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The Nolecast: Florida State football analysis

What is this team? Florida State football discussion after bye week

The Nolecast is the most successful and longest running Florida State podcast. Bud Elliott and Ingram Smith focus mainly on football, but also dabble in baseball and basketball. Please support the show by using our sponsors: Louisiana Hot Sauce, Tarpon Cellars Winery, The Legendary Home Loans team, Congruity Solutions, and Charlie Park.

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Duration:
59m
Broadcast on:
10 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
Irum Smith, but Elliot back again for another episode of the Nolcast. Alright, so had a little bi-week period to regroup, revamp, look at, revisit some of the tape that's associated with an O2 team and give you an idea as to maybe what we think is here, what we can, we'll have our obviously, we'll have our own Memphis preview and things coming up throughout this week, but give you as good of our ideas. We can as to how this team and program got to O2 and what the rest of the year will look like. As always, we want to thank our sponsors, we'll start off by thinking our good friends at Charlie Park. Charlie Park up there by the AC Hotel up over by Cascade Park, fantastic restaurant and rooftop bar there, Charlie Park rooftop bar.com and would certainly encourage making reservations on any kind of game weekend. Absolutely, man, so went back and watched it obviously, the instant reaction was not fun to do, but we have done, we've certainly done more depressing ones than that and the program is also bounced back and I am not going to sit here and lie to you guys or just give an opinion, I don't really hold it, it's going to bounce back immediately and everything will be just totally fine, every year is a new year unto itself, but there are things I like and there are things I didn't like in that ballgame and I don't want to spend too much time on the BC review, but I will say there are certain guys that I would bet on to bounce back who played poorly in this game in an uncharacteristic fashion. A couple of them who I think are guys that the staff likes, like they're not paying in the bus to deal with, who have good practice habits and are traditionally pretty good players for you. Darius Washington, who graded terribly by PFF and got his butt kicked, guys can have an off night, you lost his Boston College game for a couple reasons, I don't think you coached very well and some of your better, more dependable guys played poorly, so Washington was one. Toe Philly who was open on a couple of those throws and several of those were actually decent, some of the very few decent throws that DJU made, I just had some drops, man. Moorlach is not a guy that I think you can depend on to be a, like a real impact guy, but I generally think you can depend on him to not play like that, like that was pretty depressing. So you're talking about in a game in which you had very few plays, those are like seven plays as far as past plays to Moorlach and toe Philly that you get nothing out of that cost you first downs, that make you punt the ball back to Boston College pretty quickly. I do think you would see some, I was texting with Sonone about this today, I've noticed 24/7. By the way, I thought wrote a very fair and good article over it, but I should go read over the weekend and we were talking about like positive regression to the mean, okay? I don't really have any reason to think that that is FSU's true talent level or true ability level. And I talked about this on the instant. The line for the game this weekend came out at like two or one and a half or something. And I was like, that's just wrong. Okay. Either Florida State totally quits on the season and then the line should be like Memphis 10 or it should be like Florida State over a touchdown, which it currently is as we sit here tonight. Like North of, it was, I looked at it today, it was seven, is it north of that? Yeah, like seven, seven and a half, so, which makes a little more sense, like you did just play Georgia Tech down to the wire, right, like you have shown the ability to play not great football, but like not awful football. Like the Georgia Tech game was, okay, you know what? You are probably not one of the top 10 teams in a country level play and you didn't play all that great. Georgia Tech played a pretty good game. You made some pretty costly mental errors, some of the angles you took were poor and tackling could be better. And the Boston College game was, it was rather depressing, but like a couple of guys like that, I thought Fuller's comments today echoed sort of what we said on the on the instant, which is like, I don't know the D line didn't play that poorly. There are other spots in the defense that need to step up. So, which I agree, I mean, clearly like backers and safeties and shoot even some of the corners, it was, it was an off night that it followed a couple of poor practices in a row. And that's kind of why we were like, look, man, we got to see if some of these guys, how much they want it, how much they care and like who's going to step up as a leader, which which Norvell alluded to in the post game. Yeah, no, I mean, I think what you said there, like I literally had people who are employed by NFL teams reach out to me and ask me about large toe Philly after the tech game and some of the plays that he made and some of the plays that he's made throughout his career as far as catching the ball guys a very dependable hardworking guy that's been a really good seminal throughout his career and has given us some some pretty spectacular moments, whether it be the touchdown against Clemson or some of the other moments he's had in his career. So I've had, as you can imagine, bud over the last, you know, five days, I've had, I don't know how many former players and friends and contacts in media, national media, other large teams reach out to me and ask me like, hey, like, you know, behind the scenes, what's going on or whatever, there is no singular answer. There is like when I was a maybe 16 or 17, I remember Georgia had this very anticipated season that came up and everybody was really eager to see what a program that, you know, was kind of perennially at that time forever behind Florida and Tennessee and East and if this is going to be the year that they, you know, were the most program that a lot of people in the state have always thought they should be. And they had a really disappointing season and it wasn't like a real big secret that their quarterback was really enjoying the Athens nightlife and developed a potentially developed a strong recreational drug habit, okay? Like that's not, there is no like, oh man, if you only knew this one thing, everything that happened, these first two games, this case, there's, I don't, you know, there is no singular issue. I'm not picking on anyone, but like, what you just said with Kyle Moorlach is probably the best representation of what you've seen through the first two games. There was a stretch, but where, I mean, I'm legitimately talking over three practices. Kyle Moorlach caught every pass and caught a couple of passes that you didn't think were