Andy & Ari On3 - UCLA Bruins’ INCREDIBLE turnaround with Tim Skipper at the helm | Stages of Hot Seat Grief for Auburn, Florida, and Wisconsin

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Out west in California, the UCLA Bruins are on a two game winning streak after starting the season 0-4. Now, with Tim Skipper taking over on an interim basis for UCLA, it's likely Coach Skipper will wind up attaining a head coaching position soon. With Maryland coming to Pasadena this weekend, the Bruins are a slight favorite over Mike Locksley's Terps. Watch here as Andy & Ari are joined by Tim Skipper to discuss UCLA's great turnaround, Jerry Neuheisel's offense, and rules for life. (0:00) On Today's Episode(0:34) BetMGM(2:15) Intro: Ari's Speech at the QB Club(3:17) Previewing Tim Skipper(5:00) UCLA's Tim Skipper joins(20:19) UCLA Head Coaching Search(28:03) Rhoback(29:04) Coaching Carousel Update: Luke Fickell at Wisconsin(39:54) PaniniAmerica.net(41:59) Hot Seat Watch: Billy Napier at Florida(53:23) Hot Seat Watch: Hugh Freeze at Auburn(1:04:00) Conclusion - Megaboard tomorrow! After Andy & Ari wrap up with Coach Skipper, the fellas discuss the job opening at UCLA and where the Bruins currently stand. Speaking of hot boards, Andy & Ari dive into the coaches that are on the hot seat using the stages of grief to help them navigate this discussion. The fellas discuss Luke Fickell at Wisconsin, Billy Napier at Florida, and Hugh Freeze at Auburn. On3's megaboard tomorrow! Take a look here: https://www.on3.com/megaboard/ Our show is 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. Our show is sponsored by Rhoback, the most comfortable clothes on the planet! Use the code ANDY on Rhoback.com for a generous 20% off for all new customers through the end of this week. That’s 20% off all Performance Polos, Shorts and more with code ANDY We’re also brought to you by Panini! Panini delivers the most collectible sports cards and memorabilia on the planet. Check out the new exclusive Arch Manning collection or the Panini Prizm Draft Picks College Football series. Visit PaniniAmerica.net to start your collection today. Join On3 today and get one full year of access to The Athletic included! https://www.on3.com/subscribe/C Watch our show on YouTube! https://youtu.be/idK9HJh4W6I 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, you will meet UCLA interim coach, Tim Skipper, and you're going to come away from this interview thinking he needs to be somebody's permanent head coach as of next year. This guy is freaking awesome. We're also going to go through the stages of hot seat grief because it feels like different coaches are in different places. We're going to take a in-depth look at Luke Fickle at Wisconsin, at Billy Napier at Florida, and at Hugh Freeze at Auburn. We'll talk about it all on today's Andy Arion 3, presented by BetMGM. We've teamed up with BetMGM this season.

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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 Bed-MGM 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. Ari is in Florida speaking to the Gainesville quarterback club on Tuesday night. You nervous?

You know, I haven't really thought about what I'm going to say 100%. So I'm going to take an hour this afternoon and try to write out some thoughts just to have like a little outline. But I am really kind of hyped because I am back in the room that I projected Notre Dame

to make the playoff after. Oh, no, that's not true. They had played their first game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a skinny room. It makes you look, look at me. Like, I look like a normal size person in this room. I don't know what you've done.

But I feel really good and I'm really excited about our topics today because we flew into Tampa together and we had this podcast in the car already. So, like, it's pretty, pretty natural. My favorite shows are the ones where we can just talk to each other. And I feel like this is going to be one of those shows. Well, we're starting with an interview with Tim Skipper. And we talked to Tim yesterday and we're just. blown away. You're going to see that interview. You're going to understand why UCLA beat

Penn State. You're going to understand why UCLA then turned around, went to East Lansing, and crushed Michigan State. This guy gets it. And he's made some hard decisions. But I was thinking about your speech, you know, you've never been in this situation before. You may be a natural. Tim has been in this situation before. He got thrown into it at Fresno State, where he had to be in interim because Jeff Tedford fell ill. And he learned quite a bit. And that's situation. He took Fresno State to a bowl game as an interim coach. And now he's doing it again at UCLA where he's had to make hard decisions. He's had to change who calls the offense and who calls the defense. And it's working. All while trying to prove yourself from a personal standpoint that

you're worthy of the job, which you know, you can't really acknowledge as you're doing it. But I think that, you know, there are certain people that have the it factor or somebody who makes you feel a certain way with talking with them. And I think that's a natural gift. Like, you know, I I try to think about the coaches that I've been around in my career and all of them have been dynamic in different ways. For instance, Urban Meyer was somebody who naturally made you want to be at your best when you're in the room with you. Yes, you have to be able to Jedi mind trick 18 to 22 year olds into believing they can do

something that maybe they can't even do. Yeah. And I don't think that everybody's style is different, but I know everyone's style is different, but I think that there is an effectiveness in terms of how you get people to have their emotional response to you. And, you know, when he was on the show, here, as you're going to see here in a few minutes, I thought that he possessed that treat.

Yeah. Well, let's, let's let's let's see it for themselves. Here is Tim Skipper, UCLA's coach. We are honored to be joined by UCLA coach Tim Skipper. And I know we got it on the, the graphics as interim head coach. This is the head coach, baby. This is, this is Tim Skipper 2 and 0 in the last two games.

And coach, I got to, ask you, so you've done this before. You were the interim coach at Fresno State as well. And how is it, is it tough or is it kind of freeing when you're in that situation that, hey, things are not going the way we've planned. And obviously it was a very different situation at Fresno State. But things are not going the way we've planned. We've got to get this right. Go do what you think is best. Yeah. It's like you hit, it's never a good moment when you become the interim head coach. Something bad has happened. So, You just, my primary focus is just how do I get the guys to love football again?

What do we need to do to love football and to give us the best chance to win games? And that's the complete focus. There is a little bit of freedom in the fact that everybody knows you're in a tough situation. So they kind of give you a few days or a game to kind of get your feet wet and all that type of stuff. But you just have to make smart decisions that are going to help the entire organization, coaches, players, and support staff. It didn't really look like you needed the extra game there to get your feet wet. coach. We need it all.

So take us back to the decision. So you play Northwestern, and then you've got Penn State coming to town. You decide to make a change at offensive coordinator. You elevate Jerry New Heisle. What was it about Jerry that made you decide, okay, we're going to give him a shot now? You know, the first thing I'll say is I'm a coach's kid and Jerry's a coach's kid. And that's important to me. Like, I just think we have, we've dealt with all these different situations in our life that you have to adapt and overcome, just moving, meeting new friends, seeing the ups and downs of wins and losses, understanding that your dad's not going to be home for a lot of during the fall time, you know, all these things that coaches kids have to deal with. And then he's

just a brilliant football mind. I really enjoyed before I became, or I became the interim head coach. I really enjoyed talking to him and just talking ball and getting to pick his brain and all those type of things. And he's got a bright, bright future and hopefully it just gets better and better. Tim, when you took over, what was your first message to the team and how quickly after did you share that you guys control your own destiny to the college football playoff in national title? Oh, thank. We didn't talk about the playoffs. I'll tell you that. You want to know the truth. the very first thing I talked about was defeating the locker room. We needed to get the locker room clean, put pictures up of exactly how I wanted it to look.

