Big Ten's postseason success vs. SEC's postseason struggles & Lane Kiffin asks for patience

On today's college football inquire, the Big 10 has won the last three national football championships. The league also has two teams in the final four this weekend. Could it win its first basketball national championship since 2000? And the bigger question, why is the Big 10 so much better than everybody else at winning national championships in the NIL era? Ross Dellinger will help explain. Plus, Lane Kiffin says he's going to take some time to build LSU. That's not what they hired you for, Lane. Also, two new members of the college football playoff selection committee. We will break it down. They are coaches. You know them well. Talk about it all on today's college football inquire. Hey, everybody, this is Andy Staples from the college football inquire. The college football season has wrapped up, but it is never too early to start planning for next season. 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So take the guesswork out of buying college football tickets with game time. Download the game time app, create an account and use the code CFE. That is CFE as in college football, inquire for $20 off your first purchase terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem the code CFE for $20 off. Download the game time app today. This college football, inquire with Ross Dellinger and Stephen Godfrey. I am Andy Staples and we are going to start with a little basketball, but I promise it relates to football Ross, you were in your town, DC, where it was the epicenter of good basketball last weekend with incredible sweet 16 match ups. The unbelievable Duke Yukon finish in the early eight. Yeah, I got you thinking about football. Of course I did, but I will say I covered five, no, I covered three college basketball games in the last five years. All of them have come in the last four days. And one of them was the best basketball game, or at least the best ending of a basketball game that we've seen in 20 years. So a little, I had somebody text me and say, the football writer gets lucky with the best basketball game in a couple of decades. It was incredible. I was maybe maybe the football writer brought good energy and often. There you go. Sport. And they should be grateful. There you go. There you go. Well, that game was boring for 55 minutes or so. Yeah, it was. 35. But look, I don't even know what the minutes are in basketball. 35 minutes or so. I was like, I don't know, I was probably 40 feet or so from the shot in where I was. I was lined up behind Mullins, like almost directly behind him in line with the goal. So as soon as it, as soon as it went up and, you know, you're not supposed to cheer on press row and I didn't cheer. You're not supposed to shout either. And I think I may have shouted. Holy. Because I think that's right. That was right. I was, you know, I was at that outback bowl with the David Clowney hit. Yes. On a Michigan. That's a. Yeah. Remember what happened before that? It was the the measurement where it was obviously short, but they gave Michigan a first down and it was right on South Carolina sideline. It's like, what in the world is going on here? And then before you know it, Vincent Smith got sacrificed to the ball. Don't lie. God's and I stood up and I just go, Oh, I just want to. We're all, we're all press box veterans. I think you are allowed to decorum would allow like no matter who's in charge of the press box, if it's one school or a bowl or whatever. If it's a big hit or a an incredible physical act, kind of like what, like Ross saw. Yes. Ross, what Ross saw was a sequence of incredible acts. Right. It's a natural reaction to the whole reason we do all this. And I think that's okay. If it's just a one team scoring a touchdown. No, that is that is really, really, really, really frowned upon. And we don't we don't do that in the media. But if it is something amazing, we are human and we are supposed to interpret these amazing things for other humans. And I think that's okay. Well, that's that's what I want to thank former Tampa Tribune Sports Editor Tom McEwen, who win Raymond James Stadium was built. Politict for a press because it was one of the first ones that was built where the press box kind of went from the 30 into the end zone. Oh, you like that. Huh? Did you like that? No, no, no, no. Oh, OK, OK, OK. Tom McEwen, long time Tampa Tribune Sports Editor, guy who got stuff done. Politict to have a small press box on the 50 yard line. Just for the local local papers. Oh, that's awesome. Actually, I was sitting in that one because I may or may not have worked for the Tampa Tribune at one time and I was at SI at the time, but they were like, you're your family. Oh, yeah, you're a national local. There were only like three of us in there at the time. I mean, everybody else didn't hear me. Nice. Nice. That's great. I would anticipate those those NFL stadiums and their giant press boxes shrinking in future years because that's lost revenue for everybody. Because we eat for free. We get in for free. We're just basically parasites on the entire football economy in the media. So how many of us were at the national title game? Like hundreds. Yeah, that's that's going to change. Too many change. Yeah. Well, Ross, so as they set up the, you know, who's in the final four, you were thinking football and talking football with a lot of people who were there, I'm sure. Because all the Muckity Mucks show up to these basketball tournament games, too. Yeah, yeah, it was it was sort of a who's who here in DC, especially because of the strength of the of the regional original, the personalities with the coaches and obviously the big brands, Duke and in Yukon and St. John's, obviously, and I'm missing somebody. I mean, I covered this for five days. Who's the other team that was in my regional? Dude, I don't know. It's terrible. Oh, it's home as though it was Michigan State. Yes, Michigan State. And it brings us to the big 10. That fan base brings us to the big, which brings us to the big 10. Yes. The big 10 will have, well, they had. Well, they had six teams in the sweet 16. Right. And four in the elite eight and two in the final four. Yeah. The four in the elite, I think, tied a record that was only matched, I think, three other times in the last four. 40, 50 years with the SEC one year, the big East and the ACC to have four teams in the elite eight. And now they have two in the final four, which has been done before. But I think when you're talking about a conference that hasn't won a basketball championship since Tom is in Michigan State. Yeah. 26 years ago. So this is a really good shot to do it. I was texting with somebody in the big 10 talking to them, just texting about, you know, hey, this is like an incredible accomplishment. Right. You guys have had a great season. I, you know, I need, I need like an interview to talk about this. And they're like, we got to win. I'm not talking until we got to win. Right. You got to. So they're all. They're focused on the win. Yeah. Yeah. Big 10 teams, slight favorites in Saturday's games. Yeah. They're pretty good. I said one and a half. My favorite. Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, the odds are, the odds are pretty high that they're going to play the championship game. And probably have the advantage. But of course, you never know in March Madness as we've seen over and over again, but they get this back to how, right? How is the big 10 sort of dominating both college football and college football playoff and also now the NCAA tournament? And you won't be surprised to know that it goes back to academics money, money, money, right? It's, and we've talked about this and on the show quite a bit. I think we've all written about it to an extent is the big 10 has the biggest population centers. They have the biggest alumni bases, right? They have the biggest enrollment. They have the most wealthier, wealthier alumni bases because they're much, much bigger than those in the SEC and big 12 end ACC. And so they have advantages when it comes to pulling money, right? And resources, which are the most important these days. So this is, I don't, I don't, I get the feeling we've had three years of a sample size in college football, right? And this is maybe one, I don't can't remember how the big 10 did last year in the NCAA tournament. But I know there's only one year, but it does feel like when you combine it with football. That they're just starting to sort of really take over. It's not just that. Like if we're going to do the basketball part of it, it's having Nebraska being very good. Like Nebraska didn't make a fluke run in the NCAA tournament. I wouldn't make a fluke run in the NCAA tournament. They were good. And you know, I was a nine seed, but being good in the big 10 now requires, or being even, even a tournament team from the big 10 now requires you to be pretty good. And they all do it different ways. Iowa did it by hiring a guy who'd been a D2 coach for most of his career, who brought guys from D. Oh, who's that sound like? Also in the big 10. Okay. And then, but then Nebraska has one of its best years in basketball. Actually, it's best year ever in basketball. So it's not just the traditional Michigan state, the traditional powers. Michigan, by the way, was really good under John Dayline. They played, they played for the national title in 2018. Because John Howard and I were bad, but they quickly rallied and gave Dusty May everything he needed to make them a competitive basketball team. So like it's interesting, Ross. Because Michigan, I think is probably the best example of this in every sport. Remember how holier than now they were? Well, you know, the SEC cheats and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we do it the right way. But they weren't wrong about, hey, if you just let everybody pay, then we can pay pretty well. They weren't wrong about that part. I want to back up a little bit, acknowledge the SEC had two teams in the final four last year. They just happened to be on the same side of the bracket. So you had, I mean, potentially, And they won the national title. Yeah, they won the national title. Yes. And they won it all. Right. And they've had proliferation of basketball success at football type institutions, my alma mater springs to mind. Tennessee is enjoying a men's basketball renaissance under Rick Barnes. They also could have, they were on the cusp of the final four. Michigan's just a better basketball team. I'm not going to dabble in basketball analysis because I'm so far out of my depth. It's tricky here because we're using a lot of the same logic and pushback that the other side did during the SEC football dominance. The big 10 was always close. They just sort of failed when it mattered most. Ohio State was always close. Wait. I think that's the difference. I think that in that era, you had to build just a handful of world beaters and the big 10 had won in Ohio State. The SEC had one and a half to three, depending on the year. And that was why they enjoyed the advantage was that in the years that Alabama or Nick Saban would stumble after basically concentrating all the talent, you would have an LSU snap. You would have a Florida in the earlier run and then as, well, yeah, in Auburn, I don't know, Georgia. You'll leave Auburn out. Georgia then replicated the Alabama blueprint at the later end of this era. Now that we have, it's funny, we can talk about the money and the legitimate, the legitimizing of the money. And I used to hear this from angry Michigan fans all the time when I would sort of gleefully write about the reality of paying kids. You just wait. We don't cheat, but when we can pay them, we will. Great. That's fine. You chose not to. For some moral stance or I don't know, maybe you just needed the tactic. You played yourselves on that front. But you were right about what you could do when you started writing the checks. I never doubted the coffers in Ann Arbor or anywhere else. That's not what I'm talking about. No one could have foreseen Indiana in the blueprint. What's interesting now is I don't know if, this is me saying I don't know. I'm not trying to counter-argue or take away anything from the big 10. I don't know if it's money so much that I don't know if it's money. I don't know if it's money so much as it is dispersion of talent. And when you look at the specific situations in the postseason, the last two or three years, as it relates to SEC programs, it's less everybody's getting paid, right? Everybody's a gangster at that level. Everybody's throwing cash because again, unfortunately, as I feel like legally obligated once a show to talk about my alma mater, Ole Miss is an example of a fair to middling, often failing, you know, head up its own rear end program that when you could pay, when you could pay above board, they did so with zeal and vigor. So they're an example just like Indiana and they were play away from the national, well, they were drive away from the national title game. There's a quote this week from Steve Sarkesian to Chris Lowe, my colleague on three. And he's basically estimates the number of schools that are sort of paying the price of admission in football to be competitive at 25. He's like, we're all paying, all of us in that group are paying and trying to win. We still have to evaluate. We still have to do the best the other part. And I'm guessing that means 25 schools at at least $30 million rosters. Correct. Yeah. But hang on. But hang on. So we're back talking about the money again, which I think is interesting. If that many people are paying the price of admission, you are dispersing the talent. Okay. It's the simplest way for me to explain what's going on in the SEC is that the singular dynasty was Nick Saban. If you throw in Nick Saban at LSU and Nick Saban at Alabama, you just say it was Nick Saban. You had a little insertions along the way because people were following the cheating blueprint. I'll even use Michigan's language. Before Urban Meyer went to, no, I'm serious. Before Urban Meyer went to Ohio, before James Franklin went to Pennsylvania, there was a big old, there's a lot of pearl clutching, right? Andy, we've talked about this for years. It was about amassing all of the premier talent available. What the money's done to me is not the headline. It's that we have now pulled apart the premier five star, five star, five star, five star line. And then on the other side of the ball, it's five star, five star, five star, four men front. And then we're red-shirting five stars at Alabama and Georgia and maybe LSU. What we're seeing now is you have an Ole Miss. You have a Josh Hypo Tennessee. You start to have, oh, wow, hey, Mike Elko and A&M. They look really good because, oh, wow, it's really, like, everything can go down to