Andy & Ari On3 - Where does ESPN’s top nerd rank your team?

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Happy Monday! As fall camp is in full swing, Andy & Ari are joined by ESPN's Bill Connelly, and we go through the entire state of college football while also breaking down plenty of teams in the process. To purchase Bill's book, head here: https://www.amazon.com/Forward-Progress-Definitive-College-Football/dp/1637278705?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.HhkOF5qd6SXGW_WiP7H35pjMLivun8bIvC7eFC8SH5jGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.0faKKBoBTtdAraQAn2WqEXcM0Mh3cazlrJSJjXaZx20&dib_tag=AUTHOR (0:00-1:46) Intro: Previewing Bill(1:47-8:59) Bill Connelly joins(9:00-13:24) Is College football turning into NASCAR?(13:25-22:44) Future of CFB, What can fans do?(22:45-27:28) Michigan in top 10?(27:29-29:14) Top QBs entering this year(29:15-31:20) How will Miami perform?(31:21-32:49) Surprise teams?(32:50-40:12) Tennessee's Offense(40:13-45:44) What if Texas Tech's plan works?(45:45-51:09) Exercise and Fresh Air(51:10-56:11) Top Week 1 Games(56:12-56:40) Conclusion: Buy Bill's Book Watch our show on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/vmz3S-xyIzU Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey Interested in partnering with the show? Email [e-mail]

Welcome to Andy and Ari on three happy Monday. We joined by one of the more controversial figures in college football every preseason. Today, I'm very excited Ari. Bill Connolly from ESPN is our guest, the lord of the S&P plus rankings, which never cease to enrage people, including us. Well, we're just stupid. And we don't know anything about math. So like, that's like the hardest part about it. It's just like, very math heavy formula. And anytime

I'm confronted with something like that, ever since I was 13 years old, I've run in the other direction. And I've called whatever it is stupid, like math tests, you know, yeah, the general way you deal with the coping, you know, if you have to cope, if Bill's rankings don't favor your team is you just call him a nerd and run away. Yeah, that's pretty much how it goes. But the only one I favor is Andy.

Go ahead. Nerds in high school and the people that used to, you know, who were smart and like ahead of the curve and bright got all the ladies in the long run. So, because bright, got all the ladies in the long run. So, they did, because they also got all the money in the long run. That's right. Anyway, I've been reading Bill for years and this is my first time really interacting with him, so I'm super excited to catch his vibe and hear what he has to say. So let's bring him on. Well, before we bring him on, I do want to point out Bill has a book coming out and it is spectacular.

He sent me a copy. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It is called Ford Progress, the definitive guide to the future of college football, which you can order on Amazon right now. And I highly suggest you do. If you're a big college football fan, it will help you kind of understand how we got here and where it's going. And with no further delay. Let's bring on Bill Connelly. Hi Bill. How you guys doing?

So, okay, this part of the book process, Yes. You get the manuscript approved, this is, and then you have that long wait between the manuscript's done and then we're gonna print this thing and now you're now you're it's out in the world what does that feel like? Well for this

sport trying to put out a current events book about college football like you're you're guaranteed to have like many things outdated by the time because that four-month delay or whatever between when you finalize it and when people read it 38 things will have happened and I was able to sort of know, like somehow they didn't get the house settlement finalized before the manuscript was due, but I kind of figured I could kind of make some educated guesses there.

But like that's, this was, that was always gonna be the most nightmarish part of the process is you open the book on the release date and already, well, that's not true anymore. And that's not, so that was, that was tough. But even like little things, like I made a shoeless Joe reference in one of the chapters. And like a week after the manuscript was due,

he was reinstated. And I make a joke about Cal being the crystal palace of college football, a soccer team about how they never really win anything. Like two weeks later, they won the FA Cup. So just like stupid, like I jinxed in everything I've touched here, but at least some of the book is still true. Hey, in your next book, Bill, can you curse a few teams that I've got futures on?

That's right. Just a bunch of teams that will never ever ever win the national title and I'll set them up for success. You know what my favorite thing in the book was, Bill, the airplane conference. Cause you take people through the history of realignment early in the book. And I just want you to explain this thing

cause it is so much better than even the dumbest realignment message board thread we could have ever come up with. And it was conceived of in 1959. Yeah. No, that's really, that was one of, if you, if you learn nothing else from the book, realize that loyalty has never, ever been a thing in college football.

It was just that geography kind of stitched things together. And now the geography is no longer a thing. Everybody can be disloyal like they always wanted to be. But yeah, 1959 is when the airplane conference sure looked like it was going to happen. I think it was Pitt's athletic director who was generally seen as the main driver, but he wanted some of the really high level Eastern independence, Pitt, Syracuse, Penn State, hopefully Notre Dame. He wanted to pair them with the service academies, Army, Navy and Air Force. And then the most important members of the Pacific Coast Conference that had just fallen apart,

USC UCLA Cal Stanford. And basically they wanted to make a super conference with a West Division and an East Division, theoretically where you could play your conference championship game in the Rose Bowl on January 1st. And that would be kind of the de facto national champ every year. And the rumors, it was so weird. Like, you know, I got newspapers.com is like the best subscription I've ever made. It is just incredible to walk back through archives. And it was funny, you see constant mentions, Sports Illustrated talked about it, it seemed like it was absolutely going to happen. And then there was one little word about the Pentagon maybe

dragging its feet about including Army, especially Army. And that was it. Nobody ever mentions it again after that. It just kind of dies on the vine. And they recreate another Pacific Coast conference, basically. And on we go.

But sure, there were a couple of years there where people just kind of assumed that it was going to happen. Like that's that's a mind blower when you think about not only that, how could that conference would have been, but then everything else that would have happened after that, that the domino effect of what might have happened had this conference come together. Bill, as you're going through the book and working on, you know, trying to outline the guide to the future. How much do you feel like history repeating itself happens and how much of this is unprecedented? Well, yeah, there is a certain aspect of,

you can always say like, bulls always got their way, but now they aren't as much. Geography always held things together and now it doesn't as much. It does feel like certain things have actually kind of broken from history over these last few years. And that's, you know, right down to the NCAA dragging its feet. That was pretty, you know, that was a pretty constant thing too. And now suddenly that was taken out of their hands a little bit.

