Emry, how are you, man? Yeah, my man. Happy New Year's, bro. I appreciate you bringing me on. Absolutely.
Thank you for the time. You know, we just had this conversation before the break. I had a great opportunity over the past two weeks to sit down and watch all types of football, including the college football playoff.
What are your first impressions with this new format, this 12-team format, and the seedings that we just saw? First of all, I saw you in that bowl of cheeses too, man. I don't think I watched you out there, man.
Oh, boy. Yeah, I was at the Cheez-Its Citrus Bowl, sitting in the bowl of cheeses. I had a good time, okay, Emry? I had a good time.
I did. Well, I will say this to your question. I do love the 12-team playoff. Personally, I would like to see it expand to 16 teams or 20 teams because every—we know this—every winter workout, every spring, college coaches around the country, you know, are preaching, hey, we got to work hard and we can win our conference this year, we got to shout out the postseason. Well, that used to not ring true until they expanded the postseason, but now it still only rings true for those in the power four and one lucky team out of the group of five. But if you can get the 10 automatic bids from the conference champions and everyone from the MAC all the way up to the ACC gets their conference champion in the postseason and then you could just bring in 10 at-large bids, it solves any question on who deserves to be in, how would you leave this team out, it answers all those questions, and I think that's the way this should go. In order to do that, I know they would never do this because it's money, they should eliminate the conference championship game, shrink the regular season down to about 10 or 11 max, and therefore we could be done by New Year's Day with this college football national championship. Yeah, well, as you said, it's all about the money. You know, that's that's not happening.
Emre Young is here with us on the JR Sport Brief Show. What are your thoughts on the seating? I mean, you had mentioned a group of five. We saw what happened with Boise State. I've been underwhelmed by a lot of the games and how competitive they have been or not been so far. What are your thoughts on adjusting the seatings going forward for the college football playoff?
I feel like the seatings are fine. What they should do is eliminate the bye week. Now, if you are going to receive, then, yeah, it makes even more sense to eliminate the bye week because we saw those teams that got the bye that had those higher seats all end up losing. So if you can just go from, you know, your last game into the postseason, you could you can do that. Or if you do it like how they do it at every other level of college football, FCS, V2, D3, you get your automatic bid, the higher seats, they receive the postseason in terms of like, OK, this team, the top eight, they get by and they go by, you know, who's the stronger of the teams and they give those guys the bye.
So they do receive every time the postseason. So I don't know why the FBS tries to make this out to be difficult when they have a clear example on how to do it at every other iteration or level of college football. Emre Hunt is joining us from CBS Sports HQ. When you think about the final four teams that are remaining, we get back to the action on Thursday, Notre Dame and Penn State down in Miami on Thursday. On Friday, we get Ohio State taking on Texas out at Jerry's World.
What are your thoughts on what we should look forward to with these final four teams? Man, both matchups are mirror images of one another. Penn State, Notre Dame are two teams that are very good along the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. They run the football rather well because they got two excellent backs each and they have good quarterbacks that are able to play above the X's and O's. Now, Allard does it with his arm.
Raleigh Leonard, for the most part, does it with his legs. And so this is going to be a super competitive game. I think this one will come down to the wire and it will be a low scoring game, kind of like what we saw in the first half of Georgia, Notre Dame. And on the other side, Ohio State, Texas, it's a ton of speed everywhere. We talk about the receiving core for Ohio State, the secondary for Texas is excellent.
So that's a great matchup. Then you flip the field and Texas' receivers have a ton of speed and Ohio State secondary is excellent. And you have two quarterbacks that have been battle tested. Will Howard is playing on a different level this postseason. And we've seen Quinn Ewers in back to back games have to lock in and lead his team to a victory when they've let a team hang around for the four quarters.
And they also have like Penn State, Notre Dame, two excellent backs on each side. So, so evenly matched. That one's going to be high scoring. The other one's going to be low scoring, but they're both going to come down to the wire because they're both great matchups. Well, who do you favor to win it all here in Atlanta in a few weeks?
summary? Come on now. I like Notre Dame.
Listen, wake up the echoes, 1988, Tony Rice rocketed smell. Get those guys out there on the field to watch their team win a national championship. Cause I feel like they are so well coached and Marcus Freeman. If I was the NFL GM, I would be called to Notre Dame to see about getting him to be my head coach.
Cause he's a culture setter. And also underrated about Notre Dame is that they have excellent special teams. We saw that play a huge role in the Georgia game. And I think that's going to be the catalyst for them winning this national championship with the current pretty much layout in state of college athletics period. Is this what we can expect year after year expanded playoff there's so much teams and players and transfer portal. Can we just throw it up in the air year to year as to who's going to walk away as a champ?
I like, I like it this way too. I think so because what has really leveled the playing field is NIL and transfer portal. So now, you know, we've seen this over the course of history of college football, you know, back in the late seventies, early eighties, where certain teams had a hoard of talent, you know, Nebraska's pit Penn state. And you know, as TV starts to expand and you were able to see more and more teams on TV, um, no longer can you play that, you know, dangle that care like, Hey, come to our school. We play on TV, but now everyone plays on TV in Florida. It used to be Florida, Florida, state, Miami, until FIU popped up. So, uh, south Florida, central Florida, FAU. And when those other schools started to pop up around those three majors, it was like, why would I go to the bench at Florida state, Miami or Florida? I can go start at central Florida and that weekend, those teams. So I'm saying all that to say Georgia, Alabama, they'll still be able to get great talent, but they won't be able to hoard talent because those guys were hitting the portal and they're going other places to start. And now you have a balance of equality across the board at a lot of different schools. So it really makes it any given Saturday. Uh, we saw that play out this year, Vanderbilt beating at Alabama. We never thought we even utter those words.
