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00:00Welcome back to Newswire here on SportsGrid, a busier week than we thought it would be going into the week in college football.
00:06Naturally, the last 48 hours or so has turned college football upside down with the firing of Sharon Moore,
00:13the head coach at the University of Michigan, who's even going through a legal battle of some sort today,
00:18which we'll learn about more this afternoon.
00:21Let's bring in Bill Bender from Sporting News, Bill.
00:23This one caught everyone by surprise, apparently, except for the University of Michigan,
00:28who had been looking into this alleged inappropriate relationship with Moore and a staffer at the University of Michigan.
00:37Maybe, Bill, that's a story for another show on another network.
00:41But on our show, we're wondering what is going to happen now that Moore is clearly done as head coach at the University of Michigan
00:48and that Harbaugh tree looks to be done, too, with Moore being out.
00:52Which direction do the Wolverines go and how fast can they take this direction?
00:58Because the college football season is coming to an end.
01:00Recruiting season coming to an end.
01:02They got to act fast.
01:04Yeah, and with the portal and those kind of things opening, you have to act fast.
01:10I think it's two separate stories.
01:11One, Sharon Moore, and this is tragic on some level, that you can have, obviously, like you said,
01:17an inappropriate relationship spiral into an arraignment on Friday that a lot of people are going to pay attention to.
01:23And the details throughout this are going to be salacious in nature.
01:27But the football side, which is entirely separate, I'm wondering if they take a run at Kaelin DeBoer.
01:33And that's the lead question.
01:35Would DeBoer have interest right back?
01:38That was a hire they probably should have made the first time after Jim Harbaugh left in 2023.
01:43They do need to move away from that tree.
01:45That's why I think Jesse Mentor isn't the answer here.
01:49And if it's not DeBoer, you're looking at Jed Fish from Washington, coach there under Harbaugh way back in 2016.
01:56And then Kenny Dillingham, the young Arizona State coach.
01:59That would be a big step up for him, though.
02:03Yeah, Jed Fish, my fraternity brother at the University of Florida, once upon a time, came in a little bit after me.
02:08We got a good tree at UF, by the way, with Howard Roseman and Jed and a lot of others, too.
02:12By the way, Jed is the favorite right now on Calci.
02:1425% is the number on calci.com, if you check that out, to be the next permanent Michigan football head coach,
02:21followed by DeBoer and then Kenny Dillingham, 18%, everyone else less than that,
02:25in terms of the prediction markets over on Calci.
02:28Let's get a prediction from you, Bill, on the big game this week that favors the under.
02:33When you think about Army-Navy, the two teams that know each other oh so well, 38.5 is the total this week.
02:39Navy, 6.5-point favorites against Army.
02:41We know that this generally is an unpredictable game in terms of outcome, Bill,
02:45but we also know that there tends to not be a lot of scoring over the last 20 or 25 years.
02:50Do you have any lean on this one?
02:52Yeah, I would lean toward Navy here.
02:54I mean, Blake Horvath in last year's game, 204 rushing yards, 107 passing yards, four total touchdowns.
03:01They won big. A couple trends here to keep in mind.
03:04This is the fifth time since 2015 that at least one team has been ranked.
03:10You know, this is a little bit of a, I don't want to say a golden age of the rivalry.
03:13That was obviously in the 40s and 50s, but you're looking at this Navy team.
03:17I think they're three, and that ranked team is three and one straight up in those games.
03:22So that's one reason I like the midshipmen.
03:24One thing to keep in mind, though, and why Army might be able to keep this game close,
03:29is they do have a better turnover margin, a plus five turnover margin.
03:33You mentioned it. They're going to run at each other.
03:35These are two of the top five rushing offenses in the country,
03:38but I'm going to take Navy to cover, win by a touchdown.
03:43Gary Danielson, by the way, I talked to him this week.
03:45It's his 17th time covering this game, the most of any person,
03:49and it'll be the final time he covers the Army-Navy game.
03:52So Gary deserves some recognition for that.
03:55There's no question.
03:55One of the great voices of college football all time.
03:59Okay, we actually have a bowl game, Bill, after the Army-Navy game.
04:05I don't ever remember this happening, but somebody will probably tell me it happened last season,
04:08but I don't recall it.
04:09In fact, the L.A. Bowl is the name of it, and they announced, by the way,
04:12before the bowl that there is no more L.A. Bowl after this season.
04:15So bowl season, unfortunately, seemingly going by the wayside.
04:19Washington minus 9.5 against Boise State.
