Is Alabama TOO YOUNG to compete for a CFP National Championship in 2026?
It's a Dear Andy & Ari episode and before we get to your incredible questions, Andy was able to hear from Kalen DeBoer at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, and he had some interesting thoughts on roster building in this age of college football? Should teams assemble its roster based on talent alone or should age be incorporated in the mix? As Indiana was the oldest team in the College Football Playoff this past year, is the route of attaining older players the best? Andy & Ari dive deep into roster building here.0:00 On Today's Episode1:32 Presenting Sponsor4:05 Intro: Does Age Matter in roster building?15:00 Striking a balance in roster building25:00 Impersonations26:52 Dell28:05 Dear Andy & Ari: Is College Football like the NFL in 2011?45:37 Tampering Suspensions58:05 Level of Competition in QB play1:04:15 Wrapping up: Denzel Washington impersonationTo begin Dear Andy & Ari, a listener asks about the overall state of college football and if it is anything like the 2011 NFL season when Sam Bradford and Cam Newton had some wild deals as a rookie. Will the market balance itself?Also, Andy & Ari take a dive into the tampering ordeal that was visited earlier in the week between Dabo Swinney and Pete Golding. Who is the only head coach to be suspended for tampering? The answer may shock you.To close out the mailbag segment, Andy & Ari are asked about QB talent evaluation in high school. How much of a factor is the level of competition for these gunslingers? Watch here as Andy & Ari dissect the level of competition in evaluating.On Tomorrow's show, Andy & Ari will be visited by Jeff Goodman of the Field of 68 and Texas DB Michael Taafe. A Friday show you won't want to miss!The Dell XPS proves there's no need to compromise—style, power, and reliability come together in one expertly crafted machine.Check out the all-new Dell XPS at Dell.com/XPS.Our show is also presented by BetMGM!If you haven't signed up for BetMGM yet, use bonus code CFB and you will get up to a $1500 First Bet Offer on your first wager with BetMGM! Here's how it works: 1. Download the BetMGM app and sign-up using bonus code CFB.2. Deposit at least $10 and place your first wager on any game.3. You will receive up to $1500 in bonus bets if your bet loses! Just make sureyou use bonus code CFB when you sign up!Make this college football season one for the history books. Make it legendary.See BetMGM.com for Terms. 21+ only. US promotional offers not available in New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (Available in the US). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-327-5050 (MA), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-981-0023 (PR). First Bet Offer for new customers only. Subject to eligibility requirements. Rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 7 days. In partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel.Join On3 today! https://www.on3.com/join
Video Transcript
On today's Andy and Ari On 3, presented by BetMGM, the popular saying in college football now, stolen from college basketball years ago, is, "Get old and stay old."
Everybody watched Indiana with a very mature team, won the national championship.
So lots of other programs trying to get a little bit older.
One program that is not necessarily getting any older is Alabama, one that is still recruiting at a very high level out of high school.
Talked to Kalen DeBoer this week at the Senior Bowl, and he explained why Alabama is still a little bit younger, despite getting dispatched by one of those old teams.
Ari and I will talk about whether that is the right method for roster construction today.
Can Kalen DeBoer get it back on track doing it this way?
Plus, is college football settling into a situation kind of like the NFL did when they created the rookie salary scale?
Has- have we seen our Sam Bradford contract in college football?
Has that happened yet with a high school quarterback?
Plus, a great question about tampering and who gets punished, because there is one high-profile coach who's been punished for tampering.
It's not who you think, if you don't already know who it is.
And great quote from Auburn coach, Alex Goluich, the new Auburn coach, about tampering and what happens next.
We'll talk about it all on today's Andy and Ari On 3, presented by BetMGM.
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Welcome to Andy and Ari On 3, presented by BetMGM.
I am home in Mobile, but did some good talking, Ari, in Mobile.
Talked to Kalen DeBoer from Alabama, talked to Alex Goluich from Auburn.
bumped into, to Alabama Defensive Coordinator Kane Wommack there.
And, it, it, it's been an interesting past 24 hours or so as I've been noodling on, on where the Iron Bowl sits right now, where Alabama and Auburn sit after, after hearing updates from their coaches.
And I wanted to talk about Alabama today, because there was something Kalen DeBoer said, Ari, that absolutely fascinated me.
Because, you know, w- he was, he was talking about the, the portal additions they've made.
He was talking about some of the, the younger guys they, they have who were blue-chip recruits, who are now coming into bigger roles on the team.
And we remember what happened in the Rose Bowl to Alabama, and one of the popular narratives coming out of the Rose Bowl was, "Hey, Indiana was so much older than Alabama," and perhaps that was a reason why Indiana handled Alabama so easily.
And so Ari, you know, this is, this is something we've talked about a little bit on the margins, but I think we need to hit it directly.
Like, how old do you need to be to win right now?
Well, I, I just, like, think it's interesting, because the thing that we think works always in college football is the thing that just worked.
Mm-hmm.
Like, that's how we our brains work.
It's like, well- Right ... when Trevor Lawrence and Deshaun Watson were winning national championships, the discussion in the off-season was, "Well, you have to have a top-five NFL quarterback to win the ch- national championship."
And then, of course, that changed, you know, in the subsequent years.
Now Indiana, you know, as we all are circling, our, our tails trying to figure out an explanation for how a team that has been an afterthought for 100 years just won the national championship, there are multiple theories about it, and obviously, the prevailing one is you have to be old.
Um- It certainly helps that they were old, right?
But if you actually zoom out and look at what Indiana was this year, it was a fundamentally sound, aggressive team, which I think you could attribute to age.
But it also had top-notch NFL talent on its team- Mm-hmm.
Which I think is always going to be the baseline requirement for this.
Like, I don't know how it's gonna be acquired.
I don't know how old they have to be.
I don't know if high school recruiting is gonna become less important to the portal, all those things.
But what I do know is, is that once you take the field, you have to have NFL players all over the place to win the national championship.
Now, maybe not to the same extent that you did in 2015, but you still s- certainly have to have them.
And Indiana, through the portal, has the number one overall pick in the draft coming up, and a few other players who are gonna be day one, day two picks.
do you believe, Andy, I'll throw it back to you, that a team- Mm-hmm ... has to have a bunch of juniors and seniors, fifth-year seniors, and eighth-year seniors on their team to win a national championship?
'Cause I'm not sure I'm, I'm convinced of that yet.
I'm not, I'm not there yet.
And, and I wanna point out So, shout-out to AllTimeTy on Reddit.
So the, it, AllTimeTy posts in the, in the CFB subreddit, which if you have not perused that particular neighborhood of college football fandom, some of the smartest people, smartest college football fans, lots of fun.
They always come up with fun stuff to talk about, and- Smarter than me ... have conversations about.
So AllTimeTy did a study on the teams in the playoff- Okay ... and came up with a way to, to measure how old they were.
And basically, this was not a look at the entire roster.
This was only a look at the people who, who play significant minutes, essentially.
So people who had played fi- played in five or more games, and how many seasons of college football they had played in, you know, going into it, as of this season.
So Indiana was the oldest.
