June 7, 2024 • 44 mins
John talks with Michael Calabrese from The Action Network about how College Baseball is on the rise and will be something worth betting on because of all the hype around it, do the Lakers have a chance to win a championship in the future with Lebron on the team, what's going on with Lincoln Riley and USC, and finally they discuss his upcoming book; LEGENDARY BOWL: Deciding College Football's G.O.A.T.
6:07 - Michael Calabrese interview
10:42 - JJ Redick or Dan Hurley to the Lakers
14:18 - College football storylines
28:43 - LEGENDARY BOWL: Deciding College Football's G.O.A.T.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (01:48):
What is going on, everybody? It's your old friend John Middlecoff.
This is three Now podcast. By the way, I've been
we haven't a podcast the last couple of days because
I've been sick. I don't know what happened to me.
I wouldn't say it's the sickest I've ever been. That
would be food poisoning. My friend's at Chipotle, even though
(02:08):
I love Chipotle. But it was because of Chipotle. That's
the worst I've ever felt ever. I honestly thought I
might not make it. And I think that's a common
theme when anyone ever gets food poisoning. This one is
just like the flu, and it has started kicking in
Monday night. I felt it coming and then by Tuesday
I took a combine like thousand steps the last fifty hours.
(02:31):
So it's been brutal. But feel a little bit better today.
And we're gonna have on Mike Calabrese from the Action Network.
He just wrote a book. He covers college football, and
he wrote a book calling the Legendary Bowl, deciding the
college football Goat. So he basically takes the best teams
of the last forty five years, puts him in a
(02:53):
March Madness style bracket, and plays it out on EA
twenty fourteen, the college football video game, and it's coming
out on Monday, so I'm interested to see what he
thinks about the Dan Hurley story as well. But this
is gonna be a podcast for the day because I'm
running on fumes. I'm literally sitting on my desk just
(03:13):
sweating profusely. So mentally tough, but the last couple of
days sucked. It's weird. It's like I gotta do something,
but it's like I don't have the energy to do anything.
It's like I gotta get a Christian McCaffrey take like
I couldn't even function, So we'll get to that next week.
Hopefully I feel better. Other than that, yeah, subscribe to
(03:35):
the pod. Everything's up on YouTube, and hopefully everyone's had
a good week. So before we dive in to the podcast, though,
you know, I got to tell you about my friends
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(03:56):
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if you want to go to a comedy show, if
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(04:42):
of my guys Stuck. He's running mates over at the
Action Network. He has a new book out, Legendary Bull
Decided College Football Goats. I dove into it a little
bit this morning. It's you basically sixty eight teams, all
college football powerhouses since nineteen. I see a couple of
early upset potentials. Mike Calabrese of the Action Network. He
(05:05):
writes a column for The New York Post. He's been
talking about college sports for a long long time, a
passion of his. Given that he's a Philly guy, not
a huge Eagles guy, Mike.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
No, I mean I like the Eagles, Unlike some of
my neighbors. My emotional state doesn't ride or die with
how the Birds are doing. But yeah, college football comes
first in my household, always has, always will.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Know what I like about you guys at the Action
Network is you guys are degenerates, and I can relate
to that. I mean, I flip on big bets on
campus and you guys are going deep on the College
Baseball World Series. I worked at Fresno State in eight
o nine and if you remember, they had the upset
of all time upsets in Omaha and won the College
(05:49):
Baseball World Series maybe Georgia. Uh, it's very rare for
that to happen. Usually it's what's LSU was a defending champion.
They just lost to North Carolina, who it's clearly a powerhouse,
the Florida States. You know, the big boys win. But
it's a pretty cool event. And you guys are talking
about a gambling It's why you resonate with me over
at the Action Network. I know that.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I mean this year also, on top of it generally
being kind of a wild tournament, this year in particular,
you have six of the final sixteen teams that are
either three or four seeds. And what does that mean
for people who don't follow college baseball. That's essentially like
in March Madness, if six double digit seeds made the
second weekends, you know, ten, eleven, twelve seeds. That's how
crazy it's been. You got teams like Evansville coming out
(06:33):
of nowhere, and I think that's what adds to the
mystique of the event where you have the Giants and
you have the Cinderellas, and the pressure clearly slides towards
those home teams because there's a difference between losing on
a neutral floor to another power program more or less,
and there's a big difference being at home disappointing your
home crowd losing to a team like Evansville coming out
(06:54):
of the Missouri Valley. So I love the storylines, I
love the energy, and then it all ending in Omaha.
I think it's really special as well, where you have
all the fan bases competing to see who can eat
or drink I don't know exactly which one it is
as many jello shots as possible. So there's lots of
culture around college baseball, and I think over the past
what's called ten to fifteen years, I think the national
media is kind of getting in on the party a
(07:15):
little bit.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Well, if you see how people go to these SEC games,
I mean they're fifteen twenty thousand people. I had a
buddy that played college baseball. They played at Miami back
in the late two thousand, early two thousand and tens,
maybe two thousand and nine, and he said it was
it felt like a Major League Baseball environment. So in
the South, you know, obviously the SEC programs Florida State, Clemson,
(07:37):
North Carolina. I mean, the Oakland A's wouldn't have to
move if they get fans to show up. So this
is it's a really big deal in the South. I mean,
and I've been saying forever, the power of college football
is the SEC. All the money has a rising tide
lift all boats. I mean, these golf programs in the
South now flight Private Auburn just won the golf National championship.
(07:57):
All the money and it's only the beginning, right, We're
gonna see it with the big ten. And it's why
I you know, we're doing this. The story broke this
morning about Dan Hurley going to the Lakers. My initial
reaction is, this is trying to mess with JJ Reddick
because I would imagine he's asking for a lot of money.
(08:18):
I can't see anyway that Dan Hurley would leave Yukon
to go to the Lakers Northeast guy the Knick something
like that. I would be stunned. I'm not saying that
they haven't contact and I'm asking him for the job
and coach k once upon a time almost got there
Billy Donovan, you know, the Orlando job, and backed out
and then eventually took the Okac job. My reaction, I
(08:39):
don't know where you stand. I know you obviously they're
the powerhouse college basketball program. I would be stunned if
he ends up as the It's a shitty job. I mean,
Lebron's forty. They're going to force him to draft his kid.
Anthony Davis is just injured a lot, even though he's
a very talented player. They have no room to add
any players. I don't know. I don't think it's a
great NBA job. Like when Billy Donovan took Okay, see,
(09:00):
that was a pretty remarkable opportunity. Now Kevin ended up leaving,
but you had the opportunity to win a championship. You
do not with the Lakers. And people are gonna say
I'm a Laker Hater's that's a fact. They got no chance.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I think it's in that short list of teams with
special mystique. I'm certainly I'm not a Lakers fan. I'm
not a Rider die NBA fan.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I hate him.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
When you mentioned the Lakers or the Yankees or the
Dallas Cowboys and I understand that they're polarizing for a
lot of different reasons. People's imagination and their ego starts
to go, what if I was the person to turn
that around? And clearly that would say, if he ends
up going there and they turn it around and they
win an NBA championship, his resume is cemented as one
of the greatest college basketball or excuse me, basketball minds
(09:43):
in the history of the sport. And I think after
winning two in a row, especially the way that he's
won in the last two tournaments, just going away no
one coming close at least make the argument, you know,
from a negotiation standpoint, what do you have to let
you know, what do you have to prove in stores Connecticut?
Like you've already dominated that level, just as you dominated
high school basketball for nine years before that. I agree
(10:04):
with you, though, as someone who is a tremendous tactician
you watch you can play the sets they get into.
That's not modern NBA basketball. It's more ego management. How
do you go ahead and handle those players and also
handle the fact that you're not being able to buy
the groceries. You're the cook, but you do not get
to choose who gets to play for you in the
(10:24):
kind of way that you do at the college basketball level.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So I think it would be a mistake.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
But I think it's very real that he's going to
take it, particularly because the number is going to have
so many zeros behind.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
It, you expect him to be the Lakers coach.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Then, I do, as a matter of fact, I think
that this story has it's not just smoke. I think
there's real fire here. I don't necessarily think if it
was a more established coach in JJ Reddick and kind
of you know, playing one side against the other, I
think that could be the narrative. But in this situation
with JJ, with the track record that he has and
(10:55):
the lack of experience, I don't think this is just
a little gamesmanship by the Lakers front office. I really
do think they want Hurley.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I do think good coaches can figure it out any era, anytime.
You know, screamers can lighten up and guys that need
to scream can figure it out. After he won a second,
I watched a lot of just YouTube interviews. I mean,
his practices has like a nineteen eighties NFL field to
it a lot like his father. It's not the NBA
(11:21):
where the Lakers haven't done a practice in five years
since Lebron shows like they don't do shoot arounds in
the morning. So it's it'd be now, like I said,
I bet on people, and he's clearly proven you bet
on this guy. But it would be a pretty hard
one eighty from the way that he's used, like he
couldn't act like that to Lebron and Anthony Davis, that's
for sure, right. So it it'd be a fascinating case study.
(11:45):
I know that like it. It makes the Lakers more interesting.
I think they'd be more interesting with Dan Hurley than
they would with JJ Reddick.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Also, there's an element that's outside of his control, but
I think you know, carries a lot of weight, which
is if you come in fire and Brimstone, you want
to change the culture. You want to say my way
of the highway. If you start winning early on, people
will buy into it. But it's very easy to go
in the opposite direction, where you know, this guy is
college theatrics. He's trying to, you know, puppeteer everything we're
doing and we're not winning. You can lose the locker
(12:12):
room really quick, and we've seen that so many times
with college greats moving up to the NBA. You know,
talk about Patino, his biggest regret was, you know, his
foray into the NBA. It just didn't work. He couldn't
use the same you know, defensive style, He couldn't motivate
in the same way. He didn't have the same kind
of god complex that actually worked where players respected him
to the same level. So I think it's it's a
(12:34):
tall task, But I don't know. There's just something about
the Lakers mystique and that opportunity to say that I
figured it out that I think will play to his ego.