big-bodied five star defensive players in the last 25 years of football. You were used, you, for a time, were able to amass 90% of that wonderful five star big-body talent. I feel like I'm doing some sort of weird ASMR here. I'm sorry, on one roster or one and a half. And I think now we're dispersing that. Now, the problem with my theory, guys, is that it does not explain. We've basically leveled off the sharpest end of the knife from the SEC. So you have, like, six, seven great rosters that are kind of dull when it matters most. What I can't account for is Indiana. I can account for Ohio State spending their way through a national title. And I'm almost hesitant to claim the Michigan title as an NIL era. Like, that had been in progress. The blueprint there had existed before the Switcheras. They were heavily developed, old team, lots of guys they developed into pros. But to your point, where when you, that was the beginning of you can't have four or five stars across your defensive line. Well, suddenly the people who found Mason Graham and developed him and then got Kenneth Grant, who was a big time recruit and then played like one, suddenly they had the best defensive line. And they could win. I also think that we might, we may have, I think we're in a limbo. I don't think we've defined this era yet. I think we're all convinced it's what we're talking about. So everybody, oh, the nerd schools are spending money and the Midwest is back. It's small. And last year, the Big 10 had three teams in the Sweet 16. I just looked. I think that's what it's about, right? Also, you know what else happened last year in the Big 10? Pennsylvania State University spent money like a drunk sailor and it failed miserably. So it's not, we haven't locked this thing in yet. I don't think we've codified success. I think we are headed towards an amalgamation of the kind of different moments we've seen the last couple of years. And what I mean by that is I'm really growing more and more convinced that the big spenders, the brands of the sport are going to start to build out spending blueprints and not like, when I say moneyball, people associate that with like, oh, a mid-level program is going to spin their way smartly. It's not moneyball, but I do think the days of like, we've got four wide receivers making seven figures plus. I don't know if that's going to persist. Like I don't know if anyone's unlocked the code for dominance yet. I guess I'm inadvertently criticizing Indiana and I don't mean to do that, but I don't know if that's going to work year over year. The book Moneyball was about the age. And it was a little bit disingenuous because, yes, they got all these position players at a discount. They had a great pitching staff. That is, yes, the year that moneyball takes place, especially the movie, they have three arguable ace number one starters, meaning like three pitchers that would be the ace on your staff. They drafted well in the more traditional scouting way. And so, and also in baseball, like when the Red Sox finally break through with the, they were using analytics. They were, they were using the quote unquote modern scouting techniques with a bunch of money behind it. And so that's what you're going to see is who's going to become the first to unlock this, whether it's somebody in the big 10 of the SEC. My guess is it's one of those, but we also have Texas Tech doing this with money. Yeah. Miami. Miami is the one I want to do it with. As with money. Yeah. Ross. Yeah. And Ross, I know you've covered Miami a good bit in its modern incarnation. When I say what I'm about to say, everybody gets tense. Like I'm, like I'm not pocket watching anybody, but I've refused to believe that even in the most zealous spending is schools, Texas Tech, Miami Ole Miss, LSU, I think there has to be a reckoning and there has to be sort of a refining of this process, right? Like I think Miami is now examining, all right. Where have we overspent? Where have we underspent? What has it yielded us? There has to be a refining of the process. This is just, by the way, this is just business. This isn't just about college football. This is how business works. I don't know, Godfrey. I don't know that. That's okay to say. Yeah. I don't know because, well, I'm just saying, like I don't know that they're going to refine the process too in any way. Like I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not so sure the money is going to level off because, oh, we need to rethink, right? We need to rethink our plan and it didn't give us, this plan isn't working. And I don't, I ever think the answer is, well, we're just going to not spend as much or something. Right? No, they're going to spend as much, but they'll keep throwing stuff against the wall. Yeah. It's not the over stylistically schematically. Until they think, yeah. It's not the amount spent that I'm talking about. I think it's where you're spending it. I think that's how we're going to see a significant change. Yeah. Like, and what do you think we're going to see? I wonder, like what, how and, okay. You mentioned the receivers, like you think, yeah. So Ohio State is going to have like, right. So when Jackson Smith and Jigbud just re-signed with the Seahawks, there was a stat that was floating around and I would have pulled it, but I didn't know we were going to end up here. Where you have X amount of Ohio State receivers of recent years that are now commanding like significant second year contracts in the NFS. It's wide receiver U, right? That's what we're getting at. And we have this perpetual pipeline. That's great. And back in the day, you used to say, man, LSU is DBU. No, Florida is DBU. And you go here and you're going to get, right, you're going to get your second NFL contract. The problem now is those colleges have to pay for that talent in the system. And I think that wide receivers, an interesting position to me that I want to watch for a couple of reasons. One, they're expensive. Two, one person catches the ball in every play if you even decide to throw it, which means that you're spending a ton of money on those who are not involved in the play, play to play. And this is how like analysts think, right? So if you are spending an exorbitant amount of money on wide receiver three, that means that like... The Parker Livingston conundrum. Here we go. We're going to watch this play out in Texas, Oklahoma. I keep saying this and everybody thinks I'm doing an Atlanta Falcons bit. I'm not. Look at Arthur Smith. Look at the system he runs. I'm serious. There's a ton of 12. There's a ton of tight end incorporation. And you know what's cheaper than buying premier five star wide receivers? Buying a collection of tight ends. I'm not saying Ohio State is suddenly going to tighten the purse. I need everybody to be really clear here. I have a theory in progress. That's all. But that's where Iowa can break through as well. It's just Ohio State. But if you can be an increment or a order of magnitude in Ohio State's case, better than Iowa at doing Iowa, that's what you should do. And then you flood all your money onto defense or you cherry pick that coveted free agent at like a rush end, for instance. Or you go and get, oh God, help me. The running back who came from Ole Miss. Oh, they went to Ohio State? Yeah. Oh, shoot. He's a Cleveland Brown now, I think. Troy on Henderson. Thank you. No, Troy on Henderson was already