So they had 37 major contributing players, and the average number of seasons played was 3.57.
So that's- Wow ... that was the oldest team in the college football playoff field.
The youngest team was Oregon, with 45 major contributors.
Average was 2.76.
Alabama was the third youngest team.
They had 44 major contributors.
Their average seasons was 2.82.
So here, here's the deal.
The, the oldest teams in the playoff this year, Indiana and Texas Tech.
They were the two oldest teams.
They're also probably the, the two that started the most transfers, other than Ole Miss.
But the four youngest teams, tell me what all of these have in common.
The four youngest teams in the college football playoff: Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, and Oregon.
What do all of those have in common?
They're all traditional high school recruiting outfits.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
So they have younger players, but presumably, those are more talented younger players.
And while we just saw And, and I, I, I'm with you, Ari.
We just saw a bunch of older players, who were also very good, who had grown into really good players, beat the younger ones.
Like, they beat Alabama.
The Indiana team beat Alabama on the way.
They beat Oregon on the way.
There still could be a team that comes along that has players that are so good, young players that are so good, or sophomores that are so good, or juniors that are so good, that they are- they overcome their youth.
They literally almost lost to a team They were 40 yards away from losing to a team whose best player was born in 2007.
Like- Yeah.
Now, Miami was middle of the pack.
Yeah.
And we've talked, we talked about Mario Cristobal's roster-building strategy quite a bit, and we said he's probably got the best mix.
So Miami's right in the middle of these teams.
Yeah.
So, but- But I think that it's an interesting trend.
You know what I think is also interesting?
It is.
And so Kalen DeBoer got asked about it in Mobile, and I thought his answer was really interesting, and it's one of those I imagine the Alabama fans, who are still smarting from the Rose Bowl game, probably heard it and wanted to smash their heads into a wall.
Here's Kalen DeBoer.
Kalen, it seemed like a lot of the portal pieces y'all brought in, not only are they pieces for now, but they have years of eligibility after, too.
How important was that aspect of it, especially with the offense and the inconsistencies?
Yeah, I mean, a, a lot's been made about, an older team.
And, you know, I didn't do the study.
The study was sent to me, but it was, it showed how young we were as a football team.
Probably lent to some of the inconsistencies we had, at times, especially at the end of the year, when you're facing, the most mature teams and the best teams in the country.
But, it is what it is.
I, You know, you always would love to get some upperclassmen, whenever that, that, that shows up.
But some position groups, work in that way, some don't, depending on what you already have in your program.
And so, we just wanted to take the best players, the ones that fit, the ones that were hungry, the ones that want- really wanted to be here and be a part of it.
and I think, I think we did that.
So again, s- probably younger again- ... but, you know, that's something we gotta use as an edge and, try to, try to, try to, you know, make kind of our, our thing.
You know, that, you know, let's continue to grow up faster.
You know, let's have the Last year, Brooks' and the DeJoun Lee's, and the Michael Carroll's, and, you know, London Simmons, and the guys that, were true freshmen last year, you know, take that next step, along with, a lot of our guys who are upperclassmen in our program.
You know, I've got a lot of thoughts about this.
This might be the whole show.
I know we have to do a mailback today.
I, I, I ha- I knew you would, because as soon as all those words came out of his mouth, my first thought was, "I gotta send this to Ari."
Yeah.
Well- There are, are multiple ways to react to this.
First of all, is how do you get old?
Right?
Like, I just- The portal.
The- I know.
So you're saying that 'Cause, like, I think that there's multiple ways to get old.
There's one, go buy a bunch of players who have played four years and have proven, and I think that obviously works.
But also, if you're Alabama and you're taking a bunch of young, talented players, the hope is that you can retain those players so that one day they will get old with you.
you know- But they may never get old.
Like Caden Proctor, he had what a lot You know, what most players want to have, the three years and out.
Like, "I'm, I'm three years and I'm off to the NFL."
Yeah, but I would still think that juniors are old, right?
but it is- Older, it is Caden Proctor was a third-year starter, so yes, absolutely.
You know, I think that Caden Proctor is a perfect example of what I think is the exact thing that you want, which is somebody who plays three years and stays in your program for all three, and is really good in his final year.
but, like, it is so funny, Andy, 'cause it is such a departure from, like, the 2016 year, where, like, I think I wrote a big story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or it might have even been The Athletic back then, about how Ohio State is too old, and they are not gonna be as good this year because they didn't have enough players that were NFL-ready to go.
Like, that was the thing, right?
Like, if you were a, a- Right ... traditional recruiting juggernaut, and you had a bunch of fourth-year players on your team, that means that you missed on all those recruits that you signed 'cause they're supposed to be in the league.
but yeah, like, I, I think that, like, if you are bashing your head against the wall because you're an Alabama fan and you're not old enough, I think that I would probably pump the brakes on that a little bit.
Like, I don't know if we have enough data yet to prove that, like, you unequivocally have to have X number of fourth-year, fifth-year seniors on your team to win a national championship.
What I would be most concerned with, as always, is having the best players, and I don't think that that always- Right ... correlates to how old you are.
Now, lastly, the most ironic thing about this, Andy, and it cannot be understated, and it has to be acknowledged, is that Washington and Michigan were two very veteran teams, right as the, at the climax of the change of the sport.
Like, Kalen DeBoer's entire success, or the number one bullet point on his resume that afforded him the opportunity to be Alabama's head coach, was taking Washington to the national championship game, and Washington was an older team than Michigan that year.
Yeah.
They were an incredibly old team.
So, you know, I, I don't know Like, I- if I had to, like, bet on it, like, if you're trying to, like, ask me, "Should you abandon traditional high school recruiting and just get older every year?"
I would think that's an insane thing to say right now.
Well, and, and that's what I was gonna ask you.
Yeah.
I was gonna ask you that.
Because, o- or do you try to strike a different balance?
I guess if you wanted to say, "Hey, you know what?
We're gonna allocate all our money to our top five class, to the top 10 players in each class, and try to get 10 elite-level high schoolers in your program every year instead of 15 to 20 to 25."
Mm-hmm.
"And you wanted to sh- cut that number down and focus on the main core guys, which would make, over a four-year period, half of your roster," then I think I could buy that with the anticipation of getting players in the portal.
But I guess, like, are we past the point in the portal now where there's even any concern that there's gonna be players at the position of need?
Like, five years ago or four years ago, when the portal was open, like, we also had to be afraid of, like, well, if you, if you bank too much on the portal, you might not have the type of player you need to fill the hole that you have.
But are we past that now- Yeah ... since so many players enter it?
Like, 'cause it is kind of a crapshoot, too, of, like, who's available.
Well, and that's the thing is a lot of the SEC programs kind of traded, like, especially on the offensive line, traded younger players who hadn't really played much.
And so you saw them You know, this guy would move from this school to the o- the other.
He's been at, at the first school two years.
He has He's been a backup, and now he's gonna go to the, the next school, and we don't know if he's gonna be a backup or a starter.
Now, I will say this, like, Alabama didn't completely stay young in the portal.
Like, they got, Jayden James is one of the players they got out of the portal.
He was Mississippi State's starting left tackle last year.
