Geoff Schwartz Is Smarter Than You - Gambling in the NFL, Big Ten Schedule, and LIV's Power Play

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Geoff and Gabe are live on Twitter to talk about the state of gambling in the NFL in the light of another player being suspended for betting on NFL games. Plus, what will the Big Ten schedule look like in 2024 when USC and UCLA join the league? And could the "LIV model" be used to disrupt the NFL?Be sure to rate, comment, and follow the pod for a new episode every other week during the offseason.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. It's Tuesday, excuse me, Thursday, June 8th. Oh man, the summer months, Gabe, sometimes just get these days messed up. I don't know. I'm Jeff Schwartz alongside Gabe Goodwin. This is Jeff Schwartz of Smarter Than You. So much to get into today. We have gambling in the NFL, a big topic that I love to talk about because I do a lot of gambling. By the way, Gabe, North Carolina, gambling, coming to North Carolina. Cannot wait.

So excited. We'll talk some Big Ten, Act 12, Big 12. Didn't see that coming. Oh, no. Didn't see North Carolina going there before California did, but all right. Never thought that would happen in North Carolina. I'm shocked. Also shocked about Liv and PGA Tour merging. We'll talk about how that might affect the NFL.

But first, Gabe, before we let kind of people roll in here, so we're going here, one of your coworkers has lobbied a complaint about you that you left the Dave Matthews band running in the office as you left to go do this podcast. Is that something you would like to answer for? What's the complaint? Dave Matthews band, supposedly.

That's a bad thing? Sorry, trading my voice for the beautiful, melodious voice of Dave Matthews band and his marvelous band? How is that a downgrade? That seems like an upgrade. Supposedly, one of your coworkers disagrees with you. Well, we can name that coworker because he's a part-time co-host on this show. His name is Matt Ford.

He is famous for rooting for the Washington, D.C. football team and losing bets with you. So I don't really care about his opinion. But the opinion that we should all care about is, is what the NFL feels about gambling, right? Where the NFL is coming in hard game on the players that gamble in the National Football League. Listen, the reason this show exists, the reason we called it what we called it is because you are more level headed. And

because when the takes start flying, you're able to swap them to the side and just tell us what's really going on. Yes. So I need your help with this because the easiest take that I have seen after Colts defensive back Isaiah Rogers was busted for not just gambling, gambling in the facility and gambling apparently on the Colts. Hundreds of times he placed lots and lots of bets. This is something they're going to drop the hammer on. And the easiest take

is, what's so bad about him doing this? Meanwhile, the Colts have a sponsorship deal with Caesars. So it's pretty hypocritical, right? That's the easiest take I've seen. Yeah, but who cares? I know this is not the same thing, right? I get that

drunk driving and gambling on sports is the same thing, but there are sponsorships in the NFL with beer companies. Should you be allowed to then drink at the facility and drive home because there's sponsorship with the beer company, right? The answer is no, right? The answer is no. The reason why you can't gamble on sports, excuse me, gamble on the NFL while you're

playing the NFL is it's because the integrity of the game gets brought up if you do this, right? Now, every single time that Isaiah is in the game moving forward, now he might not know if he's ever going to come back in the NFL, who knows? But every time he plays from now forward and even looking back, people will think, is he doing this because he has money on the game, right? And people are going to go back and find clips of him and say, is he playing this way because there's money on the game? Now, the money that he supposedly wagered

is not a lot of money, right? It was $5, $10, $15, $20. They said he had one low level or low four-figure wager he made. For the most part, just like kind of all of us, pretty easy wagers for fun. We're just doing it and we're seeing what happens, right? Just like when Calvin Ridley got busted a year ago, what do people do? They went in and found video of him every time he fell down or went out of bounds and said, look, he's on the take. He's doing this. That's why you're not gambling on the NFL if you're an NFL player. I don't care about the sponsorship deals. Who cares? That to me is a talking point that makes absolutely no sense to me. The NFL has sponsorships. By the way, players get some of that money. It's in the CBA. They collect some of it themselves. So we act like the NFL players aren't

part of this at all. The other take that really has frustrated me is this idea that it's on the NFL teams to make sure their players know all the rules about gambling. Okay. Yes, Gabe, you're right. The NFL teams should tell their players the gambling policy. They do tell them that. I've been in those meetings before, guys. Whether players pay attention or not, this is another story. Who knows? The meetings are long. They're tedious. I'm sure your job, you have compliance meetings as well. They're boring as heck. Are you paying attention to compliance meeting?

I don't know. But the NFL does tell the players the rules. There's a long athletic article about this. And then a player said, yeah, we're told about this. Now, were they told specifically they can't gamble on other sports at the facility? That's up for debate. Players said they didn't know that. In the article as well, there was a nine-year NFL veteran who said, I want to gamble.

