The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Spencer Hall on Lane Kiffin & LSU's major mistake, Pressure on Alabama & Ohio State, College Football's playoff problem | 12.02

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

In this episode, Bomani Jones and Spencer Hall discuss LSU hiring Lane Kiffin & whether both parties will regret this decision. Later, they break down other coaching carousel news and why the current college football calendar makes no sense. Finally, they discuss the pressure on Kalen DeBoer & Alabama Football ahead of the SEC title game and the lack of pressure on Ryan Day & Ohio State. 02:45 - Lane Kiffin wants to ride the tiger 22:00 - Other College Football coaching moves 30:00 - What's going to happen if Alabama loses 38:00 - Ohio State vs. Indiana: Who cares? 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 one of those times in a week where we have a guest join us.

He is the best college football writer in America. Check him out at Channel 6 and other places. Spencer Hall. What's going on? What's going on, sir? There's nothing happening. I mean, I don't know why you would have me on. Oh, yeah.

December 2nd. Hey, look, man, we got a hurry up to get this does so we can go watch this Diddy movie that Fitty Made. I don't have any shame in admitting. I can't wait. And it's all these people who are like, yeah, well, he's just doing this because he don't like Diddy. The only reason I'm watching is because I don't like Diddy.

Let's go. We all have appointment viewing. You have that. I have to go to Zach Fox's TikTok account and just see how many times he's retweeted Kevin Gates singing beefing with my chick while I'm in jail. I don't know if you know this. He's retweeted at like 50 times in different variations and I can't stop hearing Kevin Gates

in my head. So we both have, we should get to this because we both have things to do after this. Yeah, yeah. I just want to say this one thing about 50 cent is for all the terrible things there are to say about him and they are terrible. One thing the man is not as insincere, right? Like I watched him sit down in that interview with the director and you know what he's

thinking, I put this black woman on. You know, and he's sitting there and they talk to Robert Roberts and he takes that quiet tone and talks about the seriousness of the matter and he was just like look man i'm just telling y'all the man asked me if i basically he's like he asked me if i wanted to go shopping with him and i knew what time it was i knew he was trying to beat and i ain't been cool with him ever since so yeah i'm making a movie about it you know there's survival instincts you only get from surviving a violent shooting and i think that's i think that's one thing we've learned about 50 is that if he leaves the room it's time for you to go to yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yeah

This is what it is. I was hanging out with somebody that some people in this show would be familiar with. He was with his girl. He was talking about how they were somewhere in Atlanta and he saw some dude walk in. And he was like, he was about shoot up to place, let's go. And he got out. And that woman looked at him in front of us and said, and you know, that was the day that I realized that there was something about you. Like, she was 100% like, yeah, this is the kind of man I need in my life. Just in case you're wondering what they love. this gas station is no longer a safe space. We got to go. Yes.

Yes. All right. Lane Kiffin is now the coach at LSU, right? That happened. That happened. He's there. He is there. I don't know about you, but I've heard not a word about candidate number two for this job.

LSU decided that they wanted Lane. They talked about how they was never going to give out a contract. like they gave out before. Not only are they giving him a contract like the one before, they're going to pay him bonuses. If Ole Miss were to win a national championship, Lane Kiffin's owed a million dollars in his contract,

and LSU is going to give him the million dollars. They have handed the keys over to him, and I don't think anybody has really properly stopped to ask the question. Is this a good idea for LSU? Well, first of all, let's congratulate Jeff Landry on some extreme politicianing. extreme politician speak by being like, we're going to do contracts that are different.

We're not going to do all this, this appeasement and we're not going to just give coaches what they want. Then Lane rolled up and he's like, keys to the castle, baby. Yes. For Lane. Take him. For Lane, a guy who, if I may remind you,

has won championships as an assistant and has won with Florida Atlantic. Yes. we have, and yes, full credit to everything that happened at Old Miss. That is the best run at Old Miss history. He is the best coach in Old Miss history. Do not throw John Vaught in my face. Not everyone was eligible to play those games.

I didn't get to see the full capacity of those things. His name's on the stadium doesn't have to be on the statue outside. If they were going to build one, it would be from Lane. He is the only guy with an 11 win season there. 10, 11, and 10 phenomenal run there. Maybe his best work. And I think what will be his best work. because I think this LSU gig is now completely complicated by,

simply by how he came in and by the circumstances of the game as it exists now. So the Ole Miss thing is interesting because it is the best run and I made a mistake last show. I said that Lane did not have a big win at Ole Miss and that's not true because they did beat Georgia last year. Listen, they beat Georgia. Other than that, big win for Lane ever, I believe is the. 2011 year against Oregon where they pulled one out at the end of the year while they were someone in the throws of probation. Okay. So my bad, he has won two games worth discussing in the last 15 years. My fault. My fault. I owe you an apology lane. You've got those two. However,

if you are lining up the best coaches in the SEC, just putting their names on the list, I'm not even necessarily saying where does he stand on the list. I'm asking you how many of those coaches can you definitively say Lane Kiffin is a better coach than insert name here. And buddy, I don't know, given that Mississippi State's coach is actually kind of sort of the shadow coach and the actual coach is actually a really good coach, bad guy. Who you got? I don't have anybody that I am positive in this conference

that Lane Kiffin is a better coach than. I'm a little higher on him than you are. Okay, but tell me positively, is he positively better than Beamer? Than Beamer? Yes. Okay. Is he positively better than Heipel?

