Texas’s Comeback, Oregon’s Nightmare, Michigan’s Rock Fight & Our New AP Top 25 After Week 2 | College Football

Welcome to The Solid Verbal. The Solid Verbal. Come after me. I'm a man. I'm 40. I've heard so many players say, well, I want to be happy. You want to be happy for a day, eat a steak. It's that woo woo. And now, Dan and Ty. Verballers, whether you are watching us live or listening, perhaps on Sunday morning over a nice cup of tea or coffee, we have got quite a bit to discuss. Dan Rubenstein, welcome back, my good friend. How are you today? Quick pitch, Ty. Quick, quick, quick pitch. What if we, in lieu of talking Oregon, Oklahoma State and how we feel about that game, what if we rebroadcast today's Nationals Orioles game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, thus submarineing our show via copyright strike after copyright strike, and we can just move on with our lives? Yes? My good friend, I am not gonna let you off the hook that easily. I can't, not after all these years, we've gotta talk about that game. Season is off and running, my friend. We had our first crazy week, it was week two, a hell of a day for the state of Oklahoma, to say the absolute very least. We had a wild finish in Austin that just finished up a short while ago. What else? We had an 84 point win by James Madison. Of course. We had a crazy finish in a USF game. Kudos to the Van Buren boys. We had all sorts of craziness go down in the wide world of college football. I'm wearing my Virginia Tech shirt from our good friends over at Sons of Saturday. How metal is this shirt, man? It's great, a great shirt. Shout out Gobbler Country. Virginia Tech with a 44 to 21 win over Old Dominion, getting a little bit of revenge. Look, for me, I felt a bit of culture shock in week two. I felt a bit of culture shock because seeing how some teams came back down to earth, ones that I didn't expect, seeing how some others rebounded in a way that felt unexpected. It was like week one all over again in a sense, where I felt like I was still getting to know many of these teams that we had formed semi-lucid opinions on a week ago. Yeah. Week two comes around, we sort of throw the whole damn thing out the window. Yeah. No, you're totally right. And I've been hammering this to you all day long, that I've sort of treated some of the results as sort of a product of like a NEPO week, right? Where there's like, what has this team done to earn this line? And I'm ashamed of myself for not leaning into that stronger. But this was a terrific week. This was obviously a terrific week, no matter who you root for. Even if you are disappointed like I am, and some of the humans that I associate with are disappointed, or with whom I associate, you can appreciate the madness in different ports of this sport. And so, I'm very excited to get into it. I have a lot of thoughts, almost entirely positive, save for one very specific part of my brain. But yes, I am quite excited. If you are watching live, either on YouTube or TikTok or somewhere on X, the Everything app, please give us a holler. We've been asking throughout the day to tell us to fill in the blanks. I'm a blank fan and right now I am feeling blank. So if you wanna drop that in the chat, we'd love to hear from you. We'll get to that after our reverbs here in just a short while. And then of course, now that we've got pretty much a full week of games to discuss, unlike last week, we will get to the portion of the episode where we will actually talk through the ballot that I'm going to cast at like 3 a.m. Eastern time, whatever we get done doing our editing for our AP Top 25 vote. So we'd love to hear from the Verballerhood on that and much, much more. Please hit us up in the comments if you're new here. Rate, review and subscribe, Dan. OK, we should probably start with Texas 24, Ohio State 23. Should we not? I agree. We should. For most of the night, for most of the night, this was not the version of Texas that I expected in this game for about three quarters. We had Arch Manning struggling. We had them turning it over. We had Ohio State very much dictating the pace of play in this game. We had Texas going down 23 to 3 at the start of the fourth quarter. There were plenty of opportunities in this game for Texas to basically just throw in the towel and say, this is not our night. And so I feel like I learned a lot about the Texas Longhorns in the fourth quarter especially. But their stick-to-it-iveness to find a way, arch manning, going from being sort of a problem or a little bit unsettled early to basically leading the comeback. And then finally, Texas taking advantage of an opening a little bit late in that game to grab the dub very, very late. I just feel like we can say definitively that Texas is in the contender tier. I think we expected that when we started talking up this game. But what I learned the most about the Texas Longhorns tonight was that they refused to let a bad night end in a loss. And as Texas fans who listen to this show and have written in over the years know all too well, there have been too many moments like that. Tonight wasn't one of those nights. It was a sloppy night for a lot of this night for Texas, right? The mistakes were somewhere between dumb and freak mistakes, right? That there were the the the the muffed punt that they were able to recover. And another fumble on that drive that they were like miraculously able to recover. The the freak fumble or the not a fumble, but the interception that bobbled off of Cam Coleman and his outstretched arms and body on a beautiful pass from Arch Manning early on in the game that resulted in Ohio State interception and just an out of sync Arch Manning in the passing game and a rushing attack that couldn't get into any bit of a rhythm. And it showed on the scoreboard, right, that they're down 20 points and Ohio State, to their credit, Julian Sayne did a nice job of finding Jeremiah Smith. I mean, it was by and large Jeremiah Smith and a couple of tight ends. I think that's a part of this story that is also, you know, where we should go a little bit in that we've had all of these years of Ohio State filthy rich with receiving talent. This was Jeremiah Smith and essentially only Jeremiah Smith as a true wide receiver contributing to this game for four quarters. That's not good enough for Ohio State. That wasn't good enough for Ohio State to close this game out. But that's the only true wide receiver that they could count on. Julian Sayen made plays. Julian Sayen had a largely good game. He fell off in the second half to some degree, but still very good. And to Ryan Day's credit, he knew that this was even as it seemed like it was getting out of reach for Texas. He knew that it was going to go four full quarters and Ohio State battled. The defense made plays and did everything it could. But that was an interesting subplot to me. Obviously, the biggest plot of this game is the Texas comeback. It's the ability for Texas to find yardage, for Arch Manning to improvise and find those tough yards and keep coming even when it wasn't the most accurate, it wasn't the receivers having the cleanest day for Texas. They kept pushing and that was the story to me, that the attitude from this Texas team seemed to reflect a desire to just not go away. And they won their clunker. And a bunch of teams won their clunker today. Winning is a skill and it seems like for the first time in a minute, Texas is able to win a game like this. Whereas in previous years against similar opponents, you go back to last year against Ohio State, you can go back to games against Georgia. It just didn't seem to be coursing through the Texas vein like it was tonight. And we'll see if that persists. We'll see if that continues. But came away super impressed with Texas finding a way to get out with a win. Yeah, I mean, Ohio State very much demonstrated that they could control Texas. They did it for the first three quarters, but they did not demonstrate that they could kill Texas. Right. And look, what are the ramifications of this? Both teams have really difficult schedules. Ohio State's got obviously their Big Ten schedule in front of them. Maybe we can discuss that if not on this episode at some point in the very near future. Whoever came out of this one with a win definitely has a leg up with regard to the playoff. That being said, these are two high level teams. It was a one point game. I don't think it's going to hurt Ohio State too dramatically. We can talk about that as well as we get into our AP Top 25. Definitely. What makes this loss hurt on the Ohio State side is that they sort of built the game that they wanted for three quarters and then couldn't finish