American Conference 2026 Preview: Reset

Summary

Split Zone Duo: American Conference 2026 Preview — “Reset”

Podcast: Split Zone Duo
Hosts: Alex Kirshner & Stephen Godfrey
Release Date: August 3, 2026

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Episode Overview

The episode offers a comprehensive preview of the newly renamed "American Conference" for the 2026 college football season. Hosts Alex Kirshner and Stephen Godfrey (host emeritus) take stock of a league at a crossroads: the American has just undergone a wave of coaching and roster turnover. The conversation focuses on the “hard reset” facing the league after many of its top coaches and players left for higher-profile jobs, navigating NIL realities, the portal’s disruption, and what programs are best positioned to reload or reinvent themselves. The format revolves around the “Rose, Bud, Thorn” structure, giving space for optimism, intrigue, and skepticism for each major program.

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Key Themes and Episode Structure

• Identity Crisis and Reset: The American is “functioning as it’s supposed to” (02:29) as a launchpad job, but mass departures and realignment have created a low point for continuity and star power this year.
• NIL and Portal Dynamics: The conference’s competitive balance now shifts with programs trying to “out-talent” opponents by leveraging local resources (like USF in Florida or Tulane’s NIL).
• “Rose, Bud, Thorn” Format: Each team is examined through optimism (Rose), curiosity (Bud), and skepticism (Thorn).
• Preview Order: Tulane, North Texas, Navy, East Carolina, South Florida, Memphis, UTSA, Temple, FAU, Rice, UAB, Tulsa, Charlotte.

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Segment Summaries & Timestamps

1. The New American: Change, Opportunity, and Challenge

[00:39–04:03]

• The American is now just “the American” — “no longer the American Athletic Conference” but rebranded amid realignment and turnover (00:39).
• “It’s low tide, guys,” says Godfrey (03:09), noting the league’s drained of star power, generating a lot of “opportunity… or it could be someone like Navy just running roughshod.”
• Over three-quarters of all-conference players transferred up (03:26).
• Still, multiple schools are using NIL to reload, not just lose.

2. Tulane Green Wave — A Model for Mid-Major NIL

[05:03–12:23]

Rose:

• “The system is that Tulane woke up a couple years ago, decided to put money into the program... they have the best NIL, I think, in the American.” (05:03)
• “If I’m starting over… I want to interview at Tulane before I interview anywhere else.” (06:04)

Bud:

• Defensive continuity via coordinator Taylor Polk and a strong linebacking core offers optimism despite turnover.
• Notes the unique “defensive tree” traced through Troy, Army, and Houston (06:26).

Thorn:

• Skepticism on the Will Hall hire (“not the most exciting thing in the world” —08:24).
• Season is poised to answer whether Hall’s struggles at Southern Miss were due to lack of support or coaching limitations.

Notable Quote:

“Hiring Will Hall is not the most exciting thing in the world… We’re going to figure out… was Will Hall completely bereft of support and resources at Southern Miss or did Southern Miss have a Will Hall problem?” —Stephen Godfrey (08:25)

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3. North Texas Mean Green — From Air Raid to Defensive Rebuild

[12:45–19:59]

Rose:

• Defensively-oriented transfer haul under new coach Neil Brown (formerly Troy/WVU).
• Notable transfers: Udoka Iziani (UTEP), Aaron Alexander (Ark State) boost edge/LB group (15:34).

Bud:

• Neil Brown’s track record on D at Troy raises hopes for improvement in mean green defense.
• “Could you just kind of fart out a good enough offense to go with that defense and contend?...Not a bad idea. I’ve definitely heard worse.” (16:30)

Thorn:

• Fan support questioned: “Will students care when everything they liked about last year’s team is gone?” (18:54)
• Losing almost entire starting offense (4 returning starts from last year) might kill carry-over momentum.

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4. Navy Midshipmen — The Consistent Contender by Default?

[20:57–25:18]

Rose:

• “The Drew Chronick offense has been the hardest to stop and the best and most complete offense of the three Academy schools.” (20:57)
• Smart coaching hires and defensive baseline keep them a step ahead.
• “This is the best Service Academy at the moment.” (21:13)

Bud:

• New QB Braxton Woodson is “fast fast”; might avoid typical regression with new starter (22:15).
• Woodson previously flashed vs. USF and ND.

Thorn:

• Media possibly overrating Navy due to returning production. Portal puts ceiling on academy talent vs. transferred-in stars at power programs.

Notable Quote:

“This is a consistent winner of a program. But this year’s really interesting. I think they’re picked first because all the talent-heavy teams are turning over so much.” —Stephen Godfrey (25:13)

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5. East Carolina — Quietly Well-Positioned for Breakout

[27:15–32:49]

Rose:

• Promising WR group (Brock Spalding) and Miami transfer Ray Ray Joseph (28:29).
• Jordan Davis from North Texas brings high-powered scheme as OC.

Bud:

• Head coach Blake Harrell (14–5 at ECU); program is a “coaching cradle.”
• “This is the team that could break out this year… have just not gotten national play like they probably deserve.” (30:06)

Thorn:

• Quarterback carousel; no entrenched starter—may limit upside.
• Overperformed on red zone defense in ‘25, which may regress.

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6. South Florida Bulls — The NIL Arms Race Arrives in Tampa

[32:49–37:09]

Rose:

• Most transparent plan in the G6: “USF is telling everyone who will listen, we are going to be the best group of program in a very short term.” (35:15)
• 24 former Power players, 10 blue chips on roster.
• Stadium construction and fully funding revenue share are “visible signals” of intention.

Bud:

• Defensive coordinator Josh Aldridge, poached from ECU—a signal of rising budget.
• “He called some wild...he’s a very aggressive playcaller. It’s definitely something I want to take a look at” (35:44)

Thorn:

• Skepticism over Tim Beck as OC and Michael Van Buren at QB: “This feels like a placeholder.” (36:15)
• Top-end skill talent likely, but QB/OC combo may keep ceiling low in year one.

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7. Army Black Knights — Can the Option Rise Again?

[38:54–45:16]

Rose:

• “I’m pretty sure the running game is going to smash this year and I mean smash like successfully rather than just smash into things.” (38:54)
• QB Cale Hellums, 4 OL starters & specialist excellence (punting/kicking) set the floor.

Bud:

• Defensive prowess against explosive pass; but little pass rush—can they generate enough chaos?
• “I think there could be a lot of points scored in Army games this year.” (44:16)

Thorn:

• Defensively suspect, may rely too much on specialists in close-game scripts.

Notable Moment:

“The skillsets are not as separated as they might be in other schemes.” —Godfrey on Army’s QB/RB ‘merry-go-round’ (41:34)

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8. Memphis Tigers — Charles Huff as the Portal Kingpin

[45:16–50:26]

Rose:

• New HC Charles Huff: “He knows how to find talent in the portal. He also knows how to kind of edge up developmental talent.” (45:16)
• Significant Marshall-to-Southern Miss-to-Memphis talent pipeline; noted DE Jamon Tapp as top transfer.

Bud:

• QB mystery (Stokes, Gardner, Noland), but optimism about whichever starter emerges.

Thorn:

• Brutal schedule: “I think Memphis is making the run next year. But this is not a just-add-water instant conference championship season...” (49:47)

Notable Quote:

“Everything could break right...and then he’s going to be in serious demand if they win those games.” —Godfrey on Huff’s one-and-done potential (50:26)

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9. UTSA Roadrunners — Staleness and Ceiling?

[50:31–55:45]

Bud (Main Focus):

• Concern that UTSA, under Jeff Traylor, might be hitting a ceiling—flatlining at 7-win seasons while “money isn’t barking” despite rumors they need ~$5 million/yr. roster spend.
• “They are 34 and 5 at the Alamo Dome since 2020. That is the most home wins in the group of six.” (55:42)

Rose:

• Points will be scored: QB Owen McCown returns, 3 OL starters, productive RB Will Henderson III.

Thorn:

• Defense was “noncompetitive against good offenses and then almost everyone left.” (54:02)
• Heavy D-II transfer reliance; little reason for optimism on that side of the ball.

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10. Temple Owls — The “Winners Win” Approach

[56:03–59:49]

Rose:

• Loving the Casey Keeler hire; “best and most legit coach that Temple has had since Matt Rule.” (56:03)
• Could win 8–9 in a best-case season and parlay to ACC/Power job.

Bud:

• OL continuity; offense trending up with OC Tyler Walker returning.

Thorn:

• Still “don’t have a quarterback.” (57:32) Will lean on run game.

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11. FAU Owls — The Wild Card of Fun Bad

[59:49–63:52]

Bud:

• Most returning production in the league; lots of lower-division portal flyers (D-II/D-III standouts, e.g. Ferris State).
• QB Kaden Veltkamp & thousand-yard WR Easton Messer are a strength.

Thorn:

• “Minus 21 turnover margin” (reported as “worst since Covid”) doomed ‘25; defense was “131st in Defensive SP plus last year.”

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12. Rice Owls — Offense as Identity

[63:52–67:11]

Rose:

• “If you’re going to be this bad, at least try to be different.” Gun option and D-II staff as schematic edge.
• Running back group and new transfer QB Jacurri Brown could intrigue.

Thorn:

• Portal ravaged defense: “The defense essentially turned over all their good pieces.” (66:59)
• Will advance on O, but D may be “horrific.”

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13. UAB Blazers — Fresh Start, Familiar Challenges

[67:11–72:19]

Rose:

• Alex Mortensen now HC, “very likable, which is a little bit of a change of pace.”
• QB Ryder Burton (former BYU/WVU), RB Rodd Robinson (“looks exactly like a former Georgia running back”) could provide an offensive spark.

Thorn:

• Lost best players (WR Iverson Hooks to Oregon); portal woes.

Notable/Fun Fact:

• DC is Todd Grantham (“Throw it up so-and-so is down there. Just blitz. We’ll figure it out later.” —Godfrey, 72:19)

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14. Tulsa Golden Hurricane — Innovating to Survive

[72:29–76:01]

Rose:

• QB Baylor Hayes returns; offensive line continuity.
• “Got a quarterback coming back, got an O line coming back. I feel good about these things.” (75:25)

Bud:

• The “Portal House” anecdote (players living together in a Tulsa Airbnb); Tulsa increasing recruiting profile in creative ways.
• “If you’re going to be bad, try to be different.” (75:25)

Thorn:

• Portal cost them most productive players (Dominic Richardson, defense); likely more pain ahead.

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15. Charlotte 49ers — Should They Even Be FBS?

[76:01–80:18]

Rose:

• “I can’t really come up with a rose here that’s not disingenuous.” (77:04)
• City of Charlotte is nice…? (product endorsement for Haberdish restaurant).

Bud:

• QB Connor Harrell flashed when healthy; FCS receiver portal tap.

