Andy & Ari On3 - Miami’s BRIGHT Future with Mario Cristobal despite CFP National Championship loss | Darian Mensah's Latest

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

It's a Dear Andy & Ari episode, and we have some incredible questions from our great listeners. To start though, Andy & Ari re-visit Miami, where Mario Cristobal and the Hurricanes are already gearing up for next season. Watch here as Andy & Ari dive into the bright future for the Hurricanes. Also, the fellas go through the latest with QB Darian Mensah and if the Blue Devils QB is really on the move to Miami. (0:00) On Today’s Episode(1:15) Presenting Sponsor(3:37) Intro: Miami’s future(14:00) QB Darian Mensah’s Latest(20:01) Jordan Seaton(25:20) Miami Moving Forward(28:14) Dell(29:37) Dear Andy & Ari: Who will adopt Miami’s approach at QB?(44:50) The State of the ACC(50:39) If stars don’t matter, what does?(1:00:26) If Ari wins the Arch Manning Bet…(1:05:34) Charles Bediako playing for Alabama Basketball(1:07:36) Why Humanity is Cooked with Ari(1:17:17) Conclusion: Monday-Friday starts next week! As Andy & Ari dive into the mailbag, a listener asks if any other teams will adopt Miami's approach at the quarterback position. Will other teams take this approach? What are the benefits? Next, the fellas dive into the state of the conference of the ACC. What's ahead for the conference as Miami receives a substantial amount of revenue from its CFP run? Also, Lori asks a phenomenal question: If stars don't matter anymore, what does? To close, Ari has a rant on humanity as Texas prepares for a potentially massive snow storm in Dallas this weekend. The Dell XPS proves there’s no need to compromise—style, power, and reliability come together in one expertly crafted machine.Check out the all-new Dell XPS at Dell.com/XPS. Our show is also presented by BetMGM! If you haven’t signed up for BetMGM yet, use bonus code CFB and you will get up to a $1500 First Bet Offer on your first wager with BetMGM! Here’s how it works: 1. Download the BetMGM app and sign-up using bonus code CFB.2. Deposit at least $10 and place your first wager on any game.3. You will receive up to $1500 in bonus bets if your bet loses! Just make sureyou use bonus code CFB when you sign up! Make this college football season one for the history books. Make it legendary. See BetMGM.com for Terms. 21+ only. US promotional offers not available in New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (Available in the US). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-327-5050 (MA), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-981-0023 (PR). First Bet Offer for new customers only. Subject to eligibility requirements. Rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 7 days. In partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel.Watch our show on YouTube! https://youtu.be/5RQXFKUTGtY Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey Interested in partnering with the show? Email [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On today's episode of Andy and Ari on 3, it is a dear Andy, dear already, but first we check back in on the team we last saw driving, trying to win the national championship and coming up just short. The Miami Hurricanes. What happens now after Miami's run to the national title game? Can the hurricanes improve upon this season? Can they do it again? Can they win a national title? Well, a lot of that is still up in the air because a lot of Miami's, is in question with the targeted quarterback that the hurricanes want getting sued by his old school. We'll talk about Darian Mensa and Duke and what's next for them. Also, your questions answered. Miami goes portal quarterback heavy. Is that something everybody is going to do from now on? Also, in the era of stars, maybe not mattering as much? What does matter now? Our pal Lori asked a great question, plus a suggestion for what I'm going to have to do if Arch Manning does wind up in New York

for the Heisman ceremony. We'll talk about it all on today's Andy and Ari on 3 presented by BetMGM. We are talking about those BedmGM college football futures, but all the spreads and totals and futures that we use. Come from our friends at BedmGM. If you have not signed up for bed MGM yet, what are you waiting for? Use the bonus code CFB, that's

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Call 1-800-327-5-0-0-0-0 in Massachusetts. Call 1-800-off in Iowa or 1-800-9-81-0-2-3 in Puerto Rico. First bet offer for new customers only, subject to eligibility requirements, rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in seven days in partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. Don't forget, if you haven't signed up for BetMGM yet, use the bonus code CFB and get your $1,500 first bet offer today. Welcome to Andy and Ari on 3 presented by BetMGM and Ari. We've talked a ton about Indiana, given them their flowers, deservedly so. The Hoosiers, the most incredible turnaround, probably in the history of sports, Kurt Signetti.

There's not enough praise you can heap upon him. But we do need to talk about the team that lost in the national title game on Monday night, the Miami Hurricanes, because one, this was an incredible run for them. They recaptured something that Miami had lost for more than 20 years. Two, I kind of think they can do this again. And a lot of it depends on some transfer portal shenanigans that are going on right now, some very interesting legal wrangling that's going on right now. now. But you wrote about this, despite the heartbreak in hard rock, Miami's future is still bright under Mario Cristobal Ari. Where do we think the hurricanes go from here? You know, before we go to the future, I want to go backward just a minute. Because when you

think about it, we got so overwhelmed by Indiana's performance in the national championship game in Hard Rock, Andy. I don't think that we like even considered. And maybe we did a little bit, but think about how insane it would have been if Miami would have scored in that end zone at the end of the game. When you think about the story of their season

and how it would have culminated in a touchdown. Oh, I was thinking about it, Ari, because I had to write a story that would have been published as the clock struck zero. And that was my Miami story. My Miami story was going to be, be if they ended up coming back that the game was their season kind of in micro where they had

some slip-ups and a moment where it looked like all was lost and they still kept grinding and found their way back and they came up short in this case but it was the first one possession national title game since the second and 26 Alabama Georgia game oh I think about that I didn't realize that but I just think if you think about the pain of losing. I think the worst thing about losing the way that Miami did was because of how close they were to maybe having one of the more remarkable stories in college football playoff history, if not college football history, in terms of location season. This is a team that was on the ropes and potentially could, may have been left out of the playoff altogether. They would have beaten Ohio State. They would have beaten Texas A&M.

They would have beaten Ole Miss and they would have returned in a game that, they nobody would have thought they had a chance to win and then won on their home field in the last minute. That would have been something that like you couldn't drop in it. I mean, you want to talk about the movie of Indiana. The movie of Miami would have been great. And the last thing, and I don't know if people put this together, Andy, you put this together before I did. But it kind of hit me on the plane home. Jabari Sharp, the defensive back from Miami or from Indiana that picked off Carson Beck at the end of the game.

Is the next. What did I say? Jabari. Jamari Sharp is the nephew of Glenn Sharp, the cornerback from Miami in the 2002 game that was flagged for the PI at the end of regulation that forced overtime. And that was maybe one of the most controversial calls in college football history. So like the sick twisted knife in the chest of being twisted like that. This is like a twist of. And you have them in.

Also, Jamari played at Miami Northwestern. He's not recruited by Miami. And he reminded them on the field after the game. People asked them, well, maybe that's why they should. I mean, it's just awful. That's why they should have recruited me. And I think that the pain of losing,

plus the agony of being so close to envisioning an ending that would have been unbelievably special, is the thing that you take away maybe in the first week or six weeks or two months even after the game. And you don't really reflect on Miami's build. And I think that Indiana, is such an interesting case study of where college football is headed, and we're going to get into that later into the show.

It's been so remarkable what Kurt Signetti has done. You almost forget that Miami has improved year over, year over year under Mario Cristobal. And like not every build is going to be new, higher, great season year one, national championship year two. Like just because Kurt Signetti is doing something so insanely, profoundly good and amazing, doesn't mean that Mario Cristobal sucks.

