What are we going to do about this?

Well, the Big Ten did what they should do about it as of yesterday, which is peel back the curtain, like the Atlantic Coast Conference has already done.

The ACC may have teams on both coasts, so the makeup of the conference is a little weird right now, but at least their rules mechanism for replay has made a lot of sense, and that is when we're reviewing a play, Greeny's going to watch it, Shefty's going to watch it, everybody's going to see it in real time, because it turns out We're not guarding nuclear secrets.

These are not classified documents we're trafficking in.

It's sports.

It's a game.

We're reviewing calls.

Thank you.

Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It would really shock me if Michigan got run off the field.

It would not shock me at all if Michigan won the game.

It's like waves in a bathtub.

That's how college football works.

That's, it doesn't just stay on one side.

Like every action has a reaction.

Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[laughs]

You've gotta have transparency to have integrity on the outcomes of games, and they were right.

The Big Ten was right when they were looking at Texas Tech saying, "Look, if you guys don't do something about this, then we're gonna issue a league-wide boycott of scheduling Texas Tech." But then when it comes time for the Big Ten to be fully transparent, like, to their credit, the ACC has in their review process, the Big Ten was not that proactively enough.

And so I'm not one who's claiming a fix was in.

I'm not claiming anything like that.

What I am claiming is a lot of people will think that, and there's a very easy way to circumvent that.

There's an easy way to nip that in the bud, and that is fully peel the curtain back.

[laughs]

So how do they reconcile that going forward long-term, Pate?

Long-term, they cross their fingers and hope this is a one-time problem.

I've even listened to the SEC's sort of rebuttal and pushback on this.

It's a lot of boring language.

But even in the language that they've released, they said, hey, look, man, we're very empathetic to this situation.

But there's this much bigger overarching principle here that we can't have pro athletes playing college sports because as much as the lines of amateurism have been blurred from a standpoint of paid versus amateur, there is still a world's difference between collegiate athletics and professional athletics.

But I want to zoom it out again.

Should we have LSU on upset alert Saturday night?

What is your sense of the whole thing, big picture, Pate, go?

Well, you heard Lane Greeney.

It is a show, after all.

So we have to have mass public interest, which we have.

Let's say it goes the way that you just suggested.

Let's say today things go in favor of those players seeking eligibility.

My heart of hearts, you know, the huge question mark in here is even if that happens, I expect the SEC and I expect everyone involved in the SEC to look at Lane and said, look, whatever that judge said is whatever he said.

Josh, do you believe this year is title or bust for Arch and Texas?

Shit.

'Cause I could definitely, definitely see a world where Clemson cannot, cannot get any traction offensively, and it's like 30 to 6.

Weird kind of game.

I could see a game where I could see Clemson winning the game, 'cause it's week one, so anything could happen, but if Clemson won the game, it would be a lower scoring game.

So that's in my pocket.

And then the third one is, I could kind of see LSU just sputtering out of the gate a little bit, and it's this weird, um, LSU shooting itself in the foot, Clemson limiting possessions, grinding out some drives.

They can move the sticks a little bit, 'cause they got younger guys up front for LSU defensively, and it's, it's just, it's an LSU win, but it's kind of an, an unconvincing win.

You are?

For those that didn't get an opportunity to listen to your reasoning there, please share it here on Hurricane.

All right.

I got so many things I want to say.

Firstly, it's good to be here.

I appreciate the intro.

I'm excited to talk in this space here because I can be a little more – I can undo the tie here that I'm not wearing and be a little bit more forthright with how I feel about this.

So you're right.

What do you have to say about the current state of affairs inside the SEC, and will it ever get back to where it was?

Like, what what do you think needs to be done? Josh Pate

here.

Every time you and I talk, we agree on two things.

Yes.

One, everything's messed up.

Yeah.

Two, something needs to be done.

Like, what do you got for me on that for the Big Ten?

It's weird to say bounce back, but I f- feel like the way that they got mushed by Indiana in the playoff last year It, it just kind of changed almost their reputation in college football that has been maybe the strongest reputation of any program for so long.

What Teddy just said about the difference in the perception of how OU and Texas is covered, apply that to Oregon and Alabama.

Oregon got dealt with worse by Indiana than Bama did, and where's Oregon in preseason predictions? Just kind of to, to drive that home a little bit.

Uh, so I went down there for a couple of days last week.

Watched them scrimmage last Thursday right before they named...

Keelon was already the starter, like, kind of they kept that under wraps, but he was already the starter.

Uh, that...

Tell me, Josh Pate.

Mm

... to this thing.

