The Press Box - Ep. 187: College Football With Mallory Rubin, Ben Glicksman, and Ralph Russo

Episode Date: September 22, 2016

The Ringer's Mallory Rubin and Ben Glicksman discuss Louisville's smackdown of Florida State and Urban Meyer's continued dominance in Columbus (14:00). Then, Associated Press college football writer Ralph Russo joins to discuss Lamar Jackson being in the September Heisman zone (23:00), North Dakota State's consideration in the top 25 (30:00), and Wisconsin's identity (38:00). Finally, Mallory and Ben wrap up with picks for the upcoming weekend (44:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And reruns on HBO Now, HBO Go, and, HBO on demand. Welcome to Channel 33's College Football Podcast. My name is Mallory Rubin. I'm the deputy editor of Theringer.com. A lovely website that you should visit often. I'm joined today by Ringer Articles Editor and College Football enthusiast Ben Glickman.

Ben, how are you? I'm good as always, Mal. How are you? Ben, I'm great because I have exciting news to share with you in the world. Well, what do you got for me here? You might have heard that Chris Vernon will be joining the Ringer podcast family. We are obviously thrilled to have him. And he's going to be doing a couple NBA shows a week.

And he's also going to be doing a college football gambling podcast every week. And so with all of this college football goodness in the Ringer podcasting universe, you know what it's time for? It's time for us to go to school, Ben. Exciting times. Ever since I left, I've been hoping to go. back. So this is great news all around. The Ringer University feed will be launching next week. And that's where you'll be able to find this podcast and Chris Vernon's college football

gambling show and all sorts of college football goodness. So get excited. Please subscribe on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we'll have lots of good stuff for you, we promise. Yeah. Yeah. I would echo the same thing. Subscribe to, I was about to say Rutgers University.

Don't subscribe to Rutgers University. Ringer University is much more functional. Oh, God. I can't believe we're now associated with Rutgers in any way. This is terrible. It's time to talk to our branding department. Yeah. My bad, everyone.

I'm sorry. Ben, we have a loaded show. We have an exciting guest. Do you want to tell the listeners who will be joining us this week? Yeah, we have Ralph Russo from the Associated Press. A longtime college football writer for them is going to come on and talk to us about the AP poll and rankings, which nobody ever gets... irrationally upset about. So this should be fun.

Exactly. We already have so much ranking drama to discuss that we felt we felt compelled to consult an expert and that's what we're going to do. But before we get to the latest polls, let's spend a couple minutes looking back at what was a, as expected, very, very exciting and weird Saturday of games. Let's just talk about a couple of the highlights or lowlights, depending on your particular allegiance. And let's start with the absolute bloodbath that was Louisville, Florida State. I don't think a single person on planet Earth anticipated this result. What was your biggest takeaway from this beatdown? So I think the first thing for me was just how is this even happening? Like we've sort of grown accustomed to over the past couple of years, right?

Florida State has a habit of digging itself into into really big holes and then storming back in dramatic fashion. We saw this all the time with James Winston during the 2014 season. The last time they played at Louisville, they were down 21-0 and came back to win 42 to 31, I believe. And even in week one of this year against Ole Miss, they were down 28 to 6, I think, before winning in pretty emphatic fashion. So I was sort of, I kept waiting for Florida State to make that run. They're known for that run. And then Louisville just kept beating the crap out of them.

But other than Lamar Jackson, which I will, I'll let you. let you talk about Lamar Jackson, who is clearly the greatest quarterback who ever lived. I think we can say that safely at this point. But to me it was the Louisville defense. I sort of came into this thinking it was going to be a shootout. I thought Lamar Jackson was going to get his yards. James Quick was going to get his yards. But on the other side, I thought Francois, the quarterback for Florida State, was going to get his.

I thought Dalvin Cook was going to have an impact. And honestly, I mean, we were communicating on Slackst throughout the game. I was genuinely concerned for D'Andre Francois' safety. The Louisville Front Four just absolutely dominated the Florida State front four. And I think if Louisville is indeed going to be a legit playoff contender, it's not going to need just Lamar Jackson. It's going to need a really stout defense too. And this was a really encouraging performance in this regard.

By communicating with each other on Slack throughout the game, do you mean sending each other a series of increasingly distressed and alarmed emotion? Yeah, that in caps lock, basically just yelling things in typed form. We were essentially by, you know, certainly the third quarter, really actually, probably the second quarter, communicating in exclamation points and the bulging eye emoji. That was basically it. My biggest takeaway, other than that Louisville, I guess, robs us of the capacity for human speech, is that, you know, first of all, and this is an obvious one, but I think worth saying out loud,

Florida State's defensive backfield is not okay without Derwin James. And, you know, that makes sense because he's one of the best and most important players in the country. I don't know if you or anyone listening got to watch a season with Florida State yet this week, but one of the really fascinating things was that they had a camera with Derwin, who was at home in a brace on crutches on his couch watching. and his posture during the game, you know, he was upright and peppy and positive and saying, you know, I believe in the guys they've got this. And by the end, he was fully stretched out on his side.

It just basically looked like he was in the middle of a sad nap with his hands over his eyes. It was really something. Lamar Jackson absolutely shredded this defense. There were so many big plays. Allow me to, if I may, allow me to quote Kevin Clark from, the Ringer NFL show, who spent much of this week's episode quoting Mike Tomlin from your Pittsburgh Spielers, Steelers, lots of chunk ability in this game, Ben. Lots of chunk ability.

