Andy & Ari On3 - What college football teams might DISAPPOINT in 2024? | How has Nebraska stayed interesting?

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Thank you to Gametime for sponsoring today's episode! Week 1 is days away, don't miss your chance to watch your favorite team. Download the Gametime App and enter code: STAPLES for $20 off your first purchase, terms apply. Last Minute Tickets, Lowest Prices, Guaranteed.This show is also sponsored by FanDuel. Go to fanduel.com/Staples to sign up and receive $200 in bonus bets when you bet $5. FanDuel is also offering a 30 percent Profit Boost Token if you place a wager on the North Carolina-Duke basketball game on March 9.(0:00-0:46) Intro(0:47-13:19) Signing Date Changed(13:20-18:59) Dear Andy with Ralph Russo(19:00-32:20) How Close are we to a 2-Conference League?(32:21-44:22) What Teams are Overrated and Destined to Under-Perform?(44:23-51:02) 15 Teams to Name all 11 CFP Power Teams in 2024-2025(51:03-59:01) What are the rules anymore?(59:02-1:09:16) Similar Programs to Nebraska?(1:09:17-1:10:43) Conclusion with Ralph(1:10:44-1:18:16) Top Spring Break Destinations with our Producer, River(1:18:17-1:19:04) Wrapping Up - Jedd Fisch tomorrow!It’s a Dear Andy show, but with a twist. Ralph Russo, the national college football writer for The Associated Press and the keeper of the AP Top 25, joins to help Andy answer questions.Which teams that have high expectations in 2024 may not live up to those expectations? Andy and Ralph believe Missouri and Michigan are being expected to do a lot after losing a lot.Can Andy (or Ralph) guess the 11 power conference College Football Playoff participants by only naming 15 teams?If the courts keep striking down NCAA rules, would any rule be sacred? Could a player go to court to be allowed to keep playing college football?Why has Nebraska been able to stay interesting to people across the country even though the Cornhuskers haven’t been successful on the field recently?Want to watch the show instead? Join us LIVE on YouTube, M-F, at 8 am et! https://youtube.com/live/qxx-rlt9tNY

Welcome to Andy Staples on three. We got a Dear Andy show, your questions answered. And in fact, I brought a friend in to help me answer your questions. Ralph Russo, the Associated Press, the keeper of the AP Top 25 National College Football Writer for the world's largest news gathering organization. Me and Ralph will answer your questions. And there are some good ones like, who are the teams destined to disappoint? There's another good one about,

can we name 15 teams and correctly identify all 11 power conference participants in the first 12 team playoff? That one is a little tricky as we will get to when we answer those questions. But before that, we have a little bit of news. And this is right in the wheelhouse of the folks who typically consume on three contents. So you're welcome for this one. The Collegiate Commissioners Association, which is the group that runs the

National Letter of Intent Program. This is a lot of letters, a lot of alphabet soup here, but basically this is the group that runs the NLI program that decides when national signing day is. So Pete Dammel from ESPN reports on Wednesday that they're going to move the December signing date, and this has been talked about, but they've decided to do this. They're going to move the December signing date from the third Wednesday in December to the Wednesday after the last regular season game. So in this particular case, it would be December 4th because the last regular season games are November 30th. This is going to make the coaching carousel absolutely wild. Now, the original thought as they discussed this was that they were going to have another signing day in the summer. They had talked about August.

They kind of settled on June. They're still not sure they want to do the June one yet, and they don't really want to start the June one this year if they're going to do it at all. So they're going to talk about it when they meet in June of this year about doing it for next year. So that doesn't really change much. And if they do it next year, it makes that coaching carousel situation less wild next year. But this year, it's going to be crazy. And here's why. You got to think about the timing of this stuff.

So I'll give you an example from last year. Mike Elko, Texas A&M's new head coach. He was hired on November 27th. Remember all that stuff that went down on the last day of the regular season where it looked like Mark Stoops might get the job and then it shifted as the night went on and they wind up hiring Mike Elko. He's there the next day. So like Saturday is the end of the season. Sunday, he's there. Duke didn't hire a head coach, didn't hire Manny Diaz till December 7th. So here's the timing of this. If you fire your coach and you hire a new one, let's say you fire your coach in season and then you hire a new coach, that person probably starts on the last day of the regular season or the following day,

that Sunday. So you're going to have basically three days to get that signing class together before National Signing Day. But that's not even the real problem because that's a situation where you fired your coach. You're probably not happy with where the program's at anyways. You're going to probably take a lot of transfers in this class. You understand you're going to have a new coach. You were planning on having a bridge class anyway. So that's not as big a deal. Plus, you still have some time. You have like three days.

For the next school, though, it's a problem. Because think about this. Why did Mike Elko get hired from Duke? Because he was doing a good job at Duke. Duke was doing well. Duke was outperforming its normal expectations. And no coach goes into a situation going, well, I'm going to get another job at the end of this season so i'm not going to recruit and i know you're recruiting as if you're going to be there the

following year so you're going to have a full class so you're going to lose your coach you're going to have a full class and then you're going to have no coach on national signing day, which means you're not going to get much of a class unless obviously you turn around and hire somebody in 24 hours. So it is going to be a wild coaching carousel. First of all, if there's a coach who starts the season on shaky ground and loses some games, that person's not making it to Halloween. That school is going to want to fire that coach. They're going to want to get in line, make sure they have the option to get more candidates, have a broader candidate pool. But they're probably going to hire a coach who's

winning right now, who's doing very well. That's the school that's going to really get screwed by this. And there'll be a few because they're bopping along thinking, we got a good coach. We're doing great. And all of a sudden, now they have no coach. Now it's signing day and they still have no coach. Now, perhaps the way college football has changed, it blunts the impact of this because usually when a coach takes over, you are dealing with a lot of transfer portal guys. You're going to take a lot of transfer portal guys because you do want to kind of reshape the roster in the way you want it to look and you want to be able to plug those guys in pretty quickly.

It also may be that just because you have a class signed doesn't necessarily mean that anybody's too broken up about it. We're going to hear from Jed Fish on Friday's show, the new Washington coach. If you look at the situation with who Kalen DeBoer had signed at Washington, because remember they'd already signed a class, and who Arizona had signed under Jed Fish, well, some of the guys Kalen DeBoer signed at Washington wound up with Kalen DeBoer at Alabama. Some of the guys that Jed Fish signed at Arizona wound up with Jed Fish at Washington. I don't think we're as precious about letting people out of the national letter of intent. Most schools are like, okay, we'll let you out. The coach you thought you were signing with is gone. But I'm still not sure how much of the math the football oversight

committee, the college commissioners association did on this. I know they think this is going to make coaches jobs easier. I think it will make it a little easier because they will get the signing class signed before the transfer portal window opens. And that is a big deal. But if you are planning to fire your coach, if you are worried you might lose your coach to a school that just fired its coach, your November, December are going to be very, very interesting and probably not in a great way. Now, perhaps this is the only year that happens. They're going to talk about a June signing day. I think a summer signing day would be helpful.

