It is the JR Sport Brief Show here with you coast to coast on the Infinity Sports Network. Man, we got the SB Awards getting ready to go down. We got the Major League Baseball All Star Game and Home Run Derby that have taken place over the past few days. WNBA is moving towards its All Star break with Caitlin Clark kind of in limbo due to injury, so there's still plenty going on in the world of sports, but the countdown is on. For some football.
And yeah, we're going to get the NFL training camp sooner than later. Rookies are reporting. But on the college side, we've already had some media days. We're going to blink and we're already going to be staring at week zero. The Big Twelve had its media days last week.
The SEC had its turn this week to talk about some of the things we've heard and what we can expect heading into this season and during the year. Joining us right now is the founder of CollegeFootball News.com. Pete. Few sec. Pete, how are you, man?
The Espies, last night's All-Star game. There's nothing going on. There's nothing going on in sports right now. We're all just waiting for football to kick in. It's okay.
It's okay. It's that time of year. Hey, it is. It's sitting in the middle of July and waiting on that time. You are right about that, Pete.
But based on some of the things we've heard last week, there's so much talk about the college football playoff and who's going to be in and how many spots they get. At this point in time, it's kind of sickening. Where do you think they they eventually going to land on this issue?
Well, I'll argue that they'll start off arguing your point by calling it quote sickening because it's fine. You know what? It's still. Better than any other playoff going because even if they expand to sixteen. You're still getting fewer teams involved.
You know, remember, there's 136 college football teams. If you look at any other sport, Like all the pro sports, basically you have a 50-50 shot at getting into the playoffs. NBA, it's like a 65% shot. If you're counting the play-in games, and the NCA basketball tournament is about a 38% chance to get in.
So it's still really hard to get into these games.
Now, the problem is. Once you get in, unless you are a superpower, you have no shot.
So, like, you're not going to ever get a Boise State or any sort of Cinderella-type team. Go in there and do anything great because it's just too hard. It's a different sort of sport. But it's fine. You know what?
It's still the the regular season's still gonna matter. You're still going to get the teams in there. You're not going to get really any outliers. You might get an upset or two here or there, but the best teams are always going to end up in the top of the college football heap. Pete Futzak here with us from College Football News.com.
As SEC had its time to shine this week here in Atlanta, Georgia, we've been looking for some SEC action. When it comes to actually winning the national championship, what are your thoughts on what we can expect this upcoming season? Obviously, a lot of storylines with Kirby Smart. We still have Texas now in the SEC, a lot of expectations on Arch Manning, LSU and Kelly. What are the biggest stories that you're paying attention to?
Yeah, all of that. It's the biggest storyline overall, overarching, use the word arch, is the starting quarterbacks.
So, like right now, I mean, and U.S. Bob, like, any ask any sports fan, any college sports fan to give who is the starting quarterback for Alabama, Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame, Michigan. And it's like. They can't do it. I mean, because you don't have the star power there.
Like, usually, I remember going into the last year, everyone kind of knew who, you know, guys like Carson Beck were and Alan Milro. And, you know, if you're a deep college football fan, you knew Will Howard coming over at Kansas State for several years. And, you know, so everyone had a quarterback and everyone else got a quarterback in the transfer portal, like Notre Dame got Riley Leonard from Duke. You don't have that this year. You've got a lot of young players who have never played before.
You don't have any massive transfers other than Carson Beck going to Miami that matters.
So you have you know, Kate Club Nikki Clemson. And you have Drew Aller at Penn State. And even those guys aren't like household names. I mean, they're you know college football fans will know who they are, but like the average fan won't know who those guys are yet. And then you have Arch Manning, who for all the hype, he's only played four started four games and he never really has not yet to play a real team.
So there's a lot of uncertainty out there over all the top teams. Who's got the quarterback who can come through? Oh, Pete, you mentioned Drew Aller and what we saw last year. What step are you expecting Penn State to make this upcoming season? There's a lot of expectations because of just the continuity aspect based on what we saw last year.
Exactly.
So, like, last year was easy. I mean, last year you could knew in February that Ohio State was going to win the national championship. They just had more talent than everyone else. You know, they had everyone coming back on that defense. They were all motivated.
They have fifth, sixth year seniors. And then you get Caleb Downs, the great safety from Alabama. And you had all these young wide receivers that were expected to step up. And you had the backfield full of stars. Everything was in place there.
Kind of like that with Penn State, except that they're just not quite as good. They've got all the talent in place, they've got the backfield, they've got all the experience, and they have the starting quarterback.
So, overall, they have the most talent returning that you can kind of know about. You can say, okay, I get that. That unit's really good. That defensive front's nasty. And they got player after player after player.
But there's still that prove it factor where Ohio State was just knocking on the door for years and years and years. Penn State hasn't quite been there, so they don't really get that same benefit of the doubt, but yeah. Talent-wise, they are the best team in the country coming into the season. But That doesn't necessarily mean, you know, like it couldn't be Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State. You know, you have all these other teams which are right there.
Pete Fucek is here with us from College Football News.com. You've mentioned some of the big-name schools we expect to be in a college football playoff. And and we're it's still early. I know we're we're in July. But is there a team that you think is going to take a step forward?
We always have a couple of teams. A couple of seasons ago, it was like, what what the hell is T C U uh doing here? What are your thoughts about a team that may be situated to to get some run that nobody thinks about. Yeah, so basically, you're asking who's the Arizona state in this question, because like. The entire Big 12 is right there.
You don't have is the conference from top to bottom is. Better, good. I mean, even like Cincinnati and Houston. I mean, those teams are better this year. Kansas should be way better this year.
And then Utah and Arizona, who flopped in their first year after coming over from the Pac-12, they're both terrific, especially Utah. And Arizona State gets just about everyone back except for Cam Scadabo running back.
