Bobby Carpenter, Former Ohio State Linebacker

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Stuck in a timeshare and want out, contact Wesley Financial Group now and get a free timeshare exit information kit at wesleyfinancialgroup.com. Let's go out to the hotline right now and welcome in the former NFL linebacker, the national champion at The Ohio State. And that, of course, is the Bobby Carpenter, kind enough to join us right now on CBS Sports Radio on The Zach Gelb Show. Bobby, I know it's been a minute. How you been? I'm doing well, Zach.

Thank you for having me on. And we're right in the throngs here of college football season in the NFL, so I'm getting a whole lot better than that first week in November, right now to about mid-January. Yeah, I can't wait.

I actually have tickets this year for Michigan-Ohio State on Thanksgiving weekend. And that game is always juicy, but it gets juicier by the day with all this stuff going on in college football right now. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of times, you know, you have these issues that happen. They always said, you know, they drop breadcrumbs every day, but in this, it's almost been like a loaf of bread that's kind of fallen out of the sky. And if you work in the media, it just gets kind of weirder or juicier, however you want to look at it.

There's just all different tentacles and things that are kind of spawning off of this situation up there. And it's, you know, I don't take like a lot of pleasure and delight in it. I want to see this game be played.

I want to make sure that it's on the up and up. I obviously, being a Buckeye alum, would love to see my Buckeyes win, but I don't want to see like Michigan not play in the DFP or not. I want to see them not play in there because they lost it on the field, not because they're being punished in this way. Like if it was before the season, that's a different deal, but we're so far down it now. It's just, I don't know.

It feels weird. So if you were Tony Petitti, would you just punt and do nothing right now? See, I don't know if you can do that because I know, you know, talking to some of the coaches across the Big Ten, that conference call got pretty heated and people were very upset. And this isn't just an Ohio State thing. I mean, there was multiple coaches across this who suspected it for a while. They've been kind of submitting things. And that's, when people talk about due process, like the evidence has been there and it's been submitted, not just like in the last couple of weeks, like they've been submitting things over the last year and change.

Like these schools are the ones that had all the information. So it's not like there's this big investigation, like you just kind of lay out what's before you and say, okay, is this, this, is this, that, like, does this look real? We'll submit some allegations.

We'll hear what their responses, then move forward. I mean, I don't know if you suspend hardball, if you suspend coaches, like a fine. I don't know if that really does this justice because to me, this isn't, you know, a recruiting thing or, you know, some other nonsense.

Like people, there's people that have diminished like the stealing of signs and listen, sign stealing Zach happens in game all the time. Like going back and forth, you're going to pick stuff up. You're going to understand, Oh, when they do this, they do that.

This is their check. But it's another thing to like, if someone's even recording in game and then like, Oh, we got someone going back and looking at it and then marrying it to the plays of what happened when you're, when you've been given that, that prism of history to look at things, it makes it a heck of a lot easier. And so that's, when I look at this, like, and then it's not a big deal. I go, dude, if you told me every play in the NFL, if there's a run or a pass, I mean, that's what experience is for. Like, that's why you study tape.

That's why you do all those things. So it matters a lot. Like if you know what covers the defense is going to be in as a quarterback or coordinator, like that makes your play calling that much easier as far as what you're ultimately going to do. So, you know, I think there is an element of that where there's obviously competitive advantage. Hopefully that that is gone now and it would be much easier if they just got those stinking transistor radios, which last year, someone else tell me it's too expensive or, you know, with the altering of the helmets, like, listen, it's a week.

I need it. Yeah, it is. Then six guys need them, three quarterbacks on offense and three defensive players. And that's what the NFL has. And like they use all different helmets.

It's not like everyone used, where's a uniform helmet in the NFL. So I don't want to hear all that nonsense. Talking to Bobby Carpenter right now. We were just talking about this before you got on Greg Doyle comes out. I don't know if you're Heisman trophy voter. I am, but he's a trophy voter as well. And Greg says, I'm not going to vote for JJ McCarthy to preserve the integrity of the Heisman trust award. I argue that if JJ lights it up on the field against Penn state and Ohio state, when it's at a quote unquote level playing field, how are you going to leave this guy off your ballot? I think that's absurd to keep him off the ballot right now and say from the start, you're not going to vote for it.

