Pardon My Take - Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

The Indiana Pacers did it again, stealing game 1 after being down all night. We talk about how incredible this run has been for the Pacers and the fact that the NBA has stripped all pomp and circumstance out of the NBA Finals (00:00:00-00:18:27). Back in studio we talk about Aaron Rodgers finally announcing hes a Steeler, the White Sox are out of hell eventually, Elon vs Trump and more (00:18:27-01:39:29). Wright Thompson joins the show to talk about his career, writing about Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, Ted Willliams, interesting stories from his travels, the Grateful Dead and tons more (01:39:29-02:19:01). Mike Florio joins the show to talk OTA's, biggest stories in the spring, schedules, NFL and more. We finish with Fyre Fest of the week (02:19:01-02:37:01).You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/pardon-my-take

Hey, pardon my take listeners. You can find every episode on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. On today's part of my take, we have a twofer for the people. We have an awesome interview with Wright Thompson, incredible author, talking about stories about Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, all the books he's written, really, really cool guy. Awesome to talk to him. And then we have our good friend, Mike Florio, talk a little OTA, talk a little football. We're also got a lot of news to talk about the Indiana Pacers steal game one in Oklahoma City. Incredible start the NBA finals.

We're going to talk about the Stanley Cup final game one. We're going to talk about Aaron Rodgers to Pittsburgh. We have Fire Fest of the week, a great show setting you into the weekend. It's all brought to you by our friends at DraftKings in a sequel better than the original. We're going to find out at UFC 316. It's a rematch nine months in the making. Get in on all the action DraftKings Sportsbook, the official sports betting partner of UFC. It's a huge night of fights, headlined by a rematch between

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Okay, let's go Yeah, pardon my take. Yeah, pardon my take. Yeah, pardon my take. Welcome to Pardon My Take, presented by DraftKings, UFC 316 and DraftKings. One night only for a shot to win some cash. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now and use code TAKE. That's code TAKE for new customers to get $300 in bonus bets. If your bet wins when you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Today is Friday, June 6th and the Indiana Pacers have done it again. They stole game one in Oklahoma City. These Pacers, they just keep doing it. PFT. It's insane. They have come back from 15 points down or more five times in these playoffs. That's the single most in a playoff since 1997. It's just the Pacers game plan is to lull you to sleep being

giving you a 10 point lead. And then in the last three minutes, fuck your world up. And that's what they did. The OKC Thunder again. You should let the Pacers take a lead. You should go into the fourth quarter losing by six points against the Indian Pacers. And I bet you'd win like 75% of those games. It's crazy what they've done. These playoffs. Just like Ryan Rossello said, don't count the Pacers out. He liked the Pacers. So credit to Ryan for being the only one aboard that train. It was crazy. I think when Halliburton got the ball, I thought it was going to go in at that point. He's just like, OK, same story. But up until that point, I was still like, surely they can't do this again.

They didn't lead until 0.3 seconds left in the entire game. If NBA playoff, if NBA games were 45 minutes long, the Pacers would be a lottery team. Yeah, it was. It was. It was. I mean, we shouldn't be shocked because they've done this so many times, but it still is shocking because the competition keeps going up a level and it's like, no, there's, this isn't going to happen for a game one, Oklahoma city. Like the thunder were in control of this game for pretty much the entirety for 45 minutes. It was not like,

yeah, it was, there would be a run here, run there, but it just felt like they were always in that 10 point range, but they never got the kill shot. And with nine 32 left in the game, they had their largest lead of the game, which was 15 points. And then the Pacers outscored them 32 to 16 in the last 932, uh, incredible fourth quarter from them. How Burton is an absolute just ice and ice in the veins killer. How does it time and time and time again? I just, I don't know what to say. Like the Pacers are so much fun. There's been an incredible run. This, this finals obviously had going into it. There was a lot of talk

about, you know, okay, see you going to kill them. Uh, you know, the ratings, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then the Pacers just show up and they're like, Hey, you know what? You want some fun games? Let's make it an incredible game one and everyone buckle up because you're never safe with the Indiana Pacers. How many players do you think have more last second game winning shots than Tyrese Halliburton in the course of the playoffs? I believe this is since the year 2000. Hmm. Probably like I mean, is it none since excuse me since 1997 final five seconds of fourth quarter in overtime since 1997 in the playoffs is one guy. How many it's LeBron James.

He has eight. Yeah, Tyrese Halliburton has five. It's crazy. It's and how many is he having in this in this playoffs alone? Three? Yeah, I think three. Yeah, it's it's nuts. And they're just like the thunder. SGA was awesome tonight. Lou Dort was awesome tonight. Their defense. What were the what was the turnovers in the first half? Was it 18 turnovers? 19, I think 19 turnovers. Were you like when you saw like the halftime lead, what was it? 10 points? Yeah, it was, it was 12 points. 12 points at halftime. And it felt like the Thunder could have been up like the Thunder didn't play that great offensively in the first half. They

were just incredible on defense. And it felt like the lead was way bigger than 12 points, even at that point. So I don't know, I don't know what the Pacers are doing. I don't know what Rick Carlisle is doing. I don't know what, what makes them so different other than the fact that they just, they, they always believe that they can win until the very last second, but this must be the best thing ever to be an Indianapolis Pacers fan. It must be, it must be the best time. These playoffs have to just feel like crack, just hit after hit after hit of crack. Yeah. And it's, I mean, I think it's a testament to their conditioning their pace like they just and Richard Jefferson actually made a

really good point in the first half where you could see it in the first quarter where the Pacers pace which they like to play at they needed to dial it down a little bit because they were just playing to frenetic the Thunder were in every single passing lane and once they kind of got in a little bit of a rhythm and in control in that second half, and especially the fourth quarter where they scored 35 points against the best defense in the league, it just it's you just give Hal Burton a chance at the end. And

that's all that matters. The Pacers led for point three seconds of this game. Yeah, point three3 seconds of this game. It was insane. They're so fucking fun. And I don't really know what else to say. Then there's so much fun to watch. And like they always get the thing that I love watching about the this Pacers team is they just, it feels like they always have guys stepping up. Like OB Toppin was incredible tonight. He was five for eight from three. They you know, they had six guys in, in double figures. Like it just feels like they get something from everyone. Uh, and like in TJ McConnell had not, you know what I mean? Like they, they have so many guys and they're so deep that they get something from everyone

and they all pick up each other. Like Tyrese Albert and looked very passive in the first half and it's not like he was, it's not like he lit the world on fire in terms of like the overall game yet he was he was very good rebound in the ball but like it doesn't matter because other guys will step up like Nemard hit a big three that's like they just have guys that step up in big moments and they're so much fun to watch yeah Nemard he didn't play that well he shot not not great really, but in the fourth quarter he made he always like it when it comes time to actually do something important. Nimhart is always there making

shots. Yeah, it was. It was not. Can we talk? So I don't really know. I mean, I I want to say the thunder going to kill him in game two because that just feels like how these things go where it's like, hey, now there's, you know, you, if you're the Pacers, you went down to Oklahoma city, you stole game one, the little bit of the pressure's off. Okay. See on the other sides, like we really blew this badly. Uh, so it feels like there'll be an adjustment there, but no matter what, like there was a lot of people who thought this would series series would be very quick. I think the Pacers are like, it's going to be hard to beat the Pacers in Indianapolis. So what, you know,

the Indiana Pacers are for real. I don't know. I it's crazy. I know that it's like crazy to say, even though they're already in the NBA finals, but they were that big of underdogs and this game just at some point what they're doing is not fluke. It's just this is how they do it. They just had they step up in big moments and while other teams kind of crumble down the stretch and I think it does speak to like SGA is incredible MVP when you need a bucket at the end. It's kind of like he's just going to he's going to try to do it himself when the Pacers need a bucket at the end.

Anyone could get it for him. Yeah, I don't know. I think we're all confused. Nobody saw this coming. Literally. I'm not even confused. I'm just like, this is awesome. It was awesome. It's great. I just, every time I watch it, it's, it is the same thing that happens over and over again. And every time I'm like, how the hell did they do that? Yeah, it's crazy. So yeah, congrats to the Pacers. Congrats. And you did it without Caitlin Clark in the building. Yeah, which they have two games coming up with Caitlin Clark. So if they win those, they hold serve with Kate and Clark. It's at least going seven. Yeah. And

we still got to figure out the Valkyrie situation. Um, the can we talk real quick about, uh, the bottom of the nation of ESPN and their broadcast of the abomination of ESPN and their broadcast of the of the of the NBA finals. You didn't like it. Just saying saying that Halliburton was shooting tour dates out there. No, that actually was kind of a funny line. I actually like that. No, I'm talking about the fact that we didn't get like a true NBA finals game one intro

video. We didn't get to see the player introductions and there is not a single thing on the court that will tell you that it's the NBA Finals. And listen, I know people were like, Hey, what would they do with the big Larry O'Brien? The big Larry O'Brien hasn't been around for like 10 plus years, but I look back and there's been some years where there hasn't been anything. Maybe it's because in this maybe isn't this isn't fair because it's Oklahoma City and it just looks weird because it's not like it's not like watching an NBA finals where it's the Lakers or the Celtics or you know, a quarter or the Warriors or the Heat where you've seen a bunch of them. How do you not have just like a script NBA finals? How do you not have

anything? Maybe even on the baseline there? It's the same argument I make with the with the throwback jerseys or the alternate jerseys. When I watch the highlight of this game 10 years from now, I want to know it was the NBA finals and there's nothing on the fucking court except YouTube TV. It's crazy. So I was good job. YouTube TV. You gave us the fucking fast forward that has Larry O'Brien on it. Nice touch. Put it on the court. I know I'm gonna sound like an old man right now, but it really bothered me. I would like I wanted

to feel different. I would like there to be NBA finals and script on the baseline at the minimum. That's the minimum minimum. And then what ideally you should have is a little logo on the wood where the you know, the son that says pay core arena, maybe on the other side of the court from that, put the finals and have the word finals in elegant cursive and maybe MBA is in block letters. And then the year is and have us and have us give us an intro, give us an intro that makes us feel something like this is the NBA finals. You should get us people. This is the one game, especially game one is like the one game year where you should be

wanting to sit at your TV 15 minutes early to see, you know, the intros, the player, the players being introduced, the, the intro graphics, everything they didn't do shit. I don't understand. And guess what? If it's the NBA Cup in the middle of December, they do all this shit with the court. So I don't know what. Listen, I like Adam Silver is your current guest. When he comes on, we can tell him this to his face. You have to make the NBA Finals feel special. It has to feel special, and it has to feel like when I watch it, when I watch back clips 20

years from now, I have to be like, that was the NBA finals. Not that was just a great game. The Pacers and Thunder played in the middle of February. I'll be honest. I don't really care as much about the intro videos. I don't spend a lot of time watching the pregame. That part's not important to me. But the part I mean, here's where I think the intro videos

play game one kind of plays. Yes. And then in a close out game kind of play. Besides that, I don't really give a shit think the intro videos play game one kind of plays. Yes. And then in a close out game kind of play it. Besides that, like I don't really give a shit about the intro videos, but it's, I wouldn't say I wouldn't care about if it was game three, they didn't play it. I wouldn't care. But game one should have an intro video of how they got there. At least, at least put the words NBA finals on the

courts that I know that the game's important because sometimes my brain is dumb and I'm seeing the thunder and the Pacers playing on TV and I forget in the middle of it, oh yeah, this is the NBA finals, we're dumb. Put that on there, remind us all the time of it. And the Larry O'Brien Trophy would be nice to have, but what about this? What if the winner of the NBA finals,

what if they get to put the Larry O'Brien Trophy on their court for the entire next season? That'd be fine, but I just need something. I don't care about next season. I want the NBA finals to feel special. It doesn't feel special. I just see YouTube TV. That's all I see. It pissed me off. Do I sound like an old man yelling at a cloud right now? I feel like a lot of people were with me. No, I mean, listen, the fact that they didn't have it on

the court did irritate me. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I know that it hasn't been like I went and look back and there's some years that they just don't have anything. But and so it might be partially because it was just like so large YouTube TV and it is again, okay, sees not like the court. It just looks different because it's a different shade of blue than we're used to in the NBA finals. Um, so I'm not trying to pick on okay, see, it's not their fault. CSPN. I just want to

feel special. I want to feel I want to feel special. You know what? Like I'm watching something special. You know what? I love Thunder recurring guest. He should have had Delirio Brian trophy on his body. Yeah, that that feels like maybe a closeout game. Like if they're up, if they if they got up in the series and they were and like they could win, but they also could like not a game seven, like a game five or six where you're like, Oh yeah, they could. It's in the building.

Had to have Adam Silver present Thunder to the owner. Yeah, Hank, you agree, right? Yeah, I mean, they should definitely have the logo or something or even the jerseys don't look don't look the same. Yeah, the script. The script is fine. I take the script. It also I think it was because the game felt like a blowout in the series felt like a blowout and people were just looking for something to talk about and then all of a sudden that changed but like

that felt like that was going to be the story of the finals for the first like three quarters was just like where is the logos? I agree with that and that was that was definitely like my thought in the beginning of the game was like oh this is fucking bullshit because I wanted to feel special doesn't it's like this series is gonna be quick and then I like came full circle and went all the way around where I was like I just watched an incredible game one and now I'm even more mad that they don't have anything special on the court. To commemorate it. If I'm a Thunder fan that they don't have anything special on the court to commemorate it

If I'm a Thunder fan, I protest this like how sovereign citizens they get in court and they're like that flag doesn't have the yellow tassels On it. I don't have to pay my speeding ticket Yeah game should not count as an NBA finals loss. That was a that was a mid-february loss Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That was yeah that that that eliminated us. No, see, that's the thing. The fucking NBA Cup has the craziest. Yeah. Can't even say it was an NBA Cup game. We would know what an NBA Cup game is. Memes. Are you okay? I'm okay. That was a flashback for you. Flashback. I'm still shocked. Okay. I'm just memeing over here. Okay. Max, we already talked about Villanova Pope without you and Jay Wright. So no one knows what it's going to do for recruiting. Yeah, no one. That's it's never

been done before. No knows we talk right now there's a lot of people getting getting on me saying that a Lot of high school basketball players aren't Catholics and it won't mean anything to them, but you won't know you know literally nobody knows Nobody knows yeah single person knows literally no one knows Number we do a bad job by not bringing up, I mean, Max, we cover your ears, please. All right, so Jay Wright, like that's, I like to talk about Jay Wright in front of Max. Did we do a bad job by not mentioning Dan Hurley's name? Because I've seen that. I've seen that a lot. But that would actually be what Max wants.

I know. That's why everyone just backs me up by saying that Jay Wright never wants to coach again. I'm sorry. I know that's we don't want to say that's why everyone just backed me up by saying that Jay Wright never wants to coach again. I'm sorry. I was listening. We heard actually we heard different reports later on in the show. So you'll have to listen that. Yeah, we have we have someone who's got an inside knowledge. In fact, we might just cut these cut this apart because we already discussed it. Yeah. More inside than John Fanta. You don't trust John Fanta. Yeah, I'd say buddy. I'd say more inside than John Fanta. You'll I guess you'll have to tune in to us talking about it because yeah, we got an insider more inside than John Fanta.

Okay, the disrespect to John Fanta. That's that's what kind of show. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. John Fanta would agree. Our insider is more inside than John Fanta. No, it wasn't. Yeah, he would. Yeah, he would. Yes, he would. All right. Let's look. We know what.

Let's kick it to ourselves. Let's find out. Okay, back in studio before we get to everything that's happening. Game time. Game time. Football is back. The 2025 NFL schedule is out. The only place you should be getting your tickets is game time.

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sauces. We should do it. Okay. Everything has happened. Everything has happened. We're back in studio. We already talked about NBA finals game one. Everything has happened. All the news has happened all at once. We're going in studio. We already talked about NBA finals game one Everything has happened all the news has happened all at once. We're gonna get to Florio and write Thompson Florio We talked about this with him Aaron Rodgers When is he is he will he what's gonna happen and then in the afternoon after we recorded with him? Aaron Rodgers has agreed to a one-year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He is back The Steelers long national nightmare of being the Pittsburgh Steelers. He is back. The Steelers' long national nightmare of being like,

yeah, Mason Rudolph, he might actually be okay, is over, because you know that there were Steelers fans, and I love Steelers fans. I love the city of Pittsburgh. There were some yenders out there that have spent a long time thinking about, maybe Mason Rudolph is the guy. No, they talked themselves into it, some of them.

