Shutdown Fullcast - Shutdown Fullcast: The 2007 Special Episode

Episode Date: July 26, 2017

We're gonna talk about the Backyard Brawl, and Stanford winning outright as a 41 point dog, and the Heisman winner finding his path as a minor league baseball player, and Dennis Dixon's injury, and the time ULM beat Nick Saban, and Houston Nutt, and a whole lot of other weird shit that happened in 2007. We apologize now if any of this is painful to you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Shetown Fulcast. This is our very special 2007 edition. What is some like really 2007 things? Just to put people in the right mind. Um, Avatar. You drink my, I drink your milkshake. I drink it up. I drink your Avatar.

You say any year before 2011, I'll be like, yeah, I think that was the year Avatar came out. Avatar and There Will Be Blood are really just. both about the fight over natural resources, if you think about it. That's true. And like the thing they have in common is that no one's actually watched them since 2007. And I don't know, other than beating a man to death in a bowling alley, I don't know that I remember any plot points from either. He is a terrible father.

Right, that's Avatar, yep. When Daniel Day Lewis is riding the purple dragon and they're connected from his hair, into the dragon's brain they're trying to stop the bad guy from Jurassic Park 4 or whatever from eating the magic space rocks

he's a terrible father to his boy who I think can't speak. Hey, why can't we get Daniel Day Lewis to play the predator because I really want to see him use his extreme method approach. He has to become invisible? Yeah, he has to

he has to like skulk around L.A. only speaking in the predator's roar and like killing and discriminant well discriminately the predator knows what he's doing he's not a xenomorph that's right he's not he's not just a limel he's not a minus killing machine their choices being made is one of you like rubbing paper in front of your microphone well i'm not but you never know it's just i want i want everybody you know this this this podcast will never sound good I will try. And I'm hoping that maybe in some Sisyphian way, this is how I'll live forever, that, like, God has decided, Ryan, you can't come home until you figure out how to make the forecast, not sound like shit.

I'm like, okay, God. And 300 years later, there will be me saying, well, Jason's recording from inside his space lawn. How did that happen? Buddy, we just love you too much to let you go. I love you guys too We're here to talk about 10 years ago Throw some D's on it

You know what's really That was the year of Rich boy Rich boy, okay Yeah man the last track on that album If you really want to be terrified Think about how good we all looked In 2007 Oh man

It's the same compared to Yeah no Jason's the same He's immortal I haven't aged since I hit like 14 it's uh i mean for a while it made me mad but now it makes me happy do you think it's going to like call catch up at once or oh yeah yeah it's going to hit me hard the day i turned 40 like pow yeah he's just going to be an old guy from georgia there goes my back he's going to look like hank hill's dad your eyes will get

instantly beady you'll have some war record that you didn't actually earn i don't even know what Spencer was doing in 2007. That's a really good question. Neither do I. I was working for sporting news and doing part-time stuff. Those aren't real words. No, no, no. I did end up, though, in a couple of places at 2007, most notably, the LSU Florida game in Baton Rouge, the greatest game I've ever seen. You might say the past is crap, and I do frequently, but I would remind you,

several things about 2007 maybe the best year in college football history for plot best script by far all right and throw some ds by rich boy came out that's it those are my two things in 2007

then I go well those were guaranteed quality that's it and that's enough that's enough for me to be proven wrong on my the past is crap don't remember anything there are things we should remember about 2007 oh we might even have a list up them. We do. So we're going to play a little game here. I have prepared a list of what I would

say are the 13 stupidest facts about 2007 college football season. And it's always on this program and is anything doing anything affiliated with this program when we say stupid, we say so lovingly. I'm going to run through these facts and Spencer and Ryan are going to give each one a one to 10 score on how stupid this fact is. And then at the end, we'll rank them and we will decide what are the ten dumbest facts from the greatest season in the history of America's stupidest court. Can I ask a clarifying question if that's okay? Well, that doesn't really fit the theme, but yes.

Do you want us to judge how stupid these are from the vantage point of today, 2017, or then 2007? I think looking back is the way to do it. Absolute value, yeah. So I think as Judge, from the most complete historical perspective you have, which is the one you're sitting on right now. Great. Because there are at least a few where the history is what really makes it. Right, right.

I like that. Great. Perfect. So, and this is a part of at SBNation.com and at various team sites throughout the SB Nation Network we have put together what we believe is the greatest story anyone could possibly tell about the greatest season in the history of the sport. So, let's start with thing number one on the list. Jim Harbaugh-Stanford beat Pete Carroll's USC as a 40-point underdog.

