The Secret Formula of the College Football Playoff Committee

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

You do wear robes, though.

I presume you wear robes.

There are torches.

We

get no robes.

They don't even buy us robes.

That's fed up right after this ad.

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So, John Urshel, I summon you here finally after months of chasing you,

getting you past the statute of limitations, I suppose, for your testimony as to what it was like to be on the College Football Playoff Committee, who this past week came down with what feels like tablets from the mountaintop, declaring that in fact, yes, number one, Georgia is followed by number two, Michigan, followed by number three, Washington, followed by number four, Florida State, all undefeated.

And then Oregon, OSU, Ohio State, Texas, Alabama, all 11-1 after them.

And so I want to get into how it is maybe that these decisions were reached, but first I need to explain who the fuck you are

and why it is that behind you happens to be this chalkboard that you just wiped clear of suspiciously secretive equations.

Right.

Who am I?

So I'm John Urshel.

I'm a former NFL offensive lineman.

My day job now is

I'm a professor at MIT.

I'm a mathematician.

And I assume I'm here because I'm a former college football playoff committee member.

Okay, so I just got to be clear about this.

Nobody has a resume like John Urshel.

The guy played on the offensive line at Penn State, got drafted by the Baltimore Ravens, and while in the NFL playing, you know, the highest level of football in the world, he simultaneously started taking PhD classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

You know, arguably the highest level of mathematics in the world, which meant that John was studying J.J.

Watt and also this.

this.

The only solutions to the differential equation dy dx

equals k times y

are exponential functions

given by y of x equals y of 0

times e

to the power kx.

Yeah, I didn't understand a word of that for the record.

But the reason I called up John is not because he just became a full-time professor of mathematics at MIT last month at age 32.

It's because for three years, from 2021 to 2023, he was a member of an even more incomprehensible institution, the College Football Playoff Committee.

And so now that his tenure is over, officially, I wanted to find out what it's actually like to be a part of this thing.

Maybe the most controversial and enigmatic voting body in all of sports.

That's probably true.

I feel like college football, for many who are not initiated into the cult of it,

so to speak, is underappreciated as a matter of its hugeness.

Like this is the second most popular sport in America, John.

And the college football playoff now, the culminating event of this whole enterprise, we're talking about a half billion dollars a year as constituted presently in a TV rights deal with ESPN.

And we're talking about, yeah, a math problem, therefore, in terms of how to apportion not just the money, but the slots available in a semifinal with four teams, a different sort of math problem that I'm curious how you got asked to help solve.

Essentially, the way it works, it seems, is that

They decide, you know, the people in charge of the college football playoff, you know, the sort of like, you know, underlying board

decides and I imagine votes on who to select and who to nominate.

And you don't tell someone, oh, I'd really like to be on the committee.

You don't ask someone.

I just got a random phone call from Bill Hancock and he introduced himself, said he was wondering if I'd be interested in being on the playoff committee.

And I told him, you know, of course, I'd be happy to.

And

that's how it goes.

You just get a phone call and you say yes.

This is not some glamorous thing.

I think a lot of people, you know, from the outside looking in, think, like, oh, it's some incredibly secret process.

It's some like insider, whatever,

some, you know, very important people.

No, it's just regular people.

We're not getting paid to do this.

It's not some extravagant sort of thing.

And yeah, we're just there to watch football and try to make the best decisions we can.

So you get drafted by the College Football Playoff Committee is what I'm hearing.

Yes, exactly.

Is there a salary associated with being on the College Football Playoff Committee?

No, no salary.

We're all sort of doing this because we love college football, because we believe in, you know, in the mission.

With the sanities and the

tribal fanaticisms of everybody who is living and dying on your decisions,

also involved in this equation.

And so Bill Hancock, for the record, the executive director of the college football playoff enterprise here.

When he is asking you to commit time,

what kind of time are we talking about?

Because I want to get get into just like, when you say there's travel associated, what the fuck does that mean?

An incredible amount of time.

From Sunday to Tuesday,

I am not home.

I am with the committee

and we are talking football.

Where are you guys gathering?

I don't know.

I don't want to say, you know, the where of it all is.

Oh, come on.

We don't need people like trying to hunt the committee down.

