Chris Fallica on College Football Bets, Portal Chaos and World Cup Fever

Power Cleaned Transcript

[00:02] Welcome to The Solid Verbal.

The Solid Verbal.

Come after me! I'm a man! I'm 40!

I've heard so many players say, “Well, I want to be happy.” You want to be happy for a day? Eat a steak.

It's that whoop, whoop.

[00:19] It is a cold and dreary day in Eastern PA, but it's always a pleasure to be here with you and the Verballerhood. Dan Rubenstein, welcome back.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, it's actually pretty nice here. I'm excited for this show. I'm excited to speak with you and hopefully, Ty, through this content, we can warm you up.

I was mostly speaking to the Verballerhood. The sunshine, the rays of the Verballerhood beaming down upon me.

Good, good, good. I'm glad to hear it.

[00:50] Yeah, very excited for this show. We're having on Chris Fallica, now of Fox, formerly of ESPN. You've seen his face on GameDay, you've seen his face on Big Noon, and he has occupied a unique place in the college football media world. And so, excited to talk to him about all sorts of things: data and his own personal history, and how things have changed over the years. So, can't believe we haven't had him on. Excited to have him on and go from there.

Absolutely.

[01:19] We didn't do a show earlier in the week because I had some vocal stuff going on, but we are back now this week on Thursday. We haven't fully sussed this out, but I think that may also be the plan next week because we are very slowly now building into preview season. Once we get into the first full week of July, you're going to start seeing preview content go up three times per week. Every Sunday, every Tuesday, every Thursday, we're starting to gear up for the college football season.

[01:52] The first thing that you will hear, as you have the last two years now, is the intro to the 2026 college football season. And then that will be followed by a part one and a part two as we make our way through the G6. And we'll lump Connecticut in there as well. And then after that, we're going to be rolling with the Power Four.

[02:12] We're going to continue on with what we did each of the last two seasons, I think. At a minimum, last year, where we did a part one that was a bigger-picture look at the Power Four conferences. So we'll start off with the ACC, the themes within the conference, the contender tiers within the conference, the things that we're watching within the conference. And then that'll be followed up by two more episodes where we break the conference down into two and preview individual teams within.

[02:40] So we started doing that already. It's a lot of studying, but honestly, it is June right now. There is not a whole lot to talk about. We do have something to talk about here momentarily, but it's a breath of fresh air to actually be thinking about and talking about real-world football. I'm kind of pumped.

Agree. Absolutely, yes. So that first episode will be tiers and storylines, and then we'll go through team-by-team stuff and talk about what's new for this year, how we feel about these teams and schedules, the stuff you're used to. And I got to tell you, Ty, it makes me very happy to do those episodes. I'm always super pumped to dive in and reveal all of my wrong opinions ahead of the season beginning.

[03:23] One hundred percent. So, if you're new here, even if you're not, make sure you hit follow or subscribe so that you don't miss any of these episodes, any of those episodes. If you've got something to say, it's always solidverbal@gmail.com. And of course, as we say on every episode, Verballers.com. V-E-R-B-A-L-L-E-R-S dot com. That is our Patreon.

[03:43] We built a whole fan portal that we're going to roll out this year that's going to contain all of the games that we've played in the past that we're going to, in some cases, roll out here in the very near future, that are new or were maybe dormant for a year or so as we get into preview season. So we'd encourage you all to check that out if you do sign up as a Patreon member. It is, again, the best way that you can support what Dan and I do. Helps us keep the lights on here at Solid Verbal HQ.

Yes.

[04:13] With that being said, Dan, I'm not going to yell it because my voice has been dead for about a week and a half now. After you and I recorded, I don't know, last Wednesday?

Yeah, a little bit about a week ago.

I then went to the World Cup and screamed my face off, which didn't help. But really going back to Wednesday, it's been no bueno with the voice. I'm not going to yell the breaking news thing.

And you were dehydrated, and you had a terrible slice of pizza, and you had a rough.

A terrible $16 slice of pizza at Lumen Field, aka Seattle Stadium.

Yes. Usually the best pizza in Seattle.

The best worst pizza I've ever had.

Lumen Field.

[05:02] But we do have breaking news. It turns out that all of that, and by that I mean capital-T that surrounding Brendan Sorsby, has taken another turn. For a long time, he was trying to play in college football. He decided, even though he won a temporary injunction, it wasn't for him. There was too much going on. Maybe it was Texas Tech, maybe it was Brendan Sorsby. It's probably a little bit of both of them deciding that it was best to part ways. He was going to enter the NFL Supplemental Draft.

[05:31] The NFL has decided it is declining to hold a supplemental draft this summer. It's not like a thing that always happens. In reality, they haven't done one in years. And as such, Brendan Sorsby is now going to have to wait his turn until the 2027 NFL Draft.

Do you have the quote from the NFL lawyer?

Yeah, yeah. So this is a letter to Brendan Sorsby or his representatives, whatever. The quote is, so this is Pete Thamel, “Per the letter obtained by ESPN to Sorsby, which references a supplemental draft that hasn't been held in years, quote, ‘Your petition, filed three business days before the deadline without any supporting information or documentation, and only after abandoning your recent litigation efforts to avoid NCAA sanctions, does not provide a basis for the league, capital L, to alter those plans.’” Man.

[06:25] The plans as in to not have a supplemental draft this year. So 2027 it is. Those are where the hopes are. And it's a longer letter. I encourage you to check it out if this kind of thing interests you. But Brendan Sorsby will not be playing NFL football this fall. His story has taken so many turns.

