Fore Play - Scoop Central with Ian Rapoport

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

NFL insider and scoop specialist Ian Rapoport (01:17:24) joins the show. We discuss breaking news in between golf shots, dipping into other sports’ news (aka Tiger Woods playing the Masters), and scoop wars. In talking points, Riggs, Frankie, Trent and Lurch react to the reported list of golfers joining the Saudi league, Greg Norman’s most recent comments on it, Bryson undergoing surgery, LaCava’s interview about Tiger’s golf prospects, and more.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/foreplaypod

Hey, 4Play listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Fourplay, observe at Barstool Sports. We have the entire squadron today looking good, feeling good. It is Wednesday night that we're recording April 13th, 2022. This pub, you'll go out on the 14th. Big thanks to Jake Bass, Brendan Jones, our whole team behind the scenes, videos, videos, videos, podcasts, promos, edits, merge, graphics, all kinds of shit.

So we wouldn't be anywhere without them. gentlemen, we got Ian Rappaport on this show, who is, you know, one of really two, I would say, in his entire league of Scoop City when it comes to the NFL. We interviewed him like two weeks ago, and it was right in the middle of the hype of Tiger Woods. Is he going to play? He's walking around. Is Joe La Cava with him? Not with him. Is he going to play the Masters?

We haven't heard from him. What's going on? So we talked about that. What he would do with that? What kind of scoop battles he's been in? The good, the bad, the ugly, what's happened. So it's a really good interview. We have almost an hour with him.

And then we got a lot to get to on the golf front. Boys, how are, how are we? Everybody's looking good, I would say. I'm doing well. Rapaport is one of two and his line of work. But these days, especially recently, he's the one who is the least weird of the two of them or the least controversial of the two of them. Adam Schaefter feels like recently he's had a couple of bumps in the road that people have not loved. And in a rap port, bad tweet, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And he, yeah, there's just something about that guy. So Rappaport is, seems like, the, the cool one. So it was good to have the cool one on the podcast. I will say I missed that interview because my Iowa internet, it failed me that day. Oh, yeah. You just kind of drop.

You just kind of drop. I know, I was in there and I saw him. I was like that's Ian Rappaport. I felt like I was, you know, because you see him on ESPN, you know his background and like his literal background, the one behind him. I'm like, fuck, that's Ian Rappaport. And then my internet just stopped working. And I was like, I guess I'm going to have to listen to that one.

But I'm excited to because he seems like a cool. It was a good interview. We asked him about something that I've always been interested in with, you know, insiders and scoop guys about fantasy football. And he actually gave a really good answer that was pretty interesting that I think we'll answer a lot of people's, you know. You're a huge fantasy football guy. You do a big draft. Are you like the, are you the quarterback? I do. I think like, no pun intended. The quarterback of your whole league there. What's up, Frankie? You okay? No one heard that? I heard any of that. I just heard a little bit of a kerfuffle, I would say.

It was a Dave girl poster just fell because I kicked it. Oh, bummer. But yeah, no, I'm a huge fantasy football guy. And, you know, if I had a guy that gained Rapaport in my league, I think that there would be some conversations to be had about the fact that he gets information before anyone else. So it was a really interesting way that he describes how he goes about it. So that's a little tease for what's to come. Good little teaser.

Other than that, I'm doing great. I'm doing fantastic. It feels good to fucking be home. I'll tell you that. Yes. Yes. Frankie and I were just all over. We had like a, you know, a week that felt like three or four weeks with a lot on top of that as well.

So it did just feel good. Last night I got back to Arizona. Just, just regrouped, debriefed like with myself. I did some laundry. I just kind of today for the first time, I'm posting a little bit on my Instagram story. Now I was trying to cram that in before we recorded. But just like got to do a range session today for like an hour for the first time in a couple weeks after like watching the masters and feeling so good and excited about golf. We just got to go to the range and just hit golf shots for like an hour,

which was so much fun. Doing laundry is so much fun. Franki and I just been living out of a fucking suitcase, sleeping in airports, Lurgy's doing that whole thing. Trench travel around right now. I won't be home for a week and a half. I won't be home for legitimately a week and a half.

Yeah, you're fucked. So you're not going through any of the joy of what we're talking about right now. No. Yeah. Clothes stink. I got to do laundry in the hotel tonight. Just an absolute nightmare. Last time I sit on my own,

it felt good to sit on my own toilet. I can't imagine that. Just everything felt right. Like the shower was in the position I'm used to it. It felt good. The noises all sounded the same. Like I'm like, you know, the acoustics of when I was tooting. Everything was just, everything was just, yeah.

Just noises that you know. Oh, yeah, I'm here. I'm home. Yeah, I know that noise. I'm home. That's the way it echoes off that wall. I know that wall. Because you know when you go into a new hotel bathroom and sometimes it's like more echoey

or sometimes it's just the way that it reverberates off the walls, you're like, this, I'm not supposed to be pooping here. Well, I'm in a hotel now. And the first thing I noticed was that the hotel is really, or the, the toilet is really low to the ground. It's really low to the ground. It's a little bit ironic. It's a little bit ironic after the, you know, beginning of that setting up of the

interview and Frank, Trent's just frozen, man. Tren, frozen, too. He was fine. He's also recording locally, so it's always those things where it's like, fuck, he's been talking the whole time. Now you're fine, Trent.

I stopped talking because I realized that all three of you were frozen, so I was like, that can't be happening all at the same time. But what I was saying, I don't know if you guys missed or not. And again, like Frankie's saying, we're recording local, so you're going to hear me say this again. The first thing I noticed, oh, it just froze up again. That is hilarious.

Fucking fuck. Oh man. Dude, the whole pre-show you were fired. Were you in Iowa? Jesus Christ, dude. I'm not going to say it again, so you guys are never going to know what it is

and the listeners will be the only ones soon up. Talk about that bathroom really quick. You have it right now. Talk about the bathroom really quick. The toilet is lower than I'm used to. The toilet is lower than I'm used to. I sat down and I felt like I was falling down three floors of stairs. It was just, it was bad.

That's a fucking shame. Does it like hurt your knees? knees are at a weird angle when you're when you're on there. I just felt like, yeah, I felt like Will Ferrell and Elth. Well, you know, look, let's talk about something that's going to make you feel better, everybody, which is whoop, okay, I got this cool whoop, green whoop band. Trent's got one of these green whoop bands for a little spring golf season. I have to tell you, nothing likes being, uh, when you're, when you're home after travel,

when you're in your bed and you're in your routine, more than whoop. Woop, they just get it. They highlight the fact that having a consistent routine in terms of going to sleep, in terms of how much daily strain that you have is infinitely more healthy. They started saying these push notifications a few months ago where it's like, hello, it's time to, you know, hope you're getting ready for bed, buddy. You need to get ready to go to sleep. We need these seven, eight, nine hours of sleep.

And that's because Wu tracks you at an incredibly accurate level. And with this little technology here now, the WOOP 4.0, which is what we have. They give you like this blood oxygen level. They're giving you like the temperature of your skin. I mean, what this thing's able to do through that. It's so good that it makes me think they're just making it up, but I know they're not making it up. I mean, you got Roar,

you got all these phenomenal professional, Justin Thomas, phenomenal professional golfers, athletes who use this thing. We use it. And it's just, it's addictive with how much information it gives you about your body, your heart rate,

your heart rate variable. Is that what HRV is? Variable. Yes, it is. That is right. Is it variable or variance? I don't know. Oh, boy.

Seems pretty much. I know you want that number to be higher. You want that number to be higher than lower. That's what I know about HRV. I'm a 77% today. I feel good. I got seven hours and 37 minutes of sleep last night. I'm feeling good.

And it is addictive in the sense that sometimes it'll die and I won't realize it. And I'll go to bed and I'll wake up and I won't know how much sleep I actually got, which is what I did for most of my life until I got a whoop a couple years ago. I couldn't. I can't do that anymore. I need to know that I got seven hours. hours and 37 minutes of sleep just so I can feel good about myself. So I love the whoop.

I'm literally never getting rid of it. I don't know, I don't know how long. It seems like you're going to be around for a while. They seem like pretty successful, especially since from when we started to where they are now. They're putting out new bands. They're putting out new versions. I'm never getting rid of it.

I love it. So look, people can go to whoop.com into the code four. You can save 50% off your first checkout. Now look, Rory, I got this data from Rory's holeout on the bunker shot to shoot an 8 under 64 at the old Masters tournament. It says during his shot, his heart rate spiked to 143 beats per minute when he hold out that shot. He was working off his green recovery score 73% and was primed and ready to go to make history

and make a real run at it. It's nice when you wake up in the green. I can't tell you how good that feels. He got 51 more minutes time in bed than his 30-day baseline. Average his sleep performance was 9% higher than his 30-day base. The main message here is that Roy prioritized. getting good sleep the night before the final round had a great recovery and was ready to make history. You can make history by going to whoop.com, enter the code four to save 15% off at checkout.

When I bet Tiger Woods to hit the first fairway at the Masters on Thursday, my heart rate got all the way up to 137. So you were almost as high as Rory when he holed out in the 72nd hole of the Masters tournament in front of tens of thousands of people live and millions of people around the world. Think about that. There were a lot of people, you know, people saw that on Twitter. A lot of people saw my thing on Twitter. So I was nervous about that. And then I got nervous. I was there for it.

When Bug told me what my higher rate was, that made me more nervous. So my heart rate got even higher. So I'm just a mess when it comes to that. But, you know, just two peak athletes having high heart rates. Yeah, that's kind of what I would call both of you guys. So we got a lot to get to. I mentioned that earlier, an enormous amount to get to. Obviously, this interview is going to come on the back end of the show.

So we got Saudi Golf League updates. Greg Norman, who kindly said that he's respect to the Masters and let it go off before he made his big announcements about the Saudi Golf League. We have Bryson's getting surgery. We got Joe LaCabu did an exclusive with Sports Illustrated. We got to talk about a Scotland trip that we have coming up. We got from the gallery questions. And then we obviously have that interview that episode. And then we have a billion things to plug.

Just, I would say, an enormous amount of things to plug, which is good. But we're going to start with these shoes. These G4 shoes are going on sale today as you're listening to the show, 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, which is 7 a.m. my time, which is I'm going to have to get up early as fuck to promote these things. But these are custom G4 shoes. They've got Barstool Golf and our logo in there. On the tongue here, they got the Barstool logo. They are purple and white.

They're the MG4s, which are the most comfortable golf shoes ever invented. We made these like a year ago. And with supply chain and what it takes to get these puppies made custom. how cool they are. It took about a year for them to come in. These are going to sell out lightning fast. They're going for the same price that they are, that shoes are on G4's site. These shoes the MG4. So go check them out. Store. Dot BarsoSports.com. Check out our links. We're going to be promoting the hell out of them because we like to sell shoes. These things are awesome. Boy, yeah, when you see them in person, you're not going to believe them. We've worn them to the last

couple of Barso classics. And it's a good gauge for how people across the country are going to, you know, receive them when you see big white purple shoes coming down the fairway you don't know if someone's going to love them or they're going to hate them every single person has been like holy shit wherever you got in those they didn't even know that they were barstool branded i mean all the barstall branding is so quaint and um subtle subtle subtle jinks it's perfect it's minimal it's it's exactly what we need to do with the with a collaboration with g4 everyone needs a white pair of shoes and you throw in a little pizzazz with the purple. I'm telling you right now, it's a showstopper.

It's an absolute showstopper. They also like, I have other MG-4s. These, these laces are better than most. There's something about these laces. They got a little hint to whiten them. And when you're tying your shoes, they just look better. They feel better. So keep your eye out because they will sell fast.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say too, because I put up like a teaser promo on my Instagram story and I have hundreds of people being like, when are those coming out? I need those right now. So truly, I know we say that for most things that are going to come out, but these are going to want to get them fast because they are going to fly off the shelves. Next thing I'm going to plug, we have tonight Thursday on our YouTube. We have a behind the scenes master's week edition of us in Chicago. So we're at the Barstool, Chicago office with the whole crew there.

We're at the Barstall River North Bar. We are gambling in real time, winning, losing at different times. Heart rates are through the roof with the Barstool Sportsbook. So check that on a YouTube channel next Thursday. So a week from now, when you're listening to this, the long-awaited, much-anticipated scramble match against Bob does sports comes out on our YouTube channel. We don't have to get into the nitty-gritty now because we can plug it next week. But just throwing that out on the horizon, on your little radar horizon. That's coming up.

We play Robbie Burger, Joey Coldcuts, Fat Perez, and the Jet, their producer of the Jet. So get ready for that. And then Barstle Golf Time. So we're doing all kinds of rewards right now. Huge rewards boosts if you go use the Barcelona Golf Time app. Spring, spring is sprung, spring it all over the place. Azaleas, flowers, plants, shit's just sprouting up. So should your golf game be getting ready to rock?

No matter where you are. You could be in the northeast. You could be in the west. You can be in the south. You could be in Arizona. You could be anywhere the hell you are. It's golf time. You're pumped.

You're excited. Masters, Barstool golf time. Go use the app by booking tea times, leaving reviews. I actually used it for a tea time tomorrow. I'm playing with our pal hanky pankey out here in the desert. We're going to play the Campbellback Ambiente course. Use the Barstool Golf Time to find tea times in the afternoon. They are available. Booked it. I'm going to leave a review. I already made a review

a video, but I'm going to leave a review and write my words of wisdom in there for what people should do. But go use the varsal golf time app. And then the Tulsa Tango. We're going to introduce the Tulsa Tango. What the name is going on sale. You're welcome. Friday. Tomorrow. Friday, that puppy will be on sale at noon Eastern Standard Time. It is a two-person scramble. Tuesday night in Tulsa, right across the street, basically, from Southern Hills, golf tournament, Barstool, Tulsa, Tango, two-person scramble at night on an 18-hole par three course that they have. It's going to be awesome.

