CFP Odds Reaction + Bama Behind The Scenes & Ryan Day Draft Idea

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Yeah, I know it's been a while, guys. I mean, we can't have a show on Easter. We're not savages. So yeah, we took a week off, but we really didn't because we loaded up the channel with speaker series content and beyond. But we're back. We're jam packed. We're high atop a sun drenched downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It is Thursday. It is April 9th, the year of our Lord, 2026. And you know what happened today? We had odds drop right in our lap, not just to make the playoff. That would be fun, but to miss the playoff. So yes, if you are a particular hater of a particular team out there and you get really, really tired of only seeing odds to make the playoff, odds to win this and that and you think, but I'm kind of a more sadistic minded person. I want to bet on terrible things to happen. We have that as of tonight. We have that. Ryan Day's got an idea, at least Ryan Day's saying some stuff to friend of the program, even though he is in and of himself saying some weird things. Kevin Clark and I'm going to address both of them on the show tonight. We have got someone asking me not about the loudest stadium we've ever been in, not about the most intimidating stadium we've ever been in. Just flat out what's my favorite that we've ever been in. I've gone public with this before, but I'll go public with it at least once more. I'm not going to shy away from it either. And you will be happy to know it is the stadium of a team that we allegedly despise. We hate them. So we're going to swerve them, bro, tonight, all that plus some behind the scenes Intel and whispers and scoop from our trip to Alabama last week. They're watching us in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Columbus, Ohio, Tempe, Arizona, South or Lee, England? Jesse, are you familiar? No, no, not in the geography books in rural Pennsylvania. Okay. Well, they're watching us in England. We appreciate it. Subscribe to the channel, whatever, whatever continent you're watching us on. Just keep watching and to keep it free, even though we all know it always will be, but especially to keep it free and to keep the lights on around here. Subscribe to the channel. We appreciate it. Okay. So everyone's sitting around right now and they're thinking it's April Masters got the NFL draft around the corner frozen for, yeah, if you're into that sort of thing. So we weren't focused on any of that today, although we did have the Masters on in the background. Bradley, here's a good end point for you. FanDuel has provided us with odds to make the playoff and to miss the playoff. These are live right now. You can go look at them. You can bet them. You can do whatever your heart desires with them. But they are on the screen right now. And if you're listening on podcasts, let me spoil the ending for you. Notre Dame has a really good shot to make the playoff this year. Texas Tech has a really good shot to make the playoff this year. Indiana, Shocker, really good shot. Look at the number four team there, because this is the first thing that jumped out to me. Miami's got really good odds to make the playoff. I'm going to tell you I'm not doing bold predictions yet, but on this April 9th, I think Miami will be better this year than they were last year. I don't know if that means they go as far as they do, but I feel really good about Miami. So it stands to reason that FanDuel agrees. And Miami's odds to make the playoff are the fourth best in the country. They're minus 280 right now, if you want to bet them to make the playoff. That's not what stood out to me. What stood out to me is, look at the rest of the list. Where's the ACC? It's non-existent. I don't want to go as far as to say it's a one bid league certainty this year, because it's not certain. Nothing's certain, but there is a massive drop off between Miami and whoever are fine traders at FanDuel think is the next best team in the ACC. That would be, by the way, SMU at plus 430. So minus 280 to plus 430, Louisville behind them, Clemson behind them. You notice, Jesse, I do that thing a lot of times where Bradley has the slider up that I can clearly see. And yet I'm still looking at chicken scratch handwriting that I wrote hours ago and sometimes cannot read. But yeah, and then if you want to really, really get morbid, you go way, way, way, way, way down the list. And there's Florida State. Now it may sound like I'm singling out Florida State. I am because out of all the cows and NC States and Dukes of the world, you have Florida States mixed right in with them. Florida State was a national championship caliber team a couple of years ago. The rest of them weren't. And so the fall off has been historic and Florida State earlier today was minus 20,000. They are to make the playoff. They're plus 1,900 right now. We ran the numbers, Jesse, earlier today when we were plugging it into the little machine, you wanted to just go bet 10 of your own hard earned American dollars in this economy on Florida State to make the playoff. You'd make a fair amount of money. But today, when we looked at the fact that they were minus 20,000 to miss the playoff, yes, you can bet on that. You would need to bet $2,000 to win $10. So that's where we're starting things off. That's the starting line in Tallahassee this year. What about the SEC? No teams in the top six. The overall odds Bradley showing you conference odds right here, which I'll get to in a second, but the overall odds to make the playoff, the SEC has none of the top six teams. Haters will say that means they've fallen off. Homers will say that just means that, well, maybe they'll say there's a bias against the SEC. I think the realist mind will look at it and say, oh, probably just means the league's pretty compressed again this year. Now, again, we haven't played a game, so there's no way for us to really know, but we do have odds to go on. And the odds suggest that, yeah, there's no top six. There's no SEC representation in the top six. And then there's a little dot, dot, dot, which I learned in my later years were called ellipsis. Yeah, I did not know that in middle school and high school. And then seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 and 13 are all SEC teams. So we have a very, very compacted SEC this year, at least at the starting gate on the odds board. What jumps out to me is not a team in the seven to 13 range, though. I see Florida down there. Odds to make the playoff Florida plus three 80 better odds than Missouri. Shorter, a little bit longer odds than Tennessee. But Florida is like, um, they are not distantly behind what you would call the lead pack. Now, the thing about this pack is you can't really see any separation. Georgia, Texas, LSU, A&M, Bama, Ole Miss. There's not a tier. There's not a cliff like there is in the Big 10, which I'll show you in a second. So you kind of keep going. Oklahoma, Tennessee, Florida. Then there's, I guess, a fairly substantial gap. And then there's