Thorn:

• Projected dead last by SP+. “The likelihood is that they’re going to get blown off the line of scrimmage on both sides.”
• Schedule offers few winnable games—“what an ass game” (79:48) re: the UAB matchup.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity in this league this season. Or it could be someone like Navy just running roughshod.” —Stephen Godfrey (03:09)
• “It’s low tide, guys.” —Godfrey (03:09)
• "I want to interview at Tulane before I interview anywhere else." —Godfrey (06:04)
• “If I was Jeff Traylor and the money wasn’t real, my ass would be on front street telling everybody… We’re broke.” —Godfrey (53:16)
• “If you’re going to be bad, try to be different.” —Godfrey on Tulsa and Rice (75:25, 63:52)
• “This shouldn’t be an FBS program.” —Godfrey on Charlotte (76:16)

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Awards & Superlatives

[80:41–86:26]

“Dude of the Year”

• Defense: Udoka Iziani (North Texas) — “This guy’s best platform yet to show how good he is.” —Godfrey
• Offense: Whoever wins Memphis QB job — “That’s the position to watch in the entire league.” —Godfrey
• Alex’s picks: Kael Hellums (Army), Jamon Tapp (Memphis/USM transfer)

“Coach Who Won’t Be Here Next Year”

• Favorites: Charles Huff (Memphis, likely next hot candidate) or Jeff Traylor (UTSA, possible lifer or jump candidate).
• Dark Horse: Zach Kittley (FAU), if things go significantly south.

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Underrated/“Low-Key” Games of the Year

[86:26–88:50]

• Navy at UTSA: “Troops at the Alamo”—contrasting styles and UTSA home dominance (86:26).
• ECU vs. Memphis: “Really telling game because… I’m curious how fast Memphis can supercharge by dumping NIL in and grabbing Huff.” —Godfrey
• Tulsa at Rice and Temple at Rice: “Of those three teams, there’s probably one bowl bid in there.”

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Episode Takeaways

• The American is in a full rebuild year: continuity is rare, and most programs have overhauled staff and rosters via NIL and the portal.
• Programs with a clear plan or resources (Tulane, USF, Memphis) are separating themselves from those clinging to old models or struggling to adapt.
• Service academies (especially Navy) may benefit from chaos — but risk being out-talented over 12 weeks.
• League-wide, defense and continuity are rare and thus valuable; expect odd shootouts, especially in games involving Army, FAU, or Rice.
• Some teams may not even belong in FBS (Charlotte), while others are fighting a tidal wave (Rice, Tulsa) but trying to innovate.

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For New Listeners

This episode provided a candid, thorough, and often humorous look at a chaotic conference in transition. If you want a sense of how budget, coaching continuity, and the portal/NIL era affect the non-power-conference landscape, this preview offers stories and skepticism in equal measure, with plenty of “weirdness” to look forward to.

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For more, visit SplitZoneDuo.com and subscribe to keep up with the rapidly changing world of college football.

Transcript

[Stephen Godfrey]

We're coming and we ain't backing down. We don't need a bunch of cats

[Alex Kirschner]

in here looking in the mirror.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Everybody just do your job. You understand that? Hey, will you shut up? I'm bitterly disappointed with the officiating today. Guys being dudes.

[Alex Kirschner]

And they run through our.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Like, through a tin horn, man.

[Alex Kirschner]

Thank you, Lee. Thank you to Steven Godfrey, Split Zone duo, co founder and host emeritus, who joins me, Alex Kirschner on Our American Conference 2026 preview. Stephen, welcome back.

[Stephen Godfrey]

American, of course, I got the American. Although I'm excited about it, honestly.

[Alex Kirschner]

I think we did this with you last year, too. I was out for a week, and we thought, stephen's here. This is the week that we should do the American preview. So you and Richard did.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I remember. I think it was me and Richard. I remember this, and I remember feeling more excited about doing the American. Very, very different American Athletic Conference. No longer the American Athletic Conference, by the way, but very different situation last off season because of the amount of coaches who were sort of on the precipice and programs that we're trying to challenge. And then now it's like, you know, short of realignment, we're talking hard reset this season.

[Alex Kirschner]

We are. Last year, we also did an episode that we called the American Identity Crisis, which I guess could apply to lots of things these days, but specifically applied to this conference. Literally, they were changing their name. And we will honor the name change in this episode. We will call it the American or the American Conference. Except I will.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I will try when like. Or I will forget pretty quickly.

[Alex Kirschner]

Except, though, when it's. When we're talking about all conference players, we are going with all aac. I am not calling their all conference players. Yeah, I refuse to do it. I think it's a little weird. Can't do it means two different things. But I think, Stephen, last year, before we get into the teams, I think the league had the kind of recovery year that it wanted at a high level. Like, the thing that had been good about the American in the 2000 and tens, maybe very early 2000s, was that it was a launching pad, which sucks, because when things go well, you don't want to lose players and coaches. But it was really good at it, at launching coaching careers, in particular in the 2010s. Then that stopped for a while. But then last year, Tulane's coach goes to Florida. Memphis's coach goes to Arkansas. USF's coach goes to Auburn. North Texas coach goes to Oklahoma State. All of that happening because those teams were if in one or two cases, a little disappointing. Good. And got the job done.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's functioning as it's supposed to. I mean, even with the amount of uncertainty as to, like, how college football is going to shape itself and perform and create a postseason, all that. All that stuff for the future, the American did its job really well, which is why we're in a little bit of a hard reset and it's going to create, like, situate. Well, you know, we're gonna talk about Navy in a second because Navy is kind of like the. I. I don't want to insult the service academies. Like, Navy's a default pick to win this conference right now because there's so much uncertainty at the majors inside the American because we're.

[Alex Kirschner]

It's.

[Stephen Godfrey]

It's low tide, guys. Last year was insane with the amount of coaching, the amount of talent. And so there is. I don't want to sound like a cliche sports radio guy, but there is a tremendous amount of opportunity in this league this season. Or it could be someone like Navy just running roughshod.

[Alex Kirschner]

Speaking of that opportunity, the commissioner, Tim Pernetti, said at their media days that 78% of the all conference players transferred up after last season as tough. That's tough.

[Stephen Godfrey]

That's what it is, though. Like. Like, you know, we're not going to sit here and mourn it anymore. I think, you know, there's also going to be. As we get into these team previews, there are a lot of rosters that look very different by cherry picking what's below them. And a couple. A couple schools, like, you know, we'll talk about, like with USF and Memphis specifically, that are. That are pulling power talent into the program. So it's not all bleak.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah. And they're preview. No, definitely not. Definitely not. There's reload potential at many of these places that you don't see around most of the group of six. Uh, you know the format, Steven listeners, you probably know the format. Unless this is your first one. We can break this format as we want, but we do A rose, a Bud, and a Thorn. The rose, a thing you like.

[Stephen Godfrey]

This is a bachelor thing, right?

[Alex Kirschner]

Uh, the rose is a bachelor thing. Rosebud Thorn started with my wife doing this with me on New Year's and doing it with her friends on New Year's Eve, and I decided that I liked it for conference previews, so I stole it from her. And she doesn't get royalties either, which is really terrible.

[Stephen Godfrey]

It was. It was perfect for some of my Schools assigned and then very tricky. But there's some of the. Of the less hopeful.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah, there's one where I am not doing a rose because I refuse to lie to the audience. I'll be later. But rose. Bud Thorn. But is kind of the point of curiosity, intrigue. You think it could be good, but you haven't quite seen it yet. Steven, why don't you get us started with the defending champions, the Tulane Green Wave.

[Stephen Godfrey]

The two lane system is the rose here, which is. The system is that Tulane woke up a couple years ago, decided to put money into the program, decided to be organized and smart and deploy cash into bringing talent on campus. Because shockingly, a affluent private school like Tulane had people who were willing to spend money in the deep south on winning college football games. That hasn't changed. I think NIL is actually a big. I mean they have right now the best nil, I think in the American in terms of dollars and then how dollars are spent. Keep an eye on South Florida as the years go by. Okay. Like South Florida is fast, fast approaching, but for now, let's say it is Tulane. And then also I want to talk about, I think Will hall getting this job after John Sumrall has to do with the NIL structure and the people involved in that. Will hall was a very much a familiar face and it made some NIL people comfortable.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah.

[Stephen Godfrey]

To sort of keep consistency going there. So that's the rose is that if I'm starting over, I'm looking at an American job. I want to interview at Tulane before I interview anywhere else. I think maybe in a year or two.

[Alex Kirschner]

Put them above obviously USF you mentioned, but you think they have a better economic outlook than Memphis is interesting to hear at present. Okay.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I think that there's raw potential at the larger publics, specifically Memphis and South Florida. But they've just started. Tulane has a head start and it's not. Look, it's not Indiana will tell you this. It's not the raw number spent or, or Texas A and m would have 20 national championships. It's also how you spend it. And so that's why I'm putting Tulane above everybody else. Bud. I think in a turnover year, which is very much what Tulane is facing, new coach, largely new roster. What I like about this roster right now, I think is that I would bump the floor for Tulane's defense up even in a transition year. Meaning that I think you can expect them to look better than you would expect in a transition year because of the consistency. One of the smart things that happens in the John Sull system going all the way back to Troy is that they use a lot of the same guys and they hire within this sort of like it's a little bit of Army, a little bit of Troy, two lanes involved. There's some guys from Houston that are involved and they're all kind of a network of guys that know each other in, in this defensive tree. And right now they don't have a ton returning in terms of like the people in the helmets on the field, but the linebacking group is really good. And the D.C. taylor Polk is a carryover from last year and he was also at Troy. That is very helpful here because one of the things we're also going to talk about, Alex, is there's a lot of new faces on opposing offenses. So to have some consistency at all in your defense, I think is, is solid. I'm stretching here and I'm sure you will stretch as well at these turnover schools because there's just so much we don't know. The Thorn here is probably the conversation we should have, which is that I'm, I'm willing to kind of be a prick and I'm going to say that hiring Will hall is not the most exciting thing in the world.

[Alex Kirschner]

No.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Got some baggage on it and we have here. Here's the fun thing. I'm going to turn the, I'm going to turn the Thorn into like at least a conversational bud. Alex, we're going to have a really quick evaluation. We're going to figure out by the end of this season was Will hall completely bereft of support and resources at Southern Miss or did Southern Miss have a Will hall problem? That's what we're going to figure out really quickly because Will hall goes from a decided have, not in the group of to a decided have and we're going to see what the difference looks like in deployment of talent and coaching of games.

