Andy & Ari On3 - Which college football coaches need to BEAT THE BUZZER in 2025?

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Thank you to Gametime for sponsoring today's episode! Planning your college football travel for this season? Gametime has tickets to every game. (And every concert and comedy show.) Download the Gametime App and enter code: STAPLES for $20 off your first purchase, terms apply. Last Minute Tickets, Lowest Prices, Guaranteed. Busy mornings, late nights, working through lunch—life doesn’t always leave room for a complete, balanced meal. That’s where Huel comes in. This podcast is sponsored by Huel, spelled H-U-E-L, The World’s #1 Complete Nutrition Brand. It’s a complete meal in seconds—just grab, sip, and go. No more skipped meals or unfulfilling snacks. Huel makes it easy with nutrition that fits into your life. And right now, you can try it for FIFTEEN PERCENT off your first purchase of $75 or more with the code STAPLES15 at HUEL.com. Fuel up the easy way with Huel today! huel.com/STAPLES Bring home the W with the ultimate tailgate package. The Burger Box from Whataburger is perfect for every occasion. It comes with 10 single or double burgers (with or without cheese), your pick of sauces and all the fixings (which you can customize — did someonesay grilled jalapeños?). Keep it basic or go wild, it’ll be a slam dunk. Order online from April 4-7 and earn double reward points. State and Liberty makes modern athletic fit clothing for men who want to look great and be comfortable at the same time. Whether you’re looking for an athletic fit suit or your new favorite hoodie, State and Liberty has what you need. New customers get 10 percent off when they use the code STAPLES, or you can visit this link: https://tidd.ly/3BY2Amh We’re buzzing about buzzer beaters after the first final shot to decide a game in this NCAA Tournament. Maryland’s Derik Queen called bank and called game to beat Colorado State and move on to the Sweet 16. But that wasn’t the only buzzer-beater Sunday that mattered. UConn nailed a shot as the buzzer sounded that didn’t help the Huskies at all, but it crushed Ari. The Terrapins advancing also makes the situation involving coach Kevin Willard more interesting. Villanova wants a coach, and Willard might be a candidate. Maryland wants to keep Willard, and the price keeps going up as he keeps winning. This leads to a discussion of football coaches who exercised similar leverage when they did their deals. Now these coaches are under pressure. Who is under the most pressure this season?(0:00-12:04) Weekend Recap of March Madness(12:05-15:12) Huel, 2 Minute Recap(15:13-35:05) A Deep Dive into Maryland Athletics(35:06-36:38) Gametime Ad(36:39-41:06) Ari's Sun Problem, Curtains(41:07-47:43) How Much Pressure is Billy Napier under?(47:44-53:40) Pressure for Brent Venables?(53:41-57:48) Brian Kelly's expectations at LSU(57:49-1:13:34) Lincoln Riley at USC(1:13:35-1:15:21) Conclusion Oklahoma’s Brent Venables?LSU's Brian Kelly? USC’s Lincoln Riley? Auburn’s Hugh Freeze? Watch us LIVE on YouTube, M-F, at 8:30 am et! https://youtube.com/live/BkRf4gC9FYw Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey

Welcome to Andy and Ariane. Happy Monday. Happy buzzer beater day. We finally got a buzzer beater. The NCAA tournament actually got two and we're going to talk about both of them because both of them were significant in different ways. one of the teams in the Sweet 16 and produced an incredible moment and actually was the second huge shot that had happened in that game in about a 10 second span. One had nothing to do with the result of the game, but our dear Ari got crushed by it. Yeah, I love reliving past trauma on the show. It's my favorite thing to do. Yeah, so that was the Florida game. I don't know anything about college basketball, okay? You know this, I don't know anything. All I know is that Florida's supposedly the best team or one of the best teams, right?

They're one of the two best teams. And I'll set this up, because if you're just looking at lines on the game, Florida went off as a nine and a half point favorite. So you're probably thinking, oh, the buzzer beater that you can hit to cut the deficit from five to two is meaningless. It's meaningless only if you bet before the game. Many people like Ari bet during the game.

Yeah. So like, I think they were down by six, like with 18 minutes left or something and the spread popped up two and a half minus two and a half. I'm like, oh yeah, okay. This is good. Um, Yukon obviously is very experienced and has won the tournament recently the last few years, right? So, um, you know, I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I was like, this is a pretty nice spot here. I think it's good value. You got three possessions of value here in a game that is close. So Florida goes back and forth. They're basically tied down the stretch, right?

It's like neck and neck. And then Florida pulls away with four minutes left. Don't they get up like nine? They got up pretty big. And I'm celebrating. I'm like, all right, let's go. Let's do this. All right, let's go. Let's do this.

You know, the, on to the next one, whatever. And yeah, so like Florida just stopped trying to score and then kept fouling. And I was watching, and you know what the sick thing was, Andy? Is I was watching the game for the final two minutes and I knew exactly how it was gonna go.

Like I could feel it. Like I was like, this is, cause I was doing the math, if they make both free throws here, they'll be a four, they make two three, they'll be up six. And like you're like trying to say like, you wanna get into a position where if they hit a three, they're only down three instead of two.

And I knew the second, the Florida hit their second free throw, cause I wanted them to miss. I wanted them to miss the second free throw to make it more like not to let them inbound. So they had to. I believe it was Walter Clay. I believe it was Walter Clayton Jr. I think at the line at the end to go up five that last free throw to go up five.

But yes, if he misses that just the scrum for the rebound. Yeah, right. Like, you know, it's not a clock out, probably. Because like it didn't matter if he made those free throws, if they were up three or they were up five, it didn't matter for my purposes. Well, they need to be up four for their purposes. No, but I'm saying, yeah, they needed to get up four, but I'm saying once they were up four,

it didn't matter whether they got up to five at that point. Correct, yes. Whether they scored or not. And yeah, the second he pulled up from the logo, I was like, that's going in. And it was like, it was a perfect shot. And I punched the couch and my daughter was in the room and she goes, daddy, what's wrong? I'm like, you know, I felt really bad about that. Like she's like, what happened daddy? I said,

daddy stubbed his toe, sweetheart. It's no big deal. Metaphorically, you did stub your toe. I did. So here's the thing. And I'm going to tell you this and I'll show you because like when I went to Vegas this weekend like I bet on just about every game and I never went up to the cage once I just did it through my guy and I got to show you this graphic. I don't know if you'll be able to see but I put I'm not going to tell you how I mean I it was a lot. I put a lot of money. We don't use shame here so you don't have to. Okay it's it was pretty big and when I like I mean like thousands of dollars like I'm I don't bet $20 a game like I bet you know pretty good and this is the total I don't think you'll be able to see after the week ended. Can you see the total here? I can't. No. Okay it says a dollar and 23 cents. That's I'm up a dollar and 23 cents. Hey, you didn't lose anything. There it is. Dollar 23. Like, so somebody asked me in the chat, why do you bet if you don't know anything about basketball? Well, I understand lines and I understand if a team is a 10 point favorite and the best team in the tournament, you can get two and a half with the entire second half left.

Like that's a pretty good position to be in. But also to like I don't come up with the plays on my own. I tail people. I'm not arrogant. Because there's people who go up and go, you know, I like Arizona's uniforms. That's not how I do it. I do it on people who know what they're talking about.

And I just copy what they're doing. And we were on women's games all weekend. We were on NIT games last night. And I finished. I closed out the weekend 5-0 to get back to up a dollar 23. So it wasn't terrible but if I wouldn't have done like the live one, like that was just me on my own. If I would have just tailed the people and not tried to like be smart and do things on my own, I would have won a lot of money this weekend. But that's me. So anyway, yeah it was uh, the thing that stinks about gambling is, is like, if you

do it, you know how you're going to lose three minutes in advance. I watched that, that Florida game play out of my brain seven times before it actually happened and it played out exactly that way. God forbid the guy would have missed. Of course not. Just buried that thing. That thing would have been good from a hundred yards away. Like, I mean, it was just a perfect shot.

