Local Hour: Celebrating Miami Making The CFP!

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Chris, did your father get lost on the way to the office again today?

Where is he? It seems so. He's here.
He's getting makeup, but it was a rush. The traffic seemed to get him today.
Oh, he's coming in. He's snarling.
He's coming. He just came in.

He's coming in snarling, late again.

I'm saying at this point, what is

sweeping off his seat? What is anger? What is the anger at whom? I don't know.

Traffic. What is the percentage of times, Asla, that you would guess that Cody, since you've been around, is on time? What percentage?

I would say 20%. one out of five.
Please.

90%.

I really don't understand what happened. I got word on a text that you were going to be here at 8:10 in the morning, and then you're just walking in right now.
A couple wrong turns.

50 minutes after that. So, do you have any excuses, explanations? Why did you text us that you were going to be in at 8:10? What are you smiling about now?

I mean, I texted my initial estimate was 8:16.

610, 816. This to me feels exactly like the PFPI controversy from yesterday.

Whereas maybe the traffic is mostly to blame, but there's a little look in the mirror of like, maybe I should leave a little earlier. No, no, there's got to be a smidgen of blame.

He doesn't want to do the blame to him. He hasn't changed any part of his routine.

But I want to ask the question again because I pointed out yesterday that Spotify sent us that big, heavy trophy saying we had 100 million streams last year. And I will say again, that's just Spotify.

We're on in a lot of different places. We're a big show.
Tell me all the other big shows where Ryan Clark walks onto the set seven minutes after the show started.

In my guess my dad's defense, I did see Cam Newton walking onto the first take set last week. I saw it too.
About like 10 minutes late. Right.
And we start wearing hats like Cam Newton. There you go.

Maybe that's the punishment. He dresses like Cam Newton next week.
You know what, though?

I understand when Cam Newton does that once. You said you've seen it once.
Right, it was the first time.

I've rarely seen it happen with anybody. There was the one time Stephen A.
Smith was running alongside the Seaport Studios, remember? But these are one, like to your point. One time.
Yeah.

You know, this is something that people can relate to. You know, that's why people love me so much because,

look, in real life,

sometimes you're tardy, not always on time. I know, but Zaszlo just guessed that you're on time 20% of the time since he's been here.
I doubt that's happening with Cam Newton.

He wouldn't be on first take anymore if it were happening with Cam Newton. He would be on second take if he demoted.

Well, you see, when it's jokes like that that you get, you gotta be, you gotta tolerate talent when it gets here. You know what I mean?

Isn't 8.30 technically on time for us?

If 8.30 is the number, it's way less than 20%.

You should start at 9, quite frankly. But 8.30 is when the rest of us are here.
Well, normally I am. Normally, I beat you in.
No, not normally. Normally, is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

I think normally I beat you in here. You know, you live a minute and a half away.
I live a mile

hour and a half away based on Miami traffic. If you think I'm going to leave my house at 5:30 to get here, you've got another thing coming.

Was that a hi-hat?

This is the Don Labatar Show with the Stu Gats Podcast.

We've talked for a while around here about how time got sort of distorted at the start of the pandemic.

But if you use that as a landmark and we went back right to the start of the pandemic and I told you, do you think it's possible in any circumstance where the greatest player in soccer would be playing in Miami at the top of his game for the championship in Miami?

and that would happen quietly.

Could you have imagined a scenario, could you have concocted an imaginary scenario where Messi would play well and have his team within a game of the championship against Vancouver, and it happens quietly?

You don't think that, and this has been the case for a few years now with Inter Miami, you don't think they've done an extremely poor job at

the promotion of their team? They promoted Messi very well. It's been promoted all over town.
I have felt the promotion of Messi everywhere.

I have not felt the talk about this team and its championship chasing everywhere. But Dan, how many times has Inner Miami come to you and say, you know, can we get someone on your show?

Can we talk about it? How many times in the history of them existing here? Yeah, but I'm going to guess probably zero. Okay, it's right.

It's zero times, but I also think that's less important than it's ever been. I think at this point, I don't think that these teams in general need the support of local media.

