PMS 2.0 1432 - NFL Week 7 Preview/Picks, TNF Recap, Georgia Head Coach Kirby Smart, Nick Saban, Country Superstars Bailey Zimmerman, Luke Combs, & AJ Hawk

18:01Crazy. Crazy.

18:03Pat McAfee:Yes, he was actually pissed. People were on the internet were like, was he actually mad? I don't know him. It's like, yeah. He didn't get a concussion. very, very pissed. He'll move past it, obviously. He's appreciative of this guy. But this follows into that. I assume Aaron was like, yes, what are we doing? And Jones, to Jones' defense, he's just super-duper excited. Well, then he tries to give him a concussion too after. Broad loves to celebrate. This is not the first time. He loves to celebrate.

18:28Nick Saban:He doesn't know how big he is. Like a small dog that barks and thinks he can take on. He doesn't realize how big he is. Like, hey, man, I'm a monster. I think he's going to be changing the way he celebrates what the quarterback goes for. If I had to guess. But on a note, they had a game-winning drive. There's a game-winning drive in the Pittsburgh Steelers' mind. This goes back to the Miami Dolphins just a couple weeks back against the Chargers where less than a minute left, they had a game-winning drive.

18:53Pat McAfee:I mean, that's tough to watch every single time. They had a less than a minute game-winning drive. And then all of a sudden, no. And then you got two ago, and we got players, and it just spirals into an entire thing. Steelers had a game-winning drive. They come back. They win it, and Mike McCarthy even called it. He's like, and he's going to be a lot of close games, and there's nobody right out of the ball in his hand, Aaron Rodgers, if it's a close game. He's got to have the most, if not a second. He just started making up stats about Aaron in the end that he hadn't done actual research. And it's like, well, here we go again, late in the fourth.

19:22Pat McAfee:You need a touchdown, only can have a touchdown. Aaron does that with the offense. I'm not saying it's just Aaron, but you get it in this entirety. And then Joe Flacco, you left too much time. You left too much time for Joey Flacco. And T. Higgins sliding there. And then Jamar Chase, after the game, was asked about it, would you slide? And he said, if you want to win the game, you slide there. It's like, yo, that's a great culture. That's just immediately. Exactly. I think that's very indicative of the way Zach Taylor is delivering his message that you're two number ones. You've got two number one wide receivers there.

19:53Pat McAfee:That a touchdown is certainly good for maybe incentives. Because they put in the contracts, hey, if you score, we'll give you more money. So that's my job, I guess, is to do that. because this is what I'm getting incentivized to get paid more in my profession. And then they say, hey, why don't you be a good team player and not score? And it's like, well, why'd you put in my contract to score a touchdown and I get more money? Well, the team went – don't you care more about the team? Like that is always a defense that players could have, but we all, every player wants to see their teammate make the right decision in the moment.

20:22Pat McAfee:You know, like there's a Super Bowl touchdown, I think some – I think it might – I forget who it was. Maybe it was Ahmad Bradshaw. I'm not 100 % sure. it might have been Ahmad Bradshaw where he like, I think he was running Super Bowl. Holy hell, here we go. And then he, oh no, oh no, late. And then he does the stop fall thing there. And I think we all appreciate the fact that he remembered, oh no, I shouldn't do it. But also like the fact that he got his touchdown, you know? So it's like a Super Bowl touchdown, which is a huge deal for life and everything like that. So T Higgins doing this on a Thursday night football in prime time when you want to pad stats and everything like that.

20:56Pat McAfee:And he probably has incentives in there to make more money if you do it. Like, dude. And then Jamar Chase saying the same thing. Maybe since he isn't there, look out for the jungle. Yeah, in defense of the Steelers' defense that could have got a stop on that last drive, Jamar had only had 21 targets at that point. So they had no – like there's no way they could have known that they were going to go to him twice to start that drive and leave him wide open. And he had 94 yards of yak, by the way. So it wasn't as if he was just – yeah, look, he's wide open. Like that's the crazy part. It's not like he had 16 catches for 100 yards and 10 yards a yak.

21:32The guy had 94 yards a yak. He was catching the ball, and then he was just running around wild. Genuinely, before, I always thought, all right, fire Tomlin, whatever. This is a game where it's like, okay, who the hell did this? Because this is just as egregious as a ref screwing up a game, I think. Like, the best player in the league, the best wide receiver, top two, whatever, in the league, and he's going to get 23 targets and catch 16 balls. Like, did they even watch? Do they know he's on the team? Like, it makes no sense. Yeah, I think there's a lot of Steelers fans asking the same questions you are.

22:11It's early in the season. They're 4-2 is what the Steelers will say and what the coaches will say, and there's still a lot of room ahead and a lot of season left. But there's certainly a lot of question marks on that defense

22:19Pat McAfee:after Joe Flacco does what he does. Now, to your point about Jamar Chase's 23 targets, there's a little bit more context here from Hembo. That's the most in the game since Antonio Brown's 23 targets in 2015 Week 9. Okay, let's go ahead and feed A.B. It's the most in the game versus Mike Tomlin-led Steelers. It's the most in the game with Joe Flacco's quarterback. Joe Flacco likes to get everybody a rock. That's right. He probably happens. He does. So, but 23 times, it's the most in, it's the most tier, it's the most tier. And he ate, and T. Higgins did too. So, congrats on the offensive juggernaut.

22:50Now, let's talk about something that hit the Internet this morning. Pablo Torre, who is a sports Batman, I would say. Yeah. Is that?

22:59Nick Saban:Weapon. I think that, yeah, exactly. This guy, now, I'm assuming the people that are on the other end of Pablo Torre's investigations aren't going to say this, but we, as somebody that's in the sports media world, who have a lot of questions about a lot of stuff happening around the world and the sports world, We're, like, very impressed by the fact that Pablo Torre is just going all in like this. It is on everything. It's like he's uncovering stuff that I think has been around me for a long time. I think he's only going to continue to do those things. Like, we are – I don't want to speak for everybody in the Thunderdome, but, like, this guy's courage is out right now.

23:35Wildly impressive. Huge fan of Pablo Torre now. Yes, and his, like, his courage and what he's doing right now is very impressive. Now, this morning, he released a tape, and he described it as a hot mic. Now, I don't think it's a hot mic because it's a prerecorded show. So hot mics normally on live show. You think you're in commercial. You're not in commercial. But this was certainly a recorded sit-down that was happening during a podcast that Bill Belichick was producing called Coach.

24:05Pat McAfee:And it's a conversation between him and Jordan. The way they talk about kind of everything, you know, it's pretty enlightening, obviously, but I don't think Bill Belichick or Jordan thought that was ever getting out. You know, this is a time that they definitely thought nobody was recording. They certainly had to have known that they were mic'd up in this entire thing, which could worry you a little bit. And you're doing this for people. But they were talking as if it was just a break in the show or break in the action amongst themselves. But obviously they're mic'd up. It's being recorded. It's an interesting thing.

24:31Pat McAfee:I don't know. I think whenever we watched it, I felt uncomfortable watching it because I knew that the people that were on camera didn't know they were potentially being recorded or we were watching it. But nonetheless, it was found and discovered and put out. So certainly something that the world has now. And I immediately thought to myself, he was doing all his work at NFL Films. Did NFL Films leak this video to Pablo Torre to then add into his investigation about what's currently happening at UNC with Bill Belichick and hiring and everything else that's going on behind the scenes? So I reached out to NFL Films.

25:03Pat McAfee:And I will say this as somebody who has a, what has it been, five years? Four or five? What has it been, five years probably? Yeah, five. Yeah. Five-year business relationship with NFL Films. NFL Films operates as like the 33rd NFL team. They've been with the NFL. You obviously all remember Steve Sable talking about, you know, the Frozen Tundra and Green Bay. We all grew up with NFL Films happening. I think it's 50-plus years now they've been around. They've basically been the 33rd owner for the NFL. They have been a part, a massive part, of the growth and development of the NFL. I think every league around the world hopes that they have a Scorsese-like level of production, but also content creators and creativity that are able to showcase the game and its people while not just being a propaganda machine for the NFL.

25:48Pat McAfee:And that's what I have experienced with NFL Films and our business relationship. Now, have they messed up with our relationship? Yeah, yeah. Have I let them know that I didn't appreciate what happened? Yeah, of course. And they, to their credit, have taken full ownership every time whenever they mess up. the NFL Films people feel obligated to be good to the NFL, its players and its coaches strictly because of how much they love the NFL, its players and its coaches. You're talking about some of the biggest ball fans out there. So whenever this gets leaked I immediately send it to the people that I know at NFL Films who I've been giving millions of dollars to for five years now for rights for the show so that we can run plays and we can run highlights and we can do everything that, you know, studio shows on TV were able to do while we were just It's an internet business.

26:35Pat McAfee:So I was actually the first person to negotiate digital rights with NFL and NFL films because we were a social media show, a digital show before we got here on ESPN. And I wanted to compete with the studio shows. And I thought the difference that the studio shows had or ESPN had or Fox or CBS, these people that have these rights, is they were able to show actual footage. So I wanted to do that. So I approached the NFL. I do an agreement with NFL films. It ends up being a couple million dollars a year, two and a half, three million dollars a year to pay for rights so that we can post and use and everything like that, which is now a big-time talking point, I guess, across the Internet.

27:06Pat McAfee:I'm staying out of all of that. But me in NFL films, what I'm saying, we're pretty – okay? We know each other pretty well. They've never lied to me. So they haven't, right? I think that's true. They never lied to me. Strong business relationship. Yeah, the only time actually was when it was, I believe, Bengals-Steelers on Thursday Night Football, and we didn't use their graphics and we drew stuff. We did the drawing graphics. No, but that wasn't NFL Films. So NFL Films was actually fighting for us there while it was another network was trying to attack us at the time. So it was like a one-day show where NFL Films actually, actually that's a great example.

27:46Pat McAfee:NFL Films had to fight for our relationship and said that we were not doing what these other people were saying with graphics and things like that. So other networks didn't like that we had a digital deal with them. So there was shows, maybe even this one, I'm not 100 % sure ESPN was one of them or not. But these people were trying to attack our deal because what CBS and Fox and ESPN were paying was like billions of dollars for NFL rights. But that was for games, live games. So how much were five minutes of no audio tape in there? So there was a lot of people sending like at us trying to take.

28:16Pat McAfee:Once again, it's kind of the story of the thing. People trying to bury us, you know, in NFL films is actually came out and was like, no, this is what the wave of the future is. And now they have inside the NFL on X, actually. So they're moving in to the digital world, which we were certainly talking about with the Brian Branch thing. So I asked them about the NFL Films, seemingly NFL Films footage that was leaked for this Bill Belichick story that Pablo Torre is doing. Because this is not what they do, AJ, right? NFL Films feels obligated to protect everybody. Like, they don't, that isn't their thing.

28:44Pat McAfee:So here's a couple things in back-to-back days that I think the NFL Films people not vary in. And I think every player knows that about NFL Films too whenever they go in there, right, AJ? Is that a big part of it?

28:52Nick Saban:People like players are not, you know, players are paranoid about a lot of different companies and places that are trying to get them. They don't feel like NFL Films is out to get them. No.

29:00Pat McAfee:Yeah. NFL Films always on their side, but also not a propaganda machine. So it's a fine, you know, it's like a, it's a little bit of a balancing act for them. So I asked them like, Hey, this Belichick video is pretty dirty here. Like this feels like pretty dirty. It's coming out of your building. They responded with when this footage was captured, NFL Films did not produce coach with Bill Belichick. NFL Films did not edit this show. NFL Films did not shoot the show. NFL Films did not and does not own the show. As a matter of convenience to him, which once again, NFL Films obligation to like people and players and coaches in there.

29:34Pat McAfee:As a matter of convenience to him, NFL Films allowed Coach Belichick and the production team from Underdog to use our studio for his coach show because he was already here in his capacity, his talent on inside the NFL. NFL Films has a long-standing relationship with Bill Belichick based on trust and mutual respect built over many years of working together. We have absolutely no reason to believe that this footage leak came from NFL Films or from any employee of NFL Films. So that's their statement on it. Now, that's like high level, okay, at NFL Films. That is the leadership group that is saying that.

30:07Pat McAfee:Now, I don't think they know for a matter of fact, and I don't think Pablo Torre is ever going to tell anybody what his sources are, who his sources are, But NFL Films wanted to make sure, and could I tell people, that that did not come from our people, from the research that we did, and that was not our show that was happening in our building. Now, on that note, I assume they regret doing that at this point. It was a convenience to Bill Belichick, especially because what gets out. And then the Brian Branch film that came out, or video that came out on Inside the NFL that was being read by Louis Riddick, that made Brian Branch look awful.

30:40Pat McAfee:Right. Foxy, that was the big takeaway from that video, right? That hit the internet. Yes. Lions fans are pissed. It felt like a hit piece. It was just the weirdest thing ever. And everyone is really pissed about it today. Okay. So I basically told the NFL films people that I was talking to, like, Hey, you got this with Bill. And then you had the Brian branch video, like, and they're like, wait, this is not, this is, so this is the answer on the Brian branch clip. Okay. We want all of our shows to have a distinct voice and point of view in the case of turning point, that voice and point of view is Louis Riddick's.

31:12Pat McAfee:He spends time every week with the show's producers, watching each segment and going over the script before narrating. That particular sequence felt different to us as part of a nine-minute breakdown of the Lions-Chiefs game than it did as a standalone excerpt on social media. On X, it felt overly critical to Brian, so we took it down. So they wanted to say, like, everybody was attacking them for taking it down. They're like, you should. We should have never put it up as it was to begin with. So that is kind of their stance on it. And I think they didn't say it there in the exact text of me, but in the conversation that I was having, I think they were trying to provide more in their head.

31:47Pat McAfee:I know that wasn't what the excerpt was from the nine-minute video. In their head, they wanted to give context for Brian Branch on why this situation happened, but it obviously went a different direction. They said they did it, so that's why they took it down. They were like, that's not what we wanted in the whole thing. So I don't want to be here, you know, just speaking for NFL Films, but it feels like somebody should in this world. because NFL Films is an asset to us, not a bad thing to the entire football world, A.J. Hawk.

32:12Nick Saban:Yeah, NFL Films, they're not the people to go after that try to do that stuff, I think, to make people look bad. It was like the lowlights of Branch in that game and the voiceover. Everything just didn't feel right. You're trying to add context to it, I guess. It's like when, remember, Tua came out and Tua apologized and he said, like, my teammates know my heart, they know my intention, but it didn't come out that way when I spoke to the media. It looked like he was taking shots at people. I feel like maybe that's what happened here. Their intention was to give some context. Hey, he feels like he got blocked in the back.

32:40Nick Saban:That's what got him upset. That's what came before this. He didn't just jump out of nowhere and attack Juju. But obviously that didn't work. And now they took it down. But it doesn't matter. We all saw it.

32:49Pat McAfee:Yeah, we all saw it. And everybody attacked him for taking it down. And they were like, well, we didn't like it. That wasn't what we wanted either. So what are we supposed to do, you know? And then the people that recorded were like, nope, we already got it. This is what you did. They're like, okay, we know. We're trying to – geez. Yeah, so I think they should view NFL Films people as like they're away from the New York office. They're not in the NFL office. They're like their own operating team, and they try their absolute best, and they say every once in a while we get things wrong, okay? And we're going to own up to that, but we would like to, you know, continue to try to make our sport and our players and athletes continue to grow and build, you know, that whole thing.

33:25Pat McAfee:And they're a talented group, but they've been in it here the last couple days. And Pablo Torre, brother? He's a dog. I'm getting that footage. Dude, he's a dog.

33:35Nick Saban:When did he get on this path where he started to, like, is he called a whistleblower or what's he doing? Investigative journals.

33:43Pat McAfee:Investigative journals. Yeah, I believe he got called out by a certain somebody whose show is now on Netflix, which is cool, about not being a real journalist. And then I think he was basically, is that right? And then that's where the Clippers thing, you know, kind of started. Because this isn't his first one. I mean, it kind of started with the Clippers and Ballmer paying Kawhi under the table.

34:05Nick Saban:Sorry to cut you off. How many people do you think are pretty scared and worried that he's going to start digging in and sniffing around their program and what they're doing? Probably everybody. Everybody should be. If you've done something wrong. Anybody can get it, says Pablo. I mean, he's been on this USC beat for a while, too. He was the first one way back when, like when things started going bad. Yeah, excuse me, not USC. He was the first one when things kind of started going bad, where it was like, hey, everyone needs to be aware of what's going on here. and then it kind of cooled off for a little bit.

34:32And then now it's just like, you know, he's back on it. So, yeah, if you've got some shady dealings, I'd be watching your steps very carefully.

34:39Nick Saban:Yeah, I don't know. I think it's going to quiet down on that whole Pablo situation in North Carolina, right? He's not going to talk about them anymore. Probably. We'll see. I don't know, Pat, what's going on, buddy? Who you got there? You got an absolute living legend, it feels like, with you right there.

34:51Pat McAfee:That's right. Six-time national champion, two-time as a head coach, ladies and gentlemen, Kirby Smart. Kirby! What's up, fellas? How are you, man? And thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the hospitality here. I'm at the Buttsmere Heritage Hall, right? And it's a sports admin here, which is on the facility, though, of your football offices as well, right? This whole area here is your guys' show. It's an unbelievable view, man. I can't get over the view this guy's got, man. It's awesome. And it's a beautiful day, too. It is a beautiful day. It's like a perfect day here in Athens. It's normally hotter than this, I would assume.

