Joel Klatt’s New College Football Playoff Bracket Prediction

And we're gonna do that today, an October bracket projection. Are we going swimming, Joel? Do I need a swimsuit? Why are we talking about ponds and pools? That's weird. Is it just because of like the reflection pond outside of DC? A&M fans absolutely hate it when I bring this up. These are facts and they are undisputable. A&M is kind of a popcorn program. We've seen them be really good in spurts. Outside of that, they've been average. (upbeat music) Hey, welcome in to the program. It is the Joel Glad Show. I'm Joel Glad. This show is sponsored by Hilton Hilton for the stay. And we thank them for their support. We have got a brand new bracket. As you remember from a year ago, every single month, I'm gonna give you a new bracket prediction. We obviously did it at the beginning of the year. But we should do it during the course of the year. As we see these teams play and we change our minds about what they are, who they are, and what they can become. So we're gonna do that today, an October bracket projection. And I cannot wait. So I'm gonna do it like this. I'm gonna give you my conference championship games. I won't reveal a winner just yet. I'll get to that once I get into the seeding one through 12. And here we go. So in the Big 10 championship game, here's how I see it right now. With the injuries that Indiana is having and now kind of a resurgent Oregon team with all of that talent. Obviously, we hope Dante more comes back, but they're plenty serviceable with their backup Rheola. I think Oregon makes the Big 10 championship game still. They obviously have some tough games ahead in particular to that game in Columbus. But I like Oregon to make it to Indianapolis and I like Ohio State. Their schedule is not gonna be easy, but they obviously, you know, they've got Jeremiah Smith. They've got Julian Sain. So that's where I'm gonna go in the Big 10 championship game. The SEC championship game is gonna be Georgia and Alabama. I think Georgia's the best team in the SEC. I know Texas is technically right now. Yeah, number one team in the country and so on and so forth. But if you look at their schedule and then the way that they've played outside of those 18 minutes of game time against Texas or excuse me against Ohio State, I think that they're gonna be susceptible to getting beat. Because of that, I think Alabama actually passes them. When's the typewriter goes to the SEC championship game and it's a Georgia Alabama championship game which we've seen before as you know. In the Big 12, this one's gonna be an interesting one. Okay, here's two games that I want you to really pay attention to. I think that the participants in the Big 12 championship game are gonna be the winners of these two games. The winner of the BYU Utah game in Salt Lake and the winner of the Texas Tech Oklahoma State game in Stillwater. So here's what I'm gonna do. I think it's tough to win on the road. I'm taking both home teams. I think it's a Utah Oklahoma State Big 12 championship game in Dallas. And then in the ACC, we know Miami's gonna be there. I think we all understand that. With Louisville's loss a week ago, I got a little bit more gun shy. But when you actually look at their schedule and the fact that I don't see any other team running the table, I certainly believe that Louisville is still gonna get themselves back into a position to play Miami for the ACC championship game. So those are those eight teams that are playing for championships. Let's get to the bracket reveal. Here we go. Number one team in the country and I do think that they are going to be undefeated because I think that they beat Notre Dame is gonna be the Miami Hurricanes is gonna be my number one seed. So Miami jumps down there in the one seed. They get a buy. I think they're going undefeated. Like I said, they are incredibly powerful. I think that we're gonna look up at the end of this week after they travel to Clemson. We're gonna be like, yeah, that team is absolutely for real. I like Georgia over Bama in the SEC championship game. So if they win the SEC, either undefeated or with one loss, doesn't matter to me. I think they'll get the benefit of the doubt here and get the two seed. I think Georgia is that good. We saw that a week ago when they blew the doors off of Oklahoma, thanks in part to John Mateer, but they get the two seed. I think Georgia is very good. And again, those are the two teams that I think Sneaky are like, okay, I think those are probably the two best teams in the country. The number three seed is gonna be my big 10 winner. And regardless of what happens in Columbus, I think Ohio State gets to Indy and wins the big 10. So Ohio State is gonna get the three seed as the big 10 champ. I think they're probably an 11 and two team at that point just 'cause of their slate. And I know that Matt Patricia is still figuring out the defense and they're gonna have to stop the run much better than they did a week ago against Illinois. Illinois ran a bit all over them, but they still have Julian Sain. Experience guy was a Heisman finalist a year ago. And they still have the best player in the sport, Jeremiah Smith. And I wanted to sit there for a moment and do something a little bit new. If you're listening to this as an audio podcast, I encourage you to go over and check out the YouTube page 'cause here's what