And after our first practice, I told him you have your deadlines tonight at midnight. So to start tomorrow, the locker room needs to look this way all the time, not just tomorrow, but every single day. And that was the message because we need to win off the field before we're going to win on the field. So you gave them chores. Oh, yeah, I guess you can say that. To me, it's pretty simple. Take care of your stuff. a lot of them are you are you a make your bed every morning like that's how you have to start the day

i am not that guy to be totally honest i am not i'm a get up and go type guy and then i come home and it is what it is i heard you say uh in one of your press conferences that if the day doesn't start with enough juice that is if it's not intense enough you'll start the day over yep have you had to start the day over yet i have not had to do that i have not um energy and passion and love for what you're doing is what I believe in. And that's happened. Like it's from day one, we've learned how to enjoy what we're doing, enjoy the process and love what you're doing also. And just put everything that you have in your body, the strain to be successful. And that doesn't matter if we're on the field practicing. Doesn't matter if it's game day. It doesn't matter

for sitting in a meeting. Doesn't matter if it's a walkthrough. Give everything you have at that moment and then we'll be okay. When equals what's important now. That's how I see it. So now, is what's important you you seem like a great guy uh and you know somebody that people would want to play for but i i'm really curious on a serious note we watched UCLA for the first few games of the season and we've watched your last two is it even surprising to you to a certain extent how much of a night and day feeling it i mean it doesn't even look like it would be possible to do what you guys have done like how is it turned around so much and are you shocked by it even uh to be totally honest with you. I haven't even thought about it that way. I haven't been able to take

a deep breath and reflect. That has not happened. Like I hit the ground running and it's still running. I'm sure I'll probably have some thoughts on that later, but there's so much going into this. I mean, we changed our offense, changed our defense during the weeks of the games. Like, we have a lot on our plate right now. So I don't really know that reflection piece right now. I just worry about the now. And I'm just trying to keep these guys rising, man. That's all I want to just stay on the rise. I love what you said after the Michigan State game where you said there were so many built-in excuses had we lost this game where it's, you know, it's a 9 a.m. body clock start.

It's a cross-country flight. It's a this, it's a that. And you're like, none of that matters. How do you make your team believe that too? That's how we operate, man. I mean, the time of the day is wherever we're at. I don't care if it's East Coast time, Pacific time, whatever it is. The time of the day is where we're at.

there's no excuses with football nobody's going to feel sorry for you once that whistle's blown and it's kickoff time so you need to go play and the standard and the standard is the standard we need to hold up to the standard i don't care what the situations are or what it built in excuses we have the standard adapt to overcome and let's go play Tim our producer just texted us he'd run through a brick wall to play for you uh and I'm kind of getting that feeling too there's just certain people that kind of we actually need to send Tim Rivers highlights yeah so if you need If you need a 130-pound slot receiver who played small high school ball in Tennessee. He runs a 5-9-40, too. He's a dog, though. He's an absolute dog. So we'll send you the tape at the huddle clip afterward. Tim, you know what is really something that stands out to me,

and I'm sure you're obviously aware of this. But Nico Iamaliava has been through the ringer a little bit, you know, at least in the court of public opinion. He has a huge change from Tennessee to UCLA. Things got off to a pretty rough. start for him. What was it like trying to cultivate a positive mentality with him and how have you seen him respond the last few weeks because he's played a really, really good few games? And it seems like he's on the verge of maybe turning around some of the narrative that's been

spun about him. Yeah, you know, that narrative is crazy, man. Even for me, you know, I was on it, I didn't get here until August, basically, and just went straight to camp. And I didn't know Nico at all. I just knew, you know, media coverage and all that stuff. And that kid is a great kid. and he's a natural born leader. I'm telling you right now. He voices his opinion, whether it's good or bad, and people follow him. That's the number one thing I'll say about him. As he gets in difficult situations, he didn't shy from it, he didn't run away from it.

He attacked it. And I'm just glad he's having success now. Like, he deserves that. He's a very hard worker that's dealt with a lot of stuff on and off the field, and most of his off-the-field stuff. And he just keeps on rising, keeps on moving forward. and it's just a pleasure to watch him grow as a person. But I just want to get out there that this dude's a natural born leader.

Like he has a voice and he's not afraid of anything. And I'm just glad he's on our team. Ari and I were at the Tennessee Ohio State game last year where they basically had him in hell where Tennessee's receivers couldn't get open at all. And he was getting beat up so much trying to run and gain yardage. And I remember turning to Ari during that game and saying, you know, the way he can run, if you could ever have a situation where he's running this way and then you get guys open, it could be a really effective offense.

And that is exactly what it's looked like the last two weeks for you guys. Yeah, he's a dual threat guy. I mean, very athletic, good passer, very smart. He takes what the defense gives him. If he has open running lanes, he's going to take off and get out of there. If they're going to put people in the box and account for him, spying and all that stuff, then he's going to let his receivers go eat. So I really like his decision making.

I like how he has command of the game and just continue to make smart decisions and he'll be very successful. So I mentioned you've served as an interim coach before. For the viewers who don't know, you were Fresno State's interim coach last year. Coach Tedford had gotten sick and you took over for the program.

What did you learn through that experience that helped you on that day when Martin Jarman comes to you and says, we're making a change, you're the interim? Yeah, that experience was everything. I'm just going to tell you. When I took that thing over, I wasn't prepared for everything that came with it, just the off the field stuff, the schedules, the Wednesday meeting time, what are we going to eat, all the media stuff. How much I was away from actual football was crazy, and I had to get used to that, and I got better and better as I was working the job.

But taking over here at UCLA has been 10 times easier for me because of that experience. I already had a schedule laid out. I already knew how I wanted their off days to be. I could answer questions without saying, hold on, let me get some more information on it. Like, I'm so far ahead. And I know exactly what I want to do every single day. I know what our mission and goals need to be that I'm just very comfortable. And that experience really did help me, though.

I mean, it was invaluable, priceless. Tim, when I think about UCLA's program, I mean, I grew up on the west side of the country. And, you know, I think they've got the most beautiful uniforms in all of college football. They're in a beautiful town. who doesn't want to live in Southern California, all these things. But there's a perception about the UCLA job nationally, about, you know, buy-in, administratively, fan buy-in, all these things. What is the ceiling for UCLA from your perspective?

