Chapo Trap House - Episode 216 - First Time, Long Time feat. PFT Commenter (6/3/18)

Episode Date: June 4, 2018

It's sports night here on Chapo! We're go deep into the Red Zone with local radio call-in favorite, PFT Commenter. We go around the horn and take a tour through the wide world of sports takes: Is Lebron overrated? Should we play the National Anthem before movies? Should you kneel? Did Robert Redford make the right move by leaving Kristen Scott Thomas at the end of 'The Horse Whisperer'? We analyze the athletes who clash on the gridiron and the heroes who cover them in the sports media.

I I You're talking before about Lenny Dykstra showing up at your stew with a briefcase of the gun in it. Yeah, which sounds that's pretty fucking scary Like a handgun. Yeah, so Lenny Dykstra rolls with a piece. He's got a handgun For a while on part of my take we had him as our chief financial correspondent Well, he founded that magazine for like athlete troponores. Yes, you know Yes, if we find a magazine for current players, I think he was like here's how to spend a lot of money while you're an athlete

That's something that they need a lot of help There's anything athletes need like need help with it's Having CTE then starting a restaurant that fails and then they have a weird family falling out with a brother-in-law Yes, and then go bankrupt, right? So you're gonna want to have your appetizers be called kick-offs Desserts are extra points. All right. What if you what what if you in the bathroom hear me out here? You have autograph memorabilia, but it's not from you It's from a less well-known player because you want to monetize your own memorabilia. I like I like that idea I also like having toilet paper that has like your big rivals face up. Yeah, that's always a classic and like other celebrity

restaurant tours Bathrooms cameras for all the women who are going to the bathroom in there. You're actually perfectly describing Jerome Bettis's restaurant I was there like a month ago, and it's almost the exact same thing except the urinals You can just look out over I think they have actually they have TVs in there We can look at the dining room So you go to the bathroom take a piss and you can just make sure that that your girl is still being respectful of Well, you're gone from the table, you know the saddest not to use your phone while the saddest casualty I've had someone from Milwaukee the saddest casualty of the Ryan Braun

steroid Scandal was that it was the death knell to his two restaurants that he had in Milwaukee one of which was a scratch Italian place Which with it was it was sort of like a bro pasta restaurant, and then he had another one that he co-owned with his buddy Aaron Rodgers It was like MVPs. It was their two numbers and And they had to close them both and I'm sad because I never got to try either of them like because I bet they were amazing That does yeah, that's very sad. We had a swill and bet Betis was a Penn State guy, right? Betis. Yeah, no Notre Dame Notre Dame. Yeah shit. Who's the who's the ring back went to Franco Harris? Okay. Alright, so there was no like

There was no turno memorabilia. Well, I'm sure they're probably well I mean it's in Pittsburgh So yeah, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting like a mini statue of Joe Paterno there You could make an amazing coffee table book out of the failed investment projects of professional athletes We had we had the Michael Jordan steakhouse in Chicago and I never went in there But I imagined like if you went in there with like normal fitting pants that weren't ashy acid washed It was like when they made you put on a jacket. They're like, um, could you actually put on this like weirdly big Oxford shirt? And these acid wash kind of like half Jankos. I had it on up to our dress coat our Michael Jordan dress

Can you put this weird earring in right now? I had a birthday party at the Michael Jordan steakhouse in New York It's in Grand Central Station. That's how you know. It's good. It's right in the train station So like when people come out of town to go there, they're right there. That's a sign of quality So sorry back to you back to the nails. Oh, yeah, the Lenny Dykstra. Um, so yeah Yeah, he started at a magazine that was like investment advice for athletes. So it's like you don't blow all your money I think it was actually opposite. I think it was like marketing like how to live luxuriously Seriously, it sounds like I was joking about that, but that's literally what is but in addition to that though He was a financial

Advisor, yes, and he I think his all-time stock tips went like five hundred and one and one He had one failure that he'll he'll tell you all about it in his book Actually, it's 501 two because we called him We were in Vegas and we had like 700 bucks that we won in some bet and we called up Lenny and we said hey Lenny Should we put this money on red or black and he said red we put it on black and then red hit so he lost a 700 bucks He's five hundred one and two But yeah, Lenny we used to have a lot of fun with Lenny we'd call him up and ask him if Every time there was some sort of like locker room talk in the news

We would we would have him as our locker room correspondent because he was just he was just a weirdo He just loved to talk about like oh, yeah, nobody to push you like me Yeah, if you ever heard him on Howard Stern They just had him on to like talk about all the cunnilingus He's performed in his life and hearing him talk about it with like his his missing teeth is just I remember ridiculous I saw uh, there's a picture someone put online of a Lenny Dexter sign baseball card that they got at one of those like You know autograph conventions and Lenny signed it and it was like to a kid or something And Lenny signed the card like I don't know how much pussy you got but there's no way it was as much as me

Yeah, that's very true. One time we had we had Kurt Schilling on the show This was like I forget why we wanted to talk to Kurt Schilling, but we we kept him on hold for like politics Yeah, you want to pick his pick his brain we kept him on hold for like five minutes and we had our hold music was Beyonce singing the national anthem at the I duration and so we kept like cutting in on be like hey Kurt are you doing okay? And then I would be like yeah, Kirk Yeah, where should we transfer you to like ask him like who he's trying to speak with then we put him back on Fake hold keep playing it and we asked him once we finally had him on the show. We said

So you shared a locker room with Lenny Dykstra, but you guys had a lot of fun back in Philly, huh? And his big funny story about Lenny Dykstra was yeah, Lenny was great one time There was a female reporter in the locker room and Lenny had a boner And he just kept staring at his boner and then looking at her and then looking at his boner again It was hilarious and we're like, yeah, that's us Can't make this up man. What a guy I bring up Lenny Dykstra and his his his magazine that's his success win magazine for athletes Yes, and I remember watching HBO's real sports that Brian Gumbel and it was a segment

Hosted by fucking Bernard Goldberg the guy author of the great book a hundred sickos who were screwing over America He did it He did a segment on a package on Lenny Dykstra about like, you know You may think this guy is a goofball, but he's actually a genius It was all about like, you know, he took over a chain of car washes and now he's a millionaire and he's like He's yeah, he's mr. Deals like he yeah plays the stock market. He's a genius and then Years later, they did another segment on real sports It was a follow-up with Bernard Goldberg where they were checking in on Lenny after he had lost all his money and

Completely shit the bed and I never forget Bernard Goldberg asked Lenny Dykstra Who's like again slurring and like being sullen like how much money do you have in the bank? Like how drastic are your finances and he goes money? Well, fucking what we want some fucking money I got $70 right here and he takes like crumpled bills out of his pocket and Bernard Goldberg goes no Lenny I'm not talking about the money in your pocket. How are your finances, but I love the idea of a Bernard Goldberg originally Louding him as some kind of genius. That's the thing like if you've ever spent any time talking to Lenny Dykstra I I have no idea how you would ever walk away from that conversation being like this guy's got a shit together

He was never a guy even when he was playing baseball like he would he was the guy that would have two cheeks Just like completely filled with red man And he couldn't hear him talk like he was he'd even slur when he didn't have a slurring problem because he had so much chewing Tobacco in his mouth. I have no idea how he ever scammed people into thinking that he was like an investment guy It was the glory though of the of the housing bubble Yeah, no, that was the glory era of American Ophry every dipshit with any access to capital could just Like just throw money around and it would all end up being profitable because everything was just all of the money Was just making more money and it was just great

You know what it was it was when he was on that Philly's team He might have been like the smart one because it was like the Mount Rushmore of Dunces. It was him Kurt Schilling John Cruck and Mitch Williams. So yeah, he was he was the brains behind the operation on that Philly's team There was I remember like there were multiple CNBC reports about Lenny Dykstra in like 2007 Like right the financial crisis really started in like 2007 when Citibank announced like this unexpected loss and it caused Because like a bunch of options and like dead instruments to snap up But before that like all it was yeah, the Lenny Dykstra segment on you squawk box or whatever fucking show was on CNBC And it was like you may think this guy is a sub mental toad

But he's actually investing his money and then they would talk to Lenny Dykstra And he's like, you know, you doubt you got your fucking Dow Jones got your stock market You got your you've got your money markets. Just put all that shit in there and boom It was because it was that easy it was such a bull market that like you could literally you could just get an ape to throw a dart at Something and you would probably make money. He was playing the the Japanese stock market. What's that called the Nikkei. Yeah Well, again, it does it does clue into the the connection between You know athletes at the highest level who are almost all degenerate gamblers as well because they need that that fix in their life Once the at the game is gone

But I guess I should just start the show. Yeah, you haven't figured it out already We're talking to host departed my take pfd commenter. Yes going buddy. Pretty good. That's my real name That's my actual name. Oh, you're Catholic. Yeah So it's yeah, we're talking up sports balls here today So if you're for some kind of a nerd who doesn't like that switch off now We will not be taught what we're probably gonna talk e-sports Yeah, e-sports in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, right? Yes. Yeah, the two main sports the world sports. Yes

