Josh Pate On Lane Kiffin, USC vs. Oregon, Arch Manning, Power Rankings

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0:49 You know what?

0:50 I just got our friend Jamie Horowitz sent me a picture last night. He was with you. And he's like, man, how good is this guy? You know, you're a humble guy. A lot of my Southern friends are humble. They don't want to talk about it. They had good parents or something. I don't know what it is with you Southern guys.

1:09 You always like humble. You know, you guys still go to church. The rest of us heathens, you know, us coastal guys, you just for one second, what is it like to be you right now? Your last 18 months, holy shit, Josh.

1:25 It's great, right? Yeah, we talk about you guys every Sunday, by the way. We talk about you every single Sunday. So I did an interview last week. Someone said, where do you want this to go? You know, the whole what's next thing. And I'm a huge fan of The Office. I love that quote from Andy Dufresne about the good old days. You got to realize you're in them when you're in them. And I told the person where I'm going, right?

1:51 Like this, this is it. This is what I've aspired to do. I've just aspired to, to kind of be at the epicenter of college football. This is not a means to an end. I don't want to, I'm not interested in the NFL or the NBA. I just, I love college football. And here's the part, here's why I'm humble about it. Cause there's a lot of it that's out of my control. So if I were to have come along in 1992 and, Podcasting, YouTube, the entire digital sphere, what you and I are doing right now, it's not afforded to us. So we've got to find distribution and overhead somewhere, and it's going to be out of our control.

2:23 And so you've lived both lives. I have to an extent, but I was fortunate enough to kind of come along in an era where those Berlin walls, so to speak, were falling down and there were these opportunities to just do it your way. And if it screws up and if it crashes and burns, whatever, but that's the part that keeps me humble is I kind of know how blessed and lucky I am that that exists. Cause I didn't build that. I'm not responsible for that.

2:51 Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm very happy for you. So let me throw this at you. Um, Trinidad Chambliss, for the last two years, has been my favorite player in college football. I don't know if he's a Sunday player. I don't really care. I will say I covered Tommy Frazier in Nebraska beating Florida in the Fiesta Bowl. I was there, 50-yard line, upstairs in the media room. I knew Tommy Frazier.

3:13 I didn't think that would transition to pros.

3:15 I just didn't.

3:16 I thought he was a great college player. There have been other guys. Tim Tebow. Jake Locker got drafted. I grew up in Seattle. I told people, that's not going to work in the NFL. Trinidad Chambliss, I think, can work in the NFL. People said Bryce Young's too small, and I'm like, David Canales, all those tall receivers. But I'm going to throw this at you. One of my knocks on college football, because I like it more today than ever, portal NIL super conferences.

3:42 Notre Dame's good.

3:43 Miami's good.

3:43 I love it.

3:46 Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin should have been playing Labor Day. College football, NFL got to get it right. NFL's like rematch, Super Bowl, game one. Game two, massive rivalry, McVay-Shanahan. College football, volleyballs it around for about three weeks, and then they give us maybe one or two games. I think we should have spent all summer talking Kiffin going back to Oxford.

4:10 That would have been literally, this is our repeat of the Super Bowl. Now, it was a great game. The better team won. But of all the changes in college football, the one that never gets discussed is, why do we screw around with September in college football? Why didn't this game open the season? Why don't we do major conference rematches week one? Your thoughts?

4:34 I don't think that scheduling should even be under the purview of the university. and maybe not even the conference, but definitely not under the university, with this much money at stake, this many zeros in your media rights deals, it shouldn't be up to Indiana whether or not they play good competition. It shouldn't be up to me and you.

4:55 That's the Don Draper thing. That's what the money's for. We trade off our freedom to schedule down in exchange for that. So I have a lot of curiosity about this. Scott Dodderman I think wrote a good piece a couple of days ago within the past couple of days about how next year things change. Week zero becomes week one for everyone. And all these conferences are kind of jockeying around how they're going to do that. And I think a couple of them have bitten the bullet and just said, well, why don't we just schedule conference play early in the season?

