Hour 1: 9-0 Team Loses Game Comma, Mario Cristobal Sucks
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This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz Podcast. I can't tell you how frustrated I was watching a Miami season die at the feet of Vandenberg recovers your fumble. It didn't die, Dan. It didn't die. Vandenberg recovers your fumble. Season's not dead. I mean, I would say any hopes and aspirations that maybe this defense—

They're not good enough. I'm not saying the season's dead because they can't win the rest of their games and then end up in a playoff. That team is too flawed defensively to beat a good offensive team in a playoff game when you need Cam Ward to be perfect. They're not going to run through the playoffs as that team when they can't run easily through Virginia Tech, California, and Georgia Tech. I would agree that the defensive performance, I think overall their defensive metrics, because a lot of Miami fans were trying to rationalize the defense, say they wouldn't be the first –

average defense to win a national title. It's a bad defense. They're ranked like 65th in FVI Plus right now. I would say up until like two weeks ago, people were putting up what LSU did in 2019. And I think contextually, you had to add that that LSU team ran into really stiff competition. Miami's given up 300 yards to Malik Murphy. Miami got...

Just trounced on the ground to a team that was essentially playing three plays and telling you whenever they were going to be in an obvious passing situation. And then converting those obvious passing situations with a freshman quarterback is the only one they had who wasn't injured and can throw a football. Like what you just lost to in the way you just lost to them, to me, was crippling in a way that's exposing. It is exposing in that.

You couldn't even have your players in position. Everyone knew where those plays were going except for Miami's defensive coordinators who were stunting players at the defensive line and allowing quarterbacks to easily break contain. I think contextually, in a vacuum, if I tell you it's 28 points against Georgia Tech, you've got to do better than that. But you're also omitting the fact that Georgia Tech should have had 35. They did the smart play at the end of the game and also how effective that offensive game plan was defensively.

David Lake of Inside the U said that Georgia Tech essentially had to thread the needle. This was their only path to victory. Perfect game plan. And they killed it. They would always get nine yards on first down to make sure they could bleed out an extra two minutes out there. I'd say what happened to Miami's defense is beyond troubling in that you don't really see a path to them just being below average. When the offense that you're playing is that limited –

and you still throw up a stinker like that, you're probably not going to do any substantial winning. That being said, everything's still out there for Miami. They control their own destiny, and they'd be favored to make the college football playoff inside their own conference. Before Saturday, that was another reason why Cam Ward was and is such a great Heisman candidate, is that...

The reason they were 9-0 is that Cam Ward was outscoring the other team and his own defensive shortcomings, winning high-scoring games, winning comeback games. He failed Saturday, and I agree, he didn't have a very good game, but here's how good Cam Ward is. He throws for 340 yards and three touchdowns when he's not having a really good game. I'm not sure how much his Heisman candidacy was hurt.

Can you imagine if he completes that pass to Jacoby George that was there for him? I think...

Cam Ward is so tied up with Miami's success. You can't break yourself of it, the exciting way that he plays. But I also think he creates a lot of problems that aren't necessarily going to be there if you have someone that's in the pocket that's getting rid of the ball in under two and a half seconds. But this is where Miami is right now. They live and die by that. And if they're going to concede nine-minute drives to the other team, they need to be efficient. And they're the best short yardage team in the nation. And they failed miserably on third and shorts.

That fourth and one call where they decide to get cute and throw Mark Fletcher into the flats and he's not even prepared for a pass. Just what are we doing? We're not going to have that many drives. They're cutting our drives in half here. Let's get the first down. No one's been able to stop Miami on fourth and short at all this season. So automatic three yards. Miami got cute. They had fewer chances. Their margin of error shrank. And Georgia Tech threads the needle. That's a loss that hopefully wakes Miami up and it happens at the right time, but

When it comes to the defense, I can understand completely why you'd talk yourself into this team's not winning anything. Yeah, I think just to go back to your point about 2019 LSU, on FEI they were ranked 11th on defense, obviously the number one offense in the country right now. Miami's 65th on defense, and that's opponent-adjusted efficiency data from BCF Toys. So that is a very large number.

golf between not having the best defense and still winning a championship and having a really, really... If you remember that LSU defense, they turned it around later in the year, but if you look at the marquee players, everyone can name what they had at wide receiver. Defensively, who's the best player from that LSU team? Stingley?

