Shutdown Fullcast - Shutdown Fullcast 4.27.0

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

The final preview episode! We're there, at last, but not before an intro where we talk about how playing in Detroit in the NFL is like the Dark Souls of football career challenges, and maybe a quick diversion into Botched, the best worst show on television. These two concepts are definitely related. The final teams: --BAMA. Mostly just us making things up about how they're not going to drag everyone on this schedule except for Ole Miss --OLE MISS. A fond discussion about a team that will probably beat Alabama, and then somehow lose four games along the way. The Rebels remain the team that wins the lottery on Monday, and is out of money by Tuesday; the Rebels remain "As I Lay Dying: The Football Team." --TEXAS A&M. That thing where you look at the schedule and make some very charitable advances in the Aggies' direction and still come up with a 7-5 record at best. Good luck, Kevin Sumlin! --UCLA. Josh Rosen could be really good, and it still might not matter if UCLA manages to get half its roster injured like they did last year. We also examine the philosophies of Jim Mora, Profane Zen Master. --West Virginia. Dana Holgorsen has been in Morgantown six years! He's almost an institution, which is probably just about when he up and leaves before creditors find him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the shutdown fullcast. We have five teams to discuss in the college football season to come in 2016. We promised to do very little in the way of research for these five teams. Actually, we all probably did a little bit of research. We just don't want you to know about it. But definitely no research, none going into this cold, just to bring you, I think, are the essential truths behind each team, which are that they pretty much stay the same every single year. You just need to know the ghosts that haunt them.

Joining me for this exorcism, this pre-season exorcism of bad expectations, terrible predictions, and haphazard research. Listen to the dulcet tones of our college football editor, Jason Kirk. Hello. Listen to that. You're Mike? That's all y'all get. Just, that's all y'all get just one word. Hello.

I'm no longer recording on the phone in a rainstorm or on the busted MacBook on a farm in Indiana. Got a microphone again. May you're just lying on Richie with it. Now, yeah, now I'm at Liljohn's house on his mic downstairs. I thought it was kind of cool because for a while you would turn into two chains after two chains first. You know how two chains after he does his verse on a group track, he turns into like the ghost. of two chains in the back going like yeah just like yelling and saying things two chains like way back there in the back yeah yeah like yeah him doing that i like to imagine it's a

clone of two chains like yelling at him to give him a turn is four chains yeah still still a wonderful tweet by the way also that other lovely voice great every week silky to the bottom Thank you. Ryan Nanny, joining us from Brooklyn, New York. I would describe my voice as chiffon, which is to say that you should only have a little bit of it. My, how delightfully decadent. Like an hour of chiffon sounds terrible.

And you're listening to this podcast. You made a mistake. Speaking of mistakes that you're going to make, you're listening to us talk about college football. You're listening to botched college radio. Oh, man, we've got to talk about botched. We really don't have to talk about it for a long. Not talking about botched.

Yeah, I don't know what botched is, and I don't think... This is literally what we were talking about, and we just decided to press record in the middle of this. So, thank you for interrupting us, cold open. If you don't know, botched is a show that I watch with my wife. Everyone has one show that they watch. We have very different tastes in TV. However, we both managed to agree that we can watch botched. It's a show on E, so you know it's good.

and it's about botched plastic surgeries and it centers on this practice in Beverly Los Angeles I don't know if it's in Beverly Hills I think everything in L.A. is either Beverly Hills or Compton. Either one, right? I want to say it's in Compton. It's not. It's probably in Beverly Hills.

Two doctors, Terry DeBrow, Paul Nassif, very different personalities. You might recognize both of them from various real housewives of Orange County in L.A., etc. In fact, Paul Nassiv actually was married to one of the Maloos, the family that owns the Palms and the Sacramento Kings. That's no longer the case. He's still driving a Ferrari, so I think he's fine. I don't think he had the money in the family, and he has a lot of money.

So anyway, it's about botched plastic surgeries and how they fix them. It gets really interesting. All you should know is this, that I just get off on watching the relationship between the two doctors, because one of them is kind of this short dude who tends to fat, and the other one is two. to bro who's this thin guy and he just accuses them having man boobs and then they joke and they get together and then they give people new boobs then i say people because there's an episode where they remove a man's boobs that he had put in on a dare because he was a professional gambler that's not really a dare so much anymore is it apparently it's still it's still very

much a thing that i a professional gambler it sounds to me like he won a bet like that's like saying robocop got made on a dare not not the movement movie the man the robotic cop you don't know he didn't that's true i don't know that he didn't i think there was a i think there was a cover story they probably just brought him into the they probably brought him in with the gunshots to the hospital and one of the doctors was real drunk was like hey hey man i bet you i could turn him into a robotic robotic police officer he bet the lions would make the super bowl and then never do that you'll have to be a robot there is There is no version of Detroit, film or otherwise, where the Lions win the Super Bowl.

Has it ever happened in fiction anywhere? Wow, that's a really good question. I mean, in established fiction. There's definitely-home improvement or anything. There's Lions fanfic out there. Yeah, remember the Detroit Lions, the team where no, they haven't won a Super Bowl, but they did have someone die on the field. They did have that.

During a game. And you know what? I think there are two ways you can go. if you're an outstanding NFL player, you can go to a good team and try to win, try to win a championship. There are countless examples of this. But a lot of those teams never get there. You can be a great, like Andrew Luck might never win a Super Bowl. It doesn't mean he's not a good player. Or you can go play for the Lions and never get close to the Super Bowl, but people will really talk about how good you are because you played for, because you were good on the Lions.

that's Barry Sanders, that's Calvin John. Like, there is, there's a track record for this. You'll get, like, you'll be a hypothetical champion, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's basically like, do you want to beat the game, or do you want to show people how far you can get on insane difficulty? Yeah, man, he's playing on lions. Like, if he wasn't playing on Lions difficulty,

Barry Sanders would have had, like, nine Super Bowls. Yeah, so playing on the Lions, it's like playing Donkey Kong. There's no actual end. Right. It's just how. how far you can go. Yeah, or it's instead of story mode, you're playing free play. Right.

