CFB's Tampering Problem + Bold Predictions Return | Late Kick Live Ep. 387

We need a flag. It's called football need a flag. We don't have one right now. Conferences have their own logo. And of course you could put that on a flag. That would be a lien. And so if we had a flag in college football right now, I've got an idea. And the idea is we just take the Gadsden flag, the Don't Tread on me flag. You've seen it with the snake on it. And we just take the snake off. And we put a little football on there. And then we take the word tread and we replace it with tamper. Don't tamper on me. Cause everyone's complaining about it right now. And that's how we're going to lead the show off tonight. We're jam packed. High a top a resplendent. Son baked downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It's Sunday, May 14th. The year of our Lord 2023 is tampering an epidemic. Is it just a mild to moderate problem we have in college football? Well, a lot of people are talking about it. A lot of people have opinions on it. I do too. I have for a long time as a matter of fact. So I'll repeat some things tonight and I'll take you down some new roads tonight. Guess what's back? Bull predictions are back. We did this for about what Jesse two and a half months last year. We started around this time. It ended up being like a franchise piece of content for us over the summer. So I threw the tweet out there this morning. And the tweet reads, what is the boldest prediction you have that you would bet your own money on this year in college football? We got over a thousand replies so far. So that's going to last us for a while. We will get a lot of meat off that proverbial bone and we're going to go through the first four tonight with many more to come. We're going to take a look at the SEC East tonight. We're going to take a look at the biggest games in the Pac 12 tonight. I also have the Michigan mood tracker tonight. Why Michigan? Well, because one of you accused me of not talking about Michigan. And if there is one way that we format this show above any other, it is random DMS accusing me of things completely changing the trajectory of the show. They're watching us in Clingman, North Carolina, Austin, Texas, Seal, Alabama silent E on the end of seal, not to be confused with Sealy, Texas. I got to tell you, thank you. I tell you, thank you all the time. It does not get redundant because it's normally in reference to many different things. But you see sometimes if you follow me on socials at late kick Josh Instagram or Twitter, you'll see sometimes I put those little tweets out and it gives the yellow caution triangle as the emoji and it says, thank you alert. Now, always be talking about something we accomplished on the show. There are two reasons I do that. Well, three reasons. Number one, just general thanks to you guys because you always make that possible. Number two, it's not quite like Michael Jordan with his high school basketball coach level of spite, but there were some people who said this wouldn't work. And I like to remind them occasionally it does work this whole year around college football thing. And you don't need to worry about that. Here's what you do need to worry about. And what we don't need to worry about. This sucks for a lot of people in our business right now. A lot of people are getting fired in our business. A ton of people are getting laid off. Some pretty high profile names you'll see over the next month to two months will be laid off. It'll surprise a lot of you. And I'm not talking about anyone in particular. I'm not talking about any company in particular. It's happening across the industry. The reason it's not a problem for us is because of you. This show, this little spinny logo behind me is a big time success. And not only is it not something that anyone wants to hit the dump button on, it's something they want to invest more in. And so we had a lot of really good meetings last week. And we have a lot of them lined up for this week, a lot of really good conversations and a lot of extremely good energy around the show. So I'm not going to bore you with that. I'm just telling you, we don't take it for granted, especially right now because there are people who will go to work tomorrow in our industry who have no idea if they're going to end the week being employed. And because of you, you don't have to worry about that. And I appreciate that. Okay. That's boring. So we got that out of the way. So now let's get to the fun stuff. Or is it fun? Tampering. Dirty word, but it's the buzzword in college football right now. We're in the transfer portal era. We're in the NIL era. I'm being told we're in the, we're in the tampering era too. Several of you have reached out to me about this. I think it was, it was Feldman and it was Max Olson over at the Athletic. Both dudes do great work and they put out a piece together about tampering. And it's right there on the Athletics College Football Front page. If you want to go give it a read, I highly suggest that you subscribe over there. Even though I don't have a skin in that particular game, they do incredible work, especially in the College Football Front. So they wrote a story and they quoted anonymously a lot of coaches except for Pat Narduzzi who just went on the record. More on that in a second. The piece basically says exactly what you would think it would say. The G5 is being ravaged by tampering. You've got people who are cheating and you've got a bunch of bad actors behind the curtain, behind the scenes who are taking full advantage of kids who don't know any better. Voila. There you go. And what is tampering just to refresh everyone's memory for those who are new around here and who don't really know the ins and outs of college football right now. The Transfer Portal recently changed. I assume you know what the Transfer Portal is, but what changed in college football is they did away with the penalty that you have to pay for transferring. And so everyone's just free to go wherever they want to, at least for their first transfer. And what that led to is a lot of people reaching out to kids on other rosters even though it's illegal to do it. And they're reaching out to them and saying, hey, if you want to come over here at University X, even though you're currently a player at University Y, we'd love you. We've got a spot for you. We'd even have NIL money for you. So it's pretty gross. But yeah, it's happening. Of course it was always going to happen. No one is shocked. I don't think at the fact that it's happening. I hear it constantly. So in the interest of not burning my own sources, I will tell you that I have conversations, not quite daily, almost daily, multiple times weekly with coaches, summer head coaches, many more are assistant coaches about this very topic. Here's how it usually sounds, and I'm not telling you guys anything I don't tell them. It usually sounds like this. I get a call or I get a text which leads to a call about a particular situation where a kid is being tampered with. And the evidence is either hearsay or screenshots of DMs or text messages they have. So usually there's fairly solid evidence here. Usually they got a lot to go on. And my response is always the same. Speak up. Because what they really are coming to me for is they're coming to me because they'd love in an ideal world for me to shed light on one particular person or one particular school who is doing this. And I'm not going to do it because there is not one particular school or one particular school or one particular person at a school who is doing this. There's a lot of bad traffic out there on the interstate that we call college football. But I always do tell them, why don't you speak up and they say, I can't. And I say, no, you won't. It's not you can't. You won't. There are a lot of reasons. The first reason is, well, they think it'll look like sour grapes. Maybe so. Number two is, well, I don't want to, I don't want to disproportionately burn a buddy because in a lot of cases, all these dudes know each other and they don't necessarily want to see one of their friends whose guilty of tampering lose his job because the NCAA just randomly decides to drop a sledgehammer on his head. And so what this sounds to me like is it sounds to me like venting. That's what it ends up being. They're venting about tampering, but they really are not looking to have it eradicated. Pat Narduzzi spoke up. Pat Narduzzi at Pitt, this time last year. Remember when Jordan Addison left and he went to USC and Pat Narduzzi flat out came out and said, yeah, he got tampered with. He didn't do it anonymously and he didn't shy away. Pat Narduzzi spoke his mind. Now he's quoted. Pat Narduzzi is