Hour 1: Michigan Wolverines Hail Mary victory, ESPN’s Troy Aikman, Tua Tagovailoa named starter in Atlanta, Wolverines victory reaction

0:00Rich Eisen:Hey, I've got some game time tips to share with Frigidaire. When you're hosting during football season, you've got to be ready for every kind of craving. Somebody wants fresh pizza. Somebody wants crispy wings. Somebody's asking if there's sliders. That's when you need more than one call in the playbook. Frigidaire offers ranges and wall ovens with over 15 cooking modes, so you can tackle hosting with confidence. There's Stone Baked Pizza for restaurant-quality pizza in as little as two minutes, Air Fry Mode for crispy favorites, and Air Sous Vide for juicy tender sliders. Plus, there's slow cook, no preheat, and more.

0:35Rich Eisen:Stone Baked Pizza and Air Fry, both built right in your oven. That's the game-time MVP combo. So when you're hosting before kickoff, Frigidaire helps you cover every craving. Available at The Home Depot, how doers get more done. Only when using stone-baked pizza mode, cook time requires preheat and reheat and may vary based on ingredients.

1:18Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

1:24Rich Eisen:This is The Rich Eisen Show. Hey, everybody. Can't get enough of The Rich Eisen Show? You're in luck. You can find us everywhere. Watch us weekdays on Disney Plus from noon to 3 Eastern. Miss the show? We've got a podcast so you can listen anytime. But here's the best part. Our YouTube channel. Subscribe at youtube.com slash Rich Eisen Show and you'll never miss a moment. Now, on with the show. 3, 2, 1. This is the Rich Eisen Show. There's one second remaining in the game. Live from the Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. Today's guests. Pro Football Hall of Famer Troy Aikman. ESPN College Football Analyst Josh Pate.

2:12Rich Eisen:Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Cam Hayward. Falcons running back Bajon Robinson. And now it's Rich Eisen. That's right. That's right. Welcome to this edition of the Rich Eisen Show. Ladies and gentlemen, it's another National Football League season underway on Wednesday night. It's another NFL season for us to cover. We've been doing it since 2014, which means this is our 13th season covering football. It's our bar mitzvah season. Hey, Mazel Tov, Chris. Hey, Mazel Rich. Yeah, Mazel all around. Mazel del Tufo. Good to see you, Mikey. How are you? Let's like the candles. TJ Jefferson, is that candle lit over there?

2:58Rich Eisen:Good to see you, sir. It is. It's Lahime. It's a life, indeed. Listen, Troy Aikman's first up. Coming up in 20 minutes time, just like last year when we had our first show ever on Disney plus in the ESPN app and ESPN radio and Sirius XM channel 80 last year. Troy is going to help us kick off this season again. Bijan Robinson is going to join us in our number three, two has been named his quarterback essentially because it seems like Penix is hurt. We'll check in with one of the best in the national football league. And it appears I will have him on my fantasy team in the league. I want to win the most.

3:30Rich Eisen:I have the second overall pick in next year and this year's draft on Wednesday night. Hey, everybody. We have two regular guests every Tuesday of the football season starting today. Josh Pate will join us to talk college football every Tuesday. And every Tuesday, Pittsburgh Steelers, great. The Ohio State, great. Cameron Hayward is going to join this program. And on his podcast, Not Just Football with Cam Hayward, his first guest, I don't know how he booked him, Aaron Rodgers. A two-parter dropping part one today and then part two coming up on Thursday. So Cam Hayward's going to join us. You should as well.

4:10Rich Eisen:844-204-RICH is the number to dial on all of this good stuff. Now then, the college football weekend that we just saw lit. Prime won with hardly any time left on the clock to go ahead. Colorado wins on a blocked field goal. That went down. we also saw Miami put the belt to the Gatorade jug on Stanford we saw the we saw Notre Dame take on Wisconsin in Lambeau Field tight game at halftime second half not so much we saw Lane Kiffin and Clemson Lane Kiffin's LSU Tigers in Clemson delayed for an hour or so because of heavy rains what they wound up doing is they they got an injunction from a Louisiana judge against the weather, it all cleared and they played football.

