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, that's Zimo.
Speaker 2: Welco to the latest edition of Get Off My Pilon
College football podcast. This is your host, Matt Zemec Get
Off My Pilon, part of the College Gridiron Coast to
Coast podcast network.
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Gridiron Coast to Coast shows covering college football in all
the different corners of the country, giving you the different
flavors of this wonderful sport, which really came alive in
week five at the end of the month of September.
So we'll get to Oregon, Penn State, the Big One
in a little bit and really the big ten had
the biggest stories. But let's just first go through a
roundup of the other action of the West Coast schools
that we follow on a continuous basis. CAL was down
fourteen to nothing very early in New England, but rallied
to beat Boston College. Now CAL face planted against San
Diego State. Able to rebound here, but you know, Boston
College is at the bottom of the ACC. So CAL
just barely sneaking by BC. Bears will take the road win,
thank you very much, But just barely beating a bad
Boston College team does not augur well for the Bears
moving before because the ACC schedule is only going to
get tougher from this point onward. So you know, CAL
has a lot of work to do in terms of improving,
but at least the Bears avoid what would have been
a very bad loss. Stanford, also in the ACC, beat
San Jose State thirty to twenty nine, so you know,
a little Bay area Silicon Valley action and that game
was close the whole way. Give Stanford credit for scratching
out scratching out a couple of wins. And you know,
a month ago after the loss to Hawaii, it seemed
Stanford could be at the very bottom of the Power Force.
Well the Cardinal aren't there. You know, Oklahoma State is
clearly worse. UCLA is clearly worse. So Stanford's not one
of the two or three worst Power four teams managing
to get a few wins. So give the Cardinal credit
for fighting and for winning some attainable games. I mean,
that's the best they can reasonably do. So maybe Stanford
finishes the year three and nine, four and eight. That's
certainly better than one and eleven or two and ten,
which is what it kind of looked like. In early September,
Mountain West San Diego State wins a total rock fight
six to three on the road at Northern Illinois. Ugly game,
beautiful result for the Aztecs, who moved closer to Bowl eligibility,
and that would really be a good result for Sean
Lewis this season. So San Diego State not looking, you know,
consistently impressive from week to week. But you know, shut
out Cal. So obviously that defense allowing just three points
to Northern Illinois after shutting out Cal, that defense is
onto something. Can the can the offense join the defense
in terms of giving San Diego State a more complete profile.
That's the storyline to watch with team tench Titlan as
the season moves along. Staying in the Mountain West, Boise
State handles Apple Acchian State without too much of a problem.
It wasn't a thermonuclear blowout, but it was a comfortable
win for Boise State. But you know, it'll be interesting
to see the Broncos as they get into the teeth
of the Mountain West season how their journey is going
to evolve. The score was forty seven to fourteen, but
that was a twenty seven to fourteen game midway through
the second half. Boise State then gets two touchdowns in
the fourth quarter to make that game much more lopsided.
So it was it was thirty three fourteen through three,
and then Boise State extended that lead late to win
by thirty three points. Not really a whole lot to
talk to talk about, I should say. In the Mountain West,
we're gonna see teams play each other in the top
tier of the conference. It'll be interesting to see how
the Mountain West season unfolds as we go along. You know,
the Mountain West has had a disappointing September the American
has clearly been the best Group of five conference. It
has the teams that are being talked about as the
contenders for the Group of five championship, and the birth
in the College Football Playoff. Mountain West has really been overshadowed. It's,
you know, and the stories that are emerging from the
Mountain West, they're more often negative ones than positive ones.
Colorado State scoring just three points in a loss to
Washington State, and Jay Norvel is in trouble in Fort Collins,
you know, shaking up his staff and or at least considering,
you know, the reassignment of roles within his staff. That's
a big talking point for Colorado State football right now.
But the Rams have not been good this season, and
it just got worse with that twenty to three loss
to Washington State. And the other team in the Pack
two or the two pack, whatever your preference is, Oregon
State dominates Houston for three and a half quarters but
then allows too late touchdowns and then loses in overtime.
So Trent Bray, who you know that that takeover for
Jonathan Smith after Jonathan Smith left for Michigan State. Trent
Bray was Jonathan Smith's defensive coordinator. He stays in Corvallis.
Players love him, players wanted him to coach that team.
But it's not working zero to five for the Beavers.
And you just can't let a game slip away when
you lead by two touchdowns midway through the fourth quarter.
