Go with Your Gut! A Look at the Second Round Playoff Games

Nate says "Go with your gut!" and discusses the top four seeds going 1-7 in the second round of playoffs. Then Nate breaks down the Georgia-Ole Miss game, what was good and bad for the Dawgs? Then Nate talks about the other second round games and at the end of the show talks some Georgia and Kentucky basketball.

Transcript

 This is sports takes with Nate skates. No spin, just straight sports. Happy New Year everybody. It's our first show of 2026 and it is a very rough day for us dog fans. That loss was brutal. Last night uh, it was a great game, but a horrible way to lose. So we will talk about that game. But first, I've got something I need to say. When I started this show. I said that it was a fan made podcast where common sense would prevail, rather than making some of the poor takes that media pundits make, such as DJ lag is going to win the Heisman. Penn State's the number two team in the country. Arch Manning's the best quarterback to ever play football. Those were some things that I give as examples of. Obviously, the media did not know what it was talking about going into this college football season. But as I've been doing this show, which is something very outside of my comfort zone, anybody who knows me will tell you I don't do a lot of talking in front of people, but as I've done this show, I've found myself, I do. I've done a lot of research when I before an episode, and I've been checking all these stats, and I feel like that is I'm letting that alter my takes as a fan. Sure. Yeah. If I'm gonna get on here and talk about sports, I should do the research before I get on here. But really, I just should talk to you as a fan. And what I've done lately, especially with my picks in round two, our last show, I felt like I should have gone with my gut. I mean, I told you on the last episode. My gut said Pick Oregon, but these stats and maybe some wishful thinking said picks Texas Tech. So I picked Texas Tech. Well, obviously I should have gone the other way. And. Also, one thing that I, for the last year had been adamant about was that the buy is too long and it is hurting the teams. Well, when I decided to talk about that on the show, I talked myself out of that. I looked at a bunch of stats, I read articles I tried to make a rational take rather than a gut based fan take. And so I said we didn't have enough data points, which was true. We didn't have enough data points. We only had four games. You had the situation with Arizona State and Boise State. You had the circumstances surrounding Georgia's loss last year, but I should have stuck to that take that the buy is largely negative and now we have more data points. Now we have eight games and the teams with the by higher seeded teams are 1 in 7 now. And I mean, I did say on the previous show that the buy absolutely is causing rust, but that the question was whether or not it outweighs the rest. I mean, I think now you could start to argue that it does outweigh the rest. And so, yes, you could say Boise State, Arizona State and Texas Tech were all underdogs as three of the seven games. Georgia had a lot going on last year. We talked about that last episode. That's four of the seven games. Yes, Ohio State should have been the favorite last year. I mean, it should not have shocked anyone for Ohio State to win in the second round. So there's another one of the games. And yes, in two of these matchups this week, it should not have been a shock to anyone that Miami and Ole Miss won. I mean, that's not who I picked. I wouldn't say that was the favorite, but it shouldn't have come as a shock for those two teams to win. And Dubai certainly didn't bother Indiana. It was no problem for Indiana, but I think a record of one and seven for the top four seeds speaks for itself. They are supposed to be the top four teams and they can't even win one game. You got the situation with Texas Tech. Texas Tech turned the ball over four times. Yes, Oregon's defense played well. We'll talk about that later. But some of that seemed like rust to me to turn the ball over four times. We're talking about a team that had the best turnover margin in all of college football, has four turnovers, and in all these games were the top seeded team lost. It really seemed like the offensive lines were not sharp. Part of that is take the Ohio State Miami game. Part of that is just the dominance of the Miami front. That's not a surprise. It shouldn't have surprised anybody. But the way they dominated Ohio State's offensive line. And yes, Georgia was without its center. And Ole Miss defensive line parade played really well. But I think the bye did have too much of an impact. The coaches have said it's too long of a bye. I said that the last episode, the NCAA needs to look at this and say, okay, enough. We there needs to be a lot of fixes on the calendar. Anyway, regarding the transfer portal talking to coaches, we talked about that last episode. I might bring it up again, but we do not need to force the playoff schedule to fit a certain holiday or TV schedule. The season should be ending earlier, and the transfer portal shouldn't open until it's over. This was something Dan Lanning from Morgan was talking about. He said that the season should end by New Year's Day, and I largely agree with that. This this idea of having a conference championship weekend and a couple weeks off in the first round game, then ten days off, then, you know, we're playing on New Year's Day for the second round of the playoffs. The season is too long. These kids are still going to school. This is too many weeks and it's too long of a layoff. So those were two things that I felt like I should have gone with my gut. Now. If I had gone with my gut, I still would have picked Ohio State in a close win. That's maybe a little was too characterized by the stats, but I still would have picked Ohio State in a very close defensive battle. That's what I said the game was going to be. It's kind of what it was. And Miami won the game. I still would have picked Georgia. I mean, I didn't have any reason to think, oh, Mrs. Defensive Front was going to dominate Georgia, so I still would have made that pick. I still would have only gone two and two. But going forward, I told you this was a fan show. That's