I would like to update it and just say that it's the Dark Souls of the NFL, right? I think that's the Browns. That's the Browns. Yeah, you died. Every play just ends with you died. Because at least the lions, you know what's going to happen, which makes it sort of a Donkey Kong, Dark Souls. It's like, oh, you fucked up by, you opened the door that it's told you to open. Shouldn't have done that.

We need to recut that Calvin Johnson disappearing from the frame giff, right? When the Lions lose and Stafford's in the background and he's like, oh, man, and Calvin Johnson just like dissolves. He just gives up and drops out. Remember, that happens. And then Calvin Johnson retires. Yeah. Like, Detroit just breaks people. And I get this because are they more Michigan or Michigan State?

I argue they're way more Michigan State. Barring last year's Michigan, Michigan State game, they are way more Sparty. in terms of, I almost got the ring. No. Keep dreaming. Keep dreaming. We're not here to talk about Michigan or Michigan State, though. We got some cream of the crop for our last preview episode. We did a good job burning off the teams we didn't want to talk about last week,

because now we get to almost uniformly. These are teams that I am looking forward to watch, even if I don't necessarily think they're going to do good things. I think that's the accurate way to sort of group them I will say this I think I put this in terms that I think Jason will appreciate all five of these teams can cook all of them like in their own

inimitable not always successful way they're five very interesting teams I'd say they all whip pies out the window I would watch a game between any combo of any of these five teams that is 100% true and you get to watch at least two of these teams play each other

yeah week one So that's good. Week one we get one. One's a conference game. I feel like A&M and West Virginia play a bowl every year. Yeah. I feel like UCLA Ole Miss are destined for some sort of, you know, second tier. That could be a playoff game that, you know, does not lead to an eventual national champion, but that's fine.

Ooh, and we get to see, we get to see Old Miss. Actually, we get to see Alabama continue to see if they can turn the corner as a program and be oldness. Oh, boy. Can they break the curse? Also, Bama, West Virginia. I think that is an ATL game next year. That sounds right. Because they played that two years ago, last year?

Oh, man, my calendar's way off. Are they not doing it again? Who knows? Doesn't matter. None of this matters. Which one you want to tackle first? Oh, man, there's no question. Even if we weren't going to alphabetical order, I think we've got to pay the people off.

I think we've got to just give them what they want. Okay. I think we got to talk about Bama. ain't no other team talk about I thought you were going to go for the head fake and say West Virginia but no there's no head fake here we're ducking our ducking our big skull and tucking

straight down the middle I had faked you I didn't you know do the thing where I was like oh sure I'll take the biggest guy in prison then fake no I went straight for the biggest guy in prison and remember in college football the biggest guy in prison is Alabama yeah that's prison that's a good way to define this sport

by the way can I give you the Alabama alumni update from this week that that of all of the bizarre stories to come out, the last one I would have called was Rolando McLean. Allegedly on that drink. 50, 40 to 50 pounds overweight on drank, which of all of the things that would terrify me

from becoming addicted to a drug, massive weight gain is way up there. Like, heroin's terrifying, but you're like, eh, you'd be pretty thin. Yeah, it's not called heroin thick. Right. T-H-I-C-C. also the name of the drug is lean that's a lie i know i mean you look you look at young thug you look at uh you

you look at you look at you look at you look at two chains no a more accurate description of the health effects is look at what happened to gucci mean when he stopped using it yeah Gucci looks like an athlete now uh yeah paul paul wall paul had to have gastric bypass let's call it bloat can we call it bloat instead of lean yeah purple yeah purple we should rip purple purple bloat i'm on that bloat yeah I'm going bloating this weekend. Really, perp, sounds like an accurate description, because just picture the shape that that sound evokes. Like, if you can add jolly ranchers to a drug,

it's not going to leave you slim and trim. Maybe use Sprite Zero. You can, but nobody will. Yeah, but that's the most bizarre thing to me that in all of these, like you're like because Alabama players go through this thing where they all come out like Amari cooper right every single one of them under savings come out like these super driven extremely ambitious like I am going to crush life in my robot hands kind of guys yeah yeah yeah I was gonna maybe this list is a little longer hey listen AJ McCarrant on an NFL

roster that's an basic over achievement how do we get to AJ McCarran he started a playoff game They didn't win, but the Bengals had to start him for a playoff game. And then he stood outside of Kroger tweeting about Kroger won't let him in or something. Yeah, I think, by the way, that's a, yeah, because he was there like two minutes before closed. And they were like, nah, dude, which good for them. It's his Kroger, buddy. I think, I think, by the way, that's all a grand plot getting A.J. McCarrant on the Bengals, because if he fails, there's a blind there. Because they're like, ah, you know why he failed?

He's on the Bengals. Right? So Alabama can be like, what in us? So you're saying he can just keep losing playoff games. See, you can tell this is the Bama preview because we're just talking about the NFL. We're just talking about the pros. That's right, which, you know, legitimate concern with their rosters year in and year out, not whether they have a quarterback. Yeah, they don't need one of those.

But how much they're losing to the NFL, year in and year out because that's a real thing for Alabama. I hate to be the person who is boring. boring, but for the team that seems to just embrace inertia in football form, are we just sort of unnecessarily making up windmills at which to tilt? And can't we just say, it's Bama? Yeah, they lose a bunch of NFL players, and then they replace them, and then, you know, they don't go undefeated, but they still wind up playing for the national title or damn near close. I don't know. Are we just sort of making up board problems because it's fun?

yeah i think the dynasty's dead no that's not what i said oh oh oh that's not what i said sorry sorry i was just looking at dan wilkins tweets from a few months ago um i mean yeah it's the same thing every year they bring in number one recruiting class the entire roster came from number one recruiting classes they don't have a quarterback but the entire quarterback death charge nothing but blue chips they'll solve it there's nothing to worry about and then like some small problem will emerge like the past defense will go from being number one to like number 10 and we'll say say, oh, Saban has a huge weakness and has been exposed, it'll bounce back up to number one. There's nothing interesting here.