A lot of you might have stayed up on Friday
night to watch that game and like that, you know,
Oregon State was control until it wasn't. Just completely letting
that game slip away at the very end. Just a
very painful loss and a waste of a generally good
performance against Houston. Speaking of Friday night, and this is
this was one of the more interesting games among teams
that we cover here, and get off my piloline. Arizona
State down seventeen to TCU and a heartbeat and then
down by seven late in the fourth quarter. The Sun
Devils pulled out close wins throughout last season. You know,
they won so many fifty to fifty games. They were
able to overcome mistakes. They do it again, and this
Arizona State team has already won two twenty seven to
twenty four games that it pulled out at the very end.
The Sun Devils continue to win fifty to fifty games
under Kenny Dellingham, it's a it's a crushing loss for
TCU Arizona State now with these wins over Baylor and TCU, Like,
we remember how cluttered the Big Twelve race was last season,
and we think the Big Twelve breaks is going to
be similarly cluttered and complicated this this year. So Arizona
State is picking up those head to head tie breakers
that could really matter as the season goes along. And
like no team has yet separated itself from the pack
in the Big Twelve. You could say that Texas Tech
is the favorite. I think that's a reasonable and fair
statement to make. But let's remember Utah's quarterback Devin Dampier
was injured. We talked about that game last week. Here on,
get off my pieline. Let's see Texas Tech, you know,
go through the Big twelve schedule at least a few weeks,
get into mid October, late October, and see if Texas
Tech can separate. But right now, I'm not ready to
kind of call anything in the Big Twelve. And so
for now, just Arizona State is collecting those head to
head tiebreakers. Maybe it'll be Arizona State as the second
place team in Texas Tech is the first place team
and those two teams will meet for the Big twelve
championship game. But it's just a wait and see situation.
But Arizona State, you know, is not playing great, but
if it has not lost that knack for being able
to rally, lay in games and at the ends of
halves and win games, that you know, we're very much
jump balls and and you know we don't cover the
Kansas Jayhawks regularly and get off my pilon. But Kansas
is like the opposite of Arizona State. Kansas is the
team that leads Layton games and loses them. Happened again
to Kansas against Cincinnati. Arizona State is on the other
side of that coin. Arizona State's losing games late and
it comes back to win them. So, you know, Kenny Dillingham, obviously,
you know he's gotten through to his players about playing
for six minutes. A lot of coaches will talk about that.
Arizona State's a team that actually does it. Arizona State
lives out that that aspiration and that goal that football
coaches have. So Kenny Dillingham able to get through to
his players in ways that a lot of other coaches aren't.
But you know, Arizona State can't live like that forever.
That's the other point to make. Arizona State needs to
get on top of some of these games. You can't
expect to rally every single time, But Arizona State has
been scrambling to win games this year, just as it
did for most of last season, staying in the Big twelve.
On the western teams, we do cover Utah absolutely throttles
West Virginia. Now West Virginia. You know, I don't know
how close attention you're paying to the Mountaineers under Rich Rodriguez,
but quarterback, running back, the various skill positions, they are
absolutely decimated at those various like West Virginia is one
of the biggest mash units in college football, certainly on
the offensive side of the ball. I'm not sure if
there's a single offense in terms of comparing projected Week
one starters to what the actual depth chart looks like
now and how deep on the depth chart the Mountaineers
have had to go. I'm not sure if there's a
single offense in the Power for Conferences that has been
as injury ravaged as West Virginia. But anyway, Utah goes
into Morgantown, and you know, if a team is missing five, six,
seven bodies prime players on its offense, you should bring
down the hammer. So Utah does what's expected. It's a
nice little bounce back from the loss of Texas Tech.
Let's see if Utah can now maintain that consistently m
the weeks ahead. Also from the big twelve teams in
the West, Colorado Byu. They both played late Saturday night.
Interesting little game. Colorado throws the first punch, gets up
fourteen to three, but BYU reeled in Colorado as the
game went along. Bear Bachmeer quarterback for BYU. He's a dude, running, passing,
command of the game like. He looked very comfortable, very
much in control. That has to make coach Khalani Sataki
feel great about the Cougars and where they are. Byu
didn't look great though. A lot of rough edges in
that game on both sides, and so it's it is
interesting to wonder was this game close because BYU wasn't
great great enough to really pull away and hammer Colorado,
or was this game close because you know, Colorado is
actually not that bad a team, even without Travis Hunter
and Shadur and maybe the Buffalos are a little bit underrated.
