Fiutak: New Era Of College Football Has Made Sport Better

Pete, how are you?

I'm tired. I mean, we forget this is so late. I mean, I am used to 20 something years of like, it ends around New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and then you have maybe a straggler game after it, maybe a week later. Now we're like 20 days past it, which is kind of awesome, because it's fun. But yeah, this is a long season and everyone got through it. It turned out pretty well and we got a pretty good game last night after a rough first go there. Oh, my good. 31 to 7.

I mean, I don't know how much rougher it can be. Are you surprised? Well, let me not say are you surprised. What are your thoughts on the game that we saw overall? A lot of people thought I did that Ohio State was going to run them out of the building. They kind of did until they, Notre Dame went on what, 14, 16 point run.

Ohio State was my pick from January of last year. So it's an entire year being like, Ohio State's the best team that's going to win the national championship. So I mean, I'm not that smart. It's just they have the best team. They're the most players. I mean, all that.

It's not that hard. And so they do. They're the best players. What kind of hit it, though, is that Marcus Freeman, people ain't. You know, that was not what Notre Dame did all year. And, you know, one of the things leading up to this game that kind of recognized more and more is people didn't watch Notre Dame.

You know, they maybe saw the opener against Texas A&M. So that big night game. And then the Northern Illinois game went two down. And then they didn't really play anybody because the Florida State game, you know, was a dud that didn't really matter.

And there wasn't really any marquee games on there that you had to watch. A couple of games around Peacock and who had that, you know, so they all of a sudden everyone was like, wait a minute, Notre Dame's actually pretty good. But they were a good team. That was a real deal team that I think beats Texas if Texas had beaten Ohio State. But what they did all year was they were just fearless.

They just always, not in a Dan Campbell line sort of way, but just sort of a confidence, we know what we can do. And you saw it on the first drive because that's what Oregon did to Ohio State in the first meeting. Ohio State got lit up. Oregon got lit up by Ohio State in that first meeting. But what they did was they were more physical on the offensive line. They were able to push Ohio State around a little bit and they just kept moving the ball.

And so what did Notre Dame do? Just get positive yards. Two yards here, four yards there. Make it third and manageable. Make it fourth and one.

Let Riley Leonard go Josh Allen and power away and do that. And they got away from that in the second drive with the throw and they really kind of biffed it with that field goal attempt, which you could see it on Marcus Freeman's face. There was no reason to kick the field goal to be down 13. And he knew he should have gone for it. Then he doinks it off the uprights and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I should have gone for it there and I didn't.

And now we're going to have to fight for a little bit here. So Pete, after the game, we saw being a head coach, he's going to fall on a sword and admit to being wrong. He didn't necessarily admit to why he kicked the field goal or that that was wrong. He did say that we lost the game because of me. I simply look at the talent disparity.

Which one would you lean more towards? Oh, no, that's why they love him. I mean, the players love this guy and for good reason.

He's a good guy. He's going to do that because he himself, I'm sure, is like, I could have done this, this and this differently. And had we done that, we would have been good. Well, you kind of saw it when they're, you're right. When it's 31 seven, it's like, okay, this is over. And then they get that touchdown.

The shot goes over the sidelines and there's freedom. But that's one, that's what you kind of see is he's like, okay, that's the first step. And that's been their mindset all year that they would keep going for stuff. And then if it didn't work, they're like, okay, we're just going to fix it and we're going to do it right next time. And so they've got that unwavering belief that something good was about to happen because it did all season long, but he's also still a really, really young head coach who hasn't been through the wars. Remember Ohio State, you know, since the six and seven season of Luke Thickel, they've been a game away or a play away from play for the national title or being in the national title every year for the last 12 years before winning it last night. They've done it. They've taken so many bites at that apple. They got it in 14, actually technically 15, and then they got into the national championship in 2020. I mean, they've been there.

They're used to this. Notre Dame and Marcus Freeman aren't. And Pete Futesack is joining us from collegefootballnews.com. Since you were so keen on accurately predicting Ohio State winning the championship today or yesterday, I should say, what do you predict for Ohio State moving on into the future, knowing that their quarterback is going to be moving on? You've got to assume that, well, first of all, they've got guys in place who are good enough to catch the start, but like, do they go to the transfer portal again?