Missouri. Then there's another gap. Then there's Auburn. Then there's another gap in there, South Carolina. But Florida stood out. And then I also, if you want to talk about how compressed the SEC is, at least in the fan dual odds, Florida has the ninth best odds out of the SEC teams, but their odds are better than SMU and Brigham Young. Those are the number two teams in the ACC and the Big 12, respectively, just to give you a little bit of an idea there. Mississippi State's plus 3,300 to make the playoff. There are six big 10 teams with worse odds than that. So there are, there are multiple big 10 teams with better odds than the highest SEC team. There are several more big 10 teams with worse odds than the lowest SEC team. Compacted. Very, very compacted. In the Big 10, I think there is money to be made. Realistically, there's money to be made everywhere here. But in the Big 10, especially, there are very, very clear tiers. Again, this is at the outset of the season, and then the season will play itself out. Indiana, best odds in the Big 10, minus 3,30 to make the playoff. Oregon, right behind them, minus 2,70 to make the playoff. Ohio State, third in line, very, very comparable, minus 2,40 to make the playoff. All right, then that's the end of tier one. Then you have tier two. This is where there's money to be made. Michigan, USC, and Penn State have very similar odds to make the playoff, plus 2,70, plus 2,90, plus 3,10. And I think there's money to be made there in tier two, because I ask you a simple question. Do you think that the Big 10 is only a three-bid league? And that's even assuming that the three bids would go to Indiana, Oregon, and Ohio State. But I think the Big 10 is going to be more than a three-bid league this year. That's just my feel on it. And so the question becomes, all right, well, where's the fourth team? At the very least, where's the fourth team? And then if we really wanted to have fun, and that is what God invented spring for after all, I could put together a really solid argument for either of those three teams making the playoff. I could easily sell you. If you gave me three or four minutes, I could sell you on Michigan. I could sell you on Kyle Whittingham coming in there and a massive uptick in production from Bryce Underwood and just a collective getting together of the program and really Michigan's performance in 2026, going to show how discombobulated they were at head coach and downstream in 2025. I could sell you on that. I could sell you that USC has a playoff caliber roster. I could sell you on my Ava and a third year quarterback under Lincoln Riley. And if wide receivers really going to be one of our biggest concerns there, I just refuse to think that's going to be a big concern. Wire to wire for them. They get a really, really good entry point to the season. They get Oregon in the Coliseum. They get Ohio State in the Coliseum. And I could tell you on Penn State, really, I don't have to say anything other than schedule, but I could also tell you this is Rocco Becked in his ninth or 10th year starting at the quarterback. Yeah. Fourth. Oh, wow. Metric system, ninth or 10th year. Uh, he doesn't have to learn a new system. Very familiar. A lot of that team's familiar. Matt Campbell's coming into state college and they are, I think, sort of not a turnkey national title contender, but that is a turnkey playoff contender because of this schedule. I could sell you on any of them and they all have plus odds. The big 12. We need to talk about the big 12. This is not your Mimos big 12. Your Mimos big 12 was a big 12 where you could finish last one year and first the next year. And like many things, uh, they have changed. Massively in the big 12, the SEC from a structural standpoint looks way more like the big 12 used to look than the big 12 does. And it's because of Joey Maguire. Joey Maguire has ruined the big 12. I hope he's happy. I don't know how he sleeps at night, probably with a pillow and a comforter and chapter or two of a book, but look at that minus three 70 to make the playoff. And then it's bring him young in Utah, miles and miles and miles behind him. Just to give you an idea of how this stacks up with all the teams in the country. Texas tech has the second best odds to make the playoff. Brigham young is 19th best. Utah is 21st best. So kind of like with the big 10, I'll ask a question about the big 12. Do you think this is a one bid league? Or do you think it's a two bid league? If you think it's a two bid league, there's a ton of money to be made here because Texas tech is, I assume in, and then you got to figure out, is Houston going to make the leap with really Willie Fritz or is one of the teams from Utah out there, bring him young Utah. Are they going to be the one that grabs the spot? I personally think that's one of the most fun Easter egg hunts in this entire equation right now is finding out where the value is. Is there a second playoff team in the big 12? I think it's bring him young. Hear me out. I'm just telling you where I put my money today. I bet Brigham young to make the playoff today. That that is not equal to a prediction that they're going to make the playoff. I just think there's really good value on them to make the playoff when I have head coach returning in demand head coach returning quarterback returning. I think they get a little bit of a subconscious sympathy vibe from the committee in 2026 because right or wrong. Some people think they got boxed out last year. There is a Notre Dame home game. Some people will say they have to play Notre Dame. I say they get to play Notre Dame because they get them at home. It should be a knife fight at worst at best. Maybe they pull an upset, but even if they don't, it'll be competitive. I think it will. And they don't play Texas tech in the regular season. They're top 20 in returning production. That right there profiles as a lot better playoff potential resume than 19th overall. So they alleged a lot of things about this show as it relates to BYU last year. And we are fighting the allegations in a big way this spring. On a related note, producer Jesse came to me earlier today. He came into my office. He was already in there. And he said, I have what we are calling the Franklin trifecta. And that is where you take Brigham Young and Penn State and Virginia Tech and you parlay the three to make the plus. I'm not advocating for this sort of behavior. I'm just saying he traffics in this sort of behavior. And if you take Brigham Young and Penn State and Virginia Tech, all of the teams basically that were involved in the hurricane of the James Franklin firing and then the Penn State hiring debacle that somehow ended with a massive cherry on top of it, by the way. Brigham Young, Penn State, Virginia Tech, all three to make the playoffs. It returns plus 25,000. That means betting 10 of your dollars returns $2,500 unless those odds moved in the last hour. But that wasn't the sickest thing Jesse did today. The true sicko move, one of the sickest I've seen in the modern era was he comes in and he says, Hey, got