Welcome to the latest episode of the Shamrock, our second Ohio State preview edition.

My trusted colleague Matt Fortuna is not with me from Chicago, who's somewhere on I-65 driving to West Lafayette for Penn State Purdue tonight.

So Ralph Russo, kind enough to join us. I think it's definitely a, if I come on your podcast, you have to come on mine situation.

Yeah, a little home and away situation. I always like to say, like I have, I tend to have so many guests on the AP Top 25

college football podcast. There's my plug from the athletic. I feel like sometimes we are a

satellite podcast for the athletic between, I literally make a concerted effort not to put your colleagues on, you and your colleagues on too much because I figure like you all have your own podcast and people hear from you all enough.

A lot of talking. We've got a lot of talking about college football at the athletic.

Ralph, you were in South Bend this week, spent a little time with Marcus Freeman, spent a little time with Jack Swarbrick.

Now you're in Columbus, despite some of the art behind you in this guest room that you are,

where I see a photo of Touchdown Jesus back there.

So Notre Dame always never far from you, even probably in Brooklyn where you live.

So I was interested first about your conversation with Swerberg.

You had a story on the AP, which I would encourage people to read because I don't think

Swarbrick has talked a whole lot on the record about sort of some of the craziness with

conference realignment and Notre Names to Dependence.

What did you take away from that conversation?

I don't know if there was anything necessarily new,

but it kind of affirmed what we kind of thought his position would be.

Yeah, Jack definitely didn't commit any real news.

But he, you know, I thought it was interesting.

It was the top of the story.

So clearly it was the most interesting thing to me, right?

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