[Alex Kirschner]

After we recorded our off season vibe check about Tulane, I was talking with someone who's down there and very knowledgeable and close to the program, but not actually in the building. And he was trying to explain the Will hall thing to me. And I will, I will say that I at least get it. I get the concept that I think they're trying to prove. I think you already said the key thing, which is get the concept. Yeah, you know, people there are comfortable, comfortable with him, people who write checks. Tulane people felt like it was a big loss when he left the Willie Fritz staff to go to Southern Miss and Southern Miss is a mess. And there's this idea that he had to spend a lot of time fundraising there and couldn't just be a ball coach and that didn't help him. One reason that I am paying some credence to this is that I've been trying to do more Instagram social video stuff lately to try to get out and meet potential new splits and duo listeners. And I was doing a recap dive on the Ellis Johnson Southern Miss tenure, which was one year in 2012. And I remembered because we were doing splits and do at the time that when Will hall was there, it was bad enough that people were putting paper bags over their heads. And I was looking for a picture of someone putting bags over their heads in Hattiesburg of Will hall and I couldn't find one, but I was able to find several during the Ellis Johnson era just in the photo wire service that we use. So they've had multiple paper bags over face as coaches in like 14 and less than, less than 15 years. Which, I mean lots of teams have fired multiple coaches in less than 15 years. But to be at paper bag over face level with multiple guys in that shorter period of time, you know, like, you could sell me. It was a Southern Miss problem. You could sell.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I just, I, I, the optics are rough because you went, you went from the most sought after coach in the power, in the power 2 or power

[Alex Kirschner]

4 to a guy who got fired by Southern Miss. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Godfrey]

And again though, but, but Summer all. Look, Summerall has is very good about operating, fostering, building a coaching tree, working within it and creating consistency. That's how you win at Troy and then turns out that's how you win at two lane. And he's also leaned into other people's trees like Willie Fritz. I think it's the smart thing to do. And so I can understand Tulane wanting to stay within that system prescribed. I mean, look, Will hall is probably hiring. Will hall is probably a big reason why John Sumral. Excuse me, John Sumrall turned around and wrote a check to Tulanes nil.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yes.

[Stephen Godfrey]

As a, as a sort of parting gift before he went to the Gators.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yes. They definitely benefit from a combination of Summerall really nailing the vibes on the way out the door. And also just Tulane, I think not having that many people that he, not that many players that he wanted to take with him to Florida because it's a different level of competition. So they have some pretty interesting continuity on this team. Despite losing the top guy, losing the head coach, Jamari McClure running back really came on strong like six, six and a half yards of carry in the back half of last season. I think they'll have a quarterback somewhere. I liked Kaden Samanza, who was the Mac freshman of the year a couple years ago when he was on this team last year. But Jake Retzlaff wound up falling in their laps. I think, you know, I think they're going to be good, but I don't think you're a dick or being unreasonable for at least asking the question or pointing out that it's not very fun. Totally.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah, totally acknowledging to. To the audience right now this is a very easy way to look wrong in one year. But until that time, like, until that time, the question will persist, I think. Minimum seven wins and nobody gives a. Nobody gives a crap. They turn around, they get deeper, and they compete next season for the. For the conference championship.

[Alex Kirschner]

Speaking of continuity, there is none with the next school, the North Texas Mean Green. This is a complete tearing apart down to the studs. A combined four starts from last year's team are back. They had the number one offense in the country last year. That's by SP plus by our friend Bill Connolly, meaning its opponent adjusted, meaning you could really make a case that not just best in the G6, not just best for what they are, but best, period, best offense in the country. And that whole thing, literally that whole thing is at Oklahoma State now, or it was out of eligibility. So Drew Messmaker, the quarterback, Wyatt Young, the top receiver, the running back, Caleb Hawkins, who scored 29 touchdowns as a freshman. Yes, that is a record. In total, it's only 18 guys from the last roster at Oklahoma State. But it's so many of the key guys, especially the key guys on the part of the team that made them great and that allowed them to win 12 games. So what do they do? They do not stick around with someone from the Morris offensive staff and offer him the job. Those. Those guys are all with him in Stillwater. They go Godfrey and they hire Neil Brown, former Troy and West Virginia head coach. That is a stylistic departure from Eric Morris. Were you surprised when they almost did? I don't know about temperamentally a bit at least identity schematic wise. They went with an opposite of your ex move here.

[Stephen Godfrey]

No, not necessarily. I mean, I think that there. So, again, it's just. We're just looking at different philosophies between the hiring practices of Tulane and the hiring practices of North Texas or even, you know, we'll talk about South Florida in a second the advantage you get with Will hall, whatever questions you have about his USM tenure, is that your roster won't look like you all need name tags to say to introduce yourselves to each other come August. There's more of that, a lot more of that. Here at North Texas they went with what they thought was best coach available. And I think the the operating assumption now is that if we do that, you just have to be that much more aggressive in the portal in the immediate short term. So it's just a difference of philosophies for now. If if one coach succeeds, the other one bombs out. You're going to start building a case study on how to do this in

[Alex Kirschner]

the American you are exactly right that the name tag thing is the thing with this team. So Rosebud Thorne is going to be a little bit silly here, but I'm going to do my best. There is a fun transfer alert. Neil Brown is a guy whose best units have typically been his defenses going back to when he was at Troy and I think we're going to see some of that. If you just look at who they added and what their numbers were at previous schools, the most exciting people played defense elsewhere. Elsewhere in the G6 last year they have an outside linebacker, Udoka eziani, who had 12 and a half TFLs and five sacks for UTEP. This is his fifth school ranging from community college, Boise, Missouri State, UTEP here

[Stephen Godfrey]

I'm going to but I'm going to mention him later in the show because I like I actually watched some UTEP football last year and so you know this is going to be this guy's best platform to date. But yeah, it is going to be it's going to look totally different than than anything with Mesta Maker and Morris.

[Alex Kirschner]

They also have a 91 tackles guy, the leading tackler from Arkansas State's defense last year, and inside linebacker Aaron Alexander. Just if you're playing portal ball just trying to read numbers, it looks like this could be one of the more prolific edge and linebacker groups in the G6, which would be really good for them. Because my bud is the idea of North Texas not having a horrendous defense is just a little interesting. I'm looking at their defensive SP plus ranks going back to 2014. Right now I have them before me and I see 120 or worse almost every year with a a randomly mixed in 61 in 2018 when they won nine games and then an encouraging 79th last year. So the two years in the last decade plus that they have not just been awful on defense. They've won 21 games and come within one win of the playoff last year. Yeah, with that offense, but still. So Neil Brown built three top 50 defenses by SB plus in his last three years at Troy. That was a long time ago. It's a different sport at that time. But I'm intrigued about that. I think Neil Brown has some credibility to build a good defense. And you know, could Neil Brown do that? And then because you're in North Texas and you can probably find a quarterback, could you just kind of fart out a good enough offense to go with that defense and contend again in the American. Probably not this year, but over the next two or three or four years. Not a bad idea. I've definitely heard worse ideas.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah, I don't think they're abandoning offense by any stretch. But if you start with a quality defense like I just got done talking about like the, the, the surest foot you could put forward right now at Tulane is actually on the defensive side, which isn't saying much. The same can be. This is going to be a latent theme which is just a lot like when I did this, when I did this preview with Richard last year, I think I actually said almost verbatim, there's five teams here where you can copy and paste the preview, which is exceptionally good high end offense. And whichever of these four or five teams can play marginally better on defense, they're going to have a shot. And what it turns out was we it hit for North Texas because they had hired the guy. Oh my God, I can't remember. Eric Morris hired. It was another Sam Houston's D.C. i think. And that paid out for them because they brought a bunch of transfers in and they got marginally better. South Florida had the same problem. They got marginally better and that was enough for those programs and coaches to vault to the top. Right. And so it's almost the reverse this this year where you've got some pieces in the portal on defense so far for these contenders. We just don't know what the offense is going to be yet. Neil Brown had a weird thing, Alex, where like those defenses that you mentioned ended up being the identity of the Troy teams, which was like he was a spread guy, you know, like he was, he was, he was three or four branches down in the leech tree. But like he was in that Kentucky spread group and they ended up having to kind of run the ball and play defense to win games. Like that's, that's how they beat LSU that year. Was like defense and running the ball.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yep. They beat Ed Horseron LSU and were really good. They had some of the better defenses in the country for a couple years there. My thorn is a little higher level, but and kind of just makes me sad. But this is a program that has a hard time building fan support famously for obvious reasons. Like most of their students who like college football are fans of other teams. It's a commuter ish school where people go home on weekends. They got 30,000 plus people into that stadium for that weeknight game against USF last year where they lost by 27 points in a 63 to 36 game with about 70 turnovers if you round up. But it was, I say this honestly, one of the best 27 point blowouts I've ever seen. It was a fun game and you can see the fan support was there. Can that continue at all when if you're just some sophomore in North Texas, what you are seeing of this program as well, it doesn't really exist anymore as I enjoyed it last year. Like will I come back and give it another shot this year? I don't know.

[Stephen Godfrey]

It's. It's weird. It's a, it's a classic commuter school. It's also like kind of a hipster town. Denton has a low key. Like it's a big music scene. Do you know Nora Jones went there? Like they have a really, really, they have a really, really strong performing arts program. I know, I know actors who went to North Texas. One of my best friends actually finished. He left Ole Miss and moved back to Texas and finished his degree in Denton. It's not necessarily built for like hardcore college football fan, but they are like there are a lot of people on campus who are still betting it can be. It's a big school, it has that going for it. I think many, many, many group of schools are probably kind of sitting on their hands too much and how they market and get people out there. But consistent winning usually solves everything. And then there's enough people in that on the north side of the metroplex to cater to that. You don't have to worry about living and dying with students.

[Alex Kirschner]

Stephen, take us to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

[Stephen Godfrey]

So the rose here is I think a little obvious. It's that the Drew chronic offense has been the hardest to stop and the best and most complete offense of the three Academy schools. I think it's doing the most of the three. I think the personnel has fit it well, which is actually the reverse. I think it's actually, it's fitting its personnel best, and they've had, I think, a more effective use of offense in American play than army has. So I think this is the best Service Academy at the moment. This is also a lot of people's preseason pick, but I'm kind of curious if that's just by default because people are leaning too much on returning production, returning starters. Obviously, Service Academy got a different situation. I'm not really sure, but I do know that the smartest thing that Newberry did was hire Drew Chronic to run that offense. And the combination of having a good defense by default, having a defensive head coach is that they, they iterated in a way that I guess Kidney Matalolo never would. And that was the whole Ivan Jasper saga. And so I continue to eat a little bit of crow because we really.

[Alex Kirschner]

That was where the ad.

[Stephen Godfrey]

We drowned that ad, dude.

[Alex Kirschner]

The ad Chet. Yeah, he ousted, ousted Ken Neo, Matillo's trusted lieutenant Ivan Jasper. Or tried to. And then I was back and well, now everyone's gone.

[Stephen Godfrey]

But yes, I mean, so far it has worked out. The bud here is the new quarterback. It's a new quarterback year at Navy, which usually portends a little bit of regression, but I actually want to talk about that for a second. Braxton Woodson is the. Woodson is the new starter, but he has started games before. He has seen significant time, and he may be like, I don't, I don't know if we're going to get into, like, Reynolds territory here necessarily, but once in a while, y' all know Navy just creates a quarterback that is an absolute problem. Braxton Woodson is really fast. Not Service Academy fast. He's like, fast fast. He had, I think he played a couple full drives in the USF upset, and then he started against Notre Dame because of injuries.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah, seven yards of carry for. That's without sacks, obviously, but, like, seven yards of carry is not really what you expect from a Navy quarterback. You expect a, a plump 4.1, perhaps, or 3.6. That's more what you expect.