He's been in college three years.
Like, he's an old player who's experienced at a position that they need.
So it's not like they didn't do that.
Yeah.
They just, they just didn't do it with everyone.
It was more o- more of the Mario Cristobal method of some of these portal guys are gonna be older players who fill an immediate need, must start right away, must contribute right away.
And some of these guys are younger players in the portal who have eligibility remaining, that we like, and maybe we can develop.
Yeah.
I mean, if you go look at the way that Miami was broken down, that's probably the way I would do it.
You know, you gotta go get your Ruben Bain, right?
You have to go get your Kai Johnson- Well, I This, I'm thinking more like your Zechariah Poyser.
Like, Zechariah Poyser was a, was a freshman, all Well, he was, he was an All-Conference player as a freshman at Jacksonville State, and made all sorts of freshman All-America teams.
And so they take him with three years of eligibility remaining at Miami, and he immediately starts for them.
Yeah.
But even if he hadn't, then you still get, get something out of him.
Marty Brown, I think, had spent two years at, at North Dakota State, so he had, he had two more years remaining.
So you, you knew you were gonna Like, they didn't take Marty Brown to necessarily start right away, and- So who are the best players on Miami's team?
Marty Brown's probably the backup running back next year.
Who are the best players on Miami's team?
Malachi Tony, Ruben Bain, and, Francis Maunua.
Okay.
And all three of those were high school signees, right?
All of them.
Yeah.
And, and that's the thing.
Like, those names that Kalen DeBoer mentioned, the names he mentioned at the end of that answer, Michael Carroll- Dijon Lee.
Those are all people who signed in the class of 2025.
Like, Michael Carroll and Dijon Lee were five-star prospects.
Michael Carroll was the number 14 overall prospect.
He's an offensive lineman.
He was starting at the end of the year.
Dijon Lee, cornerback, the number 15 overall prospect.
Like, those are the type of players that usually, you know, back in, in, 10 years ago, they come into their own in season two.
Yeah.
Like, their sophomore year is when they, they really blossom, and if they hit, they hit big.
And I think if you're Alabama, if you're Georgia, if you're Ohio State, if you're Oregon, you're still banking on that sort of thing.
Like, Oregon wants to Decoryan Moore to have the breakout season of all breakout seasons next year- Yeah ... as a true sophomore.
And he might.
And, you know, the thing that Miami also had was Akin Mesidor, who was a transfer, and he was an older player.
I mean, he was a 2020 prospect.
But he was a, but he was a transfer after one year at West Virginia, and he spent three years at Miami.
Right.
So, like, I, I, I think that, like, these trends are fun, a- as you show a picture of Akin Mesidor smashing Julian Zahn's face in.
but like, I also know that, like, there's so many players on all these teams, it's really hard to have a boilerplate thing.
But I still think that you should still sign 15 high school players a year that are really, really good, and then maybe in the portal, you know, find guys that are high upside who are leaving too early, or find veterans that are very, very good.
But like, you know, Texas Tech is one of the older teams, too- Mm-hmm ... and they couldn't move a, they couldn't get a first down against Oregon.
No.
And like, it's like that, like, being old is always- I, right ... yes.
And, and I think, I think we saw We are probably overreacting to Indiana right now.
Probably overacting, overreacting to that one team.
And it's interesting, 'cause, another one of the older teams in the, the playoff this year, according to that, that chart I was giving you, was Texas A&M.
They were the third oldest team.
Yeah.
And I, I would contribute that to probably Mike Elko being a new coach.
Like, you know, they, they fired a coach two years ago.
Mike Elko came in, and, and he told us on this show that the roster was, was in a very unbalanced place.
So he went and got experience.
Yeah.
I think experienced players at some of the more physical positions.
Yeah.
Like, older players on the lines, older players at linebacker, and then what I think you actually- The, the, the closer you are to the line of scrimmage, the older you probably need to be.
Older you should be.
Right.
Yeah.
And then as you get further away from the line of scrimmage, sensational play-making ability is always going to be crucial.
Always.
And like, the thing is, is like, we, we spent a ton of time talking about Baby Jesus, and rightfully so.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Like, Malachi Toney is an absolute demon out there.
We did not spend enough time collectively as a college football community discussing how fricking good Indiana's receivers are.
Like- Yes.
Well, right!
And, and, and- ... the other thing about that is, who was the most important person who came on in the middle of this season, you know, from middle of the season on for Indiana?
Charlie Becker.
Charlie Becker.
Yeah.
A recruit out of high school.
And I think a two-star.
Yeah, from Nashville.
Like, bunch of the SEC looked at Charlie Becker and was like, "Eh."
Charlie Becker made two plays on critical fourth downs that were back shoulder throws with Mendoza in the fourth quarter and third quarter, I believe.
It was the fourth quarter, both of them, maybe.
Yeah.
in that game that won them the national title.
Also- I think you could make the Who was the MVP?
Go back to the Penn State game.
Mendoza.
The Omar Cooper catch never happens if not for the incredible Charlie Becker catch right before it.
Yeah.
Andy, I know that we have to give the MVP to the quarterback who had the sensational run that is gonna be played on NFL Films for years to come- Yeah ... but like, Charlie Becker was the MVP of the game, in my opinion.
I, I think- ... the number of times Fernando Mendoza and Charlie Becker must have practiced that throw was the MVP.
Like- Yeah ... how many, how many days over the summer did they just practice that?
Becker told us- Because- ... after the game that his hands would bleed.
That's how many times they did it.
Yeah.
That, that's, that's the MVP right there.
Like, the work ethic that, that allows those two people to practice that throw, that particular route, over and over and over again, so that when it matters the most, you know it's gonna work.
It's amazing- That's the MVP ... that something so hard to do could look so deliberate while also looking so accidental.
But, and here's the thing, and this is where we, we, we can give Kalen DeBoer some grace here, because he has recruited really well out of high school.
That is a transfer player throwing to a guy that was recruited out of high school.
It doesn't have to be all fifth-year guys who transferred to your program.
Yeah.
So- That said, like, the secondary conversation about DeBoer is it better work!
No matter what you're doing, better work this year.
Right, it better work.
Yeah.
And you know, that, the offensive line needs to be revamped, and, and we saw that.
Who throws the ball?
We'll find out, but it's, it's gonna be a guy Kalen DeBoer recruited out of high school, not necessarily a guy Kalen DeBoer recruited out, out of, out of high school at Alabama, 'cause it's either Keelon Russell, who he signed at Alabama, or it's Austin Mack, who he originally signed at Washington and then brought to Alabama.
It's one of those two.
So these are Kalen DeBoer guys, both of them.
They did not come up under any other coach.
But we don't know who's gonna win that job.
That is a pure open competition right now.
Yeah.
and will be one that we talk about quite a bit this off-season.
But yeah, like I, I do love these philosophical off-season discussions, because it gives us something to track.
Do you need to be old?
Do you need to be talented?
Do you need to be both?
but you know, I think if we find out in five years that this year's Indiana team was just a combination of Heisman-winning quarterback, number one overall draft pick, and one of the most amazing head coaching- not only runs, but discoveries of all time, like, that would also, like, w- who cares about anything else?