So it's definitely different now. Just in terms of all these changes that we've been fighting about forever. People have been yelling about a playoff for 60 years. And obviously the pain players thing really picked up steam about 10 or 15 years ago. And so yeah, we're getting a lot of what we want right now. And I don't necessarily love the results of getting everything I want in the process. But yeah, it definitely feels like there have been some wobbly dominoes that are

actually starting to fall Andy I want to jump in and latch on to something. He just said what don't you want and what you like? So you're one of the things I referenced in the book is when I ran for college football commissioner back in there's like the thing I did at SB nation back in the day that people seem that seemed to resonate the most and I like a nine-point Platform of here are the things you know when I'm commissioner, here's what I'm changing. You versus Josh paid is going to be spectacular. I just went either. I was the third party candidate for that one.

I feel we can work together. I thought I don't want to run against anybody. Um, especially not anybody, unless it's somebody with the NCAA, I guess. But so basically looking back, you know, the idea was simple. Everybody had been talking about a commissioner, you know, satellite camps were a big argument point in 2010s, all these things that popped up and everybody agreed that we need a commissioner, but there was no place to create one and it never happened. But I got I had like a nine point platform of things about things like, you know, updating the amateurism model, getting rid of divisions,

conference divisions, expanding the playoff, getting rid of divisions, conference divisions, expanding the playoff, all these things. And looking back, I've got some version of seven of the nine things or six or something like that, except nothing that I was concerned about whenever that was eight years ago has really been fixed because there's nobody in charge of college football. That was the one thing that we really needed. We need somebody, more than anything else, I think this sport would be in better shape if there was just somebody who could say no to the most powerful commissioners in certain regards,

because we do have somebody in charge of college football, and it's just the most powerful conference commissioners who are acting on their own behalf and on the behalf of their schools, and that's never gonna create a healthy model. So that's always been kind create a healthy model. So that's always been kind of the I'm getting a lot of what I wanted individually but we still don't have anybody in charge therefore it's not helping with the separate the separation between you know the very very top of the sport the haves and everybody else I'm you know if anything is going

to tear down the sport I think it's kind of if we go too far in that direction and I don't want to see that happen. Well and you bring up an interesting point in the book and we have a very dedicated listener viewer named Matt who just constantly tells me this and I push back on him and you explored it. Is college football in danger of becoming NASCAR which was a sport that kind of flew too close to the sun. It was getting incredibly popular. So they started doing things to make it an even more mainstream sport and in the process killed their core fans and the business.

It still exists as a large business, but it is not a national sport by any stretch of the imagination. And Matt says, well, college football is going to come to NASCAR. I'm like, NASCAR is kind of boring and football is kind of awesome. So that there's your key difference there. But I don't know, reading the book, you did make some good arguments. Yeah. I mean, I had basically a chapter. I, I, I joked about how, you know, every single change that happens in this sport that we don't like, we say, it's, it's got to kill this sport or the sport's even already dead sometimes.

And yet if you actually try to look at any sort of health measure, which we don't have anything good to deal with, but if you look at attendance, attendance is good. You look at TV ratings, TV ratings are good. There's no real way to say that this sport is struggling right now. Everything, all those kind of high level measures look pretty good. And so I wanted to write a chapter just based

on the warning signs. Like how have other sports fallen from grace to some degree? And the most obvious one to look into is NASCAR because it was in the mid 2000s, in the mid aughts, it was never college football. It was never quite that big But it was still as big as it had ever been. It was a cultural, you know behemoth You had the Cars movies you had Ricky Bobby. You had all these things reminding you just how big NASCAR is and

They just kept trying to get a little bigger and a little bigger and kind of catered everything to the casual viewer to get a little bigger and a little bigger and kind of catered everything to the casual viewer. The Darlington Labor Day thing, moving that away from the celebrated spot to to Southern California, no less. It just basically it ticked off a bunch of the most hardcore fans. And that's not a problem if the casuals are are are fully on board because they're always going to be more casuals than hardcores. But problem came when the economy crashed and sponsorship money dried up. And a lot of the opportunities that they were seeing didn't exist anymore. And when that happens, you need the hard course to fall back on to lean on to make sure you're not gonna like that your your floor

is pretty high, so to speak. And a lot of the hard course and given up, they said this wasn't this wasn't meant for me anymore. And that's kind of the biggest concern I have. Like just, you're not in control of everything. You don't know exactly how the next few years in the world are going to play out. And therefore you don't know what factors are going to be impacting college football.

NASCAR might've been fine if not for the late, for the what, 2008 economic crash. And if you find out the hard way that you've alienated your hard cores it's kind of hard to get them back sometimes. I sometimes wonder how many of the fans who tune in to college football and maybe this is stupid because there's so many of them but like how many of them are actually hard cores and how many of them are casuals. The casual people who watch college football outweigh the hard cores by a large margin. Obviously that's something we can only kind of guess about.

There was a study that I tried to reference in that chapter actually about, what was it called? Dan Raster, one of the great sports economists of our time. Bunch of people is called who are our fans? And they tried to, whatever techniques they used, I'm not gonna try to get into that, but they basically tried to divvy out like, how many are hard cores versus semi-hard cores

versus whatever. Basically said that about 20% of fans are the core. The absolutely, you're never going to scare them off. They're going to buy the tickets and join the clubs and go to all the home games and all that stuff. And on one hand, like I pointed out, like in the big house, that means you've got about 20,000 people

who are hardcore. That's a humongous number of people really. That means like 90,000 aren't. And then you're getting into some experienced seekers versus the so-called, what they called high income critics and just all these different categories that could technically be alienated under certain circumstances. And it was kind of, yeah, like that's, there are a lot

of different categories where you could pretty easily scare one off or another and it would make it kind of a noticeable impact. So it's always going to be a weird balancing act, but I did think that one study was pretty interesting. So Bill, I'm not gonna give away the the ending of the book, but but generally, what can can a fan do to affect what happens next? Is there anything a fan can do? I mean, that's one thing I mean, I read a lot about soccer as well. And that was a useful experience for this book, because, you know, I was in Germany last year and German fans protested a private equity deal that the league was trying to put together. They

