Andy & Ari On3 - The SAUCIEST takes tackle Coach Prime, Michigan football and Lane Kiffin's social media empire

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Wendy’s New Saucy Nuggs take the Crispy and Spicy Nuggs you love and turn them up to 11. Choose between flavors like Buffalo. Honey BBQ. Garlic Parm. Or, if you’re a real heat seeker, try Spicy Ghost Pepper, only on Wendy’s signature Spicy Nuggs. Thank you to Gametime for sponsoring today's episode! Planning your college football travel for this season? Gametime has tickets to every game. (And every concert and comedy show.) Download the Gametime App and enter code: STAPLES for $20 off your first purchase, terms apply. Last Minute Tickets, Lowest Prices, Guaranteed. This show is also sponsored by PrizePicks, America’s most fun daily fantasy game. Use the code STAPLES to play $5 and get $50 instantly. https://prizepicks.onelink.me/ivHR/STAPLES  In honor of Wendy’s Saucy Nuggs, we’re plumbing the depths of Ari Wasserman for the sauciest take that he saved up during his six-week hiatus before joining On3.(0:00-0:36) Presented by Wendy's(0:37-5:16) Ari's Sauciest Takes(5:17-24:10) Is Deion soft?(24:11-25:35) Gametime Ad(25:36-33:31) Do Michigan's penalties matter?(33:32-35:20) PrizePicks Ad(35:21-45:52) Lane Kiffin's Twitter NIL jabs(45:53-50:49) Revisiting Michigan(50:50-57:05) Ari's Dive into the NCAA(57:06-1:03:41) Conclusion; Dear Andy & Ari tomorrow! [e-mail] What will it be? A Coach Prime take? A Connor Stalions take?Something no one else has ever dreamed or imagined? Want to watch the show instead? Join us LIVE on YouTube, M-Th at 9:30 am et: https://youtube.com/live/yN-1KuvCG-U Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey

you've had Wendy's nugs dipped in sauce, but have you had them covered in sauce? Wendy's new saucy nugs. Take the crispy and spicy nugs you love and turn them up to 11. Choose between flavors like Buffalo, honey, barbecue, garlic,

Parmesan, or if you're a real heat seeker, try the spicy ghost pepper only on Wendy's signature spicy nugs. I dare you. That's seven delicious ways to try the nugs you already love. Pick a flavor grab some extra napkins and prepare to nug like you've never nugged before for a whole new way to nug it's gotta be wendy's at participating us wendy's welcome to annie and ari on three presented by

wendy's and yes those saucy nugs we going to get the proper love today from myself and Ari Wasserman. Because Ari Wasserman has had six weeks of takes bubbling in that hot sauce vat of a mind that he has. And he hasn't been able to unleash them on the world so here's what we're going to do we're going to give ari a chance to throw out the three hottest takes that he's been sitting on that he has not been able to tell you about and i am going to decide which is the spicy ghost pepper of these takes if you've had the windy spicy nugs you know the spicy ghost pepper of these takes. If you've had the Wendy's spicy nugs, you know, the spicy ghost pepper is the seriously hot one. Like I'd probably not for Ari, not for his tum tum,

but I love them. The spicy Buffalo is great. Spicy honey barbecue is great too. The spicier, the better. Let's just put it that way. Ari, I'm so excited that you finally get to unleash.

What has it been like for you you had this six week period where you you just couldn't say what was on your mind so I was off for six weeks and during this time period we were moving um and moving is really really awful so uh I kind of lost myself in that but people were like like, wow, that's great. You get six weeks to kind of just relax and get ready for the season. It's like the worst possible time of the year to miss six weeks of work in this business is like the buildup into the season. Now, obviously, the season would probably be just as bad, if not worse. But watching all the predictions and the thoughts and the discussions

from afar was really, really hard. Like I did not enjoy not working. And I think that's what's so amazing about the job that we get to do, Andy. It's that it's such a blessing to be able to talk about the things that we would be talking about if we didn't work in this business, you know? And not being able to have a platform or an ability to fire these takes off was kind of brutal. So I will say I am excited for the show and ready for the show. I want to take a second and I want you to take a look at this head of hair right now. The reason why I bring that up is because yesterday it looked like I just rolled out of bed and I had a really rough morning. And today we have a whole new system in place because I don't know if you know this, but I'm by and large in charge of dropping our daughter off at school at eight.

That traffic in Dallas from where her school is to here is really tough. I have anxiety about making it back on time. Today, I woke up at 530. I showered. I did my hair. I ran this house like it was the navy andy we were out of the door by 7 30 at daycare by 8 and i was back home by 8 17 so i'm like cooking with gas today i'm feeling good and if you see this head of hair that's done well and doesn't look like

i did yesterday which i hope doesn't happen again for a long time that means you know i'm ready for the show beautiful beautiful yeah we're requiring ari to to I'm ready for the show. Beautiful. Beautiful. We were requiring Ari to do his hair for the show. If you watch the old show, Ari would wear, you know, a hat from some sort of bougie resort. We've decided that's just not professional enough. We will be wearing our bougie resort hats. You know, occasionally we might have a casual show every once in a while where we can wear our bougie resort hats, but by and large, we're going to be professionals here. We're going to come out with only the most professional blazing hot takes on this show. Ari's lettuce will be properly presented

when he does that. I mean, if you have that hair, you've got to show it off anyway. Think about all the people who don't have hair. Think about the guys getting plugs right now like they're sitting in some doctor's office getting plugs praying that they could someday look like you look right now andy you know they've done a really good job with this hair transplant thing though like i don't know if you they've come a long way so if you want lettuce like this there's hope for you you know what i mean mean? Like nobody gets everything. Uh, I got this. I'm happy that, that, you know, I'm in this position as almost 40 years old to have this hair. That's just golden locks, but, um, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. Uh, just by the second I get onto the screen, if you see this hair with the gel and everything in there, then, you know,

he's ready to cook. All righty take number one there's gonna be three i will judge which take wins the spicy ghost pepper award for this week give me number one okay uh number one dion is soft okay why i just wanted that to just land a little bit because you know that's like a good cut place but what are we doing with the uh banning reporters from asking questions if they've been critical of you like part of the job of being a college football coach is accepting and living with criticism when things aren't going well. Now, that doesn't mean that things aren't going well at Colorado. I think that from a thousand-foot view, there is no question that Colorado is in a better place than it was before

Deion Sanders took over, okay? the fact that we are talking about them as much as we do is a testament to what Deion provides Colorado in any program just by being Deion Sanders. But I had a certain vision of what Deion was supposed to be or was going to be when he got to Colorado. And he has not lived up to that vision to me in my mind. And that doesn't make me a hater. I don't hate Deion Sanders. I think he's one of the greatest football players of all time and certainly one of the most funny, charismatic personalities that we get the pleasure of consuming on a day-to-day basis.

