The Herd with Colin Cowherd - 3 & Out - Michael Calabrese from The Action Network joins the pod

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

John talks with Michael Calabrese from The Action Network about how College Baseball is on the rise and will be something worth betting on because of all the hype around it, do the Lakers have a chance to win a championship in the future with Lebron on the team, what's going on with Lincoln Riley and USC, and finally they discuss his upcoming book; LEGENDARY BOWL: Deciding College Football's G.O.A.T. 6:07 - Michael Calabrese interview 10:42 - JJ Redick or Dan Hurley to the Lakers 14:18 - College football storylines 28:43 - LEGENDARY BOWL: Deciding College Football's G.O.A.T. Follow John on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for the latest. Check out Gametime - the fastest growing ticketing app in the US, and the official ticketing app of 3 & Out and GoLow -  for tickets to all of your favorite NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA teams. Concert and comedy show tickets, too. Go to Gametime now to create an account, download the app and use code JOHN for $20 off your first purchase. #Volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Yep, that's me, Clivert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford show on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

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Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. See dkng.combe for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms, and responsible gaming resources. What is going on, everybody? It's your old friend John Littlecough. This is three and out podcast, by the way. I've been, we haven't had a podcast the last couple days, because I've been sick.

I don't know what happened to me. I wouldn't say it's the sick as I've ever been. That would be food poisoning. My friends at Chipotle, even though I love Chipotle, but it was because of Chipotle. That's the worst I've ever felt ever. I honestly thought I might not make it.

And I think that's a common theme when anyone ever gets food poisoning. This one is just like the flu. And it has started kicking in Monday night. I felt it coming. And then by Tuesday, I took a combined. like thousand steps the last 50 hours.

So it's been brutal, but I feel a little bit better today. And we're going to have on Mike Calabrese from the Action Network. He just wrote a book. He covers college football. And he wrote a book calling the legendary bowl deciding the college football goat. So he basically takes the best teams of the last 45 years, puts them in a March Madness-style bracket and plays it out on EA 2014. the college football video game.

And it's coming out on Monday. So I'm interested to see what he thinks about the Dan Hurley story as well. But this is going to be a podcast for the day because I'm running on fumes. I'm literally sitting on my desk just sweating profusely. So mentally tough, but the last couple days sucked. It's weird. It's like, I got to do something. But it's like, I don't have the energy to do anything.

It's like, I got to get a Christian McCaffrey take. I'm like, I couldn't even function. So we'll get to that next week. Hopefully I feel better. Other than that, yeah, subscribe to the pod. Everything's up on YouTube. And hopefully everyone's had a good week. So before we dive in to the podcast, though,

you know I got to tell you about my friends at game time. I went to a concert last week. It was awesome. Saturday night, Luke Combs, State Farm Arena out in the middle of nowhere in Glendale. And it was very enjoyable. It was the last time I had fun because I've been sick all week. But I'd highly recommend going to one.

If you want to go to a concert, if you want to go to a comedy show, if you want to go to a game, you want to watch the Yankees, they're hot. The Phillies, they're super hot. You want to get out, enjoy some sun. Well, do it on me because GameTime's the official ticketing app of this podcast. We are trying to take care of you guys. Take the guest work out of buying tickets with GameTime. Download the GameTime app.

Create an account and use the code, John, for $20 off your first podcast. purchase, terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem the code, J-O-H-N for $20 off. Download the GameTime app today. Last minute tickets, lowest prices guarantee. Okay, very excited to have on one of my guy Stucky's running mates over at the Action Network.

He has a new book out, legendary bowl, decided college football goats. I dove into it a little bit this morning. It's basically 68 teams, all college football. football powerhouses since 1980. I see a couple early upset potentials. Mike Calabrese of the Action Network. He writes a column for the New York Post.

He's been talking about college sports for a long, long time, a passion of his, given that he's a Philly guy. Not a huge Eagles guy, Mike? No, I mean, I like the Eagles. Unlike some of my neighbors, my emotional state doesn't ride or die with how the birds are doing. But, yeah, college football comes first, and my household always has, always will.

What I like about you guys at the Action Network is you guys are degenerates, and I can relate to that. I mean, I flip on big bets on campus, and you guys are going deep on the college baseball world series. I worked at Fresno State in 2008 and 09, and if you remember, they had the upset of all-time upsets in Omaha and won the college baseball world series. They beat Georgia. It's very rare for that to happen. Usually it's what's LSU was the defending champion. and they just lost to North Carolina who is clearly a powerhouse, the Florida states, the, you know, the big boys win.