Well, we'll surely overtake the NFL now that that's on the way out for tonight is on the way up That's right. The NFL is dead. I don't know if you guys heard that or not yet ratings went down at the exact same level that like every Television show went down like because obviously people are cutting the cord But it became like a huge political issue and people are it's like they're reading into it like a Rorschach test Like okay, the ratings went down because of my reason though My it's actually just people not buying fucking cable television and that's that's about it. I mean people could say yeah there's an overall

The internet is like biting into the market share of cable TV and traditional entertainment But the truth is no one wants to watch football games since the players union had a strike Where D-Ray was declared the winner of every game. It's true as they did They didn't like that was very divisive move in a time that we shouldn't know ourselves. Yeah, it's just not good It's like everyone wants to forget politics at these games were $300 trillion of military hardware flies above the stadium right every 20 minutes Dude, don't don't take away my flyovers It's a huge waste of money and it's like a bunch of bullshit

But there's something about being in a stadium when a when a like f-18 flies directly over you that your balls kind of Shaked, but you're like, okay, I get it. I kind of get it. This is cool It is is I don't really watch football But like I think it should be a punishment like if you're a top tier team like if you made it to the playoffs last year You get a flyover But if you like you had a negative record You just didn't make it the coast card just drives around your stadium Thanks, and worst record gets a strafing run

That's a good point I think the the solution to the anthem thing is just only the team that won the Super Bowl should be the only team That's allowed to stand for the national Their winners and that's what the flag represents The flyover of the Super Bowl is actually the only successful combat mission for the F-35 I'm pretty sure the one would crash if they tried to fly over a stadium I want to I want to talk about the NFL anthem stuff with you But before it is the the NBA finals right now. Yeah, you know

So let's talk basketball and you're the perfect person that I wanted to ask about this can you explain to me the hilarious story about the Brian Colangelo's fake Twitter accounts and the owner of the 76ers I mean the story is enveloping as we speak. It's where we at so far so what's happening what we know for facts are that he there were five burner accounts at least and They would respond to like egg avatar. Are we talking egg avatars one was called Eric, Jr One was like sixers with like nine numbers after it But they would they would reply to stories like members of the media or sometimes players even

And offer up very sensitive information about stuff that was going on inside the building that he would be the only person to know about or he would be one of you know, a handful of maybe three or four people that could possibly know about it and Somebody we're thinking the former GM of the 76ers who was he was essentially fired and pushed out the door because He tanked the team for four or five years in a row just to get good draft picks His name is Sam Hinky and everybody in Philly loves this guy. They forced him out Because the team was very clearly losing games on purpose and he was mad that he got forced out all the good players that he got We're now winning under a Kalangelo So they're thinking that Sam Hinky discovered these burner accounts and sent like a message to the ringer saying hey look into these things

I think this is Kalangelo. So it turns out that a couple of them were tweeting while he was doing press conferences too So they can't all be him, but they've been tied to his wife now They were like they were tweeting during press conference defending like his outfit from people who are roasting him that big collar as much Yeah, bitch, and then they'd be like hey, you know, I'm a fashion expert and Brian that he looks great Yeah, that was my favorite one. It said like actually, that's a very normal collar Move along and find a new slant or something like that. It reminded me of I saw somebody tweet about this about the the tall guy on the Simpsons. He was like, this is the This is the largest auto I can afford

But when you go back and you look at his collars now, some of them are a little bit big But even the ones that aren't that big now all you can see is like a giant collar So it is yeah, he is a giant collar guy So but like was he doing it like he was also responding to Sixer's players too and like sort of like trying to get under their skin To motivate them or something. Yeah, talk shit to do well and be it or whatever Joe and be it I'm Julia Oka for was another one. I think where he would just respond and say hey your teams taking care of you the best They can they're trying to get you a good way out of town and they're looking, you know, they're looking out for your career And it's just a really bizarre story. They haven't figured out. I mean what how's that investigation going to go?

They're gonna be like hey was that you that had all those burner counts He's gonna say no and they're gonna say oh, okay, and that's the end of the investigation Like I don't know how else it can go, but it's just a bizarre bizarre story Well, I just what blows me away over and over again is seeing these rich powerful guys Like glanjil comes from a from a sports dynasty, right? Like Elon Musk is the same thing like you're that rich you have that much power Why do you have to fucking post you got a post? Why do you have to post you get all the money in the world can't buy likes and retweets like it feels good

Even if you're like a billionaire you got to get those likes off. That's so terrifying to think of though I don't think it's surprising at all, and I think it portends badly It's not surprising because it's like, you know all we have this guy in Illinois Jim Oberweiss who? He's a like big Republican guy, and he's actually like an ice. He's literally an ice cream Baron like he sells like high-end dairy and I dairy and It was always funny because he was like Dennis has one of dad and Dennis Hastert's biggest Pat Patrons and it's funny that it's like oh man, of course the fat guy has the ice cream bear It couldn't just be like a Koch brother or something turns out. There's another reason that has sir like the ice cream guy. Yeah

Yep, you got to drive the truck This thing's a pussy magnet but He ran for governor, I think four times and spent an eight digit amount every time and Every single time came in third or fourth place in the Illinois GOP primary And there are tons of rich guys like this who just do something they suck at because they're like well

I have all this money I'm like great at everything and I think like posting is the final frontier Mm-hmm, and Elon Musk He's like gotten a fan base of posters who are as Stefan Heck pointed out all from the Netherlands for some reason, but I Think it portends badly because like now they're just they're trying to get in the honest way, right? They're just trying to win favor with good posts, which they just can't do they don't really have a good posters mentality But that means eventually they're gonna get sick of like getting owned by people and they're just going to make it

They're gonna pretty much it's already happening You're not gonna be allowed to like fuck with a rich person on the internet much longer I think because they're just they're gonna be sick of this shit where people like where it's like one realm They don't have control over you're gonna get banned just for like, I don't know Telling Elon Musk that all the grime songs sort of sound the same or something You know like that dating website elite singles Yeah, there should just be a social network for you have to have you know a billion dollars to qualify It's just a bunch of billionaires just suck each other off of a bad

Oh, yeah, there aren't that many billionaires so you don't you look at the rush of getting that nice 5k Requeats or something like that, you know really hit the jackpot with it Well, you can just you can just game the system and like in football football tricked me because for the longest time I was like football is awesome because it's high scoring and then one day I just realized that every point is really just worth seven points and that's why it's high score And that's why I like the big numbers so just make it so like one retweet is actually worth like a thousand They're like, oh, yeah, I got 2,000 you get the same rush I miss bookland shows the GM not the owner, but yes sports teams owners

Definitely have that pathology of like because they think they're part of the team and they want to like, you know They think they are an athlete in a way and like even though he's not a poster my favorite example of this is Maybe one of the worst owners in sports James Dolan owner of the Knicks and the MSG company my favorite thing he ever did was he required MSG employees to come to his gigs like white man blues band called JD in the straight shot Oh, yeah, where he literally does these lead vocals and plays harmonica doing like, you know, like blue just Atrocious blues rock for for like yacht people. That's the awesome thing about money is that you have you get to make everybody be your friend You're like the kid from the toy and everybody is Richard Pryor

It's awesome. I would love to see what Dan Snyder the owner of the Redskins would do if he like if he started a band I would I feel like he would be I he would try to get into rap. I feel like dance Be a SoundCloud rapper you start taking Xanax and he would be the bar out the first like zanned out all lives matter rapper Yeah combined two great things. Well, I did my favorite genre of rap is not SoundCloud rap It's Facebook rap and it's always like a white. It's always like a white guy with just like Sort of like a chin strap. Who's like, yo, you could actually be racist to white people, too That's the entire point of my song And just has like a very simple duplicate flow and it's like but when you say I'm bad because I'm white

What you really mean is that you're not right and it just all the comments are like boomers who are like, you know I didn't like rap before but this is great. That would be Dan Snyder, but he would be on Xanax because he's rich That would be amazing. I was he would have multi-colored dreads I would pay money to see Dan Snyder rap Dan Gilbert is another like rich guy who's like just every time he says anything He's like, yeah, this is gonna go great. I'm great at talking to people The Cavs owner got really salty about LeBron. Yeah taking his talents to Miami The Comic Sans letter. He speaks in Comic Sans I'm talking font Dan Gilbert absolutely talks in Comic Sans and

It's funny watching LeBron like when they won the Eastern Conference finals You know, everybody walks past the owner and shakes her hand LeBron James just like straight up ignored him He just hates him. He hates him so much I hope what I really want to see happen is LeBron James go back to the Cavaliers at some point in exchange for equity in the team And like be the first player owner which he actually might be and just also please LeBron if you're listening bring deli back Thank you. Well, um Well, yeah, it's the NBA Finals right now. Let's talk about it LeBron. I think we can finally say overrated definitely

