Shutdown Fullcast - Week 1 -> Week 2: "What makes you think gravity doesn't apply to you?"

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Without the benefit of lights or helmet comms or video feeds, it turns out SMU and Florida State were able to play football, by using their hands and feet to move the ball up and down the field.We have now caught up with all the Western Michigan/Regular Michigan Narnian nonsense that was going on while we were recording After Dark!In conclusion to both of the preceding stories: Replay is bad and we don't need it!Dabo is kebab'd y'all. Dabokebab. Kedabo Swinney. Is this anythingWe did not reorganize the buttons on the soundboard before the season started again, and we made that approximately 10 days into the season before it blew up in our faces[squints] Arkansas what are you doing all the way out there?? Come home. There's a lot of people who love you and none of them live in Pacific timeThe Shutdown Fullcast is on Patreon. This is how we pay our producers, and occasionally ourselves. If you'd like to help with that, give us $4 a month (or a larger, funnier number of your choosing) and we'll give you bonus episodes, including Fullcast After Dark during football season. We think this is a pretty good deal (for you)The Shutdown Fullcast is produced by delicious and energizing Monster Energy Master Chief Michael Ray Surber Fullcast theme variant arranged and performed by Clayton MooreWhen they're not ruining the Fullcast, Spencer and Holly write Channel 6, a year-round newsletter that is mostly about college football, until it’s not? They also produce Turfman's College Foot-ball Almanac, on sale nowBefore the world ends (again), treat yourself to Jason’s critically praised novel and other workCheck out Surber’s band, Killer Antz (new album out now!), and listen to his musings about cycling, music, and other amazing party tricks on PodcasterinoPurchase exclusive Shutdown Fullcast gear at preownedairboats.com, real website, not a trapThrough September 30, all proceeds from our PTKU merch collection will be donated to Alianza Translatinx

You can't spell gravitational center without UMass. I'm going to look at UMass's schedule now. I don't know if I've ever given a shit to look at UMass's schedule. Shoot your eyes. I understand we'll be looking at the schedule later on in this very episode, but UMass itself demands. Sacred Heart, Dub. Stone Hill, dub.

Dub. Witness us. Frino. For previous UMass teams, neither of those would be guaranteed. But, man, that trip to Sacramento State, that's a conference arrival on the other side of the planet. So that one's circled looming large for us in Minuteman Nation. Can they have an undefeated September? Are they going to get there a week early so they can get on Sacramento time? Yeah, they probably should. This is the episode I found out Sacramento State was in the Mac.

I mean, with Sacramento State paying for travel, if I'm UMass, I'm like, all right, y'all, we're flying, we're flying on top class planes. We're staying somewhere fancy. Sacramento's greatest resort is where you're putting us up. The greatest thing about Sacramento will be when UMass is leaving Sacramento with a victory and undefeated September. Paige Osteolyakovich, please send us your finest recommendations. RIP, buddy. Yeah, I am 100% on this. I'm also the world's worst team that now transfers to Rutgers.

So Rutgers now has a chance by they have to fuck someone else with it, right? This is it follows. after so many years it's been like what seven years since we've been in the records as the default de facto bad team joke team back there you're right back man right back the floor people need to know this and we can pick this this is a theme i would like to extend to other stories that we are going to talk about today the floor is always there y'all what makes you think it isn't what makes you think gravity doesn't apply to you what makes you think you aren't replaceable. What makes you think you can't lose to UMass? Like, what what makes you think

a few years of seven and fiveishness means you're not you anymore? Oh, we're like if you wanted to change the jokes about yourself, you should have simply done what Indiana did. I understand you don't have Indiana's money. In fact, you have the opposite of Indiana's money. I'm just saying, it takes something to make the jokes no longer the jokes. But in this case, this, you just acted like the Wreckers of 10 years ago. So that's who you are. A record yet Rutgers thinks they're too good to lose to UMass. UMass differs. I love that that was what, so many days ago, and yet it's top of mind right now.

Why wouldn't it be? It still happened. There were literally games last night, outrageous ones, as of this recording on Tuesday, folks at home. Yeah. And they happened. And I'm still thinking about the fact that UMass not only won that game, but bullied Rutgers. Bullied them. They did. Yeah. Push them around at the line.

Dominated. Held them to 30 rushing yards. 30. That's not my favorite thing. That's 90 feet. Right? That's not a bowling lane. That's like a three-story building.

You just, you didn't let them do shit. Can we discuss what happened to FSU last night? Yeah. So, lights are hard. That's what we've learned. It's a, I mean, as a species, humans didn't really have full control over it for millions of years. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a hard thing.

It's tough, man. It's difficult. The darkness. The darkness, again, what makes you think the darkness isn't waiting for you? It's right there. All you have to do is have your lights go up. It is right there. It's right above you, beneath you, all around.

you closing in on you yeah at all times and last night fs u managed to uh managed to have a problem paying their power bill that's not what happened but it you know i'm gonna go with it anyway i mean it's tough when like they can't afford to fire their coach again that's an oversimplification but but when they can't afford to fire their coach they're like oh god damn it the lights went out god damn it now we can even afford less to fire actually maybe they're just saving on the power Bill. If we just play in the dark, we'll be able to scrape them together enough to fire this guy. And like, my God, dude, SMU tried so hard to give this game away. Like, flubbed punt, fumble right away, interception that was Kevin Jennings' fault,

interception that wasn't his fault. Just, they almost literally could not have tried harder to gift Mike Norval this win. And, man, imagine, imagine being a Tallahassean at the end of a five-day-old. five day uh football weekend right um got to get up early for whatever and you're sitting there for two extra hours watching this shit getting back home at i don't know two a m or whatever how fucking pissed are they at this guy today like this is like beyond pissed right this is just like i don't know if this guy can hurt me anymore but he's got to go i know but i don't want to find out i don't want to find out what's around the corner i know that you've hit a certain point with a coach

where they start breaking math and they start doing things statistically that are unique achievements the kind you don't want that's where you start to enter what I would call the twin peak zone that's where a tall man appears across the room and starts saying

it is happening again like that's when I start getting ominous warnings of cosmic doom from enigmatic figures that's the kind of space you enter when you get per op de stats these kind of numbers. Last night, SMU was the only FBS or NFL team.

So not even the Browns have done this. Not even the Browns! Not even the Falcons in a big game have done this. Yeah, that's a better example for this, because the Browns would never have this many yards. Right. Like, the Falcons, to me, specialize in statistical occurrence would break your brain. The Browns specialize in, this is shit.

The Browns are just like, oh, my God, they've been bad for 30s. 35 years, whereas the Falcons are like, they had the best quarter of any team that got shut out ever. This is like, this is the most attractive plague victim I've ever seen in my life. The Browns are like they have lost the same way for a half century. The Falcons are, no one even knew you could lose this way until now. You're doing new shit. So, you need to, yeah. FSU, you're currently a little bit of both.

Yeah, you've done amazing things, man. This is what I am talking about. The SMU was negative three or worst turnover margin, twice as many penalties as their opponent, fewer rushing yards than their opponent, lower time of possession than their opponent, and more missed field goals than their opponent, and yet still won the game.

That, when you are hitting trick-shot statistical combos on me as a fan that's when I know my head coach is doing something spectacular he's doing something really special in terms of incompetence and in terms of bad luck and like especially in a game where like

you know neither team had helmet mics like everything's broken everything's falling apart and like the road team comes in like let's just throw the ball around just fucking wing it. I don't know man we got like eight plays let's go

like sure like stereotypes are from Texas high schools. I don't know. We're just going to whip the fucking ball around anyway. You know, so, okay, fine. But, and Kevin Jennings is very much just like, snap the ball. We'll see what happens. So, like, Rhett Lashley is the head coach at SMU.

He was the offensive coordinator for Gus Malzahn. I was laughing last night because they introduced Kevin Jennings. And they say, hey, Kevin Jennings, man, he's got real possibilities, you know. He's real comfortable in his offense because he's been in it for three years. And I remember thinking, does it take three years to memorize eight plays? That's it's not the most it is not the most rockets this is one reason SMU is very successful they have systems that you can come in and pretty immediately start producing and that's one thing Kevin Jennings has done and he's been really interesting and fun at it and by interesting I mean

sometimes he'll give you two picks while he throws three TDs you know he's the kind of he's the kind of guy this is an offense by the way that at one point I think had like 400 yards of offense and they were tied 1717 yeah yeah because they kept they kept bricking it right at the goal line. Yeah. This is actually a really great broadcast. Like there was a lot of like, oh, I got to see this tuning it. Like I saw, I saw like, you know, like, coworkers who don't closely follow college football.

