The Solid Verbal

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The Solid Verbal

America's College Football Podcast since 2008 The Solid Verbal is a twice-weekly college football podcast with Ty Hildenbrandt and Dan Rubenstein.
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Ty lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania; Dan lives in New York City. The show was conceived while the hosts were doing work for SI.com — Ty was writing a weekly “Quick Slants” college sports column; Dan was shooting his popular “SI Tour Guy” video series. The thinking was that creating a fan-centric college football podcast would fill a giant niche. The Solid Verbal was born in August of 2008. As of the 2009 season, The Solid Verbal was both the highest rated and most popular, independently-run college football podcast on the web. Featured by iTunes on several occasions, the show has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and boasts thousands of listeners (or “Verballers”) in every corner of the globe. Guests have ranged in name from prominent bloggers to popular reporters to well-known current-and-former head coaches. In September 2011, The Solid Verbal joined forces with Grantland.com, providing the Grantland Network Podcast with a weekly college football recap show. As of the 2012 season, The Solid Verbal teamed up with SBNation Studios to create a weekly simulcast that Verballers can watch live. The Solid Verbal continues through the regular season, post-season, and off-season, because people don’t just love college football, they live it.

26/05/2026

Some college football narratives have expired. Others still have teeth.

For this episode, we tried out a new game called Bed or Built, where we take the sport’s most repeated offseason talking points and decide whether they should be put to bed or are still as built to last. Miami and Mario Cristobal, Ryan Day, Texas A&M, Oregon, Clemson, James Franklin and the post-Saban Alabama all make their way into the conversation.

The goal was not to recap old arguments just for the sake of it. It was to ask which labels still explain the sport as it exists in 2026, and which ones are mostly running on muscle memory, fan perception, or scars from an older version of college football.

Listen/watch links in comments 👇

21/05/2026

Tony Petitti is making the Big Ten’s case for a 24-team College Football Playoff, and somehow, some way, that has us wondering if we should be rooting for Greg Sankey.

In our latest episode, we react to Petitti’s playoff pitch, the push for more postseason “access,” the obvious TV inventory angle, and what this could mean for the regular season, conference championship weekend, and the future of college football.

Then, we shift into a full ACC vibe check.

Miami looks like the clearest headliner, but after that? Things get weird fast. We talk through the league’s biggest connective tissues, including quarterback uncertainty, thin receiver rooms, offensive line questions, Cal’s wide range of outcomes, Louisville’s friendly path, Georgia Tech’s possible regression, Virginia Tech’s playoff odds, NC State’s sneaky schedule, and whether the ACC is basically an abandoned mall with one extremely vibrant Chili’s.

Also included: Slices ’N Steps in New York, illegal-streaming hypotheticals, Chili’s corn nostalgia, and the start of what may become a full ACC-as-mall-store taxonomy.

Listen/watch links in comments 👇

14/05/2026

It’s May, which means it’s time to start talking ourselves into some college football possibilities.

On today’s episode, we do a vibe check of Big Ten “Maybes” and run through the scenarios that could define the 2026 season:

- Could Ohio State’s schedule create real College Football Playoff drama?
- Is Iowa sitting on one of those classic “how did they get to 10 wins?” seasons?
- Can UCLA turn offseason energy into actual Big Ten wins under Bob Chesney?
- Is Oregon’s championship window sturdy enough after two internal coordinator hires?
- How brutal is USC’s schedule, really?

And what exactly should we expect from Michigan in Year 1 under Kyle Whittingham?

Plus: Wisconsin optimism, Maryland intrigue, schedule sandwiches, coaching crush power rankings, and more.

Listen link in comments 👇

12/05/2026

📅 Which weekends of the 2026 college football season should you absolutely block off now?

In our latest episode, we ranked the entire 2026 schedule by watchability, from the lighter early weeks to the November stretch that already looks completely ridiculous. We’re talking massive ranked matchups, sneaky trap spots, rivalry weirdness, cross-country travel spots, and the Saturdays that might require some advanced calendar diplomacy.

This episode is part schedule preview, part public service announcement. Which weekends are safe for weddings, hayrides, errands, pumpkin patches, and general human interaction? Which ones require 12 straight hours on the couch? And which teams have the kind of schedule that could make or break the entire season?

Listen/watch links in comments 👇

07/05/2026

Our latest ep starts with the possibility of a 24-team College Football Playoff and turns into a bigger conversation about where the sport is going, who is making the decisions, and why so many fans feel like college football keeps drifting away from them.

