November 19, 2025 • 37 mins
Colin Cowherd is joined by Josh Pate to discuss the latest in College Football. They start off with this weekend's big matchup between USC & Oregon. They give their takes on who will win and the state of USC (3:00). They give their Mount Rushmore of College Football jobs (10:00) and discuss if Texas can sneak into the playoff (16:45). Does Ohio State have an all-time great defense this season (25:30) and which teams would test the Buckeyes the most (30:15). They talk about why the new Big Ten & SEC are wins for fans (33:45). Colin says why he was wrong about Oklahoma (38:15).
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This week's Crunch Time performer, brought to you by McDonald's
new Buffalo Ranch Sauce, is Josh Allen best football player
in the world, second time in his career. Three passing touchdowns,
three rushing touchdowns in one game. It's like that junior
high football player that's got a mustache and nobody else
does right. No other player has ever done it once.
So Josh's performance was satisfying, just like the first bite
(00:26):
of the bakon creamy Buffalo Ma Crispy Ah was good.
He's a regular host of the Josh Pates College Football Show.
Totally tied into college football West Coast to East. So
(00:47):
years ago, I worked in Portland, Oregon for a spell
and Mike Belotti was the coach, Jeff Tedford was the coordinator.
They finished number two in the nation. One year they
got lucky not having to face Miami. They faced Colorado
and they matched up really well with Colorado and not
with Miami at all. And I think Nebraska played Miami
and got you know, there was like ninety eight percent
(01:09):
fans of the Rose Bulller Nebraska, but Miami kicked the
you know what out of them. So Oregon has used
two things to become a power. One was Phil Knight's
creativity and money to build facilities. When there used to
be the facilities war, right, that would used to be
a big deal pre NIL, Like, there was about a
ten year period it was an arms race for facilities
(01:30):
and Oregon was the forefront. They've actually used three things ingenuity,
one hundred different uniforms to impress Southern col kids to
be the cool place. USC has one uniform, Penn State's
got one. Oregon had a thousand, So they used phil
Knight's ingenuity, then phil Knight's money with facilities, and then
(01:50):
third phil Knight's money with nil where they are the
big bidder on the West coast. Most of my life,
when I grew up in the Northwest, you would think
you were going to land the number three running back.
In southern California, USC would get number one, UCLA two,
you'd get three, and then at the last moment he
(02:10):
would decide to just go to USC and be a backup.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
But that changed.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Oregon now mostly gets as good as players as anybody
in the West Coast. I think this is an awful.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Matchup for USC.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The teams that beat USC Northwestern actually ran the ball
to them. Iowa can run the ball at you Michigan
last year. I think Oregon's going to be hard to block.
I think Oregon USC's O line young. I think Oregon's
gonna run on them. I think Oregon's a big playoffense
(02:46):
in USC on the back end. At corners week, if
Oregon and there are a nine and a half point
favorite wins Josh thirty three twenty one wins by two touchdowns,
how do you think we view I know how we
view Oregon, that's been established, that's an elite program. How
(03:06):
are we going to view USC? Because I think it's
a terrible matchup the same way people have been viewing them.
I largely see your way.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
The one thing I would say is, you know, coming
into last week, if you and I were to have
talked about Pitt Notre Dame, you know, you could have
held up a piece of paper and said, Pitt's got
the number three run defense in the country, and I
would have looked at you and said, Okay, Notre Dame's
going to run right through them. I don't really care
what paper says. It's lying to me a little bit.
So with this, like Oregon statistically top three pass defense
(03:35):
in the country. But I can tell you that staff
up there supremely respects that Indiana had a combo of
wide receivers come in there and work them a little bit.
USC's got the same combo receivers that could come in there.
And if USC were to win this game and we
look back, that's probably the reason why. But if that
doesn't happen, and if it goes Oregon's way, it's probably
(03:57):
just more the same. Colum this probably you were. You
were a head coach that left the Big twelve to
go to the Pac twelve that became the Big ten,
and you really were never going to be a fit
in the Big ten. They hurled these accusations at Lincoln
as to why he didn't take the LSU job, and
he was scared of this, scared of playing that kind
of ball. I don't even care if there's validity to it,
(04:17):
because you didn't ask me what valid is. You asked me,
what are people going to say? What are people going
to think? They're going to throw around the same accusations,
the same pejorative connotations, And the beauty of competitive sport
is you control that. But yet it is that way
until you change that. So I see the matchup the
same way you do. But that's cool because if we
(04:39):
both see it that way and then they go up
there and win stylistically more a rock fight kind of game,
then that's how you change narratives. That's the only way
you change narratives. Yeah, no, there is.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I mean I was joking with Lincoln off the air
the other day before we did our interview. I said, literally,
you are being led by a walk on running back
from Calabasas. And yes, he said, he said, only at
USC you find a kid in your backyard who's almost
as good as any running back you faced all year.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You know. There the.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Thing I always go back to, like Pete Carroll takes
over the Raiders and their defense is bad. That always
worries me, like you can't get your side of the
ball right. Lincoln's offenses have been money and the fact
that he's doing with a walk on running back, and
for some of the year, one receiver Lemon's been the
really good key receiver that's always been healthy. Deuce Robinson
(05:36):
left went to Florida State. You know, guys have transferred out.
It's kind of been a one receiver offense for a
lot of the seats. They don't have a supreme tight
end talent. Lake mccree's okay, three star kid. He's fine,
not a pro so, but it is. I will say
this USC's I'll give Jen Cohen the eighty credit. It's
(06:00):
a really distracted market and money gets splintered into movies
and second homes and tech companies and pro sports season
ticket It's hard to galvanize Los Angeles like the Dodgers do,
the Lakers do, and yet there's the Angels and the Clippers.
It it's just it's hard. It's hard to stay to yourself.
(06:23):
It's the biggest economy in the country and Baton Rouge isn't.
But everybody knows in Baton Rouge, if you have money,
if you have two nickels drub together, you're giving them
to LSU football. I think it's much harder than people think.
In Los Angeles, it's an incredibly distracted market. And more so,
remember when Pete Carroll was there, Josh, there was no
NFL in the city.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, yeah, there was just media either man. So like
it's the whole New World.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And the Dodgers weren't the best organization in North America.
Like Pete was there, and when Pete was there, if
you won your regular season games, yeah, there was no semifinal,
you won the Pac twelve, you went to the Roles.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I think I said today, there's four or five programs
in the country that have an advantage for national championships. Georgia,
Ohio State, University of Florida, I don't love the governor,
but probably LSU. And I mean, and I said, I
would say Oregon, but there's no players in the state.
(07:23):
And then I think there's six of them Bama in
the new anil world. They don't have a lot of money,
and that changes things. They don't look like like Oregon
can go buy players from the state of Bama. Bama's
going to have a hard time getting them out of Oregon.
That for Oregan wants them. That wasn't the case four
years ago. So I mean, I I've said this to friends.
They don't want to hear it. I said, USC is
(07:45):
not Ohio State in this new world, and they're not Georgia,
and they're not Florida's. It's another thing. Josh costs three
million dollars minimum to my home and a nice neighborhood
with good schools. The assistant, the linebacker, coach is making
five fifty. You can't afford to buy a home. How
do you view USC as an elite?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Are you?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
What is your Mount Rushmore for best jobs, money commitment,
state with players donors control their history.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Georgia has always been They've been to my number one
for a while. If you were to promise me alignment
at LSU, I put LSU right up there. Ohio State's
way up there for me. Ohio State. Whatever you think
about Ohio athletes, I mean, there's like a proud tradition
of high school athletes. Ohio State has zero problem going
into South Florida, I mean, zero problem whatsoever. So I
(08:41):
put Ohio State up there. You'd have to check, like
which period of time it is. But Texas conditionally is
up there.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Same.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
But what's changed over the past, just like what's evolving
right now in front of us is Texas A and M.
