Andy & Ari On3 - How many teams should be dreaming of making the 2024 College Football Playoff?

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

It’s a Dear Andy show, and we have some great questions pulled from Andy’s Ask Me Anything on Reddit’s college football subreddit this week.But first, we have a lot of news…(0:00-5:59) CFP on TNT?(6:00-8:08) Big Ten Joins in on House Settlement(8:09-14:44) Big Ten... After Dark?(14:45-15:51) Dear Andy Intro - Reddit Edition(15:52-28:41) CFP *Berth Hopes(28:42-32:40) Up and Coming Coaches(32:41-37:53) 5 Part Question - Focusing on Negatives?(37:54-40:20) Covering Teams Expected to Lose?(40:21-42:22) Covering Big Brand Names(42:23-43:59) General Attitude towards smaller schools?(44:00-46:24) Happiness vs Misery for Fans(46:25-49:30) What are chances of Big 12 or ACC getting 3 teams in?(49:31-52:01) White Whales(52:02-58:29) Favorite Game to watch live in person?(58:30-1:01:37) Best Non-NCAA Sport?(1:01:38-1:02:14) ConclusionTNT will televise two first-round College Football Playoff games and will add two quarterfinal games in 2026.The Big Ten’s presidents approved the House v. NCAA settlement, joining the ACC, the Big 12 and the NCAA Board of Governors.The Rutgers at USC game will kick off at 8 p.m. local (11 p.m. Eastern) on Fox on Friday, Oct. 25 (Presumably after a World Series game).Now on to your questions:How many teams can enter the season realistically expecting to compete for a College Football Playoff berth?Which Group of 5 head coach should be the next called up to a power conference job?Could three teams from either the ACC or Big 12 make the CFP?What was Andy’s favorite game to cover in person?Want to watch the show instead? Head on over to YouTube, join us LIVE, M-F, at 8 am et! https://youtube.com/live/kkgflug-rtEHost: Andy StaplesProducer: River Bailey

Welcome to Andy Staples on three. Happy Thursday. It is a dear Andy show your questions and this week most of the questions coming from a very special group of people. I did an ask me anything segment with the reddit college football subreddit. It's a great college football community. If you're not hanging around there, if you're not posting there, if you're not lurking there, get thee there because you'll find a lot of like-minded people. You'll find people who love college football as much as we do here. And it's so much fun to see what they're talking about, hear what they're talking about. I told them I lurk there quite often because I want to know what they're talking about, what interests them. It helps me with the show. And they asked some really great questions, some good college football questions, some good questions about kind of how we do this show. And I realize we don't get into that all that often. But I do think it's interesting to talk about every once in a while,

kind of peel back the curtain a little bit, and then just some fun memories. They took me down memory lane with one question, and we'll talk about that one here. And there's a lot to talk about because there's a lot of news. We're going to have, probably on Friday, a show that dives a lot deeper into the House versus the NCAA settlement, but there was more news on that. Interesting television news, though. On Wednesday, TNT will be televising two college football playoff games

in the first round this year and next. And then starting in 2026, they're going to start doing two quarterfinal games. So what exactly does this mean? Is it like TNT hires their own announcers? Are they going to start covering college football? Because some of us are old enough to remember when there were big 12 games on TNT, but I don't know that a lot of fans even remember that TNT used to have college football, but the way this is going to work is they are sub-licensing the games from ESPN. ESPN has all

the rights to college football playoff. It will be ESPN production, ESPN announcers, and then it will be on TNT. TNT is allowed to create any sort of programming around it. So naturally, my first thought goes to, do we get Ernie, Kenny, Charles, and Shaq talking about the college football playoff? And I know some of you are like, why would we want the NBA show talking about the college football playoff?

You only ask that if you've never watched inside the NBA, like those guys can talk about anything. It's interesting because right now we don't know if those guys are still going to work at TNT because TNT might not have NBA rights after this year. So Andrew Marchand, a very good sports media reporter at the Athletic says that what happened with them buying this college football product is independent of those negotiations. I tend to, you know, I looked at it automatically. Oh, I guess they're not going to have the NBA

anymore, but it's apparently still in the, in the window that they could potentially have the NBA. And I'm telling you guys, if you've not had the pleasure of watching inside the NBA, especially after some of these late NBA playoff games, these are the funniest people on television. If you have them talking about college football, they'll be funny. If you have them talking about movies, they'll be funny. So I'm asking you TNT, if you keep the NBA and you still have Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley and Shaq and Kenny Smith I don't don't look unless you're gonna hire me which I'd love and appreciate just have them talk about it before the game starts it'll be great because they can talk about anything, but that's how it works. Now,

why are they doing this? Why are they doing this? Well, we've talked about this. We've complained about this a lot. They're doing this because they want you to subscribe to their streaming service, Max, which not an advertiser. I'm just telling you, this is why they're doing this. Remember, Time Warner Discovery, which owns, or Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns Max, which owns TNT, they're partnering with ESPN, partnering with several other entities to create a streaming bundle that will basically get you all your sports. This will sell some more of those. This will also potentially sell some more subscriptions to max, which is what used to be HBO max, but now it's kind of rolled in all of their properties in one. So that's what it's basically to get you to subscribe to another streaming service.

Of course, if you already have cable, if you already have something like YouTube TV, you're getting TNT anyway. But this will be very interesting to see college football on another channel. But again, with ESPN's production, with their crews, I don't think it's going to look all that different or feel all that different. It'll look and feel probably like the other games that are on ESPN. But just another example of how fractured the media landscape is and how these strange bedfellows are coming together. Because I don't know that these, these entities would have been working together on something like this very long ago,

but now they need to go. Dog says, Chuck's going to call the Longhorn fan. Yeah. Oh yeah. Chuck, Chuck will have a lot of fun with a lot of fans. Imagine Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith getting into a discussion of some of the traditions at Texas A&M if Texas A&M were to make the playoff.