a 17 team parlay to bounce off of you. I said, go on. He thought I meant continue. I really meant walk out of the room. Don't come back in the room. And then he had Bradley make this ungodly graphic. And this is a 17 team parlay to this is to miss the playoff. Right, Jesse? Yes. So there is not a top 20 team here. Okay. So for this to work out and really I would argue, even if he wins, he's a loser ultimately in this equation. But if this hits, all we need to have happen is Clemson to miss the playoff. And South Carolina to miss the playoff. And Virginia and Arizona and Arizona State in Kansas and Vanderbilt in Kentucky. We're halfway there. UCLA needs to miss the playoff. Arkansas, Cincinnati, Colorado, Iowa State, Minnesota, Mississippi State and Stanford. Where could it go wrong? I can't even believe Fandals offering this. Where does it go wrong? So that very, very simple straightforward in your face, 17 team parlay for teams to miss the college football playoff. That returns right at one to one. You go bet $30 on it. Probably went about $30 on it. Did you add Syracuse at the bottom? So Syracuse is also going to be added into this. Oh, I get it because we couldn't fit him on the graphic. So we had to leave one school out. You Fran Brown, anti-Fran Brown stance that we've taken here. This is anti-logic and common sense is what this is. But you know what? Somehow it made its way onto the show. But I just wanted to illustrate for you. This is not just a world where you bet teams to make the playoff anymore. You can bet them to miss. You can parlay them to miss. My meme all raised me better than that. But you can do that sort of thing. Let's move on. Got chills just looking at the graphic. Someone asked us a question. Someone asked us a question about Ryan Day. Russ from Somerset, Pennsylvania said, did you see day, I assume, Ryan Day, say that he wouldn't mind a draft? Why would he want that? I thought we were talking militarily, but he's just talking about football. What a relief. So we did add that into the show. Now, here's what we know about Ryan Day. Most of us know Ryan Day to be a good and decent man. There are some circles of the Internet that would say otherwise. I rebuke them, though. Ryan Day has always been good to us. He's a friend of the program. And I am told that he was on Kevin Clark's show. Kevin Clark, a good and decent man, also a friend of the program, made some very, very, very questionable statements about the overall status of college football earlier today, which I also rebuke. But as we've said many times, smart people sometimes say casual things. Casual people rarely say smart things. Kevin Clark, clearly the former, not the latter. And that's not even what this is about. So we went and rounded up the footage. We hope we don't get sued for playing it. I'm going to let you hear what Ryan Day had to say with Kevin Clark, and then we will respond. Wave of Wanda, change anything about college football. What are you going with? Wave of Wanda is creating a structure that you can enforce rules and creating that. And that's not just like easy, I understand. You know, it's not too far fetched for me to think that there's a way that you could actually have a draft and build it like the NFL. I know that seems a little bit out there, but we're going to need a lot of help to get there. I could do that right now. That's not happening overnight. I think that there's, you know, once we started going down this road of NIL, we have to kind of go one of two ways, in my opinion. We almost have to go back to where we were before or we need to go all the way towards the NFL. I think right now we're sort of in purgatory. I would like to offer some free advice to a friend of the program, Ryan Day. Never mention that again. Not even because it's a bad idea. I don't like the idea, but it's not even that. It's that you're the head coach at Ohio State, man. You have averaged the number three recruiting class in the country over the last four years. You're the last person who wants a draft. This thing is working for you, not against you. Now, I do understand the points he's making. Ryan Day is a really smart guy. I understand the points he's making. What he's saying is I don't want limbo. Let's either have it the way it used to be or have it the way they do it. If we're going to try and emulate the NFL, let's go all the way down the rabbit hole. It's not hanging out in the middle. The view is not good here. The ventilation is not good here. So let's go one way or the other. In principle, I get that. OK. This is April. This is not August. If it were August, we would be breaking down fall camp scrimmages. We'd be figuring out depth charts, putting out bold predictions. We got to get ready for the season. This is April. God gave us April so our minds can wonder. Ryan Day's just did. Kevin Clark allowed it right there on his platform. Kevin Clark platformed a college football draft idea. He platformed it. I'm just reacting. OK, so let's let our minds wonder for just a second. Little daydream never hurt anyone. I clearly prefer the old model. This goes without saying I'm very much a traditionalist. I really, really love the idea that in college football, you select where you're going instead of being selected. I enjoy that. I am not the person who sits here and bangs the drum that we need to fully emulate the NFL, although I do concede that there are certain facets of this whole thing, the NFL figured out a long time ago, that college football needs to figure out. So I think I strike a good balance on that front. I love the culture of recruiting, the classical culture of it, not what it is right now, which I can't stand. I love message board culture. I love official visit culture. I love all of it. So yes, Ryan Day offered two scenarios there. I clearly prefer the old way we did it. That doesn't mean that I am daydreaming that we can somehow go back in time. Not that. I think you could get structure into the sport via rules that are enforceable that could loosely make recruiting return to the way it once was, albeit with a lot more money involved, but money doesn't ruin the whole thing. As long as there is structure in the way that works, that's fine with me. But, but that's not a fun segment. And that's really not what he spent a majority of his time talking about. What he did there was he said, you know, either we go back to the way we used to do it or we just fully commit to the NFL way of doing things and have a college football draft. And he did understand that that would go over like a lead balloon. And he said, I know that sounds crazy. And it does. Yeah, of course it does. So, but. We should either do one of the other. Now. I was thinking earlier today. Yes, I could come in and talk about why this is a bad idea. Hey, it's probably never going to happen. But like I said, it's April. And so I started saying to myself, self, how would this work? How would this happen? And my mind spent a lot more time on it than I thought it would. That's why we added it into the show tonight. So here's the