John (68:22)
Let'S just crank as we head towards the football and I want to give one of our John Boy Media friends a shout out here. Part of the inspiration today, our guy Courage, he messaged me and you know what, I'm gonna, I'll give the selfie to BBD to to get on the screen because I was feeling a very similar emotion of, you know, the holidays and everyone's podcast is on a different schedule. Courage sent me a selfie of himself thinking into the distance. Sending to Davis Wimbledon. He said out walking. No waking Jake, no talking Yanks, no talking baseball. Glaber gone. Recent Jake hair on pods getting a little long. Things are getting dark and I think we all kind of knew that holiday feeling. So I'm glad I could be back in the lab doing this. And I can't just skip football because we're at an hour. So let's talk about it a little bit. And I do need to throw my college football under the bus for a little bit because the first round of games were tough. The 12 team bracket that it was the first year they've rolled out and I've talked about some of the flaws. There's Courage just in the distance just wishing he could have headphones in hearing a voice talk about sports. I get that feeling. I know that feeling. So we're getting learnings. And it's also that weird thing that you need to preface this with. There's only one year of data so we need to see more data. And I do think that's true. But one thing that clearly felt off was the seating. Boise State getting a buy in a three seed compared to the other teams that seemed a little ridiculous. But college football, did the top, top qualified automatic qualifiers from their leagues get in? And it was interesting. I was listening to Joel Klatt talk about that and they said that was non negotiable because they want championship games to matter. And by matter they mean people pay money to go to the game. So that's where college football is at that Boise State and Arizona State should not have bias. It probably should just been top four teams. We're working on that. Something that I think is egregious and will be changed and maybe not. And this is where you need more data and all of that. But given college teams home field advantage in a playoff game, I don't know. I think I heard Matt Liner talk earlier this year, like just make all of these bowl games like at different sites and it gets a little tricky, right? Cause you're start doing teams and regions. But like NCAA basketball does that. Like they don't just rank them in order. It's like oh, the west region and BYU's a 12 seed. Well, why don't we make them that 12 seed even if it's not fair and everyone kinda gets over it. So we'd have to figure that out with making these all bowl games. And maybe we will, maybe we won't, or maybe they like that. But SMU at Penn State, Pony Express got grounded quickly. And part of that was because of their quarterback. He played one of the worst games you could possibly play. So that's not good. But part of that was they had an early fourth and one where he could have scrambled. He threw it into the end zone for an interception. Bad. But also that Penn State crowd got insane. Same thing with Ohio State. Ohio State hosted Tennessee and they thwomped him and they probably would have thomped him anywhere, neutral site in Tennessee even. But the fact that they had home field and then Notre Dame, Indiana, although that final score looks a lot closer than it was. And maybe these were the matchups this year and these teams never had a shot. And I talked about some of the quarterbacks and how the quarterbacks aren't where they need to be or you'd be surprised how they look this college football Playoff. But yeah, it was all home favorites and I think I'm talking the spread too, which is insane. But college football home field advantage is worth like 10 points. I know that's not exactly how the math works out, but we're also talking a playoff game. Penn State was nuts. Ohio State as well. So unfortunately the entertainment that those games potentially could have provided got overruled. And I'm not going to do the whole speech. Alabama should have been in. I think South Carolina was actually the team that got screwed the most in all this. But I don't think it would have mattered because they would have been on the road. Road playoff games, these places were nuts. Like Penn State, I think exams were over, so it was literally just drunk kids there. That kind of matters. That's why we have home field advantages. So something to look into. Again, maybe it's just one year and it's how everything laid out. But like okay, Tennessee was the ninth seed, Ohio State was the eighth seed and that gave Ohio State home field advantage. That's pretty significant. And maybe if that's as important and Maybe we want to roll on with that. Cool. But yeah, that, that part just felt a little off to me. But I'm also a unique college football fan, so I'll tell you this for tomorrow. Penn State, Boise State. If you haven't seen Ashton Jinty play yet, please watch. He is loads of fun. 29 rushing touchdowns this year. His unique stance in the backfield and it's everything. Like I was the couple. The few Boise State games I got to watch this year, which was actually more like. Again, it's probably three Boise State games. But like, what the hell am I doing anyways? He's complete. Like, it's not like, whoa, Boise State opens up a huge hole. He beats one guy and goes like it's every carry with him. If he gets a little bit of space, he's got you. If he's bigger than you, he'll be bigger than you. If he's smaller than you, he'll be faster than you. And every run it feels like he's falling forward or getting a couple yards. When it's. Even when it's not. The breakout runs I'm very interested to see. Everyone thinks Penn State is going to kill them. Penn State is an 11 point favorite because they're good