Geoff Schwartz, SiriusXM radio host & FOX Sports broadcaster, tells McElroy & Cubelic what the new teams mean to the Big Ten & how the number of QBs at Big Ten Media Days is telling of the league
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McElroy and Kubelik in the morning starts now. All right, welcome back in. McElroy and Kubelik in the morning. Appreciate you guys tuning in. 735 right here on JOX 94.5. Talk some Big Ten media days here in just a moment. First thing about our friends at Wayne's. Mosquito protection, you got to have it. That Mosquito Plus from Wayne's.

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Every new pest control service receives that Wayne's fire ant treatment absolutely free. 866-WAYNES-1 or visit callwaynes.com and let Wayne's continue to create your happy place. Let's go to the Buyers Right Hotline and talk to Jeff Schwartz, who now covers the Big Ten. First and foremost, Jeff, just how weird is it being at Big Ten Media Days with your alma mater now a part of the Big Ten?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's going to feel real until we play games, but yesterday was the first day. We didn't get any West Coast teams. We get those teams today, two of them. So I think what kind of set in today when we talked to Winston Riley and Deshaun Foster about moving out east and the travel's fine, but just the deal of playing different conference opponents. You get into a rhythm when you play

teams every year, right? You understand the inside and outs of what they do and who they are and the coaching styles and the players and whatnot. And it's all new for all these coaches coming out. Even from the other way around, right? Coaches having to play some of these teams for the first time. So it's different. A different vibe from, I don't know if you've ever been to, you probably haven't been to Pac-12 Media Day before. It was a one-day event and

I like the intimacy of it and how quickly it went, but this is three days. SEC was four days. These are ACC's three days. These are long media days. It's something that I'm not used to, but it was fun yesterday. I'm enjoying it. It'll feel real when we get to conference games probably. It still doesn't feel like it's actually happening. How do you anticipate them adjusting to a league that is almost exclusively ground and pound? I think their personnel from a...

Skill position standpoint exceeds that of everyone, not named Ohio State in the league. But in the trenches, it's kind of a different animal with more bulk than Twitch. So how do you anticipate Oregon being able to hold up in that regard?

I think we're going to be fine. I mean, that we have giant humans that often keep it going for us. I mean, that to me is not a concern. I think that's a little overblown when it comes to, you know, this idea of,

Joe Morward, which I know Cole's part of, it's not the Big Ten last year had a bunch of offensive lines that we were like, we've got to watch these guys. It sounds good, the Big Ten's big and physical, and how can the West Coast schools play that? But Oregon is positioned...

to play against these Big Ten teams. Our goal, obviously, is to have to beat Ohio State and build a team to be able to do that. Washington's going through a little bit of a rebuild with a new coach. I think they'll be fine eventually. USC's trying to rebuild the offensive team. Those schools...

We'll have more trouble, I think, than Oregon will. So I'm looking forward to it. Obviously, Ohio State's defensive line is fabulous. Michigan lost a lot, but they returned a couple guys up front, and they returned guys in secondary. So that'll be fun to see us go against them. But I'm not worried about the physicality of the conference. The Pac-12 last year was the deepest it's been on a defensive line in maybe my lifetime. When you look at how many guys got drafted from different places. So that's not...

my number one concern about Oregon moving to this conference. Jeff Schwartz, former Oregon Duck, now covers the Big Ten, which is just kind of odd to say, for Sears XM, joining us now on the Bioshock Hotline. I want to go to USC because you brought them up. Do you lean more towards them being sort of a surprise contender for a conference championship, maybe outside shot at a playoff, or maybe being an underwhelming team this upcoming season, and why?

Well, the win total, I think, is 7.5. That feels about perfect for them. Look, Lincoln Riley, I think, finally...

came to his senses this offseason about where his roster is. They went really quick fix with a lot of positions when he first got there. We are learning as the portal continues year by year now that you cannot build your entire offensive defense aligned in the portal. You can add pieces, certainly. A lot of schools have done it, and it's been very helpful for a lot of schools to add certain pieces in those units, but

You have got to recruit big bodies and develop them, have them play for you. And USC just is not a talented team in the trenches right now. You know, there's not many players. Maybe their left tackle is NFL guy. Bear Alexander is probably NFL guy up front for them. And

It bears like 6'2", 290. It's not a big player. And that's it. And that's USC, who used to send all their linemen to the NFL. So they're just not talented up front. And then you look at skill position. Miller Moss who won the bowl game. I don't really know how much that matters to a season. But they also just are sort of –

As of right now, they're void of, like, high-impact skill guys that are going to be NFL players. They can be. At some point, there's some young players that aren't even draft eligible that Zachariah Branch and they're tied in. I keep forgetting his name, who's the Pug Street freshman last year. He's like 6'5". But, again, like, not a lot of NFL talent right now. So it's a team that's –

It's kind of shocking when you look at their roster and you look at what USC has been. Look at what Riley was at Oklahoma, and they just don't have a lot of pro dudes. I think that's going to really hamper their success this season when they have to play against teams they're just –

far better. They get Penn State at home, which would be good for them, but they go to Michigan, they go to Washington late in the season, they got Nebraska late in the year. Nebraska, I'd imagine, in week 12 is much better than week one with the quarterback situation. It's going to be tough for USC.

