Split Zone Duo: College Football Podcast
An independent college football podcast that covers the whole sport, led by Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner. Free episodes each week (twice per week in season), plus frequent subscriber episodes. Featuring co-host emeritus Steven Godfrey and friends. www.splitzoneduo.com
From the Vault: Anatomy of a Coach Carousel, 2001
This is a wider re-release of a 2025 episode for Split Zone Duo’s paid subscribers, who make this show possible. We’re sharing it widely to show more people what our subscriber shows are like, and because it’s a natural fit with our new episode on the 25-year anniversary of the 2001 season.
The coaching carousel before the 2001 season transformed college football. Some programs set themselves up for national championship (or even dynastic) runs. Some screwed themselves. Some set the stage for the next several decades of the top tiers of the SEC and Big Ten. In this e...
Story of a College Football Season: 2001
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Content note: This episode includes an extended discussion of the September 11 attacks and their connection to college football.
For Relaunch Week, Alex and Richard revisit the 2001 college football season, a year flattened in memory into the dominance of an all-time Miami team but very, very strange below the surface. September 11 halted the sport and jumbled its schedule; a chaotic December put Nebraska in the national championship game after Colorado had beaten the Huskers by 26; Florida and Tennessee settled the...
The 2026 College Football Fired Coach Draft
Alex and Richard conduct the second annual Coach Firing/Retirement/Departure Confidence Draft, assigning point values to 27 FBS coaches based on how likely they are to leave their jobs after the 2026 season, either because they got fired or retired. (Poachings are not included.) Last year, Alex scored a narrow victory thanks to his bold and successful pick of Kyle Whittingham to be out at Utah after the season. Can Richard fight back?
The board runs in order of tenure, from Kirk Ferentz’s 28th year at Iowa to Bill Belichick’s second at North Carolina, and produces wide...
Why You're Always Bad: Northwestern
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Rodger Sherman joins Alex and Richard for the newest installment of “Why You’re Always Bad,” focused on the program that now owns the FBS record for losses. Northwestern has also posted a winning record over the last 18 years, won six consecutive bowl games, and is preparing to open an extremely expensive new stadium. So Rodger comes prepared to challenge the premise. The group works through the Wildcats’ dark ages, occasional breakthroughs, facility-rich “Ryan family,” small fan base, and existential need to remain in...
ACC Preview 2026: Miami and Who?
Join us for Relaunch Week! Welcome to our first conference preview of the 2026 season, where Alex and Richard discuss the ACC’s 17 teams. This episode has a rose (a good thing), a bud (a point of intrigue), and a thorn (a worry) for every team in the league. Each school is covered, and then we pick some preseason awards:
- 4:28: Virginia
- 10:51: Duke
- 16:13: SMU
- 21:49: Miami
- 29:28: Pitt
- 34:43: Georgia Tech
- 43:28: NC State
- 49:05: Cal
- 52:53: Clemson
...
The "Best CFB Games of the Century" Draft, on Hard Mode
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A quarter of the way (and change) into the 21st century, the occasion calls for a proper celebration of the sport we all love before we get into 2026 in earnest. Richard and Alex compete in a draft of the century’s best games to date, but there’s a twist: years cannot be repeated, and neither drafter can use the same team more than once, whether it won or lost. We won’t spoil the picks in the episode description this time...
The EA CFB Revolt, Big 12 Infighting, and Michigan in Limbo
Matt Brown of Extra Points joins Richard and Alex to talk about the major college sports business stories of the moment. In this latest SZD/Extra Points Sports Business Hour (and the final week before conference previews), the gang discuss the following:
* 2:06: The EA Sports microtransactions revolt
* 28:02: The Big 12 and Monster Energy: a sponsorship bag fumble or the internet getting carried away during a dead zone in July?
* 42:10: More Texas Tech vs. the Big 12 from media days
* 49:25: Michigan’s athletic department limbo as a lawfirm investigation into the Wolverines’ culture comes to a...
