Then...and Now with Host Jon Shomo
The Fifth Quarter ep. 21
Hi, out there. Happy New Year to all of you. This is John Shomo with episode 21 of the Fifth Quarter, our college football podcast. And what a time it is in college football, the first ever 12 team playoff. We've had some very interesting results, not a ton of close games, but interesting results. We'll go over those here in a minute. Welcome aboard. February 2025. Before we get going here, I'd like to add my voice to those just absolutely sickened by the act of terrorism on New Year's Day in New Orleans. Also, we had one in Las Vegas, but the one in New Orleans particularly affected planning around the Sugar Bowl and 15 people lost their lives. A whole bunch more are hopefully getting better in the hospital or at home. The authorities, it's unreal to think of how many people had jobs where they had to adjust the plan. That's not the major thing here. The major thing are the families of the people who were killed and injured and so forth. But the police, the planners of the bowl game, the people affected at Notre Dame and the University of Georgia. So many people had to scramble and make alternate plans as a result of this thing. The Sugar Bowl game was pushed back almost 24 hours. They did start it at four o'clock Eastern time on January 2nd and we'll go over the game here in a minute. But I wanted to add my voice to those who are just sickened by that act of terrorism. Okay, as for the playoff games, but we'll hit them one at a time here starting with the first one that was played this past weekend. Penn State had a little too much in terms of talent for Boise State. It was still a three-point game late in the third quarter. Penn State hit a couple of longer plays and I think they kind of wore down Boise a little bit. Wound up winning 31 to 14, a game that was a final score that was not necessarily indicative of the closeness of the game. It wasn't nip and tuck but it was competitive. Hats off to Boise State for a great season. Hats off to Ashton Gente for a fantastic college football career. But Penn State marches on now. Big game James has won two big games in a row and they will get ready to face Notre Dame as it turns out in this coming week. Second game played Texas versus Arizona State. Texas ran out to a 24 to eight lead late in the third quarter. Then as they have a tendency to do those who have watched them a lot this year, they kind of played with their food if you will. And Arizona State stormed back, give them a lot of credit to tie the game. When yours completed a fourth and 13 touchdown pass in overtime, otherwise Arizona State wins the game. But then Texas, he threw another one on their second possession and overtime. Gotta give very big props to Cam Scataboo, the Arizona State running back, who is a super competitive guy and he did it all. He threw for a touchdown. He was all over the field on offense. Just, you know, he certainly proved himself to be worthy of all of the attention that he got this year. Should have been certainly a big candidate for the Heisman Trophy. But Texas survives. They move on now. Who are they gonna play? The Ohio State Buckeyes who left no doubt whatsoever in Pasadena. They just came out of the shoot and obliterated the number one undefeated team in the nation, the Oregon Ducks, a team that had defeated them 3231 at the Ducks home field in Eugene, Oregon early in the season in October. They just played a fantastic Rose Bowl game. It's now on to Arlington, Texas to play the University of Texas in the Cotton Bowl, aka semi-final game for the college football playoff. When they come out and stay aggressive and as we've said before on the podcast here, when they play to win, they're gonna win. And I think when they play like that, they're the best team in the country. Doesn't mean anything's guaranteed. The football shape funny. It takes funny bounces. They're gonna play a really good team in their home state at the Cotton Bowl. So, you know, they still have to buckle down and concentrate. And I'm sure the coaching staff is drilling that into the Buckeyes. But of all the teams this past weekend, they certainly looked to be the best. Again, no guarantees there. In the Sugar Bowl game that we mentioned earlier, Notre Dame scored a total of 17 points in 54 seconds of game time. That 54 seconds was wrapped around the end of the first half and the second half kickoff, which they returned 98 yards for a touchdown. They scored a field goal, recovered a fumble inside the 10, punched it in, had halftime, scored a 98 yard kickoff return to start the second half. That turned out to be the ball game pretty much. Someone described George's left tackle and I don't want to give any names or anything like that as a swinging door. It pretty much looked like that sometimes in the game. Not good if you're if you're described like that as a lineman, you're not good. That's not a good thing. So anyway, hats off to Marcus Freeman and the Notre Dame fighting Irish. They have won. They now play Penn State. Talk about a blue blood tournament. We have four of the biggest blue blood brands in college football history still alive in this playoff. We have the Penn State, new Lions. We have the Texas Longhorns. We have the Notre Dame fighting Irish and the Ohio State Buckeyes. It doesn't get much