How dumb was this? So at first, it's really tempting to say not that dumb because, you know, Jim Harbaugh, Stanford turned into a very good, program. This was his first year in Palo Alto, I believe. Yeah, it was. And, you know, USC definitely had that like sort of trickle down after the glory years where it's like, okay, this doesn't seem, this doesn't seem ludicrous. But then you remember who, who the quarterback was for Stanford. Would that be Tevita Pritcher? Yeah, it would be. do you know what his passing line was on the day 11 for 30 for less than 150 yards one touchdown and a pick y'all y'all and by the way on that last drive i'm pretty sure they're facing like fourth and 18 and they convert it no stanford uh player rushed for more than 32 yards this was stanford finished the day with 235 yards USC had 450 Yeah. By the way, that team, we're clouted on them now. They ended up 10 and 2. They end up.

Wait, wait, which team are we clowning on? USC for losing. Okay, okay, because I was going to say, that's, so that's what makes it really dumb, is it's not like the Stanford team with some sort of secret juggernaut that we just didn't know how good Jim Harbaugh was at that point, and they put it all together. And what a miracle season. Can you name the other three teams that Stanford beat that year? I can't I can't actually I have looked I have looked this up okay before San Jose State they beat Arizona because everyone beats Arizona

right they beat USC and the last one is ah Cal they beat Cal they beat Cal Cal which briefly ranked number two correct so it's just a very weird collection

of wins for a four and eight team to say yeah you know we were pretty bad all year we lost to washington by 18 and uh but good news we beat number two usc on the road so i'm gonna say that this what do you want like a scale here yeah one to 10 one to 10 with one not being surprising at all and 10 being like oh my god yeah this to me this is an eight this is still very dumb very very very, very dumb. No, I'm going to want up you here. This is a full 10 out of 10. I think this is, no, this is the thing that in 2007 makes the absolute, no, no, no,

it's a 9 out of 10. I just remember something that makes even less sense. So 9 out of 10, 40-point underdog, a 4-8 Stanford team knocking them off. Yeah. Oh, one more fact about that game. The guy who caught the pass that converted the fourth and long that led to the successful fade into the end zone to beat. USC can you name that wide receiver from the 2007 Stanford class he no longer plays

wide receiver yeah so it was richard sherman richard sherman white receiver caught that for them long uh it i mean if it helps if you look at looks when you have the time go look at the box score for this game and go to the USC side and look at how many USC players you're like i remember him it is not it is like very small list especially on the offensive side of the ball. I don't remember a goddamn single one of the... Like, Joe McKnight, yes, we remember Joe McKnight, rest of peace. These guys just like, yep, mm-hmm, sure.

Yep, that sounds like a name. And also, starting quarterback John David Booty was hurt for at least part of this game. We went back and looked and figured out the USC was one of the teams that... In this season, there were several teams that fit this bill that was undefeated with a healthy quarterback. That's unfortunate. Yeah, this game was very dumb. Very, very, very, very, very dumb. Very dumb.

And Vegas people say it stands to this day is the biggest point spread upset in history. And there's still debate as to whether it's even the biggest upset of this year. Moving along. Yeah, please, go ahead. Number two, USF, rank number two during its 11th year as a football program. Um, gosh, this is the, in the initial BCS rankings. So you look at, so it's not that dumb if you look at who they beat.

They went on the road and beat Auburn, ranked 17th of the time, uh, in week two. In week four, they beat West Virginia, their big east made at the time. Yep. All that sounds right. Uh, they beat them at home. They were, uh, the mountaineers were number five. So like, that's two quality. That's two quality wins.

In between there, you also had a win over UNC, not a good UNC team, but a ACC win all the same. So, like, from the pure perspective of did it make sense at the time? Sure, you had to get, somebody had to be number two. Why not USF? Even from the perspective of, like, what happened by the end of the year? I don't know. They didn't. I don't know how dumb it is.

I just, I feel like it's maybe in like a five, six range. Yeah, I was, I was going to go four out of ten. The things got pretty crazy. Um, they had a clean record at the time. Yeah, four out of ten. This isn't in this, from this perspective, not the weirdest thing that happened. I mean, I mean, it's not even the weirdest thing about USF season, I would argue. The weirdest part is that they played, uh, Oregon in the Sun Bowl.

And we have a piece about that. that Richard Johnson wrote up, they got destroyed by Oregon. They lost by 35 points. I'm pretty sure they were losing by three touchdowns at the end of the first quarter. But USF was favored to win that game. We lived in a world where the same Vegas odds makers that said Stanford, 40-point underdogs, said, South Florida, you should beat Oregon. my favorite one of my favorite stats about this year um there's a there's a bunch of them um is that

oregon as a ranked team lost three different games to unranked teams Oregon had an excuse best player Dennis dixon quarterback got hurt USF also lost three ranked games to unranked teams in the Sun Bowl USF was ranked Oregon was ranked unranked Oregon one see if you can figure that puzzle out at all because i can't so uh ryan you were five or six for this yeah i'll say i'll give it a five i feel like that's a five okay wow that's that's very low in my opinion but i'm only the uh presenting i'm hanging it i'm hanging it as a four that's okay well you i'll trust you florida experts on usf um number three the heisman trophy winner went on to set the nfl playoff record

for yards per completion, despite being an H-back, inspire the two weirdest things John Boyce ever published, and hit more home runs than Michael Jordan. Matt Ryan did all that, huh? I was going to say Matt Grohty. It's amazing. John has always been a big fan of Darren McFadden, always been fascinated by him.