possible when they left the quarterback's hands. He had a stretch there in practice that was incredible. You know, always a guy that you realize is, you know, not going to make the league based off how he crashes in the end or whatever, but a pretty prolific pass catcher who just had one of the more frustrating nights that we've seen in a long time on Monday. That's what's been wrong with the scene in the first two games. You know, a guy that is an incredible player in practice and just didn't have a moment that it transferred and unfortunately you've had an awful lot of moments coincide with each other that, you know, the play that you've seen in practice and it's not just practice and I'm just telling you all, oh, it's such a better team of practice. I mean, look, you've got two years of table Lawrence to a Philly being an incredible receiver out of the backfield and he dropped a ball in the first quarter and you didn't see the ball again for another 12 and a half minutes or whatever in part because of it. It's just a strange blend of a lot of guys with some known production and both on the field and in the IPF and practice field that has yet to translate over to Saturdays. In the first two games, you played opponents who have a pretty good understanding of what they can do and they really lean into what they can do and span the heck out of it. In this Boston College game, I thought Florida State was trying to lean into what it thought it could do and it just blew up in his face in a bad way. Like who do they think they could trust? All right, Moorlach made a nice catch against Georgia Tech, got to open some good week of practice, good spring, like coming along, you know, fall had gone well for him as far as camp goes, a million drops, you know, to a Philly, right? Like a guy who in Dublin was one of your more dependable guys, a guy who was like the only playmaker you had four years ago when you were playing up there at Clemson when you almost won with Jermaine making that crazy, you know, tackle or even like you had really no business win in that game. But yeah, it is weird how it all kind of just fell apart. I don't have a million answers for you guys, and obviously like we not nervous do. I don't know that the staff has like a magic bullet answer here. I do think like there was a, I believe, was it snowing to put out the report that they have had some discussions though, as far as the in-game experience and entertainment. And I don't want to like just take this and like distract from, you know, the bigger issues like the on-field stuff. We talk a lot of ball in this podcast. I will say, and I shared this with some people at FSU, I've been doing this for, shoot what, 15 years now, the number of people who were, I would say equally or more pissed off about the in-statey experience, specifically the music, then the actual result of the game was a little bit shocking to me. Like, I probably got 50 texts, like, dude, what the heck happened? Why are they playing like just constant house music? Like there's no downtime to talk to the guy, you know, like next to me in the seat, it's just like like a constant club all the time, like this is, this is insane. I wonder if there wasn't, excuse me, I wonder if there wasn't a little bit of an overcompensation because you don't, you know, you have the big hole in the stadium. You do have a very limited seating, relatively speaking, you're talking about a building that last year had what, 74 or five or whatever, that's now 49, five or 51, five, whatever it is. It was, it was, it was, it was not enjoyable, man. And I know that people said, oh, it was the same thing as last year, we've stand up and shout on third downs and stuff, it wasn't. It was, it was noticeably different than last year. The good news is, look, I think this is of all the things we'll talk about, probably the easiest thing to fix, you know, and I think it will be fixed. I know that it has landed on a lot of people's radar and, you know, a good, good, that's something that, that everybody can show a linear progression and from week to week and, you know, it's kind of reminds me of the conversations that we have about the helmet, man. You know, Florida State is a relatively young program, but is a, is very much part of the deep fabric of college football, okay, and, but having said that, you only have a couple things that are really unique to you. You don't have 120 year history or whatever, you know, you didn't play in the first game or you're not some, you know, grandfather member in of the SEC or big 10 or something like that, but nobody has the war chant, you know, nobody has that type of environment. In fact, teams and the NFL and baseball and Turkish soccer league and sports teams all over the world have copied that because it's dope as hell. Let's be real careful about, you know, trying to, like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say this. It's exactly the same, but like the idea that Colorado is supposed to play Shador's song, you know, rap song after each score or after he throws for a touchdown or whatever. Like, yeah, no, we need to play the fight song. We need to, you know, college football is unique for its own reasons and not that it is, you know, provides a club like atmosphere or whatever else and you do legitimately have one of the elite bands in the country and lean into that. So I do think that'll change. There is a lot of, like, moving stuff, moving pieces, I wouldn't even say behind the scenes. I mean, the stadium is a construction site, it's very clear that you can see, but also, you know, I can tell you Florida State has a different multimedia rights partner. So that means that a lot of the different in-game components are different and that, you know, there was probably, you know, I don't know the inner workings of that part of it. I'm very familiar with the script from having, you know, had an entity that ran commercials in the stadium last year. I know that part of the in-game structure of music and commercials and breaks and stuff like that. I think it'll change. I know it bothered, you know, you and I talk to each other all the time and tell each other, you know, Twitter's not real life or whatever. Well, that was a real life thing. I mean, that landed in a lot of emails, a lot of text messages, a lot of phone calls. I think you'll see a noticeable difference this weekend against Memphis. I hope so and I agree that I've heard that they will be changing some stuff up. I kind of left, like, wondering why they did this and I think the new partnering is an interesting component of it. I would comp it a little bit to social media, right? Like at some of these social media teams, like social media in-house for teams, right? People who work there feel the need to, like, produce social media content, okay? And sometimes the best social media strategy is less, okay? Like, you will see now when teams get blown out, two or three years ago when, like, "Hey, we've got to have a Twitter department. We've got to have a social media team." And, yes, of course, everybody has a social media team. You would see these teams who are getting their butt speed posting, like, big-time celebration graphics on Twitter, like, to make when the score is now 49 to 7 