Another Realignment Earthquake + $cheduling Controversy | Late Kick Extra Ep. 168

Paramount Plus is streaming a mountain of movies with freaky favorites like Smile. I'm seeing something no one else can see. Then scream six. Hello. Let's play a game. Action adventures like Dungeons & Dragons honor among thieves. We got him now! And Top Gun Mav. Good morning, aviator. And family favorites like SpongeBob SquarePants Sponge Out of Water. Gravity Taddies. And Paw Patrol the movie. Actually, sir, I'm a puppy. A mountain of movies. Paramount Plus. Haven't any fun yet? Stream now. Hey, everyone. It's Lisa Roman, host and analyst on Attacking Third, a CBS Sports Soccer Podcast. The NWSL is back, and this year it is better than ever. Plus, we're just a few months out from the 2023 Women's World Cup. So you can catch international stars like Alex Morgan, Marta, Mallory Swanson, and Kaitlyn Sheridan competing every week for their club teams. Listen to Attacking Third three times a week for expert analysis, previews, recaps, news, and exclusive player interviews from around the world of women's soccer. Download, follow, and listen to Attacking Third anywhere you find your podcasts. Plus, we're also available on YouTube. You can watch all of our episodes and interviews at youtube.com slash Attacking Third. Now, don't freak out. I forbid anyone to freak out, but I do have really, really good news. Do you guys realize that we are closer to kickoff 2023 than we are far away from the national championship game? That's just convoluted way of saying we are over the crest. So we're going downhill. There is no more I think I can. I think I can. It's it is I thought I could. I thought I could season for anyone who is familiar with the epic tale, the little engine that could, which is kind of how I like to live my life. This is the late kick extra podcast. I'm Josh paint. This is wall to wall mailbag. We do it once a week and it is Tuesday, May 16th, the year of our Lord 2023. We got a loaded mailbag here. We're going all over the place. Obviously, since you and I spoke, there's been a lot happened. There's been this ACC stuff. There's been this Dylan Rayola stuff with Georgia. Yes, we will address all of it. In fact, I want to get to some of that right at the outset, but I appreciate you guys doing what I've asked you to do. Okay. And that's all I'm going to say about this. You have been subscribing to this podcast in large numbers. It is frequently now on the charts, the number one college football podcast in the world. And for those of you who know what I'm talking about, that's big time cause our main source of traffic is YouTube, not podcast. So it stands out. So if I sit to say it stands out to the powers that be around here, thank you so much for that. All right, let's dive in here. Braden hit me up. He asked the question millions upon millions are wondering right now. And that is what is happening with the ACC. He asked what are your thoughts on the recent ACC news? So the ACC news is working off something that I hinted around strongly at back in January. A few of you picked up on this. So, so when this news broke yesterday that there are seven schools that want to get out of the ACC grant of rights deal that right now takes them through 2036. That just means they can't move anywhere. Like if you were an ACC school, you can't move anywhere until 2036 because you have signed your rights away to television networks, et cetera until 2036. Well, it was always said publicly that that's the end period. That's the end of the story. You can't go anywhere. And I told you back in January that there were, there were some people I had spoken to in the legal community that had told me behind the scenes, a lot of people in the ACC did not think that was nearly as ironclad as it was being painted publicly. So I don't know anything about that world. So I'm very inquisitive. I ask as many questions as I can. And all I kept getting back was a wink and a nod and just wait and see. That's what I told you. I told you everything I knew back in January. So now we fast forward. February, March, April, here we are in May. Four months later, what do you know? We got multiple schools who are looking to get out of that thing over there. They need one more. It sounds like they need one more. And if they get one more, they can break out of there. There's going to be a lot of money that is owed, but the whole point and the whole thing I want to reiterate is when you go read Brandon Marcello's work on this, when you read the work, a lot of people in the college football space are doing on this, it's important to remember this is fluid because as much as you're going to read about what it would take to leave the conference, what it would take to break a grant of right steel, how much is the dollar figure that would be owed? If Clemson wanted to leave, if Virginia Tech wanted to leave, it's fluid because there are people in the legal world who think that they can work around the language in that deal. If that's true, all bets are off. It's like if I have a contract with CBS and it says they owe me a $2 million buyout if they fire me or whatever, but there's also a clause in there that's very obscure and it says, you know, if I'm caught J walking in a state that starts within in a month that is after August, all of a sudden it's voided and I J walking north Dakota in November, well, well, well, no one was talking about that, but all of a sudden they don't owe me a penny. So maybe not that specifically, which is in this contract, but there may very well be workarounds and there also may not be. So I'm not speaking definitively because no one has told me that definitively. It's just that people who have done this for a long time have intimated to me, which is a fancy word for indicated. They've indicated to me that, yeah, we may be able to get around that. Now here's the follow up that stuff's boring. That stuff's just legalese. If you're 19 years old right now and you're just walking around campus at Iowa State and you're watching from afar, all you want to know is who's going where is Florida State going to be in the SEC? Is Georgia Tech going to be in the Big Ten? So back in January, I also told you I had some thoughts on this, not ironclad. So understand everything I'm saying right now, just write it in pencil. The light kind of pencil that you can erase pretty quickly. I said, I thought if there was a poaching of teams from the ACC, if they go get teams from the ACC, if so, if the ACC breaks up and it's a free for all, I think Miami is attractive to the Big Ten. I think Georgia Tech is attracted to the Big Ten. I think for obvious reasons, a Clemson or a Florida State would be attractive to the SEC. I think one of the Virginia schools at least would be attractive to the SEC. And of course, you have these partnerships in certain situations where one can't move if the other doesn't move and state legislators come into play. So that's really, really muddy and I'm not even going to attempt to go down those roads. But my point there is broad strokes, purposes. Yes, there are some very attractive properties for the Big Ten for the SEC. But just as equal to that in headline stature is the fact that not all of these entities are going to have a home. Like if it breaks up over there, Boston College is SOL. They are going nowhere that means anything in the grand scheme of what you know to be Power Five, which may be rapidly evolving into the Power Two. The other question is, well, what do you think about it? Well, I don't like it. In fact, I'm really growing to despise it. Is it the way things are going? Yeah. And every time I do