But it's a pretty cool event. And you guys are talking about it gambling. It's why it's why you resonate with me over at the Action Network. I know that. I mean, this year also on top of it generally being kind of a wild tournament, this year in particular, you have six of the final 16 teams that are either three or four seeds. And what does that mean for people who don't follow college baseball? That's essentially like in March Madness, if six double-digit seeds made the second

weekends, you know, 10, 11, 12 seeds. That's how crazy it's been. You got teams like Evansville coming out of nowhere. And I think that's what adds to the mystique of the event where you have the Giants and you have the Cinderella's. And the pressure clearly slides towards those home teams because there's a difference between losing on a neutral floor to another power program more or less. And there's a big difference being at home, disappointing your home crowd, losing to a team like Evansville coming out of the Missouri Valley. So I love the storylines. I love the storylines. I love the energy. And then it all ending in Omaha, I think it's really special as well, where you have all the fan bases competing to see who can eat or drink. I don't know exactly which one it is,

as many jello shots as possible. So there's lots of culture around college baseball. And I think over the past, what's called 10 to 15 years, I think the national media is kind of getting in on the party a little bit. Well, if you see how do people go to these SEC games, I mean, they're 15, 20,000 people. I had a buddy that played college baseball. They played at Miami back in the late 2010s, maybe maybe 2009 and he said it was it felt like a major league baseball environment so in the south you know obviously the SEC programs Florida State Clemson North Carolina the I mean the Oakland A's wouldn't have to move if they get fans to show up so this is it's a really big deal in the south I mean and I've been saying forever the power of college football is the SEC all the money has a rising tide lift all

boats I mean these these golf programs in the south now fly private Auburn just won the golf national championship. All the money, and it's only the beginning, right? We're going to see it with the Big Ten. And it's why we're doing this. The story broke this morning about Dan Hurley going to the Lakers. My initial reaction is this is trying to mess with JJ Redick, because I would imagine he's asking for a lot of money.

I can't see any way that Dan Hurley would leave Yukon to go to the Lakers, northeast guy, the Knicks, something like that. I would be stunned. I'm not saying that they have a contact and I'm asking him for the job and Coach K once upon a time almost got there. Billy Donovan, you know,

the Orlando job and backed out and then eventually took the OKC job. My reaction, I don't know where you stand. I know you, obviously, they're the Powerhouse College Basketball program. I would be stunned if he ends up as the, it's a shitty job. I mean, LeBron's 40.

They're going to force him to draft his kid. Anthony Davis is just injured a lot, even though he's a very talented player. They have no room to ask. any players. I don't know. I don't think it's a great NBA job. Like when Billy Donovan took OKC, that was a pretty remarkable opportunity. Now, Kevin ended up leaving, but you had the opportunity to win a championship. You do not with the Lakers. And people are going to say I'm a Laker hater. That's a fact. They have no chance. I think it's in that short list of teams with

special mystique. I'm certainly, I'm not a Lakers fan. I'm not a ride or die NBA fan. I hate him. I hate them. When you mention the Lakers or the Yankees or the Dallas Cowboys, and I understand that they're polarizing for a lot of different reasons. People's imagination and their ego starts to go, what if I was the person to turn that around? And clearly, if he ends up going there and they turn it around and they win an NBA championship, his resume is cemented as one of the greatest college basketball,

or excuse me, basketball minds in the history of the sport. And I think after winning two in a row, especially the way that he's won in the last two tournaments, just going away, no one coming close, he could at least make the argument, you know, from a negotiation standpoint, what do you have to prove in stores, Connecticut? Like, you've already dominated that level just as you dominated high school basketball for nine years before that.

I agree with you, though, as someone who is a tremendous tactician, you watch you can play, the sets they get into, that's not modern NBA basketball. It's more ego management, how you go ahead and handle those players and also handle the fact that you're not being able to buy the groceries. You're the cook, but you do not get to choose who gets to play for you. in the kind of way that you do at the college basketball level. So I think it would be a mistake, but I think it's very real that he's going to take it,

particularly because the number is going to have so many zeros behind it. Do you expect him to be the Lakers coach, then? I do, as a matter of fact. I think that this story has, it's not just smoke. I think there's real fire here. I don't necessarily think if it was a more established coach in JJ Reddick and kind of playing one side against the other, I think that could be the narrative.

But in this situation with JJ with the, track record that he has and the lack of experience. I don't think this is just a little gamesmanship by the Lakers front office. I really do think they want Hurley. I do think good coaches can figure it out any era anytime. You know, screamers can lighten up and guys that need to scream can figure it out. After he won a second, I watched a lot of just YouTube interviews. I mean, his practices has like a 1980s NFL field to it, a lot like his father.

It's not the NBA where the Lakers haven't done a practice. five years since LeBron shows it like they don't do shootarounds in the morning so it's it'd be now like I said I I bet on people and he's clearly proven you bet on this guy but it would be a pretty hard 180 from the way that he's used like he couldn't act like that to LeBron and Anthony Davis that's for sure right so it it'd be a fascinating case study I know that like it it'd make the Lakers more interesting I think they'd be more interesting with Dan Hurley than they would with JJ Redick also there's an element that's outside of his control but I think carries a lot of weight,

which is if you come in fire and brimstone, you want to change the culture, you want to say my way or the highway, if you start winning early on, people will buy into it. But it's very easy to go in the opposite direction where this guy is college theatrics. He's trying to puppeteer everything we're doing,

and we're not winning. You can lose a locker room really quick. And we've seen that so many times with college grades moving up to the NBA. You know, talk about Petino, his biggest regret was, you know, his foray into the NBA. It just didn't work.

