Football, through the Moon Crew.
"WELCOME!...To the Shutdown Fullcast. The Internet's only college football podcast."
—Spencer Hall, usually opening the program.
SBNation, Banner Society, and Channel 6 started covering college sports, and college football especially. The three men and one woman who talk about it on this podcast have been doing so for several years. They are among the most well-versed in university organizations, coaches, programs, and all the weedy little details, dramas and identities of nearly every team and conference.
Does that mean they have to be insightful, smart, or intelligent about any of it?
Absolutely not.
And that is the general idea of the Shutdown Fullcast: College football as seen through the acerbic, deeply strange lens of its four hosts, who also are the principal writers and editors at then-Every Day Should Be Saturday, then-Banner Society, and now independently. The Fullcast has two installments throughout the college football season; an hour and a half preview of the week ahead on Wednesdays and which games the hosts are personally interested in, and a shorter show on Sundays reacting to what happened in college football that week, with a special "40 podcasts for 40 bowl games" series right at the end of the season, where the group gives it's general opinion of every game in bowl season...but only as much as they feel they deserve. In late 2018/2019, they also began doing live shows in select places throughout the country, usually the heart of a specific College Football conference, and as such they tend to focus in on the conference as a whole during these shows. The show went on hiatus for four months in 2020, only to return, ensuring that the Fullcast is in fact, unkillable. In 2021, they added a Saturday night rapid reaction show using Twitter's Spaces feature.
What they usually fill it with is plenty of trivia about the often strange, silly, and embarrassing world of college football, anecdotes about their own lives, and plenty of hilarious diversions that may not make it the most informative podcast on college football, but it is certainly one of the most entertaining.
Can be found on Apple Podcasts here
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The Fullcast is hosted by:
- Spencer Hall: The affable and very acerbic "host" of the program, though he usually never controls the topic of conversation for too long. He is a University of Florida alum and a Gators fan, but he's also one of their biggest critics.
- Jason Kirk: A native of Georgia who doesn't officially have a "Power Five" team he roots for, preferring to root for his FCS level Kennesaw State Owls. He's usually fine, as is most things he interacts with. He wrote a a novel about religion.
- Ryan Nanni: Another Florida fan who can act as either The Gadfly or the Butt-Monkey, depending on the topic at hand. Is the curator of what has become known as the "Goddamnit, Ryan!" or "Sicko" segment where he highlights an otherwise uninteresting or objectively bad game for usually poorly constructed reasons. In early 2019 he became relegated to guest appearances when he was Kicked Upstairs in SBNation's corporate ladder, then returned full-time later on.
- Holly Anderson: A Tennessee native and alum who's covered the sport for Yahoo and Grantland before joining up with her longtime friends. She would normally join infrequently and for the 40 for 40 series, but in 2018 she became more of a full-time host.
The Shutdown Fullcast provides examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Prescribed to several schools, namely Wisconsin, Washington State and Arizona State.
- Animal Motif: For Spencer since Season 6, it's Buffalo, because he finds their orneriness and strength amusing.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Ryan ends up being this for the production side of the podcast. Later, Michael Serber fills this role.
- Berserk Button: Each member of the podcast has one.
- For Spencer, it's usually Florida football in some way or games that are boring slogs. Or Holly inferring that she's going to hook up with his dad.
- For Ryan, it's making repeated fun of his name. Or his virility. Or his voice.
- For Holly, it's usually Tennessee football and anyone trying to besmirch them other than her.
- For Jason, it's coaches and athletic directors that have money not using it to fix their relationship with each other.
- Beyond the Impossible: Their first live show was recorded in 2018, and to Ryan's bemusement, it has the same poor level of audio quality as many of their earlier episodes.Ryan, before the show: It's extremely on-brand, thank God. That's the only thing we have going for us right now.
- The guys will frequently be impressed by teams that "break math" by doing less on offense and still winning.
- Big Applesauce: Relentlessly mocked by Spencer and Jason, who were mostly trying to mess with Ryan when he lived there.
- Cold Open: The Fullcast gained hopelessly out-of-context cold opens in 2020.
- Dada Ad: All of the ads that are read out on the Fullcast are usually just an extension of the group's weirdness.
- Deadpan Snarker: All four hosts are good at this, but Jason, due to his laid back personality, can make it seem like there's almost no joke in what he's about to say.
- Deep South: All four are from the south, and are well versed in both the positives and it's negatives.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Their first official season was as the Shutdown Fullback YouTube show, with only Jason and Spencer as hosts, with more scripted content. Their first season as the Fullcast is incomplete on Soundcloud, is more of a series of freeform conversations between the hosts, and it doesn't feature Spencer's signature welcome.
- Flanderization: The coaches that the hosts make fun of usually get exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness. For example:
- Steve Spurrier is a sarcastic Key West attorney who loves messing with his fellow coaches.
- Will Muschamp, a favorite target, is a barely functional caveman who hates scoring points.
