Chapter 1: What are the highlights of the 2025 college football season?
We're coming, and we ain't backing down. We don't need a bunch of cats in here, meh, looking in the mirror. Everybody just do your job! You understand that? Hey, will you shut up? I'm bitterly disappointed with the officiating today. Guys being dudes. And they run through our a** like a** through a tin horn, man. Ha ha!
Thank you, Lee. And thank you to Split Zone Duo listeners and subscribers. Real quick off the top before we get into it. Look, we understand and we know that the world right now feels hard to a lot of people. Things feel extremely heavy, extremely dark. We don't come to offer necessarily levity for that situation, but we will give you about an hour, maybe an hour and a half of respite from it.
That's the best we can do. And sometimes that's the best and the most that you need when things feel pretty tough. So I'm going to do what I do every week just about, which is talk about college football with my dear friend, Alex Kirshner. And the thing that we do fairly often, but not every week because we need to be accurate. We're going to talk about it with Roger Sherman.
So Roger Sherman, welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show. Happy new year. Have you been on? since the new year um i think just to discuss uh kurt's daddy's career indiana university and can you still like what is the statute of limitations on happy new year is january 28th are we past happy come on richard it's just an honest question just for the record
You hit February. You hit February. It's over. You got it. Just make it sure that the snap was at the same time that the clock hit zero, but the ref wasn't looking directly at the ball. So yeah, fellas, it's time for our annual award show. It's very big in Hollywood. It's called the split zone duo awards or affectionately known as the zonies or the splitty D's as usual.
No, there's a very clear winner between those two. Again, we're putting options out there. What can I say?
The Zonies are the awards that college football players, teams, coaches most aspire to when they are putting out watch lists before the season and everyone is getting excited. We have done this just about every year that we have had this podcast.
We are going to award teams of the year, which is not exactly the same as just picking the best team in the country because, well, that was kind of obvious this year for both the power conferences and the non-power conferences. We're going to pick a moment of the year. We're going to pick a proof of concept of the year for... Perhaps new coaches, perhaps not that new coaches.
There will, of course, be the Minority Coach of the Week of the year in an interesting schematic spot. The Brian Harsin Award for forestalling the inevitable, one of my favorites. And, of course, our favorite players, the Podcasters Player Award, the PPA, coming down the pike at the end. Let's start with our teams of the year in the 2025 Zonies category.
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Chapter 2: Who won the Power Conference Team of the Year award?
My team of the year is going to be Miami. I think that why I picked Miami here is because Miami is proof positive of one symptom of the expanded college football playoff, or one that is at 12 teams. Part of the beauty of it, in my opinion, is that, look, single elimination tournament is what it is, but you do not necessarily have to be the best team
Uh, by I test or incongruent or as a result of an incongruent schedule over a small sample size that we all then kind of congeal vote and argue about and then crown as the national championship. Now, funny enough, as Alex has stated, Indiana would have been the national champion in the nineties and probably our BCS format, uh,
And then end up also running a campaign and winning three games in January to do it as well. So it is very funny that Miami made this run at the same time that your very classical champion did the thing that I wasn't really sure would ever be done again, which is power conference power to bonafide 16 and 0 playing a real conference schedule.
and winning a conference championship against the teams that you would have to do to get through that unscathed. It's just deeply impressive. But Miami making the run the way they did
under the coach they have, who has shown growth over his tenure, who has gotten the better part of or figured out the better part to blend the current roster acquisition system with the mandate of being Miami's head coach, which is pretty much recruit where you are and do it well.
And then going on a, I don't want to say a miracle run, but going on a run as a double-digit seed in this tournament. And then getting to the national championship and being 60 minutes away from doing it in your home stadium. It was sick. I think power conference team of the year for me, the Miami Hurricanes.
Good pick. Solid. This was the year that Miami... became Miami-like again, and that was cool. And I liked how it happened while Miami was just personally pretty quiet about it. You know, they were loud about being Miami, but Miami didn't really care for the, is the U-back thing? And yet it was because they had the players and they had the coaches and they made it work and it was a very good run.
Defining image of the year also is like any number of 15 microphones. Absolutely.
Yes. It is very funny that the very, the most public, I don't want to say most public, but the most shown fan at Indiana games was Fernando Mendoza's mother and father.
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Chapter 3: What was the Non-Power Team of the Year for 2025?
