Speaker 1: On today's episode, Hardcore history meets hardcore college football. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the solid verbal hell.
Speaker 2: That for me. I'm a man, I'm forty.
Speaker 3: I've heard so many players say, well, I want to
Speaker 3: be happy. You want to be happy for a day?
Speaker 2: Edith state is that woo woof? And Dan and Tye.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Sole All boys and girls, My
Speaker 1: name is ty Hildebrandt. That fine gentleman over there as
Speaker 1: always the illustrious Dan Rubinstein, Sir, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: How goes it?
Speaker 3: How are you can't complain? Ty just went on a
Speaker 3: Costco run. Not a sponsor could be. I always hesitate
Speaker 3: about dropping proper company names, but Costco started ubiquitous at
Speaker 3: this point. Took two little monsters to Costco. We ate
Speaker 3: our faces oft in life is good? Ty beautiful? Well,
Speaker 3: this show is good today. I'm excited about this show.
Speaker 3: We did it once last year in the build up
Speaker 3: to the season. We're doing it again today.
Speaker 1: It is the hard Core History Crossover Episode.
Speaker 4: Two point zero.
Speaker 1: Dan Carlin, noted Colorado noted college football fan Dan Carlin
Speaker 1: is stopping on by. We reached out to him, wanted
Speaker 1: to bring him on. Look a lot's going on since
Speaker 1: we had him on a year ago, with respect to Colorado,
Speaker 1: with respect to Colorado's now old conference defunct conference, just
Speaker 1: college football as a whole wanted to bring Dan back
Speaker 1: on just as like a nice little appetizer to the
Speaker 1: season head.
Speaker 3: So we've got a terrible Colorado season in the rearview mirror,
Speaker 3: hiring the biggest name in terms of flashiness and newsworthiness
Speaker 3: in this past recruiting cycle, and coach prime Dion Sanders.
Speaker 3: It's chewing a future, is shooting shooting a future in
Speaker 3: the Pac twelve for the Big twelve, Oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: still playing a lame duck season in the Pac twelve.
Speaker 3: And the publicly claiming to be a Colorado football super
Speaker 3: fan tells you that the Man News is college football,
Speaker 3: because not everybody admits to something like that at this
Speaker 3: point in Colorado's history. So I love to hear it.
Speaker 3: I love to have Dan on the show and can't
Speaker 3: wait to talk to him before.
Speaker 1: We get to the interview, though, Dan Breaking News, thank
Speaker 1: you for filling in for me as the voice is
Speaker 1: a little bit on the men. Dan, We've got our
Speaker 1: updated Patreon perks for this coming season. At long last,
Speaker 1: we finally rolled them out. Is there a website? There
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Speaker 2: Very quickly.
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Speaker 1: we have heard from you load and clear. You love
Speaker 1: to learn about schemes, As luck would have it, so
Speaker 1: do we. Yep, maybe we're not the ones to educate.
Speaker 1: That's why we've enlisted the help of our good friend
Speaker 1: Jeff Schwartz, who is going to be stopping by every
Speaker 1: other week and putting together a special video that dissects
Speaker 1: the biggest plays in moments from the college football season.
Speaker 1: Our hope is that we can learn together about schemes
Speaker 1: with you, with yes, our good friend Jeff.
Speaker 3: I like what you called it schemes. Even though it
Speaker 3: is schemes, it's technically totally true. But when you just
Speaker 3: say the words schemes, it's like you want to learn
Speaker 3: how to defraud an insurance company. Jeff Schwartz is here
Speaker 3: to tell you. I mean, who's to say x'es and
Speaker 3: o's football scheme talk? And he's what I'll tell you exactly.
Speaker 2: What he's going to do.
Speaker 3: Right, we can go into detail. Jeff is going to
Speaker 3: take a big game from the previous weekend and he's
Speaker 3: either going to look at a specific element of an
Speaker 3: offense or defense and be like, all right, here's the concept,
Speaker 3: these are the rules, this is why it exists, and
Speaker 3: here's how this team executed it super successfully to quash
Speaker 3: the hopes and desires of the other team. And so
Speaker 3: he has done terrific things with x's and o's in
Speaker 3: both college and pro on video, and so that is
Speaker 3: going to be exclusive to to patrons on verballers dot Com.
Speaker 1: That and possibly, we can't rule it out, some sort
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Speaker 3: Look, that's exactly where my mind went right when you
Speaker 3: said we're gonna have an expert on schemes.
Speaker 1: Uh, you're also going to get access, extended access to
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think to expand on what you just said
Speaker 3: about empowering people to sort of come up with new
Speaker 3: segments and portions of the show, Essentially, there's going to
Speaker 3: be a select group of patrons on here that will
Speaker 3: be serving as segment producers, not telling us how to
Speaker 3: do our job, but also they will be acting as
Speaker 3: the angry townspeople with pitchforks and torches that say, you
Speaker 3: know what, now is the time to talk way more
Speaker 3: about Kansas State or Miszoo or Penn State or Texas
Speaker 3: Tech or the fact that the Florida State job is open.
Speaker 3: Let's do an entire, huge, long segment about this, and
Speaker 3: Ty and I will say, Okay, sure, great, done, it's
Speaker 3: pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Verballers dot com v E R B A L L
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I really hope you just had promised a PlayStation
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Speaker 1: We probably should have talked about this before. I just
Speaker 1: sort of I just sort of went for it. But
Speaker 1: for Ballers dot Com, hope you can join us this season.
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Speaker 3: I guess you're a little bit you're burying the lead.
Speaker 3: We accepted the offer from Apple that the PAC twelve
Speaker 3: was unable to secure, and uh, we've bought a lot
Speaker 3: of PlayStation fives with that coin.
Speaker 1: Ty. That is a perfect segue to our guest of
Speaker 1: honor today. He is the host of Hardcore History, of Course,
Speaker 1: our favorite history podcast. He's also a diehard Colorado Buffalo's
Speaker 1: fan who is gracious enough to come back here for
Speaker 1: a second tour of duty. Please to welcome back to
Speaker 1: the Soliverbal Dan Carlin, Sir.
Speaker 4: How are you.
Speaker 2: I'm well.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me. A lot's changed since the last
Speaker 4: time we spoke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say so.
Speaker 1: The last time we had you on, I think it
Speaker 1: was right after the news broke about USC and UCLA
Speaker 1: going to the Big Ten. We obviously talked about that
Speaker 1: and what it meant for college football fans as a whole.
Speaker 1: We had no way of knowing what will go down
Speaker 1: at Colorado. How are you dealing with all of this
Speaker 1: change in Boulder?
Speaker 4: I'm adjusting, But you know, when you go one in eleven,
Speaker 4: everything looks hopeful from the one and eleven viewpoint. So
Speaker 4: so I'm very hopeful, is what I can say. It's
Speaker 4: really you know, I'm not a very flashy guy. I'm
Speaker 4: one of those guys that likes to see the old
Speaker 4: fashioned players who score a touchdown and hand the ball
Speaker 4: to the referee and all that, and that's not the
Speaker 4: game we have right now at Colorado, So I'm trying
Speaker 4: to adjust to a different sort of amount of flashiness
Speaker 4: and energy. But at the same time, you know, I
Speaker 4: haven't had good reason to be hopeful in a while,
Speaker 4: so I'm enjoying that side of it, so exciting and hopeful.
Speaker 1: So it says it right in your podcast description. You're
Speaker 1: a guy who prides himself on unorthodox thinking. How would
Speaker 1: you grade out the unorthodox methods of coach Prime so far?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's funny because I mean, we all
Speaker 4: come from an era where what he just did, in
Speaker 4: terms of overhauling the roster wouldn't have even been possible.
Speaker 4: So when you talk about unorthodox thinking, this is unorthodox
Speaker 4: thinking on his part. And in terms of the rules,
Speaker 4: I mean the fact that you can do this and
Speaker 4: you may not be able to do this in the
Speaker 4: very near future. This is a narrow window where something
Speaker 4: like this is possible. But when you bring on I
Speaker 4: think it's something like seventy new players. That's a complete transformation.
Speaker 4: And I know that USC and Oklahoma and some other
Speaker 4: schools have done let's call it a lighter version of
Speaker 4: this last year, so it's not totally unprecedented. But it's
Speaker 4: going to be very interesting to see all the questions
Speaker 4: that get answered, because when I read people who are
Speaker 4: critical of this, they'll talk about how long it might
Speaker 4: take to get these new players to gel and all
Speaker 4: that sort of stuff. But here's the way I look
Speaker 4: at it. God blessed the people we had on the
Speaker 4: team when we were one and eleven. But this is
Speaker 4: a huge each talent upgrade, so I can't see this
Speaker 4: as anything other than a net positive. Now, maybe they
Speaker 4: don't gel, Maybe these players left the teams that they
Speaker 4: were on for some good reason, but we have to
Speaker 4: be better than what we had. So that's the way
Speaker 4: I'm looking at it.