instead of 49 to nothing. Or like, "Hey, you know, into the second quarter, you know, Miami's been in the gators 100 and nothing in the swamp." Like, I took a look, like Florida did not do that when they were losing to Miami. They posted the final score thing. But like, there is a bit of, like, a justify your existence, justify your employment aspect sometimes, to some of these, like, entertainment things. And I will tell you, as somebody who works in media, I also think sometimes it's, like, the people in executive positions are a little older and they get told, like, "Hey, this is how we reach the youth." Right. Right. Now, here's the thing. There's a real problem in college football that young people are not buying season tickets as much because, especially, like, I'll tell you, it's hard, dude, it's hard to get to all these ball games. And TVs are better, COVID changed a lot of people's experience because they went out and they souped up their in-home entertainment stuff a lot more and now it's, like, really good and you got to find creative and challenging ways to get people, but I get the long-term concern. In the short term, though, the vast majority of people who are paying any kind of decent money for tickets at all, which this year, obviously, there were a lot of people who were kind of ticked off about, you know, some of the ticket stuff, which understandably, like, I mean, it changes hard. They're not looking for the in-stadium club experience, let's just say. So maybe a more gradual change to that if we can. Yeah, I mean, dude, I had people in luxury boxes telling me they were trying to figure out how to close the windows. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I hope they fix that. Yeah. I think it'll change. I think your point, a lot of times, you know, new people and jobs or whatever, they just feel like they need to do something else to make it known that that's what they're doing. And I do think you're right, you know, a lot of bad ideas. And I'm speaking broadly here, not about Florida State, but a lot of ideas in sports and broader corporate America get green-lighted because they get marked as, oh, this is a way we can reach the youth. Well, I mean, there's been some very popular beer campaigns that probably were not the best idea recently, right? Like keeping it in-house, Florida State put receiver gloves on Martin Luther King Jr. Like, seven or eight years ago down, like that. Yeah. Um, I will say, um, I thought I don't know how any of this played out, but like the idea that the players chose not to have the war chain and I think is, um, is I'm very skeptical that that is even a, like, the player's input isn't asked, uh, on a lot of things. I'll put it that way, you know, so like, I just, I don't think that's the case. Yeah, that explanation, if you buy that, no, no, like, the people that run Florida State are not complete idiots. And they would basically need to be for that to be a believable explanation in my opinion. So now what could have happened is, hey, we're going to play more in stadium music. Let's get some player input on what they would like to hear as far as music in the stadium. So not every song is Phil Collins, or, you know, 80s hair band, which I get, like that, that could have happened. Yeah. That, uh, and look, we don't, we can transfer off something else. We don't know. It's been 20 minutes doing this. I'm the one this prolonging it, but like the biggest thing of last week, though, like it's more. Yeah. Uh, that's really more like pregame music and stuff. Like I, but yeah, we're splicing hairs and, uh, like I said, I think, I think there'll be a change there, and, um, you know, when your strengths, uh, Florida state is, is the chiefs and you'll lean into them and, uh, look forward to seeing what the future looks like as far as in the stadium experience. So it's a challenging year in general, man. I mean, you're asking your fans to actually, you know, actively enter into a, what is a, or enter into what is an active construction site. I mean, it's a, it's a challenge in general, um, a lot of, a lot of growing pains, uh, towards what ultimately we'll love, you know, we'll be a very positive thing for Florida state from a revenue generating perspective and this is always going to be a challenging year. Um, you know, hopefully the otherwise the, uh, in game atmospheres is, is enjoyable as it can be. All right. So before we kind of get to the more macro conversation, from my perspective, quarterback DJ is not giving you on the field, what he's given you in practice. He is not giving you on, on the, the, the game field, what he gave you at Oregon state or even kind of what you saw at Clemson, right? Now, I know, and I think it's pretty well accepted now that you don't have as good of a players around him around here at the skill positions that you had to Oregon state. And that's not a, like a, you don't have as good of a players as Oregon state usually as that would show really good Oregon state crop last year, you know, um, I probably should have specified that better in the off season, to be honest, when, when we took a lot of flak for saying like, I do, I don't know, like they had like three skill position guys drafted and like another one with a Texas, you know, a team is trying to win a national title this year. Like we'll see, um, to me, like if you're Florida, you're trying to win a conference title. You're trying to make the college ball playoff pretty unlikely at this point. You are a 45 to one 20 ACC currently, but that's not dead last as far as the odds actually. Uh, there are, uh, you're still out of Cal pit, Duke, Virginia, Wake Forest and Stanford and then tied with BC, still ahead of Cal. All right. Even after that. Yeah. Showing in Eastern Alabama. Good. Oh, I don't know if you saw that. Yeah. Florida State apparently is not the only program that is allowed or that is immune from, uh, from upsets. It's, um, Cal did, uh, did lose as a 14 point favorite, which is larger than, uh, and if a shoe has been an either game this year, about 45 minutes outside of Chicago would, uh, would tell you the same, um, uh, yeah, one is, is bad. But my thought here is for a variety of reasons, I think you need to start Brock Glen in this game, but I'm more of like the looking towards the future type type person. This is not a conference game. I think you need to see what you have in Brock Glen. There is some chance non zero chance that he's more of a gamer. Didn't really show you that in Louisville last year, uh, in the AC title game, but at the same time, he also got hurt like pretty quickly into that ball game. And thus you had to run till Philly Wildcat again, super dependable guy who just gave you a bad gaming as Boston college, but we've seen him make a lot of good plays before. If it was a conference game, I don't think so, but like coming out of the buy week in a non conference game, I would like to see Brock start because I think I've seen about enough of DJ. Yeah, I got egg on my face if DJ comes out and plays more like he plays in some practices, but like DJ in game so far to me is, I don't think I need to see that, but like, I don't know. I can certainly be wrong about this. Yeah. Um, you're like one of the brightest people