Pablo Torre Finds Out - Tim Tebow, Urban Meyer and the Christian Nationalist Surge at Ohio State

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

When candidates cosplay as football fans and QBs become a passport to the hearts and wallets of vulnerable Americans, the wrong people can get rich and powerful off sports. Electrician turned independent journalist D.J. Byrnes has pranked Buckeyes "fan" Vivek Ramaswamy, caught Urban Meyer in a lap-dance scandal and will go to trial over Shrek's private parts in the name of free speech. But nothing shocked Ohio's muckraker-in-chief quite like watching a college-football powerhouse combine the enterprises of church and state.• Subscribe to D.J. Byrnes' Substack, "The Rooster"• Leak to us: Submit your confidential tips to Pablo• Previously on PTFO: We Investigated the Christian "Scam" Fronted by Tim Tebow(Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.)(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Honestly, I was at an anti-human trafficking conference yesterday, and team shared with me when we were leaving as we're flying to Alabama for a event and kind of caught off guard with some of it. Right after this. DJ Burns, aka The Rooster. You have an upcoming trial next week. They're calling it the trial of the century.

typical fashion things got out of control and we're going to trial next week in Lake County. Well, I got to read the headline to catch people up real quick. Quote, nude Shrek text to Ohio State Senator reportedly lands blogger in jail, end quote. Yeah, there was no reportedly about it. The facts of the case are undisputed. The text message was sent. It was in the context of a very influential state senator losing the presidency race to be the next president of what I call it the state's most beautiful

retirement home. We had a long feud. He lost. I sent a text, and three weeks later, I was arrested at the state house on, I believe, to be trumped up charges. Well, Senator Jerry Serino. Yeah, that would, he is the, he's the recipient of reportedly. And I cannot stress this. Do you have, can you actually, do you have on your phone the photo? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just need to, if you wouldn't mind, I need to refresh my memory, our audience's memory, insofar as we can even show any of what you texted Senator Jerry Serino in May of 26, which led to you rejecting two plea deals and, in fact, go into trial on October 8th, in which you might face up to six months in prison, as you argue, for the right to free speech, which encompasses lewd images. a sort of like looking up point of view

up at a giant uh shrek penis I don't even know if it would be considered giant for troll standards it was described as hyper realistic image I was gonna mention

of the cartoon Shrek probably created with AI or similar technologies and it's like I don't know how you could describe it as hyper realistic right but yeah constitutional question is it hyper realistic for Shrek's green penis to be that enormous.

So we're going to get to our ongoing coverage here of Tim Tebow and his 44 appearances at Life Surge and the allegedly predatory business practices of that allegedly Christian company in just a second. But that photo of Shrek's penis that we started with, you should know, was sent to not one but at least two different Ohio politicians by our fearless guest today, DJ Burns, the noted Ohio State football fan and political prankster, whose pranks I can't possibly co-sign in totality. But I know him best as the author of The Rooster, where he broke a story five years ago this week

about the notably Christian head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars at the time. Urban Meyer, a leader of men, who was previously a national champion at the University of Florida, where Meyer coached Tim Tebow, and also at Ohio State. The top story we're following this evening, Jaguars Coach Robyn Meyer now addressing this video, showing him in a compromising position with a woman at his restaurant and bar in Columbus, Ohio,

a woman who is not his wife. I just apologize to the team and staff and for being a distraction is stupid. So I was working as a union electrician prentice at the time, and it was Friday night, I believe. And I got a video sent to me of grainy images at the Urban Meyer Chopp House that opened in the Short North,

which is Columbus's one trendy district. And I actually knew a server there at the time who gave me the details, said they arrived with a local restaurateur. They were noticeably intoxicated. And knowing Urban, I knew how he was going to play with it. So on Monday, he dresses the team. He gets up there and he tells us it, basically, well, you know, I was out with my friends, and this young siren was trying to lure me on to the dance floor.