what it's going to be. I'll do the research, but if the gut says something, you go with that. And that's generally good advice in everywhere in life. Don't get paralyzed by the stats. Don't get paralyzed by what experts say. Don't think about what you should do or what people think it's going to sound like. What sounds rational? What sounds intelligent. Go with your gut. Especially when we're talking about things as fans. And so going forward, I said this was a fan show. That's how we're going to do things. If the gut says pig organ pig, or if the gut says the bi is hurting, the bees hurting. So going forward, let's talk about these games. The first game I want to talk about as a unapologetically biased Georgia fan is the Georgia Ole Miss game. I want to talk about that first, and I want to make this clear. I am not saying Georgia lost this game because of the bye. I think that that did hurt the dogs some, I think, but it also enabled them to get Colby Young back. There was good about the layoff. Sadly, it did not help them get some of the guys back on defense. You had a couple defensive linemen out. You had Kyron Jones out. Drew Bobo, the center was still not back. That was very apparent in the game. And so even after all that time Georgia still just wasn't that healthy. But Ole Miss won this game because its defensive line dominated Georgia's offensive line most of the second half, and because Trinidad Chambliss made incredible plays and Kwon Lacy had a great game. Those are the reasons. And frankly, as Kirby Smart said, they got out, coached Ole Miss, did a better job coaching in this game than the Georgia coaches did. That is why Ole Miss won the game, not because of the bye. And I really feel like the key to the game was the way the Ole Miss defensive front played against, uh, the Georgia offensive line. Gunnar Stockton was under pressure nearly immediately on many of the passing plays. I mean, the guy, you know, he's barely starting his drop back and there's guys coming through there. You had some running plays where the backs barely have time to get the football, and they're getting tackled in the backfield. And this is what I was completely shocked by Ole Miss stuffing Georgia's running game most of the second half. I did not have that going into the game. The primary reason, other than being a homer, that I would have said that I said Georgia would win the game, was that Georgia, as in a lot of these games, such as the first game against Ole Miss, and especially look at the fourth quarter, they wear these teams down, especially these teams with smaller, more athletic defenses. They wear them down. Georgia wore Ole Miss down in the first game, and they were then able to dominate in the running game. I expected that to be much the same in this game, especially as well as Nate Frazier had been playing. I really thought Georgia would be able to move the ball a lot on the ground and in the first half, and even at times in the second half, they were able to run very well. I mean, Frazier was going for what, 6 or 7 yards a carry. But, you know, I that's just something I didn't see coming into the game. If I had gone with my gut, I still would have picked the dogs. And Ole Miss just showed up and really was able to outplay Georgia up front. But this is also something I want to talk about. Coaching wise, you hear a lot from Georgia fans about offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, and that typically is divided into two camps. You have one camp that says Mike Bobo is the worst offensive coordinator in the world, and he needs to be fired. The other is Mike. Bobo is a genius who is just too smart for you stupid fans. I think Kirby Smart kind of tends to the latter. The media tends to the latter. To say that Mike Bobo is a genius and you just can't keep up with his play scripting and all of that. I'm not in either one of those camps. I think Bobo makes some very good decisions and he has some good game plans sometimes. Uh, I also think he makes some bad decisions, and he often does that in big games. My biggest complaint with Mike Bobo over the last couple seasons is so many times, it seems like he is trying too hard to be smart and to stick to some script of plays rather than just taking what is working, what is working? What is the defense giving you? How many times with this offense? I'm not talking just the Ole Miss game. I'm talking all the last couple seasons. How many times in the last two years have you seen Georgia throw on first and second down and end up in third and ten? How many times have you seen we finally give Nate Frazier a carry up the middle. He goes for 7 to 13 yards. He's just cashing a defense. But we give him 4 or 5 carries until the fourth quarter of a game. I just see that happen too often. There's too many times over the last couple of years that the run is there, and we are making it too difficult on ourselves. Something Indiana did. And their game is do not get yourself in third and long. This has been my complaint all year long. Stop getting in third and long. We do not need to throw the ball on first second down as often as we do. It is perfectly fine to throw the ball on first down. It is not okay to continually get yourself in third and long. And some of that yesterday was at times the run getting stuffed. But some of this is also not on Mike Bobo. It it it can be on Gunnar Stockton sometimes. We had a series of plays earlier in the year. I think it was either the Georgia Tech game or the SEC Championship game, I don't remember which. I think it was the Georgia Tech game, but whether it was Bobo's decision or Gunnar Stockton's decision, Gunnar ran the ball three times in a row and we had to punt rather than get it to one of those great running backs. Then, after we had punted with a quarterback run on first, second and third down, we get the ball back. On the next possession, Gunnar runs it again four plays in a row. We ran the quarterback run last night in the Ole Miss game. We had a series of plays where it was pass play, quarterback run, quarterback run and punt while the running backs had been dashing the defense at that point. You you cannot have a series of plays like that. I also thought Georgia was running way too many slow developing run plays when they did run the ball. We