No. No. And I will say this too. I think Heipel's a better, I think Heeple's a better or guy. Like, given, I think that is, underrated the gig that he has done at Tennessee and the culture that he has built because when was the last time, I'll make this brief, when was the last time you heard, man,

Tennessee's got a problem player or Tennessee has a culture. Nope, nope, that is a kumbaya group that gets results at a place that is harder to succeed at than people think. So yes, next. All right. Is he positively better than Eli at Missouri? another underrated dude i think overall if i was giving you one v one game lane is a better play caller and he's going to be a tougher one-on-one matchup if i'm extending this over if i'm giving you a stock report right here's your money take your portfolio to eli drinkwitz and associates i would give it to drinkwitz just based on the steady performance at a place that again a little more difficult than people think got you but if you know

but they're in the same neighborhood and i'm just saying ain't anybody going through all this year for Eli Dringowitz. That's all I'm saying. Like that's, that's the, I, the thing I give him credit for, you and I have talked about this for years with Lane. I do appreciate that he doesn't make offense more complicated than it has to be. Hey, we got a dude and I'm going to give him the ball every time if I can. Hey, it is not, it doesn't matter what position he plays when it was Amari Cooper, a Marry Cooper damn near one of Hizman. When it was Derek Henry, he ran for 2,000 yards, and he won a Hizman. If you're the guy, you're going to get the ball. If he did this, with the Marquis Lee at USC.

Listen, he did this with, he did this with Jackson Dart. He did this with Trinidad Chamblis. Did not matter that he was a Ferris State transfer. Did not matter that he appeared to be an FCS player. When he walked on the field, you go, wow, that guy looks a little small. Doesn't matter. You're going to touch the ball 53 times. It works.

And he's going to do it. So he doesn't make it harder than it has to be. He puts players in a position to succeed, delegates. Much better than he used to it. U.S.C. the story was that Lane would not delegate and Lane would not let anyone touch any controls on offense. He's a little bit better about that now still calls plays, but very good about delegating. And keeps it loose. Like that says a program wide keeps it loose.

We're all basically, we're talking around. We're outlining the elephant in the room, which is Lane. That's it. Every question we asked today, Bo. every question we asked today is going to be should work, should work, should work, should work, but that's it, that's it. There's kind of a mess there.

And it's complicated now by, well, there's a mess meeting a mess. And in the middle, they're going to try to build a football program together. And that that's going to be the challenge here. You're not going to convince me that the most attractive part of this job

Delaying Kiffin was not the fact that it is fraught with drama. like you're not you're not you're you're you're not gonna now now one thing I will say though one thing I will say mm-hmm you might bring it it it feels like bringing in back should be on the board right like it it it it should be at the top of the board actually bow would that be drama would that be drama I feel like that would be a good time it'd be a good time but that'd be dramatic right that would be a story so that means that means they're gonna do it that means it's gonna happen I'm gonna give everybody a blueprint here okay oh man would it come back even

though he was the head coach. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You know, Lane wants it to happen so it's going to happen. They've handed him everything. Do you want, oh, hey, would it be weird if Nick Saban were a consultant? What if, what if Nick were just off over here and we just paid him to be over here? Wouldn't that be dramatic? Yeah, sure.

They'll try to do it. Whatever you name, if it's going to be a good story and it's going to raise some eyebrows, Lane will do it and LSU's just going to let him. I just, my, my, I don't know if complaint is the right word, but as coach, right? He's not quite Lincoln Riley in the sense of, hey, you know, we got to play some defense too, right?

Yeah. However, you know you got to play some defense too. Like, I think, and look, you are, you are in, I mean this in the positive way, Florida man. Like, he is, he, while Spencer has the picture of Florida man, he does not have the internal composition

and constitution of Florida man. But he is the, we talked about it. He's the spiritual successor to spurry. Like if there was a job that was a fit, that is the one, except it sounds like the AD of Florida was like, nah, I ain't working with this clown. What are you talking about? Like, made it off the top was kind of like, like, I'm not really trying to do this. I got to take this call, but I'm not. About that, the reason that did not happen, the primary reason besides the chalk and cheese relationship between athletic directors, Scott Strickland and Lane Kiffin did not get along.

That was a factor from what I've heard. Additionally, Florida has a GM. We have GMs now. And now you have to do the NFL thing where you go, does the throne get along with the exchequer? Does the treasury get along with the presidency? Do the people doing the budgeting and the talent prospecting? Are they on the same page with the coach?

Right now, Florida has something, which may be a problem for them. They have a GM who operates co-equally with the coach. And that is both report to the athletic director at LSU. That will not be the case. Lane did not want that at Florida. He's going to take Old Mrs. personnel guy, who, to be fair, if you look at the number of people that they've prospected, that's probably one of the dudes who had a hand to getting Trinidad Chambliss,

probably one of the guys who built this roster that's filled with talented, skilled players who all can do exactly what they need them to do on offense, at least. That's what Lane gets there. So that's a factor as well. Yeah, and so we'll just see what kind of defense they play. Well, yeah, one, got to get a new defensive coordinator because Old Miss is now in the hands of Pete Golding. who, hey, I told the people on the show on Monday that I saw a picture of him and it was hit.

And they said he was head coach. And I was like, oh, that man can't beat a head coach looking at that beard and everything else. And I was like, oh, but maybe it's just that picture. And then I went it looked up more pictures. Nope, it just gets worse. You can make, I can't believe that man is the head coach anything. But I talked about this. I don't know if anybody's followed up on it.