He couldn't use the same. you know, defensive style. He couldn't motivate in the same way. He didn't have the same kind of God complex that actually worked where players respected him to the same level. So I think it's a tall task. But I don't know, there's just something about the Lakers mystique and that opportunity to say that I figured it out that I think will play to his ego at the end of the day. I think he'll do it. Before we dive into the book, a couple of college football things I want to dive into. I got into it, you know, coward is a diehard USC guy and he tried to defend him on. I'm sure you saw the story that broke last week how Lincoln's begging to get out of the game.

And I'd go, it'd be one thing if he was playing, let's say, prime Alabama, and they had built this thing up. LSU lost their starting quarterback. LSU lost multiple wide receivers high in the draft. Oh, their defense. Oh, yeah, they also fired their defensive coordinator. So you could argue there are a lot of similarities. Brian Kelly gets there, you know, at the same time Lincoln does to USC to LSU.

I thought it was a really, and I saw that you had the O-4 USC team. as one of the number one seeds, which is probably an easy. Setting the number one seats for you, at least two or three out of the four of them had to be pretty easy. I thought it was an embarrassing moment for the program. You know,

because it'd be easy one for LSU to Brian Kelly. But yeah, I'm going through a transition time too. We're all trying to get the playoffs now. My personal take is, and listen, I've met Lincoln. He obviously had a lot of success in Oklahoma. I do think the USC's thing is a little bit different animal. And that's a pretty,

they expected more when they gave $120 million. There was a reason the LSU gave Brian Kelly, what, $90, $100 million? To say no, hell yeah, we want to play you. And this isn't in LSU, it's in Vegas. Well, sorry, I rambled on that one, but I'm pretty fired out. I thought that was, because I'm a West Coast guy. I want these, it's awesome that Oregon's good now, that Washington made a run last year.

But I don't think USC is going to be good for the foreseeable future. I just, I don't think it's really going to work with Lincoln, at the level in which that they thought when they, when they traded, signed him or however the hell that worked. All right. You said you're a West Coast guy, specifically you're a Fresno guy, which built their entire brand on any team, anywhere, anytime. And this is the opposite.

This is him basically letting it leak out that they didn't want to play this team at this time. And they just show that they were scared. And so much of recruiting, of program perception is you speak it into reality. And for everything that he's accomplished offensively, and all the Heismans and his offense being plug and play, he should be able to build on that. And instead he's tearing it down and looks like, you know,

they're putting their tail between their legs and running away from an opportunity. I agree with you. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And what's interesting is that when you look back at like the Pete Carroll hire before he went on that run with the Trojans, a lot of people did not like the hire because they felt like he wasn't Hollywood enough. He didn't understand how to bring in, you know, high scoring offense or to be able to recruit. And he was more of a defensive mind, hard-nosed kind of guy.

I still think even if you're in a city like Los Angeles and when the team's really good, you're as famous as the Lakers and the Dodgers and everything else, you have to have a core toughness. And at least he's trying with a new defensive coordinator. But I think it starts at the top. His Oklahoma teams were always soft defensively. And when the chips were down, they just didn't give you that feeling that they were going to fight through it. And that's despite having incredible offensive talent. The Kyler Murray's Baker Mayfield basically was a god in college. All of this great offensive sizzle never paid off.

because they didn't have the defensive stake. And I think it's the same situation here. I think it's a black eye for the program to go out and to be linked to a statement saying that you want to get out of a game. You want it to be the opposite. You want to say, the hell with it. We'll go play in Death Valley and we'll show you that we're not afraid anybody. And to go back to those USC teams from the early 2000s, they played on the plains at

Auburn. That kind of got that run started for them. And Matt Leiner talked about it where it was so loud. It was so intimidating and we made the place quiet. That's the kind of energy you have to have both as a coach and a player. to be able to go from a team that's flirting with the playoffs to a team that other programs are scared of. And I think for the money that they're paying him,

he absolutely should be delivering that. Yeah, to me, if you substitute Oregon for USC in this game, they'd be licking their lips because it's a home game in Vegas. Yeah, and for us to be wanting out, it's even easier for their fans. You know, it's a four and a half hour drive. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I definitely wouldn't pick USC as a potential playoff team this year,

now going into this conference. Would you? I mean, do you think they're one of the 12 best teams going into this 2024 fall season? I do not think they are. I don't think they're built to win in the postseason. But I'll say this, the 12 team playoff is going to be interesting because I think both fans, players, coaches, and Vegas, we're not quite sure what it's going to look like yet. And I mentioned Vegas, because when you look at the odds to win the national championship,

basically they have the same swatch bunch of teams ranked in that 3 to 1 to 20 to 1 range as they did one was a four-team playoff. But now we've, you know, gone from four teams, tripled it up to 12 teams. There's more access and there's an opportunity for teams to get hot at the right time. And then it becomes less about your personnel and more about your path. Do you get a home playoff game? Are you playing a G5 team? Is, you know, one of your opponents, do they have a quarterback who's injured or a star wide receiver? All of these other things come into the conversation. So I don't think they are even close to being considered a top 10 team in terms their overall talent and mentality and coaching.

