Speaker 1: Check it out college football on the West Coast. This
is Get Off My Pylon, a look at the PAC
twelve and more, part of the College Gridiron Coast to
Coast podcast network. Here's your host, Matt Zimon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the latest edition of Get Off My Pilon
College football podcast.
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Speaker 2: Off My Pylon covering western college football in the United
States and so as we prepare for Thanksgiving week, you
know rivalry Week to a point, but remember with the
PAC twelve dissolving and it's going to be reconfigured in
a couple of years. We don't have Oregon Oregon State
this week. We don't have the Civil War this week.
We don't have the Apple Cup this week. They were
held in September because they were now non conference games.
So rivalry Week is taking a hit, certainly in the West.
We did have Stanford and Cal this past weekend before
Thanksgiving wild games. Stanford got off to it a very
strong start, but col rallies late in the final minutes
to get the Acts to win Big Game Michigan Ohio
State is the game. But and there are other rivalries
called the Big Game Stanford Cal. It's just Big Game. Uh,
don't don't ask me why there there's that little nuance.
But Cal does win Big Game, gets the Acts over
Stanford in an acc battle in Berkeley. Yes, that that's
our that's our new world. But rivalry Week has taken
a hit because of realignment. Obviously Texas and Texas A
and m though being you know, a conference game now
that that's gonna be the Camp Miss story. But in
terms of you know, football on the West. It is
a little bit different this week, but certainly a lot
on the table, a lot to discuss heading into the
final full Saturday of the college football regular season, the
week before the conference championship games, and then we're gonna
have the first twelve team playoffs. It's gonna be quite
fascinating to see how it all shakes out. So let's
start in the big twelve. That's where the action is
for what Western college football programs, at least you know
several of them. B YU, Colorado, Arizona State all being
thrown into a blender. And you know this, this was
a weekend in which b YU had a chance to
nail it all down and didn't. In Arizona State was
clearly the better team most of the day, but BYU
all season long, rallying late, rallying the second half, rallying
in the fourth quarter, that's what the Cougars do. And
once again, you know, they almost pulled it off, but
you know, just going to that well all the time
just not sustainable enough. Arizona State does manage to fend
off BYU in a game that shouldn't have gone down
to the final play. It did, but it shouldn't have
been that close. And so Arizona State now has the
inside track of Arizona State beats Arizona and a bragging
rights game and a rivalry game, Arizona State will go
to the Big twelve championship game. So at ASU b
YU game. Plenty of you, I'm sure said it was
one of the major games in the three point thirty
eastern window. And you know, Arizona State gets off to
a twenty eight to nine lead midway through the second
half and then seem to you know, down shift and
BYU sensed an opening and made it a closer game.
One thing we have to point out, and I know
that Arizona States had kicking problems, but you know, even
if you have a kicking problem, you can still kick pats.
You can still kick chip shot field goals. And ASU
and Kenny Dillingham were passing up chip shot length field goals.
And it's worth keeping in mind given the way that
game ended. You know what if Arizona State had taken
that chip shot field goal it had in the third quarter,
all right, when the game was still you know, it
was in a different stage. We're not talking about the
end game here, and Arizona State did have a field
goal that if it wanted to at the end of
the game leading by five twenty eight to twenty three.
But if it was in A State had not passed
up a chip shot field goal in the third quarter,
all right, at a different point in the game, then
at the end, if the score thirty, the score would
have been thirty one twenty three, or at least it
could have been thirty one twenty three. And then you
kick another field goal and it's thirty four to twenty
three and it's game over. Now, many people will say,
and I think it's a fair point. You know, Arizona
State at the end of that game inside the BYU five,
leading by the five to five points, and I remember, B,
why you had time out so everyone A State was
going to kneel take a knee. B. Why you could
have stopped the clock? Okay, so so B. Why you
would have had time to to get the ball back. Theoretically,
but Arizona State could have just gone ahead and scored,
and that way, ASU, you know, would not have gotten
into the situation it created with quarterback Sam Levitt dropping
back twenty five thirty yards, you know, running around to
kill the clock and then throwing the ball in the air,
which you know that was intentional grounding, right, there was
there was past the line of scrimmage, but there was
no receiver in the vicinity. Levitt was in the pocket
and that didn't get called at the very end. But
you know, the next time Kenny Dellingham wants to kill
the clock, you don't need to run backwards. You don't.
You never want to give up twenty five thirty yards unless,
unless this is the one exception, you're taking a safety.
