Welcome to another episode of Building the Beast.

I am your host, Dave Hellman, and this is a show that needs no introduction.

It is the quarterfinals of the college football playoffs.

Should be scintillating football all day, New Year's Day, as well as New Year's Eve.

Plenty of games to watch.

More importantly, for our purposes,

plenty of prospects to evaluate these four games absolutely loaded with guys who are going to hear

their names called in the 26 NFL draft. So without further ado, let's get to it. Dane Bruegler

and myself breaking down the college football playoff quarters. Let's go.

Well, Dane, it's about to be a new year. It's about to really ramp up in the draft cycle as the 2026 draft comes into, begins to come into focus. And before we dive into this preview show,

can, can you hear that sound? Because I think I hear

the sound of scores of Raiders and Giants and Jets fans, Cardinals fans, maybe even Chiefs fans, oddly enough,

downloading our show as they start to get ready for the draft that perhaps they

weren't paying as close attention to in September or October.

The frequency of tweets and downloads and all that kind of, it starts to ramp up this time

either.

There's no question about that.

And, you know, it's a fun part of the year because the draft order is coming into focus.

You know, who's going to have the number one overall pick?

Certainly it looks like the Raiders are dead set on getting, getting that number one overall

pick, which, you know, we've talked about a long time, probably Fernando Mendoza, the favorite to be that pick. But then after that, we, it's still plenty is up in the air, as Dante Morgan, declare, is how, you know, who's going to be the first non-quarterback drafted? And so there's a lot that we're going to figure out here the next few months. But I think there's a lot we're going to learn from these,

especially this,

...