We're excited to announce our latest video series College Town, the series that dives deep into the heart and soul of Southern football culture. I'm Wes Blankenship, your guide as we embark on an 1,800 mile adventure across five legendary college towns. From Gainesville to Chapel Hill with unforgettable stops in Athens, Tuscaloosa, and Clemson, we explore the rich traditions, passionate communities, and electrifying game day rituals that make each location a pilgrimage site for college football enthusiasts. Join us as we discover local hotspots, connect with devoted fans, and soak in the excitement that elevates these towns to legendary status every fall, all powered by the powerhouse Toyota Tundra. Buckle up, it's time to hit the road with us and uncover what sets Southern College football apart from the rest. Watch every episode at SaturdayDownSouth.com/college-town or hit the link in our bio. Hey, what's going on? This is the Saturday Down South podcast, I am Conro Garra. Will, week five is here, and we have full preview on the way, in case you haven't heard a certain Georgia Bama game that we will get to in a bit here. But first, we have some news that I feared we would get, we didn't have a chance to really break this down. Didn't think it was going to be that serious, and it turns out it's worst case scenario for Hill Perkins, out for the year of torn ACL, can't help but wonder if that's the last down of college football that he plays, which is just a massive, massive bummer. Yeah, no, I fully agree. It's something that's interesting, and we've talked about this with a ton of players, it's been realized that LSU players, man, they kind of don't get better. How many true freshmen at LSU have we talked about? LSU leads the country in that. Derek Stingley, and I mean, the Honey Badger stuff. Mark Chase, not coming back for his senior year. Yeah, I mean, you could go through it, Rick. It's like all these guys that we've had, where it's, Keshan Booty is another guy, where it's like, okay, and not the guys don't get better, it's the guys don't get better in college, because that's the funny thing as we see, you know, Joe Burrow and Jaden Daniels doodle out on Monday night football, these guys all producing the pros. But that's why I loved, you know, Malik neighbors so much, because he was a guy that got better every year. Really rare at LSU. Often you will get one big year, I'll have a Honey Badger, and then you just kind of disappear, it'll be a great pro. Ryan Paralou. Ryan Paralou, man. Sorry, I didn't mean to go there. Sorry to my birthday, or my birthday week, but yeah, that was a guy. Anyway, so point being like, yeah, I think, even Jefferson, Jordan Jefferson was like, they was a great freshman. So point being, this doesn't shock me, because I've been through it a ton. I think with Harold Perkins LSU definitely kind of failed him in the last two years, counting this year, right? I didn't, unfortunately, right? He wasn't really an impact player on the defense this year, last year, because they didn't use him correctly, and he's not a guy who's six, six and going to push guys sideways and be like, or even like a like a tyrant Matthew that kind of put him anywhere he figures it out. They still were trying to determine what his best role was, you know, he was playing star as one of those six guys that had a new position in this half Carolina game. So yeah, it's, it really is. I've said this over and over again, kind of a failing by LSU to maximize a guy who they did have for two years and some change. It was immediately impactful. Brian Kelly took a minute to play him, and then once they found out what he was, it was like they started to take away from that or add things and basically give him a calculus test when they said that he was succeeding in algebra. So it sucks. It sucks. You know, he's a guy that to your point, I'm not really sure where he plays in the NFL, because we haven't exactly figured that out. But if he goes, here's the thing. What if he doesn't? What if, what if he doesn't? And I'm not saying that I'm like, I would tell a kid you absolutely need to come back to school. And I, I certainly will not be surprised if Harold Perkins looks at the last two years of LSU and says, why in the world would I come back to a place that has misused me? I have no problem whatsoever. Harold Perkins decides that's the last down of college football that I'm playing. I'm going to the NFL. I'm going to make sure that I get taken care of as long as I get that first run great, I'm good. But what if he comes back because he just turned 22 weeks ago. You, you brought up the point. Where's this position at the NFL? Like, where's the position that scouts are going to look at and say, that's the thing you definitively do best because I love seeing Harold Perkins just attacked the ball carrier as great as that is reality is he'd be one of the 10 lightest inside linebackers in the NFL. He'd easily be the lightest edge rusher in the NFL. And what have you seen from him in coverage besides some nice progression to make you think? Yeah, like, yeah. But how much of that have you been able to say, yes, that's, that's where you can make a living on in the NFL. And like, I'm not saying that he wouldn't be able to find somewhere that could use him successfully. But especially to after the Isaiah Simmons situation played out, Isaiah Simmons is already on his second team. He's with the Giants. He was at 238 coming into the combine too. And that's a guy that was kind of like a tweener at Clemson and he ends up winning the butt kiss award playing linebacker, something he did really well on his, his like pre draft year. But like, I just kind of wonder if if he actually looks at this situation and looks at all the feedback and then goes, you know what, what if I did this? What if what if I do this crazy thing of kind of dictating the terms, Dallas, you both from an NIL standpoint and from a positional standpoint. And he says, look, here's how I'd like to be used. Here's how I feel comfortable playing this sport. And here's how I'd like to be used. I'll let all that other stuff take care of itself. I'm not saying that I think that's going to happen. I'm just saying that I don't think it would be that crazy if it did. Well, man, I've been joking about me getting like the Homer tag, but this is just kind of upset every LSU fan. I think he's done it for sure. I'll admit, dude, I'll admit, I want to see Harold Perkins play more college football. And that's definitely fueling this take that I have, like no doubt about it. Let me finish though. I think he's played his last time for LSU. Because at the end of the day, if you're Harold Perkins, what have you seen from this university on defense specifically? And I know like Baker's been great for linebackers. Like, I get that. But if you're going to come back to college to your point, I'm Harold Perkins. I go to either the highest bidder or go to a place like Georgia where it's like, hey, if you just hang out around Kirby Smart, you're going to go in the first round at this point, kind of like, I mean, it produces great players. But LSU, you're good. He has so much bad tape out there. If I'm playing in the wrong position, if you just put him around a bunch of five stars and say, Harold, do two things well, you're going to go in the first round. We've seen that go to, you know, even like a Texas, not to say that they're, you know, that the same pedigree as Georgia, but the money is going to be there, the spotlight is going to be there. So I think he's definitely played his last down for LSU just for a couple of reasons. LSU doesn't, we've seen have the money of a Texas or Georgia. Number two, it's like they have this great relationship. Like Baker's been his first kind of good coordinator and he's had him for a couple months, right? And you know how locked, locked any was immediate days, how seriously he was taking his leadership role. But at the same time, if you're going to go turn down NFL money, you either got to go chase a paycheck or you got to go chase like a first or second round grade. And I don't think you can get any of those LSU. Yeah. And like that's the other thing too is, you know, even if teams want to work you out at different spots for the draft or something, you're going to be coming off a serious knee injury. I don't know what you're going to be able to do, you know, if it's a little bit different than, you know, these guys who go into like a Jameson Williams, who obviously like went into the pre-draft process coming off the torn ACL, but he put together such great film with that year that he had at Bama that it was like, all right, his draft stock, he's going to be good to go. He's not going to necessarily have to go out there and prove anything. I'm just, I'm very interested what this next chapter for Harold Perkins looks like. And I hope the best is, is yet to, you have to come for that kid because man, it was so fun to watch when he was right. But it's, it's a bummer to think about the idea of him having played his last down at LSU, potentially his last down at college football. Yeah, for sure. Hope, hope the best for the kid. You know, he was Brian Kelly is one of his first recruits, first five star. And I think he did a lot to kind of make people believe in LSU. I loved watching him as a player, you know, whatever number he wore, right? Maybe the number seven we need to take a hard look at. Just keep the same number, whatever you do next year, maybe keep the same number. Just saying throw it out. Yeah, I think seven almost needs to be like bestowed, like the Heisman House, like we need to get everybody together and say, this is going to be our number seven for like two or three years. Because it feels like every time we give a guy seven now, it's like, Oh, you're out of here. Yeah. So it's, it looks good though at four with number four. I mean, he's been a man child up front for LSU. And that's a good thing for the LSU defense is like, yeah, it's been a little bit more quarter quarter, but they've actually found some impact players as crazy as that might be. I'm not saying that they're all the sudden back to having a really good defense. But I think they have at least shown they can find some of those impact guys with Blake Baker. But certainly they would rather have Harold Perkins Jr. than not. And it's unfortunate that they're not going to have him. All right. We, by the way, have Hurricane Helene. Both of us. Yeah, both of us in the background. So if you see lightning, you hear thunder, rain, whatever the case may be power going off, literally anything that could be happening. We're recording this on Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully everybody is staying safe and hunkered down. And maybe you're listening to us while you're while you're kind of riding this thing out. And hopefully nobody's weekend plans are too impacted by this. But yes, well, we have a full pod on the way. We have West Blankenship coming up in a bit. We discussed our new SDS series that he led College Town, which is just so unbelievably cool, as well as some Georgia Bama talk with him. And then we got later the week to close. Let's do what we did last time. Well, and let's start with the game. That's one of the biggest of the season. One would argue the biggest of the season. Number two, Georgia, one and a half point favorite. How about that against number four, Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The over under eye half for this one is 12. Yes, count of 12. Nick Saban mentions. That's excluding college game day, obviously, because Sam is going to be there. And that's what we're not doing to mention every time he talks. But we're going to get the graphics of Kirby's one in five mark against Saban. That's coming. We're going to get the shots of Saban up there in, you know, in his suite. And he's going to be chatting up with Miss Chit with Miss Terry or something like that. Or, you know, we'll get the shots of Saban chatting it up with former Bama players and or current recruits from his suite. That's that's coming. Can you imagine being a recruit? Well, you're on your official visit or something like that. You're kind of seeing the lay of the land, all that. And, you know, whoever's showing you around just says, hey, you know, you want to go hang out and save in suite for a quarter or something? I'm pretty sure if you auction that off and you could answer this because you lived in the state of Alabama. If you auctioned off of that opportunity to normal citizens in the state of Alabama, at least $10,000, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think like this is going to be such a funny game for that reason. It's going to be a lot of like changing re-use as they would say. Yeah, very much so. And look, Saban is the elephant in the room. I mean, pun very much intended, of course, on the field that is named after him, his presence or potentially lack of a presence, it's going to be felt. And how could it not be? This is the type of matchup that he lived for. And in a weird way, this actually hasn't been the type of matchup that Kirby has lived for. This sounds like a knock, but it's not. And I'm not just talking about the Bama aspect. I'm more just talking about what he's facing as a road team in this atmosphere. Kirby is in year nine at Georgia will. Wow. Yeah, I know, which is just weird in itself. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, time is flying. It really is. He has only had two true road games against an AP top 10 team. Can you name them? One of them was that Clemson stinker, right? Wow, they still were. We'd figure them out. But then road games against a top 10 team. Oh, man, I'm thinking like none of the 40 games because it's Jacksonville. Yeah. Man. Yeah, I don't think they've gone to. Yeah, because that game was at home. I actually don't know those two games. 2017 at Auburn, that they got waxed for that day. Yep, Georgia enters number one in the country and then lose that game like 40 to 17, something like that. And then, of course, he gets the rematch that he wins in the SEC championship. And then the other one, I'm kind of reluctant to count it, not because of the quality of the teams, but 2020 at Alabama because that game wasn't that that was like one I thought of, but that was just such a weird year for Georgia. Like, yeah, weird year for everyone because I, you know, that's not a full house. It was a COVID reduced crowd. So we'll get to more of this discussion later with West about how unique of an opportunity this is for Kirby on the road. But but think about that. He has only had one instance in his career at Georgia, in which he's been in a true road game against an AP top 10 team that had a full crowd. That's cut. I mean, that's kind of crazy. And in case you were wondering, I look this up because I'm a loser and I was very curious. Saban, eight and three in his career in those games. Also, in case you were wondering, Kalen to bore to an O in those games in his four seasons as a head coach, not as relevant seeing as how Kalen to bore is coaching the home team. But against AP top 15 teams, if you were curious what that number is for Kalen to bore, eight and two pretty good. And the losses were when he was at Fresno State in 2021, when he lost to Oregon by seven, an Oregon team that the following week they went on the road at beat Ohio State in Columbus ended up being a 10 win team. And then last year at Washington, you could probably say you beat this guy. Right? Just not Dan Lanning. And then last year, angry as heck from that one game. He's like, I'm never going to do that again. Yes, seriously. And then of course, last year, Washington loses to Michigan and the National Championship in case you somehow didn't see it. But Kalen to bore has been pretty darn good against top 15 teams in his career. If he wins this game, so much of the conversation nationally will shift to how Bama isn't going anywhere. Dynasty isn't dead. You thought that you killed Bama with Nick Saban being gone and Bama's going to be just fine. If Kirby wins this game, the conversation will shift to the shrinking list of coaches who can stop Kirby in a post saving world. It's not that Kalen to bore is necessarily on that list right now. It's that we don't know if he is going to be on that list right now. Huge, huge ramifications on both sides. Obviously, those dynamics are at play. I can't wait to see how Kirby Glenn Schumann approached the Jalen Milro assignment again. Last year in the SEC Championship, Milro won that game with his arm and he won that game with his legs. It was the arm that made it a 10 point game in the middle of the fourth quarter. And it was his legs that picked up the two first downs and put Georgia's three-peat bid, not just on the back burner, but completely off the stove. That's what he did to that team. Georgia should be the healthier team in the trenches. I would guess if they get some of those guys back up from potentially going to have Michael Williams back, he's been banged up in the first part of the season. Unfortunately, that would be huge to be able to potentially test that Bama offensive line, especially those Bama tackles, which I do not necessarily think we can be convinced that they have turned the corner. Still not sure how they're going to hold up against guys that can get after the quarterback. I expect Jalen Walker will be able to do that as well. If we saw a lot of Jalen Walker on Caden Proctor would not surprise me one bit. Can Georgia disguise those looks and confuse Jalen Milro in his fourth game in this offense? I don't know. But I think he's been pretty darn good to start. And he's had some tough moments against USF where they just couldn't necessarily finish drives. And it was rough at points during that game, but he's yet to throw a pick and he's taken five sacks through three games. And I think with how bad that USF offensive, or that USF game was for a Bama's offensive line, you could say like, it's actually kind of surprising. Like