threw tennis balls onto the pitch. You know, they interrupted matches. They threw remote control cars onto the pitch and when then the steward would go over to try to pick them up and drive off and the crowd would cheer. Like they absolutely messed with the league. They protested in massive amounts. The English fans protested the Super League when it came together in 2021. And it's it's what would American sports fans actually protest? I have no idea of the answer to that because we've barely seen it. We know I as I like to point out targeting, we know that. That's another way that we assume the sports,

we're going to kill the sport. But I know protest works because Greg Ciano isn't Tennessee's head coach. But that's about the only thing we've ever seen protested in large amounts. And it's just kind of, I guess that's a cultural difference, really. But no, I mean, if there isn't any sort of mass protest

about this or that, I don't know what changes it because clearly, especially when we, with realignment, when, you know, Missouri left Kansas, when Oklahoma left Oklahoma state and so on, it wasn't, you know, we got to keep playing, we got to keep this rivalry going. It was bye, we won. We, you know, our spreadsheets are going to be better forever now. And that's not what happens in other countries or other sports. So I don't I don't know what

American fans will do or if there's ever going to be any pushback, but kind of wish there was in some cases. Well, I'm glad that you have mentioned vol Twitter in a way that they will find positive. And, and cause they, they love when we talk about how influential they are. And Ari loves vault Twitter. Like Ari's been sucking up to vault Twitter all off season. Yeah. Because I've been on the wrong side of vault Twitter, like three times in my life.

Um, I was covering Greg Shiano personally, when that happened. Um, so you can imagine things didn't go well for me at that time. But it is interesting to me, Andy and Bill, that I almost feel like the dysfunction of the sport and as it's trying to evolve is a large portion of our content and our interest. I do wonder if we ever get to a point where things are just functioning well,

what would we talk about? But that's not just what we talk about. Like what it be as entertaining. I mean, I say it would absolutely be as entertaining because there are lots of the quarterback battles and whatnot that I'd sure like to be talking about more than, Oh, hey, the SEC just figured out another way to get an extra, you know, $20 million per team or whatever. But, um, no, I mean, it certainly occupies a lot of the oxygen. That's for sure. Well, I would like to talk to you about some actual football,

but before we do that, I wanted to tell everybody, again, go to Amazon right now. Order Bill's book, Ford Progress, the definitive guide to the future of college football. And then you can get mad at Bill about the SAP plus rankings. That's right. The SAP plus rankings are great for me

because I came late to the idea of predictive power rankings and learned later in life. I met Ari and he started explaining how gambling works to me and how lines are set. But these are absolutely fascinating and they make people furious every year. And you explain them every year and they still make people mad.

But let's go on and talk about the basics of the S&P Plus. You use return, like in the pre-season version of it. You use returning production, recent recruiting, recent history. How does that, the recent recruiting piece of it. Use returning production, recent recruiting, recent history. How does that, the recent recruiting piece of it, I'm curious, how does that change in the, in the era of the transfer portal? It's changed a lot. Each of each one of those components has changed quite a bit through the years. And I mean, the components remain the same. No matter how you're going to go

about trying to build expectations, even your own head about how Ohio State's going to do or Tennessee or whoever, you're going to basically use some combination of who do they have back? How good have they been recently? You know, and how good are the new pieces more or less? And that's that's how we do it. So there's no question like every single year I get new a new set of data, new year of data in the transfer, transfer heavy era. And every year the transfers are even heavier. Even this year when there weren't as many like truly elite guys at the top, there were just more transfers. So it does kind of change things quite a bit. Basically for that recruiting piece, especially any impact from this year's recruiting class is all transfers pretty much. Like two years from now, then like the freshmen recruiting rankings are a heavier piece of it, obviously, because a lot of transfers don't stick around that long. But yeah, I mean, that incoming talent piece now

is just basically what kind of transfers have you brought in, who will help immediately? So that alone is different. Obviously how I calculate returning production has become a lot more transfer. It's not returning production at all. It's returning plus incoming production. Um, and so there are a lot of different tweaks there, but I mean, the concepts

still overall remain the same at least. Bill, as you, as you have been going through these numbers and stuff, um, do you feel like because it's so hard to quantify incoming talent a lot of the times, because a lot of these players haven't played much, um, that it's so hard to quantify incoming talent a lot of the times, because a lot of these players haven't played much, right? Um, that it's becoming harder and harder to put out a reliable metric. Um, cause like we, and that's not an attack, I think an attack on you and your product. It's a question that everybody who does any sort of predictive power rankings has to face, which is there are more teams that can win the championship than ever before.

And it's just kind of all over the place a little bit. Yeah. I think basically what the way I've come to look at it is, you know, on average, the projections still do really well in terms of like the number of teams that it nails or comes close to nailing. That really hasn't changed. It still has a pretty good job, but I think the misses are bigger now. Like Indiana. Um. There was no if

you had a predictive system that had Indiana and like the top 15 last year, it's probably a terrible system. Because there's no there's no way you could connect those dots reliably say that Indiana this is absolutely going to be a top 15 team. So you know, that kind of stuff is just going to just kind of happen, you're going to miss it. And I think the teams with a ton of transfers, there's a lot more volatility to those picks. And that's something I've been trying to figure out how to bake

into the equation a little bit. And I'm assuming too, when somebody comes into a new team from a lower level, that there's a weight system that accounts for that too, right? Yeah, especially. Yeah, I haven't figured out the best weighting for like G5 to P5. And part of it too, is then you got to figure out P5 to G5 and things get a little weird. I definitely get for the smaller schools though, they only get hat you only get if you rush for 1000 yards in FCS, you only get 500 yards credit, you know, just little things like that, that seem right, you pretty well. I'm sure there's a much infinitely more. which Mrs. Cam Scataboo, but probably that balances out with with other people moving right and even Scataboo his first year was was just good like he was definitely solid but he didn't break through until he was kind of that

returning piece that took another step. The reason why Indiana wouldn't be accounted for is that D'Angelo Pons is one of the best corners in the league in the entire country and he was a transfer from James Madison. He's like five foot eight or five foot nine and there's no way to account for that. Right, like he had good production if I recall correctly at JMU. Kamara, the DN had great production and yeah, that all got plugged into Indiana's, you know, overall return in production, you know, average.

