Tennessee begins QB battle + Army/Navy game open to moving date

On today's College Football Inquirer, a court ruling leads to a good old-fashioned quarterback competition like your grandpa used to watch at the University of Tennessee. We'll break that down. Plus, could Army, Navy move to Thanksgiving weekend? And could that be the key to unlocking a more elegant college football schedule that does not stretch almost to February? We'll talk about it all today on the College Football Inquirer. Hey everybody, this is Andy Staples from the College Football Inquirer. The college football season is wrapped up, but it is never too early to start planning for next season. And when you do, go to the GameTime app for all your ticketing needs. I'm looking right now at tickets to Lane Kiffin's LSU debut with the Clemson Tigers coming to Baton Rouge. You can get in for as little as $242. And when you're using the GameTime app, you can see exactly where you'd be sitting in Tiger Stadium. You turn your phone, it's like you're turning your head. GameTime is so easy to use. I used it when my wife woke up one morning and said, Hey, I'm taking our daughter to the Ares Tour, the Taylor Swift concert in Miami tonight. You better get us some tickets right now. And of course, I went to GameTime and they had all the tickets I needed. I love that the price you see is the price you pay. There are no hidden add-ons when you get to check out. Game Time has a lowest price guarantee. So if it's not the lowest price, they will credit you with 110% of the difference. And your purchase is covered with the most flexible customer service policy in the industry. 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 Inquirer, 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 is the college football inquire with ross dellender and steven godfrey i am andy staples and guys the court is leading to something interesting on the field which sometimes that happens but i i feel like this has become more of a public affairs reporting podcast where we did this court decision happened and this court decision happened well a court decision happened on Friday. And I'm more interested in what happens on the football field after this. So back up, Joey Aguilar, Tennessee quarterback. They kind of got him in a trade for Nico Iamaliava. He won another year at Tennessee. Tennessee was pretty cool with that. He goes to court to try to get it. Knoxville judge seemed like it'd be okay. Nope. Knoxville judge denies Joey Aguilar that extra year in court on Friday, which leads to Ross and Godfrey, something we talked about on Thursday's show that never happens anymore. Yeah. Quarterback, old-fashioned quarterback battle. Maybe that's what the judge really wanted. Maybe that's what he wanted to see the Vols have a big quarterback battle. What was funny about that reaction is what we saw a week before in Pittsburgh, Mississippi, right, was like a judge that was obviously very connected to Ole Miss and just sort of the way that whole trial played out with the judge getting emotional as he read the ruling. I still think he was just tired after reading for an hour. Trinidad signing stuff and invocation praying for an extended year of eligibility. Like all that that we saw. Seems normal. Clearly sort of this biased John Grisham type of playing out was kind of like the opposite. Right. We saw during the Nashville hearing or Knoxville hearing, which was a judge that was like kind of skewering the attorney. And then we see a ruling that kind of does the opposite of from the fan base. You saw the outpouring from the Ole Miss fans of right. Thank you, judge, you know, that stuff. And then you saw like, I think I saw a couple of social media messages from the Tennessee fan base of whoever that I forgot the judge's name there. But apparently it's an elected position. So a lot of people, a lot of the Tennessee fans are all right, guys, we've got to get together the next the next when he goes for runs for reelection. We can't forget that he denied and ruined our season. Was his what was his alma mater? I'm sure someone has this Tennessee. I thought it was Tennessee. Yeah, Tennessee. Yeah. So it's a bad fall. And the thing is, he's going to get his ribs spitting at Calhoun's. Yeah. Judging the judge in the Charles Bediaco case in Alabama, both went to the schools involved and both, quote unquote, betrayed the schools. But I'm not sure how mad that's in it, because as Ross pointed out, this is not an overwhelming sentiment from all Twitter, which all Twitter, when it gets on something, does not let go. It is a dog with a bone. these guys i think are kind of excited because they've got a yes couple of very heavily recruited quarterbacks one is a redshirt freshman one is a true freshman george mcintyre and fazon brandon they're gonna go at it this spring and and godfrey brought this up on thursday's show and it's fascinating because we just don't see this anymore these are two quarterbacks who were recruited out of high school by this school like when's the when's the last time we saw this yeah this is what i was curious about because either outcome of this decision was going to create something that doesn't really exist anymore now had joey aguilar been cleared to play i think we would have had a like a true college football first that i played out on the show right so you have the incumbent starter who's back who you would probably trust the most opening week and i I don't have their schedule in front of me, but it's not a soft opening for Tennessee. They have Georgia Tech at Georgia Tech week two. Their SEC opening is Texas and Auburn coming to Knoxville in weeks four and five. So, you know, you would want someone with game experience. But I started to think, you know, is college football going to create some sort of NFL model where you draft the future quarterback of the franchise? He signed a veteran and the veteran starts six, seven, eight, nine games into a 17 game schedule. And then eventually you sort of graduate in the rookie in what is clearly a transition year with best case scenario is you would then exit that season with one of these rookies, if you will, at Tennessee poised to take the reins. Now, in college football, what you would be really mortgaging, I think, is the idea that Tennessee could go to the playoff this year, which would be two years in a row after going in the first year of the 12. we all know that this is a uh volatile fan base i'll be nice this morning okay would they tolerate i don't think i'm being mean by saying they're incredibly demanding like i i have said that the tennessee head coach job is the highest pressure job in sports other than like new york yankees manager i think it's a higher pressure job than alabama coach there's a lot of i don't want to bog the segment down there's a lot of reasons for that good like geography the fact that there's no pro like that part of the state of Tennessee where I'm at is like there's no pro teams it's Tennessee football sometimes women's basketball and until Vitello had baseball going like it was a year-round concern which is a problem when Tennessee wasn't living up to their standards so all that being said now of course we don't have the Aguilar we don't have the weird NFL situation although I do think someone's going to have to reckon with that eventually in college football but the way we're bringing back veteran quarterbacks but now well we have Tennessee almost did remember Tennessee tried to get Sam Levitt. Yeah, they tried to get, right? Yes. So, but okay. Let's say it was Aguilar. Let's say it was Levitt. What are we doing here? I'm fascinated. What that signals