CFP Rankings Reaction + Week 10 Prediction Special & FSU Coaching Search

- How do you know that cloud won't become manipulative? - This is a constant worry. - And you can actually catch the model thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm gonna tell the user why. - I'm Walter Isaacson. I'm my new podcast, The Builders. I'm going inside the minds of the people shaping our future. Listen to The Builders starting October 13th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In October 2021, my brother David was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A year later, he convinced me to make a podcast with him, this podcast. - My biggest fear is that I am afraid of being forgotten. - My brother David is the story of the last chapter of my brother's life. It's weird and messy and vulnerable, and I'm gonna share all of it with you. - Okay, so here we go. - Listen to my brother David on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Looking for practical advice to help you grow your career. DM me with Doug Melville is the podcast for you. I'm your host, Doug Melville. Every week I sit down with leaders, founders, creators, and innovators. - There's no external force, more influential in human behavior than culture, full stop. And if you have any want or desire to get people to move, then culture is the biggest cheat code that you're not using. If you are serious about growing professionally and personally, just DM me. Listen to DM me with Doug Melville from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - I mean, they can tell me not to get worked up over playoff rankings all they want. To know I'm gonna get worked up over playoff rankings. I'm gonna get worked up over the AP poll. I don't get why people don't understand. There's value behind that committee telling you what they're thinking at any given time. And they just did that. And Jesse, I gotta be honest, my jaw's on the floor. - jaw's on the floor. It is Tuesday night, November 3rd, the year of our Lord, 2026, don't dare me. I'll do it, don't dare me. Which impact, high a top of very argumentative. Downtown Nashville, Tennessee, you just watched what I watched. Do you get it? I don't, but we will talk about it. The playoff rankings, version 1.0, have dropped in our lap. And then on top of that, we got the Saturday of the century of the year to come. So we got huge prediction night ahead of us. We've got an FSU coaching search update. Could we go four hours? Well, we could. Should we, could one? Yes, should one. I don't know. I know they're watching us in Tampa, Florida. Shawnee, Oklahoma, Windsor, California, Rock Hill, South Carolina, Bradley. Show me the live sub-counter. We're up over five, nine, five, K, which means we're right around the corner. From 600 K, do me a quick favor. Thousands of you are watching. Just subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. That's it, that's all. All right, here we go. College football playoff rankings are out. I'm rarely shot in this world of ours. In these modern times of college football, I'm rarely shot, but I have no idea what to make of what just happened to me, and what just happened to all of us. A lot of times these days, if you know the proper people to listen to, it's not that big a mystery what the playoff rankings are gonna be. And I am telling you, even those people are utterly stunned by what just happened. So there are gonna be a lot of folks out there who try and sound intellectually superior to the room, saying, oh, don't pay attention to this. Oh, this doesn't matter. Buddy, it matters 'cause this is the first time we've heard from this particular committee. So I can promise you it matters. Now, you could do the whole caveat every single statement you make with, but there's a lot of football left. I think, Jesse, are we all aware that there's a lot of football left? Yeah, like everyone's gonna play a bunch of games in November, we all get that. That's like in politics when someone says, no, I don't agree with everything he says. I don't agree with everything she does. Everybody gets that, just say what you think. So I'm just gonna say what I think tonight. We got one thing that I wondered about first and foremost, and that is a definitive statement on Notre Dame. The absolute lowest that I thought Notre Dame would be in these rankings was nine. Now, in the AP, they're top five, which, as we all know, is pretty insane right now. And so we had a really good idea of the playoff rankings. We're going to have Notre Dame lower than the AP, but buddy, they just rolled off the assembly line at number 11. So there's no more guesswork. You remember when we used to wonder in the late 90s, are the Undertaker and Cain and Cahoots? And then they just walked down the ramp together, and J.R. said, there's no more guessing. They're in Cahoots. Well, there's no more guessing. This Saturday, Notre Dame's got to beat Miami, or Notre Dame's not going to the playoff. I feel pretty confident in saying that. So they very clearly separated team and resume there. If you listen to Hunter Yurichek, talk about how much respect they have for Notre Dame, but then he talked about who they haven't played and who they have played and all that. There's a differential between the team and the resume, which should happen in rankings. I had a big argument with the head coach today, 'cause that head coach's opinion is just, well, whoever would be favored on the neutral field is how we should rank the teams. That's not true. That's not it. If that were the case, Notre Dame would have to lose like three more games to drop out of the top 12. You know how many games Texas would have to lose to drop out of the top 12 of power ratings? You can't make this like power ratings. You gotta make it merit-based. And I said going in the last weekend, Jesse, I thought we should have gotten more credit for it personally. I said, Notre Dame's game against Navy was the third most important Notre Dame game last Saturday, 'cause that Wisconsin game was huge, and that SMU game against Syracuse was huge, and both of those data points, one in the past already, and Wisconsin, and one in the future, and SMU got wiped off of Notre Dame's resume as being quality wins or potential quality wins. So this is it. They still control their fate. You beat Miami this Saturday. We're gonna be in the building for that. It's gonna be incredible. We just didn't know it was gonna be an elimination game, but it's gonna be pretty incredible. What does that say at number five? Alabama's number five. That's what we're gonna do. Is the committee just Nick Saban, Jesse? Do you think it's just, is that part of his deal with the SPN is I want game day? I wanna get paid. I wanna make my documentary, and I wanna be the committee. You wanna be on the committee? That's not what I said. I said I wanna be the committee. BAM is number five. Well, I don't quite know what to say. I thought it'd be like eight or ninth. I don't really know what to say. They do have, if you dive into it more, you know, if you put the joking aside for a second and you try to make sense of this, you're probably not gonna make sense of it. Okay, Alabama's too high. However, they do have a win against Kentucky. And like, here's what I think's happening, Jesse. I don't think people have really come around to the idea in their minds that Kentucky's the number six team in the country. So if you have a win on the road against Kentucky, just replace the Kentucky logo with like Texas or something in a normal year, that would make sense. If you had gone on the road and beaten Texas by like three scores or whatever, that would be impactful, like that would last in everyone's mind. I don't think the Kentucky win for Alabama's resonating, the way it would if it was another logo, that win against South Carolina. These are blowout wins for Alabama that they having its top 20 competition. The one that I wondered about, that they did explain to the committee's credit, they did explain on tonight's show, is they said that Alabama game right there at Mississippi State that was a blowout win, they counted it differently. And I'm gonna be honest with you, they did exactly what I've always asked them to do. 'Cause every single year, we have these games featuring teams that are pretty highly ranked and then someone beat some, then inevitably some team loses a high profile player and they're a shell of what they were and they fumble down the stretch like Mississippi State's doing right now. And you never get credit for beating the healthy version of that team because the unhealthy version of that team goes on to be unranked. Missouri played Camarriotaylor Mississippi State. Missouri oughta be getting a little more credit for that. Bama smoked Camarriotaylor Mississippi State and if that committee's looking at that game and saying we're treating that like it's a top 15, top 20 caliber win, I'm gonna be real with you. I don't have a problem with that. I still think it puts Alabama too high but if you're telling me you're counting that that way, I don't have a problem with it. Here's my only follow up question. 