Andy & Ari On3 - How college football will work in 2024 | The COMPLETE 2024 Season Guide

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Today's show is brought to you by PrizePicks, the easiest way to play daily fantasy. All first time users that deposit and use the promo code ANDY will receive a 100% instant deposit match up to $100. If you deposit $100, PrizePicks will give you $100.Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/ivHR/ANDYAndy and On3’s J.D. PicKell provide a primer to help get you ready for the 2024 college football season.(0:00-2:34) Intro(2:35-6:40) Chip Kelly Speaks(6:41-15:16) Lane Kiffin Proposes how to fix college football(15:17-17:45) JD Pickell Joins(17:46-21:49) The New Big Ten(21:50-25:39) New TV Schedules(25:40-31:01) The New SEC(31:02-34:16) The New Big 12(34:17-44:44) Explaining the New Look ACC(44:45-54:57) The New 12 Team CFP(54:58-56:49) ConclusionEven those of us who cover the sport get confused sometimes about all the changes coming to college football in 2024. So Andy and J.D. decided to help by explaining exactly how everything will work.They cover…The new Big Ten.The new SEC.What channels those leagues' games will be on.A radically revamped Big 12.How Cal, Stanford and SMU wound up in the ACC.How the new conference schedules work.How the 12-team College Football Playoff will work.Plus, Andy discusses his story on how Lane Kiffin would fix college football.Want to watch the show instead? Join us live every morning, M-F, at 8 am et! https://youtube.com/live/i0u0IVIKN90

Welcome to Andy Staples on three. It is a day of newness, of new things. We are going to talk about how to watch college football in 2024, what to remember about college football in 2024, what's new about college football in 2024. And I realize the core audience of this show, you guys follow the twists and turns, the ups and downs as well as anybody. But I do this for a living and I still sometimes forget how things are going to work. And we had a commenter on yesterday's show, and this is why we're doing this, who said, I'm a Tennessee fan. I'm glad that we're playing Oklahoma and Texas, but I don't want to play LSU less now.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to play LSU more in this new environment. And then I thought, okay, this is a diehard fan who watches this show. So somebody who's really involved in this stuff and pays a lot of attention to it, and they're still having a hard time with it. Imagine all these other people are going to drop into the sport in August, in September. They're like, what is going on? Well, there's a 12 team playoff now. How's that work? Oregon's in the big 10. Colorado's in the big 12 again. What are we doing here? So what I want you to do is watch this show and JD Piquel from On3 is going to help me with this and it's going to live on YouTube.

So when you have a friend who asks you a question about how all this stuff works, point them to the video, send them a copy of the clip and say, here you go. This explains everything. Watch this and you will be ready to watch the 2024 football season. Cause there's a lot going on. It's, it's conference realignment. It's what TV network is the game I'm going to watch that I want to watch going to be on. It is how did this team end up in this league? It's there's a 12 team playoff. How do they actually decide the national champion? All of this stuff. So this is more of a public service for your friends who are going to be dropping in to college football. We're going to have some fun talking about how it got here and what we think is going to happen when all this stuff actually starts. First, though, let's talk about something else that's new

that probably will shock your friends who are a little bit casual in terms of college football fans when they figure this out. Chip Kelly on the field as the offensive coordinator at Ohio State. Chip Kelly, obviously a very accomplished head coach, was the head coach of UCLA just a few months ago, but now he's running the offense at Ohio State and he was asked the question, why make this decision now? Sometimes I do a lot of things other people don't do. So I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I think it started when we were preparing for our bowl

game. Ryan Gunnarsson, who's a great quarterback coach, left to go to Oregon State as the coordinator. So he wasn't there. So I actually coached quarterbacks during the bowl game. And I just started to think like I hadn't actually coached a position since 2008. And then I think my wife from Mark, she's like, I haven't seen you this happy in a long time. And to me, the best part of football is football. And so you got to do football and not do some of the things that involved with the head coaching deal. And I had a chance after we beat Boise in the bowl game and as we started recruiting just to kind of think about what that experience was like. And then I get to make the decision on what my future is going to be. And so what do I want to do? So I started to look into, is there an opportunity and what had it been the right spot to go somewhere and,

and just coach a position again and be back with that group. Cause I think as a head coach you sit in on position meetings, but then you're always getting pulled out and there's all, there's other things that are involved with with being a head coach. And I think it's more of a CEO operation right now. You know, it's the job and the landscape, as we all know, of college football has changed. So I just thought at the time that, you know, there's a story about John Lennon when he was a little kid that had an assignment of what do you want to be when you grow up? And he said, I want to be happy.

And then his teacher said, I don't think you understand the assignment. And his mom said, I don't think you understand life. So I just wanted to be happy. And I'm really happy coaching a position, really happy to be at this place. You know, it would have taken a special place for me to leave UCLA because I love those players and I love that coaching staff. But to be here with Ryan, I had a great relationship. I've known Ryan since he was a little kid. So I think a lot of things just fell into place that way. Chip Kelly working for Ryan Day, who used to be Chip Kelly's quarterback at New Hampshire. And they have known each other for a long, long time. And of course, Chip was asked about that relationship.

And well, it sounds like his John Lennon assignment is going pretty well so far. Ryan said he doesn't think of it as you working under him. It's working with him. The fact is he's the head coach. He makes me call him sir though. I didn't, he just said, can you do that day one? And I was like, all right, right now. All right. So Chip Kelly's having fun. That video from our friends at Letterman row, that's on three's Ohio state site. If you're not subscribed there and you're an Ohio State fan, what are you waiting for? But he definitely seems like he's in a happy place right now. So that is a good thing. That is what Chip Kelly wanted. I know everybody, his move to UCLA, from UCLA to Ohio State launched a thousand think pieces, but let's be realistic about it. Chip Kelly was in danger of getting fired at UCLA.