a segment like this, every time I do a feature like this on the podcast or even if I go on someone's radio show and I'm asked about this and I talk about it, someone will come at me and say, well, what's going to happen? You might as well not fight it. Who's fighting it? Like what? I'm not holding a weapon right now. I'm just telling you, mainly if you ask me, I tell you, I don't like it. I like there to be a relevant major college football conference in every sector of the country because think about this. Now, there are dominoes. Certainly they're going to fall from this. If the ACC dissolves and that's one of the big time college football conferences, if it dissolves and it gets swallowed up in portions of my combination of the big 10 and the SEC and at the same time, we're trying to figure out what the media rights deal situation is for the Pac-12, whether they're going to remain intact and then you got to worry about whether Oregon or Washington are going to move around and you got to worry about whether the big 12 is going to poach some of those four corner schools, all of a sudden, to me, it becomes a lot clearer if it wasn't already, that if the big 10 and the SEC swell any further, there is no, there's not enough oxygen in the room for another two conferences to flourish out there. Now truth be told, they're already wasn't going to be, but now they really won't be. And so the best you can do if you're trying to sell me on any kind of even roughly equitable playing field out there is to put one more power conference out there and that would mean the big 12 probably swallowing up some viable components and the rest of it just floats out to see and there you go. It's pretty obvious why I wouldn't like that because that's like a little death triangle of conferences and what everyone else is left out. At that point, by the way, we don't have a power college football conference west of the great planes. You would have some teams in a power conference, but I mean USC would be in the big 10, Oregon, may very well be in the big 10 if that happens. What do we have out there? Like where's Cal? Where's just throw out random teams? Like where's Oregon State? Where's Washington State? So yeah, I don't like that. And you go on the other side, you go down there and ask where is North Carolina State? Like just these teams, you don't really talk a whole lot about, but you're used to them being baked in to the quote unquote power five picture of college football. I mean, a lot of folks are out there worried about the G5. Man, you need to be worried about half of the P5. Half of the P5 may not even have a home by the time this is done, but hey, it's okay because some people you'll never meet are going to make a lot of money off of it. And the TV ratings will be good for the games that you can still find. So that means the sports healthy, right? You've heard me rail against this for a long time. I'm not going to do it for an hour today, but anytime I've talked to you about things like playoff expansion, not just that. But when I've pushed back on things like playoff expansion, I've always been careful to tell you my argument is not just against playoff expansion. Playoff expansion is like one little rubber band in this ball of rubber bands. And that ball of rubber bands is put together by people that if you really knew the truth, you would not want anything to do with. And this is another example of it. And it's sold to you sometimes as we're moving in the direction that's in the best interest of the game. Do you notice how they never move the ship in a direction that would ever cost them a dollar or two? Any direction that they push this sport for the betterment of the sport, it always happens to coincide with which direction will be more profitable. I'm not against making money. I'm telling you there are ways to operate this sport that would also be pretty profitable, although not quite as profitable that would be in the ultimate better interest of college football than the direction it's headed now. So you had your doubts for a little while when someone like me told you, hey, you don't want to go down this road. You don't want the people who have their hands on the wheel to have their hands on the wheel. Okay, were you doubted? And maybe you still doubt. But now we're not two or three weeks down the road. We're several years down the road. Look around. What direction are we headed? Do you like it? Do you think we're headed in a better direction as a sport than we were a decade ago? You'd be hard pressed to convince me the answer to that is yes. However, we will survive. We will make it DC next up. What does Dylan Rayola committing to Georgia mean for Georgia and especially Mike Bobo? So Mike Bobo for those unfamiliar is the new offensive coordinator at Georgia. Dylan Rayola for those unfamiliar committed to Georgia verbally, big time quarterback prospect out of the 2024 class. And this is a monumental recruiting win for Kirby Smart in Georgia. You could make the solid argument. It is the biggest recruiting win that they've had. I know a lot of you, well, not a lot of you. Some of you don't follow recruiting hardcore. So some of you look at this stuff and I know what your reaction is. Oh, I'm not going to freak out about a kid who's never played a down of college football. Okay. I'm not going to freak out about a kid. Oh, for all I know, he'll probably recommit between now and then. I would bet you a lot of money. He won't. I would bet you a lot of money. He won't. In fact, I take it a step further. Anytime most highly ranked kids commit early, they don't decommit. You could come up with the exceptions to the rule. Certainly even in this cycle, there will be some highly rated kids who commit early and then de-commit 90% of them are not going to do that. It's always a defense mechanism whenever your rival picks up a big time player. Oh, it's early. He'll de-commit. He probably won't, man. He probably won't because they rarely do. Like five times more often than not, the early commits, especially the highly rated ones and doubly, especially the highly rated quarterbacks stay committed. They're committing early for a reason, guys. They're committing early because they are the cornerstone of the recruiting class and they're committing early so that they can then start recruiting other pieces into that class. That's why highly rated quarterbacks rarely de-commit. Occasionally, but rarely. What does this mean? Well, it means they have the best quarterback prospect that they've had. I'll grant you. It doesn't mean anything until he produces on the field. It's just that it's hard to envision a talent as high upside as Dylan Rayla not performing on the field. But we will wait and see you there. My best or my best guess is that he will be very good. My best guess is that you'll have a flood of perimeter talent that Georgia otherwise will have not been in play for that they're all of a sudden in play for because kids are going to want to play with him. It's not just receivers. I mean, for all you know, there's a corner out there that will be more likely to sign with Georgia just because they got that big time quarterback. Happens all the time. My thoughts as for what it means for the Georgia offense. Now, this is where it gets interesting because I'm not with everyone else on this. I think it's monumental. So far as far as that goes, I am with you. But here's where I pump the brakes a little bit. Sometimes, well, I say sometimes there are rarely instances where someone's as good as Georgia, but follow me. So Georgia's been really good without superstar quarterback play. Georgia's been really