So, like, you have an entire conference full of very good teams. You're probably not getting two in. From that league, because they get into the 12-team college football playoff, at least for the time being, it seems like you've got to have at least 10 wins. And that's going to be tough for more than one team.
So you're going to have the big 12 champions. Long-winded way of saying, if you can figure out who the Big 12 champion is, and I kind of think it's Utah. early on as as the most In the bag, there. That's kind of, I don't want to say your outlier, but that's the one that can at least get there who maybe a little bit off the grid. I'm not saying they're going to do anything once they get there, but that's going to be kind of one of those teams that's just going to be just good enough to kind of be the Arizona State, like, oh, okay, so you get one of those top four spots, even though you are nine and four as the Big 12 champ.
Yeah, I was gonna say I take a look at the Big Twelve. My expectation is that they just go out there and cannibalize each other. Yep, exactly right. Again, there's absolutely no shocking result. that you can find on a game by game basis.
Like if you say, you know, Kansas beats Iowa State, okay, you know, or Cincinnati takes down Arizona State, all right, you know, everyone's just a little you know about all about the state. And none of them are National Championship good, but there's a lot of very, very, very good teams. There's a lot of sticks and sticks. Seven and five teams in that bunch. Pete Futak is here with us from College FootballNews.com.
Speaking of the Big 12, it feels to a certain degree. between them and the ACC that they're trying to fight out of being little brother between the the SCC and then the the Big Ten, which obviously now spans all across the country. is that always going to be the case? I mean, we have we still have conference realignment going on, we still have NIL. Like is there a space and time and way where the two smaller conferences can join Big Brother?
Not really. Because you're just not going to have. There's a whole bunch of reasons for this. Don't forget in all this The SEC is not far out of that because it's good. It's the SEC.
It means more, and everyone, it's got Alabama, all the power teams, all power conferences. Eventually, everyone's going to wake up and realize that a couple years from now, Purdue is going to make more money than Alabama. The Big Ten has all the money. They have all the biggest deals, all the biggest markets. It's the biggest conference.
Doesn't mean Purdue's better than Alabama. It just means that they're getting paid more, which in an NIL world, you're going to have more money to play around with. And then eventually these SEC teams, their schools are gonna be like, wait a minute here, how come we're not getting that deal?
So there's it's actually not a power two in terms of business. It's the Big Ten. There's about a 100 foot drop in the SEC, then about a 500 foot drop in the Big Ten and ACC. And the problem with trying to say, okay, well, we're going to create some super league of just the powerful teams. If you remember twenty twenty when you had just conference in conference action, when you had all all the SEC's teams only played each other, and I think you only had like four teams that finished with winning records after the bowl season.
So if you're someone like uh, you know, uh oh m actually Mississippi State, you're never gonna have a winning record if you're gonna play if you don't get those three games against Central Directional State and you know, some other one double SDS team and then a Mac team. You're never going to have those winning records. And so a lot of these schools aren't going to like the idea of having to scratch and claw by going four and eight by playing nobody but Alabama, then Georgia, then Tennessee, then all the killers right in a row.
So you've got to have schedules that at least have some sure wins on there for at least the most of the members. No, Pete, you know, talking about the ACC, there's a guy who's coming over from the NFL. He's still talking about his time in the NFL. How long is Bill Belichick going to be sticking around in North Carolina, given how he hasn't even coached a game yet? And there's a focus in on everything but football.
Yeah, it's gonna be interesting.
Well, that's one of those you've asked before about w who's that, you know, funky outlier team. North Carolina's not anywhere near as good as uh Clemson or Miami coming into the season. But their schedule is not bad. Yeah, they have the they have one nasty game, I believe it's Clemson, and they get that one at home. It's either Clemson or Miami.
They get one of those two at home. And every other game you're looking at, you're kind of like, wait a minute, that's not bad. It could be Wake Forest. You know, they can win, you know, NC State. They could beat Duke.
You know, Duke's really good this year. But like, you look at their schedule and You can say, you know, it might be mid-November, and we're talking about 8-1 North Carolina. And Bill Belichick is like, wow, look at this, it's working and everything just because the schedule's really good. The other part of this is Remember, it's not like Bill Belichick can go back to the NFL and be the emperor of all he surveyed. I mean, because nowadays in the NFL, obviously, you've got GMs, you've got other factors.
You can't just. The coach, GM, and own every aspect of the franchise and the personnel thing, it's hard to do. And he'll never get that kind of control if he goes back to the NFL. In college, If you're the head coach, that's your show. You are the lord of the whole manor.
So it's it'll be hard for him, ego-wise, to say, Yeah, I want to be back in the NFL, unless he wants to go just as a purely a head coach. And Excuse me, has full trust in whoever the general manager would be. Yeah, well, he can ask his girlfriend for advice. She'd be able to help him out, right? Hey, you know what?
Getting older as I am, God bless you. Like, that's that knock it out, Bill Dollichek. You do what you do. And, you know, look, if they win, all of that girlfriend stuff is just kind of a fun, quirky side note. If they lose, then that's what becomes a distraction.
All it matters is just win, just do your job. And win, and then everything else would be fine. Yeah, what a way to potentially end a coaching career. What a wild one. Hey, Pete, thank you so much for the time.
Tell everybody where they can follow you and all your work with College FootballNews.com. That's it, collegefootballnews.com. We've got all the rankings up now, all 136 team previews. If you want to deep dive into every team, we've got everything analyzed, broken down with win totals, and all that kind of fun stuff.
So, collegefootballnews.com. Hey, Pete, thank you so much for the time. We'll catch you on down the line, okay? Absolutely. You have a great night.