So people need to go to barstoolsports.com slash events Friday and go register for this puppy. You go to the PGA Championship all day, where Tiger Woods won a major, by the way. And then Tuesday night, you go and you hang out with us. We got full dinner. and then I think at 7.30 we're doing a shotgun start. It's going to be fucking awesome.

Yeah, I'd say if you're within five hours of Tulsa, Oklahoma, this is an event that you should be checking on the website, barstlesports.com slash events. I'm telling you right now, the Tulsa Tango is going to be something that we've never done before. I mean, it is something we've never done before, but it's going to be so much better than any event that we've had before a major event, because this is only the second one we've had,

and we're just getting better. We did one at the Ryder Cup. Now we're doing one with the PGA Championship. This is under the lights par three. The course looks outrageous. Two man teams, Tulsa Tango. You make a putt,

you tango around the fucking pin. We're going to be taking pictures. We're going to be making content of it. Maybe. Credit to Frankie on the name. I know he wants it. Thank you very much. Maybe if you get in,

you should do a little buffet of bits and like, I don't know. Bring your wife, bring your girlfriend and have her in like a little tango her or something. I don't know. We should have dancing. We should have music. We should have people tango in all night long.

It should be a fucking celebration of golf and PGA championship and barstool golf. And I am so excited for that. The logo is insane. The course looks nuts. So do we have the name of the course, by the way? Yes. La fortune or La fortune? I don't know.

La fortune. Depends on how much English you want to throw on it. La fortune. So here it's capital L, lowercase. a capital F Orchon La fortune Park

Go look it up Look it up send it to your buddies Get jacked up Be like we have to be ready on Friday This thing's going to sell out in a heartbeat Just like the Barstool Classic does Because this is the Barstool Classic At night with dinner included

Going to be a hell of a night Can't wait for the Tulsa Tango Was it busy And then the last thing That I would like to plug Is that the Barstow sports book Will be the official gaming partner of the Zurich Classic next week down in Louisiana.

And our very own Trent Ryan and Frankie Borelli will be on site throughout the entire week with full credentials and access all over that joint. It's a wild time to be alive, guys. Trent and I are playing in a celebrity shootout. I still don't believe that until I'm actually on the T-box and whoever I get paired up with, I'm sorry. This is, this has remnants of Kyle Rudolph at,

what was that? What was that street at Win Song Farms in Minnesota when we all went there like four or five years ago. I was really just at the, I mean, I'm nothing right now, but back then I was just like pizza boy to the max.

Just like at Dave's hip, we showed up. We're ready to golf. I thought we were all golfing together. They go, no, you're actually one of the quote unquote celebrities today. I walk up to a group of four people

that paid a ton of money to play in this golf event. I apologized immediately. I literally went up to each one of them, shook their hands. I said, I would leave if I were you. But if you want to stay, we'll have a great time. We ended up having a fantastic time. It was a scramble. It was the whole thing.

But, like, you know, they got me instead of Larry Fitzgerald and fucking like Roger Clemens. It's like, it's a huge difference. So Darius Rucker was like singing in the group ahead of us and I'm sitting there like, yeah, I actually got the job because I applied. I used to work at a pizzeria. Like, I don't go fuck who this guy is. So we're running that back. we're running for her.

Yeah, I think like Sean Payton and Drew Bree's playing this thing. It's down in fucking Louisiana. We got Mincy on the ground.

He's going to be in the mix. We're going to have all the Louisiana people. I'm sure Megan making money is going to be down there. They're all, we're just going to have Barstool down there

for the Barstool Sportsbook. We're taking over a PGA tour event. This is pretty fucking exciting. We never get to do this ever. No, never. So the two of you, gruesome,

twosome of Frankie and Trent, will be down. there on site the entire week. So watch out for that. Gaming partner, official gaming partner, Barstle Sportsbook. It's big time.

It's great. You want to invest team event. We got Kiz, who has a great track record. I think they, him and Scott Brown lost in a playoff one year, and they just have a very good track record. And then Max Homa and Taylor Gooch to Barstool Golf,

four play, you know, friends of the program as well. So we got a bunch of good teams. Who's Scotty playing with? Is he with a, Is he with Burns? It would make a lot of sense.

I know him and Sam Burns are very good buddies. I don't know what he's playing with. Sheffler, Zurich, Classic. You think it'd be Burns. I think it's Burns. It says last year he played with Scotty Shephelver and Bubba Watson, but I doubt that that's the same team. No, that ain't it this year.

Oh, it just says Flash interview. I don't know if they played together. We should figure that out. But anyways, Zurich Classic. You two were going to be there. I'm excited to see what you cook up throughout the entire week. I got a Ryan Palmer. Ryan Palmer.

I was going to say because they're both Texas. They both are Texas guys. I thought he might have played with Ryan Palmer. Is that who he's got? I like that. He followed me on Twitter the other day. He's another one that when we do that Texas swing that we're going to do where we go beat the shit out of Scottie Shep for her and then beat the shit out of Harry Higgs and then beat the shit out of Ryan Palmer. Ryan Palmer's going to be part of that.

He called us one time, Trent, remember the first time we had him in the show? he called us driving his son to hockey practice one night. I do remember that. He was a really nice guy. He's a super nice guy. I have his number, actually. I forgot. I should text him and follow up.

Dude, there's some really good teams in here. I mean, Colmore and Conradt, and Victor Hovlin is a problem. Patrick Cantlay and Zander Shoffley, Problem. Sky Shuffer and Ryan Palmer, problem because you have the best girlfriend

on the planet in that group. I mean, the Zyrr Classic puts asses in the seats. Jason Day is there. I mean, you guys might get some of the best stuff we've ever gotten next week. Dude, I read in the credentialist that we're going to have a band around our arm and we can just walk inside the ropes.

And at a PJ tour event, that's never happened for the fucking foreplay boys. So the fact that we're down there. Celebrity golfers and everything. On Bourbon Street, maybe you're going to have a couple of cocktails inside of us and I'm going to be walking inside the rope. Who knows, man? I might be getting into some trouble. Wouldn't be the first time for the four play podcast down there. No, we're going to have a great time, dude.

Barstle sports book. We're going to be gambling again. Imagine. So we're going to be gambling and at the event. That's going to be fun. Imagine you're gambling on it and your media at the event. That's like, that's interesting. That's going to be fun.

Go stand on a part three knowing these guys are coming up. All right. Like who's hitting this green? I can't wait for that. That is going to be fun. Bro, can we eat like crawfish? Can we eat a bunch of crawfish one night? Dude, we're going to have Ben Mintz, the king of New Orleans down there.

You don't think we're going to be, you don't think we're going to have crawfish. I've been to New Orleans one time in my life and it was a very short trip. I was down there with Riggs actually. This was four or five years ago. And I didn't get to experience like we didn't have like a big crawfish night. And I would like to experience that. So you're right. Ben Mintz will probably set us up nice.

Can't wait for that. Crosh is awesome. A table of crawfish and a couple beers. That's what I want. Oh, you'll have a nice time. I don't know that I've ever experienced crawfish. I eat seafood from A to Z and I don't know that I've really. really had crawfish.

Like what are we what is it is it like crab legs? Am I way off on that? I mean yeah. I mean it's just different and it almost looks like like a little shrimp lobster kind of thing. You just got it covered on the table and you just kind of calamariish almost like kind of yeah it's it's like it's like it's like it's like it's a hard shell but a little bit of soft and you kind of just crack it open and eat it's like uh so it's a food that's

no no crab leg is it's way off. That was a similar description to a crab leg. You said you're hard shell. crack it open all over the table. So size of it, but it's not like a crack, like, it's a full animal, like a full. No, I get that. I meant like consistency of eating it. Like the experience of eating crawfish is similar to like a table full of like crab legs and like

lobster tails and you're just cracking shit open. Okay. Yeah. I can get with that. Lurch and I had a bachelor party one time down, down there for our friend Peter. And that was my first real experience. And it was, it was excellent. We had this nice dinner over.

were looking was it burbot street lurch yeah oh you guys did the dueling pianos right didn't you yeah we did do that patio patios or patty o'brians or something yes patio ryan's i think dude you uh and then we went to we're going there by the way you have to go dude you write you write your you write your song requests on a napkin

you hand it to them and they play the dual piano it's unbelievable that's right good memory yeah and then i put like a five dollar bill with it and toss it into them and they just play it's unbelievable Yes What was that restaurant We went to? Was it rigs?

Was it galvators or The one that we had The big dinner at? Yeah Yeah We're throwing beads Because there's those decks They were going

And having beers You can throw the beads On somebody If you like You know Throw the beads And they land on somebody's head Or

It's awesome And then they flash Or Tits at you Isn't that They show you Their boobies It's really nice

Yeah Yeah We're going to see Naples Yeah I'm going to Show the boys I'll show the boys

If Trent The only ones I see in New Orleans, I feel like that's going to be a weak fucking trip down to New Orleans. I mean, that's all you hear about. You go down the street and there's boobies everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. You need to do better than that.

I bet there will be some young bachelor fans that are down there that recognize Trent and demand to see his boobies. That's my guess. We'll see. If I get enough beads. Dude. That's going to be a scene down there. It's going to be a fun time. What else is a fun time is a game time.

New app created by fans for fans. It's changing the way we buy tickets and has become one of the fastest growing companies in America. Look, Frankie and I described and even put a video out describing how awesome it was to be at Augusta National at this event, our favorite event in the world, especially in the world of golf last week. There's just nothing like live events, live sports, live shows. We missed all of that with COVID for a couple years. Now, a lot of it, almost all of it, is back, although I did see it. they're expanding the mass mandate on flights again, which as somebody who flies all time,

it's a real shame. We're not here to get into that. We're here to get into GameTime. GameTime's founder, Brad, this is how it started. Is that a bar with his brother before Game 7 of the NLCS? He sees ticket prices dropping. He buys them on his phone,

but then realizes he has to print them. You do not want to have to go through all that. So he came up with this. He thought, wow, I got a great last minute deal, but this was a giant pain in the ass. GameTime app was born. Today, over 15 million people have downloaded the app, created by fans for fans.

The GameTime app makes it easier than ever to score last minute deals on tickets to sporting events, concert, shows everything. They've got every major sport, including golf. They've got tickets to the Wells Fargo Championship, the PGA Championship, which we're going to be at. Shout to the Tulsa Tango. Best part, you get $20 off your first purchase. Download the GameTime app.

Go to the account tab to create a login and redeem code for F-O-R-E for $20 off your first purchase terms apply. Download game time last minute tickets. Lowest price guaranteed. Use the redeem code four for $20 off your first purchase and go check out the GameTime app. That app is insane. I mean, I've used so many ticket apps my whole life going to all these different events, Yankee games and you travel and you're in Boston.

You want to go see the Yankees just a Red Sox. It's impossible to get tickets. And I'm telling you right now, game time, just the way that the way that it's been built and like the, is it like user ability? Is that the word I'm looking for? Yeah, user friendly. User friendly. The interface.

The interface is so elite compared to the other one. The user experience is so elite to any competitors. And they've been so good to us at Barcelona. So Glennie Balls, a Ranger fan. He was sitting center ice last night thanks to game time. A Ranger fan. It's just like they, I've seen game time pop up on my social media more in the last couple months than I've seen any other sports ticketing.

app ever and it's because it's just better and everyone's using it i saw all the guys went to the final four with it guys are going to the frozen four with it i mean it's they've really been coming up clutch and 20 bucks off for using the code four is insane 20 dollars off it's a great deal go use the app it's awesome people use it and they love it 15 million 15 million it's a lot okay much to get to on the talking points front we're going to start with the saudi golf league the new york post reports few names bubble watson Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, and Kevin Kna as four names to join Greg Norman, Saudi Arabian-backed golf league. First instinct, what do we think about those names?

This isn't necessarily confirmed, but this is the New York Post reporting this. And I have not seen it denied from any of these players. Again, that would be Bubba Watson, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, and the walk-in putt specialist himself, Kevin Knot. It honestly seems like more names that are like what they've shared with in the past. It almost feels like now it's more of a competition of not exactly PGA, not exactly champion store, but a little bit of that middle crowd. You know, like a little bit of sunset of their career and they're, you know, they just want to do a stravagant trip in Europe and over in Saudi for a couple of years

and play golf over there. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know. Those names really seem to fit the bill of goods of people that they're attracting, I guess, if they are, in fact, accurate. Quickly, the world rankings. Kevin Nath 32nd. Lee Westwood, 50 second. Bubba Watson, 68th, Ian Poulter, 72nd.

Yeah, Bubba, I feel like that's going to be the name people are most surprised with on that list. And he is a guy who is always sort of toying with retirement. And I think this is a situation where if he wanted to retire or if he wanted to go down that path, this is a good way to cash in as much as he possibly. could. And so I am not surprised by his name being on that list. I don't know people would be very surprised at his name was on that list. But if people are looking at that, I mean, like, why would Bubba Watson sign up for that? I think it's partially because of that reason where he's always, he's always just kind of said, like, I don't know how much longer I'm going to do this. I don't

know how much longer I want to do this. He always had other business ventures. And I could see this, him viewing this is like, all right, I sign up for this. I get X amount of dollars. It's a pretty lack schedule and then I can, you know, drive off into the sunset, so to speak. Yeah. I'm not surprised. I think I'm actually most surprised about Bubba, not because of the money or any of that stuff, but because of his personality, hitching himself. Now this is all, this hasn't been confirmed.

So if he's not on it, I'm sorry. But like hitching himself to something like the Saudi back golf league is something that I wouldn't assume someone that deals with like backlash the way that Bubba Watson does. like he's he's been very open about how he can't handle like people chirping him and he's struggled with like reading comments on the internet and like doing the wrong thing and everyone thinks he's like bad guy bubba to his caddy meanwhile he's like good guy bubba and he like wants to be a better dad and all the stuff and then like the whole golf world is canceling people for like hitching their wagon to the Saudi money backed golf league and baba watson's one of the first things we see like you want to talk about backlash Phil mickleson has been sent to Mars. Like, what, like, what do you do? Like, that guy, like, Bubba, like, basically said he couldn't sleep at night because people would, like, think he walked a weird way or something.

