Andy & Ari On3 - Could the College Football Playoff expand AGAIN? | West Virginia’s Neal Brown proved everyone wrong

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Today's show is brought to you by PrizePicks, the easiest way to play daily fantasy. All first time users who deposit and use the promo code ANDY will receive a 100 percent instant deposit match up to $100. If you deposit $100, PrizePicks will give you $100.Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/ivHR/ANDY(0:00-4:12) Intro(4:13-20:13) CFP Expanding AGAIN?(20:14-44:31) West Virginia Head Coach Neal Brown Joins(44:32-44:53) Dear Andy Intro(44:54-49:38) Advantage to be3rd Place in Big Ten & SEC?(49:39-56:59) Oklahoma Sooners Preview(57:00-59:36) Will College Football Hate Texas and Texas A&M even more?(59:37-1:01:39) UCLA's Big Ten Status(1:01:40-1:02:59) Alabama's Realistic Expectations?(1:03:00-1:13:16) Investing in a Backup QB(1:13:17-1:16:02) EA Sports College Football Video Game UpdateIt’s a Dear Andy show, so naturally we’ll start with a question about the possibility of the College Football Playoff expanding to 14 or 16 teams. That’s what the commissioners in charge of the CFP talked about on Wednesday, and they have about a month to decide how they want to tweak the CFP format.How would a 14-team playoff look? What about a 16-team format? Why are commissioners considering this? How would it change automatic bids?Next up, West Virginia coach Neal Brown joins the show. He discusses ending the 2023 season with a mayo bath, proving wrong the people who predicted the Mountaineers would finish last in the Big 12 and retaining the best players on the roster in the NIL era.Brown also explains the process of testing out a coach-to-helmet communication system in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. Does he think everyone will be using similar systems this season?Then it’s back to Dear Andy…Does the 12-team format — which may only exist for 2024 and 2025 — favor the teams that finish No. 3 in the Big Ten or SEC?Would Oklahoma’s predicted win total be higher if Dillon Gabriel were still the Sooners’ starting quarterback?Is UCLA in danger of being more like Indiana or Northwestern in the Big Ten?How should schools handle quarterback recruiting in the NIL era?Want to watch the show instead? Head on over to YouTube and join us LIVE from 8-9 am et! https://youtube.com/live/eT1kYeYXl7s

Welcome to Andy Staples on three. It is a dear Andy show. Your questions drive the show. And oh, by the way, we can get right to it with your questions because there's more playoff expansion potentially on the way and soon, except not for two years and before they ever play a 12-team playoff. I know it's confusing. I'm actually very glad we just did the FAQs on the 12-team playoff yesterday before we got to the 14 or the 16 because I think it's just going to confuse people even more. I was listening to non-college football specific stuff yesterday and they were trying to explain

how the 12 team playoff is going to work and nobody who doesn't get in the weeds in college football seems to understand anything like I heard guys say well Notre Dame can't be any higher than sixth no they can't be any higher than fifth but again if you're not in the weeds on this stuff how are you supposed to know that like It is one of the most confusing things. Your postseason shouldn't be this confusing. And so here's the thing. I'm about to reach a breaking point here on this. And you know me, I've been Mr. Expand the Playoff. I've had no problem with them wanting to make changes. But at this point, it is pretty clear

they are making this stuff up as they go along. So if you're just going to make it all up and if everything's going to change anyway, half the time before you've actually done anything, then you need to tear it all down and start over. So tomorrow, on tomorrow's show, we're going to talk about that. Dan Wetzel from Yahoo is going to join us, the smartest guy I know. And we're going to have a

no bad ideas meeting where we're just going to come up with everything. We're going to try to tear it down and rebuild it from the ground up because all of this like bandaid here, bandaid here, it's getting very confusing for normal people who don't spend every day obsessing about college football. And I realized on this show, we're all obsessing about college football most of the day, but there's a lot of people out there who aren't. David says, playoff might expand. That's cool. hope they keep buys and add play in games I I'm hoping that's sarcasm I'm sensing sarcasm there sensing sarcasm Mike in the chat with this expansion does this mean that James Franklin can actually do something

next year instead of just talking about oh that's cold Mike that's cold Mike's a Michigan fan I think James Franklin could have made the 12-team playoff next year. We'll find out because they will have a 12-team playoff next year. John says, surely you know smarter people than Dan Wetzel. No. No. Dan's the smartest guy I know. No question.

No question. K&R, the more they expand it, the more chance it has for the champion to be a fluke. Am I off base? Yes, you're off base because you have to beat more good teams. It's not basketball. You can't have one hot shooter and beat a team that has 25 better players than your best player. It doesn't work that way. Like, I'll give you an example. When Butler

played Duke for the national title in basketball, Butler had the best player on the floor. Duke had the next five best players on the floor at any given moment. Butler almost won it. Gordon Hayward's shot goes in, they win. If that's the case in football, if you have the best player on the field and the other team has the next best 11 players on the field at any given moment, you're going to lose. So that's why it's a little bit hard to be fluky. You might win one of those,

but you're not going to win four of those. But it is Dear Andy Show. We also have a visit from Neil Brown, the West Virginia coach, where I'll be dear kneeling because I had a lot of questions for him. He got a mayo bath at the end of the mayo bowl. They were using the helmet radios in that game.

How's that work? Because it looks like that's coming to college football. But we'll start with a deer ante question. And this is very timely and topical. From Talking College Ball, Dearest Andrew, I hope this X finds you well. I've seen some fans pontificate their view of the power too. If the college football postseason tournament expands to 16 teams and auto bids are removed,

who would be upset? I would not envision many. Warmly, Talking Ball. Well, Talking Ball, I think we know based on about a hundred years of history that any potential changes to the postseason will cause people to complain. That is a given. We know that. Now, what you said, 16 teams, no automatic bids, I think would be very interesting. I think Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the SEC, Tony Petitti, the commissioner of the Big Ten, I think they might find that interesting. I don't know that the other commissioners would find that incredibly interesting, although we're about to talk about this. So on Wednesday in Grapevine, Texas,

the commissioners who run the college football playoff got together and they met about the format from 2026 and beyond. Remember, they've decided on a format for 2024 and 2025. Again, this is all very confusing. So drop a note in the chat if I'm confusing people, if I'm going off on too many tangents here. But right now they're talking about what they're going to do when this current TV contract ends, which is after the 2025 season and what they'll do picking up in 2026. And so they are talking about potentially expanding it again. They could expand it to 14. They could expand it to 16. Now talking ball, you're not going to get what you want here because they were still going to have automatic bids. In fact, now there's talk of more automatic bids. So more automatic bids probably going to the SEC and the Big Ten. I've said all

along, don't codify your automatic bids. Do not say they go to this conference or this conference or this conference unless it's one per. Because if you say, well, these two get two, the rest of you, we're not going to name any of you, but if you're the highest ranked and your champ is the highest ranked, then you're in. That doesn't make any sense. You should probably just do best 16 or best 14 if you want to do it that way,