Chase Daniel really inspires John. Man, it's, so which part of that do you want to, like, The whole... All of it. All of it. That was the Heisman. Ten years later. Wait, did this guy even play football?

Wait. Yeah, I'm going to put... I'm going to put everything that's happened to Tim Tebow post 2008 as, uh... Yeah, it's, that's like a... It's an eight? I mean, it's pretty weird. I mean, was this the same time that all the, like, wildcat shit was going on? Oh, yeah.

So there is definitely some school of thought that was like, well, you know, Rex Ryan's going to figure out how to use this guy on office. Some bullshit like that. An NFL guy will figure out something innovative. Oh, yeah. That was a big, big thing. We actually, we did a post on the Wildcat as well. Alex Kirshner did that one about how, you know, you had at Arkansas,

you had Darren McFadden, Felix Jones, Peyton Hillis. You had Tebow at Florida, not technically Wildcat, but, you know, to a defense. it looks about the same. You also had the, you know, the West Virginia of the zone read. Again, to a defense, it looks about the same. And then you have in the NFL, it's all trickling up. Arkansas's offensive coordinator becomes the Dolphins quarterback's coach, and they draft Pat White.

It doesn't work, and that's sort of the end of the wildcat, but helped lead to the run-pass option phase. Yeah, I mean, the whole, the whole Tebow saga, what did you give it, Spencer? I give it an eight. It's weird. So I want to give it, I only want to give it a seven for this reason. It has, it has a, I want to give it room, because it can get weirder.

And I, I feel confident that it very well may. Like, if you tell me, oh, you know, next Summer Olympics, Tim Tebow's, you know, silver metal, discus. I'm like, sure, why not, you know? He's got the throwing motion. I've seen some of those Jets gifts. And hey, man, listen, in recent Heisman Trophy winner news, he, he, he, he, he, he, He ain't the weirdest, I'll tell you that. Number four, LSU lost two completely off the rails bananas games

and not only made the national title, actually won it. Oh, God. May I remind you, Kentucky and Arkansas. Both in triple overtime, correct? One of those, undefeated in regulation. one of those at home so the weird thing about lSU one of the weird things about lSU this season is that um when they were number two in a year where being number two was like the worst thing you could be they were fine like they cruised against the unranked teams they stomped virginia tech they beat south carolina by double digits like number two was not an issue for them when they were number one sometimes they won and sometimes they didn't so like in a weird way they needed to be number two going into the national championship game because number one was really where they had problems those expectations they were they were much better being in like lower level math being all oh yeah you know this is easy a plus um how weird was it god nine yeah it's a it's a it is a full on nine go back and try to find other undisputed

non-billingsley poll national title holders with two losses without resorting to skull dougary or intellectual dishonesty it's very hard I'll tell you the last in the AP poll was 1960

Minnesota yeah that's like not even football yeah that's I mean that's whatever that's a wildly different era yeah it's I mean it seems It feels like it would be incredibly hard now for the number one team in the country to lose to an unranked team at home in their 12th game and still make the play. Like, it could happen, but definitely not if you already had another loss.

So, like, the fact that they even got to play for a national championship and then win it, like, fairly easily. And also, I mean, I think the playoff, that sort of illustrates how weird it is because, like, Penn State almost made the play. as a two-lost team last year. But that means ranking number four, not number two. There's a huge difference. And that was with surging at the end of the season, not stumbling. Not shambling in. I had to go through these, by the way, remind you that it wasn't quite the case with

LSU because remember that in South Carolina, in a really mean South Carolina LSU game, they break the game open with a fake field goal, right? Then the Florida game is a comeback, some sort of gigantic. Swamp Opera. It's just drama from one end to another. They have a shootout with Alabama. The week before that, they played Auburn. And do you remember what LSU

did? Yeah, yeah. The craziest call of Les Miles' entire career, and that's saying a lot. Yep. Yep. With one second left on the clock, they run a play in field goal range. Easy field goal range.

What is it? Is it a field goal? No. No. It's a faded Demetrius bird where the clock could have run out and they would have gone to overtime instead of securing a safe win. Even in the SEC championship game, Tennessee is leading that game by a point in the fourth quarter. Final score is like 2114, right? 2114. And you know the how how LSU scores its last touchdown? Uh, pick six. Eric Aange serves a six. Eric Aange through the winning LSU TD in that game. and Ryan Paraloo, their backup, later possibly questioned for being a person tangential and associated with an investigation into a riverboat counterfeiting scheme.

You know, I've never made a joke. Never. Never. Not made one. I like that that suggests that he was counterfeiting the boats themselves. Can you say, oh, it's made out of paper, machet. Damn you, Perilu! Oh, he's 3D printing these boats.