good without five star level quarterback play and they've done it because they have a style that is uniquely built to their personnel. They play rock solid defense best in the country. They normally can run the ball. They can play ultra physical and they have an offensive line that suits what they do. So then the casual approach to this would be, well, if we bring in a transcendent like future first round NFL style quarterback, we just get to plop him on top of everything else and everything else stays the same. And we just upgraded quarterback. That's not necessarily how football works. So what I'm saying is Georgia's been really good past two years. They've won the championship for a reason. They've been the best team in the country at the end of the year. You don't get much better than that is my point. I know if you're a Georgia fan, I'm from Georgia. I get it. I get it. I get it. You're going to convince yourself, nah, if we've been that good without a star quarterback, that means we could be even better than that with a star quarterback. Maybe maybe not. Maybe you get the star quarterback and then there's a little bit of a trade off. You change your style of play to suit that quarterback's skill set. And then all of a sudden you become, I don't know, 20% less physical at the point of attack off the snap when it comes to your run game. And also because of the style of play and practice, maybe you're a little bit less dominant defensively. Now you accept that trade off because there is no substitute for dynamic high level quarterback playing college football. The reason I'm so confident saying this is because we've seen it happen before. It just happened at Alabama over the last several years. They decided to go get elite quarterback play. Alabama was the best defensive team in America. And then all of a sudden they were still one of the best, but they weren't impenetrable nearly to the degree that they had been. A Georgia fan listening to this right now would be saying, oh, these could be non-sequiturs. It could be that Kirby Smart leaving Alabama is the reason why they fell off defensively. I don't necessarily think that's entirely the case. Now Smart's a great coach. So it did not help Alabama that he left. But I happen to think that the style of play shifting at Alabama had a lot to do with it. So it's, if you, if you select which, which thing I just said to be your takeaway, you may think I'm trying to rain on Georgia's parade for landing Dylan Rayola. Absolutely not. I'm telling you it is one of the biggest wins in Kirby Smart's career there. I'm telling you you should be turning cartwheels if you live in and around Athens, Georgia. All I'm saying is be realistic about it. It doesn't get a whole lot better than what Georgia's been the last two years in terms of overall caliber of play. Your quarterback play could be better, but the overall level of your team is not going to be a whole lot better than it has been the last couple of years. And that's just because that's how football works. So it doesn't have to get better, by the way. Georgia's been plenty good enough. Georgia, truth be told, Georgia could get 5% worse than they have been and still maybe be the best team in the country. So it's not a problem. It's just a reality. So make sure you don't build things up in your mind where we're going to beat everyone 55 to 13. And then all of a sudden one week, it's 38 to 28. And you're saying, well, we still won, but boy, our defense man, what happened to it? Don't be like that. I've had to listen to that from Tuscaloose for a long time. Don't be like that. You'll be better off for it. Next up is Taylor from Hickory Valley, Tennessee. And Taylor asked, what is the most underrated aspect of doing what you do for a living? This is a good question because I was thinking about it earlier and I had a couple of thoughts. So the first thing is you get to structure your day how you want to. Now we work a lot, now, especially in the season, it's seven days a week. So there's not a lot of free time during the season. But at least you get to structure your day how you want. And also we get to backload the days. So I'm not a morning person. Although I do a lot of work in the morning, I can do it from my apartment and we don't have to do a show until later in the day on the days that we do a show. But what I love is I go to the gym every day, for example, so I can go to the gym anytime I want. I don't have to wait until I get off work and I don't have to go at 5 a.m. And boy, I respect those of you who do it because I've done those morning workouts. Sometimes when we're going to fly to a game, I will go to the gym before we fly to the game and I hate it. I've never gotten used to morning workouts. I did them in high school. I never got used to them. Hate at them and always haven't always will. But sometimes it's a necessary evil and I get it. And I respect you guys who have to do it because you got a normal day job. I'm thankful that I don't have a normal job in terms of clock in, clock out. So that's one thing. The second thing is having resources is so underrated. And the least little thing, like not having to worry about whether your company will travel you to a game or not having to worry about whether you can get an extra camera man and not having to worry about any of that stuff. If you've worked in local news like I have, like a lot of folks in this industry have, you'll never take that for granted. Just the smallest nothing things that you would be shocked that are an issue, they're an issue at the local level and they're laughed at at the national level. Like you really thought that was going to be an issue? And I took a while to get used to that in a positive way. And the other thing, this is probably where I love it the most is, of course you get to go to any game you want to for free and you get paid for it actually. Whereas back in the day when I was a fan, I used to have to pay to go to the games and truthfully, I couldn't afford to go to most of the games that we get to go to now. We'll never get old ever. And we get cooperation with most of the coaching staffs. So most of the coaching staffs out there are great to us because they know they can trust us to keep our mouth shut. And they know that if it's within the realm of integrity, we'll do everything we can to promote your program because we love promoting the sport of college football. We love promoting your players. Well because of that, we get welcomed in these programs and head coaches and coordinators and whatnot. We're in constant communication with them and they work with us and there's cooperation and you cannot imagine how far that goes to get you guys information. Obviously a lot of times I can't tell you what is shared with us, but what I can do like the other night when we did that segment on tampering, we couldn't have done that segment with any kind of intelligence behind it if I didn't hear from coaches. So the trade off is I can't tell you a specific coach I've talked to. I can't tell you a specific allegation, but what I can do and what those coaches do not mind at all is taking what they've said, condensing it into a generalized message and then delivering that to you because the net result is you still get more access and information than most any other show out there could give you. Why? Because it's not just my opinion I'm giving you. It's an opinion that's been formulated and packaged up to deliver into this microphone from a whole lot of coaches and a whole lot of agents and a whole lot of athletic directors in that case. These are really willing and able to talk about that sort of thing. So