I never thought I was going to go like it did, but it became a national story, and I eventually lost my career in the electrician field over it. Another video has surfaced that appears to show Jaguar's coach Urban Meyer in a provocative situation with a woman who is not his wife. We're blurring a portion of the clip because it's not appropriate for broadcast. Yeah, there was no room left for the Holy Ghost. And the Wall Street Journal called me and how many times you get to use, you know, phrase shit cocktail. In the Wall Street Journal, I gave the interview, quote, I do have a reputation as somebody who enjoys serving the rich and powerful shit cocktails. End quote. And then two o'clock on a Friday, my foreman's like, we got to go out to the parking lot.

Why are we going out to the parking lot? I have no idea. Yeah, I was fired like a dog in a casino parking lot on the west side of Columbus. And yet, and yet, that is somehow not the parking lot related story that I also wanted to talk to you about today. Which brings us now to my former classmate, someone who you're quite familiar with through your reporting by the name of Vivek Ramoswamy. I'm familiar, unfortunately. If you want to restore law and order in this country, vote. Trump. If you want to reignite the economy in this country, vote Trump. If you want to revive

national pride in this country, vote Trump. If you want to make America great again, vote Trump. Alleged Khanman Vivek Ramoswamy is somebody discussed on this show previously, how he used to raise his hand in our intro to philosophy lecture by making the shape of a V, which we all thought was kind of like shining your own bat signal into the sky for the teacher to call on you. But I digress for a second because it leads us to August 2024 Operation Desperado. Yeah, Vivek, there had been rumblings that he was looking at running for governor. As a Republican against Amy Acton, a Democrat. And if anybody familiar with his presidential campaign, would normal people, like, I can't believe that's even a thing.

But Ohio, as I have said from the get-go, is a state dumb enough to elect him. So I was very well known in state political circles by then, but Vivek was basically the only Ohio Republican who wouldn't be familiar with me. And so my friend had randomly texted him in April of that year saying like, hey, Vivek, this is head coach Ryan Day. I love what you're doing with the country. We'd love to have you on the radio show or come in and talk to the team. And he responds instantly saying, Coach Day, it's an honor. You know, I'd love you. Big fan.

Would love it. And so fast forward, end of July. I was bored on my couch, and I resurrected one of my former alcoholic aliases, Tim Chitters. And his lawyer, he's a former Ohio State quarterback. Whose photo did you use for Tim Chitters, by the way? I searched Kid Rock look-alike. Look at his day. The avatar checks out.

And that was in the Four Lockeau era. So, yeah, it was a running... The For a Locco era was somehow a better time for America. It was. It was a simpler time. Back when we had a functioning FDA. And I texted him as... I've learned in this business, if you go to the assistance,

they're going to have... Well, I'm going to Google this Tim Chitters guy. I might see there's no connection to the university. Someone might do a minimum amount of due diligence about who Tim Chitters is, as our campaign is desperately trying to wear sports. where Ohio State football specifically as a costume to get elected? Yes. Yes. I just laid it on thick.

And I said, you know, the guys in the locker room, they're really excited about the potential of you running for governor. And it's like, okay, do these Ohio's, these 18 to 22-year-olds, do they really have opinions on the inner workings of Republican state politics? And from there, things just escalated. They escalate to a parking lot at a raisin canes. The assistant shows up. They bring an entourage, which was against the whole thing.

I've specifically stressed it was supposed to be him and the assistant. And the only person who legitimately knew something was a miss was the intern. He was a big Ohio State fan. And I just, I won the intern over by, he was a big Caleb Downs fan. And I was like, oh, I'm in with Downs. I can get your hand shake. Just to recap, you win over the intern by name dropping Caleb Dounce. Yeah, yeah.

We were discussing Ohio State football. And I could tell. He's just very excited, and he's like, you know, Caleb Downs is my favorite player. And this is my last day with Vivek, and this is why I wanted to come on. And out of all the people involved that day, I feel bad for the intern. And one of my favorite parts about your journalism, of course, on The Rooster, is that you brought us a video. So I'm Vivek Ramaswami. I'm a businessman. I was born and raised in Ohio.

I grew up in Cincinnati, but I'm in Columbus now. And my wife actually works at OSU. She's a cancer surgeon at the cancer hospital here. And I'm looking forward to talking to the guys in the football team. What I expect to be darn well, the championship team of this year. I've been a big fan for a long time. But I want to share some of my experiences because one of the things I did over the last year was to do something that nobody expected of me, which was to run for U.S. president.

