Yesterday, I stood inside Neyland Stadium with a master’s degree from Alabama and watched Tennessee fans celebrate beating the Crimson Tide.
And I thought to myself: This feels like heaven.
Yes, an Alabama fan just wrote that. Bear with me.
I went to Knoxville to work with Morgan Wallen Radio for the Vol Roll Call. It was my first time experiencing the Third Saturday in October in person, and somewhere between the tailgates, the noise and Tennessee fans trolling one of my alma maters with “Dixieland Delight,” I was overcome with emotion
A real-life reminder of why I dedicated my life to this game.
It also got me thinking about something I initially hated: a 24-team College Football Playoff.
After yesterday, I’m starting to wonder whether my resistance says more about the college football we all grew up with than the college football we actually have.
Because those are two very different sports.
Most Saturdays, I’m at home working on college football for Mad Dog Radio. I love that job. Getting paid to talk about this sport is a privilege I never take lightly.
When I’m in a stadium, it’s often behind the microphone doing public address for MTSU. I love that, too.
But damn, I miss being in the middle of something like yesterday.
A huge part of the joy was getting to work with Morgan Wallen Radio.
Before the game, I wandered through the tailgates interviewing fans about why they love the Vols, Morgan Wallen and college football. We talked about the games, their expectations for the afternoon and what makes a Saturday in Knoxville mean so much to them.
Everybody had a prediction. Everybody had a story. And apparently, everybody wanted to feed me.
They were so warm, friendly and welcoming. I’d walk into a tailgate with a microphone and end up hanging out, laughing and talking football like I’d known these people for years.
Getting to hear their stories was every bit as much fun as talking about who was going to win. In fact, honestly, my soul needed it.
And how cool is this? I got to work on a music channel. For a guy who has spent his career in sports radio, joining Morgan Wallen Radio for the Third Saturday in October was a pretty special opportunity.
Between quarters, I delivered updates from Neyland, sharing what was happening inside the stadium.
The campus is just so beautiful. The energy was off the charts. Then you get inside with more than 100,000 people, and the place does something to you.
You feel the noise in your body. You see how much it means to people. For a few hours, you belong to something enormous.
It felt like church.
It was American. It was Southern. It was special.
And when the fans flooded the field, I was remembering why I fell in love with college football. I was thinking about my Grandpa George and the reasons the college game is so different and special. However, it has to be LIVED to be FELT.
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While Neyland was losing its mind, the rest of the sport was coming apart.
Georgia lost. Notre Dame lost. Texas lost. Alabama lost. Five of the top seven teams in the AP poll went down on the same regular-season Saturday for the first time.
A bloodbath for the brands.
And I started thinking: Are brands really brands anymore, or is this just a new version of college football Hunger Games every year in the modern era.
How many of us still give an established power the benefit of the doubt while asking Indiana or BYU to prove itself one more time?
Then one more time after that?
Indiana is the defending national champion. In football. DO NOT FORGET!
Yet some of us still evaluate the sport as if the Hoosiers are borrowing somebody else’s seat at the table.
We have more than a century of college football history lodged in our brains. We know which schools are supposed to matter. We know which teams are supposed to have better players. We know how the story is supposed to end.
Then Saturday arrives and refuses to cooperate.
At some point, we have to update our expectations, MAYBE CHANGE IS GOOD!
People get tired of hearing the word “parity.”
I understand. It gets thrown around after every upset, and one wild afternoon doesn’t establish that every roster is equal.
But look at the possibilities now.
Think about the four-team playoff era. For my money, it the single worst stretch in college football history from a competition standpoint. You could argue the game was more broken then than it is now in a world of lawlessness.
There were incredible games and extraordinary teams. But too often, the championship conversation felt like a private party.
Alabama. Clemson. Ohio State. Oklahoma. Later, Georgia.
In plenty of preseasons, it felt like you could pencil in three participants before anybody played a snap. Then we’d spend months arguing about the fourth team, only to watch a semifinal expose the distance between getting invited and actually belonging.
Rick Neuheisel has always said defensive linemen are gold bullion.
That was the foundation of so much of it. The best programs could stack those players, develop them and send another wave at you when the starters needed a breather.
Oklahoma belonged in that conversation largely through a different kind of firepower, with quarterbacks such as Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray. But the broader point remained: an awful lot of the talent that decided championships was concentrated in familiar places.
