The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Spencer Hall on Cam Newton at Auburn: The Greatest College Football season of all time | 01.13

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

On this episode of Time Machine Tuesday, Spencer Hall & Bomani Jones remember Cam Newton's insane 2010 season at Auburn.  First, they discuss the origin of the legend of Cam Newton, beginning as a backup at Florida & Blinn College.  Later, they discuss him running through the LSU, including his legendary run against LSU & the allegations of Mississippi State offering him $180,000.  Finally,  they remember his win over Alabama in the Iron Bowl and why his NFL career is still underrated 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 Time Machine Tuesday.

Spencer Hall joins us from Channel 6. What is going on, my man? You ready to talk about something big, something fast? You're going to talk about something that you didn't have to be smart in order to work with. I would love to talk about Cam Newton today, if you would like to. We're going to do that. Before we do, I have to say, this is the second time I've seen Spencer's hair cut, and I hung out for a moment in Atlanta.

And I love how Spencer maintains his fundamental truth while also hugging up on just enough Atlanta. Just listen, this I didn't ask for. You realize this just happens. This is how they do it. If you get your haircut inside the perimeter, they're like, okay, starting here. Everything else is optional, but, you know, they're going to give you a little tight on the side, a little long on top. Have you gone all the way to go into the black people barbershop yet or have the white dudes just got on board? I have done that when my regular guy, who I'm in a committed relationship with a barber and happened for about six years.

But before that hit or miss, hit or miss all the time. and one of those hits was going to a black barber. And do you know what it looked like? This. That's it. Same haircut. They'll just give you the same cut. No flinching.

No nothing. Just go. Honestly, the reason I didn't go back is because I was like, am I invading the space? Because once it's utility, right? Once it's like, shit,

I need my haircut. And then twice you go, I don't know. Is this, am I taking up space in a place where I shouldn't, right? Not only you welcome, I'll also make this point that if you are a white person willing to go to a black barbershop, just throwing it out there, you are not the most conservative person in the room. You may not realize that until after a while, but if you are willing to set foot, you are not the most conservative person in the room.

I think that is 100% true. I will also state this. I am now, I live near a very conservative barbershop that I do not patronize. and occasionally I will see a person of color coming out of there and I'm just every time I see it I go I want that story I want to know who you're going to and how this happened well the real question is did they come out with or without a haircut because they're good to be like we'll we'll we'll cut that gray that's they line well well we'll know no do with that oh these are paying customers these are people who are using so I want to know the story I do I do but story of all stories this week on

Machine Tuesday. We do wish to talk about the 2010 college football season, which ends 15 years ago now, because you know these things wrap over and get you into 2011. Now, first time machine Tuesday, we talked about the Vince Young game at Rose Bowl. Five years later, and you may think that Vince Young is the greatest college football quarterback of all time. There's an argument for it, okay? But we fast forward five years. And if you don't think Cam Newton was the best college football quarterback of all time. And I mean just quarterback, because I think this is important to note. There's a difference between a player and a career, right? Like, I have been watching on the internet where there has been a discussion about

whether or not Fred Taylor is a pro football Hall of Famer. Where do you land on that, by the way? This is where I land. This is a distinction is very important. I believe that Fred Taylor was a Hall of Fame talent and Hall of Fame player who did not have a Hall of Fame career. Right? Right.

You might make an argument that other quarter of, have had better careers than Cam Newton. Tim Tebow, who's a big part of this story that we'll get back to later, is somebody that fits such an example. Tommy Frazier, another guy that we may put in and fits under this example. However, for my money, the greatest college football season any individual has ever had is Cam Newton 2010. Part of the intrigue of that season, and I don't even think we fully understood it at the

beginning of that year. But how you get to 2010 from Cam Newton, starting it at Westlake High School, getting to Florida in 2007, this is a wild story when you stop and think about this. So Cam was a five-star recruit quarterback coming out of Atlanta. He goes to Florida. Now, Irma Meyer is, I'm getting a quarterback every year, dog, the best one that I possibly can, right? And then they'll duke it out. We'll figure out who the starter is going to. to be and if you want to leave okay generally speaking we'll help you do that all right 2006 they got tim tibo with tim tibo was the backup quarterback and um short yardage pullback basically on a national championship team in 2006 2007 he's the starting quarterback cam is a true freshman now people will tell

you that tim tbo was better than cam newton for the whole stretch of the time at florida you just if you say so buddy i got other people people on the cam side will tell you otherwise right there's all little like little weird details. I believe they were roommates when they first got there. And so that becomes, you know, that's a weird college football coach thing to do. Make Major Applewhite Chris Sims be roommates, right? Make Tim Tebow and Cam Newton be roommates. Oh, okay. Wow. I mean, I can't imagine any reason there'd ever be any tension between those guys under those circumstances. No, no, never. But this thing happened in 2007. It's very simple. Tim Tebow won the husband trophy and put up a stat line that hadn't been seen, which was 20 touchdown.

passes and 20 rushing touchdowns. At this point, Gainesville, Florida belongs to him. It was already kind of sort of his in 2006 as it stood, but it was his job at that point for however long he wanted to happen. All right. Next season is 2008. Florida again wins a national championship,

but also of note, and you correct me anywhere, I may be getting some of these small details wrong, but John Brantley, who was a legacy recruit of, sorts who had been a five-star recruit, finished as a four-star recruit, originally committed to Texas. He went to Florida because, again, Urban Myers getting a quarterback every year he possibly can get one. T-Boh is the starter. Newton is the backup. John Brantley's below him. And Cam,

you know, got caught with a stolen laptop or there was a stolen laptop found near him with reason to believe that he has stolen it. I believe the picture had property of Cam Newton whited out. And white out. Yeah, and white out on it because. I mean, he might as well have licked it like it was a muffin and just said that this now belongs to me. Okay. Cam also has an ankle injury for much of that year. The key detail here, what I'm going for is by the time that year was over, John Brantley was above Camp, who you've never heard of.

