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Richard and Alex go deep on this week’s biggest story: Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby is under investigation for sports betting, including wagers reportedly placed on his own team while he was at Indiana. Inside:

* 2:05: The Sorsby betting story and why it’s such an uphill fight for him to ever play college football again

* 25:37: What this makes us think about the state of sports gambling in the United States and our own sports media history with it

* 38:08: Thanks to our great sponsors, Homefield and Nokian Tyres

* 40:05: NFL Draft postmortem: Diego Pavia, Cade Klubnik, UNC and Colorado coming up empty, and interesting late-round CFB finds

* 52:42: The NCAA’s potential move to a “five in five” eligibility standard

Producer: Anthony Vito

SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Richard, Alex, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey bounce around to a handful of college football news stories that demand more discussion:

* 1:46: Kentucky’s attempt to set up a sketchy $1 million job for outgoing athletic director Mitch Barnhart, which came apart under political pressure

* 12:02: Virginia Tech’s disempowered AD finally stepping away

* 19:18: The unusual amount of post-job change animosity flowing toward Auburn coach Alex Golesh from USF

* 30:40: Jeremy Pruitt’s tangled mess of an attempt to get out of his NCAA show cause, and what it tells us about the current state of enforcement

* 38:42: The NCAA seems poised to move up Week 1 to the current Week 0 slot in late August. Why is this happening? Well, the NFL. Does college football have any chance of hanging on to a prime calendar spot? And what other sacred spots on the schedule might be under attack?

Producer: Anthony Vito.

This is a subscriber episode, but everyone can hear a nice big free preview

To get this episode and many, many more (as well as a whole back catalog of evergreen college football history shows, reporting on the coach carousel, and more), become a paid subscriber today.

NFL teams have more data and scouting resources than ever. Yet they haven’t gotten better at picking the best college football players. Why not? ESPN senior writer Bill Barnwell joins Richard and Alex to dive into a complicated topic:

* 0:20: Welcoming our guest, Bill Barnwell

* 9:24: The NFL Draft is the biggest deal in the city of Pittsburgh

* 16:31: Why NFL teams haven’t gotten better at drafting over the decades

During this episode, Alex mentions a few statistical studies that researchers have done on pro sports teams’ draft performance over time. You can find those here and here. Producer: Anthony Vito

SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Longtime pals Ben Solak of ESPN and Derrik Klassen of The Athletic join Richard for this year’s discussion of the college football QBs who will soon become NFL QBs. From Joe Fagnano and Diego Pavia (a statue player in CFB, but probably not one in the NFL) to No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza, here’s how the crew sees this year’s QBs stacking up.

Producer: Anthony Vito

This is a subscriber episode, but everyone can hear a nice big free preview

To get this episode and many, many more (as well as a whole back catalog of evergreen college football history shows, reporting on the coach carousel, and more), become a paid subscriber today.

SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Richard and Alex take subscriber questions! As the college football offseason hits more or less its halfway point, it’s mailbag time. Among the many questions we answer in this episode, you will find

* 0:55: Utah did not envision that Kyle Whittingham’s departure would go down like that. Was the Utes’ fate foretold by what happened at … Maryland? All the way back in 2010?

* 22:03: Who could be the next Texas Tech?

* 50:15: Does basketball really have more portal activity than football, or does it seem that way because of small roster sizes? (Yes.)

* 52:34: Why doesn’t Richard believe in the sanctity of the one true portal window?

* 54:00: How big is the talent gap between a G6 and P4 position coach?

* 58:43: Was Greg Sankey born on third base? Plus a longer chat about the way college sports media talk about conference commissioners.

* 1:04:13: Why do we express skepticism about USF’s finances?

* 1:11:23: If we could cover any sport other than CFB for a living, what would it be?

Producer: Anthony Vito

This is a subscriber episode, but everyone can hear a nice big free preview

To get this episode and many, many more (as well as a whole back catalog of evergreen college football history shows, reporting on the coach carousel, and more), become a paid subscriber today.

In this latest SZD/Extra Points Sports Business Hour with guest Matt Brown, Alex and Richard talk about several things you’ve seen in the news. Find Matt at Extra Points, and listen to our conversation here:

* 0:45: Learfield, the college sports multimedia rights company, sold to a (new) private equity owner in a $2 billion deal. This is one of the largest deals in college sports history, but for what? Matt helps us understand the importance of companies like Learfield and its rival Playfly, and how they affect both our favorite teams and their financial statements. Will this deal change much about the college sports landscape, though? It doesn’t seem like a slam dunk.

* 19:45: The Trump administration’s college sports executive order is fake and made up, but somehow, that’s not the same thing as “meaningless.” It also might destroy any potential for a serious legislative solution to college sports’ problems. Matt tells us what he’s learned from Capitol Hill sources.

* 32:37: Did the Big Ten office do a make-work for Wisconsin’s AD so that the Badgers could get someone better in that job? The answer isn’t “definitely not.”

* 42:34: The NCAA makes an example of … Iowa.

* 47:35: Audience question 1: What would be the pros and cons of media rights consolidation?

* 52:04: Audience question 2: Which schools are doing fun and different things with their House settlement allocations?

Thanks to Matt! Read him all the time at www.extrapointsmb.com

Producer: Anthony Vito

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Richard and Alex discuss how the offseason is going across the Group of 6 college football conferences. In this episode:

* 1:52: A fresh way to talk about the G6 offseason

* 3:55: Our tour through new head coaching hires, starting with Charles Huff at Memphis and Brian Hartline at USF, then moving all around the country

* 1:10:49: Recruiting talk. Who has money? Miami University, apparently

* 1:24:35: Fine, we’ll talk about the Masters, and Alex will make peace with Auburn fans

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Producer: Anthony Vito

This episode is free, but to get lots more, become a paid subscriber today

For $10 a month (or a free month with the whole year), you get:

* Roughly twice as many episodes (usually two bonus a week in season and once a week out of season, but sometimes more)

* Our entire back catalog of hundreds of bonus episodes, with many of them focused on evergreen topics from college football history

* Subscriber Q&A opportunities

* The knowledge that you’re helping us make an audience-driven podcast about college football and keeping this thing alive and well

Thanks to Homefield and Nokian Tyres

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Shop Michigan and UCLA national title gear at Homefield.

Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a discussion about college football history. For understandable reasons, people all cautious about calling for teams to make coaching changes when the incumbent is a legend in the job. How careful should we be, though? In this episode, we go through the past 40-ish years of coaching transitions from living legend to … someone else. How do schools do when they either fire an all-timer or need to replace him in retirement? The answer isn’t great, but it’s not as bad as you might think.

* 2:04: Why Dabo Swinney got us thinking about this subject

* 16:20: The rare cases of the “guy after the guy” arguably doing a better job than the coach he replaced, or at least winning more games for a while

* 21:15: The maintainers who kept the train on the tracks, like Ryan Day

* 39:13: The long, slow declines, like Virginia Tech post-Frank Beamer

* 59:52: The tank jobs, like Ron Zook or Ron Prince

* 1:24:16: The cases where the jury is still out, like Kalen DeBoer. (Is that jury still out? We have a mini-debate.)

* 1:31:15: Lessons for Clemson heading into another fraught season

This is a subscriber episode, but everyone can hear a nice big free preview

To get this episode and many, many more (as well as a whole back catalog of evergreen college football history shows, reporting on the coach carousel, and more), become a paid subscriber today.

Producer: Anthony Vito