You could kind of go either way with that, and
I think is just let the season play out a
little bit so that we get a great sense of,
you know, just how good or not BYU and Colorado are.
But BYU gets the win on the road in Boulder
at night. Colorado, you know, should be kicking itself because
it got on top of that game and had other
chances to make plays. But the pieces aren't quite fitting
for that offense. Just guys not making the right reads.
Also some dumb penalties as well. There was a big
holding penalty that wiped away a long Colorado run that
really could have helped the Buffs, I believe in the
second half. So it'll be interesting to see if Colorado
can clean itself up play more airtight football. You know
that Deon Sanders is expecting that Colorado did fall short
of expectations. But on the other side, b Yu gets
punched in the mouth, responds well to adversity. That could
be a real catalyst for the road ahead in a
very scrambled and uncertain Big twelve college football landscape. All right,
now we get to the feature presentation. And actually, let
me just stuck in. Arizona in the Big twelve obliterated
by Iowa State, and Iowa State was just like a
five to five and a half point favorite. Couldn't believe that.
I think, you know, Arizona beat Kansas State because Kansas
State has been cratering. I know Kansas State won this
past weekend against UCF, but Kansas State's a bad team,
and Arizona barely beat Kansas State. I was shocked that
Iowa State was a small favorite and Iowa State just
blows the doors off Arizona. So zero surprise there. Arizona's
not especially good. It's just that Kansas State was worse.
You know, some teams are better, other teams are worse.
We need to emphasize when you're actually good or you're
actually more awful. There are gradients here, right, and there
are points of emphasis. Arizona beat Kansas State because azone
was good, but because Kansas State's bad. So I think
the markets kind of misread the value of that Arizona win.
I thought Iowa State was a lot better than Arizona
going in, and of course that is exactly what happened.
All right, Now to the Big ten, just wanted to
make sure not to forget Arizona. Let's start with the
pillow fight in Evanston Ucla and Northwestern seventeen to fourteen.
It was as dull and uninteresting a game as you
might have expected until the very end Ucla with a
late rally. Bruins had two possessions, down three points in
the final few minutes, but never came remotely close to
doing anything. Northwestern led this game seventeen to six, had
the ball third and goal inside the UCLA three, got stuffed,
and then instead of going for the touchdown put the
game away, went for a twenty yard field goal. That
twenty yard chip shot gets blocked. Ucla then drives down,
scores a touchdown, gets a two point conversion, and suddenly
a game that Northwestern completely dominated for about fifty to
fifty two minutes suddenly became a little bit nervous at
the end. But Northwestern's defense completely flattened UCLA's offensive line
on those final two bruined possessions, So really it was
a dull game, brief five minute segment in which UCLA
made a rally and to make it interesting, but ultimately
Northwestern clearly the better team, And so with UCLA. If
you look at the Bruins schedule, they play a lot
of the Big Ten heavyweights. The only two games remaining
on the schedule that seem remotely possible as chances for
victories are home against Maryland and at Michigan State. And
Maryland's already kicked Wisconsin twenty seven to ten on the road,
and and Michigan State certainly not a good team, but
the Spartans actually gave usc A game for three three
and a half quarters a couple of weeks ago. UCLA
is looking at oh to twelve. Ucla is likely to
have the big donut, the big bagel zero and twelve.
It's an absolute humiliation and the thing you need to
emphasize about UCLA, in addition to everything else that we've
been saying here on get off my pion over the
past month. Notice how Joey Aggie Are of Tennessee has
played so well with the Valls after leaving UCLA. And
there's another quarterback who left UCLA and he's now thriving.
We're gonna be talking about him in a little bit.
But like players leave UCLA, they instantly get better. Tells
you how bad the coaching has been at UCLA. So
Tim Skippers, the interim taking over from Deshaun Foster, he's
just inheriting the mess here, so like, we're not gonna
be criticizing Tim Skipper. This is all what Deshan Foster
left behind, the wreckage that Tim Skipper, the interim, has
to sort through. And it does reinforce one point that
UCLA has to fire Athletic Director Martin Jarmond, the guy
who created this whole disaster. He has to be cleared
out of there before UCLA and barks on a new
head coaching search, and new candidates are not gonna want
Jarmond in there in any way, shape or form. UCLA
needs to fire the ad who can't manage the football program.
