The Josh Innes Show - Which College Teams Are Frauds?

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

I made the mistake of reading some dumb USA Today story about College football frauds. Basically this gives me a chance to go off on LSU. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1866-531-260-19 and over. Physically present in Ontario. Eligibility and restrictions apply. See Draftkings.com slash sportsbook for details. Please play responsibly. Number one sports book for live betting based on available live market data. I enjoy this headline on USA Today. Headline from some dweeb.

Fraud alert. What SEC teams are legit or guilty after week three results? Well, let's see Jordan Mendoza, who is probably not even a real person because I doubt USA Today even employs real people to be writers anymore. But fraud alert. You've sucked me in, Jordan Mendoza because I saw LSU in the title of this. Let's see. Let me play a couple commercials here.

and let's find out which college football teams are frauds, right? Now, mind you, it's important to know that there are teams like Michigan who are undefeated, yet stole a game from Western Michigan and should have lost. They have a shitty fucking quarterback and all that. Are they frauds, yet somehow you've got a team that goes on the road against another top 10 team in the most hostile environment you're ever going to face and they lose by a fucking touchdown and they have the ball with a chance to tie it at the end of the game, but they're somehow going to be a fraud.

I'm interested now. I'm curious. Now you've got me worked up. Let's play a couple commercials and we'll go. All right, let's learn about who the college football frauds are, according to Jordan Mendoza of USA Today. Let's see here. To think you can avoid a date in the USA Today's sports court is foolish thinking. It's just a matter of when you'll have to show up, blah, blah, blah.

Let's see. Here's some of the teams. Number eight, Alabama, are they a fraud? The Crimson Tide again had sluggish start, trailing Florida State 21 to 6 in the second quarter. before the offense exploded. Do I think Alabama's a fraud? No, because I don't think Alabama's a national championship contender. That is Josh speaking, that Jordan Mendoza here. He's got Alabama, the number eight Alabama. They won 50 to 36. Yes, they start slow. That's fine. They also

end up winning by two fucking touchdowns. Okay, they scored 50 fucking points. They start slow. Like, do I think that Alabama's a fraud, no, because I don't think Alabama's a team that's going to win the national championship because I don't believe a young freshman-type quarterback is going to go win the national championship. But do I think they're a fraud? No, I think they are what they are. LSU. Let's see if this guy thinks that LSU's a fraud. Lane Kiffin's return to Oxford didn't end in glory. LSU rallied from a 17-point halftime deficit to tie the game but couldn't complete the comeback, losing on an interception in the final minute. The verdict, good. Howl worked up over this, I don't know, but with all the emotion and hostility, it would have been easy

for LSU to fold after such a bad start. But to the credit of the Tigers, they put up a valiant fight that they nearly pulled off. Good, Jordan. You don't want to fucking piss me off. Because let me tell you about Josh Ennis. I'm watching the LSU game on Saturday. And when they're down 17-7 or 17-0 or whatever the fuck it was, it was 24 to 7 at halftime, I'm watching this shit.

And I'm like, I looked at Jilly and I said, I never want to watch this shit again. It was one of those type of things where, like, the defense was so bad and everything was so terrible that at halftime I turned on Jerry Maguire. And if not for the fact that it was on like true TV and it was edited. So instead of hearing, I'm all heart, motherfucker, I hear, I'm all heart, my friend. If it wasn't for that, I probably would have just left Jerry McGuire on and not watched any more of the fucking LSU game. That's how enraged I was over the LSU game. Then we get a little rally going.

Now, here's where I got really enraged. And the part part is like, I don't want to. to get worked up over this shit because I know the dude's playing don't really give a shit about LSU and I know it's a different universe. It's not the same as it was even 15, 20 years ago and I get that, but I'm getting worked up over it. And LSU's got a chance to take the fucking lead. After all that, after being down 24 to 7 at halftime, the game's pretty much fucking over. They rally all the way back despite the fact the quarterbacks played like shit, despite the fact that the defenses look terrible. All this shit. And they have a chance to take

the lead when they're down 24, 21 in the fourth quarter. and they call a dreadful, obvious running play call that loses a yard, therefore they have to kick a field goal to tie it instead of taking the lead. If they would have taken the lead in that spot, I believe they would have won the game. And here's why I believe they would have won the game. Because let's say they go up 28, 24. I understand after they tied it 2424,

that Ole Miss was able to march down the field and score a touchdown to take the lead anyway. I get them, and they went for two and they went up by eight. I'm aware of that. However, I think if LSU takes the lead there, they're up four, let's say Ole Miss comes back down the field scores and goes up three. What did LSU do on the next drive, which was ultimately the last drive of the game? They got down to the fucking two-yard line. So if LSU's down by three with a chance to go win the game with a minute to go,

I think they would have done it. Now, granted, the Dingus quarterback that makes $4.5 million fucking dollars couldn't hit a wide open receiver in the end zone multiple times that would have given them the touchdown and set them up for the 2. point conversion try, but at least they would have marched down the field because for the most part, LSU's offense didn't face a ton of resistance in the second half. See, like my emotions on this have ebbed and flowed from I never want to watch LSU again. It turns out we're just the same fucking team we were as we were with Brian Kelly to we need to go out and kick the shit out of Texas A&M. Texas A&M is a fraud, by the way. Let's see what this guy thinks about A&M. Let's see, Texas A&M.