So I reached out to my NFL PA rep and asked him what I could do legally. A responsible player. It's up to the player. If they want to gamble, it's the player's responsibility to know the rules before they do it. I would advise just don't gamble in sports when you're playing the NFL. Very simple. You'll never get in trouble. But Gabe, I don't understand why all the responsibility on social media seems to be to the team to let the players know. It's the players. We're adults. If we want to gamble, it's up to us to understand the policy so we don't get in

trouble. We control what we do. It's our bodies. It's our person. We are our own job. Our body's our job to be able to play that job. You need to know the rules. And to me, I feel like this is on the players, not on the teams at all. Yeah. The other thing about this that's confusing to me is the reason that I'll just speak for myself myself that I would occasionally put a few bucks on a football game. Certainly the reason that I play fantasy football where I have a few bucks on it is to make a Colts game interesting. Well, if I was on the freaking Colts, I think I would find it pretty interesting. I don't need a motivation to care about the Colts game. If I'm playing defensive back for the Colts, why would he be gambling in the first place I agree with you on everything you just said but what is he what does he need to do this for

that's the thing so so I've always liked to gamble I of course I didn't gamble while I played because a wasn't allowed it's still not allowed and b it was you couldn't do it right there was no yeah it was much it would have been harder to do. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, man. I couldn't imagine, even for this way about hedging bets, where like if I'll bet on... The emotional hedge of a wager, I don't get that, right?

Where like I'll bet on, let's say I bet on Oregon as the underdog, which I will almost never bet on my team as underdog because to me, if they cover seven points but lose the game, I still feel like shit even though I won the money. Who cares? Right?

So imagine if you're Isaiah and you bet on your team to win and you lose, you're now lost and you lost money. But what if you bet your team to lose? Now you've lost and won money. Do you feel good about that? Like, definitely. You're like, oh, I feel great. Again, not life-changing money. And that's the other part about this too, Gabe, is it's not life-changing money, right? So you're ruining your career, whether you're an NFL player,

the Alabama baseball coach, some of these Iowa players and Iowa State players, you're ruining your career over money that in the end is minuscule compared to your NFL contract, right? He wasn't betting tens of thousands of dollars. And again, for the hundredth time, sports books, because there are so many in so many states, they're so regulated, Gabe, they know how much money is being wagered. If you all of a sudden bet way above your typical wager, they're going to flag that as maybe this guy knows information that he shouldn't know. And they're not going to let you make that wager. Okay. I

don't think I've talked about this on this show before, but I do a Sunday morning radio show during the season with Bill Krakenberger, who is a professional wagerer. That's his job. He's part of a syndicate. He makes money wagering. Okay. We were at a casino doing a remote last year and he wanted me to go play some wagers for him. He gave me $10,000. Okay. It was awesome. Like in cash.

I've never held that much money. Yeah. To make five wagers for him. I made two wagers for $2,000 each. Four grand. The casino was like, yeah, we don't know who you are. We're you're, you're cut off. I couldn't even make the rest of the wagers.

Yeah. In person with cash. Couldn't even make them like of the wagers. Yeah. In person with cash, couldn't even make them. They're like, yeah, we don't know who you are. And they saw me physically do it, of course, but like the regulators that they send the slips to wherever they are on their computer somewhere else, we're like, yeah, we don't know this guy. We're done. And I got limited right away. I made a thousand dollar wager. That was it. One more thousand dollar wager. right away. I made a $1,000 wager. That was it. One more $1,000 wager. So the idea that you're going to get rich doing this, it doesn't happen. And so I don't get the motivation to even want to do this. I understand. Okay, fine. Your favorite college football team, you want to wager on the

Belmont Stakes this weekend. You want to do the World Cups coming up, some big events. Okay, I sort of get that. But for a daily wager on basketball and football and baseball while you're playing to me doesn't seem even worth it. And so I know it's easy access. Trust me, I'm so excited North Carolina is getting wagering. I can just do it on my phone instead of going through my offshore. It's going to change the way I wager, maybe hopefully on the good part of it. But players should know, man, just don't do it gabe

there's signs in the locker room about gambling there's always been signs there just don't do it and roger's wagering on the colts that's what's going to get him the most punishment like i could see the nfl being like yeah you wager on the colts buddy like you're not playing the nfl again yeah i mean talk to pete rose if you're unclear on how that works uh good news though in case people somehow have played in the league and still don't know the rules the league is creating a video for all the teams to play for their players yeah and the the beginning of that video will be none other than tom br Brady because obviously when you think a guy who always obeys the NFL's rules has never looked for an edge never and who is also a terrific

investor of course great with money he is of course the first person that comes to mind there's never been a time when Tom Brady was a little bit in the gray zone on NFL ruling. So what do you think of that? Do you think Tom Brady telling players not to gamble is going to work? As a fellow Fox employee, I endorse everything Tom Brady has to say about any subject. Fair enough. And I would like to make it clear that, uh, that me and Tom Brady, um, are, uh, I'm, uh, are, are going to be work buddies soon. Uh associates soon. I mean, Tom Brady giving a message to a player who's, again, let me explain this. Most of these meetings that we're in, in the NFL, are these kind of compliance-ish meetings. They happen in training camp and maybe in OTAs. They're like two hours long. They're the same meetings that you don't want to go to either

in your company, right? So we're not paying We're not, we're not paying attention. Like I, I, I just, you're not right. Like you just, you're checking the box. I was in the meeting, check, move it along. Right. So like I, I, again, if players want to be educated in this topic and they want to gamble, it's their responsibility to go do this, right? If you are in any other company and you screw up in this essence, we're not blaming the NFL. It's the same sort of topic I talk about with the Crime and Punishment League, right? We're like, everyone's always upset NFL teams for not punishing players. It's like, well, what about the people that are in charge to do that, right?