John Brantley was ahead of Cam Newton on the depth chart and it was made pretty clear that in 2009, John Brantley is going to be the starting quarterback here. There was also some cheating on test allegations. a lot of this stuff, right? Right. 2009, John Brantley's going to be the starting quarterback at Florida. And you, Cam Newton, need to find somewhere else to go. And there was a great concerted effort to find a place for him to go as far from the SEC as

humanly possible because nobody wanted that big motherfucker coming back. His potential was not unquestioned. And the reasons for John Brantley rising above him. on the depth chart were, if I recall correctly, and I think I do, very stupid. Urban Meyer was terrified, I believe, of not recruiting a legacy. That was what Urban Meyer said at the time. And he was very worried about missing up that kind of legacy pick because Brantley's father was a quarterback at Florida and Brantley's well respected in the Florida community.

And Urban Meyer has said that that was something he cared about. I would also tell you this. Does that seem plausible? Or is it more likely the kind of thing you would say if you had absolutely mismanaged the greatest quarterback season provider in history? Yes. I didn't say greatest quarterback in history. Let's not put our foot in that bucket.

Yes. What greatest single season in terms of impact? You messed that up. Yes. He did. You messed that up. That's it. That's not even a risky take.

That's a fact. You could have had that. That could have been the next thing. And instead, what you got helped destroy that dynasty. So I would probably be looking for other more, you know, I'd be looking for some rationale. I'd be at the rationale shop looking around and shopping. So that's the kind of thing I think you say when you know that you've screwed up. And by the way, now compare that to what you said next, which is now we need this job.

gentleman as far away from the SEC as possible. Why? Why? I'm the goose. I'm the goose and the meme just barking. Like, why? Why do you need him far away? Yeah. For the same reason you need clearance between you and a nuke. Yes. Right. When it goes off, it's going to blow up everything around it, which you did. Right. Like they didn't, he wasn't going to go to Heinz Community College in Mississippi, right? Like any of those, no, no, no, no, no. So Cam goes to Blinn College in Brentham, Texas, the school with which I'm very familiar with. Kills it. Kills it. Kills it. Kills it. It's great. It makes no, the idea. First of all,

Blynn is one of those schools that just got good at a bunch of stuff, right? Like, oh, didn't have the A-C-T score to get into Texas, Texas, San Diego, and the University of Houston, uh, come down here. Oh, you're really fast. We have a nationally reputed track program here. Michael Bishop, legendary Kansas State quarterback. He did his time at Blynn, right? Like, it was like, this was the place that you. you went. And so Cam goes there. He doesn't want to be there. Everybody understands, I'm here for a good time, not a long time. And it goes pretty much exactly as you would expect for it to go when you drop Cam Newton. By the way, Cam Newton, who is now in year three

of eligibility. So this isn't like 18 year old Cam Newton. This is 20 going on 21 year old Cam Newton, going to a junior college, a place where he's only supposed to be like two year guys. He's in year three and he's playing against those dudes. Come on, bro. Go look at photos of Cam playing at Blin. There are a few and they look a lot like Jonathan Ogden in high school. That was exactly what I was going to say. Yeah, playing against all of those like private school boys in D.C.

And you see him on the field and he looks like a dad. And then it looks like there's a toddler. And the toddler is a normal size person. That's what Cam Newton looks like on the field of blend. Yeah, it was nuts. It was nuts. And so like I say, it goes as expected. And again, my understanding has always been, people were very concerned about him going way far away, right? Anyway, he's the number one Juko recruit in America, and everybody named Mama is trying to get their hands on him and to recruit. I know Bob Stoops made an offer at Oklahoma for what mattered to me at that time. Thank God that never came to be.

Lane Kiffin, who when he got to Tennessee, told Todd Boyd, no, your scholarship offer is no good here. I've got Matt Sims on deck, right? He made an offer for Cam Newton. Like this is Lane Kiffin before Jalen Hertzen before Blake Sims broadened his outlook on how to play football, right? Yeah. This is Lane Kiffin looking for standard dropback quarterback.

Nope, he was like, yo, let me get a piece of this. Mississippi State, they made the hard play for Cam Newton. He wound up going to Auburn. Now, I talked to people on the cam side of things around the time this is going on. The point they made was, you got to remember, Auburn's like an hour and a half from Southwest Atlanta. He spent a lot of time at different points going up there for the weekend, hanging out. Like, there were logical reasons that he would wind up going to Auburn. That is still the worst nightmare that Urban Meyer could have ever had.

I guess it only could have been worse if he went to Georgia, but Georgia wouldn't get a quarter. Like that looked like that. That's a whole other episode. Yes, it is. Also, by the way, another Georgia episode we should do is we should do, oh, yeah, they're only going to start a white quarterback at Georgia. And somebody's going to go, DJ Shockley. And I'll go, true? Stetson Bennett.

Yes. Is a confounder there. Stetson Bennett started where Dave the DJ Shockley did. Mm-hmm. That's the point. Also, Stets and Bennett, if you watched him play, you would go, huh, huh. Interesting. Not the style I expected to.

see. Stetson Bennett the fourth from Georgia. Stenson bitten another Juco all star of the history of the South East. There's so much

going on with that. But Ken winds up back. He's at Auburn. Gus Malzon is the offensive coordinator who himself has had this fascinating journey. And it's funny because

remember the problem he had at Arkansas was everybody wanted Mitch Mustain to air it out. And I think Houston Nug gets a bad rap for this for saying I got three NFL

are running backs back here, baby. We're going to give them the ball a lot. But it costs Malzon. I mean, he left, basically. He went to Tulsa, became the offensive coordinator. And then he winds up at Auburn. Their head coach is Gene Chiswick. And we'll talk about that guy in a little bit later as this all goes. What you need to understand is that Auburn football team, and we didn't realize it at the time, was Cam Newton, Nick Fairley. That's it. and some guys. Guys. And some guys.