Okay. You want me to actually make the semi-concrarian point here? Yeah, if you want, go ahead. I can try. I mean, it's not going to go that well, okay? That's what I can say. Nothing here ever does, so. Yeah, let me, yeah, follow us down this familiar garden path, if you would, please.

But here are a few things which I think can, I think, affect them. Okay. They adjust beautifully, right? Like, if you watch, like, the most brilliant thing I watched last year was watching the Alabama staff actually have to really work and watching the team have to really sweat out Clemson because that was as good a shot as they got since the old Miss game. And they very nearly lost that game. They really did.

They had to, that game comes down to a special team's call, which, I wrong. And some perplexing decisions to continue to not cover O.J. Howard, but yeah. Right. You know, that game came down to daring, which to me says that, yeah, you know, you can beat him. You can make him sweat. Ole Miss certainly doesn't have a problem with it because there's a blueprint to how you do it, right? Because it's a very systematic team and you have to have a quarterback who's going to force you to play in an unsystematic fashion. Sean Watson did that.

Chad Kelly did that. Chad Kelly's been bucking the system his whole life. I think the blueprint is You need like an anti-blueprint Yeah, no, that's it You actually have to turn this game Like that's the reason If people want like the succinct way to beat Alabama

Is you turn it into a game of flow Not a game of downs As close as you can get it, right? Les Miles is thinking too much Is what you're saying Oh my God, Les Miles is taken Like of all the great criticisms of Les Miles If you want to get it, attempting to out-Bama

Alabama. Every single year has been the dumbest damn thing because he's convinced they can go toe to toe. And the fact is, organizationally, they can't. Nick's planned better. You can't out-plan him, right? So you kind of have to be an anarchist about it. You have to have a player who, if you look at the games Alabama's loss, it's always centered on a quarterback doing things one-on-one against that defense and forcing them off their assignments. Because they're so pattern red. Everything, if you don't know, this is your explainer. The reason Nick Saban's defenses are so good is that they're pattern reading defenses. So they know what you have. They teach how to flow with routes. They don't just

have general rules. They teach part by part how to move with receivers. And that's not true of every defense. Defenses are taught a lot of different ways. That's the reason they're so good. If you can break them out of that, guess what? They're a turtle on their back. They're very talented, but they don't have any idea what they're doing once you start improvising or working at a pace that makes them feel like they're improvising. Like velociraptors. Exactly. And if you get them, if you get them,

if you get them out of sorts and where they don't know what, you know, exactly what they're doing, then all you have to contend with is every single one of their athletes is better than yours. So now you've, you've even the odds, but not really. But you're still behind. Like they're at the point where they're so talented, so well organized, and so deep that if they lost two games,

it would be shocking. It really will. All right. Well, let's do this schedule then. Can you find, Jason, can you find two losses on this schedule? Not it. I mean, so part of this is that Alabama does not exist in a vacuum unless you actually live in Alabama, in which case I think it's just an Alabama Auburn vacuum, which is fine. But part of the problem, I think, is that the SEC West, at this point in time, does not feel stacked with major hurdles for them to clear.

Yeah, Ole Miss, you know, we think, at least has figured out how to give Alabama problems over the course of a game. They have Chad Kelly, bop, bop, bop. Tennessee's, you know, this is the year that everybody's looking at them to take some giant leap forward. played a lot of close, bloody, concrete, concrete brick-throwing games with Alabama. LSU still has, still does LSU things. Maybe Auburn has, will harness all the promise that they squandered last year, but I don't know, you look up and down this, this schedule, and there's not a team on here that you're like, oh, that team, this is the year that they're ready to just go all

out. I have to sort of start making things up. Yeah. Like, you go, oh, at Arkansas, if they had Brandon Allen. Right. If it was November. The powers are not fully marinated yet. If it was November, that's true. Remember, you put it in the marinade, and an Arkansas team really doesn't, like,

you know, mature as a meat until November. You got to smoke it for two months. Yeah, that's how they get played. So your three hardest games are on the road. LSU, Tennessee, Ole Miss, if you had USC, your four hardest games are away from home. Right. You could probably at Arkansas and say your five hardest games are away from home.

Sure. That's at least a loss. Maybe two. Okay. I'm just going to take Old Miss. Why not? I'm riding now. All right.

Let it ride. I have at LSU, obviously, because my beloved Bengal Tigers are going all the way. Do I have to pick one? I think I broke a podcast by saying LSU is going to beat Alabama. You're fine. I guess I guess I'll that you're stuck with Tennessee I guess I'm stuck with Tennessee that's fine and and you know Tennessee did did make that a very interesting game last year so maybe because Tennessee has a lot returning and Alabama does have a lot to deal with but I mean the problem is really this if they lose the old Miss game that's in some ways proven perfect for them because it's early enough in the season that they can use it as a motivating tool and they can rebuild what they're doing. from there and then they just bulldoze everybody else down the rest of the schedule yeah that's the pattern once they lose everybody else is fucked so if you're tennessee and you see them lose at old miss

sorry yeah he'll get you shot next year yeah or man or if you want to know the real the real burner on this one if they somehow lost at arkansas oh tennessee oh oh they are road case man yeah yeah yeah oh it gonna be brutal i'll watch it yeah yeah i can't i i i i don't i i i I'm fine, based on what you're saying about a lot of these games, the toughest games are on the road. I'm fine with one loss. Two just seems like such a stretch right now. Two doesn't seem like a stretch if the quarterback situation doesn't work out because they use quarterbacks now. I know, an unusual idea.