Imagine them taking sides in the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry. There's a lot of ways you can go with this. So again, if TNT keeps the NBA, I really hope that we get an inside the college football playoff pregame, postgame show, halftime show, you name it, I'll take it. Other news, the Big Ten's presidents have approved the House versus the NCAA settlement. So they join the Big 12 and the ACC and the NCAA's Board of Governors. This is coming. Now this is college

sports. There's always the possibility that something could go wrong. There's always some possibility that some conference could throw a wrench in things before this all gets done. Now, the deadline allegedly set by the plaintiffs in this case is Thursday, is today. So presumably we're expecting a bunch of conferences to say, yep, this will work, yep, this will work. That deadline is not necessarily set in stone. They can settle this any time before there's a verdict in a trial, and the trial doesn't start until January. So if it goes into Friday, if it goes into next week, it's probably not the end of the world, but it does seem like they are making progress toward a settlement. And as we've discussed this week, and we'll discuss probably more on Friday, that means schools will be paying players directly. And does it eliminate collectives? No, probably not. Does it change the relationships? Yes, it does. Does it change how schools approach their donors about pay? Yeah,

probably. And I think the donors are probably gonna be pretty thrilled with that because I think they're pretty tired of being hit up twice. Hey, how about you make a donation to get yourself better season tickets? And also how about please donate to the collective or we won't be able to compete. I know they're tired of that. So I think this will help with that, but we'll see again, lot of hurdles along the way before they get that thing up and running other news. We got one more kickoff time on Wednesday and boy, is it an interesting

one. We're going to have to wrap our brains around this concept. And I realized that, you know, theoretically we were, we were thinking about it, I guess, as far back as 2022, when USC and UCLA said they were going to the Big Ten. But now we have, it's a real thing. Big Ten after dark is real. There is going to be Big Ten after dark. And I mean way after dark on the East Coast. Way after dark.

October 25th. That's a Friday night. That is now when the Rutgers at USC game will take place. It will kick off at 8 p.m. Pacific time from the Coliseum. That's right. 8 p.m. Pacific. 11 p.m. in Piscataway. That's presumably after a World Series game on Fox. It's going to be on Fox. The timing of that is probably so that you have a World Series game leading into it. As you probably know, because all of you are very smart viewers and have listened and watched the Big Ten Ceilings and Floors show, Rutgers is going to be pretty good this year. That could be a kind of fun game. And it's going to be pretty good this year. That could be a kind of fun game.

And it's going to be late. So we're going to see how late everybody wants to stay up on a Friday night before a college football Saturday on the East Coast. But man, that's right. Big 10 after dark is a real thing. Oregon, Washington, USC, UCLA. And Kevin Warren, when he was the commissioner of the league, talked about this, is getting that extra window.

That's valuable to those TV partners. The truth. Oh, goody. More 3 a.m. football. UCLA versus USC. I don't know if UCLA versus USC is going to be at 3 a.m. Eastern time. I think that one's probably, that's usually an afternoon game on the West Coast. They wear their home jerseys.

They get all the beautiful colors going. Into wilderness, Nathan. We have a question from Nathan later in the show, I think. For me, I love the early games and the really, really late ones. Nothing in between. That's right. You can have your 3.30 Eastern time games, everybody. Give me 9 a.m. from Dublin and give me 11 p.m. from Los Angeles. This is going to be hard. I'm telling you, there's so much about this season that is going to be hard to wrap our brains around initially. Because we're so used to Pac-12 after dark.

And yes, when these West Coast teams play one another and it's late on the East Coast, it's like, okay, that makes sense. But when it is Rutgers showing up to be the opponent. That is going to be yet another story entirely. But I'm telling you right now, that game could be fun. This is USC. We go back and forth. Our first question, dear Andy, we're going to talk about the Trojans a little bit. They could be good. If they're not significantly better better on defense they're going to be an average

big 10 team rutgers is going to be an average to above average big 10 team that happens to have the easiest schedule draw of anybody in the big 10 this is going to be probably a really good game so if you're on the East Coast, I don't know, take a nap in the afternoon. Like we get home from work, take a nap. Get yourself prepped and get ready to roll at 11. 11 p.m. Eastern.

Nick Costco in the chat says, don't get New Jersey fired up, Andy. We got to have Nick on to get New Jersey fired up. Nick works with us at On3. He's good at getting New Jersey fired up. I think we should get New Jersey fired up. I don't think there's any reason at all not to just drive the Rutgers bandwagon 3,000 miles across the country.

So that game, they'll have just played UCLA, by the way, in New Jersey. They will have played Washington, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. They've got a game at Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech, by the way, is actually kind of in the same boat as Rutgers, as one of those sneaky teams that everybody's not kind of thinking about right now. But once the season starts, I mean, whoa, whoa, they're actually kind of good. So that game, I believe it's week three, could be a lot of fun. But Rutgers will have played pretty much the meat of its schedule by the time it gets to USC. So we'll have a really good idea of how good the Scarlet Knights are. But I can't wait. Andrew, the big 10 is going

to have to make a big adjustment to playing on the West coast. And those West coast teams in the big 10 are going to have to make a big adjustment to play on the East coast, the body clock. I mean, like, like I just said, Rutgers has UCLA in New Jersey. So UCLA has got to go all the way there. And then Rutgers has got to go all the way to LA. Penn State's got a situation. I believe they play UCLA and USC back to back, not all there or all at home. It's one at home and one away, but it will be, it will be just a fascinating transition to watch these West coast teams come into the Big Ten. I don't know that it's going to be as different for the West Coast teams that are going into the Big 12 because it feels like the Arizona schools

kind of feel like spiritually they belong with the Texas schools anyway. Texas Tech, if you've ever been to Lubbock, you're out there. You're very close to New Mexico at that point. You're not that far from Arizona. So it makes sense. And of course, Cal Stanford and the ACC is going to be absolutely bizarre. Absolutely bizarre. But you're going to get some ACC after dark because they have that window now. So let's, let's get ready to embrace it. Let's get ready to not sleep. If you live on the East coast, if you live on the West coast, you're going to have some interesting primetime games that, that probably you never thought you'd see. All right.