Introducing guys. Some dudes. For all the talk of everything about the SEC and generally speaking, the SEC possesses a depth that talent that you're not going to find other places. SEC schools, particularly the top half of the SEC, and we would say that Auburn is a top half of the SEC school, right? Mm-hmm. They've got guys.

They're going to send a bunch of dudes to the NFL. What we did not know at the beginning of that year was that team would send two guys, at least to the draft. Maybe some other guys got in, some practice squad action, some special teams, little situation. They had two guys get drafted off that whole team. The story is going to end with them winning a national championship with two guys who got drafted. Not just two guys who got drafted in 2011. Two guys off the whole goddamn team heard their names called. by an NFL employee.

Yeah. Auburn fans, sit down. You can't hear this question. Everyone else, come forward. Or look at your screen. If you're watching YouTube, look into my eyes. Tell me honestly, do you remember the name of a wide receiver on that offense?

Wide receiver. Didn't say tight end. I'm even going to take him out of it. Okay. You don't remember a name of a wide receiver on that team. I only remember one. Who do you remember? And it's only because his name was somewhat distinct.

I believe it was an Ontario McAulb. It was a running back. Ontario McAleb. Oh, sorry. My bad. But yeah. So we're all in the same boat. Because if you had asked me,

if you had asked me at 845 this morning when I was extensively reviewing things in my car for this show, I would not have remembered the name of a wide receiver, Darvin Ham. I'm sorry, Darwin Adams, not Darwin, Darwin Adams and, you know, guys like Terrell Zachary. they didn't go to the league. But I don't think I ever knew Darwin Adams name, and now that I'm looking at it,

they do have a wide receiver whose name, I remember, but not from playing wide receiver. Wasn't Cody Burns, a quarterback? Became a quarterback, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Additionally, Philip Lutzenkirkin. Do not forget Lutzy.

Let's see, RIP. He's no longer with us, but Philip Lutzenkirken was their big red zone threat. The fact that we're having this conversation means that the average college football fan watching this is like, Oh, yeah, no idea. That team was Cam and a dude who I remember for rolling over an Oregon defender.

That's it. Like you might remember Michael Dyer. Right. Like offensive line. This is the thing we talk about, the SEC wins at the line of scrimmage. They didn't even really have those guys. Yeah. This was one dude.

And I understand what happened with Cam was not immediately you jump into the season and all hell breaks loose. It wasn't that, right? Like this was, when you look at how they started that season, I think the first game, you know, they went to play Arkansas State. Okay, like we understand that one. I remember it was like a real close game against Mississippi State. They played an overtime game against Clemson,

and this is at the beginning of the Davo era, which was, who, boy, that was a hoot. But they were just kind of like, they were putting up decent numbers, but they were, like, they scored 17 points against Mississippi State. They scored 27 points in overtime against Clemson. I didn't put up 35 against. against a pretty decent South Carolina team,

but we didn't know what this was. This kept going and their defense was not good, right? They were giving up a lot of yards. They played a game against Arkansas. That was a basketball game. It was a basketball game. It was an incredible game to watch on television. And as I recall, I feel like it was right around like the time change.

So the game ended and it was dark and it was like 65 to 43. That is correct. And it was just, Beown, boom, up and down the field, up and down the field, up and down the field. And again, we were talking about a guy with no NFL linemen, no NFL players to throw the ball to, and they scored 65 points.

Yeah. By the way, an offensive line, no more for breaking knees than anything else. Yes. Like, if you want to know, if you want to know, like, I'm going to, let's just be very real here. What did the rest of those guys on that Auburn team do on defense and offense? helmet to helmet contact and a lot

of roll-ups and chop blocks. They were very good at being, and I say this complimentary, like hashtag complimentary. That's a dirty team. Like you did not have fun playing them. All of those guys on the ground, Cam shook a few of them loose

to be fair. A lot of them are lying on the ground because they go, this is pre-NIL and my ACL or the letters I care about right now. I'm going to make a business decision. I'm going to lie down before this dude chop blocks me. Yeah. And look, that Arkansas team was good. Yeah. Like, I mean, that is the, if you know the infamous Bobby Petrino picture with the Sugar Bowl hat, if I'm not mistaken, this is the team that went to the

Sugar Bowl, right? In that game, by the way, KF Newton, 10 for 14 for 140 yards and one touchdown, 25 for 188 on the ground for three touchdowns, because it was the Bel Air Academy offense. Like the teams combined, isn't the SEC, upon the SEC defense. There's a thousand yards of total offense. But it was also, if I recall, the CBS game of that week. And that was the game where everybody saw what Cam Newton was. The power of national television still matters. Johnny Mansell owes everything to beating Alabama on national television in the CBS game in 2012, the week after Alabama played LSU. That's what we had here. It was

the national TV window and one man looked like nothing we had ever seen. So I'm going to take you to the 23rd, October 23rd, 2010, because at this point, he's getting national renown, sort of getting prominent, sort of getting the notion of, okay, this is a person that you should watch. And you should, you know, you should at least stop by for a quarter or two if you're going to watch a college football game. And I got a friend who has some tickets. So, you know, I'm going to drive down to Auburn.

They haven't been a game in Auburn. They're going to be playing LSU. That's a good time. Yes. So I end up in the corner of the end zone for this game against LSU. And there is a run. They do beat LSU and they do it on the back of one Cam Newton touchdown run, which has T-shirts and posters you can buy.

Ryan was there. Ryan was there. Right, right, right, Ryan was the LSU student and Ryan, I believe, was in the stadium at the game. He might have been next to me and the LSU mom. I was next to, who was a very nice lady who whenever Auburn had the ball would say things like, hit him in the knees!

