[MUSIC] >> This episode is brought to you by Microsoft Azure. Turn your ideas into reality with an Azure free account. Get everything you need to develop apps across Cloud and hybrid environments, scale workloads, create Cloud-connected mobile experiences, and so much more. Discover what you can create with popular services free for 12 months. Learn more at azure.com. That's azure.com and sign up for a free account to start building in the Cloud today. But I look at this Tennessee team, I think they're different on both sides of the ball. They go against Oklahoma this week, and it feels like a gotta have it for Tennessee, more so than Oklahoma. [MUSIC] >> Hello and welcome in, it's always college football. Appreciate you being with us, wherever it is you're coming to us from. It's on the podcast platform, Spotify, Apple podcast, you name it. We appreciate you very much and we also appreciate those of you that are joining us via the ESPN College Football YouTube channel. Fun show in store for you today, friend of the show, Josh Pate will join us. We'll have a deep dive into some of the big storylines. As you guys like to, as you guys know, what we like to do on Wednesdays is we like to have next Sunday's conversations today, right? We want to kind of be out in front of it, set up some storylines that could come to fruition or crash and burn on Saturday based on the outcomes of some of the games. And we'll have those conversations with our next guest, Josh Pate today. We also are gonna give you some updates, there's some news and notes around the sport, some of it's old, some of it's new. We'll give you our perspective on some of those news and notes here a little later in the show. But let's kick things off with a great conversation with our good friend, Josh Pate. All right, we welcome them in now, and I think Josh does an awesome job. Become a friend over the years, have watched his show as a fan. You can check his show out on the YouTube page. Josh Pate's college football show. I know there's all sorts of drama and people just basically squatting on your social media name. Josh, so I'll let you clear the air on that. You can do it on YouTube. You can do it on the podcast, but Josh does an amazing job. And I'm sorry that people are just claiming your name on college football. Yeah, before we pressed play on this, you said, so what's the situation? I explained it to you and you said, yeah, what a disaster. It's a disaster right now. Look, the bottom line is just watch the show. You can find me on social if you want to. It's not, I'm like Dion, I'm not hard to find. You got the show's name right and that's really all that matters. Yeah, Josh Pate's college football show, formerly late kid Josh, but I think Josh Pate's college football show sums it up because you go all over the place when it comes to college football. And now, I mean, you're doing like content 24/7, so it's like, I don't, it's not only late at night anymore, it's not just at eight o'clock or whatever time it is or seven o'clock our time or six o'clock our time. So you can always check it out on the YouTube page. It's an awesome job. And you can, if you go to two, four, seven, you can find his stuff pretty much everywhere, but we'll start here. Let's start with the Florida Gators. I know you famously never start with a team that loses, but that was yesterday. That was two days ago. Great A&M, give them more flowers. Awesome. Marcel Reed, the greatest thing ever. I'm great with all that. But before we get into A&M, what is the deal with Florida? Like, because you are, you work with two, four, seven, you got friends in the recruiting space. Billy has had all the options in the world. I look back at this program's track record of success and it really has only peaked with two coaches. That's Urban Meyer and that Steve Spurrier. So how difficult is this job? It's as difficult as any other job relative to the rest of college football. It shouldn't be as difficult as Arkansas. It shouldn't be as difficult as South Carolina. I mean, this program should have a leg up. I think A&M and Florida ironically played on the field last week. And it's interesting because I think there are a lot of parallels there. I think they're both incredible jobs. I didn't say programs. I said jobs, a program wise, each has struggled in recent history, but I look at it and, you know, in the Xbox sort of PlayStation world, if you don't like what you're getting, you can just hit reset and you can try it again. Boom, like that. In real world, if you make the wrong hire, you pay for it five years minimum because you got to get that staff in, you got to get new staff in, you got to rehaul recruiting and everything. So it can really get away from you. If you do nothing more than make two or three bad hires in a row, I just explained 15 years to you. That's a long time, man. There are kids that are in high school now that all of a sudden don't even remember the last time that you were nationally relevant. So, you know, you guys are sitting there playing Florida in the late 2000s. And I'm in the stands watching it thinking, wow, Saban and Meyer are about to be the next bow versus woody. Think about the next decade. Just didn't work out that way. And then it was very hard to backfill Urban Meyer. So I'm down there