Speaker 1: Network.
Speaker 2: It's time to celebrate the previous team sport known to man,
where modern day gladiators collide for.
Speaker 3: All the glory on the grid.
Speaker 1: Ie, Let's talk some college football on Cougar Sports with
Ben Crittle.
Speaker 3: Welcome back Cougar Sports. One of three nine ninety eight
point three ESBN the Fan. I've been Crittle broadcasting from
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Nobody does it better than band or Wealth It. He's
time for little college football. Bring to recap some of
the college football playoff games, what happened, why it happened,
and delve into some of that data, as well as
getting into some BYU Notre Dame News and the Notre
Dame Fighting Fighting Irish getting called out by Joey McGuire.
All that and more here on your Utah ESPN Radio network,
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Let them know I sent you. Let's get out to
the hotline and welcome in. Pete Mundo college football Insider,
Big twelve Insider representing a number of things KCMO, Kansas
City's Sports Talk, Kansas City Talk as well as your
home for everything Big twelve football. We have Heartland Heartland
college sports as well. What he runs, Pete, How the
heck are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well, guys, I'm doing really well. Ben.
Speaker 2: It's good to be back on the show with you
and never adult moment in this sport these days.
Speaker 3: Huh, no doubt about it. Your thoughts, your commentary. The
recap of the college football playoff Week one weekend numero uno.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it feels like it went basically the
way that we all expected. I mean, maybe Alabama Oklahoma
was a bit of a surprise to some people.
Speaker 1: But I'm sitting here watching.
Speaker 2: These games and saying, Okay, Tulane went the way we expected,
James Madison the way we expected. So now we're just
kind of sitting here and waiting for these quarterfinals. I mean,
the sport has screwed itself so many which ways, on
the scheduling, on the playoff format, on the handling of
the playoff teams.
Speaker 1: I love college football.
Speaker 2: I know you do as well, then, and everybody involved
listening right now does. But boy does it have a
lot of problems. And sadly those problems were in many
respects on display this weekend with the way these games
played out, the teams involved, and the fact that there
really wasn't a lot of juice to what we saw
over the weekend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Look, my biggest issue with this whole thing
is people forget that there's contracts that required that JMU
and Tulane get in. Six highest rated conference champions get in.
That's contractual. So you don't want to you don't want
to get into a legal battle here, and that's what
could have happened if you didn't pick, if you did
not put Jamu and Tulane into this college football playoff. Furthermore,
this you had.
Speaker 1: You, you had to put them in.
Speaker 2: I don't deny it, but but once again, how we
got here like this is march madness. I mean, that's
not what football is. It's not basketball and the sport
this is. This is not a commentary on they shouldn't
have been in. They should have been based on the rules.
It's just how this sport has set up this postseason
that's made the Bulls irrelevant and really only given us
a handful of good games after conference championship weekend, while
also watering those down in the process as well.
Speaker 3: I totally get where both sides of the table are
coming from in this conversation. This is not the first time,
nor will be the last time that blowouts happen in
this first weekend. There's plenty of P four versus P
four blowouts, right, We've seen that time and time again.
It's not just P four versus G six blowouts. Correct, correct, absolutely,
And so what do we do to remedy the situation?
I think that still, do you want Cinderella's stories or
do you not? Pete? Where do you stand in that?
Do you want a Cinderella story or no.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, there's no evidence to suggest that Cinderella's
work in football in this environment that we've created with
nil and everything else. I mean, we even saw this
trend last year of March Madness. We had more power
for teams than we had ever had because you're seeing
these major college sports become the haves and the have
nots with the money involved. So the days of Davidson
making a Sweet Sixteen run with Steph Curry or Loyola
Chicago getting to a Final four, those days are falling
by the wayside. In basketball, it can still happen in basketball.
