I know people down in the bayou kind of scratching their heads, but just kind of talk about that for a second because it's really fascinating what's happening in Westwood and of course up in Bluegrass territory.

It's interesting.

Anytime a, a school fires a coach, I think there's this pressure, this urge, um, by the decision maker to, uh, bring in a bigger name than the last guy that you had.

Um, and so for LSU, you fire Brian Kelly, well, there's only a [laughs] few options that you could go out and pursue that, that is, uh, you know, higher up the food chain, so to speak, than Brian Kelly.

And so LSU made, uh, Lane Kiffin target one, two, three, four, five.

You know, he, he was the apple of the eye and, and they got their man.

Uh, three SEC schools obviously fought over him in Florida, Ole Miss, and LSU, and, uh, and LSU got him.

Uh, what kind of heat do you think he will feel this year if he does not get it turned around and make his team eligible for the college football playoff?

I know people down in the Bayou kinda scratching their heads, but just kinda talk about that for a second because it's really fascinating what's happening in Westwood and of course up in Bluegrass territory.

It's interesting.

Anytime a, a school fires a coach, I think there's this pressure, this urge, um, by the decision makers to, uh, bring in a bigger name than the last guy that you had.

Um, and so for LSU, you fire Brian Kelly, well, there's only a [laughs] few options that you could go out and pursue that, that is, uh, you know, higher up the food chain, so to speak, than Brian Kelly.

And so LSU made, uh, Lane Kiffin target one, two, three, four, five.

You know, he, he was the apple of the eye and, and they got their man.

Uh, three SEC schools obviously fought over him in Florida, Ole Miss, and LSU.

Uh, what kind of heat do you think he will feel this year if he does not get it turned around and make his team eligible for the college football playoff?

But, uh, I'm told by people in South Carolina, "Yeah, we know it's a problem, but we don't have enough money to pay him off." Uh, w- if you're a South Carolina fan and that's the message you get, uh, either directly or probably in this case indirectly, what are you supposed to think?

Uh, I think you feel horribly downtrodden, downcast, um, and on the verge of apathy, i- if that's the, the message out of, out of the administration.

Uh, I understand South Carolina not making a move on Shane Boom- Beamer at this point in the season, but let's look and see what they have up next, right? They have Florida at the Swamp, and then they have Tennessee.

Now, Florida and Tennessee, neither one of them, uh, look invincible, but I sure like both those teams better than I, I like South Carolina.

So, you know, if South Carolina lose- loses those two, they're, they're sitting at, at two and five.

And so I think at that point, you know, selling the id- the idea of staying the course and, and patient, uh, with a coach who's already lost nine in a row against Power Four opponents.

Shane Beamer is now two and four in his last 14 games against Power Four, uh, opponents.

That was before they went to Missouri.

It's

hard to know because Lane is great at the propaganda game.

He's great at the manipulation game.

So I know during that time – he was putting forward the message of like, of course they should let me coach, right? Like it's obvious they should, they should let me coach.

Right.

Did he really believe that? Or was that just the message that he was trying to get people to believe, which then, you know, on, on college game day, they, they turned into shills for, for Nick Saban and it really became the CAA show.

on college game day last year, Nick Saban and others were spewing that propaganda out while the rest of us who actually still had functioning brains said, no, this is crazy that you'd be able to coach Ole Miss in the playoff as LSU's coach, right? Like he didn't leave for an NFL job.

Where do you think that conference is as far as potentially getting two teams in the college football playoff?

It's about the president of LSU and, and the fact that you've covered some NCAA investigations, plenty in your time, the fact that the SEC used the word institutional control, that used to be the most dreaded word on any college campus, and they used it in a- accusing one of their own, the president of LSU, of that a- a- and, and, and the, and the puppet AD, uh, of, of just that in this case.

This whole thing, Paul, was obviously a test drive of self-governance.

You know? It, it's been five years of, of people in power saying, you know, "Need, need a Washington, DC bailout to help govern college sports." And, and here finally in the last few months, I think there's been some recognition that that federal bailout may not come and that the leaders of college sports have to be responsible for solving the issues of college sports.