had several plays where the back is lined up very deep in the backfield. We're trying to run these sprint plays off tackle that develop very slowly. It's 1 to 2 whole seconds for the handoff to even take place. You just don't have time for that. And I saw one when we finally did put Josh McCray in and give him a carry. That's how we decided to do it. The very first play you put him in, you don't try to throw it and surprise Ole Miss. Then the very first play you put him in, you try to run to the outside with your £240 running back. I didn't think that was a good decision. I think there were a lot of plays that we do, and this is part of the offense, and it's part of what works, where this is an option for gunner to throw it, gunner to pull it and run it, Gunnar to hand it off to the running back. But sometimes that takes too long. And when you've got guys crashing into the backfield and we just don't have a lot of time, maybe a little bit quicker developing run play sometimes. And this is another area that I. Have been screaming at Georgia for years. To use two running backs. I do not know what the disdain for, whether it's a fullback position or just a running back. One of your tailbacks playing fullback. It is okay to use the eye formation. It is okay to have two running backs in the game, whether that's a split back ie form however you want to do it. We have had incredible success when we do that. I mean, just take this year you had to play in the SEC Championship game. This was a great call by Bobo where Roger Robinson was in at fullback, and we throw the pass play to him where he almost falls down but manages to keep his feet, scores a touchdown. Robinson is transferring now. Well, maybe because he never gets on the field. You've got all these backs and you've got a guy £240 in McCray. Robinson's a big back. Frazier is a big, strong back. Why are we refusing to run power? I know they like to put in the 2 or 3 tight ends. That's power too. I agree with that. I like that, but I just think Georgia could make it a lot easier on themselves sometimes, especially goal line situations and stuff. Give them two backs to think about. Let them have to decide. Figure out who's going to get that. Let him have a lead blocker. I just I know Kirby's not a big fan of the lead blocker fullback position. He said that before. It's just something I disagree with him on. I think we need to use a fullback more often. And, you know, I think we had the series of plays there at the end and we'll talk about that here in a second. But where we're trying to score, to take the lead with a minute left in the game, we run the quarterback run good success. You're you know, you've only got a couple yards to go to the goal line. Then we do a slow developing option type run play to both ends. It gets stuffed. That was a situation you're on the 2 or 3 yard line. I know at that point Frazier is hurt and that is something I'm going to go ahead and go on that tangent. I have been really frustrated with some of the officiating. I'm not talking about penalties, calls, that kind of thing over the last several years in our games, everybody's games. I think we have gotten to this point where the rifts are taking way too long to blow the whistle on some of these plays where backs have been stood up. I am not a fan. Everybody talks about the tush push. I'm not a fan of that. I'm also not a fan of the offense comes crashing into the back of the ball carrier and pushes them forward ten yards. I don't like any of that. It was my understanding in the NFL at one time there was a rule you couldn't do that. I think we need that again. I'm tired of watching these players get stood up by all these defensive guys, and you just keep letting the play go and keep letting it go and keep letting it go until you get the guy bent back into a pretzel. And that's kind of what happened to Nate Frazier. We should have blown the whistle sooner. He shouldn't have been bent back. We wouldn't have had a knee injury. I still haven't seen how long he's going to be. What how severe that injury is. But hey, maybe Nate Frazier never even gets hurt if we blow the whistle. So that's a frustration I've got with football across all levels. I think when the forward progress is stopped, you blow the whistle. You don't take 15 minutes and wait and see how many guys crash in to push them forward or backward or or strip the ball from him. So that's a personal thing that I think had an impact there. But you could go on and on complaining about this or that and second guessing everything, particularly the last sequence of plays. Okay, you've got a minute left, you've got the ball on first and goal. You have the good first play. And I saw Graham Coffey talking about this on X and I agree, Kirby said. They threw the ball on third down because they were trying to win the game rather than play for overtime. Okay, I understand that you cannot give Ole Miss and Trinidad Chambliss the ball back with a kicker who shows he can make it from 60 yards, the ball back with nearly a minute left in the game. Your defense is gassed. You are very depleted at defensive back and defensive line. Uh, we had a targeting call earlier in the game. You've got another defensive back out. You cannot afford to give them the ball back in that situation with a minute left. So. I would have preferred them to handle that a little bit differently. I understand you're trying to win the game, but to me the second down play was really where a lot of that went wrong. You should have just run power and been done with it, or tried to throw a pass on second down and then run it on third down. Let the clock run down and maybe you get in, maybe you get in and you win the game there. But if you don't, you run it down. You kick the field goal. That's personally how I would have rather seen them do that rather than give Ole Miss the ball back. But there's a lot of things you could second guess throughout the game. I don't want to play Monday Morning Quarterback too much and not everything we saw in the game. I know a lot of people are really mad at Bobo, but not everything is Mike Bobo's fault and not everything is Kirby Smart's fault. Sometimes things just don't work out on the field. Ole Miss makes good plays. There were times where Gunnar maybe, maybe miss some