[MUSIC] Hey, what's going on? This is the Saturday Down South podcast. I'm Camaro Guerra. Will the playoffs on my final? It is set, and don't you know it? Georgia missed out for the second consecutive year. Wow, look at that. Wow, her feet vindicated. [LAUGH] The playoff field definitely did not play out in the way that I anticipated when we were discussing this in the preseason, when we were discussing this in early December to imagine Notre Dame advancing and advancing in such convincing fashion. We will get to all the takeaways from that game. But I think there are certainly a lot of people in college football going, wow, Notre Dame finally did something like that for the first time in decades. We will not just talk about that game. Of course, that's going to be a big topic of discussion. What it means for Georgia moving forward a lot of different pieces to that. But we're going to recap every SEC bowl game that we haven't recaped, including by the way, maybe the game of the year with Texas in Arizona State. >> I was there. >> Yeah, yeah. So we have so, so much to get to Bama takeaways. I mean, South Carolina, Lincoln, driving me frigging nuts. So let's get into it. Let's start with what we saw last night. We're recording this by the way, Friday. Hopefully people are listening to this by maybe the time they're driving home from work on Friday, we moved our schedule as a result of this game. Obviously being moved with the tragedy that took place in New Orleans on Bourbon Street and obviously our hearts go out to everybody that was impacted by that. So weird circumstances, it's been, and I know from people that were there, just a very kind of bizarre type of situation that you just don't expect. When you go into an event like this and to have it play out this way, it's at the stage in a very strange way and to be playing this game at four o'clock on Thursday, instead of originally late on Wednesday, it was very, very strange and very, very bizarre. So I wanted to mention that before we get into the actual game itself. >> Yeah, man, I mean, that day was just a fever dream. I woke up super excited to go to the beach bowl and I look at my phone and there's this terrible tragedy unfolding and it feels like every hour, there's some new crazy detail to the point where I get into the beach bowl. I'm able to access one of the club areas, you get some photos, and I'm sitting there looking, just scrolling my phone, and I feel like I'm in like a suspended reality. I'm looking at my phone, it's almost like everything. The best way I can describe it is one of the movie scenes where there's explosions going around. And I'm like, look at my phone, just keep learning, keep learning. And Texas is like smoking Arizona State in the background. I'm like, man, I'm sad, this game's a blowout, what do I do? And then as the day goes on, this game turns around, I'm watching Scataboo do what he's doing. And it's just this insane, we're hearing about the bowl game, getting moved. We're hearing Louisiana politicians say it's getting played the same day. That was one of the most fever dream, and I couldn't even imagine. Our guy Perry was at the game, me, I'm at the beach bowl trying to not like, you know what goes when you do what we do, you want to be grateful for your app. But at the same time, I couldn't focus. So I'm like trying to check on my guys, Perry, all that. So yeah, I mean, there's really just nothing good to say about it. You know, I'm hurting for the city of New Orleans. And I hope everybody can get in contact with their people and just one thing really quick. You know, it goes into Orleans as far as people have a good time. It was on Bourbon Street. And I couldn't imagine how scary that was for a lot of people that, you know, their family member had, you know, had flown in Bourbon Street and was sleeping. And you know, their phone died or something like that. I've had that happen to me where I'm worried about when my buddies and their phones just dead on Bourbon Street. So just a just a weird day in college football, one of the most tragic events related to God, probably one of the most tragic events. I'll just say that. Yeah, we don't have to quantify it. We don't have to. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's one of those things that you just like, it was very, very bizarre. So I don't, I don't mean to just like make, make the entire conversation about that because obviously people have had two days to kind of process the magnitude of everything that went into it. Like, you talk, I didn't even realize that, that all of this had gone down until like peri text me, I had on Wednesday, I woke up and I was going to be doing dad duty stuff until, until game started and whatnot. And that's kind of usually like how we do things on a Saturday. And so like peri text me, like, like 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning was like, Hey, we're, like, we're good. Just in case you were wondering, I'm like, Oh, yeah, like, I knew he was saying at the Notre Dame team hotel. He like does that. And he was telling me about that. I was like, Oh, good. You didn't get in any fights with the opposing fan base. That's like, that's, that's a good, that's a realistic thought that we think about you know, with these games is like, no, I mean, the terror attack. And I was like, Oh, I need to get on the internet, don't I? Dude, I had that conversation with so many people because it just came out of nowhere. So I just wanted to address that. Like we're looking back at it. It's like, but the way that day develops was so scary and in my heart goes up to everyone. And yeah, I was talking to football, you know, it's a football pod. I just had to talk about that because it's my heart was hurting and still hurting for those people in New Orleans. Yeah, it's, yeah, just, just very, very unfortunate, extremely fortunate set of circumstances. Once the actual game got started, well, um, I think even if you could kind of put the weirdness aside, I don't think any Georgia fan would have walked into that building and expected to get beat the way that it did. And I don't mean that this was some complete beat down. I mean, Notre Dame ends up with 244 total yards. Like where I'm not going to sit there and pretend to like Notre Dame dominated every facet, facet possible of this game. But, you know, I mean, they didn't even average four yards per pass attempts. They did average more yards on rushing attempts. They didn't pass attempts. But well, that's what felt excruciating is it almost felt winnable the entire time because Notre Dame was kind of struggling as they built this huge lead. Yeah, it was weird from that standpoint. But at the same time, I don't think anybody in red and black ever expected to be facing a three score deficit in the second half. Oh, yeah, no chance. There's no way that Georgia expected to have line side pressure, overwhelmed, guner stocked and who was good at times, but not the guy that you wanted, obviously in that spot in his first career start. There's certainly no way that Mike Bobo with 39 seconds left in the six to three game, you know, seemingly going to be down three points going into halftime, thought that anything but positive things could happen. If you attempted a pass play, we're going to get to the Bobo part of this later. There's absolutely no way that Georgia thought in the biggest defensive moment of that probably of the night. It turned out to be that it's Captain, the butt kiss award winner, Jalen Walker, who was mostly dominant throughout the night. There's no way that Georgia would have thought that he would be the one to commit the cardinal sin of jumping off sides on a play that Notre Dame had just no business snapping the football deep in its own territory up 13. And to be fair, there's no way that Kirby Smart thought that you could sub out all 11 guys and actually do that because according to the SEC and ways that, you know, he was communicated to that was not a legal play and not something that Notre Dame was allowed to do. Turns out the referee could have seen that the receiver blatantly jumped off. Anyway, yeah, I mean, just a lot of different things that just did not go Georgia's way. There's just no way that Georgia would have believed a two touchdown loss to Notre Dame was in the cards. And it was and it was and it didn't feel flooky. And I don't think there's any one thing to blame for it, not even Parker Jones, the inactive walk on who made contact with an official and then was shown by ESPN a million times with Mako Roy having the goal to say Steve Bartman, not cool, not cool. No, let's we don't need to do that. We don't need to do that. I do wonder what the closed door conversation with Parker Jones and Kirby Smart was because I looked up his bio immediately after that and tried to mic him up. I'm sure so sure we can find that audio available. Good Lord. If this were the XFL, Parker Jones would have been getting a sideline interview. Oh, you think they tried again? They tried because it just ran like cool, like midway through the third. We're like, this guy, remember him? And again, like obviously it's a catastrophic mistake to make in that standpoint, you can't connect with an official. We saw that happen in the Texas game as well with a sideline penalty of an assistant who just trucked the, you know, the lion, the lion's judge. And you just like, you can't have that in that moment. I totally get it. But oh my gosh, they, they were just hammering that point home when Georgia ends up settling for a field goal. And that doesn't, in my opinion, end up being the difference in a game. Maybe the complexion of the first half is different, but nonetheless, I don't think that's the only thing that stands out for Georgia. I come back to this. Georgia was a flawed team in a field of flawed teams, or at least teams that have had moments in which they have shown their flaws in significant ways this season, and it was easy to do faults to Kirby Smart, aka the guy who was 35 and one against non-SEC teams since the start of the 2017 season. That's that you heard me bring up multiple times. Nice 35 and two in those spots. I'm sorry. I have this Fox score code to ESPN. They have like a Zapruder film highlight. This player on the sideline, I don't want to say his name again. Sorry, Parker Jones, yeah, like he's had better, better moments in his life. I'm sure that tongue lashing from Kirby, like picture, whatever you got from your parents when you did the worst possible thing as a kid and just multiply it by a hundred because Kirby probably shaved years off of his life with the verbal beatdown that he gave to Parker Jones. Sorry, I didn't want to bring him up again. I just started laughing. I was like, I wish you think I'm laughing at you. I just ESPN is what's anyway. Back to what you were saying. Kirby's record in these games, 35 and two in these spots. And Notre Dame is now four and 23 against AP top five teams since 1999. By the way, Marcus Freeman has two of those victories. Yeah, coach Kirby smart and the off sides play. That was kind of the crescendo of that. But you know, and you can probably make a lot of fun of Notre Dame in years past for its regular season schedule, even though I kind of defended it at different points, but you can make fun of it because of how much they have struggled in these settings in the postseason. And this is when I close my eyes and think about Notre Dame in the postseason, I think about your Marcus Russell and that LSU team just throwing it all over them in that building. And that's that's our Notre Dame, you know, looking like it just doesn't belong in the same field as Ohio State in the Fiesta, like those are the images that I think of when I think of Notre Dame big time stage, but now season. Yeah, this was not that. And it could have been because Northern Illinois, as we know, Casey hadn't heard lost to Northern Illinois as a 28 point favorite. They've been the same team for the four months since then. Since that game, five matchups against AP top 25 teams at the time that the games were played, four of those were double digit wins. They won those games by an average of three touchdowns. Now compare that to Georgia. Well, all year. Who's Georgia? Who's Georgia? And we still don't know still, no, still don't know. I guess the only thing that you knew from Georgia was that they weren't going to do anything offensively in the first half. Six of their 12 games against core four competition, they trailed at half time. Here's the most telling Georgia stat with that in the unfortunate consistency in those areas with struggling to get into the end zone in the first half of these games. The last time that Georgia led a core four team at half time was against Texas. The first Texas matchup, October 19th. All right. Think about that. They tied. They were tied with Tennessee, but we're talking core four. That was all defense. Q. Yeah. All defense. So like our offense was like putting it on him and like moving up and on the field. Yeah. This was the preseason number one team in America who had the preseason Heisman trophy favorite at quarterback for 13 of those 14 games. By the way, that feels like a fever dream. I am glad that you said that because that really puts it in for, I mean, the favorite for the Heisman has always started the year. Yeah. I mean, it's depending on like if you looked in July versus August, like it was him, it's Quinn, yours. And there were a lot of reasons to believe that Georgia was going to end up being the least flawed team in college football. And I made that argument throughout the offseason. Like, guys, I don't see the flaws with this team. And this entire season was just this, this is why they're flawed here. This is why they're flawed. They're 19 the last 20 seasons now. That is that the preseason AP number one has failed to win a national championship. Second consecutive season that Georgia was on the wrong end of that. Georgia now owns three of those 19 seasons of a preseason AP number one coming up short of a national championship. What's very clear and the only real takeaway that you can have from, I think, watching the way that this year played out is that Kirby just never found the right buttons to push with this team. I don't think you can blame injuries. I don't think you can blame NIL. And I honestly don't think it's valid to be like, well, the discipline issues in the offseason and, you know, guys getting driving related arrests and stuff like that. I don't think that you can just say that that is what led us to what happened on Thursday night. I think Georgia just never had that year. A lot of things to this though. I don't know if the guys that they brought, you know, Nick Saban coached these guys. It was peak. I don't know if I don't think there's a title team. It depends on who you're talking about here because I think if you're talking on the offensive side of the ball, then that's a different discussion and Saban's not going to save. It's not going to be your guy that's going to be like, Oh, I'm going to develop a receiver. Obviously he had no shortage of great receivers. He also had great offensive minds and great scheme. I'm just saying, like one, I won the game day decisions. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't, we can talk about the coaching, talking about recruiting with the receivers. Like there's obviously a dearth of weapons on the Georgia sideline. I don't think that's anything. I mean, that drop was just the Dylan Bell drop was terrible. Now they end up scoring a touchdown on that exact drive though. So it's, it's in a weird, and they scored what? Like three plays later or something like that with, with cash Jones. But yeah, I mean, the drops this year, obviously, like really, really cost this team. There's no doubt about it. They had had more consistent QB play like that. That would have helped better run game discipline on defense. And they were, I thought, okay, at times in this game, more urgency on offense. Like you could point to all these things and go, yeah, this held this team back. This unbelievably talented team that was in a different place with percentage of returning production than most Georgia teams are. And it was supposed to be the revenge tour from last year of getting left out of the playoff of losing the one game that they couldn't lose. And they're going to show the world and they did. Yeah, I just keep going back to it though, man. I mean, I think what that required, which was a logical thought, right? Was Carson Beck being Heisman Trophy level guy, all American. Cause I look up and done this roster. It's like who was going to make these plays? Like Etienne was never going to be that guy that gets 20 carries a game. We talked about this. They never really found that guy. They had to piece that guy together Frankenstein style. So, okay, Carson Beck can't be Joe Burrow. Basically there's no Edwards layer. There's no other guy to lean on. Okay. Who is the receiver? Who is the past catcher? Cause we've seen Oscar Delt pretty solid player, not our powers. Not going to carry it. I mean, it's so rare for a tied in the carry-in offense the way that, you know, at times we've seen powers do. And so I look up and done this roster and I don't feel actually that disappointed as weird as it sounds. Cause I'm like, who could have played better? You know, Dylan Bell for sure, right? But I mean, Gunnar Stockton as a passer, I think, played just as well as Riley Leonard, obviously Riley Leonard had some really big rushing plays and that probably puts him over the top, you know, overall. But I don't think that as far as the decisions on game day are what lost Georgia this game. You know, you give up a return touchdown and you have the bad turnover. To me, that's not coaching. I just don't think they had the horses. And when you're playing a team like Notre Dame who Brian Kelly left there cause he couldn't get talent. Um, not, not great. I don't want to, it's, it's Kirby Smarts quote unquote fault because he brought the guys, he hired the coaches. It's his team, but I don't think there was anything that could have happened on that game day, assuming that they get the return touchdown and that stuff happened that I don't think Kirby could save this. That's kind of the problem though. Yeah. Where's the development? Where was the development? More so on the offensive side of the ball. I think there are a lot of guys who could point to on the defensive the ball side of the ball and say, yeah, I would still, I would still want you a little walker being able to rush off the edge. I have no qualms for the Georgia defense, the adjustment. Well, there's, there's an obvious one on my mind. I'm, I'm a bite my tongue on this. Um, and I waited until Georgia scored just 10 first half touchdowns in 12 games against core four teams this year. Kirby smart needs to cut Mike Bobo loose and realize that his offense is a problem, it's probably well, well, I did a 180 on Bobo last year because he proved my initial skepticism wrong. All right. There were a handful of pivotal games last year in which a short handed Georgia offense that was working through the Brock Bowers injury. That was working through the Lad McConkie entry where I thought they came out and they looked the part and I loved the way that Carson Beck developed over the course of last year. I thought, I thought you could point to his performance as an OC and say, did he take the monk in concepts that we were promised that he would last year? I, I saw it and it was there. So I apologize to Bobo. I apologize after the Tennessee game, I believe that's when that came. But now I'm sitting here today, January 3rd, another season in which Georgia will not play for a national championship. And I'm saying that if Kirby cannot see reality, he is letting his loyalty to his best friend, limit his football team. We have reached that point. What about this offense got better? You know, like nothing got better and struggle to see what stayed the same. The first half stuff is significant because you could tell me, yes, they made adjustments at halftime. They figured things out. They got better. But here's how it hurt you. Okay. Georgia's opening drive, three negative place, one first down from a DPI and a punt after Gunner Stockton fumbled out of bounds. He gets the backside pressure and that was actually a fumble. It was not an incomplete pass. That was with three weeks to prepare after two consecutive games, which you failed to have an offensive touchdown in the first half. And I can blame Bobo for the lack of reps that Gunner Stockton had because he didn't attempt a pass against core four competition this year because Georgia couldn't get out to early leads. It's a stock and good experience showed at times. And I'm not blaming Gunner Stockton. What again? I think he played awesome, man. I think we're saying the same thing to be clear. Zero percent Gunner Stockton's fault. Cause that you ball, I look at the box door. I'm like, wow, he actually had way more attempts to that. I remember it getting a turnover as I get it. But what was he supposed to do? Well, Dylan Bell is out there playing soccer. Dylan Bell got 12 targets in this game. Yeah. And I liked Dylan Bell too. And by the way, his depth of target, you'll go back to looking to be like, what in the world are we doing here? And that's, I mean, kind of an issue, obviously, because you don't have the time. And when you assume that you're going to have the time, like Bobo did with 39 seconds left in the first half of that game on Georgia's own 20 yard line in a 63 game with a guy in his first career start and left tackle. That's getting beat off the edge. He decides, let's dial up a pass play because nothing bad can happen. Oh, buddy, get it. I, that's the single biggest sequence of the game right there. Okay. And everybody knows it. And the fact that Notre Dame returns to the second half kickoff just magnified how crucial of a mistake it was because you'd also know in that spot when it's six to three that you're kicking to them to start the second half. So you can think like, Oh, well, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll find a way to be able to get a field goal here to close out the half, kind of ignoring the fact that the worst, one of the worst possible things happened to you at the end of that first half against Texas, which is Carson Beck gets hurt, injures his elbow, season netting injury, because you're like, ah, we got to just, yeah, screw it. Now is when we're going to throw down field. If I'm Kirby, I'm not just looking at that, the one game sample size, I'm looking at this entire season and realizing I need to look inward and make a change. This will be as coveted of his, of an assistant opening is any in the sport. And instead of paying your best friend, 1.1 or 1.2 million, whatever the salary is going to bump up to, you know, the last year of this deal, he signed a three-year contract, go out and hire someone who can maximize talent because I would have an extremely similar list to the Oklahoma vacancy and they ended up going with John Matera. I look into Kirby Moore. I look into Mike Shanahan in Indiana. I'd look into Charlie Wise Jr at Ole Miss. I'd look into guys that call plays because right now you have an OC that yes, he's loyal and yes, he ran in theory, the system that you wanted him to run. But when it's 23 to 10 and they're out there running wide receiver screens with two minutes left of a football game, your offensive coordinator doesn't get it. And if you think he gets it, then you don't get it. And that's reality and Kirby smart. I'm not one to sit here and criticize his decisions. I've been very reluctant to do that in years past, but if he doesn't make his change at OC, he's going to regret it. And he won't realize it may be until years and years from now. Man, you know, I spoke on this beginning of the season, the Alabama game. I literally said this offense is going to cost us the international title and the vitriol that came after me, you know, I don't really want to see that again. Let me, let me tell you this. Georgia fans, I've said this from the beginning. I like you guys a lot. I live in Atlanta, Georgia. If you think that I wanted to see Notre Dame win the sugar bowl against Georgia, I got a bridge I can tell you. So before I get too deep into this, I know, you know, the criticism of me is talking about LSU, but I'm talking about two specific people that are very relatable here. Jumper one. Oh, number one is Bo Polini. Oh boy. This is my boy. Oh, no, it's not that bad. Well, well, it will never that. OK, I'll say it up for Bobo in this sense. OK, let's say they kept David Randa and the defense was a top five defense, which is what it was all year. This offense cost Georgia national title because he hired his buddy. And at the end of the day, you can't do that. We talked about adapter die. We talked about this over and over again, where, OK, Todd Duncan was this NFL guy. I'm not going to exactly say he was like disgraced, but he was an out of the box. He was the out, yes, he was an outside of the box hire and he was kind of screwed by Freddy kitchens with the play calling duties. And Kirby made a an unbelievably savvy move to say this guy is going to be the one to to to ramp up our offense. And it was an outside of the box hire that like it wasn't, oh, hey, you know, what this guy is, you know, I've worked with him in the past. He's my former teammate, my former roommate and this stuff, obviously very, very different set of circumstances. You know, I agree that Kirby smart should trust himself. He already won back to back titles. He already competed for a third one in a row. How did he do that? He had an offensive, like an innovative offensive coordinator. He had a gritty quarterback who was humble and a great leader. OK, go back to that, dog. You don't go back to 2008, go back to work for you. You know, we could see it in this all season that for the first time, it was a little bit of 2010 bama vibe. This Georgia team started to look complacent for the first time under Kirby where you can talk about the off season. I'm not talking about, sorry, I'm not talking about during the season where in the, and they started to kind of smell their own farts a little bit. And that's never been the Kirby smart thing. And on defense, it rarely showed, right? Mississippi State. Oh, OK, when it mattered, and I said this over and over again, so I'm not going to doubt Georgia because their defense keeps showing up and it did. I'm just talking about another guy here. Um, Cortez Hank did sitting on the LSU sidelines, just produced. Two receivers that are in the rookie of your conversation along with Jaden Daniels, um, these are quarterback, not coach by Langton. But point being, I look up at now in this roster and I genuinely say, OK, you're leading receivers area and Smith. You had one catch, Smith, Cass Jones, Dom Lovett, Dylan Bill, ETN absolved a blame a little bit, but he's up out of here to two delps. Nate for who on this roster was going to go be. George Pickens, I hate to say his name, but I wouldn't even go that far. Um, and you know how I feel about, about the Pickens thing and he's the rare five star that ended up going to Georgia and whether or not his abilities were maximized in that offense, I would debate that, um, as well. And I think Pickens is, is a lot to blame for it. The injury being a big part of it, um, as well that he suffered is in his pre-drive season, but you're saying you look at this roster and you go, why are they not getting the guys in there when their receiver room looks different than what it thought it was, what it thought it was going to be. The Colby Young, Raara Thomas, right. That, that whole thing off the field certainly played a part in the picture of this, but where are, where are the guys? The five star guys coming through, where you're just like, that's a campus talent and when that guy has a matchup that we like, he can take over a game. That guy's not there. You're right. It's Brock Bowers. You know, that's him. Where's your lad, my honky? Wait, where's your reliable guy? They don't even really have that. Again, it was kind of supposed to be Oscar Dilt, but in terms of him being a tied in, like that was just what the offense kind of looked like. But then we went, oh, wait, maybe this office just had Brock Bowers, maybe if Brock Bowers played left tackle, they would have just run that way every play. Like maybe they just built it around that player. And so point being, it's not just getting the talent. It's not just developing the talent. Like, I think that we're treating the symptoms. Like we're putting a band aid on, you know, smallpox or something. If we're going, ah, it's play calling, it's whatever. This team needs to aggressively hit the transfer portal. And that's what they've been doing at the receiver spots though, then. And it just, it did not work out. You know, you're so right. I'm so glad you said that because they already tried that. It's not just the Bobo thing. Like I had to do so much research into this Bobo thing because it felt like every week some Georgia fan was giving me some stat or revelation. I appreciated that because I learned a lot. It's the fact that even if you go hit the portal, there, there's not a dude in the building that can develop that guy. And we're getting to a point where they can't recruit that guy either because why would he come here? Georgia is a great defensive team. They model their head coach. Okay. And I'll say this too, you know, people are going to make a big deal out of the off the field stuff, the distractions. Look, the reason why George Pickens is such a great case is he had those issues. You know, he was, he's still having issues on the field and off the field. He's one of the rare on the field issue