1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Look around the transfer portal, Nebraska WBB win: January 9th, 2026, 11:25am

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

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Back to one-on-one with D.P. Sponsored by the Downtown Lincoln Foundation on 93-7, the ticket. We are back here on one-on-one on 93-7. The ticket had an interesting talk in the first segment about Miami's victory and what that means the college football playoff as a whole. As again, this is a new expanded system, the 10 seed, making it all the way to the championship game. So good conversation there starting off.

We got some texts back on it. Let's send to Dave Braska here. Says conference champions like division winners in the NFL get higher seeds. So they do matter. Do they, though? You can tell that to Duke. Yeah? Tell that to James Madison.

Tell that to Tulane. Those are conference champs. Those are. They didn't get in. You know, they didn't get a higher seed. And that didn't happen. Now it worked for last year, right? If you look at Boise State,

getting the double by. Yeah. They did seating back. They did it the way that did too. But again, we move the goalposts. We change how we measured it. And so, yeah, sorry, conference champions from Big Ten and SDC get higher seeds. All things aren't equal in college football.

Dave Brasca, that's my entire point. It matters until it doesn't. And I'm saying it can't matter until it doesn't or it shouldn't matter until it doesn't. It should either matter or it should not matter. Right now, it's, again, having the cake eating it too, having it both ways and different standards moving goalposts. I think part of it too is obviously how much it matters is significantly less than it once did. And so that's the adjustment that we have to make.

And again, that's when you go from the regular season and to the undefeated talk, we've got some text there about Indiana going undefeated too. The old system was like, if you slipped up once, you're probably not playing for a championship game or you're going to need help to do so. And I like, I love that. And so that kind of led that even bled into conference championship weekend, right? The new system in adjusting to what it is is not that. And so, you know, you can say it doesn't hurt the regular season.

And then there's different arguments throughout that, right? Does it hurt the levity of each game in the regular season? Yes. Does it make more games particularly interesting at the end of the regular season because teams are fighting to get in? Yes. So there's, you know, different ways to say it helps and hurts the regular season. but the levity of each game is what I'm going to miss about college football. And it's what I do miss.

And it's what I expected to miss when they do this, expanded this playoff is for the regular season. Now, you still get those helmets out there. You get, you know, everybody excited and it's the game of the week and all that sort of stuff. So it's still there, right, similar to the NFL regular season.

They've been doing this a long time. You still get excited about, but you know and you understand this doesn't mean everything. You know, it means something as far as seating. And, you know, standings and for teams to get in, obviously, and that matters. But, you know, so you get to this point. And that's where I just, especially as we're seeing these lower seeds or teams

with buys have so much success in these first two expanded playoffs, it's like, I get it. And in the regular season, maybe that does enough for you is, hey, this is for seating. This is, seating doesn't mean a whole lot for me, especially when your whole argument is let's play it on the field, right? Yeah. You might get a certain advantage. and in this case, you get even the, yeah, if you're the eighth best team,

you get a home field game. If you're better than that, then you don't because you get a, so. Well, if you're the 10th best team and you happen to get a good draw and happen to pull an upset in a half or two, then you get to play for the national championship in your home stadium. You can, yeah, it's possible that's happened here. So it is, it is very much still a complete mess,

which is maybe what golf football is. But again, at least you, you know, for a lot of people, a lot of folks, at least they're playing it out there on the field. But again, to me, seating, if that's, if I'm tuning into a regular season game, you're telling me this matters because of seating. I'm going to go,

all right, this isn't the same. No, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. American Nightmare says winning conference champion game should mean something for players that played in it,

but it feels like a slap in the face for the Duke players. This is where I'll push back a little bit because that was a seven and five Duke team going into that game. They won the right games. they did. But again, it's kind of a function of the college football system, the way it's set up right now. If you gave auto bids for conference champions,

yes, it would feel like a slap in the face. But guess what? You don't give auto bids for conference champions. You give automatic bids for highest ranked conference champions, including in the group of five, right? Or the five highest ranked, you know, conference champions. Duke wasn't there. Virginia ended up not being a conference champion,

so they miss out on the college football playoff. And before that, American Nightmare said Duke's Conference Championship didn't mean anything. I would push back and say, well, meant something to the Duke players that lost those games early, went on a heater through ACC play and did enough to win a conference championship, taking down a favored Virginia team. It meant Virginia didn't make the playoff. It meant Miami probably helped get the draw that it did, right? It affected seating.

It affected the way the college football played out. You can't tell me it didn't mean anything. It's not like that butterfly didn't flap its wings there. Like something happened. I just don't think it's a huge slap in the face to Duke because they knew the stakes. They're going to stump for themselves. Manny Diaz did.

