Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hey, lifers. Dustin, here it is, July 22, 2025. Hope you are all doing very well.
[00:00:09] We are getting closer and closer to the beginning of the 2025 college football season.
[00:00:15] But as of now, we are still in the doldrums of July. It gets real sad for me whenever, like, college baseball really is the last thing before there's just pro baseball on which I'm not the biggest fan of.
[00:00:31] Kind of forced to keep up with it right now just because that, you know sports.
[00:00:36] But, you know, you, you get the end of college football, but, you know, we still got the NFL. Get the NFL, it's okay. You know, we got, we got college basketball and then college basketball ends with March Madness and you go, hey, NBA playoffs are starting and then NBA and NHL playoffs, which I don't really care about the NHL either, but you know, it's playoffs. They're, they're cool to watch. And then they go off and it's college baseball. And then college baseball goes off and it's really just two straight months of nothing other than, than pro baseball. But the Braves aren't doing great, so I don't really care.
[00:01:12] But anyway, welcome to the College Football Lifer Podcast. Hope you're all doing well as I just have literally spent the entire week watching old college football clips on YouTube. So that's how I know that I'm really ready for the season to get started.
[00:01:29] Do you want to talk about some things here? We had some big things last week. I did not get a chance to actually make an episode last week, so a lot of these are outdated. But according to my statistics, nobody's listening to this yet, so it doesn't really matter. So it's July 22nd. We are right at a month until week zero and Farmageddon kick off the 2025 season.
[00:01:50] So let's talk about some of the, the, the storylines from this past week in college football. I'll have another episode out on Thursday dealing with more recent topics, but I have all these ready to go, so I might as well make an episode on it.
[00:02:06] The first thing we're going to start with here is Louisiana Tech joining the Sun Belt. This news came out last week. A lot of pushback from some of the other members in the Sun Belt, particularly in the Eastern Division. We'll talk about that here in a second.
[00:02:22] But I think this is a really cool move. I don't hate it. I know a lot of conference realignment is driven by, you know, TV contracts and revenue contracts and entering new territories, but I think One of the cool things, actually the coolest thing about the Sun Belt is the fact that it is the only regional conference left in college football.
[00:02:50] So you get rid of Texas State, who is joining the Pac 12 starting next year, to bring the Pac 12 to eight full football members to make it a full FBS conference.
[00:03:01] But you, you're losing the Texas market, assuming you had it with Texas State and San Marcos anyway. And you bring it in Louisiana Tech from Ruston, Louisiana. It does give the Sunbelt three Louisiana schools. You know, that's not great, I guess, but also Ulm and I believe Louisiana as well, just bleeding money in their athletic budget. So cutting down on travel costs does help. It also helps teams like Southern Miss and Troy, who are in the Western Division. South, Alabama, you can now drive to all of those pretty easily, I would think, at least based on the way I'm seeing the US map in my head, you should be able to drive to all of the Western Division a little easier.
[00:03:48] The trip from, you know, Mobile, Alabama to Rust in Louisiana might take a little bit of time, but I don't know, it feels like it's easier than San Marcos, Texas. Right?
[00:04:01] So I think it feels like you should be able to drive to. All the Eastern teams should be able to drive to each other. All the Western teams should be able to drive to each other. And I think that's what this whole thing is supposed to be about. So I don't hate it.
[00:04:16] Louisiana Tech was previously in the sun belt from 1991 to 2001 in all sports but football.
[00:04:22] So it's kind of a return to form for them. Except for the football, which is what we're talking about.
[00:04:28] They were actually in the Big west in football from 93 to 95 and the WAC from 2001 to 2012. We all love the WAC and Conference USA since 2013.
[00:04:39] As far as Sunbelt opponents go, a little history for you. They've never played App State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, James Madison, Marshall, Troy, most of those teams were in 1 AA, moved up to the FBS 1A since Louisiana Tech kind of moved up as well. I don't really know how to describe it, but they're, they're newer programs in the fbs with the exception of Marshall there and Troy for a while. They do have a long standing rivalry with Louisiana. They've actually met 87 times. They played Southern Miss 53 times, ULM 43 and Arkansas State 38 times. So some a little mix of old and a mix of new.