I think any fan base probably would. Big Cat, we've gone into some, there have been some rough off seasons for us where we have to convince ourselves. Oh yeah. Of certain guys going next year. And it's shocking how easy it is to do. So I'm sure that Pittsburgh is now, they get to be happy, excited about it. Aaron Rodgers not worrying about like, is he going to sign?

How come he hasn't signed yet? What was your favorite part of the Mason Rudolph era? Mm. Assault. No, well, part of the Mason Rudolph era? Assault. No, well, in the most recent. As the starting quarterback. OTAs, I'm sure he threw a nice spiral. I think mine was how he handled the Steelers drafting Will Howard as a starter.

I thought that was a textbook example in class, being a welcoming teammate. Aaron Rodgers could learn a lot from that. That's facts. Also, the Steelers fans talking to themselves being a welcoming teammate. Aaron Rodgers could learn a lot from that. That's facts. Also this the Steelers fans talking themselves in Mason Rudolph. It's weird because obviously we think Steelers we think Ben Roethlisberger how many years he was there how great he was two Super Bowls the Steelers are kind of like a mini Colts right now on their run because 2022

Week one starter was Mitch Trubisky 2023 week one starter was Kenny Pickett 2024 week one starter was Mr. Biscay 2023 week one starters Kenny Pickett 2024 week one starter was Justin Fields Obviously Russell Wilson played a lot in that season too and then 2025 it is Aaron Rodgers. So four years four different week one starters I'm excited that Aaron Rodgers gonna be back in the league just because something to talk about I'm not excited about November 23rd when he comes to Chicago and if he wins that game, he's gonna be like still own you I'm Chicago. I love Chicago. What? I love this place. They don't love me. He does have some juicy games because it's week one against the Jets.

So I was going to say, what do you think was going on behind the scenes? Do you think that the NFL secretly colluded to putting the Jets as the Steelers' week one opponent to try to make Aaron Rodgers make his decision as soon as possible? I think they just knew he was going to be the starter. I always assumed with Aaron Rodgers make his decision as soon as possible? I think they just knew he was going to be the starter. I always assumed with Aaron Rodgers that it was last year for minicamps, he went to Egypt. He wanted to see how this draft went, so there wasn't going to be any surprises if they draft

Shador Sanders early or something like that, trade up for a quarterback. And then he also probably just didn't want to go to minicamp or OTAs. I think Steeler's minicamp, trade up for a quarterback. And then he also probably just didn't wanna go to mini camp or OTAs. I think mini camp, Steelers mini camp, there's one next week. But OTAs, probably for a guy like him, I'm under suck, he didn't wanna do it last year.

He's not gonna do it this year. He missed a bunch of it this year. So he was always gonna do this. It's the late Farveian where it's like, the summer comes around and he's like, yeah, you know what, I will play. Yeah, my favorite part, by the way, in the far of documentary is right after they confronted with the picture scandal and he was gonna repress cops And the first thing he said was, you know, my hands are full right now

Yeah after his hands definitely know we're not full when he could have fixed her he could have had a He could have actually had a hot dog and that yeah in his hand Yeah, but yeah memes square enough week one against the New York Jets By the way revenge is this a revenge game. I don't think this is revenge game people are calling it a revenge game I think every game is probably in one way or another revenge game for Aaron Rodgers, but I think it's a double revenge game Double revenge, I'd say it's more of a revenge game for the Jets against Aaron. I yeah or Jesse game for the Jets against Aaron. Yeah. Or Jussie. Yeah, for Jussie, but it'll be a revenge game for Aaron Rodgers because of the Aaron Glenn slight to him in that meeting. Oh yeah. The two-minute meeting. Yeah, and he doesn't like Woody Johnson.

No, so the build-up to the game will be Aaron Glenn versus Aaron Rodgers. Yeah. By the way, Max is out today. Zach is sitting in his seat. Zach, just through five minutes, you've done an incredible job with Google, because he's almost like voice to text. He had started Googling Brett Favre picture. Oh, no, don't do that. Yeah, and I was like, oh, no, this is not going to go well. And now he's on the schedule.

So yeah, we have week one against the Jets. Zach, I got a question for you real quick. Before we started taping, you said Chrome or Bing or what? I told you that I get seizures from Google Chrome. And we're still using Google Chrome. I thought that at first it was the color chrome that was throwing you seizures because that's really reflective.

OK, yeah. I did do some Google and saying that Google Chrome can't cause seizures to you directly. But if we pull a video that has a lot of lights and everything on Chrome, it may give you a seizure. Okay, now that's a good point because I was just making that up. He made it up and it was a test. Hank actually bought it.

Yeah, Hank bought it. That was a test for you, Zach. You did. Yeah, Hank bought it big time. Come on. Hank was like, wait, you get seizures from Google Chrome? And Picat was like, yeah, he hasn't gotten them in a while. And then I knew.

I did initially. I was like, you get seizures? And PFT was like, yeah. And then I was like, oh. Because I was ready to be like, Zach, fuck man you you're gonna give me seizures using chrome But you took it one step further and you found out that in fact it wouldn't unless you played an epilepsy video Yeah, yes as long as we stay away from epileptic content. You should be good. Okay the whole seizure thing was a lie So don't worry about yeah, we're good as they get seizures

I think it's fair to be like a little concerned at yeah, of course a little concern they get seizures I think it's fair to be like a little concerned at first. Yeah of course a little concern. Alright so the Steelers schedule we got some juicy ones so they play the entire NFC North. Yep. So that is all revenge games or old rivalry games. So Steelers Jets week one they play the Vikings in week four and then the Packers in week six and then the Bears, like I said, November 23rd. It's going to be fun. I don't like Aaron Rodgers, but I do think he's more interesting than Mason Rudolph. I think it's an upgrade. The Steelers are probably going to be in some prime time games. I think it's an upgrade over last season. Yeah, it absolutely is an

upgrade over last season. I'm looking right now. The Steelers are in a decent amount of prime time or standalone games and I'd rather have it be Aaron Rodgers, then You know Mason Rudolph or Will Howard might be fine Do you think that that this is gonna scratch Tomlin's itch for having a crazy guy in the locker room? Oh, I think it might it could I think this is what he needed. Okay, though. Yeah, but DK's not he's not as he's just violent I think there's a difference between crazy and violent Yeah, yeah, DK definitely is on the line of crazy

We also had pit the state of Pennsylvania it ayahuasca is banned. Yeah, so yeah That's okay that you can grow his own. Yeah, just victory that yeah Yeah, Aaron Rodgers Hank any thoughts Aaron Rodgers back He was like Aaron Rodgers. I feel like you like Aaron Rodgers now, too Yeah, be rooting. It's it's I don't hate him as much as I used to I think he's an interesting guy He'd make the NFL more interesting league is is more interesting having a guy like that as like with a big spotlight And I would love to think he's way over the hill

But I hope he proves me wrong. I feel like he's he's not he's trying like he's not Working that hard in the offseason and he's old. I agree with that. I'm not scared of him Like I used to be and also he's in the AFC. I would love the Bears beat him for his last Game ever I mean, I assume this is last year, right? If he's signing a one year contract, I would, I would think this is last year. We're just gonna do it again. This is the last day, a full off season going to a different game. We're just gonna do the whole thing again.

Oh, Iowaska retreats in Pennsylvania. Good Googling. There you go. I don't know if they actually do it. They probably just they probably just put that in Put it up there, and they're like oh, yeah, you can come here. I think Aaron's probably moved on from ayahuasca I think he wants to do it a couple times. You're like good I think he wanted to blow it up and and he you know he took his ayahuasca trip He's like the world needs to know about this then he told the world about it But now so many people are doing it that Aaron's like this isn't cool anymore. Yeah, so he's gonna say to see I don't think He's not to see guy. I know it. No. isn't cool anymore. Yeah. So he's going to fight. Two C. I don't think he's not a Two C guy. I know a Two C guy when I see one.

No, he's not a Two C guy. But the funny maybe ketamine. Could be ketamine. So the funny thing about Aaron Rodgers and the timing of his big, oh, I'm back. I'm back. This is going to be great. Everyone's going to talk about Aaron Rodgers is he had maybe,

what, 20 minutes? Was it 20 minutes before? John rostein tweeted that Iona and Fordham have a home and home scheduled come the next two years completely took the news cycle away from It's over like Rogers Sorry, dude. I I hope at home series November 14th newer shell I just want to say not we don't get political on the show But as an empath today is is a tough one for me Check in on your friends. Yep, Alex Jones is having a real hard day

I've been watching his live streams. I just want to say, you know, no matter how strong somebody appears on the outside You never know what's happening between those two years. Why is it a hard day? He's just having a rough day Well, Elon and Trump have broken up and it is ugly. It's as ugly as we all expected. Yeah, I was talking to Mad Dog about how to relate this to a high school girl breakup, like when two friends break up, is there any chance that they get back together? I don't, I think that this would be the equivalent of like your, your buddy gets, your buddy cheats on your friend with another girl who's also your friend and he gets that girl pregnant Yeah, there's no coming back. I was just saying once you hit the pedophile button, it's it's hard to be like, hey, you know what, man?

I didn't really mean all that shit. I said, yeah, I don't think you come back from that. That's not saying like I Think you don't listen to me. The fun I don't think you I don't think you care enough about me The funniest part about all this is that Elon was like, you know what, I'm not gonna say anything because he's being fiscally responsible. Yeah. But then the second fiscal irresponsibility crept in, he was, I have to speak my mind.

It's fireworks. Yeah. Yeah, so it was very funny that Aaron Rodgers had this big announcement and then boom, like Trump and Elon are just going to be fighting probably nonstop, because those are two guys that are not going to back down from each other. No, and I think this is probably a big day for Aaron Rodgers too. He's a guy that likes to read his own

headlines, right? But when this came out, he has to pencil in the next nine hours on YouTube. Yeah, he's like I gotta get I gotta do my own research for awhile. Yeah, alright. Other things that are going on in the sports world. We had Stanley Cup final game one. Awesome game. Awesome. Awesome game. Oilers come back down 3-1 in the second. Winning overtime. David, a dry sidle. I saw a stat. It's pretty crazy. The Panthers entered 31-0 over the past three playoffs since coach Paul Maurice took over when leading at the first or second intermission. They were leading at both. And the Oilers, this felt like, I know that it's obviously one game and it's a long series

as we learned last year when it went 3-0 and then all the way to game seven. But this did feel like a little demons, you know, exercising a little bit of demons for the Oilers where they're down early, Stuart Skinner looks shaky. Although that goal was, they reviewed that. Was it first goal or second goal? Second goal that was questionable for interference. Yeah.

I was watching it and I was like, I have no idea what they're gonna call on this. Right. Because in the playoffs and especially in the Stanley Cup finals, you know what by the letter of the law interference is, but you don't know what they're actually going to call during the course of the game. Right.

So in that happens, you're like, Oh man, is this going to be another thing where like the Panthers are just so much better? And then the Oilers fought back down three, one, get to overtime, win it over time with, you know, 30 seconds left in the first overtime that there's just something about the Stanley Cup final in Canada. That's just like the Oh Canada, the crowd just absolutely electric. They scored a minute into the game. It was awesome.

Multiple people dressed up as the Stanley Cup in the crowd. Yeah. Love to see that. And I thought Wayne Gretzky made a pretty good point after the game that Edmonton really couldn't lose that one. No, it was it was actually a can't lose. Yeah. Edmonton in game one based on how last year went.

And so now, I almost feel like it swings the pressure is off Edmonton so much right now. Yeah, I feel like the Panthers might go out there when game two. So our guy Jans pays to listen to Pardon My Take told us the over was a good play in game one. He has texted me and said that the under is his play for game two because he thinks that Bob is going to lock back in Mm-hmm It also anytime we get into a big-time

Playoff hockey game overtime. I don't know if you guys ever seen this tweet that always goes reviraled It just makes me laugh because obviously it's not real the John Boyce tweet. No, it's not the John Boyce tweet it's the one that says that people don't realize that No, it's not the John Boyce tweet. It's the one that says that people don't realize that There's no rules for the eighth over time and playoff hockey and that they are see the rules for the eighth Overtime are sealed in an envelope in Toronto and haven't been open since 1917. Hmm, and people actually think that's real It just makes me laugh every time that like imagine if we got to an eighth overtime You're like we got to go find out what the rules are in it. Just open the envelope. It's like keep playing boys. It's like no more skates It happens all the time when there's a big-time overtime game

I laugh every time because it it is a cool theory to be like What if there's a rule that no one's seen for over a hundred years and we just we haven't gotten to that We saw for the first time Florio who we're going to talk to had a little bit of that today with the NFL. He was like actually a team can score one point in a game here's how it happens. Yeah. It could be a 24 to one game. Hank you don't know that? No. Yeah. You don't know about the the one point conversion? Is it intercepting a two point conversion or running it back? So it would be like if you're if you're trying for a two-point conversion, and then it's fumbled and then returned Yeah, then it could be a 1-0 game

But now it'd be one one one one six right six one six yeah score. Got me score. Got me score. Got me Okay, so yeah hockey awesome. We have Whitney on Sunday night after, which I'm happy that the Oilers won a game because Whitney was not going to show up on Sunday night if they went down 0-2. No, but it was great watching. I love overtime in the playoffs when it's not my team playing. Yeah. And then the Saley Cup finals, it was incredible. I was hoping for two, I was hoping for three over time.

I don't know if you guys saw, but I said I would have stayed up for at least seven over times. Seven? Well, you would have had to stay up for the eighth. Well, yeah, because I was waiting, but yeah, that's true. So I guess it was eight, it was eight. But I wasn't trying to brag or anything, but I was ready to do it. If it got to it, I was ready to go.

I'm unlimited over times, as many as it takes. I'm going to wait and see. You got to see how it goes cuz if it's It's like four in the morning I might have to just close my eyes for a second at some point if it went to like ten over times a team Would quit right well Yeah, unless the rules say that you can't quit that you're not in the that's only the eighth overtime But what a nice throw overtime rules are one team has to quit the night overtime rules are written on the bottom of the Stanley Cup

Yeah, one team has to quit, but overtime rules are written on the bottom of the Stanley Cup. Yeah, one team has to quit. But if both teams quit, then they both lose. Yeah. But if one team quits, then it's only one team loses, right? mutual quitting if neither team quits, then it's both teams lose two games each. The tent overtime is hidden behind Mount Rushmore. Yep. Right next to the Declaration of Independence. What pages are they looking for in the next National Treasure? I don't know.

The Lost Pages? I can't wait for that movie to come out. Yeah. I mean, just, just, they got the system and they run it. They run the same play and it works every time. Bruckheimer's gonna do it again. Bruckheimer is in Michael Bay. Yep.

They've never worked together. Nope, it's gonna be great. Most ambitious crossover of all time. Uh, okay. Anthony Richardson is hurt. Another shoulder injury to the quarterback ranks. So CJ shroud, Anthony Richardson. I feel like this is, I feel like it's gonna be Daniel Jones. Yeah, I do too. I think just spending three months with Kevin O'Connell. That room is enough. Yeah. Such a legendary room. He was in yeah. Yeah, but maybe Spin zone if your Colts fan, maybe he'll stop overthrowing receivers if his shoulders a little bit hurt true true He takes a little off. Yeah, could be good for the deep ball

I just feel like the Anthony Rich and experience might be over third year bump third year bump. I don't know I Don't know are there are there still people who believe in anything I Is I you do it? I'm in the always I'm in the camp of I kind of like to watch him play cuz he's fun Hank is in the camp don't disagree on that Hank is in the camp of I saw him play one time in college And he was electric which is also fair, and I staked my reputation on him. Oh, I can't.

After seeing that, I'll never not believe. Right. Despite the fact that every other piece of evidence suggests otherwise. Right. Yeah. I think it's fair. I just wonder are there Colts fit? Because I remember what last year started.