And it's a gift. We get to talk about him. But my number one thing with him is your number one qualification for being Colorado's coach is your stardom. You weren't some sort of Bill Walsh figure. To be a Power Five head coach as quickly as you are, the reason why is because of the attention that you bring, right? If that attention brings some negative attention, that's still attention, right? All PR is good PR. So why is a person who is famous as Deion, probably the most famous coach that we've had in college football for accomplishments and personality and visibility outside of the sport like banning cbs sports from asking a question um

why is the person from the denver post not allowed to ask questions like it's it's not what i would expect from somebody who has competed at the highest level in every single walk of life. I just do not understand it. All right. I'm going to tell you why you're wrong in this particular case. Not the CBS one because the CBS one was soft. It's the Sean Keillor one. So Sean Keillor is the columnist for the Denver Post.

He's the one that Dion won't take questions from. And Dion is now taking questions from CBS. Again, that was soft. He didn't like where he was ranked in their poll of Big 12 coaches. But the Sean Keeler one, and I think Sean would agree with me on this. It's interesting. I'm saying this as someone who I've been a sports writer for almost 25 years now. I've been in a lot of press conferences. I have asked

some antagonistic questions. I have had relationships with coaches that have gone badly because of questions I've asked them and, or because of things I've written. But here's the thing with Keillor. And I think Keillor understands this because if you heard the exchange in that one press conference where Dion's like, I'm not taking anything from you. What, why are you the way you are? Basically he's asking who hurt you. Keeler has come after him from day one. He's called him a fraud over and over again.

It's gotten personal. It's different when it's, I don't think that you are doing the roster construction the right way because I think you should recruit more out of high school. I think you should visit high schools, that sort of thing. It's almost like coaching actually. It's very similar to when you're coaching a player. If you have a player, like an offensive lineman who keeps messing up the same play, if you're screaming at him about how he's messing up the play, why he's not taking the right first step, why his hand placement's wrong,

you can get mad and you can yell and you can cuss, and that's fine. But if you call him a moron or useless or something like that, that crosses the line. And so if you're going to call a guy a fraud over and over again in print, you should expect some pushback. You should expect him to not treat you fairly because you're not treating him fairly. Yeah. So if you make it personal, do not be shocked if the other person makes it personal too. Yeah and listen if it was just one person or one

instance of this happening this probably wouldn't have been a thought process and and frankly speaking i haven't read a ton of keeler's work and if you're just being uh mean or rude or personal for no reason then uh there's there's other issues there that go beyond whether or not dion should take questions from you and and i'm not i'm not just bashing sean here because sean's written some good stuff like there's a column from sean that compares dion's tenure at colorado so far to ed mccaffrey's tenure as a head coach at northern colorado which i don't think most people know how that went and i didn't know the depths of it until i read what he wrote. And then I went

back and read more about Ed McCaffrey's time at Northern Colorado. And the parallels were kind of shocking, really. And so that was good. But then calling him the minister of BS and stuff like that, that's where it goes over the line, and you should expect some pushback. Yeah, but it's not, and it wasn't an isolated incident. So in this scenario, not from Sean, but I mean in terms of like not taking questions from reporters and stuff, I think that the number one defense for Dion of anything,

including the things that I say that I'm assuming people will clip and call me a hater and all this stuff is to go out and perform the job in the best possible way. And the thing that I think I will say about my stance

with Deion Sanders, Andy, is that I think that the potential for him to be a legitimate power five coach at a big time place. Cause we just got done talking about funny people making jokes about him taking over Florida state in a few years. Like I really think that Dion Sanders, if doing the job,

the full way, which is high school hallways, recruiting calls all in on high school football recruiting, could be a transcendent coach in this business. I think that what he did at Colorado is remarkable, especially considering the fact that a lot of the people that have come to play for him and a lot of the eyeballs that have been on Colorado are based solely on who he is and his aura. But he does not weaponize his stardom where he needs to be weaponizing it the biggest star in the world to these places and using every bit of his free time to accumulate as much high school talent as possible so the sean keeler thing is a very deep discussion about like conduct and how to be professional in this

business and all those things i actually i actually want to see the conversation that Dion was suggesting in that press conference between those two. Like, yeah, I want an hour of them sitting down, both of them explaining why they are the way they are. And I would watch the hell out of that. Yeah.

Cause like, if you actually go back and look at my coverage of Dion Sanders, especially like right at the beginning, like I was all in on this guy. Like I thought that he was going to get a bunch of transfers in year one, make them a much more functional football program the way that he did,

and that he was going to use that as a jumping off point to create a recruiting swell in the high school ranks that made high school football players like Travis Hunter and the other five stars that he's gotten want to play for him. I thought that the chances of Colorado signing top 20 classes were off the charts. I think that building a program with long-term sustainability through high school football recruiting is certainly a viable option for Deion. But what we've seen here is trying to build a roster that can win

eight games as quickly as possible, but the foundation of the program with the high school recruiting is just not there, which makes me feel like he isn't going to be there very long, and then makes me wonder what the actual motivation of being a coach is in the first place. And maybe that sounds harsh and it's not a personal thing with him. It's more of a disappointment that he hasn't attacked the job full steam ahead the way that I thought he was. And if he was as passionate and is passionate about being Colorado's coach as he was being one of the best football players to ever walk the face of the earth, then things would be really, really, really good.