open guys. Didn't see some guys that were open. That's not the coordinator's fault. And you had situations like Kirby talked about on that play, where we're trying to draw them offsides, and the center is not supposed to snap that football. But we were we were being a little too complex and we had run a few different, I think, Kirby said. It was three different variations of that play, trying to get people to jump offsides and run on and off the field. And you've got a very inexperienced center, uh, filling in for Drew Bobo in Malachi Tolliver. That's just a that's just an unfortunate situation. And so I think sometimes we got a little bit, a little bit too cute. But I don't think everybody needs to pile on. Here is my biggest problem with the play calling throughout the game. In the first half, the first two possessions of the game, we just decided not to run the ball. We had a quarterback run, but when Nate Frazier is absolutely gassing them very early in the first quarter, second quarter of the game, you've got to keep pounding the rock. You knew your advantage was supposed to be in the run game. Now in the second half almost got it together. But in the first half of the game you should have kept running the football. And there's just too many times that I'm yelling at the TV for Mike Bobo to quit throwing it on first, second, third down. I understand they view the screen game as part of the run game. That's fine. A lot of the screens have worked out well. I just mean, sometimes you just gotta hand it to Frazier, hand it to Bowens, let them go. So that's my complaint. There. Now, the good of that game if you're a Georgia fan. That was Gunner Stockton giving everything he had in that game. Everything. There were a lot of players on both teams who played their heart out. That was an amazing game. It didn't end the way I wanted it to, but those were players who gave it everything they had. I was reminded of the The Batman line in The Dark Knight Rises. Catwoman says, you don't know these people anymore. You've given them everything. And Batman says, not everything, not yet. That was Gunnar Stockton last night. He was going to give every ounce of his strength, his body, to win that game. He was he was never giving up on a play. He was scrambling. He was running the shots that he took in that game. By the way, the shot we all saw should have been targeting. We know it should have been targeting within the soft world of football that we play in now, where quarterbacks are wrapped in tissue paper. It is mind blowing to me. Then the 2024 SEC Championship game Texas gets away with the targeting on Gunner Stockton. And then there was a clear targeting in this game that didn't get called. I don't understand why everyone's allowed to hit Gunner Stockton, but you're not allowed to hit other quarterbacks. Besides that, he hangs in there, completes that pass, then comes up on the very next play and runs it in for a touchdown. Not hey, coach, I need a break. Hey, coach, I need a stretcher. No, the very next play, he runs it in on the goal line. That's the type of guy he is. I have never in my life seen a quarterback as tough as Gunner Stockton. Never. I've seen some tough quarterbacks. I have never seen a guy like Gunner Stockton. Josh Pate posted on X that if something kills Stockton, the rest of us have been dead for weeks. That is spot on. The guy is a tough old farm boy. He likes the contact. He it fires him up and the team has adopted that mindset. I've talked about that in other other episodes. And you also had an incredible effort by players like Zechariah Branch. You saw him pumped up, bleeding from the mouth. Colby Young made some incredible plays. It was great to have him back. Nate Frazier, of course, always max effort from him. A lot of guys on the defense played a good game. Hey guys. That's I've talked about Ole Miss on here before. That's a great offense. So the job that Georgia did especially somewhat depleted. That was great. I mean, what else do you want from him and Dylan Everett? Always. Every time there's a big game, whether it be Texas last year, the SEC Championship game, last year, the SEC Championship game this year, we've seen him do it over and over and over. Those the interceptions. He has the fumble return for touchdown. The guy is just a big game player. And he nearly had a pick to clinch the game for us. So there were a lot of guys who played really well and played their heart out. You saw K.J. Bolden get hurt and he just kept playing. You saw C.J. Allen go down and he just kept playing. Uh, Raylan Wilson goes out. He comes back in and keeps playing. There was just some great effort and but really what this game was about was Ole Miss Trinidad Chambliss played out of his mind. The dogs just could not get him on the down on the ground. You had blitzes that you got two and three guys back there and you just can't get him. Uh, he kind of broke around Everett that one time. He makes a great pass. Trinidad Chambliss is really good, and he's really exciting to watch. He was on fire. He's dropping it in. Making great throws. Uh, there were a few drops during the game that's got nothing to do with him. But he was on fire, and he played really hard, and I thought he looked pretty classy at the end of the game, showing, uh, going and finding Gunnar Stockton. This is just a situation of what can you do? I'm reminded of the SEC Championship game Georgia played against Joe Burrow and LSU in 2019, where LSU just def marched through everybody because they were clearly better than everybody else. That year we had a really good defense. There was nothing those guys could do that in that game. He was putting. Joe Burrow was putting the ball wherever he wanted it. To a lesser extent, that was that was Trinidad Chambliss last night. There was just nothing Georgia could do about it a lot of times. And Kevin Lacy, the dude, is playing with a hurt shoulder and he just gutted it out. The guy kicked our butts really in in a lot of ways. He, you know, he had about 98 yards. He had a great game. He ran really hard. I did not expect Ole Miss to be able to run the ball as effectively as they did. I talked about on the last show how Georgia had only allowed 128 rushing yards in its last four games combined. Ole Miss didn't have a huge day on