Like Mario Cristobal is doing an amazing job there. And when he got hired, remember, we used to have conversations. Like if Mario Cristobal, the guy who played there, who was part of the U teams, the guy who's from there can't do it, then no one can. And like, we're not there. Where he's doing it. And I think that- Harry, a year ago right now, we made ourselves look like morons.

Because we were thinking Miami just lost the number one pick in the draft in Cam Ward. And we knew he was going to be the number one pick in the draft at this point. and they're not even going to be the best team in their state. You know, they're going to lose that to Florida, which they certainly did not. They ended up beating Florida on the field and then clearly the best team in the state. And they're in a better position now than they were.

And I think about that because this time last year, as Cam Ward is leaving, as they are losing that historic offense, you think, well, did they have, hit their ceiling under Mario Cristobal, and now we know they didn't. We know the ceiling is essentially national championship. They were one possession away from it this year. And depending on what happens with the rest of this transfer portal, they certainly seem like they're going to have the roster that they need to try to get back there. Yeah, absolutely.

Man, it's, he's done a really good job. And they have gotten better year over year, over year. Now, the only way you can get better from this past point now is winning the national championship. And I don't know if it's a realistic expectation to think that, you know, if next year doesn't culminate in winning it all, that it was a failure. But when you think about all the demons that were slayed along the way, the ACC sucks, Mario Cristobal will shit his pants and big moments, doesn't know how to take a knee at the end of the game, like all the things that people said about Miami. They haven't won the ACC, which by the way is still insane to say out loud, since they

joined it in the early 2000s, all these things. I think that Miami's program should be viewed as one of the more healthy programs in the country in large part, not just because of what they did in this run they went on, but how they're building it to go on these runs. Well, and Miami has a formula that Mario Cristobal actually described it to us when he was on our show, I think it was in September. And he broke it down. I remember I quoted him in a story.

that we wrote the week the transfer portal opened last month, or I guess earlier this month. And he said, we want a mix of people. We want Blue Chip High School recruits. So that's your Francis Maui Noah, your Ruben Bain, your Malachi Tony.

We want experienced transfer portal players. So that's your Carson Bex. That's your Keelan Marians. We want transfer. portal players who have time remaining, who can then come and be with us. That's your Keem Messador. That is your Marty Brown. That is your Zechariah Poyser.

It's a good mix. It works. It feels like a workable formula going forward. I mean, it kind of feels, you know, Indiana adjacent because Indiana had a great mix, too. Indiana had portal players who came in. They had high school players that, you know, even though Indiana has never been one to recruit blue chip players. You know, they, they had players on their team that were recruited from previous

staffs that were still on the team and making a big difference. Offensive tackle Carter Smith comes to mind. Jamari Sharp. Right. The guy that wasn't recruited by Miami. They had the transfers that came in that were there for multiple years. They had the one-year rentals who won the Heisman. Like they did everything the same way.

And like as we break down. how to win a national championship in the Stars Matterless moment. And fun fact, Andy, I don't know if you know this, but I bought a vanity plate for a car that I bought. And it's a Stars Matter on it, and I might have to change it. So, that's not, change it to Portal Matters. Portal.

P-R-T-L-M-T-R-S. Yeah. Yes, Portal matters. Yeah. I don't know what we're doing with that. But, you know, I think that blend matters. right. And I do still think that the teams, for the most part, I don't know, we didn't talk about this, but do you believe that teams can get away with recruiting top 40 classes and winning national

championships now is like what Indiana did the norm or the expectation? Or do you still feel like by and large that if they're eight national champions or nine national champions in a 10-year period, that eight or nine of those will still be teams that recruit the way Miami does? Like I don't know what it will be. Yeah. We're going to get into this because our friend Lori, who asks the best questions, she has a great question that we're going to answer in the dear Andy Deerari section of the show about this very thing, about what matters now. So we're going to talk about that.

But I think we agree that Miami has a really good formula, that Miami's formula is one that I think other schools, if they're not already doing it, you mentioned Indiana, pretty much doing that too. Other schools may want to copy it. and now we're watching Miami try to execute that formula for 2026. So let's talk about where they're at in terms of that because the biggest current story in college football is the situation with Darien Mentsa at Duke. And so we have news since the last show about Dary and Mensa. He was officially entered into the transfer portal at 1155 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday night. And we know that the judge in the case, because remember Duke is suing Darien Mentsa,

claiming that he is breaching their contract that they have. He has a two-year deal with Duke. The judge said Duke had to put him in the portal, but he is not allowed, based on the court, this injunction that was issued, he is not allowed to enroll in a new school or join a new college football team before hearing on this case, which is currently scheduled for February 2nd. So Darien Minsa is the target for Miami. This is the guy that Miami wants to be its quarterback next year.

Another piece of interesting news that may also impact Miami, Darian Mensa was not the only Duke player entered into the transfer portal on Wednesday. Ari, a guy that you wrote about when he was in high school also entered the transfer portal, and that is Cooper Barcate. He was their leading receiver this year. And remember, he spent the first three years at and saved by the bell fans will understand this one. Nobody else. Oh, bud.

Is that only a saved by the bell thing? Did you see the episode with the college fair? I haven't seen Saved by the Bell in 20 years. So, I mean, probably, but I have no recollection of any of it. In the episode of the college fair, everybody's looking at their different schools. Jesse originally wanted to go to Stanford. I don't know if Stanford issued a cease and desist, so they started calling it Stanbury. But then there was a guy from

And that's how he said it every time. I think that's the one where Zach got the really high SAT score and he realized he was a candidate to potentially go to Harvard. So that's where Cooper Barcate went first, though. You know, there's a lot of people who talk about things incessantly. And I think like CrossFit's one of them. I think, you know, if you do CrossFit, you bring that up a lot.

Eating vegan, probably, or being gluten-free, you talk about a lot. Trying to think of some other ones. If you run a marathon, you probably talk a lot about that. And by the way, there was a marathon happening in Miami as we were trying to get to where we were going. And annoyed Andy. It was a 5-0K. It wasn't even a marathon. Whatever it was, it annoyed you.

I know respect for 3.1 miles. But go ahead. Yeah, if you're going to block my traffic, you better go 30 miles. If you're going 3.1 miles, get out of the street. But going to Harvard is one of those things, right? Like there was a contestant on the Bachelor a few seasons ago that went to Harvard, and I think he brought it up in every conversation he had with every person he met. I don't think Cooper Barcate does, though.

Cooper Barcate is a pretty accomplished dude. And so he goes to Duke. He's their leading receiver this past year. But yes, he's in the portal now. And according to our friend Portal Pete Nacos, Miami is a school to watch for Cooper Barcate. given his productivity for the ACC champion Blue Devils, I think other schools will be interested as well.