Uh, let's see. Texas A&M, are they a fraud? Tell me about Texas A&M. Texas A&M is a fraud according to this guy. And I would agree. And I also hate myself for looking at this stupid story and arguing with this stupid fucking story. Now A&M is just not good. And maybe Kentucky's better than people thought, right? But it's kind of like this. LSU waxed Clemson. Just destroyed them. Like 51 to 3 or whatever the fuck it was. And everybody's like, man, look. at LSU they dominated. Then we come to find out that Clemson's offense actually is dog shit and they've been bad all three weeks they've played. So it kind of takes a little bit of the shine off of that. You know, people are looking at A&M and they're like, you know, or they're looking at Kentucky and they're like, wow, Kentucky rallying. They beat Texas A&M and what a game. Maybe A&M just kind of

fucking sucks. You know, maybe Marcel Reed sucks. When he's not playing LSU and running for a million yards against LSU every time they play. He's not really all that good and he doesn't throw the ball particularly well. Maybe he just fucking sucks. Therefore, maybe they just fucking suck. So I'm not ready to anoint Kentucky as anything. Like, I've heard people saying this like Kentucky is better than we thought. I mean, good for them.

They went to Texas A&M and they got an upset victory over. They were big underdogs against Texas A&M. But what has Texas A&M done in each of the first three weeks? Because if we're going to look at Alabama and say, well, Alabama starts, slow and then they have to score. Yeah, they start slow and then they end up slaughtering people. And yeah, A&M did that against Arizona State. Arizona State's not very good. And then, yes, they lost. I'm not telling you that Texas A&M is better than Alabama. But what I'm telling you is that, like, we're looking at Texas A&M and Kentucky beating Texas A&M as if to say that Kentucky is so much better

than we thought they were going to be. Kentucky may go out and lose this week. Who the hell does Kentucky play this week. Kentucky's playing South Alabama. So Kentucky's not going to lose this week. But then they play South Carolina after that. South Carolina, who's been a team that people look at and go, what the fuck happened to them? So who knows? We don't know.

But my point is, you look at these games and people like to determine whether or not it was a good win. At the end of the year, Texas A&M may only have five wins, and Kentucky will have five wins. And you go, really, how impressive was that win that they had against Texas A&M? Right now it looks good. Just like week one, when LSU slaughtered Clemson were like,

oh shit, look out for LSU, they scored 51. Then they were in, not inept, that's not the right word to use, because they moved the ball fine against Lotech, even though they couldn't run the ball against Lotech, but they still went out and beat them by four fucking five touchdowns and whatever, but like it was a different team. And then this week, first half against Ole Miss,

they scored seven points in the first half against Ole Miss after scoring 31 in the first half against Clemson. I say that to say this. You don't always know. A&M may go to LSU and get just pistol whipped this weekend, and that makes that Kentucky win look less impressive for Kentucky, if that makes sense. So every week we all like to litigate things on a weekend, week-out basis, right?

So we like to look at these things and go, you know, wow, Kentucky gets a huge upset win. It's a giant win. Maybe Kentucky's better than we thought. Maybe. Or maybe you look at their schedule. LSU, they could lose to LSU. They might go out and lose to fucking Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt.

We haven't even talked about the Vanderbilt miracle. I've never seen anything like that. Out of all the weird endings of sporting events in history, the end of the Vanderbilt game is one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen. Like, it's one thing to lose on a Hail Mary. Like, you know, poor Western Michigan got fucked and they put an extra second back on the clock for Michigan. And it screwed Western Kentucky. You knew when they put that second back on the clock that Western Kentucky was going to lose.

You just felt it, right? Like they let all that energy out after they thought they won. Then it's, oh, by the way, we get this long review. There's a magical second that it shows up on the clock. And now we're, you know, now there's one second. You just knew that this Bryce Underwood, who's not good, by the way, guys making $12 million total or whatever it is over at Michigan, he blows. Like a lot of these, I think what we're learning is a lot of these guys that are getting paid money here,

we'll get into that. Okay, so that you knew that Western Michigan was going to lose that game the second they put the one second back on the clock. But then you look at the end of this Vanderbilt game. I'm shifting from breaking down Kentucky football here for a second to talk about the end of Vanderbilt North Carolina State. If you didn't watch it, so it was looking like at worst,

it was going to be a tie game because you've got Vandy driving the ball down the field. They were facing very little resisted. they were at worst going to kick a field goal and the game was probably going to go to overtime. The Dingus quarterback makes the most ill-advised throw ever, throws an interception near the corner of the end zone, games over. Vanderbilt, I think, has one time out left or whatever.