Right.
Like, you can try to- But, but maybe one of those, one of those four youngest teams.
W- w- was it Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon?
Oregon.
If I said one of those four teams is gonna win the national title next year, most people would be like, "Yeah, sounds okay."
Sounds right.
"Sounds good."
Yeah.
You know, I don't know.
Yeah.
Like, is Wake Forest gonna come out of nowhere and win next year?
Like, probably not.
Like, I don't know.
we'll see.
We are a Jake, Jake Dickert podcast, so- He's a really good coach.
Yeah.
and w- having- We gotta get Rob Izell, his offensive coordinator, on.
You know- Remember Rob Izell was the guy who did the perfect Nick Saban impression when he was- Yeah ... an Alabama walk-on?
Yeah, we need to do that.
I'm a big- So- ...
I'm a big sucker for impressions.
There's this guy on Instagram that does a Denzel Washington impression that makes Like, it, it sounds more like Denzel Washington than, Denzel Washington himself, and I find it to be- Can I play it for a second?
No.
Okay.
Not right now.
Okay, I just like It sounds just like him.
We'll have him on.
Yeah.
We'll have him on as Denzel and have him talk about college football as Denzel Washington.
I'm gonna message him.
Don't, don't- Don't t- don't tempt you with a good time?
Don't threaten you with a good time.
I, I am a sucker for good impressions.
Do you think our numbers would pop if we had guy who sounds exactly like Denzel Washington co- talking college football, and we just ran photos of Denzel Washington over it?
'Cause I'm sure he doesn't look like Denzel Washington.
Yeah.
I don't understand why he won't let me play it right now, but, it would, and- Well, send it to Producer River.
He can insert it into the show so it's not you holding your phone up to the microphone- Okay, I'm sending it to Producer River ... like an amateur.
And maybe we'll pay it off at the end.
I don't know.
You'll have to stick around till the end to find out.
But, you know, one of the most successful clips that we ever had on Until Saturday, after you bailed on me at The Athletic -- Was Hey, we're all friends here.
we had a voicemail line, which I hope we can institute at some point with us, um- Oh, I did set one up, so yes- You did set one up.
We, we, we will set that up for next season, yes.
But some guy called in and asked a question while doing a Keith Jackson impression, and it sounded more like Keith Jackson than Keith Jackson.
And, like, people thought it was amazing.
Like, I think everybody's a sucker for a good impersonation, aren't they?
Whoa, Nelly, indeed.
All right, I Let me, let me just get the, the text out to, to Frank Caliendo for the off-season.
We'll, we'll get that set up.
But we have questions from you.
It is a Dear Andy, Dear Ari day.
We have lots of great questions.
We'll get to those right after these words from Dell.
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All right, great questions this week.
We start with one from Mark: "Dear Andy and Ari, do you think college football is now experiencing what the NFL did in 2011 when they implemented the rookie wage scale, and is it possible it benefits teams with smaller pockets?
In 2010, Sam Bradford signed a six-year, $78 million contract, and in 2011, Cam Newton signed a four-year, $22 million contract.
Now, with college teams seem- seemingly leaning more into pro- the proven guys, doesn't it mean the five-star players might be making a more, quote-unquote, rookie wage scale-type contract, and with that, smaller schools might be able to acquire top talent easier, albeit riskier?
If blue-blood programs are spending on, spending big on proven rentals, they might not wanna spend as much on the five-star QBs to be a backup, and therefore, l- the lesser schools might get them.
The freshman players would be able to start right away and then leave to bigger and better plat- programs if they perform.
Thanks, and I've learned and cared more about college football the last two years than ever because of you guys."
Thank you so much, Mark.
That is awesome to hear.
That's a really nice thing to say.
Thank you, Mark.
So this is a great question.
It, it actually dovetails perfectly with what we were just talking about with Alabama.
And what we were talking about, a- and you mentioned it, Ari, like, maybe the balance for a, even a blue-blood recruiting cor- program like Alabama, maybe only 10 really big freshmen.
And it doesn't necessarily have to be a quarterback every year.
Like, Alabama right now has a, a five-star quarterback in Keilan Russell, who is competing for the job.
But if you decided, like Miami, you're gonna be a, a quarterback rental program, you don't need a five-star quarterback.
Like, Miami Who's biggest, Miami's biggest signee this year?
It's Jackson Cantwell.
He's an offensive lineman.
So I, I think maybe The quarterback thing's really interesting, and so I was talking to somebody about Jared Curtis the other day.
So Jared Curtis, for those who don't remember, is the, was the number-one quarterback in the Class of 2026.
He's going to Vanderbilt.
He was originally committed to Georgia.
He flipped to Vanderbilt toward the end.
I don't know his exact NIL dollar figures, but from what I was told, he was essentially gonna get a backup salary at Georgia as a freshman that would blossom into a starter salary when he became the starter.... part of the reason you flip to Vandy is 'cause the job's open, but also they can pay you like the starter, because they don't have a current starter.
So that is Vandy, which never would've been able to flip a quarterback from Georgia before, able to do that now because of this system.
No, the, the, here's, here's a That's a good point.
That's not what the question is, I don't think.
I think the question is, should Georgia no longer be interested in Jarred Curtis at all out of high school?
And will the backup offer from Georgia not exist, and thus make the starter salary less for p- player, for places like Vandy, right?
Well, no.
It, it, it makes them, that quarterback available to them.
I think they still have to spend some money.
Now, but remember, I, I doubt very seriously that Jarred Curtis is making anywhere near what Darrian Mensah, Sam Levitt, or Brendan Smorsby are making.
That's what the experienced portal guys- Yeah.
Like, those guys are making i- like, 5 million plus.
But should- I would bet Jarred Curtis isn't making anywhere near that.
But should Georgia, and Alabama, and Ohio State dish out seven figures for a freshman quarterback?
No.
No, 'cause you- And- ... mess up your, you mess up your salary scale.
And, and I talked to an NFL scout about this this week, and I hadn't heard this term, but I, I like it, "You mess up your, your financial locker room chemistry."
Like, and I've talked about this before, 'cause everybody's like, "Well, what are You know, how are the players gonna accept one making so much more than the other?"
The same way everybody else does in every line of work.
'Cause every- everybody has jobs where somebody makes more and somebody makes less.
But it has to make sense.
Like, it has to make The player who deserves it most has to make the most, and the, the locker room will respect that.
If it's a really good player who's really important to the team, the locker room will respect that person making more money.
If it's not someone who's proven anything, that's where you get a problem, and that's what the NFL ran into.
The difference is they have a CBA, so they could go back and say, "Hey, teams, we have this little problem," and the teams had the same problem.
Like, the, well, they're like, "We can't help ourselves.
We keep spending too much on these number-one draft picks."
And the players are like, "You know what?
We actually think that's a problem, too.
So how about we create this rookie salary scale, and we'll solve both our problems?"
There's no CBA in college football, so they can't do it that way, but perhaps the market can, can do it- Yeah ... for them.
