← Josh Pate's College Football Show
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- [00:00]
Donald Trump
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Josh Bate
Guaranteed Human. I feel like I'm in a separate universe. Number one, got the President on the show tonight. Number two, my instincts are really to talk about Team USA over Canada per usual in hockey. And yet we got wall to wall college football. We're jam packed. We're high atop a chilly downtown Nashville, Tennessee on this Sunday night, February 22nd, the year of our Lord 2026. Yeah, I did say we have the President on the show tonight. We will lead the show with him just a couple of minutes from now. But that's not the most controversial part of the show. See, everyone's worried that that's going to take the show off the rails. No, that'll be fine. I feel firmly in control of that. What concerns me is this other piece of paper in front of me that says we are updating our head coaching rankings tonight. So that's what I'll apologize in advance for. We got big SEC questions on the show tonight. We got a lot about scheduling that I wanted to get to you on Tuesday but I had no voice on Tuesday so we had to postpone. Only the second time we postponed a show. The first was the unfortunate food poisoning incident of Jacksonville, a city that I still haven't been back to since then. So yeah, the cities they are watching us in tonight. Charlotte, North Carolina. So Sweetwater, Texas. Everett, Washington. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thank you so much. It's good to be back. We're loaded. Please subscribe to the channel if you have not already because it's free. It doesn't sign you up for anything. It's year round college football and we love you. What more could you need? Okay, kind of a, kind of a weird situation here. You know, we got the pate state speaker series that's going to crank up and we'll be a country all over the country, coast to coast talking to head coaches. But I did tell you that we wanted to mix in maybe some non head coaches, maybe some personalities this spring. So then the White House reaches out, says what about the President? You know, does that qualify? And I said, let me think. Yeah, yeah it does. Does it make sense for the show? Well, you know, if we could fit it in certain parameters, yes, it does. And everything was agreed upon and a neutral site was agreed upon. He didn't come here, we didn't go there. We met neutral site. And you know, there's a lot of stuff floating around college football right now. There's a lot of stuff floating around about this. Cause we recorded it Thursday. And just to give You a little heads up. We're going to play the interview and then I'm going to address a lot of things afterwards and I'm going to tell you how this came together and I'm going to give you my viewpoint on it. But think about it is no one's seen this yet and there are already a lot of takes on it. For instance, how could we let the show become political? Well, the answer to that is the show's not becoming political because there's nothing in this that's really political, believe it or not. So without further ado, and I'll address this a lot on the back end, here is our sit down the other day with President Donald Trump. I live in the world of college football. You're at college football games all the time. We just saw you down in Miami last month at the national championship game. So you love the game. You've always loved football.
- [03:16]
Donald Trump
Always.
- [03:17]
Josh Bate
I've always loved college football. So on the field, love what I see. Then you get off the field and then you just got a whole bunch of mess people talk about right now with the structure of the game and what rules can you make, rules can you enforce. I know how I feel. I know how fans feel. How do you feel when you see that from your vantage point?
- [03:34]
Donald Trump
Well, it's too bad. I hate to see it and I hate to see a lot of things in football and a lot of things and a lot of other events. When I look at the kickoff, I hate to see this new kickoff rule they have. It's, you know, it takes the glamour, the glory that it takes everything out of the game. When I watch a kickoff, you know, that's a, that's a big event. That's the opening of a game and, you know, important. It's an important thing. And then they do this. I'm not even sure does anybody understand what they're even doing. They kick it short of the end zone. Now you have to kick it short of the end zone. And somebody said they want to see more run backs. Actually, they want to see much less run backs. I guess that's why they're doing it. But I think it's very bad for the NFL and I hope college football doesn't do that.
- [04:16]
Josh Bate
You. So you're at a lot of college football games, you show up all the time. What's the process of that? When you're looking on the landscape and you say, we got a big one coming up, may want to go to that one. How do you decide where you go?
- [04:29]
Donald Trump
I look around and I'll say, like, South Carolina is good and Georgia's good. I like Georgia. I like this Georgia team. I like your quarterback, by the way. I like Gunner. He's going to be a great quarterback, I'll tell you. He's already a great quarterback, but he's only going to get better. He's asking how I, how I judge and how I judge players and which games do I want to go to. I want to go to any game. That guy. Because he's been a big Trump fan. So I'm going to be watching him very closely this year. You're going to have a big year. So I like certain people, players and teams. Alabama, just with Coach Saban together. He's a fantastic coach. Coach Myers, we have a lot of. A lot of good. Have a lot of good friends in college football.
- [05:13]
Josh Bate
You mentioned the golfing outing you had with Coach Saban, Coach Meyer, I believe Ron DeSantis was there the other day. What's the conversation like, specifically when you're around big college figures, whether it's a commissioner, a former head coach. What's the conversation right now?
- [05:27]
Donald Trump
They talk to me about politics. Really? More so than football. They liked politics. They're all obviously very highly competitive people, but I would say for the most part, we're talking politics. They want to know what's happening with Iran, what's happening? How'd you do that with Venezuela? It was pretty good. You know, that was very, very successful, to put it mildly. But they, they always want to seem to, because I play with a lot of athletes, a lot of coaches. You know, I play golf. I'm a good golfer, and some of them are good, some of them aren't very good. But does it matter one thing to golf, it doesn't really matter. That's why they have handicaps. But they always want to talk about politics.
- [06:08]
Josh Bate
You were, you were down at the national championship game. Yeah. So Indiana was this incredible story throughout the entirety of last year. And then national championship winner, and then the assistant coaches start winning all these awards and a lot of praise on Kurt Signetti, as there should be. And he put together an incredible roster. He put together an incredible staff. And afterwards, everyone wants to ask, what's the secret? How did he pull it off? You're a guy. You've hired thousands of people in the business world. You've vetted people for cabinet positions, but you've sat across from them, like we're doing right now.
- [06:38]
Donald Trump
Right.
- [06:39]
Josh Bate
What do you look for in someone to know? That's the characteristic I Want that's a guy or that's a girl I want on my team.
- [06:45]
Donald Trump
Well, I have it a little bit now in my ship. I have a great staff. I have, you know, really good people working for me. I would say first term, I had never done it before. I won. You know, I came out of business. I was to Washington 17 times in my entire life. I never stayed over. And I had some very good people, but I had some people that I wouldn't have chosen had I had a little more experience once I got all that experience. Now we have an unbelievable cabinet. And, you know, experience really helps you see people under fire when you go in there and you don't have that feel. Not good. But there's a great deal of experience. I think there's also an instinct. I've had a good instinct for people. I think I've had a good instinct for athletes. For athletes. But Herschel's a special guy. I think Herschel did really well. He tried really hard with his run, his Senate run, and I think he did really well. He got some. I think he got some unfair treatment, frankly. But I would say Herschel maybe was the greatest player ever in college football. You know, you could make a case he was the greatest running back in college football. He was legendary here. And he actually had a very good. A lot of people don't realize what a good career he had in the NFL and a very good career in the NFL, too.
- [07:53]
Josh Bate
You mentioned experience. I mean, not many people get to be the President of the United States. Yeah, not many people even further down the line get to do it twice. And so you kind of got to experience and then reassess a lot of experience, go there a second time. What are the things when people ask you, hey, what did you learn the first time that you applied the second time? What are the go tos for you?