And is it a better job that people might think? I think what you just said, man, sets the table for everything. It's beautiful. There's wonderful people here. You can get recruits in here. You have all the national attention. People love to be on this campus. I think it's a gold mine.

I think it definitely can take off. Um, it's just a matter of, uh, a collection of people working together to achieve the goal they want to achieve. And I think it can happen for sure. Just, uh, it's going to take a lot of hard work because this landscape is ever changing, but it definitely can happen here. Now, Tim, how do you handle this? Because obviously, I would imagine you'd like to be that guy who does that for UCLA. If you keep doing this, even if you aren't that guy, there's a chance you're, you're getting a head coaching job somewhere else because people have watched what you did. But how do you separate. yourself from that and just deal with the day to day of trying to keep this team winning. Kind of like I was saying earlier, there's so much going on in my day to day. I can't think about the past or the future. Like I really can't. Like I'm just thinking so much for a game plan and take care of the players.

There's so many things going on right now that I have not let my mind or I don't even have the ability to let my mind go to where I'm thinking about what I'm going to do next and all that type of stuff. I'm one of those people that, man, if you work hard at something, you'll achieve the goals you want to achieve. And I'm just going to keep on pounding the ground and just keep on working and let the chips fall as they may. So we close our interviews with a new guest with the same question. And I apologize because I should have prepped you for this. But now I'm actually, I can't wait because I kind of want to hear it extemporaneously from you.

So we always ask, you know, what are your rules for life? And we've had different coaches give us different rules. You know, Joel Clatt, when he was on, had a great rule for life of never, never talk trash to a guy with a huge belt buckle because that happened to him once and it very badly. But ARI's is never go to a restaurant that claims to specialize in pizza and sushi, which I feel like is a good rule. But, you know, what rule or kind of two or three rules do you live by? On the funny side, I never eat Popeyes unless it's in Louisiana. taste oh oh love it disagree strong disagree because

Popeyes is great everywhere but let the man cook why look look okay Copeland's owns Popeyes all right I'm from New Orleans I actually worked for them for a little while not at an actual Popeyes but my high school football team we actually

organized their Christmas lights on the house for them okay and they brought us Popeyes every single day for two weeks to eat at lunchtime and as i was doing that i end up start talking to people that were making the food and things like that and it's all about who's making the food not just the uh ingredients and the recipe it is about who is making it so i have a completely true opinion on that that if you're in new orleans or anywhere else in louisiana that pop-is taste 10 times better than anywhere else

so i have a bonus question before you get to the serious rule for life Before it closed, did you ever get to go to the Popeye's buffet in Lafayette? So I never went to the one in Lafayette, but we have one in Kenner where I grew up. And we would actually, every single time we had midterm finals, we got out of school early. So we'd be out of like 10.50, and we would go straight to that Popeyes, and we'd sit there for like two, three hours and just keep going back and forth. No, there are no more Popeyes buffets. They're all gone.

Yeah, because people like me would close the place. You are an expert. that is huge huge oh that that just hurts my heart to like i can't even imagine how great that would be to get out of school and go sit at a poppice buffet for three hours they have the full menu in the popeyes buffet it's it's just every biscuits and you got all you got beans and rice you got it all you got biscuits you got the butter you got it all yeah you could eat as much as you wanted yeah it's buffet yeah what they stopped they weren't making any money no no all right what is your serious rule for life i don't think you can beat that

one but uh no regrets that's my whole thing no regrets go full speed ahead at all times and don't worry about the outcome just keep on moving forward whether it's good or bad you got to learn from it and just get better so no regrets would be my serious thing have you ever thought about tattooing that slogan on your body anywhere no i don't have any tattoos actually i'm not a tattoo guy i'm tattoos you lift weights and you gain muscles keep it permanent i'm i'm terrified to get in a tattoo, so I'm never getting one either. But I don't blame you one bit. No regret sounds like a great life loss.

And I imagine that is exactly what it's going to be the rest of the way for you this season at UCLA. Cannot wait to see what you guys do. Thank you so much, Coach. Thanks, Coach. Thanks for having me all. I appreciate you guys. Good luck. It'll be fun to watch you.

Thank you. Ari, that is incredible advice. No Popeyes outside of Louisiana from a man. Who knows Popeyes? It's funny because when we were at the Tampa, Tampa Mall last night, there was a Popeyes that was under construction. I don't know if you saw that. Oh, I did.

I thought to myself, I thought, don't even bother opening. I'm not eating here unless I'm in Louisiana. Now, I disagree still with it because I've had some lovely Popeye's meals outside the state of Louisiana. But I trust a man who's from Louisiana. I trust his food opinions, probably more than I trust anybody else's food opinions. My take on Popeye is not a sponsor, which they were, is that, It is the, it's a fast food restaurant that provides fried chicken. And I think the gap between how good Popeye's chicken is and the best fried chicken in the world is probably the smallest gap.

The gap between say a Popeyes and Gus's fried chicken in Mason, Tennessee, which is the best fried chicken on earth is not far. What does Guses do to make it the best fried chicken? I don't know. But like what is it about it that you put crack in it or something? It's hard to tell. And Gus's is turned into a chain where there are Guses in Austin. There's a Gus is in Nashville. There's Gus in New Orleans.

Yeah, but the Mason one, their original one in Mason in the middle of nowhere is the real deal. Yeah, the Cajun spices at Popeye's, though, really hit. And I honestly, I know Raising Cains is like a big deal to people. Also, Louisiana company. But I think that Popeye's chicken fingers are about as good of the chicken fingers you can find. So that's my food take of the day. We know Tim Skipper has good food advice, but let's talk about Tim Skipper as the future. comes hurtling at us as the coaching carousel comes hurtling at us.

So if we look at the rest of UCLA's schedule, it is incredibly hard. UCLA is a three and a half point favorite against Maryland this weekend, which I was actually a little bit. Yeah, Maryland's good. Surprised by Maryland has lost a couple heartbreakers where they had leads against Washington and Nebraska late and ended up losing those games.

