Welcome to the solid verbal hell that for me.
I'm a man, I'm for I've heard so many players say, well, I want to be happy. You want to be happy for a day at the steak?
Is that woo? Woof? And Dan and Tie welcome back to the solid verb of boys and girls. My name is Ty hilden Brand. That fine gentleman over there is Dan Rubinstein. The podcast as per usual, driven by our good friends over at Geico. Dan Rubinstein, what's up, dude? How you doing, brother? I'm pretty good.
I'm pretty good. The sun is signing. Uh, we've got the little guy in school. I you know, I can't complain. I'm gonna take a shower for the first time in a couple of days because the weekends can get away from me from a hygiene perspective. Sure, I'm excited about this show. I'm excited about all sorts of weird college football news that is either happening or seems to be imminent. I'm excited for we've got the proper or maybe the old proper signing day here happening shortly that we'll talk
about after the fact. We've got I don't know, still moves to be made on the coaching front, and I think we still need to do a bit of digesting of the twenty twenty one season and maybe what we can learn from it from a very specific, specific perspective moving forward. So I just I don't know. I'm juggling all sorts of information chainsaws that I'm ready to hopefully keep tossing back and forth with you like.
A college football snake. Dan. There is so much news and information we've swallowed it whole, yeah, and we're just slowly digesting as it works its way through. Yeah. I think that's right. I don't know if that's the right way to characterize what's going on right now, but that's how I feel. There's a lot to take in. Believe it or not. It's gonna be February the first, as a lot of people listen to this, and there is a lot going on, yeah, in the world of college football.
So we're gonna dive in. We're gonna do that, We're gonna try and give further context for the season that was in twenty twenty one. Don't forget Verballers dot com v E R B A L L e r s dot com is where you can go get access to this show, all of our shows a little bit early. You can watch all of these shows on video if you are ever so inclined. You also get access to our weekly brew and a episodes as well as some of the other bonus stuff that we're going to continue doing,
especially now as we get into February. It's full on off season mode. Dan, We've got a lot cooking in the laboratory, So one more time for Ballers dot com is where you can go to check that out. Don't forget also Solid giveaway dot Com. That is our monthly giveaway website. You just got to go through like four or five steps. Free to join, free to sign up, and if we draw your name at random, you will win a signed Reggie Bush mini helmet. Wow sign Reggie Bush.
He and I joked about it before. I was only half kidding when I said that I might put my name in. I love Reggie Bush as a Notre Dame fan. Notre Dame fan, still love Reggie Bush. It's lots as an organ fan fan loved Reggie Bush. Yeah, I'm also with you. Awesome player back in the day. Wish she wouldn't have scored in two thousand and five, but nonetheless, so I'll giveaway dot com is how you get your
name in the running for that. We're going to pick the winner on February the fourteenth, which coincidentally enough, I guess is Valentine's Day.
Yes, it'd be a great Valentine's Day gift for yourself if you get fortunate enough to win it.
Yeah. And finally, don't forget to subscribe and follow and like and share and rate and review the podcast wherever you can Apple, Yeah, Spotify, Google Overcast, podcast Addict, wherever pocket casts.
Yeah, there's all sorts of great options. Where are we starting, though, Ty? Where are we starting today's show? Because I think basically through May mid May. I don't know when all of the spring practices and games officially end, but we're going to have portal stuff. We're going to have movement across the sport, just because that's the nature of the sport. Right now, where do you want to begin? At the time of recording, Caleb Williams still has not officially selected
a team. Obviously, there's going to be La Smoke. Considering Lincoln Riley's new home, there's going to be there was Wisconsin Smoke, or maybe there still is Wisconsin smoke. Depending on the reports that you choose to believe have credibility. It seems like Wisconsin's out of it, but who knows. They just hired what Bobby Ingram, who we talked about, is the father of a teammate, and that teammate played
high school football in the DMV area. With with Caleb Williams, you know there's still going to be that'saw LSU smoke involved. I suppose with Caleb Williams, I don't know. At the time of recording, he has not selected a destination. And also tie the NFL SPECU relations with Jim Harbaugh vikings interest Dolphins interests, despite mega Michigan donor and Dolphins owner Stephen ross Uh saying that he was not going to
be the one to take Harbor off from Michigan. I mean, what is interesting to you is you know there's Jackson Dart going to Ole Miss with Lane Kiffin. I just I want to know is what is stirring your your brain drink right now?
Well? The Jackson Dart news. To me, honestly, I was relieved to see that he was going to Old Miss because we talked about it on a show before it made too much sense. Don't put yourself in the situation if you're going to transfer out, if you're going to try and maximize your value in your remaining eligibility, don't go into a situation like Oklahoma where you've already got another high profile transfer in Dylan Gabriel. Don't just don't do that. Don't do that and not the same Old
Miss doesn't have other competition at quarterback. But right somebody put the quote out there. He's not going to Old Miss to just build depth on the depth chart. He's going because he wants to start at quarterback, and I think it's a good move. You combine that with some of the other moves that Lane Kiffin's made of the transfer portal. Lank Kiffin has made some hay on the transfer portal. Ole Miss has done extremely well on the transfer portal so far. So I like the move for
Jackson Dart. Jackson Dart former four star out of where Utah draper Utah. I want to say, got a comp to Alex Smith on his twenty four to seven recruiting profile, which is all very very positive. Played six games for USC last year, sixty two percent completion percentage, threw a couple picks, but he was young. I think there's nothing but incredible potential, incredible potential for Jackson Dark go into Ole miss. I really like that move. But the Jim
Harbaugh stuff, to me, is so interesting. It is so interesting because the rumors will just not go way. This has been a couple weeks running now where we've been talking about Jim Harbaugh potentially wanting to make that move back into the NFL, and then we heard some other scuttle but that he had actually told a recruit, Hey, there might be some NFL interests that I might entertain. I believe that was that's crazy. Yeah, he was entertaining
those conversations. Yeah, And then it fell through with the Raiders. The Raiders are going to hire Josh McDaniels, I guess from New England. And it seemed like for a short moment in time maybe some of those rumors had quelled. But then there was reported interests and an interview with the Vikings, and now maybe the Dolphins thing has come
back after all. Even given the ross connection with Michigan and the Dolphins, it just feels to me like there is so much smoke here and it's not about money otherwise we would have heard a lot about money, and this whole thing would have been put to bed two weeks ago. It seems to me like there is genuine interest on behalf of Harbaugh to get back into the league, to find a new team to work with, and to
make the jump now. It would put Michigan in a really tough spot given the fact that it's so late in the cycle. As he said at the top here, National Signing Day, a time of recording is tomorrow, So that would be a difficult spot for the Wolverines, especially on the heels of winning the Big Ten championship and having a retool now going into the twenty twenty two season. But if nothing more, I can't say for sure that Harball is gonna leave because nobody knows that it feels
that way though. It feels like he really genuinely has interest. This is not something he's just doing as a leverage play to get more money. Like this is a guy who was successful there before. I think he wants to take another crack at the NFL, so I'm buying on it. I don't know where he ends up, but I do think the interest is real, and I think if it's going to happen. It's gonna happen within the next couple days.
