Big ACC football matchups this weekend!

We're going to take a break from beating our head against the brick wall, talking about the Panthers' offensive ineptitude, and talk about the Atlantic Coast Conference as we head into Week 11 in the college football season with Florida State still in the top four of the college football playoff, and a big rivalry game for them, and a North Carolina-Duke game.

But I'm not going to start there with Roddy Jones of ESPN and ABC. I'm going to start at NC State. First of all, how are you, Mr. Jones? I am fantastic, Adam. I hope you're well as well.

Yeah, I'm doing very well. By the way, your Yellow Jackets are kind of okay. Yeah, they're playing well. You know, it's funny, at the beginning of the year, I thought this team would be a work in progress on offense and have a really solid defensive unit. It turns out they are fantastic on offense, and the defense is pretty terrible. It's kind of exactly the opposite of what I anticipated, but legitimately, this team is playing the best offense in the ACC over the last couple of weeks.

Florida State didn't play particularly well. I guess you could make an argument for North Carolina being in that mix, but those are the three. Those are the three offenses that are really humming in the ACC. And it's a testament to Brent Key, it's a testament to the offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner, and Haynes King has been phenomenal this year. Look, the ACC Player of the Year conversation is probably going to come down to Jordan Travis or Drake May. Jordan Travis is probably going to win it because he's the quarterback of that team and he's got good numbers.

But Haynes King has been the quarterback that's done the most with the Leafs this season, so he should definitely be in the conversation. Yeah, and they have Sneaky on the low, maybe the best uniform combination in the entire league. I love the old gold jerseys with the white helmets.

Do you? Yeah. The gold doesn't match, and it's a thing with Florida Tech people. It has been for years. We've got to have a consistent gold.

Never find it. It's okay to disagree about something like that. Roddy Jones is joining us. Let me get to MJ Morris and NC State. You've been in locker rooms, and I know you haven't been in this one, but the dynamic between the players and the rest of the team and MJ given his decision to put the red shirt back on for the last three games. Is that the most important thing, and is that relationship maybe irreparable?

I'll answer the last part first because I think it's probably an easier answer. I don't think it's irreparable only because if you decide, hey, I'm going to come back and I'm going to be really good, then all things are forgiven. If you come back and help us win, that'll definitely be forgiven. There'll be some people that are rankled, and that team has had strong leadership really for the last seven years. 2018, they've had really strong leadership from older statesmen too.

It's been an older led program. MJ Morris, being a quarterback, is sort of thrust into a leadership position, but he's going to have to earn that trust back from some of the older guys on that team next year. In terms of the most important thing this year, MJ Morris deciding to put the red shirt back on doesn't mean they can't win the rest of their games. Look at what the offensive performance has been with MJ Morris since he took the red shirt off. It hasn't been good. Casey Concepcion has been the entire offense.

So let's be real. As long as Brendan Armstrong doesn't turn the ball over, he probably gives them more than MJ Morris did because he will do the things that they were bringing him in to do anyway, which is quarterback run stuff and stuff like that. So the turnovers are really the bigger issue, and can you throw a simple pass to Casey Concepcion? If you can do those two things, then you will be just as good if not better than MJ Morris. The thing is, for the future, I don't know why you would put the red shirt back on unless you are either, A, anticipating spending five years at NC State, which very few college students sit down and think, you know what, I think I'm going to spend five years here. My red shirt senior year will be the best year of my career, so let me put the red shirt back on.

Typically, these types of discussions are pushed by the quote adults in the room, friends or family. In this case, it's to make you more valuable in the transfer market. I know his dad has come out and said he plans on being at NC State.

Plans change once money is thrown at you. We'll see if he's there. The thing I would caution him is that transfer quarterbacks this year, if you go back and look at the transfer quarterbacks of the last couple seasons, it's been a mixed bag.

I don't know that MJ Morris has played well enough consistently enough, or we could assume, or really well enough overall, we could assume that wherever he goes, he will be a starter and a good addition. It's funny, at the beginning of the year, the Sam Hartman bandwagon was full. Not that Sam Hartman isn't a good quarterback, I think Sam Hartman is, but he's not now what he was thought to be back at the beginning of the season. I remember watching the game against Navy in Ireland, and they had basically put Sam on the Wheaties box, and that's not the case. It's funny because we've seen Sam Hartman, we had seen Sam Hartman for five years before that, and it turns out in his sixth year he's the same guy he was in the first five.

