The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Spencer Hall on Arch Manning Hype, Belichick Expectations, Alabama's insane fan base | 08.29

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Spencer Hall joins Bomani Jones to preview the upcoming college football season. They discuss what success looks like for Arch Manning at Texas this season and if Ryan Day on the hot seat even after winning the National Championship last season. Later, they discuss what to expect in year 1 of UNC for Bill Belichick & year 2 for Kalen DeBoer at Alabama, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is that time of week.

We have a guest. Join us. Check them out at Channel 6. The Best College Football Writer in America, Spencer Hall. What's going on, sir? I'm geeked. I am now officially like in the mode of like, I'm watching camp tape.

Like sincerely, and without an ounce of irony, like watching reps and going, ooh, he threw three TDs against his teammates yesterday. It's going to be an amazing year. Yeah, I'm there. I see you getting to your playing weight. And when I talk about you getting into your playing weight, I'm not talking about your body. I'm talking about the facial hair. Got a haircut.

You know what I'm saying? Back in from the woods. Yeah, you got to come back to civilization for three or four months. You know, I got a trim. I may be getting another one in the next two months. I'm on top of things. And we love the idea of when you get these haircuts, given that you live in Atlanta. It's always fun to see your new world of compliments that pops up with the cut and fades away directly proportional to new growth.

That's right. You get this. Everyone's like, oh, man, did you lose weight? And you're like, in my head. Yeah. Lost about 10 pounds of hair. I used to be able to do that. You still can. I don't want you know. I don't want you to do that. If you wanted to grow out a beautiful head of hair right now, you could. Because you did it. You did it the pandemic. I still think it's there. I loved the pandemic. The pandemic was the first time that our hair lines didn't matter, right? We didn't have time to be worried about that.

I was stopping the spread and that thereby allowed me to have a thick, lush, luxurious head of hair. And I will tell you, in moments of stress, that is what I miss it. I don't, like now, if I'm, like, playing with my hair, I go straight to the scout. Now, don't get me wrong. That can also be very soothing. But the difference is, for it to soothe, you got to get all to. way in there.

You know what I'm saying? And you got to keep it there. That's the thing. I had a shaved head for a while back in college when I was like in sort of a like stone cold Steve Austin goes to a rave mode. And I had it slick lived in Florida. When you put the head to the pillow at night, the cool on the skin, oh, that's just an immaculate feeling.

I would also say I'm glad that you pulled out of Stone Cold Steve Austin as opposed to what it otherwise means when a young white male decides he doesn't want any hair on his head. You got to be careful with that. You got to be really careful with that. Like if you got a bunch of tattoos, don't. Don't. No, if you got one tattoo, it's kind of a push, right? You got to be walking out there and be friendly.

That's the thing. You can't walk out there mean with the shaved head. You got to walk out the shaved head and be nice. So very nice. Yes, great jokes. Jokes will go a long way. college football season is here. We get started this weekend.

From what I have been able to glean from kind of the macro level coverage going into the season, there is a heavy archmanning investment that is not supported by fact, track record, or history of his own. No. This hasn't happened. And by the way, the guy that he did not beat out at Texas, Quinn yours had his first preseason game, and I believe it was four for 16. It might be worse.

I think it was like five for 18. Yeah, it was bad news. Yeah, it was bad news. It looked like somebody playing, okay, listen, it looked like somebody playing against pros for the first time. But he wasn't played against pros. He was played against the Orkin Man, the Amazon Task Force.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, there was a guy in a linebacker. like a linebacker with a blue vest, right? Like he made the tackle and then he took a picture of it, right? Like delivered. I mean, yeah, he's played. But those guys are still incredibly good and they're better than what you're going to see in college. You know, I say this, by the way, as a manner of excusing Arch

because the only time I've seen Arch play in person, okay, in person was versus Georgia. And as our mutual George Foster said, who, they threw that boy in the high. Not grease. Yeah, immediately. Like, they threw him in the grease immediately, and it was popping, and he was frankly unready, okay? And in a very unfair situation, Georgia was in a lather. It was the second quarter.

They were already getting all of the cheeks kicked, like just getting smoked, right? Sometimes the defense just does that. Like, they could just sit back and cover one, and they're like, we're murdering you. We're murdering you. They were as motivated and as aware of the game plan as they were at any time in the season. It's the best like two or three quarters Georgia played all year. And he wasn't ready. He shouldn't have been ready.

Like by any definition of the word ready and any reasonable expectation, that's probably what you should have seen. He looked stunned. He looked like things were moving too fast. He looked like Quinn Ewer's yesterday, which is what happens when somebody jumps up a level in competition. I don't think we're going to necessarily be totally ready for what you see because or aware of what he's truly capable of because have you looked at the first month of their season.

They do get off to a big start against Ohio State. Mind you, that is Ohio State with a new defensive coordinator, replacing a lot of people. However, that's still going to be on the road. It's still going to be very intimidating and it's still going to be at a speed that he's not entirely familiar with. But the next three weeks, the next three weeks of the schedulers where we might start lying to ourselves about him being maybe better. He'll come out of Ohio State and he might look terrible. He really might. I don't think he will because if you know Steve Sarkeesian, he's going to give his quarterback a lot of

of easy reads. We're going to see a lot of like throws to the flat. We're going to see a lot of, you know, easy boots and play action to get him comfortable and get him some completions. Those next three weeks, though, that's where we really might start lying to ourselves because they play San Jose State. They play Sam Houston and they play U-TEP. Those three schools are going to balloon his stats. It's very good for him, by the way. That's exactly what I would want. Like if you were a quarterback and you were going for the first part of the season, what would you want? Hey, I want to throw 15 times against Ohio State. and hand the ball off a lot. Great idea. Great idea. And then for the next three weeks, I want cupcakes. I want to just sort of build my confidence. I want to stack stats. I want to look