'CFB 27' Deep Dive with EA Sports' Principal Game Designer
EA Sports College Football principal game designer Ben Haumiller joins Richard and Alex to answer their questions (and many of our subscribers’ questions) about the new CFB video game that comes out July 9. This episode covers new features and gameplay changes, why EA decided to implement an NIL system in dynasty mode, what interactions with schools have been like, which new FBS teams and stadiums made it into the game, and whether Ben is willing to apologize to Alex for all the clock-saving injuries that cost him games last year.
* 0:27: Alex’s shameful record in last year’s game...
The Worst Head Coach Firings of the 21st Century
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Alex, Richard, and Godfrey spend this subscriber episode reopening some of college football’s ugliest firing files: the decisions that looked reckless in the moment, the ones that aged like bad cheese, and the cases where the process was the bad before the next hire even got started. The trip runs from Nebraska and Washington through FIU, East Carolina, Maryland, and Ole Miss, with athletic directors getting at least as much scrutiny as the fired coaches.
In this episode:
...What Can World Cup Expansion Tell Us About the CFP?
Mike Goodman, cohost of soccer podcast The Double Pivot, joins Richard and Alex to talk about a subject that’s been on our minds a lot lately: tournament expansion. The World Cup expanded from 32 teams to 48, and we’ve already seen some of the benefits (and perhaps some of the drawbacks) of that move. What can the recent experiences of the world’s biggest sporting event tell us about college football’s potential playoff expansion to 16 or 24 teams?
* 0:17: Should the World Cup’s expansion prompt a rethink of the CFP’s?
* 3:21: Mike Goodman joins and explains FIF...
Can These Doomed CFB Coaches Turn It Around?
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Alex, Richard, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey identify 10-ish head coaches whose tenures are not going well heading into 2026. Is it possible to find hope in any of these situations? On this show, we’re trying to figure out what a turnaround might look like. In this subscriber episode:
0:01: Michigan’s hoops coach goes to the Mavericks, and it’s time for another news cycle about college coaching lifestyles
9:22: Explaining the assignment for this episode
12:23: Mike N...
Hopefully the last show we do about Brendan Sorsby
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
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Richard takes a solo show journey to wrap up the Brendan Sorsby saga now that the Texas Tech quarterback has announced his intention to enter the NFL’s supplemental draft and effectively end a sports betting saga that included dueling lawsuits, seething administrators/coaches, and state politicians getting into a tit-for-tat.
-What does the wh...
What worries you the most about your CFB team in 2026?
As the season gets closer and closer, the hypotheticals start to inch closer to reality. Will the good vibes that your favorite team captured this offseason actually pan out, or will it only lead to disappointment? Is the current situation with your coaching staff or roster getting any better? This internal monologuing can snowball into the dreaded sports anxiety.
So we asked you the listener, to spell out your anxieties about your favorite team so that we can analyze whether they’re substantiated or whether you’re just mostly being a impatient for the season to come. In t...
Our 26 Most Interesting Transfers of 2026
Transfer portal season is over. The actual college football season is almost here. With the dust (probably) settled on everyone’s roster, Richard and Alex pick through dozens of portal classes and highlight 26 players who are sliding into situations worth tracking in 2026. This episode is NOT just a recitation of the highest-ranked transfers, but a deeper examination of who’s being relied on to fill major holes, who’s propping up a hot-seated coach, and who’s just going to be plain old fun to watch. We cover new players going to:
* 11:55: Texas
* 13:50: Nebraska
* 16:5...
Did Brendan Sorsby Just Win? Here's an Expert
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Brendan Sorsby has his temporary injunction, and the field is open for Texas Tech’s QB to play in 2026. Yes, Alex is as shocked as you are. What now, though? To answer that question and a few more, let’s welcome Sam Ehrlich, an assistant professor of legal studies at Boise State and operator of the College Sports Litigation Tracker. In this episode:
* 0:17: Alex’s monologue on why Sorsby’s triumph is so absurd, even for people used to watching...