more blue blood than that. The funny thing is about the tournament. None of the top four seeds survived. None of them won a game. They got buys in the first round, as you may recall, the five through 12 seeds played at first round at the home field of the better seeded team in each case. And we wound up with five, six, seven, and eight in the final four. All the teams that opened with a home game, one twice have one twice. That would be Penn State, Texas, Ohio State and Notre Dame. All the teams that got buys lost Boise State, Arizona State, Oregon, and Georgia. You know, I don't want to make too much of it after one year of the tournament. You know, that that doesn't have to be the way it is every year. But I think it's certainly an interesting result. And I'm sure that the hours that be will look at that a little bit moving forward. But anyway, that's what we have. We have Penn State against Notre Dame. We have Texas against Ohio State. The winners will play for the National Championship on January 20th. All right, moving on to other games and other issues in the sport, as we usually do. I would mention that Illinois coach Brett Belemah and South Carolina coach Shane Beamer probably will not be exchanging happy New Year's greetings or any other kind of greetings for a while. They had kind of an incident on the field during a time out where Beamer had been kind of chirping at the referees about Illinois substitution patterns and timing. And during a time out where both teams were gathered on the sidelines, near the sidelines on the field, Belemah kind of walked out to about midfield and kind of mocked Shane Beamer a little bit. And Beamer just went off. He had assistant coaches restraining him. And Burt, as I like to call him, just was standing over there, Grinnan. That was a great win for the fighting line. I, by the way, in the Cheez-It Bowl, they won 21 to 14, continuing a pattern of not great performances by the Southeastern Conference. Certainly not what we're used to seeing in the postseason from the SEC over the last few years. I've seen a couple of jokes. I don't know if they're jokes or if they're real that mentioned, hey, you know, the Southeastern Conference isn't doing so good now that everybody else can pay their players too. Maybe tongue in cheek and maybe a little bit of truth in that. Anyway, let's go over the updated conference bowl records. This is as of Friday, January the 3rd at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, Eastern time. There are two games following today as I record this and one bowl game on Saturday morning. And then, of course, the playoff games are also yet to be. But as of right now, this recording here are the updated conference bowl records and I'll take them sort of alphabetically here. The American Conference is still on top. The American Athletic Conference teams have gone 6-in-1 in bowl season. They have one remaining later this afternoon. As North Texas, their team will take on Texas State. So potential to be 7-in-1 for the American. That is fantastic. The ACC, opposite of fantastic. The Atlantic Coast Conference teams have now gone 2-in-10 in this postseason. They still have one game to play. That is later today. Virginia Tech of the ACC will play the Big Ten's Minnesota gophers. But 2-in-10, that's pretty disastrous for a league that didn't need a disastrous postseason in light of a lot of issues. So not a great time in the ACC. The Big 12 is 4-in-4. They are done. Now, Arizona State was the last team standing in the Big 12. 4-in-4, 500 record. The Big Ten, 8-in-5 thus far, with some games still to play. Minnesota, as I mentioned, plays later this evening. And Penn State and Ohio State still alive in the college football playoff. They could win 0, they could win 1, they could win 2, they could win 3 games, as it turns out. So the Big Ten final record is yet to be decided. We know that one of the teams Penn State or Ohio State will eventually lose. So they'll end up with 6 losses at least, but they may end up with 10 or 11 wins as well. So we'll see how it happens there. The Conference USA record is 1-in-3. They still have a game on Saturday. Liberty will play Buffalo. So that game is still outstanding. Independence are 3-in-0, two of those wins by Notre Dame, and they're still alive obviously. The other win by the UConn Huskies against North Carolina. The Mid-American Conference locally here, a lot of listeners are Mac school graduates. As am I. The Mid-American Conference role record is 4-in-2. As we mentioned, Buffalo still to play in the Bahamas Bowl on Saturday morning. So they'll either be 5-in-2 or 4-in-3 winning bowl season for the Mac. That's good. The Mountain West, not so much. 1-in-4 with Boise's loss in the playoff. The Pac-12, Washington State, put a team on the field and got lauded very much for it. They had a bunch of guys enter the portal, kind of like Marshall did, but instead of kind of throwing in the season and not playing in the bowl game, Washington State went ahead. They lost a coach, but they went ahead and put a team on the field and played valiantly losing to Syracuse in the holiday bowl, but getting a lot of support and praise for the effort. So that's the only Pac-12 team. There's only two of them right now that played. The SEC, 8-in-6 in bowl season with Texas still out there. They