It's not the NFL's job, in my opinion, to punish players. It's not the NFL's job to make sure players understand the entire gambling policy. If you want to gamble, it's up to the individual to know what they're doing, man. And you shouldn't do it anyways. You don't have to make enough money. My favorite part of the story, by the way, that was out in The Athletic was that one player started, he opened an account. He gambled like five times, lost all five wagers, closed his account,

and never gambled again. I was like, yeah, sounds sounds not right. So gambling works. That's good for him. He sounds like a good gambler. The problem is everyone who doesn't shut it down after those first five laws, he just chases nonetheless. Um, I am very happy by the way that, that North Carolina will have something over California in the gambling thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have real estate.

I have. We have real estate. We have cheaper real estate. Yeah. And gambling. More sweat. A lot more sweat. It is.

It is getting. Well, you'll sweat the bets while you sweat in your swamp of a. Jeez, it is hot. It's getting there soon. I'm not on the beach, buddy. I am far from the beach. It is. It's hot it's it's getting there soon i'm on the beach buddy i am far from the beach it is um it's getting sweaty it's getting it's sweaty season yeah it's uh baseball's over now i know um our my son is out we're in swim season now it's getting hot it's getting hot buddy all right well it's uh it's also getting hot over in the big 10 any any minute now really just soon after we stop going live and we are live right now,

the Big Ten will make some announcements about the way it will do scheduling after USC and UCLA join. So for the 24, 25 and onward seasons. And it looks as though they're going to a quote unquote flex protect model, which, as we understand, it basically means that you can play one to three rival rivalry games every year, and then you'll cycle through the other matchups and it'll kind of blow up the way that scheduling has worked traditionally, at least in the big 10, but maybe some other major conferences soon. So what is your impression of what's going to happen and what this might mean for teams in the big 10 years to come?

Yeah. So as these conferences start to expand, we're getting a lot of teams, right? 16 teams in the Big Ten and the SEC. You've got to try to figure out how to play these games. And the SEC said they're only sticking to eight conference games, which I think is complete BS because playing non-conference games has been the death knell for a lot of conferences, right? It's hard to win non-conference games in a row. Even if you lose one, you can't lose a non-conference game, right? It's just hard to do.

And the SEC is staying at eight. I get why they're doing it. There's no incentive to change. But you're not going to play everyone. And the Big Ten is trying to find a way to make sure that they play the most conference games possible but also keep their rivalries intact, which, again, the SEC, if you're going to try to keep rivalries intact, that takes away even more of the opponents you can play because you're keeping the rivalry

games each year. And then you obviously play less conference games. So the Big Ten is going to this model where, for example, right, like UCLA and USC are going to be rivals in this new model, but they don't have any other rivals. So there's no reason, there's no reason to schedule them a second and third rival. Ohio State's probably going to have Michigan and maybe a Penn State, right? And Michigan State's going to have Michigan and Ohio State. I don't know. They're going to have multiple ways to do this. This feels like the future of scheduling, right,

Gabe, is to protect the rivalries, which we know are a big part of college football, and to make sure that you get as many conference games as possible. The SEC just has to come along and play their nine games. Okay, so there's a few parts of this to unpack then. I guess what I'm most interested in is if you have such a big conference with so many interesting matchups available to

you and outside of your region now, when you're talking about the Big Ten, you could be on the East Coast or the West Coast and be a team like Michigan. So you can you can travel you can go to neutral sites it's all available to you do you still need to play no offense to some of these schools but these nonsensical speed bump games in weeks zero through three or can you just make those conference games now and build some rivalries and have a little bit more fun. So a 12-team playoff changes the equation for scheduling, right? Because as it is right now, one loss and a non-conference slate,

that's going to ruin the rest of your season, right? And so teams are reluctant to schedule some of those games. So Florida's going to Utah this year. It's like the first time since like the 80s they've left the state of Florida to play a non-conference game. Like it's crazy. Teams just don't want to do it because they don't have to, right? There's no incentive to want to leave.

But if a 12-team playoff ends up happening, then okay, fine. We'll leave for some big money games, but it doesn't hurt us to make a playoff if we have some losses. And I think, Gabe, eventually down the line, not this year, not next year, but I think there could be a situation where you have just one major kind of conference at the top. It's a Big Ten SEC conglomerate at the top. And they might just say,

we're going to play a 12-game schedule of just each other because we're going to have our own championship. We're going to have a separate championship. We're going to have a championship of the power conference power conference like the their premier league championship right we're gonna have the premier league championship and everyone else got the champ it's championships league right it's the next one down from premier league championship league do you watch soccer premier league's number one i think they call the next tier down champions league okay so champions league will have their own it's just like in the college football we have like a

premier league no no no hold on on. Hold on. Hold on. Time out. Premier League is British. Champions League is across Europe. Oh, so what's the one? It's like the top four teams in England go to Champions League. Oh, hey, of course. Hank knows.