Congress *Might* Actually Reform College Football
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Alex, Richard, and Matt Brown get back together for the Split Zone Duo/Extra Points Sports Business Hour with the most serious congressional attempt yet to reorganize college sports on the table. The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 would touch NIL enforcement, athlete movement, the House settlement’s cap structure, media-rights pooling, conference realignment, and even the timing of coach moves via a Lane Kiffin Rule that Alex thinks is a little silly. The group talks through why this bill deserves your attention th...
2026's Year 2 Coach Vibe Check: Who's Already Heading for Trouble?
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Is your head coach going to succeed? Most of the time, you’ll know by Year 2. Welcome to the latest installment of SZD’s checkup on head coaches about to start their second season on the job. The class of 2025 was famously light on Power 4 hires but offers more G6 hope than you might think. In this episode, we’ll tier out this crop of second-year coaches as follows:
* 0:16: Why Year 2 remains such a revealing checkpoint for college football coache...
The Realignment That Wasn't: The Big 12 in 2016
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Host emeritus Steven Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a look back at the Big 12’s extremely public flirtation with expansion a full decade ago. It was a strange spring and summer in 2016, as the Big 12 basically put on realignment tryouts for a long list of schools including several (BYU, UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati) who did get into the conference — but not until years later, when others dominoes had fallen. Let’s revisit the summer of realignment that wasn’t, and then let...
Should Black Athletes Boycott SEC Schools?
Richard is joined by Joel Anderson, host of The Ringer Tailgate and The Press Box podcasts, for a conversation about the NAACP’s Out of Bounds campaign and the bigger question underneath it: What is fair to ask of Black college athletes and recruits at a moment when lawmakers and the courts are attacking Black voting power? They start with HBCUs and PWIs, move through the campaign’s specifics asks, and cover lots of topics from there: political education, NIL incentives, the transfer portal, the limits and power of boycotts, and why college football keeps becoming the platform for this...
Hot Seats and Hot Grills: CFB Holiday Mailbag
Alex, Richard, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey turn a Memorial Day subscriber mailbag into a holiday-travel episode, starting with an either/or question about Steve Sarkisian and Lincoln Riley. From there, they get into G.J. Kinne’s future, Arkansas cutting and then quiickly reinstating a sport, what a 24-team Playoff might do to scheduling, how to talk about Kirby Smart, Dabo Swinney, Dan Lanning, and Eli Drinkwitz in 2026, and then the important holiday matters: message boards, soccer pain, cookout tips and tricks, Alex’s recent discovery of beans, and Spotify deep diving.
In this episode:
...
Should UCLA Have Your Attention?
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Alex and Richard start with the surprise of UCLA becoming one of the offseason’s best recruiting stories, then Alex brings on Ira Gorawara fromThe Athletic for a campus-level look at Bob Chesney’s first few months in Westwood. This subscriber episode is about whether UCLA’s current burst of money, attention, and salesmanship is the first sign that a program long trapped between Los Angeles indifference and its own underinvestment might finally be changing its shape.
In thi...
Lane Kiffin's Insincerity and 24-Team Playoff Game Theory
Alex and Richard use Richard’s trip to ACC meetings as a window into the big college sports fight of the hour: how many teams will be in the College Football Playoff going forward. Then they sort through the Big Ten/SEC split over 24 teams, Ole Miss’ strange week as a national punching bag in the middle of May, and Nebraska’s first run-in with the new NIL enforcement system, which might be less the end of creative player payments than the start of better paperwork.
In this episode:
* 3:22: What Richard learned at ACC meetings, includ...
Revisiting "Is Bama Doomed?" Two Years Post-Nick Saban
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Subscriber episode: Steven Godfrey joins Alex and Richard to do a two-year checkup on Alabama under Kalen DeBoer. When Nick Saban retired in January 2024, Godfrey thought the Crimson Tide were due for a major reality check, while Alex thought one of Saban’s gifts to Bama was a durable and higher floor. Two seasons into the DeBoer era, Godfrey’s view looks like it’s carrying the day. But does Alabama see it that way, given a new contract extension for DeBoer...
Does the Big 12 Even Want This Sack of Cash?
