Week 6 Upset Alerts + Commissioner’s Poll Top 25

Josh Pate (0:13)

Super Bowl week continues, Jesse. For me, Super Bowl week continues. You got some of the biggest games in the country of the season. Overlapping with a landfall and hurricane, which I don't want to make light of. We got a ton of viewers down on the Gulf Coast. Please be prepared. Please be safe. Strictly as it relates to the Alabama-Georgia game, though, did you see what they did to me this morning on Get Up? They brought Ginger Z over from the Good Morning America set, and Greenie just boxed me and her up, and we talked weather on live television, Jesse, for the world to see. It gets no better. Playoffs, National Championship. This has been it for me. We're jam-packed high atop a splendid downtown Nashville, Tennessee on this Thursday, October 8th, the year of our Lord, 2026, upset alert meter. Got six games, got half a dozen of them. A good old-fashioned six-pack of upset, at least potential, that we're going to talk about momentarily. I got a new Commissioner's Poll out. You know, that differs significantly from the JP Poll. Some say change the name. I say, ha ha ha, nah, I'm good. Viewer's Guide, future award-winning Viewer's Guide, later in the show. And as some of you accurately pointed out the other night, why didn't you talk about UCLA, Oregon? How come you didn't break down, oh, I don't know, Texas A&M, Missouri, LSU, Kentucky, because God gave us a Thursday show to do that. So we split some of the predictions up into this show, so we're going to hit a lot of it tonight. Needless to say, we're jam-packed. College football season, almost halfway through. Hendersonville, Tennessee is tuned in. Florence, South Carolina, Littleton, Colorado, Decatur, Illinois. Thank you so much. Jessie reliably informs me that the staff is efforting our live subscriber monitor, so it'll be up soon. In the meantime, you need to trust me when I tell you we are rapidly, paper-paper stat, rapidly approaching 600,000 subscribers, which means nothing to you, but it means the world to us. So thank you if you've already subscribed, and please do so if you have not. There is no catch. It doesn't sign you up for anything. We just think it looks really cool when we have 600,000 subs because we've never had 600K before and we could soon. Okay, let's dive into the show.

Thursdays around here mean upset alerts, and I'm going to rate them all on a 1 to 10 scale of concern that I have. South Carolina is going to Florida. This line was 14 and a half, and then it was 13 and a half, and now wouldn't you know it over at FanDuel. I'm looking at the monitor right now. Does that say Florida minus 11 and a half, Jesse? Someone smells something here. Well, I'm going to put a six on this game. I'm not ready to call for the upset because South Carolina doesn't beat SEC teams anymore. They've lost 10 of their last 11, so I'm not ready to do that. But I am ready to point out some facts. And then you can do with these facts whatever you want to. Can Florida run the ball?

Well, in general, yeah, they can't. Last week, no, they couldn't. They had 25 carriers for 42 yards against Missouri. You may think to yourself, okay, that's Missouri though. Missouri is a top 25 team. South Carolina sucks. Yeah, well, their record does. They are a top 30 run defense.

They can actually halfway decently limit you on the ground. Now, if Jaden Voss texted and John Somerall saying, I don't care about that, well, that's out of my control. Florida may run it for 200 this weekend. All I'm saying is this is not a porous run defense. And then on the other side, South Carolina rather can run the ball fairly effectively. Missouri ran it all over Florida. And South Carolina's got the number seven rushing attack in the country. Florida also, the number 128 pass defense in the country. And that's really where the question is. The question is, does that matter? Can this South Carolina passing attack take advantage of much of anything right now? Remains to be seen. That's why this number is minus 11 and a half instead of minus five and a half or six and a half. I'm gonna put a six on this one because South Carolina can take advantage of some of those statistical opportunities. It could be a four quarter game. Of course, you know as well as I do, it doesn't even matter if South Carolina gets up big right now. They're just up big to give it away. And I'm speaking hurtfully, but that's only because I want to see them thrive in Coctober and right now it's just not happening. Next up, this is a small spread obviously, but I thought we should throw it in because we didn't touch on this game Tuesday. Wake Forest is a three and a half point favorite at NC State. There's a trap mentally that college football will put you in sometimes where when you see something happen early in the year, especially if it's a bad thing, you kind of freeze that in your mind and then you don't watch that team again. So with NC State, what did you see early? Well, you saw him get drug by Virginia, and then you didn't watch the Richmond game. So a couple of weekends later, you're like, all right, I'll give them another shot. They're going to Vanderbilt. The last play of the game is the most insane thing you've ever seen in your life. So NC State has started one and two, and you haven't watched them since then in all likelihood. Well, I'm here to inform you, they got by App State, they beat Louisville last week, and now they go, well they're at home, Wake Forest comes in, minus three and a half, Jake Dickard is 13 and five so far at Wake Forest. Gio Lopez, man, you want to talk about the Jake Dickard effect and the Wake Forest effect. Look at our guy at North Carolina last year, and look at the quarterback play this year at Wake Forest. Coaching matters, not that I'm questioning Belichick as a coach, but surroundings matter, environment matters. So Wake Forest, 107th in the country, and pass yards per game allowed. The reason I'm putting an 8 on the Upset Alert Concern Meter here, which wouldn't be a huge upset, line's 3.5, I'll grant you that, but the reason is CJ Bailey is coming off a career high in passing yards. I don't want to alarm anyone, but NC State's got a decent shot here to win a conference game.