You get one guy who gets hot from three point range,
you can win a game, you can pull off a
big upset. In football, it is so much more difficult
for that Cinderella story to exist. We're all longing for
the days of Boise State and Oklahoma in that Fiesta
bal that was over twenty years ago. Now at this point, right,
I mean, what are we hanging on to here? It's
time to acknowledge where the sport is and these games
with G five schools, yeah, I mean they're nice, but
they don't do anything for the viewer. And that's supposedly
what the sport is supposed to be about. Now the
viewer first, and the viewer is not being handled at
a good product with the way it's currently set up.
Speaker 3: Georgia destroyed TCU sixty five to seven. Once upon a
time in the college football playoff, Oregon destroyed Florida State
fifty nine to twenty. Alabama destroyed Michigan State thirty eight
to zero, LSU sixty three to twenty eight. Versus Oklahoma,
Clemson thirty one to zero, versus the Ohio State Alabama.
These are all college football playoff games. Alabama fifty two,
Ohio State twenty four, Clemson forty four, Alabama sixteen, Penn
State thirty eight, SMU ten, Clemson thirty, Notre Dame three,
Ohio State forty two, Tennessee seventeen. This is still happening
within the power force structure, is what I'm getting at.
I think there's a The reason why I'm bringing this
up is because I think there are probably in any
given year, it seems like there's maybe five six elite teams,
and then you have like great teams in that like
seven to maybe maybe twenty, you know, twenty range, and
then you have the very good teams from twenty one
to maybe forty that can compete with those those great teams,
and you maybe see some some wins and losses between
between those two groups. I think that's where we have
essentially a tiered system. But we do have some parody.
That's that's occurring right now. Texas Tech is an elite
team this year. They have not been relevant for the
last twenty years. So I think, I mean, I think
we're making more progress than a lot of people are
are are talking. They're not talking about the progress that
has been made in the parody of college football world,
and why aren't we talking about that? I do think
there is more parody, and we're seeing other teams get
into the They used to be good now they're great teams,
and they're getting into at least the conversation, do you
want to see an expanded playoff? Is the question? In
your opinion? Do you need it? Do you need sixteen,
do you need twenty? Do you need twenty four? So
you don't have Notre Dame, you don't have BYU, you
don't have maybe you know the Vanderbilt you had Diego
Pavia sitting there. He's a good story he's an SEC
team that he leads an SEC team. You could have
expanded to at least sixteen to make it most of
the teams happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, But I think then to your point,
do we have sixteen teams that can win a national
championship and based on you know, the results that you
rightfully noted, the answer is no. I mean, heck, I'm
at the point man where I would just I'd be
open to going back to a BCS style system. I mean,
it might bring some relevancy back to the balls. We
know that there are usually two, three, maybe four elite
teams every year that can win a national championship. Does
that save the bulls? I don't know that shit may
have sailed. But I mean we're talking about how, hey,
there aren't a lot of great college football playoff games
over the last going back even ten years now, since
this thing went to four and then went to twelve,
So should we be talking about expanding it.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I'm just I'm not there. As
much as.
Speaker 2: I was a big proponent of BYU getting into the
college Football Playoff, I don't want to solve it by
expanding it because then we get to the same debate
on Team seventeen and eighteen and on and on we go.
Speaker 3: There's a certain amount of like brand equity that we're
I think there's like a threshold or a cutoff where
these legacy brands like the Notre Dames, they can't piss
and moan there if they're out right. So, if you
want to go, and I'm with you, I want to
see data. I want to see objective metrics. If you
want a human subjective lie, you have to wait it appropriately.
You can't just lean heavy to the human subjective corruptible
human element, right You just want to at least have
some sort of balance in that. I actually chat with
Brett Yormick about that. I'm like, hey, whatever, we're going
to see maybe a combo of Council and BCS algorithm
driven metric to balance out the corruptible human element. And
I don't know if you really had an answer. He's
just been pining.
Speaker 1: For, you know.
