New rule changes & schedule changes coming to college football

On today's College Football Inquirer, lots of action in Indianapolis and not just at the NFL Combine. We've got potential changes to the targeting rules. We've got potential changes, not to the transfer rules, because there's no transfer portal in the spring. They're trying to figure out how to keep people from moving in the spring, even though there is no transfer portal. Ross Dellinger will break all of that down. Plus, Cincinnati sues former quarterback Brendan Soresby for a buyout that has not been paid. Later in the show, Stephen Godfrey and I kick around Godfrey's idea for kind of a soccer style, maybe a little bit of baseball style loan out program for star freshmen who maybe you're not ready to play yet, but you need them to play somewhere right now. We start matching up teams. It gets a little contentious. We'll talk about all of that on today's College Football Inquirer. 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Download the GameTime app today. this college football inquirer with ross dellinger i am andy staples steve godfrey is joining a little bit later in the show but ross dellinger you are in indianapolis right now nfl combine going on but it's not just nfl stuff there are tons of college football news is happening all in and around you yeah yeah that's right i um i don't only come Every year I try to come to Indy for the combine and see the agent coach side, but also at the same time, there are tons of NCAA college school administrators here. The NCAA football rules committee and the NCAA football oversight meets, and they made some big news this week. Bigger news than I even anticipated. We knew that the targeting rule would be changed. We sort of knew that was coming from the rules committee. What I didn't know was that the football oversight committee was actually going to make some decisions in fairly significant and interesting decisions on not just the calendar, but a specific transfer policy. So I'll go all the way. Well, let's get the targeting out of the way first. And that'll be probably by the time that this podcast airs. Yeah, because this can affect the games you watch this season. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, for sure. And by the time you listen to this podcast, there will be an NCAA announcement probably of this. But the NCAA Rules Committee has decided to recommend an elimination of the carryover suspension that comes with a targeting violation for first-time offenders during the season. So we all know that the current rule is that if you are flagged for targeting the second half of a game, you have to sit out the first half of the next game. That's what's eliminated. The first half of the next game, now you can play in the next game if you're a first offender. But while they sort of weakened, in a way, that penalty, they strengthened if you're a second-time offender. And that gets a little complicated, but I think it will be released by the time this podcast comes over, but they strengthened that. So that's the targeting piece of this, which obviously, I think somebody on the committee mentioned to me that Um, there's only been five last year. There was only five players who was penalized for targeting a second time in a season. So this really affects the first time offenders. They will not be, they will not be penalized in the first half of the next game. They won't have that suspension. so the football oversight they did a lot of very interesting things we know Andy that we have no spring portal transfer portal in football we have one portal this year in January but there was a sense that many players would use in schools would use the quote blind transfer this spring where a player just unenrolls and then enrolls at a school and then joins the football team that way, sort of skirting the rules in a way of transferring outside of the portal window. Well, the football oversight had an idea on how to deter schools, coaches and players from doing that. They have recommended a pretty stiff penalty on coaches and on schools who accept a transfer outside of the window, outside of the transfer portal window. And those penalties are as severe of any penalties I've ever seen the NCAA oversight come up with. So number one, the head coach would basically be suspended for half of the season, including practices and team activities. It's pretty crazy. And then number two, you'd be fined 20% of a football team's budget. Whatever your football team, your school budget is, you'd be fined 20%. And then you would be, you'd have your roster spots reduced by five. So that's all if you accept a transfer outside of the portal window, such as this spring. I'll stop there, Andy. We can get to the calendar stuff after we have a little conversation about this. But this transfer policy rule is certainly a significant thing and one that I am sure will face legal scrutiny. Yes. So I tweeted when you tweeted this out, I said, the sound you are hearing is the collective knuckles of every antitrust attorney in America cracking all at once because they're about to start typing. They haven't even picked their clients yet, but they've already started typing because this is collusion. This is a group of competitors conspiring to limit the ability of non-employee students to move from one university to another to seek a better opportunity for themselves. And there's your pickle right there, because I get what they're trying to do, where if you put the onus on the coach and if you put the onus on the athletic department that would be taking the player, you're saying, well, the student's not penalized, so they're not going to sue us. Yes, they are. They will still sue you. The other people who will sue you are the coaches, because if you try to suspend a coach for a half of the year, they're going to sue you. And they're probably going to win because they're going to say, well, you only did this to keep this entire labor market frozen. So I get where they're coming from. But it's one of those things like until they really come to grips with reality, that the only way they can have real rules about this stuff is negotiate it with the players. they're gonna keep banging their head against this wall it's like it in theory it should work because if i'm a coach i'm scared to death of six game suspension yeah but i'm also probably gonna consult attorneys of various stripes and be like hey if i did this i can get an injunction right i don't have to actually serve that suspension yeah right well Well, think about it, Andy. I think we've mentioned it on the show. During spring practice, there's inevitable injuries. There's injuries over the summer as well. There's injuries now during winter workouts and all that stuff. So if you have a key player, such as a quarterback or a starting left tackle or something, get injured, if you're a coach, you're going to want to go out and try to get a kid to blind transfer in outside of the portal. and uh now you yeah you risk number one getting you know facing these penalties uh but number two having um you know a judge take too long to rule now a judge you'd be requesting like all these eligibility cases a preliminary injunction to let you coach um right which would happen in the spring yeah which would probably happen yeah right um so we'll we'll see how schools um sort of handle this if if the past is any um guide uh the schools will sue as you're talking about uh and they they will they will sue but uh this is clearly a a deterrent in um and it also isn't finalized it has to go through sort of a socialization review process and then the um the d1 division one cabinet um will uh will make the decision one thing