But that doesn't mean that they can't sneak into the playoff because when you look at those 9, 10, 11, 12 teams at the back ends of it, a lot of them are going to have multiple losses. They're going to have warts in a lot of ways that USC has had. So then it just becomes a question of do you get the right boost, the right win right at the ends? Do you get a little bit lucky to get in? So I'm not quite ready to throw them out of a 12 team here in 2024, but in terms of winning multiple games, I think they're far from that.

Is there a team that's not considered a top two or three, you know, Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon that you like as a national championship sleeper? You know, one name that kind of comes to mind. Just given the conference they've been playing in the last couple years and how well they've played is, is Ole Miss. I mean, they've been pretty good. Ole Miss is absolutely the team because not only do they have the talent and, you know, the transfer portal king in Lane Kiffin, but one thing that I really like in terms of the Transfer Portal era is you're not. going to be able to have roster consistency the way you did five, 10 years ago, but you can have consistency at the positions that matter. Head coach, starting quarterback, and both coordinators.

There's 27 teams in the country that bring back all of those elements. Ole Miss is one of them. And then when you look at their roster talent top to bottom, what they did in the portal, I think if it all clicks, they could be a team that could surprise in that 12 to 15 to 1 window and catch a team like Ohio State, Georgia, or Texas, sleeping a little bit. And like I said, it comes down to path. You don't have to beat all three. of those teams necessarily. You can be lucky. And in a new, you know, division list SEC as well, there's opportunities to avoid landmines

where previously they were always in the SEC West. They always had yeoman's work to be able to just get to Atlanta, which they never were able to do. And I think it's a different new ball game for them this season. Do you think Ohio State is their best chance in years, given how deep their roster is or do you question the quarterback play? Quarterback play based on the offensive skill talent around him, getting Abuka back, was huge. I think that they can handle him with kid gloves and turn him into a, let's call it, a B-plus game

manager. When you look at the rest of this roster, that is enough. If you win in the turnover game and he plays, you know, basically B-plus football, as I mentioned, I think this is going to be enough for them to get a high seed, get into the playoff, potentially get a buy, because their season really comes down to three games. They're at Oregon, they're at Penn State, and they're hosting Michigan. The rest of their schedule is basically powder puff, you know, two max schools out of the gate with a bye week. That's a perfect amount of time for Chip Kelly and this offensive staff to tinker to try to figure out what works and what doesn't and then be able to go into their conference slate with some momentum on the offensive side of the ball. Because defensively,

I think it's a story that has been brought up how talented they are, but the continuity and the experience and then adding in that Downs kid from Bama, they could be arguably the top, you know, defense in the entire country, both in terms of skill and also their defensive coordinator, who I love. So I think this is a team that does not. not need a a plus Heisman level quarterback play to win the national title. And that's the other element of it is, you know, when you're playing multiple playoff games, it's not just outscore everybody. You got to win some of those clunkers. You got to win some of those one possession games. We're not turning the ball over matters. So I'm really bullish on Ohio State. If I was an

odds maker, I would flip their odds with Georgia. The fact that they're plus 455 to one as opposed to three to one, I think that's a mistake. And it may seem like a small one. But, you know, when you're betting throughout the course of the year, getting fortuitous numbers, some stalemers that are hanging around, that's the way to make money. You know, I lived in Philly for a couple of years.

It was actually right when the Joe Paterno thing kind of broke. And we had guys, I was working for the Eagles, we had guys on the staff that had played for Joe. And I was reading some of your book, and you wrote that potentially Philly had to be that in New York, the first place for 24-hour-a-day sports radio.

And that's, you know, I'm from California, where pro sports are huge and pro sports are massive in Philly too, but that was a story because of Penn State football that can, you know, they are not, I wouldn't put on the Eagles level, but they get talked about when they matter. And James Franklin has done a good job. I mean, he recruits a boatload of NFL players.

I mean, their team this year has got to be one of the more talented teams in the country. But last year, in some of the big games offensively, I don't even know what to say. And, you know, look at Lane Kiffin, for example. Most people would say they're on somewhat similar tier, but like Lane being a fun team to watch and what he's doing at Ole Miss, and then you go Penn State, in theory, should have a lot more resources.

And it's like his team's not that fun to watch. They can't score against the teams that matter. Is anything going to change? And I mean, can he just keep cruising along, 9, 10 wins, produce NFL guys? Or eventually it's like, are we even close to Michigan, Ohio State? and now Oregon enters the chat. So it could look even worse. Well, I'll answer the last part of the question first.