It seems that not only is the interest reeal in going to the NFL, and these can be looked at as pretty similar things, but the interest is real in not being a college football coach, right like that a college football major college football job is an either fully in or not up to it opportunities. It's right, and it definitely has seemed that Jim Harbaugh has been fully in.
The commitment to Michigan has been extremely real. And so I don't know in a lot of these situations, like okay, let's say the Vikings, So I think they just hired a new GM or president that he had a connection to when he was with the forty nine ers. I
don't know his name. I'm not up to date with my like NFL front office guys, but he has specifically shown interest in that the story that he would entertain the Raiders job should that be presented to him, Like this is somebody who, if you were to believe the stories that are coming out, has not just like he could have just tweeted, I have no interest in pursuing any NFL opportunities at this time. Could be a money ploy. It could be, but it doesn't seem like he's.
Driven by that. So this seems like a human who wants to be an NFL coach, and if you want to be an NFL coach on a certain level, for whatever reason, be it the changing ways of college football, doesn't want to be a major college football coach. And that leaves Michigan in quite a lurch. It leaves them and really, they're they're recruiting against killers. They're recruiting against emerging killers like Michigan State, and you have Penn State
and Ohio State right there. And so right now with signing day, with recruiting twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four kids, how can Michigan look at them in the eye. How
can Jim Harbaugh? How can any of these guys say like, Yeah, he's gonna be your coach And that's okay that you can't say that confidently, but you can't say that with any degree of realism that your coach is committed to winning a national championship at Michigan because it is a one thousand percent all in prospect and the expectations now that Michigan is officially a Capital P playoff program is for Michigan to continue being a Capitol P playoff program, and you can't be the one I want to go
back to. I've never heard of it before where a coach is telling a recruit he would entertain NFL interest, right. I'm far more comfortable with the Brian Kelly or the Mario Cristobau method, where they know it and they tell white lies and everybody gets that aspect of it. That's what we're used to. But that shocking level of honesty on one half is definitely commendable. It's not something you
hear a lot about. But I think it's also very troubling if you're a Michigan fan, if you want him to stick around, to just straight up tell a kid. That leads me to believe that it's genuine. This is a guy who wants to go back to the league if he gets an off or he's going to take it. But how many how many coaches have ever been in the position of Jim Not many? No, going from basically the top of the mountain in the NFL back to college where he could have just stayed in the NFL
and pursued other opportunities. A unique situation for sure, given.
That he played there and you know, has become this top coach. But yeah, it does seem like he you know, it's one of those things where the NFL season is what it is and it ends at a different point of time than when the college one ends, and the way Michigan season ended as late as it did, Like it's just you can't just quit the job at Michigan and say I'm just gonna wait for an NFL job, Like, you can't do that. So it is, it is precarious,
and you know, Michigan has internal candidates. I think Mike McDonald is going back to the Ravens, right, He's going back to the Ravens to be their defensive coordinator. And so you have Josh Gattis and Mike Hart, and I get Harbaugh's son, who's like thirty three or something like that, who's on staff there. Jay Harbaugh is well regarded. But no, it's Michigan is in some sort of like program purgatory right now, and it's oh kind.
Of a bummer. It is a bummer. It's a huge bummer. So a few points on this news. First off, we will continue doing what we've been doing. If there is any late breaking coach news that is find the right time, fire up a YouTube stream. Yep, bring on Michigan. People get comments from the verbolerhood that type of thing. So if and when this would break, I don't know anything. We're not privy insider information. It feels to me like things are building towards this. If it happens, we will
be doing a stream. Please follow along on social media. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven't already, and then you'll be notified if in one we decide to go live and talk about this if it comes
to fruition. The second thing that I would offer on this front is which direction would Michigan go dan that to me, outside of the fact that it's a huge bummer if Harbaugh decides to leave after winning the Big Ten championship after all these years, finally beat Ohio State, if he decides to leave, it does put Michigan in a big lurch. Like you said, they do have internal candidates. They've got Josh Gaddis to Got My Heart mentioned Harbaugh's kid.
I don't know if that's true, realistic or not. There are also some outside candidates right, we heard about Bill O'Brien as a candidate. I don't know if I really buy that. But Bill O'Brien's a name, Matt Campbell's a name you brought up, Jeff Hafley. There are all sorts of names out there that could be willing to jump over to ann Arbor. So if when this happens, it would be fascinating to see which direction the Michigan brass wants to go, given the fact that the program's in
a pretty good spot. It's in a good spot, yeah, and to have someone new take over at this juncture is a really, really tough ask. So and so many layers of fashion fascination here.
Most certainly a program that has hired either internally or hired guys with Michigan experience. And the one time they didn't and they went after that flashy national name, it wasn't too long ago, but relatively, you know, it's not the most modern hiring. But rich Rod didn't work out and certainly left people feeling, oh, we need people who
understand this place and can navigate this place. And you go to Brady Hoak who had Michigan assistant experience, and of course Lloyd Carr was an assistant there forever in Jim Harbaugh's connection, and so it's a question of, like, do those influences have that type of voice in the room where they're going to hire Mike Hart or the hire you know, Josh Gaddis somebody with Michigan experience, or will they go external to find the best long term fit,
whether it's an internal or external whatever that there's always the fascinating politics behind the scenes at a place that large.
More to come on the Jim Harbaugh stuff, for sure.
Yeah, And if it's not this year, it's next year, right, It's this just Jim Harbaugh is not a long term Michigan coach.
That's what we know. Now. What else is going on in the world of college football that you'd like to give voice to here very quickly?
I don't know, man. I saw that Lane Kiffin tweeted out that some sort of image that a fan made that he's the portal king with the Tiger King. Oh yeah, imagery. They landed well, obviously, you know Jackson, I think they landed. I think Georgia Tech's best edge rusher, Jared I I believe his name is. And so they've they've built out their program and as a lot of top teams are, LSU is bringing in a bunch of kids. USC of course, continues to bring in kids.
Did you see the Brian Kelly videos? Oh my god.
Okay, so you see that Brian Kelly with those like three sixty degree cameras circling you like you see at weddings or movie premieres or something. And he's doing that and flashing l's or guns or something with recruits and then they're wearing his his tech vest, the tech vest, right, the official uniform of being cool at LSU.
Yeah, he's doing the grit. They're teaching him to do the gritty sure, of course, which I want to see more of this. Frankly, we're in the content business here. Yeah, on the solid verbal and for as cringe worthy as it does appear, I admire the hustle. I think we've come to know Brian Kelly is every bit as disingenuous
as you might expect. So yeah, it gives me a little bit of pleasure as a Notre Dame fan to know that there's probably a great large part of him that hates the fact that he has to go through any of this. Who is, but he understands the value of it. He understands the value, which is why he's a successful college football coach. Who is in your mind the Power five or other you know, G five, fcs whatever. Who is the coach that is the least likely coach
to debase himself socially in pursuit of recruiting clout? Like, who is the guy who will be the last one to do this video? I mean David Shaw, It could be David Shaw. I was gonna say Dan Mullen. Dan Mullen got fired because of his lack.
Of whole Dan Mullen would do this in a second. Dan maull will do anything for this kind of clout. He won't necessarily grind for recruits. But when there's a camera or something like, sure is it Pat Fitzgerald, Man, we already know that Jim Harbas slept over at a kicker's house. It's not this, it's not on camera. We know that he did that.