So this whole thing from the very jump, um, was, was a test drive of whether self-governance would be possible.

And the, and, and LSU tried to shove a fist through that.

And if, and if you allow that to happen, you, you're basically admitting w- we're weak and powerless here.

That's what ultimately happened to the NCAA, right? Institutions repeatedly, uh, knocked out the few remaining teeth that were left in the, in the NCAA until the point that the NCAA became utterly powerless and, and, and, and completely ineffectual.

But it still seems like a, a rare moment, does it not, that [laughs], that we are, we are talking about, uh, maybe the best team in the country, as you said at the top, and the commissioner of the SEC just going, uh, correctly scorched earth on a university that has spit in his eye, uh, and has made a charade out of getting along among a, a, a conference and following the rules.

So who exactly are these spineless leaders that you speak of?

Well, it's the university presidents and chancellors that have the most power inside the college football enterprise, but persistently do the least with that power.

You know, for about the last five years, if not more, the university C-suite class has been at the vanguard of of hollering and crying about all the problems inside college sports, begging Congress for help, all the while refusing to recognize that they are the NCAA, the presidents and chancellors.

I mean, they are the big figures inside college.

college sports.

And historically, they do very, very little to address their own problems.

And again, they've spent years begging for federal bailout.

I'm not even sure there's a question here, Blake, but I'd like you to try to describe the last couple of days and what is really going on down there and where do you think it is all going?

Before we even get to this season, what's happening and where are you on this constant debate about expansion?

Yeah, Paul, the SEC and the Big Ten are still not aligned on the best path forward for playoff expansion.

The Big Ten remains entrenched behind 24 teams.

They're unwilling to budge off that number.

And frankly, they don't have to budge off that number because the status quo works for the Big Ten.

So the Big Ten sort of remains at 24 or status quo.

The SEC remains They're not fully behind the Big Ten's 24-team plan.

What does it all mean when we flip the switch to September and actually see LSU play football on the first weekend, especially the third weekend?

But what and who do you think will be the winners and the losers of this? Or considering there's a top, a middle, and a bottom, any best guesses now that we know how this looks and the schedule is in cement and we have a pretty good idea of who's going to be good and not?

I think the real winners, Paul, are the four best teams in the conference.

Whoever those four best teams end up being, I think they're the winners.

And it goes back to what I was saying earlier.

The smaller your conference schedule is, the harder time you have determining who's the third best team in the league versus the sixth best team in the league.

The bigger your conference schedule is, the easier time you have determining between who's the third best team and who's the sixth best team.

So if you truly are one of those four best teams in the SEC, I think you shouldn't be scared of this nine-game conference schedule.

Talking to Blake Toppmeyer, Blake, we didn't get a chance to catch up with you after Kiffin zipped into town on Thursday morning, but having spent so much time with him, helping or having him lean on you to help clean up the mess that he made with the Vanity Fair article, what was your takeaway after Kiffin does Tampa?

And then maybe your thoughts on where Arch does rank amongst what is an incredibly deep quarterback class here in college football.

Yeah, it really is a good quarterback class.

I don't think Arch is the best quarterback in his own conference, let alone in the nation.

I don't really see that as an, as a big knock on Arch.

I think it's more the other point that you made.

This is, this is a pretty good crop of quarterbacks.

I mean, you look inside the SEC alone, and you have Trinidad Chambliss, who might be the best quarterback in the country, back at Ole Miss, along with Gunner Stockton, who I just think is, like, criminally underrated, um, to, to this point in his career.

If you had to pin your hopes to one of those two to kind of be on the outside looking in to upset the apple cart here, who would you have better visions of grandeur for, LSU or Ole Miss?

He's not that far off, but it's so funny because if you take the name off the back of the shirt of the guy who plays Texas, they're very similar narratives with very similar numbers, and that is Marcel Reed and Arch Manning.

Yeah, and they go about it slightly differently, but not that differently.

I mean, they're both dual threat guys.