we're gonna do right now. We're gonna get into a little film. We haven't done this on this show, but I wanted, this is primarily a video based show. And so for all of you on YouTube, I wanted to kind of show you how Ohio State utilizes their cheat code. And what they do with Arthur Smith who is in the NFL, he's their offensive coordinator. And he comes in from the NFL. And one of the best things that I've seen them do is that they've utilized their formations and their movements pre-snap to get Smith in the best possible position to either exploit space or exploit a specific matchup. And again, this is very NFL. But let me show you what I'm talking about. Let's go back to the Illinois game that I called with Gus and Jenny last week. So this is one of the touchdown plays. And what you're gonna see right before this and we didn't quite catch this in the clip is that Julian Sand saw a blitz look. So he's gonna see these these backers and this safety start to blitz. He saw this safety start to roll to the middle of the field. As soon as he saw that, what he thought to himself is, okay, I'm gonna check the play. Let me get out of this. So what are they gonna do? They're gonna bring Devon McEwen in motion all the way over here. Now he's gonna have man-to-man with McEwen on the top side of the formation. When that happens, this safety is the one that they're gonna try to get into a matchup issue. And now this safety is gonna have to go down and be lined up on McEwen right there as McEwen goes in motion. And the corner right here is gonna be in man-to-man against Smith. Now, here's what happens is that Ohio State is gonna use a switch release. So they're gonna send Jeremiah on an inside release and kind of an inside post right there. And then they're gonna send McEwen on an outside kind of a wheel route. So that switch release, they're gonna get tight in a bunch set and then they're gonna switch release with forces, those defensive backs to either follow their original man, which is very difficult to do 'cause they've gonna picking each other at that point or they have to pass it off, which Illinois showed on film. And now what do you have? You have Jeremiah Smith on the matchup that they want, which is the safety right here at the top of your screen. Now you get Smith against Resettich in a one-on-one. There's also gonna be a huge mistake from Illinois. What happens here is that they don't pass off the coverage and this safety right here who now based on that motion should be dropping off into the middle of the field, he doesn't, he stays down right here. And as soon as he stays down, that allows Julian Sand to have a one-on-one with the matchup they want that can exploit this safety right here with Smith deep down the field. And that's exactly what you see as the play rolls out. So again, they check the play and they send Devin McEwen in motion and as we see the play out, now you see the switch release at the top of the screen. You get the man coverage, this near safety stays down. I've got my one-on-one. Now Smith can go out there and that's a total mismatch. He turns them around and he scores a touchdown. So again, utilizing formations and movements and releases to exploit a specific matchup. That's an NFL-type model right there and they did a great job of that against Illinois. Let me take you to another clip here with Ohio State. And I want to show you how they exploit space. So this is a little bit more difficult to see, but I'm going to show you how they exploit space here with their formation and more specifically a pre-snapt movement. What Ohio State is going to do is they're going to bring this tight end and they're going to bring him out in a little bit of a shift and have the back jump on the other side of the quarterback. Now that's putting two players in conflict here as Illinois is trying to run man defense. The two players that they're putting in conflict is this outside linebacker and this inside linebacker. So now those two guys have to make a decision. And what happens is as the tight end moves out, this linebacker is going to slowly creep out. Then with the play call, which is an RPO, a run pass option, you put the play fake or the run action directly into the middle of a line of scrimmage, which forces this linebacker to move up. So what did we just create right there? A bunch of space for Jeremiah Smith to exploit with his route and he's going to run just a little bit of a small slant right here. So let's play it out and let's pause it right before the snap because I can show you this movement and how it starts to expand the defense. So there you see the shift of the tight end. Now the back is going to shift over and now that middle linebacker is in a predicament, right? So here he is and he's in the middle of the field and look at all that space around him. So again, as you put a run play right in his face, he's got to step up and we're going to have Smith who's going to come right behind him and he's going to exploit that area of the field right behind him and it's an easy completion. Small movements that expand the formation defensively for Illinois. And now as we see the play roll out, all saying has to do is read the middle linebacker. The middle linebacker comes down and look at the space that Jeremiah is able to exploit in the middle of the field. It's an easy completion and now you're forcing a safety