i want to note it continues to get sort of misinterpreted in every story I feel like I write with the NCAA in there. This was not an NCAA staff decision. This was the NCAA football oversight committee, which is made up of school administrators, athletic directors, and coaches at schools. And they made this decision. So it's not like the NCAA staff. Now, the NCAA staff may have sort of given it the thumbs up or a blessing, but they don't have as much control over this. This is controlled by the committee. So just to be clear on that. And so maybe segwaying over to the calendar stuff, which wasn't announced. Let's hold off on the calendar because we got to talk about that too, because it ties into something we were talking about the other day. But I want to talk a little more about what you just said, because like you said, this is not final. This is not. If you take somebody in the spring, your coach is going to be suspended for six games right now. They do have to go through several layers of approval. And I feel like this is one where they had a little no bad ideas session, a little blue sky thinking session. And And I would imagine that they're probably the general counsel of the NCAA may may want to step in and say, guys, you're going to make my life a lot harder if you do this. Yeah. And that's honestly, Andy, you know, that over in the past that has usually happened. Right. I mean, there's been plenty of things that the schools, I think, and these committees made up of the school administrators have wanted to do. And NC Legal has sort of said, you can't do that. It's not legally defensible. I think we're getting to a point where frustration is so high among school administrators. They sort of just don't care anymore. Their coaches want rules. They want rules. They're trying to establish some kind of rule and framework despite not having a collective bargaining agreement or federal legislation that gives them the legal protection. and so they don't have legal protection and despite that they're trying their best to sort of make rules and regulations it's just really hard as we discussed because of the legal challenges presented by the schools themselves that make these rules right exactly they make the rules but they don't always agree with each other these are not unanimous votes true and if you have a few schools that don't agree and that are going to sue to blow it all up it will never hold And this is we've talked about this among, you know, with the the incident itself, with the conferences themselves, because the second the schools, the schools are the ones suing the people who actually make the rules themselves. You got nothing. And this is what you said. The coaches, the A.D.s, the people on the ground, they are fed up. They're done. They just want rules. They don't care particularly how it happens. and I think that's the issue is it has to happen a certain way to be legal and that's the problem. Now, there is one thing that these guys can do to curtail, not curtail, manage player movement is probably a better word and there was another story that came out on Wednesday about that and it was a school doing the thing it has to do. So only about an hour and 15 minutes from where you are now, Cincinnati sues Brendan Sorsby their former quarterback who's now at Texas Tech because they're claiming he owes a one million dollar buyout and if you read the complaint it's got the the relevant passage from the contract that says if if you leave between the 25 and 26 seasons you owe a million dollars that's the uh amount of liquidated damages we've we've calculated and Brendan Sorsby's agent has told them no he's he's not going to pay it uh they released a statement to the athletic said this isn't this is an unfairly punitive amount which in buyout world and non-compete world the court can say oh this doesn't represent actual damages this is just this is just to punish the person and they'll invalidate it so they're going to fight over this but ross i i think cincinnati has to do this i wrote a comment on three about it this morning they have to fight for every penny and every school that gets in this situation has to fight for every penny because right now the only thing they have that actually works is good old-fashioned contract law yeah that's exactly right we we saw that play out during the portal with the devon williams was the best public example but as i've said on the pod and as you know i know andy there were dozens of players who wanted to leave and didn't get to the point that it became public and they ended up not leaving because of the contract constraints and the legal issues with the contract. So you're right. Like, um, um, aside from this rule that the NCAA football oversight created, the one deterrent or the one, uh, thing preventing some kind of spring movement in portal are these contracts, these rev share contracts. Uh, and, and there still seems to be doubt from some that they are enforceable. Um, but we're certainly going to, at some point, a judge is going to rule, whether it's in this case or we've got a case with Georgia, right? Suing a former defensive lineman, yeah, who left for Missouri. We've got a Wisconsin, and this is a little bit of a different case, not for a buyout, but a Wisconsin player moving to Miami and Wisconsin to Miami over torturous interference of a contract. So we've got like four or five different lawsuits over these contracts. And at some point, we're going to have a ruling. I think the Wisconsin case, which is over a year old, discovery starts pretty soon. Yeah. And that one's more about Miami tampering with Xavier Lucas. The interesting part about the Xavier Lucas case is the Big Ten, which writes the conference office, writes all the Big Ten rev share agreements for all their schools. It's they're the only conference that does that right now. And after the Xavier Lucas thing happened, they went back and looked at their document and they said, OK, here's where they got us on this one. and we're going to strengthen this thing. And so the one they have now has a little more teeth. And that is why DeMond Williams is still at Washington or one of the reasons. I had Jed Fish on my On 3 show And he said of course obviously it because there a lot of good players coming back and he had a great year last year he can be really good it true but he had somebody in his ear telling him hey if you go to lsu you gonna make a lot of money and then when the reality of it hit of how much you would owe was gone uh oh washington it's like oh i wouldn't make that much money so yeah i'm gonna stay right and right so this will be interesting because soarsby reported five to six million in his package at texas tech from what i'm told texas tech knew about the buyout uh the big 12 office knew about the buyout the amount paid to soarsby was basically assuming him having to pay that buyout he'll pay the buyout right i will say this yeah i will say this though ross if i was his agent and and this is why i could never be a sports agent because i don't think this way but it made perfect sense when i thought about it if I was his agent, I would definitely tell him not to pay. Because what if Cincinnati doesn't go after it? You just saved your client a million bucks. What if what if they go to the table and they negotiate back and forth? And all of a sudden, Cincinnati says, OK, we are willing to take seven hundred thousand dollars. You just saved your client three hundred thousand dollars of real money. Like so in the agent's best interest to fight it like this. But it's every school every school needs to fight for every penny on this because i don't know about you help me with this ross i think if they win most of