players. And yet it was worth it because he is a great talent. And when you excuse great talents, making mistakes, it often works out for you. They're not players on this team that deserve that level of grace from their head coach that they've been getting. I think that at the end of the day, the way that we've seen these players carry themselves, not a generation that was led by Stess and Dennis. Not a generation that won championships at this point. There are very few people in this team that were on those teams that were contributors and leaders. This team has a completely new culture and DNA and it needs to come from within. You know, I understand that like I'm, I'm on the clean house page because it's the receiver room. It's the offensive coordinator. It's all that. It's a quarterback. You know, there's not a part of this offense. Maybe the line you could look at, but again, lots of talent. They are hard to pick that up. So that's all I got to say about that is that, look, the defense is always going to be good. I want to keep going back to that. I don't think Georgia is fundamentally broken. I think they're going to be fine. I'm fascinated to see how Kirby smart is going to figure this out. I think he's reached Nick Saban territory where I got my popcorn and I think it's going to be all good. But I think it's looking in the mirror time. It's not higher our buddies. Let's go find some random dude from the XFL or something. And let's try it out. OK, fine, your guy. Yeah, we don't have the talent to overcome bad coaching and we don't have the coaching to overcome the talent. It's a two headed problem. So moving forward and this will, we'll, we'll close with this because I know we got a lot of other stuff to get to, but Carson Beck's off to the NFL that we know. I'm going to make a bold prediction and say that he's picked after Stetson Beck, Stetson Bennett, who was 128. You know, that's so quickly to you. Yeah, we'll have more time to discuss that. But for Georgia, that means the closest thing to a quarterback battle since 2020. Um, and that was the weird Jamie Newman. That was a quarter back after three for all. That was a game of four. Yeah. They were all fighting each other. Yeah, J.C. Daniels, Jamie Newman, while Mathis, yeah, and then Stetson Bennett ultimately emerges. And then, um, yeah, um, but knowing Kirby, I would imagine he's going to build around Gunnar Stockton as kind of the leader in that room. Quarterback battle. That's the good news. You got something there, I think. Yeah, it's still a really small sample size. And that's the frustrating thing. And, you know, like you ever shot it, you have Picuzzi and they're clearly still after a veteran quarterback that they would like to add to that room. They were in the market for our guy from Cal, Fernando Mendoza, who ends up going to IU, he probably saw like, Hey, why would I want to go, you know, in this battle when I could go play it. Indiana immediately. There was some initial talk about Jackson Arnold. He ends up picking, picking Auburn, Charlotte quarterback, the Sean Purdy. He was a possibility. He ends up picking Florida to be able to back up Blackway. The crazy thing is, is that Brock Vandegriff, who just retired from football would kind of be a nice fit now that he's got the reps for what they need. And you can do the Ocarico, give them bus that. She's come back. You guys need no? Yeah. I mean, but I think if you're retiring from football before even kind of really testing those waters, then that's something going on. Like I should joke about that because that's a really personal decision. And I, you know, put that works out for him. Like he would have actually been, though, the really nice as Philip Dukes would put it, the boomerang transfer, who it just made a lot of sense in that scenario. But now as a result, you have a lot of questions. Also just give Zachariah Branch the blank check, give his brother, and some eye blank check as well. Got too many dillips, not enough branches. We need to get some talent to hear, folks. They need some talent. They need some talent because the, they have, they did not hit on the, the portal guys at receiver that they were hoping for. So yeah, that's, look, that we're going to have a lot of time to be able to discuss Georgia this offseason. Those are just some initial thoughts after just a, a results that, again, Georgia would not have expected. If you had told them that was how it was going to play out and Georgia fans, feel free to hit me up on Twitter. I just want to say that the apologies be loud, you know, the rest. I did. Okay. So one last thing. I did one bad thing and I actually don't do this. But when it was 20 to three, I went back and I found the people who were, who were pushing back on my tweet from the first round game, wherein Notre Dame really looked the part I thought against Indiana. And I said, I think this is going to be an incredibly difficult match up for Georgia and I went back and I liked all those tweets of people that are just like, I don't know what you're watching. Like what are you talking about? You clearly don't know football. That's, that's a, that's a rare time. And I'm not doing a victory lap because I predicted Georgia to win this game. So like, I, I predicted Georgia to win this game. I predicted Georgia to win a national championship. That prediction is wrong. I was wrong. So, but at the same time, maybe Georgia fans just don't do that in that moment. I love the Bucker mentality. We're an SEC podcast. Of course we want you to do well. Anyway, eh, I could pay you the other way. I'll be honest. All right. Peach ball. Yeah, it's a peach ball. You were there. Yeah. You wrote the game of the year, in my opinion. That is not a dad joke where I say that just because it was the first game of 2025. No, real game of the year. I see football like this is last year. Yeah, that game was edge of your seat, thrilling. Starting right around like the seven minute mark of the fourth quarter. When Arizona State was down 16, as you mentioned earlier, it kind of felt like, ah, this is just kind of a ho hum Texas win. Arizona State is going to spend all this time in Texas territory and not be able to do anything with it. And just when it looks like Texas delivered the dagger on that year's touchdown run, which came as they were talking about archmending on the broadcast. It was almost like you heard that. He's like, watch me turn it up field. Watch me show you that my ankle seriously big time Toby Keith moment. It felt like at the time for you or as felt like the dagger and then it becomes an instant classic, just an unbelievable wild finish that felt totally unpredictable. Texas looks like it's about to choke this game away as Cam Scadaboo was about to pull off the best boot and rally in college football history ever. I the scataboo trademark pending. I feel like they gave him the MVP. I'm going to give it to him. That was. Still a game, such a sicko, unreal. And I went from saying, wow, Texas did a really nice job making sure that Cam Scadaboo wasn't the story of this game to thinking. I think Cam Scadaboo might be in statute territory at Arizona State. Um, and just that that pose either do the, the, the puke and gaze pose or when he, you know, completed the long pass on the trick play. What was that on fourth down? Where's the two? Yeah, that's when you realize, Oh, things are happening. Things are absolutely happening. I will say. I don't think that ended up being the most unbelievable play of the game. Texas, when it was facing fourth at 13 in overtime, dead in the water. I'm thinking I'm about to go into my office and I'm about to basically write the, the column that I think Texas fans and non Texas fans would agree. Would be a fair one to write, which is. Did Sarcs faith in Quinn? Yours just cost Texas a shot at the national title, even going back to the deep shot earlier to bond that was picked off on a ball that again, like you were just that deep ball was just kind of fluttering up there. And it just, you know, Arizona State converges. Was there a targeting penalty on that play that should have been called? I don't know, debatable, but I'm thinking finally, Texas is cooked and it's going to have nobody to blame for itself. There's no way they're going to pick up this fourth in 13. Will, was it fair to say that that place was rocking at an unbelievable decibel level, you know, man, crowd wise, I'm really, you know, respect tip of the captors or a state, they're like technically the largest university. Like I think in the world, at least you remember good, like, and part of that, they have like an online school that they acquired, whatever, huge school regardless. And so point being, um, there's your crowd really showed up and it was really nice to see, wasn't like a packed house. Like in terms of like 100% capacity, but it was like, it's called it like, you know, I 80s low 90s and watching the crowd swing back and forth. Like the Arizona state crowd felt like it was about to explode. Like the entire game. And then watching the momentum, swinging back and forth, where it was kind of like the Simpsons, like, ha, ha, ha, like really cool sight to see. That's kind of one of the underrated things about games like this is that you get the feeling all at different points. It feels like a home game for a certain team and you don't really hear the booze and you don't really hear this. Oh my gosh, this, the visiting team scored and it's silent and all you can hear is the bench erupting or something like that. That's kind of a fun, underrated thing that people don't like to talk about these neutral site games, but just to set the stage for those of you who forgot, at that point on fourth and 13, Arizona state had already scored a touchdown. So Texas obviously needs to match in overtime. But again, you only need the 13 yards on that play. It would have been eight yards, if not for the fourth Texas pre snap penalty in fourth quarter and overtime alone. Golly, Arizona state sends a ton of heat, Texas picks it up. And yours hits our guy, Matthew Golden on a double move. Six 12 on game day, dude, just balled out of his mind. It's the biggest Texas touchdown, in my opinion, since Vince Young got the edge against USC. I think you could make a real case for that. Just an unreal moment. You were immediately points to the sideline. And presumably it's SARC and, you know, it was almost like he was saying, I'm glad that you're in my ear, but it's Chase Daniel pointed out. It was a great breakdown. If you saw the breakdown that Chase Daniel and Emmanuel Acho did, I would recommend watching it, maybe not if you're an Arizona state fan. But go back and watch that play because yours checks at the line and he calls for max protection because he recognizes that the blitz is coming. And basically you could do the hypotheticals and go, well, if he doesn't do that, he's swallowed whole by the two blitzing linebackers and the safety coming up the gut because we had seen a lot of instances post ankle injury in which yours had kind of succumbed to that. The golden route is nasty. He gets the safety to bite. The middle third safety is late being able to get back and if yours under throws it though, it's tipped by the converging safety in the middle third. If yours overthrows it to the back of the end zone and leads him too far, yours will be thinking about that throw and missing that throw and not giving his guy a chance well past the point when he can think about growing a mullet. Okay. That's safe to say. Um, instead, it's a throw that ends up traveling about 40 yards and it's perfect. It is the perfect play and it's the exact reason that idiots like me who love hypotheticals and, you know, we love to say, well, all this coach should have done this. We love to just play the results with stuff. It's the exact reason that these guys are put in a spot for a reason. And for everyone saying, cause I know the pushback, everyone was saying, well, arch would never have had a Texas flirting with disaster. Do we know a certainty that he would have had that rapport with one of his go to receivers, the way that yours did with golden? Because I know everybody's talking to him right now about Jeremiah Smith's rapport with Will Howard as they should be. It's phenomenal. We're going to get to that with the Texas breakdown and how they're going to be able to potentially slow him down if that's even possible. But those two guys have it going, the comeback routes that they were that they were using to be able to set up those potential game winning kicks as well. The play that he hits him on in overtime as well in double overtime for the two point conversion, those guys are in sync and it shows and it's why you love to have a quarterback as experienced as yours is, even with some of his flaws sometimes, because man, the timeliness was just at a different level. And I look, the other girl, we almost missed coming back from break. I don't know if you if you heard about that. Yeah, yeah, it was so weird. So we're, we're coming back from break after the first overtime and before they can even show the score bug at the bottom of the screen, yours is stepping up into the pocket, throwing off of his other foot and it's peanut butter in the back of the pantry gun or helm, breaking free, like the quickest double overtime touchdown ever. And that play was a thing of beauty. That play was SARC, by the way, that plays was all SARC. If you go back and watch that with the pulling guard, helm allows like the pulling guard. They basically sell run with what they were doing and it kind of sucked the linebackers in and then helm sneaks through on the wheel route and just exactly where you want him to be for that double OT touchdown. Just an unbelievable sequence by Texas. And I am, I'm blown away that they had that still in the bag. Cause I thought they were dead in the water. I'm going to go back really quick. Um, because, okay. Yeah, I went through a lock. I'm back to whatever he needs. Sorry. Sorry about that. No, that's, it was all, but we lived it. Like it's, it was all in a row. So, okay. You said the Texas play was the best. Now, would it change your mind if I told you Scott Abode did the exact same thing? You know, I'm Dan Patrick yesterday. Apparently he went to the huddle on that fourth and two and love it. It was like, Hey man, I rolled my ankle. So the play call was a Philly special. He was supposed to throw it to love it. He also checked at the line. Wait, so you're saying, you're saying, let, let it checked to the line to have a scatty, it's a, it's a Philly special. Scatty was supposed to throw it back to Levitt. Levitt goes, Hey, my ankles rolled. I can't catch this. And so he checks the receiver into like a, like a post route. And basically there's one route being run and he's like, boom. He saw it was one on one. And as a quarterback, Scott Abode checked to that. That again, maybe he's telling