Welcome to the Solid verbal.
I'm that for me. I'm a man, I'm forty.
I've heard so many players say, well, I want to be happy.
You want to be happy for dake Ado State? Is that woo woom? And Dan and Tye welcome back to the Solid Verble boys and girls. My name is Ty Hildenbrandt. I am joined as always by my good friend. He's a colleague, he's a co host for many years. His name is Dan Rubinstein. Over there in New York City, Sir, how are you? Ty?
I am excited. I am ready to go. I could not be looking forward to this show more. We've got a longtime friend coming. We have baseless, baseless predictions, and we get to talk about intellectual things with college football, so it's something for everybody.
I was not prepared for this intellectual portion.
Dan, We never are, Ty, That's what makes us so charming.
It is May. It is the college football off season. A couple of weeks ago, we put out our How Coaches Get Made show, which people seem to enjoy. People seem to enjoy that. We had a lot of fun with the show we did last week as well, so you know we're doing our best here to make the time pass in the doldrums that are the college football
off season. Now, we've been doing this for a number of years now, and one of the shows that I know you mentioned to me earlier in the week that we need to plan out that we need to make sure happens this history of the soliverbal.
Yes, the Ultimate Naval Gaze.
So I believe that's going to happen tentatively at some point in July. We've had a couple people ask us when might that show be in the build up to what will be our tenth college football regular season, which is crazy. We will be doing a history of style show at some point later this summer.
You will not be revealing the secret day job.
I will not be revealing this secret day job, but we will be giving you a unique behind the scenes look at how the sausage gets made here, how it's gotten made over the years. Yeah.
So this will be our tenth season like football season together.
Yeah. Crazy.
So that's sort of a preamble to that. If you haven't and even if you don't listen to the podcast as you should, that's insane. Listen to the Starters formerly known as the Basketball Jones. They did it, I want to say last year or the year before h and it's an incredible listen just like how far those guys
have come there now on NBA TV. So really proud of them and hopefully you guys will enjoy it, because every once in a while we have people say, hey, I don't know know how you guys sort of started this up and met, and then we'll be able to send them an hour and a half link here you go. Yes, everything you could possibly want to know about us and what was going on in our lives is everything was transpiring with the show, and we were growing and how we did things and how we think we did things.
So we're going to do that over the summer. At some point. We've got another show planned with our friend Bill Barnwell, Yes, a look back at a new topic before it was EMO. We're going to wax nostalgic about something else that we have planned.
I am so excited about this show, Dan.
I know, I know it.
I love it.
So we've got some plans And because the feedback on the How College Football Worked episode with the coaching hires seem to be exceedingly positive, which we're never quite used to. We have a plan. I think to do a couple more of those. Hopefully we can get it all done in the spring. But time getting married in three and a half weeks. Yes, I got some plans. You got some plans. No, But we have time, so I think we can knock out a couple more of those during the off season.
That is the plan. We thank you for listening. Don't forget. You can subscribe at iTunes, dot com, slash, Soliverbal, or anywhere fine podcasts are sold. We're given away for free. Look us up. We're the Sliverbal. We're also on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, the works. Okay, so Dan, Yeah, what are we doing today? Oh?
Ty?
I love that that song behind you. Today, we're gonna look into some crystal balls. We're gonna look into the future. We're looking at the horizon. We're gonna look into the layers of this universe college football in which we live. We're going to try to just find truth, Ty. We're going to look at the spring and we're going to say, this is a thing that exists. What does it mean for the future?
What is it? That song just sort of comes at you in waves, doesn't it right?
It starts up, it comes down.
I laughed, I make some emotion angry. Yeah, really the full damdle tie.
Absolutely, So we're gonna bring on our friend Bill Connolly of Vespianation Podcasting played nobody and of course his new book about the fifty best and most interesting and greatest teams of all time and talk about that as well. So again, packed full of emotions. Ty, we're gonna look into the future, We're going to look into the past. We're going to stay in the present. The show is literally just it's a thrown together good time.
Without further ado. Let's welcome in our friend Bill Connelly. Sir, how are you? I'm good?
How are you?
You're already previewing teams? You've been previewing teams for a couple months now.
Yeah, I'm almost done with the mid majors as a matter of fact, finished finished AAC, got the AAC Power Rankings coming up, got inb's on deck, and then it's onto the Big twelve, which is a power conference and is still better than the AAC.
How do you how do you do that? Like, what is your process for acquiring that information so far in advance?
Well, I mean the biggest thing. I mean a lot of it is obviously pulling off of last year's stats, and so I'll set that up in January kind of a template for each one, and then as I get close to each preview, then you know, I'll have everything set up for in this template, and then I'll just go in and add guys or you know, subtract the guy who left. It is kind of tricky early on because it takes him till probably the end of February, aka, after I'm done with the sun Belt for teams to
really start updating those twenty seventeen rosters. So AL do my best, but there's no way to avoid kind of getting some roster bits wrong here and there for the early team. And occasionally, if I actually get my act together and I worked ahead a couple of days, I'll end up with something like the NIU preview where it was like late March and their quarterback from last year that I'm blanking on his name Maddie or something like that. It looked like he was going to get a sixth year.
He was listed on the roster, they had started spring practice. I took that to mean that he had gotten his sixth year as planned and then like two days before I actually wrote the preview, it came out that he had been denied. So occasionally you'll get that, but I get most of it, right, I think.
Ty, you know what I'm hearing. I'm hearing that Bill uses current information to try and look into the future. Oh That's what I'm hearing, Tie, All right, Dan, Yeah, do tell what is the name of this game? Oh, that's a great question. We are going to call it the solid verbal Cloudy Glimpse into the Nether Fall, the psychic network, the solid verbal psychic Network.