Really good. Like, not just like, oh, they're really fun to watch and their lines stink and they might win five games this year. I mean, like, really, really good. Like, good enough for him not to worry about the Sean Keillors and the Ari Wassermans of the world. Good enough where he could be the head coach at Florida or Florida state. Like all this like talking points, like regardless of the intricacies of what you think of the Sean Keillor situation or even the CBS situation or any other situation where he doesn't want to talk to somebody.

It's the overarching thing of like who Dion could have been and who he is. Yeah. You're mad because he could be a nuclear powered recruiter. He could. Yeah. And he chooses not to be. And I thought that's what he was hired to be. Yeah.

I saw somebody in the chat saying, there's a reason Dion doesn't do in-home visits and it's not a good reason. It's not a good reason. He would be really good at it. And Andy, I hear the stuff like, why don't you go to high school football games on Friday? Well, I've got, you know, team stuff going on with my current team and coaches don't treat me the same way.

If Kirby Smart can do it, you can do it. It's like Kirby Smart has a team to worry about. Nick Saban had a team to worry about. All the teams that you're trying to recruit, it's like I don't even know that Colorado is in high leverage battles, maybe one or two a cycle, but I thought that Colorado would be in like final fives with Alabama Ohio State and other teams like 30 times a year and if they got three or four of them then you're talking about a top 20 recruiting class at a place that's in a very winnable conference like Deion Sanders could build Colorado into a power in their own conference if he had any interest in being there for 10 years and building this thoroughly and from there, and I use this on a previous podcast, Andy, I feel like

it's like the show flip or flop, right? Like you, you buy a house and you decide that either you want to renovate it and stay in it. I guess it's love it or list it. Sorry. That's love it or list it. You're mixing your HDTV metaphors or flop guess it's love it or list it sorry that's love it or list it you're mixing your hgtv metaphors or flop is whatever love it or list it where you buy a home christina come on and you you renovate it and you decide after the fact whether or not you thought the

renovations went well enough where you want to live in the house or sell it depending on how things go like i think deon sanders has done a wonderful job of renovating the Colorado home. Colorado was a condemned building when he took over and now it's a wonderful single family home with beautiful floors and kitchen. But I do wonder, and I don't know if this is an unfair thing. Let's continue the love it or list it. Cause if you've watched love it or list it like the, the, the plot of every love it or list it is you have your wish list of things you want done. So I want an open concept floor plan. I want a new modern kitchen.

I want a new living room. I want to renovate the master bedroom, en suite, and the walk-in closet. And it's always like, well, they come back 10 minutes later. We can do the kitchen and the living room. We can do the bathroom. But that walk-in closet, we just can't because we found a roof leak. We got to fix that. Well, here's the thing that I'm saying is you can make something look prettier, but I don't know. And you tell me this, Andy.

Is it fair to question the foundation that the house is sitting on? Yes. It's plenty fair. It's plenty fair. Now, Cam in the chat says, Cam in the chat says, Ari's the reason why Colorado may ruin people's lives and once they start winning are going to run off the grid,

get away from CU nuclear exploding. That's what's going to happen to me. Cam, you're being a little hysterical there. You know what's going to happen if Colorado beats Nebraska on Saturday, I'm going to write a column. We're going to talk about it. Yeah. Like,

like here's the thing too. Like being in this business is not always about being 100% correct either. Right. Andy, like I think people think that if you have an opinion with the information that you have on hand, that if anything changes or somebody exceeds those expectations, that you're an idiot. And it's like, you can go back three years and find clips of me saying that there's nothing that Michigan is doing in the recruiting realm to ever think that that team could go win

a national championship. And look, here we are two or three years later and we saw one of the greatest runs that we've ever seen from a program like that was I wrong absolutely but at the time with the information that I had in the analysis that has been fairly accurate over the course of the past 25 years they did not recruit at a high enough level to win a national title the game changed they did really remarkable things in the portal and they were able to overcome the fact that they didn't sign top five classes. But that doesn't mean that the analysis at the beginning was off. That means that they did something remarkable. So if Colorado goes out and wins 11 games this year

and kicks everyone's ass and signs a top 10 recruiting class, that would be wonderful. Like, I'm not afraid of Colorado being successful. In fact, I think that it would be great if Colorado were successful. There's a vast interest in Deion Sanders. Talking about him draws a ton of attention. And it's not like if you are critical of the man that it is some sort of hate. It's not coming from a hateful place.

We're talking about somebody who makes millions upon millions of dollars a year to run a program. No, Ari, it's because you hate him. Now, you like Ryan Day. You just say mean things about him. But you hate Deion. Yeah. I mean, I think that the most paving column I've ever written about a coach, Andy, was about Ryan Day last year after the Michigan game. And it's not because I dislike Ryan Day.

It's because he didn't live up to what he's being paid to do. You like Billy Napier. but you hate Deion. Yeah. So that's the one number one thing that drives me nuts in this business is I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding from the fans what our actual angle and job is. Like me and Andy are here right now trying to just be honest, open, and truthful with the people listening to the show of our analysis based on the understanding of how the sport works. Does that mean that we're going to be 100% correct all the time? Absolutely not. But what we can do

is- Hold on, hold on. Cam's slightly less hysterical, but still a little hysterical. Imagine this. What would college football look like if Colorado goes 10-2? What is going to happen? Just think about that for a second, even if it doesn't happen. If Colorado goes 10 and 2, Cam, they'll be 10 and 2. They might make the Big 12 championship game. And we'll talk about Colorado winning 10 games and losing 10 games. And this kind of brings me back to the original point. I think Cam thinks the world's going to explode. You guys are so wrong. are you gonna do about this it's my favorite it's like when we rank teams and they're like well well well what are you gonna do if nc state beats tennessee this weekend well i'm gonna rank nc state higher and tennessee lower that's what i'm gonna do and also

too cam just to make you feel better if colorado goes 10-2 and lives up to the hype that Deion Sanders brought, then you'll probably find that the tenor of the press conferences is going to change. You'll probably find that people love him a lot more. You'll probably find that our analysis of what he's doing is different. You want to know why? Because it's a results-oriented business, and when those results match up with the expectations, it's impossible to be negative.