But the point is we all are meeting every single week and we are having, you know, very detailed and long discussions in person

every single time before we output a ranking.

And so, so it's a lot of, a lot of time involved, a lot of travel, and that's not even including all the time you're watching football.

It's less secrecy and I think more simplicity.

And I really liked it.

Okay.

Well, now I drag you into the complexity.

Right.

Well, okay.

Now it's easy for me to talk about.

I can tell you what I did.

And it's,

yeah, I'm not on the committee.

I, you know, I'm not, I don't speak for the committee at all.

Yes.

Yes.

You're, you are, you are an MIT professor who has a first-hand experience with the thing that replaced what I feel is a little ironic,

which is a computerized system known as the Bowl Championship series.

And so in that,

I guess explain, John, how college football used to to be for people who don't know what it was like pre-playoff.

Way back when,

they just used to like see what happens after the bowl game, and then like different media outlets would just vote on who they think the best team is.

For decades, the national champion was determined by the AP poll and the coaches poll.

The power that my people had was remarkable.

Yeah, you had the Associated Press deciding who the national champion was.

Then in 1997, the six biggest conferences joined forces to create the Bowl Championship Series, or BCS.

In comes the BCS.

The idea is, okay, you have all these news outlets, you know, these people voting.

People have opinions, they're biased.

We need to centralize this, and we're going to centralize this and make this fair with a computer system that takes into account hard data

about what is happening in the season.

It always felt a little mysterious.

People were always a little dubious of it.

Yeah.

Especially because people always tend to doubt things that they don't fully understand or that are, that's easily understood.

And it was not easily understood, I don't think.

I don't know if you've seen the movie Office Space, but I feel like everybody was trying to smash the photocopier because no one was thrilled that this robot was telling them actually what was what.

I wasn't around when they were deciding to make this switch, but you know, the powers that be, the people in charge of college football, the presidents of the universities and all these people come together and they say,

enough of this BCS.

Let's make a playoff.

In 2014, after an outcry by many for more of a playoff format, the college football playoff was born.

A playoff of four teams that are decided by football experts.

Let's all get together.

Let's set a formal criteria of how this is done and get a bunch of football experts to execute this vision.

Now, I should also make clear, though, that when you refer to experts, it's not just,

you know, people who know the game or played the game.

It's people with skin in the game.

Like, what we're talking about here again is

in the current constitution of this, a four-team playoff, we're talking about a deal with the ESPN that pays each Power 5 conference $74 million annually, with also $6 million

on top of that for each team that is selected for the semifinal games.

And so there's...

Oh, gotcha.

Well,

I love how I am telling you.

Why would I know anything about anything about the finances?

Right.

That's not your concern.

But I suppose that it's relevant insofar as there are rules when it comes to

who on the committee can

debate whether one team or another is involved because there are are rules of recusal, right?

In terms of like governing, oh, wait, you're the AD at, let's say, for example,

Notre Dame.

You cannot be in the argument about whether Notre Dame specifically should be ranked here or there.

Yeah, I mean, of course not.

And yeah, I mean, that's, that's, I think

it's like that in any job.

Like if I'm, you know, if I'm on some committee for, you know, selecting someone for some math prize, if an MIT person comes comes up, I can't be in the room.

I mean, that's just like, I feel like that's how it works for any job.

And so just the sense of what I'm curious about too is just your sense of the argument, of the arguing over, I believe this ranking.

I have my, because again, I need you to help explain

what it is that you do as a, as a committee in terms of like providing lists and all of that, like the mechanics of just how you replace a computer decision with a human decision.

Yeah, there are 13 of us.

We all meet every single week when we put out a ranking, and we vote based off principles.

Conference championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head competition, comparative outcomes of common opponents, and other relevant factors such as unavailability of key players and coaches that may have affected a team's performance during the season or will likely affect its postseason performance.

The way that we vote on this generally includes seven rounds of ballots through which the selection committee members first select a small pool of teams to be evaluated and then rank those teams.

I didn't know about the money part of it that you were talking about.

Yes, I'm sure there are financial

things that impact the teams, that impact the conferences.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, this really impacts the players.