could win 0-1 or 2 games, depending on how that goes. And the Sunbelt Conference are 3-in-3, decent record. Texas State will play later today against North Texas, so that'll be the tipping point. They'll either be 4-in-3 or 3-in-4 the Sunbelt teams. Those are our updated conference bowl records in bowl season. Now let's move to what's in front of us here. The future games this week, how we picked last week's games, how our picks went, etc. Let's do the picks first. We were 37 wins, 29 losses and a tie going in. We made picks in all four of the college football playoff games that happened over the last few days. Our pick in the Boise State Penn State game, we went with Boise State getting 11 points. That did not work. The final score was 31-14. They lost by 17 points, so that's a loss on our ledger. We took Arizona State who was getting two touchdowns, basically, against Texas. And the game went into overtime. They lost 39-31 in overtime, but they certainly covered, so that's a win. We went with the Buckeyes' big surprise. They were 2-1/2 point favorites in the Rose Bowl. They win by 20, and it was not that close. But that's a win for us. The Buckeyes coming through. We took Notre Dame and the Sugar Bowl. They were getting a point and a half against the SEC champs, the Georgia Bulldogs. And as we mentioned, that 17 points in 54 seconds propelled them to a 13-point win, 23-10. So Notre Dame goes down as a win. We went 3-1 in our picks in the college football playoff games. We're now 40 wins, 30 losses in a tie. Hey, that's pretty good if I do say so myself. So we'll put that on the line here, and we'll make picks for the two college football playoff semi-final games that will happen next week. Thursday, Penn State will play Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl in Florida. Notre Dame is currently a 1-1/2 point favorite in that game. I am going to go with the Big Ten and go with Penn State. So we'll pick the Nittany Lions to cover that point in a half. It could be a one-point game, who knows. I'm not going to go out on the limb and say they're going to win it, but we'll take Penn State in the Orange Bowl. And the Buckeyes giving 6 points to Texas, 6-point favorite Ohio State against Texas in Arlington, Texas in the Totten Bowl. It'll be a majority of burnt orange in there. I'm sure Buckeye Nation will show up, but they won't have half the crowd probably. I don't care. I'm taking them. If they come out and play aggressive, they'll beat anybody. And let's just hope they have understood that since November 30th. And we'll go ahead and win that game. We'll pick Ohio State to cover the 6-point spread against the Longhorns and make it to the college football playoff championship game. So if our picks are correct, it would be an all-big-10 championship game between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Ohio State Buckeyes. That would be a rematch of the game in early November in Happy Valley, which the Buckeyes won 20-13. I'm sure Tony Petite in the Big Ten office in Chicago would love that along with all the people who work there. So that's our picks anyway. That's what we're going to go with. I did want to mention a few weeks ago, we mentioned that there was going to be a contest on ESPN.com through the Capital One Bowl Mania pick that they have there. We have our podcast contest, the fifth quarter podcast bowl contest. It is ongoing. There are, I think, six games left. And right now, Dave Kelsey leads with a record of 28 wins and 13 losses. Your humble host here is in second place, along with two others, Jeff Cole and Chad Feldman at 27 and 14. One game behind, if you will. And then everybody else's 25 wins or less, but there are some really good records. All but one of the of the entrance is over 500. I will say this that Dave's picked 98.9 percentile. 28 and 13 gets you almost in the 99th percentile in the world, if you will, that are playing this ESPN Capital One Bowl Mania. That's really good. So 28 wins, 27 wins for the second placers, even 25, 24 wins, 24 wins, gets you in the 81st percentile, which is still pretty good. So check that out. If you want to, it's called once again, the fifth quarter podcast bowl contest, many of you entered, you can check out the results daily, if you like, at ESPN dot com, hit the Capital One Bowl Mania link and go to groups. And there you'll find the fifth quarter podcast bowl contest. So we'll keep us up. We keep you guys updated on that as we move forward here. It'll end with the national championship game on January 20. So there's still a couple of weeks left before that ends. All right. I think that'll do it for this week. Once again, happy new year to everybody. We certainly have some big games coming up. We have the finish of the regular bowl season coming up by Saturday afternoon. And then the two semi final games next Thursday and Friday, we'll be back at you after those two games to review how that was went and preview the national championship. Until then, stay good, stay healthy, stay out of the snow. We're getting some snow here. We're supposed to get a lot of depending on where you live, ice, snow, all kinds of stuff over the weekend, Sunday into Monday. So be safe out there, everybody. And we'll talk to you next week. This is John Shomo for the fifth quarter. Have a good day, everyone. You