Follow The Money | September 4, 2026 | Hour 2

**Andy Staples** (0:02)
That's what I always say, you always follow the money. This is Follow The Money with Mitch Moss and Polly Howard on VSiN.

**Mitch Moss** (0:10)
Thanks for watching, as always, on YouTube TV. Listening now on SiriusXM Channel 189, iHeartRadio, TuneIn Radio, or any of our great affiliates across the country, Mitch and Femi today, live in Vegas, Circa Resort and Casino in 15 minutes. Do you concur? 30 minutes, Best Bets, Greg Peterson in Major League Baseball. And we'll get back to some college football, which is where we begin the hour on tap. Week one upon us, Andy Staples joins the program, does a great job covering this with on3.com, the On3 Sports channel on YouTube as well, on the Progressive Guest Line. Hey, Andy, thanks for the time today. How are you?

**Andy Staples** (0:45)
How's it going?

**Mitch Moss** (0:46)
Really well. What's the deal? You a little busy, maybe, with all this nonsense going on still in the... So where are we at as of this minute with LSU potentially playing guys who were in the pros not that long ago?

**Andy Staples** (0:59)
We're just waiting to see if they're gonna submit them on the roster, if they're gonna be on the roster when they submit the 105-man roster.
And we don't know the answer to that, because everybody's pressing every button they can press, whether it's the judge in Louisiana yesterday saying, hey, I may hold LSU in contempt if they don't put these guys on the roster. And the SEC filing a lawsuit in federal court saying, hey, if you do this, and the federal court says, we're allowed to uphold our rules, you could be down for some serious penalties. So I just, I still don't quite understand if the juice is worth the squeeze with these particular players. I mean, these are guys that didn't make NFL rosters, like LSU has a lot of players who are going to make NFL rosters. So we're talking about backups here. And I just don't know if it's worth it.

**Mitch Moss** (1:49)
So they would, like in our world, they're not good enough to mean anything for the point spread obviously, or the total.

**Andy Staples** (1:56)
No, Daquan Wright playing for LSU is not going to affect the point spread of the total one bit. I mean, trade as green is LSU starting tight end. Now, I guess you could say if you want to move trade as to receiver and just make him a really big receiver and Daquan Wright plays the more traditional tight end roll, that's fine. It changes the offense a bit.
Probably makes them a little different to defend. But I don't think it would meaningfully change the point spread. I mean, it's 10 and a half right now, I think LSU is favored. That's probably what it would be whether he plays or not.

**Mitch Moss** (2:26)
And by the way, in general, when you compare these two rosters, don't we think like this number is at least justified? And you can see an angle here where LSU is just so much better than what Dabo has to work with now at Clemson, that LSU does cover this number.

**Andy Staples** (2:40)
It's crazy.
I just think also that Lane Kiffin is a better coach in 2026 than Dabo Sweeney is. Because Brian Kelly beat Dabo Sweeney last year and Dabo had nine draft picks and I believe seven of them went in the first three rounds. So Clemson's got other issues besides talent. Like they've got to be able to figure out how to put the talent they have in the right position. And you know, they've got a quarterback situation where they name Christopher Vazina the starter. But if you go back to Dabo Sweeney's press conference, he doesn't sound real sure that the Vazina is necessarily the guy. He basically said the freshman Taint Reynolds almost took it and then had a couple of disastrous practices and that's that's Dabo's word. I'm using disastrous, but I got the sense listening to him that if they're slow starting offensively, we could see Tate Reynolds pretty quick.

**Femi Abebefe** (3:30)
So how do you compare with what's going on at LSU with what just broke about 30 minutes ago with Indiana where Daley and Wyatt, it sounds like they're coming back, two guys from that national title winning team. What does that mean for the Hoosiers this year? It's where it feels like people have kind of just said, okay, Indiana did it great, but they're not going to do it again. Where do you put the Hoosiers in the national title?

**Andy Staples** (3:50)
Those people didn't pay any attention. I mean, even without these guys, Indiana was going to be a favorite to make the playoff and a favorite to go deep in the playoff. But this helps a lot. And so these guys are not in the same boat as say Daquan Ryder's Avian Harris in the LSU situation because they did not ever sign an NFL contract. They may have been in some mini camp tryouts, but they didn't actually get signed and go into a camp. So the big 10 has said they're fine to play. They're gonna play. And the thing is Indiana was already pretty stacked.