ESPN’s Josh Pate Talks LSU-Ole Miss, Texas, Ohio State, Oregon & More w/ Rich

Josh Pate checked in for his standing Tuesday appearance, and the first order of business was a greeting.

"Hey, Josh," Rich said.

"Don't you Franklin me."

The bit refers to a James Franklin press conference that has taken on a life of its own, and Pate had a theory about why it happened at all. Virginia Tech has started 2-0, and not enough people have noticed.

"As Mima always said, make them notice you on Saturday. If they don't notice you on Saturday, make them notice you on Monday at the press conference."

Franklin, in Pate's reading, chose the latter. There is a real opportunity coming, though. Pitt is also undefeated, and the two meet in a Friday night game in three weeks. If both arrive unbeaten, that game draws serious national attention.

"If the kids, coaches and officials don't screw it up between now and then, that is James Franklin's opportunity."

On Texas and Ohio State, Pate's takeaway was counterintuitive. He would have felt better as an Ohio State fan had the lead been 14-3 rather than 23-3.

His evidence comes from a sideline conversation last season at the Miami and Florida State game, where Miami built a big lead and let up. Florida State did not win, but it made the thing uncomfortable. Afterward, offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson gave Pate a line he has not forgotten.

"Never forget, it is tough to rev the engine twice in this sport. In these games, if we rev it once, that's great. We can't rev it twice."

Ohio State could not rev it twice. Texas put together three separate double digit snap drives in the fourth quarter, and the 24-23 final stopped being shocking once you account for that, however shocking the path was.

Pate also thinks Texas needed it badly, and he separated that from everything else swirling around the program.

"Sark and those guys needed that."

The mechanism matters. Everything Texas ran inside the structure of its offense failed. Nothing moved until they took the thing to the backyard and let Arch Manning play football, a tale as old as time.

What he is less sure about is what it means going forward, and here he found himself in an unusual position.

"It's this weird place where I'm trying to defend Ohio State and Ohio State folks are saying shut up, you don't know what you're talking about, we're terrible."

Pate thinks the Buckeyes may still be the best team in the country. His case is partly about personnel that has not fully arrived yet, pointing to Chris Henry and another supremely talented true freshman who will see the field more once Ryan Day and his staff trust them in November.

The other layer is the lesson.

"Do not let up until it's triple zeros up there."

He compared it to Miami losing to SMU or Louisville last season, which did not derail that team and arguably propelled it. The difference is that Ohio State still has high hurdles ahead.

Rich pushed back on one point. Teams do go undefeated, and last season Indiana and Michigan both did it around Ohio State, which may be exactly what is sticking in Buckeye craws given who one of those teams is.

His larger argument was about how fans should be reading the sport now that it has been professionalized in everything but name. The only things missing are a commissioner who means something and a players union. In the NFL, the Rams lost in Week 1 and nobody declared the season over. Denver looked bad on Monday night and has a full schedule ahead.

Ohio State lost a hard road game to a very good team. It could lose two more and still be in the conversation for one of 12 playoff spots.

Pate took that and turned it into the best argument of the interview, which is that the current format is correctly sized precisely because both of those positions are valid.

"On one side of the fence you've got people freaked out that they lost a game, because they know there is that urgency in this sport. Then on the other side you're making the point that you can afford to lose a game. You can't afford to lose four of them, but you can afford to lose one, especially when you play that type of strength of schedule."

He got into it with somebody Saturday night who argued that expanding to 24 teams would produce more games like that one. Pate says it produces fewer.

"You can't duplicate that urgency when you know the loser of this game can lose three more times and still be safely in."

The balance of access and urgency, in his view, is currently right. He also knows what happens next, because the expansion conversations are already happening in rooms where people still smoke cigars.

"So of course, let's try and screw it up as soon as we can."

Rich asked him about the AI video involving Holly Rowe, and Pate's first question was whether the apology had been issued yet. It had not, at that point.

His take had two halves. The first is about the room.

"You probably don't need to laugh at that. People in the room don't need to laugh at it."

The second is about the oxygen.

"It's AI. Why is anyone even giving this the time of day? Is anyone taking a pro stance on what was depicted in that AI video? If they are taking a pro stance, are they worth listening to? To me, it's just stupid."

The conversation turned to Saturday, and LSU at Ole Miss, a game Pate will not attend because he is going to Auburn for Florida. He has more chances to see Ole Miss and has already seen LSU.

That does not dampen his read on what the game is.

"This is the kind your aunt who loosely cares about sports will be glued to. Your sister, who couldn't even tell you the mascot at Ole Miss, she'll be glued to it."

Theater, spectacle, storyline, reality show. Which is to say it is Lane Kiffin's wheelhouse, and Pate's favorite thing about Kiffin is that he refuses to pretend otherwise.

"He said last week, hey, I bring entertainers off the bus with me, I bring influencers into the stadium with me, because this is the entertainment business. I just happen to be a football coach in the entertainment business."

Pate knows that curdles some blood, and he thinks Kiffin is simply correct.

