Bussin' With The Boys - Greg Olsen Breaks Down Analytics On 2-Point Conversions; Ryan Day & Taylor Lewan Square Off; Josh Pate Reacts To Lane Kiffin & CFP Selection Drama

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

On this football recap, Will Compton and Taylor Lewan link up with NFL legend and FOX analyst Greg Olsen to break down another loaded week across the league. The boys open with the analytics behind the Bears–Eagles two-point decision and why the numbers sparked debate across NFL circles. They move into Panthers–Rams before taking a full lap around the NFC East and asking the big question: can the Cowboys actually win the division? They also dive into the NFC North race, hit the AFC South battles shaping the playoff picture, and close with Miami’s headline storyline — should the Dolphins stay committed to Mike McDaniel?  Plus in our college portion, Taylor breaks down Ohio State’s exorcism of Michigan with Ohio State Head Coach, Ryan Day, the boys recap Lane Kiffin’s bolt from Ole Miss to LSU for $100M, Pate calls Florida’s Jon Sumrall hire a near catastrophic miss if Auburn didn’t land Alex Golesh. The crew then maps out absolute CFP Armageddon—BYU stealing the Big 12 auto-bid, five-loss Duke somehow winning the ACC, Bama beating Georgia and sparking a three-loss runner-up debate that could boot half the SEC while a G5 like Tulane sneaks in. Heisman talk gets spicy (Julian Sayin, Diego Pavia, and Indiana’s zero-pick rocket Fernando Mendoza). With the college football landscape being so chaotic The Boys are here to make sense of it all.   Timestamp Chapters: 0:00 Open 1:30 Analytics In The Bears v Eagles 40:55 Panthers v Rams 44:00 NFC East 53:20 NFC North 58:45 AFC South 1:09:00 Do The Dolphins Keep McDaniels? 1:13:25 College Football Begins 1:14:58 Josh Did Taylor Wrong 1:21:33 Michigan v Ohio State 1:26:43 Should We Be Done With Conference Championship Games? 1:49:08 Lane Kiffin To LSU 2:07:18 Auburn Fumbled John Sumrall 2:13:15 Taylor Apologizes To Coach Day 2:14:50 Big 10 Championship Game 2:17:35 Hiring Matt Patricia 2:20:35 Elevating Brian Hartline 2:22:35 Julian Saying For Heisman 2:26:20 Initial Emotion After Winning 2:39:05 Nebraska v Iowa See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We'll be talking the competition, the standings going on in all the NFL divisions right now because a lot of people, the playoff picture is going to look great. We are set up perfectly for December football. We will get into all of that with Greg. We'll also get into some fun, some great analytics talk. I can't wait to pull up my desk. Get out a pen and pencil or get out of paper and pencil and just take notes from Greg Olson on analytics and next gen stats.

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Fandul, an official sportsbook partner of the NFL and now live in Missouri. Greg, welcome to the show, bro. I've been waiting for this day since your tweet the other day. I'm ready to battle. What was your tweet the other day? So Greg was breaking down the Philly. Let's just keep it easy. He sided with JJ instead of me.

I sided with JJ Y. J.J. Watt got in the comments. Greg was breaking down why you go for two when you're the Philadelphia Eagles, down nine with like three and some change or four minutes left on the clock. Greg was battling. He was out on the front lines, John Snow. Anybody who was ready for war, he was ready to take the analytical war to everybody. the modern day football game that's being played.

Yeah. And JJ chimes in under one of his tweets saying that he completely understands Greg from an analytic standpoint, but from basically like a human psychology, the momentum, an unquantifiable thing in football as players. When you're on the sideline, you don't get the two-point conversion. And then you're just deflated thinking, well, this pretty much isn't going to happen. Versus if you kick the field goal and you're down eight points in your mind, we're down one possession.

We're down one possession. Defense, we get the ball back, three and out. We got to get our offense the ball back. We can go down and tie this football game by getting a two-point conversion. JJ was basically saying that. I go up under JJ. I'm like, JJ, welcome to the war against analytics. And here's a guy that they all love to read that is essentially their Bible.

And it was a meme of, you know, like this male laying on the bed looking kind of, you know, kind of looking gay. You kind of look in suspect. Okay. And it was a guide to anal. and then I dashed it with Lytics, so analytics. And that was, you know, I was just getting in. I was getting in the troll game with Greg and JJ, just kind of sitting back like, oh, Greg sees this.

Because every week he comes on, breaking down a new situation. So great, did you respond to this? No, I went, today is my response. Okay, good. So you let it sit, you let it simmer. I'm sure you got it. I let it simmer. I felt like this was the forum.

Yeah. This was a better forum than Twitter. He argued more with Emmanuel Acho on Twitter. It seems like waiting, waiting for this show to argue. Well, Ocho, he said, he was. He piggybacked on it too and gave his whole take about momentum and feelings and confidence and all the nonsense that we all get thrown down our face for the last 20 years in football, which actually means jack shit.

Hold on now. Easy. Easy. If you're in a game and your defense is playing good or bad, does that, is that, is that, all right. So let's talk about this for a minute. Let's talk about it for a minute. So let's just take that Friday's game because that was the game that obviously,

spurred all of this. Just this sequence of events, you tell me when the momentum was in whose favor, okay? They go on a 12-play 80-yard drive with three and change left. 12-plays 80 yards. For anyone who watched that game, that offense was very hot and cold, up and down. They find their rhythm, and they go on a 12-play 80-yard drive. Who had the momentum? Eagles.

They went for two, and what happened? They did not get it. So who had the momentum? Tell me why the momentum ended. I've been told the defense is reeling. You just had a great drive. The defense is tired. The defense is confused.

The defense is on their heels. All the things that people tell us. Why they fail? Yeah, I get what you're saying. But if they... It's a very simple... Well, what's the simple? What's the non-debatable life?

If you go to 12 play, 80-yard drive... And you're methodical, you're bad, then you have a good. And it's kind of going back and forth a lot. There is a lot of argument to be like, hey, this defense has been on the field for a very long time. Anytime we can get a defense tired, now is your time to strike. So why not go for two in the situation? Now once again, once you don't get the two, now all of the momentum is back. Now it goes back to the base.

Basically, your chance of winning is now, you know, as close to zero as possible. Yeah. Yeah. But if you kick the edge of two, it becomes nine. But you're forgetting the point that the idea was it could be seven. Right. So everyone talks about, oh, my God, you made your team down nine. Nick Siriani didn't look at the clock and say, you know, three minutes, I want to be down nine.

He looked at the clock and said, I want to be down seven. So everyone leaves that part of the equation out. And then all of a sudden we flip it and we go, well, if you were down eight, if you kick the extra point to be down eight, and you do get the ball back because your defense is so motivated, then it's a foregone conclusion that it's a one-score game, even though we just saw a team three minutes ago, try to score eight points in one possession and didn't get it. So when you do it first,

the assumption is you're going to fail and it's going to be nine, but when you do it last, the assumption is you're going to get eight and make it zero. It's just nonsense. Yeah, I understand it's like, but I could be down seven. However, if I were to ask you if there's three and some change, three minutes left on the clock, would you rather be down eight or down nine if you're about to be on defense? But that's not the question.

I'd rather be down seven. The question you have to ask yourself, this was my Twitter messages for the last four days. The question is not would you rather be down nine or eight? The question is, would you rather be down nine with the hope of being down seven, or would you rather be down two with 25 seconds left? Let's just give those two scenarios. you rather be down nine with 320 or down two with 20 seconds left both cases you're kicking off what's better are you saying in this scenario down to they because i waited to kick the they waited to go

two that's what everyone's telling me is the better option and everyone always wants to say oh my god with three minutes would you rather be down eight or nine that's not the question that's apples and oranges yeah but you you have the opportunity to be down nine failed two point with three and a half minutes kicking off or would you rather be down two with under 30 seconds left, if not less, kicking off down two? Which would you rather? So just because I didn't watch this game. No, but what would you rather be? That's the. Yeah, yeah. If you're down two with 30 seconds left versus down nine kicking the ball off with three minutes left, I'd rather be down nine with that's why you go for two first. That is the simplest phrase right there. That's why you do.

it. But hold on. When we were talking about the Colts and the Chiefs game, we are talking about, you know, a field position and win to strike. And basically, you want to end the game in 60 minutes with a win. And if you're in a position, if you're, so my understanding is this, the Eagle score touchdown, they go, they're down nine. And so they kick up PAT, they're down eight. And they go for two to be down seven. Am I following this correctly? Correct. Okay. How much time is on the clock when they have the opportunity? to go for two. 3.20, 310, something like that.

If I'm the coach there, I'm kicking, I'm kicking the PAT. Because your thought process is you have one of the best defenses in the NFL. If you have the ball last, then you worry about going for two later. By going for two and not getting two, you're eventually saying the game is going to be decided right now. And by not getting it, you're losing. But explain to me the difference. So again, but this is the part that I just have a hard time getting people to understand. everyone says, oh, once you didn't get it, the game was over, the final three minutes don't

matter. If you play the next three minutes down eight and you get the ball and you fail the two point play, the same two point play odds, they're less than 50%. So you're going to fail more than you succeed. Right. The game's over either way. Right. The previous three minutes when you were so motivated and felt so optimistic, they met nothing because you ended up failing the two point anyway. Yeah. But the difference is you don't know you're going to fail when you're going for that two point conversion. When you guys play blackjack? Yeah, once in a while. Yeah. I know the answer. When you, when you have a 16 versus a dealer's 10, what do you do? Well, the book says to surrender, but I hit. You hit. Do you, some people stay? Yeah.

And it kind of, as someone who tries to play by the book, you look at them, like, why would you do that? Right. Yeah. Why are they doing it? Well, there's no book. There's two completely different games. Because in a hand of blackjack, it's you put your money down. The cards are the cards. You win and you lose.

Now, I'm talking about the psychology of why do people stay on 16. Oh, because their hope is that there is a six or under under that face card. The hope is to delay the loss, right? They mentally feel like I'm going to stay. in the game longer and but my odds don't improve. They actually go down, but the psychology is I'm not going to bust. I'm going to make the dealer flip his second card over and continue to deal out in the hopes of it just bouncing my way and getting in essence lucky.

It's the exact same thing. We have a human condition where we want to delay. You want to feel safe. of but it's it's insane it doesn't make any sense there's zero motion in cards I think there's a lot I played last night I'm in Vegas right now yeah yeah in you but I'm saying in the cards like in the cars there's nothing those cards are dead like it's all analytics it's all odds it's all you know it's all straightforward but when you got you got the juice of all the players like it could still we we'll never be in a world we'll be able to

take a two-point play that happens early and then compared to if they would have ran that same two-point play at the end of the game. Like, we'll never be able to reenact or have those situations. What do you think is more likely to succeed? I saw the grass, but it's only we're talking like a percentage point or two. But that's all we're trying to do the entire game is gain percentage points. In NFL games, a percentage point here or there throughout the course of 150 plays, that's what every coach is doing. That's why people go for fourth downs.

That's why people go for goal to goes. The entire game of the NFL right now is to gobble up as many little incremental advantages as humanly possible and hopes when they all add up to each other, it tips the scales in your favor. That's what all these close games come down to. That's all we're trying. We're not trying to gobble up 25% win share. You're trying to gobble up little bite-sized pieces and do it multiple times and flip the game into my favor. I don't know. It's just...

But listen, when you sit down with the coach before a game, they don't go, boys, we're playing a hard 57 minutes here. No, you're playing a hard 60 minutes. So if I'm a head coach and I am down by nine points, I can take the PAT, which makes it a one-score game with 3.30 left. It's not a one-score game, though. It is a one-score game. They just tried to score eight points and they fail.

It's a one-possession game. Is that better? It's not a one-possession game. Because now there is. can be. There's drive and motivation involved with your defense saying if we get to go ball back, we could win this last one. And we can't win.

You can maybe tie just so we're clear. Okay. You can win. You can maybe tie. You get the ball back. You score. Then you win the game. But I'm saying if you have the opportunity to keep everybody in the game with time on your side,

how many timeouts at the Eagles have? They had three timeouts. They had three timeouts plus the two minute warning. And there's three 30 left in the clock. versus a bear's defense that, you know, they've been very hot, but from a series to series standpoint, they're hot and they're cold. Our defense, hey, we're going to have you guys stand up. Then you guys are going to have with timeouts.

You'll have a minute 45, maybe with one timeout left, maybe no timeouts, to march down the field with weapons on the perimeter that you haven't utilized correctly, get in the field and score. They just did that. They just went 12. They just went 12 players 80 yards and scored a touchdown. 10 seconds in the game, you're down by two. now you go for it with 10 seconds left and you're deciding the game.

And what happens if they failed? If they failed, it's the same result as what we're talking about right now. But if they don't... Well, no, the difference is you're on-site kicking with 10 seconds versus three and a half minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the difference is you're also down by nine and you're on-site kicking.

And how would you rather... I would rather go... If you had to start a simulation, I just asked, Will, if you had to start a simulation, forget all of it, forget how you got there. I'm telling you, you're kicking off. Right. down nine with three and a half minutes or down two with 10 seconds. And you have to step into that game.

Which scenario are you picking? You're obviously going to take the 3.30. Of course you are. And that's why the scale tips to that decision making. But if we don't need the simulation in both scenarios, you have to assume in both scenarios you're going to fail the two point conversion. I think there is a win to prolonging the decision of the. game, especially if you're playing from behind.

If you go and you take seven. But we know from 30 years of tracking us that it's just not true. But it's, but you're saying it's less than 50% to do two point conversion. What's the percentage to do an onside kick? 14%. But I don't want to do an onside kick. I'm not suggesting onside kick. I'm suggesting that if I get the game to seven, if you succeed on either two point first

or second, there is no onside kick. Yeah. The goal is not to try to introduce the onsite kick. kick. By going for two to go down seven, you kick the ball out of the end zone and you play defense. You're not on-site kicking. The on-side kick is only activated by a failed two-point try. The question is how much time is on the clock when you fail? That's the entire argument. Do you want to be down nine? First case scenario is you fail. Of course, the goal is to not fail, right? That's clear. The argument seems to me is do you go for two?

your second to last drive or your last drive. That's the entire argument. That's okay. But you're saying go for two onside, you're putting time stamps on everything. For me as a coach, based on. No,

I'm not putting time. I'm just saying the only time you kick the onside kick, whether it's after the first or second touchdown, is only upon a failed two point play. Right. The question is, if you wait to the second one, your onside kick,

even the 5% recovery rate, even if you get it, there's 10 seconds left. The game's over. But if you, you just kicked a PAT on that last drive with 3.30 left and you're down by eight. You're giving yourself a chance with the game on the line with 10 seconds left. You have three timeouts and you, whether or not, all it takes is one possession to get you that eight points.

Right. Well, it gives you, okay, if we don't get anything accomplished on this call, I just want you guys to wrap your heads around, the entire internet to wrap their heads around. For a million years, we have been told that eight point games are one. score games and they are fundamentally not. They are one score games 43% of the time. That is the league-wide average this year of a successful two-point try, 43%. So let's say the best team in the league is 48% just for arguments. It's probably high. But let's just say the team, it's below 50, right, for the most part. Your odds of success are worse than your odds of failure.

So let me ask you this. You're the offensive coordinator. You're down eight and I give you the ball with two minutes and ten seconds left. So you can stop the clock one more time with the two minute warning. That's the best case scenario. Philly went out there. Run timeout. Run time out.

Run time out. Put. You got the ball on the plus side of the two minute warning on the minus 35. You're down eight. Tell me how you handle that possession. Do you score fast? Do you score slow? When are you trying to score and how quickly? Talk me through that if you have the ball down eight.

I'm scoring with one second left and then I'm going for two and we're going to get the two. And we're going to go into OT. So because you waited all of a sudden your odds of success go up? Well, it comes down to that last final moment. Everybody like this is where you get it. You're talking about momentum too. You're talking about hands on the knees. Everybody just solely zoomed in and focused in like this is it.

We get this play. we going on T and we're going to take this team to deep water in overtime because we just scored the final 15 points of this game and we got them right where that's how you feel and I'll look at you coach G.O. kick this extra point I'll get you that eight points here in a little bit. Okay so again over the last 25 years over the last 25 years teams that have scored two consecutive touchdowns in the fourth quarter. So I'm not just talking like in the first quarter meaningless. This so-called pressure moment when everyone's so excited and motivation takes over and defenses

are reeling and tired, all the nonsense that we're told. Let's just assume that's the situation we're in. In the last 25 years of a team scoring consecutive fourth quarter touchdowns and then attempting a two-point try. So this exact situation, the odds. the odds of converting that situation go down. So when the defense is at their worst and the defense is reeling and they're tired and I'm motivated

and the sideline is excited and all this stuff that everyone's saying is just powering our victory over 25 years, the rate of success goes down. What if I would have me and you were talking, you're my head coach and I just look at you and say, coach geo i feel you but in the last 25 years has there been a gentleman named will he see with a headset on call and plays and it's like are you and then i'm like hey coach coach geo are you

you trying to quantify me with a metric right now are we going to go and try to win this football game in o t no because if i'm the head coach and i'm doing my job we discussed all these scenarios in team meeting for the last four months and when the second the situation comes up every single guy on the sideline knows exactly what we're going right there's no one sitting there going why are we going for two i don't want to go for two i want to kick i want to kick you want to go for two why are we doing this and no one now if they're doing that the coach should be fired but the best coach is all of this is covered well in advance everyone is very clear on what the strategy is and not on game day in the heat of the moment that's how the best teams run their teams yeah no look i i i understand

everything you're saying. Oh shit, you're quitting? I'm not quitting. Like, I'm still, like, to me, he asks a question. He's like, forget everything else. I want to give you a two-option simulation. For me, I'm just asking myself, do I want to be down nine with three and change left? Or do I want to be down eight with three and change left? Yeah. And the point... But you can't say you want to be down nine without leaving, without the Well, sure. It's like, correct, correct. I would... But everyone leaves that part out. Yeah. Yes. The, okay, down, down. nine with the potential to be down seven or do we kick this extra point and just be down eight

with three and change left me like it's like the data and all the graphs you're posting and there's the success rates and everything else with the uh whether it's third down or get that's just in response to me being told that the defenses all of a sudden we're just going to quit down nine which is absurd right which i allow data to let me know okay will the the momentum thing might not be as real as you were thinking but for me it's like if we're off just by a couple percentage points here It's not like it's end-all-be-all that this is not even a debate, not even an argument. And if we're going through that situation well in advance as a head coach and we end up losing that game, and I have a tweet that comes out and just be like, I try telling Coach G.O.

Just don't be surprised if there's a lot of backlash. Well, that's the bottom line. So let's summarize this and we can move on. the number one preventer of teams making correct decisions that are actually in the favor of their team is 100% fear of the post-game press conference. Yeah. It is a much easier world to defend your point than mine because we've been conditioned for 30 years about one score and emotion and momentum and we've just been beaten over the head with it for 30 years.

had it done to us as players. We're going to stop the run. We're going to run the ball. It's like brainwash, right? It's like, it's a, it's a, it's a poison. It's the way we've been taught for 40 years. It's very hard to shift that to what the top teams are doing, which is managing the game with these factors being decision-making points.

So to stand there at the end of the podium after I failed a two-point play with seven seconds left as opposed to failing the two-point play with three and a half minutes. Even though we know that albeit small improvement, my win percentage and opportunity to win is actually greater doing what Siriani did. The post-game press conference, if he fails with 10 seconds left and they go, man, we gave it our best shot. The message is, our guys really competed hard. We really bought into the end. We strive on fighting. We never gave up. All this arbitrary nonsense and they go, yeah, the players have to be better. The players didn't execute, but coach, you were great.

I'll tell you what, that's a very fascinating angle. I've never thought of it like that. It's the only angle. You think it's not hard for Dan Campbell to stand up there in the press conference when he goes 0 for 3 on 4th down to lose a playoff game? Of course it is. And most coaches are not as strong as Dan Campbell to stand up there and go, it brits my guts out.