that I know, so I'm not trying to be a smart ass, but I don't have a whole lot of need to listen to conference odds at this point. You know, I mean, like I understand the plot you're making that yes, this is an out of conference game, but, you know, I would, I would say that going on three is just as detrimental as seeing, you know, 45 to one turned into, you know, nothing to one or whatever monumental odds would be after losing yet another game. It's also only a, you know, in theory, it's really only an arrow. You can pull out of your quiver once. If you go to Brock and it doesn't look great, or are we talking about starting Luke in two weeks or whatever? I mean, you know, I just, um, ultimately coaches, uh, we'll see this, we'll make a decision. Um, at practice, DJ, you know, kind of, you can cut and paste what I said 10 minutes ago or so DJs had some great moments of practice, um, but, you know, there's been so many different breakdowns amongst the offense that isn't DJ exclusive by any means, uh, that I would tend to probably have a little bit of a longer leash with DJ, but, you know, look, it's a coaching staff. What I will say, um, I talked to somebody today about this, what they thought the difference would really be, oh, one, you don't know. You can extrapolate what you see in practice, but we've spent 23 minutes and 26 seconds now talking about, you know, what you've seen in practice doesn't necessarily transfer exactly to games, um, that Brock particularly, you know, with where DJ is right now, that Brock is probably more likely to tuck it and pick you up seven to 10 yards, uh, on certain plays. And that in and of itself is significant when you're having a hard time, you know, moving the chains and you need an offense to give you a couple of sustained drives, um, that that's not something that I'm writing off, but, um, if this was something that I thought if you change the quarterback, all of a sudden this offense is going to score 45 points or something, then yeah, but you know, let's do it. But there's, uh, you know, there's a lot of other things that I think have to click, uh, for it to, you know, really, really matters to who's taking your snaps right now. There's also like real world and real in building implications of going 0 and 3 or 0 and 4, you know, like, or going 0 and 2. Yeah. Sure. Yes. Yeah. Definitely. Two of their top recruits, you know, decommitted this week now, granted, I think the one, most of the, like the recruiting media, you know, been kind of figuring for long before the door to tech game, yeah, but you know, it's, it's a tough one because I do think at some point, you're going to need to kind of see what you have in Brock because you will have to make a decision like for 25 and I think you'd rather make that decision with some actual game tape on him and like some in game experience with him running the offense at some point this year, but it, it may not be this point that they also need DJ, um, to move around a little better than he is for whatever reason, like, like he, I don't know again, I don't know, but like, man, he moved better at Oregon State. It looked like then he, then he's moving so far here. It's almost like he's thinking through it too much and I don't, I don't know that. I mean, I haven't talked to him about it, but looks like he's kind of swimming a little bit when, when the game lights go on. No, definitely. I mean, I don't know if you saw the video that was popular on social media a week ago or whatever with, uh, had like a cranberry song on it or whatever it was, the highlight of his time in Clemson, uh, and, um, and people are like, Oh, look at the throws or something. No, don't look at the throws, man. Look at the, look at the lower half. Look at his, look at how he's moving around in the pocket and stuff. That's a different look and do. So for whatever reason, um, you know, we'll see, uh, but, uh, you know, oh, it's too tough for everybody, man. And I'm sure it's tough for DJ, uh, you, and this is not what he had in his head when he came here and, um, et cetera. But, you know, the guy is a, is an absolute veteran has been through some things, uh, in the past and just from speaking to some of his teammates, uh, recently, you know, it's a guy who's very mature and is a good teammate and doesn't, uh, you know, point fingers at other people or whatever. Uh, so, you know, whatever that matters, it is what it is. Um, and we'll see, uh, we'll see what it looks like going into game three. But I, you know, I'd have a hard time, uh, absolutely pull it down and we'll see what happens. You know, I understand your point, um, if, if I thought it was going to be a total turnaround for the offense and maybe it is, you know, maybe it is just that spark of, of energy that you need, um, and ultimately have confidence in the head coach to, if he feels like that's the, the move that needs to be made, then, you know, it'll be made at some point in time. I, I tend to agree. I mean, like he has swapped quarterbacks before. All right. So just going through some of these patreon questions, we've got a lot of, I'm going to read some of these and just, we kind of, you have like a macro discussion about the sport if she's placing the sport, et cetera. Um, with so many upsets this weekend are the only programs that can have great consistency year to year, the ones who recruit high school at that elite super level like Georgia and Ohio State, um, do you think Mike knows that he needs to make changes to the recruiting operation shouldn't he after, after the Georgia game and seeing what those players look like? Uh, how do they go from crushing port evaluations that well to whiffing this bad in this class? Um, basically like, like some stuff like that. So I do think like the point of the, the first question there is, I think probably yes, right? Now you can, I think be really good year to year. Not really the first question again. I'm sorry. It was like, are the only teams that can avoid the wings Georgia, I say, yeah, probably so honestly, um, because like you're just the, the, the math on it is just so high if you, if you just consistently crush high school recruiting that well, because like you're getting the very, very best and you're keeping the ones that are really working out. Like, yeah, Georgia lets a Jermaine, Jermaine Johnson go once in a while. But like they, forever Jermaine Johnson, they let go. They keep like three or four draft. Yeah. And part of letting Jermaine go was that you had the number one overall pick at that position. I mean, you know, I mean, that's, that's a different situation. Yeah. No, I mean, I think, uh, look man, I, I get pushed back sometimes when people totally use NIL and the transfer portal, like synonymously, they are two different things. No, they're, they're frequently tied, tied together. Uh, but you know, this is more portal related, but certainly a lot of portal activity happens because NIL won't be naive of that. Uh, but I do think that the portal has basically created metaphorical sinkholes and a lot of people's roster. You know, I just don't know, even, you know, Georgia, I mean, Alabama is recruited exceptionally well in high school ranks. And it was what, uh, 16 to 21 with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter or whatever, uh, they're having to start to wretched freshmen and true freshmen and secondary. If the kid from USF could throw an accurate pass at all, Bama has lost at home and, and Notre Dame would be the second biggest upside of the day losing the NIL because USF would have beaten bad on Tuscaloosa. I mean, he's got, he misses five touchdown passes in that game and I'm talking like guys who were not covered, you know, like, I'll give an example right here, bless Harris. That's a guy that I think three or four years ago, pre NIL, pre portal, granted you got him to be the portal, but like, if he was on your roster and buyers goes down, he's starting for you. Instead, you get TCU, which has a lot of money and a desperate needed O line and like, why, like, and bless blesses from Texas. So you can come back to where you're from pretty much guaranteed starters job and make really good money. I think that's a perfect example. Instead, when buyers gets hurt in practice on, was it Friday, like you got hurt or whatever day that was, I mean, you're having to run out Rob Scott who played hard, but is like buyers played well against Georgia Tech and like was, was it one of the building blocks I know they were very excited about internally. I think that's kind of like a one of your points here. It is hard to keep like really good college ready depth and this is something Kirby Smart is kind of complained about in the off season as well, and people are like, oh, boo, Kirby Smart, you just have to get like another robot looking linebacker out there. But it is hard to keep that kind of depth. And I do think that you will see more programs have pretty crazy up and down swing. And I don't know if the 105 is going to change that though. Like, have you thought about that? I've thought a lot about that, man. I mean, certainly, and I would pay attention to what happened. I would pay attention to what happened with the house settlement a couple of days ago as well. There are a lot of programs out there that aren't, if that's not up and running, there's a lot of programs, I think, that will have a challenge next year that is not, I'm not talking about floor state. You know, there's a lot of people that have kind of banked into what they thought that would be tied to their broader NIO pool. No, no, let's pull on this threat. This is something I know people in the space, beyond just you have been kind of quiet and like, man, they're spending that house money before this settlement is finished in terms of the crazy price that the anticipated deals are going to fetch for some of these high schoolers, this cycle, right? Like, I mean, there are definitely schools out there who flubbed the heck out of it. And I'm not talking like, yeah, floor state had some misevaluations this year. I still think if you bake in the evaluations over this year, but also, also like the last two years, that floor state's evaluation staff gets really high marks, okay, like period. I would still, even with some clear misses this year, and we had said like, they're not going to go perfect every year. People just don't do that. That's an unsustainable hit rate. And that's something you really can't say because when I said it about Jimbo, people lost their minds. And guess what? Not every single DB turns out to be like Terrence Brooks or P.J. Williams. You're going to provide us that, yeah, but like, there were programs that just absolutely missed and just didn't land guys in the portal this year because the money you got to pay for portal kids is right now, whereas they're killing high school recruiting. And the word is like, mmm, there's some of this money promise seems to be like maybe house money, you know, from the settlement. And I am, I'm really curious about this, dude, because I've heard this from multiple different schools who are kind of saying like, okay, well, this doesn't go the same, this doesn't go the way they expected. We'll see if they got, they got the kind of booster you're going to step up, pay for it because, you know, it'll be a very, very interesting situation. Extremely. All right, so the 105 though, no, I mean, to get to where you are, that's, it's fascinating, man, how many schools are really going to fund that? How many schools are going to, I mean, baseball is an example, it was baseball at one at 11.3, something like that. I may be off my, maybe it's 11.7, you know, maybe I'm off a little bit. What are you taking baseball with 33, 35, something like that, 32 scholarships, I mean, just think about that, think about the spin decision with that and how dynamically that shifts baseball if every, you know, absolutely what I expected, but every program in the SEC West has 32.5 scholarships and, you know, half of every other conference is working off a model that has 12 or 15 or something like that. That's kind of a good little business. Like, think about if you ran a minor league team and people had graduated, you know, from like the University of Minnesota, AA affiliate, like, to have a built-in fan base that has attachment just through the school, like, and you're, I mean, they're going to become much more talented. They got that many scholarships. Like, college baseball is going to be, that's, that's going to be pretty fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting. Not probably what people want to hear us pine on about it after a no to store, but that, that's, that could be very interesting. I could see college baseball becoming equivalent to a much level, a much higher level of minor league baseball than it's ever been before, you know, and you know what I mean, it's a long-winded way of trying to say that, yeah, college baseball may be equivalent to, you know, somewhere between AA and AAA baseball within five years or something like that. You're going to be able to stack with that many more talented players and with some of the, you know, money that certain, certain programs are aggressively pouring into college baseball. So anyway. All right. So, I'll take a couple of these because a couple of you are aimed at me and I deserve the criticism. So how did they whiff this bad in this class they crushed before? I don't think they whiffed on every single kid. I think it's, I mean, look, just in general, two games is it like two games is tough because you always think you've seen enough to make a full judgment on what the season's going to look like or what this player is going to look like or whatever else. I mean, I understand, I don't want to interrupt what you're saying, but I mean, think about how many, how many players last year, like, you know, I wasn't like Braden Fisk was bad or anything, but Braden Fisk against LSU was not the same player that was playing against Louisville at the end of the year. And that's probably not a great example is I don't know they were going to have a bunch of dudes that, you know, grow into second round picks or something like that. But I just think it's, it's a little early to write off. You can acknowledge. Yes. You know, this group of 16 players in the portal or whatever doesn't look like it's, you know, similar to what was brought in in the past, if that's something you want to say after two games, that's fine. I am, we'll give it a little