Gen CFB: No One Believes in the Dawgs
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Hi Jennifer! Jennifer, how was Athens? Athens is just a great city. It's really awesome. It's such a great college town. I toured there when I was in high school and I was like, man, I could have had a lot of fun here and would have been a much happier football fan had I gone here. But...

I did not. Great time though. Wonderful place. You guys got to check it out if you haven't been. Great game. It was just all around great across the board. Good vibes. So many bars there. No Lucy curse this past weekend. The light show was fun. I keep getting comments like, I got multiple comments this weekend that were just like, wow, your first win ever. No. What do you mean? You think every single week I've lost? What is wrong with you?

It's been a lot of the weeks, but not all of them. That's true. Not all of them. Is it the best Athens? Is it better than the other Athens, you think, or no? The one in Ohio? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it's better than Athens, Ohio, but I haven't been there. I've actually heard wonderful things about Athens, Ohio as well. Oh, maybe we should do like a tour of all the Athenses.

Yeah, Athens, Ohio, Athens, Georgia, and I think those are the only ones. Yeah, I'm with you, though. Athens is a great college town. I was shocked by how big it was when I went there for a game. I went to the Georgia-Notre Dame game a few years ago, right before COVID. Shockingly spread out in large place. Yes, it is like you get your steps in there, which I didn't love as much, and it's so hilly that my calves were hurting by game time.

But I'm glad you got to see a win. And now we're in the throes of some of the most toxic college football playoff discourse that we've had in a long time, Lucy.

Yeah, but there's one thing that isn't toxic and that's cheese hits. They only bring joy and cheese into our life and crackers. So this season we are feeling the cheesiest with cheese hits. So if your team is in the conversation, they're not in the conversation, just snack on some cheese hits. Just eat your feelings. Exactly. We're not going to do a college football ranking reaction today. We're just going to talk about some of the best moments from this past weekend. But I do think we should start with Kirby Smart's comments

after Georgia beat Tennessee, which Lucy, he's been on the offensive all season long because he doesn't think Georgia's getting enough respect. They never do. They're always constantly doubted. A team that's always in the top five consistently. No one ever believes in them. No one. No one. That's why we didn't go to the game there that weekend because we didn't believe in them. That's why college game day wasn't there because they didn't believe in them. No one believes in the Dawks.

when there's been a lot of conversation about your tough schedule, playing on the road, some of the struggles that you guys have had, but also some of the positive moments. What do you think you showed the committee tonight? Well, I don't know because I don't know what they look for. I really don't know what they look for anymore. So I would welcome anybody in that community to come down to this league and play in this environment.

It's a tough place to play. So do you think this was the game that Georgia needed to have? Like the way that they won, the style they won in. Carson Beck had a much better game this weekend. Like is this what the doctor ordered for the Georgia Bulldogs? Yeah, absolutely. An emphasis on the Carson Beck moment. I think it was funny. We sat in the stands for this game. So we were just like around other Georgia fans. And the way they talk about Carson Beck, I would really never hope to be spoken about. Oh, no. Like it was just really like...

They've had enough of him as of lately. And so just to see him throw the ball to the right team, although I do think Georgia's had a ton of issues just with their receivers not catching what they should. Offensive line not doing necessarily everything they should. This was really the game they needed. And like, it's kind of weird to say, but this loss would have ended their college football playoff hopes most likely. Three losses, you're really, really pushing it. But they looked good this year or this game. Tennessee,

The way they rebounded after Tennessee's opening drive where they just were completely dominant, moved very efficiently, I thought was really, really impressive. And Tennessee hurt themselves a lot throughout this game. But it's a good win for the Dawgs. I think they're pretty much, I won't say a playoff lock at this point. You know, they still have Georgia Tech on the schedule, which they have been known to ruin a season or two. But it was a really good win for Georgia. It's what they needed. The SEC, it's, God, it's crazy this year.