his own legend. I don't think he's a guy who does that. Everyone kind of, he's like Chuck Norris at this point. Everyone kind of does it for him. But once I heard that, I was like, yeah, I think that the only way that, uh, you know, if Arch Manning would have gotten Texas out of this, maybe he had a 12 gauge. I think that was the only way that Scataboo is going to not come back the way he did. Because I'm like, yeah, this guy had like some dark magic within him that day. Or, you know, not this dark. He's a good dude. Like he just, he had the, the juice. And I think that, so I think this comeback started with the safety, weird play, um, doing math in person like that, not great for me. Um, but the way that Arizona State came back, we talked about it in the, in kind of the preview of Dillingham, Sark, best couple of offensive minds and football is a really defensive game. It was feeling weird and it kind of felt like Texas was simultaneously about a score away from just, you know, riding off into the sunset and you don't want to keep giving Arizona State chances. Um, but I'll fast forward all the way back to the point that, where you were right there, the three plays in a row kind of like to end this game. Where it goes, okay, fourth and 13 gunner, helm touchdown pick. That was like, there are moments where college football feels like art. That fourth and 13 sky cam shot looks like a Renaissance painting golden, separating by himself, his hand is like outstretched, like the Sistine Chapel. You see, and like, I actually saw that in real time. I was sitting with the Arizona State media and, uh, kind of like on the end there. And they were like, I saw him come open and I was like, Oh man, that's him. And the way the ball is slowly floated through the air, it was a reminiscent of that, uh, remember the Milton play always talk about against Florida, where I could hear in your playing in the background. I think it was going to hit by Watson. It was like one of those, but it was the good version where the ball was just traveling so slowly. And you could see the faces on there's an estate TV's going, Oh my gosh, he's behind us. And then it just snaps back in a real time and it's like, Oh, they might be in trouble here. By the way, Will had a great video on, uh, Will was running an SDS social, um, on Wednesday as all this was going down and Will had a great video of this, uh, to see that shot and to see the, the development, it was basically like you're watching the all 22 from your vantage point from the video and you could see that moment where you're right. Like if it's even he's leaving, like that's, that was that moment and seeing that, seeing that take place and seeing how much that clearly like for Arizona state to, to rally back from that would have been unbelievably tough. They did have the first down play in OT where I think it was a check down to scataboo in double OT, I should say, where it was, it was a check down to, to scataboo and he picks up the first, the initial first down. And then that's when I think Levitt had the play where he tried to, he tried to attack Makuba who makes the big time play two transfers, making those monstrous plays for Texas with that roster and all the talent that they had coming back. I think that's kind of an underrated thing to think about with like, with golden and Makuba. We just talked about how Georgia felt like it whiffed in the portal. Notre Dame feels like a team that benefited greatly from their, not the, the quantity, but the quality of their portal additions and for Texas to have those guys show up in that moment was just unbelievably, unbelievably important. Sorry. I just totally derailed your thought. No, no, I mean, it's just, it's just loose bill. I think we're both in the same place of like, I mean, the way that this game ended. And you know, um, you could talk about, you know, the Oklahoma Georgia game way more of a back and forth game, you know, but a comeback like that, the way it played out, the way that Texas, like obviously wasn't playing well down the stretch, but I wouldn't exactly see the rolling over. I mean, they missed two kind of by Auburn, Auburn. I got talked about this in the preview. Might get rough for Texas pretty quick here, because they don't have a lot of answers for the stuff that we'll talk about that later. I don't want to, I don't want to borrow this moment by that. But those little things where it's like, once you guys get back on the horse and you should be able to put this team away again, two of these, you know, and I just feels it felt like we were in a Disney movie. Like it just felt like, wait a minute, the coach is a fourth time out. You pulled out of this block. We got to talk about the, the non-targeting call, Michael Taff. Sure. So before we get into that, I, okay, you know me, my, my relationship with the officiating, I just want to say this really quick. Let's just set the table here. There were three weird calls in this game. I'm, you talked about one of them on the Quinn Ewers pick, which bless his heart. That guy has to throw one 2020 Drew Brees duck a game. I don't get it to. Yeah. And he throws this in the fourth quarter, not the first quarter, but he get out of your system, throws it in the fourth quarter. There is, in my opinion, in my opinion, my humble opinion, more evidence of targeting a quote unquote non-football play where you are launching yourself at someone on that. Okay. That doesn't get flagged. That's fine. It's a playoff game. I'm cool with that. Okay. Another play. We America spent an entire year, uh, bemoaning the touch push saying the touch, well, saying the touch push was bad. And the Philly fans are going, Oh, it's, oh, stop it. No one, not a single human being says, Hey, an offensive lineman can just RKO you into the end zone. When they repealed the Bush Bush rule, nobody, not Reggie Bush, not Matt Leonard, not anyone said, Oh, you know what? This means actually this means that we could just throw the guy into the end. So you're not allowed to pull. You're not allowed to pull. You could push him into the end zone. You weren't supposed that that touched on the camp. Scatterboo had as unbelievable as it was. And as much as he needed to be pulled, not even push, but pulled into the end zone. I play also should not have counted. They should, I've seen that flag before. You are not allowed to be able to pull them in there. So in terms of egregiousness, I mean, they, he picked him up. Like the vet is now picking up my cat. He picked him. So I still feel fit to love and picked up. Scatterboo was like, Hey, buddy, it placed him in the end zone. So if we want to talk about blatant disregard for the rules, that's blatant, disregarded for the rules. No, let's go to the target and call that everyone's not online about. Okay. Um, if you somehow didn't see this or forgot, and you know, the, the fact that it's, you know, two days ago, the final minute when this happens and it looks like Michael Taft, the Texas safety, he makes helmet to helmet contacts with the Arizona State receiver on a tipped pass. I thought live, it was targeting. I thought on replay, it was targeting and then it wasn't targeting, which is the targeting rule in a nutshell, if you were being honest. Um, Arizona State punted instead of getting a 15 yard penalty that would have taken them to the Texas 37 in the final minute. Worth remembering just so we have the full context here before we get into whether or not it was targeting. ASU was four of 11 on kicks, 30 yards or more entering the day. There is no guarantee that Arizona State as great as it was done, the stretch automatically wins just if it gets that call. So let's not pretend that that was 100% a deal breaker. Um, especially when you're in obvious passing situations with Sam Levitt and his 4.8 yards per pass attempt, okay? But even if the intent wasn't there and it was late in the game and you didn't want to see a playoff game decide on a targeting penalty, which that would have had a huge, huge determining factor in that result. I thought by the letter of the law, it was contacted the header neck area against the defenseless player and it should have been called and Arizona State fans, I understand why you're upset with that. They should also still be upset with the two critical errors and coverage that cost them the game. In my opinion, um, but I was, I was in agreement more so with Arizona State fans in that moment of if that's not targeting, then what is. And maybe the tip pass, because like the tip pass thing gets brought up with pass interference and stuff like that as well, that it can't be DPI. If it occurs after the ball's been tipped and maybe that was factored in. I hate the fact that we didn't get any explanation on this. How lame is that? How stupid is that that you can have all of this talk and you, oh, yep, you would just make a controversial ruling that is going to impact so many lives and we don't have any sort of explanation from the officials. Instead, we're left to interpret what the targeting rule is. Everybody's doing screenshots of what this, what this says about targeting. Oh, this, this angle that I saw people doing screenshots of, of the, the contact right before the play. And I'm like, that doesn't do us any good. And it doesn't have to be like this. Why do we do this? I know Josh paid has been really vocal about the lack of accountability for officiating, but he's right. Cause you needed an official to come out and say, this is why this played out the way that it did. Here's why we stand by this. Here's why this was a mistake in the spot, whatever, just give us something. Instead, we just have, nope, play on. I thought that was wrong. Okay. Yeah, I'm, I'm with you. And I think it was targeting. I'm, I'm not debating that. I'm going to go back to, I'm going to go back to the Boise State Penn State game. Right. So in that game, Boise State, um, had a touchdown, wiped off the board by like a weird hands of the face penalty by the offensive lineman. And it was kind of like away from the play. It was very slight. It happened in an incident, bang, bang, play. And it would have cut the deficit to one score, change the complexion of the game. You got to err on one side. Okay. In my opinion, this is my opinion. I'm not saying we should legislate off of this, my opinion. So again, if we got a whole new group of people coming up to me for this, the point being, I understand the mentality of let's let the kids play. Okay. I understand not calling or reviewing even though first targeting. And the reason why is, uh, with the user's pick, that wasn't the process of that pick happening. So you really start to get in some nebulous folders there, where if the targeting happens or just before the ball is secured, I believe it would just pass in first, it's, yeah, it's called as pass interference. And then you review it for targeting. That's probably how it would have played out. But you see what I'm saying? If it's called targeting before the ball is secured by the defense, it's just like a first now, there's no turnover. And so point being, I get holding your whistle there because again, football, it doesn't really, the targeting on the pick didn't have anything to do with the game. Okay. Same deal here. Unfortunately didn't have anything to do with the game. So if we want to get mad at not throwing targeting in a moment where it was just kind of like irrelevant to the outcome of the play, the pick happened in the first one, the stop was made in the second one. It wasn't like, oh, this guy was holding and it opened up a hole. It wasn't like something like that. I think that when you've already had a play like that. And like I said, of these three, the pickup is clearly the most egregious. That's the one I would like to see flag every single time, because it's just cheating. Um, the other two, it's like, I can make you look like Barry bombs in a bad engage in eight K video, dude. I mean, the way that we think that eight K video is reality is like the funniest thing to me as a video guy. And people are showing me eight K video frames. They're like, yeah, open up avid for me. If you want to talk about a K video. All right, and so these guys will show me this. And I'm like, yeah, man, but that happened in two 40. That happened in a split, split, split second. And when you do anything in football, it's like this looks like two titans colliding at that speed. So that's my only point is that it was a bang bang play. It was a football play. Both of the quote unquote tardings were from a legislative stuff out of the game. Let's say stuff that affects the game. So in that moment, like, if you think your team deserved a first down, because they got stopped and hit a little hard, owie. Yeah, so you're saying, yeah. Um, what was very clear, though, and maybe I don't know how much this impacted this, the way that it played out, if you were watching from a neutral perspective, but Peter Burns said he turned into the Russian crowd at the end of Rocky four, where they start cheering for Rocky instead of Drago. Did it feel anyway like that? Like it would have been so funny to see camp scataboo becoming so inspiring to that crowd at Mercedes Benz, that Texas fans in the crowd are throwing horns down. So we just want to say is YouTube. Lots of hand signals going on in this crowd. Oh, camp scataboo is a legend, though. Gotta say, I mean, I do want a DNA test from the Hester family just to just to make sure that he's not another one of his kids. And we just didn't know about it. I've asked him about this. Like you sure, like 100% that this isn't you because I will respect him. I got a Hester one of my first favorite football players. This guy's built a little different than Hester. Yeah, you know, he was dropped into the chemical X. Yeah, fair, fair. I wasn't going to let post Heisman results dictate how I felt about my ballot, but man, I didn't feel bad one bit about putting that guy third. I won't push back on his claim that he's the best running back in America. Even if I stand by putting Gen T second, I won't, you know, argue against people that put Gen T third or put him put him first. Performance for the ages, unbelievable performance, doing that against the number one defense in terms of defense, defensive efficiency was unreal. 