You know, the balls at the twenty five, your own
twenty five yard line, the punters taking the snap at
the ten eleven yard line. Okay, then you run twenty
yards backward out of the end zone to take a
safety at the very end of the game. But aside
from that, aside from that, you don't just give away
thirty yards. And we saw why that was a problem
because BYU had the hail Mary from the middle of
the field. The pass got inside the ten, didn't quite
get to the goal line. That's because ASU's pass rush
was able to crowd Jake Retzlov, the BYU quarterback, just
enough that he threw the ball from around his own
forty one forty two yard line. He wasn't able to
step up closer to the line of scrimmage, which was
near midfield. If he had been able to step up
those extra six or seven yards, maybe that pass gets
to the goal line. But as it was, that was
way too uncomfortable, way too close for Asu at the end.
And that's because the sun devils gave away thirty yards
and that just wasn't necessary. If you're gonna run around
and try to kill the clock, you just do it
for horizontally, and do it with a convoy of players
around the quarterback. You know, it shouldn't just be the
quarterback running around himself, like there should be like a
trips or bunch formation to one side of the field,
and that bunch of receivers can kind of provide a
protective shield around the quarterback as he runs around, and
the defenders have to get through that shield to ultimately
force the quarterback to give himself up and and and
and and kneel. So there are more creative ways to
do what Kenny Dinningham did. Like we all understand the
thought process, kill the clock, run around, waste time, so
you don't have to punt. You don't have to worry
about a snap. You don't have to worry about a kick. Uh,
and and a block and and and uh. You know
b y U taking it the other way, understand that
that like, that's reasonable. But the way that all went down,
it could have been done, uh in a much better,
easier way. You know, if the ASU doesn't lose those
thirty yards, b Yu might get one play, but it's
a one, but it's one play around its own twenty
five yard line. So the hail mary just wouldn't have
you even have had a chance. As it happened, the
hail mary was near midfield and the game came at
the very end kind of close. It was a bit
of a close call for it was in a state.
So that's that's part of the process of unpacking the
end of that game and the wild situation which unfolded
in TMP with fans rushing the field only for one
second to be put back on the clock. And can
you imagine if b Yu had scored a touchdown on
the hail mary would have been one of the all
timers in terms of going from you know, the expectation
of total victory rushing the field and then oh they
they revise everything and then BYU wins. Fortunately for Arizona
State that did not happen, and it was a very
good performance generally for SU before the final few minutes.
And ASU's offensive line that's really what's making the difference.
You know, they are blowing their opponents off the line
of scrimmage. They're convincingly winning the battle up front. Like
you know, it's not a fluke the way Arizona State's
doing this. Arizona State is knocking the sny out of
its opponents. Line plays has been markedly developed by Dillingham
and his staff this season, and in a Big Twelve
which is so dominated by parody, it's not dominated by
any one team, it's been dominated by parody. Parody's been
the winner in the Big Twelve this season. Kind of
a metaphor for the rest of college football at large.
You know, with the several the jumble of several good
but hardly great teams in the SEC, it's really the
same in the Big Twelve. Now, the better teams in
the SEC would beat the better teams in the Big Twelve.
I'm not saying that the teams at the top of
each conference are equal, But what is equal in the
SEC and Big twelve is parody, just a lot of parody.
No clear cut team or teams rising above the pack.
It's been a jumble and it's going to remain a
jumble until the very end. But ASU within that jumble
has had the better offensive line play. It has shown
up in these recent weeks, winning at Kansas State, a
team that was supposed to contend for the Big Twelve
championship game, and now beating BOYU, the team that was
in the driver's seat but no longer is. And so
with Colorado losing to Kansas and you've probably heard this,
but we want to definitely make sure you know this.
The tie breakers with a four team tie right now
in the Big twelve, tiebreakers are such that if Arizona
State beats Arizona and Iowa State beats Kansas State in Pharmageddon,
it will be Arizona State and Iowa State. Those are
the two teams that control their fate. Colorado and BYU
need those two teams to lose. And so you know,
with Colorado losing, the Buffs no longer control their own destiny,
and so as well as coach Prime Deon Sanders, has
brought along this team. We have seen the limitations of
what the Buffaloes have. You know that they were able
to take advantage of Utah's injury at the quarterback spot
a couple of weeks ago, and let's remember they beat
Baylor on in overtime after a hail Mary touchdown at
the very end of regulation. So you know, this doesn't
revise the larger reality of Deon Sanders doing a really,
really good job with Colorado and surpassing expectations, not by
a little but by a lot. That that remains true.