I got to tell you from the first quarter on, once Cam started getting loose against them, it was kill him, kill that man. Like, that's the only, there's a great compliment that I have where to a player, when I don't know what to do with them, where I'm like, okay, you should probably just hit him with a car. Just drive a car out of the field and hit them,

and that's the only way that you're going to get them out of the game. game. And on that 49-yard run, what you need to know is that the sun is going down. It is going down and it is shining at that point directly onto the field. So if you're watching Cam take this run, he's kind of running into the sun. So you can't really see where he is, but he's so big. You know, typically you lose people in the sun. This is what I remember. I remember the screams of LSU fans behind me. And the kind of screams were like, if you watch somebody jump off a building, they're kind of like, ah, I can't do anything, right? The futility. and horror of not being able to stop what you're seeing.

That's what's happening behind me. But if you look forward, Cam is so big that he's actually making his own shadow. Like typically it's so bright you can't even see through it, right? You just kind of see motion. Cam is so goddamn big when he's running that occasionally you just see this like enormous silhouette of somebody. And I remember seeing that.

And I remember seeing Patrick Peterson just kind of go through across it, like eclipsed. Like he just missed him. Like I don't know how it happened. there are NFL draft picks on that LSU defense, a good LSU defense with great talent. I think we hear a lot out of LSU, right? Oh yeah, good defense. Great talent. Later went on to have Hall of Fame careers.

How were they in college? Yeah, they're fine. They're good. That defense, and watching Cam take this run, I don't know if people can understand. It's the longest play I've ever watched in person. It took forever. It's like 13 seconds. Peterson, for my money, he's the best athlete I have ever seen play corner.

Right? Just like, like, what does it turn in speed to power? Is that what they talk about like a guy that size at the size that he was in as a junior in college? It was unreal. And Cam Newton is running away from him in this game. Just running away. And look, they won that game 2417 and it's worth noting when you look at the stats, like I'm looking at the game log now. There was only, there were no games. One game, the national championship game is the only time they cam through more than 30. passes. Only one other game where he threw more than 25. This was high school, right? Like, Gus Malzad is a legendary high school coach who was only four years removed or five years removed from coaching high school. It was you get your biggest best player. You make him to quarterback. And then we just figure everything out from there. And according to that primitive formula, they were running through the SEC. And by the way, that game, 10, for 16 for 86 yards, which is not really that impressive. But the 28 for 2.17 and two touchdowns.

And the 49 yard run was all I needed to see to know that I had been wrong on everything. I thought Cam coming out of Florida was a dude who was a bruising runner. But we didn't particularly, we didn't get to see his elusiveness very much. Right. We didn't get to see that. Like his biggest play at Florida is in 2007 and a 59, 20 blowout of Tennessee. he comes in in relief and destroys a man, puts his helmet in the dude's chest,

and blows him up at the goal line for a TD. I mean, you could hear the swamp when it happened. He hits him in the, like hits him right in the sternum. And you just hear everyone in the swamp at once go, like I've heard that twice. Lawrence Wright when he hit Joey Kent in 95.

And Cam Newton, when he speared this dude right in the chest. the goal line. Like it was an incredible moment. But he threw high. He never got the chance because what do you do when you're amped up and you're young as a quarterback? You're typically going to miss high.

And you throw off your back foot all the time. Right, you're throwing off your back foot. You see a guy open and you go, oh. And typically when that happens, the ball's going to go high. Well, we didn't get to see that. And then you get to see at Auburn. Not only is he huge, he's elusive. He's elusive in ways he's elusive in that he can run over you.

Or he could say, simply juke you, he can run around you, or halfway through that LSU run, he just hits the gas. Yeah. He hits the gas. And Patrick Peterson, one of the both fastest and strongest athletes I have seen, is behind him. Just, just gone. And that at the moment where I was like, I was wrong about everything. Yeah.

Like, that is, Cam Newton is a player who really, like, in terms of just watching him and listening to that story, everything I thought was wrong. Everything I thought about college football was generally wrong, and I had to kind of change the way that I viewed everything about the sport, simply because of the example he set on and off the field in terms of how he interacted with the machine, the apparatus. Yes, and that's now this is where the fun stuff starts. Coming up next, we'll talk about when people started getting nosy and things got really loud. Every Friday from 6 to 7.30, it's NBA Happy Hour on.

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And it's worth noting, right? The passing is getting a bit better. Auburn now looks like a legitimate national championship contender. Like I would be very curious to know how we would have received this team coming into the season. Like there was no, hey, these boys got a quarterback this year height surrounding them. They started the season at number 23, again, because they didn't have any other dudes. But now this is turning into a thing. They're now top, you know, they went into the LSU game at number five.

They're number three coming out of that game. And I believe it is in between homecoming against Chattanooga and the game against Georgia. We get the word that I think the way they did it was Auburn suspended him and then immediately appealed and thereby made him active once again so they could conduct. an internal investigation because the word on the street was that somebody had offered to give them some money. They didn't even have the allegation. The allegation was about Mississippi State allegedly offering $180,000 for Cam Newton to go there in a motel room in Starkville. Right. Right. But the allegation was not at that point that Auburn had paid, right? Or there

was any receipt of money. But now it is out there. Now the biggest story in college football is under what was at that time as scandalous a thing as one could propose. Yeah. We are now here. We've skipped fame and gone straight to infamy. Yeah. And this is where everything was wrong. Everything that you assumed about the situation was wrong.

And we begin to find that out in rapid succession. First of all, the idea that the number two team in the nation could lose the player who's responsible for them being number two simply wasn't tolerable. It wasn't tolerable. Like it just like for the SEC for anyone. Yeah, they were like the one thing about the SEC is they ain't telling. They ain't giving up. No.