So they figured it out at a certain point in the season. And I'm looking for individual players to rise up on Miami. I don't see it. They're not even positioning where they need to be. Let me stop you for a second on wake-up calls, okay? The way that Miami lost, because I want to be clear about this. And this isn't about wake-up call. It's not about learning, okay? Your coach three times...

decided and failed all three times to go for it on fourth down. I'd trust my offense like that on two of those three times. I would not on the third time. I would have taken the points, but I understood what he was doing on each one, and I believe in the idea of arrogantly going down with my best player, firing away. But the way that your coach got smoked, smoked by a game plan, the two quarterback thing doesn't work.

When one of them's hurt and he's the one starting and he can't throw because he's hurt. And the other one, when he's in the game, is throwing and you know it. And you're still giving up, not just conversions on third and 18, easy conversions on third and 18. At the end of the game, you need to stop and just hand the ball. Everyone knows you're handing it off. Just right around the corner. No problem. Easy. All of it. Easy against your defense.

Cam Ward's not excellent enough, even if he's the best player in the country, to overcome the defense and the coaching shortcomings that make it so that Cam Ward has to be better than everyone on the other side and better than everyone on his side. And he was asked to do it on Saturday and could not.

Had the game on thirds and fourth downs, could not convert the things that he needed to convert to be better than everyone who was playing in the game. Everyone who was involved in the game, because to lose to that Georgia Tech team, it's not just that it's a 5-4 team, it's not just that it was a double-digit underdog. That quarterback system doesn't beat anybody in a meaningful game. No, they're telling you exactly what they're going to do. They're telegraphing what they're doing, and you can't stop it, I think,

that makes the defensive performance all the worse. I think you're right to light up the coaching. I think you're right to light up the defense. I actually think you're letting Cam Ward off easy because the reason why he couldn't do things is because they were dropping eight the entire time. And much like Patrick Mahomes initially when he first saw it, he couldn't take his eyes off the explosive play. Now, they came within a half second of finding a wide open Jacoby George in the middle of the field that essentially would have won them the game. And it was born out of Cam Ward holding the ball too long.

but also Cam Ward, had so much underneath that entire game and refused to take it. Mike, that quarterback situation that you have never looses that game to that other quarterback situation. Never! Actually, no, I would push back on that. That's how this head coach...

would do it. That's how Brent Key enters a game as a major underdog. Mario hates him, by the way. Because he's being owned by him. Because, how would you say, the game plan... Not just because of that, because he took his job. O-line coach on O-line coach crying. Because he came and took his job at Alabama, too. Took his job. No, he's a great coach and he knew exactly what kind of game plan he needed to execute. It was a perfectly executed game plan that kept Miami's offense off the field, that limited the amounts of times that

that Cam Ward could get hot and take advantage of their shortcomings defensively. It was just a great game plan, and hopefully it's a loss that Miami can learn from and it comes right at the right time. Everything's still there for Miami, but it would appear that this would be one of the worst defenses in the last –

15 years for Miami? You can't win a championship playing defense like that. It's not, you can't have the, not even the Joe Burrow team. It's not possible. I'd say in a vacuum, if you can hold your opposing defenses and keep in mind, like the challenges that they're going to run into in the CFP, those are teams that are not going to, they're going to look at Miami's tape and still decide we're going to do what we do.

Because we're going to stick to our identity because this defense isn't going to stop us. Oregon's not going into a game that says, you know what, let's have a nine-minute drive and keep Cam Ward off the field. So stylistically, I actually think it will work out for Miami in the future, but they need to learn from this. Their next opponent does more misdirection and jet sweeps than just about anybody in the country. They need to fix that. And it was back-breaking, too, on that third and 18 when you know, okay, the quarterback that they have can't throw.