this spring in Gainesville and I'm talking to Billy. We have him on the show. It's great. But he probably opened up access to that program about as much as I've ever had access opened up. And it just reemphasized. I think he's done a phenomenal job of hiring underneath himself. And I'm not talking about assistant coaches. I mean, a lot of the faces and names that people wouldn't recognize that are part of the army that makes up a college football program. It's just he hasn't gotten the job done. Um, and, and what, what it leads to Greg is I think he's probably going to be out of a job normally when I guys out of a job. It means the entire program gets flushed. And I got to tell you now, I think this is one of those rare cases where whoever comes in there next kind of walks in like Kaitlyn DeBour did at Alabama, albeit totally different circumstances, but you walk in and you look around and you say, okay, I want to bring the best in to fill all of these compartments, but it kind of low key looks like a lot of the best are already here. I'm going to make changes. I'm going to bring my coaches in, but down at Florida, man, they spared no expense and they heavily invested in manpower and resource. So on one hand, program is not in a good place. On another hand, I still think it's a turnkey winner, just like I did with Elko going to A&M. If you get the right guy, this is not a three or four year rebuild. It is a turnkey winner if you get the right guy in there. And that's all caps. I F if, of course, huge. If, uh, the top of the SEC, and just the top of the SEC right now is about as good as I think I've seen it. And I know it's so early and these teams will ultimately start knocking each other off and we'll have a very different, more clear picture on November 1st. And we do right now, but I'm looking at Georgia and I think Kirby smart privately and anonymously emailed the AP and said, move us to number two, please. Uh, that's going to wake my team up. Not that they needed any waking after the performance last week, but I look at it and I look at this team and while it was a less than stellar performance on the road at Kentucky, I still think they have everything you could possibly want. So what do you think the reaction was inside the building when they saw that AP poll slide them to number two? I almost hope it didn't matter. I'm a realist. I know it probably did matter, but if my team was made of the right stuff, I would almost hope it's irrelevant. Like you find out late Sunday night, the AP even got released because you've been so focused on getting yourself healed up, getting rehydrated, getting ready for the, the bi week. Um, you called this game, right? Weren't you on this? Okay. Did you find it pretty bizarre that Georgia had to have three defensive linemen and play 50 plus snaps and the next closest guy played 17? That's, that's the focus to me. It's not what, what would Georgia rebound? Will they be disrespected? I forget all that. Look on the field. They don't have wave after wave of defensive front depth that they can roll at you. Uh, their offensive line was very subpar the other night. That's supposed to be the strength of that team. They're running game, both with the ball in their hands and in past pro, respectively, left a lot to be desired. Um, I don't think that the wide receiver room thus far has emerged like they've wanted it to. So I don't care if you're ranked first or 15th, like there are some tangible reasons early in the season to be concerned. Now everyone's got that. So then the positive side of it is, uh, we have seen eventual national championship teams have that kind of game before. We've seen Georgia win a national title, having had that kind of game before. So it's not like whack-a-mole. It's not like you eliminate them, but I, I, I kind of fall between. I'm of the opinion that's really good to taste your own blood. It's good to, to make sure you have that competitive character to, to win when you don't have your fastball. But I'm also not totally on the other side of the sea software. Folks say, all right. All right. Now, now this will be good for us. We got that out of the way and now it's just off to the races. It could be that or it could be. You had some flaws exposed that are going to be there the rest of the year. It might very well be the latter. Um, Tate Rallage now out for an extended period of time. Like I, I think their depth is a huge question. And Kirby told us this. Like I'm, I am keen to believe if a coach tells us something, I, I want to believe them. He's honest about it. Right. We don't have the competitive depth that we used to have. He said that. So for us to see a couple of guys get dinged up and now they're relying on three along the front, yeah, that's of concern to me, especially knowing what's coming. The bye week could not come at a better time. The number one team in the country, Texas, uh, it's easy to look at the Michigan game and say, man, what a dominant before I don't think Michigan's very good. Uh, but I also think that Texas is best footballs in front of them. So given the reaction that we now have to arch manning and Quinn Ewers and the way this team has played so far and now being moved to number one, is there a point in which you think the team starts to maybe read their own