Speaker 1: Welcome to the Solid verbal.
Speaker 2: I'm that for me.
Speaker 1: I'm a man, I'm forty.
Speaker 3: I've heard so many players say, well, I want to
Speaker 3: be happy.
Speaker 1: You want to be happy for dake Edo State.
Speaker 2: Is that whoo whoom?
Speaker 1: And Dan and Tye.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to the Solid Rebel boys and girls. My
Speaker 4: name is ty Hildebrand, joining me way way over there
Speaker 4: out of the quarantined New York City. He has made
Speaker 4: his way west. He has made the cannon ball run
Speaker 4: to southern California.
Speaker 1: Mister Dan Rubinstein, how are you. I'm tired. It was
Speaker 1: a slog, but I'm okay. Got out of New York,
Speaker 1: did it safely quarantining at the moment from relatives who
Speaker 1: are at a completely different location. So it's just me
Speaker 1: and solid wife Jody, and the Solid toddler because he
Speaker 1: now is walking, so I guess that technically makes him
Speaker 1: a toddler. So we're doing everything by the book and
Speaker 1: safe and staying away from people and removing from everybody.
Speaker 1: Ty so took every single possible precaution. And now I
Speaker 1: sit and literally sit with a large pot overturned next
Speaker 1: to the guest room bed, speaking into pillows as one does. Right,
Speaker 1: and we still sound better than the competition.
Speaker 4: Well, we hope everyone out there is as happy and
Speaker 4: healthy as the two of us. I know it's very
Speaker 4: uncertain times for many people listening to this show. We
Speaker 4: appreciate you spending some time to escape it and talk
Speaker 4: college football with us. We've got a fun show planned
Speaker 4: for tonight, which will detail here disagree momentarily. If you
Speaker 4: do like the show and you haven't already followed us
Speaker 4: on Twitter, on Facebook or on Instagram, please go on
Speaker 4: out and do so.
Speaker 1: It is free.
Speaker 4: You can also go on out to our website, solid
Speaker 4: verbal dot com. If you've got a lot of downtime
Speaker 4: you want to listen to some of our archives, you
Speaker 4: can find it there. And if you want to participate
Speaker 4: in the conversation, as I say, long after the final bell,
Speaker 4: you can do so at Soliverbal dot reddit dot com
Speaker 4: or good friend Peter Hoffman is trying to keep the
Speaker 4: fire burning d in. He's doing his part right to
Speaker 4: bring in amas and really keep content fresh and lively.
Speaker 4: Especially again, a lot of folks look for something to
Speaker 4: do right now, So head on out again Soliverbal dot
Speaker 4: reddit dot com.
Speaker 1: What is our show for tonight? We are making peace?
Speaker 1: I am making peace with I suppose it's the twenty
Speaker 1: eleven BCS National Championship game based on the twenty ten season.
Speaker 1: The game is Oregon Auburn. We are not just going
Speaker 1: back and we have rewatched and we are going to
Speaker 1: relive and try to analyze things and rehash things with
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eyes, sort of in retrospect. But I also
Speaker 1: feel it's and I didn't ask you to do this,
Speaker 1: and I have prepared my own Remember when ace Ventura
Speaker 1: answers the question, what do you know about Ray Finkel
Speaker 1: soccer style kicker? Yep, yeah, the twenty ten season, and
Speaker 1: we will get to the lead up, both in terms
Speaker 1: of Oregon's twenty ten season and Auburn's twenty ten season.
Speaker 1: But the college football season that happened in the fall
Speaker 1: of twenty ten was I suppose, depending on who you
Speaker 1: root for and who you care about, kind of perfect
Speaker 1: the way I like college football and the way you
Speaker 1: like college football.
Speaker 4: So you like your eggs over easy, you like your
Speaker 4: twenty ten college football season, Like how.
Speaker 1: I forgot everything that went and we can get into
Speaker 1: it right now. I don't know if you want to
Speaker 1: introduce anything specific or tag anything specific and ask people
Speaker 1: to follow whatever. At this point, they probably know that
Speaker 1: we have social media accounts, but no, I already did that.
Speaker 1: I know you, I already did that. But when you go,
Speaker 1: I'm ready, and I say this actually completely independent, and
Speaker 1: we're getting into it of the fact that my team,
Speaker 1: my alumni, my alumni, my alma mater, the Oregon Ducks,
Speaker 1: found themselves in the National Championship game. They go twelve
Speaker 1: to zero before that game. Completely independent of that. Here
Speaker 1: is what the twenty ten season gave us, and you
Speaker 1: can throw a jazzy little number under this beautiful work
Speaker 1: of art that was the twenty ten season retrospective. We
Speaker 1: have an incredible Rose Bowl champion TCU team led by
Speaker 1: Andy Dalton. I think it's Josh Boyce Jeremy Curley out wide.
Speaker 1: We have the best Stanford team of the modern era,
Speaker 1: Andrew Luck, Jim Harbaugh, and a ton of NFL talent everywhere.
Speaker 1: We have an Ohio State season that technically didn't count
Speaker 1: because wins were vacated, but it's still a Terrell Prior
Speaker 1: led Ohio State team coming back from a Rose Bowl
Speaker 1: win beating Arkansas, and I believe the Sugar Bowl. We
Speaker 1: have Landry Jones in Oklahoma putting up all sorts of
Speaker 1: crazy yardage. We have JJ and Scott Tolzen and Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: They lose the Rose bull but they have an incredible season,
Speaker 1: including a win over Ohio State in Camp Randle. You
Speaker 1: have a Boise State team which maybe played in the
Speaker 1: game of the season against Nevada, that overtime game decided
Speaker 1: by a game winning field goal. You have an Alabama
Speaker 1: team who had four or five head coaches but managed
Speaker 1: to go ten and three, and that includes a Bowl win,
Speaker 1: murdering win over Michigan State and a loss to South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Steve Spurrier in South Carolina, a South Carolina team that
Speaker 1: it was the very beginning of their ascendants. They had
Speaker 1: like a really nice four year run under Steve Spurrier.
Speaker 1: So that's Stephen Garcia, al Seon Jeffrey and Marcus Lattimore
Speaker 1: beating Alabama by two touchdowns. That's incredible. You have Colin
Speaker 1: Kaepernick's senior year. He's obviously an amazing college quarterback running
Speaker 1: that pistol for Nevada. Ryan Mallett and I want to
Speaker 1: say it's Jerius right, Joe Adams, Kobe Hamilton for Arkansas.
Speaker 1: They're incredible. Mississippi State goes nine to four. Nanny Diaz
Speaker 1: is the defensive coordinator and and in retrospect, really fun
Speaker 1: backfield of Chris Ralph and Vick Ballard. You have Florida State,
Speaker 1: MISSOO and Washington somehow generating first round quarterbacks out of
Speaker 1: Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder and Jake Locker. You have the
Speaker 1: emergence of Ryan Tannehill converted receiver to quarterback at Texas
Speaker 1: A and M in there I believe it's second to
Speaker 1: last year at in the in excuse me, in the
Speaker 1: Big twelve. All the while realignment is starting to and
Speaker 1: continuing to sell out conversationally continue Sorry.
Speaker 4: Yes, now, hold on, I was hoping that you would
Speaker 4: eventually get to my favorite story, yeah, of the twenty
Speaker 4: ten season, and it really had nothing to do with the.
Speaker 1: On field product.
Speaker 4: But twenty ten is when all this dust started getting
Speaker 4: kicked up around conference realignment. And you might remember some
Speaker 4: publications reported that five of the big public schools in
Speaker 4: the Big twelve were going to make their way west
Speaker 4: to the PAC twelve or the PAC sixteen. It was
Speaker 4: going to become a super conference. This is going to
Speaker 4: trigger some sort of nuclear winter as it relates to
Speaker 4: conference play in college football. Obviously it happened to some extent,
Speaker 4: not to that drastic extent, but that was a huge
Speaker 4: talking point, and it was something of like a side
Speaker 4: gig all to itself, people talking about different possibilities who
Speaker 4: could end up. Where As you said, it was sort
Speaker 4: of the beginning of this run up to what eventually
Speaker 4: was a much more modest realignment.
Speaker 1: Think about these are the teams, by the way, that
Speaker 1: realigned around this time. So and the good teams TCU, Yes, realigned, yep, yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: they make their move to the Big twelve eventually, Boise
Speaker 1: State from the Whack to the Mountain West. I believe Nevada,
Speaker 1: you have MISSII. Colorado. Yeah, well Colorado's not good. Colorado's
Speaker 1: especially not good. But in terms of the good teams,
Speaker 1: Maryland good this year. Offensive coordinator James Franklin at Maryland
Speaker 1: defensive coordinator Don Brown, Danie O'Brien, I think red shirt
Speaker 1: freshman quarterback was promising. Tulsa does not. I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have Tulsa's you can just cut this out.
Speaker 1: I don't actually leave it and who cares. But Tulsa
Speaker 1: was Todd Graham and Chad Morris. UCF is good this year.
Speaker 1: Jeff Godfree quarterback. They beat Georgia in the bowl game,
Speaker 1: the other side of the Deep South oldest rivalry. So
Speaker 1: they beat both Georgia and Auburton Bowl games in a
Speaker 1: decade span or so. We have Nebraska real ligning, we
Speaker 1: have A and M real ligning. TJ. Moe is wreaking
Speaker 1: havoc at MISSOO. They move conferences. It's it's a special
Speaker 1: year in that we had the best versions of teams
Speaker 1: or near best versions of teams. We had these strangely
Speaker 1: down versions of really strong teams. I think this was
Speaker 1: the worst year of Mark Rick's ten. You're at Georgia,
Speaker 1: they go they end up going six and seven. Stanford
Speaker 1: was their best team, Like there was just so much upheaval.
Speaker 1: And then you go to the National champion Ship Game,
Speaker 1: and the National Championship Game features two teams that were
Speaker 1: really I mean, Oregon was sort of near there and
Speaker 1: Auburn was sort of near there earlier on in the decade,
Speaker 1: Auburn going undefeated and being left out, Oregon finishing number
Speaker 1: two in both polls in two thousand and one and
Speaker 1: being left out, But these aren't your perennial top of
Speaker 1: college football year and year outpowers, both finding themselves in
Speaker 1: the National Championship game. So there is just an air
Speaker 1: of novelty and freshness to college football in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of tea magic. Taylor Martinez is
Speaker 1: a freshman for Nebraska, is an incredible story, an incredible watch.
Speaker 1: There is just something. Do you know what the word
Speaker 1: umami means? Ty No, Okay, you've heard the word, though
Speaker 1: as it relates to heard the word, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Umami is sort of the vague concept of savoriness. There
Speaker 1: are there are four main flavor profiles tie in food.
Speaker 1: It's I think sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. Umami is
Speaker 1: like parmesan cheese that has sort of all of those
Speaker 1: in one or or tomato. You know, there's there's There
Speaker 1: are certain foods that are considered to have a new
Speaker 1: Mammy quality too.
Speaker 4: So twenty ten, what you're saying was your college football umah.
Speaker 1: One thousand percent, Tyler, one thousand percent. You missed the
Speaker 1: best part too.
Speaker 4: The best part was that college football decided that in
Speaker 4: twenty ten they were going to outlaw the ability to write,
Speaker 4: not the ability to write, but the liberty to write
Speaker 4: some sort of message in your EyeBlack.
Speaker 1: So yeah, of course they.
Speaker 4: Decided they were gonna how at Tim Tebow had a thing,
Speaker 4: like there are a couple guys along the way who
Speaker 4: had a thing, and they decided they were gonna outlaw it,
Speaker 4: really cutting down to the important stuff in college football.
Speaker 4: But you're right, Auburn Oregon, there is definitely a novelty here,
Speaker 4: and both of these teams took a very different path
Speaker 4: to get there. If you look over the course of
Speaker 4: Oregon season, Oregon didn't have much trouble along the way.
