The Solid Verbal College Football

In this episode, we kick off our 2026 conference preview series with Part 1 of our Group of Six rundown, covering the American, Sun Belt and MAC. With coaching changes, transfer portal churn, new coordinators and a whole lot of roster turnover, we try to figure out which teams are actually built to contend and which ones are more mystery box than finished product. We start in the American, where U...

In this episode, we officially welcome ourselves back to college football with a full 2026 season primer. Before preview season begins in earnest, we reset the board with the biggest changes you need to know, from conference realignment, new teams, and bowl games to rule tweaks, the coaching carousel and a longer road to the national championship in Las Vegas. Consider this your intro course for t...

In this July Q&A episode, we open up the mailbag and tackle a wide-ranging batch of offseason questions. Which teams could become this year’s surprise contenders? Is Utah still a threat after major coaching and roster turnover? Can Texas Tech buy its way out of an old perception? And what do the NCAA’s new five-year eligibility rules mean for the future of roster building? Plus, we...

In this episode, we welcome Chris Fallica of Fox Sports, Big Noon Kickoff and Bear Bets to talk through college football from the perspective of a researcher, bettor, traveler and longtime media fixture. We get into how he studies the sport this time of year, what numbers actually matter, how the transfer portal has changed preseason projections, and why college football remains so difficult to ev...

In this college football podcast episode, we react to the latest and likely final twist in the Brendan Sorsby saga, as the now-former Texas Tech quarterback backs off his NCAA lawsuit and turns his attention toward the NFL Supplemental Draft. After weeks of legal maneuvering, Big 12 pushback, public statements and fan frustration, we try to make sense of how the situation became untenable, what it...

In this episode, we examine the most interesting college football teams hovering around the bowl eligibility line in 2026. With win totals sitting at 5.5 or 6.5, these are the teams that could just as easily surge to 8-4 as stumble into 5-7, and we try to figure out which direction they’re headed before preview season officially begins. We start with Florida and the Jon Sumrall reboot, then...

In this episode, we return to the board room for Sark Tank 3.0, our annual exercise in college football emotional investing. Ty brings the pitches, while Dan and special guest Andy Staples play the investors, and decide which 2026 storylines are worth buying and selling. On the board: Brendan Sorsby's prospects at Texas Tech, the SEC's return to glory, the return of Gary Patterson, and a new Group...

In this episode, we welcome back our friend Richard Johnson from CBS Sports and Split Zone Duo for a conversation about the college football topics we talk about too much, and the ones we probably do not talk about enough. As preview season creeps closer, we zoom out on the sport’s offseason discourse and ask which arguments are useful, which ones are exhausted, and where the weird, fun, mea...

In this episode, we step slightly outside our usual college football lane for a 2026 World Cup preview with ESPN’s Bill Connelly. With the tournament kicking off next week in North America, we put the tournament in terms that college football fans can understand and discuss the potential chaos of an expanded field, the "Indiana" of world soccer, and the constant tension between off-field dis...

In this June Q&A episode, we open up the Verballer mailbag and start looking ahead to preview season with some early college football summer loves. Which teams are we already talking ourselves into before the magazines arrive? Which programs are interesting, dangerous, confusing or just fun enough to pique our interest as the 2026 season gets closer? We also dig into first-time College Footbal...

In this episode, we take a break from the usual offseason doom loop and focus on the things that still make college football worth getting excited about. With the 2026 season now inside the 100-day window, we lean into the joy, weirdness and ritual of the sport, from team entrances and tailgate footballs to bowl games as holiday escape hatches, overseas openers in Dublin and Rio, and the simple fe...

In this episode, we introduce a new game called “Bed or Built,” where we take some of college football’s most repeated narratives and decide whether it’s time to put them to bed or if they’re still built to last. With the 2026 season creeping closer, we sort through the stories that have followed programs, coaches and fan bases for years, and ask which ones still make...

In this episode, we react to Tony Petitti’s public push for a 24-team College Football Playoff and try to sort through what it actually means for the sport. Is expansion really about access, regular-season stakes, and rewarding more teams, or is it mostly about television inventory, conference leverage, and the ongoing ESPN vs. Fox tug-of-war? We also talk through why the SEC’s prefere...

