Locked On ACC - Daily College Football & Basketball Podcast - MISTAKES: Miami Hurricanes Collapse as Carson Beck’s Costly Interception SHOCKS College Football Fans

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

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Miami fought for 60 minutes, but you're not going to beat an Indiana Hoosiers team when you make mistakes because they don't. 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 was closer than a lot of folks thought it would, and the hurricanes did have an opportunity at a game-winning drive with just under two minutes, and they got into Indiana territory before Carson Beck through the game ceiling interception. But I'm not one for moral victories. In fact, in a lot of ways, Miami had they kept the mistakes down, could have been

national champions this morning. Thank you so much to the everydayers for making Lockdowne ACC your first listen. We're available free wherever you get your podcast. We're free on YouTube. We're part of the number one Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. He is Kenton Gibbs, former NC State defensive linemen and co-hosts of Locked-on Wolfpack. I am Alex Dono from Locked-on Cain's. This episode is brought to you by Game Time. Download the GameTime app. Create your account and use code Locked-on College for $20 off your first

purchase on this loaded episode. We'll talk about Duke waking up on a Tuesday morning and choosing violence and attempting to keep star quarterback Darian Mensa from the transfer portal. part of this is still undecided, but their temporary restraining order attempt did fail on Tuesday morning. But we'll start with the action on the field as Miami falls to Indiana, Kenton, by a final score of 27 to 21. And I start here with not to take anything away from Indiana. And you saw Fernando Mendoza like have his Heisman drive, right?

When that, you know, the one that made it 24 to 14, the two-fourth down conversions. You wonder, though, from a Miami point of view, starting here, Kenton, what might have been if you didn't have a punt blocked for a touchdown? And if you didn't doink a 50-yarder, but a makeable field goal off the right, upright, we might be having a different conversation today. Question, Dono. What was Indiana's last few drives before that the punt block? If somebody were to asks you, hey, what's the story of this game and how did everything go down? Before that punt block touchdown, what was Indiana's last few drops? Miami stops. In the second half, and I want to be clear about this, okay, before that block punt, and this is something that I said

about, I tweeted about this during the game. Donno, remember there used to be a rule for punt returners, put your heels on the team. And if that ball goes over your shoulder at the 10. Make them make the play right. Right. Now, for all of the love that Malachi Tony gets, and he deserves every bit of it. And this is part of the problem with a Miami team,

and this is not me saying that Miami's a bad team or anything like, because I know Miami fans a little tender right now. I get it, a little bit of fall off upon tenderness over there. But when you talk about a team that's having to trust a freshman, you're talking about having to trust a freshman who may make a mistake when he fielded that punt if you let it bounce you're forcing them to field it at the one do it right and if you get it wrong operationally what happens dono you gain 19 yards that's right but what happens if you field it at the five or so and get tackled at the seven then you set yourself up for what happened and not only

that, how many yards did you gain from them down and get that to one? Six. You gained six yards. So you gave up the opportunity for 19 to gain six, right? And now, let's talk about Indiana's drives before that block putt. Punt, six plays,

six yards. Four plays, two yards, punt. Three plays negative two yards, punt. So before the punt block touchdown, there was nothing. There was, There was nothing there for Indiana. They did precious little. You have to, have to, have to make better decisions in that moment.

And that's what will, you know, ultimately get you going. And like you said, Dono, a doink field goal in that one, even if you take away the field goal, even if you say, well, hey, when you punt it back to Indiana, they were probably going to go down and get a field goal themselves. That's still a four-point swing, which changes the momentum, which changes the game, which changes how a lot of things were going in that game. It's, again, you just, you can't live like that, man. You cannot live with that type of play. Yeah, Miami had seven penalties for 70 plus yards in the game.

