Mike Golic Jr.: They can be a playoff team this year. It’s one thing to know what Sam Hartman was as a commodity coming over [from Wake Forest]. It’s another to see it within the context of a team that had a lot of change it was coming into the season with. … And to see the quarterback come out and lead an offense, really the team, and playing such a clean game, even against an inferior opponent … And to see all of the things you believe a veteran quarterback should affect actually take root that early on, I think it allows you to dream big.

Mike Golic Sr.: To me — and I was out at the game with my wife in Ireland — and it was really the command that he had. When he read blitz, what he went to, where his eyes were. It’s now a confidence level of if Notre Dame is down by 10 or 14, there’s confidence he can throw them back into the game, where we haven’t had that confidence in a few years.

Sr.: It was great. The one thing — I got to emcee an event Friday night — is while the game was good and I was impressed with Notre Dame, I have never seen anything like Riverdance. I think my hip went out of place watching them. It’s just stunning how good they are. So that was one of the highlights for me, watching them, and then golfing. I’ve never golfed a links course before. And I always watch The Open, and I want to see wind, I want to see rain, I want to see the ball in a pot bunker, and that happened to me the first place I golfed out there, everything — pot bunker and all.

What I did is I made sure I used the golf balls that had our Golic Family Foundation logo on it, so I knew when I lost a bunch of them some people from Ireland would find them and maybe donate to our foundation, because God knows I lost enough golf balls out there.

Sr.: Hell no. Not one bit. I mean, you look at what they’re looking for out of independence: Number one, money. We’re making $20 million from NBC. They’re going to want probably $60-$70 million, and they’ll get in that area. You want a place for your other sports. They have that in the ACC. And you want to make sure you have an avenue to the College Football Playoff. And that’s now going to expand — it’s gonna go from four to 12 teams — so their path has gotten even bigger. So why would they join a conference? … In all honesty, I think it’s gonna go the other way. I think what people see out of Notre Dame is independence. I think that’s where the rest of college football needs to go. All the Div. I teams need to separate, be on their own, but all the ancillary sports play in their conferences. … Separate football from everything else.

Jr.: If I had to call it at this point, I would think Notre Dame would probably be due for whatever the next round is. Like dad said, it’s going to be about, hey are you financially viable, if you have a path to the championship. And right now, as we’re getting set for expansion, it’s easier than ever for Notre Dame to make the College Football Playoff with more teams. And we’ll wait and see if some of those automatic bids for the top six conference champions gets removed because of some of the recent realignment stuff — could make it even easier for Notre Dame to potentially host the game.

Jr.: It’s sort of a rebrand. When I first got over to DraftKings, the podcast was just GoJo. It was me and my producer Brandon [Newman], who’s still working on the show here — one of my teammates at Notre Dame and good friends. It was the two of us drawing it up and playing it as we went. We got a little over a year, and then really came dad’s portion of things where he just decided he wanted to get back into doing daily stuff again. We thought about the opportunity of doing stuff here and started to get him on the show and started to do that more often. And so this was really just making official where we had been trending for a while.

Jr.: I think what people can expect is what they’ve gotten from dad for so many years, and then what I’ve tried to build on in my own way, which is something that feels familiar and comfortable. …

And with DraftKings, we want to do that same show but also meet people where they’re at now. Sports gambling is a place that a lot more people are consuming sports, so it’s something that’s certainly going to be incorporated in the show as part of the opportunity of why we’re here with DraftKings. But I think that’s just an added element on a similar show we’ve been doing for a while, which is something that feels familiar, is going to be fun, is going to talk about plenty of stuff outside of sports. For dad, it was always pop culture. For me, it’s basically all of the nonsense I take in from the internet every day that I have to explain to dad. But it’s all gonna be there.

Mike Golic Sr.: We’re not re-inventing the wheel here. There’s sports shows everywhere, but we have a great comfort level with one another. … I’ve always said, in a morning show, if you can take people down onto the field or into a locker room and give them the train of thought of an athlete where people can’t really go and make them laugh a little bit on the way to work, it’s been a successful morning. So that’s what we try to do.

Sr.: He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty in the work and know his subject matter. That’s the way I was raised and the way I tried to raise my kids, is you got to put the work in. You just can’t show up. And I think we both will put the work in. But that’s one of the biggest things I see in Mike is his ability to handle any situation, whether it’s an analytical role or a play-by-play role or a host role. And quite honestly, I think one of both of our strong points is we’re pretty self deprecating and we know we’re not going to put on a perfect show, and we’re not trying to.

Jr.: Yeah, I would say in that vein for dad, the one that’s always jumped out the most is behind the scenes, the preparation. … He’s always gonna have something ready when you go to him on a subject. He’s gonna have the details of it ready. He’s gonna make sure that in the midst of all the fun, people are informed, people get the information they need, and not too much of it.. … Dad’s always trying to talk to me about this — whether it’s calling college games or working on the radio — is finding the ways to be efficient, knowing what your audience really wants.

Sr.: Sure. I think they can make it a game. I think we have to understand this is Week 1, following a three-game preseason where starters don’t play a lot. So, Week 1 games, what they look like compared to Week 7 games can be different. And this is when supposed good teams can get had. So, yeah, they can make it interesting. I picked Detroit to win their division this year. I think they’re peaking at a great time right now. Kansas City is going to be without one of their best players if Chris Jones continues his holdout, which it looks like he’s going to do. That hurts their defense.

Jr.: Yeah, I definitely can see Detroit covering in this game. It’s a perfect matchup of strength on weakness. You take Chris Jones out of there and all of a sudden you’ve got that Lions rushing attack — they added Jahmyr Gibbs, already behind a really good offensive line. You had one of the bigger wins of this last offseason which is retaining Ben Johnson as your offensive coordinator. I’ll be curious if anyone can stop anyone in this game with Chris Jones off the field.

Sr.: Yes, very easily. 2014, Notre Dame played Northwestern. I was doing Mike & Mike with Mike Greenberg. And we made a bet, if Notre Dame lost, I had to recreate the Kim Kardashian butt photo, where she was oiled up, had pearls on, it was a butt photo. And my wife and I, it was the end of that game, we were sitting down in the basement at Notre Dame saying, I don’t believe this is gonna happen. But Northwestern won that game. So, sure enough, down in the basement of my house, my wife used a paint roller to oil me up — a paint roller — and Mike had to take the pictures, which I think he started therapy a week after that.

A bet is a bet, paying off my wager to @Espngreeny #GolicButtPhoto pic.twitter.com/cY8UUndVlf

— Keyshawn, JWill & Max (@KeyJayandMax) November 21, 2014

Jr.: The worst bet I’ve ever made was counting on my dad to not make that bet and losing that game and having to be a part of that entire experience. It was hell on earth. Obviously, Notre Dame losing to Northwestern already was going to make for a nightmare at the time, but having to compound that — you don’t know pain until you walk into your parents’ house and you know this is coming and you just see on the counter in the kitchen where you’ve grown up, you’ve eaten cereal and gotten ready for school, a paint roller next to a bottle of baby oil and feel a cold shiver go down your spine. So, that was hell for everyone involved.