, we got, we got one more question here. Good. Solid show tonight, Chris from Tacoma, Washington, home of the Tacoma Dome. At least it used to be. I don't know if it's still there, he said. I know you were joking last week, but seriously, what's the difference between James Franklin and Dan Lanning at this point? Okay, Chris, I'll tell you what. One of the key differences is the fact that Lanning beat James Franklin twice in the past year, one in a conference championship game, the other in James Franklin's own building, which led to his firing earlier this year. So I would say that's one key difference and that's kind of a low hanging fruit question. That sounds a little disrespectful. I apologize. I knew this was coming, though. I told you Jesse did I not do a whole segment on this. Last week I did a segment and I literally said, if Dan does not win this game against Indiana, they're going to compare him to James Franklin. Because Franklin last year he had his shot in the playoffs. They didn't go to the Big Ten title game just like Oregon didn't this year. But man, James Franklin beat SMU at home just like Oregon beat JMU at home. But it wasn't going to matter because they were quote unquote supposed to win those games. And then Franklin went out to the desert and they beat Boise just like Oregon went and beat Texas Tech and Miami. But hey, still no credit for it because they're supposed to win those games. But what happened next? Penn State lost to Notre Dame. Oh, James Franklin still can't win the big one. And Dan landing, I said if he does not beat Indiana, they're going to start comparing him to James Franklin. And no sooner did it happen than it happened. So that was sort of a low hanging fruit version of the question that we've been getting. I just happened to put that one on air. The big difference is Dan Lanning's beaten James Franklin a couple of times recently. But then Danny hit us up from Eugene and he asked a little bit more nuanced version of the question. He said, can Dan Lanning get Oregon to the next level with the intense pressure to succeed? He's had an incredible record thus far. He's only 39 years old, but he's starting to get that national media tag as the next coach who can't quite get there. By the way, real Duck fans know he's our guy. Yeah, of course he's your guy. Of course he's your guy. He's one of the best coaches in college football. A lot of people heard what I didn't say there. What they heard me say is Lanning's elite and he's the best in the game. Well, I didn't say that he's not the best in the game yet. Maybe one day he will be. I always have to remind folks what Danny just said. Dan Lanning is 59 years old. Oh, wait, no, he's not. He's 39 years old. Who, who do you guys think is the best coach to ever do it? Give me your top five. I would assume you said the name Nick Saban somewhere in your top five, right? Many of you think he's the best of all time. I wouldn't disagree with you. Saban won what, seven national championships? I think seven or eight point Being he won so many, you lose count. He won his first title when he was 52 years old. Lanning's 39. Landing is over a decade younger right now than Saban was when he won his first of seven or eight or however many rings he ended up winning. So I would just humbly suggest to you there could be a world where Dan Landing still figuring it out. Dan Landing didn't have two or three other head coaching jobs before Oregon, by the way. This was his first one. So has he been put in a compromised position occasionally? Did Ohio State get up on him big last year? They sure did. Did Kurt Signetti, as part of a legendary run, just dunk all over him and Oregon in the semifinal the other day? Yes, he did. Yes, he did. There are bigger tragedies in life. One of them in football would be not even having a chance because you're not in the postseason to begin with. Because there are plenty of high priced, highly paid head coaches out there who are older than one Dan Lanning that aren't there. It's okay to criticize the guy. I just think the criticism needs to be way more nuanced. Like if you don't think they're developing a specific position, if you don't think that they're executing in a certain facet of the game, that is totally valid criticism that I'm sure he would share himself if he were on the show right now. But just, he can't win the big one or he's overrated. That's just foolishness. There's plenty of room for that out there. Plenty of shows like that. I don't like to traffic in that here. I would also say this. You know, there are a fair amount of people out there that are taking this opportunity to dunk all over Dan Lanning and say he hadn't won the big one. He's not going to win the big one. He can't win the big one. Those people don't want you to remember what they used to say about Kirby, it's been a little while now. It's been over half a decade. But what if I told you there's a person out there yelling from the nearest Twitter mountaintop, dan Lanning can't ever win the big one. Who used to say kirby Smart can't win the big one because they're out there? See, Kirby didn't win overnight at Georgia. He started to win regular season games. He kept on running into Alabama and losing and losing and losing. And then finally, several years in, they lost to Alabama Then they got a shot in the rematch and they beat him and they won a national championship. And all of a sudden, the Saban hump that Kirby couldn't get over, it just turned out he hadn't gotten over it yet. The national title, the big one, Kirby couldn't win. It turned out he only hadn't won it yet because then he did. And then he did it again and then it was a non issue. And what did they do? Did that little feral group of Internet people, did they disappear? No, they just moved on to the next piece of low hanging fruit that they could swing at because they're not very tall. So it's got to be low for them. It just happens to be Dan landing right now. James Franklin's still there, but it happens to be Dan right now. And you know what you can do to shut him up? Win. You eventually got to win those games. All I'm saying is, at age 39, he's still got a lot of Runway left in front of him to figure out how to take off. Or in other words, win it all. Win a national title. My guess is he'll end up doing it. That's my guess again. Could just be a duck homer. A lot of us. A lot of us Oregon homers growing up in Columbus, Georgia, back in the day. All right, that's our show. I appreciate you guys so, so much. I wish I could say the national championship game was tomorrow night. Nope, it's a week from tomorrow night. But we'll be here every step of the way. Don't you worry about that. I appreciate everyone, man, you can't tell, Bradley. Take a wide shot. You can't tell. But this is a brand new studio. It's just that we truck the entire set into the new studio, but we've had people here all weekend making sure this thing's lit properly. We installed the brand new Nashville sign back there, which if you're listening on podcast is irrelevant. But just imagine a bright glowing picture of the Nashville skyline back there. It is not easy to make this work seamlessly technically, but we have the right people in house here and so I can't really see them right now, but they're all back there behind the glass. I appreciate them and our crew here as usual because it is not easy to make the show look normal, especially when everything over the past two weeks has been abnormal. So I appreciate them, appreciate you guys for watching and listening. Make sure you're subscribed to the channel and the podcast feed for director Bradley, producer Jesse and our entire team here. We will see you Tuesday night. Until then, take care and God Bless.
- [87:59]
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- [88:43]
Host
This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.