Andy & Ari On3 - Did Andy overreact to what LSU coach Brian Kelly said? | Can Notre Dame go undefeated in 2024?

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

It’s a Dear Andy episode, so your questions drive the show.… Did Andy overreact to what LSU coach Brian Kelly said?… Is Florida State the biggest roadblock to an undefeated Notre Dame season?… Will coaches salaries decline when players are paid directly by schools?… Which of the new members of the ACC will fare the best?(0:00-5:42) Intro - Spencer Danielson Comments(5:43-9:21) Congressional Bill Proposed(9:22-13:18) Washington State NIL Beer(13:19-14:23) Dear Andy Intro(14:24-32:09) Brian Kelly on Transfer Market(32:10-43:19) Notre Dame and an Undefeated Season?(43:20-51:59) Coaches Salaries(52:00-55:25) Georgia since 2019(55:26-1:03:37) Desperate Schools paying up?(1:03:38-1:04:24) General Booty in EA Sports(1:04:25-1:07:22) Favorite Topics/People to Cover(1:07:23-1:09:38) ConclusionWant to watch the show instead? Head on over to YouTube and join us live at 8 am et! https://youtube.com/live/OhwKpaHPNJQFollow Andy Staples on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Andy_Staples

Welcome to Andy Staples on three part do for this Thursday dear Andy edition. Yeah, we started the show at our normal time of 8 a.m. Eastern time and then about 13 minutes in the power just went out. Just boom, poof, gone. So, we're back. The power's back on, the electricity is flowing again. And we're going to redo that first 13 minutes because we could always do it better. And we have some great deer ante questions

for you. Did I overreact to what Brian Kelly said? We'll see. We'll talk about that. Also going to throw a little Hugh Freeze in there too. He said something interesting that was kind of in a similar vein

also a very interesting question about Notre Dame that on its surface and you if you're watching the YouTube stream you see the title that Notre Dame can Notre Dame go undefeated in 2024 you're like undefeated well we'll get to the question. It's a very interesting question when you break things down. And it's not as far-fetched as it might sound. But first, we've got a little bit of news to cover. Just a tiny bit. So on Wednesday, Spencer Danielson, the Boise State coach, did an interview with the local beat writers. And really, probably the most interesting part of the interview was him talking about calling other coaches who were trying to tamper with his players, specifically running back Ashton Gentry, who is Boise State's best player, and saying, hey, guys, knock it off.

I know what you're doing. Stop it. And it's a really interesting dynamic with the tampering because nobody ever turns anybody in. Because as my friend Max Olson at The Athletic likes to say, everyone wants to reserve the right to tamper. But Spencer Danielson, who probably is not going to do as much, his staff probably not going to be seeking out a lot of players from the places that are trying to take an Ashton Gentry. Sure. Just call them directly. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in those conversations, but that was not what the headline was out of that press conference. The headline was Spencer Danielson is banning freshmen from from nil now he went on the radio in boise later to explain this because this i think this got a little garbled in the game of telephone and so he's not banning freshmen from nil he can't tell collective, don't give the freshmen anything. He said, if you want to go get NIL deals on your own, by all means, go ahead. But what they're saying is at Boise State, they're going to prioritize retaining the veterans. There's probably not anything left over at that point for

the freshmen. They're not going to promise the freshmen anything in terms of like like at on three we have our our nil valuation and a piece of that is is your your true nil value which is like actual endorsement value and part of that is your roster value which is your value as a football player we're all adults here we know they're paying the players to be players and so the thing is at the West level, there's not a lot of money for rostered value for freshmen. Because that's essentially, I mean, it's basically a big casino with the freshmen. Like, you don't know what you're going to get, and you don't know who's going to wind up being very important to you. And neither do the other teams in your league. If you're in the SEC or the Big Ten, yeah, you've got to promise freshmen a little bit in the recruiting process.

Because otherwise, you're going to lose them to somebody who can give them more. In the Mountain West, I don't think that's as big of a concern. So it made for a sexy headline. It also probably is going to be a pain in Spencer Danielson's ass as he tries to recruit going forward. Because if I'm UNLV, if I'm Nevada, if I'm San Diego State, if I'm all the people that recruit against Boise State, I'm going to use that against him, even though he has now clarified it. But I think the only way you can truly use it against them is if you're actually going to give that recruit some money when they're a freshman.

And I'm not sure a lot of the schools in the Mountain West have the capability to do that. So that's where that's at. The lawyers can stand down. You don't need to be suing Boise State. You don't need to go after Spencer Danielson. It sounds like this is within the rules, within the law, but they're trying to use their NIL money in the best way they can, the most efficient manner possible. And even the schools that are competing for national titles are not going to usually overextend on a freshman. They are going to try to keep their veterans. They're going to try then to get impact transfers. Then the money goes to the freshmen. So in the

Mountain West, once you've done the other things, there's not as much money left over. So we'll see what happens with that one. But I imagine it will be a thorn in the side as he tries to recruit because it got the message was delivered incorrectly at first and kind of blew up into something that he had to then come on and clarify. But I thought he did a good job clarifying it in his radio comments. Other news. There's yet another congressional bill regarding college sports none of the other ones have passed as ross dellinger from yahoo astutely pointed out none of the other ones have even made it to a full committee hearing this one in particular from representative russell fry of south carolina barrymore of alabama

i don't think it's going to go very far because it is very one-sided. Basically, it would protect the schools and the NCAA from any kind of antitrust lawsuit. Basically saying, you're exempt from the Sherman Act. And I don't think they're going to get broad support for that because I don't think there are a lot of people who want to give the NCAA and the schools cover to just do whatever they want. That's what they did for years and years. That's what just got dismantled. You essentially would be going against a 9-0 Supreme Court decision that says all of these entities deserve antitrust scrutiny. And then you're going against multiple states who have sued the NCAA over the last seven months.