[Stephen Godfrey]

So, again, to talk about how, how much I admire this offense, I think plugging him in this year, you're not going to see the typical regression of, like, oh, we've got to get a guy up to speed type of situation that you see after, after, like, a long time, incumbent Academy starter leaves. I think he's gonna be really good. I think this offense is gonna be really, really good. The thorn here is that I. The thorn is almost the media's fault. I think the returning production there's a lot of emphasis on returning production as to why Navy is rated so high in the American Bill got into it a little bit in his preview. Espn. Phil Steel's kind of like all in on it. And then I've seen most of the other preview mags really lean on the fact that Navy's returning some guys, they have 11 starters coming back, right? They are replacing a quarterback. But this is an academy and it's just a different rule set. And Yes, I am Mr. I am Mr. Academy Football. What I'm kind of curious about is where is your value emphasis? Is it on developing guys through the academy restrictions and having that experience that is worth something. We saw army tear ass through this conference, right? Navy had an 11 wins last year and 1010 the previous year. I think like this is a consistent winner of a program. But this year's really interesting. I think they're picked first because all of the talent heavy teams are turning over so much. But also the talent heavy teams, Alex, usf, Tulane, Memphis, I mean you can keep going ecu, you can go to like they have the ability to bring in transfers that have a base level of talent higher than anything you can develop at a service academy. So it's really. I'm not making a ref, I'm not creating a referendum here. Well, actually I'm creating a referendum, but I'm not picking sides. We're going to find out this year if in a year where all the talent laden programs are turning over a ton, can Navy's consistency be the best, like create the best possible option, pardon the pun, in the league.

[Alex Kirschner]

I think you make a really good point about the talent upside because this has been the wall that Navy has run into since they've been in this league. Remember in 2016, which was my first year being a full time college football reporter with you back at SB Nation, Navy was really good. Navy made the American Championship game, which they even got to host in their own stadium. They had a good situation. They were playing a Matt Rule Temple team in that game which wound up boat racing them that day. And you know, you look at the Navy roster from that day and you'd find a lot of interesting players who you might remember fondly who were talented guys who did a good job at Navy. And even Temple had Hasan Reddick on that team. Navy doesn't have a lot of Hasan Reddicks is kind of the point that I'm making. Like you will occasionally. Just like Stump, P.J. walker was the quarterback of that Temple team. He wound up having a Bit of a, bit of a professional career. Like it's just harder because someone in this league is going to wind up having even in the Portal era just like a serious dude who you can't really deal with and ideally you know more than one of those and you can develop your heart out at Navy, but you always are going to have less athletic upside than whoever the best team in this league is. It was obviously true last year.

[Stephen Godfrey]

That's a weird snake bite situation for that Navy team though Alex, because any Navy fan is going to tell you in 2016 they had the inside track but by the time they get to army after the conference championship game because remember the scheduling hiccup there, they're on their third string quarterback. So their first two quarterbacks have season ending injuries. I want to say the backup is injured in the Temple in the AAC championship game against Temple. That's the streak breaker year. That's the other problem. That's when they, that's when the streak gets broken Army. So your point, your point persists. It's just that Navy like I remember Nia Machalolo even like two years later telling me on the record like if we have a healthy quarterback, the streak isn't broken. They were very emphatic about that.

[Alex Kirschner]

Also that Temple team had multiple future NFL running backs who at least got a cup of coffee. It's. But sure, I believe Ken, that if they'd have been in a healthier quarterback spot it might have been a different game. But I think your point is really important as we go into this year. It's fun to pick Navy because you know the floor is pretty high and there's a vacuum elsewhere but someone is just going to have better athletes than them and Navy's going to have to overcome that. Also they played in I believe four one score games, no five one score games last year and they won all of them which that is not a repeatable skill unfortunately. Sometimes I think, sometimes I think losing them is a repeatable skill. But yeah, I don't know if winning them is a repeatable skill. Interesting season for them though. For me I have East Carolina here. My Rose. This looks like a really nice skill position group particularly at wide receiver. They have back a 550 yard receiver. Brock Spalding who is a fifth year guy and can really play. He put 97 yards on NC State last year, put 64 on BYU on six catches. Dependable. It is really hard to retain even decent numbers at wideout in the G6 nowadays because everyone wants them and you can't hide them, but they did that here. They have Ray Ray Joseph in from Miami, who's a former four star who was getting from Blake Carroll. Really, really rave spring ball review. Sounded like he was doing a lot back in the spring. My bud is that they have made a very interesting offensive coordinator hire. They have Jordan Davis in from North Texas, who was their coordinator. Do I think that Jordan Davis was really responsible for the North Texas offense? No. Do I think he was even really the number two person responsible for that offense also? Probably no, because the passing game coordinator is the one now with Eric Morris in Stillwater. But he was involved. It's not like he wasn't doing anything. They have him in here from the number one offense in the country last year to run this thing. They appear to have basically gotten second pick of that North Texas depth chart. There's a running back Ashton Gray and a receiver, Landon Sides from North Texas who are here at ECU now. And also Blake Harrell is seemingly doing really well here. He's 14 and 5 in this job. They have been one of the best G6 teams since he took over about halfway through two years ago when Mike Houston got fired. And you, you know where I'm going with this. ECU has been going back to Pat Dye, like kind of a coaching cradle they have churned out. If you just go down the list, maybe not a Miami University number of guys, but have just turned good coaches. And maybe that's happening again here. The last time we really talked about this or the last person we've talked about in this light was Lincoln Riley, who was there many years ago. Now, at this point, there's just an interesting bit of coaching talent, I think, assembled around this program right now. And that could work.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah, yeah. No, I think this is the team that could break out this year too, in terms of like only. Well, I say that to an SCD audience, people. I think this audience is going to be educated enough to know that ECU won't come out of nowhere, but they just have not gotten national play like they probably deserve. I mean, this is, this is one of the all time great interim head coach to permanent head coach hires.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yep, it's gone well and it's gone probably better than if they would have succeeded. Like, remember the name Joe Sloan was out there, the LSU offensive coordinator at the time. Because he went there, everyone, he was the name. Right. He was like the sexy guy they could get. I think he probably just didn't want that job. And well, they were broken.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I mean, they were Broke as shit for a while too.

[Alex Kirschner]

So yeah, my thorn is that it kind of looks like they just threw their hands up and did a LinkedIn quarterback room, which isn't the most exciting to me. So they lost Katen Houser, who was a productive starter for them. He went to Illinois. It seems like the quarterback is going to be either Emory Williams or Mitch Griffiths. Emory is a three year guy at Miami as a backup who is now in here and Griffiths is now a fourth school 60 year guy who you probably remember from Wake Forest and also had a brief stop over at Marshall, was the third stringer I think at Texas Tech last year. I think that the G6 teams that win a lot tend to develop their own quarterbacks and just hang on to them for as long as possible, which isn't forever. But still last year we saw that in this league with Messamaker and with Byron Brown at USF and with Hauser here at Ecuador. Even Maddox Madsen at Boise, who I don't think that highly of. But Brad Jackson at Texas State is another example, maybe the most exciting or at least proven G6 returning quarterback going into this year. ECU didn't do that and I'm not sure it was exactly available to them to do that, to hang on to somebody because most of those top guys that I just mentioned are gone. But it's just not that exciting of a quarterback situation. You're hoping for a decent floor and unlikely to get a ton more than that. One other little thorn is that they dined out big time last year on red zone defense. They were in the top five nationally in that allowing touchdowns less than 40% of the time when teams got inside the 20. If you look at the other teams up there, it's Ohio State and Indiana and byu. I can buy why those teams would stay up there because they have money. And linebackers. I actually think ECU does have some prolific interesting linebackers back, including the Mike DJ Johnson. But a lot of things went pretty well last year that seem like they would be vulnerable to not go as well this year.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Hold that thought as I transition over to South Florida about the ECU defense. So first the rose is. Look, I just appreciate any program with a transparent plan like top to bottom. I understand what USF is doing. Like I, I understand the alignment. People talk about alignment all the damn time, but I don't think they actually have it. USF wants to put money in, get serious, you know, try and nip at the heels of the long departed ucf. We're gonna have an on campus stadium. We're going to increase our nil. We're going to do all the things that we're supposed to do. In the meantime, we're going to make a hire now that Alex Golish is gone and kind of stole everything that wasn't nailed down, which is fine. That's part of it. We're going to hire somebody transparently who's about personnel and about getting the best player available. Because the idea of running a group of five program or six or whatever in Tampa has always been about, hey, there's so much damn talent around here and it's easy to attract talent here. It should be. That's the heartline hire that. It makes total sense to me. Whether it works or not, I don't know. But I understand what, what you're saying and what you're doing are in alignment and I appreciate that. So this is a completely new roster, like so many rosters we're going to talk about in this league. They have a ton of power transfers, Alex, 24 former power league players, 10 former blue chips. This is a program that plans on out talenting you. And honestly, that's not the worst plan in the American. Like I, I totally understand all that. The schedule is not the world's worst for year one. So I could see a little bit of noise as long as certain skill position groups work in year one. Now we're going to get to the thorn in a second on that. But you just mentioned the ECU defense. My buddy is that they hired Josh Alridge who was the defensive coordinator at ECU last year. Also, when you see an intra conference move like this, it's very telling because what that says is like that South Florida is playing with more money than ECU is. All right.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yep.

[Stephen Godfrey]

That like you, a lot of people have a tough time. They get like blind to the haves and have nots in some of these group of leagues. This is a pretty easy tell.

[Alex Kirschner]

They say that they are fully funding the House settlement and I think they actually are based on news that the board approved, I believe it was a $16 million outlay to the athletics department and it was being explained that that was what it was going to be for. It sounds like they are more or less fully funding again revenue sharing.

[Stephen Godfrey]

To be transparent in the, in the coaching community, in the agent community. USF is telling everyone who will listen, we are going to be the best group of program in a very short term. Don't know if that's going to happen. I'm not trying to Make Boise fans mad or Memphis fans mad or anybody. But that is the aspiration. That is the stated goal in Tampa. So the bud, I think is Josh Allerge because he did he like you go back to that red zone defense, Alex, like ecu. He called some wild. I don't know how else to describe it. Like he's a very aggressive play caller. So it's definitely something I want to take a look at. The roster's turned over, so who knows? I think it's really hard to discern talent when you're comparing turned over rosters to turned over rosters, but I like him as a play caller. I think it was a fun hire. So that's my bud, the Thorn. Yikes, Alex, Yikes. Could I interest you in getting excited about Tim Beck as your OC and Michael Van Buren as your starting quarterback? This feels like a placeholder. That feels like a placeholder. Yeah. That's the biggest thing that's missing here, honestly. They're going to have a ton of talent on the field. I just don't know if the play calling pass battery that is installed right now is. Is ideal. So that. That I think will hold them back.

