This is an IHeart podcast.

And just like that, we're back.

Another edition of the Late Kick Extra podcast, Thursday, July 15th,

year of Our Lord,

2021. I cannot believe how loaded the mailback is. Our numbers, as I have told you, are through the roof. Well, now the mailback volumes through the roof too. I'm looking at our sheet in front of me. To be honest with you, I have no clue how we're going to get through all this, but we're going to try. I'm going to do the same format I did the other day, which I got good feedback on, and that is dive right into a question and then mix up the housekeeping notes throughout. So Gage is going to start us off today. He says, how would you feel about getting rid of preseason rankings, wait until, say, week six or seven or eight, and then rank the teams based on what they've done to that point. Would this negate overrated wins, improve mid-season talking points, etc.?

What are your thoughts?

Well, Gage, we already do that.

You may say, that's not true.

I see preseason rankings all over the place.

They don't matter, though.

They mean what you let them mean.

And what I mean by that is our postseason formula is different now.

It used to be that AP decided the national championship. I mean, Associated Press voters decided.

And so it very much mattered what preseason rankings were. Now it's the playoff committee.

Now, if you want to argue with me, yeah, but all the preseason and early season

narratives and talking points impact their thinking, that's a separate discussion. You may

very well be right there. But what I'm saying is technically what ESPN.com says or what 247

Sports.com says in week two or week four, it technically has no bearing. So my whole take on this has always

been, how do you stop preseason rankings? What is the official body out there that ranks

college football? Are we talking about the AP? Because we got a million different subsets and we got

a million different websites out there and Twitter accounts that are going to do it regardless.

So here's the way to handle this. Each individual listening, if you're driving around in Frankfurt, Kentucky this morning or Tallahassee, Florida, you just decide for yourself what it means. If you highly value, then you just check out every set of rankings you can get your hands on. If you don't, then ignore them totally. But I think that right now you've got the happy medium. I would guess, I mean, for those of you who don't care about the rankings, good, that's not what the actual postseason apparatus is tied to. It's tied to a committee and that committee does not release its first batch of rankings until two-thirds of the way through the season. And if you are into rankings, good, The media subculture out there can still give you

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