press clippings? I think it's inevitable. It doesn't have to cost you a game, but I think it's inevitable. They got a little taste of this last year, but they haven't gotten a taste of it. It's a, it's a fire hose in their face right now and it's going to be to the point where you almost start to search the schedule. Okay. Where's their Kentucky game? Like, where's their close scare? I, I'm really interested to see how Sarc handles this thing. Ironically, A&M and Texas both have the situation where their starter goes down, the backup comes in and, and performs very well. And so Elko's got to deal with this, but Sarc, you know, he, he's got a situation where Quinn Ewers is a very good story and he's not out for long and he'll be back. But you got one of the best in the country behind him. I don't know how many programs you think arch would start for. I'd say 95% of programs are taking over on 95. So pretty good question question is who do they have? They have like you, you, Elman row or something like that. They got a couple of games before they're really going to be tested. And if you call a wide open offense, you know what he's about to do over the next couple of weeks. And then what, how do you handle it? You've seen him in practice. You chose for Quinn to be your starter, but you also knew, I mean, having arch manning as your backup quarterback is like turning on the hosepipe and then keeking it as soon as you let that thing go, everyone's about to see it. Yeah. And I don't think that's a controversy. I think the term quarterback controversy is very overused. It's not controversial to have two starting caliber quarterbacks. But you remember back in 2017, you heard the rumblings just like I did out of Bama practices. Two is better than Jalen. We think two is better than Jalen. We think two is should be a starter. And and Saban was loyal to to our to to Jalen and then half time of the national title game comes and they make the change. If arch manning proves to give them the better chance to win than Quinn Ewers does, how do you value loyalty versus accountability to your team to put the best guy in? I think it's, I think loyalty is important, but I just, I can't be, I cannot operate right now looking at arches performance. And while the, Hey, the run was awesome. And the wiggle was awesome. And we all joke like, Oh, I've never seen a manning do that. And Peyton basically owns our show. So Peyton, love you. You're still the best, but a lot of fun, but he threw a bubble screen to the house. They blew a coverage. And it was why, I mean, it's not like, you know, I just think we get a little bit too far out in front of ourselves a bit. And I love arch and his time will come, but there's nothing I've seen so far, but at this point to make me think he's better suited to lead than to a championship. Thank Quinn Ewers is good to Tennessee. Interesting that it's like the UT to the UT. I think we've done this like six or seven different times. I don't know why those two teams when I think they just go together. I don't know why that is maybe they'll play in Atlanta at the end of the year. And it will all it made sense. You know what? Then the winner gets to claim UT at least for that year. Looking at this matchup, though, that Tennessee has this weekend. They looked very different. We all acknowledge that how good is NC State? I don't know. Did NC State implode upon themselves? 100% but I look at this Tennessee team. I think they're different on both sides of the ball. They go against Oklahoma this week and it feels like a got to have it for Tennessee, more so than Oklahoma. I don't know why that is and I'm curious to get your take because if Josh hyple goes in there and Brent Venables slows the offense down and ultimately gets a surprise victory as a dog at home in their SEC debut, then all the good will that Tennessee's built up this season so far feels like it's lost. In victory, you know, given the trophy, it's over. But in defeat, what's the reaction for Tennessee? Man, oh, so I may be on the other side of this. I think there's a little more pressure on Oklahoma here only because I think this two game stretch, which you and I talked about in the spring when we looked at schedules, may define their season. They got Tennessee Auburn Auburn on the road back to back weeks. And so later down the road, they play some bigger names. I think this is the stretch that defines whether they're a contender when they play those games. I don't think it'd be the craziest concept of the world for a Josh hyple Tennessee team that's been a little different away from home if they go into Norman and it's a hornet's nest and they lose 30 to 27. If they win 34 17 and Oklahoma gets humbled by Josh hyple who would have like blood dripping down his mouth by the way. That's how much they've looked forward to getting back there with the way it ended for him in Oklahoma, then that would be a reality check. That would kind of be a grabbing the program by the shoulders and shaking reality into it and then who knows what they are the next week at Auburn. And then you got the Texas game, you got Bama down the road. So the, I do agree with you though, if you think the profile of this Tennessee team is that of more than just a fringe playoff contender. If you really think they're an