- [08:13]
Donald Trump
Well, it's about people. You know, you have to get the right people. If you don't get the right people, you can be really good, but it's never going to be the same. It's never going to be fantastic. The way they run it, you know, you can see all the good people they have working here. They've been here a long time. You have to get. Look at the people we have. I mean, they're so. They're outstanding, they're stars. And I learned that in the first term. And again, I had a lot of great people, but I had some that I wouldn't have used again. It's been amazing.
- [08:38]
Josh Bate
You mentioned the word instinct. A second ago. Yeah, I love talking to coaches about that because oftentimes you're in a room and you got important decisions to make every day, football wise or running the country. And there are a lot of times probably where you've got expert voices, nearly consensus telling you one thing, your instinct may say another thing.
- [08:57]
Donald Trump
Yeah.
- [08:58]
Josh Bate
How do you know how to balance that when you pull the trigger?
- [09:00]
Donald Trump
That's what instincts all about. You never know. You just go with your gut. And some people can do that, some people don't do it. Look, you have to put a lot of things into the equation and that equals what you could call instinct. But, you know, instinctually I said I should run and then I said I should run again. And we're having a lot of fun, we're doing a good job.
- [09:21]
Josh Bate
A lot of times it's great when you just got one popular decision or unpopular or one right and wrong. Oftentimes in your world you got those level 10 decisions where it's just both of them are going to be bad or good. Yeah.
- [09:34]
Donald Trump
You know, you have good, like for instance, candidates. You're choosing candidates. Sometimes I have three or four people that I really like. It's very hard to do, and they've supported me. Sometimes I have to take a pass because it just is too. It's heart wrenching when you, you know, somebody's running and you're supporting somebody, let's say out of four candidates, and they're all 100% like Trump candidates. Now I have this a lot where I like them all the same. I mean, I literally, like, they're all really great and you have to make a choice. And it's very, it's a very tough
- [10:05]
Josh Bate
thing to do when you are elected president. Everybody's got like a vision of how that would be. Most of the time it's just a dream for someone. I heard you. I think it was on Joe Rogan's show. You talked about walking in there and just walking in the Lincoln Bedroom and saying, this is a Lincoln Bedroom. This is unbelievable. Yeah.
- [10:23]
Donald Trump
You know, they talk about having that feeling. I walked in and I won. And you know, you're so busy and you realize you won and maybe you take it a little bit for granted. Then you won a second time and then you win a third time, to be honest. But I stood the first time and I was standing upstairs in the beautiful White House. There's no building like it. There's no building in terms of the feel. And I'm standing right outside with our first lady who's now a movie star.
- [10:51]
Josh Bate
Yes, she is.
- [10:52]
Donald Trump
She's got a very successful movie. But I'm standing outside of the Lincoln Bedroom and I'm looking and it's so historic, you know, it's Abe Lincoln. It's a big deal. And it's a little bit of a deja vu. It's a feeling of like, have I been here before? What's going on? And it really, it really is something, it really is something. When I did it the second time and then the third time and that is deja vu because I've been there, I've seen it and here I am again. But when you stand in the White House and you see all of the great history from Lincoln, you could go to even if you don't like fdr, you know, FDR was a four term president and you see all of the, everybody leaves something, there's always a mark. There's such great history. And if you love the country, you know, you love the history, the whole history, the Democrat and the Republican history. But the White House is a special place when you're over there. But I stood out there that first night, the very First Night and 2016. And I'm looking, I'm standing right outside door Lincoln. I'm looking into the Lincoln Bedroom. I'm saying that's pretty, that's pretty wild.
- [12:09]
Josh Bate
You frequently have to be face to face with people who have maybe said not such nice things about you in the past. Maybe you've said things their way in the past and there's this separation. It's always fascinated me because normal people aren't really capable of the separation of business and personal. And I watch you do it all the time. And I mean, is that instinctive? Is that something you need to have? Is that something you can learn? Because it's, it's not normal?
- [12:32]
Donald Trump
Well, when I, when I do that, I mean you're talking about like some people that you don't like and you're dealing with them, but I'm not so good at that. I usually go after, I shouldn't, I shouldn't go after them, but I do, I tend to probably do it. I don't know if that's good or bad. Nobody's ever going to figure that one out. But no, I have a lot of people I don't like and I have a lot of people I like a lot. And you know, I'm, I'm very loyal. I'm loyal to the people that I like and we have a lot of good people. I have a lot of people that I'm not a fan of, necessarily, but I think they're right on a lot of issues. I go with them all the time. I go with those issues all the time. I want to. I want to just do what's right for the country.
- [13:09]
Josh Bate
Mr. President, we appreciate you joining us.
- [13:11]
Donald Trump
Thank you very much. Thank you. Congratulations on your show.
- [13:13]
Josh Bate
I appreciate it.
- [13:14]
Donald Trump
I hear he's got a hell of a show. Is that right, quarterback? He's got a good show. Thank you.
- [13:20]
Josh Bate
Thank you.
- [13:20]
FanDuel Advertiser
A lot of fun. Yes, sir.
- [13:21]
Donald Trump
Congratulations. A good interview.
- [13:23]
Josh Bate
Thank you. A lot of commotion for that. Yep. Appreciate the President joining us. Film that Thursday. I haven't really spoken about this publicly at all, aside from telling people that it was coming. So I'm going to tell you how this came together. But the first thing I wanted to touch on, as you probably noticed, was there weren't really many weighty college football matters discussed there.
- [13:46]
Donald Trump
All right.