284 total yards, 142 rushing, 99 receiving and 42 passing. A total of 39 scrimmage touches. Just a warrior. I don't know what his body feels like right now, 48 hours after I do horrible. I don't even know the degrees of horrible though. It's almost like, you know how when you do a workout that is new and you know, after the fact that you're going to be sore in areas that you haven't been sore and maybe ever in your life, I can't even sit here and picture what it feels like to be exposed to the type of punishment that he was over the course of a day. I guess they very physical Texas defense that look, it still took gang tackling and it still took everything that Texas had to be able to bring that guy down into somewhat containing him for the first three quarters. But my God, I just I have so much respect for him. And Texas should feel fortunate to survive to survive a performance like that. And it survived because ASU spent all that time in Texas territory and just couldn't get those breakthrough scores early that they needed. And, you know, part of that is just who Texas has been and how, you know, comfortable they feel even up, you know, backs against their own goal line. But it just, you know, it needed to be able to come up clutch down the stretch with that play against Levitt and it did. And yeah, just I tip my calf to Texas for being able to survive that and binding away. It's all about surviving events. Texas has not had style points this year. They can get any style points for that performance. They're not going to have anybody talking about their style points going into the Ohio State game and everybody's going to be talking about how much style Ohio State has deservedly so. But just can't count out Texas. You just can't at this point. Yeah, again, we need Quinn. You were just to throw the ball straight up in the air. The first play of that game, just get it out of your system. Yep, because I was like one of these is coming the whole game, of course. Anyway, so yeah, I'll say this, you know, this game really and everyone's trying to be so negative in college football and be like the next Howard Stern. I guess, like we need to appreciate what this sport is. And this came just legitimized Arizona State to me in a way and scattered to your point. Like this was a, I know it wasn't just him, you know, in the preview, I said, it would be ridiculous to me for him to do an average rushing performance by him. You know, 200 something yards, three touchdowns. This gentleman is throwing up, you know, and screaming at his elements of lineman and doing all this. And I'm like, wait, we probably shouldn't like feed him carries at this point. Like we should probably shouldn't give him 20 more. OK, we're going to give him a pass attempt. OK, we're going to get him a receiving. And I mean, like Texas dude just rips his helmet off on that play. I'm not even going to get talking about stuff, but he legislates. That was rough with the guy that was concussed. I'll call it like I see it, but point being like the way that they were able to get him involved and not be like, Hey, man, run your head into a wall from this point. It felt like he was neutralized by the laws of physics. I human body shouldn't be able to take that much contact. And the way that they were able to, like I said, find ways. So credit to that offensive game plan, credit to start for kind of like waking up. I hate to say it like that, because they played really well to start the game. You know, when you have a kick return touchdown, it's weird in context to the Georgia game where they're getting the kick return and touchdown. And it's kind of the difference that's keeping Georgia from knocking on the door of the whole game. And this game, Texas gets won early and it's like it just got erased, you know? So it's all narrative based, right? But like I said, I think this really legitimized there is no state in my mind. I have a lot of respect to them. They have a massive university massive fan base. They get there and I will collect it together. I'm not going to be competing for titles or anything, but the big 12 that could be theirs for the taking. I'm glad that the 12 team playoff gave us this. Yep. No, it was the game that we were kind of hoping to be able to get is a team that had multiple losses that wouldn't have been in with the 14 playoff that gets in and gives us just an unbelievable afternoon of football. Like that's that's kind of all you can really hope for in these scenarios. And you can't necessarily be disappointed with all these full outs. Cause that's just kind of the way that sport works sometimes. But when we get them like this, yeah, we got to appreciate them. That game was unbelievably fun. I hope Texas and Ohio State is going to be unbelievably fun. I hope injury world, by the way, should be a very pro Texas crowd. But a crowd that's used to getting disappointed in that building. Very true, very true. That is, uh, it has not been kind to teams in the state of Texas. Uh, look, we'll talk more about that match up. We're going to preview it next week. Um, on Monday, we'll have a lot more thoughts. We'll get into the jade Baron, uh, Jeremiah Smith match up Texas, hopefully learning from Tennessee's mistakes with single coverage on Jeremiah Smith. When you were revenge game, we'll talk about Will Howard trying to overcome his O and three record about against Texas, which is interesting. He did. I went back and looked this up real quick. Um, he is so old. How old is he? That dude lost to Sam Ellinger in 2020. Well, Howard is old. That is incredible. Like Casey Thompson in 2021, too. Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. What a guy. I, you know, I'm going to be happy for him. Anyway, continue. Yeah. Um, but yeah, we'll get to all that. We'll talk about the Texas angle of that, um, with next week with the preview pod. All right. Rely quest bowl, the bowl formerly known as the outback bowl. They're all fans. Don't earmuff it. Don't hit fast forward through this. You need to hear this too. You're off. It's got to take it out back. And you said I was gonna come up with the dad joke. So we'll flogged out back. Golly. What an embarrassing showing by a team that everyone was waiting to have an embarrassing showing. I wasn't going to watch this game against the seven and five Michigan team and let it impact how I felt about Bama's playoff chances because it was a seven and five Michigan team that basically had all their best players opt out. Um, I watched Bama go nine and three with two losses to six and six teams. The last of which being a blood against Oklahoma, you know this. You already know all this. So I personally did not watch this game a month after, you know, all of this had been settled and have this be like, Oh, hey, if you beat Michigan, that's going to tell me that your resume was good enough to make the playoff. Bama's offense looked like a group that could just show up and just just rely on that logo to beat Michigan. And buddy, did it not with five minutes left in the second quarter. Bama had two more yards than me, you, Lauren and Claire. Yeah. But did have some horrendous turnovers that Michigan kind of sort of took advantage of. And then Bama only beat down six and a half was kind of baffling. Like they should be down to 25 mesmerizing. The thing about this family team is when their athletes do get in space and we saw that during the comeback, they have just really, it's not Georgia. They have the athletes on Bama and you see it like when they could actually get guys the ball because it felt like they were going to win this game with you. Yeah. Um, and thought they were going to be able to kind of find a way and claw back and thought they were going to get some good field position and be able to have that kind of go ahead, touchdown and just didn't have it didn't score a single second half touchdown. And it was a very bad jail in the middle row game. We're going to get to the middle row discussion in a second here. The most maddening thing about the Bama hypothetical that people had in the first round was that they were still assuming for whatever reason that Bama had this unbelievable floor and this team did it. And that was the point, right? You know, like, Yeah, like this game wasn't an outlier. You know, in past years, it would be an outlier. It was more of a reminder than anything else. It was a reminder that Bama was an incredibly unpredictable team and he didn't know which team was going to show up in a given week. And this season, it's not just that Bama lost four games for the first time since year one of the Saban era, 2007. You lost three times as a 14 point favorite, at least 14 points. By the way, didn't really strengthen Greg Byrne's argument that Bama needs to take a serious look at scheduling. Look, say what you will. But Lane Kiffin was at least vindicated over this last couple of week. He comes out as one of the only winners. I strongly disagree with that. And we're going to get to that in a little bit. No, but I'm saying between, you know, Alabama and the older posturing South Carolina, all their posturing, at least all this showed up in the bowl game, like, yeah, I guess from that standpoint, sure, but everything else. No. Yeah. For what it's worth, Bama's defense fought its tail off in this one. And even once a hot camel goes down, I thought that group did everything that Kane Wama could have asked for. They fire their code code DC after this game. I don't think that's the results of this game. I think maybe that's just more so the results of kind of the up and down nature of this season. But I actually felt bad for Bama's defense in this one because they just had all these short fields when it was monsooning earlier and Bama's offense couldn't hold none of the football. And that happened because even when the weather settled down, Jalen Miller, I just wasn't seeing it. When you couple that with a bad offensive line showing, which Bama had with its tackle spots, it's a bad combination. We've seen that. We've seen that time and time again this year. Jeremy Bernard and Ryan Williams both look like they were going to lose their minds. They in Bernard, especially, he's like throwing his hands up, like, man, I got five yards of separation middle of the field. What are we doing? What are you not seeing here? And that's frustrating because scheme is there and separation is there. I just thought body language was really telling, especially from Bernard. Williams had only a couple of those moments, at least from what I saw. But Jalen Miller just did not develop under Kalin de Boer in the way that I thought he would. I thought Jalen Miller was going to win the Heisman Trophy this year. I thought it was going to be rough to start. I thought he was going to turn into a Heisman winner. I really did. And I don't think it's an issue with Miller with how hard he works. I don't think work ethic is a question whatsoever. I thought he came back after the Michigan loss last year with something approved. I think everything indicated that, you know, man, I just. I really like Jalen Miller. I don't know. It's not that I have, you know, I saw him in person like one time. I technically I saw him in the TLSU game. I saw him, you know, one person in time one person. I saw him one time in person. It's not like I had this great relationship or reason to like him point being. But I feel like a lot of the vitriol has been like placed on him and a lot of the comments I've heard from people online are kind of just troubling because this is a guy and I talked about it. I'm nauseam and I know that nobody wants to hear this right now, especially them, a fans, but, you know, blah, Brian thought this guy was a safety. He was behind Bryce Young, you know, often it's a coordinator who's our age and Reese, like I just. Breasted the best job with him too. Yeah, he did. But I think all that stuff was out of scripts, you know, I think that, like, whenever you look at the highlight reel from that year, Millra was kind of doing it by himself. And I think that's what it was. It was this year he started to have the two wolves, the two, the angels and the devil going, do I follow the script or do I not? Last year he didn't. He didn't care what Tommy Reese had to say in big moments. This year was like, well, the bore is this offensive mind. You should listen to him. He regressed. There's no, I'm not taking the blame off of him. He's getting the grown man territory. He's close to my age. I get it. But at the same time to act like Jill and Millra was the reason why this family team is bad is so disingenuous to the person, the player, the worker that you just talked about, guy who came back, led the team, kept this, kept this roster together. It's a good point. These guys that are online talking about dealing with all these names, if he hit the portal, do you know what would have happened to this offense? You think Ryan Williams will still be here? Okay. So I just want to say that like I'm a guy who was defended few and far between family players. Again, we've all been in this conference around Bama for 20 years. All right. Millra was one of my favorite Bama players of all time because of how he carries himself as a man, as a leader, all that stuff. And when he has a bad game, I get that we all want to blame everybody and be mad, but look at what this guy's been through. And this is the only player that I think Alabama has failed, to be honest with you. He announced that he's off to the NFL. Interesting timing. I would love to know what those conversations were like because I think Bama acknowledges all the points that you brought up and I think there would have been a respect factor for him if he was open to the idea of returning. I don't know that that was the case. I don't know that he went to the Bama coaching staff and said, look, I'm kind of debating what I'm going to do. If I stayed, what would my what would my NIL value be to stay here? I don't know if this was a situation where Bama then went back to him and said, we're not going to be we're not going to be rolling out the red carpet to make that happen. We're going to respectfully, we feel like we're going to move on. We're going to go in a drip direction. I don't know that Bama did that. We can speculate all that we want until we actually find out real legitimate intel on that. I don't want to assume that I know how those conversations went. It wouldn't surprise me if Bama was a little bit reluctant to basically bend over backwards to keep Milro and if that played any part in his decision to go to the NFL would not surprise me. Mutual parting your voice, as they say, kind of it could have been, it could have been because it didn't work, it didn't work. And look, he had moments. He definitely had moments and I've been much more of a Milro defender than not. Okay. The last two years, really, since he proved me wrong and beat out Ty Simpson for that starting job, I have been one of those guys who has tried to give him the respect, especially when he was a better player down the stretch in 2023. I think if you are trying to evaluate what he's going to be at the NFL level, that's an entirely different conversation than who he's been at the college level, but it shouldn't be thrown out. He's going to be extremely polarizing for a lot of people. I think it's insane if he's in these first round discussions. Absolutely insane, negligent. If NFL people tell me that he's worthy of that and you just have to default to the skill set, I'll roll my eyes and tell you, all right, yeah, I