At the end of the day, I think he'll do it.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Before we dive into the book, a couple of college
football things I want to dive into. I got into it,
you know, Coward as a diehard USC guy, and he
tried to defend him on I'm sure you saw the
story that broke last week on Lincoln's begging to get
out of the game, and I'd go, it'd be one
thing if he was playing let's say prime Alabama and
they had built this thing up. LSU lost their starting quarterback,
(13:06):
LSU lost multiple wide receivers high in the draft. Oh
their defense, Oh, Yeah. They also fired their defensive coordinator,
so you could argue there are a lot of similarities.
Brian Kelly gets there, you know, at the same time
Lincoln does to USC. To LSU, I thought it was
a really and I saw that you had the four
USC team as one of the number one seeds, which
is probably an easy setting the number one seeds for you,
(13:28):
at least two or three out of the four of
them had to be pretty easy. I thought it was
an embarrassing moment for the program, you know, because it
would be easy one for LSU to Brian Kelly, but like, yeah,
I'm going through a transition time too. We're all both
trying to get the playoffs. Now. My personal take is,
and listen, I've met Lincoln. He obviously had a lot
of success at Oklahoma. I do think the US Seeds
(13:49):
thing is a little bit different animal, and that's that's
a pretty They expected more when they gave him a
hundred and twenty million dollars. There was a reason that
LSU gave Brian Kelly, what ninety hundred million dollar to
say no, hell, yeah, we want to play it. And
this isn't in Alis you it's in Vegas. Well, Sorry
I rambled on that one, but I'm pretty fired up.
I thought that was because I'm a West Coast guy.
(14:09):
I want these It's awesome that Oregon's good now that
Washington made a run last year up, but I don't
think USC is gonna be good for the foreseeable future.
Like I just I don't think it's really gonna work
with Lincoln at the level in which that they thought
when they when they traded or signed him or however
they held that work.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
All Right, you said you're West Coast guy, specifically, you're
a Fresno guy, which built their entire brand on any
team anywhere, anytime, And this is the opposite. This is
him basically letting it leak out that they didn't want
to play this team at this time, and they just
show that they were scared. And so much of recruiting
of program perception is you speak it into reality. And
(14:48):
for everything that he's accomplished offensively and all the heismans
and his offense being plug and play, he should be
able to build on that, and instead he's tearing it
down and looks like, you know, they're putting the tail
between their legs and running away from an opportunity. I
agree with you, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
And what's interesting is that when you look back at
the Pete Carroll higher before he went on that run
with the Trojans, a lot of people did not like
(15:10):
the hire because they felt like he wasn't Hollywood enough.
He didn't understand how to bring in a high scoring
offense or to be able to recruit, and he was
more of a defensive mind, hard nosed kind of guy.
I still think even if you're in a city like
Los Angeles and when the team's really good, you're as
famous as the Lakers and the Dodgers and everything else,
you have to have a core toughness. And at least
(15:32):
he's trying with a new defensive coordinator, but I think
it starts at the top. His Oklahoma teams were always
soft defensively, and when the chips were down, they just
didn't give you that feeling that they were going to
fight through it. And that's despite having incredible offensive talent.
The Kyler Murray's Baker Mayfield basically was a god in college.
All of this great offensive sizzle never paid off because
they didn't have the defensive stake and I think it's
(15:53):
the same situation here. I think it's a black guy
for the program to go out and to be linked
to a statement saying that you want to get out
of a game. You want it to be the opposite.
You want to say the hell with it, We'll go
play in Death Valley and we'll show you that we're
not afraid anybody. And to go back to those USC
teams from the early two thousands, they played on the
planes at Auburn that kind of got that run started
for them, and Matt Lioner talked about it where it
(16:14):
was so loud, it was so intimidating, and we made
the place quiet. That's the kind of energy you have
to have, both as a coach and a player to
be able to go from a team that's flirting with
the playoffs to a team that other programs are scared of.
And I think for the money that they're paying him,
he absolutely should be delivering that.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah to me, if you substitute Oregon for USC in
this game, they'd be licking their lips because it's a
home game in Vegas. Yeah, And for US Seaman now
it's even easier for their fans, you know, it's a
four and a half hour drive, So yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I definitely wouldn't pick USC as a potential
playoff team this year now going into this conference, would you,
(16:51):
I mean, do you think they're one of the twelve
best teams going into this twenty twenty four fall season.
I do not think they are.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
I don't think they're built to win in the postseason.
But I'll say this, the twelve team playoff is going
to be interesting because I think both fans, players, coaches,
and Vegas we're not quite sure what it's going to
look like yet. And when I mentioned Vegas, because when
you look at the odds to win the national Championship,
basically they have the same swatch bunch of teams ranked
in that three to one to twenty to one range
(17:21):
as they did when it was a four team playoff.
But now we've gone from four teams, tripled it up
to twelve teams. There's more access and there's opportunity for
teams to get hot at the right time, and then
it becomes less about your personnel and more about your path.
Do you get a home playoff game? Are you playing
a G five team, is you know, one of your opponents,
Do they have a quarterback who's injured, or a star
(17:41):
wide receiver. All these other things come into the conversation.
So I don't think they are even close to being
considered a top ten team in terms of their overall
talent and mentality and coaching. But that doesn't mean that
they can't sneak into the playoff because when you look
at those nine, ten, eleven, twelve teams at the very
the back end of it, a lot of them are
gonna have multi the losses. They're gonna have worts in
(18:01):
a lot of ways that USC has had. So then
it just becomes a question of do you get the
right boosts, the right win right at the end. Do
you get a little bit lucky to get in? So
I'm not quite ready to throw them out of a
twelve team here in twenty twenty four, but in terms
of winning multiple games, I think they're far from that.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Is there a team that's not considered a top two
or three? You know, Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon that you
like as a national championship sleeper? You know one name
that kind of comes to mind, just given the conference
they've been playing in the last couple of years and
how well they've played is is ole Miss. I mean
they've been pretty such.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Ole Miss is absolutely the team because not only do
they have the talent and you know, the transfer portal
king in Lane Kiffin. But one thing that I really
like in terms of the transfer portal era is you're
not going to be able to have roster consistency the
way you did five ten years ago, but you can
have consistency at the positions that matter head coach, starting quarterback,
and both coordinators. There's twenty seven teams in the country
(18:57):
that bring back all those elements. Ole Miss is one
of them. And then when you look at their roster
talent top to bottom, what they did in the portal,
I think if it all clicks, they could be a
team that could surprise in that twelve to fifteen to
one window and catch a team like Ohio State, Georgia
or Texas sleeping a little bit. And like I said,
it comes down to path. You don't have to beat
all three of those teams necessarily. You can be lucky
(19:18):
and in a new divisionless SEC as well, there's opportunities
to avoid land mines where previously they were always in
the SEC West, they always had Yeoman's work to be
able to just get to Atlanta, which they never were
able to do. And I think it's a different new
ball game for them this season.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Do you think Ohio State this is their best chance
in years given how deep their roster is, or do
you question the quarterback play.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Quarterback play based on the offensive skill talent around him.
Getting a BUCA back was huge. I think that they
can handle him with kid gloves and turn him into
a let's call it a B plus game manager. When
you look at the rest of this roster, that is
enough if you win in the turnover game and he plays,
you know, basically B plus football. As I mentioned, I
think this is going to be enough for them to
(20:02):
get a high seed, get into the playoff, potentially get
a buy because their season really comes down to three games.
They're at Oregon, They're at Penn State, and they're hosting Michigan.
The rest of their schedule is basically powder puff, you know,
two MAX schools out of the gate with a bye week.
That's a perfect amount of time for Chip Kelly and
this offensive staff to tinker to try to figure out
what works and what doesn't and then be able to
(20:24):
go into their conference slate with some momentum on the
offensive side of the ball, because defensively, I think it's
a story that you know has been brought up how
talented they are, but the continuity and the experience, and
then adding in that Downs kid from Bama, they could
be arguably the top you know, defense in the entire country,
both in terms of skill and also their defensive coordinator,
who I love. So I think this is a team
(20:45):
that does not need a a plus Heisman level quarterback
play to win the national title. And that's the other
element of it is, you know, when you're playing multiple
playoff games, it's not just outscore everybody. You got to
win some of those clunkers. You got to win some
of those one possession games. We're not turning the ball
over matters. So I'm really bullish in Ohio State. If
I was an odds maker, I would flip their odds
(21:05):
with Georgia. The fact that they're plus four fifty five
to one as opposed to three to one, I think
that's a mistake and it may seem like a small one,
but you know, when you're betting throughout the course of
the year, getting fortuitous numbers standards that are hanging around.
That's the way to make money.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
You know. I lived in Philly for a couple of years.
It was actually right when the Joe Paterno thing kind
of broke and we had guys I was working for
the Eagles. We had guys on the staff that had
played for Joe and yeah, I was reading some of
your book and you wrote that potentially Philly had to
be that in New York, the first, first place for
twenty four hour a day sports radio. And that's you know,
(21:40):
I'm you know, from California where pro sports are huge,
and pro sports are massive in Philly. Two. But that
was a story because of Penn State football. That can
you know that they are not I wouldn't put on
the Eagles level, but they get talked about when they matter.
And James Franklin has done a good job. I mean
he recruits a boatload of NFL players. I mean their
(22:02):
team this year has got to be one of the
more talented teams in the country. But last year, in
some of the games offensively, I don't even know what
to say. And you know, I look at Lane Kiffin
for example, most people would say they're on somewhat similar tier,
but like Lane being a fun team to watch and
what he's doing at ole Miss and then you go
(22:24):
Penn State, in theory should have a lot more resources,
and it's like his team's not that fun to watch.
They can't score against the teams that matter. Is anything
gonna change? And I mean, can he just keep cruising
along nine to ten wins produce NFL guys or eventually
it's like, are we even close to Michigan Ohio State?
And now enter Oregon enters the chat right, so it
could look even worse.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Well, I'll say I'll answer to the last part of
the question.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
First.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
I think it's gonna get better just by virtue of
the fact that no team would have been a bigger
beneficiary in the last ten years the fourteen playoff if
it had been a twelve team playoff than Penn State,
I believe they would have five six playoff bids.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, I read, but they would have. But do you
think they would have won a lot of those games.
It's like just because you make the NCAA tournament, if
you get bounced on Thursday, Like, okay.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
I think the sixteen to seventeen team, the one with
Joe Moorehead calling the shots offensively, with Trace McSorley and
Saquon and Godwin and Mike JAESICKI. I think those teams
got hot at the right time. They played very well.