these then it just becomes standard procedure like when a coach moves yeah you absolutely if um even if maybe one judge sort of sets precedent in rules in however way uh that the these rev share agreements are like legally binding then yeah Yeah, the thought is that you would have a situation where players would just know that they have to pay, just like, as you said, just like coaches. That's sort of the thought. And I think, you know, I think we're going to see two going forward. You mentioned the Big 12's uniform revenue share agreement, which has been sort of heralded as like the standard, sort of a gold standard. I think you will see other leagues also create uniform agreements for all of their all their schools and then support their schools like the Big Ten sort of has in these agreements, in these legal fights. I think you'll you'll you'll sort of see that. Did I say Big 12? Yeah, you did say Big 12, but you did correct yourself on Big Ten and the Big Ten corrected itself. So let's let's remember that. This is this is all a work in progress. Like the Xavier Lucas one did not protect them. And you notice like Wisconsin is not going after Xavier Lucas. They're going after Miami. If Washington had like let's say DeMond Williams had gone to the portal and moved. Washington would have gone after DeMond Williams. And that's the way the contract is written. Now you could do that. So that's you know, I know everybody thinks I'm never in favor of the schools in these situations. I am in this one. this is you there's a contract everybody signed it everybody agreed to it and you can't just not pay what you're supposed to pay so yeah but you know it's pretty it's pretty simple for sure right for sure and again to you know if if the idea look there's been a lot made of issues um in the house settlement and all this rev share stuff we talked about the issues with people going over the cap and all this tampering going on, the House settlement has not brought the stability that most thought it would. In this case, with this issue with these rev share contracts, it can bring stability in a way for movement if the schools fight in a court of law, if the judge deems these as legally binding. So I think every school in America, Andy, is certainly rooting for Cincinnati to continue to fight and win this case. Yeah, and they're in first-year law school stuff, not third-year law school stuff now. So it's something everybody can understand at this point instead of the antitrust stuff. So, Ross, you mentioned the calendar. I think the people in charge are listening to the show based on what we heard. When we come back, we'll talk about potential changes to the college football calendar that sound an awful lot like some of the ones we mentioned the other day. We'll be right back. We are back at the College Football Inquirer and the other big piece of news out of Indianapolis. Listen, Ross is there. The NFL Combine's going on. You know, everybody there is like, did you talk to the Jets? Have you talked to the Chiefs, to all the guys who are about to get drafted? Yes, unless you're a top five pick, they've talked to everyone. Don't you worry about that, guys. But more important to our universe of college football, they've been talking calendar and scheduling, and it really feels like they've been listening to the show because some of the ideas that have come out of this make an awful lot of sense, Ross. they do yeah they uh and i should i'll note that the um you know the football oversight transfer policy rule that we discussed about in the opener that that's sort of been announced by the ncaa and is on a little more of a fast track these other calendar things probably a little slower they weren't announced but they were discussed and for the most part settled on i think in the committee room but they're not as finalized so keep that in mind as we go through this. So number one is at least for now, keeping the portal in January. Uh, there was sort of, um, a fight on again, like we, a similar fight that played out last year of potentially moving the portal to February or I'm sorry, to March or April. There was actually a suggestion in February, but that got, that got sort of quickly, um, um, dismissed. But, uh, so keeping the portal in January at number one. Number two, giving coaches the flexibility to move some of their spring practices to the summer. You know, the AFCA proposal is probably similar from what I understand to the concept of the AFCA that coaches association presented last year, where you basically a coach gets his 15 spring practices plus six sort of OTAs. I can't remember if they're padless or not. I think they are padless practices. And you can, so that's 21 total. And you can spread those over several months into the summer. You can kind of split them up. And the idea is coaches who some don't want to have really a traditional spring practice anymore can move to more of a June style like NFL OTA. um and then the third thing perhaps the the biggest is allowing schools starting with the 2027 season so not this year to open the season on week zero um so eliminating the waiver process that comes with week zero you know usually you had anywhere from probably six to ten fbs games or so on on uh depending on the year on week zero you had to get a waiver to play on week zero or play Hawaii, right? If you played Hawaii, you got an automatic exemption. And so now they're talking about just eliminating that waiver process and giving everybody an assured two bi-weeks every year. Right now, Andy, as you know, it depends on the season, the calendar. If you have one bi-week or two right now, and now if you move to week zero, make week zero week one, then everybody will have two bi-weeks assured every year. I like this for a lot of reasons. The moving week one to week zero. And that's what it would be. The second you do that, it's not like a few teams would sign up for this. Everybody would start that week. It gives you two weeks alone before the NFL regular season starts. And the NFL preseason gets worse and worse every year, as they keep trying to add regular season games. So you are going to be all alone with games that count to hook the fans in before the NFL even starts. So that I like that you're getting people when they are at their most rabid wanting football back. And so that's that's awesome. And it's not just because the week zero games have been whoever goes to play in Ireland and then whoever plays against Hawaii playing somebody else. If you saw USC finally replaced Notre Dame on its schedule officially on on Wednesday and that was with San Jose State and they're playing at week zero because San Jose State has to play Hawaii so they don't need a waiver for that and that makes so much sense the OTA thing makes so much like you're paying these guys anyway you're paying the players like before they were always saying well since they're not getting paid you can't require them to be here all yeah you're paying them now require them to be there all you want. Require them to practice all you want. It's not that big of a deal, especially, I'm telling you from a player's perspective, in the middle of the summer, to have a practice in shells versus what they're going to normally make you do in the weight room or on the field running, it's better. So I think that would be good. It'll make for sharper because you're starting a week earlier. And I'm assuming preseason practice starts a week earlier, but you're getting more on-field reps the game should be cleaner earlier in the season you shouldn't need as much time for teams to coalesce i like it all i i really do and the interesting thing about it ross with the week zero part is i do think there are