because then the highest ranked group of five champ is going to get in some years. It's going to get in a lot of years, but I don't think they're going to do that. Everybody wants a guarantee. Everybody wants to know what they're getting. Now, here's what's interesting about this. So this ESPN contract, which Bill Hancock, who's the director of the CFP for now, he's on his way out, but he said they got to get this figured out in a month. Basically, everything has to start being planned for. Sites have to be booked. So they do not have much time to get this figured out. The contract we keep talking about is $1.3 billion a year. Now, more specifically,

it's $120 million a game. Now, some games are worth more than others. Championship games, semifinals, those are worth more than quarterfinal games are worth more than first round games. But if we're going to talk about the number, I'm not going to get super upset about the number. I do think it's silly that you haven't even played a 12 team format yet, and you're already going to expand it. If you're going to do that, just expand this year's to 14 or 16. And I realize you can't, you've already booked sites and everything, but if you're going to do that, just do it. Like it's dumb to say we're going to do 12 just these two years. Like what if 12 is awesome? What if 12 turns out to be the perfect number

and you've already scrapped it? But I'm not going to get too upset about the number. Again, if it's 14 or 16, it doesn't add any rounds to the tournament. The tournament has the same number of rounds either way. So let's look at this through the lens of the advisory group. So the advisory group is the SEC and the big 10. They're the people who run everything now, whether they want to say it or not, or they want to admit it or not. They're the people who run everything now. They want more of the money out of this. They want a higher percentage of money from this deal, and they're probably going to get it. They also probably want more money in general and this would give everybody more money. So if it's 120 million a game, and again,

we don't know how that contract is agreed upon and it hasn't been signed yet. So everything's probably still up for negotiation, but let's say it's 120 million a game. If you go to 14, that's adding two games to the first round. That would be 1.5 billion a year that everybody would be splitting. Presumably the Big Ten and the SEC getting a larger share than anybody else. If you go to 16, that would be 1.75 billion a year for everybody to split. Presumably the SEC and the Big Ten get a larger share. Now, here's where 14 is interesting. If it's 14, there's still two buys instead of four buys.

There's four buys in the 12 team. There'd be two buys in the 14 team. Everybody else got to play a first round game. Who do you think is going to get those buys most years? Hmm. Who might that be? Would it be the SEC champ and the Big Ten champ? In some order?

So there's why 14, which doesn't otherwise make much sense, might make sense. Yeah, we want our champions. Because remember, the buys were built into this thing when Greg Sankey and Jack Swarbrick and Craig Thompson and Bob Bowlesby, when they created this 12-team format a few years ago. The buys were built in to keep the conference championship games relevant, to make them matter, to make them still viable commercial properties. The SEC makes a ton of money off its championship game. The big 10 makes a ton of money off its championship game. They don't want those to some,

to just be irrelevant. And we got another question later in Dear Andy about that particular piece of this, which is very interesting. But that's why. So if the SEC championship game and the Big Ten championship game were to be for a buy in the college football playoff, if the winner gets a buy and the loser has to go play a bunch of teams and play an extra game,

then that would make sense. That would make sense why they would want that. And it gets the number up to 1.5. But remember, when they put this out to market, when they put the 12-team playoff out to market, they thought they were going to get $1.8 billion a year. They didn't. They got half a billion less than they thought they were going to get. This would help get them back to where they kind of wanted to be. So that's what's going on. And this is all going to happen very fast.

Again, they've got about a month and it's not like before. Remember before the pack two, the two pack could hold things up because everything had to be unanimous. This is the end of this 12 year contract at the end of the 25 season. It doesn't have to be unanimous anymore. Music Meister. I also don't think that thefp and any tv media should be associated with each other music meister how would we watch the games if there were no tv media associated with the cfp i don't think you understand how this works we have to watch like they have to televise it if we get to see them, unless we just all go,

but the stadiums aren't that big. So they're going to have to contract with somebody who televises games. Everybody thinks the TV is such a conspiracy. It is a conspiracy, but it's not as insidious as you think. Everybody's just trying to make the most money possible. That's what they're trying to do. But it's crazy to me that you've not even played a single 12-team format. Now, granted, there should have been a 12-team playoff last year. We can thank the members of the Alliance, the ACC, the Pac-12, and the Big Ten for screwing that up. Pac-12 got destroyed. The ACC might be destroyed.

And the Big Ten was pulling an okie-doke on the Pac-12 and the ACC. So we know how that worked out. That was not a very smart move by the ACC and the Pac-12. And they played themselves. Like the ACC champ would have gotten in the playoff had the ACC not delayed the 12-team playoff. Congratulations. So we should have seen it already, but we haven't seen it yet, and yet they're already going to expand it. It is wild to me that this is how it's going to go down. And oh, by the way, there's this artificial timeline, like you got to get this done. I say, or if it's not really artificial again,

this stuff does have to be planned in advance. So there's not like a plumber's convention where they're supposed to have the national championship game. So they got to do this, but they are, they're doing it very fast. And at a time when the management of the sport is sort of up in the air. Because again, how college football is run

kind of is going to get dictated by the courts and the National Labor Relations Board. So it's not like something could change dramatically in the next year. And then you're going to have to change all this again. Plus, I mentioned the ACC. You got them suing Florida state, Florida state suing them. We don't know that everybody's conference membership is settled, that it's going to look like this in 2026. In fact, I think it's more likely it doesn't look like this in 2026. So stay tuned, everybody.

We got a lot to talk about. There is no off season here. None. No off season whatsoever. Who knows? It might be like 80 teams by the time we actually see the 2026 college football playoff. But I do want to point out these numbers because this is one where, and I think maybe we're past that point where people get upset about that. You don't have that

many teams deserve to make the college football play. It's not about deserve. It's about entertainment. It's about staging an entertaining tournament that you're going to want to watch on television. So let me throw these numbers out at you. In the NBA, 54% of the teams make the playoff. In the NFL, 44% of the teams make the playoff. In Major League Baseball, 40% of the teams make the playoff. In the NCAA tournament, 18.7% of the teams make the play 68 out of 364 division one teams. That's so it seems like a small number, but it's probably, you know, of the power conference schools, it's probably closer to what you see in the pro sports where it's like 30 to 40% of the power schools make it. Now the CFP, if we're talking about just the FBS, that's 133 teams, the 12 team playoff, 9% make it. 14 team, 10.5%. 16 team, 12%. So it's still the most selective playoff of any of the major sports. Now I'd say we could probably boil that down to power conferences because there's probably only one spot going to a group of five school.

So if we just did the power conferences, we're 65. Power conferences in Notre Dame is 65. 12-team playoff is 18.5%. 14 is 21.5%. 16 is 24.6%. So closer to what the pro sports do, but not still not that close. It would still be a pretty selective tournament. I think it'll be an entertaining one, but again, you're expanding it before we even see a 12 team. It's just wild. Andrew in the chat, give us a March Madness style bracket for

CFP. A 64 team is just what the sport needs. 64 team playoff would be wild. Now, it's only two extra games if we think about it that way. Like 16s, the winner has to win four games. 64 team playoff, the winner has to win six games. So it's not as outside the realm of, and meanwhile, the commissioners are like, ooh, oh, when thought of that, Andrew, don't give them ideas. Don't give them ideas. They're struggling enough as it is. They're just making this up as they go along. A man who is not making it up as he goes along, Neil Brown, the head coach at West Virginia. He came out at Big 12 Media Days last year and said, you're all wrong. You're predicting us to finish last. You are wrong.