- [13:46]
Josh Bate
For two reasons, the first of which was originally, we were going to slot that thing for between 30 and 40 minutes, at which point, if it went through that way, I was probably going to go long form and really dive on things like nil or congressional intervention, things of that nature. For two reasons kind of didn't go that way. The first was schedule changed really, really late. So we got compressed on time really, really late. I had a pretty good feel, probably 10 to 15 minutes, and I thought if about five or six different themes that I'd love to hit here, we're probably not going to be able to dive deep on that. But the second thing was I kind of got the feel that there are some big things on the horizon. If you're talking about the congressional side or if you're someone out there who is kind of hoping, or maybe you don't hope, but maybe you're just waiting for that kind of intervention in college athletics, I remain skeptical that it can happen. But if it's going to happen, you know, that's kind of on the horizon. And I think at the executive level, I got the sense that they kind of want to get everyone in the room, like, they kind of want to hear all of the opinions normally that we're hearing anonymously from Ross Dellinger or Pete Nakos reporting. Get all those folks in a room, and then we'll see what we can do, and then we'll see if we can make decisions. And so for a couple of reasons, I didn't get the sense that the President was really gonna look to dive deep on that stuff. So that's why I called that audible. It was really two reasons there. So one of the things as soon as we announced that we were gonna have him on the show, that we heard a lot, that I heard a lot was I thought you said that you were never gonna make the show political. Like I thought you said you were never gonna take the show down a political route. You're right. I have do say that. I say that right now. We're never gonna make the show political or take it down a political route. Now, I understand we just featured the President of the United States on the show, but did you listen to the contents? Up until right now, no one had listened to it. Cause we hadn't released it. So unless someone on the staff leaked it, no one had seen the contents of it. I'm not an idiot. Would be my first point to make. So a lot of the claims out there or a lot of the concerns, fake though they may have been, that people claim they had, was, man, this is going to get hijacked. You can't have the President on this show and not have it derailed and go political. And I just looked at that. I laughed because we had already recorded it. So I knew what it contained and what it didn't contain. But I mean, you've just got to think I'm a total idiot if I'm going to allow that to happen. So I was very comfortable where we were going to go. I was very comfortable talking to the President beforehand about where I'd love to go ideally. I was very comfortable talking back and forth with the White House about what the show is, what it's about, and when the opportunity presented itself, what I would and wouldn't be okay with, there was no pushback on that. Very agreeable. And so that was never a concern for me. I know it was said elsewhere. This is not some new norm for the show. This was maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity, but at the very least a once in a several, several long whiles type opportunity. And we took it. And I'll tell you why we took it. It's really simple. It's the President of the United States requesting to come on a college football show that didn't exist five and a half years ago. That's why we did it. So I personally looked at it and made the decision in about five minutes when the opportunity was presented to us. And that was the beginning and the end for me. And I understand there's been a lot of talk out there about what I should or shouldn't have done. It's our show, we choose to run it this way. And I'll tell you this, anybody who suggested seriously now, anyone who seriously suggested that if you were in the position I'm in, you would have turned this down. I either think you're lying, most likely you're lying, or number two, we're just not even in the same galaxy of thinking. So that was never a thought on my mind. This could have been President Obama. This could have been President whoever. And it's an auto yes for me. If they're asking to come on this show, especially if you think about the climate right now of college athletics. I don't know in recent memory if it's ever been more relevant to try and hear the opinions of maybe top lawmakers or the president. Now, I don't really see us bringing lawmakers on the show because at some point it just gets boring and it gets monotonous. But if the president of the United States is going to say, I'll make myself available, hey, I go into it and I'm thinking to myself, maybe something profound gets said. You know, it's not like you're delivered a script. It's not like it's a Netflix series. And you can kind of read the spoilers. And so you already know what's going to be said. And at that point, all right, let's greenlight this or red light this. No, you take the opportunity and you have the leader of the free world, you have the commander in chief on the show and he says what he says and the experience is what it is. And it was a delightful experience, by the way, but there was nothing groundbreaking there from the perspective of how nil may change or the portal may change, what Congress can and cannot do. But here's the other thing. You don't really know where that could lead, but it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. And, you know, our goal for this show has been to make it the college football show. And we've been able to do that in many ways. But the other thing is, from just a pure authoritary standpoint, I love for people to look at us and know that if it's going to happen in that world, it's either going to happen here or this show is going to have a lot to say about it or a lot to do with it. And anyone who's ridden with us from day one understands that's been a long, kind of steady climb to get where we are. But I understand there's a lot of people watching the show right now who May have never seen it before. You may have never seen this. You may not even know who I am. That's okay. I'm happy you're here. We do college football all year round. We don't mess with the NFL, respectfully. We don't mess with any other sport. We just. We love college football. We grew up in it. We're immersed in it. We love it. But if you ever question why we do something like that, aside from the obvious, it's the president making himself available for your show, you got to understand where someone like me comes from. I come from rural Georgia, and I don't come from the traditional journalism background. And we didn't build this platform the traditional way. In fact, we built this platform because the traditional avenues were closed to people like me. That's not even to knock the traditional avenues. They just weren't cut out for me. Guys, I've told my story on this show many times. But you need to understand, if you come up the side of the mountain that we came up, including a lot of folks behind this glass here, if you come up the side of the mountain, we had to come up. It's not even that things weren't handed to you. It's that you had to sort of. You had to build it yourself. And if you've ever had to build something in this ecosystem yourself, you understand, you take pride in it. Obviously, you don't take a single day of it for granted. You don't take a single viewer or listener for granted. But then also, you got to understand, okay, if you ever start to have any success, and this show has had a mountain of success because of you, and I'm eternally appreciative for it. But if you ever start to have success, all right, then you start to realize you're driving 60 miles an hour through the jungle. You're the one blazing the trail. In many cases, you're the one that's leading the pack. And so the front bumper is going to have a lot of dings in it. Meemaw always said, no clean bumpers on the lead car. No clean bumpers on the lead car. We're fine with that. I accept that responsibility. But understand, when the President of the United States offers to come on this show, it is, hey, what does it mean for me, man? I'm a kid who grew up in the rural South. What does that mean for me? I never thought I'd make it this far. I never thought I'd be in that kind of position. Number two, what does it mean for the show. But what does it mean for the space? What does it mean for someone in that position to be on a platform like this? That stuff didn't happen up until recently. It wasn't even possible for it to happen. What does it mean for the other people in this space? And that not. That's not just to talk about accessibility of President Donald Trump to other people in this. I don't mean that. I mean infinitely broader than that. Opportunities, normalizing, that kind of stuff happening. And then what does it mean for college football for the President of the United States to even be paying attention to it? So if you want to know where my head was at when I said yes to that in 2Ns, those are some of the places my head was at. I know a lot of you have seen what you think is major pushback to this and did not occur to me until close friends, maybe some family hit me up, sort of worried. I walked in the building and Jesse was kind of worried today. I saw that look in your eye. You were kind of worried about me. How you doing, boy? I know they've been coming after you. No, they haven't. No, they haven't been coming after me. An army of Twitter bots has come after me. But, you know, if you have access to some of the tools we have, you know who is and isn't real on the Internet, I'd say over 95% at time of airing today of the pushback that we've gotten online has been from fake accounts. So the actual feedback we've gotten from the concept of bringing the president on the show has been 10 to 1 positive when it comes to real people voicing their feedback. And then there's been a sliver of outright negative. There's been a sliver of people who genuinely watch the show, and they just don't like the idea of it. I retweeted a guy today who said, I don't really know that I want to listen to this, so I'm going to skip this show. I'll just come back for the next