Matt Leinart never got to experience Pac 12 After Dark on a Saturday night, and he now knows he missed out on a lot of fun. But as a former USC quarterback, maybe that’s for the best. The favorite doesn’t often survive the experience with a win, and we’ve seen plenty of ways it can go sideways for ranked teams in night games this season.
The former NFL player, USC alum and Fox college football commentator has plenty of Pac 12 experience, though, and says he’s thrilled by the season’s ups and downs thus far.
Leinart sat down with Uproxx to talk about the wild start to the college football season and make some predictions about what happens in the Big 10 between Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan. He also talks about the difficulties of playing on Thursdays and Fridays, and what’s going on with USC quarterback Sam Darnold.
Uproxx: Last weekend was supposed to, at least on paper, be a quiet weekend in college football. And it turned out the No. 2 team in the country lost to Syracuse and there was all kinds of chaos. Has this season’s wildness surprised you?
Matt Leinart: It never really surprises me, I guess. I think nowadays you can never really be shocked that this is happening because that’s why I think college football is one of the greatest sports in America. I just think it’s so fun because you never know what’s going to happen.
And to your point, I think last week is a perfect example of that. I mean, Top 25 matchups, it was kind of a boring slate. And four top 10 teams lost. And it started earlier in the week and then the whole #Pac12AfterDark, and we cover the Pac 12 at Fox. We see crazy things happen at night time in the Pac 12.
So I think that’s what makes college football so fun to watch. You never know what’s going to happen. Just when you think this team can’t be beat, they get beat.
It’s changed drastically in these first few weeks, but what do you see at the top of the coach’s poll?
I think the race, obviously Alabama is the best team in the country right now. I think no one would argue that. But everybody else, there’s so many good football teams and at this point in mid-October, a lot of these big boys in the top 10, top 15 are all going to start playing each other. And it’s kind of the last man standing at this point so we’ll find out more about teams like Ohio State and Penn State, who play next week.
And Michigan is still alive, all three of those teams play each other in the next three or four weeks. Teams in the Big 12, TCU, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma play each other. So there’s a lot of great games left, and I think to get to your point there’s been so much chaos already. It’s only going to be better.
I think you’re right about Alabama being the clear No. 1. But is there a team that’s going to come out of these next few weeks as an established contender, or at least a solid No. 2? Is it Penn State or another team that hasn’t shown itself yet?
I think the interesting teams for me: Penn State and Ohio State. I think Ohio State had the earlier loss to Oklahoma, and they’ve been rolling ever since. They haven’t played great competition but they’re starting to find their groove. And that was a team on paper where, before the season, I had them in my college football playoff. We’ll find out how much better they are before long.
Now Penn State, who I love, they just really haven’t played anybody. Their toughest game they played on the road against Iowa, which is always tough. But Iowa’s not Ohio State. So that game, which we’ll be at for Fox and we’ll do our show there, that game is going to really sort of put whichever team in the driver’s seat potentially for the College Football Playoff, potentially the Big 10 Championship game. So those are the teams right now that are circling it, because they’re really good and we’ll find out how both of those teams are in that game.
And Miami is interesting, they’re undefeated but I’m not completely sold on them still. Nevertheless they’re winning and that division is not as strong. I think Notre Dame is another interesting one. Notre Dame’s schedule is really , really tough. And if they can win out, wit their only loss being to Georgia, which is a top three team, top four team, Notre Dame could make a strong case.
So there’s a lot of interesting scenarios and nothing is for sure because all of these teams are going to end up beating up on each other and create that great debate but there’s some teams to keep an eye on that maybe lost early but have everything in front of them and are still competing, like TCU or other teams that still have everything in front of them. So it’s going to be an exciting run here.
You’ve gotten to travel around a bit to see some games this season, including heading back to USC for a game. What did you do there?
I was there for Dos Equis. This is Dos Equis’ second year sponsoring the College Football Playoff and obviously my job is covering college football. So they’re basically having a contest with the hashtag #mostinterestingfan where people submit crazy videos via social media, various social media platforms.
Crazy college game day experiences, college football stories. Just anything that is interesting and crazy. And the winner will get a life-sized statue in the College Football Hall of Fame. Which is obviously a big deal. So the crazier, the better. The most interesting. So it could be a crazy tradition you have for your team, something like that.
The winner will will be picked around the National Championship game, and they’ll forever be a part of the Hall of Fame so it’s a really cool deal to get the fans involved.