35:20It's hot last time you were here. Brother, I want to let you know, it changed my entire life. So I got a third. Fair-skinned. Yes, I'm very fair-skinned, as you see. I got third, fourth degree burns on my face and arms here last year. Beautiful stadium. And now on Fridays, I don't know if you know that. Look up, brother. We will always have coverage. Always in the shade. We will always have coverage going forward. So thank you to your school for that. Now, thank you for your school for the hospitality to us here today and also game day coming for a top ten matchup. This feels like just normal for you.

35:46What is the message to the boys? And does it feel different this year versus last year? And I don't want to bring it up, but you already have a loss on the record. So has that changed anything that you say to the boys or how do you treat this particular weekend? It's another weekend in the SEC, buddy. You better get ready because you know what? There's another one waiting a week later. But for us, it's all about fast and free in this game. I want our guys to play loose, enjoy it, and go out and compete. But you know how these big games are. They're a dime a dozen. Lane's been texting me all week.

36:10So I had to put him on mute. I had to put him on mute. What's that? He wants intel, you think? He wants to talk shit. He wants to soften you up a little bit. What do you think you guys – what is he trying to do whenever he's messing? I think he's worried about my figure, you know. I told you, that's my wife's job, not his. I heard that he talked about you not doing hot yoga. He looked at you, he judged a little bit. He's a brand new Lane, though, right? Yeah, you know what? I'm all about self-deprecation. I'm good with it. I told him my son got all upset when he said it, and Lane texted me and said, hey, I was just cutting up.

36:39I said, now you're telling the truth. But sometimes the truth hurts. No. I think you look great, by the way. Appreciate it. That's why we're black. Well, you're not the only one. That is the move. Lane, same guy on the field as he's always been, and then just off Lane because there was even a documentary that came out about how he's changed his life. Do you see a difference from his team now versus what you maybe would have seen in the past with Lane Kiffin as the head coach over there? Well, his team's always played just free and really well. I think he's done a great job. I think he's got better players, and I think he knows who he is better now.

37:13Like, he's done a great job. You watch him on the sideline. His management of game, like they've had three or four games that came down to the last possession. In every one of them, they just methodically move the ball, eat the clock, win the game in the fourth quarter. he's really good at managing these games. And we both have had extremely tight ballgames. So on that note, have you taught him how to clap with a timeout signal? Absolutely not. I told him, he texted me, I said, do you read my lips? No human being ever calls a timeout where he's saying they're clapping, they're clapping, they're clapping.

37:45And I'm repeatedly saying that with my lips. And he's like, I don't care about your lips. Nobody cares about that, by the way. Nobody cares about that. Until you just said that right there, I didn't know you were being 100 % serious. You're being 100 % serious. Read my lips. Okay, so you're saying your body might have been doing this. Read my lips. They're clapping. They're clapping. They're clapping. They're clapping. And I've told Lane loves this joke. You're being serious whenever you say that. I thought this was all you like talking shit because you got one over on Pete. You're saying, no, actually.

38:14In my brain, when I'm saying they're clapping, read my lips. Read my lips. And I don't know any coach that ever has tried to call a timeout without saying the word timeout. That wasn't the case there. They're clapping, they're clapping, they're clapping. But either way, I'm going to tell you this, Lane has loved that. He thought it was going to be a good distraction Sunday and Monday, and then he did a great thing by coming out and just blowing me up for being a fat guy with his language, and he took all the attention off that. So my kids got to see it. My wife got to see it. Well, I want to let your wife know and your kids know you look great in my eyes.

38:44Thank you, man. Okay? You're a thick guy. You know, we're not like Lane. You know, Lane is a little more, you know, he's all about prima donna. He's a little cleaner. He's a quarterback. He's a quarterback. That is the exact thought. He's a quarterback. And also, if you're doing 6.30 a.m. hot yoga, I mean, your body's going to look better than ours. Like, that is just going to happen. I did try it once. I tried it a couple times with some guys here locally. I struggled. I couldn't do it. But Lane swears by it. It's changed his life. I think it's put him in such a good mood. And he's done a fabulous job.

39:11I'm happy for him. I'm happy for you guys, too. Obviously, you're both under the Saban tree. Everybody's going to talk about that. What do you think you gathered from the tree? And what about this team is similar to past teams of yours and maybe different than past teams of yours? Well, speaking of the Saban tree, I just walked out of a meeting, production meeting with him in there, and I realized that he's still in control of all that. Does he boss you around like he bosses us around? Yes, absolutely. That is great. Actually, there's a chance that we were on the phone with one of his former coaches as well during one of these meetings, and that particular person does 6.30 a.m.

39:40hot yoga. And I was like, hold on, he's talking. And he was like, oh, this is what me and Kirby used to do. Me and Kirby used to whisper while he was talking on the side of the meeting. It was like the good way. Let's be clear. He whispered. I was sitting there quiet saying, hey, can I move my seat? I sat next to Lane in the staff meeting for the couple years we were there, and I was like, Lane, please don't talk to me during the staff meeting. He goes, why are you so worried about talking during the staff meeting? I was like, it's disrespectful. I don't want to talk while he's talking. This guy didn't care.

40:06He just didn't care. I told him all the time. That's why he gets back at me now, Lane, because all those butt whoopings he used to get. Okay, so let's talk about your team, Butt Whoopings. You've got a team that's normally just physically imposing on everybody. Do you feel that same intensity from this team and Aura? And what was the thing you do on Tuesdays? What's the thing you do on Tuesdays? A bloody Tuesday. Yeah, we get after it. We have a physical team. Absolutely, we've got a physical team. But guess what? So does everybody in the SEC. So it's really about who can be physical in the moments that matter most.

40:34And we've got an extremely tough team. We've got a resilient team. If you've watched our team this year, they're never going to quit. They're going to keep fighting. We need to play better at the start of games. You've got a tough quarterback. Yes, we do. He is taking some shots, man. The first time I've seen him, the first time we all saw him, He was just getting helicoptered, concussed, and it's like, yes. And his name's Gunner? It's like this guy is seemingly perfect for football. Tell me why he's perfect for you and this team. Because he kind of embodies this team's personality. Like to see that guy get hit last week, zoom in and watch the hit he takes from the Auburn corner when he gets hit and how fast he pops up and runs back to the huddle.

41:08It'll give you goosebumps. It'll make you think, oh, my God, did you see that guy just get hit? And he's back up going to the huddle, and the rest of the team's like, oh, my gosh. Motivates everybody. Absolutely. They play harder for him. How is he as a leader in the – how do you feel about the team's chemistry? I guess not just him, but how do you feel about the togetherness of the squad? I love the togetherness. I'm sorry. I mean, there's no questioning anything at the points of our season when it's been tough. Tough at Tennessee. Tough at Auburn on the road. They bounce back. They don't let the scoreboard affect them, which I think is a really good quality to have.

41:35There's other good qualities to have, but that's a good quality to have. I wasn't there for the Auburn one. The Tennessee game, 100-and-whatever-thousand. You guys are just not supposed to win that game. Keep shopping, man. Brother. That was cool. I assume you enjoyed the hell out of that win and what you just mentioned it right there. The resiliency that a coach has to see from his crew has to feel big.

41:54Pat McAfee:AJ, back in the Thunderdome, has a question for you, Coach. Yeah, Coach, how you doing?

41:58Nick Saban:You mentioned you got to start fast. You got to get out to a hot start. Obviously, every team wants to do that, but what can you do schematically or with the schedule to do? Are you going to dial up some blitzes on D offense? You want to try to get some explosives down the field? How do you get a fast start? I think having a plan that you stick to and that you trust. You know, we really did that on offense at Tennessee. We didn't necessarily do that on defense at Tennessee. Everybody wants to start fast. The media asks me every week, how are you going to start fast? I think the prep of that, I think playing looser, I think our guys not afraid to make a mistake allows them to play a little faster.

42:30And that's kind of the mantra we took for this week is fast and free. We want to start fast, but we want to play free of worry. You talk about starting fast. Your second halves have been dominant, especially on the defensive side. Tone has a question for you. Yeah, Coach, starting fast, but those second halves, you've given up seven points in the second half over your last three games. And there's a famous quote from Peyton Manning where he was talking, and he's like, I've never even heard of a halftime adjustment. That's not something that ever happens in football. Now, do you guys – like how – why have the second halves on defense specifically been so good for you?

43:02Is it a halftime adjustment thing, or is it just adjusting to what the team's doing throughout the game? I think it's settling down. That's why I go back to the beginning. Like, how do we play free of anxiety? because I kind of agree with Peyton, guys. I mean, there's only so much you can do at the halftime. It's short. It's quick. You're not coming up with a new scheme or new players. I agree with what he says. Everybody's like, oh, man, y 'all make great halftime adjustments. No, we just play better in the second half. We relax and go play. Why can't we do that at the start? Well, I think getting the anxiety down, though, is what halftime coaching is all about.

43:28Now, let's talk about pregame coaching and maybe even halftime. I don't know where all those videos come from.

43:33Pat McAfee:We haven't seen them as of late. Connor has a question for you. Yeah, Coach. Some of the best parts of college football are the pregame speeches that get leaked from your locker room, and I'm sure that probably pisses you off. But to be honest, it pisses me off that I haven't seen any this year or in recent memory. Did you tighten up the locker room? Did you tell everybody, like, hey, if I find a recording, it'll be bloody Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday? Or what happened there with the pregame speeches? No, my son says they haven't been as good, so that's why they're not leaking.

44:05He says you've become dull and boring in your old age. So we've wanded everybody before they come in now. Some people actually believe that, but it's not true. It just hasn't leaked. Yeah, your speeches are epic, though. Still the same guy? Still the same fire and passion. Maybe it'll go a little lower, and maybe we won't start with so much anxiety. So maybe it'll be a chill mode. Okay, so do you have different gears in there? Oh, you've got to have different gears, man. You've got to have different gears. I don't know which gears need it because some players need some gears and some players don't.

44:32Halftime, I've had to gear it up a couple times this year, and I think sometimes that helps, and sometimes you've got to gear it down. How much are you changing how you coach different generations of players? You've been around here now a long time. Expectations are to be great. We all just saw what happened at Penn State. I mean, shit, college football is a different animal. You created a lot of great times here, and I'm not saying anything would happen to you because you've won a national championship here and you are cemented in a legacy forever. But you do have to evolve and change, right, with every single group.

44:55Is this a different generation now than it was whenever you started, and how do you adjust to that? Yeah, it's very different. It's completely different than it used to be. And people say, well, it's not different. You just treat them different. And I'm like, well, it is different because the players are transient. They can come and go. They have money that they're not used to having. And I'm so happy that they have those opportunities and they get a chance to make money. But the hardest thing for me to change is on the field standard, like practice. I cannot just let it go. So something irks me, something bothers me, a guy doesn't give effort, a guy doesn't thud, it's going to drive me nuts, and I want to confront and demand.

45:24And that can wear you down if it happens a lot. So the biggest thing is don't change your standard, but change maybe the treatment, how we do things, maybe not as long of practices. We've shortened those. We want to have high energy, fast, get after it. But at the same time, I'm not changing what the standard is in terms of how you practice.

45:40Pat McAfee:Here's the definition of transient. Obviously, we knew smart was going to force us to have to do that. It's an adjective. Great. Thank you for dropping that in. Look at that number one. Read that for me real clear. One, a person who is staying or working in a place for only a short time. Yeah. Thank you. Hit that word. Tee it up. Yeah, yeah. Are you a lefty? I don't see. He thinks so. He thinks so. More power from the left-handed side. Switch. I'm a cow roll. growing up. I didn't play baseball. It just looks better. It feels, because I did the Ken Griffey Junior. Ken Griffey, man. That was my rookie card.

46:12I had so many of those. Boom, it just was so pretty. Yeah, it was pretty. So I never played baseball, but if I was around the baseball people, I would always go, yeah, man. Yeah, I'm lefty. Yeah, just do the one of those. But it turns out I got no power over there. None. None, yeah. Everything comes from this side, and I'll tell you what, I've got about two million less hacks on this side than I do on this side. Yeah, so it's a bad spot. Ty Schmidt is my baseball expert, actually. Ty, this guy. Love baseball. I mean, it never gets – you a baseball guy? I love baseball, man. I love the contact part of it.

46:42I can't deal with that, but I love the mind game. I love watching all the series, and I'm a Braves fan. My son plays a lot of baseball, so I get a lot of baseball in the summer around the house. Dodgers are about to win again. Looks like it. They got more money than anybody else. That's college football, isn't it? You're right. We don't want to get into that full conversation. But you are – brother, I mean, I don't know how often you've said it. I know we haven't said it enough. You're a goat in college football, dude. Appreciate it. I don't know about that. You are. I appreciate it. You actually are, though.

47:11You're in real time, and you don't get talked about. Ty actually has a question for you, but that just hit me like, you're a goat, dude. Holy shit. Goat's in there doing the stuff. He's the best that's ever done it. I learned from him. No, of course so. But you are a goat. If it was to be over right now, you'd be considered one of the greatest of all time. Congratulations on that. That just hit me.

47:27Pat McAfee:I don't know how often you've thought about it. I should have thought about this before you came on the show. That'd be what a good host does. Maybe then I can do some hot yoga. That would be good for me. Maybe you get better. Maybe that's why you're the goat and he's not. Could be. Whoa! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Intrusive talks. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Goats do yoga, though. I see it on the internet. Ty has a question for you. They do. You're a certified goat coach. You just mentioned, though, the SEC, how physical it is week to week and how good the conference is. Obviously, everybody knows that.

47:57There's kind of two schools of thought when it comes to it. It's like, hey, either you're battle-tested at the end of the season because you've played so many good teams, or if it doesn't go the way you want it to, well, the league cannibalizes itself. Yeah, exactly. Do you lean towards – coaches in general, I guess, across the SEC, do they lean towards either one of those ways? Does sometimes it feel like that? We're like, this year you guys might get five or six teams into the playoffs, but then there will be that conversation if someone doesn't win a national championship. Well, the league's too deep.

48:29They cannibalize themselves during the season. Yeah, you know what? I think it's the agenda that the coach personally has. So if you end up not getting in, that's the case. If you're in and you lose, that's the case. I mean, everybody uses it how they want to, and that includes the SEC, and it includes the others. I think the greatest debate right now in all of college football is what you're talking about. The other conferences or saying, oh, well, the SEC just has all these teams ranked, but they really don't deserve to be ranked, and they play each other and they beat each other up. I don't think we'll ever know the truth.

48:56I always say go pull the NFL scouts and get them to tell you where they're pulling from and where they're drafting from, and those usually equal the best teams. Who has the most players drafted? We did when we won the national championship. Michigan did when they won the national championship. Ohio State did when they won the national championship. Just look at that, and that will tell you where the best players and teams are. But we're not going to know until they start putting us all in there and they play a cross-conference like they do in basketball. I'd love to do one of those with another conference.

49:24So that's a good question. Texas and Ohio State obviously kicked off this season, SEC, Big Ten. Michigan, Oklahoma happened. And refresh me if it has happened. Do you have any of those? We had Clemson last year where we opened with them to start off. Oh, yeah, and pounded them. You remember that? Jesus. Do you remember what they did to Clemson? Well, it was a tight ballgame at half. But, again, you go back and you look across the board, and that's one of Lane's biggest complaints. And Lane is very bright. And Lane's biggest concern is we're losing opportunities to play other conferences. when we schedule nine conference games.

49:57So that's the best reward any conference can get. There's less opportunities for me to play – for us to play other conferences. And the only way to measure conference to conference is that. Modern world 12-team playoff. Everybody said we should be getting bigger matchups on a regular basis. Obviously, we've had like a top ten every single weekend. There's been one that kind of had an interesting slate. You keep going forward. Do you like where we're at with college football right now? Do you feel like – obviously, it's a transition era. You've been around a long time. You're one of the goats. We talked about it.

50:23Right. But it does feel like we're in a transition era. But in this transition era, ratings are higher than they've ever been for the sport.

50:29Pat McAfee:The sport is hot right now. Would they not be if it was 16 or 24 or 30 teams? I think they still would be. I think the ratings would still be higher. I think you'd have unbelievable playoffs. It's going to mimic the NFL when we get to having that many teams potentially in the playoffs so you get better matchups for longer. Because these games at the end of the year are going to come down to essentially being play-in games. You're either in or you're out. I would love to see a bigger pool of teams make the playoff because that's what all our fan bases want is an opportunity to do that. And also home field advantage, man.

50:57Yeah, huge. Part of college football is the experience. Atmosphere. Yes. We have two NFL analysts on our staff, okay, and they've been in the NFL for a while. They're with us now, and they're like, the difference in the crowd noise, and day to day, it is night and day. Now, NFL playoff games, not so much. But NFL weekend games, it's not even close to what you're experiencing in these games. But the tradition and the chance and everything like that, that is what college football is. It's what you are. You're the one that brings it to life because you go to campus and you get all these crazies. You've got people taking shirts off and running around.

51:27Absolutely not. That's Dan Olin. You didn't teach Dan that, Coach?