I'm curious your thoughts. But I don't think that what is discussed nearly enough about the Ole Miss part is the staggering leverage that all of those assistant coaches had in that moment as they are trying to hold together what this season is. You don't want to wind up like Florida State where one thing went bad and you thought you were going to the playoff and then nothing has been the same

since everybody decided they weren't going to do something, right? Right. Old Miss, they got to hold it together. And I think a few of those guys are going to Ole Miss, but I mean to LSU, but some of those guys are going to stay because they have to and they will be compensated handsomely for this. They will and they're going to get a nice,

two to three year run out of this and we'll see how it goes. I don't think I've ever heard anyone saying Pete Golding was an obvious coaching candidate. That's, let's just remember that. It's not like, oh, up and coming assistant. You know who that would be? That'd be Will Stein. Will Stein just got the gig at Kentucky, former Louisville quarterback who was the offensive coordinator at Oregon. He is now in charge of reviving the Kentucky program.

I think he's going to do that. He's very smart, very energetic. It'll be cool. No one ever said that about Pete Golding. Pete Golding, it was like, Wizard of the Whiteboard. If you say Wizard of the Whiteboard, that means you don't necessarily want that guy in a press conference.

No, no, no. This is your brother Bill Oliver type, right? This is somebody who is going to be in the background. He's going to be a staunch assistant, but now he's being put in a role where he's going to be, perhaps out in the spotlight and maybe a bit uncomfortable at first. And he's going to do this in a low pressure. situation called the college football playoff.

There's your coaching debut. You are in the college football playoff. You're not starting up against like, you know, Weber State. That's not happening. You're not starting off against Alcorn. You're debuting against heavy hitters. So good luck, Pete, man. Good luck.

I'd also like to point out that he used to be the defensive coordinator at Alabama. And then he was the defensive coordinator at Ole Miss. And it's not because he did such a great fucking job at Alabama. Yeah, yeah. Although, to be fair, to be fair, I will give him this. That's late saving. That's late saving where maybe the recruiting isn't quite the one-to-one fit at positions where it once was. So, yeah, I'm going to give him a little latitude on that. He did a pretty good job at Ole Miss. But if you were trying to take somebody off that staff, that is not pick one. All right. Now, this leads us to a good little transition here because we're going to, I feel like all we can say was Lane, honestly, Adela. as we're going to see, they're going to be the primary story in college football, and I will give them this. Every other coach in the country is boring, and Lane is not. Like, I appreciate having somebody to viscerally despise in the way that I realize

that I despise this man with whom I've only spoken one time. But it is going to make things better. The thing is I kind of like LSU, is I got a lot of friends that are around LSU. And I don't know how I feel about this. I said Ryan Clark a text and said, you know, I always hate it when a team I root for. or, you know, brings on a clown. And we talked about it. I said that to Marcus Spears,

and I've got no reply. Yeah. I got to run this by Van. See what he thinks. No, he's already in. He's already in. You know why he's in? Because there's no other option but to be in.

No matter who it is, no matter what it is. Once it happens, you got no choice but to be in. And so they are going to be in until they aren't in. Yeah. Oh, listen, everyone has to do this this time of year. LSU, by the way, would have been in anyway. If we had taken Attila the Hun and we had made him head coach at LSU, oh man, I'm all about the Magyar Empire.

That's right. Down with the Hun. I'm good with it. Yeah. If it had been, if it had been Dracula, they would have been thrilled. They would have been like, that's why we play at night. That's why we play at night. Yes.

Vampires for life. LSU is just going to be in no matter what Lane Kiffin does. Like to the point, that man, because, shoot somebody. He could, it could shoot somebody. And they'd be like, hey, we've all been there. No, no, we haven't. No, we haven't. Maybe you have. I have not. It does not matter. Right. Like, it doesn't matter how much creep shit we, that comes out from, from Ellis, from Ole Miss about Lane Kiffin there. It doesn't matter how much, uh, I don't know if you've seen the hot yoga instructors of the world, um, are uniting against Lane Kiffin for his boorish behavior in

classes at Old Miss. No. Oh, an officiado of hot yoga. And on TikTok, hot yoga instructors from Old Miss from the particular studio he went to was like, yeah, he farted in class and blamed it on a girl. He'd sit there and he wouldn't follow directions. He was just doing bicep curls while we were all in child's pose. Like he was apparently just going in and freestyling. Like, Lane Kiffin just like doing after all this stuff we heard about him in the yoga. He wasn't actually doing yoga. He was just going to the yoga studio, and we all know what that means. I think he started with it, and then he was like, let me freestyle on this. And they were not, they were not appreciative of that.

I just want to point out that that kind of stuff is what got Ed O'Jeron fired, not to losing. Which, which one day we will have a long investigative series on the alleged tales of Ed O'Jeron hitting on people. I do not, for one, I do not think they were true. I don't think they were true at all. come around with you on this one. When he saw the woman at the gas station and asked where she worked out and she was

like, I married and he's like, what's the point? I have come around. I think he might have wanted to work out. I mean, first of all, I don't think that entire story is true. Second, he really might have wanted to work out if that story's true. Have you seen Ed? Ed is in his 60s and he looks like he could beat your ass. That's, so the man would have loved to.

That's the other part. He would have been like, good form. Good job. Good job. Anybody ever told you you're a natural lifter? Like, that's what he would do, right? And then maybe a relationship blossoms from there. And by the way, free and clear at that point, none of this was off the books.

Right. Because Ed, at that point, divorce was clear. Yes. That was done. Ed was a single man. Right? I did. Look, that was my favorite part of this story is all these married men who do all this

dirt and everybody finds a way to let it slide because they need to keep it low. Ozerod's problem was that there was no reason to keep it low. Therefore, I mean, oh my God, and bringing the kids to practice. That, that's never going to, that was never going to stop being the world. No. And that's amazing. And, you know, there's also this.