the ground, but they got enough. They ran for 111 yards and most of the second half they were pretty well throwing it at will on Georgia's defense. This was a flip from the last game. In the first game, Georgia won by outscoring Ole Miss 17 to nothing in the fourth quarter. This was a total flip. Georgia had the lead going into halftime. Ole Miss was the one who took over the scoring in the second half. Now Georgia would not quit fighting. That's who this team is when we went down 3424. I was to the point where I was like, I just don't think our defense has anything left and our offensive line can't block them. This is not this looks really bad. And Georgia fought back and tied it again. So to me that was really incredible. But to me, again, the surprise of the game was Ole Miss as defensive line and their whole defense just really surprised me. I did not expect that at all. I didn't factor that really in as much of a possibility, to be quite honest, that the Ole Miss Ole Miss defensive front was going to control the game like that. It was an all time classic game. Sadly, it didn't go the way the dogs wanted it to, but what I hope is this team will have most of its starters back next year. They'll have a more experienced quarterback. This was Gunnar's first season as a starter, and I think we'll have more experience on defense. I hope we will see a team that is still very hungry. You hope this doesn't break their spirit? I don't think it's going to. I think Georgia fought for its wins all year and they will not tap out. They and they would not go down without a fight last year. If Georgia can keep that mindset and stay healthy, I would think we will see them in the playoffs next season. Now shifting gears to the Ohio State Miami game. I was not at all surprised by Miami's defense. I expected this to be a defensive struggle. I expected it to be a low scoring game. I thought anyone. There were a lot of people running around saying Ohio State was going to blow Miami out, and I. You're kidding. I thought you were kidding yourself. I always thought this game was going to be really close. And I thought, as we talked about last episode, that Ohio State's offense was a little overrated. I mean, they had been stuffed at times, but what I did not expect at all, and this is what made me pick Ohio State, really, was that Miami would be able to run the ball so well. On Ohio State's defense. We saw them run the ball very well against, uh, Texas A&M. I said after that game that I did not think Mark Fletcher was going to go for 170 yards again. Well, he didn't, but they still rushed for 153 yards. When you're talking the Ohio State defense which was ranked first in yards per game, first in points per game, first in passing yards, fifth in rushing defense, I really did not expect Miami to go for 153 rushing yards. And ultimately, I mean, that was a huge part of why they were able to win the game. The main part was clearly the pass rush. Reuben Bayne, junior and Akeem Mazdoor. Ahmad Moten, all these guys, I mean Julian Sainz going to be having nightmares about those guys. I was I had I mean I've been watching them all year. I watched them in the Texas A&M game and I still was feeling shocked at how often Ruben Van Jr was in the backfield. It was truly incredible. And this is one of those situations where I looked at the stats. I said, nah, Miami's not going to be able to move the ball enough and Ohio State's going to win close. I wish I had not even bothered to look at the stats. I probably still would have picked Ohio State, but Miami took it to Ohio State's offensive line. The guys we've been talking about for the last few weeks were on fire. And if I were an NFL team, Reuben Bayne Jr would probably be very near the top of my draft board. And let's talk about Chianti, Scott, the playoff that Chianti Scott is having. He has the pick six on the screen pass. I mean, he saw that screen pass coming all the way. Just steps in front of it. Takes it to the house. This is after in the Texas A&M game he had ten tackles, two sacks, three tackles for a loss. Do not throw a screen pass on this guy. I'd be probably trying to avoid anything towards the line of scrimmage anywhere around Scott. And the Miami defense held Ohio State to 45 rushing yards. I mean, earlier in the season, and I, I mentioned this before earlier in the season, before their losses to Virginia and SMU. I thought Miami was definitely the best team in the nation. I in my own rankings, I had them rated first for a few weeks. Then came the close losses. Now, following that, I continued to beat the drum that Miami should be in the playoffs. That was my very first show was I talked about how Miami should be in over Notre Dame. We talked about how good Miami looked down the stretch and the dominant win over Pitt. So I am not at all shocked that they won the game. I thought it would be very close. What I am surprised about in both these two games, Miami has just run the ball so well and. We haven't really seen them have the big passing plays we saw earlier in the season. The dominant game is by Malachi Toney, but this looks a lot more like the Miami team that I thought was the best team in the country then. They have looked in much of the season since then. I love that they are leaning on Mark Fletcher. Mark Fletcher has been playing so well, so physically rebounded after that fumble and he's really carrying the team and they say he is the heart and soul of the team. And you can see that the one negative for Miami in that game was Jeremiah Smith was absolutely dominating them. They could not stop this guy. He was everywhere. But I don't think they're going to face a lot of guys like Jeremiah Smith. I mean you hear people brag about him all the time. Always the best player in college football. Whatever. You can debate that. He obviously played like that on Wednesday night. So I don't think they're going to have to worry about facing a lot of Jeremiah Smith's. Ole Miss has some very good receivers, but you're probably not going to have a guy that dominant. But this is what a lot of people need to get about Miami. Those two losses were not blowout losses. They were very close losses to good but not great teams. They had a lull in their season where they didn't play their best and they barely got beat. But