ESPN's Josh Pate Talks LSU Drama, Miami, Ohio State, Michigan & More I The Rich Eisen Show

Josh Pate is joining the show every Tuesday through the college football season, and he opened this appearance by describing his own emotional range in Belichickian terms.

"I like to think you can't tell a lot of difference between me when I'm a winner and me when I'm a loser. And frankly, I have been both several times in life."

He was being literal about the comparison, having missed badly on a 15 to 10 final that he credited entirely to Bill Belichick, whose team closed it out by getting TCU to jump offsides. Rich's read was that the game came down to which side was more situationally prepared, which is a familiar conclusion. Pate placed the score in its proper regional context, reaching back to Frank Beamer staving off a Wake Forest rally in a scoreless game that went to overtime. "That's ACC football, son."

Then Rich asked about LSU, and whether the mess is going to reach the roster and the locker room.

Pate's answer started with churn. LSU has a new president, a new athletic director and a new head coach, and even players who have been in the SEC a while are new to this version of the place. He also thinks most people misjudged the story early. "A lot of people looked at it and maybe from 50,000 feet said, oh, it's just another legal entanglement."

His summary of what it actually became is worth quoting in full, because it is the clearest version anyone has given. "Individual players, kind of quietly backed by LSU, with the support of LSU, directly challenging the league. And the league saying, hey, if the NCAA can't enforce rules, we'll enforce league rules. And then a court down in Louisiana saying, uh-uh, no, you can't. And then the SEC saying, watch us."

It goes to a courtroom Thursday. Pate could not quite believe the premise. "I don't know if you put this on a streaming platform that they would accept this, because it's a little too unbelievable."

His instinct, he said, would normally be that no institution puts this much on the line to add a couple of pieces. And these are not depth pieces, as some have characterized them. They are contributors who would play pretty early, allowing for an acclimation period. What overrides the instinct is precedent: LSU athletics has already done exactly this in another sport, with players currently competing in soccer under the same defiance.

So Pate's read is that they intend to see it through. "Unless someone tells them, no, you literally cannot. And I don't really even know who that entity is right now."

Rich's frustration was about who to trust for answers, and he had a specific example. He watched Eli Drinkwitz deliver a well-reasoned and genuinely impassioned statement calling the situation a clown show, and then watched him need help remembering the name of the bill in Congress he was invoking, and mispronounce the name of the senator behind it. "So it's just like, who do I look to to know?"

Pate offered his standing framework for these conversations, which is also a joke at both their expense. "Every time you and I talk, we agree on two things. One, everything's messed up. Two, something needs to be done. Then there's a third thing where we both go, but what is that thing? I don't really know what that thing is."

He did make one clarifying point that cuts against the panic. This particular fight is a one-time event, tied to an NCAA eligibility rule that can only affect one recruiting class in this way. Anyone saying it is isolated is technically right. "But as you and I know, there are like 37 million other issues that do have much more shelf life."

On the two proposed fixes, he was more informative than optimistic. The Senate bill is "not dead at all" and is guaranteed to come up for a vote, and Pate leans toward it passing both chambers based on what he is hearing. His caution is about contents rather than passage. "In this country, what you do is you pass a bill and then you find out what's in the bill." His own reading is that some of the language that might have prevented this scenario got stripped out before recess.

He was drier about the other answer. People say collectively bargain as though it settles the matter. "It's so funny how people just say that. Okay. Well, that sounds easy. I assume it's not that easy."

The idea he actually finds compelling is one he has been raising for years, and heard Albert Breer raise recently. Maybe the NFL should get involved, given what it currently gets for free. "They benefit a little bit from the current ecosystem that is college football that doesn't charge them a dime for marketing, promotion, and development."

That, to Pate, is the real question. "At what point does this mess merge over into the NFL's lane enough to where they say, okay, children, we're coming in. We've already figured this out a long time ago."

Rich asked whether the playoff field will simply become a payroll ranking, the way people point at baseball payrolls in October. Pate does not think so, and his answer was the most quotable thing he said.

He expects a top 12 littered with big payrolls, and also expects a 30 million dollar roster or two to finish 7 and 5. "It turns out that there's a lot still to this game of football that's always mattered."

Talent is the number one ingredient and he is not arguing otherwise. "But that's not the meal. Those are just ingredients. It is still up to really good coaching staffs and really good organizations and really, really good culture to cook with those ingredients. And there are just some chefs out there that are better than others."

