ESPN’s Josh Pate on CFB WK7’s Big Stakes & Why Bob Chesney Should Stay at UCLA

Josh Pate opened his visit to The Rich Eisen Show with a confession about peanuts. Asked whether he puts candy in his movie popcorn, Pate said no, but explained that he grew up in the South, which is peanuts-in-your-Coke country. He learned it in Little League from a three-fingered umpire named Little Floyd, who looked at him "like, why don't you know that everyone does this in the South?" Pate tried it. It was okay.

Then he got to work: who is better between Georgia and Alabama, why college football officiating has become a disaster, whether a three-loss team should make the playoff, how Indiana beats Ohio State, and why Bob Chesney should never leave UCLA.

**Georgia is better than Alabama**

Rich thought the end of Alabama-Georgia was pass interference and "a total hose job." Pate agreed the officiating was slanted against Alabama, but he still thinks the better team won.

"Sometimes I think the better team loses because of external factors," Pate said. "I thought the better team won this game."

What got lost in the officiating noise, he said, was that Alabama brought the country's No. 10 run defense into that game, and Georgia's third-string tailback, "supremely talented, mind you," hung more than 200 yards rushing on it. Gunner Stockton was "an assassin," going nine of 10 on third down. Georgia also fumbled four times and recovered all four.

"October 14th suggests to me Georgia, right there with a couple of other teams, best team in the country," Pate said.

His test for Alabama is this week at Neyland Stadium. If the Tide are truly in Georgia's class, "it won't be a close game in the fourth quarter," even with key players banged up. "Everyone's banged up, no one cares about your excuses."

**High-payroll rosters and LSU's wall**

Rich brought up the chaotic finish to LSU-Kentucky, where Lane Kiffin argued with officials over when Will Stein had called a timeout before a two-point try. Pate said LSU is now in must-win mode, then zoomed out.

A handful of teams "paid a whole lot of money for rosters" and are already out of the playoff picture or close to it: LSU, Oregon in do-or-die mode, a Texas team that "feels a little wonky," and Texas A&M. Meanwhile, Georgia and Alabama spend, but they spend on recruiting evaluation and on keeping their own players, not overspending on portal players.

"It only takes one or two times paying 45 or 50 million dollars for a roster that goes 7-5, 8-4 for your donors to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're not doing this anymore," Pate said. He gave LSU a pass on going that route in year one under a new staff, but said anyone shocked by LSU's struggles didn't look closely at how high variance the team was. He also called Kentucky one of the stories of the year.

**Officiating has been a disaster**

Pate, who calls himself normally "pretty muzzled" on officiating complaints, didn't hold back.

"It's been a disaster," he said. "It's not even missed holding calls or stuff like that. It's like not knowing procedurally what we're doing." He cited an onside kick in the Michigan State game that was wiped out by an offsides that wasn't there.

His ask is public accountability. Players are paid now and have to answer for mistakes. So do coaches. But the officiating in "this multi-billion dollar industry is so nickel-and-dime" in how it is handled, with no central authority and separate officiating heads in the SEC, Big Ten and ACC.

Pate saw the gap firsthand Saturday. Nebraska-Indiana was "like a Greg Maddux 1998 special," done in about two and a half hours with virtually no flags. Then in Tuscaloosa, "flags all over the place." And when a conference does admit an error, he said, the best you get is a tweet two days later. "We screwed up. The end. Move on."

**Should a three-loss team get in?**

Rich wondered whether we'll see a three-loss team picked over a one-loss team, with UCLA rolling, Utah undefeated, and BYU facing Notre Dame, while Ohio State, Texas or LSU could pile up losses.

Pate doesn't think the current approach is how it should work. He pointed to a spring comment from Greg Sankey about the SEC's displeasure with the explanation it got from the playoff after moving to nine conference games. People in that meeting told Pate the SEC wanted assurance its tougher schedules would be accounted for, and the committee's answer came down to wins and losses. "It's like we were speaking Portuguese," was how they described it.

"You don't need to expand the playoff to fix this," Pate said. "What you need to do is properly calibrate your playoff selection criteria where in any given moment, if a three-loss team is more deserving than a one-loss team, the three-loss team gets the spot."

The other side of the coin, he said, is that the two power conferences brought this on themselves by gobbling up the valuable properties and pillaging the Big 12. "You had to go strap the dynamite under the bridge and then complain that the bridge is impassable," he said. But logic still wins out for him: if Steve Sarkisian loses three games and Kalani Sitake loses one, and Texas played five opponents tougher than anyone BYU faced besides Notre Dame, "we got to be fair about this."

**Ohio State at Indiana: it isn't about Jeremiah Smith**

Rich asked whether the game comes down to Curt Cignetti's plan for Jeremiah Smith. Pate's answer was a surprise.

"I don't think it's about Jeremiah Smith, as disrespectful as that sounds," he said. Smith had eight catches for 144 yards against Indiana last year, and Ohio State scored 10 points. You can't let him go for 275 and four scores, but beyond Smith, Ohio State's second, third and fourth receivers are largely unproven.

Instead, Pate wants to see two things. First, Indiana has to run the ball better than it did against a Nebraska defense that clamped down. Second, mobile quarterbacks have given Indiana issues, "and Julian Sayin's really not that." Miami, Indiana and at times Texas have shown Ohio State can be beaten physically.

Then there is the building. The Indiana crowd is getting "the biggest game in the history of that building served in their lap," and Pate thinks home field is undervalued. Josh Hoover has to do more than "poverty, poverty, poverty, ooh, explosive play out of nowhere," he said. He doesn't need to be Fernando Mendoza, though.

His instinct leaving Lincoln was to pick Ohio State. "But the closer I got, the more I talked myself into Curt Cignetti and those guys," Pate said. "Somehow, some way I think they'll find a way to get the job done."

Rich called an Indiana win potentially "seismic."

**Week 7's other big stakes**

Pate's game of the week is Missouri-Ole Miss, a top-13 matchup that got "networked," an SEC verb meaning stuck on SEC Network in the middle of the day. Austin Simmons, benched at Ole Miss for Trinidad Chambliss, returns with Missouri. Jamal Roberts has filled in admirably for Ahmad Hardy, who Pate called probably the best tailback in the country, and has gone over 200 yards in back-to-back weeks.

He also flagged Oklahoma State-Houston as a sneaky game of the day, and said the entire Big 12 should be rooting for BYU against Notre Dame. With Oklahoma State already beating Oregon, another notch could decide whether the league is a one-bid or two-bid conference.

As for Oregon, after Rich asked about "Baby Mahomes" getting a start against Nebraska, Pate said he doesn't think he has ever seen a game "quarterbacked this poorly as Raiola quarterbacked Oregon last week." Seven turnovers. UCLA turned it over three times in Eugene and still won. In the preseason, Pate saw Nebraska at Oregon as a guaranteed loss for Nebraska. Now he says Nebraska has the quarterback edge "by far."

**Why Bob Chesney should stay at UCLA**

Rich said UCLA won the offseason coaching sweepstakes. "No doubt," Pate said, and he added Will Stein at Kentucky to the conversation.

In the old days, he said, a coach blowing up at Kentucky or UCLA was assumed to be on the way out. Not anymore.

"In the modern age of college football, if Bloomington, Indiana is a green pasture, then that means UCLA is," Pate said. "Lexington, Kentucky, if it invests properly, can be a green pasture. I wouldn't move a muscle if I were them, no matter how many big offers come their way."

Rich, whose alma mater comes off a week off to take on Penn State, had already heard the same message from UCLA fans. "My phone blew up from UCLA fans saying stay away from my coach."