And in addition to that, the idea that you could be in a situation where you heard the number $180,000. That number is very important because I think that is a pivotal moment like for me and for anyone watching the sport when you go, okay, like at that point, my thinking is like, okay, well, way of the stupid system, but maybe rules, maybe rules should exist. Maybe there should be some rules. Maybe they might be silly, but we should all abide by them. And then you find out that the price for Cam Newton was $180,000. I will tell you at the time, $180,000 sounded ridiculous. It sounded absurd. It sounded like, I just saw what that guy did against LSU. That would be worth it at 180 grand. It seems doubly absurd to me now that I know the price for, I don't know, know, Miami quarterback Carson Beck.

You tell me you pay Carson Beck $3 million or whatever. What would I pay Cam? 10 times that. 180 grand. Bo, at the time, you and I knew people who made that money. At the time, we might have been making that much money. That's an amount of money you can understand. Yes.

Right? Even if you've never made 180 grand a year in your life, you know people who did. And you're like, they're dumb. or they're not as talented or they can't do half of this shit that I do, much less what an athlete like Cam does, 180K, that's a car you can envision. You might not own it, right? But you go, oh, okay, 180K.

Think about the kind of house, 180K bought in 2010. Yes, it's fine. There are nicer, right? There are nicer. 180K is not a formidable sum in someone's, retirement account, it is a tangible amount of money. And I think at that point, that has to hit everyone's brain sideways. I know it hit mine because you go, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you should probably pay in the 180K. It didn't just seem logical. It seemed reasonable and just.

Yeah. Well, I don't think it fully landed with me and I want to put a pin in the 180K until after a couple of weeks, right? And I will tell you about a conversation I had with a buddy of mine in line with this because I want to one thing that was interesting in the storyline of this is so I believe it was a black man named Kenny Rogers was the guy that Mississippi State was using as the as the go-between yeah him and John Bond yeah so it was this weird collection of go-between characters and cams daddy who was a preacher and meeting in these hotel rooms and Dan Mullen who had seen with his own eyes what this was because he was the offensive coordinator at Florida before he got the job at Mississippi State. And so he really, really, really wanted to get Cam. The thing my understanding was that

he didn't quite realize is that Camé really fuck with him like that, right? But he knew better than anybody else. Yeah. What that was. And he was at Mississippi State, right? This don't, this don't happen over there very often. So he's like, okay, we're going to make this happen. The allegation is they get together in this hotel room. I want to say it's like the day of the egg bowl or something like that in 2009. And something. flat out asked for the money directly in front of Mullen. And Mullen says, whoa, I got to go. I cannot be here for this portion of the discussion.

He should have stayed. He should have heard every fucking word they had to say. But anyway, he gets up, he leaves. This is what the allegation is. It's all swirling and it's at a time where we used to lose our minds over $3,000, $5,000. This was the biggest number anybody had ever heard. Okay.

and Alabama, which has this interesting quirk at least did at that time in its schedule where they had two rivalry games and they would play them basically back to back in the SEC schedule. One was Georgia, one was Alabama, one would be home, one would be road. This year, it was Georgia at home. And again, it's the SEC game window. It's how is this going to go? And I will never forget that dude walked out of that tunnel like the biggest rock star that he, existed like the full understanding. This wasn't the road.

So he wasn't coming out and everybody's here to hate me. No, this is the SEC and you're mired in scandal and you're at home. Everybody's here to love you. They hate us because they ain't us. That is what this is. And he bounded from the tunnel and went in front of the student section. And I was like, oh, they're about to score a gazillion points. And they scored 49.

Mm-hmm. And did it playing single wing? Yes. Like, again, the line from Jamel Holloway to Cam Newton schematically is not that far. It really is not. Like, it is a very simple offense. It doesn't have a triple option, but there are options built into every play. Right.

And when those don't work, the next call is Cam. And that was enough to beat anyone. It was enough to beat Georgia. it was enough to beat Alabama on their own field. It's amazing how simple it was. There's also this, and it's incredible. It's a moment when I think we understand the value of the player as much as we ever have because there was a time.

And I don't think this is now. If you look to the college football playoff now, people are savvy enough that we're like, okay, we can pay everybody, so now we can start constructing a roster, and you can have different strategies on how to do that. Now, if you look at the teams that are currently in the playoff, and by the time this drops, there will be fewer of them. We have different philosophies on how we invest our money.

You know, we have 100 points, right? Where do you put those character points? Miami is the closest to the older model where they're like, oh, we got three talented, four talented guys. Give them whatever they want and point them as close to the enemy as possible, right? Now, what if there was a team that had two talented guys and one of them was about 70 to 80% of that talent? Yeah. Over invest. I've never seen a team more invested in a single player, single player. Like Vince Young was an extreme case of this and Cam is over here. Right, because further over. Vince was surrounded by NFL talent. Right. That team was top to bottom loaded.

This team was not. It was this guy. And so they win that game against Georgia. And again, I can't explain to people how big the story was, how big the cloud was. that was around this. And they went and played Alabama the next week. Now, Alabama to that point, he'd already lost two games that year, but they weren't getting blown out in these games, right? They lost a one of their two losses to Jordan Jefferson and LSU. They lost that one,

and they lost one to Stephen Garcia and South Carolina. Sabin's defense hadn't quite figured out what to do with mobile quarterbacks yet. Like they didn't have to be fast. They just had to be able to move. Also, also one wide receiver, who was indefensible that day, who Saban wanted to cover one-on-one. And when Sparrier saw that, he went,

oh, neat. Just throw that guy. Does that Al-Shaw-Shaw-Jepry? Throw that, yeah, Al-Shan, just throw that big Joker. There you go. Don't do the big Joker. We can get figured out.