Speaker 4: Oregon had a weird game on the road mid November
Speaker 4: against Cal that they barely won, but outside of that,
Speaker 4: they were blowing the doors off teams. And we can
Speaker 4: get into why, but just a really dynamic offense that
Speaker 4: teams in the Pac twelve couldn't keep pace with. On
Speaker 4: the Auburn side of the equation, though a much different
Speaker 4: story now, still a very dynamic offense, a very good
Speaker 4: defense for sure, but they had six one score games
Speaker 4: before they got to the National Championship game. The National
Speaker 4: Championship by the way twenty two to nineteen obviously a
Speaker 4: one score game that made it number seven on the
Speaker 4: year for the Auburn Tigers. But going into this football game,
Speaker 4: these were teams that took two very different paths. Oregon
Speaker 4: goes thirteen and ZER twelve and h there was no
Speaker 4: pack to get to No PAC twelve. Yeah, to get
Speaker 4: to the BCS National Championship game. At the time, They're
Speaker 4: led by their quarterback Darren Thomas, who had an amazing
Speaker 4: year well Michael James, Kenyon Barner, Jeff Mayle, a name
Speaker 4: that I'm going to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 4: as we get into the actual football game. And as
Speaker 4: we saw in the National Championship pretty good defense too.
Speaker 1: So we can start there. This was in terms of
Speaker 1: Dannalytics points per drive defense. This was twenty ten and
Speaker 1: twenty twelve were the best Oregon defenses of the modern era,
Speaker 1: I suppose until twenty nineteen. But this was a team
Speaker 1: with an amazing offense but an uncharacteristically great defense to
Speaker 1: go along with it. Now, I suppose you can look
Speaker 1: at the PAC twelve and the offenses and the up
Speaker 1: and downness of the conference to say, well, it's okay,
Speaker 1: there were some good quarterbacks in the Pac twelve that year.
Speaker 1: This was Matt Barkley, Andrew Luck. You know, you're you're
Speaker 1: a big Brock Mansion guy. But now Nick Foles was
Speaker 1: at Arizona. There were legitimate quarterbacks who have played and
Speaker 1: succeeded in the NFL in the Packed twelve that year,
Speaker 1: and Jake Locker. So I really do, especially with how
Speaker 1: little success the players on this defense had at the
Speaker 1: next level, I think they did a really nice job
Speaker 1: rounding out a very complete, excellent Oregon team.
Speaker 4: You're right about saying that some of the defensive stars
Speaker 4: didn't have much luck in the NFL.
Speaker 1: But on both sides of the ball. But yeah, on
Speaker 1: both sides of the ball. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: What was apparent though watching the championship game was that
Speaker 4: they came to play. And Kirk Kurbstreet even said her
Speaker 4: on the broadcast, by the way, this is my first
Speaker 4: time watching this broadcast as well. Oh yeah, just like
Speaker 4: last week because we were at this game, which I'll
Speaker 4: get into here momentarily, but he made mentioned the fact that,
Speaker 4: you know, we expected that defense would come to play.
Speaker 4: We figured they'd come to play early. Both offenses had
Speaker 4: a tendency to start slowly. We did not expect to
Speaker 4: be this deep into the game, that deep into the
Speaker 4: game and have the game be nineteen to eleven or
Speaker 4: nineteen nineteen or even twenty two nineteen. Given the strength
Speaker 4: of both offenses, these defenses came to play, and Oregon
Speaker 4: I think was more surprising in that regard. We knew
Speaker 4: that Auburn was very good upfront, but what I don't
Speaker 4: think we expected is for the Oregon defense to show
Speaker 4: up quite the way it did.
Speaker 1: No, I was pleasantly surprised that they were able to
Speaker 1: handle Cam the way that they were across the board.
Speaker 1: I know Deon Jordan was taken high, but he was
Speaker 1: not a huge factor in this game. He was taken
Speaker 1: high in the NFL draft and didn't fully work out
Speaker 1: given where he was drafted. And defensively, certainly, Cliff Harris
Speaker 1: had a number of off field incidences that incidents that curtailed
Speaker 1: his NFL possibilities, but he had an All American caliber
Speaker 1: brief career at Oregon at cornerback and played a major
Speaker 1: role in this specific game. When I think about the
Speaker 1: twenty ten season, I think, I guess I think of
Speaker 1: you know three or four things. One the speed on
Speaker 1: offense with Mi Michael James and Kenyon Barner, especially in
Speaker 1: the backfield. They had terrific seasons with Michael James as
Speaker 1: a Heisman finalist. The fact that they had two pretty
Speaker 1: crazy games. You mentioned the Cal game that they eke
Speaker 1: out with I think only one offensive touchdown for each team.
Speaker 1: Cal recovers a fumble in the end zone and Oregon
Speaker 1: gets a touchdown from Cliff Harris on a punt return
Speaker 1: to eke out that fifteen to thirteen win. I believe
Speaker 1: you said what the final score was. And then they've
Speaker 1: teen thirteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They fall behind twenty one to three to Stanford at home,
Speaker 1: this excellent Stanford team, Jim Harby Andrew Luck and we
Speaker 1: made a Jeopardy video out of this on our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: They fall behind twenty one to three pretty early on
Speaker 1: and then completely ran sacks Stanford. They completely demolished them,
Speaker 1: and they rip off something like forty nine points from
Speaker 1: that point on. It was like fifty two to twenty something.
Speaker 1: So those things came to define the season for me.
Speaker 1: They were terrific at USC I was at that game.
Speaker 1: The twenty ten game. Darren Thomas and Jeff Mail had
Speaker 1: these huge games with Michael James Kenyon Barner that came
Speaker 1: to define the season for me. And this was chip
Speaker 1: Kelly's second season much in the it was Jeane Chiswick's
Speaker 1: second season with all but chip Kelly had the advantage
Speaker 1: of being in Eugene since two thousand and seven, so
Speaker 1: this was not a sort of flash in the pan
Speaker 1: for chip Kelly. This was sort of the culmination of
Speaker 1: a ton between Mike Blatti and chip Kelly getting to
Speaker 1: this point the Rose Bowl the year before with Jeremiah
Speaker 1: Massoli and then Darren Thomas taking over because Jeremiah Massoli
Speaker 1: has kicked off the team, taking them to the National
Speaker 1: Championship Game in his first year as the starter. It
Speaker 1: was an incredible season for Oregon for sure.
Speaker 4: And on the Auburn side, this was a season that,
Speaker 4: let's be honest, it was dictated by Cam Newton. So
Speaker 4: Cam Newton had been at Florida, he was there two years,
Speaker 4: decided that he was going to go play elsewhere I
Speaker 4: think in two thousand and nine, and then came to
Speaker 4: Auburn for the twenty ten season.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was that Blynn College jouco between Florida and Auburn.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all sorts of speculations. Was there a bag man.
Speaker 4: Was there not a bagman for camp?
Speaker 1: Who cares?
Speaker 4: Cam Newton accounted for fifty one touchdown in twenty ten,
Speaker 4: thirty through the air, twenty on the ground, and even
Speaker 4: caught one as well. So the story of the year
Speaker 4: in many regards was the fact that this newcomer to
Speaker 4: big time college football steps in, leads this high powered offense,
Speaker 4: wins the Heisman Trophy, leads a very gritty campaign, obviously
Speaker 4: undefeated all the way to the national championship. On that
Speaker 4: Auburn team, you had some other names that we'll get into,
Speaker 4: like Michael Dyer, he was a true freshman at the time,
Speaker 4: rushed for over one thousand yards. Ontario mckaleb, one of
Speaker 4: the great names of the time, another guy who had
Speaker 4: a very huge impact on the success of that Auburn team.
Speaker 4: What I find interesting watching back, and this is no
Speaker 4: knock on Cam Newton. Cam Newton's gone on to amazing things.
Speaker 4: I find myself somewhat underwhelmed by Cam Newton as a passer.
Speaker 4: He was such a bull as a runner, and the
Speaker 4: numbers speak for themselves. The guy ran for over fourteen
Speaker 4: hundred yards. But what he could do on the ground
Speaker 4: trying to bring this behemoth down really open things up
Speaker 4: in the passing game in a way that you know,
Speaker 4: maybe somebody with similar arm talent wouldn't see the benefit
Speaker 4: of just because they didn't have the legs of Cam,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Totally one hundred percent correct. I will add this, this
Speaker 1: Auburn team was not fully realized early and a lot
Speaker 1: of that has to do with the fact that Cam
Speaker 1: Newton almost stands alone as not just a one year wonder.
Speaker 1: He was only there for a year. So we've seen
Speaker 1: quarterbacks come into situations and players come into situations for
Speaker 1: a year and shine. Russell Wilson at Wisconsin. Russell Wilson
Speaker 1: was a Power five starter before then. Russell Wilson, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think NC State was ranked at the end of
Speaker 1: twenty ten, and so in twenty eleven when he goes
Speaker 1: to Wisconsin. There are those one year wonders. But Cam
Speaker 1: Newton didn't start at Florida and goes to Auburn for
Speaker 1: a season. We've seen it with some JUCO guys. I
Speaker 1: think Chad Johnson was at Oregon State for like a
Speaker 1: month and a half. He was there for the season
Speaker 1: and gone, So we've seen sort of that but on
Speaker 1: the level and the success that he had. I suppose,
Speaker 1: if you're talking strictly on this level, Vernon Adams kind
Speaker 1: of did that playing at the FCS level before succeeding
Speaker 1: at Oregon for just a year and then moving on.
Speaker 1: But cam Newton really stands alone. Mitch Trubisky sort of
Speaker 1: did that. You know he's there, it's a red shirt
Speaker 1: sophomore at North Carolina. But Cam Newton what he was
Speaker 1: able to do, So it's understandable that against Clemson. Say
Speaker 1: they go to overtime at home Mississippi State, they sneak
Speaker 1: by in Starkville early on, they sneak by on the
Speaker 1: road against Kentucky into October. But then starting with I
Speaker 1: guess they get by LSU with that amazing seventy some
Speaker 1: odd yard run from cam Newton, they turn a corner.
Speaker 1: They beat Georgia by nearly twenty points. Again not a
Speaker 1: great Georgia team, but that comeback against Alabama, I think
Speaker 1: I don't know if gritty is the word. I know
Speaker 1: you used that, but there was something twinkly, there was
Speaker 1: something charmed about this Auburn season. Twenty four point comeback
Speaker 1: against Alabama, amazing twenty four point comeback. They needed to
Speaker 1: come back against South Carolina, a good South Carolina team
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter. I think they were down going
Speaker 1: into the fourth earlier on in the season, and then
Speaker 1: they just obliterate them. In the SEC championship game, Darvin
Speaker 1: Adams has a huge game. You mentioned some of the
Speaker 1: running backs, but Darvin Adams and Emery Blake were at
Speaker 1: least solid on the outside. And then Philip Lutson Kirkhin
Speaker 1: was an underclassman. I want to say he was a
Speaker 1: sophomore that year. Obviously in an incredibly tragic situation with
Speaker 1: his far too early passing. But this was a talented
Speaker 1: offense led by once in a lifetime quarterback talent and
Speaker 1: a pretty average defense, a pretty average defense that didn't
Speaker 1: need to be more than average obviously for Auburn to succeed.
Speaker 4: Very good upfront, and we'll get into that specifically when
Speaker 4: we talk about this game. But the other element of
Speaker 4: this for us is where we were at the start
Speaker 4: of the twenty eleven calendar year. Correct, This was I
Speaker 4: believe our first national championship slash media day experience.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 4: Also correct, I don't know about you. I was completely starstruck.