it out. They had where they wanted it. It felt like they had full control of this one for a good chunk of the first half. At least they were running directly at Texas. I had posted this online. It works. They were running directly at Texas, right at the interior of that line, which is something that we talked about in the preview. They were running directly at them. They were getting good yards. They had Texas as a defense off balance. Then the game changed and Ohio State couldn't really change with it late. And so I'm sure there will be commentary afterwards. I'd love to hear from Matt Patricia. I'd love to hear from Ryan Day. I'd love to hear what they were doing on defense because it felt like the defense definitely backed off, definitely played a little bit more soft coverage. Gave Texas a little bit more room to operate. Would love to know the thinking behind that. Would love to know just the thinking of the strategy in the fourth quarter. This was a high level game. I don't want to knock Ohio State too much, but they did give up 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to go down and end up losing this one in Austin. Yeah, had the missed field goal, not an easy field goal, especially on the road. I think it was 43, 45 yards, something like that. And yeah, a couple drives there that got them nothing and didn't take any time off of the clock for Ohio State, minute, minute and a half, three and outs. And yeah, neither of the running games really exploded, but there were a lot of tough runs for these running backs in this game. And I don't know, a great win for Texas. We'll see what it means moving forward. Weirdly enough, three straight power conference losses for Ohio State. Is that correct? Miami, Indiana, and now Texas. If carrying over from season to season is a thing, it's just a very strange run of games, given what we've seen from Ohio State these past few years. But, yeah, I think Ohio State will be fine. The schedule is not especially forgiving, although perhaps a visit from a green and yellow team from the Pacific Northwest doesn't loom quite as large, perhaps. Who's to say? But yeah, I mean, Texas obviously has it in front of them as well. But this is certainly something that you're like, OK, Texas has found a new kind of gear as they as they ramp up for the rest of their schedule. Can I say something here to close this out without anyone getting mad at me? Probably not. I mean, you can, but I'm saying people will largely get upset no matter what you have to say, unless it's like Golden Retriever seemed cool. Well, depends on the Golden Retriever. It depends on the Golden Retriever. Conversation. We've talked about the Ohio State schedule. Yeah, tough schedule, much tougher schedule. We've also talked about the possibility, specifically with regard to SEC teams, not Big 10 teams, but we've talked about the possibility of a three-loss team trying to make some sort of playoff case. I don't honestly believe that this Ohio State team, for how good they look for three-quarters, is going to finish with three losses, but they do have a tough schedule. I don't think it's beyond the realm. Ohio State finishing nine and three with this one-point loss, clearly the other two losses would matter in this hypothetical scenario. But this is almost the exact situation I've been talking about all preseason with regard to a three-loss team trying to make some sort of playoff case. This would be the case. This would be the situation where you feel like you would still have a case. Nick Saban was talking about the close loss thing on game day earlier today. I know you took exception to that. I just, I don't know. I don't think we'll have to deal with that, but don't be surprised if we do later on in the season, Dan Rubenstein. This was a hell of a game. It was a hell of a finish. Again, your final score was 24-23. Yes. That being said, Dan Rubenstein, okay. All right. We had a game in Stillwater, Oklahoma. It was hot. It was delayed. Yeah, it was lightning was the delay, not the heat. But yes. 39-31 was your final. I am going to turn this one over to you. You don't have to. Let me start by saying this. Oklahoma State deserves all the flowers. They deserve all the flowers for refocusing in the manner that they did after losing to Tulsa in week one, looking like crap in the process, and then bouncing back to pull off an upset like this, in which they were the better team. This was not like a fluke win or anything like that, a couple lucky breaks. They were the better team. It was nearly a fluke loss at some point rather than a fluke win. They really did take care of business. They had the two pick six ish plays that could have swung it, but continue. This was not a fluke win by Oklahoma State. They were the better side here. In doing so, they basically turned their season around a week too, which is crazy. But given the way that things went down a week one, this is a pretty significant moment for Eric Morris and the new regime in Oklahoma State. So talk about that in a moment. A large portion of our audience right now is wondering why Oregon looks so unfocused, or why they have looked so unfocused the first two weeks of the season. It wasn't just this week. We did not see much improvement after week one. Something we often talk about here, right? You see the most improvement between week one and week two. I don't feel like we saw that from Oregon. I'm at a loss to make sense of this one. I'm at a loss as to why. This is where I take the baton and hand it off to you, good sir. What do you make of this? How do you interpret this? Help us understand what this meant to the Oregon program, how they find themselves in this predicament and now how the rest of us should react to it. What does this mean? What does it mean? I mean, the word I keep coming back to is preparation. Oklahoma State was better prepared to succeed. The game plan had this team better prepared to execute successfully. The players were better, better prepared, better on the field, better in basically every facet. And you can look at recruiting rankings and say Oregon has better talent. It doesn't matter, right? They played this game between sidelines and end zones and Oklahoma State, the score, as Dan Lanning mentioned, was not indicative of the actual back and forth of this game. There were two plays for the Oregon defense that kept this Oregon team in the game. Drew Mestemaker was terrific, had time to be terrific, had time thanks to a beat up patchwork offensive line in front of him to be terrific. Staring down an Oregon defensive line, that was supposed to be one of the best in the country, but certainly did not show that today, was in sync with his receivers. Obviously, the history he has with Wyatt Young was on full display in this one. Caleb Hawkins was able to ground out a ton of tough yards and get some big yards on big plays, had some big moment situations that obviously he was able to capitalize on. Oklahoma State was better coached, they were better prepared. And once again, this was not a big game for Oregon. Oregon's big circled games are against more storied programs than Oklahoma State. Maybe not better this year. I don't know what Oklahoma State is going to be. But Oregon did not circle this game, I assume, from afar, in the way that perhaps they look at other opponents like USC and Ohio State or whoever. And they went to Stillwater. You can say it's a body clock game. Who cares? Sure, they knew it was coming. They knew that this kickoff time was coming. You can say it was hot, it was delayed. Same temperature for Oklahoma State, same delay for Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State got to watch Oregon tape. Oregon got to watch Oklahoma State tape. And Dan Lanning made a note that they were caught off guard. Maybe my word is not his, by what Oklahoma State didn't show on tape ahead of this one. Preparation. I don't know where Oregon goes from here, but in watching this game, the best thing I could say about Oregon was, wow, those two defensive plays might just be enough for them to steal this one late, a game that they did not earn nor deserve. And that was the best I could say. Dante Moore, if you were to tell me he's injured, wouldn't surprise me. If he were at 100% health, they'd probably still lose this game. He did not look like himself. When you watched other games today, and you watch the urgency from a lot of quarterbacks, not even like athletic dual threat type quarterbacks, but like you watch somebody like Noah Fafita or Bear Bachmeier in that game, they're like, how can I get every yard all of the time? Dante Moore didn't play like that. And so I don't know if it's him not trusting