I hate it for our players. but if it happened again tomorrow, I would do it again. Because I know in my heart, this is the best way to win. Analytics. You know what just happened? You just got moneyballed. Oh, yeah. Brad Pitt.

I knew I was walking into this dungeon of Greg Olson. I knew he was going to lay it out perfectly for me. Yeah. It's just there's time. It's like when you tell people that crime in their city has gone down and the FBI data comes out and they go, yeah, but my house was robbed last week, so I don't think crime went down. It's like, well, what you experience, your one individual touch point is not representative of reality.

It might be your reality. It might be your, but that's not the game we're playing where that's what's going on here, right? Like, we all put so much value into the ups and the downs. There was a sequence in that Bears Philadelphia game. And again, you guys tell me where the momentum stopped and started. So the Bears punted. And, no, I'm sorry. So the Eagles, so the Eagles went down and scored a touchdown.

They went five plays, 92 yards, and they scored a touchdown. They missed the extra point. Okay. So they had a great drive. They missed the extra point, which no one's even talking about in this decision to go for two, is the guy already missed an extra point to make it 10-9. They then go on defense. they intercept

Caleb Williams they get the ball back so they went touchdown missed extra point defensive takeaway oh my God we've got all the momentum you know what happened

on the next Philadelphia drive three and out they fumbled so why did they lose all the momentum they had all the momentum and they lost it but then they got it back again

and then they lost it because it was never a factor they had good plays bad plays it's a football game we've all been there man, we're rolling, and then a guy jumps off sides. Well, if we had all the momentum, why do you jump off sides?

I don't know. Because it's nothing. It feels comfortable for everybody to explain these phenomena of ups and downs. In momentum means I don't really know what's going on, and it just feels like that's what it is. And it just doesn't impact the game. I'm not saying in the minds of the guys, it doesn't matter. It of course matters.

I would argue it's confidence. But it, the game, why in that four possession sequence, did they have momentum, lose it, have it, lose it, score, missed the field goal, I miss the extra point, take the ball away, fumble it back, then score, then miss the two-point conversion. But I thought they had all the momentum. He's good.

He's good. He's well-spoken. He has notes. Do you have notes? No, we don't have notes. For me, it's just the values and the percentages are. are high enough yet there isn't it so much of a gap to where I do think this is going to be continue to be an argument until this gap gets wider to where your 25 years goes to the last

40 years the percentages are 49 versus 41 and not like you know a couple percentage points can I ask question why do you hate what's the difference if the percentages are low going for two in the second to last drive as opposed to the last drive what what's the big deal the simplest way to put it is I just, and again, it's not my opinion. I just understand that 15 points is not a two possession game and that eight points is not a one possession game. They could be, it's dependent on the success of the two point play, right? Because I got to go eight and seven or seven and eight.

And I have to go eight to get eight. But I know over this season, all of our, the data is at the high side as of coinfully. it. Some years it's a little bit lower, but it's usually between like 40 and 45, maybe as upwards of like 49, 48%. Let's just say it's somewhere in the 40s. That means the likelihood of getting it and I know are less than the opportunity to get it. So if I treat an eight point game as one possession and I let the game go all the way down and I fail, I have no hope. Not that an onside kick is an overly great option. It's just the only option. The only other option, option is to high five and walk off the field. So again, I'm not saying there's this like miraculous

ability to extend the game, but I'd like to at least give myself the chance that the Cowboys had when they were down 15 and they went for two and they did recover the onside kick against Atlanta and they won this exact situation years ago. So like, do people recover onside kicks at a high rate? No, but would you certainly have that in your back pocket with time remaining in the event you fail the two-point conversion? The answer is yes. And I'd rather recover that on-side kick with three minutes than three seconds. That's it. If you continue to operate that a two-point play is a foregone conclusion, Philadelphia just failed. If it was a foregone conclusion, they would have been down by seven. It's not a foregone conclusion that you're going to get it. So this notion of, we're going to go play

defense, we're down by eight, and we're going to go in and we're going to force overtime. What makes you think, I just watched you fail a two-point conversion? So what, three minutes later changes it? I mean, you might get it. But again, we're talking a coin flip. You're going to rest it on literally less than a coin flip. That's it. That's the entire argument that all of us are making.

And no one can give me a reasonable stance. that I would consider. If someone said, hey, actually, Greg, this is why, I'd be like, okay,

I get that. But the only argument is we're going to just pretend we're in this game for three minutes longer. And I would say, if you end up going for two with 10 seconds left,

down eight and you score and you fail, those previous three minutes of hope were just as meaningless as the final three minutes when you failed. Those three minutes of time, whether it's before you inevitably miss the two-point conversion

or after you miss the two-point conversion, they're all meaningless minutes just because you feel optimism is irrelevant. I think there's some, there's some good optimism. Like it's almost like if you missed a two-point early, it's more anger that you feel. Right. Versus if you missed a two-point late,

I feel like it's more sadness. But sadness, you have the ability to keep a team together longer. Yeah. As opposed to anger. Like you miss it early. God, we suck. Why could we not hit this play? And then if you miss it on the last one,

you're like, damn, we were so close. And Greg, by your logic, I look at all of these games. And it's like, Kay, it was meaningless for the Saints to play this weekend against the Dolphins. I mean, there was an outside kick in that game.

They scored 17 points, but Dolphins scored 21. So the sale full 60 minutes is now meaningless. Bucks beat the Cardinals 2017. So the Cardinals game meaningless, I'm confused. Because you're saying that these three minutes, are meaningless because you just prolong the inevitable pain.

But all these teams losing were essentially prolonging their inevitable pain. So if we just, if we go for two early, it turns into why are we doing that, as opposed to doing the same thing late, regardless of the same result. It's, I'm not making, I'm not making the argument that the final, the biggest argument that everyone makes, you guys are making it today is if you fail with three minutes to go after the first touchdown when you're trying to make it seven and then it's a rule it's nine at that moment will said you fight for 60 minutes not 57 you guys are making the argument that the final three minutes of the game become meaningless because of the early failed two point play i'm just suggesting

they're meaningless even if you don't get the two point play at the end of the game so that's just the argument that's being used against this these other scenarios listen for the minnesota vikings the game i called yesterday once seattle went up three nothing the game was over It was mean. They ended up winning 26-0-0. It didn't matter. There was at no point, did it look like they were going to score a point? So again, I'm not sitting here saying that team shouldn't play and teams shouldn't compete.

Of course they should. I'm just making the argument in response to what's been thrown at me. It's like you ended the game with three and a half minutes by failing the two-point play. And I'm like a three-and-a-half minutes that are meaningless. It's still depending on a two-point try. You might as well figure it out sooner than later. Yeah, yeah. That's all.

Okay. You do a good job. Each week I feel like I get to learn something new with you. Because I saw another gentleman. He quote tweeted you like, this is why you are who you are in your job and your seat. I do. I think you do a great job breaking this stuff down because I've always, not always, but kind of been like a pushback against the analytic stuff.

You're anti-analytic. Not fully anti-analytic. Like I get, you know, like going for two and you're down 14 or whatever it is and you're down 10 and you score and it's like, okay, you got to go for two here. I wrap my head around that. Like, going forward on fourth down, I'm beginning to wrap my head around all these scenarios. I'm going forward on fourth down.

I've been a slow burn on the analytics. I've been more of the angry old white that's like, ah, that's not how you do it. Like, I want to play. You got Jalen Carter. You got Zach Vaughn. Like you play defense. Defense of mindset. Yeah, defensive mindset.

Defense is a mindset. But I've, but all to give you the, I'm not debating any of that. Listen, I know you're not debating that. I'm trying to give you a compliment right now. now. And I just want to say, you do a hell of a job. Attitude and all that. It matters. Yes. Yes. But it's not going to make you more or less inclined to, I guess my take is. But, Greg, think of us all on the sideline. Like you kick the extra point, go down eight.

We're all in the same team together. It's like we're staring at each other. It's like, get us the ball back. Like you. Well, if you took the field down deep or down nine. Will, if you took the, I don't believe you, J.J. Watt, the Eagles. These, I just have a hard time believing. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I have a high opinion of you guys. Oh, no. I just have a very hard time believing that you guys kick that extra point down eight

and you take that field with piss coming out of Europe and you're just fucking ripping to go play defense. And all of a sudden, it's nine and you say I quit. No, you're a spot on with that. So I just don't buy that you're playing any less hard. I don't think JJ walk plays any less hard. I don't think you're playing less hard. I don't think the Eagles are competing less.

I think you guys are professional football players. And whether you're down 7, 8, 9, 20, the expectation is you're going to play your ass off. Yes. So looking at your team and the eyes and going, we've got a shot, let's go win one for the Gipper. I think it's just nonsense. I guess it's more of just the optimism and hope that is there

when you're down eight points. Hope is not a strategy. Oh, that was a good way, Greg. That's why, dude, I love having y'all on every week, man. Why did, why when Washington won the toss last night, did they go on defense? So they could have the ball last and go for two? Of course. And they had the perfect play dialed up, bro.

When he motioned from outside and I saw that they weren't in a full cluster, the receivers weren't in a true bunch, but close enough together to where I'm like, I'm looking at the Denver defense. I'm looking at the Denver defense. I'm like, man, a lot of guys are on the same level right now. They run this pick play with the running back to the flat. Like, this is going to be wide. Dude, once the running back takes off, I'm like, oh, God, they got it.

I see old buddy. I think Defonga run into one of his defensive players. They had it, bro. And then Nick Benito just bats the ball down. They had the perfect play. It was wide open. Yes, but they had already made up their mind that they were going to go for two. They wanted to know what they needed.

So the big argument is no different than the argument we just had, you want as much information as early as possible to impact your decision making. And whether that's having the ball second in overtime or knowing when I need an on-side kick or not or knowing how many points I need, how many possessions I need, the entire gist of all of this is to control as many variables as humanly possible. That's the bottom line. And that's why people use the data. that's the end of the clip right there that's a that's a that's a that's a good because i'll

still have questions each and every week when something happens i kind of get a little i love i look forward on lincoln at eight a m because i couldn't wait to talk to you guys but now but now pre-will where i was more anti-analytic is i'm totally right about this it's more anger and then there's going to be a part of me that's like wait till we get great on and he can break this down a little bit more yeah five years ago if you went for two down 15 i mean if you 10 years ago if you went for two down 14 after your first touchdown to make it six, you would have been thrown off a bridge. That was so bizarre to anyone.

What do you mean? You're down seven and seven, and you play for overtime. Why would you ever take it? Now you're going to, now if people don't go for two after the first touchdown to try to make it six, people are like baffled. It takes time. Again, that right there, that's going to take a lot of time for your boy, Willie here. Like I'm thinking, okay, if you're going to go for two,

you could just go for two at the end of the game. When you're sitting there, it's like, are they going to tie it up with the final extra point? Are they going to go for two and try to win? What's more likely to convert a two-point play going one for one or one for two? That's not what you're arguing. Will is just saying, when am I going to go for two? And the answer to Will is, I'm going to go for two.

And we're down 14. We scored touchdown. You're going to see Willie Boy comfortably safely kick the extra point. But I'm asking you, let's say I go, well, my point, that's my whole point on all this. The 14 one is so easy because if I go for two and if I have to get a two point conversion, am I more likely to get a two point conversion going one for one, which is your scenario, or just one for two, which is do it first. If I fail, I'll do it again and tie the game. Am I more likely to go one for two or one for one for two? Yeah,

you're more likely to go one for two. That's a great point, Greg. That is, that that's a point you make because I'm kind of sit with you on that being like you're up well that's why you don't do it at the last one right if if the goals to win the game which it is I'm still doing all of these I'm still like I'm going one for one and my percentage is going to be 100% hell yeah you are I bet like yeah because you fail the first one then the best you could do is tie the game Greg this is an example of uh will being out of the game very long like we will was playing there wasn't this, you know, 40 to 40, no matter what we'd go for on fourth down. That's kind of like the norm now in the NFL.

Like you get in the middle part of the field, you go for it to fourth down. When we were playing, that was take a delay game punt. That was more of the strategy. It's really been in the last three, four years that this go for it and fourth down thing has really changed the game in a lot of ways. I think it was Campbell and Quinn who were kind of like steamheaded that whole entire thing. Yeah, they were the early adopters. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news.

What's the news? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts.

We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. And we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers was...

This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys.

Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. The French Open is one of the... the toughest tests in tennis. And I know firsthand because I competed there myself. I'm Renee Stubbs, and on the Renee Stubbs Tennis podcast, I'm breaking down everything happening at Roland Garris. Every match, every upset, and what it really takes to win on Clay. Jenchian won. I mean, she went down in three to Rabakina, but I'm delighted.

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Yeah. insane. Do they win that game if they don't throw two fourth down touchdown passes? In a game, they ran it 40-something times. But why did they win the game? They didn't win the game because they went 40 for 160. They won the game because they used fourth-down and Bryce Young threw three touchdowns. Yeah, absolutely.

That's great. That's great. That's great. That's great going out of you for 40 times running the ball. Here's why those plays worked better during those touchdowns is you're running the effectively fourth and one they got everybody up there because hey we got dattle in the back field now we're playing a little press we can get behind that that secondary so thank god they ran the ball 40 times for one six thank god thank god and i appreciate you bringing that up because it's all

about gathering as much information as you possibly can to make the right decision right great correct by running the ball effectively they should have just they should have kicked more field goals you hey you got the uh you got the panthers coming out of the south Panther's been playing some good ball, man. That defense, picking off. They play the bucks twice. So they have a buy this week and they got four games left. So they got a tough stretch.

They got Tampa twice post-buye. They've got the Seahawks at home who are a wagon. And I don't remember who their fourth game is. But three of their final four games are real. So, I mean, they control their destiny. I mean, they can get those bucks games. Again, no one gave them a chance against the Rams. You wouldn't think the Seahawks going in there with how well we've seen them play, especially that defense.

But again, no one gave them a shot yesterday against the Rams. And two weeks ago, we just saw the Rams beat the Seahawks. So again, if you can turn the ball over and you can generate explosive plays and to Canalesce's credit, use every single down to pull off an upset, we've seen in the NFL that that works. Right? Like Stafford hadn't thrown a pick in what felt like 10 years, he throws a red zone. pick and then on the next drive he throws a pick six. So like that's what's funny about the game of football is like, yeah, on paper, if they play each other, the Rams probably wins seven to ten.

But you don't play best to seven series in football. You play once. Yeah. And that defense is salty, man, picking off Stafford, who hasn't thrown an interception. I don't know how long. And they did it without arguably their two best players. Trayvon Merritt got suspended because he punched Juan Jennings and the balls after Monday night's game.

And J.C. Horn was out. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, that fourth game for the Panthers is the Saints. Okay. And again, though, you beat the Rams, you go into Green Bay, you beat Green Bay. Like, this team can beat anybody. Right. They've beaten the Cowboys. They have beaten the Cowboys. That was pre-trade. Pre-trade Cowboys.

Still, they've beaten the Cowboys, the Packers, and the Rams. And they've lost to the Saints. That Saints game is what they're. killing him. Yeah. It is just crazy to see that Bryce Young, his storyline, he gets benched, comes back, and now he's playing at a high level where they're going to pay him. They're going to pay him. Break them off.

What do you think, what are you making of the East? Cowboys winning the last two, big games, Eagles, the Chiefs. Philly's dropped with the last two weeks, yeah? I think it's been two. I know we had a long Thanksgiving break. Phillies dropped the last two. We're now like a game and a half all because Calibu, Dallas. has that tie. Like, do you, in your head, is there a world that you're buying and believing that the

Dallas Cowboys can win the NFC East? Absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't bet on it. I still think for all the issues that Philadelphia has, I still think their roster is better. I think they have the pedigree. I think they have the dudes. They have the defense. Obviously, the offense has some problems, but they still have just playmakers that can beat you, even if the scheme, even if the situation is not perfect. At the end of the day, especially in the playoffs, like talent matters, talent wins. So again, if you made me pick one or the other right now,

I'd still probably pick Philadelphia. But for weeks now, I've been saying, if Dallas could just figure out a way to just get middle of the pack on defense. Yeah. I don't know if they're ever going to be a top 10 unit. They're not there yet. they've got a lot of draft picks. They've got some time over the next couple of the next couple seasons to try to improve the defense.

But with pickings and CD and DAC and the healthy offensive line and their ability to score points, especially in the passing game, if that defense can just hold serve and not give up 30, they were averaging 31 giving up 32 at one point in the season. And you say, oh my God, just be middle of the road. Give up 25, right? Like, we're not saying you got to be the Seahaw. and give up 10. But like give up mid to low 20s and we're going to win a lot of games.

That's kind of post-by-week post-trades. That's kind of what they've become. And as you can see, they're a whole different animal when they're not just chasing 30 points every game. Make teams chase them. That's when Dallas has been their best in years past. They've built a defense that can play with a lead. They've built a defense that defends the past because their offense scores so much.

And all of a sudden, their run defense. and all of a sudden the rush attempts and all of that doesn't matter because you're not going to be able to score 30 plus against Dallas when their offense is rolling operating in a very conservative approach. Right. So last year when DAC is out and all hell breaks loose, the defense gets run through. Micah Parsons is no factor. Diggs and bland are both hurt and not productive because they're not defending the passing game and their defense goes to shit. It's all connected to the offense. So if they can just get to baseline, I don't want to play Dallas. Right, and they're getting healthy too on defense. Yeah. With Hooker coming back, you know, this is a couple weeks ago after that trade happened.

The trade looks good, man. Yeah, Quinn and Williams is playing. He's like elevated that defense in the big way. Kenny Clark, Quinn and Williams, you got Logan Wilson that week they brought him over. Him and Kenneth Murray's rotating on every series. There was a linebacker, like when those competitions are happening and the cream is rising to the top, like you just see the communication from the back with the back seven, the communication with the defensive line.

You can tell they're running around hungry. And it's been fun to watch. Dallas has been fun to watch lately since those trades have happened. Well, anytime you have a high-hire offense is insane. Insane. Insane, bro. He just doesn't try and he's just doing, if he gave. I'm convinced you could tell the entire stadium that he's running a slant route on third or fourth down.

And it does not matter. They're going to throw the ball to him and he's going to catch it. Yeah. I 100% agree. He's unbelievable. If someone just said, hey, George, if you give a 100% effort, you'll be the greatest to ever do it. And I believe if he could just take that, if he could just take that advice. Because what's George's thinking about?

It's like lack of effort on some place here and there. He's a bit of a cancer and stealer. That's where they got rid of him. And now it's like he's in a contract year. And everyone's like, yo, this is the dude. My fear is, my biggest fear for the Cowboys is they're going to break him off and he's going to shut it down. because he has, based on his track record, he's a guy that can do that.

Which it can happen, but why can't we just enjoy the moment while we got it? I'm just saying, hey, we're on the titant. There might be an iceberg ahead of us. We just want to pay attention. I was like, fuck it, dude. We're going to have fun in this ballroom.

Yeah, let's keep saying. Throttled down. Throttled down. Yeah. I want to slow down. And I agree with you. I think that's everybody's biggest issue. And again, you start paying multiple receivers.

Dax's already making $60 million. You've got two corners that are at the top. and bland and digs. There's only so much money to go around. Obviously, one of the reasons they didn't re-sign Micah. But I would also say when you talk about George Pickens and you look back at his time in Pittsburgh, at some point we have to start asking, is the drama offensively created in Pittsburgh? Yeah.

Because he's gone. And Aaron Rogers is doing interviews yesterday where the assumption is like, guys aren't coming to meetings, guys are running the wrong routes, guys are not doing what they're told, guys are missing. So like was the chaos offensively in Pittsburgh? Was that Pickens' fault? Or was that just Pittsburgh? Dude, you're not wrong with that assumption at all. Because I feel like for the last couple of years,

it's been like, hey, the marriage between Pittsburgh and Tomlin, although it was so great at one point, it feels like it's getting stale. The relationship needs a little kickup. And seeing the way it's at and how they've kind of produced the last couple of years where they really can't find an answer and their defense, they have $179 million invested in that defense, and they're just not producing the way they should.