He almost won that that Rose Bowl, that Classic against USC.
Then they go down to the Fiesta Bowl and they
played really well there. I think those teams could have
made some noise. I don't. I didn't see a national
(23:31):
title caliber team in any of those.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
I would agree with teams offensively. I mean, obviously, I'm
talking about we just told this guy's like the next
Josh Allen, and I'm watching them play him, going, what
am I missing here? Now?
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Luckily, I think what's interesting about Franklin is he gets
the credit for being a great recruiter of players. He's
also had some home runs in terms of his staff.
Bringing in Manny Diaz was a home run on defense.
Bringing in Joe Morehead was a home run on offense.
Unfortunately for him it didn't line up. He had one
but not the other. And I will give him credit.
Mike Gearsaich, it wasn't working. You looked at Aler, you
(24:06):
wanted to see him, you know, progress and get better
as a player. When you look at a school at
Ohio State, they're just churning out quarterback after quarterback who
is an impact player, and Michigan even being able to
win at a high level without a player of that caliber.
I mean, JJ ends up be getting a first round
NFL draft pick, but they never asked him to take
over games. So in comparison to those two schools, you're right,
they were falling short. But I will give him credit.
(24:28):
He goes and snatches the Kansas offensive coordinator to make
Kansas football fun. I don't think people have a full
appreciation for how difficult that job was. Their offense, even
with a backup quarterback for much of last year being
forced into action, they were still super dynamic. They were
multiple in terms of their formations. They made defenses prepare
for so much. I'm interested to see. Does Franklin really
(24:50):
hand over the keys to his program to a new
offensive coordinator and say, go out and win it for
us the way he did with Morehead or is it
more of a James Franklin light offense where don't make mistakes,
We'll try to, you know, beat the heck out of
our non conference opponents. But if we're going to play
Michigan or Ohio State. We need to get a block
field goal. We need to win, you know, in terms
of a low scoring game as opposed to getting into
(25:11):
a shootout. We'll see what he does. I think the
criticism he gets is warranted. But at the same time,
I think the worm is going to turn for Penn
State here. I think they're finally going to get into
some playoffs and if this coaching hire is the right one,
all of a sudden, I think all the the basically
the roadblocks that we're lining up in front of this
program are going to be raised, and they're gonna have
(25:32):
an opportunity to take it to the next level.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Cay let's dive into the book Legendary Bowl Deciding College
Football's goat that. This book is scheduled to come out
on June tenth.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Correct, that's right, at eight pm. It'll be live on Amazon,
both you know, the Kindle e reader version as well
as paperback and hardcovers.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Talk to me about how it originated and then just
described to everybody kind of what you did to carry
out the simulation and how you went about it.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
So I grew up on house old, whether it was
my mother or my father. We were always super passionate
about sports, and from a very early age it was
always framing things in a historical perspective. How good is
Jordan compared to this player? How good is this team
compared to a team that played fifteen or twenty years ago.
Almost every conversation at the championship level broke down into
some kind of goat debate, and not in the house.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Your house was like First Take in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
It was basically like First Take, but you had to
come with receipts. It wasn't good feelings, and my father
had no problem burying a nine year old Michael Calibertys
who was not prepared for some follow up questions. So
that's kind of where it started. And then we put
into the mix the NCAA football video game series, which
I played all the way back to College Football USA
ninety five, every single year playing it, and pretty quickly
(26:55):
in the PlayStation area you could edit the rosters. And
when the last game came out and it got sunset
and it was clear this is going to be the
last game in the series for the foreseeable future, I
started a tinker and to build rosters for who is
the best Michigan team or Tennessee or USC or Georgia.
And I just started doing it as a hobby and
then pretty quickly, you know, I had twenty teams, I
(27:17):
had thirty teams, I had forty. Well, now I can
play a hypothetical playoff. I can simulate it, see what
would happen. And really the big moment for me was
when COVID hit and they shut down sports that week.
I put out a tweet and I was like, I'm
going to put together a tournament of the best teams.
I made, you know, these rudimentary graphic design cards recapping
what happened, and it exploded and from there I was like, Okay,
(27:38):
I'm onto something. People are clearly interested. People want to
argue about the teams that I picked, the bracket, what
would happen in these hypothetical matchups. So I wanted to
blow that out into the biggest form that I could,
which in this case is a book. You know, it's
close to three hundred pages. I do deep dives on
every single team that go all the way back to
nineteen eighty and then at the end of the day,
I had sixty eight teams. And it's a format everyone's
(27:58):
familiar with. You got play games, you have four regions,
goes down to the final four, the championship, and just
from a pure college football nerd perspective, it was really exciting.
Once I had everything in place, all of the roster editing.
It took between five and ten hours for every team,
because not only do they need to dig up rosters
and look at combine stats and weights and heights and
(28:20):
attributes and awards and everything else I went through. In
a lot of these cases, I wasn't born yet, So
I went through and I watched seven of Boston College's
games from nineteen eighty four with Doug Flutie. It wasn't
just flipping on as hell Mary against Miami. I want
to see what kind of offense they're running, what kind
of defense, you know, how aggressive they are with their
play calling, because you could fine tune everything in the game.
So once I had that ready, then it was just
(28:41):
kind of a joy to watch it go through and
just take notes and make sure to transcribe those notes
into the book, so it feels like you're reading a
real recap, as though you would on an ESPN dot
com or in the newspaper wherever. You get your news.
I wanted to give it that feel, so you get
to go through this journey for about two hundred pages
of game recaps. And it's interesting too, just teasing it
out on social media. It's not just about being a champion,
(29:04):
being the best. A lot of these teams held a
special nostalgic place in fans hearts. He had two thousand
and seven Hawaii, he had nineteen ninety one East Carolina
with Jeff Blake. There's all these teams that all of
a sudden, their alumni from.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
That Boise State twenty ten. I saw that that's just exactly.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
There's so many teams that were culturally significant to the
sport that weren't champions. And that's really what I love
about college football. It's not just who won the Super
Bowl and then there's everybody else. There's thirty one losers
in one champion. There's room in college football for people
to feel a success story, and whether it's an individual
player winning the Heisman and winning a bowl game, having
an icon of comeback. And I wanted to represent as
(29:41):
many of those stories as I could in this field.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Well, you know what's funny is when I worked at
Frezlo State in eighth nine for Coach Hill, you just
had such a reverence for the Boise State program, and
I think a lot of people had looked down and
made fun of because rip Cole Brennan. That Hawaii team
got just manhandled by Joe Georgia. And I remember seeing
that Boise team for a couple of years, and by
(30:03):
twenty ten they had basically three years of all those guys.
It's like, this team is as good as I thought.
They could have won a national championship. And obviously Kaepernick
and the missfield goals in that game. But to me,
I would imagine that's got to be the best non
Power five team of the last twenty or thirty, forty
five years or whatever. They were on a different level
(30:24):
in my opinion than that Hawaii team, because I vividly
remember watching that Hawaii game in college. I mean, the
left tackle couldn't he couldn't even touch the guy. It
wasn't even fair. Where the Boise team, I think they
had twelve or thirteen guys drafted and several guys in
the second and third round in the trenches. I thought
(30:45):
they could have won a national championship and Kaepernick and
that running attack was a pretty tough team to play.
It was freezing cold in that game. It was a
big time upset. But I do think that that Boise
team has a special place in my heart because I
truly believe they're one of the best teams that because
forever they kind of got screwed in the sense that
remember with the games they would always put him against
(31:06):
another non Power five team. They played TCU. It felt
like every year in a bowl game, it's like, let
them play USC, or let him play a real team.
But that specific team was as good as it gets.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah, that team. I mean you mentioned Kellen Moorey. He
won fifty games, he went fifty to three as a starter.
He's going to be a soon to be College Football
Hall of Famer. Doug Martin the muscle hamster, all time nickname,
but also just an absolute beast at running back, Titus
Young and Pettis and wide receiver.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
They had it all.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And as you mentioned, usually when I would go through
these teams, a lot of them were half teams. They
had some glaring weakness or deficiency. Boise was absolutely loaded
top to bottom, and their coaching staff did a phenomenal job.
They handled pressure. They kicked off that season against Virginia
Tech and they need a two minute drill to go
down and win the game. And it was like watching
a professional team. It was like watching Aaron Rodgers go
(31:54):
down the field. You just felt this. It was a
foregone conclusion that they were going to win. That's how
good that they were. And we talked about at the
top with USC you want to strike fear into other teams.
They were one of the very few group of five
teams I can ever remember that even when they played
the big boys, It's like, you better have everything buckled
up tight because you need to play a perfect game
to beat those Broncos. And that's why it was, you know,
(32:17):
a no brainer to put them in the field. But
what's interesting is with teams like Boise that are such
a proud program, I had to, you know, basically go
through is it the six team that upset Oklahoma and
the Fiesta Bowl? Is it the twenty ten team that
did lose? But they got a higher ap rate rating
at one point of the season, So there's lots of considerations.
And that was also difficult with some power programs like Florida.
(32:38):
Is that the T bow team is the Steve Spurri
or ninety six team. There's lots of different arguments you
could make, but I think that's what makes it fun,
and that's what I'm hoping that fans can debate on
social and really get into it, because there's lots of
different things beyond just the wins and losses that make
a team special or as highly rated as you could
argue that they are.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
One thing that jumps out to me is you know
you're number one seeds. Nick Saban didn't have a team
that made it, and I think many people you had.
The one team you know from his era would be
the nineteen LSU team, which is the number one seed.
And it's not like one specific team for Saban jumps
out because they really changed dramatically about the midway point right,
(33:19):
physical defense, run game to be much more power offense.
But they always had a lot of guys that get
drafted on defense. My question is with the LSU thing
or team, would they be good enough on defense? Patrick
Queen was their linebacker, right and Stingley, who was actually
this one good year in college was that year and
he's awesome in the NFL now. So it's not like
(33:40):
they didn't have players, but you just look around and
you go, are they good enough on offensively? I mean
they got a billion dollars worth of player.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, it's interesting that LSU team because the way that
you framed it defensively is correct. Patrick Queen and their secondary,
the secondary was elite. They the Jim Thorpe Award winner.
They had Stingley, who was the first true freshman All
Americans since Adrian Peterson. They just had a ton of
talent on the back end of the defense. But you
could run on them. Even Old Miss in that season
ran for i want to say, three hundred plus yards.