Catch me floating. So, yeah, nine, nine is maybe too low, but I'll go with nine. Okay. Next, number five, two-parter, they go hand in hand, okay? Ron Zook beat the number one team in the country, and there were no consequences for the team that suffered that upset. None. It's like the most Ron Zook moment ever that Illinois would defeat

the Ohio State Buckeyes behind the legs of Juice Williams and that ultimately it would be futile and amount to absolutely nothing. Ronzuk basically Ronzik blew up the Death Star

but five minutes after the Death Star grew up the rebels. He's like ran out of gas, right? Yeah, we made it! It's like if they put Star Wars 4 and 7 smash him into a super cut. and like you blow up the death start dummy that was the wrong oh god damn it there have another it's

larger it's the one you were supposed to blow up no this was um ohio state i believe they went from like one to five to one in like three weeks just turned it around man no no it's worse than that they went from one to seven to one good god that's remember that's how buoyant ohio state in the polls. They can do that. I would also suggest, by the way, my score on this for how surprising or weird this is, being one of the internet's foremost experts

on Ronzo. I give it a two. Nope. Nothing about this surprises me. Because remember, this kind of things happened before. LSU, I believe it was 2003, Nick Saban's title year at LSU.

Oh, you remember their only loss? that year it was to florida at home in baton rouge oh zucker yeah bobby bowden's was it bowden's uh dedication the day they were yeah the day they were christening the field which is also ron zook's last game as a florida coach yeah so so who was the most dangerous man in the world that day answer Ronathan Zuck Yeah, I'll defer to Spencer Because he has the most feelings on this section I'm going to take it down

One I'm going to give that a one It's the least surprising thing I've heard so far All right This one, oh boy This is the one that I think this is the one When you mentioned 2007 to just average fan This is the one that yell at you

Kansas versus Missouri It was circled on the calendar, like it was goddamn Ohio State, Michigan, or the Iron Bowl or something. It was very important. Everyone watched it. And it, I can't say anymore. So. Well, that that was important to begin with puts this easily at a five to start. Right, right.

That Kansas was playing Missouri in retrospect, bumps it up to. say six and a half. I'll agree. That this becomes, by the way, a physical game that is relatively tight until the fourth quarter. Right? Because remember,

KU's down and KU Storm's back. Looks like Tom Riesin cuts it to 3121. And it's just not happening. Yeah, KU had a chance until the very end. Bill Connolly did a nice story on this with Riesing and Chase Daniel in our package. And, yeah, I think

Reesing says, you know, basically we just ran out of time. It's just one of those games. Yeah, I will take the... I'll put this at a solid seven. Yeah, it's diminished slightly because Mazoo wins this game and then turns around and just farts it away.

Again, just looks terrible against Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game. So it loses a little long-term meaning from that because we can't really look at it and say a spot the national championship was on the but seven sounds good okay i think that's that's pretty fair in retrospect um it needed to happen this way because otherwise we wouldn't have a picture of mark mangino next to the orange bowl mascot yes dan lebitard would not have a twitter avie if not for this game um next oh man hurts just to look at it west virginia

Blue 8 title shot. 10, 10. While a 29-point favorite against, and this is our quote from West Virginia full-back hero Owen Schmidt, the shittiest fucking team in the fucking world

in the last fucking game of this season. That's a quote. Alex did a nice post on the West Virginia pit rivalry and how it all just culminated in the deepest scar i know of no no it's result ever 12 what because here's this like that west virginia team was super fun to watch but flawed not not like without its foibles that pit team was

garbage let me let me let me give you who they lost to are you ready walk down this primrose no don't just don't just football flatchelix lifting you got to put some scores in here too because these were not just losses they lost the virginia by three 30 they lost to Connecticut by 20 Connecticut didn't even like scoring points and they lost a Yukon by 20 they lost

a Watt to Navy Navy on a Wednesday which is just perfect on a Wednesday they lost they lost to Louisville they lost the Rutgers remember Rutgers was good remember

not a good Louisville this is Craigthor oh yeah no this is Crown I'm sorry They lost to Louisville. They lost to, 2417. They lost to Michigan State, early Michigan State, which was a bowl team, but not like a great team or anything like that. Yeah, and their victories are crap. Like, they beat a deplorable Syracuse team 20 to 17. They have one good victory coming into this game, and that's, they beat Cincinnati, which, that Brian Kelly team, hey, look at that.

Look who popped up here ever so briefly. That team did finish 17th. was a good win but other than that i mean it's also how this happened like west virginia you you lost 13 to 9 to a team that a week earlier had given up 48 points to south florida how can south florida be 39 points better than you oh i don't know at least if it were an entertaining game maybe somebody would have had over 300 yards offense. Nope. It was like watching sledgehammers.

