Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - BIG 10 SQUAD: NEW College Football Playoff Format IMMINENT | What this means for Iowa

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Big Ten faces backlash as 24-team College Football Playoff proposal stirs controversy—will expanding the playoff ruin the regular season’s intensity? The Big 10 Squad tackles the heated debate, weighing tradition against big-money incentives. Are classic rivalries and crucial games losing meaning in the quest for more playoff spots, or can college football thrive with a larger field? The squad shifts focus to Purdue Boilermakers' bleak outlook, with brutal honesty about Barry Odom’s second-year prospects and Ryan Browne’s struggles under center. Is three and a half wins realistic in a daunting schedule, or has the program hit rock bottom? The hosts break down potential upsets, coaching hot seats at Wisconsin and Maryland, and why Purdue football fans may just be counting the days until basketball season. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Big Ten's 24-team playoff proposal is finally gaining traction. USC will finally get into the playoff under Lincoln Riley on today's Lockdown Big Ten Squad. You're talking ball with the Big Ten Squad, sponsored by game time. From USC to Ohio State, from Michigan to Oregon, from Nebraska to Washington, it's the local experts of the Locked-on Podcast Network, bringing you scoops, breakdowns, and the most comprehensive preview of the upcoming Big Ten. 10 weekend. No hurt feelings and thin skin allowed. Squad up. You're part of the Big 10 squad. Happy Thursday, everybody. Welcome to this week's Lockdown Big 10 Squad. I'm your host, Spencer

McLaughlin, neutral arbiter of all things, college football. This thing behind me is just some artifact that I picked up. Isaiah Hol of Lockdown Wolverines is here with Mark Colkin of lockdown USC, Jay Stevens, locked on buck guys, Nick Arvin, locked on boiler makers. His team's win total is first because it's at the bottom of the Big 10 again. And Roman Tomashoff. of Locked on Husky. So since we've started on a note where any USC fans that didn't already hate my guts are definitely in that camp now,

which I changed in a 22nd intro. Mark, why are you way in first? This big 10 notion of a 2014 playoff was discussed recently in Washington, D.C. It appears to have traction beyond just the Big 10. So is this the right move for college football to double the playoff access? No, it's not.

Even if it benefits USC, you don't need, look, you go to 2014. Why don't we just start doing the 64, 1618 big games type of thing and get rid of the regular season? Also, another reason why I say no, if this is the direction we're going, why is the USC in Notre Dame not playing each other? I mean, that was part of the rationale, right? So no, take this 2014 thing, get it. If you're going to expand it, go to 16, put the cap on it, put it to bed, we're done. Well, maybe it'll bring it back. Maybe that'll be the reason that it brings it back.

I don't know. Michigan plays Oklahoma again this year, Isaiah. So 24, 12, 14 playoff. They're scheduling the way that any team or program of a respectable nature actually should. No Penn States here. Seiko isn't here. at least not yet on the show. But you like the 24 team idea and we have eight and four big 10 teams

scrapping their way into the playoff? Listen, I have a better idea. There's 136, I think, FBS teams. It should be a 136 team playoff, right? Sudden death, every week. Every week is the power talking. Ben Purdue would make it in. I don't know about that.

That's going a little too far. I just feel like college football had the best regular season. It was a playoff in and of itself. Four of the six of us here can vouch how special the 14 playoff was. Sorry, Mark, sorry, Nick. But it meant something. Like the regular season meant something. The playoff meant something.

So to dilute it in the way that they have already, it just shows like they do not care about what makes college football great because now the regular season, it's like, ah, you can lose one. Before it was like you lost one. Maybe you still have a chance. Now it's like, yeah, you can lose two. Maybe you might be able to lose three. If you get to 24, it's like, yeah, lose four games.

It's all good. Who cares? I mean, when Michigan plays Oklahoma, if you had a 24-team playoff, You could literally come out of that game going, all right, nothing changes. No one, no one cares. Jay, all I've heard so far are sharp takes from the Big Ten squad. You're next. I don't know how sharp it'll be.