I don't know that June is necessarily the right month for that. But that way, you've got classes signed. You've got this stuff figured out. Collectives or, well, we don't even know if collectives will be handling all this stuff in the next few years. It may be athletic departments are handling all the NIL stuff anyway,

but those deals may be worked out already and players may decide, I like my deal. I like this school. This is where I want to go. It doesn't matter who coaches. And players may decide, I like my deal. I like this school. This is where I want to go. It doesn't matter who coaches. And that would be fine. All of that stuff could be communicated and worked out. But if we're still kind of clinging to the little bit of the remnants of the old system, it is going to be bonkers, this coaching carousel with this particular signing date. So strap in. We talked about how entertaining the 2024 season is going to be.

And it's, it's in all ways, it's going to be crazy. King Epic in the chat, they really need a better organizational structure for college football. Something like the NFL would really help reduce some of the organizational chaos. Here's the problem. You got fans who say, I just can't look like the NFL or I won't watch, which is not true. You would because lots more people watch the NFL than college football. But I do agree. You're talking about a centralized governing structure.

That's exactly right. That is not as Byzantine and bureaucratic as the NCAA. I'm with you. And I think that's probably where they're headed. That's probably where they're going. But there will be some fits and starts along the way. And this one, the December signing date is a great example. The December signing date in general is a great example. The December signing date in general

is a great example of unintended consequences. When it was put into place, it was a good idea. Coaches were tired of babysitting recruits between December and February and having other schools try to poach those recruits. They were like, okay, the kids want to sign. A lot of them are going to enroll in January anyway, so let's just sign them now.

It made perfect sense. Where it stopped making sense is when they changed the transfer rules, when the academic calendar required the transfer portal to be open in December. So players could move between semesters. Like that's, that's where it went awry. And it wasn't anybody's fault. One thing didn't necessarily correspond with the other in terms of who decides how this works. And then all of a sudden, there you go.

David Garcia asked, who would college presidents trust to run the whole system? Nick Saban. That's the most common answer. But Elaine Kiffin suggested Greg Sankey and he kind of, I think Greg Sankey is kind of running it now in tandem with Tony Petitti, the Big Ten commissioner. So we will see what happens. But I am guaranteeing that this could be the, I just guaranteed it could be. That's not very YouTuber of me. I got to be extreme here. I am guaranteeing this will be the wildest coaching carousel ever.

I don't know if that's necessarily true. I think Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly leaving Oklahoma and Notre Dame for USC and LSU was pretty wild, but it does feel like the logistics of this one are going to be very inconvenient for schools that are changing coaches. So strap in. It's going to be wild. Thank you to GameTime for sponsoring us again this week. GameTime is your best ticketing app. The best way to get last minute tickets,

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We talking about some FanDuel win-loss totals in our Dear Andy segment. If you sign up now at FanDuel.com slash Staples, you will receive $200 in bonus bets when you bet $5. Also, FanDuel is offering a 30% profit boost token if you place a wager on the North Carolina Duke basketball game on Saturday, March 9th. So they're playing in Cameron. This is game two of the series this season. This is the one in Durham. 30% profit boost token if you place a wager on that game. So go to fanduel.com slash staples. Sign up now. Also get $200 in bonus bets if you bet $5. All right, it is time to answer your

questions. We got some great ones. Got a couple video questions. Thank you so much for sending them in. We love when you help drive the show. Here are me and Ralph Russo answering your questions. We are joined now by one of our good friends and one of our favorite listeners, Ralph Russo from the Associated Press, National College football writer. Ralph, I love the questions I get from our viewers and listeners, but I don't think I should always answer them by myself. I feel like my opinion, I'm not always right, as you point out frequently via text message. Are you sure? Are you sure about that? I don't know.

It's very rare. You certainly don't admit to being wrong. Let's put it that way. That's it? Well, if I'm proven wrong, I'm happy to admit to it. It's a high bar, Andy. I'm not walking it back if it's still subjective. But yeah, no, it is funny.

I answer these questions and I'm like, you know what? I probably need to bring some new blood in on this. So we have some good questions, Ralph. And they do feed into a lot of the stuff we've been talking about all week on the show but I didn't want before we got to answering them I wanted to bring this up to you because uh you were chiming in when we were talking about the show that we were going to do yesterday with me and JD Piquel where we kind of explain the 2024 season to folks and you made the point that like it feels like college football has a higher barrier to entry

because it's just so confusing yeah it has always been that way really and um you know some of the confusion and the eclecticness of it the hard to explain is what drew me to the sport as someone who had no regional tie to it. I grew up in New York City in a pro sports household, but all the weirdness of college football drew me in. Hey, there are all these bowl games and why can't we play one and two? Well, it goes back to 1930. And let me tell you about the Rose Bowl, son. So, like, I was drawn to a lot of that. But I think for a lot of fans, you know, I think about the conversations I have with my dad, who is not a big college football fan. He sometimes asks the most basic and simple questions, and they come with convoluted answers. And I think that really does frustrate a lot of people who look at the sport, say, what, this doesn't make sense, so why should I be invested in it?

Yeah, and I think there's a fine line to walk because you don't want to take away what makes it weird and cool because that is what makes the passionate fans love it but you do want more people to come in and i i think that's the that's the problem we're getting now is is those two things are very much butting up against one another but it's funny because you know a lot of it is out of the stuff is out of people's control but the conference realignment stuff was was within their control and they did it anyway and it's just it going through it yesterday was wild to me because it occurred to me again like how much is changing right now like is it going to

be recognizable to us in 2024 once the season actually starts? My guess is we, even though we live it and study it and write about it and have to report on it, that even we might be underestimating it. I think that the two of us might be texting each other one Saturday during the middle of the season going like, wow, this is even more than I thought this is this is this this new landscape is even more dramatic than maybe I thought it would be uh starting a lot with just what is the what are the the benchmarks for success right yeah I know we'll talk about that when it comes to Super Leagues and things along those lines but I think we might be underestimating to a certain degree how much things have changed.

I would also say one other thing, though, Andy. I'm always very hesitant to be the guy who pushes back and complains about change. Because at 54 years of age, I realize that there's a whole bunch of folks younger than I am who will only know this version of college football or haven't grown attached to the version that I love. And they're going to look at the new version and think, this is awesome. Yeah, and that's the thing. I've tried not to be the type of person

who does the get off my lawn thing. I have become the no good music has been made in the past 15 years person, which I swore I never would, but I am. So I'm trying not to do that with this. But yeah, it is going to be different. And even those of us who've resisted complaining about change, we'll have to sort of understand, Hey, this is, this is going to be dramatically different once we see this going. All right, Ralph, let us, let us get to our questions because our first question I think probably comes with even more, you know, change coming in and predicts it. And we've talked about it on the show. So this is from Willie and this was actually before

Cole Kubrick and I had our conversation about a super league on monday he sent this on friday i don't check the mailbag on you know going into the weekend usually i'm usually waiting until closer to the dear andy episode before i do so i didn't see it but this is a great question so let's let's go to willie dear andy and maybe even conspiracy Andy, how close are we to having a two-conference league with a playoff? So let's say we have a northern conference, we'll call it the Big Ten, and we have a southern conference, we'll call it the SEC. And each of the conferences has four divisions. We'll go eight to ten teams in each division, right? And for the playoff system, at the end of the regular season, the top two teams in each division play. The winner obviously wins the division, but they also get a bye in the first round.

