The October Q&A

that's who I am as a human. But I'm good. Ty. I always love these Q and A episodes, and not many of them get released to the public because it's a special bonus feature for our subscribers on verbalers dot Com on our Patreon, which is just incredible. So I'm always happy, uh to interact and bounce things off of them and bounce things off of you.

I'm really excited. We'll love a good cravas Soliverblelive dot com, slash smelltieshar dot com if you are ever so inclined. As Dan mentioned, today's show is a Q and A show. We don't get to typically do a whole lot of these during the season because there's just games to discuss. We generally will save the Q and A stuff for

our brew, which you can find. As Dan mentioned earlier over at Forballers dot com, we do it live every Thursday morning for those of you who want to hop on over not just get the discord, but also participate live do a lot of Q and A stuff during the year. This is one of the few weeks where we're going to do it just for the general public.

We do them often in the off season. Now, after the benefit of one month of the college football season, the calendar has turned to October, we know a little bit more about these teams, right, starting to get our starting to get our feet wet with respect to the twenty twenty two college football season. Why don't we dive right in and answer some of your verballer questions. Congratulations, Skippy, you've got mail. You've got mail on the solid ruble. As often as we can, Dan, we pay homage to

the verbawler hood. And let's start on today's show with Heather. Okay, not including your alma mater and or team that you like to root for. If you could coach one college football team in any division, which team would you choose? And why? If you'd like to elaborate, Thank you, Heather, and we will elaborate. Appreciate the question.

your counterparts in the conference. You are inarguably the best, slashed close to the richest conference in college football, so resource is not necessarily an issue. You're in a cool place to live, Nashville, Tennessee, and anytime you do something good, it will be magnified and you will be made to be a hero in the college football world because all we ever hear is how hard it is to win

at Vanderbilt. Right. James Franklin's built a career on those few seasons that he was at Vanderbilt, did a good job, and he's done continue to do a good job at Penn State generally speaking. But you do well at Vanderbilt, you become something of a folk hero in college football world. So for me, Vandy's an answer. I think along the same lines. Illinois has been one of my answers for a good long time.

pressure at Illinois just wasn't there. You could have a good, long career without having to worry about turning gray at a young age, and any time you would go above and beyond that was the kind of thing that that again would kind of christen you a folk hero in the world of college football.

You can do worse than the Metro Phoenix area. You can win games, but the expectation is not that especially now with USC and UCLA losing. Like if the PAC ten twelve, whatever it's going to become, isn't looked at as a major pressure cooker of a conference. If you're merely good, often you're kind of set there. Yeah, so

I think AIRSU is an interesting answer. I think TCU is an interesting answer for a similar reason, right that the expectations aren't huge, But it's also not a situation like Vandy where you're gonna just get your teeth kicked in all the time and you just have to absorb it and you have to convince kids that, yeah, sometimes we're gonna play Georgia, sometimes we're gonna play Bama. Sometimes we're gonna play a better Tennessee or a better LSU, and we're gonna lose fifty one to seven. You cool

with that. So that's it's the bummer of ASU should always be competitive, a competitive enough to hang with really strong teams in their conference. But at the same time, if you win eight or nine a year, it's blank check. It's absolute, Well, maybe not a blank check in the PAC twelve, but a sizeable check will come your way pretty often. Now, will TCU hire a coach with the last name Rubinstein at Texas Christian University?

DFW area and beyond. You have a dedicated fan base that will just be happy that you don't If you don't do something disastrously and you go to a bowl all the time, there's nobody's going to be disappointed unless you're getting blown out by you know, by Baylor, by SMU. Everybody's gonna be pretty happy if you're winning nine games a year and going to the Alamobile.

the championship. If you're picking on that level, which where you're going with.

right with the things available to at Ohio State. I don't necessarily want to live in Columbus, Ohio. I've been, and I think it's totally fine. I've enjoyed it at different times of the year. But if again, if I'm having my brothers, I'm incorporating geography into this and just not my move personally, but of those jobs, if we're strictly looking at that in terms of like you're living

in the facility. Anyway, what is the hardest to screw up? Now, there's a ton of pure as the head coach at Ohio State, but with the day to Danis Danis of Georgia, Alabama, LSU Texas. Now Texas would be a good time, But like, I just don't see it as being set up booster wise and infrastructure wise to succeed in the way that Ohio State is. So in terms of the most difficult job to screw up at this point, it's probably Ohio State.