He's hurt. They've been hurt all game. And then a wide open freshman guy just runs for 18 yards. And I don't know, I think it was Mish Powell who's looking the opposite way as guys are running past him and he's like going to a spot that nobody's there. I have no idea where that breakdown was. One of them was a man. One of them was in zone. You had a true freshman and a seasoned veteran there. They got to clean it up. Thankfully they have a bye week to clean it up. I still think that this offense, you'll be in any game.

You'll be in any game in that CFP. There isn't a dominant team. There isn't a team that I look at on Saturdays. I'm like, man, Miami can't make that interesting, even with as bad as their defense is. If you go in and you just mitigate the damage on defense and you hold teams to under 28, K-Mort gives you a shot. I disagree. I think any good offense in that sport smokes you. Like,

Like, that smokes that defense because it's five yards a carry. That's Georgia Tech when you know the plays they're running. They're going five yards a carry. They're just mauling. They're telling you what's coming. I can't imagine Mario Cristobal can feel worse losing to that coach

that way where you've got the better quarterback. Maybe last year he could. Last year provided an example of where he could feel worse. Okay, fair enough, but the stakes were larger this year than they are last year. They played good offenses. Well, pretty much every offense is good against their defense, and they've been able to survive. They played with fire. There was still a path to steal that game despite Georgia Tech playing their game plan perfectly.

And it caught Miami. Hopefully, it can catch Miami at the right time and they can learn from it. Because I do think we've bottomed out as a defense. I don't think that there's another lower point beyond this. So, do what you can with it and mitigate the damage, play safer, and trust your offense. That's your identity. What are you doing with learning, though? Like, he's going to throw underneath all of a sudden? Like, the whole game plan wasn't even to run the ball. It's just Cam Bale.

us out. Keep bailing us out. You're better than everybody. Well, he failed too. I think he's not above criticism. I think he'd be hard on his own performance there despite looking at the box score. It was pretty good. But I think defensively they're still way too aggressive. There are things that they can do with personnel. There are things that they can do to play a more complimentary style. And

Like I said, mitigate this damage. Positionally, have guys. You know that if a wide receiver goes out wide and Kiko follows him, that's bad. Kiko needs to stay within the hash marks because he's not being effectively blitzed anymore. The book is out on Miami, and I think the most disappointing part of that performance was Miami has the book that everybody else has, and they're getting worse with it. I wrote a poem about the Cowboys.

Sunshine in my eyes. That's a love song. That's what inspired it. It's a song. It's beautiful behind you. It's good. I like what they did there. Good. Let's see what we have. A poem, not a song. A poem. It's a poem. Sunlight in your eye. C.D. Lamb asks why. Cowboy fans cry. To Mike McCarthy, we say bye.

That's it. Beautiful. It is. Thank you. So nice. Thank you. It was warm. You are your father's son. That is really, really lovely. Who would be favored if Mississippi played Miami? What? Who do you think? Mississippi minus three. Depends on where. I think that's a great game. It's a great game. Everybody's, it's wide open this year. There isn't a single team that I watch that say, man, they're going to just run through this in the CFP.

I think Miami presents problems to other teams, and I think certainly teams like Oregon and Ohio State, they have every right to be feeling themselves this year. But it's wide open. This is actual parity in the NCAA. I think we'd be fine to react week to week.

And Jose, let's enjoy this ride, see where it takes us, because we don't have data points to pull when it comes to this sport. We don't have previous experience with a season this wide open. That's true. There is, however, not another team in the top 30 right now with a defense that is ranked as low as Miami's. They've got to fix it. Yeah.