Yeah. I like that as well. I like nether Fall, though, how does this work? What is the nether Fall? Okay? So what we do.
We have a number of items, and we are using spring storylines, which a lot of people think don't mean anything because spring games are generally not that competitive, and we don't have teams playing as one. We have teams that are split up, and we have scoring that's a little bit wonky, and we have injuries and walk On's playing a significant role and it's really not representative of what we're going to see in the fall. But there are always nuggets, Tie, There are always nuggets. So many
nuts that they might turn into a full rotisserie chicken. Okay, So we are going to try and look at some nuggets, either from spring games or storylines or just situations around the world of college football and glimpse into that cloudy crystal ball to see if we can get any clarity to see what might, in fact, IIE be Big. Now I understand it's a bit of a mixed metaphor because the movie Big involves changing your your current status.
We haven't heard from Bill at a while. You're still over there, right, we haven't bored you to death.
I'm just trying to figure out if you guys have a copyright for that.
No, well, it's who's to say Bill, who is to say please?
Don't? Please?
Don't turn us in? So, yeah, we are going to we have a number of situations. We're going to go through some preseason, post spring top twenty fives, and we're just going to figure out by looking into our mythical nether fall ball, what actually may or may not matter time.
I'm still trying to figure out how chicken nuggets are backwards compatible with the rotisserie chicken. But that, oh you'll see, that can be a podcast for deeper into the offseason, Dan, shall we present our first topic? Can you look? I think wessed a ball? What is it that we are trying to trying to foresee?
Okay, so, as we know, as Bill and you and the college football universe at large, nos, Ohio State is a new offensive coordinator and Kevin Wilson, and based on his time at both in Bloomington and for Oklahoma where he really opened things up and a historic offense with Sam Bradford and the Sooners, people are expecting Ohio State to be a much more open offense, to spread it out a little bit more, to throw downfield a little
bit more. And that's what happened this fall. Excuse me, this spring, Joe Burrow, Dwayne Haskins, and of course the starter j T. Barrett all through the ball downfield a ton more with the two backups as sort of more successful in a spring game that didn't mean all that much. We know Ohio State and Urban Meyer have a hiss of perhaps starting the wrong quarterback recently. So what I'm saying, will Ohio State be a squad that really opens things up on offense? What do we see and will it be?
J T?
Barrett is the trigger man.
All right, mister Connolly, let's throw it over to you. You heard the setup? What see you? Whyse suthes Sayer in your crystal ball?
You know, I always land with the incumbent, you know, we always fall in love with the other options. But in the end, I mean, the guy who's been around for a few years and has won a lot of games tends to win that job. And so without knowing the ins and outs of Joe Burrow's strengths and weaknesses, or Dwayne Hoskins or whoever, I will assume that Barrow keeps his job. Barrow Barrett, excuse me, keeps his job.
And you know with you know what I always liked about Kevin Wilson offenses is they're just, for lack of a better term, they're logical. They basically, you know, to set this up. That means we have to do this. And once this is set up and defenses will do this, then we can do this. And part of that is going deep. If you want to be able to run the ball, well, you got to be able to stretch the field a little bit. And you know, the lack
of a go to receiver could be an issue. We all I mean, Noah Brown is great at that one game, and the Lord knows they have got like thirteen other four star kids who could come up big. But you know, assuming they've got decent options for stretching the field, they'll do it, because that's just what you do in a logical offense, I guess. And if they can, then I mean everything else works.
J T.
Barrett doesn't throw a terrible deep ball. Obviously he doesn't have the best arm in the world. But the whole point is a lot of times those balls are gonna be really open and you just have to take them. And if they do that, then the run game should be killer.
This is the question that I have about their new offense under Kevin Wilson. And I said this to you weeks ago, Dan, the Kevin Wilson offense that we've seen in the past at Indiana, certainly at Oklahoma when he is still working down there, it does not seem to be necessarily compatible with the skill set of J. T. Barrett, And so I've questioned, how is that all gonna go? Now?
Your counterpoint was, well, you know, they ran a little bit and they were a little bit different stylistically at Indiana, and that's true, but I'm just kind of curious to see how he melds in his previous system with now the personnel grouping at Ohio State. If you look at the schedule, they actually do play Oklahoma fairly early on in the year. That's not going to be an easy game.
Then they've got a little bit more runway where they can can work things out before they get to Penn State, before they get to Michigan State, and obviously close out the year at Michigan. So I think all will be fine for Ohio State. I've kind of seen cloudy things when I look into my crystal ball about how that offense starts its season.
Ty play the sound again for me plays oh It's lovely, very mysterious, but kind of sooner serious. So this is what I do. I look into this ball tie and I see clarity. For the first six or seven weeks, not a lot of big defenses on Ohio State schedule, but then Halloween music very appropriate. I see a lion tie. I see energy, I see vibrations. I see a nitney lion.
I see trouble for Ohio State on offense in that game against a team Penn State that returns a lot of defensive players, not the defensive vents, but defensive players nonetheless. And I think by that by Iowa State Michigan State in there sometime before the Michigan game. I see rotating quarterbacks. I see a quarterback controversy, and I see Joe Burrow perhaps even supplanting JT. Barrett.
How about that? Would you say he's digging in at quarterback?
I would not.
I would never.
I would That is not okay.
Just checking, just checking? Fair enough? Where are we going nowt ok all? Right?