to make a one-on-one tackle, which he was able to do there. But you've got Smith on a safety one-on-one And that's a great job, that's how Arthur Smith utilizes those movement. formations in order to either get a specific matchup or exploit some space create some space for Jeremiah Smith. So cool stuff. We'll be trying to do this more on Wednesday shows during the course of the year and incorporate some film. I've got some more film later on another team that I've been very high on during the course of the year. So Ohio State is third in the bracket. There they are. They got a buy and my last team with a buy is going to be Alabama. So Alabama, I've gotten the SEC championship game, but they lose the game to Georgia. I don't think that they're going to be penalized for getting to the SEC championship game. I think Bama could get to that championship game with only one loss. Let's say they get a second loss. I don't think they're going to drop totally out of getting a buy. They'll be rewarded for their regular season. And so they get that last buy and they're the four seed right there. I really love Keeling Russell in the way that he's been playing. They've been very explosive on offense. The fifth seed is Texas. So again, would you jump Texas in for a buy because Alabama lost the SEC championship game? No, you wouldn't do that. So that's why Texas is going to host a first round game. They'll be hosting the 12 seed. I think Texas is probably an 11 and one team at that point. They're in the playoff, but they're playing in the first round. My sixth seed is also 11 and one. They lost one game. It was to Miami. That's Notre Dame. I think that they fall behind Texas and Bama for that matter because there's some realization or talk or narrative. And I think that it's actually true that their schedule is just not difficult enough. So 11 and one Notre Dame. This might even be benefit of the doubt here giving them the sixth seed, but they're definitely in. They don't have a buy even at 11 and one. They would if they were undefeated, but at 11 and one, they won't. So they're going to host there as the sixth seed. I've got Oregon as the big 10 championship game loser. But again, they would have to maybe even three losses at that. If they get to that game 10 and two and then lose in their 10 and three, that's why they fall behind Notre Dame. I'm on the ducks. I think that they're going to come back and be better at the end of the year than they were at the beginning of the year. They can fix some of those problems that we saw again. So Oklahoma state. I've got them in that big 10 title game. So they're in the playoff and they're playing in the first round. Here's my eight seed and it's the big 12 title winner. I've got Utah. Now you guys know how I feel about Utah, but when you really look at this team is a really, really good Utah team. They're playing great on defense. They can run the football. They're explosive. They get BYU at home. That's a huge benefit for them because Salt Lake at Utah. That's one of the great home field advantages in all of college football. So BYU is in there and they're going to host a first round playoff game. At nine, I've got the defending champs coming in at nine Indiana. I know they're dealing with some injuries right now and specifically to their running back room. Turbo Richard, hopefully he's not out long term, but they did have Lee BB Jr. Run for over 200 yards against Northwestern. That's still an offense that that can threaten you in a hurry with the run game or the past game with guys like Charlie Becker getting down the field. Hoover needs to play a little bit better and that defense needs to tackle better in space. They don't quite tackle the way that they did a year ago, but let's not forget. Kurt Signetti is 31 and two as the head coach for Indiana. I think he's going to go back to his third straight playoff at number 10. Here's where we get some fun ones here. I think all of us could kind of agree. Maybe you disagree with Utah. Who knows who comes out of the big 12. Okay, you could make an argument for tech. You can make a strong argument for BYU. I put Utah in there. But at 10, here's the one that it's like, oh, yeah. After last week, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. I love their run game Florida. Look at their schedule. They could lose the two games that are the most difficult games left on their schedule. I believe it's Texas and Georgia, even if they lost those games that are 10 and two, they would easily get in and maybe even with a better seed than the 10th seed. But I've got Florida in the playoff. I think this is a very good football team and remember run game travels. Run game can that can provide a program, a blueprint to like, let's say go on the road to Missouri and play well and not have a letdown game. More on that in tomorrow's episode, as we break down these picks and previews for this week's matchups. But I've got Florida. I love Jaden Baugh. I love their physicality up front. Duke Clark is a terrific backup. It reminds me a lot of last year's Notre Dame team, which Jeremiah love and price, jadearian price. I don't think there's any reason this team can't be 10 and two. They do play Texas. They got the rivalry game, obviously, against Georgia. I think they're going to be favorites in every single game other than those two, so a 10 and two Florida team definitely