Jason Fitz/ESPN Spain and Fitz, Digital Host college football guru, Raiders Fan, classical violinist joins Adam to cover a LOT of bases!

A gentleman I saw wearing plus fours and a goofy outfit at Pinehurst a few years ago, one of my favorites, Jason Fitz, ESPN, Spain and Fitz, your business card is too long, digital host, college football guru, Raiders fan, classical violinist, anything else?

Did I leave anything out, Jason? Well, I mean, you are right that I looked extraordinary in the full Knickers outfit, by the way, still have that, waiting for somebody else to invite me to play golf sometimes, so that I like, you know, just so I can wear that, driving the cart around, I will get it kicked out of any country club almost immediately. Not Pinehurst, not Pinehurst at all, my friend. All right, so you're a college football guy. College football's so much more entertaining right now than the NFL, it's so sad. Last night, people were begging me to go turn on Baylor, West Virginia, except that we're not going to talk about Baylor, West Virginia, but we will talk about the Washington football team, as I call them, the Commandos, taking on the Bears. Do you remember, Jason, you're not even old enough to remember when that game would have been, like, awesome, an awesome game to watch.

Right now, it's like watching paint dry. No, when I was a kid, those, like that 85-86 era of Chicago Bears and then the Washington football team at the time, like they were trading off greatness, right? Like, yeah, I think there was this moment of NFC champions in the Super Bowls for both franchises and both franchises fan base is like, this is a little known fact for a lot of people, but I went to high school for a couple of years in PG County in Maryland, right outside of DC. And when I was, when I moved into that area, I'd never seen anything like it because there were Washington football team flags everywhere, on the houses, everything, you know, me, I'm a lifelong diehard Raiders fan and I'm driving around.

I'm like, I've never seen anything like this. I mean, that's the only place I ever lived where, especially at the time before this was even remotely common, they televised the first scrimmage of the year against Pittsburgh every year. And it was like that Washington ruled the DC Metro area in a way of passion through the nineties that I think we forget about sometimes. Dan Snyder shouldn't only be remembered for everything off the field. He should be remembered for the fact that when I moved to that area, there was a 20 year waiting list to get season tickets.

Now you can, now they're running billboards asking people to sign up for them. So it shows you what he's done to that franchise from a winning standpoint for the last 25 years. Jason Fitz from ESPN is joining us here. Like I went to college at the University of Maryland and I, so I grew up in the New York area. We had, we were Jets season ticket holders. Heck, we were season ticket holders to the New Jersey generals, Jason.

Can you not? I loved, I actually loved USFL football back in the day. But when I went to school at Maryland, what I couldn't believe was that every day during the week, either one of the channels or home team sports, which was the local cable sports cable outfit back in the day, there was a Redskins dedicated show every day of the week. We were still recapping it like on Wednesday, we were like, let's get Redskins rewind or a playbook or whatever.

And then we were previewing it starting on Thursday, all the way through Saturday night, every single day. That's what that football team means to that area. And Dan Snyder has completely ruined it.

And they, there's nothing they can do about it. You also, do you believe that he has dirt on owners and maybe even Roger Goodell? Probably, but then now what? What becomes really difficult about this is if the NFL decides not to remove him this week at their owner's meeting, then everybody's like the natural assumption on all of our debate shows is going to be, is the NFL scared of Dan Snyder's dirt? Do they not want, now all of a sudden there's going to be presumed guilt all the way across the board. So I think if that is the case and he has dirt, what he's really done is he's forced the NFL to do something about it right now. And you know, I never think that being, I mean, I joke about this all the time, but being forced to sell your sports team for billions of dollars of profit is not exactly my idea of a harsh penalty. But I do think that the NFL owners at this point are going to have to look around and say, now the pressure's on.

Cause you know, if the, I want to know every single owner that doesn't vote him out, I'd love to know why, because that owner we're immediately going to presume is suddenly out there doing something they shouldn't be doing. Look, I want to talk college football with you, but just since we started talking about this, I am blown away by this. We had, I don't know, an 80 page report on deflated footballs and something as serious as workplace sexual misconduct and everything that went on with the Washington organization, taking the cheerleaders and sponsors and exposing them and humiliating them, um, that we don't get a written report on that. They bury that report, which to me told, told us, uh, everything they're not going to remove Dan Snyder. And they're going to, and you know what, like I'm mad, mad enough at major league baseball and I'm okay with them wearing the controversy over the home run record. I'm okay with that because they should wear it. I think the national football league should wear the, uh, the whole Dan Snyder mess. But if they does sell, he bought it for 800 million.