his body. I don't know if it's him not feeling the urgency of the moment. But watching Dante Moore not be able to assess a pass rush, not trust his own offensive line, sometimes for good reason, made me think that this was an Oregon team not ready to play. And I don't know if that falls on Dan Lanning. I don't know if that falls on Drew Meringer, the offensive coordinator. I don't know if it falls on the offensive line coach, the offensive lineman in front of him, the receivers, the running backs didn't do anything. Oregon's run game is all of a sudden broken, it seems, after the Boise State and Oklahoma State games with a new offensive coordinator, a new offensive line. Oregon had no answers, whereas Oklahoma State looked at Oregon and said, okay, we can do this, we can do that, why don't we do this here? Oh, it's third and short, why don't we just go and do that right now to keep this drive going? Oregon's pass rush didn't seem to be there in big moments, they made like killer killer penalties. Oregon wasn't ready to win in the way that Oklahoma State was. And I think it's a really, really poor reflection on everybody running the Oregon program. Oklahoma State, by the way, you look at their schedule, all of a sudden, if they look like this every week, you're like, they're 10 and 211 in one team. Yeah. There's nobody on this schedule right now. Ty isn't wrong, Ty's just early, as the saying goes. But if Texas Tech is struggling to separate from Oregon State, as Houston at times, and we respect the Beavers here on this show, and all things, what is it, Brady Atkinson? My guy, man, gunslinger. I think it's LaGree as the freshman receiver too for the Beavers. He's real good. He's incredible. Oregon has to figure things out quickly. Now, they get Portland State. They will not struggle with Portland State, I believe, on Friday night. But in terms of Oregon as a national championship contender, as a Big Ten contender, now, this is Alamo Dan right now, and I'm not talking about Rubenstein. Dan Lanning and the Oregon program need to figure out, they've got what, two weeks, to figure out what kind of team they think they can be this year and figure out how to put that in place. Because right now, we've got Alamo Dan on our hands. I mean, you're going to take this team on the road to USC? I mean, are you kidding me? Personally, I'm not, but. Are you kidding me? Well, this version of Oregon isn't going to sniff USC with how good USC's offense is. Even if USC's defense is improved, it still could be better than Oklahoma State's. And by the way, Oklahoma State on defense played really well and held Oregon to 90 yards rushing. Totally. This game. This was a defensive line that got bullied by Tulsa. And suddenly they're holding their own against Oregon, who, you know, look, I'll point the finger at us. We both had Oregon making a deep playoff run, if not winning the national championship. Sure. So whatever it is, there is definitely a preparation question that needs to be discussed here this week after this result on the Oregon side of things. You know, and I don't want to take anything away from Oklahoma State because they clearly were prepared. Drew Mestemaker looked every bit the part of a pro prospect. 317 passing yards also ran for 109 and a touchdown. Big gains for Caleb Hawkins and Wyatt Young, both of whom came with Eric Morris and Mestemaker from North Texas. Even their offensive line held their own. This is an offensive line that lost their starting left tackle, five plays into the season a week ago against Tulsa. A gruesome injury that we've had people write in and say, we're not surprised they lost to Tulsa because we don't know how they can get over that. Other guys were beat up on the offensive line today. Yeah. Hobbling off the field. The fact that Oregon cannot get pressure on Drew Mestemaker, the fact that they cannot get a push on a defensive line that Tulsa pushed around a week ago, there is definitely a softness here going on with Oregon that somebody needs to figure out. And I don't know if it's a Dan Lanning thing. I don't know if it's an assistant coach thing. I don't know if it's the players feel entitled thing. I don't know what it is. But on the Oregon side, this was an embarrassing loss. On the Oklahoma State side, week one was a mulligan. Week one was a mulligan. This is a much bigger win and you could definitely build off of this. If you told me that the Oklahoma State inside linebacker noticed that the left guard would like, what was the Bill Belichick story about, was it Carl Banks? Did you see that thing? Where he would notice a tight end wiggling his fingers or something every time it was a pass. If you told me the inside linebacker noticed that Oregon's left guard or right tackle or tight end or something like that would take a deep breath before a run and they knew every time, like, oh, that actually makes a lot more sense. Yeah. Right. I'm like in my head about, like, oh, Oregon has, like, a bunch of 31 year old coaches because Dan Landing doesn't want to be challenged and doesn't want to lose coordinators like he did last season. Oklahoma State's defensive coordinator is 31. Skyler Cassidy. Great day for Skyler Cassidy. Dude's going to sleep like a rock tonight. So I don't know, man. I just look, it's week two. Oregon has time. If they have it in them, they have time to get it figured out. They didn't play a conference game yet. They could beat all these teams. They've got enough talent. You could even see the talent on display in this game. You could see it's there. They just, it was like they didn't care. By the way, you're saying USC minus anything. We're talking about a USC team once again. San Jose State, Fresno State, Louisiana. I'm not saying minus anything. I'm just saying you're going to take this version of Oregon to USC? Personally, I am not. They have some work. They got to work on themselves, right? They got to sit down on a couch and really look internally if they want anything from this year. I mean, it was just an embarrassing showing for them. But again, I give all due credit to Oklahoma State. This was quite a performance for them and a really good bounce back effort after losing a week ago in the manner that they did Tulsa. There was another game earlier in the day. Dan Rubenstein, that was basically a rock fight in a phone booth, I think is the right way to classify it. Yeah. It was a very defensive game. Michigan and Oklahoma were a combined 7 for 26 on third downs. There is 24 havoc plays I have written down here on my sheet. That includes tackles for loss and sacks and you name it. Fumbles. Let's give credit to the Michigan Defense because the Michigan Defense is what won this game. They won the turnover battle 2 to zip. They recovered Parker Livingston's fumble in the second quarter. They also had a big interception from Jair Hill in the fourth quarter. That basically gave Michigan a short field and led to the game. A six foot field. Yeah, he returned it to the two. Basically a short field. Yeah. Yes. They kept saying on the broadcast that Bryce Underwood looked better. And I don't think that's untrue. Right. I guess it's a bar question, right? Yeah. What is the height of the bar with which we're judging him? Yeah. They definitely changed the complexion of the offense. They were running Utah East. They were running the Jason Beck offense that we saw at Utah a year ago with Devon Dampier, but with Bryce Underwood. And like 30 fewer points. 