Nick Saban in His Underwear & Why 24 Teams Won’t Kill College Football | Engel Angle

For Halloween this year. I'm going as myself because that is going to both scare and intimidate everybody that I see. Just being honest.

Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Engel Angle podcast, Sunset Lounge, Stolen Water Media, Happy Mid October, where outside it is finally no longer 95 degrees. Closer to 90. Actually, we actually had a kiss of fall, like real fall for like five days.

And it was hysterically funny because what it does, at least in North Texas, is that it gives everybody a reason to run into their closets and finally have a reason to wear long sleeves. I grew up in the Midwest, And I remember in the springtime when it would get like 55 degrees, we'd be out in shorts and a t shirt convincing ourselves that it really was actually warm when it was ungodly cold. And now that I lived here in Texas for thirty years, anything under 62 degrees, it's bundle up time.

Sitting in front of the fire, shutting it down. I'm not going outside. It's too freaking cold.

It's too freaking cold because it's football season. And that gives me an opportunity to talk about a subject that I absolutely love no matter what it does to itself. I cannot quit it.

And I know I'm not alone. College football. My career indirectly started with college football.

Career. Not my interest in sports started with college football. I'm talking about my career.

When I look back and when were my first events working either as an intern or a graduate assistant or a professional. They all started in college football. My first very major sporting event that I worked at was at the University of Kansas in its athletic media relations office working a Kansas college football game, I believe against Nebraska.

I think I've mentioned that here on this podcast before. So I I love college football for all the reasons that everybody else does. I wanna share with you this anecdote about college football to give you an idea of how much the sport has changed in the last thirty years.

So I'm gonna go back to December 1995. I am in my first year out of college, and I'm working as a intern, full time intern at Missouri State University. It was back then Southwest Missouri State University in its athletic media relations office, making, making $490 a month.

It's pretty impressive. I don't know how I lived on that. And here's the crazy part.

I saved money while I did it. I think my rent... I rented a I rented a room from a guy I barely knew.

And I think I paid him a $180 a month. Not sure that apartment was in the best part of Springfield, Missouri, but it worked out. Anyways, so around October or November of that year, I started writing letters to college football bowl game directors, media relations directors, just writing letters, typing them out, printing them, and write...

And mailing them. Email was very much in its infancy. It was still kind of a novelty back then.

And the Internet was still very much in in day one of its existence. And so I send all these guys, and I'm talking like there weren't nearly as many bowl games back then as there are today. So I start...

I I just sent all these letters to these people offering my assistance to volunteer for anything that they may need in terms of media relations responsibilities that I, as a first year person out of college, could help with. I had some background in it. It was on my resume, and I was looking to network and put more things on my resume because I knew the job that I had would end in seven more months or whatever it was.

And because it was a one year internship. And even now as I sit here and say that, I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I just wrote letters to people and said, hey, would you give me an opportunity to volunteer at your bowl game for free?

You know, you get older and you look back at decisions you made or things that you did well or things that you didn't do well. One thing I did well, back then was I had absolutely no fear of knocking on doors professionally and being rejected. That is a skill.

If you can be... If you are unafraid of being rejected and you can deal with no after no after no after no, that is a hard skill. And I had it.

Now, personally, I wasn't as good at it professionally. But professionally, I was great at it and I have no idea where I came from. So I was getting usually just nothing in return, but I got two positive responses.

One of them was from the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana. Yes. Okay.

So I drove. I went back to see my mom and my dad in Indianapolis... Indiana for Christmas.

And then a day or two after Christmas, I drove from Indianapolis to Shreveport where I'm gonna volunteer at the Independence Bowl. And so one of the things that I've never forget this, the game was to be played between Michigan State University and LSU. Now for the Independence Bowl to have LSU at the time was a big deal.

And LSU at the time, if you remember, was not very good. So one of the things that it had, as all bowl games do, are events surrounding the game. And, like, children's hospital appearances by players and banquets and things like that.

Well, I get a ticket to attend the banquet between the two teams. And remember, I don't have any money. So I'm saying yes to anything that has food in it, which is something I still do now that I'm older.

So I go to the event and I'm sitting at this table with all these strangers and the whole room is full. It's mostly LSU fans because the game's obviously being played in its home state. And they introduce the two head football coaches.