to me is that this Tennessee program believes they have to be in a win-now mode. That they cannot float out another transition year. And by the way, no one, none of us, would fault Heupel and staff for what happened last year. You lost your, like, your quarterback was probably going to be your best player last year in Nico. You lost him in the spring. You bring in a transfer. I thought they acquitted themselves admirably. Think about how close they were against Georgia in September, right? Like this was a good season, all things considered. Any way you cut this, whether Joey was back, whether they got Sam Levitt, or one of these freshmen starting, you are in a transition year again. You have to set up a quarterback to be successful in the SEC. We just saw this happen with Arch Manning at Texas. It is not easy. I don't care if the kid's got 11 stars next to his name. It is not easy to transition in a young quarterback into this league. So you have to somehow adjust the expectations this season for one of these kids, either Faison or the McIntyre kid, to eventually, like, do we think one of these kids is just going to win the battle in July and August outright and then start every snap this fall? Probably not, right? There's going to be some level of back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. And who knows? I mean, it depends on how things go. they might go into the season playing both of them. Yeah, they might go into fall camp with the battle still continuing, potentially to prevent anybody from leaving, even though there's no spring portal, let's be honest, right? We're going to probably see some sort of movement in the spring. But had they got Leavitt... Maybe not to a degree we've seen in the past. Ross, if they got Leavitt or if they kept Aguilar, would they have not risked losing both of them? Well, they would have probably... Yeah, in the January portal, they probably... Yeah, this is the question I kept asking Vols fans that I knew was like, hey guys aren't you yeah you're gonna be jammed up here and you're gonna mortgage your future to try and make what what like get in as like a 10 seed this year do you is your by the way is your defense ready for that you're in the first year of a gym nole system yeah unknown he did bring some players from penn state but that doesn't guarantee that they they get i mean ohio state took a couple of years with a bunch of veteran really good players took a couple years to really grasp it the other thing is they're sinking a lot of money into these quarterbacks it's not like signing high four star five star type quarterbacks is cheap so there's a lot of money invested in that room already and that was the thing with the levitt deal that's the one that set the alarm bells off and and you know you'll hear people say oh they were just trying to drive the price up on LSU they were just trying to to make it harder for no conference rival no they wanted Sam Levitt which if they had gotten Sam Levitt they would have had to pay him more than five million dollars for this year they would have had they would have been paying whatever they're paying George McIntyre and Faison Brannon which I would assume is high six low seven figures for both of them for each of them and i that's the other part i don't know what the plan is and it's interesting because i you i will give josh heupel and company a little grace on this because they had a plan like their original plan was we are going to go all in big time nil money on high school quarterbacks and the first big high school quarterback contract that actually got paid shout out jayton shawta uh is nico amaliaba they had nico he redshirted he was the starter they went to the playoff he was supposed to come back for his second year as the starter and after spring practice he bolts so like the the plan was that always going to be that this either nico was going to have a great year last year and go pro and you'd have george and faze on going to battle for this job right now, or Nico would still be there for one more year, and they would then battle it out for the starting job in 27. That got squelched. The fact that Aguilar was good in the offense was a happy accident. Do you think that's going to scare away the coaches who have the similar plan of spending big on high school quarterbacks? I wonder if this situation, and just the in general the success that we've seen from transfer veteran transfer sort of quarterback especially in the playoff I wonder if that's going to change the way coaches who maybe are going to lean on high schools Miami's quarterback that is a four-star but if you look at where he where he falls in the national rankings he's much lower than than these other guys at the schools that are competing for playoff spots and Miami has made it clear They've said we're a transfer quarterback school They planted the flag And I think that's a better use If that's what you want to be Be that And use your resources that way Don't try to be both Because if you are You're just going to end up wasting money LSU seems like they planted A similar flag in the last several years too I think when you combine the Ole Miss years That's a Kiffin philosophy Like Kiffin's going to find an experienced Hot hand who can handle that playbook as fast as possible, he does not want to develop anybody. I think he, like, if you look at the Ole Miss years now, plus what they've done at LSU, I think that's the signature. Now, this is going to backfire on somebody. It's going to, one of these teams that's over-indexed on paying a roster in 2026 is going to have a bad time with a transfer quarterback, and this is going to cause people to reevaluate, which is going to happen. Like, the math tells us that one of these transfer quarterbacks at one of these programs with national title expectations is going to have a bad time and then they're going to be stuck without an experienced quarterback and guess what or if you rotate it hurt yeah yeah no same thing but if you keep rotating transfers like this Miami philosophy for instance and one goes bust does that mean that you turn around and say all right well now we're going to take a freshman we're going to develop him over a couple course of a couple years all of this boils down to it's it's not the development philosophy this boils down to one thing and it doesn't matter if you're Miami or if you're Tennessee with different quarterback philosophies what you are telling us and what I guess what the fans are telling you inside the established inside the coaching establishment is zero patience when now all the time automatically when now all the time and that expectation doesn't really reward either philosophy because quarterback play is not a constant at the collegiate level right it's even And if you take an Arch Manning, you have to develop him. And then if you're constantly spinning the dial on a transfer, you're not always going to get Will Howard or Fernando Mendoza winning a U.N. national title. We're going to have a situation here. I'm going to go ahead and predict this where a veteran transfer, maybe it's Sam Levitt, I don't know, is going to underperform relative to the expectations on a financially loaded team. And it's going to cause a lot of these programs to reevaluate. we kind of saw it at Texas Tech last year. I mean, that was a quarter... Well, they re-evaluated because they had the homegrown quarterback who turned out to not be good enough at the level that they needed him to be, and they went out and got the guy in the portal. They went out and got Brendan Soresby. Am I just... But am I just getting rid of everything I've learned from