It's the same shape, but a different story somehow. The other thing that's interesting to me about this year's offense is that whereas the 2007-2008 era had two of the most memorable college football players of this century on that offense at quarterback and wide receiver, 10 years from now, will a casual college football fan remember one player on this top 10 offense the Texas Tech had?
They might remember that Barron Morton was the quarterback. Maybe. Maybe Cameron Dickey, the running back, will hang around the NFL for a bit. I don't believe they have any eminently draftable offensive linemen.
The tight end might have a feature.
Definitely did not have a number one receiver in the classic sense of the word. There was no Taj Brooks this year. And I think that's where Joe McGuire deserves some credit for actually coaching this team that was bought for him. You know, they still, they still feel in a top 10 offense with just, just some guys out there.
The big zero in the playoff is going to affect the way we think about that.
Yes, it will. And you can see them potentially. Regrettably, because I do think they fulfilled the goal, which was they got to the Big 12 Championship, won the Big 12 Championship, got to the Big 12 Championship game, navigated their way there. I agree. That the goose egg in the playoff is going to hurt them overall, but I do maybe hope against hope that what they did will stand up.
But it could also be a situation where now we see them... move it forward in the same way we had like, wow, Indiana really broke through this season last year. And it doesn't seem like, like we said, Texas tech, what they did feels repeatable and it feels like they are actually getting better at it. And maybe that issue with a quarterback might be fixed next year with Brendan source.
Yeah. The key for Indiana, as it is, Texas tech is going to be as you get younger, because you will have to get younger. What happens? And that's the thing that we'll see with both those teams.
Yes. I mean, they are now starting to recruit high school at a maybe not quite elite level, but I'm close. You know, last year they, I don't want to say ignored high school recruiting, but we're not doing it like this. They had the number 51 composite class according to 24-7 sports. For 2026, they are at 18th. That includes Felix Ojo, the offensive tackle.
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Chapter 4: What memorable moments were highlighted from the season?
Absolutely. James Madison, speaking, unfortunately, of participation awards. James Madison is my G5 FCS slash other divisions team of the year. Quite frankly, broke the discourse of the sport for me. three or four weeks. Obviously Duke had a lot to do with that too.
And why I think that you can sort of kind of give Duke the award, but James Madison, because they actually pulled it off, got to the college football playoff the way that they did one loss be to Louisville close early in the season and made their run at incredible. You know, we talked, who's the next Kurt Cignetti all the time. You guys did an episode about it.
you would argue that James Madison has had two Kurt Cignetti's. Now, we'll see if Bob Chesney wins a national championship at UCLA in his second year, but JMU has... I guess kind of made fools or been part and parcel of making fools of me and Alex in our continued dogged opinion that it's hard to come up and have any immediate staying power and sticking power.
James Madison is one of the handful of teams that have done it over the last decade, come up with over the last decade and have that immediate staying and sticking power. And James Madison, you would argue, uh, maybe has done it more impressive than most because they've done it across two coaches.
Remember, James Madison got to this college football playoff with most of its good players on two years ago's team on Indiana's college football playoff team or on their team last year that also won the college football playoff.
I've mentioned this before on the show, but it's been a while, and I guess we have new listeners since then. This is as of 2023 via Sportico. James Madison, just in student fees for the athletic department, raised $53 million. It's one of my favorite facts in college sports because I think most people don't know it. The listeners to this show maybe will.
James Madison raised $53 million in student fees. Next on the list, $30 million from Old Dominion. The G5 is mostly over the top of this list because this is obviously how they fund their athletic operations.
Can you tell me what state both of those schools are in?
I can indeed. And Virginia.
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Chapter 5: Who received the Proof of Concept of the Year award?
what was it about halfway through the season, Alex, we kind of took a look at that Duke thing and we were like, Oh wait, Duke can do this. And then everybody forgot about it because it went away for a couple of weeks because Duke lost again because they were at the time for lost team and they lost the fifth time. And they were like, all right, it was, it was funny.
And then it's not going to happen. But then it comes back into fruition and, And everything plays into the favor of this all happening. I mean, if Wake doesn't beat SMU and on and on and on, if SMU doesn't beat Miami and on and on and on and on, we don't have the situation that we have.
And then we get in the damn game and Virginia could have just handled business as they had myriad times in the season. And by the way, as we know, Virginia also picked up an extra conference loss earlier in the season that didn't count against its own conference tactics because its game against NC State was a non-conference game.