Also, so many missed tackles. It's really rare to say that Florida State looked slow, but that's what happened here. I think the other thing for me, the other big takeaway, is that Lamar Jackson is not just good. Lamar Jackson is so good that he turned DeMarcus Walker into Tim Tebow. And I say that because in case you forgot, here is the text of Tim Tebow's promise, which he famously made after Florida lost to Ole Miss. To the fans and everybody in Gator Nation, I'm sorry, I'm extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season.

That was my goal. Something Florida has never done here. I promise you one thing. A lot of good will come out of this. You will never see any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season. You will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season.

You will never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season. God bless. I would now like to share with you. Before you go any further, Mal, I just want to let you know that I think you should read that at the beginning of every one of these podcasts. Because I'm ready to run through a wall right now.

Just read the promise at the beginning of every podcast. That can be our intro and we'll be good to go. I need to work on my T-Bo-E's. I don't think I really have the cadence down. I definitely didn't cry in the right parts, but I think you get the point. And here's a slightly abridged version of what Florida State Defense End, DeMarcus Walker, living legend, DeMarcus Walker said after the Louisville loss, I don't want to experience this ever again.

You will never see somebody out hustle, run to the ball, lead, outwork me from now on. I promise. I promise, Noel Nation, I promise you you're going to see a different team, a different identity. God bless. That's amazing. It's very similar. I'll also point out the beginning of that where he said he doesn't want to experience that ever again. I mean, that makes sense.

I cannot imagine it would be fun to just get running. over time and time again by Lamar Jackson. Yeah, that seems that seemed painful. I understand why Derwin James's posture devolved into something close to the fetal position. But yeah, I don't really foresee the promise working out quite as well for Walker as it did for Tebow, considering, I think, losing by 43 points pretty much eliminates you from playoff contention. But see what happens. We'll see what happens. Okay, aside from Louisville, which we week three win was the most impressive to you. You have a lot of candidates to pick from Ohio State, Alabama, Michigan State, North Dakota State, Miami, Nebraska. A lot of teams impressed this week. Who stood out most to you? So I think overall this was a really big week for the Big Ten. I mean, you mentioned Ohio State and Nebraska had that come from behind win over Oregon. But to me, the most impressive win was Michigan State. I feel like entering every year the storyline for Michigan State is the same. We're like, okay, this is the year. They fall back to Earth.

I'm guilty of this too. Obviously, we really haven't talked about Michigan State much on this podcast while I said that Notre Dame was going to make the playoff like a fool. And Michigan State basically controlled this game up until the fourth quarter when Notre Dame sort of made it close at the very end. But for three plus quarters, this was all the guys in green. And I mean, there are a few programs that we give the benefit of the doubt at this point that they're not just going to have a rebuilding year.

They're going to have a reloading year. And that's sort of where Michigan State is at. The running game looked really good. L.J. Scott looks good. The defense looked strong. Tyler O'Connor looked pretty solid at cornerback. And Donnie Corley Jr., their freshman from Detroit, had probably the most impressive catch of the weekend,

not made by Noah Brown. So, yeah, I mean, I think for Sparty, we thought this was going to be a year where they sort of finished maybe toward the bottom of the top 25. But, I mean, who knows what happens? Their schedule is pretty manageable. They realistically could be 7 and O going into a matchup against Michigan. And we saw what happened when they played Michigan last year.

Crazy things can happen. So, yeah, we can only hope we'll get the same level of chaos this time around. But how about you? Who did you think was the most impressive non-Lamar Jackson-led team in week three? God, Ben. Hide your punters. My goodness. What a prognostication.

So I do not have the same answer as you, but my answer has something in common with yours. You picked the team that officially eliminated one of your preseason playoff picks by moving that team to two-loss status and officially making you look like an idiot. And I also picked a team that gave a second loss to one of my preseason playoff picks and makes me look like an idiot. I'm going with Ohio State for crushing Oklahoma 45 to 24 in Norman, which is astonishing. I don't think that anyone was sleeping on the Buckeyes this preseason. I mean, you actually had Ohio State in your playoff, right? Yeah, so I did have one prediction that looks sort of good right now. There you go.

There you go. So thanks for dropping that in. I appreciate it. We know some things, guys. So, okay, it's not fair to. say that people were sleeping on the Buckeyes, but I do think it's fair to say that people were not as confident in Ohio State as maybe they otherwise would be. And for a pretty fair reason, the Buckeyes were incredibly young. This team had 12, 12 players drafted, which is not normal.

That's a lot. And, you know, more importantly, those players were drafted high, and they were guys who had huge, meaningful roles on the title team. You know, you're talking about Joey Bosa, Zheel Elliot, Eli Apple, Taylor Decker, Darren Lee, and those are just the guys who went in the first round. So having to replace those bodies, no small task, the Buckeyes entered this year with only six returning starters. I think it was reasonable to expect that there would be a bit of a learning curve in that it would take a few weeks, maybe even a couple months, for this team to fully gel.