maybe better than I'm going to look later in the season because I'm going to need that. It's a longer season than it's ever been before. I'm going to need that confidence. And I'm going to need to, frankly, take some second halves off. If I can avoid those hits, if I can avoid, you know, the trauma of the game itself and save it for later, I will. So it's intriguing to me. I don't think you'll actually going to get a decent read on him until, you know, the second month, third month of the season. So our kind of new reality television model of following sports, which is to say, for whatever reason, we find familiar people or familiar names and then they become our obsessions. This is part of the Chodor Sander's situation, right? It is, it is the way we feel

about his father carrying down to him and that fame, you know, that fame conferring upon him. Part of what is fascinating about Arch Manning obviously is he's not even a son. He's a nephew. Right? He is a nephew. He is Cooper's son. Cooper, who, if I'm not mistaken, I don't know if he still does, but he used to have a podcast called Soup with Coop, which is, by the way, your reinforcement of how much different it is when it's a white man named Coop and a black man named Coop. It means if we call you Koop, because it's your first name, it's something very different than if we call you Koop. And it's your last name, right? What I find interesting about Arch Banning in the historical sense is, unlike his brothers, he is actually similar to his father,

or his grandfather, rather, right? I always felt like Archie Manning had to be terribly ashamed of how slow his boys were. It has to be very similar to when, like, black people raise their kids against white people and they look up and they can't dance, right? Like, oh, man, I knew a woman once who told me that situation. She told me that her daddy looked at her dancing with the white people and immediately put them in track because he figured that that would be the next step to get him back to where, like, he realized he had failed, man.

He tried to give him a better life in some ways. He felt like he gave him a worse one. But there are reasons to have questions about Arch. There's been a longstanding belief that much of the hype is just centered around his last name. I've seen the talent with him moving. Like he, like I say, that's where he reminds you of his father. He could really go. I've seen no reason to believe in Arch the passer as of yet, but we're talking about him like, like we're almost talking about him like you talked about Andrew, no, not like Andrew Luck going into year three because that was its own different level

of hype. But it's still, I feel like it's not a what will Arch be, which is what I think it should be about a question rather than anything to clarify it. I think what you'll see, and this is, again, people pare down play books and they pair down expectations as we go. If the dude can run, this is college football. He's going to run. That's it. Right? Like, oh, hey, I don't know.

Maybe we need to bring him along with this. Shut up. No, this is stupid. This is a very simple game at its root. If he is primarily a runner, then Steve Sarkeesian and that staff will use him as a runner. And that is the thing. Now, maybe some of those things are going to be RPO's. Maybe some of those things are going to be a lot of sort of simplified run, you know, run pass reads that he's going to be able to do.

And that's fine. That's fine. Leave that to the NFL scouts to worry about what Texas is charged with is winning. And if that's what he is, if he is a runner first, then that's what he's going to be. This is my Bob Coozy take when somebody's like, man, streets weren't ready for Bob Coozy. You don't know what he was putting down. Okay. My thing is this, Archie Manning.

Archie Manning, you have no idea what an athlete Archie Manning was prior to the Superdome eating his knees. That's really what I want to get to. The Superdome and all the opponents for the Seis could do nothing to help. No, they could do absolutely nothing. They destroyed that man's legs. But one of my great white whales, if I can find it, is a full copy of the game tape for that 69 old Miss Alabama game, because that is the one where he goes full Johnny Mansell. And we don't have a full copy of the game tape for that game.

I think he throws for over 300. He runs for over 100. He is a monster in that game. A Manning, I said that out loud, a member of the Manning family running all over everyone's ass and looking like Grease Lightning out there. That's what I keep telling people, man. He had to be a little bit of shame while also being like, boys. the path to safety is into pocket.

Yeah, he had to do that because that's why he limps now. I think Arch needs to go ahead and at one point play outside of the playbook. I think that's it. And I think they know that too, because if you want to unleash all of that talent in a form that everyone can work with and understand, it won't necessarily be playing within the play, within the X's and O's. He's going to have to make some, he's going to have to improv. He's going to have to do some things.

that are probably going to make everyone real nervous. It makes coaches nervous when they don't know what's going to happen on a play, but he's not totally ready to just operate yet. Right? And this is not controversial. Like, none of this should be controversial, okay? This is going to be a first year full-time starter. Not ready to operate.

What can be a kind of complex offense. And I think that's, again, something that the staff knows and that down the road you'll see. I mean, I'm excited because I like these kind of quarterbacks. I do feel bad for him because when I went, to the game in Austin last year, I saw nothing but Arch Manning jerseys. He was not the starter, Bo. It was all Quinn Ewers was the starter and had been the starter and had put in a lot of hours and time and played a lot of games for the Longhorns and it was all Manning jerseys. There's no way that in some way he can't disappoint if they don't,

you know, Heisman National title, there will be people who will be disappointed. Well, first of all, let's not forget, quit Quinn Ewers came into college as a BFD himself, right? Huge. Huge. And to be fair to Quinn, Quinn transferred in after, I believe he made some bad decisions. But he transferred

to Texas where he was probably going to go anyway, but he jumped out to get some short money on some NIL and then couldn't beat out C.J. Stroud. At that point, I think you stay at Ohio State because you're going to be throwing to something incredible. Yeah. But instead he came back to Texas and look, it worked out okay. But Quinn

is, what, Quinn's got to be the best quarterback Texas has since Cole left, right? I think so. And everybody's talking about Arch. And it has little to nothing to do with Arch actually playing football. It is the damnedest thing. Never seen anything quite like it. But the thing for Arch, they're loaded.

