We got to talk about the ESPN Top one hundred College Football Players of this season, and surprisingly I wasn't mad, even though that there was some stuff that needed to be fixed a little bit. There's some drama over at Ohio State because their defensive coordinator, Jim Knowles, he got left out of their national championship celebration and why he left to go to Penn State, because I got two
reasons why. And the college football regular season it matters more than it ever has, despite your favor well your second and third favorite college football analysts trying to tell you differently. Bill Belichick is covering all the bases at UNC, and why is Dylan Ryola in the chiefs locker room? The pressure is going to ramp up that much more. That is more here on the College Football Show presented
by The Unafraid Show. Keep it locked and make sure that you like subscribe, get notifications and tell a friend. Getting there right now, Let's get to it before we get into the Top one hundred. We gotta start with the drama because Ohio State literally just won a national championship and then found a way to already have some drama going on this offseason because their defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, who has been there for the last couple of seasons.
He left and is now the defensive coordinator over at Penn State, and everybody's like, why would he do this?
Now?
Granted, part of it was for the money three years, like over nine million dollars, the highest paid coordinator in all of college football by at least three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But those aren't the two reasons why he left. I believe that he left for two reasons.
Number one, I believe that it is the easiest path to head coach that he can see of like a major program, because you have had James Franklin flirting with leaving, flirting with the NFL, flirting with other opportunities all the time. So and he's a Pennsylvania guy who has never coached in Pennsylvania, and we already know Ryan Date now that he's won a national championship, there is no chance in hell he's leaving Ohio State. He loves Ohio State like
down to his core, in his entire bones. So staying at Ohio State one gonna get you there. But over at Penn State you might have a different level of opportunity, and with James Franklin, if he decides to leave, and you don't know what them private conversations are like, because I've heard some of them, and there are some of your favorite college football coaches that if they get a chance to go in the NFL, they're gone the problem. And people are like, wholla, well, all these coaches are
gonna leave. They're not gonna leave. They're not gonna leave because they're not getting NFL offers. But if they do, and I'm talking about head coaching jobs, they out of there.
Uh.
And the second reason why I believe that Jim Knowles left is because the Ohio State defense is not going to be as good next year as it was this year.
They had a lot of seniors.
Yes, Ohio State is recruited well, plenty of talent, but there was gonna be a little bit of a drop off going into next season.
And he was like, yo, yo, yo.
What we not gonna do is sign up to get blamed for that and then lower your chances of getting a head coaching job. So those are the two reasons why I believe that that man left. But I will tell you this because it was according to Brett McMurphy that Ohio State asked Knows not to attend the national championship celebration. I'm like, what, the man that literally is responsible for you winning a national championship, you leave him out of the celebration. He hadn't even taken the Penn
State job yet, and you're gonna leave him out. I think that that is nasty work. I think it's dirty because we see people celebrate with the teams all the time, Like there are players who either have or are going to go in the transfer portal that played four teams in the College Football Playoff?
What are we doing here? Come on?
Man?
Like that?
That I believe, especially for a coach and a leadership position, it just looks bad because on one hand, there's the players who transfer, then there's the coaches who transfer. Which one of those should be held to a higher standard?
You know what I mean?
I mean because the Ohio State spin on this whole thing is that Ryan day that he punished Jim Knowles than taking some of the autonomy away after the Oregon loss, and then that was the beginning of the end. That's what Ohio State spin is. But then at another Ohio State faction. They believe that knows that him establishing dominance and ownership over the defense, despite the protests and his riff with the d line coach Larry Johnson, is actually
what won them the National championship. But the funny part is Jim Knowles clearly doesn't have any hard feelings because he was just asked about Ryan Day and there is no There's not a single coach that I've ever read that is spoken more highly of their head coach and Ryan than Jim knows did a Ryan Day.
Nobody.
He protects the team, he insulates everybody, He loves this place, he wants to be here. This is worse hard is at He's a good man like everything in between. So if you're going to do that even after, that means that he didn't believe that this was a Ryan Day issue.
He felt like this was an Ohio State issue. And you guys hop in the comments, do you think that that was wrong or right for Ohio State to leave him out of the National championship celebration while he was debating whether he was going to leave or stay, and they were in contract negotiations because Chip Kelly he may be leaving as well, but he was invited. I'm just saying something a little bit weird going on there. And then that leads us to the next topic of conversation.
Which is.
How should we feel Because players get criticized by the media, they get demonized by fans when they choose to hop into transfer portal for whatever reason that they're hopping in.
They get talked about and.