quoted in this story that Max Olson and Bruce Feldman wrote on the athletic and they asked him a year later, all right, do you regret doing it? He said, absolutely not. I don't regret doing it. And I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but what he said is dead on the money. And it's exactly what I would say to any other coach who talks about tampering and they want to do something about it. Speak up. Speak. You want it. You want it. You want to greatly douse the flames, name names, speak out and speak up. Even if you don't get actionable results on the specific kid that you're speaking up about, even if you don't get punitive measures levied against the specific person that you're alleging tampered, as Pat Narduzzi said, it's absolutely going to make folks think twice about coming after kids on your roster a year from now. Because the last thing they want to do is get called out publicly. There's this kind of unwritten understanding right now that no one's really going to call anyone out. Why is that? Because as Pat Narduzzi put it, everyone's doing it. That's the real reason, of course, if the common sense that Narduzzi said in on you, that's the real reason no one's speaking out because they know tomorrow they may have to do the exact same thing. Narduzzi spoke out. He said, we don't do it. So I don't care. I have no problem speaking out. So I got a lot of respect for Pat Narduzzi because he's got a problem and he's willing to speak publicly about it. And therefore I will never disagree with any take that guy has. And if it's a differing of opinion, I can respect the difference of opinion there. He's speaking out about it. More of you should. The process is not a one way street though. This is what I wanted to get to for just a second. There's a lot of complaining from coaches and there's a lot of complaining from folks in all spheres of college football right now about tampering and the allegations always go towards the coach and it's valid in a lot of cases. There are coaches that in a lot of cases have proactively scouted a kid and they either personally have reached out or they've covered their tracks a little bit better and they've reached out via second and third party channels and they've gotten in contact with a kid illegally and told him, if you hop in the portal, we want you here. We got a spot for you here. Yes, that happens, but it's not a one way street. And let me tell you the stories that I hear a lot that never make it to your ears because there's not nearly as much benefit in it making it to your ears. A lot of times coaches are receiving DMs. A lot of times coaches are receiving phone calls and text messages from someone representing a kid trying to gauge whether there would be an offer if that kid wouldn't the portal. Now I know that this is probably not shocking news to you, but I would just ask, do you ever hear about that? I'm not blaming kids, by the way. This is not me demonizing kids. I'm just painting the real picture for you. Tampering is a lot more layered than it seems. Right now you just view these innocent fawn children on these rosters and some evil coach comes in their DMs on Twitter or Instagram and all of a sudden, oh, they're like a piece of meat. Sometimes it works that way. Let me tell you how it often works on the other side. The other side is running back's coaches chilling at 3.30 in the afternoon and oh, his phone just went off. Who is this? Oh, that's the uncle of that kid I recruited two years ago. Wants to know if I'd have a spot for him here at Pate State. Well, isn't that peculiar? Isn't that strange? Now let me go act on it. Hey, I am not demonizing anyone. Sure, the coach is doing it to legal. I'm just saying there's some guided information they have a lot of times that lets them know if we do go after this kid, not if but when he jumps in the portal, pretty good chance we're going to land him. Why? Because he already told us that we're going to land him. You can agree or disagree with all this stuff. You can agree or disagree with whether the transfer portal should operate the way it does. We've had that debate in college football. I don't think anyone's really changing their mind on it right now. Maybe a few of you are, but even if you are, it doesn't matter. It's not like the thing is going to close up. I do like the windows that they put in, but even with the windows. I mean, if you're a G5 head coach, right now you wrap up spring ball. The same time that the big boys at the power five level did the big boys at the power five level have used spring to basically do a stress test on their roster and they've realized, yeah, we do need a couple of more pieces on the interior of our offensive line. Yeah, we aren't as good at slot receiver. Yeah, we did have a bad injury at safety. We do need some help there. They just go raid your roster. If you're at Kent, you know, if you're at North Texas, if you're at U.L. Lafayette, what is your recourse? You're sitting done. You're so vulnerable and it was always going to be that way. That's why a lot of people, not all, but a lot of people who have their hands on the wheel of the sport could not care less about the G5. They just don't care. They never really fought to preserve anything that you guys are doing. I'm telling you right now, you think they're looking out for you when they start talking about this auto bid process in the upcoming expanded college football playoff? I'm telling you, it's going to screw you nine ways from Sunday there too, because while one of your participants, one of the lucky few gets zapped up onto the space, the spaceship of the college football playoff, it's coming at the expense of big time schools, not scheduling you anymore because the expanded playoff makes it such that they don't have to go undefeated anymore. All things equal, they'd just rather play 12 power five opponents and maybe maybe 11 power five is in an FCS. You're the one that gets hung out to dry. No one's looking out for the G5. No one is. Even the people who claim they are aren't. At least I've always been honest about this. At least I've always sat here and said it's laughable that we pretend all of these 130 some odd teams are under the same umbrella. It's never been that way, but I digress. That's another segment. The grossest part of this thing has been and will continue to be handlers. You may think that that wide receivers coach tampering with that kid before he's ever entered the portal, that grosses me out. No. What would gross you out infinitely more? If you could see it is overturning the rock and watching all those handlers and all those agents scurry around. You don't know their names. They like it that way. You don't know anything about them. They like it that way. They want to operate in the shadows and they want to have the kid be out in the forefront. They just want to leech off of that kid. It was a really good point made in this athletic piece that I would like to reiterate to you because I don't think a lot of you know this. In the NFL, it's very structured. They have a players association and did you know that agents in the NFL have a commission cap? They can earn a max of 3% of your earnings. If I'm representing you, you sign with the Jets for 50 million over four years, I can get 3% of that max. We don't have a players association in college football. The FBPA, you've never heard those letters put together because it doesn't exist. And so it's just a free for all. And if I go sucker a kid and his family into me representing him, I may have his best interest at heart, not if I suckered him, but I may represent a kid and truly have his best interest at heart. There are some good actors out there. You do know a lot of their names. There's a reason you don't know the names of the bad actors. They don't want the light shown on them because of just what I told you. They are bad actors and they understand I could go convince a mom that, hey, I'm going to get your kids 75 or 100 grand. Who cares if I take 15% off the top? By the way, could you sign this piece of paper that says that same conversion rate applies over the next 10 years, even if he gets to the NFL? Yeah, that kind of stuff, illegal, illegal, by the way, but is the kind of kind of backwards agreement that you see being agreed to a lot of the times. It's gross. It's really gross. But, tampering is here to stay. It is the way of the college football world. The only way that you could circumvent it, slow the flow, if you will, is speak up. Take the Pat Narduzzi approach in life. Just speak up. You'll be shocked at how much less you have to deal with this just for people being scared you're going to call them out by name. Bad press is a great