Week 9 Prediction Show + Hot Seat & Coaching Search Intel & New JP Poll

College Football week 9 predictions are here. Tonight we take a look at Texas A&M vs LSU. Will Mike Elko and the Aggies derail Brian Kelly’s season? What about Ole Miss vs Oklahoma as Brent Venables and Lane Kiffin look to remain in the SEC and CFP races? Can Missouri vas Vanderbilt deliver a classic? The week 9 edition of the JP Poll dropped tonight as we get updated power ratings. Where is Indiana? Is Miami still top 10? Ohio State, UGA, and Alabama were also winners this weekend. Do we still see Texas in the top 20? Hugh Freeze is facing considerable heat at Auburn as speculation about the hot seat has ramped up. The same could be said for Mike Norvell at FSU and Brian Kelly at LSU. Where is the Florida coaching search? What about the latest with Penn State? All that plus early best bets on the Ramen Noodle Express.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
What should we call it?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Not what should we do about it? What should we
call it? Oh, you're picking up a conversation. We've got
to open a coaching search consultation service. It's very, very obvious.
It's become crystal clear to me over the past few
days slash weeks that all the wrong questions are being
asked and the right ones aren't being asked, and some
people that probably shouldn't have their hands on the wheel

(00:35):
have their hands on the wheel of various coaching searches.
So I don't know, maybe that's a spring project. Jesse,
just come up with an acronym. We need a good name.
The rest of it will take care of itself. We
need a good name. We're jampacked, We're high a type
a sparkling downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Tonight, someone tells me big
meteor shower on tap tonight. That was the talk of
the staff today, not Week eight predictions or Week nine predictions.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Or hot seed.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
We were talking about meteor showers. Not on the show tonight, though,
But we do have the JP pole on the show tonight.
We do have Week nine predictions. We do have a
ton of hot seat talk. I've got some coaching search updates.
We've got best bets. I've got a badly strained neck.
I'm all hopped up on fourteen kinds of medication. The
staff foolishly thinks that means the show will be less

(01:21):
than an hour tonight. I took the over. We will
see how it goes. I can't tell you confidently because
it says it right here. They're watching us in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Suffolk, Virginia,
not to be confused with Norfolk, Abilene, Texas and g
u i N Alabama. Does everyone know how to pronounce it?
Those of you familiar with the seventy four super outbreak

(01:42):
of tornadoes, No, it is Gwin Alabama. Know your tornado outbreaks. People.
It always comes in handy. And one more thing that
could come in handy for us as we are presenting
America's College Football Show to you here tonight, is make
sure you are subscribed to the channel. We have passed
the four hundred and fifty thou threshold, which means we
are on a terminal trajectory now, which makes it sound

(02:04):
worse than it really is, towards five hundred k and
we want to get there before Thanksgiving because we want
to be thankful for hitting five hundred k on top
of you know, friends and family and wellness and whatnot.
Five hundred K is a very very nice thing to
be thankful for. Get us there, Please, get us there.
I have both hands clasped on air.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Get us there.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
And if you think you're subscribed, check and make sure
you are. And then if you are, thank you. Now
it's time to steal four of your buddy's phones and
make sure they're subscribed, because it doesn't sign them up
for anything, and it's free, so it's a victimless crime.
It's not even a crime per se. It's just an action.
And are we against action on this show. Absolutely no,
we are not. All right, let's dive into the show tonight.

(02:45):
You know it is prediction Night. Okay, so we got
some big games this weekend. We're gonna be at Vandy
for Missouri Vanderbilt. But in the meantime, I'm going to
start the show tonight with some hot seat talk because
there's a lot of rumblings, a lot of whispers out there.
You take the old plastic cup, you put your ear
to the ground, and you're hearing some things. You're hearing
some things about Hugh Freeze and Auburn. That's where I'm

(03:07):
going to start. It feels like the job is on
the line Saturday. That's what it feels like to me.
There are some people around the program who feel that way.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Now.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
I want to stress that there's a lot of there's
a lot of fluidity.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
To this stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
With many of these coaching searches, it's not always as
cut and dry as if this happens, then that will happen.
It's just not paint by numbers. A lot of times
it is spaghetti plotted. And so when you have fifteen
different mouths in the room with fifteen different opinions and
thoughts on things, aka when it's a major college football

(03:42):
job we're talking about, then that's the way it can
be sometimes. I was looking at Justin Holkinson, friend of
the program, over at Auburnsports dot Com today and he
was talking about what would go into this. Firstly, they're
three and four, so they could just went out and
go eight and four, and to a moot point, they
could also lose Saturday and Hugh Freeze could be out

(04:03):
of a job and it may not even take until
the end of the season. And I happen to lean
towards that happening, not rooting for it happen to lean
towards that happening as just a matter of what's most likely.
But what Hokinson mentioned and what needs to be restated
over and over and over again, is it's one thing
to think that in the abstract, Okay, drilled down on

(04:24):
the specifics, because this is where I think the Auburn
situation is at right now. Not everyone who needs to
be on board with making a move is on board.
And then if they're on board with the general principle
of making a move, well then they need to be
on board with paying the buyout. And to be on
board with paying the buyout, they need to have a
follow up plan. You don't just go and fire somebody
and then say, well now what Nope, Nope, can't do that.

(04:46):
Then now what already has to be figured out before
the firing part gets figured out, Because you don't just
get to fire someone and say thanks, turn in your
keys before you leave. You got to pay them tens
of millions of dollars. So you really you better have
a good plan. Ideally, you have a plan that would
upgrade you from your previous situation. Now, I know if
you're new to college football or you've been watching it

(05:07):
your whole life, this sounds common sensical. It is, it's
not always inside these athletic departments. Let's just remember that.
So they need alignment to make the move. Nothing aligns
people behind paying a lot of money to get rid
of someone like losing football games. So if that happens
Saturday against Arkansas, I think you're going to see those

(05:27):
wheels in motion. And then I think you'll probably hear
John Somerral's name. You may hear James Franklin's name mentioned there.
I happen to lean John Sumral like I've viewed that
as the favorite to get that job if it comes open,
and until proven otherwise, that's the name I'm going to
go with. But it's not the only name involved. And

(05:48):
I think part of the dilemma that they may have
there actually is there are more than a few names
involved in the decision making process that have more than
just one or two names themselves that they want as
forefront of the coaching search, and then you got to
figure out how the search is gonna happen. So yeah,
that's where I think the Hugh Free situation is right
now when and it silences all of this lose and

(06:11):
louse Saturday, And I think it's actually in motion, and
I think it's gonna happen, And candidly I thought that
may be the situation against Missouri. But you do need
to remember, like Auburn has had two games, the Oklahoma
game and the Georgia game where a lot of their
people look and say, officials cost us those games. We
were good enough to win them. Officials cost us those games. Well,

(06:33):
if you were to flip those they're a five and
two team. I know that's not the way football works,
but there's a big difference in what's happening, you know,
with Florida State, where it's just totally dead on arrival,
versus Auburn was competitive against Oklahoma, they were competitive against
A and M. They were competitive against Georgia, they were
competitive against Like these are all competitive games. They haven't
mailed the season them, but at some point you may

(06:57):
run out of gas and it may get mailed in.
And if that's Saturday, then I think we know what's
gonna happen. Next up, what's the latest with Mike Norvell
at Florida State. I know they put out the statement yesterday.
I don't care. I still think they're gonna move on
from him. I just don't think they're moving on from
him this week, And as of seventy two hours ago,
I thought it may even be this week. So we're

(07:19):
talking semantics here. I think it's gonna happen. I think
you've got another situation, which obviously you can't have, and
that is a second year in a row.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
The team just looks dead.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
And I promise you if you weren't up late enough
to watch the Stanford game, it was really really tough
to watch.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
So I don't.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
And then there reports around the team and around the
program about players just kind of being ambivalent, you know,
it's kind of being nonchalant about it. Well, that's cause
they've tapped out, and they've tapped out because they're not
really Florida State players. They're really mercenaries. If we just
cut right to it, that's been the problem there. If
we cut right to why there's no real, real, foreseeable

(08:03):
pulling up of the nose in the future, it's because
their talent profile is not.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Rooted in high school recruiting.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
It's just all right, we got through last year, Let's
go get a new crop of players out of the
portal for this year. That doesn't work, that's not sustainable.
So it is going to cost a ton of money
to buy him out. So copypaste what I just said
about Auburn. That's kind of what you hear around Florida
State right now is do we have a plan? Do
we have an action plan? And there's another question that

(08:29):
a lot of people who are gonna write those checks
want to know before they write the check, and that
is who do we know we're going to be able
to get? And oftentimes that question is not able to
be answered, and it's very uncomfortable to write checks for
tens of millions of dollars on the chance that you
might get the guy you want. And then the question is, well,
who's the guy they want? Look the question around Florida

(08:53):
State and Florida really since it's open right now too,
But the question around Florida State if it comes open
is who can recruit the state of Florida?