Speaker 3: How much are you consuming the Colorado football off season experience?
Speaker 3: Are you on social media? Are you watching behind the
Speaker 3: scenes YouTube videos? Are you finding yourself charmed by Dion Sanders?
Speaker 3: What what is your level of, let's say, consumption commitments
Speaker 3: to the Colorado football experience.
Speaker 4: Yeah, listen, even when we're one and eleven, I'm over
Speaker 4: consuming all of the all of the media and hype
Speaker 4: and everything. But I have to say the funny thing
Speaker 4: about the Dion Sanders thing, if I can, if I
Speaker 4: can back up and sort of analyze myself from Afar
Speaker 4: is that he's a lot more likable when he's your coach.
Speaker 4: You know, It's like it's all of a sudden you
Speaker 4: kind of see the charm that maybe isn't so apparent
Speaker 4: when he's on the other sidelines or you know, on
Speaker 4: the other team. So I'm beginning to I'm beginning to
Speaker 4: get the deon Sanders charm a little bit more than
Speaker 4: I did looking at him when he was a Florida
Speaker 4: State player, or a Dallas Cowboy player, or a forty
Speaker 4: nine er player or an Atlanta Falcons player. So so yeah,
Speaker 4: and I'm always consuming the stuff. There's obviously, with all
Speaker 4: of the in house media that he's brought, including his
Speaker 4: son doing a lot of the videos, there's more than
Speaker 4: ever to consume. But you're talking to a guy that,
Speaker 4: back in the days before the Internet was subscribing to
Speaker 4: the newspapers they used to send to your house once
Speaker 4: a week, you know. So if I have a long
Speaker 4: history of over consuming and making my family think out crazy.
Speaker 3: So Colorado leaves the PAC twelve and we'll get into
Speaker 3: realignment I'm sure more in a bit, But they leave
Speaker 3: the PAC twelve. Was this something that you were following
Speaker 3: in terms of, Oh, the PAC twelve is still looking
Speaker 3: for a new TV deal, as other conferences are growing,
Speaker 3: as the Big twelve is growing, as the Big Ten
Speaker 3: is growing. Were you a proponent as somebody who you've
Speaker 3: already mentioned it's and you talked about it the last
Speaker 3: time you were on the show that you know you
Speaker 3: bemoaned the loss of Colorado Nebraska every season and bemoaned
Speaker 3: the loss of certain matchups and rivalries that Colorado was
Speaker 3: involved with. Were you done with the PAC twelve when
Speaker 3: all of the rumors began swirling? Where were you before,
Speaker 3: during and now with Colorado's move?
Speaker 4: Well, like many PAC twelve members, I was paying attention
Speaker 4: because I was worried. You know, once UCLA and USC
Speaker 4: bolt that's the Los Angeles market, it was already a
Speaker 4: conference that was considered to be weaker than a lot
Speaker 4: of the other big conferences. So the last thing you
Speaker 4: want to potentially weak conference to do is lose two
Speaker 4: of their best members. So yeah, like everybody, I think
Speaker 4: we were worried, and I think you get this sneaking feeling.
Speaker 4: I don't think people in the Big ten get it.
Speaker 4: I don't think people in the SEC get it, but
Speaker 4: other conferences have this feeling like, Okay, the game of
Speaker 4: musical chairs has started again, and is there going to
Speaker 4: be a chair to sit on for my team when
Speaker 4: the music stops? So yes, I was paying attention now
Speaker 4: in terms of what I wanted to have happened. Well,
Speaker 4: when Colorado moved to the Pac twelve from the Big Twelve,
Speaker 4: it was sort of a nice novelty for me. I
Speaker 4: grew up in southern California, so that's Pack ten country
Speaker 4: when I was a kid, and so it seemed kind
Speaker 4: of fun to play a bunch of West Coast teams
Speaker 4: that I grew up watching. I think after a while
Speaker 4: you get tired of some of the teams you've been playing,
Speaker 4: although not Nebraska and Oklahoma and teams like that, but
Speaker 4: Nebraska was leaving too so that that option wasn't going
Speaker 4: to be available anyway, So it seemed like a fun difference.
Speaker 4: It just happened to correspond to a time when Colorado
Speaker 4: football was suffering its worst stretch in the history of
Speaker 4: the of the program, which is over one hundred years.
Speaker 4: So that didn't work out very well for us going back.
Speaker 4: You know, if we were going back to the same conference,
Speaker 4: we left right in Nebraska, Oklahoma, those sorts of teams,
Speaker 4: I'd be very excited because I miss all those rivalries,
Speaker 4: all the history. And you can say we have a
Speaker 4: long history with Iowa State and Kansas State and Kansas
Speaker 4: and we do, but it's not like Nebraska and Oklahoma
Speaker 4: and this in those same way. Ye, not in the state. Well, listen,
Speaker 4: nothing gets me out of bed like Nebraska, right. But
Speaker 4: so I'm in another sense though, there's a part of
Speaker 4: me that thinks, in a way, maybe Colorado belongs in
Speaker 4: that part of the country in a conference, and I
Speaker 4: do know that there's a lot of people who feel
Speaker 4: like part of the reason Colorado hasn't been able to
Speaker 4: crawl out of the hole we've been in the last
Speaker 4: twenty years is because the normal recruiting grounds, where when
Speaker 4: Colorado is good, we recruit well, like Texas has kind
Speaker 4: of been hard to recruit when you're not playing in Texas.
Speaker 4: So some of this seems to be going back to
Speaker 4: sort of a recipe that works for Colorado traditionally. Now,
Speaker 4: whether it'll work in the future, I don't know, but
Speaker 4: it's sort of a return to the past for us,
Speaker 4: and the past looks better than the present, So I'm
Speaker 4: going to go with that.
Speaker 3: Are there specific opponents? Use nobody gets you out of
Speaker 3: bed like Nebraska? Are there any opponents? You mentioned Kansas State,
Speaker 3: Iowa State. Now you look at a conference without Texas
Speaker 3: and Oklahoma but has added Houston and UCF and BYU
Speaker 3: and Cincinnati. Is there anybody that Colorado doesn't have a
Speaker 3: history with where you'd say to yourself, that's interesting. I'm
Speaker 3: curious about that. I'm curious about being in a conference
Speaker 3: with this team.
Speaker 4: Hmm. Well, BYU. I think it's gonna be kind of fun.
Speaker 4: And we played BYU in the Freedom Bowl in like
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty six or nineteen eighty seven. I think Ty
Speaker 4: Detmer was the quarterback. I was at that game in Anaheim,
Speaker 4: so that that was an interesting that could be a
Speaker 4: fun rivalry, I think. And Houston for some reason, it
Speaker 4: seems interesting to me. And we played Houston I think
Speaker 4: in the early seventies and something like the Blue Bonnet
Speaker 4: Bowl or one of those.
Speaker 2: Kind of things.
Speaker 4: So that's kind of interesting. I have really and you know,
Speaker 4: I'm going to say this now and then we'll develop
Speaker 4: some rivalry that goes on forever. But I have no
Speaker 4: really interest in Central Florida or Cincinnati or anything like that.
Speaker 4: But we'll see how it goes. I think also, let's
Speaker 4: be honest, these are good programs compared to what people
Speaker 4: might normally think of them as. But I do think
Speaker 4: it's probably going to be a bit easier for Colorado
Speaker 4: to play those schools than some of the ones we've
Speaker 4: been playing, although we're moving with Utah, who's a nightmare,
Speaker 4: let's be honest, and Arizona and Arizona State.
Speaker 2: So it's not.
Speaker 4: Like we're coming to a conference with a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of teams that we can beat, because we haven't beat Utah,
Speaker 4: Arizona and Arizona State and they're coming with us.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 4: At this point. Like I said, this all goes back
Speaker 4: to one and eleven. Change just looks good no matter
Speaker 4: what it is at this point as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 4: and having a conference and a media deal and a
Speaker 4: place to land now that the musical chairs music has
Speaker 4: stopped is fantastic anyway you slice it. You could be Stanford,
Speaker 4: you know, true true cow.
Speaker 1: If you're putting on your other history buff hat doing
Speaker 1: what you normally do on hardcore history. Is there a
Speaker 1: historical event that you've covered, a historical figure that you've covered.