"You don't get paid 10 or 15 million dollars a year because you can diagram plays well. You get paid because this is the entertainment business and a whole lot of people love it."

What actually captivates him here is the football. If these were two seven and five teams, the storyline would carry it. Instead these are two of the 10 best teams in America, maybe better than that.

Sam Leavitt was incredible in Week 1. Trinidad Chambliss just is incredible.

"The argument could be made the two best quarterbacks in the country are in Mississippi right now."

He also flagged a name worth tracking on the sideline. Charlie Weis Jr. came with Kiffin to LSU and then stayed at Ole Miss to coach through the playoffs, and Pate expects him to be a head coach shortly. If the Florida State job opens, that is the call he would make, though he noted the Seminoles just fired their athletic director.

The caution on this game is the same one that applies to everything this month. Week 1 lies. People remember an LSU blowout and Ole Miss getting taken to the wire, with 38 hung on that secondary, and assume the transitive property holds.

"If Week 1 to Week 2 was rinse repeat, would we have seen Michigan beat Oklahoma?"

Oregon, to its credit, was rinse repeat, and that brought Rich to his next question. Is Pate concerned?

"Yes, I am."

His framework comes from last season, when several top 10 teams went into failure to launch mode. Clemson. LSU. Penn State. The new annual parlor game is identifying this year's Penn State, and Oregon is the first candidate.

"You've got the stack of wood here, but it won't light because the wood's wet."

What makes it strange is the psychology does not match the resume.

"They smell of a team that won it all the year before and came in complacent, a little lethargic, taking things for granted. The difference is they didn't win anything last year."

Oregon got blown out by Indiana the year before and blown out by Ohio State. All the trappings of complacency, no prize in the rearview mirror.

"It's like watching a bunch of ingredients that should make a good meal, but no one's making the meal."

The word he kept coming back to was unprepared, which is what makes it genuinely confusing to him. Pate knows that staff well. He has been in the building, sat in team meetings and staff meetings, and knows how militaristic they are about preparation.

Then he produced the numbers. Oregon's first five drives against Boise two weeks ago produced seven offensive points. The first five drives this past weekend produced zero.

"You change one or two things about the beginning of that game and it's 24 nothing Oklahoma State. Oregon's lucky to be in that thing."

USC is on the road in a couple of weeks, and that will define a lot, because two losses plus the Big Ten hurdles still to come is a real problem. Pate noted they are replacing both coordinators, and that the roster is a ready made winner on paper.

"We don't play the game on paper, though."

They play them inside television sets, Rich offered, as Kenny Mayne once said.

The last subject was Michigan and Oklahoma, and Pate opened with a confession that cost him money.

"I was so disappointed only because I bought into John Mateer. I bought in hook, line and sinker. I even put like 10 or 20 bucks on a Mateer Heisman ticket."

He maintains the bet was mostly for content purposes, while acknowledging he spent 20 American dollars in this economy. His reasoning had included the fact that Mateer was front squatting 500 pounds in the offseason, which he now recites with the appropriate amount of self awareness.

"As we all know, that's integral to a quarterback's mechanics. How much can you front squat?"

People told him at the time that Mateer was the same player and that you cannot bench press a touchdown pass. Pate told them they would see.

"And we went up there and I saw. They didn't see. I saw."

He is not interested in blaming Ben Arbuckle, Oklahoma's offensive coordinator.

"I don't know what he could have schemed. I don't know how you work around a guy with accuracy that poor."

The detail that actually worries him is that the staff looked as surprised as the public did, which almost never happens. Coaches usually know weeks or months before anyone outside the building.

"If you knew he was going to struggle that bad as a passer, you wouldn't have scripted him up to throw as many passes in the first half as Underwood did the entire game."

Sitting there in the second quarter next to Ian Fitzsimmons of ESPN Radio, Pate asked a question that summarized the afternoon.

"Does it not seem to you like Michigan is running the offensive game plan that OU should be running?"

Bryce Underwood's rushing line in this game was nearly identical to Mateer's from last year's meeting.

"I got what I expected. It's just the opposite team did what I expected them to do."

Rich clarified that he did not care what Pate thought about Oklahoma, and asked what he thought about Michigan.

Pate had been in the building that Friday, and the answer started with a vibe.

"The vibe around Michigan was not that of a ton of confidence."

He has not been around Kyle Whittingham teams much, so he allowed that this might simply be how that organization carries itself before a big game. What he could not ignore was the contrast with how supremely confident Oklahoma looked.

So when Michigan came out and took the fight to them, it surprised him, even knowing Michigan is a really good defensive team.

The preparation showed up everywhere. Six Oklahoma drives started inside their own 20, two of them at the one yard line. Michigan dominated special teams. They forced Mateer into the mistake they needed. They ran Underwood.

"They did everything you and I talked about last week, bullet point after bullet point that they'd need to do to win the game."

He is not claiming every question got answered. He is claiming something more useful.

"They're 2-0, whole season ahead. That game we saw last week, that's a foundation game. I can build on that. I can stand on that. I didn't have anything to stand on after the Western Michigan game."