Speaker 2: I think we're all looking for something like that, but
unfortunately there's no evidence to suggest it's changing anytime soon,
which is a shame because we all know how broken
this thing is right now, and the sport is by
and large and it's something that we all love and
we want to see fixed and corrected. But you know,
the playoff really the committee really embarrassed itself this year
with the Miami Notre Dame thing and the way that
they really just flip flop them at the end for
no apparent reason, even though Miami deserved to be ahead
of them due to the head to head and the
that BYU was really an afterthought. It just seemed like
all the talking points were coming out of the ESPN
talking heads, and ESPN in general has really become, in
some respects the de facto college football commissioner, and you
saw that play out with the narratives over the last
several weeks throughout this process. So I don't think it's
been good for the Big twelve. I don't think it's
been good for anybody outside of maybe the elites and
the big ten in the SEC. And that's how we've
seen this thing play out through through two years of
having twelve teams.
Speaker 3: In it is college football more broken than it has
been in the last fifty years? You think it's more
broken now than it has been in prior eras well.
Speaker 2: I mean, the fans side of me says yes, But
the business side would suggest that's not the case, because
they're doing great numbers in the regular season, they're doing
very solid numbers in these playoff games as well, and
there's more of them. So I know ESPN's probably happy
about out that, but it does feel like we're just
trending in an unsustainable direction when it comes to devaluing
the Bowl games that are in playoff games, you've got
guys opting out left and right, you have teams now
opting out left and right, and then we haven't even
scratched the surface of the NIL, which is just a
model that can't maintain itself. I know we're talking about
how the House v NCAA settlement will give this twenty
point five million dollar quasi salary cap to the athletic
departments for athletes, but NIL is still going to be there.
Speaker 1: On top of all that.
Speaker 2: So really nothing's changed, and that's where the sport does
continue to have a slew of issues going forward.
Speaker 3: We got Pete Mundo here on your Utah ESPN Radio network.
Pete is a big twelve insider. Tell us, Pete, give
me all the things that you're involved in on the daily.
Just real quick to level set for us, for all
of our listeners.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I do a four hour morning show in Kansas
City on KCMO Talk Radio that is a news, politics, culture, sports.
We do it all covering Kansas City and the national
news of the day. And then I own Heartland College
Sports dot com and that's where I really get my
sports itch. I've owned it for ten years. I worked
in Oklahoma, covered Oklahoma State and Oklahoma when they were
still in the Big Twelve, going back fifteen years ago. Now,
I spent a few years in New York at Fox
News and CBS Sports Radio and some other places, and
then came out to Kansas City eight years ago. But
the Big twelve outlet, Heartland College Sports has really been
my baby now for over a decade. And we've got
the YouTube channel up the podcast. Just search Heartland College Sports.
You can subscribe there. But really I started it because
I saw the SEC bias coming into the sport going
back twenty eleven, twelve thirteen, and I didn't feel like
the Big Twelve had a voice, And boy, if I
only knew what was coming, I was right about that.
I'll say that I'm wrong about plenty, but I was
right about that.
Speaker 3: Well, it brings me kind of to my next point.
BYU was left out. The Big Twelve's kind of left
out outside of Texas Tech, and even Texas Tech somewhat
underrated in my opinion in the poll in the com
Football Playoff poll. Where does the Big twelve bias stem from?
Why was BYU left out? In your opinion? What objective
data points get you lean too, and what conspiratorial points
can you point to?
Speaker 1: Well objectively, you know, we are.
Speaker 2: Twelve years into the College Football Playoff and the Big
twelve has one win as a conference and that's TCU
beating Michigan and then they got crushed by Georgia. So
that's the objective side. That's why it's critical that Texas
Tech has a run here to prove that the Big
Twelve this year was really good, especially at the top
with Tech, and that would actually help the case for
BYU and what they accomplished this year and what they
may accomplish in future seasons. So we need Texas Tech,
if you're a Big twelve fan, to put together a
run because it's hard to see how the Big Twelve
ever gets two teams into this format. If they can't
get two teams in this year. When BYU I mean yes,
they were not close games. Although the Big Twelve championship
game was a one score game late in the third quarter,
they were not close final scores. But they have two
losses to a team that I believe is the top
two or three team in the country. I know they
were ranked fourth, but I think this is a top
two or three team in the country. So if the
Big Twelve can't get two teams in this year, how
are they going to do it. They've got to get
credibility in this tournament, and that starts with Texas Tech.