The defense that we saw on Saturday is not... I think what you're doing there, they've got to learn wake-up call. They've got to fix it. No! They're not good enough. And it's okay. The way that they're going to win is Cam's got to bail them out. I mean, Oregon had major issues across their offensive line the first month of this season, and they figured it out. Teams can figure these things out. Yes, I agree. Damning numbers right now. They're not going to win anything. They might not beat Wake in two weeks if they trot out that very same defense. Well,

They're going to beat Syracuse, and they'll probably win the ACC championship game. And they can just as easily lose to Syracuse the way they just lost to Georgia Tech. They won't, though. Well, you say that, but you said it before Georgia Tech, too, and I've been telling people, this team on the road, don't trust them against anybody. Saw them down 35-10 against California, and just saw them lose. This team on the road, don't trust them against anybody, because you can't trust that defense.

Why would you trust that defense? There was no question that Georgia Tech was going to be their toughest game of the three left. Their defense has been bad all season. Road games are hard, man. They're hard. You can't go into a stadium with no defense and just expect to win a road game. They did at Cal. I mean, they've done it this year. They were down 25 points.

I understand, and they won. Everybody that you have a pretty strong opinion on, they're going to lay some eggs. There's losses on everybody's schedule. Everybody that is awaiting the CFP rankings, that feels good about themselves right now and has vibes running high, they're going to come down crashing back to earth. It is a wide open year. There isn't going to be a perfect team. There's going to be a flawed team that wins this championship.

I think the thing is, too, is this is not the first time this sort of game has happened. Miami has just been able to win. They've been down at half at so many of their games so far. Miami's been playing with their food all year long. So this just wasn't that shocking to me. If they lost to Syracuse, it wouldn't be shocking to me. Wake Forest, that would be shocking to me. But they can have four losses, and it's not the same way that the Chiefs were 9-0.

There could be four losses on the Miami schedule. Usually you don't have on a championship team a unit that's bad. Dan, they're progressing exactly where they need to be, Mario Cristobal year three. I don't disagree with that at all. Year one, lose by a lot. Year two, lose by a little. Year three, win by a little. Year four, win by a lot. Mike, it's the bandage that college football...

Colorado and Miami have. It's not a long-term fix if your solution is I need to have the best quarterback be better than everyone else on both sidelines. I actually don't think, I think their identity is what it is. It's fully tied up in Cam Ward. I also think you don't have a lot of these same issues if Emery Williams is just executing an offense, getting rid of the ball. It's not going to be nearly as sexy, but I think Miami's well-positioned to keep this going. This is not a Florida State thing where the bottom falls out.

I think it's important to look at a team like Ole Miss. I know you kind of brought them up earlier. Beating Georgia this weekend is because they made crazy moves, especially defensively, in the portal. So it kind of all depends on the offseason. It's hard to really predict anybody going forward with players just going left and right everywhere different. Like, Ole Miss was able to use the portal so effectively and almost completely fix their defense. Poem really got lost in the shuffle there, huh?

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See,

See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. Apple intelligence available now. Don Libetard. I'm not going to apologize. I wouldn't expect you to apologize. You're a giant infant. Okay. You have no control over your emotions. You have no control over your emotions. When you're calling someone you know an idiot, I don't deserve it. Okay. I don't deserve it. All right. And you're a fool for saying it. Okay.

Stugatz. You're a fool. I was kind of following you. Oh, you're locking in right now? You're locking in on us? Yeah, right. Let's drop the gloves, pal. Let's drop the gloves. You should be thanking me. For what? Every day. For what? For what I've done around this character. And the second shit gets real for you, you want to come at me and call me a fool?

Huh? No, no, no. Seriously. Jeremy just whispered. I've added 10 years to your career. This is the Don Levitas Show with the Stugats. Greg Cody, who is afflicted with something that has made more and more of an appearance around here over the last couple of years, doing his best show off-air talking to me. When we go off-air instead of on-air, what were you just saying to me?

Well, based on the overreaction I heard from you in the last segment, I suggested that the headline for the last segment would be 9-0 team loses game, head coach Mario Crisobal sucks. That was the headline. Okay, because at 9-0...