I think John Cooper at Ohio State, Frank Solich at Nebraska, Brian Kelly at Notre Dame, or having a more mediocre to bad history. So there's a couple questions in there. This is obviously predicated someone on what happened to Paul Chris. Now, we haven't had a whole lot of an opportunity to talk about the Paul Christ situation on the podcast, given the fact that it happened, as it always does, on

a Sunday after we hit the stop button. So perhaps we can discuss that a little bit now and use Paul Christ as a go buy for the rest of college football. Paul Christ recently, as in last week, lost by twenty four at home to Illinois. Illinois is not what it was in years past. Brett Bielma has them

playing well. They're a four and one team at time of recording, But the manner in which Wisconsin loss was particularly troubling, and the way that the offense has looked so far, despite bringing over a new offensive coordinator, it's not been very appealing. It's just not given anyone the impression that things are going in a good direction. So, by surprise, Wisconsin decides they were moving on from Paul Christ,

supposedly after a lengthy chat with mister Christ. They've also negotiated down his buyout to somewhere in the eleven million dollar range. I believe that's down from about nineteen or eighteen somewhere in there, right. So Paul Christ, a native son of Wisconsin, doing his part, I guess on some level to help the university not take the full buyout and allow them to put it towards a new coach. So who knows who the new guy is going to be.

We can maybe talk about that if we want. But we did put out a call in our videos and in the short snippet that we recorded after the fact, that we wanted folks to write in, Wisconsin fans to write in and let us know what their thoughts were on the hiring. You will not be surprised to learn that one hundred percent of the messages we received were in favor of this move. Everybody wanted to get rid of Paul Chris, and not even like in a mean way. The people who emailed.

That will all work itself out in due time. But before we even get into this question from beat you of a now that we've had a couple days to process the news Dan, the Paul Criss thing, how surprising was it to you? And was it the right move to make it this time?

wins whatever. I mean, He's won ten games and went to the Rose Bowl in twenty nineteen, right, yep, yep that and Wisconsin to date has done a lot of excellent things, sometimes an offense, sometimes a defense, sometimes developing higher level NFL players, like do they have the best running back in the NFL? I don't know follow the NFL closely enough, but I know Jonathan Taylor is in that conversation, right, so develop legit superstars at the next

level at the moment. So I just figured that it would if this situation would have been a either overhaul

your coaching staff or done in December. Now, because of the current mechanics of the sport being that there is a signing day in December, teams are doing everything they can to make a decision that they know they're going to make as early as possible because of keeping together a recruiting class or giving that next guy all the time in the world to quickly assemble a recruiting class to sign in December and February right to sort of

lock in those relationships. So, just with regard to Wisconsin, it I don't know, it falls under the thing we

talked about last year. I think where there's going to be sort of an older guard falling off in the coaching community that doesn't necessarily want to be as proactive in the portal, as proactive with NIL stuff, and that doesn't fully want to I'm trying to think of the right word here, that doesn't fully want to admit the current realities of the sport that this isn't how it was ten years ago, five years ago, twenty years ago when I was an assistant, when I was a young

head coach or whatever, and football is football and everybody else is doing it and passing you by. Now. Wisconsin has not been able to develop a quarterback during the christ era in the way that a lot of schools

that Wisconsin beats are able to. And ultimately, I think that was the term backslide that Wisconsin fans have used a lot when you look at the recruiting trail with Wisconsin, when you look at quarterback development, when you look at the ability to hire or maintain assistance or change things on offense, Wisconsin has been in this program that And

I'm sure you had this in your school. What was your high school GPA tie if you don't mind me asking, I know it's very personal, some whatever region it.

They showed up every single week and beat the brains out of everybody who was lesser or around the same level. Because they were so well coached. Guys always stuck around in Wisconsin, developed played as upperclassmen, and the system was just infuriatingly efficient efficient. That fell off right, So in terms of patients, when you look at underlying issues that Wisconsin has always done X well, Wisconsin has always done

why well. And it's a development place, right. They're never going to put together top fifteen classes and string those together, but they're going to find those three stars, develop them for a couple of years before they see serious time on the field, and then they thrive and then they are part of a top five national defense or one of the best offensive lines in the country. Whatever. They stick to what they do and they do it well.