30 fewer points. I mean, they were like, Utah was very quietly one of like 15 most explosive offenses in America last year. So as it were, we had Bryce Underwood leading Michigan with 87 yards on the ground. Only threw the ball 17 times, had nine completions for 111 yards, but was a clean performance, right? Didn't turn the ball over, didn't. Yeah. Okay. So that in and of itself, I think, is growth. Clearly, this was a team in Michigan that was finding its identity in real time, or at least proving to us its new identity in real time. Because whatever we saw, we could go against Western Michigan, which by the way is still going to count as a win. We're finding out that Michigan is still working through some stuff. Yeah. I was impressed with the defense. The offense, I need to talk to you a little bit more about, but this was a very, very big one at home as a home underdog against a team that came in number 11 in the nation. Yeah. What was your biggest takeaway from this game? Because I have like 15 of them that I jotted down on my sheet here. But what was the biggest one for you? That we had like two Oklahoma's on the field and had two Michigan's on the field? Like, take your pick. It was like, okay, he's not going to be able to pass all that dependably well. But we have the defense that if we keep them to around 10 points, we'll be all right. Who am I talking about? Right? Like, I think the more disappointing element to all of this is probably on the Oklahoma side of things, just because they knew coming into the year that this is what their worst case scenario would be as a team, that they would have the defense to stifle basically everybody. But they wouldn't have the offense to score 27 points when they need to, because they're not always going to be able to keep teams down to 10, 13 points. And so that becomes the issue when you play against Michigan. You know Michigan's limitations. You know you don't need to score a ton to beat this version of Michigan, because you know Bryce Underwood isn't going to wake up in week two and look like Joe Burrow or Cam Newton or anybody else that is like an all Lamar Jackson or take your pick. So you're like, OK, so we probably need to score a little bit more against a quality team and they make the changes that they make and they bring in new personnel and new assistant coaches and shifting things around a little bit on offense. Like, oh, we have the guys to run how we want to really do things now. And I mean, you were hammering this during the game itself. You're like, this is just last year's team with a slightly stronger John Matier. Like his traps and delts are more impressive this year. He was missing guys, you know, made clutch throws look very, very difficult and incomplete. And, you know, the Oklahoma offense is still the Oklahoma offense and the defense did everything it needed to do. And for all of the good that Michigan's offense did at times, in the great touchdown run for Bryce Underwood, JJ Buchanan looks like he's going to be, if the ball comes his way, accurately enough, he looks really, really good. Yeah, he looks really, really good. But the Michigan defense is now in this position where they look at their schedule and they're like, we can hold some of these teams down for a good long while. Yeah, like we can't keep everybody to 10 points, 11 points. Well, and I think I think that's my biggest takeaway, to be honest with you. I mean, I'm impressed by Michigan's ability to refocus because it was a very tumultuous week. You know, and look, they played horribly in week one against a directional Michigan school, a good one at that, a veteran team at that, but not a team that they should lose to at home. And so they had a good week of practice, apparently, if you listen to what they had to say in the postgame and in the buildup to this one. I'm still very concerned that there's only a specific way that Michigan can beat good teams. It's like this, it's holding them down to 10 to 14 points, winning it in a rock fight, in a phone booth type of situation. I'm fairly convinced that this will come back to bite them at some point when they play one of the other better teams on their schedule. But look, if this is their identity, if this is what they're gonna steer into now, if they're gonna be Utah East or Iowa a little bit less East, or whatever, they've got the defense to at least keep them in games. And I don't think it's gonna be a scenario at all. At least it shouldn't be where Michigan's getting blown out of the water. Like they will have a chance as long as they've got this defense. On the Oklahoma side, though, the Oklahoma side is really upsetting. This offense in 2026 was basically copy pasted from 2025. And nobody would ever admit as much because they worked on it in the off season, right? They were excited about their offensive line. They had some new pieces along the offensive line. But I remember. But to be fair, the offensive line is beat up, was beat up heading into this game. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, absolutely. But it wasn't all that long ago. We were doing our previews and I was reading some of the reports from Brent Venables, who felt good about nine offensive linemen in the linemen room. They felt they had depth. They felt that they had not depth, not just depth along the lines, but also depth in the backfield that they had three backs that they could rely on, maybe four backs they could rely on. John Matier added all that muscle. You see all the shirtless pictures of them. I mean, it's a tank, right? Yeah, it's got to be better, right? They still can't run, Dan. They can't run too. There's at least that, right? They can't run. They couldn't run in this game. And once Michigan took away Isaiah Sittania, they could barely pass. Yeah. The Oklahoma offense, as I understand it, at least right now, is to snap the ball and let John Matier run around and draw something up in the dirt. That's it. That's the offense right now. This is me shrugging. Yeah, that's it. The silence is me shrugging for people listening on the podcast. This will not be good enough against the schedule that, at time of recording, has four top 10 teams remaining on it. Yeah. It's not good enough. That's it. That's all I got. I got nothing else. Okay. I don't know what this was from Oklahoma. This was really disappointing. If you're an Oklahoma fan, I'd be very disappointed. Yeah. I think that's fair. The way that they won last year left a lot to be desired, but they won. That you can set yourself up to win clunkers, but the risk inherent in that strategy, it's not a strategy, but the risk inherent with not figuring out your offense and having to win like that, is it's very easy to lose like that. And I don't think Michigan is that good. If you don't have an offense, if there's no threat of opening things up in the field at all, downfield at all, it's a pretty limited team. Like they scored 10 points in this game and had a two yard drive to win it. I mean, the reason this game was close is because it was two teams that were the same team. Right. It's two sides of the same coin. They're the same style of football team this year. Except Kyle Whittingham has been there for an hour and a half. Yeah, exactly. He's years in. Exactly. And just got an extension. Exactly. Exactly. And Michigan did it better. Michigan, you know, did what they needed to do. And they were at home and kudos to them because it was a tough week. But look, Whittingham... Poor Michigan. Poor week for Michigan. They got handed a win. Well, you know where I'm going. I know what you're saying. Whittingham acknowledged again after the game, that they had a lot to work on. I think that much is obvious, especially on the offensive side of the ball. But I just, I am sort of overrun by the disappointment that I know our Oklahoma fan base is out there, that right into us are feeling right now, because I don't see how you can feel anything different. This was an opportunity to prove that you sort of solved the problem and now belong that tier up. And this wasn't it. An all-time Goldilocksing going from Lincoln Riley to Brent Venable. Can we just have like a little bit of offense and a little bit of defense at the same time? Oh my gosh. All right. So look, I'm going to play the Reverbs here in a second. Yeah. I want people in our live chat to answer the question as many did online. I am a blank fan and right now, I am feeling blank. Right. Let us know your thoughts. We're going to read those off in a second. In the meantime, arguably a generational Reverb segment here that I'm about to play. I am sorry to you in advance, Dan Rubenstein. You will hear why shortly. We can't all play Rice, Ty. And even then, I would take Oregon minus three and a half over rice. Maybe. This is, I would say, Opus level work from our Reverb engineer, Shay, who did an excellent job putting these together. We got so many calls. There's so much on the category for, we might even have a bonus version that we put out on Patreon. People dial in throughout the course of the day, in case you're wondering what I'm talking about. Our phone number is 855-VERBAL-3. That's 855-837-2253. The line is closed right now for the week, but we will do it again next week in week three. We take all of your voice messages, we mix them together into about a three and a half or four minutes segment. We like to call it the Reverbs. Here's what you all had to say in week two. Have a listen. A quick poem. There once was a quarterback named John McTier. If you give him some space, he runs like a deer. But I asked him to throw, and Oklahoma fans start to jeer. Some blame that on an injury that was severe, but I think he may need to find a new career. Go blue, baby. Dan, Ty, this is Josh from Denver. It's Jimmy from Ann Arbor. Folly from Minnetonka. Hi, this is Fielding from Maryland. I'm here at the Yukon Maryland game for my bachelor party. September