Speaker 1: Something in that vein at roughly equates to Colorado leaving
Speaker 1: the Big Twelve and then rejoining the Big Twelve. What
Speaker 1: is it a decade plus later?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean in a geopolitical sense, I think you'd have
Speaker 4: to think of countries falling apart and then going back
Speaker 4: to the to the motherland or whatever. I can't think
Speaker 4: of any you know, I do think in terms of
Speaker 4: like historical analogies when it comes to sports, I mean
Speaker 4: I can see things like that. Although you know, it's
Speaker 4: funny because conferences break up, right you had the old
Speaker 4: Southwest Conference for example, But you don't see people going back, no,
Speaker 4: you know, to where they were, And a lot of
Speaker 4: times you don't see them going back because the place
Speaker 4: where they were before is gone. So I mean, I
Speaker 4: think that's part of what makes us a little unusual,
Speaker 4: is that, you know, No, I mean I can't see
Speaker 4: us leaving the Pac twelve if there hadn't been problems there,
Speaker 4: and then to go back to where we came from.
Speaker 4: To be honest, I don't see a historical analogy, nor
Speaker 4: do I see a sporting analogy. Really, I'm sure I'm
Speaker 4: missing one, and one of your listeners will come up
Speaker 4: with one with an email after we're done, But I
Speaker 4: actually don't see it. This is pretty unprecedented, and I
Speaker 4: think that mirrors the fact that what we're seeing in
Speaker 4: college football and the realignment and the conferences and the
Speaker 4: impact of the TV money and the NC DOUBLEA just
Speaker 4: sort of becoming inept and imputed at the same time,
Speaker 4: all of this is like a perfect storm, putting us
Speaker 4: into sort of uncharted territory.
Speaker 1: Well, and I kind of wanted to pivot off that
Speaker 1: a little bit, because I know you did an episode
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago now titled The Destroyer of Worlds?
Speaker 1: What happens if human beings can't handle their own weaponry?
Speaker 1: Am I comparing college football to nuclear war? A little?
Speaker 2: What are you doing, Tay a little?
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, like, does it feel like everyone's gotten
Speaker 1: a little bit too greedy, like a little bit over
Speaker 1: their skis with chasing money and media deals and the like.
Speaker 1: Are there any cautionary tales or any thoughts that foot
Speaker 1: around in your mind as somebody who follows history and
Speaker 1: obviously follows college football, for where this could go next,
Speaker 1: and you know how you see this grander thing of
Speaker 1: conference re alignment shaking out in the long term.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean there's there's two things that come to
Speaker 4: my mind. The first one is is that you don't
Speaker 4: need this kind of money to field a college football team,
Speaker 4: but you might need this money to field a very
Speaker 4: good college football team. And I think part of the
Speaker 4: reason why is because of the competition between the schools,
Speaker 4: which has always existed. I mean, back in the day,
Speaker 4: you know, it was competition with you know, schools that
Speaker 4: had boosters giving jobs to players that didn't have to
Speaker 4: show up on the on the job side. I mean
Speaker 4: there was always I mean SMU got the death penalty
Speaker 4: for a reason, right, there was always stuff going on.
Speaker 4: I do think that when you look at the future
Speaker 4: of where college football is going, we're going to get
Speaker 4: to an interesting time here. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 4: can talk about the Big twelve being a wonderful place
Speaker 4: for Colorado to land, but that doesn't mean it's a
Speaker 4: wonderful place forever. They have a TV deal in place
Speaker 4: till what the twenty thirty twenty thirty one season. So
Speaker 4: what happens then, right, is that because to me, if
Speaker 4: you look at where this is going, and circumstances can change,
Speaker 4: But this looks to be like the TV networks have
Speaker 4: hit a limit here on how much they can pay
Speaker 4: and still make a profit.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: If that's the case, then it's very possible that the
Speaker 4: next deals that are offered, especially once you take the
Speaker 4: big ten and the SEC out of this, are going
Speaker 4: to be less than what these conferences have gotten before.
Speaker 4: And what happens when you're going backwards on an athletic
Speaker 4: department budget, right, I Mean, it's one thing to say
Speaker 4: we're going to take less of an increase than we expected.
Speaker 4: It's another thing to say we're going to take ten
Speaker 4: million less per school than we had last time. I mean,
Speaker 4: can you really downsize and have it all work? I mean,
Speaker 4: that's what Washington State and Oregon State are seeing right now.
Speaker 4: I Mean they have debt and budgets and stadiums and
Speaker 4: all kinds of things that they have to try to
Speaker 4: manage with almost certainly less money than they thought they
Speaker 4: were going to have. Well, what happens when that's not
Speaker 4: just you know, Washington State and Oregon State's problem. What
Speaker 4: happens when that's the problem of everybody outside the big
Speaker 4: two conferences. What happens if the ACC finally eventually re
Speaker 4: ups the deal that they have and they don't get
Speaker 4: as much as they got this time, which they're not
Speaker 4: happy with. So I mean, I think the interesting thing
Speaker 4: is going to be is is And we all understand
Speaker 4: that live sports is the one of the really few
Speaker 4: areas where linear television can still get you to watch
Speaker 4: live right and watch the commercials and not tape it.
Speaker 4: And so I mean that's going to be one of
Speaker 4: those things where you say, okay, so it's still the
Speaker 4: cash cow. It's the only golden you know, goose that
Speaker 4: they have right now. But what happens when they've maxed
Speaker 4: out the amount that they can pay and still recoup
Speaker 4: a profit? And I think, you know, the interesting thing
Speaker 4: here to me is the teams that have sort of
Speaker 4: fallen into the wonderful land of oz here. I mean,
Speaker 4: everybody understands that if you're Michigan or if you're Alabama,
Speaker 4: I mean that you're going to get this kind of
Speaker 4: money and that you're worth this to the TV networks.
Speaker 4: But my goodness, how did Vanderbuilt and Rutgers and those
Speaker 4: schools got grandfathered into this thing? And you know, if
Speaker 4: the TV networks could do it, they would boot the
Speaker 4: weaker schools and replace them with Florida State and Miami
Speaker 4: and those kinds of schools. But we haven't seen that
Speaker 4: happen yet. You can't go in and boot grandfathered schools.
Speaker 4: But what you can do is destroy a conference and
Speaker 4: then only take the best schools out of it, and
Speaker 4: then it's not your fault if Oregon State has no
Speaker 4: place to go?
Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Well, and that's what I think worries me about what
Speaker 1: could happen next, because it's very popular online, especially to
Speaker 1: think of how all of the remaining teams that aren't
Speaker 1: in either the Big Ten or the SEC will eventually
Speaker 1: clump together into two Pangaea Conferences. But as you said,
Speaker 1: at some point, the cable networks are going to max out.
Speaker 1: They can't pay infinite amount of money, And so what
Speaker 1: worries me is when all these media deals are up,
Speaker 1: are we going to get to a point where TV
Speaker 1: stations and networks have even greater control and do exactly
Speaker 1: what you just described. They're going to Big Ten, they're
Speaker 1: going to the SEC, and they're saying, all right, we
Speaker 1: want these ten teams. We want these ten teams. We're
Speaker 1: going to create a premier league, and whoever is left
Speaker 1: out is left out. But in the future, if this
Speaker 1: is just a continuing plate for more money, that's the
Speaker 1: only way I could see that anybody could pay more.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: But it's like I said, the truth is, you don't
Speaker 4: need this kind of money to field a football team, right,
Speaker 4: But you do if you need to have brand new
Speaker 4: athletic facilities every five years, if you need to be
Speaker 4: cutting edge, and they have to have the high definition
Speaker 4: TV screens above every locker. In other words, the things
Speaker 4: you need to woo the top players is what requires
Speaker 4: these schools to shell out the kind of money they do.
Speaker 4: That's not what uniforms cost, right, That's not what travel
Speaker 4: budgets cost. That's not even what it costs to field
Speaker 4: the non revenue teams, you know, But that's what you
Speaker 4: need in order to participate in the arms race for
Speaker 4: the top recruits. So that's sort of a different questions.
Speaker 4: So if you have your Pangaea League, for example, I
Speaker 4: as long as you have a path for those schools
Speaker 4: to play in the national Championship, I'm not sure there's
Speaker 4: not a way to sell that to the schools that
Speaker 4: already are mortgaging their future to try to compete in
Speaker 4: the world where trying to be Oregon, for example, without
Speaker 4: a Phil Knight is really I mean, you end up
Speaker 4: in debt. I mean, this is the problem that schools.
Speaker 4: I mean, look at Cal's dealing with Washington State's got
Speaker 4: real problems, but they've got those problems because they're trying
Speaker 4: to play with big boys. That there might be a
Speaker 4: sort of a relief not having to And then there's
Speaker 4: another way of looking at this, And I don't know
Speaker 4: how I feel about it, frankly, but I know you
Speaker 4: guys have probably talked about it too, which is there's
Speaker 4: a lot of people that feel like all of this
Speaker 4: is corrupting the college football that we love, and that
Speaker 4: if there's going to be and I think we talked
Speaker 4: about this when we talked last time, if there's going
Speaker 4: to be an NFL light that develops out of this,
Speaker 4: right with the top twenty four five programs or whatever
Speaker 4: you want to say, when all the shakeup is over,
Speaker 4: is there a place where you could say that the
Speaker 4: rest of the teams then actually form something more like
Speaker 4: the college football that we used to appreciate, you know,
Speaker 4: can you maybe say that everybody doesn't have to play
Speaker 4: this game and there doesn't have to be winners and
Speaker 4: losers as much as there might just have to be
Speaker 4: separate categories. And the only problem is, and we talked
Speaker 4: about this the last time, also, is that you definitely
Speaker 4: are killing the regionalism. You definitely are killing the old rivalries.