And this is going to happen with various coaches who are under pressures that all of a sudden we've become privy to their private lives. And there's a lot of things that I can say about you. I can be like, okay, I don't think that's necessarily cool or that's weird or, man, that seems like too many women to date at once. Your scheduling must be incredible, especially given the 60 to 70 hour weeks that you're working. I don't see it being very rewarding for anyone.

However, it's not in the contract. It's not breaking a law. Then all we can do is laugh. That's really all we can do. And I will return to this if Old Miss does not play. If Old Miss does not play, at least the instrumental version of area codes, or of Houdini's I'm a Ho,

Okay. Some other variation. It's ludicrous. Oh! That's the one that's, that's the one that's coming down. They're going to play every single one of them. I don't even know if they allowed to play rap at the Mississippi Stadium, but if they have him before, they will be soon.

He also gets to make a run by Tennessee this year. It is like all the score, all the score and laying lovers. They're all there. Why don't they schedule an exhibition game against the race? Yeah, don't do it. Don't do it. Because now everybody is reminded that Al Davis, though Al Davis did have some ideas that maybe weren't necessarily practical, the 40-yard pass downfield, not a base play. Yes. Not a first down play every first down. Um, Al was right about some things. And that's this, that when you fire Lane Kiffin, he does it in a manner where you're just going to want to take out a PowerPoint, where you're going to want to crack out an overhead projector. You're going to want to get vintage with it. in terms of how he leaves. Yeah, he hated that man. Oh, my God.

That's just, it never stops being amazing. And by the way, when he got the job at Tennessee, he wrote them a letter to tell them that this man would leave you with shame and dishonor. And what do you know? By the way, like, how mad, like that is anger when an old man's going to crack out a letter, right? Like, because we both have, we both have fathers who are seniors.

If you got a letter from your dad, would you open it? I'd be terrified. I might wait until he died. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like, I'll open this after your dad.

I don't want to know what's in it. It's all the board. It's all the board. By the way, Spencer, I got to tell you, at our age, all of our parents are seniors. Either either they were seniors or they were freshmen you were born. We're just at that, we're at that place. Now, I have this, though, this is a coaching thing that I've seen and I don't know that much about it, but I still find it interesting.

Two guys are about to be coaching at much different schools than they used to be, with at least one of them. Pat Fitzgerald, who used to coach at Northwestern, and apparently he is on some level been absolved, but they're running dick gauntlets at training camp in Northwestern, and he is not responsible for all the dick rubbing that they were doing. I, if you say so, but he is now going to go to Michigan State. And also the head coach at BYU, Sittaki,

I don't really know anything about him, but apparently he is the focus of the Penn State search and I am very curious about the possibility that these two guys now go to jobs where they can and have to recruit everybody. After before, really only talking to a subset of people that spoke a certain language. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Like, it's got to be such a relief for Sataki. Like for Fitzgerald is no longer, man, I got to see if they're going to get to grades. For Sataki, it's like, I no longer have to explain to them that the best part about being an athlete is not on the,

the board here. Yeah. So one, Dick Gauntlets were essential to the greatness of Northwestern football. Pat Fitzgerald knew that. That's why he did them. And that's why Michigan State is just fine with it. By the way, Michigan State, not exactly the place where maybe we want to hire a coach who created a toxic culture.

But what do I know? What do I know? I'm not paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to run an athletic department. I'm sure there's some arcane knowledge that I'm not. I'm not privileged to, or maybe we shouldn't hire that guy. You know, was it overblown? I don't know what we don't overblow. Was it bad?

Yeah, it was bad. You don't want people doing that in your football program. Now Michigan State's got to hire this guy who is, let's rewind, a retread. A good football coach, but this is a retread. Yes. You're trying to catch lightning a bottle twice. It's a much different environment. And by the way, who says he's going to be better with players with lower academic standards?

Everyone's a niche. Everyone is somebody who's successful at one place with very specific conditions. The rare individual is somebody who is successful at a number of different places under different conditions, right? Steve Sparrier, for example. Or Bob Chesney, the guy that UCLA just hired, right? There's a lot of people getting each other's jobs that's happening right now. It's fascinating. John Summerall was custom cut agent pitching him as the next Pat Die, a program, a coach, a guy in bike shorts with a whistle, right?

A dude, a killer, a defensive guy. Born to run the ball and do great things. And, you know, in the old SEC, he'd be this like eight and four guy who had a job for 15 years. And people were like, I think he has a good family and he's a good man. Right. Perfect Auburn casting. Where does he go? Florida.

He goes to Florida. The place that wanted Lane Kiffin at first. The place that employed Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer or any other number of mercenaries who just wanted to kill. Where did the guy who could have gone to Florida? Florida go. Alex Golish, right? Offensive offense first already coaching in the state of Florida. He went to Auburn, who now Auburn fans are like, um, just we like the Russian guy, right? We like it. That's Alexi Golish, by the way, born in Russia and came to the United States at the age of four. Is that going to keep Auburn fans from just like blatantly putting tigers and old Soviet propaganda and hosting them on the internet?