But it will be fascinating to watch. Does he wind up at Miami alongside Mensa? Now, we think that still happens. So we talked about this quite a bit on Wednesday's show. Duke is suing Darien Mensa. This feels, though, a little bit different. We talked about the DeMond Williams situation where he was going to go in the portal from Washington,

thought he was going to wind up at LSU, and then he changes his mind and decides to stay at Washington. We think because the Washington contract probably didn't have a lot of holes in it. This one, the team Menses seems more confident that they will be able to get him out of Duke and then we presume to Miami. So I do wonder if we're going to see like a financial settlement

before the day to this hearing. Yeah, I would be. surprised at this point if there was a hearing, right? I mean, it kind of feels like it's heading that direction. I don't think Duke would have sued if they thought the contract was strong enough that just the threat of the suit would get them to come back. Because remember, Washington had never actually sued in the DeMond Williams case. Even the threat of it was enough to make you rethink the plan. This one, they have sued. So they probably felt like that was their best bet at keeping him there. But

the fact that he didn't just say, okay, fine, I'm not going to the portal. His people were like, no, no, put him in the portal. Yeah. And then they did. Well, I don't think that there's any possible way that Mensa will be ever playing at Duke again. So now it's up to Duke to try to figure out,

you know, what's the number that they can get in financial, you know, recourse in order to like move on from this. So, like, I think that in the beginning of this whole thing, you always hope if you're the entity, or the school that it'll wind up the way that it wound up with DeMond Williams at Washington, where some people might be upset or some people might have been rubbed the wrong way by the intention, but you bring that person back and hopefully mend those fences and have a really good player playing

quarterback for you. Like that, the cat's out of the, you know, what's, you know, the hay's out of the barn or in the barn. I don't know. He's gone. However you want to put it, he's out. I think, I mean, I thought, I thought the same thing with Williams because I thought it was a situation where maybe you can't go back, but he's going back. But yes, it does seem like Mence's team is ready to push this thing forward, and they're going to try to get him out of Duke.

Now, Miami not done trying to put more pieces onto this team because Jordan Seton, the offensive tackle transfer from Colorado, is also looking at Miami. And he has looked at Miami. He's gotten a visit from Oregon. he took a visit to LSU. So he's looking at a bunch of different Texas and other school that's been interested in him. But Portal Pete wrote on Thursday that Miami's starting to look like the favorite,

although Pete is not willing to make a prediction as to where Jordan Seton's going to commit yet. So we don't know. It sounds like that one's still kind of up in the air, but you got him. You've also had Damon Wilson, who's the edge rusher for Missouri, who was at Georgia.

I don't know, maybe, Miami just likes the guys to get sued by their old schools because Damon Wilson is actually being sued by Georgia right now and is countersuing Georgia, but he's in the portal as well and may wind up at Miami. Do you think about going back to law school so you can better understand things? Or do you think you've got a pretty good grasp of everything? Going to law? I know I need to go.

I should go to law school. I feel like I can do a lot of my job a lot better if I went to law school and understood these concepts, which I do not. I call people who went to law school to help me with them. is when you go to college for journalism to be a sports writer, you do it because you like sports and then you don't realize how little you actually write about sports. Well, and the funny thing is, like, the path for a lot of sports writers

is you go into sports writing, realize the pay is absurdly low and then go to law school. Yeah. Too late. I don't know. I don't know if it's too late. It's never too late, Ari. It's never too late.

But this will be interesting with Miami because if they get all of these guys, which all of them is saying a lot, but if they got them all, you're feeling pretty good because, again, they're bringing back Malachi Tony. They're bringing back Marty Brown. They're bringing back some really good players from this team. And again, they have been recruiting high schools well in this period. Presumably they've been developing players. you know, we had Alex Mirabal on the show for Media Day. You'd love to have that guy coaching your offensive line. You've got Jackson Cantwell coming in, the five-star offensive tackle,

the number one offensive line recruit in the country. So if they pull all this off, I would think you put them among the favorites to go deep in the playoff next year. Yeah. You want to figure out a way to replace, Akeem Messador and Rubin Bain and C.C. Maui Noah. Like, they've done a pretty good job in the portal of at least addressing those positions with some really good players.

Like, I mean, like, I don't know. And you bring back, you know, some important pieces. You bring back maybe the most electric offensive skill position player in the country. And then you're on the verge. And is Darian Mentsa, is Daryan Mentsa an upgrade over Carson Beck? Yes. It's at least equal. It's an upgrade.

Okay. So if you got all that, you should be feeling pretty good about the way things are going. By the way, here's another one for Miami. Another person they kept who, based on their performance this year, would have been highly in demand. Corey Heatherman, the defensive coordinator. He's still. Yeah, they fixed the defense pretty good, wouldn't you say? Yeah. It went from being the problem to being the problem. to being the solution. And usually that the two or three, I mean, when we used to talk about it with USC, they was like, this is a three, this is a three year process.

When they, I remember that game, they played against Washington two years ago, or three years ago now, where it was like the worst defensive effort I've ever seen in my entire life. And they got gradually better with Dan Lynn, who's now gone,

but as quickly as they did this is insane. And part of that, too, is that. Miami's defense got good overnight. Thanks to Corey Heatherman. and some very well-timed and well-selected portal additions. It also helps, too, that Ruben Bain didn't have a great year last year and got healthy and then turned into Miles Garrett.

So, like, I mean, Ruben Bain's a top five pick, right? So they have, but if I'm a Miami fan, I'm looking at the way that they're recruiting. I'm looking at the way that they're supplementing their roster and replacing pieces in the portal. And I'm like looking at this as like, okay, well, you know, we're pretty sad about the way things just went. and rightfully so, they were so close to having something so spectacular.

If you're a Miami fan, you might as well just hang it up if they would have won that game. Nothing ever would be better than doing what they would have done. And part of being a fan is the chase, right? Like I always talk about this. It's like when you go to the national championship game as a fan, I even would wonder, like, if you're an Indiana fan, write us emails or send us something so we can talk about it. But like after your team wins the national championship, there is an empty feeling. Because there's no more chase.

You did it. You celebrate. I don't think the fans are feeling empty right now. I think those Indiana fans are feeling pretty awesome. After you win the championship, it's like, now what? You know, you celebrate it. It is especially for the people involved. And I've actually one of the books I helped write with Trevor Moad,

one of the chapters we had was about how you can't make something like that your ultimate goal in life because if you ever reach it, you'll be profoundly unhappy afterwards. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because I, like, and the person who explained it best to me was Billy Donovan, who's currently the Chicago Bulls coach, but he coached basketball at Florida, and he won two national titles. And he talked about how after he won the first national title, like, he felt almost empty inside. Because he said, this was my whole goal.

This was my reason for living. And I got it. And it's like, oh, my God, I'm, I've got a lot of life left to live still. because he was very like, I want to say he was in his early 40s when he, when he won it. It might have been late 30s. And what a Billy Donovan had been doing after that? Yeah. What did he end up doing after that?

He ended up calling people who had won championships. So he talked to NFL coaches, he talked to college basketball coaches who had won championships and said, how did you deal with it? and built a plan based on their advice because some of them dealt with it well, some of them didn't deal with it well. And they told him, here's what I did. Here's what worked. Here's what I would have done differently.

And so he figured out, and part of it was he had that team coming back that was good enough to win it again. And so a lot of those coaches told him, hey, your players are coming back. You guys are going to be the favorites to win. Don't worry, you're about to get challenged in ways you've never seen. seen before because this is going to be harder than you think. And then what did he ultimately do in life? What do the ultimate?

He realized that there is no end goal. Like it's not, there's no brass ring that you're striving for that once you grab it, everything's going to be okay. Like you have to understand that every day is its own new creation. You have to attend. He just went to the NBA. He did. Yeah.

And that's how he. That's what I'm getting it. at like he accomplished what he didn't go to the NBA immediately though he went back to the final four with Florida no no I know but I'm saying like eventually you want to go tackle the other thing which is I want to be an NBA champion I mean there's always something but I guarantee you if he wins the if he wins the NBA title he won't look at it like he did that first Florida title yeah it'll be he'll have a plan going forward now you know I don't know if you've seen a bill's play I don't think that's happening right now so if you're a Miami fan you're probably

profoundly disappointed in the moment. But when you think about the hunger, you got to be pumped about what's coming, though. Like, yeah, they can do this again. They can do this again. Yeah. Absolutely. Ari, we got some great questions.