It is. I thought, yeah, the most important stat, Tennessee didn't register a sack. Georgia's O-line played really well. Beck looked a lot better. Like you said, he had two touchdowns and one rushing touchdown. The Georgia offense EPA per play, 89th percentile EPA per dropback, 92nd percentile. That's pretty good. So very impressive offensive production against a stout Tennessee defense.

And now, you know, they're like you said, they are right back in it. Tennessee's offense didn't look very good. Lucy, especially the second half. It was rough. I think my favorite meme in college football this year, but every year is the Christian Bale. Like now that's very good. Let's see the unscripted drives meme. I don't know if you, you know, we'll put it on the screen, but yeah, like you said, I mean, they got off to a hot start and then Georgia like just,

really played well and dominated the rest of that game. So awesome, awesome game. I'm glad you got to see a fun home win in Athens. And now Georgia gets to play UMass because this is the time of year where all the SEC schools, for the most part, they get their either their like lower G5 opponents or they get to play an FCS team randomly at the end of the season.

I hate that so much. Every year this week rolls around and I'm like, there's no reason Alabama should be playing Mercer right now. What are you doing? It's absurd. Okay, moving on to, I think one of the most underrated games of this past weekend, Clemson and Pitt played one of the most insane college football games, Lucy, that I think I've watched in a while because of how many errors there were.

how many weird officiating moments there were. The fact that Cade Klubnick sort of like single-handedly won this game for Clemson by a 50-yard touchdown run at the end when they needed something. Lucy, it was absolutely crazy.

My favorite stat of the entire weekend was this Cade Klubnick 50-yard touchdown run because, Jess, I'm sure you probably know the answer to this. How many rushing yards Clemson had before that? They had 17, I think, the entire game, right? It was eight. Oh, no. That's way worse. It was eight.

Two hands, you can count it. That does include sacks, so it's not technically accurate. But eight rushing yards before Cade Klubnick, who, like, you cannot be letting Cade Klubnick run on you like that. Like, that is just crazy. Absolutely, like...

stole this game for Clemson, especially because, like, the thing that was so funny to me was, like, the officiating was obviously questionable at times, but it's the way that Pitt would just lose on the dumbest possible penalties ever. Like, having that trip to the red zone with an illegal formation, delay of game, and false start. All of those are your fault. All of those are on you. We need to talk about that red zone possession for Pitt. So, first, there was a false start, but the refs didn't call it, and everyone...

on both lines of scrimmage were super confused. So then our doozy was like, okay, we need to call a timeout. Cause like everyone's freaking out right now, but the pit still snapped the ball and scored a touchdown. So then the timeout happened. So obviously the touchdown didn't count. And then timeout coming out of the timeout, illegal formation. And then after the illegal formation delay of game, and then they were on third and goal from the 16 and had to kick a field goal. Cause they couldn't convert the,

third down. So yeah, that was absolutely hysterical to watch. But yeah, the officiating in this game with like the various ruffings of the passers that were called and not called was like batshit. Narduzzi was going nuts. We'll play the video of Narduzzi freaking out on the sideline, but it was a really funny game that does maybe have some, I mean, definitely has...

playoff implications for Clemson, although a lot of their fate will be left in other people's hands, I think, depending on how SMU and Miami finish the season. But really tough stretch of losses here for Pitt, especially the improper snap in the Virginia game last week, then going into this shit show. Man, if Pitt finishes the season 7-5,

No one's going to be happy, Lucy. I'll be a little happy. Except Lou's kind of funny. And I'll laugh a little bit, too. It's a little bit funny. I'm sorry. It's a little bit funny. Should we talk about BYU finally losing a game this weekend? I didn't necessarily think that Kansas was the team that was going to beat BYU. I kind of had my money on Arizona State this upcoming week, which

which could still very much happen. But this has been the same game that BYU has played the whole year. They've been playing with their food. They've been messing around. It was only a matter of time. The omens were set pretty early in this game. I think they knew that BYU was going to lose when Cosmo did a, like, was it a front flip or a back flip? He did a flip over or like a round off, whatever. He did some gymnastics over a golf cart and