So due to all this lunacy and hilarity, Duke gets in the conference championship game. As we remember, Duke wins the ACC conference championship in quite the belter in overtime. And then to put the icing on top of the cake, if you really want to go there in the postseason, Duke then has its two best players poached by Miami. Which didn't make the ACC championship game.
Who didn't make the ACC championship game and yet made the run to the national championship game and came within a possession of winning the national championship at its own home stadium. And now the ACC championship game is moving to noon on Saturdays.
And then after the season, we get the reveal that they've changed the college football playoff format so that in future seasons, Duke would have been the team that got in because they won.
And Roger, I didn't even mention the fact that the ACC's sacredest of cows, Notre Dame. getting into extremely public beef with the ACC commissioner because the ACC's scheduling apparatus had Notre Dame play Miami in Miami's home stadium the first weekend of the season, a game in which Miami won in prime time in front of God and everybody.
I actually picked as my moment of the year, and I have a backup just in case, but it feels correlated. I picked the moment when Cal's Kendrick Raphael scored a touchdown in the last minute to beat SMU 38-35, putting Duke into the ACC championship game over Miami.
It just felt like as a college football sicko and someone who is paying attention to weird tiebreakers and how one thing can affect the other. I can't remember a moment when so many unrelated teams were paying attention to something like that. There was no reason for it to happen. There was no reason for all these things to be interconnected.
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Chapter 6: What is the Minority Coach of the Week of the Year award?
And they think, wow, what a pristine athletic competition. Yeah. These kids are mostly going to be going pro in something other than sports. What a beautiful testament to American sporting tradition here. College basketball, more of a sewer than college football in the ways that people call college football a sewer. I mean that mostly as a compliment to college basketball.
Eh, somewhat as a compliment to college basketball. Okay, not really at all as a compliment to college basketball. My moment of the year, I'm just choosing a little grab bag of things that I really enjoyed. I went back through all of my hurry up notes through the season so that I could correctly remember the things that most excited me.
In the Division II playoffs, there was Benedict of South Carolina storming back from 24-0 down to beat Wingate of North Carolina on a full field lateral for an 86-yard touchdown as the clock went to zeroes. Was that the one a better?
Yeah, that was the one when it was like a legitimately like great throw by the whoever it was laterally was a QB.
Yeah, it was our former former quarterback who had transitioned to wide receiver on the run across his body across the field, like really won the game with with that throw. Perfect. I also really enjoyed Oklahoma's Taylor Wine mounting a hurdle block at Alabama in their regular season meeting. I love a brilliant circumvention of the leaping rule.
And this player for Oklahoma, Taylor Wine, just jumps clear over the Alabama protection unit and blocks this kick going into halftime against Alabama. But it was not leaping. He was not flagged, despite Alabama fans wanting that.
For one of two reasons, the officials didn't exactly clarify, but number one, he might have jumped over the gap rather than over a player directly, which would make him clean. But what I would go with, because I thought it was the most athletically impressive thing I saw all season, was that he had started the play within a yard of the line of scrimmage and in a stationary position.
And if you do that, it's not considered leaping, even if you jump directly over someone. But that doesn't usually happen because for obvious reasons, if you're standing stationary within a yard of the last garage, how are you going to jump over like a six foot five? Division I college football player trying to block you. But he did. He did.
I mean, he was arguably in the gap somewhat, but out of a standstill, this guy just jumped over the Alabama players and blocked the kick. And I thought this was maybe the most athletically stunning thing that I saw all season in college football. So kudos to you, Taylor Wine of the Oklahoma Sooners. And my third nominee, and I'm sorry about this one, Roger.
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Chapter 7: Who won the Podcaster’s Player Award for 2025?
It was exciting to see people kind of having... an Indiana football celebration with each other. But also specifically, one guy came up to Connor and was like, dude, sick jacket. I love home field and did not know who he was talking to. And after a few minutes, Kyle Robbins and I, another Indiana Hoosier Mafia member, did the reveal of who Connor was. And that was very cool. Homefieldapparel.com.
If we were doing, again, the voting is skewed. If we were doing moment of the year, it could be Omar Cooper's catch to win the Penn State game. It could be 38-3 in the Rose Bowl. It could be Mendoza diving into the end zone. And I think if we were doing it seriously, those would be the runaway winners.