Yeah. Alabama was up 27 to nothing at halftime against Auburn. But before we get to that part, the Georgia game was you are wrapped in love in the midst of scandal. Mm-hmm. This was the iron bowl on the

Role. Rick Flair time. Oh my God. And they do it with stuff like, you know, white people often lose sight of how much we know about their stuff. So they do it stuff that's really funny to the white people that I don't think landed with Cam Newton like playing Steve Miller Band, take the money and run before the game. And I've seen a clip in a documentary of Cam like yeah, they were playing and run. You know what the fuck they was playing at the time. Like maybe you did. I don't think you was really. do don't don't don't don't like oh shit that's my jam hey wait a minute they joke it on me i don't think i don't think that's what happened no no no you're telling jokes you're telling jokes for you not for us they were getting their asses kicked like they were getting run off the field and this i'm gonna be the goose again and then what and then what and then a 28 point comeback in the second half they try to call it the cam back because everything needs a name but that'll sound right it ain't it don't matter the name of it is not the point. They walked Alabama down

in their house. And it ain't really they. He walked Alabama down in their house. And this time, he couldn't run the ball. They stopped him on the ground. It was like 22 carries 39 yards on the ground. Passing this time, it was 13 for 20 for 2, 16.

And that Auburn defense that could only play with the lead this time they got their shit together and they won this. That is again, as impressive one man performing. as given the circumstances, given the pressure, given the stakes, like if it's just the Iron Bowl with nothing else attached to it, this is crazy enough.

Yeah, I listened to this game on the radio because I was driving back from another game and I listened to it on the radio and the sound that the Alabama radio crew was making by the fourth quarter, it was the sound of somebody who was being told of a bad diagnosis at the doctor every time they opened their mouth. Right? Like just increasing stages of like, okay, your test came back positive.

Oh, that's not good. Positive for what? Well, it's cancer. Oh, boy, that's real bad,

right? Then he scores like, you know, it gets up to 21. Then it's like, well, what stage is it? They're like,

stage nine. You're like, I thought there were only four stages. And they're like, surprise. You're the one, you're the first one who's had stage nine. Like,

that was every single score. just kept getting worse, kept getting worse. And it was a little more mythical for me because I didn't see it at first. I've watched it since. And it's way cooler in the radio version where I don't know how he's doing it. Right. And it was, there was an air of defiance obviously to it. And the Alabama angle takes us back to another part of the scandal that I think had kind

of been lost, which was the two powers of the conference at that point in time are Alabama and Florida. And it felt like both of them had their hand a bit in this controversy and this scandal and this investigation coming about because now we also

hear about all the stuff that happened at Florida, the cheating on test, the laptop situation, right? And the question that always comes up with any of this stuff in the SEC is who told? Because they got a real stop-snition, they have blue line situation about all of this stuff down there. Like if we could

caught, we get caught, but you don't get to tell, right? Phil Fomer skipped out on SEC Media Day. How many times trying to avoid the subpoena when Alabama accused him a snitching? Yeah, and then got served at SEC Media. Yeah, they got served. Yeah, but it was just they, yeah, this is, this is the thing, right? So Auburn getting this good, Alabama can't abide by that. Florida needs KM. to not be so good because while this is going on, by the way, Florida stinks and Urban Myers on the way out the door. We didn't realize it at the time. Mississippi State, they're furious, right?

Because they were sure that they were going to be able to get him and they did not. And now it's the game against Alabama and he just straight walks them down. Yeah. Can I walk that out a little bit? Sure. Okay. Because you've covered Florida.

You've covered Mississippi State. You've covered Alabama. You've covered Auburn. Keep going. I think this is one of the cracks in the foundation at Georgia that is eventually. one of the things that leads to the downfall of the Mark Richter era. Yeah. Because how did you let him leave?

How did you let him get out of here? Did you see that guy, Mark? He's too big to miss. How did you not get him? And then we start noticing all the other talent at quarterback in Georgia that ends up going elsewhere. Yep. They asked him to play tight in.

Roddy Garner went to Westlake, told him to play tight in. Mm-hmm. Yeah, walk that a little bit because it's not good. Yeah, yeah. It's not good at all. I mean, Sean Watson went to high school, what, 20 minutes away? Yeah, yeah. There's also an alternate timeline where if he is the rented mule,

and those were the words that Cecil Newton used to describe what he feared Cam Newton would be at Mississippi State. And I think that has to do with usage as well. Although that's exactly what happened at Auburn. Well, that's exactly what happened at Auburn, but here's the thing. So he is used as a rented mule in Auburn, but nobody stops him. Like, I think maybe Cecil even underestimated what Cam was going to do because I know what they would have had him do at Mississippi State. it would have been QB power. Yes.

A lot. He would have been going battering ram, Tebow style straight up the middle, right? And that's not what he ended up doing at Auburn, but I think the results would have been the same. Yeah. You know, like we saw a dude, nobody could tackle. Look, and that, look, I can skip to the next part. By the way, they beat the dog shit out of South Carolina in the SEC championship game when they play again. And then in a rather unimpressive performance from Cam, they won the national championship game.

A game I did not see live because I got food poisoning from a talk. place in Los Angeles when I was out there to do Jim Roma's burning. It was a really terrible situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was rough. I don't want to say which one because they had national chain, but they did me dirty and I'll never go back there again. But this gets me back to the $180,000 in the conversation that I had with a buddy of my man, Chief. Chief is a, well, I think he's still at A&T, but he's economics professor. He also played college football at Ole Miss. And Chief said to me once, and I hadn't really thought about this, but he was right. And he said, here's why that $180,000 was a steal. And he says, if you had put Cam Newton on any team

in the top 25. And keep in mind, like Stanford with Andrew Luck was in the top 25 that year. Okay. We're saying any team, if you put Cam Newton, that quarterback of that team, that team would win a national championship. And we know this to be true because the least talented team in the the top 25 that year from top to bottom was Auburn. Yeah. And they won a national championship with Cam Newton. If you put Cam Newton on Florida, we still had a bunch of players at that time.