Yeah. I don't, I don't know if I'd be giving Jim Harbaugh coach of the year, but as far as the players in this, yeah, I'm, I am a Heisman voter. And honestly, as I've been going through this, I haven't really thought of this like impacting an individual player, whether, you know, you know, let's say, you know, Blake horn was having a great year, like he did last year prior to the injury or JJ McCarthy, I wouldn't be punitive or penalize those guys based upon what has happened. So I, I don't necessarily agree with that. Now it'd be one thing if like you saw JJ, if he was like somehow directly involved and connected or something like that, but this is, this is the coaches. He may have benefited from it some, but I'm not going to penalize him for something that he really had no control over. And that's why it's just like a fan.

I think it's the best move of Petiti does nothing right now because not that you'll get your full answers, but if you line up the football this weekend and everyone knows what's going on, everyone's changed their signs by now. There's no more quote unquote advantage. And Michigan smacks Penn state. And then in a few weeks, Michigan takes care of Ohio state for the third straight year in a row.

I'm not saying no punishment should be done, but you kind of get your answers on how effective this whole scheme was. Yeah. I think there is something to that, but I will say this like, you know, Michigan, you know, and it's amazing what confidence does in life. And maybe that gave a little bit of confidence. Like they're playing good football now.

Like I tell people like the signs, that's not responsible for entirely of what they've done. I feel like it has met. I think it mattered a lot more last year's Ohio state game than it did two years ago.

I don't know if it was, if it two years ago, I mean, they, they handled Ohio state up there last year. I go back and look at it. And I talked to some of the guys and, you know, there's some plays and I always say, tell guys, like sometimes you just pick a bad play to have a bad play and it's timed up perfectly. And like the stars are against you. Well, you know, it is a lot of times there's always a coincidence.

Well, it may have been a little more than the coincidence last year with that. And so I just don't know how to handle this. Like it's hardball being on the sidelines versus not, is that, does that make a significant difference? But I do know that a lot of these big 10 coaches are very upset and to the point where like, if you're not going to do anything about this, why wouldn't we just fly drones over their practice and fill it ourselves? Like, and that's, I mean, that's like, I mean, it's like the kid, it's like, I think I've argued with my kids on this. Like if you're not going to punish him or punish Mike, I've got four kids. So there's always, well, what about their shoes are on or their, their shirts over here? They put their dishes away like, yeah, but this is a U issue. We're talking about you right now. And then we're trying to mitigate all that. So I, I wish I had a better answer. I honestly feel for Tony Petiti cause he had to clean up the TV contract mess.

And then you get this dumped in your lap, like when everything's going so well. So I don't know if he's almost in a no win situations act. When you look at Ohio state this year, Bobby Carpenter, and I've said, I don't think they're the best team in the country. I could understand why the committee puts them at number one, even though it was kind of laughable how much they were hyping up Rutgers the other night on that selection committee show. And I say that as someone that is from New York and has nothing against Rutgers and want to see Rutgers do well. Do you think Ohio state's the best team in the country or do you even look at that number one ranking and go, yeah, they're probably not the best team in the sport this year? Oh, I don't think, I don't think there's a great team in the sport this year. And so by resume, I think you'd probably say Ohio state. They're pretty good.

And I will say this you're an East coast guy. This is probably the best Rutgers team. There's been in like 10 since great show. It was probably the first time they're good. Like defensively they're good and they can run the football.

Trust me. I watched the games when like Kyle blood was the coach and then Chris ashes. Well, not nothing against him.

Very nice guy treated me. Well, there were some bad games that I had to watch when I was covering Rutgers. Yeah, they're good. They're a tough team.

I mean, they're probably going to win, you know, eight games, go to a bowl. I mean, Greg Shaw, he's, he's the perfect coach for there. So hopefully they never fire him. And hopefully he doesn't leave again. I think he probably has figured that out, but I don't know Zach who the best team is.

And so by resume, probably default, it's it's Ohio state. Their defense is playing well. They've got some really good talented offensive pieces. Have they been consistent all the time?