I don't even think it hit the net on the way through. It was a squish that didn't even hit the net. It was just like it was you couldn't have AI'd that better. Yeah, but that's the way it goes. I had a blast. It was a great. I mean, like, I know people are complaining about the first week of the tournament a little bit.

Right, Andy? Like, people aren't happy about this? I have one buzzer beater. You'd prefer more than that. You probably prefer a few more upsets but I love the the sweet 16 matchups and The games were played at a really high level. I felt like the games yesterday Were all pretty close the Alabama blew out st. Mary's but for the most part you got Ole Miss blew out

Iowa State that was the other one. That was kind of a shocking result. But you had the buzzer beater in the Maryland game. Arizona, Oregon came down to the wire. Kentucky, Illinois was close at the end. Like, that's all you can really ask for. Do crush Baylor. That did happen, so. So this is your theory, though.

Your theory is always people want to see upsets in the first round, but they want to see the best teams at the end, right? So like, for me, it's like- Yeah, they they want the they definitely want all the names by the elite eight I think they want mostly names in the sweet 16 and that's that's what you got I mean so in the sweet 16 you've got seven SEC teams Four big ten teams four big twelve teams one ACC team. So this is the first time since I believe 2007

that you've had an all power conference, Sweet 16. You don't have, the only double digit seat is Arkansas, which is an SEC team that- Coaches won a national championship. Yeah, coaches won a national championship, was not super healthy all year. So no real Cinderella's. And the question is, is this because of an IL transfer portal? I think probably yes. And I think we've talked about this. We talked about this in football. What I think this does is it probably allows those teams at the bottom or the mid level of the power conferences to surpass the teams at the top of the mid majors, whereas before if the mid majors had the

right combination of talent, they could be better than those teams. Yeah, I also think too that like it's our tendency as podcasters and journalists and whatever to Try to draw meaning from every single thing that happens like oh, why did this happen this year? Well, it happened in oh seven like sometimes things just happen, right? Like it's not I don't know that there's always the declaration of this is the new world There's never gonna be NCAA tournament upsets again and like there were a lot of good games that came down to the wire my st. John

Futures bet didn't. That was an upset. That's a 10-2 upset. I realize. Yeah, they got their butts kicked too. I mean, they weren't. Yeah. I mean, I know, I know most score maybe not. But like, if you watch the game, it wasn't very, very close. But like my thing too, is always like, if you're into the NCAA tournament, because you want games of great teams playing great teams and you sacrifice the first round upsets for

the betterment of the tournament at the end, Arizona Duke, uh, you know, Florida, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, like you've got like, you know, pretty good games coming up here and I'm excited about it. So, um, yeah, yeah, it was a really, really fun weekend. I found out that I'm at the age now where I need two days to recover from hangovers. I don't know if that's where you're at now. Oh, I need a week. completely and utterly done yesterday. And I already had a full night's sleep before, but we went and saw a comedy show and had a really good time. And it's good for the soul every now and then.

I wanted to say one last thing, Andy. I had got a DM from a listener named Merrick McClellan, who's a pretty loyal listener saying, I'm at the Encore too, let's go have a beer. And I was at the Encore all day, so I'm surprised he didn't just see me, but I didn't see that till after I left. And I just wanted him to know that I would have totally had

a beer with you if I saw that beforehand. So yeah, like we're, we're, we're a fan friendly podcast. And you know, we're just guys being dudes like you, you know, I had a great time with my friends, but always want to make more. So thanks for reaching out next time. I'm glad you did that because our guy, Ethan, emailed us this weekend. And so Ethan and Alex are very loyal listeners to the show. And in fact,

they said our show inspired them to start their own podcast. They're on season three and their podcast is incredible name, Working on the Dad Pod. So give them a listen. And also, happy birthday to Alex. His birthday is next week. I misread the email. I thought it was this Monday. Monday, happy early birthday, Alex. I responded to him and said,

will you email us again the day before his birthday? So you just blew it. But you know what? It doesn't matter. It's the thought, right? Like happy birthday. That's right? Like happy birthday. You know what? Just do it like my wife. It's your birthday for the entire month. And like that's it. So it's your birthday week. It's your birthday month. Yeah. That birthday month thing is such a crock of shit, dude. Like

what are we doing? You're pushing 40 years old, like you get one day and even that like, I don't know. I don't even I don't even get the day. I don't want it. I don't want to think about it. I don't want my birthday is in September. It's during football season. It just gets buried by news. It's fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. I usually have pretty good birthdays because my wife lets me pick where we go to dinner, which is a rare occurrence in

this household and I always pick the the greasiest, slimmiest thing. Also, I ingested 9000 calories a day when I was out there like I went to a workout this morning. I am I like undid two months worth of work this week. I bet. I don't I don't blame you.

Look, I took because the kids were on vacation. Obviously we worked last week, but the kids were on vacation. We were in the keys. I wanted to enjoy my time there. I was not working out. So I've not worked out in nine days, which is the longest I've taken off. Probably in five years. So going to be going to be ugly later today when the, when the gym gets visited again, but you know what's going to help me Ari.

when the gym gets visited again. But you know what's gonna help me Ari? Huel. Complete nutrition in a bottle. The world's number one complete nutrition. And you got busy mornings, you got late nights, you work through lunch, life doesn't always leave room for a balanced meal. That is where Huel comes in.

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you can click it, it'll take you right there. You get your 15% off your first purchase of $75 or more. That is Huel, and we are gonna fuel your day with Huel. River, can we set the clock? We have the clock set. So we're going to take you through some of the news from the weekend. The clock has started. Okay, Texas fired coach Rodney Terry.

He's the one who, if you look at the picture of the Austin American statesman put out, looks exactly like Giancarlo Esposito, also known as Gus Fring from Breaking Bad. They have hired Sean Miller. So Sean Miller essentially got fired based on the FBI investigation. He was fired at Arizona. He winds up back at Xavier, which he had left to go to Arizona. And now he leaves Xavier again to go to Texas. So he probably got a better job because of the FBI investigation. That's the team that beat them, right?

Yes, it is. Texas went to Xavier in the first four, is that right? They did. Yes, they did. That's funny. It is, isn't it? What a crazy coincidence. No, it's just one of those things.

But we got more coaches moving ESPN reporting. On Monday morning that the Drake coach Ben McCollum, who's only been there a year because remember Darren Darren DeVries left to go to West Virginia, but Ben McCollum heading to Iowa to replace Fram to Caffrey. So he goes from division two to Drake to Iowa to the to the Big 10, to the big money conference. So what a wild turn of events there. So Drake is in that Arkansas. Remember when Arkansas State lost three football coaches in three years?

It went like Gus Malzahn, Hugh Freeze, Brian Harson, all got hired away by their schools. Drake's in that boat now. The other news is obviously Maryland hits a buzzer beater. Derek Queen says, give me the MF and ball. Maryland hits the buzzer beater. They're going to the Sweet 16. The crazy thing about this is Villanova is still open. Villanova would like to hire Maryland coach Kevin Willard and Kevin Willard just has spent the entire weekend talking about what Maryland needs to do to keep him like the guarantees he needs and it's not just for it's not for his salary. It's for payroll type stuff. So it's basically

Kevin Willard is actively negotiating. And I'm sure Mike Loxley sitting here going Oh God, because whatever goes to Kevin Willard is going to get taken away from Mike Locksley. So that's what is interesting to me because you and I are going to talk about the coaches that need to beat the buzzer in 2025 on the football side. And what makes this so interesting is that Kevin Willard essentially he's like the cabbie with the meter running like until Villanova hires a coach, he can strap Maryland over a barrel for whatever he wants. I want to get into a position of that much leverage in my life just one time.