there. No, no, no, no, no. See, we're all wrong. Oh man, I stumped the entire. Oh God, what? Quincha on Judges. No, thank you. Quincha on Judges. Judges. There you go, man. You go and get the complimentary piece because you've spent well enough in every other area that you go out and get the obtained difference maker. It's funny because like I have balked at the idea of only absorbing baseball through advanced analytics because to me it sucks a little of the fun and the passion out. At the same time, I think college football is in dire need of some of my friends, Parker Fleming and Bill Connolly and these guys because I think you're going to have to try and figure out what the war is on adding free agents. War is in wins above replacement. Yes. Yes. Yeah. The NCAA loves it when I call them free agents. Free agents. Well, it is the Parker Livingston conundrum, which we will see play out in the Texas-Oklahoma rivalry this year. Parker Livingston, the third leading receiver at Texas last year in terms of receptions and yards and said that if my agent hadn't told me they were going after Cam Coleman, essentially, I probably would have resigned with Texas. But I decided to test what my market was. He did. Indiana wanted him. Oklahoma wanted him. There were other schools that wanted him, but you narrow it down to those two. And they wanted him as probably like a wide receiver too, whereas Texas only wanted him as a wide receiver three. Yeah. And by the way, this is just the inner pace higher for wide receiver two. Yeah. And this is the NFL, by the way. Like this is how it works is the NFL, you go scouting on day two or day three of the draft and you find a developmental project and he becomes your possession receiver, right? He becomes your slot guy. He becomes the sure-handed guy on third down that is going to just run a skinny post for you. That's where we're headed. And so again, Ohio State fans have kind of freaked when I've said this before. Your money's fine. Again, I'm not pocket watching. I just think you're going to start spending differently to spend smarter overall. Yeah. It's going to be really interesting to watch. But I also think so far the coaching hires in the Big 10 and the personnel departments in the Big 10 have done a really good job of working within this new system. So, yeah. And signetty, he might just be the outlier. He might just be different than everybody else. Well, maybe they are spending maybe not as much more as they're spending with Godfrey. He's talking about more wisely, you know? Spending better, right. And that's what Steve Sarkesian was talking about this week with Chris Lowe. He was talking about, hey, we can spend, but nobody wants to have this dead money that you spent and wasted. So, I also think they're getting players, the Big 10 schools, from the area that they didn't used to get as many players. Right. Right. The 10 state, South East footprint. The RP matters a lot less when somebody's writing a check. That's right. And that when you could go down the rosters of the Big 10 and you could see how many players are from the 10, kind of the 10, 12 state footprint in the Southeast. Remember all the years that we talked about how it was like the two star kids from, I'm just going to pull a Florida name out in front of a Florida person, Pompano Beach. And just that rain came to mind. That's a great place to go to. Lanchilly High School in Pompano Beach, Florida. Okay. So, you have a two star kid. The McGeese regards there. Oh, okay. Nice. Sorry. A two star kid, right? At the high school. Did you do a vocational program? No. Sorry. Okay. So, yeah. I kind of had the same thought, but I didn't want to do it. Aliva. Aliva cigars from Pompano. Soft Wars in high school, Roland cigars. Florida. What can't you do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Two star kid. Back in the day, we would talk about like, all right, you know what? You're going to have a program. Remember how like, like South Florida was really slow to the draw on facilities? It was like, well, they just want to stay home. It's going to be, it's a two star kid. So it's going to be between us and Minnesota. I always pick on Minnesota. Yeah. And you know, the kid might go up there because he's going to get a big speech about playing in the big 10 and playing against the elite. And then he's going to go and he's going to spend two years up in Minneapolis. And he says, screw this. I'm going to go home. I'm going to Juco. I'm going to end up back there. None of that matters anymore. Not because it's any particularly war. It's not warmer in the Twin Cities. It's not nicer in Purdue in January. It's the money. Right. You can buy bigger coats now. Yeah. Correct. Yes. Yes. It's just the money. It's the ability to be a provider for your family back in Pompano Beach. And that cuts out this kind of nonsense evaluation that we used to have to go through with some of these schools. So it's not necessarily that maybe the big 10 is not spending that much more money. They're having the money that levels the playing field of in recruiting. You're compensating for having to live in the Midwest. Yeah. I'm going to catch up for that one. I'm going to catch up. Yes, you are. I'm not even going to defend that, even though I've said it a million times. The... Yeah, Florida, man. Question about that. Before we move on to Lane Kiffin and expectations. But question about that. Yeah. Is it because they entered this era with fresh eyes? Yes. Because maybe they weren't paying like that. So they didn't... They're setting a new market, whereas maybe in some other places where there's been a more traditional black market prior to the NIL era, maybe there's some preconceived notions of what the market should have been. And now those people are having to catch up. Necessity is the mother of invention. And you're going to be forced into an innovative state if you're currently lacking for whatever it is that you produce. Yes, absolutely. This is why Clemson sat on its ass and said, morally, we object to this. And God told me not to pay these kids or whatever Davos said. And a program like Indiana said, all right, let's strip this thing down and innovate because we have to. I had a question on my other show on Phantom Island about, drawing out why someone like Indiana was so ahead of the curve. And Ross has hit on it a couple of times on our show. One, everyone saw that football was the life raft that kept you from drifting off into sea. And two, what did... Hey guys, what did Indiana have to lose? If this whole thing exploded and Kurt Signetti is a four-win head coach in the first two years, would we care? Would we be making some of them? It would have been normal. It would just be super normal. We wouldn't even notice. Yeah. Yeah. If Kurt Signetti had accounted for nine total wins over his first two seasons, you know what we'd probably be doing? If the money wasn't as high as we know it is, we'd say, hey, that's pretty good for rebuilding in Indiana. So they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by experimenting. Whereas a lot of the SEC schools, I'm going to try and put a bow on this, Andy, they entered into this era thinking that they were unstoppable. And they entered into this era thinking that they were unimpeachable in their logic and the expectation that every kid in Mobile or Pompano Beach, it's fun to say it's a literative Pompano Beach, would just automatically walk into