No, they're going to, they're already doing it. It's already happening, man. Chesney goes to UCLA. L.A. Chesney has won, by the way, at the E-CAC's finest, right? Finest private Catholic institutions. He, oh, before that, assumption? Yeah, like Bob, he coached at someplace before that the name is escaping me that has like a saint in it. Like, he was coaching at places where I know he did the laundry, right? He has three stops before he has three stops, all before he gets there. James Madison, which, by the way, we're talking about like, you succeeded in a big. program, James Madison. Okay, it's still James Madison. I know it's the largest public

university in Virginia, okay, by enrollment, and you know what that means, right? You're like, yeah, it's the biggest one by enrollment. You go, oh, the former commuter school that's got to glow up, right? And that happens to have a superb football program that's managed very well. That guy could have taken the Penn State job. I think that's like, if you look at the pattern, you should have gone there. You go, okay, regional sort of in the area. Definitely like the work-a-day blue-collar type guy who's on the come-up, he goes to UCLA, which is a complete wild card of a hire. And then Kalani Sataki, who could have gone to UCLA as a West Coast recruiter, somebody with roots there, he might be going to Penn State. He might already be at Penn State by the time anyone hears this, Bo.

And so there's a lot of very weird default choices going to the second step and going to the place where they were listed as either the primary or secondary. It's a very weird market, active and weird. BYU, to me, sneaky good job that I would be reluctant to leave because if they got anything over there, it's money. They got money and they have a conference in which they may be the best job in the Big 12. When you really stop and think about it, you can make an argument that they are. You have a built-in recruiting pitch. Yes. If the money doesn't do it, maybe God will.

Yeah. Maybe culture will. You don't have to, you don't have to function as a more. as an outsider, right? Not that that doesn't happen every day. Not that Mormons aren't completely fluent, moving from one sphere of their life to another and balancing their faith against a public role.

Sorry Mormons, if you're listening to this. But you have a built-in recruiting pitch where it's easy. It's easy. You're just going to the place where everyone does this already. And in addition to that, they're all a little older. If you look at those guys, they've always hit with the violence of people who got up with the kids. Yep, that's what I'd say.

Those are grown men who they're getting, They're playing football to get away. That's less true than it used to be, but there's still people there who are like, yeah, I got to play this game. Then the wife and I are going to Costco tomorrow morning. That's a concern. That's a legitimate concern.

We need to put together a list of those programs whose secret sauce is, we old. Kansas State, we old. Like, like, we get, these boys need this in a different way. Kansas State had guys who were like, you know, so I was rough-necking. That's good money.

That's good money. But, you know, I'll tell you, it's a hard life. It's a hard life out there. It's lonely, too. It's lonely. So I thought I'd come back to football because, you know, Laramie wasn't being good to me. Like, that's, that is very, very real.

And, you know, like, I think you could play with a rage that you can only get if you have, like, five hours sleep and two kids. That's, that's what BYU hits with. It's a great gig. By the way, can we? Can we just go ahead and highlight that the Big 12, I know, we're going to make fun of the ACC a little bit inevitably because the ACC has a title game where the two best teams may not be in it. Virginia plays Duke because of conference records and how things line up in that conference because it is a bucket of crabs. And everyone points and laughs and goes, ha, who's going to watch that on TV? BYU plays Texas Tech for the Big 12 championship.

This used to be Texas playing some other relatively large market team, right? And the Big 12 has morphed into this mutant where we have Lubbock v. Provo. It's way, way less comfortable when I say it that way. BYU, Texas Tech sounds all right. But I'm like, Provo versus Lubbock, the two metropolis. All right. Coming up next week, I'm going to talk about the actual football of the weekend. You know, there was once upon a time, this is a highly anticipated weekend.

and now we just talk about Lane Kiffin. All right, Spencer, it is championship game weekend, and a big discussion in the Lane Kiffin saga is the calendar, the calendar, the calendar. It's the calendar's fault that this guy doesn't know how to act like an adult, right? It's the calendar's fault that unfortunately you had to make a tough decision, a one or the other, and somehow you thought that you could get away with both,

and then you're trying to piss on our head after you get to this other part. But we have actual factual football, and I do want to point out as we talk about the calendar, It does stink in the way that everything runs and the way the playoff is now set up. This feels very anticlimactic and in some ways confusing as to what it is that you're supposed to do with a team that loses in a conference championship game, which is to say, what's going to happen to Alabama and Kalin DeBore if they lose this game to Georgia that in theory should not knock them out of the playoff if they lose, but probably will?

Probably will. I would win this game if I were here. because Alabama does not like it when you lose SEC title games. They do not like it when you lose at all. Kalyn DeVore's been an interesting piece in all of this because Kalin DeVore has been at least put as a possibility at all of the following places. USC.

Penn State. School to be named later after we vacate Coach X. He's been this sort of question. And no one asked him about any of this because we just assume Alabama's that volatile. We just assume they're going to throw him out. And no one's questioned it. I say this with people like in this industry who we're talking about whether coaches are going to move or whether USC is going to get rid of Lincoln or Texas Texas going to fire Joe McGuire. If he, you know, trails for a single quarter.

There's a lot of that. But everyone takes as a given that Alabama is volatile. And I don't know if at least on DeBoer's end that that's true. Because by all reports, he's pretty happy there. Because you know who else has the keys? Kail and DeBore. Because they have to trust him at this point. Alabama's too big a product and everything's riding on his good decision making.