Indiana actually committed more penalties than usual, but it was still just five for 38 yards. Miami went just three for 11 on third down, Kenton, which I think tells an important story for this football game because the hurricanes like to win a, certain way. They like to limit the amount of plays that their opponent runs. Instead, Miami only ran 53 plays compared to 72 in Indiana. And Miami held the ball for just 23 minutes and 36 seconds compared to Indiana's 36.24. And, you know, there were certain times in the game when

Miami was very successful at the line of scrimmage in the third quarter and into the fourth. Ruben Dane had a sack. Akeem Mesedor had two. There were times they were getting to Dary in Mensa and making him, you're sorry, getting to Fernando Mendoza, get a little ahead of myself here. They were getting to Fernando Mendoza and making him a little bit uncomfortable, and sleep a lot, just so people know. You know, other times when Miami's offensive line was getting some push, but overall, Indiana won more than their share of the battles at the line of scrimmage.

And maybe what was, and not surprising, what was most impressive about the Hoosiers is how little space they give you on defense. I mean, it's actually right. remarkable looking back on Malachi Tony, able to get 122 yards on 10 catches because the amount of space that Indiana's DBs give to you in coverage can be measured only by millimeters, not by feet or by yards. And so every yard you have to earn every single inch of every yard you get against those guys. And on the biggest possible stage, I do think Miami proved that they belonged on that field.

and they did a lot better against IU, certainly that Oregon had done or Alabama had done in the college football playoff. But Indiana showed you why they are the first 16 and 0 team in the history of college football, because the margins are so thin when you play against those guys. Not only are they really good, really athletic, really well coached, but they're so mature and they never beat themselves, right? I mean, the amount of mistakes that Miami made in that game on Monday, Monday night, not too much for them to overcome those mistakes in most of the games that they played in this year, but you're not going to overcome any mistakes when you play against a team that makes none. And here's the biggest thing about it.

My heart goes out to all the Miami fans right now. My heart goes out to all the Miami players right now, but especially that defense, man. That defense put on one of the most special performances that we've seen in quite some time. Bain and Mezzador did it all. There's nothing else that you can ask of those two. You know, Besant, who I'm super high on, made multiple plays in the backfield in this game as well. If you look at what they actually allow as a defense,

as a defense, they gave up 20 points to a Heisman winner. 20. If you're talking about, you take away that punk block touchdown, you're talking about a 21 to 20 victory for Miami. You know, like you said, the margins, they're this big. Because most teams, you don't even think in a national championship game, especially with how it is now, right? First round game, special teams may loom large because, you know,

guys are rusty, all that stuff. Okay, great. But you're talking about a national championship where everybody's been playing for the past three, four weeks in a row. and special teams margin this much is what ultimately caused this thing to shift in Indiana's way. You know, again, credit to Miami for a fantastic season. Credit to Miami for putting the ACC on their backs. Credit to Miami for not tucking their tail and folding.

Because let's be honest, right? We've seen other teams be down double digits to IU this year at half. And when they came out of that, it's over. We're done. We've seen teams be closer at halftime than Miami was. In that second half, it's over. The adjustments were made. They're too powerful.

They're too old. They're too mature. They're too smart. And that's it. This Miami team fought till the end. And you're right. You're the youth. You got multiple national championships.

No moral victories. But anybody who sits here and tells themselves, if I was to tell you at the beginning of the season, Miami will be there in Corle Gables, or I'm sorry, in Hard Rock Stadium. Miami Gardens, yeah. Miami Gardens, yeah, I know that, not in Coral Gables, I had to correct myself.

If somebody was to tell you that Miami ends up there at the end of the year, 95% of Cain's Twitter and, let me not say Cain's Twitter, because Twitter folks are a little out there. But 95% of Cainte of, games fans overall would tell you that's a damn good season.

Mario and company have nothing to hang their heads about, get back to the lab, get back to it. And I'm going to tell you, we're about to talk about some help that may or may not be on the way because of legal troubles and whatnot. And, you know, ultimately, this team is primed to be back.

They're primed to make it happen again. Yeah, and on that note, Miami is trying to Two land, Darien Mensa, former Duke quarterback. Duke threw a legal Hail Mary on Tuesday morning. We'll talk about where things stand. You want to keep it locked right here. We're only getting started on this brand new episode of Lockdown ACC.

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So make sure you check it out, Lockedon Podcast.com slash Everydayer and find the shows you love most and become an official every day or today. Alex Dono alongside Kenton Gibbs. All right. So Kenton, this Darien Mensa took an interesting turn in the situation on Tuesday morning. You know, we first talked about it when the news broke. I think it was on Friday that Mensa was going to declare to enter the transfer portal. This is the star quarterback of Duke.