I knew Hank would know this. Okay, he said I'm incorrect. Okay, fine. Whatever the next league is down, that's what's going to be like the rest of the of the Pac-12 ACC and Big 12 teams will be that lower tier, right? And they might just play in their tiers for the rest of time. That's going to happen like 2030, I think. Is there a country with a wealth fund that you think might invest in that? So we could do that now, you would like but i'm sort of teasing i we we can get to the live stuff because it's all referencing before we do should we talk just finish this thought on big 10 though yes so i guess here's what i want to know if

you're imagining a world that's still almost a decade away. For this coming, not this year, but the year after, what is, wouldn't, you know, Michigan, Ohio State, let's include Penn State in this, and certainly USC, none of them need to play anyone outside of who they would already play in a Big Ten schedule and then win the Big Ten with only one loss. None of them need to do anything more than that. So what is the reason to go outside of the conference?

What would be the risk? See, with Florida and Utah, respect to those programs, I think both of them agree we might need something to get us over the edge in the current format. We might not be good enough unless we go beat a ranked team on the road or whatever. But do Michigan, Ohio State, and USC need that if they're in the Big Ten? Well, I mean, Michigan doesn't even do that anyways. I mean, Michigan's schedule is a joke.

They don't even schedule. It is a joke. Same with Georgia, right? Michigan's schedule this year is their non-conference is East Carolina, UNLV, and Bowling Green all at home. Yeah. So they already do that now, right, and Bowling Green all at home. Yeah. So they already do that now, right, Gabe? They already schedule like that.

Exactly. But I'm saying just make those Big Ten games and don't bother playing anyone outside the Big Ten, good or bad. And if you do your job, you go. Yeah. But then you have to then make it to where it's acceptable to have two losses and make a playoff, right? Which is, I guess, in theory, what the 12-team playoff is about. So let's play this out.

A Michigan schedule that gets harder by playing, replace the three teams you just named with, let's say usc iowa and a bad big 10 team that's not currently on their schedule and now have them win the big 10 championship with losses along the way to penn state on the road and usc but they beat ohio state and then they they win the conference they're still going to the playoff probably um okay so what's the problem so just do i think well i think some of the the tough parts about it are are the depth of your team right that the more conference games you play the deeper your team has to be right because you have to withstand injuries and physicality and i think for a lot of teams around the country you don't you don't have that depth so you like you have to you have to play some patsies early on

to withstand a full season of play all right you might for some of these schools you might actually have to play a four-star recruit. Can you imagine? Oh, boy. Yeah. Depth is not an issue. Okay, so you're Trojans right now, right? They have like three defensive linemen that are any good. If one of those guys gets hurt, you guys are screwed, right? And if one of those guys

got hurt in week one because you played Ohio State and not San Jose State, you'd probably be pretty pissed as a fan all right but they didn't get hurt because of that they got but they had to play football right but but the but the impact the the impact of the physicality of game after game after game can take a toll on your body when you play san San Jose State and you play 20 snaps because you're up 35-0 at halftime, that's one less game to put wear and tear on your body.

That's less of an opportunity to get rolled on. That's less of an opportunity to get hurt. All those things are true when you play four passes to start the season. All right, fair enough. Well, we'll have some fun when when the big 10 announces what this new scheduling format will look like we'll have a chance to react to it soon for now we're just it'll be today in about an hour hour and a half yeah so the big announcement we

already know about this week which i've already alluded to and isn't really football but it has a football tie so bear with us people live golf is merging re-merging with the pga tour um basically you know there was this huge you know freak out when the saudi uh fund paid tons and tons of money to superstars who would come join them ditch the pga uh then they said a lot of nasty things about each other people had a lot of takes the takes got other. People had a lot of takes. The takes got very, very hot. And then all of a sudden they're all back together. And what do you know? The Saudis are investing in the PGA. That's the simple summary. Jeff, do you think something like this could affect sports we pay closer attention to like football or basketball one day?

It's a good question. so when the live tour was first announced we talked a lot about this on my college football show my radio show my Pac-12 show because what is stopping a fund like this from investing in a college football team and just buying all the players and winning a championship now obviously the the notoriety of golf worldwide is different than college football, right? It's a very centralized sport to America. So there's not the interest in probably winning that. But in theory, Gabe, if a fund like this said, you know what? We like Illinois football.

We're going to give Illinois football $1 billion to buy every single player with name and likeness. It can be done tomorrow if they wanted to. And does this help? Does it happen in college sports? Probably not, but it's certainly a possibility. The question becomes, does it happen in other professional sports that have more of a national pull, whether it is the NBA or whether it is the NFL? It's already in soccer, right?

Saudi's on some soccer teams, I believe. So it's happening in soccer. It's happening in the PGA. I would think it doesn't happen in NFL and NBA, Gabe, just because there's 30 other owners that have to have a say in it. And I don't know if it would get through a sale right you know the pga tour this was done in the cover of darkness right i mean it just was was done no one knew it just happened um that's why i think it's probably not going to happen the nfl

or in the nba because that's got to go through the ownership process and i don't think it would clear the ownership process the hurdle of the ownership let me try to let me try to push back on that um just being a skeptic here why do you think that that wouldn't go through the ownership what about the owners in the nfl indicates that they would be you know morally offended by the idea of you know the saudis investing in one of their 32 franchises. If suddenly, well, who's the,

who's the least valuable franchise in the league right now? The Raiders pick, whichever. Well, sorry, it's not the Raiders. It's Mark Davis has the less, at least amount of money is owner,

but it doesn't matter. I mean, like when, like fortune and Forbes and Jags Jags, cause it's always been the okay right they're the least valuable franchise and now some this same group that invested in live says we'll buy the jags for uh the same amount the cowboys are worth that's how much okay um i think ownership is saying no to that okay Okay, but think about this. Who is that sale benefiting?