[00:05:26] There was of Course, some drama about them actually joining from the other members, including what I believe their athletic director just really taking a dump on the sun belt in 2020, saying at the time there was not a single Conference USA team that would make the move to the Sun Belt.
[00:05:43] The times they are changing. The Conference USA is considered, I believe, the weakest FBS conference. It and the Mac are like right side by side battling for which one is the worst game conference in college football right now. But what are you going to do? You got to, you got to make the moves. You got to move. And conference realignment landscape, it's constantly changing.
[00:06:07] The interesting point of this, I think is at the moment, I think this puts a period on the end of FBS conference realignment for now.
[00:06:22] So this latest wave kicked off when Oklahoma and Texas announced they were moving to the sec, followed of course by USC and UCLA moving to the Big Ten, eventually bringing Oregon and Washington with them.
[00:06:35] That took the what, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State to the Big 12.
[00:06:42] Ended up being a wild scenario with Stanford and cal and eventually SMU going to the ACC, breaking up the PAC12 in general.
[00:06:51] Then you have some backfilling. The Conference USA took teams from the FCS level, notably Delaware and Missouri State this year, Sam Houston, Jacksonville State a couple of years ago.
[00:07:03] And I think, I think this is the end of an FBS team moving to another FBS conference for the moment.
[00:07:14] We should hopefully have a couple of years of stability after this, assuming the Big 12 and maybe even the Sun Belt don't decide to try to expand. I think the next round of realignment will be kicked off when Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, Miami, Georgia Tech, Virginia. Who else end up bailing from the ACC in 2029 or 2030? Whenever the exit fee enters, it's $75 million per year territory that is a lot more manageable than 200 million or whatever it is that they currently sit at. So I think that'll be the next round, probably the final round of conference realignment, in all honesty. But for now, Louisiana Tech joins the Sun Belt. And I think it's a good move. But I understand why a lot of teams, specifically from the east don't like it. They want to move into a new market, right? At least you could recruit in Texas. When you were out there, you could say, you can, hey, your kid kids gonna play here in the state of Texas? You know, every so often, even if they come to Louisiana or Southern Mississippi or Abstate, they're still gonna play in Texas. And now you don't get to say that you don't get free trips to Texas to recruit while you're out there, you know, for games or whatever. So I understand that. And you know that there was a lot of rumors that Western Kentucky was being pushed by a lot of teams in the east to add.
[00:08:46] You know, I, I don't, I think that would have been fine as well. I think we still live in a world where the Sun Belt should probably try to get Western Kentucky or there was some talk about Liberty. I don't think the Sunbelt wants Liberty. Specifically James Madison and Old Dominion. Why would they want to add Liberty? Uh, but I, I, I think the sunbelt going to 16 teams would be fine, just fine. Getting Western Kentucky and then trying to get another team from a new state to expand the footprint out for the next TV revenue deal, whatever that might end up looking like. So for now, Louisiana Tech joins the Sun Belt and that ends tentatively. The newest round or the latest round of conference realignment.
[00:09:40] Next up you have Texas State wants to block the PAC 12 agreement. So we just talked about Louisiana Tech filling in for Texas State, who's bailing to the Pac 12 for what I think they think is greener pastures. I really don't understand how, you know, this is the, if the PAC 12 of 2012 reached out to you. Sure, of course. Yeah, obviously, go. But I think the Sun Belt is a much better home for Texas state than the PAC 12 is, to be completely honest. Travel costs aside, I think just having more, more rivalries near you and I really don't, I mean, yeah, I guess you get to play hypothetically bigger name programs like Boise State, Fresno State, what have you. But I don't know. I personally, I think that Texas State should have stayed, but they're going to the PAC 12 now. There is a membership agreement that they have agreed to. It is not public information.
[00:10:43] Why? Why is it not public information? Well, the leading theory is that is because the Pac 12 is currently trying to get a new TV deal and they don't want that info to leak specifically with maybe cbs.
[00:10:57] That is interesting. They have until today to submit to the Texas Attorney General's office on why they should not release this information.
[00:11:06] So it's kind of delicate financial information.