They need support of their partners, but local media is not something.

Look, I've seen at the games the way that the local media press seats have gone from courtside to the teams all realizing, oh, wait a minute, that's very expensive seating.

Let's put the local reporters up somewhere else where they're not close to the action. Dan, you mentioned partners, and

we've talked about putting their entire season behind a paywall at Apple and how that subscription service failed miserably to the point that Apple's doing away with that and it just comes with your Apple TV.

But not only do you get fewer eyes on your product, you lose a partnership. This is a cup final that used to be on ESBN back in the day.

You at least get some daytime programming dedicated to promotion. ESBN, remember when Versus was a thing and the NHL went away from ESPN?

The NHL essentially almost died because they were largely ignored by the worldwide leader. And now Messi and MLS are totally ignored by cable sports programming networks.

You mentioned the correct thing when you said baseball and hockey suffered from what used to be the biggest and only alternative, ESPN. We've had a lot change, though, in the last five years.

And one of the things that I think has changed is these leaders in sports don't actually know how to react to a shifting tectonic change, and NBC is doing it very well.

I've never seen Carmelo, Tracy McGrady, and Vince Carter on a pregame set. That's three Hall of Famers.
I've never seen it before. So it's a golden age of sports television money.

Last night on NBC for a regular season game, they had three Hall of Famers on the set, and it's something that I have never seen for a pregame show before because Hall of Famers generally don't do that.

Or if they do that, it's Scottie Pippen who does it poorly and everyone at ESPN is excited to have him around.

But when you talk about how it's shifted there with leadership, what's also shifted is the coverage of it is so bad.

For example, I'll give you an example, an easy example, but it's something that nobody's covering. It's being reported that the Bill Simmons move to Netflix is a hugely positive thing.

And I think I understand that, why it would be reported that way. I assure you, Bill Simmons is not happy about that.
He's an employee. He works for Spotify.

They've done something to put his audience behind a paywall. He's worked very hard to build that audience.
He has an idea of what kind of damage that can do to an audience. And

what Apple and MLS and Messi underestimated is they thought, well, if it's Messi and Apple, surely there's enough money there to make all of that work. But we have a championship being played here.

The playoff format is terrible. You can't go months playing the playoffs and you can't go weeks without a game.
That's ridiculous. Like you can't do that.

But beyond that, that's not the primary problem because we'd wait for football. Even if football was doing it that way, we would wait for American football.
The best player in soccer.

The best player ever is playing at the top of his game. He's dominating the sport and that can't happen quietly.
You don't have a promo on Monday night football saying the MLS Cup is this weekend.

During the big game of Ohio State and Michigan, you don't see promotion for the eventual MLS Cup final. I understand that it still needed to be sorted there.

But Fox and FS1, say what you will about their daytime programming, I don't know if Nick Wright's going to dedicate any of his show time to, hey, we have the MLS Cup final

on Network Fox. The big thing about losing a partner like ESBN is, and MLS has data to suggest whenever they did these big pieces about Zlatan and El Trafico, those MLS games would do numbers.

It's not on people's radar. They're so totally unaware because conventional sports in this country, the two biggest ones, pro football and college football, are not promoting it.

This is why the ESPN-WWE partnership is actually a good thing, not just because of all the money that they've made, but they've normalized talking about wrestling on daytime programming.

MLS, in going over to Apple and taking the most money available to them, actually hurt their product because of awareness to the casual sports fan. It's a good example.

I mean, Stephanie McMahon was on ESPN radio yesterday. How many times this year do you think anyone related to MLS has been on any kind of ESPN football? So there's a language issue, right?

Messi's a notoriously bad interview in any language, but especially in English. Cody, you know this is a historic game.
You've described this as a historic game. Yes.
History doesn't happen quietly.

Yeah, I don't think that's historic. I don't think it's a historic game.

I think it's historic because soccer, pro-soccer, has been around in this town since the early 70s, and a half a century later, they're on the cusp of winning a championship.

I think that's what makes it historic. It should be an historic game.
How about that? It It should be. It should be.
Yes, for sure. But let's be honest.