That's true. They still have a lot of very talented wide receivers, though. They do, but that quarterback still has to make decisions. And I know Lane Kippen has been great with grooming quarterbacks. Sure. it's still a young quarterback and that's still that's that's still something that when you look at the Alabama teams that have deigned to lose two games under Nick Saban young quarterbacks quarterbacks weren't necessarily sure of what they're doing yeah okay so we're saying

10 and two and beating Michigan State by like 58 in a bowl game because that's the pattern for anytime anytime Nick Saban loses more than like one game But this time, Michigan State scores a field goal. 61-3. Yeah. Also, I'm just going to call it. This one, Lane Kiffin gets another head job, man. Oh, God.

Where's he headed? Auburn? Tennessee. Oh, man. We know Auburn wanted to hire Kirby, the other coordinator. They just, all they want is when they want some of that saving on them. Auburn is the, is there anybody in the world who's actually concerned for Alabama losing Kirby Smart.

Do those people exist? I mean, they replaced him with another top tier defensive clothing. Another splinter cell that Sabin had he just activated and brought it over from Athens. I imagine he just said,

sure, I'll just take the other Kirby Smart. So it's a trade then. I'll just hire the Kirby Smart who everyone says is a dick, sure. Basically, basically other staffs are just the cooler for Nick to keep like meat on ice

to keep it he just he leaves his eggs throughout the southeast like a snake I'll go fetch it from that nest oh my god he is from West Virginia that's all he's doing

he's just stashing it up in a holler he's like well better better go get my Jeremy Pruitt he blows the conch shell all right well Spencer let's talk about Ole Miss I mean if they're if You have them beating Alabama.

Oh, I still have them. I still have them lose in three games. That's the other side of this pattern. It won't be all that impressive of a loss for Bama by the end. I will say this. If, whether or not they beat Bama, this old mischedule has the potential for a lot of pain. Or like a lot of, a lot of, a lot of pain early on. If they are too disorganized and Chad Kelly's, you know,

Chad Kelly has a little Dr. Bow in him. He's what I like to call a high variance quarterback. Let's recall the biggest highlight of Bama Ole Miss was him doinking a ball off somebody's head and someone taking it 70 yards. That should have been a pick six. Hey, can I tell you what it was on the scoreboard? Six. It was just plain six.

I'm just saying, yes, he is the underscern. study to Dr. Bo. Nurse Bo? Yeah. Yeah. He's the, he's the second, he's the second coming, right? Bo, Bo was the father. This is the son, and then the Holy Spirit's going to be whatever God forsaken quarterback rolls in, whatever erratic interception touchdown machine. Trian Harris. Files in. I believe it's Jeremy Liggins quarterback turn left tackle. Oh, yeah. Another thing, remember it all miss. Anyone can play. play any position he's hot he's he's he's hospital he's hospital wing bow that they're like the golden state warriors in more than one because they also lose a lot towards the end oh come on oh come on

hey if anyone if anyone would blow a three one lead it'd be the old miss warriors this this is dark who who so so i believe golden state did that yeah what did that happen was that a thing that happen if you haven't followed it by the way just as a side note if you don't follow dragonfly jones on twitter do it just for his endurance running through golden state warrior fans that has continued from the finals forward and shows no sign of ceasing and i'm pretty sure for the entire next NBA season if golden state is 81 and oh that'll only make it worse yeah um Ole Miss not going undefeated though oh no no no no no no no no no no remember old I start one in three.

Ole Miss is still one of those teams that, you know, every time they win the lottery, oh, we're out of money by Thursday. Yeah, those three losses, they could all very well happen before we even hit November. Yeah. This is a very tricky early schedule. And I'm not just talking about Wofford, of course. Yeah, because riddle me, who did they play week one? Yeah, they start with Florida State.

in Orlando, which nothing to me sounds more unpleasant than spending Labor Day with a bunch of Florida State fans in Orlando. I just, yeah, I can top that, Ryan. I can top that right. Okay. Adding Old Miss fans. All I'm saying is this, if you happen to be in Orlando and you are not affiliated with Old Miss or Florida State, if you're in Orlando for Labor Day weekend, you're taking

the kids to Disney, you're. going to Arabian Nights, you're going to find the wreckage, formerly known as Splendid China. And by the way, you should absolutely, Wikipedia, Splendid China. It's the most amazing Chinese government-sponsored theme park in Florida history. Just tip all your service employees a little extra, because they're dealing with a lot of shit. Do you think all the FSU and Ole Miss fans will meet at the Mexico and Epcot to demand

someone build a wall around it? Yeah, this is This is the one where you have to tell people that They can't smoke in the Applebee's What Well, yeah, but that's a cigarette And this is crack If you don't want me to smoke crack

You need to indicate that in your signage No, no, no, no, it's a vape It's not a cigarette It's a vape I know my rights Show me in the Constitution where it says You can prevent me from vaping is my religion I didn't pay for my in God we trust license plate

I thought this was a camping world classic It sounds like camping world government more like it So if you get past an FSU that I think most people would agree Is at least as talented and probably more disciplined on the field By the way this is an Ole Miss team too That's going to have to do that With only five returning starters on both sides And maybe your head coach

is suspended or exercised or whatever his denomination does. Might be the case, too. Yeah. So then you get Wofford. Listen, Jesus descended into hell for a spell as well. There's nothing wrong with it. It's how you find the centers and raise them up. Yeah, and then they got to play Wofford, which, you know, yeah.

It's nothing. Yeah, skip. Then you beat Alabama and get all excited. And then you probably, like, lose to Georgia and Memphis back to back. And then you got to go at Arkansas, at LSU, you beat Auburn, then you chase Georgia Southern around for a while, get all tired, go play a completely different offense at Texas A&M, you go on the road for the khaki bowl against the team of the good defense.