51:32Nick Saban:Absolutely not. Dan got that from Lane. That's not me. That's not me. Who's that coming down the track or what's that coming down the track? You got it, man. Who is it? Is it who's or what? You're supposed to know the answer to that. I know the answer to that. I grew up in Georgia. That's your job. But is it who or what? I don't know. You tell me. I think it's a generational problem you guys have. I do believe that. Don't you guys me. I'm good. I'm in there. I know. Yes. AJ has the last question for you. I do, Coach. As a player, when I think of you, I think of a hybrid of Steve Atwater, John Lynch back there just taking people's heads off.

52:07Nick Saban:Is that accurate? Could you say accurate yes or no? Absolutely not. Wow. As I remember you, I got to go work him out at Ohio State. He came, and I was at the Dolphins the year he came out. So I went, and they had a couple. He was Dante Wittner. They had some safeties. I went to Ohio State and got to work him out. It was the coolest thing in my life, getting to go to pro days at USC, UCLA, and I'm a pro coach and I get to go work these guys out. But when you turn it back to me, I was not any of those guys. I was the finesse guy that didn't make the Colts. I did pick off Peyton several times in practice, but I couldn't make the team because I couldn't tackle well enough.

52:38You had a spring and a training camp with the Colts? I was just a training camp. It was real short. It was the cup of coffee theory, right? So it was Peyton's second year. Transient. Yeah, transient. Not by my choice. I was definitely transient. Yeah, that was a one-way transient. Okay, as we look ahead, what does the rest of your day look like and morning look like before? I think you're joining us on game day. We appreciate that. But what happens with your team now until tomorrow? We lock in and focus and want to be able to play fast and free. So to do that, we've got to do a walk-through we do, a kind of routine we do to get some mental practice.

53:11And then we break up and go enjoy the evening. We've got a big volleyball game tonight. Our volleyball team is going to break our state record for attendance. We're going to bring some players over there because it's right next to us. So we're going to go check out a volleyball game for a few minutes and then get out of here. I love all sports. I'm a sports enthusiast. So I want to go support our volleyball team. Okay, so I want to watch the Penn State women's volleyball. They're the reigning national champions right now. They were playing against USC or UCLA. I forget which one it was, one of the California teams.

53:34They had a dome in there packed. Packed. Crazy. We're trying to pack it out tonight. It's unbelievable how athletic these women are now. Talking about athletic, jumping. I mean, we could sign a couple of them to block some field goals.

53:44Pat McAfee:Absolutely. Who was the player's daughter that was at Penn State? Kennedy Martin. Yeah, Ruvelle Martin's daughter. Do you know who that is?

53:53Nick Saban:No.

53:53Pat McAfee:She transferred in from Texas. What was – or Florida. Was he offensive lineman?

53:58Nick Saban:He was a receiver, actually. Then he was actually an assistant coach for a little bit in Green Bay. Not anymore. Nonetheless, his daughter, 6 '6", something like that, 6 '7". Soaring. She's playing weak side. She was on weak side, bang, went over to block power, and then ran around, hit another one over here. She's 6 '6". I love watching that. I love seeing the athleticism. Great sport. Great sport. Great sport. You've got a lot of them down here. And congrats on the beautiful setup and everything. And thank you for the hospitality, man. Thank you, guys. I appreciate what y 'all do for college football.

54:26You know, your fans tried to kick me out of a restaurant down here. Yeah, Carson Beck's dad. 20 people showed up at our show down here. And Carson Beck's dad spilled some water on Connor. All over, Coach. All the noise around this place towards me, you have been very kind to me. Absolutely. I'm very thankful for you. Just get who's that or what's that right. We'll be good.

54:48Pat McAfee:That's unbelievable. We appreciate you, man. Thank you so much. Back to you, boys. I'll be here in about a minute.

54:52Nick Saban:I love you said don't be you guys and me. I grew up here. I know what it is. Tony, you got any big games this weekend? Big college games? I know we do have a big college game. We got a heart out here coming in a couple minutes. There actually aren't any big games. There's not many big games. Oh, I know there's some big games. Obviously, this one's the one where game day. USC, Notre Dame, I'm circling that one, Tony. I don't want to cut you off. I'm circling that one. I would circle that, too, because honestly, I think the loser is done. Yeah, loser leaves town, Matt. Yes, because obviously Notre Dame, that's their third loss.

55:20It's going to be tough when all three of your losses are the three best teams that you played. And then SC, they've got one loss so far, but they still have a couple of hard teams left on their schedules. So there's probably another one coming. I do think the loser that is out, winner, has a really, really good chance to make the playoffs. And then obviously the Tennessee-Alabama game, winner's smoking cigars. Yeah, how'd that start?

55:43Nick Saban:Do we know? I don't know. They have told that story 17. I think it's awesome, by the way. They've told it a thousand times on game day, and I always forget, but that's awesome. And then, obviously, the Holy War, BYU and Utah. It's a great weekend of college football. Yeah. Pat, do you know why they, when they started smoking cigars, when you win that Tennessee-Alabama game?

56:02Pat McAfee:I do not know the exacts, but I do know it's a gigantic ordeal. I remember when we were there two years ago, I think, Desmond Howard got a photo with Peyton Manning smoking a cigar afterwards in the game, and it was like he has that up in his house, I think. I don't know the exact start time, but I do know that it is very real. And obviously, LSU Vandy being a real thing is crazy. Vandy continues to be awesome. Texas Tech spent a bunch of money, and it paid off. Them as 7.5 point favorites in Arizona State. Who's playing quarterback there? Sam Levin, I believe, because it went from 11.5 down to 7.5, so I think they're expecting Sam to play.

56:36Pat McAfee:And then, obviously, we saw Matt Leinart do the shove Push, push.

56:42Nick Saban:Push, push. It was a 20-year reunion. Is that right? Yeah. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. That's huge. We had a lot of big games. And then top 10 down here in Athens. Come on. Top 10 down here in Athens. Boom. It's perfect weather. It's a perfect day. Football is amazing.

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58:25Pat McAfee:This podcast is brought to you by the U.S. Department of State. And the ones who would say they, I don't know, I don't want to say anything because there's young dogs that believe that they've been dogs since birth as well. So I don't want to question it. But the older dogs, I believe, what's that coming down the track? And I believe there was some sort of generational that said, yeah, but we're people, though. So who's that coming down the track? So I think there is a little bit of a – so each time I do it, which is this is the best call in sports. This is the best call in sports. What they do here, the call of the dogs, by far.

58:56Pat McAfee:I mean, it's just so long. Drunk is mentioned in there. You know, like there's just – for it to be their thing, it is the coolest, I think. So it is a lot of fun to do it. And every time as I'm doing it, I'm like, all right, who are we pissing off here? What's that coming? And then the young – you know, it's – I'm lucky to do it. It's cool. This place has obviously a lot of deep history and tradition whenever it comes to football. You can go all the way back to the greats that played in the past and then of the recent history dominance that they have certainly had. and now hosting another top 10 game, which is going to happen seemingly anytime another team is a top 10 team with Kirby Smart as the head coach.

59:34Pat McAfee:And to your point about liking what he was saying, I liked everything about what he just did here. I thought he was awesome. That was maybe one of the best ones we've had with somebody. Yes. Go ahead, Ty. Yeah, without a doubt. Literally the first thing we kind of all said after we was like, man, he is unbelievable. It's impossible not to like that guy and not to root for that guy. And the amount of times he said, that's a Lane Kiffin thing. And they both get it, by the way. They both are very tight. It's like these football minds, these football people are special. We have Coach Saban joining us here in a matter of moments.

1:00:05And then we have Luke Combs and Bailey Zimmerman coming and joining us.

1:00:10Pat McAfee:They're both performing during game day tomorrow. I believe that that was – I mean, we'll ask them, but I believe that was agreed to ahead of time because schedules with everybody's life, especially fall, music, there's touring that's happening. Getting people to every single city every single week is pretty difficult. So the fact that these two locked in this weekend for game day to come put on a show for us. And, I mean, of course, the students that come out and kick ass every single week are the greatest. Like, we are so thankful for them. But me just getting a chance to watch his Luke Combs and Bailey Zimmerman concert tomorrow morning, I'm pretty pumped up.

1:00:42Yeah. I take it in.

1:00:44Pat McAfee:I turn my chair around. I kick the feet up. I mean, we're at a concert right now. And Luke Combs obviously is a guy that sells out arenas and is huge. People are even talking about him maybe being a Super Bowl halftime because everybody seemingly knows his stuff, and he has a range of doing it. And then Bailey Zimmerman is like 24 years old. He has like 10 hits already. So it's like these two dudes giving up their time to come do a show here, I'm very, very thankful for. So we'll chit-chat with them in the third hour. I know they're not from Georgia, so that is a little difficult because I got friends that are Georgia musicians as well, and it's like there's like 1 ,000 of them.

1:01:20Pat McAfee:There's like 1 ,000 of them. But I don't think, like, the scheduling is as easy as everybody just, you know what I mean? Sure. I don't know. I don't know if everybody takes that all. Me included. Because I'll send text. I got no say in anything. I'll send text. This is the dumbest decision of all time. Why are we? How are we trying to make a good show? Like, what are we? Are we trying to make the people like us? Or what are we? What's the goal here? And then I obviously get a full breakdown. Well, you know, like, people have this and then this. And to get to this, the closest airport is this. and it's just like a full, there's always something with everything.

1:01:55And on that note, we got Luke Combs and Bailey Zimmerman doing a concert tomorrow.

1:01:58Pat McAfee:And then Jelly Roll, who is one of the best speaking musicians. I think every time he speaks, there's always an entertaining thing. I think that's another scheduling thing that potentially happens. Now, I'm not saying that a Georgia musician, and I'm one of Jelly Roll's, I'm maybe Jelly Roll's biggest fan. I mean, as soon as I do Big Night Out back in Pittsburgh, my first call is to Jelly Roll. Jelly Roll has impacted and made my life a lot better as a friend. And Jelly Roll, I think, on the flip side, would say, like, hey, Pat's a pretty cool guy. Like, I think Jelly Roll would say we're friends.

1:02:25I do believe that, like, somebody from Georgia would be a good guest picker for a Georgia game. But if it's not, like, Jelly Roll is the perfect human. This guy is the greatest.

1:02:36Pat McAfee:Like, Jelly Roll's story, his music, everything about him, how he gives back to everybody. Like, he's special. So I'm excited for tomorrow just in general. We got a lot of really cool and talented people a part of our program. James Franklin's going to be here.

1:02:48Nick Saban:Crazy. Really? Is this the first announcement of that? I feel like you teased it earlier in the week, maybe. No, no. I don't know if we teased it or gave it away, but they announced that James Franklin's going to be there. It's like, good show coming tomorrow. I think good show tomorrow. Now, the Georgia students for game day, I think, you know, have had a lot of game days. I think they've had a lot of game days. I think we all, as people that are relatively new to game day,

1:03:15Pat McAfee:understand that and how you go to like a James Madison, And in the entire, everybody that's ever gone to school there shows up. It's like 30 ,000 people, and they're like so pumped. It's like some of these places, obviously, game day's been to a lot. So it's not as, you know, maybe. But I think they're going to show up. From what I've been told, the crowd's going to be awesome tomorrow morning. I don't know if they're good kickers or not. I don't know how expensive it's going to be. Last time we were here, Bell Sessions and Henry Silver were a special moment. And I got a handwritten letter this morning from Bell.

1:03:46Pat McAfee:Oh, really? Handwritten. Nice. It was one of the nicest cards I've ever read in my life. That girl right there, Belle. Belle Sessions and then Henry Silver, the kicker from Indiana who went to school down here. This is, I believe this is last year when we were down here. Yes, last year. And I had just gotten a surgery to take out my, what was the thing in the back of your mouth? Wisdom tooth. Yeah, you remember that? I had a wisdom tooth that was cracked in the back of my mouth for like five weeks. It hurt so bad. I couldn't make it anymore. had to get surgery to get that thing removed, was on all types of painkillers.

1:04:20Pat McAfee:Come down here to Georgia for game day, and all of a sudden we're giving away$800 ,000. So, I mean, it was a magical moment. And Bell wrote me a letter, and it was one of the nicest things I've ever read. So it's been great down here. I think tomorrow's going to be spectacular. But to Tone's point from the last hour, the college football slate's amazing, as is the NFL slate. And last night's game, AJ, I think was a good starter for NFL Week 7. Anytime you've got two teams scoring 30-plus points, the average viewer is going to enjoy that. That's going to be a, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've got a lot going on.

1:04:52Pat McAfee:Not a lot of good defense, though. You know, last night the box score, 54 plays for the Steelers, 72 plays for the Cincinnati Bengals. So you talk about Chase Brown. He, I mean, out of Illinois, I think he was at Western Michigan maybe before that, transfer in there. We did a little research on him as we were watching him just dominate last night. He's special, dude. This guy's fun to watch. And everybody talks about that offensive lineup being great. If you can run the ball well, that helps out the offensive line for everything. Now, you have to have an offensive line to be able to run the ball well, and they were able to do that against a Pittsburgh Steelers defense that we thought was going to be able to be good against it.

1:05:25Pat McAfee:So I think there was a lot of positives shown last night from an offensive side. Defensive side, without Trey Hendrickson, Cincinnati Bengals were able to get a win. Congrats to them. And I guess the Steelers fans are worried their defense stinks. And if you're the Bengals, it's like, holy hell, we stole one, AJ. It feels like we might have stole one here with Joe Flacco as our quarterback without Trey Hendrickson on the defensive side, AJ.

1:05:45Nick Saban:Yeah, I know. With Joey Burrow on the sideline cheering his team on in the boot. Do we know when exactly – or estimated time of return for Joe Burrow? Did they say last night in the broadcast? I haven't figured it out. No, no. He's growing his hair out a little bit, letting it hang. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly when it is. The emo hair was cool, and then once they were winning, he put a hat on to cover it up, which was awesome. But I'm not sure exactly when he's coming back. I think the timeline was, what, three months when it initially happened. So people were kind of speculating end of November, maybe mid-November, depending on how it all goes.

1:06:18But, I mean, just seeing him on the sidelines, seeing him in a boot, seeing him walking around, moving around, it makes me think like, okay, well, Burrow is a tough son of a bitch. Like, if he can get back early, he's going to. He's at least going to try. So that's why, like, one win, even, you know, you look at it, okay, they're three and four. But, you know, if they win one more game without Joe Burrow and then Joe Burrow comes back with time to, you know, get it done, I have complete faith that Joe Burrow is going to run the table and get the Bengals in the playoffs. He damn near did it last year.

1:06:49I like the fact that Joe Burrow said, I'm going through this rehab. I'm not cutting my hair. I'm just going to grow this thing out. All I'm worried about is getting healthy and coming back. He's an Ohio guy. Obviously, we think he's tough. We appreciate that he was out there last night. I saw somebody tweet and call him my chemical Joe Burrow. That's great. Did you see that? That's a great tweet.

1:07:11Pat McAfee:I laughed very hard. Yeah, I agreed with it. I did appreciate the hair in front of the eyes. I appreciate he's got long swag. Maybe he goes with some braids. Maybe cornrow that thing back and see what he's looking like whenever he comes back. Maybe the moxie level will be put so high that Cincinnati Bengals can't help but win. I don't think we watch the Cincinnati Bengals and we think they can win a Super Bowl right now. But I do think we think that the Cincinnati Bengals can have a season that isn't ass, right? That is kind of where we're at, AJ.

1:07:37Nick Saban:Yeah, I feel like last – so I was in the stadium and I heard multiple fans say it a couple times, hey, we need this. This would be so big for us. A win here would be so good for our, like, morale for what we're doing. It would keep us alive, and that's exactly what it did, Ty. When you look at it, I guess when you're watching the Bengals' offense, all right, we saw two defenses that I guess could not really get a stop when they needed it. Set a straight touchdown. Can you figure it out? Do you think these defenses – can the Bengals' defense figure it out to, I don't know, maybe make somewhat of a push in the playoffs or get to the playoffs?

1:08:06I mean, I don't know. I think we're kind of high on Joe Flacco, throwing for almost 350 yards and three touchdowns. I don't know if we can expect their defense all of a sudden to be holding teams to 10 points. I don't think that's going to happen. I think they played pretty well. But in my mind, I was big on, hey, get this Bengals team off primetime. This needs to be done. Now you look ahead at that Thanksgiving game, the script is flipped. Now everything's on the Ravens. Hey, we've got to see what the Ravens are like after the bye week. I want to watch Joe Flacco on Thanksgiving night. Exactly.

1:08:36And I think that's what every, you know, didn't want to watch Jake Browning on Thanksgiving night. I'm all in for watching Joe Flacco on Thanksgiving.

1:08:44Nick Saban:My buddy told me, he texted me, he felt like Joe Flacco was on beta blockers. He was so calm and so in the moment. It looked like Joe was never flustered, never even sweat. He was out there just doing his thing. I don't know. Pat, I think you have the GOAT actually with you on campus right now, right?

1:09:02Pat McAfee:Yeah, I have a man that could obviously go into a Thursday night football game and win it right now if you were to put a whistle around his neck, just like Joe Flacco was able to do when getting traded to Cincinnati, the greatest of all time, ladies and gentlemen, Nick Saban. Hey, Coach. Thanks, guys. Coach, I see the families here. I love that. I see a good crew, Jimmy Sexton's over there, which we need to keep his ass away from the field goal kick. Every time he shows up at the field goal kick, they make it. And if you watch that Georgia one, Henry and Bell, guess who's dead center right behind the kick?