Like, dude, do you know what's going to happen when you tee it up over there? Like, everyone's going to hate you. It's like, what are you doing? Have you read the, have you read anything on the Saudi? It's a stunning name to read. Based off of what we've learned about Bubba on this very show, go back and listen to it. He's like a man of God. God and he's like the most like down to earth dude of all time.

And now he's hitching his wagon to this thing. That wagon to this fucking league. Dude, he doesn't need to do anything. He's a master's champ. Bubba Watson. How much money is Bubba Watson have? Maybe he's thinking about his grandkids. You know what I mean?

He already thought about his grandkids, man. He's Bubba fucking Watson. He's done. I understand. It's crazy. This is his ticket out. It's a great point, Frankie. It's a great point.

It's an interesting game. You're just thinking of the mentals. Right. because the skill set is like the same as the Graham McDowell's and the people that have been somewhat tied to this league or whatever the case may be in terms of who's going to officially sign. Like the names rings just mentioned are all in that same way. But I do agree with you on the point of Bubba Watson. And that feels like one that's not going to hold its weight just because of exactly the point that you made. Like the mental fortitude to play in this league is going to be one where you got to cut out the noise.

If you think internet's bad people, Twitter golf, the whole world. These people are lunatics out there. They're faceless. They're nameless on this social media. And they'll say the most outrageous fucked up shit to this guy of all time. So I do. That's a great call out for that bunch of names, honestly. I don't know.

Oh, go ahead. Well, I was just said, the other three are in no way surprising. No. No. Bubba's, no. Yeah, it's surprising. The average age I saw like Dan Rappaporto, like the average age of the rumors. players like 43 and a half years old.

The average age of top 10 golfers on the planet are like 29. So they're obviously not going after or they're not getting the cream of the crop. They're getting the, like what you said, it's like the, it's the, what's the middle ground between the champions tour and then like, what's the place between heaven and earth? Pergatory. It's Pergatory. It's Pergatory. It's Pergatory. It's Pergatory.

In this purgatory, in this purgatory, they're like slaughtering gay people and like beheading journalists. I mean, it is just like a different, it's a different. And pay, but also paying golfers like, you know, like $100 million. Yeah, it's just really weird. I'm not sure. Burgatory is a weird place. Yeah. I don't know if I agree with Lurch when you say that he, this one's not going to stand or he's

going to back out now. I think if you're, if you're this far down the rabbit hole already and your name is attached to this list, I think you're it. I think you're doing it. You think Bob is in? I will, I don't know how like how confirmed this list is. But what I'm saying is if your name is attached this far, think about how many stages we've gone through with this,

where it's like, oh, all these guys are getting all these huge offers. And even the names that got attached at that point, they immediately backed out and they put out statements. And that's what caused everyone to be like, I'm committed to the PJ tour. I love the PJ tour. I'm sticking around. If you've gotten to the point where your name comes out on this list,

I think you're in. If it's an official list. So I think he's in. This is just a rumor mill, though. It's a rumor mail, but we can put the pieces together right now. Bubba Watson also just put on Instagram three hours ago out of the fucking blue. Like, who does this? Planning out my summer for those interested, here's a look at my upcoming tournament schedule.

And he wrote, April, Zeric, Classic, May, AT&T, Byron Nelson, PGA Championship, Charles Schwab Challenge, June, RBC Canadian Open, Traveler Championship, John Deer Classic in July, Rock and Mortgage, Classic in July. It's like, all right, Bubba, you're clearly trying to show us that you're playing on the PGA Tour, because you've been linked to this Saudi back golf league. And you're going to show exactly what Greg Norman has said in all his interviews and all of his press releases that this is going to be a complimentary tour to the PGA tour. You're now showing us on your Instagram that, like, yeah, if something comes out next week that I'm playing in this other golf tournament,

I'm also playing in all these that I announced on Wednesday. So I think he's definitely confirmed. Look, and Greg Norman said the interest level we've had, well, I had a player who's won a couple of major championships sitting in my very office here 48 hours ago. Bubba Watson is a Florida guy, Greg Norman, a Florida guy. So if he's sitting in his office, a couple of major championships, the Bubba Watson thing, connecting a little bit of dots on the entire front of, you know, what kind of players they're going to have. You know, Greg Norman has been, I would say, very open about the fact that, you know, it hurt him that they're not getting the biggest, names and he's got quite a few quotes that came out yesterday on Monday right after the

Masters and it starts with a hilarious one which is we've respected the Masters and let it go off so they allowed the Masters to occur. Strong language. Yeah, exactly. Lay out, you know, without interrupting and overtaking the Masters Tournament. That's very nice of them now. But now our journey is finally coming to fruition for the players, not for me. They're rightful place to have what they want.

that's why they are all still very, very, very interested. That reads like a Michael Scott quote. We have players signed, contrary to the white noise you're hearing out there. The interest level we've had, well, I had a player, the major championship quote, quite honestly, it doesn't matter who plays. This is where it gets interesting. We're going to put the event on. There's a $4 million first place. I hope a kid who's 350th in the world wins.

It'll change his life, his family's life. And then a few of our events will go by. and the top players will see someone winning 6 million, 8 million, and they will say, enough is enough. I know I can beat these guys week in and week out with my hands tied behind my back. Interesting language. Very interesting.

In parentheses, as Greg Norman wrote with his hands behind his back and the back over his head. What is Monaghan's official line on guys playing in this league and the PJ Tour? We've talked about so many scenarios that I don't even remember at this point. Are they banned? I believe rumored that they'll be banned, but I do not believe that he has stood behind publicly that comment.

I don't know that he's made any declarative comment about what will happen. I mean, Greg Norman's forcing his hand here. He's going to have to make a decision if. With this hand side line is back. Yeah. If this is actually happening with even a couple of these guys, because those guys are guys that play on the PJ tour. So you're going to have to make a.

decision on whether or not they can play in regular tour events. That'll be a very interesting decision. Is the most intriguing part of this Saudi league, that line that he said, a guy who's 350th in the world is going to win $4 million, is that get you guys perked up at all? Will you guys tune in if some fucking average Joe golfer that's like barely scraping and scrapping together enough events or whatever to have some sort of ranking in the world, wins four million dollars in a Saudi golf event. Like I think that's going to get fucking crazy publicity.

Yes. I think so. I think that's almost better than Bobba Watson. I mean, it is way better than having Bubba Watson in your league. Like if they're just going to have a league filled with not the greatest golfers ever, a bunch of guys who literally have no money, I mean, we read all these stories.

These guys drive from event to event. They're basically homeless until they fucking get their tour card. We're going to have an event where all of these guys are going to be flying to these events to win $4 million? What's that? Like, that's, this is an insane event then.

Like, I'm now interested in it as, as fucked up as it is and whatever. Yeah. Well, that's the line. I mean, that's everybody's lies.

Like, there's so much money over there that there's some level of person that's like, you know what? If I can compete in this thing and win a lottery ticket, I'm going to go over there and try to get paid. And so like that, you know, we discussed that when it first came out,

I think, is like, What's your number where you guys sell it all? Like if they pay the 4Play podcast, $100 million, we're just going over there and we're playing in this damn field, you know? And it's like, it's a no-brainer for us. So that's where it comes down to. It's like, can they pull these, I would say,

kind of like aging out tour pros in terms of their career on the PGA tour to pull them over there and play to get some notoriety so that, you know, they can basically try to reward the 350 best player in the world with potentially a lottery ticket because he played great golf that week. You know, it's like, he went, oh, yeah, he shot 78, 78, snuck in a 68 and then a 71 to take the tournament.

Like, I don't know, maybe that's the field. And he won four over plot. I mean, somebody playing for a bigger prize than anyone has won on the PGA tour this year. And it's just like the highest ranked player in the world is like 40th would be phenomenal. I would tune into that. Absolutely tune into that.

I don't, you know, like, Some for the John Deere to consider. Maybe the John Deer should just pay out, but only accept people 50th and over because nobody else plays it. I have a question for you guys. I have a quick. What ranking do you think Brent Snedeker is? He's falling quite a bit. He hasn't played much.

I'm going to say 77th. I'm going to say 84th. 106. 256. Whoa. I've seen his face. He's alive. I've seen him.

scoffed, like from time to time. Hasn't played as much as he usually does, but that was, because I went down to see who's like, I was going to read off like the 300th person is going to win $4 million this week. And I mean, it was like Jim Herman. I was like, imagine Jim Herman that wins $4 million. It's nuts. It's nuts.

That's watching the 350th ranked player in the world win $4 million, that doesn't get me going. I wouldn't tune into that tournament. I would read about it and it'd be a funny thing to laugh about, but I don't think that's going to get eyeballs. Sounds like you guys would be into watching it But I just that doesn't move the needle for me I'm not like I'm not gonna fucking move around my schedule To watch it but it's definitely something that I'm

It's peaking my interest of a of a guy who's grinding out there If they can like get the storyline going And they're like dude this guy like drove to Saudi Arabia And like swam across the fucking ocean to get here He's like worth $3 and he's leading the tournament today With a chance to win four million. families there, like going crazy. Like, this guy's going to fucking make so much money.

And, like, I'd rather watch that over, like, the RBC Heritage. Are you insane? I mean, come on. I also don't think Greg Norman is making the point that he thinks he's making when he says, it doesn't matter who's playing, we're putting these tournaments on. Like, what, it makes you beg the question, at what point would you fold this tournament, Greg Norman? Like, what would it take for you to fold this tournament?

and if it won't, if it's not that we're not getting the top players in the world, then what is your motivation for keeping this league going? What is it? And I don't know if we've gotten an answer from that. I think we all know the answer. I don't think it's an answer Greg Norman wants to talk about. But he is essentially saying, I don't care if, if, you know, a hundred-year-old guys are out here playing this tournament,

we're putting on these events. Then it's like, why? Why? At some point he's going to care because I don't know much about their, their business, but the business model can't be each week you're going to hand out four million dollars to a guy who no one knows. That's just a lottery ticket. That's, yeah, I mean, you just became the Saudi lottery.

Like, no. At a certain point, at a certain point. You need, you need someone that puts asses in the seats. At a certain point, the boys are going to have to go over there and vie for this money. But like, I really do think that they, as long as they put on tournaments and they can say, we're putting on professional golf events over here, look how cool that is. They don't care who's taking home the money as long as those events are taking place. That's what it seems like to me.

Yeah, and that's the sport washing aspect of it. That's the sport. 100%. They're like, yeah, no, we're just having normal, like, Western culture over here. Everything's just proceeding as normal over here. And meanwhile, they could just go execute, you know, dozens of people and just, you know, be horrific whenever they want to be. That's what makes me know and realize that Greg Norman knows exactly what's going on here. I know he'll never say that.

He'll say in interviews that he doesn't want to get political. But the fact that he is willing to put on these events, regardless of who is participating in them, says everything you need to know about it. Isn't it amazing how with each quote that comes out, like your thoughts change on it immediately? Isn't it amazing how media works? Like Greg Norman has now released just one new line of information and we're having a whole new discussion that's completely different from the one we had three shows ago and we were absolutely trashing it. get like you can just tell there's a different vibe now about like talking all he said was what if a guy who's 350 wins four million dollars now we've talked about it for five minutes about like oh it's actually kind of a cool thing it's amazing where like once you get more information your thoughts change on something so much i don't think we've changed that much on yeah i don't know that we've changed but it's like it's just an interesting wrinkle that he has like brought out but i still you know like it doesn't change necessarily my philosophical understanding of and and like moral standing on the entire thing. But, but yeah, like that, that element of it is one that I hadn't necessarily considered because all we've been focused on was the big names. And that element of,

wow, there could be a not big name who hasn't made that much money, who wins one of these events and wins millions of dollars. That is interesting and that could entice other people. But it doesn't make me think that it's any more like morally sound for them to do it. No, not that. The only thing I find more interesting as this goes along is how desperate they're going to get to just put these events on. Just how far are they willing to go to just put on a golf event regardless of who's participating, regardless of who takes home that money, regardless if anyone is watching, they just want to say we put these golf events on. And it's, they're going to have to get pretty desperate because it doesn't seem like anybody's taking the bait except those four names

that we may be listed. And it's also interesting. Like, Rick makes a good point. It's a okay, they're just normalizing people because they are hosting golf tournaments. How much truthfully is like $4 million to them if they're putting that out each week? Like is that a burger to us? Like you're talking about going to have a burger after. Like what in what comparison is that? Maybe it's just not much money then. So that dollar value is clearly worth it.

I'm just like, we can give it to anybody. We hope we get good names. But this will definitely, hopefully, because of Frankie's point, like the media, one thing sways your brain, allow people to think that it's pretty normal what's going on over here. Yeah, I mean, the article that I just read, one of the handful that's come out, said that there are reports, that they're willing to lose $2 billion over the first three years, I believe. But like, think about it. They only people in control of all of this money, like the entire GDP of Saudi Arabia is like the crown prince and their, the crown prince and their entire family.

Like they, they just have trillions of dollars to do whatever they want with. So like, so in this world we're living in right now, have you earned? 500 golf tournaments paying $4 million per tournament. That's 500. So in this world we're living, have we already been sport washed or whatever, or whatever they're saying? Have we, has that happened to us with China then? And all these other places that they go and play golf events like Rory McRoy won a

PG-Tor event in China. Meanwhile, we've already discussed all the horrific things that happened in China. Like, have we already been sport washed there? and this is just the next step into doing it in Saudi Arabia. To like a degree, I think you could argue that in places. Yeah. For sure. It's just amazing how like with each step we like harp on every like bad situation and bad like thing.