one. I said, well, that's an adult decision. Okay by me. And I've even got a lot of folks who I certainly know to be from the other side of the political aisle that, you know, had the audacity to call me. And some of them congratulated, some of them said, hey, you know how I feel about the president personally, but huge deal to have him on your show. But even those who didn't like the idea had a lot of conversations with him. Totally okay with that. I just wanted any of you to know who don't really understand how the Internet works. It's kind of like if you were in the Grand Canyon, it was really foggy and you heard what sounded like the biggest tiger in the history of the world growl, you'd be scared. Number one, you're in the Grand Canyon. I don't know what you're doing there. Number two, I don't know how much fog got in here. But number three, you don't really know what that sound is or where it's coming from. And it's really scary. Really freaks you out. But what if the fog lifted and then you saw up at the top of the canyon, it was just a tiny kitten with a microphone in front of its mouth and you saw that the fog had been covering up amplifiers on both walls of the canyon, you'd feel pretty stupid at that point because you let a kitten that you fit the palm of your hand freak you out. That's the Internet. That's negativity on the Internet. Now, I live in this world, so I kind of know how that works. I know not all of you do. So you look at it and you think, that's real, that's not real. And we laughed at it internally. But I understand our audience, man. I knew we were going to have some legitimate pushback and I'm okay with that, totally fine with it. I would also ask, hey, if you're around here, if you're watching the show right now, if you're watching the video right now and you've never heard of the show, hey, we do this thing free. We do it year round. It's college football. I would love it if you guys would subscribe to the channel. Like I said, it doesn't cost you a dime, doesn't sign you up for anything, doesn't put you on some mailing list. It. It really doesn't change your life at all. It just helps us out because we love providing this kind of content. But the experience was amazing. Now the experience is. It's a spectacle. I know some of you have been maybe at sporting events and a president is there, or you've kind of seen on tv like you watch the motorcade go by. But to be at an event, especially a small confined location, and maybe an advanced security team has been working with you for a few days and you've loaded all your equipment in there and they've been on the ground several days ahead of the event itself. Number one, you come to know those People by name. And that's fun. Those are fun interactions. But then, man, the different levels of security, as the event draws closer, the different levels of security, watching how different tactical teams take over, even during the day leading up to that moment when a president arrives, I've always been fascinated by that. I'm as fascinated by the logistics of moving presidents maybe as I am presidents themselves. But it's pretty wild. Pretty wild. I've been around it a little bit more than maybe the normal person, but when you see how much the energy level drastically ramps up when you hear those sirens and you see that motorcade, and then the advanced Secret Service team tags out, and then the real, like, on duty with the President, Secret Service team just swoops in there, and you're just kind of standing there saying, all right. And then they tell you, take your hands out of your pocket, sir. Guilty. Yeah, it's amazing. It's really amazing. It's just. It's like an event. I don't know how else to describe it. Those of you who have been around it, you understand. But look, we learned a lot from this. I would say yes to it again in a heartbeat. The President was beyond courteous to us, and we really appreciate him giving us that opportunity. I appreciate the way his team handled it, because I know one of the most popular questions I got about this was, how do they. How do they handle it? How do they tell you what you're allowed to do? They didn't tell us what we were and weren't allowed to do one time from a content perspective, maybe like a general idea. Hey, do you kind of know some themes you want to hit? Like, do you want us to have him prepared for anything? But outside of that, I was actually shocked at the parameters that weren't in place. But then again, we had a good open line of communication with them. I know it will shock you to realize that there are many people in the White House who watch the show, and so we got to interact with them. But, I mean, Carolyn Levitt's staff, we enjoyed dealing with her. Susie Wiles, chief of staff, we enjoyed dealing with her. She's more behind the scenes a lot. You don't get to see her on camera so much. So it was a 10 of 10 experience for us, aside from the time crunch, which I wish we could have gotten more time, but other than that, that's out of our control. It was a lot of fun, man. So I appreciate you guys checking it out. I also appreciate you guys checking out FanDuel. It is after all the exclusive odds provider of the show. And we are going to go on to talk later in the show tonight about a whole lot of odds and ends. You know, like I'm going to talk about where could some wild card teams be this year. And like for instance, last year, Oklahoma, when FanDuel released the season win totals of like six and a half, I think it was Jesse. And then Oklahoma goes to the playoff. Where do we find those teams? Well, you can find them on FanDuel. At least you can find the opportunities on FanDuel. And so they're, they've always been the exclusive odds provider of our show. So we appreciate them. And also, look, I'm talking about college football, but you got college basketball going on right now. You got the NBA going on right now. We've got conference tournaments around the corner. Corner. We got March Madness around the corner. So you don't necessarily have to wait. You don't necessarily have to reserve your action for the moment. You get a good feeling on Clemson vs. LSU. You can if you want to, but you don't have to. We always appreciate FanDuel equipping us every step of the way. And remember, new customers right now, you sign up over there at FanDuel, you bet $5. If that bet hits, you get $100 in bonus bets. So hey, it's pretty much a win across the board.
- [29:40]
FanDuel Advertiser
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- [30:25]
Josh Bate
Now, I told you that there were going to be some controversial points of the show tonight and those happen. Right now it's time for us to update our college football head coaching power rankings. No, rake. We're going to do rankings, right? Jesse, you don't power rate coaches. Yeah, we don't. Well, I don't. Yeah. Bradley, here's a good endpoint for you. It is time for us to update our head coach power rankings. And we did not even do it last year. I don't think we did. So we've taken a two year hiatus. So it's totally in the Tumblr. I'm turning it right now. I don't know which ping pong balls are going to come out. Here's how I rank head coaches. It's not just what I saw in the last five minutes. So it's kind of like when we rank programs. What I'm looking for is I'm looking for a three year rolling blend of criteria. This is what matters to me. If different stuff matters to you, that means our rankings are probably going to look different. So I care what your teams have done on the field the past three years. I care about your relative ability to acquire talent. Like if you're at Kansas, I don't expect you to recruit in the top five. Like if you're at lsu, I do expect you to recruit in the top five at least if you're going to be ranked high. I care about your culture, I care about your organizational strength, your ability to hire and to backfill after your staffers go on to bigger and better things. I have a very, very slight predictive element to this. So, like, I'll talk about a couple of coaches that when all else was equal, I bumped them up a spot because I just flat out think they're about to do big things. Like, I believe in what's around the corner, what's on the next page and if there's other tiebreakers in my mind, I do lean a little bit more towards recency bias. So like that rolling three year blend, if your best year out of that three years was three years ago and the other guy's best year was last year, probably going to lean towards him. Spoiler alert. This is going to go really good for Kurt Signetti. So let's start at number 10. I got Mike Elko at number 10 on the brand new, freshly updated head coach power rankings. He had a season at Duke that's mixed into the past three years. Remember Duke had been terrible and then he resurrected them all the way up to, I think they finished 8 and 5 in his final year there and then he goes to A and M And in his second season there they just went to the playoff, finished 11 and two recruits, very, very strong. One of the premier portal destinations and they're, they're really, really good and strategic about how they evaluate and attract talent there. I totally believe in the developmental piece under Mike Elko. So there's solid structure. And then when you talk about the predictive element, like the next page, what does it show? I really, really believe they're trending up. So I put Mike elko at number 10. A guy that just faced him in the playoffs and beat him is at number nine. And that's Mario Cristobal. I know I'm going to probably get a fair amount of pushback, that Mario should be higher. It's really close. So I got Mario at number nine in the head coach rankings right now. Eileen Recency. So if you look back the past three years, which I'm factoring in here, there is a seven win season, but they've trended up every year. They've gone 7 wins, 10 wins, 13 wins. They were at midfield with under a minute to go, down six in the national championship game about a month or so ago. So they're knocking on the door of championship now and people were saying that wasn't possible not too long ago. So there were a lot of things that were possible there. They just needed the right guy at Miami to unlock the door, and he has. Now, there are a few bad losses baked into this past three years equation, but if you're leaning recency, you really gotta like what they've done. Talent acquisition, of course, is not a problem down there, and they're a premier portal destination. But also the intensity down there is off the charts, I think, from a culture perspective and then even more so from an organizational perspective. Organizationally is where they've massively trended up over the past year and where I massively believe in them. In the next page, if I'm kind of looking to the future, I mean, think about the difference. Think about the night and day difference in that place defensively from the defensive coordinator prior to then being replaced by Corey Heatherman. I was with Heatherman in Arkansas last week. You want to know why? It was the Broyles awards ceremony for top assistant coaches in the country. Let me tell you who wasn't there the year before the previous dc we don't want to throw names under the bus. So I'm putting Mario at number nine. I'm going to the state of Texas for number eight. Give me Steve Sarkeesian. There's a lot of debate about a couple of names and the placement of those names. Sark was one of them. Steve Sarkeesian at number eight in the head coach rankings right now. Finally harnessing Texas. 