The weirdest cross-division rivalry. Is it? Is this the thing that matters to either of those fans? Like, do Ole Miss and Vanderbilt fans feel strongly about, like, Florida? I think it's a little more heated than you think. Is it? Spencer's identified the battleground here. Yeah, it's a khaki bowl, right?

Okay. Yeah, it's a khaki bowl. This is a battle for, this is a battle for like Caucasity. Oh, yeah, this is an accounting firm break room pride battle. This is like the game between people who rent helicopters for prom proposals and people who own helicopters. Yeah, exactly For proposals Yeah, just buy them for that

And then like just park them somewhere Exactly This is the difference between people who have the lake house And those who own the lake Right That's really what we're talking about here They care, but there's just not enough Mandy fans To get real like huffy about it, you know

I hope Godfrey I hope Godfrey just decides This is the year that he's just going to go Full Old Miss fan for this game in Nashville no he's remember his soul's dead i mean i sometimes complain about being a florida fan sometimes when do you not but man worse than i am and i'm terrible old miss fans are at the long burnt dark end of something i'll never understand something so twisted and knowledge so recondite and hidden that like it's like it makes

faulkner it makes faulkner look sunny Mama was dead. A corpse played on the veranda, and it was a sunny day. I mean, they are as I lay dying, the team. Schizophrenic, every chapter's different. I heard our playoff berth knocking through the coffin. Yeah, exactly. Like, I heard Mama calling, so I tried to open up her coffin.

Well, if that doesn't describe the NCAA investigation. You know what was inside? school up north Robert Cambichie murdered by a donkey RIP Yeah this I mean if they if they beat Florida State do we feel differently about them

Long term prognosis wise Or is the schedule just Too full of landmines And Old Miss refusing to take off It's nice shoes Because damn it They want to look nice for this party there are so many things that can go wrong here

it's just a it's super super volatile they have so many games on the road they have so many tough games on the road they have so many like they're out of conference schedule is not kind simply with the presence of both Memphis and Florida State I mean it's it's it's especially helpful to look back at last year and if you had told if you had told an old fan at the start of 2015. You're going to beat Alabama on the road. You're going to beat Auburn on the road. And

you're going to beat LSU by three touchdowns. You're also going to win the Egg Bowl. That LSU fan, or that Ole Miss fan, almost certainly thinks that means they've gone undefeated, one loss at the worst. But they still managed to lose by four touchdowns to Florida, by two touchdowns to Memphis and in a very, very bizarre over time loss to Arkansas. The most bizarre. The most bizarre. So if you doubt that Old Miss is not capable of taking care of what it needs to take care of, but also not doing the basics, you're very like, like Old Miss is absolutely going to pay the bills and lock the house and set the alarm. and the whole time

they accidentally left the iron on on top of a pile of newspapers Yeah And that's the Auburn game Why are there newspapers under the I like to get back old mess I like to better myself So

This is a team that on offense too I know they still have Chad Kelly They lose Laramie Tunsell They lose Lequon Treadwell They lose They lose They lose Kendii-K They lose

lose a goal line running back in defensive end and part-time saxophonist Robert Kendii there's just there's a lot here and a lot I guess I'm not all that worried about the losses I mean Treadwell they have a ton of receivers

that might be their strongest group they won the Cotton Bowl without Kmdici they lost their you know Tunsell's a big loss but here comes the country's number one offensive tackle and he might not even start so like The specific big losses I'm not really worried about.

It's just the schedule is so damn brutal. And like for all the talk about their improved recruiting, they're still not exactly a top 10 recruiter, which you would need to be to be like a 10 and 2 kind of projected team against this schedule. I will say this. I take great joy in them having a left tackle named Gregory Little. He's very small. Here's an enormous man.

Hi, I'm Greg Little. Hello. Yeah, I'll say this feels like an 8 and 4 team. Yeah, I think that's right. Really, and I really, I will say this. Like, we've said, like, all this, like, oh, this is so hard. They're going to be fun. This is, oh, this is the 8 and 14 that's going to get a horribly overmatched opponent in a bowl game.

Oh, they're going to, and Ole Miss has already perfected this of, like, be a really good team that can't get its shit together consistently enough to play for something super meaningful and then take all of it out on your bowl game opponent. Yeah. Oh, yeah. they'll be eight and four and they will be better at every single position than the 10 and 2 team they're matched up against and they will smoke them and they're going to be so much fun to watch even in losses like even last year last year like their losses were hilarious i'm not just saying that because one of them was to florida but that helped but the arkansas game bless you for that thank you so much for playing that football game november it's real um let's do our last c cc team of the pre you Texas A&M. I will let someone else start on this. Oh, boy. Oh, my.

Jason, you want to take a stab at this? So they have Miles Garrett. That's really good. He might be the best player in the country. He's their entire defense. On offense, they have a bunch of five star wide receivers. That's pretty good. That's their offense.

Yep. Yep. They got to play U.S. CLA. Other than that, they don't have anybody terribly intimidating in the non-conference. But opening with UCLA at home has a lot of potential problems. We will save that for the UCLA preview later in this episode. Yeah, I don't actually know where the needle is with Kevin Sumblin right now. But it does not feel like it is trending super positively at this point. Because I'm just like Google, Kevin Sumlin, salary. It's large. Yeah, how much Kevin, how much are they jump into bed for Kevin Solomon with? Five million dollars a year.

Well, to be fair, with taxes in Texas, that's like $4,99,073. $5 million. So the Vegas regular season over under on wins. Um, you all want to guess what it is? Sure. Yeah. Sure. I'm going to say they're five, five and a half.