It feels to me that, like, we're headed towards, you know, that Black Monday or whatever it is at the end of the year when the Steelers don't make the playoffs, that Tomlin is not the head coach of the Steelers, and he ends up becoming, you know, the Giants. Or if they do make the playoffs by just one game because that seems to be the situation they're in absolutely every year in and year out.

They have the highest paid defense. You got the pieces on defense. Offensively, it's like you go out, you get DK, you got Aaron Rogers like all they've needed is a quarterback and now you're still in the same spot again with and at one point when the Ravens are one in five

and they're still favored to win the division and all the sports books like you have such a multiple game lead over everybody in the division and then they kind of soil it now we're sitting here you're tied with Baltimore Joe Burroughs back slinging the rock around

could the Bengals get back in this conversation and win the north by the end by the end of the year if and when those things happen, whether it's Baltimore or the Bengals, whatever the drama is, we will, I think we'll be at that spot again to where it'll be,

Tomlin's going to be the topic of conversation because the same thing keeps happening year in and year out. And this year, you had a best of a shot as anybody with Aaron Rogers, with that defense, with like a four-game lead on everybody.

And if you look at the defense too, like none of those players are young. Like T.J. Watts has been there for 10 years. Cameron Hayward is the leader of your defense. He's been for 13, 14 years. Like, at some point, there's going to be turnover. And it might be best for both situations for Tomlin to get out. Because it's like, you're going to have a great legacy.

You're going to be one of the best coaches to ever do it at a, you know, a predominant franchise like the Pittsburgh Steelers. But once those players leave, if you can't do it with $179 million invested, what's going to happen then? Yeah, you get a bad losing season. Don't get a bad. Don't get a lot of shit. Who are you guys having on from Ohio State?

Is it Ryan Day? Yeah, Ryan Day. I'm saying what's up. Okay. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm not leaving. That's my guy. Is it really your...

I just bombarded your show, sorry. No, you're good, bro. I got to stay. That's my dude. Is it actually your dude? Oh, yeah, I've known Ryan for a long time now. Okay, well, Ryan's not coming on the show. He is.

Is he? Yeah. Ohio State's on here. Yeah, Ryan Day's coming on the show. He's coming on... Yeah. No one told me Ryan Day's coming on the show. Ryan peeped in.

Am I being punked right now? No, no, you're not getting punked. He had a card up saying, would you want Ryan Day on for 12 minutes before Cade and Pavia come on. Oh, my God. And he goes, give me a thumbs up or down. I just went. Okay. Well, I was actually going to say to you, Greg, if you're actually boys with him, please send him my apologies because I said a lot of main things and I was wrong.

I was wrong. You guys are all wrong. He is the man. And you Michigan guys got to get out of your own fucking way. You know what? Unfortunately, I don't disagree with you. Ryan Day, friend of the show. We got to go out to Ohio State and sit down.

True. True. I mean, all the guy does is win virtually every game he coaches and the Natty. I mean, if that's what you're into in today's day and age, I guess that's fine. Is the goal to beat everyone? Yeah, I guess the goal is to win the national title. I did not know that Ryan Day was coming on the show. I'm actually a little bit nervous right now.

My guys at Ohio State are set up the camera in minutes while you're talking about the Steelers. elevated right now because I had no idea. Yeah. We got to get Ryan Day at a head coaching job in the end. The Grim Reaper comes for everybody. The Grim Reaper comes for everybody. I ain't no doubt. All right.

Hey, when does Ryan Day come on? 1130. So we got some time. Oh. Another thing I want to get into with you, Greg. The NFC North. Dude, the Chicago Bears. Number one seat.

I am weirdly just starting to like them. Not in a way. Everybody's like, Will. But Will, please stay away from the Chicago Bears. We don't want your curses over in Chicago. Nebraska Stucks. Please stay on that side. I just want Bears fans.

I'm not trying to invade and be like, I'm a Chicago Bears fan. I'm just saying from the outside, watching everything that this city, this team has went through all the question marks. I was part of them with Caleb Williams. But to just see that team, the way that they get excited after every game in that locker room, it just, it's like you have FOMO watching it as a former player of like how much fun this team's having. because, again, they're still not bottom of the barrel,

but they have question marks on defense, but they're very opportunistic at the same time. Caleb Williams is he has a lot of inaccuracy issues, but the dude just continues to hang in the pocket and sling it. You see the creativity on offense. You see the belief in Ben Johnson. You see the fun that they're having. And the fact that they're sitting atop of the NFC North right now

with the Detroit Lions, they might not make the playoffs. Like, that's a real conversation that's happening right now with them being seven and five. I'm just, I'm happy for the Bears. I'm excited for that fan base. They've been fun to watch. You said at the beginning of this year, we need these kids in Chicago

and the suburb of Chicago to wear something other than a Mike Dickett jersey. And fortunately, for all those parents out there, next year these kids are going to have their fingernails painted. They're going to be wearing Caleb Williams jerseys. And that's exciting. And just coach Johnson. They've just been, what have you made of the NFC North,

the surges of the Chicago Bears, Packers being a half a game back, like they're sitting there both at the top, Detroit, 7 and 5. Yeah, I mean, the Bears, I think everyone knew when Ben Johnson got that job. He was the bell of the ball, right? He's the coach, no matter what anyone tells you over the last couple hiring cycles, as happy as they were to get whoever they hired, everybody wanted Ben Johnson and then hired

whoever they hired as a secondary third, you know, so on and so forth. He's very picky. He ends up taking the job in Chicago this year. And I think that said a lot about what he viewed the roster, how he viewed Caleb Williams, how he felt they were built going forward. I think the expectation was that he was going to turn it around. We had them in the preseason game. We had their preseason game against Buffalo a million months ago back in August.

And there was a lot of optimism, a lot of hope. But there was also some reality. Like, we got some work to do. We got to turn this thing around. It's not going to happen overnight. I think it's happened even faster than they all, if they were being honest. I think they thought they'd turn it around,

but I don't think they thought they'd turn it around this quickly that they'd be literally sitting at the top of the division on the first day of December. You know, I think we for a while said Vrable's the foregone conclusion for Coach of the Year. If this thing continues to go, the Ben Johnson turnaround, the Vrable turnaround. I mean, there's a lot of really interesting coach of the year candidates. But I mean, it's- Shanahan.

I mean, the job that he's done there keeping that thing aflo, I think when it all comes down to the division, it's crazy that the Lions might not be in the division. It shows the power of replacing courts. year in and year out, which is a whole other conversation about why you hire offensive coordinators to be your head coach because you don't lose Sean McVeigh, you don't lose Kyle Shanahan, you do lose Ben Johnson. Dan Campbell is now taken back over. You know, it's hard to replace coordinators year in and year out. They're dealing with that right now. I do think Green Bay's defense is better. I think Green Bay has the best combination of defense

and quarterback in the division. So I would still take Green Bay right now as who, whoever ends up being the one, two, three, however it shakes out. If they played each other, I'd take Green Bay. I think Jordan loves a top five quarterback this year. I think he's really good. I think as they continue to give the offense more to him, they'll have even better results, kind of like we saw on Thanksgiving. And I think defensively, Jeff Hathley has done an unbelievable job. That defense is really good. So I think that combination, but yeah, I mean, you can't not be impressed with a job that Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams. They're fun to watch. They're exciting. He's great in the locker room.

He's taking his shirt off. They're giving free hot dogs out. Chicago right now is on fire. This is what Chicago people live for. I was there. My last season there, we made a playoff run. We lost in the NFC championship to the Packers. We beat Seattle at home in the snow in the divisional round.

Like there is no greater football city, especially when they're good than Chicago. Yeah. God. We could be looking at, you know, these teams playing for a playoff spot at the end of the year. You got Chicago with Green Bay twice, Cincinnati and San Francisco. then Detroit they play Dallas the Rams Pittsburgh in Minnesota and then the last game of the year they face off and it's so interesting that like in early October or late October

we're kind of sitting there and like all these teams are kind of figuring themselves out and we kind of know who the cream that's rising the top is at this very moment and then a month has gone by and the bears are the one seed the pads are the one seed the jaguires just leapfrogged over the colts yeah south Colts and Jaggs are tied with Jaggs at the tiebreaker And the Houston Texans are one game behind. It is, there's so much relevant football about to take place in the month of December to where it's, dude, it's actually so fucking exciting. Do you see, I'll tell you how I feel, and I'd love to eat your opinion. I feel this skid from the Colts this late in the season is the worst possible situation and they're going to find themselves third place in the AFC South.

It's, it's always with the teams that are gaining traction and momentum as a season goes on, as opposed to super hot. starts because more oftentimes than not like we saw with the Eagles a couple years, you see a really hot start and then that absolute plummet nose dive at the end of the year, maybe limp yourself way in the playoffs and then you're out after the wild card round. I see that happening with the Colts and I actually see the Houston Texans with that defense. I see them winning the South. That Houston Texan's defense is insane. Incredible.

I mean, what they did to Josh Allen and Buffalo a couple weeks ago was, I mean, they sacked him eight times. Yeah. He's not, he's virtually impossible to sack, let alone eight times. He just sack zero times his last game. Yeah.

I mean, he's, I mean, obviously he's incredible. I think that Houston Texans front is incredible. Domeko Ryan's that culture. Their offense scares me. I just,

I don't ever see them. Now, I haven't studied them. I haven't had them this year. So this is all, it's just like a fan watching in secondary game crossover film and whatnot. But like,

I just haven't seen an offense that I go, okay, on any given day, if they got to score high 20s and they got to score 30, like can they do that reason, without strip sacks, without pick sixes, like, can they just play in a neutral game and do enough that the defense doesn't have to hold people to 15, 17? Like, you're going to play some really good offenses. And at some point, you can't just beat everybody because you hold them under 20. So I think that's going to be the case, big picture wise, for huge. Houston. But yeah, I mean, who would have ever thought that the Patriots would be the number one

seed as we sit here in December and the Bears would be in the NFC? I mean, it's just, that's what makes the game so fun. That's what makes the NFL king is unlike the other sports where you could pretty much throw a couple teams into a hat and know those are going to be the teams when the season ends. What's king about football, what's the best part about football is outside of a couple teams that are perennially bad. Virtually everybody has a realistic chance. And, if you're bad one year, the league is set up for you to get better quickly. That is the entire motive of every decision from how they do schedules to how they do draft order to how they do a waiver, you know, the waiver wire pre-trade deadline of inverting the teams. Like it is built

to not sustain winning and is built to not sustain losing. And I think that is what gives all these fan bases the optimism going into each year that I'm alive until I'm not. And that's what makes the game fun. Yeah, hearing you say, this league's not built to sustain winning and not to stay and losing.

We have to take a look at the Tennessee Titans and realize their level of consistency that they have losing as much as they do should be awarded. We should appreciate that because not a lot of teams

can have back-to-back first overall picks. And I think that's something that we need to look at. It's almost hard to do. Right? Right. The league is literally designed to not

have that happen. So the teams, the organizations that find themselves on either side, obviously the high side is the legendary teams and the legendary coaches and quarterbacks and all that. But then on the flip side, you have to look as an organization and say, obviously, there's something flawed about our decision making. We're not hiring the right guys. We're not drafting the right guys, although I do think Cam Ward's good. There's something broken down about our process that no matter how many opportunities, no matter how many fourth place schedules we play, no matter how many high draft picks we get, no matter how many coaches we fire and hire, we are the same every single year, regardless of those moves. There's institutional issues at play that until they get fixed,

the results are not going to change. You can hire whoever you want. Yeah. It's, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially with the quarterback play too in the AFC. It's just, again, week after week, it's like, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, who's going to earn their way into the Super Bowl this year? And right now, where everybody's positioned, it's who's going to make the wallet card? Yeah. I think we're facing the guys you just brought up with,

I think is a really interesting larger conversation around the NFL that people have to start having is you talk about all these quarterbacks that are making 60 million plus. There's a lot of warts on those rosters, right? There's a lot of, you know, you look at Buffalo. they're making magic, but it looks very different, right? Who are the receivers? What's their skill look like?

They're kind of piecing it together. And I think McDermott's a really good coach and you got the best player in the league. And you kind of overcome it, right? That's why you pay Josh Allen whatever it costs because he's going to make up for whatever roster deficiencies that you have. But you start looking around the league, what do the best teams have? You start looking at, right, just take this year, who are the best teams and what's their quarterback situation?

You have Bo-Nex rookie deal. Drake May. Drake May with the Patriot. Bo Nix. Yeah. You have guys like Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield that are making 30 million a year. It's half the market. Right.

It's 50% of the market. Now, Stafford makes a bazillion and obviously he's earning it. And why, what's the difference? Virtually everyone else on the team is on a rookie contract. Right. The line, yeah. If you're going to pay your quarterback a bazillion, you better be an incredible drafter.

And then if you're paying your quarterback nothing, if you draft and sign great free agents because you have all this excess capital, you build great roster. So it's starting to say if you're going to tie up such a huge percentage in your quarterback and make them high level, if you are not incredible drafters of young cheap talent, it's going to be really hard. You're going to be good just because you have a great quarterback,

but are you going to win the Super Bowl? Right. Right. Yeah. God, yeah. You've got a lot of high-priced quarterbacks that are on the outside looking in. Yeah, do you think there's a change there? You're trying to say that some of these quarterbacks might not be on their team next year?

No, no, I mean, like they're on the outside of the playoffs looking in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because of that result, does something happen? Yeah, I just don't know how you get out of some of these contracts. That's true. The dead money cap hits. Again, I haven't studied them all. But, like, I have to imagine some of that guaranteed money gets expedited by a trade or a cut or whatever, and it accelerates forward.

You're going to be carrying dead cap money. I can only imagine how big those numbers are. The Broncos are still paying Russell Wilson right now. Still paying him his dead cat money. Oh, really? From that trade, I believe so. I mean, I definitely need to get fact checks on that. Lingers for a long time because they, I mean, they gave him that new deal and it only lasted one season.

Right, right. And he had multiple years of guaranteed. Yeah. We got a fun December getting lined up. And then it seems like it could be an interesting offseason with restructuring. Like you look at Dallas, like they're going to have to do something with Dax contract. So that way, if you're going to try and pay George Pickens and keep this roster, you know, the trade you made, with Williams, you got Kenny Clark,

like guys that are just going to have to figure out the cap situation because they're what, like 70-something million? Yeah, that's what, like 70-something million. They're about 70 million over the cap right now. And so you have to redo deck, there's 60, you're still 10 under the cap, and you want to resign Quinn and you want to resign

George Pickens. You've got to go get players to make your defense better. So they're in a very unique situation. The good news is the Cowboys have a shitload of money. Yeah. Like they're very, they're very, they're a cash rich franchise as opposed to the Titans or the Bengals. Bangles, we barely talked about them, but Joey B. coming back, beating up on the Ravens, like, are they going to be a team that can maybe sneak themselves in?

Why not? Every year, dude, find this week. Do you really? I got Bengals Buffalo in Buffalo on Sunday. That's going to be an awesome game. Burrow, it's supposed to snow, 20 degrees, snow, borough versus Allen. I mean, I know the record of Cincinnati is not great, but I mean, you get those two guys playing a December game in Buffalo,

and that's amazing television. Yeah, and mathematically, it's an absolutely must-win for the Bengals as far as playoff. Yeah, what is the Bengals? I'll be honest. I haven't dove into it yet. What is the Bengals still have a realistic chance? Yeah, so Baltimore and Pittsburgh are both six and six, and the Bengals are four and eight.

Okay, so there are two games back. Baltimore and the Ravens, they both play each other twice in December. Baltimore's got Cincinnati, New England, and Green Bay outside of playing the Steelers twice. Pittsburgh's got Miami, Detroit, and Cincinnati last game of the year outside of playing the Ravens twice. And then you got Cincinnati who they're sitting at 4 and 8. They got Buffalo. They got Baltimore. They got the Miami Dolphins, Arizona Cardinals, and Cincinnati to –

Pittsburgh to cap off the year. So they do – It feels like Cincinnati's got to win out. They do, but that's the schedule you'd want to see, right? Like, obviously – Tell me who they were again. So Cincinnati's got Buffalo this weekend. Then it's Baltimore.

Then the Miami Dolphins, the Arizona Cardinals, and then the Pittsburgh Steelers. So they have a schedule you want as long as you take care of, you know, you can knock off Buffalo this weekend. And then again, it's like you look at Baltimore outside of them playing each other twice. Baltimore is going to have to play New England and Green Bay. And Pittsburgh is going to have to play Detroit. They also have Miami. But then, again, you end the year with Cincinnati. Miami's gotten better.

Yeah, they had a crazy game against the Saints this week. Yeah, Miami's been playing with some juice ever since they made the move on the GM, right? Right, which is so odd. Like, what did firing the GM? I know. I think we've talked about in the show. I kind of, I'm a fan of that move of doing the GM with the thought process of like, what are you going to fire a head coach in the middle of the year?

Right. If they're probably going to get fired at the end of the year. Then you find a GM and a head coach that are aligned with each other. because how many times do you see a GM get hired? He brings in the head coach. Head coach gets fired. New GM comes in, but then they have,

it's just always a same revolving door of no continuity. It's kind of what you see what the Titans kind of going right now. They're kind of one piece missing. And by the time they get another piece in, that's this guy's guy, he's getting kicked out. And so with the, with the dolphins,

what you do is you get rid of the top dog. You say, hey, we haven't drafted good enough. We're going to get you out of there. Let's find out who the right GM is. bring that guy in and then you're making decisions top down. And so it's more of the foundationally, it's a better structure.

Do you think it's a foregone conclusion that they fire McDaniel? I think three, four weeks ago we were saying that. Now they're a little spicy. So it's like, yeah. If he finishes the year strong and they don't fire him, now they're just back to hiring a GM who doesn't have his coach. And it's the situation you're saying, I completely agree. It's the same thing, coach and quarterback.

Like, how many times do we see a coach is, struggling. He's got the top overall pick. He takes the top overall pick. He gets fired midseason. And they just continue to never have the bears have done it. The Titans have done it. The Jaguars have done it. And it feels like if you draft the first overall quarterback, you're going to get fired in that first year. No, I agree with that. I think this. No, I agree with your point. It would be interesting to see how Miami handles it because if if they finish strong, they don't fire them, it's the situation you laid out. They got it. What is finished strong though? Sorry, I didn't interrupt. I was just going say you got to use the playoffs yeah you got to assume that when they fired the GM that in their mind

McDaniel's going to be next at the end of the year and the way that they were kind of up and down all the things I was coming out with like you know press conferences leadership all those question marks but now you're sitting back and watching this team play with some juice play with some energy win football games play for you know you could say the head coach play for each other all that stuff if you're Miami you're kind of like shit you kind of you kind of don't want it going this way if your plan was to fire McDaniels at the end of the year. So I don't know what the finish strong looks like. What is their record right now?

Do we know? We probably find it pretty quickly. Tricky. Yeah, because they're not going to win the division. The Patriots are going to win the division. Yeah. They're like, what, two games away from walking that up, having that be done. They're five and seven right now.

Yeah, just, I don't know. I can't see. They're not making the playoffs. Like, yeah. I would probably lean on, yeah. Like, if your decision making was fire the GM, knowing that at the end of the year you're going to fire McDaniels, I don't think that plan has changed.

Yeah, you can't let the last couple weeks cloud that. Right, right. If that was your decision. Maybe it wasn't. Yeah, I mean, they're four,

they're five and seven, but they're four and one in their last five. Yeah. And they got the Jets, the Steelers, bangles, Bucks, and Patriots to round out the year.

And didn't the Jets just beat the Falcons? They could win four of those five games. They could win for those five. Then you've gone in a nine and two in their last year. And I'll get one step further. If the Patriots have locked up the one seed, they could win all five of those games because they might not even have to play the starters yeah, yeah. You go nine and one in your last 10 since you fire the GM. Who knows what it looks like.

