← The Bill and Doug Show: Ohio State Football Talk
The Bill and Doug Show: Ohio State Football Talk
Ohio State should dominate national title talk; plus, Paul Finebaum for Senate? Really? Rants
00:26:44
Should the Ohio State Buckeyes be viewed in the national college football discourse as the prohibitive favorites to win the national championship this season?
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Foreign. Welcome back to the Bill and Doug Show Solo Doug, on a Tuesday. Three rants I'm doing today. We're going to end with Paul Feinbaum. We're going to do an SEC quarterback who came from the north and maybe should be in the north second. But we're going to start off with why Ohio State is not currently viewed, I feel like in the general consensus, as the clear favorite to win the national championship. And as you guys know. You guys know, listen, I, I can analyze football a little bit, but what I often end up analyzing is the analysis of college football. And I think there are reasonable comparisons to be made between this Ohio state team in 2025 and the Georgia team in 2022 that did wind up repeating that year after winning the national championship in 2021. That Georgia team had seven, excuse me, had 10 total starters back off the 2021 national championship team, but they lost a bunch of guys to the NFL. They had three guys back on defense, which is the same number as this Ohio State defense. And that Georgia team had seven guys back on offense. This Ohio State team pretty much had like seven starters returning. Three on offense. No, three on defense and four on offense. So the defensive comparison I think is very apt. Georgia 21, Ohio State 24. And what they were bringing back defensively the next year because they lost a ton of dudes to the NFL. Ohio State had eight of their starters drafted to the NFL. Their top 11 guys defensively last year, eight got drafted in, three are back. Caleb Downs, Sonny Styles and Davis and Big Nose. And then offensively, like the numbers are down a little bit for Ohio State from last year. But really like Ohio State brought back like two and a half, two and three quarter starters, kind of two and a third. Tiger Shabola, Carson Hesman, Austin Sehr, Beld, moved position. Georgia that year brought back three offensive linemen. Georgia that year brought back to their two big skill guys who caught the ball. They returned brock Bowers and lad McConkey very comparable to Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate. And then the big difference then was Stetson Bennett returning as the starting quarterback for Georgia. Ohio State obviously is changing quarterback, but I think a month into the season, I'm not, I'm not talking about like where we were in August coming in because to maybe have some questions about Ohio State losing coordinators o State, new quarterback, Ohio State, two new offensive tackles. I get all that. But where we are now, stetson Bennett in 2022, who, who maybe was the most important guy to that Georgia team? Not anybody on the defense and like what Julian sand has done through four games. I think certainly like the, the quarterback position for Ohio State is settled. There are things to believe in. So Ohio State in the preseason was about like five and a half to one plus 525 to win the national title. Maybe like the second pick to Texas and they beat Texas in the opener. Right now looking at both DraftKings and FanDuel but I'm really talking more about the general discussion, the way the sports discussed right now in the media. But by the betting numbers, Ohio State is the favorite at plus 500. Oregon's next at plus 550. Then you get into Texas and Bama around plus 750 around plus 800 like 8 to 1 or so Penn State around plus 900. Georgia around 10 to 1 and then like Miami around 11 to 1. And that's like kind of your top group. Right. But at this point and I, it's sometimes hard to find like go back and hey, what were the national championship odds in the middle of a season? But I did find one story from 9-20-2022 where Georgia was plus 175 to win the national title. At that point a couple weeks into the season, Ohio State's +550. Their odds have stayed the same or maybe gotten even slightly worse. They're the favorite. But I, I saw and I couldn't find it. Then I saw a social media post over the weekend after a bunch of teams lost like an exciting weekend of college football that man, are there 12 to 15 teams who could win the national championship. And, and I wish I could go find it. Not to call that person out because I think but represented a consensus and the idea and I've, I've certainly been pointing this out on social media. Not sure I pointed it out here. No, I did. I put, I pointed it on the post game show on, on Saturday night where we talked about Oregon, Penn State where we talked about Alabama, Georgia preseason AP poll top 17. Only three of those seven teams haven't lost. Three of those 17 teams haven't lost. Three of 17 haven't lost. We're not even in October. It's highest Ohio State, Oregon and Miami haven't lost. But for Ohio State not to be preseason number one. I get it. But then to beat the preseason number one, hold Texas to a touchdown to then go on the road, stop Washington's 22 game home win streak, hold Washington to six. That defense I think is maybe inarguably the best unit in the country. By the Brian from