I want to join the rest of the guys. As sharp as that breath we all heard you take before you started talking. But my goodness, man, I don't like the 2014. I don't, I don't think most of us like it. I think getting Congress involved is also pretty stupid. It's silly, but that's where we are. with the people that are running the sport. And I just, I wish it was different.

I really do, but I don't see it changing anytime soon. No, because, you know, someone will make the point. Well, the FCS playoffs do it. They've got 24, which means, you know, absolutely nothing. But you know who I bet's going to be most in favor of this. Our guy Nick Arvin, locked on boiler makers, fire up for the 12th team playoff. Boiler up for the 12th. or for the 2014 playoff.

Yeah, I think we should expand it past 24. Anything it takes to get Barry Odom into the playoffs. But no, on a serious note, I don't like the idea of 24 games. Much like Isaiah said, every game in the regular season becomes more and more meaningless. The more teams that you throw into the playoffs, as it is now, I don't necessarily love the 12-team playoff. I miss win undefeated. If you lose one game, it feels catastrophic to your playoff chances. Now you can get in with two.

three and as you guys mentioned maybe four so i don't like the idea of 24 i don't think um that's good for the sport and honestly if we keep it at 12 that that's kind of fine but i i prefer the old 14 format roman i'm going to do the unthinkable and throw your fans a little bit of a bone here since i already ostracized myself to mark's mark's fan base yeah i am watch watch this the quintessential example or a quintessential example of why a 2014 playoff would be a complete and utter mess is back in 2023. Oregon and Washington played an epic, albeit crushingly disappointing football game in Seattle. I disagree with that part. Anyway, then Oregon had to win every single game the rest of the year. And then when they came to play in the Pac-12 championship game,

you knew they had to win that game. And if there had been no stakes in that Pack 12 title game, like a 2014 playoff, I would think predates a, or would coincide with an elimination of conference championship games because that doesn't make any sense. None. But as much as that was a disappointing day, if that second game had no juice,

or frankly the first game had no juice to it because, well, if you'll look at, lose, who cares. For the sake of college football, that would have stunk. Oh, but the worst thing in the world, like that both of those atmospheres were electric. I remember like just the, the pulse of Seattle, the week leading up to that Pac-12 championship game was electric. The ending of that game, the ending of the first one, even more electric, Spencer, I know you disagree, but I really don't care. All of all of that aside, I can't get one specific picture out of my head. We're all sports fans here. We all like sports outside of college football as well. When you look at the standings,

when you look at anything about, you know, where me being a baseball fan, right? If I'm looking at where the Red Sox are, and I'm looking at the standings like, oh, yeah, okay, they're in fourth and the ALEs. This is ridiculous. If you look at the top 25 in college football and all of a sudden, the cutoff moves from 12 to 24 and it's like, oh, all of these teams are the playoff. Yeah. Jay Spencer, that would be so ridiculous. Imagine trying to explain that to someone. somebody who doesn't like the sport and they're just looking at it. Like, oh, all these teams are the best and they're like every single one of them is going to get a shit. Like, no, there's no fun in that.

That's ridiculous. I like it's, I know it's simple. And Spencer, you do make some great points. I just can't get that image out of my head. Yeah. Let me, let me give you a list of teams that would have been without question in the playoff last year. Now, the group of six team is not actually, no, Tulane was number 20. So they would have been in.

Vanderbilt would have been in. I mean, they're a good team, sure. Utah would have been in. USC would have been in. Arizona would have been in Michigan would have been in. Virginia would have been in Tulane would have been in. Houston would have been in and Georgia Tech would have been in. Iowa would have been heavily considered probably in.

I don't know how anyone thinks this is a good idea. The problem though, honestly, is that it'll make money. because we'll watch, right? We got to talk about something. We will watch. We'll be there. Yeah, we'll be there. Speaking of being there, Craig Sheiman decided, oh, the squad show, I'll be there.

It's only 11 minutes after it started. Don't worry. Why can I not move him to the last place? Okay. Yeah. There we go. We're going to talk about something far more sane when we get back. And Nick is going up into position number one because the boiler makers are the first team.