On the preseason poll, Pate has no objection to Ohio State at the top, though he might personally go Notre Dame, and called the difference splitting hairs. What he finds genuinely strange is what happened underneath. Georgia sat third in the preseason AP ballot with zero first-place votes, while a team ranked 16th received some. No SEC team got a single first-place vote.

"In a world I was told we couldn't agree on anything, there's this agreement that we could put an SEC team as high as three, but do not rank them number one." He was careful to note he is not really pushing back, since he does not have an SEC champion either. He just cannot remember a preseason this uniform in a sport everyone insists is unpredictable.

His actual national championship pick is Miami, and his reasoning is a critique of how preseason analysis works.

"The preview magazine culture that I grew up in, they talk so much about lost production. And it doesn't concern itself nearly enough with, well, what's the backfill? Who's replacing it?" He conceded the rule holds most places. Lose offensive linemen, pass rushers and a quarterback, and history says you regress. Miami, he argues, is the exception.

He is not claiming they replaced their best pass rushing pairing outright. What he sees is a group of players who would have started elsewhere last season and served as depth in Coral Gables, plus Damon Wilson added through the portal.

The pivot point is the quarterback. "I think they upgraded at quarterback. This is the key for me." He has Darian Mensah winning the Heisman and describes him as tailor-made for Shannon Dawson's offense, expecting Miami to return to averaging over 40 points a game with a workable schedule for the first time in years.

What removes his doubt is not statistical. "I don't worry about that team not being hard-nosed and battle-tested, because I've seen the way they practice every day."

His game of the year, right now, is Miami at Notre Dame, and he likes that it sits in November rather than September. "It's crisp. It's nice and cool. The leaves have changed colors."

Pushed to play devil's advocate on Ohio State, Pate found two threads and refused a third. The offensive line could still get overpowered against elite teams. Back-to-back cycles of defensive attrition could finally catch up. Or both.

What he will not do is join the pile on Julian Sayin. "I think he's going to be a strength of the team. I think he'll be a big-time player this year. I don't worry about him." The only scenario that worries him is the one Ohio State found against Miami, with the quarterback under constant duress, "and at that point there are very few quarterbacks that shine at this level or the next."

Then Pate volunteered to drag Rich somewhere he did not want to go. "Maybe Michigan's a little better than people think."

His first piece of evidence is a receiver room he thinks the country has not noticed, and which he considers Michigan's best in some time. His second is a defense of Bryce Underwood that doubles as a warning about the whole era.

"One of the byproducts of paying players a whole lot of money is if their production doesn't meet your overinflated expectation right out of the gate, they're a bust and you cast them aside." He noted the same thing happened to Arch Manning. "That's not the way the quarterback position works. That's not the way it's ever worked."

What he sees instead is a supremely talented quarterback entering year two, when development is supposed to happen, now surrounded by structure. Better system fit, an offensive line Michigan can count on, maybe the best tailback out of high school football arriving, and an environment that is not the chaos of last season. He also expects the defense to be good.

The math follows. Everyone has Michigan at 9 and 3. "I don't think it's a big stretch if they go 10 and 2."

For the Big Ten's biggest game he offered three and would not choose. Michigan and Ohio State, if Michigan is what he suspects. Ohio State at Indiana, which he framed in historical terms. "We've never had a game even approaching the galaxy of magnitude in Bloomington, Indiana that that one will have."

And Oregon at Ohio State, which is notable for a scheduling reason. Nearly every big Ohio State home game since Fox acquired those rights has kicked at noon. This one is at 3:30. Pate has no personal problem with the noon window, since it gets him home earlier, but he understands the complaint and endorses it. Fans "never get the spectacle that some of these SEC teams get to have five or six times a year."

He left one more on the table. USC at Penn State is the White Out.

Asked to walk through his week, Pate described a schedule he would have called a dream job ten years ago and now simply lives in. His show Sunday nights on YouTube. Monday off, which is the only day he breathes. Tuesdays with Rich plus a live show that night. Wednesdays with Bussin' With The Boys. Thursdays his own show. Fridays traveling to a different campus for an ESPN afternoon show, which he is genuinely excited about because the Friday afternoon college football feeling is nothing like Saturday morning.

Then the easiest day of the seven. "Saturday, you just go stand on the sideline and you watch a game and keep your mouth shut, and then talk about it on Sunday."