[06:43] It has taken so many turns since, gosh, I don't even remember when all this news broke. We're going to have to wait a while to see what Sorsby looks like in the NFL. I don't know if there's another league that would take him in the interim just to see what he can do and help refine his skills. I don't know if he goes into training just to sort of get ready for the draft. But seems as though, yeah, this has taken another turn while we were recording today. Recording this a little bit early on Tuesday, June the 23rd.

[07:15] So if there is anything more on this in the interim, I suppose we will break it here on the show. But for the time being, anyway, yeah, that's where we're at now.

So he was considered to be, I saw a draft analyst talking about this, and that his tape was sort of mixed, and some of his best clips were as good as any of the quarterbacks in next year's draft or this year's draft. But it was the depth of clips that he didn't necessarily have. This was two first-round quarterbacks this year, Ty Simpson and Fernando Mendoza, correct?

Right.

[07:45] So the class wasn't especially great, per NFL teams, when it comes to quarterbacks this year. Next year obviously has received a number of different draft people talking about how deep it is and how talented it is. So now he is going up against the likes of those Arch Manning and Dante Moore types when it comes to finding his spot in the NFL. So certainly it'll be more difficult for him, though I guess he'll be better rested.

[08:18] I suppose, like I said, if there is more to come and it is of interest here to the Verballerhood, we'll do our part. I think this is kind of it for a long time.

It would seem as such. And with that, we welcome in Chris Fallica. I'm almost positive that's pronounced correctly. Not Fallica, not Felica. Fallica, yes?

But you have, I've also been called all of the above. I've been called Faluca as well.

Yeah, sure, sure. But you know what? Yeah, you got it on the first try, so you have already endeared yourselves to me.

Yes. I mean, look, it matters, right? Your name is all you have at the end of the day, so let's get it right.

[08:58] I did a show going back a few years now, and it was actually when Lamar Jackson was still at Louisville, so that's how long ago it was. I did a show in Louisville multiple times a year for multiple years, and they still called me Fallick. I never corrected them because I don't want to be that guy. I mean, I'm on, whatever, it's fine. I figured someone else would ultimately tell them, but nobody ever did. So it's good.

[09:29] Okay, so now Fox Sports and Big Noon and Bear Bets, you're all over the place with Fox Sports and the college football and now the World Cup ecosystem. Formerly a producer and researcher and all sorts of things with GameDay. You've seen him as The Bear. Not a bear. The Bear. The only one. The one and only.

[09:48] So I guess here's the transition, first and foremost. Was there a name in all of your research packets you're poring over, you're studying, that either you said on air or were trying to help people say on air? We've been doing this show since 2008. There is not a team, there is not a player, there is not a name that has escaped our ability to mispronounce something. Have you struggled?

Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala is one of my favorites.

That's a big pull.

Yeah, sure.

Good to go in there.

There's a great story. I can't remember the linebacker from Auburn. Oh gosh.

Around when?

Takeo Spikes.

He said Takeo?

Oh, that wasn't even a tough last name.

Yeah, he said “Tay-kay-oh” Spikes instead of Takeo. And I tried to correct him. And I tell you, I was like, oh, he said it wrong. And I wound up finding out his mom wound up calling the ESPN switchboard to say that he said the name incorrectly.

[10:57] And Lee, at the time, he was still his typical energetic, quick-witted self. He's like, “I'll never say his name again now.”

Exactly. Or you just invent a new way to say his name, where it's just like “Chris L.” and how everybody just sort of said Tua instead of Tagovailoa.

Oh gosh. Gosh, I'm trying to think if there were some. I'm sure I'll come up with more things.

[11:25] Well, this year we have Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele.

Yep, or you can just call him JKS.

JKS. It's easy enough.

[11:33] Okay, so what is this time of year like for you as you're preparing for the season, as you're preparing, you know, college football from a number of different perspectives and gathering information and preparing for TV? What is June, July like?

[11:50] It's a little bit of an in-between period because I'll try and do some things during spring practice and wrap my spring practice wrap-up, figure out my burning questions for the time of year, issues, storylines that are most prominent in my mind. I'll kind of do a little data mining, maybe catch up on filling up, updating some databases that I have with AP poll rank and spreads and things like that. So it's a lot of maintenance at this time of year, just trying to prepare.

[12:24] I have some opinions already formed. When the win totals get posted, I like to kind of cross-reference and kind of see what I might pre-check with some of the numbers that are out there. So I fired on some early-season win totals. But yeah, right now I'm kind of in that in-between period where World Cup's here. So I've been writing daily columns and watching World Cup and betting World Cup. So we're kind of in that in-between period right now where I don't think any of the numbers right now are going to move greatly from where they've all been bet to already.

[12:58] So when someone starts firing on college football action, I'm not going crazy right now. But I will once camp opens up and you see and read and hear things about impact players or teams that don't necessarily look good, or maybe there are some awards plays out there. But yeah, it's a good time of year. You get to kind of take a little bit of a breath.

[13:19] What else is in your database? What kind of numbers, what kind of metrics do you look at to inform, not even just from a wagering perspective, but also, right, when you're just talking about the sport? What interests you? What kind of information do you feel like informs your viewpoint?