Fuck other sledgehammers. Did either team have over 100 yards passing? No. Did either team have 20 first downs? No. West Virginia only had 12. Did we get to see the electric presence of Pat White the entire game? No, because he got hurt.

Because that's what happens in shitty games where fate just decides to drag you over the thumbtacks. That's what happens. My other favorite detail from our story on this is in our interview with Dave Onstadt. He says that in practice before this game, he looked over and saw Paul Rhodes, Paul Rhodes was the defense coordinator. He looked over and saw Paul Rhodes still running the boys through tackling drills. And this was like, you know, 35 minutes into practice or whatever. Like they should be on to other stuff.

And he said, you know, coach, what are you doing? Shouldn't we be? No, no, no. We got to work on tackling if we're going to beat West Virginia. Yeah. So, like, how this happened was Paul Rhodes got in his head that all they were going to do, all the week, their entire prep was tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, tackle, and it worked. Somehow just locking on, like, a pit bull onto one simple concept worked. Can I also, can I give you a... It is without question the most, if you think, like, of the almost, of the teams that you're like, you know, Georgia, oh, five yards away. Oh, this other team. Oh, if only they, Virginia Tech came closest. only they'd held on against Boston College. This is by far the most painful almost in college,

in like modern college football history, I would argue. Number two lost, at that point, number two had lost six times that season. Five times, five times on ranked teams, right? Five times on ranked teams. Yeah. This is from the AP recap, December 2nd, 2007. Rich Rodriguez's quote, after not being able to talk for several minutes

when the press met with them was it was just a nightmare the whole thing was a nightmare this is this is I mean this is program defining in so many ways because Rich Rod immediately after this

is no longer West Virginia's coach right he takes the Michigan job West Virginia who everybody's like oh really fuck that one up they beat Oklahoma so badly in the Fiesta Bowl that they decide to give Bill Stewart the full-time job in it's still in the luxury suites they don't even wait for the game to be over they draft that fucking paperwork up basically it defines like where West Virginia will go and who they

will be almost up to today it's fucking wild and and even more Matt Brown did a nice story on this he has a book out now called what if about college football alternate history he did he did a couple posts in our our package one of them is what if west virginia had won this game um and it gets into you know hey terrell prior he was favoring west virginia when rich rod was there uh maybe now terrell prior in rich rod's offense against big east opponents like imagine how terrifying that would be if west virginia keeps lSU out of the national championship game when does less miles get fired because we saw how far he was able to go on one national title without that jesus we're talking we're like three years into i don't even know at this point hugh freeze is it hugh freeze probably takes the ls u s u.su job

instead is less just fired after the 2011 rematch maybe probably yeah my my my theory by the way is that hugh friez cannot exist outside of the old miss petri dish so so i'll just shoot that that literally like he cannot he cannot coach football outside of old miss like he just wouldn't know how the numbers worked. We're putting it on second down. You've got four downs. Oh! Well, I guess we're going to find out if that's true or not.

Spoiler alert. Will we? The other content item we have here, Spencer and I recorded on NCAA. We went back and tried to write this wrong. We went back and competed fairly with the rosters in the game to see if West Virginia can get it right this time around. And we're going to figure out a way to present that. We haven't yet because the audio didn't work.

Wait, wait, I'm sorry, what's that? Can you imagine that we couldn't figure out audio without Ryan around? But we'll figure out a way to get that to people. I think it has a happy ending, we'll say that. It does, it does. No matter what your allegiance is going into this, we come out with something for everyone. And as the internet's foremost pit homer podcast, I mean, I think we can say, let's let's let the ears have this one. Next, there it is.

Number five, Michigan, lost at home to an FCS team in the Big Ten Network's debut. This was like a very well-heralded Michigan team, too, because this was the team that, if you remember, at the end of the season prior, they lose a very good, very close game to Ohio State to end the season. Once UCLA beats USC, I think, to knock them out of the championship slot, there is a sustained and reasonably justified outcry that the national championship should not be Florida, Ohio State. It should be a rematch of this game. So this team definitely came in, charged up, hungry, other cliches.

et cetera, et cetera, and to lose to App State, I mean, it's, it's, it's really just so magical that it was the very first game that they were on the Big Ten network. That's going to bump it all the way up to a nine for me. Yeah, this is actually what I was thinking of when I said that it wasn't a full 10, right, for Stanford to beat them. App State is bigger. It is the bigger upset. It is the more shocking upset.

it's a full 10 out of 10. Now, the amazing, the thing here, I said an FCS team, and, you know, I think most listeners, if you listen to this garbage, you probably like this sport enough to know that App State at the time was not at all an average FCS team. They were in the middle of a three-peat dynasty at that level, but still, they were an FCS team. They were the equivalent of like a North Dakota state today, right? Yeah, yeah, that's a very fair comparison. Yeah, no, they were dynastic.