Speaker 1 (09:02):
How about that?

Speaker 2 (09:03):
You want to talk about the characteristics that you need,
and you want to talk about what needs to be proven. Hey,
most of the guys whose names are going to be involved.
Are good football coaches, they'd be good clinicians. They can
really chalk you to death. They can call plays if
that's what you need them to do. They can hire
good coordinators. Your name wouldn't be in the running if

(09:24):
you couldn't do that. Who can stack recruiting classes where
they turn the transfer portal from a lifeline to just
a supplement tool, maybe a luxury, maybe some cherries on
top of the roster here and there, like the other
big boys do. Hey, once you find someone who can
do that, I'll trust that they can coach them up
plenty good enough when they get there. So that's the

(09:47):
candidate pool at Florida State. What about LSU? Different story
here because LSU still got all their goals in front
of them. They're five and two team right now, A
two lost team won the national title last year. Now
a lot of you were last I think when I
say that, because the implication would be that LSU's got
to win out And you don't think they're gonna beat
A and M in Alabama, in Arkansas and Oklahoma. I

(10:08):
don't either, but they could. So we don't. You know,
we're not in the business of firing guys who we
think are probably gonna lose some games if they're five
and two right now, and we got a lot of
money sunk into them, and that's Brian Kelly. So I
don't think we're there yet, But this is the job
I hinted at in the preseason. Remember there was one
of them I was talking about where I said some

(10:30):
of these places like Auburn, Hugh Freese was on the
hot seat, Sam Pittman was on the hot seat. A
lot of these guys, Billy Napier, like a lot of
these guys who have since lost their jobs or maybe
on the way to losing their jobs, their names were
already being thrown around. Brian Kelly's wasn't, but I had
a fairly strong feeling that it could go from not

(10:50):
on the hot seat at all to fired in the
span of one season. I still believe that we've actually
trended a lot more towards that, but they're not close
firing him yet. What they are close to doing is
demanding that he makes some changes internally. And I would
especially apply that to if they struggle again offensively Saturday
at home at night against A and M, then he's

(11:14):
going to have to change things offensively on his staff.
And I don't really know that that's much more than
rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic at that point, But
I think you'll be asked to do that. I think
it will be demanded of him. He's got every right
to say no. He is the head coach. What happens
if that comes to pass. But you got to understand,
if you're around LSU, you know what I'm saying is true.

(11:35):
If you're not around LSU, if you're a Minnesota fan,
congrats again on the Nebraska game. But if you're a
Minnesota fan and you're just watching this from several states away,
Brian Kelly doesn't have much equity built up. Let me rephrase,
Brian Kelly has no equity left with the LSU fan base.
This is the byproduct of coming into Louisiana and not
embracing Louisiana. Longtime viewers of the show will sound like

(11:58):
I'm reading off a prompter, But if you've watched the
show for a long time, you will know that I've
kept mentioning that. There's a reason I've kept mentioning that
it matters. It matters anywhere you go. Some places it
matters more than others, and lsu it matters more than others.
There's a very very unique sense of pride that people
take there from understanding what makes Louisiana state different and

(12:21):
what makes coaching there different, and what makes understanding that
state and embracing it different than coaching at Louisville or
somewhere like that. No knock on Louisville. Brian Kelly never
embraced that. Now. The catch to that was if he
came in there and won doing it his way, no
one was going to speak publicly. They may whisper behind
the scenes, they were never going to speak publicly about it. However,

(12:43):
the moment he did not win, the volume was going
to get turned up on that. And the volume is
being turned up on it. And Brian Kelly never never
built any goodwill with the people down there. He had
never really really embraced Louisiana at all, thought that he
could do it the same way there that he did
it Notre Dame. And some people get competitively stubborn enough
to think that way. The formula for success is the

(13:06):
formula for success, and I could apply it just as
certainly at Oregon as I could at Notre Dame as
I could at Arizona, as I could at LSU. Well,
in some ways that's true. You know, you block and
tackle the same way here as you do there, but
that's not what college football really is. That's not what
college football is at all. So Brian Kelly's found that

(13:26):
out down there, and they're gonna want changes. A lot
of the fan base, a lot of the fan base
wants to change at the top, but at the very
least internally, they're going to want changes offensively structurally. And
I got to say, I still think it may trend
towards ending poorly, but it's a big check to write,
and they don't have a university president there right now,
so it's very it's very politically complicated matter. But winning

(13:49):
football games takes care of it all. You beat A
and M Saturday, you're six and two, you go into
the bye week, and then you're going into Tuscaloosa with
everything to play for. So again, and this conversation could
be muted very quickly, but it could also be amplified
very quickly. So we're really on a razor's edge right now.
I would say with the LSU job, the Wisconsin job,

(14:10):
fascinates me. So Wisconsin hired Luke Fickle, and most people,
myself included, thought it was a brilliant hire that I
thought that Wisconsin had really gotten themselves serious about winning
in the Big Ten. And it has not worked. And
I don't think it's I don't think it's failed to
work because Fickle's not a good coach. I actually think

(14:30):
Luke Fickle's a really good football coach. I think he
hired poorly out of the gate, and he's paying the
price for that right now. And it is an identity
list team three years in and it's not going to
fix itself overnight. So the question you have to ask
yourself is, well, do we just want to cut bait,
fire him and start over, or do we believe in
the hire we made and are we willing to accept

(14:52):
that he himself made some poor hiring decisions, but we're
going to give him a chance to sort of start over.
It's basically the shotpan approach. Do we pay the money
to buy a guy out or do we rub the
panels together, clear, hit him on the chest, resurrect him
one more time, bring him back to life, and then
take the money we would have paid him for the
buyout and infuse it into nil aka what Florida did

(15:17):
last year. It did not work out for Florida. They
still ended up firing Napier. Remains to be seen what
would happen if Wisconsin chose to do this, but it
does look like that may be the route they want
to go right now. Again, if they get blown out
fifty nine to three at Oregon Saturday and then Washington
comes and hits him over the head at home, maybe

(15:38):
that changes the mood. So that's where we are on
the hot seat front right now. I think the Wisconsin
jobs interesting because I go back to this, I go
back to this generic mentality when people try and describe jobs,
and they're always describing jobs through like I just said,
a very generic lens.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
How good is.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
The Wisconsin job? Well, it's not as good as job A,
but it's better than job B. You don't know because
you're not the specific candidate. There are specific candidates out there,
like Kenny Dillingham views Arizona State infinitely above and beyond that,
which the normal person would. Clark Lee views Vanderbilt way

(16:19):
above and beyond in terms of job quality what most
people would. That doesn't mean anyone else would feel that way,
but it doesn't matter because they got the right guys
to feel that way about their programs. Well, what if
there's someone out there that, for whatever reason, has Wisconsin
according to their personal interests, as a top five job.
You don't know that that doesn't exist. In fact, I

(16:40):
would suggest it may very well exist out there. So
you can't know what the candidate pool is because you
can't really know that everyone views the jobs the exact
same way, is all I'm saying. And all you need
is one. Like they didn't need fifteen Kenny Dillingham's at
Arizona State, they didn't need fifteen Clarks at Vandy. They
needed one, and each of those found them. So maybe