But I'm glad they sort of admitted where their roster is right now and how they have to start building the trenches via high school recruiting. Is it Deuce Robinson, the tight end you're referencing? Deuce, yes. Deuce Robinson, yes. He's going to be good. He's a good player. But you've got LSU, by the way, too, which they're going to lose to LSU week one. So that's starting 0-1-1.

is, you know, it is what it is, but it's not, you know, your USC, I think that could be a rough one for the Trojans. What about... Oh, go ahead, Greg. Yeah, you're good. No, you're good. Go for it. I was going to ask you about Michigan because that's another team that I think a lot of folks, including us, are on a little bit different sides on. I just, I think that the front seven is going to be nasty. I think the defense will be really good again, but I just...

I'm struggling to find a lot of levels of confidence with a lot of the turnover. And I know a lot of the guys, listen, we love strong. We've been around him. We've talked to him, but he hadn't been a head coach before. And a lot of other guys that helped build up that team over the last few years is going to be gone. And a lot of skill guys are going to be gone. There's, there's some to like offensively, but it's just doesn't feel like it's going to be the same. Where are you on Michigan this year?

I'm with you. I have them as one of my teams I actually like the most to be under their win total this season. They're just replacing guys a lot of players. Like, they replace 10 starters on offense and eight on defense. They replace, I'll just read down here, 4,200 snaps on the offensive line.

4,200 snaps me off into the line. They're going into a season with all new football players. Yeah, they have some guys on defense that are very good, and those guys are going to be first-round picks, and they'll help with defense out. But offensively, new quarterback,

offensive identity because Harbaugh's not there. You might keep what Harbaugh has done, but you have new play callers. You have a new strength coach even in the building. Everything is new this year. And it feels like a year when you step back a little bit with younger players playing for the first time. And you have, you put Texas and USC in the first month of the season. You got Washington, you got Oregon this year, you got Ohio State. It feels like they're just not

going to be the team they were the last couple of years. And nothing wrong with that. I think that it ends up being a situation where, you know, we like the higher obviously, but sometimes you have a pullback year after you lose what I think 30 starters or whatever it is. Like you, not that you can't lose 30, but you lose a, you lose 19 starters. It, it does feel like this might be a year when you have to eight or nine win season. And then following year, they get back up at the double digits as these guys have some experience.

I couldn't agree more. I just have a difficult time anticipating them making a lot of noise this year. It felt like last year was three years in the process of building, and they went all in, and now it's kind of back to square one. And everyone's like, oh, all they need is a quarterback to manage the game. Have you seen their options? They're not great. Correct. And managing the game is not that difficult. It's not that easy as some people kind of want to make it out to be. A little bigger picture here.

From your perspective, you're new to the Big Ten. I know I'm excited about the high-level games, the Ohio State's at Oregon's, but I do feel like the quality kind of drops off pretty quickly. So as an Oregon Duck fan, Jeff, how is this transition being received? And what is the temperature like on some of the matchups that you'll have throughout the season? Yep.

So a good way to, I think, judge the health of your conference, to your point about the depth of your conference, is that media day, how many quarterbacks show up? Now, I know, I think the ACC makes everyone bring their quarterback. The

The Big Ten doesn't, right? And I think only five quarterbacks of 18 teams are here at Big Ten Media Day. I mean, that kind of tells you the health of the conference, right? Like, if you think your quarterback is going to be the leader of your team and be this guy who's going to be an NFL draft pick, I mean, he's probably going to show up to Media Day. Will Howell is not here, so that might be an exception. But Dural is not here either. I mean, do you think that a guy that Penn State is going to rely on to –

get him to where they want to go. It's a playoff berth. You thought, think he would be here, right? And he's not. So I think that sort of tells you where the confidence right now that the quarterback play is not at a level that is other places. It's not what it was last season. And I think that will dictate a lot of the, the success or lack thereof of some of these schools, but the most important,

One of the most difficult things I've mentioned this many times about Oregon and UCLA, USC, Washington going to different conferences. I grew up in the West Coast. My parents are Bruin alums. I went to Oregon. I'm a Pac-12 guy. When you grow up in a conference and you play in a conference and you cover a conference, you know them inside and out. Even now, I know those schools still fairly well. I can tell you their histories. I can tell you their history.

their program success, what they're good at, what they're bad at. I can recall times Oregon's played there, other teams have played there, how tough it is to play in Arizona at night in November, how tough it is to go up and play in altitude in Utah. I could mention all these things. I have to learn all these about the Big Ten. I have to learn who is...

the Stanford for Oregon, who's the team that just doesn't matter where we play. That game's always tough. And so it's, give me a learning experience this season to figure all those things out. It might take years to do that. Those happen over time. But I do like that. It seems like Oregon, Ohio state is,

or sort of natural rivals. I think it's good to have rivalries. I think that obviously we played a couple years ago, we played a championship game about 10 years ago now. We're recruiting at the same level. Our goals are the same, which is to win a championship. And so I do like that we enter the conference with someone

in the conference that we can just compare ourselves to, right? That we want to beat Ohio State. We want to beat Ohio State. We want to play them in the Big Ten Championship game. I feel like that's a good start. You know, UCLA, USC, and Washington, I don't think quite have that entering the conference. So I do appreciate that. But I think you have to just learn about these schools in a way that you never had to learn before because you just knew the Pac-12 so well.

Jeff, we appreciate you hopping on, man. Enjoy the rest of Big Ten Media Days. Thanks for discussing it with us. We'll catch up with you again soon. Thanks for having me on, guys. Have a good day. There you go. Jeff Schwartz, follow him on Twitter at JeffSchwartz. Now covers the Big Ten, former Oregon Duck. They're at Big Ten Media Days in Indianapolis. One team that we didn't spend a ton of time on there, Greg, was Ohio State. And I want to ask the question of are we making too much of Ryan Day's failures against Michigan? Or is that where he should be judged the most?

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