He was on the verge of getting fired this season. It probably would have happened at some point in the next season, the one we're about to talk about in great depth. So the move he made probably was the right one. And he looked at some NFL offensive coordinator jobs. He didn't get one of those. He winds up at Ohio State where their loss, their roster is absolutely loaded. They are probably going to be a favorite or co-favorite to win the national

title. So it's a good spot. We'll see how he meshes with Will Howard, the quarterback transfer for they, they got from Kansas state. We'll see how he meshes with Jeremiah Smith, the star freshman. We saw Will Howard from Jeremiah Smith pass in practice yesterday.

That video was floating around the internet. Just gets your blood pumping because football things are happening. One more thing before we get to our definitive guide to watching the 2024 college football season. I had a conversation with Lane Kiffin on Tuesday, the Ole Miss coach, lightning rod. You mentioned Lane Kiffin's name, people's eyes perk up. People, people, what is Lane saying? It was a good conversation. Now he wanted to do a phone interview. He'd want

to do the video stuff, which I understand some, you know, I don't like to look at myself on video either. And unfortunately I have to watch myself on this thing. But we had an interesting conversation because I wanted to ask him some big picture questions. I wanted to ask Lane about what he's done to handle all of these changes so well. And we've heard him talk about it. We've heard him be very bluntly honest about the changes in college football, about NIL, about the transfer rules. And he's used the transfer portal and Ole Miss has used NIL, their collective, the Grove collective has been very efficient, very good at allocating resources.

But it's interesting because Lane has been one of the, it sounds like harsher critics of all this stuff. He kind of put that to bed in our conversation. He's like, listen, I said college football was a disaster and I meant it, but I also said I wasn't complaining about that. I wasn't complaining. I was just saying, here's what is happening. And that is pretty much what was going on. That was what was happening at the time. There were major changes going on, things that were not allowed for decades and decades were suddenly allowed. It was a very jarring change for a lot of coaches. And what Lane pointed out is the difference between him and some other coaches that handled this well and coaches who didn't handle it well or ADs who

didn't handle it well is he said there were a bunch of coaches who thought this was temporary, who thought this was going to go away, that all of a sudden somebody would swoop in and change everything back. And he's like, that's not going to happen. And he said, he's like, I tried to tell people that. So I also asked Lane what he would do to fix what he considers to be the disaster. Because as he said, he's done a good job of managing it. He's done a good job of rolling with the changes, making his program better because of the new

environment and kind of leaping forward over other programs that maybe have been slow and have not been able to work as quickly in the new environment or work as efficiently in the new environment. And so he said some interesting stuff and you've heard it from a few people. Like you heard it from Jim Harbaugh before he left for the NFL. Jim Harbaugh had a kind of a stock speech of got to share revenue with the athletes. We're all robbing the same train. That's what Harbaugh would say. What Kiffin says is he wants them to be employees because he wants there to be contracts. He wants there to be, you know, kind of like the NFL.

It's interesting because NFL contracts aren't public, but we all know what they are and they have to submit them to the league so that they're under the salary cap and all of that sort of thing. And so all of that information is out there. There is a market for free agents. You understand when a player is on the open market, they can't just say, well, this team says they're going to give me 50 bazillion dollars and you have no way to kind of check that. That's one thing that Lane Kiffin would like to see. He'd like to see a salary cap.

And not saying, you know, everybody gets paid the same or anything like that. He's saying maybe a conference by conference and every conference can handle different amounts of money. Now, we know because we've talked about all this, that's got to be collectively bargained. And you got news on that yesterday that the Dartmouth basketball players voted to unionize in their case against Dartmouth with the National Labor Relations Board. We don't yet know if the NLRB is going to recognize them as employees and decide they can be a union. But we do know that that fight is coming in a lot of different places.

And it's also happening out at USC right now. But that's the farthest along anybody's been. So we will see what happens with the Dartmouth case. But what Lane Kiffin is saying needs to happen kind of goes hand in hand with that. You could have a salary cap if the players would agree to it. And I think they would. And so he's saying, you know, the Big Ten, the SEC,

they could do their own salary caps. The ACC Big 12 could do their own and down the line. And I think that's probably a fair way to do it. I don't know if ultimately, you know, we talked about this the other day with, with Cole Kubelik, would the SEC and the big 10 that are the most alike, would they wind up doing the same thing? I don't know, but it's a really interesting conversation with Lane Kiffin. I've got a column up add on three about it later on Wednesday. Also got a story about Lane Kiffin and the college football video game coming out Wednesday at On3.

Yes, I still write occasionally. I have not forgotten how to talk to people and write a story. So we got those. I encourage you to read them. So much fun. And then Lane Kiffin, thought leader. I like it. I like it. And I think people have this view of him that he is just kind of lucking into all this. This is all very calculated. And I remember talking to Lane Kiffin

as these changes were coming in, and he had a very clear idea of what he wanted to do. I do think him having some experience in the NFL, remember he was the coach of the Oakland Raiders for a time, helped him understand how the personnel office needs to be set up. That's another thing we talked about, is they are great at evaluating the players they're looking at and also the players on their own team, which helps you decide, do you keep this guy? Do you let this person walk? These are all important decisions in 2024. Because 2024, as we've talked about, is a different era of college football.

We're going to go deep into 2024. Our guy, J.D. Piquel at On3HQ in Nashville. But first, I got to talk to you about PrizePix, the most fun daily fantasy platform on the internet. Sign up for PrizePix today. Use the referral code Andy. They will match your first deposit up to $100. So you deposit $100, they deposit $100, and then you get going.