5:00Rich Eisen:Because that's the way it happens in LSU. 31-3 at halftime. Lane has some fun by saying, and we did it without NFL players. This is what he said during his halftime going to the locker room chit-chat. And then his halftime speech to the team got leaked. It just makes you, the paint was peeled off the walls. They put a 50-burger on Clemson. We saw SMU and Florida State go down to the wire after that game got delayed to a power outage. I don't know if they got an injunction from a Florida judge. That's the way it goes in college football. What else happened? Oh, yes. My alma mater. Listen.

5:46We hired Kyle Whittingham to make sure all the craziness that had been gone on

5:56Rich Eisen:with my school's program finished. Okay? We were doing it with all the nuttiness. Since we came on the air, Brady Hoke was the coach when we came on the air years ago. Wasn't wearing a headset. What's up with that? Out he goes. In comes Jim. Takes a while for him to get his foot in. Hangs a banner, but there's asterisks all over the place based on what everybody thinks about my school's program. Nervous birds can't be eaten. All that stuff. In comes Sharon Moore, who, by the way, while he was taking over for Jim when Jim got suspended, he's crying. He's crying on TV, cursing and crying. Then we all saw what the hell happened last year, an unmitigated disaster.

6:38Let's bring in the steady hand, the cool hand of Kyle Whittingham. Cool hand.

6:48Rich Eisen:And the one thing that we all knew about Kyle Whittingham coming into the University of Michigan is that all the controversy and all the talk of cheating would go out the window.

7:03Rich Eisen:And that didn't happen this weekend. Because it just got crazier and crazier and nuttier. And the whole country is pissed off at Michigan. As if Michigan had anything to do with the clock management and how it all worked at the end of the game with the Big Ten officiating crew and the NBC Sports broadcast crew. Nuts. Let's start with the first things first. Western Michigan outplayed, and I hate to say it, outcoached the University of Michigan. I mean, I'm sitting there watching this game, had Appalachian State on steroids written all over it. Michigan had a decent first drive and I say decent because they scored despite you know I I I know um Todd Blackledge said that Bryce Underwood our now 19 year old quarterback at Michigan um looked different didn't feel different that first drive I'm just glad that it got painted over with a touchdown.

8:13Rich Eisen:But the rest of the game was like pulling teeth. It was dreadful. Andrew Marsh, who I think is one of the best receivers Michigan's ever had, muffed punt after Western Michigan responds to the opening drive of Michigan's touchdown with a field goal of its own.

8:34Rich Eisen:And this thing was really tight. And every single time I'm sitting there thinking Michigan's going to blow this thing wide open. Nuh-uh. Didn't happen. And slowly but surely, this thing is lost. It's over. This thing is done. Western Michigan is going to go back to Kalamazoo with the big old maize and blue pelt on their wall for the rest of their lives. especially when the last final throw of the game figuratively and literally was a Hail Mary attempt that nearly hit somebody in the first row in the head and I'm like this is just the final nail of a dreadful first start in the sophomore season of Bryce Underwood, who was supposed to have been coached up, who was supposed to have had more of a sense of himself and a sense of pre-snap, post-snap, all of it.

9:41Rich Eisen:Western Michigan was all over him. They couldn't run it. They couldn't pass it. They couldn't do anything. But hold the phone. There's one second left on the clock. I have no idea why the Big Ten decided to review this because there were times the Big Ten officiating crew did not review a couple of spots that would have forced Western Michigan into a very difficult choice of to go for it on fourth down or not against Michigan's defense, which was playing very well, despite being put out on the field over and over and over again, which led to a Western Michigan possession of 20 plays that took the last nine minutes of the third quarter off the clock and bled into the fourth quarter.

10:32Rich Eisen:That's the stuff Michigan's supposed to do to Western Michigan in Michigan Stadium. Instead, it was the exact opposite. So Western was 1 ,000 % the better team on Saturday night, much to my dismay and chagrin.

10:51Rich Eisen:so i don't know why they decided to stop and look at it but they did and i don't know why they put another second on the clock i have a little bit better sense of it now and i'm not just saying because what the big 10 uh put out in a statement or a video for full transparency that they put out there of the review process that was going on in illinois at the main replay and officiating center of the Big Ten Conference. I'll get to that in a second. But the throw. I mean, that's why Bryce Underwood has got all the buzz about him. I mean, you could see it on the screen here. On this photograph, we have, he threw it 60 yards in the air, flat-footed.