coaches the entire time I've been doing this gig that, no offense to Cincinnati, but Brendan Soresby is going to be poised for greatness? like like I'm asking here no no it's it's a good question no yeah they Joey McGuire will tell you and I had Joey McGuire on my on three show last week that that the guy they ID That the guy they wanted And the thing is we can say that now but then somebody can just come back and say OK, did you see that out of Fernando Mendoza leaving Cal? Did you know Fernando Mendoza was going to be that good when he left Cal? And the answer is no. None of us predicted that. Well, it's going to be interesting to look back on the very high price, the highest price we've ever seen cycle of quarterback transfer this past year and sort of see how they did. Right. Levitt at LSU, Sorsby at Texas Tech, Indiana. His name is escaping me. TCU quarterback. Josh Hoover. Hoover. Yeah, Josh Hoover at Indiana. Am I missing any more really high-profile quarterbacks? It'd be interesting to look back, you know, this time of year. It felt like there were fewer Darius Mensah going to Miami. Ah, yes, of course. I feel like every person that you just named should write Fernando Mendoza a thank you note. Yeah. Because they made at least a couple million more because of what he did in the national championship game. Well, there was such a small group, to Andy's point like it just wasn't it was a small group and as somebody who was sort of in this market mentioned to me during the market um it's just it wasn't a very talented as as future us past years it wasn't very talented like pool so thus actually the price got higher because it was such a small pool guess what that's called and guess what that's called they tried to get demond williams into the pool that would have added more talent that's like staying at washington that's a full telly that we we had tosh the point on my on three show the story he tells of his first day on the job at cal where he gets up in the team meeting and he's gonna he's gonna call out jks and say we need you and jks isn't there and tosh scraps the rest of the day and books a commercial flight to hawaii and winds up poor kin yeah winds up at jk with jks at like 1 a.m. Hawaii time hammering out a deal like that that's how important this is and because to your point yeah it people staying so DeMond Williams JKS Arch Manning obviously wasn't going anywhere the the quarterbacks who who people feel have the highest upside wound up staying where they are well DeMond Williams stayed because he had to yeah well yeah right but he stayed yeah you you You can argue the reasons why, but he stayed. He stayed because the lawyers told him to. You know what all this sounds like? This sounds like the Kirk Cousins contract. This sounds like, you know, I'm trying to think of another veteran quarterback that's just constantly over-indexing on, you know, his value. But you know why that is? When is the last time a legitimately good NFL quarterback hit free agency? It does not happen. And possibly we're seeing the college football market, which is evolving very quickly. And but tracking exactly the same way the NFL one does. Yeah, it may be that when you have a guy who seems good, a JKS type player, a DeMond Williams type player, you will do whatever you can to make sure that person does not leave. Did you guys ever get this phenomenon when you start with like years ago in college football? you know we're college football centric year round and then you would start to do like nfl radio about this time of year because the draft people would start asking and what i noticed every single year that i ever did this was that people the nfl draft people would always start with this incredibly overinflated focus on quarterbacks that we knew were not going to pan out like i remember specifically having arguments on the radio and being like guys bischie ryan tannahill is not gonna be your solution you know stuff like that and this is now the top end of college is doing the same thing it feels like we got into a bidding war for sam levitt and brendan soresby what this is normal okay okay so maybe it boomerangs back the other way because interestingly enough a coach who we all like and who every time a job opens we say oh you got to call him and make him say no marcus freeman marcus freeman rents sam hartman he rents riley leonard and now they have cj carr who they developed themselves yeah they got two more freshmen coming in this year who are very highly rated it feels like notre dame is trying to go back to the the old model yeah can we in two guys while you develop a guy for two yeah i mean i mean And if we go back and look at what happened with DeMond, don't think that's not going to be replicated by all the other schools in conferences with the Big Ten has done with their agreement. So if you think about there's going to be more players sort of locked in in the future, you better start developing your high school players because there might not be a pool left. So hit on a five-star that you really believe in. Basically get better at evaluation. lock him in as a freshman and for the first two years go out and spend money on one-year rentals it's like starting a bourbon company you can't start a bourbon company unless you buy juice from somebody else you're going to explain that andy to the people yeah it's like starting a bourbon company okay bourbon is aged bourbon must be aged yeah and you can't just say i'm starting a bourbon company today and then figure out your mash bill and all of a sudden you're bottling bourbon because what you get you know right away is you could you just could have started 12 years ago yeah 12 years from now but what but if you start a bourbon company if you want to start one now and have a product within a couple of years you can buy you can buy juice as they call it from other distilleries so that's sam hartman and riley leonard at notre dame while while cj car was in the barrel but when car completes you need to go out find another high school talent that you want to build around and then get back into the rental cycle for two years i think it's two and two well no no but noah grubbs is coming from my alma mater lake mary high school in lake mary florida led him to a state championship he's he's he's a freshman at notre dame who just enrolled okay so you're saying another quarterback reclassify all right from 27 to 26 now you don't need to do a car yeah he's saying you don't really need to do that so rental one year rental second year guy that you developed under them then you start a cycle of quarterback development yeah you start saying yeah that's the thought yeah now if i'm sure somebody comes along um again it depends on how the contracts and how the whole model changes right if these players are going to be locked in to their deals or if we're going to end up getting collective bargaining blah blah blah whatever but like so that all that could change but like i would think the development is where you want to be seeing where what happened with the demand situation in others in this pool this pool was very shallow of quarterbacks this past year for a reason i either they didn't want to leave their school they couldn't like demand couldn't leave their school so i think everybody's got to be sort of on the lookout for um you know back to developing your your quarterback on the problem andy is that that's a fantastic system and marcus freeman might be capable of doing it because of the Notre Dame brand and yada, yada, yada. And people want to get the Notre Dame degree, so they'll have to leave staying three, four years. Except, like history tells