[Alex Kirschner]

Tim Beck is working on quite a Wikipedia page, by the way. He's one of those just he's always somewhere types of guys. 2005, Kansas wide receivers coach was there for a bit. Nebraska, Ohio State, Texas, North Carolina State, Coastal Carolina, South Florida. Now he's just always been around. He has always been around and he has not been since I have been covering the game though he is. This isn't really fair to him. He has never been somewhere in my time covering the sport for more than three years at a time. He's one of those classic mercenary college football assistant coaches. I know you all know many of those. Yeah, the quarterback thing's not very exciting either. No.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah, it's not good.

[Alex Kirschner]

I'll only say this once and then we will not talk about this at all for the rest of the season. The stadium thing is happening. Construction work is being done. The new facility and Stadium. About 400 million they say they have. They were doing a little press tour around American media days where the ad, Rob Higgins, or I believe he's the CEO of athletics, excuse me, was talking about how they have been harmed by talking about their potential over the last few years. So they're going to try to talk less about that which. Okay, that, that makes some sense to me. I do buy to your point about heartline. I think I buy it in this case that he is an above replacement level getter of talent, especially on offense in that region. We all know roster acquisition works differently now. It's hard to just charm someone in the living room, but I have to think because it's the Ohio State wide receivers that he's coming from that it's at least a pretty good value add pitch. Like look at those guys. Look at Jeremiah Smith, look at Garrett Wilson, look at Chris Olave, look at Jackson, Smith and Jig. But the best of all of them jsn, look at four other guys. I think it probably helps and I'd be pretty surprised if he didn't get at least a couple of like capital D dudes in here over the next couple years who are going to be some of the most prolific statistical wideouts, running backs, et cetera in the G6. I think that is definitely going to work. Yep, that's the situation at USF also. This is the situation at home field. Home field has bucket hats now Steven, Very exciting. Has it been hot where you've been this summer?

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yes, I have looked at the lineup of bucket hats. Yeah, they are exciting.

[Alex Kirschner]

Bucket hats have come to home field apparel.com a nice big handful of schools right now. If you want to don a beautiful bucket hat and root for your college football team at the same time, you can do that at home for the proud.com also home fields game Flow hats designed to keep the back of your head very cool. Our friends at home field are very much in the hat game in a wide variety of different ones. In fact, I got a few of them right behind me on my shelf right here. They are great with shirts, they are great with joggers, they are great with socks. They're great with lots of things, but do not sleep on the hats. Thank you to our partners at home field apparel.com Stephen Godfrey I continue with the other surface Academy in this conference and that is Army. Man, is this an interesting one this year. Man, oh man, they did not have the same close game success that Navy had last year. They had a ton of close losses and that harmed them, including at the very end of the year against Navy by one point. And that was what their season ultimately came down to and why it will not be remembered as being an especially great year for them. My rose is that I'm pretty sure the running game is going to smash this year and I mean smash like successfully rather than just smash into things. Which also can be how it goes with this offense. The quarterback Cale Hellums is back. They were good with him and bad without him. Last year they have four offensive line starters back, including the center who was all conference. They had two receivers last year who, who were pretty prolific. The leading guy, Noah Short is gone, but they have back Brady Anderson who averaged a hilarious 27 yards per catch. It can also be that way at army because when they throw it, they're throwing it over your heads. This was not a really good offense last year despite all of those people. They were 85th in SP plus and the problem was really just running efficiency. They, they couldn't run it down to down. They were smashing into things, not through things. They were eighth in the league and rushing success rate, that won't do it. Why is Navy being picked to win the league? Because Navy was second in that set. If army and Navy are high rushing success rate teams, they're going to be good. And army really wasn't last year, but Navy was. My best guess is that army is going to go up in that department this year. A guy who they are very excited about is a running back. God's power Wawie a who had 171 yards in their bowl game in which they destroyed UConn. He's a former quarterback. You know how they do that with the academy, Stephen, where they just, you know, you are a quarterback now, you're a slot back, now you're a halfback. They just kind of do a little merry go around there. If you can carry the ball.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah.

[Alex Kirschner]

Because it works.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah. The skill sets are not as separated as they might be in other, in other schemes.

[Alex Kirschner]

So I think they're going to run the ball like demons this year and that's going to be fun. I have kind of a couple of Rose and Bud Thorn combos here. Like they're really both buds, but one of them is a little bit more optimistic than the other. The non optimistic one is that the defense last year was basically proficient at one thing which was stopping explosive pass plays. They were one of the best teams in the country at not getting the ball thrown over their head or busting or letting people run through them in the passing game. But they had no pass rush. Like, like few teams in the, in the sport did less to generate pressures and sacks than they did. And so they had to rely a lot on, you know, getting, getting the offense off schedule on turnovers, on red zone stops. And none of those things really happened either. So they didn't have a great defense. They have a thing they're good at, but I don't know if they're going to be able to generate much chaos up front because they couldn't do any of that last year and this has happened a few times in recent years to them. A couple times where? Well, actually last year in particular with the transfer portal and a couple years ago they had an NFL draft prospect, Andre Carter who didn't work out. They've had pass rushers who have been pretty touted. Last year they lost a key guy to Georgia. A couple of years ago they had this guy who was supposed to be a high NFL pick and then he wasn't. It doesn't seem from the off season media coverage of this team like they are really expected to have one of those types of guys who can get a lot of pressures. So I think the defense might be trouble. I think there could be a lot of points scored in army games this year. My Rosebud combo shout out to Citizen Kane is that they have really good specialists. Service academies do not tend to have good specialists. We don't talk about this much. People don't talk about this much because it's very niche. But only four of the last 21 Army, Navy or Air Force teams going back what, six, seven years have have hit the magical threshold of 40 net yards per punt, which is what most special teams coaches in college will tell you is the good number. Three of those four service academy teams to pull that off. Our army, including last year's team and their punter with a great name, James Wagonseller is back. This team played nine one score games last year so this kind of marginal specialist stuff is very important. They had real kicking problems early in the season last year, but then from week 10 on their kicker Dawson Jones was 8 for 8 including 5 and 5 against Navy and Air Force wasn't quite enough against Navy but nonetheless that was a three point win over Air Force and a one point loss to Navy. Long range like over the course of the 2000s nationally kickers are making about 75% of their field goals. The G6 is making about 74%. The service academies are kicking at about 72.5% as a group, which I think is interesting that you are making a small number but certainly a noticeably smaller number of your kicks. I think it's hard to get good legs in these jobs and I think army has done it this year. Very, very stout specialist group going to help if they play more close games

[Stephen Godfrey]

that might also be affected by the probably fewer amount of times that they decide to kick because they're going to be in a fourth and manageable situation more often. Or a more. Just a fourth and risk situation more often where they're treating third down like second down. So.

[Alex Kirschner]

But also might, might even help the kickers because they probably who's least likely to kick on, you know, kick a 48 yard field goal on 4th and 2. Probably those teams. But I don't want to speculate.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I don't know. It did. It's. Yeah. Philosophically I'd be curious to see what they would say because then they are also more comfortable playing single possession games because they'll, they'll grind on you and, and you know, they'll go up by three with nine to go, get the ball back with seven to go and then kneel it out on you. All right, let's go to Memphis. The Rose is obvious. Charles Huff knows what he's doing in import export business. That probably sounds more salacious than it should. He took basically a completely dead Southern Miss program back to at least bowl level relevance in one season at one of the probably most have not programs in the group of certainly in the Sun Belt. It's a program that was, is, was dead. He imported a Sunbelt conference winning Marshall roster to Southern Miss. It still remains one of the strangest things we've ever seen because it was an intra conference move. There was a lot of stuff involved there. We won't have to get into that. But 25 players went from Marshall to Southern Miss last year and essentially flipped the fortunes of Southern Miss at least for one season. 14 USM players, not exactly the same. Out of that, 25 are now doing the same thing as Huff moves from USM to Memphis. This isn't brain surgery. He knows how to find talent in the portal. He also knows how to kind of edge up developmental talent. This is not that dissimilar to how a certain program at JMU kind of kickstarted a certain program in Indiana. Right. This is a, this is a methodology now and Charles Huff is very good at it. The one name you should know out of this group is jaymontap. He's a defensive end. He's the best of this transfer class in the bud here is interesting because when we get to the awards I'm going to talk about Memphis's quarterback situation again. I thought of it as a thorn and then the more I read about these quarterbacks, I think there's promise here. It's just that we have no idea what's going to happen. There's one transfer from Southern Miss, Gardner, the Kid Gardner, who was injured last year and didn't play but you have Marcus Stokes. I don't know if anybody remembers Marcus Stokes unless they're a Florida fan.

[Alex Kirschner]

Alex. I do not.

[Stephen Godfrey]

He was a blue chip commit. He was and committed to Florida. Got into trouble. I don't even remember what the trouble was. And didn't sign. He put up like stupid numbers last year at West Florida. Shout out to Pensacola. Okay. Then there's the other one that came from South Carolina. Oh my God. What's his name? Noland has the funny name. So there's something I really like about taking guys with a ton of experience, even though it doesn't necessarily apply or plug in here. I think the Memphis quarterback is going to be good this year. I just don't know who the Memphis quarterback's gonna be. And I think the way that they're setting everything up is that this is going to be one of the best teams in the league by the end of the season. I don't, I don't know if it's going to be the best team or a conference championship contender, which I don't really have. A thorn here, Alex. I think this is a great hire for Memphis. It makes a ton of sense. They are talking a lot and we'll see how they deploy it. But they're talking a lot about their new sort of investment in the FedEx part of this and the nil strategy and getting serious and all this kind of stuff. But the thorn here, if you think Charles Huff is one and done, this ain't it. Okay. I called it a flip and dip setup. I don't think we're flipping and dipping if we're Charles Huff. And here's why. Everything could break right with the roster. Every single thing. And by the way, I'm not saying it's as easy to transfer talent from Southern Miss to Memphis as it was from Marshall to Southern Miss. I understand there's levels to this, right? But let's say everything breaks right with every position group, most of which has been portaled in, most of which is going to be kind of a name tag situation. This schedule is insane, Alex, because Memphis is, is in a very sort of. Has to be very aspirational with how they're. They're. They're comporting themselves. They have to be Boise, which speaking of Alex, just in non conference play, there are only four teams in the group of that are ranked higher than the power teams. What I mean by that is like there's. So there's 68 power teams if you include Notre Dame. Okay. There's only four teams in the group of, in Bill Connolly's SP plus right now that are ranked higher than 68. And they're playing two of them this year, UNLV and Boise, both road games. Alex, this is a brutal schedule.

[Alex Kirschner]

I see. I see other road games here on this list that you gave me.

[Stephen Godfrey]

They have to play both academies. They have to go to Tulane, they have to go to ecu. This is not the flip and dip year. I'm just telling you, this team is going to be talked about a ton. I think Charles Huff is here next year. I think Memphis is making the run next year. But this is not a just add water instant conference championship season, in my opinion, because, man, that is a. But hey, you know what? Again, to be wrong. Like, I, like I'm sort of. I'm. I'm kind of giving myself an out on the Will hall thing. If they win all those games, Alex, that's the best damn resume you could ask for.