'Cause they haven't really done that in the past as much as I would like them to. Are you going to apply that logic across the board? Are you gonna do that across the board? Like if I played Ohio State, pre-July and say an injury, am I gonna get a little more credit than folks who play on post-July and say an injury? And there are a lot of injuries up and down the board here and there will be more where teams are gonna lose players. They're gonna drop off. Am I gonna get credit if I played the healthier version of them? I've always called for that. It's fallen on deaf ears. It seems like maybe conditionally, that's happening for Alabama. Now with Missouri, Missouri's down at 18. Missouri's got a, a, a, ridiculous stretch coming up. I'll talk about it more in a second, but I want to see if that gets mentioned with Missouri down the road. Okay. This Ohio State Indiana split, I have no idea. Actually, I wrote down the wrong number here. Indiana's even higher than I wrote down. Ohio State at 12 is a joke, man. I heard Michael Roy on the broadcast tonight. He pretty much summarized it. Like you keep telling folks, you're going to reward them for playing tougher competition. And at every turn, you take a crowbar to the knees of anyone who dares play quality competition, not only that, but you reward people who duck competition. I've got immense respect for Indiana as a program. I don't have any respect for the way they schedule, but it's not their fault. They're ranked number four. It's not even their fault that they looked at the landscape and strategically have chosen to duck competition. They're only acting in a reaction to how rankings happen in this sport right now. That's why I, I'm not going to hate on Indiana. Indiana is doing exactly what the committee has shown them, not told them, shown them you should do. If you want to get ranked highly, and by the way, this is why a lot of people, myself included, have laughed at the prospect of expanding to 24, opening up this, this waterfall, this gateway of aggressive scheduling. Why? If the protocols are going to remain the same, would anyone voluntarily schedule harder than they absolutely have to? Ohio State has the same record as Indiana. Ohio State has played a tougher schedule. Oh, by the way, Ohio State went into Indiana's building and beat them, and I'm looking at Ohio State 12 and Indiana 4. My bad, my bad. So they just incur their second loss, my bad. However, I'm looking at the gap there, and I'm asking myself, what did Ohio State do that Indiana didn't? They went down to Austin early in the year and got up big and gave up a lead. They lost a game that they didn't need to schedule. Like everybody understands in the room had Ohio State just schedule Mercer, whoever you want to, wins a win. After all, they would be sitting here with one loss, and they'd have the identical record and they'd have the head to head win, and they're sitting down there at 12. So this is one of those things where the committee always knows if they want a bumper team like that, they could pull a card out of their backpack and you know what that card says, Jesse, it says, injury. You don't get to know how much Julian saying is worth to the committee. This is the beauty of it. Just arbitrary. You just pull it out of thin air. This is the same thing back in 2023 with Jordan Travis. You don't get to know how much he's worth to the committee. They just get to arbitrarily use it. It's the same deal here, and it'll be that way for the rest of the season because we don't think Julian say and is going to be back anytime soon. Also, it would be another thing if you looked at Indiana's resume and Indiana had dominated. They haven't. They've played, Jesse, we could list the teams they haven't played to within one possession. They got taken to overtime by Michigan, overtime most recently by Minnesota. They got taken to the wire by Northwestern and by the way, credit to Indiana for winning the games. This isn't me saying they shouldn't be top 10. It's me saying, what in the world are they doing it for? It's almost like there's this detachment because if you look elsewhere in these rankings, there is no pro big 10 bias right now. The big 10 as a conference has really, really under delivered just as a whole product this year and it's reflected here. Ohio State's 12. I was down at 19 USC coming off a win against Ohio State is still only 20th and you compare that to two lost teams in the SEC. Bama's up at five. Texas is at seven. So there is no pro big 10 bias built in here at all. In fact, it's very obvious that committee doesn't think much of the big 10 as a whole except what in the world's Indiana doing. It's like there's a total detachment. It's like Indiana's Notre Dame two point. No, they're independent. They're not being treated as having that big 10 sticker on their home and the only thing like Jesse mentioned a little while ago and I happen to agree is is it possible? Those folks are just sitting around that room saying that's the defending national champ. I wouldn't put it past them because I've heard all kind of stupid stuff from that committee in the past. Now, this is a new committee. I'm not calling the people on the committee stupid. I'm calling some of the bias and some of the reasoning in the past. I didn't even mean to say bias. I'm the reasoning in the past. I thought was stupid. It's possible they're just going as the defending national champ to beat the man Jesse. You know what you got to do. Yeah. So I was very surprised by that. A lot of people watching by the way. Remember subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. It's just college football all year. It's free. Just click subscribe. Doesn't cost a thing. We hit up fan dual as soon as these numbers came out because I mean, we could theoretically project a bracket here. We know what the first round matchups would be if this bracket were to hold. And I don't know if you've heard Jesse, but there's a lot of football left. So this probably won't be the bracket. But to give you an idea of what these numbers would be. I mean, look, I'm not going to go on the whole G6 playoff thing again, but Boise would be a three touchdown underdog at Alabama. And then in the other games, Brigham Young going to UCLA UCLA would be a short one and a half point favorite. Notre Dame would be a seven and a half point favorite at Kentucky. Ole Miss at Texas literally just saw it. Texas would be minus four and a half. So back to the SEC for a second since someone is literally chanting SEC in the live chat. I think it's pretty clear Jesse. The door is open for maybe more than one three loss SEC team. It's been pretty obvious for a while. We're headed towards this scenario where they're going to be several three loss SEC teams sitting there at the end of the day. I think maybe people had labeled it a doomsday scenario. Oh, no, these SEC teams are going to be boxed out. They're going to cannibalize themselves. Well, they may cannibalize themselves, but I don't know that they're going to be boxed out. Alabama is obviously alive as a three loss team. I mean, I'm going into this weekend. We're going to predict the game later in the show. I'm going into this weekend thinking, all right, out of these two teams, Bama LSU. I feel like LSU is definitively in if they have one more loss. I don't think Alabama is in if they have one more loss. And then these these rankings get spit out at me. And I mean, how far is Alabama going to fall if they lose to LSU and then don't lose again. So Bama's clearly in play. Kentucky's in play. Kentucky's only a one loss team right now, but they they've got at Tennessee this weekend. Let's say they were to lose that one. And they go to A&M. They've still got at Missouri left, Jesse. So there's still some highly ranked teams. That's not even to mention the other chaos that could happen around them. So you can't view this in a vacuum like, Oh, Kentucky loses two more games. They drop independent of anyone else. No, other teams are going to lose too. So keep that in mind. Tennessee is 13 right now. Tennessee plays number six this weekend. Then they go to A&M. Then they play number 14. Remember Tennessee is going to already have a win over Alabama. I don't know if the committee is aware of that. But Tennessee beat Alabama. Also, if LSU were to beat Bama this weekend, LSU vaults up into the top 10. And so Tennessee would have potentially two games left. As we sit here right now with teams ranked inside the top 10. Missouri at 18. That's the one I'm interested in because I think Missouri's got a very, very, very good shot as a three-loss team. But it's different for them because they're down at 18 with two losses already. So you may be thinking, no, man, a third loss knocks them out. They play number seven, number two, and number six. So if they go on, it let's say they beat Texas this weekend. Go on the road and lose to Georgia. And then cap it off with a win against Kentucky. That's a three-loss Missouri that has finished pretty hot. They absolutely are in that picture. And by the way, this is where I say, as long as you apply the protocol across the board, I'm okay with it. Alabama's getting credit for beating Mississippi State with Camarillo Taylor. One of Missouri's losses is on the road close against Camarillo Taylor and Mississippi State. So keep that in mind on Selection Sunday when they're tossing all that stuff around. Though the several wrenches that could still get thrown in this because of course we have a lot of football left to play, as you know, or should know by now. The big 12 could really, really mess all this up. So the big 12 scenario right now that I think the conference is pulling for even though conferences would never officially pull for anything. I think they won't bring him young to beat Utah this Saturday. And then neither one of them to lose another game and they go on and they play in the conference title game. And then Utah gets them in the conference title game. So Utah is a one-loss big 12 champ. Brigham Young is an 11-1 big 12 championship game participant that enters that game theoretically well inside the top 10. So if they lose, they don't fall all the way out. And Texas Tech just doesn't lose another game, but doesn't play for the conference title game. So you got 12-in-1 conference champ you talk, 11-in-2 conference runner-up Brigham Young, and 11-in-1 Texas Tech. There's a good shot. All three of those teams are top 12 caliber. And the other thing to keep in mind is Wake Forest is at 16 right now. So what's going to happen here is they may not climb a whole heck of a lot with the remainder of their schedule, but they're probably