We sort of expected him to grow in a way that I don't know if it's fair to expect a guy to grow just because of the system. We had seen enough of Sam Hartman in the straight dropback passing game, the traditional five-step drop, three-step drop passing game, to know that there were inconsistencies there. We had seen enough of him at Wake Forest to know that there were turnover issues there. And what's happened this year? There's been inconsistencies in the pocket, especially when the pocket gets a little muddy on them, and there's been turnovers. There have been turnovers that have come in bunches, and turnovers that have come in so many bunches that in the last game where they're playing against... who did they play last? I'm dropping.

Oh, I don't know either. Right, yeah. He throws a pick-six early in the game, and Marcus Freeman comes out after and says, well, you know, those interceptions spooked you a little bit, and everybody's like, how can you get spooked by one interception? He saw the six turnover game against Louisville last year. He saw the game against Louisville this year where he turned the ball over a ton. So, yeah, as a coach, you're starting to think, all right, let us prevent that from happening again. So, you know, I don't want to pick on Sam Hartman, but sometimes when you see these guys for five years throw a hundred touchdown passes in college, they end up being the same guy no matter where they go. Right, and the mesh point offense that they ran, that RPO stuff that they ran at Wake Forest maybe was just great for Sam because he could do so many things, and he's really smart.

Roddy Jones is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. I want to get to a couple of other things before we have to say goodbye. You have Tulsa and Tulane coming up this weekend. I'm sorry you're not doing FSU Miami because that, to me, as somebody, as a young guy growing up watching college football, this was the game of the year every year.

Florida State and Miami was like noon, usually the fifth week of the season. Now, I mean, they're just putting it wherever now because Miami hasn't necessarily been worthy, nor Florida State, until maybe this year, worthy of the rivalry. But it's a big deal for the Seminoles because they have to keep winning. Do you get the sense that the ACC still does not get any respect at all?

So, that's a good question, and I'm going to answer it in sort of a backhanded way. I think the ACC gets respect. I think the ACC doesn't help itself earn respect. I mean, this season, the ACC had five teams ranked at one point, and at different times it's been a myriad of teams. Miami's been ranked, obviously North Carolina bounced out, bounced back in. Duke's obviously been ranked. Florida State, Clemson, started the season ranked. So, the ACC earned respect in the non-conference. The thing is, when you get in a conference, there are certain games you just can't lose. Virginia's the best two-win team in the country.

I stand by that. I will go to bat with them against any two-win team in the country. But Carolina can't lose that game. I don't care about the rivalry.

I don't care about it. You can't lose to a Virginia team. And so, you have to earn the respect from that standpoint. So, I think the ACC's probably getting a proper amount of respect at this point. Like, you can come to me with, hey, Boston College should be getting considerations. No, they shouldn't.

No, I would not do that. They lost to Northern Illinois at the beginning of the season. And that's like, who else are you going to put up there? Clemson's got four losses. And while I think they're better than a four-loss team, four-loss teams don't get ranked.

Sorry, that's just how it rolls. So, I think the ACC gets the proper amount of respect right now and really kind of has all year. Is Florida State the fourth best team in the country or does their resume just put them there?

I am on the side of Florida State. It's probably not the fourth best team in the country. I think their resume likely gets them there and their unit statistics have held up or do hold up with the other teams up there.

Now, they don't have a truly elite unit. Like, they don't have any top five unit on either side of the football. The offensive efficiency, they're number nine in the country. Defense efficiency, they're number ten in the country.

It's not like a Washington, which has got the number four offense in the country and then their defense is in the 40s. It's not Georgia or Michigan. Michigan's number one in defensive efficiency, two in offensive.

Georgia's six and 22. You know, Ohio State's got the number three defense in the country. So, they don't have an elite unit when you're talking about that air of college football, which means they're probably not one of the four best teams. They may be the most balanced of the teams other than Michigan in the top six. Although, I would argue Oregon is probably up there as well because we have an elite offense and a really good defensive top 15. But I think if you were to ask me, you know, would Texas or Florida State win if they played a game?

I'd say it's probably a toss-up. I'd lean – I'd probably lean Florida State. But if you went with that with, you know, Florida State and Alabama, despite the fact that Alabama lost to Texas, at this point the way that Alabama's playing, I think Alabama probably wins that game.