us, all it takes is one Pete Golding or Lane Kiffin phone call, and suddenly the kid who's supposed to be finishing his sophomore year on the bench, ascending junior, takes $11 million and goes and plays for an SEC team, and now your cycle's broken. You've got to get back into the rental business and restart it again. But no, that's why you keep signing the old way with multiples. You don't just have one waiting in the wings. Because who's Kentucky's starting quarterback this year, guys? Kenny Minchie. Minchie, yeah. Kenny Minchie lost the quarterback derby at Notre Dame to C.J. Carr. Apparently it was close, but C.J. Carr won, and C.J. Carr's the guy at least for this year too. So Kenny Minchie had to go find somewhere to play. You know what? But that means Noah Grubbs now goes into that cycle. Both systems and every hypothetical that we've posed, they all have one thing in common. You're tying money up at the quarterback position. Yeah. And you have to decide what the best use of your resources is. Because I kept thinking this is going to drive down the price of the freshman. And I would bet it's maybe flattened it but not driven it down. And it's going to go back up as quality veterans are not available in future years. Well, that's where, Andy, we're going to see maybe more of the quarterback movement is the guy who lost the battle, right? Like a Minchie or maybe what we see at Tennessee or something like that. That end, the G6 quarterback, right? Who like has a breakout year and doesn't have some long-term big money contract who can be on the move. By the way, segue super quickly into something that Godfrey just, you know, you just mentioned Lane Kiffin and Pete Golding calling players. And that's a good segue into a quick thing that happened yesterday, which was the NCAA vice president of enforcement, John Duncan, sending around a letter to all the schools warning them about tampering and that the NCAA will pursue tampering and pursue significant penalties against those who are tampering. A lot of schools have already gotten letters of inquiry from the NCAA about potential tampering. We know about the Dabo Sweeney situation, targeting Pete Golding in Ole Miss. I think we're going to start to see more of that. It's going to be fascinating to see how stiff the penalties that the NCAA will have. The question is, does Ole Miss turn in LSU? Yeah, that's right. That's the big one right there. I'm going to guess that's likely. so we know golding's on the hook because so dabo's already said he's going to turn him in or he's turned him in uh i imagine this well i i saw the the snippet you uh tweeted out ross and it was very strongly worded i believe it uh it's it invoked the name of the ball state president who may might might form a committee to forming it for the possibility of streamlining the rules an infractions modernization task force and i want that john task force task force that i want that john duncan exit interview when he finally leaves that position because that man has been at the catbird seat of the keystone cops he's seen a lot he's seen it all yeah he's he's seen it all you want to talk about somebody who man talk about the like like feeling like your job isn't worth anything if the NCAA does you know have some strong penalties what are strong penalties you want to ask suspension of a head coach for a game pretty strong um if they need a head coach to win games we've already if they do levy that that will impact everything we're talking about you would think right that that will impact a lot of potentially a lot of what we're talking about it it will if they actually do it if they actually do it the sound you heard yesterday when that letter hit the email boxes of all the various compliance directors was a wanking motion being made by all the head coaches. The reason that here's the problem, and this is what Duncan and those guys have never understood. It's mutually assured destruction because once you pull the thread to Andy's point, it can't stop. If you if you get Pete Golding, he's going to turn around and give you Lane Kiffin. He's going to turn around and give you X. They're going to turn around and give you Y. They're going to turn around and give you Z. You would essentially be suspending i don't think people realize this and i'm the guy who wrote the bag man story and everybody thought i was full of it in 2014 or 13 or whatever everybody does this wait all the time not everybody not every and when we come back not to talk about one of the nope that's why dabbo's gonna have a new job just dabbo we're gonna talk about one of the four coaches dabbo's one of them one of the four coaches who won't be turned in for tampering and what he said that could unlock a change in the schedule for all of college football. One of the four. Godfrey just got it. You'll get it when we come back. We are back to College Football Inquirer. We're talking about potential tampering inquiries. And then we mentioned four coaches will not be turned in for tampering. One is Dabo Sweeney. Because he's just, that's not his bag, baby. At least while he's still employed. Right. At least for now. No, no, no. He may change his mind if nothing happens. It's a big buyout. Three who will not be are the coaches at Army, Navy, and Air Force. because you really can't transfer in midstream. Not really possible. Jeff Munkin is the coach at Army. He wasn't talking about this because, let's face it, he ain't worried about it. But he was talking about when the Army-Navy game gets played, which has been considered holy sacred ground in terms of college football. When does the Army-Navy game get played? Well, you have your championship weekend, and then the following weekend, the day you give out the Heisman Trophy, that Saturday, you play that game at 3.30 p.m. Eastern Time on CBS. It's in D.C. or Philadelphia or in the Meadowlands. It is a spectacle. It is beautiful. Sometimes it is snowing. Lots of people watch it. Millions of people watch it on TV. And it has been considered one of those things you cannot touch so this is a very interesting comment from todd or from jeff munkin to seth emerson of the athletic he's open to potentially playing it on thanksgiving weekend yeah a big comment godfrey i know um has a lot of knowledge about how the placement of this game and in when you And when you were at one of these military institutions saying that you're going to move this game, I went to this game for the first time this past year. And it was like the pageantry and the atmosphere was everything that it was hyped up to be. And so for him to come out and actually say this, yeah, it was pretty jarring. But we know for two reasons. One specifically, they've got to find a way to move the game. and that's because they're going to expand the playoff eventually and they want to use that weekend for playoff games at some point. The other piece of it is even if they keep the playoff this number of rounds, a lot of people would like to move the schedule. We had Joey McGuire, the Texas Tech coach, on my On 3 show last week and he said, stop worrying about all these crazy things you need to do, move the portal to the spring. And this is if you can get the season over with by the first week of January. It solves a lot of the other problems. Football is supposed to be played in the first semester and every other division like FCS they played their national championship on January 5th Like it amazing that we can do that that we haven figured that out yet And so my what I would do is I would move zero week So this last year everybody would have played August 23rd and we would have played it out like that. The