11:40Rich Eisen:he didn't step up and heave it like he did the first time which put him you know out of bounds I mean this throw and the catch by J.J. Buchanan was spectacular an incredible grab and game over and then starts the celebration and recrimination of University of Michigan for celebrating. I mean, Bryce Underwood celebrating like he just lit it up, like SMU's quarterback on Monday night, who looked terrific, by the way, despite having turnovers like Bryce. Again, I'll get to that in a second as well, the celebrations. But this is what Kyle Whittingham had to say after the game. The extra second was huge.

12:34Rich Eisen:As I watched the first Hail Mary end and the ball sailed out of the back of the end zone, as I glanced at the clock, I was pretty sure there was one second left, but that obviously is not up to me. But as the refs went to replay, they confirmed it, and so gave us one more opportunity. And the second time around, Bryce threw a perfect ball because the first one, he sailed it out the back, which gives us no chance to catch it. And J.J. made a phenomenal catch. It doesn't surprise me. That's who he is. I see him make contested catches every day in practice. And offensive line gave Bryce enough time to launch it.

13:09Rich Eisen:And so this game will go down in history, Michigan history. I don't know if it's in a positive way, but it'll go down in history for certain. Yeah, it'll go into history. And I'm just glad it went in the way it's gone in than the other way, the Appalachian State way or the, I mean, Hail Mary against Michigan Way in 1994 against Colorado. By the way, that was the first day I'd ever set foot in Bristol, Connecticut in the ESPN. That's so wild. I went there to have an informational interview with an anchor who I was sharing an agent with in my small market. Actually, I wasn't sharing an agent with him yet.

13:55Rich Eisen:He was best friends with the executive producer of the CBS Evening News. His name was Eric Sorensen. And I got to ask Eric, can I speak with your buddy? Because I was also in charge of photocopying the paperwork that came in in the mail for their baseball rotisserie league together. Keith Olbermann was kind enough to have me up there. And I'll never forget it. I'm so excited to go up to ESPN for the first time in my life because that's where I wanted to work. I wanted to go there. That's the whole idea of going to school to be a sports broadcaster. And I walk in there and I wanted to turn every television set off.

14:35Rich Eisen:Can you imagine? Everywhere I looked. Everywhere I looked. And by the way, this just in, there were a lot of televisions in ESPN. There still are. But I digress. Rich I remember being in college And my roommate ordered that on pay per view I think it was like$4.99 Yeah I think that's what it was like back then Like ESPN had a Yeah to spend a little extra money I still remember watching that whole thing At any rate here we are And you know Michigan got the Break And Everyone talking about how Michigan cheated. I mean, my God. Can we move past that? Clearly, that will never move past it. There are Michigan haters everywhere, and the bottom line is, you've got to play better than the ref's ref, which is exactly what I was saying, watching Michigan get hosed on spot after spot.

15:41Rich Eisen:And I'm like, sitting there, screaming at the screen, that the refs were blowing these spots over and over again. And I'm thinking to myself, we shouldn't be in this situation against Western Michigan. And to his credit, Lance Taylor, this guy who was the head coach of Western Michigan, I think he is outstanding. His team was ready to roll and had this thing wrapped and won. And this was his reaction afterwards. So I have not seen the clip. Several people have mentioned it to me that the game was over. I think, you know, one, our commissioner has already reached out. You know, normally he handles those type of situations and reviews.

16:30Rich Eisen:I thought that this the crew tonight did a really nice job handling multiple close calls and review situations. We had several where the spot was questioned and reviewed, and those calls went our way, and the review went our way. And so, listen, I'll let our commissioner and those guys handle it. At the end of the day, you don't always control those situations, or is there a sec left on the clock. We talk a lot about just respond, regardless of what the circumstances are. We can't control whether there's a second left on the clock or not. We went out the first time. We defended perfectly, you know, the Hail Mary situation.

17:17Rich Eisen:I thought our guys did an excellent job. I know when I looked up at the clock, it was past zeroes before we touched it. I knew that they would review it. It was the last play of the game. And because we defended it so well, wasn't, you know, worried or concerned about our guys going out and defending it the second time. and, you know, unfortunately, we did not defend it as well the second time. He's awesome. I mean, the way he handled it, I'd want to throttle somebody and if I were him throttling somebody, my God, he's got the arms for it. If I saw him, I'd say, you are a great coach and I love Yellowstone.

17:58Rich Eisen:And Lioness, by the way. Season three is awesome. A little Sheridan vibes? He doesn't look that way to you?

