Cashing Out | September 8, 2026 | Hour 3

Dustin Swedelson (0:01)

Trying to turn the page over from week one to week two in College Football, but we can't do it without talking to our next guest, because I want to figure out what lessons we learned, where we're at with this situation in College Football. It's a learning experience for all of us. The game has completely changed. Favorites were dominating week one. Will that trend continue to help us break that all down? We're going out to the Progressive Guest Line, welcoming in our buddy Coach Big, Zach Bigelow, at Coach Big CFB on X College Football Handicapper. More importantly, former College Football coach, maybe one day on the sidelines again. He joins us here on Cashing Out in his weekly spot. What's up, buddy? How we feeling as we're now week zero in the books, week one in the books. And I don't know if we know anything more now than we did two weeks ago. What do you think about that?

Zach Bigelow (0:50)

Yeah, when everybody just schedules cupcakes week zero, week one, right? You're just like going through PFF grades and advanced analytics and you're trying to take something away from it. And you're like, yeah, when you played Northern Illinois or firm and like, how much can I really lean into these stats? So still really leaning heavily on what we wrote down in our preseason notes when we had three months of work to do it. But I'm remembering the hustle of when we finished the UCLA Cal game on Saturday night and what I did for week zero, week one in three months, we got to cream it in to three days. But that's why we love it, right? We're not sleeping until the National Championship is done.

Dustin Swedelson (1:22)

No, but the one thing we need, and shout out to David Bennett, former Coastal Carolina coach, we need more dogs. We can't have these favorites just running amok on College Football. Favorites dominated. Other than that, what did we learn? Do we learn something within that with the favorites dominating in week one? But where are you at with two weeks of data?

Where is your knowledge gained in the College Football season?

Zach Bigelow (1:46)

I think something I really took away is when adapter die, right? We are in the portal era and you saw more than ever in the LSU Clemson game, right? Dabo, you can fight against it as hard as long as you want, but it'll be the end of you or you'll figure it out because on the other end of it, the portal king, Tiger King, came in and shows you what happens when you don't take advantage of it. And I think we think sometimes with the portal, the parity could potentially exist because we think of more teams that could potentially win a national championship, right? And when the SEC is not sneakily paying for players and everybody can, all of a sudden there's seven, eight teams that can win it. But when you look at it, those seven and eight teams become even stronger than ever, right? And these guys just absolutely can't handle and hang with them. I think about the USC Fresno State games or Miami going in Stanford, right? Those guys could have called their numbers and they still covered really big numbers that were hung on there because it was just that easy for them. If they would have gone pedal down, it would have been even worse, right? And the moms of those kids in those programs wouldn't have been able to sleep at night. So unfortunately, I think that the heavy favorites and the ones that have it and the one that get to whatever they want under the portal, they just get stronger. And that middle class becomes really interesting. And when you can find your edges, that's one of the biggest take aways that I had is, yeah, but I felt like there'd be more parodies because more teams can win the national championships. It's just those national champion contenders and then everybody else.

Dustin Swedelson (3:05)

Yeah, that's probably the best way to sum it up. There is a huge gap between the haves and have nots. The haves have never had more, the have nots have never had less. Trying to do more with less. Zach Bigelow is our guest at Coach Big CFB on X. I really encourage you to mess around with some of the links he has on his social media page. You go to his website. You can do the match up deal where you can take any two teams in college football and see how they match up. He's got a million categories for you there. The information is absolutely off the charts. With that, let's start looking at some of your plays for the upcoming week in college football. And we start with UCLA. That was one I think we were both on. Taken down California on the road in Berkeley. Now they host San Diego State, their home opener. This one I'm seeing opening at 10 1⁄2.