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We've been breaking down the college football weekend today. It's kind of hard to tell what's going on if you look at the rankings, Paul. It was very saucy. There was a point in that Texas game with the onside kick by miss. I'm like, this might go the other way that so a lot of stuff happened. Absolutely. Uh, so we have to bring in athletic senior writer and host of the bunch formation podcast, Chris Venini, to help break it down. Chris, I want to start with a basic question. Is anyone great in college football right now?
I don't think so. Uh, we may rethink that at the end of the year because remember last year we kind of felt like this. Nobody's a great team. The next thing you know, Indiana finishes the season undefeated. I do wonder if Miami could get there, but they also, you know, had needed double overtime to beat Florida State a couple of weeks ago. So, they have to play Notre Dame still. We got some big games coming up, but only three undefeated teams left, the fewest at this point in the year in more than 20 years. It's a wide open race. It's a lot of fun. every week. I have no idea what's going to happen.
All right, Chris, let's go to some situations in college football. Which situation is the dicest situation? Oregon and Dan Lanning, USC and Lincoln Riley, Michigan and Whittingham. Which is the situation that you're most following? I think USC, I think that's the one most likely to potentially make a change if things go south more than they have. I mean, USC 6 and2. The record looks pretty good, but the schedule is pretty daunting still to come. They finished with UCLA, the cross town rival who's having a great first season. They're undefeated. And it feels like a lot of the USC fan base has just kind of given up on Lincoln Riley. It's been so long.
We've seen the same thing every single week. They'll go out to a Midwestern team that'll punch him in the mouth and they don't have a response. And we saw it again when they went to Wisconsin and lost 24 to7 despite giving up only like 200 yards of offense to Wisconsin. It feels like a lot of people around USC want to change. It's going to be an expensive change if they have to fire Lincoln Riley, a buyout that's potentially 6070 million, but that feels like the most untenable situation at the moment. Okay, Chris, could you see some type of situation? You remember Jimbo Fischer at Florida State like nine years ago. He saw the writing on the wall and chose an exit strategy, air quotes, chose&m.
Could you see Lincoln Riley looking at Baylor or other and saying, "Hey, look, I want to jump before I get pushed." I think it's very possible. It's something a lot of people around the coaching industry were talking about even a year ago when we thought the Baylor job was going to open up. It ended up not Lincoln Riley stayed another year and he signed the number one recruiting class. But fast forward a year and it feels the same. Baylor is open. It's a job in Texas. Lincoln Riley's from Texas. TCU could also open. Got to kind of wait and see there. and TCU is probably a bit of a better job than Baylor. Those are places Lincoln Riley feels like might fit if things go south at Texas Tech. I mean, Lincoln
Riley went to Texas Tech. He's friends with a lot of people there. It feels like he may fit more naturally in Texas. But also, if it feels like he's, you know, running away from something, is he that appealing? It's been a decade. He hasn't been able to figure out how to produce a defense. His teams have been pretty soft. I don't know if that'll work or not, but it's something to keep an eye on for sure. I noticed you didn't mention or University of Texas there, which are also who knows, right? You wrote in on the Athletic that Texas could just as easily win the national title or not be in the playoff. It kind of sums it up.