5:23 Why don't we lead off with that? Now, here's what's pathetic. You've heard this many times. I've heard this many times. All these people say and. Well, we can't schedule more aggressively until we're sure that we've got an expanded playoff. That's that same garbage they used to spew when they had four teams. And then they expanded to 12 and they got even more conservative and they're out of conference scheduling.

5:42 So like to me, there are two pieces to this. Number one, it shouldn't even be up to you who you play. I'll tell you who you're going to play the NFL. Oh, you're right. They understand that part. The second part of that is there's a lot of validity right now. I was just talking to a head coach in the SEC today, and he said, Burr, you want us to be so gung-ho about playing this schedule, but yet you know at the end of the year, maybe we get one game's leeway. Maybe our 9-3 gets in over their 10-2, but it's never going to be more than that. And I'm like, okay, point taken. I do wish that we get a little more honest about the strength of record and understanding how to sort of decipher that in the postseason room, in the playoff committee room.

6:25 But outside of that, it should never be you holding me hostage on your scheduling, demanding that I expand my playoff before you're willing to step up. Just step up anyway, or maybe don't worry about stepping up. I'll step up for you because I'm going to hand you your schedule.

6:42 You know, Kiffin's interesting because I know Lane pretty well. And I think he really works in the South. I think his sort of audacious trolling is a riot. I don't think it plays in the Midwest. I don't think it plays in the NFL. But I think it plays so good at these powerhouse Southern tribal passionate matchups. I think he's great for the sport. The knock is, show me the big wins he has. And my take is timeout.

7:08 Bill Parcells used to take reclamation projects and he turned them all around. He didn't get to Super Bowls with all of them, but he turns them all around. Urban Meyer, Utah, Bowling Green, Florida, Ohio State. Well, Utah and Bowling Green, you're not getting the national championships. I do think I've said this with Lincoln Riley. He's one of the smartest coaches I've ever seen. I don't know if he's a culture builder, but those passing games. I mean, I'm honest to God. I like to guess what teams are going to run. Nobody fools me more than Lincoln Riley. Motion, sets, jet sweeps. Their passing offense leads the country since he took over. And by the way, when he took over, they didn't have an NFL body at tight end offensive

7:49 liner in the running room. It was Jordan Addison, Caleb, and guys. I think Kiffin may never win a title. I think he's brilliant as an offensive coach. And I think Charles Barkley and Marino didn't win titles. Dan Marino on any Sunday was the best quarterback in the league for 15 years. Do you think a little less of Lane when he loses these big battles where he was dominated in the first half against Ole Miss?

8:17 Not really. I think you and I are very much aligned in the way we view him. It's a really good comp to go to those former great NBA players. Also, you know who they used to do this about, although these are not exactly correlated? They used to do it about Mark Richt a lot. I grew up in Georgia, and they used to always bash Richt. Richt had the unfortunate task of coaching in the same era Nick Saban did and Urban Meyer did. That was basically his crime.

8:39 Because I placed Mark Richt in some other areas, he probably wins a title. So I would say... Relativity is very important here because relative to the history of the University of Mississippi, what Lane Kiffin just did over the past half decade has never been done there in history. And we entered into an era where money mattered more than it ever had in previous generations. So theoretically, it should be even less likely that Lane did that at Ole Miss. I am, however, interested in the now moving forward portion because He no longer gets to have the valid excuse of, I'm working at a little bit of a disadvantaged position. If you're at Louisiana State University for any five-year chunk of time, Saban did it. Les Miles

9:23 did it. Brian Kelly's the only one who did do it. Even Orgeron won a title within five years. I will say if you ask me that five years from now and he hasn't figured out a way to at least play for one, maybe that dings him a little bit because he would have been dealing with a stacked deck. But yeah, I think he's one of the best we've seen in a long time.

9:42 Yeah. So USC Oregon's interesting. Joel Klatt said something really interesting on my show today. He said, listen, in college, you don't get three preseason games to build your physicality. In college, you don't get joint practices. to build your physicality. He goes, you build your physicality at practice. And if your offense is a finesse, counter, trappy, deceptive offense like Lincoln Riley— You build your physicality up front defensively in the Big Ten in October. So it's interesting. He says the reality is, and I was thinking about Saban about this.