Told that they're disloyal, they're just leaving for the money and whatever. So how do you square that when coaches leave from great situations? So Jim No making two million dollars at Ohio State leaves to go to Penn State for three point one average over the life of the contract three years. Now, Ohio State would have knew that they were probably gonna have to give him a raise. They may have been up to like two point five. And he was like, nah, nah, So how are we
supposed to look at this? Because I believe that we that the same energy needs to be kept for well for players as it is for coaches. Because if we're going to give coaches the pass for saying, oh man, they're just doing what's right for their family, They're just making the best decision for them professionally. Why aren't the players given that same grace when these are between seventeen and twenty two year olds for the most part, and we're giving thirty forty fifty year old men passes.
Why is that?
Shouldn't the older people be held to a higher standard. And I've tried to explain to people that it's actually coached in mind you, this is not saying that coaches are bad or anything like that, because I have a lot of friends who are coaches, and I understand it. Everybody's looking for economic stability that means you want to get paid good money. They want to be somewhere geographically desirable for them in their life, Like if you're a Midwest person, you might want to be there close to
your family. If you're a West Coast you may want to be closed like whatever. Geographic desirability looks like that to you. And you want to be have opportunities at your job, like you want to have an upward trajectory, and you want to have a good job like all
of those things. Everybody's looking for that. So the players are looking for that on some level, But the coaches, with their instability, started it, and the necessity and the player's desire to want to have that freedom and flexibility as well, because when you have a coach, and this happened after my freshman year. I believe at the University of Oregon, my tight end coach, coach Oz, who I still talk to to is they have a good relationship with He leaves and goes to Arizona State. So how
do you think that I felt as a player? This man recruited me, sold me, got me to buy in on what he was doing and on what he was selling. I go up there because I'm going to be under the coach ods Tutelage who's gotten other players tight ends to go to the NFL, and then he ups and bounces early in my career.
How do you think I felt about that? Not very good? Right?
So, if the transfer portal had been available, I may have hopped in it to go with him because I, you know, was in with his coaching. Or I may have because the next guy who came in might not have been feeling me like that good thing he was. But that's the point is that he bounces. I feel some type of way. I feel like my stable, my situation is unstable, and maybe I need to look for
greener pastors. Now that's not I'm not in the camp that this is always the right idea for players or anything like that, but you have to see it from that lens. So when coaches and I mean coach Coach Peterson before he went to Boise State, where do you think he was at Oregon? Coach Greatwood who went to other places. Coach Gregory who went to you dubb and other places. Like, all of these guys were on staff and then they leave. There's no demonizing them for it.
So why should we demonize the players for it. I'm just saying that's something that we need to think about and consider how we look at it. But you know, fans get hurt and hurt people hurt people.
All right.
Now, we got to talk about the ESPN postseason Top twenty well sorry, excuse me. Now we got to talk about the way we can be clear the East. The ESPN postseason Top one hundred Players of the Year. And it's funny because what you had in the preseason versus what you had in the postseason two completely different things. Because you had nineteen of the top players that were ranked, nine of them were not even ranked at all.
They were unranked.
So nine of the top nineteen players were unranked in the top one hundred of the preseason, including number six, number five, and number four, and note was Ty Warren from the Penn State tight end from Penn State. Number five, you had Jeremiah Smith from Ohio State, and then number four you got Cam Scattabu. Those guys weren't even ranked. Think about that. And then you had also ranked very high. You had Dylan Gabriel who was in there in the preseason,
who ended up at number nine. But this was absolutely shocking to me that when I saw this list it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be, because I when sometimes when I go into these things, I'm expecting the FPI model, which is completely broken, and we've talked about that. You can go on on a frame show. We've talked about ESPN's FPI which is obviously separate than this ranking metric that is completely broken, and you guys can go like subscribe, get notifications,
hopping them comments. So Travis Hunter was one, aston Gen t was two. So you had the Heisman winner and runner up one. Two makes sense. You had Cam Wore three, who clearly transformed Miami season. He was a super hero down there for them. No problem with him being number three. Cam Scattable at four, loved it. He finally got some of the love and appreciation that he deserved for carrying
that team. You had Jeremiah Smith at five. Now, he didn't have the most impressive receiving stats in the whole country, Like he wasn't number one or two in the country. But the dude was electric. That's what he was. He was a difference maker. Seventy six sketches, thirteen hundred yards in fifteen touchdowns and came in in the preseason unranked. Now to go backwards, though, Travis Hunter preseason ranking was three,
and Aston Gent was number twenty five. Good there, and like I told you already, Camp Scataboo, Jeremiah Smith and number six Tyler Warren were completely unranked and the dude caught one hundred and one catches. Number seven Kelvin Banks from Texas, who's going to be a top first round pick this year, and he had a preseason rank of nine, so he excelled that. Abdul Carter from Penn State preseason
ranking twenty, ended up at eight. Dylan Gabriel started at sixteen, ended up at number nine because he clearly helped the Oregon season. And then you had Kyle Kannard from South Carolina at number ten and he started out the season unranked. Now here is where some of the things, like the controversial things like so you had Nick Nash, the wide receiver from San Jose.
