I don't think anybody was thinking about that with Florida, but regardless of the P word or not, like, What is the trajectory of this team this year? If it can get back on track Saturday, and then obviously the two juggernauts coming up, Texas and Georgia, that might kind of define whether or not Florida can make that P word a reality.

Zach, you know what my biggest shortcoming is in my position as a human? It's not being...

Being in a national position where you talk about a lot of different people and don't have...

My mood isn't shifted based on who wins and loses games.

It's that I approach things...

From a rational perspective, more than I should, because I understand that college football and rooting for a team is inherently irrational.

But the question I want to ask you before I continue with the answer to that is, what were rational expectations for what would be deemed a success for Florida this year? Eight and four would people have been happy with? Nine and three? Something that shows that, hey, we're on the right track and next year we'll have another offseason where we can hit the portal and improve our recruiting and all those different things.

Do you jump at one of those jobs, or do you have it so good at Florida and have things rolling that because of the profile and the place that you've gotten to as an OC, you can maybe stay longer and wait on an even bigger and more high-profile job that has more NIL than some of those schools?

Yeah.

You also have to take into account, too, that, you know, There's an inherent contrarian take situation in every single sports debate where it's like Jeremiah Smith is clearly the obvious best receiver in college football, but it's not cool to just be like, that's who the best is.

People like to argue about stuff and we have to give Malachi credit.

Like he also showed up as a true freshman and became the most forward facing playmaker on a Miami team that completely changed the trajectory of its program in a single year.

So like he has really done stuff.

that has backed that stuff up.

So in terms of NFL prospect and generational, I think that Jeremiah Smith is maybe the best player.

But

This thing is really on the ropes, and you just signed him to a new extension.

Yeah, I think that the difference between this year and last year is that they had five weeks of wins building up to the Cotton Bowl game or the Red River game.

This year, they didn't have five weeks of wins.

And then, of course, before they play Texas, they've got to go to Athens.

So you don't have like three weeks of get right, let's figure this out.

You get one game, and then you have to go play on the road with a team that may have a better defense than Michigan.

and beat them on the road.

I know Alabama and Kentucky kind of opened the SEC portion of the schedule, but Do you have any absolutes right now that you feel about the conference? It seems like when you look up and down, even games on the back end of Oklahoma's schedule now, whether it be Mississippi State, Florida, Missouri, even on the very, very end of the schedule, it seems like there's a lot of really good teams in this conference, rightfully so, and they're all kind of jam-packed together in the middle there.

way

forever.

Well, it's no guarantee that if a person has struggled or failed over the course of time that they won't always be failures, right? But I have a hard time with this because I approach college football as an irrational human being.

I think fairly rational because my heart isn't in it for anybody.

I don't hate anyone and I don't love anyone.

My emotions don't change unless I bet on the game about what happens.

So I think that their core tenet of being a college football fan is to be like, I'm an A&M fan.

That made the Cold Takes Exposed book, right?

What do you make out of that and how long do you think he will last as a starter if this game goes south?

I think that there's a chance that he comes out of the game as soon as Saturday.

Tommy Carr is...

the backup and C.J. Carr's little brother, and we heard a lot of great, really good things about his performance and what they expect out of him as a player during his career or during the offseason, and I'm starting to wonder whether that was an accident.

I think that the comments that Kyle Whittingham made during the week were revelatory in the sense that if he didn't have any designs of making a quarterback switch or making those thoughts known, he wouldn't have said that.

And, you know, in terms of whether they just want the money or not, you know, I'm not going to put that on him.

I don't know Bryce well enough to, you know, make an assertion of what his goals are or what drives him.

What happens next?

You know, we had wondered forever if they kept expanding the playoffs, would it somehow make the regular season a little less important? And so have you seen yet where fans are kind of out on the regular season compared to the life or death way that we used to treat regular season games yet? Or is that not really kicked in?

I don't think it's checked in, but I think that when it gets to 24, it's going to happen.

I wrote an article a few months ago when I went to the CFP meetings here in the Dallas area.

And there is a line in the sand that you can't cross.

And the people who are going to potentially expand it to 24 don't know where that line is.

It's a visible line in the sand.

But if you cross it, there's negative returns.

Because

You know, we had wondered forever if they kept expanding the playoffs, would it somehow make the regular season a little less important? And so have you seen yet where fans are kind of out on the regular season compared to the life or death way that we used to treat regular season games yet? Or is that not really kicked in?

I don't think it's checked in, but I think that when it gets to 24, it's going to happen.

I wrote an article a few months ago when I went to the CFP meetings here in the Dallas area.

And there is a line in the sand that you can't cross.