Of course, there was a lot of certainly outrage from college football fans about what the sport is becoming and all that. And that Miami was the likely destination for him. Now, the intel that I had been getting throughout the long weekend, the long holiday weekend was it looked as though Duke wasn't going to present any sort of a legal fight, that there was a negotiation going on between Darien Mensa's people and the NIL representatives from Duke to negotiate a buyout, essentially. Like, how can we secure his NIL rights to take those with us from Duke to wherever we end up? And like, it didn't seem like Duke was going to throw any sort of. of a legal hurdle. I don't know, maybe Duke heard from all of the college football fans and columnists,

like, hey, you can't just lay down and take this. So on Tuesday morning, Duke did file a lawsuit unexpected to Darien Mentsa's people. They filed a lawsuit not against Miami, but against Daryan Mensa for breaching his contract. Now, most of the terms of the lawsuit are, you know, going to be up to the legal process. but they filed for a temporary restraining order that would have kept MENSA from entering the transfer portal and forced him to stay at Duke. And a judge threw that out immediately, Kenton. The judge rejected the TRO, which means MENSA is presumably free to enter the transfer portal and they will have to enter him into the portal. So even though, again, there are still some legal terms here that have to be resolved down the road,

it doesn't appear that Duke will be able to force him to stay in Durham. You know, I'm going to talk what I don't know first, and then we'll talk what I do know after that, okay? What I don't know is the exact legalese of what is, what is and is not enforceable, what is and is not plausible or possible to do as a program or whatever the deal was, right? Because if the deal is, hey, we are,

we have secured your marketing rights, and you signed away your marketing rights for X amount of years, and now you're going over there, and they're saying that they're going to pay you for your marketing rights X amount, well, there's a thing that is commonly joked about in the music industry called a 360 deal, right? It means that when you sign that, whatever you do, whatever money-making endeavor you do with your likeness

and that's based off your popularity, all that, the label gets a cut. If he did sign a deal that is similar to a 360, I don't know how much leverage he could have to potentially leave and say, hey, I'm still going to get everything that I wanted out of Miami. And, you know, whatever the agreed upon was that Dono's Ferrari of Miami Gardens is going to pay him. I don't know what that is. But if that is the deal, I think that's pretty hard to overcome in terms of the legalese aspect of it.

But now let me talk to football leagues from a couple of different standpoint. First thing first, lots of people seem to be upset with Miami about this or seem to be upset and keep throwing around the word tampering and all that. I'm a big believer and name a name, show some proof or leave it on the damn playground. Okay? Every team can say that everybody's tampering. Oh, Bama took Hollywood smothers and Noah Rogers. They tampered.

They tampering. Did anybody notice you've never seen me say that about it? about Bama and I, although my grandmother loves them, I don't give a damn about the time. I don't care about that team does not make me happy, sad joy. I don't care nothing about it. But I don't have proof and evidence. I've heard things through the grapevine, but you know what you can't go to court with? Your honor, through the grapevine, I've heard.

Your honor, speculation has it. Rumor has it. You know, so let's knock all that off. And on a quick, on a quick footnote on that, it doesn't appear, it doesn't appear that Duke is, is alleging Miami tampered, which, you know, probably means they, they don't feel like they have anything there. Like, they're actually putting this on Mensa, which is uncharted waters, right? Because, like, you know, Miami had kind of a similar situation with Xavier Lucas last year from Wisconsin. And Wisconsin filed suit, but not against the player. they filed suit against Miami.

So Duke is filing suit against the player, which is also interesting, Kenton, because even though, like, I definitely see plenty of public opinion that's behind Duke on this. I don't think it's 100%, but there's a lot of folks behind Duke on this. It still is an interesting precedent of petty that you're setting when, you know, you're in the business every single year of recruiting athletes, whether it's recruiting. out of the high school or out of the transfer portal. And once you set that precedent that if you want to go somewhere else, we're going to sue you for it or we could sue you for it,

it's just something to think about that that could make things a little muddy down the road. Well, I do want to push back on that idea, just on this front. If I sign you to a two-year deal and you're guaranteed two years of security, two years worth of pay, two years worth the NIO, two years worth it, we guaranteed you this, and you decide to leave halfway through, I don't think it's petty to sue somebody over that. I think that's good business. I guarantee you a certain amount of security and you abandoned that.