So who is that guy? Who is that guy that.
Is going to be the fire Like I think I think Nick Saban is unlikely to do something like this, but he's also like, yeah, it can be fun.
But he's also going arch Mannings basketball game.
So it's not like that's that's normal, though, I know I think that's for a top, top, top kid. I'm talking about the dancing and the like trying to tap into a trend that is fifty forty years your junior. So it does have like big I don't know if you ever come across this on Instagram or TikTok. I know you're big on social media, now, sure if you've come across like a like a twenty eight year old doing dances with like their fifty seven year old husband sixty four year old husband, and.
Like they say, age difference is that big deal.
I try not to swim in those waters too much, but I've seen those and that had like big looking for or or trying to maintain a relationship with a much younger person energy and vibes to it.
Do you think Greg Sheianna would try that? I think he would before Pat Fitzgerald. I think he would before David Shaw. Yeah, I think there's a certain amount of energy to Greg Ciano that says sure, sure, Mac Brown would. Justin Wilcox.
Justin Wilcox seems more key, pretty still younger. He's like in his mid forties, mid to late forties or something like that. So see, I don't think you can do the age thing, though. The age thing is probably.
Be Herwood for as long as Herm's still employed. Yeah, Herm would. Joey McGuire. I don't know how old Joey McGuire is, but he would. Jay McGuire, Arkwood, he would totally do it. Bim, Brett Bielma would do it. He'd be in. Brett Bielmo would do it. James Franklin, Franker Franklin would do it even if there weren't a camera. I would say Hypel, Yeah, Hypel would do it. Shaw might be the answer.
Sean Fitzgerald, Shaw, Fitzgerald, Tom Allen would Allen's got that energy to him.
Would Undy would? Yeah? And Riley definitely would. P J Fleck, Oh my god, PJ Fleck does it? He? Paul Christ? What about Paul Christ? Paul Christ is low.
Paul Chris is absolutely low with how he responded to the turnover chain in the Bowl game, like he is. Just I don't I think he would be He would be an elite non debaser.
Yeah, I think I think he's probably My answer. Just to be a little bit different.
Paul Christ is a good answer. I'm trying to think anybody else in.
The A C. C.
Den know, Babe, Tony Elliott, Mike Elko, Jimbo would do it.
Jimbo, he would definitely do it. Yeah, of course he would.
Leech would do it. But Leach would look weird doing it. He'd he had he'd have no idea what he's doing, but he'd do it.
You do it? What about Schipper? Would Chipper do this?
H I think he's on the Christ train of like he has been notoriously not willing to play the recruiting game as it exists.
I feel like I feel like Chip Kelly would look at a move like that and feel like it's beneath him.
Now that said, Chip Kelly did jump into that giant cold tub when he was the Eagles coach for your member. Also, he's down to have a good time and like for for as much as he thinks allegedly that recruiting allegedly agedly recruiting and debasing oneself in one's time to bend over backwards to the top recruits in the country as a fool's errand, and he wants to find guys who
fit you know, does the big background checks. All all reports indigate from Eugene that players loved him, he loved coaching college kids like he got a He clicked really well with them. But the recruiting thing, yeah, I don't remember seeing a lot of you know him dancing in the locker room kind of Dabbo.
Would do this.
What about Nordoozy, he'd be low, he'd be low. But I don't I think he would do it before christ Shaw or Fitzgerald.
Yeah, I think I agree with that.
I'm trying to think of like Chris Kleiman. Hard to see him doing it, but he would do it before them.
He would definitely do it.
Lance Leipold, hard to see it, would probably do it before them. Although he's pretty no nonsense.
No, I like him. Matt Campbell, Yes, Campbell, Frost, Yes, we don't know much about Timmy Chang, but Timmy Chang being for that.
Tucker's no nonsense, but I think he really is. He grinds out on the recruiting trucks, oh man, I mean.
Jobs.
Yeah, I don't know if Troy Callahan's doing it, although although you.
Know he does what it takes to get the hair did the hair thing right, Yeah, yeah, he does. He does what it takes. Oh man, this has been an important conversation. Yeah, I'm glad, No, it is.
It is strange to watch. And if Brian Kelly strings together a bunch of top five classes, you tip your cap and you say more power to you. However you do it, it works good for you. But if he's doing this and it doesn't work, like bro, I don't know, I don't know.
I get it.
I get you gotta do what it takes because Alabama and George are war machines. At this point, you're trying to keep up. But like the fact that he is how tall do you think Brian Kelly is?
Brian Kelly five nine maybe maybe five eight, Okay, so he's about five eight. So he's just sort of ducking ducking under defensive lineman's shoulders, going pew pew pew and doing like the little dances in his vest. Man, there's just gonna be so many gifts if and when he's fired from LSU. We did we did the Padrigo Show
last Thursday. One of the songs in there that we reviewed and compare I think I compared it to LSU the favorite crime song where you sort of are in something and you kind of lose lose yourself a little bit because you're into it. Brian Kelly right now is going through that stage. Yeah, he's he's just doing whatever. He's kind of going with the flow. Might look back on it, like you said, if it doesn't work and
not feel great about it. But if it does work, Yeah, if it does work, there are huge spoils at the end of that rainbow. So we are tight, are we not? A show? That is?
If nothing else, we respect bit commitment, Oh, total, totally absolutely respect Like Brian Kelly should be die his hair, Brian Kelly should be making appearances on you know, the mixtapes and music videos of local artists, like he should be giving himself to the moment as fully as humanly possible.
And I respect it like I do. I do respect it.
There is do There's always going to be whenever you see a coach doing this specifically, there's always like big time, I've never heard this song, but it's my niece's wedding and I'm hitting the dance floor. Like there is that energy to Brian Kelly all the time with these types of videos. But you know what, It's better than sitting at the table and being sour. It's better than sitting at the table during the wedding and not hitting the dance floor. So I'm good with it now.
I'm okay, I'm okay with it. Look again, we are in the content business here, Dan, of course, this is what we do now, is what I do now. So if he wants to do that dance every day of the week and post it to social media, by all means I'm showing up for Kayla on her special day. Yeah. Oh my gosh, it's great. Great to see, great to see.
Is there any other news that we need to discuss before we get into our I mean there's always you know, this coaching hire stuff that trickles all over. Boston College hired what Notre Dames tight Ends coach McNulty. I saw, not Jimmy McNulty.
That's a different one. Yeah, I saw that. Is it true that you may be in the running to be the new offensive coordinator for Mario Cristobal because that's still kind of in progress, right.
Yeah, that's kind of a weird situation. So Miami, and look, Mario crist of ball and I happened to know a good amount of about Mario Crista Ball since I am an Oregon fan and I was, you know, party two. What happened with new coach hires in Eugene, and he took his time. He always took his time. He interviewed a ton of guys for for coordinator roles, assistant roles, and really was, you know, by all accounts, thorough about who he hired. But he Miami brought him in on
December sixth we're recording this on what January thirty. First, it's correct, Miami still does not have an offensive coordinator. They reached out to Jason Candle and he turned them down. The Toledo head coach. There were parent conversations and it's sort of a he said, he said, situation with Kendall Briles and making a move from Arkansas. But they are still without a defensive coordinator, without an offensive coordinator, and now they've lost their corners. Coach to I think Alabama
Treveris Robertson. I might get gotten that name wrong. I apologize if I did. And Brian McClendon, who he brought from Oregon to be his receivers coach, is now going to be filling that same role at Georgia, and so I don't know with signing day here, with spring coming up, Like he hired his strength coach, which is important. He brought him over from Oregon, and he's got a couple other guys he brought over from Oregon, his offensive line coach, his defensive line coach.
