Host emeritus Steven Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a look back at the Big 12’s extremely public flirtation with expansion a full decade ago. It was a strange spring and summer in 2016, as the Big 12 basically put on realignment tryouts for a long list of schools including several (BYU, UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati) who did get into the conference — but not until years later, when others dominoes had fallen. Let’s revisit the summer of realignment that wasn’t, and then let’s think about how it changed the next decade of college football.

In this episode:

* 0:00: Why the realignment fashion show became so public

* 8:10: The now-quaint factors that drove realignment decisions back then

* 12:28: The candidate pool, including Houston and Cincinnati’s very different campaigns, BYU’s many complications, UCF before the Scott Frost/Josh Heupel run, and SMU before it became an ACC playoff team

* 32:02: Why the process came down to BYU, Cincinnati, and Houston. (Also, why the Big 12 was genuinely scared of Houston)

* 43:48: Counterfactuals: whether earlier expansion would have changed Texas and Oklahoma’s exit, the Pac-12’s collapse, or the expanded playoff’s politics around non-power teams

* 56:08: The afterlife of the public audition, from Memphis and Sacramento State to the next round of conference-movement anxiety.

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Producer: Anthony Vito

Richard is joined by Joel Anderson, host of The Ringer Tailgate and The Press Box podcasts, for a conversation about the NAACP’s Out of Bounds campaign and the bigger question underneath it: What is fair to ask of Black college athletes and recruits at a moment when lawmakers and the courts are attacking Black voting power? They start with HBCUs and PWIs, move through the campaign’s specifics asks, and cover lots of topics from there: political education, NIL incentives, the transfer portal, the limits and power of boycotts, and why college football keeps becoming the platform for this kind of discussion.

In this episode:

* 0:00: The roles of HBCUs and PWIs in Black college life, and how generational experiences shape Richard’s and Joel’s views.

* 12:01: The NAACP’s campaign and its asks of recruits, current athletes, fans, donors, and consumers.

* 16:16: What is fair to expect of college athlete activism now

* 26:55: Whether the idea of a “boycott” has lost force

* 37:53: The role of the NAACP in 2026

Producer: Anthony Vito

More on the story covered in this episode:

* NAACP press statement: Black athletes and fans should withhold support from public schools in states attacking Black voting rights

* NAACP: Out of Bounds

* CBS Sports on the NAACP campaign

If you like this episode, you’ll love a paid subscription.

For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Alex, Richard, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey turn a Memorial Day subscriber mailbag into a holiday-travel episode, starting with an either/or question about Steve Sarkisian and Lincoln Riley. From there, they get into G.J. Kinne’s future, Arkansas cutting and then quiickly reinstating a sport, what a 24-team Playoff might do to scheduling, how to talk about Kirby Smart, Dabo Swinney, Dan Lanning, and Eli Drinkwitz in 2026, and then the important holiday matters: message boards, soccer pain, cookout tips and tricks, Alex’s recent discovery of beans, and Spotify deep diving.

In this episode:

* 2:08: Who is under more pressure in 2026: Lincoln Riley or Steve Sarkisian? Plus: Will Muschamp’s role at Texas and USC’s politics around Notre Dame

* 13:46: Where G.J. Kinne could go next, and which coaches might make sense for future Texas G5 openings.

* 19:51: Arkansas reinstates tennis, then the conversation turns to Hunter Yurachek and athletic department accountability.

* 26:44: Would a 24-team Playoff make schools schedule better non-conference games, or just change the incentive to chase automatic bids?

* 33:57: Kirby Smart, Dabo Swinney, Dan Lanning, and Eli Drinkwitz as case studies in how we talk about portal usage, title ceilings, and carousel smoke.

* 44:52: Memorial Day light fare: Eastside LA food, message board culture, Tottenham and Valencia, cookout rules, beans, and all-time Spotify listening history.

Producer: Anthony Vito

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For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

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