Shutdown Fullcast - Shutdown Fullcast 3.30.0

Episode Date: November 9, 2015

This week's review podcast didn't record the part where we discussed Bret Bielema wearing only a windbreaker and a smile, but that was for your own protection. Trust us. It damaged us all enough on its own. Topics covered include: --Bama. Ughhhhhhh, Bama. --Oklahoma State's statistically improbable but very factual whoopin' of TCU, and how Texas could ruin Oklahoma's entire season twice by tanking the rest of the season JUST TO FUCK WITH THE SOONERS. --How Clemson chipped away at Florida State with a butter knife --Five sentences or less about Vanderbilt/Florida --The only discussion in the world where the majority of people involved believe the Michigan State/Nebraska game ended on the correct call. (Also: Old people evidently like touchdowns now.) --Ryan singing "Snoop hoggy HAWWWWG OOOOH AAAH AAAH AWWWG" to the horror and delight of dozens of listeners in recounting the wild end of the Ole Miss/Arkansas OT game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the shutdown forecast, the review edition, recorded here on a Sunday night. I am Spencer Hall, editorial director of SB Nation, much to my amazement and continual shock. And creator of Every Day should be Saturday. Joining me from beautiful Kenneslaw, Georgia, as our college football editor, Jason Kirk. Say hello, Jason. Hello. And from beautiful Brooklyn, New York, Brian Nanny. You know, one of the commenters on, I think, an SB Nation,

and main page post traced the line of transitive succession such that Kennesaw State has a transitive win over Bama. Yeah, and I don't even know if that person did that as a present for me, but... But you get that. That's yours.

I can claim that comment. I beat Bama. Jason beat Bama, y'all. Yeah, Old Miss beat Bama. How good can they be? Man. Let's just... That didn't really happen. Yeah, let's just start with that.

If you're listening to this for the first time, by the way, we have a couple of different stances on the Alabama football program here. One that Jason thinks they're fine, respectable. I think I'm representing this well by saying that you believe that they're one of the best teams in the country and that the way they play is just fine. Sure. Sure. Sure.

Okay. I would say that I'm guessing Ryan's stance here. It would be that also they are just fine. You might find their fan base a bit repellent. You might occasionally find their style of play a little baffling offensively, but you admire the defense and overall think that they are one of the best teams in the nation, correct? I mean, the only thing I would add

as a gloss of that is that Bama is basically Shadow Link, and if you just try to attack him, he knows all your moves. You've got to do something different. You're losing a Shadow Link, LSU. And my official editorial stance is on Alabama

is that I would like them to just go away. I'm tired of watching this. I find their style of play to be retrograde, brutal, unbeautiful, inelegant, and evenly stacked because they have the best compensation program,

whatever they're doing to get people to go to Tuscaloosa. Everyone says, well, it's really hard to get players to insert team, Morgan Town, Clemson, right?

We never say, wow, how do they get players to Tuscaloosa, Alabama? And we really should. Dream land barbie, no. Oh, no. I just said that to piss Jason off. Tuscalo-No, no, no.

Tuscaloosa Dreamland is pretty good. People like to shit on it because they're hipsters, but Tuscaloosa Dreamland is pretty good. It's spinoffs, however, are so fucking awful that they've charnished the name, and you shouldn't even go to the Tuscaloosa one. But Tuscaloosa Dreamland is fine, just between us. Yeah, just go to Archibalds. Yeah, just solve the whole problem and, yeah, somewhere else.

I'll also state controversially. In most bars, you can get pretty decent barbecue. you. And for me, the barbecue that is at hand next to the bar stool is superior to the one I have to go 20 miles out of town for. A brisket in the hand. Brisket in the hand. And you can find brisket in bushes in Tuscaloosa. Don't believe that. The other thing about Alabama is that I just find their style of play to be just dull. It's kind of like watching a state legislature work where you're just like, oh, this is so slow and procedural and heartless.

But if you are the kind of person who appreciates that kind of grinding machination, you can be like, oh, you see what they did there? They didn't have cloture. That's just brilliant. I guess Alabama's for you. Every Alabama game is every John Cena match where there's the exact same level of love and hate in the crowd. There's the same five moves of death. there's the same oh okay this guy won that's that's surprising um but there's also sort of this

this evolution over time where if you really look closely you can see ways that it's getting more entertaining and and it's actually becoming more uh more more pleasing to you know stylistically not a whole lot it's still not lucha it's still not a cage match but you know over time you can see the storytelling elements are are starting to become one refined you know lane kiffin owns a luchador mask it is not it is not for public use but one of several reasons we want him at miami so he's closer to central america i don't i don't know how he's using it me amo juan agua fresca one agua fresca so before we even begin discussing alabama lSU you should know two people are fine with them one of them is completely

sick with it because I've just that's not why I watch college football Roll time. Yeah, I don't watch college football to watch the Miami Dolphins. How much of that if we're being totally honest, how much of that is the fact that you saw a very

dollar store version of Alabama football during the four years of Will Must Champ's tenure? Like if that if you took that out of the equation. Zero, zero. I just, even like Pete Carroll's, James, Carol's teams are probably best described as pro-style, the ones that he fielded at USC, and they were still just mindlessly aggressive, very entertaining, brutal, a refined brutality, if you will.