And the idea that you've got two Republicans that are going to say, no, we're going to go over the heads of the states and say the states can't sue either. We're going to protect the NCAA from the states. I don't think that's going to go over very well, even among members of their own party. So that's where that's at. We got offered one of the congressmen to come do an interview on the show. I'll let you, do we think we should have him on? Because like my question would be, why do you think it's okay for these people to break the law? Why do you want to give them legislative cover to break the law? Because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You wouldn't make a law giving bank robbers freedom

from prosecution for robbing banks. So why would you let them break a law that everybody else has to follow? The solution, as we've been saying since I got to On3, since this show started, since before this show started, is figure it out yourselves. Stop asking Congress to bail you out. Figure it out yourselves. You can do it. You can do it. You're going to have to negotiate with the athletes. You're going to have to collect the bargain. It's going to happen. Stop fighting it and start figuring it out. Now, again, if we want to have one of these congressmen on, if you think that would be a good interview, let me know. I'm curious to hear your take on that. I would kind of like to hear the reasoning behind it. Are you that in the bag for the NCAA? The school? Look, they got lobbyists,

so this is probably a favor to somebody, but this is probably the most one-sided of all the things that have come down, and none of the other ones have gotten any traction whatsoever. This will be completely dead on arrival. But they decided to do it anyway. Called it the Protect the Ball Act. Basically, it's protect the schools and the NCAA from getting their asses handed in court, that's probably not going to work. One more piece of news, and this is a case where a collective that's in a difficult situation

came up with a brilliant idea. So we all know what's been going on with Washington State. Very good football program that has punched above its weight for a long time. But of course, as the Pac-12 dissolved, Washington State and Oregon State got left behind. And Washington State and Oregon State trying to figure out how they can still be competitive in the new era of college football. Washington State's collective, very good idea,

because they have created their own beer, and this week they released the first commercial for this beer. It is marvelous. From across the state to the hills of the palouse old crimson forges ahead undeterred underestimated created by coogs for coogs old crimson when the sports world evolves at a pace like never before you may be asking how do we help our teams in these uncharted times it's simple drink more beer all crimson legendary lager proceeds benefit cougar collective do your part so that is gardner minshu walking through the palouse the first image you see remember gardner minshu who is now with the the Vegas Raiders, he's a quarterback, but he has the thighs

of a defensive tackle. So the first image you see is of these massive thighs and cutoff jean shorts walking through the Palouse. And if you're listening in podcast form, I feel like I must point out when they say drink more beer, in parentheses, they did put responsibly underneath there so my question though because i you know if you've been around folks who have hosted washington state for an away game those folks love to get after it so that's why this is a brilliant idea because they're going to buy this beer they're going to help that collective make some money. They will drink your town dry, but there's a particular spirit that they favor. And my curiosity is this, does old crimson lager, which will definitely help them create a bigger pool of money to help keep good players, get good players,

that sort of thing. Does it replace fireball as the preferred beverage of the Washington State fan? Does it become like old crimson and fireball becomes yourilermaker. How does that work? How are we going to incorporate Old Crimson Lager into your already well-established drinking culture? But brilliant idea by the collective of Washington State. Fantastic. Now, we've seen other beers. Tennessee,

I believe has a vodka. And honestly, like vodka is not what I think of. And I think of Tennessee. Shouldn't you have a whiskey? Let's be real about this. But the, the beer situation in Pullman,

love it. Love the idea. And anything these guys can do, because they have been through the ringer, I'm glad. I am glad for the creativity. And I hope this makes them a bajillion dollars. And they can buy all the best players. Because Brian Kelly might not be in the business of buying players.

But everybody else is so all right, it is time for dear Andy. Our first question and it's not even a question. It's more of a statement. It comes from our friend Auburn Elvis. I require a $5,000 appearance for my questions and a new tractor. Auburn Elvis, we don't pay for questions here. We are not in the market of buying questions. We want you to ask your question so that I can develop my answer for it. I'm not just going to buy your question to have a better show. I'm going to develop your question so that we can create a great show. Also, incredible blue chips reference. Incredible.

I do wonder how many people watching this are old enough to have seen blue chips. Nick Nolte shack penny hardway was the movie event of the summer in 1993 it was tremendous matt in the chat says georgia has a vodka andy maybe that's what you're thinking about no tennessee has a vodka as well a lot of vodka is going around stubby in the chat says a weed collective probably would do even better at washington state probably true probably true but i appreciate the initiative all right let us get to the real questions a Auburn Elvis, not a real question, but a very funny statement.

The first question comes from Dan. You got to keep acting like you don't understand what Brian Kelly means. Of course, LSU pays players, but it's stupid to pay a mid DT spring transfer more than anyone on the entire team than all the two coaches, but keep blowing it out of proportion. Andrew laugh out loud. Yeah, LSU fans still mad at me for what I said about Brian Kelly, which was make a better all but two coaches, but keep blowing it out of proportion, Andrew. Laugh out loud. Yeah. LSU fans still mad at me for what I said about Brian Kelly, which was make a better excuse when you don't get the defensive tackles

you're trying to get in the spring transfer portal. And look, Brian Kelly is telling the truth that LSU did not engage at the highest rate in this particular bidding war. There were multiple defensive tackles they went after in the spring portal. All of them wanted more money than LSU was willing to pay them. And as I wrote in my column yesterday, as I said on the show yesterday, I have no problem with Brian Kelly making that economic decision because I think it's the correct one. But don't say we're not in the market of buying players. You are in the market of buying players. Explain it.

And he did. In that interview with Jacques Doucet, he goes on later to talk about, well, I can't look at my offensive tackles, who are the bell cows, and say we brought this guy in. That's exactly right. Lead with that. Because that's the decision that got made. The decision that got made was we evaluated this situation and we decided these players were not worth the money they were asking for. Now, they got very good situations. Dominic Williams wound up in Oklahoma. Simeon Barrow wound up at Miami. The money they got, at least from what we're hearing, is pretty good.