And so the difference between having a shot to play for a national championship and being on the outside looking in, going to whatever other bowl game,

this is a huge difference for a player.

And so, you know, it's really, really important that we all take the time, we put in the effort, and that we try to make the right decision.

I want to talk about the controversies, though, that you were in the room for, or the big one, which is, I think, a retrospective or retroactive controversy, maybe, which is the TCU question.

Georgia Georgia Bulldogs blunching their way to back-to-back.

TCU, I mean, they got embarrassed so bad, I don't think those football players will show up for the rest of the semester.

What's the question?

The question is,

did you guys f up by putting TCU in the college football playoff?

Wasn't TCU in the championship game?

I'm confused.

I love that you have this reaction because I, again, I love, I want to be clear about this, my disclosure of biases.

I love going on NBC and doing this show Morning Joe.

Joe Scarborough is the host.

Joe Scarborough is an Alabama guy.

I was on with him on Monday.

He said something along the lines of, what the f did the playoff committee do putting TCU, which got blown out 65 to 7 in the championship game, in this field at all.

What a terrible mistake.

The committee screwed up with TCU badly last year.

It cost them ratings.

It cost them credibility.

It cost them money.

I don't want to talk about, do do I think, you know,

do I think in hindsight this was the best decision?

Was that the best decision?

I don't want to talk about the specifics of TCU versus Alabama.

TCU beat Michigan.

Is he screaming that Michigan shouldn't have been in the playoffs?

I think he's actually.

Is he saying that is

there?

It should be four SEC teams, I believe.

I see.

Gotcha.

I understand.

But truly, like, when when you're watching these games, there is this human impulse to be like vindicated by the results as opposed to your process.

The idea of, again, if I'm a human being on this committee,

I would like to not be made to be a fool by a team that I vouched for that then gets blown out by approximately 50 points in a championship game.

And I imagine that's a difficulty

for the actual humans making these calls on some level?

I don't really have this difficulty, I don't think.

I think the reason why I don't have this difficulty is that the way in which I'm evaluating these teams is really straightforward in the sense that I am given these principles of how I am supposed to select these teams.

And I follow these principles to the best of my ability.

And so it's actually not at all up to me, and I'm glad it's not, for me to decide

what exactly should the rules be for deciding who the best team in the country is.

Like,

you know, and how, like, how we decide

what actually constitutes a top 25 ranking, like when you think about it for a little bit, it's murky.

It's governed by sort of tradition.

It's governed by cultural

values.

Well, I think the point that you're making,

which which is an undeniable one, is that these teams aren't actually playing each other by and large.

It's incredibly uneven.

None of the variables are held constant by and large.

And so these are imperfect decisions with imperfect data that are trying to arrive at something approximating fairness.

And so you have these rules to create order out of chaos.

To try to decide what's fairness, what's fair.

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This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Veeen Champain, a 41 alcoholic, volume, 400 by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

Is there a particular team that you fought for that you remember that you were moved off of because someone else had a perspective that was contrary to yours?

I absolutely have.

Okay, I'm not going to name a specific specific team because I don't need like hate mail

from that.

Look, the SEC is a totally even-tempered group.

What do you mean?

Yeah,

I don't want to encourage, so I don't want to talk about the hate mail, like the hate mail you get.

Let's not focus on that.

Were you already getting hate mail?

You get some.

Well, this is important, John, for me.

It was pretty mild on my end.

Most of mail I got was very much along the lines of

you seem like a very

honorable and respectable person.

You have to stand up.

Wait, wait, wait.

You got, you got, hold on.

You got the hate mail from people who are like, I'm not mad.

I'm just disappointed.

Yeah, I got the, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed mail.

So I, my mail was very, very mild in comparison, I would say.

But yeah, there were 100% instances where

I come in, I have some opinion, I have some,

you know, I have some hypothesis about

how I think this should go and why.

And I start talking to other people.

And whether, you know, formally during this process or informally, you know, when I get into town.

Maybe I'm grabbing dinner with someone.

Maybe, you know, it's

in the mornings when we're all having breakfast together, whatever it may be.

and I start hearing other perspectives.

You know, maybe

I was focusing too much

on certain aspects of them, but there was a key deficiency they really have that I didn't really hone in on just because,

you know, just because, you know, I had a blind spot.