But that has not been the case at all. I mean, Urban Myers team really does seem to now officially be in Nick Sabin, Alabama mode, which is to say, you know, what's the line? they don't rebuild, they reload. So you're going to lose players, right? But when you can slot in a quarterback like J.C. Barrett, you're a preseason Heisman pick at quarterback. That is a real luxury.

And then you get to see instantly these new faces emerge. You just mentioned Noah Brown for having an amazing catch. He had, this is amazing. People were tweeting about this all weekend. Five career catches for the Buckeyes entering the Oklahoma State game. Excuse me, the Oklahoma game. he had four touchdowns against the Sooners. He almost had as many touchdowns in this one game as he had career receptions to that point.

They're just popping out stars from the field, just basically on demand. It's incredible. No one doubted Myers' ability to coach the team. Nobody doubted the talent on the team because the recruiting classes have been loaded, but I think we doubted whether it would come together this quickly and it has, and that's terrifying. Yeah, so two thoughts off of that. So one, Mark Titus wrote a really good piece for the ringer this week, which basically

is a love letter to Urban Meyer for what he's done for his Ohio State Buckeyes. So make sure you get a chance to go check that out when you can. But the other thing is every sort of after the national title game, our focus is going to turn to recruiting. And there's always debates over how much recruiting rankings really matter. I mean, you look at the top two teams in the standing race right now. We have Alabama and Ohio State. You look at the teams that dominate National Signing Day for the last few years.

It's been Alabama and Ohio State. So I think reloading is a whole lot easier when your backups are five-star players who dominated their high school competition. Yeah, no doubt. It's, you know, maybe it doesn't matter in the sense that not every coach is capable of doing as much with talent when that talent arrives. but when you have these factories and you get the blue chippers every year, you're just going to keep being good. It's kind of that simple. What about the other side of it?

Which of the week three losers was the biggest disappointment to you? Who was kind of the most embarrassing failure? Again, same caveat other than Florida State. Right. So I want to actually add one more caveat here. I do not think this is Iowa. We'll talk with Ralph a little bit more about North Dakota State when he comes on. but the ESPN commentators during that game were just going crazy when they made that last second field goal about what a huge upset that was.

North Dakota State is a team that has now beat six straight FCS foes or FBS foes rather and won five consecutive FCS national championships. This is an amazing football program. So I don't think I was lost as disappointing. I don't think they're the biggest loser the weekend though. The team that really fell flat to me was Texas. part of this may have been on us. We got a little too excited about the strong asance. I remember a certain someone giving that nickname.

Not sure who you mean. It could be anybody. But after their win against. Was it Brian Curtis? Yeah, we'll say Brian Curtis. Curtis labeling at the strong asance. Come on, man, get it together. But it turns out Notre Dame, like we said, is not really a playoff contender.

And while the offense still looked at, pretty strong last week against Cal. The defense showed a lot of the same flaws that have caused this team to lose a lot of games over the past couple of seasons. The pass rush was not effective at getting to Cal quarterback Davis Webb. The defensive backs really could not cover one-on-one, especially against Chad Hanson, who had an incredible game for the Bears. But the most concerning thing is the offense that Cal runs, it's led by offensive

coordinator Jake Spavitall, who used to be at Texas A&M for a long time, is very very very similar to a lot of the Big 12 offenses they'll play, whether it's at Oklahoma or Baylor or Oklahoma State or Texas Tech. And if they're having that much trouble stopping a high-powered offense like that, it doesn't bode well for them moving forward. So I think Texas still has a lot to be excited about, especially relative to the past few seasons. But there are certainly some glaring weaknesses there that they need to address. another team with some glaring weaknesses that need to be addressed. Your Notre Dame fighting Irish, Ben. Please don't call them my Notre Dame fighting Irish.

You're Notre Dame Fighting Irish. You're just sitting there every day just waiting for someone to wake up the echoes. My pick is Notre Dame. You know, you already talked about the other side of this. You talked about Sparty, so I won't spend too long on this. but I'll just say that the final score truly did not reflect how bad of a game this was for Notre Dame and how lopsided the contest really was. You know, the Irish got on the board first. They had the opening touchdown.

And then they proceeded to surrender five consecutive touchdowns to Michigan State. Five. Yeah, that's not what you want. That's not. When you're trying to win, that's not an ideal plan to win. That's not how Brian Kelly drew it up, man. The Irish defense gave up 501 yards, including 270. 60 on the ground.

And then on the other side, Josh Adams, who I think we both love, he had 29 yards. That's not good. That's not balanced. That's not going to work. The offense, the Notre Dame offense turned the ball over three times. Time of possession was not close, not even, not competitive. And really nothing about the game was. And now the Irish have two losses and are officially irrelevant for the season.

Because with two losses, unless things are just insane this year and it is like not just 2007 level crazy, but maybe even beyond. Two losses this early, you're done. You're out of the playoff. So, you know, considering we were talking about this team as a playoff possibility entering the season, it's hard to not be incredibly let down right now. Yeah, no, I think they're out. Even with craziness, because they don't have a conference championship game.

I mean, I feel like for a two-loss team to make the playoffs, which has not happened so far in the college football playoff era, I feel like a team would need to. The two-year college football playoff era. It's a long and storied era, lots of memories. But I feel like for a team to make it, you would need to make a really strong impression in whether it's the Pac-12 championship or the Big Ten championship or the SEC championship where Notre Dame is not going to have that opportunity. So I think they're a cross-off at this point. I agree. A lot of other teams have moved up and down the rankings.

