Time to dive deep into college football, the upcoming playoffs, and the transfer portal

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So that's cool. They did just win one nil over the weekend. Up to fifth in the table right now. So, you know, and if you've seen the way that Italy's been going in the coefficient through the first half of Champions League, they might get five spots.

Oh yeah. I mean, all four of their clubs advanced to the knockout round in Champions League. No question about it. And they have sides still kicking in Europa and Europa Conference. Absolutely.

including Fiorentina, which was the Group F winner. Come on now. Let's go. Fantastic.

I love working that in. All right, sir. State's been good in the portal. Louisville's been great in the portal. Heck, is Syracuse ranked in the top 10 simply because of getting what?

Joey McCord from Ohio State? How is Syracuse a top 10 portal destination? Explain, start with state and we'll hit on Carolina and then we'll we'll we'll branch out from there.

Okay. Well, the first thing is if you are NC State, you are taking as a coaching staff and as an entire operation, the correct approach because in this era of bloated conferences and imbalanced conference schedules, you need to have the foresight to look and understand your roster, your schedule and when it's time to go get it, when it's time to not be investing in the future, but be investing in the present. And when it's not just Grayson McCall, but when it's also Jordan Waters, when you're also starting to continue to put all these pieces together, what you recognize is that NC State's operation coaching staff, you know, everybody that is supporting that is also recognizing what we are seeing, which is that this schedule is set up for NC State to be a contender for the ACC championship in 2024. If they can get quarterback right, which, hey, look, Grayson McCall needs to be able to stay healthy, right?

That is a big question mark. But if he stays healthy, he's good enough to be able, I mean, he's certainly as good as Jack Plummer, if not better. And Jack Plummer got Louisville to the ACC championship. Jordan Waters had 12 rushing touchdowns and nearly 800 rushing yards this season. You add him, when we think about that running back position for NC State, it's been two seasons, I guess, since we've really had someone that you could rely on in the way that I think you can rely on Jordan Waters, you keep Casey on board, you've got Jonathan Paylor, like, I just see a situation where you are beefing up this NC State offense to be able to be so much better than it was this year.

And again, this is going to be repeated so many times between now and July, at which point it will be a broken record. But NC State looks like the team that could be the Louisville of 2024, which is to say, if you are just good enough, then the schedule sets up that you should be able to be in the mix in November to win the games that can get you to Charlotte. Now in a power ranking world, are we throwing NC State ahead of both Clemson and Florida State? Probably not, but that's not how we decide the championships, Adam. This is how we decide the championships. It's on the field with who wins the games and NC State has enough winnable games that if they invest in the present, they could have in store for a really good 2024. Yeah. I mean, sometimes the championships are decided in a conference room in Texas, so, or at least who gets to try to win a championship. Sometimes it happens there.

Oh, you have to go to Syracuse. Sorry. I was, I am like, we've been talking about this. I've been talking with, uh, like the CBS sports newsrooms, like what's going on there. And I said, and that's what I told them. I was like, they recognize the opportunity.

And that is, you know, who else recognizes the opportunity? Ole Miss. Ole Miss has been doing a bunch of work in the portal and it's because they see that with the imbalance schedules, they've got a favorable draw to be able to try and go make a run at it, especially in the 12 team world. But let's talk about Syracuse.

Cause I do think Fran Brown has been doing work. The reason why Syracuse went to hire a Georgia defensive backs coach is that Georgia defensive backs coach has deep, deep high school recruiting connections and still has those relationships with players. He recruited at Georgia. Kyle McCord is not one of them. We'll get to him in a second. But when we look at Fidel Diggs, like players from Texas, a and M from Georgia, from Florida, um, Mackay, Muse, the wide receiver from Georgia and part returner, he is basically going back in his phone and reigniting all the old text messages from when he was recruiting players to Georgia.

And those relationships are still so strong because of Fran Brown's personality. And he was able to load them up on campus. Now, Kyle McCord is interesting because I do think Kyle McCord, I mean, he was 11 and one as a starting quarterback. He was not good enough to win the big 10 with Ohio State and Marvin Harrison Jr., which is a knock. But when you consider the expectations of Ohio State, maybe getting him out of there is going to also be able to free him up.

He was also a little bit banged up. Um, on paper, he rates as one of the highest, one of the best prospects that Syracuse has had at the quarterback position. So I am, uh, I'm encouraged by what Fran Brown has been able to do. I was skeptical of the higher off the bat, but you know, when I see what he's been able to do in terms of raising the talent level, I mean, how are you going to get an sec player to say that they're going to come to Syracuse, New York? I mean, how are you even able to get them to visit this past weekend? He had like 12 official visits from transfer portal players, many of whom were sec players last year.