Speaker 4: And I can't speak for younger people who didn't grow
Speaker 4: up with these rivalries. But when we came to the
Speaker 4: PAC twelve Colorado, for example, and they try to make
Speaker 4: Utah our artificial enemy, we don't hate Utah. We don't have,
Speaker 4: you know, decades and decades of history with that. There
Speaker 4: have been bloodbaths with Nebraska. There's when I think I
Speaker 4: told you guys this story. But when I got to
Speaker 4: Colorado in eighty six, there were all these for you
Speaker 4: young people, I might have to explain it to find it,
Speaker 4: xeroxes that were zeros onto every telephone pole and any
Speaker 4: anything that stood vertically above ground on the Colorado campus
Speaker 4: that showed a scene from the previous year's game against Nebraska,
Speaker 4: and it had two very very large Nebraska players standing
Speaker 4: over what appeared to be a relatively small Colorado player
Speaker 4: who was clearly deathly injured with like his leg snapped
Speaker 4: or something, and they were standing above him laughing, and
Speaker 4: this was on. I mean, this was how you develop
Speaker 4: the hatred that even now when we don't play him
Speaker 4: for years and then we play them again, it's as
Speaker 4: though nothing left that takes decades to really grow. And
Speaker 4: so if you move conferences around too much and you
Speaker 4: shatter the the either the history or the developing hatred,
Speaker 4: well then you kill something that that makes something in
Speaker 4: college football I think unique, and I think we're gonna
Speaker 4: miss that down the road. And maybe you know you
Speaker 4: brought up Destroyer of World Worlds and one of the
Speaker 4: things we had said there is, you know, if you
Speaker 4: had a gun pointed to your head from the time
Speaker 4: you're born, do you even know you have a gun
Speaker 4: pointed to your head? Well, if you've never experienced a
Speaker 4: real rivalry over the decades that it takes to really
Speaker 4: foster something like that, do you really miss it? I
Speaker 4: don't know. I miss Nebraska though.
Speaker 3: So do you find yourself feeling romantic about the past
Speaker 3: more than you do hopeful for the future? Where do
Speaker 3: you how do you square where we are with your.
Speaker 2: Own Colorado fandom.
Speaker 3: And how do you I mean you talk about with
Speaker 3: you know, teams spending like crazy, taking wild financial swings
Speaker 3: to try to compete with the top. Colorado's kind of
Speaker 3: trying to do that right now, where where would you
Speaker 3: prefer Colorado be in that old sort of regional style
Speaker 3: that reforms in your mind, or you know, continuing to
Speaker 3: swing even though it seems on the surface kind of feudal.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm glad you brought that up. That was something
Speaker 4: I had said to myself I should bring up, and
Speaker 4: then I forgot about it. So I'm glad you reminded me.
Speaker 4: But what Dion Sanders is doing at Colorado again, you know,
Speaker 4: the jury is still out on how this is going
Speaker 4: to turn out, but let's assume it's successful. If it's successful,
Speaker 4: then what he is showing is how schools without a
Speaker 4: Phil Knight or without the sort of backing in Ohio
Speaker 4: State or an Alabama has, how they might pull this off?
Speaker 4: Right Because what is deon Sanders State says, Colorado's got
Speaker 4: no bag. We have no bag for these players. If
Speaker 4: you want to bag, you have to go elsewhere. But
Speaker 4: can they promise something else? Is there a way to
Speaker 4: offer subsidiary benefits that don't correspond to the things that
Speaker 4: we normally assume a player's after, whether it's you know,
Speaker 4: the hype or the swag, or the or the cachet
Speaker 4: of playing for Deon Sanders or this idea. You know,
Speaker 4: he has this line. I'm going to try to remember it.
Speaker 4: If you play good, they pay good. I mean, is
Speaker 4: it the idea that that stop trying to make all
Speaker 4: this money when you're in college, Come here, I'll make
Speaker 4: you a pro and then you'll make tons of money.
Speaker 4: So are there other ways to set cause?
Speaker 2: Again?
Speaker 4: All these facility upgrades and staying on the cutting edge
Speaker 4: of all the cool stuff for the players is all
Speaker 4: part of gaining a recruiting edge. Are there other ways
Speaker 4: to gain that recruiting edge without all that? And I
Speaker 4: think that's what this Deon Sanders approach is an attempt
Speaker 4: to do to say, we're never going to have what
Speaker 4: Alabama and Oregon have, but we have something that they don't.
Speaker 4: Come here, play for me. I'll get you to the
Speaker 4: pros I have. And I think you know, it's never said,
Speaker 4: but you feel like it's implied, you know, when he
Speaker 4: brings all these pros who was it that was that
Speaker 4: was there this week top wide receiver shows up for
Speaker 4: the NFL. You got these guys and who was it was?
Speaker 4: The Denver Broncos working out with them the other day.
Speaker 4: There's this implied thing like, I know all these guys
Speaker 4: in the NFL play for me, and I'll make a call.
Speaker 4: Right they'll know your name because I'll call them for you.
Speaker 4: That's not something that's advertised on the wall, but you
Speaker 4: get this sense that there's you know that that's the
Speaker 4: hidden advantag of coming to Colorado now is there's no bag,
Speaker 4: but Deon Sanders is going to make you know all
Speaker 4: the connections for you.
Speaker 2: One, there's only Deon.
Speaker 3: There's only one Deon Sanders though, right that like, it's
Speaker 3: not a blueprint that can easily be replicated unless you
Speaker 3: go find the most charismatic players of the last you know,
Speaker 3: twenty five years and convince them to coach at your college.
Speaker 3: That would, I think be the counterpoint that it would
Speaker 3: be hard for Purdue or Minnesota or Oklahoma State or
Speaker 3: somebody like or Oklahoma State has money, so that's not
Speaker 3: a good example, but you know, a smaller major program
Speaker 3: to replicate. And two, if it works, isn't Dion gone.
Speaker 3: Isn't he leaving Colorado in that situation?
Speaker 4: So that's that's the big worry, is that if Deon
Speaker 4: Sanders is a horrible coach and we lose a ton,
Speaker 4: then this was a bad thing. If Deon Sanders is
Speaker 4: a fantastic coach and leaves next year, then this was
Speaker 4: probably I can't say it's a bad thing because again
Speaker 4: one in eleven, right, but but it's not optimal. You know, Well,
Speaker 4: here's what you hope. And again you asked earlier whether
Speaker 4: I'm watching all of the materials and the hype and everything,
Speaker 4: and I am. He has, so I guess he's a
Speaker 4: great fisherman. He's really enjoying Boulder. He bought a house
Speaker 4: that's got a stream behind his house that has these
Speaker 4: huge fish in it. You know, what you kind of
Speaker 4: hope is that if he can win at Colorado, and
Speaker 4: you can win at Colorado, sure, then maybe you find
Speaker 4: the lifestyles wonderful and there's no reason to leave. I
Speaker 4: just there was a story out yesterday that Colorado just
Speaker 4: beat all of its previous records at least for the
Speaker 4: last decade, on the amount of money donated to the
Speaker 4: athletic department this last year. Well that's all from Dion
Speaker 4: Sanders too. So theoretically, I mean, could we pay him
Speaker 4: as much as any other team out there? I don't
Speaker 4: think we could. But again, and this is almost the
Speaker 4: Dion Sanders philosophy working on Dion Sanders, but could we
Speaker 4: make his life good enough in so many other respects
Speaker 4: that when you take it all holistically, you'd rather win
Speaker 4: there than elsewhere. And let's be honest, there's another aspect
Speaker 4: here that I think Oregon and Washington are going to
Speaker 4: find out to their detriment when they go to the
Speaker 4: Big Ten. This is not going to be as tough
Speaker 4: of a conference to get to the playoffs in. And
Speaker 4: there's an advantage there too, Or you know, there's the
Speaker 4: real possibility that Oregon's going to find themselves. You know,
Speaker 4: I'll probably eat my words here, but going six and six,
Speaker 4: a lot of the years in the in the Big Ten,
Speaker 4: and a team like Nebraska who's already struggling, what are
Speaker 4: they going to do with usc UCLA, Oregon and Washington
Speaker 4: now probably in whatever division they end up in. Life
Speaker 4: just got tougher for those schools. Life just got easier
Speaker 4: for Dion Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes.