conference championship game would have been on Thanksgiving. That would have been a great Thanksgiving weekend. And then you start playing the playoffs the next week. If you have a buy, you have a true buy, just like it is in the regular season. It's a buy. And then you're playing every six to seven days. And if you did it that way this year, you actually would have had the national championship on January 1st. So Joey McGuire's thing is move week one to where week zero is now. He said, so this year you'd be playing games August 23rd. Everybody be playing games August 23rd, which moves the championship weekend games to Thanksgiving weekend, weekend moves the rivalry weekend games to the third weekend in November. And the thing is what Joey McGuire, sorry, what Munkin says makes sense because they want the four hour protected window still. Well, if you put that four hour protected window on Black Friday and you have conference championship games or play in games or whatever the conference commissioners want to do with that weekend. And then the next week you start the playoff. Yeah. You could theoretically get the game. Like this year, as Joe McGuire pointed out, the championship game would have been January 1st in that scenario. You could make that work. Not sure we'll ever see that. Yeah, I think they would like to stretch it out maybe one more week after that if they could. All these coaches, they all agreed, right? I remember Dan Lanning said this to me back at Pac-12 Media Day back in July. Move up everything and have the championship game on January 1. I think the most hope is to have the semifinals in January 1. That's probably the most realistic. That'd be fine. Have the semifinals January 1st. And then you have it. The championship game the following Monday. Whenever. Oh, God. Another weekend Monday. The Mondays. The Mondays. I know that's not the point of the segment. But ESPN is never going to let us get out of that Monday nonsense, are they? No. Especially not now. Because ESPN. Yeah. has Monday night football. The point is, Monday night football ends, you get a playoff. You get the national championship game. They won't do it on New Year's Day, Andy, you're right. They'll make it the Monday after the end of the regular season. I also think the Monday NFL playoff game, the Monday night NFL playoff game, might be going away, too. Yeah. Well, by the way, the NFL is a part owner of ESPN now. Pac-12 media day was Big Ten media day. I want to make sure Oregon's not in the Pac-12 anymore. You won't piss anyone off on the West Coast. Yeah, a lot of things here. One, I want to acknowledge that the fact this is being said out loud by a sitting Army head coach indicates to me that they're having a lot of discussions about this at West Point Annapolis. And I don't like I've known Jeff Mung in a long time. He's a pretty calculated guy. I don't think he would just go out on a branch and say this without having talked to the myriad superiors that you have when you're a football coach at West Point. The impact of this game moving is not like any other game in football, period. The amount of individuals who are involved in this from the Pentagon to the Joint Chiefs to the massive amount of DOD contractors, like there's so much money, power, and influence in that stadium when this game is played. It is a really, really big deal. However, I do think that the athletic directors and the people who are responsible for the athletic programs at these two institutions know their days are numbered on having a completely unrivaled weekend. they're acknowledging that privately they're having to message that inside their own sort of networks in a very delicate way because there's a lot of people it's kind of like how the ivies and like school presidents are completely naive and don't understand sports you have a different version of that within the armed forces and they don't understand that where army navy actually kind of ranks in the college football pantheon it's a very delicate situation because people get really pissed off in the military world. But my guess is that if Munkin is saying this publicly, it's being discussed internally. All they really want is an unopposed slot. And I said this to Andy last night when this news came out. I think it's possible that for the first time ever, if you walked in and planted a flag and said, Andy, what'd you say, Black Friday primetime or Black Friday afternoon? Black Friday, 3.30. All right, 3.30 on Black Friday. the NFL will respect that the NFL is now a part owner of ESPN like again we're closing the ownership circle tighter and tighter I do think that the NFL would respect Army Navy and stay off of that spot they're not going to care about the end time on Black Friday but I don't think they want more of Black Friday there's a lot of college games on Black Friday too you're talking about college but if you're doing this but they wouldn't be on Black Friday yeah they're not doing this in a vacuum they're not moving it to Black Friday just for no they would not have an opposite nebraska iowa what this would be would either be the faux championship weekend that's probably the best thing you can do except they are both american members right that's that's a weird thing if one of them is in the american championship game which they have yes right so that's the other issue because if championship weekend is that weekend they they can't participate in the championship game if they're playing their game so So that's the other part you got to figure out. But like what Joey said is fine, but ESPN and Fox are not going to move. Like Fox is not going to move Michigan, Ohio State or allow it to be moved. ESPN is not going to allow Alabama, Auburn to be moved to another date unless they know that there's enough inventory to cover that weekend and keep them whole. The only modification I would make here, Andy, is that we actually just, We do everything that you're saying. Everything that Joey McGuire said, Army and Navy want to play ball, that's great. We also get rid of conference championships. If we do that, we have enough space to breathe. That's the plan, but you have to have inventory that weekend. So whether that's conference championship games or play-in games or bracket busters, whatever that's like. The Duke-Michigan basketball game in Washington this weekend was great. How cool would that be? like two teams that are kind of on the cut line for the college football playoff, get together and play on that week. I know that's something I experienced this year. And I went out and like talk to people in the real world, not other college football reporters. Cause we're, we're an incestuous bunch sometimes intellectually people were fatigued in late January about the playoff dragging on. This isn't just a complaint from school presidents or from coaches. I do think that I like we all live in different parts of the we're all from different parts of the south Ross is in DC but that was his choice um when it's July and August sort of yeah when it's July and August the demand for college football peaks we all know this from running our various businesses and shows and yeah like everybody gets their look everybody gets their Phil Steele and everybody starts to freak out moving into earlier into the August window I think would actually bear a lot of fruit in terms of revenue in terms of viewership there is a fatigue point for casual college football viewers and there are a lot as it drags into the mess of january and the nfl playoffs and playing these games these these vitally important world changing college football semi-final games on a random thursday