SEC & Big Ten Worried + Biggest Portal Spenders

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Does it occur to anyone else that as we sit the little clear plastic cup of college football on the table, We fill it with water. The ripples keep getting bigger in that cup. Just feels like something's coming. It's Thursday night. It's February 26th. The year of our Lord, 2026. We're jam-packed. We're high atop a very lovely downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The SEC and the Big Ten don't even agree that the sky is blue, and yet they jointly issued, what did we call it, a white paper this morning? Yeah, like eight pages of, I won't go as far as to say nonsense. I'm sure it was well-intentioned. It was well thought out. It just didn't seem to go over all that well. College football public looked at it and dismissed it, but also some other slightly deeper pocketed, more powerful entities dismissed it. Not only did they dismiss it, ladies and gentlemen, they offered a counter. It's been a long time since someone was on the other side of the net to the SEC and the Big Ten and could return that serve, maybe even a little bit hotter than it was delivered. So I'm going to talk about that because it sounds like it doesn't really impact you as a normal fan. Oh, I promise it does. I promise you it does. There's this portal piece. Portal Pete Nekos put out a very, very thorough piece on On3.com like three days ago. But I have not gotten around to it until now. I've just been marinating. And there's some stuff in here, including about one team that's not normally on the portal radar that I want to talk to you about. We've got some allegations on the show tonight. that can't possibly be true because the allegation is I'm a Big 12 hater. Again, can't be true. So we will dive into the merits or lack thereof of that allegation. And someone asked about our partnership with Bussin with the boys. Where'd that come from? Is it going to continue? These things, the Notre Dame mood tracker, can Oklahoma make the playoff again? We're jam-packed. They're watching us in Provo, Utah. They're watching us in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Miami, Florida, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Thank you guys so, so much. It's February. And then there'll be March and April and May and June and July and August. And then it will be football season again, but we're just going to do the show the entire time and it'll be free because who in the world would pay for this? That would be psychotic to keep it that way. Just please make sure you subscribe to the channel. That's it. That's all. It helps us out and it costs you nothing and signs you up for nothing. What a morning it was. SEC and the Big Ten woke up this morning and decided, you know what? We're going to crack our knuckles. We're going to get our typing fingers ready. And we're going to send an eight page letter, excuse me, a white letter, whatever that is to Congress, to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Now it's at this point that a lot of you tune out. It's at this point that a lot of you say, don't care. Show me the schedules. Show me what spring practice is going to look like. When's our spring game? When's media days? If you're really a die hard, but you don't care about this stuff. I think though you may care about this. So what's happening? All right. Cause most of you are like me. Most of you do not want to wave through eight papers or eight pages rather worth of minutia. A lot of these terms are just made up so people can have jobs in the legal community. You just want it spelled out to you. What's happening? Give me the elevator version. Give me the elevator pitch. So what's happening right now? What's been happening for a little while. I've spent a lot of time on the phone about this, so thankfully you don't have to. There's a fight going on. It's a good old-fashioned fight behind the scenes. People may be wearing suits, but they're still fighting. Now, thus far, the SEC and the Big Ten haven't really publicly commented on it a whole lot, but the SEC and the Big Ten seem worried enough about the SCS, the Saving College Sports Commission. That's your Cody Campbells of the world out at Texas Tech. You may have seen those commercials airing over the past year. They've become, and this is my opinion, worried enough that their proposals are gaining traction that they release their own sort of manifesto this morning to lawmakers. And then five minutes later, it was released to the public. Now, to be very clear, what are they even responding to? Okay, very quickly. There's been this push from the SCS. We'll use those three letters. There are a lot of entities underneath that, a lot of concerned people underneath that. But broad strokes purposes, this is the group of people who are very big proponents of doing what you call pooling media rights. And they're thinking to themselves, well, if the SEC TV deal makes this much money, and then the Big Ten TV deal makes this much money, and then the Big 12s, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why don't we just pool it all? Because if everyone's struggling, everyone's in debt right now, and we think that we could make two or three or four X the amount of money in totality as a singular media rights negotiation that these conferences make in their own little silos, well, wouldn't that be the answer to everyone's problem? That's not quite that simple, but they're also thinking, hey, that would fill your coffers and nice little side effect. It would save the non-revenue generating sports, you know, so women's swimming can still exist 10 years from now. Again, just a nice little side note there. The SEC and the Big Ten do not agree that that is what it claims to be. And they released this paper this morning, and among the reasons that they claimed that that's a well-intentioned try, but we don't think that it really holds up under scrutiny among those reasons were it would cause too much legal chaos. Can you imagine college football fraught with legal chaos? Thank goodness we're not embroiled in that right now. Also, this would involve federal involvement. This would require federal involvement. And who in the world wants the federal government involved in college football? Aside from the Big Ten and the SEC, who are currently begging the federal government to get involved in college football. So that I cannot believe that even got put on paper and passed proofreading, but it did. Thirdly, this is kind of where the red flag went up for me, because I happen to have studied this thing for reasons I don't even want to get into. They