Let's go to Dear Andy. Let us answer your questions. This was a lot of fun. The folks at the College Football subreddit, I love those guys. I love reading what they have to say. And they had some really interesting questions this week. One was about what size mammal that I think I could confidently knock out with one punch. I thought anything I could actually do that to, it would sound awful and I might get peed all over

me. And then I thought about like a kangaroo is actually still probably a little bit lighter than me if we're going weight classes here. I don't know how much a kangaroo weighs. I'm about 220 right now. So I don't know if I'm evenly weight matched against a kangaroo, but a kangaroo would murder me. I would stand no chance against a kangaroo. Like a 220-pound hog is small for a hog. Would I have a chance there? I don't know. Those are some of the questions I got. We also got some very relevant college football questions, like this one from Single T. How many teams can realistically go

into the season hoping for a playoff berth and single t had a little little homo homophone situation here uh spelled birth b-i-r-t-h and then bobin one of the administrators at reddit cfb said timing wise it would be good to start trying in march if you would like a CFP-BIRTH. If you would like a CFP-BERTH, I shouldn't try to spell on the show, by the way. My lack of confidence is showing. But it's a great question because with the 14 playoff, how many teams could realistically, even before the season starts, think they are going to compete for a playoff? Like you'd have maybe three or four in the SEC every year. You'd have two or three in the big 10.

The PAC 12 last year was like, okay, you're going to get one, but who are, and it was basically Washington and Oregon by the end of the season. I think probably USC went in there with, with some hopes at the beginning of the season, but it's not nearly the number it is now. So when I did the top 25 the other day, we were talking about it. Teams that didn't make the top 25, I was thinking could be potential playoff teams. Now, if you go to our ceilings and floors episodes, you know that, of course, I don't think they're all going to make the playoff.

I think some of them have a pretty wide range of outcomes. Like Oklahoma, I have with a pretty wide range of outcomes, and one of those outcomes is the college football playoff. So it's not necessarily that I think they're going to make it, but can they go into the season with like a glimmer of hope? Yeah, absolutely. So right now I've got, I'm just doing the power conferences here because if we do the group of five leagues, we're going to get more teams.

But I honestly don't know how that's going to go because I don't know how the committee is going to treat, say, Liberty's schedule versus the American champs schedule versus the Sunbelt champs schedule. So I don't know how realistic everybody's hopes are there. I feel like we got a little bit better handle on the power conferences just because we've seen how the committee has treated these teams over the years. And I'm assuming, which may be completely wrong, that they're going to vote in a fairly similar fashion to how they voted before, even though there were no playoff bursts on the

line beyond four. So we'll start with the ACC. And I'm actually being somewhat conservative here in the ACC by saying that there's four teams I think should go into the season with a realistic playoff hope. Because I think there might be five or six ultimately. But I'm going to go with Clemson, Florida State, Miami, and NC State from the ACC. So that's four. I would also be fine if you wanted to add Louisville and Virginia Tech. If you want to add those two, by all means, add them. I'm just looking at this right now and thinking, okay, these four feel like the ones at the end of the tunnel.

They have the talent to be 10-2, to be 11-1, or 12-1, 11-2 two and have won the conference championship, but they, they feel like the ones that can be there. So I'm going to go with four there, the big 12. Now, I don't know how many of the big 12 is going to get in. We have a question about that later, but the big 12 champ is going to get in. The big 12 champ is going to be one of the top four seeds. Well, guys, I got eight teams that I think can win the Big 12 championship right now. Kansas State, Kansas, Arizona, Utah, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, UCF. That's eight. And if you want to throw, like, what if TCU has a resurgence? That's not out of the question.

What about Baylor? What about West Virginia, which won nine games last year? Those would all be fairly realistic. So now you'd be up to 11. It's crazy, but I'm going to stay with eight there. No, let's go to nine. Let's go to nine. Let's add West Virginia coming off a nine-win season,

bringing back most of the guys that were very important. Let's go to nine on that. So now I think I'm up to 27 total teams once we get through the Big Ten and the SEC. I keep adding them because i i can talk myself into this but that's the thing it's you know it's the beginning of the season nobody's played a game yet who can have legitimate hope is the question so the big 10 i've only got five listed here and i realize i've i've got some higher ceilings for some of the teams that aren't listed.

And there's one I'm going to, we'll talk about. So the five I have are Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, Michigan, and Iowa. And I know you're saying, well, why Iowa? Because if you look at Iowa's schedule, if Iowa has even a glimmer of a competent offense, they're winning 10 games. 10 and 2 in the Big 10 is probably good enough to get you in. But what I don't have is USC. I am willing to add USC because I think if USC is significantly better on defense, then USC becomes competitive with everybody in the Big 10 instantly. I'm not worried about USC having an effective offense. As long as Lincoln Riley is the coach, there will be an effective offense. So that's not the problem. Defense has been the problem on Lincoln Riley's teams basically since he became a head

coach. Can he get them better? Can Danton Lynn get them better defensively? He's the new defensive coordinator. Now, I think if they don't get better, I don't necessarily blame the coordinator. I blame the head coach. I blame the culture of the program. I blame the way they, the way they administrate the program, the way they practice. This is a team that, well, it's not even a team like USC Lincoln Riley or Oklahoma Lincoln Riley, they tend to be poor tackling teams at the end of the season. They tend to get beat at the point of attack. They tend to get beat up up front late in the season. Like go back to that 2022 Pac-12 championship game, Utah just abusing USC at the line of scrimmage

and USC not being able to tackle at all. Like those are the games you have to win to make the playoff. So that's why I've left them out here. If you want to add them, go for it. SEC. I've got nine teams in the SEC, and eight of them, I think will come in where their fan bases do expect their team to make the college football playoff this season.