[Alex Kirschner]

And then he's.

[Stephen Godfrey]

He's going to be in serious demand if they win those games. I don't think they're winning all those games.

[Alex Kirschner]

No, I don't think so either. But the good news is that Memphis fans are used to not making the conference championship game and they never did under Ryan Silverfield. So it wouldn't be too much of a departure if it took one more year for them to make the run under Charles Hoff. I will go to utsa, Steven, before I do this one, you know, I'm going to start with it's. It's actually a bud. And then we'll talk about the team, but it's a bud with a little bit of a pessimistic outlook as well. I worry about staleness here because if I know the Jeff Traylor pretty clearly did not want to be here anymore, then I know you know it, too. They are not very close to the top of this conference in money. And Jeff Traylor complains about it a lot in public. He has not been shy about it. I think he's complained about it in private a good bit, too. And you can kind of see some ceiling worries here. They were 12 and 2. They were 12 and 2. They moved to the American in 2023. 9 and 4. Nice debut. 7 and 6. 7 and 6. The coach is very publicly sort of sounding exasperated with the economic setup around the job. One way that they could stop treading water because I really don't think you can tread water forever like they have the last two years is if the money started barking. There was a Big rumor this season going around the American that suddenly the price of admission to play in the American at all was that you were going to at least need to be in the four or five million dollars a year range on your roster spend. UTSA has definitely been well below that. Below that the last few years. I have not found any substantiation that UTSA is doing that. There was an interesting interview that Lisa Campos, the UTSA ad, did with Darian Starling of before Saturday over the off season, where the interviewer sort of pressed her to say, hey, is that what you guys are doing? Are you going to be around that number? And I listened very carefully, and there was no. There was a talking around it. There was not an answer. If. If the San Antonio money is coming into this program, then this becomes really interesting, but I'm just not sure that it is. It's pretty opaque to try to tell if that's changing. Maybe we'll know by the tenor of Jeff Trailer's press conferences this year. What do you think?

[Stephen Godfrey]

I think that it'll come up one way or the other. If this team breaks in one direction, like. Like strongly. If. If they burn out or if they're at the top of this league, we're going to revisit this topic for sure. It's so fascinating to me how coy people think they need to be with this stuff.

[Alex Kirschner]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I don't know what you stand to gain by. By hiding the fact that you're. You don't have enough money. I. If I was Jeff Trailer and. And that money wasn't real, Alex, my ass would be on front street telling everybody we don't have. This is why you're going to see this particular brand of football.

[Alex Kirschner]

He was. He was kind of doing that last season. If you picked up the breadcrumbs from his press conferences.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah.

[Alex Kirschner]

Trying to make it clear that he was dis.

[Stephen Godfrey]

No breadcrumbs. Yeah, no breadcrumbs. I would just flat out be like, hey, guys, we're broke.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah. It is interesting when schools decide to let it out there what they're spending. Like Wisconsin's doing that this off season. Wisconsin wants everyone to know that it's 25 million, which is interesting. But why? Why? So that Luke Fickle has no excuse. But it's interesting because.

[Stephen Godfrey]

No, because they didn't. Because they didn't spend any damn money. And now they're in a referendum where half their fan base, over half their fan base, wanted to fire their coach last year. They said, no, we're not going to do that. So they have to be transparent to justify keeping Luke fickle and putting the onus on themselves to spend that money.

[Alex Kirschner]

Good read. I think that makes more sense than what I was saying. So utsa. Where's. Where's the money? Do you have it? We might get some indicator of that by how the season goes. My thorn here is that the defense is bad. The defense's numbers were driven down because they had the great pleasure of giving up 42 points to A&M, 43 to G.J. kenny, Texas State and 55 to the North Texas Machine last year. So it wasn't necessarily a fair fight. But they were 92nd in defensive SP plus which is not very good even for a team that wants to contend in a G6 conference. They were non competitive against good offenses and then almost everyone left. They got multiple Division 2 transfers plugging in here. The coordinator is Jess Lepp. Still here with Jeff Traylor. Been loyal. Been with him the whole time he's been at utsa. So the defense is probably bad until further notice. The rose again, let's be broad here. They're going to score points. They're definitely going to score points. Owen McCown is back at quarterback solid. I don't think he's making most people's lists of the best quarterbacks in the group of, but he's good. He's a solid guy to have back. They have 64% returning production on offense from a good offense that finished in the top 30 in SP plus. That's really good. They got a seven yards per carry running back in Will Henderson the third. So you got some splashy potential here and you got three starters back on the offensive line. An offensive line that did pave the way nicely last year. So there's going to be points and also they're impossible to beat at home. They are 34 and 5 at the Alamo Dome since 2020. That is the most home wins in the group of six. At that in that group of schools.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Group of schools Dome your stadium.

[Alex Kirschner]

Really there's something going on with the Alamo Dome where it's just really hard to win. They're the only group of six school with a better home winning percentage is James Madison which has been there for been at the level for less time. So on raw wins they're they're doing it better than anybody else at this level. Stephen take us to LeBron James.

[Stephen Godfrey]

New City I'm sure that's what temp yeah this one's a little I think we're we're kind of downshifting now into a different set of teams so it becomes a little bit more transparent. What's there, what's not. So with Temple it's still about what's to come. I, I really like the Casey Keiller higher. I really like everything they're doing. I think he's the best and most legit coach that Temple has had since mat Rule. I think he's going to be better than Rod Carey. I think he's going to be better than Jeff Collins was. I think, you know, I mean Manny was there for like a hot cup of coffee and that was it. So I'm not counting Manny. They like Keeler again, kind of invoking the signetti strategy. Winners win and Casey Keeler has a, has a shelf full of trophies and for games and leagues you don't know about. Right. He was a guy who climbed up the ladder and I think that really showed with what he was able to do kind of at a, you know, a, a resource strapped at least for the moment. Sam Houston State went back to his kind of his area of the country and I think this is going to work out. I don't know if they're like ever going to be conference champion contenders because of some of the programs we talked about are just operating in a different space. Like to compare a really well coached Temple in their best possible situation to a very moneyed Memphis or South Florida or Tulane, that's two different things.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah.

[Stephen Godfrey]

But I do think for Keeler, if, if he were to win eight or nine at Temple in one season, he needs to go quickly to maybe it's an ACC or Big Ten job. I'm not really sure. But like I think we're on that path. I just don't know about long term success because I don't think Temple's committed enough to, to have that. So the rose here is that they made a really good damn hire and it's still bearing fruit that like they were, they were like a drive away from a bowl last year at Temple which is, that's freaking huge. The bud here, they have a better offensive line that basically didn't get touched by the portal. So they have a good developing O line that was not like this would be a classic situation where you over index a little bit at a bad G. G6 school and then you get scooped up by like a ACC school like as a tackle or a guard. None of that happened. They kept that intact. Tyler Walker, the OC is back and that system will, then they'll have a second year for it because they were very much starting below scratch last season. The thorn is that the offense is kind of leading the. Leading the push here. They're better than the defense, but they don't have a quarterback. We're going to start saying this about every team. I think Alex, they don't have a quarterback. Yeah, it's two transfers, Jackson Smolick from Penn State and I think it's Aani or a Johnny shepherd from Wazoo. They, they run the ball pretty well and they have a good O line. That's probably what they're going to be doing. They need a quarterback and I, I don't think this is a breakout year but I do think they sort of continue a pace and, and build. I like, I just like to hire a lot. It's a hard ass job and he needs to get the hell out of there if he can pop over seven wins in one season.

[Alex Kirschner]

Man, they really should have had Navy last year. Remember that game in October? They really should have had Navy.

[Stephen Godfrey]

They were close to a bowl. I mean they were really, really close to a bowl in year one and that we're talking about Temple.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah, he's a good coach. He has found himself in some kind of odd situations the past few years. Remember he at Sam Houston was pretty public about not being stoked when they moved up to fbs. He had been a national championship winning coach. Research.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah, I know. Why didn't. They weren't ready. They're not ready for prime time. I mean, yeah, it's. If you hear a coach say that it's because they. He knows that behind the curtain there's nothing there.

[Alex Kirschner]

He's a really good football coach. I would love to see Temple make a bowl this season. And if anyone's going to do it, man, if anyone's going to do it in this economy, I feel like this could be the guy. I want to say thank you to Nokian Tires. Nokian is the inventor of the winter tire. But that tire works all year. We know it's an extremely road trippy time of the year for you and yours. We hope that you are doing that safely on tires that you trust, on tires that are durable, that are built with a focus on sustainability and reliability. And that is where our friends at Nokian Tire specialize. If you find yourself in the market for a new set of tires this year, I think you'd be very wise to ask your tire dealership about our friends at Nokian Tires back with splits on duo for their fifth year because time flies when you have a lot of fun. Thank you so much to Nokian Tires as we go on with the American Conference Preview. I've got Florida Atlantic FAU right here. Godfrey, this is a funky offseason, but of the teams in this league that are probably going to be bad, I think this one might have the most potential to be really fun bad and maybe that could verge into fun decent. Last year this team did something that I wasn't sure could be done in this era of the sport which was pull a minus 21 turnover margin. That was the worst mark in FBS by 50% as no one else in the country was worse than minus 13 in turnovers. That is legit astonishing. Worst of the post Covid, Covid and post Covid era in the sport. The offense and the defense contributed. They were bottom five in turnovers, gained and lost. So stop doing that. That would be helpful for sure. The amazing thing about this is that they had one game. It was a 19 point win over Tulsa in which they were plus two in turnovers which means they were minus 23 in the other 11 games. Terrific stuff. One of the most first year coach things that I've ever seen is a team to go -21 in turnover margin. Got to get that cleaned up or they're going to be terrible again.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Good note. Yeah, you might want to fix that.

[Alex Kirschner]

Don't do that a second time. My bud is that they have the highest returning production in the G6. We discussed this with Bill earlier in the off season and what they did in the portal is definitely intriguing. It's very small school heavy. There are players from Livingstone in Division 2, San Diego, not state, Ferris State Power Program, but Division 2 nonetheless. Western Carolina. So they have a situation like they have an edge rusher who had 28 TFLs in Division 2 last year. How's that going to work in this conference? I don't know. Their first two games are at Florida which is rebuilding but is still SEC bodies and against Navy. So that's really interesting like how will this transfer crop hold up in this league and also in their non conference? It's going to be one of the most worthwhile things to watch in this league early in the season. My rose is that they have a really good quarterback receiver tandem coming back with Kaden Veltkamp quarterback and Easton Messer who's one of those rare 1,000 yard receivers who actually returned to his G6 school. He's also a really good punt returner. Last year they had their best offense since the Lane Kiffin days, they were in the 60s in SP Plus. They could move the ball. You're going to get some fireworks here. Velcamp has been good for a while, including when he was at Western Kentucky, so I think the offense will work. The thorn, other than the turnovers is that they were 131st in Defensive SP plus last year. They cannot stop anybody. They cannot stop big plays, they cannot stop efficiency. They cannot force turnovers. They can't stop anything until further notice. Let's see if the transfers, how much they help, but I'm predicting a good number of like 40 to 30 losses for this team this year.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Very on brand for aac. Very, very on brand for this program. Yeah, that's about what I expect. All right, let's talk about a scheme identity. So the rose for Rice is that I think the scheme is still the thing to do. Alex. I used to come on here a lot and scream about like, if you're going to be this bad, at least try to be different. And that I think applied at Rice. I think the gun option that's being used and the fact that they brought in a lower division coaching staff, like it's, it's still worth a shot, man. They had a really. Do you remember Rice's season last year? Do you remember that they bowled. They went to a bowl game because of.