Speaker 4: I was starstruck. I Levasier t A. I was starstruck,
Speaker 4: not just by the players, but like seeing Stu Mandel
Speaker 4: up close and personal. It's like, this is somebody who
Speaker 4: I have talked to, I have interviewed. Now to meet
Speaker 4: these people. I'm sure Stu here is this all the time.
Speaker 4: He's a megastar. But you know, this for me was
Speaker 4: a big deal. It was my second time in a
Speaker 4: press box. I had no idea what to do. You
Speaker 4: looked at me like I had two heads a couple
Speaker 4: of times like what you what are you doing right now?
Speaker 4: I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 4: The whole experience was overwhelming for me. This was was
Speaker 4: this when we saw Mike Tarico wearing the dad jeans?
Speaker 4: Maybe yeah, this is why we saw Tarico and the
Speaker 4: dad jeans. What did you expect Mike Turrico to be wearing?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: I did, I just I didn't expect the dad jeans
Speaker 4: to be so dad. Extra dad jeans is how I
Speaker 4: would classify them.
Speaker 1: What is a dad jean? By the way, just a
Speaker 1: lot of room in the seat. Is that what you're hearing? Yes?
Speaker 4: Maybe, just maybe maybe you wear it a little higher
Speaker 4: than you're supposed to.
Speaker 1: Chris Fowler very cool, very cool.
Speaker 4: Especially on media Day with his lot going on, people
Speaker 4: buzzing about trying to get interviews. Chris Fower would casually
Speaker 4: walk in, had a Manila envelope with all sorts of
Speaker 4: stats and whatnot in it, had a rosters, had had
Speaker 4: a coffee in his hand, just sort of saunters up
Speaker 4: to someone who's maybe not got anyone at their booth
Speaker 4: and just chit chats him up.
Speaker 1: Chris Fowler looking like he runs an especially successful juice
Speaker 1: bares Denver. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I also remember from media Day looking at Cam Newton
Speaker 4: as he walked by, thinking maybe he had shoulder pads on,
Speaker 4: but then saying there's definitely no and for him to
Speaker 4: wear shoulder pads to media.
Speaker 1: Day, superhero would I would go as far as saying
Speaker 1: he looks like a superhero.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: So we were there thanks to press passes. We got
Speaker 4: through a Canadian media outfit still in existence called the Score,
Speaker 4: and we got there on their dime by pitching them
Speaker 4: a video idea. We were going to go and we
Speaker 4: were going to document the national Championship. The caveat was
Speaker 4: that we didn't really have a plan for that video.
Speaker 4: We had no idea what it was going to be.
Speaker 4: We just said it was going to be loosely about
Speaker 4: the National Championship, but we didn't we didn't really know
Speaker 4: what we were going to do. So you brought along
Speaker 4: our friend West Coast Kevin to serve as the cameraman
Speaker 4: and producer, and that was where we ended up coming
Speaker 4: up with our idea in our cheap little hotel room
Speaker 4: across from a strip club called the Dream Palace. This
Speaker 4: idea to do something of a Renaldi spoof video. It
Speaker 4: was going to be kind of a rags to riches
Speaker 4: type of thing where we talk about how improbable it
Speaker 4: was for us to make it to the National Championship,
Speaker 4: and yet.
Speaker 1: Here we are there.
Speaker 4: This is all the adversity we fought through to get here.
Speaker 4: We ended up making that video, putting it on YouTube.
Speaker 4: The Score loved it, ESPN loved it. They put it
Speaker 4: on ESPN News and they got Tom Ornaldy to call
Speaker 4: in and comment on the video as they were watching
Speaker 4: it on ESPN News, which was a big moment for us.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie, would you say, would you go
Speaker 1: as far as saying in the end, maybe the Dream
Speaker 1: Palace was where we were all along.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: It is there.
Speaker 4: It is the other thing that I must point out
Speaker 4: about this two things. First off, you've heard, if you've
Speaker 4: listened to this show for any number of years now,
Speaker 4: about this encounter I had with Bill Hancock.
Speaker 1: Head of the then head of the BCS.
Speaker 4: Then executive director of the BCS, now executive director of
Speaker 4: the College Football National Championship Playoff Series, whatever it's called,
Speaker 4: Bill Hank. I don't remember how exactly we crossed paths,
Speaker 4: but at the time we were at this resort in
Speaker 4: Arizona where they were having all the media events, and
Speaker 4: there was a hospitality suite near enough to where all
Speaker 4: this other stuff was taking place, where the work rooms,
Speaker 4: and so I had made my way over there just
Speaker 4: to grab food and drink whatever snacks tostitos a plenty,
Speaker 4: you know. And I sit down for a second, and
Speaker 4: doesn't Bill Hancock walk over to me and just chat
Speaker 4: me up? Hi, how are you on?
Speaker 1: Bill Hancock? I talked to him about.
Speaker 4: The notion of a podcast, which blew his mind, and
Speaker 4: before I knew it, I found myself in about a
Speaker 4: half hour, forty five minute discussion with Bill Hancock over
Speaker 4: a gigantic the biggest bowl of Tostito's I'd ever seen
Speaker 4: salsa a plenty drinking I think Coke at the time,
Speaker 4: talking about life, media life, A very nice guy and
Speaker 4: in that moment I like to think we bonded.
Speaker 1: Wow, what an unpaid commercial for a human. And also,
Speaker 1: this was the night of the really hard binge drinking,
Speaker 1: was it? That was the same thing. We went hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were going. You were going with Kevin and a
Speaker 1: couple of media members, drink for drink and at the
Speaker 1: end of it, Kevin threw up and you just edited
Speaker 1: audio ten beers in. Yeah, a good way to sum
Speaker 1: up our show. Yeah, so that was all before the game.
Speaker 1: That's the backdrop. That's the backdrop. We were excited to
Speaker 1: be there. We were in the press box, we were
Speaker 1: down the field. We had a front row seat to
Speaker 1: everything that transpired in this game. Did you.
Speaker 4: Watch this game? Did you watch the broadcast of this
Speaker 4: game after you got back? How long did it take
Speaker 4: before you could watch it?
Speaker 1: Well, so I technically, and maybe we technically watched the
Speaker 1: broadcast as it was happening because we were in the
Speaker 1: press box and had a terrible angle. I think we
Speaker 1: had press box access, but we didn't have press box
Speaker 1: seats something like that, so we ended up the two
Speaker 1: of us, and I want to say, Michael Wilbon sat down,
Speaker 1: sat down in a seated area that was like an
Speaker 1: eighty inch three D TV, and so we watched this
Speaker 1: game in three D for a stretch with Wilbon in
Speaker 1: the press box, and that's how we took in the
Speaker 1: majority of the game, at least until we went down
Speaker 1: to the field to watch the final few minutes. So
Speaker 1: we technically did watch the broadcast, but we're not keenly
Speaker 1: paying attention to those elements.
Speaker 4: I sat next to one of the Fiesta Bowl executives
Speaker 4: because they had the orange jackets on. Yeah, And that
Speaker 4: was before a bunch of them gotten dited.
Speaker 1: For Did he offer you to take you to this
Speaker 1: dream palace? No?
Speaker 4: No, that was that was before those guys got into
Speaker 4: any kind of okay, legal trouble.
Speaker 1: But we were there for the game. It was exciting.
Speaker 4: The first thing that jumps out to me upon watching
Speaker 4: this broadcast is gene Chiswick was really bundled up for
Speaker 4: this game, wasn't.
Speaker 1: He in a dome?
Speaker 4: Yeah, in a dome in the middle of the desert
Speaker 4: in Arizona. I'm not going to say it was the
Speaker 4: warmest day in early January, but there's a reason a
Speaker 4: lot of folks from the Northeast migrate down to the Southwest,
Speaker 4: and it's because it's usually pretty warm. Gene Chiswick was
Speaker 4: wearing an under armor turtleneck and what looked close enough to.
Speaker 1: Being a winter coat inside a dad Yeah it was
Speaker 1: a big coaches jacket thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah for sure, no sideburns in true gene Chisick fashion.
Speaker 4: I also noticed that Chip Kelly was his usual abrupt
Speaker 4: self when being asked questions from Aaron Andrews, to the
Speaker 4: point where Aeron Andrews just like, okay, Chip, okay, thanks,
Speaker 4: have a good game, Like she knew that was coming,
Speaker 4: but she had asked the questions anyway.
Speaker 1: Chip was his normal abrupt self. My takeaways from the
Speaker 1: introduction of this game one, we have a Bob if
Speaker 1: you remember Bob the Rapper and future flat Earther. As
Speaker 1: part of the pregame festivities music wise, Joey Harrington and
Speaker 1: Jason Campbell are signing boxes of Taco Bell Big Boxes
Speaker 1: at Tailgates. They have introductions for both Auburn and Oregon.
Speaker 1: The Auburn one is as you would expect, talking about
Speaker 1: Tumor's corner and how football's are religion in the South.
Speaker 1: For Oregon, they got the guy known to sell joke
Speaker 1: books near the school, a guy named by the name
Speaker 1: of Frog who's been there forever. So they had him
Speaker 1: and the Oregon portion of it, which was a choice.
Speaker 1: I suppose Nick Saban and urban Meyer in the pregame.
Speaker 1: Nick Saban's really good. He's really good on camera, as
Speaker 1: urban Meyer I thought was alsome. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I think urban Meyer retired at the end of the
Speaker 1: twenty ten season. That was another thing that we missed
Speaker 1: urban Meyer. Yes, if that timing, I think that timing
Speaker 1: works ye. And also just happening because it happened in
Speaker 1: the state a few days before, three days before something
Speaker 1: like that was the horrific Gabby Giffords and other people
Speaker 1: shooting in Tucson. Oh jeez, outside of a grocery store.
Speaker 1: This horribly tragic thing perpetrated by a lunatic happens just
Speaker 1: in that same state. So that all is the backdrop.
Speaker 1: We have a switch foot intro as well. We are
Speaker 1: one tonight in that time, we are one tonight outside
Speaker 1: of this I should add because we talked about it
Speaker 1: in the previous episode. We have number one in the country, Firework,
Speaker 1: Katie Perry, Grenade, Bruno Mars, We are letter are who
Speaker 1: we letter are? Kesha? Kesha?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What's my name? Rihanna? Raise your glass? Pink Tonight, Enrique Glessias,
Speaker 1: the Time, Black Eyed Peas Black and Yellow is Khalifa?
Speaker 1: Just the way you are, Bruno Mars, just a dream,
Speaker 1: Nelly an incredible top ten and the top ten movies
Speaker 1: of the week. Less than that, it was True Grit,
Speaker 1: Little Fokker's season of the Witch Colon Legacy season that
Speaker 1: was one of the worst Nick Cage movies, really bad.
Speaker 1: The Fighter, Country, Strong, King Speech which quality, Yogi Bear
Speaker 1: and Tangled round out the top ten. The Fighter I
Speaker 1: think was, wasn't it? Fighter was? I think that was? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Was that? Christian Baiale Wahlberg? I think so okay? I
Speaker 1: was all right, No. I enjoyed that. The mom was
Speaker 1: really good in that. So that all places us in
Speaker 1: early January of twenty eleven, two undefeated teams with TCU
Speaker 1: being left out, and they were excellent going to the
Speaker 1: rose Ball, and I was very excited for this game.
Speaker 1: And it was awesome.
Speaker 4: The atmosphere we were down on the field before the game,
Speaker 4: it was striving. Remember they let Challenger the Eagle go
Speaker 4: in the dome and he just like, rather than just
Speaker 4: dive bomb, he just did a slow circle around and
Speaker 4: people were going. He must have flown around the stadium
Speaker 4: two or three times and people were losing their freaking
Speaker 4: minds that a bald eagle was flying over them. Then
Speaker 4: eventually it went down to midfield and that was that.