[00:11:09] And I think that will be interesting if it does come to light as to what exactly the public agreement is, how much money they're getting, what if they're giving up anything to actually get into the conference, what the TV revenue sharing deal would look like, and what networks they are talking to. As far as the conference goes. So that could be something interesting to come out over the next few days or we'll keep an eye on that next up. The Big Ten will not move off of the College Football Playoff model. They want four automatic qualifying bids.
[00:11:41] They have been very vocal about this. The coaches have been very vocal about this at media days this week. It is something they are just not getting off of and it is because they view a disparity between them playing nine conference games and the sec, the other Power two conference. If you really want to break it down only playing eight conference games and if the committee is going to be viewing win loss as the end all be all which is what it feels like at times last year we were talking about, then they are at a distinct disadvantage here. Why are they scheduling an extra conference game when the SEC gets to play, you know, Wofford or Mercer or whoever, whatever FCS team you want to enter into the conversation here? That's what the Big Ten is saying. And you had Kurt Signetti of Indiana who got a lot of flack from people last year saying that they didn't belong in the playoff because of their easy cupcake and non conference schedule saying things like well we're just adopting the SEC model. We're just going to do what the SEC does. Which is not entirely true. Most SEC teams play at least one non conference team that is a in a Power 5 conference, Power 4 conference, usually the ACC or Big 12 or Big 10 even. But it's kind of interesting. So According to Brett McMurphy from on3.com the Big Ten is not backing off the idea of expanding the College football playoff to 16 teams and giving the Big Ten and SEC four guaranteed spots. Unless the SEC moves to nine conference games right now, he is reporting they would likely stay with the 12 team playoff in 2026. So they're not expanding the playoff to 14 or 16 teams and they'll keep it at the exact same agreement that they have it at right now, which is the what, five plus seven I guess agreement. And every other conference is trying to go to the five plus 11 to get four extra spots, hoping they can claim some of those. The SEC and Big Ten likely would gobble up the other four or at least two or three of the four.
[00:13:52] But the Big Ten is just not going to let that happen because they want the SEC to go to nine conference games, which they should. I'm going to be honest, I'm in favor of 10 conference games for all these power conference. You have one, you know, non conference game Usually a rivalry game that you can schedule or big time game and then the other game you can, you, you can play Northern Illinois, which you know, I say that flippantly and then immediately remember that Notre Dame lost to them last year. So. But you can, you can play the bowling greens of the world in that second game. You can schedule an FCS team if you want. I don't think they should be allowed to anymore. Sorry, FCS teams. I know that's a big deal for your athletic budget but if you can't survive without getting a million dollar payout for a beat me up game, you know, that's not really Texas's fault, is it? The deadline for the next season's format is December 1st. So you know they still have the entire regular season basically to figure this out if they want to change over the 2026 College Ball playoff. But as of right now it looks like it is going to be a five plus seven. We are just going to move on with what we have now. Remember this year there will not be the top five highest seeds have to be conference champions. That rule has been abolished after last year. But still, you know, you get an automatic bid as a conference champion. So for the Boise States of the World, that is a huge deal. Last Wednesday at SEC media days, Commissioner Greg Sankey said he believes the conference should move to nine conference games. What he told ESPN is, quote, I think we should be working towards that. My life doesn't end if we don't.
[00:15:33] I think we should have an adult conversation. We should be able to make a decision. I think nine games would promote great interest through the year, but it would be hard to coach. I've had candid conversations with coaches. I've told them that, end quote. So there are a lot of coaches that are fine going to nine games, probably some others that aren't. Because the SEC I believe has what, something like eight or nine of the top 10 in ESPN's S&P.
[00:16:01] Whatever.
[00:16:03] Like you know, ESPN obviously would probably assuming it's not just the stats based. You.
[00:16:10] You feed in what the rankings spit out, right? So you, you can put stuff in there to gerrymander, for lack of a better words to, to gumption up the.
[00:16:25] The actual stats to make the SEC look better if you want to. I don't know if ESPN's doing that. I don't know how to replicate that.
[00:16:32] Probably just saying things. But yeah, you know, I don't know. I think, I think they should go to 10 conference games. Like I said, I think the fact that you have these 16 and 18 team conferences and you might not even as a student athlete see all these teams on the field the entire time you're in school there is preposterous.
[00:16:53] And I think that they should do that.