carapans are in full effect. Go, Go Carapans! Oh man, feisty beavers, Ty Hawk Juju and a fourth quarter comeback for the ages. Who could ask for a better Saturday? Sign up for verballers.com. Join the Discord. Tell us what the best thing to put in a crock pot is on Saturday. Whether that's John Belaya inspired rotel with chicken and sausage or the Arizona State Sun Devils. Guys, the John Matier haters, they just don't understand. He had thumb surgery 48 weeks ago. He only needs like two or three more years of rehab before he makes you guys all very, very sorry. Yeah, we're here at Lincoln Financial Field. Not great. Student section for Temple is thinning out. They still are yelling on the microphone, trying to get everybody hype. Well, it looks like Marty Wims' career as Akron's offensive coordinator has come to an unfortunate premature end. But don't worry, Marty, I'm sure you'll cross your upcoming interview with the Scarlet Knights. Good luck. Did you know that the Mississippi River starts in Minnesota and runs all the way through Minnesota? Maybe that should have been an omen of what Mississippi State was going to do or running through the Golden Gophers today. UNT just whooped UNLV 44-6 in a rebuilding year. The only thing worse than the UNLV Rebels were the ESPNU broadcast crew, who couldn't find Waldo if he were dressed as a head coach on the sidelines. I'm a University of Texas fan who is getting back into the NCAA football franchise after a long absence. I was wondering if you could tell me what button you push to get a wide open receiver who got hit right in the screws by a ball that traveled 50 yards in the air to catch it and then throw it directly to an opposing defender. Sam? I was worried for this game. It's 20 to 3 at half time. I've watched zero minutes of Ohio State, Texas. Oh my god, 20 and 3 at half time. I just got done crying my eyes out. I haven't cried like that since 2005. Hook em horns, baby. That was crazy. Hahahaha! And so, to the Oregon Ducks, I say, welcome back 2025 Penn State. Hey Dan, I guess this week the Oregon Ducks learned And. that the Mountain Dew Code Red Zero Big 12 is a gauntlet. With the 193rd pick in the 2027 NFL draft, the Arizona Cardinals select Dante Moore, quarterback from Oregon, who cost himself a top five pick by coming back to college. I believe Oklahoma State cooked themselves up some duck a la range in still water in what was an absolutely historic and funny to say, cathartic win. Go, Pokes. There's been a new research paper. It showed that ducks die in still water. This is Sam from the coast of Oregon and. Go ducks. There you go, Dan. You got to take your medicine. I apologize. Buddy, if we get a copyright strike for having that song in the episode while I'm being taunted, that would not be that fun. That would not be that fun. Very, very, very, very good set of Reverbs this week. Excellent calls. We appreciate the Verballer hood chiming in next week. We'll do it all over again. 855-837-2253. Put it in your speed dial. We got a lot of people put it in their speed dial. 855-verbal3 is the phone number. Good job, Shay. We had, as I said, dozens upon dozens of other calls that we could not put in. He did his best and I think he did a really good job. So thank you to the Verballer hood again for their outreach, for their consideration, for their concern for you, Dan. I had so many people writing in like, can you give me a proof of life? Is he all right? What's the status? You were okay. I was okay. I posted an immediate reaction after the fact, like pretty quickly. I'm pretty accountable when Oregon does well. When they don't do super well, I try to post stuff. The thing that low key hurt Ty was I got texts from a couple of Texas friends who are like, man, we're down bad too, man. Don't you know that these these weeks happened to the best of us and we're getting shelled by Ohio State. You had your bad day and then Texas turned it around. And then they couldn't even relate. So that happens too. But whatever, it's college football. We move on. And as people know by now, I've always been and will continue to be a diehard UCLA fan. Go Bruins. Go Ducks forever. Go Ducks forever. All right. We've got it up on the screen here for the people watching the video. Yes. The prompt is, I'm a blank fan and I'm feeling blank. So we had a bunch come in here. A couple of our new friends out on TikTok. Glenn says, I'm a Michigan fan and I feel like my opinion about this team was justified today. Okay. We have someone else who says that I am a fan of Michigan losing. And I feel disappointed that they are 2 and 0. So there's that. Mr. Madison says, I'm a USC fan. I'm feeling excited. Sure. Okay. Anna says, I'm a Purdue fan and I'm feeling god awful. They lost in overtime, double overtime. That was a tough beat. Yeah. To Wake Forest, that was an absolutely difficult beat. We have Voice Crack here who says, I'm an Iowa fan feeling the same old Hawkeyes every year. 16 to 13 win. We're going to talk about this momentarily. And I'll read one more here. I'm a Texas fan and I'm feeling ecstatic. What do we got, Dan? We got any other ones here? Yeah, we've got a million of them. I mean, well, first of all, we have people saying like the juxtaposition of you having like kind of a shit-eating grin while I have and I'm reading this verbatim, a diarrhea face listening to the Oregon Reverbs was a wonderful juxtaposition. I'm a UCF fan and right now I'm feeling like worst Iowa. It was a tough offense. It was a really tough offense. It was very sloppy and soggy against Pitt field-wise and weather-wise, but that was not a fun four-quarter watch, I'm sure, if you're a UCF fan. I'm an Aggie fan and I'm feeling optimistic about our defense. Yeah. I'm a Colorado fan. I think they had Weber State, I believe today. I'm feeling pretty good and that's good. Colorado having a nice, quiet year in a good way. I'm a Wake fan. I'm afraid we're going to be searching for a new coach in December. It's tough. I'm a Boston College fan and I'm feeling like I avoided relegation for a week. I'm an Alabama fan and I'm feeling pretty fond of the second half. Finally, I'm a Minnesota fan and I'm feeling dunzo. At least you got that feeling pretty quickly. You weren't dragged out for four quarters like, oh, maybe. I mean, that was a flash fry is what that was. Mississippi State just beat the brakes off them from the jump. Yeah. OK, so speaking of that point, we have a bunch of other games here that I think we just sort of want to cruise around and talk about it specifically from the standpoint of. You remember Jesse Spano back in the day on. Saved by the Bell. Saved by the Bell. Of course. Legend. Elizabeth Berkley. I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so scared! We came up with this idea at about 830 tonight, Dan. We've never done this before, but we're calling this the Spanometer. Yeah, Spanometer, yeah. The question is, for the teams that I'm about to list off here, are we excited? Are we scared? Are we scared about being excited? Or some combination of the words? Excited about being scared, which I don't know what that actually means. First of all, shout out Elizabeth Berkeley. Went to my high school, or rather, I went to her high school. Also, do you know how old that reference is? I looked up the air date of that episode. I think it was called Jesse's story. 32 years, I don't know. 36 years old, 1990. Great. Great. Originally, it was supposed to be speed, like amphetamines, but they were like, we're not airing that on Saturday morning. And they changed it to caffeine pills. I could use some caffeine pills right now. It's late. Yeah. Let's go. Let's figure out excited, scared, or excited about how scared we are, or scared about how excited we are. Give me a spanometer ruling on BYU, Dan. BYU beat Arizona 28-17. Excited, scared, scared to be excited, excited to be scared. I don't know why you would be excited to be scared, but. I'm just plain excited. I'm excited for BYU football, one, because they brought a lot back. They're performing. I wouldn't say the Arizona game was loseable, but there were some moments I'm sure Arizona would like back. It looked like they dropped a pick six at some point with a new look secondary. But I liked Bear Bachmeier, I liked LJ Martin, and I like what for a team that seems weirdly as stable as BYU mostly is, obviously some changes in the off season, that the big 12 isn't looking like, oh, it's just obviously Texas Tech. It's not that at all. Now, there are teams like Oklahoma State, there are other risers potentially. I'm excited if I'm a BYU fan for sure, especially since the game against Arizona last year was a wild card in the desert, they just