SEC and national title contender, well, they go win this game and they go handle it. And if they don't, then it's not the end of the world, but the talk rightfully would probably be maybe it's just the same old, same old, maybe, maybe we got disillusioned a little bit. Maybe we got misled as college football tends to do us in the first few weeks. And Tennessee, 10 wins, nice, but we were foolish for expecting anything more. Yeah, it's probably the delineation of the result of this game and what he gives us. Yeah, I see. I love this game this weekend. I can't wait to watch it. I think Oklahoma's look terrible, relatively speaking. I think there's a lot more in the tank there and they might be holding it for this one. Cause like you said, I think it's a big one for Venables too. Uh, but he's got so much good wheel built up within the fan base for bouncing back last year. I just don't know if the reaction is going to be as strong because there's not much expected of Oklahoma this year. Meanwhile, Tennessee has got to get those injured guys back. Like they're building up to get all those injured guys back this week and it's just, you wonder like, are you looking at some breakout moment? Are you looking at a team that needed a few weeks runway before it could take off Oregon was that last week, make Oklahoma's that. Yeah. And you hope it is for them because if they play the way they played the last two weeks, they're going to get rolled, but if they, if they look like the team that played well down the stretch last year defensively, I think they're in a good spot. What's up, guys? It's the champ. Sean, I'm out of here to talk to you about prize picks. Prize picks the best place to win real money while watching football. Run your game on prize picks. Right now, prize picks will give you $50 instantly. When you play your first $5 line up, you don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus. It's guaranteed. Just download the prize picks daily fantasy app. If you use code OT, that's code OT on prize picks to get $50 instantly. When you play a $5 line up prize picks, run your game. Let's be present in certain stages of prize picks are comparable to some details. Auburn Arkansas, thanks for fascinating game this weekend. And look, I know this game, when we fast forward to the end of the year, it's like, why did we spend as much time talking about two teams that are fighting for bowl eligibility, but it's still intriguing to me on a weekend. That's a little light on content. So looking at Arkansas, we already basically said Billy Napier's done after his second loss. What does this now mean for Sam Pittman? If they go on the road and lose to Hank Brown making his second career start and first against SEC competition. All right. Well, so I'm still trying to get comfortable with the rumor that a cubolic filed adoption papers for Hank Brown, like after this past weekend. It's just unbelievable. And I texted him and he hadn't answered back about it. Hank Brown, they were able to pull away from New Mexico. And I don't make light of that because those folks struggled with teams in that state recently. So I make light of that, Arkansas, I think is in very much a fork in the road situation in their season because they, they lost a game in about as inexplicable a fashion as possible in Oklahoma State to the point where I looked at it and said, if I'm an Arkansas fan, this is the kind of game that makes me just want to burn it all down. But then 24 hours later, when your emotion is sort of back in check, you realize we did a lot of really good things today. Like there were a lot of sparks that could ignite a fire, but it doesn't matter if it gets extinguished a couple of weeks later on the road at Auburn. Yeah. And know what you have down the road. So you said it sometimes looks weird late in the year when you remember the energy and attention that you invested into a game. But that's just because you don't know how the season is going to play out. And these results are a huge decider. You know, if you, if you change 30 degrees in course, boy, you get a mile or two down the road and there's a huge gap in the destinations. Well, it all predicated on that degree course change. And it's the same way with these football games. It's not baseball. We don't play 162 of them. So one game, especially with the way talk and energy and toxicity works in the south, a couple of plays, a couple of drives in this game on Saturday could be the difference. I have and I kid you not no idea what to expect in that game. Those are the most fun games. It's going to be a, I love the matchup. I just think the reaction to the loser is going to be outrageous. Oh, I don't want to lose that game. If I'm saying Pittman or Hugh Freeze, like the press conference in defeat might be the worst possible scenario. So regardless of the circumstances, is it going to be a tricky one for sure, moving up north to the Big Ten. Um, the brass, I will admit, I don't even care anymore. Like there are just a fan of, you know what I mean? Like there are just some teams that just want to see him win. And like, I'll put my Nebraska cornhusker hat on. Like, I don't care. I just, I'm, I want Matt Rule to succeed. I want Dylan Ryola to succeed. They now have a ranked matchup who didn't have Nebraska and