1:09:32Pat McAfee:Jimmy Sexton there costing a lot of money to go out of the pocket. And then we tell them not to do it. Hey, don't do it. Okay? Then Penn State, you go ahead and watch that film. Guess whose head's creeping into the Penn State? Jimmy Sexton back there. So this man is synonymous with people getting paid. And in my experience, it's been all the kickers. So great to see you, Jimmy. You're the man. Great to see you, Jimmy. It's almost Jimmy Sexton season, by the way. It is almost Jimmy Sexton season. Let's talk about this season we're talking about. Last night, Aaron Rodgers, 41 years old. Joe Flacco, 40 years old.

1:10:03Joe Flacco got traded to that team like 10 days ago. Aaron Rodgers' first year there, they're both leading their teams to incredible outcomes. Now the Bengals win last night, the Steelers doing well. What are your thoughts on older quarterbacks? At that position, having that much knowledge or, I guess, experience has to be a benefit. How do you view these two guys playing well at this age? Well, these two guys have played well their entire career. I don't think that if you put them in the right teams with the right kind of guys around them, they're going to be able to continue to play well because their decision-making, to make bad plays for their team, and they're going to put themselves in winning position.

1:10:41I mean, Joe Flacco has done it for years, and wherever he's been. I mean, he helped Cleveland play halfway decent when he was there. Made the playoffs off the couch. Yeah, I mean, and now he goes to Cincinnati, who couldn't win a game before, and they go out and beat the Steelers, who are a really good football team. So I think older quarterbacks can play in the NFL, providing they have the right kind of people around them. And also still the physical capabilities. Joe Flacco can spin it. Aaron Rodgers threw it 69.8 yards last night, which is the longest recorded pass thrown in the NFL since 2017.

1:11:14Pat McAfee:Unbelievable. He's 41 years old. Threw that thing 70 yards. Unbelievable. That's insane. That is wild. It is. That is crazy. Yeah, I saw him throw a beer, though, Coach. We talked about it in the first hour playing times before. We were at Lake Tahoe at that golf tournament you need to go and win. You know what I'm talking about out there? Yeah. The American Century. And he rents a house. It's a big house. and he woke up, there was somebody in the lake 200 yards away. How far is that lake? It was at least genuinely 150 yards. From an elevated position too. But elevated position though, you know, so like houseway up here, lake out here from kitchen throws this thing, hits the dude's tube that he's sitting on in the lake and we all, I was rather high coach, you understand that, it's California and we all started like taking it in, we're like, did that guy just throw a beer can 100 yards Then we ask him about it.

1:12:05He's like, I feel like I'll always be able to spin it. But if you listen to Drew Brees talk at the end of his career, he's basically like, I'm trying to hang on physically because my brain is at a level that obviously is an advantage over everybody else. So physically, if we can just hang on, I'll be able to get the most out of it. Aaron obviously doing that. Joe Flacco obviously doing that. Other NFL stories that I'd like your take on. It involves your former quarterback, Tua. Tua, I think, made one of the most accountable statements that I've seen in a long time from a player when he was correcting something that he did after a game where he basically called out some teammates unnamed and then threw teammates under the bus.

1:12:39And then a couple of days later, he immediately went out and was like, I shouldn't have done that. I added more noise to the outside, owned it. It was beautiful. Whenever you see something like that happening with a former player, especially when you care about like Tua, do you reach out and send him advice? Do you say like, hey, I'm proud of the way you handled that? Like, how does that kind of go with you? Well, I am proud of the way he handled it. But one of the things that I always try to tell our players is, you know, you never criticize another player. And in my entire coaching career, you never ever saw me criticize one of our players.

1:13:07You know, I think everybody's got to take responsibility for what they can control. And if you start worrying about things that you can't control, that's going to start affecting things that you can control. But if everybody takes responsibility for their own self-determination and do what they can do to make the team better. So I was really shocked that Tua did what he did when he threw some guys under the bus. And, you know, maybe they're not playing the way they should play. I'm not taking up for the guys. But you don't say that about your teammate. But I really was proud of the way he came back and sort of took accountability for making a mistake.

1:13:44Gumpy was really riding a wave, as you could tell, I would assume, as that was happening. Well said, Coach. Well said. Yeah. Coach Saban understands how big of a Dolphins fan Gumpy is. and obviously Coach Saban, a former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, a former head coach of Alabama, and obviously your coaching tree is huge. This weekend, it's been well documented about Lane Kiffin and Kirby. We just had Kirby on. Yeah. He was awesome. Yeah. He was absolutely incredible. Talking about how different he was from Lane, though, and obviously Lane vastly different than Kirby, and I think Lane's saying the same thing.

1:14:15What do you see from these two head coaches and the teams that they represent? And I know it's a weird thing to continue to ask you if you're proud, But whenever you see the way they are doing, that obviously feels good for you. And everybody just talks about coaching trees. They never talk about how the tree feels, if that makes sense. No, I feel great about it. I love it that guys that have been involved in our program and contributed to a larger degree to the success that we had. I mean, those guys were, you know, Kirby was a big part of being a great coordinator for a long time who really contributed to the success of our program.

1:14:46To see them knowing that they want to go out and have the opportunity to be head coaches and to see them be able to go out and do it successfully is, you know, something I'm really proud of because we helped them do what they want to do. They helped us do what we wanted to do. So it's kind of a give and take. And Lane and Kirby are very different. But it shows you that, you know, there's more than one way to skin a cat. But both these guys fundamentally are not that far apart in terms of the football part of it and what you get across with discipline and execution and good game planning. And even though they systematically might be a little different, they still know what it takes to win, and both of them in their own way do a really good job of executing it with the players they have.

1:15:35Your coaching tree is pretty average. Last week we were out in Oregon, Dan Lanning and Kurt Signetti. Kurt Signetti now$93 million. Congrats to him. That's good.

1:15:45Pat McAfee:Yeah, congrats to him. We're all happy for you, Kurt. Congrats to that. And Indiana, by the way, saying, hey, we're the real deal. And Kurt Signetti announced on our show yesterday, and I guess IU tweeted it out before, they have the largest alumni base, living alumni base in America. And I don't know if that means signed up to be an active alumni or whatever, but it's like 805 ,000 people. They obviously have$93 million to give Signetti after they redid his deal last year just to kind of make a statement like, hey, we're in this thing for the long haul. But last week, and congrats to him and them, life-changing money.

1:16:16He's earned it. Good for him. and him betting on himself to go do this, all cool. But last week, Dan Lanning, Kurt Cignetti. Now it's Kirby and it's Lane. And it's like four different ways of doing ball, though. Isn't it kind of four different ways of doing ball? Do you think that? And why was your system able to take in all these different personalities and still seemingly have the same Alabama team throughout? Well, I think that the key to our success was always the culture that we created. And I think that every one of these guys that you're talking about have created a culture with their players to be able to have success.

1:16:49You know, this is what you have to do to create value for yourself and for the team. They all do it in a different way, but they all create a culture in their organization that gives the players the best opportunity to have success and their team's the best opportunity to win. And they're all the same in that. But I do commend Indiana for making the commitment because, you know, Kirk Signetti would have been the first guy on everybody's list to hire for every job based on what he's done at Indiana and what he's done at other programs that he's been at and the success that he's had his entire career.

1:17:23So for them to step up at this point in time and lock him down is really smart on their part if they want to continue to have success as a football program. Okay, so I think we just heard what you would be thinking if you were Penn State there before yesterday's announcement of the extension. you said any job anywhere a lot of people are thinking penn state's going to be the bell of the ball obviously because of all the resources you think even at his age pat craft up there in penn state would have been like if sig can do what he did in indiana now i'm once again i would like

1:17:51Pat McAfee:to say i think a lot of people don't know how much money indiana has like i i think i think mark cuban obviously doesn't have an nba team anymore he's a very proud hoosier graduate he actually made his money and became a billionaire the first time because he was trying to listen to hoosier basketball games. So whenever you talk about alumni being sport people and being wealthy, Indiana has some of that. But whenever you think about Penn State or any of these other jobs, I think it happened at Indiana whenever he got hired. You don't think age is an issue because he feels like he's 45 years older and he's out there coaching?

1:18:20Is that something they should think about? And who do you think Penn State ends up going? What is he, 62? Yeah, I think so. We went to the playoffs when I was 72, so I think he's got some years left.

1:18:35Oh, that was awesome. Good for you, dude. You're a little fucking different, though, as you understand. But so is Signetti. So is Signetti. No, he is different. He is in a good way. I think so. He's great for Indiana. They're great for Indiana. He came on our show the other day, and I think Ty asked him the question about how, hey, you're seemingly not creating as many, like, gifts or, like, quotes. And he said in the first eight hours that he was on campus, he had to change everybody's thoughts on everything. So he said he went back to, like, whenever he was 40 years old and started talking his shit.

1:19:06He said he doesn't feel like he has to do it anymore. Now he's still that same person, but he feels like for the good of the program, he doesn't really have to let everybody know that they're here because it feels like maybe more respect is for them, if that makes sense. I think that's smart, and I think it's smart on his part because you do want to create an image that's a positive image that people want to be a part of, and I think he's doing a good job of that. I like that you said last year, though, at Notre Dame, what I didn't teach you is all that shit you've been talking about.

1:19:32Pat McAfee:I wish Shig would have went to you in the moment and be like, I have to. I just want to Indiana. They didn't even have a weight room, bro. I had to do this whole thing. Him calling his shot crazy. AJ has a question for you, Coach.

1:19:43Nick Saban:Yeah, Coach, obviously Penn State moves on from James Franklin. I'm just wondering, whenever they do bring in the new coach, whoever that might be, what's their first message? What's their first, like, what's their agenda? What do they need to do that first week to really ensure success moving forward? Well, you know, obviously they've got to hire somebody that has a history of having some success, who knows how to develop a program and continue to win, and to deal with success. You know, one of the things that people talk about with James Franklin is, couldn't win the big game. Well, but how many people beat those teams?

1:20:16You know, like people used to get on them about not beating us, but we didn't beat very much. Yeah, we get it. So, I mean, there's some give and take in all that in terms of, and you actually put, being James Franklin, put them in a position to do that because they weren't in a position to do it before, and he created an expectation that really was difficult for him to live up to, but he created it. So the next person is going to have to do the same thing but then learn how to deal with success and get the program over the hump. So it's going to have to be somebody who can win over the people who support the program as well as win over the people that you need to get in the program, whether it's coaches and players, to be able to get you to that level.

1:21:03We talked about you said people in the program, people that – what you were alluding to there is I think the donors, the boosters, because over there they have a lot of resources. They have a lot of money. Right. And I would assume that that money gets a little bit more free-flowing if they have full belief in what's happening. So winning them over is a massive piece of the job, right? Isn't that kind of a piece of it all? No question. But there's also a little bit of a downside that goes with that because when those people do give to the program, make a commitment to the program, they also think they have a bit of a voice in the program.

1:21:36Yeah, I see. Which can get you hired but can also get your ass fired. Yes, it certainly can. And there's a lot of money being handed over and there's not a lot of ROI on that. They're not getting any money back. That money is a donation for players and for things you need. And if we're not winning, I don't even get a chance to enjoy it with my family. I do this entirely. It's a crazy time right now. Crazy time right now. And I think the players should get paid. I think they should have name, image, and likeness. But I think this is a system that's not really good for college football to be in this position.

1:22:10For players, coaches, and I want to see the players do well. I want to see them get rewarded. but the system of how the money flows is not the best way to do it for college athletics.

1:22:21Pat McAfee:You know how they say in everything, follow the money. Literally, everything is like follow the money. And then you start seeing college football, everybody's like follow the money, follow the money, follow the money. Every once in a while, you're going to get a Kurt Signetti to come through and build a program up out of the ashes. Right. Literally the ashes. That wasn't even a football program. I said this to him yesterday, and I know the people at Indiana probably understand this as well. when Kirk Herbstreit said they were 1-71 in those games at the beginning of game day last week, and I tried to get in, like, they didn't have a football team until last year.

1:22:49Right. This dude literally built them a fucking football program. That's exactly right. But now other people are going to think it's possible. That's right. And that creates an expectation. Yes, it does. And that's not great news. Tone has a question for you, Coach. Yeah, Coach, when I think of your defenses, when I think of Kirby's defense and those national titles, like I always think of sacks and chaos, tackles for loss, stuff like that, pressures. When I was looking at Georgia this week, they have eight sacks in six games, which just mind-boggled me. That's not Georgia. So why do you think that is?

1:23:19Because I know Kirby's still recruiting five stars up front on the D-line. Do you need to have sacks and TFLs and stuff like that to win a national championship? I don't think. I think affecting a quarterback is really, really important to winning. I don't think there's any statistical data that would say how many sacks you get contributes to winning. But affecting the quarterback does, and sacks are a part of that. Tackles for a loss are a part of creating positive down a distance where you can do things to confuse the quarterback. So I agree with all that. But, you know, the difference in your team is you always have a lot of good players.

1:23:59But how many real difference makers do you have? So to have a difference maker that's a pass rusher, just like a big difference in Penn State's defense, not to beat a dead horse here, but the guy that was the first guy picked in the draft last year made a huge difference in pass rush and how he affected the quarterback and how they got off the field on third down. So just taking that one guy away that is a disruptive player and a difference maker can make a huge difference in how you play defense and how well you do on third down. When you play the system that we played and play the system that Kirby plays, 3-4, you need bigger guys.

1:24:37You need a big nose guard. You need two pretty big four eyes. So you've got to have a couple outside backers. Well, the outside backers have got to become the pass rushers because those big guys are not going to be the pass rushers. So that's one of the downsides of playing a 3-4 defense is you need bigger people to play those inside positions that don't convert well to third down. So you've got to make sure you recruit enough outside backers like Will Anderson and people like that who can rush on third down and become the defensive ends for you that can create pressure. What's the upside? Are you able to stop the run?

1:25:09Stop the run, yeah, I think. And multiples that you can create on defense with four linebackers instead of three.

1:25:16Pat McAfee:Here's a stat from Hembo about what we were just talking about there with impacting the quarterback. Georgia's opponents have a QBR of 73.7 this season, 131st in the country. They're just not impacting the QB, says Hembo. Eight sacks on 209 dropbacks. But what you're saying is they're not potentially built to be able to get pressure on the quarterback every single time. They have other positives. QBR 73.7, not great news for anybody. But when they were really good, they had people who could affect the quarterback. Yes. They actually had those people. But I think one of the issues for Georgia has been getting off the field on third down.

1:25:51A part of that is how do you affect the quarterback? So those two things go hand in hand. Oh, my God. You talk about the 3-4 with the big bodies. And you say, like, the middle guy is supposed to eat, not necessarily get to the quarterback. They had Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis, right, at the same time? Yeah. And Nolan Smith. And Coach's big boys a lot of times. And the Philadelphia Eagles.

1:26:11Pat McAfee:They had the Philadelphia Eagles defense, right? That's right. That's what they had? They had. Oh, my gosh. Yep. And those guys were, you know, to me, people talk about defensive linemen. there's only one thing that makes you a good defensive lineman. Your ass is hard to block. And those two guys were hard to block. Amen. Amen. Toxic Table, Ty Schmidt has a question for you, Coach. Yeah, Coach, one of the other marquee matchups this weekend, USC going to South Bend. A lot of people think it's pretty much like a title eliminator, kind of. I'm just curious, with Lincoln Riley, like a couple years ago, he was the belle of the ball.

1:26:48People were talking about him maybe even getting the Cowboys head coaching job. He's had a couple things go okay for him at USC with Caleb being the number one overall pick, but when they moved to the Big Ten, it was kind of just early on like they're just getting out-physicaled by everybody. If a team is more physical, which a lot of teams in the Big Ten are, they're not going to win. They've started to look a little bit better this year being able to run the football and kind of standing up against some of those other teams. Do you think Lincoln Riley's got USC kind of moving back in the right direction, or What do you think about this USC team?

1:27:23Yeah, I do. I think they're definitely moving in the right direction. I said, first of all, I think they're the only team in the Big Ten that scored 30-plus points in every game. So they're still doing a good job on offense. The issue to me with Lincoln Rally's team was how physical can we play on defense? Can we stop the run? Can we create positive down-and-distance situations? And they're doing a better job of that. You know, they are doing a better job of playing defense. They're creating a lot of negative plays. They're one of the top teams in the country in sacks and affecting the quarterback.

1:28:00And you can't do that unless you can stop the run because you've got to create positive down-and-distance situations for your defense so that you can give some looks that confuse the quarterback and you can pressure the quarterback. And I think last week against Michigan, you know, they stopped the run and they did a good job. Now, can they continue to do that in terms of their ability to play? So for Notre Dame, to me, the number one thing they need to do is they need to be able to control the line of scrimmage and run the ball so that they don't let Southern Cal get in the kind of situations where they can affect their quarterback.