Maryland is a good team. This is going to be a tough game. The other games on UCLA's schedule are even tougher. It gets much harder from there at Indiana, Nebraska. at Ohio State, Washington, at USC. So I will say these six games, starting with Maryland this weekend, Ari, if Tim Skipper wins two of those, and they're somewhat competitive in the rest of them,

given the UCLA job. Yeah, so when you have an interim coach, I think this is an interesting discussion, and we're probably going to be seeing, not probably, we are going to be seeing it, you know, play out a few places, too. What do you think is the baseline accomplishment expectation rate before you are considered for the,

the job and does it vary based on the situation that you're in and where you are. Can you make the players believe, do you believe that if you kept the staff together, it would get better? Do you believe that this person can bring in the same or better personnel? And so those are all questions I feel like you'd answer yes to with Tim Skipper because I do think, now Jerry Newheisel is going to get interest based on what's happened in the last two weeks. But if you could keep Jerry Neuheisel, who is an alum, who is, you know, second generation alum, then I think you got something going there. Nico, like, the thing I think Nico is going

to go to the NFL after this year? I don't know if he will. I don't know. I don't know what in the last two weeks it made me rethink Nico completely. I'm not going to re. Yeah. I'm not going to try to predict what Nico's family is going to do with him. Yeah. The thing that I do know is that there is a difference and i think maybe a multiple different type of skill set andy of between getting people to believe or to buy in when things are going poorly and building a program yeah those are the two things that scare me but right it's like you can get people to feel good about themselves in the in the midst of in the moment situation but are you going to be able to build a program in the off season when you're the guy and you're not but i but i think the the turning around something that felt hopeless

is probably a tougher skill than being able to build. So if you can turn around something that was hopeless, make people believe, what can you do when you have all that runway? And so that's what I think. And I don't know that Tim Skipper's going to get this job. The UCLA search committee may say, you know what? We're going to go after a big name. That's what we want to do.

Tim Skipper may wind up with Oregon State or a job like that. Yeah. I'm telling you right now that guy's going to win wherever he goes. Yeah. I feel like he does have that quality, even River, while we were, you know, recording it was, was moved by him. I think that being able to move people is an important skill. I think it's the important skill.

And, you know, I think he illustrated that on the show, but also was illustrated in the results because UCLA was a team, you know, I don't think that we can even exaggerate it enough how bad it was. I mean, they were going to go 0 and 12. Yeah. If things had continued the way they were going, they were going to go 0.12. You know, in the most fascinating part of this whole thing is that the use, CLA revival is also at the cross section of the Penn State demise, which carried over the

following week. So it's like, you know, as we try to get context of who's good and who's bad, it's like, well, how bad is it at Penn State? Because Penn State turned around and lost Northwestern the following week, too. So, you know, they're favored against Maryland. I think part of the reason might be because Maryland has to fly the furthest possible way to get there. Right. And Maryland has lost two heartbreakers in a row. You know, wonder mentally where they're at. There's a cumulative effect on that. I don't know, but Maryland's a good team. If UCLA beats Maryland. They pop off three in a row here. The thing is if they win one more game after that,

let's see they beat Maryland. If they win one more game after that, it means they probably beat Nebraska or USC or Washington. Like, what do you expect out of UCLA in the Big Ten? Right. To be able to beat those teams. You know,

I hate to be the revelatory information deliverer here, but like UCLA is first in the Big Ten right now. So, you know, if they can win this one, right, they'll be three and O. And there aren't going to be a lot of teams that are three and O in that conference. So he's done a really good job. And I think that the one question that we didn't get to, and I want you to answer, is when an interim coach is in the position, what do they have to do, like, from a output production standpoint to get a job? And do you think it varies based on?

You have to show that you can win games that you would need to win as the permanent coach. Like, you need to be able to beat Washington or USC or Nebraska. Now, I will say Deshaun Foster beat Nebraska last year. So consider that. But you need to show that you can beat teams like that. Like being able to beat Penn State is a bonus. And I think it's important to point out, though, too, that UCLA in the past few years under Deshaun Fosters's leadership did have games where they punched opponents in the mouth. Yeah.

They did Iowa last year. They weren't just a disaster from start to finish. That Iowa game last year, you thought they were going to get eaten alive physically and they ate Iowa alive physically. So we've seen it out of UCLA. There was probably a larger discussion about what UCLA's actual program ceiling is. and what the expectations are for whoever gets that job. But, you know, so far you have a complete and utter stark turnaround. They went from disaster and laughing stock to them being favored against Maryland after

winning two games, one of which was Penn State. Like there was no night and day comparison that probably, you know, outshines how stark of a difference that is. Yeah. So if you got a job opening, you need to look at Tim Skipper. I'm just telling you right now. And I'm not talking about Penn State necessarily or Florida or Auburn if they open. but there are going to be a lot of jobs open because there's already a lot of jobs open

and there's going to be even more as coaches move around this is a guy you need to consider if you have an opening just i'm just throwing that out there but consider it and thankful that he came on the show on such short notice too yeah appreciate that and uh i'm excited to watch and play this weekend so we got to talk about some of these jobs that may potentially open but first i want to tell you about rowback i'm wearing my my hezzy hoodie right now the roeback hoodie is the most comfortable garment in the world. That's why I have 19 of them, mostly because family members keep stealing them. But the best part is now you can get them in your favorite school arrangement.

So you've got the Roebuck Black Hoodie of Death for Alabama. You've got the Roebuck, Ohio State, Hezzy hoodie. You've got the Gators Hezzy hoodie. You've got the Ohio State Q-Zip, which is really cool, which has the helmet stripe on it. 20% off your first order with the code Andy at Roeback.com. that's R-H-O-B-A-C-K, and also you got T-shirts, you got shorts, you got joggers. Their joggers are so comfortable. I was wearing their joggers last week.

Everybody was giving me compliments. Look at that Tennessee Power T-H-H-E-H-E-H-E-H-E-H-E-R-B-A-B-UtUtB-A-B-A-C-O-B-B-A-R-B-O-B-R-E, let's talk about some of these jobs where the coach is on the hot seat, they may open. And I think we need to look at it using the five stages of grief because I think that's kind of where, you know, coaches are in different places. Some coaches kind of understand what's going on. Some coaches are still fighting it. So the stages of grief are from the fan standpoint, right? No, from the coach himself.

Okay. Yeah. So denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And they all go through all of them. and so we're going to watch a couple coaches well three coaches and then we're going to try to identify what stage of grief we're going to figure out what stage of grief they're in so let us start with Wisconsin coach Luke fickle so Wisconsin just lost 37 to nothing to Iowa and it's not just that they lost to Iowa it's that they lost 37 nothing to Iowa after spending the

entire off season pushups thing focusing on this game They gave up 42 points to Iowa last year. So they had workouts where there were things that they had to do sets of 42 reps to remind them that they never were going to do that against Iowa again. They were never going to lay another egg against Iowa. And they were even worse this year against Iowa. And that is the problem. Luke Fickle took over a program from Paul Chris that had gotten worse. Paul Chris had been a very good head coach.

And then things started to slide. It was, the recruiting was not going well. The talent was not getting better. And so you felt like Wisconsin had gone from one of the best programs in the Big Ten to a mediocre program. The idea behind hiring Luke Fickle was he will bring them back to being one of the best programs in the Big Ten. They have gotten worse every single year under Luke Fickle. After the first year, I said, Ari, it didn't seem like they added much talent. Why don't they just go buy better players?