goes. Now, I'm going to wait on 11 because that's where the debate is going to be. Let's let's hop to 12. The group of six members going to be Boise State. They've been outstanding so far. They played Oregon ultra close in that first game of the year. That's going to be big for convincing the committee that they can go into the playoff and play with power four teams. And then they have blowout wins over teams that we thought we're going to be G6 contenders for this spot. Memphis beat them by 18 Western Michigan beat them by 25 on the road. Like Boise is a very good team. I think they go to the playoff and they get the 12 seed. And now we get to the 11 spot and you're starting to think to yourself like, man, there's a lot of teams that are going to be in the mix. And I agree. I agree. I think there could be four, five, six, seven teams that were debating about for this 11 spot. And I actually believe that when we get to December, we're going to start to think about that 2014 model a little bit differently because of the number of teams that were debating for this 11 spot. But we'll get to that bridge when we cross it. For now, let me just throw out some possibilities here. Here's the four teams that I'm going to debate for the 11 spot in this playoff prediction here in October. Ole Miss at nine and three. Oklahoma State who just lost to Utah remember in the big 12 championship game. Let's just say sake of argument. They're 11 and two. That's only their second loss. They've rolled off all these wins since the Tulsa loss week one of the season, including a win over Oregon. So Oklahoma States 11 and two. Let's just say Iowa is a ten and two team. That is certainly plausible. I know they have Ohio State this this week in Kinnick. But guys, look at the rest of their schedule. It is it is a manageable schedule to get to 10 and two. If they're 10 and two, they will certainly be there. And then this might be one of my favorites. UCLA, do you remember in my my preseason top 25 when I said my debate for the 25th spot was Oklahoma State and UCLA. And here we are through a month in the season. And guess what? It's coming to fruition. Here we go. UCLA, if you look at their schedule, there's a good chance. They're off this week. But then they're going to go to Oregon, even if they lose to Oregon. Their remaining schedule is is is manageable for a team that knows what they're doing and can run the football with a guy like Wayne Knight, Bob Chesney is instilled at least for me a ton of confidence in what they're doing. They could easily be nine and one playing Michigan in the next to last game in November. Absolutely plausible. Then they would have the rivalry game after that. If they split those two, they would be a ten and two team. They would definitely be in the mix. Definitely be in the mix. Their best win could be like a potential Michigan win down the road or a home against USC. They would have to split those two Iowa. Their best one would probably be at Michigan, Oklahoma State. Now, they'll have one 11 straight and then lose to Utah, messed-a-maker in that offense, looking like an old school big 12 team. And then you've got chambles there. Three team, three lost team out of the SEC is going to generate a lot of conversation. There's going to be a ton of propaganda. There's going to be a ton of narrative around there that they have to go and he's going to be a Heisman finalist and this and that. But there's an 11 and two team with a win over Oregon and we're not going to penalize them for losing their championship game. My 11th seed is Oklahoma State. The Cowboys get the spot in the playoff and there we go. There you see the matchups. Boys, you would go to Texas. Indiana would go to Utah. That would be a great game. Florida would go to Oregon and Oklahoma State would go to Notre Dame. I would sign up for that playoff. I think that would be a tremendous playoff. I would love to see something along those lines. That is a playoff. I think we can all get behind. And I think who knows what that would produce. Would Miami win it all? Maybe Georgia might win it all? Bam, I think one of those teams that don't have a buy could go win it all. Like we saw on the first year when Ohio State won it all from what were they? The eight seed. I think they were the eight seed. They were in that nine eight game with Tennessee. All right. I want to move to a little weekend. Check in now. There's the bracket. You can debate it. Please leave a comment down below subscribe to the show while you're there. Let's go to our weekend. Check in presented by Hilton. When you need a winning team on and off the field, it matters where you stay. Let's check in with that game. LSU blowing out A&M. I told you I would talk about this game and give you some thoughts on this LSU A&M game. 35 six wasn't close at all. I don't know what's happened to A&M. I really don't. But let me start with LSU. That's a good bounce back for them. A dominant victory over what we thought was a good A&M team. Maybe not so much after this, but a great bounce back for them. Now, I have said this over and over and over again. Sam Levitt cannot play the quarterback position like a running back. And sure enough, what did we see in that game against Texas A&M? Levitt limping around, banged up. He can't play the way that he does and make it through an SEC schedule. I don't trust their backup. He