Delayed Expansion + Jayden Daniels Transfers

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we do have our subject. He is interested, he is game for our monthly off topic episode that I am very excited about.

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We don't have any kind of quirky game. We don't have any sort of frills, we don't have any kind of high concept that you need to imbibe and ingest and comprehend and compute before we dive in. We've just got a few things to talk about, not the least of which is a college football playoff deciding they want to expand just not now. We've also got some coaches

that are on the move. We've got some more nil news at least quote unquote news that we can discuss, and then some transfer portal stuff with Jaden Daniels at Arizona State dam which is sort of making headline.

his locker and happy to see him go. So you know, interpersonal relationships can be tricky in in a stressful environment like a major college football locker room. I'm sure it also begs the question who would have a better offense with Jaden Daniels running things that who was not able to nail quarterback in the height of the portal movings around not a word. There are a lot of teams who could use the best of Jaden Daniels. I'm just

not sure what that is right now. I think a lot of people will look back at his performance hitting those huge throws against Oregon a couple of years ago when Oregon was like number six in the country and came to Tempe and lost because Jade Daniels had the game of his life. I think he's fine, don't I don't know that the perception of him, it seems nationally, is accurate. He made a lot of mistakes, has had accuracy issues throughout his career. Like, I think he's fine.

I think he would be an upgrade for a lot of programs. I'm just curious about the timing of such a move, and obviously things we are like we're post first phase of the portal, and I think second phase will come during an after spring, right yeah, right, A big name, I think a limited ceiling.

spot because DTR is back. They originally had Dylan Gabriel who decided to untransfer and then retransfer to Oklahoma, so that's not working out. To have Jane Daniels behind DTR, I guess, or maybe in front of DTR if he shows up, that would.

so it's it's fine. And obviously LSU with the first year coach doesn't have you know, extreme loyalty to a current quarterback on the roster. But no, I think the West Coast footprint, whether it's a Mountain West school, whether it's a Pac twelve school, it's going to make the most sense for Jaden Daniels.

be a new coach next year. Probably maybe not twenty twenty two, but next year twenty twenty three.

the NFL. We've also got Charlie Strong getting back in the game, still coaching in South Florida, this time as linebackers coach for the Miami Hurricanes. Hired by Mario Cristoball. Charlie Strong is head coach. Has definitely had mixed results, but Charlie Strong is a defensive assistant coach. I think is still a pretty good move.

think he'll recruit very well. The key will be living up to now incredibly high expectations for a program that again, how many how many times they won the ACC ty No, yeah, zero point zero times zero point zero.

So it's a great time to be an emerging program in the ACC. But I imagine Miami fans, even having not won the conference, have their site set a even higher than that. So we'll see a lot of money, a lot of hype, a lot of names, and I imagine Mario Cristaball will get the most out of his staff, especially on the recruiting trail.

to bring the twelve team playoff into existence. It was an eight to three vote when they gathered this past week to try and determine if they're going to move forward. It failed. It needs unanimous approval in order to proceed. It failed because the Big Ten, the PAC twelve, and the ACC so called alliance that we made a big deal out of volume block. Yeah, all three of those conferences voted against it. Again, nobody is saying it's not going to expand everybody's in agreement it's going to happen

at some point. But the ACC, I think what last month Jim Phillips, the Commissioner, stated that in order for them to proceed, they first need to consider the impacts of NIL things like the transfer portal and the governance structure, which on the NCAA side is undergoing a pretty significant overhaul. Right, they're still working by the Constitution and all those types of things. So the ACC has been the most outspoken

against this by staying at four. Reportedly everyone is forfeiting four hundred and fifty million dollars in potential revenue.

are disagreements additionally about revenue distribution. It's a lot of money. Got to figure out what to do with it, how to break it up. There's also some dispute over whether or not Power five conference champions should receive automatic bids to an expanded playoff. So this is something that was very much supported by the Big Ten. However, it doesn't seem like a majority around college football. So a lot

going on here. Again, I'll re emphasize for the third time that when the contracts up through the twenty twenty five season, they're going to expand this thing, presumably to twelve, because that seemed to be the direction everybody was headed. But it's going to take a little bit longer to get there. I saw Jack Swarbrick said that they were already probably about a month month and a half overdue with regard to whatever time line they had put into place.

But take more time they think they'll get there. Your thoughts on this. I know what your thoughts are on this.