going to the ACC championship game. And remember, it's not in a vacuum. You don't just look at Wake at 16. You look at all those teams listed ahead of them and understand a ton of losses still have to be scattered around this board. So some teams are going to fall. So Wake Forest needs to do no more than just sit there and keep winning, make it to Charlotte, and there's a chance. Those, those, what are they called, penultimate rankings, the second to last rankings? What if they go into that week sitting at number 10 and they go play Miami close? If you enter that week nine or 10 or something like that and you lose to number one, let's say, by a touchdown, it's almost a mirror image actually of where Brigham Young was last year because the only hurdle they couldn't get over was Texas Tech. And they played them twice and lost to him twice. That team fell out, but see, Texas Tech didn't have the cachet that maybe Miami does as a number one, especially if they solidify it with a win over Notre Dame. So I am not losing my mind over this, but I am also not of the opinion that none of it matters. I know there are theories out there that no rankings matter except for the last ones. Well, technically that's true, because those are the only ones that decide to play off. But if you don't, if you don't plan on learning a lot from these people telling you what they're thinking week over week, I don't know what to tell you. "Hey, Hunter, you're a check. I had a huge problem last year with how terrible the rankings were messaged. It's one night so far. I thought he did a pretty good job." So credit where it's due. Maybe a little more underliding, okay? It looked a little scary, but that's just, that's a production issue. I thought Hunter, you're a check. Did a pretty good job. I really appreciated them. I don't know if Reese asked them or not. I don't think Reese asked him. I think he voluntarily said, "Hey, that Mississippi state data point for Alabama, we factor that in." If that's the way you're thinking, okay, thank you for telling me how you're thinking. Instead of me just having to sit here and watch it say goodbye and then go, "I have so many unanswered questions. Make no mistake. I've got unanswered questions." That's what God invented week 10 for. Oh my goodness. Okay. We are, we're like a 20th of the way through the show. I mean, we got a long way to go. We're jam packed tonight. I appreciate you guys watching. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. You notice Jesse in the live chat. Anytime someone talks about Hunter , you're a check. It's always in all caps. A lot of emotion on this election day. It feels like Hunter, you're a check is eliciting the emotion of like a candidate in a swing state. That's what the playoffs do to people. I don't know if they're magical, but that's what the playoffs do to people. Miami at Notre Dame is going to be utterly insane this Saturday. We will be on the sidelines for this game. This game is presented by Jimmy John's Barbecue brisket sub right now, Jesse. Jimmy johns.com, the Jimmy John's app. Oh man, we got tentatively right now a forecast at kickoff of 44 degrees. But look, I don't think that this is a deterrent for Miami. Remember, they played at Virginia Tech and at pit to end the year last year. And Mario said, temperatures not real. Temperature is not real. It's there was some paraphrased quote, I can't even remember, but Notre Dame. Clearly, I'd written down in my notes before the playoffs rankings came out. Is this their last shot or not? Yes, it's their last shot. I don't know what kind of chaos would have to happen if Notre Dame loses this game for them to still make the playoffs. Three of the top four players in the Heisman trophy race are in this game that anything and everything you could possibly want. Someone's season is on the line. The Heisman trophy may be on the line. They don't tread on Saturday tour is there. It's going to be cold. All right. So let me tell you why I feel good about Notre Dame because I'm kind of changing the way that I look at some of these games this week. So if I'm Notre Dame, the reason I would feel good about this is I got CJ car. And I don't think we've seen his best yet. I've commented on this several times throughout the past couple of weeks. I thought Dan Orlovsky said it really well recently when he said, every time I watch CJ car, it feels like he's capable of so much more than they're asking him to do. And I agree. And Miami, 121st ranked past defense in the country. They just kind of are who they are back there. I think they got a kind of bubble gum and paper, the paperclip, their way to to wins on the back end or maybe make it a non factor cause they can rush the passer, but they are very, very goodable back there. Billy Edwards had a great day against them. I'll be it in a loss. And that's kind of what Miami's hope has to be. There is no flawless team out there. This is our flaw. We got to be good enough else where to cover it up. The CJ car, 18 to one touchdown to I and T right now. He's only taken two sacks. So I know I can trust him. If I'm a Notre Dame fan, I know that we don't have premier like future first round NFL type talent receiver, but we should be plenty good enough there. I need the run game to give me something. And if it gives me something, then I trust that guy. And if we go down, we need to go down swinging. However, there's a flip side of that coin. And if I'm Miami, one of the things I like is I think I can shut them down on the ground. I'm not saying like Wisconsin versus USC style, negative rushing yards, but I think I can really limit them on the ground. I got the number one run defense in the country. Brigham Young held them under four yards per carry. All to respect to them. I got a better run defense than Brigham Young and Walton and James. They've kind of overtaken and I smith like I had a lot of confidence in Smith in the preseason. But what was the word you used, Jesse? You surped. Go ahead. And these Williams to written right there. Williams. I have a Smith right beneath him. I think if I can make that run game crumble, their offense gets really disjointed. And CJ Carr pregame paper, he's three and three in games where he throws the ball 30 plus times. So I kind of as much as much as the Notre Dame side of me wants to see him turn it loose. The Miami side says, go ahead and turn it loose. Don't work out that well for you. When you do also CJ Carr, Oh, and three and one possession games. So there's still a level of proof that he needs to do. The other thing I like about Notre Dame is they got Malachi Tony. I do have a Leonard Moore. You know, those guys are going to see each other on Sundays for a long time. I think I got the best corner in the country. I mean, I'm not saying Mekai lemon is Malachi Tony, but Mekai lemon's pretty good wide receiver last year. And Moore held him to two catches, 23 yards on three targets. So I trust this guy against premier competition. And I'll trust my defensive personnel to get after their offensive tackles a little bit. I just, I will not let them lean on the run game. And then on the Miami side, they flat out think they can lean on that run game. If you watch Miami last year, this is about the time they started to ramp it up a little bit. And what they did, especially in these kind of games, especially in the playoffs, is they said it doesn't even matter how we've played to this point. Okay. There's a way you play Miami football. And we've got the kind of personnel. We've recruited the kind of personnel where we should be able to own the line of scrimmage. And I don't think this offensive line is peaked. And we are a big game program. Okay. And these are the kinds of games where, especially third and fourth quarter, we play to take the game over in the fourth quarter. And the other thing in terms of the past game, if I'm Miami, I don't think anyone can shut down Malachi Tony. But if he's limited here, does it not feel like there's just a breakout Cooper Barcai game somewhere in the deck of cards? Does it, does it not, would it not be a less than shocking outcome that Tony has a good night Saturday, but it comes at the expense of maybe Cooper Barcai having a great night. So Miami wants this game. Notre Dame unequivocally needs this game. Let's take a look at what the model thinks because right now the fan dual number is Notre Dame minus five and a half. Model does not agree. A fan dual is a little bit higher on Notre Dame than the model is and the model is not low on Notre Dame. Our model's only got Notre Dame minus two and a half. I hate to do this in a big game. But I am actually riding right with the model. I will slightly lean Notre Dame to win the game. If we're betting this against the spread, I'm just taking Miami plus five and a half. I will not be wagering on this game, but we're going to be at the game. And I cannot wait to my favorite place to go. I watch documentaries about this match up as a child growing up. And so to be able to see it in person is awesome. We'll be there Saturday. We'll also be there Friday. Bussing and paid on campus Friday from two to three Eastern on ESPN. You guys are free to come. Got a live show in South Bend Friday night. Oh my goodness. We had this encircled all year. So as I said, the don't tread on Saturday tours headed up there. The shirts for both color themes are available at paidstatematerial.com. First time we've You've done that all you've done. year due to overwhelming demand from South Florida sources. We have put a Miami themed and a Notre Dame theme shirt in the Pate State store. The live show for Friday night is sold out. I am fighting as hard as I can for us to be able to put more tickets on sale for that show. It's sold out very quick. I warned you the other night. It was going to sell out very quick. I will let you know, just kind of stay tuned on social at Josh Pate CFB. I'll give you a little heads up if we're going to put more tickets on sale. I don't know if we can or not. We were able to do it with our Knoxville show. We'll see if we're able to do it with our South Bend show. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Derio Amide, Alex Carp, Pepe Lee, Palmer Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they feel, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliché thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us. But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, who's imagination do we want to live in? This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. Listen to The Builders on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast, or ever get your podcasts. The first thing I hate about eulogies is they never actually tell the Turks. I'm Dave and I've been it for my life. A year later, he convinced me to make a podcast with him. This podcast. Okay, so here we go. We didn't know what we were doing, so we just started recording. We discussed cancer since the radiation. I lost about 10 more pounds. We fought. Yeah, this is me off. And we talked openly about the fact that David was going to die. I am afraid of being forgotten. My brother David is the story of the last chapter of my brother's life. It's weird and messy and vulnerable and I'm gonna share all of it with you. The constant back and forth battle about how do I how do I not just be alive, but I should live. Listen to my brother David on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know what made them famous? Do you know who they still want to become? I am Diana Flores and this is my podcast Born to Become. Each week, legends in sports, culture and business reveal their lives beyond the spotlight. We've sort of broken the mold. Like we're not trying to be quiet. Whatever you said, that's it. Out there. What has success cost them? Who helped them keep going? I share my experiences too. We learn from each other. I'm gonna give you like the real deal. Whoa. It was like one of the darkest times. Wow, I didn't know all of that. From handling pressure to bouncing back from rejection, you can take their lessons into your life and career. After all, even your heroes are still continuing to grow, presented by Geico. I'm still improving. I'm so growing, but I believe in myself. I love that. Listen to Born to Become with Diana Flores on the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And for more, follow Diana Flores 33 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. All right, we got to move because we got a lot of games to get to. Alabama at LSU, presented by FanDuel, who by the way, has LSU as a five and a half point favorite right now in Baton Rouge. This game is not a night game. It is a 230 central time kickoff. Kaelin DeBore, after the by-week, eight know. Lane Kiffin after a by-week, nine and six, which begs the question, is Lane Kiffin anti-rest? Does Lane Kiffin not like, he put his feet up every now and then, Kaelin DeBore does, there are major CFP implications on this game, obviously. I don't know if it's still cool to talk about SEC Championship implications, but those are on this game too. So, if I'm LSU, several reasons to feel good about this. One of them is, I was getting hot right before the by, and I was getting healthy right before the by, and I'm pretty sure I got more healthy during the by. It feels like I found my offense. It's not the craziest concept in the world that when you have a big influx of portal guys, not to mention it's a first year staff, maybe it's not, you know, clicking on all cylinders right out of the gate, but you had to figure, at some point, LSU, a Lane Kiffin, Charlie Wise Jr. offense, it was going to find its footing. It feels like that's happening. The only reason I say it feels like it's happening is because I don't want to go totally overboard in buying into Mississippi State and Auburn being the barometer for whether I'm turning into an elite team. Bama is, Texas is, Tennessee is, and they're about to go through all three of those in rapid succession. Jackson Harris has been an explosive threat at receiver. I got trade as green back. I think behind Harris, that wide receiver room has filled in pretty nicely, Dylan Jones, they can run the ball pretty good, but him out of the backfield in the past game is a weapon too, and that Alabama secondary. We talked about them being the strength of the team in the preseason. They are not the strength of that team. They have not been the strength of that team. I think technically they've got the personnel to be that, especially if they get Xavier and Brown back in this game, whatever though, they haven't been. They've just fallen short. It happens. 80th past defense. They are 70th in explosive plays allowed. So it's there for LSU. It may be there for Alabama too though. So what I really like from the Alabama standpoint looking at this is I'm finally getting healthy. We saw Bama early in the year and they looked really good, but there was an argument at that point coming off the Mississippi State game. If you said, man, I think Bama's the best team in the country. No one would have pushed back all that hard on you. That seems like an eternity ago because then the injury started to mount and it looks like in this game. You may get Delgati back at center, make it Ryan Coleman Williams back at wide receiver, Terrence Green, defensive tackle back, Xavier and Brown at corner. It's early in the week as I'm talking to you right now. Check the injury reports, but the early signs have been pretty encouraging on all of them being back and it's very obvious they have been building towards this being the time. Where they got to have those guys back. What I'm trying to what I'm trying to keep in mind as I felt really much like I was picking LSU in this game Sunday is I'm trying to keep in mind if Bama's getting those guys back. There is a version of this team. We've already seen it before this year that's extremely explosive if they've got those guys back. There's an version of this team that can really get after you if they've got their full allotment of defensive front guys. There is a version of this team that is a lot more multifaceted offensively than they looked at Tennessee when they couldn't get out of their own way because they couldn't operate up front properly. So that's there. Does it show up? No quarterback has presented the kind of conflict for LSU that Keelan Russell will. Trinidad Shameless is the best quarterback in the country, but when I say specific threat I mean broken plays running about 40 yards down field. That's not what Trinidad Shameless does. He'll extend plays with his legs, but he's still making the play through the air. Keelan Russell just has track speed. So who does take off and run? So if Alabama pops a couple of Merle a couple of explosive plays that is an excellent sign for them. Here's the problem. This is really insane. They haven't done it all year. They have not scored a single opening drive touchdown all year. I think they've only had one scoring drive period and it was a field goal. So who knows? Like some team out there is going to really ramp it up in November. It could be either one of these frankly. If it's going to be Alabama you'll probably know early because the signs are there because they're hitting explosives. Instead of you sitting there watching time take down at the end of the first quarter and they got 26 total yards and a couple of three inouts. What I like for LSU also. My pressure if I'm LSU I think can lock up Keelan Russell because Tennessee is dead and I can get after you just as good and I got just as good a home field advantage as Tennessee does and bam is 120th and sacks allowed and I'm number two enforcing them. So that may be a full stop stat actually. Like if LSU is getting after the passer like that if those teams play to their respective profiles ball game LSU wins this by double digits. If just that happens LSU wins this handily. Bama hadn't run the ball against better teams and if if I can affect them early they will have no rhythm especially with home field at my back. We all saw the Tennessee game. I'm just trying to recreate that but with a better quarterback on my side to further take advantage of of it. Key point for Alabama. Here's your question. here, they are excellent at forcing turnovers. They are excellent at scoring defensively. They got five defensive touchdowns this year. LSU is 73rd in giveaways. The other positive for Alabama now. Death Valley does not affect them. They are six and one in their last seven. I know that'll be put in a sound bite and whatnot. I'm just saying historically, even with the bore there. Last time they went down there, it was like a blowouts. Jalen Milrose career day. So what is the model thing? It's Fandall right now. LSU opened it three and a half. They've moved up to five and a half. Still not high enough, Jesse. Models got LSU minus six. Look, I will fully acknowledge there's a version of this BAM a team that can still be the best in the country. I cannot shake that image of them at Neal and Stadium out of my head. So I'm not guessing which three or four cards may be in the deck. I'm trying to guess percentage wise what I'm going to draw out of this thing. And I think there is a pretty good shot. I draw an LSU win out of this thing. So I'm just going to follow the model. I'm going to go LSU to win. I'm going to go LSU to cover. That may drop BAM as low as seven or eight in the playoff rankings with the third loss. But give me LSU to win and cover in that one. Our friends at Courtyard who we have partnered with, we've had a lot of fun there. It's been an educational experience for me. Big time. The other day, I mean, we're coming back from Wake Forest, which, what did I rip open? Who was that? It was Matthew Golden. Yeah. And lo and behold, we're trying to give it away to an Oklahoma fan. It's crazy there wasn't a market for that. So first, let me tell you what Courtyard is. They let collectors open packs and you can own them and trade physical collectibles. They're stored in Courtyard's vault and you can vault graded cards. You can trade them digitally if you want to. You can redeem the exact physical item and it just gets shipped straight to your door. It's really fun because all your finger has to do is go boom. And that pack rips open. I can't, I ripped open a sunny jerk and send the other day. It's great. These even older than Matthew Golden. It was great. So go to Courtyard.io. Now download the app is what you need to do. And Pokemon, sports cards, comics, coins, watches, sneakers, all kinds of different markets on there. We've been having a lot of fun with it. We'll be doing and have been doing a lot of giveaways with it. You'll see that on these socials a lot. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Elon Musk, Derio Amade, Alex Car, Feifei Leap, Almar Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they feel, and where they think this is all headed. Listen to The Builders, on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast, or ever get your podcasts. First thing I hate about Ulysses is they never actually tell the Turks. I'm Dave, and I've been a **** for my life. This podcast. Okay, so here we go. We discussed cancer. Since the radiation I lost about 10 more pounds. We fought. Yes, this is me off. It's weird and messy and vulnerable. And I'm going to share all of it with you. The constant back and forth battle about how do I, how do I not just be alive, but actually live? I am Diana Flores, and this is my podcast, Born to Become. We've sort of broken the mold, like we're not trying to be quiet. Whatever you said, it's out there. I'm going to give you like the real deal. Whoa. I'm still improving, I'm so growing, but I believe in myself. I love that. Listen to Born to Become with Diana Flores on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jesse, what time do you eat breakfast on Saturdays? Like on a game day? What's your routine? Like what time would you eat breakfast? You don't go to the gym, Jesse. So just breakfast on TV. Okay. So the Holy War is this Saturday. And some of you will probably be eating breakfast as this game kicks off. It is presented by factor. By the way, factor several quality breakfast options on the menu. So I would highly suggest checking them out. This is a 10 a.m. mountain time kickoff. I don't even know what total game it is. It's either the 104th playing of this rivalry or the 98th playing of this rivalry. Because in in quintessential American rivalry fashion, they don't even agree on how many times they've played. I think every rivalry game should be like that. It's the first every time though they've met us top 10 teams. And Utah is carrying a 14 game win streak into this thing right now. Utah has been rolling. Brigham Young is reeling. Jesse, do you think we're getting hoodwinked here? Do you think that Brigham Young could just rise up again? Because Utah favor by four and a half, I think Fandall Mike's trying to get me to nudge on over to the U. Let's see. All right. There's a lot to like about Utah. Obviously, if you've watched them lately, I have, they've dunked on me. I thought maybe they were a little bit vulnerable against Cincinnati. They victimized Cincinnati. They are 11th and points per game. They're a top 10 run unit, Devon Damper, 16 straight games, two plus touchdowns. Everything you need to have proven about Utah. I think they've proven a way, Sean Parker, by the way, 6.7 yards per carry. Brigham Young good run defense, not top end elite, good run defense. But if I'm Utah, I can tag explosives onto that run game. I got a high level ground game, but it's not just fully ground and pound. I can hit you with explosives. I've got paper, popper, six different players with receptions of 35 plus yards on this team. So I can spread it around a little bit too. Now, as far as Brigham Young, the reason I may like them is they have already shown us who they are in big game moments. And that's something that gets in you. That is your DNA. Don't think for a second. They beat Notre Dame and then said, "How did we do that? I got no clue." Oh well, back to being a little old, Brigham Young, that they never were to begin with. So, bear bot and Meyer played his best game against Notre Dame. Why should I not expect a repeat, not maybe a copy and paste from the stat sheet? But why would I not expect that kind of over the cliff effort from him this Saturday? And Utah, they've allowed chunk plays now, especially through the air. Not consistently, but there have been some they've given up through the air. Also, I'm going to whisper this because we don't know yet, but I may get L.J. Martin back, Jesse. I may get my best player back, who's amongst us knows. I don't know. That'd be a big deal, though. Very big deal. To answer the guy in the live chat, no, I have not talked Ole Miss Georgie yet. Maybe we're pre-recorded and I just assumed someone was going to ask that. Who knows? Anyway, one thing I wonder, and this goes back to what I said five minutes ago. Are we seeing sort of a disjointed arc kind of game? Like every year, there'll be teams that peak early, there'll be teams that peak late. Sometimes they'll play each other, and the outcome is exactly as you would expect. Did Brigham Young peak too early? Is Utah peaking right now? And if so, do both of those trends just continue? Because see, the thing about this game, rivalry or not, the thing about this sport is it doesn't fit nice and neat into compartments. Every single week, there's varying degrees of craziness because someone does not do what they were supposed to do. This right here, in other words, the thing that says Utah minus four and a half. This is not what games are played on. If it was, Brigham Young wouldn't have beat Notre Dame, you know? So I say that, but I also say, I'm not ignoring that Brigham Young's looked a little vulnerable. I mean, they lost to UCF. They got pushed by Arizona State last week, Jesse. That was a very close game. Mitch celebrates the close loss. Moral victory Mitch in there. That's awesome. That's wonderful. So on one hand, Utah makes too much sense. On the other hand, Utah may be my Indiana, where I keep trying to guess when their downfall is. And it just never happens. And that terrifies me because I ended up putting a clown nose on last year after Indiana won a national title. And I cannot say never. You never say never. I don't think a big 12 team could win the national title, but you know what? Jesse, I never thought Indiana could either. Let's take a look at what the model thinks. Utah minus four and a half at Fandall. Utah minus four and a half on the model. Utah minus four and a half is going to be my pick. I said after they did what they did to me and Cincinnati. They did it to both of us. That if I'm going to be wrong with them the rest of the way, I'm going to be wrong by going down with them instead of them taking me down. How do you say I'm looking at the live chat? How do you say Utah's a fraud? At what point do we open our eyes and watch the games? They're a fraud. Every time someone says that, they're saying it like Utah is existing as a fraud in this world of elite giants around them. Who? They're a fraud compared to who? List them. Miami. Team got taken over time against Florida State. Notre Dame team that will got beat by Brigham Young who you'll play started. Georgia fell to Auburn, like just start listing the teams that aren't fraudulent by that logic. Utah's eight, no. What they've done is they've won every game they've played so far and they're playing their best ball right now. You know what someone's going to say? Well, they haven't played anybody. You know, every team they play is ranked out of the top 100. So anyway, I don't know. I'm here for you, Utah. I showed up. Here I am. I'm late. It's week 10. But I'm here. Let's, let's roll on. Oh, I forgot we had the JP poll. JP polls out for week 10. This is not a ranking. This is not how I would vote if I were a playoff committee member. This is not how I would vote as an AP poll member. No, this is the model spitting out neutral field favorability, which I would argue is more important now than ever is we're trying to figure out strength of schedule. So as you know, one of the great traditions on this show is anytime there's a power rating or a ranking, someone has to come with Notre Dame rage. And we have Notre Dame rage tonight. The power rating, the JP poll has Notre Dame at number four. And it's right. Okay, it's just right. I don't know what else to tell you. In fact, what if I told you Vegas is even higher on Notre Dame than the JP poll is? I'll give you evidence of that down the road. So we had one question from Jack's not really asking a question. He's just yelling into the void. We happen to hear it. He said, why is Notre Dame number four? Who exactly have they beaten? They played one ranked team and they lost. If they beat Miami, they deserve to be in the top three. If they lose, they don't deserve to be in the playoffs. Think about it. Without Notre Dame's name, they wouldn't be the top 20 right now. Can we just go to the next question? I can't. I can't do it. Bradley put it back up for a second. I'll do it. I don't know how many more weeks I can explain this. Jack, it doesn't matter who they've beaten. It doesn't matter how many ranked teams they've played. A ranked win is not even a thing in power ratings. Notre Dame's name is not a thing in power ratings. What would you do if I told you? This model doesn't even know where South Bend Indiana is. It doesn't know what a leprechaun or what fighting Irish R/ is. It just knows a set of numbers. That's all it knows Notre Dame has. We are trying to figure out