we saw what it was without him. But right. I mean, seriously, like a year earlier, it was five sacks and a half would have been what it felt like it was a victory for that Bama offensive line. If Milro is settled in, and if he's throwing these deep balls to Ryan Williams, not ideal for Georgia. I would expect a lot of Julian Humphrey to draw that assignment in the Georgia secondary, perhaps a bit less Malachi Starks at the line of scrimmage. I would expect Malachi Starks a bit more over the top and trying to help out against a 17 year old in case you haven't heard, who currently leads all of FBS with 28 and a half yards per catch. Ryan Williams has been at out as advertised, if not better than that. And I love him so much. I sent you a picture that like his 13 year old sister had painted his nails. He is just the coolest guy. Like he just it's it would success finds you that early. A lot of times guys just shut it down and everything I've seen of him is just a big smiley happy lad. And that's just so great to see. Dude is balling. I mean, to be at this stage of his career and to be cooking dudes the way that he has in the first part of the season. Look, I am certainly impressed. And I am impressed as someone that said, take the under on whatever the the freshman season progression projection is for him because of all those things that have kept bringing up about the true freshman receivers in the SEC in the last eight years. But he has certainly looked apart so far. He talked about that with Coleman, not Ryan Williams. So not technically wrong. Yeah, not I mean, not the worst take in the world. Ryan Williams is going to he's he's going to probably flirt with the 800 yard mark. I would assume with how big play of a threat he's been so far. And if you can do it against Georgia, buddy, you can do it against anyone. I think Georgia fans would prefer as weird as it sounds, not to see Ryan Williams on Daelyn Everett, who hasn't had the best start to the season. SEC stat cat had him as the most yards allowed per target among SEC corners. Not great. Not great for that guy. But Julian Humphrey looks the part so far. And again, Malachi starts over the top. You feel all right about that if you're Georgia. But what's that going to look like? Because Georgia's past defense, they've allowed one pass play of 20 yards this season came against Everett. Bama, same thing. Same thing. One pass play of 20 yards allowed. That's the best in the country. Those two teams, they have eliminated those chunk plays in the passing game. Both of these teams would like to be able to test that. This is a huge game for the Millero perception. If you're a Millero hater, and if you want a chance to be able to say this guy can't throw, and he sucks and look what he can't do, you're hoping that Georgia is going to be the team to make you feel better about that take. Because if they don't, I don't know who will. Okay, I don't. I think that this is a game in which if he wins, we have to talk about the club that he'd be joining. Well, who is the only starting quarterback who beat Kirby Smart twice? Joe Burrow. Yes, sir. That's it. I like how we play in the numbers a little bit. Okay, we're not counting number 13 LSU, who's smack Kirby Smart. I see how it is. No, no, wow, I was talking about true road games. No, I don't. It was 2018. I was just kidding. They were they went into Baton Rouge, but they were like number 13. So it was an outside game. Oh, yeah, yeah. We're just we were just talking top 10 teams. Yeah, strictly top 10 in that. But yeah, Joe Burrow even twice. And that second game wasn't close. I mean, first game one. First game one, particularly close either. First game was, I thought the LSU ground game was awesome that day. Absolutely awesome. And Georgia really couldn't get anything going in Death Valley. But yeah, I mean, Burrow played with a different offense year two against Kirby. No row playing at a different offense year two against Kirby. What does it look like? How does Kirby respond to that? It's something he's probably been thinking about for for 10 months. But if no row does join that ever exclusive club, think about the guys who couldn't. Rice Young couldn't do it. Two who couldn't do it. Jalen Hertz couldn't do it because they both needed each other to come in and relief. So I don't think we can definitively say that they beat Kirby twice. You know, I don't think that's fair. But it's a really difficult thing to do. And with with Saban, that was something we always talked about, right? Beating Saban twice. Good luck. Many a Heisman Trophy winner tried. Couldn't do it. Tebow couldn't do it. Manziel couldn't do it. We saw, I mean, Burrow was was one who wasn't able to do it. Like the only guy who could, ironically enough, was somebody that's already been mentioned on this show, Jordan Jefferson. That's it. And then even Jordan Jefferson in the third time he had to face Saban 92 yards of offense, national championship. I don't need to go there. I didn't choose violence today. Well, I didn't. That's the thing about the next segment. You beat the same. You just got to keep playing Nick Saban. Jordan fans know this too well. You better lose the first beat with Nick Saban. So you quit the second one. All right. He doesn't lose. He just people just quit instead of playing him more often. That's that's the way to do it. You're locked in some kind of a Greek tragedy. We just got to keep playing Nick Saban. Exactly. Exactly. But like these are the types of things that I think we need to bring up with Kirby is, is it relates to like how unstoppable of a force in this sport are you? And we know the stat about the fact that no coach besides Nick Saban has beat him since 2020. It was Dan Mullen, who by the way is in year three in media. So if it's just a weird thing to say a lot. So familiar with his healthcare package. Really is. He's doing well. I don't think I don't think old Dan is is hurting for for work anytime soon. I'm pretty sure those medical bills are doing just fine. He's he's taking care of. But is the boy about to end that streak? Is he about to become that guy? Will Kirby's boogeyman be a coach or a program? That's the question. That's the question that we need to see answer. We are going to get an answer on this. I went back and forth. Well, back and forth. Then I came back to what Marty Smith said on this show a month ago. George was motivated by that ICC Championship loss. 10 months to think about that game. Just as they look when they're behind the wheel, I think the dogs come out real fast, real fast. Come on, bro. Sorry. That's sitting right there. Come on. George fans, you know, you know, I feel bad for laughing at that. That's how good that joke is. I think George at this time is the one that keeps Bama at an arm's length. And instead of George being the team that feels like, man, we just can't get that go ahead score. We can't get that stop that we need to. It's Bama. That's in that spot. I think we're reminded that Carson Beck is pretty darn good. Despite the fact that the start hasn't been what many myself included expected from him. But also that George's discipline on the defensive side of the ball is second to none. That's going to set the tone in this one. I think it's a game that middle row starts off slow and settles in, but not enough to beat Georgia. And I think it ends with him making a late mistake. Georgia wants a reckoning. I think that begins on Saturday night with a 31 28 Georgia victory. Also, also of note, I've now picked Georgia to win against Bama each of the last five times and I'm currently one and three so far. So take that with a grain of salt. Different, different regime. Yeah. So before we get started, I just got to share this little, like, I know we never ever ever talk about politics, but I'm going to break that rule one time to tell you something funny that we got to be aware of. First off, we talked about saving is going to be like at this game, right? So he's probably going to be, do you think he's going to be on the Bama sideline? I think he's going to be in his suite. Yep. Okay. Now I'm a sideline. No, saving doesn't want to be on the sideline. That's fair. Yeah. So, yeah, he's done that enough. So knows everybody regrets. Anyway, so Donald Trump is going to be at this game and he's got one goal for the end of the day. It's going to be to take a picture with Nick Saban. And Nick Saban is going to have one goal for the day. It's going to be to not take a picture with Donald Trump, but because he is famously apolitical. And there's going to be a chess match between these two people who will both be in sweets for Trump is trying to get a picture with Nick Saban. And Nick Saban is going to the restroom. Oh, I'll be right back up for four hours. So what you're saying, well, is that the battle between Saban and Trump will equal the battle on a field between smart and a boar. That's what I think we got to really appreciate this bill, this, this, this mini game because Saban is such a good like PR for this or guy who never takes the bad picture, never has the bad quote. And Trump is always trying to just get his hands, get the handshake, get the smiling picture. And I know post retirement, Nick Saban does not want to deal with those problems. So just be aware of that, everyone, if you see the picture come out, that'd be to save it is lost. Anyway, because he didn't want to do it with anyone. It's not being political. If it was Harris, he would do the same thing. Anyway, moving on to the actual game. So there's something I'm going to come back around to this, right? So you talked about the 2018 game. The way that that game was won the like LSU game that was in Death Valley, right? That was the beginning of the end for Jake Fromb, right? And the way that David Randall was able to kind of engineer that was there were several key points in that game where he said, okay, we are going to put everyone in single coverage and send pressure Jake Fromb can't read a field. And in response, Georges, who's Georges are seeing in 18? I think that was still our boy, right? 18 would have been James Coley. Yep. Oh, there we go. It's another greatest heads guy, right? So wait, 18 would have been. Oh, gosh. What's that? Oh, gosh, why am I blanking on the name? You want to Tennessee right after? Wasn't James Coley, Jim Cheney, Jim Cheney and James Coley is too similar of a name. And I realized it looked nothing alike whatsoever. Well, actually, they were both there and they were cocees. So there you go. So whoever made that decision between the two NPCs that we've discussed, right? They said, you know what? I'm going to go five wide. Do you guys remember this in this game? And David said, I don't care. This guy can't read past two receivers or even one. We're going to keep sending the house and put you in single coverage. And it imploded Jake Fromb. And I think it shook his confidence and that led to Kirby kind of rebuilding the offense, right? And that actually is an underrated part of this whole ascension of going, we got to have a quarterback who can win these matchups. Well, now they have one, right? Now they have a quarterback who can win those matchups. So I think that, you know, just as we have done with Nick Saban over the years or with Alabama, more specifically, right, we pick out these losses and say, what do we learn? Well, for a while, save it. It was the mobile quarterback thing because, you know, okay, I'm Jefferson and you talked about a little bit of Garcia in there, right? So I think that that is a weakness that's already been corrected. Now, not the Carson Beck we saw last week. Let me start there. Okay. Um, talking about kind of a, we talked about the Mark Stoops bugren, your shoes game. I think we're both in lockstep here that that game is just a game that Kirby Smart has every year, right? It's just it's a game on the road. Cause if that Georgia team shows up, it's not going to be good. I don't know that that Georgia team, what's what's a way to say this? I don't think that Bama's strengths line up necessarily with Kentucky's strengths to force Georgia into that type of a game. If they play a game that's 13 to 12, I'd be stunned. I just think there are going to be more chances that that Georgia is going to be wanting to take down field and they're going to try and get those chunk plays in the passing game because I think they kind of realize like we need to be able to hit on some of that and we're doing ourselves a disservice if we don't and I'm not saying that they held all the good plays for Bama. I'm not saying that. Don't say don't interpret it that. I'm not trying to disrespect Kentucky, but I just don't think they play in that type of a game. Yeah, no, I'm with you there. And I mean, I think it is just kind of being more conservative against some more conservative coach, right? At the end of the day, I think that, you know, yeah, you're not saving the good plays, but unless we're going to assume that like Mark Stoops, you know, really had Kirby where he wanted him, right? And it was really just had him in a box. I think it's closer to playing like playing mistake free football overall, which you can never really do, right? So I think you're going to have to open up the offense, which is what they couldn't do in 18. That's where I'm bringing it all the way around, right? So you can't play that style of Georgia game. You can't play the Jake Fromm style. You can't play the last week against Kentucky where the defense starts to load the box and you can't make them pay, right? Georgia is a team that historically and even now, you know, in the SEC has gone through these weird offensive line grips where you're like, wow, Kentucky can't block an Arkansas can't block Alabama can't block Georgia has always been pretty good at that, right? So it's it's as people have started to go more towards kind of like the 22 personnel bringing in tight ends and we saw that with Washington and Bowers. Georgia was actually kind of on the forefront of that and in a funny way, where they started going bigger and heavier and pushing teams around that were in more kind of like that nickel base defense with the extra DVs, right? So point being Georgia isn't old school. They were first to the new kind of what the NFL is trying to figure out now where you see more too high. You can't spread the ball out with three, four wide receivers. You got to punch guys in the mouth, right? So that being said, against this Alabama team, you do not want to get in a rock fight with this Alabama team who is a super mobile quarterback who has Ryan Williams, who can be a game breaker on any play, was a stable running backs like you just don't want to do that, especially against the guy like Deborah, who we've talked about, you know, the cocktail napkin guys that can just make up plays, right? Deborah can just throw 10 plays into a game you've never seen in your life before. You do not want to be in that style of game. And you know, not not to like, you know, pick on Georgia's offense or anything, but like Mike Bobo, but like he's just never really been that guy that's going to give you this crazy design of a play that you're like, whoa, I don't know where's the ball? The cameraman's lost. So I think Georgia needs to play confidently. And I think we're going to need we're going to see a lot really early in this game. I think in the first five or so minutes in this game, if we see old school Mike Bobo, I don't think you're going to be able to get to halftime and make adjustments if you're playing against the team like Alabama. Now that being said, like we've talked about, you know, with the bully graduating, right? And we've seen this with Lanning and Oregon, where he couldn't beat Washington. Now he didn't have to deal with that anymore. This is as big, if not bigger than any game, I think outside of that natural shape leadership game. Because at the end of the day, it trickles down into everything, right? It trickles down into recruiting, perception, all those different stuff. If Kirby Smart cannot beat this version of Alabama, that was just slightly decimated, not I'll allow some of these other schools in the transfer portal, right? We've seen, you know, guys leave, we've seen, you know, this kind of like, I don't even want to call it a scramble because like we talked about, they did it pretty professionally, but as good as you can say. But it's not continuity. It's guys learning new playbooks. It's guys have a new coordinators, all those different stuff. So if your whole thing at Georgia is come to Georgia, we run, we are a program. I'll allow what Tom Brady said, right? We have a certain offense we run, we recruit a certain type of player, a tight end. We don't recruit receivers. No, like point being like, we have a program. This is what we do. And all these other teams are going to go, you know, where they're going to be washed over like sand castles. It's really, I mean, well, it's Kirby and Mark Stoops in terms of like the oldest coaches in the SEC right now, or like the coach. They've been around the longest Tinder coaches, not the oldest. Yeah, they're the elder statesmen of the SEC. They're the only two coaches in the SEC who have coached their respective programs in a game that was played in the 2010s. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, that's what's so scary about this with Georgia, whereas if you're at home, you know, you have the bore who nobody, I mean, you don't expect Alabama to, like most people do not expect Alabama to win a national championship this year. And that's the first time I can remember that since like the Bush administration, like this is, if Alabama does not win a national championship this year, it will not be disappointing. They have a first year head coach who everybody is trying to get him to comment on everything and get him out of this element. He's doing a great job, but not doing that. It's about established that you can win in the SEC, right? Historically, Georgia has struggled with these style of games. I will say this is lined up for kind of the inverted wear black at the funeral game where it's like Alabama has been that bully, right? Georgia knows, and Kirby knows how hard it is to have the target on your back. He's already been through all of this. What you can't have is beat the final boss of the game and have him have a final form. You can't then go, Oh, this Alabama team is at eye level with me. You got to keep them a step or two down because we know that when these games are a pick him game, it can go anybody's way. I'll just say it like that. It is not going to one team's way, right? So I think that this is a statement game for Georgia. And I think they come out and play that way. I know I've been pretty overly negative to Georgia here, but it's real. I mean, the record is what the record is, right? We can talk about how, you know, savings no longer there. But I think after last year's game, that might be a little bit of a good thing on the offensive side of the ball, right? I think that, you know, Alabama was not a good, Alabama was not a great team last year, just be honest, right? They were a team that we talked about Moero going off script. We've talked about this at nauseam in the SEC Championship game. It wasn't the plays that Tommy Reese was calling. It was the runs. It was the decisions. It was the big downs that Moero beat them on. This year is the offensive coordinator who understands what a player like Ryan Williams could do, which I don't think they did last year, right? So point being, I think that in this new regime, you got to stay that step ahead. You've got to stay that step ahead. Because if they even the playing field in your house, I think that's a big deal. And what we saw this already as is the Tennessee game. And I hate to compare those two programs because I know the level of success they both had, but we've seen the high flying offense go into Sanford Stadium and more or less die. I don't think that's the kind of team that Bama has because of the physicality and the kind of lack of attrition that he didn't have to deal with because they kind of indicted their own coach. But point being, I think that that home atmosphere, the Georgia defense, and one thing that's so scary about Dibor too, I just want to keep giving both of these coaches their flowers just in case because I could really see Bama winning this. But one thing about Dibor we've hit on is that in these ranked games, he is a killer dude. He has beaten teams as an underdog. He has beaten teams as a favorite. We talked about it over and over again about Oregon last year, where the first match up, everybody said we got lucky. Second match up, they beat him even worse, right? And they were, they were underdog in the second match up. So yeah, I think you can't give a guy like that. He's like a problem, man. And once you start smelling blood, I think Georgia has had the hiccup in the road. They have seen what happens when they conservative. They don't want any more of that. I think at the end of the day, like we see, I think we see Georgia come out having fun playing Georgia football, establishing that dominance. Now if we see them come out kind of like tight and scared, we know what kind of game this is. It's a game like last week and they can't win that game. We can tell them you pick in Georgia. Yeah, I'm picking Georgia. And I think Georgia will score into the 30s kind of like you. I'm gonna go about like 3528. 3528. Yeah, I think that there are so many different matchups that you could point to and say if blah, blah, blah wins this, then obviously that's that's the key. Everywhere you kind of look, it feels like strength on strength. And even the Bama secondary that Nick Saban himself questioned coming into the year has been I think better than better than people have expected to. Now you kind of look at the quarterbacks that they face so far and are like, all right, who's who's really tested them with all due respect to TJ Finley and Byron Brown is a nice player, but they weren't necessarily going to be able to test you on the outside. So like their quarterbacks, we all knew. It's true. Wisconsin's backup, we didn't know. Yeah, that's true. I didn't know. Yeah. Tyler Van Dyke, we knew, but unfortunately it didn't play out that way. But yeah, I do think that the takeaways are just going to be so significant from this one. I can't wait for this on Saturday night. Awesome, awesome matchup for all the people that are like, Hey, I'm sick of Georgia and Bama playing each other. At least I guess. Yeah, I mean, like I get it if you're if you have that fatigue in the SEC championship, because like I'm not seeing my team play, I instead watching these two teams play over and over, but like I tweeted this stat out and it's it's remarkable to think about. Bama and Georgia are playing as top four teams for the sixth time since the start of the 2017 season, Michigan and Ohio State. They've done that six times in the last 50 years. Well, yeah, this is creme de la creme. I appreciate this as a college football fan. I understand I have a different perspective than a Tennessee fan and all different fan floor to fan. Anybody would watching this game, but it should be awesome on Saturday night. And I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I mean, to your point too, this is not, you know, Bama Clemson or even Bama LSU where you have kind of like these like either one sided games or like kind of stodgy games. All these games have been funny in some way. Like say what you will, but like Stetson fumbling and then the Ringo pick six is funny. Like the thing the SEC championship last year, some with fans would disagree with with a, you know, a pick six to lose a national championship there. But the championship game was funny. That's what I'm saying. Like where it's like, wow, we both picked this team by like 10. They are not playing well today. And like, each of these games have been fun. Like they've been fun to watch even the SEC championship game that Georgia lost before the natty was like, what? Like, how is it? Who is this team? And so like, where's this defense? And so yeah, I think that each of these games has had some kind of an unexpected result to your point about picking, you know, Georgia and Bama winning. But in the natty, right? They had already lost and then they came back. So yeah, this is a really good rivalry. I think if you don't, I hate to say we don't like this, you don't like college football. But like, they both really held up during the bargain. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. All right. Well, Kentucky number six, Ole Miss, Ole Miss 17 and a half point favorite. The overruner I have for this one is 79 Trey Harris receiving yards. Yes, I'm going to talk about Trey Harris again, because I have to, I just have to over. There's, there's one little, one little caveat here that I'll get to in a second that might, the under might hit. But there's a reason why I picked 79 receiving yards. Maxwell Harris, yep. Yeah, Maxwell Harris is a really good player. Unfortunately, Dion Walker, I did not have among my top 10 SEC players as he recommended, but that's different subject for a different time. I want to see if I could dig this up because of how good Harris has been with 628 receiving yards through four games with 79 receiving yards on Saturday. He would have the most pre-October receiving yards of any power five receiver in the playoff era. Oh my God. Think about that. Yeah. He would have the most receiving yards of any power five receiver since Brandon Cooks at Oregon State 2013. He had 807 pre-October receiving yards that season. I'm going to guess that Trey Harris isn't going to hit 180 receiving yards on Saturday because, again, Maxwell Harris did a pretty darn good player, very good cover corner, kind of a walking pick six, even if he doesn't necessarily, you know, like even if it's a game in which Trey Harris gets a fair amount of targets, there could still be a lot more instances in which Jackson Dart goes, nope, I'm just going to not pick on that guy. Let's see if Juice Wells is open. Let's see who's that opportunity receiver? Juice Wells just has, Juice Wells had a nice resurgence so far. And being healthy, you're reminded this guy is a pretty special player. And it's a bummer, I know, South Carolina fans that he wasn't able to be on the field last year. Let's just say that, be on the field. But Harrison's a big reason why this Kentucky defense has only allowed two passing touchdowns in the first four games, both of which I thought were kind of blown assignments in the South Carolina game when I thought that defense was absolutely gas. Can't really blame him for that. How does Ole Miss as a whole handle what will easily be, in my opinion, the toughest defense that it has faced so far? Does that banged up Ole Miss offensive line? Is that able to kind of hold up well? Can they run the ball against the top 10 run defense? Speaking of the Ole Miss ground attack, well, it's getting weird with your boy Ulysses Bentley IV. Real weird. He is the third string running back on this team and nobody seems to know why. Not even his dad who's tweeting and doing that stuff. Parents tweeting, dealing with the Roman Dunes they think right now as a Bears fan. Parents tweeting negativity as it relates to their son or daughter's playing time isn't my biggest thing, but it kind of just speaks to the head scratching nature of this situation. And I get it, like Henry Perris playing extremely well. His return to Ole Miss, that's a big part of why Ulysses Bentley hasn't played. Maybe even the simple acquisition of Henry Perris can kind of shed some light on that because I thought that was a really interesting post spring move for Lane to go into the portal and get Perris when you knew that Logan Diggs was going to be working his way back from entry. And I kind of looked at that and wondered if Lane just saw a longer timetable for his return after he transferred from LSU. And I thought, all right, well, that maybe helps them with the depth. They're trying to build a roster for a playoff run. It kind of makes sense to get somebody in there that already knows the offense. But maybe they knew something about Bentley that just wasn't necessarily right because that guy's in year three of this offense. He came back for a sixth season of college football in hopes of getting more work right with Judkins leaving for Ohio State. That was something we were talking about early in, you know, January even. And so far, he's got 16 carries for 62 yards. He's third among Ole Miss running backs and carries. He's fifth among that group in rushing yards and a snap count week by week is 21, 12, 3, and 4. They're getting J.J. Piggies in there for goal line carries. I was about to say they got he's got 40 more rushing yards than T.J. Piggies is how he's used. I mean, J.J. Piggies is two rushing touchdowns. Bentley's got nine and he's got 11. J.J. Piggies has 11 fewer carries. Then you listen to Bentley through four games. All right. Like we love we love J.J. Piggies. But like that's that's significant. That's probably about the only drama that you can find with this Ole Miss team so far. It's been a very drama free start for how favorable of a schedule they've had. And I do think that the Kentucky defense will make it a tougher day at the office than it's been so far for Ole Miss. But I think the matchup that might feel most overwhelming is that Ole Miss defensive front against the big blue gate. It's a big blue gate. Okay. It is. They did all right against Georgia. They did all right. It's like in half. They were still not exactly holding up for Brock Vandegrift. But I think Walter Nolan and Prince Lumaan Miel and those guys have come in and been as advertised. I mean, everything that Lane and Pete Golding could have hoped for. They have been so far. And I was one and saying, I think Walter Nolan's kind of overrated coming into the season. He has shut me up. He has looked the part on that defensive front. And I think even if the very underrated Jared Ivy doesn't return for this game, he was dealing with an ankle injury that he suffered against Wake Forest. I think that group should dominate up front. So I'm going to go 28-14 Ole Miss. So it's a narrow cover for Kentucky. But I think it's a game that Ole Miss feels like it's going to win throughout. I think they get off to a nice, fast start and they run the ball kind of throughout later on. And it's not necessarily a game in which you feel like Kentucky has much of a chance. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty interesting about that too. With USC's bitten me is that underratedly Lane has been a guy who like has really good competition. Like always. Yeah. Like because we talked about there was Spitzer, it was his name is Sanders, the backup quarterback from Oklahoma State that came in and just never played. I'm forgetting dude's name because he never played because they had Jackson Dart and he was already kind of like, it was kind of like when he was in that weird like situation. So with Jackson Dart, he didn't know if he wanted to start over or do. He brought in two portal guys brought in Walker Howard as well coming over from us who Walker Howard by the way. Speaking of third string guys, he's third string. Austin Simmons has passed him up after he moved up two classes to reclassify like Lane doesn't really care about that as much. Like he doesn't care. You talk about like, you know, popular topic of conversation today with like the UNLV quarterback and promises that that have been made. Lane doesn't really care about that, that whole like promises thing with the depth chart and stuff. And I think that's kind of played out already. Yeah. It's actually crazy because it's almost like the guys on the higher end like, I mean, you can look at like a guy like Kirby and be like, huh, some of these like rotational decisions don't make a ton of sense. Or it's like, Oh, you got this transfer and you're playing up whatever. So yeah, it's actually a respectful and commit and commend Lane on that where it's not like, Oh, you're giving some, you know, eight Brian Kelly is the worst at this. I should just make one of my own coach words like, Oh, you brought in this transfer from Oregon State or whatever. And he just like is bad, but keeps playing like we never see that at all this. And like that makes sense, right? Because they have a very egalitarian offense where they're just distributing the ball to whoever can get it to your point of a Maxwell Harrison. Like if he if they just decide to not look that way and they just throw the ball to you as well as that probably work. And you know, I think that we could talk about Kentucky and kind of where they are at this point in their season and we talked about they have the stinker against South Carolina, which I think we didn't kind of say that's kind of a few Korean shoes game they played well against Georgia. Well, here's the thing you can't play that way against Ole Miss. You know, where they play against Georgia, if they play exactly that game, and that might be their best game of the season, if they play that exact game, you're going to smoke because you've got to go for that fourth down. Even if you get in that position against Ole Miss because, you know, go for it and don't get it. Whereas like, you know, you just never know with Kirby when he's being conservative. This is kind of a nightmare match up for, you know, Kentucky because of that reason, right? That even if they play their best game, they just, I don't think have the horses, you know, they get receivers that have been around forever but keep dropping the ball. They got a quarterback who has been around forever but can't really like get into his offense and feel like a leader and feel like he's really like going through his progression. It's your point about the offensive line. I mean, this is what happens when you have, you know, like all these new offensive coordinators, guys who don't really know what their job is and they don't really know what their assignment is, and that offense is just kind of in disarray and that Ole Miss is literally the worst team in America to play when you're in that situation because once again, a draw play up on a cocktail nap, good guy, Lane Kiffin, he could get points from anywhere. It doesn't matter. Like if you have to your point, like, you know what, let's get you this is a bit out there, line up a receiver, it's dad's manager, don't care who's going to cover him on a one. Like you could see that from Lane, whereas you're never going to get that from Markstooth ever. So yeah, I think this is going to be kind of bad. I think it's going to be into the 30s. So I'll probably, I do like 28-14, but I'd go 31-14 in a game that just Kentucky never feels like they have control over. I think to your point, it's like, what's weird about Kentucky is that you'd think maybe this trenches team that pushed everybody around, well, exactly, we should just hit on the offensive line versus the defensive line of like Kentucky's offensive line. Ole Miss's defensive line is like one of the most mismatched units in this game. So what I like about Kentucky, I don't think they'll be able to do against Ole Miss. This is a game that like two years ago, in this game that was a top, was it a top 10 match-up? Will Levis having the two turnovers late in this one? If it wasn't a top 10 match-up, I think it was a top 15 match-up. Kentucky was definitely in the top 10 at the time of that game, but you need very on Brown special teams if you're Kentucky. Like that, you absolutely need that. And maybe like, I should have probably put that, that is like an over-under of over-under, one very on Brown special team touchdown. You're going to have to probably find some unique ways. I feel like to move the ball consistently against the Ole Miss defense, which is a sentence I don't often say. I mean, that really is. But so far, and yes, competition is part of it, but so far, they have looked the part and they have shown not necessarily to the degree that Tennessee has, because I think we've talked about the Tennessee level of competition in a different way than we have with Ole Miss. But like so far, they have shown you, they can be that unit that might be able to win you an ugly game. And I don't know that Lane has had a whole lot of groups ever in his career, not just at Ole Miss, but ever in his career that he felt like he could truly win ugly with. And maybe this is that type of game where they can kind of get their points early, put the foot, you know, a little, not ease it off the gas a little bit and kind of be testing the ground game a little bit more. See if you can wear down Kentucky, who I can't imagine that defense is going to feel great at the end of this one, because I think they're going to be on the field a lot, a whole lot. By the way, that Kentucky Ole Miss matchup was number seven Kentucky versus number 14 Ole Miss. Yeah, it's often some change. Yeah, that's a fun game. Those are really, really fun game fun down to the wire game. Different feel, different, different feel for where both of these programs are at two years later. No doubt about it. 