I really enjoyed watching them. Got Matt Leinard paid. Yeah. Alabama in the second half is just there to pick up a paycheck. They're just there to run out the clock on the day. Not a literal paycheck, sir. We're talking about Alabama Crips and Tides student athletes. It's a spiritual paycheck.

Uh-huh. No, Auburn's 5 and 4. Yeah, there. Oh, boy. We're talking about spiritual paychecks. Oh, boy, that's Auburn's spiritual wages have been garnished. Fair. Laying up treasures in heaven, Ryan, where the moth can't corrupt them and the Music City Bowl cannot steal them.

Fair and balanced coverage. Auburn is 5 and 4. and still managed to beat Texas A&M this week. Not just beat, embarrassed Texas A&M. They managed to give the Aggies an even deeper existential crisis than the one they were already amidst. Kevin Sommelin is making a great push for highly paid SEC West coach, who at the end of the season the fans are going to say,

man, what the fuck? He's also, I like how every week Kevin Sumblin bounces, between NFL rumors and like A&M fans wanting rid of him. Like if, you know, the, I feel like the Chargers is the team.

We always have higher college coaches. But if the Chargers pluck away Kevin Sumlin, like Aggie fans are, I feel like right now, they're kind of like, oh, okay, fine. Well, the Chargers to me would be out of the SEC West would be appropriate because the Chargers

from 2002 to 2006 employed LSU's offensive. coordinator. That would be Cam Cameron. When Cam Cameron, the offensive coordinator for LSU, saw multiple people in the box, for instance,

in the I formation, according to AL.com, on every single play they had at least seven Alabama defenders in the box. What would you do? If you had that many large, extremely angry, and talented defenders

in the box and your guys in single coverage. Just go right at it. That retaining wall probably wasn't constructed well. Just ram it. It's not about what's effective. It's about proving something psychological. I think I'd have my quarterback throw it 19 times and hopefully complete about six of them. Yeah, yeah, that's what you'd do.

That's probably how you'd loosen up that front is attack it with your sort of your jump ball passing game. And maybe it doesn't work at all. You got to respect these nearly two completions per quarter. Yeah, because guess what? That's not what LSU did. Admittedly, LSU passed a little bit, but I don't know why we don't talk about that. Like, this is, less miles goes into this game, and to be fair, we have seen incomprehensible less miles game plans before.

For instance, everything in the last time LSU and Alabama faced for these kinds of stakes, i.e. the championship game. I think that one was worse. Yeah, that one was worse. It's getting better. It's getting... It's getting slightly better. But in this one,

LSU basically decided to have a head-butting contest with Alabama. And guess what? You lose. Nobody has a harder head or a thicker skull than Alabama. That's the game they want you to play. That's the game they're designed to play. And it didn't really work out.

out well. I just don't know what within their toolkit would have worked because the run pass ratio is pretty equal. And I mean, 19 to 26. Yeah, that's really not far off. 19 passes of 26 runs. Yeah. And I mean, and Brandon Harris also five runs. And I don't recall, but you can probably factor in at least a sack and at least a scramble in there. So more or less even runs and passes. And I mean, if we want to say they should have put out, you know, five wide receivers or whatever, That's not really in their tool set, man. I mean, it's just once a team with LSU's, you know, core competency gets down 10 to Alabama,

sure, they can tie that up, but that's already, in the long run, that's already a hole. I just don't know what more LSU could have done here. I just questioned the way you're built at that point, right? Like, they're in your division. It's not like you didn't see this coming. To me, it's the same as like, We got to play Alabama again.

Florida's going must champ or like Georgia fans winning Kirby Smart or that time Auburn wanted Kirby Smart. Like, why? Why beat knockoff Bama? There's already a Bama. You know, you can beat everyone but Bama the way Bama beats people, but you can't

out Bama Bama. No, you can't. You're not, you're basically not going to outspend them in college recruiting bucks, which again are not real money. No, it's all goodwill and, uh, Emotional accounts like you have with a loved one.

In the bank. Also, Nick Saven has a debt in that department as well. The bank of you. Ms. Terry, I am going to need to file for bankruptcy. Listen, South Florida real estate. It's never been a bad idea until it is. Yeah, this was horrible to watch. It was just horrible and predictable.

and just bad. I had some hope that the second half was going to be good because as poorly as the first half went for LSU, they were only down three, and then they just got steamrolled in the third quarter. Yeah, and like out of that 10-1, I believe their first touchdown, it was one of those, you know,

they connected on a couple longer passes, and it's like, you know, are they going to do the, are they going to do the Cardale Jones thing, DeBama? That worked. That was one of the, you know, Johnny Mansell pulled that off a few times If you can start connecting on those

You can make stuff happen against Bama And then that well just dried up fast I love seeing when people go under center against Alabama Like I just start hooting the minute that happens Rolling on the floor What are you even thinking? Why? Why are you going to put your quarterback's head That close to A Sean Robinson?

It's a bad decision Well you can back him up but he's just going to jump over the center He'll just leap over the center. That 320-pound motherfucker box jumped over a human to block a field goal. At that point, just get off the field. Cross-fit works. It's like, wow, man, I bet his fran is amazing.