Very overrated. Yeah, I think I just think he's the league's worst general manager. I Think he needs to pass more often personally. He needs to pass more often needs to be a leader Yeah, except at times when I think that he should really be in control of the game and Jordan never passed so sorry. It's like you can take it both ways skip Bayless is really good at that Yeah, my favorite skip Bayless trick is before a series starts, you know, he's been a long time LeBron James hater Yeah, yeah, it's him for whatever reason. I don't know Any sanity like at the point where we were like any normal person could make that argument Yeah, skip Bayless dreams of windmills and all the mills are just LeBron James's hands blocking his takes after the three to one play out

Like finals come back. Yeah. Yeah, there's no there's no real reason to hate LeBron James besides the fact that like yes Sometimes he he milks injuries a little bit and make sure the cameras on him, which I can actually get myself worked up about So I'm gonna stop But yeah, there's the there's no chance that you can hate LeBron James. He said before the series He flipped it on him. He goes. I actually think that LeBron James is good enough to beat the Warriors in five games So what he's doing is he's setting that up so that when the Warriors and by the way the Warriors were like 13-point favorites So when the Warriors win, which they're, you know, clearly the better team Then he can call LeBron James a fraud for not living up to his own expectations and treat him like he's like his little son

Like you disappointed me. I put my faith in you one like in these games Like LeBron maybe sits for like two minutes He's he's on the court the entire game and the other thing I saw skip bill is say he's like he's like Oh, yeah, you know LeBron's, you know numbers are impressive But if you really want to see like what taking over a game is like watch manager nobly play He can change the game instantly coming on the bed. That's right. Yeah, ask any general manager They'll take me five manager no, please and like Matthew delvedova with one knee and you can you can make a championship team No LeBron like it you it's over

You can't say that LeBron James is not a great player unless you just want to stir the pot And that's what skip Ellis is is really good at doing or he used to be good at doing it Now he's like a caricature of himself a little bit The LeBron hater is like the most interesting archetype in sports to me because it's like I think like boy John boys had Something about this where it was like if you were a LeBron hater until about like 2015 You were just like generally just a joyless person Yeah, and it made me think of this guy that I knew in Minnesota who is just like, you know how there's just like there's like There'll be like a

Growth of dumb guys in Midwestern and state and then it'll just be like a dumb guy at the bot like that's the dumbest guy in the group of Dumb guys. This was one of those guys we knew and what do you call a group of dumb guys? Is it like a court of owls or one of those weird animal I don't have to think of the terminology congressman Open myself up for that one But he was like I remember I forget which I think this was like 2012 2013 So I forget which game we were watching, but he's like another great play by little bitch And we were like oh we're like oh man good one. He's like thanks It's just always the image in my mind of like a guy who just pathologically hates LeBron is that guy

Now LeBron does give people a lot to laugh at because he's not his public image is not You know he puts a lot of stuff out there that that opens him up to be ridiculed Yeah, his hairline like one the hair the always changing hair line is a classic He he was wearing like an AC DC outfit before the last game He's wearing a full suit, but he had the the shorts like the suit shorts. Oh, right. Yeah after the game He was like really mad. They lost in the heartbreaking fashion game one. He's just like yelling at reporters or he's like glaring at him with his eyes He's very very upset. He's like is that it okay? I'm out and they just stood up and then you're like, oh, yeah, he's wearing the shorts

So there's like an additional punchline on top of that And people also forget that LeBron James showed his dick to the world like two years ago in the pre games He was just like adjusting his shorts and the cameras are right on him And he just pulled his dick out like his dick popped out for half second to the point where everybody was like wait Was that was that LeBron James is dick and then everyone rewound and they're like yeah LeBron James Just pulled his nuts out on TV 10 out of 10 10 out of 10 and he also makes his teammates read books So he made him read he got everybody reading the godfather last year. Okay, awesome. Yeah, at least that's fiction I was you know, I was terrified for a second. You're gonna say Malcolm Gladwell or you know fucking

48 laws of power or some shit like that. No, definitely not like me Yeah, LeBron's more basic than that I think and he also got everybody in his like inner circle really into drinking wine and I think that's why he's such a bad general manager He just gets drunk and trades away all of his teammates like he's he loves red wine so much It's all he puts on Instagram. He started saying she's a lot which I saw him like Instagram She's ten times in maybe five days. I was like, I'm gonna make some money off that So he starts on a t-shirt that just was a bottle of wine that said she's in the NBA logo So I'm just capitalizing on LeBron James is like social media faux pas right now. It's a it's a pretty lucrative industry

He that sounds like as soon as he retires. He's gonna start posting full-time. So I'm looking forward to that He goes. I don't know. I feel like he'll be as divisive in his posting career as he was in his regular career But I'm gonna cheer him on for that. Well, the good thing is Michael Jordan isn't a poster So you can't have the MJ vs LeBron debate about that Michael Jordan would be the best poster Just cuz he's the biggest piece of shit in the like he rocks He has the one like core talent you need to be a great poster and the just he's like just a completely spiteful piece of shit Yeah, never let anything go Never let any see his speech getting inducted into what like the Hall of Fame was like

Here's everyone who ever wronged me for the past 35 years like that's perf. That's he's a forum poster He has forum poster fundamentals. Yes, but the LeBron I didn't know about the LeBron godfather thing because that's One of the greatest dumb guy works of fiction of all time like dumb guys love the godfather They think there are good lessons in there Yeah, and he if you watch closely every you know every game he'd be walking through the tunnel They'd show him holding the book he has bookmark in there and the bookmark never moved It was just like it was just a prop for him to just let people know that he was reading books

Oh, I just love the part in there where the godfather eats spaghetti and goes to respect somebody you must know them But to know them you must respect them. That's really I love that part It's funny because everybody around LeBron James is such a fuck up and he's so good that it's it's funny to watch him deal With all these people that are just like so clearly inferior to JR Smith I mean the the head and move at the end of game one. That's now the mean but JR really is the king Well, yes, he's the best the classic you try to get the pipe Tweet, you know drinking Henny out of the bottle smoking buns JR is a guy. I Is that that you said feel as he just one of those guys where you all you can say is gotta respect it

You know gotta respect his decision. I relate every fit That was Leon after the game one thing about his like not realizing what the score is Leon replied to someone He goes gotta respect his decision and someone was like, what are you talking about? It was the worst thing he goes. I know but you gotta respect it Yeah, he's the only like if JR Smith like acts like he hit the button to start a nuclear war because he's like oh damn I thought they were launching missiles as I'd be like well, that's like him Because every I said it already, but it's like every family has a JR Smith I wish my family had a JR Smith. That would be awesome

But it really people when you talk about every podcast as a JR Smith I wonder who it is. I wonder who it is who sometimes has your shooter. You're a shooter I want I wonder who sometimes has game-winning lines. Sometimes doesn't know what's going on Forgets the topic of the episode is I wonder who sometimes sleeps through an episode I wonder who shows up to an episode after playing games until 6 a.m. And saves the episode. I wonder who that is when people maybe Matt for me The LeBron Jordan comparison one thing to just really try to do as a mental exercise is imagine Jordan trying to

Trying to wrangle the herd of dipshits and fuck ups that he's had to work with almost his entire career Right, he would have fucking lost it He would have been like Billy Blanks at the beginning of last act the last Boy Scout He would have fucking practice The idea that he could have handled people who just this chronically fucking incompetent is just not something that would work No, he punched Steve Kerr in the face and Steve Kerr is like the most competent Yeah made of all time and he couldn't even he would have he would have fucking rolled JR Smith in a carpet and dropped him into fucking

Chicago River well As others have pointed out a Jordan was basically the only human being in history With the with the power and the dragon energy to rock the Hitler mustache Yeah, after after Adolf sort of ruined it for everyone else and nobody said shit to him. He was in a Haynes commercial Yes, sir mustache. Yes, Steven Haynes the fourth was on set going. That's fine Michael You do you those got all of those tagless undershirts? That is the that was a revolution the Game everyone everyone complained about bacon collar not anymore. Yeah, I still don't know what the fucking collar is

Oh, it's where the it's where the really like ripples. Yeah, the shirt looks like a shirt. Yeah, I My all my shirts at that. Oh Colangelo could use some of those fucking low profile collars Michael Jordan like I can't explain what he dressed like he dressed like What I imagine like Erdogan Suns dressed like like just huge not really baggy jeans But they were sort of like, you know the wet waving tube men Yeah, they were like that they were like that's they looked like that around things that are in front of a cardio

Yeah, that's like just yeah, but not acid wash. Okay. Also kind of like selvedge looking Michael Jordan like I think there was a period from about 2009 to 2013 where I didn't see a picture of him not wearing a corduroy jacket With like really tubular jeans. No, his fashion is impeccable like the acid wash jeans That he should release his own line of jeans like the Jordans. Yeah, we get it man. You can move shoes by the way that whole Republicans by sneakers do thing. He never said that That's just like a common thing that you say to sound smart and I say it all the time to trick people into thinking I'm smart He never said that but now Clay Travis named his book after that quote that Michael Jordan never said that's the perfect Clay Travis thing That's the perfect conservative thing just taking a quote that no one ever said. Yeah