And he was correct. West Virginia won nine games last year, retained a lot of their good players. So we're going to hear from Neil Brown very shortly. But first, I want to tell you about PrizePix. Best daily fantasy app on the planet. Download that PrizePix app, use the referral code Andy, and you will get $100 deposit match up to. So if you deposit a hundred bucks, they will match you a hundred bucks. If you deposit 50, they'll deposit 50 to match you. And how's it work? So you're playing against a number. You're not playing against a bunch of fantasy sharks who are just using algorithms. You are playing against a number. So if you're, let's say a college basketball game, and let's say it's a Kentucky game this weekend, and you want to see, they'll put Rob Dillingham's point total up there. And it'll be something to

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who ended last season getting a bucket of mayonnaise dumped on him West Virginia coach Neil Brown you're joined now by West Virginia coach Neil Brown who uh well how long did it take you to mayo out of the hair well since I know you're a food kind of sewer you would appreciate this so I'm I detest mayonnaise uh I'm a I'm a huge Dukes fan um I hate mayonnaise too I like that Dukes makes other sauces they do man like quality barbecue sauce really honey mustard like good like it's a it was a good learning experience. They do the mayo dump. I had to do a quick interview there for 30 seconds. I hustled to the locker room, threw those clothes in the trash, never to be seen again,

showered. I made it as painless as possible. I hate mayo so much. What I would want in that situation, and by the way, at least they didn't give you a concussion like they did Shane Beamer with the bucket. Yeah, that's true. But what I would do, I hate mayo so much that the smell makes me gag. I would want to sprint immediately into one of those showers that you see in the sci-fi movies

where they're de-lousing you. So they have the fire hoses. Just hit me with them. Get it all out. I thought I had a great plan. Like I had our raincoat. I had one of our assistant equipment managers, who's kind of my guy. And I told him to take it.

I felt pretty good about winning the game. So I'm usually a visor guy, wore a full hat because I didn't want my hair. And then I tell Austin, our assistant equipment manager, I'm like, hey, take the raincoat out there. The minute we win the game, give me that raincoat as soon as I'm coming off the podium.

So I'm thinking, hey, I'm going to wear the raincoat during this. I'm saying the same thing. I can't stand the smell of mayonnaise. I don't like the texture of it, anything. Well, Wren Baker, our athletic director, takes the raincoat. Oh, no. That's plan B. So if you see the pictures, I've got my sweatshirt pulled tight around my neck

so it doesn't run down my back. And Ren Baker's like, I'm going to sell some WVU raincoats. That flying WV looks great on a raincoat. But listen, you've got to appreciate when the ADC sees the revenue streams. But this season, I go back to like I re-listened to your press conference from Big 12 Media Days where you came out and said, you are all wrong. You are predicting us 14th. Here's how many offensive line starts we have coming back. Love this team.

And how satisfying was it to have that season? Yeah, no, satisfying, satisfying for sure. A little bit what ifs because obviously we lose on the Hail Mary and then we're up against Oklahoma State in the fourth quarter and we don't finish. And so two really winnable games that we didn't finish on. And so there's still a real hunger in our building. But it was satisfying. And when I went to the Big 12 media days and we got picked last, I understood it from a small perspective because the narrative around us was so negative. But what they didn't see is they didn't see that our culture had changed and really some of our struggles in 22, some narrow losses.

But some things happened that we didn't do a good enough job athletic department wise within our football program to really change to the kind of changing pace of college football. And so I knew even though we went five and seven, we won two of our last three, beat Oklahoma, beat Oklahoma State. We weren't that far away. And then I had a lot of trust in our offensive line and our defensive line. And I felt like regardless of what league you're playing in, if you're good up front, then you have a chance. And that's where I thought the media was just didn't do a very good job doing their homework. And some of that is because of the media that covers the Big 12, so Texas-centric. They don't really know what we have. And they see the record.

They see what we lost. And they just assume that we weren't going to be very good. But we had the second most, I think, offensive line starts returning. And we got multiple NFL players up front, and we changed the offense. We changed our defense, which at that time the media didn't know that. And I said that just because I really felt that, and then I wanted our players to hear that too. So you mentioned the struggles in 22.

You lost a lot of players in the portal in 22. You retained most of your key players going into last season. If you look at how things have gone since your season ended, you've retained most of the guys that you wanted to retain this year. How has that changed? What's the pitch like post-Dukes-Mayo Bowl to these guys to make sure they're back in Morgantown? Yeah, well, if you go in reverse, kind of where we were after our bowl game,

we lose the guaranteed rate bowl to Minnesota, who was better than us at the end of the 21 season. And we just didn't have the necessary things in place to hold on to our players. Now we do. Our collective, the Country Roads Trust, we've done a really good job of raising money. I think that it's very well run. It's backed. And we've got a really good plan and they've got a really good plan. So that's kind of changed and allows us to retain. That's been a big piece of it. But I also think, Andy, is we've figured out kind of what's the best path forward

in this new era of college football for West Virginia. And really for us, it's about out-evaluating and signing really good fits for us out of the high schools and developing those guys and then retaining those guys. Um, and, you know, we, we, from, uh, you know, what guys are earning coming out of high school their first year, um, you know, we put, uh, not as much emphasis on that and more emphasis on the retention of the guys that have been here in our program and produced. So I think the collective changing how we think about retention. And then we really put an emphasis on making sure our guys have a great

experience. Like we've heavily invested in nutrition. We've heavily invested in our recovery. We've heavily invested in things that, that are maybe unique and different to us. And, and, and it's worked. And we've done a great job from a relationship standpoint. That matters. That's not the only thing that matters. That used to be kind of one of the real decision makers in transfer. That's not always the number one, but it still matters. Yeah. Yeah. Because everything matters. And I used to tell people like with linemen, linemen don't like to move. They don't like change. They don't like to meet or have to meet a bunch of new people. So if you keep them happy, if they feel comfortable, it might not necessarily be the largest dollar figure that that draws them. But it's interesting what you were what you were saying, because I've heard a lot of the same things from Mike Norvell at Florida State, where just being very

brutally honest about the evaluation of your own roster and realizing who is a great contributor for you, who you can keep. That seems to be the secret sauce there. Well, you have to project too. And I think that one of the things you have to do earlier in a guy's career is you have to give them opportunities to play. And if a guy's going to redshirt where a lot of offensive linemen and defensive linemen are still doing that, if they're going to – man, you've got to give them a lot of attention. And that's something we try to do here with both fronts is we've got a development program that we put them through in the weight room

where they're getting a ton of attention from our strength coach. We are intentional about making sure that we do individual and team stuff throughout the season not just one day a week you know we do it four days a week during the season to make sure they're getting coached and they understand our schemes and and there's constant feedback being given where they understand that there is a future and this is a path for them yeah and and you got three offensive line starters coming back, but then you've got two open spots with people who've played. And it seems like that's the most – like those guys need to see the path, like you said.