MLS Cup is drowned out by the NFL chugging toward its playoffs, by the college football playoff and all the controversy and debate around that. It just gets lost.

And magnified by that is the fact that Leon Messi is unlike any other athlete in the world. He is his own industry.
He's in a cocoon. He's not available to anybody.

Under normal circumstances, Leon Messi right now would be doing interviews. He would be doing Spanish TV.
Did he used to do interviews when he played overseas?

Like right before he came here? Interviews with him are rare and

usually not very interesting. He doesn't, he doesn't, there's not a lot of access.
You don't need an interview to make Messi interesting.

He's interesting because to many, he's the greatest to ever do it. And he's astonishing when you watch him.

He captivates you with his play and universally agreed, the greatest player to ever play in that league by a wide margin. The story writes itself.
The problem is no one's telling you the story.

50 years ago, it was Pele at the end of his career making soccer matter in New York, and he was bad. He wasn't any good at that point in his career.
The point that Cody makes, though, is a good one.

When you're a growing league, this happened with the WNBA, you can't play your championship games when important American football games are being played.

Like, you can't have important playoff games in the middle of a Sunday when

everybody who cares about sports is watching something else. Right.
Yes,

you can't do that. And look, Messi is appreciated by people who know soccer.
How about

you make him known to people who don't know soccer that well?

Everybody, like if you go up to anyone in the world, name one soccer player, it's either Messi or Reddit. He's been promoted a ton.
Look, I don't think.

I think I've got this right. I don't think there's ever been a player locally that I see plastered around town, everywhere, like restaurants in little Haiti, just

more than Messi. Number one for athletes, for sure.
Number two in the market behind Andajar and Levine. They have sold Messi plenty.
This is not a sales problem.

No, it is.

I believe, I don't believe it's a promotion problem. I believe it's more scheduling and

it's more paywall.

Paywall ties into the promotion in that you don't have a big-time partner that is known by sports fans. No one's going to Apple TV for sports, really.
No one knows that as a destination.

They don't have dedicated programming to promote those events. So I think that is a huge misstep.
They don't have ESPN. If I'm MLS, I say, Messi, you have to go to first take.

Someone, you have to do that. No, but my.
You have MLS Cup, Taylor Twelman. Someone help us.
Yes.

My point, though, is that I could put Luis Suarez on first take as a controversial polarizing figure. The paywall problem is

a bigger problem. The paywall.
Why can't Beckham do something?

The football, you can get your football for free.

You can be broke and get football. You can do that.
You simply cannot do that with Messi. No, you can't do that with soccer in this country.

If you want to be a soccer fan in this country and follow all the leagues around the world, you are... paying through the nose on this stuff.
But again, it's promotion, promotion, promotion.

I know this is probably too much soccer already for our audience, but on Friday, it's a huge soccer day because you have the the the national soccer media descending upon miami because mls cup is here it's messy versus mueller vanilla versus miami i might i think that's a big game okay but also on friday is a world cup draw emanating from washington dc so we'll have tom bogart who is the number one u.s soccer well you will on friday he's the number one u.s soccer insider and he'll just be around here on friday to help answer some of these questions for us in a year from now more promotion around the city late if we could fast forward in a year from now more promotion around the city Leon Messi or Davion Mitchell?

That's a great question. Guys, you can't make this all about promotion.

They have the best player there's ever been, if not at the height of his powers, not appreciably declining in the performance of the play that you're watching, you know, in important games, three assists and a goal.

I don't think there's anyone in this studio or in our audience that knew this game was on Network Fox before I said it. I did not.
I did not. Put it on the poll at Lebatard Show.

Did you know the MLS final was on Network Fox this weekend?

But if we're going to do before we get to yet more soccer, because it's a championship game and it's okay, we'll get to the University of Miami stuff in a second. What happened with them?

I'm sure people are tired of that one as well. But I'd just like to quiz Chris and Roy here just as local sports fans.

Are you familiar with, could you get either one of the nicknames for either Inter Miami or Vancouver? Could you tell me what their

nicknames are instead of? Herons for Inner Miami? Yeah.