This is a bowl game between a Michigan State team that finished six, four, and one and LSU that finished six, four, and one. Think about that. LSU was six, four, and one.

They introduced the head coach, and he gets a standing ovation. Jerry DeNardo was the head coach at Michigan State at the time, and he got a... Pardon me, LSU at the time.

And he got a standing ovation for a six four and one record. These days in Louisiana, that would get him shot. Meanwhile, the other coach receives a very tepid, mostly lukewarm round of applause from a limited number of Michigan State fans who are in the audience.

And that coach is none other than Nick Saban. What a coincidence. So I sit there and I listen to somebody named Nick Saban stand up there and give his speech about how happy he is to be in Louisiana, and he appreciates being at the bowl game.

And then I listened to Jerry Donardo say thank you very much, and they're all excited about Jerry Donardo going six four and one in Louisiana. So a few hours later, the person who is the media relations director at the cot... Pardon me, the the Independence Bowl says, Mac, this is what we need you to do today.

Okay. What do you need me to do? There are eight footballs in a box.

Commemorative Independence Ball footballs with Michigan State logo and LSU's logo. We need you to go get those autographed by the respective head coaches of both teams. Okay.

Where do I do it? Well, Michigan State's gonna be practicing at the Independence Bowl Stadium. So go get them there and then just follow-up.

And... But basically, what they tell you to do is, well, they don't even know. Just go get it done.

Okay. I'll go get it done. This is before cell phones had maps on it or anything like that.

So you had to kinda look at a map and figure out, well, where am I going? Well, if you've ever had the misfortune of driving in Shreveport, Louisiana, which I don't necessarily recommend, it is blessed with one way streets everywhere. So eventually, I have to know.

I know what time I need to be at the football stadium to get to coach Saban. He's the Michigan State head coach. I get to the stadium after getting lost, of course.

Get to the stadium, and I just lie my way through to get past security because I don't have a credential. And the stadium is dead empty. There at the beginning, it's probably 12:00, 01:00 in the afternoon on a cool December day.

I see there is Nick Saban. He's not a very tall man and he's standing there in his green Michigan State outfit. He's folding his arms like this and he's looking down.

I think nothing of it. I'm standing on the sideline and I can see the coach coach Saban standing at about the 50 yard line and nobody is around him. The team is starting to warm up in the opposite end, one of the end zones.

I'm a college... I'm I'm a year out of college. I know nothing about anything.

And I walk up to him kind of nervous. And I said, Saban, I introduced myself. I'm with the Independence Bowl.

Would you mind signing some commemorative footballs for something or something? And he looks up at me, kind of gives me this look. And he's not mad at me.

He's not going to chew my head off. He's not going to bark at me. But he's annoyed that I'm there.

But he also knows I'm just doing my job. Nothing has started yet. That's a big deal.

Nothing has started yet. Practice starts at two or 01:00, and I know I'm there twenty minutes early. I'd been around it enough.

You don't interrupt anything unless it is a five alarm fire emergency if practice starts. You get out of their way. You know, it's like, don't even be seen, don't even be heard.

But I know I'm there well in advance. The players are kind of warming up. There's nobody standing around this man.

I know that I'm not interrupting anything. Like I said, that's a big deal. If I was, this is a different story.

So he kind of looks down and he says, Well, he's a really quiet man. He said, Well, can you put the footballs in the coach's locker room there and I'll sign them and you can come get them after practice. Okay.

Thank you very much. And I leave. Well, one thing about football practice and sports practices in general is that they take forever, especially if you are not playing in them or coaching them, which I was not.

So now I've got about an hour and a half or two hours to kill just sitting sitting around the Independence Bowl Stadium, which is on the Fairgrounds there in Shreveport. And this is before cell phones and the internet and all that stuff where you can just kind of kill time and play around nothing. So I just basically walk around and waste two hours of my life.

Little did I know that I was looking through a portal for the rest of my career where waiting is a virtue. It's not patience, it's waiting. So eventually the practice ends I'll never and forget this.

So by that point, I had taken the footballs into the coach's locker room, talked my way around here, there, there, and I eventually dropped the footballs off. So now I'm very excited. And I walk into the coaches locker room.