Probably does fran in under three minutes. Like, there's somebody looking at that like, ah, that's not impressive. The guy was bent over, okay, okay, you box jump over a human with, like, probably 150-pound weight on your back. Yeah, yeah. Alabama is the cross-fit of football because they're terrifyingly strong. and they will grievously injure you at some point. And themselves. And cult-like.

And cult-like. That's all in Alabama fan wants to tell you about, right? If you try to Alabama football, it's amazing. It'll change everything. It'll hurt you into shape. It's a process. It is. We've synthesized all the best parts of everything else into this glorious product.

There's so many weird rituals, like, every day. It's on, like, do 18 Hale, Sabins. This is it, by the way. Here are the three teams, not counting poor Charleston, right, who has to play them. They play Charleston Southern or Coastal Carolina. Which titan of industry do they play? You're referring to SEC Socon Weekend. Yes, for the SEC.

They draw Charleston Southern in that bracket. As opposed to Charleston Northern. Yes. Charleston Northern's trash. Charleston. Charleston Southern, which, oh, surprising... Charleston Southern. Charleston Southern of the...

That's got to be the most I do declare a name in all of Division I. I would say maybe Charleston Southern Baptist would be more. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Charleston Southern Baptist AME refined Third Church of Iconium playing, shockingly, at Bryant Denny. Amazing they didn't go to Charleston for this one.

It's a little cold that time. time of year. That's probably why. Ain't nothing to recruit there. The game besides that, if we excuse the poor Charleston Southern Buccaneers, the three teams standing between Alabama, it likely, because Florida has clinched the east, they will go to Atlanta. So the three teams standing between Alabama, occupying a playoff slot, and, you know, an interesting college football universe. where something different happens

would be Mississippi State Auburn and Florida What I like, what I will say I appreciate about Bama that they pick their let-down spots for teams with the exception of Ole Miss, obviously,

with teams that are unequipped to take advantage. Like Tennessee probably all told should have grabbed that game and they just couldn't do it. Yeah. No, no, I handed it to them with the requirement that you'd have to have two hands to pick up that opportunity.

And Tennessee Buster Bluthed it. Yep, Tennessee just has two fake hands. I'm a monster. I feel like Mississippi State is sort of the opposite there. Like, not a whole ton of talent, but they're very competent. Sure. You know, I think they're going to have a nice,

orderly like 13 point loss to Bama and you know if they had more of the more of the raw materials Tennessee has maybe they can make something of it but they don't hey remember by the way though if you want a little bit of hope Mississippi State actually scored more than seven points right right those that last year against Alabama oh yeah yeah based on uh based on the law of mullin they'll be up to like 14 this year I think 16 or so you got a progression because Remember, against Nick Saban, they didn't break, they broke, let's see, since 2007, their highest point total was 20. But you throw it out and it's like 10, 17, 777, 3 and 7. Well, you know what'll happen if they lose to Mississippi State.

Hmm. The tiebreakers will work out in the insets that Bama still goes. Yeah, why are we even bothering? Yeah, yeah, but that's fine. I just want it with two losses so I can do some magnificent horse shit, like vaulting. Oklahoma State over them. Houston, put in Houston. Put in Houston.

You know, we tried putting Oklahoma State ahead of Bama and that was what gave us a playoff to begin with. You do this again. We'll have an eight team show. That's fine. We can just keep doing this. We'll just keep expanding the playoff for you, Bama. Keep expanding it until the Cowboys finally make it in over the tie.

64 teams. Yep. My gunny got him. OSU. Finally in the field. issue on the on the positive side it's really fun to watch derrick henry well i i am not immune to that he said it i said it he loves the tide he's coming around at the tide all right that's all right that's all right that's the show derrick henry's back yeah goodbye y'all it's been fun hey uh you want

to talk about oklahoma state though i would really like to discuss i would like to discuss whatever the hell happened because i have not watched this game but only said in mute horror refreshing the box score and asking people what the hell was happening. That is not really the wrong way to look at this game, though, because by a lot of the raw metrics, this was a closer game than indicated. Third down conversions. Oklahoma State, 2 of 11, TCU, 9 of 19.

Turnovers. Turnovers was a bad one. Yeah, yeah, because Trayvon Boykin threw four picks. Well, to me, turnovers is like, if we do this game again is Trevon really going to throw four picks they might throw five come on

you got to think like a Florida fan here okay but like Oklahoma State won because they they got a bunch of turnovers and they also broke some crazy long plays that if even if TCU you know only gives up a 30

yard pass instead of a 70 yard touchdown maybe that is enough to sort of stem the bleeding. Let me give you the stat that jumps off and just stabs me in the eyeballs. Okay. First downs. Yeah.