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those of us who do this for a living and the sickos who watch this show, and I know you are all sickos and I love you for that. We've followed these changes as they've come year after year after year, but it's all going to hit us like a ton of bricks in August and September as the games are about to start. So J.D. Piquel, joining us from On3HQ in Nashville. J.D., we got to help the folks. We got to get the folks ready. And I've told everybody, because you know, you host a show called The Hard Count. Your audience, like my audience, a bunch of college football sickos. They got to help their friends, though. They got to send this clip over the next few months to all of their friends who may love

college football, but maybe they have very important jobs or they've got little kids and they're busy and they can't keep track of all the changes. JD, how excited are you for everything that's coming in 2024? You know, I feel like a soon-to-be dad. You know, you're excited, but you're also terrified. You know, a lot of new things. There's nothing to prepare you for this, right? Like you texted me yesterday. I was like, hey, let's talk through how the new college football era is going to work. And immediately I was like, I need to figure out how it's going to work here in the next

24 hours before we jump on the air. So fired up. It's going to be awesome. They'll get it twisted as long as college football. It'll be awesome. But it'll be a lot of newness, a lot of learning here for all of us in the college football world. Yeah. And like I put out a poll the other day i said what non-conference game are you most excited for and it is you know some good games you got like texas michigan you got lsu and

usc and somebody goes well i'm most excited about tennessee. And I'm like, dude, that's a conference game. We did the same thing. 100%. It's bizarre. I did the same thing. We tried to do a segment on the best non-conference games. I'm like, Ohio State, Oregon, that's going to be awesome. Oh, wait, that's a conference game.

Tennessee, Oklahoma, same thing. Oh, wait, that's a conference game. So Georgia, Texas, going to be awesome. Conference game. So, wow. Well, let's start let's, let's start there. Let's start there. What teams are in what conference? And we actually have a challenge at the end of this that a, that a viewer has sent in that we've got to get figured out. So we'll start

with the biggest change, probably the big 10. So who's in the Big Ten now? So we've got the usual suspects, your Ohio States, your Penn States, your Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, all those people. Originally, the plan was to add USC and UCLA. We learned that in 2022. So they were going to add the LA schools. That was going to be the Western outpost of the big 10. Then all the stuff happens last year with the PAC 12. Suddenly Oregon and Washington are in the big 10. So the Michigan Washington national championship game we just saw will literally be a conference game this season.

Bring it on. Bring it on. A little bit of the best coast coming out to the Big Ten. And the curious thing to me, Andy, I don't want to confuse the audience here, but the way this is trending here, looking at the Big Ten and you're looking at the ACC and how there might be some more Jenga blocks

that could get pulled out of that tower in the future. They've already been a national conference. They can stretch even further and kind of keep that as their headline. Hey, we're a national conference. We go from the West Coast all the way out to, I don't know, Tallahassee, Coral Gables. So, yeah, national conference is the Big Ten now. A little bit of Best Coast flair there.

And a lot of road trips for our friends out there at Eugene and Los Angeles and in Westwood. There's a lot of big-time road trips for all those sports that are not just football. So it'll be weird. It'll be very, very weird. Oregon's got a November game at Wisconsin. I don't know what you're thinking. If you live in the South, you're like, well, Oregon's way up north. It gets cold there too.

Not cold like it gets in Wisconsin. That's a different animal, different beast. And I just wonder, and the other thing about the Big Ten, and we'll talk about this with each conference because the way the conferences play each other is changing in a lot of leagues too. So the Big Ten doesn't have divisions anymore. So for years, well, they started with leaders and legends, which didn't make a lot of sense. Then they went East and West, which made geographic sense, but didn't really make competitive sense because the East was loaded and the West was not. And now I wonder, JD,

if you're Minnesota, if you're Iowa, we've seen Wisconsin already make the change, but Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, they're built to compete in the Big Ten West, to win the Big Ten West. What do you do now that there's no Big Ten West and everybody just plays everybody? I think you have to either lean into more of who you are from an identity standpoint. Like you just said, Andy, Wisconsin, they were that ground and pound. Now they got fell long ago a little bit more, a little more modern, for lack of a better term. If you're Minnesota, can you out-bully Michigan? Can you out-bully Ohio State and their new brand of defensive football they're playing? I have a

harder time believing that. I'm not saying it can't happen, but I have a harder time believing that's going to be your path to winning a conference title, which I have to imagine is their ultimate goal. So I do think you have to adapt, whether it's philosophically, whether it's the kind of player you recruit. You got to kind of be more versatile today, I think, in modern college football because of who you have to play. And it's not just in conference. I whether it's the kind of player you recruit, you got it. You got to kind of be more versatile today. I think in modern college football, because of who you have to play. And it's not just in conference. I think it's also from a college football playoff perspective as well. And that's a whole other conversation,

but like it's never been more important to be able to play in different styles, whether it's round and pound one week and then be able to throw the ball the next week. And so it's, it's, I keep ending every single segment of what I'm saying here with, it's going to be weird. Cause that's exactly right. It's going to be weird. It's going to be weird for a lot of folks, uh, both at Minnesota and Iowa and those schools you mentioned. Well, and I was talking to Sean Fitz who covers Penn state for us at on three and he made the point that Penn state for years has been trying to build to beat Ohio state.