I wasn't successful in achieving the goal, which is to win the presidency. But I did beat out many former governors and senators and a former vice president that nobody expected of me. And I learned a lot of lessons along the way, both positive. and some for me to be able to work on in the future. Do you think we could get President Trump and you do a game this year? I think so. You think so? Yeah, absolutely.

I do love when a failed politician shows up in a locker room to talk about the lessons they've learned in not succeeding. Yeah, I like the line. You know, nobody expected me to do it. Well, there's a reason for that. So I'm not sure how he would qualify beating anyone in that scenario, but his mind works in marvelous ways. But the one thing he wants you to know, Tim Schiff,

is that he loves Ohio State football. Yeah, and he always says he grew up in Cincinnati. He grew up in Evendale, notably not Cincinnati. And the idea that he's fallen into this trap in his gubernatorial campaign because he had that infamous tweet on Christmas Eve. We got to respect Steve Urkel more. Yeah, we got to put some respect on Screege,

put some respect on Erkel's name. And so he's kind of been trying to sportswash himself as a big Ohio State fan. but you can read it from the tape. I just wish we had more time to discuss the fact that Vivek Ramoswamy came out during the holidays and was like, we need to care about sports less. That's led to him showing up to three games over the past two years in bootleg merchandise, which, to his credit, is like the most Ohio man thing that he is generally done showing up in a Chinese knockoff.

But in typical fashion, he's a billionaire. So he just looks like a miser. And it's like, your team is obviously not doing you a solid here, man, by letting you leave the house like that. But it's very well-worn now strategy in politics in 2026, that to get the favor of voters who are otherwise totally uninterested in you, you should claim you love the local football team and claim you love the God that they also love,

even if neither of those things is technically true. But this brings us, by the way, before we get too deep, into the story that we again we actually brought you to get into here this this ends with uh the vake and his team waiting outside the football facility the woody hay center texting who they believed to be ryan day because i was i had a shooter there but then his brother got a DUI in typical ohio man fashion um your shooters yeah to get the pictures and the only time he really was alarmed his everybody in his entourage was on i said all right well i'm going to hop on my bicycle and i'll meet you guys over there. And they were very alarmed by that. Like, this guy's on a bicycle. And I said, well,

it's a new era. We've got to pay the players. Money is tight. And I yelled put me on this bicycle. And with gas prices in Joe Biden's economy. But yeah, I hopped off on my bicycle. I got out of Dodge. Because he had a private security guy with him. You just never know how those people are going to react when their boss is embarrassed. And so you left them there. Yeah. They end up waiting never to enter. And he never called, he had my number. He never called me. He left that for his staffers. Meanwhile, he was texting my old friend who he believed to be Ryan Day from the original conversation. Right. Head coach of the Ohio State football team. I believe his exact words were, we're by the, we're by the area with all the trophies. And so the last communication that I need to document here

is simply that at this point, approximately, you send him the Shrek Pee. penis pick. Yeah, and I believe I told him he was never going to be our governor, which it wasn't looking good for me for a while there. Like, I really thought we were a state dumb enough to elect him. We still might be, but some polling's coming out. It's not looking good for our old friend right now. There's a lot hanging in the air in these next couple of weeks for you, for Vivek, for the state of Ohio. So we are a sports show, DJ, allegedly. And you are, whether you like it or not, not just a guy serving, quote, cocktails to politicians. You're also somebody who is inevitably digging into sports.

And Ohio State football, we're going to stick here because among the many things you've looked into as well is, of course, a company by the name of Life Search. Yeah, before I started the Roosha, I worked for, I covered the Urban Meyer, pretty much the entire tenure at Ohio State. I'm from the unfamiliar. I'm from a place called the City of Kings, Marion, Ohio, which is basically the most icily of Ohio. A richard hive of scum and villainy. So I'm very familiar with Urban Meyer and Kirk Herb Street. And when those two popped up with the guy who also thinks he can change and manipulate time