Could they be in the White Caps? Glad Roy went. The Herons and the White Caps.
That is

correct.

You get the White Caps. We both knew that.

The Vancouver White Caps have been the Vancouver White Caps dating back to the NASL days in the Middle Ages. So he cheated.

What are you talking about? Their official name is Vancouver Whitecaps.

Yeah, the Herons are a nickname. Vancouver White Caps are an official name.
Yeah.

I don't understand the distinction.

There is a distinction. Because at this point,

because they're not the Inner Miami Herons. They're just Inner Miami Heritage.
Yeah, everyone knows that's their

Heron on the name. Everyone knows? Yeah.
Everyone knows that Inner Miami is a heron. That's their thing.
It's in their logo. I mean, the official name of the team is right behind you.

I guarantee you Spanish. If you polled most people in America, they don't know that those are actually herons.
They would say flamingos. Yeah.
Or ibises.

They might have guessed ibises. Those aren't the same thing.
Put it on the poll at Levittard Show. Are herons,

are herons uh ibises and cranes and flamingos the same thing cranes hold the same thing i think they are put it on the poll as well for a yes there's a lot of cranes around that stadium in miami at lebotard show yeah i think i think they should be the inner miami cranes yes i think

put it on the poll as well at lebotard show did you know inner miami was the herons and did you know vancouver was the white caps

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Don Lebatard. You are a fool.
You're nobody. You are an infant.
You have nobody skin.

I literally put together

a freaking stage for your toenail. Nobody.
I am your career right now, pal.

Look at me.

I am your career. No.
Stugats. You have messed with me, David, and now you're messing with me.
And I'm more dangerous, pal. This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

You're saying, Mike, I'm stunned to hear you pull the parachute on too much soccer talk after 20 minutes when there's a championship game that

Greg Cody is calling historic. But let's go to Zaz here as the official decider on big game or not a big game.

We're bringing in a soccer expert to our studios, so we're not talking about whether they're called the Herons and the White Cops, and we're talking about this more intelligently.

Big game or not big game, Friday, the White Caps against the Herons. Well, the game's going to be played on Saturday, Dan.
So if you tune in Friday, you may miss it.

Inter Miami, Vancouver,

Drive Pink Stadium. It's not called that anymore.
Okay. Hasn't been for a couple years.
Chase. Right across the street from empty, graffitied warehouses.
Anna Wendy's. The MLS Championship.

Also known as the MLS Cup. Usually known as the MLS Cup.
Lionel Messi and them boys versus the white caps and them boys.

I'm going big game.

I have been out on Intermaimi, but I'm going to be in Atlanta this weekend for the SC Championship, and I'm going to make sure that I watch it. If I'm watching it, that's a big game.
Big game.

That's right. Yo, chicken thighs.
You're not going to watch your

bunch football going out the pieces of the ball. You're not going to watch Shi-Tu's.

You were out of Miami. You just didn't want to cover them or pay attention any

The white caps and them boys. They're either the white caps or them boys.
They can't be the white caps and them boys. Them boys are the white caps.
Thomas Mueller. There's like one.

No, but there's like one, and he's like the main one. Thomas Mueller's on Vancouver.
He is. That's funny.
Don't look up his record against Messi head-to-head.

So last night. Oh, I want to.
Last night,

the committee got together and the wet sock came out again. And I believe he said the thing that should give Miami fans hope.
I do believe that all of this is stupid.

I believe we all are in agreement that NCAA leadership, such that it is, has been terrible for a long time. And this manifestation of it is the worst.

And I'm kind of rooting for Duke to win because then they'll just stop doing it.

Like if Duke, if Duke make, if Duke wins the ACC championship and beats Virginia and gets into this playoff scenario with

five losses, there's a good chance that they don't because they won't be ranked. And then

James Madison would make it. Then you have James Madison and whoever wins.

Two land in North Texas. Duke wins and the Dukes get in.

It's just chaos and it's terrible. And it's dumb.

Look, this is what I know about sports. And I know obviously people are going to accuse us of bias because we feel like the Miami team is wronged.