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All right, number 21 Oklahoma, two and a half point favorite against Auburn. Oh boy. The overrunder is obvious. I already teased this the other day. The overrunder is three and a half quarterbacks played in this one. As you deliver, I'm taking into this game, Connor. Yep. Not a bad idea unless it's interceptions we're talking about. Michael Hawkins, Jr. He's getting the star for Oklahoma. I haven't checked my text in a bit. But last that I checked, let me just check and make sure that we're good here. Nope. No text coming in. I'm not going to be getting the start for Auburn. We shouldn't rule it out. I don't want to brag here, but I did tear up my buddy Bronson's bachelor party five years ago. I have a pulse, which I would think at this point, that makes me a viable option for Hugh Freeze to play quarterback. I had a couple of turnovers in that game. Just full disclosure, but you know, just want to throw it out there. I mean, not literally, but being in Michigan State in 2021, I feel like you and Peyton Thord are pretty easily comparable, right? Like, I could have handed the ball off to kind of the walker of the third really well. That's what I'm saying. I mean, buddy, I know how to put it right in that red basket. That's what you need. Trust me, your boy has it covered. I've been practicing my form with Claire. She has done really well. I say to her all the time, dear, I say Claire, well, security is job security. Yeah, I know. I know. I know you beat it over my head. I get it. I'm just saying they're going to be so desperate, Auburn to find any sort of option at quarterback. That's going to be so well documented. The angst that you're going to feel in that stadium is going to reflect that because let's call what it is. It's been a terrible, terrible month of September for Hugh Freeze. It's bad enough that he's already lost two games that you're in here at this point of the season. But he's got Bo Wallace out here, saying that he threw quarterbacks under the bus. Take whatever side you will on that. I think most coaches on the offensive side of the ball would argue with Bo Wallace too hard. Look, I'm just saying, like, I would be on Bo Wallace's side. Actually, I'm going to make a prediction right now. You're right, Bo Wallace. Don't don't come to Atlanta on my account. Look, you could vehemently disagree with what Bo Wallace said about that about Hugh Freeze, always putting the blame on quarterbacks. It's still a bad look to have one here, most accomplished quarterbacks saying negative things about you in the public light. Coaches don't want that. That's bad. And it's also bad to go on Auburn Sports Network, as Freeze did, and say that if Auburn plays Arkansas nine more times, they win that game nine times. Disagree. Disagree. By the way, shout out to Arkansas social media for just going right. Goodness gracious. That's that chef's kiss social media behavior. But in this hypothetical world that Hugh Freeze has created, he's telling himself that he found a quarterback who knows how to not turn the football over in the actual world, the one that you and I and everybody listening to this lives in. He hasn't found a quarterback who can do anything. So, what are we doing? What are we doing? Yeah, Brad Venables believes that he has a quarterback who knows how to not turn the football over. He believes he has that. He believed he had that last week to it. I always got a different quarterback. He believes that about fair enough, fair enough. We'll see how that goes. Interesting move to name him to name Michael Hoggs Jr. the starter early in the week. I was not expecting that. I thought there'd be a little bit of gamesmanship there from a defensive minded coach like Venables. Definitely a different guy to prepare for than Jackson Arnold. So, I thought they were going to try and play it coy and was going to be kind of, oh, we're going to see how these guys practice and then we're just going to roll out our starter. I thought we were going to get some of that. We are not. But let's see how a true freshman handles that week of prep. Let's see how he handles that atmosphere, a defense that's going to be a game plan to face him. Look, I don't know that he's going to set the world on fire. But I do think that we see Hoggins and Giovanni Barnes, who was emerged as their lead back instead of Gavin Sawchuk. I think they rely on them as a one to punch. And even for an Oklahoma offense that's really struggled to run the football, I think they kind of find a little bit of an identity in this game. It's not full Texas A&M at Florida. I'm not saying they're going to run the football. It will like that because this Auburn defense is much better than that Florida defense is up front. But I think Oklahoma has realized that they can't throw the ball the way that they wanted to because of how banged up they are at receiver. And that's obviously part of the quarterback change that they made in this offensive identity search that they are still undergoing. And the question is, can you get that offensive line to find what they want to do in this game? Because that's the biggest thing. And I think that they're able to do that. I think they're able to do that against an Auburn defense that, let's be honest, probably hates life right now. I don't blame them. I would hate my life. I was the Auburn defense. You gave me another short field to have to defend against. We're taking over at the 15. What are we doing here? I mean, same with Oklahoma's defense if we're being honest after the Tennessee game, but honestly, well, I'm just sort of sick of picking Auburn at home in winnable match-ups and defaulting like to how difficult it is to play in that atmosphere for teams that have obvious shortcomings, which Oklahoma does coming into this game. They do. I'm not saying Oklahoma beats Auburn 10 times out of 10. But I am saying that the sooner defense is more than capable of going into that building and shutting down any person with a pulse that Auburn attempts to play a quarterback, including myself. If I do get that text, which is not coming yet, I'm going to take Oklahoma to win this one 27 or 13. So after looking at their schedule, I think I've identified that this is the Jordan hair game last week. Don't say Jordan hair. Don't say Jordan hair. Jordan hair. We don't want Auburn fans to show up. I will respect this is like the Kyrie Lacey thing. Okay. If you guys go lose dark, it's a call you Jordan here, Michael Jordan hair. Anyway, because you got none of it. Anyway, so point being, I think like this is the game, right? Because if you look at their schedule, they have somehow inexplicably scheduled three road games after this and then home dates against Vandy and ULM schedule three road games. You think they dictate how that goes? No, not them. Not them. I'm talking about like the SEC is they like the SEC is giving them like a big. This is like one of my buddies doing like an NCAA dynasty. It's like, how did you end up with this weird schedule? Arkansas had this last year where it's like, yeah, it's like a month and Pittman was really upset about that. We like we've got over a month where we're not going to be at home. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, it's, you know, they got to go talk to whoever does the NBA schedules because as much as we make fun of like the schedules and baseball at the NBA, it's way better than this. So point being like, I think this is the Jordan hair stadium, right? Like if you're, or this is the Jordan hair game, right? Like if you're kind of, you know, in Greek life, if you're part of that community, like you're not going to have a chance to see your football team at home literally until November. And I think that they want to. Do they want to? Well, I think it's kind of why you go to Auburn, you know what I'm saying? Like, I think you at least needs to be part of it, right? Like tumor drugs rules, like don't get me wrong, but like you're going to want to see some good SEC football. So I and like get to their credit, the crowd like came out, you know, for like a decently early game, 245 local kick, or sorry, that's 245. That's coming up. There was an early game last week and it wasn't the night game. And like they showed up fine. But point being like, I think this is the game where we've seen, you know, a flawed Oklahoma team like you talked about. And like I said, last week, I did not pick them. I get it. There was, there was a little bit too much. I don't see the Bobby Petrino. Oh, there's no COVID to you just to be honest with you. Like, I said, you like this that's on, you know, Bobby Petrino and how they're amazing on third down and how they have these like interesting play calls and how they can overcome quarterback play. I don't think that Venables has shown that outside of Dylan Gabriel, who was a guy who could do it with his legs. He gets kind of like, we're seeing how guys look when they have these mobile quarterbacks. Allah, you know, the difference in Tennessee this year, last year, mobile quarterbacks, when you're not like finding your rhythm offensively or just like a magic potion. And I don't really think Oklahoma has the ability to do something well right now. I know they have a couple of good receivers and no one got hurt. But at the end of the day, like, I think that this all lines up for everyone's dump it on Hugh Freeze. Nobody believes in him. Like, it looks like a bad hire. His record was worse than Harsen. Everyone's getting cold feed. He's got the quote out there. Like, he's, I hate to say coaching for his job already. But dude, next week they're at Georgia. That's a game they're going to lose by 30. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not even being mean. It's just you're at Mizzou after that. Like, do you feel like that? Anybody can do that for a day in Mizzou? I get it. But like, I think that at the end of the day, like, they have to win some SEC games. They have to play some offense. Like, we're about that. Do they have to win SEC games? Is that important? Well, Hugh Freeze does or he's getting fired. Exactly. Like, technically, they don't, but he's going to get fired if they win, you know, two SEC games at Kentucky and Vandy this year, which is kind of what it looks like they're going to do. If you can't beat Arkansas, right? So, and you can't beat Cal at home. So I think this is kind of the last end for Hugh Freeze. If he loses this game, like, we're about to start having the buyout discussions because it's not going to get better. I was just going to say, well, I haven't looked up the Hugh Freeze buyout number yet out of principle. I looked it up with Brian Kelly because, do I want to say it? Yes, screw it. I'll just say it. When I hear Brandon Walker say something stupid, I like to show him how dumb he is. And that was something he talked about in the pre-season. So I felt the need to actually dig up that number. But, yeah, with Hugh Freeze, you'll lose this game. We're going to have that buyout number ready to go on Sunday. Yeah, I promise. Don't let Brian Kelly say that quote about nine games because there will be people outside of his house that will be LSU fans. But point being, you know, I think that, you know, here's a fun little game. When you're watching info football, you see a receiver make the sickest play you ever. Oh, wow. DK Metcalf, Hugh Freeze guy. AJ Brown, that's a Hugh Freeze. Evan Ingram, done it a ton this year. But that's also technically Hugh Freeze guy. And it's like, when is that guy that they hired going to show up? And if it doesn't happen this weekend, I think he's going to get hired, man, because I don't really see it getting better. Like I said, I think that he knows that. At season's end. Yeah, like it's like the schedule just gets worse from here. Like Oklahoma's not a team that should be able to smack you. If you get smacked by Oklahoma, kind of in the way that you've described, you're getting fired because Georgia's going to smack you. Never want to count mazoo in for anything, but they should smack you, right? Alabama in Brian Denny should smack you. You're going to have lots of embarrassing losses if you can't get any, even if you like, you have to have this win so that your fan base can stomach those losses that are still probably able to be coming because that quarterback's not walking through the door. Like Cam Newton is not checking back in. Like these, this is the guys you got because you didn't hit the transfer portal, but you still have this ability allegedly as a skimmer as a game planner that everybody keeps talking about. So I think this is the game that they come out and put up. Let's call it 28 points, which is Oklahoma, buddy. It could be a lot. I think Oklahoma's defense is good. I'm not dumping on them, but I've seen way better teams by Way worse than that at Jordan here. And I think, yeah, I think Michael Jordan's hair is right now anyway. So yeah, point being like, I've seen it. So I think that they don't win this game. It's about the get ready to learn play-by-play announcer or not play-by-play, but in studio host Hugh Freeze. I don't know that Freeze would would have the desire to do that. I don't think he would. I don't think he would like to expose himself to people who can be mean on the internet for no reason. I think he's got a little bit of a different a set of aspirations in life. Who knows? Maybe he would do that. Start getting those sermons ready now, buddy. You know what? Everybody's got their own path. Everybody's got them in Davo, like a church. Hugh Freeze has had certainly a unique one to get to this point, but he sounds desperate. If nothing else, he sounds very, very desperate. Let's see if his team plays desperate on Saturday. All right. Well, Arkansas number 24 Texas A&M. This game in Arlington, Texas A&M is a four point favorite. The overrun I have is 29 combined quarterback rush attempts. Big game for that. Big, big game for that. If you're a fan of doing that in college football 25, like this is this is the game for you to watch because Taylor Greene has had a minimum of 17 rushes in his three starts against FBS competition. Arkansas Marcel Reed has had at least 12 of those in his two starts against FBS competition. Speaking of that, Mike Elko said that kind of wigment is progressing. My guests. And again, this is coming out before injury reports. Those coming out on Wednesday night make this really difficult record on Wednesday afternoon because sometimes there are things that we definitely would have talked about. And obviously we're not able to go back in time and do that, but just keep that in mind. I think we're going to see one more Marcel Reed start and then A&M will kind of make a decision on this trial run. I think we are going to see a scenario in which Marcel Reed will get the opportunity to lead A&M. And if he can beat Arkansas, then I think he keeps the job. And I think wigment becomes a really popular portal candidate at the end of the season. And if he doesn't win this game, Marcel Reed, then I think wigment is the starter against Mizzou next week. And maybe that's an unpopular opinion. Maybe there are people that are telling me Connor, you are way too in love with Connor wigman. I fully get it. I've had to kind of take that one on the chin for some strong things I've said about him. But I just still come back to the belief like, we have not seen Marcel Reed against a good defense yet. And people are like, oh, he's the guy. They struggle to put away Boeing green. And I'm sorry, but Florida doesn't get to count as your case to be a starting quarterback. It just doesn't. All right. So for me, like, just bail and kind of wigment. When I had to watch kind of wigment running against exotic blitzes that would have had Marcel's read his brain in a pretzel. Yeah, get a little bit fired up. I'm like, we're going to compare operating against Florida to operating against Notre Dame with eight months to prepare for Marcus Freeman and alcohol. Like, what are we doing? But anyway, I'll save that for a different time. I do think Marcel replays in this one. And that's not a bad opportunity for a guy that like, look, I thought he was going to be third string coming into the year after what Jalen Henderson did last year. And then Jalen Henderson gets hurt in the bowl game. And then Marcel Reed steps in as a true freshman and looks really good against Oklahoma State and keeps them in that game, a game in which they had no business being in with all the opt outs and scholarship. Like, it wasn't quite, I think it was really close to LSU 39 scholarship level. I can't remember what the exact number was for that game. But yeah, like a post Jimbo Fisher 30 day window portal stuff NFL entries, like all these different things. And Marcel Reed probably set the stage by playing well in that game. And Jalen Henderson was good down the stretch