But it does feel like it's taken him perhaps too long, and that there is I don't know, there's a reason why coaches are not sticking or coaches don't want to stick that are you know, interesting that job at one point,
I don't know. It's almost as if hiring a coach via your boosters and not an athletic director is sort of doomed to failure, isn't it just a little bit like maybe maybe there is some smoke to the program not having itself in order, And you know, I understand they've brought the guy down from Clemson and they're trying to get things together. And Mario's big fish. He's a good coach, he's a great recruiter. Like I don't mean to take anything away from him, but he will eventually
find coordinators. I think my point is nobody should be surprised at this point if it feels a little bit disorganized, feels a little bit all over the place, because frankly, those are the circumstances under which Cristal Wal took the job.
Yeah, and if you are an assistant in demand, if you're a coordinator in demand, and you interview with a couple different schools, or you go to Miami and then another school shows interest to you Miami saying this will be what the program is like, These are the plans for the program. Potentially, this is how the machine will be built in some time, and then Georgia comes to you or Alabama comes to you and says, flip a switch,
We're ready. And so it's just it's it's the sort of perils that come with being a constantly rebuilding and being a program that doesn't seem to at the moment potentially will have a solid foundation.
That there is.
Just there are a lot of teas to cross and eyes to dot, and a lot of promises to be fulfilled, to be TBD, we'll see.
With all that being said, we wanted to provide further context for what we saw transpire in twenty twenty one, So keep in mind. If you go back at the time, I had left the mysterious day job, and I was immersing myself in preseason college football fully to the extent that I could, with at that point in time only a limited amount of hours to really throw into it.
And I was fascinated by over under tootals because, if nothing more, it gives you a guide, gives you a guide for where the people who use this to put their kids through college, where they think teams are going to be. Right. So, what we've got in front of us here, and you dutifully put this together, Dan, thank you for doing this. Of course, you put together a list of the teams that either exceeded or fell short
of their preseason over underwin totals. Correct. So we've got a list here of the teams that overperformed, the teams that underperformed, at.
Least according to Vegas expectations, right, not necessarily internal ones or fan base expectations. But like this is how Vegas set the line of saying we think half of the people are going to bet this way and half the people are going to bet that way. This is that enticing number. And these are the teams that completely outperformed or came way way underneath it.
Yeah, So we pulled a few of these out that I think are of interest, and I know you and I each have a couple that we want to talk about, But I think the intention here is to look at where some of these teams ended up, how they performed relative to that over under, and then talk a little bit about why.
Yeah, by the way, looking back in retrospect, coming off of the weird, weird in a lot of ways awful twenty twenty season in terms of the variance of results and games getting canceled and teams going three weeks without playing, stuff like that, there were just going to be some
absolutely awful lines being set. Oh that it were just like somebody's like, yeah, about five and a half, they win ten games, Like why, Well, twenty twenty was weird for everybody, and so we don't fully understand the scope of what a team could have been or could be at full strength with a much more normal experience, or a team just got lucky in twenty twenty, or a team had an inflated win total because of all sorts
of things happening around them. So basically, what I took from this, if we're gonna be like prisoners of the moment is okay, You're gonna look at experience on a certain level. You're gonna look at schedule. You're also gonna look at conference. You're like, Okay, has this conference been down for a while and now have a bunch of teams with upper classmen who are just going to progress back to the mean or just like they're not gonna have as much bad turnover luck as they did last year.
Like you're also just like looking at teams.
Where you're like, what is the collapse potential? What is their Jenga potential?
You know?
And so so like one of the teams here is USC who had I think it was a nine win total set in this one, right, and they finished the season at what five and seven USC or four and eight, like they were terrible. So the collapse potential was certainly high given Clay Helton's job status. But you looked at their actual schedule and you're like, they don't have anybody tough in the non conference part of the schedule, Like
early on, it looks pretty good. Like they miss Oregon and Washington, the two best teams presumed to be the best teams in the North, like, nine games seems fine, So going you'd have to just bank on collapse potential because realistically it was understandable that USC win around nine games last year.
Yeah.
The reason they didn't well injuries, and it turns out they just weren't good. They didn't have guys on defense, and teams got better in the Pac twelve on their schedule, like Oregon State. Oregon State is a team that should basically never beat USC. They moved the ball all over SC and the win in the Coliseum, which was their first win there forever and ever, and so USC is a really good example of just collapse potential.
You knew they had it.
There's some teams that just have that in their DNA, given the circumstance, is a coach or the personnel whatever. USC was a prime collapse potential that I guess we just didn't fully underline ahead of the year.
Yeah, and one that I think is kind of on the opposite end of that spectrum where we saw the collapse potential, but a lot of folks didn't see it coming Washington, correct, Yeah, Washington's over under was nine And you know, I've talked about it for probably eight months running now, but a lot of the preview publications are very high on the Huskies. Phil Steele, Oh my gosh,
he couldn't have been any higher on Washington. Right. It took a few weeks for me, certainly for you, for a lot of folks who follow college football to fully come to grips with the fact that what we've seen early from the Huskies is not a fluke. This just might be a very poorly coached team. And you know, you can never account for coaching circumstances and coaching weirdness in some of these lines, right, You can certainly account for, yes, I think this guy's a good coach or a bad coach,
for whatever that's worth. But in this case with Jimmy Lake, we had real circumstances that went awry, and I think that contributed to the collapse that we saw from Washington. But Washington only winning like what they went four games, right, I mean, that was so far short of expectations that I don't think anybody could have seen it coming. You certainly could have gone into the year and said, I
don't think Washington's going to get to nine wins. There's sure there are reasons why I don't feel like, that's attainable. I don't remember what you had with Washington. I don't think you were as high as I went under. Yeah, but even still this far under, nobody could have seen that coming.
No, I mean, the only real sense was, like nobody really liked John Donovan as the answer for that offense, and so that was going to hold them back. But going into the season, you thought, Okay, they have an experienced quarterback. They had the COVID issues that prevented them from playing Oregon and playing in the Pac twelve championship game, but they have this reputation of having a solid defense and Jimmy Lakes being a defensive minded coach.
They've recruited well.
On offense, They've got this very experienced offensive line, They've got one of the best tight ends in the country, and like, even if they're not great, they should still be good and you can win nine games as a
good team in the Pac twelve. What we didn't fully look at was maybe they were the beneficiary of the COVID year, the weird COVID year, and they won some clunkers, and also like they had a ton of transfers, especially on offense heading into the twenty twenty one season, almost like, you know, pigeons freaking out ahead of an earthquake.
We're like, should we Is there something coming? Is there? Is there?
A bunch of frogs won't shut up that there's an earthquake a half hour later. And I think that that was it, That that was the best we could have hoped for. That a pretty average offense wasn't going to get better. In the fact that all these receivers are leaving might be an indicator of ooh, things are trending pretty quickly downward in Seattle.