It's a very small little area. And Nick Saban, a very little diminutive man, is sitting there in his underwear without his shirt on signing the footballs for me. I've done half of my job.

Little do I know that I am looking at who would become decades later probably the greatest college football coach in the modern era, maybe ever. And he's sitting there in his locker or in... At...

In his locker room on a bench in his underwear, signing footballs. So I walk in. Thanks, coach, so much.

I really appreciate this. Okay, guy. Have a nice day.

That was one half of my meeting a coaching legend. Again, little did I know who I was looking at. And little did I know that eventually he would have a famous reputation for a hot temper, whether with his own players, his own staff, or members of the media.

That was my one on one with Nick Saban, who years later, would interview on conference calls, and he was fine. State goes on to lose the game by a wide, wide margin. And Jerry Donardo, the head coach of LSU, eventually years later is fired and replaced by the man who signed the footballs for me, where he would go on to win a national championship at LSU and then years later become the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, which was a disaster, and then become the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide where he built a dynasty.

The funny part about that afternoon that I remember so vividly wasn't necessarily my interacting with Nick Saban. It was the effort needed to go find Jerry Donardo. I had to meet him.

That day would last from about 12:00 until 09:00 because I could not find Jerry Donardo. And think about that. This is ridiculous.

I had to move heaven and earth to go around and find Jerry Donardo. Not Nick Saban. That didn't take very long at all, comparatively speaking.

And he's the legend. But Jerry Donardo. Jerry Donardo.

That's the one that would took hours and hours and hours. I was having to pull off and make phone calls from a payphone. I'm not getting paid.

I do remember I just stopped at a gas station and call someone from a payphone and say, where is this guy? And eventually, found him. They did a talk show with him at a sport...

A sports radio talk show with Jerry Donardo at a Marriott there, and that's where I eventually found him. And I remember the person who put me in charge is great. Thanks a lot.

Little did he know the hell that I went through to get these two guys to sign eight footballs, all of which by now are probably at the bottom of a garbage can or maybe stuck in a goodwill pile someplace. But it did get me to think as I sit here and watch Nick Saban now and how his career has transitioned, to sit here and listen to how he's become the dean and sage man of all things college football and think about how much the sport has changed. Since I'm standing there in the coach's locker, handing him some footballs to get autographed, The fact that I could even get to him.

Do you know how hard it is to get to these people now? Back then, it was nothing. It was nothing.

I literally walked on a field, introduced myself. Two hours later, I'm in his locker not having to go through any security meet, nothing. Now I would have no less than eight people to have to get through to get him to sign those footballs.

That gives you some idea how much this stuff has changed and why I can tell you with certainty as we are on the precipice of college football's postseason making yet another change. I can tell you with certainty, nothing, nothing will stop it. And I'll tell you why here in a second.

Hello. It's Mike Rhyner of Your Dark Companion here. Let me ask you.

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Please hang out with us at the Statler Hotel. Scout with the Statler Hotel, Sunset Lounge every Tuesday, 05:30 to 07:30 through February. College football is probably the most protected sports institution that we have in this country.

More than Major League Baseball, even though baseball is the longest running sport that we have, more than National Football League, more than any other one. Our feelings and our passion about college football are so deep and so high, the best comparison I can think of are soccerfootball teams overseas. That's the best comparison I can think of.

We feel a sense of ownership in a college football team unlike any other team that exists out there. Now you may have rabid Dallas Cowboy fans or big time New York Knick fans or Laker fans or New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs, whatever. And they've they've ridden with those teams high and low.

But missing from those relationships is a sense of ownership. Yes, I know the Green Bay Packers sell stock. You can buy stock in technically the Green Bay Packers.

You can. But in terms of feeling a sense of ownership in a team, if you've graduated from that university, that creates a bond and a relationship that is unlike the one that you might feel if you grew up rooting for a pro sports team in your city. Or you inherited that fan...

That that sort of fandom from your mom or your dad or your grandparents or some sort of family tie. If you went to that school and you went to those games when you were a student or even before you were a student, you have that bond. It creates a level of delusional passion that the best comparison I can think of is almost like family.