We've all got a 10. Take a stance on. That's right. We're close enough to start making our weekly predictions for over underwind totals here on the Lockdown Big Ten Squad, which is brought to you by our friends over at Indeed. Workplace chaos, deadline stacking up, inbox overflowing, and the one position you have to fill still sitting open when the pressure's on and you need the right hire. This is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed, sponsored jobs helps you reach the people who actually fit what you're looking for. things like skills, experience, location, so you're not just hoping the right candidate

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We are not talking basketball here. Just got to get you out of that frame of mind. Okay. Reset the expectations. Our friends at Fandle have put out win totals for every power four team in college football. and Notre Dame. And Notre Dame actually has tied for the highest in the country that you can have at 11.5. It may shock you to learn, if you didn't know, Nick, Purdue's win total is not 11 and a half.

I'm not shocked. Which is a surprise to everyone across the country who's never tuned into college football before. That is a stunning revelation. Three and a half for Barry Odom in year two is the win total. Make the case. over or under? You know, I think it's spot on. I look at the schedule, but I think four.

If I had to predict, if I had to go up and down the schedule, hot take, hot take. I see four wins this year in year two of the Barry Odom era. And let me tell you why, because we start out with Indiana State. That's a win. If that's a loss, we think, we think it's a win. We're not going to go there. We're not going to go there.

Is that a Zach Edy slam dunk or is that like Brayden Smith trying to throw it down? Let me give you. I think it's I think it's kind of in the middle there like a Carson Edwards type like a little little forward guard forward type slam dunk. But I still think that that's a I still think that's a nice little win for the boymakers. But you got Wake Forest, which will probably be a loss. The game is in West Lafayette, but they came off a solid year last year. The rogue schedule is really tough for Purdue this year.

You go travel to Illinois, you travel to Happy Valley, you travel to go play Iowa, and then you have Indiana as always, which this year will probably be another loss. I do think Minnesota and Maryland are games that Purdue could potentially win this year. And then you throw, I mean, you throw in Iowa, Wisconsin. I mean, these aren't games that I necessarily think that Purdue is a lot to win. But if things go their way, they have a good shot. Definitely last year, going into last year, it's a similar roster construction from the fact. that Purdue had to bring in a ton of guys in the transfer portal because everyone else left after a terrible season. Purdue hasn't won a conference game in over two years at this point. So it makes

sense why guys are leaving. But when I look at this team compared to last year, I think that the guys that Barry Odom was able to bring in in the transfer portal was actually better adapted to fit the system he's trying to build in terms of bringing in Jared Gibson running back out of Texas, bringing in some solid offensive linemen, two from Mark's school, two from USC, Nukumathi from Oklahoma State. So you have actual size on the offensive line this year. You have a better running back group. It's a very sad way to put it.

You have an actual size on the offensive line. It's the reality of the situation. We had a bunch of UNLV guys last year. So you've got that. Ryan Brown, I don't think he threw 10 interceptions, nine touchdowns last year, which is that good. That is not good. Spencer, in case you're wondering.

I was. Okay. Well, you bring him back. So I think that he's going to be in a better situation to succeed this year with a heavier running attack. We'll see. We'll see. I think four wins is a nice little threshold for the blowmakers this year.

Yeah. We need to have a punishment for the locked on host whose team loses to Purdue first. So, I'm down for that. Yeah, we got a, we got a brainstorm collectively and figure out. We've got most of these shows cover. We've got UCF. LA. We've got Illinois. We don't have Minnesota or Maryland at the moment, but we've got Washington

Romans here. Seiko at Penn State. Oh my gosh. If you want at Penn State. Oh, that'd be great. That'd be great. What can we get Seco to do? I'd have to, I'd need to think long and hard to understand what the perfect punishment would, uh, would, would be. Mark, is it, is it a relief that USC is not a threat to be Purdue's first conference win in two years? got that monkey off our back last year. We actually I mean, it was close. I do.