last year as well. So like, this is a nice luxury that Mike Elko gets to have as a year one coach. You can kind of do this. You don't necessarily have to worry like, Oh, by loose Arkansas, I'm going to lose the locker room or something like that. But I think for Marcel Reed, Arkansas is the toughest test that he's faced so far. Even in a building where A&M has just owned. I mean, I know Jerry Jones doesn't want to admit this, but like Jerry world is Aggie world. Okay, that's that's what it's been since these two teams have started playing there a decade ago. And I think that even though A&M has just dominated this matchup since coming into to the SEC. This is still going to be a tougher challenge for Marcel Reed than going into the swamp and getting six yards per carry without blinking. It just is. Arkansas's top 25 both in rushing yards per game allowed and rushing yards per carry allowed. And that's having already faced Ollie Gordon the second and preseason first team, Ollie CC selection, Jack West Hunter. Okay, they've faced good backs and they have still looked the part up front. I think it's a bad match up for A&M. I do. And while I could certainly see a world in which the A&M front forces tailing green into some of those mash the button decisions in which you're like, Oh my God, tailing green, that's like a bottom 10 sports center play. What in the world are you doing? You cannot do that on this field and get away with it. It just doesn't work with that. But maybe he will. I don't know. I think I still like the underdog Hawks. I do. And I say that with caution because obviously this game has been a house of horrors for Arkansas. One win against A&M since joined the SEC six of those last nine losses that Arkansas has had in this matchup have been by one score. I mean, it's been a lot closer than what the overall number would suggest. I'm kind of surprised that the over under is 52 and a half. I would like the under there. I'm going to go Arkansas to win this one outright 24 21. And this game is going to be so silly, isn't it? I think so. I hope so. You know, it's crazy because you could almost argue. You could almost argue that Mike Oco, a first year head coach is going to bring more of the adult atmosphere to this matchup than the Q freeze in Auburn did last week because that was a silly game last week as well. But yeah, I, gosh, this is just a fascinating game. I think like kind of to your point, right? Like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not out on Wigman, right? I'm not going to see he's better than, you know, Daniel's or anything, but I think that at the end of the day, I don't know. Just think about that. Think about that. All right, you know, just like, I go back to Miami game. Well, go back to the game. Listen, I was, I was, I was gasoline. The other quarterback on that side. They both got us in that game, brother. So no shape there. But yeah, point being, I get it. Like you always like the new guy, but I do think like if they had Wigman, I would feel very confident to say in him here. I'm actually pretty fascinated to see like Landon Jackson versus the A&M offensive line. And Jalen Anderson, who like you were talking about, like, just doesn't have a ton of reps in the offense, but she's not playing in this one. Yeah, Marshall Reed, my bad. Against Marshall Reed, like doesn't have a ton of reps in the offense. And so like, I'm actually really fascinated with that one match up just because like as a pass rusher, we've seen like Jackson really makes him impact plays. And like, how are you going to deal with like kind of a unique player like that? Yeah, point being, I mean, oh, this sounds insane. It sounds insane, but I, gosh, it's going to be Bobby Petrito versus Mike Elko. I think I got to take Mike Elko, man. This is one that it really, truly is a pick him for me. But as I said, he really does kind of bring me adult atmosphere, right? Like even though he's a rookie head coach, I trust his defense to be a little bit more gap sound. And I do as much as I love green man. And boy, do I love green, like maybe more than any non-arkets off at America. That dude is going to make three, two, four ridiculous turnovers. It's kind of like, like I said, it's like a worthy place turnover, worthy place for sure. I don't know if he's going to make three or four total turnovers. Cause like, he's really, he's, I don't think he's thrown more than two picks. And he, yeah, isn't there more than two picks in a game in a while, like in a long. Yeah. And but see, that's the thing, right? It gets all rude. A turnover worthy play is not a turnover against Texas A&M and Mike Elko. I think they have a little bit more pride on that side of the ball. Even the Notre Dame game, they kept it close and again, to make of that what you will. But yeah, I think that the amount of like this team kind of getting better, getting more gaps out, I trust their coaches as wild as that is. I don't think that the contributor client dip is that crazy. Like I think, but you're just still better. Don't get me wrong. But I, like I said, Wigman would make me feel way better about picking the Aggies, but I do think the Aggies are going to win. Yeah. Like let's, let's call it like a 28 to 24. So push that would be. That's just right on that line, right on that. I mean, we're picking two for teams, you know, I don't want to say it's going to be a blowout, but like this game easily could be if there's some bad turnovers. But like, I just like I said, if, if Reed is the goofiest version of Reed, I just don't think he could be Taylor Greene. And I love Taylor Greene, but this is the exact kind of team you don't want to see on defense a boring gap sound. Nick Skerten is another guy. Skorten or? Skorten. Skorten. Yeah. See, like it's going to be another like pass rusher versus quarterback. Like it's, it's kind of like a mirror, right? But yeah, I, I weirdly feel like, okay, this is more of the adult than the rear of this team is going to take fewer mistakes. Speaking of adults, this game is huge for Sam Pippin's future. Absolutely huge. If he wins this game, that path to get to seven regular season wins looks really favorable. All of a sudden, it really would Arkansas would be four and one. They would have the Tennessee game coming up next week. You get an awesome atmosphere for that. Even if you lose that game, you still get that optimism having beat two teams that have just had your number in recent memory in Auburn and Texas A&M. And then if you are trying to figure out like, all right, you know, what was the number and the number that John neighbors and I had kind of settled on for Arkansas coming into this year was like, seven wins, seven wins in the regular season kind of show like, all right, that's a three-win improvement. You've probably hit on that higher of Bobby Petrino. That means your defense is still progressing with Travis Williams. Like you've done things right. If you look at the rest of the schedule, you'll see Mississippi State and Louisiana, Louisiana text on there. I'm going to count those as wins if we're sitting here today. Like we're going to get to Mississippi State in a second here, but unless they discover something at the quarterback position in a post-blake shape in world, I'm going to count that as a win. You look at the rest of those games. They're all the other five games are against teams that are currently the top 15. So preseason, those are the types of games that we'd be like, all right, Arkansas is no business winning. But four of those games will be at home. And then the one that's on the road is at Mizzou. Arkansas Mizzou would be a really interesting match up right now. I'm just saying, yeah, would be a really so like you in theory, which is have to win one of those five games against a team that's currently in the top 15. And again, with four of those being at home, I'm just saying the path to get to seven wins and for Sam Pittman to get to 2025 opens up a lot more. And I realize there are Arkansas fans listening to this going, Oh, God, that would be worst case scenario because we still don't think Sam Pittman's a particularly good coach. And they have a different impression of Sam Pittman than we do as people that don't have a dog in the fight. And my dog in the fight is liking Sam Pittman and wanting that guy to live a really good life. Of course, it's a little bit different to talk about his future from me compared to what it is for an Arkansas fan. But I just thought that's context that's worth remembering in a matchup that Arkansas has historically struggled mightily yet. I mean, here's the question. If they win this game, are they ranked? They got three votes this week. Yeah, it's, I think they're probably just on the outside looking in, but I'm sitting there at the top in the top 25. You had the lost Oklahoma state, a game in which Arkansas sure won that game. And I'd say they win a game 10 times out of 10. If they play again, we can't use that verbiage because that's a bright gilly talk. You can't do that. And I should say, I should say, if they play 10 times, they win the game the next nine times. Yeah, that's the worst. But at the same time, they're probably close. It would, I think they would have to like win pretty convincingly against A&M to get into the top 25. But it's at least a conversation that we're having and a matchup that doesn't feel that lopsided. And of course, for Arkansas fans, you're probably thinking yourself, this is usually when we blow a game that we're supposed to win. And this is just like classic one scored lost A&M. And that's how this is going to play out. And this is going to be the last little window of relevancy from a national standpoint. But what else crazier things have happened? You know what? This is a pick up game. I don't objectively care. I'm going to go with my heart here. I'm changing my pick because now that I've seen that I actually do think Arkansas gets ranked here. And think about this, the amount of teams that didn't start the year ranked became ranked and then fired their coach, probably pretty low. It would take like a weird, I don't even, I can't even imagine that, right? You have to stay, you don't have to stay ranked. Right. I'm thinking about like how many teams started the season unranked, became ranked, and then ended up firing their coach because like, I put to a dozen teams that started off ranked and just got worse and worse and worse and ended up unranked or they started off ranked and then became unranked and then got ranked again. Like to take your team from being as horrible as they were last year. If you win a ranked game on the road, I don't know, man. Yeah, I would rather root for Taylor and Green this weekend. I think I will actually be doing that. I'm going to go ahead and say, well, yeah, I think I'm going to go right with you and your score line prediction. It's like, did you have them covering now? I, why I'm winning. I have Arkansas winning outright. So, yeah, you have the money. Yeah. So I'm right there with you, man. I think I'm going to be a close game either way. But why would I pick a quarterback that I don't have to do the invested in, whatever, those are this matters. I'm like, let's, let's go for chaos and go Taylor and Green franchise game against this defense. Because at the end of the day, that's the funniest and most fun outcome. Because like, if you don't like this Arkansas staff and you're not an Arkansas fan, like, if you're an Arkansas fan, you have your own perspective, you wait, you're just having this radio on that view. But if it's Sam, five years, you know, like Travis Williams, like, this is such a cool team that I want to root for, whatever. Let's do it. I just hope we don't see a Taylor and Green failed hurdle. I want a successful hurdle. Don't get it twisted. I want to see a 66 guy trying out leap in entire defense. But I wanted to clear the hurdle. It's, it makes me terrified when he gets up there and you don't know what's going to happen. It could all of a sudden be like a Garrett Schrader helicopter situation with a guy that big. You just don't know. It just scares me. I'm not, not quite a parent watching Taylor Green is out there, but like, Oh, no. Oh, no. We don't need to see that. Only clean hurdles for Taylor and Green moving forward. That's a simple request. Remember the Taylor Green guarantee every time you watch Taylor Green, you're going to see something you've never seen before in a football game. Like baseball will like baseball. All right. This would be state number one, Texas. 38 and a half point favorite Texas is in this one. The overruner I have is 0.5. When you were snaps, probably probably under is going to hit on that one. I would guess I'm going to say, as we sit here, again, Wednesday afternoon, poor injury reports come out, all that stuff availability reports. They're not injury reports. Can't say speaking of that color. I was a little bit tired last week from everything. I believe we had a founding father playing quarterback from Mississippi State. Who's this now? Michael Van Buren, Jr. Like his his signature has got to be like massive, right? I want to see his and I anyway. Yeah, I don't I don't know that he leans into that last name as much. Heard some stuff. So history books are too favorable to the Van Buren family. He's got to redeem them though. That's the thing. Maybe it's the fifth year. Go do that research on your own time. Um, but yeah, on the Texas side with the quarterback situation, I'm going to guess that we're not going to see when you were in this one, just because of the matchup and because I think it just makes more sense to just give him that extra that extra week. No, and you got to buy a weaker on the corner. You want to make sure that that guy is right for the Red River rivalry that's coming up. Of course, after the buy, I think that this is such a lackluster way for Texas to make its SEC debut. I mean, how how sad that is like Oklahoma got college day game day coming in for the Josh high floor reunion. And there's all this hype, all this build up and it got a beat down as well. You know, I think I take this actually. This is pretty cool. I don't know. It got buzz. It got, you know, it was fun. Instead, Texas gets a Mississippi state team coming to the house that couldn't even stand the field with a Mac team. So look, Spinzone, their SEC debut at Alabama last year. Easy. Yeah. Okay. That's one way to put it. That's one way to put it. Yeah, that's that's the prequel to the Texas SEC story. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves with prequels and stuff. I think we've just run out of ideas and prequels and lazy covers of country music are two things that I can just do without in this world. I don't, I don't need that. I'm sorry, Chris Young. I didn't need you to tell me about Saturday nights once again. I nobody was asking for that. Dirk's Bentley. Tom Patti did that song better than you. Whatever we can move on. I'm past 30. I find myself agreeing with these takes. Keep them growing. You're once you're on the other side, Will. You're on it for good. Get what I'm saying. He was fewer acoustic culture. Anyway, acoustics. All right. Just the lazy covers. I don't need the lazy covers, man. Poor Michael Van Buren, though. You're going to have to face this Texas defense, which has kind of quietly been really dominant. I mean, if you're looking for any sort of signs of life from the Mississippi State offense, I don't know that you're going to find it against Texas against PK. I feel like the Jeff Levy offense does not have the personnel to even test this Texas defense, which if you're going to try and and have some success with what Mississippi State has to offer this year, you're thinking, all right, we're going to stretch the field. We're going to try and take advantage of some of these matchups on the outside. We're going to hope that we like something in one on one. We're going to get our guy and press over the top. And instead, you're kind of looking at the Texas secondary going, buddy, I don't want to test any of those guys. Maybe they will. Who knows? You're going to probably have to, but it doesn't really feel like it's that fair of a fight for Mississippi State. And that's also kind of the beauty of this potential SEC debut for Arch, which I'm expecting it will be. You can let him rip. You can tell him go out there, man, like, don't be afraid to make mistakes. You know, if you make some mistakes in this one, you can kind of trust your defense to be able to bail you out in some of these spots. I would think you know, it doesn't mean you want to be careless with a football, but I think you've seen so far with the two games he's played against UTSA and Louisiana Monroe. He's not been afraid to just rip it. And that's that's a really positive early sign, I think from him, because I think if you're sorry, all you got to do is tell him like, look, don't be careless. Trust the scheme, trust the coaching, trust the talent. And you're going to be in the driver's seat throughout this one. I think that'll happen. I think Texas will lean heavily on Jaden Blue once again to give him 25 carries in that game last week, which was an interesting development for a backfield that we've talked a lot about with the injuries that they've had so far. But I'm going to say it's another very high volume Jaden Blue game in this one in ARCH's first career SEC start. And I don't expect Texas to struggle at all. But just because I've said a lot of very mean things about Mississippi State, all of which were justified. I don't take back any of them. I'm going to say that Mississippi State covers 38 and a half and Texas only wins 45 to 10. You know, that's very generous of you. I'll I'll go on the other side of that and think, you know, we need a stat Mississippi State versus gentlemen named Manning, because this has got to be like an adorable rule situation at this point. That's a good point. Man, it was easy. Not in one of these things, man. We had to deal with the grandpa. We had to deal with both brothers. We got enough. This one can run and he's a young thug in the huddle. We can't adapt quick enough. I mean, even Cooper, ARCH's dad, he picks, yeah, he picks Ole Miss to go to, I don't know if Mississippi State was heavily involved in that recruitment. Obviously, probably not a battle they were going to win, but you even lost on that one. He's a decorated receiver. I'm just yeah, they've lost every Manning battle it feels like. That's that's actually just a layer of like unfortunateness or unfortunate luck for Mississippi State, because it's like, come on, man, we're kind of our lowest boy here. You got to remind us there's another man. He's not even at Ole Miss. We got to deal with that later on this season. This is like, now it's Texas. We thought we'd get good viewers, but this might be worse because this guy has like wheels or we don't know what the ceiling is here. And our defense sure is going to live, find out what that ceiling is. So yeah, I think that I'm with you. I think that this is one of those like, called the dogs off situations where it's like, I think that you really don't need to keep anyone out there against Mississippi State. So I think that's what's going to save them. But man, yeah, just two programs that totally different ends here, where you got Texas losing one of their like high, their Heisman favorite, Heisman contender quarterback, we could say, I don't think it was the favorite, but he was like right up there in the top four, losing him and just not missing a beat. So we got a man and just sitting back there hanging out. Let's just play him from Mississippi State. It's like, guys, we had the defensive guy, we got the offensive guy, now we can't play offense or defense. It's going to be a work of progress, guys. Are you lost to the leader? Like I'm not even trying to be mean. It's just like, this is going to be kind of a sim year. If we're talking about college with World 35. Year zero, year zero. Just keep telling yourself that year zero, find the positive. It will probably be few and far between. All right, well, lock of the week. Buddy, we're hurting. We're hurting. One and three after Michigan rally late last week, I still would have lost even if Michigan didn't rally because Texas, I think was up three or four at that point. I picked in the cover of six and a half. That didn't happen, but no panic. We're good. This is the exact point last year that everything turned around. I think I started off one and three and then I think I ended nine and four in the regular season. So if you choose to fade me, do so at your own risk, but your boy is about to get hot. All right, just saying. Let's go with Ohio State. 