first question. All right, I'm not even asking you to support it. We all know I don't. And I'm not even going to say like it's Ryan Day's idea. I'm sure Ryan Day is not the first person to float this. But Ryan Day is the biggest name attached to this. So we are now labeling it. Ryan Day's college football draft idea. He's the face of this idea now. How many teams would participate in this? Just humor me for a second. If you're driving around right now, if you're watching live, if you're watching the replay, if it's two weeks after the show aired, how would this work? Do you think would we really have one hundred and thirty eight teams participating in a draft? Would it be just the power for teams? Would we have? I don't know what we would call it. Super conference teams, maybe like the Big Ten and the SEC. How would that work? Would you draft your full class? Would you draft 25 players or would you have maybe 10 spots that you draft? And then the rest of it, you fill out via what the NFL would call undrafted free agents or what we would call, I don't know, recruits. I guess we would just revert them to recruits. Would it be a regional pool? Would it be a national pool? So if you were in Seattle and it's Jed Fish's turn, is he just free to draft kids from Fort Lauderdale? Is that how that works? Or is it split up into regions and whatnot? Also, is there an educational piece of this at this point whatsoever? Let's say that I'm a high four star linebacker from Millbrook, Alabama. That's great. Let's say Brent Key needs a linebacker at Georgia Tech. He drafts me. And on the plus side, I exhibit all the characteristics that Brent Key is looking for in a Georgia Tech linebacker. On the downside, I am an idiot who is barely getting by in the classroom. I'm probably not cut out to make it educationally, academically at Georgia Tech. Are we even doing school anymore? Or are we we really just majoring in football, which I've always argued should have been a curriculum based major to begin with. But that's not what this is about. So how are we working that? But then think about this. Once we answer all those questions, however, we answer them. Can you just imagine for a second the build up to a college football draft? I don't even know where on the calendar we would have it. I would prefer it to be in February. But can you imagine the build up to a college football draft? Can you imagine NACOS? How many mot drafts would Pete NACOS put out? If he found free time, break in college basketball, portal news, would Pete sleep? What would he just hang from the rafters for a few hours at night like a bat? How would he even? I don't know. I worry about him. I really worry about our little angel sometimes. Can you imagine the night before the college football draft? Where would we have the college football draft? Do you think? College Football Hall of Fame or somewhere really sketchy? I don't know. We'll workshop that. I mean, how do you decide the draft order? Do you go like the NFL does? I don't think that would fly. Well, actually, a lot of this won't fly. But I really don't think that Mississippi State just gets the number one pick. I really don't think that we're rewarding Rutgers or who finished last in the big 10 last year. Not a boy, Jesse. Bari Odom will pull the nose up there, by the way. I regret to inform you that it was Purdue at the bottom of the barrel last year. Are they drafting number one overall? Like if if we were to take the recruiting class from a few years ago and we were to place them now, is Arch Manning playing his college ball in West Lafayette, Indiana? Is that the world that Ryan Day is advocating for? Sounds like it. Sounds like it. How do we determine order is a really, really good question. Anyway, if you let your mind wander and I'm not so sure it's a smart idea, but if you let your mind wander on this at the very least, like it's I have this really, really crazy idea. I'm not ready to share it yet. Anyway, there are some crazy ideas in college, football or in sports that you know are crazy, you know, they're insane. But if you just push the insanity to the side for a second and you just entertain the idea for the sake of the idea, this is one of those ideas that you start to say, you know, even though I hate it, there's some of this that would be incredible. Not enough of it for me to advocate for it, mind you. But some of it would be incredible. Ryan Day, the face of the college football draft. Yep. I need to remind you about something because we got a little little line drop to us from friend of the program, Matt, who runs Magnolia Foundation the other night. So a quick reminder what the Magnolia Foundation is. That's the charity that we partner with here at Pate State. And the Magnolia Foundation was born about six years ago as of March after a tornado came through Nashville and had several people lose their lives in that tornado. My building got hit by the tornado, but we didn't lose anybody in our building. But over across the river, they did. Matt's little girl was one of those children that were part of, I think, the 23 people overall that were killed in that tornado. And then they were faced with the very, very unenviable task of burying a child and also the expenses that come along with that. And so they came out of that and realized we're starting a foundation to help people so they don't have to deal with what we just have to dealt with, at least from a cost standpoint. And they do great work with this phenomenal work. We partnered with them last year. And two ways that you can give, you can either just go to the Magnolia Foundation dot com slash give if you want to do it directly. We also put Magnolia Foundation and Pate State themed merch like hats and shirts in the Pate State store at PateStateMaterial.com. And a portion of those proceeds go to the Magnolia Foundation. But anyway, I just wanted to let you know. Matt hits me up last night with this text quote, the state of Michigan loves you. I had totally out of nowhere a five thousand dollar donation from a guy in Michigan a couple of days ago. I sent him a thank you and he hit us back and said that he connected to us through your show. Appreciate you. This isn't even the first. That's actually not close to the first text like that I've gotten from him. The Detroit airport came through because I am in the Detroit airport frequently. Someone at the Detroit airport heard us mention them on the show and then saw the Magnolia Foundation call to action and the Detroit airport just stepped up. So the state of Michigan has gone above and beyond to help the Magnolia Foundation. But hey, all seriousness, we really appreciate that. A lot of you have done that. Like a lot of you have a lot of you have bought the merch and then a lot of you said, no, I just want to go give directly. How do I do that? Well, the Magnolia Foundation dot com slash give. That's how you do that. They do really, really good and really needed work. All right, we roll on. I got a few more things that I want to get to in the show. I went down to Alabama