And mind you, we're not talking about nine to five of security. We're not talking about, hey, man, we'll give you $100,000 a year, which to the average American sounds like a great deal, right? We know the statistics from the Department of Labor. No, no, no. We are talking $4 million a year. If I sign you to $4 million a year and you agree, to terms and then you think you're leaving halfway through.

Hey, buddy, don't worry about it. I see you at court. I see you and yours at court. Here's the other part of that, though. Let me say this also. Oh, go for it. Go for it. This contract that colleges are offering,

these contracts that players are signing to, keep in mind they're not employees. And the schools, the schools do not want them to be employees. Like, they are very clear in saying, like, no, no, no, no. We do not want to consider you, employees. That's not what our business model is. These are student athletes. These are marketing deals. So you're signing players to contracts where you're saying it, these are not employees and these are not contracts to play football. These are contracts for marketing rights. And then when the players want to leave,

you're acting like these are pay for play contracts when you said they weren't football contracts, but now you want to enforce them as if you can't play football somewhere else. Donald, let's stop that. Let's stop that. You are not. know the real let's let's be honest about that anybody who's seen south park do y'all remember the episode about student athletes do you all remember the episode yes where cartman was walking around colorado how do you oh student athletes you call them that is exactly what we're seeing with nil and it not being paid for play the reality is we know what this is but i want to talk about the non-legalese and the non-money part of this to to kind of push us to the third second for a bit sure

What is up with all these teams wanting hostages? Don't get me wrong. I fully understand. I just said, if I gave you $4 million, you're going to be here for me. You're going to be here for me. But here's my deal. Sue him for the money. Don't hold him out of the pool.

Don't try to hold him out of the four because when you have a quarterback, or not even a quarterback, when you have a player on your team that said, I don't want to be here. But you've forced him to be, how well do you think that's going to work out? The same way that I said, Notre Dame pulled some Loserville nonsense by sitting out a football game, it's also Loserville activity by Washington to force a player who wants to go to be in your facility, in your building. I would gladly say, brother, if you want to go, I'll pack for you. But, but please know, you're forfeiting this money.

I'll give you, hey, you're not going to get paid nowhere else, which I don't understand this idea of, I'm going to force you to be here. Obviously, Darry and Minson and Devon and Washington, they're going to play their best football regardless of where they are because the NFL money is lingering on the other side potentially. But the reality is I don't want hostages. I want volunteers. I want guys that are geeked up to play for whatever school I'm coaching,

whatever school I'm playing that. If I'm coached door, if you don't want to play for the black ass, take your ass home. If I am Mani Diaz, you don't want to play for the, for the Duke Blanche. Devils you know Wallace Wade don't appeal to you take your ass to wherever you want to be and I ain't goes curse no more because I don't want to lose our clean rating but go where you got to go but stop all this oh we're going to force this player to play for that's not how this works anymore

it's the new world soon get your money let them go and if if they can't work out a new deal because the legalese oh so now you're in Miami playing for free good for you playing for the love of the game as we intended a long time ago good for you Well, we'll continue this conversation on what happens next with Dary and Mensa. You want to keep it locked right here. We're not done yet on this brand new episode of Lockdown ACC. Thank you for making Lockdown ACCC your first listen. For your next listen, make sure you check out our other shows.

Kenton Gibbs and Grayson Boone do an incredible job hosting Lockdown Wolfpack, talking to all things, NC State. I talk all things Miami on Locked on Cains. As you can imagine, it's been a really busy month and a half for us on Lockdown Cains. So I'm grateful for an amazing season by Miami. I'm obviously curious to see if and when Darien Mensa becomes Miami's next starting quarterback. So, all right, big this morning, Tuesday morning, Kenton, that the temporary restraining order was denied. So it looks like at the very least, as long as Darian Mensa still wants to go through with getting into the transfer portal,

the Duke will be forced legally to enter his name into the transfer portal. and that he will be, because of this ruling from a judge this morning, will be free to seek another opportunity. Like you mentioned, I guess the question would still be over. How did they resolve the money? Like, will there be some kind of a negotiation, which I had been told a negotiation was going on to release him from his NIL rights at Duke? Like, will Duke maybe insist on, hey, like, we don't want to relinquish his NIL rights?