And if they're family, you tend to lose your mind sometimes. And it is why as we sit here and pontificate the prospect of college football changing its postseason yet again, people have completely lost their minds and completely just disregarded the reality of how this ultimately will all play out. So in the last week or two, it has been reported that most likely the college football playoff will expand again from its current bracket that has 12 teams to 24 teams starting as early as 2027.

This was totally inevitable for a lot of different reasons. And I'm gonna go through them and tell you this is not the end of the world nor is it the big slap in the face to the sport that a lot of people want you to believe, including Nick Saban. The number one priority...

The first question is, well, gee, why are they doing this? They're ruining a great model. They're ruining a great model.

It's not about that. The number one reason why they are doing this is money and self preservation. If you go back and look at any of these decision makers and why they are doing what they're doing, they're doing it to make sure that they're making the most money they can and to preserve what they have as individuals so they can protect their quality of life.

Whether it's a beach house in Florida, whether it's private school for their kids, whether it's first class airline tickets wherever they want to go, whether it's paying their ex spouse, whatever it is. That is their number one priority in making sure that they can continue to have and keep what they currently possess. That's number one.

Number two, how are we gonna pay for all this crap? Unlike the other exports that exist in this country, college football pays indirectly for all of the other sports that you don't watch, you probably don't play, but exist for the grand scheme of things, and that is to market a major university. University of California, Northwestern, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, University of Texas, Georgia.

Name the school that participates in big time sports, and they are agreeing to all these modifications to college football because of money, and that money will help pay for all of these different sports that exist for the sake of existing and providing opportunities for young people and professionals for scholarships or jobs or whatever. And for that, I say, great. Fantastic.

I'm... Whatever it takes, go ahead and do it. I've totally changed my mind on that.

My career started in college athletics when I was working on the other side of it in terms of PR. And I was part of the... Guess the machine that participated in college baseball, college softball, college soccer.

You know how many people go to those games? Nobody. A very, very small number of people.

Who's paying for all of it? Who's paying for these salaries? Who's paying for these scholarships?

Football, basketball, anything that really generates real money. That's what's helping pay for those opportunities. And for that, I say, okay, keep going.

I I don't wanna deprive a young person the opportunity to swim at, St. Louis University or any of these places that have those. If they can create those chances, great.

I'm all for it. Is it socialism? Yes, it is.

But that's what that's what a college business model essentially is. The English department exists on the back of the business school. That's the way it goes.

It's flawed. It's a contradiction, but that's what it is in college football is basically doing that for college athletics. So I'm like, okay, well, we're not gonna stop it, but I'm telling you this right now.

This is not the end of the world the way some of these people are painting a twenty fourteen playoff bracket really is. It's basically a continuation of what we've watched in the last thirty or forty years, fifty years in college football anyways. It just has a new name on it.

So this is what's going to happen. Here in the next year or so, the college football playoff is going to expand from 12 teams to 24 teams. Okay.

And by doing so, it is basically going to kill or it should a lot of the second and third tier bowl games that exist. Bowl games like the Independence Bowl. I don't know what's gonna happen to that.

Bowl games like any number of other games that exist because ESPN creates it because they want December programming. And what they have found in this current era of college football is that the players don't wanna play in it, and they've basically become scrimmage... I shouldn't say scrimmages, but basically become spring practice for the teams.

But people will watch it on TV. They're not necessarily going to the games unless they're just you know, family, friends, something to do. They're diehards.

Maybe they... Maybe that university is in a city where there's some alums and they go so they can wear the sweatshirt and support their team, but it's it's really low interest. And I think what we're going to see with games like that, the Tony, the Tiger Bowl, or whatever.

I think we could see some of those games move to late August and early September, and they become sort of preseason, pre conference exhibition games where there's some kind of conference affiliation. I could see some of that happening. The the the preseason, the pre conference game, it's not gonna a pre conference game anymore.

That's played now in Dublin. That's basically a bowl game now. From what I understand from friends of mine who've attended the game, it's great.

It's like a bowl game, which okay, I could see more of that happening. But a lot of these second and third tier bowl games, I don't know what's going to happen to those. They'll exist.