There were still a lot of Anthony Richardson fans who were like, you don't understand. Well that was box score watching all that stuff. It's like I'm watching my eyes and then it's slowly as the year went on They're like, yeah, maybe maybe not Well because you started in hot autumn after like one week or two weeks and that's after I hope fans had a full summer of convincing that like the Mason Rudolph thing Yeah, they just spent four months being like Anthony Richardson is the guy he's gonna step up this year I think the problem is graphics. Yeah more the problem is you if you watch both college and NFL

you have like I didn't think he was great he had a couple great moments in college but he wasn't great in college it's kind of like Joe Milton where people like Joe Milton might be it I'm like I don't know man watched a lot of them don't know. I just want to enjoy Joe Milton yeah just let me enjoy Joe. Yeah so we'll see we'll see what happens there and then the other story I had was The White Sox are finally getting sold in like seven years to ish be a right Justin ish be a oh the brother brother How do we feel about him? Well is he mad ish beers having some problems at the side?

I don't know if you saw but he the sons are not being run very well They have not done well on the court not being raised. Yeah, they're being raised correctly and Madish be had came out a couple days ago and he actually said You know I did the thing where you buy a team and then you put a lot of smart people in place and you listen to them and They screwed up. So I'm gonna take control. Yeah, no, this is the life cycle of a bad owner. Usually it's the other way around. No, but it would happen I think at first yeah, Anish beo was like awesome. I own an NBA team I'm going to get all the best players on my team and then he's like I've learned that I'm I need to rely on my

Basketball guys, so I'm putting them in charge. He didn't get immediate results from that So now he's like I need to just trust myself Yeah, it's got me this far in life. I need to go back. So we just doing rapid flip-flop Yeah, he's flip-flopping. So Justin his brother has a deal with Jerry Reinsdorf where basically the team is Justin Ishby is in 2027 I believe if Jerry wants to sell and then in If Jerry wants to sell and then in 2033, it's just officially Jerry Reins are basically just did like a clock on his own life He's like I think I'm gonna live for about six or seven more years

I don't really want to give it up, but I also need to have something in place So yeah, it's gonna be yours. What are those things you can get tested where that tells you your lifespan? Saying the the one that like Dana White got all those rich guys get they test some level that you have in your body. Oh yeah. And then they're like yeah it looks like you have the body of a 40 year old right now. Yeah. Got the body of a 60 year old. You have X amount of years. That's what Ryan Storff probably got. And he's like okay I need to get a term sheet in place. I mean he is like 90. Yeah. So he's he's very old., uh, I'm happy for white socks fans because as much as it's like, so, so the actual terms are the agreement provides it from 2029 to 2033. Reinsorf will have the option to sell the controlling interest to Ishbia after the 2034 season. Ishbia will

have the option to acquire the controlling interest in the event of any future such future transaction. all limited partners in the Sox would have the opportunity to sell to Ishby at that time. So it's basically set that Jerry Rensdorf is not going to pass the team down to his son and keep it in his family. So I'm happy for White Sox fans because it's at least a light at the end of the tunnel. These are years and years away, but still it's better than being like who knows what's gonna happen Maybe at the last second he's like, you know, Michael Reinsdorf you run both teams

I was gonna say tough break for his son. Well, he's getting the Bulls. Oh, that's okay Yeah, that's nice consolation But also do you think that the timing of this has anything to do with the Chicago MLS team getting the site for the stadium that? That's White Sox wanted. Yeah, they got body and then the very next day. Yeah, Ryan's or being like I'm gonna sell the team Yeah, because where are the White Sox wanted. Yeah, they got bodies. And then the very next day, Ryan Zorf being like, I'm gonna sell the team. Yeah, the White Sox got bodies. Where are the White Sox even gonna be playing at that point?

It's probably still in the same scene, but they got a little bit bodied by the MLS, the fire, who are privately funded. Privately funded, a billionaire paid for his own fucking, well, it's a MLS owner, a hundred millionaire paid for his own fucking stadium. Yeah, he's got some change. He's got to.

Memes, you sent something to the group chat. I wanted to dive into just a little bit. The Colorado Rockies to the All-Star Game movement. Can you explain what this is about? I tweeted about it. Yeah, we're just getting the Rockies in the All-Star game. I love that. So yeah, the movement behind this is it would be funny. It would be funny.

Because it's a fan vote for the All-Star game, right? Yes. But doesn't every team have to have a player? No, that was an old rule. Yeah. OK, so the premise behind this movement is it would be funny if the All-Star roster was just comprised of Colorado Rockies in the National League, despite the fact that they're the worst team in baseball The premise behind this movement is it would be funny if the All-Star roster was just comprised

of Colorado Rockies in the National League despite the fact that they're the worst team in baseball history up to this point. Yes. But, I'm in. Somebody said it would be like the GameStop movement and I've been chasing that high for a minute. Ooh, Stonks. I love that.

By the way, they are still the worst team in MLB but they did win three in a row. Yeah. They beat the Marlins. Beats Scottie Schaeffler And if you wanted to do like if we did a power rankings, I think even though the A's are better on record I think their power ranking would be ahead of the A's after this week because the A's are about to win a game But I think the A's were 1 in 21 in their last 22 games now 1 in 2021 or sorry 2 in 21 in their last 23 games there's so many bad teams in baseball it's crazy yeah like the Pirate to Paul

skeins poor Paul skeins I feel so bad for him he's given up one I don't feel bad for Paul skeins no one sucks one runner and PFT one runner less in each of his last five starts and the Pirates are two and three in those starts I understand why you wouldn't feel bad for Paul Skeens in other parts of his life, but being that good of a pitcher and just having your team suck around you would be madness. So I think it's, I think it's better now than it would have been if he was pitching at this level, let's say 30 years ago or 35 years ago when people just looked at wins losses and being like, Oh, that guy's having a tough year. That's true. But now I feel like sports fans are smarter for the most part. For sure. But it's still, it does suck for him to be like, I'm,

I'm pitching as well as almost any pitcher has ever pitched. Like it's hard to lose those games. Yeah. It's, it's, it's actually kind of impressive that the pirates are like, Oh yeah, Paul skeens is going to do this for us. And then we're still going to lose this game. It's probably going to get to hang out with Aaron Rodgers too. True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, there's definitely, I don't, feeling bad for Paul Skeens is really just on the baseball field.

Yeah. I feel bad for him. Off the field, doing okay. Off the field, he's living his life. Yeah. The, they played the Astros, eight innings pitched, one earned run. They lost three nothing. He did against the Diamondbacks, six point, six, oh no, they won that game.

Against the Phillies, four starts ago, eight innings pitched, one earned run, they lost one nothing. Yeah, it's tough. That's so brutal. That's so brutal. Gets them at six innings pitched, one earned run, lost four three. Just like, come on. I feel bad for Pirates fans more so than Paul Skeen's.

That ownership is, they're next up. Because what do you do? For us to yell at them. In baseball, what do you even do if you have a superstar player like that? A generational talent and you know that you're not going to be able to win around him because your owners won't pay for good players. They're just going to hope to get a lot in a trade and then those guys become like five Paul skeins all at the same time.

And then you trade those guys away. Yeah. And then you get a whole roster. Well you need all the Paul skeins at the exact same time and then you can make a run. Then you can make a run. Yeah. That's essentially small market base but it's shitty, very shitty. Okay, anything else before we get, we have two great interviews.

Ray Thompson was awesome. Great stories. One of the best authors out there and then Florio is just cracks me up because he's he's just all all football time we had very, very fun time with our guy Mike, he's gone. He's gone full Florio you're not getting taxed during that interview by the way. Yeah, don't worry. Yeah, don't worry. Don't don't check your phone if you're driving. It's not you who's getting the tax. Yeah, but't worry. Yeah, don't worry. Don't don't check your phone if you're driving.

It's it's not you who's getting the text. Yeah, but Florio, he's cooking right now. This is the time in the off season where Florio the mind starts to wander. Yeah, it was it was a treat to talk to him. Oh, I have one last thing. Max is not here. Zach is sitting in his seat. Zach, would you like to give a statement about the Pope receiving a Villanova hat? I think the Pope receiving a Villanova hat could mean that it was the greatest gift from the Pope to, or from Villanova to the Pope. Maybe possibly some guys that may have coached at Villanova before. No, the Pope is wearing Villanova's hat. Could be coaching somewhere else soon. Oh yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I even think about that. In New York.

Maybe in New York. I believe there's a vacancy. A couple of guys that are. A lot of Italian Catholics in New York. There's actually been a lot of reports saying it might happen. Yeah. Has there? Yeah.

You either have. Yeah. And we don't have anyone to shoot him down on this show. No, he's interested. Hey, does he want to coach, though? Yeah. They said he misses coaching and he wants to be. Wow.

He loves New York Wow Wow That's huge. Thanks for the update. Yeah guys. I've worked with him. Yeah, Zach I like how you rephrase every question like it's like a writing prompt in eighth grade Zack GPT Is this good for recruiting? Hi, Villanova. Uh, I think it just it depends on if there's a couple of Catholic guys that are a bucket, you know Yeah, true over there true. You need to get the Venn diagram Catholic guy bucket. Yeah

Church hitting up high schoolers All right, let's uh, let's get to our interviews We got Wright Thompson and Mike Fleury and then we'll finish with fire fest before we get to right Thompson He's brought to you by truly We got Wright Thompson and Mike Flora, and then we'll finish with FireFest. Before we get to Wright Thompson, he's brought to you by Truly Hard Seltzer and Truly Unruly Lemonade. It combines the high elk fun of Truly Unruly with everyone's favorite lemonade. It's Lemonade Let Loose, 8% ABV, 100% delicious. They've got four supercharged lemonade flavors, Bumpin' Blue Razz, OG Original Lemonade, Punched Up Pineapple and Wild Pink. charged lemonade flavors. Bumpin Blue Razz, OG original lemonade, punched up

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is writer, a very accomplished writer, senior writer for ESPN, contributing writer for the Atlantic. He has some incredible books he should go buy right now, especially for Father's Day, The Barn, Pappyland, The Cost of These Dreams. It is Wright Thompson. Wright, thank you for joining us. My first question is, how do you become a senior writer? And when that happened, was it like the biggest day of your life? Like is there a ceremony being like you're going from junior to senior writer? Well, I mean it's funny because yeah there's a huge ceremony. You get the big pope hat and you know, by the way this is a total aside but I just

found this out. Do you know when they get down, this is a total aside, but I just found this out. Do you know when they get down to like two or three possible popes, they go to this store in Rome, I think it's called Gamma Raleigh, and they get fitted, which means that there are two people who look at themselves in the mirror dressed like the pope, who don't get to be the pope. And then you have to live the rest of your life

with that image in your head of, I could have been pope. Yes. Yeah. Like, think about that. Think about being in AAA. Three of you go up, put on pinstripes, and then two of you are like, nah,

you're gonna go sell insurance now. Wow. I would imagine Darren Revelle's gonna get his hands on some of those, the off-pope costumes, or, you know, not a costume, but. Hemingway wrote a story about that, right? Pope cost. Yeah. Or, or, or, you know, not a costume, but Hemingway wrote a story about that, right? Pope uniform, never worn. That's the saddest thing. Yeah. For sale, baby shoes, never worn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So yeah. So how do

you become a senior writer? Well, they just sort of name it. It means pretty funny. You know, my oldest friend in the world is Seth Wickersham and I worked in a bunch of newspapers. He started at ESPN magazine as a fact checker and we both ended up being named senior writers randomly on the same day. So that was fun. I don't know what that means.

I think that means you're old and overpaid. Sort of like executive producer is a Latin phrase for taking credit. You know, I think it's some of that. Yeah, it's a good place to be, though. Rick Riley anoints you with a pen, a tap on each shoulder. You may not rise. And then some terrible fucking cliche. Yeah. About teeth, usually.

Yeah. So you're good friends with with Seth Wickersham. That's interesting that that you guys are so close, because when I think of, you know, the best modern sports writers, I think of, you know, the best modern sports writers, I think about you and then Seth Wickersham when he comes out with something you can just pretty much stamp it as gold because he gets he's kind of like you he gets everybody to talk to him that probably shouldn't be talking to him. Oh, they do if I works in the NFL and I saw him come in I would turn and run. Yeah. But

like, no, I mean, he, like, I think, you know, I'm incredibly biased, but I think he's the best sportswriter in America. But yeah, we've known each other a really long time. And I mean, as you guys know, it's a lot easier to do this job with a tribe, you know, with people who sort of understand, you know, I'm in New York chasing Aaron Judge right now,

and I could call Seth, and he completely understands. You know, it's just helpful. Because I mean, this is otherwise a soulless, lonely place. So I'm super grateful. So before you jumped on, you mentioned that you had followed around Tiger, Jordan. You've gotten to know the two of them,

or kind of what makes them tick. On this show, we like to elevate the discourse a little bit. So I'll just ask you who's better, Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan? Michael Jordan. Okay. So he's the goat. And you know, it's interesting because, you know, I mean, I have one of the books you talked about called The Cost of These Dreams, which is a collection of my ESPN stories. You know, that two of the sort of tent pole stories in that book are a profile of Michael Jordan and a profile of Tiger Woods. And I always thought it was. I mean, I feel really bad for Tiger Woods because he comes along.

They don't, they have a model for what to do with a star. It's the Michael Jordan playbook. It's Nike and Phil Knight and Tiger's parents. And they did what they thought was best. And it's always astonishing that no one in that room at Nike, not Tinker Hatfield, not Phil Knight, nobody, it occurred to no one that the playbook had been built around Michael Jordan, who is an extreme extrovert.

And they applied it to Tiger Woods, who is an extreme extrovert. And they applied it to Tiger Woods, who is an extreme introvert. And like, honestly, it feels like they broken. Yeah. You know, but there's that great John Updike quote I love, the mask eats the face. And that happens to so many people in public life. I mean, you know, it was happening to Jordan.

I mean, one of the interesting things about Jordan in the last 10 or 15 years is that he's been doing real work on how to deal with the existential problem of you created yourself to be the perfect basketball killing machine and every one of those traits that you elevated at the expense of some other trait or some other person you might have been, you basically prune the ability to enjoy having been Michael Jordan. Right. So I think these are doing like real, real work on the, you know, on how to be happy. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, even like when watching the last dance, like one of the things that, that I think struck out was like even like a simple moment where Steve Kerr was like, Hey, he's our teammate, but he's kind of not attainable. Like he's not, he, he lives in a different air than everyone else and you're playing a team sport, but he's Michael Jordan and we're just the rest of the bulls. And that has to feel incredibly lonely at some point. And Tiger obviously playing an individual sport. Could you sense that when talking to both of them? Like there is a there's a loneliness that the regular audience does not

realize because we just see athletes on the screen and we're like those guys have it made, their life is awesome, women, money, fame, it's the best. Well, you know, it's so interesting. You go read Bill Russell talking about being a star and it could be a modern guy talking and he talks about the loneliness. You know, I'm in New York right now doing Yankee stuff.

I was one of the last people in the old Yankee Stadium, like to the point that Major League Baseball put one of those holograms on my notebook the old Yankee Stadium. Uh, like to the point that Major League Baseball put one of those holograms on my notebook the night they closed it and I'm wandering around during the game and this guy sort of comes out of the shadows who works there and is like, come with me and don't tell anybody I showed you this. And he walks me down this hall into a room that is full of chairs that have been like unbolted from the, it's like a storage room.

He's like, you know what this is? And I'm like, what? He goes, this used to be the Yankees clubhouse used to be down here. And this is the room where Lou Gehrig would sit by himself after he knew his diagnosis and no one else did. And like, this is the room where Lou Gehrig would sit and get ready to die. And, uh, you know, if you think, if you're Aaron Judge, you're not just competing against Otani,

you're competing against Ruth and Garrick, you're competing against DiMaggio and Mantle. I mean, the ghost that these guys have to wrestle with on the way to being the thing they want to be, I just find that incredibly compelling. And I also think that if I were in their shoes it would crush me I mean I would end up on page six doing dumb shit out in New York City like the guys who you know I mean the guys who do this well are really

Superhuman to me and and I think the the it's not tragic But the the part that always strikes me with athletes is they cannot say hey Hey, I'm lonely. You know what I mean? Like, no one wants to hear that from, from a star athlete. They don't want to hear a star athlete be like, Hey, there's parts of my life that kind of suck because everyone wants to be them. So it's not only the lonely loneliness, but you're not going to get any sympathy for it either. No, like, yeah, you go cry on your $300 million thing.