I do some props to Nick because he went through his entire schedule and not once did he mention UCLA. So good job, young man. I don't know. On the road, that's kind of tough for me, but yeah. Well, I'm looking at your schedule

and I think I can agree with you. Four is probably the target to hit because even though we're throwing you a couple, you know, offensive linemen to help you out, you still need some more. Like four wins. I could see Indiana State.

I could see you pulling a mindset at home against Wake Forest. Maybe you go on a run and you beat UCLA, but after that, Maryland? Is that your last one of the season? Probably. Probably. Probably at that point.

I mean, I think 4 is a great number for pretty football in Barry Odom's second year. It would be good. Honestly, it's just like how many wins can you get without Barry Odom being fired? I feel like is the goal for this season. You can't put that short of a clock on him, can you? Ryan Walters just got two years.

It did all the whole. Yeah, and that was a bit, I mean, but it sets a terrible. I think that move works out pretty well. I just realized what Robbins chimed in there. But it sets a terrible precedent if you fire two coaches in a row two years then. But, I mean, you also have to say Ryan Walters was fired after that type of season. If Barry Odom has two types of those seasons, I mean, the standard was already set with Walters. So in my opinion, the goal is not a bowl game.

The goal is just don't let your head coach get fired this year, which is kind of a sad spot to be. Yeah, just trying to hold you over till basketball season, right? Until Matt Painter. So Matt Painter can get it working. Roman, your Huskies, hoax. No, sorry, they travel to. West Lafayette on October 17th. Some are calling that the upset alert of the season in the Big Ten.

I think if Jedfish loses... Wait for Nick to make that pick. If Jedfish loses that game, he's he's tarmacked, right? I would absolutely think so. No, I, Nick, I'm sorry. I have the under here. I can't. cannot in good conscience put my put myself behind this team after after having to watch that in person

last year obviously yes there have been improved it's mad through the portal and so on and so forth i just i was not impressed by ryan brown i was not impressed by a lot of what this roster looked like in what in seattle was an oddly chippy game and i don't know if that was a ryan walters thing i don't know if that was a brian odom thing since very odom's brother coaches went washington too but i i look at indiana state and yeah all right i'll give you that Um, I, the only other game that I look at on this schedule and say, okay, yeah, I feel good about Purdue, maybe pulling off a win there is Minnesota. I think that Maryland is, would, it's going to give some people some problems this year. I just, I look up and down the schedule and I just, I can't. I can't do it, man. I got to take the under here. The disrespect that PJ Fleck takes on this show, all he does is win seven to nine games every single year in this conference. and gets no respect anywhere at any point in time.

Ryan, or sorry, Roman, I first of all didn't realize that Purdue is a coaching farm system for Washington. They call Washington the Purdue of the West. Purdue West. They were thinking about renaming Husky Stadium to Boiler Stadium. Yeah, yeah. But no, I was actually looking at Wisconsin here. our poor guy Ryan Herings at Locktown Badgers, they might have an interim coach at that point in season.

But he might not be there to coach the game. Wisconsin might have might have thrown in the towel. And even if I consider that as a possibility, I still don't know where four wins come. It might come down to the Wake Forest game. And I tell you what. Those interim coaches could be inspiring. Wisconsin was winning.

That's true. That's true. We've still got three more picks. Will anyone except Nick go for over three and a half? That's coming up next. Jay, your turn. Do you dare take Purdue over three and a half? Outside of, I mean, you don't have Oregon, you don't have Ohio State,

and somehow this looks like the toughest schedule that could have possibly been made when you have non-conference games against Wake Forest, who won nine games last year, and Notre Dame, who's a national title contender. I am not crazy. Not crazy enough that is to pick the over in this scenario, you better be the Indiana State. You do not want to leave that game with the loss because that would be really bad. The whole state will boo Purdue.

