Split Zone Duo's Guide to Podcasts for 2026, Plus Favorites from 2025
What other podcasts would we recommend? Many have asked. Now we answer.
Happy new year, and thanks for being part of Split Zone Duo. Alex and Richard here to give you some year-opening notes and fulfill a promise we made on the show a few months ago.
Last year, SZD released 168 episodes, with about half going out to the full audience and half reserved for our paid subscribers. (If that’s not you, we’d love for you to check out the subscription product.) In this newsletter, we’re highlighting a handful of our favorite evergreen episodes (i.e. not ones tied to a specific week of college football). We’ve also put together a guide to our own favorite podcasts, and we invite all subscribers to share more of their favorites in the comments. If you like our podcast, our guess is that you might also like the shows we’ll share with you at the bottom of this mailing.
Our favorite SZD episodes of 2025
“Anatomy of a Coaching Carousel: 2000.” Richard, Alex, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey did a retrospective on the coaching cycle that brought Pete Carroll to USC, Jim Tressel to Ohio State, Gary Patterson to TCU, and … a lot of hires that didn’t go nearly that well.
“Dead Letters: Miami University.” We added a fresh installment to a long-running series in which Alex investigates why a once-great college football program hit the rocks. The story of Miami is also the story of the Mid-American Conference, but with some localized twists.
“When the Supreme Court Imploded College Football,” a narrative, one-episode show featuring legal reporter (and Cal football diehard) Jay Willis, who went deep with Alex on the 1984 Supreme Court decision that paved the way for the rest of CFB history.
“Inside the Brawl of the Wild with Kevin Van Valkenburg.” One of the best storytellers in media happens to be a friend of the show and a former Montana football player. He joined us to talk about the provincialism and culture clashes behind the Montana vs. Montana State rivalry.
“Overtime: What’s It Take to be a Sideline Reporter?” Wanna hear the ins and outs of what it takes to do a truly unique college football television job? Richard did it earlier this year when he was on the mic for the Air Force-UConn game in November. It’s a stream of consciousness inside look at how the sausage of what you see on the screen gets made leading up to and including Saturday.
“How UMass, the Worst Team in College Football, Got Like This.” Yes, anybody can point and laugh at a truly bad football team but Alex and Rodger wanted to go deeper and dig into why this year’s Minutemen were truly wretched and what exactly that means for the future of the program.
“Picking the Defining Team of Every Decade of College Football.” Part of the beauty of the sport is how it has weaved itself into the fabric of the country going all the way back to the 19th century. This isn’t about who is necessarily the best team from each decade, but it is about looking back and saying you cannot tell the story of that decade without that team.
“Why Do You Love College Football?”A simple question with a not-so-simple answer. Consider this our love letter to the game in audio doc format with submissions from our wonderful subscribers. We’re all here because this sport gets us going for some similar and different reasons. There is nothing like it, and we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t truly love it.
Richard’s podcasts
The Football Ramble: I won’t bore you with the multiple Tottenham Hotspur podcasts I listen to on a weekly basis, but consider this like if the Fullcast and us were on the same show and talked about the other football. The Football Ramble and its sister show On The Continent cover the ins and outs of the global game from English and European sensibilities. The Ramble’s home base is the Premier League, and they talk about the game with a chemistry and a love of the game that keeps it in my weekly rotation.
Cube Show: I can honestly say the person who makes me smartest about college football is Cole Cubelic. Nobody in the media sphere gets as granular into the game as Cubelic does and he does it from the perspective of a lineman. It’s SEC-focused, because that’s where he lives and what he does for work as a sideline reporter and personality for the SEC Network. Cole has a no-nonsense style of analysis and communication, and his knowledge is unmatched.
The Varsity: I cannot for the life of me understand why regular fans are into the machinations of sports media, but if you are, give John Ourand’s show a listen. For me, it’s essentially my trade publication working in this business especially on the TV side (Ourand cut his teeth covering the cable industry). He has interesting insights, interviews with power players, and his finger on the pulse of what’s happening on the corporate side that gives me a better understanding of sports business beyond college football.
Golfer’s Journal / No Laying Up / ShotgunStart / The Fried Egg. I am healthily obsessed with golf (seriously, my therapist actually told me it’s good for me to have it as an outlet, so I can term it like this). It is the vast majority of what I think about when I’m not focusing on CFB, and I have a deep passion for the game. These shows all fuel that.
Alex and I have both done work for The Golfer’s Journal, and yours truly has won one of their events (light flex). Renowned golf writer Tom Coyne does a great job interviewing interesting people in the game. Their glossy magazine is seriously a quarterly work of art that I look forward to every time it hits my mailbox.
No Laying Up is fun week-in, week-out analysis of the PGA Tour that — if you’re like me, and depraved enough to actually watch the Friday rounds of the Mexico Open — you’ll really dig. Shoutout to Tron for being a Jags fan. Shotgun Start is in a similar mold and feels like if SZD did golf with the interplay between Andy and Brendan (and now KVV, PJ, and Joseph!). There is nothing like the SGS Year In Review series in sports podcasting that I’ve come across.
The Fried Egg is the complement to SGS. It goes deep on course architecture and the ins and outs that create the courses we play on. Andy’s understanding of what makes a golf course good has evolved how I think about the game, and it’s a must-listen.
Alex’s podcasts
Odd Lots from Bloomberg: A finance show that often isn’t about finance but uses it as an entry point to tell interesting stories I hadn’t thought about before. Here’s a great episode about a middleman company that makes a bunch of chain restaurants’ menus taste the same. I was very surprised when this show informed me which casual sitdown chain is America’s biggest by sales. I bet you won’t get it on your first try, either. (A strong hint is enclosed at the bottom of this email.)
Power Lines from Status, a media newsletter led by Oliver Darcy. I like to know what’s happening in the wide world of media (especially podcasts, but also TV, movies, etc.) and this show is the best media crit out there, I think. I also really enjoy The Town from The Ringer and Puck, which is a bit more shop-talky in its tone but is always an informative listen.
Blowback, a reported narrative podcast that tackles American foreign policy shenanigans and catastrophes. I will finish a season and think, “Damn, [insert war here] was an even worse idea than I thought.”
Effectively Wild from FanGraphs and Rates & Barrels from The Athletic. I love baseball and love how these two shows talk baseball. They make time for every team — something that appeals to me for reasons that I hope are obvious, as both a Pirates fan and Split Zone Duo host. They’re smart without being condescending. I listen whenever I can.
Hang Up and Listen from Slate. A bit of self-promotion here! I host this show on Mondays with panelists Ben Lindbergh (of Effectively Wild, as it happens) and Lindsay Gibbs (of CBS Sports). We cover three-ish sports stories per week, often ones that intersect with politics or tech. If you want to hear me talk about non-CFB sports, Hang Up is a great place to find me.
The Shutdown Fullcast. I won’t try to explain this one.
If you haven’t given these a shot, we think you’ll like them! Thanks for supporting what we do here, and we’ll see you soon.
“I won’t try to explain this one” is the best description possible of the Fullcast. I’m not sure what you could say to summarize it.
Can we get Richard's Tottenham podcasts recs for those of us who hate joy?