Right. I mean, it is, you know, I mean, I've profiled a lot of athletes and almost none of them are just happy. You know, I mean, like the guy who, you know, the guy who was probably more, you guys remember Dale Murphy, who played for Atlanta Braves? Yeah, like time MVP. So

Murph is probably the happiest former athlete I've ever met. It is because he very intentionally when he retired, set about killing the avatar of famous Dale Murphy. And most of these guys try to hang on to it. You know, he went and ran like a Mormon mission in Boston after he retired, like not a ceremonial job, you know what I mean? Like a hard job dealing with young people and you're someone's parent and there's a tremendous amount of responsibility.

I think the guys who were happiest are the ones who understand what it means and what it doesn't mean. And are able to cash their checks and walk away and you're like, Hey, whatever happened to that guy? I don't know, man. I think he's down at Key West. He has dinner and manja manja every night. Yeah, yeah. Like, like those are the people the ability to kill the avatar, not let the mask eat the face feels like, like, I don't have any special. I just have been around a lot of guys.

That's the only sort of knowledge I have. It's not like, you know, but it it does feel you know, like when you go through that collection, the cost of these streams, that collection of stories, and if you're looking for a through line, I mean, that's what you know, the songs named after the book is named after drive by truckers lyric that I really like. And it's because, you know, when I went and read those stories for the first time, they spoke to each other in a way

that I certainly didn't intend for them to. I mean, I'm not nearly that smart. But I read them, and I was like, oh, shit. This makes sense as a through line. Go ahead. I was going to say Jake Plummer is that way. Jake Plummer started a mushroom farm out in Colorado. Kind of moved on immediately and became next phase in life,

completely different from the last phase. And I know that you spent some time around Coach K, dear friend of ours, Coach Szefski. Is he like that in this next phase of life? I know he's still got the office at the building. Well one of my favorite details is that, you know, people have to be protected from themselves. If you've ever been in the Duke basketball office, all of the coaches in the team meeting rooms are on the fifth floor of that building. And Coach Cade's office was on the sixth floor. And if you walk out of his office, like around there, there was a stairway that led down to the fifth floor so he could

sort of pop in and pop out. And it's my understanding they bricked up that stairway. So if he wants to go to the fifth floor, he has to take the elevator like everybody else. I think these guys have a hard time letting go. There's a scoreboard. It's hard for me to know. Like I'm gonna have a story come out next week and some people might really like it and some people might really hate it.

I'm gonna have like a definite point of view and some people might agree, some people might think hate it. I'm gonna have like a definite point of view. And some people might agree. Some people might think I'm an idiot. But there is no binary zero some way to be like, this story is a success or a failure. You guys do a show, you know, shows probably what five days a week. And you get metrics. But like, sometimes I bet your sense of how a show went is very different than the audience's sense. And with sports, there's a scoreboard. And I think people get into the simplicity of it. That like, I know whether I won or lost today. I got two kids, I feel like every day I'm taking

L's. Or the seven year old, I just got a text message, the seven year old asked about makeup. Just wanted to kill myself. Oh, yeah. Yup. I was just like, what? That's starting already? It's funny. Not to one-up you, but I watched, I took my two oldest to school today and we were late because my six-year-old son was putting on the fake earrings on my four-year-old daughter and I was like, this is too much. They were standing there waiting to get in the car, just pressing the little fake earrings

on. I was like, come on, we can't be doing this yet. No, it's funny. I got a book that's out called Pappy Land about the history of Pappy Van Winkle. My wife jokingly calls it Eat, Pray, Love for Dads. I used to think this book is like it's full of parenting advice and I realize it is, but just not what I meant. The advice, just start drinking in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. So I got a question about the scoreboard thing because like we do, it is relatable to, you know, we're kind of in the same field where we will walk out and be like, that was a great show. And there will be people like, we hated that show.

But I think what we've done and the longevity of what we've done is it's kind of like all about the people in the room. If we can make ourselves laugh and we can make each other laugh, then what happens out once it's out there, it's like, that's kind of out of our hands. We're going to trust ourselves. Do you have something like that when you're writing? It's like, hey, if I'm interested in this, I can't control if it's going to be a hit. I can't control

if people are going to like it, but I can trust my inner self that what I'm writing about is interesting and compelling. You know, yes. And I mean, you have to be careful with that because you don't want to be totally self-indulgent. But you know, the longer you do this, the more you want it to be something you're interested in. Yeah, like I've got this crazy rabbit hole in the last two weeks of I can tell you about a 300 year history of the land beneath what is now Yankee Stadium. Okay, I don't know what I'm doing with it. But it used there was a creek there called Cromwell's Creek

that ran down into the what's that the Harlem River I guess and or the Bronx or I don't know man my New York geography I'm from Mississippi what do you want like like I've gotten really interested in the idea that there were worlds and worlds and worlds that are now just in the dust beneath this thing that feels like it's always been there one of the two of them, sort of between like 157th and 164th and River, that whole sort of complex of the old and the new Yankee Stadium. So I'm just really into the fact that there is this whole other history of this

square of land. I have no idea if anyone else is going to be interested in it. I have no idea how that's going to fit into a story about the Yankees Red Sox, if it will, other than it's the thing I'm most interested in and so I've been way down a rabbit hole. So it's some of that. It's like, well, I just hope that there's someone else who thinks this is interesting and not just like totally out of left field. Yeah, that stuff is fascinating. One thing I'll give you credit for that you're very good at is you make if it's men

and women, but I'd say from my perspective as a man, you make men think about complex themes in life, whether it be family, where you're from, legacy, all that, but you do it through a vein of like whiskey. I'm going to write about whiskey. I'm going to write about sports. So you're like tricking us into becoming more emotional as human beings. Yeah, which I appreciate well, you know, I mean with the hardest thing in the world I'm told is to sell books to men and Sort of that's what I'm trying to do You know, but I mean it's these are the

you know, I think about the conversations with my father and the things we bonded over and it was baseball games and college football games and whiskey and James Bond movies and the guns and never own and those things to me the way I feel about the movie the guns and never own and the way that I feel about an Atlanta Braves game I feel like come from very much the same place. And all of these things, when you're talking about sports, you're always talking about tribe and community and inheritance. And it's that great Jerry Seinfeld thing, you're cheering for laundry. And it's sort of like, I don't, my relationship with the, I have Ole Miss football season tickets.

They were my father's season tickets. He and I have the same name, so when he died I just kept paying for him. And now I've been grandfathered in I think. But if they, Ole Miss was talking about tearing down that grandstand and building a new one, and they were gonna move the seats, and I wasn't going to renew them. I don't give a shit about going to the games, I want to go to the games and sit in those seats. Right. And if I had to move one row, I'm not interested in writing

that check anymore. And I think a lot of people feel that way about, look, man, go into a game of a team you really care about, that your father cared about, that your older brother cared about, that your grandfather cared about. It's communion. You know, I love that thing in the liturgy, the Catholic or Episcopal liturgy. It's like, we do this in remembrance of you. Like that feels very real to me. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I have a question about a piece you wrote. You spent a year with the Celtics and then obviously Jason Tatum gets hurt at the end of the season. And you, I saw a interview you did where you had the conversation with him about like, Hey, if you actually figure

it out, like you have a finite amount of books that you're going to write. He has a finite amount of serious games he's going to play. And that, that feeling of like, you could feel like you're in the middle of it. Like you are in the pinnacle of it, but there's an end point and it's hard to, to, to kind of conceptualize that. Have you talked to him since his injury? Because it is as, as, as much as like injuries have become a part of sports where it's like, oh, he'll be back. You know, a knee injury 30 years ago was like that guy's career is over. Now it's like, Oh, he'll be back in 12 months. But still a major part of his prime is going to be taken and dealing with that has to be so, so heavy.

I have not talked to him. Uh, I really liked him. I thought he was really smart and thoughtful. Uh, you know, that story was written before he got hurt, basically. Right. And so we had to redo huge swats of it. You know, I met, you know, I don't know if you ever met Wick, the owner of the Celtics, but he, during all those dead in company shows last year in Vegas, I started doing these lunches at like in the Venetian every day at 430. And so everybody was in town, come to Smith and Walensky or wherever we were. And like we're gonna eat a steak and drink a great bottle

of wine that we're gonna go on over. And that's awesome. And interface with Jake Plummer. Yeah. And so the I'm just confident my mom is not listening to pardon my take. So you'd be surprised. Yeah. Well, if your mom is listening, just let her know I've eaten a lot of mushrooms in the sphere. So sorry, Miss Thompson. Yeah, the inspo in one of those wick came was like the guest of a friend. And I was so utterly charmed by the way he talked about the Celtics. Because if I owned a sports team that I grew up caring about,

this is exactly how I would want to talk about it. He was so pumped to tell me sort of, he bought Bob Cousy a championship ring, just like the one for the current players. And he was pumped that in 08 when they won, he engraved red arrow box name on the inside of all the rings. And like, he, you know, just if I owned a team, that's how I would want to be about it. And so it really pulled like, you know, I, I spent a lot of time around the Celtics. You know, I grew up a Lakers man.

I don't know about like, if this was true where y'all grew up, but, you know, Lakers Celtics in the eighties was very much a code, especially in the rural south for whether you were racist or not. And you know, like the, the things people use to describe why they liked Larry Bird versus Magic Johnson were like super dog whistle. So like, I always grew up kind of hating the Celtics and then found myself just utterly charmed by their culture and by the way that they are like so proactive about making sure that the the ghost and the legends feel welcome in a way that like you know a lot of other teams don't.

Yeah I don't I had a great time running around the Celtics for a season. And our friend Joe Missoula, I'm sure you got some good time with him. He's a psycho. And we love that about him. He's a complete psycho. I walked into a press conference and the guy next to me was like, he comes in and the guy, it's clear, I don't know anything. And the guy looks at me and goes, watch this shit. It was like, monet like it. I was watching. I was like, this is like, oh my god, this guy's the head coach. Like, oh

my god. Yeah, I was totally insane. I mean, like, just in a flat monotone. You know, almost like sped up, like Alfred and the Chipmunks speed talking. And I was like, this is great. I love this guy. So a question about your process, because like I'm sure it's intimidating to interview Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods and Lionel Messi. How do you like start that process?

How do you get, how do you ingratiate yourself where you can get their trust? Where you're like, hey, I'm not here to do some kind of takedown. I'm here to learn more about you and get inside of your head, so to speak. Well, it doesn't always work. I mean, you know, Tiger Woods just would never, ever, ever talk to me, uh, uh, sort of other than in like group settings. You know, I think like you want to, I think you want to end, I mean I'll tell you like with Jason Tatum, I wanted to find, you got to find some tiny postage stamp of common ground. I mean I think if you go read the stories and the cost of these dreams, they all sort of have that starting place of here is something that me, human being on planet Earth,

and you, human being on planet Earth and you human being on planet Earth, despite the fact that our jobs are very different, here is something that we share in common on like an existential level. And, you know, so for Jason, with Jason Tatum, it was this idea of there is a window and it's closing. Right. And, uh, I think everybody has that. And so I just try to find a way to connect with people.

It doesn't always work. I mean, I've walked out of interviews, I'm like, that guy hated me or thought I was insane. Or you also, I don't know if you got, you reach a certain age and just don't care. Yeah. I don't really care if Jason Tatum likes me. Yeah. I just't really care if Jason Tatum likes me. Yeah, like at all.

And so that's a helpful energy of, you know, I'm respectful, I'm in awe of your work. I don't particularly care about your weird modern celebrity. And I have a bunch of questions that either will or won't be interesting. And I think most of the time, from what I've read from you, it usually works. You usually find some level of common ground.

You get access that nobody else would ever be able to get. You get answers to questions that nobody would even ask. And it turns out great. But then I would have to imagine that there's a second phase to that relationship sometimes, when you're on good terms with the person, have great interviews, they trust you. The story comes out, and maybe there's some things

in the story that they said to you that they're very upset with themselves that they said. Do you, is there a plan? Like do you give a phone call afterwards being like, hey, just let you know the story came out. If you have any questions, let's talk. Or is it just always dicey afterwards when you write those types of stories?

Well, I don't, I like to let people, you don't want to hide that's chicken shit. Yeah. I mean, here's the story. It's a weird move because I don't want anybody to think I'm A, fishing for compliments or B, trying to sort of lead the witness. I mean, one thing that is interesting why I want them to have the story is most people hear from people who've read it. And it's like that game of telephone, like their description of it. You know, but I mean, I've had somebody call me furious after a story ran because their wife took the hard copy of ESPN magazine into

their regularly scouraged scheduled marriage counseling session, threw it down on the desk and said, See, I told you, it's like, here's the evidence right here. Yeah. The receipts. Yeah, I mean, like, like, so I don't know. It's a weird thing. I'm not trying to be buddies with anybody. I sort of think the thing I owe you after being this invasive is that if you don't ever want to see me again, you don't have to. You know, like maybe the only person I keep in touch with

that I've written about is Pat Riley. Oh, interesting. Who I just love. I think Pat is hilarious and insane. And, but mostly I don't like I sort of, you know, slide in and slide out. So Pat Riley, that's, that's an interesting one that you keep. I mean, Pat Riley is one of those guys who when you actually stack it up, it's like he has been an integral part of NBA history for 40 years, 50 years. Like it's actually insane to look at whether it being coach of the Lakers, coach of the Knicks, you know, front office with the coach of the Heat, then front office with the Heat. His fingerprints are all over the NBA. What is it, what's the secret sauce with Pat Riley? We hear Heat culture from afar,

but what is it that like, that makes him so unique and be able to last this long, being this successful in a very competitive league? I mean, I think the origin story, I mean, you guys have all obviously seen Hoosiers where Dennis Hopper sort of stumbles drunk out onto the court. That really happened to Pat and it's connected to New York. His father, who was a failed Major League Baseball player, he had four bats, I think, and

almost hated his son for his success. And Pat was shooting free throws and he heard something behind him. And you can tell, and he turned around and his dad was drunk on the court screaming at the official. And Pat's high school basketball coach, a guy named Walt Prisbelow, who Pat just idolized, got Pat's dad off the court and got him on the bench and let the game continue and you know I think one of Walt Prisbel of sons was a Miami Heat scout for a long time

I mean Pat's one of those guys when his first Kentucky teammate died Forget who it was might have been Frank Ramsey. I forget who it was the the heater on the road playing and The family goes into whatever the Catholic church is in Kentucky where the mass is going to be and the only people in the church when they walk in are the priest and Pat Riley. And he has gotten on an airplane somewhere out in the American darkness and flown into Kentucky.

Like that, you know, he's the guy who shows up. And so I think when you know that about him, everything starts to line up. I mean, this is a guy for whom basketball was a family. You know, I love this story. He grew up in a real Italian neighborhood in Schenectady and there was a big upstate New York mob. And so these guys would just feed Pat, you know, like he would eat as a guest in their kitchens and in and out of the

back door and played with their sons and after I think his freshman year at Kentucky one of these guys was a big mob boss said Patrick you can't come here anymore and he was like what do you mean and it was sort of like where you're going you don't want to be associated with me we love you very much you'll be family forever, but you can't come here anymore. And you know so he just grew up surrounded by a very strict... I mean, there's a story in the book on Pat, but a really strict code about how a man behaves in the world. And

you just, I think, see that play out in weird public ways with him over and over and over. Yeah. What do you think it is about Pat that he's been able to, he's evolved over the years. He's went from being a successful head coach to giving up the reins and moving kind of behind the scenes. But by most measures, he's been pretty successful as that, even as he gets older. Has he changed how he operates or is he just gonna be Pat until he's not Pat anymore and at that point he's out of basketball.

I think he'll die in that job. I mean, we had this thing where he was talking so much to me while I was reporting the story about retiring that one day I just called him. I'm like, hey, you're not trying to tell me you're retiring, are you? Because I don't want to have just missed all the signals. And he laughed.

And then they got eliminated from the playoffs on the last day of the season. I was down in Miami. And he texted me And then they got eliminated from the playoffs on the last day of the season. I was down in Miami and he texted me the next day and we went to like that Smith and Walensky down on South Beach. He lives in that big tower next to it. And he was like, you wanna get a drink? I was like, yes.

And we sat there, had a couple of drinks and he's like, you wanna know what the greatest lie ever told is? And I'm like, what? He goes, that I'm gonna to retire to Malibu. And he just started tackling him. And I'm like, Oh, that's it. You're never ever going away.