Yeah, and North Dakota State beating Iowa, that is, that's funny, but it happens every year, an Iowa level team. North Dakota State winning at Ohio State in 2017, say, that would, that is the level of thing we're talking about here. Right, right. It should be, we should make clear that some of us on this podcast have seen our team lose to an FCS team. We know about it. here's the thing our team was shit and it deserved to lose and it was bad and they didn't even need to complete a goddamn pass

also your team lost to this Michigan team that lost to Appalachian State nobody gives a fuck about that in the annual Michigan Florida bowl game the other thing that's cool about this game is sort of the way it was like it just put the underdog tactics

of college football just right at the forefront Like, you can be Michigan, you can have NFL linemen, you know, you can do all the pro-style stuff, you can hit the basics and have a big defensive line and all that stuff. But hey, guess what? They got some fast guys. And their big game is now even. What I really like about this is, you know, people, every year people say preseason polls are bullshit, right? And we're like, yeah, they are, but you click them, so we make them. And they do usually have, like, a level of inertia where you can be a highly ranked team.

and look like shit in week one. You can lose and look bad in week one, and you're probably still going to be ranked. Michigan dropped from five to out of the pole. After this game. Just swept right out. Get that out of here. Get that out of my sight.

They took them, yeah. They had to crawl back in. And they had, listen, this team had some good games and some good, some, like, decent wins. But, like, there is, I don't know that you can find a faster pole drop in the history of the damn thing. Yeah. Michigan went from five to unranked in one week,

climb back to 13, left the polls entirely again, and finish number 18. In the first game on the Big Ten network. I mean, it was 0-607. People forget that Michigan team comes back and just smokes and out sprints Florida in a bowl game. 0-607 was where the like Big Ten deficit theory really started. and this was this is a very big nail in that coffin for them number nine not not in order

of rankings yet but oh no this is the sad one the heisman favorite dennis dixon destroyed his knee destroyed it again the next week and number two organ just kind of evaporated just disappeared yeah dennis dixon should have won the heisman what am i what am i supposed to to, like, I don't want to attach a number to this. Well, remember, we're going dumbest. This is, I'm fair to say, this was dumb. This is, this is really dumb. This is like an eight out of, this is an eight, if I'm just going, how dumb?

Because I got to give, like, random luck a couple of points. So, eight out of ten, absolute. He played against Arizona with a tear in his ACL already. Maybe a full tear. Nobody's real sure. He went out there and played brilliantly until it gave out. It was agonizing to watch. I hate it.

I think he should have won the Heisman anyway. I think Tim Tebow, listen, great player for Florida, not like undeserving, but the way, the sort of difference between Oregon with healthy Dennis Dixon, even Oregon with playable Dennis Dixon, and after that, like, I don't know, I just sort of feel like if they should have just given him the damn. thing. Eight out of ten. Eight. So dumb. So dumb. It's very dumb. Next, ten times in nine weeks, a team ranked number one or number two lost, and then number

two beat number one. It's less dumb when you consider who the number twos were, I think, because it did create this sort of weird domino system where it was like, It's sort of like a depth chart where you're like, ah, shit, um, linebacker. Can you play quarterback? Cool. Ah, you're bad at it too and you got hurt. Fuck.

So it's less dumb from that regard. It is very dumb in the sense that, as Spencer already mentioned, number two, lost to an unranked team. So, so, so, so, so many times. And much like that Stanford team we talked about earlier, most of these teams were not good. They were not like secretly, oh, look out. Nine wins, no, these are teams that didn't make bowls or barely made bowls. Or in Florida State's case, like, the season didn't even fucking count and they lost the Kentucky in a bowl game.

Like, it was a lot of nonsense. But you kind of became immune to it at a point. And I don't know what point that was. I will give this a seven in terms of. dumb. I'm going to go downgrade. I'm going to give it a five because it stopped being dumb and it started being funny. It's that rule of three.

If you repeated enough times, it becomes funny again. Yeah, I'll give it a four because it involves humans in polling, which, yeah, it's going to be like, there's a forgivable amount of dumb there because you have very flawed voters making decisions here. So, four out of ten. The only team that was ranked number two that year and didn't lose as the number two at all was LSU. Next. That's like a nine out of ten by itself. Nick Sabin's Alabama lost to the team that currently has the country's 170th biggest athletic department financially. Two. Not dumb at all. Great. Best. Wonderful. Very good. Five stars. So good. So good. Love it.

Can I give this a zero? Yeah. Watch again. Yeah. Like honestly. if I were a ULM booster, I would keep paying for that billboard to stay up. Yeah, they've played ULM since and got murdered. Doesn't matter. Who cares? Who cares? Keep that

billboard up. Bronze the billboard. Put it on campus. Happened once. Happened forever. You literally can never undo it. You can't undo it, okay? You'll never undo it. It always happened. Make the billboard like a state historic site

or something? Like I do, I believe everything Nick Saban and Alabama have done since then has been in a very bad Terminator sequel movie attempt to be like, we have to go back and change it. And it's like, you'll never change it. Judgment Day always happens.