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Dear Andy and Ari, your questions. We attempt to answer them and we got some great ones today. Ari, our first one comes from Travis and Houston. Miami has a unique approach to quarterbacks, completely ignoring high school recruiting and dropping a bag on a proven portal guy. With how random high school

quarterback recruiting is, we see more teams adopt this approach. Notre Dame pre-C.J. Carr and Indiana have done similar. Do you think this is a better approach to your QB room. Using rivals industry ranking, 16 of the top 20 QBs from the 2024 rising draft eligible juniors have transferred at least once already. Is it still worth recruiting high school QBs?

And he says Florida State would probably be a counter example of how this can go wrong, but they also don't land as proven of players. Okay. This is a great question because this was the thing that was driving me nuts last week when I was texting you in River. and I asked it from the other direction. I was like, if you're a high school quarterback, like a blue chip high school, why the hell would you sign with some of these schools?

You know they're never going to play you. You know they're just going to recruit over top of you. Yeah. I mean, it's just like everybody, if everybody decided to do this, then what would happen, though? Like, you have to go play somewhere to become proven. Right. And I think you'd go.

Actually, I talked to Ricky Ronnie from Old Dominion about this because they lost their their quarterback, Colton Joseph, to Wisconsin, and they've got some guys, they recruited out of high school that have been waiting there and are going to play. And I think Ricky understands, like, if whoever wins the job blows up and is great this year, he's losing him. And I think perhaps the better high school quarterbacks may have to decide, I'm going to go to a group of five school so I can play and then get the payday. It's almost like getting a second NFL contract, just in a much more compressed time period.

Well, the question that I've kind of had more than anything is whether the portal quarterback situation is eventually going to drive down the price of what people are paying for high school quarterbacks. As this data becomes more available, and we start to see that most of them are transferring or not being successful on their first stop, like is the appetite for people to pay whatever Tennessee had to pay Brandon

or whatever, how much Tennessee paid NICO? And those are just two examples that come to mind. I mean, everybody's doing it. Is it a good investment? And should you be using your money and your NIL dollars for more prudent, proven assets? And like that also comes into question of other positions. Now, quarterback's the most visible. But should Ohio's,

state pay over a million dollars for a five-star safety or should they pay Caleb Downs two million? I mean, like, I think that you could do this game across the board. Now, I think you do it across the board, but I think it's different with quarterback because all the other positions you can reasonably feel like you can grab some guy. And the other part is you can also play somebody in a lot of positions early, but not put them in a position where the whole team is relying on their performance immediately. And like with a safety, with a linebacker. Yeah.

Not necessarily with an offensive tackle or a center or a guard, but you can have like play somebody as like a sixth offensive lineman where you're playing him some plays, but not completely reliant upon him. And obviously running back receiver, you can work those guys in. So Travis brought up the 2024 class, which I think is really interesting. You ready to hear the list? I'm going to give you the top 10 quarterbacks in that class. Which class?

Which class? 2024? 2024. So these will be juniors this year or redshirt sophomores. Number one, DJ Lagway. Transfer. Number two, Julian Sand actually did transfer, but not really. Can I try to guess some of the names just from memory?

All right. Number three. So who are the first two that you said? You said Sayan and. Lagway. Flagway. This is Dylan Raolo's class. So Dylan's up there. He's the next one. Transfer.

Now, starting two years in transferred. But CJ Carr was in that class. That's that's another one. He's number four. He's number six. Okay. You've got a couple ones before that. Luke Kroenhowk, Florida State Siney, number four. He's transferred. Number five, Ohio State Siney, then transferred to South Carolina, then transferred. Where is he now?

He's in a lower division now, I think. He's at Memphis now. He's going to Charles up. And then C.J. Carr. Jordan Davis was there. He's not in the high levels anymore either. The Michigan is. Jayden Davis, that he was in Michigan, number eight.

And he is now at East Tennessee State. What about Walter White? Walker White, not Walter White. Not not Beneth dealer Walker White was from Arkansas

he was Hugh Freeze's quarterback signy at at R one of the one of Hugh free's

first commitments at Auburn and he has transferred to Baylor since and he is

now committed to transfer to Central Arkansas best known as the school where Scottie Pippenwind

wasn't DeMond Williams in that class too DeMond Williams was number 13 Okay. Signed with Arizona and then went. So he's got, he did the kind of Julian Sayan thing where he signed to somebody and then ended up going somewhere else.

Yeah. And I was obsessed with the quarterback in that class, who was a little bit undersized, but like lit up every camp I went to. And that was how, House Haney. That's right. He went to, he went to Oklahoma State. Yeah. He was the starter at Oklahoma State this year got hurt pretty much immediately. He is now at TCU.

Yeah. Yeah, it is kind of a crapshoot. I mean, and think about it, like Lagway. No, I'm sorry. He came from TCU, went to Oklahoma State. He's now Colorado State. Excuse me. Okay, he went to Colorado State.

Florida invested a lot in Lagway. Correct. And I wonder if they never would have gotten lagway. Nothing would be different, obviously. Maybe I do think that there is something to be said, and I want to know what your opinion is on this. Do some of these NIL checks that you write to prospective high school, athletes and the excitement and the discussion that it drives, is there any benefit to that?

Like, the fact that Florida at least was fueled but with a bought-in fan base. Well, okay. See, I'm going the other way. They weren't totally bought in because they were still kind of out on Billy Napier at the time. So if they don't get Lagway, let's say, let's say Lagway instead of going to Florida, flips to USC on National Signing Day. And Florida doesn't have Lagway. They have Graham Mertz.

He's going to be the starter in 2024. That means you're probably not getting an elite portal quarterback because Graham Mertz is your starter. And then the job's not open. So you probably would have, I don't know what kind of, you would have gotten another quarterback out of the portal to be your backup. So when Graham Mertz goes down, against Tennessee, that guy's your starter.

That probably gets Billy Napier fired a year earlier, if we're thinking about it that way. So what Lagway did was save Billy Napier's job for a year, which we said last year when he beat LSU and Ole Miss, that that's all of Billy Napier's hopes were penned to DJ Lagway. So, yeah, Florida would have a different coach than John Sumerall now because they would have fired Napier and hired somebody last year. It might have been Lane Kiffin.

Who knows? Remember where we were on Florida in July? Oh, wait. Lane Kiffin would have made the playoff in 2024 at Ole Miss because they would have beaten Florida playing with not DJ Lagway at quarterback. That's wild. It's a wild butterfly effect there. But is there anything to be gained by the check that you write DJ Lagway for the summer that Florida had last year?

In terms of ticket sales, fan enthusiast. No, because it still came crumbling down. You still fired the guy. Yeah, it came crumbling down after people bought tickets. I guess, but people, people were going to, you would have fired him earlier and they would have bought tickets for the new coach, whether it was Lane Kiffin or somebody else. Yeah. It's just an interesting thought exercise too, because I think a lot of times people write checks as statements. Yeah.

I think the other part of it, and I think Travis points it out in the question, it is such a crap shoot with quarterbacks out of high school. cool. The industry ranks people fairly well in other positions. Like we're pretty good at predicting success in other positions. We're not at quarterback. Ditto for the NFL scouts. They're bad at it too. It's just hard to predict whether a quarterback is going to be good when they jump up a level. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if they're bad at analyzing them. Well, they're back at picking them.

Dylan Rayola is pretty good. Julian Sayans pretty good. You know, there's some misses in there. the dude at central Arkansas. How about looking at Kromenhow. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly guys that that didn't work out. They went 500. It gets you in the Hall of Fame and baseball. It gets you fired anywhere else. You think that going 500 is bad? If you did this with offensive tackles, I don't think they went 500. Yeah. No, it's definitely, it's certainly harder for sure because of the- It's harder. I'm not saying they're bad at it. I'm saying it's harder. But do you think we're ever going to get to a point where people are less likely to write a seven-figure check to a high school kid at that position?