You know, his wife, Chris is great. And the way she describes it, she's also a professional therapist. I don't think it's an accident that he married a therapist, but she's like, you know, Pat grew up needing to get his, you know, his cookies or praise and he needs it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's fascinating because you've spent so much time around people that have excelled that, you know, they share they share the common bond of excellence. How much time do you think how much time do you spend thinking about the commonalities of dysfunction when it comes to leadership specifically? I mean, most of the time, you know, it's like that post-hoc ergo proctor-hoc, like, you know,

Bill Belichick without Tom Brady is a is a sub 500 coach. I mean, I just sometimes wonder like all a coach is is somebody who either locks into a star player or gets a star player and doesn't ruin it. You know, there's that idea of like, you know, how many Super Bowl titles with the Bears have won if it had been anyone other than Ditko is the head coach, you know what I mean? Like as opposed to he won a Super Bowl. Is there a narrative where like actually he lost fourth? Yeah, you know, and any read any reads a perfect example. Any read was was known as a choker, couldn't win the big one. Patrick Mahomes. Now he's being talked about as could he be the best of all time?

That's right. And those things are like it's luck. You know, I mean, I think about, you know, my career is probably very different if Michael Jordan doesn't say yes. Yeah, that is nothing to do with me. You know what I mean? Like it was, I got him on the right day. And so you, you know, and you think about that all the time about how much luck is involved in all of this. So yeah, I mean, I, you know, there are teams that have cultures and then about how much luck is involved in all of this.

So yeah, I mean, I, you know, there are teams that have cultures and then there are teams that just have three really, really great players. Yeah. The Michael Jordan, like there's all, there's so many stories. I'm actually very fascinated to see him on, you know, doing TV next year and seeing how he'll talk

and if he will give us all these stories. But when you spent time with him, my favorite are like just the little competitive stories that come out where he can't help himself. Did you have that? Did you see that in just following him and like, Hey, this guy, there might not be another person on earth who wants to compete to the level he wants to compete in everything. Well, I mean, you know, this is a guy who like will be in the Bahamas and send staff down to the gift shop to get four Sudoku books so they can all race. This is a guy very, very, very good at the iPad

game, but jeweled. It's almost sad. It's a long fucking way down from game six to be jeweled. Yeah, you know, I mean, like, so, you know, there is these guys don't, you don't turn it off. Nobody who's great at anything is normal. Like just some people hide it. But you know, I found, you know, he's a very, very serious Marlin fisherman. I mean, I think a really great comp is Michael Jordan

and Ted Williams, you Michael Jordan and Ted Williams. Because Ted Williams was an excellent fisherman. His family let me go down into his files. He has a huge, they had a huge room full of filing cabinets and in those are all of his fishing logs. It's his diary though. I mean, you go through Ted Williams' diary and you think about, here's your fun Ted Williams fact.

Ted Williams' mother, who was insane, literally, lived through his entire professional baseball career, never went to a single one of his games. And when she died after he retired, he flew home to San Diego like a dutiful, wealthy son. He paid for a very nice funeral. He then went to her house. He got every single family photograph and he burned them. Wow. Wow. He probably should have married a therapist.

Wow. Ned Williams could have used some Chris Riley. I mean, the and so you you know, the like there's a story in the cost of these dreams about Ted Williams and his mother and his son and daughter. And the idea is like, to try to understand, you want to create a logical framework where freezing someone's detached head makes sense Mm-hmm. That's challenge is like to try how did how does this happen and You know hurt people hurt people and Ted Williams Grew up in a terrible situation and was an awful father like truly awful father and then he got really sick at the end of his life and suddenly

he and his kids had this relationship that they had all sort of wanted and didn't know how to have. And the moment that they got that relationship, he started dying. And now you understand like these desperate kids who had wanted this iconic father their whole lives and then in the last 18 months of his life, they get it. And now they'll do anything for even the prayer of another day. And like, so they're totally back shit crazy start to make sense. Yeah, that's fascinating. Um, one thing that you do, you're the executive producer of a series called true South, which I have to say is, is one of those shows, if you haven't seen it, they played on sec network a lot. It's fantastic because it's one of those shows where you'll start, they'll run

like 10 of them in a row. You'll start watching one with no intention of staying there and watching like a show after show. And you're like, I could watch southerners go and find local spots to eat and like talk about the land forever. And you just wake up, you're like, Oh my God, I just watched four hours of this. So it's fantastic. It's I love it. Mike. Yeah. My question though is being from the South, knowing the South like you do, do you think there's any tides changing with what's happening with college football and like cause college football is religion in the South and it is such an important part of culture in the South. Are you, do you see it from afar or even up close

where like this entire NIL, the big power conferences, are we losing something or do you think, hey, this is gonna be here no matter what for years and years and years? Well, I mean, you know, I'm from Mississippi, which is one of if not the only state in the country that doesn't have a fortune 500 company. And so at some point, like, Ole Miss and Mississippi State are going to run out of money. Yeah, the pool is just smaller. You know, I'm one of those people who like, like, if the SEC just broke off and played

its own thing, that would be fine with me. Like I don't particularly like, you know, I watch whatever the SEC game is, like I understand I'm part of the problem. So I don't, it's always sort of been this way. But look, the South is changing tremendously. And the people, like all the little, like I'm from a little farming town in Mississippi. And our farm 50 years ago, we needed 400 families living on it to farm it.

And now we farm it with, I think we have 18 people, and that's because the tractors can't turn themselves around. The tractors are GPS controlled, but you have to have a person in them to turn them around on the pads at the end of the roads. Rose, we're 10 years away from that being gone and so now you can farm enormous swaths of land with four people. It's like the rural South, which has in many ways been the heartbeat of SEC football fandom, is totally emptying out in a way that sort of no one's really talking about. The farm economy, I don't know if you guys have been following this, but the price of cotton

and soybeans, I mean, might be destroyed for a generation. It's going to be a really, really hard time. Mississippi and parts of Louisiana and Alabama and Georgia. And so, you know, there is a, at a time when the only thing that matters in college football is how much money you can raise. That's a scary thing if you live in the poorest part of the country. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And going back to, to your childhood, growing up, I read that you got kicked out of school. Is that right? I did get kicked out of school. I like that. I like a little bit of edge to you.

Well, you know, shout out to the Woodbury Forest School. The you know, I just went and spoke there. It was really interesting because they asked me to come talk and I was like, you guys know you? Are you sure? Like, you know what I mean? Like, you're gonna give me access to your student body. At one point you decided that wasn't a great idea. It was really, you know, it was a fun night. So a lot of people, but yeah, man, I, uh, it's interesting.

I read a book by a writer named Willie Morris called North toward home after I got kicked out of school. And it really, I didn't know, well, two things. One, I didn't know that being a magazine writer was a job until I read this book. And two, he talked about the South and the way that I felt about it, which is very much a, you know, what Patterson Hood calls the duality of the Southern thing. If you only hate the South, you're kind

of a jackass. And if you only love the South, you're kind of a jackass. If you only love the South, you're kind of a jackass. It better be both. In the conflict of that and in the inability to separate those feelings lies the experience. It's sort of like being a Catholic convert. If you didn't go to a Catholic school and your parents didn't beat guilt into you, you're not Catholic. I don't care if you take communion, you know, and so like, it's a tribal thing. And so I read that book. And before then, I just was totally lost. And that book really clarified a

lot of things for me. Like, you know, I sort of thought, you know, I'm gonna run this farm and never leave this town. And, and that book really opened a world to me. Yeah. So we've bonded you and I over our love for the Grateful Dead. You're going to the concert in August in San Francisco, which I'm very jealous of. Have you thought about writing a story? Because I would love to read a story. And maybe I think it's fascinating this iteration of the dead too because John Mayer has taken such great care with it and like even watching him interact with Bob Weir

on the stage. I think he deserves like way more credit than he gets in terms of taking something that's so special and and and making it alive again in a way that I didn't think was possible. Well look man, man, I mean, every time people start bitching about him, it makes my head want to explode. Same. Like when the greatest guitar player in the world, not named Derek Trucks, falls in love with your favorite band and devotes himself to learning it note for note, you should be nothing but grateful. I mean, the only appropriate response to John Mayer is thank you. Yes. You know, I would love, I don't really want to write a story so much as I want to write a book that no one else seems to want

me to write, which is, I want to just randomly pick 25 bootlegs out of my tape collection, and then write a memoir about listening to them over and over again and call it Nakamichi. Oh, I love that. I love like after my tape deck. Yeah, so I got a great Nakamichi tape deck in my office. And I have all of my old tapes. And like, you know, so like in my car, I just go to re listen and like

whatever the day show is. Today, let's see today the show on what is I'm pulling it up here we go so today the current Grateful Dead played 6-5-93 at Giant Stadium, 6-5-80 in Tempe, 6-5-75 at the rehearsal, 6-5-70 at the Fillmore West, 6-5-69 at the Fillmore West. And that's yeah what you just described is when I try to explain to people the love of the band, because I never, I'm too young to have seen the actual Grateful Dead. It's like, how can you be a fan of this? I saw one.

Yeah. The amount of shows and like it's the ocean. You basically, I feel like I'm in James Cameron's submarine in the ocean where it's like I can go Anywhere and every day I see something new and every day I hear a song that's like oh now This is my favorite song. This is my favorite version of the song This is my favorite year like it just it's endless and that's my love for them You know that they've given us just so much so many things we can explore on our own And and they're all so different and you kind of go through phases.

Like I'm very much right now and have been for a while on like a late Brent phase. Yeah. 88, 89 into early 90. Like to me, that's my favorite iteration of the band. My friend David Ray Morris would slap me and be like, no, it's 74 moron. Go listen to those five nights at the Winterland.

And so like, I love the fact that one, there is no right answer, but you kind of go through phases. Like I like that 87, 88, 89, 90 Brent dead. That is my favorite. Like the without a net era era like I love that shit I'm with you the Crimson White and indigo that everyone can go listen to on Spotify Yeah, yeah, it's like the yeah Brent

there's something about Brent the the just the idea of him being in the Grateful Dead 2 wearing like a Nice button down in a Rolex watch and just just jamming the fuck out of everything Well, you know, I mean those guys got really rich really quick a nice button down in a Rolex watch and just just jamming the fuck out of everything. Well, you know, I mean, those guys got really rich really quick. Yeah, they, you know, and I love the idea of, you know, they're just like, there's so many great, like, I just did all these voiceovers for the PGA Championship. And the number of Grateful Dead lyrics, I snuck into those things. Yep. I noticed. Yeah. Yep, I noticed.

Yeah, we used to play for Silver, now we play for Life. I got a totally apropos of nothing. Moses came riding in on a quasar or something. I did a fuck it. I'm talking about Sand Traps and I did Dark Star. I'm not even trying to make it work. I'm just like, no, this is what we're doing now. Yeah. And like, you know, I'm turning this enormous sporting event into my own weird sort of deadhead insider crossword puzzle. That's why I love

shout out to producer Jolly who works for Fox where he just he's a huge deadhead and you'll just where he just he's a huge deadhead and you'll just be watching. Oh sorry the hotel they're trying to call me. Yeah huge dead. Yeah Johnny and you'll just be watching like Seahawks Cardinals and it was just like oh was that estimated profit going into the commercial break? No I email with him all the time. Yeah. He's like he's he's one of the great unsung heroes in sports journalism. Like that guy. Yeah, we should. You know what we should do? We should go sell t shirts with his face on it with no explanation.

I buy it. I buy it. I would 100% buy it. Or like if somebody could turn the robot into Bertha, like the Fox. Yeah. I don't know. It still exists Like the Fox? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's still exist. I don't understand. Yeah. Yeah. He's the number one Cletus fan on the I got a Cletus mascot uniform.

Yeah, please. It's a football playing robot. I don't know what there's not to understand about it. It's a robot and it plays football. You know, I know I work for the competition. But that might be the dumbest goddamn thing. History of civilization. Like, there's a football playing. Yeah. All right. It works. And his name is Cletus and it's spelled C.L.E.A. T.U.S. like a football cleat.

Get it. You might not. You might not understand. That's OK. It's not for everybody. These are really these are complicated things. So, you know, the way you felt when you first heard Althea, that's the way that I felt when I first saw Cletus. Well, I'm in I would in no way disrespect your deep love for Cletus.

I would say I hope you don't get burned. Yeah, I don't think so. No, there's if something comes out about Cletus and it's like you got to cancel Cletus now like problematic. I might be done with with sports, not just football. I just can't wait for the Cletus trial. They got this footage of Cletus in the hallway of a hotel. It's really bad. Cletus was the guest of honor at a Diddy party.

Oh, he got oiled up and short circuited, electrocuted three R&B singers. No, I mean robots. Rob robots require a great deal of oil. That's true. That's a good point. I might have to write a fan fiction about the downfall of Cletus. This sounds like a great story. Look, I love you guys.

If you write fan fiction about Cletus that is even remotely psychosexual, our thing is over. Like, you can't do that. Oh, wait, just wait. I'll do it. In terms of just you as a writer, I mentioned earlier how you're able to bond so closely with some people. They trust you, all that stuff. Have you thought about if there's the next Wright Thompson, next young reporter, able to do some of the things that you're able to to do and he calls you and he says, I'd like to write a profile about Wright Thompson. Would you

do that? No, no, I've done this way too many people to let somebody do it to me. Hard pass. No, I mean, like I asked a couple of years ago by someone who I won't name and I was like, no man, absolutely not. Like, no, that's, we're not doing that. Uh, it's funny cause I reached out to Gary Smith to profile Gary and Gary was like, nah, yeah. Yeah. I was like, well, that makes, that's fair. That makes sense. You get it. Yep. Uh, well, right. This has been awesome. Everyone, like I said, his books are incredible. Perfect father's day gift. The cost of these dreams. Pappy land. There's

a ton of books. All his articles are incredible. Go watch true south. I got one last question for you. It's a row back question. R H O B A C K dot com promo code take 20% off your first purchase. Q zips polos hoodies joggers shorts promo code take. We got to do this again because you're a great storyteller. I have one question. It's a weird question because we started by mentioning Seth Wickersham who your friends with. We mentioned. So when Seth wrote his he's writing that book that's coming out about QB's and there was an article. Yeah. Yeah. There was an article about Caleb Williams and I'm a Bears fan and it was like you know obviously we talked about on the show and the next day I got a text from a random number being like, Hey, this is Seth

Wickersham. I was like, damn, this guy's good. He's a journalist. No one gave me a heads up. Were you the person who gave him my number? I was not the person, but I would have had he asked and I would not have asked your permission. Yeah. Yeah. So it was like, I just saw it pop up and I was like, this is why he's such a good journalist. He just no one asked. He just I had a text from him being like hey if you ever want you want to talk about any of the books like I'd love to come on. It's like all right we'll have you on for sure. And also how the fuck did you get my number. Let me tell you let me tell you if he ever calls you and says he's doing a story about you, you should

just tell him every shitty thing you've ever done. And maybe he'll be in a good mood when he cuts your arms and legs off. You know what I would do? It's that great like Robert Penn Warren line from his sort of book about the governor who's based on Huey Long and say, man is conceived in evil and born into filth and passeth from the stink of the deity to the stench of the shroud. There is always something. Yeah.

I mean, that's a, that's a great way to put it. Uh, I would read a book that if you and Seth collaborated on a book about the life and times of Jim Ursay, I think that would be incredibly fascinating. Yeah. Because. I want that guitar. Yeah, the guitar collection that he had is absolutely amazing. He turned down a billion dollars for his guitar collection.

He has the Jerry Tiger guitar, I think. He has the Jerry, you know what else he has? He has the Jerry Tiger guitar. No, he's got the original manuscript of On the Road. Oh, wow. No shit. Like, that's crazy. Like the carawack, you know, that it was all taped like he has that. Yeah, or he doesn't anymore. But you know what I mean? And I would like that. And I'd like

Jerry's Tiger guitar. Yeah, if someone find a good home for it. Do you hear your first in line? I'll take the I'll take the Hendrick strat that he has. Maybe David Gilmore's black strat. Yeah. If anyone out there is listen, just looking to get rid of the guitars, I think we could find good homes for. Yeah. Yeah. We're ready for it. Right. You're the best. Thank you so much, man. And everyone go buy a book because your books are incredible. And again, they're like buying that book for Father's Day is a great gift. Tell you right now is a plus gift. Right Thompson is brought to you by Mountain Dew baseball seasons heating up Chicago in

the summertime is in full swing. And the best thing to drink while hanging with your friends during warm weather is an ice cold Mountain Dew. We had him at Camp Barstow last year. Nothing took the edge off a sweltery day playing sports, hanging out, hitting the lake. Nothing took that, that hot edge off the day like an ice cold Mountain Dew. We tossed them around at the bonfire, have them with dinner. Mountain Dew is the best soda. It is the start of golf season too. You can grab a Dew while you're out on the course.