1:28:34Because I think USC is going to score some points no matter who they play. So it's going to be how can we keep from getting beat on the other side of the ball. Yeah, keep them off the field is a good idea. keep the offense on field, run the rock. Notre Dame should be able to do that. They are a good running team. And once again, Notre Dame, two losses are to Texas A &M and Miami, who might be the two best teams in the country at this point. We have no idea. So if they're able to get a win over USC, I think that helps out their college football playoff conversation at the end of the

1:29:01Pat McAfee:year mightily. And then USC, if they get a win here over Notre Dame and then still go on to win the Big Ten, I mean, they got obviously an incredible season. There's some stats here from Hembo that aren't great about Lincoln Riley traveling, and we've heard Lincoln Riley talk about this whenever he has to do a thousand miles plus of travel okay that's so far by the way one in six win loss oh and seven against the spread five of six losses by one score uh the other is 28 point loss in Notre Dame in 2023 they've been talking about this travel a lot Lincoln has and I think his teams have not done well what is that why why because you hear obviously Oregon Dan Lanning will never talk about it the travel you know and uh we heard Kirby Smart say yeah people use excuses whenever they have the opportunity to do it, and the travel certainly is one.

1:29:42What do you think it is about a team that maybe can't handle the travel? Is it nutrition? Is it health? Is it mindset? What would you do if your team had to travel like that? I think it's mindset. I used to tell our guys, I don't care if we play in a parking lot on a gravel field. As long as they make it 53 yards wide and 100 yards deep, you've got to be ready to go play. None of that outside noise matters about traveling, time of the game, night game, day game, none of it matters. You have to prepare yourself to go out there and execute no matter what the circumstances are. But I think every time that you sort of create this fragile mentality, I'm going to call it, about something, whether it's playing on the road, whether it's playing against noise, whether it's traveling across the country, you're just telling everybody in your organization, we've got to build on an excuse here.

1:30:36rather than making it an opportunity to do something special by overcoming adversity, which is really what you need to be selling as a leader. You know, how are we going to frame this up so we got a chance to overcome these obstacles? That's how you want your competitors to think. Yeah, you don't want your team thinking we have an excuse already, and even our coach is saying it. You want them to think, hey, we do have an opportunity to do something special. Other teams might lack in the travel. We are actually stronger than the travel. Right, which if we can do that, we're creating an advantage for ourselves knowing that most people can't do it.

1:31:10Yeah, we get to flex our shit a little bit. That's it. I always want to flex our shit. You're good at that. Yeah. Got to. Got to. We had a good press release this week, Coach. We had a good press release this week. We learned of a stat or a – I don't even know what the hell it is – emotional quotient. I assume you know what that is, but Connor has a question about EQ for you. Yeah, Coach, Big Mike McCarthy blew our minds on Wednesday when he dropped this topic that he wanted to talk about when it came to NFL QB's emotional quotient. Before these last two days, NFL Films actually had an awesome week because they posted a cool puka video of him mic'd up.

1:31:51There was an awesome video of Danny Dimes mic'd up, and then Bryce Young was the other one. It was incredible. Just him kind of telling the team, you know, stick with me. They were down early. hey, we always finish well and kind of just motivating the team. And then, of course, they end up coming back and beating the Cowboys. But when it comes to Bryce Young, why do you think right now a lot of people, myself included, are kind of just surprised by how well he has bounced back both this season and last season after he got benched? And what is it about Bryce Young that we or myself have kind of learned over these mic'd ups about what a leader he is and how positive he is and what kind of leader he is that you probably have always known about that we didn't really know.

1:32:37Can you just speak on that, especially when it comes to just his emotional kind of awareness when he's talking to his team and leading these comebacks and things of that nature? Yeah, well, first of all, Bryce has the right psychological disposition to be successful. But I think one of the things that probably impacted Bryce a little bit in the beginning of his career is Bryce is a point guard playing quarterback, and he can make all the throws and all the plays. He's athletic, but he's got to have some decent players around him, and I think when he first went to Carolina, they didn't have a very good supporting cast around him, which I think was a bit of a problem.

1:33:14I think now they've gotten some better weapons on offense. He can take advantage of those things. But, you know, to Mike McCarthy's deal is, you know, I always talked to players about being emotional

1:33:28versus playing with emotion. Playing with emotion is important from a competitive standpoint, and I think Bryce Young does that very, very well. But once you get emotional, you lose your ability to think and make good choices and decisions about what you do, whether it's getting a penalty, forcing a ball, making a bad throw, or whatever. And Bryce Young, to that point, he doesn't do that. He can stay where he needs to stay no matter what happens in the game. He never got frustrated when things didn't go well. He never got way up here when we were having a lot of success. And he always prepared the same way for every game.

1:34:04And I think that's what he's doing now. I think it's starting to pay off for their team. Yeah, I like what the Panthers are doing. I like Bryce Young's leadership. That mic'd up for me was a huge deal for him. Honestly, they called Bryce Young the Steph Curry of basketball or Steph Curry of the draft whenever he was coming out. That was like a big thing. And I think what they meant was he is a point guard. That is how he plays. He has a good sense of feel, and he can change the game, and he's athletic, and he can make moves. But then as we see the Carolina Panthers thing kind of unfold, we just think, well, this guy's career is going to go into the dumps.

1:34:32They've turned that entire place around. I think Bryce's legacy could become one of this guy being, you know, Cam Newton obviously did his thing down there at Carolina, and he was beloved. But if he's able to win there, he'll be beloved in Carolina forever, Coach, forever down there. Yeah, and I'm very, very hopeful. Like, you know, I always root for our players. Obviously you want to see them do well, just like the coaches that we talked about. But in Bryce's case, you know, he did such a fantastic job for us. To see him do well, I think especially after a little bit of a rocky start, is, you know, something that I'd love to see happen.

1:35:06Good resiliency. Resiliency. Which is what Coach Smart was talking about with his team. He was talking about Tennessee. He was talking about Auburn, how they were down and out, and they showed good resiliency. In the second half, they've been playing great, so they've been able to bounce back. Haven't started out the best, which he acknowledged like 14 times. But resiliency is a big trait, man. And we're worried. I think all of us are worried that it's going to go out the door with all this easy exit stuff that's happening with NIO and transfer. Well, I think that's the challenge. I think, you know, for a team to show resiliency, that's why I like Georgia's team.

1:35:34Because you either have that or you don't. And you see more and more teams that don't have that. So the ability to overcome adversity makes you a great competitor. And they've shown time and time again that they can do that. But, you know, a lot of teams, you know, don't have the capacity, whatever you want to call it, to have that. So when you have resiliency, and that's what I told Kirby after the Tennessee game. I said, I know you're going to look at the film and think there's a lot of things we can correct. But the one thing your team showed in that game was resiliency to keep coming back in the game.

1:36:06And that's probably more important at this point in the season because you can fix a lot of the rest of the stuff. Yeah, Kirby was awesome on our show.

1:36:14Pat McAfee:Coach, you'd been proud of his performance. Legitimately, I don't want to talk out of pocket here. Kirby was incredible in the first hour. He was great. He seemed way too comfortable with us. He seems very confident. Well, that's a good thing. I know. If the players don't think that you're confident and that you can win and that if they believe that if they go out and execute and do their job, they're going to be successful. controlling what they can control. But, you know, the one thing to me that Georgia has created a huge advantage for themselves is the competitive disposition that they've been able to play with this season so far to overcome adversity.

1:37:02They do bloody Tuesday still.

1:37:03Pat McAfee:They're still grinding pounds out there with Kirby Smart. Last question here for you, Coach, comes from A.J. Hawk in the Thunderdome.

1:37:11Nick Saban:Yeah, Coach, Kirby was on here earlier, and he was awesome. It sounds like he and Lane have a very good relationship, kind of taking jabs back and forth at each other through the media. Now, Kirby said Lane would sit next to him in your staff meetings at times and be whispering in Kirby's ear trying to talk maybe while you were presenting or someone else. Do you remember any of those staff meetings? Did you ever have to separate them like you were a teacher, like in a fifth-grade class?

1:37:34Nick Saban:Come on. All right, so they did sit next to each other. All right, Lane was like, you know, a first grader who could not not talk during class. And Kirby was always sitting there saying, like, I would never talk in class. You know, I mean, that's how different they were. But they were really good friends and liked each other. And I know they text a lot and kid each other about a lot of things right now and have a tremendous amount of respect for each other as well in terms of what kind of coaches they are and the challenge it is to play, you know, each other. and that was one of the fun things that we had.

1:38:11I think, you know, when our guys started becoming head coaches other places and we had to play all these guys that used to be assistants, you know, it was kind of fun to have to compete against somebody you had a tremendous amount of respect for, but they were also your really good friends. But the point I was going to make earlier, you know, both of these guys have created tremendous expectations for their fan base. You know, Lane's done it at Ole Miss. Kirby's done it here at Georgia. And what you don't want to happen when that happens, which happened to us, I felt like in our last two or three years at Alabama, is the players start playing not to mess up a lot of anxiety.

1:38:54And I think this may be one of the issues that Georgia gets a slow start. You know, their players are so anxious and wanting to do well so badly, badly, they're not cutting it loose and just playing early on.

1:39:06Pat McAfee:So then when we're at the second half, we've got nothing to lose. That's right. And then they play like they're capable of playing. And I think that's created by expectations. And, you know, I mean, I remember the game we lost at Tennessee, you know, on the last second field goal when we missed a field goal to win the game. You know, our players used to always do this chant when we come out, you know, like in the locker room. And we're getting ready to come out of Tennessee, and they're totally quiet. And I turn around and say, what the hell is wrong with you guys? And they were nervous. I can't even do it.

1:39:39I mean, it's a crazy chant. But it was like traditional for them to, this is what we do before we go out and play. And all of a sudden, we're not doing that because we're so worried about winning the game and there's so much on the line and there's so much anxiety. And then we just went out and played like, I mean, terrible, you know, in the first half of that game. So I see that happening more and more to teams because there's so much social media. There's so much expectation created. There's so much talk about getting into playoffs. A lot of money. Money. A lot about the money, about how much.

1:40:13You know, I taught you that. Anyway. I think the money adds to the expectations, though. Obviously, you've got a 19-year-old kid getting paid$2 million, and then you've also got expectations you're supposed to win the Heisman. Then also you're supposed to win every game. You can see how potential anxiety starts to creep in and the pressure of it all starts to weigh on you a little bit, especially in front of a hundred and some thousand people that these games are playing. No question, but just think of all the people who didn't pay Indiana's quarterback$2 million. They wish that it paid him$4 million.

1:40:43Yes, they, yes, they certainly. There's no, hey, it's not about the money.

1:40:47Pat McAfee:It's about how much. How much. Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest of all time, a guy whose coaching tree is literally just kind of what we're following around on College Game Day for the biggest games of every single weekend. That's Coach Nick Saban. Yay! Appreciate it, man.

1:41:02Nick Saban:Thank you, Coach. I like how he says, you guys are football guys. You ask football questions, you think? Can you imagine seeing him up there speaking and seeing Lane Kiffin and Kirby Smart and Kirby? I've actually been that guy. I've got a friend, Bobby Carpenter, who kind of was like that, and I would sit there and he would be Luke Fickle as our linebacker coach, and Bobby would be, you know, drawing spaceships on my papers and trying to get my attention. Oh, now you're that guy. I'm paying attention. I'm paying attention up here. No, it's just there's a time and place for it, obviously. I mean, every single time that we've ever been on a desk together at a remote location, you're trying to spaceships on my paper.

1:41:37Just trying to keep the mood loose, you know? Sure. Sure. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, you are that guy, though. You can act like, you know, when you were playing, like, oh, you know, I was laser-focused walking to what Coach Fickle was saying. You are that jackass in every other, you know, realm of life, pretty much.

1:41:52Nick Saban:Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to deny that. I won't deny it. Yeah, I guess it just depends on the crowd that you're around and what you may be doing. But you need that sometimes. Who do you guys have this weekend at Ohio State? Wisconsin. Ooh, Coach Fickle. I know. How are we feeling? It's tough for him. I mean, I feel for him because Coach Fickle is one of the good guys, great coach, awesome human being. I just don't know if you can win there right now. Yeah, people want Fickle up in New England. I'm being dead serious. I mean, he and Vrabel are best friends, so it would make sense if he did. But, yeah, I feel bad for Luke in Wisconsin.

1:42:21Nick Saban:I don't know. I don't know what the future holds for him. But, Pat, Coach Saban was awesome. I thought he was great. He was loose. Seemed to have fun.

1:42:28Pat McAfee:Unbelievable vibes here in Athens, I'm going to say. Oh, yeah. This has been very spectacular. I love where we're set up at, too. It's like we've got sports happening around us. I think the track, field, and cross-country team kind of hubbed here until they move into their new facility. What I was told here at the Butts Mirror Heritage Hall, they used to house, obviously, the track and field. They're building a brand-new facility down the road because current athletic director, big fan of track. So I guess like it kind of athletic director loves what they're doing. They're trying to build a Eugene South here is what they're saying about track.

1:43:00Nick Saban:There's some fast people in Georgia. I get it. I understand. You should lean into that, no question.

1:43:05Pat McAfee:Women's team national champions last year. So I guess like they are very much. So I'm watching these guys work out here during a break. We've got some very explosive individuals on this track back here. A couple Olympians. We were going down the hall here as I went to the bathroom. Gold medal winners, Olympians everywhere through the track. I mean, it's nice to learn about the history as opposed to just standing in the stadiums getting sunburns. Now, let's talk about the games this weekend, the NFL slate. Obviously, a big storyline of the year, especially when it comes to picking games, is when the public is on something, just know that it's probably problematic, especially if it's over 60%.

1:43:41That rang true yet again last night, right, Tone? I mean, isn't this another situation of that with everybody riding the Pittsburgh Steelers last night or no? No, so actually last night it closed the Bengals 57%. It didn't get over the 60 % to impact that number, but the Bengals closed 57%. So the public and you guys who were on the Bengals last night won.

1:44:04Pat McAfee:I love everything about that. And, A.J., maybe we're seeing the board better than ever. This is what we need to look at. 82 % are on the –

1:44:12Nick Saban:Oh, no. All right. Traveling all the way out. That's a high number. Got a great one for that game, actually, too. If the Colts lose to the Chargers and the Patriots win, the Patriots are the ones eating the AFC. That is a cool one. That is a cool one. Patriots, 76%. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't get too crazy.

1:44:35Pat McAfee:Yeah, the Bucs, 78%. Dolphins, 75%. 77 % on Dart and Scadaboo at plus 7.5 against the Denver Broncos defense, which might be problematic for a couple of rookies. But, hey, they've obviously been awesome. And then the Falcons, 75%. Wow, Cowboys getting 72 % at home with the Washington Commanders coming to town. Cliff Kingsbury returning to Texas, 64 % on the Carolina Panthers. What have you done for me lately? We love the Panthers and the Jets. We're ass in London. And then 61 % on Seattle. Congrats to them. The Saints getting 60 % of the action, getting 4.5. Congrats to New Orleans. I don't think they've ever had that much success this season thus far.

1:45:10Pat McAfee:And then the Eagles getting 60 % against a Minnesota Vikings team. All right, let's go in to make our picks here, AJ, as we wrap up Hour 2 here on Glorious ESPN. We were both on the Bengals. Congrats to us. We win. Now let's go to London Town. Los Angeles is taking on the Jacksonville Jaguars. Obviously, the Jaguars, a lot of London games over the past. They were maybe going to become the team of London. Now down in Duval, they're obviously building something special. Los Angeles spent the week in Baltimore, and they were playing at Camden Yards. Yep. Camden Yards, yep. Camden Yards, which is where the Baltimore Orioles are.

1:45:43Pat McAfee:Matthew Stafford with cleats on just goes right on to the mind, obviously. It says Clayton Kershaw's last year. Well, let me go ahead and give it a go for the high school buddy as well. Throws a strike, an absolute strike, and we should know that Matt Stafford's going to do that. The sign that's right in front of him there says do not go on here with cleats. Just don't do it. He clearly has cleats on, and he's doing his thing. But obviously, the Orioles opened up their building for the Los Angeles Rams to stay on the East Coast for this week before heading to London. They're heading out to London on Saturday just as if it's a normal game.

1:46:13Pat McAfee:This is the latest anybody has traveled to a London game in the history. We'll see how it goes against Jacksonville. For them, I would assume, AJ, with some of their games, they're traveling five, six hours via plane every single week. That's probably how they're viewing it, AJ, if you had to guess.

1:46:26Nick Saban:Yeah, I would imagine, yeah. They're treating it like any other week. Let's just, boys, let's not make a big deal of it. Let's get in town, win, and go home.

1:46:32Pat McAfee:We're flying from Baltimore. It's going to be a six-hour flight to London. If we were playing in New England or if we were playing any of these other games, It would be four or five hours, whatever it is. We'll be flying over like it's a regular game. Everybody acts cool. The time zone is obviously different. Let's figure that out and keep it moving. We don't want to spend forever over there. We'll rather spend it here in a baseball. With that being said, give me the Jacksonville Jaguars plus three and a half in London against the Los Angeles Rams. AJ, who do you got?

1:46:55Nick Saban:Okay, with that being said, I tell you what, give me the Rams. I like this Rams defense, that D-line especially, and Matthew Stafford too much, so I'm taking the Rams minus three and a half. You can take the minus. The Rams. What can I get? You can get a minus three. and also, just so everybody knows, Puka is out.

1:47:11Pat McAfee:Yeah, Puka has been ruled out. Shafter put a tweet out on that earlier. And Liam Cohen, formerly of the Rams, you would think that maybe there's a little inside information to keep it close. Not saying the Rams don't win. They might, but I like the Jags plus 3.5. Raiders-Chiefs, old-school rivalry game. The Chiefs, minus 12.5. They're currently the favorite to win a Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes favorite to win the MVP. Obviously, Max Crosby's an absolute dog. Geno Smith has been a little bit turnover-worthy. Pete Carroll said he always wins. They haven't. What do you think happens here, AJ?