one of these five places. Deerfield Beach is like, what about us, man? Yeah. Daytona. Daytona. If you ain't rubbing, you ain't racing. Very different. Yeah. Oh yeah. I am aware that jumping around cultureally just a bit. All of the expectation was these kids are going to walk into this school forever, right? Because I'll turn you into an NFL player. That's awesome. I could turn into an NFL player at Purdue and they could cut me a check in the process too. And I think it was a lot of hubris in the Southeastern Conference. And if the SEC manufactures one thing in mass, it is hubris. But they also still really care about winning. So my guess is they will adapt and adjust. Yeah. Somebody will. Or they'll just leave or something or say, Or they'll just do their own thing. We'll just play our own looking at the whole thing. Give up on the whole thing. Here's the problem. Yeah. I know we've got to move on. That will happen. We've got to move on. But here's my problem. I don't know, gun to my head, who fixes this in the SEC right now. It will be someone who has been good. Probably has been good. Who's the person we're about to start talking about. That's potentially. Someone who has been good, who's not up to their level of satisfaction of late, who's trying something different. Which brings us to what Lane Kiffin said about patience. We'll be right back. Things don't happen overnight. It takes a lot of work to get a program up to an elite performing program level. So we're making some first steps, but there's a ton of work to do. And like I said before, we have a symbol to get a roster. But at the same time too, there's a ton of work that goes into that to get program back up to where everybody around here wants it to be. And the reason that we came here. You know, it was seven and six last season. So within that comes change, within that comes a lot of work. Because that's a long jump to go to the level that I came here to get at and all the people around the program want to be at. That is Lane Kiffin talking patience. And we just got through discussing who in the SEC might try to innovate, try to do something different. Try to change the way they've been doing business because they would like to catch up, would like to compete for national titles. LSU is that school, but Lane Kiffin wants patience. Doesn't happen overnight Ross. Yeah, they would very much like it too down there for the amount of money they're spending, not just on the coach and staff, but especially on the roster. I mean, this is, you know, I certainly understand why him and many coaches say this, right? You want a lower expectation and try to get your fan base to understand if you go eight and four, well, see what I said, we have to continue to build a program. But nowadays, like in this era, where you change over, you turn over almost your entire team, or two, three fourths of it, and you're spending $30 plus million on a roster. I'm not sure. Plus the debt money. There's going to be, yeah, there's going to be that much understanding, right? Yeah, it's over $200 million, right? The whole tab is, I think, certainly put out something, maybe just being like a 190 or 180. It's actually, yeah, it's over $200,000 though. Yeah, it's over $200 million. It's the whole thing on debt money. Yeah, I mean, people forgot too, Scott Woodward's firing, his buy was like $6.5 million. So it's over the $200 mark, which is incredible. And again, lead you to believe that there won't be as much understanding if you go eight and four, even though no Lanky even really wants you to understand. We're pretending that Lane doesn't understand this. We're pretending that he doesn't. But he does. I think he does. He definitely does. Here's the best example of this. I imagine back in the day, if Woody Hayes said something interesting, like a random person just being able to call it out and then get a response from Woody Hayes, it would never happen. So Kiffin says this, a South Carolina fan who has a podcast about South Carolina named his Twitter handles, Quist-McGrady, very astutely tweets, quote, tweets this video. Nah, patients went out the door when $40 million walked through that door. Talking about the roster spin. First response from Lane Kiffin, crying, laughing emoji. He gets it. He knows. Yes, he understands. He understands. We've debated Lane Kiffin and the cult of personality to its, hopefully to its logical end, at least for one off season. I think what's interesting here to try and bridge the earlier segment and now, let's take this out of Lane Kiffin, which is an area that Lane never wants to take it out of, is himself. Even if he's doing this with sort of like a Joker-esque self-effacing nod, and he wants us to talk about him, I'd rather talk about the logic of LSU and everything that we just discussed on trying to figure out a roadmap for the next SEC national championship, because now we're in a streak. We're in a losing streak. We're in a gully. And not only that, you're not even being represented in the national title. Right? So it's a significant departure from what was. I can't help but feel like Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, is either a functional idiot or just knowingly naive about how he's entered into the narrative here, because he started by castigating the Woodward Kelly era as overspending on coaching, building these ridiculous cultural personality around, oh, these overpaid coaches are going to go off, hijack our university's athletic departments. We're spending all this money after it. And then he goes and encourages not only this exorbitant high-dollar hire of a rival school's head coach to fix the problems, with the logic being that LSU, they looked at LSU and all the problems and they said, the head coach is the problem. A head coach can fix this. That is the most tried and true logic of college football. And it may not be accurate as we enter the new era of player compensation. A lot of people across the industry that we talk to are now questioning what the component size of a head coach is. Then we find out now, as of this week, Landry has been lobbying for over a year to overspend again and bring back Will Wade, the now-former North Carolina state basketball head coach. I love the term chastising a politician for being ideologically inconsistent. All Jeff Landry did was say, these people who aren't my political allies suck and they shouldn't have money spent on them, but these people who are my political allies should get all the money spent on them. Yes, they're there. I'm totally fine with that. It was just how woefully disingenuous, even for a Louisiana politician, that this man is. Like, there's only so much I can take. I think we got to go back to October. Right. I think we talked about it then when I dove into the reason that all this was happening, right, which was the involvement in the governor and how I wrote about it in October, right? Last March, he wanted Will Wade hired and Scott Woodward said no. And, you know, eight months later, Scott Woodward didn't have a job. I think all of everything that Jeff Landry said was rooted in the changeover of a political enemy and kind of a lifelong enemy, it seemed. In who? That's in Scott Woodward. Okay, I'm not for the audience. So that's what, and as soon as, I think, and again, this was in that story in October is, as soon as the last straw was Scott Woodward telling Jeff Landry, no, last March in