Over the last 24 hours, as the three of us are talking here, which is Wednesday morning, mid-morning, and I only preface it that way 'cause news may break in the afternoon.

The SEC and the Big 10 have swung a sledgehammer back, in the SEC's case, at some of their own member institutions.

So what you have here, essentially, for those of you who haven't been keeping up, and God bless you if you have a life and you have not been able to keep up with this, the NCAA did the five for five rule.

So there is no more players randomly playing six or seven years for injuries and all this different kind of stuff.

You just got five years to play.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm

... to this thing.

Over the last 24 hours, as the three of us are talking here, which is Wednesday morning, mid-morning, and I only preface it that way 'cause news may break in the afternoon.

The SEC and the Big Ten have swung a sledgehammer back, in the SEC's case, at some of their own member institutions.

So what you have here essentially, for those of you who haven't been keeping up, and God bless you if you have a life and you have not been able to keep up with this, the NCAA did the five-for-five rule.

So there is no more players randomly playing six or seven years for injuries and all this different kind of stuff.

You just got five years to play.

Mm-hmm.

I always

had that in the back of my mind.

You're telling me you've gone through all this? What if you're tapping out one day before your big break? And true to that, I counted like the three biggest breaks I probably had in my personal career.

They all came out of the blue.

They all came with me waking up that morning not having the slightest idea they were going to happen.

So it really does happen like that.

So I'm always happy to talk about that to college-age kids or 50-year-olds.

Oklahoma will end up in Atlanta playing for the SEC championship if what, Josh Pate?

But what did you see from Keilan, just with your own eyes, that kind of made him stand out? Not just what we've talked about in the past, but what you witnessed.

Yeah.

So you guys did a really good job, and have done a really good job of just kind of summarizing what's happening in the scrimmages.

I guess the difference, if you can go there and you can watch it happen, is you know how sometimes, especially quarterbacks are never live in a scrimmage, but especially if they're gonna do a thud scrimmage instead of a tackle scrimmage, sometimes you'll have a situation where somebody makes a play that you know kind of wouldn't have happened in a game.

You know that dude would've been on the ground in a game.

Keilan Russell is kind of the opposite.

Keilan has plays blown dead, 'cause someone gets a hand on him, that could have been 35, 40-yard gains in a normal game action type situation.

Do you see that? Does that kinda jump out to you when you're seeing guys like Green, Tompkins, even Kedrick Billingsley, Jones, London, Simmons, some of the guys in the past? Do you see a different looking group, uh, as far as physically traits that you were talking about?

What do you think his ceiling could be?

I think so.

The way I looked at him, I really was messing around with putting him like top five as a player.

I'm really high on him.

I've never wavered on that.

The difference is they don't compete in a vacuum.

It's not like everyone gets a shot with Texas's roster.

Best advice you can give me for the for the wedding.

You were just working local, right?

I, before media, I was just working in warehouses and construction sites.

'Cause I came outta high school, I was like a tweener where you don't grow up broke, but you're closer to broke than wealthy, 'cause, I mean, we couldn't even spell wealthy, but you're not growing up with your back against the wall.

Uh, you're not some impoverished kid who knows, "I gotta make it or my family's screwed." It wasn't quite like that.

So I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I graduated high school.

In Georgia they have the, the lottery thing, the HOPE Scholarship.

If you have a B average you get a couple of semesters paid for.

Wow.

You were just working local, right?

I, before media, I was just working in warehouses and construction sites.

'Cause I came out of high school, I was like a tweener where you don't grow up broke, but you're closer to broke than wealthy, 'cause, I mean, we couldn't even spell wealthy, but you're not growing up with your back against the wall.

Uh, you're not some impoverished kid who knows, "I gotta make it or my family's screwed." It wasn't quite like that.

So I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I graduated high school.

In Georgia, they have the, the lottery thing, the HOPE Scholarship.

If you have a B average, you get a couple of semesters paid for.

Wow.

How do we feel about college football expansion? Are you happy with 12 or should we expand this thing?

if you want to expand something, expand Saturday, like expand selling fall Saturdays, ironically, which is what we're going to try and do with the table setting that we do on this show on Friday.

I've always been against expanding the playoff.

How about this? I've always been against the concept of creating something new and then trying to move on from the new before we see how the new works out.

To me, last year, 12 was incredible because 12 gave us what everyone was crying for, and that's More access, but it also gave us what I always cry for, and that is the balance of urgency.

Like the puckering, the feeling in the stomach that a fall Saturday gives you that maybe no other platform of sport gives you because you know the playoff safety net's always there.

So I know all the arguments.