[00:16:56] We'll see. That's probably a while off if it ever happens, but the SEC should absolutely go to nine games and the Big Ten can then move to a five plus 11 conference model for next year for the, for the playoff. And speaking of playoffs, I just wanted to talk about this briefly.
[00:17:15] Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz wants a 30 team playoff.
[00:17:23] 30?
[00:17:24] What's a 30 team playoff?
[00:17:27] This is the SEC media days. Here is the quote.
[00:17:30] Get ready.
[00:17:31] My math could be wrong here, but if we did the 12, okay, and you had four automatic qualifiers, everybody thinks that's limiting. It's not limiting if you think about it from. You take these four automatic qualifiers and you divide that into eight opportunities of eight play in games.
[00:17:48] Now you're thinking the SEC is playing in for eight, the Big Ten is playing in for eight. Since we've expanded the bubble to 16, give three to the Big 12, three to the ACC, one, one. Now you've got 30 teams. Now you're talking about an opportunity for 30 teams, 30 fan bases to be excited and engaged in giving revenue. You've got 30 teams with players who have access to compete for a championship. So for me, I think that makes a lot more sense. End quote.
[00:18:15] I mean, what the hell are you talking about, buddy? Like I. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my entire life. You think the 30th best team in the country deserves a chance to play for a national championship?
[00:18:31] No.
[00:18:32] Well, it's more engaging. Yeah, of course it's more engaged. Why don't we just make 96 team playoff and that just be the entire season every year, just 96.
[00:18:41] You just, you get 96 teams and then you whittle it down, you get the one, every team plays like nine games and that's it. Whatever it is.
[00:18:49] Absolutely ridiculous logic.
[00:18:51] He goes on to compare it to the pros here.
[00:18:54] He says it should be more like the pros. Here's the quote.
[00:18:57] When you think about it, whether it's 12, 14 or 16, you know, to me, if we've decided to go into this expansion of playoffs and we're trying to follow an NFL model. NFL model? Well, the NFL takes 44% of their teams in order to get into the playoffs to increase or the passion or to keep the fan base engaged. If we're talking about 12, that's 9%. If we're talking about 14, that's 11%. If we're talking about 16, that's 12%.
[00:19:23] That's really not changing the math for the fan base. So I really don't understand what the big fight is about. Again, when you're Talking about the NFL playoff system, not only is it 14 teams, but you only have to be the best out of your 14 division. So you've got to compete against four teams to make the playoffs. You know, again, if you're at the University of Missouri, you say, hey, you, you just have to finish the top eight to have a chance to play in the playoffs. That's a win every day. And I'm all for that. I think that's awesome. End quote.
[00:19:51] This is, I'm going to be completely honest with you. This is loser mentality to me.
[00:19:56] This is, we are never going to be in the top 12 teams in the country or very rarely. And so, you know, participation trophy given to us to get a chance to get in the playoffs.
[00:20:09] I, I think it's unbelievably ridiculous. I, I hate that we're in a 12 team playoff. I thought eight was fine.
[00:20:16] Looking back on it, for most years four was fine.
[00:20:20] Most years two was fine. So I, I, I think 30 is absolutely ridiculous. The reason that they can have that playoff system, which by the way, they expanded from 12 to 14 a couple years ago and I thought that was stupid. I, I think it's stupid now that, that they, I think the NFL has too many teams in the playoffs, to be completely honest with you.
[00:20:40] Two teams should get the buy, not just one in each conference. But the reason they can do that is because there's more parity. There's only 32 teams and you play what, you have a 17 game schedule.
[00:20:54] Three of those are repeats. You play 14 teams, so you play half the league. Every team plays almost half the league.
[00:21:02] You have a pretty good understanding of who these teams are in relation to each other by the time the playoffs happen. College football is not like that. You play 11 teams because almost every single team in the FBS plays in FCS school. So you play 11 teams per year out of 136.
[00:21:24] Like you don't even scratch the surface of being able to understand how all of these teams relate to each other. You don't even get a chance to understand how these teams relate to each other within a conference.
[00:21:34] You have 18 teams in the conference and you're playing nine.