argued that we've already tried pooling media rights. We already tried it in 1984. It didn't work. Guys, I'm not going to bore you with the details. The proposal, the effort that was made in 1984 could not be more apples to oranges different than the effort and climate today if you possibly tried. In no shape, form, or fashion should what was attempted in 1984 be compared to what you're trying to attempt today. Okay, so anyway, you don't even need to get bogged down in the details of this to have the opinion I have. I have looked at this, and I've looked at the Big Ten and the SEC, both publicly and privately, try and maintain the stranglehold that they have on college athletics for a while right now. And I've thought to myself, you're missing the boat entirely. I'm not even falling on a side of this. Frankly, I'd love to have more information and more education on every proposal. I'm just looking at it purely from a strategic standpoint. The SEC and the Big Ten have been so busy lobbying Congress. to get, you know, federal intervention, to get antitrust exemption so they can actually create laws and rules that they can enforce and they can avoid collective bargaining and all this stuff that gets kind of boring to talk about. But they've been so busy doing that that they've put zero effort into winning public opinion, which is wild because there are really only a few mechanisms that they have in play here. And the one they're hoping to hit, they're probably not going to hit, But the one they're hoping to hit is they get enough votes in Congress that they get federal antitrust exemption. Therefore, they can create the landscape that they want to. But they haven't spent any time trying to convince the college football public and the sporting public that their way is the right way. And here's what's interesting about that. the very public that they've ignored, those are the constituents of the congressmen and women that they're trying to convince, which boggles my mind how that approach hasn't been attempted, but it hasn't. So the majority of the sporting public, until proven otherwise out there, the majority of the sporting public looks at the SEC and the Big Ten, and I did the focus grouping for you guys. I'll tell you what they think about you. They think you're the problem. They don't think you're the solution. The majority of the sporting public, the majority of the American sporting public, if you will, they look at the SEC and the Big Ten as the cause of many of college football's issues, for example. Whether that's fair or not, I'm not here to litigate. I'm just telling you, you talk to Kyle in Des Moines, you talk to Kevin in Tucson, Arizona, they don't have a glowing opinion of the administrative bureaucratic state of the SEC and the Big Ten. Most don't. So when you look at the other side of this coin, this doesn't happen today if the SEC and the Big Ten aren't concerned, firstly. And my feel, and this is just feel, this is just gut for me, my feel is once the other approach is understood more by the public, that concept is going to take takeoff. The concept I'm talking about is the concept where you pool the media rights, you renegotiate all these things, but you negotiate them collectively. It earns a lot more money and you don't really necessarily care about that. I know you guys don't. I don't either because I don't make that money. Networks do. We're not with any network, so we don't make that money. You don't make that money, but that's not what would appeal to you. If these people ever get around to properly explaining this to the public, here's where the public gets on board. The public cares about experience and they care about the overall product. And I want you to imagine a world where your ESPNs and CBSs and NBCs and Foxes, along with Netflix, Amazon, whoever's in the game, Imagine a world where they are all covering college football as a whole instead of what you have right now, where Fox is almost totally Big Ten, ESPN almost totally SEC, and Big 12 to a certain extent. But you kind of have these silos where you have networks who have media rights deals with conferences, and therefore it greatly behooves them to promote those conferences or to disproportionately spend a majority of their time covering those conferences, talking about those conferences. Imagine a world where one week you could be playing on ESPN, and the next week you're on CBS, and the week after that you're on Fox. It sounds a lot like the NFL to a certain extent. Everyone kind of plays on every network, but every network is covering the sport as a whole. Therefore, it's in the vested interest of every network to cover the sport in totality. Not only that, but just from a pure fan engagement standpoint, Just from a pure quality of product standpoint, I know a lot of you like to play the game where you get tired of having the same broadcast teams over and over again, but that's kind of the way the contracts have been shaped for a long time. I mean, imagine our guy, Joel Klatt, is calling a Penn State game one Saturday night, hopefully, whiteout. And then the next week, he's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Imagine Fowler and Herbstreet are in Seattle, calling Oregon-Washington one week, but then they're in Tuscaloosa the next week. That doesn't really happen now. But it could, and that would greatly appeal, I think, to a majority of fans. So I don't care about revenue. Fans don't care about revenue. but the way it disproportionately enhances the viewer experience, they very much do care about. Now, I'm going to give you a quick theory on this, and I'm going to move on. My theory is you can pool media rights. It works. If it didn't work, conferences wouldn't exist. So make no mistake, before anyone tries to beat you over the head with their experience in the room, no, no. There's a reason the SEC moves in a block. There's a reason the Big Ten negotiates in a block. It's because it works. It works for you. You got the most valuable assets in the sport and it works for you right now. But if it didn't work as a concept, you wouldn't do it. So of course it works, but I don't think that this would significantly require federal government involvement. Like that was one of the boogeymen that they put in this response today. No, no, you don't need the federal government taking over anything when you pool media rights. I think it would significantly increase revenue. I don't think you have to homogenize college football at all. I don't think you have to rip the mechanisms of scheduling and the authority to schedule out of the hands of conferences. You don't need to do any of that stuff. So