last week, spent a couple of days there in Tuscaloosa. I watched Alabama scrimmage. They got their spring game this Saturday, hung out with Kailin DeBoer for a little while, Kane Walmack down there. You know, there's a lot of the folks that you know at Alabama. I was there as they were introducing the new women's basketball coach, Jesse. I didn't tell you this. And they thought I was somebody asked me, you cover women's basketball. And I didn't deny it. And I thought about walking in the press conference and asking a question, but I didn't do it because that would be unprofessional. That's not how we carry ourselves. But congratulations, new basketball higher down there. So being around Kailin DeBoer, we of course did the full sit down interview. That's available on the channel right now. If you haven't seen it yet, well, there's some surveillance footage of it. I didn't know we had that. But there's some footage of the press shot as he was doing 37 other jobs that day. That's fully available. I think we went like 35 or 40 minutes and then spent several more hours with him. And just here's the thing that I take away from Kailin DeBoer. You may on the outside think, boy, heading into year three, especially with the way last year ended and they couldn't run the ball. And now you've got a possibly a first round quarterback departing at the very least, a high draft pick quarterback departing and you've got to have a new QB start. Like there's probably going to be a lot of nervousness. Because boy, now if you finish, if you finish sub par this year, hot seat talk really ramps up. I don't know if maybe they shot him in the neck with a shrink dart before I walked in. People have done that before. So absent that scenario, I'm just telling you, that guy doesn't really exhibit those kind of characteristics. Now, that's kind of always the way he's been. That's kind of always been my observation. He was never really impacted by the whole taking over for Saban thing. The way that the general public and maybe the media thought that he would be. So, I mean, he's very, very laid back. I don't mean laid back in a laxadaisical way. I mean, unaffected by any kind of outside noise sort of way. But I'll tell you what what stood out to me is the awareness of their problems last year is very much existent inside that building. So it's not a mystery to them. Boy, we struggled to run the ball last year. What stands out the most obvious generic as I can with this. What stands out the most when you talk to Kailin DeBoer, for example, about why they struggled to run in the ball last year versus what your own eyes tell you or what maybe, you know, other people in media would say or what a fan would say is the depth of understanding and the ability to diagnose problems. So that's that's very, very convoluted. If you're a fan and you're watching Alabama and they can't run the ball or you're a member of the media or if you're watching me, I'm watching them, they can't run the ball. I'm thinking something's wrong with the offensive line, something's wrong with the tailbacks, something's wrong with play calling, whatever, that's just typically your go-tos if you can't run the ball. What's really mind boggling is when you talk to a coach, in this case, Kailin DeBoer, who has a history on the offensive side of the ball to hear them diagnose it and to watch them get on the board and diagnose it and to watch them throw all 22 up and them diagnose it. The depth of understanding about how to diagnose problems for real high level minds like professionals, longtime coaches in this game, it really makes you sit back and decide whether you ever want to question stuff publicly again, because even in this case, everybody knows Alabama sucked running the ball last year. But even in properly diagnosing the issue, you realize how far off in some cases you are on diagnosing the reasons why. I hope that makes sense. And I will say that to say this, I think the watching them scrimmage, I think the upside on this team is higher than last year's team. And that's not even knowing who's going to start at quarterback this year. So I will say this, going into spring, I had taken a pretty definitive stance, hey, this is probably going to be Kailin Russell's job. I think it's going to be his job. I'm really, really much back to 50-50 on that. So it's not that actually neither one of them overly stood out. I don't mean they were both bad. I mean, neither stood out over the other in watching them, talking to people around the building. This is not one of those manufactured, made for media quarterback battles, very legitimate quarterback battle. But I will tell you this, both of them have tremendous velocity on the ball when it comes out of their hand. And you just sort of start to think about maybe some of the things that plus a legitimate high caliber RPO game could open up for them that they may not have possessed last year. That's the first thing that stands out. The second thing that stands out about them is how much bigger they are with their front line defensive guys than they were a year ago. And some of that's via transfer. And they were really, really intentional about that. And it's noticeable when you look at Alabama's defensive starters out on the field. Not all of them were there on the field when I was watching, but the ones that were there. Big time, noticeable difference. The length and the secondary, the height and length and their secondary. I'm not sure. I can't just think about this off the top of my head. I don't catalog my mind like this. I'm not sure I've ever seen more just straight up length in a secondary in college football than Alabama has right now. They got a couple of six forward guys. I got a six three guy back there and they got a transfer from Mercer. Jesse, we got to circle him. We got to circle him because we don't talk about that much. We don't see many Mercer transfers in the SEC coming in and shine. And there's another kid there. I mentioned him last year and I'm going to mention him again. Ivan Taylor, it's Ike Taylor's son. I think is a really good player and it just so happens. He's on a team where Keon Sab and Bray Hubbard are coming back and he plays the same position they do. Ivan Taylor starting at like 97 or 8 percent of schools in America right now. And they're not keeping him off the field this year. And I don't really know how that works itself out. He's a really good player. And this is not a coach telling me this. This is me telling you this. He's going to have a big role for them this year in some shape, form or fashion. They took some guys in the portal. Noah Rogers stood out the day I was there. Any of you who have listened to scrimmage in tough Alabama, you probably heard that Noah Rogers is a transfer wide receiver from NC State. Impact guy, impact guy. So it's just three years in now. There's very little. Would we call it residue from the Saban era? Like there's there's not a lot of holdover from the Saban era still there. Some of the people are still there. But more and more is the year years go