That's the revenue generator. UCLA needs that revenue. Remember, UCLA
is paying calimony, calimony, the ten million dollar fee to
Berkeley for leaving for the Big ten. You know, cal
squeeze some money out of UCLA. The California University of
California Board of Regions, you know, demanded that UCLA needs
money to offset those calimony payments. You need to put
butts in the seats at the Rose Bowl. Martin Jarmond
needs to be fired at UCLA. Ohio State Washington. This
was pretty simple. Ohio State has an elite defense and
Washington's offense just not there, just not at the level
ready to compete with the Buckeyes. And you know, so Jedfish,
you know, he didn't have a great quarterback last year
and it's still very much a work in progress this
year in Seattle. You know, he didn't get Noah Fafita,
whom he coached expertly at Arizona a few years ago.
He didn't get Noah Fafita to come with him from
Tucson to Seattle. That was a big swing and miss
for Jed Fish and he's still paying the price for that. Washington,
you know, not able to play offense at the level
that it had with Kaylin de Boer and Michael Pennix.
Washington's offense just not ready for prime time against Ohio State. Now,
the Husky's defense was fine. Ohio State scores just twenty
four points. Julian Sayan with some growing pains for the Buckeys.
When Ohio State goes up against better competition, you know,
that offense might might get contained and Ohio State might
lose a twenty to seventeen type of slugfest. But against Washington,
the UDUB offense just not remotely ready for what was
coming on the other side of the ball against the
Buckeye defense and coordinator Matt Patricia with his NFL experience,
the Ohio State defense shut down arch Manning and now
shut down Washington, and arch Manning's been mediocre Saturday. Washington's
offense was mediocre. Next in our tour of the Big Ten,
USC loses to Illinois, and I you know, I cover
USC at Trojan's wire, and like, what is there left
to say about Lincoln Riley's USC football program? You saw
that if you saw that game against Illinois, you immediately
connected it to last year. Like that lost to Illinois
was basically just twenty twenty four, over and over and
over and over again. USC would lead in the fourth
quarter at some point, but would ultimately lose the game.
Late Trojans playing to the level of their competition, no more,
no less, but you know, playing a fifty to fifty
game and just always sitting on that ledge between victory
and defeat and on the road usually losing. USC lost
to Minnesota last year, lost to Maryland last year on
the road, close games, but in the fourth quarter not
making the extra handful of plays. Now, USC was bitterly
unlucky in one specific ways. Safety Kamari Ramsey, who's been
playing Nickel, comes up with a case of food poisoning.
He doesn't play, so us he's already banged up secondary.
They've been missing a couple guys. Prophet Brown most notably,
coaches raved about him in preseason camp, but you know
he's not he has not been playing, he has not
been available. So they were already shorthanded to begin with.
Without profit Brown. Now you take away Kamari Ramsey, that
secondary was in trouble, and the equation for the USC
defense under coordinator Danton Linn has been the pass rush
needs to get home to help out the secondary. Saturday
against Illinois, the pass rush did not get home. The
defensive line did not sack Luke Altmyer once us he
got one sack of Altmyer, but that was on a
blitz from the secondary. The defensive front got handled and
so that that secondary, banged up limited was hung out
to dry. And it leads to, you know, the real
crucial point on which this game turned, and it was
when USC scored a touchdown with one fifty five left
to take a thirty two to thirty one lead. Now,
some might say, wait, the turning point was when USC
scored a touchdown in a game US he lost. Yes. Yes,
Because if you are a coach who has a very
very limited unit on one side of the ball, you
need the other unit to be the group that decides
the game. All right. So USC's defense, whose pass rush
was ineffective and whose secondary was extremely limited and undermanned,
was not going to stop Illinois. It didn't stop Illinois.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Illinois finished the game with thirty four points. But Illinois
fumbled inside the three yard line the USC three yard
line twice, so Illinois could have come close to hanging
fifty on this USC defense. It was just a mismatch.
The defensive line wasn't playing well, and that meant that
the secondary was just fresh meat all day long. So
if you're Lincoln Riley and you have your down thirty
one to twenty five at the two minute warning, and
Illinois has all three timeouts and USC has first intent
at the seventeen, you need to be thinking not about scoring.
You need to be thinking about all right. I need
at first intent at the seventeen, I need to get
a first down inside the seven, and I need to
get that first down on multiple plays to exhaust Illinois timeouts.