And to talk about that, as you mentioned, we are going to bring on the APs, Ralph Russo after a quick word from our sponsors. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. If you love golf, I wanted you to check out the golf podcast that we have on the Ringer podcast network. It is called Shackhouse, and it's presented by Callaway, and it stars Jeff Shackleford and my longtime friend, Joe House, who has little credentials other than the fact that he absolutely loves golf, and he's willing to argue with Shackleford about anything. But people love it.

There's not a lot of golf podcasts out there. If you love golf, if you care about the tournaments, you care about PGA, you want to hear golfers, media people interviewed who care about golf. Check it out. Shack House, presented by Calloway, only on the Ringer podcast network. And now, back to your podcast. We are now welcoming in a college football writer for the Associated Press. You can follow him at at Ralph D. Russo AP and find his articles, everything that he does at collegef football.

dot AP.org. A fellow Brooklyn resident, Ralph Russo, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Melori. Thanks for having me. Yeah, how's everything going? Have you fully recovered from Louisville's total obliteration of Florida State last weekend? You know, frankly, I'm still letting that wash over me as someone who picked Florida State to win the national championship.

Likewise. Yeah, you know, it's one of those deals where I always tell people, like, whether my picks are right or wrong, I don't get paid any differently. So ultimately, it's not that big of a deal. But everybody likes to be right. I mean, it is sort of fun to be right in life in general. So when you're watching that landslide, part of you is thinking, well, this doesn't make me look smart. But the other part of me is thinking, like, oh, my gosh, like Lamar Jackson has a chance to be one of these sort of transcendent players. And that's the story.

It's only a few months, a few weeks into the season, but that's the story of the season so far. Yeah, we are sort of just in awe, actually, of him. I mean, we spent a little bit of time last week previewing the game. We had Stu Mandel on. And, you know, Stu had spent some time with Lamar in the offseason. And Ben wrote a great piece for us last week. And we were all like, oh, it's going to be fun to watch Lamar Jackson in a high-profile game because he's fun, right? He's cool.

But ultimately, we don't really know how good he is. And now we know. And it seems like he's answered that pretty emphatically. I think one of the things that Ben broached last week in his piece that's interesting is, like, is this officially Messiah territory or is there still some risk of like just being in September Heisman zone with Jackson where, you know, kind of setting up for the fall by by basically wowing everybody so stupendously for three weeks. Like you can only kind of go in one direction from here.

I mean, what do you think? Does he have staying power here to dominate the entire season? Or do you think we're going to be disappointed? I think this is going anywhere. You know, in past these September Heismans, and I think that. That should be called the Dinnard for Dynard Robinson, who was a wonderful player and so much fun, right? I mean, Denard Robinson, if you couldn't root for and enjoy Dynard Robinson, you're just not getting college football. But it was always very obvious what his limitations were.

He was a small guy, and his arm was, you know, he could make some plays with his arm, but ultimately he was just a stupendous runner. And you look at Lamar Jackson, and I think what in some ways this tells us is this constant argument in college football, who'd you play? Who'd you play? Oh, well, what does it mean that he did this against Syracuse? What does it mean that he did it against Kentucky last year? What does it mean that he did it against A&M and Charlotte? We get so wrapped up in that that sometimes it blinds us to the obvious, which is this guy is ridiculous. Now, he is not necessarily Cam Newton, Vince Young yet, but you certainly watch him and think, we just can't stop him.

Like, he has the ball in his hands on every play. And on every play, he just seems like the big kids playing with the little kids. And that's scary because when you have that, then everything else goes out the window. Like, oh, how great your defense is and what is the package that you use. and well, as Derwin James was there, it would have been a little different. Now, when you're the big kid playing with the little kid, the scheme doesn't matter. And I'm not necessarily willing to put him there yet, but it certainly looks that way for a few weeks.

And I think we have to stop going, oh, it was only Syracuse, because not everybody put up 800 yards against Syracuse. Do you think that there's a case that Louisville deserves to be number one after this game? And, you know, relatedly, do you think the Florida State should have followed? in even further than it did, or does just dropping from 2 to 13 feel about right for you? I thought you could make a good case for Louisville, and I have voters. You know, I always have to put this out there. I do not vote in the AP poll. We put the votes together.

We pick the voters. But me, Ralph Russo, is not responsible for your favorite team not being ranked where you want, though I'm sure you will let me know on Twitter at some point or another, you know, fans out there. But I actually, what I tend to get a lot when I see voters on the road, and I was at Stanford, USC this weekend doing some stuff with McCaffrey and getting a chance to see the wonder that he is, I had a voter come up to me and say, so if I had Louisville one, number one, what would you think?

I was like that. I would think that that's just fine. I would think that you can absolutely make a case for that. I would have been comfortable, more comfortable keeping Bama number one, because I think when in doubt go with Alabama. But I think Louisville made a really good argument this early in the season, what they did to Florida State is the most impressive thing that's happened all season. Yeah, I totally agree.