He's just being brutally honest too. He told a story before their first game of like, well, somebody tees him up for it. Like, okay, Kevin, what's an example of something you'd like Marilyn to do better? And he's like, well, you know, we were in New York for a preseason tournament, we wanted to stay for an extra night, and they're like, no, we don't have enough money for that. He's like, we're in a big tent, how do we not have enough money?

And that's the sort of thing. And he's like, okay, we gotta up the payroll. So like, if I'm Mike Loxley, I'm watching this going. Oh God, every time he wins, that's more. More money out of my rev share portion. Yeah, well, I think Mike Loxley probably too is gotta be OK with it.

I don't think he is. I mean, he's in a tough spot right now, because when we get to our coaches who have to beat the buzzer in football, he's one of them. Yeah, I know, but this buzzer has been five years now long now though. Like I mean like he's kind of, this is the year that Maryland has to show a pulse has been like for five years in a row. Like remember like when that person asked us about Maryland football and whether we could like get to a level of relevance or contention.

And I was like, yeah, but I mean, in theory it's great, but like we've talked about this for the last decade. And yeah, like I don't know that, it just Maryland is kind of is what it is at this point. So I don't know, like when you say beat the buzzer, like what does Maryland, I mean, I don't wanna like undercut our next segment here, but like, it's just like, I don't even know

what's even left here to root for or to hope. Well, if you see Maryland's schedule this year. I believe they're the only Big 10 football program that does not play. Oregon, Ohio State or Penn State. In the regular season. So. You've got to you've got to make some hay on this schedule. The non-conference is Florida Atlantic, NIU and Towson watch watch out for NIU

as Notre Dame knows but You know obviously Wisconsin Washington Nebraska Illinois Michigan Those are gonna be tough games Indiana's a tough game But Maryland like start for no or five and oh like four consecutive years and then just they well they scheduled they scheduled for that Yeah, yeah Uh, but no there was like I remember thinking like multiple times like wow maryland can Win their first two big 10 games against teams that don't look dangerous on the schedule

It'll be seven and oh and eight and oh and they'll be ready to content. It's just like it just falls apart after week five Well, so that's but let me ask you this because I find this fascinating. There's really interesting story in USA Today a couple weeks ago. So I want to ask you this and I'm gonna put you in the shoes of Kevin Willard. But I'm also going to put you in the shoes of whoever Maryland hires as its AD because they're looking for one because Damon Evans just left to go to SMU. So if you're Kevin Willard, who's the Maryland coach, and left to go to SMU. So if you're Kevin Willard, who's the Maryland coach,

and it seems like Villanova's interested, Villanova does not, they play football, but they play FCS football. So they're not spending massive amounts of money on football players. So Villanova, you are gonna get like 80% or 85% probably of the rev share budget. It's probably not gonna be the full amount the twenty and a half million dollars or whatever

But you're gonna get a lot of money. So would you rather get 80% of You know eight and a half million or nine million or as you rather get Ten to fifteen percent of twenty and a half million, which is what you're going to get in Maryland? Right Of course you take the more you take the bigger take the villanova, right So that makes Maryland a much less desirable basketball job Now, let me ask you the question. Let me ask you this question because this is what this is what kevin willard's doing right now When I say the meter's running, if you are making the decisions at Maryland right now,

and again, the AD is leaving, so I don't know, maybe Scott Van Pelt is the person making the decisions right now, would you look at the landscape and say, we're in the Sweet 16 right now. If we beat Florida this week, it means we can beat anybody who's left in this tournament. It means we can win the national championship. Do you say we're going to increase our player budget for basketball so that we have a national title contender every year? Because no matter how much we increase the one for football, we're still going to be up against Ohio State and Penn State and Michigan and Oregon in our own conference.

Yeah, I mean, that's the question too. It's just like when you think about the way that you attack that it's like, is it even prudent in today's world to go all in on basketball and, and just accept your football team stinks or is there just so much more money and interest in football that you always have to try? But there is real money in basketball. They have an arena that they fill. Like that, that's not insignificant money.

It's real money. The thing that I think is interesting about that is like, if you ask the fans, like I'm thinking like, if you ask the fans, like we would you rather be pretty good at both or terrible at one and great at the other? What do you think fans would think? Would you rather just be 9-3 in football and a team that has a chance to make the Sweet 16 on most years? Or would you rather be a team that can win the national championship in basketball and just be terrible at football. I think it depends on the fan base, but I think if we're talking specifically about the Maryland fan base, they're much

more used to being good at basketball than they are football. So I would say that most of them would take the national title contender in basketball every year over the occasionally good football team. Yeah, I mean, it kind of like reminds me of the discussion that we were having about Indiana Andy of like if Indiana would have advanced deeper in the playoff or did Indiana fans enjoy their football run this year?

As much, if not more than previous basketball runs and I and I don't know the answer to that like did they play? If you're an Indiana fan who goes through a basketball school, did you have more fun? with the Cinderella story of football? Because football is different. Like, I don't, I don't know. I know there's people who just say... And you went to a basketball school. So you're, you're actually a good example of, of someone who's lived this.

Yeah. I didn't go to a basketball school and people cared more about basketball there. But when Arizona football is good, it feels different than when Arizona basketball is good. But like that, the thing is that Arizona basketball is always good. So like, maybe that's why. But like, I do think that Tucson would get every bit as excited if their football team was like a legit playoff contender. Like, I think that people care about football, but they're at a place of apathy right now.

And it's like, even like when you look at like what Arizona did a few years ago, which had fish, it's like they were really, really good and they had a really good team nucleus. Did I say that right? You did. Don't try to say it again. I'm not going to. I'm gonna I'm gonna go one for one. You're batting 1000. They had

this this team that what did they win nine nine or ten games in Jed fishes last year there. Yeah, 10 games. The entire team was basically set to return and then he left and then it's just like even when Arizona's got it rolling. They don't they can't keep it going and like to me it's like I always feel like and I don't know if this is just like extreme arrogance or what, but I feel like there are a lot of schools out there that could really be an attractive place for football.

Like I look at Arizona and I went there and like, I guess anybody who's been to Tucson knows, like it's freaking awesome. Like Arizona is a great place to go. And we've said the same thing about Maryland football where the potential of Maryland football, if you can keep the local talent around is very high. And they're in an area that is very rich with recruits.

I don't know if it's just me because I grew up in the desert. But I think the climate that Arizona has, which is, you know, it gets extremely hot at times, but you know, the mountains near resorts and like Tucson's not the prettiest city in the world, but there are parts of Tucson that people vacation beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.

And like the pool scene and like the outdoorsy stuff and like the palm trees and the sunshine every day. Like I feel like and I didn't go to college in the Midwest and I didn't go to college in a place that snows and rains a lot. But like why wouldn't an athlete from the Midwest want to go to school at U of A and like be a really good football player? And like by the way, when you're a good football player in Arizona, like you have a really chance of... I mean, when I was in school, like Rob Gronkowski was in school, the cornerback Antoine Kasin was one of the best players in college football I've ever witnessed even to this day. Those guys all got drafted in the first round.

It's not like a place that you just go to disappear. Plus, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but people are attractive there. It's close to California for recruiting footprint. I would get every three star offensive lineman in the city. Well, all right, so you've solved Arizona. We're talking about Maryland though.