10:29 So Saban takes over Alabama. The first 10 years, it's a run program and defense. They were just physical. Then the program at the end gets kind of cute and pretty. It's a quarterback wide receiver offense. They spread it out. And even with Saban, it's not quite as physically dominating. Why? No preseason, no joint practices. The culture as the sport changes, even Saban's team, not that they were finesse, but Georgia comes in and Texas comes in. You're like, they look more like them than looking separate because the sport change, even Saban, couldn't create the physical nature to the level earlier when it was a run program, it became smartly spread it out, pass more first round receivers and quarterback.

11:19 So my thing about Lincoln is if he's the head coach and he's calling the plays and he is a great play caller, this is never going to be a top eight defense. It's never going to be Notre Dame. It's never going to be Georgia. Should it be better than it was at Rutgers? And I do think, I don't know who's going to win this game. They're very good in LA. Oregon has shown me over 10 years, 12 years, they can win these big games. USC hasn't.

11:45 But my take is, is there validity in what Klatt said, which is no preseason, no joint practices. Your toughness is built in practice. And this offense.

11:57 It's pretty tough. I worry a whole lot more about Oregon using that logic because Oregon's got a whole lot returning. Oregon is the unit that had all the dudes coming back, so they shouldn't, in theory, need to be establishing much of anything. If you tell me USC needs more runway to do that, yeah, what he's saying makes perfect sense.

12:22 I'm listening to him talk through you, and he's talking about USC, and my mind's on Oregon the whole time. And they just so happen to play this weekend because there's a there's a whole lot to what he said that's true. And it's not just with USC. Like you're watching a number of places out here where the lack of preseason in college football bears itself out in a very ugly way when the season begins. And some of them will pull the nose up eventually and some of them won't. The whole he hasn't done it thing with Lincoln, to me, is fascinating. Because there are a lot of people in the old college football public out there that they kind of marry have not with cannot. And I have never convinced myself that Lincoln cannot. I do acknowledge

13:07 he has not. I do not believe that he cannot simply because he has not. But you know what, Colin? Everything they say about Lincoln... A toned-down version of it can be said about Lanning. The difference is Lanning's had a little bit more in-your-face regular season success. They won the Big Ten their first year out there. They've gone to the playoff. They've gotten smashed once they were in the playoff. But there's a lot of the same questioning there.

13:32 It just feels like... The public has accepted a whole lot more proof of product with Dan than they have Lincoln Riley. But I agree with you. That's why Gary Patterson coming in for Danton Lynn was one of the most important moves, non-head coaching moves that was made in the spring and summer or winter, I guess it was.

13:49 Because if they can be serviceable, if they can be opportunistic, I remember that 2019 LSU defense. Once that offense caught fire, you knew this doesn't have to be 85 bear stuff. They just, they need to be good enough. Let's be situational in the red zone. Like if they can get to that point and on the other side, I'm watching a minimum baseline of physicality be executed. And I'm watching a lack of turnovers plague Jaden Maiava in these big games.

14:16 Cause that's what I'm watching this Saturday. Like I'm leaning USC to win the game. And there's this voice in the back of my head saying, What if those turnovers pop back up? But then there's a louder voice that says, what has Oregon shown you to respect this specific year's team on the road anywhere or at home? So I agree with what he said. I've just got this strange belief in USC this Saturday. And if they screw it up, it's on them. It's not on me.

14:41 Darian Mensah is the best quarterback I've seen in college. I was talking to him. I think you'll like this. I was talking to an NFL executive. couple of weeks ago and he said he's worried that CJ Carr has the same runway as JJ McCarthy. He said the defense is so good. The running game last year was so good.

15:01 The coach is so good. The schedule is so weak. Like where will CJ Carr initiate offense and pull his team to win like Fernando Mendoza? Like, where will he do this on this schedule? It's like, he'll have to wait for the playoff because they're going to roll through everybody but Miami. They're going to roll through people. The defense is just, I mean, you go back to Saban days.

15:22 It's like best corner, best safety, best linebacker. I mean, Notre Dame's defense is.

15:27 The real deal.