36 for TCU and 16 for Oklahoma State. That's the thing, though. When you hit a 50-yard touchdown pass, you just ran past a lot of potential first downs. Yeah, you just burned four first downs on one play. It's sort of like complaining that you don't own the, secondary properties in Monopoly be like, well, yeah, I went straight to boardwalk. Kirk Farrant's

is so confused by all this. Yeah, 200 and like TCU had 218 yards to 81. If you're looking at this without looking at the scoreboard, or turnovers, you're assuming that this was a TCU bloodbath. Mason Rudolph

was very good, though, in this game. Well, yeah, okay. They don't. There's no denying that. They doubled them up. They doubled them up on yards for pass like seven yards to like basically 14 yards 13.9 this was this was a game that makes absolutely no sense if you do not figure in mason rudolph having a really good game and travon boykin i guess having the kind of game that statistically he was due for over due for maybe yeah i mean it didn't help that they lost josh dachson in the second quarter of this

game. To me, it's not to take away from okay states win. It's a great win. It's a good win in the standings for the resume, for the rankings, all that stuff. They're having an awesome season. They deserve all the wonders and glory to come in their way. But I don't think we can really look at this

like they're 20 points better than TCU. They were on this day and with this box score on this field. And yet. But I don't think that we think of these teams as being that far apart in quality. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but that's not how it's going to work out for the playoff.

That's not, like, when we're looking at them. Well, TCE is not going to the playoff. That part's out of the question. Let's do that. Let's ask the most boring question possible. What does this mean for the Big 12's playoff hopes? Oh, it means that three-way knot is so on the way. Go ahead, play it out.

Okay, so looking at the schedule, we have Oklahoma State, who has now just handed the first law. to TCU, correct? Mm-hmm. Okay, okay. So follow me this way. Who does TCU still have to play? I mean, they do still have to play Oklahoma and Baylor. All of this force and basically has to play each other.

That's correct, right? And I'm just going to assume, for comedy's sake, that, let's say, that Oklahoma State manages to beat Oklahoma, but loses to Baylor. Okay. All right, so we got one loss, one loss Oklahoma State. state, and a two-loss Oklahoma, and a one-lost TCU, so I'm assuming yours is putting undefeated Baylor in. Well, Baylor

gets to lose a TCU here. Oh, there you go. Mm-hmm, because, there's a good shit. Because in November, or maybe even more humorously on December 5th, they play Texas. They do. No, no. Stop it.

No. No. Not doing that. Texas has... Too far-fetched. Texas has both lost to Iowa state and beaten Oklahoma. I just want to go ahead and go on the record and state they are capable of literally anything. All things are

possible through Texas. It doesn't mean they're all good. All things are totally possible through Texas. So you're looking at a lot of ways where everybody can end up with one loss. And if you as a voter are sitting here at the end of the day, looking at a

one loss, Stanford coming out of the PAC 12, a zero loss Ohio State coming out of the Big Ten and or Iowa An undefeated Iowa An undefeated Cinderella Iowa coming out of the Big Ten and undefeated Clemson

coming out of the ACC and a one-loss Alabama team as SEC champions I ask you where does that put the Big 12 out? So if we have the undefeated ACC and Big Ten champs and then Bama? Okay, so that's three. So now we're talking about Stanford or Baylor or Notre Dame. Or Notre Dame

lurking there with one win. Well, if Stanford has one loss the Notre Dame has two. Oh yeah, there is that. Because they play. That's true. So what if, again, what if I get, what if I get? So it comes down to Stanford or Baylor? What if it's one loss Utah and one lost

Notre Dame? Uh-uh, uh-huh. Well, I mean, I think the Pact 12 is in better shape than a lot of people do because they all play each other. They mean, like they had a bad out of conference, but they, you know, whoever emerges will have racked up a bunch of wins over bowl teams. And Notre Dame is starting to pile those up too. Baylor, however, is not.

All right, but, but I do think one loss, Oklahoma might have a case. A non-crazy case, because they're the, only one of these big 12 teams that had a non-conference opponent worth a damn went to Tennessee beat them in a very stupid game but beat them all the same the Texas loss is bad but possibly early enough in the season to be explained as well you know that was then this is now in rivalry blah-bidi blah blah may I think I think if you're looking for a one-loss big 12 team that can make the case it's Oklahoma plus it means it went out and and and beat in a row Baylor, TCU, Oklahoma State.

Of the four of these teams, based on the committee's terms, Oklahoma has the best possible one lost case because they had, they're the only one with an actual non-conference and the committee seems to care more about who you beat than who you lost to, whether we think that's right or wrong. Because you did lose to Texas, Oklahoma. You lost to Texas. You did do that. And you like to say the score was close, but everyone saw it. And if I didn't look close. No. And if I was on that. television and there was nothing else to watch and if i want to believe that things work the way that i think they do yeah then the most beautiful thing carmically for texas would be not only to

hand them a loss an unanticipated loss in a brutal rivalry game early it would be to scuttle their national championship hopes to have jeff long on december the seventh or whatever Well, we liked Oklahoma's body of work and many wins against ranked teams and their overall resume. However, they lost to Texas, which is a soundly below 500 team. Texas should tank for that reason. Is Texas tanking for that reason? Just drop the next three. Lose to West Virginia, lose Texas Tech, lose the Baylor, and tell, tell you.