And it's a Thomas Jefferson and turning it into a wine as George Yeah, no as George Orwell once wrote it was the best of times they were pretty good times. Yeah So I want to talk to you, you know, you're in the the sports media You're in the talk right the sports talk radio business and I wanted to bring up one of my personal favorites Probably my favorite of all time the king Mike, Francesca Have you noticed that he is just recently joined Twitter? He joined Twitter, but he's only he's only used a small fraction of the Website so he's gonna be rolling it out slowly. He's in beta testing right now His tweets. I think he's getting things wrong in like record time

This is actually the worst thing that could happen to Francis because the best thing that he did was he would be wrong But then he wouldn't have to address it for another 24 hours And then something else would happen and then he'd get to figure something else to be wrong about for later So he just he kept like pushing it off and pushing off getting called out on it But with Twitter, he's like getting called out on being wrong and instant He my prediction is he's gonna probably deactivate within six months and be like this is a website full losers They shouldn't be allowed to talk to me this is disgusting I Much prefer the intelligent banter of sports talk radio

So, yeah, one of the first things he said was like don't waste my time in the in the in my replies Don't waste my time, but uh, you know adapting to the medium in a quite a unique fashion I just want to share this with you one of the first things I noticed he did He did all of this like unthreaded So like you would just come across this completely random in your timeline like divorce of context So he writes here after the program today. I received this letter like that's just a single tweet Just farted into the void and then he just tweets this old ladies letter to him and he goes hi Mike I'm writing you with sadness my mother Judy from Brooklyn passed away. She was 88 years old over the years

She loved calling you up on the fan to talk Yankee baseball. I want to thank you for your kindness I want to thank you for your kindness to my mom over all those years. I know she hasn't had her transistor I know she has her transistor radio in heaven and is following the Yankees listening to you on the fan from three to six thirty I wish you luck on your return. This came from her son Michael Judy was a wonderful lady Love the Yankees and Spencer Tracy movies. May she rest in peace met her a few times at events I liked her a lot and then just right after that without a pause the outspoken Steve curse as NFL's anthem policy is idiotic He is absolutely right How disappointed would you be if you got to heaven and you had to listen to baseball

TV No, she likes he leads to listen to it on the fan He needs to listen to the talk radio to really get the right. Yeah I don't see Mike is too old school of a guy to think that just like anyone should be allowed to interact with him Yeah, you know like he's the pope. He's a sports pope. He needs to have he liked it better I'm sure when he had like some sort of filter where you could look at that little the screen of collars that he called in Is like and oh this guy. This guy thinks that they should trade Derek Jeter. Yeah, let me talk to him He liked being able to filter out the takes this is gonna be too much

Yeah, maybe maybe like some lucky fans can be buried with Mike Francesca in the afterlife And when they go to have like these people are listening to him in heaven Yeah, they they can be his servants in the afterlife working his call screeners for him in eternity None of you none of you people on here on this website. None of you have the insight or class of Tony blue balls from West Orange I originally had the idea. I wanted to make a Chris Russo parody account to troll him on Twitter to just respond to everything He says Mikey you're crazy. I Love it. I love it. Yeah, but I don't know he's like a legend and so I'm glad that he's I'm glad he's back on the air Just for you know the video clips so you get to watch him falling asleep

People will call up and just make up players names and ask for All that guy's a bum. He's a fraud. So just Lastly on Francesca, I'm wondering. Did you ever read the New Yorker profile of him? The New Yorker did a talk of the town piece about Mike and the Mad Dog back in the day and it contains One of my favorite like probably my favorite paragraph that's ever New Yorker of anything that's ever appeared in there and I just want to share with you guys right now This is from again a profile of Mike Francesca and his former partner Chris Mad Dog Russo New York City New York area sports talk radio legends

It says your Francesca and Russo have grown so accustomed to talking to each other about sports that they even when they are talking about something else They sound as if they're discussing a fake punt or a cork in the Yankee schedule a few years ago Circumstances place the two of them for an hour or so in a hotel room together a rare occurrence when they are on the road They often stay in separate hotels. I always stay in the best hotel, Francesca told me Chris Carlin their producer at the time who has now has a show of his own on WFAN walked in to find them watching the horse whisperer Carlin started to speak but they shushed him on the TV screen Robert Redford was breaking up with Kristen Scott Thomas When the scene was over Russo said solemnly Mikey he had to do it. He had to do it It was the right move dog Francesca replied the right move

That's how you know you're dealing with like a real sports guy when they when every single conversation sounds like it's Like a solemn post-game talk with like some of you just lost a game with like that The fact that they only speak to each other using sports metaphors is perfect and it's not like it doesn't really explain anything Interesting about their their friendship or their relationship It just speaks to the fact that when you spend 40 years doing nothing, but watching sports That's that's your only contact that you have to go off of so like he Francesca doesn't he probably doesn't know who the vice president is right now if you ask him But he can tell you who like the the bench coach on the Yankees is you know

He also had a he had a tweet just yesterday It was May 29th the birthday of one of my favorites JFK He had an amazing ceiling he never really was able to accomplish all he could the career was cut short tragically Driving through Dallas in an open-top car bad move bad move my He was injury-prone He did have a bad back that's why he was on all those pills Oh, but outside Francesca like who's your favorite like sports media blow hard J. Marriotti J. Marriotti Yes, not not even a question J. He revolutionized the game

He was just he was an amazing example of consistency with his ridiculous takes for you know 15 20 years Didn't he get like but he's had sort of a fall from grace though, right? He used to be like a mainstay on you know around the horn Yeah, and then he fell even lower than that. Yeah, he he ran some into some legal issues Okay, that way Ozzy Guillen started butt heads with him When he was in Chicago and that it triggered J to go into this like big spiral and once Ozzy Guillen started making fun of him It turns out that everybody else that had ever worked with J. Marriotti had something bad to say about him too And then he went out to the West Coast and he's been working on a book by the way

He tweets about it pretty frequently He's working on a book that's just compiling people's tweets that are saying mean things to him And he's gonna it's gonna revel in it revolutionize the game and he also he thinks that but when our book comes out He's gonna realize that we've beat him to the post Exactly what our book is. He's also got a podcast or he had a podcast with Woody Page the guy that he used to go head-to-head Yeah, yeah around around the horn with who also has like sexual harassment issues as well. Woody I don't know. I don't think what he can find his dick. I'm like he's got one of those like bloated faces I'm sure that his his fupa is just enveloping his crotch right now

But he had they did a podcast for like two weeks and then Woody was like, I can't even handle you anymore J So now it's just Jay Marriotti doing unmuted. It's awful. It's awful. So I like I like Jay Marriotti a lot I mean, I got to say, you know, Woody Page is good all the old guys on around the horn. That was like that was when sports were great I was I was actually talking to Matt about this the other day like a you know real Unemployment fails so now absolutely where it's like you just like you get up of a day I'm like the goal is how can I make it to five o'clock when the sports talk comes on and then I can watch Sports Center And then it'll be the evening and I can like I won't have to you know torture my conscience with my own Ineptitude and uselessness. Yeah. So yeah, once once that around the horn came on I was like

Yeah, yeah in the books It truly was the Algonquin roundtable of the early 21st century. The real battle was like getting between three o'clock and five o'clock When you did when you have to watch the Steve Wilco show I solve that issue with Mike and the Mad Dog because the yes network would play their show on TV from like three to six o'clock Yeah, that that got me through a lot of a lot of dark moments another Big hero of mine is Rick Riley. I gotta say Rick Riley has lived the best life So Rick wrote he wrote the well He was a feature writer for Sports Illustrated for maybe a dozen years and then they moved them to the back page

Which is like first thing musings on golf musings on golf and being a father and yeah And just a lot of crocodile jokes about like their teeth He was a big tooth joke guy to be like this guy's busier than a crocodile dentist and he would use it And then You know, he was he was such like an attraction people would always read that that stupid column at the end of Sports Illustrated The ESPN came in I think they paid him like three million dollars a year But they didn't really know what to do with them. They were just like we need Rick Riley We need his mojo over at ESPN and so they got him there and then he started plagiarizing himself

where he would actually just copy and paste his old articles and just rewrite them and They're like Rick. What are you doing? You can't do this and then he kept doing it over and over and over again And he just they just put them on the sidelines for the last like four years of his contract and paid two million dollars a year To do nothing to do absolutely nothing and now he lives in Italy where he makes jokes on Twitter 24 hours after an event happens You can set your watch Rick wake wakes up the next day On the Amalfi coast or whatever and says the exact same joke that somebody tweeted 24 hours So it's like Bobby Menea still getting paid by the mats to do nothing. It's exactly. Yeah