That's not how it's going to work now. You've got to be able to compete with Ohio State, but you've also got to compete with what Michigan is now, which is a very ground and pound type team. You've also got to compete with what Oregon is, which is an athletically loaded team that's going to spread you out and try to score a bunch of points on you, but also is going to have a bunch of freaks on defense. And then whatever USC is going to be in the new era of Lincoln Riley hiring a new defensive coordinator, Danton Lynn, perhaps they have an adequate defense. We'll see, but we know they're going to be good on offense because they're always good on offense when Lincoln Riley is the head coach. So that is going to be a fascinating thing

to watch. Now, let me throw something else at you, JD, as we move through the conferences here. If you are listening to this song, what are you about to watch? What conferences game are you about to watch? Gosh, that didn't feel good. That didn't feel good. That did not feel good to listen to and know that it's not going to be the SEC. It has been for the last, I don't know how many years, Andy. It's toothpaste and orange juice. It's going to be the Big Ten.

Also, the Big Ten does not have 10 teams in it. So, I mean, that's a whole other discussion. But, yeah, that's going to be the new Big Ten on CBS, which just feels weird. Now, as fellow Sickles will point out, if you watch Mountain West games on CBS Sports Network, they also, like, if you were watching Nevada Air Force over the last few

years, you heard that song before that too. Like you're watching Wyoming UNLV, you also heard that song. The Army Navy game, you would hear that song. So it's not the SEC's song, but it is how most of us interacted with it. Because most of us, that was, okay, Auburn's playing Georgia, Alabama's playing LSU on CBS, 3.30 Eastern time. That was the game. Now that is going to be a Big Ten game.

And that SEC game is going to be on ABC because all of the SEC's product is moving to the Disney-owned companies. So they were mostly on ESPN before. Now they are all on the Disney family of networks. So if you're watching network TV, if you're flipping between your usual NBC, CBS, ABC, you'll be able to get Notre Dame and the Big Ten on NBC, the Big Ten on CBS, and the SEC and ACC, and there'll be some Big 12 on ABC. There'll be Big 12 and Big Ten on Fox. The Big Ten's best game will be on Fox. That's the big noon kickoff. So a lot going on there. And it's interesting to see what ESPN and the SEC do together,

because I know one of the things that they said, and we haven't seen it yet, but as we get closer to Memorial Day, maybe we'll see some of it. One of the things that Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the SEC and some of the SEC AD said with it all on the Disney family of networks, they should be able to get kickoff times out months in advance instead of 11 days in advance, which that's a big deal for people. If you're planning to go to the game, if you're planning a watch party, if you're planning all this stuff, like to know, okay, this game is at 7 PM Eastern time. This game is at 3 30 PM Eastern time. If you're going to.30 p.m. Eastern time. If you're going to a wedding, that's a big one.

Like if somebody's just disowned. Like those people you've disowned, hopefully. That's if they're having a wedding on a fall Saturday. Like they're not worthy of your friendship. It's a very fair point. It's a very, very fair point you're making there. My thought as we were playing those theme songs was like, we're all Pavlov's dogs here. We just got to get reconditioned.

Like when I hear the SEC on CBS theme, which is unofficially official, that, you know, that theme for that conference, like three 30 Eastern, you're running from whatever room you were in, into the kitchen or into the living room, wherever your TV is. Now you have to reacclimate and say, okay, I hear that. I hear that theme. I don't have to sprint in there.

That's the big 10. If I'm, if I'm a Florida Gator fan, I'm not sprinting in to watch Iowa and Wisconsin anymore. I need to wait for my song to make sure that I know what I need to sprint in for. So it's just a mere re-acclimation period, reconditioning ourselves to the right theme song. It'll take some time, but we're going to do it together. Let's talk about the SEC, JD.

So Texas and Oklahoma get added. And this round of realignment essentially started when we learned in 2021 that Texas and Oklahoma were ultimately headed to the SEC. And what this does is create just some bangers of games because you are spreading Texas and Oklahoma across the SEC schedule, and you're getting a change in the SEC scheduling format at the same time. They have also ditched division. So the genesis of this show is a commenter yesterday saying, I'm glad that my school, Tennessee, he said, will be playing Texas and Oklahoma more, but I wish they would not have to play LSU less.

And I said, no, no, no. They're going to play LSU more. They may play South Carolina less. They may play Kentucky less, but they're going to play LSU more because divisions are gone in the SEC. Now, currently the SEC is staying at eight conference games. They may eventually move to nine, but they're staying at eight. There would be one fixed opponent. This is why I think they're going to move to nine. So they can have three fixed opponents and then everybody else you would see twice every four years. So like if you didn't have that team as your cross divisional opponent, so we're talking like,

you know, if the old Florida Auburn rivalry that used to get played every year that stopped, uh, Tennessee and LSU, Georgia and Texas A&MM. You only saw those games twice every seven years. You will now see them twice every four years at minimum. And that's a huge bonus to this whole thing, right? There's a part of me that with the realignment and the expansion and the way that the tectonic plates are kind of shifting, there's a part of me that's, on one hand, I'm stoked to see Georgia-Texas. That's going to be dope. But the other part of me is like, man, I really loved college football that I grew

up on. I love, you know, seeing those, those rivalries every, you know, that were consistent. But now the fact that we're going to get some of these teams playing more, like you said, seeing those teams twice every four years, everyone's going to play everybody. I think that is one of the really positive byproducts that traditionalists can look at and say, okay, that's, that's going to be a good thing. Like seeing LSU and Georgia play more, that's going to be a good thing for everybody. Yeah. And the divisions were good at first and actually like created some new rivalries. So I don't think a lot of people realize before 1992, when the sec split into divisions, like Florida and Tennessee hardly ever played.