Maybe not as thorough. And you're used to a high powered offense. That was George.

I'm like, man, George looks pretty good. And then, you know, defensively, they've always been so stout. And I think Mrs. Missouri is a good team, but they gave up 151 yards rushing to Missouri, 200 to Auburn. I look at Michigan and, you know, they really haven't played anybody of consequence.

So it's really tough to get a bead on them. You look at Washington. Yeah. They beat Oregon.

It looks good. And then like, they just stumble around for a couple of weeks. Oregon, I would say, I think is the best team in the pack 12, except for the fact that Washington beat them. And so I have to say results on the field matter.

Like that's my big thing. So I can't just supersede that, you know, Texas, I think Alabama might be better than them now, but Texas beat Alabama by double digits in Tuscaloosa. So like this year, Zach, it's just going to be like survive and get there.

And I mean, it's, it is the flattest I think it has been. Cause I think there's probably six or seven teams still that I look at and say, they could probably win the national championship if they get the right matchup and play well. And I tweeted this out today, like before the year I had Georgia, I had Florida state, Washington, Michigan, and what conference am I forgetting?

One other conference as the school's still alive to win the power five conference championships and like the big 10, whoever wins the East, we know is going to win the big 10 championship, but it makes it really intriguing for the sec in the pack 12. Cause if we get Bama and Georgia and we get Oregon and Washington, Alabama and Oregon right now are the two most like alive teams in the country. I'm not saying the best teams, but they're trending in the right direction.

Yeah. They're playing the best, best football right now. They've improved the most. And that's typically what you expect out of Nick Saban team. They look miles better than what they did the first couple of weeks of the season. Heck they look rough against South Florida, you know, who they're playing Buckner and Ty Simpson. And then they go back to Milro and you're like, all right, they're going to just struggle with him, but they've slowly gotten better every week.

You know? And so you see that there's been a lot of improvement there. Uh, you know, from that Michigan's played pretty well, but Oregon, like you said, like I, I was on Washington at the beginning of the season, but I think Washington does have some flaws defensively. And I don't know if they can run it against the team other than USC. I mean, they seem to just let them rush up and down the field, but, but Oregon I think is good because they can play a variety of styles. Like they can get you in a scoring contest if they need to, but they can also slow it down, play a defensive game and win that way and like pound the ball on you and run it so that they, when you can play in different styles, it gives you some success. And that, that is the one thing I think that Ohio state has the ability to do this year. We haven't really seen them light it up on offense, but if you look at all the teams this year, the ones that you have confidence in, it's the teams that have good defenses in the era of like score, score, score, score, score. You know, why do you think Oregon's better than Washington? Well, because they can play defense. Alabama, because they can play defense.

Like that's, that's a big piece of it now. And so the teams that can get stops, I think are going to matter a lot this season. With all that being said, we know how great the Ohio state defense is this year. We know Marvin Harrison is the best non quarterback in the sport. The big reason why I have skepticism with Ohio state is their quarterback, Kyle McCord. Where's your confidence in the Ohio state quarterback? You just must not have confidence in him because his dad went to Rutgers.

That's, that's probably what you're doing. He played quarterback there. I honestly think if you, the Notre Dame game showed me a lot and for anybody to put together drives like that, and that goes for any quarterback, especially when you're on the road and when you can put together a final drive, despite what's happened throughout the game and his ankle was bad, there's a lot of adversity around him, you know, they haven't looked great. And I go back and look and there's just, it's been some small things. And so it's, it's really close. It's not very far off from them being able to go out and score 42 to 49 a game. And I think also a little bit of it, Zach is Ryan Day is kind of leaned into the fact that, Hey, we have a really good defense.

It doesn't behoove us to go out there and try to score 50. If in doing that, we may throw another pick or have something happen where maybe it puts our defense in jeopardy and should things not break the right way, then we're in trouble. And so I think he's kind of leaned in to that defensive mentality, which you've seen Nick Saban do this year, some of these other teams.

So I think that it's right. It's okay to have criticism there of Kyle. I mean, he hasn't been CJ shroud, but if CJ shroud is judged off, the NFL is looking pretty darn good so far. When you look at Ryan day, only six losses in his career, there are some Ohio state fans that are going to say, well, you lost the last two to Michigan and they put them on the hot seat. What is kind of the tone with the majority of the Ohio state fan base and not just some of the people that are like yelling about Ryan day these days?