15:28 So they're not going to be challenged. And you and I know this. It really helps if your college environment and experience asks you, like Mensah, Tulane, and Duke, carry the offense. carry Saturday non-Sunday players to wins and productivity. I think Mintz is an unbelievable number one pick. And I say this going into Arch Manning. If he was Arch Pate, Arch Cowherd, Arch Gilbert, I'm watching Arch Manning and I have Eli on the show.

16:04 I love him.

16:06 This Tennessee game, this becomes another referendum to me. I'm sorry, but this is hard to win in college on the road. I'm still not sure about Arch. I still, I'm waiting for the plant my flag moment. I'm still not there. Are you?

16:25 No, no, I don't even think he's played well this year. I am so sick. I went back and watched every snap of the UTSA game last week. It was not good, man. It was not good at all. Now, you could say, like, out of the corner, oh, that's a letdown spot. Okay, if the guy's got an established track record, you know, if Fernando Mendoza late in the year had a little bit of an off week, okay, he's proven himself to me already, and he would go on to prove himself several times more. Arch hasn't. And the other thing you'll notice– You ask a lot of the NFL guys about this.

16:56 They'll say he's not being harassed every other play. He's got some clean pockets to throw out of, too. It just it's not there. And what's there is the name on the back of the shirt. What's there is tools. What's there is potential. That's all well and good. But I'm going to this Tennessee-Texas game Saturday. And there's going to come a couple of times. third and long, fourth and medium, to his credit, the same stuff that happened against Ohio State, that he's got to come through and on the road for them to win. Now, here's the thing about Ohio State that kind of confuses me as it relates to his future. So, there's no discounting how incredible that comeback was. But if you'll notice the, the

17:38 pedal only went down to the floor, once they abandoned any pretext of their offensive structure, everything they tried to do that you would consider the Texas offense failed. It just hit a brick wall all night. Then they eventually, you know, there's kind of throw the playbook in the air. All right, take it to the playground. That's when he comes from behind to win. And again, that it's great when it works, man. But everyone knows that's not, that's why you don't have a playground playbook because it's not sustainable.

18:05 It's like when you're watching FSU Bama last week, they went into that thing and Norvell took two weeks and said, we got Deuce Robinson on our team. He's a future Sunday guy. Let's just throw the ball up to him. And they did. And it worked a couple of times, but it also went to the other team a couple of times because that's not a sustainable strategy. So like this Saturday, he's going to face Jim Knowles, who is a dc that has seen this before he's going to get a bunch of different looks yep going to be in front of probably the most hostile crowd we've seen in college football so far this year and yet he's got the two tailbacks from the portal he's got a really good offensive line he's got racehorses at receiver everything

18:42 theoretically you would need to prove yourself on that stage he's got it's got to happen it can't be theoretical forever it's eventually got to happen.

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21:50 I'm sorry.

21:52 Ole Miss, I buy into them. Miami, LSU, Indiana, Alabama, Oregon. I don't have a problem with any of it. I just don't know what Oregon is. I think generally NFL and college, I need three games, four games, and let's see what you are. Yeah, you have Ohio State number one, not to nitpick. Red zone, third down, even against Kent State.

22:16 I watched about 45 minutes of that.

22:19 God bless you, by the way. God bless you. I know.

22:23 Generally, my rule is I'm not watching junk I'm not going to talk about, but it's Ohio State. So there's like Notre Dame, Ohio State. I'm just going to watch their games. You know, Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss, everybody's watching. Texas, Tennessee, I'll be glued to it. But they're USC, Oregon. But there are games that I just feel like I just need to watch a really good team that could play for the national championship. I don't know what to do with Ohio State. That schedule gets really tough. I'll tell you something too, Josh. The one thing that travels, you know this in the NFL, run game and defense. If you can't run the ball on third and short, you're not winning road games. That's my knock on Ohio State.

23:06 It's like, uh, saying doesn't give me any mobility. I don't know if they can pick up short yardage. Are they a weak one to you? I kind of feel like, God, I could put Notre Dame and then play tomorrow on a neutral field. I don't know what to make yet of Ohio State.