We're talking six figures a month. Is it over a million dollars? I think that depends on how many months you spend. I think we're looking at this point at part one season rentals. So I don't know if you get over, I don't think you get into seven figures, but that's the other thing about these NIL payments. A lot of it is kind of by the month. So that's how you measure the currency. So if you hear $100,000 a month, you're thinking $1.2 million a year. Well, if it's only for seven number, enormous number for the production relative to what you're going to get. So I don't have a problem at all with you doing that economic evaluation and saying,

nope, I draw the line there. I can't i can't i can't have somebody making a similar amount or maybe even more than i'm not i'm not sure what will campbell and emory jones are making their two offensive tackles but those two are probably first round draft picks like they're probably the two most important players on the team so yeah you can't do that but don't say you're not in the market of buying players, and some people just want to be bought. Everybody wants to be bought. I got bought by On3. Brian Kelly got bought by LSU. We all get bought. We all sell ourselves, but everybody makes an economic decision about whether they're going to buy.

Hugh Free said something interesting on Wednesday. He was on with our friends, Cole Kubelik and Greg McElroy. They have the radio show in Birmingham, and they were out at a big charity golf tournament where a lot of coaches were there. And Hugh got asked about the quarterback situation in Auburn and why not take a transfer? Why roll with what you already had when there were quarterbacks available on the transfer market? And this is what Hugh

Free said. The options that you're presented with, develop Peyton, that's Peyton Thorne, develop Holden, that's Holden Greiner, develop Walker, that's Walker White, develop Hank, developing all the quarterbacks that are on the roster, or go spend a million dollars on this guy. I just couldn't bring myself to doing that because I wanted to put all the pieces together. I'm sure you like developing quarterbacks. Hugh Freeze is good at developing quarterbacks. But I also think if the right quarterback had presented himself, who you thought was worth that amount of money then you would have called your collective and been like let's make this happen but that wasn't really available for Auburn because if we think about it the guys that were

in the market that could make instant impacts went to places that are probably a little more ready-made than Auburn is. I think Auburn's close. If you if you watch the show with Cody Belair, where we did the ceilings and floors for the various SEC teams, I don't think Auburn's that far away. But Dylan Gabriel goes to Oregon. Will Howard goes to Ohio State. Riley Leonard goes to Notre Dame. Those are probably your three quarterbacks who you would consider really shelling out for in this particular market. And those programs are probably more ready-made right

now to be very competitive right now. I mean, Ohio State and Oregon, you're probably two co-favorites in the Big Ten. Notre Dame, we're going to actually talk about here in a minute. So did I overreact? Did I blow what Brian Kelly said out of proportion? I don't think so. It's May. He said something interesting. Guess what? We're going to jump all over that. But as I wrote, and as I said, I don't disagree with the ultimate decision. I disagree with it being you, the, the rah-rah amateurism used as an excuse because you put yourself in this position to start with. The position I'm talking about is needing to sign defensive tackles out of the spring transfer portal, which is a horrific position

to be in. Because again, the supply is not great. The demand is incredibly high. All you get are very high, shockingly high prices for people who probably are not going to give you what you would expect at that price point. So the issue is more, you put yourself in this position and now you're saying, well, we don't buy players. Well, if you'd have signed some players in 2023, or if you had gotten some out of the winter transfer portal, other than the one you got, they got a transfer from Wisconsin in March who had gone in the winter then you wouldn't have been in that position now I understand they were trying to hire a new defensive staff that process got slow rolled a little bit you don't get your D line coach Bo Davis who's a very good defensive line coach you don't get him until mid-January. By that point, most of the players in the winter window

have already picked schools. In fact, probably already on campus at their new school. So that's a difficult situation. And I'm sure it would not have been easy to sign a lot of those guys when you don't have the answer necessarily for who's your DC going to be, who's your position coach going to be. But your LSU, that is the kind of place where you can say, trust us, we'll find somebody good.

Don't you want to come play for LSU? I do think that message would resonate with some people. So it's more a criticism of them putting themselves in that situation than of the economic decision to not engage all the way in this bidding war. Again, I think they probably made the right choice there. The problem is they put themselves in a position to have to make that choice, and you still are thin at defensive tackle. That's the bigger problem. And then you try to cloak it in,

well, we don't buy players. No, you buy players. If the price is right. This time it wasn't. Like Hugh Freeze, I'm sure you do like to develop quarterbacks. And that is a more satisfying way to do it. I'm also sure if Riley Leonard or Dylan Gabriel wanted to come to Auburn instead of going to Notre Dame or Oregon,

that you probably would have found the money for them. And that's, that's the thing. It's, it's more me being peeved about the discourse and the way, the way this is discussed now. And it's not, I actually shouldn't be blaming these coaches because they've been brought up in this system and trained to talk a certain way. And it's worked for years and years. And it's been the way they probably felt like they needed to talk. Like what Brian Kelly said about not being in the market of buying players would play so well at Notre Dame in 2013. That gets a standing ovation on the rubber chicken circuit.

And then Hugh Free saying he likes to develop quarterbacks better. But they got to remember, the system they're in now is much more similar to the NFL. And NFL head coaches all the time have to answer questions. Every time free agency ends and they start preparing in earnest for the draft, or every time the draft ends and now you know what the roster is going to look like because you've seen what they're going to do in free agency and you've seen the draft, they get asked, why didn't you go after this position of free agency? Why didn't you do it this way? Why didn't you do that? Why did you do it this way? Why didn't you do that?

And they'll answer more honestly because we don't have to pretend anything in the NFL. And they'll say, we looked at the options available. We had this much money to spend. We thought we could spend it more efficiently this way. It's no different now in college football. So let's just be honest about it.

Let's just address it honestly. You can say that now. And look, I'm Mr. Pay the players, but when you're getting paid like that, it's okay if people have an honest, frank discussion about your abilities. That's part of the trade-off. It's not, these are just kids on scholarship. You're not. With that money comes more criticism.

That's also part of the deal. It's part of the deal in any walk of life. Willie in the chat, transfer portal is used to fix recruiting misses, but if you completely miss on an entire group, then you can't fix that in one portal year. This is especially true if it's big people. Cody Blair tweeted this on Wednesday night. I think he's right.