Because Texas A and M has just been and it's
been like this stack of wood, but it's been wet historically,
meaning they well post Johnny manziel A and M is
a totally different world. If you went on that campus
pre Manzel and then you went back. Now you don't
(09:12):
even recognize it. So they they leveraged one play. They
leveraged Manziel better than Auburn leveraged Cam Newton, like they
leveraged him so hard, so effectively. So I'd say them
as well, but with USC. So to go back to
what you were talking about for a second, I remember
I was way younger. I was like in school when
the Pete Carroll era happens out there, and we were
(09:33):
enamored with them. We hated them in the South, but
like we were enamored with them. You remember that trip
they made to Auburn and they shut Auburn out to
start a season. The entire South, even people who hated
Auburn in the South, they like waited for that date.
They circled that date because it was going to be
like a culture clash and the South's culture was going
to rise. You can't come into Southern eat and do that.
(09:56):
And then of course they did. But I remember thinking
back then that I always it never made sense to
me as a kid growing up in the South, immersed
in college football and that being the culture. When people
would say what you just said about LA I had
never left the South. So to me, I just assumed
that all the big time college football programs and the
towns slash cities they were in were like Athens, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama, Tuscaloose, Alabama, Knoxville, Tennessee.
(10:21):
That's just the way I thought it worked. And I
thought when people said, boy, there's a lot to distract
you out there, there's a lot more going on in LA,
I thought it was excuse making. So you know, since then,
I've been able to travel, I've been able to go
out there, and it just it slaps you in the
face when you go out there. If I feel the
same about Miami to a certain extent when I go
to Miami, when I go to LA. If you just
(10:43):
drive around for a day, be in town for seventy
two or ninety six hours, and ask yourself, does this
feel different? It feels way different. And you just asked, like,
how much more difficult must it be to capture this
place's imagination? Therefore, to capture the wallet, to capture the
emotional and financial investment, then it must be in Baton
(11:05):
Rouge or in college station. And that's that's the challenge. Now,
the trade off is if you've got it, you've got it.
But if you don't have it, they're not going to
help you get it. So you got to go in
there and you got to do it on your own.
Whoever is about to take the Florida Gator job, they'll
have the full weight and oh yeah, support of that community.
Lincoln took the LA job, and it's like, this is great,
(11:27):
we'll check back in a little while. If he's winning,
we may show up and if they're really winning, we
may even give a dollar or two.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I'll give you an example. They went looking for an
athletic director. They contacted me and said, Colin Rick Crusoe said, hey,
give me a list of about five people.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I did.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I gave the athletic director at Northwestern Auburn, Florida, the
guy at Texas. Those people weren't interested. Yeah, they're like, yeah,
it's takes about eight million dollars to buy the home
that I want to buy, seven or eight. It's like
it cush at nine hundred thousand in Tuscaloosa. Like people
(12:02):
don't understand it. Ucla, if you went to the big
ten nil right now, I bet you Ucla is below Rutgers.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yes, they are yeah people.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And by the way, UCLA is in bell Air. It's
the richest college campus in America, bell Air next to
Beverly Hills. They have the lowest nil because it's a
basketball school, it's an international university, it's an intellectual hub,
eighteen languages on campus. Football is not that big of
a deal. You got to drive to the rose ball,
(12:34):
it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It's in. This is what I've tried to explain to
someone in my social circle the other day. They were like,
all that money around UCLA, why is it a struggle?
Like why did they struggle to tap into it? Wouldn't
the right athletic director be able to do this? And
I said, I guess there is this magic formula where
you could tap into it, but you're never really tapping
into that. Because I'm not faulting these people, I'm just explaining,
(12:58):
as a matter of fact, those people's way of life,
the way they acquired their means, the way they their
mind works, the way they were it would be an insult.
It would be beneath them to allocate their personal financial
towards something like football. They just view it as bet them.
That's that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
They would view, they would view it as beneath them,
and so I guess my whole point is the world's
changed with nil and transfer portal. But it's also changed
when the NFL came to Los Angeles and the Dodgers
became the richest franchise in the history of Major League Baseball.
People are distracted. Tickets cost more, it's hard to commit
(13:39):
to Saturday and Sunday. The minute USC loses a game
they should win, you know, twelve thousand people disappear. So
I try to explain that to people and they say, oh,
it's an excuse, and it's like, no, it's I've lived
in LA there's just so much those thirty seven music venues,
eight pro teams, Like, sorry, guys, it's it's not an excuse.
(14:00):
It's like you go on a two game losing street,
the whole town and moves off you. So it's interesting
the Lane Kiffen story. We all know Jimmy Sexton controls
college football coaches. Jimmy Trace, Armstrong, Jimmy Sexton, they control it.
So Sark snapped at people today when they asked him
about the job rumors. He's like, I'm not going anywhere,
(14:23):
nor would you. I mean's to me, Texas has always
been arguably the best college football job, top ten fifteen
job in America sports, Like you know, Yankee manager, you
know it's up the Philadelphia Eagle coach. Whatever. What if
Texas hammers Texas A and M. They can go and
(14:47):
say this over three and two against top ten teams
went to Columbus. Only team that's been competitive against them
is US hammered Texas A and M. Hey, we don't
match up with Joe. We could be on three times
in a row. They've slapped us around. What if they
bought Texas A and M. What are we to do
with a logmorns. I was wondering that yesterday. I thought
(15:11):
they weren't going to drop them as low as they did.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
The AP dropped Texas to seventeen, and I thought, surely
the committee will have them thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, something like that. Yeah. Same,
They dropped them to seventeen. And you know, they did
that to Miami a couple of weeks ago, and then
almost it felt like they course corrected in the following weeks.
I think with ANM, or I think with Texas rather
if they go in there and do that to Texas
(15:33):
A and M. But it would be a strong talking
point going into that Sunday. You'd have to see how
the rest of the country played out, but yeah, they
would have an argument. To be honest with you, there
are a couple of arguments SEC schools could be making
right now about anything from strength of schedule to you know,
scheduling up out of conference, which is admirable. I mean,
(15:54):
that's what everybody should do. But there's gonna be a
lot of anecdotal debates and arguments right now if your
three lost Texas in that scenario gets left out, or
like you got Alabama dropping down behind Notre Dame last night,
which confused a lot of people, and they're going to
look at it and they're going to say, we're really
about to add a ninth conference game. Why would we
(16:15):
do that to ourselves? Why would we put that on ourselves?
The simple math there. If you've got, what do they have,
sixteen teams, you're adding eight more losses across your conference
slate that you are voluntarily adding. But you're doing it
because you want to increase revenue. You want to play
the toughest schedules in the country. You want to have
a great TV product, and they're going to succeed in
all that. But if the committee kind of short changed
(16:38):
you on their logic and short changed you on their criteria,
and they really weren't as serious as you thought they
were about rewarding scheduling, which is going to be reflected
in these next two weeks rankings, then maybe a little
catch twenty two and the one you mentioned Texas, but
like the one I'm dovetailing off of with that is, yeah,
what if Texas is in if they win, or what
(16:58):
if they're not in if they win? But I'm also
looking at the SEC Championship game because there's this weird
scenario that started to get floated. You and I are
recording the night after the rankings got released, where Bama's
at ten. Yeah, but they still control their own destiny
and whatnot. So they beat Auburn. If they do, they
go to Atlanta and they win the SEC Championship. I
(17:20):
had assumed it was a foregone conclusion. The SEC Champ's
going to have a first round by they're certainly going
to get one of those top four spots. Now, I
assumed that was like ninety nine to one logic. It
feels like about seventy thirty still on the side that
we're agreeing there with. But it feels like there's this
sentiment out there that, no, you can't jump them up
all the way to the top four just because they
won their conference, And I'm like, no, you can't afford
(17:42):
not to because I was just in Athens, Georgia last week.