1:47:41Nick Saban:This one, I mean, 12 and a half seems like so much, but if you don't pick the Chiefs and, you know, they go on and win by 20 or think, oh, what's going on? But I'm taking the, you know what? Give me the Raiders. I like Max Crosby. That dude just can't be blocked.

1:47:52Pat McAfee:Okay, here's some updates about the Raiders from Ryan McFadden. For the second straight day, wide receiver Jacoby Myers, Nito, and Brock Byers did not practice. Las Vegas could be without its two top pass catchers, and I didn't tell you that until after you made your pick. I will take the Chiefs. I'll keep it. Stay on the Raiders. Okay. You can get 11 and a half. I'll take that. Even after these injuries? Okay, thank you. That's right. AJ, let's not be getting too crazy. Philadelphia Eagles, Minnesota Vikings. Eagles favored by two and a half, even though it feels like the world is collapsing out there.

1:48:23Pat McAfee:And the Minnesota Vikings, it's Carson Wentz or J.J. McCarthy, boys? I believe it's Wentz. Yeah. For a second straight day post-bye, the Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy was listed as a limited participant in practice, says Adam Schefter. Carson Wentz listed as full participant, So maybe we're about a week or two out from J.J. McCarthy coming back. Carson Wentz got the go. Who do you like, A.J.?

1:48:42Nick Saban:Give me the Philadelphia Eagles here, Pat. It's too good. You get a minus one and a half. Me as well. Minus one and a half, we get a four. Let's do it.

1:48:50Pat McAfee:I like that. I didn't like that Quacey didn't know who Justin Jefferson was with the camera, but I did appreciate the way that whole thing went. I guess whenever he shook his hands and his hand just engulfed him, they shit, these are some big hands for a photographer. Oh, wait. This is Justin Jefferson. Great acting out of J.J. I've seen him act in a Super Bowl commercial, and obviously everywhere he is is electrifying. What a great superstar for the league and for the Vikings. I'm happy they did all that. On that note, there's been a lot of negative stuff said, and Sirianni can pull all those kibbles and bits for the boys.

1:49:19Pat McAfee:Ain't that right, Ty? Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people are even throwing more gas on this and saying, hey, guess what? If the Eagles do lose this week, then maybe A.J. Brown's headed out of town. Maybe a handful of these other guys. So Sirianni's going to have the boys ready to go. And at the end of the day, O-line, D-line. Howie, you know that. The Patriots, Boston Connors hoping for A.J. Brown. And anybody that's potentially available at the trade deadline, let's go on a run. They might be the number one seed if the Colts lose. I got the Eagles minus 2.5. Saints, Bears, who do you like, A.J.?

1:49:4960 % on the Saints, remember? I will take the Bears at home here. 4.5. I would take the Bears as well. Patriots, Titans, is there any different lines we need to know about, Tone? Patriots-Titans there is 6.5 or 7. Okay, so I will take the Patriots minus 6.5 in Vrabel's revenge game. AJ, who do you like?

1:50:09Nick Saban:Yep, give me Vrabes. Give me the Patriots. Okay, Miami Dolphins taking on the Browns.

1:50:13Pat McAfee:Any different lines we need there? 2.5 across the board. Okay, I will take the Cleveland Browns minus 2.5 against the Dolphins. Sorry about it, Gumpy. Is that a good pick or a bad pick? It's going to be wet and rainy and muddy in Cleveland, so just Dylan Gabriel and Tua slinging it in the rain. Or running is what we're thinking is going to happen. I think they're saying like 50-mile-an-hour wind gusts potentially on that lake there. I like the Browns in that situation. AJ, you as well?

1:50:36Nick Saban:Yep, give me the Browns.

1:50:38Pat McAfee:Carolina Panthers, obviously everybody's high on them because of what they were able to accomplish last week at the end of the game. Down 17, they come back and win. Bryce Young looks like a bona fide superstar. And I think they have weapons outside. Jets were asked, but they were taking on Denver Broncos defense. That was incredible. What do you like, AJ? And is there any other lines we can get, Tone? One and a half across the board.

1:50:56Nick Saban:Okay, give me the Panthers at one and a half here, Pat.

1:50:59Pat McAfee:I will do the same. Colts have 82 % of the money on them, getting a point and a half as they head over to Los Angeles to take on this Chargers team. Jim Harbaugh has been fantastic on the microphone this week, talking about Jim Irsay and Justin Herbert. Stephen Holder is reporting that Colts coach Shane Steichen says quarterback Kenny Moore will return on Sunday. Hell yeah, great to have you back. Josh Downs, Charverius Ward still out alongside Ashton Doolin, wide receiver. That's a lot of wide receiver weapons, Don. and obviously Mooney's still out from the pregame hit from last week. I like the Colts getting a point and a half against the Chargers.

1:51:34Pat McAfee:Don't love 82 % of the money on them. Go ahead, AJ.

1:51:36Nick Saban:You can get two, Pat. Two? Okay, yeah. I will. Give us both the Colts at two points here. I've learned my lesson. I can't pick against the Colts right now.

1:51:43Pat McAfee:82 % is a big number. Giants at the Broncos. I like the Giants getting seven and a half. Can we get any more points? No, but you can get less if you want the Broncos at seven, H.

1:51:53Nick Saban:Give me the Broncos at seven here then. Even though I do love what the Giants are doing, give me Broncos.

1:51:57Pat McAfee:I actually will take the Broncos at 7 as well. Washington Commanders, Dallas Cowboys. Cowboys favored by 1.5 at home. This is a sunlight game. Mike McCarthy wanted to talk about it. We didn't get to it. Going to be weird shadows in Jerry World. Will that affect the Washington Commanders who aren't ready for it, AJ? Yeah, I think it will. Give me the Cowboys. You get them at Cowboys at minus 1. Ooh. I'll take the Commanders at what? 1.5. Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said Trayvon Diggs had an accident in his home last night. He has a concussion now. He won't play Sunday. Probably hit something while he's walking through the house.

1:52:31Pat McAfee:What a nightmare situation that is. So I will take the Washington Commanders. And how many points can I get? One and a half. Okay, I'll do that. And then we got Packers cards. Ty, what are your thoughts on Gannon maybe having a big-time game, two weeks removed from slapping a guy? Yeah, it is certainly possible. Matt LaFleur basically said, hey, listen, I know these guys are 2-4. Don't you dare underestimate them. We know what they can do. The Packers have had like 800 different guys play offensive line this year. So hopefully, you know, we'll get a little bit of continuity. Six and a half on the road.

1:53:03I don't know. After a piss poor performance last week, I kind of like the Packers to bounce back. Okay, you like the Packers to bounce back.

1:53:10Pat McAfee:AJ, do you?

1:53:11Nick Saban:Yep, Packers, my six and a half.

1:53:13Pat McAfee:I'll take that as well. And then Sunday night football, Falcons, Niners. This Falcons team has become the belle of the ball. Bajon Robinson, potential MVP candidate that isn't a quarterback. And the Niners, they're still hurt. Who do you like? How do you like it, AJ?

1:53:27Nick Saban:I like Falcons defense and Bajon. Give me Falcons.

1:53:30Pat McAfee:I'll take the Falcons as well, getting two and a half on Sunday Night Football. Feels like we agreed on a lot. Feels like we probably agreed with the public on a lot. Probably means we're going to have an ass score, but I know it's going to be a great time. Have an incredible weekend, everybody. We can't thank you enough for allowing us to do this for a living. It's a great weekend of ball. Enjoy every single moment with your friends, your family. And then on Overreaction Monday, we're going to bring the hammer. God! Goodbye. Yeah, hey, way to adjust there, boys Way to adjust there, boys Bring that thing at the end It's never at the end And I don't know why we went there But I appreciate the fact that we did Gumpy was yelling over here Gumpy was absolutely yelling over here He was going crazy Which I'm very grateful for

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1:55:12Nick Saban:This is the Pat McAfee Show. I'm AJ Hawk sitting in for Pat here at his desk in Indy. Feel good Friday, October 17th. This hour three is going to be a good one, boys. Football! It's what all the fuss is about. Pat, who do you have with you at that beautiful stadium? It looks like some country music superstars, I think.

1:55:32Pat McAfee:Yeah, we got legends that are selling out Notre Dame and Wembley a couple times and Luke Combs and then a man who's about to take over the entire globe, a 25-year-old who has banger after banger after banger at such a young career and has no fucking idea that he's 25 years old and he's living a different life than everybody else right now, Bailey Zimmerman and Luke Cohn.

1:55:52Nick Saban:Yeah, boys! Obviously, we're incredibly thankful that you stopped by, but also thank you so much for committing to do College Game Day. I know with schedules and everybody's tours, we're very, very thankful you're here. Let's talk about it. You just announced a show tonight here? Yeah. Yeah, Georgia Theater tonight. He just announced it this morning. That's awesome. You've got a world tour going on right now, my kind of Saturday night, where you'll be at Wembley and also anywhere else. Yeah, we'll be at the Vols Stadium in Knoxville doing Ames, Iowa State. Boo! Boo! So we're doing, yeah, two nights at Wembley, two nights at Slain Castle in Dublin, Murray Field in Glasgow, all over the place, man.

1:56:36Nick Saban:There it is. Let's go. Nice. We're off. That kind of Saturday night.

1:56:40Pat McAfee:I want to let you know, I did ask him beforehand about what information I should have, and he goes, I'm a dad, dude. You should ask somebody else. Shout out to Cappy, right there on cue to have all the answers, obviously, an entire operation making magic happen. And Bailey, we'll certainly dive into the world that you're in right now, but Luke seemingly was at your time not that long ago, brother. It feels like you've had a meteoric rise quickly. I think obviously at App State, whenever you came to College Game Day, whenever we were up there, you were doing arenas at that point. And then you've kind of just continued to grow.

1:57:12How has it been on this rocket ship, and how much do you still love what you do at this stage versus maybe at the beginning?

1:57:18Nick Saban:It's been crazy. When I was his age, I mean, I was in – I'd just been in Nashville, hadn't signed my record deal yet, and the last time I played Georgia Theater was at 26. so that would have been a year a year from now this guy was my last time I played Georgia Theater 900 seat theater then now you're selling out Wembley like you're the fucking Beatles good for you brother honestly it's been fun to watch because you're a sports guy so we appreciate sports people making it in there they don't suck we'll dive into that Bailey let's talk about you now obviously I met you whenever you were opening for Morgan then you just did an amphitheater tour you're on your way to be able to do a range you're in the middle of it and I think the way we talked to him last time about how music industry has changed so much with what the writers make and how the business is you're kind of growing up in this era of the digital era yeah how has it been and how much have you enjoyed the career thus far oh man it's it's um i i i really have social media and digital to thank for my career i feel like because without that i i i tell everybody four years ago in like 2020 21 i was living in my mom's trailer and i had never sang in my life and i just tried to sing one day music is awesome and i put it on social media dude and it just blew up overnight and i quit my job and then all of a sudden i just did with luke combs and we just had a number one in four different countries and we're here on you know game day and so it's like it's it's honestly been everything to me yeah i will say i enjoy the hell out of your brand new freshness and feel and appreciation of the entirety how many uh moments has there been?

1:58:56Like opening for Morgan, I assume. You look in the mirror and say, what the hell is this? You crushed it, though, brother.

1:59:01Nick Saban:Oh, thanks, dude. I tell everybody that is one of my, like, the biggest pinch-me moment was when I got the call that I was going on tour with Morgan. And it was just like, man, this is just like, this really doesn't feel like real life. It felt like just I was living in a dream, and it's felt like that since. It's truly... You nailed it, though, and you need to know that. Luke, do you talk to any of the young guys? You're OG now, dude. You got kids now? Yeah, dude. Yeah, it's crazy to think about. Whenever you guys make Backup Plan, which is a song you were talking about being number one in four different countries or whatever, do you give game?

1:59:32What is the advice to kind of younger guys?

1:59:34Nick Saban:Yeah, I mean, I told Bailey, you know, when we met, I try to be, because I feel like there was kind of in our business a little bit of a lack of like artist to artist conversations that were real open. So I always try to be like, hey, man, seriously, dude, like if you call me, I'll pick the phone up. it doesn't matter what time it is i've been there he's been there and like if you if you need me like i i needed somebody and there were times when there was nobody there for me so i appreciate being able to be that person for somebody else because i know how lonely it can feel i know how strange it can feel i know how unordinary unnormal it is to be in the position that we're in especially when you're 25 years old or 22 years old yeah and the creative mind is always something that's different than everybody else.

2:00:22It really is something that

2:00:25Nick Saban:not everybody really understands it, so to have him as just somebody that I can talk to just about the certain things that others wouldn't understand, it's like, yeah, it's cool to have somebody in my corner and really wants to actually help me when I go through the ups and downs of this whole being famous or whatever. Hey, that's team.

2:00:43Pat McAfee:That's good team. That's sports guy. That's sports guy. He's a baseball guy. We talked to him. He's a baseball guy. Not the biggest football guy. Getting into football, as of like he said, where are you from? Didn't really get into football, got into baseball. And then obviously he did the college game day at JMU with the Joe Brewers. There were like 30 ,000 people there. You're a moxie. You heard tone right there. You just heard the oh yeah right there? Yep. That guy became a fan of you that night or that morning because you're a moxie brother. Your absolute moxie was attacking. Thanks, thanks.

2:01:08So you need to know that. And before we send it back to the boys for questions for you, I need to ask you, one of the last times you were on the show, the Carolina Panthers were like the worst ever. Like literally the worst ever.

2:01:17Nick Saban:They were down bad. Yeah, they were bad. They were down bad. The owner was throwing ice on people. Local buildings and stores were writing signs to the owner. I mean, it got bad. And you said, hey, I'd like to be proud to be a fan one time in my life. How about now? You guys are all the way back. How do you feel? So full circle, dude. The last time I was on, I was pretty critical of the team. As a fan would be, I'm no different than anyone else. So as you know, the devastation that Hurricane Helene brought to the area of the country where I'm from, I put together, me and Eric Church put together a charity show, which Bailey actually came and performed.

2:01:54Nick Saban:That's where I met Luke, actually. Yeah, first time we met him. That's where I got his phone number and everything, yeah. We did it at Bank of America Stadium, home of the Carolina Panthers. So, who did I run into? David Tepper. Yes. We had a great conversation. We talked for an hour, chummed it up. We chummed it up. We got along great. And at the end, he was like, just don't go, you know, I saw it, you know. I was like, God, I hope he didn't see it. You know, I was just like, he saw it. He saw it. But you know what? We had a great conversation about it. We're in good graces, man. And you were speaking the truth.

2:02:34Nick Saban:And I was speaking the truth. And, again, dude, I'm no different than anyone else, man. I'm a fan. Okay, I was literally in Charlotte yesterday. I got inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall. Hell yeah!

2:02:45Pat McAfee:Let's go!

2:02:46Nick Saban:Thank you, guys. Congratulations.

2:02:48Pat McAfee:Well earned. Well earned.

2:02:49Nick Saban:So I'm there. I'm at the hotel. The kids are at the science center playing around. Everybody's getting ready. So I call up, you know, Dave Nelson at the team. I'm like, hey, I'm in the hotel. I'm bored. Can I pop over to practice? What's going down? He's like, pop over to practice. So they're telling me when, you know, in the couple years previous when they were – when things were not looking up at all in any direction. He was like, we have a phone line that fans will just call and just be like, you guys stink. And he's like, but those are like the best fans. Yes. Because they're the people that actually care.

2:03:24Nick Saban:I'm one of those fans. I just didn't know there was a phone number. Now I do. Yeah. Now I know there's a phone number. You're on our show instead of the phone number. Instead of the phone number. Yeah. But I don't have to now, dude, because we're up big time. And Tepper, I think he has changed the way he has appeared publicly. Dude, they were so incredible for that whole charity show that we did there. Donated it all, right? Oh, dude, they donated the work, donated the building, they footed the tax bill, everything. Man, we raised$24.5 million that night. A lot of that was because of them. A lot of that was because of them because guys like this showed up for us.

2:03:54Nick Saban:Let's go. But, yeah, huge, huge. Yeah, that is huge. And you know what? Maybe the football gods said, hey, you know what? Maybe this guy isn't the biggest, rudest owner of all time. Dude, he's been great, man. He's been seriously so great. You've been great, too. And you know what else has been always good?

2:04:16Nick Saban:Oh, it never gets old, baby. You still sing? Obviously, you have to sing that every night. I do. I'd sing it every night. I love it. You still punt the... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll do a punt tonight. Big punt tonight. I feel like you got pretty good extension. I'm going to try to hit this. I'm a limber cat, you know? And that wasn't it. Prove it. You know? I mean, that wasn't it, but that was it. You know what I mean? Get up there, dude. You know what I mean? Okay. Get up there. Okay. Tack his core voice. You punting any cups on stage? What is your stage presence like? Because Luke is a showman.

2:04:46If you have not been, this guy right here is going to give you everything he has on the stage.

2:04:51Pat McAfee:I'm at least going to come out very sweaty. I'm going to be very sweaty.