As long as TV wants to pay for it, as long as ESPN or Fox Sports or TBS or any of these other big media companies wanna pay for it, it will exist. And somebody will go play in it. Because right now, what's keeping television afloat in that old model, so to speak, is live sports, live events, and live sporting events is is still mother's milk when it comes to TV advertising because you don't wanna fast forward through it.

So with that being said, we're going to go to 24 teams. Okay. It's inevitable.

It's going to happen. It's not going to be the end of the world. And if you can hear me out, you can see why it's mostly a continuation of the same thing with some cute little changes to it.

All college football is doing is finally joining the rest of major sports when it comes to post seasons. Forever and ever and ever, if you're old enough, you remember everybody ripped college football's postseason as nothing more than a collection of bowl games that really didn't assure anybody of great matchups. It assured people of potential great ticket sales because it was rooted from a time when there really was no postseason in college football.

It was a college football poll or a series of polls voted by a bunch of sports writers all over the place. So they... To to consolidate that and to get everybody kind of on the same page took forever.

And it was really flawed. But if you look at who won those championships back and was voted on, it's basically the same teams now with very few exceptions. 1984, BYU had an early season win over the University of Miami.

Didn't play a loaded schedule the rest of the way. Went undefeated, won the national championship. That is the last non big time power school to win a national championship in college football.

BYU... And BYU is pretty big time. I mean, BYU is mostly Notre Dame light, and it won a national title.

So when you start to think about, well, East Carolina could win... No. They're not.

Indiana State? No. They're not.

Even if you extend it out to major college basketball, there are no cute little Cinderellas that win national championships. They're just not. Now they may win a game or two in post seasons, but they're not winning national championships, and they don't in football.

It's in fact that... And the the thing that was so discouraging about football was that at least in basketball, there was a pathway to it. You could see Butler get to the national championship in consecutive years.

Butler. Well, there is no pathway for that in major college football. There never was.

There kind of is now, but not really. Forever and ever and ever, that's what we had. And then in the early nineties, thanks to an SEC commissioner who was in the mode to make some more money, to start the path where we are now, which is major conference consolidation.

And mostly what that is is money consolidation. They don't want to share money. So they created the bowl championship series.

And that way you ensured number one would play number two. Great. Okay.

Well, that's not fair because all these other schools aren't included. Okay. Okay.

So they twist their arm. They don't wanna be sued. And then they start including teams outside of the major traditional power conferences.

Like TCU got in for a couple years, and then Boise State got in, had some very memorable games. University of Utah before it was the University of Utah when Urban Meyer was the head coach, and University of Hawaii when June Jones was the head coach. They would get into these big time bowl games, and sometimes they would do well.

If you remember, Boise State upset Oklahoma in one of the most memorable bowl games ever played. That was the Fiesta Bowl. Hawaii played in the Sugar Bowl against Georgia, got run out of the building.

TCU played Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. It won. Totally changed the trajectory of that university, by the way.

And so sometimes it would happen. And then eventually, to more arm twisting, eventually, the people who ran college football decided, okay. Okay.

Okay. We won't do the balls anymore. We won't do the...

We'll do the balls, but we're gonna have a playoff. And we're gonna call it the college football playoff, and we're gonna have four teams that got in. Four four invitations, which is what it is.

It's not really a playoff. It's an invitational. That's why I call it the invitational.

So it started in 2014. And if you go back and look at the teams that got in, they're all the big power schools. Mostly, they were blowouts.

Now every now and then, you would have a random team from from an outside that got in. University of Cincinnati got in in nineteen or twenty one, I can't remember. It got hammered by Alabama.

And actually they played... That Cincinnati team played Alabama about as well as it could, and it was closer than it could have been. But one of the big complaints about this college football playoff era is that most of the games are double digit deficits.

Most of them aren't very close. And now you've had a handful in there that have been extremely memorable. Ohio State and Alabama played one time in, I believe, the first playoff game, actually.

That was a quality, exciting game. Certainly TCU's game against Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl was incredible. Georgia and Ohio State's game that afternoon a few years ago in 2023 or New Year's twenty two rather was an amazing game.

There have been some other ones, but by and large, they're really lopsided games. And it illustrates one of the bigger problems that exist in college football that don't in the other sports, which is you're talking about taking a limited... All this talent and you're spreading it out over essentially about 70 schools or even 136 schools.