(17:01):
Luke Fickle still is that guy, or if he's not,
maybe there is a random other candidate out there that
is that guy, and it remains to be seen. Remains
to be seen. Those four words are pretty evergreen this
time of year, as is Quick Trip, although there is
no green in the logo, as you can see that
beautiful red square there that is the QT logo. I

(17:24):
was taken back the other night, Jesse, to our commitment
ceremony that we had last spring and those of you
who were new around here, you see Quick Trip plastered
all over the place, and many of you have proudly
stopped there to support the brand and to fill your
tanks and to fill your tummies with cold brew on tap,
maybe even some food. And Quick Trip once upon a

(17:46):
time was just one of many convenience stores slash gas
stations that were vying for our commitment. We decided that
that's the route we wanted to go. We were on
the road all the time, and we thought it smart
to partner with one of these brands. And it came
decision day, and we were still in the old building
and I had four of the finalists. I had the

(18:07):
hats right there out in front of me, and we
committed a Quick Trip and we've never looked back. We
have not even thought about the portal. We have not
thought about decommitting. They have not thought about decommitting. If anything,
the relationship has gotten a lot deeper and a lot stronger,
to the point where I text inappropriate things to Quick
Trip Joe all the time and he does it right
back to me. We could both get each other fired

(18:28):
a million times over. That's the kind of relationship you
want with your partners, and so I humbly suggest that
you stop by quick trip whenever you're on the road.
We will Saturday because we're going back to Vandy. The
Fauldont Lye Tour is headed right back over to Vanderbilt Stadium.
Missouri is in town. Eli Drinkwitz famously winless when we're

(18:49):
in the building watching him, so he's got that to overcome.
We'll predict the game later in the show. The latest
Fauldont Light T shirt is available in the Peate State
Store paytstatematerial dot com. How about the fall don't lie
to it? Nashville, whom stood a funk? We would have
had a Nashville shirt, much less two Nashville shirts in there.
We ought to get a Nashville sign on the set, Jesse.

(19:11):
That'd be a smart thing to do. All right, let's
move on. We have games to predict. Bradley, could you
take this camera over here for just a second. One
thing's bothering me, No, the other one. Sorry, I don't
even know what numbers they are. Yeah, Okay, we're good.
That's all I wanted to correct. Texas A and M

(19:32):
at LSU Saturday seven thirty Eastern kickoff it's a night
game in Tiger Stadium. Now, some of these things are
overrated and overstated, but LSU is twenty and one at
night in Tiger Stadium under Brian Kelly, and shame on
these people for talking about firing him. Well, there is
a follow up, unfortunately, on this piece of paper in

(19:55):
front of me. Brian Kelly also five and ten in
ranked games. Not all of them were at night in
Tiger Stadium though. So this is the fifth straight game
for a and M back to back road stretch, second
leg of a back to back road stretch. There's a
lot of noise around LSU. Okay, well, how do we
quiet that? Will we quiet that by winning a football game?

(20:16):
And it is a classic here we go again situation
for LSU. Jesse. I don't know how many LSU previews
we've done this year. Every single one of them starts
the same way. So I'm just trying to reinvent ways
to talk about the same thing with LSU. So here's
what I've landed on. Are we going to go sugar
high LSU? Or are we going to go sustainable LSU offensively?

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Because they haven't had one.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Hundred yard rusher this season, so very notably, LSU has
not been able to run the ball, and very notably
it is tilted their offensive profile towards that of being
a very pass heavy team. The problem is their quarterback
is far less than one hundred percent and so you
know when they call plays. One of the things that
has Joe Sloan under fire down there as the offensive

(21:02):
coordinator is it almost looks like you're just calling plays
for the sake of calling plays. There's no rhythmic nature
to it, there's no design to it. I'm not stupid
enough to think that they don't actually have a plan
or there's not actually designed behind it. What I do
believe is matchup wise, the LSU staff is probably being

(21:22):
outmatched by other defensive staffs. If I'm right about that,
which I think I am, it doesn't get any easier.
It's Mike Elko and his staff come in to town.
So you've got your left tackle out if you're LSU,
and yet you've still got to find a way to
grind out some yards just any way possible. Can you

(21:45):
achieve offensive balance? Can you make them respect the fact
that you can run the ball. You're one hundred and
seventeenth in rush yards per game. And because of that,
that leads to the fact that, and this is another
paper popper, LSU has the lowest play action rate in
the SEC. Why is that, kids, Well, because nobody thinks

(22:06):
you can run the ball, so it's a waste of
time to run play action. So not only can your
quarterback not really throw it at his full potential, everybody
knows when he's gonna throw it too, So it's no
coincidence that the offense stalls consistently. And if it's third
and five plus if it's a bunch of obvious passing
downs again, third paper pop here A and M is

(22:27):
tenth and pressure rate and fourth in sacks and your
left tackles out.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Did I mention that?

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yes, I did it. It doesn't hurt to mention it again.
Now LSU does have something going for him here, and
that is two things. Actually. Number one, it's college football,
so desperation and talent can do some funny things to
someone's performance. Number Two, LSU is really good at busting
the huge capbuster plays. They're fifteenth nationally in plays a

(22:53):
fifty plus yards offensively. They had one last week against Vandy.
Now the dude got tackled at the one yard line,
and with LSU, that doesn't make it a foregone conclusion
that they'll finish the drive as we saw. But if
you don't get that, I'm struggling to see where LSU
finds enough offensive traction to win this game. But the

(23:15):
follow up to that is, maybe LSU's offense struggles, but
maybe American hero Blake Baker in his defense comes to play.
So can A and m's offense scale at Night in
Death Valley against LSU's defense. By scale, I mean, for
a long time on this show, we have believed good

(23:35):
college football offenses can get totally shut down by good
to great college football defenses. But the highest level college
football offenses will score against anyone. They won't score fifty
against anyone. But there is a certain threshold, the freeze point,
if you will, past which water is gonna freeze. It's
just a matter of how long it takes to freeze,

(23:57):
but it will freeze. Well. Likewise, with offensive college football
past a certain point, the rules are such that you
can't shut it down totally. Is Texas A and M
one of those offenses, because we've seen a couple of
times this year where Auburn held them to sixteen that
they haven't. They haven't consistently put up those big numbers

(24:18):
against everyone, but they have the potential to. So if
they play their A minus or better game, question is
do they have the ability to scale that offense? And
it's very multi faceted. They can run the ball well,
they can throw the ball well. They've got a very
dynamic dual threat quarterback, multiple high level pass catchers. I

(24:39):
think the outcome here is pretty Marcel red dependent. I
think you know, I've watched Diego Pavia against LSU last week,
and he killed them with a lot of off structure stuff,
just the Diego Pavia stuff, stuff that's not written on
any play sheet or grease board, just stuff that he
made happen when the original play broke down.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Marcel Reid can do that.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
But also I think they can just create chaos through structure,
so it in many ways, it may be the toughest
challenge of the season for LSU defensively, so that's something
to watch. And in Texas A and M, they have
probably as good a depth of weaponry as LSU has
seen all year, and ls you've seen some good receivers.

(25:22):
I don't think they've seen a collection of pass catchers
slash tailbacks, some of whom can catch the ball really
well out of the backfield that Texas A and M has,
So A and M's going to feature theirs. You swing
back to LSU and you ask, are you guys going
to feature yours? If the name of the game offensively
is getting the ball in the right hands of playmakers,

(25:45):
why doesn't LSU get the ball in the hands of
their playmakers more? That kind of goes back to what
I was talking about about there being a lack of
discernible design behind the play calling, and it just looks
like you're calling plays for the sake of calling plays.
And this is pretty rudiment stuff because I don't really
question play calling on the show. I've never really done it.
But philosophically, anybody can question that. You don't have to

(26:08):
know a whole lot about football to know Hold on.
So you put eleven out there, and some of them
have a job of blocking, and then there's some of
them who just mainly run the ball, some of them mainly.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Catch the ball.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
There's one guy who throws it or hands it off.
But you're trying to score, right, Yeah, So you want
to have the ball in the hands of the people
that give you the best chance to score.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yes, this is offensive football. It really doesn't have to
be more complicated than that. Sometimes when you have the
kind of skill that LSU has, they've made it more
complicated than that. Also, it is more complicated than that.
Let's take a look at what the model thinks. FanDuel
has A and M as a two and a half
point favorite right now. Our model has it at a

(26:50):
pick them because our model still respects LSU. There's a
lot of dynamics in play here, remember this, so we
take into account many things. We take into account that
ls you was at home in a desperation spot, so
they're in a due up spot off a loss. There's
a lot of noise they need to quiet. So you're
gonna get an all in effort from that coaching staff
this week. You're gonna get a back against the wall effort,

(27:11):
we think from that roster this week. Second time on
the road in two weeks is always a tough spot
in college football. The whole death valley at night thing matters.
I think the model may have overweighted that a little
bit because I took all of it into account. And
I still think A and M is gonna win the
game and cover. So give me Texas A and M
to win, Give me Texas A and M to cover.