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Extra Points publisher Matt Brown joins Alex and Richard for this subscriber edition of the Sports Business Hour, starting with the Big 12’s RedBird Capital deal and why a lot of schools that need money might still say no to expensive outside cash. From there, the group gets into what “revenue generation” can mean for a conference office, how Utah’s private-equity idea differs from a loan, why winning alone is a shaky athletic department business plan, and what Duke’s new Amazon...
What Returning Production Says about 2026, Feat. Bill Connelly
ESPN’s Bill Connelly joins Alex and Richard to talk about his returning production rankings for the 2026 college football season. The power leagues are retaining more of last year’s snaps and yards, while the G6 is increasingly forced into annual rebuilds. Bill explains how the formula for returning talent has evolved, how the transfer portal has made it messy, and which 2026 teams look interesting based on who’s coming back. In this episode:
* 0:55: Exactly how dire is the returning production picture in the Group of 6?
* 4:10: How the returning-production formula has changed in the portal era, f...
Brendan Sorsby's Gambling Has Texas Tech In Crisis
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Richard and Alex go deep on this week’s biggest story: Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby is under investigation for sports betting, including wagers reportedly placed on his own team while he was at Indiana. Inside:
* 2:05: The Sorsby betting story and why it’s such an uphill fight for...
Five Offseason CFB Stories Ranging from Weird to Transformative
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Richard, Alex, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey bounce around to a handful of college football news stories that demand more discussion:
* 1:46: Kentucky’s attempt to set up a sketchy $1 million job for outgoing athletic director Mitch Barnhart, which came apart under political pressure
* 12:02: Virginia Tech’s disempowered AD finally stepping away
* 19:18: The unusual amount of post-job change animosity flowing toward Auburn coach Alex Golesh from USF
* 30:40: Jeremy Pruitt’s tangled mess of an...
Bill Barnwell on the NFL's Lack of Improvement in Drafting College Football Players
NFL teams have more data and scouting resources than ever. Yet they haven’t gotten better at picking the best college football players. Why not? ESPN senior writer Bill Barnwell joins Richard and Alex to dive into a complicated topic:
* 0:20: Welcoming our guest, Bill Barnwell
* 9:24: The NFL Draft is the biggest deal in the city of Pittsburgh
* 16:31: Why NFL teams haven’t gotten better at drafting over the decades
During this episode, Alex mentions a few statistical studies that researchers have done on pro sports teams’ draft performance over time. You can fi...
The 2026 NFL Draft QB Tiers Special
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Longtime pals Ben Solak of ESPN and Derrik Klassen of The Athletic join Richard for this year’s discussion of the college football QBs who will soon become NFL QBs. From Joe Fagnano and Diego Pavia (a statue player in CFB, but probably not one in the NFL) to No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza, here’s how the crew sees this year’s QBs stacking up.
Producer: Anthony Vito
This is a subscriber episode, but everyone can he...
Utah and the Folly of the Coach-in-Waiting: April CFB Mailbag
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Richard and Alex take subscriber questions! As the college football offseason hits more or less its halfway point, it’s mailbag time. Among the many questions we answer in this episode, you will find
* 0:55: Utah did not envision that Kyle Whittingham’s departure would go down like that. Was the Utes’ fate foretold by what happened at … Maryland? All the way back in 2010?
* 22:03: Who could be the next Texas Tech?
* 50:15: Does basketball really have mor...
One of College Football's Biggest Deals Ever (?)
In this latest SZD/Extra Points Sports Business Hour with guest Matt Brown, Alex and Richard talk about several things you’ve seen in the news. Find Matt at Extra Points, and listen to our conversation here:
* 0:45: Learfield, the college sports multimedia rights company, sold to a (new) private equity owner in a $2 billion deal. This is one of the largest deals in college sports history, but for what? Matt helps us understand the importance of companies like Learfield and its rival Playfly, and how they affect both our favorite teams and their financial statements. Will this de...