deterrent. It is like the fire extinguisher to tampering. Just call people out. It's not a crime. Pat Narduzzi hadn't been locked up quite the opposite. He said, we didn't even have to deal with tampering this past cycle. What do you know? Oh, the one more thing I was going to say. So, you can like the stuffer. You can not like the stuff. I don't think most of you like it. Please just don't. I know what's going to happen. This is why I have to say this. I'm going to look in the comments and I'm going to say, oh, you got a big problem with tampering. You got a big problem with the portal, which I don't with the ladder. But you got a problem with tampering and you got a problem with kids moving all over the place. But you don't have a problem with coaches. Do the same thing. Coaches don't do the same thing. There's not an apples to apples comparison between coaches professionally moving around and players moving around. As I have said, 999 times, we'll just make this an even thousand when I go to Oklahoma State and agree to be your defensive coordinator. They put a piece of paper in front of me. You might also know it as a contract. And I sign it. And there is language in that contract that spells out exactly what happens if I leave and break this contract before it expires. So if I go to Ohio State, for example, and I want to be their defensive coordinator because they're offering me more money, Oklahoma State doesn't throw their hands up and say, well, there he goes. There he goes. Again, that doesn't happen. Someone's paying someone a buyout. Now I know what the retort is. So I'll also save you time on this. Well, yes, but those are employees, Josh. These players aren't. That's why some of us just want to push the wagon on down the road. We don't want to him haul around. We don't want to stop at the rest stop. So let's just get to where we're going. And if it's employment, if that's where we're going, let's just go ahead and get there so I can stop having to deal with comments like that. Well, coaches do it. Why don't play? Why couldn't players do it? Oh, such happier times on the horizon here. How should I intro this, Colin? How do we do it last year? Great preparation for tonight's show, as you can tell. Let me take a sip from the chalice. It gives me time to think. I've got it. All right, here we go. Pretend like you didn't hear the last 30 seconds or so. Bold prediction season is here. We got one question. I need one answer from you. And the question is, what would you put your money on this season and out of all those things you'd put your money on, what is the boldest prediction that you'd be willing to bet on? Four of them tonight, but we got about a thousand of them to go. We may not get to all of them before kickoff, but the best will be featured prominently on the show. So let's take a look. What is the first bold prediction of 2023 Steven from Blaersville, Pennsylvania? Here we go. Penn State makes the playoff with an undefeated regular season. And then we had some wind margins over Ohio State and Michigan. Let's just focus on the core principle here. Penn State makes the playoff. What a defeated regular season. What kind of boldness grade are we going to put on this? Penn State going undefeated in the regular season is an eight and a quarter for me on the boldness scale. I just upped it, Jesse. I know we agreed to eight. I went eight and a quarter. This is not off the charts in the in years past. This would have been well into the nine nine and a half range. So Penn State's 2023 schedule stacks up about like this. They've got a bunch of games they should win. They're by week, then they get into October and they'll be well rested for you, Mass, for whatever that's worth. But they've got Ohio State October 21st. They've got Michigan November 11th. Well spaced out. This is the year they go to Columbus. This is the year Michigan comes to state college. My question is, are those the two games? In other words, could West Virginia trip them up? Could Illinois trip them up? Could Iowa trip them up? Well, yes. But this is the most talented version of Penn State, Franklin's had probably since they won the big 10 back in 2016. You have heard me well document my feelings towards what they could be defensively. Great one to tandem in the backfield. Receiver room. I don't think will just be established week one. They've got the safest kid coming in from Kent State in the summer, drew all or at quarterback. Another question about him is not what he'll be in week one. Like I just told you, their schedule is not front loaded. It's what will he be in week seven, week eight, week nine. They've got time to, I guess for lack of a better phrase, ease him in. Now that's not ever what they would call it, but I'm just telling you, when you're favored by double digits every week for the first five or six weeks of the season, you don't have the sense of over the cliff urgency that you would if you had Ohio State in week two, for example, this is an eight and a quarter for me. Penn State undefeated regular season eight and a quarter. There'll be a dog at Ohio State. I know we've got early lines out on Michigan Penn State. That is towards the end of the year. It's in November. Let's see how things play out and then let's see what that point spread is when we actually arrived at that game. All right. Next up, we're going down south here, immunity from Littleburn, Georgia. Vol Addict says Tennessee not only beats Georgia, but they beat them by two scores and they go on to play LSU for the SEC championship. This is very specific. So they're going to beat Georgia by nine or more. That's in Knoxville at least. And then not only that, we got to parlay this. I don't know why you guys do this, but they got to parlay this with LSU winning the West. So Tennessee could drum Georgia by 40, but if Bama wins the West, you were still wrong. I don't know, but it's your prediction. It's not mine. This is a 9.5. If you would have told me one or the other, then I could get you down in the eight range. Let's see beats Georgia by two possessions. Let's address that one first. Tennessee plays Georgia this year, second to last week of the season. How about that, by the way? Used to be a lot earlier. They play in November 18th. So whatever Joe Milton is at quarterback, we'll know by then whatever Carson Beck is at quarterback will know by then. Colin, could you show me Georgia schedule for just a second? I know that I just caught you flipping graphics, my bad, but Georgia, um, famously at this point, even though it's still May, has a very weak schedule by SEC standards. This is not the kind of show where we blame Georgia for that. Uh, I would rather blame the rest of the SEC West for that. Georgia, they go to Auburn. They will have gone to Vanderbilt. They will have played Florida and Jacksonville. They will not have faced any kind of remote hostility on the road that's in the same galaxy. That's what they'll deal with. Neil and later in the year. Now it's one thing if Tennessee has disappointed and they're already a three loss team or something like that, but it's another thing if Georgia has to deal with a dose of what Bama had to deal with last year, where one or both of them are undefeated maybe and all of a sudden you walk in is just like a big orange or in its nest, which Colin could be the new nickname of the stadium. If you guys ever get tired of what you currently call it. So the whole quarterback thing, notwithstanding, um, the battle tested nature of Tennessee, by this points, what could be, could be curious, could be interesting. So they will have already played Bama. They will have already played A&M. They will have already played some really good rosters, whether those are good teams this year, Bama will be good. A&M is another story, but they will have played some really good NFL loaded rosters. Georgia will not have necessarily faced that. Now if Georgia's skull dragon, everybody by 30, it does not matter. But if this is the kind of year where Georgia's still winning games, but they're kind of, kind of unimpressive or they're underachieving. They're not quite covering spreads while they're doing it. It's the kind of thing where you could build up the whole year and you could be looking at the Tennessee game and you could watch Georgia sneak past Auburn and they can sneak past Florida and all the while in the back of your mind, you're saying, they got to play Tennessee eventually though. That could be the kind of year we have or it could be totally irrelevant. And there's a reason why Georgia's minus one 15 odds to win the SEC Championship of Tennessee's down there at plus 1400. Those numbers could just validate themselves. I'm putting a nine and