The Jaguars owner. The value of their franchise just went up. Right. So it's benefiting Jacksonville's owner, who's making all that money, and then possibly you could say it's benefiting the future of NFL team sales, right? Where if you sell your team, you make more money.

But that's if those teams are going to be sold, right? And for the most part, how many teams in the NFL right now in the future will be up for sale? Not many of them, right? A lot of them are family owned. They're not changing hands. So how does this benefit the other owners other than just saying now, in theory, our properties are worth more?

They're not seeing any of that money, right? Like in the PGA Tour, they're getting money from the fund to keep their product alive, right? And to put more money in their product. The NFL owners don't see, like it's not making the NFL more popular. It's not making Jerry Jones more money immediately. The better comp, and Hank just said this is true, is like if they form their own XFL

and then try to merge with the NFL because they bought up all the NFL players. Well, okay, so let's play that out. What if this same group, whatever the downside of them might be, and we're not here to talk about the politics of that. Plenty of people have weighed in on that. If that same group bought up the XFL, made it a better product, helped grow interest in the XFL, and then said, well, why don't we just have professional football people like year round? Let's merge.

It's a good question. Again, the merger happened because the PGA Tour presumably needed the money, right? They need the money. How big of a scale of project do you have to pull off where the NFL feels like they're losing so much money that they will have to merge with a lower level league? Like you're going to have to – and I guess the Saudis have the money. You're going to have to take Patrick Mahomes and convince him to not play in the NFL to go to your league. Like that's the problem, right?

Golf is an independent contractor, and being able to play at various courses around the world with other golfers because you pull them away, they pulled away 17 golfers, right? Like it's not the scale of pulling away NFL players is so grand to get them to go to your spring league. I'm not sure they can pull that off, man. How many NFL players do they have to get into the league

to where a top-tier quarterback even feels comfortable considering playing in that league? I'll give you a real life example. And I'm not just picking on this guy because that's all anyone's been doing for two years. This is actually the kind of person who I think could and maybe would do such a thing. Why wouldn't Aaron Rodgers

take $100 million a year, $200 million a year, to go be the quarterback of some fledgling thing and throw to a bunch of randos and not care one way or the other how it affects his legacy? Why wouldn't he do that? That's a good question. Well, again, he gets upset playing with professional football players. How upset will he enjoy or how much will he enjoy the experience of playing with, with a bunch of scrubs and office alignment who can't block and guys who

can't catch. Like I get the money is grand, but to me it has to be like a rookie, like a rookie who says, you just say, you know what? Your rookie contract is $22 million. We'll give you $150 million to come play for us.

It's tougher when you have a team sport, I think, because the team part of it and building up a roster and making it comfortable for players to want to go, that's part of it. When you just say, hey, as an independent contractor, golfer, you're your own entity, come with us. We'll get 10 or 12 of your friends to come with us. That's a much easier sell than I think building entire football teams and being good enough to where the best players want to leave the established NFL where they're making $50 million a year for some of these quarterbacks to go to a new NFL league or new spring league, whatever it is, competing league. I don't know, man. Our buddy wright has sort of consistently said everyone has

a price and of course they do who knows what the price would be i i just think that price is a little lower than people are imagining and by the way back to the golf part of this um you know a lot of takes on tiger woods and rory mcelroy as two huge names who reportedly turned down huge sums of money to do the quote-unquote right thing and stay with pga tour and now they you know they've sort of been stabbed in the back but do you buy that because i isn't it also the case that they were building their own alternative to the pga and they're they're trying to make their own business work and like doesn't that probably factor into why they didn't join Liv? What, the par three thing?

It's like the Monday thing. I forgot what it's called. Yeah, they're doing like a golf league, right? Like on television. It's basically Topgolf on TV on Monday. I'm not worried about it. The money for Tiger and Rory, I think, is not of a concern with that story. I understand if you're a player that knows those guys and you're offered –

if Colin Moore Cowher was offered $250 from Liv and stayed in the PGA Tour because they promised him something else, and I can understand why he's pissed. Young player, good player, obviously. Big payday at that age. Tiger and Rory, I mean, they made so much money. To me, they're upset because they defended the PGA so vigorously and then

out from under them the PGA's like never mind all the work you did for us for last year doesn't matter because we joined with Liv that to me is more of the issue I agree with the stance to get the younger guys turn down millions of dollars to then you know to stay in the PGA Tour.

And now it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all. Yeah. Let me try one more time to tie this back to football and then we can move on. a merger with the XFL, what if this huge pot of money came and created some sort of a league that was a viable alternative, a higher paying alternative to college football. So if you thought of it as like a gap year, then the NFL,

which currently has like a free developmental league in college football, suddenly was like, Oh, these guys are used to getting paid at 19. What do we do now? That like, Oh, these guys are used to getting paid at 19. What do we do now? That is, that's, that's a valid question, right? What if someone creates another basic, you know, like a, like a G league, right.