Like there's things that I naturally look at more than other people, and people with expertise in areas that maybe I have less in.

You know, this is helpful.

Like, for instance, you know, if I'm watching

a team

and, you know, let's say just, I'm just making up an example.

Ronnie Lott tells me, you know, he has a different opinion on that team based off their secondary play.

Then I'm going to go back and really hear what he says and try to think about that and really try to look at that.

Yeah.

How, how similar were your colleagues on the committee in their approaches?

I guess what I'm curious about is just the diversity of, like, oh, wow, this guy is,

the way he sees this is just very different.

How much clashing was there?

How much consensus was there at the outset of any given gathering?

I think a lot of times, you know, when ESPN is talking about the committee, or when people are talking about the committee, they're saying, the committee did this, the committee did that, as if it's 13 people in a hive mind all like towards that's right one sort of like common belief

and it's 13 people and people with different perspectives and unique

sort of unique opinions unique beliefs and it's important that we have that diversity because it's through that diversity that we are robust that we don't have blind spots that we really think these things through because when you have 13 people in a room and everyone comes in with exactly the same opinion and looks at teams and evaluates them exactly the same way

that sounds dangerous to me what was most frustrating in terms of how people would think about what you guys were doing as you guys kept silent

i think i wouldn't say frustrating i think the one thing

that was

that I didn't quite understand

was

I always got the sense that people felt like it was this very secretive thing and like they were trying to like get something out of me.

It's online.

All the information, all our like the criteria that we use to evaluate the teams is online.

The process we do is online.

When we meet is freely available online.

How we gather information from like conferences, like the point person system for gathering information from conferences about additional information that we wouldn't get through normal means is online.

I should say that even the location that I asked you about, which you did not want to disclose due to safety reasons, has that online as well?

Yeah, the Gaylord Texas Hotel in Grapevine.

It's online.

Yeah, the Gaylord Texas, excuse me, that's also online.

Online.

I can feel you, John.

You're inverting the office space metaphor that I threw at you before.

You're describing this as

if it is a mundane office in which you're processing pretty mundane details.

First of all, I loved being on the College Football Playoff Committee.

This was a huge honor.

This is, you know, one of...

I really hold this in high regard and I'm, you know, I'm really honored that I had the opportunity to be on the committee.

But at the same time, I want to stress this isn't like some secret society.

You do wear robes, though.

I presume you wear robes.

There are torches.

We get no robes.

They don't even buy us robes.

That's fed up.

Can you believe that?

I was promised robes.

So on selection weekend, I think sometimes ESPN does B-roll.

of us watching the you know the final

play of games together yeah so we have a bunch of chairs set up with like all these TVs so we can watch all the games.

And I remember one year, like, you know, they show the video or they show the photo and like people were like

kind of making fun of us on Twitter or wherever.

Like, can't they get better chairs?

The Gaylord Texan chair quality.

Substandard.

Yeah, they were unhappy with the chair quality of what we were sitting.

The lumbar support.

Yeah.

Insufficient lumbar support.

So, no,

it's very mundane.

It's very normal.

It's very much like, yes, what we are doing is incredibly important and has huge impact.

But at the same time,

in part because what we're doing is so important and has this impact, it's important that everything that happens is, you know,

like clockwork.

Everything is structured.

Everything is ordered.

And in that way, everything really is mundane in the best way possible.

You know, I do remember that Bieber roll.

I do remember some of those like memes.

I do want to ask you, though, why you think it is that fans on the outside presume that what you guys are doing is a lot like that photo of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, like watching the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

I have no clue what photo you're talking about.

Oh, yeah.

We're going to photoshop you into this photo now.

It's, it's everybody like in the situation room just like

watching with the gravity of the assassination of Osama bin Laden on their face.

So people assume from the outside that you guys are like up to stuff

and it should be like this.

Metals,

laptops, hand on face.

Why the disconnect then?

How do you account for the vast disconnect?

It's easy to believe that.

I think it's so much easier to let your mind sort of like

go wild about like what's going on in the background than to just like Google a little bit.

I don't know how much you're paying attention to as MIT professor full-time now, to like the college football playoff rankings.