So that's where I believe it is. Objectively, if you
want to look at it that way, the Big Twelve
just has not been good as a conference in the
College Football Playoff going back to the early days. Oklahoma
was just a nightmare in this thing. And then you
look at the conspiratorial side of it. You've got ESPN
partners with the SEC most notably, and they're trying to
jam as many of their teams in to help their
guys as much as they can, and they're the de
fact bolt college Football commissioners. Well that's my conspiratorial side.
The objective side is probably somewhere in the middle on
all of those things. But it has not been good
for the Big twelve.
Speaker 3: So let me post something to you, right, like we
all feel that obviously Big twelve needs a voice. You
saw that it was being underserved, undervalued all those things
over the last fifty years. I would make the argument
that the SEC and the Big ten have built their
brands the equity that we lean into, the modern day
equity that they that they automatically get right because they
were the SEC And how many NFL guys are producing
the championships. It has been bought and paid for by
liquid cash. You can combine maybe you know, with improper
payments at Ordron hopped onto a podcast Busting with the
Boy said he was asked the question about nil and
and how that could change the way that he would
how he would approach coaching. He's like, well, they come
through the front door rather than the back door. They've
been paying them forever, right, Like, we can we agree
on that premise that they've been paying improperly these student
athletes in these leagues over the last fifty years with
bag men. Absolutely, Okay, So you've built equity and you've
attracted the best players through cash funds, and maybe the
schools themselves have the TV money that it correlates to
some sort of population density right to build up their infrastructure.
But those donors have been paying players forever, and now
that everything's changing, what are they doing? You see the
actions more in conference games. They're leveraging that equity that's
been built off of cheating over the last fifty years.
And now we're like, oh, we're just going to play ourselves, right,
And you look at the paper tiger that is Texas
A and m as a perfect study. They just lost
to Miami, who lost to Louisville, who lost SMU you
know who are barely you know who beat Notre Dame. Yes,
but you can see the SEC they don't want those
things occurring. So I guess what what I'm getting at
here is the system is obviously a cartel in essence
a cabal, and the only way to expose it is
through I think expansion, and Texas Tech has to win,
Like you're right, Texas Tech has to find a way
to beat Oregon. I just have a I take issue
with this circling of the wagons that the SEC in
Big ten is executing right now. Because they've been cheating
for fifty years. You know.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing though, and this is this is I
saw the ed oorzer On stuff. There's no doubt the
SEC was playing paying under the table for years. That's undeniable.
We all know the game that was being played. But
now that it's out in the open, it's like, Okay,
so the SEC, a couple of SEC teams are doing it,
you know, a couple of Big twelve teams are doing it.
But is that a model that works for the long term?
I just I don't think it is. So I'm I'm
struggling to do you know how any of this beneficial.
Speaker 3: Do you trust that the SEC and Big ten are
not going to try to continue to cheat just because
there's some rules in place from the NCAA. Are they
going to find a way around it?
Speaker 1: You mean if there was a true salary cap.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even if they say, oh, yeah, this is the
salary cap, it's not legal to set a salary cap
because there's no players union, there's no The federal government
has not allowed college athletics to be a monopoly like
the NFL, which is the only professional American football league.
Does that make sense? You don't have a players. Yeah,
so you can't. You can't put a salary cap on it.
They're going to find a way to cheat. They're going
to find a way to circumvent whatever by laws you've
put in place. That's what they've done forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, So what's what's then your point from there?
Speaker 3: What I'm saying is even if you set up by
laws to try to try to govern it, they're gonna
cheat anyways because they had by laws in place that
they circumvented for the last fifty years. So the only
way at the free market has to has to determine it,
and the pendulum have to swing hard this way, in
my opinion, and hopefully the free market swings to towards
Texas Tech at least this go around. Is it sustainable?
Probably not, because eventually you're gonna get donor fatigue, So
it'll be it'll be interesting to see what happens. But
I do think the pendulum needed to swing this direction.