It happened to be that Florida and Tennessee in the nineties were the two best teams in the SEC. And so suddenly their divisional game that they played every year became this massive event and they developed a rivalry because of that. And so that, that happens. I, I still want to see them move to a situation where they can have more than one fixed opponent because Texas and Oklahoma, yes, absolutely need to play every year. But Texas and Texas A&M need to play every year too. So we're going to get that in 2024 at the end of the season. That is probably the new SEC game that I'm most excited about is that rivalry being renewed. But you've got Tennessee going to Norman.

You've got Oklahoma going to Baton Rouge at the end of the season. Georgia going to Texas, you mentioned earlier. These are going to be so much fun. Oh, it's going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome. I mean, how many times, Andy, too, over the course of the last decade or so, have we watched a team, whether it be Alabama or it be Georgia, and they sort of run the gauntlet through the regular season,

and we say, well, they didn't play this SEC team. They didn't have to play. Bama didn't play Georgia in the regular season. How would that have changed their college football playoff aspirations or national title aspirations? I don't think we'll see quite as much as that in this new format. I think we'll see a lot more with these teams having to play each other more consistently year in and year out.

It won't be a perfect, okay, they had the most difficult gauntlet every single year, but I think we will have a better gauge for the litmus test of each team and how good they are from a roster to roster comparison because it will genuinely be the Hunger Games when it comes to these teams making the SEC title and then playing in the college football playoff. And I do think draw will matter, whether it's the Big Ten, the SEC, the Big 12, the ACC, all of that, all that matters now because now we've seen this in the ACC already. They did it. They did it last year. We're going to see it in the Big Ten, in the SEC, and we're going to see it in the Big

12 where it is going to be top two. Now, the Big 12 started this years ago, but it is going to be top two. Now, the Big 12 started this years ago, but it is going to be top two. And yes, draw will matter. The difference with the Big 12 is they had a true round robin up until last year. And they obviously now are going to have 16 teams and they're not going to have a true round robin either.

So with the SEC, like if you look at the schedules and we've done some deep dives on the show and we'll continue to do those. If you're new to the SEC, like if you look at the schedules and we've done some deep dives on the show and we'll continue to do those. If you're new to the show, then by all means, go back and look at some of those deep dives into LSU schedule, into Florida schedule, into the Texas schedule. I think Ole Miss and Tennessee probably got the nicest draws in the SEC. I think Nebraska probably got the nicest draw in the sec. I think Nebraska probably got the nicest draw in the big 10. I think Ohio state got a better draw than Michigan got, but both of them still going to have to deal with some tough games, but we were going to talk a lot about that.

And especially as the season goes on. So that's the sec let's let's move to the league I think week to week is going to be the most fun football product, the Big 12. Why do I think the Big 12 will be the most fun football product? Because I think, as I look at the membership of the Big 12 right now, I am looking at this group of teams. JD, I feel like I can name 10 of them that might make the Big 12 championship game in 2024. And a handful of those, I'd have to imagine, with it being that high of a number, like a handful of those are going to be some new teams. Like I've sat here and said,

I could see Utah, Arizona winning the whole thing. Yeah, UCF could be big this year. Now, UCF was new to the Big 12 last year. The team I think probably has the best chance to win it is new to the big 12 this year. So PAC 12 disintegrates, Oregon and Washington go to the big 10. What happens to everybody else? Well, Arizona, Arizona state, Utah, Colorado. Colorado was actually the first to make the Big 12 move, and then the other three followed. But I think Utah walks into the Big 12 as one of the best teams in the Big 12. I think Utah and Kansas State are probably the two teams

that we should be looking at as the co-favorites in the Big 12 going into the season. And Andy, we talked about this before all know all of the the madness happened this off season but like Arizona is one of your teams where you were saying hey they could be not just a big 12 title contender like you put them in that discussion as a as a national title contender with this expanded playoff now you did a great job on that piece kind of in different tiers to your your national title contenders but with Noah Fafita coming back Tetra McMillan coming back and the way they were able to kind of fend off some of the portal exodus we've seen some other places have,

like Arizona could be one of those teams that makes a huge splash their first year in the Big 12. And so I think you saying it's going to be a really fun football product, it might be a different brand of fun than what we saw in the Pac-12 with it being Pac-12 after dark but what last year's Pac-12 was where you had you know three or four teams that were just I mean it felt like beating the heck out of each other every single week I think that could be what we see with a Utah and Arizona Kansas State heck maybe Kansas and Jalen Daniels could stay healthy and

then UCF I love your conversation with Gus Malzahn. The thing I like about him, he is what I like to call big QB certified. You can be forklift certified, and that's important, but what he did with Cam Newton, if I'm KJ Jefferson, I'm not saying KJ Jefferson's Cam Newton. That's not the comparison I'm making, but his experience with someone of that stature and how to use him well, I think that matters. It's going to be a lot of fun to watch. It is going to be great. The Arizona, you mentioned, I did have them in the national title contender tiers before Jed Fish left. Jed Fish was Arizona's coach last year. He's Washington's coach now, which if you're watching this and processing all this, if you're new to

all this, wait, did he move in the same conference? No, he went from a new Big 12 team to a new Big 10 team, though they were in the same conference last year. It's very confusing. All right, JD, we got to talk about the ACC now. And we have been challenged by Wiley E. Dogg. Or no, this is, yeah, Wiley E. Dogg on X. SMU, Stanford, and Cal in the ACC as one of the weird things to explain to your friends who are casual college football fans. So Wiley E. Dogg wants us to explain this in fewer than five minutes. So I think we can go, I think we can get the entire history

of this in fewer than five minutes. So River Bailey producers start the clock. All right, we are moving. So we'll go back to the early nineties when the big East decides not to take Penn state as a football member, as a full member, because they don't realize that football is going to drive realignment. By not taking Penn State and letting Penn State go to the Big Ten, the Big East left itself open to get pillaged. The ACC, led by John Swofford, the Ninja Commissioner, realizes, hey, basketball league based around Tobacco Road, we've got to do something a little bit different. We've got to beef up our football product. They already had Florida State. They'd added them in the early 90s. So they add Miami. They add Virginia Tech.