bringing back Will Wade. And that was it. As soon as that happened, I think this was all sort of going to happen. Preordained. Yeah, yeah. And I think all of his comments were built around it, right? He even threw it, remember, like everybody kind of spotlights his comments about the spending in the buyout, but he literally talked about right the agents in how Scott Woodward, he kind of got it wrong. He misidentified the agents. Yes, yes, but he threw that in there because I think, again, this was all about the political sort of enemy and someone who wouldn't necessarily do what he wanted done a year ago. And of course, what he wanted done a year ago, big surprise, got done this year. Which was overspending again on the concept of the head coach as the missing link. This logic is going to kill some program. Some program is going to overspend their way into oblivion by doing this in the modern era. Like this is some program. I mean, all this has already happened. The difference now is that if you can choose to spend your money, here's the thing about Kurt Signetti. What did we buy with Kurt Signetti? We didn't buy at a market premium. And we don't know what we purchased yet in Indiana. Right? We know that we got a national title out of it. Was it because he was an evaluator? Or was it because we were bringing in this dynamic force and personality and field general and all this Southern mythos crap that we've described to SEC head coaches over the years? We don't yet know what the ideal head coach for this next era looks like. And so if you don't know, if you don't know, no, you know what the market thinks. We don't know what the market has yielded yet. There's a huge difference. There's a safety blanket for all these rich donors. I also think Signetti may be a one of one and trying to copy that model might just not work. I've heard Signetti is one of one or a variation thereof as an argument to help to, because we live in current time and we can't understand the perspective of the future yet. People are trying to rationalize that now in hopes that if Signetti is one of one, then you don't have to completely up in the way that you evaluate how to build a college football program. If the market doesn't, if the hires don't yield success, is the market really going to change? Well, that's my curiosity because I think we've seen, the problem is there's an echo to 11, it's a budget. It's not a ton of empirical evidence either way. Like Texas A&M, back to Scott Woodward, when Scott Woodward is the AD at Texas A&M, he hires Jimbo Fisher because he wanted someone who'd been there, who'd won a national title. They commit all this money. They give him the raise because they were trying to keep him away from Scott Woodward at LSU at that point, by the way. And then they end up paying $77 million to fire him. They were about to pay way too much for Mark Stoops and their board revolted. Yeah, there's a lot of idiots here. Yeah. Yeah, they ended up paying less for Mike Elko and probably got better results because of it. Correct. And this is where I'm headed. Let's talk about Lane Kiffin for a second. Can you name the most amount of wins he's had in a debut season at any job? Oh, it was, was it Tennessee? Was it seven? It was the 11 and three Florida Atlantic Ales. Now the problem is they were competing in a conference USA that was a slight bit lopsided in 2017, the year of our Lord. Would you now like to ask, how has he done at the power level when he debuts? Yeah, it's probably seven. The pandemic season was his first season at Ole Miss, so I don't really... Eight in five at USC. And he was 500 in the pandemic season, and I would throw that out. I would throw that out. Okay. This is not someone who is ad water instant success. This is not someone that like I continue. I'm trying to, I'm not trying to besmirch Lane Kiffin. There's this idea amongst the LSU faithful that it's like turnkey. Yes. National title contender immediately. Which is why Lane probably said what he said. Because he feel, I'm sure he feels that in Baton Rouge like, hey, this is like championship year, or at least at the very least, this is playoff birth year. And I'm sure he's trying to loo. Unlike those other times, you now can remake the roster exactly as you want. Yes. We haven't seen a lane first year in this sort of era. But here's the problem. Do you know who else went to Baton Rouge? Lane Kiffin. Lane Kiffin's inability to process criticism internally, ask any anonymous source in the AD world that's had to manage Lane Kiffin. He is going to experience criticism at a segmented level, game by game, that he's, that he never really experienced at Ole Miss. Because let's be honest, that culture is fundamentally different and way more grateful. And they might have gotten tired of things at a certain point, but they never once demanded with the volume and the intensity that LSU will and is immediately. Lane Kiffin doesn't particularly do well when there's that amount of pressure on him. CUSC. Okay. I, this is where I am fundamentally curious about Lane Kiffin being installed at the very top of the mountain. There are exceptional college football minds that work as aspiring coaches that work on the Ascension. Dan Mullen is a great example. When you install someone at the peak, it's a completely different skill set to manage and execute and then repeat national championship caliber teams. There are also guys who are just, I talked to, I'm not going to name them, I talked to a G5 coach on the phone the other day and he goes, man, I'm just convinced I'm a builder. But I know when, once I've got the thing built, I probably need to go somewhere else. And that's amazing self-awareness. Oh, awareness. Yeah. It was a low level program. And I mean, these guys, some of these guys are just veterans kind of working towards craftsmen and less as a celebrity. For a coach to know like he's hit a ceiling at that place. Yes. Yeah. It doesn't happen very often, I feel like. Lane Kiffin is never sustained. Let me phrase it this way. Lane Kiffin is never achieved or sustained a level of success that this amount of money demands or that this fan base expects. And this is why from the very beginning, I thought, I don't know if you actually know what you're purchasing. What LSU does consistently throughout history. Fascinating because the one other time he was at, he was the head coach at a place like this that had a roster that could be competitive. It was USC. And he was in his 30s. Yes. He's now headed toward his 50s. There is a different set of experiences. And so this is almost like a second wave of career for him. And so this is why to your point, Andy, this was why it was so important for him to manufacture that PR narrative and why ESPN helped and they made a stupid fake documentary about like, oh, he's a different guy now and he's a hot yoga guy. I don't think he's a different guy. I think he's not different at all. I also think he's smarter at the job than he used to be. And I think he's working harder because he's not doing something, one other thing, maybe he did a lot of. And that's, but Ross, that's a dangerous territory to tread in because there are other mega star college football head coaches right now who talk about sobriety. And like that's a tricky thing to turn into an aspect of your PR. I'll leave it at that. Because then you walk the finest of lines. What Lane Kiffin needed to do, and you guys