Well, in the NFL, there's only 32 schools. In the NBA, there's 30 there's 30 teams. In the NHL, there's 32 teams.

But you can't really... So when you spread it out like that, and then you get one good team that's really, really good. And usually there's only a couple of teams that really have the chance to win the national championship.

Yeah. There's a top 25 poll, there's 69 teams that exist in the power four model today, but really, you've only had just a couple. And if you look at historically in college football, you usually only got a couple that that can win it.

What they're trying to do is very, very hard is to create the hope that there are more than just a couple. But traditionally in college football, that's been very, very tough. So eventually, college football decision makers decide, okay.

Well, 12 teams, that that's not enough. So now we're gonna go to 24 teams. And the justification is that, well, if you look at the percentage wise of it, it's it's fair.

Okay. And the other part is if you look at historically how major professional sports organizations have conducted their post seasons, they expanded. You'll never see major college...

Pardon me, major sports organizations contract playoff games because that's where the real money is. That's the real money in terms of ticket prices. That's the real money in terms of media rights, revenues, and potential sponsorship deals.

That's why you have more playoff games. So in the NHL right now, there are 32 teams. 16 teams make the playoffs.

If my math is right, that's 50%. Good job. In the NBA, you have 30 teams.

16 teams make the playoffs. Again, if my math is right, that's 53%, and that does not include the teams that make the play in round. That little creation by Adam Silver, which was going to be just a temporary thing, is now very much a permanent fixture, and it creates the hope that maybe your team's going to get in the playoffs.

And, oh yeah, you can sell a couple more home game tickets too. Major League Baseball usually forever and ever had been the most precious of playoff spots to obtain. Now quite liberal with those possibilities.

30 teams in Major League Baseball, 12 teams get in. That is 40%. And then in the NFL, there are 32 teams.

14 teams get in. That's 44%. So now let's look at college football.

You have 136 teams, 136 teams playing FBS football. 136. So you would look at it and say, well, gee whiz.

12... 24 teams out of a 136, that's that's still pretty precious. That's still very exclusive club to be a playoff team out of 136 teams.

Nope. That's that's BS math. Because if you look at what this playoff is or will be, I'm calling it the big SECT...

SEC ten Invitational. That's what it is. The big ten SEC Invitational.

The SEC currently has 16 teams. The big ten, 18. I love that.

The big ten has 18 teams. K? The big 12, 16 teams.

The ACC, 18 teams. And then off on its own island of money, Notre Dame. And because of this twenty fourteen playoff and Notre Dame, Notre Dame is more or less guaranteed a spot in that bracket every year.

Well, that's its own different discussion. One of the frustrations about the playoff is that it's going to devalue the regular season and that teams are going to lose and all these other things. Well, in their quest for more money, the SEC big ten continually added more power football teams in big schools because that's where the money is.

Well, that's great because for different reasons. One, they they needed for those schools to play each other more frequently to guarantee one, the stadiums will be filled. And two, the ratings will be better, and they've gotten it.

Well, the trade off to that scenario is that you're going to lose now. They never factor that into the equation. Look, we're adding all these great teams.

Yeah, you are. Well, they're going to start losing now. Ask the University of Texas.

Right? Ask Alabama for that matter. Ask Michigan.

Ask any of these places. Okay, you're gonna start losing now. You're gonna start losing a couple games.

You're not used to losing two or three games a season, but you're going to. However, the trade is... But the fear is, well, they're gonna lose, and they're not gonna get in the playoff.

Yeah. No, you will. Well, now it's gonna hurt the college regular season.

No, it won't. Nothing will hurt the college regular season. Nothing.

Because we love going to the games. It's fun. It's a party.

It's so easy to gamble on. You can gamble on these games now in 39 states legally, and that number's only gonna go up. Although I'm pretty sure Texas will be the holdout in that scenario.

Nothing has affected our desire to devour major college football and neither will this postseason. But if you look at this 24 teams, that 24 teams getting in is not really affecting all 136. It's really affecting 69.

If my math is right, 24 out of 69, well, that's pretty attractive. So so your tech... And really, we're talking about 34.

We're talking about the SEC and the big ten. Pardon me. 32 rather.

Or pardon me. 30... It is 34.