We also get into Michigan State hiring Pat Fitzgerald, what “safe” and “risky” hires even mean in the modern Big Ten, which new quarterback/coach pairings are worth watching, how much pressure is really on Texas and Arch Manning, and what Mike Norvell needs this season at Florida State.

Plus, because it’s the offseason, we also debate whether you should wear your team’s gear when things are bleak, whether video podcasts have changed the game, and Dan’s strong feelings about sneakers with suits.

Listen & watch links in comments 👇

05/05/2026

For Part 1 of our May Q&A, we dig into some of the biggest questions hanging over college football right now, starting with Brendan Sorsby’s uncertain status at Texas Tech and what it could mean for the Big 12 race. We also get into the new single-window transfer portal calendar, the changing value of internal player development, and how roster construction is evolving in a sport where continuity, money, scouting, and plain old luck all seem to matter at once.

From there, we zoom out to the SEC’s national championship drought, Texas’s non-conference schedule, the future structure of college football, and what a more stable version of the sport might look like by 2035. And naturally, we also find time for foot massagers, suspicious domain names, street-naming philosophies, and a little competitive geography talk.

Listen link in comments 👇

30/04/2026

Our good friend Bill Connelly from ESPN stopped by to walk us through the post-spring college football landscape, fresh off turning in 7,000 words on the MAC and kicking off his annual conference preview series. We got into how the portal era has transformed his prep work, why the SEC has become a “horizontal” conference of strong middles, and which conferences are hardest to make sense of right now. Bill evaluated the Big 12 after the Brendan Sorsby news, talked up a few mid-major teams to watch, and explained why he still doesn’t fully trust Texas the way the rest of the country does.

We also dug into the Bob Chesney’s roster build at UCLA, Oklahoma State’s full offensive transfusion, Lane Kiffin’s quarterback insurance policy, and what to make of the pairing of Bryce Underwood and Kyle Whittingham in Ann Arbor. Bill also shared his Alabama skepticism, his read on Indiana’s encore, and why he’s increasingly intrigued by Texas A&M.

Check out the full ep, links in comments 👇

28/04/2026

🚨 CROSSOVER POD ALERT!

Joined by Jason Moore of The Fantasy Footballers with fantasy football tips for CFB sickos + an honest critique of Ty's habit of drafting too many rookies.

Plus, initial reaction to the news that Texas Tech transfer Brendan Sorsby is stepping away from the team for treatment.

🔗 Link in comments 👇

23/04/2026

Today, we're joined by the great Cole Cubelic (SEC Network, McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning, The Cube Show) for an SEC vibe check. It's not a preview, just the temperature of the conference in late April. Cole pulls no punches on the reality facing SEC fan bases: Nick Saban's standards aren't coming back, sub-goals like winning the conference have been devalued, and we've collectively forgotten what a genuinely successful season looks like. Plus, we dive in the strange Kalen DeBoer hot seat chatter, Shane Beamer's underrated portal wizardry at South Carolina, why the Alex Golesh hire at Auburn matters more than who left in the portal, Texas's need for hard-hat glue guys to pair with its sports cars, and whether Lane Kiffin's LSU rebuild can actually cohere in year one.

We also discuss the loss of program continuity in the transfer portal era, the new nine-game SEC schedule as a gauntlet-within-a-gauntlet, and a big wave of defensive coordinator turnover that could make September interesting.

Listen links in comments ⬇️⬇️

21/04/2026

It's time for one of our favorite traditions: Our annual NFL Draft preview with Nate Tice of Yahoo Sports. Nate walks us through why the 2026 class should be defined by the word "useful" rather than "generational," how color-coded chips on his big board separate the truly elite from scheme-dependent prospects, and why the lack of consensus near the top could produce a first round full of surprises and trades.

We talked through the most accurate comps and comparisons for Fernando Mendoza, the incredible Ohio State defensive factory, the Ty Simpson versus Garrett Nussmeier conversation, Jeremiyah Love's place among recently drafted running backs, Oregon's Kenyon Sadiq and Dillon Thieneman, a loaded class of offensive linemen and much more.

Listen links in comments 👇

16/04/2026

🔮 TY-POTHETICALS

It's time for an offseason thought experiment! In today's episode, we run through eight "Ty-potheticals" — plausible scenarios for the 2026 season — and debate how they would go over within the Clemson, Virginia Tech, Alabama, Baylor, South Carolina, Colorado, Nebraska, and Michigan State fan bases.

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