a half on this though. If you're telling me they're winning the East and they're beating Georgia by two scores to do it and they're facing a specific team out of the West, that's a bridge too far for me to go anything less than a nine. Speaking of bold predictions, I've got another one here for you. The model, the model really hates this one. From Peach Tree City, Owen said, Sark has never won 10 games as a head coach. The streak will remain intact as Texas. What misses a bowl game this year? So the smoke starts to come out of the model. The model would like Texas to win the AFC next year. So the model is permanently drunk on Texas. But even I have to look at this and say, what are we talking about? Miss a bowl game. They get a bowl of food in week one and rice before they go to Bama. Yes, there's a tough game in week two, which they are a single digit underdog in, might I add, but elsewhere, Texas is favored to win the big 12. That's not news. They have been before. I actually agree with those numbers this year. The over underwent totals nine and a half. So you're telling me they're missing that by what four games or I guess you can't win five and a half. They're going to, they're going to win five games where they're over, over, over under wind total of nine and a half. They're favored to win the big 12. They're plus 1600 to win the national championship game. Now I am cognizant of one thing. And that's the only reason I didn't make this a 10. I made it a nine and a half on the boldness scale instead of a 10. This time last year, I sat right here and someone predicted A and M to win like four games. I had the foolish thought to label them a disaster proof roster. That just means they have a level of talent that makes them immune to falling off a cliff. They could underachieve. They could win seven or eight games, but there's no way they would just fall below bowl contention. Well, they did. So I will never say never, but I will say Texas is making a bowl and they're going to make a really, really handsome bowl. This is not one where they're fighting to get to Shreveport. All due respect. Texas is making a bowl. They got the 19th, they're 19th in the country in returning production this year. They're roster. Like I just said about A and M, their roster is too good to allow this to happen. And also this is not a team that disproportionately relies on one superstar quarterback. They've got Malik Murphy sitting in there, which a ton of teams would love to have as their starter right now. So even if they have the worst happen and that is a quarterback goes down for the season, even then they've got backup options at the most important position. So Texas missing a bowl, nine and a half. Lastly for today, this one was out there a little bit. Eric said Colorado is going to have a better record than Miami. Eric, I don't think you're right. The preseason over under wind totals here are Colorado over under three and a half wins. That's up from three and Miami over under seven and a half wins. I would be curious if Eric expects a surge from Colorado or he expects a drop off from Miami or he expects sort of a meeting in the middle at around five or six wins. This is a tall, tall task for Dion Sanders in Colorado to pull off in year one. And that's not even considering Miami could just flat out hit their over and win nine games or something like that. So I'm putting this at a nine point seven, five Miami, obviously coming off a less than desirable finish last year. You know, Colorado's coming off a one win campaign. Miami went to work in the portal. Also the infusion of new ideas, offensively and defensively, couple of new coordinators down there. They probably won't click right out of the gate, but it's a big thing to have Tyler Van Dyke still there. A guy that just a year ago, two years ago, really, if you can't last year showed you, you can play the position at a really high level and Shannon Dawson's the offensive coordinator down there. I think they'll be more than okay. Whether they challenge to win the ACC doesn't matter in relation to this prediction. You said they're going to have a worse record than Colorado. That I have a hard time seeing. So I'm going to put a nine point seven five on that one. And with that bold prediction season is back. Any sports and outdoors is probably one of the most important places to be this time of year. There I say anytime of year, but especially this time of year, I think that some of you are going to be surprised. Some of the towns that were about to open new Academy sports and outdoors locations in, you're going to be surprised because I've had some of you hit me up from these locations and say, I don't have an Academy anywhere near me. You will soon. So that's a little teaser. But in the meantime, you've got internet. You've got academy.com. They've got our back. I told you, thank you at the beginning of the show. And I told you, we're in such a blessed position. We don't have to worry about a lot of the concerns that some other folks in our business have to be concerned about. Well, Academy is another reason you guys and Academy sports and outdoors. Those are the ones we need in the foxhole with us. At that point, a management can do whatever they want to go play HR and ping pong down there for all I care. Academy sports and outdoors, one stop shop for all things, outdoor sporting, good supplies, plus, and you just fill in the blank after the plus because there is a number of things they have there that probably surprise you. Every day we are getting DMs from people saying, I went to Academy for the first time and it never under delivers everyone to a man, to a woman. They're always shocked that I found this there. I went there for one thing, but I found this and this there. Just trust me, would I lie to you about this? No, not unless they paid me a billion dollars and even then probably still wouldn't. I'm not lying to you about this. Academy's got a ton of stuff that you need, including some stuff you didn't even know you needed. Academy.com online, if you can't get there in person. Thank you so much to our friends at Academy Sports and Outdoors. Let's pull out that microscope telescope. Telescope? Nah, it's probably a microscope sort of thing. Let's look at the SEC East. We're doing a lot of looks, post spring nature at some of the different conferences and different divisions in college football and the East is interesting because it's down. That's why and it's been down for a while and it's getting old and I would love to see this change. So let's just start this by looking at the standings last year. Georgia ran away with the Tennessee second and South Carolina had another surprisingly good year. If it's not Georgia this year, Georgia is the overwhelming favorite. If it's not Georgia, who would it be? How would this happen? I want to remind you guys, if you're not familiar with the odds market and how things are stacking up this year, sometimes you have a favorite, then you have a solid second tier, right? In the SEC East, that is not the case, at least in the odds market. Now odds mean nothing once you kick the ball off, but this is all we have to go on right now. So Georgia's over under preseason win total is 11, Tennessee's is 9, and then I want you to listen to this. The next closest team is Kentucky at six and a half, Missouri, six and a half, South Carolina six, Florida, five and a half and Vandy three and a half for the record. Vandy over three and a half is one of the best bets in the country. If you wanted to know who the worst team, keep this graphic up, Colin. If you want to know who the worst team is, odds wise, in the SEC West, it would be Mississippi State and you could slot Mississippi State right there if you're watching on YouTube. And if you're listening on podcast, there are one, two, three, there are five teams in the East that have worse odds than the worst team preseason in the West. So that's gross. That is a gigantic ankle weight, although it's not the way it works necessarily because it just means the net result is Georgia has a very, very easy schedule by SEC standards. But if it's not Georgia, I would assume Tennessee, I would be very, very surprised, frankly, if any of those other teams made a run. But what's interesting with Tennessee is that game's not until later in the year as we just talked about a little while ago. What's interesting with Tennessee is they're going to be some folks doubting them that also talked last year about the system. Now follow me here because I want you to be ahead of the curve on this and I don't want you to fall into this trap. There's this group of people that watched Hennen Hooker and Jalen Hyatt and those players start