But what I I do know about sports is that people do have at least the illusion that it's supposed to be a meritocracy.

Like you could complain about the officiating and all sorts of things, but the scoreboard ends up telling the story that gives you finality.

We have all sorts of imperfect measurement systems for our championships. All of them are imperfect.
Basketball is the best, but all of them are imperfect.

There's going to be possibly champion of professional football this year that isn't actually the best team, is just the healthiest team at the end of the season that happens to win the game.

One game samples are not representative, but they're the best we've got. And so we have the illusion of merit being the reason.

It's not judges, and I think so, and let's get this conference, let's get this athletic director to come out and try and talk for a month in front of the cameras more than he ever has, be more famous than he ever has been, be more polarizing than he ever has been.

Let's get this sound. I don't want to remember this person's name.
I don't know what his nationality is. I don't know.
He's a white man. Yeah, but as most administrators in that sport.

Like a hockey name. But his last name, I don't know what...
Hunter Yurichak. I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to say his name. I'm not going to give him this platform

of knowing his name. But I think whatever the ethnicity is or

the lineage is of that last name, the history of the last name, I think it stands for we're making this all up as we go along.

Okay, here is a really important factor too, because you're still honoring head-to-head between Alabama and Oklahoma with the sooners being up, but it has not carried the day for Miami and Notre Dame.

Neither Miami nor Notre Dame play anymore. Among the teams who are finished playing, do not play this week, can their order flip next Sunday in the final rankings?

Or is the order for the teams whose hay is in the barn, whose resume is complete, are they set in terms of where they are relative to one another?

Great question, Reese. The management committee during the offseason provided some clarification to some comments that were made last year.

And indeed, idle teams can move following the results of the championship games and how they impact the teams that are around those that play in the championship game and data such as strength of scheduled teams that may be idle.

So, yes, teams that are idle can move up or down.

I think that's going to replace the hello in terms of your evolving from your father and making noises and sounds meant to indicate the pleasure of being right.

I will not feel any better about this system if Miami gets in.

But he just said the thing that will allow you to watch for another week because all of this is just content to get you to the last 12 games when it becomes a beauty pageant.

So Mike, you heard that last night, and that made you feel good, right?

If Texas Tech handles business, Miami's in.

Meaning, because BYU, I thought Miami's going to jump BYU last night, but if BYU loses again to Texas Tech, then you believe that Miami will then move ahead of BYU.

I already know Jeremy's take on this, and I'll speak for him because I don't want to hear him talk.

BYU is being done wrong here, and they're going to get penalized if they lose that conference title game. Normally, that is a credo of mine.

You should not be hurt by losing your conference title game. It's a quality law.
But because it benefits Miami, you're changing your stance.

Well, that's because there's another life principle that I have that all football guys should have.

If you're tied in record and you played head-to-head, the chief tiebreaker is head-to-head.

So if you're going to normalize that not mattering, we're going to go ahead and normalize losing in the conference game mattering.

So just so we can clarify, if two teams played head-to-head in their season, and they have the same record at the end,

and it's a matter of whether or not they should get into the college football playoff, Head-to-head should be the deciding factor, correct? There are mitigating circumstances, though.

So the mitigating circumstances are that last year when BYU beat SMU,

you didn't think it should be the case, but this year when it's Miami and Notre Dame, it should. And the reason is what? Head to head.
BYU was not at all talked about last year in that cluster.

Oh, because they weren't talked about. No, no, no, no, because they weren't talked about because they were not in that cluster.

It was South Carolina, Miami, Alabama, and SMU if they were to be able to get to the first two

losses. Thank you for participating.
Now, it's really interesting, right? Okay, can I add, though, real quick here? Like,

I think you're probably right that if BYU loses again, this time in the Big 12 championship, that Miami would jump them. But why should BYU get penalized there?

And I'm not saying why should they get penalized for losing in their conference championship, which I do agree that they should not, but why would they get penalized for losing in their conference championship to a team we already know they're not as good as, meaning Texas Tech, they already lost it we we know Texas tech I'll answer that question they're being penalized or penalized as you say

because the CFP basically admitted that they use buffer teams That's why Alabama all of a sudden moved up ahead of Notre Dame.

