Latest / Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning / Have College Football's Big Changes Led To The Best Season Since 2007?

Transcript

Have College Football's Big Changes Led To The Best Season Since 2007? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Buckeyes Tomorrow Morning for Tuesday, November twenty, first
0:03
Speaker 1: time your host Tom Moore. The Indiana game is in
0:05
Speaker 1: four days, the game against Michigan in eleven days. There
0:09
Speaker 1: has been a lot of crabbing and complaining over the
0:11
Speaker 1: last week, over the last month, over the last year
0:14
Speaker 1: about college football and how everything is just going straight
0:17
Speaker 1: to heck, it is all falling apart the sport. It's
0:21
Speaker 1: not the sport we all knew and loved, and oh boy,
0:24
Speaker 1: everything is terrible now. And then a funny thing happened.
0:28
Speaker 1: The season started, and it has turned out that a
0:31
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that everyone has been complaining about
0:33
Speaker 1: has turned college football pretty awesome, maybe even more awesome
0:37
Speaker 1: than it was before, maybe having the best season since
0:39
Speaker 1: the crazy two thousand and seven season. I wanted to
0:42
Speaker 1: talk about all that and more with my buddy Tony
0:45
Speaker 1: gerdimant if Buckeheadle dot com. Tony, I think let's start
0:50
Speaker 1: with there's been a bunch of changes this year. Obviously,
0:53
Speaker 1: one of the things that really is the probably the
0:55
Speaker 1: biggest change is the return is the expansion of the
0:58
Speaker 1: college football playoff from fourteen to twelve. And I remember
1:01
Speaker 1: when they were first announcing this, there was a lot
1:04
Speaker 1: of hand ringing about the fact that, oh, it's going
1:06
Speaker 1: to render the college football regular season meaningless, nothing will matter.
1:10
Speaker 1: You can lose as many games as you want, you
1:12
Speaker 1: can still make the playoffs. Nothing matters. Enjoy Rby's I
1:16
Speaker 1: remember it as clear as day Tony, and it's the
1:18
Speaker 1: darnedest thing. But it feels like there might be more
1:21
Speaker 1: interest in college football broadly this year than there was before.
1:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tom, I don't know if you know this. A
1:28
Speaker 2: lot of people fear change and fear their place in it,
1:31
Speaker 2: and that was a common refrain from some people who
1:35
Speaker 2: are fans of established programs or who cover established programs.
1:40
Speaker 2: And now you look at it, and more programs can
1:43
Speaker 2: become established, more programs can establish themselves, and there are
1:47
Speaker 2: more games for more teams that mean something. Right now,
1:51
Speaker 2: I'm looking at my computer and Armie and Tulane are
1:54
Speaker 2: both seven and zero in the American Athletic Conference and
1:58
Speaker 2: they are vying for the playoffs. They may need a
2:02
Speaker 2: little bit of help. But the fact that we're even
2:04
Speaker 2: saying that, how is that a bad thing? And how
2:07
Speaker 2: how is it bad for essentially every team to actually
2:13
Speaker 2: have a path that they can look forward and say,
2:18
Speaker 2: if these things happen, we've got a shot. Whereas you know,
2:22
Speaker 2: in the past to even fathom like you know, Bowling
2:28
Speaker 2: Green making the playoffs and a four team or even
2:30
Speaker 2: the BCS like that, these were not ever things that
2:33
Speaker 2: could happen. But you've got the right schedule and you
2:35
Speaker 2: win the right games and you look good doing it.
2:38
Speaker 2: There's there's a spot for you in this at least
2:42
Speaker 2: there's there's a spot for one of you. Uh, if
2:45
Speaker 2: there are four or five of you in the group
2:46
Speaker 2: of fire, like somebody's gonna that's there for somebody, and
2:50
Speaker 2: so it could be there for you. And so it
2:52
Speaker 2: opens us up to so many more teams and more
2:54
Speaker 2: games have impact and oh but it but nobody gets
2:57
Speaker 2: knocked out after loss. Nobody got Nobody really gets knocked
3:01
Speaker 2: out after one loss. That is an established program anyway.