I think Cody says you're going to see the smarter schools just loading up on linemen at a high school from now on because you got to make sure you hit on some of those you got to make sure you have them because thus far those position groups offensive line defensive tackles more specifically than edge rushers there's been a little more availability in terms of edge rushers but still defensive tackles and edge rushers are pretty rare and defensive tackles especially are very rare the good ones in the transfer portal. If that doesn't change, if that doesn't change just because the market keeps showing that they'll be paid pretty well, then you do have to take more of these guys out of high school and hope you hit and then try to retain them. I think that's the way you've got

to look at it. But yeah, it is interesting how you solve these problems, but you certainly can't solve a side of the line of scrimmage or even one position group within the line of scrimmage in one portal class. It's absolutely not possible. Now you might be able to do it in your running back room. You know, you might be able to do it with your receiver room as long as you had a couple pieces already, but it's not something you're going to do on the line. And I think that's what everybody's learned. And we'll see what the other adaptations to this are, because I think you're going to see agents are going to recommend that those first team

and second team all conference, like Sunbelt, American, Mountain West, those guys, they're going to say, hey, don't go in the portal in the winter. Wait till the spring when the demand is high and the supply is low, and it's going to make you more money. And I still, I don't think they're going to get as many takers because I think people, if they want to move, want to move in the winter so they could be in spring practice, their new team. But again, all of this stuff may change i i really do think we're looking at this through the prism of how

things have always been done and not thinking about how this might look in the future because i can see a future where there's only one transfer portal window it's like there's only one NFL free agency period. And you notice with the NFL, they don't have any sort of stuff going on until after the draft. So when the rosters are set, then you have stuff. So what you could theoretically do is confine all the movement to, let's say a three month period after the season ends. And then you have spring

practice or you don't even have to call it spring practice. You could, you could have OTAs like the, like the NFL teams do. You could split it up. You could, you could have five days here in, you know, five days in late April or may, you could have another 10 days in June. You could split it up however you want. We're just looking at it like, well, they've always done this where they have 15 practices that they're allowed to do in the spring. And then they have the evaluation period for high school players in May. You don't have to do it that way. You could do it differently if you want to. And I think that's what's going to happen. You're about to see a very drastic shift in how the players get compensated.

So why not have a drastic shift in the calendar too? Again, that's probably something you got to collectively bargain. But once you can do that, you could say, look, here's this two month period. It ends after the national championship game or begins after national championship game. It ends two months later. That's when you decide.

And then if you wanted to, because again, this is built around colleges, then you don't start those spring practice OTAs until summer school starts. So late May, early June. I don't know that coaches would complain about that because you could probably build in some actual time off for coaches in the same time too. There are solutions to this stuff. It's going to require some imagination.

It's going to require people to realize you cannot just throw Band-Aids on the existing system. You're going to have to blow it up and recreate it from scratch. actually matter at work on this. There are coaches that work on this. There are ADs that work on this. They're talking about this stuff. This is all going to happen. It's just a matter of when, but until then you do have to deal with stuff like this, which is LSU gets squeezed, put on them because they need defensive tackles. There's a lot of teams that need defensive tackles. There's not that many capable defensive tackles in the portal. So the ones that are demand a huge price and they have to make a decision. Again, I don't think LSU made the wrong decision. I just don't think you champion that decision with, we're not in the market of buying players.

You are. You just made a decent economic decision. And it's okay to say that. It's okay to say that. Now you're not hurting anybody's feelings next question from tony is notre dame's biggest roadblock to an undefeated season florida state do the irish have the best defense in the nation best defense in the nation i think you're going to, you're going to get pushback there from Ohio state who brings almost everybody back,

who probably had a better defense than Notre Dame last year, Michigan. They don't bring everybody back, but they bring a lot back. They're going to, they're going to push back on that. I will push back on that too, but we'll probably

just make fun of iowa's offense but is notre dame's defense one of the best of the nation yeah it sure is lots of questions answered already on that defense i think so in the secondary you've got xavier watts's safety one of the best in the country benjamin benjamin morrison another guy who made one of me and cody's ultimate college football 2024 teams. Also Christian Gray, who proved himself as a young player. Defensive tackles, Howard Cross III and Riley Mills. They're set there. R.J. Obin coming off the edge.

Jack Kaiser at linebacker. This is a very experienced defense. They'll have to plug in a few new parts, but they should be very confident. So let's talk about the schedule. Because when you see undefeated in Tony's question, you're like, whoa, 12-0, that is a bold statement. Is it though? Is it that bold? I'm going to go do a little old school Phil Steele on you here. Because I always enjoyed how Phil would break down a schedule because one of the first things he looks at is how many games are you going to be favored in

this season if the season started right now how many games would you be favored in and so I went to S&P plus our friend Bill Connolly over to ESPN does S&P plus and this is the most recent one that's been out there's another update coming now that the rosters are all set but i imagine the teams at the top which didn't do a lot in the spring portal probably not changing very much so i think we can pretty safely work off of this one it's a predictive model so it is kind of like a ve Vegas power ranking where they would use, you know, we,

they would use it basically set the line in games. So Notre Dame is number nine in S and P plus the next closest teams to Notre Dame that are on Notre Dame schedule are Florida state and Texas A&M Florida state is 12 Texas A&M is 13 Texas A&M. Florida State is 12, Texas A&M is 13. Texas A&M is at Kyle Field. So remember, we're going to probably give them three points in the spread for home field advantage. So that's probably a slight Notre Dame favorite or a pick'em. Florida State, obviously that's later in the season. A lot can change between now and then, but I believe Notre Dame as the home team with the information we have now will be a slight favorite. They're favorite in every other game.