And they've let him have whatever he wants. Quietly, he's got the Lane Kiffin deal. Whatever you need, whatever you want. We're going to give it to you. And we won't have to be freaks about it like those guys in Baton Rouge. right? So I don't think, I think that's maybe now, I know it'd be fun if we could just throw Alabama into this mix. But right now, the messiest program is LSU. That's because they have Lynn Kiffin as their coach. Jeff Landry is their governor. And because Le Bon Tom continue to rule it. Like, it's just a big festive thing. Alabama, still pretty businesslike at this point. I know it would be fun if we could, if we could get them riled up. I know it would be fun if they were in chaos. I think they're probably. a little more in order than we might think they are. Okay. So I do not make the assumption that with a loss or whatever that Alabama is going to

toss DeBoer out, right? Yeah. I operate on the assumption that he'll jump ship because again, I've seen this happen several times. It is like Alabama did not want Franchone to leave. He just looked around. It was like, well, first of all, you guys lied to me. But he just looked around and was like, oh, hell no. Anytime somebody's like, yeah, college station, here I come. What? Yeah, yeah, that right there.

Not what's up? Ray Perkins, he jumped ship. There's another one I just can't remember right now. But that is always, I mean, Nick Sabin was about to jump ship. We cannot forget that the Texas job was right there. And if they had just done it right, he would have jumped ship on this one. The look on DeBoer's face when they scored that touchdown at the fourth quarter

to take the league of utter. relief just like, oh my God, thank you, shit, man. I did not want to have to deal with this again. That's why if USC were to come open and his old boss is running the search at USC, I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, he's going, he going, he going, he going take that one. But I don't know what happens if you lose this game. I mean, he's, he's had decent success against Georgia. There's some interesting kind of circles in this conference.

Mike Elko now can't be Steve Sarkeesian, but Steve Sarkeesian apparently can't be Kirby Smart, but Kirby Smart, not so great when it comes to playing again. against Alabama. It just kind of goes in this rotation. But if Alabama loses this one, does a three-loss Alabama make this playoff? My guess is no. I think it depends on how they lose. This is one of those ones where I think if the committee is looking at it and they want to put Alabama in, they will if it's close. And I think this will be a close game. And I don't think that has a lot to do with Alabama. I think that's on Georgia. I think Georgia just plays tight games this year.

They don't have an ability to sort of take big 21 point chunks out of people on offense. And defensively, they're very good. But they also don't do that thing where, whoops, three interceptions and a quarter, you're now losing by 17 points. They don't do that. This is more of an Andaconda type team. This is, by the way, Kirby Smart couldn't be happier.

This is ideal Kirby Smart football. 16.9. How do we win? Toughness. That's how we won. We won't with toughness. That's it. Did you win with brains?

No. No. We left our brains in the locker room, right? I got Mike Bobo calling plays. No one's going to be happy. Me or Ryan, we're talking before the show about how Lay Giffett is 100% not my kind of guy as human. But as football coach, Kirby Smart is 100% not your kind of guy in any form or fashion whatsoever. He's a better version of Will Buschimp who was not just not your kind of.

kind of guy. He was also your team's coach. Yeah, I'm not, okay, as I've aged, I've at least, I respect the guy who thinks that football should be won by a field goal in the fourth quarter. I do. I also hate it for the same reason that I hate clearing my bills by a dollar, right? I don't like it. I like big margins. I want to feel safe. Give me a coach that feels safe, right? They're like, hey, you know what? Our toughness is going to get us through this. And I'm like, a 38 point. Lee, it'll get you through this. You're like me. I don't want a great fourth quarter team.

I want a great third quarter team. Third quarter team. I want you to foreclose on them, okay? Like, I respect what Ohio State's doing by playing as little football as possible to get to the playoff. That's the smartest thing. Could you guys just hang 50 on somebody? Hang 50. I know you could, but you don't want to because you go, well, we can burn the clock.

We can just get out of here. It's fine. Cool. It's a job to you. Do you know what makes me feel better as a fan? Flames. Like, you know, Curtis LeMay, the head of the Strategic Air Command, was once asked why he needed 10 times as many bombs to destroy a target as was necessary. Because in the words of the interrogator, the questioner said, why do you need to reduce everything, you know, what it's already done, you've already reduced everything to cinders, right?

It's all ashes. And he goes, yeah, but I want to watch the ashes dance. And it's like, that's the kind of psychopath I want as a head coach. When Dan Lannin gets that chance, that's what he does. He's like, hey, you know what's better than a 14 point lead, a 21 point lead? You know what's better than the 21 point lead? 28 point lead. So I respect it, Kirby.

I do get it. I really love that emphasis on the process and on dominating people every down. You know what else I like? I like annihilation. I like watching a team do that because I'm nervous. I'd really prefer to be up by 40. All right. I want to point out something.

Speaking of teams that are by 40, talk about this with Ohio State. and they are playing Indiana this week in okay so one of the arguments that anti-playoff people and to be clear I have always been an anti-playoff person and the actual existence of the playoff has only made me more resolute and clearer than ever than I was right in the first place um one of the arguments was that these regular season games are just not going to hit like they used to and I've heard people make the spin but no look the ratings are up for da-da-da and all of this stuff fine I'm just telling you this week that there's a one versus two matchup in the Big Ten championship game. And it is the least anticipated one versus two matchup that I think we have ever had,

in part because of having this playoff that's just going to run next week. And I think, now granted, these teams, Michigan and Ohio, Michigan and Indie, fucking Anna, but these teams haven't really played much of anybody. Ohio State had the big win against Texas to start the season. since then no win to truly speak of. Indiana has, I mean, honestly, what might be the best win anybody has this year that win at Oregon by 10 points.

I do want to point this out, though. Indiana has given up 24 to Penn State and 20 to Oregon, and that's the most points they've given up all year long. Ohio State has not given up more than 16 points this year. These two teams have been a nod. violating people. Like Ohio State, the closest they had to the scare was Texas. Indiana had the one against Penn State.