Yurichek said the hot debate in that room for weeks has been Alabama versus Notre Dame. Yeah, that's what the national media has been arguing about for a month.
Way to read the room.

The BYU is solely there, so they don't have Miami and Notre Dame side to side. Okay, so then it was bullshit the whole talk.
Bullshit. It was tears.
It doesn't matter if you're in the same tier then.

It matters if you're next to each other. First off, tears weren't a thing.
Right.

Even though they told us they were. Then tears were a thing.

Because we all learned about tears together after week one, after the first week of the CFP. But it's bullshit.
Okay, so then Miami had to move up a couple of spots to be considered in the same tier.

They move up a couple spots.

They were compared directly, but Notre Dame's still better. That was the most recent thing that we've heard.
And now tears are no longer a thing. I swear to God, I sound crazy.

This is what they're saying. You say,

you say, you say, you call it bullshit. And I do believe most people listening to this would agree that they're making it all up as they go along.
That is absolutely what is happening.

This is what Bruce Feldman, one of the more respected voices.

Did he say the F-word last night on television? No, no, he was replying to a Kevin Clark tweet to Miami Hurricanes cutting it up. This is all so bleeping stupid.

They just keep making it up as they go along. It's like the CFP committee is going out of their way to show that the sport is run by morons.
I agree. And yeah, I feel bad for BYU.

BYU should probably be slotted ahead of these teams, but head-to-head, as Mario Chrisbault likes to tell you, should matter. And you're starting to see the tide turn.

You're starting to see Kirk Herbstree come out and say, no, Miami deserves to be in there. Nick Sabin, say it.
Greg McElroy, say it.

I woke up this morning and Jessica Smetana was tweeting out FEI ratings. They're shook because they know what's going to happen.

I feel so good this morning because I know that if Texas Tech, a 13 and a half point favorite, handles their business, Miami will be in over Notre Dame because

head to head, Chris. Stop looking at your phone.
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I think I would have been on his side. I would have looked at you like, what did you say?

I'm telling you, me and my friend, the rest of the way home, all we kept saying was, I ain't cheating. Stugats.

Why did you get your ass? I think he got your ass. I got his ass.

Chris won this one for sure. Not pathetic.

It was great. This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

It's just wild to me that the BYU thing gets wiped away, right? Because this will be their fourth loss in two years.

A thing that we're saying Miami, having four losses in two years without going to a conference championship game, will be in the position to do. And that's why they're this aggrieved party.

But BYU, a team that lost two games last year by a total of eight points,

didn't make it, wasn't even close to the conversation. This will be BYU's out of the last six seasons.
This will be the fourth season where they started unranked and finished the season ranked.

And that's what's really hurting them here is confirmation bias on the rest of these teams because all 11 teams around them, the 10 ahead of them and Miami, all started the season ranked. I get you.

And so you continue to move them up regardless of merit.

Regardless of how much. It's not a BYU-Miami thing.
This is about head-to-head. Okay.
Okay, last year, 9-1 BYU, 9-1 SMU, head-to-head.

You just said those rankings, you just said they lost by eight points, and you touted that as a merit. They lost 29-7 this year to Texas Tech.

By the way, that is more points than Miami has lost their last four games combined. Okay, but an undefeated Texas Technology.
You lost two games. I'm not doing this.

Miami's in the college football playoff. Why am I doing this with him?

Because

just because it benefits you now doesn't mean that this process is done. No one's talking about BYU Miami.
They don't matter here. They're named after a guy.

It's about Miami and Notre Dame. Stop it.
Stop it. Miami beat Notre Dame.
They have the same record. Miami's playing the best football they have all season.

Shut up. It's not just a guy.
James Madison might have been just a guy. Brigham Young was not just a guy.
I get it. More than a guy.
Like, now you're caping up for Mike, for

your mark. You're caping up for Brett.
Your mark. You're getting to a group of five guys in, Jeremy.
The aggrieved UCF guy is being taken care of this year. Big boys are playing football.
Let me see.