The loser still makes it in, and they get a home game for that first round of the playoffs. And to keep it more interesting, the third and fourth place teams play each other in each division and the winner gets in, the loser is out. Once all the games are settled, all the first place teams get reseated based on their rankings and then all of the runners-up get reseated based on their rankings and then all of the runners up get reseeded based on their rankings and then those last eight that get in get reseeded based on their rankings i'm terrible at math ralph how many people are in that playoff okay i think i think three times four i think 24. okay so similar to the FCS playoffs. Yeah. I think it was 24, which actually makes sense. If you think that it's a 60, cause it sounds like he was, he was working with about a 65,

66. Yeah. He's, he's working with the power conferences in Notre Dame. I think he, he, he prefaced the question by saying you've got the big 10 in the sec but i think he's talking about they would play off yeah to to fill their three auto bids or how many auto bids they have each and then everybody else is going to get into i am uh i'm not sure i can i can work with this one because it i i don't think i can explain it to anyone. That's my only problem, the reseeding. And I know the NFL reseeds, but it's hard enough to explain that to someone who doesn't understand it. If you had this many teams, it would be rough.

So here's what I liked about it. At its core, I hate the whole concept of just two conferences and everybody is either SEC or Big Ten. We might be heading in that direction. You know, as you and Cole said, and I talked about this with your former colleague and my friend Nicole Auerbach on my podcast, the AP Top 25 podcast last week, do we have Super League and we don't even know it? Is Super League here, but we're just not aware of it? But that's besides the point. I don't love that concept as a whole. What I do like is if you do this by division,

what you're sort of doing is recreating conferences, right? Because you're if you're doing eight to 10 teams in a division that are regional, it's almost like you are having the SEC and Big Ten banners above these mini conferences that go back to being regional. And then those conference playoff, those, those divisional playoffs that he's talking about become like conference playoffs. I've actually thought that that could be the future of college football, that at some point these conferences become so big that they actually have to roll back the expansion and it doesn't mean recreating the Pac-12 it means recreating a Western sub conference within the Big Ten so right it's kind of like where where was our guys name there

Willie I kind of like where Willie's headed at as far as that's concerned that these conferences become so big you end up recreating regional sub-conferences within them yeah and I think that's I think that's what's going to happen I I think yeah the Super League's probably going to happen in some form or fashion and I think it will be eventually delineated by these divisional lines that will resemble the old conferences that will there there will be eight teams from the atlantic coast that will look like the acc before it all you know before i guess before they added florida state would be the that's what they were they were an eight-team conference and so i do think that that that part of it everybody's saying well this is terrible

if that were to happen i don't think that would be the worst thing because it would give you back that it's in a different package but it's similar to what it used to be where you'd have these regional rivalries and that's what when i did the 48 team written version of the super league after cole and i talked i tried to make divisions like that so i did what i did was each the sec and big 10 each had 24 teams and i did four six team divisions and in each of those and so you had eight six team divisions that really ate many conferences where everybody was kind of a lot of them were rivals already or have been rivals in the past. And so I think that would make a lot of sense. And your rivals are fairly close to you geographically.

Like that's how it grew out of the ground before all of this so i mean i i think that would be the yeah i think that would be the best case scenario for this idea of a super league again that you get this sort of strange retro look right where yeah um yeah we're kind of back to the future here where we've grown so big, now we have to get small again. I think that maybe we're just wish-casting that because that does bring us

back to the thing that we love, the thing that we're missing. I think the fear is what you end up getting is really more consolidation. And now, we've talked about this before, Andy, like the next step might be not the conferences getting bigger, but the top tier, the top layer of the big conferences saying, you know what, we're out of here.

Yeah. Nelson, we're getting- And I think that would be more likely than say the big 10's not kicking Indiana out. The SEC's not kicking Vanderbilt out. That's not going to happen. Right. It's not a kicking out as much as the biggest schools, the biggest brands, the most wealthiest move on and leave the rest behind. Yeah, no, I think, I think that, that is something that if you want to envision a super league that does take the bottom part out of the sec or the big 10, that is how it would happen. It would be Ohio state and Alabama calling one another and be like, Hey, let's all, let's all of us that are like this get together and do our own thing right and that

would i mean that's the thing i i think we i fear again i i like i like willie's idea because i think it gets us to the point where we are salvaging some of what we liked and we are we are salvaging some of the history here the things that have made this great before. So yeah, Willie, it's a little confusing. You got the, you know, one verse two, three verse four, even the three verse four thing, kind of not a bad idea. I like the three verse. I like three versus four for the system. And I think Ross Dellinger has mentioned this before as a potential outcome. If the 14 team playoff happens and the Big Ten and the SEC were to get three automatic bids, you might have a 3-4 game to see who gets it. But I don't think that works if you have at-larges and the fourth team might get in anyway.

You have to create these stakes of the loser goes home to generate the drama. Yeah. It's one of the problems with the latest CFP machinations that we're talking about that are just eye-rolling, maddening, audacious, greedy, completely unnecessary is they are making tweaks that are not necessarily created. I mean, they could, you're right. There could be layers of this where then within your conference you're you're reacting to the national uh playoff and creating some stakes within your conference but this thing seems to be a Frankenstein of like well we're going to do AQ here and this Auto here and we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna diminish the value of this championship game but maybe not that one.

Should we even have championship games? It's definitely not in the interest of college football. I mean, every one of these proposals that's come out, I've said, okay, what do they actually mean here? Are they holding this out there so they can pull that away to get something they really want? Because the one and two buys for the sec in the big 10 in a 14 team playoff clearly would be to protect their conference championship games

give their conference championship games meaning that the other ones don't have it's it's too naked it's too naked having more automatic bids than the other two quote unquote power leads, too naked. You can't stack the deck so publicly. You can do it behind the scenes with your revenue share, but you can't do it that publicly. Yeah. You can't predetermine we are better in a way that is sort of anti-competitive. Um it you know again think about if you're the really good ACC teams that we all think of as having a national championship level ceiling. Right. Well, championships. In the 14

playoff. Yeah. Florida State this past year. In Miami to a certain degree. Yeah, you're essentially screwing in, like with this, which is why they want to get out. Yeah, right. And you're also creating this perception is reality situation, which it is. And when you recruit your athletes perception is reality. And if we are deeming you less than and you are in that conference that is now being predetermined to be less than how do you recruit and you are in that conference that is now being predetermined to be less than,

how do you recruit if you are even at the top of that conference? You can make up the differences in budgets. There are creative ways to do that. They're also just simply being smart and really good at your job. You can create, you can close the gaps when it comes to budgets, but when you can close the gaps when it comes to budgets but when you are not when it's driven into the format not what yes not what it's predetermined and essentially legislated in yeah that's what our friend david hale who covers the acc for espn brought a great point the other day that that i hadn't thought about it this way but as soon as he said i was I was like, oh boy.