know nothing. I haven't watched this guy at all. I don't know anything that what I'm talking about for the last two years. I mean, I get it from like, I like it more than Anthony Richardson, for sure. If that guy could go as high as he went, then I'd rather have more than him. But let's not do that again. Yeah. Like so and we'll see what this, what this conversational split lead leads to with him because he's not going to be in the same category as Anthony Richardson with him, but pretty much by the time draft he rolled around, it's like, yeah, he's going to be a top five pick. Yeah. Um, but if Richardson had no Rose, like work ethic and leadership and all that, I think he'd be fine. That's the thing is that the intangible stuff is, you know, physically, he's really gifted, he's obviously a great athlete. It's hard as the work ethic and he carries himself. He's great. That other stuff is kind of what being a quarterback is about. Yeah. Um, it's interesting because there's a little bit, you know, I think no row and will have us have a lot of common too. Like that's, that's a guy that people, and I don't think he's going to get the opportunity to have the pre draft conversation that Levis did where it was seen as a really drastic fall that he didn't go in the first round. I don't think it's going to end up being like that for J. Lemma row. Um, I'll be very surprised if it is, but look, I think he'd be a guy that, if you're telling me, I got to take him in the first two rounds, first three rounds and be like, I can't get there, but what I being intrigued to have him as a backup, to have him in the locker room, to have him learn under a veteran quarterback to see if there are things that he could just be able to study and see. Then yeah, I'd be on board with that. Um, because there are just been too many bad moments from him this year to make me think that's all the sudden going to be different after working with one of the best offensive minds in the sport and Kaylin to board. It's not like he was still working with Bill O'Brien. It's not like he was still working with Tommy Reese this season. Um, I would just be terrified to take that guy, anything earlier than the middle rounds. And I say that as somebody that really is grown to respect who he is and find myself defending him more times than not. But I'm just not quite there with him being this elite prospect in the way that some probably still think he is. I was being so nice and respectful. I mean, it's not to laugh until you described him as well. I was written in cursive. And now I just can't say that. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But yeah, that's, that's, uh, yeah, I get it. You know, I think Milroy was had some great moments. I think that you can credit him similar in a way to a little bit of the when you were his conversation that we had a couple of pods ago, where it's like his performance this year shouldn't determine his legacy at Alabama. He got you to see championship game. You know, he won the championship game last year, you know, and, and, but I'm talking about the road specifically, you know what I'm saying? Like those individual wins that he had, you know, LSU, uh, Auburn, the things that he did last year, you shouldn't just look at his final year and be like, Oh, this goes a bomb. So that's, that's it. Oh no, it's twice. I mean, like, that's, that's a very hard thing to know. Or that is soy-speaking. Like, yeah, I think that, you know, there's a lot to say about this baby team, a lot to laugh about. I think the coach, they fired some co defensive and I brought that up really. Yeah. Neither of us really know what he does. I'm sure that fixed it. Uh, sure. That's going to fix the offense. But to your point, again, saving struggling year one, I know, let's get some of their guys in. Um, but that being said, this was, I think pretty roundly, a very disappointing year for a Bama team that the whole story was the leadership was coming back. I'm like, I'm more him. You know, we're going to bring in. I mean, yeah, I mean, we were just three times the player. I think anyone thought we talked about cam Coleman and the preseason. And this guy is already as great as cam Coleman is. Uh, I'm not going to go into all this stuff, but they are lots to like about this family team. Like I said, they still have really talented roster. I think you're about an off season away where it's kind of teetering to where, okay, you get the right guy and you're right close to where you were before. If you don't start to get a little bit more complicated. Here's, here's one of the issues I have though. And again, it's your one. We're going to enter your one coaches on this podcast. I do think Bama has some real questions moving forward with the bore and not hot seat questions. I'm not going to be the guy that's going to put him on the hot seat going into your two others will Brandon Walker will probably tell you that if you lose his one game next year, he's going to get fired. Um, but the questions that we should be asking about to bore, are you developing? Are you developing in the way that you were heralded for doing so at Washington? Because I don't think Bama's going to have a first rounder in this draft. At Washington, he didn't have a player drafted at all after year one. And it was different because you could sell it as look at all these guys coming back. So the guys coming back, Bama's not going to have a bevy of first team. All SCC guys entering next season. I will see if that plays out by seasons and obviously that's more important than preseason all conference teams. Who's going to be preseason? All SCC outside of Ryan Williams. That's, that's an issue. Okay. And I can't say that this cupboard was totally bare just because of the 30 day window, wherein obviously they still lost Caleb Downs. You lose Isaiah Bond, Trey Amos to old mess. Like you lost significant guys. It was still the number one team in the country in terms of talent composite. You still had what 16, five stars on that roster. So like, and your development, remember the O line? So after the football, you bring in Braille Street, like it felt like at least a solid team. That wasn't going to bear issue coming in the year. Yeah. Yeah. So like it's, it's somewhere in between. Um, look, it was exposed to the 30 day window, but it was still a team that you had pieces to be able to try and develop. And I don't know that they trended in the right direction. And some of the bowl game results dictate how we feel about that. I get it, but, um, I just don't feel as strongly about the board going into year two, um, compared to where I thought I would be at this point, when he got the job. Yeah. This is about what I expected. I, you know, me, man, I mean, this is, this is exactly. I mean, it's the fact that you're following the legend. I said that the guy who follows the legend always struggles. I think that the bore was put in a pretty ultimately unwinnable situation that he made decisions that he made worse, right? I think that losing Ryan Grub, um, who Seattle fans aren't in love with right now. It was a really big deal. Talked about that at the time. Um, not going to get into the Kane Womack thing. Kane Womack's not where they lost this game. So not worth talking about Kane Womack right now. That would be for another day. Uh, but I think that he did a little bit of the hiring of his buddies thing. I think that because the resounding chorus was you're not going to, you, you don't understand the SEC, he almost kind of doubled down and, and it was like, I'm going to get a couple of guys, you know, get the guy from, um, oh, it's a Buffalo or whatever, the DB's coach, but I'm not going to get like, I'm not going to cave to the pressure of the outside noise. And I get as a football coach, why people do that? To be clear and if it worked out, it would have been a genius move. It would have been, Oh, next, Saban. He's not listening to Paul Feynbaum and who ever all the lists say he needs to hire. Uh, but that being said, he needs to get on bleacher report and read the list because that, that method did not work out. So point being, I'm not going to take it out. If you're going to get started on south.com and read the lists, we come up with better lists and sorry, not, not trying to, no, no, no, that's me taking shots at them. That's like the buzzy names of like, is John grood available? Like that's what I'm talking about, not the stuff that you guys do. So, or the, like, that's we outright. So point being in the portal era, it can be done. That's where I'm going with it. Yeah, I agree. I agree. It can be done. I agree. So there's no excuse for this performance. If you're Alabama, okay, you need to do better than this. You have the A, you know what it is. We all know what it is. There's no reason to even talk about it. You guys know the rules or the, the, the, the, you know, the rules of the game. You wrote the book. Okay. So is Alabama going to be the standard bear for the SEC going forward? This game was a big inflection point. I think that a smart coach that adapts like Nick Saban, when Nick Saban got punched in the mouth like this for a season, everybody was on, you know, like, he wasn't answering Mr. Terry's calls for a couple, for a couple days. He was, maybe that's not true, but you know what I'm saying? He was mad. He was hot. He was, you know, much of the little debies he was in the, he was in the lab. So I'll say that I think that this all season is going to be the biggest, even bigger than last year for Alabama, to be honest. Very important. Would expect them to spend very big in the portal as well. Post spring. They'll definitely make some moves there. Citrus bowl. Shane Beamer, verse Brett Bielama would have been an epic fight. It would have been great. Um, it was the meme come to life. It really was the pointing and the cat. I don't know what was, I don't know what show that was that originated from. Oh, yeah. It's a reality show. I don't think anyone actually saw the show. They just saw the meme. Real housewives, something like that. I don't know. Um, confusing how this happened. And if you didn't see this live, it's kind of confusing to explain it. But basically Bielama was trolling South Carolina, which is unbelievably slow substitutions. Beamer kind of had enough of it after Bielama did the substitute suggestion right at South Carolina during injury stoppage. Haven't seen beamer lose it like that before ever. Great camera work to catch beamer after the TD that South Carolina scored in the next possession. Um, you can read those lips. Mm. Mm. I guess the last lap because Illinois gets the win. The real question we need to be asking. Bert or beamer. Parameters matter in that. Oh, dude, I'm so glad you brought this up. What do you think? If it's us, if it's UFC, it's beamer. Because people don't realize how much beamer gets after it in the weight room. A lot more than people realize. Beamer obviously very different physically. Seven years older, twice as heavy as a beamer. Seven years. That's actually crazy. I know. That's kind of weird to care. They're waiting a little bit differently. Yeah. If this is boxing or bare knuckle brawl, I'll probably go Bielama. But if this is anything like anything goes, I'm not going to doubt the scrappiness of beamer, even though Bielama, former Big Ten nose guard, I'll be at 30 years ago, probably has lost a step or two. Um, but I think there are a lot of scenarios in which beamer comes away with a fight victory depending on what you would allow him to do. Yeah. I think that that was the classic case. Guys, I like beamer more than 90% of people. I've said this over and over again. I think the college football should be fun. As someone drives, who appears to be some type of a tank through my neighborhood. Anyway, I think college football should be fun. Um, I did point being like, I like some of the antics he does. Uh, this is not the spot for it. I, I think I don't even really want to get into the call. Cause I like, it's just not, it's not worth dealing with the vitriol. But I think, I think for that a point, I'm going to be honest with you. I, I really do. I really do. To think about the T pose situation, the whole concept of beamer's defense being, well, I check with the refs and it's cool. It's like, okay, man, that's not again, it's a unwritten rule. You know, it's like, well, I asked a cop if I could go, okay, man. And so I'm not even going to get into all that. I, but the fact that beamer did his little like sneaky, sneaky move. Brett said, Hey, no, and beamer kind of came away with it, looking to me. Like he backed down. I know in the moment he looked really chippy, but I think that the overarching. View, when you lose the game, the way he did, makes him look a little, a little bit immature. We play the results with that. Yeah, if he wins, it's liquidated to fire his team up. Right. You were just fired up. I mean, he's very fired up for this one. Maybe the Nicki Minh worry deal with him opting out of the second half had beamer with a little bit more edge, weird situation with the star South Carolina defensive back must be something about playing food bowls in Orlando that makes star players go, Nah, I'm good. The rest of the day. I don't know. Well, you're surrounded by food. You get hungry. Yeah, I'm out boys, just like I'm good. But the actual game was a lot of fun. It was and worth mentioning this is going to sound like I'm just making excuses for South Carolina. I'm not ill and I deserve to win that football game. South Carolina was not at full strength. Cal Canard, your Nagersky award winner, opted out, rocket sanders opted out, given his injury history at the position and the year that he had kind of rebuilding himself as a running back. I don't necessarily push back on that decision at all. And then the Nicki Minh worry situation was just weird, very, very weird. South Carolina still would have been fun to watch in the playoff at full strength. This game, even if they had lost it, 35, nothing wouldn't have changed that for me. But let's not do the thing where we pretend it was just a massive slap in the face to have this team not in the field. Let's just instead acknowledge that this was the best season of the post-spurrier era. And it's something that South Carolina should be able to build on with a top 10 returning quarterback in the sport in the North seller. So had moments in this game, but not necessarily quite as crisp as he was down the stretch and he've also got a top 10 defensive player coming back from the sport and Dylan Stewart. Those are good things. Those are things that South Carolina has not typically had that will make it a fun team to talk about. And if you're talking about how do you change the conversation about your program, South Carolina did that in spades this year. And it would have probably helped if they had won this game going away. And if Beamer gets some sort of flex