An in-depth breakdown of Josh Pate's 2025 post-spring rankings

Joining TexAgs Live from The U, college football analyst Josh Pate explained his post-spring rankings as he continues his Pate State Speaker Series. On Wednesday, Pate tackled a handful of storylines about programs nationwide, including Texas A&M.

Key notes from Josh Pate interview

• It's well-known that David Nuño was going to go to either A&M or Miami. I'm having a good time here. It's like 83 degrees today. It's wonderful. Here's a headline, though: When I was here last fall, I was watching them get ready for practice, and they have to send graduate assistants out to sweep the practice field for iguanas. That's just normal operating procedure at Miami. People in Texas are used to popcorn isolated storms. Same with where I'm from in Georgia. At Miami, something torrential is coming through, but just give it seven minutes.
   
• My bump for Florida is deeper than DJ Lagway, but it's heavily due to Lagway. We know how important the quarterback position is, but because everybody talks about that position ad nauseam, you find yourself trying to dig deeper. If you had actively predicted Miami to win 10 games last year, the reason would have been the play of Cam Ward in spite of some other stuff. I won't say it's a one-man show at Florida, but that bump is due in large part to him.
   
• Look at how Florida has stacked their roster. Billy Napier will be the first to tell you they haven't signed a No. 1 class there, but they've signed a bunch of top-10 or top-15-ish classes. Napier is not alone in expressing the sentiment of having to fire all your bullets in terms of NIL and everything to sign a No. 1 class. He trusts his development and processes. If they do their job and Lagway is what they think he could be, the only thing that could hold them back is execution, which they can control, and the schedule, which they don't control. I don't judge teams off their schedule, and Oklahoma is the same way. People will discount them because of their schedule, which is OK if you're playing the prediction game. Florida has the pieces to be really good this year.
   
• I'd rather have what Ohio State had last year with a Will Howard that's plugged into a team that's together and has been together because it's more dependable. I'm not constantly terrified of one injury or one bad game from one person derailing something. I think it's a better product when it's collective. Give me disciplined, hard-working, precise, B-plus level talent at quarterback, and I feel great as long as I have him surrounded by the right pieces.
   
• Let's say Marcel Reed, at his best, can peak at an A-plus level. The follow-up, if you have him surrounded by other talent, is that you don't need him to. It's nice, and if he has one of those games, you're going to win like 38-14, which is wonderful. What I want to know is, when he has a 56-percent completion game where he turns the ball over once, do they have a ground game they can fall back to? Yes, they do. Will they have an opportunistic and statistically improved defense? I strongly believe they will. Is it a complementary operation where he doesn't have to throw for 350 today? That was Miami last year. You don't want to get off the bus feeling like you have to score 40 to win, and I don't think that's A&M this year.
   
• There is a lot of volatility with Florida. I took a flyer on Georgia Tech, and I have a feeling about them more than anything quantifiable. They have an early game with Clemson in Atlanta. If that's a lopsided game, that could cause me to feel different. Ole Miss has a fair amount of questions, but they have a huge amount of upside.
   
• I know a lot of people didn't follow Florida closely this spring, but Lagway didn't throw a lot this spring. There was some nervousness around that fan base. They started throwing him three days a week towards the end of the spring, and they have a plan to have him full-go at the beginning of the season. It's the beauty of the sport because you get to talk a lot this time of year, but ultimately, they have to play the games.
   
• Notre Dame is a bigger question with bigger upside, especially at quarterback. Riley Leonard is gone, but CJ Carr is a question mark. They were so limited in the passing game last year. The upside of Carr from a passing perspective is better, if not significantly better, than anything they had last year. I know they have one of the best tailbacks behind or beside him. That offensive line was banged up last year, but they have a cultural dependability thing. They are probably as good at receiver as they have been in quite a while. They open with Miami in Week 1, so that will be fun to see.
   
• Unlike an Ole Miss that gets a month and a half to figure it out, Miami and Notre Dame will have played three of their four toughest opponents by Week 5 of 6. The teams that have the higher degree of uncertainty with front-loaded schedules are the biggest wild cards in the sport because they don't even know how they'll come out of the gate until they do.
   
• A lot of it is proof of performance. If you're selling TexAgs, the client wants to see proof of performance. For quarterbacks, I'd love to see proof of performance with the same position coach, the same head coach, but it's just a bunch of new pieces. That doesn't guarantee anything, but it increases my comfort level with you. Conversely, there are other teams out there with a bunch of staff changes. If I trust your personnel but you have a new coordinator, we've all seen those stories where you get four years into a coordinator being there, where they knew it would take a couple of years... Everyone is willing to tell you that after the fact. What I want to do is figure out where the staff is at currently that realizes they'll be limited here or there. The follow-up is, who can win in spite of that? I just watched Ohio State win a championship with a cohesive staff and an all-together roster, but they still lost two games. You don't have to be flawless to win the whole thing because nobody is going to be. We're seeing a landscape that is as flawed as it ever has been at the top. There has to be a characteristic of staff where they are good at masking or overcoming relative inefficiencies. If you can find a way to quantify that, then you will make a lot of money betting this stuff.
   
• If A&M's running back room is healthy, it will be one of the best in the country because it should be supported by good quarterback play, where you can achieve balance. Does Collin Klein have that laminated play sheet and feel confident calling pass or run in any situation? Do defensive coordinators believe he's confident doing that? If you have that, you will have achieved balance. If you're a balanced offense, you're talking about having potentially one of the best running back rooms in the country.
   
• I'd love to get that fan and empower him, and I'd love to have the transfer limitation rule. That's still simplistic. We have a presidential commission that's being put together, and I want to be on it. People are talking about how college football is at a dead end because the rules aren't enforceable or legal. The way to change that is to have laws that allow you to enforce your rules. To have laws, you need Congress to pass them. Everyone knows that. In our political climate, everyone is used to things being split, but a bipartisan group of people are looking at college football and realizing it's messed up. You have to let representatives know so they can vote on such things in a manner that allows them to fix things that are wrong. The people who are in charge of college football, who are pushing to fix things, don't realize how poor the messaging is. If you had a state-of-the-union style, you might have a 70-80 percent level of support from your constituents.