[13:33] Yeah, I like, well, we have access to the TruMedia database, which is great. It has all sorts of EPA numbers in there, schedule-adjusted metrics. Those are my most leaned-upon stuff, whether it's based on the schedule itself or it's essentially grinding it down to Power Four or top 30, things like that.

[14:05] There is no sport out there where statistics and power ratings and public opinion should be based on schedule more than college football. Everything is based on who you played. In the era here of super conferences, the schedules within each league are so varying and so different. Leagues are different. The Group of Six is a completely different sport than the Power Four. And even within the Power Four, there's a different sport within there. So I love mining and doing filters amongst that.

[14:41] I obviously like looking at a lot of the individual matchups in terms of EPA offense versus EPA defense, things like that, to try and find some things. And I like looking at postgame win probability. I like trying to find which teams we might be able to get an opportunity on to say, maybe they're not really as good as the record is. They won this game, but the best example I think from last year was the Oklahoma-Alabama game, where Oklahoma had, what, 170 yards in the game and like a 7% postgame win expectancy, and somehow went in there and won. And that obviously had a big trickle-down effect on the College Football Playoff.

[15:18] Chris, one of our really good friends in the college football world is Bill Connelly, who obviously is interested in a lot of the same stuff. And we've had conversations with him over the years about the transfer portal. I would say the evolving way that we all look at the transfer portal relative to preseason projections. What does the transfer portal mean to Chris Fallica? How do you try and suss out all of this player movement and actually use it in a meaningful way when you're trying to project forward?

[15:49] I still haven't mastered it. I still have to figure out a good way of doing it because, as Bill did in the past, Bill loved the returning production. And returning production now, it's completely like, how are you defining it? Returning production that was on the squad last year? Returning production, including the players with the production that they had at their former school? It is a guessing game.

[16:17] A lot of times, are these guys who were just in a bad situation at their school and they just needed to get out? Are they someone who is just securing more money in the pay-for-player to get a better bag and play, a better opportunity? I have not found a good way of doing it.

[16:37] I will say the one area that I think, macro in terms of transfer portal, is teams that use, and I think it might have proved out a little bit last year with some of these teams, if you kind of recruit well, you recruit the trenches, you recruit the interior, and then you kind of use the portal to find your quarterback, find a defensive back, find a wide receiver, find a skill guy. I think a lot of times that might be the way to go because I think even recruiting bore this out. It takes a while for a quarterback to get on the field. It takes a while for a wide receiver maybe to have an impact like that.

[17:24] And why are you going to utilize resources to bring in a guy that, after a year, if he doesn't play, he's going to wind up bolting in the portal anyway? So I think that's a strategy that a lot of teams might start using. I don't want to say that is Miami's strategy, but if you look at the way Miami, my alma mater, built their team, you recruited well on Bain and the guys on the offensive line that they had. And then, okay, you go out and you bring in Cam Ward. You bring in Carson Beck. You bring in CJ Daniels. You bring in Keionte Scott. The areas and the skill, they have supplemented their team, and it worked out well. We'll see if that's a path moving forward, if that just happens to be a one-off.

[18:09] One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot, because we're starting to collect all of our preview material now as well. I think back to when Deion Sanders first took over at Colorado and how there was much made of the fact that he was basically importing his own team, right? He's bringing his own guys. And that worked maybe to some extent. Clearly, what went on at Indiana is an edge case. Miami has been very successful as well.

[18:35] I'm wondering if, moving forward, there is any kind of way to quantify coaches who have had success in the portal in previous seasons. Because I'm starting to see a trend, right? Again, Cignetti probably isn't the base case because he's very much an anomaly. It does seem as if you can look across college football and find coaches who have been overwhelmingly more successful than some of their peers. Like, don't bet on Mike Norvell, but maybe bet on somebody else who's had a little bit more success. I don't know if that's something I could put into play yet, but it's definitely something I jotted down.

[19:14] I like your thought there because it's not only the head coach and the coaching, it's these personnel guys that you have, your talent, your roster builders, kind of the GMs of the program who do really well. Look at Vandy. Vandy's another one that they've done super well, and they're bringing in players. Indiana, obviously. Miami, obviously. Lane Kiffin is someone who obviously has done very well.

[19:39] That's going to be something too to see, how the GM, the cultural relationship, the collectives, and then moving forward, what happens in the grand space of the sport. If Congress gets involved, which, God, I hope it doesn't, that's the last thing we need is government intervention in this sport. I don't know if what we have right now is sustainable. I think we are all in agreement that something needs to be done, whether it's making these players employees, figuring out what they'll be.

[20:13] Because I think someone sent me an article yesterday, I think it was in a basketball chat, so I don't know if it was related to basketball, related to football, related to the athletic department, but Louisville had like a $30 million deficit. It's not sustainable, the way we're going right now. So something's got to be done, or else, unfortunately, we're going to see, I think, a lot of these programs go away and see a breakaway and a super conference, which I don't necessarily think is the best thing for this sport either.

[20:40] I know you're a researcher at heart. I know you care about a lot of the same data sets that Dan and I do. What is the biggest difference for you having maybe been on the other side of the camera, doing the hard work, informing the talent, helping them be as smart as possible on air, to then suddenly moving to the other side, where you're giving opinions? More people can see your face, can attribute whatever you're saying directly to you, and oh, they have your social media handle. Can you describe what that experience has been like? Because it's not something we've experienced here. Maybe someday. My hunch is that it would probably take a lot of people by surprise.

[21:19] It really hasn't been super jarring for me.

Okay, wait. That's good, right?