Speaker 3: So you grew up in southern California. I remember you
Speaker 3: live in Eugene, Oregon, or you used to live in Eugene, OI.
Speaker 3: I do, I've lived here a long time now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So you are familiar with West Coast football. I went
Speaker 3: to Oregon. I'm from southern California, and so there is
Speaker 3: definitely a part of me as somebody who grew up
Speaker 3: watching all of these West Coast schools play each other.
Speaker 3: That is said is wistful because what we're now seeing
Speaker 3: is this sort of mega conference coming together. And I
Speaker 3: don't feel anything about Wisconsin, even though Oregon played Wisconsin
Speaker 3: and the Rose bull I don't feel anything about Oregon
Speaker 3: playing Northwestern or Minnesota or Ohio State, Rutgers, Maryland, all
Speaker 3: of these places. And so I'm starting at square one
Speaker 3: as an Oregon fan as I'm sure and Oregon will
Speaker 3: play you know, Washington, USC, UCLA. So there's the connectivity there.
Speaker 3: But will you watch a new look Big ten knowing
Speaker 3: that you don't necessarily have feelings about a lot of
Speaker 3: these matchups even though you have that that geographic connective tissue.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I don't know I think what you're saying, though,
Speaker 4: holds a lot of weight. I mean, the idea that
Speaker 4: you could have a more than a one hundred year
Speaker 4: old college conference just disappear overnight is upsetting. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, and I don't know what I mean. Look,
Speaker 4: it's one thing if you have conferences that have been
Speaker 4: on shaky ground for a long time. Maybe only interests locally,
Speaker 4: but I mean the PAC ten, PAC twelve, PAC eight
Speaker 4: back when I was a kid. That's a historic conference.
Speaker 4: I mean the Rose Bowl with the PAC twelve, PAC
Speaker 4: ten and the Big Ten. I mean, these are foundational
Speaker 4: entities in college football. I mean if the SEC went
Speaker 4: away tomorrow, what would that mean? Or if the Big
Speaker 4: ten went away tomorrow, what would that I mean, It's
Speaker 4: hard to square that with a sport who's you know,
Speaker 4: one of the things that they sell the most when
Speaker 4: they talk about it is tradition, right, I mean the
Speaker 4: Conference of Champions, all that sort of hype. No, it's
Speaker 4: hard to square and I do think that. You know,
Speaker 4: I was joking with a friend the other day, I
Speaker 4: think we're one step away. There's only one thing that
Speaker 4: the pros do that college doesn't do yet, and we
Speaker 4: maybe you know, we were playing around with the idea
Speaker 4: because it's kind of a funky idea. But why does
Speaker 4: the University of Oregon even have to play in Eugene anymore?
Speaker 4: I mean, why can't it be the University of Oregon
Speaker 4: Ducks in Las Vegas?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: The Las Vegas Ducks representing the University of Oregon. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's the one last holdover, is that these these teams
Speaker 4: are actually still tied to the institutions. But somebody might
Speaker 4: turn around one day and go, well, you know, if
Speaker 4: Oregon can't get enough money here to compete, there are
Speaker 4: a lot of other towns that would pay for them,
Speaker 4: and they could still be the University of Oregon Ducks.
Speaker 4: They just wouldn't be in, you know, a tiny little
Speaker 4: town like Eugene. I mean, that's to me, that's the
Speaker 4: only difference between the NFL right now. NFL teams can move,
Speaker 4: college teams can't. But whoever wrote that they can't?
Speaker 2: Are you for this?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: No, no time, not for what's already happened. It was me,
Speaker 4: I'd still be in the Big Eight. What are you
Speaker 4: talking about?
Speaker 2: I like this. I'm just making sure. I'm just making
Speaker 2: sure sense check, that's all. Yes, No.
Speaker 3: One of the terms I use is scar tissue. As
Speaker 3: as an Oregon fan, you know, everybody makes a big
Speaker 3: deal about the traditions and the rivalries that we lose.
Speaker 3: And my thing this whole time is I have a
Speaker 3: lot of scar tissue about Washington State, Arizona, Arizona State.
Speaker 3: I even remember our game Colorado, if you can believe it,
Speaker 3: beat Oregon in the last decade.
Speaker 4: And cal I was at that game. By the way,
Speaker 4: that was awesome.
Speaker 3: When Oregon was dressed up as the duck, when they
Speaker 3: were wearing the orange cleat.
Speaker 4: I'd interrupt you and tell you a story about that
Speaker 4: than you though, because to me, it embodies everything we're
Speaker 4: talking about in college football.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So, Colorado's gone through these terrible years and it's been
Speaker 4: really tough for wee Colorado fans. And so I'm at
Speaker 4: that game with a bunch of Oregon fans. And if
Speaker 4: you saw that game, Colorado won it the very last second.
Speaker 4: It was completely improbable. I don't know what the points
Speaker 4: spread was in Vegas, but it was. It was never
Speaker 4: supposed to happen. Right, So as we're walking out of
Speaker 4: the game, the entire Oregon crowd is stunned. But there's
Speaker 4: a few Colorado fans like yours truly in the crowd
Speaker 4: as we're walking out, and we were afraid to, you know,
Speaker 4: hoot and hall right because we're so badly outnumber. But
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, and I mean completely spontaneously, anyone
Speaker 4: who was wearing any Colorado gear or anything would hold
Speaker 4: their hands up above the crowd, and another Colorado fan
Speaker 4: would touch your hand and just this sort of silent
Speaker 4: acknowledgment of hey, something good happened to us. We did it.
Speaker 4: We're in hostile territory, but can you believe we won
Speaker 4: that game? And I mean this was completely voiceless, wordless,
Speaker 4: and everyone did it. And I walked out of that
Speaker 4: and just said, where else does that happen? So when
Speaker 4: we talk about the specialness of this sport, that to
Speaker 4: me is one of those moments where you just go
Speaker 4: that was a special moment in a horrible era of
Speaker 4: Colorado football for me, and I don't think it would
Speaker 4: have happened had we been this powerhouse. It only happened
Speaker 4: because we had this shared moment of a victory in darkness,
Speaker 4: and only another Colorado fan that day knew what it meant.
Speaker 4: And we couldn't celebrate openly, we couldn't tear down the
Speaker 4: goalpost to the visiting stadium, but we could have this
Speaker 4: silent moment of acknowledgment that you know, we were in
Speaker 4: this together in this hostile place, and wasn't it awesome?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: See, that's that's an interesting point and observation. I've been
Speaker 3: in stadiums where Oregon fans were super out numbered, you know,
Speaker 3: at USC wherever, and Oregon is able to pull off
Speaker 3: an upset in hostile territory, but Oregon fans can get
Speaker 3: to USC. There are a ton of Oregon fans in
Speaker 3: southern California. There are a ton of Washington fans along
Speaker 3: the West coast. I wonder if it's going to be
Speaker 3: different when one of these West coast schools plays, you know, Minnesota,
Speaker 3: Minnesota wouldn't be an upset, but Penn State or Michigan.
Speaker 3: And I think early on people will travel. I just
Speaker 3: wonder if the experience of seeing college football in person
Speaker 3: on the road changes with geography, that you won't have
Speaker 3: as many acknowledged, silent acknowledgements after your team goes into
Speaker 3: a huge stadium and pulls off an upset. I think
Speaker 3: the geography might play in there, but maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 4: I don't see how it can't be an issue. I mean,
Speaker 4: first of all, if they do pods, or I mean,
Speaker 4: when you're if Oregon is playing the two LA schools
Speaker 4: in Washington and then some schools in the Big Ten
Speaker 4: or whatever, I think, I think you'll get just as
Speaker 4: much travel as you always did with the with the
Speaker 4: schools on the West Coast, and then maybe your average
Speaker 4: Oregon fanels spring for a game here or a game
Speaker 4: there on the road. But it has to affect things,
Speaker 4: I would think, and uh, and you know what, not
Speaker 4: just that I do think that. You know, I have
Speaker 4: a lot of friends who are Oregon fans, and they
Speaker 4: keep talking about Oregon's record against some of these schools.
Speaker 4: We beat Michigan this year, or we beat Ohio State
Speaker 4: this year, and I keep saying, yes, but those are
Speaker 4: one offs. Especially the way Oregon schedules, it's usually one marquee,
Speaker 4: really tough non conference game sandwich between two relatively winnable ones,
Speaker 4: and so you can get up for that. It's not
Speaker 4: like you're facing those kinds of offensive lines week after
Speaker 4: week after week. I think that's going to be t
Speaker 4: when you have to do that in terms of injuries
Speaker 4: and depth. Here's the thing that's more interesting to me
Speaker 4: is with these West Coast schools going to the Big Ten,
Speaker 4: with the weather, with the style of ball and everything
Speaker 4: that those teams play, are you going to start to
Speaker 4: see those teams look like Big ten teams? I mean,
Speaker 4: once you've gone through a few recruiting cycles, do they
Speaker 4: start to resemble the Michigan States and the Ohio States
Speaker 4: and the Iowa's a little bit more. I'm intrigued by
Speaker 4: that possibility.
