Josh Pate has a boldness scale. Ten is the ceiling. On Monday's show, exactly one prediction touched it, and it wasn't close.
A viewer from Longview, Texas submitted this: the only Texas team to make the College Football Playoff will be the winner of the American Conference. Not Texas. Not Texas A&M. Not Texas Tech. Some other program, wearing a state flag none of the sport's current heavyweights get to claim.
Pate didn't hesitate on the number. As he put it on the show: โThe only Texas team to make the College Football Playoff, will be the winner of the American Conference, that's a 10. That is worth a 10 on the boldness scale.โ
Context: what a 10 actually costs
The boldness scale ran through four fan predictions that day โ a Miami scoring-and-Heisman forecast, a Great Lakes geography riddle, this Texas scenario, and a Nebraska playoff call. Three of the four earned hedges. This one didn't get a single one.
To understand why it's rated a flat 10, you have to walk the bracket the way Pate did. Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech represent the state's three current playoff-caliber programs. For the prediction to hit, all three have to miss. Not two. All three.
The case: this is a bracket problem, not a talent problem
Here's the Film Room mechanism underneath the joke. Before: the Big 12's presumed contenders are the usual suspects, with Texas Tech occupying the spot most likely to represent the state in a semifinal push. Trigger: Tech doesn't win the league, and neither Texas nor A&M climbs out of the SEC gauntlet to snag an at-large. Consequence: the state's playoff hope shifts entirely outside the Big 12, to a league it doesn't currently dominate.
And that's before the second trigger fires. As Pate laid it out: โUTSA probably has to win the American and then none of these teams can make the playoff. That is a 10.โ
Give both sides their due here. The Big 12 case for chaos isn't crazy โ it's a league that's proven capable of upsetting seeding math two years running. And the American has real programs pushing for relevance. But asking a Group of Five league runner to be the last Texas team standing, over three programs built with blue-blood infrastructure, is asking the bracket to invert itself.
โDoes Texas as a state survive? I don't know that Texas survives. I don't even want to think about it. That's a 10.โโ Josh Pate
What sold Pate on the full 10, though, wasn't the football. It was what it would mean back home. He walked it out loud: โDoes Texas as a state survive? I don't know that Texas survives. I don't even want to think about it. That's a 10.โ
That's the kicker the segment was built to reach โ not a stat, a gut check. When Texas Tech missing the field also means Texas and A&M missed it, and the state's playoff banner gets carried by a program that had to win the American to get there, you've described a full identity crisis wearing shoulder pads.
The honest complication
Here's what cuts against it. Pate didn't hedge this one at all โ no "first part's doable," no partial credit like he gave the Miami scoring prediction. That's worth noting both ways. A clean 10 with zero softening is Pate at his most confident that something won't happen. But it also means he's treating this as theoretical rather than live, and theoretical predictions are the easiest ones to rate boldly because nobody has to defend them in December. If Texas Tech stumbles even slightly in Big 12 play while Texas or A&M catches one break in the SEC, this entire scenario collapses before the American's champion ever gets asked the question.
The honest read: this take earns its 10 not because it's impossible, but because it requires three separate programs to fail in the same season while a fourth, currently unproven at this level, succeeds. That's not one upset. That's a pileup.
Pate closed the loop with the only response Texas fans are going to want anyway โ sympathy, not a bet against them. Go watch the segment for how he got there, then decide for yourself whether the American's champion has any business finishing that sentence.
Articles are drafted from Josh Pate's College Football Show under the site's editorial standards and monitored by the editorial team โ corrections are timestamped, never silent.
CONTINUED FROM THE NOTEBOOK
Pate's Real Problem With The Jaden Daniels Saga Isn't The Jersey. It's Who Won't Own It.
The Pate State Staff on why Josh Pate thinks the Heisman-back demand is dumb no matter who's behind it โ and why that ambiguity is the actual issue.
ANALYSISProduced with Pate State AI ยท reviewed by The Pate State editorial teamStandards ๐ The ESPN ShowTS
The Pate State StaffAUG 14, 2026
Pate did not wake up looking for a fight with Jaden Daniels. He woke up at 5 a.m., saw an ESPN headline, and assumed he was still asleep.