to shine last year. And what did they do? They tried to pour water on the fire and they tried to say, oh, they're just system players though. Oh, hypo system does that. Those same people. Once those players walk out the door are going to look you in the eye and say, well, hypo systems not going to work. It lost too many players. What it is. Is this not? Is this not a little hypocritical? It's either a system thing or it's a players thing. You can't tell me the players are irrelevant because of the system and then tell me the system is not going to work because they lost players. It's going to happen. We're approaching preview magazine season. It's going to happen. I just want you to be ready for that. Tennessee returns 57% offensive production this year. That is 96th in the country or in FBS. So yeah, you can doubt them. That's fine. That's healthy. But if it's not Georgia over there, it probably would be Tennessee. Now what is that picture for Georgia? Well if you checked out for spring, looks like Carson Beck's going to be the starting quarterback. I just want to remind you about Georgia. They're like one of two, maybe three teams in the country where everything you've learned about this sport, you just throw it out the window. Ignore conventional wisdom. It doesn't matter that they're 80th in returning production. It doesn't matter they're 109th in returning offensive production. They're just going to be good. Because the guys they have who haven't played are better than 98% of the guys out there elsewhere who have played. So it's the same thing we've had with Bama for a long time. Clemson had this for a minute. Ohio State sometimes has this. I imagine Southern Cal under Lincoln Riley is going to end up having this offensively. Michigan is this in some ways. So they had seven first rounders lost on defense over the past two years. They had 13 players drafted off that defense over the past two years. Yeah, I would understand if you looked at that and said, boy, can you have that kind of attrition defensively and not fall off at least somewhat? And the answer is probably, no, you probably can't have that attrition and maintain the exact same level, but they are so deep and they are so good with guys you've never heard of unless you really follow recruiting hardcore. You'll know their names this year. So a lot of this stuff that is really going to be eye catching, especially if you're looking for a glimmer of hope that they're going to fall off this year. Some of those stats, I'm telling you, it fools gold. If you're looking at it, you're going to have to beat them. They're not probably, they're probably not going to implode on themselves. You're going to have to beat them elsewhere in the East though. Out of the group of teams that's in like the six or six and a half wind range, you know what caught my eye? What in Kentucky? South Carolina catches my eye. They're over under preseason. Wind total is six. Now I know why it's down there. It's always the same thing. It's their schedule. They play five games versus teams with preseason wind totals of eight and a half or better. Or I mean, schedule is tougher than that in the country. So again, it's college football. Strength of schedule matters a great deal. You are not always what your record says you are because the quality of team tied to a record in a lot of cases has to do with who you've played. They're one hundred and second in returning production this year. That's going to be the headline grabber. To me, the biggest factor on this team is Spencer Rattler back at quarterback for another year and the constant talk they've had on that program about how valuable it is for him to have come from a much more simplistic system in Oklahoma to a much more complex system at South Carolina and needing two years to fully digest it. Sometimes that's just speak. Sometimes that player speak, I guess you would call it. I think it's valid there. You got to have the weapons to throw to. You got to have the offensive line to block for you. Yes, we understand how football works, but six is a low number. They've had two years in a row. A number set too low for him. Will this be three years in a row? If I had to bet South Carolina right now, I'd bet over. Who's the ambush candidate? I always have fun with this. Missouri is the ambush candidate in the SEC East. I already talked about them a little bit. You need to keep an eye on Missouri. They lost four games last year. By one possession, they're over under preseason. Six and a half wins this year. They're number nine in returning production. They are top 25 returning production offensively and defensively. They went six and six last year for really close losses. Here's where the ambush portion comes in. They almost beat Georgia last year. They've got a buy before they play Georgia this year and Tennessee plays Georgia right after Missouri this year. So they catch Tennessee in the look ahead spot. They catch Georgia as they're rested. They are also one of the teams that hired a new offensive coordinator. I'm excited to see how this works out. They hired the guy from Fresno, had the top Mountain West Conference offense out there last year and Missouri did not. Missouri was 88th in points per game last year offensively and still had some, some really close losses. So they were six and six really close to being nine and three really close to beating the eventual national champ. That was an ugly game. That was one where Georgia is down two possessions, I believe it was in the fourth quarter before they ended up coming back to win. Kentucky, it's all about Devin Leary. For those of you who just had your mind blown by the transfer portal, Devin Leary was one of those quarterbacks who was on the move. He went from NC State to Kentucky. So Will Levis out the door? They've got a guy with proven production that came in there. Let's see how it works out. Vanderbilt, one of two teams in the league with a returning head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and quarterback. The other one, LSU and Florida. It's another program relying on a transfer quarterback in Graham Mertz. They are 107th in returning production. Their over under is five and a half Florida with a an over under of below bowl eligible standards. Unbelievable. But that is a snapshot of the SEC East. We've got a lot of time to talk about that. Is anything stand out there? By the way, to you, I will excitedly look forward to the comments. It's a little redundant. They're watching us in West Jordan, Utah. And further out West, they're watching us in Modesto, California. Lot of freight activity comes through Modesto and Castle Berry, Florida. I am not 100% sure of the transportation infrastructure in Castle Berry, but I know they're good people down there because they're watching us. We had a question that came into the late kick mail bag and I would be remiss if I didn't address it because we have not talked about this for like a couple of weeks. We all know how much change is in May. I appreciate you guys if you tuned in live. Okay, here we go. May's hit me up from Orlando. Wait, it's Austin. Okay. Well, let me say it over calling Austin hit me up from Orlando and he just put it out there. He said, his Tyler button are going to start for Bama. Is this guaranteed? No, it is not guaranteed. Somehow Alabama ended up being the only team out there that came out of spring with a muddier quarterback picture than they had going into spring, which never happens. So that's a rarity to say the least, especially at Alabama. I was talking to a coordinator last week who's not coaching in Alabama or anything like that. Just kind of an observer of the program. And he said, can you believe they found themselves in that desperate a position? And I said, good question. No, I cannot. And I still can't. I believe they were in that position, but that position they were in consider this. So they bring a quarterback game post spring from the portal. Tyler Butler was at Notre Dame. His coordinators at Alabama. He's now at Alabama. So we remember all that. That's how that shook out. Then no one transferred. That's the most hidden and possibly telltale mind blowing sign is you had a guy come in after you got two more guys who were just battling it out through spring. So normally when you got two guys battling through spring and then spring ends and then they bring another guy in, that's usually an indication that, well, neither one of you are going to be the guy. We went and got the guy. Normally that's what that indicates. That is not the situation at Alabama. I don't think it's the situation there. And obviously Jalen Milro and Ty Simpson didn't either. Because neither of them transferred. So you