It's impossible. So I don't know what Colorado is going to do. I find them wildly entertaining to watch. I cannot wait to watch them play Nebraska on Saturday night. And frankly speaking, let me look into the camera and be real with you. I like Deion Sanders. I grew up rooting for him. He is a godlike figure for anybody who grew up during the era in which he was dominating the NFL. I think that he is hilarious. I like the

way that he frames things. I think his swag is cool. I think that everything about Colorado's uniform overhaul is amazing. I think that it's innovative to bring cameras in to the facility to let people who root for your team see everything that there is to see. The sunglass look is awesome. I've never seen a better white beard in my entire life. There's a lot to like about Deion Sanders, but when it comes to certain behavioral patterns or certain ways that he approaches his job, it's my job as an analyst talking to the people who listen to the show to be truthful about how I feel about it. So not everything is hate and love, hate and love. It's analysis.

It's thought process. It's an actual opinion based in fact and how I understand this game works. And if you think that Deion Sanders has all these fans and all these Colorado people in the chat right now being upset, could you imagine what would happen? Don't imagine what if he goes 10-2. Imagine if he signed top five recruiting classes. Try to freaking think of that.

Could you imagine if that happened? I'd be bending down at the ground and kissing the man's feet if he turned Colorado into an actual college football program that could compete for national championships and did it at Colorado. If he did it at Colorado and actually came through with what people are expecting from him, he might actually be one of the greatest coaches of all time in terms of everything that he's done. So my thought process isn't hatred. It's trying to imagine that Colorado would achieve what I thought was possible the day that they introduced him as the head coach.

And I think that's love. You know what I love? The fact that if you want to go to that Colorado-Nebraska game right now, like you want to buy tickets to that game right now, you can. Download the GameTime app. Use the code STAPLES. $20 off your first purchase terms apply for us. But if you want to go to Colorado, Nebraska this weekend, if you want to go to Texas,

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$20 off your first purchase terms apply go get you some tickets to that game. Don't listen to us. Talk about it and then forget about it. Whoa! Make a memory. Download the game time app. Use the code Staples. $20 off your first purchase. All right, Ari. Take number two. I'm really

just a glutton for self-punishment here because we're going to Ann Arbor right now. Okay. That's right. We are going to Ann Arbor. We are going there this week. But my thought process and take about this is when like the Jim Harbaugh penalties were coming down, I was moving boxes or whatever, but I was reading about it. And I thought to myself, I could not give a crap. They could ban Jim Harbaugh from walking in the state of

Michigan and that would not matter to me. I don't care about the looming penalties because I get a lot of people saying what's going to happen to Michigan's program moving forward. I think that worrying about what happened as a result of the sign stealing scandal in terms of future punishment is not the correct way to look at it. And I was actually listening to a podcast called Kings of the North while I was off and they nailed it on the head. So I don't want them to think I stole their thought. I want it to show that I agree with them. But the real penalty or the real thing that I think people should be concerned with as it pertains to Michigan's national championship last year is how we view Michigan's title in 15 or 20 years or maybe even five years if the entire country views this team as if they were the Houston Astros I think that's

far more of a penalty than whether or not somebody misses a few non-conference games against teams or favored by 30 against like I don't care about what happens in the future. And frankly, I don't really care about the sign-stealing scandal anymore, other than new information that we may get in terms of how much it helped them win, other than the Connor Stallion's Netflix documentary. I care about that. But any discourse about what may or may not happen to Michigan is completely and utterly irrelevant.

How do people view Michigan's national championship last year? And will that be a black cloud over the program in their fans' heads after they accomplished the thing that they've been dying to accomplish for 20 years is the thing that I think is the most important crux of this. Because they won the national championship. You can't take it away. you can't vacate it you can't do anything to stop it but what you can do if you're a person who thinks they cheated is that you can delegitimize them in your own mind and if that happens on a grand scale that takes the sweetness away from winning a national championship you want people to to think that you're uh you're the king you want people to know that you went out and earned it you want to like winning and being a winner is all about the bragging rights and the

things that you get and i'm not saying that michigan isn't celebrating it or that they didn't win the national championship but it would hurt them in the court of public perception if it comes out that they won because of this and that's how people view their championship. They don't view them as champions. They view them as cheaters. Like that is the only thing that matters as it pertains to getting Michigan back. They went all in last year on winning a national championship and they did so. So that's my thought.

Like anything about, you know, future suspensions or vacated wins, all that stuff is nonsense to me. How do you view their championship? And that's it. Especially, Andy, because you're talking about a program and a fan base that has spent the last 20 years talking about doing it the right way at every turn, right? Being a Michigan man and all the things, doing it, winning with honor, all those things. Maybe the biggest penalty of all is saying, you know what, Michigan, you are a national champion. You didn didn't win because the stein stealing scandal but you can't levitate over the rest of us and say that you're not just like us like that to me is another byproduct but didn't didn't you always laugh at them because i always laughed at them i did yeah holier than thou attitude before

so i actually like them better when they're going bet and yeah saying no yeah we did this what are you going to do about it? Like I like them better that way. The Ohio State rivalry is better when both sides of the rivalry are taking it as seriously as possible. Right. Like how much more compelling has that rivalry been? How much more compelling has November been the last four years than it was the previous 15. And if that means that Michigan flipped the switch and was like, you know what, we're done being, uh, you know, up here on, on, uh, on a pedestal, we're going to come down there with the dogs and actually fight, go win a national championship. That's another program

in college football. That's nationally relevant in a way that, um, that we want in terms of an entertainment factor. So I don't know what we were talking about the other day. It wasn't Michigan, but somebody was hitting me with graduation rates. And I'm like, if you start with the graduation rate stuff, but you're already in it. Was it?