State, and he had a good season. And he's actually the.
Third Group of five player that was ranked and placed ahead of Tetoroa McMillan, who was at number twenty eight. Because the draft is coming up and we're going to compare those things to that, because it's actually gonna be interesting to see how that kid fares in the NFL, because on one hand, his stats were ridiculous. He you know, most yards, most touchdowns, most catches during the regular season triple Crown got, but he didn't get the love because a lot of it was done against you know, fcs
or bad teams or bad G five teams. So him ranked at twenty four ahead of t mac at twenty eight, that's gonna be tough to square, I'm gonna tell you, unless he goes into the NFL and kills it. Because these rankings when you look at the rankings, these players are like the players that were most impactful this season, like Mason Graham at Michigan, big impact because they don't beat Ohio State without them. Number twelve, you had another
FCS player. You had Harold fannin junior tight end out of Bowling Green, one hundred and seventeen receptions, ten touchdowns, fifteen hundred yards, preseason, unranked, And this goes to go show you too, how the season, how the preseason and the postseason shakeout. Just like the preseason rankings, you have players that are well, you have teams that are ranked very high, and then they fall down lower. So I actually love this ranking. Now here is one that is
going to rub people the wrong way. Jalen Milroad was unranked at the end the season, and I was like, I'm actually not mad at that, not mad at it at all, because Alabama completely underwhelmed this season and there were times where he was good, but he didn't play superhero ball. Now, do I believe he's probably one of the best hundred college football players this year, Yes, probably, But the way that his performance turned out, it just
didn't line up in that line in that bank. But I will say the most underrated, the most underrated in the ESPN Top one hundred postseason was number sixty nine, Diego Pavia. And for some reason, I feel like it's appropriate that he was number sixty nine, like just just something that a spectacle. At that point, you all you need to do is ask Alabama and ask Auburn about
Diego Pavia. Now he guessed at number sixty nine, he was recognized, but you have to think about the impact that him and Vanderbilt had on college football.
This year.
They were no longer the bottom sellar dwellers of the SEC. They beat Alabama for the first time in forty years. This is not just a layup, and Diego Pavia was the catalyst for that, and obviously their coach Clark leave. But come on, man, the man needed to be higher in terms of what his impact was. And here is where another player that he still ended up ranks. But think about this. Expectations can be an image killer. Because
you at James Pierce Junior, the kid from Tennessee. He was number one in the preseason Top one hundred and his eighteen point seven percent pressure rate was second best amongst all defenders in FBS. This year, and he finished
the season rank number forty one. That lets you know that expectations when they don't necessarily match well, when expectations are so high, and even when you play at the level that you would have expected, when you have the Jeremiah Smiths pop up, you have the other teams pop up, the other players pop up that were not expected. Now that for some reason fills more grandiose. Now Here is one thing that I did agree with. Will Howard quarterback
for Ohio State. He finished twenty spots behind Kyle McCord, so we got fifty seven and thirty seven.
Loved it.
The reason why I love this is because Kyle McCord was a better quarterback than Will Howard this year. And I do believe that even though Ohio State won the national championship, that the team would have been better off they would have They probably would have gone undefeated with Kyle McCord as their quarterback instead of Will Howard. Not saying the kid is bad, but one kid is better. That's not a distawhild Will Howard. That's just a compliment
to Kyle McCord. But the cool part was that you ended up with four freshmen on this list Leonora's Sellers out of South Carolina, who we can't wait to watch him next season. You had Sam Levitt out of Arizona State, who preseason hype going into next year is crazy crazy. I mean just I think it's too much, and we'll talk about that on a later date. You got Ryan Williams from Alabama, the seventeen year old wide receiver. I don't think he'll be seventeen next season, so maybe he'll
just be the eighteen year old wide receiver. And then you had Jeremiah Smith. So did you guys like the list? I'll put a tag to it down there so you guys can see it in the descriptions.
Will make sure that you guys check it out.
Next thing up, does the college football regular season still matter?
That's the question.
Because your second and third favorite college football media people, they will tell you that it doesn't matter as much, oh the regular season. It's watered down now and all of that wrong. They are looking at this from the complete wrong lens. Actually, more games matter than have ever mattered.
Now.
Where they are right is is that games like the Big Game Michigan Ohio State, the Iron Bowl, Alabama Auburn losing that game now will not tank your season. If you've done enough work up front, you will still make the college football playoff.
You can.
But here is where they are completely wrong is that those games, the magnitude and the impact of those games where if you lose them, you don't go to the conference championship, or that part they are right about. However, more games matter because the conference championship races without the divisions.
Have been heated and they are not even decided.
Only one team I believe had clinched going in of the power for conferences had clinched going into the last week of the season, and that was Oregon.