on. You lessen the amount of people who were there because of the natural churn in the sport, the roster is like Bray Hubbard was a Saban guy. Most of these other guys have come in after Saban left. So it is fully Kailin DeBoer's team. It's fully his program. It always has been since he's been there. I just mean it's now fully his thumb print. There there's not a whole lot of yeah, but these are the guys, these are the girls that he chose to be in that building. And these are the players that they chose to be on that team. The one thing I think that stands out that they did in their portal strategy is they went and got a lot of captains off of other teams. Caleb Woodson is an example of that. Like he'll start at linebacker for them. He's walked in from Virginia Tech and immediately I think grabbed a starting spot at linebacker for him and it's a former captain up there. And that's not the only one that fits that description. So it was a good trip down there. Went and checked out some softball. Thought Texas looked like the best team in the country. Jesse, they really skull drug Bama the night I was there. And then the following two nights, Bama beat him, took the series number one team in the country right now, I think. And I may try and make a trip to Oklahoma City this year. Maybe for Storm Chasing, maybe for the Women's College World Series, maybe both. We'll see. They're watching us in Moultrie, Georgia, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, San Jose, California. Thank you guys so much. We talked about hardest schedules, hardest starts to schedules last week. Well, Steve from Johns Island, South Carolina hit us up. He said, who are some teams that could get off to a hot start due to an easy starting schedule? Well, I got five of them right here. Notre Dame's number one. Notre Dame's got a pretty soft schedule throughout. This is called balls and strikes as we see them. Food alert in week two. Notre Dame will play rice and before that they'll play Wisconsin in Green Bay. They will play Michigan State at Purdue and at North Carolina after that. Now, we ran the numbers. That's five games. That's four power four teams. The four power four teams that Notre Dame plays to start the year combined for 14 wins last year or put another way. The four power four teams that Notre Dame plays to start the year combined for less wins than Indiana had last year. And Indiana was just one team. Really good team, but just one team. So I think Notre Dame stands a pretty good chance. I think that explains their fan dual odds right now to make the playoffs. They've got the second best odds to win the national title, by the way. Penn State will not escape this conversation. Penn State's out of conference schedule is just a pure abomination this year. They play Marshall at Temple and Buffalo. And then they play Wisconsin and then they play at Northwestern. I advocated for Matt Campbell to get this job. I wanted Matt Campbell to get this job. I thought he deserved it. I thought he was the best fit for Penn State. I'm not above cranking up the hot seat conversation if he loses one of these games. You got to do it, Jesse. OK, you're bringing a bunch of transfers. There's no time to experiment against Temple. You guys will have like a three to one crowd advantage there, too. So. Yes, like later in the year, USC comes to town. October 10th, you go to Michigan. And I know we were talking about starts, but that's the like that's the sort of the meat of the schedule there, because then you got some Purdue. Before you go to Washington, it's a very tough game. Minnesota Rutgers in Maryland. Matt Campbell, I don't know how much he paid attention to the schedule before he took the job, but it certainly didn't do anything to deter him taking the job. If he did look at the schedule, what about Kansas State? We don't want to lose to food, but we also don't want to lose to money. And they play Nichols in week one. So we don't want to lose to them. You remember back when Kirby took the Georgia job? Nichols State took Georgia down to the wire in Athens. Everyone's forgotten about that game. Frankly, like Nichols should have won the game. We don't say that much on this show should have. Because Mima always said if you should have, you would have. But Kansas State, they're bringing Nichols to town and then they bring the ghost of Washington State to town and then they bring Tulane to town. Now, I know that maybe five years ago that out of conference portion there, Washington State and Tulane, it would have looked legitimate. I don't know how legitimate those tests will be this year. And then they hop into conference play. They go to Cincinnati, draft and portal ravaged Cincinnati. And then they got to buy and then they play Houston. The big 12, like there are a lot of teams that have good out of conference tests. Baylor is going to play Auburn. Arizona State plays A&M. You got the Iowa State thing. Kansas plays Missouri. Oklahoma State plays Oregon. Kansas just kind of it's not that they didn't try. This is not a Penn State mail it in job on out of conference scheduling. This is they tried to schedule decently out of conference and the wheel just didn't spin their way, not that they're mad at it, but it does make for a pretty soft opening for Colin Klein and company up there. Pitt, oh, Pitt, they play Miami. Of Ohio in week one, they play UCF and Syracuse the next two weeks all at home. UCF and Syracuse are each bottom five teams in the odds to win their respective conferences just to give you an idea of where they stack up. Then they play Bucknell. Great basketball school historically like they've made some runs. Disunfortunately, is 11 on 11 football. And then they do dive into conference play. And look, I'm not claiming this is some easy trip to Virginia Tech. However, everybody, including me, is out here thinking James Franklin is just going to have a good year, year one. We don't know that. We have no clue what they're going to look like. So James Franklin, year one, like that's and then you get Bill Belichick, year two, pick your poison there. When does the schedule really bow its neck? It doesn't really do that until late October. And then lastly, it's kind of more difficult when you go to the SEC, because all these schedules look the same. I would say Alabama has the most workable early portion of the SEC schedule because they got East Carolina to open the season. And then they go to Kentucky, Florida State at home, South Carolina at home at Mississippi State. Alabama should start five and no. Should have means whatever you want it to mean. But there are two conference games. People are calling me who have no business calling me. One of these guys claims to cover Alabama calling me right now. Kentucky, South Carolina and Mississippi State are their first three conference games. Those are three of the bottom five teams in the SEC odds right now. So they don't let K contrary to popular belief, they don't let Alabama draw up its own schedule in the league office. If they did, though, I'm not sure that they would draw