the donors, tell the high school coaches, yeah, we're just fucking with the Sooners. That would be, Charlie, not what's happen. Just when that happens, Charlie Strong, doing the airplane naked down the halls of the Texas football program with the gold cowboy hat from the Red River rivalry. He's got muscles everywhere. All the way to Miami. All the way to Miami, just ruining Oklahoma's entire season. I was at Clemson, Florida State, which will be one of those games where you look at, the score in a month or two

as 2313 and go you know this is a solid win real back and forth not realizing how much energy was expended into just getting to 2313 it was two teams moving a lot in a lot

of different directions especially Clemson Clemson had to run in place for a very long time just to move forward because Florida State played such a good game defensively and that really won't ultimately what happens in this game and being there

it made a lot more sense if you watched it the first half Deshawn Watson had one of the most bizarre halves of football that I've seen him play including in a goal line situation spiking the ball on third and goal because Davo is waving at him to hurry up

and did not wave very clearly that's why those are unstealable signs though unstealable yeah when you are when you are making the spike gesture. And it means, hurry up.

Remember, the most literal sign is also the least stealable sign because it's technically public domain. It's all out there. Tavo got this one

off Wiki Commons. He did. This sign was developed in 1818. This is shareware. I can use it. This is the commander key in signs.

My playbook has Here Lies Pepper ronian cheese because I copied this version played it on Apple 2E it's the Oregon Trail of playbooks Edgar Allan Poe made this hand sign Wow all right We're calling Camptown races

Hud hut Is happy birthday available yet No no no you can't You can't make that hand sign Dang it IP so tricky in college football The but if you looked at it Clemson has almost 30 first downs

The Florida States 14 they run something like 30 more plays total like Clemson dominated this game in terms of pace it's just that Florida State had a really good game plan

to slow everything down and ultimately just lost it because they couldn't do anything Sean McGuire's I think only in his third start Delvin Cook Delvin Cook was hampered

and he still had 194 yards They didn't take the lead in this game until what? Like five minutes left in the fourth quarter or seven minutes they they ended up taking the lead in uh the fourth quarter with like yeah about halfway yeah the lead the lead for good was about eight minutes yeah and to me the amazing thing is um i feel like both teams came off really well like not only did florida state hang with clemson for that long despite the injuries and in a re in a rebuilding year as as bud elliott likes to say pretty frequently.

And also, Clemson took that shot right away from Dalvin Cook, breaking a 75-yard touchdown, and, you know, that didn't sink things. Yeah, and a couple of the, like, classic counterpunches that have been Florida State's thing. For instance, they get like a 45-yard kicker turn from Kermit Whitfield to go ahead and put them already in like a threatening, you know, field position to score. And Clemson chills. They hold them to a field goal. They go back and they get, you know, they get.

get a score. There are a lot of little things that could have happened here which would have put them in a tragic situation that Clemson kind of just shrugged off. It helped a lot that they got that pick in the red zone when early in the first quarter after they had already after they had already gotten a touchdown from Delvin Cook punted the ball shortly thereafter and and Florida State had marched right back down. That felt like okay maybe the floods are not about to wash you away. Yeah, and I don't know what Florida... Honestly, this is one of those games

where I looked at Florida State and thought, you all should be pretty happy with this because you come in with a noob quarterback, you come in with a quarterback with a lot of inexperienced. You have Dalvin Cook playing on one hamstring, maybe, and he almost gets 200 yards. You run him 21 times, which for an injured back, is astonishing.

And you're in that game until the early fourth on the road. So watching it, I felt pretty good about both teams. I know that's not how this is going to look. I just hope that's how people who really go back and look at this, like for playoff resume purposes. I hope that's how they go back and look at this, that they come back and go. This was actually like a really,

this was a really well-coach, really well-organized team that happened to lose to another really well-coach, well-organized team. It seems like that's how things work now. Like the committee doesn't, it seems like they don't punish teams just for losing. Like, doing this is probably about what the 16th-ish-ranked team should do on a good day. So, sure, leave them right around there. Deshawn Watson was awesome.

In the second half, he was absolutely amazing. He ends up finishing with 400 total yards of offense, passes for like 300, rushes for 100, you know. And they, by the way, like, this is the cool thing about Clemson. They are so calm. They couldn't do what they wanted to do offensively, which is throwed down the middle of the field. By the way,

Clemson misses like an easy touchdown in the first quarter, too. There's a tight end streak open down the middle of the field. And they miss him. And they didn't get flustered. They just adopted. They changed their game plan. Deshaun Watson starts running more. They start running like a crazy amount of screams because Jalen Ramsey's just blowing everything up.

So they just give up. They don't go right at him. They just say, okay, fine. chase blockers right your pass rushing cool come on in we'll just throw screens

behind you and you know let our fast guys just embarrass you in the open field because you're tired because we run like 70 plays at that point and that's ultimately

what works for Clemson it was cool to watch in person I haven't been to many games this year it was really fun to watch a team to watch two teams not yield they really didn't yield a lot

until like you know the math fell in on them so I third enjoyed it, Clemson. It's not the most exciting game of the week, like, in contrast to everything, but it was a very pleasant, very informative thing to watch. One thing wasn't really very informative, and I want to talk about this for like eight sentences. Maybe eight. I'll start counting. Go ahead. Florida beat Vanderbilt.