(27:32):
And I keep sitting here saying I don't think anyone's
gonna go undefeated. I don't think any SEC teams going undefeated,
and yet I keep picking A and M to win.
So far they have, I keep picking them to whim.
Now they do have some tough games after this, and
maybe they'll lose at Missouri.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Are they ever going to play in college station again.
I'm gonna take A and M to win. Close game.
Not a strong feel there. Let's continue moving on. Let
me take a sip of water, right quick, got the
whole jug on the show tonight.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
I'll tell you who it is. It's Publics.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
We appreciate them for not sponsoring the show, although they could.
All right, let's continue Saturday at high noon Eastern time
on ABC, we have Ole miss at Oklahoma. Just banger
after banger in the SEC. Is that SEC bias? No, Mitch,
just using my eyes to look at the slate really
is all it is. This feels like a college football

(28:24):
playoff game. It really feels it's not an elimination game.
Both teams, well especially Ole Miss, would still be very
much in the hunt.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
If they lost the game.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
But it feels like the winner of this one is
in it for everything, and I'm not sure we're going.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
To see the loser of this game in the postseason.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
That's how it feels to me. Seasons are not linear. Okay,
So I was very high on Oklahoma in the preseason,
and then out of nowhere, like sting from the rafters
in the nineties, I picked them to lose to Texas,
and then I kind of foreshadowed a possible tough trip
to Columbia last week. And everyone think I'm down on

(29:00):
Oklahoma now, No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
First off, Matier got hurt.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
You all know that the Texas game, for a million reasons,
I thought was easy to see coming. You rebounded nicely
last week. But seasons are not linear. You don't just
start here and then finish here. It's very very much
up and down and up and now you just hope
to have more ups than downs. So did ole Miss peak?
Maybe Ole Miss peaked early in the season, and maybe

(29:26):
their descent started last week and we just don't really
realize it. Yet maybe maybe Oklahoma already dipped and they're reascending.
These things could be in the process of happening. I
just think we got another ranked versus ranked matchup at
eleven am local time, and I'm all in for it.
So Oklahoma right now. A couple of things as we

(29:46):
get into the preview that I would greatly prefer these
teams invert.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Two paper pops.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Oklahoma one hundred and sixteenth in turnover margin. Don't like that,
Ole Miss one hundred and eighteenth in penalties. Don't like
that either. So what do we think here? Well, I
assume most of the country is thinking about Lane Kiffen
versus Brent Venables. I am too, but it's not where
my mind goes first and foremost in this matchup. I'm

(30:14):
thinking about Oklahoma's offense. I'm thinking about Ben Rbuckle versus
Pete Golding and the old mess defense. Because what John
Matteir did last week was enough.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
He did enough.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
He was eighteen of twenty six one hundred and fifty yards.
But over the past two weeks a critical part of
his game has been kind of on mute, and that's
the running portion of his game. Twenty two carries for
nineteen yards the last two weeks. So is that just
the new normal there or are we going to see
a breakout performance running the ball again? Not to mention,

(30:50):
we don't really know if he's In fact, we pretty
well know he's not one hundred percent throwing the ball yet,
but hopefully you're healing towards being one hundred percent again.
There they found success running last week, and ole Miss
has the ninety ninth ranked rushing defense in the country
right now. Now, ole Miss, that defense was on the
play or on the field for eighty plays last week.

(31:13):
This is important because that eighty plays has always been
a lot to play. In the modern age of college football,
when the games are more compressed and there are fewer
plays being run, not many people, not many teams are
on the field for eighty plays anymore. So you're going
back to back road right here. You're in Athens last week,
you're in Norman this week, and you're coming off having

(31:35):
played eighty plays defensively, and you got an Oklahoma team
here pretty desperate. Just just keep that in mind, especially
as that second half approaches.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
So here's a catch. I got several of them.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
The catch was for Oklahoma last week was good enough
because last week you played South Carolina and you could
pretty well rest assured that if you didn't turn the
ball over, if they did and scored defensively or on
special teams, twenty points was probably going to be good enough.
And it was more than enough. I'm not sure twenty
points is good enough against Old Miss. Could be defense

(32:10):
is really good there. I would not bank on twenty
points being good enough. Okay, here's a catch to that catch.
Oklahoma's got the number one total defense in the country,
number one overall pressure rate in the country, so maybe
they will crowbar in the bicycle spokes for Ole Miss.
But there is a catch to the catch to the catch.
Get to follow me here. It's very high level intellectual stuff.

(32:33):
Old Mess has only allowed seven sacks all year, that's
number two in the SEC. And Trinidad Chambliss is a
lot bigger threat with his legs, plus has better weapons
to achieve explosiveness than any of the aforementioned teams, especially
South Carolina last week. So a lot of catches here,
you know, a lot of things that could be but
maybe not. But explosives I think are the padlock stat

(32:55):
in this game. I do think when we're sitting here Sunday,
especially as it relates to ole mess.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
They have to have achieved these.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
They are the number nine offense in the country in
explosive play rate. Oklahoma is the number nine defense in
the country in explosive play rate. Brent Venables at home
with pressure against a very young quarterback normally doesn't work
out good. And that's even if he hadn't stolen your signals. Yes,
I heard it, Yes, I heard it. I heard it

(33:24):
in the NFL. See you think I don't watch the NFL.
I never miss a forty nine Ers Jaguars game. I
never miss a forty nine Ers press conference during a
game week. So everything Lane Kiffin said earlier this week
about Brenton Venables, Hey, man, I heard him talk about
it three weeks ago in the NFL. He was just
reading the same script, don't let him steal your signs.

(33:45):
I don't know what else to say. It was nice
of him to let Hugh Freeze know after the fact
that oh, you had their signals though.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
That was very nice of him.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
This is a been R Buckle game for Oklahoma. It's
a been R Buckle game cause if they can make
some business happen here, especially if we can reignite the
running portion of John Mattier's game. I think the game
sets up fairly well for Oklahoma. Let's take a look
at what the model thinks. FanDuel's got Oklahoma minus four
and a half. Now occasionally I just flat out throw

(34:15):
the model in the trash, and the model loves ole miss.
This week, loves ol miss. In fact, we've got oh
so Fandel's got Oklahoma minus four and a half. The
model has Oklahoma minus one and a half. It almost
makes the game a pick him. I disagree. I disagree.
So all the stock everyone thinks I sold on Oklahoma,

(34:35):
I didn't, and it's just been in my pocket. I'm
pulling it all out immunity. Give me Oklahoma to win,
give me Oklahoma to cover.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
We are back. We're back this week. We're back.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
We're a playoff contender again. After this week, do not
embarrass me. They're watching us in Winston Salem, North Carolina, Fresno, California,
and winter Park, Colorado is tuned in about to be
a busy time of year, and win Park That's not
where I'll be Saturday. I will be in Nashville, Tennessee Saturday.