Like really expect it. Like I've had some very angry Missouri fans and angry LSU fans since I put out my ranking. Cause how dare I suggest that they won't make the college football playoff. I got angry Ole Miss fans that think I got them too low because the way I have them ranked, they'd have to play a road game in the playoff. That's where everybody's at in the SEC.

So here are the nine, well, I'll go with the eight that for sure their fans are convinced that they are going to college football playoff this season. Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Missouri, Oklahoma, their fans are convinced that they are going to the college football playoff this season. Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Texas. Now, I don't know if Tennessee fans are convinced they're going to the playoff, but I definitely think they know if the schedule breaks right, they can be a 10-2 team. But all those other ones, they're coming into the season expecting a playoff.

They're like, okay, we've been right on the edge there. We're in this year. The one that I didn't mention earlier that I do think has the ceiling to be a 10-win SEC team, which would probably put it in the playoff, is Texas A&M. We don't know how good they're going to be. Their schedule's pretty hard. They've got a first-year coach in Mike Elko. But the last time I saw Connor Wigman play quarterback, he was pretty damn good.

He's been hurt. If he's healthy, they got a chance. So we're going to say nine SEC teams. So that's 27 right now in the power conferences that we should probably feel like have legitimate hopes to make this college football playoff. 27. That's great because the part of that makes it interesting is some of these will fall off at the beginning of the season they're gonna be a couple that lose you know two two early games and we're like okay they're out but then there will also be some other teams that i didn't mention that'll start hot and we're like okay well maybe they got a shot

goat dog says over under three and a half sec teams in the playoff. I'm going to go over. I think they're going to get four. We'll address that in a question coming up, but I think they're going to get four. But it is going to be a bloodbath in October, late October, in November with some of these games, because there will be some virtual playoff elimination games. There will be some games where somebody gets spoiled by getting upset. There will be teams that lose two games early in the season that get hot and go on a run. All of this is coming. And we have not gotten to see that much of that. We see it in other sports, but we've not gotten to see it in college football. So it's going to be very

interesting to see the dynamics at play. And like the Big 12 schedule, like I said, there are that many teams that are capable of winning the league. They're all playing each other. It's going to be spectacular. And the thing is, the ones I didn't mention doesn't mean they can't beat any of the ones I did mention. Zani in the chat, would Florida make it if they go 8-4 against the right teams? No.

I don't think they're going to put an 8-4 team in, even if it's... and four against the right teams. No, I don't think they're gonna put an eight and four team in, even if it's like, when you say the right teams, Zani saying, you know, okay. The problem is if you go eight and four with, by beating the right teams,

if you're Florida, it means you've lost some bad ones. So let's say like you beat Georgia, you beat Texas, you beat Ole miss, you beat Florida state. Let's say you beat all those teams. Well, you beat Ole Miss, you beat Florida State. Let's say you beat all those teams. Well, who'd you lose to?

The thing about Florida is if you can win eight games against this schedule, you can win 10 or 11 games against this schedule. But I don't know that's going to happen. So, yeah, I don't think they would get in. But I do think Billy Napier would keep his job if they go 8-4. I think that is definitely the outcome of that season. But, yeah, that would be weird. It would be strange if they just, you know, in the early part of the schedule,

which is a little bit easier, if they dropped four and then just went on a run through the meat of the schedule. Maybe if they started 0-4 and then won the last eight because it's that last eight. I don't know. The committee might be like, we've never seen anybody do this before. Christopher, I'd say they could get in at nine and three, depending. I do agree with that. I do agree with that. I do agree with that.

With a schedule like that, and there's a couple other schedules around the country where if you look at it, like LSU, I think is one of those. USC has a schedule like that. If they could be nine and three, and the nine are against the right teams, you got a shot. Josh in the chat, Florida would be lucky to get to four wins. Yeah, it's probably somewhere in between what josh said and what the other guy said but you know let let's let the folks dream right now

that's what we're doing we're we're getting everybody excited everybody's zero and zero everybody has a chance all right from commodore in seven hi andy if you could choose from a list of up-and-coming coaches or coordinators to be head coach at a Power 4, we're calling it the Core 4 here, but that's okay. Who would be the candidates you'd most want to see and why? Who do you see being the most successful when taking a step up in level or into the head coaching role? The guy I think is ready for the call-up to a Power Conference, who's a head coach in the group of guy I think is ready for the call up to a power conference. Who's the head coach in the group of five league is Jamie Chadwell at Liberty. You know, he's won

at every level. Basically he won at North Greenville in division two. He won it at Charleston Southern in the FCS. He won a coastal Carolina, the sunbelt goes to Liberty goes undefeated. They wind up playing in, in the Fiesta bowl against oregon that did not go well because quite a big talent discrepancy in that that game but he's won everywhere now the knock against jamie chadwell is that he was never an assistant in the scc or the acc so he's never really had to recruit at that level and then he's you know he's had a lot of the same staff together. It's split up a little bit when he left coastal to go to Liberty, but for the most part has worked with a lot of the same guys and they've all been with him at these different levels. So they have not recruited at that level either for the most part. So that's the concern is that you're hiring

him. He's probably going to bring a lot of the guys he's loyal to, and they have not recruited at this level. I don't know that that matters. He's every time he stepped up a level, he's won that offense. If you'd run it with better players, it's going to be really good. So I do think if there's an SEC opening and ACC opening this year, I do think Jamie Chadwell gets serious consideration. If Mack Brown were to decide to retire at North Carolina at some point, I think that would be a job Jamie Chadwell would consider. Now remember, he was exclusively in the state of South Carolina before he left for Liberty, which is in Virginia. I do think staying in the South is probably a priority, but I do think that there could be some jobs that, that would fit what he's looking for.