Skynet always wins. Ciccah! So like 2012, Sabin, Bama wins the title. He's puffing and puffing about missing on recruiting time. He starts to feel this little, this little like maybe maybe I should just enjoy an extra

little dead maybe I should go sit by the lake for a weekend I've earned it I've won two titles and he thinks about ULM and he breaks out that phone he's calling like eight recruits at the same time it's it's on Nick I'll see you someday right honey I've got to win

you're in a war we don't know I'll see you William god damn Louisiana Monroe killed my family we're still alive you're dead Not dumb. Wonderful. Perfect. I love it. Okay, here's the long one. Alabama, Florida State, Kansas State, Louisville, Miami, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, Stanford, Texas, A&M, UCLA, and Washington all lost six or more games each. And the following teams won eight or more games each.

Air Force, Arizona State, Arkansas, Boston College, Central Michigan, Cincinnati, Florida, Atlantic, Fresno State, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, State, Missouri, New Mexico, Rutgers, Texas Tech, Tulsa, UCF, Yukon, USF, Virginia, Wake Forest, West Virginia, and Tennessee. Damn, okay, so this, I'm going to side. I'm going to side. tracks slightly. I went through the 2007 standings. I tried to find who had the most normal year in 2007 for who they are as a program, and I think I have the answer. I think it's South Carolina, and I'm going to walk you through it, okay? They start out the year. They beat Louisiana Lafayette. Then they beat a highly ranked Georgia team 16 to 12 in an ugly game that makes Georgia fans miserable. That already sounds like South Carolina. Yeah, that's pretty normal.

They beat South Carolina State. Now they're up to number 12 in the polls. What do they do? Immediately lose to LSU on the road. They beat Mississippi State, Kentucky, who's number eight at the time. That's weird, but we'll move on from it. And North Carolina, they crawl back up to number six. South Carolina's doing things.

What do they do? They lose to Vanderbilt, an unranked team. They lose to Tennessee, an unranked team. They lose to Arkansas. an unranked team. They get crushed by Florida, who is ranked, and then they end the year, losing to Clemson. South Carolina finishes the year 6 and 6,

a roller coaster that, like all of them, ends the exact same place that it started. I maintain that the Gamecocks had the most typical year of any program in 2007. Everything else Jason said, I'm going to give it an 8. No, I'll give it a seven. Hawaii. Nah.

What? In context, man. Virginia! Ah, seven. Name a 2007 Virginia player. A 2007 Virginia player. You know that I have no idea off the top of my head because I repeated it back to you. Actually, let me try.

Patrick Kearney. Let me Google that. See if that. I'm off by an entire decade. Blonde Barber Ronde's blonde son. Is De Brickshaw Ferguson on that team? I feel like that's a little before his time. He just missed it.

That's a good guess. That's a good guess. Dang it. Because, yeah, he's 2006. Shit. This is hard. I don't think I'm going to be any help here. No, I give up.

In fact, I suggest that we... Wait, wait, wait, wait. Is there a long on this team? Usually is. That's... Yes! Yes! Chris Long!

Yes! There you go. Nice job. We did it. We named one player from a team that won nine games and finished six and two in the fucking coastal.

Oh, God. And was that one point ranked number 16? They got it to number 16. Last on the list. Breaking news. We bumped this one down in the timeline because of current events. And by the time y'all listen to this, who knows what might have happened.

But we do know that this part is accurate based on current reporting. Okay. Ten years ago, Houston Nutt beat the number one team and immediately bolted for Ole Miss, partly because of some drama that was stirred up by people going through his phone records thanks to public records requests. Decade later, he zapped Hugh freeze his ass out of that very whole Ole Miss job

with this exact same shit. It's just... Yeah. Yeah! Yeah, no, no, no. Get it in. Get it in. there rub it in your face just get it into the skin what you want look right at it i just the

wikipedia page is perfect for this because here's what it says um i'm gonna read i'm gonna read you a short uh end of a paragraph and end of a section and start of a new one on november 23rd 2007 in baton rouge nuts razorbacks beat the top ranked football team in the nation and a game that lasted three overtimes arkansas defeated eventual national champion at the LSU Tigers 50 to 48, returning the golden boot back to Arkansas. Three days after defeating LSU, not resigned as head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks amid,

this is an exact quote from Wikipedia, several controversies and rumors. Yeah, it was a weird pile of stuff. Like, it started with, you know, a fan was mad about Mitch Mustaine and the quarterback who came up with Gus Malzahn, and there was his email and a meeting and phone records, And is he, is he, has he have a relationship with a journalist?