O ratings which still at this point Brian does a really good job. It's b, c f toys.com he does a really good job explaining it. There are preseason priors. That is where you start, right? And then the more you go into the season, those priors lesson there's still some preseason stuff baked into this. This is a drive to drive evaluation of college football team. So there's some preseason stuff baked in, but like preseason, right? It's good for Ohio State, but like I think they've backed it up. They're the number one team in the country, Oregon's two. Ohio State has the number one defense and the number three offense. And so the thing that I am just reacting to a little bit here is the idea of, wow, it's wide open. I'm not sure why it's viewed that way because I'm pretty sure when Georgia was a defending national champ and then had a good start in 2022, that's not how it was viewed. There was a lot of Georgia versus the field talk. I felt like there was a lot of Georgia until Georgia shows it's not Georgia, give me Georgia versus Everyone else. And I'm just a little surprised that that's not the feels like to me if you disagree, if you think this is the conversation, please tell me in the comments. Please find me on social media or go to our substack billanddugosu.substack.com and let me know. But I think a reasonable conversation is it's Ohio State until proven otherwise. Now, Oregon would have a lot to say about that, but I don't think it's wide open. Actually. I I think the SEC is wide open. And just because the acc, the SEC is sort of a I don't want to call it a pit. I don't want to call it a swamp. Now I'll call it a pit in the swamp of solid but not great teams. I think we're going to maybe talk about that on our playoff bracket show on Tuesday night. Who's the best team in the in the sec? Because that answer is difficult does not mean the answer to who's the best team country, who's the favorite, who is viewed as they're the team to beat until proven otherwise. That to me is not difficult. So I think it can be confusing for the sport to try to talk about itself when there's not a clear SEC team, but there is a clear team. Maybe a clear two, maybe a clear three. But Miami and Mario Crystal ball this team they haven't done it. If you want to get totally on board with Dan landing, I get it. But Ohio State also blew them out the playoff last year. But I don't know what's holding you back. What's holding anybody back in the conversation around Ohio State. Ohio State doesn't have to be mad about this. I just find it a little bit odd and I think it would not be this way if it was an SEC team, because what is happening is the defense was the bigger question coming into the year for Ohio State with only three starters back and a new defensive coordinator. The defense is the certainty. Right now. The defense is, has the highest, certainly I would think the highest stop rate in the country. They're not allowed anybody to score. They're forcing punts, they're first forcing turnovers on downs. I think they're 84 stop rate. They're not forcing a ton of turnovers, but they're allowing 5.5 points per game. Now that's a shutout for Grambling State, but that's also seven against Texas and six against Washington, who are otherwise pretty high scoring offenses. So the defense is the certainty and then the offense is controlled and mature as I've written on substack. And so what they haven't been is explosive, but they have the most explosive player in college football and the quarterback, the young quarterback's not making mistakes and the offensive lines not giving up sacks, not getting blown off the line. So like, the thing that actually at the moment Ohio State maybe needs to get back better at the most is the thing they are most equipped to get better at, which is be explosive offensively because they have Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate, they have the most explosive receiver duo in the country. And it's like, oh, I don't know, is Ohio State going to be explosive? It's like, what do you mean? They have the ability to be that as much as anybody when they decide to be that. And in the meantime, if that is being taken away, if that is not the focus of how they're trying to win, they are winning in these other ways. So I'm, I find it interesting because I'm always on the lookout for comparisons between the Big Ten and the sec, between the north and the south, between perception and reality, what is actually happening out there? And I promise you, if the defending national champ team from the SEC held Texas to 7 and Washington to 6, the conversation would be who's going to stop them and I. And instead it feels like right now the conversation is, man, this is Wide open. I don't think it's wide open. I don't think there's a team in the SEC that is the caliber of Ohio State or Oregon. And then I think you also have teams in the North, Notre Dame and Penn State who have potential but like, have gotten in their own way, can't win the big game, defensive issues, but have, you know, have potential there, but they're not on the level of Ohio State and Oregon right now. So I just think, I think the conversation actually in the national title race is either who's going to beat Ohio State, Ohio State is currently defining the season, or Ohio State versus Oregon, collision course. Not wide open. It's not. Not