So that would be the one I would say, you, you hire him, you pull him up. I think you're going to win. I think he's, he's shown every time he's gone up a level that he's better. The truth says Oregon versus Liberty was a good game for all of seven minutes. Then the wheel fell off, but yes. Again, massive discrepancy in talent. Josh in the chat. What happens if Colorado wins the Big 12? Well, we would talk about Deion Sanders a lot. That's what would happen. We would talk about him and

I would have to be a lot of crow because I've said I don't think their results going to be all that different this year than it was last year. But trust me, it's good for the show if Colorado wins the big 12 because people love talking about coach prime and again the big 12 is a situation where everybody's fairly evenly matched now we think Utah Kansas State Kansas Arizona Oklahoma State we think they come in with a little bit of an edge. But I don't know if the edge is that big. Boosted, top four in the SEC in no order. Texas, Bama, Georgia, Tennessee, Ole Miss. Oh, you want me to do that?

Because that's why you gave me five. Okay. Well, if I... No know maybe you're saying that and and you gave me a top four with five teams that's that's good that's good that's how hard it is to figure this out right now oh my all right we'll move on to our next with our next question is a five parter from Cunipotent. I'm going to take them individually, though. I'm not going to read you all five questions and then and then rip off the answers. But I like this one because it does allow us to kind of peek behind the curtain of the show. And I do think a lot of you guys are probably interested in that stuff, probably more than I realize. So, cause I got a few of the questions in the AMA were about this stuff. And so I thought, okay, let's, let's do that. Let's transparency is good. And I think, you know, finding out how we choose topics, why we talk about the things we talk about that matter. So question one, I believe that podcasters and media take advantage of the fact that people dislike more teams than they like to get views

and have dialogue. Example, there are more fans that hate Texas than fans that like Texas. This leads to general discussion in sport having extremely negative spin in most discussions. Have you noticed this? And are you for or against how most discussions, especially during the season, it's so focused on the bad. Now, I don't necessarily agree with this because I've noticed different trends with different teams. Like what are, what are question asker points out? Like is a hundred percent accurate for Notre Dame.

If I talk about Notre Dame, if we have a Notre Dame segment, most of you in the chat are going to be just blistering Notre Dame. If I talk about Notre Dame, if we have a Notre Dame segment, most of you in the chat are going to be just blistering Notre Dame because you hate Notre Dame because you grew up when Notre Dame got special treatment and they were considered above everybody else and you didn't understand why and they haven't won a national title since the 80s. Like you will just savage Notre Dame in the chat. And that's good. That's engagement. Plus Notre Dame has a fairly big fan base.

So you do serve those people. And then you also have the people who hate Notre Dame who want to rage wash. That's good. That's fine. Texas, I think, draws a lot of the same stuff. Texas A&M definitely draws the same passion out of people for and against. There are a couple that seem to take off when you say nice things about them, Nebraska and Tennessee. I don't know that Tennessee will be like this as much as they get more success. Like a lot of it was as Tennessee sort of walked through the wilderness, their fans

were so used to everybody making fun of Tennessee and all the things that were going wrong at Tennessee that they would just kind of cling to anything positive anybody would say about Tennessee. I think that is probably changing because Tennessee is getting a lot of praise now and has really since Josh Heupel got there. But Nebraska is kind of in that boat right now where Nebraska fans, they have suffered. I mean, they have suffered mightily and they are looking for folks who can give them that glimmer of hope. So I think there's there's traffic in that for sure. Now, I I'm of the opinion that you have to be realistic. Like last year, I didn't feel that hopeful about Nebraska.

I don't think we went into the season saying, we think Nebraska's going to be great last season. This season, I actually do think they're going to be better, and that's why I say that. But I also don't think they're going to win the Big Ten or anything. I remember in Scott Frost's second season, that was the most bizarre thing. They had the preseason Big Ten poll of the media that covered the Big Ten.

I was not invited to vote in that poll. I would not have voted this way. But they picked Nebraska to win the West that year. And I was like, why? What possibly suggests that that's going to happen? There was nothing. This year, you have most of the defensive players coming back. You have them keeping Tony White at defensive coordinator. You have them adding pieces in the skill positions on offense, which they desperately needed because they got so battered by injuries last year, they could barely do anything offensively. Like they've done the

things you have to do to get better. And then you have Matt rule who has had good year twos at other places. So that makes sense. But yeah, that's, I don't really care if the discussion is positive or negative and i will say like when we're talking about what we're going to talk about for the show like for example the last couple days we've had stuff on the jayden rashada suing billy napier situation we talk about that because it's interesting like conflict is generally more interesting than harmony. So you get those people, why don't you guys do good news? I want to read good news. No, you don't.