If you're hanging on a boat, going to the river, maybe going fishing, bring the Dew with you. And it's also great to drink while you're watching the playoffs, NBA, NHL playoffs, Stanley Cup finals have been great so far. NBA finals going on. Grab a dew while you're watching the game. Nothing goes better with playoff sports and hanging with your friends than the refreshing citrusy kick of Mountain Dew.

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You know what? We were thinking two things, Mike. It's getting to the point of the year where we're like under 100 days and we're like, we just want to talk some ball. We want to talk some ball. We love football. We're kind of not tired of talking about NBA and NHL, but like we want to talk some ball. We want to talk some ball. We love football. We're kind of not tired of talking about NBA and NHL, but like we want to talk some football and also Ryan Whitney had to move to Sunday. So we're like, let's have Mike Florio on. Yeah. But

I know we really did want to talk ball cause we, cause it feels like you're, you're getting ready for your sabbatical. You're about to go on your little, you know, month off. Uh, we're getting towards the end of OTAs. So we want to have you on. Talk about OTAs. Talk about what's going on. So let's start with that. Give us the top three stories from OTAs so far and how they're kind of developing. Well I would say number one, if and when Aaron Rodgers is ever going to show up in Pittsburgh, that's the thing that has had Steelers fans into tizzy because the Steelers are acting in a way they've never acted before

to be in this voluntary holding pattern while they wait for Rodgers to make a decision. As Cam Hayward said a couple of months ago, and this really resonated with Steelers fans, you either want to be a Steeler or you don't. And I think Steelers fans are dismayed that Rogers has still pending to what's g cousins in Atlanta. That' NFL right now, although t him with another team to this plays out and if any

that may be the first ca And third, as they say, i you have none. If you hav you're the Browns and And how the hell are the Browns going to take this cluster of quarterbacks they have and carve it down into one guy who's going to be ready to go when the season starts? All right. So let's unpack them. Gun to your head. Aaron Rodgers plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers this year. I think he does, but I'd be concerned that that ultimately he doesn't

because why hasn't he done it yet? Why hasn't he just told people I'm doing it? Now people think that the Steelers have been privately informed he's going to do it, but at some point he just needs to say this is what I'm going to do. It becomes exhausting while we play this guessing game and he's at the Mike Stud concert or whatever Mike Stud is answering questions. Put on Hank's mic. Hank has a problem with that. Go ahead Hank. It's just Mike now and he's a great great artist. It's just Mike. His name is Mike?

It's just Mike. Formerly artist formerly known as Mike Stud. Great artist. Yeah. That was a ricochet. that was an unnecessary ricochet Wait, Hank. Why did he drop the stud? Is yeah, he's he's he's yeah, he's grew up literally just like that. Is he no longer a stud No, he still is. Yeah, I don't like out to pasture. You should be Mike stud Prince. You are Mike Yeah, what our own Mike's nice. You need to distinguish Mike's. Yeah. And Mike's

thought is a good way to do it. I guess if it's available. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're Mike squad on it. So you think that Aaron Rodgers at some point should tell somebody whether or not he plans to play. I agree with that. I understand his reasons and I'm not going to question the idea that he's got personal issues. People close to him are ill. He recently the top of his lower. But anyway, he mentioned he's got some people, what a great turn. He's got people close to him who are fighting cancer. If that's the reason, that's fine. But you can let the world know, I intend to play for the Steelers. He told everyone that two years ago, I intend to play for the Jets. Months before the Jets traded for him, he said, I intend to play for the Jets. Nothing stops him from saying, I intend to play for the

Steelers. And at some point, he just needs to do it. So back to the Browns real quick. You said, yeah, if you have five quarterbacks, you're the Browns. That is accurate right now. If you had a gun to your head on this, I'm not going to pull the gun back out. But hypothetically, gun to your head, if you were to pick one person that's

going to start week one for the Cleveland Browns, who would that be? Probably Joe Flacco. Just because that's the guy who you can get ready with fewer first team reps in August. See, that's the problem. If you take four guys to camp now, let's set the Sean Watson aside because they've basically moved on from him. It gets very interesting.

If Watson shows up with a piece of paper saying I've been cleared to practice and play, then the Browns have have have a variety of problems, but let's set him aside. I believe and I don't know, but I believe that they're gonna try to move Kenny Pickett before the training camp opens. He was the insurance policy they traded for before they made any of these other moves.

Flacco is the fan favorite. They couldn't bring Flacco back last year because they would have had to bench Deshaun Watson for Flacco. Now he's back, the fans are gonna want him. You can get him ready easily and you can focus your efforts on trying to figure out between Dillon Gabriel and Chadeur Sanders which guy is the most likely to emerge as your long-term answer. So I think they're going to go to camp with three guys. I think it's going to be Flacco, Gabriel and Sanders. Flacco will start week one and then once one of the other two guys

is ready they'll put that guy out there. It could be Sanders, it could be Gabriel. We'll start week one and then once one of the other two guys is ready, they'll put that guy out there. It could be Sanders. It could be Gabriel. We'll see. Who's starting for the Giants? Is it going to be Ross? Is that just decided? Well, Russ is the guy who back in 2012 when he was the third round draft pick at the Seahawks

supplanted Matt Flynn because he was superior to him in training camp. I think based upon where Russell Wilson is now, and Russell Wilson's done great things in the NFL, but based upon where he is right now, the Steelers wanted nothing to do with him. Remember the Steelers were saying before free agency, we want to bring back Justin Fields or Russell Wilson. Field signs with the Jets. Never mind, never mind, we'll figure out something else. And Wilson was out there he landed with the giant. not want him back. I thin

fading into the rear view fair competition, Jackson him out. Otherwise, why t back into round one to ge if he's not good enough t old quarterback who can't to because he can't run a like he used to. So I't run away from pressure like he used to so I?

Think that darts should be able to beat out Russ The question is do they want that to happen are they willing to do that do they want to throw dart to the wolves? Week one you look at their schedule this year. I mean last year was bad for the Giants Holy shit look at their schedule this year look at the team. They currently have I know they're better But it's gonna be a long year. Are we just pretending Jamis doesn't exist What about Jackson dart beating out Jamis Winston Jamis Winston, I think is better than Russell Wilson right now I agree with you on that and Jamis Winston's a hell of a lot more fun And it was just weird, you know These teams get desperate to get a quarterback and they start doing crazy things

When you sign Jamis Winston and then you turn around a few days later and you sign Russell Wilson, that makes no sense to me from the standpoint of the vibe in the locker room. You're either all in with the Jamis Winston experience or you're all in with the Russell Wilson experience. They're two very different things. I think Winston is a guy who could be traded before the start of training camp. Wouldn't the Saints love to have him? Yeah, you would think so.

I mean, I think there are teams out there that would say Winston is a better number two than what we currently have and maybe he could make things interesting and be the number one. By the way, you mentioned the Saints. This is a perfect, uh, Florio fan fiction. Uh, is their car fully retired? Is he, is he just trying to get rid of away from the Saints? Well, I think the Saints were trying to get away from him. Right. It was an awkward, weird situation because he had that shoulder injury that nobody knew about.

And I don't want to get too deep into the contractual weeds, but the Saints owed him 40 million this year and they weren't able to get out from under the contract before the full 40 million locked in So they were stuck and at didn't want to have the s and then come back and pl He didn't want to not hav to play it less than 100%

a deal where he keeps 10 gotten, he gives up 30 mi would have gotten if he'd and and gone through being on injured reserve got to respect a guy walk Now he's made more than 2 walked away from $30 mill have a surgery and go thr

the 30 million from the S like they didn't want him want him and it was a goo apart. The question is ne toward, it's highly unlike is next year and I'm told it's highly unlikely he ever comes back next year if he doesn't have the surgery will he be healthy enough to play? Will that shoulder heal with a year off? Will he want to come back? He's only 34 which for quarterbacks you know he's still got five six seven years left so I don't completely rule it out but the way he's

talking and the way he's acting it sounds like he's acting, it sounds like he's done. I think he wants to try to get into the media. Him and his brother have something going on now, and I think he's hoping to maybe get someone's attention and get a gig with NFL Network or somewhere. So I think that's his next play to try to get into the media. What's that beep? Is that you? Is that us?

Text down. Sorry, I don't know how to turn it off. Sorry. Okay. All good. It's probably something important. Who is it? Who's texting you? No, it dates its proprietary Oh, oh interesting Bill Belichick to the box. Is that what it is? I Wrote that this morning. Yeah, I read it

Because that is ultimate fanfiction. Yes But if it happens fan fiction. Yes. But if it happens, if it happens, remember where you heard it. All right. So tell me about your theory. Bill Belichick coaching the buck in years. How does this happen? Would Jordan approve? Well, that that's one of the wild cards that we'd have to take into account. But you know, last season, you got to figure out how to turn off the sex. I'm sorry. You can silence it. I think. I don't know. Let me try that. I don't know how to use this fucking thing. Yeah. Tell Jason light. You'll call him back. What if Jordan was texting him? How do I turn off this fucking thing?

I'll just exit. I'll exit the messages. I quit it. Do it on the top. It says like file quit. Yeah, horse quit. All right. It's gone. Hopefully. All right. So, yeah, that was, I don't Mike, I love you. That was a very old move by you to have your text messages going off. Listen, listen, I brought my nice laptop down to the barn. So the camera, you're right. I shouldn't factor in the fucking text messages. May I continue? Yes, please continue. Allow me to weave my fan fiction.

Bella Chick's consigliere, Mike Lombardi, who is basically his unofficial mouthpiece and has been very quiet since all of the Jordan Hudson stuff hit the fan, which is hilarious. Lombardi wouldn't shut up until this Hudson stuff happens. And now you can't find him anywhere. But he was putting out this idea that Todd Bowles would retire possibly after the 2024 season. It was like, what the fuck?

Bowles isn't going to retire. Bowles got on set. What the fuck? I'm not going to retire. So I feel like Belichick has been eyeballing the Bucks. Maybe Lombardi was trying to speak it into existence that there'd be a vacancy there, because that's one of the teams where they've got the talent.

Belichick needs the talent. You give him the talent, he's the best game day coach that football has ever seen. He'll take that talent, he'll get them ready, and they'll go out there and they'll find a way to win games. He's not so good at developing and drafting and acquiring talent, but if you give him talent, he'll get them ready, and they'll go out there and they'll find a way to win games. He's not so good at developing and drafting and acquiring talent, but if you give him talent, he can make it happen. And the Bucs have done some crazy ass shit when it comes to head coaches over the years.

They fire John Gruden abruptly, they elevate Raheem Morris, who nobody had ever heard of. He was a defensive backs coach who goes all the way up to head coach. They hired Greg Shiano for crying out loud in 2012. He was on no one's radar screen as a potential head coach. They fired Lovey Smith and promoted Dirk Cutter because they were afraid Cutter was going to parlay his one season with James Winston into a head coaching job somewhere else. And then when Tom Brady unretired, they kind of gave Bruce Arians the the unofficial nudge out the door.

So the Buccaneers are willing to do kooky things if they think it's going to make them better. And there was already some noise that, hey, maybe if they're looking for a coach, they would go in that direction at a time when you would think all the teams are saying no, the Bucs have a history of doing unconventional things. And it would definitely be unconventional at this point for the Buccaneers to go after Belichick. But it would make sense if you can hand him a talented team in a weak division where he could cobble together enough wins to get to the playoffs. And we know he wants to be back in the NFL. He can say he doesn't want that all he all he would like. He wants

to catch Don Schulle in the worst way. And the Bucs are the one team that would make sense out of all 32 franchises for next year. It is a good point. And I haven't really considered it. The Bucks, yeah, they have a very extremely chaotic record when it comes to how they handle their head coaches. So talk to me about the June 1st thing with Belichick. Because we've seen the date June 1st.

That's about the extent of my knowledge about it. It makes it easier for Bill to leave, or makes it easier for UNC to part ways? No, UNC would still have to buy out whatever's guaranteed in his contract. And I think he got three years, 10 million per year, so 30 million total. Now he's made about six months of it. But they'd owe him the balance of the guaranteed money if they would pull the plug. The buyout is important because that's his price tag to walk away. And when he first signed the contract, it was a $10 million buyout.

But then, as of June 1, just five months later, it drops all the way to 1 million. And I remember when Lombardi was trying to sell the idea that Bill's committed, he's not leaving North Carolina. And the easy response is, well, then take out the buyout clause. Why do you have a buyout clause in there that lets somebody write a check for a million bucks? I mean, for one of these owners, if they really want to hire Bill Belichick, what's a million dollars? It's nothing. They spend less than that for a week of maintenance on their super yachts for crying out loud. It's a write

off. It's gone. It's over. You get him. Now, as the opportunities for the NFL seem to fade, it shifted into whether or not this gives Bill power over UNC because he can say to them, Hey, bring back my girlfriend, idea mill, creative muse, handler publicist, we're in Jordan inspiration, Jordan. So be careful. You're getting into deep water here. Fine. That's fine. But let her be in the building. And if you

don't, if you don't give me what I want, I'll just write the million dollars myself and I'll say see you later. And I'll leave you high and dry without a head coat. So he's got more power in the relationship because he can walk away now for a million bucks. But any NFL team that wants him, if they truly want him, the buyout is no impediment whatsoever. It's a million dollar check. You write it, you move on. Yeah, it is good fan fiction though.

I appreciated reading that this morning. And then your team. So all those who accuse Mike of being biased, just remember he's biased. He loves the Minnesota Vikings and he will say bad things about your favorite team in service to them. How are you feeling personally about going in this season with JJ McCarthy? I have no expectations whatsoever. The Vikings for the past 20 years, it seems, have been on this roller coaster where every good year is followed by a bad year. Every bad year is followed by a good year. So I fully expect them to not be very good this year, but I do agree with

the approach of giving JJ McCarthy a chance to fully develop. There was some weirdness happening right around the start of free agency with Sam Darnold. Are they going to bring him back? Are they going to bring back Daniel Jones? I talked to people who were dealing with the Vikings and the sense I was getting is nobody really knows who's calling the shots or who's making the decisions.

Is it Kevin O'Connell? Is it Kweisi Adolfo Mensah? Is it ownership? Who's making these big picture decisions about who the quarterback's going to be? And they did talk to Aaron Rodgers. They admit that Adolfo Mensah didn't close the door on Aaron Rodgers when he talked about it a couple of months ago.

It could be Rogers is still waiting to see if they look at the film from the OTA practices in mandatory mini camp and decide, you know what, let's just go all in with Aaron Rogers for a year, make it like Brett Favre in 2009 and try to get back to the Super Bowl for the first time in 49 years. I like the idea though of giving McCarthy his opportunity to reach his ceiling. They haven't had a true franchise quarterback at least since Dante Culpepper who's who had a promising career cut short by injury before him, Frank Tarkenton. Maybe McCarthy could be the guy. It's the highest they've ever drafted a quarterback. I believe I'd have to look. It's the highest in years at a minimum that they've drafted a quarterback at 10th

overall. Let's see what this guy can do. And so far so good. He throws it well. He moves well. If he can stay healthy, you know, they could, they could win some game. The schedule is going to be harder this year though. It's one of the things overlooked last year, eight games played by the teams in the NFC North were against the AFC South and the NFC West in a season when the NFC West was down this year, eight games played by the teams in the NFC North were against the AFC South and the NFC West in a season when the NFC West was down. This year, they play all four teams of the AFC North and all four teams of the NFC East. That's eight games swapped out much

harder for the lions, the Vikings, the Packers and the Bears this year. So I think all those teams, the top teams could have a lesser record and still be better than they were last year. Yeah, and I mean, I think the Vikings did a lot this off-season. It's a good setup for JJ McCarthy. I mean, the offensive line, they did some good things with that in free agency. They obviously still have the best, if not, whatever you want to rank the receivers in Justin Jefferson.