And if you're a football guy,

if you're a football guy, you know head to head.

Look, I want to talk for a second about just the conundrum that BYU has found itself in the entirety of my lifetime because this goes back in my memory to like Lavelle Edwards having undefeated BYU teams that nobody respected because

BYU was playing lesser opponents. But I've told you this story before, okay?

Head to head. One of the stunning results of my lifetime in college football was seeing Miami go to Brigham Young and lose as, I believe, a defending champion to Ty Detmer.

And when they lost, I heard the single greatest explanation I've ever heard in a locker room for why they lost. Jesse Armstead, a professional linebacker who would be a top pick,

said after the game that Miami was too fast and that Brigham Young was running its routes. And they thought that the routes would be run faster.

And so their guys were out in front of the routes instead of like actually covering the receivers because they were too fast for Brigham Young. This has been an affliction.

I would be, if I were Brigham Young, I'd be so consistently mad. Mike says it's not a national conversation and it's because it's just happening on local BYU radio somewhere in Salt Lake City.

Like it's in Provo even. It's not even getting to Salt Lake City.
It's just in Provo. Nobody nationally cares about BYU, let's be honest.
And here's the thing about the CFP. It does matter.

Reputation does matter. That's why Alabama survives losing to Florida State because they're Alabama.
And by the way,

Miami would have won the ACC tiebreaker and been in the championship game had FSU finished with a 6-2 conference record instead of 2-6.

So it's hurting Miami, but it's not hurting Alabama. The whole process is weird.
Louisville, and here's another one.

SMU and Louisville would be the fourth and fifth toughest opponent on Notre Dame's schedule. Nothing makes sense here unless Miami gets in the

You have mentioned Alabama here, and I want to know if something is accurate because I saw Kirk Herb Street saying

while putting up a link that Alabama is now changing its schedule, that Alabama is going to do what this entire system is going to cause, which is don't play any difficult games out of conference.

You're an idiot. You're going to get, you're not going to get rewarded for it.
You're going to get penalized or penalized. You could get rewarded.

If If you win. Yeah, if you win the game.

But when you mention the allies you did, Mike, I noticed you chose purposely credible allies. You're going to have some difficulty with Marco Rubio now coming to your side.

He is an ally of yours, Mike Ryan. He's your boy.

He is. Just like Governor DeSantis.
And he is now talking to a, you know, next to a Donald Trump who is clearly sleeping throughout everything he's saying.

And I know I'm last, so I wanted to be fast, but there was a lot to to cover. I do want to say this is the most wonderful, magical time of the year.

By that, of course, I'm referring to the college football playoffs. And I just want to say this as a primary personal privilege.

And I'm a Florida Gator, but at the University of Miami, you get screwed out of the college football playoffs after going 10-2 and beat in Notre Dame.

The whole thing should be scrapped, and you're going to have to take over next year.

He kind of woke up when he said that. More power?

I can have more power.

He said he agreed with it. He co-signed it.
He's like, that is a good idea.

Put me in charge of more things. That's going well.
I'll just bomb some boats.

Marco's son plays for UF. Didn't know that.

Can I potentially pour a little bit of cold water on the theory that Miami is going to get in if BYU winds up losing? Because

Hunter Urich

said that, you know, teams could still move up and down after conference championship week, even if they're idle.

He also mentioned there that that's based on strength of schedule being affected because of the conference champions.

So, does that mean a team like Miami, whose strength of schedule is not affected because of anything that happens in conference championship games, is actually not what he's talking about?

You could be talking about Notre Dame. Boise State's playing for a conference championship.
Boise State, not your father's Boise State, but they're playing against UNLV.

They're favored by three and a a half. They could become a Mountain West champion, and perhaps that's enough if Miami gets up there next to Notre Dame.

But Miami and Notre Dame, by every conceivable metric, are very close. I have a couple of questions for you guys based on what we're talking about.

Was there evidence from last night that the committee is positioning itself to allow Alabama to lose a close game to Georgia and still get into the playoffs?