night that sucks i talked to miami fans like this would alleviate because if you've got the semis being played on january 1st which is traditionally a college football holiday, then you're in good shape. No, one thing like we maybe didn't spend time with and people don't probably understand is the Army-Navy game as it relates to the playoff and sort of the discussion of what happened this past year when there was momentum, it felt like to go finally to go to the 16 team playoff. And on that weekend of Army-Navy, there was a thought that the first round of the playoff, which really was like going to be of a 16-team playoff, was going to be like a two-game play-in-game style deal. The 16 seed was going to play the 13 seed and the 14 seed was going to play the 15 seed on Army-Navy weekend. And so Army-Navy, when that discussion was going on and getting pretty serious army navy was arguing we need a carve out so you can automatically exempt us from being a 13 14 15 16 13 seed you know so you can we can automatically have a buy into the second round or the old you know the the new first round whatever you want to call it um and that probably isn't going to happen yeah that's the line i saw the president of the united States the Saturday night before the college football playoff had their big meeting. All the commissioners had their big meeting in Miami. We saw him tweet out about preserving the Army-Navy game and about preserving the window, the four-hour window. And I think that's because the Army-Navy folks probably knew they weren't going to get a carve-out to be exempt from that opening weekend if they made the playoff, if one of them made the playoff and they were going to have to figure out where to play and move the army navy game so i think they've been thinking andy all fall about where to move this game and there was a discussion about week zero to move the game to week zero there's been a discussion about thanksgiving obviously why can't the game be played on thanksgiving night and be the college game on thanksgiving definitely could it definitely could now i'm going to tell you there anymore i'm going Nobody wants to play on Thanksgiving, I feel like. Ross, I'm going to tell you right now. That would be a great one. The same people who went and whined to the president, who, by the way, just because the president tweets something out, actually there's a higher probability it won't happen at this point. Probably. The same people who went and tattled to Trump are going to absolutely throw down against being out of their homes and in Philadelphia or Baltimore on Thanksgiving night. You and I are veterans of the Egg Bowl. Yeah. Most people, everybody wants to watch a good college football game on Thursday night. nobody really wants it to be their teams their programs yeah leaving on thanksgiving to go tailgate um i think the nfl is going to the other reason is they won't get a carve out that night ross the nfl wouldn't move off of thanksgiving night because of the viewership it's received so i think that putting it some maybe it's black friday maybe it's that saturday i think that's likelier um it's hard to carve out though like i was going to carve out i was thinking the four hour exclusive window for college i wasn't even thinking about nfl yeah and they don't they don't want to go against the nfl though because that that would no no no they and and a lot of deal with cbs would be impacted surely nfl only football game the nfl will not position themselves they will not let this even in the court of public perception they will not let this progress to a point where it looks like it's the nfl versus army navy the nfl stays beaucoup connected to the armed forces community for a lot of public posturing and pablum like you go up into the Northeastern United States, the most popular apparel brand is that salute to service like Giants, Patriots gear like the NFL will not position itself against the armed forces and they will make sure that it doesn't even get that far. That's why I don't think it would be on Thanksgiving night. The other piece of this, and we've talked about this on our text chain a little bit, and I think we've brought it up on the show, but the other piece that makes this interesting that is somewhat new is the NFL and ESPN deal has gone through where the NFL is now a partial owner of ESPN. They own an equity stake in ESPN, which makes the NFL partial owner of college football playoff broadcast rights. I think there will be more collaboration between the NFL and the CFP from this point forward because it's in the NFL's business interests for that to succeed. The NFL, which has spent decades avoiding its minor league system and shirking responsibility at every turn is now a partial owner of the college football postseason. So the next time ESPN PR wants to send me a tersely worded email about how I'm seeing ghosts about conspiracies, I can tell you where to put that email. Where, Godfrey, where? Say it one more time, guys. The NFL is now a partial owner of the college football playoff via a television network. Yeah. this is what we're dealing with but you're saying it like it's a bad thing which ultimately may be no but the nfl might be the most organized gangster on the block because the nfl is the boogeyman yes yeah the nfl is hey they're corrupt as hell awful craven ray rice whatever we can talk about james pierce fine they're also really good at organizing things okay yeah like they're effective yeah like let them get in here and suss it out yeah uh um one of the things we've been discussing here with army navy a good segue here andy is that um about week zero and moving up the season and certainly week zero will be a topic of discussion this week uh in indianapolis at ncaa committee meetings which we love to discuss a good committee meeting don't we that's right they will be discussing all this and uh they'll be discussing the targeting rule they'll be discussing uh the scourge of shorty shorts being worn by various kickers well the important things are we doing this shorty short Thursday and he wore the shortest of shorty shorts are we doing this shorty shorts on Thursday or are we doing that bit now oh no no we'll do shorty shorts on Thursday we need to properly prepare for that I got I got thoughts okay Hey, but I'm mad already. I want to talk when we come back about a longtime member of the football oversight committee. I don't believe he's on it now. He but he served on it for quite a few years and helped kind of guide the conversation in that room. I'm told because he has quite a force of personality, as you know, will understand when I say who it is. It's Kirby Smart. And Kirby Smart was on fire on Monday night. So is Mario Cristobal. So is Mario. together yeah together in Gainesville Florida and they had jokes we'll be right back we are back at the college football inquirer and Kirby Smart does not have to go to Indianapolis for the well he's probably going for the combine anyway because 94 of his players will be there but he used to have to go this week because he was part of the football oversight committee i believe brett bielema has replaced him ross dellinger tells me uh but kirby smart was in gainesville florida on monday night they do the steve spurrier award which is the award for the first the best first year coach they also have awards for the the best freshman in college football so uh the reason he was there is ellis robinson his his good db was winning the defensive freshman of the year award And then Malachi Tony the excellent Miami receiver was winning the offensive freshman of the year award And that, of course, brought Mario