[00:21:38] You're only playing half of the teams in your conference, it used to be, back in my day, like an old man. Back in my day, you actually played every single team in your conference. It was a round robin schedule. It was pretty easy to determine who the best team of the conference was. You played all of them. Nowadays you literally can't.
[00:21:56] So ridiculous. The, the, the problem is we had a perfect system. If we would have all known that the PAC 12 was going to explode, we should have just kept the 14 playoff and just made the conference champions from each of the power four get in.
[00:22:15] Right. That. That would have been the easiest way to do it. Conference championships matter. The only way you could play for a national championship is be a conference champion. Sorry, Notre Dame.
[00:22:24] Get. I don't know what to tell you.
[00:22:27] Hate it for you, bud. Join a conference like the rest of us. You ain't special.
[00:22:32] You know, each conference could have had their own 14 playoff, preferably held on campus.
[00:22:40] You know, you could have had number four Alabama at number one Texas. And you could add. I don't remember who it was. Number three, Tennessee and number two Georgia.
[00:22:49] Winners of that go to the ACC or the SEC championship game in Atlanta. Winner of that gets into the College Football Playoff.
[00:22:55] That's how we should have done it. 30 teams. Preposterous. Get the hell out of here. What are you even talking about? Next up, the NCAA wins a pretty important court case here. So this is from Ross Dellinger on Twitter. Quote, the NCAA has won an appeal in the eligibility case brought by Wisconsin defensive back Nazir for Kareem, who argued that his D2 seasons do not count against his D1 eligibility. The appeal, a 2 to 1 decision, overturns an INJ that would have permitted for Kareem to play this fall, end quote. So that is a pretty important case because basically this judge has said that no Division 2 is a part of the NCAA. It's part of the same governing body. And therefore your years at D2 count towards your years at D1, because of course it does. Why wouldn't it?
[00:23:53] And I said this judge was a 2 to 1 decision. So I don't really know what that means. I am not a smart guy, but whatever. Three judges, I don't know, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, whatever it is, wherever this was, the NCAA has won this court case for Green played in 2021 and 2022 at Grand Valley State before joining Wisconsin in 23 and 24. He started 17 of the last 18 games in Madison.
[00:24:25] He absolutely should not be allowed to play again.
[00:24:28] Go get a job. What are you doing? He absolutely should not be played. I mean, we are clogging the system up so much.
[00:24:36] Remember that guy a year or two ago from Miami that had nine years of eligibility? Like, what are we doing here?
[00:24:42] You get four.
[00:24:44] All right, Covid gave us a fifth. All right, fine. And then you, red shirt, you get a sixth, I guess. But the COVID years are about to be behind us.
[00:24:54] These players that played at juco should not be allowed to play. And I do wonder if this might.
[00:25:02] Even though juco is outside of the NCAA's structure, I do wonder if this ruling could affect them playing in 2025, namely Vandy quarterback Diego Pavia. Will they not be allowed to play in 2025? The season is getting real close, and it seems like right now they're going to. There's a couple other juco players or players that had played in juco, but as of right now, looks like they're going to be playing. But the NCAA may have something to say about that legally.
[00:25:36] Coming up next up, Fox Sports nears a deal with barstool Sports.
[00:25:42] This is from front office sports.
[00:25:45] The deal would include Dave Portnoy on big noon kickoff and barstool content On Fox Sports 1.
[00:25:54] Who wants this?
[00:25:57] Is this something anyone wants?
[00:25:59] Like, I've never been a fan of Barstool. I don't get it. I think Dave Portnoy sucks. I think he's a mean person. I think he's kind of a dumb person.
[00:26:09] He just, he, this idea worked for him and he's made a lot of money and good for him. And sometimes his pizza reviews are kind of funny, I guess. But I think he has a lot of bad takes. I've seen him yell at people. I've seen him seems like try to take advantage of some of the employees and the contracts. I don't know too much about it because I don't like barstool. I don't care. I don't pay attention to their content. I don't know who they are.
[00:26:34] I think it's a little toxic, at least from my understanding of it. And I don't understand why you would want to partner with them. I, I mean, I guess, you know, I, I, I'm not going to say that Fox sports is by definition an extension of the same brand that, like, Fox News is. But this seems like a Fox News thing. Like, where isn't Barstool pretty conservative?