But I think there has been a bit of a
reality check in terms of, you know, Colorado being that
far ahead of the field in the Big twelve, Colorado,
you know, separating itself from the Big twelve, Colorado being
a playoff caliber team. Now, Colorado could still get in
if it gets some help this weekend. But you know,
the idea that Colorado was a juggernaut or a colossus,
if you know, if anyone was thinking that that was
a bit of an overstatement, that was a bit of overreach.
The Kansas team that's been so disappointing for most of
this season has finally picked it up at the end
lance Leypold getting his team together. They beat EYU on
the road. That Jayhawks then beat Colorado very decisively. Kansas
finally is playing to its potential, but only when playing
spoiler and that that has to leave a bit of
a sour taste for the Jayhawks. But like they're gonna
remember that win over Colorado, they're going to remember ruining
Colorado's season or at least, you know, making it so
that Colorado's path to the Big twelve championship game in
the playoffs is going to be a lot more difficult.
You know that Kansas is relishing that. A couple of
things to take from that Colorado game, things that everyone's
talking about. First off, the hit that the Kansas player
delivered to sder Sanders, the quarterback for Colorado. That was
a dirty hit and they didn't even throw a flag
on it. They picked up the flag. That is exactly
what targeting should be, and yet they don't even call targeting.
They don't even throw a flag fifteen yards you know,
hitting below the waist absolutely astounding that that's not both
a penalty and an ejection, because that should have been
both a penalty and a j and yet it was neither.
Just just the way targeting, personal fouls, laid hits, unnecessary
roughness are interpreted and officiated. It's just completely upside down,
completely upside down, makes no sense. It insults everyone's intelligence,
everyone's sense of basic fair play. It's a disaster, and
you wish that the powers that be could get it right.
But you know, there's no reason to have any confidence
that the people who make and oversee the rules of
college football are going to do something meaningful about any
of this. But that is a hit that should have
merited an ejection because that was a dirty hit. You
saw the Kansas player lead with his helmet in a
situation where you know he's not trying to make a
form tackle with his arms. No, that's just spearing, spearing
and hitting low, and yet they pick up the flag.
That's an absolute travesty. Now, later in the game, we
had Shagar Sanders pushing official and some people will say
he's lucky he didn't get ejected. Well, first off, you
know sder Sanders did not get protected by this officiating
crew with that awful, malicious hit not being flag, so
he probably already had reason to feel hard done. You
know that that he was not protected by that officiating crew.
So obviously he was angry the shove. You know, you're
not supposed to shove an official. If you want to
flag him fifteen yards for that, fine, But the idea, oh,
he's lucky he didn't get tossed. Well maybe in a
narrow sense, because you know other players might have gotten
tossed for doing what he did. To that extent, maybe
you can say he got quote unquote lucky. But fundamentally,
it was a minor shove. There was a tussle, there
were a lot of different bodies there. I would want,
you know, much more forceful, impactful, direct contact if I'm
going to eject a player for what happened for what
Sugar Sanders did to the official in that Colorado okay,
this game, So that did not merit an ejection. To
hit on Sanders is what merited an ejection, and no
ejection came. So, you know, lots of controversy in that
car Out Kansas game, But Sugar Sanders, really he needed
to be protected by that officiating crew. He wasn't, and
I'm glad that he was not ejected for that pretty modest,
minor shove toward toward the referee in that game. The
other plot point from the Big Twelve before we move
on to other conferences and other Western teams the United States,
is that Utah loses late to Iowa State, and Utah
might be frustrated with that result to the side clones
at home and it's been a brutal year for the youths,
but Utah can say, hey, we made life worse for BYU.
It's actually the kind of game where you know, if
you're a Utah fan, you dislike BYU. Utah didn't help
BYU out. So in many ways, Utah, you know, did
the thing that a rival should do. No, you don't
help out b YU when you have the chance. And
it's not as though Utah was playing for really high stakes.
So really, if that lost to Iowa State narrowly, it's
gonna sting. But you it's game over and you and
you realize, oh, this, this this result help hurts b YU.
So maybe not the worst thing for Utah. All right,
So now to the other conferences. In Oregon, UH and
Washington had the week off. They meet UH in their
rivalry game this weekend, and you know, Oregon is set
to go to the College Football playoff, there's no doubt
about that. Ohio State beats Indiana, Penn State beats Minnesota.