12 wins, 13 wins, 10 wins the last three years, made the playoffs, got to the semis, Was it semis or quarters? Jesse last year played Ohio State, lost very close game. So they went to the playoffs a year ago. The predictive layer here matters to me. So you could have Sark as low as 10 or 11. I wouldn't, but you could argue that maybe you could bump him down there. A hater would argue that. But especially if you factor in the predictive layer and you believe in what's around the corner, kind of like I do. That's why Sark could be higher than 8. I put him at 8. They've got three top 10 classes last three years. Culture is just. It's hammered there. I wish I could take a lot of people with us when we go to Texas. I assure you, every place talks about culture. And if you're going to be featured in the top 10, your building's got good culture in it. In all likelihood, your organization's got good culture in it. I just have always happened to walk away from Texas really feeling it. Anytime you go out there, the folks in the building. One of the hallmarks of great culture is you could talk to 15 people in the building any given day and they all kind of sound the same. Singing from the same hymnal as Memaw calls that, that's a sign of good culture. Now you could have terrible culture too. Like you could believe in the wrong things. Unanimously. I think they believe in the right things there. It's just there's that age old crowd out there that believes you haven't won a national title yet. You haven't done anything. I am not of that crowd. And I also believe it's the best portal program in America right now. So they're all in this year. Odds to win a national title. They're tied for number two with Ohio State and Indiana right now. Next up, we put deboer. There's no we. I got to take. I got to take responsibility for this. I put DeBoer at number seven. Kalyn DeBoer, number seven in the head coach rankings right now. Past three years are blended here. And there is a national championship appearance at Washington blended in there. And then he's got nine wins and 11 wins and a playoff appearance last year at Alabama. A playoff win last year at Alabama baked in there. Recruiting hasn't fallen off, you remember. Feels like a long time ago. It's not that long ago when DeBoer takes the Alabama job. What's the only thing people screamed? The only thing people screamed was, he doesn't know the South. Are they going to be able to Recruit the South. And now, ironically, there's still a lot of critics out there, but none of them question talent acquisition. They're getting really good players. They're averaging top five classes there. They've been a little more selective, but really good in the portal too. It's just that I think there was an underrated set of issues that they inherited and he inherited when he got to Alabama. I think they've dealt with it pretty good. I think that the big question with Kalin, maybe even more so than you would ask with Sark, or maybe even more so than you would ask with Maury or Mike Elko, is the predictive layer that, that last bullet point, that fourth or fifth bullet point, whatever it was that we talked about valuing, you could find people that are all in on Alabama. You could find a lot of people who think they're trending down. I'm. I'm certainly more towards the positive than the negative. But like I'll admit to you, you couldn't run the ball last year. Well, how am I supposed to just blindly trust you're going to get that back now? Kirby and Georgia had a problem with that a couple of years ago and they rectified it. So it's not like we don't have a recent history of people finding their way or running the ball. But it's not easy to do. So that sort of thing has to show back up. And that would be what would vault Kaylin DeBoer back up into the top five. Getting close to the top five here. Number six. What a world we live in. I got lane at number six. I got Lane Kiffin. Now LSU's Lane Kiffin at number six in the head coach rankings right now. It's very interesting to see the reaction on this because I could see wild fluctuation in where people think lane belongs. But 11 wins, 10 wins. And then last year, Ole Miss goes 13 and 2. Of course he's not there for the playoff games themselves, but he coached him to the playoff. When's the last time Ole Miss had back to back to back double digit win seasons? The answer is never. It's never happened. So unlike some of these other places, you know, you got Mario trying to do what's already been done at Miami. Lane will try and do again what's already been done at lsu. Well, he did stuff that had never been done at Ole Miss and he managed the portal better. And they had to innovate through necessity at Ole Miss because they knew they couldn't go heads up in straight up recruiting talent acquisition the way Georgia can or the way Ohio State can. And he constructed a solid staff that I don't think even I appreciated at the time enough. So I got Lane Kiffin at number six. And if you're going to go the predictive layer, well, now, you know, if you believe in the B tier versus the A tier of resources, you're sitting in an A tier hotbed now in Louisiana at lsu. So I'll put Lane at number six. We continue see what people think about this. Again, like I said, I'll be very interested to see. I think a lot of people may have the same names in the top 10, but I think the order is going to fluctuate pretty wildly. I got Marcus Freeman at number five, current head coaching rankings. I got Marcus Freeman at number five. There's a 10 win season in here. There's a national championship appearance, 14 win season. There's another 10 win season last year. Half the country, you know, we call them the Compton class. The Will Compton class thinks that Notre Dame got screwed out of a playoff spot last year. But either way they were right there in the mix. Recruiting and on field production have leveled up from Brian Kelly. And this is one of those things that I have had to admit on the show that I was just wrong about. I had become convinced that Brian Kelly was pretty much redlining, pretty much maxing out Notre Dame's potential. And then Marcus Freeman walks in and basically says uh, and that recruiting is better and the on the field production is better and the intensity level and just the overall sort of animalistic DNA of the program, it's just better. And he's got a rock solid organization, rock solid culture, strong odds this year. In fact, as of this moment, if you are trying to look around the corner, see what's coming next, Notre Dame's got the best odds in the country to win the national championship this upcoming year. I mean I think most people agree with this. I couldn't be any more all in on Marcus Freeman. Never been on the show before. Could change. This spring we'll see number four, one Daniel Lanning of Oregon. We got Dan Lanning, number four, currently in the college football head coaching rankings. 12 wins, 13 wins. 13 wins. That's his last three years. There's a Big Ten title in there. There's back to back playoff appearances mixed in there. The, yeah, Butters will say, well, yeah, but they got blown out by Ohio State and Ryan Day. Yeah, that's why Ryan Day is yet to be listed. Well, they got blown out by Indiana? Yeah. You hadn't heard Signetti's name either, have you? Outside of the few, Dan Lanning and Oregon have pretty much dominated everybody else. So I think Dan Lanning absolutely belongs at number four. They're a very high level recruiter. They're a very high level portal destination. Kind of feels like a matter of time with them. Kirby Smart found himself in a position once upon a time where folks had started to say, oh, he can't win the big one. And then he did. And then they moved on to Ryan Day, and then it was, Ryan Day can't win the big one. And then he did, and now it's Dan Lanning. And I don't know if they've, as a consensus, like as a block, gone as far as to say Dan Lanning can't win the big one. But they're starting to whisper it and he will eventually win the big one and then they'll have to move on to someone else. But I got Dan Lanning at number four right now. Very unique energy in the organization again. We get to go to all these places all over the country, and I'm not saying one's better than the other, but there's just different feel at Oregon. A lot of places say they have a different feel at Oregon. They happen to be right about it. Gave a little pause there, so they can put in the hype video. Number three is Kurt Signetti. This isn't controversial because, you know, three, two, one, it's all good. I got. Sorry, Bradley. I got Kurt Signetti at number three in the head coach power rankings right now. But if you wanted to argue number one, I wouldn't really fight you on it because at JMU three years ago, he went 11 2, and then he goes to Indiana and takes them to 11 2. And then he goes 16. Oh, and wins a national championship. He's in the playoffs both of his first two years at Indiana, a place that had nine combined wins the previous three years. Culture is an A plus. Organizational structure is an A plus. He's got an incredible staff. Guys wanna work for him, guys wanna play for him. I. And think about what they just did. They beat Lanning twice en route to a national championship. They beat DeBoer, beat