(35:06):
Why because the Fall Don't Lie Tour presented by Quick
Trip is headed right back to where it headed last week.
Vandy Homers. We are a Vandy Homer show. Now Missouri
coming into town and we will be there Saturday, three
thirty Eastern, two thirty local kickoff just down the street
from where we are right now. Bradley could ride his
bike to the stadium in five minutes. This game kicks

(35:28):
off on ABC at two thirty local time. So two
of six SEC teams with one conference loss. That's what
we have here, That's what we have on display.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Saturday, we got.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
College game Day in town.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
How about that? A lot of the guys just get
to drive to the game like we do.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
This is another example across the SEC this week. It's
the third example already in the show, and we're only
thirty five minutes in of a team in the SEC
on the second leg of back to back road games.
Make of that what you will.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Which side of the.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Mirror wins this game? It is shocking how similar these teams'
profiles look. So I'm thinking to myself, you look in
the mirror and the dude staring right back at you
is you, and in this game's case, that's kind of
team versus team. They are run first teams with quarterback mobility.
They are very very high third and fourth down conversion

(36:25):
rate teams. They're both top five in the nation in
those departments. They are more opportunistic than elite, I would
say defensively, but they're both top ten in pressure rate
without blitzing, So they've got dynamic enough athletes up front
to get home by just bringing four. They've both lost
to Alabama and that's it. And there's been some chatter

(36:47):
around both head coaches for other jobs. So where's the
separation here? Well, I don't know until they start to
play the game. And I do have a suspicion that
I'll talk about in just a second. But I don't
think you need to overthink the room on this game.
This is going to be some groundbreaking analysis I'm about
to give you. I like the team that grabs the lead.

(37:08):
Like I said, buckle up, buckle up, because we're hitting
you with the kind of analysis that you're not getting
most other places. Who gets to play with the lead here?
If there's so much similarity, who gets to play with
the lead. They're both top twenty five and first half scoring,
So it could be either one. How effective is the
Missouri pass rush? Because if you can get Vandy in
third and five plus, and I have a suspicion they

(37:32):
can do it because of who they faced all year,
you give yourself a lot better chance to win. And
Missouri for all the hype Diego Pavia gets, and he
should get every bit of it. Remember who Missouri's played
this year. They've played Jalen Daniels for Kansas and he
had ten carries for twenty five yards. They've played Jackson
Arnold at Auburn he had seventeen attempts for fourteen yards.

(37:56):
They have played Leonora Sellers, they held him to mind
twenty eight yards. They faced some mobile guys at quarterback already.
Now Diego Pavia would watch that and say, I don't care.
None of them are me. They may not be, but
it's not going to be a shock to Missouri's senses.
I'll just say that, Could Vandy's defense be a little

(38:17):
more vulnerable than we give them credit for against the run?
Now that's a question I don't know the answer to.
Here's my concern right now. If I'm going with Vanderbilt
they're number twelve in the country and run defense very good,
very respectable unit. The problem is when you dive in
a little bit, if they are vulnerable against the run,

(38:37):
I don't know who will have exposed them. Because Bama's
in the one hundreds in rushing numbers LS using the
one teams, South Carolina is in the one twenties. Missouri
can run the ball now. Ahmad Hardy has been a
little off the last couple of weeks against Bama and
Auburn relative to what he's shown he is capable of
last two weeks, thirty six carries for barely over one

(38:59):
hundred yards come by, and he had one hundred or
more in every game up until that point. So if
the Missouri ground game is there, one of the things
to watch early on is are they gash and Vanderbilt
very suspiciously like the kind of thing that's not supposed
to happen to a top fifteen run defense. If that's
the case, we may have found some openings that were

(39:21):
always there and just hadn't been exposed yet, Or maybe
Vanderbilt's number twelve run d ranking is totally legit got
to find that out. Vandy's one hundred and third in
the country in penalties, Missouri's thirty eighth. Let's go to
the model. Vandy minus two and a half at FanDuel
right now is the number. Ladies and gentlemen, we think

(39:41):
the wrong team is favored. Well, by we, I mean
the model. The model thinks the wrong team is favored.
Now the model last week, remember, led me to LSU
and we already had the graphics ready and Bradley was
ready to punch the button and it was going to
say on the bottom of the screen, I'm taking LSU

(40:03):
to win and cover. And I had a change of
heart right here. I don't know that it's ever happened before.
I had a change of heart. Something spoke to me.
Who knows, Maybe someone spoke to me and said Vanderbilt.
And I took Vandy, and I looked like a genius,
and Vanderbook won and vander Brook covered. Maybe I should

(40:25):
do it again, but I'm not doing it again. I'm
taking Missouri to win, and I'm taking Missouri to cover
because if they win, then they have done that. And
I am just gonna say as humbly but as forcefully
as possible. If we go to another Missouri game and
Eli Drinkwitz can't get it done. He is not the problem.

(40:47):
We are the problem, and we will have to forsake
Missouri until further notice. I think that's completely fair. Okay,
if we pick you, that means we believe in you.
And if we believe in you and you let us down,
you fool us. Want strike one, fuollst twice, strike three,
as Mema would say. Academy Sports and Outdoors has never
let us down. And that's a fact. Missouri may implode

(41:09):
in on themselves like a dying star Saturday, or maybe
they'll win. Academy will be open either way. And Academy
friend of the program, but also a friend of the
military and friend of first responders. And the way I
know that a rare Academy paper pop is because on
this sheet of paper in front of me, because it's

(41:29):
written in hand by me. Military and first responders get
ten percent off in store and online purchases through November eleventh,
eleven eleven. Very easy to remember. Ten percent off?

Speaker 1 (41:41):
How about that?

Speaker 2 (41:42):
And I know good and well, you guys need it anyway?
What is it?

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Well?

Speaker 2 (41:45):
A number of different things they have there. Do you
need a new tent? You need a new baseball bat.
Do you need some big league Chew? Has someone somewhere
out there strategically weighted until this time to get ten
off their big lead, Chew? If you have more power
to you, In fact, I would love to talk about

(42:05):
a business proposition with you. We'll do that off air,
though appreciate academy sports and outdoors. It is the time
of the show where we have to well, we have
to call out some casuality, not a casualty, casuality front
of the program. Todd Furman is getting drug all over

(42:28):
the internet, and I, as the future commissioner of this sport,
cannot stand by and let this happen without participating. So
Todd took to Twitter last night in front of God
and everyone, and he said, and I quote, college football
parody is great until we get USF versus Georgia Tech
in the first round of the playoff, and nobody watches.

(42:49):
Tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm an elitist, but
the ratings won't lie. And I read that, and the
first thing I did was I gave it five minutes
because I thought to myself, Todd's a smart guy, Surely
he'll delete that. And I came back five minutes later,
and unfortunately it was still there, which left me no

(43:09):
other option. You see what he said on the second line,
Tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm an elitist. Well,
I responded to Todd, Todd, you are wrong, and you
are an elitist. Now I like Todd from in a lot,
friend of the program, friend of mine. This goes back
to a couple of memoisms that I got to drop
on his head tonight. First memoism is the classic buffet rule,

(43:34):
and that is that everything is not for everyone. Most
people at the buffet are gonna hone in on the
prime rib. Most of them are getting to cut of
the prime rib. Not everyone likes Candied Yams. But if
you like them, or if I like him, do you
or I really care if anyone else likes him? In fact,

(43:55):
in the buffet case, we would prefer no one else
like them, so we get them all, not necessarily an
Apples to Apples or a Yams Toms comparison to the
way the playoff works. But my point remains, I don't
care really if you don't like it or anyone else likes,
as long as I like it. So the second thing,
and it's this kind of an evergreen statement on the
show that we have to use every now and then,

(44:17):
mainly for people we love, like Todd is smart. People
say casual things. Casual people rarely say smart things. Todd
Furman is not a casual He is a very smart guy.
He happens to have set a casual thing here. Now
I know the point he was trying to make, So
there's a lot of truth to what he's saying. What

(44:38):
he's saying is hey, at its core, If USF and
Georgia Tech play in the first round of the playoffs,
far fewer people will watch that than if it was
Ohio State Tennessee. Well, of course that's true. Here's the
follow up. It doesn't matter. Todd doesn't run a network,
nor do I, so I don't know why he would care,
nor why I would care about what our TV rating

(44:59):
is going to be. Keep this up for just a second,
Bradley immunity. So let's read. Let's read a couple of
things he said there. He said college football parody is great.
Think most of us agree with that. But notice the
last thing he said, ratings won't live. Those two things
are the fundamental flaw the greatness of college football has

(45:21):
nothing to do with TV ratings unless you're a television executive.
And if you're a television executive, if you're one of
the high level mustaches, what makes college football great to
you is different than what makes it great to us.
Many people who profit off this sport because of the
media rights attachment don't really love the sport for the sport.
They love it for the profitability. I'm not even demonizing

(45:42):
these people.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
I would just greatly.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Suggest that if you love the sport for the sport,
if you grew up watching it as a kid, like
I know good Andwill Todd Furman did, and like most
of us did, why in the world have you divorced
yourself from your own baked in passions and loves and
adopted that of a network executive. What do you care
if the ratings are low? What do you care if

(46:06):
no one watches? Question?

