Miami Hurricanes' Rise Amid College Football's Parity

Let's bring up the rankings because Humberto is beyond excitement to see the U at the top of the AP Top 25. So here's the thing about college football this year. Parity, parity, parity. Usually you have the marquee programs. Yeah, you know, some many years are included in those marquee programs. The Alabamas, the Ohio States, the Notre Dames. And those are still doing well because of the NIL. But you have a lot of one-loss teams in the top ten. In fact, the past few weeks, the number one team has lost. Hopefully that doesn't happen next week when UM takes on Pittsburgh. But the University of Miami squeaked out an overtime win over Florida State. Well, four, I think four to five of the rest of the top ten lost last week, including Georgia. Texas lost again. Ohio State got a win over Indiana, but they had lost earlier in the year. Notre Dame lost to BYU. Brigham Young University, the Mormons, the Storm and Mormons from Utah, are number two. Now, this is going to set up a marquee matchup in a couple weeks that we'll talk about in a couple of weeks between Miami and Notre Dame. One of the big ones of the season. It might, and that used to be, so back in the 80s, that used to be called the Catholics versus the convicts. Okay, that was the name of the rivalry. Now, the Catholics being Notre Dame, the convicts being University of Miami. Because, you know, University of Miami brought that swag in the 80s. There's a great documentary about the University of Miami called... One of the most epic mascots in all teams. Right. The Ibis. Yeah, Sebastian the Ibis. He's amazing. So, you know, it's a small private school, but they have a lot of boosters. And they're actually one of the biggest spenders in the NIL. Now, you've mentioned this before, that one of the things that you really appreciate about the U is how much they support local talent. 100%. So, even though it's a private school and you've got a lot of northeastern, you've got a lot of rich northeastern kids that come down that didn't get into the Ivy League, they come to the University of Miami. But their sports teams are very local. So, one of the reasons I'm not a huge fan of the Miami Dolphins, aside from the fact that they haven't delivered, you know, in terms of championships during my lifetime, and the University of Miami has five national championships, is that half the team is always local kids. So, I'm cheering kids from my high school. I'm cheering kids from the high school that I played against. Local Miami kids, local Miami flavor. And Miami really gets behind the Miami Hurricanes when they're winning. When they're not winning, half the stadium is empty because there's a lot of things to do. But right now, it's popping. Right now, it's popping. They had a sell-out game during a monsoon rainstorm against Florida State the other week. They're looking good. So, I feel they have one of the most complete teams. They have a quarterback. Now, let me ask you, because this is one of the things that most people that are not, you know, week-in, week-out fans of college football do not understand. Explain to me what is the difference between conference play and non-conference play. I know these teams play a lot of games. Right. But it seems like only a few of those games count into their play of participation. So there's many conferences in Division I, or they call it the FBS, the Football Bowl Subdivision. I'm getting it wrong, but basically the top Division I teams, they have many conferences, but there's a power four. So there's the SEC, the ACC that the UM is in, the Big Ten, and the Big 12. The winners of those four conferences get automatic bids into the college playoff. oh you also have the highest ranked champion of the other conferences that also get in so the conference is kind of like it's it's like if you, I'm guessing that like in soccer if you were playing a tournament with different groups, right? Conference play is the game that you play against your own group 100%, so you have the conference record and you want that conference record to be what, cause you want to win the conference, you want to get that automatic bid, but then when you play against non-conference opponents it still works to your general record and it still contributes to your general ranking, so a lot of times what the big teams do is that they'll set up a big game with a non-conference opponent so that they can get the higher ranking, and sometimes they throw in a couple of those lesser division teams that are non-conference, um, do the teams choose who they're gonna play? Yeah, of course they negotiate and these, these, these schedules are put together many years in advance. Now what's happening now is the formation of super conferences. There used actually be a Power Five, now there's Power Four the Pac-12 used to exist, used to be a Power Five it's actually been reconsolidated, yeah exactly, that's a big, it's a big thing right now, the whole transformation of Pac-12, so what the Pac-12 used to have, Oregon, UCLA, USC, those teams are now in the Big Ten, okay, and the Big Ten is not 10 teams anymore the Big Ten is like 20 teams, so these and the SEC is another one, these major conferences they also have TV rights, so they negotiate their TV rights where MLB teams get to keep their own individual TV rights revenue. With college football, the conference splits the revenue. So the lesser teams kind of piggyback on the major teams. There's one independent team that's not part of any conference. That's Notre Dame. Why? They're the one college team that's big enough to have their own TV rights deal with NBC. So they don't want to be part of a conference.