people like we we you know played the clip from joey mcguire the other day the texas tech coach i think there's several coaches and lots of administrators who would like to shift the calendar all the way not just the start of the season but shift the end of the season and i i'm telling you the drum beat for that will be very loud next year as the playoff is going on as you go through a playoff where there's a massive gap between the semifinal or between the quarterfinals and the semifinals there's a they're not finishing till the 25th everybody's going to be ready to figure something out and this is the first step toward the solution to that yeah yeah um you know there was a thought too that um starting the season on on week zero would eventually lead to like a literal shift of the regular season up and i'm i'm not so sure that will happen anytime soon um but it does give you the yeah a little more flexibility during the season to to maybe eventually do that if you want or what we think maybe more so is going to happen right is the championship conference championship being weekend turns into something else um army navy sort of shifts around which there was some news on that um we discussed last pod we should probably follow up on that and say that navy's athletic director came out against playing on thanksgiving week um a pretty important one one side completely says no on that um so that there yeah this this just does give you a little uh flexibility and any you know you mentioned about preseason practice and um yeah i would think it would have to move move up so for for those in the south uh it's going to be uh it's going to be a little toasty a little more toasty than you have another week of of a july uh practice right last week of july probably you would have grew up in florida when two a days were still allowed have no sympathy for anybody no you don't even do two days anymore it's fine it's fine but no i i i do think even even if they don't shift the back end of the calendar soon having the two buys i because i've never understood that especially in college football where it's not like the nfl where you can sign a player off the street if you get weak in a position group having the extra buy is pretty critical in terms of recovery and because you're seeing teams depending on how your schedule gets made you might have to play nine games in a row in one of those one bi-week years so having the flexibility to have a second bi-week is is good in and of itself now if they move the calendar back end then then you lose that but you're gonna have a few years of that and and the other thing about the calendar back end it's convincing the tv guys that that that's gonna be okay and yeah yeah i was thinking about it remember that great 2006 ohio state michigan game when it was a number one versus number two and I did monster ratings. That was before we began cheering for ratings, so it wasn't publicized at the time. But do you recall what weekend that game was played on? Well, it used to be. Didn't it used to be played on the week? Was it the weekend before Thanksgiving? Yes, yes. The Big Ten finished its regular season schedule on the weekend before Thanksgiving for a lot of years. So it's not like this hasn't been done before. It's not like this game has been in this spot for because that's that's the game. That's the yeah, the cherry on top, the most valuable college football game in the regular season. And obviously, Alabama, Auburn is the other one that weekend. But Texas and Texas A&M is a big one. And I don't think there would be a problem. I don't think you're going to lose any viewership if you move those off of Thanksgiving. but what you'd have to do is replace them with some some stock on Thanksgiving weekend and that's where your Tony Petiti idea of a play-in situation or the what the Pac-12 is doing with with the flex week if you do that in the power conferences and you could create some fun inventory for that weekend then I then you might get the networks on board yeah no yeah for sure now we'll I will say they, I think the, the oversight committee wanted to do a lot more with the calendar and make even more drastic sort of changes. Would stop in that as a couple of things. Well, you mentioned one of them with TV in general, but the uncertainty of the college football playoff format, right? number one number two army army navy um and number three the uh insistence um i'm glad you're sitting down for this one andy the insistence from bowls that the quarters be played on new year's day so they can have new year's day so all this sort of hymns in the calendar a little bit where you have these um hurdles or whatever you want to call them that that prevent you from doing some things how many more of the previous generation have to retire before the people in charge of the sport look at the the bowl people and just say you guys know you don't get a vote anymore yeah yeah um a few more i guess yeah a few more what's funny is um the bowl contracts uh now not the not the new year six right not the six with the cfp but the bowl contracts all expire uh this year now they're going to be there's going to have a you know one year extension um but but the yeah the future of the bowls in general is a really kind of fascinating um storyline right now but the new year's the new year six bowls that are part of the the cfp um you know they they are given a lot of uh a lot of grace andy yeah well they they give a lot of money they pay a lot of money but yeah what what what they're gonna figure out eventually is they'll make the same amount of money no matter what they can play those games on the moon it doesn't matter people are gonna watch them uh they can play those games on campus and probably it'd be better but yes you're right here nor there right now it's it's just so it's so funny but I love it when they throw all these things against the wall and every once in a while a good idea pops in there so that the week zero thing I it just makes me happy because the the offseason is so long as it is and now i know like next year offseason will be the shortest offseason in the history of the sport it's gonna be expanded it on the front end yeah that's true right um we expanded it on the front end and now we we need to uh uh we need to shrink it um for lack of a better word on the on the back end and not have the championship game on january 25th or 24th whatever it is yeah i i i don't know about you i noticed a lot of fatigue from the audience yeah the listeners the viewers and and you know they when when they hit me up on social media it was hey why why are we still doing this like the season end already and so i i do think i do think there's a window also as much as i hate long off seasons i do think college football having the shortest season of any major american sport does help reset the appetite really well yeah and and it keeps the audience passionate and you don't it doesn't just drag on like the as exciting as the nhl playoffs are as exciting as the nba playoffs can be it feels like those seasons go on forever and I will never forget when the Bulls won their first title with Michael Jordan. Keith Olbermann was doing SportsCenter and he was talking about, he wraps up the highlight package. You see Michael Jordan crying with the trophy and Olbermann says something like, and we'll check back in on Michael Jordan when the NBA season begins next Tuesday. Can't do that in college. We don't want that in college football. No, no, no. And honestly, you know, I know we talk a lot about expanding the playoff and and I get I get the argument to expand and get more teams access. But I don't know, you know, Andy, one of the one of the great sort of