Coach firing season is upon us, and the first ouster of the year comes from Maryland, alma mater of SZD host Alex Kirshner. Richard joins him to talk through the first opening on the market. In this episode:

The meaning of Locksley’s Maryland tenure, and why it isn’t a failure despite eight-plus years of mostly bad results

5:48: Why firing season got a late start this season

12:47: What kind of job is this, really?

21:50: A very, very early candidate wishlist from a Terp

Producer: Anthony Vito

Week 8 preview! Richard and Alex start this episode with a quick football digression about Manchester City and then get into the mega-preview of this week in CFB. We cover a bunch of games, some in a lot of detail, some quickly:

* 1:41: Manchester City digression

* 6:10: JMU at App State

* 18:21: Indiana at Michigan

* 26:45: LSU at Auburn

* 35:40: Rutgers at Northwestern

* 39:50: West Virginia at TCU

* 46:48: Oregon at Illinois

* 50:22: BYU at UCF

* 1:04:20: San Diego State at Colorado State

* 1:07:09: Virginia Tech at Clemson

* 1:10:55: Ole Miss at Texas

* 1:13:19: Mike Locksley news breaks mid-show

* 1:23:56: Houston at Utah

Those are just a handful out of the dozens of games we cover this week. Produced by Anthony Vito.

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Utah placed a big, risky bet when it nudged away Kyle Whittingham so that it could elevate a coach-in-waiting, Morgan Scalley. Rodger and Alex both thought this team would be worse this season. But instead, the Utes are undefeated contenders for both the Big 12 and the playoff, and their decision to show one of the best coaches in recent history the door is looking … pretty good?

* 2:13: Why Utah has surprised both hosts

* 8:18: The two-quarterback experiment at a weird time for it (but it works!)

* 11:59: Remembering some Utes

* 15:41: BYU’s rise and the pressure to move on from Whittingham

* 26:24: The coach-in-waiting gamble and why Utah wanted Scalley

* 45:41: Utah’s private equity deal and the cost of keeping up

Everyone can hear a free preview of this episode. To get the whole thing, become a paid subscriber today. For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we're making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner break down one of college football’s wildest weeks ever, in which five of the top seven teams in the country lost and another came awfully close. We start with BYU’s late escape against Notre Dame and continue through the rest of this historic Week 7 in the following order:

* 1:33: Big 12 and Notre Dame, led by BYU 28, Notre Dame 24

* 12:53: SEC, led by Auburn 27, Georgia 24

* 27:58: Big Ten, led by Ohio State 19, Indiana 15

* 36:15: ACC, led by Miami 43, Florida State 35

* 42:40: American, led by Tulane 31, Memphis 17

* 46:04: Pac-12, led by Oregon State 48, Washington State 30

* 47:45: Mountain West, led by Air Force 41, UNLV 31

* 50:20: MAC, led by Western Michigan 21, Central Michigan 14

* 51:54: Sun Belt, led by App State 35, Coastal Carolina 32

* 53:36: Conference USA, led by Jacksonville State 27, FIU 24

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Producer: Anthony Vito

To get this episode, make sure you’re a paid subscriber.

Richard and Alex react to the College Football Playoff’s expansion to 12 teams, starting in 2027. Let’s talk through this together:

* 0:00: Why this thing we dislike is happening

* 9:12: Whose lot in life just changed a whole lot

* 19:30: The inevitable impact on the regular season

* 30:20: The big winners here, plus a closing discussion about how Split Zone Duo is going to respond to (and be affected by) this change

Produced by Alex in a pinch! Thanks for listening.

College football forgot about Oregon State. But Jesse Legree, Braden Atkinson, and JaMarcus Shephard are forcing the Beavers back in the national CFB consciousness. Yes, there are anxieties about how to keep the band together, but there is also a beautiful story about how a team is rising from the ashes anew to apparently kick ass in the new Pac-12. Richard and Rodger discuss how the Beavers have become one of the nation’s most enjoyable teams.

* 0:00: Oregon State’s revival under JaMarcus Shephard

* 5:05: Jesse Legree’s unlikely rise

* 17:13: Remember a Guy, and how Oregon State got left behind

* 29:25: Pac-12 title hopes and a possible playoff path

* 40:39: Can the Beavers keep Shephard and Legree?

Produced by Anthony Vito.

TEAM OF THE WEEK is a subscriber series where Rodger Sherman and SZD hosts talk about a college football team doing something no one else is doing

We’ve already covered the following:

* Week 1: North Dakota State

* Week 2: UMass

* Week 3: Oklahoma State

* Week 4: Arkansas

* Week 5: Mississippi State

* Week 6: Charlotte

This series will continue all season.

Richard and Alex take you on a preview of Week 7, starting with the weeknight grab bags and continuing through various blockbusters in places like Columbus and Provo. We cover dozens of games on this show, including these:

* 13:55: Florida at Texas

* 20:02: Kansas at Kansas State

* 24:38: Mississippi State at LSU

* 33:53: Ohio State at Indiana

* 42:19: Western Michigan at Central Michigan

* 43:51: Alabama at Tennessse

* 51:36: Missouri at Ole Miss

* 55:04: Penn State at Michigan (who should be more upset?)

* 1:05:37: Florida State at Miami

* 1:09:38: TCU at Baylor

* 1:16:05: Notre Dame at BYU

* 1:34:56: Nebraska at Oregon

Producer: Anthony Vito

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Shop for college sports apparel at Homefield

Steven Godfrey joins Richard and Alex to talk about some stories we’d already planned to mark the halfway point of the season. But first, we’ve got a REALIGNMENT INTERRUPTION, brought to us by James Madison leaving the Sun Belt for the American Conference in 2028. In this episode:

0:26: JMU’s move to the American

9:44: Roster management people and coaches seem to think it’s impossible to find good backup QBs now. Do we agree? And is there a statistical way to see if anything has really changed? (It’s hard because defining a “backup” in a robust statistical way is impossible in modern college football.)

29:09: A change to punt formation rules was supposed to chaos special teams chaos this season. What actually happened?

39:48: Alex expands on FOOTSHOT, his blunt-object stat that elaborates on how often teams shoot themselves in the foot. Hello, Buffs!

Producer: Anthony Vito.