I think it's going to get better just by virtue of the fact that no team would have been a bigger beneficiary in the last 10 years, the 14th playoffs, if it had been a 12 team playoff than Penn State. I believe they would have five or six playoff bids. Yeah, I read that, but they would have, but do you think they would have won a lot of those games? It's like just because you make the NCAA tournament, if you get bounced on Thursday, like, okay. I think the 16-17 team, the one with Joe Moorhead calling the shots offensively with Trace McSorley and Saquan and Godwin and Mike Jusicki, I think those teams got hot at the right time. They played very well. He almost won that Rose Bowl, that classic against USC. Then they go down to the Fiesta Bowl and they played really well there. I think those teams could have made some noise. I don't, I didn't see a national title caliber team in any of those. I would agree with you. The Sequan teams offensively, I mean, obviously, Seekwon. I'm talking about we would just. We just. told this guy's like the next Josh Allen. And I'm watching the play. I'm going, what am I missing here?

Now, luckily, I think what's interesting about Franklin is he gets the credit for being a great recruiter of players. He's also had some home runs in terms of his staff. Bringing in Mani Diaz was a home run on defense. Bringing in Joe Moorhead was a home run on offense. Unfortunately, for him, it didn't line up. He had one, but not the other. And I will give him credit. Mike Gersich, it wasn't working.

You looked at Aller. You wanted to see him, you know, progress and get better. as a player when you look at a school like Ohio State, they're just churning out quarterback after quarterback who is an impact player and Michigan even being able to win at a high level without a player of that caliber. I mean, JJ ends up being a first round NFL draft pick, but they never asked him to take over games. So in comparison to those two schools, you're right, they were falling short. But I will give him credit. He goes and snatches the Kansas offensive coordinator. To make Kansas football fun, I don't think people have a full appreciation for how difficult that

job was. Their offense, even with a backup quarterback for much of last year, being forced into action, they were still super dynamic. They were multiple in terms of their formations. They made defenses prepare for so much. I'm interested to see, does Franklin really hand over the keys to his program to a new offensive coordinator and say, go out and win it for us the way he did with Moorhead? Or is it more of a James Franklin light offense where it's, don't make mistakes, we'll try to, you know, beat the heck out of our non-conference opponents. But if we're going to play Michigan or Ohio We need to get a block field goal. We need to win, you know, in terms of a low scoring game as opposed to getting into a shootout.

We'll see what he does. I think the criticism he gets is warranted. But at the same time, I think the worm is going to turn for Penn State here. I think they're finally going to get into some playoffs. And if this coaching hire is the right one, all of a sudden, I think all the, basically the roadblocks that we're lining up in front of this program are going to be raised and they're going to have an opportunity to take it to the next level. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque.

Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win.

A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music.

The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok. Podcast Network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?

Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at It podcast. I'm Sam Jek. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s.

84 is big to me not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really?

Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let's dive into the book. Legendary Bowl, Deciding College Football's Goat. This book is scheduled to come out on June 10th, correct? That's right.

At 8 p.m., it'll be live on Amazon, both the Kindle, e-reader version, as well as paperback and hardcover. Talk to me about how it originated and then just described to everybody kind of what you did to carry out this simulation, how you went about it. So I grew up in a household, whether it was my mother or my father, we were always super passionate about sports.

And from a very early age, it was always framing things in a historical perspective. How good is Jordan compared to this player? How good is this team compared to a team that played 15 or 20 years ago? Almost every conversation at the championship level broke down into some kind of goat debate. Your house was like first take in Philadelphia. It was basically like first take. But you had to come with receipts. It wasn't gut feelings.

and my father had no problem barry in a nine-year-old Michael Calabrese who was not prepared for some follow-up questions. So that's kind of where it started. And then we put into the mix, the NCAA football video game series, which I played all the way back to College Football USA-95, every single year playing it. And pretty quickly, in the PlayStation era, you could edit the rosters.

And when the last game came out, it got sunset and it was clear this is going to be the last game in the series for the foreseeable future, I started to tinker and to build roster. for who is the best Michigan team or Tennessee or USC or Georgia. And I just started doing it as a hobby. And then pretty quickly, you know, I had 20 teams. I had 30 teams. I had 40. Well, now I can play a hypothetical playoff. I can simulate it, see what would happen. And really the big moment for me was when COVID hit and they shut down sports that week, I put out a tweet and I was like, I'm going to

put together a tournament of the best teams. I made, you know, these rudimentary graphic design cards recapping what happened. And it exploded. And from there, I was like, okay, I'm on to something. People are clearly interested. People want to argue about the teams that I picked, the bracket, what would happen in these hypothetical matchups. So I wanted to blow that out into the biggest form that I could, which in this case is a book. It's close to 300 pages.

I do deep dives on every single team that go all the way back to 1980. And then at the end of the day, I had 68 teams. And it's a format everyone's familiar with. You got play in games. You have four regions. It goes down to the final four of the championship. and just from a pure college football nerd perspective, it was really exciting.