cherished things about college football is that there are fewer games in general, whether it's regular season in the postseason. And so each game does have more meaning and value in magnitude. So we want to try to certainly preserve that, I guess. Which is why you want to go to a 2014 playoff, Tony Petiti. Sorry, I had to. Look, I get why you want to do it. I get it. But there's a sweet spot and you're in it right now with 12. You're in it. Don't mess it up. In fact, don't even go to 16, Greg Zanke. Don't do it. All right. You go to 16, you know, you go to 16. Yeah. Not to get down the road on the playoff expansion like discussion, but it's hard for the bowls now. It's really hard for the bowls, especially at the power conference level. If you add four more teams, you know, and then of course, if you had eight more teams, it's over. Right. I mean, the bowl system would have to completely change or just would be eliminated. And what will the Pop-Tarts company do? Yeah. For their marketing and branding. How will we know what the new flavors of Pop-Tarts are? We've almost got, by the way, Andy, I think I said it on the show, and I appreciate the Pop-Tart Bowl folks who are avid listeners and sent all of us boxes. I had two giant boxes of Pop-Tarts. each box was um had i think six separate flavors and each flavor had like two boxes so i had like 85 boxes or 85 pop tarts in my home my wife loves pop charts so she's like i don't know two thirds of the way through them there you go my son has plowed through every box this is this is a kid who weighed 135 pounds two years ago and currently weighs 205 so it is uh wow what would uh how old he's 16 puberty man it's crazy so tube right up ross it's been a pleasure but i know you need to get going uh you are headed to another part of indiana to do some fun stuff so have fun with that when we return godfrey will join us we're going to steal an idea from international soccer and apply it to college football and oh my god would it be fun we'll talk about when we come back welcome back to the college football inquirer ross dellinger has had to move off to another assignment. Stephen Godfrey joins now. And we gave Godfrey some homework last week because we got into this conversation. And Godfrey, you were the one who inspired this because we were talking about what would happen at Tennessee if Joey Aguilar lost his hearing, which he did. And then Tennessee had a quarterback competition. And you were positing that if Joey won, what do you do with your five-star freshman phase on Brandon. And the idea you had was take a page from international soccer and loan him out. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, whatever college football fan wants to hear is that we should model ourselves after a European sport that isn't football. Well, it's a different kind of football, if you will. Yeah, it's funny because there's a cross-section of college football fans who really are into soccer. And then there's also an equal measure of people who vehemently dislike soccer. So if you're if you're in the ladder, you're going to have to kind of to bear with me here. All right. So can I raise my hand here? Yeah, I dislike watching it because it's the most boring sport in the world. OK, I find the drama behind the scenes and the structural debates and all of that. Very interesting because I cover college football and the similarities are shocking. Yes, I would. I would echo that by saying I am not a hardcore soccer fan by any stretch. I have come to really love the sport. And much like Andy found a crazy amount of similarities between the off-field nonsense and our flavor of off-field nonsense. I will say that I've been a hockey fan most of my life. And so hockey kind of taught me how to watch soccer and appreciate it. So, but let's not- So much more interesting. Let's not kid ourselves. I think both of us would prefer a Tuesday night Mac game with a combined 105 points. I mean, just- One million percent. Yes. Now, the question is, who's playing QB for those Mac teams and what Big Ten team do they belong to? Because in this model, we got five stars playing there. I don't know why I got Italian all of a sudden. Okay, so we threw this question out. I promote the show on like three different social media platforms. One of those is Blue Sky. And a listener, a fan of the show named CB, and I don't know, we used to throw out, shout out people's handles, but it's CB Blunt 58 if you're on Blue Sky. CB took this assignment very, very literal. Color-coded spreadsheet. Made. CB. Got in the sheets. Got in the sheets, if you will, and created. He said, hey, I got a head start on your homework. I left out Notre Dame and the three military academies. Thus, there are 67 P4 G5 pairings. Obviously not perfect, but I tried to group them as close as possible based on regions of the country. Now, I'm not going to read all these off. but what CB did was took my proposal in its most literal application, Andy. So what we have here are a couple of decent examples of what I was suggesting. What we also have here are a couple of disasters in the making, sir, because much like European soccer, this sport is rife with really weird local politics, right? Really strange dynamics. I know where you're going with this. I know exactly where you're starting. Well, you know, honestly, there are so many. There really are so many. So I would point out that given the history between the programs, I'll throw out a lighter example just to start off with. So CB just kind of paired everybody up geographically, and some of these are you just kind of shrug. Like, okay, we'll pair Toledo and Minnesota. Okay, Boston College and UMass. Okay, sure, sure, sure. LSU and Tulane are never going to happen. Tulane is never going to enter into a feeder program. Given the history, actually working on a little project about this right now over at Phantom Island, given the history between one UAB and the University of Alabama, sir, I don't know if that's the one that you thought I was going for. I don't think UAB is going to sign on unless made to in the state of Alabama to be the actual literal feeder program for the one University of Alabama. So there's a lot of fun examples here. Now, some of these aren't bad, but I think I said this at the time that I was going to actually exclude the higher end group of five programs. OK, so for instance, think about the average amount of talent that Memphis has. So in this in this equation that CB created, he has Memphis paired with Tennessee. That feels different, if you will, than having one of the directional schools like, let's say, where did he put? He put Louisiana Monroe and South Alabama feeding to Mississippi State or ULM feeding to Baylor. Again, he kind of had to manipulate the map here a little bit. That's not equal. That doesn't feel right. And so when I started my homework. The thing is, let's say Memphis and Tennessee are matched. Yeah. If Tennessee has some freshmen that were highly recruited that it doesn't quite have space on the field for yet or wants to get them more extensive playing time. So let's say they send a five-star quarterback and this high four-star, lots of traits, but we're not really sure how they're going to express edge rusher down to Memphis. Right. You might have made Memphis better than you, depending on how the edge rusher develops. Correct. And so when I kicked around this idea with some friends of mine, just sources and people who work at different levels of the industry. One, I got a response I wasn't quite ready for, which was like, I thought you were the G5 guy. How dare you? Which is like, you're now turning us into the AA Toledo mud hens type situation, which after a little bit more