Not even Urban and Steve Adizio could have messed that up. No, and wouldn't have. Like that's the ifs that come off of him and off of this case, if Florida keeps him, that's another title. I feel certain saying that. I don't even think that the 2009 version of Alabama, which was a very tuned in version of Alabama, I don't think they beat Cam Newton one-on-one. No, I don't.

And I know that because the following year, they didn't, right, with a lot of the same personnel. So I don't think, I don't think they get around that. I think that if you, if Gene Chiswick, okay, who by the way, like, we know who Gene Chisick is because of Cam Newton. Yes. Like, that's it. he would be he would be a footnote he gets an extent he gets a contract out of that he gets a buyout out of that he gets a tv gig he gets a tv gig out of that he gets a tv gig out of that you don't get a tv gig unless you won that title yeah with that auburn team right if if auburn isn't in that race they

don't end up in the title game versus oregon and oregon potentially has a title because oregon plays a very ugly game that is one of the ugliest games i've ever attended i was there It's unwatchable. But Oregon probably would have won that game, right, versus almost anyone else. But in the second half, again, Cam gets it together and they do what they did all year, and they come back and win that game. So the ducks have a championship game and potentially a championship after that, right? Which would give the Pack 12 a championship, which, you know, they haven't had since.

A non-USC championship. A non-USC championship at that, the rarest of all things. Let me tell you this about the way Chiswick goes in this. And so Chisick, Chisick had been the defensive coordinator at Auburn in 2004 when they went undefeated and were loaded. Okay. Loaded on offense, loaded on defense, just flat out loaded. And that is actually a very important paradigmatic shift in the way that we thought about the SEC because Oklahoma was the number two team that year. And they went and got their doors blown off by USC.

And that became the you can't keep an SEC. SEC champion out under like ever again right that's the way people looked at it okay chisick went to texas for a couple years his defense coordinator he's the defensive coordinator in o five um where again what jean chisick is really good at is telling really good defensive players to go be really good defensive players great gift right he goes to coach at iowa state five and nineteen over the course of two years he gets the Auburn job in 2009 black people got a lot of questions about how such thing ever happens, okay? 2010, they win that national championship.

I'll never forget this. Did around the horn before the start of the college football season in 2011, like opening weekend. And I want to say Auburn was playing against Utah State. And I was in face time. I mean, I faced time, the showdown. That's what they called it. So I'm doing the showdown.

And I say, hey, keep an eye on Auburn and see what they look like without Cam Newton. and reality hit me like that was the most obvious thing in the world to say. And I'm like, brother, I don't think you understand what I'm talking about. Chuck, Chuckie Keaton is about to beat them in Auburn. Yep, and almost did. Almost did. But they were eight and five that next year, which is to say, and I believe this is a fair characterization. Cam Newton was worth five wins all by himself.

At least. Which in football terms is incalculable. We talk about like value over replacement player. It's very hard to calculate with a small data set like football. It really is, right? Like it's just you got 11 guys on each side. It's very difficult. But if you want to do a big raw number, go look at this quarterback is worth X.

This quarterback is this much of your production. That's a thing that you can go look at and look at how much production Cam Newton was worth versus any other player relative to the team. I don't mean in total yards. You can go search the stats and go, okay, well, this guy had more total yards. How many total yards out of your team's production were we talking about here? How many touchdowns can I attach to him? There are guys who have had these kind of seasons in terms of dominance across sports.

There are very few of them who have had it in football, right? And if you're going to look, the pros are not where you want to look at. You want to look in college where you can take one player and hitch an entire squad to them and maybe get nine plays. Look at Diego Pavia. We know Diego Pavia's name because he's been the anchor for the Commodore's entire effort to be a legitimate football team in the SEC in 2024 and 2025. We know his name. He's got outstanding numbers. I voted for him for the Heisman.

Was that wrong? Now that I've watched Trinidad Chambliss in the playoffs, potentially, I will confess, might have made the wrong vote there, buddy. but you know his name because he is so much of their total production. And I will tell you that whatever Diego Pavi is done is probably about half as much as what Cam did proportionally against the entire prime SEC schedule of 2010. Do you realize how good and talented one has to be to put up the passing stat lines that Cam did at Auburn? and for the NFL of 2011 to say, come on over. Come on down, we'll figure this out.

I remember when that draft was coming up, I was talking to a guy who knew some things, and he was like, the Panthers at first, they were really locked in on two guys, Patrick Peterson and A.J. Green. By the way, this is one of the great drafts of all time. We're going to do one of these episodes about the 2011 draft in a few weeks.

But there was no question. And a draft that had Von Miller, in a draft that proved to have JJ Watt, that had Richard Sherman, we can go up and down all the guys that wound up being taken in that draft. If you redo that draft with all the Hall of Famers that we already know are in that draft,

if we redo that draft, the number one pick is Cam Newton, period. Even with the short career, right? He's not going to end up in the Hall of Fame, all of that. The number one picking that draft is Cam Newton. Yeah, I would argue, you want to talk about two franchises

that he carried. He got the Carolina Panthers to a Super Bowl. He didn't get them out with a win, but he got them to a Super Bowl, which in terms of franchise impact, it's incredible. Yeah. Also survived a car crash that probably would have killed anyone else and he walked away from it. He did. When he was at Carolina, I don't, this gets to, you know, we've made a bunch of points that I hope are relatively smart and humble, but also at the same time. complicated and interesting to everybody.

This is the point where I would like to remind everybody that Cam, in addition to being what I think is the single most valuable player in the history of college football to one single team and also a pivotal point in college football history, I would like to make the extremely smart point that I don't think you know how big this motherfucker is. No.

That's a huge man. Football players think he's big. His numbers, I don't care what his numbers say. Like when you say somebody is a big six four, yo, it's impossible to explain. Like I know people who are 240 pounds, right? There are people who are listening to this that are 240 pounds. It's not the same.