They didn't. After the second year. Ari, it doesn't seem like they've added much talent. talent. Why don't they just go buy better players? They didn't. And now here they are. And so Luke Fickle, after the Iowa game, got asked a very difficult question that, you know, bless this reporter because that's the question every fan wanted answered. Here's his answer. Luke, this might be an unfair question right now, but do you think you guys are in a better position now as a program than when you took over?

it's a better position no i mean right this second we're we're not feeling real good um i could dig deep into it i could say that i think you know incrementally we've gotten better talent in some ways um it's tough to evaluate right now i think the deficiencies the injuries and i'm not making excuses where we are on the offensive line and where we are a quarterback and make it really difficult to answer that question, I think, in the best way possible. But I do believe as we started, you know, fall camp, I would tell you that we were in a better place. And I think incrementally, we had gotten better in most positions. And I would also tell you that I think a lot of other people have gotten incrementally a hell of a lot better as well. And so what that has done

has put us still in the position where, you know, no, we're not better than most of the people or maybe anybody right now that we're playing. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance. Where is Luke Fickle? Depression. Exactly. He is a depression right now. He is looking at this.

And the last part of the answer where he talks about how everybody else got better to, like he's probably talking about Indiana in the Big Ten, but it's not just Indiana because Minnesota got better. Iowa got better. Iowa is a better team now than it was two years ago. Nebraska is better than it was two years ago. And it's an interesting concept too because when you talk about other teams getting better, that doesn't mean that your place on the totem pole changes. So if Indiana gets better, you should still be getting better commiserate or more effectively than they are. And the truth of it is Wisconsin has not gotten any better. They've gotten worse.

Well, here's the thing that I asked you in the car yesterday. And I'll ask Wisconsin fans and like, listen, we are staying on top of more than 130 teams. It's really difficult to do it at times. But what was the single biggest recruiting transfer portal splash that Wisconsin has made since he's been there? Which personnel upgrades that he was referring to in his answer can we specifically point to and say, hey, this was a big deal. Like, I don't know. I'll answer for them. There hasn't been one.

So if, you know, and I know like you brought up Will Pauling in the car. They got him from Cincinnati. They didn't recruit any. Nobody that they've recruited there has become a star. Nobody that they recruited to Wisconsin has become a star. But they didn't even go out and get players that were stars already. Right. I thought he would be able to do.

And I don't know as we evaluate the job that he's done, it's a little bit more difficult to do it on the surface because there are phone calls that need to be made about. Was he given the correct support? This is the issue. Like there's a chicken egg thing with fickle that we haven't. been able to figure out yet, and I don't think that that information is public knowledge yet. So it's hard to judge who's at fault the most here. Like, did Fickle get sold a bill of goods that he was going to be able to have the resources to recruit truly well at Wisconsin?

Or did Wisconsin give him the resources, and he did not use them properly? Like, we don't know that yet. And I think the answer to that is important because not so much for Luke Fickle, because I think this has run its course. They're playing Ohio State this week. They have an open date next week. I think this is run its course. I think you will see a very sad game on Saturday, and then whatever happens, happens. The line moved from 27 and a half to 25 and a half.

It did. Well, a little bounce there. You know, there was a little familiarity there. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Luke Fickle knows Ryan Day very well, understands Ohio State very well. I don't think that matters. But it doesn't matter.

Ohio State is so much more talented. But that's the question going forward. And Chris McIntosh, the athletic director who hired Luke Fickle, we don't know where his job security is at either. So what happens in the next few weeks, we'll be very telling. Does Wisconsin say we would like to actually compete in the Big Ten? So we're going to hire a coach and give that person the resources to actually go out and get the talent to be competitive.

Again, I'm not sure if Luke Fickle had those resources and didn't use them or he wasn't given them. But I'm shocked that he would have left Cincinnati without some sort of promise that those resources would be a lot to it. And it's just kind of a confusing situation because the way that Wisconsin moved on from Paul Christ in the timing of that and then the aggressiveness that they displayed in going out and getting fickle

would be an implication that they were dedicated and committed to improvement in football. So if they did all those actions and then didn't follow through from an NIL or didn't follow through from a, you know, administrative buy-in to give him the resources internally that he needs those would be conflicting ideologies. Yeah, why did you fire,

Paul, Chris, if you were just going to give the next guy the same. Yeah, like, if you're an Uber driver, you don't, like, trade in your Hyundai Sonata and go buy a seven series BMW to do the same thing. Like, you need to, you know, you need to aim a little higher. When you invest in something, you need to cultivate that investment by further investment. So, yeah, it's been a, there's a lot to discuss, I think, about fit and about whether what Luke Fickle did best at Cincinnati and during his time as an assistant. Ohio State was transferable to Wisconsin. There's another discussion about whether the skill sets that made him excel at Cincinnati are even relevant anymore in this new era because he was doing at a time where

recruiting was done a little bit differently. I know like towards the tail end of his tenure there, like NIL was beginning. But he hasn't really existed as a head coach anywhere in this environment, especially one where, you know, like it or not, Wisconsin is still kind of removed geographically from where all the best players in the country play. And I think that there is a factor in that. um you know it's harder to recruit ohio which he has a lot of inroads in it's harder to you know in the other thing andy that i i said in the car yesterday is that at cincinnati you can afford to take

a certain type of player and roll the dice and then if you hit on that player i'm trying to think of the very small um cornerback's name sauce garner was a very small cornerback was a really small one defensive back from cleveland glenville that was really talented and um i can't remember his name but i know that he was It's a familiar name, and it was a younger brother, I believe, of an Ohio State football player. But you can, I don't know if you can take that player at Wisconsin because if you bring somebody in that's that small and it doesn't pan out, then you can't sustain that type of roster hit than maybe you could at Wisconsin. So, yeah, we'll see what happens with him, but the schedule's brutal from here on out. I think it probably is over after Ohio State. They have an open day.

They don't have an open day. They said, I misspoke earlier. They're at Oregon next week. They have an open date after Oregon. I guess you could wait until they go to Oregon and do it. But having to play two of the best teams in the country. And then, oh, by the way, they're at Indiana in the middle of November. So it's Ohio State, Oregon, Washington, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, the rest of the way.

I'm not sure Luke Fickle could win another game against the. this schedule yeah and we we saw this coming a month ago yeah two weeks ago like okay well if they can't do this then look at what they've got we we said it before the maryland game we said if they lose to maryland there's a good chance they're going to intend so yeah this is going to be one of the sadder departures and and firings and again i don't think there's a chance that he comes back even though a few weeks ago we were saying maybe the buyout's too high i think given what we saw james franklin that conversation we had had last week with Matt Jones from Kentucky Sports Radio about Mark Stoops' buyout.

Like, I think all the buyouts are on the table, including this one. And I just don't think you can, I just don't think you can go in this era with no hope whatsoever. And that is the feeling right now. There is no hope whatsoever, which is why depression is probably the appropriate stage of grief. Also, the appropriate stage of grief can be read very clearly on his face during that new. Yes.

