Phantom Island

Ryan Nanni and Steven Godfrey review the discussion surrounding Deshaun Watson's early success on the field this season, examine the baseline narrative football embraces compared to basketball and baseball, and consider why some of the league's media partners lump everything under the adversity level.This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

David Covucci, founder and proprietor of FOIAball, joins Steven Godfrey to discuss the growing push to tap fans as sources of revenue for college athletic departments, from rising ticket prices to pleas to donate your grocery store rewards points. How does the new era of fundraising change the relationship between fans and schools, and what does it mean for the future of the sport to lean even more heavily on its audience for cash?This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

Members of the Phantom Island community send Steven Godfrey questions, and, on this episode, he answers them on topics ranging from what USC really wants from a coach, what the trajectories look like for a couple of previously hot coaching prospects off to slow starts, why things are working so well for Chip Kelly at his latest stop, and an extended soliloquy about coffee making.This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

Steven Godfrey returns from a long day on the phone to talk with Ryan Nanni about possible rumblings all over college football. Listen if you'd like to compare Lincoln Riley's current school and his old one, hear about the North Carolina coaches that aren't Bill Belichick, and see if Ryan can summon a candidate to Tallahassee that will generate great chaos in the Sunshine State.This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

ESPN's Bill Connelly joins Steven Godfrey to review the history of college football coaches returning to their old, successful stomping grounds. Get ready to hear about Greg Schiano, Scott Frost, and Mack Brown (but also Jeff Tedford and Bill Snyder!) and the common patterns that explain why this move often doesn't go the way the nostalgic might hope.This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

Arkansas State Head Coach Butch Jones sat down with Steven Godfrey before the start of this football season to discuss the realities of building and sustaining a program in the world of the transfer portal and NIL. How do you build culture when your roster turns over so frequently? Have coaches shifted their perspective on what it means to lose your best players to the portal? And when does a team find its identity in this new system?This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

Freelance writer Sydney Bauer joins Ryan Nanni to review the WNBA's summer tumult over transgender athletes, what those stories revealed about the media's ability to provide necessary context and nuance to a complex topic, why the discussion always seems to focus on hypotheticals and not real people, and how one profile sprawled into almost every other topic in the WNBA. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

Steven Godfrey is joined by Parker Fleming to break down the far from transparent world of player valuation in college football. How do teams analyze a player's worth in a sport with so many teams and options? What's the best way to prioritize development versus immediate returns? Does the job of determining value better fall to coaches or general managers? And what makes this exercise so different from its counterpart in the NFL?This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

The SEC wants a federal court to confirm that it has the power to eject LSU from the league, which means Ryan Nanni and Steven Godfrey turned on the mics to try to contextualize 1) what the ideal outcome for the conference looks like 2) why expulsion is both the headline and the penalty sources say is unlikely and 3) all the collateral pieces we really haven't stopped to consider. This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

Steven Godfrey once again takes questions from Phantom Island subscribers on topics including the latest in Lane Kiffin, early Anxiety Bowls to watch out for (hi, Rutgers!), what it means to get outcoached, whether the constant off-field news about lawsuits and legislation is diminishing interest in college sports, and much more. This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

Bill Connelly joins Steven Godfrey after an offseason of schedule arguments to look at what teams actually control about this metric, why preseason measures automatically punish playing a Group of 6 team, where strength of schedule fails to meet narrative expectations, and what college football theoretically could do to create something closer to schedule parity.This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

If you've listened to this show for a while, you've probably heard Steven Godfrey and Ryan Nanni talking about some larger projects in the works. Today, we're ready to tell you more about what those look like and when you'll get to hear them, and there's also some bonus discussion of Ryan dragging Steven into the world of 2024's Madame Web.This is a preview of the full episode, which is available to paid subscribers – go to phantomisland.show to sign up today. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.

Jerry Rice holds the NFL's career records for receptions, receiving touchdowns, and receiving yards, and nobody's really come close to challenging him for any of those marks. Ryan Nanni is joined by ESPN's Ben Solak to discuss what skills Rice had that helped him play so well for so long, why the NFL doesn't see receivers playing into their mid-thirties anymore, and why playing in a less pass-oriented time might have actually helped Rice. Phantom Island is presented by Homefield and produced by Michael Surber.