Speaker 4: But the crowd was nuts, and the first quarter, for
Speaker 4: its part, was equally as crazy. Second play of the game,
Speaker 4: it's very apparent that Darren Thomas maybe has a little
Speaker 4: bit of a nerve thing going on as he overthinks
Speaker 4: an option pitch.
Speaker 1: A little too late with it. It had disaster written
Speaker 1: all over it.
Speaker 4: Thankfully, for his sake, it didn't amount to anything, but
Speaker 4: right out of the shoot it's looking like, okay, Darren Thomas,
Speaker 4: he's got some nerves.
Speaker 1: That he needs to work through here. In the early going,
Speaker 1: tried to pitch it over a receiver blocking like a
Speaker 1: linebacker or a defensive back. It was maybe the worst
Speaker 1: option pitch attempt we've seen during the duration of the Solimar.
Speaker 1: It was really bad. The flow of the game itself
Speaker 1: was Oregon comes out and tries to run a lot
Speaker 1: of optiony looks. They have two running backs in the backfield,
Speaker 1: and they used the receiver as sort of an h back.
Speaker 1: Their best blocking receiver Drew Davis, so they looked different
Speaker 1: than what they were showing on film all season long,
Speaker 1: and they eventually abandoned that strategy. They're trying to option
Speaker 1: Nick Fairley at times, which is a bad idea. They
Speaker 1: tried to leave Nick Fairley unblocked, the clear best player
Speaker 1: probably in this game. Really, right, Nick Fairley, We're gonna
Speaker 1: get the dominant player in this game. We'll get to
Speaker 1: Nick Fairly. First quarter was relatively uneventful in terms of offense. Yes,
Speaker 1: Darren Thomas skittish, the Oregon offense skittish, but they're able
Speaker 1: to when backed up against the wall. Throughout this game
Speaker 1: really generate big plays, but never really the way Auburn
Speaker 1: was able to more methodically move the ball. Auburn was
Speaker 1: a little bit more efficient in terms of balance in
Speaker 1: terms of bigger plays. In terms of finding matchups. Poor
Speaker 1: Kenny Rowe for Oregon. There, their undersized ed rusher found
Speaker 1: himself in coverage a couple too many times, and Auburn
Speaker 1: was able to exploit that. But I Oregon's offense being
Speaker 1: worse than it actually was. The Oregon offense was fine.
Speaker 1: They just either came up huge when backed up against
Speaker 1: the wall or slowed down in the worst possible times
Speaker 1: to slow down, whereas Auburn would move the ball and
Speaker 1: they would either turn the ball over or shoot themselves
Speaker 1: in the foot or overthrow somebody that was relatively open.
Speaker 1: So there was not a lot of rhythm early on
Speaker 1: in this game, but there were a fair amount of turnovers.
Speaker 1: As I fast forward to the second Oregon drive where
Speaker 1: Darren Thomas throws a high ball to Kenyon Barnert to
Speaker 1: flex off his hands, goes for an interception, they turned
Speaker 1: the ball over to Auburn. Cam Newton gets the ball
Speaker 1: throws it to Cliff Harris. He's noted as being a
Speaker 1: risk taker by the conlitaryah in this football game. Then
Speaker 1: Oregon gets the ball back. Darren Thomas proceeds to throw
Speaker 1: a pick on the ensuing drive after being hurried by
Speaker 1: Nick Fairley. So you stole a little bit of my thunder.
Speaker 4: But I did want to get into talking about Nick
Speaker 4: Fairley because him changing the rhythm of the game. The
Speaker 4: rhythm of that Oregon offense became a recurring theme. And
Speaker 4: so I guess my question to you is, and I
Speaker 4: think we already know the answer, who are the three
Speaker 4: best players on the field in this game? Not throughout
Speaker 4: the course of the year, not in the NFL, nothing
Speaker 4: like that, but on the field on January the tenth,
Speaker 4: twenty eleven. Who are the three best players that you
Speaker 4: saw on the field.
Speaker 1: Two of them are Auburn players. I think it's Cam
Speaker 1: Newton and Nick Fairley. And the third is probably Casey
Speaker 1: Matthews for Oregon, the middle linebacker who is really good
Speaker 1: in run, stuffs and forces later on in the game
Speaker 1: a huge fumble for Oregon that the Ducks recover. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the heartbeat of a great defensive performance for Oregon.
Speaker 1: But ultimately it's Nick Fairley, ya just wreaking complete havoc
Speaker 1: and demanding a ton of attention from a decidedly college
Speaker 1: offensive line, collegiate offensive line from Oregon. And then Cam
Speaker 1: Newton extends drives with his legs and even though he
Speaker 1: wasn't amazing in this game, hit a couple of incredible
Speaker 1: passes that changed the I mean that won the game
Speaker 1: for Auburn essentially. So yeah, those are those are to me,
Speaker 1: those are the clear dudes. Jeff Mail has a huge catch.
Speaker 1: There are moments, you know, Emory Blake, Darvin Adams, but
Speaker 1: and certainly Michael Dyer late, but the game changers were
Speaker 1: those three.
Speaker 2: To me.
Speaker 4: Nick Fairley was a monster in this game. There was
Speaker 4: no answer for him, especially in the second half when
Speaker 4: Oregon's line started to hire out. It was apparent that
Speaker 4: in the interior part of that defensive line, Auburn was
Speaker 4: just so much better. Truly, it was the catalyst. It
Speaker 4: was the catalyst that pushed Auburn over the top here
Speaker 4: fairly for sure. Hurried that early interception that we talked
Speaker 4: about before in the first quarter blew up as his
Speaker 4: own read later in the first quarter when Oregon was
Speaker 4: down in the red zone. So this is a guy
Speaker 4: who continuously changed the point of attack, changed the game,
Speaker 4: and changed the rhythm of that Oregon offense. And you're right,
Speaker 4: like Jeff Mail and Michae Dyer, they had moments.
Speaker 1: They're very good in this game.
Speaker 4: Cam Newton was just so good all year and had
Speaker 4: such a skill set that just by.
Speaker 1: Being on the field. He was a game changer.
Speaker 4: You know, you couldn't avoid him. There was no way
Speaker 4: that you could avoid him. You couldn't game plan around him.
Speaker 4: He had to be the centerpiece of everything. And so
Speaker 4: even if he wasn't running for more than I think
Speaker 4: he had sixty four yards on the ground, even if
Speaker 4: he was air mailing a couple wide open passes and
Speaker 4: maybe making me feel a bit underwhelmed watching him back
Speaker 4: as a passer, he just brought so much to the
Speaker 4: equation that there was no possible way you could ever
Speaker 4: game plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oregon did a good enough job that they were
Speaker 1: able to tackle him in the open field more often
Speaker 1: than not. They kept a spy on him and Kenny Row.
Speaker 1: The problem, as I mentioned earlier, is they were able
Speaker 1: to force a mismatch with him and at one time
Speaker 1: a receiver with an edge rush, which is not anything
Speaker 1: you want an undersized edgrusher at that. But he did
Speaker 1: a nice job spying on Cam Newton and they didn't
Speaker 1: have to bring a ton of pressure. They were able
Speaker 1: to get to him, able to confuse him a little
Speaker 1: bit in the past game because he wasn't making a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, going across the field horizontally progressions.
Speaker 1: It was sort of play action and this guy should
Speaker 1: be open, and sometimes that guy was, sometimes he Wasn't
Speaker 1: you neglected to mention one thing which I know you love,
Speaker 1: which is a terrible attempt at a kickoff return trick
Speaker 1: play Oh no, the end around, right. Oregon went for
Speaker 1: a couple times end a rounds and the first time
Speaker 1: they try and end around and it ends up with
Speaker 1: Kenyon Barner I believe, being tackled something like twelve yards
Speaker 1: behind where he took the hand off. And you know,
Speaker 1: Oregon started so deep into their own territory on so
Speaker 1: many drives that being one of the worst.
Speaker 4: And Herbie mentioned it later in the broadcast that Oregon
Speaker 4: just they can't get too cute here. They're very good,
Speaker 4: they're very dynamic, but they got to watch it. They
Speaker 4: don't get a little too cute, and that, to your point,
Speaker 4: was a little too cute. I think the overwhelming theme
Speaker 4: of this game was first off, defense. First, the defenses
Speaker 4: were outstanding in this football game the whole way through.
Speaker 4: And that's true for both teams, maybe a little more
Speaker 4: so for Auburn in the way that they changed the
Speaker 4: game at the point of attack. But two very good
Speaker 4: defensive showings in this football game. But the theme I
Speaker 4: think throughout was Auburn was a little stronger with its
Speaker 4: offensive line and a little stronger with its defensive line,
Speaker 4: and over the course of sixty minutes, that gradual fatigue
Speaker 4: that set in on the Oregon side led to Auburn
Speaker 4: taking a little bit more of an advantage. And it
Speaker 4: was a close game. It was won on a last
Speaker 4: second field goal. You know, I mean this was truly
Speaker 4: it was there for Oregon had they gotten a few breaks.
Speaker 4: I just felt watching back that it was apparent Oregon
Speaker 4: just got a little tired. They couldn't quite compete in
Speaker 4: the trenches. That's ultimately what gave Auburn just a little
Speaker 4: just a sliver of an advantage that they could capitalize on.
Speaker 1: The thing that and maybe this is more big picture
Speaker 1: that surprised me watching this game again, is it felt
Speaker 1: like a twenty eight to seventeen Auburn win that came
Speaker 1: down to the last drive in last second. Auburn was
Speaker 1: able to generate a lot more opportunities. Now they missed
Speaker 1: on some of them. I think Cam Newton threw a
Speaker 1: pick to Cliff Harris that was reviewed and ruled not
Speaker 1: a pick. But that's probably much more heart than head
Speaker 1: on my part. I don't know when you rewatch that,
Speaker 1: what were your thoughts. Throw He overthrows a ball, Cliff
Speaker 1: Harris jumps in front of it, and as he's sort
Speaker 1: of careening out of bounds, gets a foot down, switches hands,
Speaker 1: gets an arm down, I believe, as he's careening out
Speaker 1: of bounds, and then as he lands already out of
Speaker 1: bounds having a foot and an arm down, loses control
Speaker 1: of the ball. Yeah, I mean allow. The NFL rule
Speaker 1: is holding it onto it through the the contact with
Speaker 1: the ground. It seemed to me like that was an interception.
Speaker 1: And then cam throws a touchdown pass on the ensuing
Speaker 1: play when it's ruled not an interception.
Speaker 4: Right right, No, I mean it's Look, the rules have changed.
Speaker 4: Ask anyone who's watched football for a long time and
Speaker 4: they'll tell you how infuriating it is not just what
Speaker 4: counts as a reception, but what counts as a fumble. Right,
Speaker 4: So the rules have changed drastically over the course of
Speaker 4: time in football. And one of those breaks though that
Speaker 4: I was talking about, one of those breaks where where
Speaker 4: Auburn was able to capitalize This was a defensive game
Speaker 4: though the whole way through. Here is your second half
Speaker 4: drive chart. I know you like to do this. I
Speaker 4: don't have the musical drive chart. No, it's okay, go
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 1: Field goal, punt, punt, turnover on downs, punt, punt, punt, punt, fumble, touchdown,
Speaker 1: field goal, end of game. Not electric ty, but somehow
Speaker 1: the end of the game was exciting.
Speaker 4: The end of the game was very exciting. So there
Speaker 4: were moments in the second half that I think were
Speaker 4: extremely notable. Maybe not the pyrotechnic display of offense that
Speaker 4: you might expect, but there was a crazy goal line
Speaker 4: stand late in the third quarter, maybe the key play in.
Speaker 1: The whole game.