They are a talented team that it feels like it's a good place for JJ McCarthy, who obviously didn't want to sit a year but sat a year because of injury to be put into. And I also think Kevin O'Connell is, I mean that he's one of the best QB coaches in the league. Like I, you got to think that that is a big plus when it comes to JJ McCarthy and what you're going to find out about him. Absolutely. And they need to complement the passing game, which is run to perfection by O'Connell with a running game that that can balance things out a little better. And the moves they made at the interior offensive line are critical. Two colts were signed. They used their first round pick on the Ohio

State interior offensive lineman Donovan Jackson. They need an edg know, I mean, yes, there' happens in pro football, some guys that will punch someone needs to be punch stand up to a defensive l them grief or whatever an run blocking two differen

to work on the run blocki have tougher, harder nos line and they're trying t do that this year. And Jordan Mason, the guy they picked up in a trade with the 49ers, that could be one of those sneaky great acquisitions where he can come in and just explode for the Vikings in the running game. And if they start getting five, six, seven yards a clip, all of a sudden at passing game gets even more wide open. I'm getting excited now. Maybe I'm starting to believe you know, the edge thing is, is, is very true. You look at the Eagles and their offensive line. So it's good

segue. The Lions, Frank Ragnar retires. Was this a shock at all to people in the building or was it something that, hey, they kind of felt like this could happen? And then what is the fallout here? Because he's obviously a very it was a very talented center that offensive line was the strength of their team What do we like? How are the Lions going to adjust this? They've had a lot of turnover this year They've got the rookie they picked in round two who's already taken the snaps its center. I think that right now Yeah I think they knew rag now was transparent and he did him a favor by not retiring before the draft because if he retires before the draft then every time the

lines are on the clock or approaching being on the clock there's a blinking red light they're gonna draft an interior offensive lineman by not knowing that Ragnar was out it allowed them to not worry about getting jumped by somebody who tries to predict hey you know we kind of like that guy maybe the Lions are gonna take him, let's of the Lions and get the at. So I think they knew example, the adversity th

to deal with this year. B gone much tougher schedul this year. They play all the from the AFC North, a the NFC. So there's gonna this year with the Lions. their schedule like we we were looking at the first seven games before the bye with the other day, five and two is the best case scenario. A team that went 15 into last year, five and two through seven games they should be

thrilled with. So they've got to forget about last year. They can't make excuses. They can't say, oh, well, as us, we've got new offensive coordinator, we've got new defensive coordinator. And I think Dan Campbell's the right guy to set that tone and get them to forget about last year and focus on this year. This is why I love Mike because his show, which I was lucky enough to do with you many times, like in this part of the season, they'll be like, all right, it's Wednesday, May 22nd. What are we going to do? We're going to just break down the lion's schedule. I'm looking

at that right now. I love it. It's just ball all the time. Go through it, Mike. So Lions- You're living the dream. Lions at Packers, week one. Well, I feel like I give the edge of the home team in that one. I hate to do the Mike and the Mad Dog. There's a win, there's a loss. No, it's the best. That's what this time of year is for Mike. That's why we do it.

Hey, Packers win that game. Lions are 0 and 1. Okay. Bears at Lions. Well, hey, what an intriguing week too with Ben Johnson. Yeah. He's getting right into the ball. I'll give the Lions a late field goal. Okay. Late field goal, three points. Okay. My metrics have it five and a half for the Lions, but that's fine. Lions at the Ravens. You know, we've seen road teams go in to Baltimore

and surprise them from time to time. It's usually like if it's a bad team, they can go in and surprise the Raiders. The Ravens will kick the crap out of them like they did to the Lions a couple of years ago. I'll give that one to the Ravens. Okay. Browns at home in Detroit. I think that if the Lions lose that one, they have a very big problem. Then they're going to Sensi. Now, we know that the Bengals struggle at the start of years. Yeah, but that's deep enough into the season, right? Okay. I'll still give that one to the Lions. I'll give that one to the Lions. What's that have them now,

four and two or three and two? You got them at four and two right now, yeah. Because you have, you have penciled it. Well, no, wait, no, the only, you had had the Packers you had the Ravens as losses Yes, and then the Chiefs going to arrowhead Okay, Columbus day the Lions did win there to start the 2020 three season Oh, it's bad. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'll say the Chiefs are gonna, are gonna rectify the week one loss from a couple of years ago. So that's three losses there for the Lions. It's more losses in the first six weeks

than they had all of last year. That's all the more reason to forget about last year. The late Vikings coach, Dennis Green, used to call it the Valley of Zero and Zero. And I think that's the hardest thing for a team that had a great season. Number one seed. You gotta forget about that

because now you're back at zero and zero with all of the other teams. And you know, if you start one and three, the year after the Vikings went 15 and one, they started like one and three or two and four. You just got to forget about last year. Last year is gone. You got to focus on this year. So these first seven games, I think, will give the Lions the idea that they need to wake it up. I'm going to most of these are coming from.

Yeah, thanks. Now you're sending them through. Please stop. Mike, all I want to do is rapid fire. Ready? You ready for this? Rapid fire? Yes. Okay. First five weeks, rapid fire. Just give me the winner. Panthers Jaguars. Oh, really? You're going to do that? fire. Just just no just give me the winner. Panthers Jaguars. Oh really you're gonna do that? Panthers Jaguars come on. Uh shit I don't know. Uh Panthers. Falcons. Panthers at Patriots. Patriots.

Dolphins at Panthers. Panthers. Alright, so three and two, that's not bad. Even with the Lions. Yeah, Panthers are going to make the Super Bowl this year, Mike. Yeah, I know what you're doing, but that's okay. So many teams, and this is what the NFL loves. This time of year is between free

agency and the draft. You can convince yourself, no matter how bad your team was last year, that you can turn it around. And we've had examples. The Texans were as dysfunctional and God awful as any team we've seen over the last 20 years. And boom, in comes CJ Stroud and Will Anderson and to Miko's, and they win the freaking division in the first year. The Bengals, the year that they went to the Super Bowl, they were the one team in the AFC I'd look at and say, they got no chance to make it to the playoffs. So some of these teams that have been traditionally bad or recently bad, the Panthers, the Jets,

the Jaguars, you can turn it all around in one year. It really is amazing. And I think that's one of the things that makes the NFL special. You don't have fan bases that check out before the season begins, like you do in baseball or basketball. It's a great time to be around there. Are we, are we concerned about CJ Stroud? What's going on there? Well, I don't know. Soreness in your arm that keeps you from throwing in OTAs. Like what

the hell did you do to get your arm to the point where you can't throw in the off season? And Sims and I were talking about it the other day and it's great to have a former quarterback on the show because he said you know you can go out there and overdo it and you do get to a point where your elbow or your shoulder or something isn't right and you just have to rest it. But you're missing reps with a new offense, new players, you're missing the closest thing you're gonna have to live reps until training camp and this is the opportunity to get up to speed with the new offense they're installing. So it's a little concerning, but if he's able

to go when training camp rolls around, it's nothing to really be worried about. I wasn't concerned until D'Amico Ryan said three times, we're not worried. Yeah. And then I, and then I got worried. Yeah. Hey, I love watching those press conferences too. And you always got to watch the hands and he did a good job. He was doing the Superman Hercules stance with his hands on his hips, trying not to like because you always got because it's the you know, and it's amazing how it works. When the guy is lying through his teeth, inevitably the hand will stray up at the key moment and

kind of like and that's the ultimate that's the ultimate control of your body. If you can avoid scratching or touching your face when you're selling the bullshit, then you've got it figured out. Yeah, I appreciate that. So when it comes to teams, you mentioned a couple that went from worst to first, not expected to make the playoffs, ended up surprising everybody. Give us a team this year that did not make the playoffs last year that you think will make the playoffs this year, a surprise team.

Well, I like what the Jets are doing and I can't believe I'm saying that. I don't think I've said that at any point in the 25 years I've been covering the NFL, but they're trying to do what the Lions did. And the key is going to be the owner has to stay the hell out of the way. He was way too involved last year, fired invol Sala earlier than he sho involved in things he sho in. Trust Darren Muggie, Glenn, the new head coach

streak in him, put the te They didn't have a big s where they're in the midd of discussion and hype a and look at what the Jets are doing. It was a very meat potatoes approach. They believe in Justin Fields, Justin Fields reunited with Garrett Wilson from their time together to Ohio state. I think that's a huge positive that they, they were in favor of keeping the tush push.

And there's a thought that maybe they're going to use it. Justin Fields, ESPN research had a nugget. Since 2021, Justin Fields has converted 11 of 12 push sneak plays. That is the highest rate between him and Jalen Hertz and Josh Allen and Fields is number three in the league behind Hertz and Allen. Now Hertz did it a hundred times, Allen's done it 55 times. Fields only did it 12. But I think they may be thinking about using it. Because look, if you can make it work, you don't have first and 10 anymore.

You got first and nine or first and eight. Yeah. Because you get an automatic yard or two when you get within the range of the sticks. Yeah. I like that take. Memes loves it. Yeah, memes are our producer. Did you demote him as like he's no longer the top Florio? Yeah memes memes has a very like sour relationship with you online

But this is this is going this is big for you guys memes. What do you think? Yeah, that was really good. I'm waiting for like the gotcha. Oh, is there a gotcha? No gotcha. No, no, it's I'm it's not a setup. It's not a setup. I didn't do it to pander to you. I did the fan fiction thing to pander to Hank. I didn't do that. I don't think of you. Oh, Mike, I have a couple last questions. First of all, Mike is an author. Father's Day is coming up. Everyone please go buy Mike's books. Can we buy them on Amazon?

You get them on Amazon. 14.99 for the print editions. But because I've got a fairly momentous weekend coming up where I'm going to turn 60. Whoa, Mike. Whoa. That's why we had him on. Mike. What? You look great for 60 Mike stud I'm just trying to keep up with you. Yeah, I'm 40. That was me texting you. Happy birthday, by the way

This weekend this weekend the ebooks for father of mine father of Son of Mine, the sequel, I'm making them free both days. I do that from time to time. I'm trying to promote reading, like, because, because people hate to read because they grew up having to read in school. And I hated having to read. And as an adult, it takes a while to come back to it. But I'm telling you, and I'm going to keep working on you, because I'm going to get get you guys, especially you big cat to read my book. Yeah, I'm going to get you to read it. I know it's up there on the shelf. I'm going to get you to pull it down and fucking read it. Do you know what I did? Mike? It's right up there. I bought a reading lamp for like, you know, the little clip that you can put on your book. So at night you can, yeah, haven't like a birthday gift from your son. No, haven't used it, but that's a first step.

All right. But anyway, they're usually, I made them 99 cents on Amazon for the ebook for this year, just because I want people to buy them and read them and enjoy them because people surprisingly do buy them and read them and enjoy them. But this weekend they're free just for the ebook. The print book is not free.

14.99, you can get it now and you can give it to dad or grandpa or your uncle or your cousin or whoever for the ebook. The print book is not free. $14.99, you can get it now and you can give it to dad or grandpa or your uncle or your cousin or whoever for Father's Day. I love it. We need the AWLs to go out and buy that because we do love Mike. He's been ride or die with us from the very beginning. All right, a couple last questions. This is a random one, fan fiction maybe, that you can do an article. What's the next NFL team to be sold? Well, I think it'll be the Seahawks. Okay. All right. So not the Seahawks then. Next after that. You know, one of these owners is eventually going to wake up and say,

shit, I'll take $10, 11, $12 billion. Right. I've had enough. I've done enough. And I hear different rumors from time to time, and I don't want to compromise any sources. But there could be a guy that believes, hey, I've done everything I can in this league, and these teams are worth 10, 11, 12 billion now. I'm cashing out, baby. Now they have a hard time finding people who have the money to buy a team. But, but, you know, they're trying to change the rules and soften it and make it a little bit easier. But these franchise values keep going up and up. I will not be surprised if somebody that we didn't

expect to sell his or her team decides I'm out. I'm good. We're moving forward and we're taking the money. Yeah. Mike, I think Hank might have a last question for you. Oh, yeah. Let me do. Oh, he doesn't. He didn't respond. He doesn't. Oh, okay. I have a last question. Row back question. Well, I texted you asking, do you have a question for Florio? You were on your phone and you didn't see that text? What have you been doing? Where did you text me that? I texted the part of my take full group. You didn't see it. Mike, do you have a last question for a row back question? R H O B A C K.com promo code. Take 20% off your first purchase. Q Zips Polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, row back.com promo

code. Take sounds like Hank doesn't can't work his cell phone either. Mike. Thanks. Getting old too. Yeah, he he actually is about his birthdays in this must be a separate group text you guys have no it's the full group are you 30 I'm 31 about to be 32 he's about to be 32 Hank do you have a question for our friend Mike? Big Cat removed Hank from the conversation how I don't know it says today 1102 thanks to big cat removed Hank lock. Oh, I did it for my computer It is fucked I fucked myself, you know what it's I fucked myself Like an idiot because Mike could you know what I blame the the stupid chime that keeps going on. Mike, you're as a father. Where is this?

Yeah, I'm peppering it. Stop it. I'm trying to change the subject, so it's back on you. Mike, what are your thoughts on eating ice cream at 9 AM? I saw the picture of Big Cat with the ice cream cone at 9 15 in the morning. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to eat ice cream whenever

you want ice cream. Yes. It's one of the food groups. It's dairy, right? You can put stuff on it to expand the horizon. I got no problem with ice cream at nine in the morning. You still got to come up to our office in Chicago. We got the machine now, so free ice cream on us.

I'm waiting for a real invitation, not the phony while he's on the air, we'll invite him up. I'm waiting for the real, hey, would you come up and hang out with us in the studio? Okay, we should- That's not what I'm talking about should. You know what, Mike? You know what, Mike? I don't want to speak out of turn. We have a fantasy team. Yeah. Jerry O'Connell helps to manage it. Would you like to co-manage the team with Jericho? Would you get, no, it's not your team. You wouldn't have to pay for anything. No, no, no, Mike. I know we've we've we battered you mentally and you know, there's years of therapy you got to go through with the fantasy

art story arc with us. We've moved on from that. We moved on from that. Jerry O'Connell is our manager. Would you be, would you be interested in being the team, uh, general manager? So you would be, so he's kind of the coach. You're the general manager. We're the owners. You don't have to pay anything you got to just be the go-between so we don't have to talk to Jerry O'Connell yeah how does your O'Connell feel about that he's fine with it yeah he's actually pumped he's like I need someone who's hovering over me in micromanaging because tell you what he really doesn't want Adam Schefter to co-own the team with him yeah so this

would be you if this is real yes this isn't just part of one of your fucking bits to try to get me to step into it. So you can say, nobody gives a shit about your fantasy team. I'm happy to help out. Okay. All right. We're in. All right. But Mike, the way you just said it right there, just know that like it made me want to say it in the moment that nobody, but I'm not going to, but it was on the tip of my tongue. It's your guys team. Because it's not, this is not a bit, uh, this Jerry, he needs a little bit of help sometimes. And I think that you are the person that can help him. This is going to be the greatest test of our friendship.

Yeah. Because the whole time, if you're involved in this the entire time, PFT and I will just be like literally trying to hold ourselves back of no one gives a fuck about your fantasy, but it's our fantasy team. Yep. Yep. So, uh, Mike, but it's our fantasy team. Yep. Yep. So, Mike, you're the best. We love you.

Love talking ball. Enjoy your vacation. When does vacation start? It's not vacation. The show is off from June 13 until I think July 28, but profootballtalk.com is updated every day and I'll be doing videos every day from either my Olive Garden set at my house or down here or wherever I happen to have a computer. I mean, it never, there's always something. We're just shutting down PFT live for a few weeks. We do it every year,

but there'll be plenty of pro football talk content. No days off. What, what's the Olive Garden set? What do you mean? You know, it's a's you guys have busted my balls about. Oh yeah. When Italians get money, they basically become the trashiest version of themselves. Yeah. That's also everyone. Yeah. Don't give Italians money. They'll just make an olive garden in their kitchen. Yeah. All right. Very proud. Hey, listen, proud Italian father here. You know that my little kids. All right, Mike, you're the best.