They do. And we got five of our seven back. And just talk about offensive line. You're a former lineman so I think you probably understand this maybe even better than than most of your listeners is the offensive line for us is really um that's the single position group that's uh has had the most influence on our team and so when we got here we had one starter and Colton McKibbitz who was a great player starting right tackle for the San Francisco 49ers.

He worked the right way. But our numbers scholarship wise and our talent was not where it needed to be. And then we decided to go young. And Zach Frazier came in in the 2020 season and started every game in his career with the exception of one. And that was the second game. And he played about three quarters of that game. So he really changed. And we added Doug Nestor, who is from West Virginia. That was a transfer from Virginia Tech. And those both of those guys were great leaders for us. And they really set the tone from a work ethic standpoint. Doug was great vocally. And then Wyatt Myland came in the next year. And now Wyatt started, this is going to be, he's going to be a senior. This will be his fourth year as a starter for us.

And so then what would happen, what has happened in that room is now the standard that was set by Zach Frazier and Doug Nestor has continued. And it's how they work. It's how they meet. It's the extra stuff they do, how they handle nutrition, all those things. And so now what that's done is that's gone down to our younger guys. And we've recruited, evaluated and recruited those guys at a pretty good level too. So we got good players coming behind them, but the standard from a work ethic standpoint has really changed. Then what they've done from an offensive line room is they've really challenged the defensive line because they work out and they go against each other. They work out together. They go against each other all the time

in practice. That rose the level of work and play and production in our defensive line room so those both those units are the strength of our football team now well and especially in this big 12 we had gus miles on on yesterday he said he was even surprised he didn't realize how physical a conference it is but i mean you look around the league, you've got Kansas State, you guys, what Utah is going to bring in. Like, you better be able to be good on the line of scrimmage. Yeah. Well, this is, to me, it's the most undervalued league in college football.

And I think across the board, there's more parity in our league. I think it's the most competitive league in college football. And I respect, don't get me wrong, I respect the Big Ten. I respect ACC. I respect SEC. And SEC and the Big Ten, their top teams have probably won at a little higher level than our top teams have. But if you look at just the depth in our league in week in and week out,

like how tough it is, the bottom teams in our league have a chance to be the top teams in our league every single week. And I think when people think of the Big 12, they think, oh, it's air raid and throwing around and like defense. Well, that narrative is completely wrong. And that tells me if I get a question like that, my first thought is, well, you haven't been paying attention. You're not a knowledgeable college football fan because that hadn't been the case in the last three years.

Like this is a this is a league that's physical up front. Look at the number of offensive line draft picks in this in this draft coming up. And then look at the number of defensive line draft picks over the last two years. And you'll see like there's quality players on both fronts. This is a physical league that plays defense and is developing really good guys on both lines of scrimmages. Yeah, it's a dramatic difference than what it used to be because I did all those studies years ago about how many offensive linemen

got drafted and where they got drafted, D linemen. You're right. The league is producing better ones at a much better clip. And, you know, I think the way Gus runs the ball at UCF, you're going to see that there. What, you know, what Kansas wants to do with Jeff Grimes coming in as an offensive coordinator, like it is going to be a smash mouth league.

I wanted to ask you about in your bowl game, you were one of the teams that got a chance to use the helmet communication. And now it looks like they're going to make that legal. So what was that like? What was that experience like? How did it work? Yeah. So let's go backwards here.

So we've been fortunate. We were kind of a test school for the last, for the previous two springs we used it for a weekend spring ball and in our spring game the last two years so in 22 and 23 both we used it and it's just so in the bowl game we didn't have there there was not i think when people initially think about this thing about the nfl which they should, the NFL has only one player on each side of the ball can use it. It cuts off at 15 seconds.

That's not what we had in the bowl game. On defense, we had both our linebackers, both our safeties. We had four units that we used on defense. On offense, we just put in our quarterback, but we could have had more. Yeah. And there was no shut off and so you could talk to the guys right yeah and and so to me i think one of the issues we have in college football and it was exposed by when you saw uh um the michigan stuff with with this signals

and and to me the the sign stealing wasn't as big an issue as the advanced scouting. And I think that kind of got lost. I think everybody's probably trying to steal signs, signals at some point. In game, yeah. Yeah, in games. But the thing that took it over the top was the filming and the supposed filming, I don't know, in the advanced scouting piece. That's what made it a little different.

But I just think if you look at our college sidelines, like they look like clown shows right now, different color shirts, you know, a bunch of people. And and so the staffs have become so big and there's people that are just designed to do that. You know, there's people have real systems. And so I think, man, we need to clean that up. And I've been a huge proponent of this probably for the last three years is the technology's there it makes no sense for us not to be able to do it the helmet manufacturers are okay with it um and and so we used in the bowl game um it was very good for us um so i could talk directly as the play caller i talked directly

to the quarterback our defense coordinator talked directly to the linebackers and the safeties. That's the thing that's probably surprised me. I knew the benefits offensively, you know, how it would benefit us, but it really helped us defensively. Oh, yeah. And especially the way you did it where you had the two linebackers and the two safeties because a lot of times the linebackers and the safeties have to talk to one another before they can then,

like the safeties didn't go to the corners and the linebackers didn't come up to the D lineman and talk to them. Now you can say something directly to them and they just go to whoever they need to send the message to. Yeah, and so we didn't signal at all on defense in the bowl game. And so our linebackers talked to the D line and their safeties talked to the corners. And that's how we did it.

And it was really effective. And I think that you're going to see, I really do believe it's going to get passed and it should. The key is, is how many units are going to be on the field at one time? Is there a cutoff or not? But I think you'll see that and other technology pieces go through, having access to iPads on the sideline and those type of things so did garrett your quarterback did he ever say like coach shut up i'm trying to think here this is good i think i to me like i think the less

restrictions you put on it the better because then you don't have to police it as much yeah and so what we did is when we got into our real like North Carolina prep for the, for the game is I started, we, we used it for the lead up the week that we practiced, uh, versus North Carolina here. And then we did it for, uh, the week we were in Charlotte preparing for the bowl game. Um, and so the first couple of couple of days we did it, I just told Garrett, I was like, Hey, listen, you're not going to hurt my feelings. Just tell me what's enough and what's not enough. And so he gave me some good feedback.

And essentially what I did is I gave him the play. And then if I wanted to remind him something, if we were doing a protection that I wanted to remind him who his hot was, I would say that. And that was about it. And I didn't talk to him much other than that. I can't wait because when they brought the bed sheets out, that was it for me. The bed sheets on the poles where you have three guys with, I don't know.

It's a bad look. It's a multi-billion dollar operation. It doesn't need to be that way. If you look at an NFL sideline and you look at a college sideline, drastically different. It's just a bad, it's just a bad look for college football. If you look at an NFL sideline and you look at a college sideline, drastically different. It's just a bad look for college football, and this is an opportunity to clean it up.