And that's all due to the transfer portal NIL. Emory Hunt is here with us from football game plan, as well as CBS sports HQ. Let's talk about a couple of these programs that are not participating in the final four, but they garner a lot of attention. I mean, we can go to North Carolina where Bill Belichick is expected to save the day. What are your thoughts on how Bill Belichick will fit in there at UNC? You know, in this iteration of college football, because it's NIL driven, it's really set up like an NFL organization where you have, quote unquote, a salary cap.
You got to deal with finances. Who better to mitigate that than a guy that has done it for 20 plus years at the NFL level, knowing how to balance a roster out. And Bill Belichick still has the cache of being the greatest football coach. So he still can go and get those recruits. He's not so far removed from football to where we remember Bill Belichick, but the young kids don't.
Everybody still appreciates him for being who he is. He just got out of coaching. So you combine that with his ability to the kids could see, Oh, he can get me to the NFL. He's going to have an easier time recruiting.
And he understands how to, you know, build a culture to where guys will get it and kind of build an Alabama or Georgia situation right there in Chapel Hill. You want to talk about another big famous coach at the college level? The biggest name probably next to Belichick is obviously Deion Sanders out in Colorado.
We know his son is moving on, Chador. We know Travis Hunter is moving on. We just got the NFL draft order as of yesterday, the Titans and one, Browns two, Giants three. What are your thoughts on how those Colorado guys are going to fit in at the top of this draft? You know, I, I do feel like we'll see both Chador and Travis Hunter go in the top five because they're talented warrants that. And with regards to Chador, listen, disclaimer him or Cam Ward, you can't go wrong with either both guys or elite. We're in the process now where people will try to pit those guys against each other as if you can't have two good players at the same time.
So they're both equally as talented. But if I'm speaking about Chador, to me, he's so similar to Joe burrow based off his mental capacity. This is someone when the game is on the line, he's able to drive his team down the field to get points. How many 90 plus yard drives we've seen from him at Colorado at Jackson state. And yes, he may not be the four, three guy that can beat you with his legs, but he does pick up some yards that are there. He does throw a timing, touch, anticipation, and yet they'll have to learn to not, you know, take too many sacks. But I think to help him out in that regard, he's gonna be able to run the football cause he hadn't really had a run game at either Jackson state nor Colorado.
So you won't have to take all the texts. He's not gonna be throwing the ball 50 times a game. So I feel like Chador is a guy worthy of QB one. So is Cam Ward because he has that same dog mentality within this game reminds me so much of how Steve McNair look at all points. They just a guy that could just make any throw on the field.
The arm arrogance he has is exactly what you want. Do you think that Chador would be the best spot for the, or best selection by the Tennessee Titans? Yeah, they need a quarterback.
So you know what I'm saying? Like we, we just watch what the, the Will Levitz regime looked like. We watch what they've looked like late, Pantaleo. They need a difference maker. And it's funny cause had they just given a shot to Malik Wilson, not given up on them and not really giving them a shot.
We saw how he's looked so far in Green Bay. So yes, they need a quarterback. So whether it's Chador or Cam, they can't go wrong with that pick.
Now, if they take any other position outside of those two, then they're going to be in trouble. Well, Emery to talk about this, this upcoming weekend and the NFL playoffs are just staring us in the face. Is anybody going to stop these Kansas City Chiefs? So it looks like they're going to be well rested. We got the lions who they got the number one seed.
They're getting a little bit of a break. What are your thoughts on how the playoffs are going to shake out? You know, I think we get an upset in round one. I think the Broncos could actually up that Buffalo. You know, we saw that last year, they went up to Buffalo, Russell Wilson, those guys, and they beat the bills. You know, they had to build to that five and five. Right. And so it's not out of the realm with their defense and how they're playing and also their offense with a confident boat.
And they said, how he's playing. I think they can go up there and get that win. But in terms of the question about Kansas City, feel like Baltimore looks different this year, has it on their mind, will not forget to run the football. I like the Ravens to go and knock out Kansas City in the AFC title game and move on to the Super Bowl. Wow.
This is so we're fine. You think Lamar will finally get the job done, huh? I think he finally gets the sticky Lombardi, like my God, Brian McFadden says. I think he does get the trophy.
And I think they'll beat the Philadelphia Eagles, who I also feel like on the other side of the bracket gets through the NFC and gets to the Super Bowl. And we're in store for a classic down there on poachers. Hey, listen, Lamar Jackson said it the minute he was drafted, he said, I'm trying to bring a Super Bowl here to Baltimore.
And if what you just said happens, we will certainly see that come to fruition. Hey, Emery, thank you so much for the time. As always, where can people follow you and all of your work on air, on TV, online, everywhere? Follow me on social media at F Ball Game Plan. Pre-order the football game plan 2025 draft guide at footballgameplan.com slash 2025 draft guide. I'm down here in Florida at the Hula Bowl doing my all-star game scouting.
So we have over a thousand individual scouting reports in that draft guide. So get your pre-orders right now and you can catch more CBS Sports HQ all the time just talking ball like we just did tonight. Hey, Emery, always a pleasure. We'll catch you on down the line, OK? Appreciate you, my guy. Always a pleasure, man.