right now. So I don't listen to a lot of the other shows. It's odd for me. I have a hard time listening to other people's opinions about college football. I love other people's opinions on other things, but I just get angry. I either think, well, yeah, if I agree with the opinion, I think, yeah, I agree with that. Why did I listen? What's the point? Or if I disagree, then I get into a boiling white hot rage. So. So you guys tell me, tell me if I'm wrong, but from what my vibe is, is I don't think Ohio State is viewed as the consensus odds on favorite and not even betting one from a betting perspective, just from a discussion perspective. And I think Ohio State should be viewed as that right now. Okay, second, second thing I want to talk about is Trinidad Chambliss, the backup quarterback for Ole Miss who has started the last three games. And his average game the last three games is 20 of 32 passing for 325 yards, 14 rushes for 82 yards. He's awesome. He's in the Heisman race. He was the starting quarterback at Division 2 Ferris State in Michigan last year when Ferris State won the Division 2 national championship. He is a Michigan native who had very few offers coming out of high school. And I just cannot believe that a Michigan kid from A Michigan Division 2 college is leading the SEC to, is leading Ole Miss to number four spot in the polls and they just beat lsu. And like, it's a huge, it's a huge thing right now. And actually it's almost because the north was too good. So like, why, why didn't this happen? For instance, there's a Ferris State offensive lineman who committed to Iowa, right? So why did Iowa, why did Iowa get the offensive lineman but Ole Miss got the quarterback? And Bill and I did this show for our substack subscribers a couple weeks ago. It actually I think is because the north and the Big Ten, Big Ten in particular, was too settled at quarterback. We think right now probably like 15 of the 18 teams in the Big Ten are pretty set at quarterback, like happy with how things have gone so far, at least to a reasonable level. And the three that aren't are UCLA who brought a Nico, I am Aliaba from UCLA, Northwestern who brought in Preston Stone from SMU and Wisconsin who brought in Billy Edwards Jr from Maryland and Danny O' Neill from San Diego State. Trinidad Chambliss, by one ranking I was looking at was like number 60among quarterbacks in the portal. And it is just one of these things. Temple really went after him. Casey Keeler, who had so much success at Delaware, then went south, then came back into the head coach at Temple. They were all over him in the portal and all the reporting on this and a lot of people justifiably so and doing a good job reporting or writing about Trinidad Shambliss. His first three offers in the portable Temple were Temple, Western Kentucky and Marshall when he went in in April and he committed to Ole Miss like five days after he went into the Portal in April. So he's a spring transfer. It's like this can't happen anymore because it's going to be just the January transfer window. Ole Miss only looked at him as a backup. I think some other teams, maybe even Ohio State like sniffed around a little bit. But the big time schools were looking at him as a backup. Temple was ready to buy all the reporting people. Temple telling people this, ready to give him 300,000 in nil, ready to build the offense around him. But he want, he chose to be a backup in the SEC instead. And then it's just like, my God, like the luck of this, that Austin Simmons, their young guy that everybody was fired up about, unfortunately for him, gets hurt. And now Trinidad Chambliss does this and I don't know that he's going to give up the job. He has two years of eligibility, so he's got this and one more and that he's not in the Big Ten. It's just like, are you kidding me? But it's actually if there was more desperation in the Big Ten true to that jam list, might be in the Big Ten. But by the time you got to April post spring practice in the Big Ten, everybody felt pretty good. So it's like, oh, Iowa, they brought in a Ferris State offensive lineman. Why didn't they bring in a Ferris State quarterbacks? Because they Had Mark Granowski, who they got as a transfer and they were locked in on. They got brought in Hank Brown from Auburn. They got as a transfer. Who's the guy who one of Gronowski's was. Was missing some stuff in the spring. Whatever they had Hank Brown, they didn't need somebody. So Ole Miss needed a backup. And now here we are and Trinidad Chambliss is like in the Heisman race and is throwing for 300 yards a game for Ole Miss. And I'm just always on alert for this. Of is there something happening in northern college football in the Big Ten footprint that the Big Ten or the north doesn't recognize? And I'm. I'm like almost ready to assign blame in this Trinidad Shambless situation. He leads Ferris State to the Division 2 national title. He averaged. He ran for almost a thousand yards last year. He threw for almost 3,000 yards, 26 touchdowns, six interceptions. You knew the guy was good, but it almost. The north and the Big Ten missed on him from strength. There wasn't a spot for him. There wasn't a need for him. And then Ole Miss and I've written about this and I genuinely feel this, that your backup quarterback spot is one of the 10 most important spots on your roster, especially