Ben, how are you? Doing well, doing well. Well, thank you for taking the time to join us. I will get into your alma mater in Ohio State, but I understand you were, you were down in Dallas, you were in Arlington and at the Cotton Bowl, a matter of fact, for the Red River rivalry.
Did you expect that type of a beating? I think that there's a gap, a discrepancy between the true front runners and even good teams in college football. And Oklahoma's just not there yet. They went away from Jackson Arnold, their starting quarterback, a couple of games ago, which was so surprising. It's just been amazing to be in an era of football. And it's happening in the NFL too, where the runway for a young guy to figure things out is short and getting better. Rice Young got benched. Jackson Arnold gets benched. Alex Orgy got a game at Michigan, got benched.
So you move to Michael Hawkins, Jr., and he's going to go through his growing pains. And Oklahoma made it too easy for Texas. They, right before the half, turned the ball over in consecutive drives with two minutes left and just handed easy. You have to play super clean to keep up with the talent that the Longhorns have, and they didn't do that at all. Well, we know that the Texas Longhorns, we know who their quarterback is.
If he's healthy, that's Quinn Ewers. What are your thoughts on what Texas has done so far this season? Do you see them maintaining that, this kind of number one spot, rolling through everybody? Yeah, well, they haven't, how much can you, every team in college football, it's how battle-tested are you? And this was a big moment for Texas to play in a rivalry game, with Quinn Ewers coming back off an injury. And he was a little rusty, threw for about 200 yards. But they look at Texas, they look at Texas, they look at Texas. And Quinn Ewers coming back off an injury.
And he was a little rusty, threw for about 200 yards. But they look like a team. They're not just all talent. They're able to win in different ways. They've dealt with some adversity with Ewers being out. They've lost starting running backs. And so to me, they are certainly justified as the number one team. And they don't have much time to rest because they had the rivalry game last week and now Georgia's coming to town in Austin this weekend.
And Ben Hartsock is joining us here on the chair, our support reshow coast to coast. You talk about those Bulldogs, and they gave up 31 points to Mississippi State. They won 41 to 31. Do you think Georgia, are they at the top of the heap?
It seems like they've fallen off. They lost to Alabama. Alabama's kind of proven to be up and down themselves. What are your thoughts on the Bulldogs? Yeah, there's a lot of curiosity about these teams that look so dominant.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Alabama and Georgia and obviously Ohio State going down the way that they did. I think for Georgia, what we're learning is last year they had tremendous players, great players. This year they've got good players.
And is good enough right now? They do have competitive depth. They're going to be able to go to their backups. They can rotate through their D-line and still play at a high level. Are they ultra elite the way that they were a year ago with Lad McConkie and Brock Bowers?
I don't think that's quite the case. We're not real sure yet how they'll stack up against that talented Texas team because they've got Isaiah Bond that's doing really well, Emmett Golden at the wide receiver position, and Quinn Ewers obviously getting more comfortable after getting back out there with the game under his belt now. So I think there's going to be incredible competitiveness in these games just like we saw against Oregon and Ohio State. They're two extremely talented teams. They can hang with each other. They're in the same weight class.
It's just who does the critical execution at critical times. Ben Hartsock is here with us. He covers all things college football and Sirius XM. He won a championship at The Ohio State University. You talked about what them Buckeyes just did.
They went up to Oregon and they lost, which will probably maybe outside of Penn State be their toughest game of the entire season. What are your thoughts on the Buckeyes and what this L does for them moving forward? Well, it's disappointing for Buckeye fans, but I'm reminded of an experience I had as a young player in the NFL.
I was drafted to the Indianapolis Colts. That was when Manning was MVP, Peyton Manning, and things were going well. We were a playoff team. We knew it the day the season started. It took us 12-13 weeks into the season before we lost. I remember coming in there from a college perspective, I was used to one loss was the end of your season. I'll never forget walking into that locker room the next day and all of my teammates for the Colts were bebopping and upbeat and positive.
I was just kind of like, what's happening? They had to teach me, hey, buddy, rookie, this is the NFL. Nobody goes undefeated. The 72 Dolphins are still popping bottles of champagne.
Relax. Everything we want is out in front of us. That's what's happening to college now with the 12-team playoff. As much of a disappointment as it is for Buckeye fans to see them go down to Oregon, everything is still out in front of them.
They've just used their mulligan now. Penn State is still looming. Michigan is still looming.
But the reality is, more than likely, Ohio State will see Oregon again in the Big Ten championship and potentially a three-peat in the college football playoff. Well, Ben, we have such a wider range here now that we have 12 teams in the playoffs. Who do you find to be legitimate contenders? We know we start getting into 11 and 12.
It's just like, okay, well, whatever. But who are your legitimate contenders that you really look at? Well, that's a great question because I think it's still hard to know right now because two weeks ago, I would have said Georgia. They got beat by Bama and looked pedestrian versus Mississippi State.
Last week, I would have thought Bama, but they got beat by Vandy. So these teams are taking chance turns tripping and stumbling. And so I think what it represents is that the talent gap is tighter in the top ten than it's ever been. Instead of Ohio State or Michigan or Georgia keeping all of its players, some of those players now are going to Penn State. They're going to Tennessee. They're going to Oregon.
