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The Audible with Stew, Bruce & Ralph: A show about college football

How competitive is the Big 12 five years after losing Texas and Oklahoma?

The Audible with Stew, Bruce & Ralph: A show about college football

The Athletic

Football, Cfb, College Football, News, Sports News, Sec, Big Ten, Sports

4.41.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this packed episode, Bruce and Ralph sit down with The Athletic’s David Ubben to unpack his mind-blowing feature story on Ron Weaver (aka Ron McKelvey). In 1995, a 30-year-old former community college coach stole a social security number, completely recreated his identity, and lined up as a defensive back for the Texas Longhorns—nearly getting away with it all until a sudden unraveling 12 hours before the Sugar Bowl. We dive into the psychology, the close calls, and how a grown man managed to hide in plain sight from coaching legends and future NFL draft picks.


But that’s not all. We are also tackling the massive officiating philosophical divide triggered by the recent Folarin Balogun incident: is it better to preserve the integrity of the game by fixing an official's error, or do we destroy sports by ignoring consistent protocol? Stew, Bruce and Ralph discuss how this topic relates to today’s college football environment.


Finally, we hit the gridiron to check the pulse of the Big 12. Five years after the seismic departures of Texas and Oklahoma, we evaluate the financial and competitive health of the conference. Can Texas Tech pull off a historic back-to-back championship run, or is another dark horse ready to claim the crown?


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the Audible, presented by Trader Joe's.

0:11.4

I'm Ralph Russo from The Athletic, joined today by both of my colleagues.

0:16.0

Yes, we are all on the show today, but we're not all on all of the show today.

0:21.2

Bruce Feldman is here.

0:22.6

He's on the road.

0:23.9

Stuart Mandel is here.

0:25.5

He's in his home office.

0:28.0

Guys, it's so good to have all of us here.

0:32.4

We are on the show today.

0:34.2

We are going to get to some Big 12 talk.

0:36.6

It is Big 12 media days this week. Media

0:39.1

days are starting. Oh my God. That means the offseason is basically over. And I'm not really

0:44.4

ready for that. So we're going to talk about the Big 12 five years after Texas and Oklahoma left

0:50.1

and where the state of it is now and some interesting things going into media days. We are going to

0:54.1

talk to our colleague David Ubin, who wrote this really interesting story

0:59.1

about a former Texas football player who is a 30-year-old junior college coach.

1:06.4

Yes, David Ubin will explain later in the show.

1:10.9

But first, before we get into the football of it all,

1:14.6

we were going to talk about some football, some other football.

1:17.0

The World Cup has been awesome.

1:19.0

I'm not a soccer fan, but I've really enjoyed it.

1:21.6

Personally, I just enjoy sporting events at odd times of the day.

...

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