Yeah, I that one I didn't see coming. The other the one that I didn't see coming was Florida, Florida. Florida was at Florida would have been tough to see coming. Yeah, Florida was at nine, they're over under was nine. They obviously got to six. And that was a huge disappointment, sort of in the same vein, though not quite to
the same extreme extent as Jimmy Lake. But you had that coaching turmoil, You had that very clearly breakdown about halfway through the season where it just seems like Florida stopped playing. They stopped playing for Dan Mullen and I can't tell you the number of articles I've read, either on the athletic or through team sites or on message boards, what have you where Folks have been talking for the last couple of months about how this team just didn't
play hard. That was kind of the book on Florida from opposing coaches, that they just they don't play hard. They're undisciplined. They can get up some of the time, but most of the time they kind of don't care. Right. There was no way to really account for that before the season. Nine wins in the SEC is difficult. That's difficult by any stretch, But even with a lot of the turnover, it seemed as if they had talent in
place where they could get to that nine. I was very high in Florida before the start of the year. That clearly did not materialize.
The the case against Florida would have been, and I didn't tap into it in the same way that you didn't tap into it was sometimes Actually no, every single fan base feels like the world is that, you know, the sky is falling right because they're not recruiting, they're not hiring the right coaches, they're not getting the best
out of their players. Whatever, because just that's the nature of fans holding their own team to an incredibly high standard that it's unattainable for basically everybody, but Florida fans are an educated fan base because they know what incredible national teams look like, they know what SEC champions look like,
and they know what they they don't look like. They've had a bunch of coaches who can recruit but can't win, or a bunch of coaches who won but eventually couldn't recruit and then couldn't win, a bunch of weird personalities that weren't going to be long term answers, and so Florida fans were very quick to say, it's keeping Todd Grantham around. Okay, that's not the answer. A defensive coordinator,
it's not going to last. Florida's not going to win ten games a year with Todd Grantham calling plays on defense.
Florida fans would say, they're not recruiting as well as they should be, and yes, Florida is stringing together top ten or top fifteen or top twenty classes or whatever, but they're getting killed in their own backyard, which is a recipe for a downward trend and so those types of things are that the warnings, the trends, that's saying like this isn't adding up for a long term solution for Dan Mullen, and so that you would have to
believe and buy into that because I didn't. I looked at the classes and I said, they're still pretty good. They're not amazing, they're not Urban Meyer Florida classes, but they're still pretty good. You can still win a bunch of games. Yeah, But at the same time, and like, what do they do with Kyle Trask a year ago, Kyle Pitts, Caadarius Tony, all these guys were record setting guys on offense, but they're not necessarily guys Dan Mullen brought in.
You know.
It's just one of those things where you're just like a lot of Florida fans had that sort of like sell high mentality.
Yeah, And I don't feel like Florida fans were unrealistic. I felt they were cautiously optimistic about what could happen in twenty twenty one. But I recall, in just going back through my own preview kind of what my headspace was talking about Florida. I was high on Florida. I would never have bet that over at nine wins because again, this is a team that played both Alabama and Georgia, which on the surface at that point in whenever we did this mid July, right at that point, it seemed
like those were losses. Now, Florida played Bama pretty tight. Oh absolutely could right there, could have won that game, but that on the surface looked like two losses. If you're betting on the over at that juncture, saying those are gonna be two losses, they can't slip up at all the rest of the way, right, And I wasn't comfortable with that. Now, I think I had him at
eight wins, eight and four. They fell short of that by a couple games, and you know, in many other ways, but the Florida one kind of snuck up on me. It really did, to the extent that they would only win six games and look as bad as they did down the stretch, That to me was I could not have foreseen that one coming.
Yeah, I mean, the big the big chakra was probably I mean, outside of the first half of the Samford game, it's the South Carolina game. It's that you look at Florida's schedule they beat an upcoming Tennessee team comfortably to go to three and one, I believe. So basically what's happening is Kentucky has always been, always been in the last few years, they've been solid to, if not good, a good team. So they look disastrous against Kentucky and
just mistake prone. It's the South Carolina game where that was like the big indicator LSU it's back and forth, it's an uncharacteristic shootout.
Whatever.
You lose that game a bunch of turnovers. That was an indicator that things have gotten really, really sloppy. And that was only a few weeks after the Bama game. But you know, losing to Miszoo in overtime the way that they did and then South Carolina by twenty three or whatever like it just there was a I don't know if it's a stubbornness or if it's just I don't know what you could have seen ahead of time because you look at Emery Jones with the experience he
had in the program. Dan Mullen still has the offensive mine, they still have receivers and just collapsed and I may have taken the under If we do this again, if we go back in time and do it again. I just don't know how much we could have seen this coming as outsiders. Michigan's a team that overperformed in a big way. Yeah, plus Michigan State in a huge way. I can stay in a huge way.
And plus six Yeah, Oklahoma State also fared very well with this one that I would love to talk more ab as Baylor. Sure, Baylor's over under was five and a half before the start of the year, and I went on our Daily Bearers with our friend Peter Pope, the Pope, the og Pope, and I talked to him about where I was at with Baylor, And you know, I think what makes the Baylor result in twenty twenty one so damn impressive. And you've heard me say this is just the way that Dave Randa looked at what
transpired in twenty twenty after the weird COVID year. He gave an objective analysis as to what he thought was wrong, and he changed it. He changed it. Most guys don't have the gumption to do that, so he swapped out offensive coordinator. He started going for it more n fourth downs. He had turnover to deal with, but he was able to kind of pull things together in a way that they were just really fundamentally sound. Over under again five
and a half. I was I'm looking at this thinking, geez, I don't there are too many question marks here with the Baylor Bears. But he circled the wagons. He was able to get that team playing so well as a team to not beat itself. They had their moments, but they were just so solid. That was the theme of this past season. If you can have a solid football team out there, it will produce, it will produce. We saw that. We saw results time and again from teams
that weren't great but were just really solid. And Baylor, let's be honest, Baylor very much fit that mold. They were really solid across the board and that's why they were plus four and a half plus four and a half incredible year.
It was in retrospect, kind of a strange year in the Big Twelve. So I think you have to give credit to Baylor for overcoming that, you know, win total number in a big way. But at the same time, so they actually lose to TC.
But you look.
At where the Big Twelve has fallen to in terms of week to two week consistency on offense, especially because defensively there's some good teams. Sure, so Baylor probably shouldn't have beaten Texas Tech. I think that was a Donovan Smith lit them up. But they win that game with like a you know, a nothing win, like a four percent win expectancy or something like that. Texas falls apart and Baylor wins that game, and Texas defense is atrocious,
like Texas is wildly and consistent atrocious. New coach at ut Oklahoma State really really good and they lose that game. But like West Virginia kind of falls off a cliff this year, Oklahoma in the way that they looked on offense for large swaths of this year, especially turning to a freshman who I think Caleb Williams has all the potential in the world, but he threw in some clunkers of quarters haves and just general game performances.
I don't know.
I just some of it is Baylor just taking advantage. Like Baylor just found themselves on much more solid ground than much of the conference, and so I don't know, I could not have predicted that. I like the Jeff Grimes higher, I was unsure of where they were going to be at quarterback, but I figured it was going to be an upgrade over where Charlie Brewer was in twenty twenty. But yeah, I don't know how much there is in terms of lessons to glean from Baylor's twenty
twenty one going into the year. As much as it is like weird, you're in the Big twelve and Baylor seems solid all around and took more chances.