No, I know, but Arizona should be not dog shit in football in my opinion. But they're not consistently good and Maryland's never consistently good. So do you, at a certain point, I'm I'm making you the AD of Maryland or the AD of Arizona or the AD of we we can we can keep going on the list. Do you say let's just win some freaking national titles in basketball and be happy with it? Yeah. So

like Maryland is as much of a basketball school as Arizona, right? Is that a fair correct? Yes, they care more about basketball there than they do about football. So like for me, I think that like I would water the plants that. You know, are able to bloom. The thing that is sometimes I wonder about college football, and I don't want to say this about anybody, but sometimes you have to consider it. It's like when you plant a seed in a pot, if you know that seed is a dead seed,

wouldn't it be annoying to keep watering it? Like, and I don't wanna say that any football program is a dead seed. I would have told you that Indiana was a dead seed before last year, right? Right. And so like, I'm not saying it's impossible. And the thing is,

and that's what makes Maryland so interesting, is we've talked about this, actually Rutgers is in this boat too. And Rutgers was pretty good at basketball this year too, but Maryland has players around. Like if you could get the best players in a 200 mile radius to come to Maryland, you would win a lot of games.

A lot of games. They get some of them, but they don't get all of them. What's the, you know how back in the day before the internet or before NIL even, maybe the internet's not the right word. Like a coach would say, we wanna own a X mile rating. Put a fence around, yeah, yeah. How long is that fence typically?

Isn't it 500 miles? It used to be like 250 and now it's five, but now it doesn't matter. Now it doesn't matter because I was reading Steve Wilfong's update on Jared Curtis, the number one QB recruit in the class of 2026 and his parents were interviewed and they said, look, hey, we're telling him, don't worry about distance. Don't worry about being close to us. Pick the school that's best for you. And he's picking between Georgia and Oregon and he's from Nashville. So like one is significantly

closer than the other and his his own parents are like don't even worry about that. Yeah, I mean, I didn't know it's like just today's day and age is just easy to hop on an airplane. I don't know it just like you want to go to Vegas get up at 6 you're there by 930 have two days and come up.

But here's the thing Andy and I'm talking about Maryland and I'm talking about Arizona. I know this is a Maryland, but Arizona is 475 miles away from LA and closer to San Diego. It's like you can say the same thing about Arizona except Arizona has palm trees and beautiful weather.

Like I don't know what, I don't like, but Maryland has- Maryland is eight miles from DC and 20 miles from Baltimore where there are tons of really good football players every year. Yeah, I know you're right. I mean, it's in theory Maryland should have more NIL money than Tucson, right? Like, isn't that the thing? Yeah, well, absolutely. Now, now Kevin Plank, the Under Armour founder has never has not been particularly big on NIL. So like that he's not sugar, he's not in a position

or he's not decided he wants to sugar daddy them the way Phil Knight has sugar daddyed. So it doesn't quite work the same way. They don't have, and that's what, when we did the question a few weeks ago about Maryland football, another person asked like, because of the Under Armour connection,

does it help? It only helps if they wanna write checks. So, that's the thing. And also we don't know how that's gonna work in the rev share era. We do know that Maryland will be fully funded in the rev share era because they're a big 10 school. They have lots of money.

It's kind of interesting, cause like Maryland will have a lots of money. It's kind of interesting because Maryland will have a lot of money from that. But Nike is trading at a four or five year low right now in terms of their stock price. So they're having a rough go of it. But Under Armour hasn't filed for bankruptcy. But I'm looking here as face significant financial struggles

and implemented restructuring plans, including layoffs and reduction in product offerings. So like, we've seen it with their deals too, where they backed out of deals with certain schools. So, but that's okay. If I'm the new AD at Maryland, if you hired me for that job, which I will take that job, you only have to pay me a million dollars a year. That's, you know, less than the usual going rate right now. College Park's wonderful. I'd love to live there for a million dollars a year. I'm going to go to Kevin Willard and be like, how much you want? Not how much you want in salary, how much you want in payroll. That's what I'm gonna say.

Because I'm gonna go try to win national titles. And I'm gonna try to keep the guy who could put me in a position to win national titles. Because here's the thing, Crab Five, they're really good this year, they're gonna play Florida. What is the Crab Five's biggest issue? The Crab Five is the thing.

The five, the starting five, and they're not particularly deep at Maryland. Florida is very deep. So if Florida ends up knocking them out and it's because of the depth, Kevin Willard can just say, look, I need more because I got to have, I got to go eight deep. I can't be just five or six deep. And that's a perfectly legitimate request. The problem is there's a pot of money.

It's not infinite. And if you're Mike Locksley, you're like crap. But I want to win something. I want to be at top of mine in something. I want the free advertisement of my team playing in huge games that lots of people are watching. I wanna win something. And that is one of the two revenues producing sports.

And if I can win the national championship in a revenue sport, and I'm probably never gonna win it in the other one, then I'm gonna never going to win it in the other one. Then I'm going to divert some money to basketball to make sure they can win it. I'm just surprised that your opinion because we both are football is king people, but I feel like I'm being realistic here. If I divert all the money to football is Maryland is Maryland going to be able to compete with Ohio

State and Michigan and Penn State in Oregon? No. Then I should reverse. No, but I do think that like it is kind of crazy that Maryland hasn't popped up with a few 10 win seasons every now and then. Like I don't think they should be like the. No, they should be good. Yeah.

Like they're surrounded by really good players. Have been like the glorified bi-weeks for Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan and now Oregon. It's like I don't think that you see Maryland on the schedule to go. I think God, there's a we can take a breather here. You know, like that's not the way it's supposed to be. Rutgers is not like, I don't know. I don't know. Here's the other piece of it. Here's the other piece of it. Here's the other piece of it, Ari. Here's the other piece of it. To do basketball like this, I do not have to take all the money away from football. I can still leave a significant chunk of money for football. So, because-

Because it's a football roster. Right. I'm trying to compete with whatever Villanova's gonna spend because, and what Duke's gonna spend, the ones that are really passionate about winning in basketball that maybe are not going to although Duke football is I mean they paid up to get Darien Mensa this year, but that's what I'm going to. That's what I'm trying to compete with. Which still going to leave money for football. It's actually a better situation because if I just abandoned basketball and give all the money to football, basketball screwed, football might not get any better. So that's why, and then does the rising tide

floats all boats, like does the success of winning in basketball, the attention you get from winning in basketball, does that help you a little bit for the cool factor of the school when you do football? I don't know if it does. I mean, when Duke was winning in basketball, it didn't make their football team any better. Yeah, but at the same time too,

it's like Alabama's football program was dominant and other basketball teams good. I don't maybe maybe it's like, I think you can make the case that maybe football helps basketball. I don't know that basketball helps football. Football is just a, it's just the rosters are too big. Yeah, football is a monster. It is really hard to get your arms around.

And if you are not adequately funded, if you are not adequately all in, it's not going to happen for you. So that's what I do. Like if you hire me as Maryland's new AD tomorrow, I'm going to go to Kevin Woller and I'm going to say, what do you want? Cause his request is about this too, is that like they're going to go face a juggernaut next week and they're probably going to lose. And then if they lose, then they're out in the Sweet 16, which is an otherwise forgettable season for a team that cares about basketball this much. So like that, like that to me, it's just like, you know, this conversation too is probably a bigger conversation if they go deep into the tournament. Like Sweet 16 is not deep

in the tournament, is it? It's not good enough, but that's why you might need more money for payroll. Yeah. Because you got beat by a team that was, if they wind up losing to Florida, you'll see, if you're, if you're Kevin Willer, you're going to go, I got beat by a team that was 10 deep. I'm only six deep. Give me the money to have those other four quality players and I'm going to beat them and I can win the national title. I do think that is the best way to handle this. So we'll see. I mean, this is not unique to Maryland.