I wouldn't do it now. I wouldn't do it. Yeah. I would get the established portal quarterback with starting experience at a like for a really good group of five team or or a decent power five team like Brennan Sorsby type. Now you've got to have big money to get Brendan Sorsby. And then my next guy would be somebody who was making. maybe just elite in the FCS, who take it in a ton of snaps, or somebody who's good in the group of five,

or somebody I liked coming out of high school who signed with a school that maybe didn't fit them and hit the portal and can get them and I can get them as a distressed asset. Well, the other thing is you also have to have confidence in your school and your mechanism to getting that guy. Because there are certain schools, too, that might have a harder time getting them, right? Right. Like just because they're there doesn't mean you've got them.

I mean, Miami is in the position that they're in with MENSA because they didn't get anybody. And it's not because, and it's not because they're playing in the national championship. It's not that they're a bit a bad program. It's just like it's kind of a crap shoot who you land too. Well, and they're also a lot of them because city wars that are more expensive. Like I'm assuming that, you know, if you had to pay a high school quarterback, $1.5 million to sign with you, that's still one fifth the price of what they're going to end up winding MENSA if he goes there. Well, my thing is.

On the other side of it, if you're the high school quarterback, do you want to do it? Do you want to sign with these schools? Like Jared Curtis, I get. The Vandy job is open. So you sign with Vandy. But you think it's bad business to go to a place that already has a quarterback if you're a high school player? I did Tadian St. Clair made a, make a bad business decision by going to Ohio State? So he's not their starter.

He wasn't their starter this past year. He's not their starter this year. And there's no guarantee he would be the year after. If he's not their starter next year, then yeah, he messed up. I'm sure he's being compensated quite well to be the backup, though. I'm sure he is, but how is he moving toward the NFL? You only need one year. You've got to play at some point.

Yeah. And I'll be Matt Castle. Yeah. Yeah, I think that there's two sides of the coin, too. And the Tavian St. Clair thing, I'm not saying he made a mistake yet. Like Julian Sane may have another great year this year, go to the NFL, and then Tavian St. Clair takes over, and that's fine. That's actually the old school normal progression.

If Julian's saying, though, has a good year this year and he's like, you know what, I don't think I'm quite ready yet. I think I want some more starts at the college level. Which, by the way, could happen. Oh, we've seen with Dante Moore this year. Yeah. And it's not a bad line of thinking. It really isn't because you can get paid.

Like if you're a successful college quarterback, whether you're staying at your old school or going somewhere else, you get paid really well. So that's the risk you take if you're someone like Tadian St. Clair. Who are the quarterbacks who stayed at their current place too long? Matt Barkley was one.

But in this era, I can't think of one. Because like Jalen Milrow got pushed out. He's one that made, you know, if he'd have played another year at Alabama, that might have done that. Is Ryan Puglisi? somebody who stayed at Georgia too long? He hasn't played yet.

I don't know if he's any good or not. Yeah. Because also if you're not very good, not that he isn't, but just in theory, if you're not on a star, getting paid a nice check behind the scenes to be a backup isn't a bad gig either.

It's not a bad gig, but I'd rather be a good starter in college and then do that in the NFL. The Chase Daniel model is a great way to go. Yeah. So it's fascinating. question. Great question.

I think, Andy, what you're going to find is that, like, I think that it's human nature for us to want a cookie cutter, like, the best way to go about things. And the fact is, is that everybody does a differently and everybody. And Notre Dame's a great example of this. Notre Dame rented Sam Hartman and Renner Riley Leonard. And, I mean, they made the national title game renting Riley Leonard. But CJ Carr turned out to be great for them. And he signed out of high school.

He was very good last year. We suspect he'll be very good this year. we suspect he'll take him to the playoff. And the question I have is, which one do you think Marcus Freeman prefers, too? The second one. I agree. I agree.

So, yeah, that's a great question. Here's another really good question. Hadn't really thought of it this way, but I'm glad Patrick asked it. So this is what Patrick asked. Is the ACC really dead or did it in the most go-ACC way possible actually set up the future of revenue distribution

for the power conferences? Miami's position even better than they already were, and that seems like an advantage you wouldn't want to give away. DeFlor State, Clemson, and to a lesser extent, North Carolina, I regret giving Miami and the rest of the ACC a chance to close the financial gap for the immediate future. Miami was already in the ballpark, but now will they be way ahead in the financial arms race? And so what Patrick is asking is about the new ACC revenue distribution system, which came about in the settlement of the lawsuit with Florida State and Clemson.

And part of that is that if you make the playoff, like in the other conferences, if you make the playoff, the money you get from the playoff goes to the conference and then it gets distributed out. Now, you get more than the other conference members because you were the one that made it, but it's not an obscene amount more.

Miami gets to keep it all. Like the new ACC distribution plan is like, you make the playoff, you keep everything. Yeah. So that is really interesting, and I hadn't thought about it that way. That is a nice advantage. It does put Miami on a little bit better footing relative to the SEC and Big Ten schools. That was the concern of Florida State and Clemson and also North Carolina and Miami,

that, you know, the Big Ten and SEC schools just made so much more in TV money that the gap was impossible to close. So what the ACC said is, hey, look, if you're in the highest rate of TV games in our league, If you are making the playoff, we're going to reward you for that. And so Miami will be the most rewarded because it played in every round of the playoff. They were involved in the most highly rated games or some of the most highly rated games in the ACC this year. So they financially, in terms of money received from their conference, will look a lot more like an SEC or Big Ten team now. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's, do you think that what they did this year has changed the dynamic of the way that it's going to be viewed, or do you think it was just a team from a random conference that got hot? No, well, I mean, we knew Miami was spending in a way that was going to allow them to compete. And look, perhaps that happens with somebody else in the league. Yeah. What if Virginia Tech's great this year? We saw they were going to put more money into football. They hired James Franklin.

You saw the transfer portal class they got, which is a lot of guys that are following Franklin from Penn State. But if Virginia Tech makes the playoff, which means Virginia Tech's been playing in big games all season, which means their TV ratings are probably pretty good, then Virginia Tech's going to make more money than the other ACC schools. So is it the future of conference revenue distribution? Maybe, because you've already got Ohio State's president saying they need to do that in Big Ten.

I will point out, though, that in the past, the Big 12 did it, the then PAC 10 did it. It was actually, it sowed a lot of discord in the past when they did uneven revenue distribution. People just got mad. So I think it's a good short-term solution. And it certainly kept everybody from just saying, we got to find a way to blow this whole thing up. but I don't know that it's a long-term solution. But yeah, if I'm Miami right now, I'm feeling really good about it.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know where I stand. I do feel like things should be merit-based and that you should, you know, be compensated for being successful, but on the same token, that also creates a divide in your own league.

Like if the same teams keep getting paid more, that means they've got more to invest, which means that, you know. But what's interesting to me about this, Ari, is the, the assumption was this money is all going to go to Florida State and Clemson and they're not playing well enough to get it. Miami got it this year.

I just mentioned what if Virginia Tech gets it next year? Yeah. What if Georgia Tech gets it? What if SMU gets it? Like in the Big Ten, you'd expect that's going to be Ohio State, Michigan, and Oregon. Indiana would be getting it if they had something similar. And maybe it promotes an environment where you invest more in your roster

because you're trying to chase a payout. Yeah. Yeah, so I, like, I'm curious to see what happens here because I'm looking at the ACC logos right now and I'm thinking about the 2006 season and who can be good. And, you know, Jeff Brom at Louisville, I always assume they're going to be pretty interesting. I think SMU is going to be pretty interesting as long as Red Lashley's there.