Do they go for another Will Howard or do they try to promote from within? The key to this team, though, in which, it's Ohio State. I mean, they still have as much or more talent than anybody else, but the key to this year's team that kind of got overlooked a little bit in all the transfers and the big transfers were they had all those guys back.

JTT and Jack Sawyer and the rest of the line. You have Denzel Burke. You had so many parts of that great defense of last year. I mean, last year, they only gave up more than 17 points to Michigan.

That was it. This year, they gave it up to Oregon twice. Those were the only three times in the last two years this defense gave up 17 points or more until last night. And you had those pieces, the infrastructure, the senior five-year senior veterans in place, and then you had Caleb Dowd from Alabama, who might be the best player in college football. Then you had Judd Kintermolemes. Then you had Will Howard. And then you get Jeremiah Smith, who just rises up as a true freshman.

So you had it in place, and then you just got those final puzzle pieces. They don't necessarily have that infrastructure this time around. But, like I just said before, even before that 1-6-7 season, they were basically in the national title hunt every year after Trussell and Lynch v. Urban takes over. They're going to be in the national championship hunt again, but you do not have a team that's going to be as good as this one.

Well, Ryan Day said this is one of the best teams that he has ever seen in his life. We're being joined by Pete Futesack from collegefootballnews.com. You talked about the portal and being able to have players that are already in place. What potential adjustments could we see to the transfer portal?

Will it be reined in at some point, and how soon could that be the case? What's hard about this, and it gets completely lost, is this is college football. You can't just say, well, we're going to move the transfer portal here. Theoretically, I know, haha, they're supposed to be college students, which means that you actually have to sign up for classes, and you have to transfer in certain windows.

The semester starts at a certain time, and a trimester, depending on where you're going, ends at a certain time. You have to negotiate when you can actually get into school and allegedly go to class. It's not just as simple as this overall free agency.

It's got to be a specific window. The problem that's starting to come up in certain places, like in Wisconsin right now with an issue where the player wants to go to Miami and it's starting to come up a little bit here and there, there aren't any rules. You don't have a labor union, you don't have any representation, you don't have a Roger Goodell or anybody like that who can kind of arbitrarily figure it out.

It is everybody for themselves as everyone's trying to figure this out. So the transfer portal, yes, maybe a smaller window, but that doesn't mean you can't transfer. I mean, if you're a college student, you can just say, yeah, look, if I'm going to be a third string on this team, I'm just going to go to XYZ State. They can pay me there. I'll just sit out a year, and then I'll play until I'm 27 and go deal with the real world bet.

So there are a whole lot of different ways to do this. They just don't have any hard and fast rules in place yet. Yeah, I guess that would be the same case when it comes down to NIL. Sooner than later, I know there's a lot of government issues related to this as well, but are there not going to be regulations or laws passed where the schools can ultimately pay the players directly without this collective kind of middleman? I will say this as someone who is paying tuition bills and is about to pay more. It's a bad look when you're saying, look, I'm happy to pay for my kid's school. I'm not paying for a linebacker. I don't want any money to go to that.

I don't want to pay enough as is. And so there is that side of it. Again, it is a school. The other problem, and I won't say it's a problem because it's actually part of the positive, is that you do have to deal with the Title IX issues where, OK, well, if you're going to have a school pay for an $8 million quarterback, well, then you've got to also pay women. You have to figure out how it's equal among the ranks to make sure everyone gets the share. That's another topic for another day in my thoughts on non-revenue sports. It's not quite as easy as that, which is why NIL is actually the right way to do this, where you don't have the school's half to pay. And you just say, hey, look, if some goofy booster wants to buy a kid a tractor or something and say, hey, come here and we'll get you this and that. OK, well, welcome to the market in the world right now.

So it's really sticky. But again, it's hard to figure this one out because all the NCAA is doing right now is trying not to get sued. So right now they're letting everything go to avoid lawsuits and then they're going to hope it all kind of figures itself out somehow.

Oh, my God. Well, we know that's not going to happen. So we might as well be in store for a you-know-what show for the next, what, five, 10, 15 years?

No resolution to anything? Well, here's the thing, though. Average joy, we're talking about this right now. Ninety four percent of the average sports fans or people don't know what we're talking about or care. The thing about this on the back end, though, is the product itself, forgetting that this is supposed to be college football.