Those people have little interest in playing in the SEC
championship game. They're totally happy where they are. They're totally
happy with a five or six. They feel the same
way at all miss. They're totally happy not going. So
you've already got people openly questioning what's the value in
playing for the comment ference title. If your champion does
(18:03):
not secure a first round by you have essentially invalidated
the entire existence of conference championships within this overall playoff framework.
So there are a couple of them in the SEC.
I'm watching right now, all right.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
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You know I talked today. I was talking to Joel
Clatt about this. I said, the best defenses I've ever
(19:46):
seen in college football. The Huskies with Steve Etman in
the early nineties just bulldozed people. They brought in the
four to six and nobody knew how they brought it
from the Bears, and the whole college football for a
year did not know how to attack Washington. I mean
they literally every game just it was over in the box.
You couldn't get downfield, and they had NFL safeties and corners.
(20:07):
So for about a year. Then there's the USC defense
was really good with Pete Carroll where Clay Matthews didn't
start at linebacker, and then it was NF NFC Rookie
of the Year defensively it couldn't start for USC. Then
there was there were a couple of I always loved.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
There was at.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
The Rolando McLain, the linebacker for Bama.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
It was the one that beat Texas.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I was like, man, they they hit different. There were
a couple of Saban defenses that were and there was
a Georgia defense, a couple with the Jalen Carter.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
So there's been about four.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Or five that I've watched and gone, oh, that doesn't
look like that's somewhere between Saturday and Sunday football. It's
not Sunday, but it's close. Ohio State has an advantage
none of those had. It used to be, even Nick Saban,
you'd have a hole in your defense and you'd go
to junior college and he was never quite as good
as the ranking. You have the number two corner in
(20:59):
junior college and you're like, probably their best corner. But
he solves a dilemma. Well, now you just go buy
the best corner. If you're Ohio State and you're like,
we need to be better at corner, we're just going
to go buy the number one guy who're already in
the sport and crushing. And I look at this Ohio
State defense and again I want to see him play
out and.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Who they play Josh.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
The windows to complete passes are Sunday windows, like they're
when even when Knicks teams were great, you'd have a
corner like d Milner, who wasn't really a great corner,
he was great with a Nick's system. They got two
players that could go top five. They have another two
that could go fifteen. Between the fifteenth pick and the
(21:41):
third and the second round, what do you make of
just forget Ohio State, just what you've seen from their defense.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
It really boggles your mind a little bit because of
what conventional wisdom would have told you. Conventional wisdom, like
we all watched twenty twenty for Ohio State in that
stretch of time, and you know in the back of
your mind or you think you know they're making this
run because of all this senior veteran talent, Like they're
going to lose all these guys. Their entire defensive front's
(22:13):
going to be gone, and we didn't even know Jim
Knowles was going to be gone. But they also lose
the coordinator. And so like, just say that out loud,
you had had anybody, I don't care who it is,
Ohio State or anyone else. They are powered by their
defensive front. Entire defensive fronts wiped out and coordinator's gone
as well. Not to mention you're just coming off a
(22:33):
national championship. So there's that natural propensity to get a
little complacent, maybe come back to earth a little bit.
Everyone's gunning for you the next year. The bet I
don't know if the team overall is better, the defense
looks better, I don't know how that even happens. Matt
Patricia came in and here's one of the early warning signs.
I remember when Ryan Day got elevated there, and I remember,
(22:54):
you know, Ohio State is Ohio State, so they could
do a national search if they want to. They can
go land most any head coach they want. And they said, no,
the guy we need is already here. And I remember
some people looked at it and said, that's crazy. They're
cheating themselves by not doing this. Not do it. And
I looked at it and I said, they're not stupid.
They know what they have in the building. Just because
(23:15):
you don't know who Ryan Day is doesn't mean they don't. Well,
it's the same way when Ryan Day needed to fill
that defensive coordinator role. There are guys who would leave
really good jobs to be the DC at Ohio State.
And he went and got Matt Patricia. That's not a
name that would have been on anyone's radar. You take
the biggest industry insider, give me your top ten. Matt
Patricia's not on it, and Ryan goes and hires him.
(23:39):
And you see why like hiring. I mean, it comes
down the players making plays. But if you can staff
properly in college football and you have top fifteen talent,
let alone what they have, you're going to be really
hard to beat. Now that doesn't make him invincible, but
what you're talking about is there's going to have to
be a team if Ohio State gets eliminated that puts
together such an air tight like tight rope walk performance, precision, poise, accuracy,
(24:05):
no turnovers. That's what it's gonna take. That's what it
used to take to beat those Saban teams. It took
some insane performance. Somebody just plays out of his mind,
and if that happens, you tip your cat to the
other side. Short of that happening, Ohio State's gonna win
the national championship.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Well, the other thing is the way to beat Saban
was Manzell or cam It was generally somebody that could
go off script that Nick couldn't prepare for. He just
there'd nothing you could do. I Nick knew you were
in the pocket. You could go back and look at this.
I'm not sure he lost three times if he knew
we're going to be That's why I think Ohio State
(24:40):
beats Indiana because you know where Mendoz is gonna be.
The way to beat Ohio State or a great defense
is oh shit, Josh Allen. I mean, never forget what
Josh Allen did to Belichick when Belichick was in New England.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Bill couldn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
So the only quarterback that Bill's ever faced, even Peyton Manning,
he gave some trouble to He could do nothing with
Josh Allen because Josh actually when he was young, about
sixty percent of his game was off script. That was Manzel,
that was Camp. Those are the kind of guys that
just off script guys gave Saban trouble. And Mendoza is
(25:18):
a classic big arm pocket guy. And the other thing
is you could beat Nick if you got to lead
in the second half and his defense had to cheat
a little or guess right, like if if they could
dictate terms, Saban squeezed.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
You out like a towel.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
But if you made Nick trailed, Nick now was taking
some risk defensively, I've got to get the ball back.
We've got to generate pressure with extra people. I think
if Ohio State leads in the second half, you're in
big trouble if you have to throw against that. I
think you can the way to beat great defensive teams
in college off script and you force them to take
(25:57):
risks they normally wouldn't take because you lead.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, I think another thing that happened, like with Deshaun
Watson Clemson teams when they played another one. Yeah, it's
just that was that the I'm not saying it's the
first time you ever saw anyone run tempo, but it
was still that early period. Like Malzon comes into this
to the picture and like, guys are running tempo as
the foundational aspect of their offense for the first time.
(26:22):
So the game, like the rules hadn't shortened the game
yet either with the clock rules. Clemson ran over one
hundred offensive plays in one of those National Pantheonship games.
So I'd rarely seen Bama defense on the field. Trevor Lawrence. Yes, yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Ran down the sideline against Alabama. I think it was
Alabama ran down the side again, Trevor and DeShawn It
was off script plays that beat Bama, not just the
pocket stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
That's why like that, Just you don't run that many
plays anymore. So that's another thing that's taken out of
the toolbox. See what you're saying is why I'm really
interested how Marcel Reed would play against them. Marcell, we're
coming off the worst half of football we'll ever see
him play in his life, follow him by one of
the best. So it's a little weird timing. But you know,
(27:09):
when you talk about matchups, people always misunderstand you intentionally.