And they're loaded. And they're loaded in a way where it's not like when Texas has been loaded in the past and you still think somebody's going to push them around, right? They had literally four seasons around Mac where they did not get pushed around. And in those four seasons, they lost a combined two games or three games. Like that's how that goes, right? This is a Sarkeesian. Like they did with so many programs around the country,

did, especially in the SEC, get your Sabin guy and hope that you can implement a Sabin-like system and hope for the best. It is not worked out well for everybody. It's working out pretty well for these guys so far. If you look at their depth chart, and most depth charts, I use the same thing everyone else uses. I use Rlads.com. If you go there, you can look at the depth charts.

And they're pretty frequently updated. They're pretty up to date. And if you look at any contemporary teams chart, anyone right now in 2025, you're going to see a lot of orange. Orange is the color that they indicate to that you have a transfer coming in for 2025. Most rosters look like half orange. half. Some more so, some like two-thirds orange. Ironically, the burnt orange of Texas, two. Two transfers. This is a homegrown, home-picked team that has a lot of experience coming back, a lot of native talent, a lot of talent that the staff handpicked, recruited, and brought in with great intent.

Wisner, running back alone is a concern. Like, they are going to be heinous to face this year. So there is an element of don't screw this up, right? One more thing on Quinn Ewers, by the way, we don't talk about injuries in college enough. That guy had some injuries that just changed the way he threw. I swear the deep ball that he threw in year one versus the deep ball that he threw in year four. Those are two different things. I think he lost something in the arm through injury.

And I'm not exactly sure where along the line, I don't have his like, you know, his injury chart with the little body outlined with all of the little X's and red marks on it. But I swear injuries changed his potential at the college level and then consequently at the pro level. The dude you see now is not the dude. I think you would have seen had a couple of injuries and some luck gone one way or the other. All right. Now the Texas transfer thing thing you mentioned is interesting because the thing I tell people that's a little bit tricky about that job is that and look, things have changed now the money and the way the money works where the geography is still going to be a dominant factor in where guys go to school, but obviously it's not as clear and clean as it used to be, right? People are going to throw some bags

around. People are going to make some different decisions. Okay, cool. But players typically go close to where they are from for a number of reasons. The thing that is underrated about Texas is that and A&M also, but it's only close to Texas. Yeah. Right? Like, you have to subsist on that program on local talent. And nobody else, by the way, can subsist only on local talent. But even if you're in Georgia is maybe another program that can, but by and large, you look at their roster and they're like, no, we don't, we get the best players from Georgia, but we got to go everywhere else to get them. Yeah. But they're close to Charlotte, right? They're close to Alabama. They're close to North Florida. They're close to a whole bunch of places. Austin is close to Houston,

Dallas, and like a circle that kind of goes around there. That is what they're close to. If they're not getting it done with local players, it's going to be a problem. Yeah. And if you doubt the Texas thing is real that it's not, that Texas isn't close to anything but Texas, go look at what they've had to do in Lubbock to get talent there. Go look at the money that they've had to drop. And that's close to less because that ain't even close to Houston and Dallas. That's it. It's the, it's the, it's the FBS program that is furthest away from all the other FBS programs. Like if you triangulate it, the most remote one is not Wyoming. It is not, you know, it's not like your your Boisees. It's not, it's, no, it's, it's Lubbock. Lubbock is the one. And if you go and look,

they've had to drop a tremendous amount of money just to get talent there, right? There, but, but the upside of that is, you're right. If you're in Texas, you can subsist on local talent. You can build a national champion out of that talent. That's something that, like, South Florida can't even say anymore. Like, even Miami, Miami's always had to go out of their way to get offensive line recruits because they just don't have the same kind of offensive line recruits. Go look at They're prime lines of like the 2000s. They're from, they're getting guys from like Canada.

They're getting Martin Bibla to come down to Miami, which easy sell, by the way, great sell. Texas has the same cell. Hey, are you tired of being cold? Do you never want to be cold again?

Do you want to be rich and not cold? Come on down. Come on down. Can you imagine a, like, that's a good deal. If you've been cold that long and not had money, and you're 18 years old,

and somebody's like, hey, would you like to be big and strong for money? Would you like to have a let's say a sum, a relatively modest sum for a left tackle at this point. I'm going to pay you 500 grand to come play in Austin. Right? You come on down from whatever farm you just walked off of. And we'll bring you in.

And all of a sudden you're in Austin, Texas, and you have money you don't understand, right? You're like, at the end of the month, I have that left. That is actually an underrated part of the end. I don't think, like what the first paycheck is like. Like, I remember when I was 21, I worked an internship at a fairly large company. And I remember the internship paid $5,400 a month before tax. It was like they pay like you had an MBA or something like that, okay?

And this is in the summer of 2002. Good God. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I'm staying at my parents' house, okay? Oh. So the first check I got was a one-week check because of my start date. And that one-week check was for $1,000. And I looked at my father and I said to him, you know, I understand a little better how it is that people sell out.

And that was over $1,000. I know that for many of you, you've heard this story before. but I've been telling this story now for almost 25 years and it still shocks me to look back on how excited I was at $1,000. These motherfuckers are getting taxes, checks after taxes with like five figures before the dot. I thought you were going to tell your dad,

be like, listen, you don't have to worry about that mortgage anymore. I have $1,000. I got $1,000 now. You're going to make it happen. Drake's all me. Yeah. I love that for them. I despise any effort to curb that.

I think that that is the best part of the current game is that we're actually paying these players now. I also worry about whether somebody's trying to sell them PS6s, right? Yes. I don't even think that's out yet. No, that's what this is. It's only 10 grand. You can have one before anyone else. And I've just written in Sharpie on the side of a PS5, right?