23:24 Yeah, the way I do those power ratings is like neutral field favorability as I see it right now. And so, yes, the answer to your question, 1,000%, it's a soft one. Because I could go as far down as like eight, wherever I had Indiana. I don't know anything about Indiana yet, but let's say they played Michigan this Saturday. I could see a result that said, okay, check mark, yep, they're still the same they were last year. I could see that.

23:51 Miami may very well be the best team in the country. What I'm trying to think about, Ryan Day explained this very well two years ago, actually. I was up there in the spring and they were going into the year they were about to win the national title. And he laid out in methodical detail how they had structured everything from practice schedules to psychology of team, to development, to practice regimen, where they tried to peak in December. And he said, this is the hardest thing to do because your instinct as a coach is is to go complete balls to the wall week one on. And that's the old school way to do college football. And you can't do that anymore. Or else you're just going to get smoked in December from someone who did understand when to

24:36 ramp it up at the right time. And that team, even though they lost to Michigan, they went on to ramp it at the right time. They won the national title. And I always have that in the back of my mind every September now. I'm trying to pace myself a little bit. I'm trying to look at which teams have the personnel groupings, which teams have good enough depth, which teams have the highest caliber collective coaching staffs to where if it comes together for them, that's one I don't want to see. And unless someone overwhelmingly has grabbed that number one spot right now, it's going to be an Ohio state. It's going to be a Georgia. It's going to be a Texas. It's going to be someone like that. But, Unlike Miami and Notre Dame, you're right. Ohio State's going

25:12 to get put up against the wall again three or four times. And with a loss already, that could be a good team that's a three-loss team bordering on out of the playoff for all I know.

25:23 Isn't it interesting? You know, when Oklahoma and USC, when Lincoln left. And then here comes Brett Venables. Isn't it fascinating? Like five years later, Venables can't fix the offense. It gets worse by the week and Lincoln can't fix the defense. So what they were going into the job has largely not been that modified. It's like Lincoln's brilliant offensively. Can he build a culture? Venables can recruit and build a defense, but the offense is a mess. And the fan bases, especially Oklahoma, because their coach bailed on them. You got dumped.

25:59 Whereas USC doesn't care about Oklahoma. Oklahoma's still watching Lincoln Riley. And this is nothing against Brett Venables, but he is what we thought. Defense and recruiting and intensity, excellent. That offense is a mess, right? Like, I mean, hell, Texas has struggled to win big games in the Big 12.

26:17 Where is Oklahoma now to you? Lost a little bit.

26:21 Yeah, they're lost a little bit because I was talking this morning to someone who We were talking about teams that haven't delivered so far. And those fall into two categories. And I was actually talking about Oregon, but the same could be said here for Oklahoma. Sometimes there's sky-high expectation for a team. This could be NFL or college. They come out of the gate, a couple of early losses.

26:43 Everyone's asking what went wrong. And then after the season's over, you get sort of the post-mortem. You talk to coaches or people you know inside the organization, and they tell you, We kind of knew, man, like we kind of knew this and that wasn't right in the preseason. We knew we were a little overhyped. Then there's the other example.

27:01 This is Oregon right now. This is Oklahoma right now where everybody in the building was convinced this is our year. Everyone in the building was convinced we got everything we need. Like I'm telling you, as recently as the Friday night before the Michigan game. I'm talking to people at Oklahoma. They are sky high about what they have the ability to do the next day and what they have the ability to do. And it's just dead on arrival. Offense is dead on arrival. Whatever's happening with material practice is not translating the games. Either that or they're blind and they don't know what they're looking at in practice. And I doubt that.

27:34 So.

27:35 That's the concerning part. Because when even the coaching staff is shocked at the results they are or aren't getting on Saturday, that means they don't have an answer. That certainly means I'm not going to have an answer. Now, the one bailout with them is they still have a world-class defense. So they're going to go play Georgia this Saturday.