He said, you know, it may sound like a victory for the big 12 in the ACC to get two auto bids if that's what happens. But if the SEC and the big 10 get three, then you are essentially admitting you are a second-class citizen. And like, if I'm Florida State's lawyers, I jump all over that. Like, yeah.

Well, that's a little bit of a different argument. But yes, I do. I do understand that as far as blame and who's to blame there. But he is absolutely right. You cannot allow yourself to be deemed as second class. It's just it's pure marginalization. And you know, the funny but but he but I think he is right in the sense that you might be guaranteeing yourself better than or or the same thing that plays out organically in other words when we get into this thing you might end up with the acc regularly getting one or two and maybe two

is good to lock in which is a chance you might get one but my point is that goes back to why I'm so frustrated with the let it happen organically yeah it will just let it happen let it happen uh I don't want to I don't want to open up Pandora's box here but that's essentially it's also the SEC and the Big Ten basically saying we don't trust the selection committee exactly that's another another and I think you either lean into the selection committee or you create a super league with balanced divisions where you can have objective selection criteria like the NFL, like one or the other, but not, not a match. Yeah. You're trying to mash the two together and it's becoming just untenable. And to get back to our original point, it's doing exactly what this expanded playoff wasn't supposed to do.

It's making it more complicated. We are again, making this stuff complicated. Why do we always have to make things complicated in college football? Let's uncomplicate Ralph. Let's talk about actual football. Let's go to a question from our friend, Nathan.

Dear Andy, one of the great things about your show is that you're always so darn positive. So let's change that for a second. What teams heading into 2024 do you think are way overrated and destined to grossly underperform their expectations? Before we answer Nathan's question, Ralph, is Nathan on a skateboard or a hoverboard in that video? He's moving pretty fast. I'm actually a little worried that he's videoing himself while doing that. I think it's got to be a hoverboard because he's moving a little too smoothly. Yeah. With a skateboard, you might be hearing a little feedback, a little rattling

there. Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine he's doing that on a skateboard that smoothly. And again, as you said, probably not the safest thing. So Nathan, come on, safety first here. But we love you, Nathan. Nathan lives in Israel and follows college football from Israel, asks incredible questions. He asks the best questions every week. And so this is a good one and it does get us into, into some actual football. So, uh, this is one that everybody hates in the off season. Cause in the off season, we're supposed to pump sunshine and tell you how great your team's going to be, but there are teams that could have disappointing. This would be like TCU last year where we had high expectations for them

coming in and they clearly were not capable of meeting them. So Ralph, who you got? Yeah. So, I mean, this is right. Every time the AP poll, the preseason AP poll comes out, I always tell people that, you know, two of these top 10 teams are probably going to be unranked. Just prepare yourself because two of these top 10 teams are probably going to be unranked. Just prepare yourself, because two of these top 10 teams are gonna be, because that's what the numbers say over the years. Where I kind of look for disappointments, quote unquote disappointments,

is I tend to try to find the teams that were last year's surprises and maybe bake in some regression. So Missouri kind of jumps out. I knew you were going to say Missouri. That was one of mine. Okay. Missouri jumps out to me, Andy. And listen, they've got a lot of good stuff coming back here, though. They're losing their left tackle. One of the best pass rushers in the SEC. Two good cornerbacks. Two good corners. Cody Schrader. So I look at Missouri, our pal at ESPN, Bill Conley,

his SP plus ratings look like Missouri at number 11. So that's pretty good. We're expecting Missouri to be good. He's a Mizzou grad though, Ralph. It's totally slanted. Totally, right, right. Bill's numbers are totally biased. So I'm going to bake in some regression for Mizzou and think that while they'll probably start the year as a fringe top 10 team,

that that's a team I could see only maybe winning eight games, especially in a new bulked up SEC. Their schedule isn't crazy over the top, but it's pretty tough. And so I'm going to bake in some regression for Mizzou. That's my first one. How about we volley back and forth here since I already stole one of yours? I'm fine. I think we're thinking along the same lines. So the way I looked at it, one of the things I did,

we've been looking at win totals a lot lately. And I'm looking at the teams that have nine and a half as the win total a lot of you know because the nine and a half win total is it will this team make the playoff or not and it talks about you know basically speaks to the expectations and like missouri that what you said was was exactly my thought they lose darius robinson they lose ennis rakestraw they They lose Chris Aiden's train. They lose Blake Baker, the defensive coordinator. So yes, they bring back Brady Cook. They bring back Luther Burden, but is that going to be enough to make them okay? I'll stay in the SEC with another nine and a half win total team. And this is one we examined this week. It's LSU. So LSU is a nine and a half win total team. And this is one we examined this week. It's LSU. So LSU is a nine

and a half win total team. They stole Missouri's defensive coordinator, Blake Baker, but personnel wise, they haven't, they haven't really had a chance to change much on defense. They lost a Heisman trophy winning quarterback, potentially two first round receivers we'll see what brian thomas's combine performance does but that is a a tough schedule and if the defense isn't significantly better how are they supposed to have the same results that's that's my my question is what you're what you're essentially saying is this team will have the same results as last year taking the heisman trophy winner two elite receivers away and you had now they had one of the worst defenses you'll ever see so theoretically there's nowhere to go from from there but up but it has to go up quite a bit right the defense will get better because it can't get much worse, but the offense will almost certainly regress because there's no way it's getting better

without a quarterback who had one of the great years we've seen in the recent college football history and two first round draft pick wide receivers. So where does it meet in the middle uh I hadn't thought of LSU can I throw one maybe wild yeah go for it LSU and that would be how because I was I was skeptical about the the Sunshine we were throwing an LSU last year I was not in on the LSU as a national championship contender last year and they weren't but what you look back and they won 10 games. So it's like, okay, was it, it was strange, but they did win 10 games. Yeah. They were a little bit of a disappointment relative to, to their very high expectations. So they landed about where I kind of thought they might be. But what I, what I would suggest is this, and I would need to really dig into their roster a little more. One of the things I was skeptical about last year was it was simply year two for Brian Kelly, like simply being

year two and haven't had haven't had a chance to build up the roster through recruiting. Remember, he took over a roster that had I think 38 scholarship players left, right for that ballgame. Now I know they had a recruiting class coming in on top of that. So I just thought- A very good recruiting class, including two great offensive tackles. Yeah. So I just thought, so that's my point. Does that recruiting class and the last couple of recruiting classes, that's what you need to be a contender at a high level in the SEC so are they moving away from God we're patching all these holes with the portal players like we did last year with the

secondary and that did not work so does that balance off a little bit the fact that they've now got three recruiting classes under their belt does that balance off a little bit of the regression of simply losing, you know, this all world offense? Yeah. And I'll be curious to see what they do. Brian Kelly's year threes have historically been very, very good. Right. At his previous stops. So, but they got to be better on the defensive line.