and get 21 days in a week and that viral TikTok. My day is 6 a.m. to noon, and I'm not crazy. You're crazy for thinking it takes 24 hours, just like some dude in a cave did 300 years ago. My second day starts at noon and goes until 6 p.m. That's day two. And then the next day is 6 p.m. to midnight. What I've done now is I have changed a manipulated time. I now get 21 days a week. Wait a minute. That guy was at life search. Yes. And Malay. Yes. Oh, my. How did I? There's so much going on in our ongoing life surge reporting, which we did last week, which we will, of course, remind everybody up as we go through this discussion. So this is the story that you headlined, quote, Righteous Bucket. inside the life surge scam taking America by storm on May 10th, 2025. And I say this because you were one of the inspirations

for why we wanted to get into this from this larger national perspective and focus really at the beginning of our episode on Tim Tebow. But the roster here at this Champions of Faith event. On stage, it's the Bentham brothers who were touted as the original victims of cancel culture because they lost a home and garden television show

thanks to their anti-Muslim and anti-LGTV views. How dare you merely describe the HG TV show Flip It Forward as some home improvement show? If I didn't put enough respect on that, I apologize. Did Kirk Herbsie bring his dog? Yes, Kirk Hershey. He's running some sort of puppy mill operation, I think. The dogs were there.

Alleged, yeah. In my opinion, I forgot one of the most beautiful phrases in the English language. Kirk Herb Street, former Ohio State quarterback, ESPN, Star, brings his golden retriever. Urban Meyer brings the years of credibility that he gained as the coach at Ohio State from 2012 to 2018. The school attorney comes over to me and says, Coach, you can't do that.

And I said, I can't do what? She says, the person says you can't have the Bible study and you can't have the church service. And I said, well, we're going to do it. I said, well, you can't see separation of church and state you can't do that. And I'm really busy. We're doing it. She got our athletic director, Gene comes over.

And I haven't told this story many times, but he comes over and he can tell. He's like, okay. And I said, Gene, we're doing this. If not, you got to let me go because I can't do this. He's like, we're not, we're good. And he said, let's go. talk so the compromise we had to call it reflection right and roy hall literally leans over and says stop telling the secrets man roi hall the former buck guy and NFL player who is the chaplain

also there are some alumni of the currently fifth ranked Ohio state football team all of them by the way 24 national champions yep Caleb downs uh playing in the NFL the cowboys as a DB and then tavia and st clair nobody besides Ohio State fans are probably known, but he was a highly touted recruit out of a little place called About Fountain near Columbus. You'll probably be hearing him in a couple years. Quarterback.

Yeah, quarterback. Jeremiah Smith is a highly touted recruit out of South Florida. He could start for any NFL team this weekend. Unanimous All-American in 2025. There's nobody more known at the current moment than Jeremiah Smith. And as Life Surge announced on April 4th, 2025, special guest Jeremiah Smith is coming to Life Surge Columbus. Early Bird Special up to 70% off.

off tickets for Life Surge. Columbus be a part of something bigger and make a positive impact at Life Surge in Columbus, Ohio. Ohio State, it's kind of just another day at the office and really unsurprising if you know anything about the program and what continues on to this day under Ryan Day. Well, church and state ostensibly being separated. We do salary capture convention on the show, didn't realize we'd be doing Constitution circumvention as well. The religiosity of Ohio State, state's locker room, even after Urban Meyer, right? I mean, what you're saying, and what you've reported here is that this focus on God at the expense of ostensibly the Constitution, it has transcended urban and entered, yes, the fifth-ranked program as we sit here today. Yeah, I mean,

they're leading baptisms on the Oval, which I mean that literally. Literally, like football players on the roster have this big event where students can come and get baptized and, I guess, oversized Tupperware containers on the Oval. Tonight in a powerful display of fellowship, the tradition continues for the OSU football team. This evening, several Buckeye football players traded helmets for hope as they hosted a campus-wide faith event.

At the end of the day, his glory is above anything that we can do. So, you know, Jesus is real. And, you know, if you can believe in him, we'll be saved. And it's so good to see so many people on campus get here together. And just guys together as one, you know,

in the body of Christ, we're all child as God. So none of us here are perfect either. the biggest thing. Buckeyes stand out, Sonny Stiles, and Caleb Downs, among several players speaking to thousands. A thing that would be kind of scandalous, I would assume,

at most Big Ten universities that's just seen as another day in the life at one of the most prominent football programs in America. So I gotta say, it's not wrong or illegal or surprising that there would be athletes and coaches who are quite Christian. I happen to be Catholic myself.