PS6. Yeah. finally guys can get money and show it, right? Like I was watching Goodfellas the other day. And like a college football player showing up some jewelry on is like, oh, buddy pull it up with his wife and the mink. Yeah, take that back. Take it back.

Buddy with the pink Cadillac on the curb. It's in my mother's name. It's in my mother's name. Like, what do you guys do it? What do you guys do it? Before we get into break, I want to ask this question right fast. We'll talk a little more about it after also, but we'll start now. Is it possible to win a national championship?

and be on a hot seat because Ryan Day is testing that. It's not a hot seat, right? But it's definitely, there's still warmth. Lukewarm, just a little hint of warmth. Toasty. If you got those heated seats in your car, one light, not three lights. You're on the one light setting. How many, is it five years in a row now?

Mm-hmm. You lost to Michigan five years in a row. Well, let's see. Included to the black guy. Yeah, they lost last year. Which is the worst loss of them all? That is the worst one. 1310 to a team that had no hope of moving the ball or scoring.

None. Yes. So are you on the hot seat? No, you just won a national title. Do we still have the same questions about how essential you are to the enterprise? Yeah. Yeah. So the point I try to make to people is there is only one Alabama.

Put a bit in that. Yeah. We'll come back. John Cooper got cat that job for 13 years and beat Michigan twice. You can say that things are different now, but they're not, right? Like if this is a one-win job, which is how we frequently think of it being, is a one-win job. No, they're actually a little more patient with that job than people realize. Another job that's more patient than people realize is LSU, which we think of in our heads as a 12-win program, but it's really an over-under-9.5.

Right. Like they even, even the Sabin era, that's a over under 9.5 win program, right? Ohio State's not going to fire a coach after going 11 and 2. No. But he might want to quit. Not that he will actually quit. He just may have days where he desires to quit if he loses that job again. By the way, they're favored to be Texas.

It's going to be number one versus number two to open the season and they are favorite because they have the game at home. Yeah. And should be. And should be. Like they, they are, they are, I mean, defending champion doesn't mean anything when in terms of this year, but like that place at home rosters that are comparable in terms of overall talent, that's,

that to me is, is fair. I think the thing that when we talk about, when we talk about Ryan Day is we wonder exactly what do you do here. Because, um, the apparatus that recruits at Ohio State and brings all of that talent in, The pipeline, everyone who is greasing the wheels, if you fire the head coach, they're not going anywhere.

They're all, they're, I'm here to tell you, they're on board. They're fine. Okay, that's a machine. It is a football factory. And the floor managers and foremen are on duty and will stay on duty. Okay. The checks will continue to come. The bank is still open.

So what is the difference that. Ryan Day provides. Well, Ryan Day did win a national title and did a pretty nice job of managing that roster. Apparently in this era, he's pretty good at managing egos and being a pro-style kind of like coach, which is interesting because he appears to be having no fun doing it. So maybe he is a pro-style coach. You know, NFL coaches just all look like they're like seconds from death. That's Ryan Day. If you want any argument for Ohio State being a pro team, it's that I think their coach would probably. walk away for like a dollar more than what he's doing now just leave which may be what happens he may just end up like resigning out of concern for his well-being because it is that stressful a job i think there are some things that you can look at this season and go they are they have downgraded and that's in management that's it like there's no way of getting around with chip kelly yes they lost chip kelly and they lost jim noles that is their offensive coordinator and their defensive coordinator the pieces are still incredible you do not have to worry about that but last

Last year they managed an offensive line where they had to shuffle a couple of things around. They had to figure some things out, all right? They had to manage all of that talent and getting everyone the ball, which, you know, that is a Phil Jackson tier skill in terms of balancing everyone's feelings and making sure that everyone gets, you know, enough carries and feels like that they're, you know, validated and happy. The guy who's doing that this year is their wide receivers coach, their former wide receivers coach, Mike Hartline. I'm sorry, Brian Hartline. But Brian Hartline hasn't really done this job like this before, right? He hasn't done it the whole way. It's his shop now.

That's going to look different. All right. They'll be like, oh, the playbook's the same. It's never exactly the same because the person handling it and the person running it will put a slightly different stamp on things. He's been there obviously, but it's going to look a little different. I have more. He also scenes, by the way, to very clearly be the best wire. receivers coach on earth on earth and a great recruiter has to be has to be all the all those guys

yeah those people listening those are all him which like if you had any incentive to keep someone i know ambitions a thing but if you had any incentive to keep somebody just doing one thing he would be that guy right you're like are you're overpaying your wide receivers coach am i have you seen what we've done have you seen the talent we found we've found have you seen what we just got in the last year and a half Jeremiah Smith, we have a disgusting run of talent at wide receiver. And the guy who we're going to talk about this year may be the best one of all. That's nuts.

Well, that's what I was going to say. And I'll say this right before we go into this break, where you're talking about we got to figure out how to get everybody else the ball. Okay, so when you had Henderson and he had Junkins last year and you got to figure out running backs and all of that, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get you. Let me tell you something. This year, we out here running that Bel Air. You know what I'm saying?

We're running this like Amari Cooper. he was at Alabama. Got a Randy ratio, yeah. Yeah, we're just going to pass the ball to that dude as many times as we possibly can because I promise you he's open. It's never a bad idea. On the defensive side of the ball, too,

I don't know if you all know this, Matt Patricia is their defensive coordinator. Okay, that's a problem. Might be an issue. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Cause for concern.

It's all here. Coming up next, we're going to talk about the biggest mystery the college football has to offer us that we probably will not take our eyes off of. NFL fans, week one is your shot to play free and stack a million dollar cash bag with Draft Kings Pick Six, an official partner of the NFL.