They add those schools. They then add Pittsburgh, Syracuse. They effectively decimate the Big East, which allows the ACC to survive as a power conference. But then something happens. The Big Ten takes Maryland. And all of a sudden, everybody's scared because it's like, oh no, that's a charter member. Would they leave? They might. So the ACC grabs Louisville. They have the Notre Dame deal where Notre Dame's other sports are playing and they have a scheduling alliance with Notre Dame, trying to protect themselves. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the Pac-12 is trying to do its deal. They're trying to do a TV deal. The last time they did one, they had a new commissioner named Larry Scott. They created a network. They made a decision when they created that network. Did they want

to partner with ESPN or Fox? Did they want to wholly own their own network? That was a big risk. They wholly own their own network and holy crap, it was a terrible idea. It was a bad, bad situation for the PAC-12 JD. They did not make the kind of money they thought off that network. There started to be a revenue gap between the PAC 12 and the ACC and the big 10 and the SEC. And it eventually got to the point where when the big 12 lost Texas and Oklahoma, it became the hunger games between the big 12 and the PAC 12. Like one of those was going to get a TV deal that it was satisfied with. And one of them probably wasn't. So Brett, your Mark, the newer commissioner in the big 12 decided, here's what I think we need to do.

We are going to offer a very realistic price point to ESPN and Fox and say, can we work with this? That is not what was happening out in the PAC-12. George Kliavkoff had replaced Larry Scott as the commissioner in the PAC-12. And George Kliavkoff had an idea of what the market value of the PAC-12 schools were for a TV contract, but there were some schools that were pushing for him to get more. They were saying, well, the Big Ten's getting this and the SEC is getting this. So I want you to go to those people and say, we demand $50 million per school per year. And their market value was about $30 million per school per year. Well, you can imagine how that goes.

We've all been in salary negotiations before, and some of us have probably thrown an outrageous number out there and probably gotten laughed at. Well, that's exactly what happened in this situation because the $30 million a year that Brett Yormark had suggested for the big 12, they're like, oh, that sounds wholly realistic. Let's do business with you. The $50 million a year that was suggested by the PAC 12 was laughed at. All of a sudden, the options started to dwindle. The last option on the table was this Apple TV thing where if they sold a bunch of subscriptions, they were going to be okay. But the schools just couldn't live with that, especially when the Big Ten was willing to offer Oregon and Washington a lifeline. So Oregon and Washington go to the Big 10. Colorado goes to the Big 12.

The Arizona schools in Utah follow. What's left? Oregon State, Washington State, Cal, and Stanford. Now, the ACC has always fancied itself a highly academically evolved conference. When you have the University of North Carolina, University of Virginia, Georgia Tech, these are schools with elite academic reputations. And of course, they want to be in business with other schools that have elite academic reputations. Cal and Stanford, they don't get much more elite than that. And so they're like, hey, you want to come? We don't have to give you all the money you might get, but we'll keep you afloat. It'll be better than the other alternatives. And Cal and Stanford are like, let's go. And so that's how you have Cal and Stanford crisscrossing the country to play Boston College,

Pitt, Florida State, you name it. SMU? They're like, we've got such loaded donors. We'll take no money. And the ACC's like, you're hired. You're in. Let's go. Boom. Five minutes. That was cinematic.

The history. If we clip that and put like a different soundtrack underneath and maybe flash a couple graphics up during, I think we got a movie. We got a movie. That was my version of the Black Thought Freestyle from a few years ago. Where he just rolled for like nine minutes.

That was impressive. That was very impressive. I hope that the folks at home were taking notes and jotting it down. Like there's, there's a lot to unpack there. There's a lot to it. And you didn't just go from like modern day. You were like, all right, sit back.

Let's rewind the clock. Let's go to the genesis of this whole thing. I'll make sure we get every, you know, every T crossed, every, every I dotted. I think that was a, I think that was very, very thorough. I appreciated that one. As LL says in the chat, and I'm sensing sarcasm here, makes complete sense. I realize it probably still doesn't make any sense. And it didn't make any sense to me because I remember when the negotiations were going on. I'm like, guys, this sounds crazy.

Now, the other potential reason for this, And I probably should have gotten into this in the five minute explanation is. The way the contract works with ESPN, they need to have 15 members, including Notre Dame. And so if they were to lose three members, let's say Florida State, Clemson and North Carolina, for any reason. They would already be backfilled at this point. So, yeah. Well, I mean, just to that comment, like, hey, this makes no sense. The funny thought that I had as I heard that was like, college football really has never made any sense.

Like, for a while there, we were just voting on who was the national champion. And then we had a computer to side then we had four teams and so it's just like the whole sport has always been very very much a a subjective kind of angle and that's on the field and now we're moving to the like how do you put the pieces together for the on-field part that's supposed to make sense that's supposed to be you know nice and neat and tidy between the white lines uh now we're adding another element that's more subjective. Like it's just the nature of the beast.