Do you want the federal government involved now? Is the
question to to govern it? And they will they allow
it not to be corrupted in any way?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean that's you know, that's that's I
You're laughing about it, but you're right. I mean, the
government can't do anything. Right. That being said, do we
need some type of union element to this? I mean yeah,
and basically when to treat it like a professional sport,
you know, I mean where you have salary caps and
all these different rules and regulations. It's the only way
to make it work for I think everybody, and you
know I'm a capitalist at heart. The only time some
form of socialism actually works is in sports, because that's
what you want.
Speaker 1: And there's no better brand than.
Speaker 2: The NFL on the entire planet right now, and it's
basically run through a socialistic model. So you know what,
that's the one time where I say to myself, socialism
can work when you're trying to create a level playing
field in sports to generate excitement around a team. Look
at what the Chiefs are going through right now. All
these Super Bowls in a row are.
Speaker 1: Catching up with them.
Speaker 2: Guys are tired, they're picking last every round of the
NFL draft. Their CAP's a disaster. And now you've got
these new teams. The Patriots are back in the mix,
the Chargers, the Broncos. I mean, that's what they want.
And if college football wants to basically be the NFL light,
they would be wise to have a similar model instead
of just saying, like Kenny Dillingham said the other day,
do we have a twenty million dollar dollar out there
who wants to stroke me with check?
Speaker 1: Because I mean, that's no way to run a sport.
It's a joke.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's just asking for donor fatigue right there. Right,
you have to have some sort of sustainable or the
universities can cease to take advantage of their student athletes
and actually treat them as employees. But heaven forbid they
have to pay out on workmen's comp or provide any
sort of insurance, or provide any sort of like long
term advocacy for those student athletes. Right. They just want
to be able to make the money off. They want
a TV, right, So they're not going to employ that.
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 3: They don't want anything like that because that that that
exposed them too much. So all this altruistic student athlete
talk goes out the window as soon as they have
to employ them. So evil nature, in my opinion, Pete
always appreciate our time final thing before we let you
go BYU Notre dame. They just they just stroked a
home and home rather than the pop tart ball. The
quitting Irish said, hey, we'll just give you a home
a home. We'll do it on our own terms rather
than pay. You know, one of the TV TV, I
don't know, powerbrokers in college football.
Speaker 2: Your reaction, well, you know, I'm glad Notre Dame put
on its big boy pints. They should have been playing
in the pop tards fold, but they were too cowardly
to do it. You know, it's too bad, because when
you want to prove that you are the team that
got hosed, you go out there and do it.
Speaker 1: Notre Dame did not want to.
Speaker 2: I remember the first year of the playoff, TCU got
bumped down from number three to number six the final
weekend after blasting Iowa State fifty five to three in
their final game of the regular season. What did they do?
They went out there. They crushed Old Miss in the
Sugar Bowl. I believe it was Gary Patterson. Didn't cry,
didn't complain, He went out there and he proved that
that team was worthy of being in the playoff, and
they were worthy of being in the playoff. Instead, Notre
Dame takes its ball and goes home. It's nice they've
scheduled a home and home In part that's because USC
said they're done going to South Bend in November with
their grueling nine game Big ten schedule.
Speaker 1: I don't blame them one bit, and you know, not
that I needed another reason to be.
Speaker 2: On BYU bandwagon, but I'm definitely going to be on
it for those games.
Speaker 1: Actually, all Big twelve fans.
Speaker 3: Pete Mundo, ladies and gentlemen, Pete, we appreciate you joining us.
Great content, great commentary. We invite everyone to follow you
and check out your podcast as well as your platform.
Thanks so much, Pete.
Speaker 1: All right, we appreciate it. See you guys. Here you go.
Speaker 3: That's Pemundo. That segment was brought to you by Dental
Prosifeta Dentalprosivieutah dot com. If you've been told you need
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Dental pros of Utah in American fourth they utilize the
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pros dentalprosiviewta dot com. We'll go to break, don't go
anywhere more to get to This is Cougar Sports on
one of three nine ninety eight point three ees p.
Yeah the fan