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Does anybody have any idea of what there is to expect from North Carolina this year. No, I really don't. And I say that college football is a sport of systems. And even more so than like pro football because you have so much talent prospecting to do. You have so much management and you have so much to organize in terms of how things work day to day. And what happens in the field isn't as complex as what happens in the end. NFL. It's not. Like, plays are simpler. Schemes are simpler. But I think there's an added level of

complexity in terms of your roster management in terms of now we actually have payroll management and you can call it back because that's what it is. And then the fact that you have to coexist with this university and all the weird demands, like everyone kind of has to cosplay as a student, right? Like, hey, I'm going to go do school stuff now. I've got a backpack. Okay. You know, cool, cool. That is, that's all part of the deal there. And I don't know what Bill Belichick has in the bag for that element of it. Sometimes teams just forget how to do everything all at once.

I've seen it. Like, I have seen it. Like, I've seen it with my own team. Like, I'm a Florida fan. And in 2010, when Urban Meyer came back from his breakdown, that team all of a sudden didn't know how to do anything lost all the coaches lost everyone who sort of remembered how to do things and they came out game one and you went oh no oh no they forgot how to play football like that might happen like unc might roll out against charlotte and we have no idea what what they're doing like that might happen i don't think that will happen i think they'll be competent but you know the idea that they're going to be great is absurd like look at the roster look at what they've got look how bad they were on defense at times last year um Look how ineffective or inconsistent they were on offense at times last year. I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to be good.

I think they might be average. And that's probably what you should expect in year one for most coaching staffs. And I think that's what you can expect out of this one. The idea that he'll be different than any coach at this level is absurd to me, especially when you've seen pro coaches come back to college and be perfectly average, if not bad. Yeah, it's going to be interesting because they've spent a lot of money, at least North Carolina's idea of a lot of money, between Belichick and various things that he has wanted to get that program off to ground. I have said many times, what did him in with the Patriots was poor talent evaluation. And he is now in a sport that's about talent evaluation in a much different way because it is much more based on present value and forecasting future value.

you know, it's a different. It also would then require Belichick to do a lot more leaning on other people because you just can't keep up with everything that you need to keep up with. I remember one of the first big transfers he got came in from Holy Cross, which made me very nervous, right? I was like, here we go, big brain Bill. He's out here trying to overthink what this situation is. He is also Bill Belichick.

And my concern with him is asking a college professor to teach pre-algebra does not always work out so well, right? Can he come down to the level and the capacity that the teenager has and recognize the actual discipline that the teenagers are going to produce? I think that's number one there. Number two, you can't scheme up defense in college. Not really, right? You, like, every now and then, like, whoever the first people were,

they came up with, like, those three, three, fives or, like, Charlie Strong with a four-two. Like, you could come up with a, paradigm change maybe they get you of headed things and works with what your shortcomings are in talent. But overall, if you don't have the boys, you can't play defense, especially not in college. Well, I, my, I'm going to speak out of turn here for any coach. But here's what I have observed. And it is this, that at times, and by the way, this is, I'm round about quoting Bill Belichick here,

that when you get to the third and the fourth quarter, you have gone from 80 plays on your sheet on both sides of the ball. to two. Like there's only, there's probably three or four plays that are going to work. And in college, if you got those guys, and they fell if you have those guys,

but in college, if you've got those guys, you'd be stupid not to run them. I want you to go watch Georgia. Go watch Georgia. Okay, the best managed program of the last five or six years

of college football. And what you need to watch is what they do when they're in trouble. And they really need to like bear down and fix things. They go play like cover one. They play like basic stuff, pretty basic.

And then they just kick your ass. So when in doubt, be big. When in doubt, be strong and when in doubt be mean. And I think that's, I think that's something that Belichick's probably going to hone in on, but he doesn't have those guys. You know, so if it goes to a matter of scheme, it won't matter because, one, his team probably won't be able to pull it off. You know, you talk to, you talk to trainers in my favorite things. He goes, yeah, if you go to like one of those small smart schools, they understand the concept immediately and they can't do it. If you go to like a big FBS program, like a top 10 program, they can do whatever you ask them to do, whatever it is instantly.

But they might not understand it. That's the deal. And I think that's the gap that Belichick is going to have to bridge because in the NFL, you can cherry pick big smart. You can cherry pick big smart, big smart fast every single time. In college, they might have one of the three. And if they've got two, they're an all American. And if they got big smart fast, they're an NFL guy, which is 1% of the population of FBS players. So it's interesting to me, the hiring of some of the guys that he's brought on board who just feel like boys, just feel like his boys, that doesn't inspire confidence.

It doesn't. And again, that's not against Bill. That's against anyone. If you just bring in a bunch of your dudes, right? Like, if you have anything to worry about it, Georgia, for instance, it's the fact that you go, hey, all these guys know Kirby and play with them in the 90s. like that just never organizationally that doesn't feel great right even if the results are still pretty much on par you know i don't like that i like it when it feels a little more professional um you know because that to me seems like a better environment for like ideas and managing your

culture or whatever that's really not what you've seen at unc like at unccc it feels chummy feels like they've hired a bunch of bellichick's old boys including michaelombardi to manage the one that i don't that's the one that's the one that's the one that tells me, that makes me feel like this is an unsurious operation. Buddy, pal, pal. I'm going to bust out of pun. Hold on. Let me reach deep into the Caucasian back here.