And in their free time, they would preach, they would do these events. The difference here is that what you're identifying is a strain of something that I want to define, which is Christian nationalism, which isn't just we believe in the Lord and Savior. It is we believe that our nation, our government should believe in our Lord and Savior. And there is no better example of, I would say, the fanaticism behind it than the Ohio State University. And what we want to do on this show here at all times is follow the money whenever possible. Who's funding it? What's behind it? Because it's one thing to have even this circumvention of ostensible constitutional law to create this combined enterprise of church and state together at last.

at the Woody Hayes Center. It's also something that, as Life Surge has suggested, can be big business for some. I was stunned that it really wasn't a bigger story about, like, hey, these guys are literally funneling well-intentioned, financially illiterate Christians into a meat grinder. The athletes, in this case, at Ohio State,

were used as seemingly part of the lure. I mean, what LifeSurge dangle at the end of that stick as the carrot was that 25 lucky customers at LifeSurch would receive a photo op with Urban Meyer and the players. But as someone who was there and was watching the sales pitch happen on the ground, speaking of ground games, can you describe what that was like? I was going to spring for that. That was in my calculus, but I was like, man, and knowing Urban, it's like, do I really want to give these guys a thousand dollars and maybe for the chance of me? maybe being able to run up on Urban Meyer. I'm not so sure just knowing these guys, I couldn't trust them. So I stayed with my little box lunch ticket.

It was so depressing because there were literally people in my section taking notes and like trying to actually learn, right? I said, you know, I'll be back by one or two. How long can this really take? And it's, I didn't get out until five. It is a 10-hour, just ground and pound operation. And if you're very familiar with just the tricks of public speaking and... Oh, the motivational-speaking industrial complex here is quite...

The repetitive nature and the call and responses. I mean, by the end of it, I was like, man, like, am I missing the boat? Am I about to delete this Shrek penis photo off my phone and become a new man? Yeah, I could use some godly wealth. But it is about financial tools. Yes. part of what is different about this from Prosperity Gospel is that their sales pitch, as we

outline on the show, which has now been alleged to be predatory by current and former employees that we've spoken to, as well as certainly customers on tape with us, they are signing up because of this idea that you must learn how to do capitalism to figure out how to create kingdom impact. It's just so depressing because I have a very, you know, I've read the,

the Bible. And I thought one of several moments was Jesus storming into the money changer tables. Yet here these guys are bringing out literal money changers. And I was going to go to the class. But then I was thinking, I was like, I don't really trust these guys with my credit card information. And that's part of the story as well that we've reported is that credit stacking is one of the things they used to entice people. Hey, you need more than one credit card. Good news. We can make that happen for you right now. And I couldn't help but notice, like after every speaker, they'd bring out the money changing tables. And then they would get you in the concourse. When you're waiting in line for the hot dogs, somebody would run up on you trying to buy a hot dog. Hey, have you signed up for these

classes? I had multiple people in my schedule. I thought this was going to be an urban Meyer thing. Like, I got stuff to do. They had left. So it was like the true believers by the end of it. And they made a very repeated point that this is your last chance. The money changing tables are going away before we get to the headliners. And I would suspect, in my opinion, that it was an intentional firewall to give the athletes, these headliners, somewhat of a deniability. So I want to explain what you've reported here, which is that the players arrived about how far ahead of when they went on stage. About 20 minutes.