Timed it out a little poorly and just got concussed. It was a tough scene. It was like, oh, this could be... Oh, no, this is not what you want to see from your team's mascot before one of the biggest games of the season. But yeah, Kansas is a weird team this year. They...

like you said, Lucy, like they've, they've had a bit of a resurgence these past few weeks, but all their games have been close this year. They just haven't been able to finish a lot of them. And I think Jalen Daniels is playing a little bit better. He's sort of gotten it going in the run game the last few weeks, a little bit more. And so now, yeah, they've, they've got some, some big games coming up where they could play spoiler, spoiler,

Again, so the Big 12 right now, as we've been saying all season, there's so much parity. Every team is so close to one another. And so down goes BYU, another unbeaten done out of the college football ranks. We hardly knew ye.

Tough. It happens. I don't know what to say. Sorry. Another game that was funny, depending on who you are, is a game that I think we also predicted. We said if DJ Lagoway was going to play for Florida...

oopsie out. Oops. This might not be so good for LSU. And as it turns out, Lucy did LSU look like they even wanted to be there. They were just like so sad the whole time. The, so we, we went out to a bar and watch this one in Athens. Shout out to all the Athens bars. We're such a huge fan. Um,

The final score of this game is unbelievably funny, given my favorite set of this game, which is time of possession. So for those of you who did not watch, Florida beat LSU 27 to 16. So you're probably thinking, well, you know, probably 35 minutes, Florida 25, you know, LSU, whatever. I think LSU like,

over doubled Florida's time of possession. LSU had the ball for 41 minutes and lost compared to Florida's 18. LSU like statistically dominated this game, but like

They gave up seven sacks, which is more than they had given up the entire year combined. And that kind of ended up being like the real sort of just like, ah, moment for LSU. But it wasn't like Florida played a perfect game by any means. It was just straight up LSU loss and LSU was bad. And you held the ball for 41 minutes. You couldn't do shit. Yeah. And Florida's offense was super efficient. I mean, they had a 91st percentile in yards per play and the explosive play rate in the 85th percentile. Plus, every time they went to the red zone, they scored, Lucy. And

Like LSU couldn't stop them. So yeah, they were, the Florida offense was not on the field for very long, but when they were, they made it count. And so now LSU is sort of, their fans are freaking out about these yellow jerseys they're going to wear at home against Vanderbilt this week. I don't know if you saw that, but Florida is having a weird year. I think one thing in college football that is hard to sort of measure is the

teams trajectories. We want to like, we sort of picture teams as either like they're getting better throughout the year or they're getting worse throughout the year. But the reality is most teams sort of have peaks and valleys throughout the season. And Florida, I think is just one of those teams last weekend against Texas. They looked so terrible and bad in Texas, just kicked the shit out of them. And then they go in and play this game against LSU. And you're like, Oh,

This team has some life. They're out there fighting. And so it's sort of one of those things where any Saturday there can be an upset like this. But this is a really mentally tough place for LSU because now it's their third loss of the season. They still have a couple games left, a couple tough games left, Lucy. And Brian Kelly's 10-game season win streak is no more. It's probably gone. It's goodbye.

I definitely listened to all you said, for sure. I listened to all the words that you just said right there. But Florida, incredibly efficient offense. It's just been sort of ringing in my brain for the last like 45 seconds. Just something I didn't think we'd say on Gen CFB. And I'm happy there's a first for everything. I like Florida. They sent me stuff. Oh, yeah, that's true. They did send you that nice box of stuff. We love them. Yeah, cute. The funniest loss of the weekend was Louisville, correct? Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Want to paint the scene for us? Yes, I want to start off with a moment that was only funny to me. It wasn't funny to one other person on the planet. It was just like watching a halftime ESPN show and they're showing the score. You know how they always just have the little score bug that's like,

you know, Tigers versus Bulldogs or whatever. It just said Cardinal versus Cardinals. And that made me laugh. So I said, oh, we're already off to a good start. Just a funny looking little title card there. So yes, Louisville was at Stanford. There were all of 17 people in the crowd. Louisville was able to get out to an early lead. Stanford came back.