3:06
Speaker 2: So to think that losses, I mean, we're seeing now
3:10
Speaker 2: the arguing with the SE about the SEC and their standing,
3:14
Speaker 2: Like losses don't matter to those people, that's for sure.
3:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think there's a lot of different things
3:20
Speaker 1: that go into you talked about there about the group
3:22
Speaker 1: of five teams and those group of five teams. Every
3:25
Speaker 1: team goes into the year with at least theoretically a
3:29
Speaker 1: plausible not just a theoretical, but a plausible path with
3:33
Speaker 1: the college Football Playoff and therefore the national championship. If
3:35
Speaker 1: you go into the year and you win all of
3:37
Speaker 1: your games, and you keep winning your games, and you
3:40
Speaker 1: don't stop winning your games, you two, whether you're UTEP
3:45
Speaker 1: or New Mexico State or Tulane or Coastal Carolina, you
3:50
Speaker 1: two could be the national champion if you continue winning games.
3:54
Speaker 1: There have been plenty of unbeaten group of five teams
3:57
Speaker 1: that have gotten left out in the past, where you
3:59
Speaker 1: started the year knowing even if everything fell pretty much
4:03
Speaker 1: exactly right, you could still very easily get left out
4:05
Speaker 1: of the playoff and have no plausible path to the
4:07
Speaker 1: national championship. That is certainly one piece that has changed
4:11
Speaker 1: things quite a bit on the group of five side.
4:13
Speaker 1: Something else has changed things even for some of these
4:16
Speaker 1: sad zack teams a little further up the ladder, the
4:19
Speaker 1: transfer portal. There's been so much conversation about that, and
4:23
Speaker 1: is it a good thing, is it a bad thing?
4:25
Speaker 1: Is a good thing for players, is a bad thing
4:26
Speaker 1: for teams? I think what we've seen is that it
4:30
Speaker 1: can be a great thing for teams if you're smart
4:32
Speaker 1: enough and you're willing to invest a little bit in it.
4:35
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt beat Alabama literally this year. Indiana is a top
4:40
Speaker 1: five team in the AP Pole literally this year. A
4:43
Speaker 1: year ago, Indiana was three and nine, fired their coach,
4:46
Speaker 1: BYU five and seven overall two and seven in the
4:49
Speaker 1: Big Twelve. They are currently in control of their destiny
4:53
Speaker 1: to make the college football playoff. Two years ago Colorado
4:56
Speaker 1: one to eleven fired their coach, still have a plausible
4:59
Speaker 1: path to the college football this year. Miami Tony even
5:03
Speaker 1: perpetually sad sack Miami five and seven two years ago
5:07
Speaker 1: and now control potentially their own destiny to make the
5:10
Speaker 1: college football playoff. I think this is one of these
5:12
Speaker 1: things where you look at where teams are right now,
5:17
Speaker 1: and no one is completely hopeless Tony, Indiana, the Indiana
5:21
Speaker 1: Hoosiers are a top five team nationally, and if they
5:24
Speaker 1: can do it, anyone can do it.
5:27
Speaker 2: Anyone can do it, and every single program is looking
5:31
Speaker 2: at it like that and curse. Signetti said the same
5:33
Speaker 2: thing on his Monday teleconference as press conference. He said
5:37
Speaker 2: that in the Power four, if you have commitment, you
5:40
Speaker 2: have an opportunity if and basically every Power four team
5:44
Speaker 2: should have that commitment in my opinion, because if you're
5:47
Speaker 2: gonna enjoy the spoils, then you should be shooting for
5:51
Speaker 2: as much as you can get on your own as well.
5:55
Speaker 2: And the transfer portal, man, that is the great equalizer.
5:57
Speaker 2: And if you do it right, it's great. If you
5:59
Speaker 2: do it wrong, look at Florida State and they did
6:03
Speaker 2: it right, and with Jordan Travis, they did it wrong
6:06
Speaker 2: with djuyung La and you've seen the results and you
6:10
Speaker 2: look at the top I think eight seven seven passers
6:13
Speaker 2: in the Big ten in terms of passer ratings right now,
6:16
Speaker 2: and the only homegrown guy is Drew Aller. Everybody else
6:19
Speaker 2: is a transfer from somewhere. So you know, Indiana, Chris
6:24
Speaker 2: Signetti comes in and they've got I think twenty seven
6:27
Speaker 2: transfers and that's not terribly unusual with a new coaching regime.