The SEC and the big ten, that's 34 teams. Most of this bracket is going to be comprised of teams from the SEC and the Big Ten. You'll get two teams from the Big twelve.

You'll get a team or two from the ACC, and there will be Notre Dame. And just to avoid a lawsuit, you will get a team or two from a group of six. And for...

If you're uneducated about what the group of six is, they are six conferences that are not... That are cut below the power four. Group of six currently is comprised of the American Conference, pardon me, they call themselves the American, Conference USA, the Mac Conference, Mid American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sunbelt, and I still can't believe this, the Pac-twelve.

In college sports ambition to make more money, they basically murdered the Pac-twelve. That's why you have the bigger names associated with the Pac-twelve now playing in the big twelve, big ten, and the ACC. Now how all this is gonna look in the future as college sports goes under the knife of the senate and congress and our leadership in Washington with the protect college sports act, which really should be just called quit.

Let us just invent something that'll prevent players from being free agents every year and give us a salary cap because that's really what they wanna do. It's what will this ultimately do to the college football season, regular season playoff? Well, one, nothing's gonna stop it.

Two, it's going to occupy a greater part of December, and hopefully they get it down to early January. They should not be playing these games into deep January. It's just too much.

But they're not going to stop it, and they're going to keep doing it. Because what the market and the fans have shown consistently is that we will continue to go watch it. There will be consequences.

We're already starting to see some of these consequences of the transfer portal NIL era, And the big ones are being felt in the group of six schools, which is the gap between those teams and the power four teams now is 80 miles long. It was already very, very long, but now it's 80 miles long because those schools are... And I'm talking schools like the University of Memphis, University of North Texas, University of New Mexico, Kent State, Ohio, Oregon State, whatever.

They've basically become the minor leagues for the major conference schools. So you might have a team that's really, really good one year in one of those leagues. And then the next season they get gutted because all of those underclassmen want to go up one more level for greater visibility, more money, and a chance to...

A chance at the big time. And speaking of the big time, that's the other part to this that... I went to the Texas Ohio State game back in early September, and I gotta tell you, I don't know how anybody competes with that.

Now I know teams are beating Texas, but I'm talking about the big time college atmosphere. There's a 105,000 people at that game, and there were more outside the stadium just walking around having fun. And I'm like, how does Baylor compete with this?

How does Kansas compete with this? How does Iowa State or Central Florida or Stanford? Duke?

How do these any places really compete with Ohio State, Iowa? I I have no idea. I mean, the gap between those competing schools now is as big as it's ever been.

And one of the problems that exist with this model, unlike the NHL or the NFL, in the NFL, they're business partners, so to speak. In the NHL, the Buffalo Sabres are a business partner with Washington Capitals, Or in the NBA, the Golden State Warriors are a business partner with the Orlando Magic. Well, in major college sports, Notre Dame is not a business partner with the University of Michigan.

They are competing against each other for students, for funding, for wins. They're business partners in a very loose tangential sense of the word. So that's a part of that model that is a challenge that really has no solution.

But as we sit here and kind of knife our way through all this stuff and listen to some of these people who are so passionate about the sport and are spelling, well, it's it's it's too many teams. It's it's it's this. It's this.

Nothing is stopping us from watching it and loving it. Nothing is stopping people from plopping down $50 to park their car just for the rights to hand the people at the ticket window $250 to sit in there and watch a game. Maybe we will one day, but I don't anticipate that a 2014 playoff is going to kill this because it's too much bleeping fun.

And as we've seen with the best comparison I can think of to the NCAA college football model, just look at March Madness. NCAA basketball is nothing like it was twenty years ago. I'm not even sure anybody knows who the players are on the teams anymore.

But when it comes to that bracket, the bracket of March Madness is the star of college basketball. All it does is grow. All it does is make money, and all it does is create revenue for the NCAA to help fund all of these different sports that are played in front of moms and dads and give kids a chance to play that for a little bit longer before their athletic career is ultimately over.

And for that, I support it. The NCAA's basketball tournament is fantastic. And now what the college football playoff is doing is essentially adapting or adopting a bracket NCAA March Madness model for football.

Will it work? Yes. Because absolutely nothing will stop college football.

See you next time. This is a Stolen Water Media production.