Illinois. Hooms among us among us. Like, like to say, didn't have this as a ranked matchup on a Friday night. Um, but here we are. And Nebraska actually, when you look at the Big Ten and I'm curious to get your take on this, and we'll move into Michigan in those guys in a minute. But Nebraska has like a legitimate chance. Here in the Big Ten to make a little noise, their schedules somewhat manageable. We now look at Wisconsin. We look at some of their teams that they might be going up against. Like Nebraska might be around for a while if they can get this one. So how real is Nebraska? And at this point, how much upward mobility did they have in the Big Ten right now? Well, Greg, they could make the playoff. That's, that's how much upward mobility they have. Uh, but we were talking about the height bubble with Texas. This is the one I worry about more, not, not because anyone's going to mistake them as a title contender this year, but since we've, we've expanded the playoff, you know, there's a new sticker that you get to put on your forehead and having achieved things in college football. So you could be a ten and two team that loses heartily to Ohio State on the road in a few weeks. But if you took care of business elsewhere, you could be a playoff team. You could be an 11 seed and, and that all of a sudden means something. And it would mean something. I'm not making a lie to that. It would be a big deal for Nebraska, especially basically in our lifetime at this point, what Nebraska has been. But you, um, on one hand, I think it's worth being surprised by, but on the other hand, knowing Matt rule, it's not a surprise. What you do at temple in Baylor, you can do it Nebraska. It doesn't really matter what people say. Uh, he went in there. I mean, did he not seamlessly just adopt the vibe and like define the vibe there? Did he not seamlessly look around at what the talent acquisition profile of college football is now and just grab just both hands on the rope and yank towards Lincoln, Nebraska. He did both of those things to where you could, you could find yourself being a high three, low four star athlete in Fort Lauderdale, Florida saying, I could put a Nebraska hat on the table on signing day. Like I could see myself doing that. That's how you do it. Like that's how you have to do it. And then for the first time, again, in our lifetimes, basically, we could have a guy that could recruit to Nebraska, not having to just sell vision, depending on how this year turns out, he could actually sell proof of performance. No Nebraska head coaches had that. That would be a game changer, especially in this era. So I look, they're going to be clunky at times. You cannot start a true freshman and have five expectations all of a sudden and not be clunky, but they have been like one possession games have been the bane of their existence, if they do nothing more than flip that stack category, then they're in this thing this year. How about just not beating themselves? I mean, 31 turnovers last year. And I don't think at this point, Rayola has a single one. So that's helpful as well, moving in that direction, hoping for the best for them. No disrespect to Illinois, but I'm rooting for Nebraska on Friday moving to USC and Michigan, one of the biggest games of the weekend. Uh, to me, as, as C is in the, Michigan still has confetti raining down based on their chant. I know you have said on your show and I appreciate the sentiment. Like you don't defend championships. This is, you're not a boxer that has the, you know, you say WWE. I say boxer, whatever, uh, you know, I did used to work with tests. So watching Monday night raw now is weird, um, but I digress. You're not, you know, um, you know, you're, you're not walking into the ring, like Roman Reigns did for 1000 straight days with the bell. You're not defending anything. That trophy is that trophy and it's gone. So Michigan to me is playing with house money, at least for the foreseeable future. If they get blasted four more times, I don't think anyone's going to care. Uh, and as far as whether or not they have the right guy, they have the right vision for the, what the program could be. Meanwhile, on the other side, SC, so much goodwill was made of their performance against LSU, but Lincoln Riley in defeat this weekend, it would be back to square one to see if it's not physical enough. They're not this, they're not that they can't do it against teams that went along the lines of scrimmage. So how important is this one for SC to go and play against a team and play well against a team that has often exploited that lack of continuity on both lines of scrimmage. Very, very, because I just watched South Carolina sort of quietly abuse LSU's offensive line. I watched South Carolina run for over 240 yards on LSU's defensive line. So the retrospective look on that game loses a little bit of its luster. That doesn't remove the impact of the win, but the more and more data we get, the more informed we get, the more we realize maybe a few teams are going to push LSU around this year physically. Okay. Well, that doesn't matter if you go to Michigan and you do what Texas did. Um, now Texas did what they did against Michigan calls their bigger, faster, stronger and far more deep. They're the way better team than Michigan