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Do you enjoy it?

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Would you enjoy you personally? Would you enjoy watching Alex
Golish get a shot on the road on a Friday
night in Atlanta against Brent Keat, both of whom are
in the playoffs as head coaches for the first time?
Would you Todd Ferman watch that yes, yes, and you
text me all throughout the game because you know I'd

(46:32):
be watching too. Why do you care if anyone else
is watching? I don't.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
If you're enjoying something, do you ever care if anyone
else is? You understand where I'm going with this. Okay,
we're talking about sporting events here. Keep it clean, Keep
it clean. And there's an understanding with college football. Even
the least watched playoff game is being watched by millions
of people. So if you're some kind of person who
really does desire that communal feel, they are going to

(46:59):
be millions of other people watching this game if they
put it on at three am. It's it's not gonna
match Alabama versus Michigan or anything like that, but it's
gonna get a pretty nice TV rating. It's gonna do
a lot better than Matlock's doing on TV Land. And
we all know how great Matlock is so USF Georgia Tech.
If it's forty percent of the audience for the biggest

(47:21):
first round game, but you love it, what does it
matter if anyone else loves it? College football greatness is
on display when the sport is on display, Like college
football greatness is when the best of the sport is
on display. And that's not the same thing as high viewership,
because high viewership is just when there's a mass interest

(47:43):
that gets peaked, and a lot of times that means
drawing in the casual audience, the audience that watches the
big brands, the audience that couldn't tell you the name
of any of the players or anything like that, and.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
There's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
And some of the high profile matchups will draw that crowd.
And then there are there are other matchups like this
one that would be mainly for the diehards and the
p ones as we would call them, and the sickos
and whatnot. That's okay, which crowd would you rather hang
out with? You're one of us? Todd Furman's one of us.
This tweet may not make it look like it, but
Todd Furman is one of us. And here's something else

(48:15):
we know. It's a twelve team playoff, okay, So if
you get a USF in there, and you get a
Georgia Tech in there, that comes with the understanding that
it's loaded up elsewhere with SEC and big ten teams
and God created the semi finals in the championship game
for a reason, and it's because these teams are probably
long since filtered out by that point. So you're gonna

(48:38):
get your George's. You know, you're gonna get your Ohio
States and Texas's, maybe not this year in Alabama's. You're
gonna get your big brands at the end of the day. Heck,
most of the first round will be made up of them.
But if I'm about to sit here and listen to
someone say it's a bad thing, it's to the detriment
of college football. If Brent Key and Georgia Tech are

(48:58):
playing against Alex Golie USF in the first round, don't
let it be someone I like saying that there are
plenty enough casual minded people out there that could spot
off that nonsense. I don't need the Todd Furmans of
the world trafficking in that.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
I don't need it. Now, here's the good news for Todd.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
He's a really sharp guy and he defended himself, but
really he knows he messed up on this one, and
that's okay.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
That's okay because as.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Future commissioner of this sport, if you've built up enough
goodwill and equity in our community.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
You get a couple of mulligans.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
So here it is October twenty first, I think he
tweeted that yesterday, so retroactive to October twentieth, we have
officially applied one of Todd Furman's mulligans for the year.
And that's it. Hands clean and we all move on
and we yell, go Jackets or go Bulls. Come December,
watch that matchup happen. Now, well, just watch it happen.

(49:52):
If it happens, does he attend the game? Do we
get him credentialed? Does he come to the game with
us our balls in his court? What's gonna happen at Florida? Sorry, Bradley, Yeah,
I'm moving on now. What's gonna happen at Florida? The
job's open, there's no speculation, there's no hot seat talk anymore.
Billiy Napier has been fired. I kind of completely agree

(50:15):
with the popular sentiment right now around this job. And
if you haven't been paying attention, let me get you
up to speed. It won't take long. The popular sentiment
with this job is they're gonna go after Lane Kiffin.
And that's the popular sentiment because Florida is going to
go after Lane Kiffin, and Lane Kiffin may end up
taking the job. Now this is a matter of much

(50:36):
debate and speculation right now, and I'm gonna get into
it in just a second, but I do want to
say that Pete Nakos has been doing a really good
job over and on three of updating this. I was
just reading some of his work before we went on air,
although I don't know why, because I could just go
BADGEROIM at his desk.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
We work in the same.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
Building, after all, and I did do that today, and
so one of the things he knows. One of the
things Pete noted that I think is one true is
that hiring a coordinator or a group of six coach
is not an option for Florida.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
That's just their prerogative.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
They have decided we're not taking a chance on a coordinator,
So we're not doing what Oregon did. We're not hiring
Dan Lanning and hoping it works out, even though it
did work out for organ but we're not doing that.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
We're Florida.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
We don't have to take a risk, and we're not
going back to the G five or group of six
ranks because they just went to Louisiana and got Billy Napier,
and some people wanted to call him blue Chip Billy,
and some people wanted to call him sun Belt Billy.
And now he's unemployed Billy. And so the boosters are saying,
we're not doing that again. Hey man, John summerl may

(51:46):
be a good coach, or Alex Golis may be a
good coach, or Willie Fritz may be a good coach,
but Willi Fritz is in the.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Big twelve now.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
But they probably still don't know that we're not going
that route. We want to proven winner, and that's Lane Kiffin.
And if it's not Lane, then that's elij Rinkquit's at Missouri. Now.
I would go down the list and give you five
more names. I don't think they're getting past those two.
One of those two guys is probably going to be
the head coach at Florida. That's really not the point
of contention here. Most of the time people are debating
who's going to take the job at Florida. At the

(52:17):
very least, I think most people understand who's going to
get offered the job. The million dollar question, in fact,
the ten or fifteen million dollar question, is will he
take the job?

Speaker 1 (52:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
I have I have a very very like fifty three
forty seven percent type feel on this. My feel is
he will take the job very slightly, very slightly. Now.
Last year I was like ninety ten that if they
offered him the job, if they had fired Billy last
year and they had offered him the job, I thought
Lame was going to go. There's still like a slightly

(52:49):
larger part of me than not that believes he would
take the job.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
But I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
I don't know, because it could be that his mind
sh changed, It could be that the landscape has changed.
It could be that both things are true. It's what
you gotta ask you stuff. Has anything really fundamentally changed here? Well?
First off, we've got to ask were we right? Was
I right last year? Would he have taken the job
last year? Strong indications he would have, strong indications he
would have, But we can never prove that. So let's

(53:20):
just assume I was right and he would have taken
it last year. Will he take it this year? There
are some people who think he would because Florida is
a better job. There are other people who think that
Florida is a better job. But it's not that much
better that he should leave Old Miss. There are other
people who think Florida's not a better job than Ole
Miss at the very least, it's negligible. And there are
some other people who probably just think Old Miss is

(53:41):
the best job in the world.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
What does Lane Kiffin think?

