{"id":770470,"date":"2026-02-23T05:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T05:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/770470\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T05:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T05:18:13","slug":"donald-trump-seemed-to-have-no-idea-what-josh-pate-was-talking-about-regarding-college-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/770470\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump seemed to have no idea what Josh Pate was talking about regarding college football"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Josh Pate announced that President Donald Trump would appear on his show, the podcast host defended the decision<\/a>, saying there would be no political discussions, only college football talk.<\/p>\n

After listening to the interview, it\u2019s not even clear if Trump was aware they were discussing college football.<\/p>\n

From the jump in their 10-minute interview in the latest episode of Josh Pate\u2019s College Football Show<\/a>, Pate\u2019s attempts to suss out authentic answers from the president about the sport kept hitting brick walls, only to be diverted to wherever Trump\u2019s whims took him.<\/p>\n

President Trump will join the show Sunday pic.twitter.com\/ZC76YarHNK<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Josh Pate (@JoshPateCFB) February 19, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Pate opened the interview with a softball question about the state of college football, leading the president towards his thoughts on \u201cthe structure of the game and what rules can you make, what rules can you enforce,\u201d and how he feels \u201cwhen you see that from your vantage point?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s too bad. I hate to see it,\u201d starts Trump, before going off on a tangent about the NFL\u2019s recent changes to kickoffs, which are unrelated to anything in college football.<\/p>\n

Kudos to our Sam Neumann, who called that one last week.<\/p>\n

1000000% chance there\u2019s a 5-10 minute tangent about the NFL kickoff rules on a college football podcast. https:\/\/t.co\/kHv5OVmWg3<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Sam Neumann (@Sam_Neumann_) February 20, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Pate then asked Trump how he decides which college football games to attend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll look around and say, well, South Carolina is good,\u201d started Trump, referring to the 4-8 Gamecocks. \u201cAnd Georgia\u2019s good. I like Georgia. I like this Georgia team. I like your quarterback, by the way. I like Gunner [Stockton]. He\u2019s going to be a great quarterback. I\u2019m telling you, he\u2019s already a great quarterback, but he\u2019s only going to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump then turns to the assembled audience at Rome, Georgia\u2019s staple, The Varsity, where the interview was taking place, to tell onlookers that Pate had asked him \u201chow I judge players,\u201d which Pate had not. Stockton, the player Trump had mentioned, was in the audience and had been making appearances with him over the weekend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump then added that \u201cI like certain people, players, and teams,\u201d name-checking Nick Saban and Urban Meyer, neither of whom is an active college football coach.<\/p>\n

Pate\u2019s original question went unanswered.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Saban and Meyer, Pate asked about Trump\u2019s recent round of golf with that duo and what was discussed. Comically, Trump admitted that those conversations are \u201calways\u201d about politics after Meyer said on his podcast that their conversation was not about politics but college football<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pate\u2019s next question began by bringing up the Miami Hurricanes, then quickly transitioned to Curt Cignetti, who led Indiana to the national championship, before leaving all of that behind by asking Trump what he looks for when he hires someone.<\/p>\n

The question allowed Trump to deliver one of his signature rambles about how great he is at hiring people and how great his current administration is. To his credit, Trump was the one who found a way to bring the conversation back to college football, though he did so in an incredibly comedic way: trying to get a cheap pop from Georgia fans about Herschel Walker, who was a disastrous candidate in his Trump-backed run for the U.S. Senate in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a good instinct for people. I think I\u2019ve had a good instinct for athletes,\u201d he said. \u201cBut Herschel\u2019s a special guy. I think Herschel did really well. He tried really hard with his run, his Senate run. And I think he did really well. He got some, I think he got some unfair treatment, frankly. But I would say Herschel, maybe, was the greatest player ever in college football.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, the conversation between Pate and Trump didn\u2019t have much to do with college football. Questions offered passing glances towards coaches and strategy, but were really left for the President to answer about himself. Topics included the First Lady and her documentary, the Lincoln Bedroom, and Trump\u2019s (apparant) ability to separate personal issues from business.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a good interviewer,\u201d added Trump as they ended things.<\/p>\n

Pate was correct in saying that \u201cThose expecting political discussion will be sorely disappointed.\u201d He was right in a sense, but perhaps not fully in intention. There was minimal political discussion, but there was almost just as little college football discussion. In the end, it was a collection of softballs that allowed Trump to do his patented dance of just saying whatever came to mind while peppering the discussion with casual political jabs and rewritten historical claims.<\/p>\n

After the segment, Pate added that he had initially planned to speak with Trump for \u201c30 or 40 minutes\u201d and expected to dive deep into college football matters such as NIL. However, the schedule changed \u201creally, really late,\u201d meaning he\u2019d only get 10-15 minutes. Pate also seemed to think that Trump was planning conversations about fixing college football in the near future, so better to let that happen first, which seemed like odd reasoning.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tidy explanation, but it still doesn\u2019t explain why Pate spent most of the interview asking non-college football questions instead of peppering Trump with ones about the sport in general. Even his questions that had some college football aspect to them turned out not to be really about the sport.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s true, as Pate said, that \u201cwhen the President of the United States offers to discuss college football, it\u2019s an auto-yes 1000% of the time.\u201d As for where college football was in that discussion on a college football show, who knows? And what we were left with was, as Meadowlark Media\u2019s Mike Ryan lamented, a normalization of Trump<\/a>, at a time when you\u2019d imagine more people would want to distance themselves from him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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