So you mentioned as the play caller, and this is something that you decided last season that you were going to get back to doing. How did you find that? Because it's amazing to me how different everybody's opinion. With Gus yesterday, he's going back to it this year. He had thought the CEO stuff was more important, but now he wants to do it. Eli Drinkwit says he liked handing off to somebody else. How was it for you being back in that role?

Yeah, so when we had our struggles in 22, I think quality leaders should always look inward first. And I had a lot of things I had to do better. And for me, what it was is we had a lot of success at Troy and we had just been okay here and definitely underachieved in 22. And what I kind of undervalued was there's more to the job here than there was at Troy, but not like night and day like people think. And college football changed, so it added to your plate.

Like the player, you know, working player retention year round, the NIL stuff, you know, you're working those two things every single day. There's not a day goes by that I don't deal with some kind of NIL or player retention. You know what I mean? But so what I did there toward the end of the 22 season was like, I made a conscious decision as a leader that I was going to focus on what my strengths were. And then I was going to focus on what's necessary. So aspects of my job that I'm really good at, and then aspects of my job that are necessary. So like a necessary would be an IL, right? Things I'm good at were offensive, the design and the schedule and the calling of the game, those things, those have been strengths.

That's the reason that I got to this point to begin with, right? And then the things that either that weren't strengths of mine or weren't necessary for the head coach to do is I had other people and here's the thing like I had the people in the building they're more qualified and they're better at it than I am and then what we did from an offensive standpoint is like we've got a staff here and most of these guys have been with him for a really good uh and i gave them a ton and then not i gave they earned a ton of of of say and so what ended up for me what happened was i was really a collector of the information i was really taking their ideas and putting them into a game plan and organizing it and then calling it on game day and i had really good help during the game and

what it does for me as a head coach is it helps me manage the game better um yeah i think the offensive play caller has the most influence of anybody in the game non-player wise and so you know and here's what i mean by that andy is like if we're playing a tempo team that's playing really really fast um and we need to give the defense a break. That's not necessarily what we do. We don't huddle. We don't do those type of things. But I can slow the game down without our players having an understanding of what's going on.

Or if we're getting into four-down territory, if you're not a play caller, you've got to give the offense coordinator a really good idea of, hey, you got, this is a two down call and you really need to tell them on first and second down when they're going to have four downs. So you got to be really ahead. But as if you're the, if you're the head coach in the offense play caller, you kind of know. And so you can make that decision between second and third down when it's going to be. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's, there's less communication. It's easy to manage your time out, especially on offense. And so that's what it was for me is when I took it, I took that back in.

And I'm not saying I'll do it forever, but it's definitely the right thing for us right now. And we've made so many changes to what we do. You know, like we were air raid forever. And that's kind of my background. And we decided, you know, probably last November, November 22, that that wasn't who we were going to be moving forward. And we're going to have a dual threat quarterback. You know, we were going to run the football and concentrate on being explosive in the past game. And so I just felt like if we were going to make that change, I need to be the one that was that was implementing. So before I let you go, I want to ask about one of your outgoing guys. And you've already mentioned him and what an impact he had on your program. But Zach Frazier, one of my favorite players to watch in the whole country.

I love a good center, a guy who just controls everything on the line of scrimmage. And, I mean, dude broke his leg at the end of the season. Was he trying to play in the bowl game with a broken leg or is it i mean like if they would have let him he would have you know i thought yeah i mean it's like the ultimate team guy like what what is an nfl team getting in in zach fraser yeah well he's going to set the standard of how he works uh he's extremely intelligent um from a football standpoint uh for us he was a quarterback for offensive line. He had, he made all our identifications, both the run game in the,

in the past game. He has a deep understanding of making sure we get our five on their five, you know, and, and that sounds a lot easier than it is, as you know. Yeah. And he's really strong, plays a great leverage, and he's got – like he's not as tall maybe as your prototypical, but he's got long arms and he's got extremely – he's got big hands and strong hands. And like his wrestling background – you know,

he's four-time state champion in wrestling. And his whole side of his mother on his mom's side are all really successful wrestlers. And you see that in his game you know like you see him playing with leverage and hand strength i really believe this okay um i think i think zach will if he stays healthy which he he has done except with one except he only missed one game due to injury and that was a bowl game um so he played a lot of consecutive games for us i really believe he'll be a 10 plus year starter in the nfl he's got he'll be an all pro i really

i believe that he's the i coach a lot of really good players he's the i'm not saying he's the most talented he's the best football player that i've had the opportunity to coach well i can't can't wait to see what he does. Cannot wait to see what you guys do because you're coming off this great season, lots of key guys back and, and who knows, maybe nobody has to wear a pink shirt to, to call plays. Neil Brown. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks Andy.

The great Neil Brown. And yes, I'm very, very excited to see Zach Frazier going forward because that dude was so much fun to watch at West Virginia. But you know what else is fun? Your questions. You guys always have some great ones. And we'll start with a question from Rich that came in while we were still in 12-team playoff mode before we started thinking about a 14 or a 16.

And remember, there are going to be two seasons, at least we think, of a 12-team playoff before. So let's talk about Rich's question, which brings up an interesting scenario. The more I'm thinking about the playoff, the more it seems the third-place teams in the SEC and Big Ten have the best path to the title. Take the SEC, for example. If the regular season ends with Georgia at number one, Alabama at number four, these are national rankings, and Texas at number five, with Georgia beating Alabama in the SEC championship,

Georgia gets a bye, but had to play a 13th game against a top five opponent to get it. And it will play its final four games at a neutral site if you include the SEC championship game. So that would be correct. SEC championship game, quarterfinal, semifinal, national title game, it'll all be neutral site games. Alabama, meanwhile, in this scenario, Alabama has lost the SEC championship game to Georgia, played a 13th game, and now would have to play 17 games if it wants to win the national title. This is also true. Texas essentially would get a bye week before hosting a playoff game and only play 16 games to win the title. It seems like Texas would have the preferable path in that scenario. The above may never happen, but there will be scenarios no one ever conceived as we

enter this new world. The above could absolutely happen. but there will be scenarios no one ever conceived as we enter this new world. The above could absolutely happen. And the thing about Rich's question is whether we're talking about the SEC or the Big Ten, and I think those are the two we're probably talking about in this scenario, the third place team might not be that different from one and two. It kind of depends on the year. Now, what you say is, because you said, what's the incentive of playing the conference championship game? The incentive is if you win it, you get a buy.

And you don't play another single elimination game that you wouldn't have had to play if you hadn't won. So that's the incentive. But yeah, if you lose, it sucks. Because the third place team is in a much better position than you, probably. Now, I would say if you're the committee, you need to protect that SEC championship game or Big Ten championship game loser

by ranking them ahead of the third place team because they were ahead of them before so that you make sure that team isn't knocked into having to go on the road in the first round of the playoffs. Like that team should get to host a game if nothing else. And then maybe it pushes the third place team down into a road game, but it might not. That third place team might be pretty close. And so they may be

six or seven or eight and get to host a game. But yeah, Rich is exactly right. And again, all of this is being done to continue to keep those conference championship games relevant and lucrative. Because if they don't mean anything, then the networks won't want to pay as much money for them in the future. People won't want to travel to them, buy tickets to them. And like the SEC is an absolute cash cow. The big tens has become a cash cow. They don't want that to change. It may have to change. And it may be that the college football playoff is so popular and so lucrative that they're okay with that, that they're still going to net out better. But you've seen how these guys operate.