Yeah, I think it bodes well for Baylor moving forward. I think if nothing more, and you're right, there is definitely an atmospheric calculation that we need to make. I just sort of made that up, but oh, it's a good turn of phrase. I like it. You need to look at these surroundings, the other teams in the conference to figure out how much value you want to put on some of these results. There was some of that
going on for Baylor. But yeah, if nothing more, I think you come out of the twenty twenty one campaign obviously conference champion. You'll take that. And if nothing more, you know that Dave r Anna can coach. You know, Dave Ranneck coach. Now you know you got to see a full body of worker. You know you can coach on that one snuck up on me. The Baylor one snuck up on me. One that didn't was NC State. Yeah, you liked NC State a good deal more than I did.
Going into the air, I was all in on NC State. They're over under was six. They finished with nine wins. They had losses at Mississippi State, where they played like crap Week two. It was a horrible game. They lost a really close one on the road at Miami, and then they lost the shootout on the road against wake Forest. Those are their three winses, but every other game along
the way they won. They had the big, you could argue, program defining win, even though it might not have been a full strength Clemson team because of their injuries and just some of their struggles early, but beating Clemson twenty seven to twenty one in the first month of the season was a pretty big deal for NC State. Of course, that was a game we didn't know about, and I understand why Vegas might want to look at that one
and say, ah, that's that's probably a loss. But it was strange to me that they would not give NC State more credit than six wins for that line because it was a veteran team. Granted, we only saw Devin Leary here in their year ago. Yeah we didn't know, but yeah, we just didn't know. There were a lot of uncertain aspects to this team. But with all they had coming back and with what appeared to be a relatively favorable schedule, over six seemed like a lock. To me.
I wish I would have bet it. I didn't bet it. I don't like doing over unders because then your money's locked up and I'm not betting a whole lot. But I wish that were one that I would have stuck to my guns and actually bet in real life, because I really liked the Wolfpack going into this season.
Yeah they were so in twenty twenty they go eight and four. Twenty nineteen was a disastrous year, so it seemed like things were trending up, but they didn't do anything amazingly well. And I think largely that was because of Devin Leary's injury, and it was what Bailey Hawkman, yeah,
took over. Yep, and so it's backup quarterback. So they're getting healthier, and yeah, it was a good move, especially if you figured the ACC was going to continue to be as topsy turvy that Dave Dorin is somebody who is right, he's a competence buoye in Rocky Seas, right, he's always getting that the eight nine wins. So that makes sense that you would have had that faith, but you would have also had to just be a Devin Leary believer. You would have to have been a believer there.
And also in like you know, North Carolina given what they've lost, and we can get into them next if you want, given what they've lost, or Virginia Tech given like justin Fwente's status even after the twenty twenty season, you're just sure, I don't know NC State, just like they hire Tony Gibson, and like I just you were just betting on foundation. You were betting on consistency in a conference that seemed to have a lot of variants.
So yeah, I get the NC State appreciation going into the air, I get that.
Let me talk to you about in North Carolina, UNC. Excuse me. Yeah. North Carolina's over under was ten. Yeah, big number. And this is a team that had a lot of production go to the NFL, and so to set that at ten always felt high to me. Now, I really like Sam Howe. We both did. We're both Sam Howe believers. We like Samo a lot, and I think we both feel generally pretty good about the talent that Mac Brown has brought into Chapel Hill. It's done a good job in the recruiting trail. That being said,
ten is still a pretty big number. Yeah, And I don't remember where you were exactly on North Carolina. I think you did the preview for the tar Heels, but I remember looking at that number and saying, Okay, I like you and C I hope UNC can rise up as the counterbalance to Clemson. At the time, we were all in on Clemson too, right, But ten wins feels like a stretch.
And North Carolina, by the way, has been a decent counterbalance on the recruiting trip they have.
Absolutely. Yeah, So did to what extent did North Carolina take you by surprise?
A decent amount of surprise. I figured that a NFL caliber quarterback, a first round NFL caliber quarterback, was good enough to raise the level of everybody around him. The problem is that's true of receivers. It can be true of a running game, but when he is constantly under pressure, when you lose a line in college, there's only so much you can do to improve in a year. And it's not the NFL where you go into free agency. It's not the NFL where you can prioritize line in
the draft or something like that. Yeah, and even NFL teams struggle with that a good deal. And so with it being relatively early in mac Brown's tenure. I was never a huge fan of the J Bateman higher. I thought he was merely okay, if not a little bit below average at Army. I thought North Carolina could have done better at defensive coordinator. And some of those cracks shown like North Carolina got completely torched in twenty twenty.
In the back end, they ended up what starting a high school senior, Tony Grimes when he was a top recruit essentially who enrolled early. So that was a worrisome trend. They weren't covering a bunch of games in twenty twenty. The defense showed some cracks just up front. They just weren't as strong in the trenches as they probably should have been considering mac Brown's recruiting ability. They didn't necessarily hit the portal as hard as they should, I guess
in retrospect. But ten, yeah, ten seemed like an inflated number and it's almost it's almost I was gonna say, it's compared comparable to where Iowa State was, where yeah, a program can be interesting and deep. In Iowa State was coming off of a bigger platform and winning I think the Fiesta bal the year before, where like, okay, they're returning everybody, They're just going to take the next step. They've got an experienced quarterback, the coach, the coaching staff,
you know, the lines are intact. Like it made sense that people would be bullish on Iowa State. But North Carolina winning ten games with what they had to replace, it seemed like not unreasonable. But that is everything needs to go right. Every young player needs to hit on their potential and they need to win every single clunker, every single fifty to fifty game. And that's just a lot to ask. That's a lot to ask when you
don't have the depth yet. It's a lot to ask when you don't have the defense to bail you out of turnovers, to bail you out of situations. And so in retrospect, it maybe seems a little bit more obvious to me, But no, I didn't see this kind of week in week out, Like you look at the Georgia Tech game. They gave up what forty fifty points? Did this Georgia Tech team didn't see that potential coming.
Now, surprise, not surprised. Let's go through some of the other teams on this list here. Houston. Houston won eleven games. They're over under eight. I was not surprised by that at all. I was in on Houston.
Yeah, I wasn't to this extent. I didn't think the defense would be as good. But it's one of those things where they were hitting the portal hard. And I think most of us believe Dana Holgersson is a good but not great coach, and a good coach in the American hitting the portal returning a quarterback, Yeah, yeah, I would have penciled him for nine or ten. I did not see eleven.
Coming, Yeah I didn't. I didn't see eleven, but I was in on Houston. Oklahoma State's an interesting case. Seven and a half before the season obviously went three and a half over that number. YEP, just had the what one regular season loss? We felt good about the defense. The defense had been trending in a good direction. I have never been shy to admit my reluctance on the Spencer Sanders front totally. The defense had been trending in a good direction. I think we undervalued, frankly, how good
it could be. It was very good defense, very good defense. That's why they got to the heights that they did. So that one surprised me a little bit. What about ole Miss?