(34:10):
John Rice Plumbly went berserk on them. So if they
were to draw a team in the tournament that runs
freed option, that is run focused a shootout, definitely can
can you unfold? And also you look at that season,
we in retrospect view them as this unbeatable juggernaut. They
almost lost to Texas. That game was you know, back
and forth, down to the wire. They end up hitting
(34:32):
a long pass at the end of the game that
goes for a touchdown to win by ten, where really
it was more so if that's a first down and
he gets tackled they win by three in another shootout.
So even the very top teams, and I can play
this game with every single team in the book. Two
thousand and one Miami, they were this close to losing
on the road to an eight and ford Boston College team,
and they're arguably people love to get into it. With
(34:54):
all of the pro talent that they had on that team,
they're viewed as invincible. Will they really needed a you know,
to pull a rabbit out of their hat just to
beat a team that only won eight games. So that's
what's interesting about college football to me. Even the most
dominant teams historically, they still got a few breaks, and
they still if you play a perfect game against them.
And that's what's fun about the tournament. Almost every team
(35:14):
that you play, even if you're a one seed, they're
all special in some way, shape or form. So you're
gonna have to play your best football and get lucky
to make it all the way and win six games.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
When you go back and watch the eighty I was
born in eighty four, so I don't really remember eighties
college football, but you have the Nebraska team in the
mid nineties is one of the one seeds, and I
remember them. I mean, obviously Tommy Frazier and Lawrence Phillips,
no one really plays at the highest level college football
like that. Do you think like going back and what
would that even work? How would it? You know, obviously
(35:44):
the other team wouldn't be prepared and they have NFL
players running that So it's they always say playing Navy
or Army is difficult, right because you're not used to it.
So you put an NFL running back who, let's face it,
I mean, Lawrence Phillips is like a first round level guy.
He's got a lot of problems, but he passed away
to Rip and Tommy just had the issues with the
blood clots. But do you think that how do you
(36:07):
think that would have translated? Because like BYU looking in
the eighty four like they were a team that played
much more like these modern day football, right, they passed
the ball. Steve Young the quarterback in eighty four, it.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Was Robably Bosco in eighty they had.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
That stretch of all the really good quarterbacks, you know,
Steve Young, Jim McMahon. I mean, they were playing. It's
why Andy Reid loves to pass, because he went to
BYU in the early eighties when everyone's running triple option
and they're going four wide, slinging it around, and they
were really an outlier that way. They were like Mike
Leach twenty years ago, but in the early eighties relative
(36:41):
to the rest of college football. So and like you said,
that's what's cool about this is all these teams, whether
they won the national championship, whether they didn't, that they
have a really really significant role in the way that
we talk about and think about and their fan bases.
But not even just if you're an Auburn fan, that
Cam Newton team, if you're an SEC fan, that was
a huge, huge moment for the conference.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Basically going back to the Nebraska comp, I would say
having watched every one of their games, their their fan
base did a great job of uploading everything on YouTube.
Number one they I believe it was their second game
or first game of the season. They played Michigan State
with coach Saban, and Saban said after the game, Lawrence
Phillips is the greatest running back I've ever coached against.
And he was including the NFL at that time. That's
(37:25):
the level of he had that dog in him, like
the guy when he got to the second level, he
was looking for people to run over. And to your point,
you can compete running the triple off.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Did he have a big game against Michigan State?
Speaker 3 (37:36):
They ran rough shot. I think they won fifty to
ten in that game. Every single game that they played
in that season they went on a twenty seven point
or more run. So when you think about Nebraska and
you think about the triple option, you're thinking about, you know,
ball control and you know, shrinking the game down.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Now.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
They were hitting big plays left and right, and Fraser
was the perfect athlete to run it. It was like
putting your best athlete on your entire team at quarterback.
And he never made a mistake with football in the
passing game, you know, pitching it, pulling at everything else.
So I think they would absolutely cause problems. And what's
interesting is modern college football defenses, we'll call it twenty
ten to twenty twenty four. They're all built on speed
(38:13):
to a certain degree, and a lot of their defensive
linemen weren't as big as an imposing as some of
the teams in eighties and nineties, where you look at
the brask offensive line, every guy's over three hundred pounds.
They were incredibly well disciplined. They they had I think
two or three holding penalties the entire season, which is ridiculous.
So I think they were tacticians and they would have
been able to move the football. But I agree with
(38:34):
you there were some teams that, when I went back
and looked BYU, looked like a modern offense. Boston College
with Doug Fluti in eighty four looked like a modern offense.
They wanted them to throw at forty times, they wanted
them to run around and extend plays and make things
happen outside throw off platform, all those kind of elements.
And then there was other teams that did feel a
bit dated. Ninety nine Wisconsin is in the book with
Ron Daine. They had an absolute elite defense. They wanted
(38:56):
to shrink the game down, they wanted to run between
the tackles, and they had multiple NFL alignment to do it. So, yes,
that looks like a team that maybe could find themselves
in deep water if they ended up later in the
tournament facing an LSU or a high powered offense. But
a lot of these teams are not as ancient as
they're made out to be in this argument that, oh,
the athleticism is so different That was what was fun
(39:16):
for me in the research element, going through finding these
easter eggs. The nineteen eighty two SMU team, the Pony
Express team. They had an Olympic shot putter on their
defensive line. Not only was he an All pro in
the NFL, he won a silver in LA at the Olympics.
So these athletes were really great. Maybe they weren't as
deep as some of these modern SEC teams, but just
eleven on eleven offense and defense, I think they absolutely
(39:38):
could hang.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
And then SMU team was doing nil forty years before
ATIL paying those two runnings.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Sure were Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Well one thing, I don't want you to ruin the
outcome of this, but could you tease because I see
USC number one seed oh four, they would potentially have
to play the twenty ten Stanford team we know Harbaugh
gives in trouble, and then in the third round potentially
the twenty three Michigan team. I mean, that's a lot
of Harbaugh. And we know Harbaugh in college gave Pete
(40:07):
Carroll some issues. So that's I see a tough little road.
You know, if this was college basketball and you're looking ahead,
you know there's no land mines here, but there are
some land mines there for that USC team, specifically with
Jim Harbaugh.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
It's interesting you can play that game with just about
every one of the top seeds. Miami could draw Johnny
Football in the round of thirty two. You think about,
you know, a potential quarterback who could handle the athleticism
and breaking plays outside of the pocket. He's one of
those guys LSU in twenty nineteen, Jake the Snake, that
Arizona State team. That was a team that you know,
I was about ten or eleven at the time when
(40:43):
they made it to the Rose Bowl. I always thought
that they were pretty good. When I went back and watched,
they were an elite. They were a generational team, and
they are right right up there with the great Pac
ten teams of all time. To be able to have
an NFL quarterback like that, and then defensively they had
playmakers at all three levels of the defense, it gets
really difficult for any of these teams to win. Yes,
they would be a favorite. And what was interesting too,
(41:04):
Colin Wilson of the Action Network, he helped me set
some of the point spreads. Later in the tournament. You
think to yourself, Oh, it's oh one, Miami, it's twenty nineteen, LSU,
they're going to be two touchdown, three touchdown favorites over everybody,
not the case. All of a sudden you get pretty
close their five point favorite, their six point favorite. And
as we know in college football, any given Saturday, teams
like that lose outright all the time. It can really
(41:25):
come down to one or two plays, some turnovers. And
that was what was interesting to fine tuning the game,
to make sure that we had the right amount of chaos,
the right amount of blocked field goals, missed field goals,
all these different elements that go into a real football game,
making sure that that was just right, not necessarily to
give the underdogs more of an advantage, but to make
(41:46):
sure every team was well calibrated. I wanted to make
sure that if the ninety five Huskers were playing against
a normal team from the two thousands, that they'd run
right over them. And once I had that down, then
all of a sudden, the outcomes that were being spit
out and the game flow and then nar it started
to get really compelling. And I would say for any
collegeo ball fan, it's kind of like a fun beat
read Father's Day is coming up, Like if you want
(42:07):
to get that for somebody in your life, it's a
perfect thing to kind of go into the nostalgia time
machine and start to have these arguments in a little
bit more of a concrete way, because that's the only
part of these goat arguments that I don't like. They
usually end at an impasse in some way, shape or form.
I'm hoping to bust through that to a certain degree
and say, Okay, if Johnny Football is playing the Miami
Hurricanes and Ed Reid and that defense, is he going
(42:29):
to be harassed for four quarters? Let's find out what
it actually looks like.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Who's the Miamio one secondary beside Ed Reid.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
So we got Mike Rump at corner who was a
first round NFL draft pick, Philip Cannon who was also
a first round draft pick who not only was phenomenal
at corner but also a huge game breaker in the
punt return game. And then you had other guys in
their secondary who were just filtering in in some packages.
Sean Taylor came and he played special teams and also
when they went three safeties, he was on the field
(42:58):
antrell role as well. So the speed Athleticsime, I.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Like them, Verus Johnny Football. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Yeah, it's it's basically what's interesting about them is that offensively,
they kind of played within themselves. They could have pushed
the tempo, you know, if they went through an offensive
facelift and they said we're gonna play with a bit
more temple, We're gonna open it up. They got Andre
Johnson on the perimeter, they got Shocky at tight ends,
and they had a backfield of Clinton Portis, Frank Gore
and Willison McGahee. They could have played fast, warn everybody
(43:26):
out and score fifty points. But they don't necessarily always.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Want to do that.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Sometimes they wanted to have those nine to ten play
drives and then lean on their defense to win games.
So that's what's interesting in terms of the argument on
their side, which is if they get pulled into a
higher scoring game, they can win that way, and if
they want to win seventeen thirteen, they can also win
that way. That's not necessarily true of all the teams,
the LSU team you brought up as well. Some of
these teams need the game flow to go just right
(43:52):
to pull it out.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Mike, tell everyone where they can get your book.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
So if you go over to Amazon put in Legendary Bowl,
it's gonna populate. You're gonna get your e reader, kindle version,
paperback as well as hardcover. And we were mentioning this
before we hopped on. If I'm get enough sales, my
publisher already wants me to go with a Legendary Madness,
which would be the exact same format, but for the
college basketball teams dating back to nineteen eighty. I'd love
(44:16):
to write it. It was a multi year process to
get this one done, but it was something that I
looked back on fondly, so I'd be happy to deliver
it for fans.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Awesome, Michael, I appreciate you coming on and look forward
to seeing who wins the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Thanks for having me
Speaker 1 (44:34):
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Speaker 1 (01:48):
What is going on, everybody? It's your old friend John Middlecoff.