[Alex Kirschner]

They had to win more. Oh, right. I was going to say, did they get to six and. No, they didn't. They were five and they were a five and eight team. They don't make a lot of five and eight teams in this sport.

[Stephen Godfrey]

So Rice had a, a hard fought single possession win over UAB at homecoming in November, but they finished their season having to play just teams that were way more talented. They got smoked by North Texas, they got smoked by usf. They still lucked into a bowl only to get smoked by Texas State by 31 points. So the gap here is obvious. But I do believe that in the, in the games that they won, they kind of had no business beating everyone's beloved Jim Mora Yukon Huskies in double overtime. Right. They had no business hanging with some of the teams that they played against. Like for instance, everything that we just outlined that's negative about fau. They're still more talented. They're more talented. They lost by six to FAU last year. So it's the scheme and the, the, the methodology in which it's used is keeping them in games. I think it's responsible. They kind of snuck up and punched Louisiana in the face in their opening game last year and I think it's because people have said, hey, this is annoying to prep for. It's different. It falls into that sort of old school triple option idea of like, man, everything changes this week. We have to change everything we do this week. And there's a trap inherent in that in the college football schedule. So I'm still holding that as the rose for this program. The bud is they didn't really have a quarterback last year and they could have one in Jacori Brown. They also have most of their running back core returning, which was sort of what drove them last year. So I think the offense is going to be better. This is about where I would expect building Rice out of nothing to be in year two. Yeah, the thorn here is that like the portal just kicks your ass occasionally as you get to the lower end of any group group of school. This is where the portal just feels like a tidal wave you can't stop. I mean, the defense essentially turned over all their good pieces and the defense kept them in some of those, those games that we talked about because they weren't really strong at quarterback. So they may advance on offense and they could be horrific on defense. It's hard to tell. And again, I, I, I refuse to get into the game now in preseason, like predictions and previews and stuff of like comparing one turned over roster to another. I just, I don't know if we have the ability to even do that.

[Alex Kirschner]

I think you're right.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I would, I would expect more of the same about that, about that for Rice and I'm going to talk a little bit about them with two other programs in a second when we get into games to watch.

[Alex Kirschner]

It's kind of funny that they were one of the most prolific time of possession teams in the country. That's the system sort of doing what it's intended. They had the ball for 33 plus minutes a game last year, but, but, but they held the ball. This is amazing. This kind of explains what you're talking about with playing more talented teams. They held the ball for 38 minutes against North Texas and gave up 56 points. Let me do a little bit of math here. That would be 56 points in 22 minutes.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Look at the scoring drives. Look at the scoring drive.

[Alex Kirschner]

I'm guessing that I'm going to be seeing a lot.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Not for, not for Russ.

[Alex Kirschner]

I am looking at the North Texas scoring drives and yeah, they're a sight to behold and I think they explain the problem we've got. Let's see here. We've got a two play, 76 yard touchdown drive. A seven play, 52. Actually that's. And a 677. A one play, 84 touchdown drive. There we go. A five play, 71 yard touchdown drive. Yeah. Okay.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I'm gonna be honest with you guys. Like, I think people talk, people talk about scheme, but when you're in a, when you're in a situation like that, it's just that a team that is

[Alex Kirschner]

absolutely can't shorten it, can't shorten it from 60 minutes to nothing. You can shorten it.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I mean 60 minutes, 22. Superior talent's gonna kick your ass. And, and in this league where you can get a little more wide open on offense, like, yeah, there's. You can't, you can't grind them down when you're down 21.

[Alex Kirschner]

No. Good observation. I would say that the numbers check out with, with your eye test there. Very much so. Uab. All right, I'm gonna skip the obvious Rose, which is Trent Dilver is not the head coach anymore. It's still a hard job. Really hard job. They wound up having to give it to the interim Alex Mortenson. Steven, I know you're doing some interesting UAB stuff these days with our dear friend Ryan Nanny, and I know that's historical in nature and I look forward to seeing it, but I'm sure you've talked to a lot of people. Have you gained any insights on the 2026 UAB Blazers in that process?

[Stephen Godfrey]

Mortensen's very likable, which is a little bit of a change of pace, isn't it?

[Alex Kirschner]

That is, that is different.

[Stephen Godfrey]

It's someone who they feel connected to. No, I think that it's less about Mortensen and more about the process or what didn't occur in the process when they were replacing Trent Dilfer. So I do believe it's more the same mentality for sure.

[Alex Kirschner]

Rose wise here. I the head coach wants to have this job, but wants it for, I guess, a different reason than Trent Dilfer. Or maybe the same reason. I mean, what they have in common is that what other FBs had coaching jobs were they going to get. Yeah, the answer is none. But what I think is interesting about Alex Mortensen is that he has a kind of go get a history in college football and seems like he would like to be an ascendant college football head coach who would work in the business for a while and be good at this. And maybe he represents some chance of being what Brian Vincent, what Brian Vincent could have Been if they would have made that hire a couple years ago, maybe my buddy is that you can actually squint a bit and be interested in the offense. So the quarterback is very likely going to be Ryder Burton, who filled in for Jalen Kitna in the Memphis game last year after Dilfer got fired and immediately beat them for UAB's biggest win in a very long time. Definitely since they came to the American in 23. Quarterback demonstrated a pulse. He has some pedigree too. He was a legit like mid three star recruit. Byu. He was at West Virginia. But then Neil Brown got fired. Then he came to uab. This is his platform, this is his shot and he's the guy finally. And that looks good. They also have a former Georgia Bulldog running back, Rod Robinson, who looks exactly like a former Georgia running back. He's 235 pounds, runs hard. My understanding from reading a good story in the Birmingham banner is that UAB basically got lucky. Here they have an assistant who's from San Diego, where he's from, and they knew some of the same people and the player's dad is from Birmingham. So it just wound up working out for them that they were able to get the kind of physical talent that they just are never really going to get at UAB unless something fortuitous happens to them. So that's a bud. I'd like to see how the offense goes, especially quarterback and running back Thorn. The good players left. As you know, Iverson Hooks is the stud wide receiver who almost got through a thousand yards last year. He plays at Oregon now. This has happened. This is going to be very similar to a lot of these at the bottom of the conference. It's just there were some good players here and proven good players and they are gone.

[Stephen Godfrey]

So we got a theme going.

[Alex Kirschner]

Oh, also you mentioned Tim Beck being an offensive coordinator in this league. Do you know who UAB's defensive coordinator is this season? He's typing. The YouTube audience can see this.

[Stephen Godfrey]

No, no, no, no, no. I was checking something else for my team that's coming up. I can't remember. I know this, but I can't remember.

[Alex Kirschner]

There's a visor involved and there's some blitzing involved.

[Stephen Godfrey]

No way.

[Alex Kirschner]

Todd Grant third and Grantham.

[Stephen Godfrey]

That's. Oh, I did know that. Yeah. Certain Grantham. That's right.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yep. Todd Grantham is at uab.

[Stephen Godfrey]

You know what?

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Hey. Fuck. It's in the house, right? Like. Like it's a. Throw it up so and so is down there. It's like you Know what? Just blitz. We'll figure it out later.

[Alex Kirschner]

Stephen, let's go to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Okay, here's a, Here's a change of pace before we get to the usual. The Portal kick their ass. This is where I start to get a little creative as we get down the list. Baylor Hayes is a good quarterback. He can sling it. Okay, this is what they do. This is what their system is. And they have a, they have a returning quarterback. They have a quarterback who threw for a bunch of yards last year and is coming back and they have most of their O line back. And as we get to the south side of the American, we don't really mention that much Alex. And also this league doesn't have like a ton of recording returning quarterbacks. So boom. Big Rose quarterback experience that matters. Offense I think will be better. The Bud is where I start to stretch. Do you remember the whole Portal, Tulsa Portal house thing that happened on social media over the winter?

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah, I do. They all just packed a bunch of zins and lived in a house together for a week. And yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Godfrey]

So that is. I've told this story in a couple different places. I stayed in that house before them because my sister in law had twins and they had their like their christening. So we all went to like the twins were I can't remember how old, whatever. We flew last summer about this time last summer to Tulsa and we rented that exact house from Airbnb which weirdly has like a game room and it has like you know, fun like a pool slide and like it does feel very like sort of family oriented, like a little bit theme parky for just a regular house in a neighborhood in Tulsa. So when it popped up, I told everybody, I was like, oh, I've been in that house. Like they have a Alex, they have an NBA jam like arcade cabinet off the kitchen, right? They have a foosball table. They have a neon sign for selfies. Like it's. It's a, it's. It's a weird house. It's a fun house. It has a secret room in the kids room where it's like a treehouse style thing. I don't know if any of the coaches did that necessarily. That's more for seven year olds. But hey, whatever. I'm stretching here, but here's my butt. I have no idea what the actual NIL budget is at Tulsa. I'm guessing it's not a ton and I'm guessing it's not going to compare to some teams that we've already discussed already. But Damn it. This falls squarely under what I scream at group of teams, which is, if you're going to be bad, try to be different. And I think Tulsa has increased their recruiting profile to the highest that it has ever freaking been since I've been covering or paying attention to college football. So that alone, you know, money is going to be what determines whether or not that bears fruit. Okay. But again, you got a quarterback coming back, you got an O line coming back. I feel good about these things. And they're at least upping their profile from completely irrelevant and they don't have a total prick and Kevin Wilson is their head coach anymore. These are net positives. I don't know how much it's going to translate to wins and losses. I think everyone kind of lost them in the wash after they upset Mike Gundy with one of. One of Mike Gundy's old running backs. Do you remember that last year?

[Alex Kirschner]

Yes.

[Stephen Godfrey]

That was like. Yeah, I think. Yeah.

[Alex Kirschner]

Dominic Richardson. They got him fired. They honestly. That's gonna go down as one of their proudest moments. They got Mike Gundy fired?

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah. Sir. Well, I mean it. Trey Lamb was like a certain kind of famous in the state of Oklahoma after that. I'll put it that way. Here's the thorn you mentioned, Dominic Richardson. He was their most productive skill position player gone. Oh, defense and. Defense and skill position straight up got whacked. So it's good that they're being inventive, but they got picked apart. The portal is just not kind to programs like this right now. And so that's. It's a big thorn. Honestly.

[Alex Kirschner]

Hard job. Speaking of, I have Charlotte. Okay. This team is projected 138th out of 138 in SP plus. Yeah. So should be. That's the lowest. What's the highest number? It's the highest number, Alex.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Like, here's the real thorn. This shouldn't be an FBS program.