And, like, it got weird. And then he just left. What I really like is that in typical colleges, college football programs running their own internet, Houston Nights still has a profile on Ole Miss's website. That's phenomenal. He might be the coach now. we don't know he might have found a way to take his job back

oh miss you just got cooed it's wonderful um also can i yeah yeah go ahead no no please oh wait no i do have to say one thing um oh miss uh or sorry houson nut has an i mdb page um which makes sense because he's on he's been on tv a lot and uh most of his credits are as self including uh in the film the blind side

he does have one film role where he does not play himself it's in a movie called uh greater which is apparently the story of uh brandon burlesworth possibly the greatest walk on in the history of college football i'm quoting there i don't endorse that or disclaim it his role janitor just clean it up messes just getting just getting stuff up out of here that's all he did Hey, just getting the trash out, you know? Just helping you get rid of the trash. Just coming in late at night, spotting something unsightly in your office and giving it the heave-ho. Disposing.

I'm in disposal. Let me give you. Back-to-back disposal. Never been done. Never. 50 years. Remember, by the way, like where this all adds up, right? That the prior year, the guy that definitely did introduce the Wildcat because that was, that was, that was.

That was totally Danny Nut, right? It definitely wasn't Gus Malzon the year before being innovative, sort of pointing the way for, like, running a single wing. Because remember Gus Malazahn is in 2006, the offensive coordinator for like six games until Houston Nutt gets a little upset and somebody else is stealing his thunder. And doing innovative, interesting things. And then Gus Malz on goes to Tulsa.

Ever until 2007, there's a lot of talent sitting in Tulsa. It's like Todd Graham, Gus Malzon. I think you got Herpan there. Yeah, a few others, too. Now, but let's, listen, we're not going to get into the Ole Miss thing too much because we're doing our SEC West preview soon. Or maybe we'll have already done it. I don't know how time works.

It doesn't matter. But let's say this. There is a path forward because, you know, amidst all these controversies, Houston, that despite beating LSU resigns. and Arkansas has to figure out like well who are we going to turn to how do we how do we find a moral paragon a beacon a true where is true north and who do they hire in 2008 uh i couldn't tell you i don't i didn't i didn't um no i had no clue i mean i whoever they hired i i don't know

the name robert robert was having a rough season that's all i know robert patrick petrino yeah that guy oh who i'm sorry now Since this is the all Wikipedia, as of this date when we're recording, we're recording this on July 20th. I'm going to read you just one sentence. This is the first sentence of Bobby Petrino's Wikipedia page. Robert Patrick Petrino, born March 10th, 1961, is an American football coach, former player, and serial adulterer. You say that when it comes to relationships, he runs multiple formations. It's play action, all right?

Fake! It's a double move. Up tempo, up tempo, up tempo. So to go back to the original question, what are we being asked to rate the weirdness of, the fact that Houston nut beat LSU and three days later resigned? All of it. All of it.

You know, this is the one that I really had in mind we were debating. Are we talking about it then or now? Because I would give it I would give it like It was weird as all hell Now I don't need to be weird It's just beautiful At the time it was like a 9 out of 10

But given what I know now From the perspective in which I'm currently sitting It's like a 7 out of 10 Here's what makes Here I'll get I'll bump it to 8 and here's why It happened relatively quickly Like the idea that you could get rid of a coach Because of turmoil and controversy

And do it in less than a calendar year That's kind of impressive. Now it's like, boy, this is, you know, we're going to have to drag this motherfucker out. So I'll say it's an eight. Okay. So with that, our top 10 would be counting down from number 10. If we want to reorder any of these, that's fine. Number 10 would be number two, USF. Number nine would be Kansas, Missouri was very important, sort of wrecked by Oklahoma. afterward. Number eight would be just all the dumb shit. No records made sense. All the numbers were wrong. Just everything was wrong. This is like the grab bag of mayhem spot. Number seven and

six tied our Heisman winner went on to have every job except for long time NFL starting quarterback at the position. He played in college. That in Houston nut. Number five, dinged because it's more mean than dumb would be Dennis Dixon. Number four, Stanford beating USC is a 40-point underdog. Number three, LSU, winning the title despite losing two of the dumbest games possible in triple overtime. Number two, App State beating Michigan in the Big Ten Network's debut. By the way, did we mention it was the Big Ten Network's debut? And nobody's watched the Big Ten Network games.

I think every Michigan fan, every Michigan fan just, I'd like to, I'd like to, I'd, I'd like to cancel this channel. I told you. I told you we should have never turned away from print. Can we put the rabbit ears back up? When we had those, I didn't have to watch. Watch a team from Division 4 from in here. They don't even have academics down there in Division 4.

We should go down to Division 4. We'd probably do well. Appalachian's not even a state. I've looked. And number one, the dumbest, The single dumbest event from the dumbest year in the dumbest sport in the entire world was West Virginia losing to, once again, the shittiest fucking team in the fucking world. Yeah, yeah, that, I mean, the only one I might switch would be,

what do we have right ahead of Stanford, Ellis? I might switch that, but I'm not going to quibble over it. That number one is forever, forever the dumbest thing that maybe has ever happened in college football. It's ever happened in the history of the world. You know, you could sell me on that.