The Solid Verbal College Football

College football Week 1 is finally here, but before we dive into our full preview and picks later this week, we're looking at the bigger questions that could start shaping the season as soon as the games kick off. Which performances should actually make us feel better about a contender, and what would qualify as an early warning sign even with all the usual disclaimers about overreacting in September?
We start with Keelon Russell taking over at Alabama, then work through some of the most interesting new looks around the country. How quickly can Lane Kiffin put LSU together after an aggressive offseason? What should we be watching from Oregon's new coordinators? Can Darian Mensah immediately unlock another level for Miami, and just how much is riding on DJ Lagway working out at Baylor? We also dig into Notre Dame's revamped collection of skill players and what Wisconsin might be able to tell us about a team with national championship aspirations.
Plus, Dan ingests alarming amount of cold brew, we identify a few under-the-radar Week 1 hinge points and somehow end up discussing the appropriate hair-dye threshold for independent podcasters.
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College football is officially back, and Week 0 gave us plenty to chew on before the season really gets rolling. We start with North Carolina getting some revenge on TCU in Ireland, then turn to Virginia's emphatic win over NC State and a huge opening performance from Beau Pribula. How much should we believe after one game, and which results actually changed the way we see these teams?
From there, we work through USC's somewhat misleading final score against San Jose State, Florida State's uneven opener against New Mexico State and a late-night Memphis-UNLV game that may have made the Group of Six playoff race a little more interesting. We also discuss Stanford's dramatic finish against Hawaii and the very different FBS welcome parties for North Dakota State and Sacramento State.
Plus, the return of college football meant the debut of some noticeable changes to the TV experience. We review ESPN's post-BottomLine world, the new on-screen indicator showing which announcer is speaking, a pronunciation controversy involving Beau Pribula and one moment of sweet Eastern Pennsylvania vindication.
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Support the show!: https://www.patreon.com/solidverbal
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College football is finally back! In this episode, we get ready for the first Saturday of the 2026 season with our full Week 0 preview and picks, starting with TCU and North Carolina in Ireland and working through all eight games on the slate. Which teams can we actually trust right out of the gate, which new quarterbacks and coordinators are worth watching, and could Week 0 give us a few games that matter much more than they initially appear?
We dig into the first game action for USC and Florida State, disagree on NC State-Virginia, welcome North Dakota State and Sacramento State to the FBS ranks and try to make sense of Stanford-Hawaii before closing with a Memphis-UNLV game that could have bigger postseason implications than most people realize. Along the way, we drop our score predictions, identify a potential upset and play a few sound effects to get you ready for gameday.
Before the games, we also catch up on the latest college football news, including a wave of quarterback decisions, the increasingly bizarre eligibility fight over players trying to return from the NFL, another Lane Kiffin-related circus and ESPN making a notable change to its college football broadcasts. The season is here, Verballers!
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Support the show!: https://www.patreon.com/solidverbal
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College football is finally here, which means there’s only one piece of preseason business left: putting our predictions on the record. In this episode, we each build a complete 12-team College Football Playoff field, debate the teams that just missed the cut, seed the bracket and play the whole thing forward through the national championship.
Along the way, we wrestle with some of the biggest questions surrounding the 2026 season. How many SEC teams can survive the league’s new nine-game schedule? Does the Big Ten get a fourth team? Can the Big 12 produce multiple playoff teams? And which Group of Five contender makes it through a particularly messy race for the automatic bid? There are also some aggressive calls involving Alabama, Houston, New Mexico, Notre Dame and several teams sitting right on the postseason bubble.
We work through potential first-round games, playoff paths and semifinal matchups before putting our national championship predictions on the record. Some picks felt safer than others, a few are almost guaranteed to come back and haunt us, and somehow we independently landed in exactly the same place at the very end.
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Support the show!: https://www.patreon.com/solidverbal
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Fantasy Things is back! In our annual celebration of everything strange, stupid and uniquely college football, we draft the moments, tropes, broadcast oddities and completely unforeseen bits of nonsense we want on our team for the 2026 season. We’re not picking players or predicting champions. We’re trying to anticipate the stuff that makes you stop on a Saturday afternoon and think, “Of course this is happening in college football.”
This year’s board gets weird quickly. We get into coaches behaving strangely, broadcasts going off the rails, new ways technology could make the sport even more ridiculous, and a few very specific scenarios that feel just plausible enough to happen. There are also some long-shot “penny stocks” at the end, including a handful of ideas that are probably terrible bets but would be incredible if they somehow hit.
Support the show by signing up at Verballers.com.
Support the show!: https://www.patreon.com/solidverbal
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.