Why ESPN’s Josh Pate LOVES the Wild, Off-the-Hook CFB Season So Far

It is still September, and Josh Pate already thinks college football has given us a season's worth of chaos. He also thinks that is the best possible news for the sport.

The host of Josh Pate's College Football Show on YouTube and a Friday regular with the Bussin' With The Boys crew joined Rich and covered everything from Nick Saban's resignation story to the fate of Lincoln Riley at USC. Pate opened by admitting he listened to Rich's sit-down with Saban on his drive home, fixated on the image of the coach sitting in a room with two pieces of paper: one for a 4:00 staff meeting, one that said he was out. Rich, who had only 15 to 20 minutes with Saban, said he chose to let the legend go down memory lane rather than steer him toward fixing college football. Pate's only complaint was that ESPN is releasing the whole documentary in one day, "which is a mistake by ESPN because I will be useless that day, completely useless."

Rich laid out his case that this year feels different. Coaches clapping back at each other, wild sideline behavior, a five-sack game at Tennessee overshadowed by a celebration that had an official talking about simulating going to the bathroom. "It just seems to me it's off the rails, Josh," Rich said.

"You're describing utopia for me," Pate answered.

He broke it into shelves. The first is that the transfer portal and NIL have flattened the sport, so there are no super teams. "It doesn't matter who you put number one," he said, adding that he could pick apart top-ranked Texas "nine ways from Sunday." The second is that coaches have gone "Spurrier mode," and Florida's Jon Sumrall is the case study. "He's been around five minutes in the SEC and already, I mean, he's like a fortune cookie per minute," Pate said. "I never even cared if I agreed with your opinion. I just always wanted more people to share their opinions."

The third shelf is the push to put a Senate bill at the center of the conversation, with fans "pushing their back against the door" to keep it out until June. Pate was in Knoxville for the Texas game and watched Colin Simmons put up "a season's worth of defensive production." As for the celebration? "All I saw was an arm, Rich." Then he watched South Carolina's Dylan Stewart, once viewed as Simmons' 1B among edge rushers, play so poorly that "if he sat out Saturday night with the express intent to tank his draft stock, he wouldn't have done much different." Stewart punched a player and has since been suspended. Even so, Pate said the sport "from a consumer standpoint" could not be trending up any harder.

Rich added the clock issues at Michigan Stadium and P.J. Fleck smearing his player's blood on his face "like he's freaking Braveheart." Pate's verdict was simple: it's not even October yet.

The Oregon game was the turning point for USC, and Pate did not hedge. Oregon, playing without Dante Moore, still beat the Trojans with its backup quarterback. "That's like an annual pantsing. You can set your calendar by it," he said.

He compared it to Penn State a year ago, when a full year of championship-or-bust buildup for James Franklin rode on a home game against Oregon. Oregon won, and the season went "off the rails and down the cliff and there's just a plume of smoke." Losses to UCLA and Northwestern followed, and Franklin was out of a job by October.

Pate said USC fans feel exactly the same way now. "They've waited, they've had half a decade's worth of patience. They have let him go through multiple defensive coordinators. They just peeled the sticker off brand new facilities. They just signed the number one class in the country. They sold out the Coliseum." Then the opponent is missing its starter "and the backup still beats us by double digits, we're out."

"He will not get that thing back," Pate said. "That'll be it for Lincoln Riley at USC."

Rich asked whether it was really over with so much season left. Pate called it "a when not if," because "they're not done losing." Franklin was not fired the night of the Oregon loss either, but that loss "began the chain of events that would lead to it," and Pate believes last weekend did the same for Riley.

Next came the 12-team playoff angle: Ohio State lost to Texas, but could the Buckeyes still be the best team in the country? "Well, I think they are," Pate said. He would power rate Ohio State number one.

That is different from how he would vote in the AP poll. "If I filled out an AP ballot, and Lord knows someone with some sense needs to, I would have Texas number one," he said, because ranking teams is "a merit-based conversation. You win the game, you belong over the team you beat."

The beauty of Ohio State's schedule, Pate said, is that it will give the Buckeyes multiple chances to prove or disprove that idea. Even this weekend's trip to Iowa, which gets College GameDay and the full prime treatment, is not one of their three toughest remaining games in his eyes.

He was not without doubts. "They've got an alien as their wide receiver one," he said, but the second through fourth options "don't feel like it normally does at Ohio State," and the defensive front lacks its usual difference makers after two years of sending players to the draft. Pate pointed to Keelon Russell at Alabama, Darian Mensah at Miami and Trinidad Chambliss at Ole Miss as quarterbacks nobody has stopped when given time. "It's like a conditional number one, no matter who you talk about being number one."

Rich asked how seismic Florida's win over Ole Miss was. "That was a big one," Pate said, "and it sent echoes around Gainesville of what it used to feel like in the '90s." Like Steve Spurrier's teams, he said, these Gators "weren't afraid to embarrass you," and were "interested in completely sucking your soul out of your body."

The AP voted Florida eighth. Pate was baffled. "I have no amount of substances that I could have in my pantry up here" that would make him say he had seen seven better resumes.

Then came his boldest line of the day. "Here's what people are scared to do, Rich. They're scared to tell the truth about Florida. The truth is Florida can win the national championship." People are too "moored to preseason expectations," he said, and Florida is one of the teams whose preseason outlook belongs in the trash.

The quarterback and offensive coordinator came over from Georgia Tech and clicked immediately, and Pate noted Georgia Tech just lost to Stanford without them. They inherited one of the best receiver rooms in the country and perhaps the best running back. The offensive line, Sumrall's spring worry, has exceeded expectations. The secondary can be beaten, "but the difference is they can score." That makes Georgia versus Florida a possible SEC game of the year, and Pate's only lament was that with Jacksonville under construction, the game moved to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. "How romantic a college football move is that?"

Before letting him go, Rich asked Pate to take a swing at the weekend slate. Pate revealed, before announcing it publicly, that the Bussin' crew is heading to Pitt at Virginia Tech on Friday night. "Winner of that game's going to end up ranked," he said, and "some would argue they both should be ranked anyway." Virginia Tech almost threw away its game against Boston College in a nor'easter, but Pate sees the Hokies as "a surprise early contender in the ACC."

Penn State also plays Friday night, at Northwestern, to open the Wildcats' new stadium, coming off an unexpected loss Pate had flagged as his upset alert of the week. "That one is going to be really shaky," he said, "because if Penn State incurs a second conference loss with one of the quote-unquote easiest schedules in the country," it is "not a comfortable first month and a half of the season for Matt Campbell there in year one."

Elsewhere, Pate called Florida at Missouri one of the biggest letdown spots imaginable "against a wounded animal," said he cannot picture how Iowa beats Ohio State, flagged Auburn and Tennessee as a sneaky game with a seven-point line, and wondered whether USC bounces back against Washington before its trip to Penn State. He also plans to head to Mississippi State late Friday to see Kamario Taylor face Keelon Russell in person, thunderstorm forecast and all.

After Pate signed off, Rich summed up the USC segment best. "If Dan Lanning dug the hole, Josh just threw some more dirt on it."