This is three Now podcast. By the way, I've been
we haven't a podcast the last couple of days because
I've been sick. I don't know what happened to me.
I wouldn't say it's the sickest I've ever been. That
would be food poisoning. My friend's at Chipotle, even though
(02:08):
I love Chipotle. But it was because of Chipotle. That's
the worst I've ever felt ever. I honestly thought I
might not make it. And I think that's a common
theme when anyone ever gets food poisoning. This one is
just like the flu, and it has started kicking in
Monday night. I felt it coming and then by Tuesday
I took a combine like thousand steps the last fifty hours.
(02:31):
So it's been brutal. But feel a little bit better today.
And we're gonna have on Mike Calabrese from the Action Network.
He just wrote a book. He covers college football, and
he wrote a book calling the Legendary Bowl, deciding the
college football Goat. So he basically takes the best teams
of the last forty five years, puts him in a
(02:53):
March Madness style bracket, and plays it out on EA
twenty fourteen, the college football video game, and it's coming
out on Monday, so I'm interested to see what he
thinks about the Dan Hurley story as well. But this
is gonna be a podcast for the day because I'm
running on fumes. I'm literally sitting on my desk just
(03:13):
sweating profusely. So mentally tough, but the last couple of
days sucked. It's weird. It's like I gotta do something,
but it's like I don't have the energy to do anything.
It's like I gotta get a Christian McCaffrey take like
I couldn't even function, So we'll get to that next week.
Hopefully I feel better. Other than that, yeah, subscribe to
(03:35):
the pod. Everything's up on YouTube, and hopefully everyone's had
a good week. So before we dive in to the podcast, though,
you know, I got to tell you about my friends
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(03:56):
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(04:42):
of my guys Stuck. He's running mates over at the
Action Network. He has a new book out, Legendary Bull
Decided College Football Goats. I dove into it a little
bit this morning. It's you basically sixty eight teams, all
college football powerhouses since nineteen. I see a couple of
early upset potentials. Mike Calabrese of the Action Network. He
(05:05):
writes a column for The New York Post. He's been
talking about college sports for a long long time, a
passion of his. Given that he's a Philly guy, not
a huge Eagles guy, Mike.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
No, I mean I like the Eagles, Unlike some of
my neighbors. My emotional state doesn't ride or die with
how the Birds are doing. But yeah, college football comes
first in my household, always has, always will.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Know what I like about you guys at the Action
Network is you guys are degenerates, and I can relate
to that. I mean, I flip on big bets on
campus and you guys are going deep on the College
Baseball World Series. I worked at Fresno State in eight
o nine and if you remember, they had the upset
of all time upsets in Omaha and won the College
(05:49):
Baseball World Series maybe Georgia. Uh, it's very rare for
that to happen. Usually it's what's LSU was a defending champion.
They just lost to North Carolina, who it's clearly a powerhouse,
the Florida States. You know, the big boys win. But
it's a pretty cool event. And you guys are talking
about a gambling It's why you resonate with me over
at the Action Network. I know that.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I mean this year also, on top of it generally
being kind of a wild tournament, this year in particular,
you have six of the final sixteen teams that are
either three or four seeds. And what does that mean
for people who don't follow college baseball. That's essentially like
in March Madness, if six double digit seeds made the
second weekends, you know, ten, eleven, twelve seeds. That's how
crazy it's been. You got teams like Evansville coming out
(06:33):
of nowhere, and I think that's what adds to the
mystique of the event where you have the Giants and
you have the Cinderellas, and the pressure clearly slides towards
those home teams because there's a difference between losing on
a neutral floor to another power program more or less,
and there's a big difference being at home disappointing your
home crowd losing to a team like Evansville coming out
(06:54):
of the Missouri Valley. So I love the storylines, I
love the energy, and then it all ending in Omaha.
I think it's really special as well, where you have
all the fan bases competing to see who can eat
or drink I don't know exactly which one it is
as many jello shots as possible. So there's lots of
culture around college baseball, and I think over the past
what's called ten to fifteen years, I think the national
media is kind of getting in on the party a
(07:15):
little bit.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Well, if you see how people go to these SEC games,
I mean they're fifteen twenty thousand people. I had a
buddy that played college baseball. They played at Miami back
in the late two thousand, early two thousand and tens,
maybe two thousand and nine, and he said it was
it felt like a Major League Baseball environment. So in
the South, you know, obviously the SEC programs Florida State, Clemson,
(07:37):
North Carolina. I mean, the Oakland A's wouldn't have to
move if they get fans to show up. So this
is it's a really big deal in the South. I mean,
and I've been saying forever, the power of college football
is the SEC. All the money has a rising tide
lift all boats. I mean, these golf programs in the
South now flight Private Auburn just won the golf National championship.
(07:57):
All the money and it's only the beginning, right, We're
gonna see it with the big ten. And it's why
I you know, we're doing this. The story broke this
morning about Dan Hurley going to the Lakers. My initial
reaction is, this is trying to mess with JJ Reddick
because I would imagine he's asking for a lot of money.
(08:18):
I can't see anyway that Dan Hurley would leave Yukon
to go to the Lakers Northeast guy the Knick something
like that. I would be stunned. I'm not saying that
they haven't contact and I'm asking him for the job
and coach k once upon a time almost got there
Billy Donovan, you know, the Orlando job, and backed out
and then eventually took the Okac job. My reaction, I
(08:39):
don't know where you stand. I know you obviously they're
the powerhouse college basketball program. I would be stunned if
he ends up as the It's a shitty job. I mean,
Lebron's forty. They're going to force him to draft his kid.
Anthony Davis is just injured a lot, even though he's
a very talented player. They have no room to add
any players. I don't know. I don't think it's a
great NBA job. Like when Billy Donovan took Okay, see,
(09:00):
that was a pretty remarkable opportunity. Now Kevin ended up leaving,
but you had the opportunity to win a championship. You
do not with the Lakers. And people are gonna say
I'm a Laker Hater's that's a fact. They got no chance.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I think it's in that short list of teams with
special mystique. I'm certainly I'm not a Lakers fan. I'm
not a Rider die NBA fan.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I hate him.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
When you mentioned the Lakers or the Yankees or the
Dallas Cowboys and I understand that they're polarizing for a
lot of different reasons. People's imagination and their ego starts
to go, what if I was the person to turn
that around? And clearly that would say, if he ends
up going there and they turn it around and they
win an NBA championship, his resume is cemented as one
of the greatest college basketball or excuse me, basketball minds
(09:43):
in the history of the sport. And I think after
winning two in a row, especially the way that he's
won in the last two tournaments, just going away no
one coming close at least make the argument, you know,
from a negotiation standpoint, what do you have to let
you know, what do you have to prove in stores Connecticut?
Like you've already dominated that level, just as you dominated
high school basketball for nine years before that. I agree
(10:04):
with you, though, as someone who is a tremendous tactician
you watch you can play the sets they get into.
That's not modern NBA basketball. It's more ego management. How
do you go ahead and handle those players and also
handle the fact that you're not being able to buy
the groceries. You're the cook, but you do not get
to choose who gets to play for you in the
(10:24):
kind of way that you do at the college basketball level.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So I think it would be a mistake.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
But I think it's very real that he's going to
take it, particularly because the number is going to have
so many zeros behind.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
It, you expect him to be the Lakers coach.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Then, I do, as a matter of fact, I think
that this story has it's not just smoke. I think
there's real fire here. I don't necessarily think if it
was a more established coach in JJ Reddick and kind
of you know, playing one side against the other, I
think that could be the narrative. But in this situation
with JJ, with the track record that he has and
(10:55):
the lack of experience, I don't think this is just
a little gamesmanship by the Lakers front office. I really
do think they want Hurley.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I do think good coaches can figure it out any era, anytime.
You know, screamers can lighten up and guys that need
to scream can figure it out. After he won a second,
I watched a lot of just YouTube interviews. I mean,
his practices has like a nineteen eighties NFL field to
it a lot like his father. It's not the NBA
(11:21):
where the Lakers haven't done a practice in five years
since Lebron shows like they don't do shoot arounds in
the morning. So it's it'd be now, like I said,
I bet on people, and he's clearly proven you bet
on this guy. But it would be a pretty hard
one eighty from the way that he's used, like he
couldn't act like that to Lebron and Anthony Davis, that's
for sure, right. So it it'd be a fascinating case study.
(11:45):
I know that like it. It makes the Lakers more interesting.
I think they'd be more interesting with Dan Hurley than
they would with JJ Reddick.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Also, there's an element that's outside of his control, but
I think you know, carries a lot of weight, which
is if you come in fire and Brimstone, you want
to change the culture. You want to say my way
of the highway. If you start winning early on, people
will buy into it. But it's very easy to go
in the opposite direction, where you know, this guy is
college theatrics. He's trying to, you know, puppeteer everything we're
doing and we're not winning. You can lose the locker
(12:12):
room really quick, and we've seen that so many times
with college greats moving up to the NBA. You know,
talk about Patino, his biggest regret was, you know, his
foray into the NBA. It just didn't work. He couldn't
use the same you know, defensive style, He couldn't motivate
in the same way. He didn't have the same kind
of god complex that actually worked where players respected him
to the same level. So I think it's it's a
(12:34):
tall task, But I don't know. There's just something about
the Lakers mystique and that opportunity to say that I
figured it out that I think will play to his ego.
At the end of the day, I think he'll do it.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Before we dive into the book, a couple of college
football things I want to dive into. I got into it,
you know, Coward as a diehard USC guy, and he
tried to defend him on I'm sure you saw the
story that broke last week on Lincoln's begging to get
out of the game, and I'd go, it'd be one
thing if he was playing let's say prime Alabama and
they had built this thing up. LSU lost their starting quarterback,
(13:06):
LSU lost multiple wide receivers high in the draft. Oh
their defense, Oh, Yeah. They also fired their defensive coordinator,
so you could argue there are a lot of similarities.