And like we just forget about the one that's already happening. It's just it's ironic. And it's like it's it's just nuts. The world we're living in is insane. What do you mean? Just like now like we've moved on to like complaining about this. But like we'll just forget that they play golf. tournaments in China. It's like we pick and choose the things that we're getting mad about and like

canceling like Phil Mickelson for backing this one, but no one gets canceled for backing the PG tour in China. Meanwhile, you can make the same arguments for both sides. Like to a degree, yeah, but I would say like right, like they haven't done the, you know, if they were to go to, if the PGA tour were to go to China, which they haven't been in a while now with COVID and everything else. But if they were to go, I imagine they would start to get pretty similar pushback that they're getting on this front now, because this has had and reached such a fever pitch. And I think the Phil Nicholson case is interesting because Phil did more than just back it. I mean, Phil was literally underwriting the rules of the new league in an effort to recruit people away from the PGA Tour.

I mean, he was like kind of undermining a coup to invent and create another league, which is why he's become public enemy number one when it comes to the PGA Tour versus this. So I think Phil is going to get, like, I don't, if Bill, if Bubba Watson confirms that he's playing, I don't think he's going to get, he's definitely going to get backlash, clearly, and on social media, but he's not going to get ostracized like Phil Mickelson did because Phil Mickelson's role in it was so instrumental to it even existing that it was a concerted effort, not just to potentially benefit from another tour, but to like invent and create it so that he could hurt and shit on the PJ tour, which he did publicly, talking about their obnoxious greed and all that, versus if Bubba Watchers comes out and says, yeah, it's a lot of money and I'm going to try to go play over there.

I don't think he's going to get ostracized like Phil Nicholson did. I think it's like a little bit different roles. But I don't disagree with you, Frankie, overall, that it does feel picky and choosy-ish. Now, when we look at some of the atrocities of that regime, you know, then it becomes like picking and choosing at this point doesn't matter. What aboutism? doesn't matter. Like we're just saying this is horrific. These people that back this are horrific.

What they're trying to do is normalize their culture by essentially, you know, hoping we'll turn a blind eye to it because they throw really normal events like Formula One races and golf tournaments and WWE. And they're just pretty normal over there. And that allows them to carry on with their Sharia law and doing horrific things to people without people caring as much as they should is kind of, you know, is basically what they're trying to do. not the only bad guys in the world.

That's 100% true. But it just happens to be the one that is getting the most publicity at this moment in time. But also like, you know, the whole phrase like once it's in the budget, once it's approved, like it, you know, it almost becomes like a revolving door where obviously new tournaments are new like tours in this sense get a lot of publicity because it's something new. It's change is different. So I do agree like with a lot of like, Frankie's made a couple of good points to be in this. show where I'm like, I buy that. I know. You've made a couple that I'm like, all right, he's swaying my thought. Now, maybe you'll do the classic Frankie where now you'll go against your own point and argue the other side. But right now, your money. Wouldn't be a four play episode if that didn't

occur. It's a point. But I'll say too, I mean, right? Like, clearly there have to be good points to be made from the other side. Otherwise, it wouldn't be even close to being an existing real thing. Right. Like, there are people out there that are very successful, have made a lot of money. in theory are smart or at least can rationally think through things who are seriously considering joining and being a part of this other league. So obviously there must be good points to be made. Not necessarily saying that they're going to be able to sway everyone or that they're morally going to be on the right side.

But obviously there is a reasonable argument to be made. That's why it's becoming such a real thing. And that point is probably being made with the backing of billions of dollars, which helps usually traditionally. Okay. Greg Norman, a couple more Greg Norman quotes. He went on to say about DJ Bryson and Phil kind of stepping away. He said it was a kick in the teeth.

There's no question about it. It was a gut punch. We were so close. On that Tuesday, we had our strength of field ready to go. And the PGA tour heard about this and threw a giant redwood tree in our roadway. And they did. There's no question about it. They created a disruption by putting that information out.

All those comments about Phil out there. I feel sorry for Phil. I really do. I feel sad for Phil, and I'll always say this. He has an open door to any tournament that he wants to play in. Then when pressed about the Allen Shipnuck and PJ Doer working in Cahoots, Norman replied, that wouldn't be a coincidence. It was calculated.

It's not like my 45 years in the game has left me on the outside. I have some pretty good intel that, you know, it was calculated in how it came out, insinuating the PGA tour and Alan Shipnuck were in Cahooz. in releasing their information, which Alan Chipnuck, for the record, on Twitter has laughed at that notion because he and Maddie Janelle and them

have had their own run-ins with the PGA tour over the last few months. Greg Norman, keeping the door open for Phil Mickelson to come play in one of those tour events. Wow. Imagine if Phil did that now. He was like, all right,

I'm going to go over there and play. It's like, what? He would... True bad boy golf right there. Yeah, if he did it, that would be. But Greg Norman, man, some of these quotes are just really interesting. And we'll look back on them forever being like,

this was a crazy time in the world of golf. Everything he says is interesting because it has sort of like a, I don't know if it's an edge to it, but every part of it is just like he's trying to put himself in a certain position. He's trying to put the PJ Tour in a certain position. And it's just, it's really unlike anything we've ever seen before. We've been talking about it for months now and new things continue to happen with it. It's just, it's wild shit.

It's wild shit. Now, it is. It absolutely is. The whole thing's been without precedent. And that's made it so fascinating. Like a true rival to the PGA tour, right? Like even with like the XFL, it's been, they've tried to do it multiple times and it's popped up. But it's always been like an offseason like, you know, addition basically to football.

It hasn't been a direct competitor. They've, like, openly taken the practice squad folks and Canadian League players to play in the XFL. No league that I can think of in our lifetime has had an existential sort of threat to it. They've come in and literally tried to steal the players, basically from the PGA Tour and create a rival league with billions of dollars behind it. It is always going to be fascinating. And then you throw in the wrinkle of the morality. And obviously it leads to some incredibly. deep conversations and arguments that you never thought you would find yourself in as just a golfing.

Much like when we just do a cocktail draft and, you know, Trent finds himself in a geopolitical battle for the ages, which I thought you made it very clear that, you know, who you stood with, Trent. Yeah, I stepped in it there. I just, well, we don't have to get back into it. But before I walked into that room, I told you guys that I'm going to take white Russian. And there was no conversation like, hey, when Riggs took the Moscow Mule, he changed the location. So we'll maybe do that when you get in there. I said white Russian and you guys just let me walk right in there, fully exposed. And I made a mistake.

And then I continued to step in it to the point where I just wanted to run out of the room. So thanks to the Barstville, Chicago guys, for having us. It was a good time. Yeah, we're talking about dog walk. It's Barstor Chicago's podcast. They do this for anyone that doesn't know. You should go listen to it all the things. time. It's an amazing, amazing way. I think it's Mondays they release them, right? It's an amazing way to

get just through the day and listen to how people argue about just drafting very ordinary and random things in a snake draft. So we had cocktails and Trent in a cocktail draft, Trent somehow had to side with Ukraine and anti-Russia, but then not anti-Russian people. It's a lot. So it was, I don't know how you guys got on the war I do know how you got on the war but looking back it's it's a lot to handle when just talking drinks I do want to say fuck them for saying

and I didn't even take this drink but it's gone it's gone bar still viral on Twitter amongst all of us we all have chirped in a John Daly not being a cocktail Chief and Carl had argued against it saying criminal only it's just a mixer and

an alcohol just not true I had we went we were down south in Atlanta for the Barstle Classic yesterday, I got myself a John Daly. They didn't bring out a pre-mixed John Daily like the store-bought version. They went and got sweet tea. They got lemonade.

They poured both things into one glass with ice. Had I added vodka to that, now it's a John Daly. So I don't, at the end of the day, I don't know why they're saying that something that's pre-mixed can't be a cocktail. I got an amazing DM saying, what happened before pre-mixed drinks?

That's the best point I've seen on it. I agree. Did, did, did, did, Did Chief and Carl think that pre-mixed, like, packaging Owens mixers have been around forever? And if so, did cocktails never exist before 1999 or whatever? Like, what's their argument there? So I think we won that, even though we didn't win the draft. We won that. We absolutely won that.

All right. We're a lot of talk about money. True Bill. I have to talk about money with True Bill. I actually just got a notification earlier that a check cleared, which I guess I would have just never known when you write a check, give it to somebody, send it to somebody when they cash it, when they don't, if it clears not, unless you're like actively checking your account. You just got a quick notification from True Bill that it cleared.

I got a quick notification earlier that they had identified a subscription that I was supposed to be paying upcoming here on the 15th. It's the 14th when the show's coming out that they're concerned I don't really give a shit about and they're right. And they're like, do you want to cancel this? This app, True Bill. this app, you guys all use this app. This app is something that I

consciously have been thinking needs to exist for, I don't know, 15 years, but just never really knew how or who was going to be able to do it. And then the minute somebody told me about this app, which is before they came on as a sponsor, I was like, wait, wait, they do what now?

They just go through, you sync all your accounts, your credit cards up to this app, and then it just goes through notifies you on, you know, important, sketchy, key, monumental purchases, transactions, whatever. And then especially highlights subscriptions and things that you just pay for monthly that it thinks you probably don't need to or want to be paying for. And then I ask you to basically verify, confirm if you want to do it. On average, people save up to $720 a year with True Bill.

You can cancel subscription. Subscriptions, cancel subscriptions. directly through the app variety of tools to help customers improve their finances. Truebill has over 2 million users and helped save them over $100 million total. So do not fall for subscription scam. Start canceling today at truebill.com slash four. Truebill.com slash four. It could save you thousands a year.

That's truebill.com slash four. Excellent. It's been quite the time for me to have Truebill while having a house. like first month having showing that monthly spend it's just like dude this month like last month we got all the furniture and all this stuff which still hasn't come

couch is still not here and this month it's like you it's like it was like fireworks were going off and confetti was going off it's like you spent $18,000 less this month and I'm just like you're just basically telling me last month was the worst month of my life you know what I mean like that's all you're telling me

is that everything that we put inside the house was just way too much money and like now we have none of it left and now I have this app to show me how much better I'm doing this month because I've already filled the house up. So yeah, it was it was quite the scene going from

April to now and then we're going into May now. So yeah, it was a lot. It'll also do... It's great that way though. Yeah, it is. It'll do large purchase detected. It'll send you just in case you, you know, someone stole your identity or whatever

and it was buying something huge with your card. I bet you've got a lot of those notifications where it's like, oh, another large one, another large one. I'm sure you've gotten them too from fucking Carvel. God damn. That was such a good burn that I'm not even upset about it. When you get angry about household purchases

and things about that are going on with the house, I don't take anything you say personally because I know that you're just lashing out. I'm lashed. I'm just fucking clawing. That was a good joke. Is Carvel and national ice cream brand? or is it more northeast?

I think it's more northeast. I think you can buy Carvel in the stores, like, around the country. But there's no Carvel stores in Iowa for sure. God, dude, Carvel ice cream cakes. You get Fudgy the Whale? You guys ever have Fudgy the Whale? Dude, at a birthday party and then you know they got a Carvel ice cream cake is the best thing in the world. With the crunchies?

Lurch, talk to me about the crunchies, my man. Crunchies are the best. I mean, it's a little bit of, what is that? It's that, uh, just a chocolate. It's just a little chocolate crunchy. It's all it is. Yeah, I'm trying to think of where it is on like a candy bar. It's like, you know what I mean?

But it's that beautiful like chocolate wafer that's mixed up and they spread it on the outside and then inside the layer of it. It is the best thing on the point. It just, I'm so excited talking about it because now I can taste it. I'm tearing out. I know it's so good. Tearing up. I'm going to go get an ice cream cake tonight. Oh.

It's like that Oreo cooking It's like that, you know, that little chocolate wafer That's just blended up Almost turn into a sprinkle format That's now embedded in the cake And

And holy Toledo Consistency of their ice cream And their ice cream And their ice cream cake It can't be beat It can't be beat And then And then

Most ice cream cakes Have way too much icing on top No, no No This is just enough Like around the rim Maybe

Maybe on his like Tail Maybe on Fudgy's tail You'll get a nice little blue piece of icing and you dip it you dip that fork you have to have a fork because there's a lot going on there can't just do a spoon you got to go fork with it you got a fork it great point by frankie because that nobody wants too much of the nobody wants any more of that extra you want to get right in the ice cream cake with the for but on this particular cake you actually look forward to those

bites because it's just the perfect amount and you can take that little chocolate crumble God. Go to a Carvel near you there. If you want Lurch to tell you're having a great show, you're just going to talk about fucking food and ice cream and how much you're consuming. You just suck your dick and how great of the show you that. Usually I hate Frankie's points. That's what I say.

I like when Lurch and Frankie connect on something and they just start going like Red Man and Method Man back and forth. It's fucking a beautiful thing. I haven't eaten today. I think my brain's kind of like going somewhere and I'm really hungry. Well, let's get to the topics. hand then, then we can all go eat. Let's talk about Bryson DeShambo. Quick note. He's having surgery on a fractured left hand. Surgery is scheduled for later this week to repair a fractured

hamate bone in his left hand. He's sustained while playing ping pong of the Saudi international. I can't go all out. I can't do any speed training sessions. I can't practice for excessive hours like I have to be able to figure this stuff out. Bryson's set of the masters. He's also dealing with a minor tear in his left labrum. According to one PGA tour trainer, the recovery period for surgery on this bone is 10 to 12 weeks, which obviously a couple major championships coming up in the next, well, three majors coming up in the next three months. Could be interesting. I don't know if we have much to add, but just maybe we're just kind of delivering news to people right there. He got hurt in a Saudi golf event. I like to believe the story

that they put his hand on a table and hit it with a meat cleaver because he wouldn't join the Saudi guy. That's Frank Borelli's take on it that I think that happened. It's like the scene from the departed when they take him the back. You want to play for our league? I don't, we don't have to make a promo about it. I just want everyone to know, I genuinely think that's just the Jake Bass, like don't put that out of the promo.