Once I had everything in place, all of the roster editing, it took between five and ten hours for every team, because not only did I need to dig up rosters and look at combined stats and weights and heights and attributes and awards and everything else, I went through, in a lot of these cases, I wasn't born yet,

so I went through and I watched seven of Boston College's games from 1984 with Doug Flutie. It wasn't just flipping on as hell Mary against Miami. I want to see what kind of offense they're running, kind of defense, you know, how aggressive they are with their play calling, because you could fine-tune everything in the game. So once I had that ready, then it was just kind of a joy to watch it go through and just take notes and make sure to transcribe those notes into the book. So it feels like you're reading a real recap as though you would on ESPN.com or in the newspaper, wherever you get your

news. I wanted to give it that feel. So you get to go through this journey for about 200 pages of game recaps. And it's interesting, too, just teasing it out on social media. It's not just about being a champion being the best. A lot of these teams held a special nostalgic place in fans' hearts. He had 2007 Hawaii. He had 1991 East Carolina with Jeff Blake. There's all these teams that all of a sudden, they're alumni from that. Boise State 2010. I saw that's a sneaky. Exactly. There's so many teams that were culturally significant to the sport that weren't champions. And that's really what I love about college football. It's not just who won the Super Bowl. And then there's everybody else. There's 31 losers and one champion. There's room in college

football for people to feel like a success story, whether it's an individual player, winning the Heism, winning a bowl game, having an iconic comeback. And I wanted to represent as many of those stories as I could in this field. Well, you know, what's funny is when I worked at Fresno State in 08 and 09 for Coach Hill, you just had such a reverence for the Boise State program. And I think a lot of people had looked down and made fun of because RIP called Brennan, that Hawaii team got just manhandled by Georgia. And I remember seeing it. in that Boise team for a couple years, and by 2010, they had basically three years of all those guys. It's like, this team is as good as, I thought they could have won a national championship.

And obviously, Capradic and the missed field goals in that game. But to me, I would imagine that's got to be the best non-power five team of the last 20 or 30, 45 years or whatever. They were on a different level, in my opinion, than that Hawaii team. Because I vividly remember watching that Hawaii game in college. I mean, the left tackle couldn't, he couldn't even touch the guy. It wasn't even fair. Where the Boise team, I think they had 12 or 13 guys drafted and several guys in the second and third round in the trenches.

I thought they could have won a national championship. And Kaepernick and that running attack was a pretty tough team to play. It was freezing cold in that game. It was a big time upset. But I do think that Boise team has a special place in my heart because I truly believe they're one of the best teams that, Because forever, they kind of got screwed in the sense that, remember, with the games, they would always put them against another non-power five team.

They played TCU. It felt like every year in a bowl game. It's like, let them play USC or let them play a real team. But that specific team was as good as it gets. Yeah, that team, I mean, you mentioned Kellan Moore. He won 50 games. He went 50 and 3 as a starter. He's going to be a soon-to-be college football hall of famer.

Doug Martin, the muscle hamster, all-time nickname, but also just an absolute beast at running back. Titus Young and Pettus and wide receiver. They had it all. And as you mentioned, usually when I would go through these teams, a lot of them were half teams. They had some glaring weakness or deficiency. Boise was absolutely loaded top to bottom. And their coaching staff did a phenomenal job.

They handled pressure. They kicked off that season against Virginia Tech and they needed a two-minute drill to go down and win the game. And it was like watching a professional team. It was like watching Aaron Rogers go down the field. You just felt this. It was a foregone conclusion that they were going to win. That's how good that they were.

were. And we talked about at the top with USC. You want to strike fear into other teams. They were one of the very few group of five teams I can ever remember that even when they played the big boys, it's like, you better have everything buckled up tight because you need to play a perfect game to beat those Broncos. And that's why it was a no brainer to put them in the field. But what's interesting is with teams like Boise that are such a proud program, I'd basically go through. Is it the 06 team that upset Oklahoma and the Fiesta Bowl? Is it the 2010 team that did lose, but they got a higher AP rating at one point in the season. So there's lots of considerations. And that was also difficult with some power programs like Florida. Is it

the Tebow team? Is the Steve Spurrier 96 team? There's lots of different arguments you could make. But I think that's what makes it fun. And that's what I'm hoping that fans can debate on social and really get into it because there's lots of different things beyond just the wins and losses that make a team special or as highly rated as you could argue that they are. One thing that jumps out to me is, you know, your number one seeds, Nick Sabin didn't have a team that made it. And I think many people you had, the one team from his era would be the 19 LSU team, which is the number one seed. And it's not like one specific team for Saban jumps out because they really change dramatically about the midway point, right? Physical defense run game to be much more power offense.

But they always had a lot of guys that get drafted on defense. my question is with the LSU thing or team, would they be good enough on defense? Patrick Queen was their linebacker right, and Stingley, who was actually one good year in college, was that year and he's awesome in the NFL now. So it's not like they didn't have players, but you just look around and you go, are they good enough on defensively? I mean, they got a billion dollars worth of a player. Yeah, it's interesting that LSU team because the way that you framed it defensively is correct.