They've got to be better at corner that part. I've seen no evidence that it's been fixed yet. So I'm going to need to see that on the defensive line. They've got to be better at corner that part. I see no evidence that it's been fixed yet. So I'm going to need to see that on the field. So that's, that's where I feel like nine and a half is a very high wind total for them. I'll throw two more at you. These are my two big 12 co-favorites. So I'm high on these teams, but I can see a path where for one of them, it may just fall apart apart and that's one of these is a month one I had one of these two I guess I'm guessing yeah Utah and Kansas State like Utah rising back those are my two big 12 favorites my other Big 12 my other Big 12 favorite that I have

on this list is Arizona oh yes yes that one I I feel like expectations are tempered because jed fish left that's a good point that's a good point so i if they if they drop off i don't think anybody's going to hold brent brennan responsible for that or hold no fufita responsible like it's not the same fair enough okay so i'll give you the floor back on Utah and Kansas State then. Yeah. So Cam Rising comes back for Utah. I think Brant Keithy is going to be back. They should be able to walk into the Big 12 as the best program in the Big 12. This should be a return to the Utah at a level that won two consecutive Pac-12 titles. And that's easy to say and hard to do. And I say this believing that kyle whittingham is one of the best coaches in america and so but i think either them or kansas state probably is going to

underperform mostly because the rest of the big 12 is good like everybody's solid and some of these teams are straight up good and it's gonna be hard to win nine or ten games in this league it goes back to bill sees uh if you look at his sp plus projections right like there is no big 12 team i believe in the top 15 but there are just a ton of big 12 teams between 17 and 35. in fact they're almost all between 17 and 35 and it goes back to a lot of what you've talked about before about how like the new big 12 that what's going to be cool about the new big 12 is it's is its balance and and the fact that a lot of these teams look similar not just on the field similar, but I mean like are truly built similarly as programs.

Maybe that changes over the course of time. Can I throw one more at you on my list that doesn't fall into my model? It's more of an LSU. I mean, this is kind of probably an obvious one, but Michigan, right? Michigan's probably- They lose a lot.

I understand the expectations will be lowered, but I still think that they will be a top 10 preseason team, maybe back end of the top 10, but they will still be a top 10. And I could really see Michigan going eight and four next year between the coaching change and all the players being lost. Like that's a rough combination and the schedule ticks up. Schedule's hard. Their draw compared to other Big Ten draws is difficult. Yeah. Yeah. They get Oregon, USC, and now listen, USC. And Washington. We'll see what's going on with them. Washington, they're in a rebuild. So I'm not even putting them in this conversation because they're in such a massive rebuild but nonetheless i i just think the the even compared to the lowered expectations of michigan and i haven't seen their their win

total i should probably look it up real quick nine and a half so they're another one at nine and a half i could see them being like eight wins and maybe if they get a little unlucky who's playing quarterback for Michigan, Andy, maybe even a situation where they win seven games, which of course is not going to be a great look for Sharon Moore. But I think people have to look at the context and understand all the turnover there and compounded with a tougher big 10. So yeah, Alex Orgy saw some photos of him working out the other day. He looks like a million bucks. But it's unclear whether he wins the job or is it somebody younger or is the starter for Michigan not on the roster right now? Which is another portal season coming up.

There is another question. I just think there's so much turnover there that I could see things getting weird at Michigan. And again, I think that would send Michigan fans into a panic, but don't panic. I do think Sharon Moore knows what he's doing. So our next question, Ralph, comes from Desenzo. And I love how Desenzo in his Twitter bio has the Mike Jones phone number in it, which is very impressive. A nice callback. If I let you name 15 teams, could you nail the 11 major conference playoff teams for 2024? If not 15, what is a good number?

Obviously a better question for August, but I'll forget to ask by then. No, no, Desenzo. It's a great question right now. All right, Ralph, we can start listing teams. And I think you and I will probably be able to, to match on like seven or eight right off the top of our heads. Yeah. And, but I think the number is larger than 15. I think the number is larger than 15 too, because I think there's a lot of, I think why the number is maybe larger than 15. In other words, we would need 15, right? I think it's because we actually are walking into a season where there's uncertainty at Alabama. We are walking into a season where there's uncertainty

at the national champion, where the team that played for the national championship just had a coaching. So the things that would make, Hey, okay. I feel confident about this team. I feel confident about that team. So many of those elements are gone. Right. I mean, how imagine the idea that like I would put Alabama on my list of 15. Right. Cause you think they might be able to make it. But, but in past years I could go Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and have five that I'm like, those are locks. There's no doubt about this. But with all

the uncertainty locally with some of these programs, and then sort of what I would call national uncertainty of these new massive super conferences, it's a lot harder. I think it's going to be a lot harder to give you a list of 15 and nail it. We might do it. We might be able to do it, but I think it's going to be a lot harder. So I've, I've just done the big 10 in the sec. I, I'm not, I'm going to ask you if I should put this team on the list or not. Should I put Oklahoma on the list? Is it, is there a, is there a path where Oklahoma makes the play? They went 10 and two pretty easy schedule last year that they got themselves right on, right?

Like they had a get right season at Oklahoma that was aided a little bit by some scheduling breaks. So, you know, listen, the Oklahoman-ness of Oklahoma will always lead me to giving Oklahoma the benefit of the doubt. And I tend to be a big brands, like be safe, go with the bigger brands. Cause they've shown the track record to do it. But that's a good one of like, Oh man, like, like, yeah, is Oklahoma on this list? I'm not so sure. Like, like I said, I've already listed 15. I just typed out a list of 15 just in the big 10 in the sec, which means

I've probably got four or five in the big 12. Like if the big 12 is going to get two in, I'd say there's four or five teams that I can name right now that might be those two. So that now my list is at 20. I haven't even gotten to the ACC yet. The ACC is going to have three or four on the list. I think 24 or 25 might be there. And you know what? That's awesome. Well, right. Cause the challenge with the big 12 is you can't even narrow down who's going to be their champion without that list being five or six teams. Like I'm getting to Iowa state and going, I could see them winning the Big 12. There's a path. Absolutely. So if it takes me five teams in the Big 12, just to think I have their champion pegged,

I like right then we're quickly up into the 20s. Yeah, I think I think we're in the low to mid 20s for this exercise, which I gotta to tell you, I'm pretty happy about that. It sounds great. Yes, it does sound like we're in for a very interesting season. And again, like I said, the dynamic of what is a successful season, what does a 9-3 team look like in the Big Ten, in the new Big Ten, and the new sec, when we see a team that, boy, that looks like a really good team to me. And boy, they just lost for the third time. And it's November 1st. Like that's a, that's a new world where we're stepping into. Well, and what, what I hope happens and I think is going to have, like we were talking about

with the big 12, with the evenness of the big 12 is that conference games in November are just blood baths. Like every one of them has some stakes, like, okay, if we can make the championship game, then we're going to make the playoff. If we lose this game though, we're not going to make the championship game anymore. We're not going to make the play. Like that is going to be a fun early November, late November situation. I just think it's going to be awesome. You're going to have some teams that enter November with, listen, I mean, it's the reason why they did this, right?