Next, ty, do we have and on the subject of quarterback battles, do we have a quarterback battle in Tuscaloosa following Tua? And I'm going to get this right. Tongue of Valoa, tag of a looa tongue of the true freshman from Hawaii coming in and completely shredding the defense that he saw. In Alabama's spring game, both he and Jalen Hurts had very good games. With the new offensive
coordinator throwing the ball down field. We know Alabama now unafraid to play it and start a true freshman at quarterback. Is it possible that Tua Tongua Valoga to Tua let's just go with Tua has a higher ceiling as a thrower than Jalen Hurts, who struggled in the back end the back three four games of Alabama's season.
I got to use the sounding because I love the sound. Do it all right? I am selling this one. My crystal ball nearly broke and I saw this question on your list. Why are you asking this? How could you possibly ask this given what Jalen Hurts did last year?
Ty as the sheriff's thing in college football?
Is this what I feel? This is like a Oiji board scenario where you kind of involuntarily want to believe that Jalen Hurts my might be supplanted by someone else, and therefore your involuntary muscles pushed you towards Oh.
Alabama fans have been very much pushing for that too, So it's out there. It's out there.
Wow. Okay, So you're not wrong to say that Jalen Hurts struggled against some of the better defenses. He played certainly down the stretch, but he still was a true freshman. He still had a ton of talent around him. He was in his first year. Give him a little bit of slack, even though he's at Alabama. I think there is plenty of reason to be excited about your quarterback depth at Alabama. But he got you to the National Championship game, and he looked a hell of a lot
better throwing the football down the field. That seemed to be the focus of their spring football game, to try and get a little bit more of a deep threat established offensively. Look at those numbers you mentioned, well, how Dan, I'd like to hear you say that name again to what was it, Tagavaloa, Tagavloa, thank tounguea Valoa.
I believe Tungueavaloa.
Yeah, seventeen of twenty nine for three thirteen passing day. That's not bad. Jalen Hurts, by the way, sixteen to twenty five for three oh one, so not that big a disparity. I think he is the guy. It's good to know that if and when he goes pro, or if and when he should go down with injury, you've got another fallback option. But no, I don't see that. I don't see him being supplanted anytime soon. Bill. Look into the orb.
I have seen, you know, huddle film of Taga Blowa. So I consider myself an expert on all of his strengths and weaknesses he's got. I mean, he's got a nice arm obviously, but and you know, it's easy to put it's easy to piece this logic together because he has a nice arm. He can throw a deep and there's no question I Meanson Clemson won the national title game by daring Jalen Hurts to connect deep. He did
it once on that wheel route to Howard. He missed like two or three others that if he connects it, they won the national title and he just missed them, just overthrew them. And so you pieced that together. You've got kind of a custom made quarterback battle here. But I just I'm just allergic to quarterback controversies. I hate them so much, so many of them start like this that I immediately start pushing back and just say stop, just start Hurts, You're fine, and and let's stop right now.
To be clear, I don't I don't want this, you guys.
I just see things.
I just look forward into the space time time space, and I'm seeing I'm seeing an issue here. And I think coupled with the fact that tag of a tongue of Alahutua has looked very good early. Is the fact that there's a new offensive coordinator, so it's not like Jalen Hurts is the guy of the complete offensive coaching staff. Maybe Tua fits. What the it's Brian something comes in from the Patriots. Maybe he fits. Maybe he makes the throws. Maybe,
just maybe, Ty, this is what the doctor ordered. The good doctor wanted some Hawaiian.
Hawaiian refreshments, Hawaiian punch. Yeah. Look here, here's the thing. You could start an old boot at quarterback for Alabama and they'd still find a way to win ten games. This is a team that's loaded to the gills, and you can make a real strong case. Bill could probably find a statistical case for it doesn't matter who plays quarterback as long as he doesn't shoot himself in the foot.
To simply have two quarterbacks that are mobile, agile, hostile the way these guys are, that is a luxury that exists at Alabama and maybe only a small handful of schools elsewhere around the country.
I could be meet and point out that your point is made. I think they won a national title with Greg McElroy, but I'm not gonna say that.
I'm not going to be mean, Nope, absolutely not. That's looking into the past.
Regardless of who plays quarterback, Alabama will be just fine, even though again a ton of talent goes to the NFL. But I do think it's hurts. I think your crystal balls little bit off, Dan got to reconfigure that thing.
Easy to say in May, easy to say in May.
Okay, very good.
Next item, This one's interesting to me. So the Pac twelve South is yet to win the conference as a whole. Sam Darnold has rightfully received a ton of attention as a Heisman candidate, perhaps the number one overall draft pick next spring. USC has a bit of a tricky schedule to start out the season, a number of offensive line, wide receiver secondary losses. You know that the ship isn't
fully running smoothly yet. With Clay Helton only entering his second year with the Trojans, USC as what appears to be the overwhelming favorite, with still Washington right there, USC coming off a Rose Bowl win, will not win the Pac twelve. Us C is going to trip up a little bit, Bill. Look into that crystal ball. Is their cloudiness surrounding USC's fall.
I think really the answer to that comes partially with what you think about Stanford, because Stanford, I mean, they get Stanford in Week two, and these issues. You know, in theory, these issues get kind of worked out as we go along. I mean, goodness, those have got talent on the line and in the receiving core and whatnot. It's just kind of breaking in new pieces. So in theory,
they finished the year good team. But I mean if they trip up early, that could hurt their national title caliber, their their their qualifications, and you know, maybe, man, I can't. They're gonna be awesome. I'm trying here, but they're going to be really good. And the fact is Sam Darnold's able too. He's got really nice es capability. That helps when you've got a nifty line and an if you're receiving core for that matter, because you can kind of wait for guys to to come open on not and
create on the on the run. So I really I'm struggling here. I think they're going to be just fine.
