No one in all of college football will grow, harvest and fire off hot takes better than Syracuse this year, if coaching is any indicator of hot-take success.

Stephen A. Smith, trying to use his unique talent of shouting passionately about any topic for good, oddly offered a speech to the Orange football team this weekend, a guest speaker who has made it big by talking big.

What might help explain the bizarre speaker-listener pairing is Syracuse’s athletic director, John Wildhack, a longtime ESPN executive who left the company for the New York university in 2016. The two were spotted dining at a Syracuse steakhouse on Thursday.

Syracuse football’s Twitter account offered a snippet of his motivational talk, in which he spoke in generalities about making yourself better than your competitor. (Not necessarily in football: “I don’t ever dream of playing football, I don’t want anyone to hit me,” Smith said.)

Smith’s trademark cadence — rising intensity, punctuated with pauses and shouts for emphasis — were on full display as he urged Syracuse to “maximize your potential.”

Last year Syracuse went 4-8, a season in which it is believed they received zero motivational talks from Smith.