Ryan? Uh, I'll say seven and a half. I, uh, I said Vegas. It's actually Bovada, which if you say that around a gambling person, they'll turn, problems, they'll turn purple. Um, but it is eight at Bovada. You can actually put money on, uh, Texas A&M winning less than eight games. in the regular season, which I recommend you do immediately. Because their quarterback is literally their third or fourth choice.

The defense isn't, I mean, I guess it'll still get a little bit better, but still got a ways to go. Got a lot of problems. Schedule's hard as hell. I mean, so they have what I think can be considered for automatic wins. They have Prairie View, UTSA, NewtS. Mexico State and at South Carolina. So that means they really just have to split the remaining games. Yeah, that's going to be hard.

And even then, I mean, that's some Florida fan creeping in there. I don't, South Carolina's, I wouldn't, I wouldn't mark that at W right now. Yeah. No, I understand. Do you want to know what that game is going to be? Jesus. That game is going to be hot shit on a cold plate. It's going to be so bad.

So this is going to be the one game where you're, like Texas A&M's defense really came to play, and somehow the offense only scored eight points. A&Ms finally click their defense together. Oh, which is, which is, by the way, it's so weird. Like, there is this shift. I kind of think that Kevin Sumblin recruits, like, I do when I recruit in any sort of virtual recruiting scenario, which is I skip offensive line, and I always just get as many five-star talent players as possible. Sure. And then you wonder why you can't get them to the ball.

One really weird kind of trend. This computer's cheating. Like declining offensive line quality. The further you get away from the Mike Sherman years, when Mike Sherman was on the low, really good at recruiting offensive lines, that's gone down, down, down, down, incrementally, but now dramatically so after all this time. So consequently, a little harder to get it to all those talented people you've got to play, like at white out and tight end and flex positions. there's less and less of that. Because they just haven't gotten that. This is what A&M's offensive yards per play have done in the last four seasons.

2012, second in the nation. 2013, slight drop to fourth. 2014, a dip as well, but only down to 27th. And 2015 was a nice year, fellas, because they were all the way down at 69th. Nice. behind Rutgers, behind North Carolina State, behind Ohio, that's standard Ohio, behind Texas. I like that that makes Ohio State Ohio light. Ohio Diesel.

Yeah, that's Ohio Diesel, bro. Yeah, they're, they were just, oh man, I, I, I don't know what you say at this point. this feels like the Urig is fired I think that's what we're working toward here yeah because I'm going to start let's go schedule by schedule there's some desperate battles on here

at Auburn that's that's a lot of an acid between two coaches a lot of guys who are like eh honey don't pay the mortgage hold that check in Arkansas team that they better

barely beat last year yeah i mean i this is the thing they could be one and three when you round the horn in october nobody respects prairie view nobody and with free then you got at south carolina you got tennessee and tennessee'll probably smoke them i mean that feels like i don't think they're really well equipped to to face them although i do want to see josh dobbs versus mild gil get miles garrett because that who uh and then they'll get They're at Alabama, which you want to start adding up the scores of games since the Manzelling, since the Great Manzell era? It's not great. It's no, it's real bad.

That's not great. Yeah. It gets real nasty when you start to get, look at how badly that alleged rivalry has gone since one victory in Tuscaloosa caught Nick Sabin Nappen. Since one failed Brown's quarterback left town. one one failed brown's quarterback every town has a failed brown's quarterback look around and if you can't identify him it's you uh yeah that you really this is bad okay so so can they can they get to eight give give them the let's please for the sake of argument can we say that a and m is going to beat south k if a and m can't beat south carolina then jason's absolutely right and you should take

what every under you can find for the Texas A&M win total. But I would like to believe that things are still in such a state of disarray in Columbia that Texas A&M should still be able to beat them. Not necessarily by a lot, not necessarily in a way that gives you any confidence, but at least chalk that up as a W. I ain't watching that game. You're going to watch. You know what?

You've watched so much worse, so many worse games than that. You're absolutely watching it. You fucking lie. No, I've watched enough of Will Must-Champ football. No. I don't need to watch a South Carolina game. Spencer Hall. Spencer, watch your South Carolina. If Texas A&M has already lost UCLA and either Auburn or Arkansas,

because if they've already lost it both, I don't think it really matters what happens in South Carolina. But if you're watching Kevin Sumlin coach for his job on the road against Will Mustchamp, you are absolutely going to watch that game and you are a liar to claim otherwise. you can call me a liar if you want it's not coming off this plate maw that's that's call the flour and i'm not eating it just put oh jesus i told you to hide it in his burrito put some hot sauce on south carolina um you can it's like dog medicine you can put it in peanut butter i'm not eating it he'll find it he can smell what he can smell the muschamp why would

you eat dog medicine so i feel like this season is it's a six and six but okay that's that's a long play that's that's a slow patient steady play because there There will come a point in this season, as there are in all things, Kevin Summlin, Texas A&M, where A&M's riding really high. Like, I don't know. Maybe they beat Tennessee. Maybe they beat Bama. And we all look around like, oh, shit, look at you haters and doubters. Oh, boy. Aggie swag back. All they did a video dancing and all that. Because, like, you know, everybody likes Sleman, except for Texas fans. Even though they're not rivals, it's weird.

But, like, that moment will arrive. And then a month later we'll be like, holy shit, we thought A&M was like steady again. Oh, yeah. Yeah, A&M absolutely has... Transfer during the season. How'd they do that? Remember, they were ranked 23rd. They haven't even won three games. How'd that happen?

Yeah, I mean, like, if I was to look at things and say, okay, you can win. Okay, I'll be real charitable. You get UCLA. Wow, you beat UCLA. I don't know how, but you beat UCLA. Sure. Okay. It's at Kyle Field.

It's the first week of the season. Nobody knows what the hell they're doing. Sure. 1-0. 2-0, Prairie View. And then you take a loss to Auburn, which again, that's kind of like, hell, I'll give you that, 3-0. Then things start to get kind of bad because I don't think you're beating Arkansas, right? Especially not in the Burt Dome in Arlington.