this is a very good team that's playing very well with a volunteered pass rush. And I want to say something here. The amount of injuries Georgia had and how badly the Ole Miss defensive line was dominating in the second half. I was talking to my dad during the game and I said, I don't think that even if Georgia wins this game, they can block Miami. I don't know who would have won a matchup between those two, but I think Miami would have been in the Georgia backfield all day long. So whether or not Georgia advanced, it was not looking real good for them going into the next matchup. But this is the thing about the playoff. Especially the 12 team playoff, I have found it much more difficult to pick winners of games in the 12 team format than during the regular season or in previous seasons. I thought both of Miami's games would be very close, but I picked against them in both games. I, I think they're going to have a great game against Ole Miss. That's a very interesting game. We'll break that game down next week. But for Ohio State that offense came back to bite you. They were not really challenged by a lot of teams during the year other than Indiana. Then when they had to face, you know, another really good team with a great pass rush, they weren't able to handle it. And I've seen some people saying Miami dominated that game. I don't feel like that's really an accurate reflection of the game. The defensive front was very impressive, but this was not some kind of blowout game. So with Georgia and Ohio State out, that's a lot of people's picks to win the national championship game. I said a few weeks ago I would not be shocked if Miami made a run, but I was clear that I thought the national champion would almost certainly come from the first six seeds, or maybe even the top three seeds. Well, there are only three of the top six seeds left and one of the top three remaining in the semifinal. So. Maybe it does come from the top six, maybe it does come from the top three. But the 12 team playoff has proven very difficult to predict. Now talking about the Indiana Alabama game, this is the only game I picked right on the last show, but I did not think Indiana would win by this much. I thought Indiana would win, but Indiana absolutely manhandled Alabama pretty much the whole game. Uh, Indiana is coached so extremely well. They don't make stupid mistakes. They don't have stupid turnovers. They don't make silly penalties. They don't jump offsides when Alabama tries to get them to jump offsides. They are very, very efficient team. And I thought Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman winner, got to really show off his legs in this game. That is going to be very difficult for people to deal with in this playoff, as it was for Alabama and all the I saw all these people who doubted that they were a good team and claimed Alabama was just going to crush them. And obviously you haven't seen any Indiana this year, and it looks really silly right now to have said, oh, Alabama is going to dominate Indiana. And. But I mean, as far as just breaking down the game, there's not really a lot to break down. I mean, it is what it is. Indiana took Alabama to the woodshed. Terms pretty well start to finish. They dominated the game. I mean, when Indiana was up 17 to nothing, I had some thoughts of oh well, maybe Alabama will start getting it going a little bit. Now. We saw them down 17 to nothing against Ohio State or Oklahoma. Excuse me, but that wasn't happening. Indiana was not having that. And to me, I thought one of the key moments in the game was when Kalen DeBoer decided to go for it deep in his own territory on fourth down again, like he didn't just see this in the SEC Championship game and it blew up in his face again. And then Indiana's got the ball on the 35 yard line again. I don't understand these guys who I get. You're trying to swing momentum, but especially if you can't run the ball. I mean sometimes you're just shooting yourself in the foot when you get that aggressive. But I think the biggest story from this game is just comparing these two teams and how different college football is now than what it has been in the past. Until this year, Indiana was the losing program in college football history, both in their number of losses, the most losses of any program, and in being last in winning percentage. Before he got there, he was taking over a team who finished last in the Big Ten. Immediately after Kurt Canetti shows up, they go to the playoffs last season, and then this year, they are the only team to go undefeated in the entire country in the regular season and plus conference championship weekend when the Big Ten championship against Ohio State, who they had a 30 game losing streak to. Then they line up against Alabama with all those national championships both real and imagined. The team that used to suffocate you on defense and run the ball down your throat with Heisman winners. Now Indiana is the team that looks like Alabama under Nick Saban. They shut you down on defense. Indiana ran the ball 50 times for 215 yards and two touchdowns. Alabama ran the ball 17 times for 23 yards. Tell me you were gonna hear that five, ten years ago that Alabama would lose a game to Indiana. That's enough of a shock there. But where Indiana runs 50 times for 215 yards and Alabama runs for 17 times for 23 yards. And frankly, I don't want to be harsh, but the Alabama running situation is really bad. I mean, the culture at Alabama has completely changed, but the culture at Indiana has also completely changed. I mean, you look at the playoff picture right now. All four teams look really good. They're kind of firing on all cylinders, but it's really hard to pick anybody but Indiana to win the national championship right now. I know they beat up on an Alabama team that I said in my, uh, talking about the final playoff rankings. I didn't think they should have made the playoff and they got beat up on by Georgia. But it's hard for me to see that game and not say, this is the most likely team to win the College Football Playoff. And I love hearing this team talk, whether it's in interviews or the the postgame trophy presentations. This is a team with a team first mentality. They could constantly play the disrespect guard and talk about the doubters and all