Yes. All right, Ari. let us move to a different one. But first, we're going to rip a Panini pack. Oh, I'm excited. And it's a big one. It's a big box. This is a contenders optic, 2024.

So one of my favorite products of the year. This box contains one pack with six cards. Want me to hold your microphone or do you want me to? You hold the mic for me. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to double barrel this while he's doing this. Well, you could put the mic near my mouth so people can hear me. That would help.

So there's one pack with six cards in it. On average, two autographs. per one of these packs be careful with this okay yes i'd be careful touching be careful ripping i'm making are you nervous right now he's i mean this is a this is a pretty expensive box so okay here we go here we go here we go we go we go we got luke mcalfrey rookie card we love luke mccaffrey he scored last night luke yeah they won too or no they lost the bears one Hurry. I don't know how excited everybody's about him. Trey Benson.

That's numbered. We got a Roman Wilson autograph. Yeah, Trey Benson, number two. It's on the back. Number two. 99. 99. All right. Roman Wilson, Otto. Fabian Love it, Otto.

Loved him at Florida State. Optic illusion Amon Rae St. Brown. So that's probably our best one. Yeah, Trey Benson was the starting running back there for a minute there when James Conner got injured and then he got injured too. But yeah, Roman Wilson was a receiver that I thought had a real chance of having a pretty good year. They were talking a lot about them in the offseason. I'd hold on to that one. Well, I'm going to hold on the Amin Ra one too.

So visit Panini, America.net to collect your favorite college and NFL stars. They've got those new limited edition of Ohio State boxes. We've got a few of those to open over the next few weeks here on the show. show. So a lot of fun to be had with Panini. Go to Panini America.net and you can start your collection today. Ari, let's move to another coach. And this is a guy who is just down the street from us right now, Billy Napier at Florida. So remember we're figuring out where these coaches are in the stages of hot seat grief. The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance. So Mark Long from the Associated Press asked Billy Napier a very topical question at Monday's

press conference. And Billy had an interesting answer. So Ari, I want you to tell me where Billy Napier is in his stages of hot seat grief. Roll that question. Big picture looking around the country. Coaches are getting fired left and right. Is it high opening when like a guy like James Franklin who made the playoffs, you know, 10 months ago? Get gets, you know, gets whacked after, you know, a couple of back-to-back bad games? Look, I don't think anything's changed. I mean, I think that happens every year.

It's what we sign up for, right? They pay us, they compensate us well. You know, so these are challenging jobs, you know, in today's climate in particular. So, look, we're all men. you know we're all competitors we understand we live in a production world and you got to produce right so there's no running from that I mean so it was that way when we signed up for it in the very beginning they used to not pay us as well as they do now so but when you do get compensated and the amount of revenue that's generated in our game I think the

compensation, you know, there's, it's fair. I have no issue with that. I think if you're at a place that doesn't have high expectations and how much fun is that, right? So the challenge of playing against the best is why you do it as a competitor, right? So to see, see if you can do it. There's a leap, you know, I think there's a leadership challenge. There's a competitive challenge. There's a strategy challenge so we're at the top of the food chain here we play against the very best every week so um Penn State's no different than that all right Ari where is Billy Napier on the grief scale acceptance billy Napier is reached acceptance that's exactly right of compensation a few times on the answer and I'm like yeah he's probably picturing I'm about to get a 10 million dollar

upfront payment and then 10 million over the next few years And look, I think if you're Billy Napier, you've spent the last three years with the fan base warning you fired, it's probably been pretty miserable. And so I would imagine when it comes, and I think there's a good chance it comes on Sunday, regardless of the result of the Mississippi State game, that it will be a relief for Billy Napier. Yeah, it is interesting when you look at the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. you can basically like this is a bit but at the same time it's still denial at the beginning if things aren't going well hey it's not my fault we have changes to make anger is when you feel like you're getting unjust criticism and that's when you see people snap and news conferences bargaining is when you reorganize your coaching staff um depression is when after you do that

although billy barbilly didn't reorganize coaching staff he bargained with wins against ls u miss yeah yeah and then bargaining too maybe is just like hey we'll keep dj lagway yeah exactly you know and depression i think is what's set in when they lost the usf yes and i would agree with that that's like okay even after all that we still can't and they and they had the last little bit the last gas when they beat texas but then they go to college station loses texas and it's like okay and then acceptance is just everyone knows what's coming and when it comes you know you you provided a guess there if it's not then it'll probably be shortly after um and then they move on so and you know as a person who is talking about compensation i think that he has had to consider the benefits

of, you know, what is coming around the corner for him. And I think he's probably going to find another job as a coordinator or something somewhere. Oh, he will. And the thing about Billy Napier, he might be able to find another head coaching job in the group of five pretty quickly. So Billy Napier did one of the things that Florida hired him to do. Because what was the biggest complaint about Dan Mullen was that he did not recruit

at a national championship level. X as and O's wise, game day schematic wise, Dan Mullen did everything you wanted. the problem is Billy Napier recruited at a national championship level, got the roster exactly where it needs to be. And if you don't believe it, asked Mario Cristobal, asked Brian Kelly, asked Mike Elko. They've all said the same thing before they played Florida and after they played Florida. Like that is a stack roster. Like I had a friend who's a Texas A&M alum, text me during the game and say, I cannot believe how much bigger Florida's roster is than ours. Everybody's bigger at every position. And I was like, yeah, they have recruited a good

roster. But Billy's problem was on game day, he couldn't coach them very well. They were very disorganized. They made the same mistakes over and over. The play calling was unimaginative. And when Billy Napier was given the opportunity to hire a play calling offensive coordinator or when he was actually commanded to hire a play calling offensive coordinator, he was like, nah, I'm good. And I know you can't like rewrite history and, you know, but I do like wish that AI got powerful enough to like do an alternate universe to see. But like, I wonder if he would have just tried to take the CEO aspect of this, higher coordinators that he could trust and to let them do their thing

if they would be better off. They'd be a lot better off. I wonder if he is going to lose his job as a result of unwillingness to adapt. He wouldn't be the first coach he lost his job because of stubbornness. So like Jimbo Fisher has the biggest buyout in the country because of stubbornness. I would have put a lot of James Franklin's firing on stubbornness. Yeah. Nick Saban we always talk

What was Nick Saban We attribute a lot of superpowers To Nick Saban What was one of the best ones Evolution and willingness to adapt Adaptability That's exactly right And Billy Napier

Not willing to adapt And I think that ultimately Will be his downfall at Florida But he's clearly accepted it Like they're eight and a half point favorites Against Mississippi State Watch them come out and just rip it They might

They might you know, Mississippi State's a good enough team to beat you if you, but like, you know, I don't know. The thing that was so impressive about what Florida did last year was that they used the hot seat stuff seemingly to like rally around their coach and fight like hell for them. Like now I don't even know if that's a, if that's an internal. I don't think Florida's quit playing hard. Like I don't think that's the problem. They've not quit on him. And that's the thing like, and this is why I think Billy Napier's lasted as long as he has. People like him. Yeah. People respect him.

it's not like he's a bad guy. It's just that it has not worked the way it's supposed to work. You're not supposed to be 500 of University of Florida. You're supposed to be better than that. And that's the reason he's going to get fired ultimately. He would have been fired sooner if he'd been a jerk. So that's part of it. And the players have not quit on him.