And I'm glad that you gave the listeners a little bit of context as to sort of how the AP poll actually comes together as much as I'm sure they would all love to send you complaints to your Twitter account that we plugged earlier in the show here. Let's move from Florida State to a little bit further down the rankings. Actually, sort of toward the bottom of the top 25. One of the big results from last weekend was North Dakota State beating Iowa. I don't even really want to call it an upset at this point, given what the North Dakota State program is at this point. Now that they've won five FCS national titles in a row, they've beat six consecutive FBS opponents in a row.

What does North Dakota State actually have to do to be ranked? It seems like it's basically impossible at this point, unless they beat somebody as thoroughly and embarrassingly as Louisville beat Florida State. Yeah, and beat somebody farther up the totem pole. I mean, no offense to Iowa, but, you know, beat Iowa is nice. Beating, let's say, I don't know, well, let's not say Alabama because that's far fetch, but beating, let's say, Michigan State, now that would have been something. So here we are with the FCS team. Just a little perspective. After Appalachian State beat Michigan State back in, I think it was 2005 or 6, I always forget the year.

Oh, excuse me, beat Michigan. It was deemed by the AP. There was never a rule against it, but we sort of clarified that, yes, if you want to vote for these FCS teams, they're Division I teams. Feel free to put them on your ballot. But no team has ever gotten really close. And North Dakota State this week got as close as anybody. I guess their vote total came in about 27th, still about 30 points behind number 25.

So you're right. I mean, the chances of North Dakota State or any FCS team getting ranked is pretty slim. And I've had some folks suggest, well, if they keep winning, then they'll rise in the poll and they'll gain support. But when you talk to some of the voters out there, you know, who did vote for them, they'll tell you, you know what, we were rewarding. them for a string of great years and a really good win. But the fact of the matter is they're probably not moving up my ballot over the next few weeks. And as other good teams have good wins behind them, they'll probably get bumped off.

I think it's an acknowledgement and a reward for North Dakota State. But again, unless you're going to beat a top 10 team fairly soundly, and then it's hard to maintain it because you're going back to playing FCS teams. So I guess that's a long way of saying, I don't expect FCS teams to be ranked. And this is probably as good as it got, it's going to get for North Dakota State this season. So, you know, it's interesting to hear you sketch that all out for us. And I think there's not a lack of understanding of how the poll works among fans, but maybe now that we are in this transition phase, you know, leaving the BCS entering the playoff era, like maybe a lack of, of,

unified opinion on how much the AP poll should or does really matter still. You know, is it about respect? Is it about sort of informing the narratives and the conversation? I'm really fascinated as someone who is so close to it to hear what you think about this. You know, in the selection committee era, does it even make sense for people to get as worked up about the AP rankings as they are? I would suggest it never gets that, I mean, never makes a whole lot of sense. to work up about the ranking, especially in September,

but that doesn't stop people from doing so. But then again, I will say this. That's the reason why they're there, because people do get a little worked up, and as much as college football fans nowadays are consuming them differently and understand that they don't have the impact they used to, because we will sort this out at the end on the field. I think they still play a place in the college football conversation,

and this is how I always describe it. And I should put a caveat. I work for the AP, so the AP poll means a lot to what I do, but I'm a reporter, and I look at it like a reporter, and I look at it to a certain degree like a fan, which is I understand that it doesn't matter like it used to. I think that in 10 years, when we move on from the playoff to some different version of the playoff, there will always be an AP poll. And before the playoff, we had an AP poll. Before the VCS, we had an AP poll. So the AP poll, to a certain degree, ties the history of college football together. When was the last time so-and-so was ranked this hot? Well, the college football playoff rankings will never give you that perspective of a program's history

and the last time they achieved this level of success. But the AP poll is there to provide that. It does. It sort of sets the narrative for the beginning of the season to a certain degree. I don't think it really influences the selection committee. So I think that's where the AP poll still has a place. It sort of ties the history of college football together, and I do think it creates conversations.

And as the old-school newspaper person in me says, it allows people, it allows newspaper guys to lay out their pages properly because then they can say, okay, the top 25 games go here. Yeah, no, I think your point about it, the history is really fascinating there. It's a really good point. And I also think with the playoff rankings don't even come out until sort of midway through the season. I forget if it's week seven or week eight or someone in that realm, but especially in the beginning part of the season after fans have waited months and months and months to watch their football teams play. I think having these rankings to sort of judge where you fit in the national landscape is an important thing.

And even though it doesn't play a role in the national championship, just in sort of the calculation anymore, I still think it's always going to be a big, big part of the sport. My one question about the rankings is over the last few years in particular, there's been a very vocal movement about basing the rankings solely on this season's results. Obviously, there's human bias in there. So Alabama is going to enter at the top of the rankings all the time. But especially with sort of that new mindset, we've seen a lot of teams this year, whether it was Texas sort of jumping up before they lost a Cal or Wisconsin,

which eats by Georgia State narrowly over the weekend, I think is all the way up at 11 right now. I was wondering sort of which teams that you think have, or which teams rather that have shot up the rankings in a really significant way early on, do you think could be primed to fall off in a pretty major way here in the next couple of weeks? Well, I think, well, you hit two,

and I think of those two, because both of them Wisconsin and Texas surged in and had like somewhat historic. surges. They went from unranked to, you know, I think 9 and 10 in the rankings after the first weekend with big wins. Despite what happened at Cal, I still feel like Texas is more primed for a good long run because they don't look that much different than the rest of the big 12. So I think that once they get into the big 12, they'll score a lot of points and I think they should be fine. Wisconsin might have been a case of a little bit of an overreaction. But again,

And if you're going to sort of try to in the first week or two of the season rank on results, then you're going to over-emphasize and you're going to have these big shifts. I kind of like voters to do that, be willing to make big shifts and big jumps. But Wisconsin, I look at a team that is still trying to figure out who's going to play quarterback. You know, they've got some running backs banged up now. I think Wisconsin always has a really nice identity and sort of knows what it is. But I look at this stretch coming up, Michigan State this weekend, then Michigan, then I believe Ohio State is in there somewhere, if not immediately, Iowa and Nebraska.