All right, that's one. One. It was very bad. Two. I think we're good, honestly. I'm trying to think of a third sentence. I don't count this one. Let's never talk about it again. The dentist kicker gave his spot back to the old kicker,

and that guy hit the winning three-run homer. Not the dentist, the non-denist. The final score was 9-7. Is that five sentences? I think, yeah, you're a five now. This game was poop. Six, there we go. Okay.

that said it was not the worst Florida game I've seen in the last five years no because we won because we won it's not even because of that it's really not like it was an ugly final score I don't feel great about it it gives you no confidence in Florida heading into the SEC championship game which they booked their ticket to that said like they just turned the ball over a hell of a lot and they were probably due for one of those games where you just can't, you know, don't recover your own fumbles and make a lot of

stupid mistakes and you know, have too many penalties and turn it over on the wrong side of the field. But all told, you know, they still managed to pass the ball reasonably well.

They managed to play really, really great defense against Vanderbilt. Against Vanderbilt. Yeah, that's fine. But it was not the worst thing I've ever seen from Florida. It's maybe top five of the last three years or so. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I did not watch this game. I watch the whole thing. No, I watched that game. I watched like the second half probably. I watched the butt end of it. Okay. That's where all the meat is. It was all but, so I don't know what that means, but please continue.

No, this was mostly shoulder and clavicle, if we're talking meat-wise. Do you like marrow? This was a big bag of ankles. It's delicacy. This was. This was, maybe you could make some really piss-poor Osabuco out of this game. This is a bunch of ears. Yeah.

No, no, no. The dog will eat the ears. Dog wouldn't eat this game. Florida Vanderbilt, the necklace of ears. Michigan State, Nebraska. I did. Yeah. Oh, did y'all watch this.

I need a report. So Jason, I think, is on record amongst our editorial staff as having a very different view of the end of this game. Yeah, I'm the lone voice here. As I think the rest of us, do you want to explain yourself here? So, in case anyone hasn't seen the play, Nebraska's driving to take the lead within, I think, like, 12 seconds to go against Michigan State, throws bomb down the sideline, receiver is out of bounds with a defender right next to him. he pops back in, catches it goes for the touchdown, the win. The refs did not call him as having

stepped out of bounds on purpose-ish or however you'd want to turn it. And since you can't review that part of it, all they can review is that he came back in, which of course he did because he caught the touchdown. So touchdown stood, Nebraska won. And a lot of people did not like that because

it appeared that what the refs were saying was that he was for worst out and a lot of people saw that he was not like shoved he was not shoved yeah he wasn't actually shoved out which i'll grant um but to me the language of the rule makes it it apparent to me that it's more like if he's out of bounds because of the defender not necessarily pushed by the defender if he's out of bounds because of the defender and you know what's he supposed to trample the defender to get to the ball and that's a flag on him to me he was avoiding

the defender, that's why he went out of bounds. So I had no problem with the touchdown. And that, you know, I root for Michigan State. So there's no bias here at all. To me, it's Nebraska's touchdown. I had no problem with it at all. I will also state this, that Jason has landed firmly

on the side of the receiver, not the defender, on this play. I applaud that version of the rule. I think I would have decide with Jason here. Okay. That's fine. So far, the only people who agree with me on this are my dad and Spencer

and they are wildly different in every way, so this is a broad spectrum. Congratulations, old's. Yeah, all of us old people just love touchdowns. We do. We absolutely love touchdowns and liberal passing rules. And us young people. You young folks love defense.

Love the enforcement of rules. Really, like, what's more the equivalent of moving back in with your parents than playing defense and punting? Man. Blogger on blogger violence. That's cool your parents are barons in brooklyn ryan i know please my parents are too smart to move to new york city um here's here's why it doesn't matter um god michigan state you just let nebraska

do whatever they wanted on offense i i do feel i do disagree with jason i'm not thrilled that the game ended on that call uh that said well the game didn't end on that call it effectively did I mean, or now it effectively, like now that you know the script, Michigan State, with Connor Cook, okay, at the helm, still had the opportunity. I believe it was Connor Cook who took the pot. Yeah, they got the ball with 17 seconds back. They could have potentially. Yeah, some weird stuff happened in the pocket and he ended up burning about eight seconds. Let me put it this way.

It flipped, it flipped the probability significantly in Nebraska's favor. Is that good enough for you? I accept that, counselor. Okay. that said to me to me that touchdown just put it on oh god this this is going to hurt nebraska even more well they just they just i mean they nebraska passed including that pass for nearly 10 yards an attempt they ran they ran for five yards a carry on michigan state one of my old rules which is this if you're complaining about a call guess what your team played some crap ass football that put you

in the position where the referees decided this is why you play maximum ballist football this is why you have wide margins of victory because guess what if you're beating someone's ass by 17 or 24 points you know who can't affect the margin of victory the ref michigan state just doesn't have they don't have a great defense this year they just don't you know i i think some of that defense is in pittsburg some of it is and some of it they lost some of it some key contributors early in the season or before the season started but they're not shutting teams down, you know, Ruckers went for six yards of play against them. Indiana went for six and a half. And these are games that they won, but they were symptoms of a larger problem

that came to fruition in Lincoln. And that's why I don't... Both of these... Bunchigan State and Nebraska, they were both very, very, very due for this result. The Spartans have been trying to lose a game all year. Nebraska's been trying to win a game all year. And those things finally clicked. You know whose defense is currently 47th in terms of just raw scoring defense? That would be Michigan State. Do you know whose defense is at 46? Nebraska?