But the other three conferences TV deals are coming up, and so that is going to affect things in terms of who is bidding on the college football Playoff, how many games are they bidding on, how is what does the TV structure look like of a future playoff with four, six, eight, twelve,

sixteen teams. So a lot is going to depend on that, especially in the wake of news the news that I think NBC is extremely interested in getting involved with the Big Ten, which currently resides at ESPN, Slash, ABC and five. So a lot of that is going to come into play because now NBC looks at the Big Ten as a nice companion for Notre Dame, which makes sense. It definitely makes sense that there is going to be overlap in people who are interested about interested in Big ten games,

interested in Notre Dame games. Sure, these types of shows where there is new, big news, whether or not it is long lasting or not, like we thought it was going to be last summer, when it seemed like the wheels were in motion to go to twelve generally brings out the like I'm the sort of boring Godzilla underneath the ocean floor who like, Okay, I guess I'm gonna have to rise again and talk about my thoughts about the college football postseason. But specifically with regard to staying

at four. It's fine, It's absolutely fine if they can't come to an agreement. I'm not sure what the endgame is though, because I know that the holdup has been auto bids right that conference like the PAC twelve once it's champion in no matter what, and same goes for the Big Ten, same goes Big twelve, acc whatever. And so you have the SEC in this position, expanding to sixteen teams and adding two high profile teams that at their best can certainly build playoff caliber programs. Be it

at four eight, twelve, sixteen or whatever. At Texas's best despite the last decade, I think it's fair to assume that they could build a playoff caliber team. So I'm just the SEC is in a place where they love four teams because they can get two teams in a good amount of time. They like the proposal to get to twelve teams because they could get three or four teams in. I think it's the auto bid thing that is the hold up, because that brings in more potential

spoilers for SEC teams in terms of getting in. I saw Andy Staples write a piece about how the SEC should have their own playoff and they're send their champion to play against the champion of you know, all the other conferences and playoff that involves them. I just I think we're getting to a place that more and more

people are realizing that there's no really good answer. You can say five auto bids and three at large's, or five and Notre Dame and two at large whatever, or we can say twelve the way it was outlined last summer, with the four teams getting the buy the top four teams getting a buye but Notre Dame is ineligible for one of those buyes. They're all systems, they're all answers. I don't know if they're good answers because none of

them really do it for me. And addressing the one thing that I don't think can get fixed, which is there are just teams who are going to win a lot more games more often. And you can look at that as a feature or a bug, depending on how you feel about the sport and who your favorite team is. I just think we're we're getting to a point where we're going in circles and we're always going to have unhappy people no matter what the system is going to be.

And I think that's the case because we're looking at the sport from a financial perspective, of financial point of view in that what will make the most TV money, what will get the highest TV ratings? And college football is doing this weird thing. And I say college football even though there is no college football. There's conferences, there's

no centralized league. So we're doing this thing where we say, what's the best for the sport, or how do we get the highest ratings for our bowl games or for our national championship or our semi finals, And they chase casual fans, they chase mainstream fans, when I don't know

that that was ever the point of the postseason. If you're chasing TV dollars and that's what you're courting, that means you're trying to attract the most TV viewers, and by doing that, you're saying, how do we get people who don't really care that much about college football to be interested in Alabama, Ohio State or Clemson LSU. And

I just don't think it's a tangible goal. I mean, I understand why people think twelve teams is more interesting because we'll have new matchups and we'll have teams that are not normally in this conversation at the in January or whatever, whether it's Wisconsin or Baylor, Oregon, USC like any of those teams that like, oh suddenly they're playing in more meaningful games than usual. But it almost still to me feels like an invite rather than a meaningful

place at the table. Does that make any sense?

Like everybody else. They chased the bag. They went after the TV money, And when TV money started gaining more influence on the history and on the future of the sport, then suddenly we arrived at this place where it's all really coming down to the cash, and everybody's trying to chase the bag get the most profit possible. So this is going to happen the question, I think, and look, it's going to happen. I would prefer get here sooner than later, because you know my stance on it, it's

going to happen eventually. Just do it. But I don't think Jim Phillips is wrong to say, well, we've already got a system and there are considerations that we need to factor in here. Now. It wasn't listed out explicitly in the articles that I read, at least not all of them, but I do think that there should be a hot minute for us to sit here and evaluate player safety. Right there are more cases, there are going to be more games for everybody, but for a lot

of kids there are going to be mm hmm. For the ones who play at Alabama and Georgia in the high profile institutions, Yeah, it's going to take a greater toll on the body. Is there anything that's going to be done with respect to adding more scholarships or adding more depth somehow to factor in for this added toll that's going to take on some of these kids to build depth and to you know, fill out rosters in a way that maybe they aren't now. I don't know, I haven't seen that.

to be kind of half in and out. And as we expand, college football becomes more of a tournament sport, and then what are the repercussions. What are the fallout

situations from becoming a bigger and bigger tournament sport? And our friend Ari Wasserman wrote about this in saying that, like, if Michigan beating Ohio State and breaking through has a lot less meaning because Ohio State is still going to make a twelve team tournament, then it's just not as fun like we want steaks, and that to me, like it speaks to the appeal of college football for so many,

for so long was the scarcity of the sport. And I think that's like, how many Thanksgivings do you celebrate?