People were like, you know what? He's a good recruiter. He won the portal by getting Cam Ward. Pretty good coach. Huge improvement. He loses one game and we're focusing on it. He went for fourth down too much. They should have guessed that was a pass coming. All of these things can be true, including that headline that you just gave us was too long.

What I'm telling you about that particular game, Greg Cody, is rare is the example that I can give you that is more obvious of a situation that you're getting outcoached when you have those two quarterback situations. And what happens with the game planning of the game is not only do they run the ball at five yards a clip, they do the most effective thing, which is keep Cam Ward out of the game because they're holding the

the entire time because your coach has no answers defensively for the one place they have a strength, which is an offense that's super limited on a five and four team that's telegraphing everything and still they're doing the dual thing of scoring on your defense

And keeping your best player off the field. Limiting his possession time. Rare is the example of something happens that obvious where you're like, you've got the better quarterback and you can't get him on the field because they can run the ball. It's literally happened every big upset with undefeated teams. That's how you do it in college football. You control the ball and you keep the great offense. It scores at a great clip and you give them fewer opportunities.

They perfectly executed their game plan down to getting nine yards on first down carries as opposed to 10. They were just perfect. There was still a path to victory. And Miami's offense, you could hold them accountable and say they actually dropped the ball. It was a bad day for the defense and the offense to essentially together put their worst performance of the season. It happens. Winning is hard. This season has proven that winning is hard.

Hard, week in and week out. Hopefully they can learn from it and improve. And the running game, the run defense by Miami, I don't have the stats in front of me. If I'm wrong, correct me.

The run defense has been average, but not terrible this year. It was five yards a carry on Saturday. I'm talking about going into that game. That was an anomaly, giving up 270 yards rushing. I think the pass defense has been worse than the run defense for Miami. But the point is the defense has been bad all year, and Cam Ward has been outscoring his own defense and the other team all year. I can't do this anymore. If Mike Ryan's going to give me press conference of hopefully we learn from it.

Let me switch topics here because I need to get to off-roading, which should be off-roading, right? It should be off-roading. Miami's run defense factors in somewhere around like 70th right now, just to tie a knot on that. Thank you. But going into that, before giving up 271, it was probably more like 40th or 50th, I'm guessing.

Okay, important guess that you make. It's still pretty terrible. That's average, not terrible. It's pretty terrible. Off-roading, off-roadine, off-roadin'. It's coming in a second. But I'm scared to do something that I want to do, and I'm just not brave enough to do it. I don't know if all of you have seen what Jokic's last nine games have been.

But it's all ridiculous. Like, it's just asinine that the man is not playing. You know, he keeps improving, statistically keeps improving. And the thing I'm scared to say is that he's the best basketball player ever. Like, I'm scared to put him ahead of LeBron and Michael Jordan. But this five-year stretch, there's just nothing like it. And he's 29. Like, what?

He's just going to win all the MVP awards because he's somehow getting better, plays all the games, and is just statistically across the board. Assists, rebounds, points, efficiencies. There's just never been anything like this. It's too inflammatory to say he's the greatest ever because that's a conversation that is just reserved for a party of two right now. And...

It's such a movement behind both those players that it's a losing argument. But what I would say is I couch it usually by saying he's the most unstoppable player I've ever seen. He's just the most dominant. There's nothing that you can do that can really bother him. And even if you take away one aspect of his game, he'll excel at the other ones to the point that you stop doing that. He's just unstoppable. Basketball can't be played any better than he's playing it. No one has ever played it better.

better than he is playing basketball because it's not just the statistical production. It's the efficiency of it. Like even Michael Jordan, when he scored double digits, occasionally would have a 12 point game. Like occasionally there would be something in there that was four for 19. There would be more games in which Michael Jordan went up against the defense and the defense would feel like, yeah, we did. We did a, we did a good job on the defense.