bit of pushback or like sweeping generalizations after two games. So, I wrote down some things here, I'm going to cross them off the list. One, market factors. And by that, I mean, more teams, more players in the market this year, right? People saw how quick of a turnaround was achieved by FSU and by some of these other programs with the transfer portal. And I think they were more ready to pounce than they had previously been. So there was certainly more competition in the space for portal players. Florida State, I mean, I know you know what this is, but like, do people at home understand what first move or advantage is? You know, if you're a first move or advantage, like you can, you can, in some spaces, you can build a lever you just never caught, especially like certain things with patents like they have a, like a long shelf like patent type stuff. And if you're first a market man, for state and Ole Miss, and maybe one or two other programs had some pretty serious first move or advantage in terms of portal, right? Now, I know you and I have had like good nature arguments like, can you actually win a national title portaling? But like, there's no doubt that you can build a really damn good team doing so. And they did build a really game good team. I didn't get as hard to do now because so many more teams are involved in the portal. Like, look at TCU going to get in bless Harris, you know, for example, like that, like that's a guy that just logically you can't keep on your roster as a backup. If he's got one year left to play, wants to play and it's going to make starters money at a very rich private school, got it. So that was one right there, two, a lot of people have been like, hey, why are they idiots? Why are they trying to go all in? They should have just done a rebuilding year. I will push back on that a little bit. Number one, I'm not backing down from my thought that they, I think, felt internal pressure and they could disagree with me. That's fine. Like, that's, you know, we're not going to agree on everything. But I do think it felt some internal pressure to try to make it back to the playoff for two reasons. It's for the state. And so if you think you're there, you kind of need to be like, like, to make the playoff, you kind of need to be like a top 11 ish team. Well, that's a good goal for this program on an annual basis. Number two, I do think this is where the snub hurts you. I think getting snubbed makes it less acceptable to drop back a year and be like, okay, that was awesome. Had a lot of special players. Those guys are gone now. We're going to kind of, you know, regroup a little bit more of a consolidation of gains type of year. However, the only pushback I'll have on this is one. They're not complete idiots over there guys. I don't think any person in that program believed that they could win a national title this year. Right. I do think that they thought if we think things went well with the portal that they could make a run at the playoff, which I do believe was their goal. But I don't think that that should be confused with like a hey, they thought they're a couple of pieces away from winning a national title. I see in this program, at least not that I saw it, nobody said it publicly, I assume. Right. And nobody privately told me like, yeah, if DJ clicks, they can win a national title. That was just not said, not to me. I'm guessing not to you. But like, so in terms of figuring out what their evaluation is and the amount by which they missed, and they missed someone on some of these guys, not all clearly. Like, Richard Leonard's a hit, a couple of these other guys that I think do have some decent features. But I will point out. Richard Leonard played very well for you. Yeah. Exactly. Like the Florida fans who were like, oh, we upgrade on Richard Leonard. No, you didn't. And that was pretty clear from the start. Also think Arkansas upgraded by losing those guys to UF to if you watch a game, they put up almost 700 yards that I'll call the state list. Last weekend, they just had some of the most. That's gotta be the most frustrating loss we've ever seen. Did you see Connolly stat? No. It was like 80% of the plays so far this year that have flipped a win probability more than 15% occurred in that game. We were in that game. Yeah. We are. We're like a couple thousand plays in so far to the season. And if you're an Arkansas fan, you are just your quarterback plays like Vince Young and then you turn it over four times the second half and commit like 11 penalties anyway. The difference this year is that I do think they tried to thread the needle between making a playoff run, but also getting more multi-year guys at a lot of these spots. Ferguson is a multi-year. Jalen Brown is a guy that will have three or four years. No dirty. Right. The linebacker from Alabama. Did they misread the readiness of some of these players? I think it's clearly fair to say they did in some cases, but you. It wasn't like a they should have first guessed knew that those guys weren't ready to roll for you. I mean, if you you've done a pretty good job evaluating, you'd like your initial evaluation on these guys out of high school. They go to an elite program. The practice film in some cases is good. In some cases, I'm like, I don't know. We'll see. Right. But I'm sure they talk some guys who are at those programs and, you know, got their opinion on what they think, you know, Benson's a one year guy. Like, look, Benson's not anything special. And I like the band of people who were like, he was not going to play here if he stayed. They're right. But he's still your starter, which says a hell of a lot about what you got in the room right now. So you didn't need him. Like that's not a bad take, in my opinion. And the receiver quality this year in the portal was hot garbage. Like, it's not like, hey, they should have gotten this guy instead of that guy. I don't know who the hell you want to go get a receiver. Like Colby Young wouldn't get to come here. So partially, in my opinion, has had an impact on the NIO market is the belief in realization that the availability of additional positions other than tackle and quarterbacks may not be there. I'll put it down. You know what I'm saying? So, yeah. Totally. I mean, it's, you know, like you look at this, look at NC State, they went and they paid up big money for the Rogers kid of Ohio State's roster. He's a year one zero just like Jalen Brown was year one zero as a fantasy football term basically means like four or five star freshman receiver who doesn't like doesn't see the field. Historically, those guys bust at an astronomical rate. If you don't get on the field and bought as a freshman, there's some unique cases though, right? Ohio State and LSU, I think last year would have been the two most unique spots to pull guys off because think about it. Every single guy who started for those teams last year got drafted like crazy, you know. So NC State, I think, took a pretty informed shot. I like the shot that LSU took on Jalen Brown. He's already been in games and made some catches for you. I think he actually has a chance to be a decent player for you. So I don't hate all these portal takes. The portal takes are not the entire reason why they're