goes in. He was what? Oh, for five. I know he had a couple of nice touchdown runs, but like that's that's not a winning formula long term. Not like Oregon has with Dylan Rayola, you know, not like Utah would have with Bird Fickland behind Devin Dampe here, you know, like there's teams that can afford to maybe lose their starter. LSU is not one of those. And so the way that he plays is going to affect their long term viability. So again, like just watch for that as LSU moves forward. Now we get to A&M. I think a lot of us looked at A&M and you look at a head coach returning from a playoff team and a quarterback returning some talent on the outside. And what we failed to realize is like they lost too much up front. They lost both coordinators. So you lose all that continuity. And now Marcel Reed looks lost. He looks totally lost. We gave them the benefit of the doubt. And I think maybe rightly so early in the year, but at this time, it's time to move off of that. It's time to move off of this idea that A&M is a good team this year because they are not. That was not a good football team that went to Baton Rouge and got absolutely blasted by LSU. And here's the thing with Texas A&M and A&M fans absolutely hate it when I bring this up. But it is true. These are facts and they are undisputable A&M is kind of a popcorn program. We've seen them be really good in spurts outside of that for a long time. We're talking about 30 years. They've been average. That's what they are. I just like just look at the history. If you take a look at the last five years of the Southwest conference, okay. So that's what 90, 91 to 95 right there. They won 51 games in those last five years of the Southwest conference. Then they moved to the big 12 and in 1996, they were in the big 12. And since that time, A&M has won double-digit games three times, three times. So for 30 years, we're sitting here and A&M has averaged seven and a half wins per year. And yet every year, we're like, well, the resources, the recruiting, it's not translating. Great season, a season ago, Menzel, great year. 890s, the Sir Parker team, great year. I believe they won a big 12 championship in one of those first couple of years. But guys, like three double-digit win seasons, 10 plus win seasons in 30 years, just to give you some sense of how that compares to the rest of the country. We tend to view A&M at times in the preseason and maybe it's just because of the patch on their jersey or their location in Texas or their resources or their stadiums or the passion of their fans. By the way, their fans are unbelievable. Aggie fans are some of the best fans in college football, period, because in the middle of this 30 year average walk through the desert, they show up 100,000 strong swaying rings on like they're there. And so we over elevate, we over evaluate this team to give you a sense of what other programs have done. Over those same 30 seasons, double-digit win the years, Ohio State, 24, Bama, 21, Oregon, 16, even their brother in Texas, Texas, who had some horrendous years in there since 96, like up and down, up and down, right. But they had 13, 10 plus win seasons, three 10 win seasons plus in 30 years. And I know who that is tied with, Colorado, and I'm not comparing the two programs. I know that I went to Colorado, like we're old big 12 foes, I understand, I'm not comparing where they are. I'm not saying you are Colorado. But they've had these same amount of double-digit win seasons. So like with A&M, I think that at some point, we've got to come off of this idea that it's like, oh, yeah, they're really good. I don't understand why they get the benefit of the doubt based on the facts, based on the facts. Again, three seasons of double-digit wins. Let's move to UCLA and their route of Maryland. That was, I don't want to say it was a shocking game, but they were only a point and a half favorite and they win that game by 51. That margin as compared to the spread is one of the largest margins compared to the spread that we've seen in college football history. Chesney's got this team going now. They believe they've got excellent players. They're good at the line of scrimmage. I don't think they're great on defense, but again, do I think they're going to threaten to win the big 10 or win the national championship? No, but is this a very good football team? Yes, I do think that this is a very good football team. Their run game is fifth in the country right now, averaging about 280 rush yards per game. And I want to take you behind the scenes. I showed you some Jeremiah Smith film and now I want to take you to some UCLA film. And I want to show you how they make teams pay when teams are aggressive against them. They draw up the the proper schematics to allow their players to make big plays specifically Wayne night. Both of these clips are going to be Wayne night. And I'm going to show you what goes on here. So let's take a look at this play against Maryland. This is a fourth down against Maryland. And I want you to look at the formation first up, okay? So kind of get your bearings about you right now. They're in a wild cat formation. So this wild cat formation has Wayne night in the backfield right here on the logo. And they've got Nico Eo Maliava over there on the wing, okay? So now you can see that formation. Now here's the critical point is that they've got the back offset to the wide