November 04, 2025

Oct. 28: Unpacking Bison beatdown & SDSU moving forward, USD on the brink, DeBoer dodging defeat, Wentz the Warrior, HSFB Playoffs, Halloween in your 40's

1 hour 9 minutes

NOTICE: This weekly show is now part of the "Happy Hour with John Gaskins" daily podcast, which you can find at SiouxFallsLive.com, MidwestSportsPlus.com, and most podcast platforms like the one you find here! So, if you enjoy the topics Matt & John cover, you'll get those topics, plus relevant local guests, every Monday through Thursday on Happy Hour... so we highly recommend you check that out!

You can see it in the changing color of the leaves, and then how quickly they are falling off the trees. You can feel it in the chill of the air in the mornings, evenings, and sometimes all day. As November — which for those of us up here in the north means early winter — nears, the weather and ever-shedding trees represent the cold, harsh reality of winter drawing near, and the cold, harsh reality of some football teams' goals slipping away. South Dakota State no longer looks like a national title contender, at least in the health they are in. North Dakota State exposed that. South Dakota not only no longer looks like a national title contender they were projected to be by most FCS experts in the preseason, the Coyotes look less and less like even an FCS playoffs team. Their failure to score more than 20 points in all but three of nine games exposed that. But that's how things look now. Both the Jackrabbits and Coytes have November to change those narratives — four regulasr seaosn games each to flip the script. The margin of error is slimmer for both. The depth of both teams is thinning, too (as injuries tend to smother all teams at all levels by this time of year). On a cold day requiring flannel for John Gaskins and a hooded sweatshirt for Matt Zimmer, the two "Nobody's Listening Anyway" hosts require just a tiny extra dose of alcoholic nourishment to adjust to the temperatures and impending winter, not to mention to digest and unpack both what the SDSU and USD seasons have become and still could be. The cold, harsh reality of the Jacks is the kind of players that led them to national titles in 2022 and '23 — Mark Gronowski, Tucker Kraft, Isaiah Davis, Pierre Strong, the Janke twins, and a host of pro-level 605 Hogs and defenders — are not walking through that door, and the injuries of Chase Mason, Lofton O'Groske and Chase Van Tol made winning an MVFC of national title even harder.
But, does that mean the Jacks' chances of accomplishing something special with a brand new coaching staff and mostly-turned-over roster are toast? The cold, harsh reality of the Yotes is they struggle to score points, which makes it hard to win games against teams that aren't the worst in the Missouri Valley Football Conference. Presumably, USD must beat three consecutive top-tier league teams to reach the playoffs. But does that mean we can stick a fork in the chances of a third consecutive postseason berth in Vermillion? Fire up the Budweiser and add a shot of Rumple Minze. There's a lot of brutal reality football to talk about, and that includes the latest bumpy ride Kalen DeBoer's Alabama took in the SEC, the make-you-hurl Brian Kelly experience at LSU that is mercifully over, and the broader conversation of all these major college teams sending their head coaches packing — with suitcases full of dozens of millions of dollars in buyout money — before the leaves start falling. Zim and John cover all that, plus the surest sign that autumn is ending: The World Series, state football playoffs, and Halloween. Is Shohei Ohtani already the greatest baseball player of all time? Are Brandon Valley and Lincoln on a collision course for back-to-back meetings in the Dakota Dome in Mid-November? Should an almost 50-year-old man still be dressing up for Halloween? You'll hear the answers, but spoiler alert — like the local college football discussions, it's complicated.

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