18:08Rich Eisen:now then the clock i have heard from so many people you're seeing you know people flipping out on television you're seeing people flipping out on their instagram feeds josh paid is joining us an hour too i've got you know uh mike prayer is chiming in and saying based on what i know that shouldn't happen would it happen in the nfl no i can happen and yada yada yada i'm hearing all of that one person i know who is intimately knowledgeable about the technology of clock management in football stadiums it's a very small subset i understand he reached out to me by the way he also uh roots for a school that hates michigan i might add quote nobody gets that the tv game clock and the actual game clock are not connected to each other all these talking heads keep saying tv clock this and tv clock that but the tv clock has as much as two seconds of drift the broadcast camera alone is at a different frame rate than the clock it would be like trying to sync sounds to a movie using a cd player controlled by someone in another room the technology at professional and top college sporting events are a hodgepodge of disparate technologies from many different vendors and because they've been introduced at different times by different companies they don't talk to each other this is partially by design because they want to maintain a competitive advantage against each other the leagues are largely non-technical they are not technology companies the way most broadcast networks solve the clock issue is that they point a camera at the broadcast clock and they run computer vision to have a computer say what that clock says because they don't plug into the scoreboard directly into the truck the computer vision has anywhere from a half a second to two seconds of latency by the time it gets to the broadcast so it gets synced to a different frame in the broadcast so when then i won't say out the the person who's on tv that he calls out by name so when blank says i looked at it over and over again and it was triple zero he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about because the graphic that's on screen is a suggestion it's not accurate in many broadcast cases there's a human in the truck who is starting and stopping the graphic because they can't see the clock in the stadium my guess is that there was probably more than half a second to a second and a half left on the clock at the end of the michigan game based on what we've traditionally seen the drift between the camera and the graphic as much as i hate to say it michigan deserved the second shot you're nodding your head rich i've done hundreds of games those clocks are definitely You know I'm not like Michigan.

21:09Rich Eisen:They are definitely not accurate to what you're seeing. And 100 % who sent you that, I'm in agreement with. The only thing I disagree with, if they're shooting the clock, and a lot of the times in basketball, especially in college basketball, they have that backup clock in case that communication goes down between site and the truck or whatever, in whatever you're doing it, that's where the difference would be. That would be an identical clock. But in the case of the actual clock that's on the graphic, that is not a correct clock. So I am with you 100%. The issue is what do we do? Yeah. Because apparently there's even a separate clock for the replay crew.

21:48Rich Eisen:Yes. Because they have tenths of a second, apparently. And these football stadiums do not like NBA arenas. And some of these college stadiums are so old, they're not going to switch to tenths of a second, which they need to do. switch the tenths of a second and light up the the uprights when there's no time left like an nba yep clocks out do it and they should you should also do it for for the uh for the amount of time that you know the snap clock too instead of this oh it goes to zeros then you wait a beat net and you check you have to look down look up yeah let's cut the crap yeah well because there's too many people that have money on the line and there's too many people that think michigan's cheating Michigan didn't cheat come on give me a break Michigan cheated we were getting the ball back a lot earlier multiple times get out of here with that nonsense one last thing the celebration of rushing the field I'm a 57 year old guy sitting at home watching this with 30 years of experience of watching Michigan football and I'm like oh god they're rushing the field and it's Western Michigan like they just won the Rose Bowl and then I thought to myself if this was my first game as a freshman in that stadium I'd have been on the field too I'm telling you you're 18 years old you're a sophomore after last year's dumpster fire dumpster fire and you are by the way now spending your entire four quarters in that stadium unknowingly the latest in a line of Michigan college student swallowing on your own vomit memes like that poor kid who had his hands on his head after Michigan State.

23:36Rich Eisen:Sad Cobra. That dude, Michigan State, blocks the punt and runs it in against Jim in Michigan. Right? They were the latest in this line. Long line. And then they watched that happen? Come on. You're a college kid. I'm not going to sit here and go, you should be better. Now, this young man that's on the screen, Bryce Underwood, just to finish this thing up, him celebrating, it's just like, okay, he's also 19, which is another reason why you got to sort of sit here and wonder, is the light on inside of him to be a quarterback in the Big Ten for the University of Michigan? I've interviewed him twice, and I root for him.