of that, which we see a lot of teams that have no justification for that. Make that argument. That isn't what Indiana does. Indiana focuses on being the best team it can be being selfless, being grateful, putting the team before themselves. They were complimenting Alabama after the game, rather than taking that chance to talk about how they dominated the big bad SEC in Alabama. A lot of people would have taken that opportunity to dump all over Alabama and to say, all you people thought Indiana couldn't do it. That's not how Indiana is looking at it. They don't care what you think. They don't care what any of the outside noise is. They are locked in. And I feel like you're looking at two programs that are going in opposite directions. You've got I've seen a lot of things from Alabama the last two seasons. Where it just honestly makes you cringe and you say, that's not. Saban's Alabama. Very undisciplined at times. Uh, I said last show. Very inconsistent. A lack of consistent physical toughness, complete lack of run game. And you see the I mean, some of the stuff that we've seen some of these guys say or do last year in the Vanderbilt game. I'm not going to name names. You had a defensive back who was supposed to be the leader of the team, acting like a an absolute spoiled brat on the field, repeatedly getting penalties, and that has carried over. I feel like you got guys claiming phony disrespect and all this stuff. It just this just isn't the same Alabama team, which I don't really miss them as a Georgia fan, but these are two programs going in opposite directions. And I think you can see that both in the play on the field and the way that they are handling themselves in the media. And how can you not love this Fernando Mendoza guy? I saw somebody say, Fernando Mendoza is more excited about everything than anyone else is excited about anything, and I agree, I love it. I love watching this kid play and talk and I, you know, I don't want to say I've got a rooting interest one way or the other. Pretty much all of these teams have something that you could find to root for, but I would certainly love to see Fernando Mendoza in Indiana in the national championship game. I hope they get a chance to do that and play really well. The team that they will have to play to get to the national championship game is Oregon. So let's talk about that game. Oregon and Texas Tech. Texas Tech built its season on forcing turnovers and having the best turnover margin. That that's what I talked about last show that they had 31 takeaways. And it was a big part of the reason I talked to myself into picking Texas Tech. And ironically, it was the turnover margin that killed them. The offense had four turnovers while they only had one takeaway on defense. You are not going to be a playoff team doing that. And it wasn't just a turnovers on the stat sheet. There were a couple of times in that game where I was just saying to the TV, saying to the quarterback, Morton, you have got to get rid of the ball. You cannot take a sack on fourth down, and I don't want to bash anybody on this show. I don't ever want that to be the way this show is. But he really struggled. And that was the key point of the game. And this is what I meant by the by herding teams. Oregon's defense played very well. We'll talk about that. But that wasn't just the Oregon defense. That was the Texas Tech offense in the Texas Tech quarterback being really out of whack. And you gotta wonder how much of that is the by Oregon's defense played very well. And I kept hearing this about having a chip on their shoulder from the last game. Maybe I missed that. I mean, I just did not hear a lot of criticism of their defense going into the game. What I had been hearing was, oh, well, James Madison scored all their points on Oregon's backups, so I don't really see where there was a ton of disrespect towards Oregon's defense, but maybe I missed that. And they certainly didn't because they took that to heart and dominated. Texas Tech did not score a single point. That is a very impressive performance. And I thought Texas Tech's defense. Still, they still played well. We said on the last show how good Texas Tech's defense was. They did. They played well. And even with all those turnovers and all those short fields, they were still able to hold Oregon to 23 points. You know, this is what I said on the last episode. Would Texas Tech be able to hold up against Oregon? And the answer was no. They could not cut it. They just weren't able to hold up against the physical nature of a top tier Big Ten Dan Lanning Oregon team. However, Dan Lanning, dude, you don't have to go for it on every fourth down that has beat him in the past. And it will again if he keeps doing it. I mean, it's working for him a lot of the time. But you also see some of these guys that happened to Ole Miss some last night happened to Oregon, some yesterday. You don't get all those fourth downs. If you go for it on fourth down on your own 30 yard line, there will probably be bad consequences for that. I also, I don't want to harp on this or make a big deal out of it, but I was kind of left thinking, what are you doing? Calling a timeout at the end of the game so you can score another touchdown? I do not have a problem with people continuing to run their offense or to score a touchdown late in the game. I would have had no problem with Oregon scoring a touchdown in that situation at the end of the game, I did think it was a little odd to call a timeout when you could have just run the clock out and won the game. Why are you calling a timeout so you can score another touchdown? So maybe I was missing something there. Maybe there was a reason he did that. I thought that was a little over the top from Dan Lanning. Um, obviously Jerry Maguire responded to it well, hugged him after the game. But anyway, right now Oregon is looking really good. It was a very close game in Eugene against Indiana. The last time these two teams matched up ended up in an Indiana win. We will see what happens. No team has had a rematch in the playoffs and one besides Ole Miss over Tulane. And that's this year in its previous seasons. So this is going to be very difficult for Indiana to pull off. You saw this year Oklahoma lost to Alabama. Georgia lost to Ole Miss. Uh, we've had