6:33
Speaker 2: And they're going to build on recruiting. They're they're getting
6:36
Speaker 2: into more homes now, so you can jumpstart your program
6:41
Speaker 2: with the right guy. I mean, you look at Michigan
6:43
Speaker 2: State a few years back with Kenneth Walker. It doesn't
6:46
Speaker 2: take much to light a fuse and then once that
6:49
Speaker 2: gets going, you you have an opportunity to build on that.
6:53
Speaker 2: And you know, there, you see the boosters, see Indiana
6:57
Speaker 2: doing it, and I keep saying, like, you know, imagine
6:59
Speaker 2: how things are for Ryan Walters right now Purdue when
7:03
Speaker 2: everybody is seeing what Indiana's doing and they're like, why
7:06
Speaker 2: why are we doing that? That's not just Purdue asking
7:09
Speaker 2: that that. There's a lot of administrations asking why aren't
7:13
Speaker 2: we doing that? And if you can't get us there,
7:15
Speaker 2: we will get the guy that can. And so it's
7:18
Speaker 2: an interesting time for the coaches as well.
7:21
Speaker 1: For sure, And as more teams potentially throw their hat
7:24
Speaker 1: into the ring with a little more aggressive approach to NIL,
7:27
Speaker 1: that is only going to be a good thing for
7:29
Speaker 1: the players because I'm sure people are broadly familiar with
7:33
Speaker 1: the concept of supply and demand, and well, if there's
7:35
Speaker 1: more demand, guess what the cost of cost of paying
7:38
Speaker 1: for that supply is going to go up. I was
7:40
Speaker 1: thinking about this during the watching watching the broadcast of
7:44
Speaker 1: the Ohio State Northwestern game for a Blucky Weekly episode
7:47
Speaker 1: we have coming up this week, and Jake Butt was
7:49
Speaker 1: on there talking about Jeremiah Smith and how Jared Ball,
7:52
Speaker 1: he's still got two more years before he can declare
7:54
Speaker 1: for the NFL. Boy, if he could go pro right now,
7:57
Speaker 1: he'd be a top twenty pick for sure. And thinking
8:00
Speaker 1: about it, that's how it always used to work. It
8:02
Speaker 1: would just well, got to go for your scholarship and
8:05
Speaker 1: your book money and whatever happens to slide to you
8:08
Speaker 1: underneath the table. Now, a guy who could potentially be
8:12
Speaker 1: earning millions of dollars in the NFL has a chance
8:15
Speaker 1: to earn a decent amount of money, probably not an
8:18
Speaker 1: equivalent to an NFL contract, but a pretty decent amount
8:21
Speaker 1: of money now, which guess what, Tony. I remember when
8:24
Speaker 1: people said, if they pay the players, I'm not watching.
8:27
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, if people aren't watching this year,
8:30
Speaker 1: I think they're missing out because it has not impacted
8:32
Speaker 1: my enjoyment of college football as a whole, you know,
8:35
Speaker 1: on the whole one bit.
8:38
Speaker 2: No. And I was just recently listening to an interview
8:40
Speaker 2: with Tulane's head coach, and he was talking about how
8:43
Speaker 2: they brought in a bunch of transfers, and they half
8:47
Speaker 2: the team is transfers. Half the team is the guys
8:50
Speaker 2: that stuck around. And you're seeing what we thought would
8:53
Speaker 2: be disjointed locker rooms, like just really us versus them,
8:59
Speaker 2: or the haves versus the have nots within your own
9:02
Speaker 2: locker room. I'm sure there's some of that, but we've
9:04
Speaker 2: seen a lot of programs come together where these transfers
9:08
Speaker 2: take Indiana, take tu Lane, take Ohio State. The transfers
9:12
Speaker 2: fit in exactly with the culture. And you can't just
9:16
Speaker 2: go out and buy a championship. You need to vet
9:20
Speaker 2: and you need to make sure you bring it in
9:21
Speaker 2: the right guys. And I think that benefits That kind
9:25
Speaker 2: of process benefits both the players because they're fitting a
9:30
Speaker 2: situation where they can do the most and contribute the most,
9:34
Speaker 2: and it benefits the program because you're bringing in the
9:37
Speaker 2: right guys. If you just bring in guys to bring
9:39
Speaker 2: in guys, you don't necessarily know what you're going to get.