I'm just

So Josh, in terms of quarterbacks and big moments and how they perform, coming into this year, how do you see Arch Manning? Do you feel like he is clear and away the top quarterback in the nation, or do you need to see it first?

No, I don't feel like anyone's clear and away the top.

I do need to see it from him.

Got all the confidence in the world we will see it from him.

Um, I don't know how well people remember bowl season last year, but Texas plays Michigan in one of these, uh, quote unquote meaningless bowl games.

And I thought it was so incredible.

It was more compelling than half the playoff games, by the way.

If Texas doesn't make a deep, deep run, and I don't want to be this guy because I, I'm a big Sark fan, but if for some reason they don't make a deep run and it does not come to fruition this year, is he, is he in any kind of danger there?

So Josh, in terms of quarterbacks and big moments and how they perform, coming into this year, how do you see Arch Manning? Do you feel like he is clear and away the top quarterback in the nation, or do you need to see it first?

No, I don't feel like anyone's clear and away the top.

I do need to see it from him.

Got all the confidence in the world we will see it from him.

Um, I don't know how well people remember bowl season last year, but Texas plays Michigan in one of these, uh, quote unquote meaningless bowl games.

And I thought it was so incredible.

It was more compelling than half the playoff games, by the way.

If Texas doesn't make a deep, deep run, and I don't wanna be this guy because I, I'm a big Sark fan, but if for some reason they don't make a deep run and it does not come to fruition this year, is he, is he in any kind of danger there?

[laughs]

Colin, it's not, it's not just the NIL thing.

It, that's a huge piece of it, but also if you look at some of these guys, the SEC's not lacking for ability to spend on the quarterback position.

It's just the Big Ten's doing a better developmental job of squeezing the sponge and getting every last drop out of it.

And that doesn't just go for quarterback, by the way.

That's sort of a league-wide thing, uh, which is a four-hour show you and I could do.

Well, you mentioned Rocco Becht there.

Yeah

Yeah.

So what I did was I turned the radio off and I just started doing what we're doing right now.

But I was doing it with my steering wheel.

So there's no light, there's no red light on, there's no mic on, but you're simulating what you would be doing if you were on air.

I did it for a couple of years.

Wow.

And that really paid dividends.

Okay,

Yeah

... do you really wanna s- me, I'm talking about me specifically, 'cause I'm kind of introverted, like, not a huge people person.

Do I really wanna let my fate rest in the hands of one or multiple other people that on the best of days, it's fine, I get along with, but on the worst of days, and I realized really quick, I'm never gonna thrive in that environment.

So sink or swim, like, I'm gonna have to do it on my own.

Mm.

So it comes down to personal preference.

I'm saying we're never going back to pre-portal, pre-NIO.

Okay? So the sport's never gonna get unflattened.

It's just a great show, so you should subscribe to it wherever it is that you get Josh Pate's college football show.

I had something to add, but I'm going to let you go, because it's business-related.

It has nothing to do with 100% of people who are listening to the show, so we'll talk later about it.

Go ahead.

More pressure this year, Sark or Kiffin? Sark.

1,000% Sark.

Steve Sarkeesian is the only head coach in the SEC in what I would label championship or bust mode, because I think that's normally a stupid label.

Where are you on Mario Cristobal and the direction that Miami is heading?

So they may get a, a Haynes King out of two players if that makes sense.

I went down there in spring and watched them practice.

You would never have known that team was 4-8.

Now you know why.

Like I, I was, I was a little bit guilty of trusting the talent there when Billy was there, and it was very, they underachieved mightily with their roster talent.

So John comes in there.

Go down there and watch them in spring.

But, you know, you're going to Big Ten, you know, is there a, maybe a team or two in the Big Ten that probably gonna be making another run, and is there one in the ACC you're looking at saying, "Hey, stars align, these guys are gonna be pretty bad, too"?

Where do you think Alabama's flying right now in terms of are they overrated, underrated, or just rated?

I think probably I would agree with Coach.

I'd say they're properly rated if their rating is somewhere between the 8 and 15 range, which I think I could safely say that's what I've seen most places.

I think that's fair.

So the way I've classified Alabama is I think they are the biggest if-slash-then team in college football this year out of all the contenders, meaning there are about four different teams aspects of that team that are question marks right now that if they're answered in the affirmative, they could go win a national title.

Quarterback, obviously, chief among them, offensive line, run game, size up front defensively, what you think that's going to yield, the dividends you think that's going to pay.

Well, if that's something that breaks Alabama's way...

Where do you think this program is right now in terms of, like, are they still a top dog in the SEC, or are they