And the people who are going to potentially expand it to 24 don't know where that line is.

It's a visible line in the sand.

But if you cross it, there's negative returns.

Yeah.

You know, we had wondered forever if they kept expanding the playoffs, would it somehow make the regular season a little less important? And so have you seen yet where fans are kind of out on the regular season compared to the life or death way that we used to treat regular season games yet? Or is that not really kicked in?

I don't think it's checked in, but I think that when it gets to 24, it's going to happen.

I wrote an article a few months ago when I went to the CFP meetings here in the Dallas area, and there is a line in the sand that you can't cross.

And the people who are going to potentially expand it to 24 don't know where that line is.

It's a visible line in the sand, but if you cross it, there's negative returns.

Because if you do get to a place where a four-loss team or maybe a five-loss team, depending on how math goes, could make a 2014 playoff, then there's no consequences for losing and thus no reason to watch the game.

So I do think that people will still watch football because ultimately people just want to watch football.

But shouldn't this be a team in Cignetti that I absolutely despise? Is this just something that takes time?

Where

you just scratch out Gabriel on that medical chart and you just write Watson in on it? Basically, yeah.

You caught the same back injury.

Good job.

What is that? I

just asked my assistant if an NFL team is a 7.5-point underdog, what is the percentage chance that they have to win a game? And it says 7.5-point underdog generally has about a 22% to 25% chance to win the game.

Why did you want to write about DJ Lagway? What did you make of your conversation with the very talented young quarterback?

Yeah, I was able to talk to DJ, and I go back really far with him.

I mean, I went and wrote a profile for The Athletic on him when he was in high school still, and I think that the one thing that I know for sure is that DJ Lagway possesses some physical characteristics and traits that translate to a pretty high ceiling.

And I think even during his freshman year at Florida, you saw some of those things manifest in some pretty jaw-dropping plays.

Um, but you know, talking to Dave Aranda, to the Baylor coach, we, we had a real discussion about, you know, where DJ was last year, where he's been.

And I think it's very easy to understand how somebody in the position that he was in at Florida would not succeed.

First of all, he had never been healthy, um, you know, for long stretches of time.

Real quickly, outside of the top team that's going to win it all or whatever in the Big 12, is there a team that you are just utterly fascinated with that you cannot stop thinking about, that you want to talk about, write about, and be around?

I think more than most people believe, but that's just my opinion.

Okay, well, if you're right, then I feel less bad about what I wrote, because I wrote that at the time in which Sorsby was caught, with the paper trail of 4,000 pled bets, uh, totaling more than 90 grand, including the ones on his own team.

If I were Texas tech, I probably would have moved on at that point, especially considering the fact that they're not dead in the water at quarterback, but you can't publicly here's what I actually think.

I wonder if Texas tech did what they could from a public standpoint to stand by their guy, because that's what you're supposed to do when you're in a locker room or you have a person, even if they make a mistake or do something awful, They're still in your family.

You still protect them.

But they were secretly expecting and maybe even hoping that he wouldn't have been granted this injunction so that they optically could have said, hey, we did what we could.

They stood by their guy, and then they were able to move on from this.

Because if I play center forward...

I think more than most people believe, but that's just my opinion.

Okay.

Well, if you're right, then I feel less bad about what I wrote because I wrote that a- at the, at the time in which Sorsby was, you know, caught with the paper trail of 4,000 plus bets, uh, totaling more than 90 grand, including the ones on his own team, if I were Texas Tech, I probably would've moved on at that point, especially considering the fact that they're not dead in the water at quarterback.

But you can't publicly...

Here's what I actually think.

I wonder if Texas Tech did what they could from a public standpoint to stand by their guy because that's what you're supposed to do.

When you're in a locker room or you have a person, even if they make a mistake or do something awful, they're still in your family, you still protect them.

That's gonna become exhausting in a hurry, because if I play center for him-

It doesn't really say anything, but he could still say something, could he not?

Well, I mean, I think that in general, I mean, he's had two statements, the one yesterday and the one that he just released around 1245 today.

And, you know, you don't typically see the commissioner of a conference come out with such a pointed statement, even though it didn't say much in defiance of one of their member institutions.

So I think that's telling.

The thing that I don't know, Paul, because unlike Brett Yormark, I didn't go to law school.

is it seems as if we're at a dead end here in terms of recourse.

I think everybody's trying to figure out, well, what can the Big 12 do? Or what could the NCAA do? Or what can anyone do that isn't going to get challenged in a courtroom to punish them rightfully for doing this? And I think that the real answer to that is probably nothing.

But do you know, I'm not going to throw different schools at you, but do you know if anyone would have actually said no to Sorsby or did say no to Sorsby?