[00:26:57] Like, Dave Portnoy voted for Trump and openly talks about Trump.
[00:27:01] Like he, he seems like a pretty conservative guy.
[00:27:05] I don't know and it seems pretty interesting. So this came a few days after the announcement of the cancellation of Speak, the Facility and Breakfast Ball from Fox and Fox Sports and the firings of Joy Taylor, Emmanuel omanuel Acho and Lashawn McCoy, which, you know, I don't care. I didn't watch any of those shows. I never thought Acho was particularly insightful or interesting. I liked looking at Joy Taylor, but I don't. I never watch the shows. And of course, I mean, I hate it for Shady Eagles fan here, so obviously I hated it for him, but I didn't watch these shows. I mean, I don't really know anything about them, but if you fired them to bring in the Barstow boys, that, that seems odd, right? Like, Joy Taylor, I think you can talk about sleeping her way to the top or whatever, but she is a homegrown talent, you know, isn't that something you want to promote?
[00:27:57] I mean, I guess not. You know, it'd be interesting to know if the scandal had not come out with the whole Skip Shannon fallout that these guys got kind of caught up in, if this would have still happened. Not entirely certain.
[00:28:12] This does feel like this deal with Barstool feels like some kind of an answer to ESPN and Pat McAfee. You know, just bring on this loud, boisterous Internet personality who kind of knows sports, and we'll, we'll. We'll battle it out with Pat McAfee. And I don't think that's a winning strategy. First off, I don't particularly like either of them, Pat or Dave.
[00:28:38] I don't particularly listen to either of them.
[00:28:41] But shouldn't you be doing something different?
[00:28:47] Shouldn't you be like, you're not going to steal Pat McAfee's audience. That's not going to happen.
[00:28:53] So shouldn't you do something different to cultivate a different audience?
[00:28:57] Now, what that different thing is, I don't know, but I really don't understand trying to match it. You're not going to match it. ESPN has a much bigger brand. Pat McAfee is a much bigger brand than Dave Portnoy. Is he a bigger brand than Barstool?
[00:29:14] I mean, probably, but maybe that's my insulated way of thinking because I'm also a wrestling fan. So I'm. I've just see Pat McAfee all the time. Always. Everywhere. All the time.
[00:29:28] Yeah. I don't know. Very interesting. Very strange. I. I don't understand it.
[00:29:33] There's been talks about having some of the barstool content on Fox Sports one to Fill maybe that afternoon talk show slot segment. I don't know.
[00:29:43] Let me know you what you think. Do you, do you like that move? Maybe. Maybe more people out there, big fans of it than I, than I think. But as of right now, I do not understand it. Next up, Auburn wide receiver was arrested last week. This was from 247Sports.com Auburn sophomore wide receiver Malcolm Simmons arrested last Wednesday on charges of domestic assault with strangulation or suffocation. That sucks. His bond is $20,000. He had 40 catches for 451 yards and three touchdowns last season.
[00:30:19] You know, domestic assault with strangulation or suffocation. I have to assume that's a girlfriend, female partner, whatever.
[00:30:27] I don't understand. Like you have everything in front of you and you're going to just choke some girl out.
[00:30:35] I it just walk away. I, I, you don't have to do this. You have it could ruin your whole life, man. You have everything in front of you. I feel like we see this a couple of times a year of domestic assault. It just leave.
[00:30:49] Just leave. You don't have to get into an actual altercation. You can just break up and walk away. And if something else happens, she comes at you, she charges you, whatever. That's when you call the cops on her. I really don't know what else to say.
[00:31:03] You know, obviously due process, innocent until proven guilty, all that. But I mean he was arrested so as of right now he will not be playing for the Auburn Tigers in 2025. I can't imagine. Next up we're heading out west. The battle of I10 has been halted. The rivalry game between UTEP and New Mexico State will not be played after 2025 due to UTEP's move to the mountain West. But both sides seem to want to resume at asap. But with the future non conference schedule set, we'll see if they can actually resume possibly as soon as 2027.
[00:31:41] We will see. I did a little bit of research. They are less than an hour away, which is pretty cool. They've met 101 times which is not nothing.
[00:31:50] There's not a lot of schools that have actually played 100 plus times.