Dan uh ole Miss surprised, not dramatically so and by the way, Oklahoma States surprised, but not dramatically so too. I figured they'd be pretty good, but I didn't see the star power on offense, which made me think that they would win two three games or excuse me, lose two or three two, three, four games but still feel a really strong defense. And you know, the combination of not having the star power and a mistake prone quarterback, it worried me. And they gave me a reason not Tory. Yeah,
Ole Miss was interesting. Lane Kiffin and a quarterback with talent is tantalizing, like especially in his first real season coaching the team, and where that defense was when he arrived, with where that defense ascended to this year to become pretty interesting. Not a full surprise, but dramatically over. Yeah, I think.
I'm surprised that in year two. He won ten games. For sure. I didn't see it coming. The BYU result this year was what ten wins? They were good. I did not see this one coming to this extent six and a half. To me, I recall being very much on the fence because new quarterback, they've got some turnover. It was a great campaign. I didn't so I didn't see that one coming, not to this extent.
Yeah, the BYU thing, you would had to have been extremely down on the PAC twelve. Yeah, you would have had to know that Charlie Brewer was not long for Salt Lake City, but they were going to play him in the Holy War week two and then cam Rising would have been a clearly better option. And so yeah, they were they were hard out and I definitely didn't see it coming. I definitely thought they had enough to still be decent.
Yeah, yeah, it's in the same boat. Yeah. They basically they lose to Boise State.
And they lose on the road to Baylor. They get a disastrously bad collapsing USC A woefully I would say woefully disappointing, but a disappointing ASU team.
But that game is in provo.
They get Washington State, I think on the heels of Wazoo firing their coach, which is an incredibly difficult spot for Wazoo, and they get what Virginia was. Did Brendan Armstrong play in that game or I don't. I don't know, I don't. You can pull that up while I'm talking. It was just a weird year for b and things broke their way, but they I mean, they largely took
care of business. I mean, there was a shootout against Virginia, but otherwise, Yeah, I guess you just could have looked at BYU and said they're a wild card, let's go over just because they look solid. Clonie Sataki is hired.
Well, yeah, but no, I don't I don't think I would have been confident in that over. Uh, Pitt did well. I don't know if that's terribly surprising. We liked Kenny Pickett. I you know, I don't know if I quite expected that kind of campaign, but the Kenny Pickett to Jordan Addison connection really blossomed. The Pitt defense. The pit Past defense especially sort of let them down but somewhat Yeah, this was definitely a good team led by its quarterback.
So it's not all that surprising to me one that I I too that I was.
In on pit by the way, a big There's no way I saw the Kenny Pickett thing coming that type of improvement. But it just in looking at their schedule ahead of time with Tennessee with a new coach, I mean, they end up losing to Western Michigan, but otherwise, like the non conference isn't terrible. And then you have Georgia Tech, which was lost into the season, it still appears to be lost. Virginia Tech coming out and saying, we're not firing our coach, but we do need to tell you
that we're not firing our coach. Definitely didn't see the Clemson collapse quote unquote coming, even though they you know, got to a respectable number of wins in a quote unquote down year. But yeah, the Miami thing going to a backup quarterback who worked out for them, but Miami having the topsy turvy year that they did, I figured that they would be on more solid ground this year, returning Derek King, returning what they did on defense led
by like Bubba Bolden, whatever. I just I didn't see Pitt as that other like competence buoy along with NC State within the ACC that like, look, they're not an amazing team, but they're a good team. The Good getsy places, right, It's sort of the Baylor Sea Places the Baylor theme. Right, Good getsy places in a season as crazy as twenty twenty one, where there was a lot more parody than I think we've seen in a lot of recent years. I do want to talk very quickly about Texas, Northwestern.
And Nebraska, because I think each those is interesting. But we can't fully close the loop on some of the surprise teams to the Good without mentioning Perdue and Michigan State. Perdue was the giant killer. Perdue was the fun team that everyone wanted to root for, had a bunch of big upsets, led in large part by David Bell and George Karloftis, both of whom are going to the NFL, both of whom declared that they were going to the NFL before the bowl game. They opted out of a
bowl game. Then they somehow beat Tennessee in the bowl game, which was I think a great testament to how hard that team has played all season. To be without those guys and still win was in my view, a pretty big deal. So nobody could have seen the extent to which Purdue would rise above their six win over under. Finishing with nine wins is an incredible campaign for them. The Michigan State thing, though, is just freaking eerie. Four wins always felt a little light. However, we didn't have
much to go on. We knew that they showed some fight in twenty two, and they only won two games of twenty twenty, but one of them was Michigan was the other Penn State, like whoever it was right, Going two and five in that campaign was not necessarily a great portal into what we might see here in twenty twenty one. But this is a team that continuously played really tough, and they found ways to manufacture points. They were good on offense, not so much on defense. Yeah,
but the Michigan State one above all others. To be plus six over there over under a four was just sort of the crown jewel of this past college football season, at least within this context.
I thought the floor would be raised via portal via Meltucker's coaching acumen. I thought he made good hires when he was first there, and that it was going to take some time. Impossible to judge in the COVID year, you know, as it is for most teams that made a higher in the COVID year. But I looked at Michigan State as a team in a program who hadn't
found a quarterback who was Northwestern. By the way, of course, Big ten West Champ twenty twenty Big ten West Champ Northwestern, whom Michigan State beat, not Penn State in twenty twenty.
I figured the floora would be raised.
I figured with the raised level at various positions, the floor will be raised. But I didn't see them as solving quarterback. And so no, I didn't expect anything anywhere near this. So you were just you were just buying low on Michigan State if you were a believer in them or a Michigan State fan, because unless you were close to that program and following them day to day,
I think it was pretty difficult to see. Look and they you know, they sneak by in a couple games, you know, the disastrous second half against Nebraska and the weird game against Indiana, and they get the fortuitous fumble against Michigan, but even still they're comfortably hitting the over with those wins. So no, could not have seen that coming.
I mean, look ahead of the season, you're I mean you're looking at the schedule and you're like, it's difficult to find eight or nine wins on this Michigan State schedule, like it was looking at Purdue schedule, like you're going to be a believer in Purdue on the road against Iowa and on the road against Nebraska. Yeah, this Perdue
team exactly like it. Just I don't think a lot of people were in that headspace, and so yeah, I think Michigan State definitely overperformed, at least in my eyes, and I see that as a good thing.
Let's close this conversation out by talking about three teams. Okay, Let's talk about Texas, who was minus three there over under was eight, they finished with five. Let's talk about Northwestern was minus three and a half, they're over under was six and a half. And let's talk about Nebraska. They're over under was six. They obviously finished three and nine with those nine to one score losses. Whatever it was,
whatever the crazy stat was for the Cornhuskers. I'm curious to get your take on which of those three teams surprises you the most with the way they finished. I feel like It's a very interesting topic for discussion because and here's why. Okay, Texas had the new coach, but a ton of talent, And even if you were unreasonably high on the Longhorns the way I was, I was gonna say, like your heart, like I was, hmm, full disclosure. It still seems a little wild to me that they
would only finish with five wins. That's very surprising Northwestern. I Northwestern were accustomed to them finding a way to win the Big Ten West. But I don't know if either of us was all that high on the Wildcats going into this past season. We had our moments where we talked aspects of that team up, but I don't remember us ever being all that gung ho on the Wildcats,
So that one, to me, is not surprising. Nebraska. Nebraska had a brutal schedule, and so I was almost willing to accept pretty much any result for them in twenty twenty one. I didn't want it to be a situation where they only had three wins. I don't want that, but six. To me, it was like I could go either way on this. It's not surprising that they would
fall short of that. I think of the three Texas is the one that surprises me the most because if we want to talk about atmospherics in the Big Twelve, as you did earlier, it really was a more gettable version of the Big Twelve this past season, and for Texas to be as disorganized as they were to have still have trouble tackling on defense despite that apparently being like a focal point going into the year, that to
me is still the biggest disappointment of those three teams. Agree, disagree where you.