I've been a believer, and I will continue to be until someone convinces me otherwise that this concept works And I am strongly encouraging you keep an eye on this because this is going to be a fight that doesn go away It been happening for a while behind the scenes. This is kind of happening publicly now. But there's a whole other fight that seems like a separate fight, but it's really not. The whole collective bargaining versus can we get antitrust exemption, the ones who are leaning more towards favoring collective bargaining, not because they think it's a perfect answer, but because they think it's the only realistic way to go right now because you're not going to get Congress on board to help you. That group and the group that is looking to do things like pooling media rights, there's a lot overlap. So you got a lot of pretty influential people, pretty convincing crowd that are working together and everyone wants to demonize Greg Sankey and Tony Petiti, these conference commissioners from the big two. You can have whatever opinion that you want of those guys. They're in a tough spot too. Whether you like this or not, it is not their job, as currently stated, to look out for the entire best interest of college athletics. Now, you could argue, well, they should do that anyway. Yeah, well, that's what you think they should do. And I may even agree with you. I'm just telling you what their actual job is right now. So like you're saying, hey, you guys should voluntarily give up your stranglehold. You guys should just voluntarily give up a lot of the power you have. Well, that's pretty anti-human nature to do, which is, you know, why there have been a lot of calls for a position, whether it's a commissioner or whatever the case may be, or a centralized governing body that kind of makes that decision for you. But you got to relinquish the power in order for that to even exist. So welcome to college sports right now. That's where we are. That matters. What I just talked about, that matters. Keep an eye on that. Now for matters that will actually impact us on the field this year. So I'm scrolling on three.com the other day, beautiful, sweet Pete Nakos puts out a very comprehensive piece about the transfer portal, about how it just went down. The portal windows closed. I don't know if you guys have heard that. Hey, no one else can move portals closed. Don't you guys fly in the face of NCAA rules now? So if you didn't, I would suggest that you go read this. There were multiple rosters now in college football, according to Pete's work, over $40 million, LSU included. Conservatively, now this is what I'm hearing. Pete may have said this too. Conservatively, I've heard estimates that the average cost of a major roster went up by 50 or 60 percent this cycle. Conservatively. Some people would go like 75 percent. But these are the best kinds of articles because these are dust has settled, anonymous sources dropping intel left and right. Half of these GMs, you could tell who it is, even though it's technically anonymous. If you know these guys at all, you can tell who's saying what. But let's dive into it because I'm not even going to start with Ohio State or Texas or Miami. You know what stood out the most to me? You know what was the most refreshing out of this entire feature? Wisconsin. This right here, this is a paragraph that I don't want you to overlook. This is an ACC source to Pete Naco's quote, I don't know if they spent the most, but certainly Wisconsin surprised some people. They told at least four or five kids we were involved with that just give us a chance and we will be your highest number. So welcome to the party, Wisconsin, I guess. Remember last year they went four and eight. That was after a five and seven years. So they've had back-to-back down years. And there were rumors that Luke Fickle was going to be fired. He wasn't fired. What's your only recourse? If you're not firing the guy, you take the money you would have spent in buyout, and you wash it and repurpose it however you have to to make it past the smell test, and you invest in your roster. And I don't know how it's going to work out because from the 50,000-foot viewpoint, a lot of three stars went out. They lost 23 kids. They added 33 kids. Not loaded with blue chippers, but you trust, hopefully, that they evaluated very well. You trust that they got their kind of guy in. And by the way, they went to Old Dominion and they got Colton Joseph, the quarterback. And that kid, look, he may not have thrown for over 100 yards, but they ran it really effectively against Indiana in week one last year. And then Indiana woke up and it was over for the rest of the country. So there's work to do there, but I'm just encouraged because you look at the rest of the Big Ten. We'll talk about it later in the show. It's such an established tier system there right now. So then the next thing I noticed is everyone's talking about Texas. Everyone's talking about how this is an all-in year for Texas. True, true. I'm not pushing back on that. I wonder, should we be talking about LSU the same way we're talking about Texas? Because, yeah, Texas is loaded. Texas can win a national title. They're all in. But LSU got six of the top 30 players in the on three portal rankings. They got three of the top eight. They got two big time edge guys, got a quarterback, got an offensive tackle, got a wide receiver, got a safety. It's already a pretty decent roster as is, you know, because it's LSU and all. And there's another really solid layer beneath that real headline blue chip top layer. Eugene Wilson, they got Blockton from Auburn in there. They got Longstreet quarterback from USC. And there's some guys in there whose names you remember if you follow recruiting a lot. And for whatever reason, mainly injury, it just hasn't worked out. But if those guys are healthy, if those guys clicked, then you got a really, really star-studded second layer. And then there's a third layer of kids from like Elon, Nickel State, McNeese State, NC Central, Charlotte, Troy. And this is a guy in Lane Kiffin that this time a year ago just casually went to Ferris State and said, Trinidad Chambliss, we'll take him. And I'm not suggesting that maybe there are five more Trinidad Chambliss, plural of Chambliss. I'm not suggesting that there are a bunch of those in here, but let's not overlook that they may have had a pretty keen eye for eval mixed into spending a lot on the top guys. And then on the other hand, I'm curious about Clemson. Ironically, they open at LSU. 10.5, I think, is the current number at FanDuel, but I'm not here to talk about the matchup right now. You got to be