Split Zone Duo: College Football Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Welcome to “The Job,” a new recurring series from Split Zone Duo in which Richard and Alex go through the ins and outs of open college football coaching job. UCLA fired DeShaun Foster, which means the Bruins are once again looking for a coach to take advantage of the good parts of this gig without succumbing to the...

The Week 4 college football schedule is loaded with big games that wouldn’t have felt this big in any other year, like Texas Tech-Utah and Illinois-Indiana. Alex and Richard break down what’s interesting this weekend. A non-exhaustive list of games covered: * Iowa-Rutgers * Texas Tech-Utah * SMU-TCU (for the last time for a while) * North Texas-Army * Arkansas-Memphis * The Civil War * The Apple C...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com One quarter of the way through the season, Godfrey, Richard, and Alex discuss five teams that are off to terrible starts and haven’t fired their coaches yet. They all look doomed to at least a bad season and maybe more than that, but can we find reasons for hope? In this episode: * How Billy Napier’s staff managemen...

Richard and Alex break down an excellent Week 3 in college football, with a spotlight on more than three dozen games. We go in this order: Georgia 44, Tennessee 41 Texas A&M 41, Notre Dame 40 Georgia Tech 24, Clemson 21 WVU 31, Pitt 24 LSU 20, Florida 10 Alabama 38, Wisconsin 14 Miami 49, USF 12 Oregon 34, Northwestern 14 USC 33, Purdue 17 Ole Miss 41, Arkansas 35 Vandy 31, South Carolina 7 Cal 27...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Subscriber show! Realignment killed off a lot of college football rivalries. Then the schools involved brought some of them back … only to let them wither again. Why does this happen, and are some of the ongoing changes to the sport encouraging or discouraging teams to schedule more of these games? Now that the Bord...

The Week 3 Tasting Menu discusses many, many college football games. Here are just a few of them: * Colorado vs. Houston: Deion Sanders makes a QB change, probably, but he’s being cagey about it * Oregon vs. Northwestern: This game will not be interesting, but recent events surrounding Northwestern and its football program were * Clemson vs. Georgia Tech: This is a dangerous spot for Clemson, agai...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com In this week’s SZD Overtime episode for subscribers, we examine two programs that were dominant in the 2000s and are still, all these years later, trying to recapture some of their old magic. Florida lost to USF, endangering Billy Napier’s tenure once again. Virginia Tech dropped to 0-2 with losses to South Carolina...

Richard and Alex break down the interesting stuff from Week 2 of the college football season, starting with upsets in Starkville and Gainesville and moving on down the list to dozens of games: * Mississippi State broke through against Arizona State * USF cemented its very early hold on the G5 playoff spot at Florida * Oklahoma made sure Bryce Underwood had the night you expected * Iowa State has b...

Alex and Richard preview Week 2 of the college football season, which is light on big-time helmet games but heavy on interesting regional matchups. This episode has notes and observations on a big bunch of games, including: * JMU at Louisville, a great Friday night opener for the weekend * Baylor at SMU, where we should learn a lot more about Baylor * Illinois at Duke, where the Illini put their p...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com ESPN’s Bill Connelly, author of a new book on the evolution and future of CFB, joins Alex and Richard for a big post-Week 1 chat: * Bill’s new book, “Forward Progress,” is a mix of caution and optimism about the ways college football has changed. We talk with him about how sports actually die, what still works well...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com In this subscriber special ( join us! ), Alabama beat writer Matt Stahl of AL.com joins Alex to talk about exactly how bad things are right now in Tuscaloosa. Coming off a 14-point loss to FSU, we had a lot of questions, like: * How seriously is the Alabama beat taking the possibility of a coach firing? * What about...

The Split Zone Duo Sunday Hurry-Up returns for 2025, still featuring notes on dozens of games delivered in 30-ish (emphasis on “ish”) minutes and now sponsored by our partners at Dad Water. In this Week 1 rundown: * FSU doesn’t just beat Alabama, but does it with beef * Arch Manning flops at Ohio State, but we won’t engage in Arch Doomerism just yet. Meanwhile, a great start for the defending cham...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com After an offseason and preseason of talking, it’s time to answer: What do we think will actually happen in this college football season? Alex, Richard, and Godfrey put their names on some picks in this subscriber episode. At the end of the season, we’ll dig up the time capsule and see how we did: * The champions of...

Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner preview the first week of the 2025 season, with notes on dozens of games that will make your Week 1 more interesting. A brief selection of the games we talk about this week: * Boise State vs. USF is the Bulls’ biggest moment in years * Nebraska vs. Cincinnati is a major interior pressure test for Dylan Raiola * Auburn vs. Baylor and Georgia Tech vs. Colorado headl...

This season, FBS teams will play 126 games against FCS opponents. Most years, anywhere between five-ish and 10-ish FBS teams will lose those games. The purpose of the Split Zone Duo FCS Upset Draft is to identify those teams, engage in some friendly competition, and use the process as a look ahead to the season. Everyone picks three FCS winners, but there’s a catch: Some FCS upsets are barely upse...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Yahoo Sports’ Nate Tice joins Richard in this new episode of “Scheme School,” focused on one very famous QB. Arch Manning finally takes the reins of the Texas Longhorns this weekend at Ohio State. For a quarterback who’s been talked about more than any other QB prospect in maybe the whole history of the sport, we ha...

Richard and Alex preview the SEC for the 2025 season: * Texas has everything it needs to make a deep playoff run * Georgia has a few more questions, especially at QB, but (this will shock you) looks like a frontline contender once again * Alabama is back, per Richard * LSU has championship upside, but will the defense be good or great? * South Carolina has a huge star at QB and another at EDGE. Th...

Alex, Richard, and Rodger Sherman preview the Big Ten for 2025. This nearly two-hour episode runs through all 18 teams, in this order: * Penn State faces “semifinals or bust” season * Ohio State should step back, but how much can a team step back when it has Jeremiah Smith on one side of the ball and Caleb Downs on the other? * Oregon has a few question marks but all the talent in the world * Iowa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com The NCAA’s big decision on Michigan’s sign-stealing operation is here, and it is a nothingburger. To explain what happened and get a Michigan perspective on it (because it is very funny), Alex welcomes Jane Coaston, Crooked Media podcaster and Michigan fan, to discuss it. You can read the full infractions decision h...

Richard and Godfrey preview 2025 in the newly renamed American Conference. In a recent episode, we touched on this league’s long-term difficulties . In this one, we talk about the season to come, previewing all 14 teams. The episode wraps with preseason award nominees from the hosts for the SZD Dude of the Year, the Low-Key Cool Game of the Year, the Minority Coach of the Week In an Interesting Sc...

Our partners at Homefield have seen a lot of you on the road in recent years. They’re getting back on the trail this fall for the Homefield Can't Miss Kickoff Tour, presented by Modelo , and we’re sharing news of the first three stops on the tour in Tallahassee (weekend of 8/30), Philadelphia (weekend of 9/13), and Bloomington (weekend of 9/20). You can get much, much more information on this tour...

Richard and Alex preview the Mountain West in 2025, starting with the same team that’s favored every year and then going in no particular order: * Boise State still looks like the class of the league * San Jose State has leveled up, but now Ken Niumatalolo confronts life without an All-American receiver * UNLV is the apple of Richard’s eye with Dan Mullen in charge * Colorado State made strides la...

Richard and Alex preview 2025 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, discussing the league in the following order: * Clemson, now with a light sprinkling of transfers, has every ingredient * Miami’s defense should finally arrive, but will Mario Cristobal come through on the margins? * Louisville has both of us excited * SMU is graded on a different curve now, and on that curve, it has work to do * Geor...

Why do you love college football? It's a simple question with a not so simple answer, but we asked it of you, our listeners, as well as some special guests. And you delivered. Sit back and enjoy an audio love letter to the game that fills us with delight, disappointment, thrills, and frustrations. Producer: Anthony Vito. Thanks to everyone who contributed, including our partners: www.nokiantyres.c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com The American Athletic Conference was by far the best non-power conference of the early College Football Playoff era. Its best teams were nationally relevant. Many programs were on the rise, and so were the league’s coaches, who went on to Power Five jobs and then got replaced by coaches who often did the same. Latel...