And not to mention Washington and Oregon. And then, you know, we can get a little bit, you know, we can have that conversation with Penn State and Ole Miss. So, I think they're probably the best team in the country, maybe seven. But all that matters is that you're better than – that you keep that zero so that we don't have to have that conversation with the one-loss teams. If they win out, it doesn't even make a difference. They'll have the right to get squashed by Georgia or Michigan, right? And look, you have that right. And maybe Florida State will steal Michigan's signals and win that game.

So, let me take you right there as we close our conversation on this. What do you think should happen at Michigan? Yeah, super interesting because, you know, I heard Greg McElroy was very outspoken on get-ups about not wanting to punish the players. And, you know, while I agree with not wanting to punish the players in theory, the only thing that makes what happened not worth it is to take away postseason opportunities. You can make Jim Harbaugh, you know, forfeit all the college football playoff money. You can make Jim Harbaugh pay any sort of fine. You can make Michigan pay whatever fine. You can spend Harbaugh after this year.

Like, you can do a lot of things and none of them would have made this not worth it. Like, if you asked fan bases, would you pay a $10 million fine, or coaches, would you pay a $10 million fine for a national championship? I would say all of them would say yes, because boosters are going to front out. Like, you're going to get money from other people to out front that. You know, schools have that money. Like, they would rather the national championship. And so, while I don't want to hurt the players, the only way to make this sting the way it needs to is to hurt the players, is to forbid them for playing in the Big Ten championship game, which would then all but preclude them for playing in the college football playoffs. So, that's what I would lobby for. It would be terrible for the players whose opportunities are limited.

It would be terrible for that special team. But punishments are not to make people feel bad. It's not to make the individual, like, it's not to make Jim Harbaugh feel like, oh, I've done something wrong.

I need to, I am being punished. That's part of it. Part of it's also a deterrent to other people from doing it. And if you just fine them, like, five million dollars, man, I am sending every scout in the world to every school in the world to go and steal their signs. Because five million dollars for a national championship is worth it.

You and I are on the absolute same page here, because I always say that if you want to stop behavior, then the punishment must go as far as possible to preventing the behavior. And there is nothing that the, first of all, I don't believe, they might suspend Jim Harbaugh for a couple of games. But I doubt they're going to suspend him for the Ohio State game. And I doubt they're going to do anything to take Michigan out of postseason play. Because money, the most important thing is money to all of these leagues. And if it wasn't, Southern Cal wouldn't be entering the Big Ten. Stanford, Cal, and SMU wouldn't be in the ACC, and all the stuff that we've seen over the last five to ten to fifteen years wouldn't be happening.

Because the only thing that matters is money. And they're not taking their best team, theoretically, out of the postseason mix. They're just not going to do it. So, the thing that does help the Big Ten if they do decide to go this route is, Ohio State is basically a shoo-in if you rule Michigan out. So they still get in the college football playoff, in my opinion. They're going to play that game? Uh, yeah.

What do you mean? If they're going to play Ohio State-Michigan, and Michigan has been ruled out of the playoff, and Michigan wins that game, Ohio State still loses it. But I think Ohio State still gets in the college football playoff. I mean, it's the best loss in the country at that point.

Losing to the number three team in the country, they run roughshod over everybody else. There will be an argument that they still have a win over Notre Dame earlier in the season. I don't think their resume is good enough to get them in as a Big Ten champion.

So, I think the Big Ten probably gets in no matter what. So, just to play this out, Michigan undefeated but ineligible beats Ohio State. You've got Washington undefeated.

Probably won't happen because their schedule is so back-loaded, but maybe. Washington undefeated. Georgia undefeated. Florida State undefeated. Okay, we would not have an undefeated team. So, the Big Twelve would get left out, and one loss, Ohio State, not playing in the conference championship game would go.

That would be my guess. If Michigan is ineligible, then you only have four undefeated teams that are eligible. If Ohio State were to lose, and there's only three undefeated, so there's one more spot, I think Ohio State gets that last spot. Look, they're the number one team in the country right now. So, I don't think losing to the number three team knocks you out of the top four. I look forward to all of this.

Texas going 12-1 with the win at Alabama. Might complicate matters, but you make a good case. Roddy Jones, I appreciate your time, man. Hopefully we can catch up again soon. Yeah, I appreciate you.