got three dudes firmly convinced they're about to win the job. Notice I said three. If you can't analyze the potential conundrum, you don't split first team reps three ways very far or very far. Period, especially in the fall. You do not split first team reps very deep into the fall three ways. Two ways? Yeah. Three ways, not so much. So we got to get this sorted out pretty quick. They're 123rd in offensive production returning this year at Alabama. So this is not some of those years where it looked like you could probably take Jesse if you firmed up the structural integrity of his shoulder a little bit and I could have dropped him down there with those receivers and backs and offensive line. And Jesse could have been middle of the pack in terms of SEC quarterback production. This is not one of those years. But I also don't think it's going to be one of those teams. So I'm going to say to you again what I said when this happened. Tyler Butler, welcome to Tuscaloosa. I do not think this makes him the automatic starter at quarterback there. Although I do agree there's a reason they brought him in. The second thing I'll say is I still think they can win with Simpson. I still think they can win with Millrow because I think I know what style of team that Nick Saban wants to have this year and has the pieces to have this year. And it doesn't look exactly like the 2018 or 2019 or maybe in 2020 team. I don't think it looks like that. I don't think it needs to look like that. You're going to see a lot of talk about, well, can this quarterback, whoever it is, can he fill the shoes, fill the void left by Bryce Young? Let me spoil that for you. No, they don't have Bryce Young there. They don't have anyone who could talk Bryce Young's jot there. They probably don't need to because I am old enough to remember us going to Atlanta a couple of years ago and Bryce Young takes the field against Georgia and ends up beating them in the SEC Championship game with no run game. You got Brian Robinson who's hobbled and no one behind him and one of the talking points going into the game is Alabama is just going to have to win without a running game. And we were so taken aback because we had never said that before. That's not ever going to be the case with this team this year. Quite the opposite. I think it would probably be a mild to moderate surprise if any of these quarterbacks end up taking over multiple games. And the reason I say that is because stylistically it's not what they'll need this year. They've got a good enough road grading offensive line. They should have tons of options for high level running back play. They should be okay at receiver. They've got a secondary that I don't think will get torched regularly causing them to need to score 38 or more per game. I don't think that's the kind of Alabama team you're going to see. But there's also something else that I think we'll talk about a little bit more as the season approaches. And it's how a lot of people are assuming that Buckner coming in after spring is going to have a negative effect because it tells both of your current quarterbacks, well, you're not good enough. Then if Buckner is not good enough to win the job, you may have toxified an environment and then you're stuck with no quarterbacks. Well, if you've got three quarterbacks, you got none. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes that's not. Yeah. Okay. All that could happen. Let me present an alternative scenario for you. You ever driven with a full tank before when you've got a full tank of gas, you don't care how much you've done the engine. You don't really care because you're not looking to be economical with your fuel gauge cause you're not in danger of running out. But I will never forget the first time I went to Phoenix, I didn't actually go to Phoenix. I went to San Diego and drove across the desert to Phoenix. And the thing about that for those of you who have made that drive before is it's beautiful and you can drive like 130 miles an hour cause there is nothing out there, including gas stations. So I crossed the California, Arizona line and I got like quarter of a tank. I figured I'll be cool. Then I realized quickly the situation at hand, there's not one on every corner and all of a sudden you're not going 110 anymore. You're kind of trying to pull up that meter in the car. All right. What puts me in the sweet spot? What conserves the most fuel? Why? You got to count every drop cause you can't take it for granted that you're going to get somewhere no matter how you drive. Bama always operates on a full tank. They're always used to being so much more talented than everyone. They're always used to having a Heisman caliber quarterback and a much a race horse as a receiver that it really doesn't matter. They don't have to be fully ratcheted up. They don't have to thread the needle every week. It doesn't feel like that right now does it? In reality, they're going to out talent most everyone they play still. Even if you consider them down or vulnerable, they've got studs everywhere. Jesse, what'd you tell me? They have half a dozen former five star players just at the edge position. They are ridiculously loaded. They just brought in the best recruiting class I think they've ever brought in. They got them all over the place, just not at quarterback. Well, what that can do to a team and I'm sure Nick Saban's gunning for this is it can convince them there tanks a lot closer to either. It really is. And if you get an Alabama team that's convinced it's running on empty. Jackson Brown made a great song out of it. Alabama could make a great season out of it. That team right there can win a national championship this year. Don't kid yourself. There is no program out there that is complete. There's no program out there that has this insurmountable task because they've got a stud quarterback and a dominant defense. Taylor Williams may fit the first part of that description. USC is not shutting you out defensively. You don't even know who Ohio State's starting. Carson Bex never started a game for Georgia. Does the Michigan roster that's failed to win a playoff game really intimidate you if you're Alabama? LSU beat you down there last year. And when's the last time that folks started regularly beating you two times in a row? No. If he, Nick Saban, convinces them that they're running on quarter of a tank, eighth of a tank when in reality we still know they're much closer to F than E because of this quarterback situation. There could be a reverse effect on that team than the one the rest of the country is expecting. And I'm sure for that reason Nick Saban will be more than happy to field questions about how vulnerable they are and how much question there still is at quarterback cause there is. It's just that he may be able to win regardless of who they start back there. I need you to be a favor. It's really easy. Hit the thumbs up button and then subscribe to the channel. That's it. 58 now. This is a bad trend. 58% of our audience is unsubscribed. I don't want to throw out threats and I won't. I'm not buying Bradley dinner next week if you don't subscribe to the channel. So yeah, I am going to threaten you. And it's, it's one thing if I threaten you, I know that doesn't work. But if I threaten Bradley the associate with starvation, I think you'll do the right thing. Let's do the mood tracker. Let's talk about the Michigan mood tracker. What's the temperature of this fan base right now? Excited, right? Yeah, probably really excited. Of course they are. Think about the past 36 months up there or 48 months if you really want to go back. We talk about the word can't a lot around here. We talk about people saying things that you cannot do. And for a long time, it was very popular to say Michigan can't win the Big Ten cause they can't even beat Ohio State. And now all of a sudden that's totally inverted. Now Ohio State, they're not even going to go beat Michigan. Ohio State can't win the Big Ten. They can't win a national championship. They're not saying that first part about Michigan. Now that brings me to the second part. They are still saying they are still saying you won't win a playoff game once you get there. And that arrives us at the Michigan mood tracker. First world focus is the Michigan fan base mood right now. You guys are in such rarefied air places you've never found yourself in the Harbaugh era, places you've never found yourself this millennium until like five minutes ago. Do you know what the biggest topic of conversation around Michigan households is right now around the water cooler around lunch tables? It's how are we going to win a playoff game? You've solved the Ohio State puzzle. Now you know you