took care of business and there's value in that. Yeah, I'm stock up big time on BYU. I thought they looked good. Like, Arizona is a quality opponent. And in the first half, Noah Fafita got his. He was really the more efficient running quarterback in this game. But BYU got more physical in the second half. They shut down Fafita. They found that other gear and they shut down Arizona as a whole. Like, I thought Bear Bachmeier, especially in that second half, showed real growth. And BYU had to win a little differently, you know, it wasn't like they controlled time of possession. They actually were outpossessed by seven minutes. Like, they had to show something. They still have to find or they're proving that they can find who their weapons are, even if it's not obvious to the rest of us. It seems like Kalani Satake is very good at that. So I'm with you. I'm pretty excited about BYU. And in our next segment where we talk through our top 25, I have some thoughts on maybe where we can put them. Yeah, a good boring win. And I mean that in the best possible way. Texas A&M and Arizona State, they played each other. A&M won 48 to 20, but let's do spanometer on both those teams because I think they're both in really interesting situations right now. Okay, I think I'm still kind of excited for Arizona State, though I'm scared for Cutterbully's health with the offensive line in front of him. I'm scared for some of the low moments that happened in this game. You know, two pick sixes, one of them was just like tip straight up, and it was sort of a thick six touchdown. And the other one was just a bad contested pass that just the timing was all off on. But there's still something about the ASU defense that they looked good enough early on, especially in this game, and they did generate enough bigger plays. I mean, it was basically only to read Harris. But there's enough meat on that bone that I'm still excited. It's playing Kyle Field against a good team. That's just tough. And I don't think the final score was indicative because of those touchdowns on that muffed punt early on that set up like an 8-yard drive. So the score was not indicative of A&M's offensive performance specifically. It was indicative of A&M's performance overall. And A&M, I'm still a little bit scared about the offensive line stuff if I'm A&M. But big picture. If you score like they scored and were able to throw eventually because it was a slow start like A&M was able to do, I'm excited because I'd always rather win a game against a quality team with big offensive line questions. I say that as an Oregon human rather than losing. So good for A&M. I'm excited. It's going to be a tough schedule. I still want to see more, but there's nothing I'm truly scared of with A&M other than maybe slow start and offensive line stuff. Yeah, I'm actually excited about ASU. I came away more excited about ASU even though they lost by 28. This is kind of a fake blowout because this is a really good game for three quarters. Totally. Fourth quarter kind of went sideways, but Arizona State is better than I thought. They definitely had some sloppy moments, but again, if you cut out what happened in the fourth quarter, you don't have to squint too hard to see how ASU could be a real factor in the Big 12. Like, cutter-bully shows promise. Cutter-bully is raw. He doesn't make the best decisions. This has been something that people have been talking about for the last six months about cutter-bully even before the season started. This was the knock on him. But I think you can see the talent there. They put him on the move. He ran the ball pretty well. They ran the ball pretty well. Reid Harris is a monster out wide, had nine catches for a buck 89 and two touchdowns. I thought the defensive line looked a little bit better than I expected. So I came away. My my overwhelming feeling in this game was. I probably underestimated ASU, and I'm kind of excited about where that could go next. The problem is, you had to use the word if in a very emphatic way, right? They're like, if I had wings, I'd be a condor. If they didn't give 21 points to Texas A&M, we'd be talking in more glowing terms. That's that's when we talk about being boring. ASU is not boring and not a good way. Between Missouri, Alabama, and Tennessee, who are you the most excited about? Who are you the most scared about? I think Alabama in this moment. Excited. Excited. Okay. Because that was a frenzied atmosphere. As much as I'm not quite a believer in the short term, in what Kentucky's got going on, I really appreciated that that could have been like a weird, ugly, I don't know if it was lost, but like escape from Alabama in that kind of spot, especially as it was close in the first half. Like, you know how high I've been on Alabama, right? Sure. I'm scared to be excited about Alabama after this game, actually. Because the defense is undeniably excellent. It is excellent. Kentucky went one for 14 on third downs. They had 62 yards after haps. So the defense was really, really good for Alabama. The offense, the offensive line, both still need some work. Keel and Russell definitely showed his youth in this game on the run. They won in resounding fashion, 45 to 17. And I'm still pretty high in Alabama. It's not like we're going to drop them in our poll. But had some doubt creeping in for me personally. Yeah, I mean, that's all fair. But what they were able to do on the ground, what they were able to do in sort of staying the course and absorbing the weird, like dueling pick sixes to open up this game and then to pace a win with defense, with some big plays, with Keel and Russell settling in. I just I think their ceiling as a complete team is right now a little bit more interesting than Tennessee's just because of the the lack of experience in youth at the quarterback, although friggin Deshaun Bishop and we'll get there is an absolute dude for Tennessee. And then Mizzou, I really like where Mizzou's at offensively. I've just been hurt before with the Eli Drinkwitz program. And I just I want to see them over a non-Kansas hump before. It's like I'm just I'm a little bit scared to get too excited is what I'm telling you on the spandometer. I am thrilled on the Tennessee front. I am thrilled. And I don't know, like if you're a Tennessee fan, I don't know how you're not sitting down sort of looking at your hands and wondering how high is the ceiling if Faison Brandon keeps progressing because he already looks ahead of schedule. I agree. And this was a road game, his first road game as a starting quarterback. Georgia Tech did make it competitive. Tennessee eventually imposed their talent, their physicality. They turned it into, or they turned what could have potentially been a tricky road trip into a comfortable win. Yep. So if they get more of this from him and from the other contributors on that team, both offense and defense, I don't see how you're not excited about the state of this program. Let me give you a couple other ones here real quick. Let's do this. And by the way, return of Arian Carter too with Tennessee, which was good to see. Yeah, for sure. Let's do a couple rapid fire, OK? Because we're going to talk through our top 25 ballot. Duke beat Illinois 31-27, Spano meter, go. Excited. I mean, Walker Eaglet was able to throw better and more successfully and with nice touch. Obviously, we got another great game from Nate Shepard. But to go on the road and look, whatever Illinois is or isn't, they do have a large screen in their stadium. They do have a comically large screen. I came away impressed. I am excited for Duke Football. Duke just, for whatever reason to me, when I watch them, they don't do anything spectacularly well, but they're just competent at seemingly everything. They're just like you look up and this pitcher has like a 289 ERA at the end of the season. You're like, that guy? You're like, good for him, I guess. They win the ACC or they're competing for the ACC. They're really well coached. They have to absorb a ton. I like Illinois. I like what Illinois was able to do. I just don't think the Illinois defense is is anywhere near where it needs to be. I mean, Illinois didn't tackle in this game, right? They did not tackle in this game. They could not tackle consistently Nate Shepherd, who ran arguably, arguably one of the most important parts of tackle football. They just didn't tackle. And so I'll play the other side of it. I'm scared for Illinois because they're going to play tougher teams than Duke. And if they can't tackle, that's going to be a problem. They're redoing their defense. All that. Right. Yeah. Rutgers. I bring up Rutgers because they lost the BC 28-21. They lost a week ago. UMass. Yeah. It