There was, oh, you think A and M is better
than Ohio State? No one said that, dude. What I
did say is, out of all the matchups they could
draw in the postseason, yeah, that's the one that would
get my attention the most because that's the one that
would probably keep them up the night at night the longest.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, No, I really feel like that. That's interesting you
bring that up. Deshaun Watson, Trevor Lawrence, Johnny Manziel. Guys,
off script, they get a lead, Bama's got to create
a turnover.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
They take a big risk.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I think the Ohio State's kind of that level, you know,
I I said this. I have been very much a
proponent of the college Football Playoff and il on the
transfer portal, and I'm a Packed twelve guy. But I
told friends three years before it disbanded, I said, the
conference is in big trouble. There's no money here. The
USC's getting thirty million a year. I said, they can
(28:01):
make that going independent and pick their schedule and have
a better TV deal. At one point, Fox Sports, I
think went to USC and asked about buying all their
home games, buying a TV package. So, and I don't
want to speak above my pay grade, but I do
remember hearing a little bit of that in the building.
USC was grumbling for years about splitting revenue with CAL
(28:24):
and Washington State. I just didn't like it. So but
I think we both agree. I'll give you an example
of why Texas Oklahoma to the SEC and the four
PAC twelve schools to the Big Ten is great. I've
watched back to back Iowa games that were thrilling, that
(28:44):
were thrilling, Iowa Oregon thrilling game. I love seeing big
traditional schools never play each other, and this is the
one I remember. And then Iowa goes to LA in
another sloppy Weather game and plays USC and I'm like,
I have not watched back to back Iowa games start
to finish ever, maybe ever, ever ever in my life,
(29:07):
start to finish back to back Iowa games. I don't,
and I know I'm not alone on that. I saw
the ratings for both. So anybody that pushes back on this,
the convergence of the sec in Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Alabama,
you can't turn it off.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
No, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Otherwise you get Oklahoma and Texas Tech.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
I don't give a shit, right they. I mean you,
you were sitting there looking at a situation Saturday where
you've got oh you Bama, Texas Georgia sandwiched on top
of each other. Both of them popped to ten plus rating,
and it's just like you're, you're you want to look
at it, and you want to say, I told you
this last week because I was going to the Texas
(29:50):
Georgia game. I said, can you believe we get this
in the regular season? Just look at the helmets on
the field. At the same time, you don't have to
know a player's name, it's written. The spectacle of that
is amazing, And I think here's what people struggle with. So,
you know, we were talking about plaoff rankings a second ago,
and you're talking about the PAC twelve dissolving as a conference,
and like there's some romanticism in it, Like there's a
(30:12):
part of you that hates to see it happen. It's
like your childhood being ripped away. There's another part of
you that understands the business side of it, and you
understand this is the way the college football world's going,
it's the way that the athletic world's going, the sporting
world's going. True, So there is still something we try
and cling to in the playoff model. All the conference
(30:32):
champs are going to be in there, so you're going
to have representation at the table. At least you're gonna
have a G five team in there. And I'm always
conflicted on this because I know it's not an accident
that ten plus million people are watching the games they're watching.
They're watching it because that's where the best football is largely.
And yet we've also got this construct where we are
headed towards a mess. On selection Sunday, there's going to
(30:55):
be this glut of two loss teams and we're gonna
have to maybe make room for a second Big twelve
team if Brigham Young's inside that bubble on the Saturday
before and they lose against Texas Tech, and you got
that unwritten rule where you can't drop someone out of
the bubble for losing the conference title game, and you're
just gonna have You're gonna have Oklahoma knocking on the door.
(31:15):
You're gonna have organ or usc maybe knocking on the door.
You can have Miami knocking on the door. So there's
that constant back and forth of we just want the
best TV product for the playoff versus no, we want fair,
maybe even somewhat equitable rules for the playoff. And I'm
always torn because I could make either argument. I could
debate myself on a stage because I can make both
sets of points so seamlessly. But I think we're very
(31:38):
much in a transition period on that front right now,
of we're in an era right now where yeah, we're
gonna have a G five team that's a three touchdown
dog in the first round and we're all just supposed
to pretend one hundred and thirty six teams are playing
the same sport. Therefore, we have to have representation, and
everyone knows it's not real, but we're kind of winking
and nodding. You know, we got to be fair. I
(32:00):
wonder how long that lasts.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah, I will say of all the teams that joined
the conferences, so Oregon, UCLA, Washington, sc Texas, Oklahoma, you
could not have convinced me that Oklahoma. I thought Oregon
would do well. My take was they playing crappy weather already.
(32:25):
They'll be fine, and they're gonna be able to buy
the player. Oregon's gonna be fine. Uscu CLA warmed cold
weather and it's a little finesse. Washington, I knew you
didn't have a ton of nil money. I thought Texas
would be fine. And if you really look at Texas
since they joined the SEC, take out the Georgia games.
They're doing just great. It's just Georgia. I am shocked
at how good Oklahoma's doing. One I didn't know if
(32:46):
Vnables was a head coach. Two, the state doesn't produce
a lot of players. Three Lincoln Riley left. It's become
an offensive sport. I look up at Oklahoma and I'm like,
I've watched them play Bama back to back years. They've
disassembled them. I'm sorry, Alabama's just mistake prone. Of all
the teams that join conferences, my bad, Oklahoma looks and
(33:11):
plays Josh like an SEC team if you didn't know
where they play. Texas still feels pretty, Texas still doesn't
like to get punched in the mouth. Oklahoma to me
feels like LSU. Georgia feels like an SEC team. Like
if you didn't know, you'd think they've been there for
twenty years.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
I think where their position benefits them. A lot of
people look at where their position geographically and they thought
it was going to be a hindrance. If the moves
would have been made fifteen years ago, it would have
been a hindrance to them because they would have been
cut off from a lot of the talent. The world
had shrunk so much. For an eighteen year old, the
state lines don't matter if you're gaming every night with
(33:53):
a headset on and you're talking to someone in Virginia
and Washington State and southern California. The world is so
small it means to go from Charlotte, North Carolina to
play football in Norman, Oklahoma. Now half their NIL packages
involve private aviation for family to come watch and play,
so it's so much easier to go into Houston, or
go into Orlando, or go into Charlotte or Atlanta and
(34:15):
get talent out there. The one thing they had to
do is they had to nail the coaching higher. And yeah, look,
I'm not even ready to say that Brenton Vnables is
just a total nail of a hire, but he's been
very good. And the one compliment you've got to give
him is that team reflects his attitude. So the identity
of the team reflects that of Brent Vinnables, and you
can't say that about every team out there. So in retrospect,
(34:36):
two things happen. Okay, the SEC brought him in at
the very time when the talent acquisition game was totally transforming,
so some barriers fell down for him right there that
they didn't really control. And then number two Lincoln left
at the right time. We just didn't know it. But
his style of ball was not gonna fit nearly as
well as the style they're playing right now. Look, they've
(34:59):
had a quarterback hurt this year, or else they may
be making more noise than they currently are.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, no, I just I missed on Oklahoma. They when
I watched Oklahoma SEC games. That's just an old school
SEC game, physical linebackers, standing guys up, and SEC teams
increasingly always have a Sunday quarterback or he looks like
one in college. Like I don't know if Trinidad Chamblis
is going to play in the pros. It looks like
(35:25):
dak to me. But it looks like that's a competent.
That's a that's a Sunday athlete. Josh, you're selling me
on this. Your your latest quick trip experience.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Went down to Athens, Georgia. So the drive if you
go Nashville to Athens is going to take you past
several quick trips. So I like to drive at night.
I don't know how you travel when you do it,
but I like to travel at night. If I'm going
to drive and there is I can, I can consume
caffeine now and go to sleep. So I'm totally immunized
from it, but it does help what I'm driving. So
I am the psychopath who I'm going to stop there
(35:58):
for gas? Yes, I'm gonna go in there though, And
that quick trip like cole brew on tap, that entire station, Yeah,
that is a lifesaver. Maybe literally a lifesaver for me
with how late at night I drive. So it's been
good man, It's it's been a real good partnership too.