So Stanford got the ball. This is late in the fourth at their own 45. All right. So they needed to go a decent amount of yards just to get in field goal range. Obviously, they won on a 52-yard game-winning field goal. I think they ran. It was a one-yard play. They got a one-yard play, which ended up turning into a 15-yard play because Louisville was called for unsportsmanlike conduct. All right.

All right, that's not great. And then they got to another penalty, which put Stanford in another position to win this game. And it was a 52-yard winning, game-winning field goal from Stanford to beat Louisville. And just like the most like, just like...

Just dumb penalties you've ever seen. So dumb. So like I thought this game was for sure going to overtime. Louisville has screwed up the ending of several games this season that they've been in. Like all the games that they've lost for the most part, they maybe had a shot, maybe, and then just have completely botched the finish. So it was very, look, I'm not laughing because like, ha ha, Louisville, you suck. I'm laughing

because the visual of a Stanford kicker kicking his career high distance field goal into a net in front of four fans in the stands is actually pretty funny. So that was your classic ACC Cardinal versus Cardinals matchup, Lucy. We're going to have this rivalry in college football for a long time. Thank you, conference realignment. Yes.

so weird. It's just like, it's just insanely dumb. The whole thing is just insanely dumb and those penalties are so dumb and I don't know if, I don't know what you say in the locker room after that. It's brutal. Oh my God, it's so brutal. Speaking of dumb penalties, there was a very funny moment in the Texas A&M New Mexico State game where New Mexico State scored and their player that scored just punted the football into the stands.

and got penalized for it. I just wanted to mention it because that's hilarious. There was a similar thing in the Notre Dame game this past weekend where Riley Leonard threw an interception. I think Notre Dame was up 35-0. And the Virginia guy that caught it ran up and stood on the bench and was chirping the Notre Dame fans in the sideline with the football. We're like...

Okay, yeah, like you got us, but that was a funny reaction to have. Fran Brown gets to shower this week, Lucy. Congratulations. That's huge. That's huge for the whole town of Syracuse, New York. We're happy for everybody. We are happy for everyone. We should probably talk about the Oregon game, though, right? Yes.

So Oregon only won by three. That was a, I thought they'd win by a lot more. By the way, Iowa won by a lot more. So I'm not trying to say. Did Iowa play this past weekend? No, but when we played Wisconsin. Oh, right. Who did you, did you have a bye week? Yeah. Thank God. Can't lose that. Even though we always lose coming off the bye. So we probably did. The meme of Mike Norvell, like the Florida State bye week, like Florida State zero bye week 50. And then Mike Norvell, Taylor put that in and post. Very funny meme. I laughed. Very good. Very good.

Yeah, so this game, it happened the same time as Georgia-Tennessee, so we were only able to watch bits and pieces. Just let me say a quick shout-out to every stadium that during a media timeout puts another game on the Jumbotron. We love you, and Georgia did that, so we're very grateful for whoever operates the Georgia Jumbotron. It just seemed like Wisconsin had a pretty good defensive game. They were able to get the stops they wanted.

something that Dan Lanning said that I thought was kind of funny and weird is he talked about how like jump around now had like the Pavlov effect to them because he tried to preach yeah he tried to like preach that like jump around means like it's time for you to like bunker down so like when you hear jump around you know it's time to go and it was like I feel like it takes more than a week to prep for that so how many times have you guys been doing the jump around but whatever whatever he's a football coach you can say whatever he wants I not a lot I like I've been

I'm drinking the Dan Lanning Kool-Aid for like two years now. So far, the season hasn't let me down. But yeah, you're right. I mean, Oregon offensively wasn't very good, but Wisconsin was worse, which is why Wisconsin couldn't pull off the upset here. But Oregon just like they couldn't score touchdowns in the red zone, Lucy. They just couldn't finish the job. But yeah,

One stat, we should also mention Wisconsin fired their offensive coordinator, Phil Longo, like right after this game. So that was a failed experiment. But one stat that stood out to me, Luke Fickle is two for 25 in his last 17 games against top 25 teams.