Buddy? Do you think that's going to work out? Because I'm going to tell you, as a neutral observer, that doesn't seem like a great move. I just don't know where it's worked, and that includes the NFL network. Yeah, I've seen the previous work and counting on this to be some kind of like revolution.

organization that's going to redefine how we do things at the college level. I heard that at Arizona State when you brought in Herm Edwards. That's right. Yeah. I don't think that's what we're going to end up with. This feels like the over under on wins is seven and a half and Vegas feels a lot smarter than I do at this point. Well, hold on. It would be so great if Bill Belichick had his Antonio Pierce.

A great all-time, like the last great college football renegade because the rules are. And Antonio was not down there doing renegade stuff with money. He just had a complete and total absence of respect for these silly NCAA rules. And that's how you get Jayton Daniels to come to Arizona State, by the way. Yeah. What was that man doing there? Like they had him, if you watch with Jane Daniels at Arizona State and the things that they were asking him to do, he gets to LSU.

A place, by the way, not known for being like revolutionary, not known for being super, innovative, just doing what everyone else does for the most part. They got him there and they're like, oh, we should just let you ball. That is not when he was doing an Arizona state. Yeah, he could end up with that guy. He could end up with an Antonio Pierce. He could end up the idea of Bill Belichick having the kind of conversations that Nick Saban had, like where he's making these nuts jokes, right?

Because remember, remember, Nick Saban, terrifying reputation. But would also make a lot of jokes about his nuts with players. Yes. Like that's, if you want to know where water met its level eventually, right, it would be that. And I don't necessarily see Bill Belichick being the same. Do you think they're going to pick up on that dry New England wit? Right. Do you think they're going to find that parsimony of words charming?

I don't think that do your job is going to sell quite as well at the college level, particularly when their brains haven't even really fully formed. Right. Even if they're getting paid. Like that's the thing that I think a lot of these coaches are going to have to divorce themselves from. though we're paying you to do this, it's not going to work like you think. It's just not because they're kids. It doesn't go this way.

Yeah, like, it's a lot like, I think at that point you think of a salary more of a bunch of candy and a stocking than you do as reward for your work. You go, oh, I found this. Yeah. And I think that is probably how the majority of football players think of it because it's certainly how I thought about it when I was like 18 to 22,

you get a paycheck and go, I don't know what that's for, but we're going to see. So I'm going to say this right fast before we get to our last topic. And it's only because you mentioned the Urban Meyer 2010 season. And Ryan, LSU grad and I were talking about this. The day that Urban Meyer's tenure at Florida officially ended was not that first game. I can pinpoint it to a specific moment. It is when LSU played this game at the swap and called a fake field goal that involved the

punter, I mean the holder throwing the ball overhit. shoulder to the kicker who I believe walked in for a touchdown he did it was a great call in the post game when they asked erb as erb as erb Meyer questioned about less miles and all he could do was wave his hand to shush the question away because less miles broke that man's spirit that day that was the day it cooked fried done I thought the same thing when I saw matt staffer heading into like some sort of quackery, airstream trailer. And they're like, yeah, it's back hurt. So he's going to get infrared treatment on it.

You're like, Don, that man's right? No, don't you. But as Charles McDonald would say, nobody used to have a bad back. That's a great. Charles McDonald, who has a bad back. Who has a bad back. Younger than me. Oh, yeah, like, I should call, like, borrowing some lingo here, I should call Charles

McDonald Unk. That is how old man style Charles McDonald lives. And he talks about having a bad. back more than I do and I'm much older than Charles. No, that is a great lie. Some have had back injuries, but you are correct. If you say you have a bad back, nobody has a bad back. J.A. Adda

always tells this story about this quote from Kobe about taking charges. They J.A. refers to as charges are for suckers. And he asked Kobe about taking charges. He was like, I saw a bird take a lot of charges. Got a fucked up back. And that's Kobe talking, not me. It's like I saw Skidey Pippa

take a lot of charges. It's got a fucked up back. Saw Didis Rop and take a lot of charges. He's got a fucked up back. I never saw Magic take any charges. His back is just five. I never saw Mike take any charges. His back is just fine. Hey, hey.

I'm not about to be on team bad back. Coach K is like the king of take the charge, right? You've seen Coach K laying on the court in the middle of a game? About taking a charge. I would now love to see a Duke of Old Tivers game with just a bunch of people walking around with bad backs. Let's go find out Shea Badiye. How's that working?

I need to listen. Any running back who runs out of bounds, kudos. Kudos to you. Because you know what they are? At yoga class, playing a little pickleball. Eric Dickerson. Have you seen Eric Dickerson? Looks awesome.

Franco Harris, rest in peace, but Franco Harris considering the era of football that he played it, Frank O'Harris made it a long way walking upright. Franco Harris was an innovator, though. innovator because no one at the time was doing that Franco was like yeah this stupid I'm gonna be over here

and they're like you're not a real man I'm 50 as a fullback as a full back it was even a half back it was a full back how is this even an option how does the full back have the option to consistently run out of balance the full back by the way

checking his spending on his app right that's what he was doing he was like I've spent $50 worth of contact today boys I'm overdrawn stepping out of bounds I bet teagia feel it excellent. Every day he wake up. Oh, Jerry Rice?

Like Jerry Rice. You know, go look up. Jerry Rice big hits. It's a very short YouTube video. It is. It is. It's like looking up people who dunked on Tim Duncan. Not a lot of those. Not a lot of them. And he did it the opposite way of Shaq, where Shaq was just going to take you to the ground. Yeah. Tim Duncan was Captain, Captain Technique. By the way, Tim Duncan, side note, cut this if you want.

I hadn't seen the Bill Russell video with him. I pray in life to get a compliment is half as good as that. Where Bill Russell says, yeah, Jackie Robinson asked me to be a pallbear at his funeral because he said I was his favorite athlete. And that's what you are to me. That's what he said to Tim Duncan. I would have cried on the spot. I now hear that and I want to say to Tim Duncan. So what did you go do for the people after that, brother?