They want to have their cake and eat it too. So they're going to try to make it all work together. But again, this is an example we were talking about earlier in the show where you're trying to attach these band-aid fixes on what you need is a total teardown and rebuild that would make everything make more sense but they're not going to do that they're going to keep frankensteining this thing until god knows what happens and then maybe they'll accidentally fall into a good format, but Rich's concern is legitimate. This is real. Like if you're the third place, big 10 or sec team, especially if you're pretty close in talent, in capability to one and two,

you may be better off just being the number three team in the league. And you start as the sixth seed in the playoff and you host the 11th seed and you beat them. And then you go beat somebody in a quarterfinal and you had that bye week, which isn't, it's more than a bye week, depending on how the schedule shakes out. It's more than a week. So yeah, it doesn't make a ton of sense that this is how it's going to happen. But yeah, if you get into the SEC or the Big Ten championship game, you better win because if you lose, you put yourself very much behind the eight ball. These next two questions, I'm going to answer together. One is from Clint. One is from David.

So here's Clint, which is the shorter version. Andy, what do you expect Oklahoma's offense to look like in 2024 with Seth Luttrell, the new offensive coordinator, and Jackson Arnold? This question comes from David. If you haven't yet recorded your interview with the Oklahoma writers, which we're going to do that. We're going to take a deep dive in Oklahoma schedule with the guys from Sooner Scoop here in the next week or so, but this is just me. So he says it was too late for that interview, which is not, but don't worry. I'm going to answer this first. One, if Oklahoma

kept Dylan Gabriel, do you think the FanDuel 2024 win total would be higher? If the answer is yes, do you think this means they are intentionally sacrificing some wins this year to develop a higher ceiling QB and chase more wins in the future? That would be super interesting. My former co-host Ari Wasserman always wanted teams that were looking at eight, nine wins and had an exciting five-star on the team to do this. Even if Arnold was threatening to transfer, traditional coaching staff wouldn't acquiesce to the demands of a freshman. Or do you think the coaches have a ton of confidence

in Jackson Arnold, believe they can win more in 24 with him than Gabriel, and the line makers are undervaluing how good Oklahoma will be? I'm really fascinated by Oklahoma and personally believe they're likely to make the playoff. Looking forward to the conversation. I think it is not a case of well we would have to bring in the line makers to tell us if they think that Dylan Gabriel the trade of Dylan Gabriel for

Jackson Arnold made them set Oklahoma's win total so low it's a seven and a half it was actually six and a half when it started and then heavy action brought it up to seven and a half. But I don't think it's that big of a difference between these two. I do think Jackson Arnold has the higher ceiling. I think you probably are going to get fairly similar, similar results one way or the other. Like if you kept Dylan Gabriel there, you probably this year would have gotten fairly similar results. Now as to Clint's question, what's the offense going to look like? Seth Latrell comes from the air raid tree, but he's been working with Jeff Levy. So like the veer and shoot in the air raid are not the same offense. They, they, they operate differently, but there are some things that are similar.

If you're a quarterback working with the receivers, a lot of the concepts of finding open space, you're going to do that. You're going to have to rep it out, get that kind of telepathic connection with your receivers. All of that is still similar and the tempo is similar so you know to a defense it's it's a lot of the same stressors so I do think they're going to be similarly productive I think that the bigger issue for Oklahoma is losing so much talent on the offensive line now they feel pretty good about what they've got but that's probably the bigger question. I was very confused by this win total. I was very confused that it was only seven and a half and that it was lower than that to start with because this team beat Texas last year. They should be as good or better probably than the team

that beat Texas last year. I just don't see it. Now they did lose to Kansas. And you say, okay, well, they have the capability of losing to anybody in the SEC, maybe. But Oklahoma is never bad. If you look in the history of Oklahoma, really, the mid to late 90s are the only sustained period of mediocrity. They just don't fall into that very often. They stay good. And you can say, well, you don't trust Brent Venables, but it hasn't really mattered who coached them either. So I just think, I think Oklahoma is going to be better than the folks in Vegas think Oklahoma is going to be.

And I don't think the Dylan Gabriel, Jackson Arnold thing matters in terms of one would be significantly better than the other. I do think Jackson Arnold probably has the higher ceiling. Now, I don't think they're sacrificing wins to start Jackson Arnold. I do think they looked at the situation. They had these two quarterbacks. Both of them are probably capable of starting. And they said, we'll take the guy who we recruited out of high school, who helped recruit a lot of these younger players, who has potentially the higher ceiling and who has more eligibility remaining. Like Jackson Arnold cannot leave for the NFL until after the 2025 season at the earliest. Dylan Gabriel is done after this year. So that's actually a pretty easy decision if you look at it.

It's the same decision that the K-State people had to make with Will Howard and Avery Johnson. And they went with Avery Johnson, who's same year as Jackson Arnold. And Will Howard goes to Ohio State. Like Dylan Gabriel and Will Howard wound up in great places and in great situations where they may be competing for national titles this year. But I don't think Oklahoma necessarily sacrificed wins to make Jackson Arnold the starting quarterback. In fact, if Jackson Arnold lives up to his potential, they should win as much or more than they would have with Dylan Gabriel starting. So I do think it's the number three prongong of the question I do think it's the coach's

confidence in Jackson Arnold that led them to make this decision so and it may be wrong you know maybe he doesn't develop but you watch the bowl game there were definitely flashes and there were some plays where you're like wow wow, this guy's still a true freshman. This is, this is scary. You can't have this many turnovers, but it is one game for a true freshman making his, I think he was making a second start because he had to make one when, when Dylan Gabriel was hurt. But I'm fascinated by Oklahoma because we saw Texas and the assumption is Texas is going to be one of the best teams in the sec. Assuming Oklahoma is going to get trounced in the SEC, I feel like is a bad assumption. This is not a program that gets trounced. It's not a program that's mediocre. They're just not like that historically. So if you say you're not confident in Brent Venables, okay, I will accept that.