Yeah. It was like, Oh yeah, it was Clemson, Georgia. That's right. Did you get a lot of Clemson's graduating men and turning men into boys? I got a lot of that.

That's not your job. Sorry. Yeah. That's their, that's their that's their parents job so yeah and also like the the uh it's a great byproduct of it but we don't write about um it we don't write about graduation rates we write about football but anyway that that to me i thought was a really well thought conversation on Kings of the North. And I also kind of like felt that in my head of like, this stuff is boring me.

And it's a two pronged opinion too. I don't know if we have six hours to go, Andy. I mean, it's the internet, but I mean, JD needs the channel. Okay. Okay. All right. I'll couch that second part then. Well, okay.

Here's my thing. You're saying that the real penalty is the friends we made along the way. Like the real penalty is how everybody views this Michigan championship 15 to 25 years from now. Here's the problem with that. We live in a world where everybody believes what they believe and they really don't care

what anybody else believes. So like Michigan fans love this title, love this team, think nothing bad happened, think nothing wrong was done. And Ohio State fans think that they are like on par with serial killers. Like that's how they feel. And the Michigan fans are never going to feel the way the Ohio State fans feel. And the Ohio State fans are never going to feel the way the ohio state fans feel and the ohio state fans are never going to feel the way the michigan's fans feel so in 25 years if the ohio state fans still think michigan was a bunch of cheaters when they won the 2023 national title

the michigan fans are not going to care they're just going to laugh just about like the rivalry and how people view it because let's say unaffiliated people if they think Michigan cheated to win the 2023 national title the Michigan fans are not gonna care it's whether or not college football views what Michigan did the same way they do the Houston Astros like that is that I think is a step further down the line than just perception and Twitter banter like if you think Astros fans care do you think I do yeah I don't see a lot of Astros fans care? I do, yeah. I don't see a lot of Astros World Series gear from that year running around Texas.

I think that's an embarrassment. You live in Dallas. There's a different team that just won the World Series. I understand. It's not a celebrated title. I would be embarrassed if I were that fan. I'm not saying that Michigan, what they did, was anywhere near as egregious as what Houston did.

I'm just saying that is, I mean, being a thought process of a cheater, especially coming from a place that has so much pride in doing things the right way, I think would be way worse than whatever show cause penalty they give a coach that just has a bajillion dollar deal in the NFL. I'm going to go out on a limb and say

none of the Michigan fans are embarrassed about this. Not one. I don't know. I don't know. Not one. Not a single one. All right. We are going to move on to topic three, but first I got to tell you about prize picks, the best daily fantasy game in America, and it keeps getting better. Listen, they've already started to load the college football board for this weekend. So we're talking Texas, Michigan. Is Isaiah Bond going to score a touchdown? Well, that's a demon square this week. So that's one of those that potential payout goes higher. If you take more than 0.5 touchdowns for Isaiah Bonds. If you think Isaiah Bond's going to score a touchdown against Michigan, you feel very strongly about

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square that wins. But then if you added some more squares, potential payout goes higher like i had a three square play that won this past weekend and it was uh it was pretty spectacular so download the prize picks app use the code staples play five dollars get fifty dollars instantly and hey let caleb williams help you get there all right all right pick number or pick three. I got prize picks on the brain. Take number three. Let me ask you a question before I start. Yes. Just rapid fire.

Five teams you think who spent the most in NIL this offseason? Ohio State, Ole Miss, Texas. That's it. I don't need anything over again i have a question for you okay and this is my take i don't know if it's a take it's more of a question and i want to explore this with you because i haven't heard anybody talking about this and i might just be misunderstanding i'm intrigued let's go lane kiffin tweets out a lot about NIL. I think that I saw him tweet out just an article about how much money people think Ohio State paid for their roster. Correct.

Why is he doing that? And I know it might be to troll, but I don't understand. Like, NIL is a very important part of old missus story this season so like what is happening here and of all the troll jobs and the funny tweets that lane lane can post which i enjoy this one just doesn't really seem to make sense to me so please help me understand what what's going on here because i don't get it you want you want me to help you with this particular one with with with about Ohio state? Well, I understand that,

but this isn't just an isolated. No, no, no, no, it is. But, but,

but there's, I can psychoanalyze this one fairly easily. Ohio state in Lane Kiffin's mind overpaid for Quinn Sean Judkins and Ole Miss is running game is going to do just fine without Quinn Sean Judkins. And they use their NIL money in a more efficient manner because they are using it to brief up their lines of scrimmage, which is where they needed help the most.

I think that that is, I didn't view it that way. I thought that he was jabbing Ohio state for spending a lot of money. Obviously the Quinshawn Judkins. All politics are local. Ari, remember what, for spending a lot of money. Obviously, the Quinshawn Judgers thing is personal. All politics are local, Ari. Remember, what would affect Lane Kiffin the most involving Ohio State's use of NIL this offseason? They bought his running back.

Right. But they bought other people's players. So that's why I just thought it was like... Other people's players weren't Lane Kiffin's players. And remember, this is a situation where if you, if you delve down into it, it got to a point where Ole Miss was like, great,

you go find the best deal. That that's what that situation got to was when Sean Jenkins, it wasn't a, we want you back. Here's this Godfather offer. And then Ohio state just topped it. It was like, we want you back, here's this godfather offer, and then Ohio State just topped it. It was like, no, you seem to want more than we can give. Here's what I actually really kind of respect about Lane Kiffin,

because if you actually go back and go from the beginning of when NIL started becoming prevalent in this sport, long before Quinn Sean Jenkins went to Ohio state. Like lane has always been very outspoken about NIL and, you know, how it's, you know, free agency and he's made a million comments about this.