Speaker 2: God, I hope they don't look like Iowa.
Speaker 3: I really, especially on offense. I can't handle that.
Speaker 4: See I can I want see this is where we're
Speaker 4: different coming from a Big eight school. I want if
Speaker 4: you go watch the two thousand and one game where
Speaker 4: Colorado destroyed the Nebraska program and somehow killed ourselves in
Speaker 4: the same game. I don't know how that happened. That's
Speaker 4: the style of football I want to play. And what's
Speaker 4: funny is it's very old fashioned. And I was reading
Speaker 4: somewhere that Nebraska's trying to go back to more. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, this could be a bunch of hype, but
Speaker 4: that new coach wants to go back to a full back,
Speaker 4: two tight ends, that kind of thing, and see if
Speaker 4: that works. I'm really curious if that worked. I'd love
Speaker 4: to do that.
Speaker 2: It's it.
Speaker 4: But you know what, it's a stupid thing to do
Speaker 4: to go to an old style offense just because of nostalgia.
Speaker 4: I mean, if that's the case, why not go to like,
Speaker 4: you know, the flying v and all that kind of
Speaker 4: old stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, I have to ask, since you've been talking
Speaker 1: so much smack on Nebraska, Dan, there is a game
Speaker 1: this year between Colorado and Nebraska. Do you have any
Speaker 1: plans to attend.
Speaker 4: I'm going, Yeah, I'm going. I couldn't. I couldn't get
Speaker 4: out of it. Somebody offered me free tickets and then
Speaker 4: you and I said to my wife, I said, I'm
Speaker 4: not going. I said, I have to watch that game
Speaker 4: alone in a darkened room on television with rewind and
Speaker 4: announcers and all this. And she said, no, no, no, you're good.
Speaker 4: We're both going. If the free tickets to a game
Speaker 4: that's hard to get tickets to. Nebraska is a hard
Speaker 4: game for me to watch though, because if you actually
Speaker 4: go look at the stats, you know your your poor
Speaker 4: audience has been regaled with Colorado centric discussion, this whole conversation.
Speaker 4: But if you actually go and watch those games, the
Speaker 4: number of times that Nebraska has scored either the very
Speaker 4: first time they touched the ball or in the first series. Again,
Speaker 4: this is how rivalries are made, right, This is where
Speaker 4: you develop. Like you had talked about scars, this is
Speaker 4: how scars are formed. And the scars are what really
Speaker 4: you know, what's that old line from one of the
Speaker 4: superhero movies. Our scars are what make us who we are.
Speaker 4: And that's how these programs develop the sort of feels
Speaker 4: that they have. And so I don't even want to
Speaker 4: be at the stadium. And I told my wife. She
Speaker 4: said we're going, And I said, great, So what do
Speaker 4: we do if Nebraska kills us? It's gonna be a
Speaker 4: lot of fun to be at the stadium live when
Speaker 4: that happens. So yes, I'll be at the game. Apparently,
Speaker 4: do you have a single piece of red clothing? You
Speaker 4: strike me as somebody who might not because of Nebraska.
Speaker 4: It's funny you say that. So I'm wearing a pair
Speaker 4: of red athletic shorts right now. And my wife and wait,
Speaker 4: and my wife and my daughter looked at me today
Speaker 4: and said, I don't think I've ever seen you in red.
Speaker 4: So it's like the first time if.
Speaker 1: You have any antics when you're watching Colorado football, like
Speaker 1: if you're alone in the darkened room, because I.
Speaker 4: Know Dan and I do yet I'm usually on message
Speaker 4: boards at the same time, and not just mine. I'll
Speaker 4: be on Nebraska's at the same time. Right, I'll be
Speaker 4: reading both sides and comments about every play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know I have a problem. Oh this
Speaker 2: is great.
Speaker 3: So what are you a Are you a silent viewer
Speaker 3: stewing when you're upset?
Speaker 2: Are you a yeller? Have you broken remotes? Is?
Speaker 3: What is the physical reputation that you have watching Colorado football?
Speaker 4: It's you know, again, you have to make a distinction
Speaker 4: between watching Colorado football and watching the Nebraska game. Right, Normally,
Speaker 4: I'm a very quiet, sort of passive observer, especially you know,
Speaker 4: the last few years have given me nothing to get
Speaker 4: excited about. I mean, you just kind of get you know,
Speaker 4: you resign yourself. But Nebraska's different. And I have to say,
Speaker 4: even with these down years, we've beaten Nebraska the last
Speaker 4: couple of times we've played them. I believe this game
Speaker 4: this year is going to cause I think our record
Speaker 4: in the twenty first centuries even either this one evens
Speaker 4: it up or this will put Colorado head one or
Speaker 4: the other. So for this game, yes, I throw things,
Speaker 4: I scream and yell, and it's the it's completely out
Speaker 4: of character too. I mean, it is once again a
Speaker 4: bizarre testimonial to what this sport can do to us,
Speaker 4: with the passion and the excitement and the history and
Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff. It's it's the let's put
Speaker 4: it this way, I'm down to one sport and this
Speaker 4: is it. And if they screw this one up for me,
Speaker 4: I got nothing else.
Speaker 3: So what what now?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 3: You have the Nebraska game coming up? Are you going
Speaker 3: to be watching the sport in its entirety?
Speaker 2: Has that?
Speaker 3: Has anything changed with this offseason, with the movement of
Speaker 3: the sport? How are you adjusting? I know you have
Speaker 3: your the things that excite you, the things that worry you.
Speaker 3: How do you plan on consuming the sport overall next
Speaker 3: year and beyond.
Speaker 4: Well, it's weird for my family because I obviously went
Speaker 4: to see you, but my wife went to Washington State.
Speaker 4: Her whole family went to Oregon State. So, as her
Speaker 4: brother told me recently, Oregon in State doesn't even know
Speaker 4: who they're playing next year. Yeah, I mean, try to
Speaker 4: imagine what that looks like. They don't even know who
Speaker 4: they're playing once conference schedules start. So, I mean, I
Speaker 4: have a lot of sympathy for the programs that don't
Speaker 4: have a home right now. And we can talk all
Speaker 4: day long about we know we'll just go into the
Speaker 4: Mountain West or just reform the PAC twelve. But it's
Speaker 4: easier said than done. And if the money's not there,
Speaker 4: I guess you should be glad that there's a route
Speaker 4: to the championship game somehow. But it's going to be
Speaker 4: a look, as I told my brother in law, Colorado
Speaker 4: is just in a more delayed version of what Oregon
Speaker 4: State has because when that big twelve TV deal comes
Speaker 4: up for renewal, it could be the same situation all
Speaker 4: over again. I mean, I don't think the TV networks
Speaker 4: are going to be really excited about re upping your Texas, Tech, Central, Florida,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean, it's no offense to those teams,
Speaker 4: but it's not Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama. You know, it's
Speaker 4: just a different story once you not one of those
Speaker 4: have programs and so I'm going to be watching the
Speaker 4: last year of the PAC twelve is the way I
Speaker 4: look at it and try to enjoy, you know, one
Speaker 4: hundred and some year old conference play its last year,
Speaker 4: and ironically enough, it could be one of the best
Speaker 4: years in conference history if you look at on the
Speaker 4: on paper anyway. And then I think, I'm gonna watch
Speaker 4: the year after that to see what the new world
Speaker 4: looks like. And I'll always watch CU football. But so
Speaker 4: there's a little curiosity about what the first year in
Speaker 4: the Big ten means to all those PAC twelve formerly
Speaker 4: packed twelve teams and what I don't know what the
Speaker 4: first year in the Mountain west of the reform PAC
Speaker 4: twelve looks like for the schools that stand by and look,
Speaker 4: let's be honest, what's going to happen with the ACC?
Speaker 4: I think that's the next big question for everybody to
Speaker 4: wonder about, because if Clemson and Miami and Florida State
Speaker 4: go away, I mean, you know, then what do you have?
Speaker 4: I mean, goodness, gracious.
Speaker 3: So here's your platform, here is your opportunity, deep Colorado.
Speaker 3: What do you believe is I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 3: how to ask this question. I just want to give
Speaker 3: you a platform to give you your Colorado thoughts at
Speaker 3: the moment. I think the general consensus at the moment
Speaker 3: is they have interesting skill players. They have speed on defense,
Speaker 3: the good corners in our great corners potentially in Cormani
Speaker 3: Maclain and Travis Hunter, an intriguing quarterback prospect who hasn't
Speaker 3: faced big time defenses in Shador Sanders. What do you
Speaker 3: think people have right and wrong about either Gelling or
Speaker 3: where the talent is. It's hard to sort of know
Speaker 3: because none of these guys have played together, it seems.