But if Georgia isn't offering Jarred Curtis X- Right ... Vanderbilt doesn't, doesn't have to pay 1.5X.
They might just have to pay X, which then ultimately will bring the entire market down, which then opens the door for everybody.
Or Georgia will only offer X, and then- Right ... and X is X.
Right.
Right, so- Right, and Vanderbilt probably still has to offer more than Georgia to make you go to Vanderbilt instead of Georgia, but it doesn't have to ma- it doesn't have to offer you what Darrian Mensah's getting at Miami.
Right.
Where what Darrian Mensah Well, nobody in high school's gotten what Darrian Mensah's getting.
No, no, and I'm trying to think of any recruit out of high school Like, Jeremiah Smith, I know we always bring him up, but he's, he's an alien.
He's the only kind of person we're talking about here, who, out of high school, is a sure, sure thing.
But, you know, even if you go back in time and remember on the show when I said he's the best receiver in college football in the middle of his true freshman year, people freaked out.
I think people wanna see it for an entire year before they're willing to accept it, regardless of how generational- Yeah, but that's, that's one of those you know Like, 'cause I'm talking about locker room.
I don't care what the fans think of the salary.
Yeah.
Like, when Jeremiah Smith walks into the first workout at Ohio State, if he's the highest paid player on the team as a true freshman, which he wasn't, but if he had been, everybody on the team would've been like, "I get it.
Okay."
Yeah.
"That's cool."
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know- That's not the case with almost anybody else.
It is wild to me, 'cause if I were a head coach, I would go all in on high school players.
Interesting.
I still think I would.
This- And I wouldn't- Despite the recent evidence?
I mean, I guess the hardest part about it is, is that even if you get them, there's no guarantee you get to keep them.
That's the problem- That's the hardest part ... right there, and that- Yeah ... that's my issue with quarterbacks.
That's why I have, I have now come to the conclusion that if I were running a program, I'd never sign a five-star or high four-star quarterback out of high school.
Yeah.
I would, I would try to find an under-recruited one that I really liked, that I thought had potential, but I would not waste my money on the, the very expensive ones.
Oh, in theory, what you're basically saying, if we put it through ChatGPT, Translator, or Google Translator, whatever you wanna say, is let the smaller schools be the farm system for the big schools?
Yes, and I, I've actually heard stories of coaches who, who, who would just, like, straight up say that off the record.
There are a few.
What happens is, when you do that, you run the risk of losing to Indiana.
You do.
Because what if Jarred Curtis is awesome at Vanderbilt and doesn't wanna leave?
Like, there's no guarantee he's gonna leave, either.
Like, that's the other thing that you have to- Oh, I don't, I don't think he's gonna leave.
The, that Here's the other part of that: if you're, if you're an SEC or a Big Ten school especially, or you're Texas Tech and you're definitely willing to spend, or you're Miami and you're willing to spend, you're gonna keep the good players you sign out of high school.
I think Diego Pavia's college experience is probably pretty great.
Yeah.
You know, you're, you are gonna keep those guys.
Where you're not gonna keep them- is if you try to do what Georgia and Ohio State did 10 years ago and stack all these guys.
Yeah.
'Cause when they don't play the first year, if they're not absolutely the starter the second year, they're gone.
So what do you- so which high school players do you sign?
The, the best ones that you can find at positions of need?
Well, let's go back to what we said in the pr- in the first segment.
The closer you are to the line of scrimmage, the older you need to be.
So I'm signing the best receivers, the best corners, the best running backs I can find.
Edge rushers, I don't think I can get many good ones out of the portal, so I'm gonna try to find those.
And then you do it with the idea and commitment of being incredibly, insanely aggressive in the portal, because once it opens- Yes ... you have to get guys.
I want experienced- If you don't get them- ... good players.
Now, the thing is, I don't necessarily need somebody who was all-conference in the Big 12 or the ACC.
If you, if you're a three-year starter who's all-conference in the MAC, and you fit my physical profile that I need and, and you fit my scheme, I'm feeling pretty confident about you coming in and helping me.
Yeah.
It just seems so strange to me that we are, like, openly talking about, like, punting on reserve linemen.
it's, it, it, it's the new Now, it's interesting- I feel like I need to take a hot shower ... Alex Gurley, the Auburn coach, was talking about this yesterday.
Because he obviously had to re- revamp the entire roster, especially the offensive side of the ball.
Basically, it was an entire roster flip on the, on offense.
He needed a new starting offensive line, and he also needed a new backup offensive line, and he was explaining how they, recruiting those two groups is different.
Like, what you're looking for in the portal is different when you're looking for a backup.
Like, when you're looking for a backup, that's where you may find a guy who doesn't have tons of starting Like, that's where you may take the guy who is unhappy with his playing time at the big school he's at, and is coming to your place to get a chance for, to win a starting job, but he still might not wind up being a backup.
Yeah.
That's where you go, the young guy that has four years of eligibility left on the offensive line.
So it's, it's a weird balance, and I don't think there's a right answer that we know of yet.
And, and I think you're right, where we just go, "Whatever the last thing that happened is, we assume is the way, the way it works."
I don't think that's necessarily true.
So these coaches are all gonna have to figure out their own balance.
Like- Well, Andy, you gotta, you gotta also, when you talk about the benefits of something, you have to discuss the risk.
Mm-hmm.
And here's the risk.
If you punt on high school, or at least 40 to 50% of the class in ter- in sheer numbers, because th- you think it's a waste of an investment, and then you are light there, and then you- Mm-hmm ... suck up in the portal, or you miss on everybody in the portal- You're dead ... you don't do well in the portal, you might look around in spring and be like, "We're fucked."
Like, like, you know?
But you're, but you're also dead if you miss in high school.
Like- Yeah ... if you're a good evaluator, you're a good evaluator.
If you miss in high school, those players enter the portal because they're no longer gonna ever see the field there.
So you could still be out for a year.
But they still took up space on your roster when somebody more productive could have, and you were losing then.
But you won't have the backup, is what I'm saying.
They would still be a pretty good backup.
So go get So go buy another backup.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's terrifying.
Like, you're, like, making me talk about something that I is, like, physically uncomfortable for me.
I know.
This is, we, we This whole system is shattering a worldview that you held for the better part of 15 years.
It wasn't a worldview that I held.
It was a fact.
I used to- It was ... People who have been listening to me for years used to know I scream, "Stars matter," into the ph- in the microphone a million times.
And, like, I get mocked for it sometimes, too.
Like, like, all of a sudden, like, my viewpoint- So I was thinking about this today as I was, I was going through our website at On3.
I have- I'm gonna have some suggestions to our, our tech people, I think.
Because one thing I wanna see when I pull up somebody's player page right now, I wanna see how many, how many games they've started or how many games they've played in in their career.
Like, I wanna immediately know that.
Yeah.
'Cause I That is exactly what's happening.
'Cause I've talked to these guys, like Tracking Football and, all these different companies that, that produce tools for the teams.
Like, if you subscribe to Tracking Football and their platform, when you pull up a guy who's entered the portal, you get all that information at your fingertips.
It's like, this guy's started this many games, he's played this many years, he's played at this level.