on him, that feeling is fewer and further between when a defense lines up against Jokic. It's just impossible to stop. What is the name of this segment? Your last name is Rodin. It is. I'm glad you know it. This segment is not called Off Rodin. It's Off Roding. Roding. It's a play because, you know, on the road, off.

like it kind of sounds like my last name. I thought it was clever. I didn't come up with it. My friend Haley did. How do you feel about this week's edition of Off-Rodine? I actually feel really good about this one. Obviously the game was terrible, but LSU fans are straight up a different breed. They are some of the funniest, most interesting people we have ever talked to. It is interesting.

such a great atmosphere. I'm so sad the game sucked because I didn't really get to experience like Death Valley during a great game, but we had a blast. I would love to go back to Baton Rouge. Did it smell like whiskey at the 50-yard line like they say night games in Baton Rouge? I think the rain sort of washed that away. I will say I have never been to a school where I've seen them smoke more cigarettes than at LSU. Like cigs everywhere.

Milrow had, what was it, 12 carries for 185 yards? That's pretty good. It was like 8 million yards. It was after the second Alabama drive in the first quarter that I was like, yeah, this is cooked. We're done. We could go if we wanted, but we stayed the whole time. That's my Heisman Trophy vote.

I mean, 12 carries, 185 yards. On top of that, though, it was a night game at LSU. It's supposed to be hard to play at night there. They violated all sorts of animal rights stuff by bringing a tiger across state lines. Yeah, you should be furious, Jessica. Everybody should be furious at doing that to a tiger. It was so depressing to watch.

I am excited to ask Ron McGill about it tomorrow because that it truly made me so sad to see that tiger in that cage while everyone was booing it. Yeah. Yeah. But if they would have won, though, would have been electric.

No one wanted the tiger there. It was just it was just overall bad. You'll see it in our videos a little bit. Absolutely no one was happy. And it was like 50 percent of the fans were like, hey, I think it's really messed up to have a tiger on the field during a football game like that's wrong. And the other 50 percent were like, that should be our tiger on the field during this football game, not the other one.

The thing that I remember about when the University of Miami was at its greatest powers is when they went to LSU and they won at night like 44-3. And in that game, I saw an LSU receiver chased down by a Miami defensive tackle, Shane Curry. And outside the locker room before the game, they put the sedated tiger in a cage right outside Miami's locker room. And the Miami players came out and were putting their hands in the cage and stuff, like taunting the tiger. My dad told me that same story when we were watching the game on Saturday night.

He's like, once upon a time, I was like, ah, the good old days. They were taunting the Tiger. And then it got ruined. I was so excited to see a game there. And then it was rainy and they were all miserable. And it was 44-3 or 45-3 or something ridiculous. And the whole thing gets ruined. On Friday, I went to just see Mike's enclosure. So the Tiger that was at the game was Omar. That's different than Mike. But I went to see Mike's enclosure. And I was like, you know, I posted something about like, I don't really agree with this. And a lot of people were like,

That tiger lives like a king. That tiger has the best life in the entire world. But when I was standing at Mike's little enclosure, this family came up next to me, and I was eavesdropping on their conversation, as I always am. And I just heard them go, remember when Meemaw poked Mike with the stick?

You remember that? And I was like, I don't think this tiger lives like a king. I don't think so. And the all-smoking heaters. That tiger had to be miserable. Had to be miserable. That's an unhappy... Like, come on. That can't be pleasant. It's really, really sad. Mike was just pacing back and forth in the enclosure the whole time. And he doesn't really come out during game days because it's too overwhelming for him. The tiger that they brought in, they only had on the field for a little bit. He wasn't out there very long. I don't know if it was rain-related or what, but it was...

And all the fans booed the Tiger, by the way. They were so unhappy. Not one single person except for the governor of Louisiana wanted this Tiger at that game. Everyone booed the Tiger. They also, like, rolled him out and just floodlights on him while, like, 90,000 people are screaming. The whole thing. Terrifying. I hate to be this guy, but, like, it really did upset me for the Tiger. I just finished watching that chimp documentary on HBO also about the people that have the chimps as pets. Mm-hmm.