Speaker 3: So what is your general outlook in the short term
Speaker 3: with Colorado football this season? What are you expecting to
Speaker 3: see on the field.
Speaker 4: Well, well, let me apologize to your audience once again
Speaker 4: for a completely Colorado centric program today, But I'll give
Speaker 4: you the rundown. I can give you some so quarterback
Speaker 4: feel however you want about Shadoor Sanders. Colorado does not
Speaker 4: traditionally have good quarterbacks. So I can count the good
Speaker 4: quarterbacks at Colorado on one hand, and even the ones
Speaker 4: that graded on a curve look good to us are
Speaker 4: not that great. Cordel Stewart, Darien Hagen are the best
Speaker 4: quarterbacks I ever saw. At Colorado. Corey Deptman was probably
Speaker 4: the best pure passer at Colorado, And while I love
Speaker 4: those guys, they're not Peyton Manning, right. So this is
Speaker 4: the best quarterback Colorado's had in a very long time.
Speaker 4: He may be the best quarterback Colorado's ever had, and
Speaker 4: it doesn't take that much to be to be the
Speaker 4: best we've ever had. We're a running back school when
Speaker 4: it comes to offense, right in an offensive line school.
Speaker 4: Running back. I don't know how to grade the running
Speaker 4: back hip because the guy who's a mcaskal, who's coming
Speaker 4: off a terrible knee injury, and he still seems a
Speaker 4: little fragile. So we'll see Covasier Smoke from Kentucky. I
Speaker 4: don't know what to think of him yet. Dylan Edwards,
Speaker 4: the guy we stole from Notre Dame, is fast as lightning.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to have somebody who's fast as lightning. So
Speaker 4: we'll see. I'm glad to have him out there. The
Speaker 4: offensive line, I don't trust the offensive line yet. Got
Speaker 4: my fingers crossed, but I think the skill players on
Speaker 4: offense are the best we've had a lot, and the
Speaker 4: wide receivers are maybe better than any we've ever had
Speaker 4: as a group.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So it was a few years ago with Laviska Chanalt
Speaker 3: and Katie Nickson. They had a couple of dudes.
Speaker 4: Oh but you think back in my day was like
Speaker 4: Charles Johnson. Oh sure, I mean the guys, we had
Speaker 4: some great guys back in the day. But but this
Speaker 4: is a lot of depth to go along with the skill.
Speaker 4: We'll see how tight end pans out. I don't know
Speaker 4: if I believe some of the hype coming out of
Speaker 4: the camp, but we'll see. Defense is a different question, Tire.
Speaker 4: The dbs are fantastic. I think you're gonna have a
Speaker 4: I think I think that's going to allow the defensive
Speaker 4: coordinator to do some interesting things to cover up holes
Speaker 4: that we might have. Don't know about the linebackers. These
Speaker 4: are supposedly good players. We'll see, Uh, the edge, he's
Speaker 4: going to be good. The interior, I don't know about.
Speaker 4: But once again, if your DB's are really rock solid
Speaker 4: and really good, you can cover up some of those holes.
Speaker 4: Maybe we might have to outscore some people, and depending
Speaker 4: on how the offensive line turns out, we'll see how
Speaker 4: that happens. But as I said, coming from one to eleven,
Speaker 4: I don't know how you're not just completely jacked and
Speaker 4: and and they may call Dion Sanders a failure if
Speaker 4: we go you know, six and six or something like that.
Speaker 4: But that's a huge victory if that's especially Yeah, and
Speaker 4: look at the look at this and look at the schedule.
Speaker 4: I mean, with the schedule the Buffs have this year.
Speaker 4: If we go six to six, I don't know how
Speaker 4: you're not happy. It's about fan no matter how much
Speaker 4: cool aid you're dripping.
Speaker 1: Oh he'd be National Coach of the year six and six.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that scares me. Right. You don't know how
Speaker 4: to You don't know how many victories you want Dan
Speaker 4: to have, right if if he has a super great season,
Speaker 4: we may lose him.
Speaker 2: So but here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Coming from one to eleven, even if you go six
Speaker 1: and six, he builds up all of this national attention
Speaker 1: on Colorado football again, which which has not been there.
Speaker 1: That's a net positive. Even if he leaves after a year,
Speaker 1: if he gets anything nothing in a good direction, you know,
Speaker 1: I think maybe the coach you can get after him too,
Speaker 1: might be better than you could have hope for other
Speaker 1: I mean, when you raise the profile of the program
Speaker 1: because here's the problem.
Speaker 4: And you guys know this, and your whole audience knows
Speaker 4: it too. The memory of these people you're trying to
Speaker 4: recruit is probably eight to ten years long. So if
Speaker 4: you haven't been good in eight or ten years, it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter how long. Those of us who have long
Speaker 4: memories of a program's history matter, right. So what Dion
Speaker 4: Sanders is doing is raising the profile in the minds
Speaker 4: of these young people in a way that puts Colorado
Speaker 4: at least on the radar for their short term memory here,
Speaker 4: so that even if he leaves, you'll have more to
Speaker 4: build on than you otherwise would. And if he's leaving
Speaker 4: because of success, all the better. So that's why I
Speaker 4: think this is one of those hires that was a
Speaker 4: no lose higher for us, no matter what happens.
Speaker 3: Have you and be honest here, have you written more
Speaker 3: than one thousand words at a time on a message board?
Speaker 4: Oh? No, people hate that you can't do that, But
Speaker 4: you can write four or five posts in quick succession.
Speaker 2: Use it like Twitter, right, use the universe?
Speaker 4: Yeah, three or four two hundred and fifty word posts
Speaker 4: and in quick succession.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Dan Carlin hardcore history what can we promote for you?
Speaker 1: What have you been up to now?
Speaker 4: Then? Just you know you do the shows, love it
Speaker 4: if people like the work. I like talking college football.
Speaker 4: You guys do a great job, You ask great questions,
Speaker 4: and as always, I hope, I hope we don't bore
Speaker 4: your audience to tears.
Speaker 2: That's all. Now, they'll love it.
Speaker 1: Here here's what we're gonna do, Dan. We're gonna give
Speaker 1: you our phone number, our voicemail line that you can
Speaker 1: call into after that Colorado Nebraska game and give us
Speaker 1: a real time, raw reaction and we'll play it on you.
Speaker 4: We'll see it depends on how things go. Yes, I
Speaker 4: don't need to be on your show having it all
Speaker 4: rubbed in, you know, so we'll see sobbing. Yeah, guys,
Speaker 4: what we're gonna know it. We're gonna know a lot
Speaker 4: more clearly after the first game, because that's the problem
Speaker 4: is that we are a complete unknown.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: We can be awful, we could be great, we could
Speaker 4: be anywhere in between, and we have no idea when
Speaker 4: you've got seventy new players, all new coaches will have
Speaker 4: the offense. I mean, everything is completely unknown. So we'll
Speaker 4: know more after the first game and you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. You almost think you kind of want to lose,
Speaker 4: just barely to TCU. Have a chip on your shoulder.
Speaker 4: Have the first game at home for Deon Sanders running
Speaker 4: behind the buffalo or scootering behind the buffalo or whatever
Speaker 4: he's going to be doing, and then, you know, hopefully
Speaker 4: do real well against the rivals and tear the goalpost down.
Speaker 4: So we'll see. But I have no idea what to expect.
Speaker 4: I'm just I have a ton of curiosity like the
Speaker 4: rest of you.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Well, we appreciate your time. As always, We'll keep
Speaker 1: in touch this season. It's going to be interesting, to
Speaker 1: say the least for a Colorado fan. Dan carlon Hardcore History,
Speaker 1: Thank you again. We'll have you back on it at
Speaker 1: some point.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me on, guys, as usual, appreciate.
Speaker 1: It all right, Dan, there you go, West Coast Brethren
Speaker 1: for you on this podcast.
Speaker 3: The connective tissue of growing up in southern California, spending
Speaker 3: time in Eugene, Oregon.
Speaker 2: Ruining the end of the Pac twelve.
Speaker 3: On a certain level, of course, I think as a
Speaker 3: Colorado fan he might be a little bit more excited
Speaker 3: for the Buffs to join the Big twelve than I
Speaker 3: am for Oregon to join the Big Ten. But nonetheless,
Speaker 3: the energy from Dan Carlin is unmatched. Hy It's unmatched.
Speaker 3: It is right where it needs to be. If you're
Speaker 3: a college football fan and like on a personal level,
Speaker 3: I can't help but geek out when he comes on
Speaker 3: the program. Hardcore History is on my Rushmore podcasts.