You'll have teams that enter November with two losses. They may be a little fraudy, but those teams are going to have big, big games coming up in November that are going to be, you in November that are really going to stand out on the schedule. And again, just the idea of trying to come up with a champion in the Big 12, trying to narrow down who in the SEC might be a team that you would normally say, like, oh, I kind of like their chances, but maybe not this year. Again, it all starts with Alabama, right? The simple idea that we don't know if Alabama is going to be excellent is so fascinating. Yeah, you take Nick Saban out of the equation.

And we had an Alabama fan in the chat the other day that was just operating under all the old assumptions. And I'm like, you can't operate under those assumptions anymore. It's a different world. Yeah, you just can't. It's a different world. Yeah, it's a brave. I tweeted a few weeks ago when Alabama was having some of their portal issues. I said, I feel like we're welcoming Alabama fans back to the real world after 15 years of living in paradise. Oh, yeah. And they're learning the real world kind of sucks sometimes.

I don't like this at all. No, this is terrible. All right. Let us go to Eric. And this is one I hand-selected for you, Ralph. Since the NCAA is officially as useless as we always knew it was, what happens now to the rules that we just assume are written in stone? For example, what is stopping a legal challenge from a QB or any other player regarding the four years of eligibility? Ah, yes, the Johnny Manziel eight years of college question. What about leaving for the draft, not liking where you got drafted, and returning to college? In the real world, is it not the norm to say you can only work slash volunteer for four years, then we kick you out? That's a great question, Eric. And it also brings up the, do they have to be students thing? When is somebody going to

challenge that? Now, I personally believe, and you know how I feel about most NCAA arguments in court. I actually think that would be a winning argument for the schools and the NCAA in court that they need to be students. I do think that is a factor that many of the consumers feel is important in this situation. I do believe that. I also think that if you want to go back to where the NCAA always gets its ass kicked and when it comes to antitrust laws, I think you could make an argument, maybe, you know, I'm not a lawyer, do I play one? I'm forced to play one through this ridiculous beat that we have. I do wonder if you could say, listen, by not having some type of like limit on eligibility, you are then taking opportunities

away from high school students who would normally be matriculating and working there. Correct. This, so you need to have some type of cap on how long you're allowed to do this. But that said, Andy, I mean, the NFL doesn't have a cap on how long you're allowed to do it, but they do have a cap on when you can come in. Yeah. I mean, God bless Talia Tagovailoa. And, you know, I'm not saying that I'm like, it would have been fine if he would have gotten the extra year, but the guy was completely out of eligibility. There was no particularly good reason why he should have been granted more eligibility, but he wouldn't ask for more eligibility. So it's only a matter of time before somebody decides,

I'm just going to sue. I'm just going to sue. I think I wouldn't be shocked if it happened, but I do think this is the one place where they're probably safe. So Ralph, the examples we always get are like, what if Tebow stayed in college? Or what if Johnny Manziel stayed in college? How well would they have done? How about this one? What if Steven Garcia were still bouncing around college football? I remember South Carolina quarterback Steven Garcia beat Alabama in Williams-Rice Stadium in 2010.

That loaded team was coming off a national title, had a reigning Heisman winner on it. Steven Garcia could still spin it. He actually coaches quarterbacks down in Tampa now. But I could see him as one. The reason his face popped into my head is there was a year that Florida had a pro day, and they didn't have an outgoing quarterback who could throw for their receivers and so they called stephen garcia and said hey can you drive up from tampa and throw he could absolutely still spin it like so like there's a lot even even as he got

older and his mobility declined and he was a very good athlete back in the day, but as his mobility declined, there would be a level, like there would be some Sunbelt team that could have an offense where Steven Garcia could just catch it and spin it and be productive. I can't believe you haven't referenced this because this is right up your alley. It's unnecessary roughness, right? It's unnecessary roughness, right? It's it. Yes, that's got back. Now, the difference is coming back at like 35 years, but Scott vacuola had not enrolled in

college. That was the difference. That's a good point. Now, the one who doesn't make any sense, even though he actually accurately explains his eligibility situation is Sinbad. I can't you're expecting me to remember Sinbad. I will enlighten you. Don't worry, Ralph. I've watched this movie 1000 times. Sinbad plays Andre Krim. defensive tackle slash particle physics GA. And he's a PhD candidate in the engineering school. And so he explains that he was not going to be allowed to major in what he wanted to major in.

So he played, he redshirted and then graduated in three years years earned his master's and was in the phd program so he was actually in his fifth year of college now sinbad the actor was like 38 years old when the drug going on so it did defied believability but the funniest part of that movie which involves Kathy Ireland kicking a Kansas player in the groin and a lot of other weird moments is that Sinbad's explanation of his eligibility conforms perfectly to the NCAA rules at the time. They got that right. They had some consultant. Yes. Or or just some PA who would say, hey, look up the rules for me. Can you make sure that this is actually possible?

Yes. And some PA looked up the rules on the NCAA's website and said, yes, that would work. Yeah, so Paul Blake, the Scott Bakula character, his father had passed. He had gone home to run the family farm. He never enrolled in college therefore was still eligible to play college football can I throw one more note on top of this and I'm not going to call any individual out I'm not going to call any individual players out

because you know fine frankly like we all have different Journeys to our eventual goals in life but Richard Johnson a friend of yours a friend a friend of mine from Split Zone Duo podcast, he and I and a couple of other people have a text thread. And the text thread is only this. It's only when during portal season, some quarterback on his third school and in his fifth or sixth or seventh year pops up on our Twitter timelines and announces they are committed somewhere. And Richard and I will inevitably text each other just the the tweet and dude get a job like it's it's time it's time it's just time to leave the net right? Like there is there's a pharma company that will allow you

to rep them it's time right right it's time to move to transition to you know your car dealer salesman stage you know whatever it is your other other passions are in life brother it is time to move on well i i don't know listen if somebody would still give me a scholarship and nobody ever wanted to give me a scholarship to play football but if someone did into age like 29 like the van wilder of college football thing yeah could be a little bit fun no i do i do get the appeal and i'm being a little tongue-in-cheek so i do get it listen again we all we all mature differently go for yours seventh year senior eighth year senior mccormick the tight end from who just yeah ninth year ninth year god he's had a lot of injuries

and you know what good for you good for you son get yours. So our last question, Ralph, comes from Stephen. And this is a good one. I really do want to get your opinion on this because it stems from a conversation that Tyler Horka, who covers Notre Dame for us and I had about relevance versus success. Right. So this is what Stephen asked. When you and Tyler were talking about how Notre Dame and Nebraska in this context,