And I think all that matters because, like, we used to talk about the roster talent, and our, our, you know, our pal Bud Elliott over at, at the Cover 3 show, he has his blue chip ratio, which I think probably needs to be altered a bit.
But we have to really change the way we evaluate roster talent from now on.
Mm-hmm.
This hurts your heart, I can tell.
Well, I just don't wanna make the mistake of, like, my viewpoint was wrong for 25 years.
No, it changed.
It wasn't wrong.
Yeah.
It was right.
Yeah.
It was right for the system that existed then.
Yeah.
The system changed, and we don't know what's right in the new world yet, because the new world hasn't existed long enough.
Yeah.
And you still, like, you still need to sign players out of high school so the players can play the games.
Like, I mean- Mm-hmm ... somebody's gonna have to sign these guys.
Like- Right ... if everybody is punting on- But it may be that the- ... high school recruiting, what I mean, there's be no, there'd be no talent.
It may be the G5, it may be the FCS.
Yeah.
And the best of the best are still gonna sign with the, the blue chip schools.
Yeah.... they're still gonna be there.
But that opens up an entire new- we talked to Diego Pavia yesterday at C- talked to Diego Pavia yesterday at the Senior Bowl, and he was talking about, like, "I don't believe your hype.
You have to show it to me on the field."
And then, he got asked, "Okay, who showed it to you on the field?"
And he's like, "Dylan Stewart at South Carolina."
He's like, "I, I had never really played against somebody who could wreck an entire offense by himself.
And then we played Dylan Stewart, and I was like, 'Oh, yeah, you're worth every penny.'"
Yeah.
I've stood next to that human being, and we need to make sure- ... that that's actually a human.
Do you believe in aliens?
I do.
Dylan Stewart is, is one of those guys that you, you, you see him, and, and, and you think, "This person was created in a lab to rush the quarterback."
"This is not This is not just a natural collection of genes."
Like, this- somebody, somebody said, "I'm gonna create the perfect pass rusher here."
When you think about how far the edge of the known universe is, 7 million- Pretty damn ... light years away or 8 million- Yeah ... light years away, you have to travel- Oh, there's definitely aliens, 100%.
You have to travel at the speed of light for 8 million years.
Do you know how far Like, that's a, that's a distance that you can't even fathom.
You're telling me that it's probably a mathematical impossibility that there isn't at least another civilization of some sort out there, and maybe one that's far more technologically advanced than we could ever imagine.
So you're saying on Dylan Stewart's home planet, they all look like- What I'm saying is- ... the perfect pass rusher?
Is it really that inconceivable that there are people amongst us that look like us, talk like us, act like us, behave like us, everything like us, but aren't us?
And if we are not sure about that, first person I'm looking into is Dylan Stewart.
I watched every episode of Ancient Aliens, Ari, so I believe you 100%.
Aliens.
It could be aliens!
You know, there was, like, a South Amer- in South America, there was, like, this, And I can't remember what it's called.
I watched this a while ago, but there was a monument that's, like, 10,000 feet above sea level, and it was made out of rock that was so heavy- Mm-hmm ... that it took, like, 25 million, like, or- Ari, I have seen all six episodes of Ancient Aliens about that structure.
Okay, so you know.
So, like, you know that humans, no matter what they could do, could not have traversed the side of that mountain.
Ancient astronaut theorists believe- Andy- ... explain it to me.
The rock did not, did not come from South America.
It didn't originate in South America, and it was- it weighed, like, 1,000 tons, and it was built into a structure on top of a mountain in- on that continent.
Explain that to me.
Aliens.
Dylan Stewart.
Just a, a, an entire species of, of people who look like Dylan Stewart just, like, picking it up on their own, just walking it over.
Yeah.
You wanna tell me how the pyramids were made?
I have a common sense.
You wanna know how the pyramids were made?
Dylan Stewart.
Dylan Stewart is actually 7 million years old.
Or where- or whoever he, he is, yeah.
Get- get- South Carolina getting old and staying old.
All right, let's Our next question comes from- What about old Let me tell you about Egypt.
All right, go ahead.
Exactly.
Our next question comes from Iowa Marketing on Twitter, and I had not thought about this, but this is maybe the funniest part of all of this stuff with Dabo Sweeney and Pete Golding and, and everybody else.
How is it that Kirk Ferentz is the only coach in the NIL era that has been suspended for tampering?
And I had completely forgotten about this, but Kirk Ferentz did miss a game against Illinois State a few years ago because he contacted Cade McNamara.
Remember the quarterback who transferred from Michigan to Iowa- I remember ... who then later transferred to East Tennessee State?
Yeah.
He had contacted him at a time he wasn't supposed to contact him, and he got, he got suspend- they, they self-imposed a one-game suspension, not without- Which was probably a mistake on his part- Right ... more than anything, not even malicious behavior.
He just like, "Oh," Yeah, Iowa's like, "Hey, we messed up."
"Kirk's gonna sit this game.
It's cool."
How is that possible?
Of all the people, Kirk Ferentz is the only one.
He's not the only one, by the way.
Let me tell you- Like, there've been a couple more.
There was, like, two Arkansas State staffers.
There's a couple, but yeah.
I gotta tell you, if you did, like, a ranking of most unlikely people to get exposed for tampering Like, you know, actually, when you think about just Kirk Ferentz and, like, where he's been the last five years, that guy's seen some shit the last five years.
Like- But the thing is, like, Kirk- but Kirk Ferentz is the one guy in college football who Like, everybody tampers, and I actually, I, I, I'm willing to believe that whenever he called Cade McNamara or, or texted him when he wasn't supposed to, it was a mistake.
But I can just see him be like, "Yeah, I did it.
I'll just take my lumps."
Yeah.
Unbelievable.
So obviously, that's the hot topic.
our pal, John Canzano, out in Portland, wrote a story just yesterday, that Fresno State apparently is also accusing Ole Miss of, of tampering.
So you've got that going on.
You've got the Dabo Sweeney, Pete Golding stuff.
You've got Ole Miss obviously saying, "Hey, wait a second.
If you're gonna look at us, you're gonna look at our old coach at LSU?"
And so you have all that.
So I mentioned I talked to, to Alex Goluich, the Auburn coach, yesterday.
our friend Seth Emerson from The Athletic asked him a question about tampering, and I thought Alex Goluich's answer was, was very interesting.
So here's Alex Goluich on tampering.
... NCAA thinks tampering.
I know that South Florida, you were on the other end of it, I'm sure, of big programs trying to pluck your players.
Is there anything that needs to be done, that can be done to- stop it?
Or how much of an issue do you think it is?
Man, that's a loaded question with a lot of tentacles off of it.
yeah, so at South Florida, I would tell you not as crazy as you would think.
you, you had relationships with guys, and you were running a program based on authentic things.
I, I think it's all relative, you know?
It- like we used to talk about at the Group of Five level, like, "Man, people are gonna come get our kids."
Well, look at who's in front of the podium right now complaining about it, you know.
Like, it, it- the level's irrelevant.
It's, it truly is all relative to where you are.
it's been going on for a really long time.
This portal era, I, I think, amplified it in every imaginable way.