Speaker 1: I love what he does. Of course, go and check
Speaker 1: out his podcast, Hardcore History. It's just interested in learning
Speaker 1: something new. Dan does an awesome job just speaking to
Speaker 1: these moments in history and these situations that have kind
Speaker 1: of crafted the world. He does an awesome job. We're
Speaker 1: so thrilled that he came back, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: try and get him on the reverbline this year after
Speaker 1: that Nebraska game. I'm going to try and earnest. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to send it to him the number, like,
Speaker 1: hey man, if you're feeling up to it, give us
Speaker 1: a ring.
Speaker 2: I agree. I'm hopeful for that.
Speaker 3: So what it says ty that somebody who just constantly
Speaker 3: deep dives some of the greatest human atrocities ever turns
Speaker 3: to college football as something that is particularly interesting to
Speaker 3: him and mid tier to low tier fandom with where
Speaker 3: Colorado has been the visceral nature of him talking about
Speaker 3: Nebraska football as a Colorado fan.
Speaker 1: Did it not bring a tier to your eye?
Speaker 3: I would never publicly admit to scanning an opponent's a
Speaker 3: rival's message board, not the company rivals, but a rival
Speaker 3: commass message board during a game in which your team
Speaker 3: is looking great. And the fact that he so freely
Speaker 3: does it means he's so comfortable in his college football
Speaker 3: scan beautiful help.
Speaker 1: But to love having him on the show, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: absolutely beautiful. And the other thing I know that we've
Speaker 1: found over the years when we bring on just a
Speaker 1: prominent fan, doesn't matter who it is, sometimes they're a
Speaker 1: little hazy on the facts. Oh my god, not no
Speaker 1: Carl D. Carlin dropping it and Alton mccaskell, Dan Carlin
Speaker 1: knows what Colorado football. Well, yeah, look, it's good to
Speaker 1: have him back. Well, we'll try to bring him on
Speaker 1: again at some point throughout the course of the season,
Speaker 1: if only in voicemail form. Go and check out Hardcore History.
Speaker 1: His podcast needs no introduction.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you one final question? Yeah? Please?
Speaker 3: So, a lot of everybody that follows college football on
Speaker 3: sort of a regional or national level, has cultivated some
Speaker 3: sort of opinion about Deon Sanders over the course of
Speaker 3: the last few months, from time you hired to revamping
Speaker 3: the roster and now we're in the midst of fall
Speaker 3: camp as we record this. Has your opinion of him
Speaker 3: or of Colorado big picture, medium picture, small picture? Has
Speaker 3: it evolved at all? The more you've just sort of
Speaker 3: sat on the knowledge that Deon Sanders and this roster
Speaker 3: are going to be making their way through I guess
Speaker 3: the Pac twelve, but then the Big twelve.
Speaker 1: I have maintained since the very beginning that it's a
Speaker 1: brilliant move. Okay, it's a brilliant hire, and I know
Speaker 1: his tactics came under fire a bit. They're going to
Speaker 1: have something like seventy one new players. Yeah, this season
Speaker 1: they had fifty guys transfer out. We've never seen that
Speaker 1: kind of roster turnover, not even close to it, and
Speaker 1: I know that rankled some. I don't see unless he
Speaker 1: commits horrible recruiting violations along the way, which is not
Speaker 1: off the table unless he gets them in hot water,
Speaker 1: that's going to affect the program moving forward. I can't
Speaker 1: see how it's a bad thing. Even if they go
Speaker 1: to and ten, like, there's so much more interest in
Speaker 1: the program. As Dan mentioned, there is more money flowing
Speaker 1: into this program now than ever before. I just think
Speaker 1: I've always felt like it was a smart move, and
Speaker 1: everything I've seen so far, although unorthodox, has really just
Speaker 1: reinforced that for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, the thing is, you say, even if he
Speaker 3: goes to inten, he's going to have to do better
Speaker 3: than that, because going through a terrible season is still
Speaker 3: going to hurt recruiting, even if Dion's able to sell
Speaker 3: it as like, well, you know it's your one. This
Speaker 3: is just you know, I was trying to put together
Speaker 3: a roster that's more respectable than where it was, but
Speaker 3: still you want a little bit of proof of concept
Speaker 3: that like, well, if deon hand selected these guys to
Speaker 3: you know, be in his too deep, you'd sort of
Speaker 3: hope that he could get more out of them if
Speaker 3: this is the roster he wanted to assemble. Obviously you
Speaker 3: miss on some recruits, but I'm I'm still for it
Speaker 3: because I'm a big believer in taking swings, and this
Speaker 3: is certainly a swing from Colorado. I'm crazy curious to
Speaker 3: see what happens the week after something goes terribly wrong, right,
Speaker 3: because that's when you're going to see like, oh, Dion
Speaker 3: has their heads in the right place, they're still locked in.
Speaker 3: They lost that game by twenty eight. It was ugly.
Speaker 3: It was never a game. The team they lost to
Speaker 3: wasn't anything special. Can they bounce back this coming week
Speaker 3: against Arizona State or Washington State?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Can he prevent Colorado? Is he in a place as
Speaker 3: ahead coach? Because they certainly look to be in that
Speaker 3: place at Jackson State, but all they did was win
Speaker 3: games there. It's going to be different this year, So
Speaker 3: I'm curious to see what that team looks like after
Speaker 3: a setback of some kind.
Speaker 1: They're also a great unknown, you know. So much of
Speaker 1: what we do when we're previewing teams is we're looking
Speaker 1: back at how a team did last year and we're
Speaker 1: looking forward and trying to judge based on how many
Speaker 1: of those guys are back returning production. It does mean something.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean everything, but it's not insignificant.
Speaker 4: Colorado.
Speaker 1: Everybody's starting over. Yeah, it's so drastic that it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You throw it out completely. They are very much an
Speaker 1: unknown quantity. Now. We're not expecting them to go ten
Speaker 1: to two. It'll be I think a miracle if they
Speaker 1: make a bowl game. But there is something, There is
Speaker 1: a charm, especially in college football when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: a truly unknown quantity, especially one that's as public facing
Speaker 1: as Dion Sanders and Colorado are. Now they're one of
Speaker 1: the top five most interesting stories. Even if they don't
Speaker 1: win a game in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: It's it's wild, it's and they have TCU Week one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the most anticipated Week one matchup in the last year,
Speaker 3: to say the least. Yeah, I can't wait. I think
Speaker 3: it's a great story. And I appreciated Dan pointing out that, like, look,
Speaker 3: from the outside, you might not like it overhauling a roster,
Speaker 3: just like cutting players left and right, because it's your
Speaker 3: turn now to build this roster. But it does have
Speaker 3: that feel of like, hey, look, I know I'm a
Speaker 3: Giants fan, and that's why I love Barry Bonds, even
Speaker 3: if everybody else hates them.
Speaker 2: I know I'm a Laker fan.
Speaker 3: I know everybody else hates Sasha Vyachich for hounding everybody,
Speaker 3: but I love him.
Speaker 2: And so there is that element of like, look, we
Speaker 2: went one and eleven. Something wasn't right. The roster was
Speaker 2: not in a good enough place to get to a.
Speaker 1: Bol taste for times desperate measures.
Speaker 3: So something had to be done pretty dramatically, And if
Speaker 3: it were your team, you would be hoping for the
Speaker 3: same kind of year to year overhaul given that kind
Speaker 3: of flexibility that's available in college football now So I.
Speaker 1: Like that he may be a bit bombastic. At least
Speaker 1: he's honest, Yeah, definitely is.
Speaker 2: At Least he's.
Speaker 1: Honest, and that's in short supply in college football nowadays,
Speaker 1: so I at least give him that. Right in Salverbodgmail
Speaker 1: dot com, find us on social media. We are turning
Speaker 1: the corner now and running downhill towards the season Week
Speaker 1: zero getting awfully big in the window. We'll have our
Speaker 1: preview for you on our next episode, the handful of
Speaker 1: games that are of interest.
Speaker 2: One more time.
Speaker 1: As I said at the very top of the episode,
Speaker 1: verballers dot Com is where you can go and check
Speaker 1: out all the perse we've got this season on our
Speaker 1: patron It's the best way you can support what Dan
Speaker 1: and I do. You have nothing more play for the prizes, man,
Speaker 1: It'll be fun. Verballers dot Com v E R B
Speaker 1: A L L E R s dot com. Big thanks
Speaker 1: to our guest of honor Dan Carl And check him
Speaker 1: out over at hardcore History for that guy of there,
Speaker 1: Dan rubenste for myself Tie Hiller brand things for downloading, listening,
Speaker 1: and supporting the show. But we'll talk to y'll soon.
Speaker 2: Stay solid, peace, m