[Alex Kirschner]

Kind of hard to argue when. Well, in fact, they. Maybe they shouldn't be. They didn't beat one last year. I mean.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Yeah, like, show me. Show me what the. Show me. Show me your plan. I still don't. I still don't see a plan. Even with the new coach. I don't get it.

[Alex Kirschner]

I don't get it either. They hired Tim Albino from Ohio before last year, as best I can tell. You know, you might ask, why did he do that? It's because he was making. The Ohio coach makes less like he makes. It's the difference between the American and the Mac. He's making 900 grand. And I like Charlotte just fine. I don't. I don't participate in the Charlotte bashing, which is so popular in the sports media.

[Stephen Godfrey]

The city or are you talking about

[Alex Kirschner]

the the city of. The City of. I mean, people will point out, oh, it's just breweries and banks. I've always had a nice time time there. I've always had a nice time there. It's fun. So like I feel like people take shots at that city and I like it just fine. I've had good friends who have lived there, went to a really good restaurant there. I think it was called Haberdish. I know we have some listeners who went there. So anyway, the city of Charlotte has some things going for it and I think that's the best thing that you can say about why you would take this job if you're Tim Alan to bring it back around. I can't really come up with a rose here that's not disingenuous. So I'm going to just go to the Bud. The quarterback room has a couple guys in a vacuum. Interesting. Might be good. Connor Harrell was not the problem last year, but then he got hurt in the fourth game a week after they had won there on the game that was against an FCS team, Monmouth, but they scored 42 and Monmouth is a pretty good FCS team at least. They produce a lot of transfers up often including after last year. So that was at least something. They're doing an FCS receiver extravaganza. Extravaganza Tongue twister, which I always will at least raise my eyebrows at. They got App State's very productive slot receiver Jaden Barnes, who between 1 FCS here and App last year had 1600 yards the last two season. That's a legit get. That's for a slot guy who put 160 yards on George Georgia Southern, so you might remember watching him play. The Thorns are too many to count, but I think the likelihood is that they're going to get blown off the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball and the conference schedule. For this team to get up off the mat, the conference schedule needs to be a little kinder than it is. Like I will do. I will do a schedule game, which I know I love to do with you and you love to do. They start with the Citadel. Please don't lose to the Citadel. Might happen at Ole Miss. For some reason that has to happen.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Paycheck.

[Alex Kirschner]

That is the reason. Specifically. Not for some reason. That's the reason at App. Tough one, even though I don't know if app's going to be very good. We'll see Louisiana, Memphis at North Texas, which we don't know at Temple. That's probably not a win. Tulane at uab maybe ecu, Tulsa, maybe Navy. Like there's enough. There's maybe you could maybe find three there if you're really generous. Like the problem is that a lot of their gettable conference games are road games which make them less likely. You would really like to have uab, for example, coming to you instead of having to go there to tip that one in your favor. If it's just bad on bad, but

[Stephen Godfrey]

what an ass game.

[Alex Kirschner]

I just don't like it. I don't really see what's going on here. I don't really see what's going on here. And we have including in our very loyal group of longtime split zone duo, we call them the Gold Trans Am listeners who I am still to this day in a group chat with, we have a really die hard Charlotte fan in there who I know will message me after this. You can maybe find something if you're really trying to be charitable about it. But every year in these previews I have one where I tend to have one team where I'm like I can't really find a rose.

[Stephen Godfrey]

And hey man, Idaho is doing great things in the fcs.

[Alex Kirschner]

It might make sense. It might make nothing wrong with that. Let's do our preseason awards and superlatives. Godfrey, your split zone duo preseason dude of the year.

[Stephen Godfrey]

You're going to have to pronounce this for me because yes, Udoka Aani we you mentioned it in the North Texas preview, which I didn't know you were going to do, but he's basically the he. He's the college football conservatives nightmare because he's played at approximately 35 schools. But this will be, you know, journeyman guy who probably gets his best platform yet to show how good he is. Had a really good year at utep. Then that's my defensive due to the year. And then this is where I kind of like slipped in a little bit of a caveat or a trick here. Whoever wins the Memphis quarterback job, I am very bullish on, but I have no idea who that's going to be out of the three candidates in late July. I just feel like that offensive system, I believe they have ODU's offensive coordinator. You look at what ODU did last year. I like what they're doing. And Huff is also stocking up at skill positions so that's the position to watch in the entire league, in my opinion.

[Alex Kirschner]

Is Memphis's course back also on the pronunciation. And instead of fixing it in post. But to make the point, I will correct myself. I had the first name. I did it exactly right. It's Udoka, but Udoka Izani. And the reason that Izani. Okay, I meant to do this in prep. But the nice thing right now that a lot of college sports information directors are doing and teams are doing is putting recordings and phonetics on team roster pages. I know you feel this way as well. It's very important that we get these things right. You know, it's literally putting respect on people's names. So I apologize for getting it wrong there and I will hold myself to account. But I appeal to you college sports programs that are not doing this, if you can get the phonetics on your bio pages, that's a great thing. It's very helpful, especially when you. Oftentimes they'll just have the player record it. And I think that's a really good thing to do if you're a college football sports information director. So thank you to North Texas for that. Due to the year for me, I'm going to go with Kate Hellams, the Army quarterback. And you mentioned him earlier, but Jamon Tapp, the edge rusher, going with Huff from Southern Miss to Memphis. I think there will be a lot of sacks in that banana stand this year. Coach is not going to be here next year for one reason or another. Godfrey, you were on. I wasn't on the show last year. But you were. You had Trent Dilfer. Congratulations. That's a direct hit.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Easiest pick in the world.

[Alex Kirschner]

But this is tougher this year, I think. Yeah, it really is. I'm actually not sure that I feel really confident about any pick, but I wonder what you would do.

[Stephen Godfrey]

So there's one I want to think about for a second after you go. But we both have kind of. We're like kind of circling around this idea of, well, Jeff Trailer's been there for a while. Right. The other one that I might throw out. Here's the problem. Everybody turned over. So it's just really. It's really hard to like, find an obvious candidate. Right. And when I say everyone turned over, I mean the. The name of this is coach who won't be here next year. That could mean that he was graduate. Like a coach graduating up. Right.

[Alex Kirschner]

So. So what I have.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Everybody did that.

[Alex Kirschner]

Everybody flipped. But there's one guy who has a recent track record of one and Dones. And so I'm taking Charles Huff, but I don't think. I think it's probably not going to hit, but I think he's the best value pick. It's either him or Jeff Traylor because Traylor's just been there a while and say. They say, you know, they. They're stale again. And I'm sure there's no small number of Big 12s or SECs that would love for him to be AHC Dean of Texas recruiting. They would love that. Just probably not a head coach.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I don't think what I'm about to say is going to happen, but I'm trying to fulfill the. The ask here. The other one that I would pay attention to is FAU because Zach Kitley is only entering year two and that's. That's a pretty substantial turnaround. FAU is not as plug and play as everybody thought because Lane Kiffin was the outlier. But they've switched athletic directors, right?

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah.

[Stephen Godfrey]

So they had a white. They had a White and Brian White went to. From FAU to Virginia Tech as the new athletic director. So you're replacing athletic director at fau. We, you know, you, you talked in detail about the like defensive deficiency. It. What if he plugs in another four and eight season? It's not impossible. That's the only one that I could. That's the only one that I could stretch and think of, to be honest.

[Alex Kirschner]

And they give up 40 points a game and it's ugly and they have turnover problems again.

[Stephen Godfrey]

It. It really feels like you may not have much this season and left. Unless it's a Jeff trailer kind of rides off into the sunset moment or something. Or, or maybe there's an nil implosion like you alluded to. Otherwise we're not going to see. We're certainly not going to see the level of turnover we did last season.

[Alex Kirschner]

Yeah. This is just fanfic at this point and I wouldn't expect that it would happen. But say that UCF is a disaster and Frost gets fired, but USF goes 10 and two under heartline. Could you. Would UCF take joy in hiring away USF's coach or would they say. Or would they not do that? Yeah.

[Stephen Godfrey]

No, you. Because. Because you're in the position that it's not gonna for heartlines in game. You're not gonna get any advantage jumping over to UCF after one year at South. It wouldn't make sense.

[Alex Kirschner]

I assume you mean Big Ten head coach when you refer to his end game, his desire. Well, maybe one in particular, just power to.

[Stephen Godfrey]

Just not. Yeah, and not necessarily. I mean it's. I'm not saying that USF and UCF are on equal footing. I'm just saying in this scenario that doesn't make sense.

[Alex Kirschner]

Stephen. The Loki game of the year in this conference. I'm taking Navy, utsa, this is Troops at the Alamo. These teams have never played each other. You have a situation here where you could have the UTSA offense, you could have a lot of points, you could have UTSA stunting on them, but also getting run just run over in that way that's very satisfying when a service academy does it. You know, you could have UTSA scoring quick and Navy scoring slightly slower, but also pretty quick. And it's the home field advantage that I talked about for UTSA environment where we haven't seen Navy. I think it could be fun.

[Stephen Godfrey]

I know UTSA has played Army a few times, Alex. I think army has a rare win in the Alamo Dome. I think they're one of the few teams that's beat ut. Yeah, that has been utsa.

[Alex Kirschner]

Bill shouted out Navy as having and I couldn't believe this, but it actually makes. I could believe it because UTSA football is a slightly newer institution than Navy football, but there is no wincipedia.com page for Navy UTCA because those two didn't play. But yeah, army and UTSA definitely have. This one is in mid October.

[Stephen Godfrey]

It depends on how low key you want to get on my pick ECU Memphis, I think is going to be a really telling game because it's too, you know, it's a program that certainly has a head start in ecu. But I'm curious like how you compare they're very similar programs in a certain way and I'm curious how fast Memphis can supercharge by dumping nil in and grabbing Huff versus what ECU has built going into year three. It's in late October. So I think that's enough time for us to kind of know what these teams are going in. That was and then if you really want to go low, low key. So what I have is Tulsa at Rice on October 17th and Temple at Rice November 19th. Because I think of those three teams, Tulsa, Rice and Temple. Tulsa I believe does not play Temple. But of those three teams there's probably one bull bid in there. There's one six win season in the amongst those three teams and it's really just going to be kind of a scramble to see I think which one gets it. They're all about. They're all about. Even maybe Temple I would put ahead, but I'd be really curious just to see, like, you know, because I talked a lot about Keeler. Trey Lamb's trying to be really interesting at Tulsa. And then Rice has, like, obvious challenges and a very unique approach. So this is the kind of stuff

[Alex Kirschner]

I pay attention to. Stephen Godfrey, it's been a pleasure. You are our co host emeritus. You are our co founder. We, of course, can find you at Phantom Island. Thank you for coming on. I feel like you have a real pep in your step when you talk about this conference, so it's good to do it with you.

[Stephen Godfrey]

It's always weird, and I appreciate weird.