Like historically, humans don't want good news. They want to know what's in conflict. They don't want to know what's in harmony. Every once in a while, we give you the cheery feature about the harmonious thing, and that makes you smile, but it has to be special and unusual. Otherwise, it's just business as usual, and you're not interested in that. So part two of this question, since my team Nebraska has been awful, and it has made me question things in the sport, I noticed that if a team doesn't do well in recruiting, they get

written off immediately, even if they were doing well. Take Iowa, for example, and the way they have performed, they've overperformed their recruiting rankings and consistently outperformed what is expected. I look at a program like this that does well and then gets consistently thrown under the bus for having an ugly offense and losing a big game that preseason that they were expected to lose anyway. The question is, if teams are expected to lose because they're bad recruiting, why is so much time spent insulting them for losing ugly when they're still winning more than most teams and what commentators predict? Iowa is a special case. Here's why. That offense has been so, so bad, and that defense has been so, so good

that for neutral people who don't care one way or the other if Iowa wins, it is perplexing. We can't understand it. How can you be so good at one side of the ball and so bad at the other? And then compounding it, you have the fact that Kirk Ferentz's son was running Iowa's offense. He's not doing it anymore, but Brian Ferentz was running Iowa's offense the past few years and that made it worse. That made it even more complicated. So it's not that we don't think Iowa was supposed to be good because the way Iowa recruits, we can look at Iowa's history and say, okay, under Kurt Ferentz, Iowa tends to be pretty good. But for people who don't care, and also for Iowa fans, it is incredibly frustrating to see a team that is excellent at defense and special teams, like elite at defense and special teams, not be able to play offense.

That's not recruiting. That's coaching. So Iowa's a different animal. They get a, they're going to get a special dispensation here, but it's also a situation where if Iowa's offense ever does get going, they're going to be pretty good. We know their defense is going to be good. We know their special teams are going to be good. So if the offense gets rolling, that's, and that's why I have Iowa as a team that I think can legitimately make the playoff this year. If their offense is good or even competent, like even if it's average, there's a good chance. Part four, I get the feeling that networks and podcasts would rather everyone just drop their

own teams and jump on one of the big brand names so they can focus on it. Just talking about 10 teams. Do you get this feeling at all? Or is it just business that the big brands have more fans? So you have to cater to them as it just rough to be a Northwestern fan, for example. Yes. Yes. We are in the business of talking to the most possible people at one time. And it's hard in college football because it is a fractured group. Northwestern fans are interested in different things than Ohio State fans, who may be interested in different things than Michigan fans, who may be interested in different things than Ole Miss fans.

But we do know who the bigger groups are. We know Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Alabama, Georgia. Those are massive fan bases. Tennessee, Nebraska, massive fan bases. Texas A&M, huge fan base. Florida, LSU, huge fan bases. Our job is to entertain the most people at once. So yes, we are going to focus on the teams that get us the most eyeballs. That's business. That's the job. Now, I try on this show, and I feel like we try it on three, to spread it around to everybody we can because we love this sport and we love what makes it interesting. Part of what makes it interesting is the variety.

So we try to talk about other schools, even if it's just having fun with the fact that General Booty is transferring to ULM. Like that allows us to talk about ULM. But yeah, if something big is going on at Michigan or Ohio State or Alabama or Georgia, we're going to talk about that. And we're going to talk about that over something that's going on at a school that does not have as many fans. That's just how business works. Number five, what is the general attitude about the smaller schools amongst your peers and behind

the scenes from listening it already sounds like if you're not in the top 25 recruiting you will never do anything worth caring about to most commentators what do you think fans of Wyoming or even a bigger school like Illinois do deep down do you believe if your team isn't top 50 should fans just pick a different sport no I feel like you should have realistic expectations for your team like should you think your team should win the national title? No, you're just going to be disappointed every year. But like, if you're an Illinois fan and you can't appreciate when the Illini go eight and four, that's your fault. That's not anybody else's fault because you've watched Illinois football. You know what the expectations should be. You know exactly where you fit in the pecking order.

And look, everybody doesn't get to win the national championship. Life's not fair. And yes, we're going to talk about the teams that compete for the national championship more. See my answer to part four of the question. But if you can't understand the team you root for enough to genuinely appreciate when it overperforms expectations, that's on you. That's not on us. You've got to decide, okay, where's my line? Where do I find joy here? And look, Illinois is not going to have as many fans as Ohio State. It's just not. But that doesn't mean nobody cares about Illinois. It's a massive alumni base.

They have lots of people who went there. They get lots of people at their games. Oh, apparently I've skipped part three. All right. I did answer all three in writing, so I know what the answers are. But all right. I will go back to part three. I believe that no one is happy being a fan at sports. You either get disappointed, Nebraska, or you exceed expectations only to have higher expectations so that you can be sad the next year. Even Alabama fans throw a fit when they don't win enough. What team's fans from the outside do you think are the happiest?

And do you think it is child abuse to introduce children to my Nebraska fandom? No, I don't think it's... Listen, you have to find joy in the things you love. You have to. You have to be able to find joy in the things you love. Even Nebraska football, which again, I think you're going to find joy this year. I think you're going to find way more joy than you've had the last few years. As far as who the happiest group of fans are, this is hard because for the same reason you just

brought up, if you exceed expectations expectations then the expectations just go up i used to think south carolina fans were the happiest group i i grew up a south carolina fan this is a program didn't win a bowl game for the first hundred years of his of his existence i was at the car quest bowl when they beat west virginia first bowl win in school history. And I thought, okay, this is kind of the Chicago Cubs fan base of, of college football. Like as long as the sun's shining and the bleachers are, are hot, you know, it's good. It's all good. You're going to win a game every once in a while. You should win. There's probably going to be some crushing defeat, like the 1984 Navy game that comes along, but you know, it's all good. We're having fun out

here. Then Steve Spurrier comes along. He beats Clemson five years in a row. He wins 11 games, three years in a row at South Carolina. Suddenly they start thinking like Alabama fans think like Georgia fans think, and they become miserable too. So I don't know that anybody's immune. I think South Carolina fans are kind of coming back down to earth, but nobody's immune to this. Everybody wants more.