Or whatever the, the lead, you know, like whatever the, the overtime elite, those this overtime elite league and the G league and whatnot. Could it happen? Yes. In theory, it could gabe um but the couple pushbacks again are building out viable teams to where players feel comfortable wanting to play there right if you're because you need quarterbacks right if you're the number one quarterback in the country

and you're getting let's put it five million dollars million a year to go play USC for Lincoln Riley, who puts out number one draft picks three out of six years, right? And Heisman winners. Are you not going to USC and basically staying there three years and virtually guaranteeing yourself a top 10 draft pick? Or are you going to this new Saudi league that pays you more money? I get it. You'll make more money.

But you're playing with a bunch of schmoes and Joes and average dudes and your film looks great, but you're playing against nobody. And the NFL is like, yeah, we're going to draft you as high. Like, I don't know,

man. I think it's a hard sell for a lot of football players. You'd have to buy to get there. Again, I think golf and maybe tennis are like the best ways to do this sort of thing because you don't need a lot of individuals to make it happen, and they're still playing on the same golf courses with the same equipment. Everything's the same. And, Gabe, they're still playing the majors.

So they were still doing the best things about the tour, just avoiding the worst things and getting paid more money to do so. So if you can convince college players or NFL players that we're going to, you can only do the best things. We'll get rid of the worst things. We'll pay you more money.

We'll bring in a hundred guys. Sure, anything's possible. It just feels like very tough to pull off yeah all right let's switch gears we uh we move the line a little over under game we like to play every week uh we are live jeff i say that as a reminder as i tee up this first topic which is a okay field full of landmines so be careful just the best how much longer how much longer will mariah mills be tweeting about zion williamson over under two and a half days be careful before you answer oh did you see that stephen a smith spent like four minutes on this on this podcast

i heard so yeah yeah um i spent way too much time yesterday looking at her tweets um okay and then today i saw a report that said a third woman as zion will Williamson was was this the reason that she didn't get her Bentley because the other woman didn't do some of the acts that Mariah did to Zion and okay

the best thing about this entire thing was the tweets from Mariah about how she helped Zion get back in shape i like that but she motivated him to get back in shape oh and um she said that she told him that she he was gonna be next lebron james yeah and um and then somebody answered with just the reason he didn't she said that she told him that he was going to be the next LeBron James. Yeah. And so, this is the reason he didn't have a view.

He's sorry for the liar you are the moment you told him he was the next LeBron James. Yeah. Oh, my God. Like, this is, you know, today is the 15 year anniversary of my wife and I, our first date. We're married nine years now. Um, I got just imagining living in this dating world now where like the, the dating apps and the, they were Snapchatting and like, oh my God, like trying to date like that. And just the amount of digital information that's available and like can be pulled up

anytime. I mean, Zion probably never thought this girl would have screenshots of text messages and messages and like share the details. And does he care? Probably not. He probably doesn't care at all. But the thought of Gabe of like any of that ever getting out, like from my end, like I'd be mortified. Like I,

I, oh my God. I, but the story is so funny. I'd rather, I'd rather put 200 bets on my own team in through draft Kings than, than send those text messages and wait for the screen grab public. Well,

my God, good luck to all of them i i hope i hope them all uh happiness um together or or not together whatever makes any all of them happy uh she definitely provided uh group chats a lot of entertainment for the last couple of days oh my god so funny and luckily listen not to be too serious about this but luckily with that much uh tea, as they say, there's no allegation of it's, it didn't seem to me like anyone was saying Zion had been a bad guy or

treated like it's not that right. Like this is like, he actually, he seemed like he treated the women very well. Like, I mean, maybe we don't, yeah,

we don't know, but he's not being accused of some of the awful stuff we hear guys get accused. And so this seems like their problem to sort out so good luck to them yeah that's why we can laugh about it yes uh all right Lionel Messi is

apparently signing a historic deal to play for Inter Miami by the way American soccer teams it's soccer and we don't need to name them after you know teams in Europe Inter doesn't mean anything here so Inter Miami is a silly name soccer teams it's soccer and we don't need to name them after you know teams in europe inter doesn't mean anything here so inter miami is a silly name when i saw this news i thought inter i thought it just was like another team in europe i was like i thought inter first and i was

like i was like i didn't see the miami part and i was like oh wait, wait, oh, wait, in like, in, okay. Yeah, Inter-Miami is just a team in Florida. How many MLS games will you watch when Messi joins over under 0.5? More than 45 minutes worth of soccer. Supposedly there's the idea that his first match will be like the last game of the season in Charlotte. There's like an idea that that's like – and so the ticket prices in Charlotte have risen like 300% since he signed. They opened up the upper deck of the stadium here in Bank of America Stadium. of the stadium here in bank of america stadium um they think that like that'll be his first game he plays for them um what will happen to be in charlotte um so who knows man i won't watch are you charlotte fc is that what you're called or are you yeah charlotte fc yeah i've been no

charlotte fc i've been to one i've been to one uh one man i went to opening night the first night of the state uh it was like they had 74,000. It was fun. I mean, it's fun. I'll tell you what the pregame was fun. The atmosphere was fun. And about 12 minutes in, I was like, holy crap, this is boring. Um, but the other stuff was fine.