This is a decision that other programs are going to have to make. We're just talking about it because it is affecting Maryland right now with this Kevin Willard job situation. Ari, if you'd like to see Maryland and Florida play in San Francisco and the Chase Center where the Warriors play, you can get those tickets on Game Time right now. Download the Game Time app, use the code staples, you get $20 off your first purchase, terms apply of course, but you can get tickets to the San Francisco games, you can get tickets to the games in Atlanta if you want to see the Auburn Tigers, the top seed playing in Atlanta.

I believe the, is the South region a one, two, three, four seeded region? I believe it is. So it was a lot of chalk, but it also means you're going to get some really, really good games. Game Time has tickets to all of them. The tickets. I will say the tickets in Atlanta run a little high, but you can get some really good deals in Indianapolis for the Midwest region. Really good deals for the West region in San Francisco. So I would say

head to head to game time. You wanna see some really fun games. I'm sorry, it is the Midwest Region. So that's one at Lucas Oil Stadium where you get some great deals. You got Houston, Purdue, Tennessee, and Kentucky. That is an incredible Sweet 16 set of games. It is one, two, three, four in the Midwest. And those Lucas Oil Oil Stadium tickets you can get in the low hundreds.

To get you in the door. So download that game time app use code staples $20 off your first purchase terms apply. All right. All right. Let us talk winter form again. Solar flares. I don't understand. I don't understand why you can't get something to just block your window and not

have to worry about it anymore. They're called blinds. And apparently they're like, $1,000. We're gonna get blinds in. But like, no, no, no now I'm trying to block the... It's called Black Posterboard. You buy it off Amazon and you tape it to the wall. Or, yeah, as Raymond Horton says, a curtain. For those listening in podcast form, we are experiencing an RE difficulty.

We're not calling them technical difficulties anymore, we're just calling them RE difficulties. The sun is streaming in through his windows. It looks like he's in heaven right now. Oh yes. Ferris con. When you subcontract everything, blinds are a thousand dollars.

I'm like putting books up and it's actually getting worse. I know it's amazing. This is incredible. Whatever show the graphic. Incredible. Yeah, we're gonna have to change the graphic because it says zero days since our last mic issue. I'm sure he'll have one of those today too. But great. I'm just glad like, so we're probably gonna do

a separate on that that Maryland situation. I'm actually I think I'm gonna write a column about that today too for on three because it's fascinating. I hadn't I really hadn't thought about it this way and we sometimes we just walk into topics on this show that are really interesting and I I Do think that's fascinating like and it's look it's made much worse by the fact that the ad is leaving for another job WTF craps says Ari's in the cloud.

Dude, I don't know what to do. I put books up there. I don't know what to do. So this is we're gonna have to wait. I'll tell you what to do. Go turn your go turn your camera off and use your laptop. Okay, laptop camera because that will be less affected by this. And I like that I get to troubleshoot this in real time. That's also part of my favorite part of the show. Look at you. There you go. Okay, and then when the sun passes, I'll go back to the

other camera. That's okay. We'll be we'll be fine. We'll be done with the show by then. Let's talk football coaches, football coaches who need to beat the buzzer this year. Am I gonna get fired? Like is that like I can't I cannot get past this. There's nothing I can do as a human being. There are many things you can do.

You just choose not to do them or don't realize you like go get a blind like get a get a blackout curtain. Go on go on Amazon type in the words blackout curtain and hang a blackout curtain over those windows, and light will not pass. Okay, Andy, if I go type in blackout curtain, are they gonna give me specific measurements, or am I gonna get a bed sheet on a window that's that big?

Like, look at this, this is what I'm doing here. There's a little window right there. This is your job. It is more important that that window is covered in blacked out. Then it looks good off camera. No one cares what it looks like to you and your family when you are in the house. It needs to know about good. It's more about like, there's a curtain right there. Just hang

a curtain. You're right. There actually our little clips. I'm gonna buy I just bought I'm gonna go buy one. Okay. Oh my god. Oh yeah, the people in the chat notice this is tremendous. It is a curtain rod. Yeah. You'll have to help me find one that fits but we'll get one today. And this won't be a curtain rod. Yeah. You'll have to help me find one that fits, but we'll get one today. And this won't be a problem anymore. This is amazing to me. All right. We got to talk about it.

By the way, the sun passed. We're good. All right, let's go. Sorry for the delay. That is amazing. So the sun actually goes by that window for four minutes each day. Just as we do in the show. No, what happened was we messed with the clocks unnecessarily. Are you blaming daylight savings time for this? Is it not, it didn't happen when we were doing the show at actually 8.30, but we manually artificially changed the clocks for no reason at all.

And now it's messing up our podcast. So we're blaming the farmers. Good God. God damn crop. All right. All right, so now we're talking football coaches have to beat the buzzer. You inspired me, Ari, because you did this column on Friday.

And football coaches who need to prove the most in 2025. Now I tweet this because I like the buzzer beater concept. So some of the ones you had on your list, we're not gonna talk about, like James Franklin, Dabo Sweeney, they do need to prove something, but they are not in danger of being, they need to beat the buzzer.

They're fine, the buzzer is not going off on them, but I'm gonna give you a list of names. I want you to tell me of these people, who do you think is under the most pressure right now? Billy Napier at Florida. Brent Venables at Oklahoma. Hugh Fries at Auburn. Lincoln Riley USC. Brian Kelly at LSU. Now I fully realized that Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley might be too expensive to fire. But yeah, there are feel like they are in this boat. Pressure is manifested based on whether or not you

think you lose your job, right? One more one more Luke Fickel at Wisconsin, who also may be too expensive to fire, but yeah, I feel like he's in the boat too. So like there's some calculus there. To me, the hardest thing like I would take you freeze off the list, because I don't think Auburn needs to make the playoff. I think Florida is in a position where they expect that,

are they in playoff or bust mode? You're in Gainesville. I hate everybody from Gainesville after what happened on yesterday. But I do wanna know, like, is he in a position where Florida has to make the playoff this year against that schedule? I actually had someone involved in the organization tell me it was playoff or bust.

Right after the season. I don't think it is like I think if they go nine and three and miss the playoff. I don't think anybody's getting fired. I think they're going to say that is reasonable progress. You were right there. You got one more year DJ Lagway. Go make the playoff that that last year. DJ Lagway. I think pressure too though is that like so you know today at my

workout class there were a bunch of very buff fit men and women there. Okay. And part of the workout you have to do a weightlifting thing. Like you get on all fours and you do rows, and then you have to get up and run. It's in the bottom of a garage and it's a huge area. You've got to run, touch the wall, and come back, and it's probably 50 yards down and back.

And if I was put in a situation where it's like, you have to win this or you're fired from your job. There would be a ton of pressure in that, but at the same time too, if I know that I'm going up against people who run for distance for fun, I can't do it. Like, so like to me, I feel like there's more pressure in blowing something that you're expected to do than it is about doing something remarkable. Does that make sense? Like it really makesier loses to Georgia, like, okay, he lost to Georgia. It's like Billy Napier's pressure would be bigger if it was like, you can't lose the Mississippi State and whoever else is a beatable team on your thing.

But right, like, here's the thing. The job is to compete for national championships at Florida. So your analogy doesn't quite work because he was hired with the expectation to be in good enough shape to run with those people and if he's not, that's his fault. Yeah. No, I mean I'm with you on that but at the same time too, Florida like we anticipate that Florida is going to be very good, right? We don't.