That's not good. Wisconsin's 0-6 in the Luke Fickle tenure in these games. Yeah. That's not good. This year, they've led three top 25 teams at half and have lost every single one of those games. Wisconsin is one of those teams I'm incredibly fascinated by because the Luke Fickle hire, like, and this was that weird sort of everybody was hired coaching cycle, but 2020, 2021, whatever it was. And he was the widely consensus that was the best hire ever.

And then he went and just completely was like, all right, I'm at Wisconsin. I'm going to change the identity of what Wisconsin football is. And Wisconsin is not a school you can do that at. Like, the air raid isn't meant to see Madison. Like, they're not—

They don't belong together. And so the Phil Longo hire was terrible. The decision to just completely abandon what Wisconsin has done has been terrible. And so I don't think he's near the hot seat. I'm not trying to say that, but like...

Wisconsin was very much a school that's like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And it wasn't really broken. It just needed some fine tuning. I know Paul Chris was disappointed, but they were still winning eight, nine games a year. Yeah, but they also, when the divisions existed in the Big Ten, the last few years for Wisconsin, they should have probably been better, right? Yeah.

No, they should have been better. But I also think at the same time, it wasn't. Wisconsin didn't need an identity rebuild. It wasn't Indiana. It wasn't a completely bottom of the league football team. They needed to just spruce up what they did. And instead, Luke Fickle came in and said, we're going to change the entire football

the entire sort of makeup of Wisconsin. You don't have the talent in that state to do that. Like, you need to stick to what works. Like, Wisconsin has made their living off running the ball, doing it incredibly well, big, beefy linemen. And it's just...

he's tried to do too much where it was just like, I think you need to like micro dose the fun offense for Wisconsin. It's just, it's a team I'm incredibly fascinated by because I think it's just an experiment that has gone poorly because you're just doing too much. That team has no clue who it is. The best headline I saw was that the dairy raid went sour. But yeah, I mean, I think the blueprint for Wisconsin is like,

Try to be more Michigan than you are Ohio State, I guess. But I don't know how to do that. Luke Fickle's just got to win some games. He's just got to stack some wins next year. It's also tough when your quarterback gets hurt in the third game of the season. So we'll give him that, too. But yeah, tough game.

Tough season for Wisconsin. They've been in a lot of close games and then have just totally crapped the bed in them. Before we move on, Lucy, anything else you want to talk about from this past weekend? We've got some big games coming up. Big games coming up in week 13.

Only thing I really want to talk about, which it's weird. I'm kind of sick of talking about the Big 12. Arizona State, what a season, man. Yes. Great point. It's been very, very like I was talking to somebody about it today where it's if Indiana wasn't having the season Indiana was having, Arizona State would be that team we're talking about. Taylor's clapping right now. He loves this.

loves this. Honestly, I kind of think the Arizona State turnaround is even more impressive just considering that the situation they came into is one that was riddled with NCAA penalties and losing scholarships. Herm Edwards left that program just in hell, like with the Sun Devil. But they...

Big win against Kansas State this weekend. Scataboo has been amazing. He's been one of the best running backs in college football, and they're just winning games. They're 7-2. They've got BYU this weekend, and they've just become a really, really solid football team that's going really under the radar. Obviously, Kansas State kind of shot themselves in the foot, turned the ball over three times. They just couldn't, you know...

convert when they needed to this weekend. But Arizona State, weirdly enough, still sort of in the play for the Big 12. But it's just been a really wonderful season for them. Yeah, and their quarterback, Sam Levitt, is playing really well too. You know what's underrated in college football? Having a very competent college football quarterback, Lucy. And if you got one of those, you can do great things. Shout out to Kenny Dillingham for that. Notre Dame plays Army this weekend at Yankee Stadium.