Patrick Queen and their secondary. The secondary was elite. They had the Jim Thorpe Award winner. They had Stingley, who was the first true freshman All-American since Adrian Peterson. They just had a ton of talent on the back end of the defense, but you could run on them. Even Ole Miss in that season ran for, I want to say, 300 plus yards. John Rice Plumley went berserk on them. So if they were to draw a team in the tournament that runs Reed option that is run-focused,

a shootout definitely can, you know, unfold. And also you look at that season, we, in retrospect, view them as this unbeatable juggernaut. They almost lost to Texas. That game was, you know, back and forth down to the wire. They end up hitting a long pass at the end of the game that goes for a touchdown to win by 10, or really it was more so if that's a first down and he gets tackled, they win by three in another shootout. So even the very top teams, and I can play this game with every single team in the book, 2001 Miami, they were this close to losing on the road to an eight and four Boston college team. And they're arguably, people love to get into it with all of the

pro talent that they had on that team, they are viewed as invincible. Well, they really needed, you know, to pull a rabbit out of their hat just to beat a team that only won eight games. So that's what's interesting about college football to me, even the most dominant teams historically, they still got a few breaks and they're still, if you play a perfect game against them, and that's what's fun about the tournament, almost every team that you play, even if you're a one seat, they're all special in some way, shape, or form. So you're going to have to play your best football and get lucky to make it all the way

and win six games. When you go back and watch the 80, I've, I've, I was born 84, so I don't really remember 80s college football, but you have the Nebraska team in the mid-90s as one of the one seeds, and I remember them. I mean, obviously, Tommy Frazier and Lawrence Phillips, no one really plays at the highest level college football like that. Do you think, like, going back and would that even work?

How would it, you know, obviously the other team wouldn't be prepared, and they have NFL players running that, so they always say playing Navy or Army is difficult, right, because you're not used to it. So you put an NFL running back, who let's face it. I mean, Lawrence Phillips is like a first round level guy.

He's got a lot of problems. But I think he passed away too, RIP. And Tommy just had the issues with the blood clots. But do you think that, how do you think that would have translated? Because like BYU, looking in the 84, like they were a team that played much more

like these modern day football, right? They passed the ball. Steve Young, the quarterback in 84. It was Robbie Bosco, Boscoe in 84. They had that stretch of all the really good quarterbacks, you know, Steve Young, Jim McMahon. I mean, they were playing. It's why Andy Reid loves to pass because he went to BYU in the early 80s

when everyone's running triple option and they're going four wide slinging it around. And they were really an outlier that one. They were like Mike Leach 20 years ago, but in the early 80s relative to the rest of college football. So, and like you said, that's what's cool about this is all these teams, whether they won the national championship, whether they didn't, that they have a really, really significant role in the way that we talk about. and think about and their fan bases, but not even just if you're an Auburn fan, that Cam Newton team.

If you're an SEC fan, that was a huge, huge moment for the conference. Basically, going back to the Nebraska comp, I would say having watched every one of their games, their fan base did a great job of uploading everything on YouTube. Number one,

they, I believe it was their second game or first game in the season. They played Michigan State with Coach Sabin. And Sabin said after the game, Lawrence Phillips is the greatest running back I've ever coached against. And he was including the NFL. at that time. That's the level of he had that dog in him. The guy when he got to the second level, he was looking for people to run over. And to your point, you can compete running the triple option.

Did he have a big game against Michigan State? They ran rough shot. I think they won 50 to 10 in that game. Every single game that they played in that season, they went on a 27 point or more run. So when you think about Nebraska and you think about the triple option, you're thinking about, you know, ball control and, you know, shrinking the game down. No, they were hitting big plays left and right. Fraser was the perfect athlete to run it. It was like putting your best athlete on your entire team at quarterback, and he never made a mistake with the football in the passing game, you know, pitching it, pulling it, everything else.

So I think they would absolutely cause problems. And what's interesting is modern and college football defenses, we'll call it 2010 to 2024. They're all built on speed to a certain degree. And a lot of their defensive linemen weren't as, you know, big as and imposing as some of the teams in 80s and 90s, where you look at the brass call offensive line, every guys over 300 pounds. They were incredibly well disciplined. They had, I think, two or three holding penalties the entire season, which is ridiculous. So I think they were tacticians and they would have

been able to move the football. But I agree with you. There were some teams that when I went back and looked, BYU looked like a modern offense. Boston College with Doug Flutie in 84, it looked like a modern offense. They wanted them to throw it 40 times. They wanted them to run around and extend plays and make things happen outside, throw off platform, all those kind of elements. And then there was other teams that did feel a bit dated. 99 Wisconsin is in the book with Ron Dane. They had an absolutely elite defense. They wanted to shrink the game down. They wanted to run between the tackles and they had multiple NFL linemen to do it. So yes, that looks like a team that maybe could find themselves in deep water if they ended up later in the tournament facing an LSU or a high

powered offense. But a lot of these teams are not as ancient as they're made out to be in this argument that, oh, the athleticism is so different. That was what was fun for me in the research element going through finding these Easter eggs. The 1982 SMU team, the Pony Express team, they had an Olympic shot putter on their defensive line. Not only was he all pro in the NFL, he won a silver in L.A. at the Olympics. So these athletes were really great. Maybe they weren't as deep as some of these modern SEC teams, but just 11 on 11 offense

and defense, I think they absolutely could hang. And that SMU team was doing NIL, 40 years before NIL paying those two running backs. They sure were, yeah. Well, one thing, I don't want you to, you know, ruin the outcome of this, but could you tease? Because I see USC, number one seed, 04, they would potentially have to play the 2010 Stanford team. We know Harbaugh gives them trouble.