The sport has changed.
In the years surrounding Alston, the arrival of NIL, the growth of collectives and greater player movement, the business of building a roster has been transformed.
Keeping a great player requires more than asking him to wait his turn behind two other great players.
Money still matters. Resources still matter. Coaching and development still matter enormously.
But players have options. A program outside the traditional championship circle has more ways to improve quickly. A famous logo has to keep earning its advantage.
Concentrating and keeping championship talent looks harder than it used to. Hence what we saw yesterday. Honestly, it was glorious. If this is the new norm, sign me up.
That creates uncertainty.
And uncertainty makes for one hell of a Saturday.
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Tennessee has now beaten Alabama in three consecutive meetings at Neyland.
Think about how that sentence would have sounded during the height of Nick Saban’s run.
Saban mastered his era. Alabama supported him with extraordinary resources, and he understood how to turn those resources into a relentless competitive advantage.
The assistants. The analysts. The recruiting operation. The development. The depth.
Other schools wanted to build what he had. Very few could make it work the way he did.
Tennessee’s first victory in this home winning streak came against Saban himself. Which in itself may tell you everything if you think critically about it.
I do believe the changes in roster building have made that kind of sustained control harder to maintain. Hence why Saban retired. He knew parity was on its way, and for a winner like him, he couldn’t stomach not having an advantage.
Alabama can still win a national championship. Of course it can.
It also can walk into Neyland and get beaten again.
That possibility is good for the sport.
Even if it occasionally makes those of us with Alabama diplomas uncomfortable.
Which brings me back to 24 teams.
My first reaction was basically: Absolutely not. What the hell are we doing?
Some of that reaction came from legitimate concerns. The regular season has to matter. Earning a better seed and a home game should matter. Player workload matters. The format matters.
A great Saturday doesn’t automatically prove that 24 is the perfect number.
But it made me reconsider the competitive argument against it.
Are we picturing an expanded playoff using assumptions from an era when only a handful of teams seemed capable of surviving the thing?
Because if that’s the picture in our heads, we might be using an old map.
Look at the games we’re getting now. Look at the teams capable of beating somebody good. Look at how quickly a season can change.
Then imagine more of those games on campus with elimination hanging over them.
Imagine being in Neyland for that.
Imagine the possibility reaching places where December used to mean waiting to see which bowl invitation arrived.
I can hear the objection: Doesn’t expansion let the big brands survive losses like yesterday’s?
Yes. That is a fair concern, and the format needs to make winning worth something substantial. Home games, seeding and the path you have to travel should carry real consequences.
But there’s another side to it. An expanded field also gives more teams the chance to make a famous program’s second chance very uncomfortable.
If the talent is spread more widely, why are we so certain we already know who can win those games?
And if yesterday’s results taught us anything, it’s that our certainty needs some work.
I’ve spent my life loving college football. That doesn’t mean every instinct I developed watching the old version belongs in the new one.
Maybe I’ve been too quick to assume that a bigger playoff must produce a worse sport.
Maybe more meaningful games, played in places like the one I visited yesterday, could be pretty damn wonderful.
I’m coming around to the possibility.
Yesterday, I got to be there.
Away from the screen. Out of the house. Standing in the middle of the noise, the hospitality and the glorious absurdity of people caring this much about a football game.
I watched Tennessee celebrate. I heard “Dixieland Delight.” I felt a stadium full of people turn a fall afternoon into something they’ll carry around for years.
And I remembered that the feeling I love most about this sport starts with possibility.
Your team might do it.
Your stadium might get that moment.
Your Saturday might become a story you tell for the rest of your life.
Yesterday felt like heaven on earth.
And I’m an Alabama fan.
Come spend more of the season with the Pony. Let’s talk about the chaos on Show Pony Live.
Special episodes this week will dive into an unforgettable weekend: the upsets, the playoff fallout and why I’m rethinking a 24-team field.
Watch on YouTube or take the Pony with you on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe, follow and join the conversation—we’ve got plenty to discuss.
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And thank you to 4Topps and AR’s Hot Honey for helping make Show Pony Media possible. Upgrade your seat, upgrade your tailgate and enjoy every Saturday we have left.
Worn my Show Pony sweatshirt today 😊