Brian Kelly gets there, you know, at the same time
Lincoln does to USC. To LSU, I thought it was
a really and I saw that you had the four
USC team as one of the number one seeds, which
is probably an easy setting the number one seeds for you,
(13:28):
at least two or three out of the four of
them had to be pretty easy. I thought it was
an embarrassing moment for the program, you know, because it
would be easy one for LSU to Brian Kelly, but like, yeah,
I'm going through a transition time too. We're all both
trying to get the playoffs. Now. My personal take is,
and listen, I've met Lincoln. He obviously had a lot
of success at Oklahoma. I do think the US Seeds
(13:49):
thing is a little bit different animal, and that's that's
a pretty They expected more when they gave him a
hundred and twenty million dollars. There was a reason that
LSU gave Brian Kelly, what ninety hundred million dollar to
say no, hell, yeah, we want to play it. And
this isn't in Alis you it's in Vegas. Well, Sorry
I rambled on that one, but I'm pretty fired up.
I thought that was because I'm a West Coast guy.
(14:09):
I want these It's awesome that Oregon's good now that
Washington made a run last year up, but I don't
think USC is gonna be good for the foreseeable future.
Like I just I don't think it's really gonna work
with Lincoln at the level in which that they thought
when they when they traded or signed him or however
they held that work.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
All Right, you said you're West Coast guy, specifically, you're
a Fresno guy, which built their entire brand on any
team anywhere, anytime, And this is the opposite. This is
him basically letting it leak out that they didn't want
to play this team at this time, and they just
show that they were scared. And so much of recruiting
of program perception is you speak it into reality. And
(14:48):
for everything that he's accomplished offensively and all the heismans
and his offense being plug and play, he should be
able to build on that, and instead he's tearing it
down and looks like, you know, they're putting the tail
between their legs and running away from an opportunity. I
agree with you, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
And what's interesting is that when you look back at
the Pete Carroll higher before he went on that run
with the Trojans, a lot of people did not like
(15:10):
the hire because they felt like he wasn't Hollywood enough.
He didn't understand how to bring in a high scoring
offense or to be able to recruit, and he was
more of a defensive mind, hard nosed kind of guy.
I still think even if you're in a city like
Los Angeles and when the team's really good, you're as
famous as the Lakers and the Dodgers and everything else,
you have to have a core toughness. And at least
(15:32):
he's trying with a new defensive coordinator, but I think
it starts at the top. His Oklahoma teams were always
soft defensively, and when the chips were down, they just
didn't give you that feeling that they were going to
fight through it. And that's despite having incredible offensive talent.
The Kyler Murray's Baker Mayfield basically was a god in college.
All of this great offensive sizzle never paid off because
they didn't have the defensive stake and I think it's
(15:53):
the same situation here. I think it's a black guy
for the program to go out and to be linked
to a statement saying that you want to get out
of a game. You want it to be the opposite.
You want to say the hell with it, We'll go
play in Death Valley and we'll show you that we're
not afraid anybody. And to go back to those USC
teams from the early two thousands, they played on the
planes at Auburn that kind of got that run started
for them, and Matt Lioner talked about it where it
(16:14):
was so loud, it was so intimidating, and we made
the place quiet. That's the kind of energy you have
to have, both as a coach and a player to
be able to go from a team that's flirting with
the playoffs to a team that other programs are scared of.
And I think for the money that they're paying him,
he absolutely should be delivering that.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah to me, if you substitute Oregon for USC in
this game, they'd be licking their lips because it's a
home game in Vegas. Yeah, And for US Seaman now
it's even easier for their fans, you know, it's a
four and a half hour drive, So yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I definitely wouldn't pick USC as a potential
playoff team this year now going into this conference, would you,
(16:51):
I mean, do you think they're one of the twelve
best teams going into this twenty twenty four fall season.
I do not think they are.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
I don't think they're built to win in the postseason.
But I'll say this, the twelve team playoff is going
to be interesting because I think both fans, players, coaches,
and Vegas we're not quite sure what it's going to
look like yet. And when I mentioned Vegas, because when
you look at the odds to win the national Championship,
basically they have the same swatch bunch of teams ranked
in that three to one to twenty to one range
(17:21):
as they did when it was a four team playoff.
But now we've gone from four teams, tripled it up
to twelve teams. There's more access and there's opportunity for
teams to get hot at the right time, and then
it becomes less about your personnel and more about your path.
Do you get a home playoff game? Are you playing
a G five team, is you know, one of your opponents,
Do they have a quarterback who's injured, or a star
(17:41):
wide receiver. All these other things come into the conversation.
So I don't think they are even close to being
considered a top ten team in terms of their overall
talent and mentality and coaching. But that doesn't mean that
they can't sneak into the playoff because when you look
at those nine, ten, eleven, twelve teams at the very
the back end of it, a lot of them are
gonna have multi the losses. They're gonna have worts in
(18:01):
a lot of ways that USC has had. So then
it just becomes a question of do you get the
right boosts, the right win right at the end. Do
you get a little bit lucky to get in? So
I'm not quite ready to throw them out of a
twelve team here in twenty twenty four, but in terms
of winning multiple games, I think they're far from that.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Is there a team that's not considered a top two
or three? You know, Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon that you
like as a national championship sleeper? You know one name
that kind of comes to mind, just given the conference
they've been playing in the last couple of years and
how well they've played is is ole Miss. I mean
they've been pretty such.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Ole Miss is absolutely the team because not only do
they have the talent and you know, the transfer portal
king in Lane Kiffin. But one thing that I really
like in terms of the transfer portal era is you're
not going to be able to have roster consistency the
way you did five ten years ago, but you can
have consistency at the positions that matter head coach, starting quarterback,
and both coordinators. There's twenty seven teams in the country
(18:57):
that bring back all those elements. Ole Miss is one
of them. And then when you look at their roster
talent top to bottom, what they did in the portal,
I think if it all clicks, they could be a
team that could surprise in that twelve to fifteen to
one window and catch a team like Ohio State, Georgia
or Texas sleeping a little bit. And like I said,
it comes down to path. You don't have to beat
all three of those teams necessarily. You can be lucky
(19:18):
and in a new divisionless SEC as well, there's opportunities
to avoid land mines where previously they were always in
the SEC West, they always had Yeoman's work to be
able to just get to Atlanta, which they never were
able to do. And I think it's a different new
ball game for them this season.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Do you think Ohio State this is their best chance
in years given how deep their roster is, or do
you question the quarterback play.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Quarterback play based on the offensive skill talent around him.
Getting a BUCA back was huge. I think that they
can handle him with kid gloves and turn him into
a let's call it a B plus game manager. When
you look at the rest of this roster, that is
enough if you win in the turnover game and he plays,
you know, basically B plus football. As I mentioned, I
think this is going to be enough for them to
(20:02):
get a high seed, get into the playoff, potentially get
a buy because their season really comes down to three games.
They're at Oregon, They're at Penn State, and they're hosting Michigan.
The rest of their schedule is basically powder puff, you know,
two MAX schools out of the gate with a bye week.
That's a perfect amount of time for Chip Kelly and
this offensive staff to tinker to try to figure out
what works and what doesn't and then be able to
(20:24):
go into their conference slate with some momentum on the
offensive side of the ball, because defensively, I think it's
a story that you know has been brought up how
talented they are, but the continuity and the experience, and
then adding in that Downs kid from Bama, they could
be arguably the top you know, defense in the entire country,
both in terms of skill and also their defensive coordinator,
who I love. So I think this is a team
(20:45):
that does not need a a plus Heisman level quarterback
play to win the national title. And that's the other
element of it is, you know, when you're playing multiple
playoff games, it's not just outscore everybody. You got to
win some of those clunkers. You got to win some
of those one possession games. We're not turning the ball
over matters. So I'm really bullish in Ohio State. If
I was an odds maker, I would flip their odds
(21:05):
with Georgia. The fact that they're plus four fifty five
to one as opposed to three to one, I think
that's a mistake and it may seem like a small one,
but you know, when you're betting throughout the course of
the year, getting fortuitous numbers standards that are hanging around.
That's the way to make money.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
You know. I lived in Philly for a couple of years.
It was actually right when the Joe Paterno thing kind
of broke and we had guys I was working for
the Eagles. We had guys on the staff that had
played for Joe and yeah, I was reading some of
your book and you wrote that potentially Philly had to
be that in New York, the first, first place for
twenty four hour a day sports radio. And that's you know,
(21:40):
I'm you know, from California where pro sports are huge,
and pro sports are massive in Philly. Two. But that
was a story because of Penn State football. That can
you know that they are not I wouldn't put on
the Eagles level, but they get talked about when they matter.
And James Franklin has done a good job. I mean
he recruits a boatload of NFL players. I mean their
(22:02):
team this year has got to be one of the
more talented teams in the country. But last year, in
some of the games offensively, I don't even know what
to say. And you know, I look at Lane Kiffin
for example, most people would say they're on somewhat similar tier,
but like Lane being a fun team to watch and
what he's doing at ole Miss and then you go
(22:24):
Penn State, in theory should have a lot more resources,
and it's like his team's not that fun to watch.
They can't score against the teams that matter. Is anything
gonna change? And I mean, can he just keep cruising
along nine to ten wins produce NFL guys or eventually
it's like, are we even close to Michigan Ohio State?
And now enter Oregon enters the chat right, so it
could look even worse.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Well, I'll say I'll answer to the last part of
the question.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
First.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
I think it's gonna get better just by virtue of
the fact that no team would have been a bigger
beneficiary in the last ten years the fourteen playoff if
it had been a twelve team playoff than Penn State,
I believe they would have five six playoff bids.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, I read, but they would have. But do you
think they would have won a lot of those games.
It's like just because you make the NCAA tournament, if
you get bounced on Thursday, Like, okay.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
I think the sixteen to seventeen team, the one with
Joe Moorehead calling the shots offensively, with Trace McSorley and
Saquon and Godwin and Mike JAESICKI. I think those teams
got hot at the right time. They played very well.
He almost won that that Rose Bowl, that Classic against USC.
Then they go down to the Fiesta Bowl and they
played really well there. I think those teams could have
made some noise. I don't. I didn't see a national
(23:31):
title caliber team in any of those.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
I would agree with teams offensively. I mean, obviously, I'm
talking about we just told this guy's like the next
Josh Allen, and I'm watching them play him, going, what
am I missing here? Now?