curious about Clemson right now, and I'm looking every which way I can to hold out hope. They're losing somewhere between six and nine guys in the draft. Some of those guys will be high-level draft picks. Ten guys transferring in. Only one blue chip. Maybe they just evaluated better than anyone in the country, and that will be an afterthought. Maybe. Again, like I said, I'm trying to hold out hope. Their last two recruiting classes have finished outside the top 20, and I just keep looking for a way. But at every turn, Clemson in their heyday, Clemson at their best, no different than any other program. They do it with players. They do it with really, really good players. And I'm not saying that they don't have good players. I'm saying when you look at the talent profile of that team, that is not what Clemson used to be. Unless, here's the fingers crossed holding out hope, unless Dabo and that staff just know something the rest of us don't know. Hey, Cignetti knew something the rest of America didn't know. So now and forever, you're just going to have to hold out hope. Maybe so-and-so is the next Indiana. Although Clemson wouldn't be coming out of nowhere, they would be coming back from a temporary hiatus at the head table. I'm also playing, just in general, paying really close attention to the portal rankings. Think about the teams that either outright surprised or somewhat surprised last year. Like Texas Tech, they ended up going to the playoff. They ended up winning the Big 12. Miami was in the national title game. Ole Miss went to the semifinals. And to some degree, those teams were surprises last year because of how good they were. But they all finished top five in the portal rankings the previous spring. So if you look right now at the top 10, you're trying to find someone outside of the usual suspects that's going to crash the party. Louisville, Jeff Brom, those guys are number five in the On 3 Portal rankings. Virginia Tech, sixth. Arkansas, seven. Yes. And Houston, I'm very high on them. Number eight right now. Did I just list a playoff team? Louisville, Virginia Tech, Arkansas, Houston. Did I just list a playoff team? I see a lot of heads nodding, just in very different directions. I can see every one of you. Let's move on. This is going to be a dark, dark part of the show. This is, um, but we have to address this. We have to tackle this sort of thing. We can't let allegations like this just fester on the internet. Chad from Dallas, Texas, a hater hit us up and said, I think you're a fraud. And he really could have ended the tweet right there, but he didn't. He kept going and he said, you call yourself a fan of the big 12. You couldn't care less if it disappear tomorrow. You never talk about it. You just ignore 25% of the power four because of your love for the SEC and the Big Ten. Chad, I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm saying you just said some really bad things. Those are false. Those are lies. And I've got to do my job now. And I've got to dispel them because this simply can't be true. And the reason I know it can't be true. It's because I'm the one who yells that the Big 12 is America's college football conference. You calling me a liar, Chad? He is calling me a liar. But I'm not lying about that. I personally think that. Now, there is some separation here that I will get into because you forced me. I will get into the difference in how I feel versus maybe how other people feel. I'll get into the difference between how I would love to cover college football versus the way our audience wants it covered. But first, let me tell you, let me tell you why we do it this way. So I had Jesse waste a lot of time today going and looking at how often we really have talked about the Big 12. Spoiler alert, pretty fair amount, pretty fair amount. We have not talked about the Big 12 as much as the SEC or the Big 10 because our numbers completely and utterly overwhelmingly suggest that our audience doesn't want that to the degree that we talk about the SEC and the Big Ten. So what have we said from day one? We have said from day one that we don't stack the show for us. We've got to stack the show for the audience. And then when we do stuff occasionally, maybe even recently, that feedback indicates the audience didn't want, then we got to regroup and then we got to move on and we got to make changes moving forward, right? So we learned quite a while ago what really moves the needle, what kind of moves the needle, what doesn't move the needle. And what's tough is there's some things that don't move the needle to a large degree that I wish moved the needle. This gets to the part where I tell you how I wish it was. Here's how I wish it was. I wish that anytime we talked about the Big 12 on the show, it just went bonkers. But it doesn't. It doesn't. So if I did the show for me, that's kind of how it would be. In fact, if I did the show for me, I would just talk about the Big 12 every bit as much. I would talk about the ACC every bit as much. Because in a perfect world, all the conferences matter equally. All the interest is spread like peanut butter over toast. And everybody cares equally about all the conferences. Also, why not? Let's just make the Pac-10 come back. I'd love to have the Southwest Conference back. I would love to not have conferences with 18 teams in them. I'd love all that. But we don't live in a fairytale world. We live in a real world. And the world we live in right now doesn't necessarily operate the way that I wanted it to. So Chad, that was his name, right Bradley? So Chad, I don't know what else to say other than to tell you you're the reason that we do the show the way we do. It's not the way I prefer it, but it's the way it is. I happen to think the Big 12 up until last year has been the most entertaining conference to watch in America. because it was so fraught with parity, with competitive balance. And I also said the reason, it wasn't a joke when I started calling it America's College Football Conference. Sometimes we do stuff joking around on the show. When I said that two years ago, I thought the Big 12 should adopt it as a marketing slogan because I thought that if you took everything that America and college football fans were claiming they loved and you took the things that they claimed they didn't like, I thought the best ratio of things we liked to things we didn't like out of any conference existed in the Big 12. And you also had this stretch where teams were finishing second to last one year and then winning the conference the next year. It was a total pinball game out there every year. And now Texas Tech may have messed it up. Now Joey