I think all these games are sort of piled up on Wisconsin. That doesn't look like a team that's going to really survive that gauntlet. So I would imagine at some point Wisconsin is going to level off. And even at best, when a few of these games would be more toward the bottom of the pole than the top. Ralph, listen, this is a college football podcast. We are here to talk about college football. However, have to ask you about the Mets, have to do it. How are you feeling?

How are you feeling? Clinging to a wildcard spot, clinging to hope, despite the latest devastating blow, de Grom, surgery. How are you feeling right now? Are you in like a positive headspace thinking, okay, well, somehow this team is actually going to make the playoffs or are you just like, fuck my life and why don't any of our pitchers have arms? Like, where are you at this right now? this is and now that I know that language is appropriate I am totally for it

so this is where this is where my head is on on on the Mets I had I had emotionally divested in the Mets about three weeks ago after the like the debacle of losing games to the Diamondbacks and the Rockies I thought okay you know what this is just not happening this season and it's my busy time of the year I can't get wrapped up in this nonsense. So I just sort of called bullshit on the mess and said, that's it, we're done with that. And now they have dragged me back in,

hence setting me up, they have me exactly where they want me. Because now I am reinvested, and immediately when I have gotten reinvested, they have lost the Grom and lost two games to the breaks. In the period, it took me to get my hopes up. They have almost immediately broken my spirit. So this is where I am, and this is life with the Mets.

And luckily, you know, this is sort of life as a Jets fan too. But again, like, I don't really emotionally invest in the Jets at this time of the year because I'm too busy. But, yeah, the Mets have basically done exactly what I figured they, I was trying to prevent them from doing to me, which is set me up to rip my fucking heart out. That is well put. We have a couple of pretty diehard Mets fans in our office, too. And I think they're going through the sort of the same emotional turmoil over the past few weeks that you have. It's just not fair, though. Like, I thought I was out, and they drew me back in, and they pulled me back in.

And we're going to see where we are now. So now I'm going to watch them again. Now, I know people will be listening to this at various times, but I'm going to sit down tonight and watch I'm sure it moves again to the bruce. It sounds like a... I think we all know your pain. I mean, I get... I am enjoying right now the sincere pain of watching the Orioles somehow give up the same home runs to David Ortiz and Muky Betts every night.

Like the exact... I just don't understand. It's like I'm watching a loop of my misery, but it's not actually a loop. It's something new and horrible every day. So I feel your pain. man. Well, the cool thing about what happened with the Mets is at a certain point, this conversation started going on on WFAN, and the conversation was, what game of the playoff series

against the Cubs will Seth Lugo start? And once that conversation was started to be had on talk radio, I knew we were just in for a fall. Like this was just not where, this is not where our heads should be met fans. Like, think about those, the phrases that you're using here. And, like, we are just totally set up the crash. Especially, and I know this is too much time talking to baseball, I know, but especially when you're being chased by the Cardinals and Giants

who have, like, pixie dust all over them, like the Magic Fairy Tale team. Like, there's no way that it's not working out for those guys. And screw those guys, right? Screw those guys. because it never doesn't work out for those guys. Well, what I would say is I feel like college football's version of the magic pixie-dust team that always comes back is Florida State the past couple of years, and they got their ass kicks last weekend. So fingers crossed that you guys pull it out here in the ends.

But Ralph, thanks for joining us. You can follow him on Twitter at Al at Ralph D.Ruso AP. And yeah, thanks for coming on. Thanks, guys. That was actually very cathartic and therapeutic. We're so glad. Thanks, Ralph. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Mallory. All right, Ben, very quickly, before we wrap up today, let's look ahead a bit. Let's talk week four. Let's do a little who you got.

Okay, we have a lot of exciting, interesting, ranked matchups, or at least high-profile matchups. Let's quickly talk about three of them and each predict our winner here because the thing we're light on so far is saying stuff that we're then going to regret. You know, we want to make sure we have enough opportunities for people to call us stupid. So let's make more predictions. All right. That's what we do here at Ringer University. It's make predictions that will surely go wrong.

So I'm glad that you've stuck around to this point in the podcast year for that. Ringer University, colon, it's an education. Okay, first up, number 11, Wisconsin at number eight, Michigan State. Who you got? I probably hinted at where I'm going with this one earlier in the podcast, but I am going with Sparty. I am done sleeping on them until proven otherwise at this point. I like the running game. Their defense is as strong as always.