We saw Brent Key do a good job at Georgia Tech. We saw Tony Elliott made Virginia a lot better this year. We're very interested in what James Franklin does. Jake Dickert had Wake Forest overachieving in year one. Like, it may not be the Clemson and Florida State get all the money, even though that was the plan in the settlement. Yeah. Congratulations.

You played yourself. You know, having stood next to DJ College five feet away, him and Fat Joe the other night. Yeah. That is one of my favorite gifts of all time. The DJ colleague, congratulations you've played yourself. Congratulations. You played yourself. All right.

Next question from Lori. I love when Lori asked questions because she just thinks very deeply about this stuff. A few years ago, when the players could suddenly both transfer as much as they wanted and also be paid for NIL, everything changed. And the people complained, as they only ever do, that these changes would just, quote, make the rich get richer. At the time, I remember thinking the opposite, that with the general talent of the players on the field being more equalized, this is all going to come down to coaching, specifically the part of coaching that is motivating.

As a Georgia fan, I can rest easy knowing we have Kirby Smart. Isn't that nice for me? Kurt Signetti is obviously very good at the part of coaching that is getting the best results from the players he has. But he also had a highsman winning quarterback and a bunch of actual adults on the roster. And I think it's impossible to take the luck out of it, too. And while Indiana did not have near the highest payroll in the league, surely it's not. not a coincidence that one of the most famous billionaires in the country is an alumnus. So if stars don't matter like they used to, what matters?

Coaching, quarterback, player experience, money, luck? Yes. And since you guys brought up basketball, which I don't watch, do you think stars will still matter on a basketball team with a much smaller roster? Stands the reason that one guy can change the trajectory of a team of 15 more easily than a team of 105. Very good question from Lori. So what matters now? I think we nailed it down.

I think the most important thing was the thing we nailed down with Cignetti. And that is evaluating well based on what you need to run what you want to run. That is, I think that is the most important thing. Like having the superpower of being able to evaluate, whether that's through high school recruiting or in a 45-minute phone call with Pat Coogan. that this is a person who fits my organization, who schematically fits what I need from a physical standpoint, who will thrive here and who will help everyone else thrive here. The ability to identify that person is the most important thing now.

Yeah, I think that that's fair. I'm trying to think about like Indiana and all the things that went right for them. Now, them being old thing, they weren't that much older than Miami. Like Miami had lots of old players too. Yeah, and BYU is always old. I mean, BYU is always old. Right, because Mormon players tend to serve missions and come back and still have eligibility. And I remember, you know, when I was covering Ohio State, there was a, you know, a moment there when, and maybe this was the height of the Stars Matter era, where if you had a person that was a fourth year senior starting on your team, it was almost bad.

because that means that they didn't go to the NFL and that means they're not that good. You know, like, I think that like there is a little bit of that. But like when you think about all the things that had to go right for Indiana this year, obviously, you know, being able to call Pat Coogan and identify that he's the guy in 45 minutes to play center for you is certainly, you know, up there.

But what about evaluation of Fernando Mendoza? What about getting lucky that he developed into a Heisman winner and produced the way that he produced? What about the fact that the guys that he, brought up from JMU who, you know, I know that it's cool to say that if you pull the best 10 players from JMU, that that's going to win you a championship at the highest level. But like, those guys turned into like draft picks at a high, I mean, they're not like. Yeah, that's the thing. Like saying that he just took the guys from JMU, like everybody can just do that.

Yeah, let's just go take the best player. Because you're going to see Matt Campbell took the best players from Iowa State. James Franklin took some of the best players from Penn State. Like, we're going to see how how that works. But that is not. completely normal. Like DeAngelo Pons and Aden Fisher turning into two of the best players at their in the country. Yeah. Is not normal.

Yeah. I mean, I think like everything went the right way. And I think that a lot of it, too, is coaching in the way that he evaluates players, both, you know, the way they play and the way they are. I think those are two different evaluations. But like, I feel like every break that you would have needed to win a national title also worked out in your favor, too. So, like, I don't know. Producer River points out something really interesting.

He texted us, speaking of luck, Indiana lost a fumble in week one against Old Dominion and didn't lose one the rest of the season. Like, that is a very random thing. Now, there's certain situations. There was a fumble in the Oregon game where Mendoza fumbles it down the field, and Coogan is trailing the play and just dives on it. But that's, it's coaching, like coaching your linemen to continue blocking downfield because something might happen is coaching,

but it's also randomness. Sometimes the ball bounces a different way and bounces into somebody else's hands. I do think the more rounds of playoff you have, the more luck comes into play. Yeah. And, you know, like there's a play in the national championship game where I believe it was Ruben Bain who got to Mendoza

and sacked him and held on to the ball and like the ball almost came out. It was the most amazing thing. Yeah. I think it was Messador. I can't remember who it was. This is a huge human being puts the giant paw on the ball and is holding it down trying to push it through Fernando Mendoza's hands.

And Fernando Mendoza just holding on for dear life and manages to get it back. Like it was incredible. And if they would have lost that fumble, they might have lost the game. So, like, I mean, I do think that the margins and the game of inches thing really comes into play. now more than ever, like you said, you have four games you have to play or three in the

in the playoff to get to the end. And you need like that luck because you're going to be playing against really good teams most of the time. Yeah. You know, um, so, you know, I do love this. And I think we're going to have a full off season of this of like discussing like the most recent case of like, who won the championship? What do they do right? Who wins the championship next year might do it in a completely different way. Right.

If Oregon wins the championship, then we're right back to, oh, the old. way of doing things is the way you do it because that's what Oregon's been doing. Yeah. I mean, you look at all the way too early top fives or if River has the graphic. Do you have the graphic river handy of the BetMGM National Championship odds that we had yesterday? Just one second. These eyes, these eyes are never going to see another love like you. Here it is. My brother came always, okay, sorry. Ohio State, Texas, Notre Dame, Oregon, IU, Georgia, Alabama, LSU A&M Tech in Miami.

What do most of those teams have in common? Those are teams that were in the playoff last year. Yeah. And they all, you know, for the most part, there's what, 15 teams there? I think, you know, 11 or 12 of them recruit high-end recruiting classes. Like, I mean, I don't know that we've completely reinvented the way the college football works. Basically, we shoved Indiana and Texas Tech in there. Yeah.

Okay. I mean, Texas Tech was awesome. So, you know, and Texas Tech also is recruiting high school better as a result of their NIL, you know, influx of cash, too. That's true. They did not, we've concentrated on the portal stuff, but when they started doing this, they started spreading cash into the classes of 26 and 27 where they're going to be ranked higher. Yeah, for sure.

Didn't they have a few five stars committed in 27? For 27, yeah, yep. Yeah. So, I mean, what I think should happen is that the money that you command out of high school is a generational prospect or a five-star prospect or somebody you think is going to be a production. productive players should go down. And then as you produce in the college level, you should be rewarded with new contracts from your,

and it sounds like something they might negotiate in a CBA. Yeah. But I mean, it's just like you would think that that's how it would naturally work when the market sets itself because. Well, you want to thought that in the NFL, but it took Sam Bradford's contract to finally break them.