Speaker 4: Oregon driving seems like it's a great opportunity for them
Speaker 4: when Michael James gets stood up at the goal line
Speaker 4: turnover on downs at that point. From that point forward,
Speaker 4: it seemed like Auburn Jean Chiswick, gusmus On like they
Speaker 4: just decided we're gonna turn this over to Cam, We're
Speaker 4: gonna let Cam take over. Starting now. On the ensuing drive,
Speaker 4: it started to become a little bit more apparent, and
Speaker 4: that combo of Cam on the ground of dire on
Speaker 4: the ground of what it did in the passing game
Speaker 4: to open things up, and just I think the Auburn
Speaker 4: offensive line wearing down Oregon ever so slightly in the trenches.
Speaker 4: That confluence of events led championship cocktail tie. That championship
Speaker 4: cocktail just was enough to push Auburn over the top.
Speaker 1: I think I misremembered Darren Thomas being better in this game.
Speaker 1: He had a rough game, He had a rough time
Speaker 1: with the Auburn defense, and I don't even think it
Speaker 1: was just the pressure that he was under. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned I Ultimately, yes, the Auburn winning in the trenches
Speaker 1: won them this game. Darren Thomas looked uncomfortable, not just
Speaker 1: early but just misguys, and when they went to more
Speaker 1: of a hurry up later in the game, he got
Speaker 1: into more of a rhythm. But the majority of his
Speaker 1: yardage came on two, three four plays, and so his
Speaker 1: final line looks better than he actually looked, comfort wise,
Speaker 1: control wise, poise wise, And so that's why I felt
Speaker 1: that it rewatching. It had the rhythm of a twenty
Speaker 1: eight to seventeen Auburn win, but it was Auburn just
Speaker 1: screwing up key moments third downs, Red zone trips whatever
Speaker 1: that kept Oregon in this game and the Oregon defense
Speaker 1: like you've mentioned, But yeah, I do think you're right
Speaker 1: on that that Oregon has a terrible call that ends
Speaker 1: into safety where they line up under center. They go
Speaker 1: they just abandon their offense. They lay line up under
Speaker 1: center from the half yard line, their own half yard
Speaker 1: line and try to run some sort of power withle
Speaker 1: Michael James. Just it goes terribly, It goes really poorly.
Speaker 1: So my big takeaway later on in this game when
Speaker 1: you talk about the lack of offense in the second half,
Speaker 1: in Oregon put it together late and they had that
Speaker 1: great two point conversion to Jeff Mail with Darren Thomas
Speaker 1: throwing against his body, and it was it was those moments.
Speaker 1: It was you mentioned that the stops in the reds
Speaker 1: one Oregon would I think it was a Darren Thomas
Speaker 1: really cool juggled catch from Lavasier tuoen A. He runs
Speaker 1: it down and Auburn saves a touchdown and then they
Speaker 1: stand Oregon up at the goal line. It was Auburn's
Speaker 1: defense coming up in those moments and Auburn's offense surviving
Speaker 1: some screw ups for three plus quarters in big moments
Speaker 1: on offense and Cam Newton and then ultimately Michael Dyer,
Speaker 1: who not just on the play where I mean Comedy
Speaker 1: was down. He was not down. He was down, but
Speaker 1: he was down a second time running it into the
Speaker 1: end zone lates and they ruled him down at the
Speaker 1: one or two yard half yard line before they kicked
Speaker 1: back to half yard line. There it is. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: watched that play back and back and back in HD,
Speaker 1: and I know people have written scientific articles talking to
Speaker 1: experts that indeed Michael Dyer was not down on that play.
Speaker 1: My guy was down. Guy was down, ty all right,
Speaker 1: I think I saw that risk down, Tye. I still do.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, I want to let's talk about the
Speaker 4: sequence that led up to that moment. So, okay, just
Speaker 4: to reframe things here, we've already mentioned how little happened
Speaker 4: on offense in the second half of this football game.
Speaker 4: But that being said, the last five minutes or so,
Speaker 4: we're pretty crazy. It is nineteen to eleven at that
Speaker 4: moment in time, Oregon punts the football way, there's about
Speaker 4: five minutes left. So you're watching this team terrible drive
Speaker 4: after a terrible drive. You're watching this game. You're thinking
Speaker 4: Auburn can put this game on ice. All they have
Speaker 4: to do is what they're really good at. Keep it
Speaker 4: on the ground, put it in the hands of Cam Newton,
Speaker 4: like just be super conservative, run the clock. Even if
Speaker 4: you run it down to like two minutes. You can't lose.
Speaker 4: You just can't lose the football game. Sure enough, Oregon
Speaker 4: punts it away. Three plays into that Auburn drive, Casey
Speaker 4: Matthews comes up from behind a quarterback rush, punches the
Speaker 4: ball out of Cam Newton's hands, It flies up, Cliff
Speaker 4: Harris jumps on it at the Auburn forty yard line.
Speaker 4: WHOA what a moment late in this football game?
Speaker 1: Did we run down at that moment?
Speaker 4: Well, what was funny about it is, for as sure
Speaker 4: footed as you were in a press box, compared to me,
Speaker 4: you were like a deer in headlights trying to figure
Speaker 4: out the precise moment that we should go downstairs. And
Speaker 4: I remember you kept asking me, should we go down now?
Speaker 4: Should we go down now?
Speaker 1: What should we do?
Speaker 4: What should You were unlike any other time I'd ever
Speaker 4: seen you completely in that deer in headlights bode And
Speaker 4: so eventually I made the call, I sall right, let's
Speaker 4: go down. Let's go down, and I think we made
Speaker 4: it down in time for the Oregon touchdown, and then
Speaker 4: of course the game winning Auburn field goal, which we'll
Speaker 4: get to here momentarily.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 4: An incredible moment that Casey Matthews would punch the ball
Speaker 4: out of the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback. Oregon gets the
Speaker 4: football back. Now they've got all three of their timeouts,
Speaker 4: four fifty four left on the clock. Darren Thomas connects
Speaker 4: up with DJ Davis a long pass that takes him
Speaker 4: down to the eleven yard line, and then it takes
Speaker 4: Oregon a couple tries. It was emotionally fraught there for
Speaker 4: I don't know, a good minute and a half of
Speaker 4: gameplay as Oregon's trying to figure out how they going
Speaker 4: to get in here now. They had been in a
Speaker 4: similar situation earlier in the game. We talked about that
Speaker 4: goal line stand at the end of the first quarter.
Speaker 4: They again were trying to rely on that rushing attack.
Speaker 4: It took them a couple tries to get in eventually.
Speaker 4: Shovel pass, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was a
Speaker 4: shovel pass. I don't remember if it was. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: think it was till Michael James.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a.
Speaker 4: Little scamper in from Michael James. That brings us to
Speaker 4: the situation of nineteen seventeen. Oregon's obviously got to go
Speaker 4: for two. There's only about two and a half minutes left.
Speaker 4: That is when Darren Thomas delivers that really nice ball
Speaker 4: across his body to Jeff Mail on the back of
Speaker 4: the end zone to tie it at nineteen Mail time.
Speaker 4: You at this point are virtually speechless. I look over
Speaker 4: at you. We're down on the field. Dan is speechless,
Speaker 4: forget trying to talk to him.
Speaker 1: Hyperventilating, gay, hyperventilating everything, hyper ventilation, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Everything you might expect. Problem was they left too much time.
Speaker 4: They left too much time for Cam Newton. First play,
Speaker 4: fifteen yard passed to Emery Blake, gets down to the
Speaker 4: Auburn forty yard line. Next play, the Michael Dyer thirty
Speaker 4: seven yard rush he was not down, makes it all
Speaker 4: the way down to the Oregon twenty three. A couple
Speaker 4: other short rushes followed by a long one, the one
Speaker 4: that you referenced earlier, Michael Dyer sixteen yards to the
Speaker 4: half yard line. They had to take that to replay
Speaker 4: to make sure that he didn't get in, and he didn't,
Speaker 4: and then a couple plays here and there to run
Speaker 4: clock before they turn it over to Wes Bynham, who
Speaker 4: was as reliable a kicker as you were going to
Speaker 4: find in all of kin byrom Yeah, nineteen yards feel
Speaker 4: go good, twenty two to nineteen year final score.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a It was a really brutal weight hand
Speaker 1: just because it took so long, just because the Michael
Speaker 1: Dyer run spelled. I don't know what yard line he
Speaker 1: ran it down to, but it was just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Oregon's going to lose this game short of a horrific
Speaker 1: snap on the field goal attempt. He was That was
Speaker 1: all I could have played prayed for at that moment.
Speaker 4: He ran it from the Auburn forty, so they're on
Speaker 4: their own side of the fifty yard line all the
Speaker 4: way down to the Oregon twenty three.
Speaker 1: At that point, it's a forty yard field goal, which
Speaker 1: is not automatic but certainly reasonable. And then the long,
Speaker 1: dire run to the goal line, it's like, Okay, it's
Speaker 1: praying for a kicker tripping or a terrible snap, and
Speaker 1: both of which are pretty unlikely from that short Yeah.
Speaker 4: So now that we've sort of gone through all this, Dan, Yeah,
Speaker 4: being so you were there, You've lived it. I know
Speaker 4: you've rewatched it. What is your what is your impression
Speaker 4: on the rewatch? What are things that you felt, maybe
Speaker 4: for the first time after watching this game like ten
Speaker 4: years later, I was.
Speaker 1: As impressed with Oregon's defense as an Oregon fan. I
Speaker 1: mentioned the Darren Thomas thing where I watching it there,
Speaker 1: I was not in the mindset of really analyzing it.
Speaker 1: Was just so skittish. She was so all over the place,
Speaker 1: and offensively, I thought it was actually a pretty sound
Speaker 1: game plan to get trying to get into the perimeter
Speaker 1: with the option game. But if Michael James and Kenyon Barner,
Speaker 1: who had been the heartbeat of that offense and as
Speaker 1: good as guys like Drew Davis and Jeff Mail were,
Speaker 1: they didn't have I think Josh huff was on this
Speaker 1: team as well, they didn't have a game change or
Speaker 1: a receiver. So if those two guys at running back
Speaker 1: are not difference makers, it's almost impossible to win MI.
Speaker 1: Michael James pace that Stanford comeback, Cliff Harris on defense
Speaker 1: paced that the uh the col win with his punt return.
Speaker 1: If their fastest dudes are not changing the game that
Speaker 1: for that specific team, it was going to be very
Speaker 1: hard for them to win, and ultimately it wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be that hard. They needed just a stop at
Speaker 1: the end of the game to try to get the
Speaker 1: ball back. But with with you know, Vernon Adams probably
Speaker 1: wins that game for Oregon. Marcus Mariota wins that game
Speaker 1: for Oregon. An offensive line that either came before that
Speaker 1: line or after that line, with you know, more NFL
Speaker 1: caliber talent, stands a better shot of winning that game
Speaker 1: for Oregon. I thought what Cam Newton was able to do,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned the mismatches was amazing. Auburn was the
Speaker 1: better team. Regardless of Michael Dyer being down or not.
Speaker 1: Auburn was the better team. They earned that National Championship game.
Speaker 1: I just thought came away thinking it was wild that
Speaker 1: Oregon was in that game. So ah. Overall, I am
Speaker 1: grateful that Cam Newton didn't do to Oregon what he
Speaker 1: had done two other teams because just an incredible player.
Speaker 1: And while that the epilogue of everything was that much
Speaker 1: like Cam's career, that was a flash for Gene Chiswick.
Speaker 1: Jean Chiswicks are success was owed to Cam Newton, and
Speaker 1: he gets fired two years later. Chip Kelly only ascends
Speaker 1: from that point. The twenty eleven and twenty twelve teams
Speaker 1: that he coaches for Oregon are better than this National
Speaker 1: Championship contending team, although they don't get to a National
Speaker 1: Championship game. And it was just a right place, right
Speaker 1: time situation for Oregon and for Auburn, and so big
Speaker 1: picture it's Nick Fairley and Cam Newton and their gang
Speaker 1: of pals.
