Split Zone Duo: College Football Podcast

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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Virginia Tech has had a rough decade. Has the cavalry finally arrived to save the program from irrelevance? Tech hired James Franklin and appears to appears to be throwing huge sums of cash at his program in the hopes of stopping a backslide that started late in Frank Beamer’s career and then spun out of control und...

How are things going for all 16 teams in the SEC? Let’s discuss which way the arrow is pointing. Alex and Richard head to the Southeast on this latest Offseason Vibe Check, a chance to talk about actual football teams during the long, cold offseason. In this episode, the crew covers … * 1:25: Texas’s offensive line problem and whether a nice finish to the regular season and a bowl win can be a spr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Alex talks with the wise baseball scribe (and USC football fan) Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter about how our sport is currently on a trajectory that looks awfully familiar to another sport’s recent arc. College football is grappling with a long list of the same problems and proposals that have be...

The ACC Offseason Vibe Check is here. Alex and Richard check in with all 17 ACC football schools and throw in Notre Dame as well. In this episode … * 1:31: Miami made a big playoff run and then simply reloaded * 4:14: Duke won football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball conference titles in the same year, and yet still has bad vibes because of some devastating portal losses * 7:47: Georgia...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Lucy Rohden has spent the past few college football seasons visiting dozens of stadiums for some of the biggest games of the year. What has she learned about the sport through these travels? She joins Richard to talk about her-long road trip through the sport. In this episode: * 1:34: What constitutes a college town...

Our offseason wellness check on all 16 teams in the Big 12. Richard and Alex discuss a league with a few teams trending upward and a lot more teams just trying to figure things out. Producer: Anthony Vito This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.splitzoneduo.com/subscribe

Alex and Richard go through the one-of-a-kind football life lived by Lou Holtz, who died on March 4 at age 89. In this episode, we discuss: * 1:46: Holtz’s Saban-like upbringing and why Notre Dame was the apple of his eye from an early age * 4:14: William & Mary, Holtz’s first head coaching stop * 7:25: NC State, where he was an all-timer * 11:13: The Jets, a one-year misadventure * 17:15: Arkansa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Quick note! This is a subscriber episode of Split Zone Duo. You can subscribe here . Subscribers, be on the lookout on Sunday night or early Monday for the links to enter our annual bracket competition, with SZD sponsor prizes for the winners. It’ll be fun! OK, here’s this hoops-centric episode. College basketball h...

Offseason vibe checks return for 2026, starting with the Big Ten. This is our way of checking in on how the offseason is going for every team in the league. Richard and Alex go through the 18-team B1G in the following order: * 3:22: Indiana * 9:08: Iowa * 12:08: Oregon * 16:36: Rutgers * 17:39: Illinois * 20:24: Penn State * 25:59: Michigan State * 30:15: Michigan * 34:38: Purdue * 36:01: UCLA * 3...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Host emeritus Steven Godfrey is back to join Richard for a whip-around of the most interesting coordinator moves (and non-moves) from the 2026 coaching carousel. There’s a lot to cover here, including but not limited to: * 1:04: Miami’s key retentions * 3:13: Palace intrigue at Auburn * 4:45: Clemson pushes the Chad...

Matt Brown joins Richard and Alex for the latest SZD/Extra Points Sports Business Hour. In this episode, the group talks about how the job of an athletic director has changed in the past handful of years: * The worst athletic director Matt has ever seen * What used to be the key markers of a good AD? * How have those traits changed in the 2020s? * News story reactions: Oliver Luck gets yet another...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com In this subscriber episode , Godfrey, Richard, and Alex revisit 28 head coach transitions before the 2012 college football season. This was one of the most consequential coach carousels of the 21st century, with lots of very good, lots of very bad, plenty in the middle, and also the John L. Smith situation: THE GOOD...

Your mission is simple, should you choose to accept it: By awarding or subtracting 24 points from a handful of old college football games, how much can you alter about the entire trajectory of the sport? Richard and Alex see how much damage they can do with three possessions’ worth of points: * 0:23: RIP to college football’s Wes Rucker , Joey Knight, and Rondale Moore * 3:37: Richard’s additional...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com This is a subscriber episode of Split Zone Duo, but everyone can listen to a free preview. Become a subscriber today by clicking on this link. In the second leg of our big offseason-opening mailbag, Richard and Alex take a big list of subscriber questions. (But first, yet another MAC head coach leaves his job and re...

Richard and Alex talk about a handful of college football news stories, headlined by Sacramento State’s geographically and financially absurd move to the MAC: * 5:24: Sacramento State to the MAC and our many, many questions * 31:55: The inaugural Split Zone Duo Olympic Hockey Hour * 34:12: Eligibility lawsuits and who’s still a college athlete (Trinidad Chambliss, Joey Aguilar, and Charles Bediako...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Subscriber episode: Richard and Alex answer questions from our subscribers as college football gets into the meet of its offseason. We got a lot of very good questions, so we are breaking this mailbag into two separate recordings and will answer more of your questions next week. In this episode: * 0:15: Important ne...

The greatest program in FCS is moving to the Mountain West, effective this upcoming season. North Dakota State won 10 of the past 15 FCS national titles and decided to try something new. It’s a huge move, giving FBS a new contender for the Group of 6 spot in the Playoff and reshaping the competitive pecking order in FCS. But we’ve still got many questions to talk through: * Why now? NDSU had batte...

The Big Ten’s commissioner, Tony Petitti, spent much of this season trying to do two things: 1) Expand the Playoff to his liking, and 2) Get his member schools to sign a big private capital deal. Neither happened, and the conference now appears to have wasted a lot of time off the field even as it was winning a third-straight national championship on it. Matt Brown of the tremendous Extra Points n...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Before the season, Godfrey, Richard, and Alex made a bunch of predictions and buried them in a time capsule. Time to dig it up! What did everyone learn over the course of the season? How were our prior opinions challenged? Where we got things wildly wrong, was that bad luck (Penn State) or the sign of missing someth...

It’s time to review the 2025 college football season, with our annual awards special, the Zonies. Rodger Sherman joins Alex and Richard to dole out some important CFB honors for this past season, including: * Power conference team of the year * Non-power team of the year * Moment of the year * Proof of concept of the year * Minority Coach of the Week of the Year * Bryan Harsin Award for Forestalli...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Welcome to the rest of the college football calendar, the part when games aren’t actually being played. In this quick subscriber episode, Alex and Richard debrief on the state of their CFB fandom and talk about what’s both good and not good right now. Producer: Anthony Vito. This show is for paid subscribers Thanks...

The best turnaround in the history of college football concludes with a 16-0 season and a national championship. Richard and Alex talk about Indiana’s 27-21 win over Miami, what led up to it, and where these programs go next. SZD doesn’t stop in the offseason The opposite, if anything. We use these months for all sorts of creative projects that are designed to appeal to people who love college foo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com THIS IS A SUBSCRIBER EPISODE : Thanks so much to the thousands of people (!) who subscribe to support Split Zone Duo. One thing you get is the knowledge that you are making this independent college football podcast possible. Another thing you get is a lot of bonus episodes, including weekly dispatches all offseason...

Richard and Alex look ahead to the College Football Playoff National Championship, with some thoughts on the schematics and then the unique circumstances surrounding Miami and Indiana. In this episode: * 1:32: Our thoughts on the city of Miami * 9:55: Brief Xs and Os preview of Indiana vs. Miami: Could Miami sack Fernando Mendoza a bunch and still lose? What about the big challenge in front of Ind...