It doesn't make sense. And that's the beautiful part about it. Yeah, it's never supposed to make sense, I guess. And we should embrace that more than we do, probably. But I do. This is something that that I was thinking about. And one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode is I feel like that's a barrier to entry. And I know that there are some college football fans who like to gatekeep the sport,

who like to be the person I saw college football when it played small coffee houses, and now that it plays arenas and stadiums, I don't like it. It's selling out. But I think, because I'm a more than merrier kind of person, I want the most people in the world to come see this amazing sport. And so I'm okay with them courting the casual fan more. And I do think that's what a lot of this consolidation is. What is a Georgia-Texas game if not a chance to put that G and those horns on the TV screen together and somebody go, oh, I'm in. That has no affiliation to either school. Yeah, I feel two ways about that because I think I'm with you. I'm all about the more the merrier. Hey, if you want to buy into our sport,

please find yourself a seat. There's room for everybody. Enjoy the heck out of this. The other way I feel about it, though, going back to that metaphor i loved when they played smaller coffee houses i love when they played arenas but i'm more so in the vein of like i like my rock band to play rock music i don't want the rock band changing to that like techno sound just so we can put more people in the seats you know what i mean like so when we change it and we're like hey no this is going to be good for everybody's going to draw more eyeballs i'm like i don't think we need more eyeballs like if people want to come and see this band for what it is because they like the hits because they like the electric guitar solos and not my guy on the keytar doing a crazy solo and sliding on the white ivories like that's great with me however if you

are coming for something else like there's the nfl there's major league baseball that makes a ton of sense there's the nba which is fun for like a month of the season. If you're here for college football, welcome. But if you're here for the new sound, like, I don't know if this is something that I want to bring more people into. Does that make sense, Andy? Is that fair? It makes perfect sense. And the good news for you is that Michigan like threw the 808 in the trash and had, you know, analog,. They were playing acoustic guitar and real drums last year. We're putting seven men on the line of scrimmage. We're just going to pound you into submission. And they won the national championship doing that.

And we thought nobody would ever win the national championship again doing that. So maybe what's old will be new in this new era. But now we've got to talk about the national championship because that is, is there a subject that's been more fraught in college football than how to decide the national champion? And for years, as you mentioned earlier,

like people would play in bowl games. Sometimes the bowl invites would go out in late October, early November. And they would have to figure out a national champion based on games involving disparate teams, like number one might play number six and number two might play number seven. And you had to judge what that was going to be.

So I think now we have a 12-team playoff that probably is more similar to what fans expect in the other sports. The NFL has a 14-team playoff. Major League Baseball, their format's changed a bunch too. Their format's kind of been like college football's playoff format. It keeps changing. But I feel like 12's a manageable number. Now, we will not even get into the fact that they're already talking about expanding it to 14. Let's ignore that for now. Focus on 2024. 12-team playoff up from four. JD, what is your favorite and least favorite aspect

of the 12-team playoff? I think the favorite part of this is probably everybody's favorite, which is that we're going to see some really awesome matchups. Awesome matchups. And also, we're going to see that first round on campus. That's going to be electric. Like, if there's a home game in Clemson, South Carolina, or Baton Rouge, Louisiana, like those home game, home playoff games are going to be nothing short of absolutely incredible.

That's going to be awesome. Seeing those matchups and seeing more of those matchups. I think the season goes an extra like 11 to 12 days this year, like more college football for the most part for me in the right context with the right lens on it is a good thing. My least favorite part about this, I don't want to go too long here. Why did we just triple the field right off the bat? Like that felt like more of a pandering move to like, Hey, let's get more games. Let's get more revenue. Let's provide more inventory. I'm like, why don't we go forward to six teams? Why don't we go from four to, if we want to go crazy, double it and go to eight teams, go from four to 12. When I kind of felt like the 14 playoff worked for just about every single year, except for this year, which, you

know, it is what it is. Call a spade a spade. I wasn't a fan of us making that knee-jerk kind of change, but it is what it is. It'll be great to see. The games will be awesome, but those are my favorite and least favorite parts, Andy. All right, let's talk about how it actually works because it was fascinating to me a few weeks ago when they did finally finalize the format for this thing.

How surprised some people were about how it works for Notre Dame. That information has been out there for three years, but people, you forget. Because again, not everybody is knee deep in this all the time. So it is a 12 team playoff, but there are some layers to it. The first four teams obviously get buys. That's the only way you can do a 12 team tournament. So first four get buys. Now the first four have to be conference champions. So there is a distinct possibility that the fifth seeded team might actually be the second best team in the country. It's like the Big Ten has two monsters or the SEC has two monsters.

The second best team in the country might be the fifth seed because it couldn't win its conference. The fourth seed and the third seed, well, the ACC and Big 12 champ, like you're not falling below that probably unless the highest ranked group of five champ is up there in the top four. The other automatic bid, so the automatic bids go to the champions of the five highest ranked conferences.

So it's going to be, for all practical purposes, the ACC champ, the Big 12 champ, the Big 10 champ, the sec champ, and then another champion, whether that's the American, the mountain West, the sunbelt Mac or conference USA. So that's the question that comes in is should the ACC or big 12 champ be guaranteed a buy? I actually like that because it feels like they are being treated equally. You hear some of these potential plans for a 14-team playoff. It does not feel like they're being treated equally. Yeah, it keeps an emphasis on the conference, right? That's the big thing that I think is important in this whole situation

is the second-best team in the country, like you just said, that could be the fifth seed, the sixth seed, like depending on how this whole conference title weekend shakes out on any given year, the seeds may not actually reflect the best teams. And that's, again, kind of how it's been in college football for the better part of the last decade plus. The thing that I think is interesting, and this is something I had to text you about when this whole format was coming together, that fifth conference champion is not guaranteed the fifth seed, like you just mentioned. I think that's important.