I want people to know that if we were to put that out of promo, we would put the Saudi backed people. Maybe we put Greg Norman's face on them, and then on Jack Nicholson, and then we would have him hitting Bryson's hand to join the Saudi money-backed golf league. That's a great clip, but it's also too much, and it's like defamatory. Is it the word? I think that's an in-house. We all get to enjoy promo.

I don't know if you put that one out on the Twitter show. It's a verbal promo. Yeah, people can visualize it right now. Big time. but it's probably ping pong verbal pro bono he's hurt you know i feel bad for the guy man he's been through a lot just wants to fucking play some golf and just not be the center of like everyone's hatred attention on the pga tour i think he's tried to change the game we've been at hard on him we've been nice with

him we've been friends with them we've hated him guys going through an injury never never good to see that and you want him to get healthy he makes golf better and more interesting there's no doubt about it him not being in majors him not hitting the ball 400 25 yards and like everyone else talking about it is less interesting. Bryson more interesting for the game. I want him back. Get healthy. Can't wait to have him back.

Yep. I agree with all those things. I think that's fully endorsed. Joe La Cava. Joe La Cava did an exclusive Sports Illustrated interview. Obviously much of the talking points were about a one Tiger Woods. He said, I'm going to read through a couple of these quotes. They're all very positive, I would say, overall.

He said, I don't think he's putting in all the work to finish 20th. I think he's capable. I think it's going to have to be the right situation when he's healthy and has more stamina. He is working to get to that point when he gets there. I can see him winning again. On playing the Masters tournament, he said it was always in the back of his mind 100%. It's probably his favorite tournament of all time. He was never going to give up on it.

In the back of his mind, he needed to get through the Genesis Invitational as the tournament host and through his Hall of Fame induction. That's the sense I got. and we got and we did your text. Genesis, a full eight to ten days that he's not strictly focused on rehab. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot when he's trying to get healthy and ready. Then he goes all out for this. Are you strong enough to do it? I don't think golf was ever going to be the issue. I think he believed that based on December and the little he did at home, his golf would be good enough. So the fact that Tiger Woods, and what he really kind

of laid out here, Joey, and a lot of this stuff was that, you know, the reason that they weren't sure on the Masters is that like Tiger to go through the Genesis invitation was the host was a serious commitment for him in this stage of his career and his life and he couldn't do extensive rehab all of those days he couldn't you know do this combination of strengthening his leg and rehabbing and working on his golf he was the hope so he loses a whole eight to ten days with that and then the same thing with his Hall of Fame induction where he was really focused on the ceremony on the speech on his daughter Sam giving the speech and any time he's focusing his efforts on other things, it's like, no, no, that's just, like,

he needs to be able to go full bore on golf and strengthening and rehab in order for him to even have a chance to play golf. So we had to, like, literally get through those things before he could even begin preparation for the Masters tournament, which is just, I thought, a really interesting peek into sort of the process and, you know, how many balls Tiger Woods can really be juggling at this point in his life, which is really just not that many, which is very understanding. Yeah, I think in the past he was juggling too many balls in the air at once. And you get to a point where you're just like, you know, it just does it can't, you can't sustain that.

You just, you can. And maybe when you're younger, you can. But even then sometimes that stuff, you know, it gets too much. And you just so it's good, it's good news for us as Tiger fans. It's good news for Tiger too where he doesn't have as many things going on. And he is willing to focus on the things that he needs to do and then get back to. rehab and playing golf and all those things. It just seems like things have slowed down for him. And I think that is generally a good thing.

Very much. And that was not a, that was not a speeding joke, by the way. That's not what I meant from that. No, no, no, it's okay. You don't, there's a couple, there are a couple, there are a couple puns in there, juggling the balls and all that stuff.

I didn't mean it. I meant all of that literally. Good. Well, I took it literally. He can't literally juggle. He can't literally juggle. I took it literally in the way that you meant it literally. Do you think Tiger Woods can juggle?

Absolutely. His hand-dict coordination. He can fucking walk on water if he wanted to go to the moon. Best hand-eye coordination on the plant. I actually think juggling's harder than walking on water. Juggling's hard. No, it's not. My dad can juggle.

My dad picks up three apples and juggles him. No problem. Yeah, but your dad is a guy who can juggle. Of course, absolutely. Your dad is good at all that shit. Yeah. And that's a positive. But I don't know if Tiger Woods on the top.

topic of focusing on different things that are important. Like, I don't know if juggling is one of them. I'd love to know if Tiger Woods can juggle. I think he can. I think, I think those guys practice that shit. Wouldn't you see him, wouldn't there be at least one club of him juggling golf balls on the range? There might be.

Have we ever seen it? It's like an intimidation focus kind of thing about the fires. He's warming up and he's just like, oh, I got these. Like, you'll see basketball players kick us like a ball, a basketball around during a timeout. And it's like, oh, that guy can juggle. a soccer ball. I'm talking about actually juggling, but I think we'd have a clip of Tiger Woods.

I mean, juggles golf balls on his, like when he hits it back, like the Nike commercial. He's done like multiple balls where he does it with a fucking club in his hand. I bet he can do it with no club. That's not exactly the same thing. No. Well. I know what you're talking about, though. You'd think that maybe those two things would lead to him being able to juggle,

but I do think we would have seen it at this point. Who knows? Metaphorically and also kind of literally, he, you know, juggling less things than he could when he was younger and healthier. I think that's understandable. On his sort of takeaways from the Masters, golf-related, Joey said there were four or five shots that stand out to me. The four iron on number five, the first day from 210 yards. The chip cut seven iron he worked in there on number six, where he almost hold it the first day. The five iron he hit on 10 to a foot. Those were shots he was hitting in his heyday, a lot of salis. solid mid-iron shot. So I love here at any time Joey is optimistic about Tiger's game. That's good for me on his putting. He said putting for the most part, his speed was just off. He hit a lot of good putts. Some of them had too much base and on the high side. The stroke looked good and that's what matters to me. There's no way to simulate it at home, certainly not at Augusta National. I think he was worried about being able to walk and his focus was on getting stronger. So maybe not as much on chipping and putting. So Joey basically just gives the green light the pass to the putting.

says his stroke looked good. That's what matters to me. If his stroke looked good to Joe Lakava, then his stroke looks good to Riggs Barstool. Correct. Here here. Here here. On his future plans, he said he had to be exhausted when he was talking to the media physically and mentally. So it is big that he committed. It couldn't have been that bad in terms of the recovery and all that because he normally doesn't say stuff like that. He'll have a better sense in a few weeks, but he didn't say anything to me about the PGA. I think in the back of his mind, he'd like to be ready by July. Will he be ready in five weeks?

I don't think he really knows, to be honest, but if the necessary recovery goes well, I guess he'd like to give it a try. Joey highlighting the fact that Tiger doesn't usually commit to stuff, but that he committed to the British Open at St. Andrews afterwards, which is what we all were thinking, was very cool. And it's also just kind of funny that Joe Likaba's listening to an interview being like, oh, I guess we're playing at St. Andrews. Hell yeah.

Yeah, I don't, I think that's probably like, do you think he plays in the PGA? Yeah, I do. I think he plays at all the majors. Okay. Just because I don't think he had any setbacks, right? Like if, if it got to the point Saturday and Sunday where Tiger was like crawling around the golf course and it was like, holy shit, his body really can't take this, I would be way less inclined to believe he'll play the PGA. but from everything that we saw, I mean, yeah, he looked fatigued. He clearly didn't play as well on the weekend as he did.

But from a physical standpoint, obviously he was limped a little bit, but I thought he was limping pretty consistently throughout the entire week. So my point being, it didn't appear that his leg and overall situation got worsened throughout the week. So if it didn't get worsened, I feel like as long as over the next couple weeks, his recovery and everything is in a similar spot that it was going into the Masters, if not better, then I couldn't see why he wouldn't play. All topic is worsened a word. Worsened.

Yeah. Worsened. Yeah. Things got worse. You can say worsen? Yeah, you say instead of saying things got worse, you would say things worsened. Yeah, I didn't do that. The storm worsened as the night went on.

Wersened. I would say the storm got, okay. Yeah, learn something new every day. That's a word. Confirm rigs. You type that in. That's, yeah, I would say when I was nine, I knew that that was a word. Woo-hoo.

Oh, God damn. All right. A couple flames light in the show. Last thing from Joe Lekaba on his overall prospects. He said, but having said all that, he was extremely happy to be around the guys, set up the practice rounds with J.T. and Freddie, go through the routine on the range and go to the champion's dinner. This is my favorite quote of the entire thing.

Everything about Augusta helped the. cause. Love it. Wow. It is a cause and it's all hands on deck and this was just event number one and we're going to have tons of events from here on out. It's really exciting. Exactly.

Couldn't agree more. Simple as that. It is. It's just the fact that there is a cause, right? There's like a there's a general larger than everything else cause and that Augusta, well, cool, well, it would be great if we want it. while it was great that we shot one under par, that it was just working towards the cause.

And that cause, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is winning fucking major championships. That's what the cause is. And everything about Augusta helped the cause. That is the right-hand man to Mr. Tiger Woods himself. The man who carries the bag, helps with the shots, reads the win, hands on the club, cleans the clubs. That man says everything about Augusta helped the cause.

I love to hear that. Last thing on Tiger Woods, Davis Love the 3rd, who was the captain for the president's cup. team this year says the tiger can have whatever role he wants at the president's cup 2022 even as a playing role his quote was if he wants to be co-captain or assistant captain or player whatever he wants to do he's got he's got called the tiger cup yeah he owns it he can do every wants imagine denying that guy of anything he wants ever certainly not his love isn't going to do that yeah

I saw somebody's reply. It was just like Davis Love the 3rd, then the handshake, handshaking emoji. And it was just like everyone who watches golf. It was just perfect. It was like, yeah, that guy gets it. So I'd like to hear that. Those are the updates on a one Tiger Woods. We're now going to throw it to Ian Rappaport, unless somebody else has anything else.

But I think we're pretty much ready to rock here. We're ready to rock, dude. I got to go eat something. We're playing the dozen tonight. We're playing the dozen tonight. So that's something we got to jacked up for. Big game. Jeff D. Lowe. He fucking grinds over getting us our niche categories and all that shit that

he's got to do to get that tournament up and running. We got that going tonight. Exciting times. I think Trent might be frozen still. Yeah, he's frozen. He re-frozed. Well, oh, no, he's back again. Well, while he's frozen, this is almost frozen. This truly in my hand because I've had it at the fridge, ready to drink it. We're excited to drink it tonight. Last thing before we throw it to Raviport is truly hard seltzer. It's a clean, crisp, refreshing hard sulfur, with a hint of fruit truly hard seltzer

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This is the tropical punch right here. I love this color. This is a really nice color? Really good color. You got to like that. But yeah, we've been to the Barstville Classic now three times,

three stops throughout this year. We were there yesterday, myself and Frankie Borelli in Atlanta. Hannah Cook was there and obviously 100 or so, you know, golfers striving to make it to the championship in Scottsdale. And they're enjoying truly hard seltzer. All cans have under 110 calories, which means plenty of refreshing flavors will not weigh you down. And even every truly contains only one gram of sugar. Do it for the flavor.

Truly hard seltzer. Find truly hard seltzer near you at www. www.trulyhardselder.com. Over 27 flavors. She got a lot of options. Frankie and I actually filmed a commercial with Truly Hard Seltzer a couple weeks ago. So I'm excited for that to come out. I had some burn on just my hand.

I'm nervous about what that's going to look like. Trulyhardselter.com. Go check them out, find it, drink it, enjoy it. Under 110 calories each can and only one gram of sugar. So it's great stuff. You're going to enjoy it. All right. We're going to throw it to Mr. Rappaport.

Enjoy this interview. We will be back on Tuesday of next week. Hit it hard. Hit it hard. Hit it hard. do it hard all right folks we're joined by an icon in the scoop game he is NFL network and nflopo.com insider ian rappleport rap sheet he's got some good history of varsal sports i'm actually really excited for this i'm a huge fan of years and i'm not even the biggest football fan or biggest

n-fell fan i just love people that clearly love it that are just obsessed with what they're into we cover kind of a crumagony game and golf and there's a lot of people in golf that kind of kind of ate golf and bitch about golf. And you with your job and what you do, I feel like you just fucking love it. So I'm a big Ian Rappaport fan. Welcome to the show. Thank you, man.

I appreciate that. That was a solid intro. And if you're going to say something about me, me liking my job is a pretty solid way to go. I really do. It's a crazy, bizarre world. And there's not a lot of us to do it. And people who don't know me are constantly like,

what is your life like? And people who do know me will roll their life like. And people who do know me will roll their eyes at the stupid things I have to do, including like leave parties to go be on TV when some crazy thing happens. But yes, it's a very strange role, but I really do like it. Do you get like nervous anxiety even being on this show right now? I mean, trying to focus on an interview about a golf or whatever the hell we're going to talk about? I would say I do get a little nervous.

I actually got a call just now of someone that I'm actually waiting on. And I don't think it was, I don't think it was like something. imminent, but I'm going to text and make sure. I love it. That's just the gig. It's just never stops. A possible scoop mid-show. Yeah.

I mean, look, sometimes that happens. And you just can never tell. I mean, that's one of the problems in my world is like, you basically have to answer the phone every time because you don't know if someone's calling just a chit-chat or like give you an update on something or it's like, this is going down or whatever it is. So that's some of the nerves that go along with it. or the worst thing is someone will call you, you've been waiting on it, you miss it,

and then they just don't text back. That is when it gets bad. So for me on the outside, like, you know, we follow all of our favorite, like, insiders for all of our specific teams, like me with the Islanders. I have my three or four guys that I just like everything. I was just went to an Islander's game, actually. Well, did you?