There eventually needs to be guardrails on this thing.
I think we all want guardrails.
I, I think we all wanna know the rules in which you, you can operate in.
The truth is, right now there aren't any, so you, you operate ethically as w- w- with what you feel like is right.
is it right to call a kid that's on somebody else's roster to go get him?
It's not.
I, I think in a lot of ways, what goes around comes around.
In the fall, you gotta go line up and play, and, and I'm a strong believer in the football gods will find you at some point, and generally they'll find you at the end of a game or, or they'll find you on fourth and one.
And I think you gotta do things the right way, and the right way is, is doing right by the young people and doing right by your program.
But the pressure to win is great, and people feel it in different ways, and so I'm not here to judge anybody else's decisions on how they operate.
But you would love to have some guardrails within, within the system, and I think maybe as I establish myself in this conference, I'll have more vocal opinions.
Right now, I'm just the new guy on the block trying to build a program here at Auburn, and, and do it the right way.
The football gods will find you on fourth and one, Ari.
That's terrifying.
Does that mean the person that you tampered for- Love that ... will fumble it in the biggest moment or miss a touch?
I don't know if that's necessarily true.
I don't think one applies to the other, but if you wanna believe that, I'm okay with that.
I- Well, you know- I like the conviction with which he says it.
The thing that is kind of interesting to me, Andy, is the teams and the programs and the coaches and the staffers that tamper are bad people or scumbags, but the kid that goes isn't, right?
He's just doing what's best for himself.
So, like, who's the karma- You're saying how our view of him, our view of these- Well, I mean, that's, that's necessarily- I don't necessarily view the guy, the coach as tampering as scumbags either.
They're- No, I know, but I'm just saying that's the viewpoint.
Yeah.
Like, you think that if they're- Yeah ... breaking the rules I think in general, in society, if you break rules or you do things that are, quote, unquote, "wrong," that people view you as a scumbag.
not that they are.
I'm not saying that anybody who wants a good player to come play for them is a bad person.
but, like, it's just who's getting punished in the karma?
Is it the Is it the player or the play, or the program?
'Cause both would be punished.
I don't think the player's doing anything wrong.
Right.
But yes, the, i- in that situation, the player and the program get punished if the football gods are striking them down.
Now, did the football gods cause Kirk Ferentz to sit out one game against Illinois State?
I think that was probably the compliance department at Iowa- Yeah ... and Kirk Ferentz.
But I still can't get over this.
Like- Just like, like rubberized.
It, it is the funniest thing about it when it, when you really think about it.
Like, all of the Sturm and Drang over this, and it happens in, in all of these places, and Kirk Ferentz sitting out a game over Cade McNamara, who is not a very good quarterback for Iowa- Yeah ... ultimately.
Just- It's just a funny, funny situation.
It's, it's the icing on the cake, is what it is.
And like we said earlier, we'll see about this, and, thanks to, to Ben Garrett at OM Spirit for, for writing a column about the conversation Ari and I had the other day, with, Dabo Sweeney accusing Pete Golding and You know, 'cause it, like, the Ole Miss fans, I, I get it.
They're understandably confused about this.
You know, they've been watching their roster get raided, or at least Lane Kiffin attempted to raid it.
They didn't-- he didn't necessarily succeed all the way, but they've been watching this happen for two months now, and they're like, "Okay, but what would you like us to do?"
Yeah.
It is, like, kind of like an unwinnable situation.
Like, there's like I, I don't know.
It's just another tentacle of college football that's broken and can't be fixed.
It can be fixed.
It can't be fixed with the same solution that everybody's pushing against, the, despite the fact that it would be better for everyone.
Yeah.
Yeah, the schools just don't wanna do it.
It- Yeah ... it can be fixed.
You know, and, and I think about this sometimes.
Dan Wetzel, our friend who works at ESPN, he's talked about this a bunch.
You could just not fix it.
You just let it be.
Just let it be this completely open thing.
Don't have rules.
Dan Wetzel also wants there to be steroids in baseball.
I get it.
Like an all-ster- All steroid- Our, our friends at Pardon My Take have, have advocated that, by the way.
I think they, they advocated it to Rob Manfred, the, the Major League Baseball commissioner, where they were like, "Uh, yeah, all-steroid league or steroid month, wherever everybody can go on steroids for a month and just jack dingers."
Yeah, if you, if you wanna, if you wanna make a, make it in Major League Baseball, h- you have to sacrifice your body.
How bad do you want it?
I Look, if there were no rules, if it was just complete anarchy- Would it be that much different than it is now?
No.
It is different.
Would it be bad?
Would it be bad?
I don't know.
That's a, that's a- I mean, would, would, would it, would it any- would anything morally wrong 'Cause I, again- 'Cause the people who would have the hardest time with the Wild, Wild West are the people who are getting paid millions of dollars.
Right, because I've never had a moral problem with paying someone for being good at a sport.
There's nothing morally wrong with that.
The NCAA and the, and the schools tried for years to convince us that that was morally wrong, but most people aren't that stupid.
So, I don't- Here's where it would be a problem.
I don't know if it Like, I could probably handle pure anarchy.
You are conflating two different things.
Okay.
One is, I don't think it's bad for the people involved.
Like, I don't think anybody's a criminal involved in this.
Right.
So from that standpoint, like, not punishing people for not doing terrible things are not- it's no big deal.
Right.
You have to protect the fan experience the best that you can, and I think that the fan experience would be incredibly worse.
If, if we had pure anarchy?
Yes.
No real rules.
We have to at least have the- Not just changing teams, like, mid-season.
Yeah.
Like I mean, and I guess, like, academic rules would stop that from happening, right?
'Cause you can't just, like, leave school.
I mean, does anybody actually follow- do we know if anybody follows those anymore?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
People bend rules academically all the time to get into school and stuff, so, like, I have no idea.
But what I do think is, is that, like, the problem to we don't know how to fix this can't be who cares.
Like, I, I, I just think that we always have to, like, do our best to at least attempt for there to be some sort of order in this whole thing.
Because I think from a fan perspective, the reason why the NFL is so wildly popular isn't just because it's football and it's the highest level of football, it's also because everybody is, is subject to the same rules, and it promotes a competitive environment.
Right.
Like, I, I don't know We're already living in that world, so how much worse can it be is a good point.
But I don't know if a lot of fans are enjoying this.
But by comparison, how much better could an orderly world created by a CBA be?
That's ultimately the only solution here to me.
Probably, 'cause they're not gonna get a federal law.
So- As bad as they want one.
They, or they may get one, but it wouldn't be nearly as far-reaching as they want, and probably wouldn't allow them to do the things that they really wanna do to take control- Yeah ... and have rules that you can really use.
Like, I don't- nobody wants college football to be The Purge.
Like, I don't think that that's, that's a helpful thought.
I mean, college football is The Purge right now.
Yeah.
But we have to act like it's not, and that's fun.
I don't have to act like it's not.
It's all window dressing.
You can act like it's not.
We had an entire show about rules.
Every, every, every show in the off-season's about rules if we, if we just- Two days ago ... answer the mail.
Yeah.