Dan, you have the most pessimistic crystal ball I think that exists in the college football.
I've got I've got guys jumping up and executing. I've got, you know, a wide open, improved pac twelve. I'm thinking great things around the country time, I'm seeing it in my ORB.
So again, we're talking about the PAC twelve as a whole. Mm hmm.
And I should point out you see this too in your orb of knowledge. Yes, uh, USC MISSUS Washington on their schedule.
So we're talking about the PAC twelve as a whole and not just the PAC twelve South.
That's correct.
I think it's a distinct possibility that USC won't win the PAC twelve. I don't necessarily think it's because their offensive line or their defensive backfield stalls out. It could just be because the PAC twelve's really good this year. It's really good.
I think it just comes out of it to the PAC twelve title game. I mean that's you know, they get Colorado on the road. Colorado will take a step backwards. I don't know how much of one, but they will. Arizona State might not be ready yet on the road at cal I. Really, they get U telling UCLA at home.
It's hard for me to make the case for anybody else to win the South, but I mean, you're right, they're going to play a really good team on a neutral field in the PAC twelve title game, and therefore they need to obviously lose that.
I'm seeing a lightning storm, and I'm seeing on the outside offensively for USC and defensively we talk about the defensive backfield. You Sam being too negative. I see a ton of positivity here because when you look at their schedule, how many good proven quarterbacks do you see?
Yeah?
I don't see. If you want to count Josh Rosen, which I think is reasonable, tie, he might be the only one. And that's not until November eighteenth. You want to say, Shane Buchelle, I can't fully agree. And beyond that tie good proven quarterbacks are I'm not seeing them in my cloudy orb.
You're not wrong.
So I'm seeing positivity. I'm seeing electricity. I'm feeling good vibrations.
Still, you know, the only reason you put this in as crystal ball was because he wants a Oregon to win the Pac twelve.
Right, you know I don't. That is not in my orb.
All right, keep shaking that thing. Where are we going next?
Next Bill, We'll start with you once again. Penn states in year two of the Joe Moore head era, we'll have the clear best and deepest skill group in the Big ten even without I believe Chris Godwin has departed to the NF But Saquon Barkley, They've got young receivers
coming on strong. They've got experience on the offensive line, if not a couple of holes to fill, but trace McSorley in the effort go deep offense, Penn State will have the clear most dangerous and electric offense all season long in the Big Ten.
With Ohio State's potential with Mike Webber, with Brown, with baw et cetera. I can't say for sure that that's the case because the Ohio State exists. But if Juwan Johnson turns out to be as good as everybody from Penn State says he is, and he had a great spring and all that that, if he's there, you know, say, black Nole's still there. Mike Ziki might be the best tight end in the country. Sae Kwon Barkley rush for fifteen hundred yards without an offensive line, which is really
tricky and hard to do. I've heard Miles Sanders as soon as he learns to not drop the ball, he's going to be amazing. So yeah, I'd say the potential is there, but Ohio State's still going to have a little something to say.
About when you look at Penn State schedule again in your crystal ball bill, where do you feel the biggest land mines are, Because if I step through it here, Akron Pitt, Georgia State, at Iowa, Indiana, Northwestern, Michigan's going to be tough, but they lose a ton on defense. They're kind of starting over in some respects on offense. Ohio State obviously the most name brand variety of landman, but Michigan State still trying to find their way after
last year. Rutgers Nebraska entirely new defense, and at Maryland who maybe could be sneaky, but it just perhaps it's rhetorical. It just doesn't look to me like there is so much AMMO in that schedule that they are in any real danger of falling below you know, ten nine wins at the absolute minimum.
Yeah, I mean, if we're talking about them as a national title contender, then they can't drop any of those games because of Ohio State probably, but and you could really make a case that, Okay, so maybe Iowa Northwestern and Michigan State or well, and I mean Maryland too, that they all won't really seriously challenge and stay, but one of them it could most likely trip them up.
And so that's kind of the lots of land mines there on the road, even if we don't count of High State, which is not a which is a little too big to call a landmine, I would say. But if we're talking about if we're sitting in the bar nine or ten wins, yeah, I'd say they've got a very very good chance to do that. Their defense is fine, I mean, it's not necessarily good enough to stop an
elite level offense. There areked a lot of elite offenses on that schedule, especially with pitt rebuilding, so they're probably gonna they're looking at worth probably ten wins, I think, unless mcsorty gets hurt, and then who knows after that?
Right, Okay, so here's where I'm going to go ahead and renew my pessimistic Trace mcswirly card Dan please tie. I was not sold on Trace for a good chunk of last season, and then the Minnesota game happened. They seem to use him a little differently. He obviously caught fire, was throwing the ball downfield like a like a mad banshee, and Iowa game was great. Yeah, I mean he he was great. He was objectively great second half of last season.
For some reason, I still remain unconvinced of his skill set. I know the kid's a winner, I know he got it done last year. I'm curious to see what he does without Chris Godwin. Perhaps that's just me being artificially pessimistic, but for some odd reason, I just I have a hard time trusting that he's got staying power to be that good all the time.
Well anytime? Are you know we're relying on on a collection of four or five six games to completely I mean, you think about what everybody was saying about Penn State at the end of September, and now they're not. They're this supposedly known quantity, absolute surefire Big ten national title contender, et cetera. When you know, a month in to last year,
people thought James Becker was gonna get fired. So when the perceptions changed that quickly, yeah, it's it's sometimes worth it to kind of tap the brakes little and really kind of reassess. But yeah, the last half of last year they were amazing.