on Bilema and his team wins, ends up winning by three touchdowns after that sequence happens, it didn't happen that way. Um, and he ultimately doesn't get the last laugh that he had been kind of hoping for. Not, not quite two years ago with a Notre Dame bowl loss, but you felt like, Oh, man, this was an opportunity for them to really close with an impact statement. They felt short of doing that. Yeah. I mean, no, and I, I agree with you on the play, the results thing. I think at the end of the day, football's about winning and losing, right? I think at the end of the day, South Carolina had a great season, you know? And I've said this at times, we are so pushed towards the playoff and compete. This was such a foreraising, such a ceiling raising season by South Carolina. And they should be so proud of this season. That being said, and do we feel a little silly about talking about the playoff as much as we did guys? I mean, that's, that's why when we take here is like, you know, what if we'd enjoyed the season more? What if instead of spending the last two months talking about how it's an injustice and we need to get a petition going? Like, what if we just said, Hey, the cards are going to follow where they may and we'll figure it out. And I don't think that even was distracted or anything. I think that he obviously put a lot of time, you know, prepping for this game with the trick plays and stuff. Like I don't, but I think that optically, you know, South Carolina, you know, this is a year that the SCC's not look great. And if you want to be taken seriously, this is your moment to shine. You could have had one of the most impressive SCC bull victories, which is not saying much, you know, it's similar to what I've said at times about Mizzou where it's like, you guys want to be respected. This is a team you keep trying to convince me you are, let's do it. Show up and do it. I want, you know, we, I'm not going to loop you in here. Doesn't help me if Bert beat Shane Beamer, right? Especially with the way the SCC is. I know that, you know, sometimes the controversy of the SCC going downhill can be, you know, helpful, whatever. But I think that this is a team that was a really feel good team. It was a team that we really enjoyed watching all year. And when you make the whole narrative, the conversation about how this team was robbed instead of, Oh my gosh, look at this beautiful season. Look at rocket Sanders, how healthy he is. Look at when we're at sellers, the progress he's made. Look at Dao Lockens, who was supremely missed in this game. I look at like what Beamer was right about all this stuff. But it's the final take in the season is you guys talked about the playoff all year and the final images or coach being held back by several get back coaches as Bert looks out at him in points and laughs. It's not good, man. It's going to be better. And that's it. And I love this team was so fun. This was the most fun South Carolina team to watch for sure. Since barrier and Mike, well, there were a couple of games that won the one team in 22, you know, but on a week to week basis, this team played like a good team every week. You know, they had to go close to the 22 season, but they had some stinkers in there. This team had won against Ole Miss, but yeah, so that's it. I think they had a great season. I don't want to get too caught up in playoff stuff. But at the same time, like, let's talk about our goals here and let's be happy for the present. That's what you should be as a South Carolina fan. Yeah, I agree. A good team that could have had a better moment to be able to close the season. Ole Miss, different direction. It's, yeah, we'll get to it as let's let's start with the positive first. Let's get the positive out of the way for Ole Miss who just dominated Duke in every possible way in a game that probably 12 people were watching after the playoff game. You saw that when Ole Miss was right, it was one of the best teams in the country. You saw it on Thursday with how they dominated a lesser Duke team. Jackson Dart finished his career just all over the Ole Miss record books. And he made a throw in this game coming back across his body about 50 yards downfield. That was just ridiculous. Was one of the best trust if you've seen all year. Lane had him out there late, slinging it. Apparently he was checking into past plays when he wasn't supposed to. Whatever. Okay. Like, yeah, like Ole Miss still playing. It's defensive starters well into the fourth quarter. I don't care about any of that. Let those starters play as long as they want to. Last time, many of them will do so in college. I don't care if it's considered running up the score. Ole Miss dominated Duke from start to finish. I will say Duke running that reverse pass on the kickoff return late in the game. That was actually pretty fun. Pretty cool that they scored on that. I fully support doing random dumb stuff like that in bowl games. I've no problem with dumb stuff in general. You have some dumb stuff to do? Do it. Yeah, middle of September, we can do dumb stuff. I don't care. I don't want to limit it to just bowl games. One other nice thing. Lane won 10 games for the third time in the last four seasons, doing so at Ole Miss. If we had said when he took that job that that would be a realistic possibility in a four year stretch, we would have said, dang, that's really, really impressive. He developed Jackson Dart in ways that I didn't think were quite possible. And I think that staff deserves a lot of credit for the portal editions that they made, especially in the defensive side of the ball, how much they nailed those. I've said that ad nauseam. Oh, one, one last positive thing. The juice wells. Shane Beamer trolling celebration where he did like hold me back, hold me back. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. I will say I would probably take Beamer's side in that disagreement. Okay. A plus for creativity. It's pretty creative celebration in the moment. I think even Beamer would be like, all right, let's, you did your thing in that moment. I'll give him that. Okay. So I want to, I want to get all that out of the way. We got the positive out of the way. Can I cook for a second? Well, please. The bad is that Lane Kiffin's been speaking like a loser for the last month. And I'm over it. I'm over it. He said during this game in the fourth quarter and then afterwards in the post game, the that Ole Miss wanted to make a statement against Duke because Duke went into overtime with SMU and the ACC got two teams into the playoff. So according to Lane Kiffin, beating Duke by a billion points would make a statement. It didn't. It did not. I don't think anybody in that selection committee watched Ole Miss against Duke and thought, guys, did we make a mistake? I don't want to do the whole rant again about why I feel zero sympathy whatsoever for Ole Miss, not making the playoff. And I totally disagree with their very, very biased opinions about why they got snubbed. I don't want to do that whole thing again. But Lane bringing up the transitive property is a pretty dumb thing to discuss here, even by by those standards. All right. SMU went to overtime against Duke. So by beating Duke by more points, then Ole Miss would show that it was more deserving of a playoff spot than SMU. OK, Indiana lost to Notre Dame by fewer points than Georgia did. And IU did that in South Bend. In Lane's world, did Indiana make a statement that it was more deserving than Georgia being in the playoff or was Lane too busy tweeting through that game about how the selection committee messed up? Let's also remember that when I said state, I think it was a little beyond the anyway, cheering for Penn State was very lame, very lame. Let's also remember that when SMU went into overtime against Duke, you know what? Duke had starting quarterback, like Murphy, you know, who Duke didn't have against Ole Miss, Malik Murphy. Duke started a third string quarterback with 33 career pass attempts. What are we doing? Lane is delusional. If he thinks the selection committee believes that the ACC is just as good as the SEC. They didn't tell us that. They didn't say the ACC is just as good as the SEC. We got to treat these conferences equally. Duke had the same record as Ole Miss in the regular season, yet Duke was unranked and Ole Miss just missed a playoff spot. SMU went 8-0 against the ACC and still the selection committee nearly left that team out in favor of three SEC teams that went five and three in conference play. And I get it. You've got to sell it to your team. It's us against the world. You want to get that 10th win. You want to be able to prevent the alternative, which teams like South Carolina and Alabama, we've already discussed, they were unable to prevent that alternative. But good Lord, move on. Move on or better yet, go back in time, replay that Kentucky game with a different result instead of just crying about how unjust it is that you didn't get a chance to play for a national title as a nine and three team with three losses to teams that were outside of the playoff lane. Take your ball and go home. You're not helping yourself. This isn't the marketing thing. Oh, it's got a master plan. He's always got to be on social media. He's always finding ways to engage. You are not helping yourself. You sound like a child when you spend all off season telling us about how you've grown and you know what? Maybe you have grown as a person. All right, but I've seen nine year olds at summer sports camp that handle losing better than you do. Go play your hypothetical football game on college football 25. Get back to recruiting everyone in the portal and then move on to 2025. I'm done with it. I'm done with it. Oh, man, if you guys watch the YouTube there, I just muted myself because I realized how much I breathe whenever Carter is going out of that. OK, here's what's so funny about that. I'm not even OK. I'm almost kind of on the other end of this because I just know who they'd kept it is. I'm not trying to be made. I actually think this is really funny. I think that at the end of the day, you're you're right. Everything you just said is completely right. I agree with every single thing that you said. Remember, we talked about our fear. Expectation is rooted in disappointment fair. This at this point, I'm like, dude, if you're going to be Mr. Hot Dog and be tweeting every day, OK, like at least you didn't. Hey, you did get the win. You did. And it's kind of ironic in that way because the whole question about all this was kind of like culture, you got all these transfers in and they can't all get on one page against Kentucky, you know, LSU, and they kind of like have again, like, you know, no one's going to blame your flu. You know, so point being, I think that we have. Man, this is just such a funny place to be. I'm sorry. I like, I almost don't even want to be mean to Lane because it's so entertaining. And again, I don't expect him to be that guy. I just don't anymore. I think that we saw who his team was. And so he's kind of in that beamer tier of guys that are more about the headline than the at this point, championship aspirations. I think that beamer moved himself and Lane given this year. And now we got to see who beamer is, but I think Lane is just so firmly here. And we'll see it again. He beat Georgia. Like it's just such a weird year for him. I don't know. I think that's kind of it when it comes to like the Lane stuff. I think that overall, you know, you didn't really say anything about your culture here, but if you're going to talk to much of Mac, at least you back it up. So I'll give you credit there, man. I'll give you credit for that. And in your team, like I said, when it was right, it was really good. It was fun to watch your defense finally showed up and looked like you hoped it would throughout this season. And that's great. And I'm I'm fully on board with Jackson Dart being a much better quarterback than I initially gave him credit for and all these different things. Like I get it. I support most of what Lane does on social media because when you're the head coach at Ole Miss, it's different. You do have to do a bit of selling. I get all that. I'm just so sick of this. Because this is going to continue to be a problem in the 12 team playoff air. If we have coaches that continue to think that it's just, Oh, my gosh, how could they ever disrespect us? And look, I don't like to do the bull results are they reflect how we should have felt in the regular season because of all the different moving pieces. The SEC hasn't helped itself. So your argument that, Oh, my God, you just have to give the SEC the benefit of the doubt and every single one is the SEC is still getting the benefit of the doubt in a lot of these instances. They they are. What other teams with nine and three records are being discussed? Nine. Sure, but this, they're they are in that spot because they are nine and three. And we're talking about 11 and one compared to nine and three. All right. So like let's not pretend like, Oh, you think that these, all these things are equal. You have to actually look at what the games are. I'm just so over it with Lane. Like I'm, I just hated the way that he tweeted. Like I, I, I already talked about before. That's close as I've come to muting him in the past and it's just, it's silly. And he can't actually believe all this stuff at this point. He sounds like a conspiracy theorist. Like he does, you know, Carter, I again, I agree with everything you said. I'm not disagree with you. I just, dude, I got there in one of the saving games where I was like, this guy's just never going to get there. Whatever, I compared him to a certain figure who has become a lot more relevant. Our political discourse written, still not even going to say his name. But I think he fully took that step over the last couple of weeks. But point being, I just, it's funny to me at this point. And I can't believe I'm saying this. I truly can't, you know, but there's a, the Bucky Perkins tweet that said, you know, last three years, guys, you know, they're not three years. Sorry, 22 was off, but 10, three, 11, two, 10, three, this is kind of the best stretch for all miss since I is the best school miss since integration. And I can't believe I'm giving them kind of a moral victory here. But, you know, the consistency, like, this is what you are. You are consistently about Sidwood team. I always like, I'm just like, yeah, you guys, I don't see this team being disciplined for 12 team playoff. You're going to need to win the SEC, which I don't think you can do to get up by, because you don't, if you give like given four games in a row, he's going to blow one of them. So I just, it is what it is. So it's funny to me. It's entertaining. You know, I'm just done talking about him as a contender after this year. And that's that let's move on LSU. No, Dave, Miranda revenge game. Instead, it's