Red River Shootout. And so when you open up, when you when you give those games less meaning both by saying oh, they could play again, or that team losing that game ultimately didn't mean anything.

your points are invalid. You bring up a lot of good points. I just think it is such a foregone conclusion at this point we're going to end up with a twelve team playoff, maybe bigger I don't know, it's just going to happen. But it's your show. You can talk about whether or not you're happy or bummed out, or how you would do it. Your name's right here on the show. I'm curious. I'm curious to see what it does to the sport. I have a lot of the same concerns you do, but I am not as

doom and gloom about it. That being said, I am curious to see how.

regular season games. It just happens that college basketball has one thing that college football will basically never have, and that's the ability for casual fans or non fans to fill out an office bracket. And so I think we just need to celebrate college football for what it is then, rather than what it's not. I'm fine with the playoff. I think they're going to expand I'm curious to see

how they do it. I'm all for giving more if like we're already committed to the bid here where we're going to try and do a championship, which again is impossible in college football, but if we're at least going to try, I'm all about giving as many teams as you can the possibility of competing for it. Okay, that being set, Your second point, I think is one that I can definitely get behind. The whole notion of college

football and where it stands within the collegiate structure. I've said for a long time the biggest problem with college football is that we call it college football and that it's associated with these institutions.

all underhanded. But of course, I just think we're going to come to a point Dan where the money we're talking about here just super seeds whatever the old collegiate football structure was supposed to be. How college football reorganizes itself over the next twenty years I think will be really interesting because it's going to this place. The money is only going to get greater, right, you know, how they keep this as a college thing where everybody can

quote unquote compete is going to be very fascinating to me. Yeah.

see what a twelve team playoff look looks like. Wherever the games are played, whether they're on campus, whether a neutral field, NFL stadium type places, what does that look like? How does that it benefits the fans, at least in the short term in that we get high quality matchups. I don't think there are a lot of national college football fans in the way that there are national fans of other sports because of things like gambling in pools

and fantasy and things like that. There are I think that people are just fans of their teams, and they want to see their rivals lose. They want to beat their rivals. They want to have as winning a season as possible and share the experience with their friends and family. That is the core of the sport. And I think that's been proven otherwise. That's been proven over and over again.

So where do we go Once Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, you know, the lightning in a bottle, LSU, you know those types of programs are continually dominating the semi finals of a twelve team tournament. Do we get to an apathetic place where Wisconsin playing Notre Dame or Baylor playing Michigan becomes kind of, well, the game is cool, but

we already know that they can't hang with Alabama. Like we saw a playoff this year in which we basically had no household names at quarterback just because Bryce Young was a freshman it was his first year starting, and

then Stetson Bennett, Cade McNamara, and Desmond Ritter. So we've got a you know, American Conference quarterback, a quarterback for Georgia who is good but not the reason, the central reason why they were winning, and the quarterback for Michigan who is likely not the best quarterback on Michigan's roster based on what we look to the future with Michigan football and their offense looking like So it's just going

to be difficult to sell that. I think in the long term that this is a good thing for the sport, that more teams are getting the opportunity. Now if a team like Utah, if a team like Michigan, if a team like you know, TCU or something, can turn a playoff berth into a huge boon in recruiting and then

are perennially in that conversation. That's interesting, but that hasn't really happened when you look at and Ari brought this point up in his piece, Michigan State or Washington or even Oregon when they made the playoff, Florida State was an a to turn that into year over year playoff

caliber teams. It's just really difficult. And we have this utopian view of college football as a sport with parody and everybody gets a shot and settle things on the field, and I just don't think it's a reality in which we live. So I'm good with expanding the playoff if that's what everybody wants do it, But I just I don't see how long term the thing that people seem to want in parody is solved. It's an opportunity, it's

an invite. But also I think those of us who have watched the sport for a long time, which I assume is most people listening to this show kind of understand how it's going to go, even if they don't want to admit it.

until i'm against it. I'm I'm I'm playing the Politically, you'd have Yeah, you'd have crowds chanting flip flop at you.

before you know it. But hopefully before then we'll have, you know a lot better since for as Jim Phillips says, what some of the other changing factors in college football are doing to the sport. Hopefully by that point in time we'll get all these other wrinkles ironed out. But certainly a news story that we're going to have to keep tabs on here over the next couple months and years.