has not been a good start to the season for Greg Shiano. I'm scared for what future Rutgers budgets are going to look like with regard to buyouts and Rutgers already in a precarious financial situation. It's bad. Penn State, Penn State beat Temple 27 to 9 in Philly. Didn't watch a second of this, so this is on you. We saw a good version of Rocco Becht, but we saw an uneven offense from Penn State. Definitely some defensive things to monitor on the Penn State side. Okay. This was like fine, but not overly reassuring. So it's mixed for me. I'm not excited. I'm not scared. Actually, if I'm being honest with people as a Penn State grad, the text message that I sent to my friends was that when they've got Wisconsin, I believe in two weeks, I'm a little bit scared of that matchup. I'm a little bit scared of that matchup because Penn State had some trouble containing Jackson Smollick or just in general, let's say mobile quarterbacks in this game. We know Wisconsin's got a pretty good one. So can they put someone like Colton Joseph on the run, put Penn State's defense in a bit of a bind? This is a different Penn State team this year. They're not going to have a shutdown defense. I just don't think they are. I think the offense will outpace the defense. So I'm a little bit scared in that regard. This was not the type of showing that left me feeling overly reassured. What about Washington, Dan? 16-14 over Utah State. Didn't watch a lot of this one, but looking at the line and seeing some of the plays, a little bit scared for Washington. Washington is contending with some injuries. I think they're down a running back or two. It didn't seem from what I could, I just saw very little of this game, but Utah State was driving for the win in this one late, and Utah State lost the turnover battle three to nothing and was still driving for the game in this one late. Look, Washington won its clunkers. We respect winning clunkers. Washington's offense has not found what they're looking for, and this was a Washington offense last season that came out scoring like 70 a game. So I'm a little bit scared in this moment if I'm a Washington fan, but there's, I guess, time. I don't know. This is just really bad. Yeah, this was really bad. And the offense, I think, is the most alarming part. They scored one touchdown. They could not run the ball. They failed to finish drives. DeMond Williams had good numbers. But I don't know. You got to put points to the board. So I'm scared. I'm scared of what this could mean, because I didn't see. I didn't see how many Braylins, Brysons, Brady's, Bradens put up big numbers for Utah State. But I suppose you didn't need to, because you didn't have to score that many points to win this one. But I guess good for Washington. I don't know. All right. I've got two more games, four more teams. Pick whichever side you want. Minnesota and Mississippi State. Mississippi State went to Minnesota, beat the breaks off of Minnesota. Where's my sound? Where's my sound? Guess who just got murdered. Good hell this game. 38 to 13, it was never close. Yeah. Then on the other side of things, in a much different style of game, we had Iowa winning the Psyhawk game 16-13. It's always close. I should have listened to you. Iowa versus Iowa State. Of those four teams, which do you have the most, I guess, thought out opinion on after what we saw? It's not even a question to me. It's Mississippi State. Yeah. The idea of being a fan of a team who is now basically 100% sure you have a young game-changing quarterback is a drug tie. You know this. It has happened occasionally to you. It has definitely happened to me. It has happened to many of us who are fans of this sport. When you find yourself rooting for your team and become nearly positive, you have a game-changing young quarterback like Mississippi State. Kind of seems like they do. I know for Mississippi State people, I know how scared about how excited they are. If that is anywhere near English for Camario, aka Camario Terror, based on which part of the Keystone State or New Jersey you live. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's easy. I don't know how you can't be overly excited about your quarterback situation. I won't say his name. If you're a Mississippi State fan. I won't say his name. Dude's just an absolute stud. And I don't know if you can really have any deep emotional connection to either excited or scared if you're an Iowa or an Iowa State fan. Actually, if you're an Iowa State fan, the fact that this game was closed given all the turnover and basically rebooting now under Jimmy Rogers after Matt Campbell left, I would I would find reason in this loss to feel excited. 16-13, knowing that I was probably going to be a pretty good team this year. He's clearly a good coach, very good coach, very good coach. The Minnesota side of this, I can't even like I'm going to need I'm going to need a darkness retreat or something to collect my thoughts on Minnesota because they just got physically. I mean, Taylor aside, he was protected. Camario Taylor aside. Minnesota got physically overwhelmed in this game. They were physically overwhelmed. Nothing worked offensively. They had 1.6 yards per carry in the first half. They finished with no offensive touchdowns. They also had 12 penalties for 115 yards. This was even a more comprehensive loss, I think, than the final score would indicate. That's a problem. And this is why we scheduled the Minnesota support Zoom. You could say that Minnesota's defense last year, and obviously year to year things change pretty considerably, but you could say that this was not a good Minnesota defense last year. So slicing and dicing Minnesota's defense, maybe we should put that in perspective. Nope, Mississippi State needs everything in terms of happiness and puppies and fireworks that they can get. And so do not be afraid to love, do not be afraid to put your heart out there. It seems like Mario Taylor is the guy in a way that Mississippi State doesn't always have at quarterback. So I don't know, love with your whole heart and it's okay to open yourself up to pain at some point. All right, Dan Rubenstein, let's bring this bad boy home. We've got one thing left to do. We have to cast our ballot by 10 a.m. on Sunday morning Eastern time for the AP Top 25. We've got one ballot for the show. I will cast it after the show. We couldn't really do this exercise a week ago, mainly because there were still four games to be played. And at the time we were recording, the LSU game was going on. There were some other games going on. So there was just no way we could talk it through. There are some games. What do we have ongoing right now? I was going to say there are some games going on right now. So it's not a fully complete slate. If you care about the Clemson game, Clemson is up and going to win by 15 points over Georgia Southern. USC is still going, right? USC is still going. We got a couple of games that are still going here. Utah is still playing. They're up big on Arkansas. Yep. So it's not going to be a complete list, but I think we can react to enough here to at least put a ballot out into the public and get people's reaction to it. I'm with you. Yep. Same page. Where are we starting? I think it's got to be Texas 1, Ohio State 2. You think Ohio State does not fall beyond 2? It was a one point game. They were up the whole game. It was a close loss. They clearly were good enough to win that game. I think it's Texas 1, Ohio State 2. Well, OK, is there any team top 20 that beat somebody where you're like the way that they beat somebody? I don't think that there is an answer. Like Texas A&M had an impressive win in their number 13. LSU was, oh, LSU was Louisiana Tech. Miami did not play a team of substance. Yeah, I guess there's no team right now that has that win that would really vault them if we're trying to be limber pollsters. Right. I mean, you could probably make a case on the Tennessee front. I thought Tennessee looked pretty good. I think they should move up. Yeah. So I would go Texas 1, Ohio State 2, then Notre Dame, Georgia, Indiana. We would slide Miami up. We'd probably slide LSU up. But this does beg the question, how far do we drop Oregon? How far do we drop Oklahoma after their losses? Oregon, I think, was obviously the more shocking of the losses. The Oklahoma, unfortunately, was more the same from what we saw a year ago. But even that was a close game, and it's one that they could have won. It was just a rock fight, right? The style of play kind of dictated the terms there. But they both lost two teams who either lost or kind of technically won, but had a really poor performance last week. Correct, correct, correct. I