if you really think about being a playoff contender. And Lane Kiffin, to his credit, was talking about that recently since the emergence of Chambla. It's like you can see other places where the starting quarterback down goes down and it blows up. I think he kind of referenced Florida there last year. Florida with DJ Lagway. With DJ Lagway, they look like a playoff team. Without them, they're nothing. So now they're dealing. And I. Florida's having another bad year in Lagways, I think still had some injury issues, at least in the off season. So like. But you have to fortify yourself there. So. But I guess I'm not. I'm not calling out the Big Ten, but it's just like, are you kidding me? Ferris State in Michigan. It's a kid from Michigan who's right here and he's setting the SEC on fire. But it also is a reminder. And by the way, we have two situations in the SEC now where maybe the two quarterbacks were viewed as the two best quarterbacks in that conference. Arch Manning at Texas and Garrett Nussmar at lsu. Both have played to middling degrees at time that injury questions have popped up like, this guy's not playing that well. I wonder if he's hurt. And they've Both sort of had to address that. I think Garrett Nussmeier said recently, like, I'm not going to talk about the health stuff, so maybe they are hurt. You admire guys who are fighting through things. But Trinidad Chambliss, the transfer from Ferris State, the Michigan native, the former Division 2 guy, outplayed Garrett Nussmeier, who some people were viewing as the potential number one pick in the NFL draft when Ole Miss beat LSU last week. Congratulations to the South. You plucked a quarterback from the North. But I can't. I'm almost ranting because I can't rant because Temple. Temple did everything it could. And in the reporting you read, people reading about this, Temple's like, we knew we had him. We knew we. We were going to build our program around him. And Old Miss came in at the last second and swiped him. And it's like, okay, so, like, credit to Ole Miss, but, man, what could have been. All right, last one's this Paul Feinbaum, who I originally, you know, we. We were doing another show. At one point I said, man, I'd love to be the Paul Finebaum of the North. And, you know, I don't. I don't know if it worked out. Has said he's considering a run for Senate. He's 70 years old. And I just would say, I hope our country is not heading towards a world where we're just voting for sports commentators. I don't think a world where Paul Feinbaum and Stephen A. Smith are central parts of. They can be part of the political discussion, I suppose, if they want to be. But like that. That things are being thrown out there because you can talk about something that then you should throw yourself into. Being involved in it is just like, I don't. I don't know where we are, if that's the case. No offense to me and us and people like us, but we're just here to facilitate a fun discussion. And like, the thing that I would say about this is, I do think sometimes, right, like the sports section of newspapers, people used to call that the toy department. And actually, you know, if you're. If you're actually doing a good job in. In being a sports journalist, you're doing some real journalism, right? But, like, I don't. You're shouting to a microphone. Is that journalism? I don't know. Probably not. Probably closer to entertainment. But one thing that I. That everybody. I'm certainly not here to tell anybody how to feel, but Paul Feinbaum had pointed out that after the tragic death of Charlie Kirk that he Was saying that it was hard for him to do his show that day, and he said he felt numb talking for four hours about things that didn't matter to him. And so it's a. It's. You know, there are. There are terrible things that happen in the world, and everybody is certainly allowed to have their own feelings about those things. And tragedy, I mean, it's. It's very difficult to talk through tragedy. But the thing that I would say is I feel like that's the time when things like this matter the most. So the thing that I always push back on is, oh, sports doesn't matter in times of tragedy. In times when people are down, I think that's actually when we. Anybody in this business provides the greatest service because we are a distraction. We don't matter. But we never matter. We don't matter. We only matter in terms of making people happy, building community, bringing people together, helping you get away from the tough things in your life. And the thing that is difficult to me is that there is tragedy every day. There are terrible things every day. There are. There are incredibly difficult things that people who are watching and listening to these shows are dealing with on their own that most people know nothing about. And they push through and they find a way, and they get. You know, you. Maybe you never get over it, but you learn to live with it. But then what you are looking for sometimes is, I just want to talk about sports. I just want to listen about sports. I just want to maybe not think about this thing. And that's the only possible role that anybody in this. In this job can have that serves anything right. That's the. That's the best thing we can hope to do, to take pe. The people who actually matter, who actually do things to make society better, to serve others. Doctors