Locked On ACC - Daily College Football & Basketball Podcast - Kirk Herbstreit's hot take on CFP selection opens slippery slope | Wins shouldn't matter??
Episode Date: December 23, 2024Are the College Football Playoff selections truly fair, or are media narratives skewing the process? Dive into the heated debate as Alex Donno and Kenton Gibbs dissect the controversies surrounding th...e playoff selection, focusing on Kirk Herbstreit's contentious remarks about the importance of wins. With the Miami Hurricanes and Clemson Tigers in the spotlight, the hosts explore the impact of blowout games and the potential for home-field advantage in future playoffs.Kenton Gibbs brings his insights from "Locked on Wolfpack," adding depth to the discussion on Clemson's performance against Texas and SMU's struggles against Penn State. The conversation is rich with analysis of key players like Cade Klubnik and the broader implications for the ACC and SEC.Don't miss this engaging breakdown of college football's playoff dynamics and the evolving landscape of the sport. Listen now for a fresh perspective on the path to success in college football.For your next listen, check out the Locked On College Football podcast! From NIL deals to never ending conference realignment rumors, Spencer McLaughlin gets you ready for an exciting season on the gridiron! Click HERE to listen now. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your Team. Every Day.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Rocket MoneyCancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com/lockedon today. GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.FanDuelThe NFL Playoffs are almost here, but it’s not too late to get in on the regular season action with FanDuel because right now, new customers can finish the season strong with TWO HUNDRED and FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS if your first FIVE DOLLAR bet wins.Visit FANDUEL.COM to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Discussion (0)
We've got four blowouts so far in the college football playoff and hot takes galore.
This one, though, by Kirk Herb Street might be the most ridiculous one I've heard yet.
You are Locked on ACC, your daily podcast on the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day.
It's a weird one when we have to admit that Florida state fans were right about Kirk Herb Street all along.
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$500 bet wins, visit Fanduel.com to get started. I am Alex Dono from Lockton Caines. He is Kenton
Gibbs from locked on Wolfpack.
So Kenton, everyone is talking about how the college football playoff is broken because,
you know, the first round games were not competitive.
Everyone has an idea on how to fix it.
And most of these ideas include basically letting in whoever we feel like the best teams
are.
I mean, you could start us off on this one, Kenton.
I mean, Kirk Herbstreet says we shouldn't get caught up in wins anymore.
Like, what are we doing?
You know, I find that ridiculous for so many reasons, but I want to point out one of the biggest
reasons.
The margin of victory being used as, oh, this is a clear sign, that this is foolishness,
this is a clear sign these teams don't belong.
There were multiple games that were about two and a half touchdown or bigger games,
right, Donald.
Just out of curiosity, the NFL, everybody plays everybody.
They're on about the same level, correct?
Of course.
And there are no blowout games in the playoffs.
It never happens.
Interesting.
Because the average of their first round, which is the wild card, 17.3 points per game.
Ooh.
But you know what?
It's clear because of that that they need to completely revamp the playoff
and all of the teams that were blown out don't belong in the playoffs.
You know, only the teams that were competitive belonging to playoff.
And even beyond that, I find it interesting the narratives that are talking.
not only because they are tossed,
but the way in which they're tossed, right?
We didn't get any consistency.
You talk about Kirk Herbsty saying,
we shouldn't be so, you know, dead set on wins.
Here's my thing that's blowing me about that.
Why are you using Indiana as the team
when they play in one of the big boy conferences
and they played last year's national champ and run around?
Why aren't they the team?
That's the face.
I can tell you why, at least,
my conspiracy theory as to why.
Go for.
ESPN has a mega
television deal with the SEC
while the Big Ten doesn't.
They've got a mega TV deal with Fox.
So that's a convenient
example because ESPN has
those very lucrative SEC
TV rights. They don't have them for the
Big Ten. So why not throw the Big Ten
example as a sacrificial lamb?