Now,

I don't, do you, do you watch with interest?

Are you now checked out?

How does this work for an ex-committee member?

I'm just, so I mean, I have two small kids at home and, you know, I'm teaching and I.

How dare you?

The class I'm teaching right now, I kind of overhauled it.

So it ended up being a lot of work.

What's the name of the class?

Research.

It's like an upper-level undergrad class on numerical analysis, which is, it's like pretty much

solving problems from continuous math using a computer.

The BCS.

Exactly.

In other words, BCS for undergrad.

It's a class on the BCS.

Yes.

Okay, but I do want to explain that there are some inflection points in the current.

So we're, to catch everybody up, we're in the penultimate ranking.

right now

of the college football playoff uh of the ultimate uh four team Exactly right.

Exactly right.

And so we have the top 25.

And just to explain for people who don't know or even give a shit about this, some of the interesting kind of issues that have to be hashed out here.

So for instance, the top four teams are all undefeated.

For people who aren't familiar, it's Georgia, number one, Michigan, number two, Washington, number three, Florida State, number four,

all 12 and no teams, followed by Oregon, OSU, Texas, and Alabama in that order, all 11 and one.

And there is a looming nightmare here, John, which you're already laughing at.

Because I imagine you imagine what the committee must be feeling as they watch Georgia play Alabama this weekend.

For the draft and your YouTube audience, John is sticking his tongue out with the relishing of a guy who does not have to actually make this decision.

To explain the obvious, and it's obvious, we can talk about this openly.

Georgia is the number one team in the country.

Alabama is the number eight team in the country.

If Alabama beats Georgia, two 11-1 teams,

and they just happen to be some of the most fanatical institutions with tribes, as aforementioned, that's ever existed.

And if Alabama beats Georgia, now chaos spreads across the land.

And so, why are you laughing, buddy?

One, I'm laughing because I'm not on the committee this

year, but

because

it looks a little tough this year.

I think you have eight teams, four undefeateds, four one-loss teams.

You have three of those one-loss teams playing in championship games.

Yes.

And I'm pretty sure, though I haven't really checked the statistics,

it must be true.

This year must be

slightly an outlier in terms of how top teams have performed against their competition.

It seems like it is indeed an unusual year.

I imagine it is statistically unusual.

I was just going to say, it feels like the hardest year in the existence of the college football playoff committee when it comes to all of the things that are about to maybe change depending on who beats who.

And a lot of those are head-to-head matchups among those eight teams we just mentioned.

Oregon and Washington, for instance.

Texas looming.

And so I guess as a human being, right?

If I'm on this committee,

my life is made so much easier if Georgia beats Alabama.

When it comes to these sorts of things, I think the best thing to do is

you watch the games.

You can't control what's going to happen.

And the thing you have to do is whether

the outcome of the championship games make it fairly obvious, which some years there's a very natural divide that pretty much everyone in the country agrees with.

And some years, it might be more difficult.

Who knows what type of year it's going to be this year?

But the good thing is, no matter how easy or difficult it may be, there is a strong protocol in place, a strong set of guidelines and criteria to help guide the committee to make the right decision.

And this is where I think it's really important.

Okay, this is just my beliefs.

Different people have different beliefs.

I really believe that things are just always better

when you have clear and understandable criteria and guidelines about what you're supposed to do when thing X happens.

I'm always a believer in

like

more guidelines, more instructions when it comes to dealing with important things.

I am shocked to discover that the only MIT professor in the history of the NFL likes rules.

Having rules allow you to be equitable.

It allows you to make the same decision over and over and over again.

Now, of course, there's always the question of, are the rules right?

Should we change the rules?

But I think coming together and agreeing on rules and then applying those rules fairly over and over makes it so much easier than people subjectively, you know, deciding what the rules are.

The sincerity of your pursuit of fairness is also undeniable to me at this point.

And so I want to do something that college football does not do, which is appoint you in this hypothetical that I am drawing here at Poplatori Finds Out exclusively.

I'm appointing you the commissioner of college football.

The college football czar, John Herschel.

You get a robe, which is great news for you in this new job I've given.

You're still unpaid because, you know, come on.

What can you do?

What can you do?

But what would you change?

What would you do?