So the one thing I will give him flowers for is that even though it doesn't seem to me that he particularly likes this aspect of the game, he has coached at a program that has employed the thing that might not be his favorite thing in order to try to go win a national championship, which I think is the exact opposite of what Dabo Sweeney has done with this point of view in Clemson. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I think, I don't know if he hates it or not. I think he's very matter of fact about it. And I think a lot

of coaches are not matter of fact about it. Like they're not just saying, here's what's going on because a lot of coaches still, I mean, think about how many grew up in that world where if you talk about paying a player, like the NCAA cops are going to store, like the NCAA SWAT team is going to come flying in and then your programs in a world of hurt. Like it doesn't work that way anymore, but most coaches, they have decades of that drilled into their heads. So they don't want to talk about it. Like AJ says in the chat, everyone bought their teams. Yes, that's true. Like this is something we've been talking about with Florida and Billy Napier. The attitude among Florida's administration

has been like, hold your nose. You're taking shortcuts if you buy players. Nevermind that they were the morons who were going to give Jaden Rashad a $13.8 million. They're not even good at buying players. Lane Kiffin just approaches it in a very matter-of-fact manner, talks about it in a way that most other coaches don't talk about it. Now, Chuck Martin talks about it that way. We heard him last week talking about Alabama taking Miami of Ohio's kicker. Like a few coaches talk about it like that. And I actually find that very refreshing. I want them to talk about it in a very matter of fact, this is what, this is how it works way. Because I think that's more honest than, than pretending like, remember when Jimbo Fisher got so mad at Nick Saban and he's like, how dare you

impugn these young, he didn't say impugn because Jimbo's never used the word impugn, but like, how dare you suggest that these young men only came to Texas A&M for the biggest bag? That is an insult to the young men and their families. No, it's not. Most of us took the jobs we have because we had a competitive financial offer. That's not insulting at all. It's what everyone does. Yeah, the thing that I just think is bizarre, and I understand that the lines get blurred a little bit when you're talking about from one program to the next, and the one that he's tweeting about is to the program that he went to. But I'm on a weight loss journey, okay?

I am not nearly as big as I was six months ago. I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be with my body, okay? But I don't walk around looking at people who are overweight and going, you're fat. Like, there is a certain level of self-awareness that I have to possess as a person who has this battle myself that I am engaging in something that they are to maybe a more greater extent. But I have also participated in eating things that I shouldn't have or eating too much so like i don't know if that's a good analogy but it's like have even a little bit of self-awareness if you're going to criticize somebody for doing the exact thing that you're doing because you have walter nolan on your team now you have juice wells on your team they

didn't come there because they love old miss you know what i mean like i understand what you're saying that but he's not saying they did like he's not pretending they did but yeah so the context that you helped me see i think makes a lot of sense it was a veiled thing that i just didn't put together so you're smarter than me but it's not that that is just you just approach if you approach every single thing you see with the sentence all politics are local echoing in your head. It just explains everything almost, almost every time. So that might not even have been, that might be the mild take, but that was just like, I thought it was fun to talk that through.

Oh, I can tell you what the ghost pepper take is right now. I've, I've, I, because I think the Michigan thing, like the Michigan thing just ignores human nature because human nature is the Michigan fans are never going to think they, they cheated. And the rival fans are always going to think they're serial killers and the unaffiliated fans are going to be like, eh, whatever. And so it 25 years from now, that's not going to matter. Like I'll give you an example, the 1993 Florida state title. So the first national title in school history,

Charlie Ward, young work done. Do you think that title was tainted? Um, I don't even know. You don't even know what the problem was. Okay. So there was a big controversy around that title.

Do you know what the big controversy was? What's that? That someone took some Florida state players to footlocker and bought them some things. That's probably why I don't know about it. Yeah. Well, if you read the sports Illustrated game story from that national championship game, you would think that some Florida State players had actually killed someone. Yeah, well...

Not gotten a couple of pairs of free shoes. Free shoes university, one of C. Spurrier's greatest lines ever. But in the grand scheme of things, dumb. But I guess if they were Eric Norton... Nobody cares. They would probably have helped them play better. But I do think that there also is a distinction. I'm going to give you the second thing real quick about the Michigan.

I promise you I won't take time. But there is this. I watched the Netflix documentary about Connor Stallions, like I said, right? I'm very impressed with this man. Like, I don't know that I've ever worked as hard at anything in my life as he did to do what he did. Okay. And whether or not, you know, he was at the CMU game or whether or not he paid people. Oh, he was at the CMU game.

I think we know that. I'm not even talking about like just from a a commitment standpoint of like having a goal doing everything like going to the military like all the stuff like like I actually feel sorry for the man because I feel like if he would have used his energy in a way that same amount of energy but in a way that didn't put him in this position like I actually think somebody like that could be the coach of Michigan one day, but the thing that I, I,

and we'll never know how much what he did impacted Michigan. So I think the distinction between what Michigan did and what Florida state situation is that you're talking about the free shoes. You thing is one might have given a team a competitive advantage on the field. Right. And an in-game thing to me is always going to be yeah it's always going to trump well and remember i don't think giving people money for being good at football is bad so like i'm never going to get all worked up about that yeah and i

guess you could say to a certain extent that paying people illegally before nil to come to your school is also a form of impacting the game. It gives you a competitive advantage. And I actually got in an argument about that with somebody last week on Twitter. And they're like, well, name me one thing that's a bigger advantage than knowing what the play is. And I said, having better players. And they're like, yeah, but. I'm like, no, that's the biggest advantage you can have.

Because if I have better players than you, I can tell you what play I'm running and you still can't stop it. But the second part of this, Andy, is that there seems to be, and the reason why I brought up that I watched the Connor Stallions thing is that I found it wildly entertaining.