Well, and this is what
I mean when I say it's not just that
the narrative is being thrown. It's the lack
consistency with which is being
thrown. Colin Cowherd, another one
said, the new rule
for the playoff, Indiana should never
be allowed back. And less
than 24 hours
later said,
I think the takeaway is that it's
hard to win on the road
when Tennessee was being blown up.
Yeah, exactly.
No, wait a damn minute.
No, what?
But this is what I mean. There's no
consistency in this. And by the way,
For as much crap as I've given Florida State fans this year,
because of how they performed after everything,
go back and look at the record.
I was always on Florida State side in terms of it's not fair
and it's not right to keep an undefeated team out,
regardless of how you feel about that team.
I felt the same way, believe it or not.
I know people see the U on my hat
and they assume I was laughing at Florida State,
but I thought they deserved to be in last year, not this year.
Oh, of course not.
But again, they sacrificed their season.
And they said, we're going to boycott the playoff in the most meaningful way possible, not win any damn game.
But in all seriousness, I look at this situation and I say to myself, I don't see how Indiana is outclassed, overmatched, didn't belong.
And yet the team that spent millions of dollars spending $8 million on their quarterback alone.
And for what?
So because they spent that money on him, they're supposed to be there?
Oh, no, no. It was because they had won games that got them there that they were supposed to be there.
Okay, fine. But again, why do we not apply the logic based on, hey, this point spread happened, therefore this team didn't belong.
I'm up to thought that one game does not a season determine. That's just my thought.
USC did not have a good, great season. They beat LSU. They looked damn good in that game.
They looked damn good. Georgia State didn't have a great season. They beat the SEC team.
in Vandy.
Vandy didn't have a great season.
They beat Bama.
It's not about one game.
The Wolfpack beat the brakes off of UNC.
Sent Mac Brown into retirement.
It's exciting.
They did not have a great season.
So I look at this and I say to take a one game sample and say,
oh, look, SMU can't go back.
Oh, Clemson doesn't belong.
Oh, the ACC doesn't deserve two bids anymore.
based on what evidence?
Because if, and I mean this as a very clear in it,
if ACC adjacent Notre Dame goes on to beat Georgia,
the only SEC team that will have won a playoff game this year
was in the Big 12 last year.
Right, Texas.
Well, in this, yeah, go ahead, go ahead if you want to finish it off.
I'm good. I'm good.
So, I mean, I felt I was dumb.
founded even watching this Kirk Herb Street interview. He's done a few of them. He was on the
Pat McAfee shows saying similar things, but this sports center spot that he did with Linda Cohen,
where he said, the committee shouldn't get caught up in wins anymore, that it shouldn't be about
your record. He's saying he strongly felt that 11 and 1 Indiana clearly didn't belong in the playoffs now
that he's playing the result. It shouldn't be about your record. It should be about who you beat
should matter according to Herb Street.
So there's a lot of problems with that.
Let me unpack the first part of that, Kent.
And it's like the criteria that we use to judge who you beat,
doesn't the record of the teams you beat have a lot to do with that?
So it doesn't the record matter there?
So you're telling me the record for your favorite teams because, you know,
basically Kirk Herb Street refuses to admit he wants to see the biggest brands in.
But he can't outright say that because that would undermine competitiveness, right?
So he's just skirting around the issue.
right? So if you're saying, oh, who you beat should matter, then the record of the teams you beat
probably matter, but your own record shouldn't matter, which is crazy. And then another part of it,
what Herb Street said that I thought was very hypocritical was that, you know, we need the committee
to decide who the best teams are. He admitted that's a subjective process. So you figure out whatever
method, but decide who the best teams are. So hold on. Kirk, wouldn't a pretty good way to decide who
the best teams are based on, you know, how good their record is that an 11 and one team deserves
to be in over nine and three teams. Isn't that a pretty good way, an objective way to figure out
who the best teams are? So, you know, all this to say, Kenton, it's very clear the ESPN agenda right
now is they want in future college football playoffs. They want six SEC teams to get in. And they're
going to do, they're going to do and say whatever they have to do to justify that process. And if they
talk about it enough by the time the committee does it next year we're going to be so numb to
the idea that they're just going to speak it into existence that's what they're trying to do right
now i completely and totally abhorred the way that the discourse has going on this um in terms of
the national media and they're undermining their credibility in such a meaningful way because
how embarrassing is it to say the words out loud don't get caught up in wins
And again, we're not talking.