own too. I do have some of the leadership concerns from the player level. I don't think you have great player leadership on this team compared to the last two years. They're not realistic to think you would. Not every single year is going to have a special leader step up. Ohio State don't know if the other area I think the snub hurts you is confirmation bias. The process that you had led to 13 and up and one of the best teams you've had since the national title team. It's hard in the moment when your players are hurting and the program is pretty shell-shocked to be like, "All right, we got to make changes." Now granted, that's what Norvell has paid to do. But the timing of it was really, really tough on this. More like it's not like a injury effect of like, "Oh yeah, they're still really butt-heard about the snub." No, that's not it. Some of the logistical and timing factors of it, I think, were really tough. Just because your process yielded 13 to no to not mean the process was flawless. And I do wonder if there will be some changes. I think logically, anytime you're a proud program like the Knowles, you start 0 and 2 and staring down, probably a couple more of those. Not necessarily like huge upsets, but more losses this season. It'll be on Norvell to look at the staff. Do we have the right balance of recruiters and coaches? That's the question I would be asking myself on him, which kind of relates to this next question here, which is basically like, "Well, one is, why can Florida keep its recruits in that pursuit cannot?" I would say a couple of those kids committed to Florida are legacies who I think would go there regardless of that, honestly. I got to over here a conversation this summer that I was not involved in, but I was shooting video at a recruiting event and involved a pretty highly-rated kid, and he got told by one of the reporters, "Hey, you know there are wind totals, four and a half, meaning Florida." And the dab is with him, he's like, "Don't care, go in there." If you want some intel on that, and this is a guy, Florida State was recruiting by the way, but it's kind of one of the things I just never really bought into as far as them getting this player. But that's one of the things, if you have some serious legacies, you've had kids from Madison County who would go to Florida State, if Florida State was 0 and 12. It's like 0 and 12, death/pill reverberation doesn't matter, they feel like that is their mission for God to go there and with legacies sometimes that happens. But my opinion on Florida State's staff as recruiters, sales, relentless energy relationships, is unchanged now, as it was when they were 13 and 0, as it was when they were 10 and 3, as it was when they were 5 and 7. Which again is why, and we talked about on the show before, do you have the right mix of coaching and recruiting? I think I got this wrong. I think, like, I believed that the, okay, yeah, they're not great recruiters, okay? I mean, I saw the article this week that said that, obviously, you know, do a great job battles in somewhere between like 6 and 12, I think it was as far as like, that's a hell of a fundraising job, man, you know, congrats on that. Like, I know people want to give you a bunch of shit on Twitter, but that's a good job. Like, this staff from a recruiting standpoint is not in these 6 to 12 range nationally. Now, I thought that, now that doesn't mean that they're not a good staff. I thought that there were some other elements of this staff, and so I think where I miss evaluate it, like, if people are going to give me shit or, you know, stuff, I should probably say, yeah, I think I was wrong on this. I thought like keeping the culture together continuity may be enough to keep the floor really high and clearly it was not, right? So if you're Mike, that's something he'll have to take a look at, probably not, I mean, he's probably already mentally doing it, but like in the off season, hey, man, how did this go wrong? Like, how are we not remaining a super high floor operation? And part of it is probably thinking back to that Georgia game. Do our players look like they're players? Do I need to get a couple more guys in here or any guys who are just Stone Cold killers on the trail? So I think I got it wrong. I think I bought into the continuity and just the like ball coaching ability and maybe got away a little bit from the belief in the all importance of talent acquisition. Yeah, I mean, long season still left to be had a lot of things to be determined. And you'll just have to figure out, hasn't have like the evaluation conversation because yeah, let's say, let's say this portal window was totally different than anyone you've ever had. Yeah. Doesn't mean that you lose to Boston College, you know, I mean, that's that those two things aren't related. It doesn't mean I'm not trying to deflect. I'm not trying to say anything else, but that's a different conversation. If you didn't hit your evaluations this year, then that's a conversation that we more have after like Clemson, Miami, Notre Dame, North Carolina, Florida, whatever that class of games, you know, that's more like the, and first of all, I would not classify Florida state that has having gone all in this year, I wouldn't know, you know, did they do more than more portal activity than, you know, maybe some would have expected sure. But it's kind of a different conversation, you know. So we'll see, man, it's certainly, you know, not the not the season that anybody wanted and understand people's frustration and understand that, you know, I'm going to be a beautiful thing when you start going to and, you know, that's just the, that's the job. I'm very fortunate to have the job that I've had, that I've had, and had a lot of incredible memories and a lot of incredible experiences and people get frustrated with you. That's, you know, fortunately I've done this podcast with you for 15 years and I'm not comparing the two things at all, but when you do a large podcast, it gets, you know, 10, 20, 30,000 listens an episode, people are going to tell you that they don't think you're right about everything. People are going to tell you that you're stupid with how you process information. People are going to tell you they don't like your voice or whatever. You know, so to that extent, you know, maybe I'm fortunate to have done this podcast with you for as long as I have and I'm not going to say that it's a great experience to have a lot of people upset with you or how they, you know, interpret the entity that you're associated with or the performance that you'd have with it, but, you know, it is what it is and we'll keep focusing on what we need to focus on and move from there, but yeah. You do want it though, because like, it's what makes everything possible. Yes, I mean, passion, like when we screw up something on cover three, yeah, first of all, I'm pissed, right? Like today, we didn't have a graphic loaded that I submitted yesterday and I was like, I kept talking, I wasn't even looking at the screen, like, I kind of had it memorized and I like looked at the screen to see, like, something I memorized like, a lot of graphic got like, but like when people criticize us and like, cool, you guys care a lot about your team. Like, if we get