Like the vacuum cleaner, like it is a very funny- I was pissed that the vacuum cleaner thing was not explained. Like that's the biggest miss in that documentary. Like where was my five minutes on the vacuum cleaners yeah uh well i just don't know sometimes too it's like general fans and twitter like we are so in the weeds of everything like i don't know if like a general fan who didn't really know like i think those untold uh documentaries in

general just for people who don't know anything about what happened to begin with um so it's a matt like no and and that's just understanding the audience like think about everybody who watches netflix like that documentary was for my wife who did watch it with me the connor cyans one and her like that was her biggest question is like what rule did he break and then i explained it to her and she's like don't care that's stupid why would that even be a rule and so like i think that's what ohio state fans michigan state fans like they have the hardest time wrestling with is like if you tell this to a normal person who's not in the weeds of college football they're like i this is so stupid who cares i actually my personal opinion is that i

don't think that michigan won the national championship because of this man okay obviously he wasn't even there. He was gone. And the thing I've pointed out over and over again is Michigan did have the most severe in-season penalty that anybody's ever handed down, where they had to lose their head coach for their last three regular season games,

including their two most important regular season games. I think what makes it worse for the Ohio State fans in all of this is that they got the penalty they were looking for. They took Harbaugh off the board and Michigan still clowned them. So that makes it much, much worse. So to remove the Michigan aspect of this away, is that when something serious happens, whether it's Michigan or anything else, we all have this funny laughing, ha ha ha, like thought process when it comes to the NCAA,

uh, not being a competent body of enforcement. And I don't think it's funny so like i think that it would be great if we had uh rules in place that were enforced and a competent governing body over something that we all care about so much i enjoy it being funny like i enjoy making fun of them like it's funny to make that's what we do i'm not saying that we don't we shouldn't do that what i'm saying is is that we love this sport more than anything like this other than my family like there's nothing that i love more in life than this so the one thing that we're

watching right now is an evolution of the sport that's so drastic in the last three years that you'd probably say there's been more change during that time period in the previous 50 years combined. Previous 100 years. And there's nobody in charge. So as all this stuff happens and television deals get thrown out, like we are meddling with something beautiful. And we're always going to watch. And it's an entertainment product.

And I know that the funny parts of it are really really really uh you know funny but nobody at the wheel when the sport itself is so precious to me is a scary proposition sometimes you don't know your history there's never been anybody at the wheel i know that's what makes it great they've they've been making it up as they go along since 1869. The absurdity of it is the feature, not the bug. But do you ever fear that the absurdity of it being the feature will ever get to a point where something could happen where there's no guidelines, there's nothing happening to protect the sport from not even Michigan, just people doing things.

What do you want to protect it from? They're going to play football games on Saturdays. As long as they keep doing that, it's going to keep being pretty awesome. Yeah, I don't know. You're going to still have bands. People are going to show up. No, I know. I know what you're saying.

I mean, I get it. I am afraid. Here's the thing. I cannot stand that the Pac-12 doesn't exist anymore. I cannot stand that the teams on the West Coast are in Atlantic Coast conferences. I can't stand that the regionality of the sport that we used to hold so dearly to our heart is diminished. Okay. Ari, I can't stand that Boston Market beat Kenny Rogers Roasters in that franchise war.

It sucked when all those Kenny Rogers Roasters closed because I couldn't understand. You're on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, pal. You need to go take a drive. I think we might actually. Yeah, there's also some in Southeast Asia. But I couldn't understand. Kenny Rogers Roasters was so much better than Boston Market. Pac-12 football, you could argue, was better than some other conference's products. But shit happens.

Yeah, no, I know. Shit happens. Kenny Rogers Roasters is gone. I wish it was back, but it's gone, and I moved on with my life i didn't stop eating chicken saying is is that if there was a uh ability to have a governing body that's in place to protect the sport from itself from making changes that make it worse because i do think that the lack of conferences and the expansion of it and where it's headed is going to make the product worse. Fans didn't want this. Fans aren't going for this. Fans didn't like, oh, well, once we get rid of the Pac-12, the viewing experience is going to

get better. We're going to watch the games and it might be an indestructible product because football is football and everybody loves watching college football. But I don't think that the destruction of the Power Five made the sport better. I think you could say that like it made the product actually worse. And I don't know how many times you can go and make changes that make the product worse before it actually just becomes worse. Like I wish you need to, you need to start making decisions for the customers rather than for yourself. No,

but somebody in charge But having somebody in charge is not going to fix that because Roger Goodell is the guy in charge of the NFL. Who does he work for? The NFL's customers or the NFL's owners? Yeah, no, I understand.

I mean, it's just all all of the dollar. The problem is the people who ostensibly have been in charge of this sport the entire time, they work for the schools. The schools have done this to themselves over and over and over again.

And the fact of the matter is it's changed over and over and over again since 1869. People act like this is all new. It's not. All of this has happened before. And the thing has chugged along so things evolve now we're in this weird period of fast evolution because of a lot of different factors and it feels scary but the absurdity of the sport actually like i, I will say this. The Connor Stallion's scandal, I'm using air quotes here, actually helped restore my faith in the sport.

That something so incredibly dumb could make so many people mad. That's college football. College football is large groups of people getting mad about something stupid and funny. And yelling at each other over it. And then they play games on Saturdays. Like, that's the sport. It's amazing. Okay, I can meet you there.

I can meet you there. But maybe I'm just precious. Maybe I'm just being precious about it. I do. I'm looking at the chat. like, maybe I'm just precious. Maybe I'm just being precious about it. Like I do like, Hey, I'm looking at the chat. I think most people agree with you. Well,

I, the thing is, is that like, I know that you, like you're probably were very entertained by the comedic relief that we got during a very, it's like funny because it's like so important on one hand and so funny on the other.

Like, it's like, it is like this weird dichotomy. It's, it's, it's, but the thing is like, okay, well, we'll compare it to the NFL. Let's take spy is like this weird dichotomy it's it's but the thing is like okay we'll compare to the nfl let's take spy gate in the nfl the patriots there's nothing funny about

it and i'm not that worried about what they were doing like but it just wasn't funny it wasn't entertaining there were no weird characters like college football for whatever reason all of its scandals include these ridiculous people. That's the best part. So like, so then help me then, because like, I, I want your guidance. Okay. I thought the whole, the Connor Stallions, his name, the vacuum, the extent to which this man went is very, very funny. How can I think it's really funny while also not thinking cheating is funny?