rational conversation, we decided this isn't going to work for everybody. But those who need it in the bottom end of the group of five, it would work tremendously. And those who are teaming with talent, let's say the top 30 or so programs, this makes a lot of sense. So unfortunately for CB, who volunteered to do this homework, I don't know if it's a one-to-one match necessarily. By the way, I do like the matchup of UConn pairing with Maryland. We can call that just the Randy Edsel bond. I don't know. I like that. Also, if I'm Maryland, I do love Jason Candle training my guys. Exactly. I'm good at that. so i i love the uh i love the the georgia southern florida one just because it brings back the memory of the two guys blocking each other in the georgia southern game yes when georgia southern beat florida without throwing a forward pass as they talk about in statesboro there's a giant giant sort of like photo illustration in the lobby at georgia southern uh okay a couple things here if we're going to talk about this seriously andy i kick this around i did not actually try and apply this to the current state of football because i don't know based on the last the previous segments of the show i don't know if you can apply anything to the current state of football right now yeah the current football doesn't even know what it is right now correct which is why it's fun to have these conversations so the first thing that everybody said was this has to be mandated by some form of a cba which is that dreaded term that feels like it's going to have to happen one day but that everyone and their brother in a in a position of power if you will uh is still trying to fight so but interestingly enough international soccer no cba no cba um and i was told that's just mainly because it would be basically impossible to build and enforce an apparatus that reaches across so many different legal areas like country yeah but not states employment laws different countries employment and even bigger than something like the european union if you will So it's not even one continent. You know, you could farm a player out. By the way, you could do this in the premiership, which is, you know, mainly in the United Kingdom, with an MLS team here in the States. So that's one of the reasons they don't have a CBA. And they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, as I was sort of building this out for our recording, people were giving me examples of, like, players from the premiership who were going to go on loan. So we would need a CBA, actually, more to kind of codify the player rights tag here. and I don't mean the rights of the player. I mean the rights to the player. Is that clear enough, Andy? Do you want to help expound on that? So this is like, yeah, if I'm Texas and I sign a kid, yeah, I have the rights to where he plays for a certain amount of time. By the way, very much G League kind of thing going on with Texas and Texas State. Because you know, like the NBA, they put the G League team very close to the NBA team. They do not have to drive. If they need to call somebody who's on a two-way contract up, they don't have to drive. So the San Marcos to Austin, 25-minute drive up by 35. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, and what's funny about that, Andy, is actually a lot of AAA teams, those who can, so like the Atlanta Braves organization, a lot of the East Coast teams, have actually moved their AAA teams closer so they can do that exact thing, which is they can move players faster. So the player rights tag would have to actually be sort of like explained a little bit. We have to walk that out, as we say in the biz. The other problem is this. There has to be opt-out benchmarks at some point, meaning that you can't park a kid forever. Something would have to trigger at a certain point. And if the kid is for some reason, let's say, you know, we talked about five-star quarterbacks when I brought this up. But someone brought up to me, well, what if a three-star tight end signs who actually overachieves? Let's say they send him to the hinterlands and he's playing at Akron or Kent State, but his rights are held by Michigan, Ohio State, something like that. Well, if he overachieves, he should then have some right to try to test the market after X amount of time. That was what was proposed to me because you just made a good point. What if I have a really damn good coach at the G5, at the lower league, like a great AAA baseball coach? because those are renowned, actually, major league baseball teams. They pocket great managers and put them in the minors to develop pitchers or hitters or both. So if that's going on, I suddenly have this overachieving three-star tight end. The people I asked said, well, he should be able to go out and test the market if there's a logjam of four- and five-star talent at that position, and he then would have to burn out all his eligibility at the G5 school. Oh, 100%. I think you should only be able to do it once. Yeah. For one year. because remember we're not a lot this isn't the g league it's not two-way contract there's not a there's not a mid-season call-up you play for the team you play for that year you can do it one year and that's it but if i'm smart i'm sending all my offensive line signees down there i'm sending anybody i need who plays a developmental position down there who's not totally ready to play at my level yet. One of the concerns that was brought up, ironically, or somewhat is, you know, obviously, there's a big difference in academics at certain institutions. This was actually brought up, and there's a pairing on here. I'll go ahead and say it out loud. Are we going to pretend they're students? No, I know. This is the thing. This is like when somebody sent me the path of A.J. Swan, who started his career at Vanderbilt, and then bounced from school to school and I think ended up at Appalachian State. And no offense to Appalachian State, but if my son got a scholarship, a full ride to Vanderbilt and wound up with a degree from Appalachian State, I would be very upset with him. Okay, so I'll just, because you said that, I'll just go ahead and put this on front. The two that were brought up to me immediately were Duke and Liberty and Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee State as a bit of a jarring difference in terms of the academic and social culture there. By the way, signing up to go to make millions of dollars as a player at Duke in the ACC and then being sent to Liberty would be a little bit of a swing If anything I think Liberty and BYU might work out a partnership that might actually work out better in terms of campus culture That not a joke So the next thing is that we discussed this at the top Some of these schools don't have any willingness whatsoever to participate in this. So I picked a couple schools just because these are the ones that got brought up on the phone. Louisiana Lafayette has a great tradition. They are the Raging Cajuns. They are literally a Cajun culture. I got extended relatives through marriage there. They don't want to forfeit a full identity of their program. And in this model, they're paired with SMU. Great school, but a wildly different culture, right? And they still want to contend. Now, you can walk this out. Are you insinuating that some of the SMU students and their parents have never flown their helicopters to the Popeye's buffet in Lafayette, which is no longer a chance there? Yeah, not a chance. Some of these are fits. We could rattle through and look at some of the fits. But a lot of these G5 programs are going to say thanks, but no thanks, because we want to keep – we believe we're closer. We're in punching distance. As you mentioned