something wrong about your team, that's good, like, what you don't want is the apathy, right, that that's what you want in the passion. You can't sit here and say, oh my gosh, I'm so surprised by the passion. The passion is what makes this podcast possible. The passion is what makes two, four, seven, having a great, you know, two different podcasts within their own umbrella of passion is what let, you know, war chant have 12 employees or whatever they've got at this point. It's what lets a podcast like ours be voted the best college sports podcast in the world two years ago or whatever it's what the passion is what makes the battles in the largest collective in the country from a per member standpoint, you can't have that and then be upset when there's passion. Okay. It's it is what it is. We work in a highly passionate, motivated fan base doesn't come as a surprise to me. I'll put it that way. It's not completely. All right. Uh, other patron questions, do you think they're going to turn around and get some emphasis? Man, I'm a little scared to say because like they have had better practices at times and then gone out and that is not translated to the game and typically I would say Norvell teams for the most part have trying to think back over the years, generally played how they practiced and that includes the Boston college game. Like the last two practice of the week, I think they would admit we're not great and Norvell talked about it. So like, you know, we're not state secrets here. Like you talked about it in a press conference. Um, but like I don't think they practice terribly leading up the Georgia Tech, right? And that was, I think by all accounts leading up to tech was pretty good. Um, yeah, they usually judge this team internally pretty well and they'll shoot you straight about it. Like when they were bad internally, they would tell you, like in terms of like the, what, year one, year two, right? I don't know, man, like this is going to be a struggle. Um, we're, we're, we're not there. One of the things that I'm annoyed with myself is, you know, whiffing on this team because I feel like we really got a lot of these opponents correct, you know, I mean, like Cal is kind of decent Georgia Tech just lost a Syracuse. Like they're sort of in that like 30 to 50 range SMU, we were very skeptical on BYU, push them BYU, push them around all night. And like SMU is going to have to fight to make a bowl, you know, Duke, like can barely to afford pass. So, uh, you know, North Carolina basically got that right. I think Notre Dame kind of nailed, and I did not nail that we were going to lose it. No, no, no, I don't, don't get that wrong in Florida. So I guess my point is you're, you're struggling. Which of these teams all like, which these teams about to play down this stretch feels better about themselves. They did start season Cal does SMU know Clemson know, I mean, they hung a million points on Appalachian state, but that's still not like, I mean, the losing to Georgia may not competitive still says something to a lot of people do that. You know, Duke probably about neutral. I guess they luck box their way into that double overtime win or like Northwestern Miami. Yes. Carolina know and lost their quarterback already Notre Dame going to guess no that A&M win doesn't last all that long. Charleston Southern, not really keeping up with them until game week, apologies and Florida probably not. They played live way in the swamp and didn't cover against Sanford, by the way, so there's a 38 and a half point line. So for perspective there, Sanford this year is not quite as good as like Sanford FSU played a couple of years ago. Remember that one that was it. Bucky Hodges, Ducky Hodges, I was in Montana at the time and I was watching the game and I could get like every fourth play to load and watch and I called you the next morning and that was a frustrating one, but no, I mean, you said you're annoyed that the schedule was right. I'm annoyed that we're 56 minutes in and we've done one ad read. That's on me. Apologies. I want to thank our good friend, Matt Lewis, Grudy, GrudyHR.com, fantastic option for all NOLS and an option that many NOLS have been choosing recently as a method to optimize your business, whether it be HR or payroll, onboarding or litany of other things that Matt can help you streamline your business with, would encourage you to reach out to them. But it's somebody that's worked with our good friend Chad twice now. I will let you speak of the team over there. Man, Chad has such an awesome job, 580 I think it is, NOLS cast loans now, 844 if she knows the number to call also to hit the link right there. If you're listening to us on your phones right there in the show notes, if you prefer the website option, just click the link pretty easy. So great rates, great customer service, honest experience, love dealing with Chad, always just straight, you want to talk about a guy that is passionate. And I mean this is a common, but like, Chad will send 70 or 80 group like group tech messages and a half for sure, like he wants to know what's going on, he wants to know if he's going to get fixed right this second, and I'd like to, they don't have it tonight. Like he is, he's struggling with the rest of us for sure. And if you want somebody who talks about NOLS when you give them calls, well, he most certainly will, but he will, he will hustle for you as well. I know he's been putting up some huge numbers. So 844 FSU loan is the number to call, give Chad a shout, and does a great job now. I've used him twice personally, could not have had a better experience. So, um, all right, what, uh, let me see what else we have here, not a ton, um, in some ways it was nice to like, not play a game this weekend. And also, can we point out like how nonsense, like, yeah, okay, so you have two embarrassing upset losses. Got it. Cool. Most people know this now. It's documented. Do we, do we all have to be island games? Like, they got to be the only thing on TV. Like, you're going to play two island games before the NFL season starts and lose both of them as like 10 or 11 point favorites for like, that's what we're doing. The timing of that just like, no, it's all you. You got to play better. But the timing of that sucks, man. Right. I agree. Yeah, the Georgia Tech one, I can kind of not understand not dismiss the, it's the Boston college ones, uh, trouble one. Um, so, but yeah, that's a, that's the old Monday night game. You're back more in a routine at this point, you know, playing on Saturday, having traditional, uh, you know, the days that they associate when they talk to you about practice are back in order. Um, and hopefully you have a team comes out Saturday afternoon, Saturday, you know, noon gets a win, gets, uh, you know, it's not as though all the concerns, uh, ourselves in this fan base will be right in the world, uh, if, if you do win, but it front certainly be the first, uh, step in the right direction and, uh, let's hope that, uh, let's hope that we're having a conversation, uh, next week about a one and two team, but we will have, uh, like I said, you know, we'll have a Memphis specific review and, um, some other content for you later on in this week as well. All right. Enjoy. [BLANK_AUDIO]