But these two teams have been waxing people, but it's in part because of the calendar because they're waxing people because all they play against is floors. That's it. So the joke of the Big Ten is that everybody's a flavor of Purdue. Right. Wisconsin, that's dairy, dairy Purdue, right? That's Cal Purdue.

You know, Illinois, that's science Purdue. which I know, sorry Purdue, your rocket science, Purdue, not general science, Purdue. You know, even Penn State became ice cream Purdue this year. Like they are all different variations of Purdue. It's one of the reasons we're not excited about this one, too, is because of the calendar. We've talked about the calendar. The calendar, nothing in this sport is built for the calendar. Nothing in the sport makes sense because of the calendar.

It's like 90 different people planned it without looking at to see what overlapped. By the way, did you know that we're two, I believe two days at this point shy of, of an early signing day, which is all in the middle of this. The worst idea they ever had, by the way. Dumb, dumb, dumb. To me, that's the biggest one. That's the biggest thing that's messed up the calendar. That's the one that's getting people fired in September.

Yeah, it accelerated all of this. Like, it made everything much less stable. There's no coaches, and their hiring period can't coordinate with recruits, and their signing period, which can't coordinate with the schedule, which, by the way, the Big Ten schedule sucks this year, but that's not necessarily the Big Ten's fault. It's not, it's just the quality of teams. Right now, the Big Ten, by having so many teams, that bottom of the Big Ten, the bottom five or six teams, it's as bad as you'll see in any conference, maybe worse, just because one, conference is huge.

You're going to have more bad teams and more good teams, but at the top, it's so stratified. You know, Ohio State will beat Indiana. I feel real confident saying that. If they do lose to Indiana, then that is, that should go down as one of the great upsets in college football history. I know, Indiana has been great this year and they were great last year. And Kurt Signetti has done a remarkable job there, one that I think is like for the books. There is nobody who in my mind has engineered a bigger turnaround. Like we're now putting this in the category of Bill Snyder, Barry Alvarez, people who have gone in and take programs that are historical doormats and turned them into mean,

top tier programs. That said, if they do upset them, you're going to have to put another superl over an extra critzignetti's name, because in my mind, that would be the biggest upset in a championship game in forever years, like, because this Ohio State team is that far ahead. Their defense alone is one of the best teams in the nation. I just mean their defense, right? If you put them on the field and punt it on offense, I think every game would probably be three nothing. And it would be for Ohio State. I am looking forward to it, but I understand why other people aren't because the Big Ten has been kind of ass, right, top to bottom. It's very stratified.

All the qualities at the top in like two teams. And they've had the most, like Penn State really undermine their national standing by utterly collapsing down the stretch. You know, they're six and they're going to probably finish six and six. I think you finished six and six. Nobody wants to see that in a bowl game because they were. And I remind everybody a preseason top five. The preseason top five this year, by the way, as inaccurate as it has ever been, thanks to Penn State and Cleveland. and Texas, all disappointing.

I know. Texas at 9 and 3 is disappointing, but look where they were in the preseason 8 in top 25. Number one. One. This is, college football is in a dangerous place, though, where the NBA had this problem, and I think still has this problem to a degree,

which is all the personnel stuff and the kind of gossipy stuff started to take precedence over the actual play. Like, for example, right now, in the NBA. I don't know if you know this. I want to make sure I get this number exact right. But the Oklahoma City Thunder is 20 and 1. They could win 75 games this year, right? They are super young. They have a top two player in the NBA. They went 21, by the way,

with their second best player, not being on the team, all of this. I don't know what it takes for that to register and really break through, right? But if I told you there was some big trade that was going on or something like that. Oh, man, everybody would be all over that. And that could get the discussion. At college football right now, again, we're coming into this week and it's really all about Lane Kippant. And I don't know if there's anything that could happen this weekend that would be more interesting to people than Lane Kippen. And I think that's in part because because the conferences have gotten so big, all these games that get played, we don't feel like we really know who is and is not good. Just because you don't have the kind of the iron versus iron that you typically

had throughout a season because what do you know remember when people were like why do we even have divisions in conferences that doesn't make any sense no iteration is important consistency in those things are important they help us gather information they help build robberies they help all these things and now it's a conference championship weekend that doesn't feel like it matters that much yeah and and you brought the NBA I think it feels a lot like boxing uh where we have obvious heavyweights and I mean old school boxing I don't mean current I mean like era of the heavy weights late 70s, 80s into the 90s, where you're not going to get a whole lot of actual marquee matchups. You're going to get a lot of tomato cans and managing that record, right? If somebody is

40 and 1 with one loss, then of that 40, you're going to see 35 guys they pulled off the street, take a beating for cash. And that's what happens when you make big conferences. When you have big conferences and you try to rotate schedules and have everyone play everybody, then you do thin down the testing medal of that conference. You thin down the competitive nature of that conference. It's inevitable. And like the Big Ten, I think is suffering from this simply because they are the biggest conference. And I mean that in terms of money.

And I mean that in terms of geographic spread and in terms of actual number of members. Like they are the biggest right now. And the bottom is so very bad and weak. And the middle's not great either that when we ask, how good is Ohio State? you go, okay, on paper, this is one of the best college football teams I've ever seen. They have not sweat this year. They have barely put forth effort and they have managed to wipe everyone on their schedule in an economical fashion, like clinical. That's why, like, I think we're sleeping on this Indiana matchup because if they do, if they are competitive,

first of all, congratulations to Indiana because no one else has really been that competitive for the Ohio State. in addition to that, if they manage to upset them, it's going to be a reversal of everything that I think is supposed to happen in the Big Ten by design. Like Ohio State is supposed to come out of this thing. If it's not Ohio State, it's Michigan. And these are our bell cows and these are the ones that drive ratings, right? Not to look at this too cynically from a business point, but I'm going to do it. The Big Ten's been all about business.