When that goes, it seems it's hard to get it back, and so I don't know if it's the specific Illinois loss and the symbolic nature of it being Brett Beelima being the guy on the other side of the field and essentially out Wisconsin and Wisconsin with that run defense and Chase Brown, it can't feel good, right. Maybe it was the symbolic nature of that specific loss, but I think it's sort of a toothpaste in the two type situation.

You can't point to, well, he's got a top eight recruiting class, like maybe Louisville can with Scott's afield with his ridiculous class. At least at the moment coming in. You can't point to competitive losses with Nebraska bringing back Scott Frost because of how Nebraska played against Ohio State

and Michigan and all these teams Oklahoma. So the manner, which is the word you use, that we've been using a lot, I think is an overwhelming part of this that there's nothing that Wisconsin and the administrators of Wisconsin can point to. Yes, but at least this looks like it's going to be a bright spot for years to come.

Now that's the issue to me is practice patients. When it's early and there are signs of growth, and right now it just seems that Wisconsin's trying to do what it always did well and it's they're doing it poorly, and that's hard to reverse course.

And I think the manner in which a program has conducted itself here Obviously through the early part of twenty twenty two, that's been a story, as we've seen coaches be relieved of duties for the last four weeks running.

But if it just doesn't feel like there is momentum in a positive direction at a place like Wisconsin, you know, for as as much as it sucks to see by all accounts, a good guy like Paul Chris Loser's job, it also makes a lot of sense Wisconsin is looking seeing the writing on the wall here with respect of the Big ten, and there is this feeling, I think that you have to make a change now, otherwise you're

going to be left behind. What's interesting to me on the coaching candidate front is and I know there's this assumption that Jim Leonard is probably going to be the guy at Wisconsin. We will find out, right, we will find out. They have essentially given him like seven games now six seven games to figure out what can he do with the talent on hand, how can he make that better different vice versa. And he's essentially got an audition here, so I think if this goes well, he's

probably the guy. I would also be stunned if they didn't make a call to lance Leipold because Lance Lypold was at Wisconsin Whitewater where he did great things before obviously moving over to Buffalo and then going down to Kansas and now his Kansas at an undefeated mark of five and oh number nineteenth in the country. So Jim Leonard,

I think, is in a really interesting spot here. And I saw Bruce Felman, our friend Bruce Fellman from Fox Sports and the Athletics said that if you're a Nebraska fan, you want Jim Lenard to win all those games, because that reduces the likelihood that they're going to go out and try to get Lance light Pold. I don't know if Lance Leipold is leaving Kansas, but if he wants to, he will have options, not the least of which is Wisconsin and obviously Nebraska.

was able to do. So because that's that's the seamless Wisconsin way that has worked for them, right They hired Gary Anderson was an outside hire and that obviously, I mean, he's just a different guy. Whatever. That was just probably never going to work out in the long term. But Brett Bielma being internal obviously, Paul christ with his longtime experience in Wisconsin that Jim Leonard he's only been at Wisconsin.

He's still a young guy. Just his coaching career wise. Yeah, and the recruiting class presumably would be in a really good place. And even if it's not that strong, which it isn't at the moment, it's in the fifties, I believe you'll resonate on the trail Jim Leonard in Wisconsin, in Ohio and Michigan whatever, not to do a Howard Dean impression, but you could see that in this world where you know, look at the schools that have hired

really young coaches. When you look at you know, Oregon and noted name, you know the guy, even guys in their forties, Florida, Brian Kelly, well into his eighties. Now, I mean that it is that is going to be. I think there's going to be that divide where the older guard is going to fall off, and Jim Leonard absolutely represents upside of a younger guard. Wisconsin.