24:21Rich Eisen:but he's at a crossroads right now Oklahoma's coming in and they will absolutely tear him apart if he can't figure things out pre-snap post-snap and Kyle Whittingham to his credit has already said it's not an infinite role for him so all in all Mike Tomlin once said here on this program he's not going to apologize for winning I'm not doing that either it stunk the whole thing michigan didn't cheat and the kids should go celebrate as much as they want we're not going to apologize for winning me too 844-204-RICH number to dial here on this program did you know every 36 minutes a child in the united states is diagnosed with cancer which means some of the bravest warriors you'll ever meet aren't professional athletes or superheroes they're the kids in this fight that's why i'm proud to support hyundai hope on wheels for the past 28 years with support from hyundai their dealers and every new hyundai sold hope on wheels has contributed over$300 million to childhood cancer research, helping save more than 40 ,000 kids.

25:23Rich Eisen:Join our fight at HyundaiWarriors.com. Honored and pleased to call this man a friend. He's kind enough to zoom in again to help us kick off a football season. Monday Night Football's and same thing of Canton. Troy Aikman coming up next.

25:41Rich Eisen:Quick break to tell you some game time tips. When you're hosting during football season, you've got to be ready for every kind of craving. Somebody wants fresh pizza. Somebody wants crispy wings. Somebody's asking if there's sliders. That's when you need more than one call on the playbook. Frigidaire offers ranges and wall ovens with over 15 cooking modes, so you can tackle hosting with confidence. There's Stone Baked Pizza for restaurant-quality pizza in as little as two minutes, Air Fry Mode for crispy favorites, and Air Sous Vide for juicy, tender sliders. Plus, there's slow cook, no preheat, and more.

26:11Rich Eisen:Stone Baked Pizza and Air Fry, both built right in your oven. That's the game time MVP combo. So when you're hosting before kickoff, Frigidaire helps you cover every craving. Available at the Home Depot. Outdoers get more done. Only when using stone-baked pizza mode, cook time requires preheat and reheat and may vary based on ingredients. Rich Eisen here for gusto. After all these years talking to athletes, coaches, entertainers, and people at the top of what they do, one thing is pretty clear. Success usually depends on getting the details right. For small business owners, that includes payroll, hiring, onboarding, benefits, you know, the work that keeps everything moving, even if it's not the reason you started the business in the first place.

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28:02Rich Eisen:Get what you need in two hours or less with express delivery from the Home Depot. Subject to availability. Order select in stock items by 4 p.m. Restrictions and fees apply. The Rich Eisen Show podcast. One, and if you don't have success, I think sometimes things tend to fall a little flat. So it was a big win for us. Super excited about him and what he's going to do for the program. Troy Aikman here on the Rich Eisen Show. Our radio audience just returned. We're talking with the Hall of Famer, eight beer maker, and Monday Night Football, along with Joe Buck. another great season coming up and we'll talk about that game in a second first order business with you troy here is we had irv on the show uh last week and i asked him about uh aaron donald and miles garrett you know being on the same line and he talked about jerome lane and reggie white and going against them and i was interesting but you were really the one who had to go against them you know what was that like and do you think that this is sort of a second coming on that sort of front uh certainly could be i mean those uh it's like the 85 bears when you start talking about the 91 philadelphia eagles uh i mean they were they were number one against the run number one against the pass number one overall uh just a brutal defense and it seemed like throughout my career philadelphia always it didn't matter who the defensive coordinator was they were always really good and quarterbacks took a lot of punishment but that 1991 game I was sacked 11 times against them and you know Rich they only rushed 4 guys they didn't have to blitz and so it felt like there were about 12 guys in coverage and you couldn't find anybody to throw the football to and you didn't have time to get the ball out even if you could find somebody so it was a smothering group and I know that's the expectation or the thought that it'll be like that in Los Angeles, and it certainly could be when you pair those two guys up and what they've accomplished, future Hall of Famers.

30:14I don't, as an offense, I mean, you go in obviously just saying, well, you can't hold the ball, you got to get the ball out, but then that makes everyone else's job easier on the back end of that defense. And you can do a lot when you have two pass rushers that are as dominant as those two guys. I mean, I know that everyone who's on their schedule is just thinking, man, how are we going to move the football against them? It's a little bit like, you know, Rich, back in speaking of the 85 Bears, Ernie Zampezi was my offensive coordinator for several years here in Dallas. And he was telling me back when he was the coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams, they were playing the Bears in the postseason in 85.