I went to the last Yankee Stadium Notre Dame game. Not going to lie, one of the funnest Notre Dame games I've ever been to. Love the... I'm not like a huge neutral site person, but something about it. It was electric. I had a great time. It was so much fun. I got in trouble for having too much fun while being a Sports Illustrated employee. That's a story for another day, Lucy. But this is going to be a tough game for Notre Dame. And...

Army has not faced a defense this good this season. They have not faced an offense this good this season, but Army plays the option. They are going to try to run the ball for 18 plays, 14 minutes, 80-yard drives, and just choke Notre Dame out of it. That's the game plan. If they can execute that, I think the upset is possible. But Notre Dame's a two-touchdown favorite. They've already taken care of business against a different service academy earlier this season. So...

We'll see what happens in Yankee Stadium. But I think the even more exciting game for people that aren't a fan of the triple option is Indiana at Ohio State. Yeah, this is the biggest game in Indiana history. I'm not that familiar with Indiana football history, so I can't say that confidently. I think that proves your point. I think that proves your point then, yeah. Yeah, biggest game in Indiana football history. Kurt Cignetti just got, what, an eight-year extension this week. Well-deserved already.

Yeah, this is kind of like the game that everyone's looking forward to. One of the biggest games in college football history. Not college football history, Indiana history. Big Ten, new Big Ten history. Winner pretty much goes to the Big Ten championship game. There are still things that could go wrong, but like...

We'll either get an Ohio State-Oregon rematch or we'll get Oregon-Indiana rematch, which is not rematch but game. I do think Ohio State wins. I just think that Indiana hasn't really – Michigan's the best team they face, and they did struggle against them. Their offense wasn't able to produce like they normally do. But I don't think it's going to be a blowout by any means. I think it's maybe a 10-point Ohio State win. But we're kind of sleeping on how good Indiana's run defense is. They're allowing just 2.5 yards per carry.

This is going to be like, it's a weird game because we feel like we've already seen a lot from Ohio State. You've played, which is kind of crazy. You've played Oregon, Penn State, and Indiana all in a month span, which is just absolutely brutal. But we're finally starting to see Indiana against that big, you know,

sort of worthy competition. I think that Ohio State wins. The game is in Columbus, but I'm excited for this one. I'm excited. I'm not going to probably put money on it, but I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited too. I think two weeks ago after the Michigan game, I was like, Ohio State's going to kill this team. But the more I have thought about it and the more I have slept on it, I think it could be close. I was looking at College Football Insiders too, which does amazing previews of games. And obviously...

You have to take every stat with a grain of salt given every adjusted metric means something different. But it sort of convinced me that this one might be a lot closer than I was thinking it would be. So I'm with you. I'm not sure. I think I still favorite Ohio State. I think they have like their best players are better than Indiana's best players. And I think sometimes the college football just comes down to that. Jeremiah Smith is electric. But Ohio State's, you know.

They've struggled at times with teams worse than Indiana this season. So I am super excited to watch this one. There are a ton of great college football games this weekend. If you are a fan of the sport, man, we're coming down the stretch here. Things are going to get crazy. I can't wait for Vanderbilt at LSU, Lucy. That could be a hilarious game.

Mississippi and Florida, who knows? Stanford at Cal, one of the greatest rivalries of people that are, you know, stereotypically considered nerds of all time. But we love them. The band is on the field, Lucy. It is a great, great college football rivalry. And we love our Cal, Calgary fans. They've had a rough season. So I think we're going to both, we're both rooting for them this weekend. Oh, yeah. One of those nerds, my best friend. Happy birthday, Hannah. Happy birthday, Hannah.

Go Bears. Go Bears. Not the Chicago ones, though. Not those. Ew. No.