But the recent history part of that, you know, I think I don't remember where they ranked in return in production, but the simple fact that they'd been terrible for four years, or three years, I think, was just kind of dragged them down. There's not supposed to be a way that a team can be that consistently poor and then suddenly be a top 10 caliber team. So yeah, you're just going to miss and that's what's fun's fun Like it's the things that get me yelled at like anytime SP plus is the inaccurate about something It's gonna get me, you know scored in some way But that's the fun part of college football when you don't see something coming at all and you're supposed to be able to use but It's a good guide, but you're not supposed like if we could if we could have saw Indiana coming

Then it would just like take away. Why would we watch the games? What fun would that be? So yeah, that's always going to be the fun part. And I joked about this in a piece today, like the last year's preseason top 10, basically eight of the 10 teams either made the playoff or came really close. And then the other two,

Michigan basically switched bodies with Indiana and Florida State basically switched bodies with Arizona State or some combination thereof. And so the Mrs. What? Kent State. Yeah. They switched bodies with Kent State.

No, that's granted, yeah. But Kent State somehow switched bodies with like a D2 team at the same time. Exactly, exactly. All right, I want to talk about this year's S&P Plus right now. And I know you've got an update coming soon. But when you did the post spring ones, Michigan came in there at number 10. And it sounded like that surprised even you.

Yeah, I mean, and in theory, it's not hard to talk yourself into that just because you hope to beat Ohio State and Alabama without a quarterback last year. Like the quarterback was actively hostile to their success and their defense was good enough to still win eight games and beat a couple of really good teams. So in that sense alone, if they suddenly have decent quarterback play, not even amazing, just decent, um, you know, that sounds like a pretty good team right there. I was, I was, you know, I'm envisioning them more in that kind of the 15 to 20 range, um, as opposed to 10.

But obviously you factor in, you know, recent history among other things, and they're going to grade out pretty well. So kind of get it, but I kind of prefer that the, you know, a few spots lower that, uh, that 10 feels like pretty aggressive, especially if you're going to have a freshman quarterback, even if he's, you know, a great one. I think this is a great time to just ask about all the questions or the teams that we know nothing about. I just want to know like what does it say Florida State's going to be this year? Yeah, that one's you're throwing it like I said about variants

like there's just you know, they're going to improve. I can say that because you it's almost literally impossible not to but I think what did I have them at like 36 or something? I guess that's fine. I could see, you know, I it was just so it was so bad last year in a way that doesn't really have anything to do with talent. And so you know, in theory, that part you you you get some good influences in the locker room, new influences and so on and so forth. And maybe that all kind of cleans things up and you can be fast and athletic and talented again.

But boy, like, I don't know how you project this. Uh, every, I was looking at the teams that collapsed the most in SP plus through the years. And I mean, it's like Bobby Petrino's last year at Louisville, that kind of stuff. Oh yeah. Mack Brown after 09 and those, basically all the examples, none of those guys were covered to any major degree, except, you know, Norvell's gonna try and he brought in new transfers and we'll see.

I just, like, it's a tricky schedule for somebody with that many question marks. It really is. And that's, we've wondered how to talk about Florida State all off season. I'm sure you're in the same boat. When somebody asks, you don't even know what to say. I mean, they change coordinators,

they revamp the roster, it can't get any worse. But there's really no way to gauge how much better they could be. Yeah, I mean, if you just think of it like, OK, Gus Malzahn is going to be running an offense again that has a former Malzahn recruit, Castellanos, a quarterback in three, I thought Squirrel White was going to be a star for two straight years and he, and it never really happened, but he's decent. Randy Pittman Jr.

could be decent. Deuce Robertson could be excellent. Um, there's just so many could-be's. There's so many could-be's that it takes, and you've got a brand new offensive line as well, like brand new offensive line. So it's just like individually, it seems like there's okay talent there, but again, talent wasn't the problem last year.

So yeah, I mean, I'm just, throw a dart, say six and six and go on. I guess what does SP plus say, seven and five. So we'll go with that. I think they'd take it. So I'm looking at the top of the rankings and you've got Clemson eight, which is, which is lower than I think a lot of us have them into the, just the, my opinion, you know, rather than the numbers based, but I want to point out your, your top eight teams,

they all are predicted to win between 9.6 and 10.4 games. So not even a one game variance between number one and number eight. And I gotta be honest with you, Bill. So your top eight is Ohio State, Alabama, Penn State, Georgia, Texas, Notre Dame, Oregon, Clemson in that order. If you told me any of those teams wins the national title in 2025, I would not be shocked in the least.

Yeah, Ohio State ends up like a point and a half ahead of everybody else just because recent history is good, recruiting is good, all those things. I have serious reservations about their coordinator hires, one in particular. But I get it. That's fine. And yeah, from a talent standpoint,

the fact that so many of these teams have brand new quarterbacks or, on the other hand, quarterbacks who are very experienced, but we have questions about their ceiling like Aller maybe kind of like clubnik I, I don't think I trust clubnik as much as others seem to overall. So you know, you've got a couple like high floor, but maybe lower ceiling guys and then a whole bunch of super

high ceiling unproven guys and four of those quarterbacks are going to be amazing. And those four teams are going to be at the top. But we just don't know in advance like for sure which ones are the which ones those are going to be. The quarterback thing is so interesting because there are so many good ones. Yeah, there are so many good ones. How did that have an impact on the data as you went through it? Yeah, I think the most interesting thing is, you know, Texas is there at number five. I'm pretty sure they're going to be preseason number one.

The arch kind of momentum seems to have just kind of slowly picked up this off season. And if he's the best player in the country, they're probably the best team. It's pretty easy to just kind of declare that you're probably right. But if he's like, one of the questions I had in my SEC preview is, what if he's just like good?