So in the Big Ten looking like four playoff teams,
with Indiana benefiting from all those SEC playoff contenders losing
a third game, that's probably gonna put the the Hoosiers in.
But Oregon and Ohio State, they're definitely good to go.
Penn State just needs to win its game against Maryland.
It should be good to go. But the thing to
point out about the Big Ten, and especially as it
relates to Oregon, a team that you know, we regularly
talk about and on Get off my pylon, is that
Oregon should not be playing in the Big Ten championshiame.
And what I mean by that is not that Oregon
didn't deserve it or earn it. What I'm saying is,
if you have an unbeaten team, a team that's obviously
in that number one seed position as Oregon is right now,
why are you making Oregon play a conference championship game.
Oregon should get that week off, gets the benefit of
rest or its first playoff game, right, I mean, doesn't
that make sense? And you know, like let's say Oregon
loses that Big Ten championship game to Ohio State. Oregon
then has to play a first round game. It won't
have the buy all right, and so Oregon will be
made to play Washington on November thirty, Big Ten Conference
championship game on December seventh, and then the playoff game
two weeks later, and then it's gonna have to play
three more playoff games after that to win the national title.
Doesn't seem fair, doesn't seem right. So we need to
figure out these conference championship games and fit them into
the playoff system. Oregon should not be made to play
the Big Ten championship game. We should call Oregon the
Big Ten champion. After all, the Ducks beat Ohio State,
that game should be either Ohio State Penn State, or
or being realistic, how State beats Michigan. Like Oregon and
Ohio State clearly the two best teams in the Big Ten.
Ohio State beat Penn State head to head. What the
Big Ten should do, and this is how college football
should adjust to the twelve team playoff format in this
new era. The Big Ten championship game should really be
not a conference championship game, but we should call it
the Big Ten Playoff. The Big Ten playoff Penn State
versus Indiana. Winner of that game solidifies that third spot.
Loser might not necessarily be eliminated, but it obviously loses
its leverage. But have that third game or what or
to be more precise, have a game between your third
and fourth place teams to solidify and justify inclusion into
the playoff. And wouldn't we all want to see Penn
State Indiana more than Oregon Ohio State. We would want
to see Oregon and Ohio State play a rematch in
the playoff, not in a second Big Ten game, because
we already saw that one. We haven't seen Penn State
versus Indiana in the Big Ten regular season. And so
like we learned more, it would be you know, more helpful,
more interesting, newer fresher if we had Penn State play
Indiana again. This is this is assuming o how State
beats Michigan at home, which you know should happen. Have
your third place team and your fourth place team in Indianapolis.
I mean the game's still on television, box still carries
that game, or whoever actually that might be on NBC
this year. Whoever, you still have the TV slot, You
still have a TV window. There's still a game being
played on the night of December seventh in Indianapolis. But
instead of having one versus two Oregon Ohio State, it
should actually be three versus four Penn State versus Indiana.
That game would draw more interest, it would be more
of a revealer, would help the committee out with playoff selections.
That's what we should do, but it's not the current reality.
It's not what we currently have. But that is a
really important point to make about Oregon and about the
rest of the Big Ten. Moving on, Boise State once again,
you know does not play really well. Boise State's played
a bad month of football. In November, barely beat Nevada,
was bad for two and a half quarters against San
Jose State before finally sorting things out. Boise State needs
a late touchdown to scrape by Wyoming seventeen thirteen. Bronco's
not charging hard to the finish line, but they're in
the Mountain West Championship game. They are closer to a
spot in the playoffs, so that is what matters. It
doesn't look great, but Boise State is avoiding the losses
that these SEC contenders are suffering. And Ashton genty you
give him a ticket to New York. That should be
pretty clear. Should be pretty obvious right now, definitely should
be one of the Heisman finalists. And the other big
development in the West and particularly the Mountain West Conference.
Colorado State gets drilled by Fresno State, So that does
open the door for UNLV, which beats San Jose State.
It opens the door for a Boise State UNLV rematch.
That's what we all wanted. So now you know it's
close to happening. Just one more step to go before
ceiling that particular matchup, and I think we all would
want to see Boise State and UNLV go at it
again because that game in Vegas earlier in the regular season,
it was a compelling watch. It was an interesting, tough battle,
generally lived up to the hype. Wasn't an artistic game,
but it was a tough, physical game. Both teams left
it all out on the field, so we could get
the two best teams in the Mountain West. Those are
and have been the two best teams in the mount
West all season, Boise State and UNLV. So now if
Klorado State suffering that one loss, yeah, it's now closer
to happening. Boise State versus UNLV and in terms of
the Group of five and Boise State's position there, Army
losing to Notre Dame. That was the other thing that
Boise State really needed to happen to be Group of
five champion, So that much closer for Boise State. It's
all right there. Boise State just needs to take care
of business these next two weeks. They're definitely in the playoff.