side of the field right over there. What does that do? Well it forces Maryland to play a little bit of leverage toward the wide side. We know that college defense is like to play leverage towards the wide side of the field and they're producing numbers to the wide side of the field with the offset back in that direction. So look at what happens. We've got Maryland and they've got one, two, three, four players stood up on that side and a fifth that is inching that direction. So they're heavy leverage towards the field towards the ratio of the offense. So what is UCLA going to do? Well I think this is really smart. They're going to then look at these two players. These two second level players with him being a third is kind of on both sides. And they're going to say, you know what? We've got ratios over there. So let's allow Wayne Knight with numbers to go attack that side of the field. Now Maryland's going to be aggressive. So what they do is they run a gap scheme. What does that mean? Well a gap scheme means that this entire left side of the offensive line is going to block down. And as they block down, what they're trying to do is get all those blocks to the second level. That linebacker and what they're hoping for is that this safety right here is actually going to come down and get sucked into that wash as I call it. So they want to create a massive humanity down low. And then they're going to pull a guard to kick out this end right here. And then they're going to lead up with this back on the corner and take care of this player. So now you've got what's called hats for hats. All right. That's what we call it in football hats for hats. So you leverage them to the field. You snap the ball directly to Wayne Knight and watch what happens. They block down on this front side. And here comes the lead block. And as we play this thing, you're going to see it just open wide, open safety gets stuck in the wash. Wayne Knight is gone. So they use the aggressiveness of Maryland against themselves. Wayne Knight touched down. Let me show you another play later in the game, different formation and different setting in the game. So what we see in this clip right here is that Maryland is going to blitz and they and they see that. And so they they check to what's called a speed option. Why is that good? What is speed option? Joel? Well, first and foremost, you have to understand that they see the tells and they understand that you're going to get a blitz here and a blitz here. So these linebackers are going to be inside, which means that as an offense, if we just block down, then we can take everybody down like this and we can force them to the inside. And then we can just option that player on the end. I can do that as a quarterback. I can check into that as a quarterback. And now all Nico has to do is look at him. And if this defensive end comes to the quarterback, what do I have? I have Wayne Knight out there and nobody is left. So you're going to get a whole blitz into the middle of this offensive line. It's really man coverage. So now you don't expect even the safety or the linebackers to have to blitz and fall off and try to occupy Wayne Knight. So this is a speed option check against a heavy blitz from Maryland. And as we watch it play out, you're going to see see you kind of checks it right there. And we're going to go speed option. So he comes out and pitch it and no one's left. So that blitz happens. No one is left and Bob Chesney and everyone at UCLA is doing a great job of putting their players in a position to succeed. They use these, these looks from the defense. They change their offensive play and they take advantage of some of the over aggressiveness that we saw from Maryland on the defensive side. So that's what I loved from UCLA last week against Maryland. Please come back next Wednesday. Obviously I'm going to have more film in that show as well. Another team that I wanted to talk about is Wisconsin. So Wisconsin got a monster victory against Penn State and come back fashion last week. They come back from 17, nothing down. They beat Penn State on the road in state college and let's be honest that first week of the season, I think most of us were critical of Notre Dame for the way that they played against Wisconsin. We thought, man, you guys were only up 1310 over Wisconsin at the half. And that was probably the wrong way to look at it. Because Wisconsin is a lot better than what they were a year ago. But I want you to think about an old coaching philosophy. And I've talked about it on this program as well. We all know that Luke fickle was down. There was a couple of games last year back to back that they got shut out. And it was like, is this going to continue? Is Luke fickle actually the guy at Wisconsin? I don't know. Is this going to work at Wisconsin? I don't know. There was a lot of talk that he was going to be fired and they were going to move on and go somewhere else. And they did something that was at least in college football circles countercultural. They said, you know what? Rather than just spending the buyout rather than then, you know, dumping millions of millions of dollars to buy him out, buy a new roster. What are we going to do? We're going to dig out of this. And they saw evidence of that climb start late last year. So this old adage is that you can lose big as a new coach. And I know he's not technically