I remember I was on an airplane with him one time. I walked past him He was in first class, of course, and I remember because I'm not I'm not a bad flyer But I always kind of get morbid before I get on an airplane because anything can happen and everything well There's no way this plane's crashing Rick Riley will never die certainly gotten a fucking plane crash He'll die at age 500. I don't know if I can like hyper pillow that gives you Endless orgasm my favorite annual column that Riley would write would be he would get to go to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit shoot And he would bring his son and his son We got to watch his his little boy become a man from the age of maybe nine until 13

And then the last one was like Rick just talking about how cool it was to see his son be horny He finally gets it. It's a special moment in his life that you know the cats in the cradle moment when his son got to be like one of the guest painters to paint on the Like the bikinis that are just like you know airpods. Yeah airbrush Yeah, he was like when he was nine years old He didn't really you know he would be like oh dad Do we have to go to the beach again for the stupid shoot and then when he was 13? I couldn't keep his eyes off him when they were changing. That's my boy

And now he's just ruined for the rest of his life because he's just Expecting a bunch of women to show up and fucking bikinis and shit and ask him to help tie him on And it doesn't happen. Well, that's we're gonna Elliott Roger. That's what that's why you it's like t-ball, right? Like you have to start your son off jacking off to the Sears cattle Like ease him in and then maybe if he shows like proficiency at that you can take him to the swimsuit issue thing, right? So, I mean obviously the the sports media field usually, you know, like the political media is of course filled with Unbelievable gas bags and morons, but guts the sports media is so rich in that too. They actually take themselves more seriously Yeah, which I mean when you think about sports is more important than anything else

Like it's the bread and circus and without the bread circus then you have to focus on stuff that actually matters And nobody wants to think about that so if you're if you're in charge of if you're a sports media personality like the the biggest nuisance that you can run into in Your day is like the the line for the cold cuts being like a little bit too long or the coffee is not hot in the press box or Heaven forbid somebody claps in the press box because you have to remain perfectly neutral and unbiased and shoot right there Like your guy Saliza everybody In sports media because you can't root for one team or the other you just root for the storylines and What storyline is gonna be easiest to draw analogies to Game of Thrones for there? There is like there's like a type of

Personality like the most powerful type of personality in the world Donald Trump has it Tommy Wiseau has it Dan Quinn has it Brian Pumper has it and most of the guys we've discussed in sports media have it where it's like just It's self-assurance, but also like this level of weirdness That like there are people who are self-assured and those are athletes because they're amazing at something But then there's that level of self-assuredness that comes with not being really good at anything that Just makes you like a very strange person that can never be wrong and contort yourself in these weird ways and makes this bizarre mythology and hierarchy about yourself and I think political media They're not as yet. They're not as self-important as

Sports media maybe just because they hate themselves. Yes everyone in political media fucking hates themselves and they're right to like there's garbage They're talentless Insecure worm worm like people but in sports media like they're just as incompetent as political media But they had that Dan Quinn Donald Trump Brian Pumper power. They're like, yeah, I'm the king Well, everything I do is right all those fucking miserable political media people wish they were doing sports Yeah, they wish they were doing sports because in political media like again, you have to be like Crystal is a mindset like that's why he's the he's the king which would drive any like normal person insane Like, you know, like to behold that level of intelligence

We would be like if you know a rat suddenly had human awareness if you could get to Saliza brain would drive you mad instantly but like they essentially have to feign neutrality on Things that do have real-world consequences But for which there is no ever really any definitive resolution or victory to any one side or the other Outside of elections, but then you know come and go that like elections is the closest thing they have but there's that's why they love I'm so much. Yeah, cuz it's something an objective thing that they can report on someone is gonna win this on this day Whereas I think you're right that sports media people do take themselves more seriously because I feel like that

They're they feel like they're invested in something in which like the outcome is final and objective I think that's definitely a part of it I also think that a lot of people in sports media grew up wanting to be athletes And so what they did when they realized that they couldn't be an athlete they turned Arguing about sports into a sport like around the horn. Yeah Yeah, and so now they are points their athletes, so I I'm an athlete just my you know my Field of play is you know sitting in front of computer and god I'm fucking part around the horn. They would say like two-time defending champion

Yeah, of what having a something this fucking Tony Reali deciding that your argument about About how gritty Alex Rodriguez is was worthy of a point Yeah, I think Tony's reached the point where like he's in on the joke a little bit He realizes how ridiculous the whole setup is but Jay Mariotti never This was life and death for Jay, which it's sad. I'd like to see him make a comeback I mean he never will on the espion, but uh, yeah, we can we can dream the political media people I think a lot of them they didn't even dream of being politicians because I think they realized like early on It's like I just like anyone who sees me just instantly fucking despise this man

But they did they have this like impulse that people will find them important or loved and it drives them insane And the highest thing you can achieve in political media is to be like this elder statesman thing to be like Fucking Tom Brokaw or someone where it's like you'd they have worked in the news for over 45 years You cannot do you know about their contributions to the news? So it's like a little a little troop like almost or I mean you can strive to be Jesse Waters, too That's pretty impressive. Jesse. That's my guy that guy is I'm trying to thank you. He's just got fucking quoted by the president just yesterday. That's incredible. What? Uh, he's having a segment on waters world. He said the only thing that this is the only thing that we're back up President Trump

The only thing President Trump colluded on was getting beating Hillary or something like that. Oh, that's and he says that's pretty good That's right. And so he's being fucking quoted by the president on Twitter. That's winning I mean poor Maggie Haberman does all this work to stay in his good graces and all he does his shit on her Fucking Jesse Waters scotch tapes his eyes to do Chinese accents on fucking O'Reilly factor He's getting quoted by the president You don't understand satire. That was brilliant the ultimate Saliza mindset I was just thinking about this the other day like in like in the context of like the Samantha B controversy Saliza was responding to that. He just said, you know, we all feel very strongly about things

But like, you know bullying and insults are never okay. And like it will never make your argument look good to to say these words Or to insult people like that and shout out Paul blessed who responded Didn't you literally called Donald Trump the king of insults like a week? That was like his compliment. He was like, hey, say what you will about Donald Trump But he loves selling insults and boy. Oh boy. Do they work for him? I feel like Saliza imagines himself as Caesar Milan and he's just like being calm to serve just like correcting everybody's behavior Left and right, but it's just a pack of rabid dogs that don't give a shit about what he says But in his mind, he's like the only one that can like make sure that the discourse stays in the correct area

Yeah, he's like a labradoodle trying to act as like as a herding dog for feral hogs So like so they're like there's the political media and the sports media and obviously So is it like yet? He has to cover people like like Trump and you know those clowns in Congress But like sports you have to cover athletes. So who in your opinion, who who's the the funniest athlete? Like who is who's the biggest brain genius athlete like right now or just anyone in general like all time I mean JJ Watt could be an elaborate performance. Sorry JJ Watt might actually be like the the National Guard paying the NFL $10 million a year to engineer like a big

marketing campaign for joining the military because he's basically Captain America But I don't think he's that self-aware. I think if I'm being honest, like I think Chris Long is pretty fucking funny Like he's got into this thing recently where he he trolls hockey Twitter by doing by by praising NBA players and saying that they're tougher And the whole joke is like obviously everybody knows that hockey players are fucking tough, right? Okay, yeah, that one idiot on the capitals last night skated into the boards and broke his nose in pregame And he was out there for like his first shift and didn't miss a beat They've had guys like almost die on the ice and beg to be checked back into the game

But Chris likes to make fun of the fact that hockey Twitter is probably the They're the most sensitive group of people out there. They're the most sensitive group of people out there We call them the please like my sport people like if you ever talk trash about hockey, they will swarm you And so he just goes over the top. He's like you see LeBron James play Like 40 minutes last night. You'd never see a hockey player play that Hockey players take too many breaks and and they go on these shifts and it's just a mark of a lazy athlete And of course the joke is also Chris Long was like a third down pass rush Specialist for the Eagles and the Patriots

So he plays like one out of every six or seven snaps out there But then all the hockey players were like, I think the daily caller wrote a blog about Chris Long's problematic hockey tweets How he was using it to like actually trash the NHL not understand the context whatsoever But he's he's pretty funny. I think I have an entry from MMA. Okay, let's hear it little backstory in the UFC's flyweight division recently Jared Brooks Was attempting to slam his opponent Jose Torres with He had him like he's holding him like a boat like in the air and he's trying to slam him down to the mat to like get him Down there and like knock him out or submit him and in the process Brooks knocked himself out and

This is after the fight is on Twitter. He's adding Jose Torres You're lucky that I knocked myself out. You didn't do shit to me that whole fight Just seeing you after fight interviewed well played. But if we run that shit back I beat you nine times out of ten and the only time you do is me KOing myself So he's saying that like there's always going to be a 10% chance of himself not There isn't really that many like clever guys on MMA Twitter, there's just like really Things will just be like sort of normal stupid guy banter where it's like, you know a very very pixelated