Like you, if you love college football and you like
to patronize brands that love college football do they've stepped
(36:18):
up in a big way for us and they've just
like seamlessly infused themselves into our show. They're really good
with giving back to our audience. So quick trip, huge
salute to them. Great stuff, Josh Pate.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
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The volume.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This week's Crunch Time performer, brought to you by McDonald's
new Buffalo Ranch Sauce, is Josh Allen best football player
in the world, second time in his career. Three passing touchdowns,
three rushing touchdowns in one game. It's like that junior
high football player that's got a mustache and nobody else
does right. No other player has ever done it once.
So Josh's performance was satisfying, just like the first bite
(00:26):
of the bakon creamy Buffalo Ma Crispy Ah was good.
He's a regular host of the Josh Pates College Football Show.
Totally tied into college football West Coast to East. So
(00:47):
years ago, I worked in Portland, Oregon for a spell
and Mike Belotti was the coach, Jeff Tedford was the coordinator.
They finished number two in the nation. One year they
got lucky not having to face Miami. They faced Colorado
and they matched up really well with Colorado and not
with Miami at all. And I think Nebraska played Miami
and got you know, there was like ninety eight percent
(01:09):
fans of the Rose Bulller Nebraska, but Miami kicked the
you know what out of them. So Oregon has used
two things to become a power. One was Phil Knight's
creativity and money to build facilities. When there used to
be the facilities war, right, that would used to be
a big deal pre NIL, Like, there was about a
ten year period it was an arms race for facilities
(01:30):
and Oregon was the forefront. They've actually used three things ingenuity,
one hundred different uniforms to impress Southern col kids to
be the cool place. USC has one uniform, Penn State's
got one. Oregon had a thousand, So they used phil
Knight's ingenuity, then phil Knight's money with facilities, and then
(01:50):
third phil Knight's money with nil where they are the
big bidder on the West coast. Most of my life,
when I grew up in the Northwest, you would think
you were going to land the number three running back.
In southern California, USC would get number one, UCLA two,
you'd get three, and then at the last moment he
(02:10):
would decide to just go to USC and be a backup.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
But that changed.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Oregon now mostly gets as good as players as anybody
in the West Coast. I think this is an awful.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Matchup for USC.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The teams that beat USC Northwestern actually ran the ball
to them. Iowa can run the ball at you Michigan
last year. I think Oregon's going to be hard to block.
I think Oregon USC's O line young. I think Oregon's
gonna run on them. I think Oregon's a big playoffense
(02:46):
in USC on the back end. At corners week, if
Oregon and there are a nine and a half point
favorite wins Josh thirty three twenty one wins by two touchdowns,
how do you think we view I know how we
view Oregon, that's been established, that's an elite program. How
(03:06):
are we going to view USC? Because I think it's
a terrible matchup the same way people have been viewing them.
I largely see your way.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
The one thing I would say is, you know, coming
into last week, if you and I were to have
talked about Pitt Notre Dame, you know, you could have
held up a piece of paper and said, Pitt's got
the number three run defense in the country, and I
would have looked at you and said, Okay, Notre Dame's
going to run right through them. I don't really care
what paper says. It's lying to me a little bit.
So with this, like Oregon statistically top three pass defense
(03:35):
in the country. But I can tell you that staff
up there supremely respects that Indiana had a combo of
wide receivers come in there and work them a little bit.
USC's got the same combo receivers that could come in there.
And if USC were to win this game and we
look back, that's probably the reason why. But if that
doesn't happen, and if it goes Oregon's way, it's probably
(03:57):
just more the same. Colum this probably you were. You
were a head coach that left the Big twelve to
go to the Pac twelve that became the Big ten,
and you really were never going to be a fit
in the Big ten. They hurled these accusations at Lincoln
as to why he didn't take the LSU job, and
he was scared of this, scared of playing that kind
of ball. I don't even care if there's validity to it,
(04:17):
because you didn't ask me what valid is. You asked me,
what are people going to say? What are people going
to think? They're going to throw around the same accusations,
the same pejorative connotations, And the beauty of competitive sport
is you control that. But yet it is that way
until you change that. So I see the matchup the
same way you do. But that's cool because if we
(04:39):
both see it that way and then they go up
there and win stylistically more a rock fight kind of game,
then that's how you change narratives. That's the only way
you change narratives. Yeah, no, there is.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I mean I was joking with Lincoln off the air
the other day before we did our interview. I said, literally,
you are being led by a walk on running back
from Calabasas. And yes, he said, he said, only at
USC you find a kid in your backyard who's almost
as good as any running back you faced all year.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You know. There the.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Thing I always go back to, like Pete Carroll takes
over the Raiders and their defense is bad. That always
worries me, like you can't get your side of the
ball right. Lincoln's offenses have been money and the fact
that he's doing with a walk on running back, and
for some of the year, one receiver Lemon's been the
really good key receiver that's always been healthy. Deuce Robinson
(05:36):
left went to Florida State. You know, guys have transferred out.
It's kind of been a one receiver offense for a
lot of the seats. They don't have a supreme tight
end talent. Lake mccree's okay, three star kid. He's fine,
not a pro so, but it is. I will say
this USC's I'll give Jen Cohen the eighty credit. It's
(06:00):
a really distracted market and money gets splintered into movies
and second homes and tech companies and pro sports season
ticket It's hard to galvanize Los Angeles like the Dodgers do,
the Lakers do, and yet there's the Angels and the Clippers.
It it's just it's hard. It's hard to stay to yourself.
(06:23):
It's the biggest economy in the country and Baton Rouge isn't.
But everybody knows in Baton Rouge, if you have money,
if you have two nickels drub together, you're giving them
to LSU football. I think it's much harder than people think.
In Los Angeles, it's an incredibly distracted market. And more so,
remember when Pete Carroll was there, Josh, there was no
NFL in the city.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, yeah, there was just media either man. So like
it's the whole New World.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And the Dodgers weren't the best organization in North America.
Like Pete was there, and when Pete was there, if
you won your regular season games, yeah, there was no semifinal,
you won the Pac twelve, you went to the Roles.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I think I said today, there's four or five programs
in the country that have an advantage for national championships. Georgia,
Ohio State, University of Florida, I don't love the governor,
but probably LSU. And I mean, and I said, I
would say Oregon, but there's no players in the state.
(07:23):
And then I think there's six of them Bama in
the new anil world. They don't have a lot of money,
and that changes things. They don't look like like Oregon
can go buy players from the state of Bama. Bama's
going to have a hard time getting them out of Oregon.
That for Oregan wants them. That wasn't the case four
years ago. So I mean, I I've said this to friends.
They don't want to hear it. I said, USC is
(07:45):
not Ohio State in this new world, and they're not Georgia,
and they're not Florida's. It's another thing. Josh costs three
million dollars minimum to my home and a nice neighborhood
with good schools. The assistant, the linebacker, coach is making
five fifty. You can't afford to buy a home. How
do you view USC as an elite?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Are you?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
What is your Mount Rushmore for best jobs, money commitment,
state with players donors control their history.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Georgia has always been They've been to my number one
for a while. If you were to promise me alignment
at LSU, I put LSU right up there. Ohio State's
way up there for me. Ohio State. Whatever you think
about Ohio athletes, I mean, there's like a proud tradition
of high school athletes. Ohio State has zero problem going
into South Florida, I mean, zero problem whatsoever. So I
(08:41):
put Ohio State up there. You'd have to check, like
which period of time it is. But Texas conditionally is
up there.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Same.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
But what's changed over the past, just like what's evolving
right now in front of us is Texas A and M.