So I think it's going to be more like the NFL where these games, the margins are much, much tighter. And so we've seen it already that these teams that are new to the expanded playoff. Ole Miss has lost twice.
Looks like they're probably going to be on the outside looking in. Georgia's taken a mulligan. Alabama has taken a mulligan. Ohio State now has a loss.
All of these teams, I think they're all legitimate contenders, but we're not going to know until we get into the playoff and how that one game series is going to play out. Ben Hartsock is here with us, the chair of our sport reshow Coast to Coast. A team that we're used to watching dominate everybody. Alabama, we know they have a new coach and the players transfer out.
Milro, this was his show to run the entire season. You talk about that loss to Vandy. We saw how close things were with the Gamecocks. What do you think about this transitional period? Is Alabama going to be kind of down with the pack for years to come, or is this just an introductory year for DeBoer?
Yeah, I think that it could be a fork in the road moment. I know that a lot of people are ready to say that, oh, he lets them play music and practice during practice. That's not what Saban did. He's moved practice from the evening to after school to before school. That's not what Saban did.
I think that's unfair this early. The reality is with what Kalen DeBoer had to walk into, he lost a lot of guys that decided they were Saban guys. They're not DeBoer guys, and so they left. Guys like Caleb Downs and others, Seth McLaughlin, to Ohio State. For him to keep the guys that were on that Saban roster together and have them playing what I view as lights out. These are still college kids.
They still make college kids' mistakes from time to time. It's certainly far too early to say that they're going to go into a dark period. They're going to make the playoffs and potentially compete for the whole thing.
Honestly, if they had only won eight or nine games this year, I would have said that's okay for a coach in its first season. We'll see how they decide to torment the Georgia Bulldogs as we get a little further into the year. We'll see how that works.
They figure out a way to do that. Ben Harnstock is here with us on the JR Support Reshow. Penn State, what are your thoughts on the Nittany Lions? They're there, they're at the top of the rankings, the leaderboard, but they don't get as much attention. Well, they're a team to me that has a couple of opponents that I think are credible, character-building wins. A win at West Virginia is noteworthy to me. A win at USC. I understand USC has had two losses now, three losses in the past three or four weeks for USC.
They're an unranked team, but the reality is those are quality wins. I look at the second step of Drew Aller, the quarterback at Penn State in his second year. He is playing with a level of confidence that I think is really encouraging for Penn State fans. You take his next step, you take Tyler Warren, their tight end, who just tied a tight end record in the FBS for most receptions in a game at 17. Tyler Warren also plays Wildcat quarterback.
He's got a multiple receiving touchdown, he's got a throwing touchdown, and he's run for a touchdown this year. That's really a nice utility swish army knife to have for James Franklin and Andy Koltnicki, that offensive coordinator. And then the two-headed monster of Catron Allen and Nick Singleton as a thunder and lightning for the run game and Penn State as an absolute contender. We're going to see what that looks like against Ohio State in a couple of weeks, actually at the beginning of the month, so we'll see there.
Final question for you, Ben. We don't get as much attention towards Colorado. I think we might have had a little bit more if they went out there and beat Kansas State. What are your thoughts on what this team is going to look like? What happens next year?
Does anybody know? What do you think might happen? I think that Colorado is polarizing. Deion Sanders, for whatever reason, he is a magnet for that.
I think Shadore Sanders is a tremendous talent, and I think that he takes more criticism than he deserves. But at the end of the day, Colorado is a program that is making foundational steps each and every day, and for them to get bowl eligible is a reasonable hope for them. I still am a little hesitant to say they're going to get there, but if they can get to bowl eligibility, I think they should hold their heads high and say they're heading in the right direction.
Ben, final question. Are you in favor of an additional expansion of the college football playoff, or are you content with where it is right now? Well, I was a four-team apologist, so I wouldn't say I would want to expand it already, but what I will admit is even in this early experience knowing that there's 12 teams coming, I was concerned that we were going to have a minimization, like I said, about that Ohio State-Oregon game.
Really, that game meant really nothing, but it still didn't take away from how incredible that game was. So I'm willing to eat my words there and say that because as a benefit, what we get is that, hey, Tennessee is still alive. LSU still is in the hunt. Penn State, Ohio State, all these teams that have already got a loss on the season are still alive. Teams like Missouri and others that are new to the college football discussion this late in October is a mutual benefit. I think that unfortunately with any playoff, enough is never enough. They've already gone from 64 to 68 in the NCAA basketball tournament, and it's like when does it ever stop? So I wish that we would at least get a stretch here with 12, but I also know there's money to be made, and so in the not-too-distant future, the money will win and they'll go to 14 pretty quickly.
Yeah, any game that you can add, let's make up a wild card. So that's how it is. Ben, thank you so much for the time.
Where can people follow you, listen to you, keep up with all your work, all that good stuff? Yeah, I'm over on Channel 84, College Sports Radio throughout the week, Big Ten Channel 372, and you can hit me on any of my social media, Twitter, at Ben Hartzock. Hey, Ben, thank you for the time. Enjoy the ride, enjoy the rest of the games. Thank you. All right, good talking.