previous seasons Alabama in 2021 lost to Georgia after beating them in the SEC Championship game last season. Oregon lost to Ohio State after beating them in the regular season. This is not easy to do. It is not easy to beat these teams twice, so we're going to see how that goes the rest of the way. And that's part of the 12 team playoff. Now that there are more teams there are going to be more rematches and you can beat a team in the regular season. You can win your conference championship and lose to the team from your conference that you beat earlier in the season. We can question whether or not that's good or bad for the sport. We can question whether that's right or wrong, but it's the reality of the 12 team playoff. Now shifting gears for a second. As we're nearing the end of the show. CC play is about to start in college basketball, and the dogs looked like they were getting over that Christmas time off in their last game. Uh, the first half was not pretty. You saw Mike white pull a bunch of the starters, but they got it together. Still got the win. Georgia takes on Auburn on Saturday. And imagine a few months ago specifically before Bruce Pearl retired. But saying that going into this game the Georgia Dunk Yard Dawgs, who did not even have that moniker yet, would be ranked and Auburn would not. Auburn, who was a number one seed last year who has been a top five top ten team for the last several years, would not be ranked. So we're going to be learning a lot about Georgia going forward. I've said before, I think this is a very good team. I think this is very likely maybe the best Georgia basketball team in my lifetime. But going forward, this is going to be a difficult schedule. You've got Auburn, you've got Florida, you've got Arkansas, you've got Tennessee, you've got Vanderbilt, you've got Kentucky. This is not going to be easy. So we're about to find out what they are made of on Saturday. I'm very excited about it. And now that our football season is very tragically in the books. Time to talk about basketball now. I've told you before. I'm around a lot of Kentucky fans. Kentucky, we said they may have found something in the big win over Indiana, and then they follow that up by getting a a very good win over Saint John's and also get a win over Bellarmine. So Kentucky plays Alabama on Saturday 11:00 Central time. So that's going to be a very difficult game. Kentucky has had a brutal schedule so it's not getting any easier. So we will see. You've got the storyline of Diabate playing Alabama. We'll see how that goes. Is Kentucky finding its rhythm? Uh, personally I'm obviously you don't have a dog in the fight, but to me, if Kentucky has a close game and plays relatively well with Alabama, I think Kentucky fans should be. You're never happy with a loss, but you should be encouraged because this is a difficult game. However, obviously Kentucky, you're not hoping for a loss. You're hoping for a big win against Alabama. Try to get back into reasserting your dominance in the SEC. So next week we will talk about college basketball. This weekend. That'll probably be on Tuesday. Probably talk about some other things. See if there's any big developments between now and then and MLB free agency. And then before the first game of the third round of the College Football Playoff, which will be on Thursday night. I don't know why we've always got to play these games on Thursday. I thought it was Saturday all day yesterday. Uh, we will have a breakdown of those two games. I will try to post that on either Wednesday night or Thursday morning in time for, uh, the Thursday night game. So and that's another thing I want to talk about with TV schedules. What were we thinking here? We had Ohio State and Miami be the only team to play on Wednesday night. Then you have whoever was going to be playing the winner of that game Ole Miss and Georgia. You play that game the last game of the night on Thursday. You then play their game between those two teams, who had the widest discrepancy in time to prepare and to rest. You play that game first on Thursday and play the other game on Friday. That that makes no sense to me. This is a thing we saw in the 2017 national championship game that the playoff said that they were going to fix. Was Alabama having a little bit extra rest time over Georgia having a much shorter travel situation than Georgia despite being the lower seeded team. And that was something they said they were going to address. Well, doesn't look like we've addressed that because if you're Ole Miss, you were still playing football 24 hours after Miami, and now you're going to play the first game. I just don't really get that. So it probably won't be a huge issue. But I'm sure the very beat up Ole Miss team who just played a very physical game, will wish that they had the Friday game, or they will wish that they had also played on Wednesday when Miami was playing. So we'll see if that comes into play at all. But what are you doing? Why are we doing this all for TV stuff and not. Not for the players. So I digress. Thank you for listening to the show. I really appreciate it. We love having you guys commenting on any of your feedback. Let me know who you think is going to win next week. Let me know your thoughts on the big weekend of college basketball. If you're a Georgia fan. Please come commiserate with me, Ole Miss. I said before the Georgia game, I was rooting for you against Tulane. I'll be rooting for you and Indiana going forward. Uh, Miami. I hope you do great. Honestly, most of the teams in this playoff that are left, you know, I have nothing but positive feelings towards. But Ole Miss you played great. Couldn't respect you anymore. And I don't understand why Lane Kiffin is leaving. I don't understand why these coordinators and reportedly some of these players are going to leave right now. Ole Miss is a better football program than LSU and you got a shot to win the national championship. So anyway, congrats to you guys. Wish you the best going forward. And I really look forward to these games. Usually as a fan, when my team loses, it's hard for me to even keep watching after that. But I'm gonna do it. We're gonna muscle through and we will be back next week. Thank you. This is sports takes with Nate Skates. No spin, just straight sports.