I think a player or two did in the post game aftermath. They knew going into the game. It was a long shot for them to make it. But why? Because they lost five games. You had a chance to win the conference championship by going, you know, 10 and 2, 11 and 2, 10 and 3, whatever, and at least be in the conversation.

When you go seven and five, that's, you know, three or four steps too far, especially with the way the system is written now. It would have been fun to see Duke sneak in as a 12 seed. Tulane was probably as good as them, if not a little bit better. I can't blame Tulane for getting in or James Madison, either one of them. So I'm not mad at those two, you know, higher ranked conference champions that understood the criteria and lived up to them a little bit better than Duke did. Sure, you can say the ACC is a better conference than the Sunbelt or,

the American or whatever they're playing it at this point. So I have a hard time arguing with you, but Duke also lost five games. And at that point, that feels like it should be disqualifying, even in this day and age where who knows what qualifies you. Yeah, I mean, I can agree. There's something to be said on both points, though. So I do think it's a good text because, you know, not that it's, and again, it's finding what that meaning is or maybe what it should mean, right?

or what it should be because the ACC champion, they are definitely going to hang a banner and remember this is one of the best seasons in Duke history. So it has meaning to it, but it did not allow them to get to a chance to play for a national championship.

Right. Is that fair? Again, that goes back to what are you looking for? If you know, if you want your conference champions all to automatically get in, a power four, then you have that argument.

But again, did, did, I mean, the ACC is going to already, you know, is already adjusting their rules to make sure that this doesn't happen again. So part of this is, is the ACC and the unequal opportunity that we have in college football scheduling from the beginning. That's never going to go away because there's too many teams even in a league, you know, where you're like, it's not the big eight anymore. You can't just play everybody. Big 18. Right. Literally. Big 18. So you can't do that. And that's why I somewhat like divisions at least so that you knew your opponents and where they were. But of course, there was there was imbalance in divisions as well.

So again, there's never a perfect way to do it. And here's where we arrived on this year. But again, you got to kind of go year by year criteria. There's a lot of people kind of doing the backwards math again of like, well, how many titles would this guy have won or that guy? I mean, you can do with Coach Osborne. How many titles would he have won? It's like, well, at that time, that wasn't the way to crown a champion.

So they played that season through that. lens and how to get there and everybody knew the stakes at the time. So we'll see again, much like the BCS system that again, that I talk about that I like, is that they changed it every year. Because the formula wasn't perfect. They're doing the same thing with this formula and you're never going to get the perfect formula. You're always, it's what is funny and entertaining is that there's out, you don't go one year without an outlier situation coming in. So when you think you've got the perfect setup, there's a new situation that pops up.

Surprising news out of the transfer portal, there's a little bit of news out of the transfer portal, by the way. James Williams, former Nebraska edge rusher that went to Florida State, is now at Oklahoma State. So I know Husker fans have been following his Twitter account closely, at least, if nothing else.

Former Husker, if you can call it, Hardly Gilmore, now transferring. We hardly knew you. And he's making an interesting name for himself there at Kentucky, where so he transferred away from Kentucky, went back this past year after Nebraska decided that wasn't the move for him, played another year at Kentucky. So, you know, the Wildcats very much on the, you know,

standing behind Hardly Gilmore. And he transfers to Louisville after all of it. So one of their most hated rivalries. That's interesting. Utah edge John Henry Daly did indeed enter the transfer portal, as we know. He did indeed, by the way, end up at Michigan, much was expected of that. So Michigan building quite the, quite the team there with Kyle Whittingham. But on the bad news for them, Justice Haynes, one of the best running backs in the country.

Of course, got injured midway through the season. Would have been right there with Emmett Johnson. There would have been a battle to lead the Big Ten and rushing. He is entering the transfer portal. Again, 7.1 yards per carry this past year in 10 touchdowns, 850.7. seven yards, trying to add up the games that he had. I don't think of seven or eight. Yeah, seven games there.

But that is a, that is a surprise, although he would be, I mean, he's going to be potential All-American, at least preseason, all-American going into it. So that is huge news in the transfer portal. Immediately, you want to think, well, wouldn't get Nebraska get him. This is again one of those, this again, one of those names, kind of the Sorbsby's, the Levits that we went through earlier, probably not going to be in the discussion. I mean, if you break the bank, it seems like that's the way college football's heading. Would you want Nebraska to break the bank in that direction?

Not so sure. And most likely already had that opportunity to do so if they needed or really wanted to with Emmett Johnson. And chose not to. So there you have it. All right, let's go ahead and take great. We'll round things up with one-on-one coming next year on 93-7 the ticket. Watch live on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch. You're listening to one-on-one with DP.

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