the brakes off of him. They beat Ryan Day in the Big Ten title game. They beat Mario in his own building. So he had to go through multiple guys in this top 10 in the same run to win the national championship. And he did it. So I guess if you're looking around the corner, I don't know how it gets better than that. If you're looking around the corner, people have to wonder, is this just a hot air balloon that has no sandbags in it? Does it never come back to earth? Are there no consequences of success up there at Indiana? It is the real world. Like, at some point there's got to be a hiccup. But right now I got him at three. If you wanted to argue two or one, I wouldn't argue. I'll tell you who I have at number two and number one. I got Kirby Smart at number two. So I should hold up two fingers. I put Kirby at number two in the head coaching rankings. He's got a 13 win season, 11 win season, 13 win season, past three years, couple of SEC titles. He's had the best recruiter in the nation. I say best recruiter is in his program, led by him. Has been the best recruiter on average in the nation last three years. Not a heavy portal program, but also Georgia's a little unique. So Georgia is a place that was on top of the world as the portal nil thing really, really took off. And they haven't been all in on it. Now. I don't mean they don't spend money. I just mean they've had a different strategy there. They believe in acquiring and developing, and it drives them up the wall. I know it does. It would drive me up the wall if I had my system, my way of doing things. And then all of a sudden, I didn't have guys three and four years and anymore at least as frequently as I used to, because you've built a dependable, trustworthy structure. But, you know, it takes a little while for guys to marinate in it, and now they just hop out. And the point is, Georgia's rebuilt at 40,000ft and never had to land. And they've really never come back to earth even. And that's really underrated because a lot of places would have fallen off. A lot of guys would have fallen off. You know, there's a guy who would have been parked in this top five five years ago, named dabo swinney, who's not in this top 10 now because things changed and they didn't adapt. Things changed under Kirby and he adapted, and Kirby's still sitting here solidly one of the very best head coaches in the country. I put Ryan day ahead of him. It's not. It's not a wide margin. Could go either way here. Ryan day is my number one head coach in the country right now. There is an 11 win season, a 14 win national title season and a 12 win season. Over the past three years he has averaged a top five signing class and they've had staff churn. I mean losing the coordinators that they've lost and then backfilling the way they have is unbelievable. Unbelievable. And they kept rolling the whole time. They are just humming as an organization and they have never finished outside the CFP top seven in his entire run there. I know technically only going back the past three years, but what is this, his eighth or ninth year? Something like that, Jesse. And they've never finished outside the top seven. That is a pressure spot. That is a pressure job. And there's just. Even in the drought versus Michigan, which they finally erased last year, they never finished outside the top seven. It's been an unbelievable run. Ryan Day again, it feels like ancient history when people said what he couldn't do. Oh man, Ryan, they can't win the big one. Can't get over the hump. Number one head coach in the country. Congratulations to Ryan Day. That guy gets up every morning. Does he want to develop players and make guys better men on and off the field? Yeah. Does he want to win a championship? Yeah. Really what he wants to do is kick his feet up on a Sunday night in February and he wants to turn on his favorite show and he wants to see that he's number one in the head coach power rankings. And to Ryan Day, I say congratulations. You did it. You did it. I can't imagine a dry eye in the Day household listening to that. Let's move on. We got a lot of questions to get to. We won't get to all of them tonight, but we do have a lot of questions. Alvin in Huntsville, Missouri, what are the biggest questions for the SEC this year? It's classy that we found a different Huntsville than the one just south of us in Alabama. Hey, great question here. So it's only February, so we got a long time to talk about this. But Alan wanted to know, or Alvin Rather wanted to know biggest SEC questions this year. So I challenged myself to come up with all these in one minute. First off, is there a tier system in the SEC this year and if so, what's the tier system? So by that I mean once upon a time you would have like one or maybe two alpha dog teams and then there's a solid B tier. It's usually a little bit more plentiful, maybe four or five teams and then there's like a fall off. Sometimes there is no C tier. It just goes to D And F, there is no E tier. I cannot stress enough how compacted the SEC was last year. There were no undefeateds, there were eight teams with two losses or less in SEC play. The league totally compacted on itself and yet 11 of the last 12 champs have either been Alabama or Georgia. So the league keeps spitting out the same champion. It's just the overall structure of it has changed a little bit. And there was a whole bunch of really good but no great in the SEC last year. So my first question would be do we have any greatness in the league? Also, is there any terribleness in the league? Because believe it or not, you need a little bit of it. Folks too serious about football in the SEC and all of a sudden you got Vanderbilt winning 10 games. Vanderbilt, they're not supposed to do that. Is Mississippi State just going to remain a doormat? Is Ryan Silverfield going to be unable to resuscitate Arkansas? Which brings me to a next question. Can any first year head coach catch lightning immediately? In this post Kurt Signetti world in which we live, we've always got to ask is there a first year head coach that's just about to hit the ground running? Pete Golding I count in this group. But Alex Goelish at Auburn, Kiffin at lsu of course Ryan Silverfield just mentioned him in Arkansas. Will Stein up the road from us here in Lexington. John Sumrall at Florida. Are any of those guys going to say I don't need three years, I don't need two years, I got a contender right here. It's unreasonable to expect that but it still could happen. Byron Brown going to get the job done immediately for Goelish there. Down on the plains you've got the whole thing with Pete Golding of you had this, what I called the sugar high effect of him taking over in the playoffs. But then you've got to have the sustainability effect of all right now it's mine full time. The interim tag is ripped off. Technically it already was but you get what I'm saying and now I'm the full time head coach. Is Ole Miss just going to continue to be Ole Miss? Lane should have his best opportunities that he's ever had at LSU. Okay, but is that going to happen in year one? We do know FanDuel has released like three over under win totals and Arkansas is one of them right now and it's four and a half. So Ryan Silverfield, I don't think they're saying championship over there. I don't think they're buying tickets just in case for Atlanta in December, but who knows? So, yeah, is anyone going to catch lightning in a bottle? How about the returning quarterbacks in the sec? Which returning quarterbacks can elevate their play? Because we got a sickness, we got a mind disease in college football where if you have a returning quarterback, everyone just thinks they get 20% better. That's not an automatic. We call that the Garrett Nussmeier protocol. We can call that the Cade Clubnik protocol. We call that the Drew Allerg protocol. We learned it harshly last year across college football. So Gunner Stockton returns for Georgia. Is he going to really substantially improve? Is Marcel Reed or John Matier going to substantially improve? Arch Manning is going to be favored to win the Heisman Trophy. How much better should I reasonably expect him to be? Trinidad Chambliss, if he is indeed starting for Ole Miss? Your most recent memory is him playing like a rock star in the playoffs. Is that just what I'm going to get next year? Maybe even better. What about Lenora Sellers at South Carolina? They're paying him a lot of money. A lot's expected of him. Are we going to see improved play? It's not a guarantee just because you're returning. And then lastly, and I'll move on here, where's my wild card? Where is my Vanderbilt? Coming out of nowhere to go 10 and 2 and flirt with a playoff spot. Where is my Oklahoma with a preseason over under win Total of 6 and a half going to the playoffs? Is it Missouri? Is it? Eli Drinkwitz got a workable opening schedule. Not, not maybe easy, but workable. So Austin Simmons, remember this? He transferred there, the quarterback from Ole Miss, he transferred to Missouri. And they open up with Arkansas, Pine Bluff, and then they've got a game at Kansas. Then they got Troy, Then they open against Mississippi State. They got Florida at home, back. Half of the schedule's pretty brutal, but you kind of want to be able to ease in. If you got a new quarterback. Could it be them? Could it be Auburn? Like I talked about Kentucky? Out of nowhere, Will Stein from the Rafters on the zip line. Could be, I don't know, Mississippi State now three years in under Jeff Levy. Is there a wild card team in the league? So those would be some of the questions that I'm asking along with, have you, have you been to pacestatematerial.com lately? Some of you went, a lot of you went to start the season. I appreciate it. We killed it in the store last year and we'll be even bigger and better this upcoming year. But a lot of you went when we first opened the store and maybe you didn't go again. And if you go back now, you'll be shocked at how much inventory we've added. We keep that thing open year round. So I didn't even tell Jesse or Bradley to even key in on any specific items. Just all encompassing suggestion here. Patestatematerial.com We've got sweatshirts, we got long sleeves, we got short sleeves. Do we have no sleeves? I can't remember. Write that down. Yeah, we'll work on that. Okay. Paintstatematerial.com it's there. When you're a pro, you gotta do a little bit of everything.