Because Texas A and M has just been and it's
been like this stack of wood, but it's been wet historically,
meaning they well post Johnny manziel A and M is
a totally different world. If you went on that campus
pre Manzel and then you went back. Now you don't
(09:12):
even recognize it. So they they leveraged one play. They
leveraged Manziel better than Auburn leveraged Cam Newton, like they
leveraged him so hard, so effectively. So I'd say them
as well, but with USC. So to go back to
what you were talking about for a second, I remember
I was way younger. I was like in school when
the Pete Carroll era happens out there, and we were
(09:33):
enamored with them. We hated them in the South, but
like we were enamored with them. You remember that trip
they made to Auburn and they shut Auburn out to
start a season. The entire South, even people who hated
Auburn in the South, they like waited for that date.
They circled that date because it was going to be
like a culture clash and the South's culture was going
to rise. You can't come into Southern eat and do that.
(09:56):
And then of course they did. But I remember thinking
back then that I always it never made sense to
me as a kid growing up in the South, immersed
in college football and that being the culture. When people
would say what you just said about LA I had
never left the South. So to me, I just assumed
that all the big time college football programs and the
towns slash cities they were in were like Athens, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama, Tuscaloose, Alabama, Knoxville, Tennessee.
(10:21):
That's just the way I thought it worked. And I
thought when people said, boy, there's a lot to distract
you out there, there's a lot more going on in LA,
I thought it was excuse making. So you know, since then,
I've been able to travel, I've been able to go
out there, and it just it slaps you in the
face when you go out there. If I feel the
same about Miami to a certain extent when I go
to Miami, when I go to LA. If you just
(10:43):
drive around for a day, be in town for seventy
two or ninety six hours, and ask yourself, does this
feel different? It feels way different. And you just asked, like,
how much more difficult must it be to capture this
place's imagination? Therefore, to capture the wallet, to capture the
emotional and financial investment, then it must be in Baton
(11:05):
Rouge or in college station. And that's that's the challenge. Now,
the trade off is if you've got it, you've got it.
But if you don't have it, they're not going to
help you get it. So you got to go in
there and you got to do it on your own.
Whoever is about to take the Florida Gator job, they'll
have the full weight and oh yeah, support of that community.
Lincoln took the LA job, and it's like, this is great,
(11:27):
we'll check back in a little while. If he's winning,
we may show up and if they're really winning, we
may even give a dollar or two.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I'll give you an example. They went looking for an
athletic director. They contacted me and said, Colin Rick Crusoe said, hey,
give me a list of about five people.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I did.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I gave the athletic director at Northwestern Auburn, Florida, the
guy at Texas. Those people weren't interested. Yeah, they're like, yeah,
it's takes about eight million dollars to buy the home
that I want to buy, seven or eight. It's like
it cush at nine hundred thousand in Tuscaloosa. Like people
(12:02):
don't understand it. Ucla, if you went to the big
ten nil right now, I bet you Ucla is below Rutgers.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yes, they are yeah people.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And by the way, UCLA is in bell Air. It's
the richest college campus in America, bell Air next to
Beverly Hills. They have the lowest nil because it's a
basketball school, it's an international university, it's an intellectual hub,
eighteen languages on campus. Football is not that big of
a deal. You got to drive to the rose ball,
(12:34):
it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It's in. This is what I've tried to explain to
someone in my social circle the other day. They were like,
all that money around UCLA, why is it a struggle?
Like why did they struggle to tap into it? Wouldn't
the right athletic director be able to do this? And
I said, I guess there is this magic formula where
you could tap into it, but you're never really tapping
into that. Because I'm not faulting these people, I'm just explaining,
(12:58):
as a matter of fact, those people's way of life,
the way they acquired their means, the way they their
mind works, the way they were it would be an insult.
It would be beneath them to allocate their personal financial
towards something like football. They just view it as bet them.
That's that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
They would view, they would view it as beneath them,
and so I guess my whole point is the world's
changed with nil and transfer portal. But it's also changed
when the NFL came to Los Angeles and the Dodgers
became the richest franchise in the history of Major League Baseball.
People are distracted. Tickets cost more, it's hard to commit
(13:39):
to Saturday and Sunday. The minute USC loses a game
they should win, you know, twelve thousand people disappear. So
I try to explain that to people and they say, oh,
it's an excuse, and it's like, no, it's I've lived
in LA there's just so much those thirty seven music venues,
eight pro teams, Like, sorry, guys, it's it's not an excuse.
(14:00):
It's like you go on a two game losing street,
the whole town and moves off you. So it's interesting
the Lane Kiffen story. We all know Jimmy Sexton controls
college football coaches. Jimmy Trace, Armstrong, Jimmy Sexton, they control it.
So Sark snapped at people today when they asked him
about the job rumors. He's like, I'm not going anywhere,
(14:23):
nor would you. I mean's to me, Texas has always
been arguably the best college football job, top ten fifteen
job in America sports, Like you know, Yankee manager, you
know it's up the Philadelphia Eagle coach. Whatever. What if
Texas hammers Texas A and M. They can go and
(14:47):
say this over three and two against top ten teams
went to Columbus. Only team that's been competitive against them
is US hammered Texas A and M. Hey, we don't
match up with Joe. We could be on three times
in a row. They've slapped us around. What if they
bought Texas A and M. What are we to do
with a logmorns. I was wondering that yesterday. I thought
(15:11):
they weren't going to drop them as low as they did.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
The AP dropped Texas to seventeen, and I thought, surely
the committee will have them thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, something like that. Yeah. Same,
They dropped them to seventeen. And you know, they did
that to Miami a couple of weeks ago, and then
almost it felt like they course corrected in the following weeks.
I think with ANM, or I think with Texas rather
if they go in there and do that to Texas
(15:33):
A and M. But it would be a strong talking
point going into that Sunday. You'd have to see how
the rest of the country played out, but yeah, they
would have an argument. To be honest with you, there
are a couple of arguments SEC schools could be making
right now about anything from strength of schedule to you know,
scheduling up out of conference, which is admirable. I mean,
(15:54):
that's what everybody should do. But there's gonna be a
lot of anecdotal debates and arguments right now if your
three lost Texas in that scenario gets left out, or
like you got Alabama dropping down behind Notre Dame last night,
which confused a lot of people, and they're going to
look at it and they're going to say, we're really
about to add a ninth conference game. Why would we
(16:15):
do that to ourselves? Why would we put that on ourselves?
The simple math there. If you've got, what do they have,
sixteen teams, you're adding eight more losses across your conference
slate that you are voluntarily adding. But you're doing it
because you want to increase revenue. You want to play
the toughest schedules in the country. You want to have
a great TV product, and they're going to succeed in
all that. But if the committee kind of short changed
(16:38):
you on their logic and short changed you on their criteria,
and they really weren't as serious as you thought they
were about rewarding scheduling, which is going to be reflected
in these next two weeks rankings, then maybe a little
catch twenty two and the one you mentioned Texas, but
like the one I'm dovetailing off of with that is, yeah,
what if Texas is in if they win, or what
(16:58):
if they're not in if they win? But I'm also
looking at the SEC Championship game because there's this weird
scenario that started to get floated. You and I are
recording the night after the rankings got released, where Bama's
at ten. Yeah, but they still control their own destiny
and whatnot. So they beat Auburn. If they do, they
go to Atlanta and they win the SEC Championship. I
(17:20):
had assumed it was a foregone conclusion. The SEC Champ's
going to have a first round by they're certainly going
to get one of those top four spots. Now, I
assumed that was like ninety nine to one logic. It
feels like about seventy thirty still on the side that
we're agreeing there with. But it feels like there's this
sentiment out there that, no, you can't jump them up
all the way to the top four just because they
won their conference, And I'm like, no, you can't afford
(17:42):
not to because I was just in Athens, Georgia last week.