You go nine and one. I don't care if they don't make the playoffs with 10 wins or not. You go nine and one over your last 10. You're not getting fired. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But it goes back to kind of like our analytics talk where it's all about like you're going to play safe or you're to play aggressive. Like if you are the owner of the Miami Dolphins, are you sitting there and saying, McDaniel is a guy that's going to get a Super Bowl? The answer needs to be a yes or no answer,

black or white. Yeah, I agree. If the answer is no, then the result of the rest of the year should not matter. Oh, no, I agree. I'm not saying it's what I would do. I just, the way we all know the NFL and the way these owners

and are all risk averse, it's just so much easier to stand at the podium and say he finished nine and one. We love the way our teams responded. We love this. It's an easier press conference. And to ignore that people make decisions based on public reaction and based on press conferences is naive because they 100% do. They're humans.

People don't like criticism. People don't like to stand up there and take bullets. And whether it's a coach, an owner, a GM, whatever it is, path of least resistance is very common in the NFL. Yeah. No, good point. We got Ryan Day coming on in two minutes. Greg, you're the man. I know you're going to stick around.

I'm going to go take a potty break for everybody tuned in. Thank you for tuning in. Again, 35% off, bwtb.com, all of our merchandise. We will see you here in a little bit for our college football show. Yep. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news.

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We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes.

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We got rivalry week. We got the college football commissioner, Josh Payton, joining the boys. After all the chaos, chaotic weekend with Lane Kiffin. We'll be talking coaching changes, potential playoff chaos that we were all rooting for. Before we get rolling, number one, it is Cyber Monday. Sale is now up. 35% off our entire store. Last week, it was 30%.

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I want to say this before we start. It is so great after rivalry week, after what happened to my team, after what happened to your team, after what happened to your team, what happened to Jack's team. It's nice to sit here with friends. Will being a friend, JP, your friend, Jack, Garrett, Sherm, Mitch. It's like, it's great to have my friends here and be together in a situation like this where it sucks. It hurts. But we all get to hurt together. That's beautiful.

And Josh is also here as well. Josh is here. Now, Josh. Before we get into what's really important, which is college football, do you want to address what you did this weekend on Saturday morning? Yeah. Do you want to apologize? I'll address it.

Okay. Yeah, I'll address it. So I woke up, you know, like many people do. Every human who's alive today woke up this morning. That's right. And I woke up Saturday morning. And you know when you wake up and your consciousness is just, tugging at you a little bit for those people out here who have consciousness. Mine was tugging at me

on Sunday or Saturday morning. I thought to myself, what's wrong? I haven't done anything. You know, I'm not in debt. I don't owe anyone any money. What's wrong? It was a pick on a game. Get, no one more important than that in rivalry weekend. And I was thinking, what game, what game? And I realized it was Ohio State Michigan. A little closer, Josh. Get it up a little bit more. Do you do shows? Yeah. Just not with sensitive mics. Yeah. So I needed to talk. to someone about it. I talked to my wife about it and she said, you got to actually, she said, I don't care. But then she said, talk to someone else about it. So who else do you go to?

Will Compton. That's right. It's Savannah Pate. Will Compton's right there because you would be there, but I couldn't talk to you for what will be obvious reasons in just a second. I came on the locker room last Wednesday and I ignored all my better judgment. I ignored the model. I said, I'm not picking against Michigan again. It's been four years in a row. I can't do it. But then Saturday morning, you look in the mirror and you're like, what are you doing? Ohio State's going to win this game. So what do I do? I look and I say, we got 15, 20 minutes to kick off. Do I change? And my heart said no, but my head said yes. So I consulted William and I said, I'm going to change. But if I do, I need you to hold me to it.

I can't make this public this late. I'll get drug. And I don't want to make it about me. It needs to be about the kids after all. It's the biggest game of the year. Yeah. And so I told him, I am changing my pick. You can release this at four. And then I put my phone down. But then I pick my phone back up and said there's one more person I got to reach out to and that was you and I didn't necessarily tell you I was changing my pick what I told you is I want to tell you good luck and I love you and you said five words back do you want to read them there thank you love you too and I just don't see why that has to change because of one football game do you want to pick up the timestamps of when those texts were set I don't know I have no

interested in you have no those are semantics that is where I am like okay there's tom foolery about in Josh Pate's head on Saturday morning is I see a text message to Will Compton at, I don't know the exact time because we don't have it up, but around 10.53 a.m. And then you might be spot on it. It's basically, yeah, I look at it quite a bit.

It's basically saying, I can't do this. Ohio State's going to what Michigan's ask, what you were correcting. So I'm changing my pick. I want you to hold this. Now, as your other friend, who is at the top of your list right behind your wife, I would expect you to,

to either not text me or send a text that says, hey, by the way, I know you want Michigan to win, but I really think Ohio's going to win. This is not what I want to do to you, but you're going to see this.

You're going to know this. So here's the information. So the love you text to me is, we're in the movie Gladiator. I'm chained up. I'm about to go out for my last fight. And you give me a hug and you stab me in the back and you tell me, I love you, brother.

And then we go out and fight. Unfortunately, you just murder me. At the end scene of the movie is I get you and then I die. No, you just cut my head off. And that is what you have in the consciousness and everything I have no problem with. It's the text messages and the times in which they took place. You know, there's so much on my face that says I want to push back on this right now. It was pretty accurate.

That's a pretty accurate description of what happened. I'm so glad we can get past that. And just you sitting on this bus saying it's accurate, you don't even have to say sorry. You've already said it with your eyes. Yeah, Gladiator 2. starts today. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Which, bad movie. Anyway, I thought it was okay. I was, I was a little into it. Did you like it?

But I'm an easy crowd. I'm a guy that watches the original and goes, it better meet the sex. I'm, I'm an unhealthy watcher. Yeah, you're dead. It's a great.

Yeah, yeah. So Taylor, what you, what you're basically saying is he handled the tough situation just poorly. I landed the plane, but not without severe turdalen, yeah. I think he did it fine.

Like, if he just texted you and was like, hey, I'm picking Ohio State. Yeah, I'm going to feel some type of weight, but at the end of the day, like, he's just having a discussion with somebody else not hurting my feelings. That's all good. But he said a kick in the can around.

He sent you a text sat on this couch and goes, it's not enough. I got to now text Taylor and tell him that I love him. So that I feel even more comfortable. I feel more safe. Hey, love you too. I am pacing back and forth from my TV holding my eight-year-old. She's asking questions. Hey, what is this?

What does that mean? What are these three dots? Oh, those are timeouts. Hey, what is the yellow line? That's the first down. we have to get to that first down. It's not about getting a touchdown right now. It's about getting a new set of downs.

I look up, I get a text from Josh Spate. I love you. I smile. Thank you. I love you too. It's going to be okay. And I think, I got my trench boy with me. Yeah.

I got my judge. You said, you sent me a text. Let's ride. It's go time. Whatever it was. And I'm like, I got my dogs with me. Knowing we all kind of knew,

even me, there's a piece of me in the back of the head going, you know last year. Like, they're not going to make the same mistake again. But I pushed that away. I had other guys that went to Michigan and text me saying the same thing. I pushed that away just to find out that.

But I don't want to, it doesn't know what this show's about. This entire situation is a great analogy. I wanted to address this. I want, yeah. It's a great analogy for like Lane, Liffin, Ole Miss. Right.

Your old Miss fans. I'm an Ole Miss fan. He's texting me and he's letting him know, hey, good luck. I love just messing with their heartstrings the whole time. I'm Keith Carter. I'm the AD. Hey, I love you.

Yeah, something's been tugging at Lane Kiffin in his conscience. Yeah. Yeah, I can't do this. I can't stay at Ole Miss. I'm going to come to LSU. Yeah. And then I have to find that over the internet.

Yeah. And I come back and he's probably to be like, hey, can I support Michigan in the bowl game? I'm like, you can't coach. You can't be a part of this bowl game. And you're saying you understood. You got it. Yeah. You didn't have to play with my emotions this entire time.

Exactly. Exactly. Like if it was just a better opportunity. Yeah. He took a business decision and made it personal by just sending. Good luck. I love you. Like, I'm just like, what the hell is this?

Knowing full well, if Michigan pulls that game out. I'm texting you, we did it, bro. Yeah. We did it. And you're probably texting one and be like, please. Slip in him a hondo to delete it. And I'm just telling you we did it, man. Exactly.

And I'm sitting here none the wiser, just happy that Michigan won. And you guys had that little secret forever. That for those first two series. Yeah. It was when you guys picked the ball off. I know, dude. I was like, oh my God. I know.

Is this going to happen again? When we got three, that's when I was like, now I'm concerned. Because we picked the ball off. We're like in the low, we're in the red zone, the fringe area. And I'm like, now is it time to have, we have to have a two score lead. We have to have it. Yeah, having six points after that. Yeah.

I mean, if we're going to go into the game, I thought we're going to go Lane Kiffin, but Michigan got outplayed, outcoached, outschemed, outclassed. It was tough. In every sense of the word. And honestly, I said in the video after the game, like, congrats to Ryan Day, Brian Hartline, Matt Patricia. Like, they earned it. They ate it for 365 days, longer than that, 2,191 days.

And once they won, there is no bullshit about it. They're like, hey, in their mind, everything is right in the world again. Yep. And you got to respect it. You got to respect the way they handled it, how we have handled it. And if you're a Michigan fan, it's a great opportunity to look yourself in the mirror and be like, how are we going to be winners next time our winners? How are we going to act?

Yeah. Because there's a piece of me that loves the bullshit, like the flag planting and all that, because it just adds to the storyline of rivalry week. And it shows the highlights and the fighting and all that. I love that. But when someone who's beaten you more times than not since 2000, and they just shake your hand and walk off the field, it's like that that's a tough fucking look.

It says we're going to win with humility. It's like, oh, shit. They just took over. They predict that you will. That's the Ryan Day's playbook was perfect. All the bad things I've said about Ryan Day. Like, I take it back. He's a leader of men.

He's a great coach. He is, he's outstanding. He really is. The part that got me. was Michigan's players protected the M. Oh, I know. And Ohio State folks looked at it like, what are you doing? We're not going to do that anyway.

This isn't what you think it is. And the thing that bothers me is in Columbus last year, when Ohio State players are trying to fight Michigan players over the flag thing, I'm thinking of myself, hey, you had 60 minutes to defend your turf. Like, we technically took over your territory. Now 60 minutes has taken place. We got our ass whipped, and we got 110 guys standing on the 50-R lines.

It's, they have won. Just go home. The game is over. And it sucks, man. I thought, I didn't think we had a winning game plan. I mean, I know Bryce, like, people want to mess with the statling, the kid threw the ball 18 times. And 10 of those throws really came and like, okay, we're down by multiple scores.

It's time to like kind of rip it. And it's like, how are you going to get a kid to get into a groove of a game? And then just be like, all right, now go save us. Yeah. It's a tough situation to be in. Look, Ohio State is the best team in the country. They're the best team in the country. We were talking about all the chaos that could happen in the playoffs and everything else.

I'm just thinking, like, who's going to beat this team? No. The field may be one. Told you, we said on the locker room like a month ago, the whole chaos is going to be the playoff selection. It's going to be the process of getting to the playoff. Because once you get in the playoff, it may not be that chaotic at all.

It may just be who's lining up to be the next victim for them. Yeah. And you said it perfectly on your show last night. Like every top team, after every game, they have more questions. The only thing Ohio State's giving you is answers. Yeah. Over and over and over again.

All they've given is answers. And it sucks that I, my team has to be the last head post on a stake. Like that sucks, but I mean, that team is the best team. Now, if you are Michigan, it's you see the level that Ohio State's put themselves at in this new NIL world. Like, are you going to go match that and go after it the same way they have? That's the question they have to ask themselves. I can't do it for it.

I don't have that kind of money. I can't do it. I got a family to feed myself. I'm over here as a fan hoping and wishing and praying. I'm with you. But yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a whole lot that needs to be said unless, you know, Mitch, if you want to rub it in. in a little bit. I saw your text about your childhood traumas and us reliving those things for you. Hey, that win inspired Mitch to get back on the box, man. Yeah. Long tweet. Talking about,

I saw Jack's responses. That's a lot of words. That's a lot of words. We're talking about driving the cams, the comforter and everything else. I know it had my attention. I'm like, okay, Mitchie boy. I read half of it. And I was just, and it wasn't you. I was just, fuck, I was mad about the situation. No, I mean, like, I had to go through. I have been, I guess you could say, for lack of a better term, bullied out of being a fan, just because I have been a bit casual. But like seeing Ryan Day, like, we win with humility. And then like him shake Sharon's like, hey, we got to get these guys off the field.

We're not going to do any flag planning. Like, that's my head coach. And like, I have been a fan. Like, I had the comforter. I had the, my bedroom was painted like that. I went to two youth camps. Like, I've been a diehard fan, like, since a kid. But like, I just kind of, I don't know if I fell off a little bit.

bit, but like seeing that win, it's like, oh, I'm, I'm fully back. You found your faith again. I did. Yeah, you found your faith again. Yeah. Yeah. Born again, Buckeye. Wow.

Yeah, he's a born again Buckeye, man. I don't really see a team on here that beats Ohio State. Ohio State is the team. It's the team. Like, that's the team. That's the team that beats Ohio State. Yeah, that's the only way that team loses. Can I ask you a question?

Are we, should we be done with conference championships? Like, we have number one and number two, Indiana, versus Ohio State this weekend. And it makes zero cent. If the commission has already said, it's not going to affect their judgment. If they're technically still going to stay one and two, why not sit all your best players and be like, hey, why hurt these guys more when we have three, four more games to play? Yeah, I'll do you another one.

I mean, the Big Ten's the easy one. Look at the SEC. So Alabama's in the playoff right now. If they just don't play Saturday, they're in the playoff. Now, they don't have a first round by. So technically they could play Saturday and get that. That'd be wonderful. However, if they didn't have the game this weekend, that would be thereby.

So what happens to the SEC? Because, like, George is going to be in no matter what. There are folks out there walking the streets this morning who are seriously suggesting to you, if Alabama loses Saturday, they're going to fall out, which I think is insane. But same question for both conferences there. Why have your game Saturday? That's why I think with this new talk about we're going to restructure the playoff or whatnot, if they do it, whatever changes they make, they've either got to crystallize the value of conference

championship games or they got to do away with them. And the latter is not a realistic option because they make way too much money on them. So that goes to my whole theory of why I don't think Bama's falling out no matter what. Because you've got really one of, if not the most powerful conferences in college football with their one seed. I know Bama's ranked behind Georgia, but they are technically the one seed in the SEC. If you tell the most, one of the most powerful conferences in college football, your one seed could miss our 12 team playoff because they played in your conference championship game. The SEC like may burn the whole thing down. They may just take their ball and go home and say, you know, we're going to do our own thing.

You guys have fun. Let us know when you figure it out. And think about this. There's a world where Alabama, SEC championship game participant is not in the playoff, and there are two G5s and two big 12s in the playoff. I just threw up. Many people just threw up listening to that. Yeah, yeah.

People had to pull over in their cars. What if Georgia wins like 31 to 13? I don't care. You don't even think in like kind of a blowout scenario Bama falls out. Oh, no. There is a chance they fall out. I'm telling you I would never drop them out. Because if they're in today, then they're in period.

But yeah, like I keep listening to the folks who really follow this hardcore and the people who have sat in with the committee before. Like they take some of the media folks, they fly them down to Texas, and they have them sit through the mock selection process. And everybody who sat through that thing keeps on putting their predictions out and they have Bama losing it. if they lose to Georgia and maybe dropping out, I don't think those people are all stupid.

They clearly know what they're talking about. So, yeah, there's a chance. I just think it's insane. And if you do it, there are going to be much bigger ramifications for the SEC. Because you notice, like I saw Greg Sankey Saturday night, the commissioner of the SEC, and it made me remember that guy hasn't said a word about this.

No one in the SEC has said a word about it from the league office. They haven't tried to politic. They haven't tried to influence publicly or privately. They haven't said a word to me. like they haven't reached out to try and stoke the fire. I think they're just waiting to see the outcome. And if Bama wins, it's a moot point. If Bama loses that 12 hours between that game and the selection the next day will be,

honestly, it'll be about like the coaching world was over the past few days with LN Kiffin and LSU. Just be total insanity. I have a question. If Bama were to win this weekend, do they earn one of the top four spots? and then they get the buy, and then Georgia would fall to whatever that would be. Yeah, I think that's the way it would work.

That's the other side of the coin. Which is also a crazy thing that you would flip a bubble team. I think the SEC champ is going to have a first round buy, whoever that is. Georgia, obviously, I think Bama would jump up there too. Then Georgia falls to hosting a playoff game. And I think the way it's projected right now, three of the four teams that would host a playoff game are SEC teams. And then it would probably be Oregon or maybe,

I think Texas Tech is going to jump up and take one of the spots, by the way, as the Big 12 champs. So, yeah, like Oregon and three SEC teams hosting against God knows who from the G5 ranks. And they're probably three touchdown favorites. What if Virginia beats Duke? What if Duke beats Virginia? That's what I meant. That's an even more fun one. Because, yeah, Virginia is sitting at the 11th seed right now.

They lose to Duke, who's nowhere to be found on this chart. What then? It's, I want to, I want to remind people. people. We talked about the ACC doomsday scenario on the locker room a month ago. And then Duke lost to Virginia, ironically. And we kind of thought, okay, doomsday scenario off the table. The ACC is so bad, it lost its way back into the doomsday scenario. The doomsday scenario is, and this is going to sound fake, but it's not. Duke is seven and five playing for a conference championship because many of their losses are out of conference losses. Duke is a two and a half point

dog against Virginia. If they beat Virginia, Duke, the best week, we counted it last night, Duke is not in the top 40 of the AP right now. And that's as far as you can count. You can't even go past 40. They're not even receiving votes. If Duke wins, they won't be close to one of the five highest ranked conference champs. So they won't get an automatic bid. Those auto bids would go to James Madison and whoever wins the American Athletic Conference and then the rest of the Power Four league champs. And so the question would become for the committee on selection Sunday, are we going to put Miami in the playoff basically? Because that would be the ACC's only shot at getting a team in the playoff. And if they say no to Miami like they have been doing, you're looking at the ACC being

shut out entirely, which again, we floated on the locker room a month ago. I saw the comment section. They thought we were idiots. They thought we weren't reading the rules correctly. No, we were reading the rules correctly. It's just a scenario no one ever thought would happen has already happened in the second year of the 12-team playoff. That's the world you live in. That's the world you woke up in this morning. Virginia loses to Duke. What is North Texas's record?

Why are they even... They're 11 and 1. Yeah, North Texas plays... I've already had my stance on the G5s. You need to be undefeated. Yeah, well... Have to be. Look, here...

And their coach just left. So now we're in a situation that we don't need multiple G-5s, but we need a G-5 to take out the ACC. like if Duke wins, that will obviously be the domino effect. But we kind of need the G5 a little bit right now. If you want to chaos. Because no matter what, we're accepting, we have to accept the rules of the game,

which is these top five ranked conference champions, they get in. Yeah. Look, here's the other side of it, though. If Virginia beats Duke, it still just means a G5 team and Virginia are going to be in. And those just total blowout city against the five and the six seed, in their building in round one. Both of those games are going to be between 14 and 21 point spreads. It will be SMU Penn State last year. Like, it'll be that all over again. And you just know you're mailing it in. You're trying to stay healthy. And it's going to be a really boring watch. But what about

the spirit of college football? I'm all for it. That's why I tune in every Saturday in the fall. That is great. But you said the spirit of college football, right? And the spirit of college football sometimes gets misconstrued to where every single team in the 136 field of FBS is playing the same level of football. Everyone knows they're not. Both of you have actually gone on record as saying, yeah, there should probably be a G5 playoff. I've beat that drum for years, but you come to a total impasse because they just push

back and say, no, we don't want our own playoff. We want the right to earn our way to get our head beat in. Like they would rather have that world. Yeah. If you had, so as it stands right now, Texas is going to play Oregon at Oregon. Or North Texas or Tulane, one of the other. So one of those teams are, if your Oregon and your schedule comes out and you have them in one of your first four games, you're not looking at that going, oh, shit, we got to win this one.