I had a guy who was working the arena, who was a staffer at Value City Arena, and he was feeding me intel from the backstage. And they all got there about 25, 30 minutes, which would again beg some questions about did they even get their picture when did that happen our investigation into whether anybody got the photo with them and urban mire that also continues but the premise here that the players

according to what we know at this point are not even around for the rest of it but are showing up because here are the headliners we promised it feels like something that should both protect the players and now cause them to ask real questions in the present tense. Exactly. And I kind of gave them some grace just because I was

no Rhodes Scholar at that age. And again, I have the football brain disease like mini central Ohio. And so that could be me giving them grace where it's undue. I'm just trying to imagine being one of those players. And let's say you are genuinely religious. You are Christian and you want people to know about it. You want to save others, right? So far we're operating fully in the realm of sincerity. at a certain point, it's happening at Ohio State itself, right? And so you might imagine if alumni of our program are on stage with me, it's literally on our campus, that someone would intervene if this was not a thing that we should sign up for. Someone might even advise us one way or another.

These guys have professional advisors now, especially those three on those guys. They have the agents. They have a team. I'm extended some grace to the players, but their team who is in charge of putting these guys in winning situations, I would have some serious questions after this. Well, and this is the thing that we're balancing in real time, as we see, for instance, former Life Surge speaker and current Boston Celtics head coach, Joe Missoula,

cut ties with Life Surge publicly. I mean, I'll give more credit than Tebow with his pausing. We're having our team do an investigation, but also pausing our relationship. Well, acting like he first learned these allegations when the report came out. Honestly, I was at an anti-human trafficking conference yesterday, and team shared with me when we were leaving

as we were flying to Alabama for a event and, you know, kind of caught off guard with some of it. I do got to point out that before the episode we did with Mother Jones was published, last week, we exchanged emails with Tim Tebow's reps. And I'll just read the email here on September 14th. 2026 at 6.11 p.m. Eastern, we provided a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 15, 16, 17, 18, question list that ranges from, are you slash your team aware that stock market and real estate training courses, quote unquote, impact classes, and surge U training are being presented,

marketed, and sold to attendees at life cert conferences. Are you slash your team aware that Once at these impact classes, attendees are immediately pitched high-ticket investment courses and mentorships costing as much as $40,000. And it goes on and on and on. And it gets to question 18, based upon the information that has now been brought to your attention regarding the sales practices of Life Surge, would you reconsider your relationship with the company moving forward? I don't think they understood the firestorm that you were going to unleash upon them.

Because again, why would you not want to get out in front of this? And that's the thing. All the sports figures got requests for comment from us at this point. And what we want to know is, does this bother you? Does any of this bother you? What your name, image, and likeness was used for, if it was to do allegedly predatory scheming that victimized, sincere, perhaps financially, undereducated people who wanted to know how to save themselves.

Yeah, like, the reaction is not merely, oh, no, this is embarrassing for me. It's, I presume also, something like your conscience, reminding you that this is fucked up. And it, you know, it kills me for them to say, oh, well, we're going to pause it, which to me just is a specific word choice and kind of like, we're going to see what develops from this. And maybe we'll reexamine. What more do you need to see? Look, I think the writing is. appearing on the wall.

But it does not mean it's too late for people to establish what they knew and when they knew it. And this is where the camera swings back to Ohio State. Because the fact that this was hosted at Value City Arena, the Schadenstein Center. Schadenstein. This is the home to the basketball and hockey teams at Ohio State. Yeah, it is the official athletics venue of Ohio State. Well, we wanted to know, what? was what does it cost?

Like, what did Ohio State get paid to host this event? I'm going to assume they didn't give it away for free in the name of a Lord. And unfortunately, we do not yet know specifically what Ohio State got paid for the Life Surge event. We have our requests out. They have not yet been answered. We will update our reporting as we get it. But what we do know, thanks to documentation that we obtained separately, is that in a typical rental agreement, we have one from 2020 that was booked for a 2020.

that was booked for a 2022 event and 2023 event, we're looking at about $45,000, for a local school, for instance, which rented out the arena for its commencement ceremony. And so that's what we're thinking about as the general ballpark. But I also want to note that on item number four on this contract that we have,

it says payment will be made to the Ohio State University within 10 days of receiving facilities invoice, which simply means that, this was going direct to OSU, right? So we're following the money into a public university, perhaps in the ballpark of $45,000. And so that's what you get. Perhaps.