earlier, what if you had a year accidentally where Memphis had maybe not more talent than a Tennessee roster, because I like what Josh Heupel does on the whole. But what if they weren't really close? What if you had an underling program that was too close? That's why I don't think the American schools would think that this is a fit. Well, most of the Americans. But you have USF and Florida State. I would argue that last season, USF and Florida State's talent were very comparable. Yes, yes. And USF might have been better. Absolutely. Then I think that's why you could probably toss out 12, 15, maybe even 20 of these G5 schools who are saying, hey, no, we want to punch your chance. A great example in here is that our buddy CB paired together Iowa State and Boise State. Andy if on a blind resume test over the last 25 years I showed you the talent on each one of those you know 2004 2005 all the way through I think Boise State might have had more talented rosters in more years than Iowa State yes the Iowa State gets better in the Matt Campbell era for sure but Boise State going back into the the Dan Hawkins era that's a pretty talented rosters Yes. Now, the people who are receptive to this were it's that 30-30 principle that I introduced at the top of the segment. So let's talk about Ohio State. Let's talk about Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, etc. Now let's talk about Akron. Let's talk about Louisiana Monroe. Let's talk about the 30 or so group of five schools. And this is where it gets really sort of interesting. And this is really why I'm probably going to be watching a lot more North Dakota State football than I realized this year is I want to see where they land in in this very abrupt year one. And to that end, Andy, where Sacramento State lands in this abrupt year one. Because if you can come in and, you know, both of those programs have had such a different kind of bluster coming in. North Dakota State basically throws their resume on the table and says, you know, we're pretty damn ready for this. And then Sac State is citing these like kind of bunk economic analysis surveys without any of the football merit to it. Are you suggesting that Malaysian LinkedIn post might not have been completely accurate? I've seen weirder things cited, honestly, in arguments. I'll be very curious to see where those schools rank because these bottom 30 schools are in desperate need of cash flow. Now, cash flow is the reason we have Maction. No one got together in the dead cold of November, in the heart of the Rust Belt of the United States and said, you know what we should do? Tuesday night football, guys, let's go. let's get 105 people to watch two football teams beat each other up at nine o'clock Eastern time. No, that wasn't the reason it was television revenue. Some of these schools, as we've discussed, are on the Mendoza line of failing to keep their D1 eligibility from a financial sense. They don't like to put that on front street. And a lot of these programs are basically just broke capital B broke. I could name some and then they deny it publicly. But I hear, you know, when I do those anonymous coach surveys all the time, Andy, one of the things that comes up when you do the G5 is they just don't have the money. They just don't have the money. They, you know, I'll give you a good example, because this is something I published in Athlon in 2020 in the spring of 25. Sorry, Kennesaw State was thought to be dead on arrival in terms of their financial ability to compete. So in CB's plan here, he has Kennesaw State, which if you don't know, is essentially an Atlanta school. It's in the exurbs of Atlanta on the north side, okay? If you go up I-75 to Kennesaw, Cartersville. It's one of the big growth areas in the Atlanta metro area. On a good day, let's say it's a 90-minute drive to Athens. It's not that far from a mileage standpoint. It's far if you get trapped in Atlanta traffic. This would make a ton of sense, Andy. I know Coach Mack and Kennesaw State, the Owls were overachievers by a significant margin last season, But in the long term, what is the financial health? What does the financial prognosis look like for the OWLs program? To be tethered to the Georgia brand. Andy, how many – I don't know what the total undergraduate enrollment of Kennesaw State is. How many kids do you think are walking around a Kennesaw State campus right now with UGA apparel on? What did you say, 20%? 20 30 percent we need to pull our our friend and fellow and and kennesaw state grad jason kirk at the athletic but uh but no i i would imagine a lot it's it's probably like when i was in because like ucf's undergone a transformation ucf used to be like primo commuter school it has become its own campus like you walk around ucf now everybody's wearing ucf stuff when i was in high school if you walked around ucf's campus everybody had gator shirts or seminal shirts on and that's probably where Kennesaw State is in its evolution right now absolutely and what UCF has been able to do I think probably puts them in outlier status in terms of the amount of money and population growth and expansion for one of these have not programs into what they are their plan was athletics has actually helped them execute the plan a lot but it was a presidential top down entire university plan so yeah this but this could also jumpstart something like that for Kennesaw State if they could be tied in with the red and black that dominates the state. Well, you know, it's funny as I'll stay in that same city because I was talking to somebody about a program like so. So Georgia State is university has been around for a very long time, largely considered to be a little bit of a night school, commuter school, degree completion program. I think my mom worked on finishing her master's at Georgia State. That's not necessarily conducive to like hardcore football energy. There's been a sort of forced pairing with Georgia Southern as a rivalry. It hasn't really taken off because state really hasn't held up their end of the bargain. They moved into the old Atlanta Braves stadium. They're paired with Georgia Tech in this scenario, which you want to talk about crosstown. You know, we don't have the closest I believe this is this is they are within two miles of one another. Yeah, I technically they're within blocks of one another if you're including some of the city campuses, the two schools. So that makes all the sense in the world to me if I am Georgia Tech. But again, it's a willingness here to give up at least a little bit of your identity in some ways and sort of announce now. All right. Andy, you're the head coach at one of these schools. Are you essentially adopting a Juco sort of structure to how you're going to build and execute a roster successfully? Yes, because I would do I would have done that anyway. Okay. And I want to prove myself to be a developer of talent because my financial incentive for this yeah is if let's let's say i'm at georgia state and i'm affiliated with georgia tech and they're going to hand me the you know three-star offensive linemen that are freshmen that they would like to have ready to contribute as sophomores and if i if they do that for two three years and i deliver every time i deliver them back a player who is now ready to play at their level. Guess who's going to get a head coaching job at that level? Me. This is where I'm going to push back based off of the conversations I had with people in the G5 football side and the G5 front office side. Okay. Every one of them that I talked to in this scenario, they posed this question of like, okay, all right, you're going to win, right? You want to take these kids and play them right away, right? Your remit is now