And now we sit here in the playoff and the most important games of the year, your first game is against Tulane or North Texas. Yeah. For the spirit of college football, yeah. Both coaches are gone. Yeah, G's over here saying both coaches are gone. Which, why not Vandy? who's 10 and 2 or even Texas it's 9 and 3 that's what it should be it's that's what it should be absolutely but is vandy out i think it looks like vandy's out i think it's crazy they dropped in the

eight people they're dropped in the eight people after beating tennessee but look it's another no-win okay because when you're arguing vandy you're not arguing vandy you're arguing a fifth sCC team that's all the public years yeah and they're going to say well who is vandy beaten and then you say dude they just beat tennessee on the road well tennessee didn't even have a win against anyone in conference with a winning record. It's like if you really want to go down that rabbit hole, I could pick apart every resume up there this side of Ohio State and Indiana. I could easily do that. It's very, very selective enforcement of criteria to pick apart someone's resume. Bottom line is, if we sat on this bus in July and anyone said,

rubbed the magic eight ball this morning, I know for a fact Vandy's going 10 and 2, they're going to end the season red hot, they're going to drop 45 in Neeland Stadium, they're going to run for over 300 against Tennessee. They're going to have a bona fide Heisman trophy candidate quarterback. Like Diego Pobby is not going to get hurt. He's going to go the whole wire to wire season. You're asking what seed are they going to be? Yeah. You're going to ask, are they going to get a first round by? Are they going to Atlanta? Are they going to

play for the conference title? And instead, it's yeah, sorry, we're going to drop you a spot in the AP. Bye. I bet it makes no sense to me. You have other Jack's over here, golf clapping in the corner. That's pain. That's pain coming out.

Yeah. The total chaos scenario we could be looking at here. Georgia wins big. BYU beats Texas Tech and Duke wins. Okay. I can address those one at a time. Good luck. BYU beats Texas Tech they're both in.

Yeah. BYU is the conference champ. Texas Tech's not going to drop out. All right. Duke wins. That means two G5 teams are going in. So Duke wouldn't be in. So at that point already, just with those two parameters, you have two G5s and two Big 12 teams.

So a third of your playoff is going to be made up of G5 or Big 12. Are you going to drop Alabama out? If they get blown out, like I'm not independent of what I think should happen. I think the committee would drop them out. At which point you would have this whole sidebar of chaos with the SEC, and they would have a legit right. Georgia would be in. That's just going to be a crazy. I mean, you would, you would really get around to even asking is Notre Dame in. Because you got to make room for all these teams. Right. And by the way, my opinion is Notre Dame is not nearly as solidly just in the playoff as people assume they are because you don't know how many teams you've got to make room for. So I dropped Notre Dame out before I dropped Alabama out in that scenario because one of them played for a conference title and one of them didn't and I'm not going to punish them. But then the other part of that is, So let's just look at tomorrow night. We're recording this on Monday.

Tuesday night, the rankings come out. We assume Notre Dame's probably still going to be ranked ahead of Miami. But Miami's got another data point now. They went and smoked pit, worse than Notre Dame did on the road. And we're going to have to find out, does the committee look at that and still say, yeah, we don't care. We just think Notre Dame's better. So we know you guys played head to head. And we know that Miami's beaten several comparable opponents worse than Notre Dame did.

But we don't care about that because our eyeball. tell us Notre Dame is better, which I agree with, by the way. I just think it's irrelevant because you should have set parameters that actually matter and they are enforced. So we got to find out where Miami and Notre Dame are going to be tomorrow night so that we can project who would potentially be left out. And then the, you want a real chaos scenario. Old Miss is sitting there as the projected seven seed right now. Yes. Yeah. They lost the whole staff. Yeah, coaching staff leaves. and the committee has it in their protocol to redefine how good a team is

if you've lost a player like Jordan Travis, 2002, undefeated Florida State. Or if you lose coaches, Ole Miss this year. So there is this world where the committee looks at Ole Miss and says, sorry, guys.

That's chaos. And also to domino effect of that chaos too, based on the rules of conference champion winners and everything else. It's like, you know, the coaches leaving at Tulane and North Texas, they'll be in there in the playoff without their head coach. Yep. Just due to the structure.

The difference there is if Tulane wins the American this Saturday, they're a conference champ. There's this designation on them. It doesn't matter if the committee thinks they're the worst team in the country. They've got to put them in if they're one of the five highest ranked conference champs. With Ole Miss, they're just an at-large team. So it's totally up to the committee whether they get put in. Just like it's the same with Notre Dame. It's the same with Oklahoma.

it would be the same with Oregon with Texas A&M. They're at-larges. So the committee's got to give you a spot. You didn't technically earn it by this designation of being a conference champ. It's messy. It's really messy. Is this fixed or does it hurt more if you expand the playoff? Which I know you've been a guy that is totally against.

But then you get Vandy in. Ole Miss stays. These G5 teams, I don't know what the hell they even deal with them. Virginia's in. Let me tell you my theory. It was the same when it was a 14-playoff. I've never thought that just because, because people are mad, it means something's wrong.

I just think it means you have something really valuable, and there aren't a whole lot of them, and a bunch of people want them, a bunch of flawed teams, so no team's perfect up here. So we're looking at varying degrees of flawed resumes, and we're trying to find the 12 least flawed, although you could argue that's not really the case

with the whole G5 thing, but no, I don't think you should ever expand it. You can't expand the playoff enough to ever stop conversation and ever stop anger. and ever stop hurt feelings. It would be the exact same. Like people always say this, but they're right. You would have to expand the thing to 136 teams before you fully rid yourself of people

being upset that they got left out. So you either expand it to the point where there are still some upset people and hurt feelings, but it's really, really must-see stuff late November, early December, or you expand it to the point where not only does everyone who deserves to get in, get in, but we also probably throw in a few that don't deserve to get in. Like what puts more value, what puts more premium on regular season games? Those who deserve to get in, get in.

And maybe if one or two have to get left out, that just means the room's really packed. Like no one stands in line to get into a building where there's room for everyone. You stand in line because it's pretty exclusive and it means something to get in there. Do you think we have this issue if we were back in time and it's a 14 playoff?

You always had the issue. It's just you wouldn't be arguing about 12, 13, 14, because you would know, man, they were way on the outside. Right. Your logic there is what I always think about when I'm getting upset. Like I'll get upset inevitably about someone getting left out of this thing. But I always try and tell myself, dude, just think back to the four team era. You're arguing about teams right now that would have been way, way, way outside the four team field. And even back then, we used to say, dude, there aren't four teams that can win a title this year.

Just like this year, there probably aren't six, seven, eight teams that are going to be able to win a title. Yeah. with how Ohio State looks. So we're really arguing semantics, and you get sucked into it. I feel good about Vandy. I love what they've done. I think it would be insane if Bama got left out

because they're in the SEC championship game. You're crazy if you punish Ole Miss because they lost their coaching staff, which those players have no control over. Do I think any of them are going to win a national title? Probably not. And if that's the whole purpose of this thing, I know there are dual compartments.

I understand two different conversations. Yeah, this is a, this is why college football is the best it's going to be a mess man yeah there's no way around it i love the chaos man i i i it's like i just want the 12 best like we're we're sitting here waiting on some of these games to matter and a couple of the championship games don't even matter this weekend so you want to see how that's all going to play out and where the this scenario where you got a couple big 12 teams in couple g5 teams in do you leave out miami do you leave out nonderdame it's like they Miami, Notre Dame are very strongly

one of the 12 best teams in college football. Yeah. Yeah, but say it was Vanderbilt. Yeah, same with Vanderbilt. You got this Texas noise being louder than ever now. Let me say this about... And sometimes it weirdly makes sense. Yeah, no, they do a great job of like spinning it on you.

The semantics are very good. Let me say this about Miami. Miami has put themselves in this position. Okay, so you can't be losing to Louisville and SMU. You can lose one of them, you can't lose both. So I'm not trying to absolve them of that. It's 100% their fault. They're even in this position.

But like I said, we got to apply that logic evenly. So Notre Dame lost a couple of games, including one at home to A&M off a buy in desperation mode. Don't be losing that game. So like everyone has put themselves in these positions. Bama, minus three turnovers against Oklahoma. That's why you're in this position. So if we remove that sentiment from the equation,

I'm not picking Miami to win a national title, even if they get in the playoff. But I will say, if you were to ask Georgia or Ohio State or Indiana's coaching staff, the one group of personnel that would concern them the most are the defensive guys that Miami has. Because they probably have the two best ends in college football right now, extremely good, like long, good future Sunday athletes that could give you problems. They're probably not going to win four games to go win at all, but they, in a one-off scenario, could give you way more problems

than probably some of these other teams that are going to get in. Yeah. Yeah, Chris Ball talking about it's like Jurassic Park every day of practice with those guys. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. Yeah. This whole G5 thing, I don't get it.

I don't understand it. I don't know why they would be allowed to be in just because they won their conference championship. It's like what the rules and stuff. I've been corrected the rules several times the last few weeks. I'll tell you what I think the change is going to be. I think the change that they could make right now that would greatly absolve this is keep all the rules as they are, but make the rule where your five highest ranked conference

champs all have to be ranked at a certain level. Like they all have to be top 15. So that if Duke wins Saturday or North Texas wins or JMU wins, they're a conference champ. if they're not in the top 15 at least, then we're just going to override it. And you're not getting in. It comes in that large. Yeah, it just becomes in that large spot.

No, I like that a lot. Because if you did that, let's say Duke wins Saturday, you're probably changing three spots. Or let's just say the G5 gets to keep one spot. So you're going to have one G5 in. But you would free up two other spots that right now are going to be held by G5

and whoever else makes that. So, or at least one other spot. So, yeah, I think they would. will move pretty immediately. They can't rid the playoff of G5 because it's illegal. So they can't do that. What they can do is keep the G5 with one spot and make sure in the future the G5 is not getting more than one spot because everyone knows it's a farce.

Right. If there's two spots open, who are you, Josh Pate giving the nod to? At large's? Yeah. If we said, hey, the G5 that doesn't exist anymore, Duke beats Virginia. So ACC is kind of out. Probably Miami and Vanderbilt would be the two. But then Texas would come in and say,

if we're even in that conversation, we belong in over Vandy because we beat them. Right. So I'd be okay with that. That's what's crazy too. Texas three lost, but they did beat Vanderbilt. Yep.

Three top 10 teams, right? Yeah, they beat A&M and OU as well. Sure did. Took care of OU. Took care, OU. And OU to me is one of the more unstable teams. in this whole bracket. Like, their defense is really good,

but they don't really do a whole lot in offense. But their schedule against anybody else, like they've taken care of business they needed to, to where they're a two lost team, but it's like they... Yeah.

Yep. Like, they're in. What do you do if BYU loses by a game-winning field goal against Texas Tech? You got to see where they're ranked tomorrow night. If they're not in the top 10,

they're not going to be in. So they got to be in the top 10. It's the same thing with Bama. Only I think BYU is even more vulnerable to get in bond. because they're in an inferior conference. Absolutely. I guess my argument is like for BYU is like when you're looking at all these,

all this chaos, all this semantics, BYU would have only lost their only team that they've lost to is Texas Tech. Yeah. And if they're losing on a game winning field goal in the Big 12 championship, and that one team who beat them, yes, they have two losses, but they've only lost to one team, that one team who beat them, that's what gets them out. Whereas if the game winning field goal for Texas Tech happens and say,

Bama loses and there are a three lost team, but you can't keep Alabama out, but you bump out BYU. Like, again, I'm here for the ride. I'm going to have popcorn sitting there. I love all the chaos. I love rooting for all these teams in a weird way, but also shitting on teams in a weird way.

I love all the entertainment. You know, the other thing is with the SEC, is I think it's a low-key, really good thing for Bama that Georgia got in the SEC title game. Because even if you lose to them, you get to make the argument. We went into their building and beat them earlier. in the year. So you're telling us we're getting bumped out because we couldn't beat Georgia. No,

we already did. And we beat them in their building early in the year. And then we got penalized because we earned the right to play them again. And we couldn't beat them a second time around. Like, I don't need to make the talking points for the SEC because they're pretty obvious in that scenario. But with Brigham Young, just watch the show tomorrow night. And if they're behind Alabama already, which I think they will be, if you get that apples to apples comparison, and they'll have no leverage over Alabama. Yeah. Yeah, they won't.

I don't think they'll be in. Yeah. Shall it be fun. Should we dive into some, some Lane Kiffin? Ooh, buddy. Some Lane Kiffin. Did something happen?

Buddy. Where do we stand on this whole thing? There's a piece that feels bad for the players. Yeah. I understand why Keith Carter, I completely understand why Keith Carter won't let Lane coach. That, like, makes too much sense. But the same time it's like,

but these kids probably want a real shot at going after. a title. So they would probably lean towards hey, we want Lane to coach us, even though he's going to poach us. All right. Can you read this right quick? Can we just bat this down right quick? So read that for me. Okay. We got some tier talk right here from Washington State, the Washington State. Hard to complain

about a kid's loyalty in the transfer portal when the coaches they look up to are even worse. All right. There is a lot of truth on the surface to this because coaches are looking around constantly. I mean, coaches are demanding loyalty and yet they jump at the first opportunity they get. That part

is accurate. A lot of people have been saying the players are, you know, like I was dealing with this this morning on another show, someone said, man, the players don't need to open their mouths on this. They're a little hypocritical because the players are always moving around. So how can those players at Ole Miss theoretically complain about Lane Kiffin leaving? Well, the players don't leave in the middle of the season. The players don't get to the playoff and then say, I'm out. And so this is a little bit apples to oranges on that front. All right, so there are two sides to that question that he just asked. But then the follow-up to that is, even if the players were able to leave in the middle of the season, or the players are able to leave and go as many places

as they don't want to right now. It's just like Lane Kiffin having to take this job right now. It's just like coaching searches having to happen in the middle of the season. It all gets tied back to the same thing, that you have no discernible structure in the sport. So the players didn't write the rules. Lane Kiffin, the AD at Ole Miss, the AD at LSU, they didn't write the rules. make the calendar. So you don't have to carry water for these people. Lane could have handle this a whole lot better. But it's not running interference for any one person to generically say, do, how about we fix the calendar here to where this doesn't have to happen? Like I highly doubt Lane Kiffin woke up one morning and said, you know what I want in the middle of this playoff run,

this historic season at Ole Miss? I'd love to leave in the middle of it and take a new job. Right. I doubt that happened. Yeah, I don't, I think, I think we're just, The biggest issue is the calendar. That's the biggest problem that we have going on. But people are aware of that now. Yeah, people are aware of it. Finally. Yeah, it's like on the macro it is like it's the coaching calendar.

Like Lane was put in a very tough spot. And guys like us, it's like you can sit here and be torn. I know for me personally it's like you're torn on how you feel because now as a fan as what we do, the entertainment aspect, the TV series that goes on with Lane Kiffin. You love diving in and all that. I think it's great for college football. But the other side, having been a player, I'm sitting there thinking like, man, if Pellini or something, this would have happened in the middle of my senior year,

or not like thinking the guys that we had and it happens during our senior year, during our run, we're going to the playoff, we're sitting there at 11 and 1. I would be gutted. Right. I would be gutted as a player. Like think of, what's the quarterback's name, Childress? Childer's? Trinidad.

Trinidad. Yeah, Trinidad. It's like him knowing his offensive staff is gone. in the middle of what Ole Miss has done this year, all those offensive players, because really it's the offensive side that's been gutted. After being a D2Cat comes and transfers, was a backup, and then takes over and keeps them on the historic road.

It's all short, it's all short-term vision for those guys right now that are trying to finish up a season that they started, that they earned, been in all these conversations. So that's where I sit there and get torn, because it's like, I hate it for those players. I hate it for the players, because I'm just thinking of that situation, had it been with myself at Nebraska,

and you're just like, it sucks that it has to be that way. But if you pull yourself all the way out of it and look at it from 30,000 feet, it's all the calendar. Like they're putting these tough spots. But then you zoom in, you want to get the popcorn ready for this Gossip Girl series with Lane Giffin. He did handle a tough situation very poorly. And now I see why Old Miss fans are pissed. It's like, I'm excited for him to go to LSU because I think he's going to be good at LSU.

Just all the drama. I love all the drama. I see every side. It sucks. He's at LSU now. I'm not disagreeing, but what did Lane Kiffin do that handled this poorly? Other than the calendar just made him make a decision now. Just play with the heartstrings of everybody.

I think it was the consistent drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. Is that not just Lane in general, though? That is him in general. It is, but that doesn't justify how everybody else should subjectively look at him. It's like, oh, that's Lane. It's like, no, bro. Like, it's the middle of the night, and he's dropping a tweet through his dog's Twitter account of Ole in Georgia and being like, I just want to know

they're going to allow dogs here. And this is in the middle when, when Marty Smith is dying, he's getting weaker and older, just wanting to know if there's a decision going to be made because they're all, everybody's sitting in that house trying to figure everything out,

and then a dog tweet goes out. That was a hostage situation over there. A hostage situation. Marty Smith survived this. He didn't cover it. He survived this. But you know what you just said? You just said a point,

and then another point and then another point, and you offered like 37 perspectives. The crazy thing about this is, Have you heard anyone offer another slant on this that you've heard and said, man, I totally disagree with that. I've agreed with what everyone has said because there's so many different angles on it. I'll give you one more. Be an Ole Miss fan.

Be an Ole Miss donor right now. But rewind six years. Lane Kiffin is down in Boca. He is the head coach at FAU. He is toxic. He is radioactive. Nick Saban is a few years removed from firing him the week of a national championship game to get him out of his building.

No one will touch him. and he's just dying for a job. He's dying for a shot. And Ole Miss is the one major program in the SEC that's willing to give him a shot when no one would touch him. Not only that, he comes there, he starts to win. He tries to get out once or twice

and teams still won't touch him. And then he kind of toys with Auburn, but he reverses course of the 11th hour. But finally, you get to the point six years later where we've got a shot. Both of us, like we've paid you, you've returned it to us in kind, but we got a shot to do something historic

and we gave you your opportunity LSU would never touch you. They laughed at us for hiring you. So did Florida. And now they waited and you rehabilitated your image on our dime and you're telling us that when we finally got here, we're getting the payoff

finally for giving you your shot. We gave you all this money. We said yes to everything. We let your dog have his own a Twitter account. Like we did everything you wanted us to. You're just buy? You're just you're going to do an interview with Marty Smith on a tarmac. Same place.

You got fired at USC. You're going to interview on a tarmac and you're out of here. And who could disagree with that? So all the points of view I've heard I agree with. I haven't heard anyone say anything where I'm like, eh, I don't think that's true. I don't think that's legit. If you're a donor for Ole Miss and you are the AD for Ole Miss,

and we could reverse six years ago, however how long it's been. And they would tell you, hey, Lane Kiffin, he's going to go 55 and 19 for you. He's got the most historic season in Ole Miss. history, but then he's going to burn the shit out of you and he's going to leave. Would the AD and those boosters, would they sign up for that? I think if they knew this was how the program was going to be left, I think probably they would still go on the ride. Right.