We feel we are entitled to them. part of the issue here, Kenton is I don't know how long it would take for all of that to play out if that might like bleed into the upcoming football season. So there's a chance Daryan Mensa could arrive at Miami and kind of be playing in limbo while some of this is getting resolved. And to me, I think that would be the ideal situation for Duke. For you to say, hey, you've got to play for free until this gets resolved. And you'll get your X amount of millions on the back end if you win. if you lose, congratulations. You just forfeited $4 million, brother.

I hope you enjoyed it. I hope the time. Hey, Miami's got some beautiful scenic views. They got some wonderful apartments down there. They got some wonderful condos. They got some wonderful homes. I wonder how much of it you can buy with exactly $0 and zero cents. Oh, man, that should be a good time.

But in all seriousness, I look at this and I say, you know, the money part of this is the big holdup. And this is the first battle, the temporary restraining order. That was the first battle of many. Because this one, to quote the name of a movie that is now trending in all famous and whatnot, this is going to be one battle after another. This is going to be, we're going to keep seeing this thing happening and play out in real time. It's very, this could be a landmark case now. This case could set precedent for what we see going forward.

and potentially really in the Wild Wild West or blowing the floodgates all the way open to where, regardless of what contract decided to win, it don't matter. Yeah. I think a massive precedent was already set with the TRO getting denied because, like, that judge basically said, like, you can't force him to stay enrolled at your school and play football there. Like, that was already massive.

Like, there are other precedents that are yet to be said about enforcing the marketing dollars, But I think, and again, this goes to my and your, I think, a logical point that these are not technically football or employment contracts. These are marketing contracts. So I thought that judge made it loud and clear that, yeah, you can't force someone to play for you or to attend your university. That that's not up for debate with these contracts. I agree. I agree that that part is a massive battle. But to me, that's not the biggest part of the battle for me.

this standpoint, Donno. Imagine if you and I agree, right? And I said, hey, Donald, I get your recording rights, right? Wherever you go to record, I get the rights. I get the, you know, whatever the benefits are of that, I get that. You can go and record somewhere else for free. You can go, hey, if you are okay with relinquishing your, and here's the thing about the, the doing it for free part of it, that was what all of this was about. It was about compensating the labor force. And trust me, I was part. part of that labor force. Two torn Achilles and a torn bicep later. I was part of that labor force that my body generated a certain thing for the university. So it was all about getting the labor

force paid. And yes, the part of having that labor force have free movement, that was also part of it. Without hesitation, I'll say that the transfer portal and to sit out a year and all that while coaches can move freely, that was definitely part of it. But that's not the only part of the biggest part in my personal opinion, the ability of these young men to change the lives of their families while they're in college, the ability of these young men to change their own lives, right? Say what you want about Carson Beck. And I was one of the people who said he threw a quintessential backball to end the game, right? But guess what?

Guess what? As much as I tell people, update your LinkedIn, get ready to learn some enterprise rental car. He's going to be learning an enterprise rental car with about $4 million extra dollars on him, six million extra dollars on whatever the contract was. He's going to be learning it with that head start. So ultimately, yes, this was a massive blow. But I think that there are still many battles to go. Because imagine if you're Darien Mintsa and you win this battle to go play for Miami,

but you lose the battle for the money. Which one would you rather want? I enjoy the little money I have, so it's hard to go against that. Well, we'll end it on that note. Tremendous insight, as always, from Kenton Gibbs. You want to make sure you follow him at TGIF underscore Kenton and follow him on Locked on Wolfpack. You can follow me at Alex Dono and on Locked on Cainz.

We'll have another episode coming your way shortly. We'll also have a great episode of the squad coming up this week. So make sure you keep it locked right here on the number one Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.