Like, okay, I got to see this shit. But like the, in the pregame, you know, they're talking about like, okay, Jimbo's there. And Jimbo's like pretty good at TV. I could listen to that guy, yeah, for a long time, right? And he'd say so many words in that time. Say so many words. But they're asking him like, coach, how would you handle this? and we're talking about like the coach with the most like programmatic pro-style approach to college football right

like part of the reason you know uh has this his last couple eras fizzled a bit was and they're still very much like a old school big playbook um you know bleep blorp if a then b type of offense right yeah just and even jimbo saying like man you kind of just got to cut loose i don't know snap the ball Why don't you see what happens? I'd just call them over to the sideline, tell them a couple things, and all right, let's get to it. Yeah, listen, call the fuck down. I've seen Jimbo work on time he called James Winston over there, and his exact instructions prior to a play where James, call him the fuck down. Give me $9 million a year.

I can do that. I do that to my kids for free. That would be great. I also want to say that in this game, we went for the better part of what, half? without full power. Someone said someone say that it was like a game where you're leveling up technologies. Somebody said it's like Age of Empires. Yeah, like Every five minutes.

Oh, now we have bows and arrows. Yeah, yeah. Now we have replayback. Okay, cool. We went that whole time, and I am pivoting to something else off this. We went that whole time. Didn't ever replay. Didn't ever play.

Right. There was a, did he step out of bounds play? And I was like, they're on to the next play. I don't give a shit whether he stepped out of bounds. I can care. Yeah, I don't give a shit. I'm here to watch the next football play. That's the coolest thing about football. That's fine.

And it did make me think, this is fine. We're not missing shit. We're not. Like, I'm all right about this. If you're going to show me the previous play, it better have been an awesome play. Yeah. Show me that. But like, we went this whole time and we didn't have replay and didn't have helmet communication,

which there's like, yeah, without helmet communication, what are they going to do? And I'm like, Rhett Lashley's just sort of going, play. Play two. Play number two. With that helmet communication, how will quarterbacks throw for 430 yards in a road game? You're like kind of how they used to do it. They'd throw for 400 yards in a road game.

Well, they see you. Let go of the ball. It travels through the air. And there's one of your guys there attempting to catch it. Yeah. How would you do it? We got hands. You use hands and you use signals.

And then you tell the guy with your hands and your signals what you're going to do. It's crazy. But it did make me think I was like, I'm more convinced than ever, especially after this weekend that we got a, we got a fucking ditch instant replay. Well, the, like, I do think there's, the ball sports are the ones where like this stuff absolutely doesn't matter and has created more issues probably than it's worth as proof. Like, I feel like basketball, baseball, all of these have these things. But like, if you took the radios away from like Formula One or the Tour de France, like, things get. way hairier. And I

actually like those are the ones I do want to see the radios go away for. How much cooler would it be if the driver had to manage his like fuel mileage? On the zone? Oh no. No spotter. No spotter. Like let's do this for all

like NASCAR for only one. No spotter. Manage your own fuel mileage. Like I'm going to tell you. Make these motherfuckers stink a little bit. There are motorsports where we would just have to use the helicopter to find them. Like if you take out the If you take out radios from Rally, it would be like somebody calling on a cell phone being like, we are in a ditch 70 miles west.

Please come get us. The night is coming. Every lap-based racing sport, every driver is like, I got like three more laps. I don't got to pull over yet. I'm fine. I mean, yeah, I am certain, by the way, F-1 drivers would do that. They would be like, because they don't refuel anyway. Like, in case you don't know, they don't do that.

Because when they used to do it, people caught on fire. and they thought that made for bad television. And they were right. But like, yeah, they would go, oh, no, it's okay. I'll just use the battery pack and I'll coast on this. And I got that. Yeah, because they try, these are the same guys who try to make tires last for like 45 laps. I'm convinced.

But that's what they're coming in for, right? At this point, it's tire change. So that being the thing, like, how long have I been out here on these things? There are some drivers who would be like, I've been out here for exactly 53 and a half laps on these tires. And then there are some drivers who would be like, leave me aloud. I've very stressed. Sparks are flying.

You look like Ghost Rider. Yeah. Some, inevitably, probably a finish driver, right? Maybe Yuki Sonoda. We can throw him in there too. They would be like, I don't know. You guys tell me. I don't give a shit.

Yeah, but I don't, I don't care about replay. I don't. I don't. I think it causes, especially at speed. Like, these are sports we play that are violent and they are at speed. And inevitably, when you slow them down, everything looks like a crime. everything looks like a crime

like if you're trying to do conduct penalties absolutely true what if my official manages to miss an out of bounds call though by an inch or two guess what I don't fucking care it's not worth my time it's not worth my fucking time right they're like oh but it decided the game

you had like nine other chances to do that shit right right you'll play another one next week and you lost last week yeah those reactions are dead giveaways of a person that's never been hit in the face before yeah thank you Oh my God. It all came down to this one inch that the official didn't look at correctly.

No, you got ran over, man. Yeah, you got fucking ran over, right? Replay it back. Yeah, look, I still don't care. You show it 30 fucking times. I don't care. Like, it's, okay, so, you know, everything is recorded, and if a ref blows it, we'll see 100 angles of it.

But if that is not part, if the game itself has moved on, the game is now 10 minutes into the future from that moment and it's just you know it becomes more of a cultural thing that like nope the call is a call you're yelling about old shit yeah we're all over here 10 minutes from now oh but they missed they missed a face mask penalty okay that's hard there's a lot of shit going on that's like do you i mean if we if we had 22 refs is that what you want yeah do you want 22 refs i think that sounds funny i would watch that do you do you know what happens like when when the ref misses something do you know what this is what i did anyways the football player's like oh he's not gonna call that i'm gonna start doing that shit awesome and then everybody just does it and it's fine it works

itself out it's the the emerging culture of the game and you sort of determine like that this is the law of this particular land there's plenty of games where i realize they don't look back at the line of scrimmage once you get to the hole so at that point i'm just going to start yanking on motherfuckers because they're not call it welcome to coaching the offensive line michael server This is accurate, lore accurate offensive linemen. Last night when replay was out, replay was out for I'm not maybe three seconds, four seconds before Michael Felder, former defense's back was immediately posting things like, yeah, just target. Go ahead. Yeah. It doesn't fucking matter.

Like you said, it looks like someone's trying to like hurt, do something illegal. Well, they are. Where is it legal to hurt to like actively try to hurt somebody? Because that's what's happening on every single football play. It's the most violent, largest people you've ever met, like actively trying to hurt someone else. No one's ever like, I want to get him down to the ground. That's not the thought in the head of the tackler, ever.

It's always, I want to fuck this guy up. That guy is running, and you know how cool I look if I knock him over really hard? Yes. I am of the belief that the game should mostly be regulated between players and that the culture of the game matters a lot for that exact reason. And this is why I love rugby because generally speaking, when the ref comes over, he's got discretion. He can come over and be like, okay, listen, I'm going to give you a warning for that. Not that you can't do that in football.

You hear one thing you can do if you can get on field audio at any point. You hear officials having these kind of discussions, especially with linemen. Like, linemen back and forth will be like, hey, listen, man, 72 is on my ass. And he is holding me. But sometimes the linemen come up and they go, hey, man, listen, I'm going to be holding every play. and you just call it when you think you have to. Like that's, I've heard that on NFL films. And I love that, but I love it because it's self-regulating.

It's like how ugly do you, Mr. Official, want to make this game? I am. They can't call holding on every play because that is what we were taught to do as offensive linemen. I remember it was the awakening moment was eighth grade football because they tried to teach us the normal way up until then. And I remember eighth grade football, my offensive line coach was like, welcome to real. Here's what you do. He was like, now, I'm going to tell you to tape your thumbs. He was like, you tape your thumbs because otherwise you're going to break them.

But you feel this underneath your shoulder. You feel those straps? If you just stick your fucking thumbs right under his straps, he can't get loose of you. And they're not going to call holding because you're not going to pull the jersey. You're pulling his shoulder pads everywhere he fucking goes. I love that. That's what they taught us. They decide you've seen enough of the world to learn this truth.

You guys got some hairs down there now. I can tell you the truth. I like, I like, it was the, it was the blocking drill and I was like past blocker. I was like hitting this guy. He was like, Serber, quit that fucking shit. Look, stick your fucking thumbs in here. He can't fucking go anywhere now. And that's the way you talk to 13 year olds and get shit done.

But I'm okay with this being a human endeavor. That's the thing, right? I'm okay with there being a margin of error at every point in the game. Like the idea of perfection itself creates a kind of misery, right? It's always going to create a kind of misery because the notion that I can't, like, The ref on the field is the one who's going to decide. And I don't want him to be the most relevant factor, which is why you should just go win the damn game.

Western Michigan should have scored on one of those red zone possessions. I think this is an argument. Western Michigan, that is an argument also against replay, because ultimately replay was what fucked them. Right. Which, by the way, like, if you want to get into that whole thing about where the camera was pointed and who was, I don't.

You guys, like NBC and the, the big tent you get paid too much money for me to get mad over that y'all fucked up you you made a massive mistake somewhere in that process do i want to figure out whether it was mbc or the big tent no i think you're both incompetent like that like you a pox on both of your houses for that but also i don't have to care that's not my job that feels like a job and that is not my job y'all go figure that out all i know is western michigan should have won that thing in regulation they did should arguably there there was a weird moment where I found myself in agreement with Stephen A. Smith because I saw him shouting about how he's like they are done he was like book

these three losses and then he was like also they lost this fucking game like at the end of the season when everyone is looking at it's like God forbid they go 10 and 2 no one's going to look and be like and that's why they deserve to get in over at Louisville because they beat western Michigan. Stink. You got stink on you. You got Xbox heat, man. Don't nobody want none to do with you. Yeah. By the way, I... Well, like, this whole game happening, like, as soon as we turned on After Dark, which the episode is up on our Patreon, of like us reacting to, oh my God, Western Michigan's

going to do it. Oh, my God, Western Michigan didn't do it. Oh, God. Michigan did it. And then it was like half an hour later that we're realizing what the commenters are mad about. We had no clue about like the the false second thing, the secret clock until like half an hour into their recording. And like now people are listening or like this feels like listening to a horror movie. But like, um, like talking about it now with two days of hindsight is honestly it feels the same as talking about it at like 3 a.m. did because like nobody's really shed any further light on the thing. No. Just like, some shit happened. Okay. Cool. Yeah. There's a see. happened I guess. Yeah, there's a secret clock. That's what you guys were relying on. There's this whole other clock. This is again, we can take technology and if we don't increase the quality of the

brains operating said technology, we're still at the exact same level of execution we had before, right? That's, and we're talking about like something so stupid and so pedantic isn't the word, but it's in the neighborhood. It's just something so small and dumb that I would do anything to just not deal with it at all. I think it goes along with exactly what you're saying about trying to turn an art into a science. It's like, anyone who watched the game was like, okay, it's over, right? And then it was attempting to do the micromanagey nitpicky, rock, like, according to this molecule that only we can see, blah, blah, blah, stuff.

That, which was what caused the whole controversy. You know what I mean? So like I see a three line from Michigan Saturday night to Florida State last night, which is basically that replay is bad. It's bad. We don't need it. Like we do not need it. I don't care. I lived I lived through the fifth down. We had a game that was decided when the rest. That swung half of a national championship. Yeah. That swung half a national championship. Change destinies. And it's because they forgot to count. it. Would I take it back on replay? No. No. I'm not going to give the amateur like law lords of college football that much credit. If they got the time machine and went back and they're like, actually, no, fuck you. I'll keep the fifth down. I am okay with that because part of sports is accepting unfair outcomes.

This is part of the moral education that you are provided here and that things even when you make them perfect can become an entirely new kind of hell. Oh, that's it. College football would have a very funny history if you went back in time and like adjusted all of the officiating, just the officiating alone, not the off-field injustices, not the economic total disparity, blah, blah, blah, literally just, you know, go change the Ohio State Pass interference against Miami, go change, you know, this or that and this and that and on in the fifth down. And, you know, like the number of, oh, we found a secret second, there's like five of those

was in big games before this one. This was a whole other kind of, this was a unique one. This was like a new kind of we found a secret second, but still, yeah, um,

it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a sport with so much going on, and so many different layers of bureaucracy,

because like, part of the reason nobody can really bring themselves to trust, to trust this thing fully is that like, oh, the big 10 is allowed to say when the big 10 team's game is over. That's inherently fucking weird. Like, hold on.

Like, imagine an AFC West ref getting to say, the Broncos get another second against the Jaguars right like oh okay I'm sure the AFC West I just inherently trust the AFC West like it and this isn't even a statement about like these specific people making this call it's just fucking weird that's a weird setup again just win the listen just win the thing in regulation please please like you mentioned okay disagree I'm not I'm not done Ohio State Miami Perfect example, like perfect example to me, because you can be mad about that past interference or non-pass interference call all day.

What was Miami doing in a game that close? Have you looked at the rosters of those teams? Yeah. How bad did you screw up that you were even in that situation? It's outrageous. Well, we lost Willis McGahey. You had like nine other running backs on that roster who are all in the Hall of Fame or whatever. And one who pooped in a laundry basket in a closet. But that's neither here nor there. Yeah. I mean, when you're staring down the barrel of Craig Crenzel, there's only so much you can mitigate. That's just go look at your rosters.

Go look at your life in the decisions that you made that got you in that situation. And then you want to blame a ref. You want to blame a ref on a one-on-one play. That's why I absolutely hate this. That's why, by the way, if we'd had replay at that point to make that call, would that have made it better. No. It would have made it worse. We got one decision that time. One. This time it would have been teeth gnashing and slowing down the game and waiting for a ref to decide the game for you. Awful. Decide it yourself. Don't rely on that. 2009, Nebraska, you should have

simply scored more than 13 points. Good God. You should have-amukung- Sue is eating Colt McCoy alive. You should have let Indomacan Su do what he wanted to do in his heart of hearts, which was kill Colt McCoy on the field. I know he wanted that, and you should have let him do it, because then he might have been able to carry his corpse into the end zone for his safety, and that would have been the winning margin of victory. Those were the two points you needed.

To the shutdown full cast. You were listening to the internet's only college football podcast. Hot damn, it's week two. Going into week two. actual season college football joining me as always we've got Jason Kirk Holly Anderson and Michael

Cerber on the ones and twos so I want to discuss this what are we going to do when we kick LSU out of the SEC because I know we're voting unanimously to do that as the conference USA representative I am extending the invite to LSU personally okay that is mighty neighborly of you kicking out

liberty for LSU yeah I've never heard of LSU. Not sure what you're referring to. You can be wrong to me. The ACC representative specifically from Clemson University is not familiar with those other tigers. Yes, I'm North Carolina. I abstain until we have the opinion of South Carolina. That's a deep 1776 musical lore for those. I really are not familiar. Thank you. It's one of our two SEC representatives. I will say that I will for the conference vote unanimously to expel LSU. Why? I don't know. We're just making something.

happen that's all because we can't have professional football players in the SEC that's that's something that's not something that's literally in the literature for the league it's very funny when you put it like yeah can't have professional football players in this league i love it because like you literally have how many players are making more money than any of these else how many college football players right now are making more money than any of these lSU quote pros you know what i mean if they're coming off of a practice squad or if they're coming off of like you know minimums quite a few i know of kickers who are probably making more than they are because kickers uh according to a rachel bachman article

in the wall street journal decided that the rate needed to go up and the price of the brick was indeed sky high now because they started texting each other collective action workers workers together kickers are workers too kind of you with arcane academic terminology, collective action needs to be taken to ensure the rights of the worker are maintained. Kickers, we got a group chat that decided we all needed to make more money. The price of the kick going up. Literally. Let's make it, let's talk about things in terms everyone understands.

We got on the group chat and decided they were screwing us. And that's when we needed to ask for more money. I mean, yeah, there's like, you know, 70 of us who were good. So, and they need a lot more than seven. of us, so they should probably pay more money. Like, it is so absolutely stupid to be mad at LSU about this, because if you had a coach who was doing the exact same thing, and some of you probably are in one form or another, you would be equally heated about this.

I also enjoy my favorite thing, which is a conference confusing themselves for something that matters, as opposed to the pass-through. for school revenue. That's it. That's all you are. You could disappear overnight. That's happened before. We've had conferences just go poof. The whack just disappeared three months ago, finally, after everyone assumed it disappeared 11 years ago. Yeah, the Mac did that. The Southwest Conference. The Mac does it all the time. Yeah, the Macs. Then emerges in Rutgers. That's right. The PAC 12, you know, both exists and doesn't exist.

You know, they're a quantum conference. It's amazing. Sometimes as a particle, they're here. Sometimes as a particle, they're the mountain west in disguise. That is my favorite thing. The SEC is replaceable, man. I know that that's not what anyone wants to hear who enjoys, you know, okay, we're going to have the SEC in the Big Ten.

Big Ten's just a big spreadsheet, man. That's all it is. And they can be replaced, too, and they know it. Which is why they were like, hey, make spreadsheet bigger. Make spreadsheet bigger. invite more teams acquire more television rights and the SEC doesn't seem to understand that because and I know they don't understand it because they filed as part of this continuation of the suit against LSU they filed paperwork that cited the halftime interview from Saturday night

as evidence Lane Kiffin saying shit and trying to make it legally admissible two things on that by the way one good job extending your billable hours Love it. Number two, Lane Kiffin is not the one you want speaking in public or not speaking in public as a client. Because I will tell you, I'm not an attorney. Right. That's not a good client. Right.

Yeah. Several things are true at ones. How would the Big Ten react if, I don't know, Michigan was openly playing former quote fingers pros? Well, if it had been Saturday night, I'd say they got the wrong pros. Right. But like, I don't think this is a, the SEC is in. different from the big 10 thing because the big 10 would be doing the exact same shit and making big highfaluting moral arguments about itself while doing so whereas the SEC is basically just like

y'all are being so fucking annoying knock it off please please stop ruining our business model that's what they are saying please stop please stop like because they still don't want to really consider players professional the SEC is like we recognize that we have our fountain drink machine out in the lobby but that doesn't mean you can just fill any cup up with it please please purchase a cup um i have some breaking news by the way oh is ill issue out uh no no it's even it's even more important because it involves an even more important conference and that would be the mac this is a state yeah official statement regarding the western michigan michigan football game from Matt Commissioner

Dr. John Steinbrecker. After further study and investigation, it is now evident that replay protocol was not properly followed in determining whether time remained on the clock at the conclusion of the Western Michigan versus Michigan football game. The established replay

protocol requires the game clock displayed on the program feed be used in determining whether time remained. Instead, the Big Ten crew relied upon the clock feed embedded within its replay system as a result. One second was placed back on the clock and an additional play is rewarded. This was not a judgment regarding the proper amount of time.

Air horns. Beb, beep, bear to place on the clock. It was an error. Shotguns. It was an error in the application of the established replay protocol governing this specific end of game timing situation. Had the protocol been properly followed and the program beat clock been used, no additional play would have been awarded.

And Western Michigan would have won the game 12-7 as a result. The Mac has submitted formal appeals. Woo! We got formal appeals, yo! See, I agree. I agree with all that stuff that both of us said about replaying bad. However, once you have replay and once you, Big Ten, are the most like, the Rules Are the Rules Conference of all, well, this is how you get spoken to by your own barnacle. the Mac exists for you to pay money to beat in football except they beat your teams

sometimes officially and or unofficially but like the Mac talking shit back to the Big Ten is so fucking awesome listen we let you put your coaches on our goddamn sidelines in the middle of our games to look at the other teams and we're getting a little tired of you pushing us around okay you to take our fucking coaches for a century We let Conner Stallions hang out all he wants on our sideline. We let you pay us to lose to UMass. We're not fucking taking it anymore. This next sentence is pretty cool, actually. The Mac is requesting that those bodies recognize Western Michigan

as the actual winner in the game for purposes of their respective rankings, evaluations, and selection deliberations, and take such other corrective action as maybe within their authority. I love it because like every playoff ranking all season long. Somebody's, you know, say WMU is 7 and 0, which would mean a win over Boise State. They'd be in legit like this should be a ranked team shape. I mean, six and one, but you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, the committee's going to get yelled at or if Michigan is ranked at seven and three or whatever. Hey, Jeff Saggeran has on his rankings this week. Jeff Saggeren, long time. former like bedrock of the BCS formula right Jeff Sagarin has Western Michigan 12 Michigan 7 did he amend the the records yeah no I mean it's Western Michigan has won that game per Jeff Sagarin bang

I love it dude just like you know who won well who do you think won yeah I mean we got multiple endings which one do you want this is uh you know what you go This is becoming a common thing in the United States, isn't it? Well, like, in this sense, we play the video game. We got the good ending and the bad ending. Yeah, sure. Which one did you like more?

Which one? I got to go back and replay it. I got to get that good shit. Let's play it a third time. Get the weird ending. I am, I support the Macfully here. Did you play it? Did you complete 100% play through?

Did you romance Kyle Whittingham? Did you? Shouldn't say that about Michigan's coach. But, like, this is fine. Mack, talk your shit. Do it. Like, when UCF did this type of shit, claimed a national title, that was fucking awesome. And that was completely in line with the rest of college football history.

Yeah, man. Go tell the Big Ten to fuck itself and keep all its money because you don't want it. I'm going to play the Missouri Valley for free. I'm going to have my own party. Damn it. It'll be over here with my little Western Michigan cake. Yeah, fuck them. breaking news.

I'm so excited. Should have won it in regulation. But you know what? If you can't, I'll go ahead and take this. Right. I think this is better. This is better than winning in regulation.

Is being aggrieved in all of America rising up in defiance of like the imagine in this country, the amount of things that have to happen for people to side with the little guy, right? Like people siding against, the incredibly rich team that had a weird thing go in its favor at the hands of its own governing body.

Man, we do not tend to side with the side that was the disadvantaged side that took the suspicious L, right? America does not like underdogs, generally speaking. We love underdog stories 20 years later. At the moment, we hate them. I think most people, though, are pretty key to Western Michigan. And not even the usual suspects. I think most casual college football fans are like, hey, man, I hope Oklahoma absolutely destroys them. Yes.

And I have some news for you about Oklahoma. You know that meme where it's the horse and it's drawn beautifully on one end and then on the other end it's a child's drawing of a horse? That's Oklahoma. The defense is the beautiful, sculptural, gorgeous end. And then the child's drawing is the offense. And fortunately, Oklahoma's firehorse. portion will be going against Michigan's poorly drawn portion. They looked so inert.

They looked just inert is the word. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know what Bryce Underwood is. What was the last really exciting thing Bryce Underwood did that wasn't involving his recruiting? Oh, I was going to say made a lot of money, but you made a lot of money. then it's true but it's not like he has a run game to support him and it's not like he was making a lot of things happen for himself

except for one play that may or may not have existed up to you to decide yeah that was like 40% of their passing yards on one play was a Hail Mary at the end of the game did it happen I don't think so I you know what that's that's up to the Mac to decide and they said it didn't I listen to the Mac now

yeah why not why not And like, so we have, the Big Ten is like, oh, something happened. Good luck out there. NBC is like, oh, something happened. My, I don't know, whose fault it was? And the Mac is like, fuck you, it's your fault. I only see one party actually saying what they believe happened here, right? Like if the Big Ten came out and said, no, it wasn't our fault, or it was our fault, but it's, da-da-da-da.

There's only one party offering any sort of complete narrative. of what happened here. So, like, the only choice is to agree with the Mac. No one else is saying anything. Unified, yeah, though this means the Big Ten has to come out and be like, the Mac is full of shit. You're right. Fuck off, Mac.

We'll only lose to you once per year in a seven-figure game now. Yeah, we'll only invite you. We'll only invite you for, you know, paid ass beating seven times a year, if that. Just for that, we're taking UMass. Yeah, just. You have records now. We've got the Boston market. The real Boston market.

The real place. The tastiest Boston market of them all. We shall have the underseason mashed potatoes of your football. Boston College, man. Yep. They got the better team in the vicinity. I don't know how far away. I'm assuming this is the type of thing where like,

no, they're so far away. They don't count. I don't give a shit. They're better than you at football. Boston College, of course, will have the stink. on them if Rutgers manages to beat them this coming weekend. They will officially be the worst team in the world. Imagine going 0-2 against Massachusetts.

Let's have Bill O'Brien quaking in his new balance. God. I do have that marked as the Sickos game of the week, not to jump ahead to look into the schedule. Jesus Christ. That's rough. We haven't even managed to get over, we haven't managed to discuss, by the way, which is,

I'm very sorry server, but we haven't even managed to discuss the fact that I think, I think, I thought they would give Davo a graceful out, but I think the extinction level event that happened Saturday night, I don't know if y'all can do business like this, like if that's, it doesn't.

I don't know, man. Yeah, that's that. You know, it's tough for me to talk about the game that I haven't watched. That doesn't exist because LSU isn't real. Yeah, right. No, I mean, I just haven't gone back and watched. I think I saw maybe a cumulative 12 plays from this game.

That's enough. So it's what I thought it would be. I don't know. Like, West Godwin's defense was better than this. So, like, there's a lot to be said about the offense sucking. I don't know. That looked like Chad's been in his wheels. I've seen that plenty of times against South Carolina.

I think there's going to be a lot of games where we come out and probably score 50 points against some scrubs because he's also capable of that. But I just don't see this defense stopping a breeze, man. Like, this ain't it. And it is a defense built up of Tom Allen's guys now. Like we talked about dabbo went into the portal for the first time. Well, like all those additions with the exception of Chris Johnson, who was irrelevant, his 99 speed. was irrelevant on offense. Everyone else is on the defensive side of the ball,

because Tom Allen said he couldn't do it with the dudes we already had on scholarship. So went out and spent a bunch of money to bring in eight dudes, none of which looked any better than the guys we already had on the roster. So I'm just a little confused as to what his purpose is on the team. We got him from Penn State, a team that hadn't accomplished anything. Like the offensive lines, another thing. We have another failed head coach. coaching that. I don't really understand why like just because somebody made a lot of money before

doesn't mean throw a bunch of money at him to fix a problem, but that seems to be the, that was the solution for him. We're talking about Matt Luke. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Matt Luke in that regard. Like it, the, the solution for Dabo like, oh, well, I'm not going to hire my guys is I'll just find like some real fuckups who made a bunch of money and hire them instead. And that was also not what was needed. And it's clear now. And. Like, it's, the problem is like, yeah, you fire Dabo, fine. Maybe he has a little bit of success somewhere else, although that doesn't typically happen. Like your best bets, maybe get Tony Elliott.

Well, it's not really been total success yet. Let me just, I don't know what the, I don't know what the, I don't know what the, I don't know what the, I don't know what the, Dabo's end. Let me ask, what about anything about the last three years or four years would make somebody as a prospective hiring, uh, hireer of a Dabo go, that's a man who's in touch with the modern game. Yeah, I get it. Uh, I think Clemson is also a bit of a, um, listen, they schedule two SEC teams a year and they usually schedule one of them right off the jump at the beginning of the season. spend all offseason building up momentum talking about like

how much they're improved to get smacked in the first game by a team that's got to be ready for that shit because they're in the fucking SEC and then spending all season trying to bounce back from that. They went to the playoff two years ago.

That would I think be enough reason for a lot of programs to be like yeah, I'm gonna, we're gonna take a chance on Davis. I understand that he's not maybe seem in touch but if I'm another team, I'm like, well, I'm gonna give him the fresh start to maybe regroup this thing.

I think there's plenty of programs that would do that. So Dabo like finds a landing spot undoubtedly. Yeah. The thing with Clemson is like, Dabo's not the full problem. Like he's created the problem, but these guys aren't it. And like Dabo's not the only person that was wrong about the players that are on Clemson's roster.

He and the coaching staff have done a poor job developing them. Sure. But like these guys didn't come on campus with the level of talent that they were advertised to have. So there is an evaluation issue. across the board. So, like, that all leads back to Dabo Sweeney, but I don't know that Clemson can't afford to pay $57 million to fire him. And they just kind of have to live with the next couple years and see what happens.

I, like, I think that's it because Clemson's probably still a 500 team this year. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. You know, like, I just, I don't, I didn't see anything else from the rest of the opponents to make me think, like, everyone's going to do what LSU did. But I did see enough from the Yeah, exactly, but I did see enough from the Clemson team to like know that the Miami game,

the SMU game, these are going to be like big time problems. The South Carolina game, it's going to be a huge fucking problem. And like if Clemson sneaks through an ACC schedule, that's not the worst run of ACC opponents to have, but like it still isn't easy.

And they get to Charlotte, like they're going to get smacked in the mouth by Miami again. And so there's no success. story for this team and I don't think it's next year I don't think it's the year after unless there's a total upending of the mindset and build of the program which dabo Sweeney like if he hasn't done it yet like why why would he do it now like he's not going to bring in 30 transfers to revamp this roster which like he you know might not need to if like

all right you want to do the homegrown thing well like okay you better be recruiting at like a top 10 level you know and like recruiting a slip quite a bit you know like like Georgia can pull off the no transfers thing. They're in a tough situation because this was the class that they have coming in is the strongest Clemson class in some time, not just a number but in a star rating as well. It's borderline top 10 and if they add a couple guys in the portal in the offseason, they'll probably be a top 10 recruiting class again for the first time in what,

five or six years? Because they have fought. They've slipped to that 15 to 25 range. And they look like it. And I think also Clemson looking if this is what 8 and 4, 9 and 3 team

best case scenario it's back into the top 25 they're going to be right where they kind of belong. He also did something really. And that's just difficult to see after 12 years of never being in that position. Also did something really smart. He hired some fireable dudes.

It's very important if you know that you're... It is. If you're heading into the like fire of reentry and hoping to like pull back out into orbit. But here's the The problem is like Brandon Streeter West Godwin. Like he's fired guys and it's not worked out. So like, okay, he might have one more round of firings left.

Fire Tom Allen, fire, Nickyson, fire Matt Luke or some combination of those things. Fire Mike Reed. I don't know. Like some combination of dudes get fired get brought in. Well, it also depends who you replace them with. I think a lot of people are not going to like be moved by any firing this time unless as much as I love these guys, like it's Taj Boyd, C.J. Spiller, Tyler Grissom, like, the former players who you've got on staff with, who didn't, like, build up credentials coaching somewhere else.

Like, you got to look at, okay, maybe we need to fire Tyler Grissom, but there's a compromise here. New Hopkins is at Georgia Tech. Fire everyone. And he's, like, potentially, maybe he does do a good job and has made some work, done some stuff there. You have Willie Simmons, a Clemson guy down at FIU who's really, really sharp. It's his first or second season down at FIU down there. He could run the offense, man. And he's ran the program at Florida A&M

for 10 years. I think he was had of solid success down there. The problem is not going to get into his own guys. It's that he's gone and got his own guys who've never established themselves anywhere of note. And then when he hires anybody, it is an also

ran. It's never it's never somebody sick. And like I don't I don't buy the one season one off success of Garrett Riley. I think he was too quick to pounce on that too. Like that dude did one thing

and had a famous brother. And had a really good quarterback who made some money for him. Yeah. Many such cases. But the 57 million dollars in the facility with his face all over it and

the you know, we're 10 years removed from the first national title. Still, I just the it's the fan base will get loud and punchy but like

you guys forget I'm a Clemson fan right because I don't act like the rest of them the rest of them are like heads in the sand a lot of them are going to be totally just well it's dabbo

he'll figure it out the orange tinted glasses make up a good portion of the fan base like that was a thing for a while a long time ago you know like

like we have at this point, I'm going to go ahead and call this the second year in a row, where there ain't nothing anywhere near that, you know? Like, sure, they could play a lot better this season than they did this past weekend, and Davout was already talking about like, oh, we might go, you know, what happens if we go 11 and 1?

What do you say then? Like, all right, that would be quite a scenario. They've got dudes. To your point, though, they have the dudes. The difference was, though, it was the dudes under the dudes, right? Nine guys in the top half of the NFL draft off of a six and seven team.

So, like, how do we think this is going to go? But the difference is in the building of the roster and construction of the roster. And, like, we have guys as talented as the guys that were on 2016, 2018. It's just that those talented guys had another national championship team waiting underneath them who were rotating in and out and making considerable snaps. And, like, this team just does not have that. There is nothing behind Amari Adams at the defensive tackle position.

Like there's these defensive ends are they're not Clell and Farrell and Austin Bryant and you know like this is not sexy Dexie and Christian Wilkins in the middle. We've got like one guy for each thing, not three guys for everything so that there's nothing like even when something goes wrong. There's something to worry about. Like there's a lot to worry about the team's not deep. It's not good. This is indicative of the depth you all once had. You said Dexter Lawrence and I was like, oh yeah. I forgot you all had him.

Okay. Yeah, like you just start reading off the defensive lines for the two national championship teams or even not even the national championship teams, the ACC championship teams leading up to the national championships. Like it was just a who's and it was why Clemson was, they just had an easy walk through the regular season every year until it came down to their SEC opponents and the postseason. but like they don't they the walk isn't as easy anymore because the game's fucking changed and Davo just he took too long

like if this is him embracing it which I think it was good they went out and got a 10 dudes but like I mean he did it one time will he do it again I'm not intrigued to come to Clemson

if I'm a prospect I think that's the what's the what made what about what you saw Saturday makes you want to come there You don't want to put with Tom Allen. Nobody even fucking knows who that guy is. You know what else, too? I don't even think he, Spence to your earlier point, I don't actually think he hired those guys to fire them because they're fireable.

I think it's close, but I don't think that's it. And I kind of think this all ladders up under. I wrote a lot about this in the opener last week, and I'm not going to drag everybody through all that. But I think everything that we've talked about today, ladders up under locus of control it ladders up under

what's going on with instant replay it ladders up under what happened at Michigan well it's it's not some grand conspiracy theory it's it's that the thing that we are the thing that you're trying to make this system do it wasn't designed to do that

and they're going to look at this and they're going to say that oh the problem must be with the rule No, the problem is with your goal. Like, I think Dabo hired these guys because, to your point, they are fuck-ups. And that is going to make them, I think he is trying to do his version of Nick's School for Wayward Boys and get processed guys in the house so that he can, you know, so that he can spread this admin work around with guys, this back-end work with guys who have, you know, who have had coaching experience or who have experience in bigger programs.

but I don't think that's because he wants to make them scapegoats. I think the fact that their fuck-ups is him still trying to hold on to, to hold on too tight. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's dead on. You'd nail that. I think that's the, like it's the SEC and LSU.

I think it's the grand unified theory of everything right now. Holding too tight. It's there. And I'm aware of who I'm trying to ask. to let go and let God just a little bit, but I'm going to do something else that's real stupid, and I'm going to hold up the NFL as a paragon right now, and this and this one thing only. The bits of the NFL that do not make sense on paper, the bits of the NFL that do not make sense on a spreadsheet, like the divisions, they don't give a shit.

And guess what else? Neither does anybody else after a minute. They just keep it moving. Like we figured this out in 2020. Do you guys remember? Do you guys remember the failure state episode that we recorded when we were getting fired in April in 2020? And we recorded what we thought was going to be our last episode for a while. Our last pre-serber episode.

That episode ends with our discussion that we've come back to a lot about they did this because they wanted to. And there's no deeper reason that the people who have their hands on the labor, this is what they want. And the discussion before that was the thing that led into because they wanted to was us going, hey, remember how we set out at the beginning of the 2020 season and we're like, it didn't make any fucking sense for them to fire Will Mustamp at South Carolina. It didn't make sense for any coach to get fired this season. And what we were looking for, we were looking in the wrong place. We were looking at what would make sense to happen that season when what we should have been looking at all along was every school that wants to fire a coach for any reason is going to because

they can. Like we were, we were looking for what made logical sense when we should have been looking at, well, what do they want to do anyway? Because that's what's going to happen. And I just, I can't, I cannot get this drumbeat out of my head. It's in everything right now. Yeah. So if they want to do it, they will. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I don't know. know. I would be so excited if they fired depot Sweeney because I have no idea how that, what that looks like. But I'm like if I for the Clemson fans, the masochist out there that listen to this show like me, I'll be speak to you directly right now. Um, Michael Felder helped open my eyes when it came to the Dallas Mavericks and his fandom of

the Dallas Mavericks and also the Houston Astros for that matter. he doesn't have to care anymore because he got to witness the thing the mavericks beat lebron they won the title dirt got a title right yeah um the astros won the world series everybody hated them they was them against the world right they won they cheated their ass off and they won but he got to experience those things climpson won two national championships we won a lot of ac like we got to experience the thing for right now it's okay man just like you don't have to care that much and then this is going to pass.

Dabu Sweeney, it's not going to be the coach here until he's 85 years old. I don't think anyone's going to do that anymore, except for maybe Bill Belichick. But, oh, shit. Oh, shit. That coup failed, by the way. Yeah, no, no, no. The UNC lawyer who talked to us on Friday hit us up again this morning, and he said, and I quote, Bill and Jordan, excuse me, let me use her cryptonian name, are 2 and O in

coup attempts. They are ready for the Auburn job. Yeah, I just Enjoy these Saturdays where you can maybe make other plans with other people for for a few years Because I know I know where you're at for the last 15 years you haven't made no plans on Saturday Because you've had the option to watch What is the coolest thing in your lifetime Which is like a Clemson team that's at the top of the country

And is winning all the time and doing it with style well for past couple years we haven't had that This should have been our notice just hey man make other plans we're playing georgia southern this saturday um it's a night game go do something else during the day unless there's a really good game on you want to watch there's several we're going to talk about the schedule but like you come home watch that one probably painless and if we lose that one that's your evidence to like fully fucking eject make more plans you will you will learn over the course of whatever this ends up being of how nice the promise of probably painless will be or or to jason's point yeah yeah get in

on this shit. You remember what this was like. Feel nostalgic for a moment for the Dommy West. Domi Bowman. Yeah, like you know, we've got baby, Tate Reynolds, Chris Vezina, we don't know which one's Willow Proctor and which one's Willie Corn, but let's find out. Do you want to earn some

stripes? You know how little of a fuck I would give about whether my team wins if we'd won two titles in my fucking memory, let alone in the last decade? Wallow in it. 5110, make it worse. We're not Ohio State.

We're not Texas. We're not Alabama. Those are the teams that get to do the... These are the teams that are supposed to be able to do what we did. Okay? We did that thing. So like, just rejoice. Shit sucks.

That's a good word now. That's a good word right there. Rejoice. I just heard the book of Ecclesiastes from Michael Server. You know, we got real bad poison ivy and it's bleeding and you're scratching it, but it still feels real good. Mm-hmm. This is a feeling it should be familiar to many Clemsony. And Serber also, this is the flip side of the, of the looking around at the last home game in November and or at the tailgate or in the stands.

And they're saying this exact group of people will never be here. Everybody's got that moment, right? Everybody's got at least one of those. This exact same group of people will never be in this exact place ever, ever again. This is a river we cannot walk into twice. You know who can't walk into that river twice ever? that fucko on the sideline. That's right.

He is not eternal. Don't tell him I said that. Also, man, listen, let's go ahead. Let's get into this. I don't want that. We've done this with the Hawks. We have done this with the Knicks. I can do this with bad Florida teams

over our sort of little like middling period. Right? You know, you do like, hey, Ohio State fans could even do this in their own little way. You mentioned Joe. When they lose their one game. When they lose three games, when they have a Joe Bowserman year, right? So far out over your skis right now.

I am, but you know what? Like Franz Klammer, I'm going to bring it home. This is it. Why don't you earn? He did not. It's a kind of home. It is a kind of home, especially if you're buried at the top with your ass facing the world. Home is where you're buried.

And, um, I know who that is. Don't yell at me. Home is where you're a monument for other hikers. His Everest was one of the. That's right. Green boots. End of the lungs. Green boots, red heart.

I want to know this is where you can earn serious cred as a fan, right? Like, yeah, it's easy as a Clemson fan to be like, you know who was awesome? Trevor Lawrence. You know who was awesome? But maybe not that guy. But, nope. Cole stout, yep. Cole stout was awesome.

Yeah, that's right. Cole stout. That's right. Colstout was so fucking awesome. Remember, he was the quarterback on our national championship team. than 2016 that's correct that's correct sexy dexy was awesome christian wilkins was awesome okay that's easy that's easy but what if you're like hey man i'm gonna go back what about those clemson fans gonna be like i remember charlie whitehurst yeah take one bowers dick on all over you yeah wouldie

woody danceler what about guys if you if you don't fuck with travis zachary i don't fuck with you yeah if you don't have a small place in your heart for willie corn are you real We used to have seances for Willie Corn in this very room. By the way, get down with Christopher Visina. That's what you need to do is Clemson fan. Ride for Tate Reynolds. Dude, Tate Reynolds is so fucking good-looking. See?

Have you looked him up? No, I've not. He's so traditionally good-looking. No, let's see what this mug is hitting for here. It's like there's a shot of him and a tank top here, guns out. Let me see. Let me see. If you create, he's like the, he's the most prototypical creative player. Holy fuck.

That dude is, that dude is a high school drama villain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's going to be the bachelor one day. Okay, you brought it up. Can we talk about drama villains one more time? Because there's something on my heart. Okay, go ahead. There's one more.

I know we have to get out of here. It's 311, the full cast hour. One other thing that kind of underpins, the thing I was talking about a minute ago, like this locus of control that is bewilder during every level of leadership of the sport is like this this incredible lack of long-term or even medium-term strategic thinking and I understand why all this exists don't don't at me I understand why the university president a big a big part of this is that university presidents and you know athletic directors have been incentivized forever to keep their jobs because line go up right like they're

they're not they are not incentivized to do anything but want more And, but when it comes to Lane, they're trying to kick the, they're trying to kick LSC out of the SC. I don't actually believe that this is really what they're trying to do. Like, I know that there's a scenario in which, oh, well, they want a Super League and they want a Super League without LSU. That's, I'm not willing to go there just yet. Here is the main, like, this is not even a long term, a medium term, this is not even a short term. This is a tomorrow problem with taking a vote to kick LSU out of the SEC. you guys want to set lane kiffin up as a folk hero you want lane kiffin to be the face of your

revolution server to your earlier point do you want lane miserabla to be the theme of this fucking season like you it's bad enough if he's talking as a legal client what if he's talking as a revolutionary is that what i mean that's what i want because it's very funny But I'm not in charge of this shit, and that's not bad for my, like, Lane being an idiot is not bad for my bottom line. It's bad for some other people's. You think your headache's bad now? Listen, if Lane could- You want to give that man a veranda with a cross to crime up on?

The Tennessee fanness of that, that man. Veranda, listen, it is today, by the way, today is the anniversary of the assassination of Huey Long, Spencer, is it not? We are like, if there's one thing. We have a long-running habit of logging out of this show and finding out that news is broken while we were on it, and then we have to wait six and a half days to talk about it again, if we have logged out and LSU's attorney has not cited the assassination of Huey Long as a, you know who else was targeted for their beliefs. Jesus? No, LSU. Then I am no judge of character or Louisiana. Frankly, I was there, and this was not as bad as what the SEC is trying to do to my beloved LSU.

You can shoot me seven times and it's still not bad. That's what they're trying to do to us. You shoot me seven times again. I'll take it. It's not working. See, I don't care. Do it again. I got to find the button.

Nope. Hit me with the clown gun. Podcast business. Speaking of spicy. Speaking of the tiger rack. Pocket business. What's that business? Podcast business.

It's a business. Podcast business. Spicy assassination. That's what they did to me on the step to Louisiana capital land and involved a martyr, grow flow. I bet that's what it sounded like. Hey, listen, if you were up and you were listening to the full cast after dark and you wanted to re-listen to it or if you haven't heard it yet, okay?

And you want to hear our immediate reaction. And by the way, I mean immediate because we, by virtue of starting, I think we started around 1030, we were watching a number of the games all happened at once, including Western Michigan, Michigan. If you want to get all of that, you want to get it before anyone else does, and then have exclusive rights to it after the fact, you're going to have to subscribe to our Patreon. That's patreon.com slash shut down full cast, $4 a month, gets you instant access to that. All of our bonus material, multiple, multiple, multiple hours upon hours of bonus material amassed over the offseason. It will also get you access to our emergency episodes, which,

we will inevitably do at one point when one of these coups fail. We'll probably have two or three this week at the rate things are going. Sure, sure. If LSU has kicked out, like, if the saber rattling somehow gets out of control and LSU gets kicked out, one of us will start recording immediately. I don't care. Immediately. Someone will be near a mic.

We'll figure something down. As we will stumble down the stairs with the mic on. Hold on! You'll get the, you'll get the, you'll get the, you'll get the, you'll get the, Yeah, that's how you'll get to hear us die on the stairs. The noises of my last breath and my expiry on air. You'll get that for $4 a month. Folks, that sounds pretty exciting.

Yeah, what a deal would abide. Content you can't get anywhere else. Also, the after dark, the recording, it went up at 2 a.m. So pretty much no matter when you woke up Sunday, it was there ready for you. I saw some people who were looking for it. Yes, it's on our Patreon, shut down full cast, Patreon. It's the only place where after dark recordings go. And, yeah, if you want that stuff, if you want to enjoy the horror experience of us realizing that Michigan is somehow going to accomplish something or other, shut down full cast, Patreon.

Can I tell you what Homefield Apparel is up to? We'd love to hear about it. This is the 2026 edition of a thing that we were very excited to take part in last year. There's a preamble. I will read that as well. Shutdown Fullcast is proudly sponsored by Homefield, the industry leader in top-notch, vintage collegiate apparel made by and for true college football fans. We can confirm both parts of that. Homefield makes the most premium apparel on earth.

We can confirm that as well. Say goodbye to low effort design or cheap quality because our friends at Homefield design and research everything from the fit in fabrics to the vintage logos to make standout gear that defines your game day. Homefield just launched their Can't Miss Kickoff line this August to style your game day. But Can't Miss Kickoff isn't over yet.

Not even anywhere remotely close to over yet. The Homefield team is going on tour around the country to college campuses on the Can't Miss Kickoff tour presented by Mo. Delo. This week they are headed to Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt has drawn a team that looks like Michigan. That's a huge game, but it is honest Michigan. It is Delaware. The Delaware Blue Hins, the Michigan that does not lie.

Be sure to head out and see Homefield in Nashville. Look for the details on their socials, especially their new events page, Homefield IRL. If you can't stop by, you can shop the very best in game day apparel for your team now with Homefield. And let them no shutdown forecast sent you. Take 20% off your first purchase with code Fullcast 20 at checkout. That's F-U-L-L-C-A-S-T-2-0. No Spaces at checkout at Homefield apparel.com

or on the Homefield app. Homefield, the official outfitter of ShutdowneFolcast and your game day. One thing that you can do, by the way, if you wanted to go ahead and get a fine newsletter, the best newsletter, an incredible newsletter. You can subscribe to Channel 6. That is the newsletter put together by Holly Anderson

and myself. I am going to be sending everybody. The top whatever, that is our ranking of teams based on whether we think they belong or not. Not based on any sort of top 25. No, we're only going to rank things because we want to. Is Western Michigan up there? Maybe. I don't know.

You're going to have to subscribe. Did I rank Auburn for being supremely vile and thus establishing? Oops, because we are in that business as well. We do team-based matchup-based horoscopes every single week this season. with the help of Jamie, our co-conspirator and reader of the stars, among many other pieces of fantastic stuff we send you. That is $10 a month for two things a week. We're in year five.

We're very good at this. Channel 6, subscribe now. That's quiet storm voice. Where'd that come from? I don't know. In line with the things we were discussing in the first half hour of this show, Spencer, I recall the top whatever, an institution that

has been it was taken by you from one of our previous places and like, you know, it's yours so it has followed you around. Just five, yes. It was come up with a pool side in Vegas.

It was like the first year of the college football playoff and it was like, we need a rankly, a weekly thing that's like telling people how this is going to work, right? And then it was just sort of like, fuck it. No, we don't.

We need to rank. We need to rank only what Spencer wants to rank. So like, that spirit. has accompanied that franchise for 12 years now, something? 12 years. I do remember a big part of the Y for that, and it was a shared universal horror that we all had. Folks, this is really common, right?

You're all AP voters, right? But there's this thing where you get to, it's always like 12 for me. It's always like 12 or 13. And it's like, fuck it. UCLA's down there somewhere. and it kind of that was the that I I remember this because that was the origin of like a tactic that I have carried to countless stops and tried to be into the skulls of countless writers since then that you should write the story you want to write and then fit it to the structure and then fit a structure around it and not the other way around because do we need and do we have to have an 18th team this week we do not so why do we have one it's arbitrary this is like I've always loved top whatever because it is our way of getting as much arbitrary bullshit as we can out of the way so that we can get to the

stories we actually want to tell. Yeah. Also, am I going to put Sean McDonough in there just for saying that this was both a shootout and a track meet at the same time? There's a shootout at the panic at the Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocked a... He would have won the 400, but he was cut down by an AK somewhere around the 300-yard mark. Beautiful word. Yes.

Subscribe. You should also subscribe to Insil. Saturday, the newsletter I write, which this year, as many of you have noted, includes a disgusting spreadsheet that I pasted in. The spreadsheet, the Watch Grid spreadsheet, last year was beautiful. Did some corporate overlord that you're imagining come down and tell me to put in a pretty one? No. No, that was my decision.

I did that. So stop inventing corporate tapes who are soaked. Shit. What is happening? Sorry, I was trying to make an eerie noise, and it was the Dolly, it was the Halloween rocket. top. I'm sorry. I did not want to do that.

What I'm saying is when you see something in my newsletter, you do not have. Leaving all this. Sorry. I'm really sorry. It was going to be, it was going to help. Just imagine that I was going to say the rest of what I said.

The until Saturday newsletter. It's great. Subscribe. I'm going to kill myself. I gave Holly full. I gave her full of ready to use those buttons whenever she wanted. It says spooky.

You titled that, I think. Server. It's fine. Everything's fine. Shout out to listener Grace, listener Adam. A couple of listeners coming out to the show last weekend at the Flatiron. Appreciate that.

Nice to see you all. Next show is October 17th at the Den with the Strait Lions. That's probably going to be our last killer ants local show for the year. And then sometime around Halloween, I don't know when exactly it's happening, but we're appearing as the Ramones and performing as the Ramones for the Halloween. So a little backstory, a little lore of Winston-Salem downtown hangout culture. Back in the day, we used to have this venue called the warehouse. It now is a nice coffee shop and kind of fancy. E.E. eatery called Cranke's Coffee.

Um, but it was, before it was the warehouse and a bunch of artists live upstairs and would come down barefoot and watch shows when they were happening. And it was just really grimy place. But every Halloween, like a bunch of local bands would dress up as do a bit and perform as several different bands. I saw Velvet Underground there. I saw the Rolling Stones there.

Um, black flag. Uh, oh man, what was the bit? I think they're called Flipper. Was that the, the, Chris Nova Selick band. Anyways, it was always fun and it hasn't happened for like a decade, so we're bringing back that back this year. Right now, the acts that are performing are the strokes of misfits, Green Day, and Ramones. I'd heard an Oasis band was going to play, but I think they dropped out. So that's probably not going to happen. That's very Oasis. That was going to say.

So come check that stuff out and follow me to stay up to date on those things. And aside from that, listen to Hand the Dirt, follow Phantom Island. I show to support my work there that I do with Ryan and Godfrey. Don't know who those people are. Yeah, but I'm sure they're handsome. All right. I believe. The until Saturday newsletter.

Subscribe today. It's really good. That's right. And that concludes podcast business. Okay. I would like to look at the schedule. Let us rapidly look at the schedule. schedule. We can rapidly look at the schedule. The weeknight shick. Um, no, it's fun,

you're, uh, Rutgers Boston College, nasty have it on. Mizzou, Kansas. It follows the game. Yes, everybody should note in case you have not followed us on social and have not seen my yelling about it. Yes, Kansas has already posted a picture of John Brown to both the official Kansas athletics account and the official Kansas football account. It's time for real rivalry. Saturday, Oregon and Oklahoma State. Oh, God. Oklahoma, Michigan.

Oh, God. If you thought week one was like, kind of, eh, not really a lot going on. Fuck, there's a lot going on. Hey, have you ever... It's gruesome. Have you ever had your dog fight a turtle in the yard? That's what Oklahoma, Michigan's going to look like.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, because like a turtle doesn't move. Is this going to damage Western Michigan's strength of schedule? Yes. I don't like it. Hey, get the fuck out of the way. Cutter Bowley is going to a college station, Texas A&M. That's right.

That's five touchdowns in the first half, Cutter Bowley. Watch out, Top Golf. Arizona State, Texas A&M, you are not the same kind of white guy. Yeah. Cutter Topgolf Bowley. Also different kinds of white guy. at BYU and Mississippi State, Minnesota. Wow.

Jeez. And Cal Syracuse. Duke, Illinois. My gosh. It's those store brand popsicles where you can get the orange or the green or the red. Alabama, Kentucky, you're, okay, one of you likes basketball. You both like basketball these days. Holy shit. You're both better at basketball. You're both

basketball schools. God damn. If you want to watch some freakery, Alabama Kentucky, I think that's going to get freaky. As for games that actually matter, like games involving Alabama in the post-2020. Memphis, Boise State. It feels like Boise State is playing everyone this year.

Like all of their games are consequential and or games against like, I feel like we might have a pretty orderly G6 race this year because it pretty much comes down to did you play Boise State? Did you beat them or not? Right? They got Western Michigan, almost beat Oregon. This week they have Memphis and Memphis has already consolidated the Mountain West's strength by beating UNLV.

So like, apparently every single week, Boise State is going to be very important. I love this. I like the Boise State is just testing everyone, right? Like, hmm, you're pretty tough. Hold on. Let's spar. All right, yeah, old boy's tough. Like, they're just going around proven, right?

They're just like, hey, man, are you good? I don't know. I haven't played Boise State yet. They're going to have to tell me. Boise's non-conference schedule is like, everybody. Spencer Danielson really is faithful because he's like, Jesus is going to get us. through this.

When young Gideon kneeled by the side of the creek and had the, we only, Lord, we only got, we only got 100 guys, but we're going to face 10,000 guys. That's how many football teams. That's it. That should be their schedule. He just hangs in. It's like 10,000 guys. What are you doing?

We're playing 10,000 guys this year. However many it takes to get to that number. Yeah. And you know what? I'd trust him. I'd be like, all right, fine. I don't, I can't worry about this. I'm putting it on the Lord because trying to squat all this is going to be hard.

At 7.30, of course, is you know it. You love it. The biggest game of the year. It's the one all of this has been building toward all this offseason chatter and hype. And everyone's going to be watching. Of course, it is Iowa State at Iowa. That's right. El Classico is back. Oh, El Asico. Wow, it really leveled up there. I did. But, you know, again, some Iowa fans and Iowa State fans still. Iowa State fans have never gotten mad at us for calling it that.

Iowa fans get us mad for calling that. Iowa coming fresh off scoring 40 points. I'm sure they're going to get that fixed. Easy. Gonna pull something, dog. What was all that about? What's the rush? Slow down.

My favorite Kirk Fairth thing I've seen in a long time was that video the Big Ten had asking Big Ten coaches how many stitches were on a football. And you could tell he had his first response was, Who gives a shit? Like that was like Kirk Farrant's the most duller jock ever. And you could tell like they're like, how many? And his face just said, I don't give a fuck nerd. Like instantly.

Then he's like, I don't know. Well, what is touching the football have to do with winning at football? Yeah, I've shot. We touch it as little as possible. Ew, I don't want that. Get rid of it. Run it back 30 yards out of the quarterback's hands. Hand it to the ref.

That item is nasty. I don't want my team to be ever be touching it. Give it to them so that they can have the problems. Also playing at the same time. I guess you can watch Ohio State, Texas, if you want. Yeah. You know, if you're... There are options, like, you know, during halftime or whatever.

Because this one, because the Iowa game will get to halftime first. Might be an hour ahead of it. Chances that this will fail to live up to the billing of Arch versus Julian. Manning versus Say it. I'm like, this is... I've seen this game too many times. I know how this works. They're like, here, two sterling quarterbacks.

And I'm going to be like, Two defenses. I think it says something that the schools are not billing it that way. It does. Like their game day graphics are not billing it that way. Mm-hmm. Let's just get, let's get the expectations down. So we can surpass them by jumping over a low bar because it's early in the season.

I'll also say that the late night spot is pretty crammed this week. We have Arkansas, Utah. Arkansas, what the fuck you doing out there at 10 o'clock Eastern? You got to play Georgia like at sunrise days late. Argusaw, get your ass back home, man. What's he doing out there? We took too much chunker speed and kept going. What the fuck is going on?

Arkansas, this is a week one shit, if that. Also, you're going to notice for the first time that Sacramento State is an FBS. They're playing Fresno State. Don't be fooled. Sacramento State is in the Mac. Montana State, Nevada State. Nevada State win this. God, yes.

Louisiana USC Louisiana what the fuck are you doing out there at 11 o'clock at night help we got a party with our dogs you're not in the whack anymore you know this right that was lot that was Lotteette we got a Hawaii Midnighter but the main event of the late night games North Dakota State Air Force again ramifications by the way this might decide the fucking Mountain West North Dakota State they played two games as an FBS team The scoring margin off the top of my head is like 70 to 7, something like that. Who have they played Jacksonville State, the almost Conference USA champ last year? So like...

The boys are burly and they're very excited. They just slip literally an FCS roster up. Like, they did this after the portal closed. This is an FCS team that is like, they might win the Mountain West. What do you expect? We know for a fact against subscribe to Channel 6. If you did, you'd already know this. 12 gallons of milk a meal.

12 gallons of milk a meal. those boys are handing out dairy-fed who wants right now. Just big fistfuls of milk. Big fistfuls of milk. The rancest, the rancest bus-contaminating farts you've ever smelled in your life. Powering. Milk-thead for a while. Milk-fists.

Milk-fists. This is just a reminder, by the way, that North Dakota State, JMU, Appalachia State, all football teams that were really, really good at the FCS level that moved right on up and kept doing it, should watch some FCS football. It's pretty fucking good from time to time. Yeah, don't act like you're better than this. Yeah. Also, do you want to know what's going to be really good at the FBS level in five years?

You should go watch some FCS football. Mm-hmm. Because it's on the come-up. I will also... If you lose to UMass, you should probably go down to FCS. Yeah, probably. Get your vandal on. It's going great for Idaho down there.

They make the playoffs sometimes. Yeah, no, they're perfectly happy. That's awesome. Like, you know, get the Kibbe Dome, you know, fresh scrub. They're doing great. Not too fresh. Not too fresh. No. Still smells like taters in there. We do have a miniature, uh, keepby dome on the Warhammer table. We do. We have a, there are four things. There are four things of note on the Warhammer

table. Again, we have the Waffle House of Doom. We have a Memphis Bass Pro Shops pyramid objective marker. We have a ruined top golf and we have a miniature kid be dumb. That's all you need. We rebuild society with that. Yeah, I have two games of note that I do want to point out before we go. Three, but Serber already mentioned Georgia Southern at Clemson. I would like to go ahead.

Yeah, I would like to go ahead and highlight UCF at Pittsburgh because I want to see if Mason Heinzschel can throw seven touchdowns again. That's right. Get the fuck out of the way. Mason Heisman is on the way. That's Heinzschild now. That's right. He's got a Heishman moment.

You say, oh, he threw... I can keep going, and I will. He threw seven touchdowns. It was Miami of Ohio. Heidi, hi-hne-ho. Seven. If he throws four... Such great Heinz.

I will kill you with these. Call him Heinz 57, because that's how many T-Ds he's throwing this year. I already did that one. Oh, fuck. Also, San Diego State at UCLA. I'm just saying this because, you know, UCLA, physical. That is an extremely physical football team.

I really enjoyed watching them. They exist in three dimensional space. That is so true, Bestie. It is. They have so many dimensions. They are manifold. I have, but yeah,

go watch them because they beat the shit out of people. Manifold destiny. There we go. How's this? They beat the shit out of Cal. I don't know whether that means that they could beat the shit out of everyone. But Bob Chesney.

The Bob Chesney Project is underway, and it looks pretty good. Oh.