On offense, absolutely, so I guess with that in mind, Dan, yes, perhaps to Bill's point of needing a little bit more data to feel truly comfortable. I will stop short of saying that Penn State has the clear the best or the deepest skill group in the Big Ten, but they're certainly in the equation. If McSorley keeps doing what he did at the second half of last season, then then they're definitely in a very strong position to take the cake.
Now, Tye, as I look into the horizon, can I hear my music?
Please? Tach?
Can I hear my music? As I look into the horizon?
Thank you?
I see calm waters for Penn State for the first five or six weeks, tie. But then as I look into my orb, I see them nowhere near central Pennsylvania. And that is because three of four games on the road northwestern Ohio State and Michigan State, all the way from Central PA, all away from the Is there a valley, ty Yeah, they're located.
Yeah, yea.
Is it a happy valley?
It's very happy.
Normally I see unhappiness away from the valley, not in the form of Ohio State, not in the form of Michigan within the valley, but two weeks of body blows before traveling to East Lansing. I see a trip up spot there, I see a d I see an iss, I see a ree, and I see a spect with
Michigan State. To answer the question, though, Penn State will, indeed, because of Saquon Barkley and the attention he'll receive upfront, have the clear best deepest skill group in the Big Ten and they win the conference once again.
How about that? Wow? Okay, all right, we got another one on here, go ahead, we do. Yeah.
Clemson Tigers. Clemson with their quarterback struggles this spring being an eye to the fall where they don't have obviously an incumbent with the Shawn Watson off to the NFL. The Houston Texans Kelly Bryant, I believe one gentleman's name is Israel. That's all I really. There's a freshman that is promising, but all of them sort of struggled in the spring, both on the field and with injury to really make a mark. Clemson has a very good defense,
but schedule's not great. They have Auburn early. They're on the road at Louisville, They're on the road in Blacksburg, They're at the Carrier Dome on a Friday night, I already don't like it. I already don't like it. They have Florida State at home, but I say Clemson will not. This is what the ball is telling me. Okay, make a New Year's six bowl game.
This is such pessimistic balls, Dan, It's just tough, And yes, I am with you. I think that early season matchup against Auburn will be a bit of a menace for them. And not to say Auburn is going to be back to Cam Newton days, but I feel like they should be good enough on defense to challenge Clemson, to keep things a bit confusing for whoever ends up playing quarterback, and they've obviously got that Florida State game later in the year. Florida State should be really good this season.
You never know what happens when you go to Virginia Tech. You never know if there's another game lurking, you know. I think by the end of the year they'll be fine at quarterback. I really do. Dabosweeney will find a way to coach up that position group. But to start out knowing that they've lost a lot from last season offensively, it's going to take them a while to get things going.
So I think just in general offensive struggles. Offensive uncertainty could mean them missing a New Year Six Bowl game, maybe not specifically that quarterback group.
I think I agree because there are a lot of good defenses on that schedule, and I mean they'll have the defense to kind of you know, it'll be a lot of gross games, maybe like Clemson last year was the Auburn's gonna have a good defense. Louisville could, Boston College could, Virginia Tech will in c State might have one of the best run defenses in the country this year,
and they play at Virginia Tech at NC State. It does feel like there are a couple of losses in there, and you know, obviously Florida State at South Carolina, there are a lot of opportunities there where there will be a very very good team, but they'll finish ten and two and then have to settle for a New Year's Bowl or something into that effecting instead of the New Year's six Bowl, which is just you know, a crushing disappointment of a season.
I realize, yeah, I'm seeing them missing that New Year Six Bowl tie. Yeah, in my visions, in my vibrations and my energies in front of me I'm seeing some struggles,
and I think Bill hit it on the head. They struggled with NC State with Deshaun Watson, with Mike Williams, with Jordan Leggett, with Wayne Gollman, and I think, listen, take it from take it from me, Take it from a Notre Dame fan in you that even though you get good quarterback play year in year out for what seems like a long time, you get it until you don't ty and it can disappear quickly. It's an elixir that not every team, every program has And I think
you're right. By the end of the season, I think they'll have something going. But early on I think that it's going to be a little bit rocky and that's going to cost him a January one game.
All Right, There you have it. This has been an eliminating look dan into the pessimistic and optimistic crystal balls here in the Soliverbol while we've got Bill, Yes, we do need to talk about something else. I mentioned it at the top and we introduced him. But he's got a book out. It's called the fifty Best College Football Teams of All Time. I read to you directly from the official description of the book that Bill Connolly dives into history and evolution of the sport, telling its story
through fifty particularly interesting teams. Now this is across the rich history of college football. It's not just fifty ten teams over the last fifty years or anything like that. As I'm sure you are aware, Bill, Like, the hardest thing to do in sports is compare eras, and your books entirely about comparing eras. How do you put one hundred or one hundred plus years of college football on an equal playing field? And to try to sess this all out.
Well, I start by not actually trying to determine the best at all that was. That is a little misdirection on the cover, as you see the little asterisks there, the little anti social asterisks that you know, probably shouldn't have had, and it'd be a lot easier to explain. But yeah, this is fifty easy, fifty interesting, influential, innovative
teams that allowed me to tell college football story. So I was able to kind of you know, I was a setless nerd when I was going to concerts in college, and this is a set list crafted to allow me to do that. From some offensive innovators to some defensive innovators, teams that just had crazy, wacky years, teams that were awesome, teams that were almost awesome. And I was able to kind of piece it together there to where if you
read it straight through, it tells college football story. If you skip around to just the teams you want, it's fine. You know you'll get that team story too. But you can kind of trace the evolution from nineteen oh six Chicago to twenty thirteen Auburn pretty well.