McGuire may have messed it up. Now we're only a couple of years into this new era where Texas Tech is a massive spender out there But Texas Tech pretty well dominated the conference last year Texas Tech at FanDuel right now overwhelming best odds to win the conference this upcoming year. And then maybe you're making the argument Brigham Young is like 1B, but they weren't on their level last year. They got smoked twice. And so if we're entering this period now where the Big 12 doesn't have the cachet, maybe, that the other two conferences do, and they're losing their moniker as the conference that any team could win any given year. Well, that's not great. It's great for Texas Tech, but that's not necessarily great for my claim that it's America's College Football Conference. But Chad, I'd love to talk about it more. Man, I'm just telling you, we do big... I'll put it to you like this. If we worked for a network, we'd have to cover the Big 12 less than we do. Fortunately, we don't work for anyone. We own the show. So we get to kind of dictate the way we do it. But there's a certain balance that, hey, we're not getting dictated to what we can and can't talk about or how often we talk about one thing or another thing. But there are only so many times that you can do what we think are really, really good, really entertaining segments on the Big 12. And it does like a fifth of the traffic that a Texas A&M video does to the point where you have to look and say, all right, they've spoken. The audience has spoken. Whether I like it or not, the audience has spoken. No knock on Texas A&M, of course. We love the Aggies. So right now, I was going to say it's a fact that everyone watching the show is wearing clothing, but I can't prove that. I can't prove that. It's probably a fact that if you left the house today. Yeah, I still can't prove that they were wearing clothing. Studies show that a majority of our audience that leaves the house wears clothing. At least something is in your closet. Whether you choose to wear it or not, that's your business, and we're not trying to change your lifestyle at all. What I am saying is if you are one of those people who does wear shirts, or does wear pullovers, or does wear hats, humbly, paidstatematerial.com is there for you. Got new items over there that I didn't even know about. I was perusing last week because I was about to send someone something. Yes, I buy stuff out of our own store. No freebies here. And I saw like five shirts that I knew we conceptualized them. I didn't know that they had uploaded them into the store. But that's Alex for you. She never sleeps. So, PateStateMaterial.com is there for your convenience. No wardrobe is complete without it. That's what some people are saying at least. All right, let's move on. So we did something the other night. Oh, my bad. I didn't tell the live chat. Hello. There we go. Me and Jesse back to back just posted there. I'm the one that didn't type in all caps. If anyone's trying to pick me out. The other day we did biggest questions in the SEC and then someone said, what about the Big Ten? So I'm going to do biggest questions in the Big Ten right now. Now, keep in mind, it's February. So if you're watching this in the summer, I may have changed my mind. But right now, I got to think about the Big Ten in terms of tiers. I always kind of think that way. That's how my mind processes a conference. Is it still tier one, the same as we ended last year and then nobody else? So the way we ended last year, the Big Ten had pretty clearly organized itself to where Indiana and Oregon and Ohio State, that was tier one. And I'm wondering, is that how we start 2026? Or has anyone else joined that equation? Like Ohio State's going to have Julian saying, Jeremiah Smith, a breakout running back potential, got four or five back on the O-line. They're in. They're tier one. Indiana, the staff, the culture, what they just did, landed the number one portal class. Got Josh Hoover from TCU, really good skill pickups. Yes, Tier 1. Oregon, talent acquirer every year at the top level. Dante Moore is back. Entire defensive line is back. Really good skill players there. Yes, they're in Tier 1. Does anyone else crack that rotation? Because right now, if you think about Tier 2 in the Big 10, at least as we would sit, you would have Michigan there. You got a new staff. Bryce Underwood's still there. Could have a really, really good running back room. Probably a notch below perceptionally? Can they elevate? Can USC elevate? You got Mayava entering year three, Lincoln Riley with a third year quarterback. I like the roster advancement and I know they're really high on their positioning there. The big question is going to be line of scrimmage play. And I don't mind withholding a little doubt or maintaining a little doubt there. It's okay to be a little skeptical. USC has not earned benefit of the doubt. USC is not like Ohio State, where even if they're replacing everybody, I just know it's Ohio State, man. They'll get it done on the line of scrimmage. In their worst of worst years, how bad is Ohio State going to be on the line of scrimmage? Well, USC's not there yet. So that's why we're asking, are they still in tier two? Can they elevate to tier one? Penn State brought over a critical portion of the top of the Iowa State roster, decent retention on the Penn State end, the roster that that staff inherited, pretty soft schedule. Are they able to elevate year one under Matt Campbell? Does Iowa do anything different than they've normally been doing? Can Washington elevate? Don't know. Big questions in tier two. And then, man, we got to looking at this today. The bottom of the Big Ten was horrible last year. Terrible. So the question, it's in a new day, is the bottom six in the Big Ten any better than they were last year? So let me rattle this off to you right quick. Purdue 0-9, Maryland, this is conference records, Purdue 0-9, Maryland and Michigan State 1-8, Wisconsin and Rutgers 2-7, UCLA 3-6. Now, that group of teams, Purdue, Maryland, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Rutgers, UCLA, they played Ohio State, Oregon, and Indiana a combined 12 times last year. The average margin of defeat was 34 points. Those are not out-of-conference cupcake week results, people. those are a dozen conference matchups. There was no one possession game out of those dozen. And the average margin of defeat was five touchdowns in conference play. So suffice it to say, there's nowhere to go but up for the bottom of the Big Ten. And then what happens with Nebraska? I gave Nebraska their own little block on my sheet here. Because Matt Rule in year three, it was supposed to explode. Why? Because just a lot of us said. So the rule rule as we trademarked it to be. And they went seven and six. And they were four and five in league play. And now Dylan Raiola's gone. And now Kenny Menchie just kind of hung out in town for a day. And now he's gone. And so it's Anthony Calandria coming there from UNLV. And they've got to play Indiana. They've got to play Oregon. They've got to play Ohio State. What happens? Is the rule rule just delayed until year four? or do we look at it and say, I don't know, man, is the juice ever going to be there? That's where my head's at with the Big Ten. They're watching us. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Bogota, Columbia is tuned in and Brunswick, Georgia is tuned in. Thank you so much. Thank you so very much. We had a question earlier today. A lot of whale breaches on the show tonight. Should I explain? Yeah, I'll explain the whale breach. We have enough new viewers. I don't think I have, keep it up, Bradley. I don't think I have a sinus infection. I don't have sinus issues or anything like that. However, what we have found in the fall and the spring is sometimes I get a little congested during the show. I don't know, it's just kind of like a drainy feeling a little bit. It's not terrible. I'm not asking people to feel sorry for me, But what happens is in lieu of taking 10-second pauses, which is like death in podcast world and in content production world, in lieu of doing that, I just kind of go, so I can clear my nasal passages. For a long time, I thought no one could hear it. And then some guy came in the live chat one day and said, why are you making the sound of a whale breaching the surface of the ocean? which I thought was a little extreme. And not everybody calls it that. It's become one of the worst inside jokes on the show. And unfortunately tonight, I think we're about a dozen whale breaches deep, no end in sight. And that has nothing to do with the question that's about to be asked by Jimmy. I just wanted to explain, if you're listening on podcast or maybe like your husband or boyfriend is listening and you just happen to be along for the ride and you think something's wrong with the audio, no, no, Mitch didn't screw up the podcast feed. that's just your boy breaching. Whale breach. Jimmy from Oklahoma City said, how did the idea of doing a show with Bussin' with the Boys even come together? Did you guys know each other already? Will the show continue in 2026? Good question. I didn't know anyone cared. I knew of Will and Taylor for a while. They did play in the National Football League after all. They did play in Michigan and Nebraska, respectively. I'm not a savage. I knew who they were. I didn't know them personally until I think we met in Eugene, Oregon at the Ohio State-Oregon game two years ago. It's a great game, awesome atmosphere. Now, I had, you know, like me and Will had talked digitally, ran into Taylor one time at the airport, and nothing happened there. Nothing happened there. So Compton and I had talked for a little while, but then we met each other two years ago up in Eugene hit it off immediately. And we're both FanDuel partners. And so FanDuel would ask constantly, why don't you guys do anything together? And we're like, well, say no more. It's a very, very easy concept to sell us on. So the concept of doing the Wednesday locker room show came together. We were kind of looking for a reason to do something. And there's the reason, voila. So what you want to do in life is you want to come up with good ideas and get someone else to pay for it. It's the whole strategy of pretty much everything we do. So we did it every Wednesday. It was awesome. It was like the most fun that we had all week. At least I can speak for myself. They seem to have enjoyed it. And that kind of grew and grew and grew throughout the year as for whether it will continue in 2026. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Maybe even bigger and better. There are rumors after all. And whom's to my to confirm or deny? I can confirm that the rumors exist. That's what I can confirm. But let me tell you. So for those of you who watch the show, you kind of picked up on this. There's a weird thing that happens in media. And I've been in it in some shape, form, or fashion for like not quite 15 years, but closer to 15 years than 10 years, like 13 years. And I've done it with no one listening and no one watching. I've done it with a few people listening and watching. I've done it with a lot of people listening and watching. We've done TV. We've done podcasts. We've done radio. We've done all that stuff. And I've done local news. I've done local sports. I've worked with a lot of people. Here's what's crazy about media that you would never know until you work in it. The people you get along with, the people you like, you don't automatically have chemistry with. Sometimes you love a dude and then you're on air with him and there's no chemistry. It's like oil and water. And then here's what really will blow your mind. There'll be another dude you can't stand. And then you're on air and you just click. So what you want to find is the sweet spot, which is obviously find people you love who you click with on air. That is an extremely rare and extremely valuable commodity in our line of work. And like, I got it with those guys. So you just want to build a fence around that and maintain it as long as possible and grow it as big as you can. And ESPN gave us the opportunity to do that this year. And we're really, really, really excited about what we could do with it in this year and years to come. But that was really fun because I'm just telling you, I've been in both positions. I've been in positions where I want to have on-air chemistry with someone and it's just not there. and then there's another person. You almost hate that you have chemistry with them. But then, every so often, you get put in a room. You don't ever have to rehearse it. You don't ever have to get to know them. You don't ever have to practice it. Truthfully, you can't practice chemistry. You either have it or you don't. And it flows so freely. And it's like you go from a salmon swimming upstream to just, that salmon just hits the reverse button. He just turns it around 180s flows. That's kind of how it feels. So yeah, I don't think you've seen the last of that show. Let's continue. Have we seen the last of Oklahoma in the playoff? Chicken Joe, who only identifies as an OU fan living deep behind enemy lines horns down via emoji he said Brent Venables didn lose a single starter to the portal only to the NFL Back playoff runs and some serious