- Paul Johnson doesn't care. About anything.
- Defensive coordinator Todd Grantham's penchant for calling blitzes on third down primarily out of barely restrained emotion.Todd Grantham!Ryan Nanni: I WILL BLITZ YOU UNTIL MY FATHER LOVES ME.
- Mike Riley is the nicest human being alive, which makes it so hard for anyone to fire him in spite of his track record of losing seasons.
- Jim Harbaugh is a barely sane compete freak who will do whatever it takes to win. At everything.
- Dana Holgorsen isn't particularly picky about romantic partners.
- Ed Orgeron is a barely comprehensible bear made of loudness and cajun accent.
- A rare example of this happening over the course of a season happened to Louisville coach Bobby Petrino, who went from a slimy, vizier-type to almost a terrifying, sniveling gimp.
- Foregone Conclusion: It was not a matter of if someone got kicked out of a live Fullcast, but rather... when.note
- Gaia's Lament: Jokingly describing Michigan State's home, East Lansing.Ryan: Gonna hit you with a Tornado full of brake rotors!
- Hyper-Competent Sidekick: In comparison to Jason and Spencer, Ryan comes across as this.
- Insistent Terminology: The Internet's only college football podcast.note
- Medal of Dishonor: Their general opinion of the Big 10 conference's abundance of rivalry trophies, especially due to the mediocre games that come up.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Often the most bizarre story of the week is usually called back to another event in College Football history that was just as bad, if not worse.Jason, frequently: We tell no lies on this program.Holly, just as frequently: We have never told a joke.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: On the podcast that came out during a major sexual assault scandal at Baylor University, the group had their normal episode up until the final 15 minutes, at which point Ryan took over and, in a dead serious tone, talked about the findings frankly, and asked fans who might think they'd stick up for their university if it were a listener's own alma mater to think critically about whether or not they might deserve it.
- Happened again in 2021 in their national title review, where the final 12 minutes discussing the harsh realities of the sport, especially given the COVID pandemic, and that if the people who make decisions will it, it will happen, and the players don't get a choice in the matter.
- Happened again by pure accident after USC fired their head coach in 2021, where for the first time on the podcast's history they actually sat down and seriously discussed the culture there and why, in spite of itself, USC could theoretically return to prominence. Holly lampshaded it seconds after the discussion was over.
- Running Gag: The podcast has been around, so there are a few, namely about the people in college football or the fanbases.
- All the characters around regarding the coaches.
- Consider Arizona State.
- Barry Alvarez being the only person who matters at Wisconsin. Or is everyone at Wisconsin. As everyone else is drunker than even humankind can process.
- Northwestern fans routinely espousing the fact that Northwestern is "a REALLY good school."
- "As a Medill grad..."
- LSU fans all existing in the bayou, and able to cook anything and everything into delicious cajun cuisine. Including their own mascot.
- Podcast Business... dick.
- Self-Deprecation: EVERYTHING about the Fullcast will get mocked. From it's own audio quality, to it's hosts, to it's listeners, to it's listener numbers (usually by guests), to everything else. While they may be mean to nearly every school and region in the country, they are always hardest on themselves.
- Set Behind the Scenes: For the 2018-19 Playoff series, the discussion got so far off the rails from where it should've started that Ryan nearly had a Heroic BSoD, and as a result decided to make that particular episode about the production of the podcast, and in so doing showed that he was in fact the Cloud Cuckoolanders Minder for the entire podcast.
- So Bad, It's Good: In-universe, their description of Iowa-Iowa State, which they have dubbed "¡EL ASSICO!"
- "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Mocked for people who don't know about certain traditions at certain schools.
- Take That, Audience!: Ryan more than anyone tends to wonder about the mental state and capacity of the listener; outright stating during Season 8, Week 8 that anyone listening to the fullcast isn't mature enough for sex.
- Take That!: Certain programs and coaches will have harsher jabs thrown their way:
- Georgia will often get a lot of stink due to Ryan and Spencer being Florida grads, and Holly being a Tennessee grad.
- Notre Dame is a personal target for Spencer since the worst person he ever knew was a graduate. He thinks they're all cops.
- Greg Schiano, at the time the defensive coordinator at Ohio State, was straight up called bad at his job, to the point where Spencer stated he didn't care if he lost a source for news over it. Once he left coaching, they began piling on him with much more biting commentary
- Holly will often mock Northwestern University's Pat Fitzgerald for being a "union buster".
- Take That Us: Frequently at the production and professional "quality" of the podcast, but a special mention goes to a moment in Season Eight where Holly asserted that he went to Florida because he couldn't get into Vanderbilt and he was just projecting, which illicits a quiet, sheepish, and defensive response so unexpected the room bursts into laughter over it.
- This Is Gonna Suck: How Spencer, Holly, and Ryan view any games involving Florida and Tennessee.
- Unknown Rival: In fellow podcast Podcast Ain't Played Nobody or PAPN. PAPN for it's part tends to ignore the Fullcast.