who would be favorite on a neutral field and that's why Notre Dame is where they are. There's no merit. You keep saying what they need to do to be top five. What they need to do is wake up tomorrow morning as they are. That's what they have to do to be top five. Even worse news, if they lose to Miami, they're not falling that far because Miami is ranked or power rated really high to. Next up, there were hateful submissions in the inbox. Wayshawn Parker, I don't think it's the Utah running back but I don't know because this one's got a little devil emoji in his name and I don't think that's how the guy at Utah spells his name. Wayshawn hit us and said, "I was told by some dumb hillbilly from South Carolina that Texas would be 10 plus point favorites on a neutral field to Utah." I'm glad he didn't drop a name because then we would have had to edit it out. So you were told by some dumb hillbilly from South Carolina, Texas would be a double digit favorite over Utah. Well, as you know, we have Fandallon Speeddown and they did give me the number for Texas versus Utah on a neutral field. I could not disagree with what they said to me any stronger than I do. And even then, Texas is still not a double digit favorite against Utah. According to Fandall and Fandallalon, Texas would be a seven and a half point favorite against Utah on a neutral field. The model hardcore disagrees and the model thinks that Fandall is in the tank for Texas. That's what the model thinks. They don't mind you, the model's got Texas at five, but it does not have over a touchdown gap between five and ten. Next up is Ohio State at six, too high. Jay said Ohio State feels way too high and I feel like the five teams behind them would beat them on a neutral field with their quarterback situation. Maybe right, maybe right, they may be a little too high, but that is absolutely factoring in Julian Sands injury. That's kind of, that's not exactly where we had them last week, but I think we only dropped them about a point, point and three quarters, I think it was after that I'm looking at it right now. No, no, no, no, we dropped them pretty significantly actually. There's still at number six. There is a gap. I should mention, there is a pretty sizable gap between four and five between Notre Dame and Ohio State. So, like, you could drop a pointer to and still not drop from like five to six or something like that. I tend to agree. I've always thought predictive modeling up to including the outright Vegas odds, sometimes really under values, individual positional value, especially with quarterbacks. Cause they'll tell you, they'll look you dead in the eye and say, then we shave three points off and they'll act like that's game changing. It is, but it isn't. So with Ohio State, I think there should be a little lower than that, so I do agree with that. Next up, there is beef with Kentucky at 23, quote, I get this is not a ranking. Normally when someone starts it like that, they're going to use rankings type methodology the rest of the way. Anyway, I get this is not a ranking, but I'm trying to understand Kentucky's place. They've won both on the road and at home against teams ranked ahead of them. Once dragging them down, rankings don't exist first off. Secondly, they have won because of their turnover margin, which they deserve full credit for in the playoff rankings in the AP. But in predictive modeling, turnovers are viewed almost as a totally randomized stat. So they've happened in the past. A predictive model is not going to count on those to happen in the future. If anything, the predictive model probably thinks they'll come to earth a little bit. So look at them this week. They're playing Tennessee this week. There's a reason they're not a one or a two and a half point dog. They're a six and a half point dog. This calls there's a little bit of a gap between Tennessee and them on a neutral field. So there's not, by the way, there's not huge gap between like 16 and 25. So bump them up a point and a half and I'd probably bump them up inside the top 15 or so. But that's why they're that low. Their talent roster does not measure up to the likes of Alabama, LSU Notre Dame, which very, very much matters in this sort of thing. I have said this before, I will say this again. If you're a fan of a team like Wake Forest, Kentucky, UCLA, you should never pay attention to this stuff because it'll only make you angry because it really doesn't matter. As it relates to what you're trying to accomplish, it doesn't matter. You can be an underdog every week. If you just keep winning, ask Indiana what happens. You just keep winning. There's no limit. There's not some guy who puts his hand in your chest eventually and says, nope, you cannot advance further than this because you've been an underdog too many times. This is just a fun exercise, fun for some. I should mention this stuff is really compressed right now. The gap between one and 14 is 10 points. There have been years, like 10 years ago, at the peak of Alabama, the peak of Clemson. There were years where there were 10 points between one and four. The world has totally changed. It's the first week, also, the model really backed off on Indiana. It dropped Indiana like two and three quarter points, like there was a real volume turned down on Indiana. So they're all the way down at nine right now and they're four, what four in the playoffs. Those are two separate things obviously, but it kind of is selling its stock on Indiana. The model is, I'm just here to tell you Wake Forest at 14 is wild. Wake Forest being that high is wild because we've seen times in the past where a roster that doesn't jump out and grab you, UCLA is another one like that. Those teams just start winning, they go on a roll, Kentucky is the same as they always are. Like this, this Kentucky and UCLA situation, that's normal for teams with lower level talent rosters to be winning kind of, you know, like they're above their skis a little bit. So they're ranked high, but they're power rated low. Wake Forest is power rated top 15. Wake Forest is actually power rated higher than their ranked, which is insane for a non-blue blood type, type program type team. By the way, imagine in the preseason, Jesse, if I told you, JP poll by week 10 will have Oklahoma 40 and Clemson 41. You want to know whether coordinator moves being made and whether there may be more moves to come. That's why that's totally inexcusable, totally inexcusable. Our friends at Lovable helped us build the JP poll on our site that may be public one day. Our friends at Lovable basically specialize in taking ideas that you may have had once upon a time. Someone should do this. Someone should do that. No, you should do it. You can go to Lovable and Lovable.com helps you start building it today. And they help you take ideas and put them in motion. We have, for instance, we have built ourselves living depth charts, we've built interactive JP poll modeling and what not, got a lot of, got a lot of different products we use behind the scenes that people keep asking to be made public, so maybe I'll do that one day. But we did that all with Lovable. And then after you do it, they've got the back end infrastructure to make sure you run and you govern the software. It's a really beautiful thing. We've had a lot of fun with them and hopefully we'll continue to do so. Elon Musk, Derio Ammanade, Alex Carl, Feifei Lee, Palmer Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed. Listen to The Builders, on the IHOT Radio App Apple Podcast, or ever get your podcasts. In October 2021, my brother, David, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This podcast. Okay, so here we go. We discussed cancer, since the radiation had lost about 10 more pounds. We fought. Yeah, pisses me off. My brother, David, is the story of the last chapter of my brother's life. It's weird, and messy, and vulnerable, and I'm going to share all of it with you. The constant back-and-forth battle about how do I, how do I not just be alive, but actually live. Listen to my brother, David, on the IHOT Radio App Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Deanna Flores, and this is my podcast, Born to Become. Each week, legends in sports, culture, and business reveal their lives beyond the spotlight. That's it. Out there. Whoa. I'm handling pressure to bouncing back from rejection. You can take their lessons into your life and career. I'm still improving. I love that. Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores on the IHOT Radio App Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And for more, follow Deanna Flores 33 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. I had to take a chapstick time out, yeah, BHLs. You got to avoid the BHLs. Some guy yelled at me at a live show recently. I mean, to show a butthole lips. And people around him thought he was insane. But I knew exactly what he was talking about. And anyone who has watched the live show for a while, you know what he was talking about. But still, I don't encourage people to just yelling that in public at me. Or get you arrested. George is going to Oxford, Mississippi this weekend. It is our quick trip game preview, a lot of quick trips between Athens and Oxford. I know of a few on I-20, so I strongly encourage you to get you a little crispy snack and get a full tank of gas. Maybe some cold-brown tap. Jesse, do you think the number two spot is haunted? Yeah, Mitch does, okay. So the Georgia Bulldogs are the number two team in the country right now. Are they also number two in playoffs? Yeah. Oh boy. Number two AP. Number two playoffs. The number two team in the country has lost each of the last three weeks. So that doesn't bode well. And I know that will probably keep Kirby up tonight. You remember the last time these teams played in the playoff, five-challot classic. Over under Challot in this game. Four. Over. I would go over. I think at least four and a quarter on this game. There's this weird Georgia Florida post-game vibe where Georgia beat Florida handedly on the scoreboard, but the Georgia folks aren't happy with the offense right now. But then the older Georgia fans, you know, who are around before they were elite, they'll tell you, no, Kirby just sat on it the second half. Maybe? I don't know. Maybe Kirby doesn't even call the offense. Maybe Mike Bobo sat on it the second half. So here's what I like if I'm Georgia. A lot. I'm Georgia. Okay. And the Ole Miss defense has obvious deficiencies and we went on the road and we beat Alabama. So I trust me on the road. I trust me to be able to execute at a high level. By the way, for all that the passing game lacked against Florida last week, they sure didn't seem to have a huge problem against Alabama. Now they did fumble the ball four times and recovered all four. So you don't want to duplicate that. But the passing game, the efficiency on third down, yeah, I know I can do that. If I can do it in Tuscaloose, I can do it in Oxford. Also Ole Miss, uh oh, paper popper here, Ole Miss has allowed more 20 plus yard passes than any team in the SEC this year. So I look, here's my belief about Gunner Stockton. It's there. My belief about their passing game. It's there. It's not typical Georgia, but it's there. And they may need it because they may need to trade points here a little bit. We also, we be in Georgia, we ran it on Alabama, we're going to run the ball effectively here. Yeah, they limited Missouri, but Texas, Gaston, Florida, Gaston, we're Georgia, okay? We can lean on people. We can gash them. So I should have every part of my Swiss Army knife of an offense available to me. On the Ole Miss side, there's this kid named Trinidad Shameless that they get to play at quarterback and that's a really, really good thing. So I like that I have him and I like that I don't know if Georgia is equipped to capitalize offensively because as much as guys like me from 30 seconds ago sit here and talk about what they can do, how about what they have done. They're sitting there bragging about what they did at Alabama. Jesse wasn't that a 20 on the board, isn't that what they scored against Alabama. I'm just going to be honest with you. It takes more than that to beat me if I'm Ole Miss and I can force them to throw to win. I can force them to be explosive to win. Now, if they are, they are and we tip our cap to them if they can do that. But I don't know if they can and I don't have to guess whether my quarterback can succeed against Kirby smart and Glenn Schuman because he already has. when he was greener than he is now, he already has. Now, our ground game will not be in this one what it was capable of being in that one. But if I'm hitting my explosives and I can make them throw to win, maybe that gear they need isn't there. And I will make them pay to find out. George is a much better pressure team this year and that's something that is different between maybe this game and the last game they played. Ole Miss, third down defense, 113th in the country. In fact, I would imagine when we're doing our game recaps on day, if we're circling a stat category, it's probably just third down. It's probably gunner stocked and explosive plays. Georgia offense explosive plays and it's probably third down. Both team score, touchdowns in the red zone. So third down for Ole Miss specifically defensively and red zone scoring percentage. Are you settling for threes or are you scoring sevens? If Ole Miss wins the game, that's probably where the differences are. It's a low number. I mean, let's look at the model. Fandals got Georgia minus three and a half. Models got Georgia minus three and a half. Look, I really wish Q on Lacey was playing in this game. I wish I could see Ole Miss full strength. I think Georgia has more in the tank offensively. Much more than they had to show last week and that they did show last week. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I'm gonna lean on that assumption that I'm right. I'm gonna take Georgia to win and cover. They're watching us in South Bend, Indiana where we will be this weekend. They're watching us in North Port, Alabama and how did Steve Austin used to say it? Los Angeles, California. They're watching us everywhere. We appreciate it so much. Okay, you know what? I brought the water in here. I may as well sip some of it. FSU coaching search, Jesse. They wanna know about it. Well, we will answer. These, the tops on these bottles, they, I don't like 'em. They don't go on the right way. So I put my hand over the label. We're not promoting that water. It's not Callaway Blah. We're not promoting it. Someone asked about where FSU goes from here with their new head coach, please give me hope. Well, there's no need to rush it. I don't know that they give you hope, there's no need to rush it. One aspect to remember about this FSU coaching search, they have to sell Florida state to candidates. I'm not saying it's not an end-to-man job. I do question how end-to-man it will be. That is literally me questioning how end-to-man the job's gonna be. So don't take that in pejorative context quite yet. Here's the thing, they don't have an athletic director right now. So they're in the process of hiring an AD and hiring a head coach. That's not ideal and that's even above and beyond the fact that financially, they're kind of a mess. So you may identify the candidates all you want to. Like I got a few, I'll list them off in a second. None of them are groundbreaking. But you're gonna have to sell some guys in maybe ways that you wouldn't in the past that it is worthwhile for them to leave wherever they are to take the Florida state job. And you gotta have the right people running point on this. You cannot have someone stuck in this. We're Florida state. They're just wake forest. They're just Duke. You gotta be very careful. 'Cause if you're going after candidates, it's because you view them as a certain quality. And if you think they're of a certain quality, the market probably does as well. Which means those guys do have the option of just staying home and seeing what next year brings. So like Jake Dickert, I think he's a future superstar as a head coach. If I were FSU and I could get him, I would hire him tomorrow. If I could attract Manny Diaz, which I assume I could, Manny Diaz will be a wonderful hire for them. I would absolutely ask around about Kenny Dillingham. I think that with equal or better resources than the competition in his conference, he would do fine. I know that 'cause I've already seen him do it. Jason Eck, I'm always gonna give him a call. How do we think Jason Eck fares in the Florida humanity? Do we see Jason Eck coaching in the Panhandle of Florida? I don't know. But I would give those guys calls. I'm just saying in years past, if the head coach at Wake Forest, we're going to get an offer from Florida state, they don't even finish the sentence before his bags are packed. You're gonna have to sell these guys that you've got the answers to the questions they're gonna have. 'Cause there are gonna be a lot of questions that are asked in this particular coaching search, okay? And I will also say I did not list Jimbo Fisher there but I do think the Jimbo Fisher thing is real. And it's in its own category and it's in its own compartment. And look, there's some people that I value the opinion of who have dismissed the Jimbo Fisher thing. I am not saying first candidate. What I'm saying is until you prove that you have a hierarchy of candidates firstly and secondly, that you can attract them, you cannot dismiss anything. And you especially cannot dismiss a man who is going to effectively get in the ear of powerful people down there. He will have a coalition of the donor class. He will have a strong coalition of former players that speak up for him. That's not nothing. It's not everything but it's not nothing. He badly wants it. And so you've got to see how it starts to shake out. You've got to see how attracted your tears of candidates are to your job. If one of your A-tier guys is attracted to it, forget about Jimbo Fisher. He's not a part of the search. If even one of your high B-tier candidates says, "Oh, I'm in. Okay, go hire him." That's assuming Jimbo isn't A or B-tier, which I don't know, honestly. And then the other thing is, I don't know where the coordinators fit in the mix 'cause it's early. It's not day one early but it's still pretty early here because of the aforementioned reasons. Shannon Dawson at Miami. Would you value, first off, do you like him enough? And then would you value taking Miami's OC? There's just an added bonus there. Blake Baker at FSU. Do you think he's an American hero? Just change one letter. Just change the L to an F. There you go. Just that easy, Jesse. Put on a new polo, obviously. How do you feel? Or are you of the opinion that you've got to have had head coaching experience if you're going to be the head coach at Florida State? These are answers. Well, these are questions that we don't have the answers to yet. As I said, it's November 3rd. We don't have to have this thing figured out in a week. We probably will not have it figured out in a week. So I will say the way it was put to me today is, this search is in earlier stages than it usually would be because of the unique circumstances. I've not having an AD and candidates really needing to get a grip on what the job entails. It's not they won early, but it's in earlier stages. Maybe then a typical search would be, normally your months and months and months down the road on this stuff. And I'm not saying Florida State hasn't been months down the road. They're more, they're more hypothetically down the road than having pretty firm back channel feedback. Is the best way I can put that right now. Christmas sweaters, Jesse, Christmas sweaters are here. I could