Yeah, it is good because I try to be the person I was as a researcher with the numbers and the opinions that I would have in my tweets and whatever else. I'm kind of the same person now. It's just I'm the one delivering it kind of on air, as opposed to giving it to Kirk or Rece or Chris or David Pollack, whoever on the GameDay desk it is. So it's kind of cool that it's something that I came up with.

[21:53] And it's interesting because I think this just came into my mind as I was thinking about it. There were things that I would come up with at the time, and I'd be like, damn, I really would love to be the one to say this on air. But at the time, we didn't necessarily have the camera and whatever else to do it. So I would kind of give it to Kirk or Chris or whomever, and like, okay, it's got to be said this way. This is a really good note, and this is how I want it spun. But it was really organic the way it all came about because I just had such a great relationship with those guys on the set, and they knew how to press my buttons and they knew what subjects would get me going and they knew what I was on for. Bear with that poor pun on words there.

[22:43] But it's been good. I kind of like it because now that I'm the one, I say it, I own it. And going back and forth yesterday, for example, I had a comment. It's amazing how everything comes back to college football, in a sense, with a lot of my followers. I said something harmless, I think: “The World Cup final would be so much better at Azteca or in Dallas, so much better than MetLife.”

[23:15] And someone who apparently was a New Yorker, and I'm a New Yorker too, had a Notre Dame tie, turns this into, no, why would you say that? New York is, and it's just like you touting the ESPN line of my landmark being in of Notre Dame and making that move and going all in on Notre Dame.

[23:43] And I said, well, hold on. If you want to go back and look, my argument last year was that if you want to blame someone, blame the College Football Playoff for the way they ranked these teams to begin with, because Miami never should have been behind Notre Dame. And my argument was that Notre Dame should have been in over Alabama or Oklahoma. And the real issue was the fact that you had two Group of Six teams in. The fact that I can kind of go back and people interact and care enough about what I have to say is pretty cool because I'm trying to be the same guy on air and on social media that I am. As long as you don't berate me or curse at me or whatever, I'll do my best to respond and have interactions with you.

[24:26] Something I have always wondered, just because you brought it up here a second ago: you have access to incredible data sets given the work that you're doing for the on-air talent. I feel like every so often, and it doesn't happen every Saturday, but every so often, there will be an obscure, and I mean really obscure stat, that somebody pulls out of left field that was found deep in the annals of the Elias Sports Bureau or whatever. I have always wondered, I am not kidding, the entire span of me being a sports fan, I have always wondered how on God's green earth are you finding those stats?

[25:04] Because it is not, you mentioned you have ideas for something that you put out there on air and you want to be the one to deliver it. How are you finding these things? Is it just really clever filtering? Because every data set known to man is available? Can you talk me through that process? Because I genuinely have always wondered where that stuff comes from.

[25:22] A lot of times it is. I'll just go on kind of a wild goose chase and start doing filters for certain things and just kind of sort and mine stuff out. Oh, wow, look at this. Look at combined penalty yards, turnovers, and sacks allowed per game. Whomever is the most undisciplined team. I actually came up with this. I called it the undisciplined index. It's like the team, penalties per game, turnovers per game, and sacks allowed per game, to figure out the worst teams in that category. What purpose it uses, I don't know.

[26:05] But I guess on the opposite end, if you could say the teams that don't, and this is how I kind of came up with it last year, I used it to support Indiana. They were like the best team in the country last year in terms of allowing sacks, committing the fewest penalties, and not turning the ball over. So that obviously panned out into something where you got a team that didn't hurt themselves at all, and they took advantage of all these things, and they wound up winning the national championship.

[26:34] So, a lot of it is that I'll just have a list of things that I kind of want to look up. I love looking up non-offensive touchdowns. It's just kind of a thing that I like. Red-zone turnovers is something that I like looking at. Big, high-variance plays within a game. Obviously, the middle eight is something that has gotten a lot of publicity. I know Deep Bar Two has a lot of thoughts on that as well, how that is kind of overblown. Kind of looking at differentials at certain points in the game.

[27:13] But I can remember way back, how easy is it now to do average gain on first down or average distance to go on third down and conversion rates? I can remember the 1997 college football season, and that was my second year as GameDay researcher. I would have to reach out to the schools and get a hard copy of all the statistical game books for the season.

[27:45] So I'd have, I remember going through Michigan and Washington State game books for the 1997 season, the 1998 Rose Bowl, and coming up with the Michigan defense's third down, teams' average distance to go on third down against that great Michigan defense and how they couldn't convert. Or, like, Ryan Leaf's third-down passing percentage during that year. Because none of this was readily accessible. There was no real internet to find any of this. So I was kind of doing this manually to help Kirk with a lot of the game calls and a lot of his stuff on air as well.

[28:21] So I can remember Brad Edwards, who a lot of people know from his work at ESPN and the BCS guru for ESPN. We used to live together. And I can remember the Route 66, 66-3 Texas-UCLA game the following year. Again, there was no AP. We did not have an AP poll database at the time, but we found a book of AP polls in some library in New York. And we at the time had all the hard copies of the Beatty guides. We had a hard copy in our house because we were sickos and we would look shit up all the time.

[28:56] I don't know, one night we decided to be like, hey, you know what? I'd really love to find out what the biggest margin of defeat was for a top 10 team that they played the next year and what the result was. And I don't think we ever found the answer. But it was pretty cool to just start writing stuff down throughout the middle of the night before a college football Saturday. And now that's an easy thing to do with the AP poll database that we have. Here's every game involving a top 10 team.