Right.

So I give you

a blank map upon which you can write your vision for how to make this better.

And it's not just about playoff stuff.

It could be about anything.

As you put your hand to your beard, scratching your chin, what do you want to begin with?

Promotion and relegation.

Oh, there it is.

There's no question.

There it is.

Promotion and relegation.

I want.

Okay, I don't know how you would do this now, now that the Pac-12 has sort of like

two teams and the Pac-Two.

Yeah, I don't even, I don't even want to go down the rabbit hole of how depressing that is.

So you mourn that.

I strongly mourn that, but I have a job to do.

And my job is

I am going to institute promotion and relegation.

So what we need to do is we are going to tie

some power five conferences

with group of five conferences.

Group of five teams will go up.

Power five teams will go down.

Cincinnati is doing very well.

Congratulations.

You are going up into whatever conference you are tied to.

And you get to play in that schedule.

Maybe, you know, you win the Sun Belt.

You get to go to the SEC next year.

Wow.

Okay.

So, wait, just to be clear for people who don't get this, right?

Power five is the ACC, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Ten Conference, the Big 12 Conference, what used to be the Pac-12 Conference, the SEC, the Southeastern Conference.

Group of five, meaning conference USA is the American Athletic Conference, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt, as aforementioned.

And you do this and in that way you reward teams for performing well and teams that are in power five conferences that maybe people on the outside looking in you know maybe you know the american team says oh we could beat that team at the that's at the bottom of the you know the big 10 or the bottom of whatever

you get a chance to

Then we have like a system where everyone can move up.

And then you have some playoff system.

Let's say by taking the top teams of these five tracks,

maybe you add three at large and you have an eight-team playoff at the end.

And I think it would also make it more exciting.

Now, all of a sudden, if you're a Vanderbilt fan,

you are very excited at the games, you know, near the end of the year.

You are fighting against relegation.

Every single year in one of the group of five conferences, it's not just winning the conference.

It is incredibly high stakes.

You are fighting to go up.

Something happens.

You know, there's no ceiling.

Whereas if you're a group of five team, I imagine sometimes it must feel like there's a ceiling here because you have to try to schedule strong non-conference games.

And if you can't schedule strong non-conference games, it's tough.

Right, because you're not in the middle.

Let's make a direct path.

Yes, the incentives, what you're addressing are the incentives right now for a Power five team to risk a loss to a good group of five team,

which they generally don't want to do for obvious reasons because the college playoff committee,

by the way, beyond determining fairness is also, as aforementioned, apportioning fees from this TV rights deal to the power five in proportion that is grandly in excess of the group of five.

And so, John Urshall, what you were doing as commissioner of college football is saying, this whole 12-team college football playoff, that's cute.

But I want to do something far more drastic here.

It would never happen.

It could never happen, but I think it would be great.

I want to see this world.

I want to see you in this robe

making this radical change.

And I also want to see the hate mail that you're about to get.

Who would hate a promotion relegation system?

How could you hate a promotion relegation system?

John, you're really asking how an Alabama fan could possibly hate a world in which they have to be in the Sunbelt?

I don't think Alabama is ever going to be in danger of going to the Sunbelt.

I think they will be fine.

John, thank you for your rationality and also your insanity at the end here.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, yeah.

No, you're welcome.

So, what I found out today is that every jury, every committee should be so lucky to have John Urshel on it.

Because you'd probably heard me at various points shamelessly try to mine him for the untold secrets held in the little black book of the Illuminati Cabal of American Sports.

And only now do I realize that I probably should have tried that on like one of the seven financially conflicted athletic directors who were serving alongside John on the College Football Playoff Committee.

But John,

I mean, it feels safe to say this now,

the only MIT mathematician to ever play offensive line in the NFL?

Probably the worst person on the planet to try and sneak something past

when it comes to breaking rules.

But speaking of a qualified committee, Cablo Torrey finds out is produced by by Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan DeLindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rachel Miller-Howard, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tuminello, and Juliet Warren.

With studio engineering by RG Systems, post-production by NGW Post, our theme song as always by John Bravo, and the phrase that I'm left with at the end of this week that I found out is hoop burn.

Thank you to David Sampson.

I will see you next week.