USC. Um, while they have the potential to go in there and win in their favor to do so, they don't quite have that caliber of athlete and the depth of that caliber of athlete yet, but that's the point. The point is, can Lincoln Riley go in there and play the style of offense he wants to? And can they yet again, for the second time in a couple of weeks, show that defensively, we're not going to be a top 10 unit this year, but dude, we weren't even a top 100 unit last year. So if we can go in there and we can clamp down in the red zone, I mean, Michigan doesn't scare anyone, no matter who they're going to trot out there at quarterback. Uh, this is certainly not a game that should get away from you unless you turn the ball over. I, I would, I would relish if I'm USC, I would relish finding myself in a, in a fist fight, late third quarter, because for better or for worse, I'm about to find out about myself. And see, you said it would be back to square one. I think it'd be back to square one. If we turned on the gaming, it was 31 to, you know, like 13 or something like that. And USC had just been suffocated. If it's 26 to 24 and there's like a last second here or there, I know it sucks to lose, but I still think there'd be a little voice in the back of my head saying, this is still way better than where they were last year. All I'm looking for is this. All I'm looking for is upward progression. Now if they win this game, Greg, like when you look at their schedule at the early quarter of the season, they said LSU, man, that offensive line is going to wreck them. No, they got to go to Michigan early in the season. Well, that's going to be a physical bloodbath. No, all of a sudden start looking. There's no Oregon. There's no Ohio state. They got Wisconsin. I don't think people really shake at the thought of that. USC is another team where you may not have factored him into a conference race or a playoff race before and they've rapidly inserted themselves there. Yeah, it's, it's, I think it's such a huge opportunity because there's still a group of people that think Michigan's good. I don't think you're in that group. I've listened to your show a lot. I get the sense that you kind of like me look at Michigan and say they are nowhere near what they were, but I think there's still a lot of people in the court of public opinion that believe that Michigan's the real deal. So SC is going to get a tremendous amount of credit, potentially beating a team at their place. That isn't very good, which I think is a great spot to be in. If you're looking around, you got to win this. Here's a good test. What if I were to have shown you Michigan's season so far, but I put Iowa jerseys on them and I just trotted that out to the public. They would say, yeah, I mean, this is Iowa, like this is, it's Iowa again this year. Okay. Well, you never would confuse Iowa as a national title contender. So, so it is the helmet right now that is speaking to a lot of people. It is a good looking helmet in their defense. It's a great lid for sure. ACC Big 12, we'll get you out of here kind of with this because I'm just curious. Like right now, if you were to tell me, gone to head before the season, who's more likely to get two teams in? I would have told you ACC by a mile, no doubt. I like Clemson. I like Florida State. I like Miami. Uh, I think NC State can be a problem. I think Louisville can be a problem. And now I fast forward through, since he's I'm like, there's no way they're getting more than one in based on what I've seen through the first few weeks. I can't imagine that scenario playing out. Then I moved to the big 12 and I'm like, golly, Utah, even without camera, I still look pretty good last week. Oklahoma State, they could throw it now. Like all the doors, they've been playing well, and yet they're, they're still somehow three and oh, you have like other teams. Can State, man, they found themselves last Friday. Now I'm still now starting to feel a little bit more like the big 12 is well positioned to get a couple teams and the ACC is not. So am I, am I way too far out over my skis? Uh, I think it's still too early to tell. I think there's still so much variance with both of those conferences because I mean, they'll be Demolition Derby both ways. I think Louisville is the, uh, shark fin just off shore that could really change that dynamic. Cause I think Louisville is totally anonymous. I think they're solidly a top 15 team right now that no one can tell you anything about. They got a quarterback that if he stays healthy does nothing but win throughout his career. Um, but that's a big if on that front as well. I think their offensive lines really underrated. Uh, Miami's going to be there. I have full confidence and trust in that Louisville, if they play to their top end, should be there and that would be the decider. If they do not, and Miami does play Louisville this year, if they do not, you, you know, I'm always going to tell Iowa state cause I think it's a special year in coming for them. Kansas state's got a very tough game at Brigham Young this weekend and Brigham Young is over achieved relative to the spread every week this year so far. Oklahoma state and Utah this weekend. I think we'll go a long way cause the winner of that game's got to make a run. Yeah. I think that, that