Speaker 4: I think that's fair I mentioned earlier that I felt
Speaker 4: a little bit underwhelmed by Cam Newton as a passer. Obviously,
Speaker 4: Cam Newton is once in a generation player, certainly on
Speaker 4: the college level and to some extent on the NFL
Speaker 4: level as well.
Speaker 1: NFL MVP took a team to a super Bowl. I
Speaker 1: don't know a lot about the NFL, but he was good.
Speaker 1: He is very good, very good player.
Speaker 4: And Cam Newton was absolutely the engine that made this
Speaker 4: Auburn season go. He was absolutely the star, the superstar
Speaker 4: of this football team. But in this game, I felt
Speaker 4: underwhelmed on the rewatch with what he did as a passer.
Speaker 4: Maybe some nerves by him. I was really impressed again
Speaker 4: with Nick Fairley.
Speaker 1: I knew at the time.
Speaker 4: I remembered from us previewing the game that we saw
Speaker 4: Nick Fairley as a bit of an issue for that
Speaker 4: Oregon line to try and a count for him, the
Speaker 4: game plan for him. And we were right. Everybody was right.
Speaker 4: This wasn't a secret. He was just so good. There
Speaker 4: was nothing that anybody could do. You could triple team
Speaker 4: and it didn't matter. Nick Fairley really changed the game
Speaker 4: just by being out there. The other thing that really
Speaker 4: stuck out to me on the rewatch was just how
Speaker 4: little Oregon was able to do on the ground. And
Speaker 4: I forget what the what the stats are Officially it
Speaker 4: was something like seventy five yards something like that, but
Speaker 4: it was clearly an issue that Oregon could not get
Speaker 4: that facet of their game going. It had an outsized
Speaker 4: impact on the rest of the offense, the rhythm that
Speaker 4: I think Chip Kelly wanted to establish. Without having that
Speaker 4: to fall back on which they had relied upon all year,
Speaker 4: it really did change.
Speaker 1: The complexion of this football game.
Speaker 4: So that stood out to me in a way that
Speaker 4: I guess I didn't notice at the time. And the
Speaker 4: only other thing that I'll point out here, and this
Speaker 4: is probably because I haven't watched the broadcast until I
Speaker 4: don't know, a couple of days ago. M h, I
Speaker 4: miss Brent Musburger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna bring that up right now the
Speaker 1: broadcast itself. So we talked about he's great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we talked about on our last show some of
Speaker 4: the beef I have with Tom Hammond. Tom Hammond has
Speaker 4: called a lot of important events, all right. I don't
Speaker 4: actually dislike the guy. It just not my cup of
Speaker 4: tea when it comes to an announcer. But the difference,
Speaker 4: the stark contrast between Brent Musburger and someone like Tom
Speaker 4: Hammond was on full display here. Tom Hammond shot out
Speaker 4: of a cannon for that usc Notre Dame game. Not
Speaker 4: that excitability is a negative in the booth, it's not,
Speaker 4: but he was just keyed up from the opening kick
Speaker 4: all the way through the final gun. Brent Mussburger has
Speaker 4: more of a calm and cool and collected nature about him.
Speaker 4: He didn't get excitable. He knew how to let the
Speaker 4: game speak for itself. He knew when to use silence
Speaker 4: as his ally, and he knew how to hand it
Speaker 4: off to Kirk kurb Street in a way that I
Speaker 4: thought made Herbi a better announcer as well. He did
Speaker 4: use the big Fellow Moniker a little too much, almost
Speaker 4: to the point where I think Herb Street started saying
Speaker 4: it too just by proximity. But Brent Mussburger one of
Speaker 4: the all time greats. I miss him in the booth.
Speaker 4: It was great to hear his voice again.
Speaker 1: Very big on the because this is the twenty ten season,
Speaker 1: so this is not as pass happy a college football
Speaker 1: as we have now. This is, you know, pre Lincoln
Speaker 1: Riley at Oklahoma. This is pre you know, the Clemson
Speaker 1: in the Alabama Renaissance. And it's before Oregon becomes a
Speaker 1: really good passing team. It's before the air raid really
Speaker 1: takes hold. This is pre Dana Holgerson becoming a household name.
Speaker 1: And so when Auburn and Oregon we're throwing these quick
Speaker 1: little screens out wide. Brent Musburger was very big on folks.
Speaker 1: This is a de facto run play, folks. They're just
Speaker 1: getting the ball real quick out there. It's a run
Speaker 1: play type play. That was something I noticed that stood
Speaker 1: out a few times to me. It was more modern
Speaker 1: than I anticipated, and the two thousand and five Bush
Speaker 1: push game felt older. Than I anticipated, So I was
Speaker 1: I was pleasantly surprised by that. I suppose it's five
Speaker 1: years after that game, the Bush push to the twenty
Speaker 1: ten to twenty eleven game. So I thought it was
Speaker 1: a good broadcast, that there was nothing it was. The
Speaker 1: big thing that stood out to me were the number
Speaker 1: of replay angles as compared to the first game we did,
Speaker 1: the two thousand and five USC Notre Dame game. That
Speaker 1: there were certainly elements. The fact that it was an
Speaker 1: HD was very good. To watch this game in ten
Speaker 1: ADP made a big difference watching it back. I don't
Speaker 1: have that many other notes on the broadcast itself. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you do.
Speaker 4: Definitely came away feeling that this was way more modern
Speaker 4: than what we had seen just a few years earlier
Speaker 4: in two thousand and five. The broadcast just felt like
Speaker 4: it was a much more modern product, pretty close to
Speaker 4: what we have now.
Speaker 1: So after this game, Darren Thomas returns to play quarterback.
Speaker 1: Lemichael James, Kenyon Barner are joined by d Anthony Thomas.
Speaker 1: Oregon wins the Rose Bowl, they beat Wisconsin, they win
Speaker 1: the Fiesta Bowl. We watched that game, I think with
Speaker 1: our friend Bruce Feldman at some sort of sports bar
Speaker 1: that's over Kansas State, and twenty twelve, Chip Kelly ends
Speaker 1: up leaving. Then we have Mark Helfrich and so forth
Speaker 1: and so forth. They get back to the National Championship
Speaker 1: game in twenty fourteen. The year before that, Auburn's in
Speaker 1: the National Championship Game with Nick Marshall. So that must
Speaker 1: have been a great progression, right, nah Ah, They took
Speaker 1: a different route to get back Jean Chizz. It gets fired.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's Barrett Trotter getting the majority of
Speaker 1: the snaps of quarterback, which doesn't go particularly well. It's
Speaker 1: Barrett Trotter and Clint Moseley for Auburn. Kil Fraser gets
Speaker 1: in there as a touted freshman in twenty eleven, and
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, kil Fraser takes over and is not
Speaker 1: the answer. I'm gonna be kind. My twenty twenty goal
Speaker 1: is to be a little bit kinder to student athletes.
Speaker 1: He was not the answer at quarterback in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Gus Malson comes in in twenty thirteen with Nick Marshall,
Speaker 1: and things change. The Auburn offense improves greatly. They run
Speaker 1: the ball really well, that's a Trey Mason team. He's
Speaker 1: had obviously a weird go of it since his career
Speaker 1: at Auburn, but he's a terrific patient runner. And that
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen even that twenty thirteen SEC championship game, that's
Speaker 1: Auburn Miszoo with that great missoo front. That was That
Speaker 1: was a really fun game too. That was a fun season,
Speaker 1: the twenty thirteen SEC season. So Auburn rehires Gus Malzan
Speaker 1: after he moves to Arkansas State and gets annihilated by Oregon,
Speaker 1: So that at least felt a little good for me,
Speaker 1: even though he was coaching Arkansas State, and Auburn moves
Speaker 1: on to having nothing but amazing and uneven season. Since then,
Speaker 1: Oregon has plenty of up and downs, ups and downs themselves,
Speaker 1: and seems to have found a coach that is working
Speaker 1: out for them in Mario Cristobal eventually, but that's after
Speaker 1: some upheaval with Willie Taggart and the end of the
Speaker 1: Mark helferg Era.
Speaker 4: So to put a cherry on top, much the way
Speaker 4: we did last week when we talked about Notre Dame USC,
Speaker 4: with some first hand perspective, we have arranged a similar
Speaker 4: setup for this episode.
Speaker 2: Have we not?
Speaker 1: We have We want stakeholders. We want people who were there,
Speaker 1: and we were there in the way that you obviously
Speaker 1: were there for the Bush Push game in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five. But we are going to be joined momentarily.
Speaker 1: I think I'll do it solo, Tie, because this is
Speaker 1: just too deeply nerdy Oregon. I'm going to speak with
Speaker 1: Jeff Palmer, who was the short snapper for the Oregon
Speaker 1: Ducks in this game. So he was snapping field goals
Speaker 1: and extra points for the Ducks and they had a
Speaker 1: lot of extra points in twenty ten, just to sort
Speaker 1: of walk me through what it was like to be
Speaker 1: not just a contributor but a fly on the wall
Speaker 1: during the Oregon season. He was not the offensive coordinator,
Speaker 1: he was not leading the defense, he was not on
Speaker 1: the field for a majority of plays like a lot
Speaker 1: of players were. But damn it, long and short snappers
Speaker 1: are people as well, Tie, So I'm excited to sort
Speaker 1: of go behind the scenes with Jeff Palmer. Let's roll
Speaker 1: it all right. Tide dropped out because this is a
Speaker 1: special safe space and comfort zone for sad Oregon brains
Speaker 1: that remember this, and somebody who is probably I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say probably. There is a chance he is sadder about
Speaker 1: this game because he actually played in it and was
Speaker 1: on the team during arguably the golden era of Oregon
Speaker 1: football from two thousand and nine through twenty twelve. He
Speaker 1: started in two thousand and eight, but the Chip Kelly
Speaker 1: era and the Jeff Palmer short snapper extraordinaire for the
Speaker 1: Oregon Ducks overlap perfectly. So, Jeff, thanks for joining the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: All right, let's start here. The season was terrific, was
Speaker 1: you know, from the outside, it looks fun, it looks excellent.
Speaker 1: You're blowing teams out, you're surviving a couple of close calls,
Speaker 1: a big comeback against Stanford, and ugly that these are
Speaker 1: my words, win at Cal in a low scoring game
Speaker 1: with only one offensive touchdown for each team. Do you
Speaker 1: remember this season fondly?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: I always hear you guys say, you know, a team
Speaker 3: has to win their clunkers, and I think we. I
Speaker 3: think we put up forty points on every single team
Speaker 3: except that Cow game, if I remember ly, and so
Speaker 3: you know, I forgot about that comeback against Stanford, but
Speaker 3: just looking at scores, we didn't have a ton of
Speaker 3: close calls. I still, looking back, don't know if it
Speaker 3: was our best team out of my five years there,
Speaker 3: but it was definitely the closest team with the best leadership,
Speaker 3: I'd say. And yeah, we really ran through a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of the schedule pretty easily.
Speaker 1: Only thirty seven points at Oregon State War Game. The
Speaker 1: disappointing the Civil War was only thirty seven led by
Speaker 1: Michael James on the ground. But what does that mean?
Speaker 1: What is when you say that it's not necessarily the
Speaker 1: best team, but in terms of leadership, I suppose in
Speaker 1: terms of locker room vibes and just a feeling you had.
Speaker 1: What is different about a team able to survive their clunkers?
Speaker 1: That say, different from losing narrowly to Stanford in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: losing to I think it was USC and LSU in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. What's different about leadership and survival?
Speaker 3: I think a lot has to be attributed to Chip
Speaker 3: Kelly coming in and changing the focus to a lot
Speaker 3: more attention to detail, and the guys that really bought
Speaker 3: in that were left over from the Vallati years were
Speaker 3: you know, we're the upperclassmen at that point, the Jordan Holmes,
Speaker 3: the David Paulson's, the Eddie Pleasant, all the older guys.
