After 2023, Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh left, and Alabama and Michigan fans worried a lot about assistant coach hires made by their successors. It got Alex thinking: Do national championship head coaches ace their assistant hires out of the gate? What happens when they mess up the important work of filling out a coaching staff? SZD goes through 25 years of history in a quest to figure out if a coach can win a national championship without acing his first test. Production: Anthony Vito.  

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Does a new head coach’s first staff matter?

An independent college football podcast that eats the whole hog. Plus a newsletter. All with Steven Godfrey, Richard Johnson, and Alex Kirshner.  

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In this solo show, Steven Godfrey's trying to figure out why Clemson's O-line can't match its D-line, why BYU was (is?) dirty, if Army/Navy has a Rose Bowl mentality, and how NFL markets affect local college teams. Production: Anthony Vito. Magic Mind: https://magicmind.com/splitzone20    

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Single Wing: Clemson's bottom line, UCF's shopping aisle, and a battle with impostor syndrome

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As a postscript to last week’s newsletter about college football coaches’ golf handicaps, Alex and Richard discuss several football-adjacent golf topics. Has golf supplanted college football as the sport that’s most being harmed by its executive leadership? Is Hugh Freeze really that good? (Trent Dilfer definitely is.) Why is this the preferred offseason hobby of two-thirds of Split Zone Duo? And what, exactly, will happen at this week’s PGA Championship? Handicaps: https://www.splitzoneduo.com/p/college-football-coaches-golf  Production: Anthony Vito.

How golf is college football

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Ohio State played host to one of the most bizarre commencement speeches of all time this month, when alumnus Chris Pan pitched graduates on Bitcoin and attempted to lead the Buckeye crowd in multiple singalongs. D.J. Byrnes writes The Rooster, a newsetter covering Ohio and its politics. Last week, Byrnes’ publication broke the news that Ohio State’s president, Ted “Slapshot” Carter, broke with recommendations from an advisory committee to select Pan. What was happening there, and what does it reveal about the leadership structure bewteen one of the most powerful institutions not just in higher education, but college sports and the entire Midwest? D.J. joins Alex to talk about it.  Read Byrnes' story: https://www.rooster.info/p/ohio-states-drug-fueled-bitcoin-shame

The politics behind Ohio State's ridiculous commencement speech

Welcome to a FREE episode of The Single Wing thanks to our friends at Magic Mind (https://magicmind.com/SPLITZONE20 for 20 percent off). May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so let's talk about anxiety, parenting, and the Jimmy Sexton era of agenting. Plus: UCLA, Kent State, Wyoming, and Pearl Jam.  Production: Anthony Vito.   

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The Single Wing: UCLA's optimism and Kent State math

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It was huge college sports news in 2023 when dozens of athletes at Iowa and Iowa State became the targets of a state investigation into underage sports betting and wagers originating from the two campuses. It was less big news when enormous problems with that investigation came to light and the case started to fall apart. On this episode, Iowa writer and attorney Patrick Vint of Hawkeye State joins Alex to discuss how (and why) Iowa law enforcement made itself into an NCAA investigatory arm, how the NCAA handled the information brought to it, and how we can think about a hugely problematic investigative process that still revealed legitimate issues. Production: Anthony Vito. Read Patrick's feature on the case: https://hawkeyestate.substack.com/p/heads-will-roll

Does a new head coach’s first staff matter?

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