Dear Andy: Can Kalen DeBoer add his name to a select list or will Kirby Smart keep rolling?

Saturday features a marquee showdown between Alabama and Georgia, and you, the listeners of Andy & Ari On3, have questions. Let’s dive into the latest edition of Dear Andy to answer your college football questions.

From @UnKagedd
When was the last time an active coach beat Georgia?

I looked up the answer to this question over the summer for a project that never wound up in print, so I knew the answer. But I still had to look it up again just to make sure because it’s so unbelievable.

The active coach who most recently beat the Bulldogs was…drumroll please… Florida Atlantic coach Tom Herman.

That’s right. It’s been nearly six years since a currently working FBS head coach beat Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs. Herman did it as the Texas coach in the Sugar Bowl following the 2018 season. After the win, Longhorns QB Sam Ehlinger said this…

OK, so Ehlinger was about five years premature. But Texas eventually got there. Meanwhile, Herman was fired at Texas following the 2020 season. He did consultant work for the Chicago Bears before taking over last season in Boca Raton. This year’s Owls are seeking their second win Saturday against Wagner.

This just serves to underscore how dominant Georgia has been under Smart. The only other coaches who have beaten Smart since Herman did are Nick Saban (three times), Dan Mullen (who, it can be argued, Smart helped chase out of Florida), Ed Orgeron and Will Muschamp, Smart’s former Georgia teammate who beat him in 2019 and then came to work for Smart after South Carolina fired him.

Can new Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer turn this into a much easier trivia question to answer? He absolutely can. In fact, I’ve picked Alabama to win this game. But stats like this one give me pause. Like Saban before him, Smart has built a roster so deep and talented that every time you think you’ve found a weakness, another first-rounder emerges. 

That’s why no one but Saban, the undisputed greatest of all time, has beaten Smart since 2021. 

The X thread that contained this question spawned another trivia question: Who is the last head coach to beat Georgia who is still with that program?

The answer? Dabo Swinney’s Clemson team — led by a five-touchdown day from quarterback Tajh Boyd — beat Mark Richt’s Bulldogs in Death Valley on Aug. 31, 2013. I remember leaving my wife with our 4-year-old and 2-year-old to travel to Clemson and cover that game. Those kids are now in ninth and eighth grade.

 Yeah, we’re all old. 

From Vaughn
Thoughts on the state of redshirting in college football in the wake of Sluka and UNLV?

Between Ari Wasserman and I on the show and the multiple stories written by the great Pete Nakos, we tackled a lot of questions regarding QB Matthew Sluka’s decision to leave UNLV after three games over an NIL dispute. But we didn’t address anything like Vaughn’s question, and I think it’s a fair one to ask now that multiple other rule changes have weaponized the four-game redshirt rule. It’s certainly one the schools have been asking recently.

When that rule was passed in 2018, undergrads still had to sit out a year after they transferred. NIL payments weren’t allowed. It was passed largely to allow coaches flexibility to try freshmen early or save their redshirt year if they needed to press a young player into service because of injuries at a particular position. It also allowed teams to mitigate bowl opt-outs by using young players who hadn’t hit the four-game limit. (The rule has since been changed to make postseason games exempt.) 

The concept of redshirting has been around since the 1930s, but for most of that time it was used mostly to allow freshmen to physically mature before playing them against older players. For generations, players have had five years to play four. (Players who missed most of a season due to injury also could receive a medical hardship waiver from the NCAA.) Coaches have been pushing for more than two decades to just allow five years of eligibility and dispense with redshirt rules. That never got much traction until recently, and now it’s under serious consideration.

While eliminating redshirt rules and tacking on an extra year wouldn’t stop players from leaving over disputes similar to Sluka’s, it could keep them from happening midseason. Sluka spent four seasons at Holy Cross before transferring to UNLV. He was a freshman in 2020. The NCAA doesn’t count that year against any player’s eligibility clock because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so he used three years of playing eligibility between the 2021 and 2023 seasons. This would have been his final season of eligibility. But as long as he doesn’t play more than four games, he can play somewhere else in 2025.

In a system where players just had five years of eligibility, Sluka would have no reason to stop playing this season (other than an injury concern). If he felt he wasn’t getting what he was promised from an NIL standpoint at UNLV, he would have been free to seek a better deal elsewhere next season. Under the current rules, he wouldn’t be allowed to play next year. So he had to make a decision before he played in a fifth game.

Will this force the rule change that schools already seemed to be leaning toward? It might.

From @TScheer73
Imagine you are an NFL general manager with the first pick in the draft this year, what QB are you taking with that first pick? Maybe rank your top five? Or are you taking Travis Hunter with the first pick?

If I’ve hired Bill Belichick as my coach — because I probably fired my coach after we had the NFL’s worst record — then I just let him take Colorado’s Hunter and fulfill all the fantasies he had while coaching Mike Vrabel and Troy Brown, who had cameos and more-than-cameos away from their primary side of the ball. 

If my owner insists on me taking a QB, then I’m probably trying to trade down. None of the draft-eligible QBs have wowed me to this point, and watching Bryce Young get benched and Caleb Williams struggle has me worried about reaching. (Jayden Daniels did look awesome on Monday for the Commanders, so perhaps it’s still possible to strike gold.)

At the moment, I’d say these are my top five draft-eligible QBs. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable taking any of them at No. 1.

1. Shedeur Sanders, Colorado
2. Cam Ward, Miami
3. Quinn Ewers, Texas (who might be No. 1 except that he’s been hurt every season as a starter)
4. Carson Beck, Georgia
5. Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss

A Random Ranking

Reader Justin, who is great at picking Random Ranking topics, has asked me to rank the best musicians and musical groups from the state of Florida. We’ll go with people who either formed in Florida after growing up there or who spent most of their careers in Florida. So Jim Morrison, who was born in Melbourne, Fla., and who briefly attended Florida State, won’t be on the list because the Doors formed in Los Angeles after his graduation from UCLA. Tom Petty, who grew up in in Gainesville and formed Mudcrutch and the Heartbreakers there before moving to California, is on the list. The Backstreet Boys and N’Sync formed in Orlando and each contained some Orlando natives, but their stars came from elsewhere. Creed, which formed in Tallahassee and includes members from Orlando, will not appear on the list because my arms are not wide open.

1. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Gainesville)
2. Ray Charles (Greenville)
3. The Allman Brothers Band (Jacksonville)
4. Lynyrd Skynyrd (Jacksonville)
5. Rick Ross (Miami)
6. Mel Tillis (Pahokee)
7. T-Pain (Tallahassee)
8. 2 Live Crew (Miami)
9.  Dashboard Confessional (Boca Raton)
10. Sister Hazel (Gainesville)