04:22Generally, Boise's a good team in the bowl season.
04:24They prepare very well for these sort of games, but they did not have the season, Bill,
04:28that they've had in the past.
04:30The total is 52.5.
04:32I don't think there's any question that Washington is a far superior team here,
04:36but I'm also hesitant to take a look at Boise State and say they get blown out
04:40because that generally has not happened, with the exception of, I believe,
04:42that playoff game in college football.
04:44Yeah, and, you know, a fun game always to play is with bowl names.
04:48You play real, fake, or defunct.
04:50Is that a real bowl game name or what?
04:52And now Gronk has his name on this one.
04:54So it should be a fun game.
04:56I think Boise State is good enough to hang around and keep it close into the second half.
05:02Of course, Jed Fish is going to be asked the Michigan question at some point during his press conference.
05:07But give me Washington to win, Boise State to cover.
05:10All right, Bill.
05:11Have a great weekend.
05:12And we'll catch up and preview the college football playoff games next week here on Newswire.
05:16Thanks again.
05:17I appreciate you.
05:18Thanks, Greg.
05:19Welcome back to Newswire here on Sports Grid.
05:20Always great to catch up with John Lafayette.
05:22He's an editor at The Measure, and he breaks down media and all things happening in sports as well
05:26in a way that we can all understand.
05:29John, great to have you back here on Newswire.
05:31One of the big stories, of course, in college football at the end of last week into this week
05:35has been Notre Dame.
05:36As you know and everyone else knows, they did not get into the college football playoff
05:40and also decided to not play in a bowl game this season, which is a strange decision,
05:45considering the fact that a lot of kids could have still played, John.
05:48In addition to that, they would have got good ratings.
05:50They would have got paid a little bit of money.
05:51But it all seemingly was not worth it for them.
05:55So where does the Irish stand now moving in the future?
05:58Well, this is a story of bruised feelings and big money.
06:02All of sports is about big money, of course.
06:05Notre Dame feels it got snubbed, and it feels, more importantly, it got snubbed by people
06:10it was business partners with.
06:13You have them putting together almost an enemies list that starts with the folks at ESPN.
06:18ESPN, of course, broadcasts the playoff tournament.
06:21But they also broadcast the SEC and the ACC, big, powerful conferences that want their teams
06:28to be in the playoffs.
06:30So when the time came for people to push and shove and make sure that their teams got into
06:37the playoffs, Notre Dame felt like there was nobody there on their side.
06:42So they're taking their ball and they're going home, which seems sort of childish.
06:47But it also, again, it affects a lot of money.
06:49Notre Dame, if Notre Dame had gotten into the playoffs, they would have gotten $4 million,
06:56nothing to sneeze at.
06:57If they advanced in the playoffs like they did last year to get all the way to the finals,
07:02they could get as much as $20 million.
07:04And because Notre Dame is an independent and not part of one of these big, powerful conferences,
07:08they get to keep all that money themselves.
07:10That's a big paycheck.
07:12So they lost out on a pretty substantial paycheck.
07:14Now, by not being in the playoffs, they become part of this bowl system, which has sort of
07:22become a strange landscape.
07:25Players opt out of these games all the time because they don't want to get hurt.
07:28They don't want to get ready for the pros.
07:31They want to get ready for their pro days and being checked out by the pro scouts.
07:37And this is the first time that a major team has said, hey, we're not going to play in these
07:42bowls either.
07:43Now, this bowl game they would have played in probably would have been the Pop-Tarts game.
07:47They would have played against BYU, who was the next team that was also left out of the
07:51playoffs.
07:52And they would have gotten about $3 million to play in that.
07:55But you know what?
07:56Notre Dame figures, hey, we're bringing ratings to this game.
08:00Those ratings would have gone to ABC.
08:02They would have gone to ESPN.
08:03Why help them?
08:06So they're not.
08:07It remains to be seen whether or not these bowl games will survive this.
08:12I mean, as the playoffs get bigger and bigger, the bowl games get less and less important
08:18and get worse and worse teams contributing.
08:21I mean, you're going to start to have teams with losing records in some of these bowl games.
08:25So Notre Dame is taking the power of its ratings and taking in the money and the prestige that
08:30they bring and saying, we're not going to give it to anybody who's not really supporting
08:35us.
08:35And we'll see what happens down the line with them eventually, whether or not they'll
08:39eventually be forced to align with a conference or not be aligned with a conference and what
08:45conference they would pick, given that now that they're angry at ESPN, the SEC, and probably
08:50the ACC.
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