One of the points that I saw that a lot of SEC big brains keep rattling off, well, college basketball doesn't just go by wins.
Name me a single college basketball team in NCAA history that played in a power conference and won 90% of their games and was not under any type of penalty or postseason ban that didn't get their asses.
in the tournament. Come on, talk to me. Since you know everything, since you know something about,
oh, yeah, it's all about, you know, the NCAA finds a way to, you know, not just make wins,
how many wins you have, be the only thing to matter. Yeah, sure. If you're playing the
northeastern directional school for the differently able 12 times a year in conference, absolutely.
But guess what? Here in the real world, if you play at a power conference, even if you end up
with one of the easier schedules in that power conference,
you get what you get.
You get what you get.
And I'll tell you this much,
we are literally, quite literally,
three plays away from having the SECB O and two in this thing.
We are a couple of moments being different from Clemson.
The blind side block being called back in Phil Mapa being potentially healthy
and able to punch it in from the one.
We are those two plays away from looking at.
King Guptonson, no, wait a damn minute.
Did the SEC runner up and the third best team in SEC, both looms?
One of them got boat race, one lost at home, three plays away from not being a reality.
And yet here we are saying, you know, it's not about just wins.
It's about who you beat.
Well, if that is the case, I simply want to ask this, while we head down that slippery
slope, because I hate when people are all, that's a slippery slope.
but when you look at this one, this really is a slope that is completely made of about a footwide block of ice.
Because how under God's green earth, if a team in one of the big boy conferences with one loss to a team that is in the top 10 is not good enough.
Who the hell is?
Right.
They want to decide before the season even starts.
like they're going to have Alabama, especially just automatically penciled in for next year.
You know, Bama's never going to be bad.
Like I don't see like they're not going to probably lose more than three games, right?
That's close to their, well, okay, maybe we can talk about that.
But if Bama loses three, they're going to be automatically in from now on if they only lose three.
Well, I don't know why because the team that, one, they lost to two teams that wouldn't be bowl eligible had they not beat them.
And the third team that they lost to just got things.
asses ran up out of the horseshoot. They got stumped out so bad. One of the worst,
I believe they had the second worst margin of victory, uh, margin of defeat in the, in the
playoff so far. 42 to 17. Was it, was that the worst? Hold on. So we had 38 to 24 was the Texas win.
Yeah, 38 to 10. So it was, uh, it was, uh, second worst to Penn State in SMU. Yeah, yeah.
So, so, and, and mind you, and mind you,
second worst margin of victory, and yet everybody screaming about Penn State and Indiana being undeserved.
And everybody's saying, oh, well, you know, Penn State called the dogs off.
Ohio State had a guy with number 33 in at quarterback with about 10 minutes left.
I don't know what you want for me, but I'm the type of guy that I'm going to apply the logic the same way as consistently as possible every single time.
I'm going to apply the logic as consistently as I can
and as congruent of a fashion as I can
because I don't want people to be able to pull up my words
and say, Ken, here you are arguing with yourself.
I don't want that to be the case.
And yet, there are so many people who get paid so much more than us, Dono.
People who get to travel and stay in five-star hotels
before they get seen by millions that will gladly go on air
and say some ridiculousness like,
we can't get caught up on wins.
No.
We got to get caught up on who the ESPN top 150 says signed with who.
It's so ridiculous.
It's so ridiculous.