- [54:24]
Donald Trump
A little,
- [54:26]
Josh Bate
a little and even a little. And it helps to have something that works as hard as you do. That's why Valspar has durable, high coverage paint for every job. Every time made. For more Valspar pros, head to Lowe's today and talk to a pro rep about saving time and money on your next job with Valspar. Signature paint exclusions apply. See valsparpro.com for details. Had a great question here. In the spirit of the fact that the Speaker Series is right around the corner, we had a question. Well, we had a bunch of questions about which coaches we're going to have on, but I can't announce that yet. But Stanley from snowy Camden, New Jersey said if you could go back and interview anyone from college football history for the Speaker Series, who would it be and why? Great question. And this is one that everyone can play along to at home or on the road or at the gym or wherever you are. I always write down Keith Jackson anytime anyone asks me this. He never coached the game. He wasn't a player. He's the best broadcaster to ever do it. I would go to Keith Jackson, number one, because he treated the English language like Picasso treated a set of paints. But number two, because if you think about it, not only did he have a way with words, not only was he a supreme broadcasting talent and a supreme storytelling talent. Keith Jackson knew everybody. Keith Jackson knew all the coaches. So Keith Jackson had all the stories. So why go to one coach? I'm going to list some coaches, too. But why go to one coach when I could go to someone who knows all the coaches and he's interacted with them for an entire lifetime? Not to mention he has stories of his own. So with Keith Jackson, think about, like just dialing up a game. Hey, Florida State, Florida, 1993. Just tell me about it.
- [56:20]
FanDuel Advertiser
It.
- [56:20]
Josh Bate
And he does. Iron Bowl, 1985. Tell me about it and he just goes for 15 minutes on it. That would be awesome. I think it would be awesome to talk to Bobby Bowden. And also we were thinking about this and since it's a question on our show, we can just make up the rules. We're picking figures and we're also picking the period of time. Right. So if I'm going early 90s Florida State, mid-90s Florida State, I probably want to go pre Canal, pre Canal Florida State afterwards is a little tainted. So pre Canal Florida State, but they're still in their prime. Bobby Bowden's there. I would just love to experience Florida State still with the fan base able to remember when they were nothing. Because now every you're 40 years old, you don't remember when Bobby Bowden basically built Florida State football. It's kind of just baked in now. Like everyone knows Florida State football, even if they're down temporarily. Everyone knows Florida State football was a powerhouse, but when Bowden was there, it wasn't that far before that they were nothing. And I'd love to be able to talk to someone because that doesn't happen anymore. The most glaring recent example of this potentially happening is Cygnitti in Indiana. But Indiana has been in a major conference for a long time with adequate resources. They just weren't tapped into. And now someone finally did it properly. Florida State wasn't even on the map before Bowden went there and did what he did. So I would love to talk to him. I'd love to talk to Steve spurrier in the 90s, because in the 90s. The 90s, I contend, are the greatest decade in the history of the country. And the reason I say that is because it was a perfect mixture of technologically, you've come far enough where you have all the modern comforts of a society, but you haven't gone past 911 because the entire world changed post 9 11. So we're pre 9 11. We are in a period of time, art wise, culturally, that I happen to love. But also you're in a period of time where people haven't really gotten around to caring what everyone else thinks nearly to the degree that they do now. And there are a lot of reasons for that. Steve Spurrier I don't think has ever cared what people think about in period, but especially in an entire society that was a little more like that in the 90s. I would love to have Steve Spurrier on think about going down to Gainesville in the spring of 94 or something like that. Baseball's on strike in 1994. So we got a lot of audience looking for sports. That's the first thing. And the second thing is Steve Spurrier with 45 minutes to an hour to just chop it up with you. That'd be unbelievable. And then I had one that was totally off the wall. If I'm able to take my current self and teleport to 1927, 28, Notre Dame, and I have Knute Rodney, I think it would be an interesting conversation because I'm talking to a legend of the sport. I'm looking around, everything's black and white. Because that's the way the world looked in 1928. I think as much as it'd be fun to talk to Knute Rockne, think about the questions Knute Rodney would have for me, because I'm from a century ahead of time. I'm from a century into the Future. I'm from 2026. I've seen what happens to this sport over the next century. You got some questions for me? I think Knute Rodney would ask a lot of better questions than I would in that exchange. And I always have to write down Dabo Swinney, because we stopped asking Dabo to come on the Speaker Series, but he still always has an open invitation. We just. I don't want to beg anyone because the way it typically works is we announce on the show we're doing the Speaker Series, and then everyone reaches out and we kind of mutually line up dates. Well, Clemson's never reached out to us. I've reached out to Clemson because I'd love to have Dabo. I'd love to go over there. I'd love to sit down with him. And we kind of talked a couple times, but it never happened. And now I just stopped reaching out. But I still love to have Dabo because he's our. He's our white whale. We've never had him on the show. So. Bobby Bowden, Newt Rockne, Keith Jackson, Dabo. What a foursome there. And also, it was brought to my attention because I'd forgotten this when we were in our production meeting earlier today. And I'm not going to name a name here. People hate when I do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Forget about Dabo. I'm not talking about him. Last year, after we had the entire series lined up, I noticed that there was a coach that I really wanted to be on the Speaker Series that had not reached out. Sid had not reached out. And so I reached out to them, and they turned us down. The Sid didn't The Sid was stoked about it. The head coach turned us down and it wasn't it was very polite, but it was just they turned us down and they had their reasons and it wasn't anything personal or anything like that. They just turned us down. And it still eats at me. I'm not bitter about it, but it eats at me. And I think if I gave you 20 guesses, you would never guess who it is. And the reason I'm not going to mention that name is because I hope to get that coach on the show this spring, at which point maybe that'll be the big reveal. I'll be excited to see who the guesses are in the comments section. They're watching us in Columbia, South Carolina, Laredo, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio. Thank you so much. Very important segment coming up. Critical because we're only like six months away from kickoff, so we have to get these things nailed down. Gary from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which weeks should we be looking forward to the Most in the 2026 regular season? Of course, the answer is all of them, Gary. But if we're going to get specific, you got to go to week four. Week four is pretty amazing. So week four is a big week in the sec, but there are a couple of big ones in the Big Ten, too. Look at that lineup in the SEC on this given week. I know a lot of you are listening on podcast, so just kind of close your eyes unless you're driving. And I want you to picture your running programming at espn, abc. You have to decide which of these games goes where. So you've got South Carolina at Alabama, and they've played two years in a row. The games come down to the wire last two years, Ole Miss at Florida is the same day. Oklahoma at Georgia is that day. A and M at LSU is that day. Texas at Tennessee is that day. So decide how you're going to run programming for the old ABC tripleheader. Then in the Big Ten, Iowa is at Michigan and Oregon is at USC that day. So