It's just life. It's human nature. But yeah, I love the five-part question. All five parts were good. I truly enjoyed that. From Exciting Pineapple 4, outside the SEC and the Big Ten, what are the chances of the Big 12 or the ACC

getting three teams in the playoff, and who is more likely to do it? So we talked about a lot. We talked about this a lot last week at the ACC spring meetings because the ACC in recent years has not produced more than one good team most years. And so 2020 was the outlier, but that's because Notre Dame was playing as an ACC team and they also made the playoff along with Clemson. But other than that, from 2017 to now, the ACC would have only gotten one full-on ACC team in per year.

And that's just, that's not going to get it done. This year, I do think they're deeper at the top than they've been in a while. I think Florida State is going to be really good again. Clemson, obviously, is very talented, can keep winning. Miami is extremely talented. Now, do we trust Miami yet? No, we don't trust Miami yet, but we do know they have a roster that could potentially be at the top of the ACC. NC State, yet another one. They're just, like Dave Doran has built a consistently winning program and you add Grayson McCall, the former Coastal Carolina quarterback to that mix, there's a good chance that they could be very good this year. So I do feel like the ACC

has a better chance of getting multiple teams into the 12-team playoff than it would have, say, last year or the year before. The question is, what do the SEC teams do? What do the Big 10 teams do? What do the Big 12 teams do? So the ACC, I'd say two from the ACC makes a lot of sense. Three would be tough, I think, because it would probably involve one of the two that gets in knocking one of the other competitors out because they were kind of hanging on the line there. The Big 12 is a different story

for the reasons we talked about earlier when we're trying to figure out who should go in with realistic playoff hopes. All these teams have a chance to win the title, the conference title. The question is, will there be a second or a third team that you feel like is good enough? And I'm not sure that they're going to be two or three teams that can separate themselves from the pack that well like to get two in you've probably need 11 and 1 versus 11 and 1 in the conference championship game or 10 and 2 beats 11 and 1 in the conference championship game and they both get in and then how would you have a third well you'd need probably a 10 and 2 that lost a tiebreaker, but has a nice out of conference win. It would be,

it would be rough. Andrew in the chat. Can the pack to get three teams in? No, no. Unless, unless Oregon state and Washington state want to want to split off and form like a B team. No, the two team league cannot get three teams in. That is a great question. All right. From LeBronton. Hey, Andy, I've always loved your appearances on Pardon My Take, and I think you're the best CFB guest they have. Well, thank you for that. They always talk about their white whales of podcast guests. So I was curious, what would your white whale be to have on your podcast? That is a great question. Now, here's the thing.

We talk college football. I think there's a fairly realistic chance that we could get anybody in college football. Dion might be tough. I'll put Dion on that list. I would love to have Dion in the show. I think Dion would be a fascinating guest on this show. I would ask him about those development questions that I ask on the show. I'd ask him, do you think this is a way to create a better offensive line? Do you

think historically this has worked? Why are you doing it this way? I'd love to ask him those questions. I would bet that he would charm us on this show. I would bet that we'd be laughing and smiling and you guys would be completely charmed by him. I can't. Look, Dion, if you want to come on, let's go. Come on. Other than him, I think we can get pretty much anybody else in college sports. So I actually want to know, who do you want? You tell me.

Who would you like me to get? Because I think, again, most of them we could get. Now, I did come up with a scenario that's kind of my white whale scenario. I don't think these two people would do this. I think individually they'd love to come on. I think together they'd probably come on, but I don't think they'd do what I am suggesting. What I would love is to have Steve Spurrier and Steven Garcia on, and I want them to talk openly and honestly about everything that happened at the University of South Carolina when Steven Garcia played quarterback for Steve Spurrier. I want all the stories. I want nothing held back. I want to know, because I bet it would be spectacular to hear these two tell the story

and hear each side of each story because knowing both these people they're very good storytellers I would love this so Steven if you're listening I have your number i can text you coach spurrier same thing the offers out there if you two want to do this we'll make it happen i would absolutely love that show i would love it all right michigan for life 53 asked what was your favorite college football game to watch live in person? So I've gotten to cover so many good games over the years. This was a tough question, but then I thought about it, you know, cause I did the Vince young Rose bowl. I was at second and 26. I was at the rocket game in Michigan state fans. remember that one, Kirk cousins hitting the hail Mary to Keith

nickel to beat Wisconsin. Like so many fun games through the years, but there is one that stands out above them all because of just the scenario, the circumstances in my own life as that game was going on and just the game itself. So for me, my favorite game, and it'll probably always be my favorite game, it's going to be hard to top. It's going to be that Boise State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl. So for those who don't remember, that was played January 1st, 2007. It was after the 2006 season.

And I think what has been lost to time is that Boise State actually dominated the first three quarters of that game, and then Oklahoma came back. And then it looked like Oklahoma was going to run away with it. And then Boise State came back. And, of course, they have the lateral play to keep themselves alive. And then they win it on the Statue of Liberty with two-point conversion. Jared Zabransky handing off to Ian Johnson.

Ian Johnson then gets down on one knee and proposes to his girlfriend, Chrissy Popotics, who's a cheerleader for Boise State. She's in the end zone. So here's how I came to be at that game because I wasn't a national writer. I was covering Florida for the Tampa Tribune and I had just landed in Phoenix. Florida was going to play Ohio State for the national title a week later. The only reason I went to the Fiesta Bowl, well, there were a couple of reasons. But one of the main reasons I went to the Fiesta Bowl was to make sure that my computer worked in that press box, that I could send from that press box because the deadline situation, the national title game, I'm working for a newspaper, that deadline situation was going to be really hairy.