What if he like he's a first-time starter who shows flashes like he did against UTSA last year That was like the best small sample game performance ever You know, and then he was only okay against Louisiana Monroe after that What if he takes a ton of sacks and gets fooled occasionally, but it's otherwise great in Texas Goes what like ten and two nine they have, they have like two receivers who did anything last year that their offensive lines knew their defensive lines. New. They have a whole bunch of potential issues if art is anything less than great.

So that's kind of, that's, and that's kind of a story with a lot of, with a lot of these teams, like Notre Dame sure looks like they're going to be awesome. If CJ Carr's solid. And obviously, Jillian's saying at Ohio State, he doesn't have to be a world beater for them to be really good. So it's just kind of interesting. Again, we don't know which one of these guys

is gonna be good, but on paper, that all kind of cancels itself out and the defending national champion ends up number one, I guess. You had a fun column last week about the teams that can kind of sustain the gains they made in 2024, the ones who might make breakthroughs. The one I was really interested in that you said

should be able to sustain its gains from 24 is Miami. Because a couple things, like you put out this, S&P likes Miami quite a bit The shrine bowl that is shrine bowl 1000 that Miami's got way more players than I thought would be on that list and and because Miami's kind of in the in the realm of Texas A&M and LSU in Texas and the ones that are kind of near the top of the list and that doesn't tell you anything definitively, but when you lose the number one pick in the draft

and you lose one of your best receivers of all time and your defense wasn't very good, but then you, I guess this is one of those cases where you can really revamp things quickly. Yeah, I mean, the way I'm choosing to look at Miami, I'm definitely not gonna call them a top five team or anything, but they ended up 10th in SP plus last year because their offense was so good. And because

the defense was good for like a month. And then it just got work progressively worse every single game from there and ended up like ranked in the 50s or 60s, I think. But I mean, the general idea here is that I like the, you know, if Bayon gets more help on the defensive line, the secondary is it's been completely revamped, but I kind of like all the individual pieces that they added their new defensive coordinator. The secondary, it's been completely revamped, but I kind of like all the individual pieces that they added their new defensive coordinator, if you just kind of a brand new, like a culture shock for the defense, as long as the defense improves as much as the offense regresses, then

you're good, in theory. So I definitely don't want to put them in the in the overall contenders list, but they're going to be I think a borderline top 10 team again. And that's going to make them really interesting in a race where, you know, they don't play Clemson in the regular season, but Clemson's up there. And then we don't know who else is going to be involved in this ACC race. Could be SMU again. Could be I'm really Louisville curious. But yeah, I think Miami is going to be... I'm never going to trust Mario Cristobal to make all the right in game decisions until he does it. But I see at least another borderline ish kind of top 10 team there. You know, with the formula, I feel like if you have a general understanding, or you keep track of what's going on in college football, like, you know, you kind of can put together who's going to be good and who's not. As you're putting together the data and looking through things,

are there any spots or teams that surprised you for the better or the worst when you were doing it, when the formula spit it out? I was kind of curious where Texas was going to end up. I guess fifth is about right. Just because of their iffy return in production and the fact that SP Plus doesn't have an arch factor built in. Fifth is probably about right for them, but I was curious, because I do think a lot of people

are going to end up voting for them at number one here, whenever their polls are released, in the next week or two. But otherwise, Ole Miss being 11th, that's a lot of respect to what they were last year. They were, they ended up second in SP Plus last year. Their good performances were so good that it basically offset the sketchy performances

that they had a couple of times that cost them a spot on the playoff. And so the fact that they're only projected to fall to 11th is just a reminder of how good they were last year. I don't love this transfer class as much as I liked others. And I don't know if they're gonna have that in them but that was kind of an interesting one. I didn't know where they would land, uh, and Oklahoma being

at number 15 or 16, I think is, is, you know, everybody knows why Oklahoma is interested in it's it's good defense plus brand new transplanted offense. And maybe it sticks and maybe it doesn't, but yeah, I think in the end, there weren't a ton of just absolute, did I calculate this right kind of surprises there? It all kind of at least makes sense to my eye, or at least it has after I've spent the last couple months living with this list and getting used to it. So I brought up vaults Twitter before because I feel like you're in an interesting place

with them right now. You you had something recently where you ranked Josh Hyple as the second best coach in college football. You had something recently where you ranked Josh Hyple as the second best coach in college football, but you also have said that it feels like the Vols could end up with their best defense and worst offense in the Hypal era in 2025, which if you've been paying attention to the news, that makes sense. How'd that go over? Yeah, the Hypo thing went great. That was, I should have known that was going to be very social media toxic kind of topic. But basically what I wanted to do with the hypo thing is, you know, in May we put out our just our top 10 coaches rankings and it all made sense.

Like the most recent title winners were one, two, three other, you know, Freeman and Franklin and guys who took their teams far recently filled out the rest of the list. And there were all basically schools that always win. So I wanted to see if there was a way I could use numbers to craft a list where, you know, it would at least tell us. It was never no matter what the social media little images said, it was never meant to be Josh Hypple's better than Kirby Smart. It was just basically like if we if we line things out statistically, who does it tell us we might be underrated? That was how I was looking at it. And yeah, basically if you combine just pure quality,

which I use your average SP plus rating when you're a head coach. And then I also looked at for every year you're a head coach, how are you doing against that school's 20 year history prior to that? And the bottom line is, he probably benefited from walking into what Scott Frost built at UCF, being able to take that that mock speed offense and immediately do great things with it. So he got a good rating for that. He has also been awesome at Tennessee. Tennessee was not good for a while before he got there. You know, Butch Jones had two good years good for a while before he got there. Yeah, but Jones had two good years and otherwise,

what was like three losing seasons in four years before he arrived and they went straight to good and then they've been awesome or top 15 level for three straight years. So I'm not going to declare him better than Kirby smart, but that that little exercise at least you know, next time I'm voting on top 10 coaches, I'm at least going to going to consider that because that really is a good track record. And obviously that could take a hit this year, depending on how things play out. But you do realize it's the internet.