And the funny part about it was after Herb Street goes on his rant where he said it like five times,
we can't get caught up in wins.
Linda Cohen is like, you raise some great points, Kirk.
And I'm like, no, he didn't.
He raised any good points.
Yeah.
But how much time do you really?
have to even refute the foolishness of we can't get caught up in wins we can't because that on
its face is such an incredibly bad faith premise that on its face is literally saying at the just
one for one period point blank by the way there is only one conference that is deserving of teams
being in here in a meaningful clip because if the big 10 ain't worthy who the hell else is right
It's terrible.
It's just terrible.
Got a lot more to talk about on this episode of Lockdown ACC, including,
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the playoff format is perfect.
Now, I disagree with the idea that we can't get caught up in wins,
but is there anything we would do to tweak the format moving forward?
And yeah, we have a couple of tough ACC losses to talk about.
I don't think the Clemson loss was nearly as bad as people say it was,
but SMU, that was ugly.
I will fully own that one.
You want to keep it locked right here.
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Thank you so much for making Locked on ACC, your first listen and your first watch today.
Make sure you also check out Locked on college football.
I'll make that your next list.
And Spencer McLaughlin does an awesome job.
And I know he's been very, very busy talking about everything going on in the college football
playoff.
And I am Alex Dono and he's Kenton Gibbs here on Locked on ACC.
So Kenton, is there anything?
This is the first year of the 12 team format.
And I will say one thing.
There's been a lot of hot takes when we've only seen the opening round games.
Like you've got four teams that haven't even played yet in the CFP because they enjoyed
by weeks.
But hot takes have been going wild after the first four games.
Is there anything you feel like they should change or they should tweak?
I would say the only thing that I would change or tweak about the current playoff situation is actually,
actually, you know what?
The more I think about it, tomorrow I'm like, I like it.
I like the way it's set up.
I like, at the end of the day, I think that there should be a reward for winning your conference.
I think there absolutely should be a reward for that.
And I think that reward should be either playing a home game or playing in a bowl that is very near your school.
I'm sorry.
I think that there is value in having shown the ability to win a conference regardless of what conference it is.
And so I think that that's pretty much the only thing that I would say.
Like conference champions, if you are a conference champion, who's on the outside looking in,
I think you should be in a situation to get a home game as opposed to a conference runner up elsewhere.
But everything else, I'm not really going to say I'm against.
Yeah, because one of the suggestions that I've kind of considered that I've seen going around,
but I have my doubts about this.
And it goes with a lot of what you're saying there, Kenton, is the idea that you shouldn't guarantee top four seeds to conference champions.
but then the more I think about that,
I feel like they got that right,
because like you said,
there should be a reward for actually winning your conference.
Because if you stop guarantee,
and that's only for the top four,
because obviously Clemson,
they won the conference,
but they were the fifth rated conference champions.
So they didn't get the first round by.
Only the top four do.
But if you take that one away,
then you're going to see some teams that realize,
we've got a lot more to lose than to gain
by playing in the conference championship.
So maybe we're going to sit our starters for this game or who knows, maybe it'll be possible to opt out of conference championship games in the future.
So I agree with you.
There should be a reward for being a conference champion.
One thing I have considered is because they do this in other sports.
Like this is, I'm a big soccer nut and they do this for, you know, UEFA Champions League.
I'm open to reseeding after the first round that the bracket isn't necessarily locked in because then you're not excluding any teams.
Like the teams that are in are in, but maybe based on how the performances look in the first round, you can kind of reseed and say, okay, now this team is the number one seed and this is the five, the six, just to, because, you know, obviously I know Oregon hasn't played a game yet and they'll probably win this thing. But they've got a, they've got a tougher road than some of the teams that didn't win their conferences. So maybe receding after the first round is not such a terrible idea. Now, I'm surprised. I haven't heard a lot of people.
people bring this idea up.
And I'm not saying I want this,
but I wonder if this is something that they'll consider.
