Robert Griffin III | Former Heisman Winning QB

All right, welcome back in. This is Zach Gelb Show Coast to Coast on the Infinity Sports Network as we are here USA Army Navy Radio Row and now joining us, one of our favorites, the 2011 Heisman Trophy winning quarterback at a Baylor.

That, of course, is our pal Robert Griffin, the third RG3. How you been, my man? I'm doing good, brother. You? I'm doing fantastic. You look amazing. Look at this. USA.

USA. I hung out with you a few years ago at a Super Bowl party. I go RG3 knows how to dress. I look like a schmuck, so I still have to upgrade the suit this year. You look great. I saw it as soon as I was walking around the court.

I said, oh, he's got the suit. This is incredible. So we're on a bunch of stations around the country. As you know, one of our affiliates is KTIK in Boise, and I told him today we're having RG3 on. You're like a God out there.

I love you with the Gentie support. We have the Heisman Trophy coming out tomorrow night. We'll find out who it's going to be. I think you could only be Travis Hunter or Ashton Gentie.

How do you think this thing's going to play on out? I think you're right in the sense it's between those two, but I think the fact that we got Dylan Gabriel and Cam Ward in the finalist shows you that it's going to be a lot closer race than people anticipated because it comes down to preference all year. I've been saying that Gentie is the best player at his position, and because of that, if he has an opportunity to break Barry Sanders record, you would feel like, oh, they're going to lean that direction. But then when you look at award season and you understand that what Travis Hunter is doing is something that no one's ever done.

We've never seen this. You talk about Charles Woodson and Chris Gamble. It's like, but no, those guys didn't do it in the way that he is.

So how are people going to weigh that out? Because Travis Hunter just won the political. He won the AP Player of the Year. So you know that voters are leaning towards him in certain aspects, but the fact that Dylan Gabriel is in there and Oregon is the number one team in the country, but he doesn't have the best numbers.

And, you know, you could make the argument that your door should be in. You can make the argument that Cam Scadaboo could be a Heisman finalist as well as Bryson Daly from Army. So I just I look at the way that the voting happened and I say to myself, wow, maybe people will be shocked at who wins the Heisman come tomorrow, or maybe it'll just be a lot closer race.

But I think it does boil down to preference. I have a bizarre theory and it actually has to do with politics and the Heisman Trophy. So when President Trump won the election the first go around, I think there were a lot of people who were afraid to publicly say they were going to vote for President Trump.

And then they did so quietly in a weird way. And I'm a big fan of Coach Prime, Chador, Travis Hunter, even heard Chador say it the other day. If Travis doesn't win, we're going to cause havoc. I wonder, because I know how some voters are, they get afraid of getting backlash.

I wonder how many voters are voting gente quietly because they're afraid of what happens if they say publicly, it's not Travis Hunter. Yeah, I can see that. And I can see it in this sense as well.

We both know this. It's not just politics, but it's also marketing, right? So when people are voting for these awards, yeah, they're voting for the best player at a certain position, but it might be that they're voting for the guy that they think they want their brand attached to the post. And I think that's a real thing. And I think we have to be cognizant of that. And I'm not saying that the Heisman is doing that because there's so many Heisman voters.

That's ridiculous. I don't know where these voters come from, but who wants their brand associated with a certain person? And you already know that if Travis doesn't win, the narrative is going to be it's because those voters didn't like Deion Sanders and they held that against him. And if it's a close race, I don't think I would say that.

If it's not a close race and Gente wins, I think there might be some validity to that. How much hate do you think there actually is, though, for Coach Prime? Because I love the guy. I said years ago he should get an SEC job when he was at Jackson State. I told it to his face.

I go, I want to see you at Auburn. So is it just Coach Prime kind of stirs that up because that his team feeds off of it, or do you think there is a large portion of people that actually hate Coach Prime in Colorado? I think it started when he went to Colorado. I don't think people hated him. I think when they were 3-0 at Colorado, I don't think people hated him. But I think when they were sitting there at 3-7 and they were still one of the most viewed teams in the country and he had brought so much more money into Colorado and all the TV networks were talking about Colorado every single day on TV, that's when I think people started to hate. Because now they felt like, oh, it's not warranted.

Oh, they might have started the season strong, but now they're a terrible team. Why are we still covering them? Well, you're covering them because their coach is a Hall of Fame cornerback who has two of the best players in the entire country. So now you turn around this year and they're actually vying for a Big 12 championship. Now people are like, now it's like, well, now you should be talking about them.

But guess what? Their ratings are lower. We're not talking about them as much on TV.

So why is that? I think there's this innate thing with the news that people want to, they won't admit it, but they want to hear the bad stuff. They want to hear about the guy that robbed the bank.

They don't want to hear about the firefighter who saved the cat out of the tree. Well, that stupid article that came out earlier this year that was trying to paint the program. And I go, who the heck is this writer?

And I go, this can't be true. We can't hurt him with what we say in a paper because they win in games. We can't say anything about his son because his son looks like he's going to be the first pick in the draft.

Can't say anything about recruiting either. Can't say anything about recruiting because he's bringing in great recruits and he rebuilt their entire offensive line and they were better this year than they were last year drastically. So how can we hurt him? Well, we can hurt him by not voting for Travis Hunter for the Heisman.

You know what is a misnomer about him? He's an old school football coach, but he embraces the new way to promote. And you saw his teams from the first two weeks of the season, North Dakota State, Nebraska spanked them, absolutely smacked them. And then to see the way that that team got better in the trenches, on the defensive line, the receivers that have developed, I thought this team wasn't going to be eligible this year because I didn't like them.