Every other game. So they're probably favorites as we start the season right now in 12 of their 12 games. So yeah, undefeated is definitely on the table. Is it easy? No, no undefeated season is ever easy, no matter what your schedule looks like. But this particular Notre Dame schedule does look like it is workable. This Notre Dame schedule looks like you can navigate it. Now we talked to Tyler Horka from blue and gold.com and he pointed out, cause I I've always said in this version of the playoff, which we've not actually seen one

yet, but my, my thinking is that in Notre Dame goes 10 and two in any season in this version of the playoff, they get in the playoff. Tyler thinks with this schedule, you might have to go 11-1 just because it's not on paper right now as strong of a schedule. I think you do have to go 11-1 probably as you look at it now. Although we'll see again because some of these teams could be better. But here's the thing. If you could beat Texas A&M, that gives you the mulligan against Florida State. Louisville is a team that beat Notre Dame last year. But you look at the way that game falls.

And I think Louisville could be pretty good. I've said this multiple times. Tyler Shook playing for Jeff Braum feels like a good marriage. And Tyler Shook, if he could ever stay like a good marriage and Tyler Shook, if he could ever stay healthy for an entire season, could be a really, really good quarterback. You saw Louisville be ahead of schedule last year. Louisville schedule is considerably tougher this year. So I don't know if Louisville will actually have as good of a record as they had last year, but they could have as good of a team. Now that team beat Notre Dame because Notre Dame was at the end

of a pretty rough slog of games that it included, you know, the Ohio State game, the Duke game that was a very tough road game at night. And then you go to Louisville and Louisville was good. I mean, Louisville won, got the ACC championship game. But where that falls in the schedule this year, it does not seem as daunting. You know, it's after Miami of Ohio.

It's at Notre Dame. One I will throw out there, Georgia Tech, it's a neutral site game, but not really. It's at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which is two miles from Georgia Tech's campus. Though I will say that's probably going to be a 50-50 crowd. But I think Brent Key's done a really good job at Georgia Tech. Buster Faulkner, one of the more hot, rising star commodities as an offensive coordinator. Haynes King

really developed well last year after transferring from Texas A&M at quarterback. That could be a tough one. But you look at the Florida State game, one, get them in South Bend. We don't know what Florida State's going to be. My suspicion is they'll be pretty good. Like DJ Uyungle takes over at quarterback. It's going to be a lot of new people, but they attack the transfer portal in a similar fashion and maybe got a little better caliber of transfer this off season than they have in the previous ones. Plus their high school recruiting has improved each year as they won more.

So I think Florida state, we can, we can pretty safely assume having watched Mike Norvell operate for the last few years, they're going to be pretty good, but like you go, Oh, they play Notre Dame has to play Navy before four state,

but not right before four state. There's a weekend between those good. But you go, oh, Notre Dame has to play Navy before Florida State, but not right before Florida State. There's a weekend between those games. You remember my friend Bruce Feldman wrote about this years ago, and it's a great theory, the body blow theory. Basically, when you play a triple option team, that next week you are in danger because your linemen are beaten up. It takes a different toll. But because there's a week in between,

I don't think that applies either. So can Notre Dame go undefeated? Yeah, absolutely. Notre Dame is capable of going undefeated. I don't think A&M's a gimme. Louisville is going to be tough. Georgia Tech, obviously Florida State. The other one I will point out, and this is a team that we're not talking about very much right now. It's strange because we talked about them so much each of the last two years, is USC. We are assuming USC is going to go into the big 10 and be just okay. We are assuming that USC is not going to be a challenge for Notre Dame when they play them at the end of the season. We don't know that. We do not know that. Lincoln Riley has always had good offenses.

They just revamped their defensive staff. Danton Lynn comes in as the defensive coordinator. So we don't know if their defense is going to be better. If that defense is better, USC by the end of the season could be a very good team. We don't know what the quarterback situation is going to be. We're assuming it's going to be Miller Moss. He looked awesome in the bowl game. But I tend to give Lincoln Riley offenses the benefit of the doubt. So it could be that USC is pretty good by that point, but we're just assuming that they're not going to be great. I don't want to,

I don't think we should make that assumption, especially because that's an end of the year game. What will be really interesting, I think is let's say Notre Dame drops the A&M game, drops the Florida State game, and they sit 10-1 going to the Coliseum on the last day of the season. That's going to be an incredible game. Even if USC hasn't been that great in its first year in the Big Ten, having the ability to spoil Notre Dame's playoff chances potentially, and that's going to be one of those big scoreboard watching games, probably around the country,

because anybody else who's in for an at-large spot, but kind of on the edge, is going to be watching that. The truth says, we're also assuming the USC defense is going to be at least competent. We don't need 2021 Georgia, just limit teams to 30 points. Agreed, agreed. It doesn't have to be a massive improvement. An improvement to baseline competency would be a, well, actually that probably would be a massive improvement over what we've seen at USC the past two years. So yeah, I think we're going to have to reserve judgment on the Trojans until we actually get to see them play. They open against LSU. And as we've said, that LSU offense,

I'm not that worried about them reloading. They've got Garrett Nussmeyer. I think CJ Daniels, Kyron Lacey going to be able to maybe not completely replace what you got from Malik neighbors and Brian Thomas, but they're going to be pretty good. They're also gonna be able to run the ball with that offensive line. So off the bat, we'll get a better idea of where USC is defensively. You know, if LSU just runs through them for 50 points,

then maybe we, we revise that, that assumption at the end of the season. But how fun would that be? If Notre Dame at the end of the year is playing for a playoff berth at USC? It would be especially fun if USC is also in the mix for an at-large. That's a ratings bonanza right there.

But I just, that's the part of the new playoff that really excites me the possibility of games like that because that matchup in in the four-team system if notre dame has dropped one to a&m or florida state with this schedule i don't know that notre dame's still in the mix for a spot in the 14 playoff at that point. Maybe they are. It depends on what everybody else has done, but they're definitely in the mix for a spot in the 12 team playoff. And I think that could be a truly fun way to end the season. Next question from Sean. Do you think coaches salaries will begin to decline with the change in how athletes will be paid?

And that's the assumption that this is going to come under the umbrella of the athletic department, that all of the collective stuff can be brought in house, that the schools will be doing it directly. And I do not think the best coaches will make less money. Like Kirby Smart just signed a new deal that's going to pay him $13 million a year. Kirby Smart is probably worth more than $13 million a year. Like he is the best coach in college football. He keeps proving it year after year. And I don't know that there's anybody you even put on his level right now with Nick Saban gone. So the best of the best, I think are still going to be extremely valuable.