And then once I get that first down inside the seven,
with Illinois now out of timeouts, I'm gonna run the
ball a couple more times and then I'm gonna score
with no more than fifteen to twenty seconds left. Now
can you orchestrate a situation like that, you know, to
the exact final detail, not necessarily like the green Bay Packers,
Just to offer you a comparison, the Packers were in
a very similar situation to USC and lincoln' riilly on
that Sunday night football game against the Cowboys. They were
trailing two minute warning. Dallas had three timeouts. Green Bay
had first and ten at the fifteen. So USC was
first and ten at the seventeen. Now, the one key difference,
green Bay was down three, not six, so like the
field goal was in the back pocket. But nevertheless, it
was a situation where you know you're at the two
minute warning and you don't want to you don't want
to score too early, and you know that your defense
is just having a terrible night. What you want to
at least try to do is at the very least
drain the opponent's timeouts. Make it a little more difficult
if you do score the touchdowns somewhat early. So let's
go just go back and forth on this, green Bay,
as it turned out, it did, you know, try to
run the ball a couple times. Now, those running plays
didn't really do anything, They didn't go anywhere, they weren't
executed well. But at least green Bay drained two of
Dallas's timeouts. And then third and ten. Yeah, you have
to go for the touchdown, right, or at least you
have to be throwing the ball downfield. And so green
Bay did score on the third and ten. Dallas, of course,
did have plenty of time to get a touchdown the
other way, and the game goes into overtime eventually. But
green Bay at least tried to slow walk the ball
into the end zone and did at least achieve the
smaller goal of draining a couple Dallas timeouts. USC under
Lincoln Rally, didn't try it at all. First and ten,
throw right into the end zone, score with one fifty
five left, didn't wait, didn't drain any clock, didn't drain
any of Illinois's timeouts. So just like not even trying,
not even making any sort of effort to make illinois
situation more difficult, you know, leaving Illinois with all three
time outs and nearly the whole two minutes. You know,
people will disagree with me, but you know what, like
game management and the way you use strategy lad in
games like this is just a point where I think
the whole coaching community is behind the curve. You know,
we do. It's so to be fair to Lincoln Riley,
I'll be fair to Lincoln Rally in this one respect.
He's not unique. Almost every coach thinks along the same
lines that he does. Whoh, it's just it's hard to score,
so you just have to score. You can't worry about
the other details. But I'm going to really push back
on this because if you have a strong offense and
you have a week defense either structurally weak or you're
just not playing well on that given day, you need
to go down swinging with your stronger unit, with your offense.
It's just the way it is. Obviously, you want your
defense to be good, you want your defense to be better.
But if your defense either is bad or is having
a bad day, or is really undermanned and under resourced,
and all three things applied to that USC defense on
that day in Champagne on Saturday. You have to try to,
you know, engineer that slow walk on offense, run the ball,
short pass, get a first down in two or three plays,
drain Illinois timeouts, get a first and goal with the
six or the five, run another play, second and goal
with the three, and then score your touchdown on second
down or third down with fifteen seconds left. Coaches are
gonna say, that's hard. You know what football is hard,
Winning's hard. Life is hard, Like you need to try
to learn how to do these things. You need to
tell your elite offense, Hey, we're gonna do this thing.
We're gonna not only score, but we're gonna use up
a minute and a half minute forty five. We're gonna
drain all three timeouts. We're gonna get that first down.
You know, we're not gonna it's not gonna be instant
gratification where we just score right away. Wee wee. No,
we're gonna take our time. We're gonna get our first
down in two or three plays, and then we're gonna
get a touchdown on two or three more plays, and
we're gonna do this thing, and we're gonna help our
teammates on defense. We're gonna help those guys on defense
who are having a bad day, who've been overexposed and
who are undermanned. Like that is winning football, that's winning competition.
You let the game be decided with your strength, and
you can say till the end of time, it's hard
to score, it's hard to win. But if you need
to keep your defen defense off the field for as
much as possible in the final two minutes, you do that,
you at least make the effort. That's the thing, right,
you know. With let's go back to the Packers against
the Cowboys. The Packers did two running plays they didn't work,
but then on third and ten they scored the touchdown.
They didn't run a lot of clock, but they tried.
They tried, and at least they shaved away two Dallas
Cowboy timeouts, so they achieved something. They tried, They made
an effort. It didn't go perfectly, but they made the effort.