That's all that was last night, was to protect Alabama if they lose a game. Like the only way Alabama is affected by what happens in that game is if they're embarrassed.

All right, so the second question I have is give me more information on Marco Rubio's kid playing at Florida. He is small.
You are correct. He has to be small, but he has to be physically small.

Marco Rubio fits in my pocket. Anthony Rubio is 5'9, 191 pounds.
What position does he play?

He's a running back.

He's a running back with what kind of bona fides? What kind of high school credentials does he have? Is he on scholarship? Has he scored

5.4 yards per carry? Now that's on five carries. But I'll go ahead and figure that out from high school.
But that is with the Gators last year. He did six carries a year before.
Yeah. Nice tiny.

Really? Well, if he fits in. Seeing he went to Berlin.
If he fits in my pocket. Yeah.
I don't know what kind of pocket you were in that day. Whatever, man.

That's small hands as well, according to Trump. Cargo shorts.

If you can get me any more information on Marco Rubio's son, I'd like to know if they're just giving him political gifts in the backfield.

They're giving him carries for touchdowns, late in games, just because there's some...

Well, I don't know how he's gotten that 5.4 yards per carry average on five carries. I'm assuming it's by blowout.

I blame Florida for Miami not being in the playoff because that would be a quality win for Miami if beating Florida meant anything this year. Losing to Florida is keeping Texas out of the playoff.

I'm seeing Marco Rubio's son was third team all day, his senior year. He chose Florida over scholarship offers from Buffalo, Charlotte, and Bryant.

It sounds like he's a walk-on. Tough decision.
Maybe he's a priority walk-on.

Well, Billen and back a long time ago when my friends played at Pace and Columbus, I will not forget their reaction when they went to play against Edger and James. And he was in the backfield and

he's carrying six of them into the end zone on his shoulders because he's just much bigger than everyone who's playing for.

Let's pair these two sounds here, these two Cody sounds of being right and how good it feels to feel right. We've got, that's yours, very Christmassy, very Santa.

I'd like to hear that with Diana Rossini's kids, but also I'd like to hear your dad. Which of these is better as a

form of passion and excitement about being right?

Chris, why did you get that excited that you became, that you summoned a hysterical, joyful Santa?

When I'm right, I like it.

Doesn't happen often.

Maybe that's why.

Also, the Panthers have the last playoff spot, got smoked by Toronto.

Aren't a very good team. Well, the shell of themselves.
Seven players are out right now with injuries. Yeah, but Roy, you spoke to something before the show.
Bob, been bad.

Yeah, he has an 883 saved percentage, a 289 goals against the average, adjusted to 3.06 or something. That sounds bad.
Goal is bad. It's bad, Dan.
But he has goals saved above average, negative 5.

That can't be good. And I want to clear up something that Dan said.
He said that they had the last playoff spot. No, they're bottom of the Eastern Conference right now.

But, you know, you get hot for three games and you're right back in playoffs. How many points are they out of the final playoff spot? Well, let me see how many games in hand that they have today.

Nine way tie. It looks like, Dan, you're not going to believe this.

The Florida Panthers have come full circle. They are just five points out of the final playoffs.
Wow, spots.

They lose last night 4-1 at home to Toronto, and Bob can be forgiven for not taking the regular season real seriously, right? I told Roy this year. I told Roy,

I said there's literally nothing that guy can do to not start the first game of the playoffs.

Like, he could be worse than he's been the first half starting game one if we make that. I mean, granted, if he is worse, we won't make the playoffs.

This is the year you need good bob not bad bob right yeah especially with all the injuries that they have no i would say the last two years is the in the playoffs they've needed good bob not bad bob it's totally fine for it to be bad bob the first 25 games of this season the year when they're hammered by injuries anyway you've got guys going out with barbecue injuries i mean it's ridiculous that what's happening to the panthers this year and another thing the home ice advantage has disappeared i think the panthers have lost like four of their last five home games or something of that nature.

It should be noted. Florida is a bit of an older team, and the schedule is a lot more congested this year because of the Winter Olympics.
Bobby. Didn't need to be noted.
I didn't feel like.

Bobby.