Well, I think the majority of it is, it's always a vocal minority. Most people look and say, Hey, like this guy is one of the top coaches in the country. Look at what he's done. You know, he's been here for a while. These aren't urban's recruits.

This isn't, you know, urban's team. He's been here. He's been to CFPs.

He's just not, hasn't gotten over that hump. I mean, he's won some big games. They beat Clemson. They've gotten down the wire. Heck they, I mean, they were 47 yard field goal away from beating Georgia last year. Like they were right on the precipice of getting it done. So they're not that far.

They just have to find a way to eventually push it over the top and find a way to get it done. And so I think a lot of people realize that they want to beat Michigan. I think this sign, the situation up there has probably taken a little bit of heat off of him, especially from last year.

Cause two years ago, I don't think it mattered. Last year at home, it just seemed like things were going a bit too well. And a little bit in the second half, you know, they called it the meltdown, but all of a sudden it makes a little, maybe a little more sense now. So I think that's taken some heat off of him, but not for one. I think Ryan is a heck of a football coach. And I always say, if you want to get rid of him, who are you going to hire? And then like they kind of stumble around him.

Like, exactly. I've been around good coaches. I've been around bad coaches. Ryan is a really good football coach.

Be glad that you have him. You think Urban Meyer will have a return to college coaching? I know there's always like those rumors, maybe Michigan State's going to make a run at him.

I don't think so. I know people have talked about it. There's been rumors, you know, they've offered him a hundred million and all this and heck maybe they have, you know, I think he's very content now, you know, he tried at Jacksonville. I honestly think Zach is harder to coach in college now than in the NFL.

Cause at least in the NFL guys are under contract. In college, like, Hey dude, you're yelling at me. I'm going to go dip and get in the portal. I'm out of here. Like you can't, you can't be as firm. Like you have to have a great relationship with people to be able to coach them hard. And so I think that, I think he honestly saw that, took a step back and like, all right, I'm good.

I'm having fun. I can watch my son-in-law coach at Ohio State and go see my grandkids. And honestly, Zach, he's like a different person when he's not coaching. When he coaches, I mean, he turns into like full on like sociopath locked in singular focus. And then I saw him, you know, a couple of nights, a couple of weeks ago, he's in Columbus, you know, like relax. It's like a different human being.

Like it doesn't even make sense. Last thing I'll ask you just because I want your defensive mind with what you've watched this year in college football. Would you go Caleb Williams or Drake May, if you had the number one overall pick?

Yeah, I'm going to be honest, full disclosure. I haven't seen enough of Drake May this year. Last year, I thought he was pretty good.

Maybe a little more consistent. I know Caleb Williams can make some unbelievable plays. He does some reckless stuff. My only concern is with Caleb, as he developed too many bad habits this year, cause you watch him like he tries to be a hero at every play and sometimes it works, but then he's also put himself in harm's way. He's fumbled the ball, he's thrown some picks.

And so I think that you have to make sure that you can eliminate that when you bring him in. Cause that does not work in the NFL by any stretch. Did you have any problem with him crying in the arms of his family? Like after the game, I didn't think that was a big deal, but some did. You know, listen, I'm a very emotional player. I think the one thing I love about football is the level of emotion that it takes to be able to play it. You know, he poured it out in that game.

I mean, I, I don't know. I never ran up and talked to my parents during or after a game that I was playing in college. I'd wait for, you know, they wait after, for me after the locker room, but I don't necessarily have a massive issue with that.

Like, would you rather have a guy laugh and not like he doesn't care? Imagine he was eating a hot dog on the sideline, laughing, people be crushing him. You can't win. It's a good point. Exactly. The hot, you go look at the hot dog situation, you know, from, you know, was it Sanchez? Well, do you want that?

I mean, cause you're going to criticize that as well. So you can't really can't win for losing Bobby Carpenter. Always great to catch up with you and talk a little football with you. You'd be well. Thank you. I appreciate Zach. Thank you.