But the one thing that will never stop, it will never stop no matter what, is desperate team falls in love with really good high school player and overpays him because they're desperate. Yeah. It's always going to happen, and then that will set the market. Like, there's no way that everyone's going to be like,

okay, let's cap these five-star quarterbacks out of half a million. And it's not going to happen because there's just too many teams. Like, in the NFL, there's 32 teams. They have a fairly orderly process. Even if you had a CBA in college, there's still not going to be nearly as orderly a process. And there will always be somebody who's like, Yeah.

And if somebody's a bargain, if you can do it. If somebody's a bargain, Arizona's going to come in and go, we'll give you $100,000 more than what they're paying you. There's always going to be somebody who will give you more, and then eventually the yarn will unravel and you'll be back at a million and a half. But I think if we get 10 years of data before, I mean, maybe we'll get the CBA before then.

I don't know. But if we get 10 years of data in the current system and it turns out that like nobody's getting an ROI on their players from high school, like people are going to stop doing it. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. And Lori asked a great question that we could spend the entire,

offseason arguing over. And again, just because of what Indiana did does not mean that is now the the one way to do it. We just got through talking about what Miami does. And I think Miami's system puts them in a good place to be back competing for the national title again. I think what Notre Dame is doing now, which is slightly different, we'll put them in a position to compete for national.

They played for the national title last season. I think they'll make the play off and probably win some games. games in it this season. So there's a lot of ways to skin this cat and we'll have to see what happens. One more. This is from John and it is about our Arch Manning situation. For those who don't know, Ari, if Arch Manning does not make it to New York as a Heisman finalist this year, in 2006, Ari must run five miles while I wear a GoPro. and mock him the entire time. Which means you have to run too, though.

I'm not letting you out of this one. If Archmanning is not a Heisman trophy finalist next year, Ari is running five miles. I will put the GoPro on my head and taunt him the entire way. You know what? I'll make it six miles to make it a mile. No, no, no, no, no. 10 miles.

We're going to drag you to the finish. I don't think I could physically do that. Don't make you do that. Not 10 miles. Come on. How far is 10 miles? What's the half marathon? It is 52,800 feet.

A half marathon is 13.1 miles. Yeah, you'd be three miles short of a half marathon. I don't think I could even do five. I don't recommend that, Ari. Yeah, all right. Thank you. Five miles, fine, fine, fine. Yeah, I have to run five miles too, but that doesn't bother me,

especially at the speed you would run five miles. Yeah, and there's going to be some walking in the middle there. Like, let's be right. Yeah, it's not affecting me at all. Like, I ran three and a half yesterday. It was fine. Three and a half mile walk in Miami,

and it took us a long time. It's a real hard. I did walk a couple of days later. And I was like, River will tell you, but like when we were doing it, I was like, how fast am I supposed to run if I lose this bet? And I even ran it.

And I'm like, I think I could do this. Like, I ran for 20 seconds. And I was like, I can't get you. If you're running an 11 or 12 minute mile, which is pretty slow, maybe fine. Yeah, you walk a mile at a normal pace in 18 minutes, right?

Right. 18 or 19, yeah. That's a pretty, you know, consistent pace. So it'll really only take me an hour and a half, right, no matter what. Yeah, it's going to be the worst hour and a half of your life. It's going to be fun for me. I know. So John has, because we ask for things that I can do if Ari wins and I lose, which, again,

I'm on the other side of this thing, but I kind of, I kind of like Arch's chances. We'll see if he plays the way he played this season and gets better. Like, there's a good chance. But here's what John said. I have two ideas where it could happen if Ari wins the bet about Archbanding, becoming a highs and finalist next year. The first is every effort should be made to get Ari his own promotional code for the next sponsor of Annie and Ari and Ari. No, Andy 15, Staples 20, or even Annie and Ari.

If Ari wins the bet, he should get his own code like RE2K27 or something. I think that's fair. I think we can talk to our advertising partners and be like, listen. Andy's over-exposed here. Ari needs his own codes. So, easy one. If we're looking for something that punishes Andy more directly,

I have a great suggestion. If Arch Manning is a Heism finalist next year, Andy must acquire a rowback, Texas A&M Hezhy hoodie or a shirt and wear it for an episode of the show at the end of each and every segment of that show, Andy, in his best and most enthusiastic Ari voice, must say,

go get them, eggs! That's, go Terps, John. Thank you for the suggestion. I don't hate that. Somebody also said that you should do the exact opposite. And because I'm doing a relatively healthy and, like, pro-health activity that you should do something gluttonous and, like, disgusting. Like a muck-bong. Like, you need a muck bang.

You should have to, like, eat, like, yeah. Like, I go to, like, 12 fast food restaurants and get one item from every restaurant and you have to eat that item. See, old Andy would have not considered that a punishment. Yeah, you'd be like, that's great. Yeah. Don't tread me with a good time, baby. No, but here's, you know, I actually think I came up of it. I get to pick the menu items.

Well, as long as you leave the tartar sauce off the filet of fish, I'll be fine. Yeah, I was just going to get 12 flailo fishes. You put tartar sauce on that filet fish. I'm barfing all over you. Okay. What about this? One filet fish sandwich for every mile I have to run. Done.

Five filet fish sandwiches. Easy. And you're taking off the best part. The liquid gold. We saw the mayo thing. If it's tartar sauce, imagine that with chunks. Tartar sauce is so good, dude. It's disgusting.

It's the mayo of the sea. All right. Now I'm not hungry. I was going to do lunch after this, but now I'm not hungry. But Ari, you, well, actually, before I let you rant about the state of humanity today, Oh, yeah. I promised I would let you rant about the state of humanity. You sent us a text earlier and said, I have a rant in the chamber.

I want to tell everybody, you know, one, football season is over. Basketball season is in full swing. We're deep into conference play right now. Like things are getting spicy. We talked about Charles Bettyaco on yesterday's show. This is the guy who played at Alabama as a freshman and then went to the NBA and was on the G-League rosters for the Spurs affiliate and for the Pistons affiliate and has decided,

I just want to go back to college. And a judge has granted him a 10-day temporary restraining order that allows him to participate in Alabama's basketball activities before a hearing. Now, his hearing is next week, so it may all go away after that. But he is allowed to play Saturday night against Tennessee. So that game is on ESPN and 8th,000.

30 p.m. Eastern time, Saturday night in Tuscaloosa, Tennessee against Alabama. Ari, I think every athletic director in America is going to be watching that game. It sounds like he's going to play. I mean, I might want to watch it now. Yeah. Well, like the Kentucky coach, Mark Pope's like, you know, the NCAA should just say that if you play him, you can't be in the NCAA tournament. But the issue with that is the court order says you can't punish. him or Alabama

for them doing anything while he's protected by this temporary training order. So they can't even do it. Like if Natoz wants to play him, he can play him. You know, the thing that's so nuts too is that like,

what if you're doing all this? Then he comes off the bench and has six points and goes like two for eight from the floor. He averaged six point seven points in the one college season he played. So that would be right, right around his average.

It's just like, uh, I don't know. It seems like kind of like a circus, but, you know, that's college sports, man. We want it to be a circus. That's exactly what it is. All right, Ari. You have a rant on the state of humanity. Yeah.

Well, first of all, Andy, I don't know if you guys realize this. My plan. If you're in podcast form, I just want to let you know you need to watch the YouTube every once and a while because producer river just produced what we call a lower third, which is the thing at the bottom of the screen that tells you what we're talking about. And it just says why humanity. is cooked with R.E. Yeah.

I think it's like it's not a revelation. But if you have been watching the news at all. Or checking the weather, which I do religiously. And you make fun of it before. Even I'm checking the weather. I don't check. I religiously don't check the weather. And now I am.

