Ari Wasserman on Playoff Head-Scratchers
The Audible with Stew, Bruce & Ralph: A show about college football
The Athletic
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The first College Football Playoff rankings sparked immediate controversy, so who better to bring on to discuss it than Ari Wasserman from On3?
Is the committee leaning too heavily on both vibes and advanced metrics, over actual results? And if the rankings are out of whack, will they correct themselves by the end of the season?
They also look at the best available coaching jobs, debate Auburn's ceiling, discuss why Florida has been a graveyard for coaches, and dive into Ari's biggest pet peeve.
Plus, mailbag tackles Ralph’s playoff prediction formula, whether Florida State's win over Alabama actually hurt Mike Norvell's expectations, and why Kurt Cignetti didn't get a power conference job until his 60s.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Audible, presented by Trader Joe's. |
| 0:13.8 | I'm Ralph Russo from The Athletic, joined by my colleague Bruce Feldman and by my friend my friend of me, never quite co-worker, but a dear, |
| 0:28.6 | a dear person in my heart. Ari Wasson. Just a just just just a person I really I love and |
| 0:36.2 | admire Ari Wasserman today joins us. |
| 0:40.1 | He is from On 3. |
| 0:41.3 | He is from the Andy and Ari show. |
| 0:43.3 | You can hear that every freaking day. |
| 0:46.0 | They do podcasts pretty much every day. |
| 0:47.9 | If there's a day during the college football season, |
| 0:50.0 | most likely you can catch a podcast with Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman. Ari, thanks for filling in for |
| 0:57.1 | Stu today. Thanks for joining us. It's great to have you here. Thanks for having me. I always enjoy |
| 1:05.0 | being near you guys. You guys are the best. I do want to put on record, though, that ever since I have been |
| 1:10.3 | banned in the Audible by Stuart Mandel, I have made multiple appearances and he has never been on the show. |
| 1:16.4 | So until I see his face on this show with me, I'm still going to assume that I'm banned in his |
| 1:23.5 | mind. Technically, you can see his face, Ari, because somewhere in the graphics, there's a artist |
| 1:28.3 | rendering of Stu that will have to suffice because as best we can tell, there's a reason why |
| 1:35.8 | you can't be together on this format. But we're glad we can have you on the podcast. I'm happy to be |
| 1:43.2 | here, and I can't wait to get into it because Ralph is a listener of our show |
| 1:46.3 | and I hear his thoughts every day right on my text phone screen. |
| 1:50.6 | So it's good to actually be able to talk to you and converse and talk through some of this stuff. |
| 1:55.2 | But I thought last night's playoff reveal was interesting. |
| 2:17.5 | I'm just going to have you go. And frankly, I'm going to sit out a little bit, frankly, because Bruce, they, people heard from me last night and they heard from Stu last night. Bruce, you weren't on the show to talk about the playoff rankings. I know, Ari, you had your own platform, but we're going to bring you new to our audience. So I'm going to sort of tee up Bruce a little bit to tee you up, Ari, about |
... |
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