They're not run-first quarterbacks, but they're also very willing to run and very skilled runners.

And I think that's what Texas slowly learned last year about Arch Manning.

Or maybe they always knew it, but Steve Sarkeesian admitted that he misused Arch Manning at the beginning of last season.

Now, I get part of that was probably concern about exposing your quarterback to injury, but for Texas to play up to its expectations, it has to lean into what Arch Manning does well, and ultimately it started to do that later in the season.

It seems like a narrow group of politicians who even give a flip.

He's not that far off, but it's so funny because if you take the name off the back of the shirt of the guy who plays Texas, they're very similar narratives with very similar numbers, and that is Marcel Reed and Arch Manning.

And they go about it slightly differently, but not that differently.

I mean, they're both dual threat guys.

They're they're you know, they're not run first quarterbacks, but they're also very willing to run and very skilled runners.

And I think that's what Texas slowly learned last year about Arch Manning.

Or maybe they always knew it.

But Steve Sarkeesian admitted that he misused Arch Manning at the end of or at the beginning.

It seems like a narrow group of politicians who even give a flip.

So help us understand what, if anything, him going ghost means.

Well, I think it allowed some time for that Vanity Fair piece to blow over.

You're right about the apology.

He sort of uncorked a half-baked apology that he released on three.

That didn't go over particularly well.

He probably would have been better off saying nothing in the aftermath of the Vanity Fair piece because it didn't feel like a particularly heartfelt apology.

And really anything he would have said in that moment would not have addressed the wound that he left, A, by leaving Ole Miss, and then, B, by picking at that scab and ripping it off raw and in some of those comments to Vanity Fair.

Let's talk about what you learned or thought or discussed in thinking about this list and who's burning the brightest right now in that regard.

And I started by asking him kind of where he would have Sam Levitt ranked among SEC quarterbacks if you were ranking them right now.

In 2024, Sam Levitt, I think he's probably four or five.

And I think any quarterback, when they're playing with Lane Kiffin and Charlie Weiss, they're going to get a bump, right? We've seen it time and again, really throughout Kiffin's career.

He's deft with quarterbacks.

He really is.

That's, you know, for all the other stuff that goes around with Lane, that's why he's coveted is, one, he gets the portal really well.

And two, he's great with quarterbacks.

Well, he did ask for a follow-up on Chambliss, and he kind of brought up an interesting twist about Trinidad Chambliss.

But is he representing where college football is today in June of 2026?

Not really.

I mean, he's retired, right? I mean, this is why he's not in the sport anymore.

So, I mean, I guess he represents the grievance crowd, the I don't like where college football is at today, therefore I'm no longer a part of it.

I mean, he's a great spokesman.

for that for that crowd for what's actually going on in in college football today i mean i think he's fairly aware of it sure but he's not dealing with that uh day in day out because he didn't want to anymore and so from his perspective it is obviously gone in a direction that he doesn't like that's why he's not involved in the game anymore i think there are probably Other coaches who are lukewarm on the way things have gone the last five years, and there are probably other coaches who are just fine and perfectly enjoying the way the sport has transgressed in the last five years.

But what you have in Nick Saban is sort of the mouthpiece for the grievance crowd, the coaches and the individuals in the enterprise who really don't like the developments that of the last five years, and they're going to tell you everything that they don't like.

said in one of his many interviews last week that he could find them.

Yeah

... after he left.

Now, mm, Tennessee fans are a unique level of passionate shall we say, but that night as you recall, Tennessee fans trashed their own field with debris, and Lane Kiffin wound up getting hit by a yellow golf ball, a yellow golf ball that he still possesses to this day.

So that was sort of the precedent for the scene of a Lane Kiffin return.

I'm not sure if Ole Miss fans can top that.

It's a smaller stadium.

Uh, I don't know that they can match the level, um, of, uh, of passion and vitriol that, that Tennessee fans have at times.

Before you go, and now the, the best interview I've seen you do in a, in a while is, is actually with somebody who is trustworthy and shoots straight and doesn't try to con people, and that's Mike Elko.