So you're thinking, all right, they you know, the coaching
staff was making that attempt to let the offense decide
the game and not let their their bad defense be
you know, on the field in the crunch time moments
of that game. USC and Lincoln Rowdy didn't even try.
And that's what really frosts me from a USC perspective,
you know, covering this team as I do about that game.
Lincoln Riley's been a bad game manager for bad game
manager for a very long time. He's not interested in improving,
He's not interested in kind of really digging deeper to
help his team, to protect his defense and do the
difficult things that are needed to win games. And so
USC is just stuck in this groundhog day where it
just keeps losing these close, big ten road games at
the very end and just not taking care of extra details.
And so until Lincoln Riley really improves his coaching, and
we don't know if he will, USC is going to
be stuck, all right, So we saved the best for
last year and get off my pilot. Oregon, Penn State,
The Big Showdown, Primetime, Happy Valley, the Wide Out. And
I mentioned earlier when talking about UCLA, then when quarterbacks
leave the Bruins, they leave Westwood, they thrive in other places.
So Joey agiar. He leaves Ucla, thrives at Tennessee. Dante
More leaves Ucla. He sat all last year behind Dylan Gabriel,
and this was his big national close up, and he
obviously passed the test. And you can see the physical gifts.
You can see the speed and the mobility in the pocket.
You can see those crossbody crossfield throws under pressure, like
that crossfield throw he made in the second half. That
was an ale. That was an NFL level play, and
Dante More then keeps a level head into overtime. Oregon
is able to tie Penn State in the first overtime,
take the lead in the second, and then Drew Auer
gets intercepted and Oregon in a game it did control
most of the way. You know, Oregon was up by
fourteen points, seventeen to three, and I thought the game
was done. Then early in the fourth quarter, Penn State
then somehow rallied an abruptly lost control of a game
it had been dominating up to that point. For Oregon
was the better team most of the night, and Oregon
does wind up with a win that it fully deserved.
Dante Moore, you know, he's not very experienced. He hasn't
had he hasn't played a full season of college football.
Drew Hour, you know, he's had multiple go rounds with
this thing. He comes back for one more season. You
would never have guessed if you did not know how
experienced these two quarterbacks are. Who was the veteran and
who was you know, the comparatively less tested quarterback in
this game? Dante Moore quite a lot better than than
Drew Hour. Penn State very clunky. Uh just just looked slow.
Oregon looked a lot faster, stronger for most of this game.
So you know, if you're Oregon, I mean, you have
this win sealed that the Ducks already have one foot
in the door for the college football playoff. Dan Lanning,
you know, continuing to have the right culture, the right mindset.
You know, it's not as though Oregon played a brilliant game,
because this was a three to three rock fight for
two and a half quarters. You know, Oregon's offense didn't
exactly look all that impressive, But then Oregon really turned on.
The Jets got the seventeen to three lead, then you know,
briefly lost focus, but was able to pull it back
in overtime. Dan Lanning He nails so many things about coaching,
the culture, the mindset, the work ethic, the mentality, and
he does recruit very good players who have speed, who
have a lot of talent. It comes together on the field.
You know, we can we can perhaps quibble with some
of his fourth down decisions there. You know, there are
certain times when I think he oversteps the mark. But
for the most part, Dan Lanning gets a lot of
pieces of the puzzle right in the coaching profession, and
certainly he's getting a lot more things right than James Franklin,
who suffers another loss to a top ten team. And
the discussion after this game was really interesting in terms of,
you know, this might not be Some people were saying
this loss might not be the worst thing for Penn
State because you know, they might still host a game,
but they'll get into the first round, and so like
by playing in the first round, they'll stay kind of
sharp instead of that buye into the quarterfinals. And your
Oregon had the bye last season and then was absolutely
pancake flat in the Rose Bowl against the Ohio State
team that was playing a first round game. It's a
lot like the Major League Baseball playoffs. This week, A
lot of people think, you know, it's good to play
that wildcard series because when you win it, then you
go into the LDS, the division series with fresh momentum,
and guys have come through a really big test that
three game wild card series, and they're sharper, they're more polished.