[00:31:55] I looked it up. There's 57 rivalries of the FBS level with at least 100 meetings, which is actually more than I thought.
[00:32:01] But only 23 of those west of the Mississippi. So they are one of two dozen rivalries west of the Mississippi to have met triple digit amount of times.
[00:32:11] So I, you know, I don't think this is natural. What was I saying this is nationally heralded as a huge rivalry, but to those involved it's a great rivalry. You can drive to each other probably a little bit of overlap in the fan base. So hopefully they figure it out the same way that the Apple cup and the Civil War have figured it out to keep going. Shortly we're going to stick around that area. So New Mexico to renovate University Stadium. It's $11 million grant from the state to replace the video board in the north end zone. And they keep saying in the announcement that they're going to have a more fan focused upgrades to help with the game day experience, whatever that means. So I don't know exactly what that means.
[00:32:53] If that means just inside the stadium or if there's going to be something outside the stadium for like a gathering point. I really don't know. It didn't say. Kind of left it a little vague. New Mexico also announced new uniforms with tweaks to the numbers, font and color accents. So big week for New Mexico fans. You get a little bit of tease of a new scoreboard, video board rather, and it does look good. They talk about how it's bigger, it has more pixels, so should be fun for fans in the stadium. Going back to what we were talking about earlier in the episode with Kurt Signetti and Indiana talking about how they're trying to schedule more like the sec or at least the perception of how the SEC schedules that was shown last week when they canceled their series with Virginia. According to Brett McMurphy, Indiana has canceled a home and home series with UVA in 2027 and 2028 and will pay the WHO's $500,000 to not play them. They added home games against Kennesaw State in 27, Austin P in 28 and Eastern Illinois in 29. Doesn't that just get you excited? Indiana fans again, if the way the Big Ten feels, especially Indiana, who let's be honest, is not Michigan or Ohio State, the way they feel is if wins and losses matter, then we're just going to play teams we think we can beat every single year. Like there's no point in us playing competitive non conference games, which I understand they also seemingly were rewarded for that last year by getting into the playoff with one of the worst non conference schedules in the history of the Power four.
[00:34:34] So they have no reason to change that. Right? They were rewarded for that last year going 11 and one with the really what? Two games? They won one game. I can't remember who it was. That, that was really. That was a ranked team Wisconsin maybe. I can't remember. And then losing to Ohio State.
[00:34:54] If that's all it takes every single year they're gonna be. Why would they schedule outside of that? So very interesting to see what other Big Ten schedules end up looking like soon.
[00:35:07] And if the SEC doesn't hurry up and go to nine teams, they're just going to keep scheduling teams out. The Big Ten will for extra years. So kind of feels like they're holding the SEC hostage on the nine conference games schedule at the moment. And sticking with Indiana. They have announced that they're bringing back their old mascot, Hoosier the Bison.
[00:35:29] Hoosier. Hoosier.
[00:35:31] Starting August 30th against Old Dominion. And he faded from public view after the 1969 season and was brought back in December when the Indiana University student government passed the Bring Back the Bison act to readopt him as the school's official mascot. According to Indiana's website, the Bison had been assembled for the state of Indiana since 1801. Did not know that when it was on official court documents signed by the Indiana territory Governor William Henry Harrison, future president as a symbol of the frontier. And it has been on the state state seal ever since.
[00:36:06] So I do not Assisi associate Bison with the state of Indiana, but apparently for 200 plus years that has been so Hoosier. The Bison even has a Twitter and Instagram account. So there you go. So if you want to follow Hoosier the Bison is it. Who's Hoosier? Hoosier.
[00:36:26] Indiana. Hoosiers. Indiana. Hoosiers.
[00:36:30] There's like an extra H in there somewhere, I think.
[00:36:34] So that's what I got for you today.
[00:36:37] In the future, I'd like to have some some history to fill these out at the very end, but didn't didn't do that today. So let me know your thoughts on everything here. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at. Yeah, that. Dustin, I appreciate you listening. Thank you so much. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast if you have not already. Give it a like. It helps a lot and I will see you in the next episode here in a couple of days. And episodes will be out every Thursday until the season when they might be out every single day, assuming there's enough going on in the college football world to necessitate that.
[00:37:16] So thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.