Yes, and better than last year, and they were seven and five last year against this same schedule. Although I would argue this schedule is not as hard because you lose UCF and you add USF. Yeah. But you're right. He's in, he's expected to beat Texas and Georgia and all these things. But I also feel like the embarrassment factor of like, oh, if you lose games to Texas, Georgia, LSU and A&M, it's

like, okay, well, that's just a hard schedule. So like, but he is also not getting the job done. So you're still getting fired. Probably. The answer is him. The answer is him. But at least if he doesn't make it, it won't be as a result of just embarrassingly blowing it

against teams that you should. I don't think the answer is him. Because I think he knows more what he's got. Now, DJ Lague having a nagging shoulder injury that is keeping him from throwing in the spring is a problem and something I would worry about if I were him. But if I know that, if June, July roll around and I know DJ is healthy, I know he's throwing and I'm fine, I'm not as worried because I kind of know what I got. It's a similar roster last year.

You're talking about the man who was basically fired in the middle of the last year. So he knows the position he's in. Exactly. If Auburn goes six and six this year is like you freeze fired. Yes, yes, he would be. Yeah. No, Hugh, Hugh, freeze would be. He freeze also has more manageable buyout than everybody else on this list. Yeah. So he went six and six this year. That'd be like, in this conversation, we know unequivocally that Florida would be prepared to fire him. like there is some saving grace

potentially for a Brian Kelly because of his buyout and there's some saving grace because of Hugh Freeze and how early he is in his tenure like there is a conceivable outcome where he freezes in the same part of his tenure where Billy Napier was when they were going to fire him before I know know, I think that like if there were betting odds of bad season equals firing, Billy Napier would be the overwhelming favorite. Like we know he's gonna get fired if he doesn't.

Yeah, well, I would say I know Hugh Freeze will be if he goes under 500, I just don't think he will. I think Hugh Freeze can be much better this year. I think they're gonna be good. Yeah. The one I think is under the most pressure is Brent Venables. Yeah. Because we do not know what they have. We think that John Matier is is definitely the answer at

quarterback. If you read Pete Nako's story, add on three last week, they're raving about John Matier. Everybody's pumped. Everybody's excited about what John Matier can do in that offense. But they still have to prove the offensive line can get better. They have to their receiver group has to improve. Now obviously they were all hurt last year, but they've they've got some guys that have come in that I mean they've got a guy named Giovanni Gibson who might be their their best or second

best receiver will see, but. He was at Arkansas Pine Bluff last year and it was an Arkansas Monticello in D2 the year before that. Like he came out of nowhere and so they may have unearthed the gym there, but they need to have that. They've also remember we trust Brent Venables on defense, but they lost some really good players like Danny Stutzman and Billy Bowman are gone.

So I think that's- I just don't know that it's okay or that it's fair to say that he would unequivocally be fired with a bad year. Billy Napier is the only one of all of these coaches that we know for a fact will be fired. If Brent Venables has a bad year at Oklahoma, that would be three bad years in four seasons there. He would be fired. I'm telling you that right now. They've already hired a GM who doesn't answer to Brent Venables. It's a very precarious situation. And the thing with all these two is that they've all invested a lot of money in their quarterback improvement. The DJ Lagway, obviously, and here's the kicker too that we have to consider. Is like, what if DJ gets hurt?

Oh yeah. Well, how do you even, how do you, how do you grade the coach if your star player gets hurt? Your job is to win games. That's how you grade it. Like this is year four, your job is to win games. A player knows in his heart whether or not his team is good enough to go 10-2 against that schedule right now.

He knows, right? Don't you think he would know right now? I think he probably feels pretty confident that it can, based on the way last season ended. Because now, it's also like, too, it's like if you know you're probably not going to do something six months in advance and you have time to emotionally prepare for maybe that helps you loosen up a little bit. I don't know.

And also with what I actually think what happened to Billy Napier last year probably probably helps him because he's been in the position like he's gone into work thinking I'm getting fired here and then turned it around. So I think that probably gives you like a nothing to lose quality that should help you. Now, they're in a better, if, if Lagway gets hurt, they're in a better place last, this year

than they were last year in terms of replacement because they have Harrison Bailey who he's bounced around. But like the last time we saw him, he was leading Louisville to a win against Washington in the Sun bowl. So he's played high level football. You know, like he was a he was a Jeremy Pruitt recruit at Tennessee back in the day. He's not been ultra successful, but he probably gives them a better chance to win than and I'm not trying to.

I'm not trying to heap on to Aiden who came in in the Georgia game and started the Texas game for them. Who is the Yale transfer who walked on but? Harrison Bailey probably gives him a better chance so that they're in a little better situation, but I would argue or agree with you that if DJ Laiway gets hurt, it's probably going to be bad and that's probably gonna be bad. And that's not good. Oklahoma is in a similar situation with John Matier,

where you need him to be healthy. Now they brought in Cole Gonzalez, who's also, who has played a ton of football, not at the highest level, but he was at the FCS level and just tore it up. He was the best quarterback in the Southern Conference for a couple of years at Western Carolina, helped Cade Bell get the Pittsburgh OC job. So they've got a situation where if they lost their starter, they have somebody who could come in and probably run the

offense. So we'll see. But I think Venables is under tremendous pressure because with Napier, we saw at the end of last season, the team that played LSU and the team that played Ole Miss can beat any team on Florida's schedule. Have we seen Oklahoma be able to do that? Now, I, I, maybe the Oklahoma, the day they beat Alabama, 24 to 3. Maybe that was it. Maybe that's the possibility. Because look at Oklahoma's schedule. It's every bit as brutal as floors. They got Michigan coming into the non-conference. Floors is worse.

Okay, worse than floors. I'm not going to argue with you on that. The last six, sorry, the last seven games for Oklahoma are, I'd say it's even worse than the last half of Florida's schedule last year. College football this year. Yeah. So here's the difference though,

and why I still think it's Napier. Does Oklahoma have to make the playoff? Does Auburn have to make the playoff? Does Auburn have to make the playoff like Florida doesn't have to make the playoff either? I'm telling you right now, I don't know, man. If Billy Napier is nine and three is not getting fired, telling you that right now, they might rattle their sabers and people might complain, but they're not going to fire him

if he goes nine and three. OK, well then. So are they all 9 and 3 is good enough? Oh yeah, who's not 9 and 3? That's good enough as Brian Kelly. Brian Kelly's in such a weird spot. Okay, let's talk about Brian Kelly because we had that show where we talked about LSU and what represents success at LSU.

So Brian Kelly's. Sort of rhetoric has changed. Remember it was this time last year. We're not buying players translation. We're not paying what defensive tackles in the spring portal are asking because they're asking too much. Now we are buying players. We lost on Bryce Underwood. If you read the story, Ross Dellinger wrote at Yahoo a few weeks ago where

they talked to Brian Kelly He talked to Scott Woodward their athletic directory talked to Austin Thomas their GM about What they're doing there and They're spending more money and they're raising more money and they were very active in the in the winter transfer portal but the thing is, now you're telling everybody, okay, we did it the wrong way before, now we're doing it the way you're supposed to do it. What happens if it's still not good enough?

And in LSU, good enough is a much higher bar than anywhere else. Yeah, Florida's bar for good enough isn't as high as LSU's, right? I think both of them are like Brian Kelly's okay if he's nine and three. If Brian Kelly's eight and four like he's not getting fired because again, I think he'd be too expensive to fire. But they are out on him if he's eight and four that fan base turns they're done yeah I mean I thought that

they were turning last year weren't they yeah I think they're okay because they they finished like when they lost to Florida if they'd lost another game after that if they lost either Vanier Oklahoma I think it would have been really really bad but I think the way they finished they didn't they didn't quit on him I think that helped yeah Yeah. I mean, we're almost like the August 30th game against Clemson is the one year anniversary and we keep making the same mistake. Like that's like, like that's like worry. Yeah. Like they were a year last year in the opener. Like it's not, it hasn't really been going well there, man. Like it really hasn't. And the thing that's different about Brian Kelly than you could

even say Brent Venables and Billy Napier are facing is that he was a coach that they had to go pry away from another place with the anticipation that he was already one of the top five coaches in college football. He came in from a way higher starting point than those other two. Now, I'm not saying that Brent Venables, who is one of the best defensive coordinators for over a decade in the sport before taking this job, isn't held to a high esteem and Billy Napier wasn't hired at Florida to get to the playoff and to beat Georgia. I know what they were hired to do, but Brian Kelly's

reputation as a coach and the expectations that surround those expectations were so much higher when he got to LSU, on top of the fact that he left a job that he took a team to a playoff multiple times to go win national titles at a place that gives you closer proximity to players, less standard for admissions and of course plays in a conference that, you know, breeds success in a way that doesn't in other like the fact that Brian Kelly hasn't made the playoff so far this year, like he's like in the Lincoln Riley bucket to me of like great coach that everybody that everybody was just going to be awesome.