that is a very, very tasty menu on week four's lineup. And then in week seven, this one's kind of spread all over the place. Love what we have in week seven. So this is when Notre Dame goes to Brigham Young. And remember, Notre Dame doesn't exactly have a murderer's row this year. So you got to take the premier Notre Dame games where you can get them. Florida State is at Miami on this same day. And then I get Ohio State, Indiana, I get Penn State, Michigan, and I get Nebraska, Oregon. So that is a huge triple hitter that won't be on the same network in the Big Ten. And then in the SEC again, they're just kind of tossing Florida, Texas at you. And then Bama, Tennessee and then Auburn, Georgia and then over in the acc. I didn't want to sleep on Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and I didn't want to sleep on Virginia, smu. And also this is the same day that Arizona State plays Texas Tech. So week seven, sneakily, could be the best week of the year. Except that I would like to draw your attention to week 10, because I think week 10 may be even better. Now the ACC is doing this thing. I don't know if it's weird, but it is a thing where they've got four conference games on that Friday. Where are they going to air? Jesse, do we even. Obviously we don't have network assignments yet. But like, CW's got to be involved. They've got to be involved somehow. How am I supposed to do Friday night lines when we got four league games happening? So anyway, Louisville, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, smu, Clemson, Syracuse and Duke, NC State. All those games are on a Friday night. And you may be saying, oh, those aren't any big deal. Okay, I'm just saying there's a conference that has four league games on a Friday night. Then we get to Saturday. This is the big day. Miami, Notre Dame is this day in South Bend. Oregon at Ohio State is this day. Penn State is at Washington on this day. Brigham Young, Utah. Holy war. We say it two more times because they don't want us to say it. Holy war. Holy war. Always got to say it thrice. And then in the sec, this is Bama, lsu, this is Oklahoma, Florida, this is Georgia. Ole Miss, a playoff rematch. This is Texas, Missouri, and this is A and M, South Carolina. And then of course, I got to go rivalry week, which is week 13 because we only got one buy this year. So the Friday lineup, Texas and Texas A and M or that day, Florida and Florida State Egg Bowl. A lot of Thanksgiving Egg bowl proponents. I'm part of that club. But they're going to play it on Friday again. Nebraska, Iowa is on Friday. And then of course, on Saturday you got the game. Michigan at Ohio State this year you got the Iron bowl. You got Washington, Oregon, Oklahoma, Missouri is that day. South Carolina, Clemson is that day. Look, I know it's February. I know we got a long time until we really, really have to nail this down. But as I'm looking way down the road, I got those, those four weeks, those Would be the ones I circle. We'll wrap it up tonight with one more little tidbit that we have to get to. We've been doing the mood Tracker, just looking at different programs and trying to take the temperature of the fan bases as we get ready for spring. And we figured we'd spin the wheel. We saw that it landed on the Florida Gator logo. We'd do Florida's Mood Tracker tonight. And the mood for the Florida fans is basically just kind of like time. Look, some. Some teams, some programs or losers out there calls their losers. Florida is not a loser program. They just have to look in the mirror and think, we're hotter than this. We should not look like this. We just need a makeover. We just got a Laney Boggs ourselves. We got it. We got to take the ponytail down. We got to pull the glasses off. We got to take the smock off. Isn't that what artists wear? Aren't they called smocks? I believe, yeah. There is zero culture behind that glass. Maybe Bradley a little bit. Four of their last five years have been losing seasons. This cannot happen. This should not happen at Florida. Now, here's the good news. It hasn't been so long that they've won there that people have forgotten. It is. I still count it as recent memory. I guess it's 15 years ago, but still fairly recent history that Urban Meyer in Florida did what they did there. So we know it can happen. I will continue to say an armed and aimed. Florida is a very dangerous Florida because you remember when I went down there the last several years, we'd go down there and see Billy, see the coaching staff, do the speaker series down there. And I. I've told you, the last couple of years, place is extremely dangerous. They got everything they need. And then they would, to varying degrees, underachieve on the field. And everyone would say, oh, you were wrong about Florida. Hey, I may have been wrong about some predictions here or there. The D.J. lagway, number one quarterback in the SEC last year. Yeah, that one missed the dartboard. It hit. It hit someone in the arm over there. Yeah. Okay. Do I regret that little bit. But I'm not wrong about what Florida's capable of. I'm not wrong that when you go in that place, it's really impressive. There are a lot of folks committed to winning there. Then again, so are there in Athens, Tuscaloosa, Austin. So no one really cares what you're committed to doing. They care what you are doing. They made a good hire. Like I like John Summerall a lot. I just think that there was so much fixation on Lane Kiffin in the hiring cycle that a lot of people looked at anyone other than Lane and were going to be let down by it. And the history of this sport shows that more times than not, it's not the programs that go higher, a proven superstar that end up winning in the long run. Number one, because it's hard to hire a proven superstar. Number two, because more times than not, it's the program that finds its future superstar head coach instead of going and plucking someone else's finding who is going to be your own. So maybe John Sumrall 10 years from now has become to Florida what Ryan Day is to Ohio State or what Kirby Smart is to Georgia. Obviously this is a best case scenario type situation, but maybe that's what happens. Cause that's far more likely than the alternative. To me, at least it's been a while though, you know, since the SEC's had to fear Florida. It's been a while. It's been a lot of. A lot of Georgia, been a lot of Bama. There's been some LSU in there. Boy, Florida hadn't been on that radar. Tennessee's popped. Tennessee was in the playoffs two years ago. Florida has just not been there. And I. Oklahoma made the playoffs last year. You just wonder. They cannot stay down forever. Even Ole Miss in the playoffs last year. How long until it's Florida's turn? I do think they got the right guy down there. I really, really believe in John Sumrall. I've talked about him for three years. I really believe in him. They just got to have a makeover. You don't have to reinvent the wheel down there. Everyone knows what the principles to winning are. Summerall's done it. Multiple stops. I understand. Yes. You don't have to come in the comment section and scold me on this. I do understand that it wasn't that long ago people were telling you, oh, Billy Napier knows what it takes to win. And then you look, then he didn't win enough for you. And you say, well, maybe the formula for success, winning at the G5 level is different than here. No, no. It's just. Maybe the stage is a little too big. Maybe the lights are a little too bright. The formula for winning, that's. That's not in question. You just got to have a guy that can execute it. I think you do. Time will tell. That's our show. We appreciate you so much for joining us. It was a unique show tonight and I assume that there will be a lot of dialogue had about it. Look, I know if you're watching in February, you're one of our P1s and I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Maybe I don't say it every show. I try to thank you so much. Check and see if you're subscribed and if you're not, I humbly ask that you do that. We will do our next live show Thursday night. We'll probably get you a podcast only either Tuesday night or probably Wednesday morning. So look for that this week and otherwise let's have ourselves a good solid start to the week. Appreciate all of you for watching tonight. Take care. For director Bradley producer Jesse I'm Josh Bait. God Bless.
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