[29:25] And here's the thing. That's crazy. So if you're wondering why Chris has had the job he's had these past few decades, and why you, listener at home, can't burst into the industry, it's because very clearly, when he's banging down the door at the New York Public Library for old AP polls, Chris is capital-B built different, okay? And you just have to make peace with that.

For better or worse.

For better or for worse.

[29:53] So a few years ago, just sort of in what you were talking about, the undisciplined index, God, maybe three, four years ago, it might have been Tory Taylor, the punter at Iowa. I calculated that the yardage that he ran on and off the field to punt a ball was greater than Iowa's offensive output. Like he was putting up more yards running on and off of the field. And I say that, one, to pat myself on the back because I was very proud of that, and two, have you ever come up with something? Have you ever dug up something? I think you were doing the Aflac trivia stuff, right? Have you ever found something that was too mean to put out there?

[30:33] Too mean? Maybe that's just the way my brain works, that I calculated like the Texas Tech defense. It's not a great reflection on me, but I think if I give out a wager now, it just shows the evolution of my career: research, hardcore stats, now people know me in the betting space. If I were to lose a wager and there was a ridiculous-type performance in a game where a quarterback stunk or whatever, yeah, I would probably have a little bit of an axe to grind at times. And I would do my best not to.

[31:18] Or I can very specifically remember a couple of years ago the Miami-Syracuse game, the final game of the regular season, where Miami wins there, they're in the ACC Championship Game and they're probably going to go to the College Football Playoff. And they wound up, I think, kicking a field goal from like the 10-yard line late in the game. And I was kind of like, well, what are you doing? The probability of your defense stopping Syracuse, which they haven't stopped them all game, again, that was a very personal-type thing. So I try to be better than that. Usually I don't like to call people out.

[32:00] Do you have maybe not even data-supported elements of how you look at games or trends? Something we do on the show is called a letdown lookahead sandwich, where we're like, okay, this team just played a big game and they won or lost and whatever. And then next week they have something. I have no idea if the data supports it. What are your pet ways of looking at schedules and situations?

[32:22] I love looking at it, and I don't have a way to quantify it either. Can you write some sort of code and download game-by-game histories from either the Billingsley data or College Football Reference and quantify a team? Do you pull an upset, then you play another bad team, and then you have another good team in between? Is it that? Is it an unranked team and then you have a top 10 team at home? There are a bunch of different ways to do it, but it is absolutely something I look into.

[33:04] I can remember a couple, few years back when Mississippi State had a game against UMass and they were like a 30-something-point favorite, I think they were. And they didn't come close to covering. And I believe that the next week they wound up hosting Texas A&M, and A&M, I think, was fourth or fifth in the initial College Football Playoff rankings. And of course, they pull the upset as a dog there.

[33:32] So, yeah, my mentality and my thought process is, these are 19-, 20-, 21-year-old kids still, for the most part. You only have a finite measure of energy, emotion to use in certain weeks. And they're on campus. They hear people talking about, “Oh, Ohio State's coming in next week.” And, “Oh yeah, we are Rutgers this week.” It's only natural to have a bit of all that. And coaches are spending a lot of time during that week looking ahead to other games as well.

[34:11] So that is one of the bigger handicapping tools that I have in my toolbox, looking for the letdown lookahead sandwich game. I know Danny Sheridan is very big on that too, especially with the SEC cupcake week late in the year that I guess now is going to be going away. But you can find a lot.

[34:32] I can remember last year, people at this time of the year talking about Oklahoma going to Temple the week before they played.

Yep, I remember this.

Yeah, I remember this well.

And they went to Temple and they wound up winning very, very easily and getting the cover. So it doesn't always work. A lot of times it's baked into the line, but it's still something you have to pay attention to.

[35:00] Here's what I want with all of your filtering abilities. And we talk about this on the show. We have not quantified it in any sort of accurate way. A lot of people point to weather, they point to the time-change stuff. I want all of the elevation metrics. I want the teams playing at sea level who suddenly have to play at Wyoming, who suddenly have to play in Salt Lake City or Provo. That, I think, is the next untrod data that we could probably use to our advantage. How do you feel about elevation?

[35:25] That's a great one. I think it absolutely matters. I think if you look at Utah and BYU at home, I think the numbers probably do bear something out there. I can remember, way back when, trying to figure out the best home-field advantage, and I was just trying to do difference in win percentage at home and on the road. And I think when I did this at some point in the '90s, Washington and Auburn were like the two biggest differences in home win percentage and road win percentage.

[36:08] But have you guys been to either Rice-Eccles or BYU?

Well, I've only been to Rice-Eccles.

Yeah. It is a, the fans are right on top of you. It's right there in the mountain area. BYU's the same way. That is something. But look, there's a whole conference named after it, although some of the teams are in the Pac-12 now, but in the Mountain West, right? A bunch of those schools, Air Force is up there. Boise, I believe, is up there. Wyoming's definitely up there. In the Sonny Lubick era, they were always a difficult place to go play when they had Moses Moreno and Kevin McDougal and Bradford.

Sure.

[36:46] So let me ask you this. You mentioned this earlier, that you started forming opinions of teams for this coming season. Are you finding teams or team opinions that you'd be willing to share with us here today, where you are trusting a team maybe more than the betting markets are trusting a team? Who are some of those squads that stand out?