It's like a second home. Three and one at South Carolina. I'll give you that, four and one. Not going to watch it, but I'll give it to you. You're not beat Tennessee. You're four and two. You're not beating Alabama. That's four and three.

You beat New Mexico State. Now we're at five and three. You're not beating Mississippi State. That's five and four. Mississippi State is just too good in the line. Like, they're actually, like, their front sevens are pretty decent. So, and that's not the case with Texas A&M. So now we're at what?

Five and four? Yeah. Old Miss, you're not beating Old Miss. So that's five and five. You beat UTSA. They're six. There you go. You get six because you're not beating LSU.

Yeah. Fine. All right. Six and six. Gig them. That's, by the way, I think that's pretty charitable. to get to six and six. I think this is the, I think it more or less

ends up. Like, if I'm charitable, I think we can agree on six and six, this is the season where Kevin Sleman gets fired. Because if he goes six and six, that's good. This could be like a four and eight. Easy. Hey, four and eight doesn't always get fired. Let's talk about UCLA.

I hate you so much. Should have eaten your must champ. UCLA is a fascinating team to me. Josh Rosen is so, so, so, so, so, so potentially great. Last year he was, I think what I, what is so impressive about him for somebody who started as a true freshman was that he avoided sacks super well. Like, he didn't always put the ball where it needed to be, and he had some games where he just sort of couldn't, you could tell the things were happening too fast for him and he couldn't

adjust but he he he never looked incredibly uncomfortable in the pocket um that's it you know what you know what he has yeah he has those little like shifty marino moves yeah like little dan marino pocket moves that like you know it was good at that mark sanchise was also really good at that i know at the college level yes no they are they are they are the uh the moose of the older man at a wedding who you're like oh he can dance a little bit look at i did not know jim could dance. Did you? Are you live sub-tweeting me? I kind of am. You're right. That said, he is without four of his top five receiving targets from last year. He does not have his running back coming back. He's going to have to take on a good bit of responsibility

as a very young man, playing for Jim Moore, the most patient man in California. yeah and can i can i give you this too zen master jim morrow jim let's just let's just ask you what your what your opinion on zan is well just imagine a rock's not a fucking rock okay if you look at a fucking rock that fucking rock isn't necessarily a rock if you look at it the right way at one point it's an object and then it's not fucking there is it that's fucking zen and then did he the rock not the fucking rock you know what i mean um ucla also last year totally derailed season totally derailed because the defense uh i think bill c's article said that at one point half of the starting defense was out with injury oh my cursed that's a very hard way to play a season as it turns out

yeah when you lose when you lose miles jack when you lose eddie v down front i'm not going to say his whole last name it's very long but uh yeah they had really big injuries and they had a true freshman quarterback and we're still pretty good until the very last game. Eddie Vanderdose. V. Yeah, Eddie Vee. Also, Tom Bradley back. So what? You get same defensive coordinator coming back? A lot of, you have a lot of guys with experience back as a result of the walking wounded tour that you had last year. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, Jim Mora is the coach that has done a lot more with UCLA than I think anybody thought he was going to do, but has still reached that point where what I love about the Texas A&M game is we are taking the college football's two sons that perpetually we have so much hope in.

Every year, Jim Mora and Kevin Sumblin, oh, this is the year they're going to get it together. He's going to start his own business. He filed for a business loan himself, and he's planning on moving out of the house. and oh no why is my car repossessed what happened did you sign up did you use my car as collateral for the business loan god damn it jim mora i can't trust you anymore yeah and part of that by the way like he can legitimately claim uh lightning struck my business because it did yeah it did because they had they had the worst injury luck i was trying to think of a team that suffered like we joked about iowa for a number of years having really bad injury luck just wasn't even close to like airbag angry iowa running back hated got nope not even close their defense

was decimated so he kind of has an excuse for why he defaulted on that loan um and that led to a very nasty stat one you really don't want to have which is to be real bad against the run because remember it's way easier just run the ball and beat you than it is to attempt something ambitious like passing would you care to guess where their rushing defense was nationally last year god In yards per game or yards per carry or what are we talking? We're going to go total, yards per game. Okay. Well, Nebraska tacked on a solid 400 or so, I believe.

Oh, God, I forgot about that. Yeah, I remember that? And Nebraska wasn't exactly good at offense. Nebraska was sort of fine at offense, but... Can I cheat and say, are they inside the top 100? Oh, buddy, man. They are just barely hanging on to that house. He has a subdivision.

Yes. Hey, listen, man, it's all about being in the 144. It doesn't matter if you're first or 143rd. They're still making the payments, man. With that mortgage, it's getting to be unmanageable. There are 128 teams, so yep, they're ahead of North Dakota State. If they didn't want, if the minimum payment was bad, why did they list it as an option? They should make it higher.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to say that in terms of where they're at, they're at 98 degrees of bad. They're exactly 98th in the nation for the 2015 season. The nicheset of defenses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are totally the nichesie of defenses. Wandering the beach, not doing much tackling. Still kind of handsome doesn't have a lot to do.

No, no. So they have to stiffen up against the run. The good thing is, as you've mentioned, they have a dude who can make some awe-inspiring throws. Like, Rosen just makes some throws where you go, oh, my God, how did you see that? And, hey, Texas A&M, I'm sure they won't let him do that over and over and over and over again. Nope.

Nope. Airtight. Not one bit. Yeah, so this is kind of a, this feels like kind of a, I guess it's a transition year for UCLA. Last year was the year where they were really supposed to just dominate the South, you know, have a good shot at winning the conference as a whole. A lot of people had them in the discussion for going to the playoff.