Apparently there is a winter storm that is coming through Texas, but will be like the entire eastern part of the country. I'm coming through the whole country. Yes. It's just sweeping through the country. Yes. And I was going to be. in Montana with my wife right now, but I'm not because of this storm.

And I'm currently, like, set to drive from Dallas, Texas to Mobile, Alabama on Sunday for the Senior Bowl. And apparently we're getting three feet of ice. I've never even heard of feet of ice. Like, I don't even know. I've never heard of that either. Is that possible? Like, I don't know what it is, but we're, we're living.

I don't live in a place where ice falls on me, so I wouldn't know. Yeah. So anyway, in order to prepare for what's coming, because the power grid in Texas isn't made for this, so people will lose power and all these sorts of things, I went to the grocery store. Like every human being should. And, you know, I got a few water bottles, you know, some food, some non-perishable items. If for whatever reason we're stuck in our house and, you know, we aren't able to. to go out for a few days. The store when I arrive

is completely empty. Completely empty. Perishable items are gone. Chicken's gone. Fruits gone. Water bottles obviously are gone. People are hoarding groceries at the moment in a way that you would anticipate

post-apocalyptic behavior. Well, I mean, look, you can buy as much meat as you want because it's just like putting it in the freezer. you set it outside I guess yeah you know I didn't think about it that way wouldn't buy any fruits or vegetables those don't but here's the thing that really chaps my ass

okay is that even if the storm comes through and it is as bad as they're saying and I actually think that the weather channel is propaganda to scare people and that's how it drives ratings I think that they make things seem worse than it actually is for the most part now you live in a place that it gets hurricanes and are actually

dangerous so maybe you get really happy when there's a hurricane. They're excited about hurricanes. We're not excited. You have to take hurricanes seriously, and I don't understand people if you're told to evacuate who don't evacuate. That's a completely different rant. But I think for the most part, that news is sensational analyzed in weather the same way it is in politics and other things. But it's only supposed to be a two or three day thing, even at its worst. By next week, temperatures get back up into normal. The snow will melt. The grocery stores will be open. why are people hoarding perishable items that you're going to be putting in your fridge or freezer that might not even have power this week?

And it makes me think, like, we all saw the craziness with the toilet paper during COVID, right? Which was the most unbelievable thing, weird thing to hoard. But, like, if we ever get to a point in time where society is without grocery stores for a month or something terrible actually does happen, like our society is cooked people are like not i can't even make like dinner tonight just in a normal day because the grocery store is empty and it's just like what are we doing like why are we doing this do you think i'm nuts like why why can i not buy broccoli in the grocery store today the broccoli thing amazes me like who who's like let's get some bunches like some heads of broccoli because there's not like you're not going to be able to cook it

Because you're not going to have power. You're going to eat the raw broccoli, I guess, before it freezes? It doesn't make any sense. Just like, but you buy enough for the weekend. You don't need to buy a month's worth of groceries today. Where you live, you don't have a lot of natural disasters. It is not a common thing for you. Now, it's not common where I live either, but every year or so,

there is a hurricane that comes and you need to be prepared for it. And so I feel like we Floridians are better prepared than people from other states because we've dealt with this. Now, we don't deal with everything well as already spent, you know, several days in my fine state and kept saying this is the weirdest place in America. And I agree. But one thing we're good at is preparing for national disasters. Like, we know what to buy. We're buying the batteries. We're buying the bottle of water.

We're buying the beef stew. Like, we know how it works. we're not lowing up on broccoli. But you know what is so funny, though, is that if you are a person that just got done spending a rack in the grocery store or 500 bucks, and you're buying perishable items, what you're basically doing is wasting food.

Because by next Tuesday, regardless of how bad it gets this weekend or for that power, like order will be restored in Texas very soon. And then you're going to be sitting on all that. I actually, like, I'm kind of excited about what post-apocalyptic ari will look like. Like, I don't think you're becoming a warlord in the post-apocalyptic landscape. My father told me I should buy a bunch of gold.

Like, what would you do? Like, what would you still be? That's what I told him. I said, okay, so I'll buy gold. By the way, through the roof right now, he was right. I should have bought gold. He made a lot of money. But that won't help you in the post-apocalyptic world because.

Let's just say. The dollar crashes. And my credit cards and my cash can't get me groceries. Yeah. And people are bartering for bread and water with gold. All I'm doing is collecting gold for the toughest guy on my block. Like, what am I doing with it? Like, I'm not going to have gold.

Like, if that takes, what is your, what are you going to do when the lights go out? Like, what will your job be? You mean, like, in terms of the tech, propagandist? Like, what if we ever get to a point where people, where it is actually mayhem. Yeah, I've thought about this. Like, I don't have a lot of useful skills. I have chosen a field that is completely worthless if the lights go out.

I mean, I think if we get to a point where media is no longer needed, then we've got bigger problems. But like, I can't, I can't fix a circuit. I can't fix a car. I have a handyman coming over to my house as we speak to put on a new, a new showerhead. You're done. Yeah.

If the lights don't come back on, like, your beautiful life. Do you agree, though? She's going to live in the warlord's house. She's not going to be with you anymore. And I know that.

I think we both know that. Like, you know, but one time, like, we heard a noise in our downstairs kitchen or like in the middle of the night. Like,

it felt like someone was in our house. And I like, I got up and went, down there and I was like, I'm the man, I'm going to take care of this. And like, she was into it, you know? But do you think that people lose control? Like, over things like that. People get scared, especially if they've never been in the situation before.

That's why I'm joking a little bit. But people in Florida who live in Florida who deal with hurricanes all the time, like, that first time the storm starts spinning, like, my wife will tell me as soon as she sees it, go to the grocery store, go to Sam's Club, get the batteries in the water. We'll have it. It'll be fine. Yeah, but like if you want to buy water, you don't need to buy five cases. Just buy one, buy two.

You don't need five. You don't know how long your power is going to be out. You ever had your power out for a week? We have. If your power was out for a week, would you go through five cases of water as a family? Yes. Especially if you have a boil water advisory and you don't have clean water if your water supply gets affected. Five cases.

You don't know what to do in a natural disaster. Five cases of water. I can't follow in you. A lot of water. I drink four water bottles a day, maybe, max. Well, that's not enough. Yeah, anyway. I don't think there's any consideration.

At least 72 ounces a day, Ari. There's no consideration for anybody else ever, for anyone. That's why you got to become the warlord. Yeah. That's going to be my goal. If the lights go out. Firearm today. Take over the ball.

block. You're in Texas. A firearm didn't helping you much. You've got a neighbor who's got more than a firearm. You don't have to learn how to shoot it. Yes, it would help to know that.

By the way, everybody, responsible gun ownership, very important. Ari, I am not following you if the lights go out. Now, I'm pretty useless too. But I feel like I got a better chance than you. This is the two dudes in the forest with the bear. You know, I ain't got to outrun the bear. I just got outrun you. I'm going to do everything I can to get to Mobile. So just let's hope they're over.

We can only hope. Everybody, we'll be back on Monday. This is the last week of the season, because there was a game this week. So last week of Monday through Thursday shows, we began Monday through Friday next week. We'll show it. It's a single tear going down my cheek. as we realize it is the offseason. But that's okay. We're going to get you through this. Andy and Ari will be here for you every day. Monday through Friday, 3 p.m. Eastern time in the off season.

We're going to be in Mobile for the Senior Bowl. We'll be talking to some of your favorite players as they move on in the next level. We'll be talking a lot of college football because we'll be getting some new info, I think. It's going to be awesome. Talk about it.