[37:08] Now you're asking, that's taboo for me. You're asking me to give the old word, which is over. I'm not necessarily an over guy.

Okay. Do you find that kills the fun? Because I don't like betting on this. I feel like it kills the fun.

I think it's more fun.

Wow. Okay.

I think it's more fun because I think you have kind of a contrarian opinion. And I think the contrarian opinions kind of are more beneficial for wagering and predicting. At this time of the year, everybody thinks their team's going to be good.

[37:48] Well, here, this is the sound that we play. So this is our trust meter here. With Chris Fallica, it could be teams maybe that you trust more or teams that you trust less than whatever the lines are. Who are those teams for you that maybe you've looked at?

[38:06] I do trust Indiana. And I wrote a little column earlier. They're going to have a 22-game winning streak when they host Ohio State on October 17th. The schedule's easy. Players they brought in the portal, the culture of winning there. Now, are they a national title contender again? Can they beat Ohio State? Can they rip off a playoff run like they had? I don't know.

[38:31] But people who I think are the doubters of Indiana, I think, need to go away because I think they proved last year that with the collective that they have and the GM and the coaching staff that they have, they're here to stay.

[38:48] I do think the winner of the Miami-Notre Dame game in South Bend will be number one going into the College Football Playoff. I think that game is for the number one seed. I think Miami has the potential to be better than they were last year. Now, yes, they lose a lot of leaders, a lot of veteran starters on that team that kind of led by example on the field and in the locker room. But talent-wise, they could be more talented this year. And I think CJ Carr, obviously year two, with the way Notre Dame is recruited and that schedule as well.

[39:23] Here's again, there's a BYU example for you. They got to go to Provo.

They do.

That could be their one interesting game. But I think they're better than BYU. I think they'll get out of there with the win. So yeah, I think Miami, Notre Dame are certainly two playoff teams. Oregon as well.

[39:37] If you want to look for another popular team, I actually made a wager, gosh, I guess it was six weeks ago or so now. FanDuel, you're allowed to parlay these teams to make the playoff, and I'm sure the prices are long gone now. But you could parlay Miami, Notre Dame and Oregon to make the playoffs, and you got like minus 116 or something on that. And something's going to have to go very wrong, I think, for one of those teams to miss the playoffs. So those are some of the teams right now that I am a little bit higher on than others.

[40:14] If we're looking for some of the teams that I am maybe not as high on, I think Michigan State is a team that is getting a lot of love. I went under four and a half on their win total. But I am a big Pat Fitzgerald guy. I think he got screwed at Northwestern, but he went 4-8 in his final year. You take away the COVID year in 2020, and in his final three years at Northwestern, he was 7-29. How much did the sport change since he was last coaching? And look, I would love to see him do well.

[40:49] If you look at their schedule, it's a problem in the Big Ten, even though they don't have Ohio State, they don't have Indiana. You play Notre Dame in the non-conference. I think they are going to struggle mightily.

[41:05] Florida State, a team that we talked about, if you look at their quarterback situation right now, their portal situation is not great. They are, I think they are in big trouble again this year. Arkansas, I think they're going to again fail to win an SEC game. You bring in Ryan Silverfield, but you lose all of your offense. You look at the conference schedule that they have. I just don't know where you're going to get a win. At Vandy, at Auburn, home Missouri, home South Carolina. I just see them as an under, under four and a half as well.

[41:43] So you've occupied an interesting part of the college football universe and a unique part because you've been everywhere. I've been a lot of places. Ty's been some places. You've been everywhere. Has anything changed during your travels with the sport? Is it a vibes thing that's changed, or has it completely remained like everything changes in the sport, but Saturdays are sort of the same on campus? What have you or have you not noticed about how your experience has changed over the years?

[42:12] I kind of hate that I'm saying this. I've noticed, in a lot of instances, maybe fewer fans at games. It's in the game experience. I don't know if, on a week-in, week-out basis, if it's what it once was. I don't know if people would rather just either tailgate or people would rather just hang at home, go to the bar, go to the rent, watch a bunch of games, because a lot of times with games on at the same time, you're missing a lot of stuff. So I've noticed that in a sense.

[42:49] I know with the GameDay and the Big Noon crowd, it's always kind of there because you get a new group of people coming to campus every year. But it feels like fans at the game, that might be a little bit on the decline. And I think fans are more and more apt to be negative on their team. More booing, more fire the coach, more bench this guy. I find a lot more of that these days than I think I did in the past.

[43:27] It was one of the things, LSU always stood out to me. I always thought they were the best fans out there because they were brutally honest about their team. When they were good, they let you know about it and they supported it. But when they were bad, they had their reasons, and those reasons were accurate, and they let you know about it. But it seems like there's just a lot of negative for the sake of being negative right now. I don't know.

No, I think that's reasonable. I think we've noticed that, especially online, and how, you know, fans seem to be.

Social media age.

Yeah.

[44:00] So much. And I know even you talk about my travels, I'm always aware of that. I can think back to the mid- to late-'90s on a College GameDay weekend, where you could go out and you could go to dinner, and then you could go out to The Swamp in Gainesville or the Supper Club or somewhere, and you didn't have to worry about a camera phone. You could enjoy a beverage before going in for an early night and going to work and just kind of hanging. And now you could never do that. You couldn't put yourself in the public space. You wouldn't want that to be out there from a personal standpoint.