If you say somebody is good, it means you think everyone else stinks. Yeah, and it was for like three days, that post just kind of lived on the internet in relative peace. And I got some people saying, oh, interesting experiment, which is what I was hoping for. And then I think the Georgia 247 site found it. And the last two weeks have been pretty.

Well, the message board will find it. I got lulled to sleep on this one. I thought that one had passed and then suddenly it had very much not. Well, it's funny speaking of Jordan. So I did the top 10 offensive coordinators last week. And I was, you know, where do I put Mike Bobo in this thing? And I was like, if I put Mike Bobo in this thing,

all the Georgia fans I know are gonna kill me. They're gonna yell at me for having him in there. What's the first comment I get? Where's Bobo? Where's my Georgia fan? I'm like, dude, I know what you people say about him. Twice now for two different 10 years you've said that about. Yeah, I, it was funny. I was telling my editor earlier this off season,

the Bobo retirement rumors were so strong at the end of the year that in my head it had just happened. And after like three weeks into the off season, I'm like, wait, who was the new Georgia offensive coordinator? I don't remember who they hired. And then realized, oh, I made that up. They're rolling with Bobo for another year. We'll see Well, we get a lot of Bobo in the chat A lot and it's and it's always negative from Georgia fans like

Consistently negative from Georgia. Rarely is it positive ever from Georgia fans? Well, and he's kind of you know We there are the system guys and there are the build a good offense around your talent guys And when he had lad and Bowers two of the most unique players in the game He he was dialing up rolling is just yeah Last year you need a system to make when you don't have any obvious stars You need a system to lean on and he didn't seem to have any idea what their identity should be last year You know I identity should be last year.

You know, I do think that this season is going to be amongst the most entertaining seasons of our adult lives. And I don't know if like I'm overselling it and I like hesitated there to even say this, but like we were having a conversation before the show started, Andy, that, you know, this is the one year where it does feel wide open. Yeah. Do you think that this is the norm, Bill, as you put together these lists? Is this what we're going to get every year? I mean, I sure hope so. It has been really interesting to me that we've seen a lot of people on the political side and then some on the sports side too that are suddenly concerned about competitive balance when it kind of seems like last year.

I mean, I have major concerns like dependent. I think I have a different definition than some of the people talking about it. It's different. You have to separate the two things. Competitive balance between the power of four and the group of five never been wider between the ACC slash big 12 and the SEC slash big 10 never been wider between the ACC slash big 12 and the SEC slash big 10 never been wider but in terms of who can actually win the national championship there are a lot more under this system than under the old rules which there

were like three teams right yeah no I mean I think that's exactly right and I'm very concerned about what I'm concerned about it's just I don't think you know when Ted Cruz talks about it, I kind of think maybe he's talking about, you know, A&M keeping up with Georgia. And that's not really my definition of competitive balance. But, you know, it is, you know, a really interesting year where you can talk yourself into at least eight teams. I did my ifs list a couple weeks ago, which is kind of, it's a piece I always love to do basically just how many ifs does it take to make for me to make this team a serious national title contender and for, you know, Penn State it was, you know, if Aller has a little bit more improvement in him and,

uh, you know, things like that. So basically every year that I've done that, if you have more than three ifs, you don't win. And there are six teams that have either two or three. So that's my, maybe it's only six in the end, but it sure feels like it could be more. And it feels like there are a lot of really young, exciting quarterbacks like the Laguays of the world, who if they're suddenly, if I realize Laguay needs to be healthy and

who knows about that. Yeah, if healthy. But if he turns out to be the five star sophomore who rises more than the other young guys, what's Florida's weakness exactly? Like their defense was really good at the end of last year. It's why Lague was six and one. Lague wasn't amazing last year,

but he made some big plays and the defense was good. So there are a lot of teams you can talk yourself into in that regard too. And that makes things really interesting to me. So I hope so. I, by the end of the off season, I've convinced myself that this is gonna be a great year no matter what.

I have it basically like a how to enjoy yourself piece at the very end of the year that walks through all the the big games and the fun teams and the FCS games to watch and all this stuff. So I'm always psyched anyway, but doesn't feel like it's gonna be too hard to talk yourself into a pretty wild race here. You know, we have these different teams taking different

tacks in terms of roster building. How much will you adjust, you know, S and P plus going for like, let's say Texas tech, what they did. Yeah. And they win the big 12 and they wind up, you know, six in the country. Like, does that cause you to maybe tweak things going into next year? Yeah, I think basically, for every high, high transfer team that we've had so far, some of them have worked out really well, Arizona State, Colorado, you know,

UNLV, Barry Odom just- Ole Miss through the years. Right. And so we've had those and then we've had, you know, plenty of, of examples of the exact opposite. So I think it's always going to be kind of zero sum, but that whole idea I was talking about with volatility, where if you sign 25 transfers and you're starting X number of transfers, or maybe looking at it moving forward, I'm looking at like what percentage of your return in production is actually returning versus incoming and fiddling with things in that regard, then I do think it'll end up in a situation where I think I just have a very wide range of potential outcomes for those volatile

teams. And tech's a really good example. I mean, that's gonna be a brand new defense. I don't know if I trust Barrett Morton enough. I somehow don't trust the offense enough as a whole, but the defense is gonna be brand new. And if, you know, anytime in the last 15 years, if tech has a, like a top 30 or 40 defense, then that's a really good football team. So yeah, really curious about them. Arizona state was a good example last year of a team that, you know, heavy, heavy, heavy transfers for one year, pretty heavy the next, and then a sudden surge.