And like, I just, these are wild animals. And the cage was so thick that you could barely even see the tiger through it too. And he was probably so scared. Bit of a liability issue, I suspect, to have a tiger. Anyway, on that note, PETA's involved. There's protesting. State lines were crossed. And there were all sorts of animal cruelty violations. Let's go off-roading. Oh, suck that tiger dick, bitch. Oh.

Ever since I was a young girl, I had one dream in this life. It wasn't to get married. It wasn't to be a princess or some shit. I don't know what young girls dream of. I wanted to go to Death Valley. I wanted a night game in Baton Rouge, and my dream is coming true. This place rules so hard. This is the top of my college football bucket list, but no one will tell me what STTDB means. I just want to know. I feel left out. Suck the tiger dick, bitch!

It's so hot and it's November. This is really bad for all of us as a society. How would you describe the LSU tailgating scene? People get a little out of hand and like kick the shins. I heard an eight year old kicked an adult in the shins and I was like, it's a little bit ridiculous. But I think it's cool. But I think people get out of hand, especially out of state people. Sorry, but like get a grip.

Who's the worst fan base you've dealt with? Tennessee. Tennessee band. They were behind me in my rear. And I was sitting there, and they were blowing their horns, and I flipped them all off hard. And I was like, you guys are ridiculous. Get out of here with that gaudy orange. I'll never wear that gaudy orange, purple and gold, even though it's not my color palette. I still like to participate. So I wear neutral. I'm not going to crap on anybody. Well, you know what I think? Let me think about it. Ole Miss fans are kind of dicks.

We're kind of depressed because we felt like Brian Kelly was going to bring us a dynasty. And now we're not sure. So we're trying to understand why that's not happening. How do you guys feel honestly about Brian Kelly? He looks like a great guy. He looks like your best friend's dad. I think he's doing okay. How's Brian Kelly doing? Like, I'm kind of just there for the vibe. Brian Kelly's doing good. Is Brian Kelly cool enough to be the head coach at LSU? I mean, this is Swag U, right?

He's the least swaggy person of all time. I don't know. Brian's swag could be tonight. This could be. Winning this game tonight is swag. You talk about legacy games? This could be swag game loading tonight in Death Valley. Yeah, he's getting cooler because he's starting to embrace the culture. This is the culture shock coming to this part of the world. We eat more. We drink more. We party more. The atmosphere here is just different.

What was your immediate reaction when you heard that Nick Saban was retiring? When he retired, we were like, whoo-hoo, thank God. Retired that man, whipping our ass. Nick Saban's sexy.

Okay, so here's the situation happening at LSU today. For those of you who don't know, LSU has a live tiger on campus. His name is Mike. He's a full-ass live Bengal tiger that lives in a facility right across from the football stadium where people can go and take pictures of him, whatever. Morally, I don't agree with that, but that's not the point of this right now. So Mike used to go into the games, and he would be in a cage on the

field sitting behind the visitor's bench, which is crazy, but they stopped doing it because it's 100,000 people. It's really loud. It's probably pretty dangerous. There's some state government official here who's like,

Like, this is what's the most important issue in our country right now is the fact that there's not a Tiger on the field. But it can't be Mike anymore because they decided that Mike wasn't going to be the Tiger on the field. So they outsourced it, and they went and got a Tiger from Florida, naturally, who's coming to this game to be on the field, but it's not Mike. And people are super pissed about it. How do you feel about them bringing in a Tiger that's not Mike to be on the field?

No. So now we got a stunt double, you know, some cat from Florida.