The other team that with the buy that sits around
for a week can be flat. We've seen that happen
in baseball plenty of times in recent years, so the
logic carries over to football. Some people are saying, well,
Penn State's not going to get a buye. Penn State
can now go to the first round, play a home game,
win that and then move forward. But here's the thing,
here's the count. Here's the counter argument to that point
about Penn State. First off, Penn State now can lose
one more game. They can't lose two. Penn State plays Indiana,
that's going to be really tough, and there are other
tough games on Penn State schedule. Nindie Lyons have now
just one more game, they can lose ten and two.
They can't be nine to three, they have to be
ten and two. So already the margins have shrunk for
Penn State. But The other thing is, let's remember Penn
State had that SMU Boise State bracket path in the
playoff last season. But now we've made the playoff, has
made the change where the top four teams, they're not
conference champions, they're the best teams. So Penn State's not
going to get into a situation where it plays SMU
in the first round and then plays Boise State in
the second round. No, Penn State's gonna have to play
legitimate top ten teams, and so James Franklin's record against
top ten teams, uh oh, Penn State's in trouble. And
this was supposed to be the year Penn State put
it all together and was a prime national title contender.
Then ee Lions did not look the part. And Oregon
played a really big role in making that happen. So
Dante Moore passes his test. Oregon is a team you know,
showed toughness and showed resilience. But now, you know, the
other thing in the Big Ten is we look forward.
Oregon's going to be hosting Indiana, you know, getting that
game at home that's going to be really important in
Austin Stadium. Oregon probably is going to win that. You know,
Indiana did struggle at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City against
the Hawkeyes, but you know, in Ohio State with its
offense struggling, I think you have to put Oregon at
the top of the Big Ten right now. If you
were to say who's the favorite in the Big Ten,
I would put Oregon over Ohio State because with with
Ohio State, with Julian saying that limited offense outplay Penn
State's defense, I don't know. I'm not convinced of that.
You know, Ohio State was able to outclass Washington and
separate itself there. But you know, an Ohio State Penn
State game, you know, Oregon Penn State was three to
three for about forty minutes. Ohio State Penn State might
be three to three for fifty five minutes. I'm definitely
taking the under in that particular game. So right now,
I would say Oregon is number one in the Big Ten.
If if you wanted to make an Oregon Ohio State comparison,
you know, arch Manning playing as poorly as he has played,
Ohio State beating arch Manning fourteen to seven, that's not
nearly as impressive as Oregon winning on the road in
Happy Valley at night against Drew Hollard. I know Drew
Hour is not that good, but like an experienced quarterback
unlike Arch Manning, and you're doing it at night in
a very difficult road environment. That is clearly a much
much better win on the Oregon side of the ledger
than Ohio State's wins over both Texas and Washington. So Oregon,
we're gonna be saying Oregon in the inn probably well
probably not definitely the playoff, and very probably the quarterfinal round.
As Big Ten champion, the Ducks are on their way
to playing January football. Dan Lanning has that program exactly
where he wants it, So that's a lot to chew
on for Week five. That Oregon penn State games certainly
lived up to the hype in terms of drama. It wasn't,
you know, majestic football for most of the night, but
that fourth quarter was certainly very compelling. The game came
alive after the three to three rock fight for the
first forty minutes, the last twenty and then the overtimes
absolute cinema in central Pennsylvania. So we'll see what Oregon
and the other top teams that the Big Ten do
in the coming weeks. But like we began to learn,
we haven't finished learning, but we began to learn where
these Big ten teams stand in the balance of power
in one of college football's foremost conferences. So that is
this week's show. Get Off My Pylon, part of the
College Grade Coast to Coast podcast network. Go to Gridiron
Coast on Twitter for all the shows. Visit and listen
to our family of shows, Big Ten Paradigm. Noah Drury
has more on that Oregon penn State game. Of course,
you want to listen to that Yards and Stripes on
the Service Academies, I mean Navy playing some ball. Navy's
undefeated very much in the mix of the Group of
Five championship. So Yards and Stripes, as you covered there,
the All Sports Discussion podcast and Jason Powers Florida Football
Insiders podcast, they're both gonna be teeing up that big
Miami Florida State game that's coming up this weekend in
week six. So you want to listen to each of
those podcasts that are part of the College Grade Iron
family and the other shows that are part of College
Grad and Coast to Coast Speaker, Spotify and Apple wherever
you listen to your podcasts, you can get access to
all of your favorite college grade aron Coast to Coast shows.
So this is mount Zemic for get off my pieline.
Thanks for listening this week after week five. We'll see
you next week after week six. So long from all
of us at the College great Land Coast to Coast
Podcast Network