noise feel very realistic What are the odds on back playoff appearances Higher than Longhorn fans want to admit. So he editorialized a little bit there at the end. So we did consult with FanDuel to give the boring official answer here. Oklahoma has the 12th best odds to win the national title this upcoming year. But I don't think Chicken Joe, deep in enemy territory, hit us up just to find out what the FanDuel odds are, respectfully. So they got a tough schedule this year, but they had one last year. We had them with the number two toughest schedule in the country last year, and they still made the playoffs. So it doesn't really matter, necessarily, or it's not a barrier to entry for Oklahoma that they have a tough schedule. Here's the question. I'm very, very, very careful asking this because I want to not talk myself into or out of anything in February, but I wrote it down right here. Did we see Oklahoma's full potential last year? Because remember, they started off good and the tear was hot. They beat Michigan in week two and things are just ascending, ascending, ascending. Then he gets hurt. And then they eventually got him back, but the offense was never the same. And there ended up being two schools of thought. One school of thought was his injury derailed what could have been a Heisman caliber season. The offense was off to the races. There was that school of thought. Then there was another school of thought that, no, he always had vulnerabilities and flaws in his game and he was going to get exposed anyway. The injury just happened to be an excuse for explaining away what would have happened even without the injury. Now, usually when there are two diametrically opposite schools of thought, the truth is somewhere in between, usually. So we'll see. But what if Matier was ascending and he was only cut down by that injury? Because remember, they couldn't run the ball to save their lives last year. They were 113th in rush yards per game. They were 99th in explosive runs. So they did it without a running game. They made the playoff without a running game. Here's the question. What is that offense this year? Do they do what Georgia did? Georgia wasn't good running the ball and then they got pretty good run in the ball. They had a little dip and then they picked themselves back up and they ran the ball very respectively last year. Can Oklahoma do that this year? There's no excuse why they can't. And then you got Mateer back again and he's got some good weaponry around him. What about the other side of the ball? Have we gotten to the point where we can just blindly trust that Brent Venables is going to toss an excellent defense out there? Hey, I kind of am there, but I don't know if they're going to be number six in the country. So they lost four of the top six on the D-line, four or five linebackers. Now they got good players still. So like Kip Lewis is still there. He led them in tackles last year. He led them in tackles, right, Jesse? Yeah. Kip Lewis led them in tackles. David Stone's still there. Both Bowen kids are still there. So they've got good players. It's just up front. Like, is that nucleus going to be there to where it seems almost impossible to be able to run on them, like was the case last year. Number three run defense in the country last year. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to assume a little drop off. And if it doesn't happen, that's just all the better. I'm going to assume, let's say they have the number 20 defense in the country. They'll think that's disrespectful, but I'm trying to be conservative here. So let's say they have the number 20 defense in the country. If I get Matier, equal to or better than he was at his best last year, and I get an improved ground game, which has to be a laser sharp focus for them this spring, then that schedule, it's tough, but it's navigable because they did it last year. They got seven of the top 19 teams in the playoff odds at FanDuel on their schedule. So it gets no easier for them, but it's hard to ignore the competitive character that that group showed last year. And I do want to take this opportunity to say when we put out our program rankings the other day, yes, yes, begrudgingly, I will admit it was an oversight that we left OU out. They were supposed to be above Tennessee and Texas Tech. We're not perfect. We never claimed to be. So we're looking at a top 10 program in America, looking to go back to back to the playoffs. I do agree. Yeah, I could easily see it happening. Luckily, it's February, so I don't have to make my predictions for like another half a year, basically. No, we'll probably hit it around July. FanDuel right now, as you see, the exclusive odds provider of the show, FanDuel equips us with, well, that information is publicly available, but FanDuel also equips us with a lot of context that helps during very, very interesting times during the college football season when so-and-so would be favored on a neutral field, and then we get called out for it, and then FanDuel says, No, actually, they're right. They would be favored. And then the dude who was criticizing us and calling us a liar just says, well, doesn't matter. Games aren't played on point spreads. They're played on the field. And I'm like, we know. We never suggested anything other than that. Anyway, FanDuel keeps their hands clean on that. That's us. We traffic. We traffic in the mud on those sorts of arguments. But right now, new signups over there, of course. You're a new signup. You bet $5 if you win. Your first bet over there, you get $100 in bonus bets. Jesse suggested maybe some baseball futures today. You know, Pittsburgh Pirates. I don't know what the win total is this year. No, it's just under. Apparently just under. Don't even know what the number is. It's really responsible. But you got March Madness coming up. You got conference tournaments coming up. You got college football futures you can hit right now. I'm not going to say the options are endless. There is eventually an end to them, but you can go for quite a while over there. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. For Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18 plus and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets, which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit fanduel.