I think, well, football is unique in the way it's evolved, both in the rules of the game and the styles and schemes within the game. You see a year to year, but I'd imagine if you look at it over one hundred plus years, you're really going to get a full sense for how much the game has changed. Let's assume football's around in fifty years. What does it look like. Where is it headed now in twenty seventeen relative to where it was and where you think it's going to head?
Well, I mean, I think basically it's you know, the Spencer Hall's piece earlier in this earlier this week at sp Nation kind of covered the same thought. Pretty well. You know, it gets fafter and it gets more spread out, and that's kind of the way things have gone. That's probably the way they'll keep going to some degree, and there are a million ways to do that, but that's
that's kind of where it goes. And so you know when you compare, when you compare nineteen oh six Chicago to twenty thirteen Auburn, you kind of you see that the way that motion, well, like nineteen seventeen Georgia Tech, they use the jump shift. Basically a bunch of guys would literally jump to kind of change the matchups, to change the numbers. That was their version of Auburn running motion on every single play to figure out where the
numbers advantages were for Tray Mason in twenty thirteen. And there's just a lot of that you see, and I mean it was still all. You know, college football is so rich because it has been around so fricking long, and so there have been so many teams, so many programs that have hundred plus year histories. That's not something we can really say about many pro sports. I mean, even baseball has been around forever, they haven't had one
hundred plus teams playing major division ball. And so there's all this the quote unquote pomping circumstance that makes it all college football, and the fact that you're always using eighteen to twenty two year old male to play the game kind of ensures that you have a certain similarities from era to era. But no, the game is going to get faster, it's going to get in theory a little bit less violent, and I'm betting it will probably still exist in fifty years.
Harder or easier to build a truly dominant team in nineteen thirty.
Well, you know, you had the advantage of you know, minimal film and uh, you know, you had a lot of advantages like that. But you also nobody was recruited nationally except for maybe not to Dame at that point, so you were kind of more a victim of the
talent at hand. And so I would say more difficult, but also harder to tell if you're dominant, or if you're dominant nationally at least, because yeah, you know, unless you're Notre Dame, you're only playing teams within your region and then maybe a ball opponent at the end of the year and bowl and teams really didn't take baths all that seriously. Then, So I would say it was probably less, it was either harder to build a dominant team or know you had a dominant team.
Bill.
If nothing else, the book seems to sort of be a way for you, a vehicle for you to talk about what you sort of love about the sports. And it looks to me and I insist that you correct me if I'm wrong, especially with some of the modern teams that you've chosen, but even throughout the history, So your first team and here is the nineteen oh six University of Chicago team, and the final team on here is your twenty thirteen or college Football's twenty thirteen Auburn Tigers.
But it seems that if there is a through point, it's sort of the idea of coming out of nowhere, like you have two thousand and seven with Chip Kelly coming out of now or Boise State coming out of nowhere, twenty thirteen Cosmels on coming as as a high school coach, you know of Voomerkin from Arkansas. You have a Dartmouth team in nineteen seventy, you have Michael Vick and Virginia Tech exploding onto the national stage without really a rich history,
a rich modern history before then. Is that something that feels unique to college football because the feeding system almost is so unknown to everybody outside of that one local ecosystem for that team.
Yeah, there was probably a good and there are a lot of examples, like you know, choosing four Texas instead of five, ninety four Nebraska instead of ninety five. I think at the bottom line is if I would have actually written a book about the fifty absolute best teams, you know, forty five of them them would have finished undefeated, and about half of them you would have basically been the same story to tell over and over again with
different names. And so the interesting part to me is, yeah, sometimes it's the parts you didn't expect or the things that happened right before the big run. Oh, four Texas being the best example of that. That was the team where you know, we were talking about Penn State and the fact that you know, the perceptions changed so quickly. Well, halfway through two thousand and four, Vince Young was a disappointment.
He was getting benched because he you know, they got shut out against Oklahoma, he got benched against Missouri because he was throwing terrible interceptions. He was not Vince Young until late in that season. Uh, And that was that's a more interesting story. Ninety four Nebraska having to deal with Tommy Frasier's injuries and deal with actual adversity instead of the ninety five team, which just wrecked everybody. It
was a lot more interesting to tell those stories. So I do think I leaned into it, especially especially for the more recent teams, where I knew more about them heading in, like some of the older teams. I mean, like forty five Army was the best team of all time. That one's pretty that was interesting to tell because of all the transfers and all that, But it was still
just dominant game after Domina game. As I got to, you know, more recent times, I did seem to favor the surprises or the out of nowhere things are just the you know, the the realized greatness part, instead of just the full season of domination.
It's obviously going to be nearly impossible to pick one or two or three. But college football, maybe more than any other sport, is it seems like it's defined by larger than life personalities of the coaches. Was there anybody when researching this? I mean, you look through all that, you know you have Steve Spurry, you have Don James, you have Tom Devaney and you have just like there's
a million different people, you have less miles on. Here are there personalities going back in time that you were not expecting to either like or be intrigued by as much as you were.
Yeah, I was really happy that I chose sixty five UCLA for the book because Tommy prothrow was fascinating. I wish he had never gone to the pros. I wish he like he belonged with college football. You know, he carried a briefcase around nobody ever knew what was in it. He's done all these really super weird quirks and he was a g I meant, I got a Heisman winner at Oregon State and then he goes and wins the
Rose Bull his first year at UCLA. Like that was he was a very very interesting character that maybe because he left for the Pros when he did, he isn't quite as as as regarded as well known as other coaches.