Group of 6 Offseason Vibe Check: Memphis, Memphis, Memphis
Richard and Alex discuss how the offseason is going across the Group of 6 college football conferences. In this episode:
* 1:52: A fresh way to talk about the G6 offseason
* 3:55: Our tour through new head coaching hires, starting with Charles Huff at Memphis and Brian Hartline at USF, then moving all around the country
* 1:10:49: Recruiting talk. Who has money? Miami University, apparently
* 1:24:35: Fine, we’ll talk about the Masters, and Alex will make peace with Auburn fans
Read the 2026 returning production rankings
Producer: Anthony Vito
This episode is...
Dabo's Decline and the History of CFB's Guy After the Guy
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a discussion about college football history. For understandable reasons, people all cautious about calling for teams to make coaching changes when the incumbent is a legend in the job. How careful should we be, though? In this episode, we go through the past 40-ish years of coaching transitions from living legend to … someone else. How do schools do when they either fire an all-timer or need to replace him in retirement? The answer isn’t grea...
"The Most Interesting Program in CFB in 2026"
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Virginia Tech has had a rough decade. Has the cavalry finally arrived to save the program from irrelevance? Tech hired James Franklin and appears to appears to be throwing huge sums of cash at his program in the hopes of stopping a backslide that started late in Frank Beamer’s career and then spun out of control under Justin F…
SEC Offseason Vibe Check: Kiffin Money and Chicken Money
How are things going for all 16 teams in the SEC? Let’s discuss which way the arrow is pointing. Alex and Richard head to the Southeast on this latest Offseason Vibe Check, a chance to talk about actual football teams during the long, cold offseason. In this episode, the crew covers …
* 1:25: Texas’s offensive line problem and whether a nice finish to the regular season and a bowl win can be a springboard
* 5:16: Ole Miss’s Pete Golding era and the window that’s still open
* 9:41: LSU’s Lane Kiffin honeymoon period
* 13:45: T...
Does Baseball Explain CFB's Future? Feat. Joe Sheehan
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com
Alex talks with the wise baseball scribe (and USC football fan) Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter about how our sport is currently on a trajectory that looks awfully familiar to another sport’s recent arc.
College football is grappling with a long list of the same problems and proposals that have been bouncing around Major League Baseball for decades: Should the sport consolidate its media rights in the name of “competitive balance”? Can we even agree on wha...
ACC Offseason Vibe Check: Just How Pre-Fired Is Mike Norvell?
The ACC Offseason Vibe Check is here. Alex and Richard check in with all 17 ACC football schools and throw in Notre Dame as well. In this episode …
* 1:31: Miami made a big playoff run and then simply reloaded
* 4:14: Duke won football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball conference titles in the same year, and yet still has bad vibes because of some devastating portal losses
* 7:47: Georgia Tech’s fourth defensive coordinator under Brent Key, the Buster Faulkner exodus to Florida, and whether Alberto Mendoza can be the next Haynes King
* 10:16: SMU’s offensiv...
What Makes a College Town? Lucy Rohden Has Figured It Out
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Lucy Rohden has spent the past few college football seasons visiting dozens of stadiums for some of the biggest games of the year. What has she learned about the sport through these travels? She joins Richard to talk about her-long road trip through the sport. In this episode:
* 1:34: What constitutes a college town, plus the critical nature of a college town being easily walkable (sorry, South Bend and College Station)
* 6:58: Lucy’s proprietary system for ranking 50 college to...
Big 12 Offseason Vibe Check: Houston, You Have a Quarterback
Our offseason wellness check on all 16 teams in the Big 12. Richard and Alex discuss a league with a few teams trending upward and a lot more teams just trying to figure things out.
Producer: Anthony Vito
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Lou Holtz (1937-2026)
Alex and Richard go through the one-of-a-kind football life lived by Lou Holtz, who died on March 4 at age 89. In this episode, we discuss:
* 1:46: Holtz’s Saban-like upbringing and why Notre Dame was the apple of his eye from an early age
* 4:14: William & Mary, Holtz’s first head coaching stop
* 7:25: NC State, where he was an all-timer
* 11:13: The Jets, a one-year misadventure
* 17:15: Arkansas, where Holtz was “the guy after the guy” and managed to stick the landing after replacing Frank Broyles … for a while
* 24:41: Minnesota, where Holtz’s eye was el...