[44:44] That's something you always are aware of, that people are going to, whether you have a positive interaction or a negative interaction or experience, or how you respond to people coming up to you, saying hello, do you want a picture? Even if you're having maybe the worst day, you know that I want to be nice to everybody. I want to take pictures with everybody. I want to talk to everybody, not just because I'm concerned about, oh no, if I say no to this person, or I'm going to sleep on a plane and they happen to walk by, but I just want to be good to everybody because I know that without them, there is no me, and there is no traveling show, and there is no sports, and there's nothing else. But just kind of eliminating the bad positions that you put yourself in because of Twitter and Instagram and social media and camera phones right now.

[45:35] Our friend Geoff Schwartz said to 100% ask you about college town food. What is on the new A-list? You've been everywhere. It's been a long time where you've been doing these shows. New places that you've been to in the last, I don't know, three, four, five years. What has made the hair on your head stand up?

[45:58] Well, it's going to be very, very hard to supplant The Smokin Pig at Clemson. It's actually in Pendleton, South Carolina. I know Dreamland gets a lot of love for its barbecue in Alabama, but The Smokin Pig is fantastic. It is the best barbecue that I have had.

If you are going to a road game in Clemson, what's the order?

[46:24] The order is you get, they have a great loaded baked potato mash thing. It's awesome. They've got a great peach cobbler dessert. The pulled chicken, the pulled pork, the brisket, it's all fantastic. Obviously, macaroni and cheese is top notch as well. And yourself a gallon of sweet tea, and you're sticking to the floor as you walk out. So you're good to go there.

[46:57] Sotto Sotto in Atlanta is awesome. I think they call it like the priest strangler pasta. It's ridiculously good, but you can't go wrong. Any of the pastas, they're fantastic. Really, really authentic stuff. It's Sotto Sotto in Atlanta.

I need to pull up a map of the, you should have your own map at this point.

I should have a map. I should have an app. I could be at my own little, like, college towns across the...

Eat with The Bear.

[47:32] Giuseppe's is a really good Italian place in Columbus. That's another good one. The Jeff Ruby barrel-cut filet at Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse, whether you're in Cincinnati or Louisville or Columbus. The barrel-cut filet is the best cut of meat that you're ever going to get. So that is a good go-to.

[47:56] Let me get you out of here on this because I know we both have World Cup on the brain. I know you're into it. Dan and I have been getting into it. I was at the game in Seattle. I'm going to the game in San Francisco. My wife and I fully have the fever. We're fired up.

[48:09] Given your proclivity for all things betting, I'm going to present you with a hypothetical to wrap the show. For a second, and I don't know your betting tolerance, but let's assume you're a real cowboy. All right. Let's assume you're one of those guys that takes everything out of the bank, you take it to Vegas for just one bet. You got your whole life savings, you can put it on a bet. How far are you willing to put your life savings on the United States going in the World Cup?

[48:42] Thirty-two. If we're talking like as a bettor, as a handicapper, as someone who, everyone is getting caught up in World Cup fever right now. Can't you see a possibility where the hype is beyond belief, and we're sitting there playing Bosnia in the round of 32, and it's frigging nil-nil, and we're going to stoppage time and added time?

I mean, you did say you're an under bettor, so you're not necessarily one to buy into the hype, is what I'm detecting here.

[49:21] Yes, correct. They are clearly better than they have been. Way better than what they've been. And Poch is a great manager, and I'm sure he's going to be gone after this. Truth serum, I think they will get to the round of 16. I wouldn't really count on them going much further than that. If you're going to be in the part of the bracket that they're going to be on, they're not going to beat Spain. Quarterfinal, that is as far as they will go. And if they get that far, that is amazing. Like I said before the tournament, round of 16 is what they needed to reach.

Right.

[50:02] And I do think that they will get there because certainly now, it looked like they were going to be drawing Belgium, but now the Belgium...

Yeah, forget about that. Forget about that.

Now you're probably going to be getting Egypt.

You should beat Egypt.

And then in the round of 16. So that's if you get past Bosnia, which you should. You're better than Bosnia.

Yeah, they're down their best player at the moment.

[50:25] Yep. There's going to be a lot of hype, a lot of expectation. It's going to be everyone questioning you now to patting you on the back, and, “Oh, wow, we're going to make a run,” to, “Oh, can we beat Spain?” And, “Oh, we can beat Spain, and then we can beat France, and then we can beat Argentina or England in the final.” That's not happening, but quarterfinals, it's not out of the realm of possibility.

[50:46] See, what I thought you were going to ask me was, like, say you have to make one bet or one type of bet, what would it be?

Okay, what would it be?

And it would be under two and a half in a high-stakes knockout-round game because of that reason. The style of play, teams not wanting to make mistakes. And I actually did make a bet prior to the World Cup. And it might still be out there. I don't know if the numbers moved or the prices moved, but I did bet over four and a half penalty shootouts because you're getting another 16 matches. And in the last go-round, you had five. And I think I laid like 195 or something like that on over four and a half. And I know a lot of places had five and a half, but I would expect that we'd see five knockout-round penalty shootouts for sure.

[51:40] Yeah. Well, you got an extra round. You have more games. I mean, it definitely gives you more bites at the apple.

[51:46] All right, Chris Fallica from Fox Sports, from the Big Noon universe, formerly of the College GameDay universe, the Bear Bets podcast that he does with our good friend Geoff Schwartz. First time on the show. It's been a pleasure. We'll have to have you out sometime soon.