Like that's pretty good. Now. They they had they had moments with Bo Polini, of course, but they've been in a funk and that that's like a big, bright, shining example. What I go back to is how many schools truly regret making that move when it seemed like the necessarily

the necessary thing to do. How many coaches have proven on a big public stage that they were let go because of on field results or lack thereof, and when they went to their next job that, oh, it turns out that school made a mistake and their standard was too high and they should have appreciated what they what they had. Yeah, you roar back to like it's not it's not super often it happens, and you can go back to Minnesota and you know some of the struggles

they had. You know, there was I don't remember it was Stu Mandel or somebody like the Glen Mason line where it's like, you should be happy with six or seven wins, and you know, you hire a couple of coaches who don't get you there, and then it looks like a particularly terrible time to be Minnesota or something like that. But I don't I don't have a problem with schools holding themselves to a standard and saying we

should win eight games. You know, we should win seven games, we should be a bowl team, or Iowa State, we're committed to football. I don't think Iowa State is saying can we do better than Matt Campbell?

doesn't exist in names. I think people and ames just big picture are thrilled with the Matt Campbell era, right because you've seen the down days, You've seen long stretches of down days, and so there are very few places unless you're not making a bowl game in your Arizona state and your Nebraska, your Florida or one of those schools like yeah, we should be winning eight games and progressing. There are schools that have a history of it that there's proof that they can win eight, nine, ten games

a season. And if they're not getting there, and it's clearly a fixable reason why they're not getting there, then yes, I think. I think patients can be thrown out the window. But I'm also like, it's it's again, it's look at the underlying facts.

kind of everything really kind of everything with Houston. We were pretty high on the Kougs coming into this year. We're really high on the Cougars. We like Clayton Tune. It felt like, to some extent, Dana Holgerson, you know, snake bitten, for one reason or another, that this was going to be the season that they put it all together. I will say this is not an easy schedule. It's not an easy schedule by any stretch.

and there's your issue right now. We can dig much deeper if we really wanted, But what we're getting from this profile is that Houston is just not getting any bang for the buck, that whatever they're doing out there is not maximizing their situations, not maximizing their players' potential.

big pick against Texas Tech. I think it was an overtime, it was late, right, and it's just turning that into points and that's the game, and they didn't. Right, So again, Tulane's pretty good. We know Kansas is pretty good. We know Texas Tech is at least frisky. They beat Texas and so it's coming them up big in moments that they probably wouldn't have found themselves in last year. But no, it's I don't know if it's an execution thing. I don't know if it's an injury thing. I don't know

if it's a depth thing. They haven't a clear number one receiver who's been made plays in Tank Dell. But no, when when saddled with these expectations, especially as they head into the Big twelve, for whatever reason, game to game, they just have not been there.

they've been there too. As they kind of transition into this new regime, so we'll have to keep an eye on whether or not things go in the right direction for Houston. I do think it gets easier as the schedule gets into you know, mid October, all throughout November. There should be easier wins along the way, and hopefully this thing will balance out. But it's been a tough go. It's been a tough go, to say the least. Let's go over to Kyle kind of on the same lines here.

This is I feel like this is a Dan Rubinstein special.

you going with? Can I use a Bill Connolly stat? You can use whatever you want, all right, then I'll.

but or a net percentage, whatever it is. That's what I would look at if you were to show me Oregon schedule and show me how often they were able to generate and prevent, or you were to show me Mississippi State, or you were to show me Florida and whatever across football. To me, that's what I would take, and that's what I would think would continue to be the most predictive as both units evolve. In the short coort.

There is some luck involved with that, right, it's not always a perfect metric, but if you see a team went ten for sixteen on third downs, that's generally a case that the offense is doing what it's supposed to do and maybe the defense can't get off the field vice versa. If you see two out of sixteen, then you know that the offense really struggled against the defense. And I would think more often than not, that team's not winning a whole lot of games. So a bunch

of these little data points that you could use. None of them are perfect, But since you won explosive play rate, let me go third down conversions. Yeah.

those explosive plays. But that's a big one too, because you talk about third downs, if you don't face a lot of third downs. That's also amazing.

they're going to win the national championship. But on the defensive side, we have options, right, Georgia, Georgia. Is George's defense as good as we expected against Oregon?

Which college's brand is most misaligned with their conference affiliation? Dan, you're a culture guy, big on culture. I remember when Colorado joined the PAC twelve and there was just conversations.