a Garrett Nussmeier is one of the five best returning quarterbacks in the sport game, just slinging it all over the place, even without Kyron Lacey. It's great. Baylor couldn't get pressure on him outside of when they drop that edge guy into coverage and Nuss just didn't read it. I tell you what, that Nuss, man, he'll get one of those. He'll get one of those like every game. Evan, Kelly, just they would show us when you were in the arm punt. At least it's a punt. Nussmeier will go, hey, buddy, here's the ball at my 20. Yeah, just did not see it at all. Um, but yeah, I thought Chris Hilton Jr. He really capitalized on the opportunity without Lacey. I thought trade as green capitalized on the opportunity without Mason Taylor. Even though I'm in meeting with games, I'm already really good. He's really good. He's, he's AJ Green. Like we did two touchdowns in the Wisconsin game last year. This year he's getting interfere with. I'm like, if we had this gentleman, we might be in some other teams anyway. Yeah, I thought the LSU defense pre what week's injury actually played pretty well against the Baylor offense that as we talked about was kind of humming coming into this with Sawyer Robertson and had post week's injury. Not so great. LSU targets carted off the field. He's going to have surgery on the fibrilize fractured fibril and he's apparently like possible to return for the spring, which I did not expect with it. The scene that was the team kind of like surrounding him as brothers, super emotional. Kelly said afterwards, a dislocated ankle. But ends up getting fibula surgery. I don't know how that works. His leg got very messed up is what we know and good that he's not going to be dealing with like a nine month injury or something like that. Cause that would have been like, well, how would you have treated that? Like, would you have traded a healthy week if it meant losing that game or weeks being lost for nine months and you win a ball game? I think certainly an all time football gods move by me is like, you know, Bailey was moving the ball kind of at the end of the half there. LSU has already gotten up to like a couple score lead. And I say to the room, people, you know, I really wouldn't mind it if they score here. Like I hope like this is still a competitive game, you know, and of course, they score horrible injury. Come back is mounted. I'm like, careful what you wish for. Football gods. Why did I do that? Why did I say, Oh, you know, I hope the other kid keeps this competitive. That's all to me. That's so on me. Of course, I want to be in this ball game when, of course, I want to write off from the sunset, you know, and just have a good time. So, but yeah, I think that it was, it was heartbreaking. But overall that he has enough time. He's also a superhuman lot. A lot of people know his name a lot more will know it next year if he's healthy. Yeah, I'd be interested to see how Blake Baker uses the emerging with weeks. I shouldn't say the emerging, the emerged with weeks alongside Harold Perkins, who we found out was coming back for next year. Oh, yeah. And it'll be really interesting to see kind of the strategy of how LSU is going to use him and try and find a way to maximize that defensive, that defensive ability. But LSU ends up getting to nine wins. Brian Kelly is now 29 and 11. He is likely going to finish ranked for the third consecutive year in the AP poll. Nasmire back, as we said, those two defensive stars as well. Already been active in the portal with Nick Anderson, Barry on Brown, Bower Sharp. LSU will start as a top 10 team next year trying to make the CFP for the first time in six years. That's going to be the expectation. And it'll be kind of a no excuses season for LSU. And while I don't think it's, I don't think it's, oh my God, if Brian Kelly only wins nine games next year, he's getting fired. Some might come out and try and say that. I do think that it's the type of year where if you're coming in, preseason top 10 and the wheels fall off, we're having very different conversations. But this is what LSU wanted to have is to have those expectations going into next year dealing like, all right, you actually have a real foundation that you can build on. And for Brian Kelly, your task is making sure that this isn't 2023 all over again. When you had those expectations and you saw obviously that year come up short. Yeah, for sure. And I'll keep it quick here. I think that, you know, I was pretty, you can hold me accountable here. I was pretty aware of LSU not being very good this year. You were all over that. I'm going to give you a lot of credit for that. You said it and even going into the A&M game when I said, well, I've seen playoff LSU, you're like, no, not there. This team was not there. Yes, I'll give you tip of the cap even though I've given you crap for making a few things about LSU. Yeah, no, I'd point the, you know, I saw week one with, you know, John Emery, being a leading rusher and thought to myself, where do we go from here? Probably not an absolute championship. You know, losing against USC, suddenly that's aging a little bit better. Anyway, so I think that overall is pretty key to on this LSU team not being very good. I think you're exactly like 2023 had expectations LSU fell short 2025. We'll have expectations. I think that this year freeing myself of the playoff discussion very early, I was able to enjoy the Oklahoma game, the venerable game, the bowl game. I think that Brian Kelly did a lot of things to, you know, get guys back in the boat as far as, you know, you got Chris Hilton engaged. You got all of the portal guys coming in. So I think this is finally the Brian Kelly has his team. He's got his guys. It's going to be really up to him. Just don't execute anyone. Sorry. That's a joke from pre LSU, a Brian Kelly joke. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just avoid. They don't have a Sunday opener to start next year, do they? Well, that's also something that's really worth bringing up. They start with Clemson. So check back. Not on a Sunday, right? Not on a Sunday. So on a neutral site at Clemson. But it's not on a Sunday and that's all that matters. It could be worse than the things I've endured over the last couple of years. Good point. At least it'll be at a new location. I won't be there because I'm telling you, they've already gotten enough money out of me for this week one case. Clemson's out there with like three defensive starters from the portal. And all of a sudden everybody's just going buddy. Clemson's using the portal now. National championship hopes back on. Ellis, you still can't win an opener. I'll tell you what. Somebody is going to cancel after that bowl. I don't know if it's going to be Davo or if it's going to be Brian Kelly, but the jokes are going to be ruthless at whoever does not adjust for that. Anyway, that's true. All right, Mizzou beats Iowa rallies. We didn't want to spoil the ending on the last pod. If you stuck with this this long, this is the Easter egg. Seriously. Look, when we were recording and we recorded during that game on Monday, we knew Mizzou's defense was just going to wake up, put the clamps on. Just didn't have to say it. You know, we didn't want to do that. And for everyone that's upset about the offside's penalty on fourth down, that wasn't called someone feel like Iowa was scoring a touchdown, even if they did call that offside against Mizzou, didn't have a touchdown the entire second half. That Johnny Walker Jr. sack in the middle of the third quarter that held Iowa to field goal after it looked like they were about to make it a 14 point game. That was huge. The death row defense is Brady Cook was talking about afterwards. They played really, really well. Also Brady Cook basically just had Marquise Johnson available in the second half because your boy, we went down. Boy, we sad. Cook basically did his I'm back from the hospital performance. As easy as he was just turning into pro wrestling, huh? We need a, when a guy is just all of a sudden he flips the switch. Do we call that a hospital game? I feel like we have, we've seen enough of them now, you know, at the Brady Cook one, we've got the Hugh Freeze hospital game. We can forget. That's a literal hospital game, a hospital bed game. I'm talking like all of a sudden you realize this guy, I don't know what he did in that locker room, but he is a different player than who he is right now. And to be fair, Brady Cook was pretty much like this. I think for at least a good chunk of the day against a respected Iowa defense, but he was just, he was tremendous on the stretch. He really was. And I just, I came to really respect him. I did. And I know we got into the discussion about Brady Cook versus Drew Locke. I have since converted to the other side, but Brady Cook just ends up leaving a legacy as a winner. And to have consecutive 10 win seasons is no small feat. It's really not. We talked about how weird it was that Mizzou had a negative scoring differential in SEC play. Actually ended up being minus 20 in 10 games against core four teams this year. Mizzou might finish as a top 15 team this year, even though it got blown out by A&M and Bama. And the best win came against an Iowa team that was eight and five. Kind of doesn't matter in some ways. Kind of matters in others. Drink quote tweeted someone that said, Mizzou is going to go down as the worst 10 win team in history. And drink said, just make sure you add music city bowl champs to it. Love it. That's the old Jack Sparrow, but you have heard of me. It is a 10 win team. Who can't say that? Anyway, 21 and five and a two year stretch for Mizzou. Here's the other thing. I can criticize the lack of quality wins this year, but Mizzou's only losses in this two year stretch. 10 and three LSU with the Heisman Trophy winner, 13 and one Georgia in Athens game that they were competitive in. And they were very competitive in both of those games too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then this year, an eight win A&M team, the ugliest, definitely the ugliest of this group. Not competitive in that game. Not competitive whatsoever. The loss to a nine win Bama team, albeit with a banged up Brady Cook, Drew Pine has to come in. That game was just a disaster from the start. And then nine wins South Carolina in Williams price. And it was a game that they lost in the final minute after they came back. And then they let the Lenora Sellers drive happen late. And rocket sanders ran over 15 guys like he was Billingsley and Friday night lights. But go ahead. That's impressive. That's impressive. It is. One last thing, Blake Craig, shout out to you. Hits a 51 yarder and a 56 yard kick in the fourth quarter. Hits six from 50 yards. Looking like money meavis. Just saying. Free season all SEC, sign them up. Look, that's the identity of your drink. You just got to find kickers that do legs. Um, anyway, yeah. I think that, uh, I want to read too deep into this would be the Hopium thing, but I think a lot of these quarterbacks outside of literally just Taylor Nomuro, the kind of the old guard of the SEC for these bull games, uh, did represent pretty well. I think that Brady Cook, uh, Diego Pavia, Nuss is one of those guys. I think Jackson Dart, Jackson Dart, that was the other guy I was thinking of. Coing yours. A little bit, you know, I think that that's more like a playoff game. But in terms of like keeping the eyes in the boat, keeping guys from transferring in these other games, you know, I do think that a lot of them were able to ride off into the sunset and at the end, you know, it was looking pretty rough for them, obviously. And so the fact that that was, that was the actual kind of Friday night lights that was sent off for Cook, pretty cool. Um, but yeah, like it said, just as Ole Miss, you know, we talked about Ole Miss in Bizzou a lot last year. And I think their ability to set the floor after two really historic seasons. Yeah, they quote him, quote, didn't live up to expectations. But they also didn't embarrass themselves in a way that fans look at yourself in the mirror. What's been more common? Has it been you guys, you know, stepping on the rake or has it been you guys having at about par for the course season? And about par for the course season is really what you hope, honestly. You know, after, after what you guys did and you could build on that, you can recruit off of that, you can hit the portal. So I think overall, you know, we did a lot to bemoing Mizzou. But like we said, be sure you put that 10 wins in there. Yeah, they earned really hard. They, they earned the right to be bemoaned. Yeah, it sure did. If they had come into this year picked to finish 11th in the SEC, we would be praising this 10 win season. But because of how good they were last year and what they returned on the offensive side, they, I think they were first in the SEC and percentage of returning production coming into this year. And yeah, you earned those expectations and you earned the right to have a 10 win season be called kind of disappointing and kind of hollow as we did. But it still could have been so, so much worse. And drink deserves credit for that. He absolutely does. Did not embarrass this team in ways that others did or state just saying. Yeah. All right. Schedule for us. That's a pod, by the way. That was a loaded, loaded pod. We are going to record on Monday. We're going to preview the playoff. Our friend Chris Button is going to join us. She's been everywhere lately. So it would be good to catch up with her. We'll talk all things playoff as well. It's kind of taught put a bow on some of the SEC things that she saw throughout the season. And then I think we're going to wait until Sunday to record after that. We're planning on the fly here. This is what we're doing. Super strange to have Thursday, Friday playoff games. I don't know that it makes a ton of sense for us to be like, yeah, what's recorded a pod on a Saturday when people aren't quite as dialed in. So we might record that on a Sunday. We'll have to kind of figure out what the schedules we're looking like. But yeah, that'll be the plan. Record Monday of next week. And that pod will come out on Tuesday. If you haven't, leave us a five star review. Subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can watch every episode of started on South podcast. Follow us on Twitter at the SDS bot at set on top. At T.J. OK, thanks guys. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
The CFP quarterfinals were ... eventful. The guys discuss what went wrong with Georgia in its loss to Notre Dame, Will's experience witnessing Texas surviving Cam Skattebo and Arizona State, Alabama's blunder vs. Michigan, South Carolina's missed opportunity vs. Illinois, maddening Lane Kiffin after Ole Miss' blowout win vs. Duke, LSU's dominant victory against Baylor and Mizzou's late rally to beat Iowa.
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