They're agreeing willingly to come to Syracuse in mid December and spend a weekend there. Here's what's interesting to me. And I hadn't heard anybody bring it up. So he couldn't win with Marvin Harrison Jr. So he's going to where Marvin Harrison Sr. played in college.

People have, we should, we should see some sort of a symmetry there. I actually mentioned it on yesterday's, uh, cover three podcast and, uh, well look, cause don't forget they were high school teammates. They weren't just college teammates. Oh, Harrison Jr. played high school ball together for three years in Pennsylvania. So the idea that Marvin Harrison Sr. would have been a connector at a minimum on this is absolutely in play because those two families have known each other for a long time.

All right. Um, now how does, you know, we just talked to Michael Clark at 24 seven sports. How does the portal, how does this impact positively or negatively? I don't know, probably negatively, uh, national signing day, which is also coming.

You, you rightly, uh, pointed out that it is my least favorite day of the year. Um, and it's, and I think it's kind of been minimized anyway by all the portal news because we have immediate gratification for the most part out of the portal. And we absolutely don't in terms of high school recruiting for the most part. So how, how, how did these two things and the calendar also is kind of messed up.

So how do these two things work? Transfer portal is impacting national signing day, but not in terms of the buzz, kind of like you're mentioning that's something else. What is impacting the national signing day is that coaches are giving away less scholarships to high school players. So, um, if I have 25 scholarships in the old day, I'd be going out there and I'd be trying to lock down 25 recruits. Now I might be saving five to seven out of those 25. And that's like legitimately out of that. I mean, you see portal classes of 12, 13, 14 or more Colorado's got 15, right? You know, that's some of the exits, you know, players are losing as well. So there's some transaction there, but there are less scholarship offers being made to high schoolers because scholarships are being saved for them to use on the transfer portal, because you would rather get somebody who not just as a little bit more developed in terms of their football, but I've heard coaches talk about this just a little bit more developed in terms of college.

You know, somebody that understands how to practice, how to go to class, you know, is not living at home who is already adjusted to taking care of themselves. Tommy DeVito is living at home. We have issues with Tommy DeVito by the way. Um, I, I do think that that is an impact that is significant. This cycle is interesting because it is very much lacking for drama.

And what I have heard, it's not the transfer portal, it's NIL. It's the fact that all the work got done for the most part this summer, they got all their money together. They got all their ducks in a row and they got these guys locked in. And so it's not quite the same as the old days where you could come parachuting in at the last minute. And maybe there will be some examples of that on Wednesday.

I'm sure that, you know, whether it is Jeremiah Smith, the number one wide receiver, you know, Dylan, Ray Ola has already announced his flip to Nebraska from Georgia. You didn't know about that. No, no, no. I'm, I'm, with lucky land slots.

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Daily bonuses are waiting. No purchase necessary Boyd were prohibited by law 18 plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details is that this I'm just like, he's one of the top quarterbacks, right? So maybe Matt rule had a million and a half to $2 million. Oh, I'm, I am very certain that they had a million and a half to $2 million. You know what else they had?

They also had a nice raise for his uncle. Who's the offensive line coach. I didn't think that Nebraska's offensive line was that great. In fact, I saw a lot of their quarterbacks get sacked and throw interceptions.

But yeah, you know what? Donovan, Ray Ola, Dylan, Ray Ola's uncle probably does deserve a fat raise. Uh, conveniently before national signing because he really wanted to go to Nebraska to win six games. Well, and Dylan's dad played at Nebraska, right?

I mean, there was like, ultimately the, the only reason he wasn't at Nebraska was because it was Nebraska where Nebraska is, and now they've gotten things together. So it's not the transfer portal. It's NIL. That's taking the drama away from national signing day, but the transfer portal is impacting national signing day because less scholarships are being given to high school players. So what is, because I know you get 25 scholarships to use a year, but if you lose 18 guys through the portal and you only bring in 12, that's a negative of six. How does the, all of that get figured in with your available scholarships for high school? Please do not ask me to do math.

I went to a public school and I did not take math in college. No, honestly, the roster crunching that you're talking about drives coaches crazy. That's why you have general managers. That's why you have huge personnel departments. And it's why you talked about the calendar earlier, right? This, this part of the calendar year, I mean, it is, it's really, really tough on coaches and I'm afraid it's going to lead to some burnout of some bright minds because it's going to say, forget this. Like I can, I can go be an analyst in a corner office at a bank somewhere and not have to deal with all of this. So I, it's tough that the answer is I can't do that math for you because even at the power five level, personnel offices are being driven crazy and that's not even getting started on the impact of the COVID year, which is still in our system for one more season.