winner has to be at least one of those two teams we're talking about and I think that'll be really interesting. And one of the best games of the weekend for sure. Um, I guess last one, I guess to ask you, why do you have Cole Kublick on the show as often as you do? I just don't understand that. And why does he text you so much during the show? Well, the answer to the first question is charity. No, do you get, uh, do you get like a government drawback or like, do you get that like government help for having him on? You know, I'm talking my legal team. They say I can't. No, you can't. But it is pretty, it is pretty egregious when you, I ask a bare minimum from my friends and one of them is just don't text me. Like have respect to know that I'm on the air and even my mom and sister and dad follow that protocol, uh, but there is one human who resides down there in Birmingham, Alabama, who does not. And we have referenced him several times in the last couple of minutes. Well, I do think, uh, he's not the only one though. I feel like canal has texted you during the show this year. Like you've had a bunch of, I don't expect anything from canal though. Okay. I have standards that I hold cube look to. Canal is just a free spirit floating out there in the ether. Yeah, he is very much a free spirit and, um, we'll be curious to see what happens to his Knowles moving forward, but I guess how much I appreciate everything so far this year. It's been great listening to the new show, even though it's not new. It has a new name. Josh Pate's college football show. You can check it out on the YouTube channel, uh, just YouTube. Josh Pate, you'll find it. Piece of cake. You can find them on social media somewhere. I'm sure there'll be some type of reading things and you can find chalice of supremacy at, uh, at the pasteate material.com now, right? That's things up and running confirmed. Oh man. Hey, how about that little walking talking chuggy train mascot? That thing right there is going to put food on people's tables this Christmas. You watch and see. Yeah. I mean, who doesn't need a chuggy train mascot? Uh, that's makes all the sense in the world. Josh, appreciate your buddy. Look forward to seeing you again soon, man. Okay, moving into some news and notes now around the sport. Some quarterback updates that we want to give you. Michigan is opting to go with the more athletic option to quarterback and Alex Orgy. Now Davis Warren got the start to start the season. I think the reason why they went with Davis Warren is they thought they'd get a little bit more out of the run game with their running backs and with their offensive line. It just hasn't been going as efficiently as they'd like. So they put in Davis Warren, they thought he'd be able to compliment that rushing attack that's still going to be really good. Well, it hasn't happened. He's actually got six picks. He's actually putting the team in difficult spots by making poor decisions and pressing. So they're now going with Alex Orgy, who's nowhere near the thrower, but is more dynamic with the ball in his hand. So I would think this 50, 50 run pass balance that we've seen from Michigan in the first few weeks. Yeah, it's going to be more like 70, 30 run to pass moving forward with Alex Orgy under center. He's not a threat to beat you with his arm, but he is a threat to take off and take at the distance every time he holds the football. So keep an eye on that and look at how things change for their offensive identity moving forward. Also, moving over to NC State. Grayson McCall was hurt last week against Louisiana Tech. He's out this week against Clemson. Freshman CJ Bailey will get the start. He came off the bench, had a pretty good performance, but at this point, we're not sure what to expect from this young man. Some really high highs on display last week against Louisiana Tech and some very questionable decisions as well. So he played like a freshman. What will he do on the road in an extremely hostile environment? That will be fascinating to watch on ABC this weekend. And then finally hate this story. Absolutely hated Tyler Van Dyke has been lost for this season. We're worried about this. He was scrambling to his right while playing against Alabama last week, went down awkwardly on his leg and you can tell the emotion on the sideline when they started to evaluate him. They also put him on the cart, saw him go in, saw him come back out, knee brace with crutches. He just felt like it was going to be a potentially bad situation it was. It was confirmed by MRI a couple of days ago that he is now out for the year with the torn ACL. So hate that for Tyler Van Dyke. Hopefully he can bounce back, get another year of eligibility if he wants it and come back and finished his college career the way it started, when he was off and running as a young player there at Miami. That'll do it for us here at Always College Football. Please like, rate and subscribe, tell your friends. And for all of us here, Mark, Jake, Jack, the other Jack, I'm Greg. We hope you have a terrific day. And remember, it's Always College Football. Hey guys, it's Greg McElroy. Thanks for watching Always College Football. Make sure you like, rate and subscribe to ESPN's YouTube channel and wherever you listen to your podcast. (upbeat music)
