ESPN’s Josh Pate on the CFP Implications for the #2 Georgia vs #6 ‘Bama Winner

Josh Pate walked onto The Rich Eisen Show with a Braves playoff game on his mind, a live show to do during the seventh inning of it, and a warning about the sport he covers for a living. College football, in his view, has lost the ability to be patient in October.

"There's some smiles, and then there's some really big frowns in the sport right now," Pate told Rich.

The ESPN college football voice then walked through all of it: an Alabama team he thinks might be the best in the country, a Michigan program he had to cool off for 72 hours before discussing, a Georgia-Alabama showdown with playoff stakes, and a Group of Six game in Albuquerque he wants everyone circling now.

Before getting to any one team, Pate zoomed out. He described something that used to exist in the sport, what he called the "recalibration of expectation." A fan base that started slow would adjust its hopes in early October and aim for a second wind and a solid bowl game.

"Obviously those days are gone," Pate said. "It's sort of part of the playoff-ification of the sport. It's one of the aspects I hate, candidly."

Now, he argued, the default reaction to falling out of the playoff conversation is anger, torches, pitchforks and hot-seat talk. He pointed to Texas A&M, which exited its game with LSU carrying two losses, followed by influencers trying to get into the locker room and Mike Elko throwing them out. And he had no patience for the proposed fix. The answer from the people who built this environment, Pate said, is to expand the playoff further "so more people can have hope," which he called a solution that has "worked so well the first time."

On Alabama, Pate did not hedge much. "That team at its high end has best team in the country potential," he said. "It may be the best team I've seen so far."

The engine is quarterback Keelon Russell. Pate said that if you showed someone the tape and called Russell a third-year starter, they would believe it, because the accuracy, awareness, maturity and poise are "off the charts." Then you tell them he has started five games in his career. "You would say, 'You're lying to me,'" Pate said.

He went further than the quarterback. Rewatching last season's Georgia and Alabama games in preparation for this weekend, Pate said he could not find a single spot on the field where Alabama is not better now. Last year's team made the SEC Championship Game and won a road playoff game with a first-round quarterback. This year's group is "definitively better at quarterback," definitively better along an offensive line that lost a first-round left tackle and four of five starters, "night and day different" at tight end and on the defensive front, and loaded in the secondary.

The catch is the schedule. Rich ran through it: Georgia on ABC Saturday night, then at Tennessee, home for Texas A&M, at LSU, at Vanderbilt and the finale against Auburn. "There's no guarantee they even make the playoffs," Pate said.

Rich then turned to his alma mater, and Pate admitted the two had texted over the weekend. "If we had gone live then, you know that I was ready to say some pretty reckless things," he said. "So I have had 72 hours to gather myself."

His measured version still landed hard. Pate believes Kyle Whittingham was effectively forced out at Utah before he was ready to stop coaching, and that everyone looked at Whittingham's identity and saw a perfect fit for what Michigan's identity should be. "It doesn't always work out that way," he said. He noted the administrative upheaval and off-field turmoil at Michigan over the last three years, and wondered aloud whether the decision makers will see this as a bridge year or simply see it through.

"This is not a situation anymore where you go give a guy 2 or 3 years," Pate said. "This is a post-Curt Cignetti world in which we live."

Rich played Whittingham's postgame sound after Minnesota took the jug back with its first home win over Michigan since Jimmy Carter was in office. "I've been in this profession 40-plus years and this is maybe the biggest challenge I've had," Whittingham said, adding that he did not know the timeline but promised it would get figured out.

Rich's own read focused on quarterback Bryce Underwood, who is 19. The late throws in that game, Rich said, showed no grasp of the moment and no advancement from the end of the Ohio State loss, though he was careful to note that a muffed punt and an apparent blown protection were not Underwood's fault. Michigan still needs a school president and an athletic director, and still has Indiana, Oregon and Ohio State on the schedule.

Pate countered with a Kalen DeBoer comparison. DeBoer's first year at Alabama was judged against the myth of a loaded Nick Saban roster, a perception Pate called "a lie," and he has since figured it out. The difference, Pate said, is age. DeBoer has a decade and a half of coaching left if he wants it. "Because of the age thing, maybe it's unfair, I just cannot think of him as having multiple years down the road left," he said of Whittingham.

Rich then asked the uncomfortable hypothetical: if DeBoer had lost to Oklahoma in last year's playoff, wouldn't he have been Michigan's coach? Pate said DeBoer told him to his face he was not going anywhere, but conceded Michigan would have "beaten down his door" and that you never truly know until there is an offer on the table. "That's a great unanswerable to me," he said.

The weekend's marquee game comes down to physicality first, Pate said. "Both of those outfits believe they take a backseat to no one physically," he said. Georgia has been right about that for a long time. Alabama is "night and day different" this year in team DNA.

Then there is the weather. Pate expects a landfalling hurricane along the Gulf Coast to play a role, and warned that fans may get a false sense of security after last week's Mississippi State game was supposed to be a deluge and was not.

He called Gunner Stockton "the most lethal quarterback in the country at keeping his offense on schedule," and said Georgia rarely faces third and eight. The question is whether Alabama, roughly 10th nationally in run defense by Pate's estimate, can disrupt Georgia's rhythm, since no one has done it yet. And he flagged that Alabama had about the best third-down offensive day you will ever see in Athens last year.

The stakes, in Pate's view, are lopsided. "I think the winner you can pencil into the playoffs at this point," he said, calling the winner "a borderline, lowercase L lock." The loser, meanwhile, is not finished. "It's not the end of the world for the loser," he said.

Rich asked Pate to look over the steering wheel, the way he did weeks before the Virginia Tech-Pittsburgh thriller. Pate's pick: North Dakota State, now an FBS team, at New Mexico in Albuquerque in about two weeks.

New Mexico's only loss came by one possession to Oklahoma in Norman, Pate said, and the Lobos gave up 14 points total in that game. He thinks it could be the Group of Six game of the year with "massive CFP implications," and that it will also raise hot-seat chatter about whether New Mexico coach Jason Eck could be in demand if a job like Wisconsin opens.

"I think America could wake up the week of week eight and be really shocked at the amount of attention that is shown on the University of New Mexico and North Dakota State," Pate said. "It won't be out of nowhere if you watch the Rich Eisen Show."