and nurses and paramedics and teachers and garbage collectors and police officers and firefighters and people who work in grocery stores and people who work at restaurants and people who actually keep America moving, and people who build things, who work in factories and people who do cancer research and are in a lab. Like those people matter. We never matter. But we actually can matter the most when the times are toughest. So it's just a little odd to me to be like, listen, when something terrible happened. And when something terrible happened was. My instinct was, I can't do this thing. Let me go run for office, because that'll solve it. And it's like, I. That's not going to solve it. The answer to America's woes, whatever they may be, are not People who talk about sports running for office. So I just, I just hope we can do better than that. I think we can. I think we can. I think we can have people with a little more expertise. The thing that can be hard is that at its best, what people doing shows like this maybe do best is build community, right? Is allow people to express their opinions, is facilitate discussion, which maybe in politics we don't do well enough sometimes. Build community. Build community, facilitate discussion. So then it's like, oh, well, that guy has callers on his show and he wears a tie, so let's vote for him. I just think it's an odd instinct. But the thing is, because the instinct should be, let me dive back in, ideally, I think is let me dive into what I actually do, which matters even more when people are going through tough stuff. So anyway, and also with that, I would like to announce that I'm running for Senate in Ohio. Would love your vote. I don't know. I mean, and the other part of this is, and listen, I swing swords around, but I never say things I don't mean. I never say things I don't mean. I do think it's not secrets here, but like it's supposed to be interesting. So I would never say something I don't mean. But do you heighten it 10%? And it's not even like, I don't think you heighten the opinion, you heighten the delivery. Right. I mean, I don't quite get quite as squeaky voiced in my normal life. I don't swing swords quite as much in my normal life. But when you also sometimes at some point become a caricature of yourself and then it's like, do you actually mean what you say? Are you, are you putting on an act? And then it's like, oh, and now I'm going to run for, for Congress or I'm going to run. It's just, it's just odd to me. So I don't, you know, whatever, whatever. I mean, everybody can do whatever they want, but I'm hoping we don't wind up with the Senate of sports talkers. God help us all. That is, that is, whatever it is we need. I hope. I don't know for sure what it is. I kind of know what it isn't. And it isn't that. All right, Tuesday rants. I might, maybe that's what I'll turn this Tuesday thing into. It's just like rants. If I come up with two or three things that are aggravating me, you know, me I'm aggravated most of the time. We'll have some reaction from Ryan Day in the coming days to the Tuesday news conference as Ohio State gets ready for Minnesota. We'll have our playoff brackets on Tuesday night. We'll have some big stuff on our premium show. And the other thing that I also remind you is like, man, roback. How about that? Roback.com r h o b a c k.com I think it's like another good distraction because so it's two things that can be here. I like window shopping online. I like window shopping in person. But you could window shop online, too. So if you go to roback.com you get in the fall mood and you're thinking about college sports and you can look at your favorite team. But I also think sometimes it's fun to look at other teams and they have just a million different teams there. It's this like fall collection of hoodies and quarter zips. A lot of it's really classy. Like there's a cool stripe or there's a cool little pattern on there. Just go check it out and then maybe you find something you like. Maybe you find something as a gift that you could get somebody. Like the, the, the holiday season is not that far away. And if you do that, your first order, 20% off with the code BAD20. So if you want to go check it out, roback.com maybe you haven't been there before and you're like, what is this guy talking about? It's just kind of a cool, different kind of vibe of college football gear, you know, university gear to represent your schools. And I think there's two things you can do there. One, you can either rep your school or the other is sometimes like, oh, I like a bunch of different schools. Maybe you're like a Big Ten fan and it's like, oh, this one, like I kind of this color combo over here. But I also like this school a little bit, this stripe combo over here. Maybe I'll try that. So roback.com r h O-B-A-K.com bad 20 get you 20 off your first order. All right, we will talk to you guys soon. Premium show on Wednesday for our Substack subscribers. You can find me and Bill over on substack. Billanddugosu.substack.com we'll have our Ohio State Minnesota picks on Thursday. We'll have our national picks on Friday. We'll have a live post game show on Saturday after the Buckeyes and Gophers go at it in prime time for now. You guys know I always greatly appreciate you hanging out. For now. I'm Doug Lamorice, and that was the Bill and Doug Show.