Drawing where it's like lots of people are fake nowadays that type of thing But sometimes like you'll just get something absolutely insane or jarring like Sage Northcutt and His just like a video of him doing a backflip and he's like Sunday is awesome Where he's like a sort of like hyper trophyed Rod and Todd Or you'll just get like white guys saying the n-word a lot Yeah, it's the last sports domain in America where like the white guy athletes just publicly drop soft a n-words all the time And it has there has to be like a a thing every week where people have to tell these guys

Who like have to do a correspondence course to formally finish eighth grade as 26 year olds like with it They can't say that and they're like what I have black training partners. It's okay Some of the yeah, some of my favorite guys to punch in the face are black I think it was Darren Ravel who said that this whole 76ers mess could have been prevented if teams put in social media training for their front office Employees it's like that. Do you really think that like saying hey? Don't create five burner accounts and like tweet at players and reveal like hip of and commit hip of violations on He was gonna do that anyways

There's like a 30-minute seminar at the airport that you can take that is gonna prevent that. I Mean Ray Allen is an all-time great. Yeah his his tweet of I'm on my way. Just imagine my tongue and dick going back and forth between Your pussy and then my dick and your clit and my tongue on your clit and just let me know when you come And it was supposed to be a DM very clearly Yeah, uh sex gifts I don't I'm like thinking of getting into baseball a lot of my friends follow baseball But they you're thinking of getting into baseball. Yeah, I need another hobby besides war with by which I mean fortnight

But let's go to a game this summer. Okay. I love going to baseball game finally That's okay. They're turning around to my way of saying things. I know I actually like watching baseball I just never do it, but My friends love they've told me this is like the best dumb guy athlete Trevor Bauer. Oh, yeah, he is the stone dollars. Yeah, he he cut his finger off with a drone All right, I'm definitely getting into baseball now and he's and he's like a mega tweet guy, too Uh-huh. Yeah, no Trevor Trevor's a funny funny guy. Didn't you put like Bush did 9-11? Or Bush did WTC like on the mound. He wrote

Bd 9-11 on the mound Yes, and people people don't know I don't think he ever said specifically what it was but a lot of people speculate That it's Bush did 9-11 you really if you if you're enticed by dumb guys Felix baseball is for you It's might it might have the dumbest guys like as like a football baseball players might be the dumbest athletes They're my type of dumb like another guy. He doesn't play in the league anymore He believes it plays in Korea now was a named Luke Scott and he was he was just a parody of a MAGA shut He would just do casual racism in the locker room and he did a thing

I think it was for ESPN where he just drove around in his car and talked about how he liked to keep the doors unlocked because he wanted to encourage a car jacker because he had a gun in his in his Glove compartment and he was just willing to shoot anybody who tried to steal his car. He was just doing bait car for himself. Yes He definitely had a dashboard cam on himself. Yeah Baseball players seem like they're my types of dumb guys like the Just like the very like selfish or like stupid white guy. Oh, yeah. Well, they all want to be cops Yeah, yeah, like the whole baseball code thing. It's all these guys getting to be police officers

Like a guy like Brian McCann who's a long time Catcher his whole thing is policing the unwritten rules making sure that nobody walks too slowly Around the bases when they hit a home run or too fast either There's exactly like there's a precise speed that you have to round the bases or else You're showing up the pitcher and he will fucking end your shit Like any and he and there's a lot of them like that. They just all they have cop mustaches They just wish that they could have a gun if they could play play baseball with like a police

Utility belt and gun and a fucking And the taser and shit they would love it. I think umpires should have guns actually umpires referees Especially in football. Yeah, make make sure that you like if someone comes at you and they're arguing. That's a standard ground situation I was brought up to respect authority and I think there should be a gun to a halftime gun caught a show Yeah, if I like the idea of of officials having guns, but not not like an Out carry like stuffed into their belt so that if somebody comes and starts yelling at it They can just casually lift the front of their shirt, you know Like in like in menace the society or whatever and then just put it away and and get them to walk to walk

Yeah, I also walk it. I'm also a big fan of the unwritten rules Those are my favorite arguments to get into like what this guy bunted to break up a no-hitter is that should we throw a 99 mile an hour fast ball And then like last week there was a slide I think I think Rizzo on the Cubs slid into home plate like a little clumsily hit the catcher But then the pirates didn't throw it Rizzo the next time he came up to bat And so that's it's then like wait are the pirates disrespecting the unwritten rules by not enforcing the unwritten rules And then the Cubs should throw out the pirates to make sure that next time someone disrespects the unwritten rules

You respect the unwritten rules and you beat them next time Yeah, and the idea that the idea that the enforcement mechanisms for these things that are just It's just basically like a ladies tea party situation It's like it's the foot baseball equivalent of like extending your pinky when you're drinking your tea the punishment for that should be Having a professional athlete throw a fucking baseball at your fucking head. Mm-hmm. That's that's that's the punishment That's the crime hold on a second Wouldn't our politics be better, you know if these norms could be enforced by throwing a fastball at Mitch McConnell's head Well, maybe maybe there'd be more bar partisanship if there was

Enforcement of the unwritten rules of politics what mad said was perfect though because that's the perfect like Midwestern southern dumb guy shit Where it's like tons of just you actually break it down. It's all caddy bullshit. Oh, yeah It's all like you're a fake friend. You didn't you owe me gas money. You took my headphones Well, do you do at least I raise my kids like that type of thing, but it just always ends in spectacular horrifying violence So it's perfect like these this is my sport Yeah, after after MMA is after John McCain is uploaded to an AI and becomes president and finally bans the uoC I'll be happy to go to baseball. I I think that there's something to that like

There needs to be enforcers in politics like each party should have you know like in hockey You got one tough guy each party gets one guy that's allowed to get into fights on the house floor And then well, we've been like dancing around for a while with with elected officials like Jesse the body Ventura Like Lamar Alexander. Yeah, there you go If you're gonna have Jesse the body and you're not gonna use them to start a fight like what's really the purpose there? Yeah, if you had Senate goons, yeah, like imagine just a guy when John McCain like triumphantly returned in his wheelchair and The Democratic goon like I guess are there any athletes who ended up be there usually be our end up as Republicans, right? Jim Bonning

Steve Largent. Yeah, if you have them just show it like imagine. He just like tips McCain over the press gallery second row and they're like Oh, okay, we have to let we have to let like I guess the Republican goon would be Dennis Astor Dennis He was a wrestling coach. He was a wrestling coach. Yes Well, there was one guy one one visionary who had an idea on how to enforce norms on politicians when they're playing baseball, but It might be a little ahead of his time You know that they actually did have a have a goon one time. It was a Jim Traficant. Yeah He would just threaten to kick everybody in the crotch if they like didn't sign his letter of intent to abolish the IRS

That guy was awesome Jim Traficant and and Lincoln Chaffee are my two favorite all They would make a great buddy cop duo because they are really it's like fire and ice Yeah, you've got this weedy sort of dorky careful blue-blooded nerd Oh, I buy the book. I don't know Jim and Jim Traficant this wild literal mafia tied Midwestern are like, ah fucking It's fucking weird. We're we're breaking stopping here beam me up, right? Yeah, I'm the end of everything. Yeah, and then he died because he fell off his tractor um

Ted Stevens would would have been a goon, too He was what he when you got near his earmarks. He fucking wrote it out Well, he had he loved the Hulk he loved hulking out He walked out like but Sumner who is the guy was Sumner got can't beat the guy to death of the king The guy who beat the guy who got beat didn't ask Charles Sumner and then an abolition Preston Brooks beat him up didn't an abolitionist Challenge Brooks to like a duel and he was like some great duelist and Brooks like pussied out Well, he did I mean he pussied out in that he intentionally attacked Sumner when he was sitting down in the Senate because he had like a

Foot on him and he didn't want to have a fair fight because he was worried he'd get beat So he just started clubbing him while he was sitting in this chair Which was very constrictive and he literally couldn't stand so he was just beating a man who was essentially incapacitated already He was a total bitch and he died shortly after which is good. Yeah, they should get Rand Paul's neighbor to be a good Rand Paul's neighbor will be the Terry Tate office line Congress so it'll do both parties just if any mother toes he's gonna do my mother toes out full on yeah It's like oh you're doing another Discretionary hold on a on a judge appointment speared. All right, so before we wrap things up today

We did want to check in with you You know, we've been talking about the the merging of sports morons and political morons And this is the perfect topic the perfect author What did you know it friend of the show Megan McCartle registered a take in the Washington Post called a defense of Roger Goodell? That you know, I would be remiss without getting your thoughts on I just like to point out that this she actually plagiarized that for me I wrote an article in defense of Roger Goodell like four years ago So just from the get-go. Well, I like it a lot because it's my own take that she's recycling. I haven't read this I'm gonna just make a shot the dart guess does she start off by saying bear in mind