that's the blessing because you can't get that unless you have a national platform normally. So we've been really blessed to have that and then you guys have made it a huge show. So everybody out there recognizes it and they recognize the power of it. And yes, we always wanted to get to that point, but it doesn't make it any less meaningful and magical feeling because we're there. So those things are underrated to me. Let's roll merrily along here. Sean is next up. He asked, am I crazy to think Bama might not be a playoff caliber team next year? Sean, I wouldn't call you crazy. I would disagree with you, but I wouldn't call you crazy. Their over under wind total is 10. And while that's really high, that's as low as it's been for Bama in a while. You're coming off a year where they looked vulnerable, right? But then what is vulnerable? They lost two games on the last play of the game or they would have been undefeated in the regular season and we would have had Bama versus Georgia in Atlanta. As I say that, it kind of boggles the mind to think about that. So we're coming into this year and I talked, I talked to you about this the other night on late kick live and I'm going to reiterate it or reiterate it. There's no end there. You can think that if you want to, it is your constitutional right to doubt Alabama. It is my constitutional duty to inform you out of the six highest rated recruiting classes in all of history, three of them are on Bama's campus right now. Do you hear what I just said? Not Bama history. Out of the six highest rated recruiting classes in 24 seven sports history, three of them, 2023, 2021 and 2022 Bama are on campus in Tuscaloosa right now. Certainly maybe there have been pieces that have transferred or pieces that have not worked out but by and large, the core of those classes are on campus. Alabama is so loaded. The only reason that people are talking about them in such poverish terms is because you're not grading Alabama against the standard of the other teams in the country. You're thinking to yourself, I don't know if 2023 Alabama measures up to 2020 Alabama, 2017 Alabama. Well, that's not who they'll play this year. That's not who would keep them out of the playoff Ohio State or Georgia or Florida State or USC. These are the teams that would keep them out of the playoffs presumably. So let's look at it. I asked you the other night, I'll ask you again, is Michigan definitively better than Bama Penn State, Ohio State Georgia? I don't know because I've never seen Carson Beck start a game. I don't know who's starting at quarterback for Ohio State. We've never seen Drew Alder start a game. We haven't seen USC play competent enough defense. So quickly, have I listed four teams that you are sure are going to be better than Bama this year? I can't find four that I'm sure will be better. Now I could paint you a path where they don't make it. It didn't happen last year. I thought they were the best team in the country last year going into the season. So it's not like it's foolproof or anything like that. But yeah, I would be very careful doubting them. Now the one thing they have that flies in the face of the dumbest argument on Twitter is they have a tough schedule and most of the time do have a tough schedule and Twitter would convince you, oh, Bama doesn't play anyone. Like you're just wrong. It's not even opinion. You're just wrong. The sky is purple. No, it's not. Well, that's your opinion, bro. No, it's blue. I can assure you it's blue. They play Texas in week two. They got Ole Miss at home. They got back to backs on the road, Mississippi State, and then at A&M. They play Arkansas and Tennessee back to back then before the bi-week and after the buy LSU comes to town, before they finish up with road games at Kentucky and at Auburn, it's a tough schedule. You may listen to that and say, oh, Auburn's not going to be good this year. You try being a rival of Auburn and playing in Jordan hair stadium. Then do they ever get blown out in that spot? It far more likely is there'll be a double digit underdog and take you to the wire. So Bama's got a tough schedule yet they still have the second best odds to win the national championship this year. So remember what I just said. Bama's got three of the highest rated recruiting classes in history on campus right now. They've got the second best odds in the country to win the national championship, but we've got folks out there doubting them. Here's the reality. The reality is if I took Alabama's roster and I put Florida State uniforms on them, they would be the popular pick to win the national championship coast to coast. And the reason is because your mind would work differently. If it were Florida State, you would accurately judge the roster just on how it compares to the rest of the country. But when it's Bama, you mistakenly start to compare it to past Bama teams. And if it doesn't measure up to past Bama teams, you think, uh oh, weakness, uh oh, wobbly tire, not necessarily, not necessarily. Let's move along. I know you can't see this and I don't have it in a chalice, but I do have the choice liquid in just a regular old plastic cup here. So for for old times sake, even though it's something we do every week, I'm going to take a little sip out of it. So hang tight with me. I tried to slurp so that you could hear it immunity. Let's move on here from Edmond, Oklahoma, CFB community asked, which aspect of the sport do you think fans may take most for granted? First off, I've got to issue an apology. So I was watching the show the other night. I was watching a replay of the show because we're just sadistic. That's what we do. And I said take for granted clearest day. I said it. And I know that it's not granted like the rock granite. I know it's not that, but I've always said it that way. I spell it the right way, but I've always said it the right way. I'll tell you another one. Blessing in disguise. I always say really fast and it sounds like blessing in these skies. And I know it's not that. They're called malapropisms. We've got a whole list of them in the eye, Josh. So my apologies for that. Um, good. I was checking a Google dot for something. All right, we're set. So anyway, back to the question. How do you take for granted? Huh, I've got a theory, but you've really got to tell me what it is because I mean, I don't know each and every one of you at a cellular level. So I don't know your thoughts and feelings. I know some of them, but I can't boil it down like this. Here's what I think. And this is a general sense. I actually think our audience may be exempt from what I'm about to say, but in a general sense, I think college football fans, the more casual fans, they take Saturday for granted cause college football just happens on Saturday. So they've never, they've never known Saturday, not being the center of the college football universe. This sounds kind of dumb. If you don't know where I'm going with it. And if you're new around here, you don't know where I'm going with this. If you have been around for a while, you're probably yawning because you know what I'm about to say. Thank you for sticking with me though. Saturday is everything in college football. And it's not just the day we play the sport. Saturday meaning the regular season really. People can take the regular season for granted cause they've always known that college football Saturdays are just crazy. And they think that that just is like college football was born that way. And it just always will be that way. And you can make any kind of change to the sport you want, but it doesn't matter cause Saturday will always be crystallized as what it