He could sell it probably for 6 billion. And by the way, to your point, I will quickly say every time in the month of October, we see players out there wearing paint for breast cancer. Ask yourself what stance the NFL has actually taken to support women when they've had the opportunity to, because over and over again, they ask us to be fools. Like if you don't care about it, then just tell me you don't care about it and let us all figure out how to deal with that. But don't come in on one hand and pretend that you do care. Like Michigan state is done with title nine and then turn around on the other hand and be like, yeah, but we have this fancy initiative now actually louder than words.

There's no question about it. And you know what, if they didn't care about it, we'd still watch the league. Nobody's watching the league because they douse themselves in pink in the month of October, Jason fits at Jason fits on Twitter, digital host college football guru Raiders fan. Before we get out of here, I'm going to ask you about the Raiders. Uh, we have at least look, I don't know how interesting Penn state at Michigan is going to be. I don't know much about Oklahoma state and TCU, but I do know something about Alabama and Tennessee. I went to an Alabama Tennessee game before Nick Saban was the head coach at Alabama. I went to a game at Neyland stadium.

They pack them in like sardines there. Um, but this game, if Bryce young even plays and is not, if he, if he plays, he's probably a little bit compromised, but Alabama at Tennessee, if Tennessee's offense might be good enough to pull off a pretty shocking upset here, what do you think about this game? Yeah, I'm thinking Tennessee and for partially for the reason you just mentioned, but also sort of an under talked about stat when I hosted college football live this week, we went into our production meeting and they said, what interests you about the game? And I told our production staff, like, we're not talking about the fact that the, while the ball's defense has given up some big plays, they leave the sec and quarterback pressures.

And everybody looked at me shocked or research or looked it up and he said, by God, you're right. Like the balls get at the quarterback better than anybody else in the entire conference. So now you're either going to have a backup quarterback, or you're going to have a banged up Bryce young with an AC shoulder injury.

That's problematic. That's enough in and of itself because the, the, the Alabama offensive line has not been good enough week after week. And you know, on Saturdays, my digital shows with AJ McCarran, he had the exact same injury as Bryce. And he told me the minute it happened that what they did for the rest of that season is every week, Monday through Friday, he never threw a football. He only handed off the practice. Couldn't lift his arm Saturday morning. They gave him three shots in his shoulder. The first pass he threw every week was the warmup passes that the cameras catch of quarterbacks on the sidelines.

That was it. He didn't even know if his arm was going to work until the game started. If it's the same for Bryce and every indication I've had from AJ and from Greg McElroy is that it is, if it's the same for Bryce, we don't even know how his arm is going to handle it. So I think that's enough of a window for an offense that we know can score a bunch of points. I think Tennessee's going to win this football game. And then all of a sudden an Alabama team that skated a few times with some really weird looking wins.

I don't think that they can get lucky again this time. Uh, yeah, that, that story, uh, opens up a different conversation that we don't have time to get into because Bryce Young has an NFL future. And I look just what we have seen here, I'll just use Duke basketball as an example.

Duke basketball has had plenty of situations where guys are hurt and like Zion Williamson, they didn't let near a basketball court until he was 100% because all they did was protect his pro future. Uh, I would hope that Nick Saban would do the same thing, uh, there. All right. We're going to have to say goodbye here in a minute or so. Um, so you're a Raiders fan. How are you liking the Josh McDaniels part of the tour?

Yeah, I think unfortunately this is just a lot of people trying to learn a lot of stuff quickly. The Raiders is going to be fine though. If you look at their five weeks this week, they have six straight games that are very winnable.

I think by the time we hit me mid season, they have a real shot at still being around 500, which is crazy. They've lost four games, but I combined 14 points and the ball's been in the offense's hand and every one of those gates to win it. So just like the giants, I don't think are really necessarily a four and one team.