You probably will have that fifth conference champion more often than not be right in there in that 12 spot, that 11 spot. That's going to be very interesting. Meanwhile, Notre Dame, because they don't play in a conference, they don't play a conference championship game, they can be no higher than five. The fifth seed is the highest they can go. And it was like, Notre Dame got screwed. They screwed themselves. No, they can be no higher than five. The fifth seed is the highest they can go. And it was like, Notre Dame got screwed. They screwed themselves. No, they didn't.

Because Jack Swarbrick, the AD at Notre Dame helped design this plan. And there was a reason behind it. Because with this format that has seven at-larges, originally there was going to be six when the Pac-12 imploded, they changed it to five autos and seven at-larges. With seven at-larges. Originally, there was going to be six. When the Pac-12 imploded, they changed it to five autos and seven at-larges. With seven at-larges, Notre Dame never would have to join a conference. Now, again, all of that may change, but right now, if this format or something similar continues, Notre Dame never needs to join a conference, which is a big deal for Notre Dame because they cherish their football independence. So they can be no higher than five. So five through eight get to host a playoff game. Those will be on campus. This is what we've wanted to see all along. College football playoff games on campus. College football playoff games in bowls are dumb.

College football playoff games on campus will be awesome.off games in bowls are dumb. College football playoff games on campus will be awesome. And I promise after you watch a few, you're going to be like, why are we putting these other games in bowls? But that's another conversation for another day. Seeds nine through 12 on the road. And that's where I think a lot of the intrigue is going to come in in November and on conference championship Saturdays, like who's going to be at home, who's going on the road, who gets a buy those building in those three layers, I think adds drama. Yeah, without question. I mean,

I think the whole Notre Dame conversation going back to that, that was something that I'm really curious to see how that becomes a reality. And when I say it becomes a reality, like what happens when Notre Dame's number one team in the country, they go undefeated, they're clearly far and away the best team. I don't know what year it's going to be, but let's just say that happens. And they're, you know, true to the format. They're in that five spot. They got to play somebody at home. Let's say it's that, you know, that G5 champion more likely than not and they get stunned in south bend and everyone's going to say well if they were in a conference they would have

to buy would have a chance to get healthy would have you know it's like that that whole actually having it in practice i'm wondering if that happens enough times let's say it happens two times and notre dame is the number one team in the country at the end of the regular season and then they get upset in that first round twice. Does that change, you think, Andy, their thought process on their independent? I know it's a lot of money. I understand NBC is writing a lot of zeros on that check, but is the chance to win a national championship

and having better chances to win a national championship, does that ever come into play, you think, in the future here? I think the format's going to change so quickly that, that it may not matter. Like Notre, Notre Dame may get pulled and pushed by forces that are completely different than, than post-season alignment, but we'll find out. Uh, so after those games on campus, which again, are going to be awesome. The quarterfinals will take place in the Fiesta Bowl, the Peach Bowl, the Rose Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl. So basically, those top four teams will get slotted into those bowl games. They'll know they're going there.

They'll know who they're going to play, the winner of this game, the winner of this game, based on seeding. It's not the NFL. They do not reseed after each round. So you know who's going to funnel into which game. And then Fiesta Bowl and the Peach Bowl will host semis. And then you've got a neutral site national championship game. So that is how the 12 team playoffs going to work. I think JD, if you are in the big 10 of the SEC, if you go 10 and two, you're probably going to make it. Yeah. I think if you're in the big Ten of the SEC, if you go 10-2, you're probably going to make it. I think if you're in the Big 12 or the ACC,

10-2 might get you in, but is no guarantee. But we know their champions are getting in, and I think if you were to have an 11-1 non-champion, they're in too. But I think at least one of those leagues is getting multiple teams in, and probably both of them. I mean, how many teams can we pencil in right now andy into that in that 12 team like who's going to lose more than than two games in the big 10 of the sec is ohio state losing more than two games is george losing more than two games you know like i feel like we can kind of start to fill that bracket in in pencil at least

with some of those teams that don't have more than two losable games on their schedule as we sit here the key word obviously is as we sit here in march but i don't have more than two losable games on their schedule as we sit here. The key word, obviously, is as we sit here in March. But I don't know. I think it's kind of fascinating to see that that thing's kind of filling out in my mind. Georgia's got to go to Ole Miss. They've got to go to Texas. These new schedules make this very hard to predict. Like, Ohio State's got to go to Eugene.

And they've got to play Michigan at the end of the year. They've got a little losing streak against the Wolverines. So I don't think we can predict this. And I think that's the fun part. Yeah, I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I cannot wait for all of this. JD, thank you so much for helping with this project.

This has been a lot of fun. I'm so glad if you enjoyed this, please send it to your friends and the folks that you know who maybe aren't as psychotically invested in college football as all of us are, but who enjoy the sport, who love watching the games on Saturdays. Send this to them. Help them out. Help them be ready for what's to come because it's going to, again, hit you like a ton of bricks in August and September. It's going to be crazy. And if you enjoyed this show, we do this every day, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. Eastern time. We talk to players. We talk

to coaches. We talk to the fun people all around the sport. College football is the most fun sport in the world. We have fun on this show. We love it. Like, subscribe, leave a comment. If you don't get a chance to watch on YouTube, you can subscribe to us on every podcast platform and hear the audio as you're on your daily commute. However you need us, we're going to be here for you. Also, The Hard Count with J.D. Piquel. You can watch that on the On3Sports YouTube channel as well. So subscribe to that On3Sports YouTube channel. J.D., I'm even more excited than I was for the 2024 season. And I was already very excited.

I feel like this was better. I am better for coming on to this show right now and having a walkthrough, having a step-by-step into what we can expect now in the 2024 season. It's a new era. It's a new era of college football. It's going to be awesome. It is going to be amazing.

Guys, thank you so much, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.