But I just feel like this program has earned the benefit of the doubt. Now, if they go into the SEC and it's a terrible year, I'll be wrong and I'll eat those words. But I don't think that's going to happen. I think Oklahoma is going to be a good to very good SEC program in the very near future because they've been a good to very good program wherever they've been. The Big 8, the Big 12, doesn't matter. So I think they're going to be all right. And I don't think that Dylan Gabriel being a starting quarterback would have changed much this year. I think Oregon's really happy they got him, though. I think they're pretty thrilled because this allows,

instead of one program hoarding two quarterbacks who could be starters pretty much anywhere, this allows one to really take off with some really good talent around him. Next question from Odin Horns, Texas fan. College football has hatedas while it has been down last three or four mac brown years then charlie strong then tom herman will college football hate texas when it's successful again in the sec by the way the texas the university of texas system and the texas a&m system have a combined endowment of 65 billion dollars okay

odin horns do you think people are going to hate Texas less when they're winning? My experience is that people love to hate a few programs. They love to hate Notre Dame, and they love to hate Texas. So I don't think Texas getting better is going to cause fewer people to hate Texas. They may not make fun of you as much. They might not. Actually, they probably make fun of you just as much, but they might not have as much reason to actually make fun of you. It won't hurt your feelings because instead of them referencing real Texas losses, they will just be referencing imaginary scenarios where Texas

loses a game in the future instead of referencing a recent loss because Texas will be winning. So I don't think there's any chance that the hatred level goes down. It can only go up from here, which I'm sure you love. Now, you bring up an interesting point when you talk about what Texas and A&M have in terms of piles of cash in their endowments. Because I think A&M also, if it ever gets really good, will be one of those universally hated programs other than their own fan base. Because they kind of are now, but it's more as a punchline because they can never seem to get over the hump. Texas has gotten over the hump on multiple occasions. And so the hatred level, I think would be like, let's say there's a scenario where Texas and

Texas A&M are really, really good. Kind of like, you know, the Florida, Miami, Florida state thing in the nineties, where those programs in the same state, just dominating college football. Let's say Texas and Texas A&M are the two best programs in the sec over the next five years. If that happened, people outside of those fan bases would hate them more than anything in the whole country. And I got a feeling, Odin Horns, you seem like the type that would like that, that would appreciate that, that would enjoy being hated,

that would embrace being the villain. Congratulations. I think you're headed that way. This question comes from Christian. Is UCLA destined to be the new Northwestern or Indiana of Big Ten football? This really depends on what UCLA does. It depends on what Deshaun Foster does.

And, well, we say Deshaun Foster. The circumstances of Deshaun Foster's hiring suggest that if Deshaun Foster doesn't work, they can very quickly pull the ripcord and make a change. So I don't know that it's necessarily Deshaun Foster or Bust making them successful in the Big Ten. That said, UCLA does not have to resign itself to being like Indiana or like Northwestern. UCLA can be a very good Big Ten program. UCLA has access to players. It has a great education to sell, which I know people say, oh, that doesn't matter in the NIL. It still matters. There's still moms

and dads out there who, when their son becomes a big football recruit, they're also looking at what the degree means, even in the NIL era, even in the NIL era. So UCLA has all of that to sell. Incredible location, very good players nearby. You go back to the Jim Mora era when he had Adrian Clem on his staff and they were getting really good players. You can do that. You can absolutely be a good team in the Big Ten. Can you dominate the Big Ten year in and year out? Are you going to be like Ohio State or Michigan? No, probably not. I think Oregon has

that capability. I'm not sure UCLA does. I'm going to need to see that more consistently for a period of years before I believe that. I think USC has the potential to do that. We've seen USC be able to do that. We've not seen UCLA in the modern era be able to sustain something like that, but can they have good years where they make the playoff, where they compete for big 10 titles? Yes. UCLA has the capability of doing that. Music Meister has a question in the chat. What do you feel the realistic chances of Alabama next year? I think Alabama could compete for the SEC title. Alabama's roster is still very good. Yes, they lose Caleb Downs. Yes, they lost Caden Proctor, but they didn't lose a lot of other

players who they expected to be starters. And then Kalen DeBoer brought guys from Washington and other places who can fit right in Keon Saab you just saw come from Michigan he's probably going to plug right in and play so Alabama probably shopping a little bit in the post-spring portal which means they're shopping outside the SEC but it's a very good roster it's a roster that can compete with the likes of Georgia and Texas and LSU and Texas A&M. It's going to be tough, but when's the SEC not tough? So I think we can no longer assume that Alabama will be dominant because we haven't seen Kalen DeBoer coaching them yet. But I do think we could see 10 wins, 11 wins,

an SEC championship game, birth. Like none, none of that stuff's off the table. Just cause Nick Saban retired. None of it's off the table. Our last question comes from Dan. It's a doozy.

So get ready. Dan says, I know mailbag questions should be short and quick reads, but screw that. Let's get into the details of it. This is about quarterback, not just recruiting, but quarterback management in the NIL era. It's an interesting question. Obviously a good backup quarterback has always been important, but in this new era, you're going to see the champion play 16 or 17 games when few play more than 13. The top odds teams to win next year are the usual suspects, but more importantly, they have very defined backup QBs with five-star recruits. That's Georgia and Texas top tier young transfers. That's Oregon and Ole Miss or both, which is Ohio state.

That makes me ask three questions. Do we see a shift giving more backup QBs playing time, not just when you're up 30 on Portland State, but maybe when you're up 20 on Indiana? Lower the injury risk to your starter, get the backup real game reps, and red shirts be damned. Why would coaches care for red shirt eligibility in this era? And frankly, if you're a good player, you don't have any incentive to follow the MJ Morris model.

MJ Morris was at NC State, and now he's at Maryland. If you're an elite talent, you only need one good year to get drafted. If you make one or two more appearances a year, you'll be more prepared and increase your NIL value in theory. And as a coach, you may think this makes a player more bought in knowing they'll get some playing time. MJ Morris seemed like a sexy name mid-season and the best he could do as a Maryland team that probably goes seven and five. I will push back on that a little bit in a second, but let's, let's finish the question. Do we see the good, never great starters who may as well be GAs become the hot backup commodity for elite schools in a longer season? Spencer Sanders was QB three or four at Ole Miss, but if he had to come in,

I wouldn't be absolutely horrified as an Oregon fan who lived through the Braxton Burmeister days. Curtis Rourke can start at Indiana and win two, three games, or he could probably get an okay NIL deal and be back up somewhere at LSU or Florida State and maybe he wins the job and get better coaching. I thought NIL would make top tier players go to quote unquote smaller schools to get playing time year one at a school who promises not to take a transfer starter and then transfer up to get more experience and better NIL value. Let's call that the Dante Moore model, but he seemed to regret this choice, which was going to UCLA first. He's now at Oregon knowing he wasn't quite ready to start day one. Do you think we'll see more top 20 QB recruits go to a smaller school and take Dante's lead or recruits go to the

best schools knowing they need to sit a year or two, but get the best coaching possible. All very good questions. Let's go back to the first prong of this question. Do you give their backup more playing time? I've always been a proponent of giving your backup some good live reps at any point during the season, even whether you're a national title contender or not, because you're probably going in this age of college football, when quarterbacks run as much as they do, when defenders, especially in elite conferences, are as big and strong and fast as they are, you're probably going to need your backup at some point. You need to know if that guy can play. And so whether that's a series in the third quarter of a game that you're up 17 points early in the season with the first team offense, or, you know, kind of a defined thing, we're going to give you

this, this fourth quarter. And when we get up big, but I think the series in the third quarter or two, those are helpful. The more you can get a guy experience in those situations, the better he's going to be when he comes in, the less freaked out he's going to be when he comes in as far as the red shirting. No, if you've got an elite quarterback, don't bother red shirting. Don't even worry about it. Play him. If you're going to play him, what happened at NC state with MJ Morris was a very interesting situation. It was a little bit different. So what happened with MJ Morris is MJ Morris ended up having to play as a true freshman in 22, which was not really the plan. So come 23, he's thinking he's going to be the starter at NC State.