You got to step this shit up now, home boy. Is it not a very Tim Duncan thing to hear that though and go, wow and then like next day be like oh i don't know it's gonna just gonna hang out pretty cool pretty cool yeah yeah it was all right um so you and i have talked about this for a while and it still worked out we have a whole generation of people who really still don't know what does alabama thing truly about right because nick savin kept the wolves at bay he was so good so consistently for so long that we never saw Alabama get there. Keep in mind,

the one time Bear Bryant had a bad season after their little segregation has gone too far, period, and they got the wishbone in, and then took everything back. Bear Bryant had one bad season, and a month later, he died. Yep.

Not exaggerating. Yeah. And he said that Alabama deserved a better coach, and I know he meant that somewhat metaphorically, but I also know, know he understood like even that monster would eat even him up last year Alabama lost four games if somehow they lost four games this year what does that look like bad it's bad it's it's it's already bad that's a it's not a riot type situation but it's definitely disgruntled

unhappy and probably already thinking about the next thing if they lose four games it also It depends on what four games they are. Losing to Auburn is inexcusable. Losing to a team that they think is a tier below them is inexcusable. Losing to Tennessee. Let's put that watermark right there. If they lose to Tennessee, who is formally a rival,

but not functionally a rival in the minds of most Alabama fans, if they lose to Tennessee again, and if they lose particularly in sort of a hard-nose manner, last year's Alabama team, very weird because they are a transitional team. They were kind of a platypus team. There's a lot of different parts that didn't necessarily fit. Jalen Milrow was the quarterback.

And I think having a quarterback like Jalen Milro when he is obviously too talented not to play and too athletic not to play, but has limitations on his game, that is you're going to be kind of a boom-buss team. You're going to be the kind of team that sometimes scores 35 and sometimes you score 13 because he was that inconsistent, but that gifted at the same time.

So I think that they had the golden handcuffs of a very gifted quarterback who could exactly play the position the way they wanted to. Now they're going to have a less talented quarterback potentially, at least in terms of raw athletic talent and potential, you know, Jalen Milrow. But he's a ghost of five-star pass worth noting. Right, right. You know, like Jalen Milrow, 80-yard arm, capable of busting a 70-yarder, and then also capable

of just mismanaging the offense because, you know, he couldn't operate it, you know, at the level that the coaches wanted him to in terms of efficiency, right? And that's all it, that's all it is, is efficiency. When we're talking about efficiency, it's take your checkdown, hit your check down accurately, right? Recognize this. Get out of a bad play. Get into a better play. You know, don't turn the ball over. You know, he was the kind of guy who they lived with the bust so that they could enjoy the booms. But that combined with, you know, some like a new regime on defense, that'll get you four losses that'll get you some inconsistent play um they don't necessarily this is still by the way i don't want anybody to lose sight of this this is still a top five roster in college football in terms of

sheer raw talent this is still nothing but four and five stars right this is this is nothing but if we're doing movies this is nothing but a bunch of lawrence arabia this is nothing but a bunch of Casablancas, right? Like, this is classics across the shelf. Um, so on that alone, you can't rule them out in terms of national title contention. You can't rule them out in terms of SEC championship contention. Um, but what they look like this year, it's, it's going to be, it's going to look a lot like that Washington team offensively, right? Because, you know, they've got the band back together on the coaching staff. Um, you know, they have Ty Simpson at quarterback who I think is going to be, um, a less spectacular option than Milro, but probably more.

more efficient in terms of what they want down to down. They also have Caden Proctor at Left Tackle. I need you to go look up Caden Proctor. Yes. You might be able to find him on Google Maps. Like he might be listed as a building. He is, and I'm not like, they've had specimens at Alabama before. They've had guys who defy what you believe a human being is capable of in terms of size and power.

Caden Proctor squatted 800 pounds. Check your follow for what I just texted you about Caden Proctor. You're not going to want to say it out loud. Can I say it out loud? I'll let you look at it and make that decision. I'm not going to. I think you're going to vote against it. But just look at what he says.

Just look at what he says. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to let the listener or viewer in on this. I have a piece of information about Caden Proctor and his family that would indicate to me that 6'7, 369 with an 800 pound. squad is standard. Whatever the, if you go to the Proctor family reunion, there's a semi-truck.

Not a low. There's a semi-truck of food, okay? Like the Cisco truck. They back the whole thing up. He's not alone. He's not a low, but I tell you this, but it's been a winner every game he's supposed to because here's Rob, here's Rob counting those losses that are going to make Caden the board regret his choices.

Yeah. They got an at Georgia. Mm-hmm. They got a at South Carolina. and that's still a we going to see situation, right? It still, I don't care what the top, whatever they're in. It's still South Carolina. They have Oklahoma, I mean, oh, LSU at home where LSU,

we're going to learn a lot about how much, how they feel about Brian Kelly based on what he does with this roster. That's, that's three in, in Tennessee, South Carolina, LSU all in a row with Alabama and with Oklahoma right after that, right? Mm-hmm. This, I don't know. what exactly the expectations are. I just know losing four games two years in a row is your seat will be a blaze for year three. You'll get year three and you'll get a brick thrown through your window.

