Bobcats Gear up For First Game of 2025 Campaign

Welcome back to football, everyone!

This is the weekly newsletter I send out on Mondays after the Sun Belt Conference’s media availability call, where I can kind of gauge vibes ahead of the weekend’s matchup. This week the team is hosting Eastern Michigan for the first game of the 2025 campaign.

We have played the proud MAC school once time before in 2021, under then head coach Jake Spavital. The Bobcats flew out to Ypsilanti, Michigan and were sent home losers after a 59-21 drumming.

Our guy Brady McBride threw for 187 yards and was 16-for-25 with three touchdowns. In the first three quarters, one time each, the Bobcats marched down the field and scored successfully. but struggled with just being consistently average, which ultimately lost them the game.

Consistency is something G.J. Kinne in year three, is also focusing on too, but for different reasons completely. Lately, I have been focused on transitions.

This past weekend was just kind of another sign of the shifting times in my own little world.

I’m 27. Guys my age are either getting married, settling down or might even be on their second or third kid by now, rushing them along the morning routine and still trying to get a pump on in the meantime. Meantime, I am gearing up for yet another busy podcast season for football.

My group of friends, while not married, are entering a new season of adulthood. What does that mean? We shoot down free shots of whiskey poolside. Our wild and crazy nights are now more often capped around midnight or 1 a.m.; And we are all now into either golf or regular Sunday brunch plans than ever before.

When I woke up on my buddy Danny’s couch this past weekend, the shift in the air hit me like a truck: Football season is now on our doorstep.

I didn’t watch a single down of the week zero slate. I’ll actually probably have to watch Texas State’s games against Eastern Michigan on replay. I’ll be in the Rio Grande Valley covering the Vaqueros’ first-ever game at the newly remodeled Robert and Janet Vackar Stadium, once the home of the RGV FC Toros, now rebuilt to house the region’s first-ever college football team.

Sitting down at brunch with my buddy and his girlfriend, who are now living together and sort of crashed our late-night Mario Kart session, I just started reflecting on my journey through the middle of my own adult chapter.

I’ve dedicated a lot of time over the last three years to be able to talk football with the best of them. When I first started this show, it was all about the money.

Zimmel and would talk ad nauseam about this team, one day, I just asked him to let me record the yap sessions and let me monetize it. I was in a tight spot and it ended up becoming my biggest outlet creatively at a time when I desperately needed something. A variety of family and personal issues would later surface and I clung to the show like a life vest in the middle of the ocean.

I was 23-years-old, living with a girlfriend at the time, working a job I hated and I was kind of at this fork in the road where I would look up and go, “Is this really it?”

No, joke, the podcast saved me from boredom, true financial strife and just like a lack of ambition.

I’ve gotten to see this team do things that I would dream of seeing and writing about in college. Now, three years later, this little podcast has now given me license to write and talk about everything, including going back to South Texas and writing about a team I have always wished had a football team.

Sorry for the word vomit. I just always get nostalgic and grateful around this time of the year. It’s a privilege to do what we do and we have such a blast doing it.

I’m so stoked to cover this latest team under G.J. Kinne and I’m excited to see what we can turn up for you all along the way.

I have the team finishing 8-4 and that is not bad at all. All the respect goes to our current Sun Belt Conference member schools. I just don’t have enough data on this team right now to say they’ll win out or even contend for the title at the end.

The Bobcats are also staring at the fork in the road.

Before the teams’ much-celebrated move to the PAC-12 Conference, they’ll have a guntlet of a schedule to go through. Looking just at the end of October and mid-November.

The Bobcats will play JMU on a Tuesday, then go on the road to play The University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Southern Miss. We’ve never beat ULL and I’m not sure this team does that this year and Southern may very well win the league.

Rest assured, everyone has a target on us and will look to kick us as we run out of the conference.

This year’s team also features a lot of players who have all the potential in the world, but still need to play football in order to see that through. I’m excited to see what shakes out in the end. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong and I’ll be writing this newsletter in 12 weeks, talking about a CFP bid.

Later this week I’ll have some thoughts out about the week, the team’s performance and we start gearing up for UTSA hate week! Football has arrived!

More on Eastern Michigan this week on the show!

Just a quick reminder, our audio is now exclusively on the DCTF feed, that’s due to our adshare partnership. Our video feed will always be on YouTube.

Also, sign up to play pick ‘em this year with me and Zim:

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