You ask who could have possibly greased those tracks for them? I would suspect Urban Meyer, in my opinion, would be at the top of that list because he still maintains clout within the university circles. He's still a guy who had a bar slash restaurant. restaurant very famously. Not far. The Steakhouse went away, but he still got the 7-0 pub, the Urban Meyer brewhouse or whatever,

up in Dublin. So he was this past weekend at the Ohio State Illinois game. They gave him a big entrance. A guy national championship winning head coach, the Urban Meyer. It's good to be home, bro. Sounds it. Oh, it's go. Let's get this place rocking.

A legend. His name is intact. On television all the time. And on television all the time. On Fox doing sports broadcasts as, again, this leader of men. And that's the funny thing about, he's great on TV, he's great at football. Urban's problem is when you're not talking about football. And then he kind of reveals himself as just another money-hungry suburbanite.

Well, as we then ask the question of how does Tim Tebow get involved in this, All we can say for the time being is that Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow, of course, have this intimate personal history. They won the 06 and 08 national championships together, as we alluded to at the University of Florida. They are both, of course, fellow members of the College Football Hall of Fame, which Tim Tebow welcomed Urban into in 2025. They remained close since, as they will tell you, quite often if you give them the opportunity to be on television together, as they were, on College Game Day in 2016. We kind of snuck in and we used it as well. So we'll use anything we possibly can. Yeah, coach will say it doesn't matter, but he uses it nonstop.

I remember in 2006, we had a whole wall dedicated to how disrespected we were. And there were a lot of Kirk Herbstree up there. And he loved it. And do you remember what Tebow said about Urban after your reporting about the lap dance scandal? I think I might have missed that. According to the People magazine headline that I have in front of me, Urban Meyer going through, quote, one of the hardest times of his life, end quote, Tim Tebow says, of coach.

He then proceeds to explain on, of course, first take. I think, first of all, this is a very disappointing, frustrating and honestly heartbreaking situation. You know, when I first saw and heard about what happened, my heart was hurting for Miss Shelley, coach's wife, someone that I love very much, and his daughters, who I'm very close with and who I've talked to both of them this week and also had the chance of talking with coach.

And it's a very difficult week. And my advice to him was to apologize, to admit it, to learn from it and to never, never repeat it. The biggest tie, perhaps, between Urban Meyer and Tim Thivow, you might argue, is on this piece of paper in front of me. Because for those who aren't familiar, DJ, and I'm not even sure if you're familiar, but I do just want to bring you the Form 990 for the Tim Tebow Foundation, which you might imagine has a roster that's also worth considering. Oh, dear. I believe this is what the kids call getting caught in 4K. So what I'm looking at is Urban Meyer listed as a co-director, officer of of the Tim Tebow Foundation.

Looks like he's working one hour per claim, unpaid, which is probably the most shocking part of this revelation. But yeah. So look, we continue to try and follow the money because we believe that there is the possibility, of course, that this is the story on some level of good intentions being abused. And the question is,

who knew about the alleged abuse taking place when it came to, yeah, the thing that all of these people, I think, would say on all sorts of stages, they consider the most sacred part of their lives. So with 44 appearances, you kind of lose the visage of deniability. You had no idea. This is all just catching you by surprise that there might be something not on the up

and up with how all these people are getting funneled into what I would describe as a religious meat grinder. You don't have Google, you don't have the Internet. And this reminded me that I do want to understand the origin story. you might even say the Immaculate Conception of Life Search. Like what was the first of these events that ever took place? And what I found took us to July of 2021 in Tampa when then Jacksonville Jaguar, Tim Tebow,

is the headliner, the face of the birth, the immaculate conception, you might even say, of this event. Are you ready? Join thousands of local. Christian business leaders for a one-day event in Tampa, Florida, live and in person. This is not another virtual event. Life Surge is the only Christian business event that brings speakers like CEO of Duck Commander and star of Duck Dynasty, Willie Robertson.

Hear how Willie expanded his family's company from a living room operation to a half a billion dollar marketing phenomenon with Duck Dynasty, becoming the leading destination for all things outdoors. His story is a remarkable example of entrepreneurship and dedication built on hard work, faith, and family. Also, hear how Auntie Ann Byler left her Amish community overcame major tragedies and started a small pretzel stand called Auntie Anne's pretzels. We got to cancel Auntie Ann now?