9:43
Speaker 2: And sometimes you bring in a guy who he loses
9:45
Speaker 2: his job and he quits and he heads back to
9:47
Speaker 2: the portal because that's what he knows. And so you
9:50
Speaker 2: can live and you can die by it. But if
9:52
Speaker 2: you do it right, it's an opportunity for everybody to
9:55
Speaker 2: do well. And but you're talking about ceremised or this guy,
10:00
Speaker 2: that that guy could go and leave and be a
10:02
Speaker 2: first rounder. They're all going to have to deal with
10:07
Speaker 2: the situation of they can be first rounders in college.
10:10
Speaker 2: You know that a top twenty pick in the NFL
10:12
Speaker 2: could be the number one pick in college, if you
10:14
Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about with the with the portal
10:17
Speaker 2: and things like that. So just because you've got a
10:19
Speaker 2: player doesn't mean you're going to be able.
10:20
Speaker 1: To keep them.
10:21
Speaker 2: So that's a lot of work for a lot of people,
10:24
Speaker 2: but it can create so many more interesting scenarios for
10:29
Speaker 2: all of the other teams. Wasn't that long ago, a
10:33
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, we were talking about the rumors
10:35
Speaker 2: of Marvin Harrison to USC and it's like a hahaha.
10:38
Speaker 2: And now, not that it's gonna happen with jeremih Smith,
10:41
Speaker 2: but it can happen with anybody's best player where some
10:44
Speaker 2: of the whispers you start hearing you might want to
10:46
Speaker 2: put more weight into and it's like, well, just imagine
10:49
Speaker 2: if that person went to that team and then this
10:51
Speaker 2: person went to that team, and there's a ton more interest.
10:55
Speaker 2: And I don't think it's negatively, I don't think it's
10:58
Speaker 2: impacted the fan based so much where you're like, I
11:01
Speaker 2: can't do this anymore. I'm tired of my players leaving.
11:04
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do it anymore because I don't
11:06
Speaker 2: know that we've actually seen any evidence of that being
11:10
Speaker 2: any kind of significant drop off.
11:13
Speaker 1: No, and I think you also are When do you
11:16
Speaker 1: lose interest, you lose in twist when you feel like
11:18
Speaker 1: it's hopeless, Like I'm sure people are bailing from schools
11:20
Speaker 1: that are you know, I saw the pictures of the
11:22
Speaker 1: Purdue parking lot and the and the inside of raws
11:25
Speaker 1: Aid Stadium. Yeah, there's not a lot of attendance there,
11:27
Speaker 1: but that's a you're whatever one and whatever you are
11:30
Speaker 1: at this point one in nine, one and ten, and
11:33
Speaker 1: your in state rival is doing what they're doing. And
11:37
Speaker 1: guess what if you do it right, if you if
11:39
Speaker 1: you hire smart people, you have the opportunity to do
11:42
Speaker 1: the exact same thing if you invest the same way.
11:45
Speaker 1: And this has not just been I think there was
11:46
Speaker 1: a lot of concern that, boy, this is going to
11:48
Speaker 1: really just just benefit the rich schools, and it's just
11:50
Speaker 1: going to be the consolidation of all the talent and
11:52
Speaker 1: all these all the rich goals. You can if you're
11:55
Speaker 1: smart you two can be Indiana football. A sentence that
11:59
Speaker 1: I was not expecting to ever say at any point
12:01
Speaker 1: in my life. But here we are, and I want
12:04
Speaker 1: to look real quickly. Later on Tuesday, we're going to
12:07
Speaker 1: have the Week three of the college football playoff rankings.