Speaker 2 (53:44):
Because he's the only candidate therefore, he is the only
opinion that matters here.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
But to the people who will.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Come in the comments section, and I respect you, guys,
I just told you, I don't know what he's gonna do,
but I know I'm going to kind of get ahead
of it because I assume where you're going to go
with this. I know there are some people, many people,
thousands of people actually will be in my comments and
they will say, why would he take that job? Why
would you leave Old Miss where you already have everything
set up the way you want it to take the
Florida job? And I thought Shane Matthews did a really

(54:15):
good job. Yes, he's a former Florida player, but a
lot of the stuff he laid out he was doing
either a radio show or a podcast. I mean, Shane
laid out a lot of stuff that you can't really
push back on all that much. He talked about how
the facilities are better there. I've been in both places.
Florida's got incredible facilities. They're brand new, so it's better
there than it is at Old miss Geography, if you

(54:37):
prefer to live in Florida, I mean, there's some people
who would prefer to live in Oxford, Mississippi, over Gainesville.
Most people would probably prefer Florida. But look, man, Oxford,
Mississippi is a really nice place. So like that may
be more a matter of opinion. So I'll grant you that.
If you're pushing back on that. The alumni base is
bigger at Florida, if that matters to you. The game

(54:58):
day environment unequivocally is better at Florida. In stadium, now
you can go hang out in the grove indefinitely, and
that's about as amazing a scene as there is in
college football. They don't decide third and eight in the grove.
They decide it in the stadium, and the swamp is
second to know when it comes to that. The media
market proximity, again, this doesn't matter to fans, it don't

(55:19):
matter to some coaches, but it may matter. But when
you keep stacking that stuff on top of each other
there's a solid argument to be made there Florida is
the better job. Here's the question, does Lane Kiffin care
about any of that?

Speaker 1 (55:31):
That's really all that matters.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
The case can be made as to why, generically a
coach would leave Ole Miss for Florida, But that's a
generic coach. Lane Kiffin's not generic. He is a specific
person here. And the thing that I wonder, there's one
word that matters here to me, it's legacy. How much
does that matter to Lane Kiffin? So a couple of

(55:55):
things I wonder. I wonder if he's made up his mind,
because there's one thing for to be a theoretical there's
another thing for it to be an actual. And you know,
as well as I do, any of the big decisions
you've ever made in your life, you could theorize at
all you want to. When someone puts a piece of
paper in front of you, sign it yes or no,
only then do you really find out.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Where your heart's at.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
So he may already know, or he may think he knows.
That's when you'll find out. And I just wonder what
legacy means to him. This is kind of the case
I would make if I roll Miss Yes, are there
are edges that Florida has, but this is twenty twenty
five college football. Those are not the edges they used
to be if this were nineteen ninety seven, if this

(56:39):
were twenty ten, it's understandable. It's twenty twenty five, and
truth be told, our NIL structure may be even better
built right now than theirs. Is Ole miss was ahead
of the curve and has been ahead of the curve
on that front. The Florida folks would push back and say, yeah, well,
how many staffers have you lost that you want to retain?

(57:00):
How many have we lost down here? And we had
a guy on en route to being fired. Yours can
stay there as long as he wants to, and he
still can't retain staff. He would never have that problem here.
And if we got the right coach here, the machine
behind him that will build with NIL will dwarf anything
you have. Okay, maybe that's true. How much does legacy
mean to Lane Keifvin? Because right now Lane's been in

(57:24):
Oxford for a while and he's at the pinnacle of
his career. And if you're watching in real time, you
never really know like you're in the good old days,
you're in the prime of your career. But you got
to think of it in like documentary terms. Fast forward
thirty years. Your career, I would guess, is over. You're
looking back on it, and there's a fork in the road,

(57:47):
and you're either going to decide my life is in Oxford, Mississippi.
I'm the head coach at Old Miss, and if you
decide to go that route, you'll end up winning several
more years at Old Miss and you will fundamentally alter
that town and there will be stuff named after you
in buildings and streets named after you one day if
you do your job correctly. Okay, that's one. That's one

(58:10):
path at the fork in the road. The other path
is you want to find out how you would do
at the University of Florida because you think you can
win a national championship there and you're not sure you
can win one at all Mess and that means more
to you than legacy. I'm not saying either is wrong.
I am quite literally asking what matters more. That's what

(58:31):
you'll find out if this goes from theoretical to actual.
If it's put in front of him, you have an
offer in front of you to be the next head
coach of the Florida Gators. Then and only then will
you really find out and everyone's got everyone's got these
slam dunk theories. Oh he'll absolutely take it, or oh
he's not leaving. You don't know.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
He may not.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Even know, or maybe he does, but if he does,
by my estimation, he hasn't.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Told many people.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
So we'll see. The good news is whether you live
in Gainesville or Oxford, flex power generators can be there
for you.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Wops to amongst us saw that turn.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
We gave away a flex power generator at Vanderbilt's game
last Saturday. We uploaded the video today if you want
to check it out. The easiest trivia questions in the
history of mankind. That's all you had to answered. Guy
asked us, Wait a second, what's the catch. There's no catch, buddy,
What do we ask him? We asked him name a
Heisman winner that was under six feet tall. He went

(59:30):
Manziel Dean, who was the team in twenty seventeen that
claimed a national championship even hung a banner in their
stadium UCF And who was the coach that won the
most at Vanderbilt. I can't remember how we worded it
prior to Clark Lee. It was James Franklin. That was it,
that was all he needed to do. We gave him
a brand new generator. I can't do that with all

(59:52):
of you, but I can say if you go to
my flexpower dot com forwards last Josh Pate, they got
some really good deals over there, and I know last
night our power went out. I don't even know why.
Don't get caught. Don't get caught in the dark immunity. No, no, no,
there's no need to live like that. This is the
modern age. This is flex power. These are flex Power

(01:00:14):
years here, so you can go to myflexpower dot com
for slash Josh Paie, they got you covered. Jesse, you're
under isscrewed. I'm sorry. JP Pole is out for week nine.
Not rankings, not rankings, not rankings. These are not rankings
at all. I think most of you are well in
tuned with what this is by now. We have had
a shocking little amount of controversy around the JP Pole recently,

(01:00:35):
and it makes me proud, makes me really proud, because
it makes me think most people have gotten with the
programmer round here.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
There you go. These are not rankings. These are power ratings.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
I have the model right here. I don't always agree
with the model. In fact, you're gonna see right off
the bat, I don't agree with the model on the
number twenty team. But what we're trying to figure out
is who would be favored against two on a neutral field.
And if you're wondering to yourself, why does that matter?
I guess to you it doesn't matter. We just happen
to have fun with it. We think it's a good
predictive tool. For instance, we never had Alabama below Florida

(01:01:10):
state after week one. We never dropped Texas below Oklahoma,
even though the season started the way it did well.
Since then, that's made a lot of sense. But in
the moment we got criticized heavily for it. So let's
dive in number twenty again. I can't stand behind this.
The model still has Penn State at number twenty. Of course,

(01:01:31):
drugs goes without saying I made pres I think, hand
draw an asterisk and write the word drugs on the graphic.
That's how in protest I am of my own model
put in Penn State at number twenty. It's just how
heavily it bakes in talent. And understand now most of
the time, that makes sense, but when a team has

(01:01:53):
tapped out, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.
But who knows, man, maybe Penn State, maybe there's going
to be an inspired effort second half of the year.
Penn State should not be number twenty even in a
power rating. They shouldn't. Louisville' at nineteen, Vandy is at eighteen,
USC seventeen, Utah sixteen.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Notice, by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Miami got beat by Louisville the other night and everyone
just trashed them for it, and they were thirteen and
a half point favorites, and they had a bunch of turnovers.
But I look at it and I say, if you
have a bunch of turnovers against the top twenty team
with a guy who has a coaching edge on most

(01:02:31):
of the country in Jeff Bromp, you should lose. Like
that's not a shocking result. And so as much as
people may think, oh, Miami got too much credit for
the Florida State when they may get they may be
get a little bit too much criticism for the Louisville loss. Yes,
I had them number one of the Commissioner's pull and
I need to justify it somehow. Let's continue Number fifteen.

(01:02:53):
LSU didn't move because people told us we had them
underrated last week. No, we had them properly raided. So
since we had them where they belonged, we don't need
to move them until they're still number fifteen. Texas Tech
is number fourteen. Oh, we got Tennessee thirteen, Missouri twelve,
and Oklahoma eleven. And now look at the top ten.

(01:03:15):
Something notable has happened here. So Texas is the number
ten team in the country, Ole miss is nine, and
A and M is number eight. If you'll remember and
trust me Billy Lucci does. As of the past several weeks,
the model still had Texas over Texas, A and M.
And now we have A and M ahead of Texas.