I've reminded a lot of people this this week because I got reminded of this. Actually, I think during our live show the other night, do you remember the the last game jimbo fisher coached at texas a i know the answer to it because you've said it yeah it's a 51 to 10 win against mississippi state and i had memory hold that and i remember thinking when i watched that game oh you know things are looking okay there well you come to find out later they'd already basically they'd already decided to fire him i can't remember if they told him or not you know and and you know he's just coaching freely because he's like oh whatever i'm i'm out of here after this yeah yeah i don't

don't know what you would have a better idea of that here at florida what's going on but it does seem like an inevitability here in the near future that this is going to happen yeah it feels like and they've got i messed up on the open date conversation for wisconsin because theirs is actually after Oregon uh florida's is after this week they have an open date and then they play georgia and so the rest of the schedule still hard uh maybe not as hard because kentucky and Florida State don't look as challenging, but obviously Georgia, Ole Miss and Tennessee are very challenging after that. So the Miracle Run conversation is over. Like they're not having that anymore. And I think that's why when you see Billy Napier answering that question, it is very much

in the vein of I get it. I accept it. Because he knew what the question was too. It wasn't about James Frank. It was about Billy Napier. Yeah. So Florida has to figure out what to do. extremely talented roster, what can you keep? Who's going to hang around? Because you obviously want to keep Dallas Wilson. You want to keep Miles Graham. You want to keep DJ Lagway if you can. You want to keep Jaden Baugh.

Jaden Baugh. You want to keep Vernel Brown, the third. Vernel Brown and Miles Graham, obviously, are legacies, their sons of former Florida players. So you feel like you'd have a better chance of keeping them. But if you could keep a lot of this roster together, and some of these guys are going to the NFL, like Jake Slaughter is obviously going to the NFL.

yeah so i think there's a chance this is a good job they're going to have a pretty pretty robust candidate pool here where where they can find some some people who really want to come work there who would like to have that job i think penn state's kind of in the same boat so and i actually think the florida gave him a reasonable timetable to turn it around they did four seasons is plenty four seasons is plenty and the thing is and we've talked about this with other coaches like kurt Cignetti is just destroying everybody's excuses. Nobody can say, well, I didn't get enough time because Kurt Cignetti didn't need any time. And the truth of the matter is, if you hire the right coach, you don't need any time.

Kirby Smart was in the national title game in year two. You know, Ryan Day was winning immediately. Like, if you hire the right person, he was in the national title game in year two, too. He was, you're right. That's exactly right. So if you hire the right person, it doesn't matter. They just are good. I don't know if those are great examples, though, because those plays.

Stan Lanning. Special, too. Yeah. Mario Cristobal. Mario Cristobal got hired the same week as Billy Napier. Year three, they were considerably better. They almost made the playoff. Year four, they may wind up the number one seed in the playoff.

Yeah. Yeah, there's no question. And I don't know where Florida stacks up against, you know, Ohio State, Georgia. And, you know, probably further up the tone pole than Miami was when Mario took over there, I would say. So, you know, I think part of it, too, is it's viewed as a good job by coaches. Who do you retain? and what conference do you play in and how much resources are you going to have

to assemble a roster? I think Florida checks a lot of those boxes. So they should be able to hire somebody that's pretty exciting. Yeah. And look, you know, I hate doing this when the firing hasn't happened yet, but again,

when the coach shows you that he accepts it, we can all move on. And he'll be fine. He'll be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine. All right, we move from Gainesville

to the loveliest village on the plains. Hugh Freeze came into the season probably in a better spot than Billy Napier, we thought. But he was on the hot seat because he had a very manageable buyout because things had not gone

the way you'd hoped at Auburn. And right now, Auburn is sitting at 0.3 in the SEC. They play Missouri this week. Missouri is really good. And if they lose this game, they're 0 and 4 in the SEC. They still have games against Vanderbilt,

games against Alabama left. Missouri is a one and a half. half point favorite on the road. Auburn dominated first half against Georgia, fell apart in the second half. Obviously, there was a very questionable call at the end of the first half. But as a lot of people pointed out, including our friend Cole Kublich, the former Auburn center, you can't just fall apart because you got hit with a bad call. Like if Auburn, even after the bad call, if Auburn had played the way it did in the first half, in the second half, it would have won the game. So, Hugh Freeze is in a situation now where this is a win or else, I think.

I think he's in a winner-or-else situation, but I don't think he's in the same place as Luke Fickle or Billy Napier when it comes to how he feels about the job. So let us play a clip from Hugh Freeze's press conference and decide where we think he is. At what point, though, is the results are reflection on the leadership and the coaching? How much of that are you homing? What are you changing this week? Like, while the fans expect a different result this is everything? I can't control what your expectations are or what theirs are. I know what ours are to get ready to go win a football game,

just like the word last week. And I thought we had a really good plan for our kids to do that. You don't always win in this league. And we knew that when we came here, when we were starting to build. and we're there and we do have to get different results and we all know that when we sign up for it. But anybody that looks at it

and doesn't see that it's very, very close and attainable really don't know what they're talking about. And so we've, but we've got to get different results and, you know, there's one way to do that. Go back to work and let's get better at learning how to win when we get those opportunities and hopefully get a few breaks that go our way also and, you know, and let's get on the winning column and see if we can't get on a run.

Ari, this five stages of hot seat grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. So we were on the same page. My guess was what you would have said on the first two, right? Yeah, so we've done Luke Fickle and we've done Billy Napier so far. Luke Fickle was clearly depression. Billy Napier was clearly acceptance. So which is Hugh Freeze? Anger. That's exactly right.

Hugh Freeze is at anger right now. He does not believe that he's doing a bad job. Yeah. And also I would be a little bit angry, too, on some of the breaks that you got. I understand, too. And I mean, think about how much of a tight rope a head coach is walking to maintain and retain his job and how much of a tightrope winning a single game in the SEC usually is and to kind of fall on the wrong side of that tight rope a few times. could have been the difference in a pretty successful season so far.