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Luckily, I think what's interesting about Franklin is he gets
the credit for being a great recruiter of players. He's
also had some home runs in terms of his staff.
Bringing in Manny Diaz was a home run on defense.
Bringing in Joe Morehead was a home run on offense.
Unfortunately for him it didn't line up. He had one
but not the other. And I will give him credit.
Mike Gearsaich, it wasn't working. You looked at Aler, you
(24:06):
wanted to see him, you know, progress and get better
as a player. When you look at a school at
Ohio State, they're just churning out quarterback after quarterback who
is an impact player, and Michigan even being able to
win at a high level without a player of that caliber.
I mean, JJ ends up be getting a first round
NFL draft pick, but they never asked him to take
over games. So in comparison to those two schools, you're right,
they were falling short. But I will give him credit.
(24:28):
He goes and snatches the Kansas offensive coordinator to make
Kansas football fun. I don't think people have a full
appreciation for how difficult that job was. Their offense, even
with a backup quarterback for much of last year being
forced into action, they were still super dynamic. They were
multiple in terms of their formations. They made defenses prepare
for so much. I'm interested to see. Does Franklin really
(24:50):
hand over the keys to his program to a new
offensive coordinator and say, go out and win it for
us the way he did with Morehead or is it
more of a James Franklin light offense where don't make mistakes,
We'll try to, you know, beat the heck out of
our non conference opponents. But if we're going to play
Michigan or Ohio State. We need to get a block
field goal. We need to win, you know, in terms
of a low scoring game as opposed to getting into
(25:11):
a shootout. We'll see what he does. I think the
criticism he gets is warranted. But at the same time,
I think the worm is going to turn for Penn
State here. I think they're finally going to get into
some playoffs and if this coaching hire is the right one,
all of a sudden, I think all the the basically
the roadblocks that we're lining up in front of this
program are going to be raised, and they're gonna have
(25:32):
an opportunity to take it to the next level.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Cay let's dive into the book Legendary Bowl Deciding College
Football's goat that. This book is scheduled to come out
on June tenth.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Correct, that's right, at eight pm. It'll be live on Amazon,
both you know, the Kindle e reader version as well
as paperback and hardcovers.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Talk to me about how it originated and then just
described to everybody kind of what you did to carry
out the simulation and how you went about it.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
So I grew up on house old, whether it was
my mother or my father. We were always super passionate
about sports, and from a very early age it was
always framing things in a historical perspective. How good is
Jordan compared to this player? How good is this team
compared to a team that played fifteen or twenty years ago.
Almost every conversation at the championship level broke down into
some kind of goat debate, and not in the house.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Your house was like First Take in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
It was basically like First Take, but you had to
come with receipts. It wasn't good feelings, and my father
had no problem burying a nine year old Michael Calibertys
who was not prepared for some follow up questions. So
that's kind of where it started. And then we put
into the mix the NCAA football video game series, which
I played all the way back to College Football USA
ninety five, every single year playing it, and pretty quickly
(26:55):
in the PlayStation area you could edit the rosters. And
when the last game came out and it got sunset
and it was clear this is going to be the
last game in the series for the foreseeable future, I
started a tinker and to build rosters for who is
the best Michigan team or Tennessee or USC or Georgia.
And I just started doing it as a hobby and
then pretty quickly, you know, I had twenty teams, I
(27:17):
had thirty teams, I had forty. Well, now I can
play a hypothetical playoff. I can simulate it, see what
would happen. And really the big moment for me was
when COVID hit and they shut down sports that week.
I put out a tweet and I was like, I'm
going to put together a tournament of the best teams.
I made, you know, these rudimentary graphic design cards recapping
what happened, and it exploded and from there I was like, Okay,
(27:38):
I'm onto something. People are clearly interested. People want to
argue about the teams that I picked, the bracket, what
would happen in these hypothetical matchups. So I wanted to
blow that out into the biggest form that I could,
which in this case is a book. You know, it's
close to three hundred pages. I do deep dives on
every single team that go all the way back to
nineteen eighty and then at the end of the day,
I had sixty eight teams. And it's a format everyone's
(27:58):
familiar with. You got play games, you have four regions,
goes down to the final four, the championship, and just
from a pure college football nerd perspective, it was really exciting.
Once I had everything in place, all of the roster editing.
It took between five and ten hours for every team,
because not only do they need to dig up rosters
and look at combine stats and weights and heights and
(28:20):
attributes and awards and everything else I went through. In
a lot of these cases, I wasn't born yet, So
I went through and I watched seven of Boston College's
games from nineteen eighty four with Doug Flutie. It wasn't
just flipping on as hell Mary against Miami. I want
to see what kind of offense they're running, what kind
of defense, you know, how aggressive they are with their
play calling, because you could fine tune everything in the game.
So once I had that ready, then it was just
(28:41):
kind of a joy to watch it go through and
just take notes and make sure to transcribe those notes
into the book, so it feels like you're reading a
real recap, as though you would on an ESPN dot
com or in the newspaper wherever. You get your news.
I wanted to give it that feel, so you get
to go through this journey for about two hundred pages
of game recaps. And it's interesting too, just teasing it
out on social media. It's not just about being a champion,
(29:04):
being the best. A lot of these teams held a
special nostalgic place in fans hearts. He had two thousand
and seven Hawaii, he had nineteen ninety one East Carolina
with Jeff Blake. There's all these teams that all of
a sudden, their alumni from.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
That Boise State twenty ten. I saw that that's just exactly.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
There's so many teams that were culturally significant to the
sport that weren't champions. And that's really what I love
about college football. It's not just who won the Super
Bowl and then there's everybody else. There's thirty one losers
in one champion. There's room in college football for people
to feel a success story, and whether it's an individual
player winning the Heisman and winning a bowl game, having
an icon of comeback. And I wanted to represent as
(29:41):
many of those stories as I could in this field.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Well, you know what's funny is when I worked at
Frezlo State in eighth nine for Coach Hill, you just
had such a reverence for the Boise State program, and
I think a lot of people had looked down and
made fun of because rip Cole Brennan. That Hawaii team
got just manhandled by Joe Georgia. And I remember seeing
that Boise team for a couple of years, and by
(30:03):
twenty ten they had basically three years of all those guys.
It's like, this team is as good as I thought.
They could have won a national championship. And obviously Kaepernick
and the missfield goals in that game. But to me,
I would imagine that's got to be the best non
Power five team of the last twenty or thirty, forty
five years or whatever. They were on a different level
(30:24):
in my opinion than that Hawaii team, because I vividly
remember watching that Hawaii game in college. I mean, the
left tackle couldn't he couldn't even touch the guy. It
wasn't even fair. Where the Boise team, I think they
had twelve or thirteen guys drafted and several guys in
the second and third round in the trenches. I thought
(30:45):
they could have won a national championship and Kaepernick and
that running attack was a pretty tough team to play.
It was freezing cold in that game. It was a
big time upset. But I do think that that Boise
team has a special place in my heart because I
truly believe they're one of the best teams that because
forever they kind of got screwed in the sense that
remember with the games they would always put him against
(31:06):
another non Power five team. They played TCU. It felt
like every year in a bowl game, it's like, let
them play USC, or let him play a real team.
But that specific team was as good as it gets.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah, that team. I mean you mentioned Kellen Moorey. He
won fifty games, he went fifty to three as a starter.
He's going to be a soon to be College Football
Hall of Famer. Doug Martin the muscle hamster, all time nickname,
but also just an absolute beast at running back, Titus
Young and Pettis and wide receiver.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
They had it all.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And as you mentioned, usually when I would go through
these teams, a lot of them were half teams. They
had some glaring weakness or deficiency. Boise was absolutely loaded
top to bottom, and their coaching staff did a phenomenal job.
They handled pressure. They kicked off that season against Virginia
Tech and they need a two minute drill to go
down and win the game. And it was like watching
a professional team. It was like watching Aaron Rodgers go
(31:54):
down the field. You just felt this. It was a
foregone conclusion that they were going to win. That's how
good that they were. And we talked about at the
top with USC you want to strike fear into other teams.
They were one of the very few group of five
teams I can ever remember that even when they played
the big boys, It's like, you better have everything buckled
up tight because you need to play a perfect game
to beat those Broncos. And that's why it was, you know,
(32:17):
a no brainer to put them in the field. But
what's interesting is with teams like Boise that are such
a proud program, I had to, you know, basically go
through is it the six team that upset Oklahoma and
the Fiesta Bowl? Is it the twenty ten team that
did lose? But they got a higher ap rate rating
at one point of the season, So there's lots of considerations.
And that was also difficult with some power programs like Florida.
(32:38):
Is that the T bow team is the Steve Spurri
or ninety six team. There's lots of different arguments you
could make, but I think that's what makes it fun,
and that's what I'm hoping that fans can debate on
social and really get into it, because there's lots of
different things beyond just the wins and losses that make
a team special or as highly rated as you could
argue that they are.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
One thing that jumps out to me is you know
you're number one seeds. Nick Saban didn't have a team
that made it, and I think many people you had.
The one team you know from his era would be
the nineteen LSU team, which is the number one seed.
And it's not like one specific team for Saban jumps
out because they really changed dramatically about the midway point right,
(33:19):
physical defense, run game to be much more power offense.
But they always had a lot of guys that get
drafted on defense. My question is with the LSU thing
or team, would they be good enough on defense? Patrick
Queen was their linebacker, right and Stingley, who was actually
this one good year in college was that year and
he's awesome in the NFL now. So it's not like
(33:40):
they didn't have players, but you just look around and
you go, are they good enough on offensively? I mean
they got a billion dollars worth of player.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, it's interesting that LSU team because the way that
you framed it defensively is correct. Patrick Queen and their secondary,
the secondary was elite. They the Jim Thorpe Award winner.
They had Stingley, who was the first true freshman All
Americans since Adrian Peterson. They just had a ton of
talent on the back end of the defense. But you
could run on them. Even Old Miss in that season
ran for i want to say, three hundred plus yards.