particularly Nebraska, have maintained national relevance through tough times, it made me wonder what schools do you think reside in the same territory as Nebraska, still relevant despite not being the chase for championships recently, as well as a school with the potential to make the jump to join the schools in consistent national relevance. So the first one that came to mind for me in terms of, I think if you

mentioned this school to most people in the country, they still say, oh, that's a big time football school, Miami. Miami has not been able to win the ACC titles, has not made college football playoffs, but if you see the U on the helmet, it still means something to you. Just as you see the N on the Nebraska helmet, it very much still means something to you. Yeah, you have to have such a deep, a deep, rich history of success, maybe some cultural relevance, which of course Miami has too. I mean, Miami in some ways, Miami's relevant, Miami's success corresponded with an era of college football and signaled sort of the changing of the guard in college football writ large, right? Miami was this burgeoning program program so there's a lot of relevance and again

the history of success plus it's also not that long ago right like minnesota used to win a lot a lot of national championships way back when but we're so far removed from that i don't think they necessarily belong in this conversation i think the list is pretty short. Miami was the first one that came to mind for me. Georgia Tech, I don't think is on the list anymore. I think they were at one point. Could UCLA be that to a certain degree? UCLA is a very big brand, I think. I think it's more of a basketball. I think the basketball part of U.S. of UCLA's tradition is more relevant to this conversation of like who stays where in other words my what I always tell people in covering and doing this beat for 20 years is there are

a handful of schools that are interesting when they're good and even more interesting when they're bad right and i think miami also fits into that cat miami absolutely fits in frasca you know we can tell a bunch of like nebraska like the story of nebraska being unable to get back to what it once was is incredibly fascinating now i will say this when does the when does that run out on nebraska at what point it has to right if they can't if they can't get off the schneid yeah i mean we we grew up with nebraska great so we'll always be interested in nebraska and whether they can return to glory but at a certain point our generation will hand it off to another generation and all of a sudden Nebraska will be Minnesota, right? Nobody remembers when they were good.

Look at the grainy footage of Lawrence Phillips and Tommy Frazier, right? Which again, makes me feel ancient, but this is reality. Well, there was no HD at the time. It is pretty grainy. Yeah. I think another one, and again, maybe it's a little too soon, but Florida, right? Florida, I think has made it to a point where they are always relevant even when they're not great because of their amazing highs and lows. And I'm seeing it on the screen. Tennessee probably is one of those programs that will always remain relevant. Listen, even throughout almost 20 years,

I mean, Tennessee has just gone through 15 years in the wilderness, but I still think there was a relevancy to Tennessee football. Also, I think the passion of Tennessee fans, very similar to Nebraska fans. Yes. They're not going to let the flame go out. And that's, that's different from a lot of fan bases. The second part of Steven's question, I find just as interesting. And I think you mentioned a team, you mentioned Florida, which fits into this. this so Florida the real success of Florida started in 1990 when Steve spurrier got there went through you know the urban Meyer era but that they've had good years but you're right 40 years from now they'll still be considered a big time college football school even if they don't get back to consistently winning again. Another one that I think now fits into that category.

Now it is competitively relevant at the moment. It is currently relevant competitively. So this is, this is more hypothetical than anything else. I think Oregon has ascended to the level where if Oregon dropped off for 20 years, Oregon would still be considered a big name brand. I think so. Yeah. And Oregon is such a unique program i i use that word like i think i think definitionally correct right oregon i don't think i don't think oregon has another true comp in that it was a program for years and years and years with zero his. Oregon had no history before what we remember. It was well known in its region, but you're going to be hard pressed to find people who remember watching Oregon in the 80s or watching Oregon in the 90s, unless they're from the Pacific Northwest.

Yeah. They just didn't have a whole lot of national significant victories and success on a national level. And then all of a sudden they become a rocket ship where they are now a national program that plays for big national championship not just championships but big national things right yeah and i think that's happened now long enough that they have established essentially we're looking at 30 years of this oregon you know i don't know where somebody would, you know, somebody who's an Oregon fan would be better at this. Would you put the pin at the Rose Bowl that they played against Penn State? That was 1990. Help me out, Andy. Four.

That was 94. Yeah. I think that's where it starts. I think it starts in the Richard Spallotti era. Yeah. Now we're on 30 years of that an entire generation or so of football college football fans have grown up with oregon being a big thing so i think that that lasts that there's a tail on that and that will linger on for probably another 20 or 30 years even if oregon were to hit the skids a bit right which it doesn't appear they're going to do anytime soon so no no there's nothing there that's not happening certainly not in the very near future yeah I I think that's that's such a great question and the Nebraska thing like it's hard for me and I don't know how it is for you but remembering Nebraska as the most dominant force in the sport to see this,

to see them not be able to get over the hump and even get back into a bowl. Like, you know, they had, they had the situation at the end of last year where they were one win away from being bowl eligible and just couldn't get it. And it's like, God, come on. And you look at their schedule this year, they should be bowl eligible. They should have it figured out. And it it's like what if they don't so listen i grew up in new york city i'm not a nebraska fan i i really am not but there will always be a soft spot in my heart for nebraska

because the mike rogier team that lost to yeah by the way he was from new jersey who lost to the miami team that in that all-time great orange bowl that was my bring me to college football team that was the one that really was like wow this sport is awesome this team is awesome. So I am totally with you that, listen, I think it's fair to say Nebraska will never be again what it was at its Tom Osborne best, right? It's fair to say that because that was unbelievable. That was one of the all time. You know, my example I always give is at my high school in our weight room. So in suburban Orlando, over the door that you took from the weight room back to the locker room was a list of the bench and

squat maxes of Nebraska starting offensive line. And that was aspirational to us. That was what we looked at every day to inspire ourselves. Like in suburban Orlando. They were a piece of sports culture, not just a great football program because they were sort of this symbol of big, bad football. Big, early Midwest football. and yeah it's uh unfortunately i don't know if it's going to come back to that level but i don't even necessarily we've had this discussion

before hey man just be wisconsin just figure out how to get back to that level and we'll be we'll be we'll be more comfortable i think i think rules got a pretty good handle on it at this point. And I, I think so too. If we're talking schedules and I, this is, this is another conversation you and I can have on your show or on my show another day, but schedule draws in the new era of college football are really interesting in Nebraska. Got a good one this year. The Nebraska should be able to manage this one. and if they can't then there's bigger problems i hope so again i hope so because again i mean again this sounds like an old guy thing to say i think college football would be better with a healthy nebraska but that just

might be because i long for the 90s because i'm getting along for the 90s, Ralph? I mean, grunge. The clothes were so baggy and amorphous. Yeah. The music was so angsty. Yeah, I'm a very, I was, angsty music was big for me. So I long for the 90s. It was my prime, Andy. I'm way past my prime. Well, we're going to throw on some Soundgarden,

a little Black Hole Sun, a little Fell on black days, maybe some Alice in Chains. Hey man, Pearl Jam. They're coming to the garden in September. I actually think they're coming during the week and I'll be able to see them because usually if they come on the weekend, I'm a little busy during fall on the weekend. Well, there you go. Eddie Vedder, bringing the 90s to you. Ralph, thank you so much. Thanks, Andy. The great Ralph Russo helping answer questions. We're going to do that every once in a while for our on three family. I want to hear Philip Dukes help answer your questions.