That was it.
So we didn't We couldn't definitively say who was playing in the Big Ten Championship, who was playing in the SEC Championship, the ACC Championship. Oh wait, hold up, SMU was still that was in that category two, So you couldn't, or the Big Twelve especially, you couldn't definitively say who was going to play it. So that means that damn near every game in the conference mattered at the end of the season, and that's not what would have typically
happened in the in the normal set of world. In the four team playoffs, you really only had like six or seven teams going into the last week of the season that even had an iota of a chance to make the college football playoffs. That's the difference. So Tennessee Vandy at the end of the season actually mattered, even though Tennessee couldn't go to the SEC Championship. Minnesota, Penn State mattered, Clemson, pit mattered BYU, Arizona State mattered, Georgia Tech.
Georgia actually mattered, not just the teams that were ranked from one to you know, six in the last couple of weeks of the season. No, because those buys were on the line and everything else.
So if you.
Love college football like we do here on another Fraid show, don't sit here and let these people bait you and try to tell you that the regular season was not as important and that the twelve team playoff and that four was the answer. They just want to be right about about four. Four was never the right answer. Expansion was always the right answer.
I was an.
Eighteen playoff guy, but the twelve I'm not mad at I think that sixteen is the answer only because I don't like boys. I do not believe anybody should be getting buyes, and we saw the bye problem this year, just saying told y'all that this was the problem that we were gonna have.
Next thing up. I want to give Bill Belichick a shout out.
Bill Belichick a shout out because and I'm assuming that this is because of him and him leaving no stone unturned. That Keenan Memorial Stadium which has since thirty which has had synthetic turf since twenty twenty. So Keenan Memorial Stadium synthetic turf since twenty twenty, that they switched from natural grass after Mike Brown was hired, and now they're athletic director Bubba Cunningham. He actually gave credit to Bill Belichick for that because the Patriots played on turf from two
thousand and six on and he probably didn't want it there. Now, this dude has thrown himself, Bill Belichick, into the college football head coach life. The dude is out at high schools. He's even sitting courtside at Bulls games with GM Mike Lombardi. The dude is out here like embracing this college football life. So if anybody thought he was going to the NFL, it ain't happening.
And I love.
The switch to grass and North Carolina is a state that you can support it, that you are not gonna end up with sloppy fields.
Love it.
Just take care of your grass, not mad at it. Good job Bill, Good job Bill Belichick. All right, Next thing up, Dylan Ryola. He was quarterback for Nebraska. He was in the locker room with the Chiefs after they won their AFC championship game and he was dubbed as the Patrick Mahomes junior. And I remember watching a Fox like pre roll, like a promo for a Nebraska game. Oh, Patrick Mahomes junior, the next Patrick Mahomes up, we'll see
him play this Saturday. And the dude just finished a much, you know, like a solid freshman.
He's in at Nebraska.
The kids often compared to Mahomes because he's I call him cosplay Mahomes. And this is no slander because I know the kid. Him and my kid are cool. Like this ain't no diss at all. I believe that Dylan will have more success once he stands in like not being the car not doing the exact same thing as Patrick Mahomes, but taking all the best parts of Patrick
Mahomes and then adding his own flairing into it. It reminds me of the movie Cool Runnings when they were becoming a Bobslad team and they were copying everything that the Swiss did, and at some point, you know, Senka was like, yeah, like yo, bro, like, we gotta stop copying the Swiss. We gotta be who we are. And that's when they started to have more success because trying to be like the Swiss was causing them problems even though, oh,
the Swiss had a lot of good things going. And that's exactly where Dylan Ryola and Patrick Mahomes are because it's the glasses, the haircut, the pregame warm up, the everything, everything, and this is going to add way more pressure onto him. Now granted he didn't go out there publicizing it and everything else. It was the actual players from the Chiefs who put them on, you know, put them on social media because Ryleis's dad, oh, excuse me, excuse me, let me.
That's teammate Dawson Merritt. His father is a Chiefs coach, and the Cornhuskers just hired Chiefs assistant Terry Brayden.
To be their new d line coach.
So this is something that I'm going to watch because the pressure is going to ramp up even more if he allows himself to be pigeonholed into the Dylan Ryola I'm sorry, into the Patrick Mahomes model. When he's got to say listen, yes, I love Patrick Mahomes one of my kids. He's like, listen, I'm Patrick Mahomes, Like, this is what I want to be. I love the way his style of play. Nothing wrong with that. You gotta stand in your own shoes, man. And I would tell
the kid that myself. I like him, I like his dad. Good folks, that's something that we got to talk about. But you guys though, we still unafraid. Show here on YouTube, on AXA, wherever you watch it. Make sure you like, subscribe, get notifications, tell a friend about the show. Peace out, Catch you guys later.