it up much differently than this. So those are some of the schedules that I'm looking at. Next up, 743, Jesse Timothy from Goodlitzville, Tennessee hit us up and said, a lot of people talk about the loudest stadiums, but what is your favorite place to go for a game? This is good because most of the time we get asked what Timothy just said, loudest stadiums or toughest places to play in all that. We've done that a lot. I don't know the last time I was asked my favorite place to go. But since Timothy asked, I will tell you it's an easy answer for me. Notre Dame. Notre Dame is my favorite place to go. Notre Dame is my favorite game day environment. It's my favorite game day experience. Now, look, whatever age I am, some say late 30s, some say early 40s, Wikipedia says 55, but we're going to get that fixed. Whatever you think about me, mentally, I'm like 115 years old in a sense that I really, really appreciate the history and the pageantry and the tradition of college football. And there is no place that's done a better job of balancing that while modernizing itself than Notre Dame, because there are parts of the experience when you go to a Notre Dame game that look and feel no different than watching the movie Rudy or 20 years before Rudy was made or 30 years before Rudy was made, except everything's in color instead of black and white. Awesome. Last game I was up there was the Ohio State game two years ago, probably topped out at 70 degrees that day, low humidity, clear blue skies. I don't know that I've ever been part of a more pristine college game day experience than that. And the best way that I can describe this place, if you have not been to a game there, to equate it to another sport is what's going on right now at Augusta National. The way I feel when I'm at Notre Dame is the way I feel when I watch the Masters, when I look at the grounds there at Augusta National. There's like a such a reverence that I have for it that like I would refuse to play at Augusta, even if they let me, because I'm not a good golfer. I would think it's disrespectful if anyone ever turned me loose there, but I would love to go walk the course. And at Notre Dame, you can't mess up the field because it's turf. So that's good. But I feel the same way there. The first time I ever went up there for a game was 20, it was either 16 or 17 when Georgia was up there. And we drove from Columbus, Georgia to South Bend, Indiana and back. Those are different times. That was what the budget would allocate and allow. And after the game was over, I'd never been there before. I'd really never been out of the South before to go to a football game. After the place emptied out, I just stood in there. I walked, we were about to leave. We went to press conferences. We walked out and I remember walking back out of the tunnel, which I was trying to figure out which tunnel was the one that Fortune stood in and talked about how you don't have to prove nothing to nobody, Jesse. If you don't get that now, you never will. I think I may have gotten the right tunnel. But nevertheless, I just stood there for like 10 minutes. And all you could hear was leaf blowers cleaning the stadium out, soaked it in. I love Notre Dame, man. I love going up there. That's my number one. The other one close behind and this is going to blow your mind is a neutral site game. It's the only neutral site game that we openly advocate for on this show. And it is the Red River Shootout known by some as what is it? They call it the rivalry right now. They change the name every few years. Not here. It's the Red River Shootout. It's at the Cotton Bowl every year. The Cotton Bowl built shortly after the Civil War, I think. Two or three years after the Civil War, still standing. It's amazing. It's infected. It's infested with locusts, but that's not a problem for me. I love it. One tunnel in, one tunnel out. And if you walk up the tunnel, it's the Texas State Fair taking place outside during the game. There's the footage from a few years ago. You may think, oh, that was shot before the game. Oh, this must have been shot after the game. No, this is half time of the game. Wham, nailed it, Jesse. First try. I still got the chicken head. They handed me at the fair for making that shot. You see the credential on the belt. You just walk right back in. I would not advise that if you're just a patron at the game. But I took advantage of our credentialed status. Got some funnel cake, walked right back in. What I love about that place. And I know this has changed in the last year. What I love about it is there's minimal luxury. Now, if you're if you're wanting the comforts of the modern environment like exist across town at AT&T Stadium, you're not going to find it there. That makes for a great environment because that means die hard fans are there. Very, very few people go to OU, Texas for the social event. Very few go there like you would go to a stadium or a game at a big stadium. And you're the game's happening. But, you know, you got your back to it and you're talking to friends in your suite. Or, you know, one of those ridiculous sweets on the field where you can't even see because people are standing in front of you, but you don't really care because you're not there for the game anyway. That doesn't exist at the Red River shootout. It's just artillery after everyone scores because Texas and OU both have some version of gunfire that happens after touchdowns. There's if it's not windy, there's like a ceiling of smoke that just floats above the stadium. Also, as the game goes on, as the day goes on, the smell of fair food wafts in because it's not a double decker. It is a double decker stadium. It's kind of low double decker. So the smells from outside can come in. Sometimes that's a bad thing, but in this case, it's a good thing. So you give me Notre Dame if I'm going to a campus. You give me OU, Texas, the Cotton Bowl if I'm going neutral site. And give me FanDuel for the exclusive odds provider of this show. Now, as you know, the Masters is going on right now. I know a lot of you are wagering on it. I'm happy to report that the Mulligan Betback Token is a feature that exists right now on FanDuel. What that looks like is if you go bet on anything, Masters related and you lose, it's not fun, but at least you're covered with a betback token. What that means is you go and you if you win, you win, you get rewarded for it. If you lose, you get punished just not nearly as much. You look in your account and there'll be a free bonus bet there. Now, you only get one of these. That's how Mulligans work. You don't get infinite amounts of them, but you will get one. My advice is take it. That was five dollars, Jesse, something like that. Take it and go find someone who is a fairly long shot still to win this thing. But but is within the bubble of winability. That's what I would do. That's what I will do with my Mulligan Best Bet. You guys can do whatever you want to with it. Must be twenty one plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC. First on my real money wager only five