We love you. Thanks, guys. Floria was brought to you by Morgan and Morgan and Fire Fest is presented by Morgan and Morgan. This week's Fire Fest is brought to you by our great friends. We all know that life comes at you fast. One minute you're having a great time out on the lake, the next day you're back at the office trying to figure out how to repair your boat because you steered it into some rocks. When you find yourself in the middle of your very own

FireFest you just might need America's largest injury law firm in your corner. Morgan & Morgan has been fighting for the people and helping with your FireFest for over 35 years. With Morgan & Morgan it's easy for the people and helping with your FireFest for over 35 years. With Morgan and Morgan it's easy to get started. Their fee is free unless they win. You can check them out at ForThePeople.com slash PMT. That's F-O-R-ThePeople.com slash PMT. Okay, FireFest of the Week time. Henry, FireFest. I don't really, I had a good week.

Yeah? I'm busy. BNPFT is golf CEO. It's got me back in the trenches. Busy, busy, busy? But good week, summertime. Hank pulled me aside today. He's like, just so you know, I've got a plan, but I need you to follow through on the plan.

I mean, that's fair. He's putting some pressure on me. It's going to be hard work. He's put together a massive plan. Like BNPFT have a very friendly, friendly relationship. And it's like, I don't want to be in a spot where I kind of have to, you know, push them. But that's what it's going to have to take. And Hank, if you have to play golf as CEO of PFT Golf Enterprises, if you have to supervise,

then you have to supervise. That's part of your job. Simulation. Yeah. Simulate competition. You got to get out there. But nothing bad happened this week? I'm curious. Yeah, no, we're You gotta get out there. But nothing bad happened this week? I'm curious.

Yeah, no, we're just checking in on you. Checking in on your friends. You just having fun? Just having a good time? Living life? Yeah, it was a good week, quick week. It's foggy, just can't go outside in Chicago. Yeah, what's up with the smog?

I think it's Canadian wildfires. Was there smog today? Yeah, bad smog. Oh, I didn't even, I haven't been outside today. Yeah. Whoops. I think it's the Canadian wildfires again, I didn't even I've been outside today. Yeah, whoops I think it's the Canadian wildfires again. They're doing that shit again to us What the fuck? Oh man

Blame, Canada. Is it like bad? Is it bad? Is it bad real bad unhealthy? Oh, we're in red zone Yeah, oh Canada's elected a new pope. Oh Red zone different. Oh,. Canada's elected a new pope. Ooh. Red zone. Different. Yeah. Okay, so you're good. Yeah, I don't I can't force I can't force one. Okay, great. Don't force one. You got this, man. You did a great job. Hey, kind of stole my fire fest of doing nothing. I've had a pretty good week. It's been it's been excellent across the board. I don't really have too much to complain about. I guess the only thing is softball has been canceled now for three weeks in a row. Yeah, it only rains on Wednesdays here in Chicago. Yeah. So I guess we're just going to finish the

season out with the standings as is. And that's that. I have no idea. I don't know. It's kind of a bummer. I miss playing ball. I do. Great boys. Yeah, it is very weird that we've had three straight rainouts. Yeah, I guess the other fire fest, it's an impending fire fest that I'm working on with with Nick and Brandon to buy the the 20-seat stretch h2 limousine Mm-hmm, and then we're gonna figure out how to monetize that later, but it's time in on for silent investor Yeah, you're sound yeah, because I know it's gonna make money. It's gonna make so much money I just don't know where I'm gonna park it or what I'm gonna do with it But besides that sounds like like my best idea yet.

It looks sick. And by my best idea, I mean, shout out to Nick for presenting me with the investment opportunity because he was like, PFT has got money, so I should just ask him to pay for it. Yeah. And we'll figure out, yeah, make money later. Yep. Buy Hummer, limo. Limos are getting going extinct. Yeah, that's a good point. They have been going to sing for a while. They've become trashy I think it's the I think it's like the Suburban has kind of taken over, you know black car has taken over for limos. We're not see limo I'm just like oh is it prom season right? You don't think like like the vans. It's like the party van

Yeah, like 20 years ago. You see a limo. You're like what famous person is in there that doesn't exist anymore Yeah, now it's yeah, you're right. It's a fleet of black suburban It's the giant Suburbans the convoy those the Tahoe's you got the Tahoe's and then you've got to like open-air Party buses that people take around Nashville. Yeah, and those are the three genres of Going out with a bunch of friends these days. Yeah, so let's bring limos back Yeah, let's do it Zach would make a great limo driver by the way with the cap and the driving gloves. Yep. Yep You ever worn driving gloves never the gloves, but pretty decent driving record. Okay, what's that? What's your driving decent? Everybody's got a couple a couple tickets some stop signs coaxing. Oh

Accidents but uh, how many accidents? Only four a couple accidents, don't be crazy. Oh wait, a couple accidents? But I was- How many accidents? Only four. That's a lot of accidents. But I was in the victim of the accidents in two of the four. How old are you? 27. That's a decent amount of accidents.

What were the other two? There was a, I mean there was a hydroplane, there was a, somebody ran a stop sign. One was a rear end. That was hand up. That was my bad. That one was me. And then the fourth one, I was passenger, so it doesn't count.

Oh, that doesn't count. Zach used to sell cars. Oh, yeah? Me too. What kind of cars do you sell? We did a new ones, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram. Used just whatever we got. What about you?

I use cars. You enjoyed it? Actually, I kind of did for a little bit. Did you like cars or trees? Definitely better. Or dogs? Dogs, number one. Trees, number two.

Cars, number three. I'm not really good. I don't know if you know this about me or not, Hank, but I'm not that knowledgeable when it comes to cars. I watched you bring the El Camino back to life last night. Camino looks good. It does. I watched PFT.

We got wings last night, little guy date, and I watched PFT pull up and I was like that fucking thing looks sick Yeah, it's nice and loud. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. And then I left he the it got in didn't turn on I was like, oh, but you opened the hood got it going. No problem I know how to do like three things now with the car, which is a massive. I'm becoming a man. That's huge All right. My fire fest is uh, I don't really have one either. I mean, I guess it's that we got the ice cream machine. It's up, operational, delicious, incredible. I guess a future Fire Fest, like I don't know

if it's sustainable to do 915 ice cream every morning. But I did find today that I, doing, you know like Joe Rogan's big into the sauna cold tub. Mm-hmm. I found that I did two Cups of coffee and ice cream and it was basically sauna cold tub for my brain And and your stomach and my stomach but I like I had a little bit of a pep to me that I didn't have just From the car like it was I don't know Maybe it was just a hot and cold back to back That just had me feeling good. I mean shocks the crash

No, it makes no because that's the beauty of the ice cream machine the minute you think you're gonna crash you just get more Ice cream think about big cat. What did we have for dinner last night? Wings hot wings. Yeah cold beer. Yeah, there something and you feel great while you're doing it. I did. It's the same thing except for breakfast. Yeah. Although I going yesterday was was five ice cream cones, and then wings for dinner. And you just gotta wonder how do these kidney stones keep happening? I don't know. It's a mystery. But it is something that if I was nine years old, and you told me, yeah, you're gonna you're gonna eat ice cream for lunch and then you're

gonna have wings for dinner. I'd be like, yeah, being an adult rock. And then ice cream for breakfast. It is. I mean, you gotta make you you've been kind of a hater on the ice cream machine. I'm just concerned. Walking in today and seeing a line of people not even close to noon. Yeah. 10 a.m. And there was a big group of people eating ice cream like it was like a coffee machine. It's the water cooler. Yeah. It's the water cooler. Yeah. I love it's a place where we can get together and talk and share stories as office mates. Imagine being the guy that had the under in the hockey game last night. Yeah. I said, yeah. The ice cream machine. The ice cream machine.

I've been doing little, if you do littler cones, you can do more of them. So you don't go all the way to the top. I made a mistake yesterday, though, last night. Because people were tweeting at me, and I googled listeria. Yeah, we also had a professional chef in here who, like, he had some bad stories. Correct them on, we don't use that word

I should not have zackled it when I came from that if that's cool with you. Yeah Moving for all the cream team just you know PFT. They refer to it as the L word okay moving forward I will not I will try not to refer to it But I'm recounting a story of what I did last night and last night I did in fact Google the L word You know you can get you started getting on WebMD and stuff like that you trick yourself into having like stage 4 cancer the next Day like you got you gotta be careful Google and stuff like that. Yeah, you just start spiraling. That's a good point anxiety Shit's clean. They're gonna clean it once a week. Maybe twice a week. We're gonna make sure it's clean for you

Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, Zach You got a fire fest before we do numbers I've got super quick one. Yeah Do you have to so Maya my fire fest of the week is that uh The developers of our Marvel rivals was a video game I like to frequent to play with my friends and my brother because we don't live in the same areas. They're taking the game So they're they're allowing these guys do if you're not familiar a smurf account which is like in the rank system So what's going on here is like a burner for video games hundred percent. They're doing burner accounts and They're coming down in the trenches of like lower levels and just pub stomping so they're cut

They can't compete but in their current ranking so they like to go alternate account come down bully the guys who aren't to their Standards and it's just that that's so you getting pub stomped every night? I'm getting pub stomped right now in right? Yes Why don't you go smurf? I? Got I got a integrity in the game. Oh, yeah, okay I actually suck so they're just playing down a level in pub stomping the fuck out of you Yes, cuz they don't want to compete with the guys that are at their current standing so that's playing scared Is that is there any is that a little bit? Are you just mad? You're getting beat? Yeah It sounds like you're just getting straight up stopped

That's one of the aspects But they said they'd address the smurfing in the newest update that that is terrible in the update and the latter part of the update Is that they changed the team ups and now there's a sharknado that you can light on fire and the sharknado is ruining the game That you can light on fire and the sharknado is ruining the game The Smurfs so Jeff is a shark Jeff has an ability to swoop everybody up storm is another character in the game She does tornadoes they can collab now sharknado the third guy comes in with this fire tornado Now we got a flame sharknado going and it's what was once a nice escape for me My friend is like an existence that I don't Your players act I feel like that's a big that says a lot about you. Who do you play with?

I'm either going invisible woman or I'm going Bucky Barnes. So I'll do heels and a little bit of a DPS no tank though So every night Zack what you're saying is you're basically going to like literal war where you're just dying constantly And it's just not fun anymore Depending on the night. Yes last couple nights. We just begin destroyed. Yeah, it's no longer any fun It's not like before it was a great time now. It's not really in existence. It's morale low all time low Yeah, a couple guys are just like I'm not doing it. Oh No, I have like a squad name or anything No, no squad name just you your brother your boy me my brother and then some interchangeable

Homies I'll swap through nice your homie swapping They're swapping through okay. Well, it's this shark. NATO sounds it just destroys everything Yeah, just picks everybody off the point You know you're trying to hold down the point and then the shark NATO sweeps him off is it's really unfair What game is this again Marvel rivals a PvP 5v5? Marvel theme. And who's the developer? Uh, Chinese developer.

If I was gonna pronounce it, I would pronounce it incorrectly, but it was... This sounds brutal. Because I wanted to go to war for it. You've never been pub stomped? I thought it was Blizzard before. Oh yeah, I mean, I'm at first. Call of Duty, it's like that. You get pub stomped?

Oh yeah. I've been getting pub stomped recently. Dude, this sounds brutal. In the air? In the aviation? In the air, yeah. Yeah, one of squadron members really like went into the DMs on a popular team started roasting them So now they've got some developers that are on that team Now they're just amping up the difficulty level of the bots that I play against that can't I'm getting pub stopped Alright, so who's uh, what's the Chinese name word that you can't pronounce?

It's net ease so not as Chinese. I first thought yeah These games. All right, listen to me very clearly net ease game Get the fuck out of here with the sharknado. You're ruining the game. My boys getting pub stomped and he's about to quit entirely It's bad for his metals and figure out the Smurfs Thank you guys for doing that. Yeah And figure out the Smurfs Thank you guys for doing that. Yeah That is rescind the new update

AWL let's fight for Zack like I don't know tweet it at That ease games like figure out the Smurfs no more pub stomping and fuck the sharknado And if you guys see anybody smurfing feel free to report man hit that report button get him gone Have you been reporting I report yeah, I get him out of there Hate to say it, but I'll do it I mean hypothetically if you were to tweet at them it would be at net eat net ease games underscore E in that's at net ease games Underscore Ian yeah, so or or just oh no tweet. Yeah, tweet it Marvel rivals

That's perfect. That's the that's the account that gets a lot of yeah, okay treat at Marvel rivals Tell them no more pub stomping no more smurfing. No more sharknado You had another one does it? We I don't say memes memes is saying yes, you have another one. I have a second one super quick Get to it call duty update also bad was it bad I Didn't know I was oh, I know I don't leading you that you had some game on the cod update my bed So I guess second one super fast is uh some of the recent clips about I know we've talked about a couple eating habits here these circle back to my mom and

She I we mentioned that maybe I don't tell her the full truth about what I mean sometimes And then we do group facetimes at the end of the night right so family facetimes. Oh, that's sweet That is super enjoyable. It is because everybody's in different areas. You know catch up on our days really a highlight of my day It's kind of taking a turn. She's now having me report back like what I'm eating for dinner like you lied to me. What's going on? That's good though. Yeah, she cares. Have you thought about? Try this tonight, so what time you do the facetime? It just it just depends what time they get my grandpa to bed usually around like anywhere from six to nine That's that's really sweet. I think maybe tonight. You just be like hey mom listen

I'm getting the fucking pub stomped every fucking night The last thing I need is you smurfing my ass with a sharknado She's like what is he going insane? What is she what is she is she what she's concerned with cuz you're you're doing your thing She just wants to best for me make sure I'm healthy. You know she didn't want me to keep she knows I'm a I'm real easy at habit forming. So if I start the habit forms and I'm just going to keep ripping the fast food for eternity. So, but I, so I did, I did get ahead of it in the grocery order. I had some ground beef, I had some rice, avocado, I did show her the ingredients on the counter,

but that was on Monday and I ended up getting that pizza. So I had to shamefully walk the ground beef to the trash chute because it that was the last Day I was good for But guess what you showed it to her. Yes. She saw the ingredients now. What if she sees this clip? This is why I only want to do the first one Zach's I've been also asking Zach for his dinners And he sent me just a large pepperoni pizza that he ate the whole thing of and he said but I did not get any Knots no garlic not good work good work But he actually then followed up saying he kind of regretted because he could have used a couple knots

Maybe it would have make your mom feel better if you just get vitamins to So you're like hey mom. I took my vitamins today. I think we start at the So you're like, Hey, mom, I took my vitamins today. I think we start at the beginning builder blocks. I think we got to have the food pyramid down right before we start going to supplements. No, I think you can go supplements and then you can eat whatever you want. Start working out here at the office. She's like, Mom, I'm playing basketball for 10 hours a day. So why more you think?

Yeah, I got here. I think you gotta lie your way out of think. That's how we got here. I think you gotta lie your way out of this. That's not good. Well tell your mom, what if you said, you know what mom, I'm just not eating dinner at all anymore. And then she'd be like, no you have to eat something. Okay, yeah, good point. I'll eat dinner. I'd throw it to fast.

You could also do this Zach, this is real quick. Why don't you start eating big lunches? And then when she asks what's for dinner, you'd be like, a cucumber. Not hungry? Just go with something super light. Yeah, cuz then you're not actually lying. I like that Yeah, you're telling her the truth you say what your dinner is but a big lunch you go sluggish in the middle of day It's very safe. I think if you ate what you eat in the middle of day We wouldn't see you for the rest of the day that wouldn't be good for production. Yeah, or you could just eat lunch at 7 p.m That's super fair. Yeah, yeah, just move around there the time of day where the eating is that your lunches a state of mind production yeah or you could just eat lunch at 7 p.m. that's true yeah yeah

just move around there the time of day where the eating is that your lunches a state of mind like that all right good show we'll have Ryan Whitney on Monday to recap the weekend and do a little US open preview memes have you had any time to think about how you didn't really congratulate me enough for my var first ever Vr Congrats, okay Let's do number three Those memes that was memes that was unfortunately me fuck. How you run? Wait till he's talking sorry. I also thought that ah

77 65 56 uh 77 65 56 No you're not 21 99 52 55

Right on me I have 56? I gotta remember my number now I gotta remember my number now. You're 65? 44! 44! Love you guys. Later. So So So So So Thanks for watching!