Covering college football allows Josh Pate to chase storms in the spring

On Saturdays in the fall, college football analyst Josh Pate is on the "Every Given Saturday" Tour, but on Saturdays in the spring, storm chasing becomes his priority. Pate joined TexAgs Live to discuss his recent journey and offer thoughts on a handful of spring football topics.

Key notes from Josh Pate interview

• When I was growing up, I would go to school. Both parents worked, but I would ride the bus to my meemaw's, and like many kids, I would watch SportsCenter on TV, but also the weather channel. When “Twister” came out, I was just old enough to get it and understand it, and it hooked me. The last thing you'd think as a kid scared of rollercoasters is to like that kind of thing. We just passed the anniversary of the March 3, 2019, tornado outbreak. There were 23 fatalities in that tornado, all within a quarter-mile radius of us. A year to the day later, I moved to Nashville and the building I lived in got hit by a tornado. That was the only time I was in a building and had to go underground and not be the storm chaser.
   
• When people have said it in the past, it's been very abstract, like, "Oh, I wish we had real games for spring." The first thing I think will yield fruit is everyone's looking for money, and every program is looking for added revenue streams. I have known that media partners are there, CBS, FOX and ESPN. They have always looked at their spring lineup, and it's desolate after March Madness.
   
• If you're cash-strapped, imagine ESPN giving you millions of dollars to play a spring game. The other part is, what stands in your way? Most of them are feedback from the conference commissioners in sports as loose as college football. It's one of those classic “we haven't done because no one's ever done it before.” Everyone wants to be second and do it as soon as they figure out it's safe to do. Every time you mention a good idea, breathing oxygen or drinking water, there's always someone saying its not a good idea. I had someone say you shouldn't be forced to put things on tape or play games, but if you don't want to do it, don't. It's not mandated it should be an option.
   
• There is an injury concern. I have had everyone who says that there will be injury in spring games tell me that logic because, best I can tell, in the old way, everybody on the field is one of your players. In the new way, only half of them would be your players. This cuts the risk of injury in half. They go good on good every day in practice anyway. It is not simulating and risking them getting hurt all of a sudden. There is a development piece. We don't just want a spring game against an opponent. They need practices with the other team leading up to playing the game and a whole week of organized activity against each other.
   
• The only downside is you're putting your full team on display for everyone to watch and scout for the spring portal to raid your roster. I think the spring portal will be a thing of the past. I would get rid of it and do whatever it takes to get rid of the spring portal. With revenue stream and sharing and how that will be structured in the future, I think there will be an incentivization to make guys stay on your roster. To where you'd not have to outlaw transferring, just if I am paying you enough money at TexAgs, and you get the parking spot you want and all the benefits, I am not forcing you to stay because you don't want to leave. It should be the same way with revenue sharing instead of this backward approach with all these buyout clauses and breaking NIL deals. I understand, but it will play terribly. You can accomplish the same thing but in your revenue share structure.
   
• Hypothetically, if A&M’s defensive line is top eight in the SEC, they will have a reachable chance in every game, which means possessions and turnovers will be the talking point of the season. I know people think quarterback will be a talking point, but I can blindly trust they will be good at that position.
   
• I think you can be a top-eight quarterback and not be anything to write home about. Look at the lineup of quarterbacks this year and go nine or ten deep with guys you can trust as returning starters. We don't have that this year. There's a steep drop off to number three, let alone eight. I'll take my chances at quarterback. I don't think it's good enough to guarantee anything.
   
• Mike Elko wasn't questioned in the offense after that bowl game. There are things I trust, the offensive line being one of them. We were setting up to talk to Elko but talked about a bunch of offensive coaches. The return of production on that offensive line was said to look way better on paper. I think if you gave me those things, I would call A&M a top three or four candidate in the SEC. That's if you say the defensive line is top five to eight, and Marcel Reed is top five to eight.
   
• Collin Klein has a big year, but he will probably say that every year is. I don't get paid to make excuses for coaches but most of the time, there's an explanation for why and why things didn't happen. A lot of the system works if everything is clicking. The name of the game in college is to hang a malleable system to where if things are operating at B-minus efficiency levels, you can still squeeze a win out of it.