I’ve seen some of the ads for that. Do you know what the statue is going to be made out of? Granite? Marble? Something like that?
I don’t know what it’s going to be made out of, but it’s going to be a legit statue in the Hall of Fame. It’s the real deal, and I think that alone gives incentive for a lot of people to submit videos. It’s pretty cool, it’s a fun campaign.
The Playoff has changed the way we talk about football, but do you think it changes the way players play and coaches coach? Does it change the way teams schedule their opponents?
Well, yeah. I think the way the college football is set up, the people who are scheduling. The teams that have the weak non-conference schedules are the teams that are suffering. The Big 12 has suffered. TCU suffered a couple of years ago. Baylor. Washington got in last year but they had, I think, maybe the weakest non-conference schedule in all of FCS. And Washington again, they lost this past weekend, but had a weak non-conference schedule.
So I think you’re going to see teams and athletic directors schedule more Power 5 opponents instead of the easy wins. Instead of the easy wins against 1-AA or a non-Power 5 team. That’s why USC always has a tough non-conference schedule. They get Notre Dame every year. They play Texas this year which is a great non-conference win for them. They get Western Michigan, who isn’t Power 5 but won 12-13 games last year.
Oklahoma and Ohio State played. Even though Ohio State lost, that loss can be great for them because they went out and played the top 10, top 5 team in Oklahoma, potentially. So I believe that the way the committee is breaking things down — and again I’m not in there, I’m not sure what’s being said behind those walls or what’s valued more than other things — but I do know the non-conference schedule is an important things and teams have been docked for not having good non-conference schedules.
Saturdays are traditionally the day for college football, but over the last few years we’ve seen conferences embrace other days, mainly for TV reasons. What changes when you play on non-traditional days? Do you think the weirdness creates more upsets like we saw last week?
It really, it is. It happens every week. Whether it’s a Thursday night game or a Friday night game. There’s just something — I never played in those, they really didn’t do that then. But there’s something, it changes your week.
You know, football players, at all levels, they have a routine. In college, you’re going to class, you have your schedule: practice every day, your workout schedule. You travel on a Friday or go to your team hotel. All those things. The routine is the same.
So when your routine changes a little bit it can throw everything off. USC/Washington State is a perfect example. A Friday night game in Pullman, Washington, it kind of has an eerie feel. I loved playing up there: It’s a small stadium, and you know it’s going to be rocking. They have a top team coming in. It’s just, things happen. Football is a game of momentum and when you have the fans and your team’s fired u and all of those weird things happen.
I mean, this past week Clemson/Syracuse. Syracuse is good enough to score some points on Clemson. Dino Babers has done a good job. But it’s a Friday night and you’re going to the Carrier Dome, which fits 50,000 people and they’re passionate. So you think you’re going to beat a team by 30 and you come out kind of flat and that’s when good teams get beat is when they don’t take the other team seriously. Or you’re in an environment that’s really hard to get up for. We’ve talked about it on our show. It’s hard to get motivated sometimes for a game like that.
And the great teams are motivated every week no matter who you schedule. And that’s what you see sometimes. Those games are different. It’s just a different feel and you hope you kind of win, escape and move on. Unfortunately this past week I know a lot of teams didn’t do that.
Do you think the narrative around quarterbacks in college football is toxic? It often seems that projecting quarterbacks as pros is more important than how they play for a team within a system or how they develop overall.
Yeah, I think it is unfair. It’s unfair that — so Sam Darnold went from nobody last year to obviously shining in the Penn State game, which put him on the map in college football. And now it’s “No. 1 pick’ and Heisman and all these things which, really, in three to five months he became the face of college football.
He didn’t ask for that. And, again, you play the sport that’s what happens. You deal with it, and I think this year in the first game Sam Darnold kind of struggled and everyone’s talking about, well, you just get ripped apart if you’re not perfect in every game in the NFL and we’re seeing that in college football.
It’s really hard to be perfect. There’s not anyone out there that’s perfect at anything they’re doing . It takes practice. It takes work. It takes all those things, especially at quarterback with that hype. Sam Darnold is a great kid. He doesn’t want any of it, but obviously he’s a great player.
I do think in a way we are completely over magnifying these young players in these situations at quarterback. It’s the nature of the business. It’s my job, obviously, but it can be unfair at times. The expectations can be very unrealistic at times, but thats kind of the price you pay for having success in this day and age. With social media and technology and all of the scrutiny you face. So it’s tough, but then again that’s what you get for having success.