has been for you growing up. And I just have to tell you that's not automatic. There's a reason Saturday feels like it does. Even if you're an NFL fan, you'll admit Saturday college football feels way different than anything you watch on Sunday. Not because the level of play is higher. Not because more people are watching necessarily, but it's because the stakes. It's because the urgency. It's because the atmosphere is way different. It's like nothing else we have in all of American sports. Why is that? Well, it's obviously been tied to the fact that the structure of the sport is different. And because the sports always been that way to some degree or another, we have in some cases come to take that for granted and we shouldn't. And that's one of the big fears I've had forever and always will is changes being made to the sport that take the importance away from Saturdays in the fall. And it restructures it to where Saturdays in the fall are like an appetizer for whatever the main course is because there is no main course you're going to deliver me that tops what Saturdays in the fall have come to mean to me. There was another question I didn't put it in the show today, but there was another question someone asked that went like this. It went, you love college football. Is there anything out there that could make you just throw your hands up and walk away from the sport? And I thought about that I couldn't really come up with anything. I'm sure there's something. But realistically, like what could happen to the sport to make me just give up college football, but the thing that would come closest to it or the thing that would just drive me up a wall and make me really not passionate about it anymore would be if we woke up one day in 20 years and fall Saturdays were just bleh, you know, they were just there like a regular season NBA game. Yeah, people go to it. Yeah, it's entertaining. Yeah, you can bet on it and have fun with it. Yeah, you can talk about it with your buddies, but no one really cares about Sixers magic in mid December. No one talks about that game a month after it happens. Doesn't matter if it is the greatest triple overtime thriller you see all year. It's irrelevant because it doesn't make a difference like a regular season major league baseball game. It's entertaining. I watch most of the Braves games, but that's me because I'm a Braves fan to envision someone making an appointment television in Laredo, Texas to watch Braves Mariners in the middle of July. The third leg of a four game road stretch is insane. Of course it's not it's not must see because it doesn't matter because they're going to play 161 more of them in college football. If we were to ever get to the point where you knew that the expanded postseason made it such that there were many teams that can lose three or if we expand further than 12, they could even lose four games and still make the playoff. That would that would have watered down the regular season to the point where Saturdays would really not mean anything close to what they've meant in the past. I mean, I was at the gym earlier and the NBA is a different beast and I'm not about telling any sport how to run itself. This is just an example. I saw a stat on the bottom line where Jesse, what is it like the Lakers are one of very few teams to make the conference finals after being seven games below 500 in the regular season or something like that. I want you to think about that for a second. The group of people, pro sports fans that come to us regularly and lecture us about how to best format our sport are glorifying as we speak, a team being seven games below 500 in the regular season, but it's cool because they're in their conference finals. Well that's cool for the conference finals, but it makes your regular season completely laughable and that would drive me away from college football. Now, of course, no sub 500 teams going to win a national championship in college football, but the equivalent of that would be like a four loss team being put in a position to make a run. You play 12 games in no way should you ever be able to lose a third of them and have a shot to win a national championship. That's just my take on the matter. Next up, Dublin, Georgia is where menace pickens hails from, of course, and he asks, with the expanded playoff inevitably, or half man inevitably, menace asks, with the expanded playoff inevitably arriving next year, is the SEC just guaranteed three teams every single year? No, they're not. They are not. It increases the likelihood, of course, mathematically, that you could have three SEC teams. This is a fear that a lot of people nationally have, and I understand why you should have this fear, by the way. And the fear is we're going to have 12, 12 teams, right? You got six auto bids. So six of them will be conference champs. One of them will be the SEC champ. So there's one in every year. Then you have another half dozen spots that are going to be at largest, which means it just goes to the next highest ranked teams, right? And it is true that if you go back in recent history and you look at the final rankings before bowl selection, yeah, there are a lot of years where your random Florida or LSU or Arkansas or whoever will just be hanging out up there at like number 10 with two losses. Or in some cases, you could have three losses. If they're to Georgia and LSU and Bama, and those are your only three losses, you could be a three loss team and still be right like 11 or 12. And it's true that in some past years, you would have had three SEC teams in the playoff. And then what happens? Well, what happens is it's not just SEC. See, that's where I think the question is only halfway written. The follow up should be how many SEC and big 10 teams are you going to get in there? Because that should be your bigger concern. If you want a healthy balance for the sport, your bigger concern should be, well, what if the big 10 and the SEC champion and then we get three teams from the big 10 any given year and then we get two or three teams from the SEC any given year and like the entire at large pool is just a bunch of big 10 and SEC. And maybe you throw like an ACC or a Pac 12 in there, but by and large, the majority will be from two conferences. So here's what's also going to happen. The first round games are going to start to filter out the lesser teams. And so mathematically, you have a much larger chance of seeing quarter finals, semi final championships with big 10 versus SEC or big 10 versus big 10 or SEC versus SEC. And I don't, I don't mean this to be an entire podcast that rails against playoff expansion. It's coming. Can't do anything about it. I'm just, I'm just saying a lot of people who are excited about this thing. I want to talk to you when you're watching Ohio State versus Penn State in a semi final game or you're watching Bama versus Georgia. In some cases, these teams could play three times in a year, by the way, they could play regular season. They could play conference championship game and they could face off again in the playoff. Does that feel like the college football you really want? I don't personally want it that way. But I will warn you now, we are headed towards that direction. You're probably also looking at a situation where the first years of the playoff are going to be the most balanced. This is another uncomfortable truth. There's a theory out there and candidly, I hope you guys are right about this and I'm wrong, but I think I'm right. There is this world out there. There's this theory out there where we get to the playoff, right? And then more teams get access and more conferences get