Because again, we've had four,
four, you know, home games and the home
teams all won by double digits.
I wonder if they will
consider tweaking that and
making everything a neutral site game.
Like if they feel like some of these games were not
as close as they would have been, like
maybe if Penn State wasn't playing at Happy
Valley and they were playing in the Superdome,
maybe SMU would have been a little bit more
competitive. You know, if they look at something
like that. I wonder if they'll do a way.
And I thought the home environments
were really cool, Kenton, but I wonder if the
committee might look at that and say,
these games were all blowouts for the home teams.
Maybe we need to make everything neutral site
from here on out.
I could see that.
My only idea there is
even these neutral sites are generally
not neutral sites. You get what I'm saying?
I remember there was a year.
So I grew up, I grew up, obviously,
those of you all that penititions to show for
for a while. I'm from the west side of Detroit, Michigan. Okay, I grew up in Big Ten
country. I watched when Michigan was really good, they had to go out to Pasadena to play
a team called USC. Now, who do you think that game was more of a home game for, even though it was
a neutral site in Pasadena, California? You know?
Yeah, USC probably had, what is it, like 10 miles from their campus versus, you know,
thousand plus miles.
Yeah.
I watched Michigan State have to go down, I believe it was, to either Louisiana or Atlanta, to play Alabama, who in the, I believe it was either the sugar bowl or the cotton bowl or something along those lines.
When they were really good, had Shalikahoon and company up there, they had to go all the way down and play Alabama in that situation.
I don't think these neutral sites are truly neutral in and of themselves, you know?
Also, I'm all for let these teams have their home game.
If weather is a factor, so be it, whether it's a factor.
You know what you could do to prevent whether being a factor that's going to bother you and your team, win your damn ball games.
That way, instead of saying, oh, my God, we got to go up to Happy Valley.
You find a way to say, wait a minute, does Penn State have to come down the downs?
Oh, this should be fun.
Instead of having to say, man, I think it's going to be a lot of wrong color orange in Austin.
you would say, wait a minute, we're 11 and 1.
Bring y'all tails on the Death Valley, you know?
So that's not a shot at SMU or Clemson because I think that they both held up the banner of the conference spectacularly.
I don't care if it was a blowout SMU.
This was your first year here for y'all to even do what y'all did this year.
Great job.
Clemson.
Same deal there.
But I look at this and I say to myself, I'm fine with teams having home games because, again, there should be some incentive to winning your conference and all that.
don't like that the home game seating is not based on winning your conference.
I don't think that a team that's second or third or fourth in their conference
should get a home game over a team that won their conference championship,
even if they weren't the best and they just happened to win the conference championship game.
Tough Titty said to Kitty when the milk went dry.
You won when you had to win, and I think that that should be worse on.
Yeah, I want to echo something.
You said it earlier in this episode.
You also said it in one of the playoff post game shows that we did,
and those have been a lot of fun, by the way.
Kenton and I were on after the Notre Dame Indiana game.
We were on after the Clemson, Texas game.
But you talk it's not like all of a sudden we have lopsided games in the college football
playoff.
Like everyone, now that we've got 12 teams, everyone's like, see, we should have let Ole Miss in.
We should have let Alabama in and South Carolina.
And none of this would have happened if we let these teams in.
So Kenton, the college football playoff, I think it's in its 11th season with all the previous forms being 14.
76% of the games in CFP have been decided by 10 or more points.
76%.
This is not a new thing.
Like having lopsided games in the college football playoff is not something that just suddenly
happened now that you've added eight extra teams.
Most of these games, there have obviously been some epic ones over the years,
but most of these games have been blowouts.
This is not a new problem.
It's absolutely not a new problem.
And again, when big brands get blown out,
Nobody says they don't belong.
Nobody says that.
Nobody said it.
When Clemson got blew out by LSU, nobody said, oh, Clemson can't ever come back.
They don't ever have them back.