twofold. so at any of these schools that we're talking about you're supposed to just win football games flat out that's it new coach at charlotte new coach at akron win football games as hard as that might be but andy what we're talking about now is you've been sent a raw freshman who's a four or five star left tackle okay i see i don't think you're getting that guy most of the time well who are you getting because i can still keep this going i mean like you can throw me throw me an You might get the highly rated quarterback who wants to play, who doesn't want to sit. The four or five star offensive tackle is playing or is a backup. He's not. You're talking about on the big team. Yeah, he's on the big team. Who you're getting are the other offensive linemen that they signed. And then what they want is for you to figure out if they can play or not. Well, so here's the problem. And this is what every coach said to me. All I have to do now at G5 School X is win football games, where I need to develop the best five offensive linemen to go out and beat the other G5 schools in November and win our conference. What you're asking me to do is something that's way more akin to NFL preseason football or AAA baseball, which is that any AAA, hey, I'm not going to ask you, but anyone listening, your favorite MLB team, okay, in your head, how many games did your AAA team win last year? You probably have no damn idea. And in several of those games, and especially as you trickle down into double A, a lot of games were played with the intent of development over winning. And that's what the G5 coaches pushed back on me on. They said, what if I have to ride or die? You got to pitch this guy so many times. Like, it's not the same thing. OK, but what if my all right. But what if I'm down here at Georgia State and you sent me this four or five star quarterback and he's eaten the curb? He's terrible. But I've got a veteran. I've got my TJ Finley there who can probably go out and win us this game. Then you play him and you tell the coach at the other school, well, you blew this one, sign a new quarterback next year, and send him to me. But what if word from upon high from that coach says, hey, you know what he needs? He needs more snaps. Push through it. Fire me if you want. See, but the coaches weren't as cavalier as you were in this situation. They're like, am I going to? I have a buyout, Godfrey. At the G5 level, you might have a decent one, But these guys asked me flat out, am I going to be judged by doing everything tactically I can to win this football game? Or am I going to be judged by developing these 10 to 12 five stars? And the answer is going to be yes, because if you actually want to be a successful head coach at the highest level, you've got to be able to do both. So that's what I'm saying. The incentive for me as that coach is if I do all this, I prove that I deserve your job. and that's which is good because your ad is going to think somebody else deserves your job soon because that's how the sport works so when that happens i'm ready to step in but no i i think to take this back into the realm of the real it doesn't necessarily have to be one g5 team slotted with one power conference team right in in reality the way they do it in soccer is you may loan out to a bunch of different teams you may take loans from a bunch of different teams you also may develop and i sent you this story a really good story from the athletic about brinford which is a premier league team that is shockingly well run it's like it's basically like a group of five team it's boise state it's it's boise yeah yeah yeah yeah they're they're always better than they should be. They lose their best players because those guys go sign massive free agent deals. But they develop this reputation of we find guys on the cheap and turn them into two successful Premier League players and then sell them. Because remember, in the soccer community, you get a transfer fee when you send that guy off. So this is like the buyouts. This is like the Brendan Sorsby buyout that they're suing over. You're selling players. Yes. Not only are you developing now to attract talent when, because you and I, we've talked on the show before about there are G5 programs who are at differing volumes preaching this and recruiting right now. Come here, get developed, transfer out. I mean, Jeff Chote at Nevada just straight upset it after Isaiah World left for Oregon. He's like, come here, and in two or three years, you can be a millionaire. It's not a bad pitch. it's funny because in this story, Brettford is financially profiting off of this, and that's not an element we've seen yet. Although, again, if you had a development-minded coach, it's funny because you think about how many people, I just talked to Bryant Vincent about something completely unrelated, the Louisiana Monroe head coach. And if you look at what he did as OC in New Mexico. Very good, like out-punches his weight at Louisiana Monroe. Yeah, so he was the offensive coordinator in New Mexico. They had the highest statistical improvement in offense the one season he was there before he went to ULM. He was part of the UAB turnaround staff under Bill Clark. He said, in so many words, we were having a conversation about something else. He said, I just think there's a certain breed of us, some of my coaches, who are developers. We're just here for the renovation. It's just how we approach everything. We like the challenge. It's how we view the entire job. This could be a whole new breed of coach, Andy. You could have guys who, as long as the compensation is still decent, stay in these ranks and just sort of be known as a mechanic or a renovator it full time. And if it drives in baseball, yes. And at Bradford, like in your story specifically, if you drive profitability, there will be a higher demand for your service, especially if you are partnered with one of these mega schools. Yeah. Right. So what's the likelihood of this happening is, is, you know, probably next to none, but it's zero, but Hey, look, it ties back into something Ross and I talked about with the Brennan Sorsby lawsuit. If, if you can make these buyouts stick, if the schools can, can fight for these buyouts in court, get it to become standard procedure where everybody pays the buyout when they take a player. It actually could become not a profit center, but a revenue generator, a revenue stream, where you could become the garden. You could become the farmer's market that cultivates the best tomato and everybody wants to come buy your tomatoes. So. Oh man. Farmer's markets, English soccer. Boy, yeah. We're losing a hardcore red stripe of this audience i know this audience godfrey we ain't talking about the farmer's market of mine on therisha okay we're not right now so you think ari goes to a far does ari shop at a farmer's market ari's wife will drag his ass to a farmer's market for sure so there's your bonus content there's your bonus content that's exactly right all right i i think that's a fun conversation And also tying back to what Ross and I talked about at the beginning of the show, it's all in flux. Nobody knows what's going to happen here. Everybody's throwing ideas out there. And this is this is February. This is the time to do it. So, yeah, feel free to laugh at us. But there are kernels of this that will exist in college football in the next five years. Just wait. Ten years ago, you would have laughed at us about telling you a story that Cincinnati was suing. another Big 12 school for a quarterback buyout. So strange things do happen. And that school is Texas Tech and it paid the most money. Lubbock's lovely. What can we say? 2026, everybody. We will talk to you on Tuesday.