represented. And therefore it distributes the money more evenly and then recruiting evens out cause more players will go more places. Now I've told you that's not the way it's going to work because I talk to kids constantly and they never mention playoff access as the reason why they're picking a school. They just don't. I know it's something you want to be true that doesn't make it true. And the other thing is these conferences are the ones that cash in when it comes to playoff revenue. So Ohio State makes the playoff and the big 10 gets a check and then it gets distributed over the 14 or 16 member institutions. So like if the pack 12 gets Oregon in the playoff, that's wonderful. Do you think it's less likely or more likely that while the pack 12 gets one team in, the SEC could get three or the big 10 could get three and therefore they triple their revenue. And that's stacked on top of an already gargantuanly bigger media rights deal. The rich just get richer. The haves just get heavier. The have not just get have naughtier. Do not look up Webster's to back me up on those those pronunciations. But my point there is it will only get worse like the divide will only get bigger. My theory is your best shot at having some kind of equity in the playoff will be in the early playoff versions cause the further we get down that road, the more sharply the divide is going to show. And the more likely you will have super teams from super conferences and therefore they'll just swallow up all the playoff food and you'll be left over there with crumbs. I hate it, but this is the direction we chose to go. It's a very it's it's not a negative podcast per se, but we've just had consecutive questions here that have taken me down a negative road. And look, I apologize. I really do. Look, here's the trade off and you're going to have to picture this. Okay. I'm going to do a magic trick for you, an audible magic trick and it has nothing to do with the ad toss. I'm not throwing that at you right now. So I'm doing something with my hand right now and it looks like I'm taking one hand from behind the front hand and then passing my backhand through my front hand and it is so crazy. And I wish you guys could see it right now, but you can't. So I may do it on air one day, but right now the problem is I have these nasty looking calluses cause I've been doing a lot of deadlifts and I am I'm frankly ashamed of how my palms look at the moment. These are called poverty palms and I don't like it. It looks like I've been doing some things that I wouldn't like to tell me more about on the street to make ends meet right now and it's not good. It's just not good at all. All right. Zach is next up. Save me Zach. Zach is from Ottawa, Canada and he asks, how would you grow or expose the game of college football in Canada? This goes right in line with that question we had the other day about how should we feel about college football teams playing games in international markets. Remember we were talking about like Notre Dame is going to play in Dublin. It's kind of an exemption like it makes perfect sense that Notre Dame would play over there, but I did not need to see Northwestern and Nebraska play wherever in the world it is that they played last year. So anyway, how would we grow the game in Canada? It's pretty simple. Show off the game in Canada. That doesn't mean take college football games to Canada. So I was asking Jesse earlier if he knows what the I did or odd is. The I did or odd is that dog sled race. I've never attended it. Always been a little fascinated by it, but the point is I grew up in rural Georgia. How did I know about the I did or odd? I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it right, but I know what it is. I knew about it because it got put in front of me somehow. I either read about it or I saw it on TV or I saw it on the news, but they did not run the I did or odd in central Georgia. That's what they didn't do because that would make no sense because the elements that are unique to the I did or odd, you have to find in Canada. So with college football, would it be smart for me to take Texas versus Oklahoma and play it in Saskatchewan one year or would it be smarter for me to make sure we get the Texas OU game in front of people in Saskatchewan as it's played in Dallas? I think the latter is the much more savvy marketing technique. Now here's the reality. You're not going to catch a ton of Canadians in that marketing net, but that's okay. That's okay. What you will do is you will find pockets of people who really love it. It's the same with EPL soccer, the English Premier League in America. There are pockets of people who watch that stuff. They're folks who wake up at like 7 a.m. on Sunday morning and they're watching Manchester United. I'm not one of them, but I will tell you this. I don't think any of those folks are watching man you because they came and played a friendly in Charlotte, North Carolina. Although I know they actually do that sometimes. That is not what grabs an American audience. Oh, okay. The I did or odd is an Alaskan event point being it somewhere in the north where it's cold and it snows a lot. True. Yes, true. So with with college football, there are elements of college football that would appeal to anyone if they were presented with it in the right way. I don't care if you live in Alaska or you live in Caribou, Maine, even though that's way up north. It's not a college football market or you live in Toronto or Montreal or you live in Calgary. If you were to have properly put in front of you, the spectacle of an LSU night game and all the pageantry and tradition and noise and colors and intensity, you don't have to know a thing about Baton Rouge, Louisiana and you don't have to have ever been there for that to make you go, wow. Wow. Now you may not follow it as hardcore as someone from Tibido, Louisiana, but man, next time it's on, you may make it a point to go find it. That's how I would do it. I wouldn't think, here's what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't go into it saying, okay, the only way we succeed here is if every Canadian is watching college football. No, but you do. You do go find the hot leads as they call them in sales. Go find the people who it would appeal to if only it were put in front of them and make sure it gets put in front of them. How do you do that? That's a question for marketers, for people in that sphere to answer. It's no different than I figure out how I do this. 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Make sure to download and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the Odyssey app anywhere podcasts are found. Apple's Eye on the ad toss out of nowhere. Next up, got a good question here. Question from Associate Bradley's hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. Clint asks, Billy Napier and Brenton Venables started at Blue Blood Programs the same year. They finished with the same record in year one. Both had their share of struggles. Who achieves success first at his current program? And how has that success defined? Pretty good question because I think that the expectation level at Oklahoma and Florida is comparable. They have had comparable levels of success. They've both contended for national championships. When they're operating at peak efficiency, they should both be competing for conference championships. They should both be putting kids in the NFL. They should both be recruiting in the top 10. So that's how I would define success first off. You've got to be in the mix. That's how I would define success. And by the mix, I don't mean trying to reach a bowl game. I