They wind up recruiting Brennan Armstrong as a transfer over MJ Morris. And they say, okay, we're just going to have Brennan be the bridge guy. And then you're going to red shirt. And then you'll be the guy in 2024. Well, they didn't like the way Brennan Armstrong was playing. So they go to MJ Morris. They're like, Hey, we're going to play you now. He ends up starting four games. He goes three and one. And at the end of four games, he's like, wait a second. I was going to red shirt. Y'all recruited over me. And he's like, I a second. I was going to redshirt. Y'all recruited over me. And he's like, I'm shutting it down.

I'm still redshirt. I'm maintaining that eligibility. And now he'll go to Maryland. Well, he'll replace all-time Big Ten leading passer Talia Tungavailoa. I do think MJ Moore is going to be pretty good at Maryland. So I'm not saying that that's the best he could do. I think he went to a place where he thought he could start right away and he probably have a pretty big career at Maryland. I think that offense is, is pretty good for him. But do you play those guys more? Yes. You play those guys more. No, you don't worry about red shirting.

The Spencer Sanders backup model. I had not thought about this, but this is brilliant. This is really brilliant where you, and it's funny because this is actually what Gardner Minshew was supposed to be at Alabama. And then Mike Leach called him and said, Hey, I think you can start for us at Washington state, but Gardner Minshew was going to go be the backup at Alabama. He's going to be Tua's backup at Alabama with an eye on going into coaching. And that would have been, it would have been a shame because we wouldn't have gotten to see that Washington state seasons out of Gardner Minshew.

I don't know that he'd be in the NFL right now in that situation, but that is a great point that the spit like Spencer, everybody's wondering with Spencer Sanders, like, why is he at Ole Miss is he's not going to win the starting job, but he was a pretty valuable person to have in that quarterback room with Jackson Dart with Walker Howard. That's a good idea. That's something, you know, if I'm a coach, I'm going to start looking around for that type of person. Like, is there a three-year starter out there who maybe got aced out of his job by a transfer or by a higher rated freshman? You go get that person and they serve as kind of like the backup quarterback in the NFL.

Like if you, if you talk to chase Daniel, or you talk about the talk to the guys who've been longtime backup quarterbacks in the NFL, they understand that their job is to get the starter ready and to be as helpful as humanly possible to the starter. They are almost a coach. They're basically a member of the coaching staff. And this is smart. This is very smart. So, Dan, I hope you're charging a consulting fee to some of these coaches because I think that's a very good idea.

And as far as the NIL piece of it, you know, Dan says smaller school. What he means by that is schools that are not as close to the national title. But I think Dylan Raiola is a good example of this. You know, Dylan Raiola, he makes the decision to flip to Nebraska. I don't think it was a coincidence that it was about the same time that Carson Beck said he was coming back to Georgia. So Ryan Puglisi, the other freshman in the class, was going to Georgia with the assumption probably that he was going to sit for a while. Because that's how George's operated. Like Carson Beck had three years before he got to start.

Stetson Bennett obviously was there for a while, left for Juco, came back, and then he got to start. We'll see if some of these younger guys, you know, who winds up succeeding Carson Beck, uh, because you've got a couple of guys that, that Gunnar Watson, you are right. Gunnar Watson's wrong. Gunnar, Gunnar Watson's Detroit quarterback, but Brock Vandegrift left to go to Kentucky, but, but you'll see these guys willing to wait their turn. And so I still think you go, unless you think you're going to start right away at the other school, which I think is what Dylan Riala is thinking. I think the idea is Dylan Riala believes he's going to be the starter for Nebraska this year. But unless you have that lined up at a, at a pretty big school where the NIL is going to be good too, I think you go to the national title contender and

see where you fit in competitively. Because even if you get there and you know that first year, I'm not going to be the guy here, but I'm pretty good. I can go be the guy somewhere else. You can just transfer and go be the guy somewhere else. You've had that experience. You've gotten that coaching. You've been around a program that knows how to win. You soak up some of those work habits and that sort of thing. So I do think that's still going to be the choice for most of your top flight QB recruits. And we'll see. We'll see what happens with Dylan Raiola. I think DJ Lagway is an interesting one this year because he's going to a Florida program where coaches on the hot seat don't know how good they're going to be this year.

Very likely that the coach who recruited him isn't there in 2025, which means he might not be there in 2025. But unlike Nebraska, Florida has a clearly defined veteran starter in Graham Mertz. So that's a different situation too. I think everybody's going to kind of handle it their own way, but I still think you're going to see most of those guys go to program that is close to the national title stacks, the quarterbacks one on top of each other. And then they see how they fit because I think most of those guys are pretty competitive. You know, I think back to when Alabama had

Jalen Hurts, Tua Tungvaluwa and Mack Jones in the QB room all at the same time. And they were very competitive with one another. Jalen Hurts realized, okay, I'm going to run out of time here. So I'm going to go to Oklahoma and finish. Mack Jones was not going to run out of time. He's like, I can be whoever comes behind these guys. And so he stayed and became the starter. So I do think that's still going to be the more likely option. All right. A little news for our guy, Pete Naco say Naco-sification, if you will, EA sports has announced the opt-in program for players to be in the game, the real players. You don't have to download a roster where somebody put the names in.

There won't be fake names. These will be the guys. And so they have to opt in and it's a group situation. And if you opt in, you get 600 bucks and a copy of the game, which for most of the players is going to be just fine. In fact, most of the players would just take a copy of the game and to be in the game, they're going to do about 85 players on each roster, basically the number of scholarship players on each roster. And it's going to be the real guys. Now they've got to download an app and they've got to fill a form out to get this and they can opt out. Well, if they don't opt in, EA is going to go, okay, you didn't opt in. If you're a superstar and you didn't opt in, EA is going to talk to you and probably cut a deal with you, but they don't have to. But I think most people will opt in.

So if you look at it, it's going to be about six and a half million dollars that EA is going to pay out on this thing. And you get real names. And if you think about what EA makes on that game, drop in the bucket. And EA was all fine with this. The EA always wanted to do this. The NCAA wouldn't allow it. And it took lawsuits and everything else and NIL to get that to this point where they can pay the guys for it. But I always thought if you just gave a free copy of the game and said, you're in the game, like your face is in the game, your name's in the game, most guys would be cool with that. But 600 bucks and a copy of the game, come on,

that's a hell of a deal. So we're getting the game, real people. We'll see how everybody opts in. I've really enjoyed on Twitter this morning, the people who work in college sports, the people who work in operations or academic advising, they've been tweeting, oh my God, you're going to make this many college students fill out forms. This is going to be a very tough job for whoever's in charge of making sure these things get

filled out. But God bless them. They're doing the Lord's work because we are getting that game this summer. Cannot wait. Cannot wait till tomorrow, though. Our friend Dan Wetzel from Yahoo Sports, smartest person I know. No bad ideas Friday. We are going to figure out what they should be doing

instead of Frankensteining the college football playoff and everything else. We might tear it all down and rebuild it in one episode. Who knows? We'll talk to you tomorrow.