2:04:55Nick Saban:I'll at least tell you. And then there's symbols that he's hitting the shit out of that don't need to be hit the way he's hitting. Full showman. How about you, Bailey? What do you think your stage presence would be describing? He's got way more energy than me, by the way. He's like 10x me. He's 25, dude. Yeah, that's 10x me. I would say standing still has always made me super nervous because I think too much. So that's why I always bounce around. And I'm just like running and singing and dancing and trying to just like not be nervous. And that's the way I do it. I just run around and, yeah, crazy.

2:05:29Nick Saban:Get the energy out. I come in on a rope swing last year for tour. Yeah, that is awesome. It was sick. Yeah, it is sick. You can see more of that. AJ's back in the Thunderdome, has a question for you boys. Yeah, this is for both of you. Luke, maybe you go first, but from when you started, I guess, your stage presence, you're performing, it's all about reps, I would imagine. How much better are you now, I guess, than when you first started performing live on stage for people? I think you have to think about it a lot less now, right? It becomes like muscle memory, like anything, right? Like you just, you know what to do, you know when to do it, you know how to do it.

2:06:03Nick Saban:And then there even becomes, you know, as when you do a tour, you know, the set is generally somewhat built in. I mean, there are spots where things can move around. You know, I'm not sure exactly how Bailey does it, but that's kind of the way we have like a fixed, some points that we want to kind of hit and we can move things around in the middle. And so for me, it's even sometimes the talking points can be like, okay, when we get here, I know that after this song, I'm going to talk. And for the next two songs, I'm not going to talk in between. but then all that stuff becomes kind of pre-programmed and it allows you to just go and i think the the craziest thing i don't know if bailey feels this way but for me that like the fans bring the signs you know it's like game day not as many as game day but they bring the signs and they're like bailey you're cute you know whatever it is bailey you're cool you know all that stuff and i want i see the signs and people sometimes people are real hyped about the signs.

2:06:55Nick Saban:I'm in the middle of singing fast car and it's like, there's already a million words. I'm trying to like, I'm not ever remembering them, right? Like I'm not in my mind going, what's the next word? What's the next word? It's like when you start like a cassette tape and it's going and if, but if I look at a sign and start to read it, it's like, and I'm like, I don't even know where I'm at in the song, what song I'm in, what, where are we even? If I start reading the sign during a song, I'm cooked, dude. I'm done. So you're a no sign going forward guy? No, I love the signs. I just got to read them.

2:07:30You love adversity.

2:07:30Nick Saban:I love it. But I just can't read them until a song, like in between songs, I can read them. But during a song, I'm like, oh man, if I start reading that. I got it. I got it. Sign time is in between songs. In between songs. Yeah. Sign time for the Luke Holmes shows is in between songs. Ideal. Because if you do it during a song, you're potentially ruining the concert for everybody. Yeah.

2:07:50Pat McAfee:So let's just make sure. And I want to let you know, I have the same problem. I'll be talking, and the brain is just kind of doing its thing. And then if I see something, like something will pop up on this screen, for instance, and I'll see it, and all of a sudden that is now just in the sentence. And it's like that doesn't make any sense at all. Bailey, are you reading signs while you're out there that you're kidding?

2:08:07Nick Saban:I would say my thing that I've had is I'm singing a song, and everybody's singing, and then somebody's trying to tell me where they met me and their story about why they love this song I'm singing. And they're, like, trying to tell me that, and I'm singing the song. And then I'm like, it's, like, during the songs. How are you hearing it? You can hear it. How are you hearing it? Because I'm watching. I'm, like, you know, singing to them. And then they're, like, my cousin loved you, and I love this song, and my name is. And I'm, like, dude, I can't have a conversation right now. I'm trying to sing.

2:08:44Nick Saban:Or you've got the in-ears, like, Pat's rocking the in-ears, and they don't know you've got the in-ear. So they're like, oh, well, he can just hear me because I can't see that he has something in his ears. And they're like, this guy's rude. He's not saying anything. I know he can hear me. He's right here. I feel so rude. I have a conviction about it. I'll feel like I need to go back over and be like, hey, I'm so sorry. I just can't hear what you're saying because I'm trying to play the show. There's going to be a lot of those moments where you're going to feel like an asshole and people are going to be able to portray you as an asshole.

2:09:13And then you just got to remember deep down, if the full context was given, You're not an asshole. We're good dudes.

2:09:19Nick Saban:We're all good dudes. I mean, I hope so. I try to be. But I have these for game day, you know? Yeah. So we go through a lot of crowds in game day. Same thing you're talking about. Yep. Somebody comes up, wants to tell me a very good story. I know it's just by the way their face looks. Yeah. And I'll stop and tell them thank you. They're talking right to my face. We're this far away. And you're like, oh, man. That was awesome. That was awesome. That was awesome. That was awesome. I can't hear a word. There's three people talking in my ear at that time that are in a truck somewhere. And I can't tell you, but we feel like assholes.

2:09:50But we got a job to do, too. Yeah. People need to understand that, you know? For you, full-time, how long have you been doing music now?

2:09:57Nick Saban:Full-time? Gosh, probably 13 years. Good for you. Dang. I did want to say, man, dude, I grew up. I think everybody did. But I was like 16, got my license. First song I played. Luke Jones. Long neck eyes. Really, truly. Hey, maybe you should cover that. It feels like that's right in your... Go for us, go. That's what I was... I was singing around campfires when somebody told me, hey, you can sing. I'm like, really? And I was singing Luke Combs, man. Hell yeah.

2:10:27Pat McAfee:I'm happy to be here for this. Yeah. It's a pretty cool deal. It's a pretty cool deal.

2:10:30Nick Saban:I'm not trying to fangirl, but it's pretty cool. Let's share with this guy. They're using his name for Super Bowl halftime show shit. This guy. Think about that. Yeah. Like, how many musicians could do a Super Bowl halftime show, is what people say? And then your name got dropped into that. Do you know... How old are you? 35. That's awesome, bro. In my prime, guys. Here we go. Here we go. Still got it. Fucking good. I got it. Look at Flacco, guys. Look at Flacco. Hey, man. Well said. Look at A-Rod. The Icy Hot Bowl, dude. It was the Icy Hot Bowl. The Icy Hot Bowl, dude. Let's go. It showed out, didn't it?

2:11:00It was great. Yeah. He threw about 69.8 yards in his last throw. Speaking of miles. Wow. $30 off tickets right now with code Pat McAfee. You can buy Luke Combs and Bailey Zimmerman concert tickets and everything. It doesn't matter if you're a new or repeat purchaser. $30 off with code PATMACAFEE at our friends at SeatGeek. They're going to thank that.

2:11:19Pat McAfee:I owe them about 20 reads. I haven't said that in a long time. They're going to be very thankful I did that. Ty, there it is right there. Boom. P-A-T-M-C-A fee. $30 off for the boys. Now, there are some restrictions apply, which I think are if they're less than$30. And then you guys need to figure out your fees shit. Without a doubt. You guys need to figure that shit out. I think you're all trying to figure it out.

2:11:44Nick Saban:I just work here, man. I literally just work here. I literally just work here. Ty has a question for you back in Indy. Yeah, for both of you guys, for what you're going to do tomorrow for game day, like the performance, how much will your prep differ for when you would do a concert? Will you just kind of go up there and just fucking rip that on the run, or will you still have to kind of prepare like you would going into a full set? Oh, D, I'll let you take this one. Rip it. I would answer with rip it, yeah. I'm just going to wing it. That's where, honestly, I've gotten to this point right here, right now, by winging it.

2:12:21Nick Saban:So I'm just going to keep doing that. It's like, I don't know, it's like, would Steph Curry need to warm up to shoot a three-pointer at the house? Yeah. I'm not saying he's going to make it. He does that shoot around. He's a professional. At the house. You know, people say I got a Marcus Canby jump shot. Oh, UMass great. Not that it's good. It's just kind of a weird, it's just kind of a strange.

2:12:42Pat McAfee:Did you go elbow out there?

2:12:43Nick Saban:I kind of go elbow out a little bit, yeah. Do you make it, though? No. No. Not at all. No. You dunk? Occasionally. For sure, dude. Yeah, you guys can dunk. I feel like Bayley. I can't. I can't. Bro, he's got the gold-plated Air Forces on right now. I don't know if those are easiest to jump. Yeah, I mean, he's. Honestly, I feel pretty good at these. He's been watching track practice, too. I think he's ready to roll. Yeah. I think you should think.

2:13:10Pat McAfee:Hold on, Bayley. We're getting down on right now. Sweet. Those are filthy. Look at the. Look at the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

2:13:17Nick Saban:Oh, hell yeah.

2:13:19Pat McAfee:I don't know if that's blurry or not, but that is.

2:13:22Nick Saban:It's looking good, though. Hey, look at the watch, the necklace. He's looking fine. That's what we first bonded over. You and me? Was our presidential bands. Hell yeah, bro. I appreciate it. We really made it, man. Yes, we did. We made it. Yes, we did. Look at us. We're staying in this building right here right now.

2:13:39Pat McAfee:I mean, we made it a lot more than me, for sure. and I'm going to try to get me back to center here. Certainly a little bit slower and off. I like it. This is nice, man. It's fantastic.

2:13:49Nick Saban:It's like the production truck. There it is.

2:13:52Pat McAfee:If you need anybody for your shows, I can certainly tell you Wembley, get me on the sticks over there. Connor has a question for you boys back in Indianapolis. Yeah, boys. First of all, Luke, go App State. Hopefully they're doing well. It is good to see the Panthers are back, even though the Patriots beat them 42-6 a couple weeks ago. So great game. Great game for us both. But one of our guys in here is a massive country music fan, and he said, hey, if you don't ask this question, I'm going to be real pissed. Both of you guys were with Big X to Plug, and he wanted to know what that was like. And also I wanted to know, did Big X to Plug cut his teeth in Nashville to kind of get in with you guys and country music?

2:14:34Because that's a big deal for some of these country music guys. Like, hey, did these people even get to Nashville to learn about country music? But what really was it like working with Big X to plug?

2:14:45Nick Saban:He was, I feel like I'm like offhandedly, Mike, very limitedly responsible for the part of this thing. Not in any official capacity. Thank you for doing that. We love him. So the Post Malone album, the F1 Trillions getting made. I wrote six songs on that record. We're there one night. And, you know, a lot of his guys have produced all kinds of different stuff. hip-hop stuff they're producing this record and it was it's like late nights you know we'd write two three four songs in a night kind of thing from eight o 'clock till i'd be leaving at like two in the morning like guys i gotta go i got kids like we're starting another one i'm like i'm out like i'm not like my kids are waking up at seven whether or not we write another song right now or not so i gotta go um but so i'm sitting there there we're talking hip-hop and i'm like gotta hear this guy big extra plug texas dude gotta play it so they play it they're all getting the phones Turns out, who is this guy?

2:15:38Nick Saban:We got to look him up. Got to look him up. Next thing I know, they're hitting me up. Hey, reached out to that guy. He wants to do something together. And I'm like, okay, great. So we try to link up with him. He comes to my show in Houston a few years ago. Great guy. Awesome. Awesome. Rocks the big guy look. Yes. Which I'm a big fan of. Man. Maybe you need to get a grill, too. You think I should go shirt off? And grill. Yeah. I've been trying to have that shirt off thing for a while. I've been trying to tell you that, but you just won't listen, man. Just go full off. Just let it ride. Hell yeah.

2:16:07Nick Saban:I would love it.

2:16:08Pat McAfee:I think you'd get the tap. I would love it. You know, maybe get half the body, that black tap.

2:16:13Nick Saban:Just a full inked out.

2:16:16Pat McAfee:Basically like this on the entire side.

2:16:18Nick Saban:I'll do the quarter sleeve too. Yeah, I think it would be a good idea. Like the half short sleeve look. But no, he's great. All the stuff I did with him was done in town. He's been in Nashville a lot doing that. I'm not sure what Bailey's experience is like. He can tell you for sure. Yeah, I feel like since he's from Dallas, Texas He's like already like really country And like is from that like background already And then I had already loved his music And I was thinking, man I saw this interview where he was like I'm going to do a country project And I thought, man, how cool would that be If I did a song with him?

2:16:55Nick Saban:Yeah, that'd be freaking awesome And then like three months later He sends me this song And then like five minutes later we had it done tell me how the process goes when he sends you a song do you the you write or it already says like hey this would be the part that you would be on yeah so they had sent me a song that was already written it had been written for like two or three years i think and i just cut the hook and it was already done i think we uh messed with it a little bit throughout the thing but like when he sent me the song on my phone i had my vocal cut in like six minutes i was like yeah in the studio i was like dude i am not letting this i love this song like i've wanted to do this big x the plug thing for like a long time so yeah i just like jumped in and then i think that it actually ended up being like the final thing we did okay so let's talk about uh you knowing you just listen to his music and you like yeah i was just a fan really to be honest and so then when we're in that post thing i bring it up everybody's looking it up and then those guys reached out to him and they're all you They're all legit in that production hip-hop world.

2:17:56Nick Saban:So when they reached out and just said, hey, we would love to do something together if you're ever around town. That's a cool community you guys are in. It feels like your business is a good community. I'm sure there's assholes in it. I'm sure there's people that you – It's like anything. Yeah, I'm sure there's people that everybody hates. But from my understanding and the people that I've met, obviously in your guys' world through game day and through college football basically being the connection, it feels like you guys have a great community. Country music is great. It feels like you guys take the festival serious.

2:18:23Like whenever CMA will have a fest or something or there will be some country music something. I mean, Morgan Wallen's standing in my boots fest. It feels like you guys show up for each other in country. Do you feel that? Oh, I agree. Yeah, I would agree for sure.

2:18:35Nick Saban:It's awesome. It's like the best part of country music is that. Always done like that or is it your generation? No, I think it's always been like that. I think it's, you know, if you go see a country show at Bridgestone Arena, you don't know who's going to be there. because it's like I've done – I've probably played there six times just from people going, hey, I'm playing Bridgestone tonight. Pop in and sing a song with me.

2:18:57Pat McAfee:And then all of a sudden out of nowhere. Yeah, I'm like, okay. Oh, yeah. All right, holy shit. They're screaming, dude. Yeah, they're screaming. Tone has the last question for you boys back in Indy. Yeah, Bailey, Pat mentioned earlier when you were with Joe Bros at JMU, I was like, that guy has way more pizzazz. I need to start listing him, so I just wanted to give you a shout-out on that. And then Luke, I just got tickets to Notre Dame, so I'm pumped for that. But I wanted to ask you about Lollapalooza. My daughter listens to that and the Alex Warren cover that you guys did together. It was awesome.

2:19:35Did you know that it was going to go as viral as it did?

2:19:39Nick Saban:I didn't. Honestly, I didn't. I think that my team was really great about setting that up. Obviously, I had heard the song, was familiar with it. I mean, it's such a massive song of the summer, right? I mean, it was just such a huge tune. And his first single and everything, and Alex is such a great kid. That's the first time I had met him was that day. And he was kind of closing out the other stage across the way before we went on. And so slipped over, come in the green room, you know, played my bands in there. We worked it up with steel guitar. And so it's kind of a different version than the version that he's playing.

2:20:13Nick Saban:You know, I didn't want it to be like the same thing. Yeah, you don't want to rip it exactly. Right. So we come out and I get home the next day and my team is like have you seen the videos of the song? And it's like just like millions of likes and views and I'm like I just did not expect Like not that it's not great But I'm just I feel like I'm not the like I'm not the guy that gets social media going. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like it's like You see me on there You brought the entire this guy's literally Luke Combs He's like literally Luke Jones. You're going to Wembley, bro. Yeah, you get the people going, bro.

2:20:46You get the people going. Oh, yeah. On that note, maybe cover Baby Shark. Yes. Oh, yes.

2:20:52Nick Saban:You're talking serious cash, dude. Kids, kids songs. Yeah, you're talking big bucks, dude. You don't even know what that is. Well, I know what Baby Shark is.

2:21:02Pat McAfee:Okay, you're 25.

2:21:03Nick Saban:Not because I have kids, though. Because he was a child when that came out. Baby Shark came out. Right, right. I was born in 2000. This child This child That's taking over the industry And this old ass man right here

2:21:20Pat McAfee:Are both going to be on college game day tomorrow He has a show tonight at Georgia Theater He announced this morning it's sold out 900 tickets should be something special Obviously our guy Bailey here Has got an album tour coming out He just dropped an album check that out The dude is awesome He's 25 years old He's awesome His vibes are immaculate. He has no idea about the world, I don't think. And that's great. That's good. I think that is a great – I think that's a good thing. I like it that way. I like it that way.

2:21:46Nick Saban:I'll go PSA for Bailey Zimmerman right now. If you're a fan out there thinking about buying a ticket, you can know that if you buy this guy's ticket, he's going to fucking appreciate it. And on that note – He should feel good about buying a ticket to a Bailey Zimmerman concert. Yeah, he'll put on a show. And so will you, brother. And we thank the hell out of you guys for that. And I can't wait to see you guys tomorrow morning. Yes, let's go. Maybe tonight. Yeah, maybe tonight. Might need a shotgun guest. Nine o 'clock. You know? Might need a guest to come out. Nine o 'clock shotgun start. Maybe start with a shotgun start.

2:22:19Shotgun start.