(01:03:38):
So for the first time I think this year the
model would favor Texas A and M over Texas. So
congratulations to Mike Elko. You have arrived. This was the
goal you guys have been working towards. The outcome this
Saturday is kind of secondary, but the primary goal of
being rated ahead of Texas and the JP poll has

(01:03:58):
come to fruition. Congrats guys. Miami dropped to number seven,
so they dropped four spots. But in terms of the
raw power rating, we deducted two solid points. Well, the
model deducted two solid points from Miami. That's a pretty
big deduction. Frankly, and this is just my suspicion. I

(01:04:20):
think the model may have dingmed Miami a little bit
too much. It was a multi turnover game against a
pretty good team. Now, I think what the model was
baking in is that kind of performance is a hallmark
of past Mario Christobaul teams. The model was thinking, maybe
they've moved on beyond that. But since they exhibited that

(01:04:41):
they haven't coming out of a bye week, well, now
we got a yankin back down to earth. And if
you know, if that's what you're thinking, it makes sense.
That's just a little moment between me and the model. There,
let's go five through one. Number five, Georgia, number four,
Bama number three, Oregon back up, back up four spots
to number three. There, Indiana is two Ohio states one.

(01:05:03):
So the heavily sec biased model that we have here
has the Big ten with the top three teams in
the country. What's its angle? What do we think Certainly,
certainly Bama and George are going to make a move here, right,
I don't know. I'm starting to think the model doesn't
really recognize conference affiliation at all, and it just rates

(01:05:26):
teams blindly based on preset criteria. That's what I'm starting
to think is the case. If you want to know
how large the gaps are here, Georgia is five, so
Ohio State's number one. We've still got about a four
point gap between them and number two. Now here's what
I'm interested to find. This model is not powered by FanDuel.

(01:05:49):
That's a misconception. Sometimes this model is laying out these
teams as it would favor them on a neutral field. Now,
a lot of times it's going to very very closely
mirror what fan duel would have. And sometimes when you
just flat out don't believe one team could be favored
over another one, I'll go to fan Duel and I'll say, hey,
could you give me the hypothetical line just so it

(01:06:11):
backs us up.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
A little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
But the reason I'm mentioning that is, let's say it's
the Big Ten championship game. Let's say it's Ohio State
versus Indiana. Do we really think Ohio State's only a
four point favorite against Indiana? A lot of you have
your own models out there. What would you make that game?
The model would have Ohio State minus four? What would

(01:06:33):
you have Ohio State versus Indiana?

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Because that's a risk.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
That's you're hanging Ohio State minus four, you know you're
going to take heavy Buckeye action. Now, one of the
biggest lies that people have ever told about Vegas in
general is that the point spreads they put out are
just meant to garner equal action. That is not the case. Okay,
every single week, there is a side in most games

(01:06:59):
that they're going to be heavy on, and I can't
think of one off the top of my head, but
like there have been several examples just in the past
few weeks of lines where as soon as they released it,
you know they're gonna take heavy money towards the favorite
or towards the dog. They're just more comfortable with their
position than the public position in those games. So in

(01:07:20):
the Ohio State Indiana game, if they really believe four
should be the number, they may tack on a half
point to a point towards Ohio State because they know
they got they got to charge a premium for people.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
To bet the Buckeyes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
Because they're a public team, kind of like Dallas Cowboys
in the NFL. But it's not gonna be by much.
I mean, I can tell you confidently if Fanduels internal
numbers said Ohio State minus three and a half is
the real number, they're not putting Ohio State minus seven
out they're not. The reason that can't happen if you
just think this through logically, is because there are too

(01:07:54):
many other sharp people out there whose numbers would spit
out a true.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
Points just like Vegas.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Just like FanDuel A lot of times, what you'll find
is there's this defense mechanism that people kick into when
they see that their team's not favored by as much
as they think it should be, or maybe their team's
an underdog, and they say, oh, that doesn't mean anything.
That's not what Vegas really thinks. They're just trying to
get equal action. As if as if the real Vegas

(01:08:23):
opinion would be like six and a half points detached
from the number they put out. That never happens because
just think it through for a second. FanDuel guys walk
in the office and they look and they say, all right,
our numbers suggest Ohio State about a four point favored
against Indiana. However, we're going to put out Ohio State

(01:08:43):
minus nine. Well if the real number, if the true
numbers around Ohio State minus four. There are so many
sharp model based predictive types out there that understand what
the numbers should be that if fandueld even a field
goal off of what their internal numbers actually said, the

(01:09:04):
number we get hammered so quickly. It happened last week.
It happened with the Penn State. Iowa came last week.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Guys.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
They put Penn State minus out and that thing crossed
zero like that because enough people picked up on the
fact that they had deviated off what the true.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Number should be too quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
So there are four points right now between Ohio State
and Indiana. There are four points between Indiana at number
two and Texas at number ten. So the gap between
number one and number two, for the model's sake, is
as why does the gap between number two and number ten.
There is a ten point gap between number two and
number nineteen, So there is not a lot of separation here.

(01:09:48):
It still looks the same. It's just Ohio State has
distanced themselves a little bit. You can go bet all
that at FanDuel. You can't bet the model at FanDuel,
but you can go bet on games at FanDuel, the
exclusive odds provider of the show. It is where we
bet the ROMANODL Express, which I'll give you in just
a second, and we appreciate them, and there is a
lot of shifting in the conference odds. I was looking

(01:10:10):
at that today, I was looking at the Heisman market today.
That one's starting to come into focus. But the Conference
Championship odds and the Big twelve specifically fascinate me a
little bit. So you can go bet at all at FanDuel.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
It must be twenty one plus and present in select
states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or
eighteen plus and present in DC first online real money
wager only five dollars first deposit required. Bonus issued as
non withdrawable bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt.
Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook dot FanDuel dot com.
Gambling problem call one eight hundred gambler or visit FanDuel

(01:10:45):
dot com, slash RG call one eight eight eight seven
eight nine seventy seven seventy seven or visit CCPG dot
org slash chat in Connecticut, or visit nd gambling heelp
dot org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helplinema
dot org. Or call eight one hundred and three two
seven fifty fifty for twenty four to seven support in
Massachusetts or call one eight seven seven eight Hope n

(01:11:05):
why or text Hope and why in New York.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Okay, romin little Express And then we got to get
out of here. So I got on Arkansas the other night.
Arkansas plus one and a half was the game we
moved on the other night. Not so shockingly, that game
crossed zero shortly thereafter, and now Arkansas is a one
and a half point favorite, but we got him at
one and a half point dog, So Arkansas plus one
and a half. We are adding these two games. Appalachian

(01:11:29):
State plus fourteen and a half. They are playing Old Dominion,
and we're adding Cal plus four and a half. Cols
flying cross country to go play at Virginia Tech. We
do not like Virginia Tech laying this many points right now.
I think that's a Friday night game in Blacksburg. That's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
We're gonna take Cal plus four and a half.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
All right. The show did go over an hour and
two minutes. The over hit by eight minutes, and I'm
going to sleep immediately when we get off here. Appreciate
you guys. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. The
Drive to five K continues. We'll be back Thursday night
at seven eastern sixth Central. Until then. For producer Jesse,
Director Bradley, I'm Josh Pate. Take care, have a great

(01:12:10):
remainder of your week, and God bless.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
Must be twenty one plus and present in select states
for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or eighteen
plus and present in DC. First online real money wager
only five dollars first deposit required. Bonus issued as non
withthdrawable bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions
apply see terms at sportsbook dot FanDuel dot com. Gambling
problem call one eight hundred gambler or visit FanDuel dot

(01:12:48):
com slash RG call one eight eight eight seven eight
nine seventy seven seventy seven, or visit CCPG dot org
slash chat in Connecticut, or visit nd Gamblinghelp dot org
in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling heelplinema dot org
or call eight hundred three two seven fifty fifty for
twenty four seven support in Massachusetts, or call one eight
seven seven eight hope n Y or text hope NY

(01:13:10):
in New York