With everybody they lost, it feels like expectations can't nearly be that high. But you're still talking about a division that is not clearly in the grasp of anybody else. So I think it's not unreasonable to look at this UCLA team and say, Yeah, three, four losses seems within the realm of possibility, but they could still win the South. They still could. I just, I don't see them improving on the run that much. Yeah. Also, they're probably going to have to, like, offensively, it's going to be a slight change from what they were doing before with Kennedy, Paul and Molle.

Allegedly wanting to be more physical with the run game, which to me says, yeah, good luck. They're doing fullbacks and such. I mean, yeah, they could win the South. Who cares? It doesn't matter. Nor's going to win the conference. It is a pretty meaningless regional award at this point. Yeah.

If I were to look at games where I go, yeah, they're going to lose. Probably lose to Stanford. Yes. Yeah, I know. Number one fan. They're probably going to lose to... I don't think that... I mean, USC, that's a game, right?

I mean, I don't see USC as being anything proven. There are a lot of teams that they managed to catch in the lurch this year that I think, you know, like, I think Utah is a tough matchup for them just in terms of what Utah does. So, I don't know, 9 and 3 seems like, maybe a rogue loss there. 9 and 3 seems like a doable thing here. Yeah, 9 and 3, and we say that Washington State game kicks off at like 10, 15 Eastern, because then that's a wazoo win. Yeah, that's true.

In like the eighth quarter. Yeah, okay, I'm good with that. Let's do the last one. The last team of the entire Power 5. And therefore, our number one. Our number one. West Virginia, Mountaineers, who, uh, sure. They're, there's the one good thing I'll say about West Virginia last year.

They got out of this very frustrating pattern where they would beat somebody that they, they would play out of their minds and beat somebody very highly ranked, ruin somebody's season, and then they would shit the bed. 2012, they beat number 11, Texas. then they lost to unranked Texas Tech by 35 points. 2013, they beat number 11 Oklahoma State, but before that they got shut out by unranked Maryland. 2014, they beat number four Baylor and then lost to unranked Texas by 17 points.

Last year, they pretty much just beat the teams they were better than, with the possible exception of Kansas State, and they lost to the teams that they weren't as good as. And I guess that's comforting in the sense that it's stable, but god damn it west virginia football is not supposed to be stable yeah and let me give you by the way things that they can count on right which i think is instability i just think they have an uneven roster because of where they are

remember west virginia population wise like punches so far above their weight in terms of population it's not even funny like they shouldn't they shouldn't even be like in d1 in terms of the number of people that they have in state so what they do is pretty like remarkable overall i don't want to to take that away from them they're just uneven somehow they managed to always get like a talented running back they always managed to have one dude on defense who this year a noble i'm gonna try to say the last name do it do it and with chuck who great good enough you said it with confidence

there we go all right he's he's he's fantastic he's going to be the dude off their front their front three uh who makes a difference but that's really it like they're not a consistent team it's hard for them like for them to win nine or ten games is always sort of like a minor miracle for me and they do it with more consistency than you would think yeah i mean skiler howard is definitely the biggest one of the big sex factors i think in in the big 12 at least just because last year he he torches maryland he torches baler torches absolutely torches arizona state in the bowl game but then the variance just you look at his numbers against TCU and Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, and they're just garbage.

Like, it's very odd to have a quarterback that you say, yeah, he can realistically go out there and complete 65, 70 percent of his passes. It could also be 40. He could throw for 300 yards. It could also be 120. He can throw four touchdowns. It could also be four interceptions. It's a very particular game.

It's like playing a scratch-off where one-off. option is you win a million dollars and the other option is somebody comes over and cuts off one of your toes like that's don't play that scratch off although that does sound like a west virginia lottery game yeah um i would take a look at a schedule because it's it's kind of weird it's weird it's weird every year that there is a big 12 it's wild and wonderful uh literally uh they start with missouri uh at home in a game that based on today's news with two prominent Missouri players who won't be on the team this year

just got a little easier then they host Youngstown State. Remind me again who's coaching the Penguins. Oh, that'll be both a lady. I will absolutely watch this game just for that reason. Chance to impress this

former conference. And then the maybe one of the strangest neutral site games we have all season week four they play BYU at FedEx Field Yeah That's about as weird as it gets

In terms of fan base, locality Everything The winner gets to go out for a nice Club sandwich with Kirk Cousins I don't know It feels like every single game on the schedule Is a toss-up Including Youngstown State, to be honest.

Wow. Well, I mean, they'll be fine. They'll be fine. I kind of feel like, I mean, I don't know what BYU is either. Like, there's like the under new management question really brings to, like, also, that's a west to east. Which, ooh, I'll give the advantage to BYU or to West Virginia there. And I don't think, I think we've said previously Kansas State and all that. And honestly, West Virginia is a better team in the next.

every team, I think, on paper, up until you get to TCU. Yes. I think that's probably right. So that's like, I think they could be five and oh. They could be five and oh, four and one seems maybe a little more realistic because while they are better. It seems a little more on brand. Well, they are better on paper than most, if not all of these teams. They're not significantly better than all of these teams.

And they're not, they're not consistent. And we're also throwing in a long, long, long trip all the way to Lubbock in there. Yeah. But four and one seems realistic to start the season. I mean, just overall, like, I can find seven wins here if I'm being pretty optimistic. So, like, seven wins, and let's say that you just get the offense absolutely humming. There's eight. This is an eight and four team if they have a really good year.

Is that? I go seven. I think they lost a lot of important pieces on defense, and we saw last year, like, when Carl Joseph went down, that changed the entire team. And he's not back. so is that enough to keep jane holgerson at west virginia it should be i mean i what in the world do they expect out of this program stuck in the big 12 i just really liked the idea of a lot of teams having to choose between dana holgerson or lane kiffin for head coach openings 20s again lane kiffin west virginia head coach yeah again if lane kiffin ends up at the head coach of west

Virginia, something's going wrong.