Brian to take us home here on the Irish Breakdown podcast brought brought to you by our friends over at Fanduil.

We've already talked about programs that are ascending.

We've talked about programs that are kind of on the dissension.

Now we're going to talk about some of the programs that they kind of enter a prove-it year.

And this is a very interesting conversation.

We're going to do exactly what we did in the previous segments. We're talking ACC, Big 12, Big 10 in the SEC. But these are some teams. The list is a little bit more lengthy. So we'll work through these a little bit more quickly. But these are teams that can't really file in either bucket, but they enter a very pivotal year in 2026. And when we start talking about the ACC,

I think a team that we have to start here with is SMU, Brian,

a team that's also on Notre Dame schedule this year.

I believe they play them on Senior Day,

which I think is a very entertaining matchup for Senior Day.

Sorry, sidebar, but compared to some of the other opponents that they played on Senior Day,

very intriguing matchup.

But you look at SMU, they went 11 and 3 and played for the conference title in 2024,

made the college football playoffs as an at large.

That's how good of a football team they were.

Now, unfortunately, they had a bad exit.

We remember how ugly of a football game that was.

They played in Happy Valley against Penn State. Then it took them midway until the 2025 season to shake that loss. They turned things around. But now is that completely behind them? Can they be back to an ACC title contender in 2026? I think that's what's at stake here. That a very weird year.

So, I mean, look, he's had three good seasons in a row, back-to-back-back-11 win seasons. Now, of course, one of those was in the American Conference. So, like, okay, can you continue that now that you're a Power 4 team? And he did that two years ago in the ACC Trev. you know, won 11 games his first year, you know,

played in the ACC championship game,

had some big wins that year.

And then you come out and, like you said,

...