Speaker 2: Those were all the.
Speaker 3: Best leaders on that team, and I think the entire
Speaker 3: team was so in especially you know, post Civil War
Speaker 3: going into that National championship game. I think it was
Speaker 3: a time for us to all really bond and become
Speaker 3: that much closer as a team. It was just incredible
Speaker 3: leadership is what I'll always remember about that team.
Speaker 1: There's no Pac twelve, so there's no Pack twelve championship game.
Speaker 1: So this is a long layoff between I think it's
Speaker 1: the Civil Wars December fourth, The Auburn game is January tenth,
Speaker 1: so this is over a month. How does that space out?
Speaker 1: I assume at some point you go home for the holidays.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm wrong, but what is preparation like for a
Speaker 1: program that has never ever been in this spot now
Speaker 1: going to a national championship game?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we almost had almost like a year of prep
Speaker 3: before going to the Rose Bowl and having close to
Speaker 3: a similar layoffs, but I think it was I think
Speaker 3: it was like thirty five days if I remember correctly,
Speaker 3: something like that. And being on the quarter system, you know,
Speaker 3: you get out relatively early for Christmas, and so the
Speaker 3: only people in Eugene, And that kind of goes back
Speaker 3: to why I think the team bonded so well is
Speaker 3: we're pretty much the only people in that little college town.
Speaker 3: And so we practiced, I want to say, for like
Speaker 3: two weeks. A lot of it was just you know,
Speaker 3: helmets and shorts or whatever. And then we got to
Speaker 3: go home for six or seven days celebrate Christmas with
Speaker 3: the family. And then if I remember correctly, we reported
Speaker 3: directly to Scottsdale and all met there, you know, over
Speaker 3: the course of two days, and then started six or
Speaker 3: seven days of bull prep practices in Arizona.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it was it was a really long layoff.
Speaker 1: Do you remember things being different in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily an offensive or defensive meetings, But is
Speaker 1: there a different field to preparation for a game like this?
Speaker 1: The the Oregon offense comes out with some different looks,
Speaker 1: The Oregon defense is preparing for a singular dual threat
Speaker 1: quarterback talent that maybe we haven't seen since or before
Speaker 1: in cam Newton. Is there do you feel a heightened
Speaker 1: sense of focus? Is there? Is it learning something all new?
Speaker 1: What do you remember about the team sort of preparing
Speaker 1: in Arizona, basically after not playing in a game for
Speaker 1: as you said, about a month.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was a pretty tricky balance of
Speaker 3: like trying to stay relaxed over that whole ten day
Speaker 3: period when we were there, but also putting in the work.
Speaker 3: And obviously there's no one on the scout team that's
Speaker 3: gonna simulate Cam as big as Cam and as.
Speaker 2: Versatile as he was, so yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was pretty interesting because being a specialist, I'm able
Speaker 3: to watch during practice and get a sense of the
Speaker 3: team in that sense, but I'm not sitting in on
Speaker 3: all the meetings and seeing how focused everyone really is.
Speaker 3: We met with the tight Ends because coach Osborne was
Speaker 3: the tight End's coach, so we would, you know, we'd
Speaker 3: see how locked in David Paulson and those guys were.
Speaker 3: But that's really the only real sense we had. And
Speaker 3: just comparing to the Rose Bowl the year before, how
Speaker 3: many guys were.
Speaker 2: In the video game room where they have kingpong tables
Speaker 2: and pool tables.
Speaker 3: There was just less guys in there fooling around throughout
Speaker 3: the day, and what I would assume is more intense
Speaker 3: film study and meetings and everything of that nature. So
Speaker 3: I think just the level of overall focus that year
Speaker 3: compared to especially the year before, was just that much
Speaker 3: more intense.
Speaker 1: So the game happens and the Oregon defense is I
Speaker 1: would say, pretty exceptional all things considered with what the
Speaker 1: Ducks are facing and Cam Newton and the season that
Speaker 1: Auburn had offensively, and the Oregon offense really struggles to
Speaker 1: get into a rhythm. The offense generates some big plays,
Speaker 1: comes up huge near the end of the game, generating
Speaker 1: a touchdown drive. Did that surprise you based on both
Speaker 1: the season and by what you saw in practice that
Speaker 1: it was the Oregon defense leading the way of underrated
Speaker 1: part of the team and the offense, which had been
Speaker 1: this explosive unit really struggling with a i'd say somewhat
Speaker 1: average Auburn defense. Was that surprising to the way the
Speaker 1: game played out?
Speaker 2: It was?
Speaker 3: It was especially like I said earlier, us putting up
Speaker 3: at least forty points on almost everyone we played, I
Speaker 3: thought this was for sure going to be a shootout.
Speaker 3: I believe the over under was like seventy points or something,
Speaker 3: and I thought that was crazy. But our defense was
Speaker 3: underrated throughout the year. I mean it was the typical
Speaker 3: bend but don't break that ALIODI loved and there are
Speaker 3: so many studs on that defense, so it didn't surprise
Speaker 3: me in that sense. But I was pretty surprised that,
Speaker 3: you know, especially in the second half, we didn't come
Speaker 3: out and look all that different and make that many
Speaker 3: crazy adjustments. I thought we'd come out of the locker
Speaker 3: room at half and hopefully hang thirty or whatever, and
Speaker 3: it's just, you know, it never came to fruition.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was pretty sloppy overall. As one of my biggest
Speaker 3: memories is how quick the game went and how sloppy
Speaker 3: it was overall.
Speaker 1: You hear sometimes in retrospect coaches saying, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a story that came out. Who knows how true
Speaker 1: it is after this year's LSU Oklahoma game that LSU
Speaker 1: coaches were quietly extremely confident that they didn't view Oklahoma
Speaker 1: as worthy of the stage. Who knows if it's true,
Speaker 1: But you do hear stories about coaches being especially confident.
Speaker 1: What do you remember about the vibes heading into the
Speaker 1: game compared to other big game moments, Because you have
Speaker 1: now played in a number of huge Chip Kelly coached
Speaker 1: Oregon Team Games. Was there a sense of yeah, we
Speaker 1: got this, they're vulnerable, or was it if we do
Speaker 1: this and if we do that, we have a shot.
Speaker 1: What what was the sense of comfort and confidence do
Speaker 1: you from the from the coaching staff?
Speaker 3: Super confident super confident ship was always about you know,
Speaker 3: control a wee can control and win the day, and
Speaker 3: you know, build up to the game, and the sense
Speaker 3: throughout the team is that as long as we played
Speaker 3: our game, there was no one that could beat us.
Speaker 3: And we were all extremely bought in on that. And
Speaker 3: there were a few guys, especially on offense, like when
Speaker 3: Mike and I were pretty close, and I always checked
Speaker 3: in with a couple of the other backups on offense
Speaker 3: and just tried to get a sense because I wasn't
Speaker 3: in their meeting rooms, and every single one of them,
Speaker 3: you know, would would look me in the eyes and
Speaker 3: be like, oh, yeah, we're we're going to be fine.
Speaker 2: So you know that.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that was it was based on
Speaker 1: one film study, based on confidence with previous results. What
Speaker 1: was it that that filled the team with that much confidence?
Speaker 2: I think it was because.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they thought that Nick Fairley could
Speaker 3: could really take over a game like he had throughout
Speaker 3: the year. I remember talking to a couple of the
Speaker 3: old alignment and they're like, if you know, if we
Speaker 3: neutralize Nick fairly and if he runs upfield and takes
Speaker 3: himself out of a lot of the plays like he
Speaker 3: had throughout.
Speaker 2: The year, then we're going to be fine. And then
Speaker 2: he blew up so many plays in the first half.
Speaker 3: I thought they would, you know, do something different in
Speaker 3: the second half to to kind of mitigate what he
Speaker 3: was doing.
Speaker 2: And it never happened.
Speaker 3: But I think it was, you know, man demand, if
Speaker 3: you looked at their defense versus our offense, I think
Speaker 3: that you could still argue we were better. We just
Speaker 3: they they made plays, especially in the red zone, that
Speaker 3: we couldn't punch it in.
Speaker 2: So, you know, so frustrated to look back on.
Speaker 1: But have you watched that? Have you watched the game since?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: I had not watched it until.
Speaker 3: I don't know if if you knew Tim Taylor, our
Speaker 3: backup hunter on the earlier years, he got married this
Speaker 3: summer and I stayed at Rob Beard's house. This was
Speaker 3: like August of this year, and we decided to watch it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we decided to watch it. I don't think he
Speaker 3: had ever watched it, and we came away like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, we we were the better team, Like we
Speaker 3: you know, it's just a few plays here there. Again,
Speaker 3: it was the little things that I came down to
Speaker 3: and just so close. So yeah, that was the first
Speaker 3: time this summer that I actually watched it.
Speaker 1: And what during your time do you feel like was
Speaker 1: a more talented team better team? What was that difference
Speaker 1: you mentioned the leadership? Where were other teams better, stronger?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like other teams could have done the
Speaker 1: little things perhaps that the twenty ten team couldn't do.
Speaker 1: Certainly there was a quarterback change after twenty eleven and
Speaker 1: a different quarterback in two thousand and nine. Where do
Speaker 1: you think other teams during the Chip Kelly era would
Speaker 1: have fallen against this twenty ten Auburn team.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the twenty twelve team was our best team.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: The athletic just came out with a piece the other
Speaker 3: day with the brackets, and the twenty ten team was
Speaker 3: the most talented team in the best and I think
Speaker 3: they would have beat that Auburn twenty twelve. Imagine Marcus
Speaker 3: the twenty five team. Yeah, imagine Marcus first case, that
Speaker 3: would have been such an awesome game. And I think
Speaker 3: the twenty eleven team was every bit as good as
Speaker 3: the twenty ten team.
Speaker 2: It was just a younger team.
Speaker 3: We graduated a lot of studs from that, you know,
Speaker 3: after the Auburn game. So I think talent wise, the
Speaker 3: twenty twelve team I think would have beat that Auburn team.
Speaker 3: And I think the twenty eleven team also would have
Speaker 3: been been a really good game. The team that played
Speaker 3: Ohio State in that rose bolm definitely wasn't as talented.
Speaker 3: I think Darren Thomas was better than Masoli overall, and
Speaker 3: so I think there, you know, there was a big
Speaker 3: hole there. And then I think the difference of Kenyon
Speaker 3: and Michael versus Lemichael and la Garrett the year before
Speaker 3: was a big step up, and I think that would
Speaker 3: have made a huge difference.
Speaker 1: So what is it like, locker room before the game,
Speaker 1: locker room at halftime, and sideline do you do you
Speaker 1: feel energy changing, do you feel confidence turning into concern?
Speaker 1: Or are you just so wrapped up in the game
Speaker 1: because it's just this this huge crowning moment of the
Speaker 1: sport you're playing in.
Speaker 3: Sideline was always extremely confident. Every time we got the
Speaker 3: ball back, we thought that's when we were going to
Speaker 3: get rolling. And that's really how every game was, including
Speaker 3: that col game. It was like, every time we got
Speaker 3: the ball back, this was when we were going to
Speaker 3: put our foot on the gas and go. So there
Speaker 3: was always a lot of confidence. And I'd say pregame
Speaker 3: is the same way. It's like we just wanted to
Speaker 3: get on the field and get kickoff going because you know,
Speaker 3: we knew we were going to blow out a lot
Speaker 3: of these teams going into it. I can't really comment
Speaker 3: much about the locker room at halftime. We're in there
Speaker 3: for a few minutes, and we hear coach Ow, you know,
Speaker 3: gathering up the defense and you know, screaming at the beginning.
Speaker 2: But most of us.
Speaker 3: Specialists when would get out there as early as possible
Speaker 3: and during halftime, so didn't see a lot during halftime.