They said, man, Joe Burrow and company had a great year.
You know, hey, can't stop chasing and Jeddhas and all those guys.
Get what you get.
And you accepted that and you moved on.
When Bama got blew out by Clemson, nobody said, do not let those boys from Tuscaloosa come back after.
They don't ever deserve a spot in this playoff again.
When Michigan State got blew out by Bamba, it wasn't, oh my God, I don't care what type of season they have.
Them guys from East Lansing can't ever come back.
The reality is, and even with TCU, I think that's the biggest most prime example of how delirious people get because they talk about Georgia blew them out 65 to 70.
Well, that was in a national championship, and it was during a play.
playoff of four teams, which means what, Donnell?
They had to do what to play Georgia, be the playoff team.
They had to beat a playoff team.
They beat Michigan.
That's all Michigan.
What do you want from?
So I don't look at any of these blowouts as, as, hey, you don't belong because it happened
or whatever the case may be.
I look at it as another team, bested you.
They whooped the wheels off you.
You lick your wounds.
You come back next year.
But like you said, Donald, these blowouts are not a new thing.
going back to the 14th playoff.
We have seen a lot of these teams take their lumps.
We have seen Oklahoma come back year after year after year under Leaking Riley
and get put to sleep in the playoffs.
And we never said, oh, the new rule, we can't have them in.
But for some reason, because Indiana's red and white is a slightly different hue than Oklahomaans,
they just, oh, we can't have them back.
We just can't, you know, so.
I mean, I think the big problem is the committee last year has already set the precedent
that we're going to sometimes pick our matchups based on entertainment and TV ratings over earning it, right?
Because they did that last year.
They kept out Florida State because Jordan Travis was injured and they knew that, you know,
Brock Glenn was not, you know, going to be able to put an entertaining product on the field.
So they did that.
They left Florida State out for that reason and that reason only because they won their conference.
They were third.
That was the only reason.
It was for entertainment purposes.
So now all of a sudden, it has been normalized.
that, hey, we should be picking matchups and playoff teams based on who's going to bring the best ratings to the table?
Because you've said it before, can you imagine if the NFL decided to say, hey, you know what, we don't want underdogs in the playoffs.
I don't care that you had a Cinderella, you know, 11 and 6 season and you earned your way in.
We don't feel like, you know, we don't feel like, you know, the New York Jets with, well, that's a bad example because they're bad.
We don't feel like a team from a smaller market is going to bring enough eyes to the table this.
year. It's like it's unheard of, but yet it's normalizing college football now.
We do admit it was not the best showing for the ACCC over the weekend. We'll talk about SMU's 38 to 10 loss and Clemsden's 38 to 24 loss. You want to keep it locked right here. So we're not done yet on this brand new episode of locked on ACC.
And I'm certainly not done with Fanduil. I mean, guys, football season is nowhere near over. We still have a ton of college football playoff games left, a ton of bowl games remaining. And yeah, the NFL play.
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Thank you so much for making this pre-holiday edition
of LockdowneACC your first listen and your first watch today.
Make sure you check out our other shows for your next listen.
I host Lockdown Keynes.
I will be on location for the Pop-Tarts Bowl in less than a week.
I am looking forward to that. Kenton Gibbs co-hosts Lockdown Wolfpack and does an awesome job talking everything, NC State.
All right. So Kenton, I thought Clemson was competitive with Texas. I mean, they had the game within seven points in the fourth quarter.
Obviously, the rushing defense was brutal. I think Clemson should probably make some, maybe make some defensive coaching changes during the offseason.
and it hurt them.
I don't think it was the difference in winning or losing the game,
but not having Phil Mafa for most of that game did hurt Clemson
because they were out rushed.
292 to 76, I believe, was the running gap.
But Clemson was competitive.
They had some life against Texas.
So why don't we start with that one?
Because again, like, I know it was a double-digit loss,
but that wasn't quite the embarrassment for the ACC
that the other game was.