There's enough time on the clock where with one timeout still in your pocket, you can stop the clock, and there may be a chance the opposition has to punt. The advantage you had is that you stopped them before they went to the end zone, so they're at their own one. So there's a chance that maybe you get a safety, cut it to one and they have to kick it off to you again, whatever. They don't. So there's about

six seconds to go after all the clock stoppages. And there are many options for what you can do if you are in North Carolina State. You could punt, but that's like the worst option, presumably the worst option. Actually, what ended up happening turned out to be the worst option. But you could punt, but there's a risk that you snap it over the punter's head. Well, if you snap it over the punter's head, it's just a safety. It eats up four or five seconds and the game's pretty much over anyway. You win by one. But it could all. It could also get blocked and they could fall on it in the end zone and score a touchdown. So punting's not worth the risk.

You can grab the ball, run around, fall down, take a safety with a second to go and you're still probably going to win the fucking game. You can run around for a few minutes and just get out of the pocket and just heave it up in the air out of bounds and the clock would probably run out. There's a lot of things you can do. You can run into the end zone and take a safety. You can run out of the back of the end zone. You can run around until somebody gets close, then run.

run out of the back of the end zone. You can turn around and throw the ball out of the back of the end zone. There are so many things. Ultimately, what you want to try to avoid is getting tackled. Because if you get tackled in that spot, there's a chance you could fumble. If nobody touches you, you're probably not going to fumble. So what does this dingus quarterback do? Runs around, gets tackled, fumbles, and Vanderbilt falls on it with ultimately one second to go on the clock and they win the game. I've never seen a game in that way. Out of all the wild games, and there have been wild endings.

There's blocked punts or was it a Michigan, Michigan State game? Who did Michigan State play in a game once where like the punter, like at the end of the game, like the punter dropped it or it was blocked or something happened where, you know, we've got blocked field goals that win games. There have been guys that have thrown Hail Marys. You've got the end of the miracle at the first Meadowlands miracle where Herm Edwards picks it up and you've got Merrill Reese going, I don't believe it. Like, I mean, that's kind of on this level.

But you look at this, you will not see an ending like that. It's fucking crazy, man, like to see a game in that way. And, like, I don't know how you survive that. If you're like the coach at North Carolina State, how do you overcome that? Like, how do you show up the next day and be like, well, guys, great game, but, like, how do you do it? I don't know with a straight face that you can. But all that said, I was looking at that guy's list of, you know, who's a fraud and who's not a fraud around college football.

I think Michigan's a legit fraud. You know, good for them. They beat Oklahoma. Oklahoma's a fraud. Oklahoma scored 13 fucking points against New Mexico or New Mexico State, one of the New Mexico schools. So Oklahoma, I don't buy them at all. I think that John Mateer sucks.

I just don't think they're any good. So basically what Michigan's got going for them is the refs cheated for them to win one game against Western Michigan. And they've gone out and they, by the way, they struggled against UTEP for half, maybe even longer than that, and then eventually flex their muscles. And then they struggled with Oklahoma who struggled with New Mexico. If you care about that kind of breakdown of it, what an impressive breakdown by me. But I don't think anybody takes Michigan seriously as anything. But watching LSU, it's funny because this is how my. mood changes. During the game, I'm like, seasons fucking over. I don't want to watch

anymore. Jilly's like, so what are we going to do next weekend for the A&M game? I said fucking nothing. We're not going to watch that shit. I'm going to watch fucking Netflix. And now I'm like, we got to go out there and beat the shit out of Texas A&M. We're still live. You do forget when you watch college football now that one loss isn't going to cripple you. For the most part, one loss was your death, you know, 10 years ago, 12. years ago, 20 years ago, one loss, you're like, well, shit, why even play the rest of the season? Unless you could lose another game at this point and still be in the race. Because the schedule you play matters, the teams you lose to, how you play against those teams

matters. Again, they went into a situation. And while Ole Miss is not like the most impressive home atmosphere, it's not the biggest stadium, it only seats like 60 something,000 people or whatever. It's not like a big place. But the bus saw they walked into is as tough as they're ever going to face. They will never face an environment like that shit. again, dog. They will not. And look, they went into it and rallied and were two yards away from

having a chance to tie the game. So again, there are no moral victories when your quarterback makes $4.5 million a year. Right? So we're not going to get any of that shit. But still, it's something. And I give them credit for that. Anyway, more to come. Don't you wish you could just hit Skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siyya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned and today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.