They've made a lot of money there. They have enhanced the image of Ole Miss football as well. You look at Ole Miss. You don't look at them as like a stepping stone place anymore, even though Lane Kiven just showed them that they're the most stepping stone place of all time. But if you go back in time and you look at every one of them and said, going to have these next six years this is how it's going to go for you you're going to be in the playoff you're going to have the best season ever in old miss history but after that the head coach

right before the playoff he's going to fuck you guys they'd probably all sit there for a second take a deep breath like you are right now and go bring it yeah you know what we'll take it because where old miss was six years ago was it was a shit show yeah it was the in the conversations with the kentuckies in the mississippi states in the vanderbilt's like they're in that tier and now you're in an upper tier conference or upper tier program. Yeah. So yeah, any way you look at it,

you kind of sit there and nod your head and go, yeah, I see that. Because when you're talking about being a player and I'm thinking about if I'm a senior and I've given my entire life to this program and that's how it's left me, you almost makes you want to cry because you're like,

holy shit, because you imagine how those seniors feel. And they're probably in the moment right now. They're like, hey, fuck them. We don't need them. We'll go win this thing. They're going to have the Cinderella story

that everyone's looking for. And the reality is probably not. So they're like kind of massive. asking that pain only to get like six months from now to be like he really did just leave us didn't he after he told us all these things yeah do you think he handled it well I think because not to mention no no everything I didn't know even the the documentary had this year on it's like that was like three months ago his image of being where your feet are enjoying the moment it's not about money the yoga and the prayer and all where I need to be you know just rip it out and then you it's like you know I had conversations with God, my family. And this is where, this is where, because even

Marty asked him, what is, what is Ellis you offer that Ole Miss doesn't happen? He's just like, I don't know. I don't know. I was praying on it and made a decision with my family. Maybe it'll work out. Maybe it doesn't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's got to prove it right. Yeah. I didn't know about the dog tweet.

I didn't know about that. I think taking away like the trolling on Twitter, which it's hard to take that away, but just the position that Lane has put in, I can have empathy for the thought process of like no way you handle this correctly because if you go if you stay at old miss you're here at old miss but you just jog along lSU oberd for a little bit in florida up until last week and now they're way behind the eight ball of who their coach is going to be who uh their

recruiting class transfer portal the whole thing so you've kind of fucked three programs then okay but let me hit you with this is john somerall not the exact same situation john summerall head coach at toulane all year they've been on a magical run this year. They are one win away from punching their ticket to the playoff. John Summerall has been interviewed by several programs over the last month for their head coaching vacancy. John Summerall just took the Florida job. John Summerall handled it professionally the entire way. He didn't talk about anything other than Tulane football the entire way. He was communicative with his AD the entire way, which Lane was too. So I'm not knocking him for that. But John Summerall is in a conference

championship this Saturday and is also being introduced as the Florida head coach. today and no one's hating on John Sumerall. So is it really just, oh, everyone hates Lane Kiffin because, you know, he's the whale in the room. To a certain extent, yes, Lane's a much bigger name than John Sumerall, but it's also, I think people have respect for the way John handled the process a whole lot more than the way Lane handled the process. And so like I got a bunch of LSU buddies. They're just saying, boy, it's really hypocritical. Everyone's hating on our guy. What about Sumral? What about Sumerall? I just think he handled the whole process a whole lot differently. I think, so you

mentioned it not being the whale in the room. Summerall was not the wheel in the room. Some Romer was a guy if we don't get Lane, then we get Summerall. And so it's much easier for Summerall to sit in the position he is. And once again, I'm not taking aside. I'm just arguing the point. For Summerall to sit there and be like, I'm about too laying. Because at

this point, all he is is about too lane. People are kind of maybe calling him and being like, hey, if this doesn't happen, you're our guy. And with that information, if you're Summerall, like, there's no other other than, I just got to keep on. I just got to keep He 100% had the Auburn job. Did he? What happened?

What happened with Auburn? Dude, Auburn, let me tell you something. That's a whole other show. Auburn almost fantastically screwed themselves. Auburn had John Summerall done. As late as last week, they had John Summerall done, and they messed around. I was so confident that Auburn had finally handed a coaching search the right way. And they had.

And then they got to the finish line, and they just tripped themselves up, you know, because they can't help it. And then John Summerall says, no. You're not going to dictate terms to me about. who's going to be on my staff. And if they're going to be on my staff, I got to look him in the eye. I got to make sure they're right for me. So he said, peace, I'm out.

And he could say that because he knew he was going to get the Florida job. But my point to you was, so Auburn pulled the nose up at the 11th hour. They got Alex Golish. He's good. They almost crashed entirely. We could do a whole show on that today. But with John, John did know he had head coaching jobs. He knew at the very least, I'm going to Auburn.

And that's going to be a major head coaching job in the SEC. Florida is interested in me. could have taken Arkansas in a heartbeat, could have taken Virginia Tech. All those were on the table for him. He ends up at Florida because they don't get Lane. That's true. He would only have been on LSU's radar

had they not gotten Lane. That's true. He also could have had the old Miss job. So he had several SEC irons in the fire. And he knew he was going to leave Tulane, but yet he handled the entire season, I think the only way you can, given the circumstances. I think people respect it a little bit more.

No, I can get on board with that. Yeah. I empathize. with Lane not like he probably didn't know what he wanted to do I agree with this time I'm sure he didn't people have people had no clue what he was going to do I like I empathize with him having a hard decision and laying in bed and getting the heartstrings tugged on and everything else I empathize with that because when the cheer stop the dust settles it is only you it's you and your family you make whatever decision you think is best for you in this world he thought it was he at the end of

the day he took an old miss job he took a in his mind a better opportunity better backing better structure. I look, he does his thing. I'm all for that. Because again, it is only you in this world making your own decision. So if that's what he's most happy with, dude, go do your thing. It's just all the semantics that came around because John Summerall, like, you just don't feel the TV series that came with John Summerall throughout the entire process. Again, he is aligned with his AD. Probably, I'm assuming with the team every step of the way. And when you are going to make these hard decisions, because you're in a tough spot because of the same. this calendar with the coaching with the coaching cycle when you're going to make these hard decisions

that's going to inevitably hurt feelings no matter what you try and have his least amount of bloodshed as possible yeah it felt like john summer old did that and it felt like lane kiffin it was just a bloodshitting across the boy yeah yeah yeah he took the opportunity to pull the sword out yeah had the trauma from the last six years getting fired by um nick sabin and decided i'm going to get mine right now on the way out right and then trying to point the finger at the ad on the way out saying he won't let me talk to the team, he won't let me coach, thinking that I'm going to get us to 11 and 1. They'll kind of have no choice because I got,

it's like you got Sabin, you had Herb Street, the national voices that were saying they should still let him coach. So then when he's on his way out, he can do, well, he didn't let me do it. It's like, bro, there's no world. There's no world where that AD should let you coach the college school will playoff. I can sit there inside that building. I don't care if it's petty, whatever.

No, he's got to protect everything Ole Miss. And if you're leaving, bro, you got to go. Got to go. I thought, yeah. The Herb Street saving stuff, that was kind of blowing up everywhere. They're all with CEA. Oh, they're all with CA? They're working.

Sexton, man. He's the ultimate winner in all this, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah. Why not stay at Ole Miss? I'm sure at this point you had all the boosters saying, we'll give you all the money in the world. Yeah, money wasn't going to be the issue. Look, one thing Lane was consistent about is money's not the issue for me.

Like, I talked to him several times throughout this. He always reiterated that. He was dead serious about that. It's a big deal for Jimmy. DAA because not only, I mean, look, there's a business side of this where when you're negotiating a deal, if you're Jimmy Sexton negotiating like a keystone deal, which is going to impact the rest of the market, you've got like 50 other clients that are about to get a raise because of what you negotiate for Lane.

So Lane couldn't have cared less about the money aspect of it. He's already made more than he'll spend in 10 lifetimes. However, I think he desired to be desired for so long, and he wasn't. And he sat at Ole Miss for a while. First off, he said it at Bama and FAU. and finally he was desired enough to get the Ole Miss job. But remember, Lane's pretty old school in the way he looks at this stuff. So even if we're in the new age of college football, he still looks at the SEC the way an old school guy would look.

And he's looking at the LSU job, like Saban looked at it a generation ago. It's like everything's there. These are not his words, but I probably believe folks like him think I'm pretty responsible for the success that Ole Miss has just had. Like, I am the reason this is happening. Again, whether that's true or not, that's kind of the almost like the competitive narcissistic quality you have to have to yourself to think, I'm the cause of this. You look at LSU and you think, Ed won one there, less one there, Sabin one there. It almost seems like LSU's just built to win titles no matter who's there. I'll go there and enhance what's already just a rocket ship. And I won't have to do all that work. All I'll have to do is turn the spigot on and let the natural resources and the natural advantages flow.

And maybe I can win two or three at LSU. Whether that happens or not, I'm just telling you, I think I pretty well articulated how someone like him feels about why he takes the LSU job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He just wants to be great. Yeah. He gets to focus on more on the things he loves and is great at.

I tell you what, Twitter was fun, though. Who, buddy, it was on fire. We got one right here. This is from John Tweet's Sports. I made a difficult decision to leave my wife, who's been very loyal to me for a woman she despises. I was hoping to keep living in our house through Christmas, and I think like nothing was wrong.

My request was denied by my wife, despite the kids wanting me to stay through Christmas. That's a shame. That's a shame. And Lane Kippin would look at that say, how dare that woman? Yeah, how dare is why? Holy shit.

That is a John Tweet Sports. That's fantastic. That's a fantastic breakdown. That's what you want. So you said something on the John Summraw, Auburn. Auburn was wanting to put people around the program or around on his staff that he wasn't necessarily in the same room with to keep tabs on him. Well, no, it's even worse than that. They kind of slid there.

I was like, hang on it's like, I got to kind of know why they fumbled the bag with John Summoral. They had John. John wanted the Auburn job. I don't want to gloss over that. Like in coaching searches these days, sometimes it's just let's go get the guy we think's best for the job and he's going to take our job because it's the next step. John Summerall wanted the Auburn job

because he wanted to be the Auburn Tigers head coach. And he just happens to be a really, really great candidate. So they had him locked up. There was also the DJ Durkan side, who was the interim head coach there. And I think John Cohen, the AD, had really become attached to the idea of DJ. He's a phenomenal defensive mind.

They wanted to keep him there. If they don't hire him as the permanent head coach, they want to keep him there as the defensive coordinator. So you, you know, you kind of, you maybe gauge John Summerall during your negotiation and say, what do you think about Durkin? And maybe Summerall's receptive to it. Maybe he says, I like DJ a lot. You know, maybe I'll have a place for him on my staff.

That's okay. What's not okay is then taking that at Auburn to mean, all right, let's go ahead and extend DJ. And let's sign him to a new deal. And let's call John Summerall up and say, hey, all right, he's going to be. going to be on your staff. That can't happen. It can't happen for many reasons, but two of them I'll give you is that makes you the AD, the guy that Durkan's answering to, not John Summoral, because John Summoral is not the one who hired him or paid him. And secondly, you haven't even vetted him yet. You, the future head coach of Auburn, have not even sat down with this guy or these

guys, because Durkan's not the only one they were trying to dictate with, and looked them in the eye and pitched your vision and seen that they buy into it. You didn't even do any of it. You didn't even do any of that. And so if anyone's going to put conditions on you with how hard it already is to win if you get your way on everything, you're not taking that job. Doubally especially when you've got other programs that are bidding for your services. So Auburn screwed themselves fantastically. Early midpoint of last week. We go into the Iron Bowl Saturday. I was down there. And it was grim. And a lot of folks around there thought we're about to have to elevate Durkin. And I think John Cohen probably knew he had screwed that up.

But then Alex Golish turns down Arkansas because Auburn is on the table. And I think that they were able to salvage a situation to the point where I could easily see us three years down the road saying Auburn fumbled their way backwards into a huge win here. Because I'm very, very irrationally excited about the prospects of Alex Golish at that place.

Sometimes you know how you just get a feel like some places are just like puzzle piece fits? I would have felt that about John there too. These were both really good candidates. The market's going to be way higher on John than they are on Alex Golish. You probably know more about Sumrall than Alex Golish. I'm way high on John Sumrall. I'm way high on Alex Golish's potential at Auburn.

Those people probably had to Google his name yesterday. But in time, I think they'll really, really love him down there. Quarterback play has been abysmal at Auburn for like the past 15 years, aside from a couple of exceptions. And the one thing I can promise, if nothing else, is quarterback play won't be an issue at Auburn. Maybe there'll be other issues. Maybe you can't stop molasses in December defensively, but quarterback play will be really good under him. I know we got Greg, obviously, in a couple minutes.

So before we get you out of here, during your show last night, you're still singing the praises of Matt Campbell. Penn State is still looking for a coach. I think it's insane. That Matt Campbell is not the guy? I think it's insane. Who's Penn State swinging on?

I don't know. They're swinging at air, brother. They're swinging. You're talking about Auburn fumbling. I'm obviously an outsider. watching, but like to have your coach fired in mid-October and still be in the same position you are. And now all the coaches that people are like, hey, you should get these guys. Goal is getting figured out in like 24 hours. Dude, Golden guy. Ole Miss had won four hours yesterday.

Yes. Ole Miss lost the coach like, you. And he's like, yeah, me? Yeah, okay, I'll do it. And Penn State is sitting there. They're smoking sigs in the parking lot. Their head coach who they fired already has a job. And you have no head coach. And yet Matt Campbell is responsible for like eight of the 10, Plus 500 win seasons in conference play in Iowa. Iowa State has been over 500 in conference play 10 times in their history. Matt Campbell has been eight of those 10 years. Not good enough for us, though. We're not reaching out to him. We got things figured out of Penn State. So things are cold on Campbell. From the Penn State perspective, yeah. Now, Matt's turned down several. Like, dude, Matt could have had the Tennessee job. Could have had the Detroit Lions job. Could have had the Florida State job. There are a ton of big name schools that he's turned down. Yeah. I don't know if that's out there, but it is now.

Okay. Now, Detroit, I'm told, ended up being okay with what they did. Yeah. Yeah, in the NFL world, I know you don't watch it. Lines are in a bit of a spot right now. Lines are actually out of the playoffs right now. As of right now. As of right now, they're not good.

They're technically not good right now. Dan Campbell's worked out with Detroit. It's been okay. Yeah. So Penn State, who are they going after? I got no clue. Could be you. You could get a call later today.

That'd be sick. I would turn it down. I'm also, I'm seeing, I don't know how real it is. I'm seeing Hypo's name getting back in the... I saw that. I know nothing about that. I'm not BSing you. I know nothing about that.

What was he? Who is he connected to? Allegedly Penn State, according to the message boards, et cetera. Penn State, the big message board guy. Yeah, big message board guy.

How can you not be? I was talking with Josh and I was like, Penn State doing a good job keeping this stuff quiet. He's like, well, there's nothing to talk about. They've kept this one quiet,

but they've done a terrible job as far as their coaching search goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a fair point. Yeah. We knew Penn State was going downhill the minute Mitch you got a DM. Wow. The minute Mitch got a DM,

we knew, okay, Penn State's in a bad spot. That's a good tease for Wednesday. Yeah. Great tease. Yeah, we'll get to talk more when we do the locker room. That's going to drop Wednesday night whenever the playoff rankings come out. Josh Bate, as always.

Thank you, bro. Broke down a lot of good stuff right there. We will see you with Greg Olson. Round of applause for Josh Baker. Red of applause, Josh Pake. 30% off Black Friday, BWTB.com. 35% off Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday.

Yeah, Black Friday's done. That happened last week. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, huge news? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas.

We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name,

Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band Before Jonas Brothers, this is how you guys remember it going down? Yes.

I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

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or wherever you get your podcast. Coach Day. First off, let's give a round of applause for Coach Day coming on the show. I'm glad he came on. maturity leadership the whole thing especially the way i've talked about you the last year which i'm not going to shy away from i will say this before we start i have said a lot of nasty things even after like the spring tour i've uh used the third base comment i've i've said not a leader of men and you know my opinion shouldn't and does not matter to you however i will say like i was wrong and you

you truly uh you beat our ass and you did it with humility you did it uh you know the way Ohio State probably should have done it last year. And you have shown a, you've proven me wrong. And I want to formally apologize for that because it's, you know, it's one thing to make comments of rivalry and stuff like that and things that I did believe at a time. But for you to go, I think it's 16 and 0 since the game that happened in Columbus last year, it shows how much of a leader you are in that locker room.

And it's very impressive. So that is, that's all, that's the last nice thing I'll say. Even though I appreciate it, Taylor. I got a lot of respect for you. And so, no, it means a lot. And, but it's a tribute to these guys and then the program and these kids. And there's a lot of great life lessons, you know, over the last year of just life. This is life, right?

Yeah. You know, I mean, and this is the world we live in. This is the stage that we play on. And, you know, you get what comes with, you know, losing games. And the only way to get it right is to get it fixed. Yeah. And, you know, we certainly, you know, have got it fixed the last 12 months. but like we've got to move on because we got Indiana this week and certainly we've got a lot ahead of us.

What is the, well, I want to get into recruiting, Patricia, all that, but you brought up the Indiana game. And we had Josh paid on the show earlier and we're talking about like these conference games really are losing, they're losing kind of the, hey, we're not really playing for a big then championship. We're playing for a national championship. And if you have the one seat in Ohio State and the two seat in Indiana, what's stopping you guys from just saying, hey, we're going to sit our best receivers. we're going to sit our quarterback and just be like, hey, the commission's already said they don't really care about, you know, conference championship games.

Right. We're both getting by weeks. Yeah. We're getting like, why not just move on? Yeah. And kind of wipe your hands with this thing. Obviously, there's a level of competition and all that that you want. But if the, if the big goal is a national championship, who cares about a big 10 championship?

Yeah. No, I hear what you're saying. I think they got to look at it for sure. But, you know, we're in it. And we want to be the one seat. And I think everything matters when it comes down the stretch. And so, you know, if you're just playing the numbers and you're playing, you know, the trends, you know, you want to be in a situation where you're the one seat going into the playoffs.

So, so that's it. I also think there's a lot to momentum. You know, I feel like when you have momentum, you got to keep it. When you don't, you got to go get it. I feel like we have momentum. I want to keep momentum with the team. And these guys are just competitive dudes that just love to win. And, you know, winning a Big Ten championship does matter.

It was one of the things that was on our list of goals. So it'll be a great environment. Like it'll be, you know, it's Indianapolis. Still have a great crowd. We'll have a great crowd. So, you know, we want to win. You know, we want to be undefeated. We want to be the one seed.

So that's what's motivating us. Yeah. And the way it stands right now, like we're seeing one v2. We're seeing a potential preview of what the national championship is going to look like. So I'm sure there's going to be that level of juice to it. What do you see with this Indiana football team? Coach Kirkson, Nettie, he's done a hell of a job in his. couple years there. They're on a role. Fernando Mendoza, he's a very good football player. You have

another great quarterback as well in Julian Sane. What do you see with this Indiana football team? Yeah, I think they're well coached. I think they don't make mistakes. You know, in all three phases. They play hard. They have good fundamentals. Like I said, they don't beat themselves. And, you know, they have a plan on how they're going to attack. And they play fast. You know, like when you watch them on film, They are playing fast. They're playing downhill. You know, they're anticipating as opposed to reacting. And certainly, you know, having Mendoza there has really just taken them to the next level.

And so this is going to be a hell of a game and a really good opponent. Throughout the year, Ohio State's been categorized, you know, based on scheduling and everything else that can be boring. Like the offense isn't explosive until they have to be, yada, yada, yada. As a defensive guy myself, seeing what you guys have done defensively. which again, it's hard to, since the defense, they're not like, you know, this attacking, putting points on the board everywhere, anything else, somebody who appreciates defense. Losing Coach Knowles to Penn State last year, you had the number one defense in the country.

To go out and get Coach Patricia, you've held every opponent to under 17 points a season. Your first in points per game allowed was 7.8 and yards allowed per game. What has it been like having coach Matt Patricia in the building? What has he done with this defense? And you got cats everywhere across the board. but speak about the defense a little bit because you guys, you guys crush teams defensively. While you answer that question,

I'd love to also hear about the process of getting Matt Patricia in your building as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when everything went down after the season, it happened at a point where it was late in January. So a lot of the hiring cycle had already gone through. So, you know,

kind of caught all of us off guard. And so one of the things that, you know, I've learned in this process is like, don't rush into a decision in terms of your hires, man. Like you have to get this right. And even though there's recruiting involved and a lot of things that come into play, you know, we try to take our time on this and be really thorough. And the thing that, you know, I was really trying to look for was somebody that would come in

and work with the staff that we already had and be willing to really buy into our culture and what we're doing because, you know, it wasn't like someone was going to come in and bring in their staff. We just won a national championship. We have a great defensive staff. I think the best in a country. And so, you know, I talked to some different guys, but Matt really separated himself, one, because of his background of winning Super Bowls and what he did in the NFL.