would move Oregon lower, because at least you can point to Oklahoma's defense as being like of high quality. I don't think you can do that for either side of the ball for Oregon. All right, so you're looking at the poll here, right? I would move Oregon somewhere closer to 20. Yeah, if not out, would you move them out? I wouldn't move them fully out, no. I think going fully out would be a little much. But the manner in which they've lost... We moved Michigan out, and then they immediately beat number nine. The manner in which they lost, I think, is telling here. Oklahoma, they were at nine in our poll before. I think they were at 11 in the AP poll when the final ballot came out. I'm inclined to slide them down 16, 17. Okay. Does that make sense to you? I'm okay with that. I'm also inclined to put BYU ahead of Texas Tech. Good by me. BYU, for my money, looked really impressive today. I'm inclined to move them up a notch. Now, Texas Tech did win a clunker. We don't fully know what Oregon State is. They went to Corvallis. Texas was on the road, whereas BYU did it at home. But I believe Arizona to be a better opponent than Oregon State in this moment. I'm okay with moving BYU ahead of Texas Tech. Texas Tech needed four full quarters. That's right. And BYU, I was really impressed with the manner in which they won that game. Great. I feel like they really showed us something. So I'm renumbering this here so that we can read this off to the Verballer hood. The other question that I have is Michigan. Michigan beat number 11, the Oklahoma Sooners. We dropped them out of our poll a week ago, but I feel like we should probably move them back in. The question is how high. But like, who are you scooting out from the current poll? We had Pitt in our poll. I think we can move Pitt out. Okay. We also had like Iowa in our poll. I think maybe we could have a conversation about Iowa. I think we can move them out. Sure. By the way, the sidebar here is Michigan plays Iowa in two weeks. Will that total add up to 30? Maybe not. I don't know. The other question then that I have and I think this is starting to take shape, is Washington because Washington struggled mightily. We had them at 18. I feel like maybe we can bump them down. I would probably trust Utah. Oh, I would move Washington below Utah. Utah is about to beat Arkansas by 30. Yeah. I would move Washington somewhere around 21, 22. Okay. Just because, look, the Mizzou win against Kansas was very good. Obviously, that's a match up fraught with emotion and they came through and looked very good. It was a slower start, but I like rewarding rivalry wins, especially when you score, what, 38? Yeah. So I'm good with Mizzou ahead of Washington. All right. I think we've got our top 25 ballot here. Let me know if there's anyone we should put in, and there are a handful of teams that I think could probably have a stake. So where are you? Where are we scooting Oregon? We've got Oregon right now at 19. Okay. So here's the way this shakes up, or I'm sorry, at 20. The way this looks right now is our top 10 is Texas 1, Ohio State 2, Notre Dame 3, Georgia 4, Indiana 5. Yeah. Six through 10 is Miami, LSU, USC, Alabama, Ole Miss. Yep. 11 through 15 is Texas A&M, BYU, Texas Tech, SMU and Tennessee. And then to round out the final 10, we've got Oklahoma, Penn State, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Mizzou, Louisville. Yeah. I mean, on our radar, I know you have this written down. Virginia's on our radar. Boise had a very nice win against Memphis, which is push comes to shove. Two of the teams that could be in a very late November conversation. South Carolina, we'll see the schedule isn't there yet. UCLA, very comfortably beat, like a pretty decent, now Pac-12 school in San Diego State, and had the nice win against Cal, who was pretty ugly against Syracuse today, but winning is better than losing. And then the Mississippi State question, Virginia Tech hasn't played anybody, but another comfortable win for the Hokies. So on our radar for sure. If you've got anything to say, solidverbal.gmail.com, of course, you can always write in and find us on social media as well. I think this is about, we'll submit, we'll see where it goes from here. Obviously, we are subscribing to the idea of limber polling Dan Rubenstein. Chad with at least two Ds, possibly three Ds in the chat says, fix your poll, Oklahoma can't be ahead of Michigan. That's absurd. I think he or she, I don't know if whatever, Chad might be on to something. Do we have Michigan ahead of, we shouldn't do that. Yeah. Okay. I think we have to, we have to use a little bit of logic. Okay. Well, it's late, so I didn't even think of that. So we've got, I mean, we have Oregon ahead of Oklahoma State, right? But Oklahoma State has a loss. Oklahoma State lost to Tulsa. All right. So let's back up real quick. Okay. We have Oklahoma right now at 16. We have Michigan at 23. Does this mean we should bump Michigan up to 15? Or does this mean that we should bump Oklahoma down or try to split the difference? I'll split the difference like an 18-19 sitch. All right. So here's what we'll do. We'll put Michigan at 19. We'll put Oklahoma at 20. I think I've got it here. Thank you, Chad, with at least two Ds. Yes. We will make sure that that is so. That's a good call out. It's late. Thank you. This is why we do this live. That's why we do it. Should we do some doodle alerts here before we let the fine people go? Let's do it. Let's call out some banner individual performances, Dan Rubenstein. I mentioned Deshaun Bishop for Tennessee, who is terrific. Drew Mesta maker for Oklahoma State. Reed Harris at ASU. Jesse LeGree, Oregon State. I mentioned Dylan Riley at Boise State, head of hell of a day. Austin Simmons and his. I mean, Kaden Lee was also good, but it was Donovan. Oh, man, I just I said this to you earlier. A love a day, a love, a love, a love a day. I'm screwing this up. Sorry. I apologize. I will get it. Ty here. I'm going to search in our in our slack chat. A lube a day. How about that? A lube a day. Yeah, I had a ring down to him. I overwritten it. Hunter Tipton. You wrote down Memphis. Yeah, man. Hunter Tipton. Tight end, nine catches, 229 yards and a touchdown in a losing effort. By the way, I don't know what his final line will be, and I know USC is only playing Louisiana right now, but Mark Bowman did something I have never seen. He's a true freshman for USC. At the time of recording, he has six catches for 83 yards and two touchdowns, midway through the third quarter. He hurdled two dudes in the same jump. They were closing in on him at the same time, and he jumped over both. He was reported to get like a ton of money, like an unheard of amount of money for a freshman tight end coming into USC as a five-star. I watched the hurdle and the touchdowns, and I said to myself, yeah, okay, that makes sense. That tracks. Cool. Good for him. Hope he invests wisely. So yeah, Mark Bowman, absolute dude moves for USC. We do dude alerts every Saturday night. We do reverbs every Saturday night. We do the stream every Saturday night. So we appreciate everybody stopping on by verballers.com, verballers.com. That's where you can go if you want to support the team. We do a pick them game every week. Out on our Verballer portal. If you're interested in supporting what we do as an independent operation, we would encourage you to go and check that out. If nothing more, please rate, review and subscribe. And if you've got something to say, you can always reach out on social media, or you can hit us up on email or read all the emails. SolidVerbal at gmail.com. Dan Rubenstein. Yes. I mean, literally everything. No, it's not literally everything. There's a lot more to Saturday. We're going to talk a little bit more about it on the Monday show we're recording. But I will say, 7-3 Blue Jays final to round this show into complete form. And we'll be discussing what I assume was a disappointing year for the Blue Jays. I haven't tracked it. Week two is just about officially in the books. By the time many of you hear this, that will absolutely be the case. We will be back, as Dan said, on Monday evening. New episodes drop Monday and Wednesday during the week at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. We'll get you ready for another exciting week in college football. This was a banger in week two. Hopefully, week three's got more of the same for that guy over there. Good friend Dan Rubenstein, for myself, Ty Hildenbrandt over here in Eastern PA. For the millions upon millions of Verballers listening and watching and responding at home, thank you for your ongoing support. We greatly appreciate it. We'll catch you on Monday night.