I don't watch football or know anything about sports But it seems to me that this is how things should go not quite because I can't believe she's a football fan I mean, maybe she is I don't know. I don't know what any of these ghouls like I mean when I think of Megan McCartle I honestly just imagine her Standing stock still in her incredibly well-appointed kitchen just staring at the wall The uh, I think the basic we're just cutting fucking carrots until she has a giant pile of like Clooney and Yes, I think what she's like getting at is that Roger Goodell is in a tough spot Yeah, and therefore we shouldn't be allowed to criticize it goes back to what I said about yet

That's exactly what she's gonna do. It goes back to my JR Smith thing. You just gotta respect this decision Gotta respect Goodell. Yeah, he gets 30 million dollars a year his job. He has a great job I mean his job is to be paid 30 million a year to just get made fun of yeah Like he his his job is to deflect any criticism from the owners and just take it himself. He's the world's most well Compensated dunk tank clown. Yes Taking the heat in this regard would be like this new policy that if NFL players wants to kneel for the national anthem they have to do it in the locker room We have to stand if you're on the field. This is the new NFL rule

Yeah, well, that would that would actually have been more easy to understand than what they ended up doing which was They leave it up to the team to stay in or out of the locker room But if you come out for the national anthem and you either kneel or show disrespect to the flag Which is very like a very nebulous term like is facing away from the flag disrespect is like 90 degrees away Is that disrespect just sort of subtly rolling your eyes like what about doing a hand motion? Yeah jerkoff hand motion or crying like no Sean Moreno like is that disrespectful to the flag or is that actually should you get Like an extra two-point conversion. You have to cry you have to cry It's not respectful to see the flag and not weep at its site game doesn't start until John L. Way comes

Yeah, so they what they did was they put this new rule and they say okay Well, if you disrespect the anthem then it's a 15-yard penalty So they've like incorporated the the national anthem now into the into the literal law in itself Which is the one thing that they were trying to like avoid at all costs But the NFL doesn't know how to handle any crisis without making themselves like a de facto branch of law enforcement Yeah, so this was there there the most hated rule in the NFL used to be the catch rule because nobody knows what it catches They have to review it nine times and it takes you know 30 minutes for a guy sitting in an office in New York to make a ruling on it and now they've gone and they've turned the

Kneeling rule into the new catch rule where they're gonna have to do like video replay reviews of whether or not a player's knee was on The ground was that was he kneeling during the national anthem? They're gonna have a kneeling analyst probably which I've submitted my name for like I will do full-on National anthem analysis for Fox NFL Sunday. No questions asked. Could they have like a Incentive system to where it's like if you one of the players gave up their first-class seat for a troop on the way There they get like a ten-yard gain or if like you're scouting players in college if you see like Alignment at FSU or something knock out a An atheist professor. Mm-hmm. He gets just like a bot like first-round draft pick. I think that's a great idea

Yeah, well JJ. Why would be the league MVP for sure? Yeah, absolutely. I have a hero of Marine Todd I've got an idea. How about they just don't play the fucking national anthem before a goddamn sporting event? Yeah, it's getting ridiculous. Whoa. Whoa, Matt. Yeah, like the thing is it's like everyone takes it for granted But why why stop there? I don't know if people know this but in India They play the national anthem before movies when you go to a movie theater. Well, why don't we do that? Well, why are we disrespecting the flag by not standing for the anthem before we watch the fucking book club or whatever? Why are we doing that? I played before I have sex Why don't we play it at restaurants before you eat? Oh, by the way, you do do this is a follow-up thing

I found out about that the the troops steakhouse the strip barbecue restaurant that we talked about a while ago is that on I think like at noon Every day they do play the national anthem and everyone is expected to stand like with a fucking bib and a bunch of Rib grease on your fingers. But why isn't that national white? Well, it's like why don't Where are you deciding that this is the a precise amount of respect that the anthem and the troops need? Well, what there's always more places to be giving troops respect and the flag respect. Why aren't we doing it there? I think that the national anthem should be played five times throughout the day and no matter where you are you have to drop What you're doing? Yeah, didn't deal in face fort Benning. Yes for the green

And maybe we could put big towers in every city with a guy whose job it is to go up there and give the call to the anthem Yeah, yeah Call through Maybe Carl Lewis has that job. I got an idea 30 days a year There's one month a year where you fast from dawn to dusk thinking about the troops You can't eat during the day or drink you have to do it after dusk for 30 days each each year

How about that? Yeah, and you think about the sacrifices in the in the battle that they're that they're fighting on an ongoing basis I like that. Yeah. Oh, yeah And then the problem with this is like there's gonna be a succession struggle. You're gonna disagree whether Luke Bryan or Jason Aldean is a successor to Garth Brooks The true You know sort of right? Decided that thank you very much. Yeah, that was an inconclusive battle. Aldean's forces were surrounded But they sort of emerged as a stalemate. Well, also also Luke probably look Brian worships fire

Okay, the problem is around the floor. He crawls around the floor of CMT studios like a snake It's disgusting. The Luke Bryan people go every year They make a pilgrimage to Branson and they flog themselves with cowboy belt buckles The government the government of Tennessee is under fire for safety hazards at the Grand Ole Opry Hodge The problem was the Jason Aldean forces just didn't have the high ground Well, if you look at I think it's in Pittsburgh every year They have the Kenny Chesney concert and the aftermath of that. That's basically the hodge for for country. Oh, it is 25 I just saw this 25 tons of garbage were recovered from the twits for the Kenny Chesney concert

All right, let's let's let's sorry. Let's dive into a to McCartles Roger Godel so she begins by writing Whatever you think of Roger Godel commissioner of the National Football League You should recognize that he's trying to solve a genuinely hard problem or rather two hard problems on one hand He's trying to maximize the audience for NFL games at the same time He's also trying to negotiate the same fraught racial politics that our nation has been struggling with for centuries But in miniature and in prime time So those are the two problems he's trying to solve

Nearly 70% of NFL players are black Why wouldn't those players want to use their privileged position to highlight one of the most pressing problems facing their community today? But the last time the Nielsen year in sports report broke down the numbers in 2013 football viewership was 15% black, but 77% white only 35% of whites are sympathetic to the black lives matter movement Which seems a reasonable proxy for their sympathy for the kind of in-your-face protests that refusing to stand for the national anthem It's totally in my face All right, I have to watch the part of the game where they sing this song

I mean and they're just they're doing it It's just I'm really more into the song part The sports is just everyone having a good time blowing off steam after the song Right the crazy part is everybody watches the red zone channel now anyway, so we don't even see the national anthem We just we the game start and then people file their reports on who kneeled and who didn't kneel for the national anthem So it's like no one's actually outraged in real time. We just find out about it later I actually have a kneeling fantasy league where uh, you know, it's like a big mean bunch of guys are betting I've picked the players most likely to kneel not just in football like also in baseball

Cricket for some reason I've actually like wasted a lot of spaces of my roster and cricket I forgot they don't play the American national anthem there and e-sports Who's starting the game and overwatch who I'm making their character crouch by the way Do they before the overwatch tournament? Do they do the national anthem? Do they stand for the overwatch national anthem? Which is a Lady Gaga song I Do like how in any one of these in any situation where we're where Megan feels the need to comment What what compels her to comment is her instinctive sympathy for someone in an absurd position of power

Yeah, that's the only thing she cares about so she know but she says here less you she says here Let's be clear Whites should be more sympathetic to the problem of racial inequities in the criminal justice system if cops treated whites the way They treat blacks white people would not be arguing that crime is the real problem and that profiling is just statistics Of course Megan has argued that on numerous occasions herself They'd be frantically calling for legislators and muttering about the second amendment But few human beings of any color are as keenly alive to the suffering of others as they are to their own travails So however desirable it seems unlikely that white America en masse will suddenly muster towering outrage

About the problem that doesn't about a problem that doesn't much affect them Not even if they see athletes protesting it on national television So she's sort of like she's describing like a real moral and political Schism in American culture, but as usual in Megan's Inimitable way she finds a way to like Describe both sides of it in the most banal way possible without ever really getting to the heart Yeah, she just sort of like just states both sides doesn't really say anything about either of them Yeah, it seems her take is just I you may not agree with what Roger Goodell says

But I will defend to death His right to fuck it up as much as possible. Yeah, there's really no take that she has come out But I think that there is an elegant solution that the NFL can employ which is like let's skip past this first amendment bullshit and let's just say let's bring back the third amendment and You should be allowed to kneel for the anthem if you quarter You have to you have to room and board with the troop for that week and then you have permission to kneel So she describes that you know NFL viewership is down 17% since 2015

Which as you've pointed out is just all TV ratings are down that same also football is bad now Football games are hard to watch because they've done all these rule changes and it's they take forever It just seems to me that they're more boring than they use Matt. You're right though She goes attendance and public perception about the NFL are also hurting There's a robust debate over whether the protests are contributing to the decline, but we'll sidestep that since I know a little about the sport And the opinions of people who do know so there we go largely seem to be conveniently correlated with their opinions about the protests There we go. So again, she's never gonna ever gonna say, you know Whether it's right or wrong whether whether an athlete should be able to kneel for the national anthem and not have their job threat