So that was one reason I went. The other reason I went is my mom passed away on December 14th, 2006. The 2006 season was a really hard one for me. She had, uh, she had lung cancer and it was a situation where she'd had surgery a couple of years earlier. They thought they'd gotten it. It had spread to the lymph nodes. We found out later they didn't get it. And so spent most of that season trying to help my dad take care of her and was going back and forth from Gainesville to Orlando and really just trying to spend as much time as I could with her. And we lost her that December. And so that trip was the first time really I'd been alone since that had happened.

I'd been with my family or I'd been with my wife. And so I didn't, I kind of didn't know what to do with myself. And so the idea of being able to go to this game with some, there were some, you know, friends of mine who covered different teams or work for different publications who were going to be there. So I wanted to go, go to the game. I'd get to be around. I wouldn't have to be alone with my thoughts in a hotel room. And so I'm at that game and I'm thinking, Oh my God, my mom would love this. So for those who don't know, I think I probably told this story on the show before,

but my mom was probably the biggest college football fan who's ever lived. She had two degrees from the university of Alabama. She was not one of those Alabama fans, though. She loved the Tide, but she was respectful of other teams. Even Auburn, she was respectful of, except for one day a year. And the irony was not lost on her, that she loved Alabama, whenever Alabama played, she rooted for the underdog in every other game, every other game. So like she had, uh, she had a Tuesday night team. That was the Toledo rockets. She'd watched a ton of Boise state because they played tons of weeknight games. So like on Saturday, like everybody else, she's watching the sec, but she's, she just deep, deeply invested in college football and football and a holder of grudges too.

When I was in high school, in my senior year, right before national signing day, we got a call from one of the Duke coaches. They asked my high school coach to tell me to get an application into Duke very quickly. I was not considering going to Duke. I had not thought about it. We'd not heard anything from their football program was not considering going to Duke. I had not thought about it. We'd not heard anything from their football program. And so this was news to me and I'm like, Oh, Whoa, are they, would they potentially consider signing me? Like, I didn't think I was up, you know, being recruited for scholarships at that level. So I get the application in, you know, we, we hustle it off, get it sent in and, you know,

signing day comes and goes and we find out, of course they want me to walk on. They don't want, they're not going to use a scholarship on me. And it made my mom so mad now, understanding it the way I understand it now, like that was incredibly generous of them and an incredibly great opportunity. Like I could have gone to Duke as a student. What a deal. But she was so mad. She thought they had played me. And so when Duke went 0-11 the following season,

and I was a freshman walk-on at Florida, and we went and won the national title, my mom took great joy in every Duke loss. She would call me every Saturday to tell me that Duke lost because she was more worried about me than them. But yeah, she was amazing. So having lost her and knowing how she'd feel about that game, because she'd be rooting for Boise State. There's no question she'd have been rooting for Boise State over Oklahoma. And so when you see the American dream rolled into one college football play, like the ultimate backyard play, the Statue of Liberty,

to beat freaking Oklahoma, and then the guy who scores the two-point conversion drops to one knee and proposes to his girlfriend. It's everything you want, and it's everything she would have wanted. And I had to think as I'm sitting up there in the press box, they got an angel on their shoulders tonight. They have to, because I know how she feels about this. So that's why that's my favorite game and always will be.

So thank you for indulging me on that one we do have one more and it's from our friend nathan i mentioned early in the show because he was asking one in the chat dear andy the sickos committee puts out a running non-ncaa champions list in honor of this what non-nca NCAA sport do you think would be the most fun to one take part in yourself to have nationally tele televised and cared about like football. So producer river has put a water polo in the, in the, in the photo there. I actually think water polo is an NCAA sport. Not many teams play it, but I do think they sponsor it. No, no, we're going deeper than that. Remember when General Booty transferred to

Louisiana Monroe, I told you about their water skiing team. Like they are dominant. They are the Alabama of water skiing in college. That's not an NCAA sponsored sport, but it exists. Now, if you've ever seen me on skis, this is not the one I want to take part in. No, I think we all would guess that for me, it's meat judging. I don't know if you followed last week, but Texas A&M was talking some meat judging smack and then Texas Tech jumped in. Oklahoma State has a tremendous meat judging program. K-State has a tremendous meat judging program. But there's too much science involved in that that's not it's not like you're just eating steak that's not what they're doing like there's a lot of science there i am not smart when it

comes to that i i'm not good at science so that's not happening bass fishing i think would be a good one i don't know that i'd be very good at it but just head out on a lake and drop a line in. I'd be all right with that. Bass fishing is very competitive at the college level. You got the dudes with the sponsors all over their shirts. I think, though, the one that I would want to participate in, because I'm a little bit of a psycho, and that I would love to see covered and televised like college football is rodeo college rodeo would be the the one like I would

I do think it would be fun like the steer wrestling looks pretty awesome I can't ride a horse at all I can't even imagine riding a horse jumping off of horse and then wrestling the seer to the ground but it looks like fun roping riding let's go i mean come on think of the stars that would emerge think of the nil deals yeah i think it's college rodeo. Wyoming's one of the big Colorado schools. I think that would be, yeah,

it's, it'll be interesting. It would be interesting to see who the powerhouses would turn it. Cause when, when the money started pouring in, like which schools would really ramp it up. I think Colorado could have a good shot. Nathan in the chat who asked the question, rodeo is great. I grew up going. See, I picked the right one. I knew it. Guys, that was an incredible year, Andy.

Thank you to the folks at the College Football subreddit. We love you. Please watch the show. Guys watching the show, head over there. Get in their chat. You're going to like them. You're going to like those people. That was fun. We're going to have to talk some news tomorrow, though. I suspect we'll be talking a lot about the house settlement and what college football is going to look like going forward

because it's, listen, the train is coming down the tracks and it's coming fast. We'll talk about it all tomorrow.