She has an Amish villain origin story. It's a lot to learn that Auntie Ann is a real... My trip to the airport are never going to be insane. say that smell smells different now. It's just so much happening here. The lore of these people never sees this to amaze me. I would not have thought anti-ante-a-that's, that's heartbreaking. And above all else, you'll leave Life Surge transformed and encouraged to make an impact for Jesus

after hearing an inspiring message from athletes, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, Tim Tebow. You will learn their secrets along with their unique biblical strategies that not only help them, but can help anyone turn an idea. career or business into a successful and influential force using their own that seems rather explicit and that's what this in my opinion scam uh seems to be run upon is this ability to get pull in these sports figures business tycoons and canceled reality television show operators to get people like a traveling circus almost to get people interested and kind of sports wash it and business

swash it to give it the air of legitimacy. Well, that's the thing is that sports, the show, the show that we do here, we're realizing over and over again that we are constantly asking the question of who did the due diligence on this and how is it that sports keeps attracting the people who perhaps did it? And the answer is that sports is this passport to access audiences that otherwise are inaccessible. It's what Vivek Ramoswamy was doing when he was trying. trying to be Ohio State Superfan. It's what Life Surge is doing.

It's what all of these entities that we are uncovering see as their key into, in this case, the hearts and wallets of like vulnerable Christians. And I joke with my friends all the time that like sports fandom, I truly believe it has a similar effect on your brain, like any hardcore street narcotic, and that it warps it, right? And so it's a perfect, because you're getting in a set of marks,

like my friends with Cleveland Browns. The Cleveland Browns are, in fact, a street narcotic. And so you have basically this loyal fan base of people who are like drug customers, right? They keep coming back no matter the result. It makes them feel good, but it also makes them hurt. But they will say that they love it. And so if you can tie sports into religion, you have a very specific person who is already greased to,

believing the righteousness of their lifestyle. And there is no more recurring face and name in Life Surge, which is the overlapping Venn diagram of those two circles. Then Tim Tebow, who went to that first event that we just played the trailer for in July of 2021, and then appeared at 43 more as headliner over the next several years. To me, it's funny, he should have just taken his advice he gave to Urban Meyer. Come clean with what you know. Quote, my advice to him was to apologize, to admit it, to learn from it, and to never, never repeat it.

Because how much money is he, you know, he's probably made, I would say, there's at least two commas involved, probably. I think that's a respectable guess. When you look at his reported base speaking rate of, you know, 50 to 100 plus,000,000. $1,000 times 44. Yeah, do the math. This is a lot of kingdom wealth that is being searched. Who is better to wrap a scandal or wrap a swindle around than somebody who is inherently above that is as close to God as Tim Tebow has been throughout his entire career?

I want to end on a Shrek quote, DJ is what I'm attempting here. I've actually never watched a Shrek film. its entirety. Wait a minute. I'm glad that we could do this before you're called to the stand next week. What you're telling me is that the rooster, the guy who is literally going on trial for sending a picture of Shrek's quote hyper-realistic penis to a sitting state senator has never seen the film that that image is inspired by. No. I will note that apparently in this new film coming out, It's just amazing timing for Disney. Apparently, Shrek and his entire family get jailed.

Shrek and Duncan, two star worth friends off on another whirlwind big city event. Oh, this is bad. Right. Oh, baby, come back. Any kind of food could see. There was something and everything about you. Spoiler alert. Yeah, not to spoil it, but it.

It's definitely feels. Maybe Alex Jones is right, and we are in The Matrix. And so the question DJ Burns, The Rooster, as we get to the end of this episode, in which we have found out so much together, is, yeah, is art-imitating life. It truly starts to feel that way, you know. But some of these things, like,

it's almost beyond parody in this golden age of corruption in which we all live in. But here we are. Mr. The Rooster, thank you for your reporting. and I hope this isn't the last time that we talk to each other as free men. Anytime. And if our next conversation comes over, you know, a smuggled cell phone in the Lake County Prison,

then we'll cross that bridge when we get there. It's going to be a good episode. Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Laura Newcomb, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumenello. Studio engineering by RG Systems,

sound design by Andrew Bersick, Digital Strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.