Cristobal to town. And Kirby Smart had the mic first. And I don't know if they planned for a roast. Yeah. So Chris Doering, former Florida receiver, is the emcee of the event. His company sponsors it. and Chris is a you know former walk-on receiver at Florida who actually led the SEC in touchdown receptions for a career for basically until Devontae Smith broke it so Chris tortured Kirby Smart as a player and so Kirby enjoying the back and forth as Chris is trying to introduce him and ask him questions about his player Kirby just grabs the mic and gets going and seeing Mario in the crowd he he had some fun with this he uh he asked mario he told he told ellis hey be careful mario will take your players he said if it had been up to him he would have been paid a lot more nil money so i don't like you being real close to mario right now he's still got another year left got to be careful around mario sometimes he'll take your players if you know what i mean and then and then what do you mean yeah when you go on recounts a uh meeting christobal earlier in the I remember these two work together on the Alabama staff. Yeah. So Mario came up to me. He's like, you got to start getting some protein shakes in. You've had too many carbs. Smart said. So I told him you got to spend more time around Steve Spurrier because he won more conference championships at Duke than you have at Miami. Spurrier, by the way, is sitting on a stool five feet away because it's his restaurant that they're at. And Spurrier is dying because, of course, he invented this. Yeah. Yeah. I've taken a page of the old ball coach's book there. Telling Kirby. These two guys, as I think both of you know, are probably, I mean, every coach is passionate about winning and competitive and all that stuff. I would say that these two are at another level of coaches that I've met. Certainly, Mario and Mario wears it a little more on the sleeve. so I just really really really hope that at some point maybe in the playoffs this year that these two team coaches will meet in a game that would be great well Mario got the mic and and rubbed you know decided to to rub it in his way apparently they had played they just played a video highlighting Malachi Tony the star freshman receiver who was catching passes from uh from Carson Beck, former Georgia quarterback who transferred to Miami. And this is what Mario said. I didn't know what I didn't know this was like this, but I'm glad it is. First thing I'll say, it's great right there to watch what a player like Carson Beck can do with great coaching. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then he said, let's give it up for Kirby Smart. I mean, if it wasn't for all his years of pre NIL, we wouldn't have NIL right now. Robinson family, great meeting you. We leave at 930 on the real jet. We have more than one restaurant in Miami as opposed to Athens. Wow. Andy, slander on the Athens. Mama's boy. Yeah, I was about to say, five and ten was the first thing I was about to say. Slander to the Athens dining community. Hugh Atchison. Hugh Atchison is like, what'd I do? Man, catching strays. Athens is great food. Yeah. Gainesville of all places. I love every bit of this. Okay, Andy, this kind of stuff happens, and it's going to leak out, and we live in this, we live in a social media era, but this is, we need to impart one. hilarious to something that we all get to see little glimpses of by virtue of our positions. But this is also not. It's not real, right? Like it's genuine and they mean all this stuff and they are highly competitive. But this was done in jest. Like I'm already seeing this trickle out on social media this morning. Oh, yeah. John Sumrall is a stud. It's it's it's Gainesville. And so Kirby Smart walks up to Steve Spurrier, whose daughter is a real estate agent in Gainesville. and he says coach your daughter's one of the best real estate agents in Gainesville and Steve's really that's right and Kirby Smart goes John Sumrall you're the fourth Florida coach I've coached against his daughter's making a lot of money off you guys it's good even when you can see the setup coming that was that's good Kirby really has I think I think he's a like probably an all-time great ball buster and so is Mario, which is what, like, can you imagine they end up playing the national title game and the Sunday morning press conference before the title game is this? I'd give anything for that. Yeah, that press conference sucks. It's the worst press conference of the year. It is. Because everybody's really tight and they don't want to say much. They don't want to cause a scene. They don't want to cause headlines. But this would be great if we just had a roast on the Sunday morning before Monday's national championship game the thing about the busting of the these you mentioned these two guys are great at at sort of ribbing each other in friends and whatever the stories of Mario from just just passed in Miami as sort of this like bruiser on the streets of Miami makes me think that if you if you bust too much that you might actually you know get a bust like a fist in your face here's the thing former all sec safety not afraid of anybody mario cristobal is the coach we pick to win the coach royal rumble like this is yeah this is the ultimate sports writer bar conversation we we have this conversation multiple times a year like if a royal rumble breaks out between all the fbs coaches who's winning the answer is mario cristobal where's he coming in absent ed orgeron in the group the answer what number is he drawing it doesn't like it i don't know ah you know he's a bigger guy so i think you need to draw 20 you don't want him to go wire to wire like flair i i've never booked the event i we're who's sean michaels then give me give me a sean michaels kirby's kind of like that to be honest like that's true a little smaller wiry yeah yeah um are we talking are we booking this or are we going is this a shoot fight we're talking about shoot fight right like actually a real fight i i'm saying a real fight and mario's being a lot of ass yeah does mma training in in the offseason yeah he is still enormous yeah mario is funnier than people give him credit for and i mean i can probably i think the statute of limitations on this story has expired now but i when i was like more on the beat years ago there was a signing day at oregon when Willie Taggart was the head coach. And Mario was his, I want to say, O-line OC coach. OC, yeah. Yeah, and it was really like the first time the coaches had all been together. They all got hired. They all immediately went out recruiting. It's three in the morning Pacific time. We're at Oregon in this like jet black meeting room, like Oregon's little spaceship football facility. Phil Knight's there. Mario's there. The whole crew, I want to say like Jim Levitt was on that staff. It was a cast of characters for sure. and do you guys remember the lane kiffin fau like commercial thing he did yes where he was like oh wow like like he looked he kind of looked like he was it was a hostage video like showing proof of light which he says he did on purpose but i'm pretty sure he didn't oh he definitely did not he was severely hung over and let's say he was carrying some water weight if you will um mario before the uh yeah the pilates and the there was no hot there was nothing hot yoga uh there was There was something hot seeping from the pores. But that commercial came on on ESPNU, which was up on the big war room screen. And I'm not going to say what it was or what was said. But Mario ripped off a 60-second bit on that commercial that to this day is some of the best ad-lib comedy I have ever heard