Again, I don't know that I would say that the reason that Auburn lost the game on Saturday was because of that call. I think that it obviously impacted their ability to win and to compete at a high level in the second half. But he doesn't strike me as somebody who is sitting there thinking, like, I got to look in the mirror and figure out what the hell is going on here. I think this is somebody. No, and he got a question elsewhere in the press conference that would have led you maybe to bargaining, but here you can see why he's definitely not to bargaining yet,

because bargaining is the one after anger. Do you guys considering the quarterback change, can't you consider the quarterback changes at this point, too? When you look at the first half, you're in love with what you see. When you look at the parts of the second half, you question why not the same throws, why not the same accuracy? So all of that is certainly worth looking at. We're always getting other guys reps for sure.

But Jackson is who we're going with Saturday. And hopefully he gets off to that right, that same start he did again and then continues it now throughout four quarters. I'm not going to throw you the red meat of a new quarterback. No, no. I'm going to keep doing the same thing I've been doing and see if they get a different result. Well, sometimes you just need a chip in a chair

and you might have to keep that chip in your pocket until you have to bargain. Like, you know, I don't know if we're at the stage of bargaining yet. I think Auburn is good enough as it is right now to win games like the one that they're playing. Auburn is just like Florida, though. Like Florida's close in some of these. Florida has beaten Texas,

but it's over for Billy Napier. Like, because they're not good enough to win enough of those games. Auburn is the same type of job, the same level of expectation. it doesn't matter if you're close. It does. You need to win them. It does seem interesting to me that Auburn brought in multiple options at quarterback,

and it's possible that this team is going to go down with the quarterback ship for the second consecutive year. Jackson Arnold. Really the third consecutive year. I think that Jackson Arnold has the worst quarterback rating of anybody in the SEC and hasn't thrown an interception. I think that's a stat I read. It's wild. And if you think about how poor your play has to be in order to accomplish that feat, he is a very gifted runner. He can extend plays, get away, get first downs.

We've seen him do good things this year. I'm not going to sit here and say that he's just been an irredeemable, terrible quarterback. But whatever's going on there offensively isn't working. And you have a lot of really good players. I think their offensive line is much better than I anticipated it would be. Yeah, it's not been as good as we thought it was going to be, but it's still not bad by Auburn standards. I guess like you can get fooled too by pushing around a big 12 team.

And then it's a little bit different in the SEC, I guess. but their defense has been outstanding defense is good uh they've been in every game you know you like you said there there are small margins you got to get it done when that opportunity is there but i don't like look at this Auburn team and like feel like it's as big of a dumpster fire as it was a year ago no but the problem is the job's not to be a not big dumpster fire the job is to win the SEC and win the national championship and i always say this you know there's certain jobs where your job is to win the national championship and it's unfair but that's the job. Auburn is one of those jobs. Florida is one of those jobs. Penn State is one of those

jobs. That's the job. And they're really hard. Like, it's understandable with some of these coaches. They get into them and they say, but we're right there. We're just right there. It doesn't matter. You have to get the results at some point. Yeah. And Hugh Freeze has been preaching patience. And we talked about this a little earlier that Kurt Signetti has essentially obliterate. all of these people when they asked for patience because he didn't need patience at freaking Indiana. If you hire the right person, patience is not required. The right person will just win. I'm with you. I'm with you. And I think that sometimes patients can pay off. I don't know if it's just if you don't win in year one or two, you suck. But I understand the inability or

the refusal from a program standpoint to wait for that because it is. Well, the other thing, is it's not essential i think that people try to sell you as it's essential you need three years yeah you don't if you hired the right coach you're gonna be you're gonna be much better in year two you need three years five years ago yeah so here's the deal Auburn has given Hugh Freeze the resources the roster Hugh Freeze has is good enough it comes down to coaching just like the roster billy napier has is good enough it comes down to coaching that's the problem that's the issue like Brian Harsen didn't have that roster by his choice and by the power brokers at Auburn's choice because he clearly didn't want to recruit the way you need to recruit, but also I don't think

they want. I think they kind of starved him out there at the end in terms of NIL money. So Hugh Freeze has not been starved out. Hugh Freeze has gotten what he needed. He assigned the kind of players he needed, be that from high school or the transfer portal. They've gotten the resources. They've put the roster together. This is all very similar to Billy Napier at Florida, by the way. And the difference between Hugh Freeze in year three and Billy Napier last year in year three, you know what the difference is? What? $11 million of buyout money. Hugh Freeze is just cheaper to fire. Yeah. So where do you, on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being hottest? Would you say his seat is right now? Compared to like

Billy Napier? I'm just saying in general. Billy Napier is in the infirmary. Yeah, I mean, Billy Napier is kind of accepted what's going to happen. Hugh Freeze, I would say, is it a 9.5. Like lose to Missouri and go 0 and 4 in the SEC With Vanderbilt and Alabama still on the way I just don't know I don't know what you can do Like this is this good So you've got Missouri

You go to Arkansas The Bobby Petrino led Arkansas Where Bobby Petrino is trying to get that job That's kind of a scary game in Fayetteville Yeah Kentucky I'm not that worried about You get them at home And Lord knows where they're going to be at that point At Vandy worry a lot

Iron Bowl worry a whole lot. So, like, you're looking at potentially two and six in the SEC. That's not good enough. No, certainly not. It's just not good enough. And that's the same thing with Billy Napier. And again, if Billy Napier's buyout had been $15 million instead of $26 million last

year, he'd have been fired last year. So Hugh Freeze, $15 million buyout, things not going the way you want. They will pull the plug if they have to. Let's just pay attention to that game. but, you know, Hugh Fries may not be as far along the stages of hot seat grief as Luke Fickle and Billy Napier, but if he doesn't win right now, he's probably going to wind up in the same place. So it's going to be a very fascinating weekend of college football. There's some juicy storylines, juicy games.

Missouri at Auburn may be the juiciest. Ari, you got to get ready for your speech. Cannot wait. I will be there to introduce slash heckle you. Yeah, I don't even know what you're going to say. So that like what the way you started and I'm not going to tell you either. It's okay. You don't have to.

I think, you know what I one time I had to give a speech at a wedding and that's the only time I've ever spoken publicly in my entire life. Now, you say I do it every day. It's a little bit different just being in this room with you and being in front of a physical 150 people. But I made it rain. I made it rain in there with the wedding speech. Good. And I was hammered. Well, you're not going to be.

hammered this time, so I'm glad. Tomorrow, the megaboard, and there's a lot of megaboard topics. We got to talk about Matt Rule, because obviously Matt Rule's name got connected to Penn State, but the Nebraska fans are like, wait a second, that's our guy, including Dylan Ryola. He's like, that's my guy. You can't take my guy. So we're going to talk about that.

We're going to talk about Oklahoma, very interesting message board thread with the Sooners. And a whole lot of other stuff because there is a ton going on in college football. And, of course, the mega boarded on three is where you see the most scintillating discussion anywhere. We're going to bring that to you in podcast form. We'll talk to you tomorrow.