At disagree to me, it's Nebraska. It's Nebraska because of the amount of time Scott Frost has now been in Lincoln, the experience of Adrian Martinez, the improvement of the defense since Scott Frost got there. Under I think it's Eric Shenander, the defensive coordinator who goes back to Oregon days with Scott Frost, and the schedule nowithstanding because it's a tough schedule.
I just I don't know. It's the Big Ten West, which I think is fine, but you know, we're coming off of a year in which Wisconsin was extremely disappointing. Minnesota was extremely disappointing for a stretch in twenty twenty that like I thought Nebraska had enough continuity there that they would be able to close out games. And the surprise to me is this should be the surprise to everybody, because it's very hard to go three and nine with a competent offense and a good defense.
It just is. That's true. It just is.
And so I file Texas under the sort of like Lakers law that Vegas is always going to inflate a Lakers win total because you know, La guys always go to Vegas and they love betting the Lakers and betting the over, and they're just like, there's so much enthusiasm around Texas in the way that there's enthusiasm over like the Lakers and the Yankees and all these things where it's just like doesn't take much to bring them back.
They're Texas, come on. And so Texas is coming off a Bowl performance in which they look like they maybe have a quarterback of the future and Casey Thompson and although they nam Hudson card the starter, so he's like compared to Aaron Rodgers, Bruce Fellman compares him to Aaron Rodgers his potential, his skill set, whatever. And then you're bringing in Sark, who was just with Mac Jones, who was just with Tua and you're just like plug.
And play, plug and play. Turns out the defense was a lot farther away. Turns out the offense was a lot outside of like the emergence of Xavier Worthy and Bjeon Robinson until he got hurt. Line wasn't there, Quarterback play was inconsistent, injuries at quarterback, and so I think what happened is there's just always going to be swirling enthusiasm.
Texas is capital be back, and so that they fell short kind of nothing new that Nebraska fell short in the games that they did Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa with Lee, like all those games where they had a lead or they were right there one possession and give it away Illinois to start the season. Like I don't know, I was surprised that Nebraska wasn't a bowl team this year, even if you go back to my expectation before the
season started with that brutal schedule. Man that like Pat Fitzgerald, makes bad hires, like Mike Hankwis was awesome in two thousand and eight for a hire, and he was awesome for twelve thirteen years, but he was far too loyal to his offensive coordinator for far too many years, and then he hires I think Jim O'Neil, a failed defensive
coordinator in the NFL. The offense, there's no it's just Hunter Johnson doesn't work out like Peyton Ramsey's fine, he's if not on spectacular, but like there was nothing about Northwestern that screamed, oh, I see this is the overhaul, right that. I think the surprise with Northwestern is like they kind of you can just blink and they're going to be a bowl team. That's just how Pat Fitzgerald is.
Just like duct tape and chicken wire to bowl Northwestern sometimes nine when with Northwestern, right, I think the hires have been suspect there they have. I think the surprise with Northwestern, and you're right, I mean the surprise with Northwestern over the years has been that they've been so good that they find ways, like you said, smoking mirrors, the cape and chicken wire, to be as as good as they are when the Big ten West go to
a good bowl game, that type of thing. The surprise this year is how bad they were.
Well, they fielded the historically bad offense two years ago. I get it, but it was so bad. It was really bad, really bad.
Where we're on this show, we're looking at Northwestern, We're thinking they got no shot in any of these games. Yeah, no shot, And keep in mind you and I are used to dunking on the Iowa offense. Mm hmm. Northwestern was horrible, horrible. So I just if I were ranking these in order of most surprised to least surprised, I would say probably Texas won for me because they've got a special place in my heart. What can I say?
Northwestern two, Nebraska three. I wasn't surprised by the Nebraska result, if only because I knew the schedule was tough, and you know, I knew they're going to be hitching their wagon again the Adrian Moreartinez. And no disrespect to Adrian Martinez, but you know, we've seen a couple of years of what Scott Frost is trying to do, and it it spooked me out a little bit that it was all on him, or felt like it might all be on him again.
So that one doesn't surprise me as much as the other two. Yeah, God, do you think Pat Fitzgerald and Kirk farrensh just get together in the off season, say like, how how can we win the West with an awesome defense and no offense? Do we just keep playing like this? Should we just keep doing this? Should we just be like silly little silly little boys, keep using this and
employing this as our strategy. It's working and did once again? Yeah, I don't know the Nebraska thing to me, it's just the the mind blower.
No, all right, well right in We're at soliverbotgmail dot com. You can also go to the website solible dot com. We will post clips of this show across all our social media platforms as well. But way and let us know what your thoughts are. Who's surprise to you? Who didn't surprise you? What were points of contention for you? As a college football fan and watching some of these teams play, what caught you off guard? We would obviously welcome your feedback. You can do so across again all
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UH San Diego State four and a half games above Indiana with a win total set at eight games heading into the twenty twenty one season minus sliding in at two and ten six.
That one is tough. That one's tough.
You mentioned Purdue Western Kentucky adding our guy Bailey, Zappi and Kittley at at offensive coordinator. I want to say George Kitley. Because of George kittle Zach Kitley at offensive coordinator, they go two and a half over the expected win total. Fresno State did a nice job with Kaylin de Boorr just and utsa worth mentioning they were they showed potential but were kind of a disaster in finishing out games.
They make that that next step, I think in large part because of the passing game Frank Harris and just really Frank Big Frank, yep. So really cool to see. In terms of lessons moving forward with how I'm going to look at this, I think I'm going to look at returning production, consistency along the coaching staff, and just how much I buy a team's conference. I think that it's the common friends purchasing that that is going to
be my big thing. Like if I am if I am just like not a Big twelve believer, I'm not an acc believer heading into the twenty twenty two season.
I'm committing to that. I'm absolutely committing to that with my win totals. All right, Well, we've got months and months before we Yes, we do see the win totals for the twenty twenty two season, but we'll be all over that for sure. If it went that comes to fruition, Dan, Always a pleasure to speak with you, Hey, same, It was good to go through all the Jackson darts. Can I kind of have that sound one more time? Please? Oh? I really can't.
Always you can just call me up on the phone and say can I hear the drop?
And I will. I'll absolutely play it for you. I appreciate that we talked about Jackson Dart we talked about Brian Kelly, you talked about Jim Harbaugh, all the news in college football. Hopefully gave you a little bit more context here on the season that was. We will be back on Thursday. We'll be talking about National Signing Day. Yes we have to, of course I like to. It's the reason for the season for that guy over there, my good friend Dan Rubinstein, for myself, Tie hildon Brandt,
will talk to you all in a few days. In the meantime, as always, stay solid, peace,