What I'm curious about is will the replacement level coaches still get these massive deals? Will the guys who win seven or eight games a year at a place where the average coach wins seven or eight games a year, will schools bump them to $7 million a year, $8 million a year? Or will they say, you know what? We can just put this money into buying better players and get another version of you for half the price. Because I think that's, if you're thinking about it realistically, what you could do. If you have a coach who wins seven or eight games a year and his agent comes in demanding seven and a half million dollars, she's like, no, we'll take this guy for three and a half and we'll put that three and a half toward getting a quarterback. I know what you're saying, but there's going to be a salary cap.

There's not a salary cap unless they can collectively bargain. There's going to be a salary floor where they say we're going to commit this much to paying players, but unless they can collectively bargain it, there's not going to be a salary cap. So you're going to try to figure out how to use that money best you can. And I was thinking about this in relation to the situation at Florida, because there's another part of this too, and it's the staff size and the amount of people that you're paying. Because it's not just what you pay the head coach, it's what you pay in general. And so one of the things I've said about the Florida situation as these years have gone by under Billy Napier is that when they hired Billy Napier,

NIL was five and a half months old. Nobody knew exactly how it was going to evolve. But imagine if you went back to the people at Florida with a map of how it was going to evolve. And you said, okay, Billy Napier is coming in here and he wants to expand the staff by a lot, by dozens of people that you're going to have to now pay. And that's going to cost millions of dollars. Would you prefer doing that or using those millions of dollars to buy better players? The answer from anybody who knows how things have evolved would be, you definitely use that to buy better players. Like, had they said donors who were begging for money right now to pay for all these new staff members,

had they said, we would like you to donate to the collective so that we can now pay players more or get different players or get more good players. Had you said that, they would have a better team now. But nobody knew how things were going to evolve. So going forward, do you need all those polo shirts? No, you absolutely do not. You still need important people.

Like you need really good position coaches, but not necessarily really good position coaches who are great recruiters. Like a lot of times, good position coach who is great recruiter was code for bag man, or at least bag man adjacent. You don't have to worry about that anymore. That's not part of the skill set you care about. What you care about are the position coaches

who could develop NFL players, who can take a guy, whether it's a five-star recruit or a three-star recruit, but who has rough edges, who needs things cleaned up and polish them up into an excellent college player who then becomes a high NFL draft pick. Those position coaches remain very valuable. Brian Hartline at Ohio State, the receivers coach, for example, that guy's track record is impeccable. You pay that guy. Cortez Hankton Jr., who we had on the show,

LSU's receivers coach. He was at Georgia before. Four of the guys he coached got picked in the top 40 of this year's draft. Let that sink in. Six guys total picked in the draft that he'd coached. That's incredible. You pay that guy.

You don't necessarily pay all these analysts because you don't need them anymore. Like a lot of them were helping make the position coaches lives more efficient because they had to, the position coach had to spend so much time recruiting. Well, now the money recruits for you. You still need to be able to ID the talent.

You still need to get to know the player to figure out, are they going to be... Because the money motivation part of it is bad. You've got to figure out, is this person only going to take the biggest bag and that's all they're worried about? Because usually if you've got a whole bunch of those guys, you're not going to have a very good team.

So you do have to get to know the player. So the personality part of the recruiter still matters, but it's not as all consuming anymore. So you don't need as many support staff people. That money can go toward players. And you also don't need to be putting these incredible facilities in anymore. You need functional facilities. But Nebraska put out a rendering of the walkthrough room that they're making that is used by NASA and NHL teams. And it's going to have all the...

Basically, it kind of looks like the place where they filmed The Mandalorian. And looks amazing. You probably don't need it. You probably can just go in your indoor and do walkthroughs. That's the sort of thing that's going to go away. Roger Sherman, our friend who used to work right for the ringer, he did the big road trip around college football this year. He said, this is going to be one of the last of these.

He tweeted that on Wednesday. And I said, yeah, there's some gold- plated bidet manufacturer that's absolutely crying right now. I'm not sure UCF is ever going to get its lazy river, which really does make me sad because I thought the UCF lazy river would have been pretty amazing. But this sort of thing is not necessary anymore. Matthew in the chat. That's not true for everyone though. Some teams aren't giving NIL money to freshmen and slash income recruits the way some others are. To put it another way, Georgia and Ohio State don't have to do what Miami does. This is true. If you can develop first rounders and win championships, probably in that order,

then you're going to get a little discount from the freshmen on the NIL. Also, those are huge programs where players know if they're good there, they will make money. So I do think that is part of the equation as well. But I do think definitely support staff salaries will go down. I think replacement level head coach and replacement level assistant coach salaries will go down. But the truly special ones are still going to make a ton of money because there's still a ton of value in that. And I've yet to see a situation where you just put a super team on the field with just an average coach and you got the results you wanted. Now, Matt in the chat, who's a Georgia fan

is going to love this next question. This is from Brian. Please do a ranking of the active head coaches who have a win over Georgia since 2019. Thanks. I'll hang up and listen. Oh, Brian, you thought you could trick me. I knew what this was going to be before I looked it up, but I did want to look it up just to make sure I had all the names correct. Of the coaches who have victories against Georgia since 2019. So to answer Brian's question, there is no ranking of the active head coaches who have beaten Georgia since 2019, because there are no active head coaches who

have beaten Georgia since 2019. Here's the list of guys who've beaten Georgia. You actually could have gone back to 2018 if you wanted to. Here's the list of head coaches who have beaten Georgia since 2018. Ed Orgeron, Nick Saban, Will Muschamp, Ed Orgeron again, Nick Saban again, Dan Mullen, Nick Saban, and Nick Saban. That's it. That's the list. Ed Orgeron, enjoying his buyout money, fellow Roebuck endorser, living his best life. When Scott Woodward, the AD at LSU, said, here's your buyout, according to Ed Orgeron, he said, when do I get the check and what door do you want me to walk out of? He's living right.