got to go put it back together over here, but there is no longer this fear of an aptitude of it not mattering what you do because they just got our number. No, they don't. You've got theirs. So if anything, you just expect a competitive game and then your way and your philosophy and your approach and your development, it's going to beat them. Even if you haven't out recruited them, although that may be changing too, you got that part of it figured out. You got the big 10 championship thing figured out. You know how to do that stuff. It's the playoff. That's what you got to figure out. How do we win a playoff game? These are first world problems. It's a very first world focus and it's a good place to be, really good place to be because number one, you are you're still hungry because you haven't gotten to the mountaintop, but you have just loaded up on appetizers. So you got the main course still out there somewhere. You're not hungry. Well, you're not going to starve. You're not hungry, but you're not going to starve. It's a great place to be. It's a great middle ground. They got a weak schedule. It's not something I blame Michigan for. Kind of like I said with Georgia, it just is what it is. They've got a weak schedule. They play East Carolina to start then UNLV, then Bowling Green, then they opening as a rutgird. It's just, it's not a murderous row. Unlike last year, we're not really talking about figuring out a quarterback situation or anything like that. We know who the man is up there. They are number five in returning production. A lot of the pieces you're familiar with are back. They have probably got the best running back tandem in the country, although I will get some fight out of some folks about that. They've got one of the best. I drank them number one. So I'll say that much. They added a good portal class. It's not ranked number one because they didn't need it to be ranked number one, but they sprinkled some really good pieces in from the portal. They're overrun to pieces and win totals 10 and a half. They are plus one seven five to win the big 10. That is the best odds in the big 10 to win the conference. They are plus eight hundred to win the college football playoff championship. So they've got the third best odds to win the national championship. It used to be that Michigan, their odds were so, so disproportionately off because it was correlated with the fact that odds makers didn't think they could beat Ohio State. And so even if we think they've got a good team, if they can't beat Ohio State, we're not going to give them any kind of decent odds to win the national championship. Success is not a continuum though. This is the one thing I always come back to. So there's this thought sometimes that, okay, you make some progress in 2022 and then we beat Ohio State and we win the big 10 and we get to the playoff again and we don't win again. And there's this thought that, okay, that's where we'll pick up next year. No, you pick up zero and zero and you got to start all over again. You can apply the lessons and some of the same pieces are back and sure, the things that worked last year will probably continue to work and maybe you even learned some lessons from the things that didn't work. But you still put yourself in the minefield. You could still have injury. You could still have bounce as a ball go against you. The other teams could get better. Someone could have hired the guy that's the magic elixir or your kryptonite or whatever you want to call it. All kinds of different variables are out there. So success is not a continuum. It doesn't just keep happening. You don't just get to keep picking up where you left off, but Michigan does not feel like a program right now that is prone to great spikes in production. It does not feel like a team that's going to win 10, one year and sixth the next year. Whatever they figured out up there, they figured it out and it's really, really rock solid. So there's a big difference obviously in beating Ohio State versus not beating them. And there's a big difference in winning the big 10 versus not winning the big 10, but I do not think they're going to fall off a cliff or anything like that. That's to me with this kind of team that's out of the cards. We're talking about small margins of difference between success and failure here, but even failure is probably not far below that 10 and a half threshold. I am still amazed while I'm speaking about that. I am still amazed that they turn this thing around with no change at the top. I mean, I know it feels like a long time ago guys, but if you, if you're not a Michigan fan, forget being a Michigan fan. If you're not a Michigan fan, if you're a Wisconsin fan, but you observe the program and you play them a lot, didn't you think for a little while if they were ever going to ascend to the top of the conference? If they were ever going to supplant Ohio State as the, the perceived top dog in the conference, can you think at certain points it was going to be with someone other than Jim Harbaugh? Because I did like I got myself into that mentality and they did not make a change at head coach and even the head coach himself explored the NFL a couple of times and even with all that, even while interviewing for the Vikings job on national signing day. All of these things should have thrown the program into a tail spin. It got better. They figured it out. It took a long time, a little bit longer than maybe you guys wanted, but they figured it out, kept tinkering, kept adjusting, just fractions of an inch, not miles, just fractions of an inch and it's did that. I know it gets so boring and so cliched because so many people say it, but if you'll just keep chopping, if you'll just stay committed to your process, you'll bore a lot of people talking about it. But man, if they give you enough time, if, if your employer gives you enough time and your process is sound, it's crazy what happens because Jim Harbaugh is at Michigan and you got urban Meyer at Ohio State. He could never have known what was going to happen, but he kept chopping. Never beat urban Meyer. Kept chopping though. That's out of his control. Kept chopping. And now Michigan, at least for the time being, is on top of the Big Ten. Over on the preseason win total, ten and a half. Favorites to win the Big Ten. A favorite to go to the playoff again. And they're just the same dude, it's just Jim Harbaugh. So yeah, they got first world problems up there and they got a first world focus. That is the mood right now for the Michigan fan base. We are not done. We're not done. We're not done. We're not done. A very important piece of paper in my hand right here. You know, I just realized, yes, we always have the chalice on the set. And yes, there is a choice liquid in the chalice. It's not alcoholic, but I never finish it. And I've almost finished it tonight. I don't think I'm going to quite make it up. Almost finished it tonight. And I'm not quite sure what that means, but it did chew up 30 seconds of the show. So there's that. You know me, Pac-12 paint. I got to give some love to my brothers and sisters on the West Coast. I want to talk about some top games out there this year. There is this, oh, it's like a love square. It's not even a love triangle. It's like a love square featuring USC and Oregon and Washington and Utah. And I've got to tell you something that I told you about the big 12 last year. I know it's popular. If you live in Des Moines or you live in Valdosta, it's popular right now to say it's the big 10 and the SEC and everyone else. No one else measures up. Look, you may be right about that. Can we please just stop to acknowledge there is good football. There's entertaining football being played elsewhere and not every game has to have a college football player sticker on it to be entertaining. There is a sizable portion of this audience that still believes that, right? Okay. Now what if I told you even the college football playoff casuals out there could need to watch the Pac-12 this year? What kind of prediction is that? I don't know. That's what God made August for. But in the meantime, I am telling you they got some good quarterbacks out there. Check out how many teams out there have a preseason win total of eight or higher. There's like a glob of them, ton of them. It's not like the SEC East where you got two and then there's this drop off and then go a little bit further down, a little bit further down. Oh, there's the rest of you. That's not the Pac-12. So, I was looking at the schedule. You're going to have to wait a few weeks and they got some good out of conference games in the meantime. But once you get in conference play in the Pac-12, there is going to be a