Sorry. Uh, I also would say that I don't think the Raiders are really a one in 14 mediocrity in the AFC. I think the Raiders still have a shot at the playoffs, but you've got a lot of people trying to learn a lot of language with Josh McDaniel's office. I think the Raiders are McDaniel's offense. It's just, it's not going as quickly as anybody wanted it to.

No, no, it is not. It's funny when they signed Devante Adams to that, uh, you know, they traded for Devante Adams. They didn't sign him.

Uh, although I guess they did sign him. Uh, when they did that, and everybody's calling Devante Adams the best wide receiver in football, and he's certainly among them. Now I'm not, I don't think Devante Adams is average, uh, and was elevated by Aaron Rodgers to be otherworldly, but I do think that Aaron Rodgers in the past has had the ability to take very good to great wide receivers and make them superhuman. Whether it was Jordy Nelson or Devante Adams, he has done that. Um, what has been the difference maybe with Adams and Derek Carr that they haven't quite gotten to that level? The car is the opposite of Kyler Murray.

Like people question Kyler Murray's homework car does too much homework. So by the time he gets to the line of scrimmage, uh, he knows where he's throwing the ball before we even get to it. The difference is that, you know, Aaron Rodgers would drop back and say, okay, I don't care if there's three guys on Devante, I'm going to make a play. Derek Carr has decided to walk up and say, okay, according to the, the analytics and the coaching, I'm supposed to put the ball over on this side because of this defense.

And that means that's where I go with it. I mean, a guy like Matt Collins, who most people had never even really heard of in the NFL coming up here, he's a Carolina guy. Yeah. I mean, like he has, he gets all the targets. Why'd you get all the targets? Cause card looked at the defenses like, well, why would I throw under triple coverage if I got Matt Collins over here one-on-one? So like, I understand the logic of that, but that's so risk averse that you're not letting your playmaker make plays. So Matt Collins is having a nice little season, but the heck that do when it comes to the playoffs, nothing like you've got to feed Devante. And that's why I think Devante is frustrated. He's just, he used to throw the ball and give me a chance and cars spent many years with whatever you do, make the right decision based on the defense, not based on what you want to do aggressively. And I don't know that you can uncoach that in a few weeks. I'm not the only one, by the way, who thinks it's an utter joke that he was charged with misdemeanor assault, right? Devante Adams. Yeah.

I mean, that's look, I know everybody wants to go out and get theirs like that, but like, there's gotta be an easier way to do that. I mean, you and I both stood on the sidelines enough times, you know, where you're supposed to be, where you're not supposed to be, you know, where security is not supposed to let you like, it's just, I don't know, it's a bit of a reach for me. All right. Final thing for Jason Fitz. Um, assuming that the top three teams in the country will be the top three teams in the country when we get through the conference championship games, uh, in whatever order you want, Ohio state, Alabama, Georgia, um, who's the fourth team in the playoff? I think it's Clemson, honestly.

And it's a boring cake. I don't trust Michigan's quarterback situation at all. So I'm out on, on Michigan. Uh, USC is pretty good offensively. And we have no idea if their defense is really any good. And by the way, it's still the PAC 12.

So I don't know that we've seen that much. So, you know, I, I know a lot of people want to make it USC by the end of the year, it might be USC, but also just fun fact for nobody paying attention to PAC 12 got rid of divisions this year of when it comes to their championship game. So there's a real shot that we ended up with USC versus UCLA for the PAC 12 championship, which is gross for that conference. They don't want that, but I think USC has got a chance to win out, but Clemson has done everything you can ask them to do. They, I don't know what we're waiting for. They've gotten enough of the big wins.

DJ looks better now than he did. I think the wake forest game was a little bit of an eye-opener for everybody to see that they can win a shootout. So I think Clemson's done enough in a year where they're just clearly thank God for expansion in the future.

Cause we can't even find four good teams, but let's have 12, eight, 16, whatever you and I are on the same page. Uh, it's good to catch up. Jason fits from ESPN Spain and fits classical violinists, digital hosts, college football, guru, Raiders fan. I got, uh, I'll, I'll narrow that down the next time, man. I always appreciate you asking me, man. I appreciate it. Stay well, my friend. We'll talk to you soon. Jason fits from ESPN.