No. It is impossible to explain how big he is. It was so funny, the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, and that's what he had made the game changer game manager quote. And I'd never forget, I think Dominique gave him some hell over that. I did not. I knew exactly what that,

what that guy was talking about when he said that, right? But Dominique said he walked past Cam, it was like, oh, okay, I understand what he's talking about now. No, no, it's not, it doesn't make sense. He's built like Master Chief. Like he looks like a space marine. He is the biggest thing on the field, even if there are other bigger things, right? Everything's huge on him. He's got big calves.

Like, he has the calves of an offensive lineman. Like when he lines up, I remember seeing him at Florida, and he came out on the field. And I remember thinking, I was like, oh, that's a big tackle. That's a, oh, that's Cam. Yeah, shit. Like, I, in terms of what a quarterback could be, we're used to quarterbacks being tall and some of them being kind of muscular. I don't think you're as big in terms of total bulk. Like, we don't have, we don't have Josh Allen size dudes very often.

But we have them a lot more now that you have a guy. like Cam. And now we see prospects like that and go, yeah, sure, go ahead. Start a power forward at quarterback, right? Start a center. Hell, right? He's like the darn-ale Washington of quarterbacks. Right.

Like just incalculably huge. Should not be that size. And if anything, you know, this is a real dumb point I'm making. But I hope that if you go back and look at what he's doing to the LSU defense in 2010 on that run, or if you go back and look at his highlights, just know that when he was passing you, it was like a van sweeping by you in a parking lot. Like it made a noise.

He's just, it doesn't make sense. I've seen the mic'd up with one of the bosses, pardon me if I can't remember which one or distinguished between the two, but one of the boas is miced up talking about tackling Josh Allen and Josh. And they said, the ref is like, hey, man,

those little low next time I'm going to have to probably throw a flag. If you go in that low on him, and Bosa looks at him and goes, Look at him. What am I supposed to do with that? And, you know, this is somebody who is as also huge, right? And extremely strong, a 99th percentile human being in terms of physical capability. And he's looking at this guy like, this is a question from hell.

I can't answer it. You're asking me to do something. I don't want to and can't do. Like, it's like in terms of, in terms of, he's one of the few players who has metaphorically. and literally as big as he should be in terms of college football history. He was that guy. And this is Time Machine Tuesdays. We're going to do this every Tuesday, man.

Brother Spencer Hall, check him out at Channel 6. This was fun. Like, I am enjoying this. Listen, we're going to do Mansell. When Mansell's time come, we are definitely going to get to Mansell because that was the, that was a time. Yeah. That is good. That is the way to put it.

If you want Cam, yeah, oh, time was had. Now, imagine this. Imagine you put Cam Newton on the team that Mansell jumped on to that had three first round picks on the offensive line, Mike Evans, and the man who one day still might put it all together,

Christian Michael, and running back. We wouldn't have those 2417 games now, would we? No, it'd be week four and everyone going, what? Yeah. That would be a team that had a legitimate.

I don't know. I think they could keep it close against the Cardinals. Listen, I'm going to give you, listen, I'm going to give you, yeah, they might, but I'm going to give you the haters, the haters prescription, which is, you know what they'd be, Bo the end of the season? Eight and five. Eight and five. They would.

Somehow, some way, even if they weren't eight and five, somehow it would be like this year, where at the end, Aggie felt eight and five now, didn't you? Didn't it feel just like eight and five? Right before that, I wrote that the two most psychologically shattering things that could happen, like the worst possible case is that if A&M lost to Texas and then they lost in the playoff. And Bo, they lost to Texas and they lost in the playoff. My favorite thing about that is that I never wanted Texas to play them again. Like when I was really invested in that, I was like, you want to go to the SEC fine.

Never play them again. Leave with the belt, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, never play them again. Case McCoy walked you down at your house. Never play him again. And instead, Texas has chosen to take that to another level of, how about we just never lose to him again, huh? What you think about that?

Like, the fact that A&M could not win that game the first year that the series was resuscitated and it was in their house, never moves to them again. It's devastating. It's devastating. But I'm making jokes about 8 and 5. That Texas A&M team with Cam Newton would have. people would still shudder eyes would twitch you'd be like how how how did you lose by 70 points to a football team and you'd go listen listen I was there they'd have been 10 and 0 after seven games yeah we would have we would have just given them additional NCAA NCAA just would have been investigated on principle they would have been like something's happening yeah it'd have been like 10 8 rounds in boxing like that's just instead of a 10 8 round if they let you you

get 11? Oh, okay. Listen, you want to talk about SEC Omerta. Okay? You want to talk about keeping Lecosa Nostra quiet and not snitching, okay? SEC, you say we're good at it. No, there's gossip. How often, how often does everybody you know talk about college football calls up and goes, listen, I got eight or nine things from this week. Oh, yeah. They gossip, but they don't call the cops. No, they don't call the cops. Okay, well, at the time, we got Big 12, Texas A&M, right? Yes. They're called the cops. They're called them. Listen. There's all kinds of Texas. First of all, Texas,

A&M's going to win five games by 30 points each, and Texas is going to convene the state house. Be like, well, we got to outlaw this. Yeah, this has to stop right now. That can't be real. They would have arrested Cam at Memorial Stadium before they allowed him to actually play any football there. But listen, you're like, oh, well, why would there be a cop on the field at Texas A&M?

They're both. Listen, they're bumping shoulders in the tunnel in 2025. What do you think they wouldn't do in 2010? That's right. That's right. My brother, I appreciate you, man. Yeah, thank you. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time.

Remember, we're going to do your time machine Tuesdays every Tuesday. Stick around with us. Join us. Ryan Bradley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. And also, we do this four times a week. Remember, follow the right time. Call the voicemail line.

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