I want Dukes to scoop answering some viewer questions. So we're going to ask him one of these Thursdays if he can join us and help answer the questions because I think he's going to be a lot of fun. I like having somebody else. It's just my opinion. You guys get tired of it. You know how I feel. There was a comment in the chat while we were talking with Ralph. It said, Andy, did you see the Oklahoma win total? Maybe I've been beating that a little too hard.

Perhaps I have mentioned that one too many times. I don't know. But one more question before we go. And it is from our producer, River Bailey. River, what you got? All right. So spring break's coming up. Everyone's going out on their trips. Miami's released a video saying you can't go there for spring break. The city of Miami Beach. We should talk before Before we get to your question, can we watch the city of Miami Beach's video? Let's do it. Hey, we need to talk.

This isn't working anymore. And it's not us. It's you. We just want different things. Our idea of a good time is relaxing on the beach. Hitting up the spa. Or checking out a new restaurant. You just want to get drunk in public and ignore laws.

Do you even remember what happened last March? That was our breaking point. So we're breaking up with you. And don't try to apologize and come crawling back. This isn't safe. So we're done. And just so you know, we're serious. This March, you can expect things like curfews, bag checks, and restricted beach access, DUI checkpoints, $100 parking, and strong police enforcement for drug possession and violence.

Whatever it takes, because it's time to move on. Maybe we can talk when you're done with your spring break phase, but until then. The city of Miami Beach telling college students, please come back when you're old and rich and don't want to puke in our parking lots anymore. Yeah, they're saying they're saying don't come back. Just don't come to Miami. No, they want them back when they're rich and they can enjoy Miami Beach the way Miami Beach would like to be enjoyed. But that's why. All right.

So, River, what is your question? So don't go to Miami for spring break for your college student. Where are your top spring break destinations? Am I envisioning that I'm a college student again? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Because it's different answers.

I'll give you an example. Now, old me, like I wound up in a bowling alley bar the other night and it was basically empty. There were huge TVs. There was a good draft beer selection. Essentially that's my idea of heaven. So this bowling alley bar I was in would be my perfect spring break destination now. But when I was in college, okay. So I did two spring break trips in college. I went to Negril, Jamaica for one of them and then did a cruise for another one. The cruise is a fun one. If you can get a bunch of people together, like you need a huge group though, and you need to know people you're with. And you also need to know that most of the other people on the boat are going to be spring breakers.

You don't want to be there with a bunch of families. You don't want to be there with a bunch of older people. Like you want basically the same age group taking over the boat because that is a fun way to do it. Not so much if you are the only spring breakers there. So that was, that's what I would advise on that one. Uh, the Jamaica one was fun. I I'm not sure. I have not checked the state department travel advisory website lately. I don't know if that's cool now anymore. It was awesome. Then cliff diving jerk chicken by the side of the road at one in the morning, uh, watching the NCAA tournament

from like some tiki bar on the beach. Like that was, that was pretty spectacular. So I guess I'll go, you know, the cruise number three, if you can, if you can take over the boat, if you have a big enough group of people and like, if you're going with a group of 20 or so,

that's enough. Like you're just with your friends, you're good. And so, and that's, you can handle that economically. There are add-on prices and all that, but as a college student, that might be one way to go. Number two, I'm going to stick with the old standby Panama city beach because they're not kicking you out. They're not telling

you don't come. They're like, come on. We will. Yes, we will enforce laws and that sort of thing but we are not telling you not to come and they they appreciate that listen college students are going to come down they're going to enjoy themselves they may get a little rowdy that's fine for my number one this is gonna be a little geekier okay a little different something i probably would not have realized when I was in college, but I'm saying this now. And obviously your spring break is going to have to match up with this. Although, if your spring break is next week, you could do it one way. If your spring break is the following week, you could do it another way. But it is my opinion that the first weekend of the NCAAcaa basketball tournament is the best weekend in

sports it is the best time in american sports so pick a region or well sub region so the the first weekend pick a site okay and don't wait wait till selection sunday maybe to pick the site or don't wait till selection site just pick a random site where you don't know any of the teams. Like if your team's not in it and just go, just go have fun. You get the pick, pick a Thursday, Saturday,

because people will start rolling into town on Tuesday and just go have fun or go to Vegas, go to Vegas and hang and be in the sports books for the, for the NCAA tournament. That would be the way to do it. Now, if your spring break is next week, obviously conference tournaments. Pick a conference tournament in a location

that you think would be fun. And St. Patrick's Day weekend. Exactly. But St. Patty's Day on Sunday is kind of a killer. If your spring break ends on that Sunday, you're not making it back to school on Monday. So hopefully the schools that have spring break next week understand that, that nobody's back to school on Monday so hopefully the schools that have spring break next week understand that that nobody's coming to school on March 18th yeah but

yeah I that's the way to do it so enjoy the in the college basketball aspect of it I do think like picking a college basketball road trip either to a conference tournament or to Vegas during conference tournament or NCAA tournament or to a random NCAA tournament site in a city that you just want to go have fun in. I think that's the way to go. That would be the most fun way. And it would be a story that you keep telling over and over again. And look, you can go to the beach later. I'm a huge beach person, but everybody's going to the beach right now. This is going to get you around some really fun people and you may see something cool. Like one of the highlights of my professional career is covering the tournament regional in Tampa in 2008 when there were four double digit seeds that won on that Thursday. It was incredible.

It started with a buzzer beater, Western Kentucky beating Drake, 12-5 game. Ty Rogers hits the buzzer beater like five feet from me. And I'm like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. My life is complete. And then there were three more upsets that day. It was incredible. So that's the part that I think you'd really enjoy, get a kick out of.

But yeah, just stay away from Miami Beach. They don't want you there. Great question, River. I appreciate it. Just go to Fort Lauderdale. Just go to Fort Lauderdale. You could just go to Fort Lauderdale. Although, again, they're going to feel the same way about you.

Having spent some time in Fort Lauderdale in the last few years, they don't like you either if you're puking all over their beaches. But listen, I've had a beer or two at quarterdeck i know things can get a little out of hand sometimes i understand all right river we got we got a big show for everybody tomorrow washington coach jed fish joining us great interview he's in a very unique situation where he's taking over a team that just played in the national title game but will barely resemble that team next year fascinating talk and of course we'll get you updated on everything going on in college basketball as we hurdle into the final weekend of regular season play in the power conferences. We've got tournaments going on in the mid-majors,

tournaments next week in the power conferences, and Selection Sunday coming up on St. Paddy's Day. It's all happening. Talk to you tomorrow.