Sort of Mark D'Antonio has shown time and again that he's able to get it done. And on the Wisconsin side, the quarterback situation makes me a little bit nervous. Bart Houston is apparently still the starter, despite the fact that Alex Horniebrook came in against Georgia State and sort of spelled him and led that team to victory at the end of week three. I have to interrupt you for a second. How many people who are listening to this who are like casual fans, how many of them think you made up those names? I did. They're actually not real players on Wisconsin, but it's, it helps explain if it sounds like I know the players on each team. But yeah, those guys are made up totally. But who do you have here? Who do you have in this

matchup of fictional players? They may not actually be played. playing this weekend, but who do you got? I'm aligned, man. I'm with you. It's all Sparty. I just want Craig Gaines, our copy chief, to be happy. He may or may not know that this game is happening or that it's college football season, but I want him to be happy. So I'm picking Sparty. You know, I don't know if Notre Dame is really bad or Michigan State is really good, but either way, I'm pretty sure that Wisconsin is not really good. You know, this team barely be Georgia State. That's not going to win us over. And, you know, Wisconsin hasn't won in East Lansing since 2002.

So Sparty's rolling. They're not going to drop this game at home. It might not just be in Ohio State versus Michigan thing in the Big Ten this year. We're looking at a more interesting race than we thought. Definitely. All right. Next up, number seven, Stanford at UCLA. Who you got?

So I wanted to pull the trigger on taking Chosen Rosen and Soso Jumabo and UCLA. It's a fun offense, but I just couldn't do it. I got Stanford. Christian McCaffrey, what can you say about him? The Stanford defense has been really impressive so far. In both games, they're two and O. They played one pretty good team in Kansas State and one team, which is just a bunch of sort of high schoolers

that were plucked from a local Los Angeles mall and USC. And they shut them both back completely. So my biggest question about Stanford coming into this year was if they had a quarterback who could replace Kevin Hogan, who, Mal, I'd like to remind you, was good. Chubby, Brian Madness? Yeah, he was effective for as much shit as he took. But Ryan Burns, the guy who stepped in for him, has done a really good job.

And yeah, I mean, last year when these two teams played, Stanford won 56 to 35 and McCaffrey rushed for over 240 yards. I see sort of a similar script playing out this time. But are you going with your boy Chosen Rosen to pull the upset? I'm not, man. I want to. I really want to, but I just can't do it. I desperately want Joe's and Rosen to be amazing.

I want UCLA to be competitive, but it's hard to ignore reality. And the reality is that Josh Rosen is currently ninth in the PAC 12 in past rating. I mean, this guy was supposed to be in the conversation for the best quarterback in the country. He's currently the ninth best in his own league. He's barely completing 60% of his passes. He's rocking that pristine one-to-one touchdown to interception rate. ratio, you know, that is all terrible. And now he's going to have to try to get up back on track against Stanford's defense.

They're allowing 11 points per game. And then when the Stanford defense isn't on the field, Christian McCaffrey is. You know, he rushed for four touchdowns against the Bruins last year. He's been incredible so far, but it doesn't really feel like he's had that like holy shit game yet where everyone is just gushing over how incredible he is. This could be that game. So give me Stanford. Yeah, the other thing that UCLA has a bad habit.

habit of doing is for the past few years, they've been one of the most penalized teams in college football, and especially against the team that's always as well-coached and so good at the intangibles as Stanford is. I see that being a bit of a problem this weekend, too. All right. Last up. This is maybe our Forever War. I don't know. Number 17, Arkansas at number 10, Texas A&M. I think this might be the first one we have different picks on. Who you got? I think you're probably right. So it's the last one. week on this podcast. I said that I was a believer in Arkansas in 2016. Last week, they went out and beat mighty powerhouse Texas state, 42 to 3. Yeah, tough the state. They,

perennial blue blood in college football for you guys who don't know. But, but yeah, so here I am doing what I know I probably shouldn't. And I'm taking the hogs. I'm taking, I'm a believer in Brett Bielma this year. Austin Allen is actually the most efficient quarterback. so far in the SEC, which I know is not saying a lot because most SEC quarterbacks just started playing football within the last few weeks. But he's been the best of the bunch. I think the thing that makes me nervous here the most is that Arkansas has done a little bit of shuffling on their offensive line. They have really good players there, but shuffling on the offensive line is not a great thing to do the week before you're going to face Miles Garrett.

Yeah. With that said, with that said, I think Arkansas is, I think Arkansas is, Arkansas is going to do it this year. And, Mal, guess who's calling this game? Who, Ben? Joe Tessator, which means this game is going into quadipal overtime. The past few years, actually, this game has gone into overtime. Arkansas lost 28 to 21 in overtime last year, and the year before they lost 35 to 28 in overtime. I think this goes to overtime again, except this time I have the hogs pulling it out.

but please proceed to tell me why you feel differently here, Mal. Give me the Aggies, Ben. Give me the Aggies. Different pick, but actually, for one of the same reasons that you actually mentioned. So I'd like to thank you, as usual, for doing my work for me. The hogs have allowed two sacks and five tackles for loss per game. And as you kindly noted, they are about to go up against sack lord Miles Garrett. That is, that's scary.