23 and a half point favorite at Michigan State. What's by the time this used to be like a really fun back and forth rivalry early to mid 2010s. And now it's on peacock. And now it's on peacock. Well, I don't get peacock. I'm not watching this one. Bar there's been texting me once a month. Dude, you got to get peacock. You got to get peacock. And I have just for whatever reason not gotten peacock yet still haven't done it. Still not going to get it for this game. Just going to fall along on my phone. Just going to assume that Jeremiah Smith is going to get like four touchdowns and people are going to be like, wow, this Quinn Sean Judkins guy is really, really good. Maybe he should be the starter. And I'm like, did we do we not pay attention to the first two years that old miss and what that guy was doing and the guys that he beat out in that backfield news to you that this guy is really, really good. But anyway, I think Ohio State should win this one probably by four touchdowns. I would think as much respect as I have for Jonathan Smith, who was a big part, I felt like, of lock of the week at different points last year, I felt like I was picking on a lot of Oregon State games because I do like Jonathan Smith a lot, but it's year zero for Jonathan Smith too. They're making too many mistakes in the offensive side of the football. I don't think you can do that against the Ohio State defense, but I'm going to say that Ohio State controls this one. It's never particularly close. I don't think we see the tweets in the fourth quarter of turn on peacock right now. Michigan State has made this a football game. And then I'll have to be like, oh, yeah, that's right. I don't have peacock. I can't turn on peacock. I'll just take your word for it. Man, these, these poor gentlemen, Michigan State pour what out for them. They had Boston College last year, lost you last week was now apparently a good football team. Ohio State at Oregon, Iowa, which you never will to see at Michigan. This is actually a really hard schedule rough. Sorry. Yeah. This is like, say what you all about the big 10, but the schedule, the issues will not be present going forward because of any team can get those five teams in a row pretty rough. Anyway, so yeah, this is kind of the opposite. We're just talking almost to be state where it's like, there's something to hatred there. All right. Like there's like, this is not a huge spread. This is not, you know, a some random team that you want to be nice to. This is kind of one of the wins that you want to bank if you ride a day, if you struggle later on with the other Michigan school, you go, Hey, we beat them by 50. Let's just keep it moving or whatever. I say struggle isn't used to win. But yeah, I'm right there with you. I think they have every incident to run it up on everyone they see. Yeah, preseason's over for Ohio State. You're supposed to be playing actual football now. I think that they recognize that on Saturday. All right. Before we kick it to us, you're going to hear and or see, depending on where you're listening to this, our trailer for College Town, which is presented by Toyota. Our Gainesville episode is live now. Everybody should go check it out. It is just such a fantastic look at Southern culture. It's so, so cool, Wes and our team. It's just a phenomenal job of being able to capture that. So we discussed that series as well as some Georgia Bama things as well. So first, the College Town trailer and then Wes. Welcome to College Town, a series where we explore the heart and soul of Southern football culture across five iconic College football towns in the powerhouse Toyota Tunnel. Football, is everything here? No dogs, baby. You just see things that you wouldn't see in our house. We can be very loud when we're excited. From Gainesville to Clemson, LaStops and Afton, Tuscaloosa and Chapel Hill, we'll uncover the rich traditions, passionate communities, and game day rituals that keep college football fans coming back for generations. All these people come back to town, graduated 50, 60 years ago. The city lives and dies with what their football team does on Saturday. It's really great to think about how dependent we are on kids playing a sport. There's that small town feel that just erupts on game day. When you first see it. Don't miss out. Watch every episode on Saturday down south.com slash College Town or click the link in our bio. I'm excited to be joined by a very special guest. It is Wes Blankenship. Wes, we got a ton to talk about. Obviously, it of course is Georgia Bama Week. We're going to get to that, but man, we first have to talk about everything that you've been doing for SDS with this College Town project presented by Toyota. There has been a lot of stuff that has already come out. If you follow us on social Saturday down south on YouTube, follow us on Instagram, you can see all this content that's going to be coming out. But before we get into the real nitty gritty of it, traveling around 1,800 miles with a few Brits, a 21-year-old from Tallahassee, as someone that is Georgia, just as southern through and through as it gets. How was that experience? Connor, thanks for having me on. Huge shout out to Saturday down south for tagging me to be a part of that project, man. I really appreciate it. It was amazing. It was a lot of fun. Everything you just mentioned is very true. We did have three British crew members, and we did have a recently graduated cinematographer from Florida State. It was kind of a motley crew, to say the least. A lot of eye-opening experiences for all of us, really. It's funny because as different as the vernacular was between us and the British guys, I learned more from our 21-year-old photographer than I did from any of them. And I learned about what Gen Z is saying. I learned what bussing means. I learned what no cap means. So it was a linguistic journey, no doubt. But it was a phenomenal crew. We all had a part to play and not unlike any given football team in the southeastern conference or beyond. We did perform a little bit better than Florida State, thankfully. But it was a team effort, man. And it was great. Connor, Dan, Charlie, Josh, and myself, we put together some things that I think people are really going to enjoy, whether you're from the college towns we visited or not. It's really awesome, and you kind of knew it was going to be awesome the time and energy that was put into it. It's five college towns for the first season we have. You got to go to Athens. You got to go to Gainesville, Tuscaloosa, Chapel Hill, and Clemson. And I'm sure you had different takeaways from all those different places. Had you been to all those places before? Like, what stood out, I guess, from the places that you hadn't been to yet? Sure. Well, I live right outside of Athens, so I'm glad that one was in the mix. That was a quick up and down, three, 16 couple of days for us. And that was amazing. And our visitors from across the pond enjoyed the classic city the most. So I'm glad to report that. From a Bulldog fans out there, we converted a few English Bulldogs while they were here visiting. But as for the trips, the places that I visited that I hadn't been to before, I'd been to Chapel Hill. And I think if you've been to Athens and Chapel Hill, you can kind of see that they're similar, kind of old historic southern towns. Chapel Hill was a little sleepier, but the history there is amazing. And you know, a lot of people view it as a basketball school. But when I spoke with the people there, they were just as passionate about them, some heels football as well. I know the most recent result, James Madison notwithstanding. They loved them, some heels football up there. I had not been to Tuscaloosa. I had not been to Gainesville. And I had driven through Clemson. So really eye opening in a lot of different ways in a lot of different towns. As a Georgia grad, my experience with Florida was always in Jacksonville when Georgia and Florida played. So I'd never had an excuse to really stop by in Gainesville. And it is the hottest place I've ever been. It was very hot. It lives up to its name as the swamp. I think, you know, if you're a Gator fan out there listening though, you blew this dog away because I really appreciated that they leave the football stadium open. You can go visit Ben Hill Griffin and just check it out and sit in the stands. And even on a July morning, which is when we were there, there were people running up and down the stadium steps, sweating it out. I mean, I was really impressed with that. Tuscaloosa. I was, you know, the thing that struck me about Tuscaloosa is you can see how football has impacted that town economically. I mean, there's no doubt about it. The money that comes from the Nick Saban dynasty era is well spent. There are brand new stores everywhere. There are shops as far as the eye can see. It's really spread out. It's a large, large campus. And, you know, I'm used to being a little bit more walkable when I'm downtown Athens. And T town was a little bit bigger than that. Clemson was fun though. Clemson, if you've never been, I recommend it because it is right on the shores of Lake Hartwell. So there's a lot to do. It's kind of similar to Gainesville in its own way. You can tap into the nature, the natural aspect of what's right near campus. Gainesville, you're in the middle of what feels like a jungle. It's very beautiful with the ponds and wildlife. You will see a lot of gators. You will see a lot of big birds. I mean, you got to keep your head on a swivel in Gainesville because the wildlife is for real and it's ferocious. But I really enjoyed so much of it and the places that we got to visit. I think it showed me not only what their culture is like and what they're all about, but it shows you what sports means and that those places would not be what they are if not for college athletics. And that's the whole point of the series that we did. It really is. And getting to showcase that it is something that I know I take for granted because I do this for a living. We talk about these places and these people and we become so accustomed to driving through a college town and seeing a college bar or something like that. But when you experience it with people that are from overseas and they come here and they experience what it's like even in July when it's not mid season mode, which you guys are doing this project in the summer when it's not necessarily like, hey, a P college football Saturday. But even just seeing that a sort of like lighter version of it, it kind of opens you up to, oh my god, like it really does all revolve around these places and it's so unique. We wanted to showcase the southern culture that's associated with this. So along those lines, and you knew you're going to be asked this question, I didn't prep you with this one, but it was going to come no matter what the best bite of food you ate on those five trips was what best food was in Tuscaloosa at a place called Archibalds Barbecue. And it's a little bit outside of Tuscaloosa proper. There are two locations, but Archibalds, you walk up and it has this old cinder block chimney and it actually had caught on fire recently and they had to rebuild the thing, but they did. And I'm glad that they did. And everyone there just has this family connection to it. They've worked there for generations. Their grandparents did, their parents did. There was a 16 year old kid there that I'm fairly confident will be the owner of it one day, but it was just tremendous, man. I mean, that's what makes barbecue elite is when it has time to build up that residue of smoke and flavor throughout the years. And you can taste that at Archibalds. They hooked us up and gave us some huge dishes. I tweeted a photo. I'll make sure you get that, but they gave us some huge dishes, the ribs, the chicken wings, the okra, and then the sauce that they make, of course, they wouldn't tell us what was in it. But that's for good reason. I mean, that's a good proprietary vat of sauce that they got going on there at Archibald. So if you go follow your team to see a game in Tuscaloosa, go to Archibalds. That was the best food I had the whole time. You're a Georgia grad. You've spent a ton of time in Athens, but getting to kind of experience it this way when you're coming in not so much as like a tourist, but like a connoisseur of the area and getting to experience different things and talk to different people. What was probably the biggest revelation for you, like going into Athens, even though you've probably seen every inch of Athens in a million different ways, like what kind of stood out about that aspect of the trip? I think it challenged me to look at it in a new way and working with the guys that were not from the United States that didn't necessarily know a ton about college football. I think each one of them had different varying exposures to it. And you know, Dan knows a lot about it, but you know, even with Josh, our photographer from Tallahassee, you know, it made me, it challenged me to look at it through their eyes and make sure I wasn't missing the things that make it great and really tap into what is the heartbeat of Athens right now. And you know, I've lived through Athens. I went to school in the early 2000s here, mid 2000s, I guess, and I remember what it was like for Georgia to be hungry. I remember what it was like in those early Mark Rick days with David Green and David Pollock to be a team that everyone knows about, but isn't knocking down the door just yet. And then you start to see incremental success. They went in SEC Championship. You know, they're still desperate though. They're still hungry for a naddy. And then Kirby comes and it's just, you know, similar to that layering of smoke that I mentioned that at Archibald's barbecue in Athens, there's so much context and there's so much history there of emotions and almosts and heartbreaks and then finally breaking through and then now being on the top. And yeah, Alabama still has Georgia's number for the time being. We'll see how it goes in Tuscaloosa this weekend, but it reminds me of those Florida years where you had everything but you had everything but that went over Florida. Now Georgia has everything but they went back to back should have been in the playoff last year. They've got it. They're right there within striking distance yet again year in and year out. And it changes, I think, the people who are newcomers, the new students there that didn't live through that hurt. And that was kind of what opened my eyes to it is how much Georgia's changed in summer guards of expecting to be great. But then in other regards, the history of it that hasn't changed the Georgia theater, the legacy of widespread panic and REM stories like Mama's Boy, which is where we went to get some breakfast and some brunch and they opened up years and years ago, now have multiple locations. So the thing that struck me, I mentioned seeing the economic impacts of Tuscaloosa of the after, the after effect of Nick Saban. I think there's still very much a transitional during the phase of Georgia's dynasty, if you will, of how a lot of money from football, a lot of more influx from students, very competitive school to get into, they're still a before and after. And I think Georgia still very much has those roots that Athens does of where it's come from and where it's