know this, because the last time Lane Kiffin really pushed into the arena for open jobs was the last time Florida was open. And it was a resounding no, wasn't it Andy? It was in Miami, right? Miami was open too. One of the things, in addition to what I think really, it really was the 2003, 23 season, sorry, at Ole Miss, where he bounced back from the eight-win year and returned back into national prominence. He went about selling a rehabilitated image because the industry-wide knock on Lane was the sort of permanent terminal immaturity. Now the problem is how well they covered that up or what they kind of nipped and cut around and- You just said that was never going to bother LSU. Well, let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. And then I'll get off this. You know who it does bother and you know who never in the world would have touched it was Greg Byrne in Alabama. And if there's one program that LSU secretly over a couple drinks will tell you that's who we should be emulating and that's who we're always chasing, it's Alabama. But they don't operate like that or act like that. Well, that's because Louisiana is terminal in a lot of ways. But what I'm saying is that's where- That's ideologically where they want to go. It is. It's fun for us especially. Yeah, you, Godfrey, are treating this like a cautionary tale. I am treating this like it's going to go one of two ways because it is going to go one of two ways. This is a highly combustible situation and it will be fireworks that everybody loves watching or it will be a giant tin alarm fire. Just like the basketball hire. Yeah, right. Just like the basketball hire, right? Will he say it himself? Yes, that's close. Either you're going to have a national championship or I'm going to be the first coach fired twice at one school. Yeah. And I think there's a self-awareness there that I love. I love Will Wade so much. I always have because of his ability to say the thing, to speak the actual, to say something honest in the biggest of moments where the most eyes are upon you is something that coaches usually shirk away from and Will Wade has never shied from that. And I think Will Wade summarizes the situation at LSU better than anybody, which is, we're sure are spending a lot of money right now. This thing's either going to be a rocket or it's going to blow up on the launch pad and kill everybody who's standing around to celebrate it. I'm good with that. I really am. Lots of content. As someone who understands that this is an entertainment product, yes. I appreciate them for entertaining us. Andy, it's good booking. It's great. It's good booking. It's good booking. Speaking of booking, the college football playoff selection committee has booked some new members, some football coaches that you know and maybe love. Maybe they beat your team and you don't love them, but the brain power in the room seems to have gone up. Let's talk about when we come back. We are back at the college football, the college football, the college football playoff because we're going to talk about the college football playoff and the selection committee, which has some new members. Brian Maggard, the AD for the region Cajuns, but that's not the headline. The headline is, former Auburn and UCF coach Gus Malzon, former Cal and Fresno State coach Jeff Tedford joining, leaving former Nevada coach Chris Alt, the innovator of La Pistola as a formation, former Arkansas and Kansas AD Jeff Long, and former, or excuse me, and Miami of Ohio's David Saylor. So those guys are off. These guys are back on. Hunter, you're a check. The Arkansas AD will be the one doing the deer and the headlights interviews with Reese Davis again, 6'7". There you go. 6'7". RIP. Gus Buss. No offense to Mr. Alt or the individual, Andy, just named from Miami of Ohio. You're losing to Jeff Long. You're gaining to ball knowers. Ross, this feels like what if any, is there a way to like measure how this might change discernment by adding more sort of coaching experience or are we just guessing? I don't think so. You know, when I, when I, when I talk to committee members, they do often speak a lot about how loud and sort of leading the coaches are in the room. Big surprise, right? The coaches are like the ones that are doing a lot of the talking. And so they lean on the coaches a lot. So these, these coaches have probably, I would guess, more of like a prominent role in the room than I think any others. Because I think a lot of people in the room, which are ADs, look, look to their sort of opinions on things. So, but, you know, I look at things from, and I need to pull up the college, the new, actually full committee to see like, you know, sort of like geographic sort of culturally, like where everybody's from and how it breaks down would be an interesting thing. Because obviously, the list right now, the, so it's, it's Nebraska AD, Troy Dannin, former Michigan state, and since that he's Mark Antonio. Yeah. Yeah. There's two Midwest ish guys. Utah athletic director, Mark Harlan, our friend, Ivan Mayzell, West Coast. Ivan's on there. Yes. Noted also. Oh yeah. This is the second year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Former, you know, late of ESPN of the Sports Illustrated Dallas Morning News, Newsday. Yeah. Ivan's done it all in our business. Chris Massaro, the Middleton, a state athletic director. Randall McDaniel, the great offensive lineman who is an Arizona state alum, played in the NFL for a long time. Former Oregon state coach and Nebraska coach Mike Riley, the nicest man, whoever coached football. Westley Walls, former All-American tight end from your alma mater, Mr. Godfrey, Carl Williams, the AD at the University of Virginia, and I'm here to check for Mark and son. So where, when you look at these people and you look at where their roots are and just where they, where their mind might be, might be subjective, subjective to some area, right? It seems like we've got probably most of them or the majority of them, even though it's probably only a slight majority from the Southern footprint. There's like three or four from the Midwest. There's three or four from the West and there's probably seven plus from sort of the Southeast, even though they're not necessarily working as, like UVA is a good example, but Carla's been her whole career. Georgia. Yeah, she's just Georgia. Ivan's from Alabama. He lives in Connecticut. He went to Stanford. He's way too intelligent. I would be assisted in the world when it comes to, yeah. Ivan's just smarter than everybody. He is, but if you have to put a root on somebody, right? I mean, yeah, you're, I mean, you're probably putting him in that Southeast group or I am, but I don't know. Yeah, I am. I am. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I've heard a lot about that recently. They've put it that way from probably, you can imagine a league like in the Midwest area. Oh God. Well, Ted, I think Ted, Ted, Fred's a nice, I would say sort of wink towards the West Coast, which is fundamentally historically underrepresented, you know, there's a few of those in Harlem in right. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I like that the West Coast exists in one of the, oh yeah, Mike Riley. We don't have enough time, but Mike Riley, so many wonderful stories of Mike Riley being like essentially a Truman Show character. He's just the best. He's the freaking best. Ross, I had a question yesterday and I was like, let me ask Ross, rather than do the research. So you add Gus Malzahn to the committee when the exceptions that you have to list or like, I can't, you know, the thing where you like, I can't vote on this or I can't discuss them. You know what I'm talking about? You have to, you have to, you have to list these. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Is it everywhere? Yeah. Yeah. Is it, is it everywhere you've ever coached? Is it your alma mater? How did they discern that? Cause someone was asking me, would he be, cause Gus is now like, he's at Florida State, UCF, Auburn. Like, is he exempt from discussing all of those schools? Oh, I don't think so. No, I think they usually, usually, I believe, this is a good question that I should know the exact answer, but I don't. But I think it's, it's like where you currently are, which a lot of these coaches right are retired. And I think it's, I mean, I guess like, if you're looking at somebody, I think maybe Gus has a pretty extensive tree too. So right. You can't eliminate him from everything. Yeah. But like somebody like, um, Dantonio, well, he's probably also pretty easy to eliminate of Michigan State though, is like in the, yeah, maybe Cincinnati. So I think that they're probably do it in a manner like, you know, Dan and was at Tulane, Troy Dan was at Tulane out and now in Nebraska and spent a little time in Washington, but I don't think he's going to be exempt from the previous two, right? I think he would just be exempt from Nebraska. It's going to be a little bit of like, just common sense way about it. And people are assuming, oh, this guy coach here, but for example, Jeff Tedford, who, who and Jeff Tedford's coaching tree is most likely to be discussed by the college football playoff selection. Oh man. Andy's quizzing me now. That would be his former offensive coordinator, Kaylen DeBoer. Damn it. I was going to get there. Yeah. Well, you know what? His successor at Fresno State, Kaylen DeBoer. And they were, yeah. Yeah. So what I think I like about this, Andy, is that this would be the first time and you all stopped me if I'm wrong. You're going to have Gus Malzon on there who was game planning and coaching against these teams a year ago, like Miami and Duke and, you know, schools we've had discussions about. Yeah. Like, oh, there's, yeah. They'd be no, no. That's to my knowledge, never, it's never been that fresh in terms of having a voice in the room who was in this. So basically, Tony Roma, when he first started at CBS and knew what all the defenses were doing. Oh no. Now you've cursed him to be terrible after year three plays. No, Gus is, Gus is an interesting cat in general. Like, get Gus talking about the buck sweep and he just gets giddy. Like he loves this stuff. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm excited to see what he does and how that those conversations flow because he genuinely loves the game. And he's not one of those older coaches. And I criticized him as he got older because I didn't think he innovated as much as he did before. And I thought he got a little set in his ways. But he's also never been shy about, you know, saying what's on his mind about yeah, doing what he thinks is the right thing. So I'm fascinated to see what he is in that room. Because I remember stories of the original iteration of the playoff selection committee where Barry Alvarez was on it. Barry Alvarez was very outspoken as a former college football coach who thought this is how the game should be played. Gus is going to have some, some strong opinions on that. I think Tedford's going to have some strong opinions on that. So I, I'm interested to see how the dynamics work. Love Tedford's inclusion too, because his resume represents, I would say have nots at various levels. Fresno State was a mighty G5 program once about a time and Tedford was a part of that. But it's nice to have someone who can represent sort of the middle body of college football programs who are trying really hard to break through those just last night. Tedford put out some bangers at Cal. All right, buddy, I've got the answer. Okay, thank you. I got the answer live. See, he got, he got bad. Okay, so let me read, let me read the, the bio. Thank you for doing my own. A member shall be deemed fully recused. Something to note, there's a fully recused like deal and then there's a partial recused deal. Yeah. So fully recused means you are completely out of the room. You do not participate. Partially recused means you're in the room, you can actually participate, but you can't vote when they vote. Right. So here's the two. Here's, here's a person who is fully recused is a person who receives direct compensation from the institution. So the number two has an immediate family member who is a football athlete, staff member or senior administrator at the institution. So that's for a lot of situations. Yeah. For partial recused, you're redeemed a partial recused if the member has a secondary relationship with the institution. And the examples are immediate family member employed by the school, but outside of the football program or the senior administrative leadership. When you are partially or fully recused, you leave the room. No, when you're partially recused, you may remain in the room and you can actually participate in the discussion, but you cannot vote when they do the votes. When you are fully recused, you have to leave the room. You leave the room. Do you think there's another room with like maybe some sodas and Mario Kart or just something to... No, there is another room with bacon. Yeah, there's bacon and other, other foods. You did a really nice spread. But no Mario. And there's a big couch. Like if you're going to sit by yourself, you should at least have a kitchen thing. Yeah. Now the CFP Executive Director, shall have the authority to impose a partial recusal if he or she determines that a non-compensated institutional affiliation exists. So if there's some kind of other underlying, I guess, issue to see a people and that's what I'm just saying. And then that's where partially we do that. The former... Yeah. Well, now in the past, coaches have not been recused for past schools, which is what I thought. They have not been recused. So like... Okay. Okay. Yeah. So the Gus question is like, Auburn would not necessarily count. Yeah, like a good example is Tyrone Willingham. Tyrone Willingham was not recused when they discussed Notre Dame in Washington when he was... Okay. That's what I was looking for. Yeah. Maybe Auburn would want to recuse. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I'm waiting for a committee member who's currently... I don't know that Arkansas is going to get discussed, but yeah. Given how that will discuss, like... Yeah. Yeah. I'm waiting for someone to be like, guys, I actually have to recuse myself. They still owe me $13 million. That's what I'm waiting for. It's coming. It's coming. Oh, good Lord. Gentlemen, I'm going to have to recuse us because we have run out of time, but it has been a wonderful conversation. Wednesday, there's a vote coming up on the blind transfers. Will they improve a six game suspension? What a punk band name. The blind transfers? Steve and the blind transfers? I love it. Yeah. We're on the work. We're going to go to that show at a small coffee shop, and then we'll probably talk about it on Thursday's show. We'll talk to you then.