And he's a former head coach in the NFL. And he's brilliant in so many different areas. But, you know, I knew Matt. You know, he's from the Northeast like me. And so, you know, we had, you know, we were acquaintances before. And, but the more time I spent with him, I just realized, like, how personable he is. Like, he's a family guy. and I felt like he would fit our team and our culture really, really well.

And it's amazing to me, like even when all that was going on, like I got a lot of just pushback, you know, publicly. And like, I just think so many people are now realizing what a special person he is. And, you know, he's done a great job from the minute he got here in building trust, building relationships. He had a certain level of credibility with our guys. You know, he looks at guys like Arvel Reese, Caleb Downs, you know, Caden Curry and he says, you know, this guy reminds me of Jamie Collins.

This guy's like Ninkavish. This guy's like so and so. And so he kind of plugs them in based on the guys he's had in the past when he was with New England. And our guys just love it, man. They eat it up. These guys love football. They love to compete.

And they've just been eating up the football. And that's what Mattie is, man. He loves ball. But he's done a great job building relationships. Yeah, there's a lot of criticism with Matt Patricia. And if it was going to work him going down to college, but on the offensive side of the ball as well. Chip Kelly,

he goes from college to the NFL. Obviously, both these coordinators have made a big mistake, leaving Ohio State. Both of them are potentially out of a job at this point. But you take Brian Hartline, and he goes from the wide receiver coach to the OC. When we were in Columbus,

we got to meet with Hartline. Energy, very infectious guy. I see him at the Texas Ohio State game. I go to give him a handshake. He looks like he looks daggers through my eyes. Like, you can go fuck yourself. And there's a lot of question marks like, is this guy going to be able, he's obviously an incredible recruiter. The way you see the wide receiver room always line up like every great receiver in the NFL right now,

unfortunately went to Ohio State. But from a play calling standpoint, what was that process like elevating him in-house? Yeah. No, he, as you can tell and you know, he's a competitive dude who really maximized every ounce of what God gave him as a player. You know, he had a great career here to Ohio State and then, you know, played for a long time in the NFL. And the only way you do that is by, you know, really understanding, you know, the game, you know, how to find edges. And that's, that's him. And so, you know, he's done that with the wide receiver group.

And now, you know, the next progression for him was being a coordinator. And I think a lot of guys just think, like, being a coordinator is calling plays. That's a big part of it. But so much of it is just the organization of the staff, the motivation, the organization of practice, you know, the, messaging, the focus, like everything that comes with that. And so it's been great to be around that and watch it with him. You know, he's got a great staff around him. Tyler Bowen does a tremendous job. Keenan Bailey, Billy Fessler, Carlos Lachlan, and having Matt on the other side of the ball allows me the opportunity to be there too and to help along the way. So I think he's getting better and

better at it every day. And, you know, certainly we'll have to be at our best here down the stretch. you have a great quarterback in julian saying why do you feel like he should be at the Heisman at the Heisman ceremony later this month well I think he has the highest completion percentage ever for a college football player something someone told me I mean he's his accuracy is off the charts 70 point nine percent is pretty decent yeah but hey there's an argument that he's just throwing routes on air because the receiver have so much damn separation it's beautiful I mean yeah that's the hater in me that's the hater in me coming out a little bit He's a great, he is obviously a very talented individual.

Yeah, no, I get it. I mean, we have great receivers, but that's not his fault. You know, I mean, he's, he doesn't miss those throws by much, you know. And like, you're right. Like, you know, Carnell, you know, did a great job on that route and the separation, even, you know, Jeremiah's route, you know, in that shot the other day. But those balls are like on the money, you know, I mean, he's just really, really accurate. I think he's got a special gift in terms of his intelligence, you know, being around him every day.

he's intelligent. He can handle high levels of information fast. And I thought, you know, in the game, on the first interception, they did a great job with the skies there. And they got him on that one. But like there was no panic because I know exactly what he saw. And, you know, he went right back at it. I mean, he's got composure.

And he has a toughness about him. And that was the, I think he really had only played in a game that was like 50 degrees or colder had never really played like any kind of elements. Now, we've been practicing in it, but for him to handle that with the snow going sideways and just the way he played, scramble for a first down and handle it, big third downs. I mean, he was excellent on third down. I just think that he's got some special gifts about him. Was there a piece of you when we went down and we drove the ball and we kicked three

and then the first throw, we get an interception. Was there a piece of you? Had to be. That was like, oh, fuck. It's happening again. Of course there was. Dude, I was thinking this. I was like, oh, my God, we're going to do it again.

And then once we kick three, I was like, God damn, we're never going to score a touchdown on this defense. But what was going through your head when that pick happened? Well, the thing that never happened, though, is like I just never panicked and neither to anybody on the sideline because, like, there was just a certain level of confidence we had going into this game. And it was like, I can't believe this is happening right now. And it's just all right, because we wanted to have a fast start in the game.

That was kind of something that we talked about going in. We always want to do that. Obviously, everyone wants to have a fast start, but it was something that we felt like it was important. So when it didn't go that way, you know, it was like, what the hell is going on right now? But when you went over and you saw what happened on the first run and the defense settled down, force three, and then the defense to go out there and not panic at all, I mean, they sprinted on the field. They were like, let's go, watch this. And they got to stop.

And it's six nothing. and it's like, okay, we're all right. Let's put a drive together, go right down and score. And at that point, I think just the composure of the team, you know, and it's just the way these guys are, their way they're wired. Nothing gets them, you know, rattled. And so, but I think, you know, that goes back to our training and the confidence that we had going into the game and what we play with.

But to say that I wasn't like, you got to be shitting me. I know, man, when that pick happened, I was like, oh, my God. I was sitting at home. I was like, oh shit. Because the chaos of, I mean, you're more in it for the chaos as a fan of Michigan and playing at Michigan. I'm like, if we can fucking pull this off again, this would be, we might never lose again. Yeah.

We might never lose again. I was telling you before, I was so, I'm so bought into the rivalry now. Like, obviously you get to see all the fodder, all the shit talking. Like, you got little kids doing the, they're reenacting the flag at school for plays. Like, this rivalry is so insane. and I was so bought in because it's like I'm sitting there. I'm in the Foxx Oatio. I'm pulling for my boy.

I'm like, okay, if Michigan wins, we'll get to see another year of all these antics, like all this stuff that everybody gets entertained by. But I'm also sitting back like I know Ohio State is salivating to just beat this team's ass. And coach, obviously you're in the business where it's all compartmentalization, goldfish memory. We got the next one. We got Indiana coming up this week. But just the initial emotion when you knew you had that game in a bag.

And not only that, but having a 20 play drive where you're kind of pushing. it up their ass a little bit and just in a fashion of you don't have to say it like that i'm just you know you're right that is what was happening yeah there had to you know it's almost like kind of not eff everybody else but like i knew we're this is what we're capable of doing to this team and i'm glad we all finally showed up today and did it yeah yeah i mean the first thing it came to my mind was why don't we do this last year yeah you know i mean i mean that's that that's how crazy my mind works and that's what i was thinking it was like i mean how to hell did this this happened last year. You know what I mean? That's just because just the way that, you know, we took the field

and played in that game, you know, it's really how we've done it the last 12 months. But you know, that's life, you know, and, you know, life comes at you, life comes at you sideways at times. And it's, it's all about how you respond. And, you know, I feel, feel like, you know, there's times in that game where, you know, just it didn't go our way. And so every year you try to identify what those things are to get them fixed. And, and so, you know I often like I said in the press conference thought about how you know I wanted to respond after the game but I just felt like it was the right thing to do is just handle it with humility and um and celebrate you know with our team with our team in a locker room and man it was

it was a memorable day in that locker room with with that team yeah yeah I mean it truly had to be after all like the noise that took place this time last year everyone like like big ev from barstool and Ohio Taylor like yeah Ryan day's not the guy for this team Like he can't beat Michigan. I think Cooper was also one and four against Michigan. He lost his job. You go win a national championship. Like there had to be borderline tears getting this essentially off your back

after going through all of that shit for like the last year. It's just bizarre to me. I think, but I think also like, you know, in today's day and age, you know, there's a lot of things that get said and what you give energy to, you know, you control. And so at the end of the day, like, you know, you can listen and, you know, listen to narratives and, you know, people want to run with narratives. And when you're at Ohio State certainly gets a lot of clicks and a lot of attention and I get what people are trying to do. But like when you know deep down in your heart, what's real and what isn't, you got to fight like hell to make sure that, you know, you get out there and improve the people that care about your right and the ones who don't wrong. I mean, that's every day, right?

And so that'll be the same thing this week. Every game and every week's an opportunity to prove people right, prove people wrong. Yeah, as I was sitting there, it's like I have my popcorn ready the whole time because it's like, I've just wanted a spectacle. And when you, the way you handled it after the game, it was like, oh, I didn't even know. I'm sitting here thinking in my head, like what are I having an option? Yeah, yeah, this wasn't even an option in my head. And when that happened, I was like, oh, dude, much respect. Like, that was, I mean, you got our boy, we got a producer in the back, Mitch Carsley, who's been an Ohio State fan forever.

And he's kind of gotten, you know, he's been a little fair weather at times, like not the most on the table for Ohio State's Taylor. You got Taylor, Michigan, man, here kind of, there's been some bullying going on to where he didn't feel. He felt a little more insecure about being an Ohio State fan because he didn't grow up in Ohio. But the way you handled after the game, it's got Mitch Carzley out here tweeting, like, I'm so proud to be an Ohio State Buckeye. I feel like that's the inspiration you've kind of spoken to the Ohio State fan base on the way you handled that after the game. Yeah, I think this past game, like I, like, like Will. that I've been bullied by Will and Taylor and you're thinking I'm a fair weather Ohio State fan,

but I mean, grew up going to two youth camps and like getting to meet you guys in person last year, like, and actually, and at the end of the game, you say we're winning this with humility. I'm like that, that's my head coach, so I just wanted to say thank you and oh, H. All right. That's pretty nice.

You're not going to tell, you're not going to a bully Taylor now? No, I will definitely, this one will definitely be held over his head as the last four, I've been held over the line. But you'll do it with class. You'll do it with class.

Do it with class. And like, hey, just know that when we win, we do it with humility. We don't have to get a flag plane or anything. Like, just know that aspect. Show you, show them how to be a fan. All right. Okay. Show them how to be a fan of a winning team.

This is what it looks like. Let's all just relax. After the game, after the game was over, I texted Big Ave, Ohio, Tate, and Eddie George. And I just said, congratulations. I did not text Mitch on purpose. I was like, fuck this guy, dude. And I saw his tweet. But yeah, hey, listen, you got it for me three.

365. Just wait until next year though. Am I right, Coach Day? That's right. I know we got one year and then we'll be back at it again. Are we thinking, are we thinking maybe go to the NFL now? Like, let's get you out, let's get you out of there. Let's just beat Indiana. How does that sound? But I will, I will say this, you know, just finishing up is just though that like, you know, being the head coach at Ohio State is a big responsibility. And obviously that rivalry game means a lot to a lot of people. So even just to hear, you know, the pride, you know, of everybody, you know, at Ohio State, you know, that's ultimately. what this is all about, it's pouring back into people, the players, the coaches, the fans, the supporters. That's what comes with this job, and it's a big obligation. And, you know, when you come up short, you've got to figure out a way to get it fixed fast.

And so that's what motivates me and our staff here. So, you know, it was a good day, but we got a lot of football ahead of us. Coach, we appreciate you joining us, man. Thank you for your time. Absolutely. Go win the Big Ten. It's going to be a fun game to watch. You guys in Indiana, both awesome football teams.

I can't wait to see how it unfolds. Good luck in the playoff, bro, and maybe we'll see you next year. Maybe we'll see you next year's some point. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate you, Coach Dave. Thank you for coming on. I'll talk to you guys.

Let's get you got it. You got it. Yes, sir. Thank you, Coach. That's a nice surprise, yeah? Did you guys, wouldn't you guys know? I didn't know. Like, Ryan came on before.

I was like, would you like to have Coach Day on for 20 minutes before the Cade and Diego come on? And he said, just give me a thumbs up or down. I just put thumbs up. I had no clue until we were sitting doing our show already. I'll tell you what, dude, you see all the stuff like the Lou Holtz after the Notre Dame game, the Congress thing, not letting Dave in Columbus and stuff like that. But this year, like, I know him and Pat McAfee had beef.

And so he goes on Pat McAfee. And for all the things that I said about Coach Day. Yeah. And then him to come on two days after. And you know his ass is just quiet in the back of his head like this motherfucker. Like, you've got to look at me in the eyes. He's got his receipts. He's got his receipts.

And I'll tell you what, do I like Ryan Day? I guess, maybe. More than anything, I respect Ryan Hartland, Matt Patricia. Like, say what you want about that game. Like, I didn't even bring up the touchback. Was it a touchback? Was it not a touchback? Because even if it was a touchback, it did not.

That would not have changed the game. So, yeah, they beat her ass, man. They beat our ass. I thought I was going to have to get. I had no choice but to respect. But to respect Coach Day for that. I thought I was going to have to get knee pads for you there for a second the way you was glazing for him.

But really it is like, it's just like, dude, hey, he, myself, myself, Dave, a bunch of people have said so many nasty things about him. And for him to just quietly go 16 and 0 and keep taking on the chin for 365 days. And then come on our show. It's like, yeah, dude, I have to essentially pay the Piper and be like, hey, I said all these things. You've proven me wrong and I respect that. And, yeah, dude.

I mean, what else can I say? Hey, hey, fuck you. It's like, okay, my team just lost 27 and 9. And it was not even close compared to 27 and 9. Or maybe they'd be like, no, fuck you, Ryan Day. You're still born on third base. Like, yeah, he was born on third base, but he still elevated his team. And that sucks to say.

There was that article, too, that I was telling you about that came out of last week or a couple weeks ago where it talks about the standard that Jim Tressel set. Urban Meyer comes in, kind of holds that same standard, raises the bar. And then it's like Ryan Day who comes in, who hadn't had a, a head coaching job. And this is a guy that's not going to be able to keep the same expectation. Right. And the article basically said, everybody was right.

He didn't keep that expectation. He elevated it because he's like the most winningest Ohio State head football coach. Yeah. In his tenure so far at Ohio State. And, and I mean, you see their recruiting class. They're one and two every year. They crossed the portal. Like, that's not stop any time soon.

That's why in this video that I made after the Ohio State Michigan, it's like, hey, if you're Michigan, unfortunately the standard is your rival and that's a shitty position for you for you to be in so you have to if we have the resources now is the time to funnel in all of those resources into having a team with similar talented players and scheme and clock management all those things like you you have to make a decision now to do that or you're going to get left in the dust i feel like you guys weren't it's not like you guys are an untalented team like you're just very you're just very young because I mean, last year.

They went 9 and 3. Yeah, we were 9 and 3. But like, you see what happened to the boys? Nebraska over the weekend? We're the youngest team in the Big 10. Like, we're the youngest team in the Big 10.

All those things are going for us, but to see the offense kind of sputter, like you want to see growth throughout the year. And there's a lot of times like Michigan should not be kicking a field goal to win as the clock striking zero against Northwestern. We shouldn't be in these types of dog fights. Like, yeah, we had a very talented team this year. Like there's it with six freshman office

Our six freshmen starting on the offense A lot of young talent in the back end of our defense But like You could see the different levels Of what's taking place between Ohio State Michigan And it sucks to say I am a Michigan guy Like I'm a guy that supports and loves Michigan

But like you have to be able to look at these things objectively and be like this is the reality Like Paid said it best on his show Like every team that's in the top 10 Have given you question marks Throughout the season all Ohio State has done is giving you answers.

And that's the reality. Like that is the team two beat in the international championship. Yeah. And I look, I love your guys' rivalry so much because it's just so bizarre that you can win a Natty. But there's almost a real feeling of like, it doesn't count because you didn't beat Michigan.

And Taylor's thinking, we got to reload. Like the standard is Ohio State. Like beating. It's just winning that game. Yeah, you can legit. go you could go one in 11 as long as that one wins against ohio state or michigan you do not care you can go one and eleven at michigan or ohio state and if you beat michigan or you beat ohio state like

yeah it's all good you said you said you beat ohio state one time yeah i was one in three against ohio state it was when trestle got fired because of the allegations or he like stepped away and was it luke fickle he took over i'm i'm wondering like as like uh because you you guys don't do gold pants, right? No, we don't do nothing. But like, obviously it's the biggest rivalry in football. Like, what is like that feeling afterwards? Like, did you were like, holy shit, we beat Ohio State?

Dude, we stormed. We stormed the field. I remember I'm like looking around like this is incredible. And like Chris Brown, my boy who played on the hockey team, he like grabs my shoulder and he like, we're like hogging. It is. It's the best feeling in the world. It is the best feeling in the world to beat that team. Because literally since you step on campus,

every single day, something is mentioned about Ohio State. It's on a clock when you walk in, it's in the locker room. Like, I love that there's no trophy. I love that it's just like hatred. Like, we hate each other. I'm not even sure how.

But like, we just hate each other and you're just, you drink the Kool-Aid the minute you walk in, it's the only thing that matters every single year. Like Michigan State is an afterthought. Like, I went one and three against Michigan State. Even going one and three against, like, years are an afterthought compared to Ohio State.

It's just nuts, bro. It's fucking nuts. But yeah, they are, with their exclamation point percentage out, 15 minutes out, got it. What the fuck happened? I don't know, brother. That was crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. They, look. Nebraska was, I had a parlay going for Friday. Nebraska was the only leg to not hit. God. And it's getting to the point

where it's like, yes, like, I love you will, but like Nebraska is getting to the point where they're on the no bet list because they,

the amount of parlays I've lost from just them, it's like, look, I understand it. And if I'm you on piss off too, if I'm you, I'm putting them on the no bet list too,

we have to earn your trust back. And unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Until the bowl game. No, no, don't fucking matter. Oh, the bowl game is everything.

Bull games don't matter for nothing. Well, you might be going to, I've heard rumors of potential Music City Bowl. Yeah, I think there was an article that came out that's you guys. I haven't seen articles. Like, I've just had a couple buddies texts. Like one. Isn't it like projected right now? It's Tennessee and Nebraska?

I had a buddy text from Missouri being like, hey, it's looking like it could be Missou and Nebraska and the Music City Bowl. I have no clue. I haven't looked at the list. It's, dude, it's been brutal. It was brutal to watch. I don't know, man. I don't have a whole lot of answers for you.

It wasn't good enough. We're sitting here seven and five at the end of the year. Failure of a season. I don't know. There's usually hope and optimism that I have to latch on to. And there hasn't been any over the last couple weeks. We got killed from Penn State. But if you come out, you beat Iowa.

Don't matter. Not that it doesn't matter, but you finish off 8 and 4. You have some, again, some hope and optimism on this team turning it around. So I want to say our record's been very poor in the month of November. Probably different variables going on. And defensively, man, it's just, it sucks to watch the way we are performing defensively. Yeah. I want to say over the last two games, like Penn State and Iowa traveled in our red zone like

10 times and they scored 9 of 10. Been poor and run defense. I want to say we're in the triple digits as far as rankings go. Do you think if you guys won like two more games, Emmett Johnson would like be invited to New York and have a legit chance of winning? I don't think New York, you know, a legit chance of winning. I'm sure he's up for like the running back award and everything else, as he should be. I think he's an absolute stud.