Just not doing well and I'm glad you mentioned Lincoln Riley because we got to talk about him too. Yeah, I'm good at this too. You know, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they left on the same day., yeah. They left on the same day and went to their places with the same expectations. That was a crazy day. It was a crazy day. They had the same agent or had the same agent at the time.

Can you imagine how busy he was that day? The thing that is interesting is that whenever we do these coaches who's available, who should they hire conversations, you never think about the tenured guys at destination jobs. And then the two of them just got plucked away from places that you thought that they would never leave because they were like top 10 jobs in America, and then just go to other places.

And neither of them have been good. And I think that, that Brian Kelly has had, you know, at least some, some positives, like I think Lincoln Riley's teams have gotten worse every year. It's not going in the right direction. It's headed in the wrong direction. So let's talk about Lincoln Riley because we look at these Big Ten schedules now and USC pops up on them and we don't say like,

oh, that's a tough game. We don't even think about USC right now. That's not why they hired Lincoln Riley. USC is not in the conversation at all when you talk about the you know, I was thinking about this when we did our schedule breakdowns and rankings last week. It's like well, and they're one of the few teams in the country that don't have to play Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon or Michigan this year.

It's like you play Oregon, they play Oregon in Michigan. No, no, no, no, you're I'm saying like in the conversations that we have about easy schedules, we use right, right, right. Or our Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan and Oregon. Correct. Yes. Not in the big four of anything. They're just a team that's floating out into the abyss somewhere. Yeah, it is. It is very strange. Now they've made changes. This is this year they've made changes in the front office. And so like, if you look at it, on threes industry comparison for 2026,

USC has the number two recruiting class right now in the class of 2026. But I will point out, they were still in the same boat last year. They did this last year where they got some big time recruits to commit to them early in the same boat last year. They did this last year where they got some, some big time recruits to commit to them early in the cycle and they lost most of them. So like their highest rank recruit is from Gainesville, Georgia. Last year, they got some big time recruits from Georgia to commit

and one from Florida and they all, they lost them all. The difference here is that if you go down the list, you got some California guys. Now we talked about Jonas Williams, the quarterback from Illinois who's committed there. This feels a little different. This feels a little different, like they might be able to hold on to some of this. But that's not a fix now that doesn't help them in 2025. So like is Jade my Abba still the guy at quarterback? Is it going to be who's on Long St the the?

The new signee before we go on to the quarterback discussion because I think that's a major part of this. I want to say like the recruiting discussions important because the class that they currently have assembled is what I thought they were going to do for the first four years. Like I thought they would always bank three of these and like coming into this year, they would be ready to play.

Like the fact that this year right now is nice, but a, if they go out and start stinking, you don't think that, uh, yeah, your boys, Xavier Griffin is going to take an official visit to Georgia and flip. That's what happened last year. Like it's it's like it's nice to look at but this is a solution for 2027 and this is what should have already been signed and developing in the program the last two years and it hasn't been not to mention that USC has failed tremendously in in-state recruiting. Um the state of California in general doesn't have a lot of offensive linemen because

people like washboard and like well and so you get you get a manual you get a manual pregnant out of the portal from Wyoming. He turns out to be pretty good. He's not playing for USC this year is playing for Oregon. And also. Who's their quarterback like the number one thing that you know you're supposed to be. And like we talked about this, Andy, in terms of like, and I don't know if we're still doing this.

We might do it. Like we have a long summer ahead of us trying to identify what every program's identity is, right? You know, like Georgia, we know is country. Oh, that's the summer project. Yeah. Summer project. But like USC is the only team in the blue blood discussion that doesn't even know what it is

right now. Like you would say what's that USC's identity having a Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback fun offense and a good enough defense to get to the playoff. Like that's what I thought the plan was. But now they don't even have a quarterback. Like I'm not saying that my alpha has no shot at being good ever. But like it's not it's a it's a hell of a fall off or drop off from what you anticipated this would be.

What is this year five? Is this year five or year four? This is year four, right? Yeah. This is, well, and maybe Longstreet's that guy. And maybe he is, maybe we'll like, they'll be seven and oh, and like their freshman quarterback will be awesome.

Like we can't, if I could tell the future, I would be rich. But I'm saying right now, You wouldn't, you'll still gamble on on Chinese ping-pong and coming though I would be good at gambling that I mean trust me if I knew it was coming I wouldn't have had to pay you and River a thousand dollars at the steakhouse I didn't see that coming I didn't see going into year four of the USC era of us clinging to a recruiting class in 2026 as the fix to the recruiting classes that didn't happen while also not having a

proven know what you have quarterback to replace Caleb Williams. Like we're not two, we're two years away from him. It's not Caleb just left. We got to figure out somebody to replace Caleb. Like we're two years removed from Caleb now. And we still don't know who that guy's gonna be. And like we talked about this, or write about this, the USC fans will chime in and say, well, but the most recent fixes

are gonna fix it. But they're not but he's tried to make fixes along the way, and they've gotten worse. That's what scares me about this. Because Lincoln-Riley at Oklahoma, you kind of knew what you were gonna get. They're gonna be bad on defense, but they were gonna be amazing on offense. The Lincoln-Riley Oklahoma teams that won the Big 12, I think would have been pretty competitive in the SEC too.

Like. Oh, for sure, yeah. So, the quality of his teams has just gone down year over year over year. I want to acknowledge this. Caleb Williams was one of the best college football players of the last decade period. Okay. Yes. That man did a lot of things for USC that helped them get out of jail. Okay. Their defense got better last year from the previous year.

Yes, he made dance and Lynn was a good hire. When you remove Superman from your offense and you replace him with a player who was just pretty good or okay. You don't get by with an okay defense. You pair the defense from last year with the insane offense from the year before. But OK defense is not enough when your offense is just OK. And their offense was just OK last year. And the thing that USC's identity should always be, you should always know at USC when Lincoln Riley is your coach, that no matter what happens, you're going to have a frickin' awesome offense. And they don't even have that anymore.

And an awesome quarterback. I mean, in terms of like all the, all the guys that we talked about on today's show in terms of failure, like Lincoln Riley has failed the most out of all those guys, right? Maybe Bren Benavils, because he has had two really bad years and Oklahoma doesn't have very many bad years. But like, at the very least, like I would if I was buying stock, if like USC and Oklahoma are very cheap stocks to buy right now. I'm definitely buying Oklahoma stock going into this year. I don't know, like Oklahoma could be awesome this year. I don't think there's any chance that USC is awesome this year. Right? I don't know. chance that USC is awesome this year, right? I don't know. Oklahoma seems trended upward at least. It might not work, but with their,

with their offensive line fixes, hopefully their entire receiver room won't be injured this year. And you go get who I think is probably going to be one of the four best quarterbacks in college football this year. You have actual tangible improvements that you can cling to. Not to mention that Oklahoma sucked a lot last year because half their team was injured. But that's also part of the equation,

like USC just stunk. Like I don't think that, I don't think that- But USC didn't really stink. USC lost a lot of one possession games. And that can turn around too. However you want to phrase it, but that's not where we thought we were gonna be in year three.