Oh, yeah, I saw you on the, I saw you on their Instagram, you went to a game. Yeah, ownership there is great. They're doing a great job with everything. This year's been a shit show, but I love the way everything's going to eye winners obviously I love the way everything's going with that team but you know I always wonder like like maybe you can just talk us through a little bit about like how you got into this game and like into this world and like was there a point in like

trying to get people to believe you when you were first starting right there's because like I'm always skeptical of people that are putting out news if they're not like my guys now at this point well I think there's by the way I want to update you guys the call that I got was not urgent. Okay, good. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Freeze you up, you know. Yeah. And I got to call this person in a couple hours. So that really, I'm really doing well. I mean, look, unless whatever happens, happens, in which case, it's going to be closer than a couple hours. But anyway, so yeah, I'd say when I, there's two things that happen. When you first get started in this, and I never really was like looking to get into this. I was a newspaper reporter, very happy to be a newspaper reporter.

I lived in Boston, appeared on TV like once every couple weeks and thought it was awesome and was just like, never wanted to do this, right? So then I ended up doing this friend of a network and I got hired as I got Dallas correspondent. And then I became our insider.

And you're so nervous and so I say anxious to break everything that you want to report every single thing that's happening. And so you get like thirsty, right? So like every little scoop, you're like, can I report that? Can I report that? And you end up, and you end up,

either reporting like a lot of half scoops or reporting stuff that changes. So during the process of like pushing, pushing, trying to get out there, trying to get your name out there, trying to break more stuff, you end up having stuff that's not all the way right or at worst, just wrong. Or what also happens is, you know, you piss a bunch of people off, which is okay. But when it like ruins a deal or, you know, put someone's contracted risk, for instance, that's fine, but it's just not that cool, honestly. So when I first started, it was a battle to get out there and report and report

while also making sure that it was believable and right all the time. And those things do not always, they're not always on the same path. So it really took me like probably like five years, honestly, four or five years to figure out that like, you don't have to report everything, sometimes not reporting stuff, earns truck, and you get to report bigger things in the future. Like, it's constantly a battle between, like, trying to prove that, like, I deserve this job, but also not reporting something and screwing it up

to show people that you actually don't. Yeah, it is. It's so interesting because there's so much chatter now about, you know, access journalism and we deal with that, but we're more like fans or fanboys than we are. So we don't give a shit. If somebody's like, oh, yeah, we just won't report bad shit about people because we're not reporters.

We're just podcasters. and we like to have relationships. Is it tricky for you sometimes to walk that line between protecting relationships and doing kind of your journalistic obligation? Yeah, it really is. But I try to be extremely transparent and clear, right? Like I don't have a lot of nuance. And I probably decided like five years ago that, no, a little less, maybe four years ago,

that I'm just going to be really upfront and honest and I don't care. So like when people, like let's say, you know, an agent will call me like, you know, here my guys getting drafted in the first round. What do you hear? If I don't hear that, I don't care about, I'll just tell them. You know, whereas like early on you, like, oh, I don't want to offend this guy. Like he's a really important agent. I'll just tell them.

And when I'm reporting something bad, bad injury, you know, some sort of disconnect in a team, you know, something that an organization or a player or an agent or a coach would have a problem with, What I try to do now is call them beforehand and just tell them. Here's what I got. And, you know, people will talk about access journalism and often it's derisive, which is okay. People criticize me for a lot of reasons. Like I've been criticized for worse. I happen to be short.

People say that. Don't care. There's all sorts of things people can criticize. We get criticized a lot for, you know, all kinds of things as well. So what, you know. For wearing pink or? Pink. I have no hair.

Frankie's got, you know, he's going to want to start here. You do a bald thing you got going on. Yeah. Yeah. That is bald. Yep. Yeah. Alopecia.

You can't talk about that. Oh, my bad. I'm just kidding. Be sensitive, please. Jesus. It's a joke. I am sensitive. For all the...

Yeah, I don't... Yeah. Yeah. I'll keep quiet on this one. I have a couple thoughts in my head that I want to say, but I'm going to keep quiet because it just doesn't make sense. You can air it out here. I mean, you can say whatever hell you want on this show as well.

This is where to do it. No, so one of the good things. things about access journalism is that when you're reporting something, I can get access to the people I'm reporting on and at least be up front and be like, this is what I have. And then they get to weigh in and tell me what they think beforehand. And I'll either incorporate it into my reporting or I won't. But it saves me the angry phone call after. And then when you have it, it's all kind of buttoned up. So like, yes, it's a tricky line. But what I've been able to do is when I have something and have to report it. I'm able to tell my people like, got to go with it. And they'll be like, I wish you didn't,

but I get it. And so that's like, they know my job. They know where I'm coming from. If I call people, like, yes, sometimes I'm friendly with people I cover, but they know I'm calling as a reporter trying to report something. So the lines are a little blurry, but I think clearer than people imagine. What percentage would you say of information that you're releasing to the public comes from like the actual team as like a dedicated, like, a dedicated, Like they want this information out. And then what percentage would you say comes from a guy trying to maybe get leverage on his owner or an agent trying to get leverage on the team? Like what would you say the percentages are?

I would say, first of all, if I'm going to, unless I find out, there's a couple different ways I get stores. One is someone not involved, stumbles across something. They go, hey, man, you may want to check into this. Right. Like that would be one way. And then that's probably the way or like, hey, just heard about. this injury, it's not my team, it's not my guy, but like, look into it. That's just plain and down the middle as it comes, because someone just goes, hey, you're a reporter, you would like this,

go look into it. The other part of it is, you know, agents have agendas, players have agendas, teams also agendas. I have an agenda. I would like to report real things. So everyone who is involved in this has something that they want. And rarely do I just kind of like stumble across something by accident. A lot of times it's people saying, hey, this happened. And you're like, okay, this person is telling me this because why. And then I've gotten a lot better, I think, at trying to figure out where the agenda is and why someone wants you to say something. And as long as I know and can like be like, all right, this person is saying this from this side, but I get to get to the other side first before report it to make sure it's all even and then you report it kind of all at

once. Now, it's not always possible because things can happen very fast, but that's the goal is to make sure, all right, here's why this person is telling me this. It helps them in this way. I got to get to both sides, report it at once, and then hopefully it's down the middle. Do you have like a master list of sources somewhere? And the main reason I ask, because like, I just would, it would be hard for me to keep track. I mean, if I go to the city of Chicago and I'm trying to think like, who do I know in Chicago that's a friend of mine that I could play golf with? I can't even like remember everybody. I would almost want to write down like a list.

So if something's coming up with the Bengals, I almost feel like you would need to be like, all right, baby, I'm going to look at my Bengals list and be like, oh, fuck, that's right. I got that guy. Do you keep like a list somewhere? It's kind of a funny question. I don't do it like that. But what I do is, and I forget stuff all the time in my life. I have a very strict Google calendar that my wife and I share.

that I put everything in all the time and set alerts for myself on almost everything. He's got forget stuff all the time. Like my brain is cluttered with like, who's the agent for this player and like, what's his contract, right? So I feel like the regular human stuff sometimes gets lost in my stupid brain. But what I do is every time I take someone's contact down, I put the team or I'll say agent or agency, right? And then let's say something happens. All right, I know I'm going to be covering something.

Let's say the Bengals. I look at my phone. I'll type bangles. I'll type bangles. Here are my Bengals people. Who can I call that's relevant here? Or I have like a whiteboard to my left with like important stuff that I need to track down, which is actually great because it's almost empty because we've gotten through free agency.

And there's like, you know, I got like Baker and Jimmy G on there. But everything else have been able to cross off. But what I'll do is I'll make notes for myself like, here are the five people who are going to be intricately involved. in this just because like when in free agency when like stuff is crazy I'm constantly like hold on hold on this is happening I can and so like it just makes it easy for myself to write it down all right here's who I can call pretty fast that's interesting yeah see that's like I figured I was like how the how the hell does this guy keep track of so many different things what's the um like have you ever been I'm sure you have but what are some of the big cases when you've been used or like

misdirected, basically, with a scoop? That's a great question. You know, I would say what does happen sometimes, let's say contracts, right? You'll have a team and not necessarily the GM, but someone involved, a coach, you know, some executive who will be like, hey, we're getting this deal done. And you're like, wow, I'd love to report a huge contract extension for $80 million or whatever. And they get to the agent and they'll be like, well, actually we haven't agreed to that. And I'm like, okay, the team wants me to think they've agreed to it.

Maybe I put it out. Maybe it puts pressure. And eventually, you know, we'll get done probably. But you try to use me. I mean, it doesn't happen honestly that often, but try to use me to say like to make it to make it so to speak it into existence. I think that happens. you know, there would be sometimes with injuries where it's not like I'll be used, but I'll know something like, all right, this guy has a spray and MCL.

He's out two weeks. And the team will be like, that's not right. We don't know that. And I'm like, all right, you have a game coming up this weekend. You'd like the opponent to not know. So you're saying we don't know that to make sure that I don't report this. And either I'll say like, hey, you know, I got it. Sorry.

Or I'll be like, I'll trust you on this one. But I'm like, don't screw me. And let me know when he's. going to be declared out. So that's, you know, there's a lot of that. I don't know that there's like so much intentional misdirection because like everyone finds out everything. Like that's, of all my journalistic views or whatever I do, the fact that nothing is secret basically ever has guided so much. Because if I know something, probably a decent chance that some of the other people who do my job also know something. So it's going to get out. And why would I not put it out?

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Go to Taylormedgolf.com slash barstool sweeps right now for your chance to win big. So we've got to talk about, we're currently in the middle of, I mean, this is Friday, April 1st, 2022 for us golf fans, and I know you're a bit of a golf nut, which we're going to get to, but we're kind of in the middle of someone's going to drop a scoop that is going to be one of the bigger scoops in my lifetime in golf, which is if Tiger Woods is playing the Masters tournament or not next week. Do you, like, are you trying to even, I get a couple questions on this, but I'm sure you're obviously. following it. Are you trying to exhaust some sources just out of curiosity to see what the hell's

going on? Do you have some sources? Are you kind of like getting some information? What's your, like, how are you kind of tracking it? Tiger's hard because he's buttoned up. Like he's got his people and they do not say anything. So like when he has back surgery, like it comes out on tigerwoods.com or whatever. And like usually it's an Instagram post. Everyone's like, oh, wow. And there's some athletes like that. Like when I broke JJ Watt getting cut by the Texans a couple of years back, he was not very happy with that because he wanted to be the one to announce it. Some guys are really into that. I also wanted to be the one to announce it and I ended up breaking them, which is great. But then when he signed with the Cardinals, I knew I wasn't getting it because

his people were like, JJ is announced. Anyway, Tiger is kind of like that. I have a couple of people I can check with. I actually, so I found out, when was this? Oh, I think it was last year's master's. When did Kepka play with the Betelah injury? That was last year's masters, right? Yeah.

And he was like on one leg. Oh yeah, that was last year. He was doing the lean. Remember he's doing like the thing where he would lean and read pots like that? Yeah, yeah. Right. So I had someone be like, hey, just so you know, Bruce Kepika tore hit.

First it was like TOR's AICL. Actually, don't report that. It's Tor his. I think it was Patelotent. I forget what the actual injury. So I was like, I will take that injury. So I was able to report like very specific details on Kepka, which was just kind of fun. And like, I don't try to that much because I don't want to be a jerk to the golf riders who do this.

Reporters who do this for actually a living. Yeah. If I found out for sure the tiger was playing, I would definitely break it and it would be an awesome scoop. And the retweets would be just fantastic. Yeah, I was just going to ask you, like if Joey Likava called you, just hypothetical was like, rap we're playing we're trying to win you can report it you would just drop a golf bomb out of the college yeah it'd be so good oh yeah and i need that if what i really need and i guess with instagram now it's easier because you can sort of get to everyone right like i need caddies to dm me like random golf scoops i feel like

that would be great you know do you get do you get the same i mean you obviously get the rush that we get when you're like when you put out something whether for us it's a huge video or like a funny witty tweet for golf like are you just sitting there refreshing are you doing the trent rind just looking at your phone every single second just being like oh baby this one's doing some numbers um every once in a while you the problem is first of all free people like free agency in this free agency was bonkers it is not that fun if we're being honest because every second you feel good about yourself someone will dump something on your head that makes you not feel good about yourself right um but

But like sometimes and you know, there'll be times on like, I'll know something's going to happen. Like I probably knew that Devante Adams trade was going to happen like two and a half days earlier. But like the contract needed to get done. The trade needed to get done. There was some back and forth things. It was actually very complicated. And you just have to wait. And so when it happens, you're like scramble.

And that's like, we need you on TV. So there's rarely time to be like, what can me go? because I need to be on TV. When I was able to report that Tyreek Hill had received permission to seek a trade and was going to be traded, that was one where like, it was a big one because just the fact

that he was going to be traded was awesome. But the trade hadn't happened, so it wasn't like breaking, breaking news. That was one where I was kind of like, let me just read the, I don't read the regular replies. I read the verified replies because usually they're less toxic. But that was one where I was like, yeah, this is a good one.

Let me see where this goes because I knew I had a little bit of time with the trade happen. Yeah. I love just the thought of you just kind of dipping your toes in other scoops a little bit. Just kind of like if you can get a little something, just poking in and then just getting out of there. I was just looking up like your Kepka tweets from last year. And it's like out of the clouds. The airport's just like amazing story at the Masters. World number 11, Brooks Kepka shot even through nine.

Then you're talking about his doctor. I love that you're getting into it. How big of a, you've always been a golfer? Yeah, I mean, since I was like, you know, probably seven or eight. And when I was young, I was pretty good. So, like, I really hit the height of my golf career when I was like 12. And I would, you know, play with my dad. And I would play some, like, tournaments and whatever.

And then I found other sports. And I played a lot of baseball growing up. So I basically look like someone who used to be good at golf. So people will see me swing and they're like, you look like you're good. I'm actually not good. You think I'm good, but you haven't seen me three punt a lot of that. But I've been, you know, when I lived in Boston, I didn't play a lot, but I lived in Mississippi, played a ton, Alabama, played a ton.

It's like what I do when I have a little bit of time. Like I actually played this morning, my first round of the year, which was amazing and awesome and cold, but great. So it's basically like, I don't have time to do a lot of things. I do family, I do golf, and I smoke meat. It's really like, and drink. And smoking meat. It's really it.