That makes no sense. They're bringing in Omar from Florida like what? But I think if they were to mess with Mike's mental state, he wouldn't be able to fight like he does. So we had to go in the transfer portal to get a tiger. That's how that works. We got a transfer portal tiger while we had a homegrown tiger. So you're adding to the talent pool is really how I see it. I think what we did is we saw an asset out there in the open market, Brian Kelly,

Do we want to call him Swagoo now, or has Booger already got that? Swagoo Jr. Swagoo Jr., Swagoo Part 2. I think he went out in the transfer portal. He did some recruiting. He brought in this transfer portal tiger, and I think it might be the king. That is Mike. Put it on. Who the f*** is Dan Levitard? Have you ever heard of the Dan Levitard show with Stu Gotts? Yeah. Yeah. Woo. Give it to me again. There we go.

So that might be one of the worst games we've ever been to in the history of off-roading. But at least the weather was really good. So signing off in Death Valley, I'm Lucy Rodin. Suck that tiger dick, bitch.

Loved LSU loved it there was a moment that didn't make the the cut that I want to talk about cuz it's so funny those three guys the one guy in the middle was like hey I would really like a job for the Dan Levitard show and I was like, okay cool. What's your qualifications? He said well if you hire me, I'm a redhead I'd be the shows first gender. I said oh we already have one Chris Cody He said that's great that you're bringing in DEI hires

Can you guys tell me whether you find it funny, interesting, both, neither, that the advent of the shift in that sport with power and money started with Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly, and both of them have been like, oh my God, you didn't have to give them any money at all. You could have been just fine deciding to go any number of other people. These are not any kinds of groundbreakers.

USC is 12-12, I think, in their last 24. And Brian Kelly hadn't done shit. I think Jimbo's probably the best example of that because they gave him more money than God. And now they're paying him more money than God just to not coach there, which is crazy.

It's a good example. I just don't think of it as the place that the whole thing shifted. I associate like NIL and corporate CEO changing with both being able to buy Oklahoma's coach and being able to buy Notre Dame's coach. Like you're going somewhere else to just buy someone. I didn't think of that the same way with Texas A&M and FSU. Maybe I should have. Yeah, it's totally.

feels like it's the exact same thing. Scott Woodward, who was the Texas A&M athletic director that went to LSU that made the Brian Kelly. Sorry, wrong microphone. I was a little confused. You were saying? Same athletic director that hired Jim

Jimbo at Texas A&M and LSU and Brian Kelly at LSU. So you guys do this with Fisher more than with Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly? That was the most shocking thing. He left a national champion side. I mean, Mel Tucker's contract too was...

like $95 million, and that really crashed and burned. So what am I doing that I'm associating it with these two guys? Because that coaching cycle was 2021. That was when a lot of things shifted after Lincoln went to USC. Brian Kelly, I think...

Right. LSU wanted Lincoln Riley, couldn't get him. So they hired Brian Kelly and then like the whole carousel went in motion. Brent Venables went to Oklahoma. He's now on a massive contract and their season has been in the toilet. I think you're just thinking of the 2021 coaching cycle because it was crazy. I mean, like that's the year that a lot of things changed, but I think it started before that.

My favorite moment from that coaching cycle was when Lincoln Riley came out and said, I am not taking the job at LSU and then took the USC job the next morning. It was awesome.

I don't know if you guys saw getting back to the conversation we were having on Jokic. He was asked the other day in a press conference, he was like, have you had any bad nights this season? And his response was, yeah, the second night, the second game we lost. And the reporter's response was, you had 41. 41-9-4 that game, by the way. It's his worst game.

His worst game of the season, Dan, points-wise, is 16 points, but he also tacked on 12 rebounds and 13 assists that day. Should I do it, Mike? Should I just proclaim him the best basketball player ever? I'm just too scared to do it. I mean, if you call him the best ever, you already did. Just lean in. Go with that take.

Season's greetings, podcast audience. It's Mike Ryan. And now is that time of year where you start hosting your family gatherings, be it Thanksgiving, be it the upcoming holiday season. You're going to have some folks in town. You're going to be doing some entertaining. So why don't you make your family time a Miller time? It's the first thing that I roll out when I got guests over at the house, an ice cold bucket filled with that beautiful white can. See, Miller time makes family time all the more special because for one thing,

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