Yeah, in a very similar vein to all, people said that the end
Indiana game was not as close as the final score would imply.
This one was not as far as the final score would imply.
Because if you look at the final scores, you would say,
oh, Clemson was less close to Texas than Indiana was to Ohio State.
The reality is coming down a stretch, like Donald said,
it was a one possession game in the fourth quarter.
It just so happened to be as soon as they got into a one possession game,
they decided, you know what, let's see how fast Texas running back and run.
Let's give him an unimpeded lane and let's see how fast he can run.
But honestly, I saw really good things from Kay Klufnik in that receiving core.
And ACC, we're in trouble.
We're in trouble.
Every ACC fan listen to this that is not a Clemson Tiger fan, we are all in trouble.
I am saying this right now, and you all will know this right now for the ACC Media Days next year,
unless something drastic were it happened,
I very seriously doubt that anybody usurps them as the kings of the ACC this year.
Because they, you know, obviously the gap fits, the tackling, the angles need improvement.
But I don't see too many positions where they're supposed to get worse.
They don't have a ton of guys transfer out every year.
I look at their roster and I say, man, you got all these freshmen all over
place playing good ball you got all these sophomores all over the place playing good ball
they're going to be back and they're bringing some transfers in now now dabbo sweeney has has woken up
and he started using the portal so it might be over for everyone else because the big thing that's
been holding him back for the past few years he's now starting to use the portal and bring in
starting caliber players so we could be in big trouble yeah it's like how the u.s military runs a lot of
tests and they're like oh yeah just just keep that keep that playing going to 50% capacity do not
make it go all the way and it's like wait what they're like yeah we need to see how it can do when
we're rolling that half capacity it's like why would you because we know it full clip it'll destroy
everybody else if if this is clemson going like full throttle there's there's going to be a problem
there and as far as the smu game we saw problems that rear their ugly head come out once again
that's that's really what we saw in this game we saw some some moments where kevin jennings just
looked out of sync with his past catchers early in the game and two pick six has basically
put this thing away before it even got started. I mean, it's it's it's tough to keep digging
yourself into these holes and thinking you're going to claw back. That's not how it's going to work.
That's not how it's going to work under any shape, way, form, or circumstance. This was a domination
by Penn State. Hats off to them. But you saw what you saw from SMU.
all year. You saw terrible penalties in inopportune time. You saw bad
turnovers that they could not afford and against the team like Penn State that just
does it the right way. They're not the flashiest team. They're not the team that you look
at and think, oh, they're going to get about six, seven explosive plays a game. They showed up
and played the game that you know Penn State is going to play. They're going to keep it clean.
They're not going to give you the ball. They're not going to commit a bunch of dumb penalties.
and they're going to say, hey, we are who we are, we do what we do.
Stop us.
Yeah, that was, like you said, it was 14 to nothing on two pick sixes in the blink of an eye.
I was at a sports bar and thinking, hey, maybe I'll all hang out for a couple of X hours.
Maybe I'll leave and go home at halftime.
After it was 14 nothing, I'm like, check please.
We're good.
We're good here.
I don't need to see much else.
Your wings didn't even get dipped in the ranch ago before you had to go.
You know what I mean?
I was just, that was nasty business.
It was nasty business.
We appreciate everyone making Lockdown
ACC, your first list and your first watch today.
And happy holidays and Merry Christmas to everybody.
I'm not sure about the next couple days.
We'll see.
I know if nothing else will definitely be back by the 26th,
which is like in Europe, that's also a holiday.
It's Boxing Day over there.
But we don't celebrate that.
We'll be here.
It'll be locked on ACC Day on the 26th.
So make sure you follow Kenton at TGIF underscore Kenton.
Make sure you follow me at Alex Dono.
And we'll talk to you guys next time on another episode of Lockdown ACC.
We are part of the awesome Lockdown Podcast Network.
Your team every day.