That's not a lot of things, but that's what I do. I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a funny short joke when you were just talking. What was it? Well, you said you reached your height of golf at 12, and I was going to say, did you reach all of your heights at 12? That's actually pretty solid. Yeah, that's good. I couldn't hold it in. I couldn't hold it in.

The only reason is because he brought it up. You did hold it in. Why didn't you say it? I don't know. on a roll. I just, I was staring out. I'm like, I got to say this one. It is, it is funny, though, because I feel like a lot of us just had better games when we were super young when we started, like for me, just because you had more time to actually develop like a game. And also, you had no crazy, like hitches in your swing or mental gaps in your game. Like, you were

just learning something for the first time. I always am so envious to people learning the game of golf for the first time because they are just, you can mold them however you want. Yeah. Whereas, like, for, and I have two boys. I have seven and eight. I have a, my eight year old hits lefty, which is just amazing. He's got a beautiful swing. He swings and misses a lot, but even when he misses his swings are awesome. And then I have a seven year old who basically swings like a meat cleaver as absolutely hard as he can. And it's been so fun to see them kind of like get into it. And there's a great pro at our new place we just joined who's been like doing some lessons with them and like you I don't maybe it's because they're kids it's when I learned something it takes me

like a minute to figure it out right like I said I went out and played today tried some new swing things I'm working on for 13 of the holes I was right on the money and then the rest I was definitely not takes me a while for them it takes them like two swings they just pick it up and like and they like it which is like the coolest thing like kid golf is like that's of all the things I'm good forward to this spring and summer like that's really high in the list. That's going to be awesome. Yeah, the scar tissue and all the band-aids on our swings as we get older and older, they just become impossible to take off.

Yeah. You, when you play, I mean, are you just on, do you try to put your phone away? Is it impossible? Your phones? I imagine you got multiple phones. No, no, one phone. I don't, philosophically, I don't believe in multiple phones. I have AirPods.

What do you mean? I think it's ridiculous. I only have two pockets. Like, how many phones? It's like if I have three phones and I have more phones and I have more phones and pockets, right? And it's like, I can, people can hold on. I can text them. I can put my AirPods in while talking and tweeting and texting at the same time. I texted my computer, which is helpful because I have a Mac. Like, I'm a one phone guy and I stand by that. So there's

basically two seasons of golf for me. There's the one I just started right now, which was I put my phone in my pocket on ring basically and I have you know two balls in my right pocket on my phone T's in my left pocket and I play and if I have to take a phone call I have to text then I just do it and move on and like I I I probably because the TV world has messed me up forever like I don't get bothered by anything like I don't get interrupted like someone could talk during my swing like I don't care I could talk during my swing it doesn't affect me like the TV. world you're having to hear something in your ear and talk about something different has trained me to not care about anything around me. So I can like get a phone call, tweet, put down, swing,

and be absolutely fine. So that's this season. When we get through the draft, I can leave my phone in the cart or like on like in my bag and play without really worrying about something going off of being crazy. Wow. So yeah, now I'm envisioning this funny image of of you in just really normal places. You're at dinner. You're just on a golf course tweeting something major, some big information, and then just putting your phone back in your pocket and going on with a normal day-to-day activity? Well, sometimes that happens.

Like I had the David Bokhtiari contract extension, not the first one, like his big extension when there's rookie deal on the seventh hole at Bonnie Breyer in Larchmont where I used to play. And it was funny because, like, I sort of thought it was happening, but like, I really didn't know. And I get a text and it's like, Bakhtiari deal done, here are the numbers. And I didn't see it for like four minutes because I'm literally like walking from T to the middle. I literally remember where I was, walking T to the middle of the fairway, a little hump in the middle of the fairway, uh, bunker on the left. I look at my phone, I'm like, oh, God.

I'm like, I don't know if anyone else has this. It's been four minutes. That's a lot of time. I like hurriedly tweet it, send something else. I'm like, all right, time to hit. And then, you know, hit your shot and whatever. I had the David, the Derek Carr contract extension. It was like $25 million a year.

A couple of years ago, I was playing in Connecticut with my buddy Russ. And we're about, we were playing like a very serious match. $5 a side. And I'm on the 16th green par putt. And I get a text that's like, hey, contract's coming now. Get ready. And I'm like, right now, like how many minutes do I have? Because I'm like, all right, it's 16.

We have 17 and 18. That's like 23 minutes or something. He's like right now. Great. Tweet it right now. Miss the put. Tap in for bogey. Go to my car, drive home, and go be on TV for the next.

hour and a half didn't finish the last two holes just oh gotta go be on TV that's the lifestyle is there a crazy rivalry between you and the other insiders do you guys have like a mental standings on who has more scoops throughout an off season or a free agency yeah i mean i wouldn't say crazy rivalry like i want to win and they want to win but it's not like a nasty thing you know like we'll credit each other from time to time. And like I ran into Schaefter and ran into Glazer at the owner's meeting, said hello, like totally fine. We just want to win, you know, but it's not like,

it's not nasty at all, which is good because it really shouldn't be. Like, honestly, like, football, it's scoops. And while we know, you know, I know what stories I have broken and I definitely know what stories I missed. Like, I probably got a pretty solid list of that. And I don't know that many other people care. Most people just want their news as soon as they can get it. So like, all right, you had this, you know, four seconds after him.

Like nobody knows. Yeah. But we kind of, we keep score for no other reason than just to know, I guess. Yeah. The credit, the whole credit thing drives me crazy sometimes with like, like, we'll put, like the other day we put out that someone tweeted out, some random account tweet out the website to Tigers plane. So like now we're all kind of tracking Tiger's plane going up to Augusta. And I was just like having fun

with it, putting it out on Twitter. And like everyone's like, oh, are you going to credit that other golf podcast that did it first? It's like, hold on. Hold on. Let me stop you right there. You read your mentions. Yeah, but that's like, don't read your mentions. I know, but my point is like, that's a little bit of a Frankie problem. Frankie. But also like, first of all, I don't follow the other fucking podcast. And second of all, did they invent a train tracking web a plane tracking website like that's the most impressive shit i've ever seen in my entire life if so if so i will give them all the credit in the world for tracking

tiger woods's private jet but if they just have the same website i do i'm going to put out just as many should just as much shit as them and i'm going to track it all day long with no credit zero credit the tiger's plane allows him to be tracked most planes like owners have planes teams in college i covered college out plane tracking was a big thing we literally sent an intern to camp out at tussar exclusive airport waiting for Nick Saban to arrive when Alabama was hiring him because the plane was disabled and we didn't know when it was going to. We just had someone stay there. We sent him Coke and pizza. It was great. Don't read your mentions. Nothing good in it. It's bad for self-esteem. You don't care. Do what you do and only focus on that. And when someone discovers a something

else on the internet that you also could have discovered, like it's like if I find like a player posted something on Instagram and then I posted after other people like, I don't need a credit. It's literally there for anything. Yeah. It's the internet. It drives me crazy. So the plane thing, you're telling me, Tiger doesn't have to have his plane. No.

It could be listed in a way where we wouldn't be able to see it. Turn it off. And it's actually really frustrating. And now I don't care because there's not a lot of plane tracking in the NFL. But in college, plane tracking is a huge deal because the candidates who you're going to I guess head coach or whatever, they're not public. Like they keep everything secret. So you'd be like, all right, why is the Alabama plane flying to Norman, Oklahoma?

And then like everybody goes bananas, but you can turn it off and it'll say like the owner and operator has elected not to have this be made public. And you're like, no, like how do I find out where the plane is going? It's awful. Wow. So that does tell us we were, I think like Frankie Trent, we're right about that being like, I think Tiger wants people to know that he's going up to Augusta. So how did the news break? The news broke because...

I've seen a picture. Was that how it broke? It was like the screenshot on, I think, Tuesday morning of that public site or app where you can track planes that are publicly listed. And Tigers was listed. And so when it took off from Palm Beach or Jupiter or wherever it took off from, those people had it listed on their app as a notification. So the second that it like fueled up, you know, we said like the second Tiger buckled his seatbelt, these people got a notification and then it started to go up north right towards augusta circle to land so that's how it happened oh cool okay yeah but you know tiger's a tiger's a mind game guy it's like

it's one of the things that makes him tiger woods is he's always getting an advantage over his his other the other opponents by doing stuff like that like i think scott van pelt said on the spn the other night that if tiger woods plays at augusta on thursday like rory or someone else could legitimately be naked on the first tee and no one will know they're there. Like, so Tiger knows like by him just having his little plane bleep on a website that he is now owning the week. And I know that that's part of his strategy. Like he's just dominating it. Guys knees are starting to buckle. They're sweating a little bit more. They're gripping the clubs just a little bit harder because he's tracking on his way to Augusta. Imagine he just showed up.

Like that's not no, that's not fun. We need to know. Yeah. And I would imagine, you know, not knowing Tiger but understanding how our media world works, like I think you're right. Like the fact that we were able to find out about it, like Tiger does everything in secret. You don't think that he could play a gust and nobody would know about it. 100% chance if he wanted to, it would lock it down like it's Tiger,

lock it down, come in in a car that no one knows, play, have everyone sign NDAs or just be like, don't say anything like, it's Tiger. He could definitely do it. The fact that we know about it means he wanted to make sure that we know about it. Shopify,

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I like a suite of feature. I think Trump was discussing sweet. Could you have a suite of features? That might have appeared on this show. I was just trying to confirm that. A suite of features is a nice thing to have. It is. It is.

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I'm a huge trial guy. You have to try it before you dish it off to the universe. I will say my brother's wife, she runs this little small company, Beirut, and uses Shopify, absolutely loves it. She would show me little dashboards, check out, like conversion numbers the other night just to take a look at it.

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the NFL where like they're the most tight-knit crew can't get anything out of them. I mean, it used to be Brady and it's not really like that anymore because he's got so many people around him handling his social media and other stuff. And I also think he kind of stopped caring. Everything Brady used to be like all buttoned up and perfectly packaged. Russell Wilson's a little like that where like if you're going to report something, you know, it's it's generally going to be something that he makes sure he has his fingerprints on. Now, there's been times when, you know, like I reported that he was looking around wanting to, you know,

I think it was like evaluating his other options in the play, either in the playoffs or at the end of the Seahawks season, and everybody was very mad because they did not want that out there. But, you know, he's definitely someone who I think tries to control a lot of his message. You know, it's interesting because that like polished, handled, you know, quarterback or whatever, J.J. Watt, big time star. I feel like they're getting less and less because younger people especially are just out there on social media. And there's so much access to them. And they put out so much that I think they stopped caring about like, this has to be perfect.

Like Joe Burrow tweets sometimes like kind of what he wants or puts on Instagram like what he wants. And it's not always like well thought out. It's like here's what I'm thinking. And I'm sure PR people lose their minds. But like these guys are kind of more of themselves now. I think they've ever been. Do you have a fantasy football team? We do.

Is that even allowed? Like, you know injuries literally before the whole world. Like, do your buddies hate you? That's insane. I'm on two fantasy teams, two fantasy, I'm in two fantasy leagues. One is, like, work associated. The other is with, like, some of my college buddies. And, you know, there have been times when I've found out information,

their best one was. But, like, I've not, I've won the league. I've been in the league 10 years. I've won it once. I've been to the playoffs five times, and I finish in the finals three times. So I'm good, but I'm not dominant because it's so random.

Also, my players have really let me down in the last couple years. Anyway, Carson went's two years. We have multiple quarterbacks. Carson wins two years in a row, injury at the end of the season, really screwed me.

Anyway, the best one was, so I went to Columbia, and we as a family will go to Columbia football games. on Saturday, which is awesome, like a cool atmosphere and great. So we're on the, we're on the road to Columbia game, and I get a text, and it's like, hey, want to make sure you didn't miss this. Stafford's out this week and probably beyond that. But don't say anything.

And I'm like, okay, nobody knows this. And he was listed as questionable on the injury report. And like, quarterback's listed as questionable or generally playing. They always play. And so I'm like, oh, boy. Like, what in the world am I going to do with this? So I call, you know, my contacts with the lines. I call people close to Stafford and nobody's getting back to me.

Finally, after three hours, someone's like, I know you know. Please don't report it now. Like, no one else is on it. Just hang with us and, you know, report it Sunday. Am I going back and forth? I'm like, I don't want to get beat. And this is a disaster. On the other hand, there's like, you know, competitive things at stakes.

So like I kind of don't want to screw that up, even though I don't really care, but these are also people you know. This is sort of like the access journalism question from before, right? Right. So meanwhile, we're at the game like hanging out. I'm like the family's there. It's great. And I'm like a stress mess because I got this thing in my pocket. So of course I picked up David Blow, I believe was the backup quarterback for the lines.

And stagged, because I had staffer, staffed them on that bench. And people are like, oh, that's weird. Maybe Stafford's not going to play. I ended up reporting it to lead the show game day morning the next day. It held all the way till the next day. I was able to report it right as the show was starting, which was great. But it was definitely so stressful. And then, of course, they get all the messages to people in my fantasy league like,

you knew? Yeah. I had an idea every once in a while. Yeah, I mean, but look, if one of your buddies in that league had like a work buddy that works on the staff and was like, I think he's not going to play and had that information should do himself, he would have done the same thing. Right. But also, like, I, I'm still not great.

So, like, yes, I have an advantage for that. But I also, like, I also picked Trey Sermon in the third round this year. Yeah. Oh, like. So. Yeah. No, it must, it must, yeah. Your record definitely is more fair than what I would have imagined.

I would have imagined, like, 10 years, eight championships. Like, your buddies just don't even want to play with it. But I'm also, like, so that's actually. Because you know the draft literally better than anyone. in your league. That's sort of an insult to me too, though, because I should be better. Yeah, you should know. Compared to what I, compared to like how, it's like if I'm, you know, if I'm out there shooting

in the mid-80s, you're like, all right, that's pretty solid. But if I have like the natural talent of Tiger, not that solid. Right. That's true. Like, Frankie, he could, like in theory, he maybe should be the worst team in the league. But because of his access and what he does, he's actually pretty, like he's okay. Yeah, a little better than mediocre. Right.