12:10
Speaker 1: We'll have our usual live show coming up at seven o'clock,
12:13
Speaker 1: seven thirty, whatever time it is. We'll throw it on
12:15
Speaker 1: Twitter and everywhere. Make sure you subscribe to your YouTube
12:17
Speaker 1: channel and then you will not need to rely on
12:19
Speaker 1: me remembering what time the show starts. But it will
12:22
Speaker 1: be week three. I threw together a look at the
12:25
Speaker 1: bracket based on the current AP poll, so this won't
12:28
Speaker 1: be exactly what the bracket looks like necessarily last week
12:31
Speaker 1: it aligned exactly. This week we'll see, but the current
12:34
Speaker 1: AP top twenty five all. Just run down the list
12:36
Speaker 1: real quick. Number one, Oregon number two, Ohio State number three,
12:39
Speaker 1: Texas number four, Penn State number five, Indiana number six,
12:42
Speaker 1: Notre Dame number seven, Alabama number eight, Georgia number nine, Ole,
12:46
Speaker 1: Miss number ten, Tennessee number eleven, Miami number twelve, Boise
12:49
Speaker 1: State number thirteen, BYU number fourteen, SMU number fifteen, Texas
12:53
Speaker 1: A and M number sixteen, Colorado, number seventeen, clubs the
12:56
Speaker 1: number eighteen, Army, number nineteen, South Carolina number twenty two,
13:00
Speaker 1: number twenty one, Arizona State, number two two, Iowa State
13:03
Speaker 1: number twenty three, UNLV number twenty four, Illinois, number twenty five,
13:07
Speaker 1: Washington State. Again, that's the ap pole. That's not the
13:09
Speaker 1: college football playoff rankings. But if we take those again
13:13
Speaker 1: last week, it matched up exactly. So if we take
13:15
Speaker 1: those and apply those to the formula they use, the
13:18
Speaker 1: pattern they use to put these teams in the bracket
13:21
Speaker 1: week one, but first playoff round, you'd have number twelve BYU,
13:26
Speaker 1: the Big twelve champion traveling to Columbus to take on
13:29
Speaker 1: Ohio State, number nine, Alabama traveling to South Bend to
13:32
Speaker 1: take on Notre Dame, number eleven, Ole miss traveling to
13:35
Speaker 1: number six, and state number ten Georgia traveling to number
13:38
Speaker 1: seven Indiana. And then your four teams that get the
13:42
Speaker 1: buys are at number four Boise State, who is one
13:44
Speaker 1: spot ahead at BYU, so they could theoretically Boise State
13:48
Speaker 1: could theoretically not just get in by get a first
13:50
Speaker 1: round by number one Oregon, number three Miami and number
13:55
Speaker 1: two Texas and Tony, I look at that and there's
13:58
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways you can go. But here's
14:01
Speaker 1: where I want to at least start. The Georgia Bulldogs
14:06
Speaker 1: have to travel to Bloomington, Indiana on December twenty first, Tony,
14:09
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you know the average high temperature that
14:12
Speaker 1: day on December twenty first in Bloomington, Indiana, high temperature
14:15
Speaker 1: twenty forty three, low of twenty seven. All miss in
14:18
Speaker 1: State College, Pennsylvania average high of thirty eight, low of
14:21
Speaker 1: twenty five. The Alabama Crimson Tide in South Bend, Indiana
14:25
Speaker 1: high of thirty six, low of twenty four. Tony, we
14:28
Speaker 1: have spent if you have been in the a member
14:31
Speaker 1: of the online posting Army fighting in the posting Wars
14:35
Speaker 1: for twenty years now, we have been talking about out boy.
14:38
Speaker 1: You know, it would be so interesting to see these
14:40
Speaker 1: bowl games and what the bowl game record would be
14:42
Speaker 1: like if the SEC teams had to come play in
14:44
Speaker 1: the North. Tony. I know the world is not a
14:47
Speaker 1: beautiful enough place to have Georgia come and play in Bloomington,
14:50
Speaker 1: Indiana and December twenty first, but what if it was?