And then in the third round, potentially the 23 Michigan team. I mean, that's a lot of Harbaugh, and we know Harbaugh in college gave Pete Carroll some issues. So I see a tough little road. You know, if this was college basketball and you're looking ahead, you know, there's no landmines here.

but there are some landmines there for that USC team, specifically with Jim Harbaugh. It's interesting. You can play that game with just about every one of the top seats. Miami could draw Johnny football in the round of 32. You think about a potential quarterback who could handle the athleticism and breaking plays outside of the pocket. He's one of those guys.

LSU in 2019, Jake the Snake, that Arizona State team. That was a team that, you know, I was about 10 or 11 at the time when they made it to the Rose Bowl. I always thought that they were pretty good. When I went back and watched, they were an elite, they were a generational team, and they are right up there with the great pack 10 teams of all time.

To be able to have an NFL quarterback like that, and then defensively, they had playmakers at all three levels of the defense. It gets really difficult for any of these teams to win. Yes, they would be a favorite. And what's interesting, too, Colin Wilson of the Action Network, he helped me set some of the point spreads later in the tournament. You think to yourself, oh, it's 01 Miami, it's 2019 LSU. They're going to be two touchdown, three touchdown favorites over everybody. not the case. All of a sudden you get pretty close.

They're five point favorite. They're a six point favorite. And as we know in college football, any given Saturday, teams like that lose outright all the time. It can really come down to one or two plays, some turnover. And that was what was interesting to fine-tuning the game to make sure that we had the right amount of chaos, the right amount of blocked field goals, missed field goals, all these different elements that go into a real football game, making sure that that was just right, not necessarily to give the underdogs more of advantage, but to make sure every team was well calibrated. I wanted to make sure that the 95

Huskers were playing against a normal team from the 2000s that they'd run right over them. And once I had that down, then all of a sudden, the outcomes that were being spit out and the game flow and the narrative, it started to get really compelling. And I would say for any college football fan, it's kind of like a fun beach read, bothers days coming up. Like, if you want to get that for somebody in your life, it's a perfect thing to kind of go into the nostalgia time machine and start to have these arguments in a little bit more of a concrete. crete way because that's the only part of these goat arguments that I don't like it. They usually end at an impasse in some way, shape, or form. I'm hoping to bust through that to a certain degree and

say, okay, if Johnny football is playing the Miami Hurricanes and Ed Reed and that defense, is he going to be harassed for four quarters? Let's find out what it actually looks like. Who's the Miami-O-1 secondary beside Ed Reed? So we got Mike Rumpf at Corner, who was a first-round NFL draft pick. Philip Buchanan, who was also a first-round draft pick, who not only was phenomenal at corner, but also a huge game breaker in the punt return game. And then you had other guys in their secondary who were just filtering in in sub packages. Sean Taylor came and he played special teams and also when they went three safeties. He was on the field, Antrell Roll as well. So the speed athletic is, I like them versus Johnny football. I'm not going to

lie. Yeah, it's it's basically what's interesting about them is that offensively they kind of played within themselves. They could have pushed the tempo. You know, If they went through an offensive facelift and they said, we're going to play with a bit more tempo, we're going to open it up. They got Andre Johnson on the perimeter. They got shocky at tight ends. And they had a backfield of Clinton Portis, Frank Gore, and Willis McGehy.

They could have played fast, worn everybody out and scored 50 points. But they didn't necessarily always want to do that. Sometimes they wanted to have those nine and ten play drives and then lean on their defense to win games. So that's what's interesting in terms of the argument on their side, which is if they get pulled into a higher scoring game, they can win that way. And if they want to win 17-13, they can also win that way. That's not necessarily true of all the teams, the LSU team you brought up as well. Some of these teams need the game flow to go just right to pull it out.

Mike, tell everyone where they can get your book. So if you go over to Amazon, put it in Legendary Bowl. It's going to populate. You're going to get your e-reader, Kindle version, paperback, as well as hardcover. And we were mentioning this before we hopped on. If I can get enough sales, my publisher already wants me to go with a legendary madness, which would be the exact same format, but for the college basketball teams dating back to 1980.

I'd love to write it. It was a multi-year process to get this one done, but it was something that I looked back on fondly, so I'd be happy to deliver it for fans. Awesome, Michael. I appreciate you coming on and look forward to seeing who wins the whole thing. Thanks for having me.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite, unhumored me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, Help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care which I'll say it. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the Fourth.

You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college. football journey or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford Show on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. On the Look Back at a podcast. For 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 is big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors.

Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human