in the line. So Penn State is one of the few teams that they've held up with Ohio State and Oregon and that's where the game is, right? That maybe they're just dominant down there and all that cool stuff about Genti doesn't matter. I will be interested to see. I the way everyone else who knows college football is talking about it that I respect is saying Penn State is going to give them the business in the way they talked about the home teams doing it last game. This isn't a home game. This is at a neutral start. The Vrbo Fiesta Ball. Watch out, 11 point Penn State. I don't know, I. I guess maybe I just want to believe in Jinty too much and maybe they're going to be outclassed and outskilled by Penn State across the field, but I don't know. A girl can dream for now. Oregon, Ohio State as I'll avenge myself from those first round matchups. I said right after the Oregon Ohio State game if they could somehow get these teams to play in the playoffs. And we got it. It's in the quarterfinals, which some people aren't happy about because some people are like this, this might be the championship game. They will run it back with Ohio State as favorites in the Rose bowl against undefeated Oregon who beat Them. Yo, you want to talk about a coach being able to scream at the boys you guys beat this team. We're going to a neutral site. And they're the favorites. Meanwhile Ohio State is playing with the vim and vigor of 10000 sons because this is the whole crew that they never beat Michigan four years Ryan Day supposed to be good as dead as a head coach and they came now and they played one of the best games of the season. So that is much must watch. I started with Boise because that's New Year's Eve 7:30pm Ohio State. Oregon is 5pm New Year's Day. Okay, talk myself into that before that is Texas, Arizona State, your Chick Fil A Peach Bowl. Texas is a 13 point favorite. This is what I'm talking about with the buys like parts of this system are still clearly a little broken and this is one of them. I don't know. Again I hope these games aren't living up to their spread billing because that would stink. But Arizona State with Scatter Boo. That'll be the word of the day on New Year's Day. The joke with him is you know how good is he going to look with Belichick in New England? That joke's about five years old now because he now coaches North Carolina. But white running back who plays just like an absolute dog. The receiving and the rushing are electric that let's see what he can do to the Texas defense and Texas's offense has left a lot of questions out there. But I mean this is the Texas Longhorns. Their their two losses are to Georgia where Arizona State this year it felt like they kind of came out of nowhere. Their losses to Texas Tech and Cincinnati. So you know that just feels a little different. Their head coach Arizona State I think younger than me. That's tough. Yeah, that hurts. Kenny Dillingham. Nice. There's a cool wiki read again. Why was I there? Why haven't I read a book this year? But I read Kenny Dillingham's Wikipedia. Let's finish off Notre Dame. Georgia. This is the last game of the day. This is the smallest line. Again two kind of traditional powers here. Georgia has a one and a half point favorite without Carson Beck who's declaring for the draft even though his season is over due to injury. I mean that is kind of the story that I'm. It depends what you believe in. Like Georgia without hey Carson back hadn't played great for them recently that now they're going to their backup quarterback. His name my apologies. Who is Stockton Gunner Stockton. That's right. Who's more of a run threat than a pass threat. That the Georgia offense was actually clicking decently because maybe they leaned into the run a little bit more and maybe that's a good thing for them. We'll see their Notre Dame. People are saying Notre Dame might be better than them on the lines. I always get scared with that with an SEC school. You know, when we're seeing some of Notre Dame's footage against recently like Army, Virginia, I don't know, maybe that's me being rude and obnoxious, but this is queued up to be one of the good ones. Personally, no clue. I. I love the way Notre Dame has been playing, the way they run the ball. It's just absolutely electric. I think Georgia can say the same thing, that it should be a fun one. And maybe it comes down to the quarterbacks and you got inexperienced gunner Stockton versus Riley Leonard, who's played a ton of college ball. Listen, a lot of people like Notre Dame in that game and not just because they're drunk Irish guys. So I'm hoping that the next couple days redeem the college football playoffs. And if that whole first weekend was kind of a bust, what if this weekend is great? What if the following week is great where there's two games and then there's still a championship after that? So it's a ton of college football. And it's so funny how far college football has come to get to this point because this is basically professional football. But hopefully we get some electric matchups in there. And then with my NFL Association, I think I can be somewhat high and tightish because the NFL just plays every day now during the holidays. So that's pretty wild. Like this week technically happened going back to Wednesday Christmas with the Chiefs playing Pittsburgh and Baltimore playing Houston. Both those games were a dud. I've got a few buddies in the group chat getting pretty hot that all of these short week games are kind of hot garbage. And I don't know, I think there's some data that would help. And one of those data points would be Baltimore, Houston 31 to 2. So did you get to watch NFL football on Netflix on Christmas? You did, and I loved it. I'm a sports junkie. The games were bad, so we just got to figure this out again. We're evolving. Let's just figure this out a little bit better.