Honestly, we had a show about rules two days ago and yesterday, and now we're doing it again today.
And today.
Yeah.
Welcome to the off-season of college football!
Let's talk rules, baby.
All right, one more question.
From Steve in San Antonio: "Guys, I had a question about recruit star rankings," which is very timely, because we just had our, final set of class of 2026 five stars released this week.
"Last week I recall you guys reviewing some of the yearly lists of the top 10 QBs in each class.
You guys were saying it had pretty much turned into a crap shoot similar to the NFL draft, because a lot of these guys are not coming close to panning out.
My question lies in how stars are assigned to QBs specifically, and whether or not level of play is a factor in star ratings.
A generic example would be here in Texas, where the classifications are 1A to 6A.
Let's say Billy Joe plays for Podunk High out in the sticks in a 2A or 3A classification.
Billy is slinging it all over the yard and killing the weak opposition week after week, and putting up crazy numbers.
The recruiting services make him a four or five star, and everybody wants the kid.
He has all of the measurables.
However, would it not be reasonable to assume that if he was playing with the big boys in 6A in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, he would not look nearly as good?
So when he finally goes to campus, he does not play, does not play well, and transfers every year with no real success.
So when you review the list of QBs for the past years, where does level of play factor in, if at all?"
This is a very good question from Steve, and I, I will tell you, you know, like, Charles Power and Cody Beeler, who, who do the scouting for us and, and have a big hand in the rankings, they do take that into account.
They absolutely take level of play into account.
And certain players are under-recruited and under-ranked because of level of play.
I can give you a, a, a smaller school player from the state of Texas who was probably not as heavily recruited as he should have been based on the level of competition he was playing, and that was Patrick Mahomes.
If Patrick Mahomes played in suburban Dallas, he would've been a five-star quarterback.
Yeah, I think part, part of it, too, is, you have to acknowledge that's probably the biggest, highest hurdle, biggest challenge that our talent evaluators face.
Mm-hmm.
because when you're watching tape, like, a person can't just watch tape and decipher the talent level that they're playing against.
Yeah.
Right?
Like, it's hard.
So that's part- Like Kyler Murray was a fairly easy eval, even though he was small.
Kyler Murray was playing at Allen High School, you know, a big, big classification school, playing against other huge classification schools every week, playing teams that were loaded every week, and he was making everybody look silly.
So that was an easy one.
It's not as easy Like, Cam Ward was running, I believe, the triple option or maybe the wing T. It was one of those.... and nobody saw him throw in high school.
The only person who saw him throw was Eric Morris in Incarnate Word in camp.
Well, just so everybody knows- And he's like, "You're pretty good at this."
That's the point of having these camps, too.
Yeah.
Like, all summer, it's camp season.
Like, you want them on the same field with, like, like, similar prospects so that you can decipher, you know, physical traits and ability.
Like, I mean, that's why physical traits and ability are so important.
Because if it was just tape, I mean, the NFL has a hard time with that.
Exactly.
You know?
And I, and I think the other part of this And if you look at, at star rankings, and if you look at the NFL draft, it's easier to project an offensive tackle, a defensive tackle, a defensive end, a cornerback, a wide receiver.
They're just easier to project.
Quarterbacks, when they move from level to level, and I'm talking about middle school to high school, high school to college, college to the NFL, when quarterbacks move from level to level, it is anybody's guess- I mean- ... how good they're gonna be- It's appropriate that- When you get the speeds up on them ... Arch Manning just came up on the screen.
'Cause Arch Manning's number one criticism, as he was struggling last year, was, like, reviews of his high school tape, and he played at a lower level in high school in Louisiana.
So- Mm-hmm ... you know, you know, it's, it's hard.
And he wound up being, I, I would, I would argue, a very good quarterback by the end of the year.
I think he was, yeah.
When he Probably getting accustomed to the speed of the game.
It- his offensive line got a little better as the year went on, too.
But getting accustomed to how fast it comes at you, how fast you have to read everything, and some people make that adjustment, and some people don't.
Some people can do it naturally and do it immediately, and some people need some time, and some people never can.
So I think that's the problem.
It's, it's not necessarily a flaw in the quarterback evaluation process.
It is that quarterbacks are incredibly hard to evaluate, period.
Yeah.
Even the people who are paid the highest to do it, the NFL people, st- still don't do it very well.
Because it's just difficult to project how someone will play when they jump up a level.
It's not as difficult with the other positions.
A straight-line answer to the question, though, is it is taken into account, very much so.
Yes, it is.
Yeah.
It absolutely is, and it's That's also something coaches do.
When the, when the coaches are evaluating, they love when they get tape from big, big classification high schools in Texas, and Georgia, and Florida, because they know what they're looking at.
They know exactly what level of competition they're looking at.
It's also why they feel more comfortable evaluating transfers, because they understand FCS tape.
They understand Group of Five tape.
They get Th- they, they get it.
They, they, they feel more comfortable projecting what this person will look like if you move them to their level.
Because they're- everything's homogenized.
They're like, "Okay, these are all FCS players they're playing against.
I get that.
I know what that is supposed to look like.
These are all Group of Five players that they're playing against.
I get that, and this is what it's supposed to look like."
And I think they feel the same way about bigger high school classifications in the big football states.
But yeah, if you, if you get a good player who's either a small school in one of those big states or is in a state that does not typically produce a ton of talent, it's a little bit tougher eval, because you don't exactly know what competition they're facing.
Mm-hmm.
So yeah, it's a Quarterbacks are a crapshoot.
Speaking of Arch Manning, Ari, we're gonna, we're gonna talk to somebody about Arch and his development, and also about Texas in general, and where Texas fell short this past year, but how Texas has, has grown up as a program in the Steve Sarkisian era.
Michael Taff, the safety from Texas, will be on tomorrow's show.
He was a walk-on.
He went through a five and seven seasons there, went to two college football playoffs with the Longhorns, won a conference title in the Big 12.
Excellent discussion of the journey of Texas football over the last few years, and he had some great insight about Arch Manning, what happened with him this year, what he expects to see from him next year.
So I talked to Michael Taff at the Senior Bowl.
We'll catch up with him on tomorrow's show.
And, also, Jeff Goodman, our friend from Field of 68, will help us break down a very big weekend in college basketball.
Kentucky going to play Coach Cal at Arkansas.
Gonna be a big one.
We'll talk about it all on Friday's show.
Oh, oh, and by the way, here's, here's the guy.
Should we, should we get this guy on the show?
This is Ari's Denzel Washington impersonator.
Close your eyes.
Should we get this guy on the show?
You don't know loss.
You don't know pain.
You don't know none of that.
I can guarantee you, I've seen it.
I've experienced it with my own eyes.
You understand me?
It's etched in here.
It's embedded on the inside of my mind.
I'll tell you a story.
I went to school with a little girl, a little girl named Mary.
And Mary, Mary had a little lamb.
Jesus.
White as snow, shimmering.
and everywhere, everywhere that Mary went, oh, ho, ho, you can guarantee that that little lamb was, was Oh, that little lamb was sure to go.
Woo!
Need a drink.
Yo.
