Split Zone Duo: College Football Podcast

EA Sports College Football principal game designer Ben Haumiller joins Richard and Alex to answer their questions (and many of our subscribers’ questions) about the new CFB video game that comes out July 9. This episode covers new features and gameplay changes, why EA decided to implement an NIL system in dynasty mode, what interactions with schools have been like, which new FBS teams and stadiums...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Alex, Richard, and Godfrey spend this subscriber episode reopening some of college football’s ugliest firing files: the decisions that looked reckless in the moment, the ones that aged like bad cheese, and the cases where the process was the bad before the next hire even got started. The trip runs from Nebraska and...

Mike Goodman, cohost of soccer podcast The Double Pivot, joins Richard and Alex to talk about a subject that’s been on our minds a lot lately: tournament expansion. The World Cup expanded from 32 teams to 48, and we’ve already seen some of the benefits (and perhaps some of the drawbacks) of that move. What can the recent experiences of the world’s biggest sporting event tell us about college footb...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Alex, Richard, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey identify 10-ish head coaches whose tenures are not going well heading into 2026. Is it possible to find hope in any of these situations? On this show, we’re trying to figure out what a turnaround might look like. In this subscriber episode: 0:01: Michigan’s hoops coach...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com This episode is for paid subscribers, but everyone can hear a free preview. Want to get all of our podcasts? Join us here. Richard takes a solo show journey to wrap up the Brendan Sorsby saga now that the Texas Tech quarterback has announced his intention to enter the NFL’s supplemental draft and effectively end a s...

As the season gets closer and closer, the hypotheticals start to inch closer to reality. Will the good vibes that your favorite team captured this offseason actually pan out, or will it only lead to disappointment? Is the current situation with your coaching staff or roster getting any better? This internal monologuing can snowball into the dreaded sports anxiety. So we asked you the listener, to...

Transfer portal season is over. The actual college football season is almost here. With the dust (probably) settled on everyone’s roster, Richard and Alex pick through dozens of portal classes and highlight 26 players who are sliding into situations worth tracking in 2026. This episode is NOT just a recitation of the highest-ranked transfers, but a deeper examination of who’s being relied on to fi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Brendan Sorsby has his temporary injunction, and the field is open for Texas Tech’s QB to play in 2026. Yes, Alex is as shocked as you are. What now, though? To answer that question and a few more, let’s welcome Sam Ehrlich, an assistant professor of legal studies at Boise State and operator of the College Sports Li...

Subscribe to our new YouTube channel just for episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@collegefootballpodcast Alex, Richard, and Matt Brown get back together for the Split Zone Duo/Extra Points Sports Business Hour with the most serious congressional attempt yet to reorganize college sports on the table. The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 would touch NIL enforcement, athlete movement, the House sett...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Is your head coach going to succeed? Most of the time, you’ll know by Year 2. Welcome to the latest installment of SZD’s checkup on head coaches about to start their second season on the job. The class of 2025 was famously light on Power 4 hires but offers more G6 hope than you might think. In this episode, we’ll ti...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Host emeritus Steven Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a look back at the Big 12’s extremely public flirtation with expansion a full decade ago. It was a strange spring and summer in 2016, as the Big 12 basically put on realignment tryouts for a long list of schools including several (BYU, UCF, Houston, and Cincinn...

Richard is joined by Joel Anderson, host of The Ringer Tailgate and The Press Box podcasts, for a conversation about the NAACP’s Out of Bounds campaign and the bigger question underneath it: What is fair to ask of Black college athletes and recruits at a moment when lawmakers and the courts are attacking Black voting power? They start with HBCUs and PWIs, move through the campaign’s specifics asks...

Alex, Richard, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey turn a Memorial Day subscriber mailbag into a holiday-travel episode, starting with an either/or question about Steve Sarkisian and Lincoln Riley. From there, they get into G.J. Kinne’s future, Arkansas cutting and then quiickly reinstating a sport, what a 24-team Playoff might do to scheduling, how to talk about Kirby Smart, Dabo Swinney, Dan Lannin...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Alex and Richard start with the surprise of UCLA becoming one of the offseason’s best recruiting stories, then Alex brings on Ira Gorawara from The Athletic for a campus-level look at Bob Chesney’s first few months in Westwood. This subscriber episode is about whether UCLA’s current burst of mone...

Alex and Richard use Richard’s trip to ACC meetings as a window into the big college sports fight of the hour: how many teams will be in the College Football Playoff going forward. Then they sort through the Big Ten/SEC split over 24 teams, Ole Miss’ strange week as a national punching bag in the middle of May, and Nebraska’s first run-in with the new NIL enforcement system, which might be less th...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Subscriber episode: Steven Godfrey joins Alex and Richard to do a two-year checkup on Alabama under Kalen DeBoer. When Nick Saban retired in January 2024, Godfrey thought the Crimson Tide were due for a major reality check, while Alex thought one of Saban’s gifts to Bama was a durable and higher floor. Two seasons i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Extra Points publisher Matt Brown joins Alex and Richard for this subscriber edition of the Sports Business Hour, starting with the Big 12’s RedBird Capital deal and why a lot of schools that need money might still say no to expensive outside cash. From there, the group gets into what “revenue generation” can mean f...

ESPN’s Bill Connelly joins Alex and Richard to talk about his returning production rankings for the 2026 college football season. The power leagues are retaining more of last year’s snaps and yards, while the G6 is increasingly forced into annual rebuilds. Bill explains how the formula for returning talent has evolved, how the transfer portal has made it messy, and which 2026 teams look interestin...

Want a video version of this episode? Find it on YouTube right here. Subscribe to our new @collegefootballpodcast channel to get video versions of all our free episodes, and subscribe to our main channel for our occasional history short docs and other fun YouTube exclusives. Richard and Alex go deep on this week’s biggest story: Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby is under investigation for sports bettin...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com 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:...

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 drafti...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com 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 h...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com 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...

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...

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...