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. slash chat in Connecticut, or visit ndgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. Lastly, on the old program tonight, thank you guys so much for watching, especially if you're tuned in live. Wish there was like an option where we could just give away five t-shirts in the live chat. Call YouTube. Call Mr. Tube. Ask if we can do that. But yeah, I appreciate you guys. Make sure you're subscribed if you haven't already. Mood tracker time. We're just weaving our way all throughout the country tonight. We spun the wheel. It landed on Notre Dame. The mood of the Notre Dame fan base right now. I'm just going to assume the role of a Notre Dame fan tonight because I have some things I want to say. I'm in pure gold rush mode right now, which I know, yes, seems a little hokey because it is Notre Dame. But I would kind of say this even if this was Virginia Tech and they were in the exact same position Notre Dame is. Just pure on gold rush. Just full steam ahead. Get out of the way or get run over. This is our time. Now, the haters will say, dude, Notre Dame? They're losing love? They're losing price? Yes, yes, they are. But here's the thing about college football. If you lose players, you get to replace them. So, yeah, they're losing two very, very good tailbacks. but Williams and Young probably combine to make a top 10 tailback room for them this upcoming year, which doesn't mean there's not a little bit of drop-off there. It's just not off a cliff. And in the aggregate, the rest of that team is loaded. Who has this? Listen to this. All right. And you tell me who else has this because it's a very unique position that Notre Dame finds themselves in. You're looking at the FanDuel odds to win it all this year. That's not a typo. Notre Dame has the best odds in the entire country. And the reason is because they ended the season last year winning 10 straight, but they feel like they still got shafted out of a playoff spot. And so they have this massive chip on their shoulder. They've got a bulk majority of that roster back. They got a loaded staff. CJ Carr is now an experienced quarterback. They're probably in about as good a position in terms of weaponry around him as they've been at any point during Marcus Freeman's tenure there. And I would think this is one of very few spots in the country this year where you look at the team, it's fair to say title or bust. And by title or bust on this show, we mean go play for the national title. You know, that's how we hedge the bet a little bit because obviously if Notre Dame plays for a national title and they lose in the final minute, it's not a bust. But they got to be right in that mix for the national title this year. And as for the Notre Dame fan viewpoint on all this, Notre Dame fans always have to deal with folks hating on a couple of different things. One, any given year, there's a large contingent of the college football public that thinks Notre Dame's overrated. And then number two, a lot of people pissed off that you maintain your independence. And if I'm a Notre Dame fan, I think I'm well cut out to be one because I'm well cut out to look at all that and just smile at it. I'd love it. I would love it. I'd particularly love that I get this team this year. But then in general, the whole independence argument, you've never heard me on this show. So I'm removing myself. I'm me again for a second. You've never heard me yell for Notre Dame to join a conference ever because I know if I were Notre Dame, I would do exactly what Notre Dame has done. Okay. So now I'm hopping back in the shoes of a Notre Dame fam. I'd look around and I'd make the very simple retort to anyone yelling that I need to join a conference that you'd do the exact same thing if you were us, if you could do it, but you can't. So you're not actually upset about principle. You're upset out of envy, out of jealousy. And by the way, some of you used to be independent and you sold out. It's not our fault that we defined what matters to us and then we defined what we believe in and then we adhered to it. You know, we committed the cardinal sin of maintaining who we are and what we claim we are while the rest of you jumped into conference boats to save you left and right. We didn't need saving. We're Notre Dame. I would relish in just shouting that in people's faces. So I'd be a good Notre Dame fan. I think I'd be very good at it. Schedule is what it is this year. It's very soft. There's no defending that. They don't need me to defend it. It kind of is what it is. You had USC on there and now the USC matchup got scrapped. So what you're left with is you're left with Miami really being the only top 20 caliber team they're going to play this year. What does that mean? It means you got very low margin for error. Kind of like last year, only worse. You can afford to probably lose one game here. And then if you lose another one, you'll probably be out of the playoffs as you should be. That's worth the trade-off. Totally fair trade-off. You got this kind of squad. You got this kind of opportunity, you've got the most recent example in your rearview mirror of what can happen if you don't maximize on your regular season opportunities. You got to win them all. You got to win them all. Notre Dame should go undefeated this year or at the very worst, 11-1. They should be a top four seed and that's what it should be. We'll see what it is. But that mood, man, this is going to be the slowest spring and summer in the history of any kind of Notre Dame fan's lives, especially if you're like 25 years old or younger. Now, if you're a 68-year-old Notre Dame fan, you've lived a lot of life and you've learned, don't try and speed up the off season. It'll get here soon enough. But if you're a 23-year-old Notre Dame fan, this is going to crawl by. But that's okay. it'll eventually get here. Okay. I have got to go home and eat. I mean, I'm hungry. So I appreciate you guys watching the show. We'll be back Sunday night. We got speaker series stuff coming up, you know, actual head coaches. And we will, I'll let you know when that's going to start. It's not going to start next week, at least as far as I know right now, but it's going to start very soon. Trying to pull some things off that we've never done before. We're trying to pull some sit downs with some head coaches off that we've never done before. I got one. No one would ever guess the head coach way off the radar, but I can't wait to. He doesn't even know that we're going to interview him yet. I haven't even let him know. So we technically haven't hit the green light on that one, but I think we will. Anyway, we're looking forward to that this spring. Until Sunday night, appreciate all of you. For Director Bradley, Producer Jesse, I'm Josh Bate. Take care. Have a great start to your weekend, and God bless. We'll see you next time. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit ndgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.