I just thought it was Chidor, Travis Hunter. And those were the individuals, the star power, two of the top five picks in the draft could be one and two. And then it was everybody else.

Everybody else got so much better with the transfer portal and the way they developed them from last year to this year. And what I would say is I think the loud minority is the one that is preaching the hate crime. But you know this, there's a mob mentality. Once the loud minority starts saying things, it can start to impact people's opinion.

And I think maybe a little bit of that is what happened. But to your point, Dion, this is the difference between Dion and Bill Belichick. Dion can connect with the younger generation. He knows what they want. Yes, they want to win. Yes, they want to build their brand. They also want to have fun.

And he knows how to do that. If Dion didn't have the eye and the heart of his team, they would have fell apart this year. And they didn't.

They never did. Yes, they lost the game at the end of the year to Kansas that would have put them, honestly, probably in the basketball playoffs. But they would have crumbled throughout the year after that Nebraska loss, and they didn't do that. So now you got Bill Belichick going in there, and he's saying, I'm going to run this like an NFL program. Well, Dion's doing that.

But Bill is going to do it with no fun. So unless Bill Belichick can tap into the fun aspect of it and show a little bit more of that media personality that he did, or whatever he had in that media personality, he won't be able to connect with the younger generation. If he does that, and he takes your advice, RG3, what do you think the ceiling is for Coach Belichick at UNC? Yeah, I think they will win consistently. I think at North Carolina they will win consistently whether he has fun or not. I think the difference between them winning national championships and just winning consistently is whether he can connect with the players on a fundamental layer. He can win a national championship at UNC?

1000%. 1000% he can win a national championship. I just thought the ceiling, and I'm a Patriot fan, I love Bill Belichick, I just thought the ceiling would win an ACC championship. Well, I'm a believer that if you can win the ACC, you can win a national championship. So I don't believe in conference biases. I'm actually happy that the college football playoff played out the way that it did, and we have the matchups that we have.

Because now you get to really see cross-conference matchups, non-traditional matchups, settle it on the field, put the football in the middle of the field, and let's see who's the best. Eight out of the last ten years, whoever's won the Maxwell has won the Heisman. The decade before that, you know this, you didn't win the Maxwell, you won the Heisman, it was two out of ten. Does it matter that Ashton Gente won the Maxwell last night? I do think it matters, but you also have to look at... In terms of the Heisman. I don't think it matters.

I don't. I don't think it matters in terms of the Heisman. What's your biggest college football playoff take right now with the matchups that we see? I think Notre Dame makes a run. I'll tell you this, I don't know which one, but I think one of Arizona State or Boise State will be in the Final Four because I don't love Penn State and I don't love Texas. They beat nobody this year.

Okay. I think at this point it will come down to... I'm a big Jimmys and Joes guy.

It's the Jimmys and the Joes. Ashton Gente, if that's in Gente, is healthy. Boise State will give any team they play hell because every guy on that field knows, man, we just got to keep it close so Ashton can go run for 200 yards and do his thing. But I still believe Oregon's the best team in the country. I know they're ranked number one in undefeated, but I think Dan Lanning, what he's able to do and how he gets his guys motivated is something I've really never seen at the college level in quite some time. He's the best motivator in college football. Last thing I'll ask you, because I know you've got to run RG3 here with us, Army, Navy, Radio, Ro, on behalf of USAA, I'm so happy what has happened to the commanders. It's great that Daniel Snyder doesn't own the team anymore.

I don't have to say that quietly anymore when I come down here. Josh Harrison, a really good job. Dan Quinn's a solid coach. We know what Peters is, but most importantly, they have the quarterback. I know how much you still love the organization, but how about what you've been seeing from Jayden Daniels this year?

Yeah, it's phenomenal. Jayden Daniels, he's already proven that he's a franchise quarterback, and this is what I was telling people about Chicago, and I'm not a villain. I'm not trying to tear anybody down, but it's why I said that Caleb Williams needed to use his power in Chicago or before he got there to make them make a decision on Matt Eberfluss. If Eberfluss was going to be their coach, extend him, make him public. That way it takes the public pressure off of his seat so that we know that they can grow together.

They never did that. So now Caleb's going to have his third offensive coordinator and his second head coach in his second year in the NFL. Structure matters. So when you look at the commanders, new ownership, new GM, new head coach, new offensive coordinator, and that offensive coordinator has experience working with a dual threat guy, now that's when you create a growth environment for your quarterback. So I know everyone's like, you got to get the quarterback. You got to get the quarterback.

Yes, you do have to get the QB, but you have to build the structure around the QB to allow him to have a growth environment to lead and grow and be a quarterback of the future. So I think Washington has done an amazing job of that. And like, even on top of that, you know, being here in DC with USA, having the opportunity to work with the kids who did a hero's huddle, literally right outside of Northwest stadium, where I created all my, not all of them, but a lot of my football memories to give back to the military families.

USA has created a structure of growth for our military, for us to be able to give back to the military communities. That's why we're all here for this game. This is America's game, but it's really all of us sitting down and saluting all of our past, present and future military men. And saying, thank you.

Hey, thank you that Zach Gal can wear this ridiculous suit and be able to do this interview because we have the freedom to do that. So I'm a big structure guy. No single player is greater than the whole. So if you create it like the commanders have for Jayden Daniels, the whole is better.

And that's why I think the commanders are set up for longterm success. He's my man RG three RG three. Great to see you. Thanks so much.