Yeah, or white supremacy opinions different. Yeah So she goes, um, the decline of football may be inevitable But even so it's probably a bit much to expect an NFL commissioner to say I guess we're doomed and seek meaning in the impending death by sending the league on quote a Suicide charge against racial inequality That you just Literally they were wearing detonation vests and killing the cops that were protecting them. It's unbelievable And she you know, she goes, I'm not gonna read all of this

But she goes the solution that the league's owners actually chose was the kind of mushy compromise America used to specialize in designed to please no one But satisfy everyone that McConnell believes that is like the height of oh, yeah morality But she goes here which encapsulates another problem that this country is struggling to solve the burgeoning politicized politicization of every facet of American life and not just the vague patriotism of playing the national anthem at sporting events But the specific political vision of one of our nation's two warring tribes And then she just goes into talking about tribalism. We live in a society. Thank you Megan. Everyone's in a tribe except Megan She goes there's a deeper and arguably more important objection a healthy society needs to foster spaces where we forget about our political

Divisions and unite over something else without those spaces We don't have the common reservoir of goodwill of shared identity from which durable political change must ultimately be forged so what she's saying here is NFL players or any black person concerned about the way the cops treat them You're gonna have to take the L on this one at least as far as football goes Because it's it's a space that we all need to come together and and as you said Matt if they really wanted to be a political How about just cut out the fucking national anthem? Yeah, how about we don't have a fucking caravan of Bradley fighting vehicles doing doughnuts in the fucking field before the game

Don't you take away my flyover? Don't you do it? I mean like most entertainment that people consume is devoid of politics. Yeah, that's the dumbest thing about this take like If you broke it down by age like you would find By my rough estimate there's about like two million Maybe probably less than that people in all combined American media markets who want to consume like cable news all the time But the rest of it, which is like Jake Paul Professional overwatch Takeshi six not these are all apolitical things whatever like network show people like that's called like you know

The nanny's wife or whatever the fuck people like it's all totally apolitical It just it is taking a belt sounder to your brain. You feel very nice Nothing most people don't care about politics. Most people don't vote Megan is doing here is creating equivalency between Kaepernick or any politically active African-American athlete who wants to use their platform to highlight the you know injustices in America's judicial and you know policing and And someone who gets

Insanely mad because for ten seconds at the beginning of their of their you know weekly wing and beer fest They have to look at someone who disagrees with them Like she's saying like that that is like equally intolerant or like that's equal Hostility hostility you're being hostile to the fucking corn fed roub Racist to make up the NFL fan. She says most people don't want to immerse ourselves in politics 24-7 In fact, most people can't stand it. But like she's saying like it's 10 seconds I second and you know most people never watched it before this people had and Kaepernick was doing it for a while And nobody even noticed right at first. He was like sitting on the sidelines

Yeah, he wasn't even kneeling and then I guess he talked to maybe Nate Boyer or One of the one of the former military guys that was in the NFL and they said hey How about you Neil and so now he kneels like out of from it's a recommendation from a real live actual troop That said hey, just kneel. That's not disrespectful. And so now he kneels But now that's a bigger problem because it's anything that questions the order is disrespectful because it's a threat You're threatening my man cave. You're threatening the sanctity of my fucking meat neck existence and therefore I'm violently angry at you But what the NFL is dealing with really and if she wasn't a pinhead she'd recognize this is it's the it's the double-edged sword of monopoly This is the same thing that that Facebook is dealing with and Twitter is that is that the idea that well, you know

People can do what they want It doesn't hold sand if you are a hegemonic thing like Facebook is essentially a monopoly, right and and and in terms of sports When you talk about like the most popular sport it is NFL by a vast vast amount and there's no other at Football leagues, you know, they've they have an anti-monopoly exemption that allows them to be this Absolute market bestriding colossus and what that does is then you've created a Totality where people want to feel represented because they have nowhere else to go like if they're on Facebook There's no alternative to Facebook if they want to watch football. There's no alternative to the NFL So everyone needs to feel like they're being represented in it Vince McMahon. Where are you?

Oh, yeah, the XFL. Yeah, see they're talking about that and then who was going to bring it back as like the troop Football tour yeah, and that's gonna be awesome. Like yeah, like landmines That will blow up if you kneel on this on the on the field during the national anthem that kind of thing Every half you have the national anthem. I actually know after every touchdown you have the national anthem That that's and then that that if that we had that situation and there were a bunch of different NFL footballs You could be more loosey-goosey about it, but the NFL is this totality. So people want to feel like they are Part of it, you know and the same and that's like this is the fucking bed you made NFL by being yeah America's sport And this is like we're all miserable shitheads who hate each other

That's part of being America and what I like about this piece is that McCartill of course cops do not understanding anything about sports Or football that's another standard move of her if she's opining on a topic She'll always make sure to qualify by saying I know nothing of what I'm always berries in every article a caveat You shouldn't have read so she's like doesn't she doesn't understand sports or for she doesn't follow football. She certainly doesn't understand Anyone who's upset about cops killing people only in the most only in the most passionate She certainly doesn't understand this way But what she does understand is the position Roger Goodell is in which is being like sort of frontman for like a series of old Like unaccountable oligarchs. Yes, and they're a billion dollar industry that literally

Grinds the lives of black people into a grist and you know money for that Yeah, turns their brains in the soup. So the thesis for this article is a just knock it off with Roger Goodell He's you know, he sucks. He makes bad decisions, but you shouldn't be mean to people. He's doing his best Yeah, and he actually Roger Goodell is doing his best The problem is that his best is really really fucking bad Roger Goodell is like he's not a lawyer and he'll be quick to remind you that he's not a lawyer Which it means that he can get away with saying a lot of shit that a lawyer would get in trouble for saying and his other technique Besides like this convoluted legal mumbo jumbo

They puts out is to just issue statements that are so boring that you fall asleep after the second sentence A typical Roger Goodell statement will be the NFL is certainly Observing and taking in all sides of this issue and we are implementing Certain protocols for pregame behavior that will ensure a continued success for game day experience for all of our fans And it's like you just want to fucking die and you don't you don't care What else he says at the end of that statement? He could like you know throw in mine comp in the second paragraph and nobody would ever get to it Maybe that's that should be the true compromise like if Megan was more competent

She would recommend recognize their compromise is not Meeting somewhere in the middle probably like closer to the right. It's taking all extremes And what you could do is you start out the game with Roger Goodell saying you know that Corporate statement speak we're taking in all sides of this. We're trying to create the optimal experience blah blah blah then boom national anthem everyone stands, but then one troop is killed But the troop is Bo Bergdahl And Yeah, everyone is happy everyone gets to do the thing that they like

Fans of Roger Goodell of which there are many get to experience him and he gets to level of playing field fans of the anthem get to experience that Enemies of American Empire get to enjoy something, but it's not it's they're not taking away of anything from the right wing people They hate Bo Bergdahl Megan make you keep finding deserters what no what this article is is Megan is actually she doesn't like sports Doesn't really like art or culture of any kind outside of you know cooking recipes and things like that I don't know anyone like that, but she But she she she is a fan of good out because she's a fan of bloodless Solace flax yeah for corporations and billionaires, which is what she is That's how she got her start that is in the Koch brothers Institute for humane studies

That is an awesome type of person just like I don't really like the games is kind of boring, but Roger Goodell He just just really he just knocks it out of the park every time I'm just a fan of leadership She closes here saying Fervently supporting free speech doesn't necessarily imply that everyone should have to listen to that speech every waking moment Which is why you can support what the athletes are kneeling for and their right to speak forcefully for their opinions without retaliation or censure and Yet still recognize the wisdom of a Goodell style compromise that leaves Americans at least a few arenas Where they only have to root for one team at a time. Oh, Roger

You left it by the way without without retaliation or censor Like Kaepernick still doesn't have a job in the NFL because the owner is literally colluded to keep him Yeah, and or even a sponsorship deal. Yeah, yeah Hey, so Roger Goodell player of the year though. He left it all at the field to keep the NFL a political real blue collar commissioner He just shows up Every day he's the first guy in his office last guy to leave his office every day Real heyman eggs type of commissioner He's not one of those showboats and that you'd get in other leagues guys like Bud C league like flashy sexy players like Bargea

Marty Can I saw a mountain Landis? Well, I think that about does it for this week. Thanks everybody for joining us. Thank you so much for letting us share our takes with you, sir Yeah, it's been a pleasure Cheers everybody. Bye. Bye next time. I Mean, I don't know why we're playing it because it's a significantly more successful show than ours But part of my take on itunes stay a chair check them out Do you want it? Do you want me to plug your show on your show?

Yeah, okay. Hey, check out chapeau trapeaus and buy their fucking book. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome Hey