And I do think we're going to be seeing quite a few of those. Indiana, of course, being another obvious example. Tell me about USC. We're obsessed with USC on the show. I am. What do you see there? So this is something I wrote about this in my Big Ten preview that was fascinating when I was putting things

together. He redshirted a ton of guys last year. He signed a ton of, well, not a ton, but quite a few younger sophomore transfers. He's riding with my quarterback. Basically, if you didn't know anything about the his recent history and how we're all trying to put him on the hot seat, even if they can't afford that buyout, you think you know, he's he's working with urgency and he's he's needing to win now and go big kind of seems like he's building for 2026, especially

if you take that 26 recruiting class into account, which, you know, freshman earlier, they're going to help so much for that first year, but it feels like this is another kind of hold your own at seven and five kind of year. And then suddenly you look up and you know, maybe they brought in a transfer going back next year or something too. Suddenly they have a whole lot more pieces next year. And you know, it's the idea of being patient at USC is kind of mind blowing, but it seems like he's going to at least give it a shot. Well, and the thing is Ari calls it forced patience. It's, and it's a concept that I think we should probably become familiar with as you're dealing with these incredibly huge buyouts that USC can't afford Lincoln Raleigh's buyout. Let's be real here, unless he robs a liquor store, he could probably go four and eight this year and not get fired. But it is, uh, it's interesting because when they

hired him, the idea of having patients as you wait for another recruiting class in year four is wild. Yeah, it was, it was funny because that whole first year when they start 11 at one, my numbers hated them. You know, they were winning every game with like a pick six and winning by three points or something. It was just a it was a team designed to for SP plus to not like very much. And when they collapse, they just kept collapsing for a while. And now suddenly after that first year when I was lower on them than

anybody now I'm kind of higher on them for the future. This year is gonna be just kind of a year. There aren't that many huge games on their schedule. Obviously, if they beat Michigan at home in the middle of October, then things get kind of interesting maybe, but then they have a lot more hard games after that that they'll probably lose.

It just feels like this is a seven and five season and then barring as some shock from late development from my AVA or something. Yeah, I think they're going to be awesome moving forward. I'm already trying to be the first person to overhype them for next year because if you're going to jump on the bandwagon, you might as well be the first one. Oh, I think that's going to be a pretty hefty bandwagon, especially if this recruiting class sticks together. Yeah. Regress in the wind column improve on the field is something that I think is interesting. And there's a team that. So Illinois is who we're talking about.

Yeah. Well, we've hyped up Illinois. They have a pretty interesting schedule. Do you think that they can make the playoff? Yeah, I mean, I think basically any team without too many tough games, I mean, they have just one of the top 20 in my project projected SP plus rankings. And, you know, they play Indiana, but they don't they only play Ohio State. Don't play Michigan. Don't play Penn State. That's a really nice schedule.

I think they're projected their average win totals 8're projected, their average win total's 8.7. Your average win total's 8.7, you can get to 10. My concern is just that it's really hard to win all your close games two straight years. And they just, I mean, the Rutgers example being the most extreme, but they won a ton of close games last year. It's really, really hard to do that twice.

And that's the biggest thing. Missouri proved that you can. They won all their close games almost for two straight years. But yeah, they're absolutely contender. I just think, yeah, they're going to be a better team on paper. They're really high in my returning production rankings. And SB Plus didn't love them last year because of all the close wins. But I think that's the top 20 team. They just, they're going to have to get some breaks again. And it's really hard to do that again. Yeah.

and it's really hard to do that again. Yeah. Bill, I want to celebrate right now. It is the 10th anniversary of the single greatest college football preview headline ever written. And it appeared atop one of your stories when you were at SB Nation, you penned the Kansas preview in 2015. Here's the headline. Kansas football won't win many games, but it'll get exercise and fresh air.

That along with the commissioner thing, I think that was the other thing I was most known for at SB Nation. It took like eight seconds, me and Jason Kirk joking in our chat room. And then something that became the headline, it was the one thing everybody remembered. What teams this year are going to get a lot of exercise in fresh air?

State. Well, Kent State is, I hope they're getting exercise. I like who UMass hired, but they're not going to be good. Actually, let's just go to power conferences, because there are a lot, obviously, Akron, Charlotte, Kent State, they're going to be a lot of pretty poor teams.

I think overall, Purdue was that team last year. And I love that they hired Barry Odom, because Barry Odom is the ultimate complete tear down renovation guy. And I think they'll be better than they're projected to be, but they're projected to be real bad this year because they were bad last year. I don't love Northwestern here. They're definitely a fresh air and exercise,

especially with the lake, the breeze coming up the lake, that'll be nice fresh air. You know, Prestonstone better be really, really good. Otherwise they could struggle. Really concerned about Maryland if we're sticking to the big 10. They got hit harder in the spring than just about anybody.

And I know Locksley has been talking about that. They got the schedule though. They got the easiest schedule. Yeah, that might help. I mean, if you're bad enough, that doesn't matter. But yeah, they'll have a lot of at least semi-winnable games. Mississippi State, if we move over to the SEC, I think they were easily the poorest team last year.

And it's hard not to see them. They just don't quite have enough pieces SEC, I think we were easily the poorest team last year. And it's hard not to see them. They just don't quite have enough pieces yet, I don't think. So there's a lot of bad there. And I love, by the way, Kansas, not one of those teams. And there are more of those teams in the Big 12, because all of the Big 12 teams are playing for a bowl, at least. Some of them will get there, but they can all tuck themselves into going like eight and four uh in the preseason that's pretty amazing. I mean that that is I think Arizona is probably the one I'm probably the most worried about in the big 12 but the Mississippi State one's interesting to me because I have people ask oh what should they do with Jeff Levy if if they're bad this year like I don't I don't know that anybody could do anything with this schedule.

Yeah. In these circumstances. Yeah, they have one of the, it's not as, it's not Oklahoma, Florida hard, but it's a hard schedule, obviously, especially if you're just trying to be like a top 50 level team. You better win those, you better be Southern Miss, the Southern Miss Thunder. The Southern Miss of it all, like going to haddesburg and potentially losing is is i mean would be devastating yeah that would be uh a rough way and i mean they're impossible to scout they should be Mississippi State should be talented enough to beat them but southern miss just grafted on a quarter of the Sunbelt Championship roster onto it onto their terrible roster and who the heck knows what's going to happen there. But no, I mean, you beat them, you beat all corn state, you beat NIU in theory,

you know, NIU not the easiest team to beat. Picture Mountain West team, NIU calling back to your book. That's right. Yeah, that was a call to history. Former big West team, Northern Illinois going back West now. But yeah, once once conference play starts, like where where are the wins there? Maybe you can upset Tennessee or Ole Miss if everything goes just right at home, but that's a rough road schedule and that's tough.