Yeah, let's do it again either as the season gets closer or during the season. Maybe you can have Geoff and my ugly mugs on the show.

Yeah, let's do it.

That'd be great.

I'll throw a Miami hat on. He can throw his hat on. We'll be good to go.

[52:13] Do you also get texts from him at like 6 a.m. in the morning about Oregon football, like he sends to Dan?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. It's not always Oregon football. These days, it's like, “The WNBA is an unserious league.” It's a clip of Caitlin Clark getting called for a technical foul after she gets elbowed in the face. Or it's something to do with one of the social media betting influencers out there. Yeah, like it gives out a bad price that's nonexistent and they win, or it's the ramblings of someone that has nothing to do with it.

[52:50] It's good stuff, but yeah, it's always like 6:30 in the morning. Early. And I get it when I wake up at like 8:30. I don't have two kids to get off to school or camp or whatever else. He's got that to worry about. Me, I'm up late at night watching Jordan and Algeria play into the wee hours in the morning. So I'm up till about 8:30, quarter to nine, and then I'll lay there, “Oh, what's Geoff got to say? Who's Geoff fading today?” All that good stuff.

Awesome. Thanks, Chris.

You got it, guys.

[53:22] All right, Dan, there you go. Chris Fallica, Fox Sports, the Bear Bets podcast. Go and check him out. Make sure you throw him a follow on social media as well.

[53:31] I love talking about experimental stats. That is a thing for me. It's always been a thing for me. Have you ever had that curiosity that I described earlier, where you're watching a game and they pull out some random thing? It's a lot of baseball, to be honest with you. But they pull out this random scenario from the Elias Sports Bureau, and I just wonder to myself, who is in charge of finding this? How are they finding it? There's no way there is a predetermined thing that you can just click on and find what a guy ate before a game in 1935, or what, you know what I mean?

[54:05] Well, baseball is especially good because you get those old names, which is like, “Nobody has tripled in 11 consecutive games since Hopscotch Tillman.” That's right. You know, there's those guys.

Tomato Can Stevenson.

There was an Oil Can Boyd.

Oil Can Boyd, excuse me.

Yeah. But yeah, those are the, you know, Treehouse McGee. So yeah, we don't unfortunately have detailed stats for college football that go back that long a distance. But yes, I think Chris was doing the Aflac trivia stuff, you know, come back from commercial, go into commercial. They'd ask the question and come back, and Kirk would try to guess it. That was always fun.

[54:41] But yeah, the experimental stats, I'm always on board with. That's why I want elevation numbers. That's not even figuratively. I could probably figure that. We have people who listen to us in our Verballerhood, in our Discord, frankly, who I think would be down to help with that.

It can't be, yeah. Like if we were to go back five years, 10 years, and you look at teams covering spreads at home and what the biggest discrepancies are covering home and road, teams that are playing at elevation, that's interesting to me.

[55:10] Do you think if we figured out the delta, the location or the elevation at the location where they are based versus the elevation that they are playing their game at, and then somehow looked at a point differential and how it compares to, you know, I guess you'd have to normalize it somehow. But is that kind of what you're thinking?

[55:32] Yes, absolutely. I just want to know, and I had this conversation with our guest last week. My guest last week on the bonus show, Monte McNair, former president and GM of the Sacramento Kings. He was great, by the way. He was on our bonus show. It was on the plane. That was great. He was talking about how much home-court advantage is worth and different referees. The idea that, okay, normal home-field advantage in college football, let's say it's worth an average of 2.7 points or something like that, but at elevation, it's 3.9. That there is actual data to support it.

[56:09] Because I don't think there's body-blow data to support that theory, even though obviously that's ironclad. And letdown lookahead sandwich, that's all subjective, how you define those games. Elevation's elevation, Ty, which is also interesting when the Mountain West existed in the way that it used to exist because you'd have the West teams not playing at elevation. You know, your San Diego State, I hope San Diego State's not at elevation. But then they would play against, you know, Air Force or Colorado State or something like that. And to see the discrepancy in those home-and-away games, how teams did when they were used to playing at elevation and had to go elsewhere, and vice versa. So, I don't know, Ty. I think there's enough data if you go back enough years.

[56:46] I mean, we're living in a three-dimensional universe, man.

This is true.

I don't know what that means, but it's true.

I mean, it goes up. You got to factor that in.

Yeah, I agree.

[56:56] All right. Well, big thanks to The Bear for stopping on by here. It was a pleasure to have him on the show here. It's been a long time coming. So glad we were able to finally make that work.

[57:05] As I said at the very top, please hit follow or subscribe if you have yet to do so because previews are just around the corner. Got another episode or so before we fully dive in and start getting you ready for the season. But if you've already done that important first step and follow what we do, we would encourage you to leave a review, leave a star rating, tell your friends at a minimum about the show. We are welcoming here in the Verballerhood. All are welcome to stop on by and talk college football with us, Dan.

Definitely.

[57:41] Why don't we leave it there? We will be back, as I said, before long. Make sure you check those feeds. Check our social media channels for updates on when the next episode is going to drop. You and I are doing some travel. We would welcome everybody to stop on by. As I said, SolidVerbal.com is a website if you want to find out more about what we do. For that guy over there, my good friend Dan Rubenstein, for our guest of honor today, Chris Fallica, we'll be back soon. In the meantime, for that guy Dan, for myself Ty, you know the drill: stay solid. Peace.