Yeah. That's right. Do you, like, we get, so we get. this shit all the time of like DMs or tweets where people were just completely random. You know, John Doves, like, hey, I got a buddy that is out at Metalyst and he played behind Tiger Woods today. Here's a couple like pictures of it. You know, don't use my name. And then I sit there and I'm like, well, you know, videos and footage are technically not allowed at Metalyst.

And Tiger's Camp would be furious. And like it just feels a little bit ethically wrong. So I'm not going to post this. Like, do you think, like, do you think I should be posting that stuff or we should be posting that stuff? Would you consider posting anything like that? Or is that we don't. I probably wouldn't. What I get sometimes is I get like, this free agent has boarded a plane in front of me here.

Look. You know, like that happens. Like, I think there was a, God, what was it? Like, RG3 maybe or there was some big quarterback who was like spotted at an airport. And if wherever he was going broke because he was spotted. at an airport. I think it maybe it was hard. I can't remember. So that happens from time to time. I would say, you know, if someone is snooping and like taking pictures of Tiger at medalist, like, I don't know the big time value of that unless he was like playing golf with no shirt on or

something or like, you know, got into a fight. Like if he gets into a fight with Mikkelson while they're playing and to force him together and no one else around you have pictures, that's probably newsworthy. If it's just him playing like, yeah, let him live his life, you know? Like there's just I don't know, like the private lives are so messed up of these guys anyway. It's so hard to be a normal human. You know, like I get people coming to me all the time at dinners. And I don't mind. It's fine.

But like, imagine if I was someone actually famous. Like, it's let the dude play around, you know. I think that RG3 one was with the Patriots, right? It wasn't yet like Logan Airport. And didn't Dave, like, take that as like a scoop? And it was like, I feel like that's become a meme. No, no. There was a famous Larry Fitzger.

is Larry Fitzgerald, that one. But like, and so it was a picture of someone, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't Larry Fitzgerald. Yeah, Dave ran with it. You know, I don't know the originator of that. But I definitely, there's definitely every single time you have a like spotted at the airport reference, someone will just tweet the picture of not liar Fitzgerald. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what it is. Yep. Is there like a percentage threshold you have for reporting something or is it always 100%. I mean, you ever report something you're like, man, do you like weigh how big it is versus like how solid it is? Yeah, I mean, you better be right. And if you're going to say something like, you know, likely towards ACL, likely contract extension, like you better have it, right?

And so, you know, the bigger it is, the more sure you have to be. I think you should always try to be sure anyway. I had one where, and it was sort of like a horrible moment. But it was very well known is when I had the bills trading for Antonio Brown. You guys remember this couple of years back? And, you know, I had someone very much involved right in the mix. Say, look, trade is basically done. Compensations agreed to.

it's close. And so it's, you know, it's about to get done. And I'm like, cool. And so I call a bunch of people and I went with it.

And it was all true. Except then it wasn't true three and a half hours later when the deal broke down, I believe over a, he wanted a big contract extension and all that. So it was like,

I was right, but then I was wrong. And that really changed the way I reported. First of all, you know, I got all sorts of criticism and like, you know, the bills later came out with the statement, acknowledging like, yes, we were very much looking into it, but ultimately it didn't work out. But I really learned like, and it was awful. And I, you know, did a bunch of interviews the next day.

I think I talked to Deadspin. Just try to be accountable, even though it sucks. And it was a really good lesson because I should have taken a breath. Hold on. let me contact all parties, see if I can get anything, see where it stands. Because somebody, had I waited, somebody might have been like, hang on. Like, this is, you're right. It's getting done, but some things need to be worked out.

And I think, but I don't know this, but I think by me reporting it, it probably made it harder for it to get done. Wow. Because all eyes were on it, right? But it was also like a really good lesson for me to like take a breath. even though you think something is right, even though your source is impeccable, like cannot be a better source,

it still could be wrong. So like make sure and like nothing is worth that. Going through that, nothing is worth it. Like finish second if you have to, but be right. Right. It's not for the fate of heart, that scoop game, man. I did one scoop in my life with the Islanders.

It was when Artemmy Panera and was choosing between the islanders and maybe going to Columbus and maybe the Rangers and there was all these talks the night before he was about to sign that he was going to the New York Islanders. Islanders just had new ownership.

Like Lula Marello was in there. I'm like, holy shit, we're about to get our $10 million guy. This is it. I was in a group chat with multiple players in the NHL from different teams saying, like sending me the bread emoji because they know I'm a huge Islander fan

being like breadman going to New York. Like this is insane. So I just tweeted out, Artemi Panera will be a New York Islander tomorrow when we all wake up. Got thousands and thousands of likes retweets. Turns out he canceled the offer with the Islanders and took less money to go with the Rangers.

The Rangers came swooping in last second. He literally was confirmed with the Islanders. Like texting the players. It was crazy. And I never deleted it because, like, you can't. Yeah, no, don't know. And now every, whatever, what is it? Like, what's the day of like NHL Free Agency?

Like, whatever, July 31st, I get to tweeted at me every, single year as an anniversary, happy anniversary, because now he's on my most hated rivalry. He's fucking crushing it, 240 points since he's become a Ranger. It's insane. So I have to live with that my whole life. Like, it's psychotic that that's something that's attached to me because it's, it makes me the most man that I've ever been ever. But yeah, I have to live with it.

It's not for the faint of heart in your game, man. It's fucking, it's terrifying. Even me talking about the Antonio Brown thing, which, you know, worked out well for the bills, to not work out so well for him. And the fact, like, it turned into such a positive because for me, it really literally changed how I do my job. Like it absolutely forced me to reexamine my entire process and made me a lot better reporter. But it sucked so bad. It was just so terrible.

And like we were at, I like horse racing. So I'll go with my wife. We're going to the derby. It's going to be great. And we went to Belmont that year. and like one guy in a line was shouting, you know, A, B to the bills at me. And like, it was two months later, I'd already made my piece with it. I'd processed it.

I had mourned my loss of being horrible. And it's still, like one guy, it's still stung. And I don't know why somebody would do that. Like, what do we? What the hell? Can't believe the guy's heckling you for the scoop. It hasn't happened very often. Most people are like amazing.

That was the one guy. And it was the one thing where, like, you know, in the end, like, I was not good enough. And I was still think about, I'm like, oh, come on, man. Yeah. So in early 2018, four years ago, Dave Portnoye wrongly fired you from Barstores Sports. Yeah. What was that?

Walk me through that one a little bit. One of the weirdest moments in my life. I was in my basement. I'm in my basement now, but right around the corner over there. I'm playing with my, I think my youngest was three. So I'm like on the ground, like wrestling or something. And I get a text that's like, hey, listen, you know, that obviously wasn't acceptable, which you did last night.

You know, we can't have that. I'm going to have to let you go. And I was like, I think I said, wait, what? Or like, WTF or like, and I'm reading it over. And it's like, you know, sometimes this happens where I'll get a text out of the blue and it'll be like, you know, grong to the bucks. You're like,

am I like reading this properly? Like, what is happening? You know, or it'll say like, done deal and you're like, what's a done deal? What could this mean? You have to take a second to like,

think of like, what is this person texting me about? Um, and I'm like looking at it. I'm like, last night. What did I do last night? Why Netflix and went to bed?

Because that was pretty acceptable. Like, what are we talking about? And I'm like, wait. Wrong rap? He's like, Yes, wrong rap. You are actually not fired for me.

I'm back. And then I thought nothing of it. And then I realized, like Michael Rap reported, I guess gone bananas and, like, said a bunch of bad stuff. I don't,

I still honestly don't really know. But it was, you know, not great. And then he got fired. And then Dave tweeted it. And I probably got the most random text that I've gotten in, like a very long time of people being like,

we're back. I'm like, yes. Yeah. I loved because, yeah, once he figured it out, you figured it out, I pulled it up now, and you just wrote back, awesome, I'm back. Yes, I'm back. Yeah.

What a world. What a crazy world. Man, the scoop game is not for the faint of heart. It's true. We've done it. We've dabbled a little bit at the President's Cup. We got into it a little bit in Melbourne in 2019 with some of the golf journalists. And, you know, people that, if you try to out-scoop somebody,

That is the nails come out, man. It is, it is a ruthless. Reporters, we're going after you. Yep. Mm-hmm. They do not like that. So we do,

you know, we kind of dip in occasionally, but you know you're going to get like, you're really under a microscope then. We could kind of, we could kind of float around the surface with what we do and we poke a little fun and joke around and great. When you start to get into the nitty-gritty of the scoop game and the journalistic game

and the reporting in golf, that is, you better have, you better have all your T's cross and your eyes dotted because people will come after you. Yeah, and people are very possessive. And even now, like, you know, I'm, I'm friendly with a lot of the people who cover the teams. Not all of them, but I'm a fairly friendly guy. But like you get something a little not right or you interpret something different from how a local reporter has done it or, you know, say something that someone else had earlier and you kind of didn't realize the knives will also come out.

Even people that you're kind of friends with. And you're like, oh, that wasn't very nice, but I'll remember that one. You know, you're right. Everyone is, everyone is very possessive, which is I am too. So that's totally fine. But it's part of the reality. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it.

I appreciate the time. Like I said, I'm a big fan. I find your world fascinating. I find kind of the blending of the lines, blurring of the lines between what kind of what you do and what we do, which are obviously very different. But they've crossed occasionally. And it's just a fascinating world. everybody. So keep it up. We appreciate it. I hope you're able to get a little bit of golf.

You got what? A couple, you got like a couple months of golf season where you can get out there a little bit. Yeah, I mean, basically I'll be, you know, like I said, I played today. It was mediocre. And then I'll probably play like, I don't know, three or four times for the draft, which would be fine. Draft happens. And then like May, June, July when I'm not in training camp, I'll just play as much as I can. And, you know, I have a golf trip. with my buddies this year for the first time in 10 years and going to Kiowa. I'm going to get my ass kicked on the ocean course, which is going to be great. I heard that course, like the hardest course in the world.

I've never been there. Yeah, I mean, they say when the wind is up, it is, it's going to be ugly. So I don't know what I'm rooting for because it's going to be a bloodbath either way. You guys play at a bunch of the other ones around there, too, is like Turtle Bay. Yeah, yeah, you're playing all. I think we're playing five times in two and a half days. So I think we're playing all of them. but I haven't, you know, as much as I love golf, like, I haven't really done that just because

it's hard to get away. And like, I travel for work. So like to tell my wife like, hey, I'm back from owners meetings slash draft, combine, Super Bowl. All right, I'm going out with my boys for four days. Like, it's not great. You just take care of the family, honey. I'm just going to go, you know, have a couple drinks and play golf from three days straight. Right. drinks after golf. I don't, I drink during golf, but I don't like to be drunk while playing golf because I don't like to be bad, but after golf. Right. You guys doing like a Ryder Cup or something?

How many guys you got? We got four guys total. Okay. So we'll have a, this is like so dumb, but I'll tell you anyway. So the best wing place near us or maybe around is called candlelight, candlelight in. We all like wings. So we'll be playing the candlelight cup.

Where the prize, we did it like 10 years ago. the prize will be some sort of personalized gear or sweatshirts maybe. And we don't, you know, we don't play for like, it's not like big money or anything, but it is very intense. I know my partner I've known for a while. He's been encouraging me to play bad to raise my handicap, which I'm fundamentally against, but I also understand. So it's going to be, that is going to be awesome.

So it's two on two same squads the whole weekend. Yeah, I think we might do some, you know, and it's shot or kind of like some weird some sort of weird rider cup style something midway through just to spice it up but yeah one partner for the whole week who's the planner you guys have like a main planner in your group oh yeah see so um i made the call initially just to make sure we could get on and whatever and people were ocean clear sky was all it was great um and then my buddy russ uh is basically always the planner so russ has is like i made the initial call and then i'm like hi listen, I'm like taking all this.

I'm like, can you just call my buddy Russ? So I text on like, hey, the guy from Keel was going to call you. So he scheduled it. And then my two other buddies, like one is, I mean, they're not going to say long for the ride, but they know to let Russ handle it. He will do it. Brett and Mike are my other guys and we will go play and it's going to be very cool. I know just every group.

I mean, you know, we do a couple of these buddies trips a year. There's always a planner. And then there's always a point where the group chat or group text chatter, email chain starts to pick up and starts to get hyped and there starts to be a lot of uh everybody wants to get like where are we going when are we going which course we're playing you're taking the course flyovers you're doing the whole thing so i think everybody can relate to that well i'm i've been taking lessons not a lot but a couple lessons just uh you know inside in a simulator and i just learn that i can play the ocean course theoretically on the simulator so i'm kind of wondering

about the ethics of like taking a for a little spin and just make sure i'm familiar with the course before I go. I feel like that's okay, right? Yeah. That's kosher. That's totally kosher. Especially with all the wind there. I mean, it's essentially a different golf course once you get there. Yeah. You're not going to know anything. Like we were there for the PGA and that fucking golf course is no joke.

I remember walking the front nine be like, I'd never want to play this golf course ever if it's like this. I mean, it's just impossible. But beautiful and absolutely elite conditions. So yeah, you guys are going to have the time of your lives. And we appreciate it. Man, must follow, obviously, for any sports fan, any football fan, wrap sheet, keep it up, keep up the good work. Have a great summer playing golf. Hope you play well.

Good luck at the Candlestick Cup. And, you know, let's do this again sometime. Candlelight. What do I say? Best wings of West. If you ever come to Westchester, great wings. Anyway. But thank you.

I really appreciate it. You guys are awesome. Keep out scooping the newspaper, traditional journalists. And I'm sure I'll run into you at an event or something. Yeah, for sure. Appreciate it, brother. Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.

See you.