in my life. He's a lot funnier than people give him credit for. Well, remember, these guys have to be able to immediately connect with people from all walks of life. That's what recruiting requires you to do. Most of them are pretty engaging, pretty funny. Like, some are also hilarious. You'll get to know him more now that he's in a more high profile position. The guy who I always thought would be the best and he wouldn't do it. and he told me like, I'm not going to really unleash it unless I can really start winning was Will Muschamp. Will Muschamp would have been the funniest football coach of all time. Yeah. If he had been allowed, like he wouldn't, he would, he was reigning himself in. Like he worshiped Steve Spurrier. Steve Spurrier was his idol. And if he had been able to win like Steve Spurrier, he would have gone after everybody and it would have, but he's like, I haven't won enough to earn it yet. I'm not going to do it. That guy, you get him off camera, off mic. Like he is the funniest football coach. He leaned into the idiot jock thing a little bit in his public persona, like not knowing what Yoda was or Star Wars. He wasn't that simplistic behind closed doors. Oh, no. He's much smarter than – Maybe the most beloved head coach Biden administrator I've ever met. Everywhere Will Muschamp went. That's why Ray Tanner had tears in his eyes when he had to fire him in South Carolina. Jeremy Foley did too. Yeah. Yeah. Like was incredibly well-loved. Yeah. What we should do is like who's actually who could do five minutes at an open mic instead of the Royal Rumble. It's like if you watch the video from last night, Kirby, like Chris Doering is trying to keep the show on the rails and Kirby just steals the mic from him. And he's he's pacing back. He's got the he's got the he's got the timing. He's got the pacing. He knows exactly where how far away from his mouth to hold the mic. Like it is perfect. I'm just like he looks like he's done it before. I'm stumbling on something in real time, and I don't know if I'm going to cause a problem by saying this. I'm going through the personalities, with the exception of Bielema, in my head. And most of the Big Ten guys, I think, would die at an open mic. And a lot of the SEC guys would kill. I feel like Cignetti would kill. But everybody would want to kill him at the end. In a dry way. In a very dry way. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like Tommy Lee Jones. Jed may be alright. Who? Jed Fish would be great. Jed may be good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. but yeah you're right there's not a lot there's not a lot there in the room yeah as far as personalities behind the mic like Ryan Day winning him like Matt Campbell that ain't happening Ryan Day is too normal like Ryan Day is the most normal human being for a super power head coach the guys in the SEC are psychopaths yeah but they're funnier I'm just realizing this now they're funnier yeah they definitely are a little more characters and personality for sure the ACC's got some guys Because Manny Diaz is awesome on the mic. He's got a broadcast background. It's almost like he's not allowed. It's not as fair. Dabo would kill. Dabo would be amazing. He just doesn't impress. I don't know. Dabo regularly. It'd be a clean set. Yeah, maybe. Dabo could Nate Bargetzi it though. Dabo would have you rolling. Don't insult. I guess. Don't insult. Nate Bargetzi does a very impressive job because he is clean. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple duds in the South. I'm not saying it's like it's one to one, but, you know, B2O Joey would be good. And yeah, you had to be a high school coach person. Gus Malzahn, if you because Gus would never let us see the whole the whole personality. Gus could be fun, but Joey would be more fun. If we're going with the guys who started out as high school coaches. Sonny and Arizona State would be really good. Sonny would be good and dry just like Signetti. It would be pretty funny though. Sonny gave me 15 minutes on why he liked the cow job when he was obviously telling me with his face that he didn't and it was one of the best. I didn't use any of it but it was one of the best tongue-in-cheek dry. It was like a skit. It was like something from Mr. Show where he was just telling me one thing and his face was telling me the exact opposite. Once he found out I was from the South he was like, oh, it's fantastic here in Berkeley. I have total support. and just his eyes would just get bigger and bigger. I'm just imagining, can we do SEC? Whose line is it anyway? I think they would win. I think they would win. Who's Wayne Brady? Yeah, I think they would win. Who's Ryan Stiles? If we're doing by league, yeah, they would win. Dude, you know who, and I know this because of personal off-field connections, but like Golding is pretty funny. Golding is like, it's a particular style of humor. but kiffin kiffin would have to work on his set i i don't know that kiffin would improv as well no kirby would be a finesse kirby shane beamer some roll some roll very good improv guys summer all is way better i know andy's already said really good summer all is like i spent time with him when he was at troy like he he can break balls he's really funny yeah yeah oh um Will Stein maybe? Yeah, I think Will Stein, he's one that has not quite shown his personality yet. Yeah. People are going to like him. People are going to very much enjoy Will Stein. I don't want to be mean to Clark Lee, but if it's there, I haven't seen it yet. He's a very, he's a sweetheart. I don't know if he's... Clark Lee's a very cerebral guy. I just, that's probably not his environment. No. So, but yeah, this is good. we've seen drink do it in the press conference with Dan Mullen how have we left drink off the list this would be insane drink is a likable Dan Mullen that's an oxymoron next well and of course they went at each other the greatest drink quote ever was about Dan Mullen yeah right refresh me he's so jackass you're a jackass he's better than people yeah he's better than people golish might be too we don't know yet i think i think when golish can calm down he's in a weird situation with the culture there but like i think i think golish might be fun oh yeah he he's he's fun now he's pretty intense but he's funny yeah yeah very intense so there you have it folks there you go 10 has three national titles in a row but the sec is funnier they gotta come around on the characters here's the deal though it's much like much like on the field the sec has a bunch of hitters brett bielema yeah can murder that dude walked into an interview with me one time we had a one-on-one in spring football he walked in barefoot and he goes you ever been sunburned on the top of your feet that's how he introduced himself because he was walking barefoot to the like that guy can kill on every level like yeah bielema for sure we'll have our definitive coach comedy rankings on thursday no but we will be talking about short we kind of just did yeah i promise you that somebody's gonna hear this and i'm one of us is gonna get a text and one of us will be like i can't believe you didn't mention me like we have inadvertently hurt someone's feelings we were gonna get one from drink and we saved ourselves so there you go yeah but yeah probably get ready for the short shorts conversation because i know you're laughing you're thinking oh andy's kidding about this no actual important college football people have spent hours talking about short shorts. We should explain why. Save the short shorts. We will. Save the short shorts. I'm going to go roll mine up right now. We'll talk to you Thursday.