And, you know, you're supposed to see these guys in your sight class and all that kind of stuff. Now, the product of college football itself from the straight business standpoint is so much better because now if you do have a transfer portal, everyone's got a decent starting quarterback who can at least be competent. You don't have, you know, you can fill in gaps. The actual games are played better. It was a better played sport this year. Now, from the history of the beginning of college football, there's only been like four teams that won the national championship. I mean, it's just not a you're never going to see a Cinderella. You're never going to see a Boise State or an SMU make a run to the national championship in this thing like you can in the NCAA basketball tournament. So it's always going to be the Blue Bloods because they're going to have more money. But overall, the product is just better on the field. Yeah.

Well, this is it's disappointing. I do think people care when it comes down to the payment of athletes. It was only, you know, five years ago that I was still fielding calls from listeners going, oh, the players need to be happy that they have a scholarship.

They don't need to make money. And I think if we fast forward to your point, I mean, if you're paying tuition or I'm paying tuition, I'm paying for my kids tuition and then the players get a revenue share. I mean, that's a payout.

I'm going like, hey, this is it. I need to go to school for free. I mean, pay me too. Why am I paying to go here? Well, that's the thing. My kid, you know, your TikTok account probably is more more publicity for her school than everybody else's. But the opposite of that, though, is they're actually not getting the scholarship doesn't cover what they're worth, especially college basketball players.

You only have over 15 of them. I think there are some studies said that if they were doing this right, you know, every power program player, no matter who it was, should be paid to pay at least four million dollars or whatever, just to make it worth it. But the other part of the thing, too, is, OK, that sounds great. All the players can't get paid. Oh, meanwhile, you know, Steve Sarkeesian just got his contract extended to, what, twenty ninety four or something. I mean, you know, the college coaches are getting paid 10 plus million dollars a year. Assistant coaches are getting paid two million dollars a year. So if the adults are getting paid here, why can't the players? And I get it. If you're a player, you're saying, you know, I don't want to you know, why am I not getting the one here? You know, this is an entertainment business.

I'm the one out here performing. You know, where is my money on this? And the other positive of this overall, too, is you saw fewer players going to the transfer for the early entry NFL draft this year, because now they are getting money where if you were a fringe NFL guy, you would jump early, be a fifth round pick, you'd get cut in camp and then, all right, that's it. Whereas now, yeah, you want to stick around. You're going to get paid for a little while and maybe, you know, hit the weights more and become more of a pro prospect. But now you're seeing far fewer players leave for the NFL early.

Hey, Pete, final question for you. It's 2026 between January now and 2025. What can we expect over the next year? What is your big prediction?

Is Deion still going to be staying? Who's winning the Heisman? What should we look out for over the next year?

I mean, it's going to be honestly, it's going to be the year of Arch Manning. It's going to be, Texas is going to be everyone's, you know, top three-ish team to start the season because, you know, the SEC is going to bounce back. Everyone's going to panic and all these, oh, the SEC is done.

No, it's not. The SEC just had, you know, a couple rough parts here. They lost a couple tough games, whatever. The SEC is fine and so everyone's going to be screaming about that. But it's going to be the Arch Manning sweepstakes because at the moment, we always know the players rise up. You know, there's going to be a Joe Burrow that comes from out of nowhere or Cam Newton or someone we don't know. But right now, next year's quarterback crops looks really, really weak except for Arch on top.

So it's going to be Arch sweepstakes if this goes according to plan. Yeah, I've been waiting on Quinn. You was to get the hell up on out the way for a minute.

Now you can carry water in the NFL. I'm looking forward to that one, Pete. Thank you, man. Yeah, it started just on 4-3 push-pushes from the 1. Quinn, you were probably your starting quarterback last night against Notre Dame. So, Quinn was all right for himself.

Yeah, when he was healthy enough to be all right. Let's see how that lasts. Hey, Pete, thank you so much. Where can people follow you and everything that you do with College Football News? CollegeFootballNews.com and now it's a fun park. Like you said, now we try to figure it all out. Who's going where and, you know, the off-season stuff. I geek out on the schedules and, yeah, we get to start right now because, you know, August 28th is just around the corner here.

Oh, my God. Don't, I mean, well, the way the weather is outside all over the country. We might want to rush it, but I'll take my time getting there.

It is minus six degrees out right now where I am. I will take that wherever I can get it. Yeah, I understand. I almost slipped my hip walking into the studio today, so I get it. Oh, man. Hey, Pete, appreciate the time. We'll catch you soon, okay? Anytime. You have a great night.