The headline: an attorney representing Daniels told LSU it can no longer use his name, image, and likeness, and that Daniels felt disrespected after the school let current quarterback DJ Picket wear his old number five. As Pate read the actual language on air: โAn attorney representing Commander quarterback Jaden Daniels informed LSU it can no longer use his name, image, and likeness and said he felt profoundly disrespected after LSU allowed quarterback DJ Picket to wear his former number five jerseyโ By that afternoon it had escalated again โ Daniels' camp reportedly wants LSU to hand back its own copy of the Heisman Trophy, and Lane Kiffin has personally gotten on the phone to try to settle it. As Pate relayed it: โHe continues, "Daniels contacted LSU leadership before fall camp. Lane Keifin has personally spoken to Daniels."โ
For context: Picket was reportedly promised number five by the previous LSU staff, Brian Kelly reversed that promise last year, and Kiffin โ new to the job โ restored it. That's the entire chain of events. A jersey number, passed around by three different regimes, somehow produced an NIL cease-and-desist letter and a request for a trophy back.
Pate's actual argument isn't really about the number. It's about ownership. He laid out two theories for how this got out of a phone and into an ESPN headline.
โSo, there are two possibilities here, really.โ The first: Daniels himself is steering it. โPossibility number one, Jaden Daniels himself is driving this, in which case it's one of the most mind-numbingly stupid cell phones in recent college football memory.โ The second, and the one Pate leans toward, is that Daniels is deep in Commanders training camp and someone in his circle picked this fight with time on their hands and nothing better to do. Either way, Pate's verdict was blunt: โEither way, it's a terrible look. Either way, it is not even pennywise pound foolish because I don't know where the penny wise comes out of this.โ
โEither way, it's a terrible look. Either way, it is not even pennywise pound foolish because I don't know where the penny wise comes out of this.โโ Josh Pate
Run the actual math and the theory falls apart before it starts. Daniels won a Heisman at LSU after transferring in from Arizona State. Cutting the school off from his name and likeness doesn't punish LSU โ it erases his own connection to the program that made him a first-round quarterback. Pate's summary needed no embellishment: โSo, it's not even Pennywise pound foolish. It's just dumb. It's just stupid.โ Whatever the intended message, the actual outcome looks like a professional athlete threatening his own alma mater over a number a teammate is wearing.
Here's where Pate's argument sharpens into something more specific than "this is silly." Daniels later posted a screenshot on Instagram that said plenty of words and confirmed almost nothing, except that a team โ his team โ is handling this. Pate's response to that non-answer was the actual thesis of the segment: โSometimes you just got to man up and take responsibility, right? Like if you're telling someone, "Give me my Heisman back and stop putting my name in your mouth." Just say it's you.โ If it's not him, Pate argued, the fix is just as simple โ get whoever is running this out of the camp, or at minimum, stop letting them make calls with his name attached. A grown man playing quarterback in the NFL doesn't need a proxy fight over a jersey number.
The honest complication here is that Pate is arguing about tone and accountability, not about whether Daniels has a point on the substance. There is a real, if thin, thread of sympathy in this story: Picket was reportedly promised the number by a staff that no longer exists, and reversed on by a staff that also no longer exists, before Kiffin restored it a third time. If you're Daniels and you feel like promises made to a teammate about your old number keep getting renegotiated without you in the room, irritation isn't unreasonable. What's unreasonable, in Pate's telling, is escalating that irritation to an NIL freeze and a trophy request instead of a phone call โ which, notably, Kiffin already made.
Pate closed the LSU half of the argument by putting the whole saga in franchise context: โLSU though, even at its best, even in the best of times when LSU is humming, there's a crisis out of left field like every other week.โ And then the line that actually separates respect from endorsement: โLSU has been many things. They've never been normal to the point where I celebrate it. I respect it, but I do not respect this. I do not think much of this at all.โ
None of this moves the needle on LSU's season. It's a jersey number, a lawyer's letter, and a trophy nobody is actually going to ship anywhere. But Pate's real complaint travels further than LSU's locker room โ it's aimed at whoever is standing behind Jaden Daniels making decisions in his name while he stays quiet. Watch the full segment for how Pate walks through both scenarios, and decide for yourself which is worse: the quarterback picking this fight, or the quarterback letting someone else pick it for him.