dollar first deposit required. Bonus issued as non with trouble bonus bets, which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit fanduel.com. RG call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit ndgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24 seven support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. We finish with the truth. The truth is in my hand right now. We've been doing the truth teller series. We pick someone. We pick something. We try and tell the truth about them. And tonight the wheel landed on SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. This is just me pausing, envisioning what the comments are going to look like. I think the truth about Greg Sankey is impossible to nail down. SEC Homer, that's not what I mean. What I mean is I think you've got the truth, you know, black and white, two plus two equals four, sky is blue. And then you've got your truth. Chocolate ice cream is the best. And when it comes to Greg Sankey, I think it's a it's a lot less black and white and a bunch of shades of gray with him only because your perspective on this is going to heavily depend on the chair you sit in. And so I look at his job, his job description is commissioner of the SEC, right? Not commissioner of college football. It's not in his job description to oversee things in the best interest of college football as much as we would love for it to just be assumed in every decision maker's role. This is not a fairytale world. It's not quite Shawshank, but it's somewhere between the two, probably leaning a little bit more towards Shawshank in the attitude you have to have when you're the SEC commissioner or the Big Ten commissioner or whatever. And so I was trying to look at it through that lens because Greg Sankey says things sometimes I can't stand, but it's not even cause he's wrong. It's just because I'm viewing it from a different chair than he is. He's over there doing his job. And for everyone who looks at some of the things he says or some of the stances he takes going and poaching OU, Texas. It's a good example. I hated when OU in Texas came to the SEC because I hated how inflated it made one league. I hated how it gutted another league, just like I hated when the Big Ten expanded, hated it. But I stopped short of looking at it and saying, shame on Greg Sankey for going and being so greedy and selfish as to get OU in Texas because here's the reality of it. Either Greg Sankey does it when it's on the table to be done or he's fired and someone else takes his place and they do it. Like there's no option, in other words, for Greg Sankey to hear the knock on the door, open the door. It's OU, Texas. Hello. We're two of the most prized assets in college athletics. We're looking to move. Are you interested? He can't say no because if he says no, they just go up the road to the Big Ten and then you get fired. And if you say no to them, you get fired. So my point's always been, I don't have to love the way things are. But I can also look at decisions being made that create the current environment and understand, yeah, some of these folks are doing what they have to do. Now, look, even if Greg Sankey didn't have to do it, maybe he still would have done it. I don't know. But I look at, I try and look at these decisions that I don't like through those lenses, that's not to make, you know, a permanent escape hatch for placing blame on him or anything like that. I just think it's worthwhile to consider that lens. There is what I want college football to be, which is regional, much more evenly distributed, much more competitively balanced. And the fact of the matter is that is not what Greg Sankey goes into work every day thinking about. Greg Sankey goes into work every day thinking about positioning his conference in the best position it could possibly be in, because ultimately who he's answering to, they don't really care about the status of the Pac-12. I wish they did. I wish they did. I wish that there was a whole lot more collective understanding that maybe in some cases it benefits us to take a step back if it means the sport gets to take two or three steps forward because in the aggregate, everyone wins more. I love that. In college athletics, at least, I love that. We can have a whole separate conversation about societal implications of that mentality. Sports has always been a natural preserve. So there are a lot of things I would advocate for in sports that I would never advocate for on the streets. And I wish everyone thought that way. I wish everyone made decisions that way. I think the truth of the matter with Greg Sankey is he's been a very, very effective commissioner for the SEC. I think out of these names, he is clearly the most powerful commissioner. And I'd even go a step further. Let's record this is April 9th. How should I word this? I think there are some measures that Greg Sankey is fighting right now, namely the overhauling of the Sports Broadcasting Act and the pooling of the media rights and whatnot. And then in my world, I think that probably ends up combined with the Score Act. Anyway, it creates this whole new ecosystem, a collectively bargained ecosystem where there is more money being distributed to football as well as non-revenue sports, more structure, more rules. And this serves to benefit the entire landscape more so than just the SEC or the Big Ten. I think Greg Sankey is the commissioner of that. If it's not me, Jesse, I think Greg Sankey is the commissioner of that one day. Like I think he's in a really weird position because I think there's some stuff he's fighting against right now that if he loses the battle, he still ends up winning. That's how I sort of see the future for Greg Sankey. And that's, I don't know, it's always been really weird because I respect the job that he has means he's going to have to make decisions I hate sometimes. I kind of get that. I always ask, man, if I were in his position, would I have done anything different? And a lot of times the decisions I hate, I also find myself saying, yeah, I hate it, but I think I may have had to do the same thing if I were him. Not great, not terribly though. That's our show tonight, the over hit by a few minutes. It is what it is. Still got out of here in under an hour. Appreciate you guys. We'll be back Sunday. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and tell a friend or two to do it as well until Sunday for director Bradley, producer Jesse, I'm Josh Paite. Take care. Have a great weekend and God bless. Or 18 plus and present in DC. First online real money wager only $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets, which expire seven days after receipt restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandual.com gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit fandual.com slash RG. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit ndgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24 seven support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8HOPE NY or text HOPE NY in New York. This is an I Heart podcast.