You mentioned Oklahoma and this is an already and I have gone around and round about since the schedules came out. The last seven games for Oklahoma is the hardest thing I've ever seen. It's amazing to me. What do you expect from the Sooners? Because it feels like if things go well, then okay, fine, it might be okay. But if things start to falter, then it just, it's a snowball.

Yeah, I don't know how to set, like, where's the bar for Venables this year? Especially with the new athletic director I guess coming in at some point where where is he in trouble if they don't hit this because in theory yeah this is oklahoma you're supposed to win double digit games but if you're a top 15 team they're projected 16th in sp plus with an average of 6.9 wins because after boy State, after Temple, after Kent State, it's all 21st or higher. Every single one of those teams after Kent State is projected 21st or higher in SP+. So if you're really good, you're going like, what is that? One, two, three, seven games.

If you're really good, you might go four and three against those teams. And if you beat Michigan and Auburn early, you're five and oh, or something, then you know, that that becomes kind of an interesting, you know, get the confidence going, get that stadium super loud, you know, maybe that you can do something with that schedule. But man, it's just if you're merely a top 20 level team, that's so many close games, and you're gonna lose quite a few of them. you're going to lose quite a few of them. Bill, you're just, you're really smart. And I'm just going to lean on you to help me. I'm going to ride your coattails here. One of the games that I'm most excited to watch in the, you know, opening week of the season is Baylor Auburn. Gun to your head right now,

you have to pick one of those teams, not to win that game, but you want to, you're investing in one of those two teams this season, who are you going with? If I'm investing in the season, I'm saying Baylor. Just because they get to, you know, the big 12 is going? If I'm investing in the season, I'm saying Baylor. Just because they get to the Big 12 is going to be a bunch of tight games too. But they're not in the SEC. They don't have Auburn schedule.

So that part's easy. But as far as like for that game specifically, Baylor was really, really solid at the end of last year. And I think they're one of those teams that could easily contend in the big 12 there. Granted, they're like 12 of those, but I was really Baylor and TC you both kind of flew under the radar and were really, really, really solid late in the season. So if Auburn hasn't figured out how to not blow every red zone trip,

not turn the ball over, they were like, statistically, I could tell you all the reasons why they were like the most unlucky team of all time last year with all the close losses and you know, then you realize it probably wasn't luck. No, like that was, it was always the same mistake. And that's it's really hard to write that off as luck. So yeah, I mean, if they're suddenly kind of a new quarterback, granted a scarred quarterback who got hit a ton last year. Um, if, if the new quarterback, uh, you know, with a new system and everything, if that can all just click, they have talent there, they've got one of the best D ins in the league, they've got super fast wide receivers. Like there's a lot to like, it's just, man, I'm not going to trust them until they actually went a couple of close games.

So I guess give me Baylor in that case. Who's going to win the game? Yeah, I'm going to say Baylor just to make Auburn prove it. Yeah, it's a pick them at this point. All right. I think Baylor is actually favored by one now. You did just mention TCU. So before we let you go, I got to ask Labor Day.

TCU goes to Chapel Hill. We get to see Bill freaking Belichick coaching in a college football game. Sonny Dyches had to coach against Deion Sanders in Coach Prime's first game in Colorado. Does Sonny Dyches get his revenge on the famous guy on the other sideline in this scenario? I can't decide what would be the most entertaining here because they'd both be pretty entertaining. I guess really I'm just gonna land on the, when I'm high on TCU, they stink. And then I give up on them and they're good again.

So I'm pretty high on them this year. So it's gonna be- So North Carolina by a million. That's right. The Bellatrix dialing up the most exotic blitzes you've ever seen in college football. And you know, it's, we get to overreact to that for a little while. Like we overreacted to Colorado two years ago.

That's, that wouldn't be, from an entertainment, from a general ratings and page views standpoint, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. What would be more entertaining to a person that's not a North Carolina fan or a TCU fan? Double check losing or winning the first game? I would assume that more people, what's the gut here,

that more people hate Belichick than love Belichick? Probably from the NFL base. I also think there's like an element of like college football purists that'll be like, see, you can't just come in here and push everybody around. Maybe, I don't know. No, I think talent wise, I don't really like what North Carolina is bringing

to the table. I liked it. They got Gio Lopez that made me feel a little better because he's super fun. But yeah, I mean, it does feel like, you know, if you just wherever what's the what's the win total at for North Carolina this year, like six or seven, I assume. I thought it was six and a half. Six and a half, yeah. So that's, I feel like maybe lower is more likely than higher, but I'm willing to believe just about anything with this experiment here. Which is crazy because they have the easiest schedule in college football this year. I think that's the reason for the win.

I think the win total is actually seven and a half. Oh, it is? Yeah, I'm looking to see if it's been updated recently, but, uh, it is, it is pretty fascinating. This whole Belichick experiment because, you know, it, can you just coach circles around people when you don't have the roster? Right. And then, but, but he's also Bill Belichick and maybe he can get the roster. Cause you see him, you see him flipping a guy from Ohio State who probably would have been, you know, 18, 19, 20 in Ohio State's class, but is one or two

in North Carolina's though. That makes sense. It would be super fun if he turned out to be like, all those things we heard through the years about him being a great teacher. I kind of thought maybe he'd end up as like he'd finish his career in D three, like pulling Amos Alonzo stag, just go back to his, you know, the smallest school imaginable and just coached there for 10 years.

He's just coaching Williams, right? Like just completely off the radar, just enjoying himself immensely. I thought maybe that was the move. It wouldn't be, it would be semi entertaining if he really did just like suddenly go back to being a teacher and be the best development guy in college football and make a bunch of three stars. Great. Like that's, that wouldn't be, again, like in terms of things to write about, I wouldn't complain.

That would be super interesting. That'll work in the ACC, you know, for as long as North Carolina is there, which brings us back to Bill's book. You need to buy Bill's book, Board Progress, the definitive guide to the future of college football will be ordering very soon. You hop on Amazon right now and order Bill. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time. I was happy to have you here, Bill. Thank you.

Absolutely. Take care.