It's not what we thought we were gonna be. Here's the other issue with USC, is they did lose a lot through the portal. So like Woody Marks, his eligibility ran out. He was the Mississippi State running back transfer. He gained 1133 yards last year. Average 5.7 yards. They lost a million last year, they stunk Andy.

Okay, they lost to Minnesota too. They lost to that Michigan team. Yeah, I know. They lost to that Michigan team. Yeah, I know. Quinton Joyner averaged 7.6 yards to carry for them. Who's he play for now, Ari? Not them, right? Texas Tech, yeah. Like I just said, their best returning offensive lineman

went to Oregon. They kept their two best receivers, but then they lost their next three. They're elsewhere now. Zach branches at Georgia, Deuce Robinson, Florida State, Kyron Hudson is at Penn State, right? So that's at a certain point, you gotta have some continuity.

At a certain point you gotta you have some continuity. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they lost to Michigan last year 2724 and then that's not the game that Michigan had like nine yards passing or something. Yeah, it was. Yes, you knew you knew they they went Alex orgy that it was a full blown orgy. It was a full blown rushing or not a passing orgy. It was a running orgy. Yeah, I'm looking at the the game leaders area. Oh yeah, orgy went seven for 12 for 32 yards and they won. Now Michigan Michigan was like, okay, we're in trouble. We are just going to run the ball. You stop us. By the way, we're just going to run the ball.

And then we're going to see two where Michigan scored with 37 seconds left and they could. They had a final drive. There was a two minute drill. I think it was a minute. We're just going to run the ball. Yeah, and then rolling is broke off an 80 yard run or something. You get him inside the 10 yard line.

It's like dude, you knew they weren't going to throw it. It was terrible. I'm not going to... Listen, Andy, this is a podcast, and I know that sometimes I say a team stinks when they were actually just okay. But we don't need to safeguard the USC fans. They stunk a lot, okay?

We're not going to... You don't know what stank me. Call me, Ralph. They stunk, okay? They were terrible. For what... In comparison to what the standard should be. That's not that's not if you would have said their season the day

that Lincoln Riley got hired in year three, people would have been mortified. Mortified. They would have. You're right. You're right. River throw the USC schedule back up there. Can we talk about the back half of this schedule? Sure. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about actually, not even the back half. Let's let's let's start in the end of September. Like this is actually a heart one of the harder Big 10 schedules because obviously they play Notre Dame in the non conference. Illinois, Michigan, Notre Dame, Nebraska.

Northwestern, Iowa, Oregon, UCLA. Yeah. Michigan, Iowa, Michigan, Notre Dame, Nebraska, Iowa, Oregon. I don't like that. Yeah, no, I don't like three road games in the Midwest out of four weeks either. Illinois at home against Michigan at Notre Dame and then bi-week at Nebraska. That's a, at least they get their bi-week in there, but like there's a lot of Midwest flights there. I would say Halloween weekend, we're going to have a real good idea what's going on there because listen Matt rule at Nebraska.

Under pressure as well, not the same kind of pressure because Nebraska's improved both seasons under Matt rule. But Nebraska. In year three of Matt rule. Should. Be higher than USC in the pecking order based on what USC is done. Now USC shouldn't be low. USC in Nebraska should both be in the upper half of the Big 10. But I'm not sure there's room for both of them in the upper half right now. Yeah. So you know, I know that we don't, do we have the actual buyout numbers or?

We don't. It's massive. It's enormous. I don't even know if it's possible. I think that like it's like a mostly guaranteed contract and it happened at a time where he got pried away from a job that he didn't have to leave. So it had to be a $100 million guaranteed contract, right? Well, I'm sure it was 100% guaranteed. Yeah. Yeah. So like, we're, it's, yeah, I mean, it's, it's probably in the 60 to $70 million range at this point. Like I think he could, outside of, you know, sexually harassing somebody, I don't think that he's going anywhere for a long time. Don't do anything that would cause you don't, as you see with Stanford right now, we talked about that the other day. And I suspect we're going to see some action on that here in the next

week or so. But as long as you mind your P's and Q's, I don't think they can fire you no matter what happens. It's like the reverse of forced patience too. Like it's like right like the forced patience thing is like, okay, well, you can't fire anybody for six or seven years. You have you you're stuck with this person through good and bad and hopefully that will manifest in good things towards the second half of that forced time because you're giving a guy time to cook. But on the other hand, too, it's like if you wake up every

morning, you know, these people can fire me in five years, even if they wanted to. My hope is that there isn't a lack of motivation or a lack of of feet. Well, that's what happened with Jimbo Fisher. There was a lack of motivation. What are they going to do? Raise seventy seven million dollars and fire me? Yes. You almost want your coach to feel like they're going to get fired.

Well, what you want is your coach to not want to get fired, which is a different thing. Like if you feel like you're going to get fired, but you're cool with the giant check you might get because of it. Yeah. It doesn't really motivate you. If you feel like you're going to get fired and you want to work harder because you do not want to be labeled a failure no matter how much money is on the other side of it, which I think is actually most coaches. Like we talk about the buyouts and all that. I will say this. I think most coaches would rather keep working than get a buyout because they do not want

to fail. Yeah. keep working, then get a buyout because they do not want to fail. Yeah. The question is where Lincoln Riley falls on that spectrum. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. So anyway, these are the coaches. Uh, I, I wish that contract didn't shield it, but I can't imagine the amount of pressure that Brian Kelly's under.

I cannot imagine the pressure that Lincoln Riley might be feeling in terms of just like that, like looking failure in the eye. And of course, Billy Napier and Hugh Freeze to the same extent. So, I mean, these are, you know, the story was more about what coaches have the most to prove, even if it doesn't mean they're going to get their job pulled from them. I think that Abbo Sweeney has a ton to prove this year, just based on the conversation that he had on our show last week. You actually think that your way is the right way still.

You got to go prove that it is. Just guys in those positions too, so I'd encourage you guys to go read the story. It's up, but, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's a fun time and you know, that's what makes this podcast. So fun. We get to go into next year, anticipating all this pressure and trying to, you know, sink our teeth into it. So can't wait. It's, it's going to be wild. I talked to a coach's agent the other day and we were talking about how few jobs there were open in the power

conferences this past year. And this person estimated 12 to 15 after this season. Oh so I guess the contract forced buyout NIL rev share thing had nothing to do with last year and that was just a weird year. Could be, could be. Like people still want to win. People want to win real bad. Take that away from this go guy. Sometimes things just happen. Not everything is the beginning of a trend True. So true and in this case people still really want to win. Yeah Tomorrow we are scheduled to be joined by the mouth of the South not Jimmy Hart Paul Feinbaum

That's right Ari's gone on the show and debated Brad from Macon. We'll talk about that with Paul. We'll talk about the SEC getting 17s in the Sweet 16. We'll talk about how much pressures on Kalen to bore going into year two. Paul's very plugged into that program. I can't wait to ask Paul Finebaum if he thinks that a person can win a debate when one of the parties that's engaged in the debate doesn't give a single

identifiable fact. I'd love to know that. Like it's, I know, I know it was just like, I don't know. Like there's people who think that I lost a debate with somebody when I was presenting information, the other person was presenting like hallmark cards back. And I don't know how that's how that's possible. the other person was presenting like all-mark cards back. And I don't know how that's possible. I just, I don't know if I could lose the debate against somebody who doesn't know how to install a curtain

when there's already a curtain rod installed. All right, go buy some curtains. I love you. We'll talk tomorrow. I will. Bye. Love you too.