stretch where every week it's must see out there. If you're a real college football fan, let me take you to week seven and I'm going to go in chronological order here for just a second. Week seven, Oregon at Washington. Last year, Washington comes back on Oregon. They win 37 to 34. That's the game where BONIX got banged up. So hopefully we cross our fingers for quarterback help this year. BONIX is back. Michael Pennix is back. Both of those guys are studs out there. Both of those guys could put up like all American type numbers any given week, maybe, both in the same week. But as much shine as those quarterbacks are going to get in that game, you got to go to a good defense that's already arrived at Washington. You got to defense at Oregon. I expect to be a whole heck of a lot better this year. So I think there's going to be a very popular sentiment that the over in that game is the right bet. Let's pump those breaks just to touch. The next week told you it's going to be happening every week. The very next week, week eight, Utah is at USC. That's a rematch of the Pac-12 championship game. And there is a thought out there, the school of thought from my fine friends in Los Angeles, California, that if Caleb Williams doesn't get hurt in that game last year, Southern Cal wins the Pac-12, Southern Cal goes to the playoff. And I agree with you, but he did get hurt and you didn't go to the playoff because that's how football works. And Utah beat you again to win the Pac-12 second consecutive year. So we get that game in the regular season and week eight this year, Utah offensively, I think their fifth in the country in returning production defensively, they're 45th. So a lot of those offensive pieces, including Jesse's doppelganger, Cam rising at quarterback, he's there. He is, you know, he's kind of turning in a little bit to West Coast, Sean Clifford. I don't know exactly how long he's been there, but that doesn't matter. It matters how long it feels like you've been there. And Cam rising, I think was bald when he got there and he's got hair. He's like crystal gale hair going on now. So it's all the way halfway down to his lower back. Beautiful, but it's long immunity. And so you've got that one. That's a great Pac-12 championship game rematch. Then the next week, I told you, throw these four teams in a hopper and just spin it the next week, we got Oregon at Utah. So Utah goes to Southern Cal, then they come home and play Oregon. These two didn't play last year. And it's a shame, but we do get it this year. Oregon is plus 325 to win the conference. Utah's plus 500 to win the conference. So these are two of the favorites to win the Pac-12. Really good test of physicality here. So Utah physically is one of the big tests for Southern Cal, then they'll come home and these teams will each be a test for each other in that department. Then that's week nine, the very next week. I'm really looking forward to this one. Washington is at USC. The Utah game, two weeks prior, will have given us a really good glimpse into how this year's USC team handles a certain level of physicality. And the reason that's important is because two weeks later, this week here, Washington will bring that same level, if not that level and then some defensively into the Coliseum. You get Michael Pennics on the same field as Caleb Williams. Caleb Williams is going to be the top player taken in the NFL draft. Next April, Michael Pennics is going to be one that has an opportunity to rapidly rise up those draft boards. This is the kind of game just because of how high profile it will be that will matter a whole lot. They didn't play last year either. Washington and Southern Cal didn't play last year either. So we were robbed of several of these games and we'll get them all this year. And then the week after that, bang, bang, bang, bang, USC at Oregon. Southern Cal has had a little run here, haven't they? Plus 180 makes USC the favorite to win the Pac-12. Plus 325 makes Oregon the second favorite to win the Pac-12. So you get the top two odds teams here. They wait till week 11, but they play in Austin Stadium. To this point, USC will have gone to Notre Dame. That will have been their toughest road test. They will have not faced anything like they will in Austin Stadium. Folks in Eugene are already talking about this game. That place will be insane. And I don't know what our tour is going to be called this year, but I will have failed mightily if we don't end up at Oregon for USC at Oregon. I mean, we should be out on the West Coast a few times this year, but yes, this should absolutely be one of them. Now, keep in mind as I talk to you about all these games, forget about divisions. Divisions don't matter anymore. They're taking the top two teams out there. So at any given point, even if it's, even if it's two teams that you previously know as being from the south or two from the north, we could have a rematch in the Pac-12 championship game. Oh, by the way, the week after that, that's when we get UCLA at USC. I think Dante Moore is going to be starting to quarterback for them, if not eventually, or if not immediately than eventually. And so USC, yeah, they're at the forefront of the conversation and you got Oregon and Washington and Utah, UCLA's preseason win totals eight and a half. So they're up there too. And then the week after that to cap it all, we get Oregon State at Oregon. You didn't think I was going through this whole thing without talking about Oregon State. Oh, by the way, Oregon State win total. Also eight and a half, Oregon's is nine and a half. There is just this log jam of pretty good teams out there with a chance to be really good. And the reason that they're going to get slept on nationally is because people think you have to be a national championship contender preseason to be taken seriously. You don't, you don't look at the odds on the screen right now. You're going half a dozen deep of teams that Vegas is telling you really have a good to at least somewhat chance of winning the conference. USC, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Oregon State, UCLA, that's how the top six shake out. I didn't even mention Colorado. I did not even mention Deon Sanders being out there. I didn't even mention like Kenny Dillingham at Arizona State being out there. Cal had a big influx from the transfer portal. I didn't even have time to mention them. I didn't have time to mention Delora back in Arizona. Chad Fish is one of our favorite head coaches. And they went over on that win total for us last year. You let me get this piece of paper real quick. Paper pop instead. There are six teams with win totals of eight and a half or more in the Pac 12. That is the most of any conference in FBS. Any conference, not just power five. We're talking about the lower tier two, eight and a half or more. They got half a dozen of them. It's going to be a good year out of the Pac 12. It was a good night tonight, man. We went what? 65 minutes. I know that there was a little problem with the post editing on the live show from the other night. And here's how that works. Now that we're all the way at the end of the show, the degenerates who love everything about the show, you're here and I can tell you what happens. So we do the show live, right? We hardly ever pre-record the show. 99% of the time it's live. What we do to build the audience is at 650 central time, we put up a countdown clock. If you watch live, you've seen it. At the end of the show, that's it. No one's watching live anymore once it's over. So the replay is obviously on the YouTube channel anytime you want to watch it. Well, I go in after the show and I shave off that countdown clock. I edit it off and it takes YouTube about an hour to process that. But most of the time, if you're coming along and watching the replay over an hour after the live show's ended, you just click the video. It plays an ad and then it picks up right at the beginning where I say, welcome in. The last show that didn't happen and it wasn't our fault. So we just won all the credit with none of the blame as usual. But there was a processing error and so my voice was 10 minutes off of whatever the video is you were watching and sorry, I'm trying not to let it happen again tonight. Thank you though for watching and listening. Make sure you're subscribed to the channel, make sure you're subscribed to the pod and that's all we ask of you other than that. We will get through this together. We got 16 Saturdays to go. 15 if you don't count the last one. For producer Jesse, for Director Colin, for Bradley the Associate, I'm Josh Bate. Take care. Have a great start year week and God bless. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪♪