Shutdown Fullcast - Why don't they make the whole season out of Week 0?

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

Between Florida and Miami trying to melt down in any possible direction and Hawaii-Arizona doing the same but with way more scoring and quarterbacks who look like they wanna fight Johnny Utah, Week 0 was...a colossal success! We talk about that and a few storylines we'll be throwing our stupid little hearts into this year.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the shutdown fullcast. Lo and behold, if you're hearing my voice, then this, this podcast, this podcast has made it not only to college season, but into college season. We're over the wire, folks. We are now, the wire separating us from the safety of the offseason. No, it's live fire. What do you think a wire is for? It's to separate you from the trench, the trench from no man's land.

We are now all. Are you Catherine Zeta Jones in entrapment? Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Sean Connery is trying to seduce me, but I think, oh, are you wearing a cat suit right now? I always wear a cat suit. This is the trick. But like a big, fluffy, fuzzy one. Yeah.

Yes, with a tail and everything. Mr. Mostophily's ass. Are you Tony the Tiger? You what? Oh, no. Bitch, he's rum-tum-tugger. Congratulations on your new bowl game, Spencer. Thank you. It'll be okay.

Not great. It'll be okay. I'm so tired. The bowl game. It's mediocre. That's what I want him to say. I love going to the middle of the desert in December and eating lots of corn and milk.

And sugar. There's one of the sugar. Don't worry. Big old milky bowl of, of, I don't know what Frosted Flakes are made of. Brand. Yeah, why didn't they call it

the cereal bowl? You shitbirds. What did the Frosted Flakes Bowl used to be? Oh man, I don't know. Tony the Tiger Bowl? I'm sorry, yes. The Tony the Tiger Bowl. Because he has formed his own

separate subsidiary to sponsor this bowl. Frosted Flakes and its partner corporation have nothing to do with it. It's just Tony Tiger. Welcome to Tony the Tiger's sovereign citizen, movement. It's grift. He's gone completely rogue. They don't even, they don't even know how to shut it down. The folks at Frosted Flakes Corp, they're pulling their hair out right now. Well, he saw,

listen, he saw Cliven Bundy and he was like, this is my moment. I'm excited for the feds to be like, can we indict a serial mascot? Because he's embezzling. He is doing that. It is an Arizona bowl game. A little bit of a history. You know, some of us saw John Juncker and was like, man, we were born a decade too late, really, to get into Bullgrift. Some of us saw John Junker and saw the future instead of the past. This could be, I think if I had to get a former corporate mascot to be the front for my obvious fraud of a bowl game that I used to launder money. You could just say bowl game.

No, I'd use the Noid, right? Not Captain Crunch, really. No, no, no. The serial thing's not going to be too obvious. I got to pivot. I got to move away from that, right? I see. So you're going to go with a mascot that hasn't been used in, I would say, at least 25 years?

Noid had a video game, though. Yeah. So did the seven-up spot. The note, don't we know the Noid is already a villain? Like, who trusts the Noid? They're going to be all over. I think Captain Crunch is better. He has a military title.

Mm. Or if you don't want to go serial, go grimace, because he already has a criminal in his circle. So they'll say, well, They didn't go hamburger, so it's prying on him. And he can hide things in his weird body. That's all money in there. That's a human man, but he's just swallowed a bunch of cash and cocaine. They'll just think, oh, that's WKU Big Red's cousin.

WKU, remember Big Red, the only mascot I know of that appeared in Italian copyright court to defend his name. In costume. to defend his name and image. I am confident the WVU Mountaineer will have that happen one day. I'm thinking that's Bulgarian court. Hey. Some place

kind of north of the Balkans, you know? Hey, listen, man, Sicily's fun. You don't know. It's mountainous. I think it'll be somewhere where it's settled by duel. I think that's the only way you get the mountaineer show up. Well, he better make the first shot because that second shot is going to take a minute.

Hold on! Pack, pack, back, back. Goddamn musket. It's not musketeer. Yeah. The week zero, we actually had football, which is thrilling. Kind of. Yeah.

No, it was great. I mean, as horrifying as it was to watch Florida, Miami. There we are. We had the full spectrum of football. We really did. Because I joked at one point that Florida, Miami was just a warm up for Arizona, Hawaii. And that turned out not to be a joke Because remember we don't tell jokes on this podcast

That actually came true Yeah, the first game was Someone called it Slappers Only Football That was pretty accurate And then the second FBS game Was Rocket Launchers Only Football Just nothing but big hits, man That's all we did

For Arizona, Hawaii The cake after the unnecessarily Nutricious Main Course Which could I think Slappers only is actually unfair. I think it's more proximity minds, but you get blown up by your own. I mean, that's just

proximity minds in my experience. And like, it's not like you forgot where you laid them. Ha! There we go. Fuck. Corner. Shit! Like, Miami, you put the mines on your offensive line, and then you tried to walk forward. Proximity lines.

All four screens with Manny Diaz going, damn it! Who's our job? like Miami's took Jerry and Williams behind five proximity minds you know you get like a cleag light behind him

Dan Mullen is kind of odd job shaped I mean he is always wearing a hat if I put if I imagine if I ask you to imagine Dan Mullen in a turtleneck and a very heavy blazer does he not look like somebody who gets beat up as the minion

of a bond villain and or somebody who gets kicked in the face by Tony Jha I mean he does does have that look. Sure. He's a little henchy. Also, he can make noises like,

whir. He just, yeah, what do I want me to do? Oh, man, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, God, invisible Tommy gun. He does kind of have that, like, 1930s gangster.

Hey, what are you guys doing here? Eh? Yeah. Pulls up to the bar. Milk, make it a double. Put it in a dirty glass. Give me an egg cream. Yeah, this was,

this was. Welcome to our college football podcast. which now has games to talk about. Actual games! You mentioned Jared Williams' name, Jason. Sharon Williams looked great, man. This is me. I'm going to be as positive as I can.

He did fine. That's a freshman. That is a red shirt freshman, correct? He did start against Savannah State last year. Didn't we all? But that is a first-time starter against a very game defense that enjoys putting a lot of pressure on the quarterback,

performing brilliantly behind an offensive line that was best described as really feisty paper machet. The offensive line looked like what you might expect to see at, say, the Citadel, like an especially small military option school? Yeah. Like, one of those dudes had to be like 240. Yeah, I don't think the right... The Citadel with mono, I think, is probably a fair description.

Yeah, I don't think that Miami's right tackle weighed more than 260 pounds. how many sacks in Florida finished with? 10. 10 and I think 16 tackles for loss. That's not healthy, man. No, that's too many. It actually feels like unhealthy for both sides. Like at some point, Florida's tacklers are going to be very tired.

And it's not like Miami, you know, unveiled a crazy, hurry up, throw the ball a ton off. They only threw the ball 30 times. So if you're telling me, we'll eliminate scrambles and all that. There were plenty of other places where he got hit on some of those 30 dropbacks as well. They're rope-edoping them, but in true Miami fashion, we have lost the dope. So 30 passes plus 10 sacks, so they tried to throw like 43 times. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot.

I know we started off talking about Miami. And to say all the good things, Jaron Williams, if they can keep him upright or at least, you know, the rest of their schedule doesn't feature a defense. it's really going to put as much sort of stress and pressure and chaos into his life as Florida's will. You hear that Duke defense? Spencer's calling you out. I have definitely. I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, I don't think my beloved Pitt Panthers are going to put 10 sacks worth of pressure on the Miami Hurricanes. Now, this works for me.

We'll see what Bethune Cookman can do. This works for me two ways, by the way. The Pitt Super weapon, charging up even more fiercely now that I've said that. Any day now. Any day now. They're just going to go off. And in addition to that, if they only surrender half the pressure, they still give up five sacks a game. And that's a lot of, that's a lot of punishment.

On the other side of the ball, Miami, man, Trajan Bandi's awesome. Trajan Bandi and Shaq Quarterman, oh, there's a lot of... Those are both Crash Bandicoot characters. They are. They're Crash Bandicoot characters, and they are just as bouncy and enthusiastic. in their pursuit of the ball carrier because my God, they were fun to watch. Trajan Bandi is just a battle of a corner.

I don't even know what the word is. He was making tackles in the run game. He was like recognizing plays well before they came his way. Just, yeah, he was a handful. He was a mess. He hit a lot of those short tackles where Florida failed to convert. They get the ball out to Tony

or they get the ball out to P.Rine and get tackled like a half a yard short. That was usually Trajan Bandy leading the way on those and absolutely sticking people. So, like, they were fun to watch. I know Miami fans might get slightly stressed about how that game went. And there's reasons for concern, namely your 175 pound right tackle and how they'll hold up over the course of a season.

But overall, I was like, no, there's stuff here. Like, they've got a lot to work with. I don't think that. I think Miami fans probably took it in stride. I mean, it's not like they attacked Florida's band director after the game and put him in a joke hold. I didn't actually hear about this until a few minutes ago. Ryan, do you want to talk about that? Yeah, let's brief us, please. Like, I've only seen the sort of bare minimum about it, but Florida's band was heading back after the game, I assume, to the buses or whatever.

And hold on, I'm going to pull up an actual article here. So, yeah, the band members were walking to the bus. a female Miami fan tried to cut through the group the director went to stop that person and when he did somebody else grabbed him behind

in a chokehold and threw him on the pavement so bro been taking an MMA just a little you know I just had to do something you got to control the situation

you know body position kumate you know that kind of stuff I know a lot about it I don't want to drop any technical stuff on you Shit goes down in Orlando, may.

Yeah. I wouldn't say I failed the police academy, mostly because I was thrown out before final exams, so. I mean, I opted to leave. It's more of a DNF. Yeah, more of a, like, pending situation. I trade, that's true I say. I just needed something else. Speaking of Miami's defense, which played pretty well, so about four and a half yards is considered an average rush.

How many of the six gaiters who carried the ball averaged better than that on the night? I know this answer. Four and a half is what he's looking for. Man, I don't think any of them did because I remember looking at seeing P. Ryan average like four. There was one. You're forgetting one very important. Oh, the punter. The punter.

Yeah, the punter. Your punter is your only above average runner. That's fine. well i mean if that's how we got to do it that's how you got to do it stan mullen likes going for it on fourth so this dude's going to get his carries can we talk about the um the absurdity that was the last drive yes yeah so spencer and i have been talking about this um most of the day and i just want to walk everybody through in case you didn't watch the game here is

here are the exact sequence of events so uh Miami gets the ball after a just crushingly dumb in timing and in selection interception on Florida's first play after stopping Miami on downs, I believe. During that interception or afterwards, they get a 15-yard on sportsman-like conduct penalty for excessive celebration. That's followed by. Can we go back? Sorry.

Yeah. Please. Not to interrupt your flow. When does this drive start? At what time mark does this? the final Miami possession start. I want to say it starts with about four minutes left in the game.

No, no, no. Why would I ask you the time if it were not a fascinating time? Okay, it's 420. That's correct. Thank you. I apologize. Okay, so Miami starts with the ball at the Florida 40.

They rush for a one-yard loss. They fumble the ball, but they recover it. But none of that counts anyway because there's a 15-yard illegal block penalty. They complete a pass for negative 1 yards. They have a sack fumble that is curiously recovered for a 4-yard gain. There's a delay of game. There's a 7-yard sack.

And now it's 4th and 34. Spencer, what happened on 4th and 34? Florida committed pass interference, thus giving Miami an automatic first down on 4th and 34. My God, that's Jane Coston's music. It was probably past interference well past the line to gain, though, right? No, it was behind it. where you don't actually have to commit that. Yeah.

Cool. So this has moved. Now, Miami has successfully moved back to the Florida 35 at this point. That's better. Or sorry, the Florida 49. They complete a pass for negative two yards. They have an incomplete pass. They get another pass interference on third and 12.

This is now, at this point in the drive, they have snapped the ball. Let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. This is, I believe, the ninth snap. They get their first offensive yards, a 12-yard pass completion. That's followed by an incomplete pass, a sack fumble that Miami recovers again for a loss of two. That's the third fumble on this drive, forced and recovered, forced by Florida, recovered by Miami. There's another incomplete pass with pass interference, except that flag gets picked up, and then the last play of this. the game is in incomplete past.

This journey started at the Florida 40, went back to the Florida 43, went back to the Florida 35, then back to the Miami 49, and then all the way to the Florida 26th word. It was... So can I give you the summary? Confusing. That's correct. That's 10 actual counted on the sheet plays for 14 yards that covered, yeah, something like, something like at this point, 50 yards.

14 yards of actual offense. Most of it gifted in the form of penalties that did not need to happen. On the upside, there was a guy named Jeremiah Moon on Florida. Jeremiah Moon! I am really excited for his tent revival tour. Y'all come on down.

I'll listen to the Reverend Moon. I had a question for our two gators on here. Sure. on a scale of 1 to 100 how would you grade this game with obviously 100 being the best possible game

that feels like about a 68 maybe one on 1 to 10 out of 1 to 100 yeah just check them but yeah about a 68 because I went back and rewatched it

and because remember football is mostly empty space you got a fast forward button you can rewatch a game real fast and a lot of this made a lot of sense like nobody in Florida rushed the ball particularly well but they weren't

super committed to it because the smart thing to do when you have a bunch of really good receivers and Miami has got a strong front is to pass and that's actually like when I look Franks missed some guys in the passing game but they were there and they're open that's something

like yeah you probably fix that and work on it I'm not saying that you're going to get any kind of Baker Mayfield transformation out of Franks because Because at times, he will let the ball wander. He's a libertarian passer sometimes. He's just going to let it. If you love something, let it go.

Yeah. He's just going to let the market decide where the ball goes. That happens sometimes, okay? Literally the invisible hand. The invisible hand passing the ball down field, which... That's what an incompletion is. That's what that interception was, right? He's like, I'm going to throw it away.

And the market was like, nope, son. We're putting that up for sale. They should start doing that at Michigan football games. Pass broken up by Adam Smith. I just checked. There actually is an arena league football player named Adam Smith who played at Western Kentucky. Amazing.

Arena bowl champion. Two-time first team all arena in 2015 and 16. Hey, he was with the Buccaneers. What's more free market than piracy? He's from Murphy'sboro, but I suppose I didn't really have to tell you that. But I don't, like, looking back, there's a lot of sloppiness. But Franks was protected pretty well in the past game. When he made mistakes, it was because he was leaving pockets that were pretty clean.

He wasn't really stepping up. There were guys open. Receivers did big things. I mean, Tony had a huge play. Josh Hammond had a huge play. I don't feel that bad about it, especially when I consider what the defense could look like, considering how they looked in a game where they got 10 sacks. Not a bad line.

But if they're, again, if they're only putting up half that kind of production, that's still enough. So I don't, I feel really good about that. And in addition to that, we have a punter who runs like he's going to be, we have a punter who can apparently tear ass faster than any of our running backs. And we have good running backs. So I don't, yeah, no, I don't feel that bad. 68 at 100. One shy of 69.

They've got to earn that. Ryan, how you feel? It wasn't, it wasn't a nice game now. I'll give it 75. Because it could have been, like, it's right in, like, that game could have been much better for Florida. They were looking, they looked in control early. It looked like, okay, they're going to win this in, like, pretty comfortable fashion, whatever. It also could have been much worse because the only reason that Florida is even in a position to force Miami's hand on the last two drives of the game is because Miami misses an easy field goal, like a 28-yarder or something.

something like that, after they run their own fake, which should have come back for holding, except Florida lit the, I think it was the holder. They lit him up out of bounds. Or maybe it was the kicker. I don't remember who. To extend that drive. And Florida also got gifted extremely good field position, which led to a touchdown on a muffed Miami punt. So, like, there was the potential for.

all things was was there this could have there it's not that hard to say this could have been a 17 20 point florida win or a 17 point florida loss like all of those things are in there so i feel very comfortable being like okay you can have like a straight see i'm not going to give you anything stronger or weaker than that so do you want to know how you two homers compare to the objective cold uh hand of reason as far as game grades here sure yep yep i think Because, you know, if there's one thing people say about Spencer and I, it's that we're too up on Florida. So I really, I'm really excited to have us taken down about you. So ESPN's FPI actually gives game scores for each game.

It's the game control thing that the playoff committee mangles sometimes. And people make jokes about FBI, but it performs fine. It gave the Gators an 85. Okay. Not bad. So, I mean, I think you look at the box Miami Recurricular. covered 80% of the fumbles. Right.

That's not sustainable. Like, to rip off an old Bill C-Stat, there were eight defenders got their hands on passes. Miami got two interceptions. Florida got none. You would expect more like one each, something like that. Like, one of Florida's led to a Miami touchdown. Yeah. Like, Miami, it feels insane to say about a game in which so much rent wrong for them,

but they got most of the bounces, you know. They should have been a pretty comfortable Florida. to win. I would like to say this is, this game, I think was a perfect summation of why Florida fans don't generally want to play Miami. Miami fans love to say like, oh, you're scared, you're scared. And they're not wrong, but it's not like scared in a, oh, no, we might lose way. It's scared of in a like, oh no, what if the sewer line backs up kind of way? It's like, it's just going to be unpleasant no matter the outcome, no matter how much it ends up costing, whether we have to tear down the house or move or whether it's like relatively it only takes a week to fix

the sewer line still backed up that's the florida miami game it's always just going to be a backed up sewer line it's it's it's not that you're scared of the hurricanes it's that you're scared of gators versus hurricanes yes yes the series itself yes yeah so that's heartening because you know we are notoriously sunshine pumper's when it comes to football so 85 all right Once again, you're two down on your team. Once again. We should be more enthusiastic, he says, weeks before another upset by Kentucky. Okay, cool.

It's okay. Spencer's truly a Hawaii fan anyway. Thanks to Magma McDonald. Magma McDonald. If you want to get your family. Magma. Out of this prison, Magma, you're going to have to shoot me with this tennis ball gun. Okay. Last night, Ryan and I spent maybe a little too much time trying to put Cole McDonald,

Hawaii's charismatic young quarterback with the dreads, in an American Gladiator's type situation that I've decided is some kind of American Gladiator's dystopian drama where he has to rescue his family from super hell jail by performing basic American Gladiator's tasks. Kind of... Taken, but with big, big foam Q-tips. Yeah, and some running man thrown in there. We were joking that that's like a, that's a big, we were joking that it was a warm-up. Not a warm-up.

Arizona, Arizona-Hawai rule. Cole McDonald, I believe through five touchdowns and four interceptions, perfect line. A perfectly balanced four and four. No, the Thanos line. Wow. You know, he gave you the, that's, that's a Wendy's combo or something, right? The four-for-four. The four.

Cole McDonald was going to keep you even, all right, y'all. He's going to take you out of the game and bring you back in. But a joy to watch, and Hawaii still runs like an old school run and shoot, so they're hitting, like, insane, like, go routes and these massive comeback routes that they just kind of, you know, feel out in the middle of the field. And occasionally they give the ball to a gigantic 260-pound running back on draw plays, which is hilarious because it's always like ha gotcha said the rhino Holly I think you are one of the most foremost experts on pack 12 after dark

how would how did this stack up to the legacy of that sainted hashtag well it was it was a little bit puzzling to have a pack 12 after dark that kicks off in full daylight and finishes in near full daylight but yeah this this game that this game had everything it was oh Arizona's going to get boat raced oh Arizona was just sleepy and they've caught up to their body clock confusion

oh no everyone on both sides might be very bad and that's even better oh no they're both just about the same amount of bad which is not all that bad but hey Arizona what happens to your schedule when you go home nothing bad I bet oh that's my emotional bouncy ball this was something that we were discussing in our slack before this but this was really bad for

Arizona in ways that I don't think I fully realized right not last night no not till I looked at the schedule today yeah because I thought oh losing on the island that's completely explicable because Hawaii typically performed very well at home and then Bud and Jason and Ryan they learned me up on why this was actually super bad for Arizona yeah like coming into the year you're going for six wins that's it and we talked about it a little bit how the early part of the season um i think alex was on here talking about how like go for five and oh and then just try to cling and get that last win well that's off the table now because one of your three or four likeliest wins you should have gotten your ass kicked you got pretty lucky to lose

by a touchdown yeah and the rest of the schedule the rest of the schedule We have, okay, you'll be favorite against Northern Arizona and Texas Tech at home and Oregon State at home. Yep. You got to host Utah. You got to host Washington. And you could lose all of your road games. And then there's UCLA. Who the fuck knows?

This could be a four-win or three-win team. Can we agree that they still will probably, unexpectedly just light the fuck out of somebody who on paper you'd be like wait what Oregon lost Oregon lost by 30 to Arizona yeah Utah's rolling in at 10 and oh and then they lose to Arizona

Utah's so gassed right now too because they are now Lee Corso's pick they are now everyone's like momentum pick for a possible playoff slot they are now everyone's favorite pick for a pack 12 championship and I feel like that irrational exuberance has now hit the point where nothing makes more sense than playing a piss poor Arizona team that

just wails up out of nowhere and clobbers them to destroy their home. Arizona's your cousin who ruins Thanksgiving. Who's going to puke on the turkey? And so is Arizona State. That's the best one. That's why they spent Thanksgiving together. They're just like the inconveniently timed arrest twins, right? Like, we were going to make graduation on time,

but somebody had to blow vape smoke in the cop's face. My favorite Arizona stat of the day, did we see the one that Reddit CFB tweeted by chance? No, no. So can you guess which Power 5 team has lost to the most non-Power 5 teams in the playoff era? Is it Arizona? very close so close

no number one is Kansas with seven right number two is Arizona with six wow ahead of

you know Illinois Rutgers yeah that's the thing about Arizona's and Arizona Wazoo has lost

like multiple FCS and is still behind but yeah but those always Those always are the harbinger of a really good season for them, right? It's as if Washington State actually forgets how to play football goes into the game and is immediately reminded, right? Like they're the amnesiac football team, right?

Like, where am I? What am I waking up to? Tattoos all over their body, throw ball down. What? They do the thing from the boxing movie where it's like the ninth round, you got to cut me, except they do it in round one. Hey, we're just, we're going to the hotel. It's not even fight day. I got to, I got a bleed to feel it.

You got a, we just got off the fucking plane. Cut me, I said. My favorite stat from this game actually is Jason, who is the current leader in FBS in passer rating? It's my beautiful blonde dreadlocked state tattooed Cole McDonald who got benched. through four picks and he is still your number one quarterback in the country because his passes do not hit the ground is the key he completed 71 percent which is awesome and if you factor his interceptions it completed like as you say his completion percentage was actually much higher he keeps the ball clean that's what matters most his interceptions sublime by the way

because you would think if you're hard if you think you would yeah you think if you would throw four picks, that would be, mm, Ms. Rad, maybe a tipped ball or two, maybe you know, just a great play by a TV. Receiver runs a wrong route. Sure. Sure, especially in the system. There was one tip that went against him.

Yeah. There were also a couple dropped picks. There was one where he hit a quarterback in the helmet. He's awesome. I love him. He's one of the most college ball players of all time. He has rocketed up the people's Heisman list. Yeah, I hope he gets his doctorate and sticks around forever. Yeah, Nick Rolovich, if you're listening to this, don't bench this young man.

We need him. Or do. Whatever it takes. Let him stay for eight years. The NCAA can't afford a flight to Hawaii. You're fine. Three out of the four pixie through to complete the thought, directly at the defensive back. I mean, like, between the

one and the zero, right? Just like right in the middle. Just an amazing... Like a fucking challenge. He's Patrick Swayze's character in point break. 100%. Into the waves, bro! Bodey would throw that.

Yeah. Adore him. And I adore that Kaleel Tate, who now appears to be fully mobile and ready to show us and dazzle us with the talent that he displayed in the 2017 season, all for a possible 4-8 Arizona team. Woo! Yeah, baby, get it.

Let's get our Sisyphus on. Khalil Tate had 600 total yards of offense in a 72 to 48 loss to Oregon State. Yeah, headlines that might happen. That might be something you read. That's also people's Heisman behavior. We saw one of the most important, unimportant games of the year, basically. We're going to look back on that and feel. so honored that we watch this game, right?

I can't believe that we watch the president and a future Nobel Prize winner face off as QBs. The first man on Mars versus our first international president, Cole McDonald's. I just love that in the first eight hours of FBS action of 2019, we got the complete extremes of the college football experience, right?

Like the ugliest offensive game possible and the ugliest defensive game possible. Some people thought that when I said Florida and Miami should open the season every year, just to remind us what we've been missing. Some people thought that I meant that sarcastically. No. No. Absolutely not. This is what you think I'd rather watch Vandy, South Carolina?

You think we'd rather watch, like, decent football? Absolutely not. Get that shit out of my face. The game-saving tackle for Hawaii made by Manly Williams, you probably already know that if you're listening to this podcast. Maybe you don't. Here are some additional Manly Williams facts. One, his nickname is Pumba, which means it's entirely possible after stopping Arizona from winning this game. He launched into Hakuna Matata, and I really hope he did.

He just let out a big old pig fart. Two, he has an uncle named Manly. He has an Uncle Manly. Uncle Manly. That is somebody in his family. Damn. Who also played at the University of Hawaii. Three. His name was Uncle Manly

at the time. Three. He has an older brother. He's Manly. Remember. His older brother, Lance. We play this game. We play this game sometimes. We played it before with a corn dog and tater and I forget what else.

But if you are out there and you have a relative with the Christian name of Uncle, please let us know. Yeah. I know you're out there. Manly and the student's brother, Lance. Damn.

I've been naming children wrong. Should we talk about our other project for the season? Yeah, why not? Okay, so some of you are already playing the Bold Predictions game. Hawaii winning meant that if you had Hawaii gets a victory over a Pac-12 team,

congratulations. You've got your one point for that. But we are Separately at Banner Society, eight of us are putting together basically an emotional investment that we will individually make for the season and track over the course of the season. We're probably going to have this out, well, whatever I say will be off by at least a week. So let's say tomorrow. Christmas. And let's hope that that works in our favor. It won't. It won't be. So yeah, Holly, let's start with yours, because it is an interesting choice that you've decided to put your heart into? I used to have this thing.

Let's back up for a second, and let's talk about picking. Hello, hello, shut down, full cat. We acknowledge you. Y'all, we are recording at night for the first time this season, and he is online. He is alive and online. He's usually very sleepy when we record in the off season in the middle of the afternoon. And I tried to bribe him with treats in the pre-show to keep quiet. And he housed them all immediately and just ran in here and started hollering again.

I mean, it doesn't work with Spencer. Why would it work with this cat? Oh, I was talking about Spencer. Okay. Let those cats holler. So we've had versions of this discussion before. And they usually pertain to the SEC West. But every year for the decade or more that I sat in the ballroom of SEC Media Days, like, it would bother me.

Just picking Alabama, you know, to win because there's no way out of this quagmire, right? Like either Bama wins and you were correct or you pick someone else and it's like, oh, you're just trying to be cute because Bama's going to win. And heading into a season that looks, if anything, chalkier than last season, which as we've previously discussed was the chalk-tock-chalk-chose season up until what the second quarter of the national title game, it kind of felt the same. So I started to do what I usually do in these situations, and I'm just picking new people to win out of boredom.

Georgia is boring, and Kentucky has eight home games. And I would very much like for Kentucky to win the SEC East. I feel like I was inspired to do this when I went to look at Kentucky's schedule on Kentucky's official athletic website and saw that they had already recorded the team having a win. That win was in their spring game. Like they did it all out. It says UK versus University of Kentucky.

Win 64 to 10. I'm like, man, I like that energy. I like your, anyway, they open with Toledo. So this may, the good news is I'll be, I'll be in or out of this in a hurry in six days or five days by the time you listen to this because they open with Toledo. See, I'm excited for them to lose the Toledo. and that fuels them. Oh, God, if they lose to Toledo and then go, like, undefeated in conference play, man, man, put that in my veins. Their draws out of the west are Arkansas and Missy State. They get Florida at home.

They go to Georgia. They get Tennessee at home, which not like that's going to matter. They get Louisville at home. I get Missouri at home. I really just like for Kentucky to, I'm looking forward to another. I return to the lobster pot years of the SEC East, and I kind of just want Kentucky to ankle bite their way to the top because, oh, Jesus Christ, like, save me from having to say literally anything

about Georgia football that's descriptive. It's like, oh, let me, how do I, how do I describe these flat front, no iron tackies? You mean Jake, you mean Jake Fromm? Man, listen, more like Jake From Office Depot. anyway, that's, that's mine. I have started to flail about and make, because I don't feel like there's any real virtue, especially in these incredibly chalky times we live in.

There is no virtue in saying, oh, Georgia and Alabama are going to be in Atlanta in December. Yeah, probably, but God, in the meantime, isn't it more fun to root for something that would be interesting? Kentucky A&M SEC Championship game. Yeah, picking Georgia, Alabama is, sort of like being the oncologist who has all the tough cases, like, your, your, your prediction rate is great. You're not having fun. Yeah, it looks like I'm right again. You're going to die.

Like, to what, to what possible benefit, as I often say to young Alex Kirchner, to what possible benefit? Like, who benefits if I'm sitting here picking Alabama and Georgia? Who cares? I don't mind being wrong. And I don't really have anything particularly hard in my heart against University of Georgia, I just want things to be different. Spencer, yours is not necessarily different, or at least not wildly different. Nope, nope, I just want to practice this by saying, I am on Team Texas with 10 wins, okay, and have been on it for a long time because it's been very good to me. I believe it won me a chicken bet one year, and it has become my favorite running joke

that Texas, every single year, they play football, will win exactly 10 games. On the other hand, there's Texas A&M, our SEC brethren, who have decided that the approach to playing football is to spend more money publicly than anyone else. That's cute, by the way, because the actual approach to winning is to spend more money everywhere, publicly and extremely privately, if you catch my drift. Now, Texas A&M and Texas both projected to have pretty good seasons, and that's why I would like to be. like to go ahead and just Riverside both of those because I think at least I think they will both be expensive disappointments my favorite kind of thing because there's nothing more Texan than going to go and we're going to spend a lot of money on this and in football especially college football that doesn't always work so what I'm does this does disappointment look

like the same thing for both like how are you what qualifies as disappointment for each of that. Oh, we can hit this pretty easily, right? Because I think what passes for disappointment for Texas A&M after dropping, um, is that $70 million on, on Jimbo? Probably more. Who can you can even keep track? It's 70 mil guaranteed. It's more. Is it more? It's 70. Over 10? Or is it 75? It's 75. I'm pretty sure. It's a lot of money. It's enough that, it's enough that anything less than a national title in the first what five years six years six would be a long time if you want if you want a particularly overheated hot tub of expectation let's fast forward to if jimbo makes it to year six without winning a serious title of some sort that would be that'd be real bad and there's a lot

of evidence by the way that a and m will leave this season with something less than a title and something more like disappointment because in the 21st century, since the year 2000, they've only won double-digit games once. Once! That'd be 11 and 2 in 2012. That particular saga required a generational talent at quarterback, at least at college, Johnny Mansell.

And a coach who just lost to Hawaii. Yeah, we bring it full circle here, don't we? We do. So, disappointment being, the norm at A&M, and with everyone going, oh man, they got Kelman, Jimbo's got this all figured out, I see no reason to think any of those things are true. Both given history and the fact that they play a very difficult schedule, where losing three games seems very reasonable. In fact, with that schedule, every year losing three games seems extremely

reasonable. That's before we mentioned. They play Clemson again this year. So, yeah. A&M totally easy to come in at something that feels less like success and more like disappointment, even with what would objectively be a good season with this schedule. That's before you consider, I don't know how much money y'all sank into this thing. I know you wanted the biggest pool in the neighborhood, but, you know, sorry, sinkholes got a mind of their own. You could think of it as a really big pool that goes all the way down to the aquifer. A pool with a personality. Yeah.

Of its own. A surprise pool. A surprise. What's better than that, y'all? Sudden pool. The Lord has gifted you a pool. Hey, y'all, now we can go fracking. Oh, man, maybe that's how Hugh Freeze hurt his back.

They don't call it unnatural gas, do they? You freeze hurt his back fracking. Please don't use the word hole that close to you, freeze. You just so much say hole. Why? Shut your freeze hole, Ryan. Let me tell you a little bit about the hole in my heart. all right we're going to move on to jasons oh in texas by the way oh please like they're already

there with they're already there with tom herman they're there with anybody who runs texas football right if tom herman wins 10 games again right or if they go 10 and 2 that can still be disappointment for them because they'd be like oh that's heisman winner sam elinger right there should done better than that should have made the playoff with that yeah you see what the aggies are doing they won nine games It was nine and three. I like that your prediction really is less like you're down on Texas and Texas A&M and more you've given yourself a lot of reason to be an LSU fan this season. That and this, that and the poison of expectation and money, we're already there.

I'm already right. I just have to wait. I just have to wait. Oh, wait. Bundle this with an economy on the brink of collapse. and Texas and Texas A&M boosters that no longer can get the buyout money together. Whose economy is that? Or as the dollar collapses, now they're funneling like trillions of dollars into their programs.

Right. That's how Boris Johnson becomes the new Texas head coach. My favorite part of this is like, objectively Texas is like this is like a nine and three team. That's what all the numbers say. But people are putting them in the playoffs. So the disappointment is baked in. It's right there. This is going to be a fun one for Spencer to follow, because I think it's going to cash.

Because no, you think both will be? I think A&M, I think that the expectations are not high enough this year for it to cash for money. Yeah, I mean, A&M, that's a seven or eight win team on paper, but does the Aggie Brain acknowledge paper? Absolutely not. That's Fiat currency. I mean, like, Aggie fans, like reasonable ones online. Yes, they're at least four. They say, like, yeah, if we go to a bowl with this schedule, fine, you know.

But there's other Aggies as well. So. I mean, let's remember. We'll check it after they lose to Auburn or something. No, no, remember, we frame this up. November 16th versus South Carolina on Military Appreciation Day. The most holy day of all. That's when this all unravels in a hideous 11-8 loss to South Carolina.

Jason, your storyline you're going to be pouring your heart into. So this one has a couple, what's the word, tributaries that feed into it? Sure. When a little rivers make a big river. So let's go back to 2014. All right. when ESPN SEC bias hollering became a real thing, right? SEC Network, they're hijacking the playoff, you know, blah, blah, blah. This became a thing because of Florida State fans who saw their undefeated team slipping in the polls, Danny Connell's. You know, he's leading an insurgency, so on and so forth.

The SEC Network. That's Dr. Neurologist, Danny Cannell, please. Now, there's the Bond villain, Danny Cannell. So the SEC Network is hijacking football because SEC teams are getting into better games than they deserve. Now, flash forward to 2019, ESPN just launched another conference network, didn't they? The ACC Network.

So let's see if, let's cut right to it. Let's see if we can get a four or five lost team into a New Year's Six Bowl from the ACC in the first year of ESPN owning an ACC network. And then let's see if we keep the same energy that we did back when the SEC network was allegedly running things in 2014. So here's how it goes. In this year's New Year's six setup, there are very, very few at-large spots because the conference ties, once you factor in the two games that are playoff games this time around, you have basically only one at-large spot left over. There's going to be a lot of top 12 teams who don't have spots in New Year's six games.

games basically the ACC sets up to have by far the funniest spot the spot they're guaranteed assuming Clemson makes the playoff which is basically the safest assumption on the board because coming into the season the the ACC team expected to win the most games was Miami with a win total over under it got as high as 9.5 if you wanted to take the under let's go ahead and cut that down to 9 maybe even a little lower if you're you know if you got major concerns about that offensive line or whatever the point is maybe it's miami maybe it's virginia tech uh maybe it's it's even syracuse you're going to have like a four lost team right there ranked like 23rd or something and even if they're nine and three they got to go to charlotte to lose to clemson

to become a four lost team that team gets an orange bowl bid very likely at the expense of you know you could have a team rank like seventh or eighth or ninth miss out and have to go to the the, you know, citrus bowl or whatever because of this terrible ACC team. It gets better. So there's also a citrus rule where if the orange, blah, blah, blah, the orange bowl has certain stipulations that can lead to an ACC team taking the Big Ten spot in the Citrus Bowl. So now you could have yet another five-loss ACC team stealing a spot from yet another top 15 team and kicking, you know, a Big Ten team down to, you play out the ramifications, a Big Ten team falls down to one the Big Ten's worst bowls, which is the Red Box, right?

This is the only bowl broadcast on Fox. So now, in the first year of the ESPN-owned ACC network, an ESPN-affiliated ACC team have taken two of the best bowl spots and kicked a Big Ten team down to Fox's only bowl. So now we got broadcast beef, you know, not just conferences are mad about this, but we have, you know, all of the, whatever is left of Fox College football has now been poisoned as well.

Also, that Red Box game that gets the one mad Big Ten team that's most screwed by all this, it's on at the same time as the Music City, so no one's even going to watch it. Michigan State, baby. Michigan State, nothing would be more, nothing would be better than the Martin Antonio retirement game taking place in a bowl game that you can't watch. So we're going to get a, yeah, we're going to get an eight and four Virginia. You know how you would have wanted to go.

And 8 and 4 Virginia will kick an 8 and 4 Michigan State down to the least watched bowl. I have one flaw with your argument, and that is that maybe the ACC Network won't operate in that framework because it wasn't designed to amplify the ACC and its fortunes. Well, I mean, my thing is it's not even calling the ACC Network a propaganda network. But here's the thing. What if the ACC network is actually just something Mark Rick's wife started to get him out of the house? So my thing is it's not even about what they're actually doing because what they're actually doing is very cool and fun, right? Yeah. Like they got West Durham. They got our boy West Durham. Mark Rick is awesome on air. It's about just the humor of the perception result. That's all I'm saying.

If you haven't, if you don't subscribe to our newsletter, you should. You should go and do that. Stephen Godfrey basically spent his self-appointed assignment during the Florida Miami game was just watching Mark Richt sort of wander and not know what to do with his hands or brain during the entire ACC

like coach's room version of that game. It's very charming. The ACC Network, we want to come into the broadcast booth and broadcast an ACC event so you can prove your objectivity by letting us do that

because we are the most objective analysts. Does it matter that Spencer has Georgia Tech ties? No, I mean he will have to be, yes, he will have to be he cannot, that he has too much skin in the game.

Far, far too much. A year and a half for a master's degree there. Lots and lots of skin flaps. Yeah. I think our deal's going to be a really, well, I think a good offer for them, right? We will drive ourselves to Charlotte. Sure.

Right? So you don't have to pay for that. We'll pay for our own hotel. We're going to stay with a friend. That's fine. We'll sleep in the car. We don't even need it to be football, to be clear. Like, I think almost any sport is on the table, right?

Will they let us do a pit? Oh, yeah. We're aiming way lower than football. Okay, good. No, come on. They'll let us do a pit game. I don't think that will. That's not football.

Can you just imagine us chanting, put pit in? Or just being the biggest pit homer's imaginable. and having at least like seven Wake Forest fans become enraged at how... I'd like to cancel my subscription! To the ACC network. These lunatics are talking about Pitt as the greatest football team of our time. I was never yelling my dick after they yell put Pitt in.

Yeah, when we say like, when we talk propaganda, you know, no, it's, it's going to be a normal conference network until we get on. That's when the actual propaganda begins. Can I do all the good propaganda cues to? Like, some people say Pitt's the greatest football team of all time. Many people are saying. Many people are saying it. You hear it more and more. More and more.

They come up to me and say, sir, pit, it's so good. The biggest pit. My storyline, and I struggled with how exactly to phrase it, but I think I landed on the one that feels cleanest to me. I think a 10-win team is slumbering in the Big Ten West. College football's division that has gone the longest without putting a team in the college football playoff or before that, the BCS Championship.