teams win. So this may sound like a leading question, but I think that context is important that we really have wanted over the course of the last ten to twelve years our teams to win national championships. Is it good for college football to be a national championship focused sport? And I don't know, there is no college football. We have a number of conferences who want different things and teams who want different things within those conferences with different

realistic goals. The focus on a national championship the end all be all thing, Like, is that a good thing to sort of have as a center, a central point of a conversation around the sport because obviously all sports, all major sports, are organized in different ways. You know, you have EPL where somebody just kind of wins based on what happens during the season. But then you have the Champions League where you have all sorts of great

teams playing in a tournament. You have you know, the way the Stanley Cup and NBA playoffs in baseball where they play a series of games like it's all organized in different ways. College football has always been culturally and competitively an outlier from the other major sports, and I sort of think, and it's impossible to go backwards. I understand that. I totally am fully willing to admit that. But is there anything that we can do as a

duo with whatever our audience is. Is there anything that can be done in the way the sport is framed and the way that even conferences think about their TV networks think about the sport where we're maximizing the season, and we're maximizing say January first, like New Year's Day used to be a holiday. The scarcity of January first was the best thing ever. Is there anything that we can do in the way that the sport is framed and organized that at least moves the focus away?

if you will. That's interesting to me, and that's interesting to a lot of the people that listen to the show. So focusing in this future state on playoff qualification instead of national championship is one angle that I think makes some sense. Another way that you could play it is it could just go full contrarian Dan. You could go full Contraria and the way you have on occasion and really try to highlight the rivalries and focus on in

season storylines and not so much on the playoff. You know, playoff be damned storyline, something that we got to follow at, something we got to cover here on a college football podcast. But by not putting as much emphasis on that the way the national media would, perhaps then you carve out a separate lane for yourself and you find some sympathizers with you. Beyond that, though, it is hard to go up against this gigantic media storm that is an expanded playoff.

Whenever it comes to fruition, it's gonna be suffocating in the same way that the playoff was suffocating the first time around. I'm a playoff proponent. I was all for it then, I'm all for it now. I'm interested in how this plays itself out. I have concerns as well, maybe not to the extent that you do, but I just think it will be you will have more Jimmy Kimmel commercials, you will have more custom jingles, You'll have more of the stupid who's in stuff from ESPN whoever

gets it. You'll have probably multiple networks at that point doing the commercials as well. It will be in your face if you're a college football fans, So perhaps to just go full one eighty, we're steering into bedlam as our national championship. That's one way you could go at it. My hunch is that there'll be a lot of folks who are very, very sick of all the promotional material that comes with a new playoff.

it is. I think the way that the sport is organized in conferences, I think we're heading to a point where if we still want a national championship, if we still want a playoff. We're going to need to get to a point where there are I've talked about like an ESPN side of things and a Fox side of things, that the reason why playoffs work in other sports is they're organized in a much more sensical way. Well, there are fewer teams, Yes, there are fewer teams. There are

far fewer teams. And look, if we are going to be honest, Cincinnati is a major program. Cincinnati is in fact the first group of five pro to make the playoff. But they happen to be a major program playing in the American So I still am of the mind that the sport needs to be organized in a better way of how seriously and unseriously programs take major college football. And until we get to that point, we're just we're just daisy chaining in half thought of ideas in pursuit

of something that isn't actually advantageous for the sport. So it's going to expand we're going to talk about it. We will profit from it in our own very tiny little way, but in terms of good for the people who actually care about the sport, who are on recruiting message boards, who are watching spring games, who are watching random you know, Hawaii Fresno State at midnight Eastern or whatever.

I don't think the playoff and expanding the playoff is doing right by the central core audience of the sport. I don't know. I think those people of which we are too, I think those people are being led into this. What if we made college football a little more like the NFL when it's just not.

USC isn't it now. They cared about the playoff because Pete Carroll was at USC, because they knew or the BCS because they knew Matt Liner and Reggie Bush's name. There were household names. It's basically impossible right now in twenty twenty two, if we're going to live in the present, to have long lists of household names in the sport.

But all of these other sports with household names are able to succeed because people care, people know about the names, people care, and so we are we're trying to fit the sport into like a weird funnel when the reality of twenty twenty two is such that like just doesn't exist.

know your thoughts. Again, We're on Twitter, all the social media platforms, right and let us know. We'll post clips from this episode out there. Please feel free to respond on those clips. Let us know what your thoughts are. But playoff expansion not happening for the interim, would you go to a.

through the bowl system or what. But that possibility of keeping games on campus, really high leverage games on campus is exciting to be I'd love to go to not just a Notre Dame game, any of those games.

ball bounces your way. We're only playing on campus, and we're getting all sorts of crazy fun. Matt, we get Oregon, Florida, we get Notre Dame. I mean, Notre Dame's played a lot of non conference games as an independent team, but you get you know, Notre Dame Washington or Notre Dame Texas.

We a few years ago with the eighteen wheeler game, like, we have all of these matchups and it helps us to actually figure out who's good for determining a national championship at the end of the year because the data is so much more meaningful. See that's what i'd like. I like this addressed on the front end rather than in a playoff. But I don't know, maybe I'm different.

signed Jonathan Taylor tailback. It only says Jonathan Taylor, doesn't say Jonathan Taylor tailback on the helmet.