Josh Pate makes the case against playing college football games overseas

Next season, Kansas and Arizona State are set to play each other in the first-ever FBS college football in London, England. This continues a trend of college games being played overseas in recent years.

According to Josh Pate, no matter how dumb you think college football in Europe is, it’s dumber. He argued the case against playing college football internationally on his show, Josh Pate’s College Football Show.

“You cannot take college football to Europe, because once you take the product off campus, you have removed the college portion of the football,” Pate said. “And at that point, when you’ve stripped away all that, you’re just taking the second-rate football product over there. The European mind has no clue about Dabo Swinney running down the hill. They got no clue about the Big House or the Shoe. They just know we get to see NFL games occasionally.

“Someone called Michigan is coming over here, someone called Arizona state’s coming over here. Those guys look smaller than the pro guys, they look a little bit slower, they drop more footballs. So why are we watching this? That’s the European mind … What they’re sending them over there is just football.”

Kansas and Arizona State will be the third overseas FBS game in 2026. On Aug. 29, 2026, TCU and North Carolina meet in Dublin, Ireland, while Michigan and Western Michigan meet in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2027, Pitt and Wisconsin are scheduled to play in Dublin.

To Pate’s point, London has hosted dozens of NFL games, this will be only the second college football game held there. In 1988, FCS opponents Richmond and Boston University played in front of 2,500 fans at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. However, European exposure to the college side of American football has been increasing in recent seasons.

Georgia Tech defeated Florida State in Dublin to kick off the 2024 college football season. Meanwhile, the sport returned to Ireland in 2025 featuring a matchup in the Big 12 between Iowa State vs. Kansas State. Still, Pate isn’t convinced that fans overseas would appreciate these matchups the same way it would have on American soil.

“The European mind cannot comprehend many things that America has to offer,” Pate continued. “But one of the hardest things to comprehend has to be when we send a college football game over to Wembley Stadium, because they get NFL games sent over there, so they’ve seen the best athletes playing the sport in the world. They have no clue about the tradition and pageantry you speak of about college football, all they’re seeing is a second rate football product on the field.”