going is also evident. You got to be on the road for a couple of weeks. And there's a break in between with this trip that everybody's been on road trips before. And there are various elements of a road trip that you kind of just want to be over, not necessarily being on the road anymore. Like, oh, we're going to be this place for three hours or this place for four hours. I know that by the end of it, there was a general consensus from the people that I talked to getting out of that tundra for the last time, they're like, dang, I'm actually going to miss that car. I would have been striving her out in that thing. What was that that whole experience like? Because it'd be a little bit different if you're if you guys are all cramming into some some small vehicle and this trip just feels like everybody's on top of each other. And it's just like, gosh, get me out of this thing. But it didn't sound like it was that vibe at all. Connor, the tundra that they gave us was phenomenal. It was spacious, comfortable. The monitor that it had for like GPS and, you know, the Sirius XM radio and all that that was in there. By the time I got back into my truck that I drive daily, I felt like I was looking through a pinhole. I mean, the comparison with that monitor, it was just mind-blowing the technology in it. The 2024 Toyota tundra and we all had room to spread out, put all of our gear in there. We had a lot of camera equipment, audio equipment, our own personal bags. You know, we're going to three cities at a time with a break in between. So, that's a lot of packing that you had to do. And it was it was special, man. Every time I'm out on the road now, I feel like I see one of those tundras everywhere. Everything I see just reminds me of my crew, man. It brings a tear to my I know you guys had an awesome time. Like I said, all that coverage, if you don't want to miss it, we have a tab on started on south dot com with college town. You can follow it along there or started on south on YouTube. We're going to have those videos. Clemson is going to be coming out this Sunday. Gainesville is already out. It follows on Instagram as well started on south on Instagram. Lots and lots of great coverage. Even if you don't like, if you if you have no desire to go to these places or anything like that, coverage is just absolutely awesome. And these videos are so unbelievably well done. I was glad you got to be a part of this. All right, Wes, let's talk about the two, two of those college towns that you're going to be seeing in action this weekend. You are a dog. Let's talk about this from the Georgia perspective, man, because gosh, when Nick Saban announced that he's retiring, I whether Georgia fans want to admit it or not, they know deep down in places they don't want to talk about, they thought to themselves, man, it's gone. It's gone. The boogeyman is gone. If if Alabama comes out with a win this weekend, this feeling of angst, how prevalent will that be for Georgia fans? If that's the end result in Tuscaloose. Yeah, I think as I mentioned previously, living through the Steve Spurrier dominance of the 2000s and 90s before that, it was a it was very much a feeling of we're not just losing to this team. We're losing to this guy. We're losing to him. He's the one that has our number. And then you thought you had a chance and then what does Ron Zook do? I'm not comparing Kaylin to board to Ron Zook, but Florida breaks Georgia's heart in a pre college football playoff era in 2002, still very much a what if in Georgia football and Mark Rick's history. Things are a little bit different now. And I think Kaylin to bore steps into a better situation. The floor is a lot higher, and I think he's a better coach. So if Georgia once again comes up short against Alabama, the thing that makes it hard is logging on to the internet for a lot of Georgia fans and having to face that. Whereas you should have the feeling of, well, yeah, Kirby's won in whatever against the tide, but that won in five. Yeah. That one was pretty dang special, right? But I think people have still had a hard time getting over that and I get it. It is very frustrating. And I think that if Georgia doesn't win, the context of their season is not ruined, but the context of how you feel day in and day out, walking around as a Georgia fan is just well, dang, like I hope we get him again because I thought that was going to go a lot differently. But we'll see how that goes Connor. I am cautiously optimistic, I'll say. And I think that Nick Saban no longer being there. I put that in air quotes names on the field and think he's still having his opportunities to help out SEC's fit. But Georgia's got the roster. They got the coaches. The only thing they don't have in this one, I think, is the home field advantage. It's going to be so interesting to see how we see these year to year adjustments because that SEC Championship still fresh on the minds of many on both sides, I think, in this one. But, you know, I go back and we're going to see, we'll see flashbacks of 2007 because, of course, that's the last time that Georgia won in Tuscaloosa, a game that at the time felt like, man, like, Bama's maybe Bama's just always going to be like this. And it's year one of the Saban era and Stafford comes in there. And it's this big monumental win for Georgia. Do you do you remember that? Is that even a fair thing to bring up because of how many different iterations we've seen from Georgia since then? Yeah, I do remember that. That was, I believe, the night of my senior high school homecoming and we were watching it at dinner. And all of our dates were pissed because we were paying a lot more attention to that. The thing I remember about that game, though, is the call in Todd Blackledge just being just flummoxed that Mike, who's in the booth with them? Was it Mike Patrick's? I think, yeah, that was that game, wasn't it? Gosh, that's crazy. And that clip is so viral. It's so perfect, 2000s material. I think three-year letterman tweeted that out. Like, this is the most 2000s moment in history of the internet. It was perfect. That was that night. Gosh. And I think people still are is Mike Patrick. Yeah. I think people still are wondering, you know, what's Brittany done with her life? But since then, since that win, Alabama's done a lot with its life. In covering Georgia, as I had, you know, covered them in local news for a while, covered them more in this digital podcast era as well, kind of on Georgia's beat. It's tough for Georgia fans to understand this, I think. But unless you're up close to it in covering it and trying to be as neutral as you can, you can't come away from being on the wrong end of those thumpens without a level of respect of admiration, even though there's heartbreak. You think about the 2012 SEC Championship game, that, you know, that in a lot of ways continued Alabama's dominance and put Georgia's chances on hold. Another what if, what if Georgia wins that game? What happens to Kirby Smart in his career? What happens to Mark Rick did Georgia? There's a lot, man. There are a lot of ways that Alabama's dominance just sent tidal waves through the course of college football history. And Georgia's been on the wrong end of it from dog's fans perspective many, many times. And this one is just another chance. Saban is gone. A lot of the players that he recruited are still there though. And they got a dang good coach still. Time will tell if he's as dominant and as legendary. I don't know if a lot of people expect that many coaches will have the chance to be that dominant and legendary in the expanded playoff era and NIL era in which we live now. But this is a real one, man. And the thing for Georgia is it's just the beginning, just the beginning of that gauntlet at Texas at Ole Miss Tennessee at home and playing weekend and week out in the SEC. Who knows who's going to sneak up on you? You know, and I hear a lot of Georgia fans saying after that Kentucky game, well, you know, Kirby's teams have this game once a year. You know, you struggled against Auburn before that you struggled at Missouri. But the thing that I'll say that is different walking into this Bama House of Horrors is that you would already seen and I'll point it 2022 specifically. You won the National Championship that year. You'd already seen proof that your team could blow the doors off of everybody. You'd already seen proof when they destroyed Oregon. You'd already seen the proof when they went into Columbia and blew out South Carolina. Georgia's went against Clemson as looking better by the week. But they'd only done that one time. And what else have they shown you other than that? I don't know if you can just say, oh, you know, they struggled at Kentucky. It's just part of the season. They should still do well against everybody else. The schedule's a lot harder and there's no guarantee that that this team is made of the same stuff that that 2022 team was. What did Georgia fans think of Mike Bobo right now? I mean, it depends where you look and it depends who you're hearing from. I mean, the vocal ones are always the ones that are least in touch with reality. And there's also some that give him the benefit of the doubt. Carson Beck didn't play very well at Kentucky. His offensive line didn't play very well. I mean, there were throws there to be made and the same thing was true against Alabama and the SEC Championship game. I'm not a Mike Bobo defender by any means. He's not proven that he's Todd Monkin, but he's also not proven that he can't get the job done and that he can't put his players in the position to make the right calls, make the right plays. And in a lot of instances, they just didn't. I think Tate Rattledge going down in Kentucky was a little bit of a shock at the time. But I've also seen Georgia respond really well when offensive linemen go down in years past. They still recruit really, really well, Connor. They still have a lot of great depth. So Kirby Smart is pretty good off of a bi-week and they've had a lot of chances to look at what they did wrong and what they're not doing very well. And this is a chance for Carson Beck to lock in and prove that he's that first round NFL draft pick that everyone says he is and to earn some of that NIL money. Trying to think of what I view is the best road win of the Kirby Smart Era because, you know, like beating some of those Florida teams with Mullen, obviously, that's a neutral site game, the Oregon game where they come out and they blow the doors off them in Atlanta. That's not a road game. Bama, they lose there in 2020. And I'm trying to like, I'm trying to not dismiss that because I do think if you're going to be this juggernaut, this unstoppable force, that's a big part of it, right? Like going into somebody's house in the way that Bama did to Georgia and the very infamous funeral game that kind of launched the Bama Dynasty into what it became. I don't need to remind Georgia fans of that. But like, what do you view as that best road win that Kirby has had so far? Because I think that it's very much on the table on Saturday night, if they're able to get it done in Tuscaloosa. Yeah, I mean, if they went in Tuscaloosa, this is number one, no doubt about it. But don't discount the games they've gone into Knoxville in one. I mean, true, whether Tennessee's good, great top 10 or not, they're allowed when it kicks off, whether they're there in their seats in the second half or not, because Kirby's made them leave quite a few times. But last year was was pretty impressive. Going into Auburn is similar, going in and winning there. But I think the signature is winning at Notre Dame in 2017. It's a good point. I think that that in a lot of ways put Georgia on the trajectory that they're still on. But yeah, you beat Alabama this weekend in Tuscaloosa. That's number one. That's the best win that he will have had, no doubt about it, because not many teams go in there and get a win. Even better than the National Championship, 21? No. No, I was at that game. That's a legacy mode. That game right there was special for a lot of reasons. And don't forget, man, this expanded playoff, the schedule that Georgia has, unless they dropped three games in the regular season, which I don't think that they will, a very good chance you'll see Alabama again. So just because you don't win this one, if you don't, and I'm not taking that off the table, but it's the season is not over. Might be hard to go to church on Sunday and sit next to your Bama buddy in the pew and go get lunch with him. And you might stay home that next day, if it happens, but a season is not over if you don't win this weekend. Do you have Bama buddies that you do that with? That doesn't sound right. What's that? Do you have Bama buddies that you do that with? Because that doesn't sound right. I don't have any Bama buddies this week. That's the correct answer. You got a you got a prediction for Saturday night? Yeah, I think George is getting a lot of smoke that isn't necessarily fair, just based off of one game, because what did Alabama do the week before that at home against South Florida? I think it's a much more evenly matched game than the optimistic Bama fans want to think. And I think the pessimistic Georgia fans that have way too much Larry Munson in them aren't giving them enough credit. Georgia's got a long season ahead. I don't think they drop this one. They might drop one down the road, but I think Georgia does find a way to get a win. I think Kirby Smart welcomes Kaylin to bore to the Georgia Alabama rivalry. It is not a traditional rivalry and a lot of historical college football perspectives, but I think it is in modern day college football. It's not the last time they'll match up. It'll be a dang good one. I think Georgia wins it. I'll say 27 to 24. I like that. I like that a lot. Last last one for you. And I'm not going to put you on the spot with an invitation question requests, however you want to call it. But the Matthew McConaughey video for that Georgia Texas game, when should we expect that to come out? That's like a Monday video for you, right? We'll see. We'll see what the storylines are that week. Just depends how the spirit leads, Connor. You never know what's going to happen between these old years. I'll bet a whole lot of money that the spirit's going to lead you to some some McConaughey that week. He's been he's been pretty relatively reserved this year, which I kind of like. I feel like he's almost dialed it back a little bit, but him retweeting you ahead of the Georgia Texas game. Like I'm I'm banking on that. That's that's going to happen. Yeah, I mean, I I'd love to meet him. I'd love to do a, you know, do an impression to his face. He's he shared some of my stuff before. So I don't think it bothers him. I think it's a badge of honor for him. No doubt about it. And now the Texas is in the SEC in our neck of the woods. It only makes too much sense for it to happen. One of these days, we'll see. Love it. Like I said, college town, awesome, awesome stuff coming down the pipeline. I'm sure you're going to have it all over your your socials as well. SDS socials will be tweet now clips and and these full videos. Everybody should go check this stuff out. It is absolutely awesome. I was so glad that you got to be a part of this and do this. I really appreciate the time and I'm sure we'll catch up soon, man. Yep. Go watch college town. It's awesome. Thanks Connor. Thanks, man. Before we do latter of the week, one thing real quick, there are talks for a second series of college town and the best way to see your college town represented if it wasn't represented in season one is one of those five schools. Flood the comments on Instagram, YouTube started on south on both of those. Tell us where we should go next year. Obviously, we would love to be able to go to a bunch of different places. And I love the fact that, you know, we're willing to do content like this. I think this is hopefully going to become something that we do on an annual basis at SDS, but the best way to be able to make that happen is to watch the comments on where we should go next. Also, also, we have exclusively on Saturday down south YouTube interview with Emmett Smith. Yeah, might have heard of him all time in a fellow eating rusher Saturday down south on YouTube. That's something that we're going to do a little bit more. Just sometimes we'll have interviews or sometimes we'll have different things that we're doing that are going to be exclusively for the YouTube channel as well. So definitely go subscribe if you have not done that yet. Well, I'm going to start with my lad with you. Everybody that knows me or that's been listening to the show for an extended amount of time should know who my lad of the week is going to be. Go for it. It's Malik Willis. Come on. Big, big time. Toby Keith, how do you like me now when from my boy Malik Willis? Yeah, against the Titans. Of course, the most predictable thing ever is that he has to go to the Packers to look like this version of himself. My skin is crawling, Will. I was like, all right, the second they signed him. That guy's going to step in. He's going to win two or three starts. No big deal. It's going to be like one of the best stories in the NFL. And I'm just going to be sitting there like, what's there are so many memes that could describe the angst that's like, oh, well, the Elanza morning one is pretty good too. Yeah, that's the all-time gift. Yeah, I just I love the fact that he is getting this opportunity because it's unfortunate how quickly the Titans bailed on him. Someone that I bang the drum for is the number eight quarterback in the post spring 2019 SEC quarterback rankings who could get. But you know, somebody that like seeing him fall in the NFL draft sucked because I'm not going to say like I got to know him or anything like that. And you know, my interactions with him are extremely limited, but still somebody that I found myself rooting for. And I thought the story was just kind of cool the way that he developed