Those people have little interest in playing in the SEC
championship game. They're totally happy where they are. They're totally
happy with a five or six. They feel the same
way at all miss. They're totally happy not going. So
you've already got people openly questioning what's the value in
playing for the comment ference title. If your champion does
(18:03):
not secure a first round by you have essentially invalidated
the entire existence of conference championships within this overall playoff framework.
So there are a couple of them in the SEC.
I'm watching right now, all right.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
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You know I talked today. I was talking to Joel
Clatt about this. I said, the best defenses I've ever
(19:46):
seen in college football. The Huskies with Steve Etman in
the early nineties just bulldozed people. They brought in the
four to six and nobody knew how they brought it
from the Bears, and the whole college football for a
year did not know how to attack Washington. I mean
they literally every game just it was over in the box.
You couldn't get downfield, and they had NFL safeties and corners.
(20:07):
So for about a year. Then there's the USC defense
was really good with Pete Carroll where Clay Matthews didn't
start at linebacker, and then it was NF NFC Rookie
of the Year defensively it couldn't start for USC. Then
there was there were a couple of I always loved.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
There was at.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
The Rolando McLain, the linebacker for Bama.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
It was the one that beat Texas.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I was like, man, they they hit different. There were
a couple of Saban defenses that were and there was
a Georgia defense, a couple with the Jalen Carter.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
So there's been about four.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Or five that I've watched and gone, oh, that doesn't
look like that's somewhere between Saturday and Sunday football. It's
not Sunday, but it's close. Ohio State has an advantage
none of those had. It used to be, even Nick Saban,
you'd have a hole in your defense and you'd go
to junior college and he was never quite as good
as the ranking. You have the number two corner in
(20:59):
junior college and you're like, probably their best corner. But
he solves a dilemma. Well, now you just go buy
the best corner. If you're Ohio State and you're like,
we need to be better at corner, we're just going
to go buy the number one guy who're already in
the sport and crushing. And I look at this Ohio
State defense and again I want to see him play
out and.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Who they play Josh.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
The windows to complete passes are Sunday windows, like they're
when even when Knicks teams were great, you'd have a
corner like d Milner, who wasn't really a great corner,
he was great with a Nick's system. They got two
players that could go top five. They have another two
that could go fifteen. Between the fifteenth pick and the
(21:41):
third and the second round, what do you make of
just forget Ohio State, just what you've seen from their defense.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
It really boggles your mind a little bit because of
what conventional wisdom would have told you. Conventional wisdom, like
we all watched twenty twenty for Ohio State in that
stretch of time, and you know in the back of
your mind or you think you know they're making this
run because of all this senior veteran talent, Like they're
going to lose all these guys. Their entire defensive front's
(22:13):
going to be gone, and we didn't even know Jim
Knowles was going to be gone. But they also lose
the coordinator. And so like, just say that out loud,
you had had anybody, I don't care who it is,
Ohio State or anyone else. They are powered by their
defensive front. Entire defensive fronts wiped out and coordinator's gone
as well. Not to mention you're just coming off a
(22:33):
national championship. So there's that natural propensity to get a
little complacent, maybe come back to earth a little bit.
Everyone's gunning for you the next year. The bet I
don't know if the team overall is better, the defense
looks better, I don't know how that even happens. Matt
Patricia came in and here's one of the early warning signs.
I remember when Ryan Day got elevated there, and I remember,
(22:54):
you know, Ohio State is Ohio State, so they could
do a national search if they want to. They can
go land most any head coach they want. And they said, no,
the guy we need is already here. And I remember
some people looked at it and said, that's crazy. They're
cheating themselves by not doing this. Not do it. And
I looked at it and I said, they're not stupid.
They know what they have in the building. Just because
(23:15):
you don't know who Ryan Day is doesn't mean they don't. Well,
it's the same way when Ryan Day needed to fill
that defensive coordinator role. There are guys who would leave
really good jobs to be the DC at Ohio State.
And he went and got Matt Patricia. That's not a
name that would have been on anyone's radar. You take
the biggest industry insider, give me your top ten. Matt
Patricia's not on it, and Ryan goes and hires him.
(23:39):
And you see why like hiring. I mean, it comes
down the players making plays. But if you can staff
properly in college football and you have top fifteen talent,
let alone what they have, you're going to be really
hard to beat. Now that doesn't make him invincible, but
what you're talking about is there's going to have to
be a team if Ohio State gets eliminated that puts
together such an air tight like tight rope walk performance, precision, poise, accuracy,
(24:05):
no turnovers. That's what it's gonna take. That's what it
used to take to beat those Saban teams. It took
some insane performance. Somebody just plays out of his mind,
and if that happens, you tip your cat to the
other side. Short of that happening, Ohio State's gonna win
the national championship.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Well, the other thing is the way to beat Saban
was Manzell or cam It was generally somebody that could
go off script that Nick couldn't prepare for. He just
there'd nothing you could do. I Nick knew you were
in the pocket. You could go back and look at this.
I'm not sure he lost three times if he knew
we're going to be That's why I think Ohio State
(24:40):
beats Indiana because you know where Mendoz is gonna be.
The way to beat Ohio State or a great defense
is oh shit, Josh Allen. I mean, never forget what
Josh Allen did to Belichick when Belichick was in New England.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Bill couldn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
So the only quarterback that Bill's ever faced, even Peyton Manning,
he gave some trouble to He could do nothing with
Josh Allen because Josh actually when he was young, about
sixty percent of his game was off script. That was Manzel,
that was Camp. Those are the kind of guys that
just off script guys gave Saban trouble. And Mendoza is
(25:18):
a classic big arm pocket guy. And the other thing
is you could beat Nick if you got to lead
in the second half and his defense had to cheat
a little or guess right, like if if they could
dictate terms, Saban squeezed.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
You out like a towel.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
But if you made Nick trailed, Nick now was taking
some risk defensively, I've got to get the ball back.
We've got to generate pressure with extra people. I think
if Ohio State leads in the second half, you're in
big trouble if you have to throw against that. I
think you can the way to beat great defensive teams
in college off script and you force them to take
(25:57):
risks they normally wouldn't take because you lead.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, I think another thing that happened, like with Deshaun
Watson Clemson teams when they played another one. Yeah, it's
just that was that the I'm not saying it's the
first time you ever saw anyone run tempo, but it
was still that early period. Like Malzon comes into this
to the picture and like, guys are running tempo as
the foundational aspect of their offense for the first time.
(26:22):
So the game, like the rules hadn't shortened the game
yet either with the clock rules. Clemson ran over one
hundred offensive plays in one of those National Pantheonship games.
So I'd rarely seen Bama defense on the field. Trevor Lawrence. Yes, yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Ran down the sideline against Alabama. I think it was
Alabama ran down the side again, Trevor and DeShawn It
was off script plays that beat Bama, not just the
pocket stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
That's why like that, Just you don't run that many
plays anymore. So that's another thing that's taken out of
the toolbox. See what you're saying is why I'm really
interested how Marcel Reed would play against them. Marcell, we're
coming off the worst half of football we'll ever see
him play in his life, follow him by one of
the best. So it's a little weird timing. But you know,
(27:09):
when you talk about matchups, people always misunderstand you intentionally.
There was, oh, you think A and M is better
than Ohio State? No one said that, dude. What I
did say is, out of all the matchups they could
draw in the postseason, yeah, that's the one that would
get my attention the most because that's the one that
would probably keep them up the night at night the longest.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, No, I really feel like that. That's interesting you
bring that up. Deshaun Watson, Trevor Lawrence, Johnny Manziel. Guys,
off script, they get a lead, Bama's got to create
a turnover.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
They take a big risk.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I think the Ohio State's kind of that level, you know,
I I said this. I have been very much a
proponent of the college Football Playoff and il on the
transfer portal, and I'm a Packed twelve guy. But I
told friends three years before it disbanded, I said, the
conference is in big trouble. There's no money here. The
USC's getting thirty million a year. I said, they can
(28:01):
make that going independent and pick their schedule and have
a better TV deal. At one point, Fox Sports, I
think went to USC and asked about buying all their
home games, buying a TV package. So, and I don't
want to speak above my pay grade, but I do
remember hearing a little bit of that in the building.