I'm just returning the favor, right? This is the conference that has embraced the spreadsheet more than any single conference. And by the way, people go, well, that's SEC homerism. No, we can't read spreadsheets. We're not great at that. The SEC has been behind in terms of thinking about this. Okay, they're just slower. They're slower and they haven't been as reactive.

And they've made a bet on a different business model. And I don't think it's going to wear out. I think the Big Ten wins as far as anything can be considered victory in this. But the point is this matchup, this matchup has so much on the line in terms of national branding. It would also be very Ryan Day to lose a game at the end of the season that he shouldn't lose and win the national title anyway, right? Lose the big 10 championship and an upset. Go on and destroy people in the playoff,

which was the plan all along. Like I think that is, they've been building to this. The playoff is the priority. So I don't know, Kirk, catch them sleeping, man. I would also like to take this moment to make the point that maybe just maybe, Lane should have looked at Kurt Signetti who looked at this and was like,

no, how about I just take all this money to stay right here where I'm a god? As opposed to, I'm going to go jump in some hot grease. Why? because that'll impress people. Hey, listen, some of us have ADHD, okay? Lane was in the old mess for six years. Yeah.

I'm going to convert that to normal people years. That's like 200 years anywhere else. That's fair. That's 200 years. Okay, we're talking about, we're talking about a grown man who post on Instagram stories like he is a 23-year-old lady. Okay. And by that, I mean a lot of inspo, right?

A lot of like, you know what? You do what you need to do for your heart. If someone's in there, you need to let them go. You need to let him go and see if they come back. Like I've never seen a grown man post like that. And this isn't me going, well, that's female posting. No, I'm not doing that. I just haven't seen it.

Well, no, I just haven't seen it. Okay, I've never seen anybody post. He posts like, I think my nieces should post. My nieces don't post like that. But he posts like stuff that I'm like, I've never seen a coach do this in my life. And he's 50, right? He's slightly older than I am.

Like, that's unreal. What a time. What a sport. What a world. What a world. Listen, greatest American sport, we just spent this entire time

talking about human resources. Even our human resources, Beau, is more interesting than any other sport. It is. And that's the thing everybody hates, right? When HR calls, leave the building. But when college football HR calls

and wants to tell some stories, have a seat. Doc, here's where college sports generally are like the world. Okay. I went to Grenada last week, right? Mm-hmm. Look kind of like Hawaii short of flight, gave it a run. And they have a bit of an interesting political history in Grenada.

You're not the first American to land there. Yeah, but it's cool. I got out on my own, right? Yeah. So I'm there, and I don't want to get into all the details of the history because it'll take a little bit of, too long, but I was thinking about something that involved a bloodless coup and then one that involved a more violent coup. But anyway, Grenada right now has 120,000 people, okay? Right. That is a small town. Small town is going too far, but it is a very, very, very small city, right?

Like, you can go through the list of cities that have 120,000 people, and you can see who those, places are. Now, take a moment. I don't know anything about who runs grenade or anything else. So I'm just operating hypothetically. So take a town that has 120,000 people. And imagine who the mayor is of a place that has 120,000 people. And you can imagine who the mayor is of a place that has a million people, okay? The mayor of a place that has 120,000 people is not, I mean, New York elected area Adams. You get the point that I'm making here, right? It could be anybody that could be the mayor of a place that has 120,000 people. Except that guy isn't a mayor, that guy or woman, is a president, a prime minister. And you know what comes

with being a president or a prime minister, you get your very own army. Okay? So you take whatever little town it is that you have that has 120,000 people and imagine that you let the person in charge of that have a whole ass army to himself, okay?

Yeah. Think about that in the context of college sports. Okay? There's big, they're small, there's all these things, but in the end, there's a lot of people who have armies that should not be allowed to have an army, but something that they have,

that's cool, that means you get to have an army. That means you get to have all kinds of things that a person who's actually operating on the scale of that, no one man should have all that power. That's all I'm saying. That's college sports.

That is, hey, I'm going to put it this way. Lane just took a job where he gets his own tiger. Yes. He gets a tiger. That's scarface. Yes. When you become LSU's coach, there's a tiger and it's in your house.

Hold on. There's a tiger and a tiger that they also got because the governor decided that they needed a different tiger, right? Right, right. Also, can we discuss this? Lane's probably going to post like the tiger is his. Because we, in the course of all this conversation, did not get to. Lane might not have even had a dog. Lane had a dog and he posted from a social account for that dog, Juice Kiffin, and now the dog's still in Oxford? you never leave a man behind, Lane. Never leave a man behind. He told everybody, he told everybody to get on that plane. And the dog didn't think it was about him.

He might have had, for real, I can't believe I'm saying this. We might have had a football coach who had a Labrador Retriever for PR purposes. We might have had a stunt dog, right? A PR dog. That is now, by the way, safe in Oxford, safe in Oxford. heard. But yeah, by the way, Old Miss stripped the verified badge from the Juice Kiffin account when Lane Kiffin took that. So you want to talk about Petty. You're no longer have the blue check dog. That's beef over there. They ain't paying no more money for that. Spencer Hall, check him out. Channel 6 and various other places talking college football. My man, I greatly appreciate you. No, anytime. All right. Now, ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this three times a week, right? Or I mean, four times. Excuse me. We're now. do it four times. Brian Brumley handed everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line 3-2-3-5-9-6-7-67-67. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like,

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