after, you know, after the fallout at Auburn with him being third string immediately after I ranked him as the number eight quarterback in the SEC. But glad to see that he's doing it right now. Just hate. Hate cannot emphasize that enough that he is doing it with the team, the franchise that I hate more than anyone. Wow. And all of their beautiful owners. You know, you're great people, all of you. You're not getting scammed. You're not like, well, this is great. You don't deserve him. You don't deserve Malik Willis. I deserve a quarterback. Not bitter. You know, this is a bit that legitimately, and I'll give it credit gets funnier every year because it started off. And like, I was just kind of like, yeah, you know, sometimes you know, I can throw some some Hail Mary's except those they work sometimes they don't. And then, you know, he goes to Liberty, it's like, get a little bit better. And they're like, that was kind of enough to be like, this guy's probably like a top like a quarterback. Like that was probably enough because he was like, probably really well this stuff. And he gets drafted. He's okay. And then he's good. And he is like, every bit even better than the player. But of course, you still holding the stock had you the nearest to where he actually is, which makes you the most correct on him. However, he's got to do it for the Packers and prove that no matter who plays quarterback for the Packers, they're going to be better than the quarterback for the players. I'm sorry. To be clear. And yes, that did hurt my feelings. And you're right. I am holding the Malik Willis stock. I am not holding the actual Packers stock that all of you are not getting scammed with. Yes. Yes. What would you present? So I actually have just vowed to keep up with this because they could truly only get funnier for you. Because what if he's just off starting NFL quarterback and suddenly the Gus quarterbacks are like bonic. So we were told was just unfixable. Now quarterbacks that bonics or that Gus Melzon wrote off. Exactly. Or just Gus Gordon because I instead am still bumping around somewhere. I'm not exactly sure where he is. He's like a pretty much a career backup. But if those are the two starters that Gus was just like, you can't play. It's just over to. That's incredible. Let's Joey Gate would up to. Oh, man, he's probably working enterprise. Jeremy Johnson, just copying the CFL. There's Sean White, the quarterback, not the snowboarder/skateboarder, notable redhead. I'm just saying that might be the path to success. So Hugh Freeze, if you're interested, that's where to look. Yeah. I love it. I love this is the most random. That's the cool thing that Lizzic underrated about just like dude friendships is like there will be a random athlete on some random team that you and your boys have had fights for hours about. And like, they'll come out at a room full of random people and you and your boy will get right into this red. I did this as a group chat the other day and it was like, what are you talking about? Like you wouldn't get it. But yeah, those are the best. Like you wouldn't get our heated arguments over Tires Thomas. You would not understand it. They've been going back for 20 years now with my boy Ben. You don't want to you don't want to step in the middle of a Tires Thomas discussion. And you don't want to hear him talk about Augio Heda. Only the real ones know Augio Heda. That's a real deep cut. So many conditions as years of this good. I was like, Oh, no, I said it'd be a fair. No, I said it'd be a pro bowler. Okay. It's not what I said. I didn't say it'd be good. It's like the classic dude thing. So anyway, yeah, this is kind of a different direction for a lot of a week. But I think it's a I to me, like this is going to be something that changes college football. Yeah, it's going to be the UNLV quarterback, Matt Sluka, Matthew Sluka. This I think is the case that might get interesting. Interesting. Interesting. I think this is going to change college football. This might be the guy that actually makes us change college football because the way this has gone out again, this is Wednesday. I recorded this. So they come out tomorrow that he was holding someone at gunpoint. I don't know. But the possibility of this happening. Explain what this is for those. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Um, yes, you're just all right. I assume that what's it called? Like, I'm one of those guys. I'm so dialed in. It's just like, what are you talking about, dude? Why are you talking about the UNLV quarterback? So UNLV quarterback, brother, famously two and oh, under great head coach, burial. Reno. Yeah. Yeah. Three other great head coach, burial. They've beaten two power five teams or whatever, kind of like higher level competition teams. Everyone slice that. I don't know if there's a power five anymore in Kansas. Yeah. Yes. Anyway. So point being, um, their quarterback has just put out a statement, um, that he's done. He's going to take his medical red shirt that his, uh, basically long and short of his, his NIL obligations from the school have not been fulfilled from his perspective, right? So UNLV has also put out a statement, um, basically saying that the, that he's threatening them, right? That his representation and the director was UNLV does not engage in such activity, nor is it known to respond to implied threats. Uh, this one's in my opinion, gonna get ugly. I think no matter how you slice it, because you're talking about a kid who transferred from Holy Cross and a whole career there. Um, just in the school, I'm usually a big kind of like player or disenfranchised person over organization. You know, UNLV is a big institution, say what you will about their athletic prowess. They were pretty impressive basketball school for a while, um, but at the end of the day, like they have more capital. They have more leverage, uh, than Sluka does in this situation. And I think that, you know, both sides are going to tell their version of events. But like I said, like, so, so he's saying that more or less, right? He was promised, and this is all coming out through reporters, representatives, all this stuff. But what we know right now, I can't stress this enough. This is all hearsays might come out tomorrow, whatever, but what has been reported is that, you know, he asked for like a hundred grand and they gave him around three. Okay. The cover is living expenses. Yes. The cover is living expenses. And of course, the university is saying, Oh, you know, we, you know, you can't do that really, like in the way that things are structured right now, it has to be a collective. There can't be all these like very specific contract terms. In some places, if that's the thing, state to state, it's a little bit different. Las Vegas and Nevada, not really one that we've dealt with before, not like a Texas or an Ohio. There's like pretty well known out there. I think this is kind of a perfect store. I think this is like enough things are going on here where someone is going to have to do something about this, because we can't have athletes committing the schools and redshirting three weeks in to go play for another school. Say whatever you will say that it's the kids' fault. I know there's a lot of old school guys in the comments saying you quit on your team. The response to that for me would be, well, you know, again, you don't go to work if your paycheck is not coming in. When it becomes your money, when it becomes our lives, we view things differently. So that's the way that I'm going to view this going forward, which is that this might be a situation where, you know, we have, um, oh my gosh, Oh, it was his name, Rashata, Rashata, right, where it came out. Oh, Florida can't pay this. It's all Florida's fault. And then suddenly, it turns out his representative is younger than me, right? That could be the case. It could be the case of the sky. Wait, wait, wait, yeah, good point. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a good, like, whole several classes between me and this guy, like recruiting classes. So yeah, point being like, maybe it is a situation we had bad representation. We got bad advice. We've seen that over and over and over again. And most of the time we see that, you know, in a documentary later on, but this is really, we're seeing the underbelly get peeled back where you have this inspirational story. And then suddenly it's about money and like nobody. I mean, nobody, not the networks, not the school, not the players. Nobody wants this. So it might get to a point where we get to like where baseball was in the nineties, where like Congress is talking about this, but we've seen coaches jump up and down and nobody really wants to get involved. When it gets to a situation like this, maybe it's not the thing, but I think it's the beginning of the iceberg where it goes to, we're going to, I think, have to end up with some regulations here because nobody really cares about you and LV to be honest with you. But if this were like a different situation where, you know, he's going to a power school, which you probably will do or something like that, your rival comes up with this guy and you're like, okay, well, how did he get here? Now you start to get now a whole other group of fans is going to be engaged. We're not even thinking about right now. If he goes to Michigan, well, I have state manager, you're like, what happened? Let's go look at it. So yeah, I just think it's open. This is really the epicenter of what's wrong with college football right now that either a university is lying or a kid is lying. And he's, you know, he's older. He's a doperclassman, you know, he's graduated from Holy Cross. So again, a little bit closer and agency me like it's not like he's 18. But at the same time, he either got that advice or is just being selfish or a university is lying. And those are really the two options or the three options there. So I'm so fascinated. This almost reminds me of the Edo Banden case in a way. Like when I first saw it, I saw the two different sides like, you guys are not going to come to an agreement. One of you guys is going to end up being right. And again, nobody wants this. Yeah, I mean, the problem is like, when you say like, Oh, like something has to be done about it, it's like everybody acts out of their own interests. There's not a collective that acts for the best interests, then you would see a situation like this and think, all right, well, this has to be the end of it. It's like kind of doesn't. It really doesn't like there's no, there's no sort of like governing body that's going to step in and say, well, this is the thing that's going to push us too far. It's like you kind of feel how you feel about this stuff. I think it's the networks and the money. I get the end of the day. You know, if you got, you know, imagine this was happening, like I said, I don't know that poll though. They don't have that kind of poll to step in like, still have the poll? No, not to not to not with no packed well, not to get I know, but not to get federal regulation about like labor laws and stuff like that. The networks don't have the poll to be able to step in and say, look, this is what's agreed upon with NIL. UNLV is saying that they can't give you this, they can't acknowledge that this is the line in the sand that's been drawn, and this is why you have to come over and cross it. Like everybody is looking at the situation and going, yeah, like you're right, someone's lying, someone's definitely lying and all this stuff. Why is this agreement not in writing? Get everything in writing. You say like, oh, you know, like nobody would want to work. You know, if if their payment wasn't, you know, wasn't being paid, and it's like at the same time, you would also have all of your payment, like in writing, in contract form somewhere, like you're not working without something like that on the tables. Like that's, it's a mess, an absolute mess, and it sucks. Like it sucks. And I feel for UNLV fans, like Guy Fieri, I'm sitting there going, man, I got to watch my alma mater go through this. That's right. It's Guy Fieri. Not Fieri. People say Fieri. It's not. I love the fact that we're carrying this much about an issue that is significant. Okay, like that, that I think is important because you're right. It could happen at a bigger place. And it could happen to a program that has even more vested interest with more more ramifications of all of a sudden starting quarterbacks says, I will not play. I'm taking advantage of my retcher. But I don't know that changes imminent. I wish I could say that change feels imminent. But man, it just like there are so many different parties that are pulling for their own interests when it comes to like federal regulation and all these different things that I just can't sit here and say that this will be the thing that changes everything else. Yeah. And I mean, remember like, get a band case took, what, 20 years, 15 years? Yeah, it was 95. Exactly. Like to kind of like suss that out. So that's what I'm saying. Like tip of the iceberg in terms of like, yeah, no one's quite hurt yet. But you know, the thing that's crazy to me and all this stuff, and you're right. Like I'm fully, I'm not exactly disagreeing with you. Think about all the things that don't really make sense, you know, when you go, this is obvious, we should fix this. Most of that serves whoever is in power, whoever has money, right? And so look at something like the one and done rule or the fact that, you know, the NFL was a 501(c) charity until basically COVID hit or a little bit before that, right? None of that makes sense, but it benefits the people with money. So I think that when you start talking about gambling lines, or starting quarterbacks or checking themselves out, if that's a possibility, where you start talking about the rights deals where it's, oh, well, yeah, you had this UNLV game, or you had this. Okay, let's say you had the LSU game last year, and Jayden Daniels just said, you know what? Never mind, man. That's going to affect the broadcast rights, viewership, gambling lines, all that stuff. So I think that we are headed towards somebody being the adult. Obviously, not the NCAA. We've seen that, but somebody if it's the NFL saying, you know, hey, we're going to, we're going to put a stop to this. You need to have, you know, these, these rules in place so that we could all keep the money flowing. So yeah, I think this is the first time it's truly gotten to where it's messing up the pocketbooks of like these billion dollar institutions. And I think that wouldn't, once that gets started, they start working really hard to make that never happen again. Yeah, college coaches agreed to availability ports because they realized you're not exactly unloading the trade secrets by saying that a starting quarterback isn't going to play, and instead they don't have to just field DMs for like four or five days in texts and calls from family members who are betting on the games. And that's why that's why something like that changes, because people have money online and they want to, they're like coaches realize why am I letting my quarterback just get harassed, he's questionable with an ankle and said I can figure this out now and, you know, try and get ahead of this. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see what comes of it. I started to make a joke earlier about like, what if, what if Venables just starts Jackson Arnold and I'm like, Oh, we can't do that anymore. Because remember a couple weeks ago, Christian McCaffrey, Bensters, a late scratch. And I'm talking about every betting site said, you know what, we're going to cancel those bets. He didn't correctly do the injury report. So we're not in a world of gamesmanship where coaches are technically doing like the right thing in terms of winning the game. It's all about Vegas. It's all about money. And of course, this is in Vegas. So it all kind of is like those because they're right there, brother. Anyway, yeah. All right, that's a pod. That's a meaty pod. Whole lot to get to this week, week five. Yes, thick with two C's as they say. All right, if you have not leave us a five star review, please subscribe to Saturday don't stop on YouTube where you can watch every single episode of Saturday don't stop podcast follows on Twitter at the SES pod at sat on south at the Jogara echoes work. Thanks guys. Talk soon. We're excited to announce our latest video series college town series that dives deep into the heart and soul of southern football culture. I'm West Blankenship your guide as we embark on an 1800 mile adventure across five legendary college towns from Gainesville to Chapel Hill with unforgettable stops in Athens, Tuscaloosa and Clemson. We explore the rich traditions passionate communities and electrifying game day rituals that make each location a pilgrimage site for college football enthusiasts. Join us as we discover local hotspots connect with devoted fans and soak in the excitement that elevates these towns to legendary status every fall all powered by the powerhouse Toyota Tundra buckle up. It's time to hit the road with us and uncover what sets southern college football apart from the rest. Watch every episode at Saturday down south.com slash college dash town or hit the link in our bio.
Week 5 is here! The guys start with the unfortunate news out of Baton Rouge that Harold Perkins is out for the year with a knee injury. Has he played his last college down? The guys dig into all the Week 5 SEC action with picks and previews for Georgia-Alabama, Kentucky-Ole Miss, Oklahoma-Auburn Arkansas-Texas A&M and Mississippi State-Texas, plus Lock of the Week. Wes Blankenship joined the show to discuss his work on the new SDS video series "College Town," presented by Toyota. Plus, some Georgia-Alabama discussion. The guys close with Lad of the Week!
Watch College Town - Out Now - https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/college-town/
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