Will Muschamp, that everybody forgot. South Carolina beat Georgia in 2019. Then went to work for his former college teammate, Kirby Smart. Yeah, the truth. Tom Herman is really the last one who's still appointed. Not true. In the earlier years, yes, there are. And that's right.

Tom Herman at Texas also beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. I did want to go back and just see, like, who's beaten Kirby Smart since Kirby Smart became the head coach of Georgia? And really, that 2016 2016 his first year was the only one that that they suffered any significant losses so here but the list from 2016 is really interesting because it's five guys and four of them are head coaches at other schools now. So here's your list in 2016. Hugh Freeze was at Ole Miss. Butch Jones was at Tennessee. That was the Dobnail boot game.

Derek Mason at Vandy. Remember, they lost to Vandy that first year under Kirby Smart. Jim McElwain was coaching Florida. He's at Central Michigan now. And then Paul Johnson at Georgia Tech. Now he's retired. And then in 2017, the only one who got him was Gus Malzahn at Auburn and Gus Malzahn, obviously now the head coach at UCF. So that's it. But Hugh Freeze, now the head coach at Auburn, Butch Jones, Arkansas State,

Derek Mason, Middle Tennessee, and Jim McElwain at Central Michigan. So there are some active coaches who have beaten Kirby Smart. They're just maybe other than Hugh Freeze, not necessarily in a position to try to go beat him again. But wow, that is a, it's pretty impressive, pretty impressive. And I do enjoy the way that Brian phrased the question because yeah, that that's, that does make things, it puts things in perspective quite well. So this question from Tyler piggybacks onto that question. How long until Texas A&M or another rich and desperate school decides to make Kirby Smart and his entire team more money than they can refuse to all come to College Station for a

year or two to guarantee a championship? The answer to that, Tyler, is never. There's not enough money to do it. Georgia just gave the man $13 million a year. Are you going to give him 20? And then you're going to pay the whole team to move on? I don't, I just don't, I don't think that's possible. I don't think that amount of money exists.

And I know that's everybody's fear in this era. But there's not some unlimited money tree out there that somebody can just pay that much. It's not like a national title. Yes, it's something that the people at Texas A&M want badly. But even they aren't willing to pay like that to get it. Because here's the crazy part of it. You could pay all that and you still might not win it. Brandon in the chat, if the title game isn't Georgia versus Ohio State, it better be because they already played each other in the rounds before. I tend to agree with that. I tend to agree with that, though I think Alabama, Texas, Oregon are going to have something to say about that. But that feels like the matchup. And

remember, we saw those two in that classic Peach Bowl that it would have been probably more fun had that been the national championship game. And I think that particular year, it pretty much was the national championship game. And it was everything you could have ever wanted in a game. And I think that particular year, it pretty much was the national championship game. And it was everything you could have ever wanted in a game. But yeah, I'd love to see that this year. Brandon, Phil Knight is the money tree. No, he's not. If he was, Oregon would have the best roster in college football. They don't. They have a good roster, but they don't have the best roster. It just, everybody's afraid of it. It's never going to happen. All right. Next question comes from David. He sent it on video. It is a four-parter. Four.

Hey, Andy. Isn't it great when life experiences give you more than one college football team to care about? I've been fortunate to have four teams that I love, so I thought I'd send you this four-part question. My parents both went to Cal. I grew up near Berkeley. So, how do you think the new schools will fit into the ACC this year? Can I expect better than a last-place finish? My wife is an alum of UT. How about that Longhorn running back room? Do you think Baxter and Blue can be as good as Bijan and Roshan? Who do you predict will get most of the carries? I live and work in San Antonio. It seems like UTSA took a step back. Are they in trouble now that Dr. Frank Harris is

done? And did Coach Traylor miss his chance for a Power 2 job? My daughter's a Texas State Bobcat. What will the QB situation there look like this fall? And are they ready to compete in the fun belt? As for me, I'm hoping my anteaters can make a run to Omaha this month. A UC Irvine grad in the wild. Yes. Zot is what the anteater says. If you get some UC Irvine gear with the anteater on it, sometimes he's actually saying Zot. I have one where the anteater is surfing. I have a t-shirt from home field, a UC Irvine t-shirt where the anteater is actually surfing.

All right. Let us get those questions in order. That's a lot of surfing. All right. Let us, let us get those questions in order. That's a lot of questions. All right. The Cal Stanford SMU question, who's the best of the newcomers in the ACC? I'm going to go with SMU, which is, is interesting because they're the ones that aren't coming from a power conference and you do worry about depth at that point. But I think Red Lashley's done a good job building depth as best he can. And they've done some work in the portal. Cal, like Jay Knott at Cal,

I think is going to be one of the better running backs in the ACC. They lost Jake Spavitol, their offensive coordinator to Baylor this year. So I don't know that they're necessarily going to be as explosive as they were, but they should be able to play some stingy defense. Troy Taylor, I thought, did a very good job in year one at Stanford,

given the circumstances he took over, but I do think it's probably going to be hard for Cal and Stanford. SMU, again, they got Florida State coming to their place in September. Watch that one. That's going to be a fun one, because I don't know that SMU is going to be a fun one because I don't know that SMU is going to be quite deep enough to be competitive for the ACC title this year, but I do think they could be the best of the newcomers. As far as the Texas running back room,

listen, asking somebody to be as good as B. Sean Robinson and Roshan Johnson together as a combo, that is a huge ask, but we'll see Jay Baxter and Jaden blue be good. Yeah. I think they could be very good. Who gets more of the carries, you know, blue average six yards of carry last season.