We’re midway through May, which means it’s time to start talking ourselves into, and out of, what the 2026 college football season could become. In this episode, we turn the month itself into a game with a Big Ten “Mayyyyybe” vibe check, asking which scenarios feel realistic, which ones feel like offseason nonsense, and which ones might look strangely prescient by November....

We’re taking an early look at the 2026 college football schedule and doing a public service for the Verballerhood: figuring out which Saturdays deserve to be protected on the family calendar. From Week 0 appetizers to monster November slates, we rank the season week by week, identify the biggest projected matchups, and decide when it is safe to go outside and when it is absolutely not. Along...

We’re back for Part 2 of our May Q&A, which means the offseason conversation gets both bigger and weirder. We start off with College Football Playoff expansion anxiety, including the possibility of a 24-team field, the future of conference championship games, and the growing gap between the people running the sport and the fans who love it. We discuss the new marriage between Michigan St...

In Part 1 of our big May Q&A, we dig into some of the biggest questions hanging over college football right now, starting with Brendan Sorsby’s uncertain status at Texas Tech and what it could mean for the Big 12 race. We also get into the new single-window transfer portal calendar, the changing value of internal player development, and how roster construction is evolving in a sport wher...

Bill Connelly from ESPN.com stops by to walk us through the post-spring college football landscape, fresh off turning in 7,000 words on the MAC and kicking off his annual conference preview series. We get into how the portal era has transformed his prep work, why the SEC has become a "horizontal" conference of strong middles, and which conferences are hardest to make sense of right now. Bill evalu...

Just as we hit record, news broke that Texas Tech's Brendan Sorsby, one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in the transfer portal this cycle, is checking into a treatment program for a gambling addiction, and is under NCAA investigation dating back to his time at Indiana. In this episode, we lead off with what it means for Texas Tech, and why this story is bigger than just one player in an era where...

In this episode, we're joined by Cole Cubelic (SEC Network, McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning, The Cube Show) for an SEC vibe check. It's not a preview, just the temperature of the conference in late April. Cole pulls no punches on the reality facing SEC fan bases: Nick Saban's standards aren't coming back, sub-goals like winning the conference have been devalued, and we've collectively forgotten...

It's time for one of our favorite traditions: Our annual NFL Draft preview with Nate Tice of Yahoo Sports. Nate walks us through why the 2026 class should be defined by the word "useful" rather than "generational," how color-coded chips on his big board separate the truly elite from scheme-dependent prospects, and why the lack of consensus near the top could produce a first round full of surprises...

It's time for an offseason thought experiment! In this episode, we run through eight "Ty-potheticals" — plausible scenarios for the 2026 season — and debate how they would go over within the Clemson, Virginia Tech, Alabama, Baylor, South Carolina, Colorado, Nebraska, and Michigan State fan bases. Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 4:25 - Clemson 15:55 - Virginia Tech 24:57 - Alabama 36:22 - Baylor...

Spring football is ongoing, and the quarterback battles are starting to tell us what 2026 might look like. In this episode, we work through a few of the most unsettled QB rooms in the country, from a four-way competition out West to a pair of SEC jobs where the depth chart has been rewritten since December. We also dig into the teams we can't stop thinking about heading into the summer, including...

While the golf world turns its gaze to The Masters, we take a look at the truly elite in college football. In this episode, we debate the top quarterbacks and coaches in the sport. Which programs deserve "elite loser" status? Which 2026 schedules feature the most ridiculous gauntlets? And why does Dan still cringe about the time CNBC put him on the spot about Augusta National? Timestamps: 0:00 - I...

Coach Jerry Mack led the Kennesaw State Owls from a 2-10 season in 2024 to a Conference USA championship in his first year in 2025, flipping the roster and the entire offensive scheme in the process. In this episode, he talks about what drew him to Kennesaw State, how he approaches roster construction in the transfer portal era, what he brought back from his time coaching in the NFL, what it takes...