He was awesome though, And plus that sixty five UCLA team, there was kind of a sense of discovery about some of the older teams, just in that I made I made my you know, my quote unquote set list, and before I kind of knew everything I maybe needed to know about some of these teams, and so it was at dicovery process in the sixty five team ending with you know, a dramatic comeback went over USC and then randomly I wanted Memphis to play Tennessee and getting screwed
on a couple of calls and Tennessee scoring the game winning touchdown by like a millimeter and then knocking off Michigan State at the last second to win the Rose Bowl. That was one of the more Auburn twenty thirteen. Auburn is kind of dramatic seasons that I was really happy that.
I chose of the of the coaches and programs that you profiled here there there's also a theme of adaptability. You know, this wrinkle happened to the team or to the sports, the conference, whatever, and this is how this team changed things up or responded or you know, reversed course.
Is there a specific coach that you feel or coach, series of coaches whatever that you feel like has a sort of timeless quality that could you know, if it's you know, Bobby Bouten nineteen eighty one, whoever it is, that could have succeeded in nineteen thirty seven, just as well as they could have succeeded in two thousand and four. Is there a guy that that fits that well?
Yeah, I mean pot Rowe didn't have a specific formula to go by, so he was probably on the list, But I mean Bear Bryant's another one where you know, the changes he made, you know, as his program began to Stacknate and just created this decade of dominance in the seventies, not just integrating his roster obviously, but also catching on to the success of the Wishbone early kind of breaking it in or installing it in the Debt of Night basically after Springball had ended so that he
could unleash Hell in nineteen seventy one. That was pretty fun. Thousand's another one I think that could have succeeded in a lot of ways. But yeah, there are some some guys that are you know, that either made the book or just were great in general because of the combination of style. Like Barry Switzer, you know, would he have succeeded without the Wishbone. He kind of tried to succeed without the Wishbone in the in the early eighties, and it didn't work. He kind of had to go back
to his baby a little bit. But but yeah, there are certain coaches who, like, you know, John Heisman. You know, obviously Stag is the ultimate example of the guy who just like, oh, you're changing the road, all right, Well that'll allow me to draw up these new plays and I'm going to be to like this instead. I mean, they were a dominant team before the forward pass, they were dominant team for a while after the forward pass, so that there are plenty of examples of guys like
that that were pretty fun tinkers. And you know, really, since Stag has awards named after him, maybe we should start there.
Bill, what you learned that you didn't know? Or if there are too many things to answer that, what was your favorite thing that you learned while doing this?
I think I decided that the sport was really it became itself in the mid nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, because in that little period of time you had Notre Dame becoming Notre Dame and you know, getting getting the people in charge of the university to allow them to go to the Rose Bowl, and then winning the Rose Bowl, you know, and kind of becoming that national name. You had Alabama winning in the Rose Bowl for the entire South the very next year, and the SOW at that point.
Then the Southern schools that I actually really kind of enjoyed football getting together a few years later, creating the SEC, and you know, et cetera. From there, I guess, But then you know, nineteen thirty, but with the with the depression kind of thinking, and I wrote about nineteen thirty Utah a team that was amazing that had nobody to play basically, but they were trying to set up benefit games and after the season against USC or some team at Yankee Stadium just to kind of prove how good
they were. Number One, they had to give that up because they had a basketball season to play, and all those same guys were awesome at basketball and they went like eighteen and three. But number two, that was the idea of a depression era benefit game. Is why Army Night and Navy started playing every year. And so all these things that happened in that little bitty period of time, from Notre Dame to the creation of the SEC to Army Navy, all of that carried forward and kind of
defined the sports that was that. You know, if i'd known how what some of the really good resources were that I was going to be able to pull from newspapers died Calm among them. Really, I would have maybe chosen a people have a few more old teams, because you really see it like there's a load of teams in the seventies, eighties, nineties. I would have chosen more from that era because it really was a nice learning process.
Bill, Was there a specific year or time when you can point to the fact that this, you know, it starts out as this hyper hyper local sport, slowly expands to becoming regional, and then finally becomes a national sport. I would assume relatively recently because of the advent of the ability to watch so many games on TV.
Yeah.
Is could you see when you were researching when the sort of switches got flipped from being sort of hyper local maybe at the state level, maybe region level, maybe half of the country level, and national level. Were there specific tipping points or was it in fact sort of super gradual?
Well, the first one was noted in becoming a national brand, and then during the war, you know, being able to kind of keep some of its players with because of a connection with Navy during the war that they were able to dominate during that time. Having that national name helped. But really, yeah, I mean it goes down to was that the ncaa versus border regions of Oklahoma in the in our mid eighties, there the Supreme Court case that basically said that teams could align with each other and
create their own television deals. That plus the creation of ESPN and the emergency of ESPN created what we know of there. It wasn't two or three or four or five games a week. It's every game is now televised, and that just that level of exposure changes everything. That's kind of when when it started going down the road
of becoming a true national sport. And that is you know what the part of the rationale for writing this book in general is because it is our history is so regionalized in this sport, and in that you know, Alabama fans no Alabama's history, but not necessarily USC's and Oklahoma's and Notre Dames. And we all have our own history books, but we don't have just a ton of books that really tie everybody's history together. And so that was one of the goals of the book.
Who is the most upset that a specific team was left stout which fan base and which team? Do you acknowledge that, yes, you have a point. I couldn't make it the best seven hundred and forty four teams of all times? Where has the title wave of criticism? I assume good natured criticism come from well, well number one.