Like running the football, catching the football. He does everything for Nebraska's offense. Hey, real quick, don't get off this conversation. I want to keep talking about Nebraska. I just got to pee so bad. Okay, okay. And he had what? 170 and halftime?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, something crazy. Like, he plays, dude, we're going to miss him. I think he's going to probably go to the league. I mean, if he stays, that's great. It'll always be interesting for guys who are mid-round or lower round and NIL. Like, do you stay for another year, get X amount more dollars playing? But as a running back, you only have so much tread on the tire. You do, like, the ultimate goal is NFL.

And you're in the NFL second contract. as far as financials and everything else goes. We'll see what he does. You got the portal stuff with Raiola happening. Yeah, I was going to ask. Did we talk about that last week or is that news this week? Dude, the last week of such a blur. I think it was news this week.

Yeah, it started to become news a little bit last week, and now it's going to be, I mean, it's going to be news. I don't know what articles have been written out there. What are you hearing from the inside? I'll wait until Taylor comes back on because I'm sure he'll want to ask questions about that. But yeah, dude, I mean, we got pummeled, and it sucked. I fit. Was that Iowa's high-scoring game all season by, like, a lot?

Yeah. And the Iowa Hawkeyes, man. Like, they own us. Ten of the last 11. And you can't, you know, there ain't going to be like, I'll be talking my shit next year when it comes, but it's one where you just got to, you just got to tip your cap to them.

Like, they beat their ass. They are big bro. There's no defense of the border. You know, George Kittle, he was, He was hitting me up right away. Bruce Kittle, his dad's hit me. I got the whole family that Kittles hit me up. What about Robert Gallery?

Robert Gallery. He's texting me. I forget what he said. I'm like, buddy, you need to take me to, you need to take me on one of your, what's the trip called? Ibermectin. No, Ibregane. Galleries hit me up on my buddy. You got to take me on one of your Ibogain trips, like the trauma and PTSD I'm going to have from these Iowa Hawkeyes.

Like next one, next one that you host, I need to be on. Yeah. I'd be puking my guts up, puking my pain and losses out from just the way we've been just getting pummeled these last two weeks. Dude, the shitty thing, too,

is like, this was your three amount rule. Yeah. We were trending that way, starting QB, broke his leg. Yeah, I'm not here to make excuses.

We were talking to Taylor when you were off the, the noise and everything of, uh, raola transferring if Will was hearing anything on the inside, but he wanted to wait until you got back on. Yeah. are you willing to say on I know you've had conversations

Oh you're there you know by the fights for the program harder than Willie C I know I'm on the end You know I'm in there Right I'm saying we have microphones I'm in there I know that if we were microphones

were off you would tell me everything Do you want to talk about that On this? I think he's gonna be looking at options I'm from the standpoint of Detective Willie And all the stuff that was going on last week It's in my mind

When that Raola stuff came out on Nebraska is bracing themselves to lose rail in the portal. And then I'm hearing all it's coming from the inside of Nebraska. And I'm thinking, dude, bullshit. What is the upside for Nebraska to want to leak or have any article written about their star quarterback, their starting quarterback that he's going to be available to the college football world two days before we play the Iowa Hawkeyes? like in no world would

Nebraska have that article get out there especially for it to be phrased and framed that Nebraska is bracing like basically I'm hearing from sources that article had zero credibility and substance because there was no quotes from anybody on the inside it was just pure speculation

or I've talked to a couple guys like no who who have you talked to and this is the same gentleman um I forget his name but it might be Chris something with a C Chris Hummer. I think Chris Hummer, it's the same gentleman

that was on top of the is the same gentleman that was on top of the leak of Rayola potentially shopping in the portal last year being connected to the Miami Hurricanes. Chris Hummer had that story and that came out of left field that Dylan was shopping

or that Dylan was kind of testing the portal a little bit. But Chris Hummer was on top of that one and nobody else knew about that rumor other than Chris Hummer. And it's like, well, yeah, but they need to be focused on it. No, bro. That leak got out last year because you're leveraging for more NIL money from Nebraska,

which Dylan did get, and I'm all about the players getting paid. I'm all about these games. It's just don't make it seem like it's coming from inside Nebraska when it's clearly not. Same guy was on the rumor last year with Rail and Miami and the portal. That, you know, you're leveraging it up. Yeah, Adam Wells wrote Bleach Report article. Yeah.

Adam Wells is not a C to be seen. Yeah, but then also when this one come out, it's like this ain't like it's ain't coming from Nebraska football. I promise you that. So, and I respect the games being played, but let's not act like. Let's not all sit here and act like it's coming from inside the Nebraska building. It's not. Let's not make shit up. Yeah, let's not make shit up.

And words and optics matter in that game. You know what I'm sitting here? Like, we've been in the league. We've been in contract negotiations. Right. Framework, reports coming out from certain guys. Like all of that stuff matters. If it's coming out from Nebraska side,

it's probably going to come out from what, Pete Nacos, I believe? Or whenever he was on top of all the rules. So do you think this is Dylan doing this? Do you think it's somebody in Dylan's family? No, I don't think it's Dylan doing this. Dylan's probably focused on getting healthy because he broke his leg. Like he's probably just, he's probably doing his thing trying to get his leg healthy.

He's probably in a tough spot. Like we've all had major surgeries, especially when our first one happens. Like there's some very lonely, like I'm not this, not at all coming from. Dylan but yeah it's definitely coming in my opinion from raola camp real a camp the raila camp i don't know who like there's no names i'm saying raila camp if you want if you are shopping you are actively

shopping which i've heard is happening if you're actively shopping that doesn't come like all that and you want the college football world to know that dylan is available then you want an article out there like i'm saying if if i was in this place and say it was It was my kid who was the quarterback. Or if it was me and I had all this high-level thinking about it all and the strategy of it all, if you wanted to get out there, you don't want to come from, hey, I am actively shopping while I'm still on Nebraska's football team. They're about to play the Iowa Hawkeyes. My brother just decommitted last week.

Right. Like, I'm not wanting it to be, hey, I'm doing all of this. You want to seem like come out a different way. And the way you wanted to come out is the way it was written. That Nebraska's bracing for Dylan to leave. Like it's a Nebraska, like there's a Nebraska reaction from this. Yeah, because last year I don't think I heard anything about Raola shopping himself until after the fact.

It's interesting that's happening before. Like I had heard when that came out and when it was happening. But in my brain, it's like, like I, again, I understand the game being played by players by the institution and contract and hey, if we do have a really good quarterback, he could be looking at a lot of dollars out there. And we want to keep him. We need a pony up and pay for them. so that way we can keep them because this is a kid like Dylan Raola makes Nebraska better.

Dylan Raola makes Nebraska better football team. So yes, I want Dylan Raola on the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Big Dylan Raola fan. I'm more like just speaking on just the antics. I'm more in the lore of Nebraska football than probably a lot of people that are listening right now. But with the articles and everything else coming out and then fingers feeling like it's being pointed at Nebraska for having this stuff out. This is where I got to just defend my squad.

This is where I got to defend the turf a little bit. It's 100% not coming from Nebraska. Yeah. when Matt Rule was staying, what was happening? Right. The boys are out there posting he ain't going nowhere. He's locked to stay. You want to shut this down, then you just publicly send up, hey, I'm not going anywhere. But that's not the reality that we're in right now. Right. Which is totally fair for Dylan and doing the situation.

My thought is, is like, if you're Nebraska, what do you do? Because you just sign a rule to an extension. He got the funding and the backing that he means go get these players. Yeah. At what point do you pull a Tennessee and go, hey, we're not paying. you anymore. Like you've got enough money. We're trying to win a championship. We need this money to go get other players as well to make you look better. Right. This is where that goes out of my depths. I don't know if he's wanting more money or if he's just wanting another place to look. Yeah. For me, I'll just be a buddy. Don't like this. Finish what we're building something. He's a pivotal

part of it. Finish what you start. Don't run from the fight. He'll up. We need you. Recruit these guys. Build this program. You're the guy, you're the kid that's going to have a statute. Because if you're a running back, a receiver, a tight end, somebody puts in the opposite side of the ball that gets the ball, you want to go to a place that you're going to be showcased. And if you don't have a quarterback or you don't know if the quarterback that you would be throwing to you would be there, it's very difficult to get these guys big.

Hey, we'll pay you $2 million to come. It's like, $2 million is great, but I'm trying to make it to the league, and I need somebody to facilitate me the football. And that's the issue that Nebraska is running into. I hate this feeling for Nebraska right now. I do too. I know.

And as a friend, as long as I've known you, it's never felt this dark. And I'm not saying that to stir you up. I'm not, I'm just saying, this is a very, like, uncomfortable feeling

sitting here being like, is Nebraska getting better? Is there, I'm sure something's going to happen in the off season with Transfer Portal and recruiting class and all that? We'll be like, look at this.

This is what we have to hang out. Right now it doesn't feel like there's something there to be like, Nebraska the next step next year. Right, as far as like progressing from where the bar is at right now. Like I 100% believe rule is the guy. I don't disagree with that at all. We're going into an off season where there's a lot of games as game play versus

finding these ways to push the boat forward. It feels there's going to be a lot of recruiting that has to happen potentially in-house. I have no clue. But you're right. And to the point, because again, when we were talking before the year started and you said seven and five and I'm like seven and five would. feel like a failure of a season. I'm sick to my stomach that we're sitting here.

And the answer is seven and five. But you were saying this is like, hey, just one step at a, you know, it's one game at a time, one step at a time. I'm saying, I'm saying, I've already said that. I've already shook your hand and say that's not good enough. Yeah. Like, I wish you never made me shoot my hand because I'd be able to sit here and be like, hey, you're technically a game better like eight and four next year, nine and three.

Right. But I think you're in enough to where you can stand on the record. But my reaction to you having that record is like, no, bro, it won't be optimism. No, you're right. It's going to feel like we're failing. Yeah. And so that's where you end the year 7 and 5, you end off these two assholes we took from Penn State and Iowa. And it's like, you know.

I'm with you. Because you're right. Like 7 and 5 is not okay. Yeah. Like you guys have gotten the monkey off your back from a bowl game standpoint. That was fun. We had a good time with that. Like bowl games don't matter.

They don't. So players sit out. They go to the NFL. They start to transfer. Like, bowl games do not matter. And I said that before Michigan beat Alabama last year because bowl games don't fucking matter. So are your record seven and five? Well, if we win a bowl game, we will be eight and five.

You know what I'm saying? That's why I disagree with you. And I understand why you would do that for the mental aspect. Well, there's teams like you're going to play a team that were, yeah, it's not like all these stars. Michigan was seven and five. And then they played a bull game or they won. They were seven and five. Bamma, were you not fired up that they beat Alabama?

Yeah, I was stoked. They beat Alabama. I'm like, oh, shit, this is awesome. But the reality is, is half their team. sat out and a lot of our guys sat out too and it's like all right like that's if it happened in the regular season I'm way more fired up than if it happened at a bowl game like the citrus bowl isn't fucking getting me from six to midnight I I feel what you're saying because say Emmett is going to the NFL right and he sits out of the bowl game then yeah it's I'm thinking

to myself all right we lose this game like we didn't have Emmett johnson it's an insurance policy just like Alabama had an insurance policy last year Like a lot of their players didn't play. A lot of our players didn't play. But at the same time, it's like, you're just having two cool logos play each other. Alabama and Michigan. Oh, this is dope.

You barely ever get to see this. Ain't nobody gives a fuck really about that. No one. No one actually cares. You could if everybody in the locker room does. No, if everybody played. Like again, if we need everybody for the bowl game and everybody has that outlook

and you rally for the bowl game, absolutely. To me, my brains are. You're still trying to put out more film. My brains on, look what just happened to Michigan. versus Ohio State. How do we beat that? How do we beat when they already have a top three recruiting class coming in? We need to go, fuck a bowl game.

But that's a disservice to the bullies. That's a disservice to the seniors. The guys who are still trying to play some ball. The bowl game is important for the 15 practices. That's the most important part of the bowl game. That's the most important part of the bowl game is to have 15 practices. She has Excel, work. I'm going to watch whatever game Michigan's in.

And I'm be rooting for them. I'm going to be hoping they win. I don't know if you are, man. No, but at the end of the day, like, whether they win or lose, I want to see progress. So, Bryce plays in the game, or Jordan Marshall plays, or, you know, these receivers. I want to see Andrew Marsh take a step. I want to see McCulley take a step, even though he's a senior. Like, I want to see these things happen.

So I go, I'm really excited for next year. Because the bowl game doesn't matter, record-wise. It doesn't do anything for you. The transfer portal, the recruiting class, the development of play. players, the spring practice, the camp, the season. That's what matters. Truly. Because no one's going to look at the big bad mower bowl.

No one's going to be like, yeah, but we got that, didn't we, boys? Like, if 7 and 5 is a, is not good enough for Nebraska, then having a big bad mower bowl victory doesn't mean shit. It's the bad boys. Not the big bad. 9 and 3 for Michigan. Yeah. Hey, if Povey and Cater here, get him in.

We got to, this is separate because it's for the episode. Oh, okay. Brian Day's not for? No, he's for today. Oh, I thought he was going on bussing because then you just seamlessly talk through. He's going on college football. And then they're going to wrap, give footage to Jared for CFB for him to edit. And then they want you guys over there with Cade and Pavia so we can get a little bit of vlog.

Oh, I got you. Yeah, all that being said, man. All eyes on 26. Like all eyes on January 2nd, then transfer portal opens, and I need a lot of block M's next to a lot of fucking talent. You need everybody.

Transfer portal. I need fucking everybody. Cam Coleman, fucking Ryan Williams, that kid from Clemson, bring them. I need them. Everybody.

Everybody. It's like I know the feeling that I have right now. It's a sad feeling. Because you can't see the light. But where my optimism lies is in the month of December when the headlines start coming out, whether it's transfer portal, recruits, whatever it is, it's going back, I knew, I knew that it was something. That was going to come down the pipe.

The problem that Nebraska has right now is you guys have to beautifully orchestrate this chess board between now and spring. Like you have to handle the Dillon situation while also getting receivers, grabbing a couple of defense. guys like it's got a you can't just make sure your boat's good you've got to optimize your boat i agree i think coach rule i think he is the guy for the job i agree that job i think he's going to have hard decisions to look at and make whether it's with staff whether it's with players that you have to do that self-scout because he is like that is everybody's putting it into coach rule leading us to this national title i know one movie did make last off season that was mike Echler. Hey, coach, heck man. He's up for awards of special teams.

No, yeah, ex-a-man. Yeah, he is the man, bro. I'm so fired up that he's had, he's had success, that he's been telling me that, you know, he's like, once I get, dude, Will, he's teaching me about special teams, he's doing all these things once he got the job. I'm like, heck, I hear you, bro. I'm thinking, best special teams in the country. I'm like, yeah, that would be awesome, but this, Echler could sell ice to an Eskimo. He could sell anything. I would have, I would love to poke Echler to Michigan. would love to because our special teams

was all year yeah it crushed it man I was fired out I was pumped to see the success that he's had this year in Nebraska especially being a Nebraska boy this is where

this is where like sadness starts to creep in for your team if your team's not in the playoffs it's like I'm really excited to watch these playoffs unfold the chaos all that stuff

but there's a piece man it's like I really wish it was August no buddy we are dude this is prime I know I know but I just

I want No, but I want to watch my boys. Yeah, but I want to watch my guys. Think about the chaos we have coming up. Oh, yeah. That we get to live in, watch from the inside. It's like going into an F5 and we're just sitting there in the, in the eye of the storm, seeing it happen. Especially we get BYU this weekend, especially Georgia wins, BYU wins, Duke wins.

Like people are going to be going crazy. And we get to have on Pavia and Cade. A couple boys where they're sitting there at 10 and 2, like they should. Yeah, you guys deserve to be in. Absolutely. But also... It seems like they're not. It seems like they're not going to be in.

Cade's texting me last night. He's like, you think... We'll talk about with him on the show. But he's like, what do you think of this happens to that? And ultimately, we have no clue. We have no idea. I thought Clark Lee was going to leave. It's almost like, hey, you got to get out.

Clark Lee's going to go. He just signed an extension. I didn't know five top conference team. The five conference champs got in. Yeah. The people are fact checking me. I'm looking at the rules. I'm like, oh, damn.

I guess I was wrong on that one. Dude, the G5 thing. I just want the 12 best team. It's so dumb. The G5 thing is so dumb. You need an extraordinary G5 team to get in. And I know I caught a lot of heat on that. Fucking shut up.

We cut a lot of love too, bro. Don't worry about the loud minority. Yeah, yeah. But I'm just saying, like, when I would see a couple of comments, it'd be like, these fucking guys, like, no, dude, you're in North Texas. No disrespect. These are the big dogs.

If you're 12 and 0, and you're winning by like a point differential of like 40, you guys should fucking be in that thing because I don't want to see that squad against that squad. But I don't want to see a one-lost North Texas team who lost 63 to 39 versus some random-ass school. I don't want to see JMU is 11-1. I don't.

Tulane, you lost your coach. And if so, it should just be one. Like, to me, it comes down to, you look at high school football. It's 1A all the way up to 6A. Right. Like, there is levels. And they've had a hell of a year to where if G-5 is having a tournament, like, I'd tune in and see who's going to win the G-5 tournament.

The NIT, I would love to see an NIT tournament, just other classes. But yeah, bro, there's too many of these bottom feeder type teams, not bottom, top of their bottom feeder conferences that are going to get into this playoff and screw out some teams that very much. They are 12 of the best teams in college football. You're going to say, I want to watch Tulane and Oregon versus Oregon and Oregon and No fucking way. No way. Get bent.

You want to watch, you want to watch North Texas in Oregon? Or do you want to watch Miami in Oregon? And I'm always saying that because they're the ones, they're the five seats, so they would play one of those teams. I wish we could be fluid every year at the playoff to where you just make decisions based on what everybody's kind of feeling to the point to where I'm like, okay, you know what? We have 10 locks that are going to be in the college hole.

There's going to be two spots left. Let's get an 18 bracket, all these arguments, all these teams, Miami, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt. what you're saying. JMU, North Texas, Duke, Virginia. There's eight right there. Or BYU for one of them. Yep.

And have them battle out for the two slots. I don't think eight. You know, eight teams for, yes. Okay, I'm back with you. For a playing. Two slots that go into their playing game of the championship. Winner of that championship then goes out and plays Ohio State after their by week. Like, the easiest spot to be in for Ohio State because teams got to play three more

games before they get to them. And you want to earn your spot in this tournament. Yes. You got to go through this, you know, eight-man bracket, get to the championship. championship. That's the playing game to play Ohio State. That's how I want this game. Here's what I want. I want the eight teams to play. You get to the final two teams. Hey guys, you're both in. We go to a gas station on Odessa, Texas, and we flip a coin.

And one, whoever gets the coin tosses, the 11, the other one is the 12. Yeah, maybe, maybe I like that. Maybe with the three you argue for the SEC, right? It'd be Texas. It'd be Vanderbilt and then Bama, if Bama lost the SEC championship? You can not just do Vandy What was it? Texas and BYU Texas and Miami

Right If you get outside I'm saying if the SEC had one They want to go full Texas football mode Like they know football the best SEC It almost be better if you do 14 Four teams

Four slots Four slots not eight slots Four slots You play one game Yeah And whoever wins that game You two are in You guys are in

Four slots We need everybody. Everybody. But if Bama loses, and we're arguing Bama, Vandy, you know, Texas, let's get them in a gas station. They'll just hit the flips. Ain't no curses. Who's getting in the tournament? Oklahoma drill.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, we will see you tomorrow for our bussing with the boys. I don't want to stop. Tomorrow and bustle. Well, we'll carry it on whenever Diego and Kate getting here. We can ask them about bowl games. Yeah, because they were in a bowl game last year, weren't they?

Yeah, they were in a regular bowl game. We can talk to them about it. We'll have Kate McCombie. She doesn't count. Stude alignment for the Vanderbilt Commodores. And then we got Diego Pavia, Heisman candidate, one of three probably going to New York. We'll have him on the bus tomorrow. See you then.

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