2:22:19Nick Saban:Shotgun start. Nine o 'clock shotgunning on a Friday. Once again. I would join. I know you. Yeah, we know. I know you. We know you would. We know you would, baby. It's 25. Maybe we get Kirby out in the visor. He can rip a shotgun down with us. Wait a minute. If he does that. Call him up. Something special. Call him up. Hammer Ole Miss if he doesn't. This is how it starts. This is how it starts. This is exactly how it starts. This is how all great ideas are done.

2:22:45Pat McAfee:There's a chance both these guys, and he just went into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. There's a chance both these guys are in every Music Hall of Fame whenever their careers are said and done. We appreciate the hell out of your time. Good luck tomorrow. Early morning, obviously. I'm sure tonight if you're doing a shotgun start at 9 p.m., you're going to be well rested.

2:23:00Nick Saban:Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We'll shut it off there. Yeah. Yeah, we'll just come out shotgun and beer. It'll be the end of the show. Ladies and gentlemen, Luke Combs, Bailey Zimmerman. Yeah, boys. Are they on tour together right now, do we know? No. Well, I mean, not together, but is Bailey going to play or open for Luke tonight? There's probably a chance. Yeah, I would – you could probably make that assumption that he might be there. They're probably going to play their number one song together potentially. Hey, I know Bailey played – I didn't ask him. He played at Ohio Stadium, Ohio State. Oh, really?

2:23:31Nick Saban:I think when he was opening for Morgan a couple years ago. Was that the biggest OH of all time? I've heard there's another person that said they got the biggest O.H. of O.S. Yeah. I'm not sure. I don't know the person's name. Bobby Carpenter. Bobby probably has, but I don't know the person that actually really claims that. I don't know who that person is. You do, Ty. No, I don't either. I don't know what you're talking about. Bobby makes sense. Luke's tour is doing – he's going to, I believe, Ohio Stadium, and he's doing Notre Dame, and he's doing Oklahoma. He's doing all the big college football stage shows.

2:23:59Wow. I mean, he's going to Jack Trice. I don't know. Yeah, he's going to Iowa State. Yeah, why are we going to Kinnick?

2:24:03Nick Saban:He could wave at the kids before the intermission or something. He was a lot bigger, too. But, hey, I get it. I get it. Iowa State fans love Luke Combs just like everybody does. Do they? Yeah. Who doesn't? Iowa State, well, of course. I like when you booed him the second he mentions Iowa State. Had to. He probably thought you were booing him for a minute. Maybe, but it was instinct. I wasn't booing him. I love Luke Combs. Who's an Iowa play this week? Sorry. Penn State. Yeah. Penn State. Oh, my gosh. I did know that. Yeah, at home. Interim coach bump, you think, for Penn State? Yeah. I mean, I'm a little worried about it.

2:24:31They've looked so bad, you know, that it's like at some point they have a lot of good players still, so you would think it would maybe go the other way. But, I mean, shit, we heard Signetti say it yesterday. Hey, Iowa's a tough place to play now. It is, yeah. At night. And they have a quarterback making his first start, which I think definitely bodes well for Iowa. Grunkamard. Grunkamard. There's no N, but yeah, Grunkamard. Grunkamard.

2:24:53Nick Saban:He's from right around Dublin, Ointangy, right by me, about 10 minutes away from Iowa. Ointangy? He's a stud, yeah. Is that a river? Yeah, there is the Ointangie River. Oh, no, I'm thinking of Hoochie Coochie. I mean, that's something. Oh, down in Tattahoochie Coochie. Oh, there's something, too, but there is an Ointangie River, yes. There's an Ointangie River Road close to where I'm at. But, yeah, I don't know. Who's Penn State going to hire, though, for real? Terry Smith. He's an interim. I mean, he could. He has every opportunity to win it. That's the first step towards it. What if he does win out?

2:25:20Nick Saban:What if he wins out and then they have to hire him? I don't know, but it's a very – 19 million a year? That's a very important hire because you can't go – You can't fire a coach who's winning 10, 11 games a year. And win seven? Yeah. Yeah. You can't even fire a coach. There can't be any drop-off. A coach has to – no, absolutely zero drop-off. They have to come in and if he wins 10 games, that's a failure for them. You've got to get to the – well, you've got to get to the playoffs and make a run. Yeah. But James Franklin last year was a couple plays away from being a national championship. Correct.

2:25:50Nick Saban:That's wild. The names that obviously are getting thrown out are Rule at Nebraska, Matt Campbell, Iowa State. And then, you know, like there's a lot of people saying like, hey, you got to at least call Saban. You got to at least call Urban. You got to at least call Marcus Freeman. Now, he's definitely not leaving there, but you got to at least call him. You got to at least call Lane. Like you got to at least put out feelers too because when you fire someone who's winning 10, 11 games a year, you have to make a splash. Yeah, hey, Pat, tomorrow on game day live on set, you should ask Saban like, hey, man, if Penn State calls, are you going to entertain that?

2:26:22Nick Saban:Are you going to at least answer the call? So Miss Terry's here this weekend actually. So everybody always tells me, like, hey, that question would be directed towards Miss Terry first. And then Coach Saban. So I did. I literally, she was in the back of the room. So I turned around. I'm like, Miss Terry,$20 million a year,$30 million a year you get back into coaching. And she laughed and said something about a credit card debt and said that's going to have to keep going.

2:26:45Pat McAfee:And I laughed so hard. I was like, that's the greatest answer I've ever heard. So I don't know the reality of that. And I think Coach Saban is loving his life being retired. He's still in ball because of game day. But I think he golfs a couple times a week. I think he doesn't have the pressure of having to wake up and know if his team's going to show up. I don't think he has to renegotiate with players. There's a lot of things that he has kind of mentioned. He's 73 now, 73 years old. I think he enjoys retirement. I think he is enjoying retirement. I think he does a couple speaking gigs a week around the country.

2:27:19Pat McAfee:I mean, he is car dealerships. He's living. He's doing his life right now. That's why whenever his name was mentioned that he was going to run the college commission or whatever, I was like, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of work for a guy that just gave up a lot of work for the first time in his life. You know, he was committed to ball for the last, what, 40, 50 years of his life. So I don't know if saving is possible, but, I mean, maybe Pat Kraft gives Miss Terry a call and says, we'll give you an open check and we'll take care of every credit card for the rest of your life, maybe. But then you start thinking about, like, Kurt Signetti, right?

2:27:51Like, Kurt Signetti's situation. and everybody thought he was going to get hired.

2:27:55Pat McAfee:And then Indiana goes, nope, I don't think that's the case. I assume there's a couple coaches over the next few days that are going to be signing new deals, I think. And it's only going to be able to happen at the schools that have real backing and have like a real chance, you know. And I think that's what's so big about the Indiana deal for Kurt Cignetti. It's like that's$93 million to a coach, okay. So what else do they have for players and for facilities and everything? They're like, we're very committed. They are very committed to everything. The president, Pam Witten, Miss Pam, the president, okay, she is somebody I met whenever we were down there.

2:28:33Pat McAfee:Witten, Miss Pam Witten, I apologize for getting that wrong. I got a chance to meet her whenever a game day was down there. And after I picked Indiana, I got a text from her, you know, that was like, hey, Pat, thank you for the belief in what we're doing here. We're very thankful, obviously, that you're in the same state as us and like a very positive thing. and she's like, we are very all in down here, both academically and athletically, and we think the athletics can fuel the other. And just thank you for believing in us, basically, is what she said, because I have since watching this entire thing.

2:29:02Pat McAfee:And this is just another way to publicly prove that they're all in, and Indiana's for real. And it's like, this isn't just a flash in the pan here in two years. They didn't get lucky here. It's like, they're all in. They understand how special Signetti is in the evaluation process and getting the right guys, and they got the boosters to be able to stick in there. So good for Indiana up and to the right. But there's going to be some places that are going to get exposed for not going all in. And that's when you're going to see these coaches go to other jobs. That's when you're going to see Penn State become very, very open for people if they're at a place that maybe isn't as all in, which sucks.

2:29:34Pat McAfee:But it's just the reality of the business at this point, AJ.

2:29:37Nick Saban:Yeah, and you truly can't compete at the highest level if your school is not all in. That's why we see what Vot Tech, they come out publicly committing, what, 10 years, 200-some million dollars. And Sig even said it yesterday on the show. They also have money, like, whatever the pool is to pay your assistants. That's a huge deal as well because I need a bunch of cash to bring in the best coaches. They're going to call be my O &D coordinators, the guys that are going to eventually be groomed to be the next head coaches at big places all over the country.

2:30:04Pat McAfee:There's some programs that send us, you know, like full bag. We're very lucky that these schools give us stuff. I would like to let that be known. I would just like to let that be known. I'm very thankful for the swag bags that schools give to send to the Thunderdome or give to us the game day whenever we come to town and everything like that. And when people send stuff to us, there's normally like a presentation from some schools. Like, hey, here's a box with a light with a story, like a whole thing, you know? Or like, hey, here's a suitcase that is like very expensive with our shit in it. Or like, hey, here's a Jordan bag with all this stuff in it.

2:30:34And then there's some places that are just cardboard boxes. And they send like a bunch of stuff. And you can tell that the thought is like, we're not spending money on bags.

2:30:41Pat McAfee:We're spending the money on players and we're spending the money on coaches here. And then there's other places that are like, hey, here's a three-piece suitcase luggage, and here's this. It's like, oh, they got – these people have extra money just laying around to send to a Thunderdome in Indianapolis, Indiana, hoping we see it in the mail. Not guaranteeing, just hoping that we see it. And it's like – it's a wild time in college ball right now. Indiana's for real, though, AJ. It feels like the Big Ten's got a real one down there in Bloomington, and Cignetti's a beast. He knew when he was on with us yesterday, right?

2:31:11Nick Saban:Yeah. You knew? Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

2:31:15Pat McAfee:I appreciate that. They texted me like four minutes before it got announced publicly, thanking me for having Sig on. And then, oh, yeah, also we're about to announce an extension. And then I go, can I tweet that? They're like, absolutely. We're about to announce it, though. So it was a race of me versus them. And I got mine out. I think they got it out with a lot more information quicker. So I kind of missed the breaking news because I was maybe pooping at the time. But I am very thankful that the Indiana team is as good as they are. as welcoming as they are. And the way they play ball is cool to cheer for, you know?

2:31:48Pat McAfee:Yeah, entertaining. If you don't have a team, college football team, first of all, I think you should get into college ball. It's great Saturdays every single weekend of the fall. Obviously, the sport of football is great. The environments are insane. But this Indiana team is a cool team to become a fan of if you're just picking up a school. I mean, the underdog, consummate underdog. Now, they're the number three team in the country. They're not going to be surprising anybody at this point. But just like coming out of nowhere, becoming a team, The way they've been built. Kurt Signetti's story about being a consummate assistant coach.

2:32:17Pat McAfee:And then in his 40s or 50s, I think it's his 50s, says, I'm going for it. Drops down to IUP James Madison to become a head coach. And then his work at James Madison leads to his head coaching job at Indiana. First time D1 head coach at the age of 60 or whatever. Like, his run has been inspiring. It is a movie. And they're a fun school to be a fan of. If you're not just living in Indianapolis like we are, just in general, that's a fun place to kind of get behind. And there's not a lot of people that have jumped on an Indiana football wagon in a long, long time. Western Pennsylvania guy, West Virginia guy.

2:32:53Pat McAfee:I love everything about them, man. So I'm thankful to be in Indianapolis, but I'm also thankful for this entire college football run that we've been on here for the last few years. Just getting baptized into all these places. So cool. Tonight, two big games. Two big college football games. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Might have a national champion playing on a Friday night. This is abnormal. Now, it might have a couple national champions playing on a Friday night, but nonetheless, number two team in America is playing on a Friday night. This is awesome. This is not normal. This is great. Louisville versus Miami.

2:33:25Pat McAfee:Miami at home, obviously, down there at the Orange. Hard Rock, they said it's a crazy, crazy atmosphere, especially when they're going. Let's assume Michael Irvin is going to be down there doing awesome things tonight on the sideline. Nebraska and Minnesota, obviously, we talked to Coach Rule just yesterday about what Minnesota is, what they could be, and that problem they could have with them. But all these teams obviously have a chance going forward, but the number two team in the country playing on a Friday is special. Gumpy, I know you're all horned up for tonight. Yeah, offensive line for Louisville stinks, so Bain and the boys should be able to run wild, as they say, at the asylum, Cristobal calls it.

2:34:00We're playing in the asylum tonight.

2:34:01Pat McAfee:A lot of confidence on ESPN there by national pundit Kyle Cathbart. I might motivate the Louisville offensive line And on that note, let's get the hell out of here. AJ, thank you for traveling to Indianapolis, brother. We appreciate you.

2:34:16Nick Saban:Of course. Easy drive. It was a beautiful couple days for me going to that Bengals game and then just making the trip over here. It was perfect. Oh, you stayed the night in Cincinnati last night? Yeah, we did. It was awesome, for real. Kids have like a fall break thing, no Friday or Monday school. So, yeah, it worked out beautifully. It was a magical experience, honestly, in that stadium last night with the kids. It was really cool.

2:34:35Pat McAfee:We appreciate you making the effort, brother. We're happy you had a good time. and congrats to the Bengals get a huge one. You were going to pick the Bengals regardless because they were giving you tickets. Okay, now it's all set. No, we didn't get tickets.

2:34:43Nick Saban:We didn't talk to them until later, but they hooked us up afterwards once they knew we were coming. Who gave you tickets, them or eight? Whatever. Seat Geek. We paid good money for them. Yeah, trust me. We paid good money. Shout out. $30 off, though. $30 off. Yeah, we did. I used the code. Pat McAfee. I used it. That's all the kids had Aaron Rodgers. They did. Yeah, they did. They had Bengals. They were on the field pregame in Bengals sweatshirts, and then they took them off and had their Aaron Rodgers eight jerseys that people were yelling and screaming at them as we were walking back to the hotel, Hootay!

2:35:16Nick Saban:Looking right at my kids yelling, we're kind of on both sides here, pal. I'm all right with it.

2:35:20Pat McAfee:Yeah, but we like that. We like that that was happening to your kids, obviously. They felt part of it. Bingo. There's some parents that would get upset about that. You watching Hawker get chewed out in the middle of the street in Cincinnati. They're going to remember that forever. They're going to remember it forever. AJ is not really finishing the story because he ended up curb stomping three people. Okay, we do care. We do care. I appreciate the fact, though, that Aaron played the way he played. I like the way Flacco played. And it feels like it's a good omen going into a great football weekend, if that's how it's going to go.

2:35:52Pat McAfee:Boys, great work in the back this week. You guys have done a phenomenal job. Way to go. Talk to the table. Way to go, boys. Way to go, boys. You too. Good luck tomorrow. Hey, another sports start next week, boys. Let's not forget it. You know that trophy that's right there in front of Connors about to kick off. One half of the hammer. Don. Cowboys, AP 10, great work this week. Thank you, brother.

2:36:20Pat McAfee:Graphic design, boys. The Think Tank, boys. We appreciate all your effort this week. Incredible work on all parties and all things, including Rushmore on X, which had another incredible episode drop on Tuesday, which was bands. Look for this upcoming episode on Tuesday. Dunkers. Oh, hell yeah. It's very good.

2:36:37Nick Saban:Comedy Wilkins, I hope they talk about.

2:36:39Pat McAfee:I'll find out. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah, he does get talked about. There is an obvious omission from this episode. And I hope Ari and Ben and Shaq and Reggie hear about it. I do. I hope they do. They will. But it's a great episode. It is a great episode. It's coming out on Tuesday. Shaquille O 'Neal, Reggie Miller, Ben Persky, Ari Emanuel, Rushmore on X. Full episode available only on X unless a Tom Brady fan club rips it and puts the whole thing on YouTube. The full episode is only available on X. Clips are everywhere else. It's a great show and I'm very proud of everybody that pieced that thing together.

2:37:16Pat McAfee:And on that note, let's have the greatest weekend of all time. Gumpy, why don't you come join me over here, buddy? Come on, Gil.

2:37:23Nick Saban:Where is he? There he is.

2:37:28Pat McAfee:What are these shoes here? New Bounds. They are kind of far. They are pretty far. They look super European, but that's kind of like your thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, I like them. Can't wait to get the Cooper Fox. They're different. Dude, the Lawn Mower ones. Yeah, no caps. Steph Curry ones. No, that's what Coopers look like, too. Really? Yeah, they're tough. That's kind of New Bounds' thing right now. Maybe we call them the Zero Turn ones. Oh, I like that. That'd be so sick. Give me a pair. The Z-Turn ones out there? Hell yeah. All right. Let's get the hell out of here. Boys, we're so lucky we get to do this.

2:38:05Pat McAfee:We're so thankful we get to do this. Let's try to enjoy every single moment, shall we?

2:38:09Nick Saban:Hell yeah. Absolutely.

2:38:12Pat McAfee:Bullrush, thanks for the overwatch, brother. Love you, Bullrush. Bullrush. Love you, Bullrush. If you think you're going to show up somewhere and shoot me, just know that there is a man who's got the binos out everywhere we go. Okay? His name is Bullrush, and we're thankful for that. All right, have a great weekend. Be a friend, tell a friend something nice. It might change your life. We're in this thing together. Team on me. Team on three. One, two, three. Team. Goodbye. Legally, we can't say drinking Storm makes you smarter and more focused. But with zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine, and immunity support, you're smarter and more focused for drinking Storm.

2:38:49Storm, good energy in, good energy out. Energy for life.