But after that, like, Wisconsin, maybe. Minnesota, Maryland, I think Minnesota is going to be a loss. Maryland, maybe, because I don't like the coach. I don't trust him. So I think Loxley at that point, he could also be out of there. They can have an interim coach and you're not sure what's going to happen there. I just don't trust this team. I think having a returning quarterback is going to be very helpful,

but they could have less wins this year than they had last year. And of course, if you have only one win, Barry Oldham's gone. Yeah, that would not be good. By the way, Roman, can I just throw this at you? Washington was like that close to losing to Maryland last year. That's it. Hey, that Maryland team has got some real talent. I don't know about Mike Loxley either.

I agree with Jay there, but they got some good pass rushers, man. That's true. They do have Zion. And I'm not a quarterback. Isaiah, are you, oh, wait, did they miss Michigan as well? Oh, they do miss Michigan. How about that? No Oregon, no Ohio State, no Michigan.

And no wins. Come on, Craig. The ghost of Larry Bird is going to haunt you home, like at the end of haunted mansion. Isaiah understands that. Reference the rest of you, TBD. Isaiah, three and a half. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Good. Good. Three and a half over under, boiler makers. Listen, I mean, you look at the schedule and you just think like, what would it be like if Purdue could get a win?

And I'm like, wow, imagine if they beat Indiana State in that first game. And just the feeling in West Lafayette, if they're able to get that and just, you know, no, they're not. I don't, I have utmost respect for Barry Odom. I don't know that you fire him. right, like Ryan Walters was the one who kind of cratered everything, right? So it was a little bit different, right? They were coming off of a Big Ten championship game appearance, and it just kind of went completely backwards. So it's a little bit different. Barry Odom has done wonders at Missouri, at UNLV. I don't know that he can do it at Purdue.

I think that they need a little bit of a change in terms of just the culture, which I didn't really witness last year. I mean, they played Michigan extremely tough. more so Michigan just couldn't get out of its own way. And, you know, I'm on the field after the game. And you would have thought that Purdue had won the game, the way that they were talking to Michigan players. They're like, they're going up to him.

Wait, really? Yes. They were getting in their face and being like, you're going to get waxed next week and all this stuff like that. It was like, it's crazy. It was, it's awesome. They had to be separated at the end of the game. It was a bizarre.

So like, until they can take themselves seriously, I don't know that this team's going particularly far. Craig, our Big Ten Arbiter here, are you going to try and salvage the honor of the Boilermakers football program? Which, Isaiah, correct me if I'm wrong, was the last team Michigan played in the Big Ten championship game? No, they played Iowa. Iowa. That's right. But Purdue was the year before. Yes, the age of divisions. That made no sense. Anyway, go ahead, Craig. Nick, I'm going to tell you what I told my kids when they're small earmuffs. Just check out here so you don't hear the bad words. Three and a half. Are you kidding me? I can't think of a program in the entire Big Ten that has less excitement than Purdue football going into this year. If they get two wins, it's a successful year. I'm thinking, I'm Northwest.

Western's been bowling two of the last three years. They got a new stadium. Rutgers, Greg Shiano's good for five to seven wins every single year. I don't know how he does it, but he'll do it. Purdue, I'm thinking about going live on Lockdown Big Ten for postgame, November 7th after this Maryland Purdue game. That could be for all the marbles for both of these teams. I got him at two wins.

And that's best case scenario. Sorry, Purdue. Oh, everyone but Nick, taking the under. Nick, is Ryan Brown? What was the interception ratio? Not touchdown interception? Well, nine to ten. Nine to ten.

Yeah. Ten to nine would have been also. Here's the thing. Ten of nine would have been also terrible, but the reality is worse. That's not great. Nick, you can have the final say here. That feels like the most just way to end this show.

Yeah. I mean, at least we won a big ten title in basketball. So I'll leave with that. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Nick Arvin, locked on boiler makers, Mark Hoken, locked on USC, Roman Thomas Schoff, locked on Huskies, Jay Stevens, locked on Buckeyes, Isaiah Hole, locked on Wolverines, Craig Scheman, locked on Big Ten. I'm Spencer McLaughin from Lockdown wherever. I appreciate everyone listening. We'll see you next time. And until then, hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.