But instead, we picked fun minutiae from throughout the season, like Duke sneaking into the ACC championship game. A lot of fun minutiae. We are a show that loves fine minutiae. Fun and fine, actually. Fun minutiae, fine minutiae. The proof of concept of the year.
Minutiae, you psychos. Minutiae.
I'm not even going to get into this one. It's a weird word. Too much for me. Roger, your proof of concept of the year, this is the Zoni Award for the coach or program that really got something on track, really identified something that works. And it can even be a guy who left the job or a program that underwent some upheaval. Oh, thank God you gave that caveat at the end.
I was going to be screwed. Went with another Latin word there. I don't like this for me. That's two Latin words in two sentences. Caveat minutiae. Anyway, I'm going with North Texas. The Mean Green. Number one in offense, both scoring offense and number one in SP+, which is nuts.
Like for a team in the G5 to be number one in SP+, they're the first team from the G5, even in the top 10 since Western Kentucky in 2021. So that's five years where nobody from outside the power conferences got in the top 10. and they were number one. Just clearly, Eric Morris knows how to coach an offense. You have the leader in passing yardage. You have the leader in rushing touchdowns.
And he did it this year with a guy who was literally did not play college football. And he did it this year with a guy who literally did not play high school football as his quarterback. Like, just a guy who played... safety and punter for his high school football team, Drew Mastabaker, then becomes the nation's leader in passing yardage and a five-star transfer prospect.
I don't know how much more you can prove the concept than being this good on offense at a school this... historically barren like north texas and doing it with someone who was a zero zero zero star recruit like so i think oklahoma state um will get to continue that proof concept good pick i wish that we had seen north texas beat tulane and win the american and be in the playoff because i think
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Chapter 8: What conclusions were drawn about the future of college football?
They had their first sellout since 2007. Don't compare it to Scott's Tots. Sure. They actually delivered. They delivered rather than promising college tuition and not paying it. They had a sellout for the first time since 07. They put 37,000 people in their stadium to watch them beat New Mexico State, their rival in week five. They got a power fork coach fired in Deshaun Foster.
They were also kind of a pain in the ass when they played Michigan to open the year. They scored a touchdown on like a little, what would you call it? Fumble Ruski type thing where they sent the ball backward on the ground and caused a pileup and then threw it over their heads for a touchdown. They were just fun. And also, uh,
We talk a lot about how hard it is to sustain anything in the G5 from year to year, but the success of the football program and getting people through the doors of that stadium has actually resulted in some momentum for them to get public money from the state to renovate their stadium. Because by having some bigger crowds, they couldn't handle them well.
They didn't have enough gates for people to get into their stadium. So it was a logistics nightmare when they actually started to fill this football stadium And so there's actually a public push right now, including in the legislature in New Mexico, for additional budget for the stadium. I don't know how long this kind of thing is going to last.
Their athletic director from this year already left for Colorado, Fernando Lobo. But there is real juice, real excitement behind New Mexico Lobos football. And that is a feat. On my short list of moments of the year was that game. I think it was the day after Thanksgiving. against San Diego State, which they won in overtime or double overtime.
And when the game ended, they were in line to make the Mountain West Championship game. And they were wearing the turquoise, and the crowd there was so camera-shakingly loud. I was like, this is happening in Albuquerque, New Mexico? I have seen New Mexico home games before, and I've never seen anything like this. And then... I'm still mad about this.
Utah State blows a 10-point fourth quarter lead against Boise State, and Boise State makes the Mountain West Championship game instead of New Mexico. But that was a moment of the year for me. That was on my short list. Their jerseys were cool, the alternates that they rolled out. Incredible jerseys, incredible aesthetics. Jason Eck, definitely folk hero in the college football internet community.
I also love that he is there another year, which I assume someone saw when he was doing it. It's one of these situations, who knows how long this lasts. hoping for a great season. You were talking about UNLV being the heavy favorites probably in the Mountain West next year, but I'd love to see New Mexico give it a shot. Same. I'm very much behind the Lobos.
If they could sustain this for even two or three years, that would be kind of unexpected, but awesome. And I'm not going to put a ceiling on what they could do, especially given the competitive nature of their conference going forward. Richard, proof of concept of the year? He did it. He did it. Excuse me. Here I am getting lost in my show notes.
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