USC was grumbling for years about splitting revenue with CAL
(28:24):
and Washington State. I just didn't like it. So but
I think we both agree. I'll give you an example
of why Texas Oklahoma to the SEC and the four
PAC twelve schools to the Big Ten is great. I've
watched back to back Iowa games that were thrilling, that
(28:44):
were thrilling, Iowa Oregon thrilling game. I love seeing big
traditional schools never play each other, and this is the
one I remember. And then Iowa goes to LA in
another sloppy Weather game and plays USC and I'm like,
I have not watched back to back Iowa games start
to finish ever, maybe ever, ever ever in my life,
(29:07):
start to finish back to back Iowa games. I don't,
and I know I'm not alone on that. I saw
the ratings for both. So anybody that pushes back on this,
the convergence of the sec in Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Alabama,
you can't turn it off.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
No, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Otherwise you get Oklahoma and Texas Tech.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
I don't give a shit, right they. I mean you,
you were sitting there looking at a situation Saturday where
you've got oh you Bama, Texas Georgia sandwiched on top
of each other. Both of them popped to ten plus rating,
and it's just like you're, you're you want to look
at it, and you want to say, I told you
this last week because I was going to the Texas
(29:50):
Georgia game. I said, can you believe we get this
in the regular season? Just look at the helmets on
the field. At the same time, you don't have to
know a player's name, it's written. The spectacle of that
is amazing, And I think here's what people struggle with. So,
you know, we were talking about plaoff rankings a second ago,
and you're talking about the PAC twelve dissolving as a conference,
and like there's some romanticism in it, Like there's a
(30:12):
part of you that hates to see it happen. It's
like your childhood being ripped away. There's another part of
you that understands the business side of it, and you
understand this is the way the college football world's going,
it's the way that the athletic world's going, the sporting
world's going. True, So there is still something we try
and cling to in the playoff model. All the conference
(30:32):
champs are going to be in there, so you're going
to have representation at the table. At least you're gonna
have a G five team in there. And I'm always
conflicted on this because I know it's not an accident
that ten plus million people are watching the games they're watching.
They're watching it because that's where the best football is largely.
And yet we've also got this construct where we are
headed towards a mess. On selection Sunday, there's going to
(30:55):
be this glut of two loss teams and we're gonna
have to maybe make room for a second Big twelve
team if Brigham Young's inside that bubble on the Saturday
before and they lose against Texas Tech, and you got
that unwritten rule where you can't drop someone out of
the bubble for losing the conference title game, and you're
just gonna have You're gonna have Oklahoma knocking on the door.
(31:15):
You're gonna have organ or usc maybe knocking on the door.
You can have Miami knocking on the door. So there's
that constant back and forth of we just want the
best TV product for the playoff versus no, we want fair,
maybe even somewhat equitable rules for the playoff. And I'm
always torn because I could make either argument. I could
debate myself on a stage because I can make both
sets of points so seamlessly. But I think we're very
(31:38):
much in a transition period on that front right now,
of we're in an era right now where yeah, we're
gonna have a G five team that's a three touchdown
dog in the first round and we're all just supposed
to pretend one hundred and thirty six teams are playing
the same sport. Therefore, we have to have representation, and
everyone knows it's not real, but we're kind of winking
and nodding. You know, we got to be fair. I
(32:00):
wonder how long that lasts.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah, I will say of all the teams that joined
the conferences, so Oregon, UCLA, Washington, sc Texas, Oklahoma, you
could not have convinced me that Oklahoma. I thought Oregon
would do well. My take was they playing crappy weather already.
(32:25):
They'll be fine, and they're gonna be able to buy
the player. Oregon's gonna be fine. Uscu CLA warmed cold
weather and it's a little finesse. Washington, I knew you
didn't have a ton of nil money. I thought Texas
would be fine. And if you really look at Texas
since they joined the SEC, take out the Georgia games.
They're doing just great. It's just Georgia. I am shocked
at how good Oklahoma's doing. One I didn't know if
(32:46):
Vnables was a head coach. Two, the state doesn't produce
a lot of players. Three Lincoln Riley left. It's become
an offensive sport. I look up at Oklahoma and I'm like,
I've watched them play Bama back to back years. They've
disassembled them. I'm sorry, Alabama's just mistake prone. Of all
the teams that join conferences, my bad, Oklahoma looks and
(33:11):
plays Josh like an SEC team if you didn't know
where they play. Texas still feels pretty, Texas still doesn't
like to get punched in the mouth. Oklahoma to me
feels like LSU. Georgia feels like an SEC team. Like
if you didn't know, you'd think they've been there for
twenty years.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
I think where their position benefits them. A lot of
people look at where their position geographically and they thought
it was going to be a hindrance. If the moves
would have been made fifteen years ago, it would have
been a hindrance to them because they would have been
cut off from a lot of the talent. The world
had shrunk so much. For an eighteen year old, the
state lines don't matter if you're gaming every night with
(33:53):
a headset on and you're talking to someone in Virginia
and Washington State and southern California. The world is so
small it means to go from Charlotte, North Carolina to
play football in Norman, Oklahoma. Now half their NIL packages
involve private aviation for family to come watch and play,
so it's so much easier to go into Houston, or
go into Orlando, or go into Charlotte or Atlanta and
(34:15):
get talent out there. The one thing they had to
do is they had to nail the coaching higher. And yeah, look,
I'm not even ready to say that Brenton Vnables is
just a total nail of a hire, but he's been
very good. And the one compliment you've got to give
him is that team reflects his attitude. So the identity
of the team reflects that of Brent Vinnables, and you
can't say that about every team out there. So in retrospect,
(34:36):
two things happen. Okay, the SEC brought him in at
the very time when the talent acquisition game was totally transforming,
so some barriers fell down for him right there that
they didn't really control. And then number two Lincoln left
at the right time. We just didn't know it. But
his style of ball was not gonna fit nearly as
well as the style they're playing right now. Look, they've
(34:59):
had a quarterback hurt this year, or else they may
be making more noise than they currently are.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, no, I just I missed on Oklahoma. They when
I watched Oklahoma SEC games. That's just an old school
SEC game, physical linebackers, standing guys up, and SEC teams
increasingly always have a Sunday quarterback or he looks like
one in college. Like I don't know if Trinidad Chamblis
is going to play in the pros. It looks like
(35:25):
dak to me. But it looks like that's a competent.
That's a that's a Sunday athlete. Josh, you're selling me
on this. Your your latest quick trip experience.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Went down to Athens, Georgia. So the drive if you
go Nashville to Athens is going to take you past
several quick trips. So I like to drive at night.
I don't know how you travel when you do it,
but I like to travel at night. If I'm going
to drive and there is I can, I can consume
caffeine now and go to sleep. So I'm totally immunized
from it, but it does help what I'm driving. So
I am the psychopath who I'm going to stop there
(35:58):
for gas? Yes, I'm gonna go in there though, And
that quick trip like cole brew on tap, that entire station, Yeah,
that is a lifesaver. Maybe literally a lifesaver for me
with how late at night I drive. So it's been
good man, It's it's been a real good partnership too.
Like you, if you love college football and you like
to patronize brands that love college football do they've stepped
(36:18):
up in a big way for us and they've just
like seamlessly infused themselves into our show. They're really good
with giving back to our audience. So quick trip, huge
salute to them. Great stuff, Josh Pate.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
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