Oklahoma State. Wow. Yeah, a little bit of people think in terms of just that raw number. Also consider this, Oklahoma State. They're playing that in the Big 12. So, which is definitely not what Michigan is. states facing in terms of in terms of

Illinois and Texas Tech are very similar in that neither one of them are going to sniff a playoff anytime soon some people some people would compare you know Oregon and central Michigan sure sure you could I don't know why I like to think that central Michigan is the trendsetter fashion wise

of I mean it really Mount Pleasant is basically the Eugene of Michigan but now we get Here's the fun outcome of this game. Somebody brought this up to me on Twitter. I don't remember who it was, so I apologize. Let's say Michigan State just focuses all its efforts on taking down the Buckeyes on November 21st. Let's say they succeed.

That means Michigan and Ohio State becomes a game that decides whether Michigan State or Ohio State goes to the Big Ten Conference Championship. Does this set up a possible scenario where Iowa gets to play Michigan State in the Big Ten championship camp? Yes, it does. That is possible. Yes, it does. And that sets up a conversation where we possibly have an undefeated Iowa. And actually, it goes beyond that. I mean, if Michigan State wins out, they're in.

Because they only have one conference loss. And if they were to beat Ohio State, then they would have beat both the teams they could possibly tie with. Correct, correct. So we could be. be really basically one upset away from a Michigan State Iowa Big Ten championship. It also opens the door for a Michigan, Iowa, Big Ten championship game because if Ohio State wins out but loses to Michigan in that Big Ten, in that final game before the conference championship, they'll each have one loss in the conference, and Michigan will have the tiebreaker.

I want to mention a few other quick teams of merit, things that I found fascinating before. we close with Old Miss Arkansas because I think it's natural that we have to close on Brett Bilema's maybe most ass-pollinist victory. When I say ass-pullinist, I mean treating your butt like the magical hat and pulling rabbits

from it. This would be which, who knows? None of this is a metaphor by the way. No, it's literal. Brett Bilema grew up on a farm in Iowa. There's no telling what he did for entertainment. That way the tax man can't take them from you. It's true. They're technically not livestock at that point. You can't tax them.

Got to tax them differently. That's fertilizer. The rabbits? Yep. Adorable fertilizer. I don't know why we tax rabbits in this country, but we do. Rabbits are you? My daughter just got a rabbit.

I don't know what the point of the thing is. It just sits. Well, congratulations. You're now a gentleman farmer. Shit. Jason moved on up. Also, you just admitted that in a podcast. Georgia tax and revenue want to talk about your estate.

This transit. This transitive win over Bama has really made you quite the gentleman. I'm claiming this little fella as a deductible. This rabbit beat Bama. This rabbit is an agricultural investment. Please, what games do you want to talk about? I'm a land-grant university. I want to mention this, that a few things.

One, that Washington State and Arizona State played, one of them six and three and four and two in the Pact 12, and it's not Arizona State. Nope. Amazing. Luke Falk's been unconscious through for 497 and 5 TDs on Arizona State. Arizona State's 4 and 5, dude. They are having a craptastic year. Another team I want to mention, Wisconsin, quietly 8 and 2. Very quietly.

Very extremely. Are they seriously like the nation's least meritorious 8 and 2 team? Arguably. I mean, it's funny because now they have losses to like two teams are going to be in like the top 8, but. They just haven't done anything otherwise. Their best win at this point is Illinois, I guess. Yeah. Also, going back to this,

Cal and Oregon and Washington State have the same record, both in conference and overall. That's a real thing that we should all reflect on at this point in life. Question everything. Remove your assumptions. And reconsider your basic stance on existence, because I just said that. It's totally true.

Also, Washington State holds the tiebreaker. They hold the tiebreaker. I mean, not that it matters. Washington State is... It doesn't matter. Stanford could decide to leave football. Sure. They could.

It could happen. You never know. Maybe they just run one of them fancy Google calculations they got and the computer's like, blorp, drop football. I guess my point with the tiebreaker is just we can actually say

Washington State is ahead of Oregon on the U.S. You're not going to stop me. I might even say it, but it's not true. It just feels right. Another team I wanted to mention North Carolina. Putting up the old Seis-Sace on Duke, the devil's number on the Blue Devils themselves, 66-31.

North Carolina just not, zero-cooth. And if not for maybe the most improbable loss in the ACC this year outside of Florida State. Georgia Tech, which is really super improbable. Go-Noles. North Carolina losing to SEC, South Carolina to start this year makes zero sense because otherwise we would have

basically two undefeated North Carolina and Clemson playing in the ACC championship game. That's fucking everything up. Yeah, and North Carolina lost to South Carolina because of interceptions by Marquise Williams, who had 425 yards at halftime against Duke. Yeah. So I really, really,

really good player had a really really really bad game that's what it took yeah and remember ryan switzer future new england patriot he's coming for edelman's job god that's i got the dallas cowboys on tv right now cole beasley just cut this kid's hair and you got you got switzer yeah also we really should have known they're going to be good they have a guy named bug howard bug howard obvious lightning rod for excellence you really should have seen this coming all standing up for jean chisick to take that UCF job. Totally happening. He's going to get a spray tan then.