You know, I know you're all aboard the Razorback. Express here. I am not there. Here's the promise I will make to you. If Arkansas wins this game, I will be prepared to change my mind. Wow. Yeah. So high stakes. I mean, here's here's the other thing that's concerning for me. Texas A&M usually starts 5 and O before they fall apart in the second half of the season. And right now they're only at 30 and no. So I may have picked against them two games too soon, but we'll we'll find out on Saturday here. Exactly. You're expecting and Kevin someone to fail slightly ahead of schedule. So that's really on you, got to say.

Yeah. All right. Upset pick. Who should be worried? So this isn't a huge upset pick, but I don't see that many people taking it. I have Florida beating Tennessee. I know we were all aboard the Tennessee Express during our preseason podcast. But after the first three weeks, I am not impressed.

I know that Florida is going to be without quarterback Luke Del Rio, but they have Austin Appleby, who is an improvement over Triane Harris, which I think we can agree is certainly something. But, I mean, most of all, for the last 11 meetings between these two teams, Florida has won every single meeting. So I feel like I'm not so much picking an upset as I'm picking like the sun to rise the next day. This is just something that's going to happen. It's in the vault heads. And, I mean, Tennessee's offense has looked terrible so far. Even if Florida is missing their starting quarterback, they currently have the top-ranked defense in the nation. And Tennessee has the 100th ranked offense, I believe.

Yeah, give me the Gators. Yikes. Yeah. And, you know, Camp Sutton, who is Tennessee's one of their senior leaders, cornerback, kicker Turner. He's out with a fractured ankle, which is a huge loss for them. But I would never make that pick because I don't ever want to disappoint Amanda Dobbins' dad. So instead, I apologize. It's nothing personal.

I just, Josh Dobbs has not been the guy I wanted him to be so far. Ben, I want to know, can you guess what I'm going to pick here in an effort to be consistent? Can you guess who I'm going to pick? Are you taking Auburn to beat LSU? Well, that's a good one. But no, I'm going to save our Auburn talk to close out the show in about one minute. I'm going to say Clemson.

Oh, God. Okay, go ahead. I'll let you take this one away. This is your time. It's just like, you know, it's sort of like, this is my corner now. This is my hill. And I just got to stay on it until I have absolutely no choice but to abandon ship. I think I mixed like seven metaphors there, but you get the point.

I respect it. Look, Georgia Tech, not a great team, but not a bad team, prepping for the triple option on a short week. is hard. And not only that, but this is the always dangerous Thursday night road slot. So the combination of my general lack of faith or, you know, position the other way, my, my certainty that Clemson is going to stumble at some point paired with the fact that this is a dangerous set of circumstances. I smell an upset or at least upset potential. I'm sure they'll win by 40 now that I've said that. But, you know, got to stick to my guns here. I respect that.

I will say I don't think Clemson is going to lose this week, but the week that Clemson does eventually lose, I will make sure that we allot like a full five minutes for you to gloat about predicting it correctly. I'm going to need more than five. I'm going to need more than five. We'll just make that the whole show. I actually won't show up for that episode. I'll just sort of be like,

this is the Mallory Rubin episode to talk about how correct she was about Clemson not being as good as everybody thought. I'll just record the monologue today and just hand it over. over to Tate and Jim so that they're ready to hit the button whenever I'm finally right. Let's wrap up. Last thing of the day, what are we going to do about Gus Malzahn? And it doesn't really matter what we're going to do. What is Auburn going to do about Gus Malzahn? If he loses to LSU on Saturday, is he done? I mean, barring a miracle, I would say yes. So the one thing that works in his favor is his buyout is quite large.

If they were to fire him after this year, I think it's $8.95 million I read earlier today when looking that up. And the other thing that sort of works in his favor is Auburn University's president recently announced that he's going to step down in 2017. So a lot of times when there's all that administrative shuffling, you don't get the shuffling in the football program. So that's what's working in his favor. The thing that's not working in his favor is that Auburn has somehow, lost seven straight home games to power five opponents. They're one and two. They're about to be one and three if they can't stop Leonard Fournett, which if last year was any indication, they're going to have some trouble with that. And for their schedule the rest of this year, they play

at Mississippi State, they play at Ole Miss, they play at Georgia, and they play at Alabama. If they can't win this game, I mean, it's going to be real, real trouble for our boy Gus. I was all aboard the Gus bus after he took them to the national title game when they lost to Florida State. But I think our boy could be in a little bit of trouble here if they lose this game. What do you think, though? Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, Jordan Hare is supposed to be one of the toughest places to play in the entire country. You can't, if you're Auburn, you can't go to one and three, just full stop, period, ever at all.

but you definitely can't do it by losing at home to a division rival. Like, that's a death knell. I just don't see how he'd recover, especially because things are not exactly going swimmingly for LSU right now. So, you know, this is an opportunity for him to kind of save the season and maybe safe his tenure. But if they lose, which I suspect they will, it's probably wind it down for Gus. I would say on the flip side of this, if Auburn were to somehow win this, game, this loss could actually be even more damaging to less miles, right? Because, I mean,

LSU tried to get rid of him last year. They lost that game against Wisconsin, the opener, which basically got rid of all the goodwill that he had. If they were to start two and two in a year that they entered as a top five team in the AP poll and had national championship expectations, that could that could basically be the end of less in Baton Rouge. All right, Ben, on that supremely depressing note, let's say goodbye to everyone. Everyone. Enjoy the football this weekend. It should be another good one. And everybody, we will see you next week on the Ringer University feed.