Tony Petitti’s Playoff Pitch and an ACC Vibe Check
The Solid Verbal College Football
iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we react to Tony Petitti’s public push for a 24-team College Football Playoff and try to sort through what it actually means for the sport. Is expansion really about access, regular-season stakes, and rewarding more teams, or is it mostly about television inventory, conference leverage, and the ongoing ESPN vs. Fox tug-of-war? We also talk through why the SEC’s preference for 16 teams suddenly puts some fans in the strange position of... rooting for Greg Sankey.
Then it’s time for an ACC vibe check, as we take a look at the conference before full preview season kicks into gear. Miami looks like the league’s clearest headliner, but after that, things get messy fast. We work through the conference’s biggest connective tissues, including offensive line questions, thin receiver rooms, quarterback uncertainty, Cal’s wide range of outcomes, Louisville’s favorable path, Georgia Tech’s possible regression, and whether Virginia Tech or NC State could turn into a surprise playoff-adjacent story.
Also included: Slices 'N Steps in NYC, illegal-streaming hypotheticals, Chili’s corn nostalgia, and the beginning of what may become a fully realized ACC-as-abandoned-mall taxonomy.
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Timecodes:
0:00 - Intro & Slices 'N Steps in NYC
6:38 - Tony Petitti's 24-Team CFP Plan
31:07 - The Vibrant ACC Mall
38:00 - The Cal Factor
45:20 - The Case for Syracuse
52:07 - The Case Against Georgia Tech
59:48 - Miami's Heisman Elimination Game
1:07:49 - Virginia Tech's CFP Chances
1:12:41 - The Surprise Orange Julius
1:17:05 - Mapping Out The ACC Mall
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:06.3 | Welcome to the solid verbal. |
| 0:08.1 | The solid verbal. |
| 0:09.1 | Come after me. |
| 0:10.8 | I'm a man. |
| 0:11.8 | I'm 40. |
| 0:12.6 | I've heard so many players say, well, I want to be happy. |
| 0:15.1 | You want to be happy for a day? |
| 0:16.7 | Eat a steak. |
| 0:17.6 | It's that woo-woo. |
| 0:19.2 | And now, down and tie. |
| 0:22.7 | Dan Rubinstein, welcome back to the show, my friend. |
| 0:25.7 | We just saw each other a few days ago. |
| 0:28.3 | It's true. |
| 0:28.9 | We had a good time, a good brief time in New York as we, I mean, I couldn't try and put any sort of lipstick on like strategizing for the fall. |
| 0:40.2 | Strategizing. |
| 0:41.1 | I don't know. |
| 0:41.9 | We just stare at walls and basements all day and it's good to see humans, right? |
| 0:46.2 | That we either work with or just each other. |
| 0:49.1 | And it was good to be in New York. |
| 0:50.7 | It was like summer in New York, which was very nice. |
... |
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