new, but like you can lose big before you ever lose small. And then you're going to lose small before you ever win small. And then you're going to win small before you ever win big. I think we are seeing Wisconsin in the middle of that maturation process. And let me show you the evidence. It's not just what they have done this year. They're three in one. Some big wins in terms of blowouts over Western Illinois and Eastern Michigan. They played Notre Dame close 1310 at half. And then a huge win against a ranked opponent on the road. But we should have seen evidence of this late last season. Okay. As they're digging out, it was there. The last five games last year, they played a pretty tight game against Oregon 217. That was, I think it was only 14 nothing going into the fourth quarter. That one was on the road. And that was a very good Oregon team that would go on to play in the national semi-final. There's some evidence right there. They're next week. What did they do? They beat a ranked Washington team won the game. That was their third win of the season. They lose to Indiana and the blow out. So no one's thinking about them. No one's thinking to themselves. Oh, this is a slow build. They're digging out because they got blown out by Indiana. But guess what? Indiana blew everybody out. They would go on to win the national championship. So let's give them a pass for the Indiana blowout right there. What do they do the following week? They beat Illinois. That was a ranked team. Now, they would go on to lose their rivalry game against Minnesota. But again, you're in this combination of like losing small winning small here and there. And then they come out and they start three and one. I think we're seeing Wisconsin. If you take a little bit of a step back and you don't just view what happened on Saturday and like, Oh, Luke fickle, all the sudden they've popped up and they're a team. Now this has been happening since late last year. And I think that we've got to at least think about the fact that this team should be headed towards six seven, maybe even eight wins this year. And if you told me before the year that Luke fickle and Wisconsin were going to get seven wins, I would have said that's a successful season for them. Not everybody can go to the playoff. You know, we suck all the meaning of success into the playoff, but there is success outside of the playoff for teams that are trying to build and get themselves to the next level and fickle and Wisconsin are part part of that. They changed off into coordinators a couple of years ago. They've had quarterback injuries and now you're starting to see a program that I tell you what. You know, they turned the ball over in that game and won on the road. So three ranked wins going back to last year and their last few ball games, watched an Illinois and Alpen state. I am just happy for Luke fickle. I'm happy for Wisconsin fans because it did not look good. And now rather than buy out and take the easy way out, they decided to put their, you know, big boy pants on and start digging out of the hole and it looks like they're coming out of that. College football season is almost here. And if you're like me, this is the best time of year. You're looking at the schedule, checking the matchups and circling the big games you have to see in person. There is just nothing quite like that Saturday Stadium atmosphere. Now, once you pick your game, the next step is finding the best deal on tickets. And that's where SeekGeek comes in with over 35 million downloads. SeekGeek is the number one rated ticketing app featuring more than 70,000 events across sports, concerts and live shows. I use SeekGeek because they make the entire process effortless. The app makes it super easy to search for your team, compare seats across the entire stadium and grab your tickets in just a few taps. Everything is sent directly to your phone. So getting through the gates on game day is completely seamless. Plus every single ticket is backed by their buyer guarantee. So you can shop with total peace of mind. And of course, I have a code for you guys. You can use code clat 10 for 10% off your next set of college football tickets at SeekGeek. That's 10% off any college football tickets with promo code clat 10. Make sure you click on the link in the description to download the app and have the code automatically added to your account. So you can use it later on. We just want to thank SeekGeek for their support of the show and all of college football. Some news late. What was that Monday night? The Senate voted to pass the Protect College Sports Act on Monday night. So that will legislation will move to the House of Representatives. I wanted to just give you kind of a quick overview because I'm sure even like me, I'm kind of like, well, what's totally in this bill? What does this mean for college football? What does this mean for my program? Let me just start with the biggest overarching topic, which is what is this bill accomplish? It's not even the 37 or 85 things that are in the bill specifically, except for one. The one thing that's the most important part of this bill and that's the one that you should be not only rooting for, but behind is the fact that it gives the NCAA and the College Sports Commission some antitrust exemption. What does that mean? It means that they can enforce rules. I've been saying this since