MACtion is back as of this week, and the Toledo Rockets are once again right there in the mix to win the conference. How did the most consistent program in the Mid-American get that way? And what challenges has it needed to overcome to stay there? There are a lot of them. Inside this episode:

4:20: The Cignettification of Toledo

6:38: Mike Jacobs and the small-college coaching pipeline

15:38: Remembering Toledo coaches, from Nick Saban to Jason Candle

20:04: Giant-killing and the Glass Bowl

24:38: The university, the city, and the challenges of MACtion

34:07: Can anybody else in the MAC do this?

Producer: Anthony Vito

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Richard and Alex look ahead to one of the juiciest weekend schedules college football has seen in years. First, a quick discussion of the midterm elections’ effect on the college football landscape, and then dozens of games, including:

- 10:34: Virginia Tech at SMU

- 14:04: New Mexico at Nevada

- 18:15: BYU at Utah

- 23:46: Texas at Missouri

- 31:38: Texas A&M at South Carolina

- 34:25: Alabama at LSU

- 40:14: Oregon at Ohio State

- 52:39: Georgia at Ole Miss

- 58:05: Miami at Notre Dame (note: recorded before we heard Malachi Toney’s status is uncertain)

- 1:05:43: Oklahoma at Florida

Producer: Anthony Vito

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Guest host Jessica Smetana joins Alex to talk through the first College Football Playoff rankings reveal of the season. This episode first aired as a live stream on YouTube and has been spruced up lightly by our producer, Anthony Vito, to go into your podcast feeds now. In this episode:

* Running through the opening 1-25

* What the committee says it’s doing differently this year

* Our biggest beefs with the committee (Alabama, hello again lol)

* The committee’s crush of the week

* The team at risk of being dropped from the group chat

* Jessica Smetana’s Notre Dame Discourse Corner

* The sneaky good win (or loss) of the week. Hi, Oregon?

Thanks for listening, and especially thank you if you were one of the people who joined us live and waited for us during some early technical glitching!

Florida State is open. Richard and Alex give the whole job market an overview but focus most of this episode on the Noles, who are still (for most people) the best available gig on the market. In this episode:

3:01: Richard walks Alex through the backroom and infrastructural changes FSU has already made (and the ones fans still want)

12:50: Where exactly did Mike Norvell’s tenure go wrong?

22:59: Where will this job sit in the pecking order of available gigs?

25:24: Names who might make sense in Tallahassee

30:29: NC State’s apparent pursuit of Philip Rivers and what we see in it, plus a bit more on on Baylor and Sam Houston

Producer: Anthony Vito

Richard and Alex take you through Week 9, telling you about dozens of interesting games in 30ish minutes. Including but not limited to:

USC 30, Ohio State 18

Indiana 23, Minnesota 16

Washington 17, Nebraska 10

South Carolina 42, Oklahoma 25

BYU 27, Arizona State 20

Texas Tech 34, Arizona 26

Iowa State 51, Oklahoma State 49

Miami 38, North Carolina 35

Clemson 36, Florida State 24

Troy 24, James Madison 21

Johns Hopkins wins on a FAIR-CATCH KICK

Producer: Anthony Vito

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The New Mexico Lobos have a long and mostly bleak football history. A former coach one said you could fit the fanbase in a few rows of bleachers. The list of UNM players the casual college football fan remembers watching is zero player long. But right now, under coach Jason Eck, UNM is one of the most exciting turnaround stories in the country and has a real chance to make the playoff. The Lobos are doing something no one else is doing, and Rodger Sherman joins Alex Kirshner to talk about it on this SUBSCRIBER SPECIAL:

0:16: New Mexico’s moment

9:51: The Jason Eck story

19:26: Remember a Lobo (Brian Urlacher edition)

25:20: Why winning at New Mexico is ultra-difficult

36:48: The defense and the turnovers

42:50: What happens after Eck?

Producer: Anthony Vito

Alex and Richard break down the Week 9 of the college football season, including Lincoln Riley’s uphill climb against Ohio State, and the Cody Campbell rants that should have Texas Tech fans concerned.

Florida Atlantic University at North Texas (00:02:37) Baylor at UCF (00:06:08) Arizona at Texas Tech (00:09:50) Notre Dame at Navy (00:19:32)Wisconsin at Iowa (00:24:06) Florida at Georgia (00:31:22)Miami at North Carolina (00:52:40)Ohio State at USC (01:00:28)

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

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Cohost emeritus Steven Godfrey joins Richard and Alex on this episode for a discussion what the player pay market has done to coach expectations.

5:07: The price of the brick (or of Jesse Legree or Kamario Taylor) goes up: What does a mid- or low-budget program do when a superstar emerges?

13:47: How much longer can coaches use NIL as an excuse?

22:01: Why different people in the same program will give you a different number for their roster spend

32:36: If coach pay isn’t going down, what does that say about what we can reasonably expect from coaches without a ton of roster cash?

43:23: Dissecting the season’s three big-budget disasters so far: Oregon, Michigan, and Texas A&M.

Producer: Anthony Vito