Dude, he is getting the richest spray tan and he's going to wear a white shirt and it'll come off and we'll all laugh at him. Any other games you want to mention before we discuss the most improbable ending of the week? Can we, this is not going to mean anything to anyone. South Florida is 5 and 4.

And they still get to play... South Florida is probably going through a bowl. Yeah, they still get to play UCF. Like, we never talk about USF and that is for a reason but hey good job willie tagger you were on the hot seat squarely and you have you know you've pulled something out here i don't know what it is but it's something i would really laugh if he took the ucf job at the end of year you're evil just drove all of his stuff down i4 you're evil uh and and the only other thing i would point out is that Arizona i don't

i don't know what arizona's doing like the state of Arizona as a whole the product has gone down so badly to the point where the Arizona the the territorial cup might determine who gets in a bowl game. Listen, Todd Graham stayed on this particular craze anatomy way too long. Now you should jump in those first two seasons when the agents are talking movies. Nah, it's like season six. This is the one where a Ferris wheel explodes and a ghost comes and talks to you. Exactly.

This is the one where Todd, you're going to perform, you're going to get out the electro paddles and shock a deer back to life. There's a baby. There's a bomb in Washington State's heart. Can you get it out? Oops, you blew up. Also, the heart is inside of a whale. Yeah.

This may seem similar if we did this last season. But the whale was inside a deer. It's different. It's different. We've raised the stakes. We have. It's can't miss TV. An episode you can't afford to miss.

Arizona football, 2015. And best part, this doesn't affect Rich Rod at all. No. No. Because, man, there are a bunch of jobs. Oh, man. That's the amazing part. It's like the Ridgerod sweepstakes.

It's like, don't she notice his team's going to finish like five or seven? Yeah. That's fine. No way. Trash sweep takes, man. Somebody's picking this up. Yeah, I know that you've already graduated, but we're still living together. So you kind of have to do your share of the chores.

Yeah, man, fuck that. I'm not doing that. So let me take us now that we mentioned the games. and finish. We got the spare change out of the way. I want to go to the big bills. That would be the wonder that was... Snoop hoggy.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hook. Don't ever do that again. Disagree. Malvoted. Damn it. I like to do one thing to make the listener deeply uncomfortable every week. The great discomfort in this being not

just the ending, okay? But there were several steps along the way that made this completely improbable, right? It was very dumb. Yeah, Hugh Freeze went forward on the 49, right? He did. With 16 seconds ago,

facing a fourth and six in regulation, you would think at the, basically at midfield, you would just punt the ball away, let our Arkansas take a knee, go to overtime, etc., etc. Instead, Hugh Freeze went for it, did not convert. Arkansas got the ball back, threw a 20-yard pass, fortunately got the kick blocked, and then won in overtime anyway because they converted on 4th and 25. Two plays later scored a touchdown and went for 2 and got it. Oh, and I skipped the part where they went for 2 and missed it, but a face mask penalty gave them

a second chance. I don't think the Lord loved you today, Hugh Fries. He's just testing. He frees his unconfessed sin. It's just a blessing. That's all this is. It's a blessing in disguise to pick up your second conference loss, your third, which, by the way, the out-of-conference loss that beat you, Memphis, happened us up for their first loss as well.

Yeah, but that was probably to a better team than Arkansas. Do you think Navy's better than Arkansas? do you i think navy arkansas would give bret belema a level of erotic pleasure to which i am not comfortable discussing the game would somehow be over in 59 minutes real time oh god and mike feldner where the greatest game ever played exactly man like when you when you get that game when that game gets starting to get to like netflix like would you like to watch the next arkansas old miss game or next arkansas navy game are you still watching oh arkansas navy it's a screen saver

yeah flying toasters everywhere that and this that not only did they pull this off throwing a ball that ball by the way when thrown was it like 20 yards backwards it was so they throw a pass 10 on 4th and 25 the ball is thrown 10 yards short of the sticks

so it travels 15 yards forward it is then lateral back about three yards behind the line of scrimmage. So, yeah, 18 yards at that point. On the diagonal. It's a good chuck. Yeah. On the diagonal, have you tried that?

On the diagonal, basically over dude's head. I mean, go out your backyard and try that. This is really hard to throw. Like, that is an extremely difficult act of athleticism requiring great skill to throw the ball on the diagonal like 18 yards behind your head. It was awesome. There are some Ole Miss fans mad because, like, how can that even be a football thing? He wasn't aiming at anybody.

And, you know, you raised the case that, well, sure, look how far we through it. That alone is a football thing. Look how strong he is. Also, listen, I watched Jonathan Crompton play quarterback in the SEC. Intent is no part of a completion. It was, I mean, Ole Miss basically lost because Arkansas started to play the Highland games. They're like, oh, let's caper toss. Cool.

We'll turn this into the haggis throw You're the haggis in this case, Ole Miss. Delicious.