Speaker 3: But I can just say our confidence on the sideline
Speaker 3: always was was really positive, really really upbeat.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, and after the game, is it is
Speaker 1: it a crush team? You know, the way Oregon loses
Speaker 1: the game, certainly with Michael Dyer with the last second
Speaker 1: field goal, is it is it depressed. Is it is
Speaker 1: it crushed?
Speaker 3: Is it.
Speaker 1: Sort of confused and in a daze. What do you
Speaker 1: remember about the emotion following a game? I mean, you're
Speaker 1: you have and I was on the field, you know,
Speaker 1: the blue and orange confetti comes down, You're going into
Speaker 1: a locker room losing the biggest game of your life.
Speaker 1: What do you remember about that emotion? What do you
Speaker 1: remember about communication with coaches and the way everything is
Speaker 1: gathered and even the minutia of a postgame loss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember personally just trying to get out of
Speaker 3: the locker room and get on the bus as quickly
Speaker 3: as possible. I you know, I witnessed a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot of tears and a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: just a lot of really sad handshakes. I think it's
Speaker 3: the way it allays down at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, we went toe to toe with them,
Speaker 3: and to have a play like Michael Dyer play really
Speaker 3: be the decision maker was what made that loss that
Speaker 3: much worse. Right, and then the fact that for most
Speaker 3: away games, you know, you fly out right after the
Speaker 3: game and you get back. The fact that we had
Speaker 3: to like go back to the hotel that night, and
Speaker 3: still kind of all sit around and wait to flock
Speaker 3: out the next day.
Speaker 2: I think it made it that much worse.
Speaker 3: So it was it was quiet, If I used one word,
Speaker 3: it was really eerie, really quiet.
Speaker 2: Really sad.
Speaker 1: But do the coaches communicate? Is there is there a
Speaker 1: giant team meeting? Is there like a debriefing. Is there
Speaker 1: a coach saying, you know, like looking at film, not
Speaker 1: necessarily film right after the game obviously, but is there
Speaker 1: is there a communication with the coaches saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we did everything we could or we didn't. You know
Speaker 1: what is that like the interaction with the staff?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: I definitely remember Chip addressing the team and just saying
Speaker 3: how how proud he was of us and how we
Speaker 3: have nothing to hang our heads about. I don't remember
Speaker 3: exactly what was said, but I just remember him saying
Speaker 3: something to the effect of like you have nothing to
Speaker 3: hang your hats about, and how proud he was of us,
Speaker 3: and he was always, you know, pretty positive even after
Speaker 3: losses and taking them as a learning experience. So that's
Speaker 3: the general takeaway of what I remember him saying to
Speaker 3: the team as a whole.
Speaker 1: And now as you look back, what do you what
Speaker 1: do you remember about playing at Oregon that people don't know,
Speaker 1: people misunderstand, people are one hundred percent correct about when
Speaker 1: you look back at this time, Oregon goes to a
Speaker 1: National Championship game and you went to You went to
Speaker 1: four BCS games, right, you go to the Rose, the Fiesta,
Speaker 1: the Fiesta again, and the Rose again. What do you remember?
Speaker 1: What do you take away from the Chip Kelly era
Speaker 1: and that level of success.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I personally take away how So I came in
Speaker 3: Bloodi's final year, so I saw what the culture and
Speaker 3: the day to day it was like pre and post
Speaker 3: Chips and so I'm you know, I'm a huge Chi
Speaker 3: Kelly defender, and you know I'll defend him to the death.
Speaker 3: I just think what he did coming into that program
Speaker 3: and changing the culture, changing the style of play, putting
Speaker 3: his stamp on it.
Speaker 2: It was really remarkable to be a part of.
Speaker 3: And you know, the teams that bought into it really
Speaker 3: benefited from it. And he didn't try to just develop
Speaker 3: us as players, but as people, you know, like people
Speaker 3: started going to class more and getting better grades, and
Speaker 3: our networking opportunities got better and better. So just the
Speaker 3: little things that ship did to make us better people.
Speaker 3: I'll always be thankful for from a football perspective, obviously
Speaker 3: getting to play in all those big.
Speaker 2: Games, winning that Rose Bowl.
Speaker 3: Being a kid growing up in southern California, that's like
Speaker 3: what I always wanted.
Speaker 2: So I'll always.
Speaker 3: Remember like running on the field when time expired during
Speaker 3: that Rose Bowl and like jumping into David Paulson's arms.
Speaker 2: It was it was It was like one of the
Speaker 2: best memories ever.
Speaker 3: So, you know, just winning a Rose Bowl, the first
Speaker 3: one that and I forget how many years for Oregon.
Speaker 3: Just being part of that was really special. And just
Speaker 3: the culture shift that ship in still during his time
Speaker 3: there was awesome to be a part of.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot on the show about the secret
Speaker 1: sauce of winning in championship programs. A lot of that
Speaker 1: is that word culture and buy in. And you have
Speaker 1: limited experience that the final year of Mike Bolotti was
Speaker 1: a good but not great team. You end up in
Speaker 1: the Holiday Bowl, you red shirted that year. Is it
Speaker 1: just a coaches being more humans, being more direct about expectations,
Speaker 1: being more empathetic? What is to you? What is championship culture?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What when you talk about buying, is it just getting
Speaker 1: people to care, explaining things, getting them to understand what
Speaker 1: is expected to them. What, how do you actually define
Speaker 1: buy in in culture?
Speaker 3: I think it was just put really simply for us,
Speaker 3: like if you're not going to buy in, you're gonna
Speaker 3: be out of here. Like if if you can't be
Speaker 3: accountable to get good grades and go to class, then
Speaker 3: I'm not going to play you on a Saturday. So
Speaker 3: it was just laid out really simply for us, okay.
Speaker 3: And there was a lot more accountability teammates to teammate
Speaker 3: from winter conditioning to staying there for the summer and
Speaker 3: you know, taking summer school and conditioning in the summer.
Speaker 3: There was just a lot more player to player accountability,
Speaker 3: you know, guys like Walt Thurman and TJ. Ward, especially
Speaker 3: that first year after we were like big culture instillers.
Speaker 3: I'd say, but yeah, I think it was just player
Speaker 3: to player accountability was the biggest change that I noticed.
Speaker 1: Jeff Palmer, thank you very much for your time and
Speaker 1: for your insight and just speaking from the heart. Michael
Speaker 1: Dyer was down.
Speaker 2: He was definitely down. He was.
Speaker 1: All right, man cool.
Speaker 4: Thank you to mister Jeff Palmer for stopping by sharing
Speaker 4: some of his insight twenty two to nineteen. Auburn won
Speaker 4: the National Championship for the twenty ten college football season.
Speaker 4: They played the game on January tenth, twenty eleven, out
Speaker 4: there in Glendale, Arizona. Dan and I were there. I
Speaker 4: will post as part of this posting out on our
Speaker 4: website and maybe on some of our social channels that
Speaker 4: video that I mentioned earlier, the video that we put
Speaker 4: to the score that we ended up making that got
Speaker 4: us a little bit of a claim, which was really
Speaker 4: cool and a lot of fun to make, So you
Speaker 4: can relive that moment with us. I watched it a
Speaker 4: few times last night, still get a kick out of it.
Speaker 4: Can't believe we put that thing together, But we'll put
Speaker 4: that out on our website for those of you who
Speaker 4: want to take a stroll down memory lane with us.
Speaker 4: We would also encourage you to email us at sliverbo
Speaker 4: at gmail dot com. We don't know how long we're
Speaker 4: going to be in this offseason mode. Quite frankly, it's
Speaker 4: a much different offseason given current world events. So we
Speaker 4: always ready willing and able to read your suggestions for
Speaker 4: what we should talk about next. Do you like these shows?
Speaker 4: Do you like us rewatching games. Great, let us know
Speaker 4: which game we should watch next. Do you have another idea,
Speaker 4: something else that we can cover to keep that fire
Speaker 4: of college football burning even in these uncertain times?
Speaker 1: Dan, do you have a non Notre Dame and I'm trying,
Speaker 1: I will think of a non Oregon game that you
Speaker 1: still need to make peace of that you were just
Speaker 1: either disappointed with or surprised by and are still trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to feel about a specific matchup.
Speaker 1: I'm putting you on the spot as you think about
Speaker 1: hundreds or thousands of games that are cycling through your brain.
Speaker 1: But well, if there's anything that jumps out, let's think
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 4: A game that was formative for me was that National
Speaker 4: championship game I want to say in two thousand and
Speaker 4: one between Miami and Ohio State's.
Speaker 1: I think that's later, that's three. So two thousand and
Speaker 1: one was nebrass So the two thousand and one season
Speaker 1: was Nebraska Miami, Miami shells them.
Speaker 4: The game where willis mcgae he blew out his knee right.
Speaker 4: That game, to me is one that I still have
Speaker 4: trouble with. And the pass interference game past interference game,
Speaker 4: but that knee injury went through me in a way
Speaker 4: that most injuries don't, and it's something that I still
Speaker 4: remember to this day. Maybe not so much from a
Speaker 4: game standpoint. The game was incredible. There were a lot
Speaker 4: of megastars on the field for that game, but that
Speaker 4: injury in and of itself is something that I still
Speaker 4: think about and had a really really profound impact on
Speaker 4: me as a college football fan, to be honest. So
Speaker 4: I want to say it instantly comes to mind.
Speaker 1: It was all three. It was ACLMCLLCL, I believe PCL,
Speaker 1: whichever it was, but it was It.
Speaker 4: Was the fact that he came back and was able
Speaker 4: to play again in the NFL. Didn't achieve nearly the
Speaker 4: success that made me some thought he could have before
Speaker 4: the injury, but nonetheless, the fact that he got to
Speaker 4: where he was an accomplishment. Unto itself, that game stands out.
Speaker 4: I would need more time to think of.
Speaker 1: Other ones, but no, I'm I'm looking at some of
Speaker 1: the stuff from this game. MVP. Craig Krenzel, how do
Speaker 1: we not who I think is a doctor?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: I want to say, it's a Keith Jackson game. So
Speaker 1: he went through to go through two thousand. I know
Speaker 1: we did USC Texas, so he still had a few
Speaker 1: years a couple Well, he did the rid of this game.
Speaker 4: He did the retirement tour where everyone gave him gifts,
Speaker 4: and then he didn't retire, which I think is still
Speaker 4: one of the greatest schemes ever played.
Speaker 1: Totally true, I'm totally I'm I'm down to do this game.
Speaker 1: This was the two thousand and three Tostedos Festival. I
Speaker 1: want to say, I watched this at an ex girlfriend's
Speaker 1: parents house. That's that's your that's AT's I suppose. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of that guy names in this game, including
Speaker 1: you know, everybody on that Miam that crazy Miami team.
Speaker 1: That's what Andre Johnson and Sean Taylor and John Nathan Vilma,
Speaker 1: DJ Williams. There's Entre role who's in a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm down. You want to do that, We can
Speaker 1: do that. It's also pretty sound verbal, which I like
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 4: All Right, well, let's plan on doing that. If anyone
Speaker 4: else has any other suggestions for games that we could watch,
Speaker 4: We're open minded. We'll take a look. But for now
Speaker 4: we'll go with that as sort of our our marching
Speaker 4: orders until next week.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, Maurice Clarett. Yeah. Oh, there's a lot happening here,
Speaker 1: a lot going on in that game. I'm feeling that
Speaker 1: juice TI all right.
Speaker 4: So on that note, thank you for bearing with us,
Speaker 4: thank you to mister Palmer for stopping by with some
Speaker 4: of his wisdom and first hand account, and we will
Speaker 4: be back next week. In the meantime, we'd encourage everyone
Speaker 4: wash your hands, stay safe, and as I say each
Speaker 4: and every week, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Stay solid, Pe