I think. The only other thing to say about the playoff,
in addition to, you know, amending the conference championship games
and how they fit in the other thing to say,
and this is partly a Big twelve thing, but it's
really more more broadly applied throughout the sport. It also
applies to all these SEC teams with three losses. To me,
if you play twelve games in a regular season, you
know that that's unique to college football, right play only
twelve games. College basketball you play about thirty. College baseball
you play, you know, several dozen games. College football, you
played just twelve games. If you lose three of them,
I don't care how how good your nine wins are.
If you're losing three of your twelve games, you know
you're not really taking care of business. And I know
that you know Army also Tulane, and of course the
two of them play in the AAC Championship game. Yes,
they haven't played schedules that are as tough as the
teams in the SEC, but they haven't lost as many games,
especially the Army. Army lost once. There should be some
sort of way to say, hey, if you've lost three games,
we're not going to eliminate you from playoff consideration, but
you go to the back of the line, all right.
There should there should be something about that, and that
that has not really been made clear, and there isn't
like a rule structure to police that. I think that
there needs to be at least something done, Like if
you have three losses and like you don't have a
certain amount of top twenty five wins, you go to
the back of the line, like you will not be
able to get in over a group of five team
that goes eleven and one twelve and one. You know,
if that was a rule, you know you have to
have substantial meat on the bone. Merely being from the
SEC shouldn't be enough to give you more consideration than
an eleven and one team. You know, if you're nine
to three in the SEC. I'm sorry, I don't think
that should get you ahead of the line. You need
to stay in back of the line. But the Playoff
hasn't really nailed down its criteria along those lines. But
maybe that can be a reform plank for twenty twenty
five or maybe twenty twenty six. Every parts of this
process on several levels that can use some adjustment as
we go forward, and hopefully we're gonna learn how to
do this better in the playoff era. Obviously, we weren't
expecting this much carnage in year one. We weren't expecting
all these SEC teams to have three losses. We thought
they'd be ten and two and it would be a
done deal. Well, has it really worked out that way.
It's been a lot more clean and neat in the
Big Ten. That's where you've seen teams not lose a
second game or a third game, and so it truly
is a different situation in the Big Ten conference. That's
why the Big Ten is going to get four teams
in barring some remarkable upsets in turns of events. But
there is a lot to clean up and improve about
this playoff process, and I say that even before the
announcement of the twelve teams, and who knows what kind
of curveball the Committee's gonna throw, But that's coming up
in a few weeks. We will talk about that when
we get there. We'll cross that bridge when we get
to it. College football fans, we know that with the
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ticket Smarter and ticket smarter dot com. Get off. My
pilon wants to wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving.
You know what, you don't have to talk politics, right,
just eat the food, watch the football, have a good time,
you know, take a break from the madness of the world.
It's a great week of sports. It's a great week
of college football. These Saturdays you know, they've gone by
very quickly, and this is the last full service college
football Saturday. Then we have that much more smaller scale
Saturday on December seventh with the conference championship games. This
is the last really big Saturday. Get bull bids announced,
We're gonna get coaches fired. We're certainly going to talk
about all those kinds of things next week. Here on,
get off my pilot. But hey, enjoy the holiday. You
don't have to make it a time of misery or contentiousness.
I think it's a time to really take a step
back and just enjoy what we have. Hopefully you'll find
the ability to do that. Hopefully you're in a situation
where that comes easily. But if not, hey, you know,
why not just avoid the harsh collision and enjoy a
wonderful Thanksgiving with you and your family. So we get
off my pilon, send you our best wishes. Hope you
have a great holiday full of family and fun and football,
and we'll be with you next week to make sense
of how everything happens, how everything comes together. As we
get closer to the first twelve team college football playoff,
find a college grad roon coast to coast at Apple
and wherever you listen to your podcasts on Twitter at
Gridiron Coast. So this is Matt Zemk thanking you for
listening to another edition of Get Off My Pilon, covering
western college football in the United States, part of the
College gridroon coast to coast family, Happy Thanksgiving. We will
see you next week.