(34:10):
John Rice Plumbly went berserk on them. So if they
were to draw a team in the tournament that runs
freed option, that is run focused a shootout, definitely can
can you unfold? And also you look at that season,
we in retrospect view them as this unbeatable juggernaut. They
almost lost to Texas. That game was you know, back
and forth, down to the wire. They end up hitting
(34:32):
a long pass at the end of the game that
goes for a touchdown to win by ten, where really
it was more so if that's a first down and
he gets tackled they win by three in another shootout.
So even the very top teams, and I can play
this game with every single team in the book. Two
thousand and one Miami, they were this close to losing
on the road to an eight and ford Boston College team,
and they're arguably people love to get into it. With
(34:54):
all of the pro talent that they had on that team,
they're viewed as invincible. Will they really needed a you know,
to pull a rabbit out of their hat just to
beat a team that only won eight games. So that's
what's interesting about college football to me. Even the most
dominant teams historically, they still got a few breaks, and
they still if you play a perfect game against them.
And that's what's fun about the tournament. Almost every team
(35:14):
that you play, even if you're a one seed, they're
all special in some way, shape or form. So you're
gonna have to play your best football and get lucky
to make it all the way and win six games.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
When you go back and watch the eighty I was
born in eighty four, so I don't really remember eighties
college football, but you have the Nebraska team in the
mid nineties is one of the one seeds, and I
remember them. I mean, obviously Tommy Frazier and Lawrence Phillips,
no one really plays at the highest level college football
like that. Do you think like going back and what
would that even work? How would it? You know, obviously
(35:44):
the other team wouldn't be prepared and they have NFL
players running that So it's they always say playing Navy
or Army is difficult, right because you're not used to it.
So you put an NFL running back who, let's face it,
I mean, Lawrence Phillips is like a first round level guy.
He's got a lot of problems, but he passed away
to Rip and Tommy just had the issues with the
blood clots. But do you think that how do you
(36:07):
think that would have translated? Because like BYU looking in
the eighty four like they were a team that played
much more like these modern day football, right, they passed
the ball. Steve Young the quarterback in eighty four, it.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Was Robably Bosco in eighty they had.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
That stretch of all the really good quarterbacks, you know,
Steve Young, Jim McMahon. I mean, they were playing. It's
why Andy Reid loves to pass, because he went to
BYU in the early eighties when everyone's running triple option
and they're going four wide, slinging it around, and they
were really an outlier that way. They were like Mike
Leach twenty years ago, but in the early eighties relative
(36:41):
to the rest of college football. So and like you said,
that's what's cool about this is all these teams, whether
they won the national championship, whether they didn't, that they
have a really really significant role in the way that
we talk about and think about and their fan bases.
But not even just if you're an Auburn fan, that
Cam Newton team, if you're an SEC fan, that was
a huge, huge moment for the conference.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Basically going back to the Nebraska comp, I would say
having watched every one of their games, their their fan
base did a great job of uploading everything on YouTube.
Number one they I believe it was their second game
or first game of the season. They played Michigan State
with coach Saban, and Saban said after the game, Lawrence
Phillips is the greatest running back I've ever coached against.
And he was including the NFL at that time. That's
(37:25):
the level of he had that dog in him, like
the guy when he got to the second level, he
was looking for people to run over. And to your point,
you can compete running the triple off.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Did he have a big game against Michigan State?
Speaker 3 (37:36):
They ran rough shot. I think they won fifty to
ten in that game. Every single game that they played
in that season they went on a twenty seven point
or more run. So when you think about Nebraska and
you think about the triple option, you're thinking about, you know,
ball control and you know, shrinking the game down.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Now.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
They were hitting big plays left and right, and Fraser
was the perfect athlete to run it. It was like
putting your best athlete on your entire team at quarterback.
And he never made a mistake with football in the
passing game, you know, pitching it, pulling at everything else.
So I think they would absolutely cause problems. And what's
interesting is modern college football defenses, we'll call it twenty
ten to twenty twenty four. They're all built on speed
(38:13):
to a certain degree, and a lot of their defensive
linemen weren't as big as an imposing as some of
the teams in eighties and nineties, where you look at
the brask offensive line, every guy's over three hundred pounds.
They were incredibly well disciplined. They they had I think
two or three holding penalties the entire season, which is ridiculous.
So I think they were tacticians and they would have
been able to move the football. But I agree with
(38:34):
you there were some teams that, when I went back
and looked BYU, looked like a modern offense. Boston College
with Doug Fluti in eighty four looked like a modern offense.
They wanted them to throw at forty times, they wanted
them to run around and extend plays and make things
happen outside throw off platform, all those kind of elements.
And then there was other teams that did feel a
bit dated. Ninety nine Wisconsin is in the book with
Ron Daine. They had an absolute elite defense. They wanted
(38:56):
to shrink the game down, they wanted to run between
the tackles, and they had multiple NFL alignment to do it. So, yes,
that looks like a team that maybe could find themselves
in deep water if they ended up later in the
tournament facing an LSU or a high powered offense. But
a lot of these teams are not as ancient as
they're made out to be in this argument that, oh,
the athleticism is so different That was what was fun
(39:16):
for me in the research element, going through finding these
easter eggs. The nineteen eighty two SMU team, the Pony
Express team. They had an Olympic shot putter on their
defensive line. Not only was he an All pro in
the NFL, he won a silver in LA at the Olympics.
So these athletes were really great. Maybe they weren't as
deep as some of these modern SEC teams, but just
eleven on eleven offense and defense, I think they absolutely
(39:38):
could hang.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
And then SMU team was doing nil forty years before
ATIL paying those two runnings.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Sure were Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Well one thing, I don't want you to ruin the
outcome of this, but could you tease because I see
USC number one seed oh four, they would potentially have
to play the twenty ten Stanford team we know Harbaugh
gives in trouble, and then in the third round potentially
the twenty three Michigan team. I mean, that's a lot
of Harbaugh. And we know Harbaugh in college gave Pete
(40:07):
Carroll some issues. So that's I see a tough little road.
You know, if this was college basketball and you're looking ahead,
you know there's no land mines here, but there are
some land mines there for that USC team, specifically with
Jim Harbaugh.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
It's interesting you can play that game with just about
every one of the top seeds. Miami could draw Johnny
Football in the round of thirty two. You think about,
you know, a potential quarterback who could handle the athleticism
and breaking plays outside of the pocket. He's one of
those guys LSU in twenty nineteen, Jake the Snake, that
Arizona State team. That was a team that you know,
I was about ten or eleven at the time when
(40:43):
they made it to the Rose Bowl. I always thought
that they were pretty good. When I went back and watched,
they were an elite. They were a generational team, and
they are right right up there with the great Pac
ten teams of all time. To be able to have
an NFL quarterback like that, and then defensively they had
playmakers at all three levels of the defense, it gets
really difficult for any of these teams to win. Yes,
they would be a favorite. And what was interesting too,
(41:04):
Colin Wilson of the Action Network, he helped me set
some of the point spreads. Later in the tournament. You
think to yourself, Oh, it's oh one, Miami, it's twenty nineteen, LSU,
they're going to be two touchdown, three touchdown favorites over everybody,
not the case. All of a sudden you get pretty
close their five point favorite, their six point favorite. And
as we know in college football, any given Saturday, teams
like that lose outright all the time. It can really
(41:25):
come down to one or two plays, some turnovers. And
that was what was interesting to fine tuning the game,
to make sure that we had the right amount of chaos,
the right amount of blocked field goals, missed field goals,
all these different elements that go into a real football game,
making sure that that was just right, not necessarily to
give the underdogs more of an advantage, but to make
(41:46):
sure every team was well calibrated. I wanted to make
sure that if the ninety five Huskers were playing against
a normal team from the two thousands, that they'd run
right over them. And once I had that down, then
all of a sudden, the outcomes that were being spit
out and the game flow and then nar it started
to get really compelling. And I would say for any
collegeo ball fan, it's kind of like a fun beat
read Father's Day is coming up, Like if you want
(42:07):
to get that for somebody in your life, it's a
perfect thing to kind of go into the nostalgia time
machine and start to have these arguments in a little
bit more of a concrete way, because that's the only
part of these goat arguments that I don't like. They
usually end at an impasse in some way, shape or form.
I'm hoping to bust through that to a certain degree
and say, Okay, if Johnny Football is playing the Miami
Hurricanes and Ed Reid and that defense, is he going
(42:29):
to be harassed for four quarters? Let's find out what
it actually looks like.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Who's the Miamio one secondary beside Ed Reid.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
So we got Mike Rump at corner who was a
first round NFL draft pick, Philip Cannon who was also
a first round draft pick who not only was phenomenal
at corner but also a huge game breaker in the
punt return game. And then you had other guys in
their secondary who were just filtering in in some packages.
Sean Taylor came and he played special teams and also
when they went three safeties, he was on the field
(42:58):
antrell role as well. So the speed Athleticsime, I.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Like them, Verus Johnny Football. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Yeah, it's it's basically what's interesting about them is that offensively,
they kind of played within themselves. They could have pushed
the tempo, you know, if they went through an offensive
facelift and they said we're gonna play with a bit
more temple, We're gonna open it up. They got Andre
Johnson on the perimeter, they got Shocky at tight ends,
and they had a backfield of Clinton Portis, Frank Gore
and Willison McGahee. They could have played fast, warn everybody
(43:26):
out and score fifty points. But they don't necessarily always.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Want to do that.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Sometimes they wanted to have those nine to ten play
drives and then lean on their defense to win games.
So that's what's interesting in terms of the argument on
their side, which is if they get pulled into a
higher scoring game, they can win that way, and if
they want to win seventeen thirteen, they can also win
that way. That's not necessarily true of all the teams,
the LSU team you brought up as well. Some of
these teams need the game flow to go just right
(43:52):
to pull it out.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Mike, tell everyone where they can get your book.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
So if you go over to Amazon put in Legendary Bowl,
it's gonna populate. You're gonna get your e reader, kindle version,
paperback as well as hardcover. And we were mentioning this
before we hopped on. If I'm get enough sales, my
publisher already wants me to go with a Legendary Madness,
which would be the exact same format, but for the
college basketball teams dating back to nineteen eighty. I'd love
(44:16):
to write it. It was a multi year process to
get this one done, but it was something that I
looked back on fondly, so I'd be happy to deliver
it for fans.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Awesome, Michael, I appreciate you coming on and look forward
to seeing who wins the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Thanks for having me
Speaker 1 (44:34):
The volume
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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