Chris, earlier in the show, I made an argument if Texas loses a third game, say at Missouri or at LSU, I think they still have a case to be in the playoff because of the strength of their wins. Do you think there's any chance this year they'd let in a three loss Texas? Yeah, if there's any team that's going to have a chance with three regular season losses, it's Texas. They beat Ohio State, they beat Tennessee on the road. They just beat Old Miss, who's been a top 10 team. They've got really good wins. And the losses are just not great. Oklahoma, Florida at home. But I think we're seeing we're going to have just a lot more losses this year. The
SEC moved to nine conference games. You're going to have a lot of I think nine and three and even eight and four SEC teams trying to make a case compared to a Big 12 which had a bad weekend compared to a Big 10 which is not having a great year. And if there's anybody who's got a shot, it's Texas. So that's why the Miss win was so important because they still have a pretty difficult schedule to come. They got LSU, they got&M game. You never know. Uh so they can probably afford one more since they got that win at Old Miss. That's why it was such a big game. All right, Chris, let me go to Indiana and Michigan. That was not a pretty game. That was a tough watch. I sat through the whole thing. Josh Hoover, not a good
second half for Indiana, but they squeaked by. The fact that Indiana beating Michigan at Michigan is not that big of a story is mind-blowing for guys like us who grew up on college football. Indiana, when you look at them right now, can you still consider them a national title contender? I think you have to just because again I don't think there's anybody who's like far and away. You're like definitely this these one or two teams are far and away. I mean we're six inches away from Indiana being undefeated at the moment. I do have concerns. Josh Hoover is clearly not playing well. Indiana only threw the ball twice after halftime against Michigan. One of those
was the interception and one of those was in overtime. And I that I think that's a mix of concerns about Hoover and also believing Indiana's defense could win that game, which they ultimately did. Signetti played pretty conservatively. You're going to need Hoover to be healthy. I think ultimately with the playoff, you see it a lot when you get toward the end of the year. Who's the healthiest team? Who's it's it's kind of like you see in the NFL in other sports now because we still got three months until the national championship. So, there's a lot of time still to go. I think Indiana's got a real shot. Offensively, I'm concerned, but that Michigan win was big because you look at the rest of the schedule, it's very
manageable. They should be in a pretty good spot to make the playoff. What's happening to the quarterback play in the Big 10? I feel like we're getting into the dregs right now. Does that mean that the Big 10 might not be as good overall this year because there's so many backups playing? Well, right. It's everybody's hurt. I mean, Ohio State's quarterback is probably out for the year. Oregon's quarterback has been out. Illinois just beat Oregon with a backup quarterback. Michigan State was on its third string quarterback. UCLA is on its backup quarterback and then had to use its third string quarterback. It's just the injuries. This is why they're throwing that flag on the Jared Goff hit yesterday in the NFL because
everybody's petrified of quarterbacks getting injured and it just it makes for some pretty ugly football. It's why I still like Indiana. Their quarterback is still standing. Yeah. Like he's hurt but he's there. And we'll see how Frankie looks for Ohio State. Have no clue what to expect from him. True freshman, three star guy. beat out a former five-star who has been waiting a year. Is that good or bad? Is can you just hit the Jeremiah Smith button and spam that a bunch of times and it's enough to win? I don't know. We'll see. But that really kind of opens up the entire Big 10 race. But it really does start with quarterback play. The injuries are part of it, but Iowa's quarterback play hasn't been good. Minnesota's
quarterback play hasn't been good. It's uh it's been a rough watch a lot of weeks. All right, Chris. UCLA football. They follow the Indiana plan. can go to James Madison, bring in Bob Chznney. All is well. It's a great story. It's not getting a ton of coverage nationally because I think people still they focus on USC or, you know, the Raiders, you know, other teams in LA. How close do you think UCLA is to getting a playoff spot? Pretty close. I mean, the schedule the rest of the way is very favorable. Um, I think one reason they haven't gotten as much attention is because they haven't had that gigantic win yet. They did beat Oregon, but Oregon has kind of fallen
off and so it's not that great of a win anymore. You know, they beat Michigan State. It was kind of ugly. They beat Wisconsin. It's kind of ugly. Again, the starting quarterback is out, but this is a great team defensively. They're one of the best rushing teams in the country. Wayne Knight is an extremely fun running back. So, it's going to build and I think it will. It's possible they trip up once or twice here because you again, you got a backup quarterback. These things can happen, but they can probably afford a loss. They'll get in at 11-1. It's very similar to Indiana two years ago, their first year with Kurt Signetti.
Yeah. We want to get you on record here before we get you out of here. Uh we like to say Tulain right now has the best uniforms in college football. You know, there's open-mindedness about this, but where would you say if not Tulain currently the best regular uniform in college football? Well, is that regular? I'm going to go New Mexico. They wore the turquoise against North Dakota State on Saturday. You were there. It's gorgeous. Beautiful. I was there. It's a beautiful state. Beautiful uniform. Route 66 helmet. They don't wear it all the time, but they're wearing it more frequently now. I love the New Mexico turquoise.
Oh, that's a great answer. Uh yeah, we don't really know who's going to be the best team at the end of the year, but we do know the best uniform, so that's important. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me.