Yeah. LAFC same way. Stadium's awesome. Fans are awesome. It's just a great, a great place to go you feel much better bringing your kids to that stadium than some of the others in la it's less annoying to get to oh it's better than doctor stadium who would have thought yeah yeah um all right the chiefs your chiefs i don't know why we skipped down this is third this should have been first they went to

the white house to celebrate the super bowl. You remember that? They won the Super Bowl. Yes. And your boy Travis Kelsey, he did not wear a tie to the White House in front of the president. So over under two and a half players on the Chiefs who could have gotten away with that because as far as I could tell, Pat

did wear a tie. I think he did. Travis did. Would you do that, Jeff? I did. Could you have pulled that off? Oh, no chance. But did you see Travis Cassidy try to talk at the mic and Mahomes pulled him away?

Smart. Yeah, that was very smart. No, I could have pulled that off. No, I couldn't have pulled it off. It was good to see the Chiefs went. I know there's a lot of animosity now going to visit the president it was i'd like to say what it's good it's cool for the players i saw a bunch of the guys that had a one before pretty excited about it i was certainly would have gone if i was playing the matter of the president i still would have gone because it's

the white house um and uh and uh yeah it was it was fun to see them celebrate can we talk about the fact that maybe travis kelsey is doing important work for all of us men and normalizing no ties? You're no tie guy? Shouldn't we be there? Ties suck. Who wants to wear a tie? No one does. It's like a ridiculous fashion statement.

What could we possibly do to be like, make ourselves more uncomfortable? Oh, I know. Tie a frigging rope around our necks. Like it makes no sense. Why would we do that? What's the last time you wore a tie?

You know, every now and then sad occasions, weddings, things like that. You got to wear a tie. I've, I've worn one recently. It didn't,

you know, sometimes it just doesn't matter. You put it on, but if you have a choice, why would you wear it? Oh, yeah. I would never wear a tie if I didn't have to. Okay, great. Good job, Travis Kelsey.

Thanks for showing us all what we can be. I agree. I want to get through these next quickly because the last one's very important. Over under 25% chance. Yes, it is. There'd be a single headline about the sky being orange if the fires were in la and not new york i don't even know what that means hank why did we write that what does that mean well because the sepulveda passes on fire four years ago and

people were still driving through it and it was like oh boy it's on fire again a little bit of smoke in new york shut the entire city down that's what that's what it's oh you call okay so you're you want to call new york soft that's what this is no no the air the air quality thing is is certainly an issue because i've we've had that i've had to play high school sports in not air that bad but with wildfires happening it does affect you but i think the fact is like every single person in new york city took a picture of the sky and i think us in california californians were like whatever man you don't care that much about we have fires right yeah i mean the elites in york don't care well yeah and la we have we have world-class natural disaster potential at all times you know

we're always ready for the absolute worst the planet can throw at us we've got earthquakes fires and tsunamis all ready to go so yeah you're right but that was pretty wild man and and canceling games and and all kinds of events because of the air quality that's i haven't heard of that very often on the east coast so hopefully things have gotten better today last one the one i think is worthy of most of our time here over Over under 5% chance, we as a team can figure out what this headline means. I saw it on Instagram. I shared it with Hank.

I said, do not tell me what this means. I want to work it out with Jeff Lott. I know what it means. Yeah, I know what it means. Can I read it to the audience? Yes, yes, yes. This was an SB Nation headline. Is Baby Gronk the new drip king or is he just getting rizzed up by livy okay i don't have any idea what any of this means not one part of this makes sense

all right so yesterday i saw this headline i clicked on it it and I'm up to date on this. So there's a like a 10 year old. Don't just give it away. This has to be a little bit interactive, Jeff. Okay. You if you know the answer, don't spoil it. The audience. Okay.

So what? Okay. So let's start with with with a start with baby Gronk. Where what do you think about that one? I don't know who that is. I'm explaining to you. What are you thinking with that one? I don't know who that is. I'm explaining to you. It's like a 10-year-old high school,

a 10-year-old kid who is good at football, who they call baby Gronk. That's all that means? Yes. Okay, so a kid who's good at football and maybe he runs people over or something, he just reminds people of Gronk. And he has a huge social media following.

Got it. Okay, so that's why he is a known commodity. Instagram, 319,000 followers. He takes a bunch of visits to SEC schools, it looks like. Took a visit to memphis louisville missouri okay all right so we're going with baby gronk is a thing i just didn't know about it all right the new upper case drip king who's drip king i think that means if you have like swag with ladies if you have like if you have like uh if you're if

you're able to to uh that's not one popular that's no i think i think i think it's a i think if you're popular with the ladies is what that means and that's what i've always like taken it to be i don't really know um i actually look it up right now um someone who has so much capitalized yeah um someone who has so much drip that they are regularly complimented and worshipped drip kings are the alphas of the world oh nice uh drip king can be there can be multiple drip kings that's not a singular thing no correct like like like for example, Hank is not a drip king. Doesn't seem like he would be a candidate. No, I doubt either of us are either, but okay.