mean, be in the mix in November when we're talking about that playoff picture and that big 12 and SEC championship picture, your name needs to be at the forefront. Neither of them are there, but it's only year two. We're going into year two for each of these coaches. I think Oklahoma's closer, a lot closer. Number one because I don't think the rebuild project was quite as extensive for Brenton Venables, although it was a little more extensive than the public led you to believe. So balance that statement. He had a tougher task at hand. In other words, then the preview magazine culture told you he did at Florida. Napier's just got along road. Oh, and it shows in the odds market the preseason win total for Oklahoma's nine and a half this year, like Vegas expects them to be really good this year. But preseason win total for Florida is five and a half. Vegas doesn't think they're close this year. The quarterback situation is much better at Oklahoma. Not only do you have Dylan Gabriel coming back, you just got the elite 11 winner in Jackson Arnold, five star kid. So the quarterback future is secure there. You cannot say that about this year with Florida. Graham Mertz is kind of kind of the hope for them. The Wisconsin transfer and also recruiting and portal have been better for Brenton Venables in the first call it two cycles at Oklahoma. Then it has been for Florida and it's not the Florida's been terrible. I'm not trying to say that, but this is a comparative analysis. Oklahoma's just been better for the record. Florida is currently ranked ahead of Oklahoma when it comes to the 2024 cycle, but it's so early that that's going to change so much that there's probably not even a whole lot of skill in talking about that. But here's the other thing. The other thing is this could upend itself in like a month because if we get into September and Florida goes and they beat Utah and they just upset a couple of people early, meanwhile, Oklahoma drops a couple of games early, it will sound the exact opposite. People will be saying along with me, wow, Billy Napier is really getting it together in year two, Billy Napier, we should have known because he succeeded at Louisiana. So he was not an unknown commodity as a head coach, he just needed a little time. Meanwhile with Brenton Venables, you'll be saying maybe he's not cut out to be a head coach because this is two years in a row. We were willing to give him benefit of the doubt in year one. There was a lot of up, upended nature of a roster and stuff, but year two, man, maybe he's just not the guy. So I'm saying all that right now, but you know, as well as I do, if things start rocky for Oklahoma and things start a little bit better than expected for Florida, we are so, we are so new to the two eras in Norman and Gainesville respectively that anything could happen anything could be said. That's one of many reasons you have to watch the games. Next up, this is a good question from County Lion, Oklahoma. Roger said is using Las Vegas pre-season over-unders at the end of the season, is it a good litmus test to determine whether a team over or underachieved in that particular season? So basically, it's pretty simple. If Pete State has an over-under of eight and a half and I win eight games versus nine games, is it really that easy? Is it really saying, well, if they go over, it was successful. Even if they go under, it's a failure. This is case by case. I think for broad strokes, purposes, it's a decent metric, decent. But think about this, if Bama goes 10 and two this year, will they view it as a success? Because that's their over-underwin total. But if Bama loses to LSU and Tennessee again, they don't go to Atlanta, but someone says, it's okay though, they pushed, they're going to push you off a cliff if that's what you're trying to tell folks in and to lose you Alabama, home of Nico Johnson. They don't want to hear that. They want to hear overachievement and overachievement only. Also with the Florida Gators, we just talked about them a second ago. They're over under five and a half. If they win six games and they went over, is anyone calling that a success at Florida? I don't think so. Conversely, you got some other teams out there like Oklahoma. Ironically, we just talked about them too. They're nine and a half this year. Man, I was just choked, but I'm not stopping. Continue to roll. If Oklahoma wins nine games, I don't think they would be turning cartwheels, but it would at the very least ease the concerns that Brent Vanibels is just in over his head. Brent Vanibels doesn't know what he's doing. So Oklahoma ironically could go under and probably be happier than Florida if they barely go over. So, it's a case by case thing, man, but if you're indifferent, let's put it this way. If you're indifferent and you're just an agnostic fan that is just observing, then yeah, I think the Vegas over undernumber, especially when you get later, like in August, when both sides have been hammered down by the sharpest of money out there, you're really getting a true gauge on what the expectation should be for a given team in a given year. And then if they overachieve against that number and you're not a fan of that team, you're just kind of watching that team. Yeah, I think that's a better metric than using whatever else you would have out there. What do you want to use? FPI? Absolutely not. So yeah, I would use Vegas metrics before I would use a lot of the other things out there. Right, frankly, now when I say frankly, sarcastically, it doesn't count. You know, I am a reformed Franklinite and so I'm trying to stop using frankly in every other sentence, but it doesn't count if I admit with my tone that I know I'm saying frankly. So those of you out there policing me, it's like we have a frankly anonymous group out here and you've been policing me. Hey, you know, you said frankly, right? And I appreciate it, but I don't need you to be my accountability buddy when I say it sarcastically. Just wanted to float that out there. All right, man, it's clear throat. Geez, I almost lost it there for a second. And it's not like the cough that I've been doing the last few weeks. This was like a like spit goes down the wrong pipe sort of cough. Hooms amongst us hasn't been there before. And how brave of me, by the way, to continue rolling on. And I didn't even even Bradley the associate in there to stop recording. I'm sure it may make it out into the ether a little bit later on as as a little blooper cut. All right, who's next up? Joe is next up from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. And they are hot in Mechanicsburg, not just in terms of attractiveness. They are bent out of shape about this whole white out situation. So let me read the question. Joe asked, how do you feel about the Iowa game being the white out game? The new Big Ten TV contract is in full effect now. What is Joe talking about? He is talking about September 23rd. That's when the Iowa Hawkeyes roll into town and it's going to take a while to get used to this. CBS has the white out game. That's right. Yours truly. My employer has the white out game because the Big Ten is in a contract with everyone now. It's just confusing. I'm not even going to try to explain to you how it works. But here's the byproduct. The end result, if you will, for Penn State is yet again, they have to watch a game that's not the biggest game on their schedule, get made into the white out game because there's language and TV deals that precludes the Michigan game. Or last year, the Ohio State game because Ohio State was the big noon kickoff game. And this year, there's some rule with Michigan where if it's passed