Miami fans yelling that I didn't include two thousand and one in Miami because no matter how many times I explained that it wasn't just the best teams and there was more. I had explained that a lot to Miami fans, Penn State fans had a legitimate gripe. There was really there were two or three Penn State teams that were on the initial Like when I created a list of all the teams I wanted to cover, it was like one hundred and seven and there were like three of
them on there. But you know, for quote unquote set list purposes, one of them didn't end up making their the list. So that was an obvious if you're just looking at the big name programs not having Penn State on there. You know, obviously with some awkwardness now about everything that we defined as the Joe paternal era, that didn't help, but that was I think something I couldn't
quite figure out. Arkansas was another one that didn't and should but really fans of of Kansas State were just sad that like the ninety eight Kansas State team didn't make it or something, and that made me said, all right, Bill.
Final question, it's open ended. Why should people? Why should college football fans read this book?
Because it tells the story of college football and it you know, we are fans of college football, we all have our team, but this is this tells the sports story and tells it's pretty much guaranteed to tell you a lot of things you didn't know, and it really it just ties together. I said this on podcastsing played Nobody earlier today too. This is such a huge sport in terms of the number of people it takes to put a team together and take it on the road
to play another team. The number of people involved and invested in this sport is just ridiculously big, and so being able to tell not only fifty stories, but fifty stories from like forty two different teams, every region, every era, I think really it was very exciting. It was it was a long time. It took a few number of months to write this, but it was really worth it because you could see the stories all kind of being intertwined a little bit and a nice it's a nice
reminder that we're all in this together. I guess that's that's the handholdy way to say it.
Very good. His name is Bill Connolly. Find his fine work at Espianation. Don't forget to buy his book again, the fifty Best College Football Teams of All Time and lest we forget podcast Ain't played Nobody. Him and Stephen godforre you do a wonderful college football podcast, which we would recommend to everyone that listens to the very bal Bill. Hope you're doing well. We will talk to you soon and it's a long off season, so keep doing what you do.
Sounds good?
All right, Dan again Bill Connolly, yep, Espianation podcast Ain't played Nobody, Don't forget to buy his book. We'll put the link in the description of this show, the fifty Best College Football Teams of All Time. And he sort of gave away the game a little bit, saying, well, the title might not be perfectly representative of what this bo book entails, but I like what he did. Bill's a student of the game. Anyone who's ever read Bill knows that he's a student of the game for nearly
every aspect he can be. So I'm excited to dive and I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I'm excited I have to and learned a little bit more about the fine work that he did. Also, I enjoyed this show. I really like the sound. I feel like I've got a new one that I can add to the arsenal now as we go through the off season, and maybe can sub that one out for my hypothetical sound.
I'm going to tell you something one hundred percent real about Bill's book, The fifty Best Astress College Football Teams of All Time. It's a hell of a pooper reed tie really it is, because listen, it's broken up, it's fifty teams, it's a couple hundred pages, so they're almost just like Bill boils everything down into what you need to know about each squad and each he provides a
ton of good context. But there have been times where I've said to myself, you know what, I'm an exercise today, or I am going to to eat a little extra fiber so I have some more reading time with Bill, that's one hundred percent true that ginger Tea is very good for it. If you go with some stuff that really suits your factory, well you can get down with Bill in a very intimate way.
Now would be a good time to point out that one of the off season shows that we will this is your dream show. I don't believe we're going to do the bathroom Medicut show.
We're not going to do that.
We shouldn't do that. Let me ask you this. People would be repulsed if we did that.
But I've got may I follow up with your statement?
Please?
I have not agree to if we do a Q and A say next week, as we've been doing early on in the off season months, and people happen to write in with questions about bathroom Medicot and it's mixed into a general college football, non college football show, will you reveal some of your secrets about the bathroom.
I mean, I'm going to have to be extremely careful about how I word some of their responses here. It doesn't have to be corporate bathroom etiquette. Okay, okay, right, so we're not specifying, right.
It could be home, it could be at the in laws, it could be you know, you're in the middle of the street in Chicago and you need to is it a Barnes and Noble situation? You know, maybe talk about what you do if you're on a college campus, and how to scope out the best bathroom.
If people want to ask questions about it, I might have to go through and handpick the ones that I'm willing to answer. But you know this, no one else knows this. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't message you about a new bathroom etiquette observation.
This is absolutely true. Yeah, So what I'm saying is you don't need to bring your own experiences to the table.
Tie. Yeah, we have listeners who work in offices of all kinds. We could broaden it to office etiquette. We got a great one about fingernail clipping at the office cubicle, which I can elaborate on based on a previous role. Yeah, but yes we will.
We will take any question that people have and Ty will give you his expertise based on his own experience.
Yeah.
I think that's fair to say.
Yeah, yeah, we can do that. Okay. I don't know how he got on that tangent oh poop read right.
Okay, yeah, oh Bill, Yeah, read this book. I mean, read it anywhere. Read it while you're traveling, read it while you're on the beach, read it, you know, at night before you go to sleep. But I'm just telling you this is almost scientifically created and curated for your thronell experience.
Bill's gonna love He's gonna love that ringing endorsement from.
If there's another printing, I'd be happy to blurb it. Okay, I'd be happy to blow.
Well, we see the Amazon review under an anonymous name, will know who it is.
Yes, that's correct.
Big thanks to Bill Connolly Again, don't forget to check him out again. Espianation podcast ain't played nobody the fifty best college football teams of all time. We will absolutely put that link in our podcast description. We're off until next Wednesday. We'll be back talk some more college football with all y'all. Don't forget. You can email us at saliverbo at gmail dot com, or find us on Twitter,
on Facebook, Instagram, all the normal social media channels. In the meantime, tell your friends about the show, Subscribe at iTunes dot com or wherever find podcasts are sold. For that guy over there in beautiful New York City, Dan Rubinstein. For myself here in good old Eastern PA. My name is ty Hildebrandt. We will catch you all in a week. In the meantime, stay solid, hey,