14:56
Speaker 2: What if it was? And the amount of pressure on
14:59
Speaker 2: those big ten teams to defend the honor of the
15:03
Speaker 2: posting Armies over these last twenty years out on the
15:06
Speaker 2: battle front, making these theoreticals that we knew we'd never
15:10
Speaker 2: have to actually defend, and now we're all here going,
15:13
Speaker 2: uh oh oh, I better start deleting all of my
15:18
Speaker 2: posts from nineteen ninety three and beyond. Yeah, no, no,
15:23
Speaker 2: that's way too early. But yeah. I mean it's then
15:27
Speaker 2: it becomes put up or shut up and for both really,
15:30
Speaker 2: and we can start making these sweeping generalizations about one
15:34
Speaker 2: conference over the other. But I do think regardless of
15:38
Speaker 2: how it's going to how it would turn out, we've
15:40
Speaker 2: all wanted to see it. And so that is another
15:43
Speaker 2: example of what the changes have given us a possibility of.
15:48
Speaker 2: We can see those fantasy matchups that we've talked about.
15:51
Speaker 2: We can see Tulane or Boise State making the playoffs.
15:55
Speaker 2: I mean, this has been Boise State has been going
15:58
Speaker 2: at this for about twenty years now, trying to be
16:00
Speaker 2: a part of a championship, and they finally have legitimately
16:08
Speaker 2: made it. And I think that's pretty cool. I think
16:11
Speaker 2: all of these option opportunities for so many teams is
16:15
Speaker 2: great for the game. More games matter now more uh
16:20
Speaker 2: by factors. More games matter now than they used to
16:24
Speaker 2: because your games matter until November. Now every single week
16:28
Speaker 2: we talked about this is a play end game. This
16:30
Speaker 2: is losing your out game, and that's in November. We
16:35
Speaker 2: used to have those in September and then then whoever's out,
16:38
Speaker 2: they're out for the next nine games. What fun is that?
16:41
Speaker 1: Well, and you want to talk about games, more games mattering?
16:44
Speaker 1: We were driving home from Northwestern on Saturday night and
16:49
Speaker 1: we're absolutely in rapped attention to the BYU game. Who
16:52
Speaker 1: would have cared about the BYU game a year ago?
16:55
Speaker 1: And this is a game with potential college football playoff
16:58
Speaker 1: and national championship implications like direct significant college football playoff
17:02
Speaker 1: and direct national championship with the implications Ohio State Indiana
17:06
Speaker 1: this weekend. You want to tell me that that game
17:08
Speaker 1: doesn't mean. No one cares, Tony, It doesn't matter, no one.
17:12
Speaker 1: Too many teams in there already, it doesn't matter. That's sorry,
17:16
Speaker 1: I have bad news. Now. Are there flaws with the
17:17
Speaker 1: current system? Yes? Absolutely? Will there be more change coming
17:20
Speaker 1: in two years when the current college contract expires, absolutely,
17:24
Speaker 1: Will that change be only two more teams in there?
17:27
Speaker 1: And then two teams getting a bye. Yeah, probably will
17:30
Speaker 1: that ruin the college football regular season boiler alert? Probably not.
17:34
Speaker 1: It will probably create more interest, more excitement, all that stuff.
17:39
Speaker 1: But the first year this year, the first year, man,
17:42
Speaker 1: oh man, is that going to be exciting to see.
17:45
Speaker 1: We'll have the We're heading into the home stretch of
17:47
Speaker 1: the season right now, Buckeyes home for Indiana, a top
17:51
Speaker 1: five matchup, their third top five matchup of the season,
17:53
Speaker 1: then Michigan, and then the postseason. We'll see where that
17:56
Speaker 1: all goes. But a great place to go for all
17:58
Speaker 1: of that would be at buckeyehuddle dot com. That's for Tony,
18:00
Speaker 1: Kevin and I covered the team, Mark covers recruiting, got
18:02
Speaker 1: our whole team of Vexus and those gurus there. Thank
18:04
Speaker 1: you a smarter football fan. We would love to see
18:06
Speaker 1: you there. That will do it for today. Thank you
18:08
Speaker 1: guys all for joining us. Have a great day. We'll
18:10
Speaker 1: talk to you tomorrow.