a certain date on the calendar, both parties have to agree to it being a night game. And for obvious reasons, Michigan doesn't want that. I have never understood the rules, but those are the rules. So if I were a Penn State fan, yeah, I'd be pissed about it. Of course I would. And that's coming from me. I love the noon games. I am different than everyone else because I'm selfishly a fan of noon games as has been well documented because that lets me, if I'm at the game, get out of town and get back to Nashville that night instead of traveling the next day, which means traveling the same day we have a big show. But I am not you. Okay. So the best interest of me should not circumvent the best interest of you. What did I talk about to you for like, oh, seemingly an hour a little while ago? I talked to you about how money runs this sport. I'm not one of those people who thinks he's overthinking the room. And I figured out the secret formula when I tell you that everybody knows that. It's like when someone walks in and says, well, you know, money is running politics in this country. Like buddy, anyone past the age of five knows that you're not breaking any news here. Just like when I say, well, money runs college football, not breaking any news to you. But sometimes it helps to point out the specifics. So again, I'm going to ask you, do you ever notice how these scheduling quirks and in Penn State, for example, when when you get cost another opportunity to have a premier game, be your white out game, you ever notice it's not because Penn State did it. It's always because of some convoluted language and TV contracts. So I'll ask you. Is the white out one of the best things that college football has? I would answer yes. Did anybody in the room care when they were negotiating these deals? The answer is no, they couldn't care less. Why? Because a lot of these people don't love college football. Once again, people with their hands on the wheel of college football don't always love college football. And exhibit 101 is the Penn State wide out game. Anyone with a competent head on their shoulders would walk into a negotiation room with any TV partner. And among the first things out of their mouth, they'd say, we need to have a carve out to make sure the Penn State wide out game is exempt from some of these rules. We make sure somehow that we get a premier game as the white out game, but they didn't do that. Why? You would be probably shocked to know half the folks in the room don't even know that it matters. I'm not kidding you about that. Half of them don't know it matters. And the other half really only care about the tradition of college football being upheld as long as it doesn't stand in the way of costing them a dime. They're very happy when it's convenient to tout how much they're crystallizing tradition in college football and they're promoting tradition in college football. But that's only when it's convenient for them. It never supersedes profit. So if it were to cost them five or $10 to make another game, the wide out game or carve out something in their media rights deal that makes sure the wide out game is whenever Penn State wants it, it's not going to happen. So they're very convenient, very dishonest when they talk about how, oh, we're looking out for the fan. They're not looking out for you at all. They take the opportunity when they do something you like cause it was convenient for them to make sure you understand they did something that you like, but they do a ton of stuff you don't like and they never go on record talking about why because the why would really aggravate you because the why is just so a lot of people that you'll never meet can make a lot of money that you'll never see. That's who's running your sport in a lot of cases. Hopefully they don't silence us. Next up is Austin from Carter'sville GA. He said, do you expect this year's big 12 to be more or less chaotic than last years with the addition of the four new teams. So we got central Florida and Houston and Brigham Young and Cincinnati. They're all added to the big 12 this year. It's the last year that we have Texas and OU. Last year we had Kansas State and TCU in the conference championship game. They were the fifth and sixth teams in the preseason odds to win the big 12. That's pretty crazy. And there was that stretch last year where everyone was alive. Kansas was alive. K State ended up winning the thing. TCU ended up going to the championship game and Oklahoma State before they imploded. They looked like a very viable candidate. Baylor for a little while. Iowa State for a little while. Viable candidates all up and down the big 12. Not to mention you got Texas and Oklahoma out there, although Oklahoma kind of faded from sight a little bit earlier than you would have expected. This year I actually don't think it's going to be as crazy. Now make no mistake. The big 12 will still be a must see product. But the reason it was so crazy last year is because of what I said. No clear favorite emerged. We didn't know until the very, very, very end of the season that Kansas State was going to win the thing. This year we look at Texas in the preseason and I could be wrong about this. Certainly people who believe in Texas have been misled before. But with Texas this year I see a much greater chance that a team, Texas in this case, ends up going wire to wire as the favorite. Now you could have an upset, of course, and you could have a lot of chaos underneath Texas. But to me to have a chaotic year on par with 2022, you can't have a favorite emerge. We did not have a favorite at any point last year. Even with TCU, even when they were going through the regular season undefeated, they were winning all those close games, they were coming from behind to win those close games to where any given week you thought, oh, that's going to come to an end. And even when they played Kansas State, you thought, dude, that's not going to be easy game against Kansas State. And it wasn't. They lost and still went to the title game, even having lost the conference title game. So right now, Texas OU, Kansas State, Texas Tech, and TCU, those are your five betting favorites to start the year. I mean, like I said, last year, number five and six play for the title. The year before them, Baylor had the second to worst odds and they ended up winning the big 12 championship. So anything can happen in that conference. But I'll tell you, I think the Pac 12 is going to be this year's version of the big 12 ton of contenders out there. And even though you may think you have a preseason favorite, if it's USC, for example, they got beat twice by Utah last year, including in the conference championship game. So there is no unequivocal favorite out there. And all those teams play each other like almost round Robin style. So I think the Pac 12, maybe this year's big 12. I appreciate so much you guys listening. Do me one favor on the way out, subscribe to the feed, and then make sure you're following on the socials at late kick Josh. Both of those assignments are free. They don't cost you anything. And that concludes what I need from you today. I hope we gave you what you needed from us. Until next time for producer Jesse, director Colin, and Bradley the associate slash director, I'm Josh paint. Take care. Have a great rest of your day and God bless. This weekend CBS heads to a major tournament when the world's best golfers to stand on the legendary Oak Hill Country Club with the winner taking home the coveted Wanna Maker trophy at the PGA championship live coverage on Saturday and Sunday begins at one Eastern, the PGA championship this weekend on CBS.