not be more excited about the designs of the Christmas sweaters that we have at PateStateMaterial.com. Did you see the nice sack Santa shirt? It plays on every possible theme that you would want a Christmas sweater to play on. So, I mean, we got three of them just right here in the graphic. Jesse, these are up right now, right? We do have them up, okay. I'll say no more. The graphic does the work for me. It is November. I am told that someone in my household purchased a Christmas tree today. So apparently it's that time. And if you're going to purchase a Christmas tree, you might as well be purchasing sweaters as well, PateStateMaterial.com. Back to game previews. You cannot tell me that I'm not moving into pretty good clip right now. Like I'm picking them up and putting them down right now. Tennessee hosting Kentucky. Kentucky will Stein headed into Neelan Stadium. How will he ever escape Jesse? Kentucky is 3 and 0 in the SEC on the road this year. Maybe it's Tennessee that's in trouble. Let's dive into it. Both of them were off a buy. Two quarterbacks emerging. George McIntyre, if you go back to the South Carolina game. One of the things that really stood out is, man, so many touchdowns called back. Therefore, so many big time plays taken off the board, but you can't deny that guy is coming along pretty nicely as a quarterback. And so is Kenny Menchie. Has been all year long. Neelan Stadium at night. This is a 615 central time kickoff on ESPN. So why I would feel good, if I were Kentucky here, is I'm looking on paper. And the matchup on this paper here, it looks pretty okay Jesse. It doesn't terrify me. I'm 30th versus the run. I'm 116th versus the pass. Tennessee wants to run it. Tennessee doesn't light it up through the air. So at least it's good on good. I mean, at least it profiles pretty advantageously for me. And I've gotten a good taste of how to win these close games. This is not foreign to me if I'm Kentucky. I've been in the one position. game. Well, I was about to say I did it against Alabama. Alabama handled me pretty well, but I learned my lesson and I've had my act together since then and I took LSU to the wire and beat him. I went into Colombia, did something you couldn't do. I beat South Carolina. So if I get in a four quarter fight, it's not foreign territory to me. And I got a quarterback still emerging right now. And he doesn't turn the ball over. And so one of the big criticisms which is stupid is that oh, Kentucky's not dominating games. No, they're winning them and they're putting themselves in position to win them because they're not stupid enough to think we're just going to go skull drag everyone man. We're going to steam roll everyone. No, they're they're intimately familiar with who they are, who they aren't and what they're capable of. And they've been maximizing that. So offense can do a lot on any given day. Also, on any given day they could have a really, really good rushing attack on any given day. Kenny mentioned can get after you now on the Tennessee side. Look, it looks nice that they're the 30th ranked run defense in the country. I'm going to run the ball on Kentucky. If I'm Tennessee, I'm going to run the ball on Kentucky. South Carolina ran it on them. 232 on the ground. A&M ran it on them. 187 on the ground. You'll notice that both of those were South Carolina wins. So I need to flip that in my favor. But to show on Bishop on my side, I'm running the ball on them. They haven't had to protect against the kind of front I have either. I got kneeling at my back. Do you see what I did, Alabama? And I'm going to be able to do it against Kentucky too. And if I get them in third and long, they are 116th in the country in third down conversion percentage. And I'm top 25 in that category defensively. So if I can if I can win on early downs, and I'm really good at it. And I'm forcing Kenny mentioned third and sixth plus, you know, 10 times or so. I feel really, really good about what I can do on third down. There's a very easy pre padlock stat here. It's just turnovers. Kentucky's plus 12 turnovers in their wins. They are at least plus two in all their SEC wins. They've been taking the ball away. If you can do it all year, go for it. It's normally not a sustainable formula. History has shown us, but there are always outliers to history. Tennessee's top 15 and takeaways. But the turnover margin isn't top 15 because they've also given the ball away. So don't I'm just saying it's not the most shocking thing in the world. If you turn on this game in the fourth quarter and it's 21 to 19 Kentucky. And you pull up the box score and you're like, dang, man, Tennessee's outgain in them by 140. House Kentucky. Oh, plus two turnovers. Okay. The model famously does not predict turnovers. So as fan dual has Tennessee minus six and a half, the model has Tennessee minus eight. Jesse, that's a key number. The difference between the fan dual number and ours. Tennessee by a touchdown feels about right to me in this game. So I don't have a strong lean in it. I will go Tennessee minus six and a half. But I mean, that turnover, that turnover margins everything because the second I pick Tennessee is the second that they turn the ball over on the opening drive. And oh, here we go again. But I can't predict that. So I'm taking Tennessee to win and cover. This number in front of me, three, two, six, seven. Let me tell you what that number means. A lot of money, Mitch. I saw you perk up in there. So we do a pick them over there every week. It's free. 210,000 of you entered last week. It should be double that. It should be everyone with a fan dual account. Honestly, why? Because again, it's free. Even if you've got zero dollars in your account, you can go enter for a chance at $500,000 in prizes, not over the course of a season. Each week, they're given away half a mill in prizes. So here's it's very easy. You can do it in like 30 seconds. Me, Will and Taylor all pick 10 games. It's the same 10 against the spread. So do you. Same games. Whoever does the best splits the pot. So last week, we had 210,000 entries. 153 of you hit 10 out of 10. Each of those 153 people took home $3,267 in bonus bets. They just drop that money right there in your account for doing nothing more than playing a free pick them game. I have no idea why people don't do it. I have no idea. Like 210,000 is a lot of people. Whenever you guys don't want to shot a free money, that's your business. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas, star casino or 18 plus and present in DC. First on my real money wager only $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non withdrawal bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandual.com gambling problem call 1-800 gambler or visit fandual.com/rg. Call 1-888-789777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit ndgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8 hope-NY or text hope-NY in New York. Maybe you want a shot at winning via the ramen noodle express. Maybe you want to do it the hard way, the old-fashioned way. That's cool. We went six and three last week. We're all about this. Eastern Michigan minus one and a half. We're on that one. I am adding Dan Mullin. If you let me down, I will never believe in you again. I am adding UNLV minus six and a half against Wyoming. Why? Because the model says so. And that and that alone is why we are taking UNLV and Eastern Michigan. Eastern Michigan, I think it's a Wednesday game by the way. Is that right, Pres? You're my MacSource. It's a midweek game. So, yes, Wednesday night. In other words, tomorrow. So, it will be a past tense game Thursday. Either they'll win or we'll just remove it from the graphic and pretend like it never happened. No, we don't do that. We count all the wins and losses. Make sure you are subscribed before you leave. Really tight show tonight. Really tight show. Very proud. We have not predicted all the games. So, we've still got games to go on Thursday. We've got upset alerts on Thursday. We've got we got a ton still to do. There's a lot still on the plate. This is the most loaded week that I remember in several years and it'll all culminate with us headed to South Bend in the end of Friday and Saturday. So, for Director Bradley for producer Jesse, I'm Josh Payt. Take care. We will talk to you Thursday until they God bless. Must be 21 plus in present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas, Starkisino or 18 plus and present in DC. First on my real money wager only, $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithrobble bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt. Restriction supply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem. Call 1-800 gambler or visit fanduel.com/rg. Hope is here. How do you know that cloud won't become manipulative? This is a constant worry and you can actually catch the model thinking I think X is actually true but I'm going to tell the user why. I'm Walter Isaacson. Listen to The Builders starting October 13th on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. In October 2021 my brother David was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A year later he convinced me to make a podcast with him. This podcast. My biggest fear is that I am afraid of being forgotten. It's weird and messy and vulnerable and I'm going to share all of it with you. Okay so here we go. Listen to my brother David on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for practical advice to help you grow your career? I'm your host Doug Melville. There's no external force more influential in human behavior than culture, full stop. And if you have any want or desire to get people to move, the culture is the biggest cheat code that you're not using. If you are serious about growing professionally and personally just DM me. Listen to DM me with Doug Melville from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.