It could be bad. I do like, I will say this. I want two things to stand here. One, this could go bad in a hurry. It could go bad real fast. And if it's not a fit and they don't play like great football, not good. They have to be great. That is the standard there. It could go sideways super fast. Super fast. They will get you out of there because again, like Ryan Day, the factory's fine. We can put a new name on the nameplate. But everybody on the floor and the systems and how we make things, the football factory is going to be there. You're not that important as a head coach. You're not. You might be once a generation. But ultimately, even Nick Sabin over a long enough span of time, would have. have been replaced because that's what happened to Bear Bryant. So it would have, like, if Nick Saban started to fall off, hard, okay? Not these sort of like little indications that he was falling

off that over the last like two to three years in terms of replacing coaching talent or recruiting. And it was never really recruiting. It was talent development. No, we're talking about a big fall off. They would have replaced him. I'm just, I'm interested how they play. Yeah. The difference between Ohio State and Alabama

is the floor. The floor at Ohio state is much higher, much, much higher. You don't have a whole lot of those disaster piece theater seasons. There is no 2000, 2000, that's the year I'm looking for, the three and eight year, the Mike DeVos. Yeah, where they lose, they don't have those in the Ohio State ledger. I think they lose to UCF at home. Yeah, yeah, doesn't go down. Louisiana Monroe. Remember that one? Yeah. Well, yeah, and that's, that, that is the bottom, the bottom could be five wins. Like when things fall apart at Alabama, you could have a four-win season if everything goes wrong.

I don't understand how you could do that with this current roster, but if DeBoer's recruiting were to fall off at any point, that's where you go, okay, you can't fall off recruiting-wise at Alabama because look at everyone around you. Look at everyone around you. They will eat straight off your plate with no apologies, you know. And on either side, on every side,

you'll have guys who do that. But I like what they, like I will say this. That's all very negative. I like this staff. I like the roster. You know, I like their approach. I think everything could work there and work right now. They're not chasing a ghost of a former glory by hiring someone who did something a long time ago, which is what Auburn did.

Auburn essentially hired a guy because of what he did a decade ago. Which was win two games against Alabama. 1450. That's it. You want to know like why Hugh Freezes cash and checks. He's cash and checks in the larger sense because in 2014 and 2014 and 20s. 2015, they beat, Ole Miss beat Alabama back to back, including once in Tuscaloosa off of one of the wildest quarterback games ever played by Chad Kelly. The other reason that he's currently employed is because last year when they were down, they beat A&M.

That was it. Otherwise, that was their only win over a team with a winning record last year. And they might have gotten him out had he not won that game in particular. I will say one last thing before we go, because you mentioned earlier, them games. where the grease is hot, the grease is popping. There is nothing quite like that young quarterback out there in a grease popping game. And if you've ever been to one in person, you never forget it. So one, I did not go to in person, but we'll remember that year that Ohio State won the national championship, the Cardale Jones season.

They had J.T. Barrett underrated kind of all-time. He's like the original Jalen Hertz, all-time great college football player who was often a limiting factor on the team that he quarterback. But his first start was a game against Navy. His second start, he got introduced to a man named Bud Foster. Bud Foster wore his ass out. And I knew that that was going to happen because I had gone to a game in, oh, wait, it was Carolina and Virginia Tech. And Carolina had a really talented team that year. And they had an NFL quarterback.

They had three drafted receivers by Bush Davis had started to get the thing up and humming, right? Yeah. T.J. Yates gets hurt in the third quarter. they go to a kid named Mike Paulus. His brother Greg played point guard at Duke, but Mike Paulus was a high four-star recruit. He was a quarterback of the future type. The first play after Yates got hurt,

they ran an off-tackle-tackle-a-all-tackle-tall a little score to touchdown. Fourth quarter comes, and I had never done, I had never done this coming a game before. I was on the sidelines for the last drive. And it was Mike Paulus on one side, and it was Bud Foster's Virginia Tech defense on the other side. And I watched a man's career in before it started.

I ain't never seen nothing like that before in my life. I don't know how in the hell he was. I think it really crystallized for me what the job is that you're asking of a quarterback. Them boys was in there fast, fast. And he had no idea what to do. Yeah, one thing you could do to break up a spread offense that relies on, you know, QB Reed relies on, you know, I'm going to look this way and see if your ends crashing and I'll come around. There's a great way to do with that.

Tackle everybody. That's it. So Bud Foster ran the 4-6. The 4-6 has not been a major force in football since the mid-80s. It was the Jurassic Park situation where they go, hey, you know what? I think a T-R-R-X would do really well in this environment. Let's just let it loose. Let's see.

When the 4-6 comes out, I want you to know what this means. Your center, who hikes the ball, has a nose tackle, the biggest, fattest, meanest guy on the defense. And he's lined up head-on. He's lined up head-on to the center. No gap control to worry about for him. No, oh, I got to go ahead and control. No, his annihilate.

That's it. His whole job is to annihilate the guy who only has one hand to block with that snap. That's it. It is a beautiful, sometimes suicidal approach to defense. Ohio State could not handle it. They could not. It was just like watching somebody get hit with a sledgehammer for four quarters. Strategy of the 46 is very simple.

We're going to make it impossible for you to run. Therefore, you're going to pass except there'll be no. time. There will be no time because that six stands for six linebackers. Six linebackers. Okay. They're not there to do pass coverage. They're not there to be doing anything smart. They're there to play kill you. That's it. It's one of my favorite defensive wrinkles of all time. By the way, not a great Virginia Tech team. No, they just, no, they just had the answer that date, which was awesome to watch. Great team that won a national championship against a quarterback who I believe that year was. a Heisman trophy finalist.

Yeah, yeah. A great team that just got a quiz that it did not study for at all and failed it badly. A team is so great that it could win a national championship with his third string quarterback and its offensive coordinator

being Tom Herman. Just throwing that out there. You said it. Not me. Spencer Hall. Check out the shutdown forecast. Check out Channel 6. Check out the college football season

and follow him because he's better at this than anybody. My brother, I appreciate you. Thank you. All right. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. We do this three times a week. Ryan Brumley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater.

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