So is like, yeah, Instagram famous kid football player, the new guy who's great with the ladies. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait oh wait wait wait up to update hank says the drip king is actually a tiktoker who plays lacrosse for umass that's too that's too confusing continue sorry put a pin in that we're gonna have to come back to that because that does complicate things so our choices is is an instagram famous football playing teenage kid the new no he's something that he's 10 okay the problem is you have to go okay gabe the thing about this you have to go you have to start the end and then work your way back so baby gronk was filmed in a video with livy Dunn, who's a gymnast from LSU,

who is one of the highest NIL earners in all the sport, right? Like she has a billion followers on Instagram. I know who Livvy Dunn is. That's the Livvy we're talking about? Yes. Yes. You have to work backwards, right? So there was a video filmed with Livvy for social media,

and people are saying, did Baby Gronk, is he pulling livy as a 10 year old or is she like raising him up which i think is a term for like using him for social media clout oh or i was trying to explain this earlier and you, and you'd wanted to do this whole, like, yeah. So, um, I, I don't really,

I, so you know, I just wanted to find out if you know how the internet spoke and I apparently do. And you're kind of okay. Like if we went, if we went to Spain together, I would probably do a lot of the talking.

I can speak some Spanish here on the internet, you're our translator. So, Hank says that Riz is short for charisma or like flirted with. And the idea is that he's getting flirted up by Livvy, but why would he be flirting? I think it's the same thing I said, but just different words. Oh, God. You didn't make just different words. I, geez. Oh, God. You didn't make this any easier. I'm sorry.

I think it's like, I don't know. My brain hurts now. You made me do this. I'm sorry I made you do it. Is there any football related stuff we didn't cover that you want to hit before we say goodbye? Bryce Young was named the starting quarterback for the Panthers when we were talking. We've already decided that? Yeah. Frank Reich said he'll

be the number one quarterback. And heading into training camp. Who again? PJ Walker still the backup there? Andy Dalton. Andy Dalton is the backup there? Yeah. The beige water water pistol is your boy.

Your boy Colin calls him. Actually, you know what? Honestly, I like that for Bryce because I feel like at this point, Andy is fully into like, I want to try to come take your job. I'm going to compete with you in practice. But come on. I know who I am. I'm mostly here to make you better. It's like to me, that's just the right kind of veteran to have take your job i'm going to compete with you in practice but come on i know who i am i'm mostly here to make you better it's like to me that's just the right kind of veteran to have as your backup yeah he's perfect um but this also takes away the um the pressure of like

pretending that you know you're not going to um you're you're not going to make him the starter. By the way, as we're finishing up here too, some conference schedule leaks in the Big Ten are out for 2024. The ones that concern you, you ready? Michigan at USC. Ohio State at UCLA. Iowa at USC. UCLA at USC. Ohio State at UCLA. Iowa at USC. UCLA at Michigan. Wisconsin at USC.

Nebraska at UCLA. USC at Penn State. USC at Iowa. I mean, good luck, Trojans. Enjoy that schedule, everyone. Wait, what do you mean USC? You said Iowa twice. No, what do you mean USC? You said Iowa twice. No, UCLA and Iowa. Oh, okay. Iowa's at USC. That's a win.

Yeah. That's a huge win. Iowa has to come to the Coliseum. That's fine. We'll beat them there. There's no way I want to go to Iowa. That's like the hardest place. But you're also not winning at Penn State. Happy Valley is going to be a tough game, of course.

That'll be one of those whiteout games. But, you know, whatever. And you get Michigan at home. Michigan at USC is going to be one of the biggest football games of the decade. Look, I'm sorry to let you in on this information. There's no home field advantage in the Coliseum. So, I mean, that's not a thing that people worry about. There certainly was for quite a while.

What it was was you had the better football team. Okay, well, that's going to be the case again this year. This is next year. Look. When you have, when you have. This year, this year is going to be the year that the Trojans shake off the rust of a loss to Tulane and two to Utah and say, ah, it's time to, you know, get our stuff together. Blast this conference one last time. Get ourselves ready for the future without our quarterback, but in a big division and a big conference and kick the crap out of everyone. That's what's going to happen.

One with this. Last six games of USC schedule. You ready? Straight through. No buys. At Notre Dame, home Utah, at Cal, home Washington, at Oregon versus UCLA. Where do they finish that slate? Notre Dame, Utah, Cal, Washington, Oregon, UCLA. where they finish that slate. Notre Dame, Utah, Cal, Washington, Oregon, UCLA. I don't like at Oregon.

I think at 4-2, you're pretty happy about that, right? 4-2? I mean, we're going to have to see how good they look the first six weeks of the season. They played no one the first six weeks. They'll still be 6-0. I understand, but if Caleb's throwing for six touchdowns a game and the defense can actually play this year. Let's just say this.

If USC's defense can tackle people in the open field, can tackle anyone ever in the open field, they can easily go 5-1 in that stretch. Last year, they won most of their games without being able to tackle anyone in the open field. That's a fact. You know that. You're the Pac-12. You also didn't play Washington or Oregon, which are two of those teams that are on that schedule.

Very tough games. Very tough games. I agree. Well, we spent too many minutes on USC, so we're going to get out of here. No episode next week. We're back the following week, but I will be in the office next week. Bringing bagels, I think. I'm going to figure that out. I'll be in Los Angeles.

So I'll see you guys next week. Take care, everyone. Enjoy the show. Please rate, review, subscribe. Really appreciate it. Take care, everyone. Have a great weekend. Outro Music