He was explosive when he touched the ball. I, I wonder, will he be the, will he be the featured back? I think they're going to split the carries. This is 2024. You're not going to have anybody being the 25, 30 carry game guy, but Blue was really explosive when he got the ball. As for UTSA, did Jeff Traylor miss his window? No, he didn't miss his window. Jeff trailer is a very good coach. Now we do need to see him without Frank Harris as, as David put it, Dr. Frank Harris. He was there for seven years. Uh, it appears now they have, they're, they're still

haven't really named a starter, but it appears they're leaning toward Owen McCown. Who's the son of Josh McCown who like Frank Harris is a left lefty. If you just said, UTSA is going to have another lefty, you're like, oh, wow. Jeff Traylor loves his lefties. But McCown played in the bowl game, looked pretty good. I'm not concerned about Jeff Traylor keeping that program on the right track. I think he's done a really good job. And I think there's a lot of folks out there looking at Jeff Traylor as the next time a good job in that part of the right track. I think he's done a really good job. And I think there's a lot of

folks out there looking at Jeff Traylor as the next time a good job in that part of the world opens, he's one that will be heavily, heavily considered. As for the QB situation at Texas State, they've got a pretty good, and we need to have GJ Kenny back on the show. We had him on last season after they beat Baylor. He's a very smart guy. You can tell he's going to be a big star in coaching profession. Their QB situation, very interesting. I remember last year they had TJ Finley who had been at LSU and Auburn before that. So they took Jaden Delora who'd been at Washington state and Arizona. Nofafita took the job when Delora was injured and didn't give it back. They took Jaden Delora. Jaden Delora settled a and didn't give it back. They took Jane Delora.

Jane Delora settled a lawsuit that was attached to a sexual assault accusation from back when he was in high school. Eight days after he settled that lawsuit, Texas State and he basically parted ways. He withdrew from the university. And so that didn't work out. Now, when Jane Delora committed to Texas State, TJ Finley went to Western Kentucky. So he's gone. So what did they do? They went and got Jordan McLeod. Jordan McLeod, now on school number four, but school number three, he was very successful. So Jordan McLeod, remember, started at USF a long time ago.

He then went to Arizona, then went to James Madison. And last year, James Madison, he was the Sunbelt Offensive Player of the Year. So remember, he's just moving in conference. So 3,657 passing yards last year, 8.9 yards per attempt, 35 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Yeah, I want to see that guy in G.J. Kinney's offense. I think he's going to be pretty good. I think Texas State, which had a great season last year, is going to be a very, very interesting team to watch in the Sun Belt this year.

One more question. It's from Dan. If General Booty goes to a mid-level group of five team, do they automatically become your favorite team for the video game and a dynasty rebuild? Dan, I hadn't even thought of this. But yes, of course. Like if he is a Louisiana Monroe Warhawk, ULM's my team. Of course, I'm going to start with General Booty.

Why wouldn't you start your dynasty with the highest ranking officer in college football? Gotta be General Booty. This is such a good idea. So as soon as that decision gets made, I think I know what my team is. Dan had one more question. As a journalist, what have been some of your biggest and favorite content machines as far as people and topics go? Dion and realignment have been huge lately, but what else may people forget? I think the one for me is two years ago, Jimbo Fisher versus Nick Saban. That was tremendous theater. And it was in May. It was like the Brian Kelly thing now,

except on steroids. Like anytime somebody says something interesting in May, we're just like, whoa, thank you. Cause we had nothing. We didn't know how we were going to get to August. But that,

that blowing up, like it starts with Nick Saban saying what he says at a gathering in Birmingham. And then the next morning you have Jimbo Fisher shaking with anger at a hastily called press conference as he basically accuses Nick Saban of everything under the sun. It's never going to be better than that. I can tell you right now. It's never going to be better than that i can tell you right now it's never going to be better than that but i will say that another one that i thought was a lot of fun at the time was early michigan jim harbaugh now jim harbaugh reliable content generator throughout his tenure at michigan obviously last year he was good for a ton of content.

He was suspended for the first part of the year. There was the sign, the Connor Stallion stuff. He was suspended at the end of the year. He wins the national title. We assume he's going to the NFL. There's all of that back and forth. So Jim Harbaugh was always reliable. Remember he was sleeping over at recruits houses and agitating for satellite camps like the satellite camp thing to me was where i just sort of checked out on all of the small ncaa arguments like i started saying you know maybe just focus more on the big picture of like when will these players get paid and how is that going to happen because as they're going back and forth on satellite camps, as is the hottest topic at all of the conference meetings that,

that may that year, I was like, what are, what are we even doing here? We're asking about whether teams can have camps together, whether Michigan can have a camp in tech. Who cares? Who cares?

But it was an interesting topic because it was Jim Harbaugh and he made people feel a certain type of way. He either makes them happy, mad, amused, angry, all of the above. Makes him the perfect content generator, just like Deion Sanders. Deion Sanders makes you feel some way. That's why we talk about him all the time. Speaking of which, Philip Dukes and I had a really interesting discussion about Deion Sanders on Monday. It went so long that I couldn't ask Dukes the other questions I wanted to ask him.

So on Friday, we're going to bring Dukes back. I had a lot of Auburn questions for him. So I want to ask him about that. I also want to ask him about Hugh Freeze's comments on the quarterback situation, because I'd like to get Dukes take on where he feels the Tigers are at, at quarterback. We also wanted to talk about whose roster came out the best following all the transfer portal movement. And then I do think Dukes is the perfect person for that. Well, Dukes is definitely the perfect person to talk about what Austin Rivers said about NBA players, NFL players. And I feel like we really need to drag that discussion into college because there's a bunch of NBA players that I would have loved to see play college football.

There's a couple NFL players that I would have liked to see try to play in the NBA. That's a great May talk radio debate topic, but I think Dukes is the perfect person for that. Also, Shador Sanders dropped a single this week, and we haven't had a chance to talk about that yet. So we're going to talk about that with Dukes. There's so much. Like, it's May, but there's so much going on, and we appreciate, oh my. Hold, before we go, John in the chat.

Can we get Booty to back up Orgy at Michigan? I'm just going to leave that. Well, first, Ryan, what am I doing? I with us, came back. Love it. Love it. Well, I'm going to put this back up. Can booty back up orgy? I think that is the question that we all need answered. How, how do we make it so booty backs up orgy? I love you all. You're the best. We'll talk to you on Friday.