Nobody currently in the Big Ten West is projected to win even nine games. Nebraska's got the highest that I found within eight and a half. Wisconsin's at eight. I was at seven and a half. Minnesota's at seven. But I think, and I have no reason to believe this, and I'm just choosing to chain myself to the weird mast that is the Big Ten West, I think there is one team, and I don't know which one it is, amongst this group, that is going to have a surprisingly good season, and probably in the process, fuck something up for somebody else. I don't know if that's Iowa

beating a like Iowa State team that looks like it could have one of its best seasons in years. I don't know if this is one of these teams knocking off Michigan or Penn State. And again, no idea which one it is.

I just feel very, like I have this feeling that somebody in the Big Ten West is going to be a 10 game winner this year. Ten, that's it? Yeah. That doesn't say it.

If there were some kind of mnemonic device, we could use. Did you actually mean 12, Ryan? Can we go 11? Can you give me 10 prior to the conference championship game? I want a Big 10 West team with like queasy playoff hopes where they're like, we could make it,

but do we really want to? Look, 10 or more accomplishes that. Okay. If we're calling 10 plus. If somebody is, yeah, yeah, I'm not saying they're going to hit 10 right on. Like, if somebody hits 11. I just want you to aim as high as you can. I think 10 is reasonable, considering that there is nobody who is clearly in the stratosphere right now and that I want to, I want to believe that this will work.

And I don't need, like, all of these teams to enter October already with two losses and be like, well, fuck. All right. Good job me. I'm going to be so damn mad if you make a 10-win Northwestern team happen with this. Oh, man. So mad. Northwest 10 As a Medill grad

That will infuriate me Because it will distract from our academic excellence The only team that I am confident Won't do this Illinois I'm not at all word about Illinois being it The other six teams in the division It maybe seems feasible I do need Illinois to lose all of its games

Basically though Illinois if you fuck this up for me I'm going to be really pissed Yeah you need them to be West Rutgers Yes which they are they pretty much are in many years so have you looked at nebraska's schedule because i think it'll get you up to 11 i think it's possible but you know they've got hey where are my manners happy scott frost week everybody hey happy scott frost happy scott month yeah um yeah i

Nebraska's got a Nebraska's got a shot at it um scott tempers Wisconsin's Wisconsin schedule is not like crazy right now yeah i mean you know Wisconsin did 12 recently, so maybe you should go for 12. Listen, stop trying to goad me into this. Wait, what is the cutoff point for 10 wins? Is it like bowls and everything? No, I'm saying, I'm saying at the end. So like if you look at their helmet schedule, I'm just saying the regular season.

So it doesn't count if they make the conference championship game, but they only have nine, I don't get it. They have to win 10 regular season games. Okay, good, I like it. How delighted would you be if for the next five years under Paul Chris, Wisconsin only put up win totals of six. or 12. That's how we do it, bro. We don't break them up. It's like, it's just bulking and cutting.

Yeah, it's just bulking and cutting. Yeah, I've got to take it out to a six-pack. Next week, next year, though, I'm going for the 12. That's the new term for, yeah, bowl eligibility. We got a six-pack of puppies. What are you doing tonight? I'm going to stay a bowl-eligible. But, you know, tomorrow night, it might be getting a 12.

Belver. Might be going for the goal championship. So when I'm cranky, I don't know, in five weeks, you all are free to remind me. It's because I chose to care about every team except again, Illinois, in the Big Ten West. Also, you're moving in the middle of a football season. Shh, nobody knows that yet. Oh, cool. There is a very possible scenario here where, like, halfway through the season, I'm like, okay, got a couple teams in the mix, and they all shot each other. Cool.

Somehow, Iowa and Nebraska beat each other twice. is that NFC North schedule that's if I were Nebraska played each other twice you wouldn't blink right I don't think it would it would be on the schedule and it'd be three weeks after they played the last time and nobody would Gus Johnson be like Gus Johnson here playing for the first time this year you've got Iowa Nebraska

one of the New Mexico schools is playing Liberty twice this year so like why not why not Wake Forest and UNC are playing a non-conference game there are no rules there are no rules did you see that north carolina is trying to start a new tradition yeah where'd they come up with that one of lighting the tower in the color of the university hmm those are head coach and be mac brown you know in an entirely original thought that i had like his son no no the the unretired mac brown like his idiot nephew no no like actual Mac Brown, yeah. Like the former player from like 10 years ago, right? God, please let his son-in-law

accidentally level the tower at UNC trying to light it blue. I'm just concerned that he's going to be like snowblind putting on all that blue at once. I'm excited for him to like try to start a hook of horns, but you have to like curl your fingers. A ram horns. I feel like the statute of limitations has run out to the point where a brand new Longhorn Network staffer, once was trying to get Mac Brown set up for an interview and he refused to acknowledge this woman's presence in the room as she was like trying to get him fitted with a microphone and whatnot because it was dead of winter and she had a red scarf on

and he was like he was like the opposite of a bull like he ignored her like a toddler until someone came up to her from Texas and was like and she took off the scarf and he's like well hello Oh, and then acted like she was friendly. Like she just materialized. Yes, yes. It's been long enough now, and I think everybody involved in that particular situation has moved on. But yeah, man, oh, God.

The ramp. You can see now while I was never a fighter pilot. Those are still NC State colors, so we still got, Ryan, I've tried to do the RAM hand sign. I think I've given myself a cramp. It hurts a lot. This hand sign sucks. The RAM. It's making a thing.

The cramp. The cramp. You can't spell RAM without cramp. Cramp them. Cramp of rams. So humid here. Oh, God. I got the heel cramps.

The ram horn network would be incredible because you know that one show could just be Jerry Stackhouse beats the shit out of people. That's it. Just Jerry Stackhouse handing out two pieces to random people in Kitson, North Carolina. Let's roll, y'all. Anyway, whenever anything goes wrong with, whenever anything goes awry with UNC this season, and it will, we just blame MacBron. Brown's lack of object permanence. How am I supposed to function as a head coach without a TV network

devoted to my... Please don't leave me alone with all this food. I tend to bloat.