If that's what we think he did. You can definitely hold both thoughts in your head. It's certainly possible to hold both thoughts in your head at the same time. Because, yes, if you think that they gained an unfair advantage, you can say, look, they should be severely punished for this. But I also think that this guy who had the vacuum cleaner repair business being the mastermind of the whole thing is freaking hilarious. Yeah. That's where I'm at. I don't think that the cheating part is funny. I don't think that there's no way to hold people accountable is funny. And I don't, and like the, the, the rules part is one part, but the other part is the

evolution of the sport and the way it's going to set up and how the playoff works and where the conferences are. Like all that stuff is like a completely different entity. Almost like television is over there somewhere. We got the NCAA over there somewhere. We got no man's land in the middle. And it's like, on one hand, I want to laugh because Connor Stallion's name and everything he did was funny.

But like if Michigan won games, and I'm saying with an if because I don't think we'll ever know. I don't think that they did. But if they did by doing something outside of the rules, that's not funny to me. So like I have like this like internal battle between like yes i want to laugh with you andy i do think it's funny that the man was doing dyson vacuum cleaners on his like that that's the funniest thing ever internal crisis i don't know it's it's not a crisis it's okay to feel that it's okay to be conflicted but there's no asterisk on this show i think i think i'm gonna make an easy ruling here on your sauciest take it's it's the d on

his soft take that was very saucy i think you backed your point of view up very well i happen to disagree with you in this particular instance we've talked about that but i understand exactly where you're coming from on that that's the the sausage steak. That's the ghost pepper take. So if you want to have some spicy nugs today in honor of Ari's Dion take, get the ghost pepper. Go out on a limb. Get the ghost pepper. It's spicy. I'm telling you.

But remember, with the buffalo and with the honey barbecue, you can also make those spicy. So I think my lunch plans are set, Ari. But this has been fun. I'm so glad because this is, I actually intentionally did not call you or text you about this stuff while you were on hiatus because obviously I knew you were coming here and I did want to hear it fresh from you because I knew it was driving you insane. Like I knew you were moving boxes from one house to another, dealing with all the things that, you know, basically writing, just taking your paycheck and handing it over to Home Depot, like everyone does when they buy a new house. And then you turn on a podcast and be like,

I gotta talk about this! Let me tell you. One thing you just said, you know what was worse than not being able to get takes off? What's that? Going to Home Depot. It's the worst place in the world, and it's not meant for me.

It's the best place in the world, and we would love it if they'd want to advertise it. You want to hear a Home Depot rant? A Home Depot rant. Okay, go for it. Let me ask you this. How many people do you think walk into Home Depot and know exactly where to find the exact thing that they need for their house ari it's on the app and it tells you you like you you key in the item on the app and it tells you not only what aisle but what bay it's in i'm not saying where it is in the store

i needed to get a screw okay there are nine there's a thousand screws in that place and you might know what that word means but i don't so well what are we talking about deck screw wood screw i had to like machine screw i don't know like that's the problem so like did you bring did you bring the screw i took a picture of the end of the screw you have to take a picture of the whole screw yeah because you need to know how long it is what the head looks like what i'm gonna rant I took a picture of the end of the screw. You have to take a picture of the whole screw. Yeah, I took a picture of the screw. Because you need to know how long it is, what the head looks like. That's what I'm going to rant.

I'm going to say they need to have employees in this place to go help the layman. Because there's so much going on in here. They're the nice people wearing orange aprons. Yeah, I know. They're really nice. And I asked for a different type of light switch that the the contractor said go get a two prong or two two two whatever light switch i he i said write it down for two seconds a two gang light switch it's you know those light switches that where you like have

multiple like lights on there and you like yeah two gang whatever it was i wrote it down and i asked the guy at home depot where do I find a two whatever light switch? And he goes, he took me to the light switch aisle. And then, of course, the light switch aisle is the size of Walmart by itself. There's nine million different types of brands and features. And he's like, bro, I can't I have no idea what you're looking for. I'm like, OK, well, I'm going to go home now because there's no way that I could figure out what this is myself. It is overwhelming.

Dave's here says, somehow he's the guy who wouldn't like Home Depot. Next, he's going to go after Harbor Freight. Listen, I'm okay. The minute you go after Tractor Supply, Ari, is where I draw the line. Yeah. You've never been to Tractor Supply, have you? Yeah. Go here.

They have everything. Like, you can literally buy chicks, baby chickens at Tractor Supply. This is it. Right here. This is me. Ari is definitely... Can't be fixed with duct tape. Just buy a new one.

Do you know how much money I've probably wasted in my life buying things that I didn't need because the hassle of fixing the thing that was broken was too much to bear. And it probably would take you five minutes to fix. Yeah. If you say that you're a man and you go into

Home Depot with your tool belt and you can put a deck in your backyard by... But no, no, no, I can't. That's not talking to you. I'm talking to the comments here. I can't put a deck in. But I will tell you, I have 10 years of home ownership on you. So home ownership is what teaches you to do all this stuff. The first time I bought a house, I felt exactly the way you did.

10 years from now, when you walk into Home Depot, you're going to be like, ah, I got this. It takes some time. I don't think, I got this. It takes some time. I don't think that's okay. It takes some time. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Well, I hope you're ready.

You got this. Everybody in the chat, listening, watching, you've got this because I'm about to give you homework. I'm about to give you an assignment. Tomorrow, it's not just Dear Andy. It's Dear Andy and Dear Ari. You're going to get a written version from me and a written version from Ari, and we'll answer your questions on the show.

So Thursday is still going to be the best day of the week, but we need your questions. At Andy underscore Staples. At Ari Wasserman. You can email me, andysapleson3 at gmail.com. We'll have Ari set up an email address too if you just want to email him a question. For now, if you want to get one to Ari

and it's long and you can't fit it on social media, just email it to me. I'll make sure he gets it. But we want your questions. We're going to be breaking down the Michigan-Texas game in detail tomorrow because we're going to that game. We got to do some homework on that.

We got to figure out how that's going to shake out. But we'll also be answering your incredible questions because we love you and we know that you are the smartest, best-looking audience in the college football universe. And you ask the best questions. So get those questions to us at Andy underscore Staples, at Ari Wasserman, andysapleson3 at gmail.com, and we will talk to you tomorrow.