And I know a lot of the big Big ten schools attract people from New York, from California or whatever, you know, Indiana and Wisconsin and Michigan, what have you. But it did seem different. It did seem different, And I actually think this about Rutgers in the Big Ten. I think this about Maryland and the Big Ten, and I think this is about Nebraska in the Big Ten that from the core of the conference, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin,

Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue Minnesota. It is different going to a Nebraska game. It is different going to Rutgers. I've been to Piscataway, have not been to a Rutgers game. It is different going to College Park. Like Maryland is as acc to me as any ACC team. But we're having this conversation about the Big Ten. So I think the newer additions to the Big Ten don't fully strike me as obvious, you know, carryover from the other schools.

it feels that misaligned to me. The Maryland thing, I still screw up, kind of like I do with the Brewers being in the AL right, Like I'm just never gonna get used.

Virginia Tech every year to me. I don't know why that is like a Syracuse, Penn State, Boston College Pitt like there. There is something to me that like brings all of like the like a tortilla would wrap that into a competitive burrito in a more interesting way culturally to me. Does that strike you as anything that makes sense? Or am I just nutty? I think you might be a little bit nutty, But it's okay, that's okay. I

wanted to ask you about like Florida State. Okay, the ACC as opposed to the SEC, yeah, or Big East that does hasn't existed in quite something.

make sense. But I don't know. With the number of teams in the Southeast or East Coast or Southeastern whatever, however, we want to qualify like they are a fit with Miami and North you know, all the Carolina in North Carolina schools. It seems when you start getting into the Northeast with Syracuse and pitt and Boston College, that's.

lot of fun stuff that comes after this. But final question here on the Public Show from Andrew, if you had to pick two people who you'd have on a Manning cast like set for a big who would they be? So is the assumption that it's me and you and then two other people?

way that makes it interesting and relatable. Do you have any thoughts that come to mind as you are a TV executive?

to make the Hall of Fame. Quite possibly should like Hall of Fame quarterbacks with that deep knowledge of the game, especially with recent knowledge of the game that they're only recently retired. I think that's pretty much impossible. All the good ones were already on TV networks, it seems, or

on the radio or doing something within the sport. What is most attractive to me would be in a national championship game or a playoff game or major major bowl game, is to get two or three coaches doing the Coaches round whatever the roundtable show that they do, but specific ones who have played those teams, who've had success against those teams, that are like more tenured within that league. That though, So if it's a I don't know, I'm

making this up obviously. If it's a Georgia, Ohio State national championship this year, okay, and we get to have Jim Harbaugh and Nick Sabe and Eli Drinkquitz or you know what I'm saying, like or James Franklin when they're like, you know, when we're preparing to play this team. One of the interesting things, was like we never saw them using the tight end like they started doing later on

in the season. Right that there is interesting enough connective tissue with game planning for these teams, with being familiar with the coaches, with being longer term college football coaches, so they've kind of been there and seen it all. But you have different levels of experience, which is why I have like the Eli Drinquitz, Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh, where there's just one guy's been there forever, one guy's been there for a while, another guy's been there for

only a couple of years. I think that's fascinating right where you start getting, you know, Dan Mullen would watch the National Championship and like, oh, they're going outside down here again. Where you get like guys being so familiar with the types of offenses that teams are running, and then in the commercial breaks talking about like, oh man, it'd be weird to see if they stop running this

sort of quarters. Look that it doesn't have to be just about x's and o's, or during the commercial break they're talking about recruiting Jalen Carter, recruiting Jackson Smith and Jigba and like great kid, weird dad you know, obviously thrilled to see him having success at Ohio State. Wish he had come to wherever. That's that to me is the would be cool about having that alternate feed, having that that sort of closeness to the teams involved in a big game.

Major apple White. Major apple White was like taking notes. I mean some of these coaches, you know, you put them in a situation where they can really break things down and and do so kind of off the cuff, and it's really impressive to watch. So I think I'm with you, just interesting combinations of coaches from varying levels of experience, and yeah, you know, programs around the country I think would be really cool.

It's impossible because that's just you know, it's it's hurting cats to get those types of big names, because I'm sure there's bad blood about something with a lot of these guys, which is why you see a lot of random pairings. You're like, oh, I guess, why would Derek Mason and Mike Leech hate each other or something like that. So of course they're gonna be the same like that, you'll have that. But with some of the bigger guys,

it'd be great, it really would. They're weirdos in their own ways, and so maybe they're not going to be as fun loving as the Mannings, but I think there is still potential there.

to do so as well. Join us now over at Verbaalers dot com and we'll talk you tomorrow with all things Week six