27:53 And that's the kind of game Georgia's favored by nearly two touchdowns. You've seen it a million times, just like I have. A very prideful program with a top-five defense gets itself in wounded animal mode. And somehow offensively, they just scratch out 16 points and it's a late fourth quarter game. And you're like, Wow, if they had a heartbeat of an offense, imagine what they could do. It's not there. And then the follow-up to go even further down the rabbit hole you presented, sort of the brain drain aspect of when you remove someone from an organization and then you look at the void they left. That's really how you can judge how valuable they were. Look at Clemson since Venables has left. Look at Georgia Tech

28:37 right now once Buster Faulkner, the offensive coordinator, left. You talk about the offensive regression from OU once Lincoln Riley left. So there's no doubt those guys are studs on that side of the ball. It's just that's the second to highest rung of the ladder. And some of these dudes, when they climb up one more rung, that's tough. It's really tough.

28:56 Yeah, there are people meant to be vice presidents and there are people meant to be presidents. Ben Johnson, generally in the NFL, the hottest offensive coordinator almost always works. It was Shanahan, it was Ben Johnson, Clint Kubiak. Clearly the Raiders look different. Like generally the only coordinator you know that's gonna work is the one, like in college, is he a great recruiter? Venables is. And is he great on one side of the ball? The problem is in this day and age, Marcus Freeman may be the exception.

29:28 You'd rather be great on the offensive side because when you look at your top 10, it's a lot of quarterbacks. I mean, CJ Carr and Trinidad Chambliss and the kid at Miami. Okay, so I think– I don't know what to make of Oregon. Oh, I wanted to ask you this. I'm a mixed bag on Deion Sanders. I don't think he's a great coach. But I do think Colorado is like a fourth-tier program. And he's made them interesting. He's raised money. And I don't think it's a good team.

30:00 They don't even beat average teams. They sure as hell don't beat good teams. But this week, he's like, yeah, I'm going to cut some guys. And I was kind of like, not because I'm pro-NIL and pro-transfer portal, but I was kind of like, we.

30:14 Can do that now.

30:15 Yeah, like, you know, there's the old saying, with great power comes great responsibility. Well, with great money comes great accountability. And if your coach is like, you're not playing well and you're bad on the bus and in the room, I'm getting rid of you. So I was actually, I'm pro Pam and pro cut them, which I never was.

30:35 It would have been outrageous to do this five years ago. Where does it land for you?

30:40 That one landed softer than I thought it would land because I knew eventually those headlines were coming. And when it's Dion that just so happens to be the one doing it, his name ends up being the headline instead of the story itself. If this were Kyle Whittingham doing this at Michigan, it would be a very, very front page story. But like. The day this stuff really turned down this road, you had to know that this was coming.

31:05 And I remember we were doing sort of a pro and con on my show one night because there were hardcore proponents of NIL. And they were almost fantastical about the idea. They were like, it's all positive. There's nothing that's going to be wrong about it. There has been a ton of positive about it. They weren't wrong about that.

31:21 But I just said, are you ready for all of it? And they were like, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, you've thrown this student athlete moniker around for a long time. And there has been an academic attachment, maybe looser than the normal student, but there has been an academic attachment. There's been a romanticism about the college affiliated player. And I said, when you're paying them, even though legally they're not going to be called employees until several years down the road, in all likelihood, they're employees.

31:48 What happens if the left guard just isn't cutting it in week four? What happens if you don't like the attitude of the backup corner and he's not additive to the program anymore? You get rid of them. You fire them is the word we would use in the adult world. And you're paying them money now. So they're not kids anymore.

32:07 You can't keep calling them children. You can't keep calling them kids. And to Dion's credit, this is not the first time he's gone off about this. He's been very vocal about it. And you know what? I'll give him credit on this, too. Whether you personally endorse him. this Senate bill that's been thrown around. You can love it.

32:23 You can hate it and throw it in the fire. At least he's someone who takes a stand on where he wants things to go. He's not someone who just shouts about problems because those are the worst kinds of people. They have no solutions. They just have problems. So, so Dion's willing to take a stand on stuff, agree or not.

32:39 And he's willing to actually put his actions behind his words, which he did this week. And I'm not inside Colorado. I don't know exactly what was going on there, but this is not, if you've been following the trajectory of this thing, this is the least shocking headline. It's shocking that it took this long, honestly.

32:56 Josh Pate, great stuff. Friday's on the other network. Good seeing you, buddy. Appreciate it, Colin. This podcast presented by Bud Light. Easy to drink, easy to enjoy.