And by the way, it's, it, it does seem like it's almost algebra, not simple arithmetic as to how this whole thing gets figured out. Let me ask a couple of more quick questions and we'll let chip Patterson go. We thought that Clemson would approach the portal differently. I realize there's still time, but they have zero commitments. So are they going to approach this differently or are we just playing a waiting game?

No, they did approach it differently. They've lost. They had three offensive line targets that they went after in the transfer portal and all of them committed to other places. I can't criticize Clemson for not trying because they are trying now it's matter of execution. I will say that if real quickly on Clemson, I like the hire of Chris Rump and bringing him in as an addition to the defensive staff. And I think that the fact that you depart, you fired two coaches who were part of the commonly criticized.

These guys have no non Clemson experience and bring in guys that have Clemson experience, Matt Luke on the offensive line, Chris Rump on the defensive line. Those guys have, they've been around for a long time. So the portal and the staff, those are two common criticisms. They're trying to address the portal.

They're just missing. And then on the staff side, I like the changes. Matt Luke, by the way, was a, an assistant at Duke under David Cuckley for a long time. He was the head coach right at Ole miss for a hot minute.

Duke has not replaced anybody. What are they doing? I don't, I I've only been looking at, I like the offensive coordinator hire, you know, we, we talked a lot about. Rhett Lashley and the offensive success that Miami was able to have right there. Clearly there's a relationship that is important. So I I'm, I'm, I'm good on the OC hire.

I have not, I have not been passed any information in terms of their, their additions from the portal at that at this time. Yeah. I mean, losing Riley Leonard, losing Jordan waters, losing open to, to Notre Dame as well. There's, there was a lot of good talent that left Duke to, to head elsewhere real quick.

North Carolina only has three commits out of the portal. One of them is an offensive lineman from Georgia. The other two are the quarterback tight end combination from Texas A and M. What can you tell us about them?

So max Johnson, son of Brad Johnson and his brother, obviously also both John Johnson's going to North Carolina. I had this strange, a little bit of deja vu near the end of Mack Brown, Mack Brown's tenure at Texas. There was a, there was a common sort of a refrain about all these other quarterbacks that he didn't recruit, right? No Mack Brown recruited Johnny man's it's, it's not true, but it was just kind of the way that it was talked about because there were these other prospects. If Garrett Gilbert turns out to be a superstar, then nobody's got any of the same kind of criticisms, but that wasn't the case. After Colt McCoy, it looks on paper like a bunch of misses, but you go back to those recruitments.

And what happened was that Mac was getting guys early. You know, he, he was the national championship winning coach at Texas. And if you looked good and if you were bonafide and he would drop that offer, you would say yes. And he's got his quarterback and late bloomers then would not be going to Texas because Texas already had a quarterback.

Right. I bring that back because Max Johnson committed before the portal was even open for underclassmen. Max Johnson committed back when you could only enter the portal as a graduate student. And I think Max Johnson has heart. I think Max Johnson has grit.

I'm not being funny here. I saw him lift his lifeless body off the ground behind a bad Texas A&M offensive line and continue to return to the huddle and try to go out there for a like dead man walking a tight team that was Texas A&M this year under Jimbo Fisher. I think that he's got great intangibles. He's a big guy.

He can take those kinds of hits. So, you know, I think that Max Johnson can bring a lot to that locker room. But when I see all of the quarterbacks that are available in the portal, there are other quarterbacks that I would rank. If I was ranking the portal quarterbacks ahead of Max Johnson. And that's why I just I wonder you. It's great that you were able to have a high floor quarterback and you were able to grab them up and then be done with that concern.

But in jumping so early, did you take your out yourself out of the sweepstakes to get somebody who maybe has a higher ceiling? D.J. you younger like. Listen, I don't know if North Carolina was going to play. DJ is the bell of the ball between Florida State and Miami or, you know, like Florida State, Miami, Cam Ward, Cam Ward. Right.

Like it's just do you even want to play that game like that? Cam Ward, little Cam Ward's little D.J. is huge. Yeah. One's faster. And then, you know, one's more lumbering. It's like, do you really want to get into the bidding war with Florida State and Miami?

That's like who can be dumber? I don't know if that's that's something that I mean, I don't know if that's something that a lot of college football programs want to do. Like, all right, you guys have fun with that. All right. When when you and I speak next, we will we will definitively point to the Bulls as to which conference was the best. Right. Florida State. Well, they proved they can't belong.

They didn't belong when they get punked by Georgia, even though Florida State's roster has been completely decimated by players not interested in playing in it. But we'll we'll talk about that in the new year, sir. I appreciate your time, as always.

Sounds good. You'll be well as Chip Patterson here on a Tuesday as opposed to a Wednesday. Hey, guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but I like fun, too. It's a thing.

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