I was blue in the face. They needed antitrust protection so that they could enforce rules. Now we can get to what's in the bill that is surrounding the rules. Well, there's eligibility rules and we know that those eligibility rules have been changed recently. And by the way, they've been in court. So why can you not enforce the five for five because there's no antitrust protection? So that's how all the sudden you get all of these court cases. The biggest thing that we've had to do is get the sport out of the courtroom. And this is going to at least lead us down the path that we can get the sport out of the courtroom. So now you can enforce rules without a judge like eligibility rules, the five for five, like a one time transfer. So that could potentially be coming to college football where yes, you can transfer one time. But outside of that, you would need extenuating circumstances like your program was eliminated, like your coach leaving outside of extenuating circumstances. You can't just freely transfer a second and third time. So this idea of everybody is a free agent every single year will have a lot less movement. That's exactly what the coaches have wanted. That's what fans have wanted so that you can root for the same guys year in and year out. And then the last thing, not even the last, the third most important thing is the payment pool. I intentionally didn't call this a salary cap because it's not a salary cap. Let me try to explain the the payment pool and just bear with me for a moment. If you follow college football, you'll know that via the house settlement a few years ago, schools were allowed to revenue share up to $21.5 million with collegiate athletes. We all kind of know that. Now we started hearing numbers far past that. And we thought to ourselves, wait a second, like I thought we were supposed to be capped at 21 and a half, but not really because the 21 and a half was just a revenue share for athletes, but they could still go get NIL deals that were on top of the 21 and a half. So you hear numbers all over the top of college football anywhere between 40 to $50 million that some of these schools are spending on rosters. And what this payment pool is going to do is take that money that's already in the marketplace and not put a cap over it, but put the provisions so that the college sports commission can actually enforce the rule that it needs to be a true NIL deal. So there's two pools of money. There's going to be the revenue share from the house deal, the 21 and a half million plus. There's going to be a retention pond. I don't why are we talking about ponds and pools? That's weird. Why do they call it that? Anyways, that was a quick tangent and an aside, but this retention pool, if you will, of money, that's going to be $22 and a half million to get us up to a quote cap, but it's not a cap. I'll explain that in a second of about $45 million. That money is already in the system. They didn't want to take that money out of the system. But what they wanted that that money to be is for retaining their current players. So you've got 21 and a half million dollars as a programming. You can use that to acquire talent. You've got $22 and a half million that now you can allocate towards retaining your current players. So any player that's been there for over a semester, you can use that money to retain them on their roster. You can't go get a transfer and say, oh, I'll give you 10 million bucks because that could fall outside of the 21 and a half million dollars. I might be losing all of you at this point, but what you need to know is that there is a payment pool part of it is for acquiring talent part of it is for retaining talent. And on top of that, there's a $5 million allocation for women sports and non revenue sports that can make sure that keep those keep those going. Couple of other little details in this, a coaching hiring window. So essentially, it would be impossible to hire a coach officially until the college football season is over. That would be January 25th. Sorry, Lane Kiffin. This is officially the Lane Kiffin rule. And I would just say that this legislation is wildly popular. The polling in the public suggests it's wildly, wildly popular. And it just got 77 votes in the Senate. Can you think of anything in life that would get 77 votes in the Senate tomorrow. I can't. So moving forward, there's some hope that there can get the House of Representatives back in to vote on this just for a day and pass it before the midterms. That's not definitely gonna happen. They're hoping that it happens, but even if we wait until after the midterms, there's some hope that we can get this passed through the House signed by the president before the end of the college football season. You might be glazed over and I know that was a lot of information, but I wanted to give you kind of the main bullet points and elevate it so that you kind of understand what's going on. If you didn't take anything from that and you're like, what are we going swimming, Joel? Do I need, do I need a swimsuit? No, just main point is anti-trust protection so that we can enforce rules. And that's a good thing in college sports. All right, tomorrow we've got picks and previews, big week into college football. I've got that coming up. And yeah, by the way, we were five and two last week. 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